ABC News(WASHINGTON) -- Gov. John Kasich, R-Ohio, said Roy Moore, the controversial Alabama Republican nominee for U.S. Senate, should "step aside" in the wake of a report that he allegedly initiated a sexual encounter with a 14-year-old girl when he was in his 30s.
"The party ought not to be for this," Kasich told This Week co-anchor Martha Raddatz in an interview Friday, which aired Sunday. "He should step aside."
Moore has vehemently denied the allegations made in a Washington Post report Thursday by four women, including the one who accused Moore of initiating a sexual encounter with her when she was 14 in the late 1970s. The three other women allege in the story that Moore pursued them when they were between 16 and 18 years old and he was in his 30s.
This article is a prime example of fake news, an attempt to divert attention from the true issues which affect our country, like health care, military readiness, tax reform, immigration and national debt, Moore said at an event Saturday in Alabama. We do not intend to let the Democrats or the established Republicans or anybody else behind this story stop this campaign.
Kasich said on This Week that although Moore has the right to defend himself against the allegations, he should withdraw from the Senate race.
"Its just really a matter as to whether he ought to be the candidate, the standard-bearer of the Republican Party, and I just think he shouldnt be, Kasich said. He can continue to defend himself, but I think, at the end, the party ought not to be for this.
Kasich dismissed the Moore campaign's assertion that the allegations are politically motivated.
This is not about Obama or left wing. I just dont believe that it is, and Im saddened by it. Im the father of two twin daughters, and I just think its inappropriate, and I would just really would like it if he stepped aside, said the Ohio governor, who vied unsuccessfully for the Republican nomination for president in 2016.
Kasich tweeted Friday that he has long opposed Moore and that the allegations in the Post report make the former Alabama judge unfit for office.
Even if Moore formally drops out of the race, its too late for his name to be taken off the ballot. According to the Alabama secretary of state's office, a candidate's name can be removed from the ballot only if the request is made no later than 76 days before the election. The Alabama Senate election is on Dec. 12, a little more than 30 days away.
Raddatz asked Kasich if he can imagine Democrats winning the Senate seat in Alabama, which was vacated by Republican Jeff Sessions when he became U.S. attorney general.
"Well, I don't know," he said. "But, you know, everything in life can't be about, you know, who wins an election."
He also alluded to the possibility that another Republican, such as current Alabama Sen. Luther Strange, who lost to Moore in the primary, could run a write-in campaign.
Lisa Murkowski ran as a write-in candidate in Alaska and she won, so let's see where it goes, the governor said.
Copyright 2017, ABC Radio. All rights reserved.
.HOW COULD I NOT ASK WHAT YOU THINK OF ; A. TRUMP RUNNING AGAIN B. TRUMP ANNOUNCING SO SOON I think he wanted to beat DeSantis to it! TELL US WHAT YOU THI...
6 hours ago
HA NOI General Secretary of the Communist Party of Viet Nam (CPV) Central Committee Nguyen Phu Trong held talks with General Secretary of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee and State President Xi Jinping on Sunday during the latters two-day State-level visit to Viet Nam.
Trong congratulated the Chinese leader on the success of the CPCs 19th National Congress and on his re-election as General Secretary of the CPC Central Committee for the 19th tenure.
He said he believed that under the leadership of the CPC headed by Xi, Chinese people will achieve all targets set by the CPCs 19th National Congress and turn China into a strong, democratic, civilised and modern socialist nation.
He also appreciated Chinas participation in and contributions to the success of the 2017 APEC Economic Leaders Meeting.
Xi expressed his delight at visiting Viet Nam again right after the CPCs 19th National Congress. He congratulated Viet Nam on successfully organising the 2017 APEC Economic Leaders Meeting as well as the meetings outcomes in fostering development in the region and the world.
He showed his sympathy over losses caused by recent disasters in Viet Nam.
During their talks, the two Party chiefs informed each other of their respective countrys situation, discussing and agreeing on major orientations and measures to boost the relations between the Parties and countries in the future.
The leaders said the two countries remain important economic partners, while trade, investment and tourism ties have enjoyed growth, and border situations on land and in the Gulf of Tonkin have basically been stable.
Both agreed to uphold the achieved results, and work actively to solve existing difficulties and shortcomings so as to develop the Viet Nam China comprehensive strategic cooperative partnership stably and sustainably.
Party General Secretary Trong affirmed that Viet Nam treasures and wants to boost its friendship and the comprehensive strategic cooperative partnership with China in a stable and deeper fashion, and back Chinas efforts to grow further and contribute positively to peace, stability and prosperity in the region and the world.
He emphasised several main points to strengthen the friendship and cooperation between the two Parties and countries.
Firstly, he asked the countries to intensify delegation exchanges, increase the efficiency of collaboration between the two Parties, and strengthen cooperation between the Vietnamese National Assembly and the National Peoples Congress of China, between the Viet Nam Fatherland Front and the National Committee of the Chinese Peoples Political Consultative Conference, and between the two countries ministries and peoples, particularly younger generations.
He stressed the need to promote the coordinating role of the Steering Committee on Bilateral Cooperation in supervising and speeding up the implementation of signed agreements, especially high-level ones, and step up cooperation in diplomacy, defence, security and law enforcement.
It is essential to implement the declaration on joint vision on defence cooperation by 2025, organise border defence exchanges and strategic defence dialogues, and share experience in Party work, political affairs, health, joining United Nations peacekeeping missions, and combating crime.
Secondly, the two sides should improve the effectiveness of cooperation in economics and other fields, he said, suggesting that both countries continue efficiently implementing high-level agreements and common perceptions, focusing on expanding investment and trade scale and applying measures to reduce Viet Nams trade deficit.
Viet Nam and China should boost win-win partnership in areas of Chinas strength and Viet Nams demand, including agriculture, environment, climate change response, science-technology and transportation, especially in seeking new rice varieties adapted to salinity condition in the Mekong Delta region, he said.
Trong proposed that the two countries properly settle issues related to fishing vessels and fishermen; manage, protect and use water resources along their shared border in a sustainable manner, while working closely to prevent and cope with flooding, ensuring nuclear safety, and creating optimal conditions for road, rail and air transportation.
Thirdly, Viet Nam and China should maintain peace and stability and deal with problems at sea peacefully, he stated.
The Party leader also underscored the necessity of safeguarding lasting peace and stability to minimise risks of instability, and building trust in the settlement of East Sea issues between countries concerned, saying this will benefit all sides involved as well as the region and the world.
All parties should exercise restraint and make no moves to complicate the situation or expand disputes, while respecting the legitimate and legal rights of each other, and focusing efforts on maintaining peace and stability at sea to prioritise socio-economic development.
He proposed that Viet Nam and China fully and effectively implement the agreement on basic principles guiding the settlement of sea-related issues and the Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the East Sea (DOC), in parallel with soon conducting the practical negotiation for the building of an effective and efficient Code of Conduct in the East Sea (COC).
The two countries should consider the application of suitable cooperation forms in some areas with real overlaps in line with international law, he said, adding that they should stick to carrying out the agreed roadmap, and utilise experience gained in sea delineation and cooperation in the Gulf of Tonkin to make progress in the delineation and collaboration in the waters off the mouth of the Gulf of Tonkin.
At the same time, they should consider the possibility and plans of cooperation among relevant parties as well as between ASEAN and China in some less sensitive areas with shared interest, including the management of fishing and protection of the marine ecology and environment, said Trong.
For his part, Xi briefed his host on the major outcomes of the CPCs 19th National Congress.
He declared that the Party and Government of China always pay great attention to unceasingly reinforcing and developing the comprehensive strategic cooperative partnership with Viet Nam under the motto Friendly neighbours, comprehensive cooperation, long-term stability, looking toward the future and in the spirit of Good neighbors, good friends, good comrades, and good partners.
He also referred to promoting the efficiency of cooperative mechanisms on trade, infrastructure, and monetary-finance, and connecting development strategies of the Two Corridors, One Belt framework and Belt and Road initiative to grow the countries economic-trade ties in a balanced and sustainable manner towards the US$100 billion goal in 2017.
He also suggested the two sides support and facilitate cooperation between localities and border areas of the two countries, increase people-to-people exchange, and ratchet up affiliations in social security to improve peoples lives.
He vowed that China will continue providing non-refundable aid worth 600 million CNY in three years to improve social security in Viet Nams northern localities.
China will spare no effort to soundly manage conflicts at sea to maintain peace and stability in the East Sea, Xi stressed, affirming that China wants to work with ASEAN to implement comprehensively and efficiently the Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the East Sea (DOC), and negotiate and build the Code of Conduct of Parties in the East Sea (COC).
He also suggested the two sides boost coordination at multilateral mechanisms like the United Nations, APEC, China-ASEAN, and Lancang-Mekong, contributing to maintaining peace, prosperity and development in the region and the world at large.
19 deals secured
General Secretary of the Communist Party of Viet Nam Nguyen Phu Trong and General Secretary of the Communist Party of China (CPC) and President Xi Jinping witnessed the signing of 12 cooperation pacts and the exchange of seven other documents in Ha Noi on November 12.
The cooperation pacts consist notably of memorandums of understanding between the two sides on promoting the Two Corridors, One Belt framework, agreement on cross-border trade, co-operation on e-commerce, development of traditional medical centres in Viet Nam, key projects in trade development planning for 2017-2021, and border patrol.
Meanwhile, the seven documents exchanged dealt with personnel training between the provincial party central committees of Viet Nams northern border provinces and the Party Committee of Chinas Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region; social scientific exchanges; cooperation in legal framework for the management of nuclear safety between the Viet Nam Agency For Radiation and Nuclear Safety and Chinas National Nuclear Safety Administration; cooperation for 2017 2022 between the Vietnam National Political Publishing House; and investment in the construction of a tyre manufacturing factory. VNS
HA NOI General Secretary of the Communist Party of China and President Xi Jinping and Chairwoman of the Viet Nam National Assembly Nguyen Thi Kim Ngan attended an inaugural ceremony for the Viet Nam China Friendship Palace in Ha Noi on Sunday.
The ceremony formed part of the Chinese leaders two-day State visit to Viet Nam from November 12.
The Viet Nam China Friendship Palace is located at No. 188 Le Quang ao street in Nam Tu Liem District. It was built with non-refundable aid from the Chinese Government and Viet Nam governments corresponding capital.
With both its interior and exterior design inspired by the shape of the lotus flower, the 14,000 sq.m palace will serve as a venue for cultural, art and people-to-people exchange activities between the two countries, as well as conferences and meetings.
On the occasion, the Vietnamese and Chinese leaders also inaugurated a Chinese Cultural Centre in Ha Noi. Following the ceremony, Xi and Ngan met with delegates of the Viet Nam China Peoples Forum and a number of intellectuals with outstanding contributions to the growth of ties between the two neighbouring countries. VNS
Waterloo firm
receives award
WATERLOO Clark & Associates was honored with the 2017 OPGA Freedom Award for their compassionate service and dedication to veterans and active-duty soldiers.
The OPGA Freedom Award recognizes OPGA members who have provided orthotic and prosthetic fitting and/or rehabilitation for soldiers wounded in action.
Grundy hospital
services honored
GRUNDY CENTER Grundy County Memorial Hospitals Outpatient Services have been named among the best in the nation for patient experience based on patient surveys compiled by national health care consulting firm Press Ganey.
The hospital received the Guardian of Excellence Award for ranking in the top five percent of more than 1,800 hospitals across the nation for 2017. This marks the ninth consecutive year the hospital has been recognized for patient experience.
The hospital is completing an 18-month renovation plan designed to provide more space for its Outpatient Services and has scheduled a Nov. 19 open house from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. at the hospital, 201 E. J Ave.
Covenant clinics
receive honors
WATERLOO The National Committee for Quality Assurance announced four Covenant Clinic locations have received NCQA Patient-Centered Medical Home recognition for using evidence-based, patient-centered processes that focus on highly coordinated care and longterm, participative relationships.
Covenant Clinic has four clinics recognized as a Level 3 PCMH: Covenant Clinic Family Medicine, located in the Covenant Professional Office Building in Waterloo, Suite 210; Covenant Clinic Family Medicine, located at Arrowhead Medical Center in Cedar Falls; Covenant Clinic Pediatrics, located in the Covenant Professional Office Building in Waterloo, Suite 510; and Covenant Clinic Family Medicine in Shell Rock. Most recently, Covenant Clinic Family Medicine at Arrowhead and Covenant Clinic Pediatrics renewed PCMH recognition at Level 3. The Level 3 designation is the highest level of PCMH awarded.
DES MOINES An Iowan found himself in the middle of a political storm last week in the nations capital.
Just as Senate Republicans were preparing to hold a hearing on Sam Clovis nomination for a federal Department of Agriculture job, his name surfaced in the Russia investigation by special counsel Robert Mueller.
That investigation revealed that Clovis, a former conservative radio host, economics professor and U.S. Senate candidate from northwest Iowa, had communicated with George Papadopoulos, a former Trump campaign foreign policy adviser who has admitted to lying to the FBI about his attempts to connect the campaign with Russian officials in 2016. As part of the investigation, Clovis testified before a grand jury.
On Nov. 2, shortly after the news of his involvement broke, Clovis withdrew his name from consideration from the chief scientist post.
The political climate inside Washington has made it impossible for me to receive balanced and fair consideration for this position. The relentless assaults on you and your team seem to be a blood sport that only increases in intensity each day, Clovis wrote in a letter to Trump. As I am focused on your success and the success of this Administration, I do not want to be a distraction or negative influence, particularly with so much important work left to do for the American people.
The path that led Clovis to the middle of a political maelstrom started in conservative western Iowa.
Born and raised in Kansas, Clovis came to Iowa in 2000 after serving 25 years in the U.S. Air Force, including as a fighter pilot, and working in the private sector.
In 2005, he became chairman of the business administration and economics department at Morningside College in Sioux City. Four years later he started a radio show, Impact with Sam Clovis, on KSCJ-AM radio in Sioux City. During this time he lived in Hinton, Iowa, a town of fewer than 1,000 people in Plymouth County, roughly 15 minutes northeast of Sioux City.
Clovis meteoric rise in politics perhaps in some ways started with his radio show, but officially began four years ago with the start of his campaign for the U.S. Senate.
He joined four other Republicans in running for one of Iowas U.S. Senate seats. Clovis campaign was unsuccessful; state legislator Joni Ernst won the GOP primary and later the 2014 general election.
Clovis also was nominated to run as the partys candidate for state treasurer, but lost that general election race.
In 2015, Clovis became involved in the presidential campaign. He first aligned himself with former Texas governor Rick Perry, but later switched his support to Donald Trump. The Trump campaign made Clovis a senior adviser.
When Trump was elected, he hired Clovis as a senior adviser in the U.S. agriculture department, and over the summer nominated him to become the departments chief scientist, who oversees the departments $3 billion of research and investment grants. The position requires U.S. Senate confirmation.
Then the political fireworks started.
Clovis nomination drew scrutiny, in particular from Democrats, some agricultural groups, and scientists from 50 states who questioned his credentials. Clovis has an advanced degree in economics, but does not have agricultural science education or experience.
In a letter protesting his nomination, scientists said Congress had codified the job in the 2008 Farm Bill as one whose nominee was to be chosen from "among distinguished scientists with specialized training or significant experience in agricultural research, education and economics."
"In every aspect, Clovis falls far short of the standards demanded by the position. While he holds a doctorate of public administration, his professional background is completely devoid of relevant scientific experience that would otherwise equip him to fulfill his duties," they wrote.
Among those signing the letter were 43 scientists from Iowa, including Cornelia Butler Flora, agriculture and life sciences professor at Iowa State University and Frederick Kirschenmann, distinguished fellow at the Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture at Iowa State.
"Sam Clovis's decision to withdraw his nomination as chief scientist is a victory for science and our farmers who rely on agricultural research," Sen. Debbie Stabenow, of Michigan, the top Democrat on the Senate Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry Committee, said in a statement. "From Day 1 it was clear to me that Sam Clovis was the wrong choice for our farmers and ranchers. His lack of qualifications and long history of politically divisive statements were disqualifying, and the recent news surrounding his time as co-chair of the Trump campaign has raised even more questions."
The feeling is different among Clovis's Iowa supporters, who said they are disappointed he felt compelled to withdraw his nomination and that he would have served well in the post.
Its unfortunate, but I understand his decision, said Steven Holt, a state legislator from Denison who supported Clovis 2014 campaign for the U.S. Senate. Im sure he thought it would be a great distraction, so he withdrew his name.
I think its unfortunate because I think hes brilliant and I think he would have done a great job in whatever post the president put him in, Holt said. I found him to be a man of great integrity.
R. Doc Zortman, of Sioux City, got to know Clovis in 2009 at tea party events and supported Clovis campaign for the U.S. Senate. Zortman said he, too, was disappointed that Clovis felt obligated to withdraw his name from consideration for the chief scientist post, but added that he was not surprised because he thinks Clovis was acting in a way that would not cause consternation to the Trump administration.
Sams a team player, Zortman said. Instead of going through all that and dragging the team down, hes a team player. Instead, hell stay in a position that doesnt require a hearing.
Clovis supporters in Iowa also pushed back at suggestions he was not fit for the chief scientist post. Holt said the job duties do not necessarily require an agricultural scientist, and Zortman defended Clovis previously stated skepticism of the human impact on climate change.
Clovis also received the support of Iowas pair of Republican U.S. Senators. Ernst said she was encouraged by his nomination but respected his decision to withdraw, and Chuck Grassley called Clovis withdrawal a lost opportunity for a strong leader to serve Americas farmers.
During his nine months at USDA, hes already made a big difference for agriculture, Grassley said in a statement. Sam served his country in the military and was well-suited for the position. Hes in touch with the grassroots of rural America, and however he serves next, theres no doubt hell make a big contribution.
Clovis said so long as the administration approves, he will continue to serve in his role as an adviser in the agriculture department.
Zortman said while he is disappointed Clovis felt obligated to remove his name from consideration for the chief scientist job, he thinks Clovis will be a positive influence in his current position.
My belief is, and me being a Christian, I have the faith that everything happens for a reason, Zortman said. Wherever Sam ends up, God wants him there.
WATERLOO Residents would have just four hours a year to shoot off fireworks in Waterloo under a plan up for debate this week.
City Council members are scheduled Monday to vote on an ordinance which would allow fireworks use on private property in the city limits only from 6 p.m. to 10 p.m. on July 4.
The councils public works committee voted 2-1 in August to recommend the short window for fireworks, with Councilmen Jerome Amos Jr. and Tom Lind supporting the idea and Steve Schmitt voting against it.
Waterloo eyes 1-day fireworks limitation WATERLOO Fireworks usage would be limited to the Fourth of July under a proposal narrowly
The Legislature and Gov. Terry Branstad legalized the sale and use of consumer fireworks this year for the first time in 80 years, allowing them to be used from June 1 through July 8 and again from Dec. 10 through Jan. 3.
The law does not allow cities to restrict the sale of fireworks. But cities are allowed to approve shorter usage periods or completely ban setting them off.
Earlier this year, Waterloo council members limited fireworks use from June 30 to July 4.
There was a public outcry following the Independence Day holiday from residents calling on the city to ban the fireworks because the noise traumatized veterans and others with stress disorders, agitated pets and disturbed the peace.
Fireworks supporters pushed back and suggested the issues this year were due to the novelty and will subside next year. Concerns were also raised about the police departments ability to enforce a ban.
Several other large Iowa communities, including Cedar Rapids, Iowa City and Dubuque, have completely banned consumer fireworks use. The City Council in Cedar Falls voted 4-3 Nov. 6 to approve the first reading of an ordinance preventing the use of fireworks.
Cedar Falls council votes to ban shooting fireworks -- again CEDAR FALLS There were no fireworks as the Cedar Falls City Council voted 4-3 to ban the d
The meeting is scheduled for 5:30 p.m. Monday in the council chambers on the second floor of City Hall. A work session on the fireworks ordinance is slated for 4:35 p.m.
WATERLOO An airline pilot and U.S. Navy veteran is trying to find information about a Waterloo airman killed in a World War II crash before he could get home to see his terminally ill mother.
Cape Coral, Fla., resident Ted Mikita is working on a book about the crew of a U.S. Army Air Force B-24 Liberator bomber shot down over the island of Koror in the Palau archipelago during a bombing run in late August of 1944.
Eleven crew members perished, including Mikitas cousin, Herb Farnam, and a buddy, Don Elliott of Waterloo. Mikita is writing a book on the crew. A quick check of Courier files yielded scarce information on Elliott, and Mikita solicited the papers help in getting the word out.
Mikita is a 1980 graduate of the United States Naval Academy at Annapolis, Md., who was a Navy anti-submarine patrol plane commander. He is now an international long haul pilot with Delta Airlines. His project is a spin-off from family genealogical studies.
As I researched and actually visited known parts of the wreck I learned how little was known of the individuals who were each very remarkable young men, he said.
He is writing the book as a memorial to those men.
I hope to bring them to life for the relatives, including myself, by telling the individual stories of their upbringing, joining the Air Corps and the exciting combat missions they were involved in, Mikta said.
They flew about 25 combat missions before they were shot down.
Don Elliott has been the toughest nut to crack for research, said Mikita, whose mother-in-law was originally from Waverly. What is known about Elliott is he attended West High School, Iowa State University and was the only son of an ailing mother.
Elliotts mother, Grace Bannon Elliott, was critically ill. Donalds father and Graces husband, Claire Elliott, wrote to President Franklin D. Roosevelt asking that Donald be granted a furlough to see his mother before it was too late.
Donald never made it back. A Sept. 10, 1944, Courier article reporting his death and the efforts to get him home carried the headline, Furlough Plans Ended by Death.
The article quotes part of a letter Don Elliott wrote his mother: As the glowing twilight fades to darkness, remember that your job has been well done. ... Dad and I will carry on the best we can. Then the three of us will be together again ... in a world of eternal happiness.
Grace died a month after her son was shot down. Claire Elliott remarried twice and died in 1962. According to Mikitas research, he was survived by three stepchildren, all of whom are deceased.
According to Mikitas research, Elliott and Farnam, Mikitas cousin, shared a footlocker and manned the B-24ss fuselage or waist machine guns. Elliott also was a radio operator on the plane. The crew had distinguished itself in raids on Truk lagoon and Yap island.
On the fateful Aug. 28, 1944, mission, Mikita wrote, the plane, commanded by Capt. Gordon Dixon, head of the 372nd Bomb Squadron, led a group of planes in a bombing run over Palau when it was struck by a 70mm Japanese anti-aircraft cannon.
Mikita says according to the 372nd Bomb Squadrons historical entry, The airplane burst into flames immediately after being hit and went into a shallow dive for about 200 yards, then leveled off and the bomb load was salvoed (dropped). After the bombs were salvoed, the right wing broke off in flames and the remainder of the airplane fell straight down, flaming. One body was thrown clear of the wreckage. No parachutes were seen to open.
Portions of the wreckage were recovered in a series of expeditions over the years since the war with the cooperation of native Palauans, including one such trip by Mikita and members of his family.
Mikita asks that anyone having direct or historical information about Don Elliott contact him at Ted.Mikita@gmail.com.
WATERLOO The Volunteer Center of Cedar Valley needs help with the following:
The Boys and Girls Clubs of the Cedar Valley seeks volunteers from 7:15 to 8:30 p.m. Nov. 27 to collect free-will donations during the Cedar Valley Christmas concert at the Gallagher Bluedorn Performing Arts Center.
The American Red Cross seeks a volunteer driver to deliver blood goods from the Waterloo office to hospitals and sites in Dubuque County. This opportunity exists Monday, Tuesday and Friday beginning at 9:30 a.m. until no later than 4 p.m.
Americans for Independent Living needs volunteers to sort and display donated household items, clothes, linens and towels, and much more.
The Kids Cafe program of the Northeast Iowa Food Bank provides 400 warm meals to children in the community. Two volunteers are needed Monday-Thursday to drive a van to serving locations. The opportunity starts at 3 p.m. and takes 90 minutes to complete.
For more information, call the Volunteer Center of Cedar Valley at 272-2087, or go to www.vccv.org.
WATERLOO A Waterloo family escaped after a fire broke out in their home Saturday night.
Resident Brittany Radford told officials she and her three children went into the kitchen for a snack. When they returned to the living area, flames and smoke were already present, originating from a tipped-over space heater, Radford told firefighters.
Firefighters quickly extinguished the flames but not before the fire did heavy damage to the one-story rented home, said Battalion Chief Michael Moore with Waterloo Fire Rescue.
It vented out a back window and caught the back of the house on fire and spread to the lower roof, Moore said. There was a lot of heat inside. There were two rooms that were going.
Two adults and four children lived at the house, and the American Red Cross was called to assist with emergency shelter.
Radford went back in to successfully rescue a dog that was in a kennel, according to firefighters.
No one was injured in the fire, which caused $25,000 damage to the home and $15,000 damage to its contents, according to reports.
Radford rents the residence with Ethan Weber, and it is owned by Scott Hambly, according to reports.
Physicists say it is theoretically possible to have parallel universes. It could be argued, however, that it is no longer a theory. Just look at Americas news sources.
I have an app that gives headlines and leading stories from both Fox News and CNN. Several weeks ago on the same day, there appeared these headlines. From Fox, Clinton campaign helped fund research that led to salacious Trump dossier, report says. On CNN, Desperate for distraction, Republicans open investigation. Both were talking about the same event.
You can tell this was a big story because the norm is to simply ignore news that doesnt fit your narrative.
A day after Donna Brazile dropped her bomb on the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton, she ceased to exist on CNN. Its lead story was, GOPs Corker blasts Trump for pressuring Justice Department. Meanwhile Fox was trying to keep the story alive. Their headline read, Gregg Jarett: Hillarys scheme in rigging the nomination may have been criminal.
Brazile claimed Clinton used her money and the money of the DNC to exclude any other candidate from winning, i.e. rigging the election and guaranteeing Sanders had the same chance of winning as we have of draining the D.C. swamp. This story disappeared off the edge of the flat earth. When her anti-Clinton remarks went public, they were not mentioned on ABC. They hardly saw the light of day on NBC, and, of course, CBS never heard of it.
The networks did manage to report on Russian meddling, and although there appeared to be much smoke, no one seems to be able to find the actual fire. Evidently, we are not sure who was meddling with whom. Nevertheless, it is news we should all care about.
The potentially criminal behavior in the DNC is something we shouldnt care about.
That Clinton and her husband managed to enrich themselves from the sale of anything not nailed down, including lots and lots of American radioactive material that re-appeared in (can we say it?) Russia, it is not news.
In the parallel universes we now inhabit, crimes are crimes only if they are committed by someone you dont support. Otherwise, crimes by those you wish to support dont exist.
It seems there are things that are real in one universe that do not exist in the other. However, some events do appear in both, but with opposite charges, much like matter and antimatter.
In both universes, we are constantly told someone is guilty of something, and it is probably criminal.
Is it Trump, or is it Clinton?
Maybe it is both, but could that happen? According to physicists, matter and antimatter, brought into contact, simply annihilate each other, and the whole thing ceases to exist.
Which may not be a bad thing. Maybe we could start over with some new news sources and maybe even a new crop of politicians who are not slimy swamp critters.
One can only hope.
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FAW-Volkswagen (FAW-VW) will recall 1,512 vehicles to address a malfunction of the air conditioning system, China's quality watchdog has announced.
The recall, effective Nov. 30, covers Audi Q5 Hybrid vehicles produced between March 10, 2012 and July 21, 2015, according to a statement by the General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine.
Contact corrosion within the electrical connector for the auxiliary heater may cause the connectors to overheat or melt, which could result in a fire, said the statement.
FAW-VW will replace the auxiliary heater free of charge.
FAW-VW is a joint venture formed in 1991 by Chinese automaker FAW Group and Germany-based Volkswagen Group.
On May 28, 1991, I found myself standing on the grounds of the Kremlin in Moscow. Gathering outside the building at the same time were many newly selected members of the Russian legislative body.
The members task was to elect the new president of the Russian Federation. At the time, the Soviet Union was still in existence and Russia itself was one of the 15 provinces that made up the entire country.
But an election by popular vote was not something that had been done before within the communist system. When they discovered an American congressman was in their mist, I was quickly surrounded. I still remember the question of one member. She asked, Congressman, the people I represent dont agree. What should I do?
I told her, Find out what they agree on, and then do it.
I was trying to tell her to become a good politician. This is because a good politician should be able to hear from the public diverse messages, discord, dissension and consensus and then, with his or her colleagues, form a course of action that needs to be taken and addresses the problem.
I dont apologize when I say I admire good politicians. I like good politicians, irrespective of whether they are conservative or liberal. If the politician can look to the ideology that forms the basis of that individuals perception and understand the differences from their own, then needed steps can be taken and unwise undertakings avoided.
Here is one example. In 1953 Dwight David Eisenhower, a Republican, the first since 1933, took over the presidency. Eisenhower believed the country desperately needed a modern system of roads. But the new president could hardly commence his term by calling for a tax increase to pay for it. Mainline Republicans would have been appalled. It was a Democrat, Speaker of the House Sam Rayburn, who found the solution. His suggestion was to create a trust fund to raise the money necessary to build the highways.
Eisenhower had his roads and the Democrats had their infrastructure project, which created jobs, and none of us want to think what this country would be like today without our interstate transportation system. This was an action taken by consensus.
There is another model of political leadership that some choose to take. It is called dissension. These political leaders attempt to maintain power by stressing to some why the opposition is a threat to their individual well-being and the nations.
Here is what I mean. I was disappointed when our president, reacting to the attack by an immigrant in a rented truck who ran down people on bikes in New York City two weeks ago, chose to use the incident to gain political points. The president immediately blamed the attack on Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., and his support for an immigration program that had let the individual into the U.S.
Setting aside the fact the legislation that created the program was signed into law by President George W. Bush, was supported by 14 Republican senators when it passed and Schumer, at the time, was a member of the House, what is most troubling is the type of political leadership the president chose to exercise. Instead of calling on both parties to form a review and then revise the policy, he decided to cast blame for a regrettable and tragic incident on a political opponent.
It is unfortunate we now live in an era where the politics of dissension divides the voting public into an us-against-them mentality. This has become the norm. It is generated in part by the belief that winning an election is more important than the functions of government determined by those who won.
But a good politician understands once the election has been conducted, the talent of the individual office holder is measured by how well the tools and levers of government are used.
What this country needs right now are more good politicians.
Tax surprise
ROD LORENZ
TRAER -- If you are a farm landlord, you are in for a big surprise with the new tax cut proposed. You are about to be taxed 15.3 percent Social Security (self employment tax) on your rental ground.
Has anyone looked at the new tax proposal? I skimmed through it, and it's just a bunch of numbers and words that need professionals to sort out. Anyway, on Page 51, line 15 states that 1402a is amended by striking paragraph 1. This amounts to a serious tax increase for any landlord; a modest 200-acre farm renting for $200 per acre would now have to pay $6,120 in self-employment tax.
Please do not be fooled by all the news of a big tax cut. Farmers, you are going to pay more one way or another if they push this through into law.
Contact your congressmen.
Veterans Day
STEVE KAPLER
WATERLOO -- On June 14 1969, one of my older twin brothers got married at St. Edwards Church. Earlier that morning, he attended the funeral of a fellow Columbus High School graduate who had been killed 10 days previously on Hill 471 in South Vietnams Quang Tri Province. His name was Lt. Michael OConnor. He and five other Marines who made up a recon patrol dubbed Flight Time had been dropped behind enemy lines to gather intel on North Vietnamese and Viet Cong troop movements. In the early morning hours of June 4, their position was ambushed and a close-quarters firefight ensued. Urgent calls for help went out. By the time rescuers arrived, all Flight Time members were dead.
One observer reported: The teams weapons were all gone and bayonets were used to finish the fight. Hand-to-hand combat had taken place. They had fought to the last man and only the perverted mind of the suicide bomber with satchel charges ended their fight. Mike OConnor had just eight weeks left on his tour of duty.
This Veterans Day, if youre bored, you might take time to locate his grave at Calvary Cemetery on Falls Avenue and simply say, thank you.
Clayson column
GARY HEDDING
CEDAR FALLS -- Dennis Clayson on Nov. 4 challenged the woman who called out George H.W. Bush for sexual assault. He wrote the woman does not understand sexuality or assault, or both, because the past president was too feeble to be assaulting her. The Department of Justice website defines sexual assault as any sexual contact without consent. Examples of sexual contact including fondling. Fondling includes copping a feel. So, she knows about sexuality and assault.
Clayson accuses her of acting disproportionately. I disagree. She didnt slap him across the face. She didnt file a complaint for sexual assault. The only thing she did is refuse to remain silent. She held him accountable for his action. She did speak out in public, but then Bush copped a feel in public, so that isnt disproportionate either.
Sexual assault does not get a pass because someone is more than 90 years old; or because it comes from someone in a wheelchair; or from a respected past president; or as a joke. Ridiculing this woman, so that others choose proportionate silence to sexual assault, means sexual assault in this country may not change. And Claysons article was about the things that prevent change.
Troubled masses
DONALD FISH
SHELL ROCK -- The world has become more crowded and compressed and we have more electronic but less face-to-face communication. This is a formula for distrust, paranoia and dishonesty between groups and individuals. Do not be surprised at increased local gun violence and international tension. You righteously claim "guns are not the problem." I say guns within the reach of people who are angry, confused, hungry or bullies are a major problem. Read the stories.
We need common-sense gun regulations. We don't need assault rifles designed to kill masses in the public. We need money for prevention and treatment of social and mental health conditions. Equality is the key to our freedoms, yet we allow big money and corporations to undermine our freedoms by brainwashing us and avoiding regulation. Pay attention to whose marketing tells you what to buy and how to live. Search out the human stories behind sensationalized news bytes. Wonder about why we the people are the losers in a win/lose system. Government and corporations are not our enemies. We need to build economic and governing systems that build goodwill and respect not power and riches. Love and vote. Understand your neighbors.
White crosses
KIE MAAS
WATERLOO -- To the woman who called Faith Lutheran Church about the white crosses: I am so sorry you are hurting because of the abortion. You feel guilty after having an abortion to save your life. Please think about the 900 out of 1,000 women who had an abortion because they were told it was the best or only "choice" they had. That is the reason our sign says "Abortion 'choice" hurts -- Jesus Heals."
Abortion is not helping women. People can get help if they have made that choice at Word of Hope, (888) 217-8679. The witness of the crosses is to help people realize abortion is a bad choice, not a solution to a difficult situation. If the message would prevent one woman from making that choice and not have to deal with the pain you are dealing with, would it be worth it? Planned Parenthood did 328,348 abortions in 2015, 300 times the 1,000 crosses. Breast exams are down 12 percent in a year, prenatal care and adoption referral are almost nonexistent, but abortions and government funding are up. Not respecting human life, which includes abortion, is a big problem in our nation.
US is bankrupt
ROBERT BLAIN
CEDAR FALLS -- It's ugly. The federal deficit is $19-plus trillion. Weve been habitually accumulating more than $1 trillion per year in federal deficits and trade deficits. Free trade left our manufacturing base hanging on a meat hook. Were a world leader in poor test scores, illegitimate children, substance abuse, divorce, welfare dependence, low savings rates, obesity, political corruption, illegal immigration, polarization of wealth, the loss of formal religious training, cyber insecurity, consumer indebtedness and societal violence.
Now we have a proposed tax reform plan thats nothing more than a $1.5 trillion giveaway program for a society that didnt earn it and doesnt deserve it. Weve long been living beyond our means: consuming more than we produce and being enabled by ongoing systemic debt accumulation. The U.S. is morally and fiscally bankrupt and is now in the final stages of cannibalizing itself. Appropriate for any giveaway program would be to include free yoga classes for all Americans so we can bend over and collectively kiss ourselves goodbye.
STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. Sailors learn to tie knots. A ships cruising speed is measured in knots
Scott Edwards and his wife Kathleen, or Kat, tied the knot in a big way 20 years ago when he served on the USS The Sullivans. They cant believe that much time has passed on their cruise in life.
Edwards, a native of the Iowa community of Victor on the county line between Poweshiek and Iowa counties, and Kat were married on board ship just two days before the ships 1997 commissioning at Staten Island, N.Y.
They returned to the site of their wedding on the 20th anniversary commemoration of the ships commissioning and shared an anniversary kiss in the ships pilot house where they were wed. They now live on Chincoteague Island in Virginia, near where they met.
The senior chief (petty officer) took us to where we were married, she said. We got to take some pictures. Got to take a kissing picture. It was real nice.
The same ship, same pier," Scott said. It was the first time since I got off the ship that weve been able to see the ship. So its real impressive. She looks real good after the 20 years of service shes already done.
It was my last ship before I retired from the Navy, Scott said. I came in on the commissioning crew. He spoke with some current Sully sailors in his work area. And some of the stuff I had started is happening because thats been passed down. And its kind of neat.
The couple were loaded down with Sullivan souvenirs and apparel. And like many current and former Sully sailors, Scott maintains a tie to the ships sponsor, Kelly Sullivan, including a recent visit to Waterloo.
I was back to Iowa in October to visit my mom and went up to see Kelly and see the museum, the Sullivan Brothers Iowa Veterans Museum. I wanted to go do that. So she met me and gave me the tour. Saw the cemetery.
The memorial markers for the brothers are in Calvary cemetery. He also visited the site of the brothers family home on Adams Street and Sullivan Park.
The Courier interviewed Scott during the 1997 commissioning. At that time he commented one of his favorite times of day was to have coffee on the fantail of the ship early or late in the day.
Thats some of the stuff I miss. Theres nothing like being a sea and watching the sun come up, or seeing the moonlight on those waves. And the ship at night sounds so quiet. Its just a calming thing. You go out there and gather your thoughts. Its just nice having coffee out there. I would have never made a good submariner because they never would have let me on deck.
Well, you still have coffee on the deck in the morning, but now it stays in one place. Doesnt move around a lot, Kat quipped to him.
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Saturday's 24-hour online shopping binge is the day-to-day online shopping market in microcosm, and benefits manufacturers, traders and consumers far beyond China's borders.
Trade at Alibaba, China's leading e-commerce platform, reaches 168.3 billion yuan (US$25.4 billion) on Saturday's shopping promotion. [Xinhua]
November 11, China's Singles' Day, became an online shopping spree in 2009 when Alibaba's Tmall began to make it so through extensive promotions.
The world's biggest online shopping spree is a barometer of consumer behavior.
Set in both "the world's factory" and second largest economy, the event draws shoppers from around the world looking for bargains and multinational corporations seeking sales.
"It is a worldwide social synergy event," said Zhang Yong, chief executive officer of Alibaba. "The synergy means joint efforts by global businesses and driven by technology and big data. It is a Chinese phenomenon with world influence."
This year, sales hit 100 billion yuan (15 billion U.S. dollars) by 9:04 a.m. Sales on Tmall broke the 10 billion yuan mark just three minutes after midnight. Last year, it took almost seven minutes.
"Singles' Day brings us many nice surprises each year, with the new commercial phenomenon and business forces. I think this year will be no exception," said Zhang.
Alibaba has created Haitao to help people in China buy foreign products, and TMall Global as a marketplace for foreign businesses to sell directly to Chinese consumers.
Japanese brands Onward Crosset and Laox, for example, have Singles' Day promotions at their shops on Tmall Global.
Stadium Goods, a New York City-based marketplace that sells footwear and other apparel, said it began preparations for the promotion one month in advance.
Its Singles' Day sales target is 2 million U.S. dollars, said John McPheters, founder of the company.
But it's not just sellers, many foreigners are also buying, according to Cyol.com.
According to data by AliExpress, Russia, Brazil, the United States, Spain, France, Ukraine, Israel, Belarus, Canada and the Netherlands have become the top 10 buyers in terms of purchasing power.
Females and people from 25 to 34 years old are the main source of the 100 million foreign online shoppers, the data showed.
"It is a Chinese phenomenon, but resonates across the world," Zhang said.
Alibaba's net income rose 146 percent to more than 17.4 billion yuan year-on-year for the fiscal quarter ending September.
Revenue from international businesses reached 2.9 billion yuan, 115-percent growth year on year, thanks to strong growth in its Southeast Asian platform Lazada and China outbound platform AliExpress.
"Singles' Day is adding more and more overseas businesses, and it has become a huge opportunity for goods, capital and culture to be exchanged around the world," said Jin Xuejun, professor of economics at Zhejiang University.
In 2016, Alibaba's Singles' Day sales totalled 120 billion yuan thanks to its internationalization tendency, but the record was surpassed in just 13 hours this year.
The Singles' Day shopping is becoming bigger in scale given JD.com Inc., Kaola.com and other cross-border e-commerce platforms have came to share the big on-line shopping cake. It takes JD.com as long as 11 days to top 100 billion yuan of sales by Nov. 11, in contrast with Alibaba's nine hours.
These cross-border e-commerce platforms have made increased efforts to expand businesses abroad. Taking Alibaba as an example, its online payment app Alipay can now support 27 clearing currencies and serve users in over 200 countries.
Cainiao Network, the logistics arm of Alibaba, has established 266 cross-border warehouses in 224 countries and regions.
Nov 12, 2017 | By David
Heres another round-up of some fun DIY projects that have been shared around the hobbyist 3D printing world recently, hopefully giving you inspiration to get involved yourself, or at least providing some comfort in these turbulent times as summer curdles into the sour light of autumn. Theres a set of 3D printed tires that let you drive on water, a 3D printed semi-automatic railgun, and more besides.
1. 3D printed aquatic car tires
Users of remote controlled cars are finding their terrain options expanding at a considerable rate due to the increasing popularity of 3D printing and the consequent hobbyist modifications that are now available, but water has remained the final frontier. Up until now, that is! The results of a project carried out by Simon Sorensen have been demonstrated on his Youtube channel RCLifeOn, and they are pretty impressive. His remote controlled car travels upon the water much like a sailboat or like Jesus Christ himself, and we can definitely spend a long time watching this particular video.
His 3D printed tyres are equipped with paddles, to give them the level of traction they need to move across a surface beneath which they would otherwise sink like a stone. Not only is the motion of his JLB Cheetah fast and stable, but its also still able to be remotely controlled and directed as the vehicle makes it way across the water. The tyres were printed with a 5 percent infill, which leaves plenty of room for air inside to keep them floating. A 14.8V Lipo batter was used to provide the motor with the required power to keep the wheels turning.
2. Customized 3D printed doors
As far as doors for a server cabinet go, functionality tends to be the key. Few are the designs for doors to enclose a network server that are also memorable and aesthetically striking. But "Wouldn't it be funny to put Grunderzeit-style doors on the server cabinet?" So this project by one Austrian hobbyist Michael is a real one-of-a-kind. He built some new doors for his cabinet in the Grunderzeit style. This refers to an economically prosperous period of time in Austria and Germany, in the early part of the 19th century.
The basic doors were found in a furniture store, and he modified them in various ways to fit the cabinet in which his server was kept. A major part of getting the doors to fit properly was the hinge design, and this is where 3D printing came in. He used CAD software to model some elaborate customized hinges, and sent off to get them 3D printed in steel. With a Voronoi-based structure, modified with the hobbyists own personal flair, the hinges are an impressive feature that closely resembles the traditional Grunderzeit style. An FDM 3D printer was also used to put together a template for finishing the doors wooden frame.
3. 3D printed Semi-Automatic portable railgun
If youre looking for something to get a bullet from one place to another in a short amount of time, electromagnets are perhaps an even better option than the traditional gunpowder approach. Thats certainly the logic behind the development of rail-guns, which are usually seen as high-tech, heavy-duty military equipment. 3D printing technology is making everything much more accessible, however, and a hobbyist with the right expertise, equipment and mindset can now put together his own portable railgun without breaking the bank.
Described as a journey, the process of developing this portable DIY rail-gun took over 2 years. It was the pet project of a Youtube user known as NSA_Listbot, and he has shown off the terrifying results on his channel. NSA_Listbot custom designed both the magazine and receiver and manufactured it himself (minus the spring) using a 3D printer. He made use of a field-augmented circular bore, 4.5kJ capacitor bank, and a custom Arduino Nano. PETG filament was used to 3D print the main body of the gun, safely housing these components. Titanium and steel projectiles are both capable of being fired at incredibly high velocities, although the rate of fire is very slow. It takes around 45 seconds to fire all three bullets in the magazine, although that should improve as battery and capacitor technology does. Lets hope it doesnt improve too much, though.
4. 3D printed keys
We know all about the dangers of online hacking and the potentially huge impact of various cyber-security breaches, but could the digital world even affect the security of traditional physical locks? A Hackaday user called Dave Pedu has been testing out 3D printing keys, and the results of his project might give you cause for concern.
Pedu made use of parametric design techniques and OpenSCAD, a programming environment which makes it easy to manipulate 3D models. His design was based on the recognizable and commonly used Kwikset lock and key pair. A photo of a key was used, and then processed in order to generate a 3D model. All the program needs is values for the heights of the keys five teeth, and it can use these to automatically generate an accurate model.
Pedu used his Flashforge Creator Pro 3D printer, with 0.15mm layer heights, and he printed the keys using ABS plastic. After a couple of attempts, he was eventually able to successfully turn his lock with a 3D printed duplicate of his own house keys. Pedu believes that newer, tighter locks probably wont work as well, as the plastic keys will simply break, but either way this is an exciting or potentially worrying development, depending on how you look at it. Maybe refrain from posting photos of your keys online, if thats something youve been doing.
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Jim K. wrote at 11/12/2017 8:13:20 PM:As a locksmith for 25 years, I have experimented with 3D key duplication successfully. Once you have the static parametric key profile, you only need to "read" the depths (0-9) as the spacing is also static to the profile in most cases. The key in this photo is not a Kwikset, but a Weiser. Additionally, locks are inherently at their smoothest operability when brand new, not 'tight' as indicated above.
Lucina Schell at The Quarterly Conversation:
Before Leonora Carrington became a famed surrealist artist and writer, she went mad. In the late 1930s, the English debutante was living with her lover Max Ernst (more than 20 years her senior) in a farmhouse in Provence, when Ernst was imprisoned on a visit to Paris and sent to a concentration camp. As the German army advanced, Carrington fled across the Pyrenees into Spain, where, after exhibiting increasingly deranged behavior, she was interned in an insane asylum in Santander. Down Below is Carringtons brief yet harrowing account of her journey to the other side of consciousness.
It was Andre Breton who encouraged Carrington to write down her experience. Liberation of the mind was the ultimate aim of surrealism, and Carrington, already consecrated as a surrealist femme-enfant, a conduit for her much older lover to the realms of youth and mystery, had now traveled further than any of them and lived to tell the tale. While she was predisposed to find artistic merit in her experience of madness, Carringtons reasons for telling her story seem more personal and therapeutic: How can I write this when Im afraid to think about it? I am in terrible anguish, yet I cannot continue living alone with such a memoryI know that once I write it down, I shall be delivered.
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A ceremony was held Sunday to commemorate the 151st anniversary of the birth of revolutionary leader Sun Yat-sen.
The event was held by the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), China's top political advisory body, in Beijing's Zhongshan Park, which is named after Sun.
Born in 1866 in south China's Guangdong Province, Sun was the founder of the Kuomintang Party, and is a revered revolutionary leader who played a pivotal role in overthrowing imperial rule in China.
Iraqi security forces battling Islamic State (IS) militants on Saturday freed a town and nine villages near the IS-held city of Rawa, the Iraqi military said.
The soldiers of the 7th Infantry Division and the 8th Armored Division, backed by the paramilitary Sunni tribal fighters, crossed the Euphrates River and captured the town of Rumana, its bridge and nine nearby villages, Lt. Gen. Abdul Amir Yarallah, Commander of the Liberation of West Anbar Operations, said in a brief statement.
They also managed to seize the areas near the border with Syria, and would continue to clear the vast rural areas in the north of the river, Yarallah said.
Earlier in the day, Yarallah announced the launch of an operation to free the city of Rawa and the nearby town of Rumana within the first phase of a major offensive to clear the rural areas in the north of the Euphrates River.
On October 26, the security forces started a major offensive to free the last urban IS stronghold in Iraq near the Iraqi-Syrian border.
The IS militants seized large swathes of territory in Iraq in 2014. After three years of battles, the Iraqi forces have retaken most of the occupied areas from the terrorist group, including the countrys second largest city Mosul.
A Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) worker was allegedly murdered in Keralas Thrissur on Sunday.
The RSS worker, indentified as Anand, was an accused in the murder case of a Communist Party of India (CPIM) activist four years ago.
It is to be noted that this is not the first case of violence against the workers of the right-wing group in the state.
Earlier, many similar incidents of assault have been reported that have political tension in the state.
The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has been accusing the Left Government of killing the political leaders.
The saffron party had also held a rally JanRaksha Yatra in Trivandrum recently to protest against alleged political killings in the state.
BJP president Amit Shah, who also participated in the rally, hit out at the LDF government and questioned whether Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan has come in power to kill BJP and RSS workers.
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Date: 30 September, 2017.
Place: Shag Harbour, Province of Nova Scotia, Canada.
About one month ago, on 30 September, a very strange event was reported in the small fishing town of Shag Harbour, Nova Scotia.
According to an anonymous testimony published on Mutual UFO Network (MUFON) online database, three silent unknown objects were seen hovering over the Canadian village, a well-known place for UFO hunters since it was the place of the famous 1967 UFO incident.
At approximately 07:50 pm on 30 September, 2017, while in Shag Harbour, Nova Scotia, I along with several others who had attended a guided bus tour to the old moss plant location witnessed three silent unknown objects pass overhead, moving west to east, at a very high altitude, the author of the report related.
I first noticed a small star-like round light brighter than other stars visible in the sky. At that time perhaps 35 to 45 degrees up from the horizon, the yellow/white star-like light moved eastward slowly and silently, he explained. It had no flashing or blinking lights and was constant in illumination, he added.
The witness commented that he thought he had just seen the International Space Station (ISS) moving across the sky. However, he soon realised it was something else. At first, I thought this could be the ISS or a satellite, so just maintained eye contact as it passed slowly overhead, he affirmed. As the first light passed overhead, a second group of lights appeared behind the lead star-like object. These new lights that appeared were all solid light blue and flashed on one after another until some 8 to 10 lights had come on, then went off and began flashing on again, one after the other, repeating the sequence, he described.
Moving as one group, as if these blue lights were attached to a larger object, following after the lead star-like object, there were two sets of light blue lights one on each side forming a disc shape. Each side of lights followed the same sequence of coming on one light after the other until all were lit, then would go out to start again, the Canadian citizen asserted. As the second object moved off after the first object silently, a third object appeared. It was, however, more of a blob of light forming a roughly arrowhead-like blobby shape of yellow-white light (it too was silent, but had no flashing/blinking lights; the light was a constant yellow-white.), he continued.
Finally, the alleged UFOs kept on moving towards the east until they went out of view. However, this experience was very significative for the witness and the rest of the people who were with him. I and one group of fellow witnesses had an animated discussion about what we saw on the way back to the Community Centre. I know that at least four other people witnessed this event, he expressed.
Draw your own conclusions
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A well-known Alabama businessman worked to arrange a meeting between President Donald Trump and the prime minister of Lebanon earlier this year, federal records show.
Will Brooke, a former Republican congressional candidate and retired executive for the investment firm Harbert Management, had to register as an agent of the Lebanese government in order to advocate for the meeting even though he was never paid for his efforts. He's the only person in Alabama who's registered as an active agent of a foreign government, according to federal records.
"I checked with expert legal counsel and was told I had to register, whether or not I was a volunteer," Brooke said Thursday.
Passed into law in the 1930s in response to concerns about both Nazi and Communist propagandist campaigns in the U.S. the Foreign Agents Registration Act requires U.S. citizens to register with the federal government if they attempt to influence public policy on behalf of a foreign government, political party or business.
The law, rarely the focus of public attention, came into the spotlight earlier this month with the indictment of former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort, who is accused of failing to inform the government about his activities on behalf of a Russian-backed political party in Ukraine. In the wake of that indictment, The Star searched for Alabamians who are also registered foreign agents.
Only six names are registered in the state over the past 40 years, and most involve mundane business transactions.
Scott Nelson, a lawyer for the Washington D.C. international law firm K&L Gates, said the requirements to register under the law are "very broad," and can include everything from lobbying public officials to simply agreeing to "generate goodwill for a foreign government."
Past agents
The publishing company EBSCO registered in 1977 in order to sell subscriptions to publications printed in Russia and Eastern Europe.
The Birmingham law firm Hand Arendall entered into agreements in the 1990s to represent European aviation companies including an attempt to market the Panavia Tornado, a British-made jet fighter that was never adopted by the U.S.
In 2005, another Birmingham law firm, Maynard Cooper & Gale, registered to represent a political party run by Sanjar Umarov, then a jailed political dissident in Uzbekistan. Umarov was freed in 2009 and moved to the U.S.
All of those companies are now listed as inactive foreign agents and there was no active agent here until Brooke registered in May.
"The registrant will contact the Office of the President of the United States on behalf of the Office of the Prime Minister of Lebanon regarding a possible introduction for the purpose of direct communications between their respective offices," Brooke's paperwork reads.
'A man of good faith'
Brooke told The Star he encountered officials from the Lebanese government while on a mission trip to Lebanon with a church group, and agreed to speak to the Trump administration on behalf of prime minister Saad Hariri. No money changed hands as a result of the agreement, he said.
"I believe Mr. Hariri to be a man of good faith and a moderate," Brooke said this week.
After years of strife between religious groups, Lebanon now has a constitution that requires recognition of all three of the country's biggest religious groups Sunni Muslims, Shia Muslims and Maronite Christians, at the top levels of government. Hariri is Sunni.
Hariri did have a meeting with Trump in July.
"Lebanon is on the front lines in the fight against ISIS, Al Qaeda, and Hezbollah," Trump said in a press conference after the meeting. The president's comments generated a small stir at the time because Hezbollah a Shia political party and militia that ison the U.S. list of terrorist organizations also holdsseats in the Lebanese parliament.
Brooke said he doesn't know whether he had any influence on the administration's decision to hold that meeting.
Influence
Still, Brooke does have pull in Republican political circles.He was a key witness in the corruption trial of former state House Speaker Mike Hubbard. While Hubbard was speaker, Brooke invested $150,000 in Hubbard's failing print shop, Craftmaster. Hubbard also asked Brooke for career advice, and for help getting a job. Emails revealed at the trial showed Hubbard simultaneously seeking career help and promising to secure funding for a nonprofit Brooke's wife had campaigned for.
Hubbard was convicted on 12 felony ethics counts in June 2016.
Brooke also made a failed run for U.S. House of Representatives in 2014. He's probably best known for a TV ad in which hefired a rifle at a printed copy of the Affordable Care Act.
Hariri, the Lebanese prime minister, has seen his own political trouble in recent days. On Nov. 4, according to accounts in the press,Hariri announced his resignation as prime minister, blaming pressure from and a possible assassination plot by Hezbollah and Iran. In an unusual move, he made that announcement not on Lebanese soil, but in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
The resignation has led some in Lebanon to speculate that Hariri's move was forced by the Saudi government. Saudi Arabia and Iran are rivals in the region. Aninternal crackdown by the Saudis earlier this month has landed nearly a dozen princes in detention, according to accounts in the press.
Registrations, prosecutions few
Nelson, the international law attorney, said there are about 500 registered foreign agents in the country. Federal rules allow many representatives of foreign businesses such as the automobile and aircraft companies that do business in Alabama to register as lobbyists instead. Prosecutions under the act are rare, he said.
"A U.S. Department of Justice audit last year concluded that over half of initial FARA registrations were late and that about half of all registrants had filed at least one subsequent report late," Nelson wrote in an email to The Star.
Before the Manafort indictment, perhaps the most famous late-filer was Billy Carter, the brother of President Jimmy Carter. Billy Carter's paid work on behalf of the Libyan government led to Senate hearings and became an election-year albatross for the Carter administration.
Billy Carter is among Alabama's past registered foreign agents. He didn't register until July 1980.
By that time, Carter was working as a publicist for a mobile home company in Haleyville.
Anniston Star Capitol & statewide reporter Tim Lockette: On Twitter @TLockette_Star.
The cold open of "Saturday Night Live" on Nov. 11 featured Mikey Day as Roy Moore, the Alabama Republican candidate for U.S. Senate.
In the skit, Beck Bennett as Vice President Mike Pence has called Moore to the White House to tell him he might want to step down after being accused this week of inappropriate sexual conduct with a 14-year-old girl.
Moore is dressed in a cowboy hat and a vest, as he was at a campaign rally in Fairhope in September, when he pulled out a pistol while addressing the crowd.
"The Senate hangs in the balance," says Bennett's Pence. "We can't lose your seat this December."
"Look, it's all lies," says Day as Moore. "I'm not that guy!"
"It's hard to convince people you're not into young girls when you dress like Woody from Toy Story," says Pence.
After Pence leaves the room, Moore asks himself, "What am I gonna do?"
That's when Kate McKinnon steps out of a cabinet as Jeff Sessions, who checks off the "controversial stuff" Moore has been doing.
"I'm usually the creepiest one in the room, but I look at you and I'm like, oh my God! I got the goose flesh!"
Finally, Sessions tells him, "I'm Alabama, but you - you, sir, are too Alabama. Get out!"
A Mississippi man was killed in a two-vehicle crash in Tuscaloosa County.
Alabama State Troopers on Saturday identified the victim as Leslie Howard Snyder. He was 57.
The crash happened at 5:55 p.m. Friday on Interstate 59, about four miles west of Tuscaloosa. Troopers said Snyder was driving a 2000 Ford Explorer when he was struck by a 2016 Dodge Dart.
Snider's vehicle left the roadway and hit several trees. He was taken to DCH Regional Medical Center where he died a short time later.
The crash remains under investigation.
One week ago today, an Atlanta-based rapper and his cousin, a promoter, left Montgomery to head back to Georgia and neither have been seen, or heard from, since then.
Edward Reeves, also known as Bambino Gold, and Kendrick Stokes, also known as Skooly Kee Da Tooly, were formally reported missing on Tuesday. "They just vanished into thin air,'' said Stokes' mother, Felicia Stokes Webster. "It's very devastating."
Reeves, 29, and Stokes, 30, are cousins by marriage and longtime friends. Both originally from Montgomery, Stokes was in his hometown on Saturday, Nov. 4, to promote a party at Sky Bar on Debby Drive. Reeves came to town on Sunday and shortly after 9 p.m. they left Stokes' house to attend the Alabama National Fair. "A lot of people saw them there,'' Webster said.
After a couple of hours, they left to head back to Atlanta but Reeves said he had to make one stop at a friend's house. That was about 10:55 p.m. Reeves and the friend talked briefly, and then Reeves and Stokes left.
The friend said the men were supposed to return and when they didn't, he began to try to reach Reeves by cell phone. By 1 a.m., Reeves' phone was going straight to voicemail. The following morning, other loved ones also tried to call both men but, again, they only got voicemail.
"Between 11:30 p.m. and 1 a.m., something happened between that time,'' Webster said. "What happened, we don't know."
Reeves and Stokes were last seen in a 2016 white Honda CRV. The vehicle has not been found either.
Webster said Montgomery police have obtained cell phone records for the men, and are looking into some leads there. She could not elaborate.
"My heart is devastated,'' Webster said. "I'm not sleeping. I'm not really eating."
She said her son is the first grandchild in the family, and said the disappearance is taking its toll on the entire family. "My parents are not doing well and his father's parents are doing well,'' she said. "It's really wearing on their hearts."
Stokes started working as a promoter when he was just a young teenager, she said. Up until his disappearance, they talked every day to pray together. Each morning, Webster would send her son scripture to study for the day. "I talk with him every day,'' she said. "This is no like him. He reads His word and he prays."
Reeves, a father, has appeared on over 150 mixed tapes since 2011 and has featured with artists such Sy Ari Da Kid, Boosie Badazz, Ray Vicks, Eldorado Red, and Doe B. Alley Boy, according to published reports. Reeves in September 2017 YouTube video discusses surviving a previous gunshot wound.
Webster is pleading that anyone with information please contact police or family. "The suspense of sitting around waiting is hard and at night it gets worse,'' she said. "That's my child. It's very devastating."
Anyone with information on the location of either man should call the police or Crime Stoppers at 215-STOP.
In response to the allegations Roy Moore inappropriately touched a 14-year-old girl in 1979, Twitter users have started uploading pictures of themselves at that age.
The #MeAt14 campaign started trending Saturday night on Twitter. Moore, the Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate seat left behind by Attorney General Jeff Sessions, was accused by four women of sexual misconduct in a Washington Post article on Thursday.
Saturday, Moore made his first public appearance since the allegations at a mid-Alabama Republican Club meeting honoring Veterans Day. Moore, a Vietnam veteran, spoke at the meeting. He addressed the accusations later in his speech, saying they were "fake news" and a "desperate attempt" to stop his campaign.
The hashtag took off after a day of some politicians taking back their endorsements, while others have rushed to his defense.
Users who participate in the hashtag use #MeAt14 and upload a picture of themselves at 14-years-old-- the same age Leigh Corfman was when she says Moore took her to his Gadsden home, took off her clothes, and touched her inappropriately.
Three other women, who were also in their teens, said they went on dates with Moore.
Lizz Winstead, a writer and producer who co-created The Daily Show, was one of the first to use #MeAt14 and ask for the flood of photos. She also encouraged users to use #NoMoore along with their pictures, in protest of Moore.
Some Twitter users responded with comical answers, while other took the challenge more seriously. The underlying question in the #MeAt14 tweets, according to NPR and Winstead, is should these young teens be able to consent-- and be in a relationship with-- a 32-year-old?
This is me at 14. I was on the gymnastics team and sang in the choir. I was not dating a 32 year old man. Who were you at 14? Tweet a pic, tell us who you were and pic to the top of your page #MeAt14 #NoMoore pic.twitter.com/HPVzMgaD8h Lizz "Unlikeable" Winstead (@lizzwinstead) November 12, 2017
#MeAt14 showing off the sand turtle I made at the beach. A man in his 30s should know better, because this is a child. I tied off my braids with scrunchies, ffs. pic.twitter.com/kkiFyRpSyJ Holly (@hollyislate) November 11, 2017
Inspired by @AshaRangappa_
Heres #MeAt14
You cool with a 32 year old man dating me? pic.twitter.com/ffpQRwDGON Ariel Dumas (@ArielDumas) November 11, 2017
When the thought of dating a high school senior was skeevey #MeAt14 pic.twitter.com/zd7makz8yp Momarella (@THerman23) November 11, 2017
A Morgan County couple has been arrested in Georgia for charges including rape, sodomy, and sexual torture.
According to the Morgan County Sheriff's Office, Michael William Lesher and his wife Lisa Marie Lesher were arrested in Carroll County, Georgia, by the US Marshal's Service on Oct. 30.
Michael Lesher, 52, was indicted on two counts of first-degree rape by forcible compulsion, one count of incest, four counts of first-degree sodomy, one count of second-degree rape, and two counts of first-degree sexual abuse.
Lisa Lesher, 39 was indicted on four counts of first-degree sodomy by forcible compulsion, one count of second-degree sodomy, one count of sexual torture, and one count of first-degree sexual abuse.
The charges and indictments came after investigators re-opened a 10-year-old case. The sheriff's office said in 2007, when the allegations surfaced, the case could not be prosecuted. Now, the two victims are "prepared to follow through," the office posted on Facebook.
Michael and Lisa Lesher waived extradition and were transported to the Morgan County Jail earlier this week, where Michael Lesher's bond is set at $435,000 and Lisa Lesher's bond is set at $437,000.
There is no statute of limitations for sexual crimes against minors. The Department of Human Resources, the Child Advocacy Center, the Morgan County District Attorney's Office and the Morgan County Sheriff's Special Victims Unit are investigating the case.
The sexual abuse allegations against U.S. Senate candidate Roy Moore haven't changed one thing in Steve Guede's plan to mobilize local workers for the Moore campaign.
"It's actually increased our calls about volunteering," Guede said on Friday.
Guede is the Calhoun County coordinator for the campaign to elect Moore, a former judge and social conservative icon, to the U.S. Senate in a Dec. 12 special election. Moore will face Democrat Doug Jones, a former federal prosecutor, in that contest.
Moore's campaign hit a major roadblock on Thursday, when The Washington Post published a story in which four women, all current or former Etowah County residents, alleged that Moore pursued them romantically when they were in their teens and Moore was in his 30s. All the incidents occurred in the late 1970s or early 1980s.
One of the women, Leigh Corfman, told The Post she was 14 and Moore was 32 in 1979 when Moore initiated an encounter with her at his home in which he took his clothes off, undressed her and touched her through her underwear. The age of consent in Alabama is 16.
Moore has denied the claims, his campaign calling them "fake news" and "intentional defamation."
The news came as local volunteers for both campaigns were gearing up for a Veterans Day weekend of campaigning. Both were planning door-to-door canvassing. Both were organizing phone banks. Both were recruiting marchers for Anniston's Veterans Day parade, a momentary truce in what has sometimes been an acrimonious campaign.
"It's not part of the campaign," Calhoun County Democratic Party chairwoman Sheila Gilbert said Thursday morning. "This is just to show that Democrats support veterans."
"Everybody needs to support veterans, no matter what party you're in," Calhoun County Republican Party chairman James Bennett said.
The day after the news broke, though, the differences in the two parties' views were clearer than ever.
Where the ducks are
"I don't think anybody believes that four weeks before the election, something like this can just pop up," said Guede. Like other local Republicans who spoke to The Star after the Post story published, Guede said he didn't trust The Post's reporting.
He claimed consternation over the coverage would actually increase involvement in the campaign.
Democrats were also seeing a "surge" in their volunteer efforts, Gilbert said via text on Friday.
That could mean both parties will double down on a belief that the race will be decided by the amount of passion among the faithful - rather than by appeals to a shrinking middle of swingable voters.
"You have to hunt where the ducks are," said Lori Owens, a political science professor at Jacksonville State University.
Owens noted that turnout in the primary and Republican runoff was less than 20 percent. With only one race on the ballot in a vote held during the holiday season, she said, turnout in December is likely to be low, too. That enables both parties to potentially sway the vote with little more than their base, though the stakes are higher for the Democrats.
"The Democrats have to get their entire base out, and maybe some undecideds," she said.
Gilbert said Democrats are turning their volunteers toward targeted areas, where they can urge likely Democratic voters to get to the polls.
"You don't go to just every neighborhood," she said. "There's a plan. We're going to places where there are strong voters, recurring voters."
Targeting
Democrats are also engaging in phonebanking events when volunteers call would-be voters selected from a party database, asking them for donations, support and a vote on Dec. 12. Gilbert cites last week's Anniston visit by Doug Jones, which brought about 125 people to Classic Too on Noble, as an example that the strategy works. She said she talked to supporters from as far away as Mentone, who said they'd show up for the event - on a Tuesday during work hours - and did.
Guede said he doesn't do the same sort of targeting.
"I don't use a program," said Guede, who ran unsuccessfully for state Senate in 2014. "When I ran for office, I didn't use a program, and I don't use one now."
Guede said he asks volunteers to start in their own neighborhoods, knocking on doors and talking to people about the race. The Republican phonebanking effort, he said, is more targeted, with lists that come from the state party.
In at least one neighboring county, there's no Republican canvassing or calling effort at all. Asked on Friday if the Moore allegations changed his campaign strategy, Cherokee County Republican Party chairman Josh Summerford said there was nothing to change.
Trump country
If 2016's vote for Donald Trump is any indication, Republicans may not need targeting to win, and Democrats may face an uphill battle no matter how precise their aim.
Cherokee County went 83 percent for Trump in 2016, and with about 10,000 votes cast there, the rural county may not be a rich prize for either party. In more-populous Calhoun County, seven in 10 voters cast a ballot for Trump.
Democrats tried to use data to win elections here in the past. In 2014, Democratic groups announced plans to target a handful of House and Senate districts where Republicans seemed weak. It didn't help them break the GOP supermajority in both houses.
Both parties, locally, acknowledge they engage in some campaign practices that are traditional, but not necessarily proven to work. Campaign signs are popular despite a lack of evidence that they sway undecided voters at all. Democrats plan to spend much of November holding up signs in Bynum outside Anniston Army Depot during shift changes.
It's not because there's data showing them federal employees will be easier to reach, Gilbert said.
"It's the biggest employer in town," she said. "We're going where people can see us."
Anniston Star capitol & statewide reporter Tim Lockette: 256-294-4193. On Twitter @TLockette_Star.
A principal at a Jefferson County elementary school is under fire for comments she made to a New York Times reporter about allegations that Senate candidate Roy Moore had multiple inappropriate relationships with teenagers nearly 40 years ago.
Adamsville Elementary School principal Susan Remick's comments, painted as a lack of concern, were reported on Friday. Remick issued a statement on Saturday clarifying her remarks and saying her remarks were misconstrued.
Jefferson County school officials are standing behind Remick, defending her reputation as an educator and an advocate for children.
The New York Times article focused on comments and reactions from women in Alabama. Here are Remick's comments as reported by the New York Times:
"This all happened many years ago, correct? I honestly think we're paying too much attention to it. I'm a little disappointed in society right now. It ultimately hurts somebody's reputation. If it were true at the time, it should have been addressed at the time."
Many commenters on the media outlet's Facebook page focused on Remick's remarks because she is an elementary school principal, and some said she should be fired.
The response on Twitter was equally harsh, with some publishing Remick's phone number and email address and urging others to contact Jefferson County school officials.
I am usually not one for public draggings of people I disagree with, but #SusanRemick has minimized pedophilia, and she is a SCHOOL PRINCIPAL. @JEFCOED you need to take action. Spratface (@Spratlinger) November 11, 2017
Remick, in her fourth year as principal at Adamsville Elementary, issued a statement on Saturday afternoon clarifying her remarks and saying, "It was not my intent to express lack of concern as was stated in the article. I have spent my career advocating for children. I am concerned each and every time any child or person is mistreated."
Here is Remick's full statement:
"What I intended to communicate in response to the reporter's question was not what was conveyed in the New York Times article. First, I wish that we lived in a society where such things did not occur. Second, I wish for the healing to begin for any individual who experiences this kind of abuse as soon as possible. As our community is changing and sexual abuse has come to the forefront, many women are now able to share their experiences and confront their abusers. For these women, it has taken great strength and courage to come forward. I wish they did not have to carry this pain inside them for so many years. It was not my intent to express lack of concern as was stated in the article. I have spent my career advocating for children. I am concerned each and every time any child or person is mistreated. My words were misconstrued; I assure everyone that my actions on behalf of children for the past 20 years show what my true intent is. I have lived my life in the service of children and will continue to do so. Any other interpretation was unintentional, and I regret having said anything that could be misinterpreted in such a manner."
According to the Adamsville Elementary School web site, Remick has been an educator for 20 years.
Prior to becoming principal, Remick was an assistant principal at Chalkville Elementary, Administrative Director at Mitchell's Place, the preschool special education director and a special education teachers for Mountain Brook City schools.
Jefferson County superintendent Dr. Craig Pouncey issued a statement, touting Remick's professional career as an educator and saying her remarks were misconstrued. Pouncey's statement reads, in part:
"We want to openly express that [Remick's] statements were misconstrued and do not reflect her, or the system's, commitment to the safety and welfare of all children. The protection of children has always been, and will continue to be, a priority of Jefferson County Schools.
Social media outlets have targeted Mrs. Remick, and the presence of anonymous accounts indicate internet trolling and harassment. Unfortunately, in today's media environment, it is easy to sensationalize issues, and we feel that Mrs. Remick has been a victim of this. Thus, we felt the need to come forward with a statement in support of her, as well as clarifying the system's views on suspected abuse. The district remains committed to serving every child in the best possible way."
Brynn Anderson
Former Alabama Chief Justice and U.S. Senate candidate Roy Moore spoke in Vestavia Hills Saturday, his first public appearance since allegations arose that he had a sexual encounter with a 14-year-old in 1979. Moore emphatically denied the allegations and questioned the timing of the woman and three other accusers coming forward.
"There are investigations going on. In the next few days, there will be revelations about the motivations and the content of this [Post] article. They will be made public," Moore said at the Mid Alabama Republican Club meeting Saturday in Vestavia Hills. "We fully expect the people of Alabama to see through this charade and vote in the [election] coming up."
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Jeremy Gray | jgray@al.com
Accusers 'publicly persecuted'?
The attorney for one of Roy Moore's accusers said in a statement following the speech Saturday, which drew a small band of protesters, that the women are being attacked for making their claims. "He knows full well why these women did not tell what he did to them before this week. As young teenage girls in the late 1970's in a small, rural southern town, they had no way of knowing their rights, especially against him considering that he was a district attorney at the time. As he gained more power within the Alabama judiciary, they likely feared that he would publicly persecute them....precisely as he has done this week," the statement read.
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Bob Gathany | bgathany@al.com
Will the election be moved?
With the election now just 30 days away, some have wondered if the state Republican Party will remove Moore as its nominee but it's too late for the party to replace him with another candidate or remove his name from the ballot. Gov. Kay Ivey said Saturday she does not intend to change the date of the Dec. 12 election. "The Governor is not considering and has no plans to move the special election for the U.S. Senate," Josh Pendergrass, communications director for Ivey, said in a text message.
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Common knowledge?
A woman who worked at the Etowah County District Attorney's Office with Moore said Saturday it was "common knowledge" he pursued teenage girls. A tweet posted by Teresa Jones on Friday slams the U.S. Senate candidate by stating information she says she knows from her time working with Moore as a Deputy District Attorney in Gadsden. "As a Deputy DA in Gadsden when Roy Moore was there, it was common knowledge about Roy's propensity for teenage girls. I'm appalled that these women are being skewered for the truth," she wrote.
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#MeAt14
This is me at 14. I was on the gymnastics team and sang in the choir. I was not dating a 32 year old man. Who were you at 14? Tweet a pic, tell us who you were and pic to the top of your page #MeAt14 #NoMoore pic.twitter.com/HPVzMgaD8h Lizz "Abortion AF" Winstead (@lizzwinstead) November 12, 2017
Twitter users have started uploading pictures of themselves at age 14.
The #MeAt14 campaign started trending Saturday night on Twitter. Moore, the Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate seat left behind by Attorney General Jeff Sessions, was accused by four women of sexual misconduct in a Washington Post article on Thursday.
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SNL couldn't resist
The cold open of "Saturday Night Live" featured Mikey Day as Moore and Beck Bennett as Vice President Mike Pence, who has called Moore to the White House to tell him he might want to step down. Kate McKinnon's Jeff Sessions helps make the case."I'm usually the creepiest one in the room, but I look at you and I'm like, oh my God! I got the goose flesh!"
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Jeremy Gray | jgray@al.com
Support keeps eroding
Several nationally prominent republicans have called for Moore to step down. Some have withdrawn their endorsements. Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana joined the chorus Saturday.
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8 counties might decide the election
The state's eight most populous counties have almost as many people as the other 59 combined, and those are among the areas where Moore was weakest in the primary against Sen. Luther Strange, appointed to the Senate on an interim basis after Jeff Sessions was elevated to U.S. attorney general. The accusations against Moore come as Democrats are feeling increasingly optimistic about their strength in suburbs after Tuesday's elections in Virginia, New Jersey and other races. Still, it's a steep, steep climb in Alabama. No Democrat has won a U.S. Senate seat there since 1992, when Howell Heflin was elected.
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Will evangelicals stand with Moore?
There's an outpouring of impassioned and soul-searching discussion in evangelical ranks.
"This is one of those excruciating decision moments for evangelicals," Albert Mohler, president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, said in a telephone interview. "These allegations, if true, are devastating. If true, this is a very big deal." According the Pew Research Center, 49 percent of Alabama adults are evangelical Protestants. For some of them, the Moore allegations echo the quandary they faced last year, wrestling over whether to support Donald Trump in the presidential race despite his crude sexual boasts.
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Paul Gattis | pgattis@al.com
Not that Ed Henry
Alabama Rep. Ed Henry has been the target of dozens of angry social media posts since his appearance on CNN, but the wrong person is actually getting them. Twitter users targeted the Alabama lawmaker... but, they actually tweeted at Fox News Chief National Correspondent Ed Henry.
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"Don Easy Peazy Lemon Squeazy."
Trenton Garmon, who works for Montgomery-based Foundation for Moral Law, was featured on Friday's episode of "CNN Tonight" with anchor Don Lemon, whom he referred to "Don Easy Peazy Lemon Squeazy."
According to The Hill, Lemon did not address the nickname at first mention. Later in the segment, Garmon said, "But hey, Don Lemon squeazy, keep it easy. Here's the thing, man..."
Lemon stopped the lawyer mid-sentence, asking Garmon to just use his real name--Don Lemon.
"It's just Lemon," the host said. "My mom didn't name me Don Lemon keep it easy squeazy. It's just Don Lemon."
Garmon replied, "I got you, man."
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'I tried to say something'
A longtime family friend of one accuser made an impassioned plea on Facebook in support of Leigh Corfman.
I need to say something, not because I want to get political, but because I know the truth and I need to tell it. The... Posted by Mary Jo West on Saturday, November 11, 2017
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Julie Bennett
Doug Jones has the lead?
A new Alabama Senate poll, released Sunday morning, gives Democrat Doug Jones his first lead over Moore. Louisiana-based JMC Analytics conducted the poll after allegations of sexual misconduct by Moore were reported by The Washington Post. The poll had Jones received 46 percent support in the poll to Moore's 42 percent. With a margin of error of 4 percent, however, the race is essentially a statistical tie. The poll also had 9 percent of participants declaring themselves undecided.
For many evangelicals, fiery Alabama politician and judge Roy Moore has been a longtime hero. Others have sometimes cringed at his heated rhetoric and bellicose style.
Now, as Moore's U.S. Senate campaign is imperiled by allegations of sexual overtures to a 14-year-old girl when he was in his 30s, there's an outpouring of impassioned and soul-searching discussion in evangelical ranks.
"This is one of those excruciating decision moments for evangelicals," Albert Mohler, president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, said in a telephone interview. "These allegations, if true, are devastating. If true, this is a very big deal."
Mohler said Alabama voters face a potentially wrenching task of trying to determine if the allegations -- Moore has emphatically denied them -- are credible.
According the Pew Research Center, 49 percent of Alabama adults are evangelical Protestants. For some of them, the Moore allegations echo the quandary they faced last year, wrestling over whether to support Donald Trump in the presidential race despite his crude sexual boasts.
The Rev. Robert Franklin, professor of moral leadership at Emory University's Candler School of Theology in Atlanta, said The Washington Post's report about the Moore allegations represents a test of "moral consistency" for evangelicals.
"Evangelicals are steadily losing their moral authority in the larger public square by intensifying their uncritical loyalty to Donald Trump," Franklin wrote in an email. "Since this is Roy Moore and not Donald Trump, I think there may be significant disaffection with him, and increased demands for his removal from the ballot."
As for Moore himself, Franklin suggested there were "classic evangelical remedies" such as confession, prayer and remorse and isolation.
"Election to higher office is not one of them," Franklin wrote.
Although Trump won 80 percent of the white evangelical vote in his presidential victory, his candidacy exposed and hardened rifts among conservative Christians about partisan politics, the personal character of government leaders and the Gospel. Surveys by the Public Religion Research Institute found that the percentage of white evangelicals who said they still trusted the leadership of a politician who commits an immoral act rose from 30 percent in 2011 to 72 percent last year.
Still, a solid minority of conservative Christians adopted the #NeverTrump hashtag on social media and joined those outside of evangelicalism who said "values voters" had lost their values. Women and black evangelicals especially emerged as critics of Trump's remarks about women, immigrants, African-Americans and Muslims. Many of these same critics of Trump's behavior and rhetoric condemned Moore in recent days, and bemoaned the fact that some evangelicals were standing by him.
"Okay, seriously, we elected a man president who bragged about using his power and authority to sexually assault women," tweeted Kyle James Howard, an African-American student at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. "Why are we surprised that members of his party would now be defending a party member's sexual assault of a minor?"
One of the Southern Baptist Convention's leading public policy experts, the Rev. Russell Moore, expressed dismay after the allegations against Judge Moore -- no relation -- surfaced on Thursday.
"Whether in the hills of Hollywood or the halls of power, it doesn't matter," Rev. Moore tweeted. "This is true: sexual assault and child molestation are evil, unjust, satanic."
Roy Moore embraced controversy as he built his evangelical following. He was twice removed from his post as Alabama's chief justice, once for disobeying a federal court order to remove a Ten Commandments monument from the lobby of the state judicial building, and later for urging probate judges to defy the U.S. Supreme Court decision legalizing gay marriage.
Among those declining to break with Moore in the wake of the sex allegations was Jerry Falwell Jr., president of evangelical Liberty University in Lynchburg, Virginia.
"It comes down to a question of who is more credible in the eyes of the voters -- the candidate or the accuser," Falwell told Religion News Service. "And I believe the judge is telling the truth."
Mohler, the seminary president, said many evangelical Alabama voters will find themselves facing a difficult choice when ballots are cast in the Dec. 12 special election.
"There's so much at stake," he said. "Those of us who are pro-life have got to be very concerned about losing even one seat in the U.S. Senate."
The Democratic candidate in the special election, Doug Jones, has said that a decision on whether to have an abortion should generally be left to the woman in question.
Abortion policy also was evoked by Ed Cyzewski, a Kentucky-based seminary graduate and author, in a series of Twitter posts Friday questioning why some of his fellow evangelicals would continue to stand by Moore.
"Right now there are evangelicals who feel trapped," Cyzewski wrote. "They think Moore did something reprehensible, but believe abortion is evil."
Katelyn Beaty, an editor at large with the evangelical magazine Christianity Today, suggested that among many of Moore's evangelical supporters, there's a "presumption of innocence" because of their mistrust of national media such as The Washington Post.
"Many Christian communities have trouble appropriately responding to sex abuse allegations," Beaty wrote in an email. "There is a default trust in powerful, charismatic male leaders, coupled with a discomfort with women who use their story or voice to challenge the status quo or power structures."
However, Beaty said more moderate evangelicals -- notably those critical of Trump -- were likely dismayed by the allegations against Moore.
"For them, the defense of Moore is another sign that both evangelicalism and the GOP have lost their credibility and their souls in the pursuit of power," she wrote.
Vietnam veterans were the first to have the term PTSD applied to them, but is the US doing enough for its war veterans?
More than 20 million US military veterans are currently living in the US. After years of serving their country and waging war overseas, many of them struggle with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), homelessness and addiction.
Peter Collins has been a licensed independent clinical social worker since 1988. In the past 10 years, he has worked with over 6,000 veterans and their families in a programme called Military and Veteran Services.
In the following account, he describes the symptoms of PTSD and provides an insight into how the US government deals with the veterans battle within.
I know one veteran who walked into a shopping mall, and when he saw a woman wearing a burqa, he immediately grabbed his kid and ran out of the mall. He felt threatened based on his experiences in combat not knowing who were his friends or enemies and expecting both, men and women, to do terroristic things. Thats an example of avoidance, which is one of the four major symptoms of PTSD.
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The PTSD diagnosis didnt exist until the Vietnam War.
PTSD has been called many things throughout history. In the Civil War, it was called, soldiers heart, and in World War II and World War I it was called shell shock or battle fatigue.
Once the Vietnam war started to get rolling, the PTSD diagnosis was formalised, which was a real benefit, because then treatment protocols were figured out and more people were getting an accurate diagnosis.
Flashbacks, hypervigilance and avoidance
The four symptoms of PTSD start with re-experiencing, which happens in many different forms, including having nightmares or flashbacks.
Flashbacks can take over to the point where you feel like youre in the middle of the trauma right at that moment. Intensive thoughts and feelings are also part of re-experiencing and can take you away from anything that youre doing or that youre trying to concentrate on.
The second symptom is what we call hypervigilance. This is the sense that one is constantly on guard for any potential threat. Usually, the threats around them are amplified, so things that wouldnt cause a person without PTSD to be triggered feel much larger to the veteran with PTSD.
Avoidance, the third symptom, is the need to avoid things that remind them of the trauma. That can be sights and sounds; it can be smells, it can be crowds of people. They also avoid conflict and crowds. Avoidance is a big part of the picture.
Finally, there are negative emotions and cognition. Depressive feelings and guilt.
Sometimes theres a moral injury where battle buddies may have been killed by friendly fire, and so it is emotions that affect the way that they think. There are some cognitive distortions that they have, thinking that perhaps loved ones cant be trusted, not trusting systems, particularly systems like the VA [Department of Veteran Affairs].
Hypervigilance... is the sense that one is constantly on guard for any potential threat. Usually, the threats around them are amplified, so things that wouldn't cause a person without PTSD to be triggered feel much larger to the veteran with PTSD. by Peter Collins
In the last 10 years, I have worked specifically with service members and their families in a programme called Military and Veteran Services.
Service members and veterans are referred to us with a PTSD diagnosis in place. Others come in, and its a fairly simple matter to take a look at the four major symptoms of PTSD and see if somebody endorses them, and for how long.
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We provide some basic tools for them to better cope with their symptoms, while exploring the options for treatment.
We deal with a lot of post-9/11 veterans, many of whom have been deployed multiple times because that conflict required multiple deployments.
Weve seen many veterans who were in the National Guard, who prior to 9/11 would drill once a month and go to an annual training for about a week. They would be on call for disasters in cities, like floods and those kinds of things.
But all of a sudden 9/11 happened and the same people that had never been to war and really didnt get the full training to go to war went on multiple deployments into war, which they didnt expect and neither did their families.
They werent allowed to wear uniforms when they came home
We also deal with a lot of Vietnam veterans, who are kind of a special group. Many of them never got treatment. They were not welcomed home from their service, because of the state of the country and their countrys feelings about the war in Vietnam.
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They werent allowed to wear their uniforms when they came home, because they would be spit on, and cussed at and called baby killers. The VA was not set up to handle that many veterans, many of whom had PTSD.
There were long waiting lists; they didnt feel welcomed there, so many of them just continued to suffer with their PTSD for long periods of time. They developed problems with alcohol, split up with their families or lost their homes.
Theres a goal to end homelessness, but many Vietnam veterans are living off the grid. They live in the woods, and they dont interact with society.
The creation of veteran centres where they can stay and get group therapy works well for veterans who dont feel comfortable going to VA. If they are combat veterans, they can go to a vet centre, which is really small buildings in the community.
Many Vietnam veterans are living off the grid. They live in the woods, and they don't interact with society. by Peter Collins
McDonaldisation of mental healthcare
The McDonaldisation of mental healthcare is a problem. It takes huge research studies and a lot of money to create an evidence-based treatment, but yoga can be very useful, and thats not on the list.
So, if you go to any VA in the country, youre going to probably get cognitive processing therapy or cognitive behavioural treatment because those are the evidence-based practices that they use. Its like if you go to any McDonalds, a cheeseburger is going to be the same.
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I have a problem with that because many other things could be useful in the treatment of someone struggling with PTSD. Alternatives such as gradual exposure, prolonged exposure, yoga, anxiety-reducing kinds of things like teaching breathing techniques, mindfulness.
The evidence-based treatments are just not right for everybody. Some veterans may not have the intellectual capacity or the emotional capacity, or might be offered treatment in a location that they dont feel comfortable in, but yet, if you go to the VA, thats what youre going to get.
I would say the US government is not doing enough to help veterans. Just with the post-9/11 population, only about 60 percent of veterans are working with the VA.
Sometimes the waiting lists are extremely long, and when somebody is in crisis mode, trying to get treatment and to come in is difficult. And then they find out they cant be seen for six weeks or eight weeks. Theres a high turnover rate at the VA, and Ive heard many stories of veterans who start working with somebody on their PTSD and then their therapist leaves, and theyre assigned to a new therapist.
That can be very damaging to the relationship. There can be an interruption in treatment, and for many, it can just be a trust thing that they cant recover from.
They are not in a position of asking for help
The other thing is, if you got to any VA in the country at about four oclock, many staff are fleeing to their cars. Treatment is only offered Monday to Friday from about 9am to 4pm.
For service members and veterans who have PTSD or other mental health problems who maybe employed, its almost impossible to receive treatment at the VA.
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Veterans, particularly combat veterans, are not in a position of asking for help. It runs counter to the way they see themselves.
They see themselves as strong and resilient and as people that do things and provide services to other people.
Many of the veterans have told me, despite the fact that they are suffering, that theyre not sure whether they should work with us because somebody else another veteran probably needs us more than they do.
I think that theres room for a lot of growth at the VA, in the community and the veteran centres.
I guarantee you that our military right now is developing strategies as well as mobilising and recruiting soldiers, because of the various hot spots around the world.
There are people in America that dont know that were still in Afghanistan, that were still In Iraq, and were still in many other countries across the world. The Korea situation is obviously hot and marching towards a potential war.
One of the best things that could happen is for there not to be another war, but when we look at politics around the world, the conflicts that still exist, the conflicts that look like theyre about ready to start, I dont see that happening.
Men working in mines in Rajasthan state are dying early due to silicosis caused by dust, raising safety concerns.
Bundi, Rajasthan, India At first glance, Radha Bai and Hira Bai do not appear to be crusaders. On a September afternoon, the two frail and elderly women, their heads veiled by the loose ends of their brightly coloured saris, could be heard raising loud slogans outside the administrative offices of the district of Bundi, in the western Indian state of Rajasthan.
They were demanding their rights to compensation, leading a group of 80 widows whose husbands worked in mines and had succumbed to what the locals call the curse of this region the fatal respiratory disease, silicosis.
One of the oldest occupational diseases in the world that kills thousands of people every year, silicosis is an incurable lung disease caused by inhalation of silica dust found in rock, sand, quartz and other building materials.
According to a report by an academic research collaboration, nearly 800,000 workers could be affected by silicosis in the state of Rajasthan alone. No official data is available.
Radha and Hira are from Budhpura, a village of widows in Bundi, situated in the middle of huge sandstone mines. The district of Bundi and the neighbouring districts of Bhilwara and Kota are hubs for sandstone export to Europe.
Radha counts on her fingers the number of people in her family afflicted by silicosis. Her husband, his two brothers, her oldest daughter, all of them have died. She says she might be the next victim of silicosis.
This is how we all die here. The moment there is blood in our cough, we know death has come for us, she said.
The environmental devastation in and around Budhpura is visible. The rough track that leads to the village is on a craggy landscape of grey-brown rock dotted with hills of piled up rubble from mines. For the roughly 5,000 people in the village, the surrounding sandstone mines offer the only means of livelihood.
After Radha was diagnosed with silicosis, the doctors advised her to stop working on stone, to stay away from the dust, but she had no choice. She has to raise her three younger daughters and the three children of her oldest daughter Mamta, who died five years ago from tuberculosis. She was 32.
Mamta had never worked in the quarries, but the air in Budhpura is laden with the dust that not only affects those who work in mines, but also those who live near them.
Mamta was misdiagnosed with tuberculosis, but it was silicosis that killed her, says Radha.
Disease has left Radha weak and chronically ill. She looks older than her age.
I feel like I am only half alive. I know there is no cure for me. But I want to live longer, to settle my children, the 55-year-old says.
Hira, who is 58, lost her husband to silicosis two years ago. He was 68. First came the cough, after which he was treated for tuberculosis. He would work all day and drink through the evening. He did not survive long.
She is a midwife in the village, work for which she is not paid anything. She has been forced to chisel cobblestones, as do her two sons, earning a rupee (1.5 cents) for each piece.
Carving a piece of cobblestone to a size of roughly six inches square takes around five minutes, but it is a strenuous task carried out by bare hands, with little attention to safety and health concerns.
Rules regarding workers rights are often flouted, and laws are hardly enforced, as powerful mining mafia wield influence over authorities.
The more they work, the more they earn, with younger and stronger people producing more than 100 pieces in a day.
I cant protect my sons from this job. What else can we do? Hira said.
Al Jazeera tried to reach out to authorities, but they refused to comment.
Since her husband passed away, she has been running from pillar to post to receive 300,000 rupees (approximately $4,595) as next of kin compensation from the state government.
Rajasthan is amongst the worst affected by silicosis in India, says MK Devarajan, former member of Rajasthan State Human Rights Commission, who helped formulate the state policy on silicosis.
Weve not even seen the tip of the iceberg. The problem in Rajasthan and the rest of the country is much worse than we imagine.
But, it is poor people who are affected by it, and no one is there to plead for them, he says.
The state has a monetary relief mechanism for certified silicosis patients since 2013, but critics point out flaws in the process.
The Rajasthan government provides Rs 100,000 ($1,545) as compensation to people diagnosed with silicosis by government-appointed doctors. When such certified patients die, their families receive Rs 300,000 ($4,636).
But it is a long process filled with arduous paperwork, a daunting task for most workers and their families as there are no formal contracts of employment and the industry is largely unregulated.
The average income of people working in mines is about Rs 350 a day (nearly $5.4), which is the same as the minimum daily wage for unskilled non-agricultural workers. Those working in dumpyards outside their homes, including the widows, earn less than $3 a day.
I must have made eight visits in the last two months to the administrative office, every time I had to go back to file new paperwork, said Hira. I am illiterate and nearly ready to give up, her eyes filled with tears.
The average age at which mine workers are diagnosed with silicosis is anywhere between 35 to 45 years, according to Dr Anil Saxena, professor of respiratory medicine and chairman of the silicosis board at Kota Medical College in Rajasthan.
The social complications that arise from it are often worse than the disease itself. We find that communities are indentured to the work, he says.
Widows in the age group of 18 to 60 are entitled to a pension of 500 rupees (a little more than $7) a month.
Chanda Yadav from Budhpura, along with other widows, has been petitioning for the widow pension to be increased.
The younger widows with young families to support need more money, said 52-year-old Chanda whose husband died 15 years ago of respiratory problems.
A widow supporting a family of four would need close to Rs 10,000 a month ($155) to survive. The pension is not even a pittance.
There are nearly 180 widows in the village of Budhpura, and about 80 cases of silicosis have been detected in the village since 2014, according to the Mine Labour Protection Campaign (MLPC), an NGO that works for the rights of mine workers in Rajasthan.
Every other family in Budhpura has a similar story to tell. Death comes early, and more men than women die of silicosis because of greater exposure. When the early symptoms set in, the cough, shortness of breath, constant fatigue, they are usually misdiagnosed and treated for tuberculosis.
A village of widows is common parlance in the state of Rajasthan. In district after district, such villages are to be found, with abysmal work conditions, no alternative means of employment.
Rajasthan has the highest reserves of natural stones, including marble and granite, in India. It produces more than 80 percent of Indias sandstone.
According to most estimates, there are 2.5 million mine workers in Rajasthan, and a large number are at risk of silicosis.
The number of silicosis certified patients in Rajasthan those that have been paid compensation by the government has been rising every year, with 2,201 cases in 2015, 5,058 in 2016, and 1,182 for 2017, up to the month of April (the latest figure available). But the actual numbers are higher, according to advocacy groups.
Rana Sengupta, managing trustee of MLPC, says that awareness about silicosis has gone up in recent years, but more needs to be done.
The tragedy of silicosis is that it is a preventable disease, through wet drilling and proper protective gear, Sengupta told Al Jazeera.
Mine owners in India get away without paying compensation to workers or fail to improve working conditions. They will spend millions to buy new machinery, but human life is cheap, he says.
Mine owners, on the other hand, shift the blame to the workers themselves. Chote Khan, a sandstone mine owner in Bhilwara, says, We give the workers masks and helmets, but they are irresponsible about their own safety.
Early in October, Hira Bais compensation finally came through, but it was already delayed by nearly two years. She plans to use it judiciously, so her family can be secure. The men here die. Its left to us women, hidden as we are behind our veils to do everything, she said.
(With additional reporting by Petra Sorge and Julia Wadhawan. The reporting has been supported by the European Journalism Centre and funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation)
People in Indian capital battling the highest pollution in years with sharp rise in patients with lung problems.
New Delhi, India Prashant Saxena, head of pulmonology and critical care at New Delhis posh Max hospital in south Delhis Saket, is a busy man.
This smog is a silent killer. In the years to come, the severe effects of this polluted air in our bodies will reveal its deadly effects, he told Al Jazeera.
He says there is a 20 to 25 percent increase in emergency patients and another 25 percent increase in the number of outpatients visiting him daily since a thick blanket of smog enveloped New Delhi last week.
The situation is uncontrollable and unmanageable for us. There is shortage of beds and even medicines and devices like nebulisers, Saxena said.
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The apex body of doctors in the country, Indian Medical Association (IMA), urged people to stay indoors as it declared a public health emergency in the wake of the worst pollution in years.
New Delhi is the most polluted city in the world, and the burning of crops by farmers in the neighbouring states and industrial pollution has worsened the situation further.
PM2.5 levels rose to 703 on November 7, which was more than the double the 300 mark deemed as hazardous, forcing authorities to temporarily shut city schools.
Since then PM2.5, which has been linked to lung and heart diseases, has regularly remained above 500 this week. The tiny particulate matter enters into the lungs and bloodstream.
Normal life disrupted
According to science journal The Lancet, about half a million Indians died prematurely in 2015 due to PM2.5 pollution.
Patients have been lining up at government and private hospitals with ailments such as chronic obstructive lung diseases, asthma, chronic bronchitis, pneumonia, and nasal, eye and skin allergies.
The toxic smog has disrupted normal life northern India and parts of Pakistan, with flights cancelled and the number of people being reporting respirarty disease going up.
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Outside Saxenas chamber, patients swarm. Its Ayodhya Prasads fourth visit in a row. He says he cannot breathe and is suffering serious respiratory problems owing to the smog.
The 55-year-old, who works as a laboratory assistant at the Indian Institute of Technology in New Delhi, is receiving nebuliser therapy at the hospital.
I cant breathe. I keep coughing and my eyes burn. I am an asthma patient. This pollution is making it unbearable. I cant climb up the three flights of stairs to my home as I feel my lungs will give way, Prasad told Al Jazeera.
A few kilometres away from this high-end hospital in a jhuggi (slum) in Valmiki Mohalla lives Rahul Singh. He is young but has the same respiratory ailment as Prasad. The 14-year-old is complaining of breathing problems and a chronic cough.
My chest feels heavy, and I have to breathe with a lot of force. I feel tired all the time now, Singh told Al Jazeera.
Pollution will kill me slowly
He is running the risk of permanent lung damage as a study published by The New England Journal of Medicine shows.
His mother Divya, 40, is the sole bread-earner of the family. She works as a housemaid for families in an apartment block nearby, Gangotri Apartment.
I feel guilty. I leave my son without anyone attending to him as I cannot miss work. The doctor says we should get an air filter in the house, I dont have the money to buy such an expensive device, Divya says, as she prepares lunch for her son.
The outpouring of anger has found space on social and print media, while news channels devoted hours of debate on the pressing issue.
But many members of the working class are resigned to their fate in the face of a political class which is engaged in blame-game.
At a middle-class apartment cluster at Alaknanda in South New Delhi, 50-year-old, Radhey Shyam works as a guard.
His duty mandates him to stay outdoors the whole day in a city where the top doctors body, the IMA, advises everyone to stay indoors.
It is difficult, but what will I eat if I dont work? The pollution will kill me slowly but the hunger will do it faster, he told Al Jazeera.
High spirits and a celebratory atmosphere have characterised the political campaign rallies in the run-up to a long-awaited presidential election in the self-declared state of Somaliland, which is due to take place on November 13.
This is Somalilands first presidential election since 2010, and the stakes are high. Three candidates Faysal Ali Warabe of UCID party, Abdirahman Mohamed Abdullahi of Waddani party and Muse Bihi Abdi, of the ruling Kulmiye party are vying to replace Ahmed Mohamed Mohamoud Silanyo, the current head of state.
The contest was delayed for more than two years due to voter registration issues, lack of funding and a devastating drought.
The process will be witnessed by international election observers funded by the UK government, as well as a team of over 600 domestic observers who will be reporting on polling day using SMS.
It is hoped that a hi-tech voter registration system using iris-recognition software will guard against electoral fraud.
In the past, there have been allegations that competing clans encouraged their members to register multiple times to increase their political influence.
Since Somaliland declared independence from Somalia in 1991 following a bloody civil war, the region has held five largely peaceful elections and one constitutional referendum, forging a political system that combines traditional leadership with modern representative democracy.
The fact that it is not officially recognised by any other country means that Somalilands political situation is complex, and the Somali Federal Government in Mogadishu still lays claim to its territory.
A week after the surprise resignation of Saad Hariri broadcast on Saudi-owned Al-Arabiyya from Riyadh, Lebanon has stopped asking where he is and has started demanding his release.
Lebanese President Michel Aoun called the circumstances of his disappearance ambiguous and mysterious and asked Saudi Arabia for clarification. In meetings with foreign ambassadors, he has gone further and declared Hariri kidnapped.
It has become clear that Hariri was planning for a short visit in Riyadh and was scheduled to return to Lebanon that weekend. He is set to appear for the first time tonight in an interview from Riyadh.
I spoke to Habib Ephrem, president of the Syriac League in Lebanon and secretary-general of the Levant Encounter, a think-tank known to be very close to President Aoun. He showed me an entry in his calendar from last week titled 11:30am Hariri scheduled for Monday, November 6. He had received a call from the office of the prime minister on Saturday, November 4, hours before Hariri resigned in front of Al-Arabiyas cameras. Clearly, not even his team in Beirut knew what was going on.
Hariri now seems stuck in Riyadh, like another head of government, Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi, Yemens president, who reportedly has not been allowed to leave the Saudi capital for months. And with all the posturing from Riyadh, the fear in Beirut is that the country might be facing a proxy war, just like the one in Yemen.
The Lebanese are not a herd of sheep
According to the latest reports, Saudi Arabia took the decision on Hariris resignation because he was unwilling to confront Hezbollah. He was handed his resignation speech while waiting to see Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
There have been also rumours that Saudi Arabia is setting the stage for Saads older brother, Bahaa, to replace him, and has demanded that members of the Hariri family go to Riyadh to pledge allegiance.
When it comes to an armed confrontation with Hezbollah, it is unlikely that any party in Lebanon would be willing to participate. by
Interior Minister Nohad Machnouq had a scathing response when asked about the issue: [The Lebanese are not] a herd of sheep or a plot of land whose ownership can be transferred from one person to another. Lebanons democratic system is based on elections, not on a simple pledge of allegiance.
Clearly, the latest developments are an assault on Lebanons sovereignty and one that has been widely condemned in Lebanon, except by hardline supporters of Saudi Arabia. These include former Justice Minister Ashraf Rifi, a Sunni strongman from Tripoli, as well as Samir Geagea, the leader of the Christian party Lebanese Forces, who only found the timing of the resignation surprising but not the substance of it.
Saudi escalation in Lebanon
On Thursday, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Kuwait and Bahrain urged their citizens to leave Beirut, given the Kingdoms accusation that Lebanon has declared war on Saudi Arabia.
This is not the first time such a travel ban has been issued. In February 2016, Saudi Arabia undertook a similar evacuation in the aftermath of the attack on the Saudi embassy in Tehran. Riyadhs justification for the move then was that Lebanon failed to condemn Irans aggression.
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Tensions later subsided, especially after the presidential settlement that brought Aoun to the presidency and Hariri to the premiership.
But, this time, Lebanese citizens are more worried that this evacuation of Saudi citizens could be followed by an economic and possibly military escalation. There is also the ever-present Israeli threat of renewed aggression against Lebanon; Israeli officials have been talking about another conflict with Hezbollah even before the latest crisis.
Now, Iran already has its ally in Lebanon well-armed and ready. The question is whether Saudi Arabia intends to confront Hezbollah militarily, leading to a Yemen-like situation.
Such a move would have a devastating effect on the country and the millions of Syrian and Palestinian refugees it is hosting. Given the human catastrophes in Syria and Yemen and the incessant turmoil in Iraq, pushing conflict on Lebanon would unleash a whole new level of chaos, destruction and death in the region.
Lebanon does not want war
In a widely watched political show last Thursday, a Saudi analyst offended the Lebanese public by hurling threats and insults at Lebanon, even going as far as accusing the Lebanese president and the speaker of being terrorists.
The Lebanese reacted with anger to these accusations on social media, leading Justice Minister Salim Jreissati to ask the general prosecutor to investigate the case as a crime of contempt and criminal libel against the president, speaker, foreign minister and Lebanese Army.
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If the Saudi intention behind the resignation was the formation of a strong anti-Hezbollah coalition that would spearhead an escalation against the party in Lebanon, the result would not satisfy Riyadh. So far, there has been a clear display of national unity signalling the importance of preserving stability and avoiding another war.
In fact, it is not clear what options Saudi Arabia has in the event of a decision on a full-blown confrontation. To be sure, it has many supporters.
However, when it comes to an armed confrontation with Hezbollah, it is unlikely that any party in Lebanon would be willing to participate.
Now, this is not to say that Hezbollah enjoys national backing. On the contrary, one thing that has become clearer is that Hezbollah will be unable to continue with its policy of involvement in conflicts outside Lebanons borders without drawing the ire of Saudi Arabia and other Arab states.
Samir Geagea had a point when he called on the party to withdraw from regional conflicts if it is serious in its support for Hariri.
So far, the Lebanese public has made it clear that it has no appetite for a military showdown with Hezbollah. It has also become crystal clear that Lebanon does not want to be part of another armed conflict, nor does it want to be led into a confrontation on someone elses behalf.
The civil war of 1975-1990 was enough. And so were decades of Israeli aggression and wars.
Cooler heads need to prevail. There is no other choice.
The views expressed in this article are the authors own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeeras editorial policy.
After insulting the previous US president, Philippines leader Rodrigo Duterte is quite happy to welcome his successor.
The much-anticipated meeting between two of the worlds most controversial leaders is set to take place on November 13. US President Donald Trump is expected to hold bilateral talks with his Filipino counterpart, Rodrigo Duterte, ahead of the East Asia Summit in the Philippines.
By and large, many are expecting a convivial hobnob between the two populist leaders, who have promised to make their respective nations great again. While some have welcomed the burgeoning Duterte-Trump bromance as a much-needed respite for a troubled alliance, others have been critical of the US presidents open embrace of strongmen like Duterte.
A troubled alliance
During his early months in office, Duterte repeatedly insulted US officials, including former President Barack Obama who criticised his bloody drug war. Dutertes scorched-earth campaign has reportedly claimed thousands of lives since 2016, drawing condemnation from human rights groups, international media and Western capitals.
Amid growing disagreements with traditional allies like Washington, Duterte adopted an independent foreign policy, which saw the Philippines drawing closer to China and Russia. In return, US chief rivals offered state-of-the-art weapons and large-scale investment deals.
It must be said that Trump and Duterte also share ideological affinity. by
Within months, Duterte downgraded security ties with America, threatening to expel US soldiers stationed in the Philippines and cancelling major war games in the contested South China Sea. He also restricted US access to Philippine bases under the newly implemented Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement.
All of a sudden, the US seemed on the verge of losing its oldest ally in Asia, with China rapidly filling in the vacuum. The election of Trump, however, precipitated an unmistakable recovery in bilateral ties.
In particular, this was due to the Trump administrations explicit and conscious decision to prioritise strategic cooperation with Asian allies over promotion of human rights and democracy values. The Filipino president, who has consistently shunned criticising Trump, has been visibly pleased.
Birds of a feather flock together
If anything, Duterte has been all praise for Trump in the past year, welcoming closer bilateral cooperation against common concerns such as terrorism. Ahead of his meeting with the US president, he promised that his country will remain to be the best of friends with America.
In return, senior officials from the Trump administration, particularly Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, have rarely discussed human rights concerns during their meetings with Duterte.
According to leaked documents, the White House even supports Dutertes anti-drug campaign. The US president went as far as praising the Filipino leader for doing an unbelievable job on the drug problem.
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It must be said that Trump and Duterte also share ideological affinity. They are both besieged populists, who present themselves as the true representative of the people against the liberal establishment.
Deeply unpopular at home, Trump has openly embraced and seemingly envies international strongmen, who exercise almost total control over their respective countries. As for Duterte, he relishes the support and attention of global leaders like Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin.
But there are also pragmatic factors at play. Duterte has recognised, albeit reluctantly, the significance of US alliance in moments of crisis.
Ties that bind
When ISIL-affiliated fighters laid a months-long siege on Marawi, the Philippines largest Muslim majority city, Washington provided desperately needed Special Forces assistance, high-grade intelligence, and weapons to the Philippine military.
Philippine Defence Secretary Delfin Lorenzana, a former defence attache in Washington, thanked the US for playing a vital role in defeating ISIL elements in Marawi. Duterte has also acknowledged the deep and unshakable bond between the Pentagon and Philippine military, which has played a key role in shaping and taming the Filipino presidents erratic defence policy.
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During his meeting with Trump, Duterte is expected to discuss ways to enhance counter-terrorism and counter-narcotics cooperation, where both allies share common concerns. Its doubtful, though, whether there will be any substantive discussions on trade and investment issues as well as the South China Sea, where Duterte is exploring joint energy development with Beijing.
The two leaders will also tackle continued cooperation in areas of disaster relief and humanitarian assistance, given the Philippines vulnerability to extreme weather events. Duterte, however, made it clear that he wont welcome any discussion on human rights lest he will tell the US leader to lay off.
Though the US administration has been under pressure to raise Dutertes drug war in Manila, Trump will likely focus on building rapport and personal friendship with his Filipino counterpart.
It is far from impossible to expect an all-smiling picture, showing the two leaders making the controversial Duterte fist bump gesture after their meeting. Duterte is determined to show that even the US president is behind him, while Trump is eager to display his personal diplomacy and ability to win back estranged allies.
This will likely anger their liberal critics at home, but will keep one of the worlds longest-standing alliances on an even keel. In many ways, Trump and Duterte are a perfect match and will likely keep their bromance going over the coming years.
The views expressed in this article are the authors own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeeras editorial policy.
F*** off with refugees was just one of the chants that echoed in Poland as thousands rallied against Islam and EU.
Warsaw, Poland After some 60,000 people, including nationalists and fascists, gathered in the Polish capital for an Independence March on Saturday, the countrys deep divisions have risen to the fore.
This years event ran under the slogan: We want God.
Typical chants included: The whole Poland sings with us: f*** off with the refugees, God, honour, homeland, Not red, not rainbow but national Poland, One nation across the borders and F*** Antifa.
Some reports said that amid the sea of banners, messages included: Clean Blood and Europe Will Be White.
Poland has refused to take in refugees, with officials claiming that people of Muslim background are a threat to security. Fewer than one percent of the Polish population is Muslim.
The event, also attended by citizens of neighbouring countries, sent the world a clear anti-European Union, anti-liberal and anti-Islam message, although many participants including organisers claimed that the march was peaceful and patriotic.
Cheers to Great Poland! a man chanted from the stage to crowds waving white and red flags. The world is changing. We are fighting a culture war.
This war is not somewhere far away. It is in your home even though you may not realise it. Its a war against God, against the homeland and honour, which they want to take away from us.
Crowds applauded in agreement, cheering, Great Catholic Poland, Great national Poland.
Some fired off red flares.
Europe and the world is in decay
The mood was celebratory which together with the red gleam and dark blue sky gave the moment an ominous atmosphere.
When the emcee announced the national anthem, families with children, elderly, women, and above all young men, stood at attention and sang along.
Each year, the November 11 Warsaw Independence March gathers thousands of participants commemorating the memory of 1918, when Poland regained statehood after 123 years of partitions.
But it has also become an occasion for right-wing groups to promote their ideology.
Europe and the world is in decay: culturally, politically, economically. We Poles have to be the alternative, said Tomasz Dorosz of the National-Radical Camp, speaking on stage. There will be a national Poland or none.
Today, we are reclaiming the revolution from our enemies. Today, we are the revolution. We will carry this banner, said Doroszs associate. When we march together with God we are undefeatable.
Anti-fascist counterprotests
Parallel to the march, the Anti-Fascist Coalition, an umbrella alliance of the Warsaw Women Strike, Citizens RP and other progressive groups organised a demonstration under the slogan: To your freedom and ours.
Lidia Domanska from Antifascist Warsaw said around 5,000 people joined the counterprotest.
While both events passed without major incident, tension is not far from Polands polarised society.
With public discourse shifting right, divisive language and nationalist slogans could cause further turmoil.
The media is filled with right-wing propaganda; the discourse has shifted towards views which only a few years back would have been unequivocally labelled as fascist and racist by Lidia Domasska, Antifascist Warsaw
Recent international and domestic developments have deepened divisions.
Domanska told Al Jazeera that following the 2015 parliamentary elections, which brought to power the right-wing Law and Justice party, fascists have put on suits and entered the [the lower chamber of the parliament].
The media is filled with right-wing propaganda; the discourse has shifted towards views which only a few years back would have been unequivocally labelled as fascist and racist, she said.
People who are fed with this narrative begin to see hate speech as something acceptable.
The year 2015, which saw the refugee crisis further unravel as attacks took place in Paris, was a turning point for the European far right and brought several traditionally nationalist and right-wing messages to Eastern Europes mainstream politics.
It is now commonplace to juxtapose Christian values, sovereignty of the nation-state and the right to protect the national character of societies against what the far right views as Brussels seeking to erase nation states and Islamisize Eastern Europes homogenous societies.
Poland is the role model for Europe, said a representative of the Slovakian far right on stage on Saturday. Its time for the European nationalists to unite in the fight against neo-Marxists and Islamists.
Meanwhile, the right-wing Polish governments reluctance to accept refugees and its opposition to the EUs refugee resettlement programme has seen its popularity rise among the far right.
The threat comes from Brussels, which aims to create the United States of Europe. We will not let them do that, said Laszlo Toroczka from Hungarys Jobbik party, who spoke at Saturdays event. Poles and Hungarians are capable of changing Europe. I believe that with Gods help we will win.
Religion is a tool the far right uses
Despite the explicitly nationalist character of rhetoric that seeped through the march, right-wing social media users warned against labelling it as fascist and nationalist.
The event, they say, was an expression of Polish patriotism attended by families with children, rather than angry mobs of young white men.
According to a study by the Public Opinion Research Centre (CBOS) published in November 2016, while 17 percent of Poles express support for movements such as National Radical Camp (ONR) and All-Polish Youth (Mlodziez Wszechpolska), only seven percent identify as nationalists.
At the same time, 88 percent of Poles consider themselves patriots, even though for 52 percent, the difference between nationalism and patriotism is unclear.
At the same time, sentiments of nationalist movements resonate most with people younger than 25, 38 percent of whom support those groups.
In August 2017, CBOS found that in 2015, 32 percent of young people identified with right-wing views above the record-high of 1998.
However, that trend was temporary and in the first seven months of 2017, 26 percent of young people between the ages of 18 and 24 expressed such views.
The support for the far right has not corresponded with the rise of religiosity among Poles, which, according to CBOS is decreasing.
The reference to religion in this years Independence March slogan We Want God may, therefore, come as a surprise.
Religion is, above all, a rhetorical tool that the far right uses to present itself as the defender of traditional values against liberal progressives and other sinners, Andrea Pirro, research fellow at Scuola Normale Superiore, told Al Jazeera.
Such a narrative is intended to reinforce the contraposition between a Christian us (the native population) and a non-Christian them (by exclusion, the non-native aliens).
Religion can be thus interpreted as a political expedient to be used against migrant populations, ethnic minorities, and liberal agents supposedly acting on their behalf.
Professor Anna Grzymala-Busse of Stanford University said Polands use of religious nationalism and the fusion of religious and national identities is nothing new.
We see similar versions in other countries in central and Eastern Europe [such as] the Serbian government during the wars of Yugoslav Succession [and] Jobbiks references to the crown of St. Stephen in Hungary, she said. All of these are instrumental uses of religion for the sake of political ends, and rarely reflect genuine religious sentiment.
Follow Agnieszka Pikulicka-Wilczewska on Twitter: @Aga_Pik
More than 160 community groups join protest aimed at denouncing the rise of far-right groups in the Canadian province.
Safa Chebbi is hopeful.
Despite what she describes as a rise in hate-filled and racist rhetoric in Quebec, the community organiser says conscientious, anti-racist voices will drown out far-right groups in the Canadian province.
Theres a segment of the population that is conscious of the gravity of the situation, Chebbi told Al Jazeera.
On Sunday afternoon, a Large Demonstration Against Hate and Racism, will wind through parts of downtown Montreal, Quebecs largest city.
More than 160 community organisations across Quebec have signed on in support of the rally, which organisers say also aims to denounce the rise of far-right groups in the French-speaking province.
They are increasingly in the streets and really normalising intolerance in the public space, Chebbi, a spokesperson for the march, said.
Several far-right groups operate in the province, including Canadas first branch of the European anti-immigration group PEGIDA.
They have succeeded in really legitimising their existence, even though its based on hatred, Chebbi said.
Thats why its critical for Quebecers opposed to racism to have their voices heard, she said.
Signatories in support of the demonstration include the Quebec Womens Federation, the Confederation of National Trade Unions (CSN), university student unions, and a range of local community groups.
Demonstrators from cities across Quebec, including Sherbrooke, Gatineau, Drummondville and Quebec City, will also be bussed into Montreal to take part in Sundays rally, Chebbi said.
The fight is not going to end today. We will continue, she said.
Toxic climate
The march also aims to counter a toxic climate in Quebec that organisers say has been brewing for years.
In 2013, a Quebec government led by the sovereigntist Parti Quebecois party tabled legislation to adopt what became known as a Quebec Charter of Values.
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The bill, which was never voted into law, sought to outlaw all religious symbols in the public sector, including teachers, doctors and day-care workers.
Muslim women who wear headscarves, Jewish men who wear yarmulkes, and Sikh men who wear turbans, would have been affected.
The legislation followed a long-standing and often heated debate in the province over what is known as reasonable accommodation, or how best to integrate new immigrants into Quebec society.
Social anxiety
In recent months, the arrival of thousands of asylum seekers at the Canada-US border has re-ignited those feelings of anger among segments of the Quebec population, which believe the government is giving too much to new immigrants at their expense.
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Far-right groups have formed, and support for their anti-immigration and often anti-Muslim rhetoric seems to be growing.
Storm Alliance, a far-right group in the province that says it wants to preserve and protect Canadian values, recently organised anti-immigration protests at the border.
According to local media, the group said they were protesting in the face of the scourge of illegal immigration.
A similar protest was organised in Quebec City by La Meute (which can be loosely translated as The Wolfpack), one of the most vocal far-right groups in Quebec.
The groups spokesman recently objected to being labelled racist, telling Radio-Canada: La Meute is a citizens group for political pressure, so we dont attack people.
He added that the group doesnt want to intimidate people. Were attacking political positions and decisions taken by politicians.
But many rights groups disagree, and anti-racist protesters largely outnumbered the far-right members at both protests.
Chedly Belkhodja, principal of the School of Community and Public Affairs at Concordia University in Montreal, told Al Jazeera that while these groups have always been around, they have recently gained visibility.
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The groups have reacted to immigrants coming across the border from the US, Belkhodja said, but [there is] also a general sense that for some, Quebec is maybe welcoming too many immigrants and too many Muslims.
Debates are often polarised in Quebec, Belkhodja said, and understanding the provinces history is key to understanding the far-right movements today.
The Catholic Church also wielded tremendous power in Quebec until the 1960s, when a Quiet Revolution pushed for the government to take control back from the church in key areas, including healthcare and education.
For decades, Quebecs francophone majority was also blocked from holding positions of power in major industries across the province. The positions instead went to Anglophones, who were a minority, and long-standing social anxieties persist.
This whole story is the narrative in the [background], and it is used by some groups to say, Oh we have to be careful and vigilant against losing our achievements,' Belkhodja said.
Its the Trump effect, he said, referring to US President Donald Trump.
Its everywhere, this notion of social anxiety. A society that is more reacting on anxiety is not always rational.
Opposition to Bill 62
Against this backdrop, Quebecs current Liberal government passed a bill last month that obliges people to give and receive public services with their faces uncovered, including on public transit and in hospitals and schools.
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While the government justified Bill 62 as a necessary measure to protect secularism in Quebec, it has been condemned as an affront to the rights of Muslim women who wear a full-face veil.
A constitutional challenge to the law was filed in a Quebec court last week.
The legislation comes less than a year after six Muslim men were shot and killed as they prayed at a mosque in Quebec City, the provincial capital. The deadly attack was condemned as an act of terrorism targeting Muslims.
The suspected gunman, Alexandre Bissonnette, was known for harassing local, pro-immigration activists online. He also reportedly espoused support for French politician Marine Le Pen and other far-right leaders on social media.
The Liberals also recently cancelled a commission to investigate systemic racism in Quebec, after opposition parties and popular media condemned the probe as an exercise that would put Quebec on trial and paint all Quebecers as racist.
Instead, the government is organising a one-day forum in December on immigrant unemployment.
Not the Quebec we want
Haroun Bouazzi, co-president of AMAL-Quebec, a group that works on issues of secularism and citizenship and is among the marchs signatories, said Bill 62 and the cancellation of the systemic racism consultations have created an unhealthy climate.
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Thats not the Quebec we want, Bouazzi told Al Jazeera.
He said the march sends the message that Quebecers are able and want to talk about racism, discrimination and how to build a more equal society.
We think its very important to stop saying that Quebecers are not able to confront one of their societal demons, which is racism, he said.
Bouazzi added that if the government wants to have a sincere dialogue with racialised minorities about their needs, the focus should not be on pieces of fabric, like Bill 62, but its the fight against discrimination.
We spent 10 years with debates about minorities and not with minorities, he said.
Its important to re-centre the debate where it should be, which is around how were all going to be equal.
American delegates, representing some 50% of the US economy, went to the UN Climate Conference in Germany to voice their support for urgent climate change and to strongly condemn President Donald Trumps environmental policy.
Thousands of protesters took to the streets of Bonn to call for more action to fight climate change.
The US was the focus of a lot of anger, and has been since President Donald Trump withdrew his country from the Paris Agreement in June this year.
Also present in Bonn were American delegates representing some 50% of the US economy. They were at the UN Climate Conference in Germany to voice their support for urgent climate change and to strongly condemn President Trumps environmental policy.
They emphasised their commitment to fighting climate change despite Trumps decision to pull out of the Paris Accord.
Al Jazeeras Peter Sharp reports
The Saudi-led coalitions easing of its blockade on famine-threatened Yemen is a step in the right direction but does not go far enough, the European Union and United Nations said.
The coalition shut down Yemens borders on Monday in response to a missile attack by Houthi rebels that was intercepted near Riyadh airport.
On Wednesday, it reopened the southern port of Aden, controlled by coalition-backed government forces, and the Wadea crossing on the Saudi-Yemeni border was reopened the next day.
The EUs commissioner for humanitarian aid and crisis management, Christos Stylianides, said Saturday that more steps were needed.
Initial measures to resume operations in Aden port and to open Wadea border crossing are a step in the right direction, he said.
The EU urges the coalition to ensure the immediate resumption of the UNs flights and activities in the ports of Hodeida and Saleef and the opening of land borders for humanitarian relief and basic commercial commodities.
The delivery of life-saving supplies is critical for the Yemeni population and must be facilitated by all parties to the conflict, Stylianides added.
On Friday, the UN office for the coordination of humanitarian aid, OCHA, said the coalition was still blocking desperately needed UN aid deliveries to Yemen, despite the reopening of Aden and Wadea.
Humanitarian movements into Yemen remain blocked, said OCHA spokesman Russell Geekie.
The reopening of the port in Aden is not enough. We need to see the blockade of all the ports lifted, especially Hodeida, for both humanitarian and for commercial imports.
Famine
UN aid chief Mark Lowcock told the Security Council this week that unless the blockade is lifted, Yemen will face the largest famine the world has seen for many decades, with millions of victims.
Stylianides echoed Lowcocks concerns.
Yemen is suffering the worlds worst humanitarian crisis, with more than two-thirds of its population in need of humanitarian assistance, he said in a statement.
The EU shares the concerns expressed by Lowcock and calls for full and unrestrained access to be restored immediately, to avoid Yemen suffering the largest famine in decades, Stylianides said.
Geekie said no aid had gone into Aden yet and the reopening of the Wadea crossing did not affect UN operations.
The transport minister of Yemens internationally recognised government, Murad al-Halimi, said two airports in Aden and the loyalist-held southern city of Seiyun would reopen from Sunday.
Yemeni media quoted him as saying the national carrier, Yemenia, would resume its flights to and from the two airports to destinations including Amman and Cairo.
The sea port at Hodeida, which is in rebel-held territory, is key to UN aid efforts as it is closest to the majority of people in need.
The coalition accuses rebels of using aid shipments to smuggle in weapons.
Before the blockade, UN aid agencies were delivering food and medicine through Hodeida, Saleef and Aden ports.
There can be no alternative for all these ports being fully functional and receiving commercial and humanitarian cargo, Geekie said.
The UN has listed Yemen as the worlds number one humanitarian crisis, with 17 million people in need of food, seven million of whom are at risk of famine.
More than 2,000 Yemenis have died in a cholera outbreak now affecting nearly one million people.
Saudi Arabia and its allies intervened in neighbouring Yemen in March 2015 to push back the Iran-backed Houthi rebels who control the capital, Sanaa, and restore the government of President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi to power.
The Ruhr region of Germany was once the nations industrial hub but has fallen into decline. Now one of its major cities is capitalising on its powerhouse past and hoping that tourism can help recharge its economy.
The coal mines and steel plants in Germanys Ruhr region have powered the country for more than a century.
But since the industrial hub fell into decline, Essen, one of its major cities, is now looking to tourism to recharge its economy.
The Zollverein Coal Mine complex has been transformed into the Ruhr Museum, welcoming some 1.5 million visitors a year.
Al Jazeeras Nick Clark reports from Essen, Germany.
Sources tell Reuters that Saudi Arabia is looking to replace PM Hariri over his unwillingness to oppose Hezbollah.
From the moment his plane touched down in Saudi Arabia on Friday, November 3, Saad Hariri was in for a surprise.
There was no line-up of Saudi princes or ministry officials, as would typically greet a prime minister on an official visit to King Salman, senior sources close to Hariri and top Lebanese political and security officials said. His phone was confiscated, and the next day he was forced to resign as prime minister in a statement broadcast by a Saudi-owned TV channel.
The move thrust Lebanon back to the forefront of a struggle that is reshaping the Middle East, between the Sunni monarchy of Saudi Arabia and Shia Iran.
Their rivalry has fuelled conflicts in Iraq, Syria and Yemen, where they back opposing sides, and now risks destabilising Lebanon, where Saudi has long tried to weaken the Iran-backed Hezbollah group, Lebanons main political power and part of the ruling coalition.
Sources close to Hariri say Saudi Arabia has concluded that the prime minister a long-time Saudi ally and son of late Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, who was assassinated in 2005 had to go because he was unwilling to confront Hezbollah.
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Multiple Lebanese sources say Riyadh hopes to replace Saad Hariri with his older brother Bahaa as Lebanons top Sunni politician. Bahaa is believed to be in Saudi Arabia, and members of the Hariri family have been asked to travel there to pledge allegiance to him, but have refused, the sources say.
When Hariris plane landed in Riyadh, he got the message immediately that something was wrong, a Hariri source told Reuters news agency. There was no one waiting for him.
Saudi Arabia has dismissed suggestions it forced Hariri to resign and says he is a free man. Saudi officials could not immediately be reached for comment on the circumstances of his arrival, whether his phone had been taken, or whether the kingdom was planning to replace him with his brother.
Saad has given no public remarks since he resigned and no indication of when he might return to Lebanon.
No respect
Hariri was summoned to the kingdom to meet King Salman in a phone call on Thursday night, November 2.
Before departing, he told his officials they would resume their discussions on Monday. He told his media team he would see them at the weekend in the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh, where he was due to meet Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi on the sidelines of the World Youth Forum.
Hariri went to his Riyadh home. His family made their fortune in Saudi Arabia and had long had properties there. The source close to Hariri said the Lebanese leader received a call from a Saudi protocol official on Saturday morning, who asked him to attend a meeting with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
He waited for about four hours before being presented with his resignation speech to read on television, the source said.
From the moment he arrived they (Saudis) showed no respect for the man, another senior Lebanese political source said.
Hariri frequently visits Saudi Arabia. On a trip a few days earlier, Prince Mohammed bin Salman had arranged for him to see senior intelligence officials and Gulf Affairs Minister Thamer al-Sabhan, the Saudi point man on Lebanon.
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Hariri came back from that trip to Beirut pleased and relaxed, sources in his entourage said. He posted a selfie with Sabhan, both of them smiling. He told aides he had heard encouraging statements from the crown prince, including a promise to revive a Saudi aid package for the Lebanese army.
The Hariri sources say Hariri believed he had convinced Saudi officials of the need to maintain an entente with Hezbollah for the sake of Lebanons stability.
Hezbollah has a heavily armed fighting force, in addition to seats in parliament and government. Saudi-backed efforts to weaken the group in Lebanon a decade ago led to Sunni-Shia clashes and a Hezbollah takeover of Beirut.
What happened in those meetings, I believe, is that (Hariri) revealed his position on how to deal with Hezbollah in Lebanon: that confrontation would destabilise the country. I think they didnt like what they heard, said one of the sources, who was briefed on the meetings.
The source said Hariri told Sabhan not to hold us responsible for something that is beyond my control or that of Lebanon. But Hariri underestimated the Saudi position on Hezbollah, the source said.
For the Saudis it is an existential battle. Its black and white. We in Lebanon are used to gray, the source said.
Sabhan could not immediately be reached for comment.
Resignation
Hariris resignation speech shocked his team.
Lebanese President Michel Aoun, a Hezbollah ally, told ambassadors to Lebanon that Saudi Arabia had kidnapped Hariri, a senior Lebanese official said. On Friday, France said it wanted Hariri to have all his freedom of movement.
In his speech, Hariri said he feared assassination and accused Iran and Hezbollah of sowing strife in the region. He said the Arab world would cut off the hands that wickedly extend to it, language which one source close to him said was not typical of the Lebanese leader.
Hariris resignation came as more than 200 people, including 11 Saudi princes, current and former ministers and tycoons, were arrested in an anti-corruption purge in Saudi Arabia.
Initially there was speculation Hariri was a target of that campaign because of his familys business interests. But sources close to the Lebanese leader said his forced resignation was motivated by Saudi efforts to counter Iran.
Hariri was taken to meet the Saudi king after his resignation. Footage was aired on Saudi TV. He was then flown to Abu Dhabi to meet Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed, the Saudi crown princes main regional ally. He returned to Riyadh and has since received Western ambassadors.
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Sources close to Hariri said the Saudis, while keeping Hariri under house arrest, were trying to orchestrate a change of leadership in Hariris Future Movement by installing his elder brother Bahaa, who was overlooked for the top job when their father was killed. The two have been at odds for years.
In a statement, the Future Movement said it stood fully behind Hariri as its leader. Hariri aide and Interior Minister Nohad Machnouk dismissed the idea Bahaa was being positioned to replace his brother: We are not herds of sheep or a plot of land whose ownership can be moved from one person to another. In Lebanon things happen though elections not pledges of allegiances.
Family members, aides and politicians who have contacted Hariri in Riyadh say he is apprehensive and reluctant to say anything beyond I am fine. Asked if he is coming back, they say his normal answer is: Inshallah (God willing).
In spite of New Delhis pollution crisis, a car rationing scheme in the smog-hit capital has been dropped after a challenge from the national environmental court, the National Green Tribunal.
In spite of New Delhis pollution crisis, a car rationing scheme in the smog-hit capital has been dropped after a challenge from the national environmental court, the National Green Tribunal.
The Indian government had planned to bring in car rationing from Monday, exempting women for their safety.
The tribunal had protested the exemption of women, arguing that rationing had to be applied across the board in order for it to work.
The smogs been so bad that schools have been closed this week.
Al Jazeeras Charlotte Bellis explains.
Iran says defence affairs not negotiable in response to President Macrons call for dialogue over its missile programme.
Iran has rejected French President Emmanuel Macrons call for talks on Tehrans ballistic missiles programme, saying the nuclear deal it signed with world powers in 2015 was not negotiable.
Macron, during a visit to Dubai on Thursday, said he was very concerned by Tehrans missile programme after Saudi Arabia claimed it intercepted a missile fired from Yemen last month.
Referring to the Saudi claim, the French president had raised the prospect of possible sanctions with regard to those activities.
Irans Foreign Ministry Spokesman Bahram Qassemi said its missile programme was defensive and unrelated to the landmark nuclear deal that put a cap on Irans nuclear activity in exchange for sanctions relief.
France is fully aware of our countrys firm position that Irans defence affairs are not negotiable, said Qassemi, ruling out the possibility of any talks.
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Obamas successor, Donald Trump, decertified the deal last month and slapped sanctions on Irans powerful Revolutionary Guard Corps. The fate of the deal has fallen on the US Congress, which has 60 days to reimpose nuclear sanctions.
We have told French officials repeatedly that the nuclear deal is not negotiable and other issues will not be allowed to be added to it, Qassemi said, according to a statement on the ministrys website on Sunday.
France has been trying to save the nuclear deal which Iran signed with six world powers Britain, China, Germany, France, Russia and the United States.
Last month, Macron told Iranian President Hassan Rouhani in a phone call that France remained committed to the deal but stressed on the necessity to have a dialogue with Iran on other strategic issues, including Tehrans ballistic missile programme, a proposal ruled out by Iran.
The US says the missile fired at Saudi Arabia was supplied by Iran. Washington has also called for the UN to hold Tehran accountable for violating two UN Security Council resolutions.
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Saudi Arabia and its allies also accuse Iran of supplying weapons to the Houthi rebels, saying the arms were not present in Yemen before conflict broke out in 2015.
Iran denies the charges and blames the conflict on Riyadh. Tehran says it has no plans to build nuclear-capable missiles and the missile programme is for defence purposes.
Iraq and Iran agreed in principle to export Kirkuk oil to Iran, according to the Iraqi oil ministry.
Iraqi Oil Minister Jabbar al-Luaibi said on Friday in a statement that 30,000-60,000 barrels of oil a day would be exported to Irans Kermanshah province.
The deal was signed in Baghdad between Iraqs State Organization for Marketing of Oil (SOMO) and Iran, al-Luaibi said.
The amount of oil exported would be increased after pipelines were installed, he added.
Al-Luaibi said the oil would be trucked over Iraqs border to Kermanshah.
The [Iraqi] government aims to carry out oil and strategic projects with Turkey, Iran, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Syria, al-Luaibi said, adding that the deal with Iran would be signed after technical and administrative aspects were settled.
Last month, Iraqi forces seized control of the oil fields in Kirkuk from the Kurdish Peshmerga forces, which took control of the disputed province in 2014.
The move came amid tension between Baghdad and the Kurdish Regional Government (KRG) over the controversial referendum on September 25 for Kurdish independence.
Iraq is the second largest crude oil producer in the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) after Saudi Arabia, and holds the worlds fifth-largest proven crude oil reserves after Venezuela, Saudi Arabia, Canada, and Iran, according to the US Energy Information Administration (EIA).
It was June 2, 1988, and Hargeisa was under attack. The rat-a-tat-tat of nearby artillery rose above the city and filled Ibrahim Abdullahis ears, but the battle was in the north and hadnt reached his government-controlled southern district at least not yet.
As he nervously ventured outside, Abdullahis mind raced. He had already sent his wife and eight children to safety in Ethiopia, but he felt a longing to stay in Hargeisa, a need to protect his modest mud-brick home and keep it occupied to deter looters and to defend the product of years of his hard work.
Everything had happened so quickly.
Just days before, Somali National Movement (SNM) rebels had captured nearby Burao city from Somalias national army, and Hargeisa was now in their sights. But it seemed that government soldiers were determined to stop that at any cost.
Within the past two days, Abdullahi had heard that killings had begun.
Ill take it day by day, Abdullahi thought to himself. If the situation gets worse and theres an opportunity to run then Ill go.
Government soldiers were rounding up men of fighting age in Hargeisa to prevent them from joining the SNM.
Crouched down outside his home, Abdullahis mind wandered to thoughts of fleeing again.
Rumours were circulating that women and children were also being targeted, but he had no way to know for sure. Some people had even said government bombers were pursuing fleeing families as they tried to escape.
He thought of his wife and kids and prayed the rumours were untrue.
Then, out of nowhere, he heard his name.
Ibrahim Abdullahi?!
The noise of gunfire hung in the air, but it remained at least a couple of kilometres away. But here, as he looked up, tens of metres from him, was a small group of government soldiers.
Abdullahis mind raced again. Civilian or not, he was of fighting age.
Yes, thats me, he murmured, trying not to let the fear in his head spill into his words.
Come! the commander barked, several soldiers standing menacingly beside him, guns cocked and ready. We need you.
Walking towards what he assumed was certain death, Abdullahi took one deep breath and ventured forward.
Using an intricately carved wooden cane to help his ageing legs, 75-year-old Abdullahi stands tall and proud, albeit a little unsteady before lowering himself into a black leather swivel chair in the unassuming office building in Hargeisa.
Its 2017, and the walls of the office are dotted with photos of men in masks working meticulously, digging at the dusty ground and carefully brushing away dirt from skeletons that havent seen the light of day in decades.
I remember burying bodies in that grave, Abdullahi says gesturing towards one of the photos on the wall in front of him, and that one, he adds, his eyes slowly tracing the room.
Some days I must have buried hundreds, some days just dozens, he continues. People were being killed everywhere in the town. They didnt see a difference between men, women, or children everybody was to be killed.
Abdullahis story precedes the man in Hargeisa, the capital of the self-declared republic of Somaliland that announced its separation from Somalia after the government of Siad Barre collapsed in 1991.
His weathered face one that seems to have as many wrinkles as years hes had in his life may not be well-known in the city, but in every corner of the capital his story is legendary, some regarding it as truth, others as myth.
But in the office of the War Crimes Commissioner, Abdullahis story has been confirmed again and again over the years, hes been the key to reuniting distraught families with the remains of their loved ones.
Those were black days, black black days, Abdullahi repeats as he recalls memories that have stayed fresh in his mind three decades later.
Resting his cane on the table in front of him, Abdullahi begins to tell his story, his eyes darting from side to side as his mind rewinds through the years to 1988 and the 28 days of his life that have defined him ever since.
Im only alive to do this job
The city was a ghost town. Buildings lay abandoned, dead bodies were scattered in the streets, and the smell of death lingered in the air.
As Abdullahi walked, everything started to become familiar. He wasnt walking to a military barracks like he first thought; he was on his way to the Ministry of Public Services where he was employed handling heavy machinery like tractors and diggers.
Go and get one of the machines that can dig, the commander said abruptly when they arrived outside the complex. Be quick, we have to go there are bodies waiting.
Abdullahi did as he was told.
Within an hour he was at Malko Durduro, a valley area in western Hargeisa, digging into the soft soil. Several government soldiers stood around his digger with 10 bodies tied together lying beside them, blood still seeping through clothes and staining the sandy earth below them.
As he listened to the soldiers speaking among themselves it became apparent to Abdullahi that the army didnt want the bodies buried in an effort to cover their crimes they were fed up with the smell. His job, as their new prisoner, was to get rid of it.
The corpses were unrecognisable. Pieces of flesh ripped off their bodies from head to toe, shot to pieces by an anti-aircraft gun that sat nearby.
If I didnt know how to operate this equipment they would kill me, I would be lying there as well, Abdullahi realised as he dug. Theres no one else in the town; Im only alive because they need me to do this job.
To survive, he would have to dig.
Guarded day and night, Abdullahi dug to save his life. Barely allowed time to rest, he buried hundreds of bodies a day in that first week.
At first, the dead were men, mostly in fatigues rebels. After a few days, the fatigues disappeared, and women started appearing, then children. All killed in the same way tied together in groups of 10, shot, their faces sometimes slashed with knifes and mutilated.
The soldiers may maim and deface them; they may chuck the bodies on the ground like pieces of rotten meat as though they were never humans with emotions, dreams, wants and desires but he knew otherwise. They were fathers and sons, mothers and daughters, and even in death, they deserved respect.
In those first few days, Abdullahi swore to himself that he would at least give them that.
The most important thing to him was to get everyone buried before nightfall, before wild animals would come out of the bush and claw away at the bodies. If he could just do that, he thought, it would be some way at least to give the dead some dignity after such a violent and unjust end. It was how he could show respect, his silent rebellion against his captors.
For days on end, he worked from dawn till dusk, burying the war crimes of a regime that wanted him and his people dead. He did what he could to keep his mind blank. He thought of his family and daydreamed about where they could be, safe and away from the living hell that their hometown had become.
He trained himself to concentrate on digging, to distance himself from what was happening. Thats the only way he would survive.
Then, after two weeks, one of the bodies spoke.
I still cant sleep at night
The ground slips a little below Abdullahis feet after a night of heavy rain turned the bone-dry dirt in Malko Durduro to mud.
Its important we teach what happened in the past so it never happens again, Abdullahi says using his cane to steady himself as Al Jazeera takes the 75-year-old back to the mass graves he dug three decades ago at the notorious execution site of Malko Durduro.
My biggest fear is that what happened here will be forgotten.
Plagued by a deadly and devastating drought all year, the nights rain was the proverbial drop in the ocean, bringing more joy to the residents of the Somali city than water. But it was still something to a region that has been battling extreme weather conditions throughout 2017.
Every year when theres heavy rain more skeletons appear, Abdullahi says, scanning every inch of the area as he meanders from side to side. It brings all the memories flooding back.
To Abdullahis left, imposing cliffs of dirt stretch several metres up, small trees and cacti clinging onto the edge just another rainy night away from succumbing to erosion and joining Abdullahi on the valley floor.
Returning to Malko Durduro three decades after he was forced to bury thousands of bodies here, it doesnt take long before Abdullahis mind takes him back to those dark days.
I still cant sleep at night remembering him, Abdullahi says, recalling the one body the only body which looked up to him from among the dead and spoke.
It was two weeks into his captivity when Abdullahi came across a miracle.
A man who had somehow survived the firing squad and then played dead as soldiers piled the executed into a grave.
The miracle was short lived.
Facing being buried alive, there was only one thing the survivor could do. He spoke.
He was supposed to be dead, Abdullahi says pausing. He talked to me, pleaded with me, please untie me, but the soldiers heard him speaking. They untied him from the corpses, forced him to stand up, and they shot everywhere at him, all around him, even at the trees.
I had to do this job to survive, he adds, looking for understanding.
Digging his cane into the soft ground, Abdullahi walks the valley floor for several minutes, his eyes wandering the surroundings as his memories take him back to that time. He cant prevent them, even if he wanted to.
Stopping in his tracks and using the cane as an extension of himself, Abdullahi motions towards the cliff side. Within seconds, and without words, its clear what hes trying to draw attention to. Exposed by the rain and protruding from the wet cliffside is the unmistakable bone-white colour of a skull, almost waiting for the right moment to drop to the ground and join its burier on the floor below.
To the right of the skull, the tips of ribs stick out at differing angles sandwiched between greenish brown fabrics fatigues.
He was a rebel, Abdullahi says, filling the silence. I remember burying there.
Panning the area, just tens of metres away from the newly exposed skeleton more bones stick out this time there are no fatigues. The bones of a civilian killed by the army, and then buried by Abdullahi.
I remember being taken to this valley and a military vehicle pulled up with an official inside it, he recalls.
They pushed 12 bodies out of it, bodies of school children they were still in their shirts and dresses. They had no noticeable gunshot wounds. A soldier told me all of their blood had been drained from them so it could be used for the national army. That soldier cried as he told me, he cried for almost five minutes.
Those were the worst days of my life.
As he speaks, the faint sound of playing children carries through the air from a school less than 100 meters away. Throughout the land surrounding the school, more bodies are scattered, waiting to be exposed, identified by forensics, and eventually returned to their waiting families decades later.
For Abdullahi, the memories of the people he buried will never leave him. But he counts himself lucky he survived.
As the bodies reduced from hundreds a day at the beginning of Abdullahis captivity, to just a few per day after three weeks, he knew his time was running out. Soon he would be surplus to requirements, and if he didnt find a way to escape, he would be killed too.
But on the 28th day for the very first time he found himself alone.
Abdullahi didnt need a second opportunity.
The guards were getting more relaxed with me as I hadnt tried to escape, but on the 28th day I was out in the valley and realised there was no one watching me I ran, he says, describing his bid for freedom.
Hiding until nightfall, Abdullahi smuggled himself out of Hargeisa. Within days, he had gathered information about the whereabouts of his wife and kids they had survived the bombers and were still alive.
After two days and three nights of walking, he made it to their refugee camp in Ethiopia.
Walking into the camp on the morning of the third day, Abdullahi saw his family in the distance, and for the briefest of moments, the memories of the dead left him.
At that moment, when I saw them again I felt reborn.
The 75-year-old says hes lived a good life as a husband and a father to twelve children he had four more after returning to Hargeisa after the war.
Hes come to terms with what he witnessed and became a part all those years ago, and has found some comfort in helping the Somaliland authorities to recover the dead 2,000 of whom remain buried.
My children, to this day, call me the walking dead when they see me, he says, laughing a little to himself. They couldnt believe I survived. They still cant.
At least 400 suspected ISIL victims, many wearing prison uniforms, found buried at military base formerly used by ISIL.
Mass graves containing at least 400 suspected ISIL victims, many wearing prison uniforms, have been found in northern Iraq.
The sites were discovered on Saturday near Rashad airbase close to the groups former stronghold, Hawijah, 45km west of Kirkuk.
Iraqi forces recaptured the town of Hawijah and surrounding areas from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS) group in October. It was one of their last strongholds in Iraq.
Rashad airbase, located about 30km south of Hawijah, was used by ISIL as a training camp and logistic base.
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Al Jazeeras Imran Khan, reporting from Baghdad, said it was a common ISIL tactic to imprison and execute anybody who was in opposition to their rule.
The graves are a significant find, most of all for the families of the victims who have been seeking closure for years, Khan reported.
According to locals, ISIL turned the military base into an execution ground. Iraqi authorities have been cataloguing exactly how many people died under ISIL rule and are now investigating how many victims are in these particular graves, he added.
Authorities are relying on local people who took detailed notes during ISIL rule, handed them over, and showed authorities where these graves are located.
The discovery of the mass graves was not the first after the routing of ISIL in Iraq and Syria.
In August, Iraqi military investigators discovered two mass graves near a former ISIL prison outside Mosul that contained the bodies of 500 victims.
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Earlier that month, Associated Press news agency conducted a survey that concluded that ISIL buried thousands of their victims in at least 72 mass graves across Iraq and Syria.
Through interviews, photos, and research, AP obtained locations of 17 mass graves in Syria, including one with the bodies of hundreds of members of a single tribe all but exterminated when ISIL took over their region.
Of the 72 mass graves documented in the investigation, the smallest contained three bodies; the largest is believed to hold thousands.
Powerful 7.3 magnitude tremor strikes Iran-Iraq border, killing at least 328 people and wounding more than 2,500.
A 7.3 magnitude earthquake struck the border region between Iraq and Iran late on Sunday, killing at least 328 people and injuring an estimated 2,530 more.
As aftershocks continued on Monday and as rescuers sped up their operation, Irans state news agency IRNA confirmed the death toll, saying at least 382 of the injured remain in hospital.
The US Geological Survey (USGS) said Sundays powerful quake hit close to Halabjah, southeast of Sulaymaniyah, a city in the semi-autonomous Kurdish region of northern Iraq.
The tremor, which was felt as far away as Qatar, struck at 9:18pm local time (18:18) GMT. Its epicentre was at a depth of 33.9km.
Most of the victims are believed to be in the Iranian town of Sarpol-e Zahab.
Iranian media said rescue teams deployed in the area amid fears the death toll will rise.
Crossed by several major fault lines, Iran is one of the worlds most seismically active countries.
In 2003, a 6.6 magnitude earthquake flattened the historic city of Bam in southeastern Iran, killing some 26,000 people.
On the other side of the border, Sulaymaniyah officials declared an emergency in the early hours of Monday to assess the aftermath of the quake, according to local Kurdish media.
At least seven people were killed in Iraq, reports said, citing Iraqs interior ministry.
Turkey was among the first countries to respond.
The Turkish Disaster and Emergency Management Authority (AFAD) said on Twitter that it was sending 20 search and rescue personnel to Iraq, as well as humanitarian relief supplies.
Al Jazeeras Imran Khan, reporting from the Iraqi capital, Baghdad, said cars came to a standstill in the city as the buildings began to sway.
Baghdad is not prone to earthquakes so when people began to come outside, the shock was visible on the faces, he said.
For the first few seconds, I actually thought an explosion had taken place, but as it carried on for up to a minute I realised it was an earthquake, he added.
Pictures and footage published on social media showed people seeking safety in the streets of Sulaymaniyah while the interiors of buildings shook.
Papua New Guinea will delay by at least 24 hours a plan to forcibly evict hundreds of men from an Australian detention centre, three asylum seekers said.
Hundreds of men have barricaded themselves in the Manus Island centre for more than 11 days without regular food or water, defying closure bids by Australia and Papua New Guinea in what the United Nations calls a looming humanitarian crisis.
Rejecting UN calls to restore utilities to the camp, Papua New Guinea said this week it would apprehend those responsible for the standoff when it forcibly evicted the men on Saturday.
But several asylum seekers said Papua New Guinea officials told them detainees could remain until Sunday.
Police are talking on a microphone outside prison, Behrouz Boochani, a Kurdish journalist from Iran who has spent more than four years held in the camp, told Reuters.
Theyre telling the refugees to leave, saying tomorrow will be the last day you are here, he said in a text message.
It was not immediately clear what caused the postponement.
Pressure on the asylum seekers, drawn largely from Afghanistan, Iran, Myanmar, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and Syria, has grown in recent days as Papua New Guinea tries to get them to move to three transit centres.
The asylum seekers fear reprisals if they move to the transit centres, pending possible resettlement in the United States. The main camp was closed on October 31 and water and power have been cut off.
Some island dwellers are angry at what they perceive as preferential treatment for the asylum seekers, many of them well educated, in a poor, rural society, and some detainees have come under attack when on release from the camp.
The patience of Papua New Guinea authorities has begun to wane, however, and they moved this week to remove camp fences and dismantle rainwater collection bins, as well as makeshift shelters built to ward off the tropical sun and rain.
Under pressure, groups of men have elected to move to the transit centres. But the exact number left is difficult to ascertain, though Manus Island police commander David Yapu told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation that about 400 remain.
Several of those remaining told Reuters they would not move, setting the scene for a potential clash, which would further stoke international criticism of Australia.
Australia has used the centre, and a camp on the tiny Pacific island of Nauru, to detain asylum seekers who try to reach its shores by boat. It says boat arrivals will never enter Australia, even if found to be refugees, as this would encourage people smugglers in Asia.
Acting Prime Minister Julie Bishop said there was no reason for the remaining men to choose to stay, rejecting criticism of inadequate facilities at the transit centres.
Over the last few months they have travelled to East Lorengau on many occasions and never raised any concerns, Bishop told reporters in Perth.
Russias parliament warned that some United States and other foreign media could be declared foreign agents and obliged to regularly declare full details of their funding, finances and staffing.
Vyacheslav Volodin, speaker of the State Duma, said on Friday that parliament could back legislation as early as next week, in response to what legislators view as US pressure on Russian media.
Possible restrictions will be the same as those taken by the United States, Interfax news agency quoted him as saying.
Russian legislators said the move was retaliation for a demand by the US Department of Justice that Kremlin-backed TV station RT register in the US as a foreign agent, something Moscow has said it regards as an unfriendly act.
Volodin said some US media in Russia were trying to turn US public opinion against Moscow.
We understand that its essential to protect the interests of our citizens and the country, and we will do this in the same way as the country which lays claim to be the gold standard and mentor, and which is constantly talking about freedom.
The US action against RT was taken after US intelligence agencies accused Russia of trying to interfere in last years US presidential election to help President Donald Trump win, something Moscow has denied.
Russian election
Russia faces a presidential election next March. Vladimir Putin is widely expected to stand again and to win. He remains broadly popular though critics accuse him of suppressing dissent, not least by tight control of domestic media.
legislators will conduct a first reading of the new restrictions on November 15 and try to complete approval in two further readings by November 19.
US and any other foreign media that fall under the new restrictions could have to regularly disclose to Russian authorities full details of their funding, finances and staffing, and might be obliged to say on their social media profiles and internet sites visible in Russia that they are foreign agents.
The Duma earlier this year launched an investigation into whether CNN, Voice of America, Radio Liberty and other American media were complying with Russian law.
US government-sponsored Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) said last month Moscow had threatened to brand their Russian language service projects foreign agents in retaliation for US pressure on RT.
On November 10, Joanna Levison, RFEs director of media and public affairs, declined to speculate about how the latest move might affect the broadcaster, but said RFE had every intention of continuing its journalistic work in Russia.
While RT is able to work and distribute its content freely in the US, RFE/RL has lost all of its broadcast affiliates in Russia due to administrative pressure, it has no access to cable TV, and its reporters are beaten and harassed, Levison said in an emailed comment.
Russia said last month it had dropped accusations against CNN International of violating Russian media law and that the US channel could continue broadcasting in Russia.
San Francisco-based social network Twitter has also angered Russian authorities, when it accused RT and the Sputnik news outlet of interfering in the 2016 US election and banned them from buying ads on its network.
Eight days after his shock resignation, Lebanese PM denies rumours he is being held against his will in Saudi Arabia.
Saad Hariri has rejected rumours he is being held in Saudi Arabia against his will and pledged to return to Beirut very soon to affirm his decision to quit as Lebanons prime minister.
Hariri made the comments from Saudi Arabias capital, Riyadh, speaking publicly for the first time since his shock resignation eight days ago.
Speaking on Sunday on Future TV, a station affiliated with his political party, Hariri said he was free in Saudi Arabia.
Here in the kingdom of Saudi Arabia, I am free. I have complete freedom, but I want to look after my family as well, he said, adding that he planned to return to Lebanon in the near future.
Im not talking about months Im only talking about days and Ill go back to Lebanon.
Something wrong
In an unexpected move, Hariri, a Sunni Muslim politician and longtime ally of Saudi Arabia, quit as Lebanons prime minister on November 4 during a visit to Saudi Arabia.
Reading out his resignation in a televised statement from Riyadh, Hariri blamed interference in Lebanon by Iran and its Lebanese ally Hezbollah for his decision to quit, adding he feared an assassination attempt. His father, Rafik Hariri, was killed in a truck bomb blast in 2005.
But Lebanese officials have said Hariri is likely to be under either house arrest or in temporary detention in Riyadh.
Al Jazeeras Zeina Khodr, reporting from Lebanons capital, Beirut, said Hariris televised appearance on Sunday was aimed at persuading the people in Lebanon that he was not being held against his will a widespread belief in the country.
The majority of the Lebanese believe, in one way or another, that there is something wrong, said Khodr.
The aim of this interview really is to try and convince the majority of the Lebanese that he is not a hostage, that he has the freedom of movement and that the Saudis are not dictating to him what to say or what to do.
Political turmoil
Hariris resignation, just 11 months after he took office, has plunged Lebanon into uncertainty, threatening the countrys fragile political stability and raising concerns over an open-ended crisis.
It has also stoked fears of an escalation in the regional divide between Iran and the Gulf states, primarily Saudi Arabia, with Lebanon on the front lines.
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Hariri is part of a unity government that also includes rival political factions such as those supported by Hezbollah, a popular Shia group which is represented in the Lebanese parliament and has a strong armed wing.
Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah, on Friday said Hariri is currently detained in Saudi Arabia and that his forced resignation is unconstitutional because it was done under pressure.
Speaking in Beirut, Nasrallah said he was sure Hariri was forced to resign as part of what he called Saudi Arabias policy of stoking sectarian tensions in Lebanon.
In his interview on Sunday, Hariri said he wrote his own resignation speech, insisting that he was not forced to step down.
I wanted to make a positive shock for the Lebanese people so the people know how dangerous the situation we are in, he said.
Hariri also said that upon his return to Lebanon he will confirm his resignation in accordance with the countrys constitution.
But he also hinted that he could rescind his decision to step down, provided that Hezbollah respected Lebanons policy of not getting involved in regional conflicts.
Al Jazeeras Khodr said Lebanon adopted a policy of disassociation from wars in the region, particularly in neighbouring Syria, a few years ago.
Hezbollah has been accused of ignoring this policy by sending forces to fight alongside the Syrian government, Khodr said.
In one way or another, Hariri threw the ball in Hezbollahs court he kept on saying I had to do this to save the country, and now he is telling Hezbollah this is your way to save the country.
Rami Khouri, senior public policy fellow at the American University of Beirut, said Hariris body language during the Future TV interview indicated that he was in an uncomfortable situation.
This was not the normal Saad Hariri that weve seen in Lebanon for many years, Khouri told Al Jazeera from Boston, US.
He physically looked not at ease, and what he was saying was very contradictory to many people in Lebanon saying that he is free when he didnt look free; saying that he is doing this to help Lebanon when perhaps it was actually more to help Saudi Arabia, added Khouri.
Theres just a lot of contradictions and a lack of clarity in what he was saying, so I think it just reinforces the widespread sentiment in Lebanon that he is being used by the Saudi Arabian government as a mechanism to put pressure on the Lebanese government to put pressure on Hezbollah which would put pressure on Iran I think there is no doubt about that, he is caught in a very difficult situation.
The UN and the European Union are welcoming initial steps by the Saudi-led military coalition to lift its blockade on Yemen.
The UN and the European Union are welcoming initial steps by the Saudi-led military coalition to lift its blockade on Yemen.
The government-held southern port of Aden is now open, and the national airline says they will resume flights out of Aden and Seyoun.
But the EU says its not enough to prevent mass starvation.
The UN and aid agencies are demanding a full lifting of the restrictions, to avoid a humanitarian catastrophe.
Al Jazeeras Mereana Hond reports.
Somalilanders will choose their next leader after inadequate funding, political disagreements and drought delayed polls.
After a seven-year wait, Somaliland will go to the polls to elect a new leader. Here are five things you need to know:
Why is this election important?
Somalilanders will finally be choosing their new president on November 13 after inadequate funding, political disagreements and drought caused the polls to be delayed for several years.
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The presidential election the third since Somalias northern region decided to separate from the rest of the country in 1991 was originally scheduled at the same time as that for the lower house of parliament, but the two have now, controversially, been separated, with the latter planned for April 2019.
While past efforts to register its electorate were riddled with inconsistencies, this latest attempt a first in Africa with its use of iris scan biometric technology has gone smoothly, and all parties have expressed confidence in the process.
The change in leadership after a divisive administration increases the stakes, especially given the delay for those waiting for their chance to take power by Mohamed Farah, director of the Academy for Peace and Development in Somaliland
President Ahmed Mohamed Mohamoud Silanyo, whose government has been accused of corruption and nepotism, is stepping down so the stakes in this election are high.
The change in leadership after a divisive administration increases the stakes, especially given the delay for those waiting for their chance to take power Mohamed Farah, director of the Academy for Peace and Development in Somaliland, told Al Jazeera.
What will a new administration have to deal with?
There is the issue of two recent deals with the UAE, which would see it take over and develop the Berbera port, as well as building a military base in Somaliland. Both developments have significant financial and geopolitical implications for Somaliland, and have the potential to shape its future.
Somaliland will have to play a critical role in the economic development and political stability of the region, and there is a feeling that such large developments [could] be an issue for a new administration, Farah explains.
Somalilands political system incorporates both traditional elements and modern political structures, but despite instituting a three-party political system to avoid clan-based politics, clan still remains a central factor in Somalilands politics.
All three candidates are from the same the clan, but shifting allegiances between sub-clans have been an important aspect in the run-up to the elections.
Who is standing?
Three candidates are vying to replace Silanyo, the current head of state.
Muse Bihi Abdi, who is standing with Kulmiye, the ruling party, was a commanding officer for the Somali National Movement (SNM) rebel group during the struggle to overthrow President Siad Barre in the 1980s. He also served as interior minister in the 1990s, and worked on reintegrating and rehabilitating ex-combatants during the crucial post-war years.
Despite some achievements, such as taking steps to improve stability in the unrecognised countrys eastern regions, the Kulmiye party has been accused of widespread corruption and clanism, and of conducting state business without adequate transparency. For example, Silanyos government presided over the controversial deals with the UAE, all the details of which have not been disclosed.
Bihis main challenger, Abdirahman Mohamed Abdullahi Irro, served as speaker of the lower house of parliament for 12 years until he resigned to take part in the presidential campaign.
Irros party, Waddani, has been the most vocal in its criticism of the port and military base deal, and has vowed to review the deals and possibly withdraw from them if elected.
Projected to finish third in the polls is long-time leader of the Justice and Welfare Party (UCID), Faysal Ali Warabe, who has been opposition leader since the early 2000s. Unlike the other candidates, Warabe is running on an anti-clan agenda, and advocates for a welfare state in Somaliland.
What does the international community think?
An International Election Observation Mission (EOM), funded by the British Government, has been invited to oversee the elections by Somalilands own National Electoral Commission (NEC). The EOM includes a team of 60 observers from 27 countries.
[Were] particularly hopeful that the implementation of the voter registration system will address issues that have marred previous elections, the EOM said in a statement.
It also is a milestone in the sense that, if it goes well, it will mark a maturing of Somaliland's electoral democracy by Michael Walls, observer and researcher
According to Michael Walls, chief observer with the EOM and an academic who has researched Somalilands development, this election is significant because its the first time an incumbent is not standing, and because there is a real choice between candidates.
It also is a milestone in the sense that, if it goes well, it will mark a maturing of Somalilands electoral democracy, Walls told Al Jazeera. It shows that Somaliland is capable of keeping the electoral process going, and thats significant. There are many people, including from the international community, paying attention.
When are results expected?
The vote will take place on November 13, but results are not expected until November 17.
All parties have claimed confidence in the NEC, and the transition is expected to be peaceful.
A battle of jobs versus the environment is raging in northern Greece, as one of the countrys largest foreign investors threatens to pull out.
A battle of jobs versus the environment is raging in northern Greece, as one of the countrys largest foreign investors threatens to pull out.
Canadian mining group Eldorado Gold almost suspended operations last month, saying the government is not meeting contractual obligations, causing delays and costing it millions.
The two are now in court, with the government claiming it is trying to protect the environment.
Al Jazeeras John Psaropoulos reports from the Kassandra mines in northern Greece.
The US president Donald Trump has urged Vietnam to buy missiles and other weapons systems from the United States.
The US president delivered a message to Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc, urging him to buy missiles and other weapons systems from the United States. Trump said the US makes the greatest missiles in the world during his brief state visit to Vietnam.
Trump had also offered at an earlier meeting on Sunday with Vietnamese President Tran Dai Quang to serve as a mediator in the South China Sea territorial disputes.
But during a joint appearance with President Trump, Quang said his country wants to settle disputes in the South China Sea through peaceful negotiations.
Vietnam and China along with four others claim all or parts of the strategic waters.
Chinese President Xi Jinping is scheduled to arrive in Vietnam for a state visit later on Sunday. Disputes over the South China Sea are expected to be high on the agenda during Xis talks with Vietnamese leaders.
Trump has highlighted trade issues in meetings with Vietnams prime minister and the secretary-general of its Communist Party.
Trump told Communist Party leader Nguyen Phu Trong that trade had become a very important element in the relationship between the two countries.
Outside of trade, Trump says he looks forward to the onetime adversaries, the US and Vietnam, having a fantastic relationship for years to come.
Decision to buy Russian missile system over others based on technical and financial reasons, official tells Al Jazeera.
Turkeys decision to buy an advanced missile defence system from Russia is not aimed at sending any political messages, a Turkish official has said, a day after Ankara announced the finalisation of a deal that might affect its relations with NATO.
Ahmet Berat Conkar, head of the Turkish delegation to NATO Parliamentary Assembly, said the purchase of the S-400 anti-aircraft missiles was solely based on technical and financial reasons.
Turkeys picked S-400 over other options because the missile system possesses more advanced technical features than its rivals, with a better price and shorter delivery time, Conkar, who is a member of parliament for the ruling AK party, told Al Jazeera.
His comments came after Nurettin Canikli, Turkeys defence minister, said on Saturday that the S-400 deal with Russia was done.
The S-400 missiles are purchased. Only small details are left to handle at this point, Canikli told reporters in the northern city of Giresun.
NATO suspicion
Russias S-400 is an advanced anti-aircraft surface-to-air defence system that has been imported to various countries.
In the bidding process, before agreeing on buying the S-400, Turkey which is a NATO member and hosts a base for the military alliance had also considered US defence contractor Raytheons Patriot system.
Since its announcement last summer, the Turkish-Russian deal has been viewed with suspicion in NATO circles, as the Russian-made equipment is believed to be incompatible with the systems used by the alliance.
General Petr Pavel, the chairman of NATOs Military Committee, had recently warned Turkey about the consequences of a possible S-400 purchase from Russia.
The principal of sovereignty obviously exists in acquisition of defence equipment, but the same way that nations are sovereign in making their decision, they are also sovereign in facing the consequences of that decision, Pavel told reporters in Washington, DC, on October 25.
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Defence officials in the United States have also expressed concern over the purchase agreement multiple times.
According to NATOs policy, interoperability does not necessarily require common military equipment. What is important is that this equipment can share common facilities and is able to communicate with other equipment.
But Conkar said he believed the purchase would not affect Turkeys cooperation within NATO and its participation in the alliances activities.
There are other countries who have bought weapon systems from third countries. NATO projects and actions are carried out through a planning process that would not interfere with Turkeys other defence investments, he told Al Jazeera.
The cost of the Russia-Turkey S-400 deal is more than $2bn, according to the CEO of the Russias state-run defence company Rostec, quoted by official TASS news agency.
Patriot deployment
Turkey, which has been relying on Patriot batteries from NATO allies for its air defence, has been seeking to have its own system for some years now.
In 2012, Ankara requested air defence support against threats posed by missiles from across its border with war-torn Syria.
Responding to the request, NATO allies Germany, Italy, Spain, the Netherlands and the US in January 2013 contributed missile batteries to augment Turkeys air defence, according to official NATO records.
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But the vast majority of the air defence batteries were withdrawn in 2015, despite Ankaras concerns over the security of its border.
Currently, Spain and Italy provide one Patriot missile battery and one ASTER SAMP/T battery each for Turkeys air defence respectively.
In a separate development, Ankara last week signed a letter of intent with France and Italy to cooperate with these countries in order to develop a new missile defence system, according to Canikli, the defence minister.
In addition to the S-400 deal, Turkey also made preliminary agreements with the Eurosam countries to develop, produce and use the air defence system in order to improve its long-term domestic national capacity, said Canikli, adding that Ankara aims to have its own technology in this area.
Eurosam is a consortium of Italian and French companies set up to develop anti-aircraft defence systems.
Conkar said the Eurosam deal demonstrates that Turkey has no intention of antagonising its allies through the purchase of S-400 missile systems.
This development openly reveals that Turkey will work with its allies to develop such systems in the middle and long term. However, it needs the S-400 system for its immediate defence, he told Al Jazeera.
Follow Umut Uras on Twitter: @Um_Uras
Australias Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull said he would not call a general election after a citizenship crisis claimed another member of parliament, leaving his government clinging to power with the support of two independents.
Australias constitution bars dual nationals from parliament, and Turnbulls centre-right coalition government was thrown into disarray last month by a High Court ruling that five of them were ineligible to be legislators.
Earlier on Saturday, Conservative Liberal party MP John Alexander told reporters in Sydney he was no longer certain that he was solely Australian, and that meant he had to resign.
Turnbull will deal with issues such as a no-confidence motion when they arise, he told a televised news conference in Vietnams central city of Danang, where he is attending a summit of Asia-Pacific leaders.
We have the support of the cross-bench on matters of confidence and supply. There is no question of that happening, Turnbull added, ruling out the possibility of a no-confidence motion.
His centre-right coalition government must rely on the two independents to vote with it, to safeguard its position and block the passage of legislation it opposes.
Turnbull said he expected a December 2 by-election would return Barnaby Joyce both to parliament and to his former position as deputy prime minister, thus bolstering the government.
He ruled out an early return to Australia, following Alexanders resignation.
It is my obligation that I must resign, Alexander told a news conference. Thats what I will do. I think there is a great need for certainty, to clarify the situation and to do so as expeditiously as possible.
Alexander had been waiting for Britains Home Office to clarify whether he held British citizenship by descent. It is not known whether it responded.
He would have to confirm sole Australian citizenship before fighting a by-election to regain his seat.
Alexander said he planned to contest the by-election, which The Sydney Morning Herald said must be announced no later than Monday, to allow the minimum 33-day campaign required to hold the poll on December 16.
Only the two independents now guarantee Turnbulls position, after the High Court ruling expelled three members of the Liberal-National coalition government from parliament, with a fourth resigning days later, after confirming his dual nationality.
With parades and a party endorsements for the first lady after Mnangagwa was sacked, analysts say a new path is clear.
Editors note: 15/11/2017:
This article was published on November 12, before the armys actions on Wednesday.
Harare, Zimbabwe A flurry of party endorsements and parades in honour of Grace Mugabe, Zimbabwes first lady, could mark the stirring of a national political dynasty for the Mugabes, as structures within the ruling Zanu PF endorse Grace as a potential candidate for the vice presidency following Mondays dismissal of former Vice President Emmerson Mnangagwa.
All the partys provinces have rallied around the 52-year-old for the vice presidency, with her strongest support coming from the Zanu PF womens league, which she leads, and the youth league.
Youth league leader, Kudzanai Chipanga, who organised a solidarity march in her honour on Wednesday, said she was the only person fit to take up the post.
As youth, we dont believe in patriarchy; women can also be leaders. We want [Grace] Mugabe as our vice president because she can work well with the president and she can help him in leading the nation, he said.
The solidarity gathering was held to apologise to the first lady for being heckled by a small group of pro-Mnangagwa party youths in the second city of Bulawayo last weekend.
My husband is the president, and I'm the president's wife. I'm a woman, so why can't I be the vice president? Am I not a child of Zimbabwe? by Grace Mugabe
The overwhelming support for Grace comes ahead of an extraordinary Zanu-PF congress to be held in the capital, Harare.
That gathering next month is set to endorse President Robert Mugabe as the partys one centre of power and sole presidential candidate for 2018s elections.
From typist to aspiring president
Grace herself has not ruled out the possibility of becoming vice president, nor has she rejected claims that she aspires to succeed her husband.
My husband is the president, and Im the presidents wife. Im a woman, so why cant I be the vice president? Am I not a child of Zimbabwe? she said to crowds at a rally in the second city of Bulawayo at the weekend.
During the first years of their marriage in 1996, Grace had little involvement in political affairs and mainly focused on managing the familys vast business and real estate interests in Zimbabwe and beyond.
Shopping sprees abroad earned the former presidents office typist the monikers First Shopper and Gucci Grace.
Since her controversial attainment of a PhD in Sociology in 2014 she was hastily awarded a doctorate from the University of Zimbabwe and her election as first secretary of the Zanu PF womens league, she has become more involved in party politics.
In late 2014, Grace held a series of rallies accusing the then vice president, Joice Mujuru, of conspiring to topple Mugabe.
Mounting allegations of corruption and attempting to assassinate the president resulted in Mujurus dismissal and expulsion from the party.
Now for the second time in less than five years, Mugabe has fired another deputy accused by Grace of plotting to succeed the worlds oldest sitting president.
The power behind the throne
As Zanu PFs December congress is a special elective conference, some analysts predict Grace could be elected into the partys four-member executive as the party constitution requires the praesidium to consist of at least one female member.
Since Mnangagwas expulsion, Zanu PFs praesidium currently consists of Mugabe who is the first secretary, Ignatius Chombo, the national administrator and Phelekezela Mphoko, who currently serves as the deputy second secretary and national vice president.
The choreographed endorsements we have seen from the provinces may be all the Mugabes need to convince themselves that what they are doing is legitimate by McDonald Lewanika, political analyst
McDonald Lewanika, a political analyst and activist, told Al Jazeera Graces election to the praesidium was a strong possibility that could lead to her succeeding her husband.
Her power belies in the fact that her husband is the president, but we are yet to see what happens if Robert Mugabe isnt there for her. She is angling for the vice presidency right now, but she also seems intent on keeping the presidency in the Mugabe household.
For now the choreographed endorsements we have seen from the provinces may be all the Mugabes need to convince themselves that what they are doing is legitimate and they have the will of the people, he said.
While most observers agree with Lewanikas view, one analyst holds a different perspective.
Ibbo Mandaza, director of the SAPES Trust, a regional think-tank, told Al Jazeera he believes Grace does not want the presidency, but to secure her future after Mugabe.
Now that Emerson is out, her job is done. She doesnt need to be vice president because she already sees herself as president. She sees herself as Mugabes other because she can make important decisions on the countrys affairs so what more can the vice presidency give her?
She wants to ensure her future and the security of her family so she might prefer someone who can look after her interests to succeed Mugabe, he said in a telephone interview.
Not what we fought for
The ongoing purges of scores of Mnangagwa allies have widened the rift between the Mugabes and various groups of war veteran leaders.
War veterans, who fought alongside Mugabe during the 1970s liberation struggle and spearheaded the repossession of white-owned commercial farms in the 2000s, claim Mugabe has betrayed the revolution.
Victor Matemadanda, secretary-general of the Zimbabwe National War Veterans Association, told Al Jazeera the ongoing expulsions were a strong indication that Mugabe was acting in his own interests and those of his wife.
Mugabe is no longer doing the things we thought he would do after the war. Its like he wants to rule the country with his wife, but we cant allow that, thats not what we fought for and thats not the Zanu PF we belong to, he said.
The war veterans recently declared they had formed a revolutionary council to challenge Mugabes grip on the party.
Matemadanda is currently facing charges of insulting the president for wearing a t-shirt printed, Control your children first and Grace: a failed mum, her sons unruly rogues. Failing with only two boys, cant mother 14 million.
The t-shirt refers to the extravagant lifestyle of her two sons, Robert Jnr, 25 and Bellarmine Chatunga, 21, whose partying led to an incident in which Grace allegedly assaulted a South African model with an electric extension cord after finding her in a hotel room with her sons.
The Zimbabwean first lady was later granted diplomatic immunity, an order the alleged victim is currently challenging in court.
But in spite of controversy, party members have remained steadfast in their support of the first lady and countered the charges through loyalty marches.
With the chant munhu wese kuna Amai (everyone to the mother) rising louder and louder as more voices back the call for a female vice president, Grace, the mother of four, could one day become the mother leading the nation.
The US president says he believes Vladimir Putins denials, but also accepts CIA confirmation of meddling.
Whether at home or abroad, US President Donald Trump cannot seem to shake the discussion about whether or not Russia interfered in his election last year.
This time, the debate on Russian meddling and manipulation is the presidents own doing. Trump made contradictory statements while meeting world leaders at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation in Vietnam.
Trump met Vladimir Putin and appeared to accept the Russian presidents denial of involvement. Then Trump told reporters he had full confidence in US intelligence agencies after the CIA said Russia did meddle in the race for the White House.
Is Trump trying to influence criminal investigations that could lead to impeachment? And paying lip service to Moscow?
Presenter: Laura Kyle
Guests:
Alexey Khlebnikov, International relations analyst, Russian International Affairs Council
Scott Lucas, professor, University of Birmingham
Lisa Osofsky, FBI former deputy general counsel
English News ASEAN to increase exchanges, deepen cooperation with China: forum delegates
Alwihda Info | Par peoplesdaily - 12 Novembre 2017
The 2017 Tuole Forum on China-ASEAN International Production Capacity Cooperation was held in Panzhou, Liupanshui, in southwest Chinas Guizhou Province on Nov. 9. At the forum, ambassadors and diplomats in China from Vietnam, Thailand, Malaysia, Laos, Singapore, and other ASEAN countries said they expect to deepen China-ASEAN exchanges and cooperation, so as to achieve win-win results in production capacity investment, tourism, energy, and building materials.
(People's Daily Online) The 2017 Tuole Forum on China-ASEAN International Production Capacity Cooperation was held in Panzhou, Liupanshui, in southwest Chinas Guizhou Province on Nov. 9. At the forum, ambassadors and diplomats in China from Vietnam, Thailand, Malaysia, Laos, Singapore, and other ASEAN countries said they expect to deepen China-ASEAN exchanges and cooperation, so as to achieve win-win results in production capacity investment, tourism, energy, and building materials.
Khampao Mao, vice governor of Xiangkhouang Province in Laos and a standing member of the Xiangkhouang Provincial Committee of the Lao Peoples Revolutionary Party, said China and Laos are close and friendly neighbors bordering each other. Laos-China cooperation in trade, investment, culture, society, and tourism has yielded fruitful results. At present, Chinese businesses form the majority among the foreign-funded enterprises in Xiangkhouang.
Khampao added that his province will prioritize socio-economic development by attracting investment in tourism, agriculture, and processing. Khampao hopes to deepen friendly ties with Guizhou province in China and tap the cooperative potential and create a sound environment for investment, so as to achieve win-win results.
Liupanshui deserves promotion, because the city holds advantages in eco-tourism resources, cultural heritages, mineral resources, and agriculture products, said Bong Yik Jui, consul general of Malaysia in Nanning, capital of Chinas Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region in the southern part of China.
Bong Yik Jui said the ASEAN personages should use the forum to strengthen economic and people-to-people exchanges with China, create new opportunities, increase mutual trust and benefits, and finally achieve China-ASEAN complementarity and win-win results.
Pompop Uampidhaya, consul general of Thailand in Kunming, capital of southwest Chinas Yunnan Province, believes that hosting the forum in Guizhou shows the province attaches great importance to cooperation with ASEAN countries. Having advantages in terms of big data, manufacturing, tourism, and vocational training, Guizhou can be conducive to ASEAN development.
Pompop said Thailand is ready to join hands with Guizhou in various fields, while enhancing its connectivity with ASEAN neighbors and contributing to economic stability, prosperity, and sustained development in China and Thailand.
Other ASEAN delegates also shared their insight at the forum. Since the establishment of dialogue between China and ASEAN 26 years ago, the two sides, as close neighbors bordering each other, have grown to become mutually beneficial economic partners.
Holding respective advantages over industry, location, and opening-up, both sides gather to deepen mutually beneficial cooperation, jointly cooperate in production capacity, set up an exchange mechanism for common needs, and materialize the common goal of win-win results.
Dans la meme rubrique : < > China sees prosperous development of offshore wind power generation China speeds up efforts to expand, renovate expressways 'First-store economy' leads consumption upgrade Pour toute information, contactez-nous au : +(235) 99267667 ; 62883277 ; 66267667 (Bureau N'Djamena)
English News China leads Da Nang tourism
Alwihda Info | Par peoplesdaily - 12 Novembre 2017
Investing in Da Nang is another option for the Chinese. So many Chinese have chosen to invest in Da Nang, she added.
Nguyen said she believes tourism serves as a natural bridge between the two countries. More Chinese people are visiting Da Nang and other Vietnamese cities, and it is through their tours that they get to know the real Vietnam, establish friendship with the Vietnamese and help promote bilateral ties.
By Zhang Zhiwen From:People's Daily app Da Nang (Peoples Daily)-As the most attractive tourist city in Vietnam, Da Nang has welcomed more than 500,000 Chinese tourists in the past 10 months, surpassing last years total, a local tourism promotion official said.
Nguyen Thi Hoai An, Deputy Director of the Da Nang Center for Tourism Promotion, told Peoples Daily at the APEC International Media Center that APEC summits and President Xi Jinping's visit to Vietnam could introduce the city to more Chinese citizens, that may help the city attain its target of 550,000 Chinese tourists in 2017.
"Da Nang has received more than two million overseas tourists, and more than a quarter of them are Chinese, who patronize our hotels, restaurants, and tourism spots." Nguyen said.
Last month, the mobile app "DANANG-FantastiCity" was launched, and its Chinese version aims to help Chinese tourists know the city better.
Investing in Da Nang is another option for the Chinese. So many Chinese have chosen to invest in Da Nang, she added.
Nguyen said she believes tourism serves as a natural bridge between the two countries. More Chinese people are visiting Da Nang and other Vietnamese cities, and it is through their tours that they get to know the real Vietnam, establish friendship with the Vietnamese and help promote bilateral ties.
Pic:
Photo: Da Nang tourism information inquiry
Dans la meme rubrique : < > China sees prosperous development of offshore wind power generation China speeds up efforts to expand, renovate expressways 'First-store economy' leads consumption upgrade Pour toute information, contactez-nous au : +(235) 99267667 ; 62883277 ; 66267667 (Bureau N'Djamena)
English News Vientiane celebrates Laos edition of Xi bestseller
Alwihda Info | Par peoplesdaily - 12 Novembre 2017
Xi Jinping: The Governance of China consists of 18 chapters featuring 79 speeches, interviews and 45 photos of the Chinese president from different periods of his life. It covers a two-year period beginning in 2012 when Xi was elected General Secretary of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee.
Yang Ou, Sun Guangyong, Lin Rui From:People's Daily Vientiane, Laos (People's Daily) An official book launch ceremony for the Lao edition of Xi Jinping: The Governance of China was held in Vientiane, the capital city of Laos, on November 9, 2017.
Hosted by Chinas State Council Information Office (SCIO), China International Publishing Group (CIPG) and the Chineseembassy in Laos, the book launch drew more than 150 representatives from both countries, and a crowd of Laotians excited to receive a copy of the book.
SCIO vice minister Guo Weimin along with Laos officials feel the Lao edition of Xis book is a profound follow up to the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China that concluded in October. The Lao edition comes at the right time as Presidents Xi is expected to visit the country on November 13.
Guo said the book reflects the early development and key points of President Xi Jinpings Thoughts on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era. As a window into Chinas highest leader, the book provides Laotians with an opportunity tolearn more about China from a rational, comprehensive and objective viewpoint.
The Lao edition will also enhance mutual trust andunderstanding between the two nations while promoting strategic partnerships, as pointed out by Chinese Ambassador to Laos, Wang Wentian.
Xi Jinping: The Governance of China consists of 18 chapters featuring 79 speeches, interviews and 45 photos of the Chinese president from different periods of his life. It covers a two-year period beginning in 2012 when Xi was elected General Secretary of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee.
Since its 2014 release, the book has sold over 6 million copies, has been translated in over two dozen languages, and is now available in roughly 160 countries and regions.
Dans la meme rubrique : < > China sees prosperous development of offshore wind power generation China speeds up efforts to expand, renovate expressways 'First-store economy' leads consumption upgrade Pour toute information, contactez-nous au : +(235) 99267667 ; 62883277 ; 66267667 (Bureau N'Djamena)
English News Xi renews open economy pledge
Alwihda Info | Par peoplesdaily - 12 Novembre 2017
"Openness brings progress, while self-seclusion leaves one behind," Xi said. "We should put in place a regional cooperation framework that ensures consultation among equals, wide participation and shared benefits, build an open Asia-Pacific economy and promote trade and investment liberalization and facilitation."
By Bai Tiantian in Da Nang and Liu Xin in Beijing Source: Peoples Daily and Global Times Chinese President Xi Jinping on Friday called globalization an "irreversible historical trend" in his APEC keynote speech, reaffirming China's commitment to an open economy and multilateral trade system.
Xi's speech came after US President Donald Trump's "America First" address where he vowed to protect the US from being taken advantage of.
"Over the last few decades, economic globalization has contributed greatly to global growth. Indeed, it has become an irreversible historical trend. Against the backdrop of evolving global developments, economic globalization faces new adjustments in both form and substance. In pursuing economic globalization, we should make it more open and inclusive, more balanced, more equitable and beneficial to all," Xi said.
Xi stressed the importance of an open economy that benefits all.
"Openness brings progress, while self-seclusion leaves one behind," Xi said. "We should put in place a regional cooperation framework that ensures consultation among equals, wide participation and shared benefits, build an open Asia-Pacific economy and promote trade and investment liberalization and facilitation."
He said the building of a Free Trade Area of the Asia-Pacific (FTAAP) is the long-cherished dream of the business community in our region.
Chen Dingding, a professor of International Relations at Ji'nan University, told the Global Times that "China has benefitted greatly from the multilateral trade system. The country joined APEC in 1991 and with the help of APEC, China's economy further liberalized and eventually became a member of the WTO."
Chen said Xi's APEC speech is very much in line with his report to the 19th Communist Party of China (CPC) National Congress.
"Xi has repeatedly voiced his opposition to protectionism at multiple occasions. This shows China pays great attention to openness and globalization at the very top," Chen noted.
C) summit to discuss how to push ahead with the TPP, after the United States pulled out this year.
"The meeting did not happen, work remains to be done and that's what's happening now," a Canadian official said.
Pic:
Chinese President Xi Jinping delivers a keynote speech at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) CEO Summit in Da Nang, Vietnam on Friday.Photo: Xinhua
Dans la meme rubrique : < > China sees prosperous development of offshore wind power generation China speeds up efforts to expand, renovate expressways 'First-store economy' leads consumption upgrade Pour toute information, contactez-nous au : +(235) 99267667 ; 62883277 ; 66267667 (Bureau N'Djamena)
Chinese President Xi Jinping, who is also general secretary of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee, arrived in the Vietnamese capital of Hanoi on Sunday for a state visit to the southeast Asian country.
Chinese President Xi Jinping arrives in the Vietnamese capital of Hanoi for a state visit to the southeast Asian country on November 12, 2017. [Photo: Xinhua]
It is Xi's second visit to Vietnam as China's head of state and top CPC leader.
Before flying to Hanoi, Xi concluded a busy two-day stay in Vietnam's central city of Da Nang, where he attended the 25th Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Economic Leaders' Meeting.
During his stay in Hanoi, Xi will hold talks with General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Vietnam (CPV) Nguyen Phu Trong and meet with Vietnamese President Tran Dai Quang and the Chairperson of the National Assembly of Vietnam, Nguyen Thi Kim Ngan.
The visit, which comes on the heels of the 19th CPC National Congress, is also reciprocal for previous visits to China by Trong and Quang earlier this year.
Trong made a four-day official visit to China in January, while Quang paid a state visit to China in May and attended the Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation in Beijing.
Chinese President Xi Jinping arrives in the Vietnamese capital of Hanoi for a state visit to the southeast Asian country on November 12, 2017. [Photo: Xinhua]
"The leaders of the two countries will have in-depth talks on promoting the relations between the two countries under the new circumstances, "said Chinese Ambassador to Vietnam Hong Xiaoyong.
In a signed article published on Nov. 9 on Nhan Dan, the official newspaper of the CPV, Xi said China and Vietnam need, more than ever, to work in joint efforts in their pursuit of dreams of national strength and prosperity.
The two countries have made tangible progress on the strategic alignment of their development initiatives -- China's Belt and Road Initiative and Vietnam's "Two Corridors and One Economic Circle" plan.
Bilateral trade has also seen a rapid growth in the past few years. Statistics show that China has been Vietnam's biggest trading partner for 13 consecutive years, while Vietnam is China's largest trading partner in Southeast Asia.
In 2016, bilateral trade volume reached 98.23 billion U.S. dollars. The figure is expected to reach 100 billion dollars by the end of this year, according to Hong.
China invested a total of 823.6 million dollars in Vietnam in the first quarter of 2017, becoming the third largest foreign direct investor of the country.
"It is of great significance for the leaders of the two countries to strengthen the top-level design and jointly work on the blueprint of the future development," the Chinese ambassador told Xinhua.
Vietnam is the first leg of Xi's two-nation Asia tour, which will also take him to Laos on Monday.
The United States needs a climate change policy grounded in and consistent with the Constitution. We dont have one.
The incoherence and ineffectiveness of our current climate policies are a consequence of the unconstitutional, extraconstitutional and swamp-weasel approaches practiced by the Clinton, Bush and Obama administrations. Clinton refused to take Kyoto to the Senate for ratification; Bush refused to unsign it or to take it the Senate, and Obama and John Kerry negotiated the Paris agreement as a voluntary international agreement not requiring Senate approval. Trump withdrew the U.S. from Paris, but making the Senate vote on it would have been the best strategy for achieving a climate change policy grounded in the Constitution -- and dealing with swamp-weasels.
Here are some of the numerous ways that climate change policy is violating, skirting or simply ignoring the Constitution:
Article 1, Section 1. Legislative power is vested in the Congress, and Congress hasnt passed a national climate change policy. In Massachusetts v. EPA, the Supreme Court, at the behest of Democratic state attorneys general, creatively rewrote the Clean Air Act to include CO2 as a criteria pollutant, and much executive and advocacy mischief has ensued. President Obama took that ruling and quickly made an executive endangerment finding justifying aggressive government action to save the planet, including the Clean Power Plan. So SCOTUS and POTUS declared a national climate change policy, but the Congress, vested with all legislative powers, has not and repeatedly has declined to do so.
Article 2, Section 2, Clause 2. Two international climate change policy agreements have been signed by the United States- Kyoto and Paris, but neither has been ratified, or even voted on, by the Senate. The Treaty power is shared between the President and the Senate, with 2/3 majority needed for ratification. The Kyoto Protocol was never submitted to the Senate after that body voted 95-0 against the terms of Kyoto in the Byrd-Hagel resolution -- but efforts to implement Kyoto continued in blue states and at the EPA. The Obama administration chose to employ a swamp-creature fiction that the Paris agreement was not a treaty because it was voluntary, and thus did not require Senate ratification. Senate leaders from both parties went along these extraconstitutional but politically convenient fictions.
Article 1, Section 10, Clause 3. Foreign Policy is the province of the President and Congress, and State agreements and compacts with foreign powers and other states require the consent of Congress. That consent has not been given or even asked for in numerous climate change policy agreements between the states and foreign powers. In August 2001, just months after President Bush had rejected (but not unsigned) Kyoto, New England Governors and Eastern Canadian Premiers signed an agreement to reduce GHG emissions. The agreement was an updated version of the Kyoto protocol, and became the basis for the current Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), an emissions cap and trade program the blue states hoped would be a national model. There are similar interstate regional efforts on the west coast. None of these agreements has Congressional approval. Interestingly, the swamp-weasel voluntary argument was initially developed to avoid Congressional approval of interstate agreements, and then expanded to avoid Senate ratification of Paris.
Article 1, Section 10, Clause 3. Foreign Policy is the province of the President and Congress, and State agreements and compacts with foreign powers and other states require the consent of Congress. That consent has not been given or even asked for in numerous climate change policy agreements between the states and foreign powers. In August 2001, just months after President Bush had rejected (but not unsigned) Kyoto, New England Governors and Eastern Canadian Premiers signed an agreement to reduce GHG emissions. The agreement was an updated version of the Kyoto protocol, and became the basis for the current Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), an emissions cap and trade program the blue states hoped would be a national model. There are similar interstate regional efforts on the west coast. None of these agreements has Congressional approval. Interestingly, the swamp-weasel voluntary argument was initially developed to avoid Congressional approval of interstate agreements, and then expanded to avoid Senate ratification of Paris. The First Amendment, protected speech and Citizens United. SCOTUS has ruled that political speech is protected from government censorship, regardless of the source or content. But a coalition of Democrat State Attorneys general, backed by Tom Steyer and gubernatorial ambitions, have launched an investigation of climate change skeptics and Exxon Mobil, including issuing subpoenas to libertarian and conservative think tanks. The swamp-weasels, inspired by Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), claim its a fraud investigation, but its a transparent and arrogant attempt to use government power to silence skeptics.
Article 6, Clause 3. No religious test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or Public Trust. It can easily be demonstrated that environmentalism is a modern version of the ancient creed of panthiesm, with its own theology, holy books, prophets, saints, demons, hell, and paradise. EPA Administrator Scott Pruitts confirmation hearings gave ample evidence that such a religious test is being applied. Both Senator King and Senator Collins voted against Mr. Pruitt because he does not share their alarmist beliefs and policy preferences. There is a growing Boycott, Divest and Sanction movement against climate policy skeptics in the US it certainly looks like a religious test to this non swamp-denizen.
Until our climate change policy is firmly grounded in the Constitution, it will continue to be divisive, ineffective, and unsustainable. A good start would be an up or down Congressional vote on the Paris Treaty and the regional agreements, especially as blue states seek to implement Paris despite President Trumps withdrawal. I have asked both my senators to do that, with no response. Next stop, Senator Inhofe.
Jon Reisman is associate professor of economics & public policy at the University of Maine at Machias
If God does not exist, everything is permitted, wrote Fyodor Dostoevsky in The Brothers Karamazov. Mentioning this in association with Devin Patrick Kelley, the militant atheist who last Sunday perpetrated the worst church shooting in U.S. history, is bound to raises hackles. Of course, few atheists will descend into committing murder; in fact, Ive known some Id call good people. Moreover, note that I myself once not only didnt believe in God, but like Kelley thought religious people were stupid. Yet is it possible a straight line can be drawn between atheism (the belief) and increasing crime and immorality? Ideas do have consequences, after all.
George Washington once wrote, [L]et us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion. [R]eason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle. Many great thinkers have expressed the same idea, yet, when its related today, the assumption is that whats being said is atheists cant be good people. This is both because theists generally dont explain their position well and atheists generally dont seek to understand it well; passions run high and the two sides talk past each other. But now Ill explain exactly what Dostoevsky and Washington meant in a way making it apparent why its an insight that helped bring me, formerly a dismissive unbeliever, to faith.
A very near relation of a close friend said to him once, Murder isnt wrong; its just that society says it is. Ive heard this sentiment expressed, in different words, many times. In fact, notorious serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer, known as the Milwaukee Cannibal, said to his parents as a teen, If theres no God, why cant I just make up my own rules?
But heres the question: What would you say to my friends relation? How could you refute him? We could warn, as a painfully legalistic ex-cop once said to me, that committing murder will land him in the pokey. But that doesnt really address the matters heart, does it? We want people doing the right thing not just because and when they fear consequences. (Atheists emphasize this when criticizing the fear of God; note, though, theres also the love of God.) In fact, weve staked our whole republic on peoples ability to, in a great measure, govern themselves from within.
I know what I can say to the man. On the surface, it sounds simplistic: Youre wrong, because God exists and has created eternal, unchanging moral law its called Truth.
Now, my friends relation could disagree with my proposition (God exists), but he cant dispute my logic. If God exists and has decreed the relevant moral law, the man is wrong. Yet what can an atheist tell him? For if the atheists proposition that there is no God is correct, the man is correct: Society is all thats left, so it could only be society saying, Murder is wrong.
To fully grasp this beliefs implications, we must delve into the nature of right and wrong. If society is all there is and Man is the measure of all things, as ancient Greek Protagoras put it, can we even speak of morality? Consider my standard explanation:
If we learned that the vast majority of the world loved chocolate but hated vanilla, would we claim this made vanilla wrong or evil? Of course not. Its just a matter of taste, or human preference. Yet how is it any different asserting murder is wrong or evil if the only reason we do so is that we learn that the vast majority of the world hates the idea of killing others in a way the vast majority of the world considers unjust?
If mans consensus is all it is, then it falls into the same category as flavors: human preference.
Some may now say, But wait, were not talking about killing my taste buds but killing people! Its a totally different thing! I dont argue it doesnt feel different (to all but sociopaths), but remember that the idea this should put murder in a different category would, under atheism, also just be a function of mans preference.
This is irrefutable. The only way we can say morality properly defined not as something synonymous with mans preference, in other words truly exists is if its a universal, eternal, unchanging moral law handed down by an omnipotent, omniscient Creator of the Universe; that is, if, just as God created Physical Reality (matter and the laws of physics), He also created Moral Reality.
And if God doesnt exist? Then we should stop fooling ourselves and putting lipstick on the pig of mere preference. Stop using words such as values (prevalent now precisely because morality connotes something absolute), designed to obscure atheisms meaninglessness. Like my friends relation and Dahmer, just accept that right and wrong is illusion.
This brings us to the true meaning of You cant be moral without God: If divine law isnt real, no one can be moral because you cannot conform to a non-existent standard. Moral is as incomprehensible a term in a universe without Truth as physical would be in one without matter. So, if God doesnt exist, neither atheists nor theists can be moral only in or out of fashion.
The reality, my atheist friends should note, is that embracing any moral is a matter of faith. We cannot see a moral under a microscope or a principle in a Petri dish. Science cannot prove murder (or anything else) is wrong only possible. For science merely tells us what we can do, not what we should.
People generally dont come to terms with these implications of atheism because most dont take their world view to its logical conclusion; many also wouldnt want to, for it means staring true meaninglessness in the face. It means that all the causes moderns fill their lives with are mere vanity. Tolerance cant be better than intolerance, love better than hate, or respect for life better than murder in a godless, Moral-Truth-bereft world.
Then again, consistency cant be better than hypocrisy, pretense better than sincerity, or fairness better than imposing ones will, either. Thus, someone who has thought these things through and accepted atheisms correlative moral nihilism may push his agenda simply because he wants to. As with atheists atheist Friedrich Nietzsche, he may blithely accept his own contradictions, boiling his creed down to occultist Aleister Crowleys maxim, Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law.
By the way, this may explain studies showing that sociopaths have above-average intelligence. Perhaps theyre people smart enough to think these matters through, but unwise enough to come to the wrong conclusion (God doesnt exist, thus Truth doesnt exist, therefore right and wrong doesnt exist). For certain is that if you accepted this parenthetical proposition intellectually and incorporated it into yourself on an emotional level so that it permeated not just your head but your heart you would be a sociopath. You wouldnt have a conscience because youd know, and feel, that there was nothing to be conscientious about.
Of course, almost no atheist so thoroughly imbibes that proposition; most have strong feelings about various trespasses (real and imagined). So not every atheist becomes a reprobate any more than every Muslim becomes a terrorist or every Nazi a genocidal maniac. But ideas have consequences. Atheism, just like misguided theism (e.g., Islam), is destructive.
This may take a dark form or just that of the atheistic but generally good-hearted young man I once knew who responded, when I mentioned that something he was contemplating was wrong, But its not wrong for me. The point, however, is that atheisms implied moral nihilism can justify anything. Rape? Kill? Steal? Why not? Whos to say its wrong? This brings us to one last matter.
When someone points out that atheistic Marxist governments have killed 65 to 110 million people, atheists will often retort, But atheism doesnt prescribe that! Theyre correct. Atheism doesnt prescribe any behavior.
It also doesnt proscribe any behavior.
And thats the problem. Silence on moral matters would be fine if man by nature were angelic. But by nature, hes barbaric and he remains so unless some civilizing agency enters the equation. Atheisms mistake is one of omission.
This is why Dostoevsky, Dahmer and Washington were right: If God does not exist, everything is permitted. Ideas have consequences. Be careful what you believe and what you espouse.
Contact Selwyn Duke, follow him on Twitter or log on to SelwynDuke.com
One of the most popular arias in the opera catalogue, sung by the licentious Duke of Mantua in Giuseppe Verdi's Rigoletto, is the tenor song "La donna a mobile." Its opening, "qual piuma al vento" (woman is fickle like a feather in the wind), is a cynical masculine put-down sung by a scoundrel. But its later lines, "muta d'accento e di pensier" (she changes in voice and in thought), are curiously applicable to a real-life Donna: the Democratic Party politician Donna Brazile.
This Donna is no novice to local and national party politics in the U.S. She has long been an insider in Democratic Party politics. She has been a regular contributor to newspapers and a political commentator on TV networks including CNN, NPR, and ABC. She was campaign manager for Al Gore in 2000, making her the first black American to direct a major campaign.
She was appointed interim chair of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) in spring 2011 and again from July 2016 to February 2017 in the Clinton campaign. Her sole aria derives from that experience. With the publication on November 7, 2017 of her new book Hacks: The Inside Story of the Break-Ins and Breakdowns that Put Donald Trump in the White House, and public utterances about it and her activities in the 2016 presidential campaign, she is experiencing her 15 minutes in the national spotlight.
The emergence of Brazile in the limelight and the story she has been telling about the 2016 Hillary Clinton campaign and her own reflections on it has been astonishing partly because of its forthrightness and partly because of its variation in substance from time to time. As a story, it is titillating because it has everything: race, gender, flaming ambitions, moral corruption, and what she calls the "titanic egos" of leading Democrats: Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton , and Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the ill fated chair of the DNC, who was obliged to resign as a result of leaked emails showing Democratic Party officials trying to sabotage the campaign of Senator Bernie Sanders.
Brazile pulls back the curtain on the electoral campaign with revealing insights, but at the same time, the problem is that the curtain is strained and partly torn. There are a number of controversial aspects of the story. Perhaps the central one in the book is that she found an "unethical" agreement between the Clinton campaign and the DNC. This was a joint fundraising agreement of August 26, 2015 among the DNC, the Hillary Victory Fund, and Hillary for America. It specified that in exchange for raising money and investing in the DNC, the Clinton campaign would control the party's finances, strategy, and money raised. The campaign would be consulted on staff appointments, budgeting, and data. Brazile considers this agreement unethical because it was signed in August 2015, almost a year before Hillary was the official nominee of the party.
The questions of ethics aside, the agreement allowed Clinton to influence or control the party long before she became its official nominee. This factor is related to a second issue: the serious question of the rigging of the election in the Democratic primaries. On this Brazile has been ambivalent, even contradictory, stating on November 5, 2017 that she had found no evidence of the party primaries being rigged in favor of Hillary. Yet, in July 2016, she started looking for evidence that rigging had taken place and found some. As a result, Donna replaced Debbie W.S. after emails showed she was working to help Hillary and deny Sanders the nomination.
This rigging may not have been a criminal act, but it compromised the integrity of the Democratic Party, since it broke the rule that the party would stay neutral until a nominee had been chosen by vote.
Connected with this is the problem that Brazile does not come with clean hands in this issue. Earlier, in the Dukakis campaign, she accused George H.W. Bush of racism and of having an extramarital affair and was fired.
She finally confessed that she had given the Hillary campaign advance warning of expected questions to be raised in town hall meetings. On this the evidence is clear, as shown by the March 5, 2016 email to John Podesta, the chair of Clinton campaign, and Jennifer Palmieri, communications director, informing them of questions directed to Hillary at the town hall meeting the next day. One would come from a "woman with a rash" about the problem of lead poisoning in Flint. A later one was about the death penalty. Indeed, both questions were asked of Hillary. On October 14, 2016, Brazille was fired by CNN, which felt uncomfortable about her interaction as a journalist with the Clinton campaign.
A highly controversial issue is Brazile's remarks on the deficiencies and problems of Hillary. Brazile is critical of the campaign. Hillary took minority constituencies for granted and made mistakes with "stiff" and "stupid" messages. The campaign was badly mismanaged and lacked passion. The lack of enthusiasm was felt even in black areas.
But it was the physical problem that most concerned Brazile. After observing that Hillary was suffering from pneumonia and being unsteady on her feet on September 9, and fainting at a 9/11 memorial service at Ground Zero in NYC on September 11, 2016, she considered that V.P. Joe Biden should replace Hillary on the ticket together with Senator Cory Booker to replace Tim Kaine. Former Clinton staffers have expressed surprise that Brazile had considered replacing Clinton on the ticket and brought in the familiar Russians. They argue that Brazile had accepted fake Russian-fueled propaganda, spread by Russians and political opponents. The caveat in all this is that Brazile as interim chair could not unilaterally replace the ticket, though she could start the process by which the whole DNC could do this.
But flaming egos and political differences are not the whole story. Donna is black, unmarried, with no evident companion and ambiguous about her sexual orientation. She complained that Hillary staffers treated her like a slave like Patsey, the slave character in the film 12 Years a Slave: "I'm not going to be your whipping girl." She considered the Clinton staff condescending and dismissive toward her. She suggests allegations of sexism by male staffers, though Harvey Weinstein is not mentioned.
The whole affair is revealing for the light shone on leading political characters, and it is good to notice the absence of any collusion with the Russians by anybody, but the story remains perplexing. Was there significant rigging in the Democratic primaries, that Donna at one point calls a "cancer," in favor of Hillary and against Bernie? The next, and hopefully final, chapter in the saga should come from Bernie and from Biden, the king in waiting, though not in Camelot. The opera is not over, even though the...well, the lady has sung.
With the help of the DNC (broke, but forking over millions to this end), Hillary pulled off what Kimberly Strassel rightly calls one of the dirtiest tricks in U.S. political history." She hired a smear outfit (Fusion, headed by Glenn Simpson) which put together ludicrous claims, leaked them to willing press cohorts, including David Corn at Mother Jones, hired Christopher Steele (GPS) to concoct a fairytale about Donald J Trump and had Steele give the Dossier to the FBI in July 2016. Then press megaphone Michael Isikoff at Yahoo News -- obviously tipped off by Steele -- reported, U.S. intel officials probe ties between Trump advisor and Kremlin.
Having generated this nonsense, handed it off to the FBI, and shared the news of that handoff to Isikoff, Hillary jumped all over it, spinning its own oppo research as a government investigation into Mr. Trump. She and her surrogates hit the airwaves with it:
To that point, it is fair to ask if the entire Trump-Russia narrative -- which has played a central role in our political discourse for a year, and is now resulting in a special counsel issuing unrelated indictments -- is based on nothing more than a political smear document. Is there any reason to believe the FBI was probing a Trump-Russia angle before the dossier? Is there any collusion allegation that doesnt come in some form from the dossier? The idea that the federal government and a special counsel were mobilized -- that American citizens were monitored and continue to be investigated -- based on a campaign-funded hit document is extraordinary. Especially given that to this day no one has publicly produced a single piece of evidence to support any of the dossiers substantive allegations about Trump team members.
Its not the first time GPSs Glenn Simpson served as a conduit for fake news from foreign sources. Nor the first time he enlisted leftist allies in his smears. In 2007 and 2008, while still acting as an investigative reporter for the Wall Street Journal, he smeared Alexander Mirtchev, his corporation, and others, claiming that they provided murky services to dictators and oligarchs from the post-Soviet states, including the Kazakh first family based on accusations from two brothers, Devincci and Issam Hourani, who claimed they had done so. An outfit titling itself Project on Government Oversight (POGO) funded by a variety of foundations, including George Soros Open Society, the Living Fund of the (far left laundering outfit) Tides Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, and the pro Iran (former roost of Valerie Plame) Ploughshares Fund, followed up in 2011, demanding that Eric Holder investigate whether members of Congress received money to alter perceptions of Kazakh president Nursultan Nazarbayev. As a basis for POGOs claim, they relied heavily on five articles published in 2007 and 2008 and co-authored by Glenn Simpson, then with the Wall Street Journal.
When Mirtchev -- doubtless after an expensive legal battle to clear his name -- finally got his day in court, the Hourani accounts were dismissed with prejudice, the court finding that The campaign and court case were predicated on forgeries and fabrications, exposed by leading international expert document examiners. The Court of Appeals sustained the dismissal of these bogus claims.
Though its less well known, Simpsons GPS was also trying to play both sides of the street in furtherance -- whether they knew it or not -- of a Russian plan to confuse the electorate and create havoc. GPS had prepared a second dossier targeting donors to the Clinton Foundation.
The Kremlin hoped to undermine the United States government regardless of which party won. Fusion GPS, the research firm commissioned by the Clinton campaign to compile the so-called Trump dossier, is also responsible for a second dossier -- the information that Kremlin-connected lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya provided to top Trump-campaign officials in June 2016. The second dossier reportedly alleged financial misconduct by major contributors to the Clinton Global Initiative, a project of the Clinton Foundation. [snip] For all the talk about Trump collusion with Russia, it seems increasingly clear that the Kremlin, as is its wont, hoped to undermine the United States government regardless of which party won the White House in 2016. Wittingly or not, Fusion GPS helped the Putin regime play both sides.
Still, Simpsons shoddy work and known reputation as a smear merchant did not give the press pause to carry the Russian Collusion flag Hillary placed in their hands. Worse, it caused James Comey, Rod Rosenstein, and Robert Mueller to tie it into what Conrad Black rightly calls a Gordian knot of absurdity.
No one seems to have noticed that the Democrats are now making unctuous noises about the inviolability of a process that has disintegrated into utter nonsense. According to the bipartisan leadership of the Senate Intelligence Committee, the Steele dossier is the only possible evidence of Trump-Russian collusion, and we now know that it was composed of unsubstantiated allegations by unaccountable sources in and around the Kremlin, paid through intermediaries engaged by a retired British spy and paid for by the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee through the sleazy political dirty-tricks provider Fusion GPS. We also know that the special counsel, Robert Mueller, and the deputy attorney general who engaged him, Rod Rosenstein, were, as FBI director and U.S. attorney for Maryland, the prosecutors of the Russian representatives who offered improper incentives to secure Russian acquisitions of substantial American uranium interests, but did not bother the Clintons or Clinton Foundation, which contemporaneously were generously paid by those who favored that transaction, at a time when Secretary of State Hillary Clintons approval was required under national-security legislation. We also now know it is likely that the Steele dossier was used as the excuse for surveillance of the Trump campaign and transition activities in the Trump Tower in New York by the Obama administration, which had appointed Mr. Mueller and Mr. Rosenstein to their former FBI and Justice Department positions. And [snip] we now know that his protege and successor at the FBI, James Comey, caused the appointment of his friend Mueller by Rosenstein (who had recommended that Comey be fired), by leaking to the New York Times a memo to himself (Comey) of contested accuracy and ownership [snip] And finally, in this Alice in Wonderland sequence, Comey confirmed to the Senate Intelligence Committee that he had assured President Trump three times, starting on January 27, ten weeks after the FBI took over the Steele dossier from the failed Clinton campaign, that Mr. Trump was not a suspect of any wrongdoing. The burning question is why this unutterable nonsense continues, and the Trumpophobic media respectabilize the (Hillary) Clinton view that paying for the Steele dossier was just a normal attempt to get campaign information. [snip] If this all sounds like the Hound of the Baskervilles chasing its tail, that is because it is that and more: The hound has caught its own tail and devoured itself from behind to the point that it has become a deformed biped.
Read it all, and tell me why Black isnt absolutely correct to tag this bunk, rubbish, a Babylonian ziggurat of pompous and officious suppositions and confections that, when explained in its correct sequence no sane person could take seriously.
Of course, it should be shut down. Its a disgrace and an embarrassment that our top legal officials and intelligence operations could be so stupid or corrupt.
Weve grown to expect that of the press, of course, and Justin Raimondo reminds us how stubbornly they cling to the Russian collusion horse puckey; in particular, he notes the hysterical press insistence that the DNC was hacked by Russia:
This is what I love about the presidency of Donald J. Trump -- this news story: CIA director met with DNC Hack Conspiracy Theorist at Trumps Urging. Isnt it magical how a 40-year veteran of the National Security Agency, formerly head of its World Geopolitical and Military Analysis Reporting Group, a whistle-blower who exposed Agency abuses long before Edward Snowden hit puberty, can be reduced to a mere conspiracy theorist at a headline-writers whim? The media is aghast at this intrusion of a competing conspiracy theory into the Russia-gate debate: theres only room enough for the Official Story, which is that Russian state actors were deployed to capture the DNC/Podesta communications and hand them over to WikiLeaks. No evidence has ever been provided by the US government or its corporate contractors to make a convincing case for this scenario. Indeed, theres been lots of talk about Russian bots somehow hypnotizing the US voting population into pushing the lever for Trump, but very little forensic evidence that shows a Russian handprint on the WikiLeaks materials. Binney and a growing number of technical co-thinkers are challenging the Official Story by revealing that internal evidence points to the fact that the data was physically downloaded onto a handheld device of some kind. There was no hack of the DNC: an insider copied the files and handed them over, probably on a thumb drive. Now I dont know whether this theory is correct, or if it will be later disproved when new evidence comes in. Yet I think youll notice the hysterical tone that Binneys appearance on the scene has provoked from the Presidents enemies: isnt it just a bit over the top to call a longtime NSA employee with a distinguished service record a conspiracy theorist? Well, no, not when its a matter of religious dogma that must be defended at all costs: the DNC hack couldnt have been an inside job because that would undermine the public pronouncements of every Democratic party official since Election Day, 2016.
In any event, things continue to move along. Simpson has finally agreed to testify to Congress -- albeit it on the dossier and in closed hearings.
And his effort to keep from turning over to Congress the bank records, which seem likely to disclose the names of journalists whom his outfit Fusion paid, has hit a bump as far as he is concerned. The Obama-appointed judge who was handling the bank records case has been removed -- perhaps because her law firm represented Huma Abedin and other Democratic insiders and a new judge appointed to hear it;
If you, like me, prefer to remember the day when Americans were smarter and more resourceful than to be taken in by this foolishness, I draw your attention to an obituary in this weeks New York Times.
Its about Irv Refkin, from my hometown, Milwaukee. When he was 3 or 4 his immigrant parents died in an auto accident and he spent the next 10 years in a German Lutheran orphanage where he learned to speak German. Through a series of mix-ups while in the U.S. Army, he was mistaken for a Canadian and flown to Britain, before the United States army knew he was missing, he had parachuted into occupied France. He carried out three missions for the British and when the U.S. entered the war he worked for the O.S.S. as a saboteur, assassin and courier behind enemy lines.
Its good to remember that once upon a time in a country called the USA we had people with enough courage and wit to know how to do the right thing.
Correction: name corrected to Irv Refkin
A powerful California state senator has been ensnared in a sexual harassment scandal just as he is beginning his campaign to unseat incumbent US Senator Diane Feinstein.
Senate President Pro Tem Kevin de Leon, the Democratic leader of the state Senate, is renting a room in the house of Senator Tony Mendoza. Mendoza has been accused of inviting a female staffer back to the house on numerous occassions only to have the young woman turn him down. De Leon claims he knew nothing of Mendoza's invitations and Mendoza says he never "abused my authority."
But the scandal highlights the new reality for politicians and people in positions of power across the country. The 2018 election cycle is likely to see a tsunami of accusations against politicians running for office as women come out of the shadows and go public with their charges. Whether or not the accusations are political motivated is not the point. The accusations will resonate with female voters, many of whom have their own horror stories of being harassed or abused in the workplace.
De Leon is in charge of a human resources committee that deals with sexual harassment in the workplace. How he handles the Mendoza charges will certainly impact his US Senate bid.
Fox News:
"It really does feel like we're at this inflection point with sex harassment allegations where suddenly they're being taken seriously," said Kim Nalder, director of the Project for an Informed Electorate at California State University-Sacramento. "It's hard to imagine that Kevin de Leon's bid will be completely untarnished by this revelation that someone close to him was accused of this kind of misbehavior." The latest allegations against Mendoza, which come after nearly 150 women signed a letter three weeks ago calling harassment pervasive in the capital culture, shed further light on the Senate's murky processes for investigating its own members. After the initial outcry about harassment in mid-October, De Leon and Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon immediately pledged to review the Legislature's policies. De Leon hired an outside investigator, and the Senate asked women to speak to her. De Leon said at the time that "everyone deserves a workplace free of fear, harassment and sexual misbehavior." That statement was made before the allegations about Mendoza became public. A month earlier, the Senate began investigating Mendoza, Senate Secretary Danny Alvarez confirmed. A former employee of Mendoza's complained to the Senate Rules Committee in September that the senator had repeatedly behaved inappropriately toward a young woman who worked for him through the Sacramento State fellows program, said Micha Liberty, a lawyer for the employee. That month, the employee and two others in Mendoza's office were fired. The Senate and Liberty dispute the timing of the firings relative to the complaint. Mendoza and Alvarez said the firings had nothing to do with the complaints. Liberty, though, said her client made clear she was accusing Mendoza of sexual harassment toward the fellow, and she was forced to sign a confidentiality agreement when she was fired. Liberty would not name her client and did not provide a copy of the confidentiality letter.
Is it fair that de Leon is being tarnished with guilt by association? That is the danger of raising awareness about harassment in the workplace. The issue is so toxic that the stink of scandal will be attached to people who may have only a casual association with the accused. We're not quite yet at the Salem Witch Trial point. But you'd have to be blind not to see the danger.
It's clear that this is not going to be a partisan issue, that accusations against politicians will almost certainly fall on both Republicans and Democrats. How politicians handle such charges will determine whether they survive or not.
I am cheered by a story from Friday that seems to have received little notice. Rachel Frommer reports for the Free Beacon:
Oberlin College and its vice president have been accused of libel and slander by a local bakery, the owners of which allege in a suit that administrators supported students in an unfounded campaign to paint the establishment's owners as racist. The suit against the college and Meredith Raimondo, who is also dean of students, was filed on Nov. 7 in Lorain County Common Pleas Court on behalf of Gibson Bros. Inc., and owners David and Allyn Gibson, the Morning Journal reported.
The account presented in that local news report highlights allgations that could be extremely damaging to Oberlin:
The complaint arises from protests some Oberlin College students held in front of Gibsons Food Mart and Bakery, 23 W. College St., in November 2016 as a response to three of their classmates being arrested and charged with attempting to steal from the store. Jonathan Aladin, 20, Cecelia Whettston, 19, and Endia Lawrence, 20, pleaded guilty in August to charges of attempted theft and aggravated trespassing. Aladin also pleaded guilty to underage purchase of alcohol. Lorain County Common Pleas Judge James L. Miraldi placed the trio on one year of community control and ordered them to pay restitution to the store. As part of the plea deal, they were required to read statements explicitly stating the incident was not racially motivated. The suit alleges, despite the Oberlin Police Department releasing the incident report refuting the racial narrative, the college persisted in assisting students in protesting the store to bolster an attempt to brand the college as having a legacy of being a strong advocate for and a strong supporter of African American students and racial minorities. The allegations in that last paragraph, if they stands up in court, could justify punitive damages being awarded, since Oberlin knew, or should have known, that the racial allegations were false, and yet persisted in aiding students in their attempt to economically harm the bakery.
The allegation that Oberlin officials knew or should have known that racism was not a factor in the arrests, and yet allowed and facilitated students in deliberately damaging the business future of the bakery, should open the door to punitive damages. The purpose of punitive damages is deter future misbehavior. Therefore, the sum awarded as punitive damages needs to be big enough to matter to the defendant.
Oberlin College enjoys an endowment of over $800 million, or almost $300,000 per student, which will sound mighty impressive to a jury in Lorain County, Ohio, population 300,000, 85% white, and as hard hit by deindustrialization as anyplace one could find. Oberlin pegs the cost of attending it at just under $68,000 per year. That compares to the per capita income in Lorain County of $25,000 per year. Oberlin's per capita endowment is 14 times the average income of the county in which it lives. I am not sure that the social justice warrior impulses of the coddled students at Oberlin will pull on the heartstrings of jurors who formerly worked at one of the impressive list of closed factories in the county.
Oberlin can afford the best lawyers in the country. What the plaintiff needs is a silver tongued member of the tort bar, able to appeal to jurors in the name of justice, and personally after a third of the possible punitive damages award here.
I can very easily imagine a punitive damages award sufficiently large as to get the attention of Oberlins management. Generally speaking, poorer communities surrounding wealthy colleges are hotbeds of resentment against the privilege and arrogance on campus toward townies. Typically, plaintiffs lawyers argue that an arrogant large institution, if it is to change its ways, needs to be held liable for damages affecting its net worth measurably -- by whole digit percentages of its wealth or income. One percent of Oberlins endowment would be eight million dollars, for instance. If jurors want Oberlin to stop calling innocent people racists, then a punitive damages award in the millions could well be in prospect.
Typos corrected
At first, Andrew B. Ferris was kind after the vehicle he was driving was pulled over by a Chippewa County Sheriffs Office deputy in the town of Wheaton on Oct. 10.
A criminal complaint said Ferris, 33, of Chippewa Falls admitted being drunk. Just arrest me and do what you need to do, Ferris told the deputy, the complaint said.
But after Ferris preliminary alcohol breath test registered at 0.16 percent, twice the legal level for first-time intoxicated driving in Wisconsin, things didnt go as smoothly.
The complaint filed Thursday in Chippewa County Court said when he was arrested, Ferris questioned how two sheriffs deputies at the scene felt about arresting a veteran who fought for the U.S. overseas. He also questioned how the deputies could live with themselves or sleep.
Instead of napping, the deputies checked records and found Ferris had been convicted of intoxicated driving in 2006 and twice in 2008.
In the latest incident, Ferris is charged with intoxicated driving fourth offense. He signed a $2,500 signature bond. He is scheduled to appear before Judge Steven Gibbs at 1:30 p.m. Tuesday, Nov. 14.
According to the complaint:
A deputy followed the vehicle Ferris was driving on County F. The Ferris vehicle traveled at speeds up to 74 mph, then 70 and later slowed to 50 mph. The deputy said the Ferris vehicle crossed the center line of the road, came back into the lane, crossed the fog line and returned to the lane.
Ferris said he had two beers. Ferris was restricted to having a blood alcohol content of no more than 0.02 percent.
The UK Daily Mail unearthed a 1986 letter from Prince Charles, the heir to the British throne, in which he completely bought into the narrative of Jews being a foreign presence in their own homeland. You see, but for those pesky Jews, everything would be hunky-dory in the Middle East.
Writing to his close friend Laurens van der Post in 1986, the Prince makes a startling assessment of the Arab-Israeli conflict. He argues it was the exodus of European Jews in the middle of the last century that helped to cause the great problems.
He goes on to say terrorism in the region will only end when its causes are eliminated. He then expresses the hope a US President will find the courage to stand up to the American Jewish lobby.
Ahh, those pesky Jews are screwing up America, too.
Antisemitism is deeply embedded in the British aristocracy, despite the fact that historically Britain was more welcoming to Jews than other major European countries. Aristocrats have a class interest in stifling the competition for wealth and influence.
Form this and many other reasons, Charles is unfit to wear the crown. We can only hope that his mother lives long enough to hand her crown to her grandson, and confine Charles to irrelevancy as the clown prince, able to spend his time fantasizing about being a Tampax for Camilla Parker-Bowles.
A fire at a pipeline run jointly by Saudi Arabia and Bahrain has been called a terrorist attack sponsored by Iran by the Bahrainian interior minister. In response, Saudi Arabia immediately increased security at its own oil facilities. The pipeline attack follows a missile attack on the Riyadh International Airport that was foiled by Saudi defenses.
Bloomberg:
The plan to step up security was reported by Al-Arabiya television Saturday, citing the Saudi energy ministry. Bahrains Interior Ministry said recent terrorist activities in Bahrain were directed by Iran, and security forces determined that the fire was intentional. The pipeline later in the day resumed pumping oil after a brief halt, the state-run Bahrain News Agency reported, citing a statement by Bahrain Petroleum Co. The "attempt to bomb the Saudi-Bahraini oil pipeline is a dangerous Iranian escalation that aims to scare citizens and hurt the global oil industry," Bahrains Foreign Minister Khalid Al-Khalifa said on Twitter. Iran responded by saying the Bahrainis need to know that the era for lies and childish finger-pointing is over," official Islamic Republic News Agency reported on Sunday, citing Foreign Ministry spokesman Bahram Qassemi. Tensions have been rising in the region after Saudi Arabia blamed Shiite-ruled Iran for an attempted missile attack on Riyadhs international airport last week, saying it could be considered an act of war. Saudi Arabia said the thwarted missile launched by Yemeni rebels had Iranian markings, a charge Iran has denied.
The missile attack, the attack on the pipeline, and the forced resignation of Lebanon's Prime Minister Saad Hariri are only the latest in a series of events that have caused tensions to skyrocket in the region and make war between Saudi Arabia and Iran more likely.
Guardian:
Within hours Hariri, by then in Riyadh in Saudi Arabia, had resigned his position, concluding his transition from Lebanese leader to Saudi envoy and Lebanons transformation from outpost to ground zero of a stunning regional escalation. The aftermath of the hurried departure, and the heated week since, has swept across the region, linking apparently disparate events which, in reality, were symptoms of political undercurrents that had been coursing through the Middle East for generations, and which have now burst to the surface. The fall of Kurdish-held Kirkuk in northern Iraq to the Iraqi government, backed by Irans most prominent general, in October, starvation among the population of war-torn Yemen, a ballistic missile over Riyadh, and the apparently forced exit of the premier in Lebanon are all part of the same machinations a great strategic power play between two regional heavyweights that has suddenly shifted from back rooms to potent realisation. Now, more than at any point in modern history, Iran and Saudi Arabia are squared off against each other as a race to consolidate influence nears a climax from Sanaa to Beirut and the tens of thousands of miles in between. The standoff is seeing new ground conquered, previously unimaginable alliances being mooted and the risk of a devastating clash between two foes whose calculations had long been that shadow wars through proxies were safer than facing up directly. The shift in approach has been led from Riyadh, where a new regime determined to put Saudi Arabia on an entirely different footing domestically, is also trying to overhaul how the kingdom projects itself regionally and globally. The ambitious, unusually powerful, crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, has been given a mandate by his father, King Salman, to take on what the kingdom and its allies in the United Arab Emirates see as an Iranian takeover of essential corners of the Sunni Arab world.
By forcing Hariri to resign, the Saudis may be deliberately trying to start a civil war in Lebanon. The ostensible reason for pulling support from Hariri was that he wasn't tough enough with Hezb'allah. Hariri tried to argue - in vain - that his position in Lebanon was extremely delicate and that trying to stand up to Hezb'allah would destabilize the country. That the Saudis ignored this warning was not lost on Lebanese factions. Sunni, Shiite, and Christians in Lebanon are preparing for the unthinkable - a repeat of the civil war that devastated the country for 20 years.
Lebanon may be the focus of the conflict today, but the civil war in Yemen is actually far more of a threat to Saudi Arabia than anything that happens in Lebanon. Iranians are using their Houthi allies to bleed Saudi Arabia, forcing the Kingdom to devote more and more militiary resources to a conflict that is apparently without end. Thanks to the return to Iran of frozen assets by the Obama administration following the nuclear deal, Iran has nearly unlimited funds to pour into Yemen and directly threaten the Saudis.
At this point, it wouldn't take much to ignite a shooting war between the Saudis and Iran. The Kingdom has already warned Iran that missiles from Yemen will be considered an attack by Iran and a push by Hezb'allah to engineer a complete takeover of Lebanon might also be seen as an act of war.
Can the two sides pull back from the brink? Not with the stakes as high as they are and the belief by both sides that their enemy represents and existential threat to their existence.
Yes, there have been stories about young people turning to socialism. One of the latest polls shows that a majority of millenials would prefer to live under a socialist, fascist or communist system rather than a capitalist one.
But thing are getting a bit more disturbing now that elections have been happening. Turns out one of the Virginia Democrats elected in last week's special election. Lee Carter, is a young unreconstructed socialist, and a member of the far-left Democratic Socialists of America. That organization has seen a fivefold increase in its membership, from about 6,000 to now 30,000. You can bet the Communist Party U.S.A., now run in part by the fairly youthful and charismatic Libero della Piana, is seeing similar membership numbers rise.
Disillusion with free markets and capitalism is often cited as the reason for this phenomenon. According to an interview with a millennial socialist in The Guardian:
Everyone has student loan debt and everyones rents are exorbitant and everyones paying like $300-a-month premiums for Obamacare. Its common sense for people my age.
The problem with that statement is that none of those complaints have anything to do with capitalism, they are byproducts of creeping socialism. Rents are high because leftist NIMBYs refuse to allow housing to be built. Student loan debt is a direct function of government funds freely available to universities for loans, which gives them every incentive to raise prices sky high. Obamacare speaks for itself, there's no freedom of choice in its mandates for insurance companies and no willing-buyer, willing seller dynamic for consumers. All of these are full blown byproducts of socialism. Want more of these horrors? By all means elect more socialists.
And that's where the issue of ignorance rolls in. Millennials have no education to speak of on the horrors of socialism. That may well be the triumph of the influence of President Obama's mentor, Bill Ayers, who made it his lifework to destroy America as a free society. When the Weatherman terrorist gig didn't work out, he turned to early childhood education. Much of what is known from the news is that he favored leftist sops to the teachers unions such as smaller classroom sizes. Much of what isn't known is how deeply he infused educational lessons into indoctrination, an indoctrination that promoted Marxism and ignored the crimes of socialism.
In an interview published in 1995, Ayers characterized his political beliefs at that time and in the 1960s and 1970s: "I am a radical, Leftist, small 'c' communist ... [Laughs] Maybe I'm the last communist who is willing to admit it. [Laughs] We have always been small 'c' communists in the sense that we were never in the Communist party and never Stalinists. The ethics of communism still appeal to me. (emphasis mine) I don't like Lenin as much as the early Marx. I also like Henry David Thoreau, Mother Jones and Jane Addams [...]".[61]
Those ethics are out on full display in the nightmare of Venezuela, which he and his stepson, Chesa Boudin, helped foster and promote. You don't hear anything from either of those guys touting the wonders of socialism in Venezuela, now that it has been exposed as a disaster. Just ignoring it keeps the myth of socialism still glorious. It's telling that in the case of Lee, elected in Virginia, his political opponents use of Marx and Mao in opposition campaign ads drew no rise from the millennials he was trying to reach. They think it can't happen here.
Ayers wasn't the only one who ruined the education of the young and filled it with leftist propaganda, but he found a welcoming environment in academia, and from there, went on to influence elementary education as one of its brightest lights.
The results are now in these attitudes and these election results. Bill Ayers has succeeded in his long march through the institutions and now his successors are beginning to take power.
One of the social, political, and economic challenges facing Israel is how to integrate its large population of pious, strictly observant Jews (called the haredi or ultra-orthodox). Israel's original government policy to show respect for religious Jews by exempting them from military service and offering them support for their large families unfortunately had many unintended negative consequences. As the population of religious Jews has skyrocketed, it has become untenable. The growing resentment among secular families for the extra burdens imposed on them were frustrating, with no end in sight. Israeli society was in a political stalemate.
The answer is not as impossible as it once seemed. It comes not from government policy, but entirely from private initiative from the haredi themselves. The answer is entrepreneurship, in which ultra-Orthodox women are taking the lead, founding startups tailored to meet their own needs as mothers of large families. There are more ultra-Orthodox women in hi tech than secular women. In the last five years, the number of religious female entrepreneurs in hi tech has jumped from five to over four hundred.
Bloombergquint reports:
In the haredi community, many women serve as the main caregivers and breadwinners while their husbands focus on Torah study. One result is that entrepreneurship is often a better way for Orthodox female founders to provide for their large families. "We're taught very early that our role as women is to be the breadwinner," said Sari Roth, 40, chief executive officer of Bontact and a mother of seven. ... Take office planning: Not every company wants to set up a kosher kitchen or a place where women employees sit apart from men. Bontact, which provides a multichannel messaging platform to 50,000 companies, installed transparent office walls so male and female workers can meet without violating modesty rules. High numbers of children among haredi women can be a barrier for senior roles in secular-run companies. Avital Beck, 35, who has six children and a doctorate in molecular biology, co-founded her company MilkStrip so she could hold a challenging job and have flexible hours to spend time with her children. "Because most senior jobs in the tech industry are so inflexible, it just made sense to found my own company," Beck said. Similarly, Tikva Schmidt, a software systems architect with 10 children, founded TIDE Technology, an outsourcing firm offering software architecture and development solutions, to provide high-level jobs for haredi women, while allowing them to raise their children. In the data base of Kamatech, a venture backed by the U.S. government and private money that aims to get more ultra-Orthodox Jews into Israel's technology industry, around 40 percent of the 1,100 entrepreneurs listed are women up from just five in 2012. "I speak at a lot of meet-ups and technology events, and the only time I looked around the room and saw as many women as men was at a Kamatech event," said Adi Soffer Teeni, general manager of Facebook Inc. in Israel.
Both male and female haredi Jews gravitate toward math, science, and technology, as these subjects are more compatible with their religious values and their practical family needs for income than a liberal arts education.
Large families and a close-knit, functioning community provide practical support to mothers who want to work.
The haredi world offers more support to women entrepreneurs, especially in terms of childcare, Margalit said. "I absolutely needed help from the family," she said. "My husband had to be recruited, and also my mother and sister."
This leadership role for women in busienss is not a break with Jewish culture or religion; it is a direct affirmation of the Shabbath blessing, from Proverbs 31, recited every Friday night by a Jewish husband in honor of his wife, called Woman of Valor. The poem reads, "A woman of valor who can find, for her price is beyond pearls" and not only describes her loving heart and charity, but also shows her hard at work as an entrepreneur. "She contemplates a field and purchases it; from the fruit of her hands she plants a vineyard."
She is like the trading ships, bringing food from afar.
She gets up while it is still night to provide food for her household, and a fair share for her staff.
She considers a field and purchases it, and plants a vineyard with the fruit of her labors.
She invests herself with strength and makes her arms powerful. She senses that her trade is profitable; her light does not go out at night.
She stretches out her hands to the distaff and her palms hold the spindle.
She opens her hands to the poor and reaches out her hands to the needy.
She has no fear of the snow for her household, for all her household is dressed in fine clothing.
This is a wonderful case of how the most successful innovative solutions, even to complex and seemingly intractable societal conflicts, arise from free enterprise and individual initiative.
In his customary extemporaneous broad-brush fashion, President Trump took on the purported consensus of 17 intelligence agencies that Russia hacked the DNC server. Speaking to reporters while flying from DaNang to Hanoi, the president said that Vladimir Putin had denied interfering in our elections, and:
TRUMP: I think that he is very, very strong in the fact that he didnt do it. And then you look, and you look at whats going on with Podesta, and you look at whats going on with the server from the D.N.C. and why didnt the F.B.I. take it, why did they leave it, why did a third party look at the server and not the FBI if you look at all of this stuff, and you say, whats going on here? And then you hear its 17 agencies. Well, its three. And one is Brennan and one is whatever. I mean, give me a break. Theyre political hacks. So you look at it I mean, you have Brennan, you have Clapper, and you have Comey. Comey is proven now to be a liar and hes proven to be a leaker. So you look at that, and you have President Putin very strongly, vehemently says he had nothing to do with that. Now, youre not going to get into an argument. Youre going to start talking about Syria and the Ukraine.
As he and faithful readers of AT know, that conclusion was based on analysis supplied by a private investigator working for the DNC, CrowdStrike. No intelligence or police agency ever examined the server. And according to the analysis of Conservative Treehouse, the FBI report itself (read it here) has been exaggerated and distorted by the media:
The Russian Malicious Cyber Activity Joint Analysis Report is pure nonsense. It outlines nothing more than vague and disingenuous typical hacking activity that is no more substantive than any other hacking report on any other foreign actor. This report might as well be blaming Nigerian fraud phone solicitors for targeting U.S. phone numbers. Just because your grandma didnt actually win that Nigerian national lottery doesnt mean the Nigerian government, or representative of the Nigerian government were targeting grandma. This FBI report is, well, quite simply, pure nonsense, thats why NSA Director Admiral Mike Rogers refused to endorse it.
But back in Langley, Virginia, at CIA Headquarters, this overt challenge from the commander in chief did not go down well. The name of Trumps own appointee as CIA Director, Mike Pompeo, was invoked, as Mallory Osbourne reported in The Hill:
The CIA on Saturday said its director, Mike Pompeo, "stands by" the intelligence communitys declassified report that concluded Russia ran an influence campaign aimed at helping President Trump win the White House in 2016. "The director stands by and has always stood by the January 2017 intelligence community assessment entitled: 'Assessing Russian Activities and Intentions in Recent U.S. Elections.' The intelligence assessment with regard to Russian election meddling has not changed, a spokesperson for the agency said when contacted by The Hill.
So far, Pompeo has not faced any cameras and said anything. As Director, failing to stand by the work output of his agency would require formal proceedings, I suspect, a move that would be highly premature. And Pompeo has to deal with professionals who control the information flow to his desk.
I dont think this battle is over, mainly because it defies common sense to have allowed the DNC server to go unexamined. But taking on that conclusion requires a lot more spadework.
Remember that the deep state plays for keeps.
In the latest chapter of the great illegal immigrant sob story, turns out the post office hasn't bothered to deliver a number of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) renewals on by the tight Oct. 5 deadline set by Attorney General Jeff Sessions. At first glance, it looked like another activist dance from the lawyers lobby representing some sad-sacks who just can't quite follow the rules. Thirty-three applicants out of 122,000 did not have their mailed applications into the hands of the immigration authorities on time.
But the New York Times story does show that the DACA recipients' complaints have merit. The DREAMers they cited really did mail their renewal applications in on time, sometimes three weeks ahead of time. They had tracking and certified mail evidence. They followed the procedures they were asked to follow, in good faith, using a U.S. government service. The fact is, they did get stiffed by the post office which never bothered to deliver their paperwork in the time needed to fulfill the bureaucratic requirement. Welcome to Honduras.
Yet now the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services is the bad guy for having any rules at all. Just as America is to blame for the actions of the DACA recipients' parents, so now the immigration bureaucrats are to blame for the lousy service of the post office, according to what's implied in the Times report.
Except that it really is the post office that's the problem. And its incompetence affects all of us, not just illegals. As anyone who sells eBay or uses the postal service frequently knows, the post office not only delays packages, it loses them, and sometimes steals them. It questionably alters timelines on tracking as items move through the system to cover its keister. And if you complain, they will tell in a form email that you you didn't put a return address on your package, no matter how irrelevant to the case, even if you have photographic evidence that you did. In the most egregious cases, where the postal service has clearly lost a package, they do not bother to compensate. It's all on you, the consumer. They never make mistakes and they are never held accountable.
Which raises the question: Why does it take complaints from DACA recipients to draw any media attention to the pervasive problem of incompetence at the post office, which has accelerated its slide downhill since the Obama years? Where are the stories of lost and stolen mail, the lack of transparency on the bad personnel committing it, the discontent of the good employees whose work is sullied by the unpunished miscreants? I see these stories in the local press occasionally but nothing in the mainstream news. It's a national problem but it gets no attention without DACA.
In a way, it's a nice prospect to imagine the leftwing La Raza lawyers squaring off against the incompetent Democrat-aligned postal service in a fine case of leftwing-on-leftwing rage. But it's not happening that way. The blame is going to the immigration bureaucrats instead, and they are the ones being asked to alter their way of doing business, not the post office. The post office should be on the spot, but the Times and the activist lawyers it quotes would have you believe the problem is the immigration service's rigid deadlines and the wicked, heartless Jeff Sessions who set them. It wouldn't dream of blaming the leftwing, unioned up, Democrat-supporting postal service whose problem hubs are located in one-party cities such as Chicago, and which have been making life miserable for all postal customers as a result. What's more, the press rarely ever reports on the obvious problems of corruption and incompetence the post office has slid into otherwise. It takes DACA, that shibboleth of the left, its beneficiaries for whom no service or favor should be denied, to draw any attention to the festering ongoing problem of bad postal service Americans have been enduring for years.
Do I feel sympathy for the DACA renewal applicants who got stiffed by the post office? Yes, I do. Do I think they should be shown leniency in the wake of this incompetence. Yes, probably. But what really needs attention is reforming how the postal service does business. Hard reforms are what's required most of all, and a hoseout of dishonest and incompetent personnel. If DACA's recipients' issus are the only way to do it, well then, let's roll. But why does it take DACA sob stories to get any spotlight onto such a universal and long-festering problem?
The adventure began, Menomonie dweller and UW-Stout emeritus faculty member David Tank said, when his photos of historic Menomonie postcards began appearing in The Dunn County News.
After a half-dozen or so ended up in the paper, people started saying, Im cutting those out and sticking them in a scrapbook. Are you ever going to make a book out of those? Tank remembered.
Having retired from teaching writing and mass communication at UW-Stout in 2016, Tank said he jumped at the chance to practice what hed taught over the years.
His first book was called Postcards from the Past: Then & Now Pictures of Menomonie, Wisconsin. Hes since gone on to create Postcards books for Dunn County, Eau Claire and most recently, Chippewa Falls.
But Tank isnt just finding antique postcards. He has a unique approach to showcasing the history of northwestern Wisconsin: Next to a postcard illustrating a building or landscape, he shows a photo of the exact same location, taken present-day.
I begin with a historic postcard, find the exact spot where the original photographer stood then re-shoot the same scene, he said.
The result is a fluid visual showcase of Chippewa Falls history, one that Tank will officially launch on Thursday, Nov. 30 at 6:30 p.m. at the Chippewa Falls Public Library, 105 W. Central Street. The 100-page book also includes maps of where each photo was taken, letting readers follow the postcards path themselves.
Im trying to be very precise, almost like a time-traveler, Tank said. If the original photographer was transported to today, what would he see through the camera lens?
Tank began the book two years ago, purchasing postcards from the early 1900s to the 1940s from eBay featuring Chippewa Falls spots. Hes had them shipped from as far away as foreign countries.
A year of shooting the contemporary photos followed. Tank remembers his months photographing Chippewa Falls fondly, praising its residents for their pride and dedication to the towns history.
The people have been so marvelous in helping me figure out where the pictures were taken. Theyve literally invited me into their homes to look at pictures, even onto the roofs of buildings to help me duplicate a photo, he said.
Several well-loved spots make a debut. The Heyde Center for the Arts, the Leinenkugel Brewery, the NSP dam and the Highway 124 bridge stand out. Irvine Park particularly appealed to Tank, who called it a photographers dreamscape in its early years.
The book has met with success, Tank said, especially with audiences who followed his journeys through Menomonie, Dunn County and Eau Claire. Hes started a similar project for his hometown of Fond du Lac, and may begin a book on Wisconsin Dells.
But for now, Tank is promoting the Chippewa Falls edition, and his event at the public library on Nov. 30 will offer a behind-the-scenes look at the books creation for history buffs and local photographers.
Its been a very fun project to work on, Tank said.
Postcards from the Past: Then & Now Pictures of Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin retails for $24 plus shipping and handling at www.postcardsfromthepast.net. Visit the website for a 20-page preview of the book. It is also available at Bookends on Main at 214 Main Street East in Menomonie, at the Nov. 30 launch event at the Chippewa Falls Public Library and at the Chippewa County History Center at 123 Allen Street.
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With around 100 commercial aviation, general aviation and military customers in the Middle East, Air BPs operations have grown considerably over recent decades.
One of Air BPs latest customers in the region is the Emirates Airline Flight Training Academy. Air BP recently won a contract to supply the new academy with Avgas and fuelled the first two Cirrus SR22 G6 training aircraft on October 31 2017.
The academy, which was developed by Emirates Airline to train beginner pilots, is located near Al Maktoum International Airport and scheduled to open this month.
The company has also recently started supplying fuel to Dubai-based Emirates Airline at Sao Paulo Guarulhos International and Viracopos Campinas International airports in Brazil. This is in addition to the existing operation at Rio de Janeiro International. The first Air BP-fuelled flight, an Airbus A380, departed from Sao Paulo Guarulhos International Airport bound for Dubai International on November 3 2017.
Christian Tabet, managing director Air BP, Middle East & Northern Africa, said: We are very proud of our heritage in the region. Over the past 85 years we have shared our knowledge and expertise, contributing to the development of aviation fuelling operations here. The Middle East is an important region for Air BP and the Dubai show offers a great opportunity for us to meet with new and existing customers. Our success here is based on our strengths in safe and reliable operations, investments in key infrastructure projects and a deep commitment to our customers.
On Friday, volunteers at the Chippewa Falls YMCA loaded boxes to send to people serving in the US Military. The boxes contain food, hygiene products, books and personalized cards thanking active duty military personnel for their service. All the items in the packages come from donations dropped off at local YMCA branches, Leinie's Lodge and McDonell Area Catholic Schools.
Ameco says it wants to increase both its market coverage and capabilities and is planning to increase cooperation with partners on aircraft, engines, components and landing gear, said executive vice-president and chief market officer, Zhu Xiao.
Headquartered in Beijing, Ameco has maintenance bases in 11 Chinese cities. The company says it is increasing its Middle East customer base and is providing heavy maintenance for Iraqi Airways wide-body aircraft.
For airframe overhaul, Ameco has added new customers from Iraq and Turkey, as well as several European and Asian clients, as it develops new capabilities on new-generation aircraft such as the Boeing 737MAX, Airbus A350XWB and Airbus A320neo.
It is also expanding its modification and retrofit capabilities, such as passenger-to-freighter conversions on Boeing 757s.
For engine overhaul, Ameco says it has seen rapid growth in its V2500-A5 engine overhaul business, and now performs repairs on thrust reversers for V2500-A5, CFM56-5B, CFM56-7B, CFM56-3 and Trent 700. It plans to invest in a new aircraft-related component workshop.
The company also plans to build up Boeing 787 and Airbus A350 generator capabilities, as well as further expanding its power by the hour (PBH) services.
The Bahrain International Airshow (BIAS), in association with Farnborough International, will take place from November 14-16 next year. It is already proving to be the fastest-growing airshow in the Middle East.
The 2018 event will have a larger exhibition hall than 2016 to accommodate the increased exhibitor attendance from around the world.
Already confirmed are Airbus Group, Bell Helicopters, DRDO, Leonardo, Lockheed Martin, Otokar, Sky Prime Aviation, Turkish Aerospace Industries, Thales, DITDSO, with new participants for 2018 being Orbital ATK, UTC and Huawei.
Yousif Mahmoud, head of the Bahrain International Airshow, said: The show provides the perfect venue to explore business opportunities in Bahrain and the Middle East. Our exceptional civil and military delegation programme means that the event is becoming more and more attractive to companies looking to showcase their aircraft or other technological advances in aviation.
The show will have a strong presence from Russia with UAC, Rostec and Rosoboronexport all confirmed as exhibiting.
We hope to have a Russian pavilion within the exhibition hall, which will allow smaller Russian SME businesses to participate in the show, said Mahmoud.
The Russian space agency, Roscosmos, is also planning to have a strong presence at the show with the potential to host a space conference.
Bahrain-based Texel Air will also be returning to the show with a much larger presence to cover the chalets and exhibition hall, while the ADS Group will host the UK pavilion and Kallman Worldwide will bring a US pavilion.
While the event has grown, it still retains the unique qualities of its first show in offering an exclusive environment for high-level business meetings, said Mahmoud. Its civil and military delegations programme is unparalleled and the exhibition feature hall has allowed even more international businesses to participate. Furthermore, its unique location at the Sakhir Airbase means it can display just about any type of aircraft.
Still a year away, organisers are unable to confirm aircraft being displayed, but Mahmoud certainly has high hopes.
We hope to see the international debut of Texel Airs Pemco FlexCombi 737 aircraft, as well as Gulf Airs Boeing 787-9 Dreamliner, which it will take delivery of next year, he said.
We are also working with the US Department of Defence, which will be displaying some of its aircraft, including the latest combat jets.
Mahmoud added that the 2016 show saw the international debut of the HAL Tejas, which may well visit again for 2018.
We will not be short of military display teams either, said Mahmoud. The Russian Knights, Saudi Hawks and Al Fursan are all expected to display at the show. We have also invited the Italian Frecce Tricolori and the Patrouille de France to perform and we are currently awaiting confirmation from them.
Bahrain will also be hosting the Manama Air Power Symposium the day before the show. The event sees senior speakers and panels made up of chiefs of air forces from more than 20 countries in the MENA region and other key locations discussing the leading issues of the day.
Mahmoud added that Bahrain was not just looking forward to visitors coming to the events, but also visiting the country as a whole.
Bahrain is known as a cosmopolitan country and it is seeing increased growth of both business and tourist visitors, he said.
Growth figures will further be reflected, as the countrys airport modernisation programme is well under way. When complete, the airport capacity will increase to accommodate 14 million passengers a year.
Construction is well under way and we expect completion in 2019. Once ready, the new terminal will be four times larger than the current one with 130,000 air traffic movements yearly, said Mahmoud.
Events like BIAS help contribute to a growth in business tourism in Bahrain. With links to Saudi Arabia by land via the King Fahd Causeway, and regular flights to and from that kingdoms main cities, Bahrains airport modernisation programme will be a key enabler to tourism not only in Bahrain, but in the region.
JPALS uses GPS to guide fast jets, helicopters and drones to safe landings on ships and land, even in challenging conditions such as mountainous terrain, helicopter brownouts and bad weather.
The US Navy and Marine Corps is currently using JPALS to land the Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II and drones on aircraft carriers. And Raytheon says it is now introducing the precision landing capability to the Middle East for land-based operations.
David Ray, Raytheons vice president of business development and strategy, said: JPALS has proven to be highly effective on ships, allowing the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter to land on a designated spot only 20cm square.
With an aircraft carrier, the landing can be incredibly difficult to calculate as the platform may be moving in nine different directions. But, having solved the problem of moving runways with JPALS for the Navy, we were able to adapt the system for land use.
Raytheon says it has shrunk the JPALS system down to a Humvee-sized solution that is very transportable. The company says it can handle precision approach and landings for up to 50 aircraft simultaneously from 20 miles away.
On land, JPALS can handle difficult and non-straight-in approaches where there is terrain. As such, it makes it ideal for a whole range of different missions, such as military special forces or humanitarian relief, Ray said.
The system uses the principles of local area augmentation using GPS and your known location to more accurately fine tune the navigation signal in the immediate area.
For humanitarian missions it can work 24 hours a day regardless of the weather. It really is tomorrows technology, but available today, Ray said.
The other great feature of JPALS is that, although it was developed for the F35, it is backwards compatible for other aircraft, such as the Lockheed Martin F-16, the Sikorsky UH-60 Black Hawk, and the Bell Boeing V-22 Osprey tiltrotor.
It is also easy to set up and operate, with very few moving parts, so reliability is first rate, Ray concluded.
Dubai's forward-looking attitude to transport has already hit the headlines this year with its plans for Volocopter unmanned air taxis just a year or so away.
Airbus is also in talks with the emirate's authorities on how autonomous air vehicles could be incorporated into the city's future. The company will also be talking about how innovation will be moving the aviation sector forward even faster over the next few years.
The European manufacturer is looking into the future with several new flight concepts, which are close to becoming reality as several technologies converge and become progressively less expensive. For example, batteries and photovoltaics that could power the new breed of autonomous aircraft are dropping steadily in price. And, while the 'power density' of batteries extracting enough energy from them to allow viable flight times and speeds has previously proved problematic, this is now on the verge of being solved, with many designs of battery-powered aircraft appearing in Europe and the US. Batteries still take time to recharge and this could cause delays between one user leaving the aircraft and another taking off in it. One way around this is to have battery packs that are quickly interchangeable pre-positioned at autonomous vehicle landing sites, with these being swapped after the aircraft lands.
However, Mathias Thomsen, Airbus general manager for urban air mobility within the organisation's corporate technology office, cautions that, as yet, battery packs are relatively large and heavy and owners, users and regulators are likely to be wary of the prospect of the frequent removal and replacement of such a substantial item.
The European manufacturer is cooperating in the design of a couple of potential autonomous aircraft, but Thomsen says that one of the most obvious problems is finding places for the new fleets of autonomous aircraft to take off and land.
Their vertical-take-off and landing capabilities mean they will be able to make use of a wide range of sites but a large city might need several hundred of them to ensure passengers can take-off and land close to where they need to be. That could automatically change the way our cities look, noted Thomsen.
We know there are several new cities planned for the Middle East and greenfield cities are always of interest because of the ability to design something from scratch. Dubai, with its clearly stated ambitions to be at the front of the autonomous flying trend, will be among the authorities to which Airbus will be talking.
We're looking at working more closely with a handful of cities in the near future. Dubai has already started running that race and we will clearly be talking with its officials.
Another type under development is the four-person CityAirbus. This will initially be operated by a pilot for certification and market entry purposes, but will, in time, be able to operate autonomously, once the appropriate regulations are in place. Tests of an 'iron bird' ground rig should be completed by the end of 2017, with first flight targeted for 2018.
To compensate for the time required for passengers to get in and out of an autonomous air vehicle, Airbus calculates that it will have to travel at a minimum of around 120km/h (70mph). We think there will be a premium for higher speeds, said Thomsen. Although fears have been expressed at the safety risk of not having a pilot on board, Airbus thinks the opposite will be true; aviation accidents, particularly those involving light aircraft, are predominantly caused by human error. Autonomous flight is likely to be a safer solution. The question is how autonomous vehicles interact with non-autonomous vehicles, said Thomsen.
However, airspace has the advantage of already being a very controlled environment and introducing a new technology, such as autonomous flight, is a 'clean sheet of paper' concept, into which safety can be built from the outset, rather than trying to add it to a pre-existing system. Autonomous vehicles could have a control stick so that a pilot could take control in an emergency. Alternatively, if no trained pilots were present, autonomous vehicles are likely to have a 'land me now' button that would bring the aircraft down as quickly as possible while still being safe. The role of airports in the use of autonomous aircraft is key, said Thomsen. They have very long planning horizons. We've already started engaging with some, but there's a lot more work to do.
Traditionally, he added, large airports did not like helicopters because they did not follow the pattern of movement of fixed-wing aircraft and their presence cut the productivity of the runway. But Airbus believes that a fully autonomous system that did not overload air traffic controllers and used clearly designated corridors could fit into an airport's operational rhythm. Another innovation that Airbus will be talking about at the show is its Skywise open data platform, which aims to improve operational performance and support the carrier's digital transformation process. Devised in collaboration with US software and services company, Palantir Technologies, a specialist in 'big data' integration and advanced analytics, Skywise is already improving industrial operations performance throughout Airbus' factories. It facilitates enhanced aircraft and equipment designs, better service and support offerings based on deeper in-service data insights. Skywise is a cloud platform and has been designed from the outset with a high level of protection from cyber threats, said Airbus.
There are several layers of encryption, together with strong firewalls, to prevent users looking at data to which they should not have access. Skywise will provide all users with a single access point to their data, which will be enhanced over what is available today by bringing together data from multiple sources across the industry into a cloud-based platform. These sources include work orders, spares consumption, components data, aircraft/fleet configuration, on-board sensor data, and flight schedules. Additional data sources that are traditionally shared with Airbus and hosted only on isolated servers will also be integrated into the platform to help operators conduct their own analyses and make decisions.
These include items such as parts replacements, pilot reports, aircraft condition monitoring reports and service bulletins. Airbus believes Skywise will be able to help airlines support and improve their business models by improving fleet operational reliability through predictive and preventative maintenance, as well as providing rapid root-cause analyses of in-service issues and tracking maintenance effectiveness over time. Skywise will be free to airlines if they agree to share their data with Airbus, and airlines can set limits on what is available: It's important to say that in Skywise people only share the data they want to share, explained Jaime Baringo, who heads Airbus' digital business development. Yes, there's a leap of faith for people sharing data. That's why we are starting with customers who already work with us they are our best ambassadors.
Airlines could benefit from benchmarking against others, although information provided to Skywise will be anonymised, so that one airline cannot get a direct insight into the performance of a competitor and thus gain a competitive advantage.
However, the more you share, the more [benefit] you will get, he added. And those benefits are potentially much greater today than they would have been just a few years ago. Although in-flight fault reporting through systems such as ACARS has been around for some years, systems like Skywise will hugely increase the amount of data that is downloaded. From next year, every Airbus A320 and A330 will have the Fomax modem fitted in its avionics bay. That gives you 60 times more data from the aircraft, data that at the moment you can't see. At present, there are 400 parameters; there will be 24,000 from next year, explained Baringo.
Indeed, every new A350 is already connected to the Skywise system and provides some 60,000 parameters per flight. With Skywise, operators of Airbus aircraft will be in a position to leverage the cumulative knowledge of the 20,000 Airbus engineers who have tracked the performance of each individual aircraft over its entire operational life. Moreover, by integrating their operational, maintenance, and aircraft data into a secure and open platform, airlines will be able to store, access, manage, and analyse selected Airbus data together with their own information and global benchmark data without the need for additional infrastructure investments
Things are different in Dubai this year.
A range of Russian sources, including the TASS news agency, are predicting that the UAE will sign a contract to acquire some 12-18 Su-35S aircraft.
Emirati interest in the Su-35S was reported during the last Dubai Air Show and then again at the IDEX exhibition in Abu Dhabi earlier this year.
In April 2017, Denis Manturov, the Russian Minister of Industry and Trade, said that the UAE had received the technical documentation and information necessary for assessing the Su-35S.
Though talks are currently described as being at the pre-contract negotiation stage, TASS reported that negotiations may be held in November during an air show in Dubai.
The Su-35S is a modernised and much-improved derivative of the Sukhoi Su-27 Flanker, with thrust vectoring engines, a modern glass cockpit with LCD displays, HOTAS controls, and an N035 Irbis-E (Snow Leopard) passive electronically scanned array (PESA) radar.
It is not directly related to the original Su-35 (or Su-27M) that first flew in 1988, and lacks that types canard foreplanes.
Though primarily intended for export, the launch order for 48 Su-35S aircraft was placed by the Russian Defence Ministry in 2009, and a follow-on order for 50 aircraft was quickly added.
The first Su-35S was delivered to Akhtubinsk for state joint tests with the defence ministry in May 2011, and the first batch of 12 Su-35S aircraft was delivered to the air force in December 2013. The delivery of another 10 aircraft in February 2014 marked the official entry into operational service. The type now serves with the 23rd Fighter Aviation Regiment at Centralnaya Uglovaya air base near Vladivostok in the Far East, and at Besovets air base near the Finnish border.
Four Su-35S aircraft were deployed to Khmeimim air base in Syria in January 2016, and the type attained full operational capability in September 2017.
Dr Temel Kotil, the man who headed Turkish Airlines for 11 years before becoming TAI chief in October 2016, has a masterplan for his organisation.
Not only does he want to increase TAIs turnover this year, from $1.6 billion towards $3billion, he also wants to grow the company to $10 billion inside 10 years, which means a 25% annual average increase.
That might well explain why TAI has such a big presence at this years show.
Kotils immediate priority is to commercialise all the main projects that have been designed and developed over the past 10 years. Those include the T129 advanced attack and tactical reconnaissance (ATAK) helicopter, the Hurkus turboprop trainer/close air support aircraft, the Anka unmanned aerial system (UAS), and the six-ton T625 helicopter.
The five-ton T129 ATAK is making its debut at the show. Export sales have been disappointing and Kotil will be aiming to boost the helicopters fortunes. There have been serious discussions with Pakistan and Bahrain but nothing has materialised. Now the government-backed company is aiming to show off the T129 to a general Middle East audience.
Domestically, the T129 is big business, with Turkeys aerospace industry developing an indigenous mission computer, avionics, weapons systems, self-protection suites and helmet-mounting cueing system. The Turkish Army is purchasing 59 T129s, with 24 delivered to date.
While the nine early development helicopters (EDHs) have a 20mm cannon in the nose turret and are armed with unguided rockets, the T129B will be more sophisticated. It has the capability to carry eight UMTAS anti-tank guided missiles, 19 Roketsan CIRIT laser-guided 2.75in missiles, eight Stinger air-to-air missiles, two 12.7mm gun pods and two 294kg auxiliary fuel tanks on its stub wing pylons.
Positioned above the nose cannon is an Aselsan ASELFLIR-300T advanced targeting system turret, which houses a thermal camera, laser range finder/designator, laser spot tracker, colour TV camera, and colour spotter camera with a multiple target tracking capability. They can be monitored by the pilots Aselsan helmet integrated cueing system (HICS).
In early October, the Turkish Undersecretariat of Defence Industries (SSM) formally accepted the Meteksan Savunma MILDAR millimetre wave radar, which has been under development since 2013. Meteksan and TAI began testing the MILDAR in December 2016. Serial production is expected to begin in 2018 or 2019 on the 20 Phase 2 T129Bs.
TAI is also promoting its Hurkus-C light attack armed reconnaissance aircraft. Unveiled in February and shown publicly for the first time at IDEF 17 in Istanbul during May, TAI is now keen to win export orders.
The Turkish Army has a requirement for 12 plus 12 options, and the gendarmerie six plus six options. Both customers helicopters will be configured with the same weapons, the 2.75in CIRIT LGMs and the Laser-UMTAS, ensuring commonality with the T129 ATAK.
Meanwhile, an export deal for Turkeys first indigenous unmanned aerial system, Anka, seems to be a long way off.
Since development started in 2010 there have been three versions. The Anka-A was used to mature the ground surveillance and maritime surveillance radar systems before the programme was split into two.
The lighter Anka B, with an on-board Aselsan maritime surveillance and ground station radio relay, has attracted interest from the Turkish Navy, using the Aselsan full HD communications, aperture and targeting system (CATS).
Integration work has been completed on the CATS, which will also appear on the Anka S variant, equipped with a foreign SATCOM.
The Turkish Air Force has ordered 10 Anka S, while contracts for 12 Anka Bs are also believed to have been signed, split between the Polis and Turkish Land Forces, which is also interested in the Anka S.
The Wisconsin Economic Development Corp. board Wednesday approved a $3 billion contract with Taiwanese manufacturer Foxconn, a deal the companys CEO is personally backing should it fall apart.
WEDC CEO Mark Hogan said after the board voted 8-2 with member Tom Sylke, an intellectual property lawyer, abstaining that the contract was the product of 28 weeks of negotiations in which the state sought to balance flexibility for the company and protection for state taxpayers.
What weve done on a collective basis has been able to put together a contract that reflects and achieves both of those goals, Hogan said. Were excited about the opportunity for the state to move forward.
Rep. Dana Wachs, D-Eau Claire, who along with Sen. Tim Carpenter, D-Milwaukee, voted against the contract in closed session, said spending $3 billion on one company within one industry is a risk that is too much for our taxpayers.
I had hoped that this would be a deal I could support, but it just is too much money for this deal, said Wachs, a 2018 Democratic gubernatorial candidate.
The vote took place in private but was announced immediately afterward.
The company is planning to manufacture liquid-crystal display (LCD) screens at a 20 million square-foot campus in Mount Pleasant starting in 2020.
Under the terms of the 29-page contract, released publicly for the first time Wednesday, the company will be able to collect up to $1.35 billion in construction-related tax credits if it creates a gradually increasing number of manufacturing jobs up to 8,450 through 2025. It will also be able to collect up to $1.5 billion in tax credits if it creates up to 13,000 manufacturing jobs by 2022 and maintains that number through 2032.
Though Gov. Scott Walker and Foxconn CEO Terry Gou agreed earlier this year on a $10 billion investment by the company, the contract only requires the company to invest $9 billion in the state to be eligible for tax credits. Hogan said the company still plans to invest $10 billion, but the construction tax credits are based on a $9 billion commitment.
The jobs must pay at least $30,000 pear year and average $53,875 annually. The job credits pay out 17 percent of the first $100,000 of salary, which is higher than 7 percent for the states typical enterprise zone job credits. The construction credits equal 15 percent of capital investment, up from 10 percent in a typical enterprise zone.
The company will be eligible to receive up to $10 million in job credits starting in 2018 if it creates 1,040 jobs in the state. To receive any credits next year, the company must create at least 260 jobs. But if the company doesnt earn the credits in a given year, they can be carried forward into subsequent years.
Within five years, the state can reclaim any credits it pays out if the company provides false information, leaves the state or ceases operations and doesnt restart within a year. Those violations could result in the company owing as much as $965 million if they occur in the years after 2022. Also after that point, if the company employs fewer than 6,500 workers the state can reclaim a sliding scale ranging from $500 million in 2023 to $250 million in 2032.
Compliance with the terms will be audited by an independent accountant based on a sample of the companys workforce at the end of each year.
Guarantees offered
Gou and his holding company, SIO International, are pledging to pay back 25 percent of the amount that would be refunded to the state should the company default. Publicly traded parent company Hon Hai Precision Products, the 27th largest company in the world, would back the rest.
After 2032 the deal ends and the state would have no recourse should the company reduce its Wisconsin workforce. The nonpartisan Legislative Fiscal Bureau anticipates the state will recover the $3 billion in lost tax revenue by 2042.
Wisconsin Technology Council president Tom Still, who has supported the deal throughout the process, said Gous personal guarantee and connecting the construction tax credits to the companys manufacturing workforce in the state during construction are unusual for deals of this magnitude.
It sounds like a pretty good belt and suspenders, Still said.
The $2.85 billion in tax credits will mostly be paid from the states existing tax collections because the company also will benefit from a state tax credit that almost eliminates state corporate taxes for manufacturers. The amount of that benefit to the company is unknown and Hogan said the state didnt calculate the amount when negotiating with the company.
Foxconn is also receiving a sales tax exemption estimated to be worth $150 million, similar to the Milwaukee Bucks arena deal. And it is eligible to receive a $100 million incentive as part of a $764 million tax incremental financing district for infrastructure improvements offered by local officials in Racine County.
The WEDC board vote is the final layer of public oversight before the contract can be signed and construction can begin, likely some time next year. Walker and Gou will sign the contract Friday in Racine.
The WEDC board received a copy of the contract Monday ahead of the vote, breaking with the agencys past practice of only providing a staff report summarizing the deal.
The board had been scheduled to vote on the contract on Oct. 17, but the vote was delayed for unspecified reasons. After public pressure mounted on the agency to release the contract, it announced Friday the contract would be provided to board members.
A report by WHO said 2.5 million Indians died due to air pollution in 2015, the largest number in the world.
Every winter, Delhi is enveloped in smog, as millions of tonnes of crop residue are burned in the northern states. Smoke billows across the cities and suspended particulate matter sends the air quality index through the roof. The severity of the problem is known: A report by WHO said 2.5 million Indians died due to air pollution in 2015, the largest number in the world. Authorities express their solidarity but do little else. The Centre, which was ordered to produce a Graded Response Action Plan, did so only in October, by which time pollution levels were too high to contain. Its time to work together and address Indias silent killer says leading environment expert Chandra Bhushan.
Its winter and like all winters over the past few years, air pollution in Delhi dominates the headlines of newspapers, television channels and social media trends. Like before, all the organs of the government have sprung into action in the last few weeks; having done very little in the previous ten months.
The Delhi government wants to introduce the odd-even vehicle rationing scheme, but has not bought a single CNG bus in the last two years. It collects pollution tax from trucks entering the city, but has not used this money adequately to control pollution. For instance, it has not bought adequate numbers of mechanical sweepers to remove dust from roads. Dust is a major source of air pollution in the city.
The Central government has shown solidarity and nothing more. The Union Health Ministry has issued a health advisory and NitiAayog has recommended a slew of measures like finding alternatives to crop residue burning, and encouraging commuters to share cars and take public transportation. The Union Environment Ministry has issued advisory to states to implement various actions. But the fact is the central government has failed to bring the governments of Punjab, Haryana and Delhi together to solve the problem of stubble burning. Millions of tonnes of crop residue are burnt every year by farmers of Punjab, Haryana and Western Uttar Pradesh, but nothing concrete has been done so far.
The judiciary too has also come into action. Supreme Court, High Court and National Green Tribunal (NGT) have passed orders and strictures. But little seems to have been implemented or can be implemented this winter. To the credit of the judiciary, it has been seriously taking up the issue of air pollution in NCR, but have been frustrated by the executives. In turn, the judiciary has issued orders that are non-implementable.For instance, Supreme Court has given orders to implement the standards of Oxides of Sulphur (SOx) and Oxides of Nitrogen (NOx) for industriesby December 31.Everyone knows that these standards cannot be implemented in two months. But I dont fault the honorable court for giving this un-implementable order. Supreme Court was frustrated by the union environment ministry which was sitting on these standards for months. The court had no other option but to force the ministry to issue them and then enforce them in a short period of time.
Similarly, NGT has banned the use of diesel vehicles that are over 10 years old and petrol vehicles more than 15 years old in Delhi. But the government has no mechanism to implement this order other than fining and impounding individual vehicles. Impounding the vehicle isnt an option either for the Delhi government neither has space to park these automobiles or the facilities to scarp them. The air pollution in NCR is a classic case of too many cooks spoil the broth.
Causes and solutions:
Air quality index in NCR varies from mildly polluted to severe throughout the year. Last year, the air quality index in about 50% days in November, December and January were in the severe category. That is, the air was toxic. This year doesnt seem to be any different. The reason is simple: we know what to do, but dont seems to get our act together. This because:
Firstly, our political leadership has not understood and internalised the gravity of the situation.
The statement of the union environment minister, air pollution is harmful but to attribute any death to a cause like pollution may be too much is disheartening, to say the least. Air pollution is killing people and we must recognise and accept it. Only than we can move ahead.
Secondly, our environmental agencies are failing us. There is absolutely no leadership in the environment ministry, central pollution control board or the state pollution control boards to address this issue. In fact, all these agencies seem to be mute spectators and following the orders of the courts. Without the will and the willingness of executive, we cannot tackle air pollution.
Thirdly, multiple sources contribute to air pollution. The main sources are vehicular pollution, dust from roads and open spaces, industries like thermal power plants and brick kiln and crop residue burning. We do not have an implementable action plan for each of them. What we currently have is court orders and fiat of the executive. Developing an implementable action plan will require working with all stakeholders and coming out with viable solutions within a given timeframe. Let me illustrate this point. Everyone knows that we have to stop stubble burning. We have orders of the courts and regulation of the government to stop this. But, we do not know how to stop this; because we do not have an action plan that is agreed by all.
Lastly, air pollution in not a NCR phenomenon, it is a Pan-India phenomenon. Most Indian cities dont meet air quality norms. The severity of pollution is highest in North India during winters. In fact, Delhi is not the most polluted city in India. Cities like Gwalior, Allahabad, Patna and Raipur are more polluted. According to a recent report by the British Medical Journal the Lancet, an estimated half a million Indians died prematurely in 2015 due to PM2.5 (particulate matters less than 2.5 microns in size) in the air. Above all else, we need agencies to work together and not at cross purposes. Only then can we combat the killer that is air pollution.
The writer is Deputy Director General, Centre for Science and Environment, Delhi
New Delhi: Net debt of India's largest realty firm DLF rose by Rs 900 crore during the September quarter to Rs 26,800 crore and the borrowing could rise further to meet construction cost of its ongoing projects amid a demand slowdown in the property market.
DLF expects to reduce its debt significantly from the proposed infusion of over Rs 13,000 crore into the company by the end of this fiscal, mainly from promoters' stake sale to GIC.
Net debt increased to Rs 26,799 crore as on September 30, 2017, from Rs 25,899 crore at the end of the previous quarter, DLF said during an investor presentation. The company had a negative cash flow during the second quarter of this fiscal as it stopped sales bookings during May-October, but continued construction of its projects.
"Operating shortfall shall continue till new sales volume and collections pick up while at the same time construction spend shall continue. "Continued capex in new office complexes and construction spend on residential (units) shall result in temporary negative cashflow and spike in net debt levels for which financing is already in place," the presentation said.
On sales bookings, the company said it had suspended sales in May 2017 taking a cautious, conservative approach to understand the rules and regulations under the real estate regulatory Act and GST. New sales booking have now been opened with effect from November 1.
The company said operating cash deficit of about Rs 750 crore per quarter will continue for the next two quarters.
DLF's CFO Ashok Tyagi had earlier said the company has an unsold inventory of about Rs 15,000 crore.
"Out of 15 million sq ft under construction in our residential business, 13 million sq ft will be completed by March next year. Around 8 million sq ft is ready to be handed over to customers shortly," Tyagi had said.
On the debt reduction, the company is banking on infusion of funds from promoters. In late August, the DLF promoters decided to sell their entire 40 per cent stake in the company's rental arm DLF Cyber City Developers Ltd (DCCDL) for Rs 11,900 crore.
This deal included sale of 33.34 stake in DCCDL to Singapore's sovereign wealth fund GIC for Rs 8,900 crore and a buyback of the remaining shares worth Rs 3,000 crore by DCCDL. Post this deal, DLF will have 66.66 per cent stake in DCCDL.
On Saturday, DLF said it expects the sale of its promoters' stake to GIC to be concluded by December and infusion of proceeds into the company by February 2018.
DLF expects infusion of over Rs 13,000 crore into the firm, which will include Rs 10,500 crore from promoters and another Rs 3,000 crore from institutional investors to maintain the minimum public shareholding.
The deal has been approved by DLF's public shareholders as well as fair trade regulator CCI.
"We are hopeful of concluding this deal and subsequent infusion of funds into DLF within this fiscal," DLF's Senior Executive Director (Finance) Saurabh Chawla had said.
The promoters will receive the proceeds this calendar year and will infuse funds into DLF by February 2018, he added.
With the Assembly polls approaching in Gujarat, Rajput agitators also warned the ruling BJP to face consequences if the movie is released.
Over one lakh Rajputs converged at a massive gathering at Gandhinagar in protest against Padmavati. (PTI)
Ahmedabad: Members of the Rajput community on Sunday held massive protests in Gandhinagar and Surat in Gujarat demanding a ban on the release of Bollywood film 'Padmavati'. The protestors allege that the makers had distorted historical facts in the film.
While over one lakh members of the community converged at a massive gathering at Gandhinagar, thousands took part in the protest march in Surat to raise their demand of staying the release of Sanjay Leela Bhansali-directed movie.
The movie is scheduled to release on December 1.
Mansinh Rathod, who is leading the Gujarat chapter of 'Karni Sena', claimed that Mr Bhansali has "distorted the historical facts in the movie."
"We have learnt that there is a dream sequence in the movie wherein 'Rani Padmavati' has been shown romancing with 'Allaudin Khilji'. We condemn such a heinous portrayal our queen. 'Karni Sena' will never allow such movie to hit the theatres," Rathod said.
He said not just Gujarat, the movie must not be released anywhere in the country. "To raise our demand, Karni Sena and other Rajput and Hindu organisations called a gathering in Gandhinagar. We had also organised a protest march in Surat. It is our clear warning that if this movie gets released on December 1, there will be violent protests and government will be responsible for the law and order situation," he added.
In Gandhinagar, the mega gathering of the Rajput community saw the presence of senior Karni Sena leaders, such as its founder Lokendrasinh Kalvi and national president Mahipalsinh Makrana.
"Though the release has been scheduled on December 1, we will make sure that the movie does not see the light of the day," Kalvi claimed.
According to Virendrasinh Bhati of Karni Sena, Bhansali has backtracked from his promise of showing the movie to the Rajput community to get a clearance first.
"We are very much sure that there is dream sequence in the movie. If Bhansali claimed that the movie is as per the historical facts, then why he has not fulfilled his promise of showing it to us. We want the government to take a clear stand and ban the movie. If the movie gets released, Rajputs will show what they can do," said Bhati.
With the Assembly polls approaching in Gujarat, Rajput agitators also warned the ruling BJP to face consequences if the movie gets released.
"We want a complete ban on the movie. If the Centre or state government fails to step in, the BJP may have to face the ire of the community during the Gujarat polls," Rajput leader from Surat Yashwantsinh Vala said.
Last month, former Congress leader and Rajput strongman Shankersinh Vaghela demanded a pre-release screening of 'Padmavati' for Hindu and Rajput community leaders to check if the makers have not distorted the facts.
He had also warned of violent protests by the people of Gujarat if the movie is released without showing it to community leaders.
Recently, Gujarat BJP had given a representation to the Election Commission opposing the release ahead of Gujarat elections next month, saying that distortion of facts in the movie will hurt the sentiments of the Kshatriya Rajput communities.
'Padmavati' has been facing a lot of trouble since early this year. Bhansali was assaulted by activists of a Rajput community group, Karni Sena, while shooting in Jaipur.
The HM said the PM got to know about the issues with the GST and he categorically stated that necessary amendments must be made.
Singh also claimed that the business and traders were very happy with the GST. (Photo: PTI/File)
Lucknow: Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh on Sunday said Prime Minister Narendra Modi was the reason behind the amendments in the Goods and Services Tax (GST) rates made in the recent council meeting.
The Union Home Minister said the Prime Minister got to know about the issues with the GST and he categorically stated that necessary amendments must be made.
"When the Prime Minister got to know about the issues with the GST, he categorically stated that necessary amendments must be made. It was after this that the GST council meet was held and with consensus, they made certain changes due to which the traders are now happy," Singh told the media.
Singh also claimed that the business and traders were very happy with the GST.
"Businessmen and traders are very happy with the GST. It was implemented on the basis of 'one nation, one tax'. Our democratic government works for the public," he further said.
Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley had recently announced moving 178 items from the 28 per cent to the 18 per cent tax bracket under the GST, applicable from November 15.
The changes in the tax system were decided at the 23rd GST Council meeting headed by the finance minister, at Guwahati on Friday.
The information came to light when the CBI checked the browsing details on his mobile phone and laptop.
Earlier on Saturday, the apprehended teenager was taken by the CBI to the school to recreate the crime scene. (Photo: PTI/File)
Gurgaon: The Class 11 student, accused in the murder of seven-year-old Pradyuman Thakur, at Ryan International School searched online for various types of poisons and methods of usage before carrying out the crime.
The teen also looked up for methods to remove fingerprints from knife, Hindustan Times quoted its sources as saying.
The information came to light when the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) checked the browsing details on his mobile phone and laptop.
"Investigators suspect that after killing the student by slitting his throat, the accused deliberately threw the weapon, a knife which he procured a day before the murder from Sohna, in the commode of the toilet where the incident took place on September 8," a CBI source told HT.
However, the CBI refused to divulge further information due to the sensitivity of the case.
Since the investigation is at a very sensitive stage, we would not like to offer any comment at this stage on any aspect of the probe, said CBI spokesman Abhishek Dayal.
Earlier on Saturday, the apprehended teenager was taken by the CBI to the school to recreate the crime scene.
The team asked the teenager to explain the events that took on the morning of September 8, when Pradyuman, a class 2 student, was found dead in the toilet of the school, they said.
The CBI team took various measurements and recorded time needed to commit the crime as part of a corroborative exercise. It said the drill was meant to ascertain the claims of the accused.
The CBI officials also used a dummy in the form of a soft toy to ask him how he killed Pradyuman.
A Gurgaon juvenile court on Saturday sent the boy to Faridabad observation home till November 22.
(With inputs from PTI)
The collegium had recently said that the judiciary and not the IB, is a better judge of who should be part of the judiciary.
The high courts from where the recommendations have been received include Karnataka, Jharkhand, Gujarat, Madras and Tripura, the functionary said. (Photo: PTI/File)
New Delhi: The Supreme Court collegium will take a call on appointing 40 new judges to nine courts, a senior functionary said even as 106 judges have been appointed to the constitutional courts this year.
The law ministry has forwarded recommendations from nine high courts to appoint 40 judges to the Supreme Court collegium.
The high courts from where the recommendations have been received include Karnataka, Jharkhand, Gujarat, Madras and Tripura, the functionary said.
According to law ministry data, as on September 1, while the approved strength of judges in the 24 high courts was 1,079, there were 413 vacancies and these high courts were functioning with an effective working strength of 666 judges.
As per procedure, the three-member high court collegium recommends a name to the Supreme Court collegium. The recommendation is initially sent to the Law Ministry, which attaches an IB report about the candidate's record and forwards it to the SC collegium for a final call.
The collegium had recently said that the judiciary and not the IB, is a better judge of who should be part of the judiciary.
Commenting on the appointment of judges, law minister Ravi Shankar Prasad said 126 judges were appointed in 2016 which is a record since 1989.
He said on an average 82 judges were appointed annually. "As of now, 106 judges have been appointed in 2017. By December 31, we will surpass the 126 figure," Prasad said on Thursday at an event attended by Chief Justice of India Dipak Misra.
A girl student of the institute accused the director of casting aspersions on her character.
Bhopal: The alleged sexist remark against a girl pupil by the director of National Law Institute University (NLIU) here has sparked student unrest in the campus.
Director of NLIU, Bhopl, professor S.S. Singh, however, dismissed the allegation describing it baseless, manufactured and fabricated.
Those who know me, including the parents of the students, will never believe it. Some people in the campus are instigating the students against me. They want me to quit. I was an angel for the students for last nine and half years. Suddenly, why the allegation of such low level was hurled against me? Mr Singh said.
Mr Singh has been serving as director of the university since 2008 told reporters here on Saturday. A girl student of the institute accused the director of casting aspersion on her character.
I was called inside the directors room. The director cast aspersion on my character in front of four other faculty members, the student narrated before the demonstrating students in the institute campus here on Saturday.
Students of NLIU, Bhopal, have launched an indefinite agitation demanding the removal of the director following the allegation. Students were also up in arms against the institute authorities for imposing irrational restrictions on them.
They alleged that the authorities have turned the institute a jail for them. They have been asked to return to campus by 9 pm. Bhopal MP Alok Sanjar visited the institute and held discussions with the agitating students.
He has assured them to take up the matter with the Centre as well as the chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan.
It is unfortunate if the director had made such a comment against a girl student, he told reporters here.
The students of high school, who held a sit-in protest, accused the school authorities of running classes from 6.30 am to 6.30 pm.
Asked on their demands, other protesting students said they wanted immediate change in timings of school classes. (Photo: File/Representational)
Hyderabad: A group of students of a private school at Chaitanyapuri here held demonstrations on the school premises against what they termed as "long school
hours".
The protesting students of high school, who held a sit-in protest on Saturday, accused the school authorities of running classes from 6.30 am to 6.30 pm and raised slogans-
'we want justice'.
"Our school classes are held from 6.30 am to 6.30 pm while in other schools, the classes are conducted from 8 am to 4.30 pm. After school hours, we again go to tutions and there is homework also," a student is seen saying in a video circulated in media.
"By the time we go to sleep it is around 10.30 pm to 11 pm and again next morning we have to get up at 5.30 am to attend school by 6.30 am. We are deprived of sleep... parents also need to understand," the student said.
Asked on their demands, other protesting students said they wanted immediate change in timings of school classes.
City-based child rights NGO 'Balala Hakkula Sangham' accused the school management of subjecting the school children to stress.
The NGO's honorary president Achyuta Rao alleged that the school authorities are violating all the norms and moreover giving heavy homework to students.
"The students told us that they are hardly getting any sleep after studying 13 to 14 hours and again their parents are sending them to tutions," Rao said.
He further said they have brought the matter to the notice of Ranga Reddy District Collector, seeking action against the school for "violating norms".
Meanwhile, a school official refuted the allegations and said they conduct classes from 8.30 am to 4.30 pm and the students are given 30 minutes break in between and the students are asked to do the homework within the school timings.
The deceased was shot by an assailant who was escorted out of his club.
New Delhi: External affairs minister Sushma Swaraj on Sunday said her ministry would provide all help to the family of a US citizen of Indian origin who was shot dead in the US.
According to news agency reports. Mr Talati was a motel-owner in the US.
In a tweet, Sushma Swaraj said: The Indian Embassy in the US has informed me of the circumstances leading to the death of Akash Talati. The deceased was shot by an assailant who was escorted out of his club. The guard returned the fire and the assailant was also injured. We are in touch with the family and will provide them all help.
This incident comes two months after Supreme Court of India pronounced triple talaq as 'unconstitutional'.
The lady who has been identified as Yaseem Khalid said that she along with her children will commit suicide if justice is not delivered. (Photo: ANI)
Aligarh (UP): A case has been registered against Khalid Bin Yusuf Khan, a Sanskrit Professor in Aligarh Muslim University after his wife accused him of divorcing her through triple talaq.
The lady who has been identified as Yaseem Khalid said that she along with her children will commit suicide if justice is not delivered.
This incident comes to two months after Supreme Court of India pronounced triple talaq as 'unconstitutional'.
Speaking to ANI, Khalid said first she was given talaq via text and then verbally when she met him for compromise.
"On 30th October, he gave me talaq via a text, again on 8th November he verbally gave me talaq when I and children went to him to seek his help," Yaseem Khalid said.
Yaseem also alleged that her husband locked all the doors of the house they were staying in.
Yaseem also revealed the reason behind the entire dispute and said, "My husband helped someone get a job in the University. So the students in the Department wrote a letter to the Vice-Chancellor which he accused me of writing," Yaseem said.
Yaseem has registered a case in Aligarh's Civil Lines Police Station.
The latest incident comes months after Pehlu Khan, a dairy farmer, was brutally beaten to death by cow vigilantes in Alwar district.
Jaipur: Seven months after Pehlu Khan, a dairy farmer who was lynched by cow vigilantes in Alwar, a man was shot dead by cow vigilantes in Alwar district of Rajasthan.
The incident took place in the small hours of Friday. But even after two days of the murder, no FIR has been filed. Ummar Khan and Tahir Khan were transporting the cows to Bharatpur when they were waylaid by the mob and assaulted. Ummar, 32, died of a bullet wound.
His body was found around 12 km from the Ramgarh police station. He is survived by his wife and eight children. The two others received minor injuries and ran away from the scene. One of them, Tahir Muhammad, is being treated at a hospital in Haryana. The attack took place at around 5 am on Friday, said Sher Muhamm-ad, sadar (president) of district Meo panchayat. He alleged that Umar was killed by gaurakshaks and they tried to show the death as an accident by placing his body on railway tracks.
The family members recognised Ummar from his slippers. While the police remained tight-lipped about the incident, refusing to answer calls made by this newspaper, the Meo community has alleged an attempt to cover up the incident.
Several members of the Meo Muslim community gathered outside the district hospital in Alwar and demanded action against the cow vigilante groups. Ummar Khans relatives filed a complaint against the assailants and alleged that Khan was shot dead by gaurakshkas. We wont accept the body till the case is registered and a copy of the FIR is given to us, said Maulana Hanif, vice-president of Jamait-Ul-Rajasthan.
Alleging cover-up, Maulana Hanif said that two bullets were shot at Ummar one in his chest and the other went through his left shoulder but the doctors now say that they cant trace bullet marks in the body. To remove evidence, they have disfigured the body, he alleged.
Superintendent of police Rahul Prakash and SHO Govindgarh refused to make any comment. In-charge of the PCR stated that he has not received any information from the Govindgarh police station about this incident.
The latest incident comes months after Pehlu Khan, a dairy farmer, was brutally beaten to death by cow vigilantes in Alwar district. Khan and at least four others were injured when a mob had attacked nearly 15 persons hailing from Haryana, while transporting cows in vehicles on the Behror highway in Alwar district on April 5.
In September, the Rajasthan police had given a clean chit to the six people named in the Pehlu Khan lynching incident. Following this, Khans family had sought a court-monitored probe into the killing and said the case must be shifted out of the state.
Taking to Twitter, Congress chief spokesperson Randeep Singh Surjewala thanked voters for reposing faith in the party.
Bhopal/New Delhi: The Congress on Sunday retained the Chitrakoot Assembly seat in Madhya Pradesh by defeating the BJP in the byelection by a margin of 14,333 votes. The Opposition Congress hailed the victory as a signal of the winds of change blowing in the countrys political landscape ahead of the crucial Gujarat Assembly polls next month.
Congress candidate Nilanshu Chaturvedi secured 66,810 votes against BJP nominee Shankar Dayal Tripathis 52,677 in a contest necessitated by the death of sitting Congress MLA Prem Singh, 65, in May this year.
Taking to Twitter, Congress chief spokesperson Randeep Singh Surjewala thanked voters for reposing faith in the party. The winds of change are in the air. Many thanks to the people of #Chitrakoot for their faith and trust in the Congress party, Mr Surjewala said.
Congress leader Jyotiraditya Scindia, billed as the Madhya Pradesh chief ministerial candidate of the party in the 2018 Assembly elections, termed the bypoll result a reflection of the disenchantment of the people with the Shivraj Singh Chouhan government.
It is clear from the Chitrakoot victory, which comes after the partys victory in Ater Assembly byelection a month ago, that MP wants to get rid of the BJPs misrule, he said.
Mr Chouhan, however, tried to underplay the BJP defeat. It is a traditional seat of the Congress, which won the seat in the 2013 Assembly elections defying the pro-BJP wave, he said. He, however, said that his party would review the byelections outcome.
State BJP president Nand Kumar Chouhan shared the chief ministers view, saying that barring the 2008 Assembly elections, the Chitrakoot seat has remained with the Congress since Independence.
Congress Legislature Party (CLP) leader Ajey Singh, who was in-charge of electioneering in the byelection, said: The victory of the Congress in Chitrakoot byelection has set the tone for the party to return to power in MP in 2018.
Congress V-P asks Modi to speak about his dishonest CM.
Palanpur (Gujarat): Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi targeted Gujarat chief minister Vijay Rupani on Sunday over the Sebi slapping fine on his firm for alleged manipulative share trade, and asked the Prime Minister to speak out on the issue.
Speaking during his poll campaign tour of Gujarat, he claimed that the share market regulator has termed Mr Rupani beimaan (dishonest) and imposed fine on him. Mr Gandhi asked Mr Modi to speak out against his dishonest chief minister.
Gujarat is more corrupt than the entire country. Surat businessmen told me that policemen come to their units every two minutes (allegedly to demand bribe), he said.
The 47-year-old Congress leader was addressing a public meeting here in Banaskantha district on the second day of his campaign tour of North Gujarat. Jay Shah, son of (BJP chief) Amit Shah, increased the turnover of his company from `50,000 to `80 crore in a few months after the BJP came to power in 2014.
The people of Gujarat know this cannot be done without corruption, he said.
Some days ago, the SEBI said your chief minister is beimaan (dishonest) and they fined him. Modiji used to say na khaoonga, na khane doonga (I will neither take graft nor allow corruption). Please open your mouth on this subject now. But he is silent. Now his slogan is na bolta hu, na bolne dunga (I will not speak myself and wont allow others to do so), Mr Gandhi said.
The people of the country want to listen what you (Modi) have to say on Amit Shahs sons company, on Vijay Rupani. The people of Gujarat will believe that you are not chowkidar (watchman) but bhagidar (collaborator) if you dont say anything on the issue, he said. The Securities and Exchange Board of India has reportedly fined 22 entities, including Rupani Hindu Undivided Family, for alleged manipulative trading in the shares of a company, Saran Chemicals Ltd, during the January- June 2011 period.
Mr Rupani had said the Securities Appellate Tribunal has set aside the fine of `6.91 crore on 22 entities.
The flight was diverted to Varanasi on Friday due to non-availability of taxiway at Patna Airport and returned to Delhi on Friday night.
New Delhi: A ruckus among airport staffers and passengers were reported as a Jet Airways flight from Delhi to Patna returned to Indira Gandhi International Airport after diversion to Varanasi. The flight was diverted to Varanasi on Friday due to non-availability of taxiway at Patna Airport and returned to Delhi on Friday night. 150 passengers travelling to Patna had to wait for the flight to land for eight hours, only to find out that they had landed back where they took off from.
In s video released by news agency shows that a Jet Airways ground staff is seen surrounded by angry passengers who are involved in an argument.
Although it is unclear what the argument was all about, airport sources said it was related to the Jet Airways flight diversion and return incident.
Jet Airways flight 9W 730 from Delhi to Patna was diverted to Varanasi, following non-availability of taxiway and eventually brought back to Delhi.
The flight departed from Terminal 3 at 2.30 pm but due to non-availability of taxiway at the Patna Airport the flight was diverted to Varanasi. However, the flight landed back at Terminal 3 at 9.30 pm.
According to an earlier report, special flight was being arranged for all the 150 passengers. The video shows tempers among the passengers rising high and the people demanding to see the staffs manager to talk with.
However, it is unclear if the men arguing in the video are travelling to Patna or are irked by the delay which might have been caused due to the diversion and its technicalities.
A Jet Airways flight No 9W 730 Delhi to Patna departed from T-3 at scheduled time 2.30 pm but due to non availability of taxiway at Patna airport it was diverted to Varanasi. Later, it has been returned to Delhi and landed back at Terminal-3 at 9.30 pm. All 150 passengers were taken to a hotel Vasant Kunj and a special flight will be arranged to them which they will fly on Saturday at 8.30 am. This information was provided by Jet Airways, said Sanjay Bhatia, DCP airport.
The agency did not find any evidence against bus conductor Ashok Kumar, who was the Gurgaon polices sole accused in the killing.
New Delhi: After apprehending a Class 11 student of Ryan International School, Gurgaon, for allegedly killing seven-year-old Pradyuman Thakur of the same school, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) is now trying to ascertain the identity of the individuals who allegedly attempted to destroy the evidence after the sensational murder.
Sources in the agency said, A case of destruction of evidence is also being investigated by the agency. The CBI sleuths are now trying to ascertain the identity of the individuals, if any, who allegedly attempted to destroy the evidence. Destruction of evidence by certain individuals cannot be ruled out.
If required, the sleuths may conduct lie-detector test on certain individuals in this regard, sources said adding that the CBIs investigation is at a crucial stage.
Pradyuman was murdered on September 8 inside the Ryan International School. He was found dead with his throat slit inside the schools washroom within an hour after his father dropped him at school that morning. The gruesome murder of the Class 2 student triggered a nation-wide furore.
The Class 11 student, who was apprehended by the CBI, allegedly committed the crime as he wanted to get a scheduled parent teacher meeting (PTM) and an examination postponed, claimed the CBI.
The agency did not find any evidence against bus conductor Ashok Kumar, who was the Gurgaon polices sole accused in the killing. The CBIs findings will be a major embarrassment for the Gurgaon police, which had blamed Kumar and alleged that he was waiting in the toilet with a knife. The Gurgaon police had formed 14 SIT teams to find the accused.
Kumar, a resident of Ghamdoj village in Sohna, was hired by a school bus contractor around seven months before the killing. Now that they have arrested the accused student, it has been proven that the doubts that we had about the police probe was right, Pradyumans father Varun Thakur had said after detention made by the CBI in this case.
The CBI was able to piece together elements of the crime by analysing the CCTV footage, scientific and forensic examination, analysis of the crime scene and by questioning students, teachers and staff of the school. The call detail records of all the suspects were also scrutinised, sources said.
Earlier, a CBI team once again visited the school on Friday and questioned the teachers and other staff in connection with the crime, and the sequence of events before and after the body of Pradyuman was found.
The agency will also identify the individuals, if any, who allegedly helped the apprehended student in procuring knife used in the commission of crime, sources said.
Shashank Rane, the constable, was placed under suspension after a video of the incident went viral.
Mumbai: A day after a traffic police constable was suspended after he allegedly towed a car with a woman sitting inside it and breastfeeding her infant child on SV Road in Malad on Friday, locals who witnessed the incident have said the woman deliberately sat inside the car when it was being prepared for towing.
Shashank Rane, the constable, was placed under suspension after a video of the incident went viral.
The owner of a pan bidi shop that is located at the spot where the incident happened, said, We were doing our work when I saw that woman run towards the car and sit in it. She was yelling at the traffic cop and was saying that there were other cars also parked there and so they should be towed instead of hers.
The shop owner, who did not want to be named, added, The constable explained to her for a few minutes but later when she said she was not going to get out of the car, the police started towing the car, while the womans husband gave her the child and closed the door. The police has recorded the pan shop owners statement to probe the incident.
Another eyewitness, wine shop owner Bharat Soni, said, I was watching the scene suddenly this woman sat in the car and started arguing. The police asked them to come to the police station and complete the formalities, but she was not ready to get out of the car, and then took her child inside. He added, She came here to shop, not breastfeed the child.
Amitesh Kumar, joint commissioner of police traffic, said, It has been prima facie noticed that the safety of the woman and the child was endangered in the said incident. We are doing our inquiry, soon we will take further decisions.
Despite attempts, the woman or her husband could not be reached for their comment.
According to the police, her husband had uploaded the video on social media, after which it went viral. The incident was soon reported to higher authorities, who suspended Rane with immediate effect.
There is a view being expressed that the government will loose about Rs 2 lakh crore because of the reversal of its earlier decision.
The GST Council must be commended for alleviating, to a significant extent, the enormous hardship that the poor and the small and medium industries suffered due to the hasty implementation of the Goods and Services Tax (GST). It has also helped the aam admi as the tax on items of daily use like healthcare products, detergents and even chocolates has been reduced. These are among the 228 items that were moved from the highest 28 per cent slab to 18 per cent whilst many of those in the 18 per cent bracket have been moved to five per cent and even zero tax. Whether this will bring the elusive aache din for the aam admi, only time will tell.
The Councils push to the construction industry by reducing several items used by this industry into the 18 per cent bracket should bring some cheer to homebuyers that is, if the benefits are passed on. Interestingly, a section of the jewellery trade, which generates and helps in concealing large amounts of black money, has already found ways to circumvent the law, according to a sting operation undertaken by a news channel. This is a wakeup call for the government. There is a view being expressed that the government will loose about Rs 2 lakh crore because of the reversal of its earlier decision. But for this, it has only itself to blame. The government introduced GST in haste, making it one of the highest in the world. If the government is seriously contrite about the damage done, it should make the people/ person who took this hasty decision, answerable and deal with it accordingly. News trickling out suggests that this decision, taken in July 2017, was not unanimous.
West Bengal finance minister Amit Mitra has been proved right. Had the government listened to his views for postponing the July decision, there would have been no need for the GST Council to resort to the massive reversal of the earlier decision. Mr Mitra was echoing the views of state finance ministers across the country and of different parties. The GST Council was guided by the feedback from various organisations and this only underscores the fact that the government did not consult the peoples representatives before letting the Union finance minister Arun Jaitleys view prevail. Prime Minister Narendra Modis vision of a federal structure was given the boot. It is hoped that the Prime Ministers Office (PMO) will view this incident with all the seriousness that it deserves so that something like this is never repeated. Coming so close on the heels of the disastrous demonetisation, GST is responsible for pushing the already slowing economy further down The seriousness of the issue cannot be dismissed lightly as India lost its place as the fastest growing economy in the world in the last quarter (April-June). The nagging question remains: Who will undo the damage done, particularly to the small and medium businesses that are the backbone of the economy?
Going forward, the new deal offered by the Council is expected to broaden the tax base, make tax compliance easier and help the small and medium traders and entrepreneurs stand on their feet again. Whether there could have been a less painful way of achieving this is still open to debate.
Government agencies depend on observations from weather satellites to inform forecast models that helps prepare for approaching storms.
The NASA-funded CubeSat, called Microwave Radiometer Technology Acceleration (MiRaTA), will be launched into Earths orbit from the rocket carrying the next big US weather satellite (NOAA's JPSS-1) into space.
Behind every weather forecastfrom your local, five-day prediction to a late-breaking hurricane track updateare the satellites that make them possible. Government agencies depend on observations from weather satellites to inform forecast models that help us prepare for approaching storms and identify areas that need evacuating or emergency first responders.
Weather satellites have traditionally been large, both in the effort needed to build them and in actual size. They can take several years to build and can be as big as a small school bus. But all of that could change in the future with the help of a shoebox-sized satellite that will start orbiting Earth later this month.
The NASA-funded CubeSat, called Microwave Radiometer Technology Acceleration (MiRaTA), will be launched into Earths orbit from the rocket carrying the next big US weather satellite (NOAA's JPSS-1) into space. MiRaTA is designed to demonstrate that a small satellite can carry instrument technology thats capable of reducing the cost and size of future weather satellites and has the potential to routinely collect reliable weather data.
Microwave radiometers are one of the workhorse instruments aboard todays weather satellites. These sensitive instruments measure radio frequency signals related to the thermal radiation emitted by atmospheric gases, such as molecular oxygen and water vapour, and also detect particles such as cloud ice. These data are key inputs for models that track storms and other weather events. Calibrating these radiometers is important for keeping them from drifting so their data can be used for accurate weather and climate models. Therefore, a calibration target is usually included in the satellite to help the radiometer maintain its accuracy.
Miniaturizing microwave radiometer instruments to fit on a CubeSat leads to the challenge of finding a calibration instrument that is not only accurate but also compact, said Kerri Cahoy, principal investigator for MiRaTA and an associate professor in the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. You dont have room for the bulky calibration targets that you would normally use on larger satellites, Cahoy said. Microwave radiometer calibration targets on larger satellites can be the size of a toaster, but for CubeSats, it would have to be the size of a deck of cards.
Cahoy and her colleague William Blackwell, the microwave radiometer instrument lead at MIT Lincoln Laboratory, have come up with a solution based on a technique she studied in graduate school called radio occultation (RO), whereby radio signals received from GPS satellites in a higher orbit are used to measure the temperature of the same volume of atmosphere that the radiometer is viewing. The GPS-RO temperature measurement can then be used for calibrating the radiometer.
Small satellites such as CubeSats are playing an increasingly larger role in exploration, technology demonstration, scientific research and educational investigations at NASA, including planetary space exploration; Earth observations; fundamental Earth and space science; and developing precursor science instruments like cutting-edge laser communications, satellite-to-satellite communications and autonomous movement capabilities.
(Source: Deccan Chronicle)
Akash Talati, reportedly from Anand in Gujarat, died at the hospital.
Akash R Talati, 40, who owned Knights Inn and Diamondz Gentlemen's Club in Fayetteville city, was an innocent bystander. (Photo: Facebook)
New York: An Indian-origin owner of a motel was shot dead and four other people were injured in a shootout in the US state of North Carolina, police said.
Akash R Talati, 40, who owned Knights Inn and Diamondz Gentlemen's Club in Fayetteville city, was an innocent bystander when a man who had been escorted out of the club returned soon and exchanged gunfire with a security guard Saturday, police Detective Jamaal Littlejohn said.
Police said they were called to the club at 1:51 am on Saturday.
Detective Littlejohn said Markeese Dewitt, 23, of Fayetteville has been charged with attempted murder and assault with a deadly weapon inflicting serious injury.
Littlejohn said Markeese Dewitt was shot four or five times and remained in serious condition at Cape Fear Valley Medical Centre, fayobserver.com reported.
He said only Markeese Dewitt and the security guard exchanged gunfire and the others were bystanders.
One of the victims was in a fair condition at the hospital. The two others were treated and released. Akash Talati, reportedly from Anand in Gujarat, died at the hospital.
External Affairs Minister, Sushma Swaraj confirmed Akash Talati's death in a series of tweets.
Indian Embassy in US has informed me of the circumstances leading to the death of Akash Talati, a US citizen of Indian origin. /1 Sushma Swaraj (@SushmaSwaraj) November 12, 2017
The deceased was shot by an assailant who was escorted out of his club. The security guard returned the fire and the assailant was also injured. /2 Sushma Swaraj (@SushmaSwaraj) November 12, 2017
We are in touch with the family of the deceased and will provide them all help. /3 Sushma Swaraj (@SushmaSwaraj) November 12, 2017
Police have not released the names of three other people who were injured. Littlejohn said they included the security guard and a female employee of the club who operated the cash register.
The detective said security escorted Markeese Dewitt out of the club because he had caused a disturbance. He said Markeese appeared to have gone to his vehicle, got a gun, went back inside the club and started shooting.
Detective Littlejohn said police have no idea what caused Markeese to get kicked out of the club.
"All we know is he got put out, he goes and gets a gun and it goes crazy from there," Littlejohn said.
Detectives are actively investigating the homicide and shooting and have appealed to the public to contact them if they have any information on the incident.
In their meeting, Modi and Trump are likely to discuss a host of key issues of mutual interest.
It will be the first meeting between the two leaders following a proposal to have a quadrilateral alliance among India, the US, Japan, and Australia. (Photo: PTI/File)
Manila: Prime Minister Narendra Modi and US President Donald Trump are likely to have a bilateral meeting on Monday on the sidelines of the ASEAN summit.
Modi will arrive in Manila on Sunday to attend the 15th ASEAN- India summit and 12th East Asia summit on November 14.
President Trump is also scheduled to arrive Sunday as part of his five-nation Asia tour of Japan, South Korea, China, Vietnam, and the Philippines.
Read: APEC summit: Indias growth astounding, says Trump, praises Modi
Official sources said the meeting between Modi and President Trump is likely to take place on Monday.
It will be the first meeting between the two leaders following a proposal to have a quadrilateral alliance among India,US, Japan and Australia.
Japan in October had indicated that it would propose a top-level dialogue with US, India and Australia. Sources said officials of the four countries may meet on the sidelines of the ASEAN summit.
Reacting to the Japanese move, India had said that it was open to working with like-minded countries on issues that advance its interests. US had said it was looking at a "working-level" quadrilateral meeting in the near term with India, Japan and Australia.
Read: China 'uncomfortably' switches to Indo-Pacific from Asia-Pacific
Japan's Foreign Minister Taro Kono in October had said that Tokyo favours a dialogue between Japan,US, India and Australia to further boost strategic partnership among the four countries.
The move to set up the quadrilateral comes in the backdrop of growing Chinese assertiveness in the South China Sea. US has been favouring a larger role for India in the strategically key Indo-Pacific region.
The use of the term "Indo-Pacific" by President Trump has led to speculation that it may have something to do with Washington preparing the ground for a revival of the so called Quadrilateral strategic alliance between US, Japan, Australia and India to counter China's rise.
In their meeting, Modi and Trump are likely to discuss a host of key issues of mutual interest including the security scenario in the region.
Read: Trump sends strong message on trade with Asia: Vietnam
Trump on Saturday praised India's "astounding" growth after it opened up its economy and also lauded Modi, saying he has been working successfully to bring the vast country and its people together.
Speaking at a gathering of CEOs on the side-lines of the annual Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in the Vietnamese city of Danang, President Trump cited India as one of the countries in the Indo-Pacific region making strides.
He praised India as a sovereign democracy with a population of over 1 billion as well as the largest democracy in the world.
Modi is expected to meet many other leaders attending the two summits.
He will also participate in the ASEAN business and investment summit as well as a meeting of leaders of Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP).
The RCEP, comprising of 10-member ASEAN bloc and six other countries - India, China, Japan, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand, is engaged in negotiations for a free trade pact.
In his maiden visit to the Philippines as Prime Minister, Modi will also attend a reception by the Indian community and visit the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) and the Mahavir Philippines Foundation.
Modi was also seen chit-chatting with Japanese PM Shinzo Abe, Russian PM Dmitry Medvedev and Malaysian PM Najib Razak.
The brief interaction between Modi and Trump came ahead of their scheduled bilateral meeting on Monday. (Photo: Twitter/MEA)
Manila: Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Sunday held separate pull-aside meetings with US President Donald Trump and Chinese Premier Li Keqiang on the sidelines of a gala dinner to mark the 50th anniversary of the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN).
Modi was also seen chit-chatting with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev and Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak at the reception for the leaders who have arrived here for the 31st ASEAN summit and related meetings.
He also held brief interactions with several other leaders who attended the reception hosted by Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte at the mega SMX Convention Centre in Pasay City here.
The prime minister as well as all other leaders wore Barong Tagalong, an embroidered shirt which is the national dress of the Philippines. Renowned Filipino designer Albert Andrada has designed the shirts.
Modi also tweeted pictures of his interaction with several leaders.
The menu of the gala dinner featured various Filipino cuisines including Filipino steak sushi.
The brief interaction between Modi and Trump came ahead of their scheduled bilateral meeting on Monday. The two leaders are expected to deliberate on a number of key issues of mutual interest including the evolving security situation in the Indo-Pacific region where Washington favours a greater role by India.
There have been concerns over China's growing military presence in the Indo-Pacific and the issue was understood to have figured in a meeting of officials from India, the US, Japan and Australia on Sunday, under the proposed Quadrilateral coalition of the four countries.
"The discussions focused on cooperation based on their converging vision and values for promotion of peace, stability and prosperity in an increasingly inter-connected region that they share with each other and with other partners," the ministry of external affairs said in a statement.
"They agreed that a free, open, prosperous and inclusive Indo-Pacific region serves the long-term interests of all countries in the region and of the world at large," it said.
On Tuesday, Modi will attend the ASEAN-India and East Asia summits where he is likely to reassert India's push for crafting a global approach to deal with growing challenge of terrorism and radicalisation besides pitching for steps to boost regional trade.
Modi will hold bilateral meetings with Duterte on Monday. He also had a conversation with Li at the dinner.
"PM @narendramodi had a warm and cordial conversation with the Chinese Premier Li Keqiang at the Gala Dinner," MEA spokesperson Raveesh Kumar tweeted.
A police official said that the fishermen would now be produced before a judicial magistrate.
The spokesman said that speed boats were deployed to intercept the boats of Indian fishermen, who were arrested as they were fishing illegally in Pakistan's territorial waters. (Photo: Representational/File)
Karachi: Fifty-five Indian fishermen have been arrested by the Pakistan Maritime Security Agency for allegedly fishing in the country's territorial waters.
The PMSA has also seized nine Indian fishing boats during a four-day operation (between Wednesday and Saturday) in the Arabian Sea, a PMSA spokesman said.
The spokesman said that speed boats were deployed to intercept the boats of Indian fishermen, who were arrested as they were fishing illegally in Pakistan's territorial waters.
"The fishermen, after initial investigations, have been handed over to the Docks police," he said.
A police official said that the fishermen would now be produced before a judicial magistrate.
Fishermen from Pakistan and India are frequently detained for illegally fishing in each other's territorial waters since the Arabian Sea does not have a clearly defined marine border and the wooden boats, used by fishermen, lack the technology to avoid them from drifting away.
On October 29, the Pakistan government had released 68 Indian fishermen from Malir jail as a goodwill gesture.
Pakistani authorities had released a total of 438 Indian fishermen between December 2016 and January 2017 from the Landhi and Malir jails in Karachi.
Trump has been working to rally global pressure against North Koreas nuclear weapons program on a trip to Asia.
In a response to North Korea calling Trumps speech in South Korea reckless remarks by an old lunatic, Trump tweeted from Hanoi on Sunday morning. (Photo: AP)
Hanoi: Donald Trump is exchanging school yard taunts with North Koreas Kim Jong Un.
In a response to North Korea calling Trumps speech in South Korea reckless remarks by an old lunatic, Trump tweeted from Hanoi on Sunday morning: Why would Kim Jong-un insult me by calling me old, when I would NEVER call him short and fat?
Why would Kim Jong-un insult me by calling me "old," when I would NEVER call him "short and fat?" Oh well, I try so hard to be his friend - and maybe someday that will happen! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 12, 2017
Trump goes on to say sarcastically, Oh well, I try so hard to be his friend and maybe someday that will happen!
Trump has been working to rally global pressure against North Koreas nuclear weapons program on a trip to Asia. That includes a stern speech delivered in South Koreas National Assembly on Tuesday, in which he said: Do not underestimate us. And do not try us....The weapons youre acquiring are not making you safer, they are putting your regime in grave danger. Every step you take down this dark path increases the peril you face.
On Saturday, Kims government responded by accusing Trump of trying to demonize North Korea, keep it apart from the international community and undermine its government.
Reckless remarks by an old lunatic like Trump will never scare us or stop our advance, the Norths Foreign Ministry said in a statement. On the contrary, all this makes us more sure that our choice to promote economic construction at the same time as building up our nuclear force is all the more righteous, and it pushes us to speed up the effort to complete our nuclear force.
North Korea is not known to have tested any of its missiles or nuclear devices since Sept 15, a relative lull after a brisk series of tests earlier this year.
Vietnam has reclaimed land around reefs and islets, but on nowhere near the same scale as China.
Trump was speaking in Vietnam, which has become the most vocal opponent of China's claims and its construction and militarisation of artificial islands in the sea. (Photo: AP)
Hanoi: US President Donald Trump said on Sunday he was prepared to mediate between claimants to the South China Sea, where five countries contest China's sweeping claims to the busy waterway.
Trump was speaking in Vietnam, which has become the most vocal opponent of China's claims and its construction and militarisation of artificial islands in the sea. About $3-trillion in goods passes through the sea each year.
"If I can help mediate or arbitrate, please let me know," Trump said in comments at a meeting in Hanoi with Vietnam's president, Tran Dai Quang.
Trump acknowledged that China's position on the South China Sea was a problem.
"I'm a very good mediator and arbitrator," he said.
President Quang said Vietnam believed in handling disputes on the South China Sea through peaceful negotiations and on the basis of international laws - which Vietnam says nullify China's claims.
Vietnam has reclaimed land around reefs and islets, but on nowhere near the same scale as China. Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines and Taiwan also have claims in the sea.
Since Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte has grown closer to China, Vietnam has emerged as China's main challenger in the region. In July, China pressured Vietnam to stop oil drilling in a disputed area, taking relations to a low.
Relations have since improved and Chinese President Xi Jinping is visiting Hanoi later on Sunday.
The South China Sea was discussed in Beijing on an earlier leg of Trump's 12-day Asian tour and US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said the United States and China had a frank exchange of views.
The United States has angered China with freedom of navigation patrols close to Chinese-controlled islands.
Code of Conduct
In August, foreign ministers of Southeast Asia and China adopted a negotiating framework for a code of conduct in the South China Sea, a move they hailed as progress but one seen by critics as a tactic to buy China time to consolidate its power.
The framework seeks to advance a 2002 Declaration of Conduct (DOC) of Parties in the South China Sea, which has mostly been ignored by claimant states, particularly China, which has built seven man-made islands in disputed waters, three of them equipped with runways, surface-to-air missiles and radars.
All parties say the framework is only an outline for how the code will be established and critics raise doubts about how effective the pact will be.
The framework will be endorsed by China and members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) at a summit in Manila on Monday, a diplomat from one of the regional bloc's countries said.
The next step is for ASEAN and China to start formal consultations and negotiations for the actual Code of Conduct, and the earliest that talks on this can start is February 2018, the diplomat said.
From Vietnam, Trump flies to the Philippines for a meeting with ASEAN leaders before he heads back to Washington.
Relations between Vietnam and the United States have blossomed in the decades since their war ended in 1975. A recent survey put the favourability of the United States at 84 percent among Vietnamese.
But Vietnam's trade surplus remains an irritant for the Trump administration. At $32 billion last year, it was the sixth largest with the United States, though less than a tenth the size of China's.
"We want to get that straightened out very quickly," Trump said at a meeting with Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc.
The ties between India and ASEAN have been on an upswing in the last few years.
US, France and Japan have been pitching for a larger role by India in the strategically key Indo-Pacific region where China has been trying to increase its military presence. (Photo: File)
Manila: Prime Minister Narendra Modi arrived in Manila on Sunday on a three-day visit to attend the ASEAN-India and East Asia summits where he is likely to reassert India's push for crafting a global approach to deal with growing challenge of terrorism and radicalisation besides pitching for steps to boost regional trade.
The thorny issue of China's aggressive military maneuver in the disputed South China Sea, North Korea's nuclear missile tests and overall security architecture in the region will come up for discussion during the ASEAN summit on Tuesday, diplomats said.
On the sidelines of the main events, Prime Minister Modi is likely to have a series of bilateral meetings with a number of leaders including US President Donald Trump, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull and Russian Premier Dmitry Medvedev.
A host of leaders including Myanmar State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi, Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen, Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak, Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong and New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern have already arrived in the city to attend deliberations at the
ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asia Nations), a grouping of 10 influential countries.
The ties between India and ASEAN have been on an upswing in the last few years with focus being on ramping up cooperation in the areas of trade and investment as well as security and defence.
"Every single country in the ASEAN region wants India to be more engaged in the region in every possible way. That is the real synergy we have with ASEAN," Indian Ambassador to Philippines Jaideep Mazumdar said.
US, France and Japan have been pitching for a larger role by India in the strategically key Indo-Pacific region where China has been trying to increase its military presence.
Majumdar said terrorism is going to be one of the issues that will be discussed not only during the ASEAN summit but also at the East Asia summit. He said several documents are going to be adopted with an aim to contain terrorism including one on stopping money laundering for the purpose of terrorism.
While ASEAN summit is likely to focus more on trade and investment related issues, leaders at the East Asia Summit are expected to delve deep into issues relating to maritime security, terrorism, non-proliferation and migration.
Read: Modi embarks on ASEAN summit, likely to hold talks with Trump
Apart from the 10 ASEAN Member states, East Asia Summit includes India, China, Japan, Republic of Korea, Australia, New Zealand, United States and Russia.
Modi will address the ASEAN-India and East Asia summits on Tuesday. He would also take part in special celebrations of the 50th anniversary of ASEAN.
The ASEAN region along with India together comprises combined population of 1.85 billion people, which is one fourth of the global population and their combined GDP has been estimated at over USD 3.8 trillion.
Investment from ASEAN to India has been over USD 70 billion in the last 17 years accounting for more than 17 per cent of Indias total FDI. Indias investment in ASEAN during the same period has been more than USD 40 billion.
India's proposal to host an international conference on countering radicalisation may also be discussed during the deliberations at Manila as New Delhi is now looking at finalising the dates for the conclave.
Prime Minister Modi will also participate in the ASEAN business and investment summit as well as a meeting of leaders of Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP).
The RCEP, comprising 10-member ASEAN bloc and six other countries - India, China, Japan, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand - is engaged in negotiations for a free trade pact.
In his maiden visit to the Philippines as the Prime Minister, Modi will also attend a reception by the Indian community and visit the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) and Mahavir Philippines Foundation.
Modi is scheduled to have a bilateral one-on-one hour-long meeting with Trump on the sidelines of the ASEAN summit on Monday afternoon.
New Delhi/Manila: In a significant move indicating the first steps towards the formation of a quadrilateral comprising India, the United States, Australia and Japan, senior officials of the four nations met on Sunday in Manila ahead of the East Asia Summit there.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who reached Manila on Sunday, held separate pull-aside meetings with US President Donald Trump and Chinese Premier Li Keqiang on the sidelines of the gala dinner to mark the 50th anniversary of Asean in the evening hosted by Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte. Mr Modi was also seen conversing with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Russian PM Dmitry Medvedev and Malaysian PM Najib Razak at a reception for the leaders who have arrived here for the 31st Asean summit and its related meetings. Mr Modi later tweeted pictures of his interaction with several other world leaders.
Mr Modi is scheduled to have a bilateral one-on-one hour-long meeting with the US President on the sidelines of the Asean summit on Monday afternoon. The two leaders are expected to deliberate on a number of key issues of mutual interest, including the evolving security situation in the Indo-Pacific region where Washington favours a greater role by India.
At Sunday evenings dinner, Mr Modi and the other leaders wore Barong Tagalong, an embroidered shirt which is the national dress of the Philippines, designed by renowned Filipino designer Albert Andrada.
At the Quadrilateral session, officials of the four nations met for consultations on issues of common interest in the Indo-Pacific region, with the discussions focused on cooperation based on their converging vision and values for promotion of peace, stability and prosperity. The four countries agreed that a free, open, prosperous and inclusive Indo-Pacific region serves the long-term interests of all countries in the region and of the world at large. The formation of a Quadrilateral was a recent Japanese proposal and is being viewed by foreign policy experts as an attempt to rein in China, which has been asserting its might militarily and economically in its neighbourhood.
The reference to the importance of peace and stability as also inclusiveness in the Indo-Pacific region is being seen as a reaction and veiled reference to the assertive Chinese military posture in the area. China has maritime disputes with several Southeast Asian nations as well as with Japan. Following the Japanese proposal, New Delhi indicated it was open to such an idea, pointing out that it was already part of several trilateral consultation processes. The term Indo-Pacific also seems to have replaced the term Asia-Pacific, highlighting the rising importance of India in US strategy in the region.
In a statement, the external affairs ministry said: Officials from Indias ministry of external affairs, Australias department of foreign affairs, Japans ministry of foreign affairs and the US department of state met in Manila on November 12, 2017 for consultations on issues of common interest in the Indo-Pacific region. The discussions focused on cooperation based on their converging vision and values for promotion of peace, stability and prosperity in an increasingly inter-connected region that they share with each other and with other partners.
The MEA added: They agreed that a free, open, prosperous and inclusive Indo-Pacific region serves the long-term interests of all countries in the region and of the world at large. The officials also exchanged views on addressing common challenges of terrorism and proliferation linkages impacting the region as well as on enhancing connectivity. The Indian side highlighted Indias Act East policy as the cornerstone of its engagement in the Indo-Pacific region.
On University Hospitals Birmingham website, Gupta is described as a consultant in emergency medicine.
His area of professional interest is military medicine. A member of the emergency team said that he is also technical service head. (Photo: File/Representational)
London: A 52-year-old Indian-origin doctor in the UK has been charged with committing three sex assaults, according to a media report.
Vibhore Gupta, based at Edgbaston's Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham, was arrested in March this year, following a report made to the police.
In 2013, he added his weight to West Midlands Police's "Knives End Lives" campaign, aimed at raising awareness of the perils of carrying a knife, Birmingham Mail reported.
"A 52-year-old man from Harborne has been charged with three counts of sexual assault and one count of assault," a West Midlands Police spokesman said.
"The doctor is due to appear at Birmingham Magistrates Court on Tuesday November 21." On University Hospitals Birmingham website, Gupta is described as a consultant in emergency medicine.
His area of professional interest is military medicine. A member of the emergency team said that he is also technical service head.
ISIS recaptured Albu Kamal in eastern Syria to save the last urban bastion of its collapsing 'caliphate.'
The jihadist rebound came as the United States and Russia issued a surprise joint presidential statement saying there was no military solution to Syria's grinding six-year war. (Photo: AP/Representational)
Beirut: ISIS recaptured Albu Kamal in eastern Syria on Saturday after a fierce fightback to save the last urban bastion of its collapsing "caliphate".
The jihadist rebound came as the United States and Russia issued a surprise joint presidential statement saying there was "no military solution" to Syria's grinding six-year war.
The two countries have long backed opposite sides in Syria, but the Kremlin on Saturday said US President Donald Trump and Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin made progress during a brief meeting on the sidelines of a summit in Vietnam.
Trump and Putin also "confirmed their determination to defeat ISIS".
The jihadist group overran swathes of territory in Syria and Iraq in 2014, but its self-styled "caliphate" has since been whittled down to a pocket of land along the border between the two countries.
ISIS is putting up a fierce defence there, particularly for the vital Syrian border town of Albu Kamal, said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group.
Syrian regime forces and allied militia from Lebanon, Iraq and Iran overran Albu Kamal on Thursday but lost the town again just two days later after a string of ISIS counter-attacks and ambushes.
"ISIS fully recaptured Albu Kamal, and regime forces and allied militia are now between one to two kilometres from the city limits," Rami Abdel Rahman, head of the Britain-based Observatory, said on Saturday.
ISIS Squeezed In Iraq
Across the border, Iraqi forces seized on Saturday several villages from the jihadists in an offensive to capture the last ISIS-held section of their country.
The operation's commander, General Abdelamir Yarallah, said his forces captured Rumana and 10 other villages as they worked their way towards the Euphrates Valley town of Rawa, the last Iraqi town still held by ISIS.
Surendra Kumar Sinha, who is believed to be visiting his daughter in Canada, was accused of serious crimes in October.
A rare statement from the Supreme Court in October said other top judges had refused to sit with him at the top bench after he was accused of serious crimes such as graft. (Photo: AP/Representational)
Dhaka: Bangladesh on Saturday said its chief justice has tendered his resignation from overseas in the wake of government corruption allegations, as opposition groups raised fears that his departure was a blow to judicial independence.
Surendra Kumar Sinha, who led the Supreme Court to a landmark verdict on judicial oversight in August that went against the government, left Bangladesh last month amid widespread rumours that he had been pressured to step aside.
His resignation letter has reached the Bangabhaban (presidential palace), Joynal Abedin, press secretary to President Abdul Hamid, said, adding that once submitted his termination was irreversible.
Sinha, who is believed to be visiting his daughter in Canada, was accused of serious crimes in October including money laundering and financial irregularities, just a day after he departed on a month-long leave, expressing his fears for judicial independence in the nation.
Former law and justice minister Moudud Ahmed, now a member of the main opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), called the resignation unprecedented and shameful.
Weve never heard before of a sitting chief justice resigning, he said. He has been forced to resign.... This is a direct attack on the independence of the judiciary.
A rare statement from the Supreme Court in October said other top judges had refused to sit with him at the top bench after he was accused of serious crimes such as graft.
The saga comes just months after Sinha led the Supreme Court in scrapping parliaments power to sack top judges - a move hailed by lawyers as a crucial safeguard for a secular judiciary in the Muslim-majority nation.
The ruling overturned a 2014 constitutional change introduced by Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina allowing the parliament - controlled by her Awami League party -- to remove top judges.
In a written statement issued before his departure, Sinha expressed dismay over criticism he had faced from the government over that ruling and said he was a bit worried about the independence of the judiciary.
Sinha had previously insisted he would return to Bangladesh once his leave ended on November 10.
MTA transit workers recently received a bulletin that requires them to use gender-neutral terms such as passengers, riders or everyone, the New York Post reported, adding that conductors will override prerecorded greetings that use ladies and gentlemen until the replacements are made.
Please dont use any greeting other than these, the memo says. It also directs conductors on newer trains with automated announcements to override the prerecorded message with the updated, PC ones, until the agency can get them changed out.
The bulletin warns workers that line managers and train service supervisors will be monitoring them to make sure they dont use the old phrasing.
An MTA spokesperson said that gender issues were a consideration for the move.
They are trying to be politically correct, said station worker and Transport Workers Union Local 100 member Anthony Staley. They are acknowledging that they have some transgender riders. They dont want to offend anyone.
Last year, the New York City Commission of Human Rights released a list of gender-neutral pronouns to all the citys businesses and landlords. The list required business owners and landlords to use gender pronouns like ze, which can be used instead of he or she, and hir, which is similar to they. A business could be fined as much as $250,000 for willful, hostile and repeated misuse of pronouns.
According to a recent report, to fund the program, the MTAs debt service and other operating resources are expected to increase over the next five years by 22 percent to $3.5 billion.
In addition, the authoritys debt service is projected to total about $2.6 billion in 2017, almost a threefold increase since 2003, and is projected to reach $3.4 billion by 2022.
There has been no estimate of how much new announcements throughout the citys massive transportation system would cost.
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Manatee Technical College's Cantrell Hall was transformed into a massive dental clinic over the weekend, and the classrooms into doctors offices.
Free health clinic in Manatee serviced 1000+
Patients received medical, vision, and dental care
Event possible through Remote Area Medical Clinic
Anyone in need of medical, vision, or dental care was invited to attend. The event was completely free of charge with no identification required.
The Remote Area Medical Clinic, or RAM, functions entirely off volunteers. Every doctor, dentist, and opthamologist who volunteered are registered in the state of Florida. Each of them, taking their weekend to give back to their community.
"Especially in an area that you have an expertise and a skill set that no other people have... and as dentists to be able to give back and use that is a phenomenal opportunity," said Steve Tinsworth, a Bradenton Orthodontist.
This RAM clinic is the only one of its kind in the state this year. It brought people in from across the state, like Englewood resident Renee Allee, who spent the night in her car to ensure a spot in line for the dental clinic.
"I slept in my car all night... a lot of people did," she said.
Through tears, she thanked the oral surgeon and dentists who worked on her. In all, she had seven teeth pulled.
"I don't have to wait another year, with the swelling and the pain... and I can smile," she explained.
The latest U.S. Census data shows that more than 18% of Manatee County resident don't have health insurance. Making things like glasses also out of the question for so many. Not only were eye appointments free, but frames of their choice, ready to take home in just hours.
Walt Disney World has installed the first characters in the upcoming Toy Story Land.
Last week, Jesse and Rex arrived at Disneys Hollywood Studios.
Photos and videos released by Disney show the two large figures positioned around the Slinky Dog Dash Coaster, a family-friendly coaster. Rex sits atop a Jenga tower, while Jesse stands on a stack of blocks.
The storyline goes: Jesse and Rex decide to help Andy build a roller coaster in his backyard by stringing up light on towers of blocks. However, Rex gets tangled in the lights. Thankfully, Jesse is nearby to help.
In October, Disney revealed that Toy Story Land would feature Woodys Lunch Box, a quick-service restaurant. Although a full menu wasnt released, we know that the eatery will serve tasty meals and old-fashioned soda floats.
In addition to Slinky Dog Dash, the land will feature an Alien Swirling Saucers attraction.
Toy Story Land is slated to open next summer.
Watch a timelapse of the installation below:
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PR Newswire
WASHINGTON, Nov. 11, 2017
WASHINGTON, Nov. 11, 2017 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- "This Veteran's Day we give thanks to our country's veterans and show reverence for the sacrifices they have made for our country. However, it is critical to provide year-round support for this community including access to quality healthcare and tailored clinical services to live healthy lives. Because so many more veterans and active duty members of the military smoke than the civilian population, veterans require smoking cessation resources to match their higher rates of tobacco use," said Jane L. Delgado, Ph.D., M.S., President and CEO of the National Alliance for Hispanic Health (the Alliance), the nation's leading Hispanic health advocacy group.
The military has a long history of tobacco use and a culture of smoking. While 57% of the U.S. population has never smoked cigarettes, only 32% of veterans receiving health care from the Veterans Administration (VA) report they have never smoked. There are currently 18.5 million military veterans in the United States and Puerto Rico, and 1.2 million of them are Hispanic (6.5%).
As with all users, cigarette smoking increases risk for diseases among veterans and active-duty members, including lung cancer, heart disease, and many others. Additionally, their strength and performance can be impaired by smoking, either through exposure to nicotine in cigarettes, or through nicotine withdrawal. Service members who use tobacco are also more likely to drop out of basic training and experience accidents and injuries, which negatively impact troop readiness.
The Alliance is promoting the CDC and VA's free resources to help veterans quit tobacco use through its Nuestras Voces (Our Voices) Network, spearheaded by 11 regional partners around the country, which works to reduce tobacco use and cancer incidence in Hispanic communities. Network efforts include providing technical assistance to Hispanic-serving organizations to improve their ability to connect people to screening and cessation services, raising awareness of tobacco and cancer-related risks through the media, and conducting provider trainings on tobacco and cancer control evidence-based interventions.
Many resources are available to help veterans and active-duty service members quit. These resources include cessation counseling and medicines, quitlines, and other services through TRICARE coverage and Department of Defense programs. Cessation counseling at VA medical centers and FDA-approved smoking cessation medications at VA pharmacy programs are available. The VA's Tobacco and Health webpage (www.publichealth.va.gov/smoking/index.asp) links to information on quitting and cessation medication/counseling, and the SmokefreeVET program (www.smokefree.gov/veterans) offers text messaging cessation support (text VET to 47848 for English, VETesp for Spanish). To speak with a tobacco cessation counselor in English or Spanish call 1-855-QUIT-VET.
According to Dr. Delgado, "The challenges veterans face both during and after their service can be numerous, but becoming sick from using tobacco use shouldn't be one of them. To overcome this dangerous habit, all of our veterans need to understand the real costs of using tobacco and the right tools to get the help they need to quit."
About the Nuestras Voces Network. Nuestras Voces is a national network of over 200 members working for a tobacco-free world and to eliminate disparities in cancer prevention and treatment services. You can be part of this effort being led by the National Alliance for Hispanic Health! Join us at www.nuestrasvoces.org/join.
About the National Alliance for Hispanic Health. The Alliance is the nation's foremost science-based source of information and trusted advocate for the health of Hispanics in the United States with a mission to achieve the best health outcomes for all. For more information visit us www.hispanichealth.org.
View original content:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/national-alliance-for-hispanic-health-honors-nations-veterans-with-focus-on-dangers-of-tobacco-use-300554258.html
SOURCE National Alliance for Hispanic Health
PR Newswire
HANOI, Vietnam, Nov. 11, 2017
HANOI, Vietnam, Nov. 11, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Pratt & Whitney, a division of United Technologies Corp. (NYSE: UTX), and VietJet Air ("VietJet") today announced the selection of the PurePower Geared Turbofan (GTF) engine to power an order of 10 new aircraft. This deal, which is valued at $600 million at list prices, includes a 12-year EngineWise Fleet Management Program. This order follows a February 2016 contract signing for GTF engines to power VietJet's 63 newly ordered aircraft.
The signing took place in a ceremony in Vietnam's capital, Hanoi, and was attended by U.S. President Donald Trump and Mr. Tr?n ??i Quang, President of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam, along with officials from VietJet and Pratt & Whitney during the president's official trip to Vietnam for the APEC 2017.
"We are delighted to add 10 additional GTF-powered new aircraft to our fleet. We look forward to the proven performance and environmental benefits that they deliver," said Dinh Viet Phuong, vice president of VietJet Air.
Since entering into service in early 2016, the GTF engine has demonstrated its promised ability to reduce fuel burn by 16 percent, regulated emissions by 50 percent and noise footprint by 75 percent.
"We were honored to celebrate a new relationship with VietJet last year, and we are thrilled to extend this relationship now and into the future," said Rick Deurloo, senior vice president of sales, marketing and customer support at Pratt & Whitney.
About VietJet Air Since commencing operations in 2011, VietJet, Vietnam's largest airline in terms of domestic market share, has become the Asia Pacific's fastest growing low-cost carrier. It has operated profitably since its second year of operation with over 73 domestic and international routes and technical reliability rate of 99.6%, the highest among the airlines in the region who operate the same aircraft model.
About Pratt & Whitney Pratt & Whitney is a world leader in the design, manufacture and service of aircraft engines and auxiliary power units. United Technologies Corp., based in Farmington, Connecticut, provides high-technology systems and services to the building and aerospace industries. To learn more about UTC, visit its website at www.utc.com, or follow the company on Twitter: @UTC.
This press release contains forward-looking statements concerning future business opportunities. Actual results may differ materially from those projected as a result of certain risks and uncertainties, including but not limited to changes in levels of demand in the aerospace industry, in levels of air travel, and in the number of aircraft to be built; challenges in the design, development, production support, performance and realization of the anticipated benefits of advanced technologies; as well as other risks and uncertainties, including but not limited to those detailed from time to time in United Technologies Corp.'s Securities and Exchange Commission filings.
Pratt & Whitney+1 (860) [email protected]
View original content:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/vietjet-air-and-pratt--whitney-announce-selection-of-purepower-geared-turbofan-for-aircraft-order-300554261.html
SOURCE Pratt & Whitney
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Bob Geldof is to hand back his Freedom of the City of Dublin, saying he does not want to be associated with the award while it is also held by Aung San Suu Kyi.
The Live Aid founder and musician blasted the Burmese Nobel peace laureate, who has faced widespread criticism over her country's treatment of its Rohingya Muslim minority.
In a statement he said: "Her association with our city shames us all and we should have no truck with it, even by default. We honoured her, now she appals and shames us.
Mr Geldof said he would hand back the freedom at City Hall in the Irish capital on Monday morning.
Mr Geldof, who received an honorary knighthood from the Queen for his charity work, said he was a "proud Dubliner" but could not continue to hold the freedom while Ms Suu Kyi also held it.
He added: "In short, I do not wish to be associated in any way with an individual currently engaged in the mass ethnic cleansing of the Rohingya people of north-west Burma.
"I am a founding patron of The Aegis Trust, who are concerned with genocide prevention and studies. Its founders built and maintain the National Holocaust Museum of the UK.
"I spoke at the inaugural National Holocaust Memorial Day at Westminster and in my time, I have walked amongst peoples who were sectionally targeted with ethnic cleansing.
"I would be a hypocrite now were I to share honours with one who has become at best an accomplice to murder, complicit in ethnic cleansing and a handmaiden to genocide."
More than 600,000 of the minority group have fled the northern Rakhine state into neighbouring Bangladesh since August, leading to a major humanitarian crisis.
It is not the first time Mr Geldof has spoken out against Ms Suu Kyi. Last month at a summit in Colombia he described her as "one of the great ethnic cleansers of our planet".
In his Sunday statement Mr Geldof added: "The moment she is stripped of her Dublin Freedom perhaps the council would see fit to restore to me that which I take such pride in. If not, so be it."
On Saturday fellow Irish musicians U2 also criticised Burma's civilian leader, urging her to fight harder against serious violence inflicted by the nation's own security forces.
The musicians, led by singer Bono, posted a lengthy plea on the band's website, saying they had tried several times to reach out to her directly.
They claimed that her failure to challenge the targeting of thousands of Rohingya was "starting to look a lot like assent".
They wrote: "So we say to you now what we would have said to her: the violence and terror being visited on the Rohingya people are appalling atrocities and must stop.
"Aung San Suu Kyi's silence is starting to look a lot like assent.
"As Martin Luther King said: 'The ultimate tragedy is not the oppression and cruelty by the bad people but the silence over that by the good people'.
"The time has long passed for her to stand up and speak out."
Remembrance Sunday commemorations will take place across the world, and the island of Ireland, today.
The Taoiseach Leo Varadkar will head to Enniskillen to lay a wreath in memory of those who died in the two world wars and President Michael D Higgins will attend the annual Remembrance service at St Patrick's Cathedral in Dublin.
A secret letter from Boris Johnson and Michael Gove giving Theresa May apparent instructions on how to run Brexit has emerged.
Transition arrangements for Britain's exit from the European Union must end on June 30 2021, the Cabinet ministers demanded, according to the Mail on Sunday.
They also urged the British Prime Minister to ensure members of her top team fall behind their Brexit plans by "clarifying their minds" and called for them to "internalise the logic", the newspaper said.
The leaked letter appears to make a thinly veiled attack on Chancellor Philip Hammond, who backed remain and wants a softer Brexit, for lacking the "sufficient energy" in preparing for the UK's future outside the bloc.
A senior British Government source told the newspaper the UK's Foreign Secretary and Environment Secretary had conducted a "soft coup" and described Mrs May as "their Downing Street hostage".
It comes as The Sunday Times reported that 40 Tory MPs had agreed to sign a letter of no confidence in Mrs May - eight short of the number needed.
The leaked letter to the PM from Mr Johnson and Mr Gove, titled EU Exit - Next Steps, is marked "For your and Gavin's eyes only", a reference to the PM's chief of staff Gavin Barwell.
It states: "Your approach is governed by sensible pragmatism. That does not in any way dilute our ambition to be a fully independent self-governing country by the time of the next election. If we are to counter those who wish to frustrate that end, there are ways of underlining your resolve.
"We are profoundly worried that in some parts of Government the current preparations are not proceeding with anything like sufficient energy.
"We have heard it argued by some that we cannot start preparations on the basis of 'No Deal' because that would undermine our obligation of 'sincere co-operation' with the EU. If taken seriously, that would leave us over a barrel in 2021.
"We all want you to push your agenda forward with confidence and have your Government articulate the following..."
No 10 said it did not comment on leaks and neither Mr Johnson or Mr Gove commented.
Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, meanwhile, called for Mrs May to "govern or go" and demanded Mr Johnson to be sacked for "undermining our country" and "putting our citizens at risk".
In an article for The Sunday Times, he wrote: "Continuing uncertainty about the Government's approach to Brexit is now the biggest risk facing our country.
"The Prime Minister must end the confusion, take on the 'no-deal' extremists in her Government and back a jobs first Brexit for Britain."
In a statement to the Observer, he wrote: "We've put up with Johnson embarrassing and undermining our country with his incompetence and colonial throwback views and putting our citizens at risk for long enough. It's time for him to go."
Lebanon's Prime Minister Saad Hariri has said he will return to his country "very soon", in his first televised interview since he resigned in Saudi Arabia last week.
Mr Hariri was speaking today in a live interview to his station Future TV, after pressure from Lebanese officials who said his resignation was not accepted because it was declared in Saudi Arabia.
Lebanon's president said Mr Hariri was being held against his will in Saudi Arabia.
"I am free," Mr Hariri told the TV interviewer.
He said he decided to resign to save the country from imminent danger, but did not elaborate.
Mr Hariri said he would return to Lebanon "very soon", ''in days".
A dual Lebanese-Saudi national and an ally of Riyadh, Mr Hariri unexpectedly announced his resignation on November 4 in a pre-recorded message broadcast on Saudi TV, criticising Iran and Lebanon's Hezbollah militant group, and saying he feared for his safety.
His father, former prime minister Rafik Hariri, was killed by a car bomb in Beirut in 2005. His family lives in Riyadh.
Mr Hariri said his resignation was his decision, dismissing reports he was forced to quit a unity government with his rival Hezbollah militant group.
During the interview Mr Hariri held back tears. He said his resignation was designed to "cause a positive shock" in the country, warning against Iranian interference that was, he said, ruining relations with other Arab countries.
Mr Hariri said he "can't be the only one making concessions while the others do whatever they want".
Lebanon President Michel Aoun said before the interview that the "mysterious circumstances for Hariri's stay in the Saudi capital of Riyadh makes all his positions questionable and in doubt and not of his own volition".
Saudi Arabia has stepped up its rhetoric against Hezbollah and its patron, Iran, accusing both of supporting Shiite rebels in Yemen known as Houthis. A Saudi-led coalition has been at war with the Houthis since March 2015.
Saudi Arabia has asked its citizens to leave Lebanon, and many Lebanese fear further economic sanctions or even military action against their country.
Earlier Sunday, thousands of people attending Lebanon's annual marathon used the event to urge Mr Hariri to return home.
Mr Hariri was a regular participant in the marathon, giving the international sports event a big boost. This year Mr Aoun encouraged runners to call on Mr Hariri to return. Organisers said more than 47,000 took part in the marathon.
Spectators along the marathon course wore hats and held signs reading "Running for you" and "Waiting for you". Large billboards with pictures of Mr Hariri rose overhead, and a local TV station showed an hour-long profile and interview with Mr Hariri from last year.
One woman raised a placard reading: "We want our prime minister back."
- AP
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Small business asset finance firm Little Lease Company (LLC) has welcomed its second former head of Pepper Group in less than two months.With the former co-group CEO of Pepper, Patrick Tuttle, acquiring the firm in September , LLC has now tapped Andrew Paterson to lead the newly created role of general manager, lending and operations, effective from 31 October.He will be based in the firms head office in Sydney and will be primarily responsible for overseeing all aspects of LLCs asset-backed lending and loan servicing operations.Paterson has spent more than 30 years in the finance industry, most recently working as head of credit for Pepper Group. He has also held roles at Genworth Financial, RAMS Home Loans, ING Direct and Advance Bank/St George Bank. He has other links with LLC, spending five years working with David Holmes, one of LLCs other directors, alongside Tuttle and Philip Sullivan.Tuttle said the Patersons appointment came at a critical time with LLC being repositioned as Australias go-to provider of small and micro-ticket asset-backed finance to small and medium enterprises (SMEs).Andrew is a highly experienced financial services executive who will enable us to accelerate the implementation of industry-leading credit, origination, customer service, and loan servicing processes and procedures.Paterson said that joining LLC is a unique opportunity to implement a number of initiatives by utilising his commercial experience across the bank and non-bank spaces.We have a great team. Im keen to take the business to the next level. Its also nice to be back working with Patrick and David once again. Together, we have a strong track record which exemplifies our complementary expertise and skillsets, he said.
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Swiss-based Indian agriculture sector-focused accelerator fund Pioneering Ventures plans to deploy Rs 5,000 crore in the agriculture and food supply chain space in the country over the next five years and reach out to 1 million farmers.
"So far we've deployed close to Rs 1,000 crore in India in many ventures. Over the next five years, we expect this to jump five-fold to Rs 5,000 crore. We are focusing on agriculture and food supply chains and sub-supply chains," its partner Pablo Erat told PTI here over the weekend.
Over the past decade, the fund has launched four in the country Desai Fruits & Vegetables, Citrus International, FarmLink and MilkLane deploying close to Rs 1,000 crore in alliance with institutional investors and high networth individuals.
The Swiss-based Pioneering Ventures is an incubator and accelerator focused at the Indian agriculture and food supply chain space with the investment office in Zurich and operating in India.
Erat said these fresh investments will flow not only into greenfield projects only but also for strategic acquisitions.
The firms set up by the fund will systematically addresses the existing gaps and challenges in the food supply chains. The objective is to reach out to 1 million farmer families in the next five years.
"With regards to acquisitions, have to fit into our DNA. We are looking at areas like distribution and technology firms that help make farming and supply chains more productive and efficient," Erat said, adding the fund will continue to expand its footprint in the country.
"We will continue to expand on the West Coast and partly into the South and are likely to expand into the Delhi region or into the big metros based on commercial opportunity," he added.
Mukesh Ambanis Reliance Industries (RIL) is to increase its presence in the polyester space after the launch of its new brand, RElan, through which it will get into co-branding of apparel. The largest manufacturer of polyester in the country, it has an annual capacity of 2 million tonnes (mt), almost half the countrys 4.5 mt. The firm expects 5 per cent yearly growth in this segment. China, with 45 mt manufacturing capacity out of 70 mt globally, is much ahead of India.
UK-based Vodafone, the only major international telco left in India, is gearing up for a leadership overhaul across roles ahead of the completion of a mega merger with Idea Cellular.
Arunachal Pradesh is Indian territory and the opinion of others on the issue is not a concern for India, Defence Minister said on Saturday, days after China objected to her visit to the state.
Asked about China's objection to her recent visit to Arunachal Pradesh, the Defence Minister said: "What is the problem? There is no problem here. It is our territory, we will go there".
"We are not concerned with someone else's opinion on this", she added.
Sitharaman visited a forward army post in Arunachal Pradesh on November 5 to take stock of the defence preparedness and the situation along the Line of Actual Control (LAC). Later, China reacted angrily to the visit, saying the visit to the "disputed" region would not be conducive to peace on the border. China has maintained that Arunachal Pradesh is a part of south Tibet, a claim which is not accepted by India.
Asked if the issue of giving shelter to Dalai Lama and the Tibetan refugees was a bone of contention in India-China relations, the minister said every issue has its own "weight".
"A relationship can't be made or broken over one issue. Every subject has its own weight", she said at a press conference here.
The minister is campaigning in Gujarat for the coming assembly elections.
On the issue of Kulbhushan Jadhav, a former Naval officer who was arrested in Pakistan and accused of spying, the minister said India was making all efforts to get him back, and added that if Pakistan allowed his wife to visit him, it would be a good humanitarian gesture.
"The case of Kulbhushan Jadhav is pending in the International Court and India is making all efforts so that he is released. I don't know what is the position on Pakistan allowing his wife to visit him, but it would be good as a humanitarian consideration, and it will help in boosting his morale", she said.
Speaking on Jammu and Kashmir, the minister said the state government was taking steps to rein in terrorism, and lauded the state police for its actions.
"In the last one year, you have seen that stone-pelting has almost stopped and I want to give credit to the Jammu and Kashmir Police. The state government is an elected government and they are visiting villages to resolve these issues", she said.
Officials from India, Australia, the US and Japan met here today and discussed issues relating to cooperation in the Indo-Pacific region, seen as a first move to set up a quadrilateral grouping to pursue common interests in the strategically key area.
The external affairs ministry said the discussions focused on cooperation based on converging vision and values for promotion of peace, stability and prosperity in an increasingly inter-connected region.
"They agreed that a free, open, prosperous and inclusive Indo-Pacific region serves the long-term interests of all countries in the region and of the world at large. The officials also exchanged views on addressing common challenges of terrorism and proliferation linkages impacting the region as well as on enhancing connectivity," it said in a statement.
The Indian side highlighted India's Act East Policy as the cornerstone of its engagement in the Indo-Pacific region.
Japanese Foreign Minister Taro Kono last month had said that Tokyo favours a dialogue between Japan, the US, India and Australia to further boost strategic partnership among them.
The move to set up the quadrilateral comes in the backdrop of growing Chinese assertiveness in the South China Sea. The US has been favouring a larger role for India in the strategically key Indo-Pacific region.
Reacting to the Japanese move, India had said it was open to working with like-minded countries on issues that advance its interests.
The US had said it was looking at a "working-level" quadrilateral meeting in the near term with India, Japan and Australia.
A fresh, vast leak of financial records, dubbed the Paradise Papers, has brought the spotlight on how global corporate giants and hedge funds allegedly skirted taxes and the apparently hidden wealth of prominent Indians. This cache of 13.4 million documents comes more than a year after the release of the Panama papers and includes names of Indians such as Amitabh Bachchan, MoS Civil Aviation Jayant Sinha, and Vijay Mallya, among others, according to an Indian Express report. The paper has not suggested any illegality associated with the leaked names.
Here are 16 frequently asked questions about the leak and their answers
Prime Minister Narendra Modi arrived in Manila on Sunday on a three-day visit to attend the ASEAN-India and East Asia summits where he is likely to reassert India's push for crafting a global approach to deal with growing challenge of terrorism and radicalisation besides pitching for steps to boost regional trade.
The thorny issue of China's aggressive military manoeuvre in the disputed South China Sea, North Korea's nuclear missile tests and overall security architecture in the region will come up for discussion during the ASEAN summit on Tuesday, diplomats said.
On the sidelines of the main events, Prime Minister Modi is likely to have a series of bilateral meetings with a number of leaders including US President Donald Trump, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull and Russian Premier Dmitry Medvedev.
A host of leaders including Myanmar State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi, Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen, Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak, Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong and New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern have already arrived in the city to attend deliberations at the ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asia Nations), a grouping of 10 influential countries.
The ties between India and ASEAN have been on an upswing in the last few years with the focus being on ramping up cooperation in the areas of trade and investment as well as security and defence.
"Every single country in the ASEAN region wants India to be more engaged in the region in every possible way. That is the real synergy we have with ASEAN," Indian Ambassador to Philippines Jaideep Mazumdar told PTI.
The US, France and Japan have been pitching for a larger role by India in the strategically key Indo-Pacific region where China has been trying to increase its military presence.
Majumdar said terrorism is going to be one of the issues that will be discussed not only during the ASEAN summit but also at the East Asia summit. He said several documents are going to be adopted with an aim to contain terrorism including one on stopping money laundering for the purpose of terrorism.
While ASEAN summit is likely to focus more on trade and investment-related issues, leaders at the East Asia Summit are expected to delve deep into issues relating to maritime security, terrorism, non-proliferation and migration.
Apart from the 10 ASEAN Member states, East Asia Summit includes India, China, Japan, Republic of Korea, Australia, New Zealand, the United States and Russia.
Modi will address the ASEAN-India and East Asia summits on Tuesday. He would also take part in special celebrations of the 50th anniversary of ASEAN.
The ASEAN region along with India together comprises a combined population of 1.85 billion people, which is one fourth of the global population and their combined GDP has been estimated at over $3.8 trillion.
Investment from ASEAN to India has been over $70 billion in the last 17 years accounting for more than 17 per cent of India's total FDI. India's investment in ASEAN during the same period has been more than $40 billion.
India's proposal to host an international conference on countering radicalisation may also be discussed during the deliberations at Manila as New Delhi is now looking at finalising the dates for the conclave.
Prime minister Modi will also participate in the ASEAN business and investment summit as well as a meeting of leaders of Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP).
The RCEP, comprising 10-member ASEAN bloc and six other countries - India, China, Japan, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand - is engaged in negotiations for a free trade pact.
In his maiden visit to the Philippines as the prime minister, Modi will also attend a reception by the Indian community and visit the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) and Mahavir Philippines Foundation.
The government will soon be signing a series of agreements with its French counterpart for allowing Indian professionals to work there without needing an additional degree, and vice versa, senior government and diplomatic sources have told Business Standard.
Congress vice-president on Sunday stood firm on his 'Vikas paagal ho gaya hai' assertion, in reference to development in Gujarat, claiming he would not abstain from speaking the truth.
Speaking at an interactive session with social media volunteers of his party in Gujarat's Banaskantha, Rahul slammed Prime Minister Narendra Modi for disrespecting the office of the prime minister when he was in the Opposition, and said that the Congress would never do the same.
"Whatever we do, spot Modi ji's faults or disturb the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), but we will never disrespect the prime minister's office. When Modi ji was in the Opposition, he used to speak with disrespect about the prime minister. That is the difference between us and them; no matter what he says about us, we will not go beyond a certain point," Gandhi said, and continued, "But, we'll speak the truth, and this is the truth that Gujarat me 'vikas paagal ho gaya hai' (Development has gone berserk in Gujarat)."
This is a reiteration of his last month's assertion wherein, in the run up to the Gujarat assembly polls, the Congress scion had cornered Prime Minister Modi and the BJP Government in the state over the development achieved in the state, likening it to a person and saying it had gone berserk.
"Gujarat mein vikas ko kya hua? Ye kaise pagal hua? Ye jhooth sun sun ke pagal ho gaya hai (What happened to the development in Gujarat? How did it go berserk? He did after listening to constant lies)," Rahul said, at a public meeting in Gujarat's Kheda.
Meanwhile, Rahul, in today's address, further claimed the truth of Gujarat was that Prime Minister Modi has given everything to few businessmen, and that small businessmen of Surat had said that the state had the most corruption.
Continuing his attack on the leading dispensation, Rahul said the BJP at the Centre never saw themselves at fault, and added, "The ideology of the Congress is self introspection. If we are at fault, we accept it, but Modi ji never said one word admitting that the GST and note ban was a mistake."
Accusing the BJP of indulging in politics of lies in Gujarat, Rahul reiterated that the Congress' policy was that of truth.
"We accept that there are faults in this country, but we also know there is a lot of strength in this country, and the biggest strength of this country is its ability to accept truth," he said.
Stressing that Congress would win with truth at its side, against Prime Minister Modi, who he earlier claimed, has Gujarat government, Delhi government, police, army, airport, and the media, he added, "I am not talking about people in the media. They want to promote truth but there is control from the back. These people send the truth to their bosses but they fine-tune the truth."
At the event, the Congress vice-president also opened up about his much publicised Twitter handle.
"We reflect on ideas; there is a team of three to four people, to whom I give suggestions and after fine tuning them, we tweet. Routine work, like birthday wishes isn't done by me, I give little inputs on it; tweets on political issues are mine," he said.
Earlier in the day, Union Minister Prakash Javadekar gave it back to Rahul on his above-mentioned assertion in the same vein and said it was not 'vikas' but the grand old party that had gone berserk.
He said, "Vikas paagal nahin huya hai. Congress paglaa gayi hai. Vikas toh apni jagah par hi hai (the Congress has lost it. Development is at its place).
The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) on Saturday refuted the allegations levelled by the father of the accused student in the Pradyuman murder case that his son was being tortured in the custody.
Congress Lok Sabha member Deepender Singh Hooda plans to bring a private members Bill, the Right to Clean Air Bill, in the upcoming winter session of Parliament. Moved by the difficulty in breathing that his year-old son and children across the region have faced because of pollution, Hooda has written to Prime Minister Narendra Modi to constitute a committee propose measures to fight air pollution.
The Delhi government on Saturday put on hold the odd-even traffic rationing system from Monday saying it would approach the National Green Tribunal (NGT) and request that women drivers and two-wheelers be exempted, hours after the green court okayed the scheme but with only emergency vehicles exempted, in a major move to curb rising pollution.
According to state law, fines, penalties, and license money shall be appropriated exclusively to the use and support of the common schools ... . An exception is fines for overloaded vehicles. Seventy-five percent of those funds go to state highways; 25 percent go to the county general fund where the fine or penalty is paid. Fifty percent of money forfeited or seized in enforcing drug laws goes to counties for drug enforcement. Vehicles seized in drug law cases may be used by law enforcement agencies or sold with the proceeds going to schools.
India needs to invest a lot more money in science research and translate this research into products and solutions for its people, says trustee at the Infosys Science Foundation and co-founder at Infosys S Gopalakrishnan. In an interview with Raghu Krishnan, Gopalakrishnan says, surprisingly, the private sector is funding projects in places like the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Harvard and Stanford. Edited excerpts:
An Indo-Dutch collaboration has taken shape in the industrial town of Kanpur to promote entrepreneurship in the dairy sector and boost sustainability of dairy farms.
Giving shape to their security cooperation under the proposed quadrilateral coalition, India, the US, Japan and Australia on Sunday held their first official talks here with a focus on keeping the Indo-Pacific region free and open, seen as a move to counter Chinas aggressive behaviour in the area.
On Monday, when they meet in Manila, President Donald Trump plans to urge Prime Minister Narendra Modi to move quickly on finalising the selection of a single-engine fighter for the Indian Air Force (IAF), say US defence industry sources.
For the last eight months, Babita Singh has been searching every lane and bylane of the 2-sq-km spread of the Noida Hosiery Complex, here on the grimy edge of Indias capital, for a tailors job. She leaves home at 7 am and walks around till 11 am when, with the first shift in place, there is no longer any hope of being called into a factory.
Congress Vice-President targeted Gujarat Chief Minister Vijay Rupani on Sunday over the SEBI slapping fine on his firm for alleged manipulative share trade, and asked the prime minister to speak out on the issue.
Speaking during his poll campaign tour of Gujarat, he claimed that the share market regulator has termed Rupani "beimaan" (dishonest) and imposed fine on him.
Gandhi asked Prime Minister Narendra Modi to speak out against his "dishonest" chief minister.
"Gujarat is more corrupt than the entire country. Surat businessmen told me that policemen come to their units every two minutes (allegedly to demand bribe)," he said.
The 47-year-old Congress leader was addressing a public meeting here in Banaskantha district on the second day of his campaign tour of North Gujarat.
"Jay Shah, son of (BJP chief) Amit Shah, increased the turnover of his company from Rs 50,000 to Rs 80 crore in a few months after the BJP came to power in 2014. The people of Gujarat know this cannot be done without corruption," he said.
"Some days ago, the SEBI said your chief minister is beimaan (dishonest) and they fined him."
"Modiji used to say 'nakhaoonga, nakhanedoonga' (I will neither take graft nor allow corruption). Please open your mouth on this subject now. But he is silent. Now his slogan is 'nabolta hu, nabolnedunga' (I will not speak myself and won't allow others to do so')," Gandhi said.
"The people of the country want to listen what you (Modi) have to say on Amit Shah's son's company, on Vijay Rupani. The people of Gujarat will believe that you are not 'chowkidar' (watchman) but 'bhagidar' (collaborator) if you don't say anything on the issue," he said.
The Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) has reportedly fined 22 entities, including Rupani HUF (Hindu Undivided Family), for alleged manipulative trading in the shares of a company, Saran Chemicals Ltd, during the January- June 2011 period.
However, Rupani had said the Securities Appellate Tribunal (SAT) has set aside the fine of Rs 6.91 crore imposed on 22 entities, including his firm.
The fine amounts varied for the entities and it was reportedly Rs 15 lakh in the case of HUF of Rupani, who took over as chief minister in August 2016 and is currently in the thick of the BJP's campaign for the next month's assembly polls.
A report in a news portal had alleged wrongdoings in the company owned by Jay Shah, a charge vehemently rejected by him and his father. Jay Shah has also filed a criminal defamation case against the news portal.
Gandhi reiterated he and the Congress would not rest till Gabbar Singh Tax of five slabs is converted into one slab Goods and Service Tax (GST) with rates capped at 18 per cent.
"The tax (structure) with five different slabs is not GST, but is Gabbar Singh Tax, meant to loot the poor and middle-class people of the country as only they pay taxes. We will not rest till the government changes GST and puts a cap of 18 per cent," he said.
On Twitter, Gandhi asked the government to stop levying GST on the maximum number of items of mass use and "stop giving excuses".
"It is the voice of the country - the government stops giving excuses. It should abolish GST on a majority of mass use items," he said.
Gandhi also insisted that petrol, diesel and domestic gas cylinders are brought under the ambit of the tax regime.
Hong Kong on Sunday signed free trade and investment pacts with the ten-nation Association of Southeast Asian Nations, in what one of the Chinese territory's senior officials called a "loud and clear" vote against rising regional trade protectionism.
The pacts conclude nearly three years of talks, are expected to take effect on January 1 at the earliest, and aim to bring "deeper and bolder" integration of market access with the bloc, said Edward Yau, Hong Kong's commerce and development secretary.
"In the face of protectionist sentiments in other parts of the world, these two agreements are in fact a loud and clear vote from all of us here for freer and more open trade," Yau said.
"Hong Kong, being a free trade promoter and advocate of a strong, rule-based multilateral trading system, will continue to take this pathway, continue to do our utmost."
Total merchandise trade between Hong Kong and ASEAN was HK$833 billion ($107 billion) last year, official figures show. Total services trade was HK$121 billion ($16 billion) in 2015.
The ASEAN Hong Kong China Free Trade Agreement (AHKCFTA) was signed on the sidelines of a summit of the regional grouping in the Philippine capital of Manila.
It came after leaders attending an Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in Vietnam agreed to tackle "unfair trade practices" and "market-distorting subsidies" in a statement on Saturday that bore the imprint of US President Donald Trump's efforts to reshape the global trade landscape.
That summit offered a contrast between the vision of US President Donald Trump's "America First" policy and a traditional consensus favouring multinational deals that China now seeks to champion.
While Hong Kong already has one of the world's freest and most open economies, the pacts will see many ASEAN countries gradually eliminate or slash customs duties on goods from the former British colony that returned to Chinese rule in 1997.
Professional services are also expected to benefit, with increased investment flows, Yau added.
The ASEAN grouping includes Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.
($1=7.8009 Hong Kong dollars)
The group recaptured Albu Kamal in eastern Syria on Sunday, after a fierce fightback to save the last urban bastion of its collapsing "caliphate".
The jihadist rebound came as the United States and Russia issued a surprise joint presidential statement saying there was "no military solution" to Syria's grinding six year war. However, the two countries have long backed opposite sides in Syria.
Kremlin today said US President Donald Trump and Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin made progress during a brief meeting on the sidelines of a summit in Vietnam. Trump and Putin also "confirmed their determination to defeat ISIS", an alternative name for IS.
The jihadist group overran swathes of territory in Syria and Iraq in 2014, but its self-styled "caliphate" has since been whittled down to a pocket of land along the border between the two countries.
IS is putting up a fierce defence there, particularly for the vital Syrian border town of Albu Kamal, said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group.
Syrian regime forces and allied militia from Lebanon, Iraq and Iran overran Albu Kamal on Thursday but lost the town again just two days later after a string of IS counter-attacks and ambushes.
"IS fully recaptured Albu Kamal, and regime forces and allied militia are now between one to two kilometres from the city limits," Rami Abdel Rahman, head of the Britain-based Observatory, said today.
Across the border, Iraqi forces seized today several villages from the jihadists in an offensive to capture the last IS-held section of their country.
The operation's commander, General Abdelamir Yarallah, said his forces captured Rumana and 10 other villages as they worked their way towards the Euphrates Valley town of Rawa, the last Iraqi town still held by IS.
The jihadist group has in the space of a few weeks seen its "caliphate" shrink to a small rump and lost major cities such as Mosul in Iraq, and Raqa and Deir Ezzor in Syria.
Albu Kamal is the last significant Syrian town it controls. Losing it would cap the group's reversion to an underground guerrilla organisation with no urban base.
IS rose to prominence in the chaos of Syria's conflict, which broke out in 2011 with protests against President Bashar al-Assad.
It has since evolved into a complex war that has killed more than 330,000 people, forced millions more to flee, and left much of the country in ruins.
Violence has broadly decreased since a series of "de-escalation zones" have been put in place in recent months in battlefronts across the country.
Today, Jordan announced that it had agreed with the United States and Russia to formally establish such a zone in southern Syria to build on a ceasefire already in place there.
Multiple rounds of peace talks hosted by the United Nations in Geneva have failed to resolve Syria's entrenched conflict.
The state of Nebraska made the decision more than a decade ago to move away from institutional care for mental and behavioral health services in favor of local programs.
The plan was to close state-run regional centers and shift that money to community-based services addressing the same needs.
However, the second part of that equation has failed to materialize in many parts of the state.
We were able to save money by closing the regional centers and we didnt make the necessary commitment on the other end, said Sen. Paul Schumacher.
That has led to a real deficiency in mental health services and workers in Nebraska, the Columbus senator said, particularly in rural areas where its hard to recruit and retain trained professionals.
Theres a real lack of facilities in outstate Nebraska, Schumacher said.
And thats created some serious problems.
Those in need of short- and long-term in-patient care for mental health issues can linger on waiting lists for months before a spot becomes available.
Theres not enough resources for the number of people who need them, said Deputy Platte County Attorney Elizabeth Lay. The wait times are indicative of that.
In cases where emergency protective custody is needed to prevent people from harming themselves or others, Lay said the county can usually find an open bed for them at hospitals in Norfolk, Kearney or Hastings.
However, this can be a time-consuming process for the county attorneys office and law enforcement personnel, who must line up a spot for the patient and provide transportation.
Schumacher said law enforcement officers are treated as the first line of defense in the mental health crisis, but the onus shouldnt be on them to solve the problem.
Thats where the community-based services were supposed to surface to address these issues.
It is not a good system, Schumacher said. To fix the system costs money, and we dont have money. In fact, wed like a tax cut.
Schumacher, who served as Platte County attorney for eight years in the late 1970s and '80s, has introduced bills targeting the states shortage of mental health services and listened to testimony in the Legislature from law enforcement, county attorneys and others willing to voice their concerns.
State lawmakers have recognized the problems with the mental health system for years, he said, but little has been done to improve it because the Legislature isnt willing to find the funding.
We may say its a priority, but that doesnt mean its a priority, Schumacher said.
Thats exactly what Sen. John Stinner, chairman of the budget-writing Appropriations Committee, is saying.
Mental health has gotten more and more emphasis and traction within the Legislature. It certainly has come out as a priority for us, the Gering senator said.
Stinner acknowledged that better services are needed, especially in rural Nebraska, to avoid adverse, long-term problems, but noted that theres no funding available to make this happen.
When you dont have money, its hard to add to a program, he said, referencing a projected $195 million revenue shortfall for the states 2017-19 budget.
Theres a lot of areas we need to take a look at when revenue comes back, said Stinner, adding that mental health services will remain on the radar.
Lay, who has made several trips to Lincoln to lobby for better mental health services and provide a voice for this vulnerable population, said simply talking about the issue doesnt cut it at this point.
I believe that actions speak louder than words, she said. If were not funding it, then its not a priority.
Schumacher agrees.
He said its easy for senators to get elected on a platform of reduced spending and tax cuts, but thats not going to solve the mental health issue.
The Columbus senator also believes theres a tradeoff when it comes to investing in these services.
With a lack of resources available, Schumacher said many mentally ill people end up in prisons or the state-run Lincoln Regional Center instead of receiving the treatment they need.
Thats the place where you park people when you have nowhere else to park them, he said.
This has contributed to overcrowding issues in state prisons and rising costs in the criminal justice system, he contends.
And when mentally ill people dont get the rehabilitation services they need upon release, around and around they go, Schumacher said.
Weve got ourselves in a Catch-22 on some of this, he said.
Lay believes the state needs to rethink the mental health system as a whole, putting an emphasis on individual care instead of an all-encompassing model.
To say that were going to come up with one model that fits everybody is ludicrous, she said. That tunnel vision is what got us into this mess.
Her vision involves a step-down system that allows people to transition from the Lincoln Regional Center or other in-patient facilities to outpatient care followed by local support services.
She loses an ally in Lincoln when Schumacher leaves the Legislature because of term limits following the 2018 session, but said other senators have shown a willingness to help with this fight.
Its going to take more than one voice to make change in this particular instance, Lay said.
US President Donald Trump on Sunday attempted to clear up confusion over whether he accepts Russian President Vladimir Putins denials of meddling in the US election last year.
Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro's socialist government has set a high-profile location near the presidential palace in Caracas for Monday's hotly awaited meeting with investors to discuss renegotiating $60 billion in foreign debt.
The newly created debt renegotiation committee will meet with creditors at 2 p.m. (1800 GMT) at the government's 'White Palace' opposite the presidential building, Finance Minister Simon Zerpa said on Saturday.
Market sources had said Zerpa plus committee head and Venezuelan Vice President Tareck El Aissami, who are both on US sanctions lists for corruption and drug-trafficking accusations respectively, would sit out the meeting to allay any fears about legal repercussions for anyone meeting them.
But Zerpa's exhortation to attend, plus the location of the meeting right opposite the Miraflores presidential palace, appear to indicate the meeting will not be a low-profile affair.
"Once again, we invite investors to register their participation in this meeting," Zerpa, who is also the finance boss of state oil company PDVSA, said in a Tweet.
A PDVSA source said both he and El Aissami would be present, but there was no official confirmation.
Maduro's move a week ago to summon bondholders for talks about "restructuring" and "refinancing" roughly $60 billion in bonds has spooked markets worried Venezuela may be heading for default amid US financial sanctions.
Measures by US President Donald Trump's administration against the Maduro government, which it accuses of being a "dictatorship" that has impoverished Venezuela's 30 million people through corruption and incompetence, effectively bar U.S. banks from rolling over the country's debt into new bonds.
Venezuela did, however, appear to be honoring its most recent debt payment, $1.2 billion due on a bond from PDVSA. Two investors told Reuters they had finally received payment, albeit delayed.
WHO WILL COME?
It is unclear how widespread investor participation in Monday's meeting will be. U.S.-based creditors are not prohibited from attending the meeting, but are barred from dealings with officials such as Zerpa and El Aissami.
With those two on the government's committee and no sign of reforms to overhaul a moribund economy, economists are puzzling whether Maduro really wants to refinance the debt.
Rather, some speculate, he might be preparing the ground for an inevitable default by the cash-strapped government after which he would blame Washington, or he could be seeking to leverage foreign investor pressure on Trump to ease sanctions.
"We do not hold big hopes on Monday's bondholder meeting," New York-based financial services company Stifel said in a report. "It likely will be just an information session, in which bondholders probably would be more interested in hearing whether the past-due coupons will be paid than how a restructuring can be done."
On the streets, Venezuelans know little of the ins and outs of the complex debt debate, but they are praying for an improvement to dire hardships. Many are skipping meals during a fourth year of recession that has seen shortages of basics, soaring prices, and a collapsing bolivar currency.
In power since 2013 after the death of predecessor Hugo Chavez from cancer, Maduro has so far prioritized debt payments over imports, compounding Venezuelans' hardships.
A default might give a short-term financial reprieve to the government, enabling it to raise imports with a presidential election approaching in 2018. But it could also do further economic harm if investors pursue debts aggressively, including going after assets in the all-important oil sector.
Four Indian boats and 24 fishermen were detained by Pakistan Marines, near International Maritime Boundary Line, off the coast of Porbandar, on Saturday.
Yesterday, nine Indian boats and 55 Indian fishermen were detained by the Pakistan Marines near IMBL, off the Jakhau coast of Kutch, for allegedly violating Pakistan territorial waters.
At least 17 Indian boats and 107 fishermen have been detained by Pakistan Marine Security this week.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Afghanistan's Air Force is expected to receive 58 armed UH-60 Black Hawk helicopters from the United States.
This would be a part of the USD 1 billion deal to provide 159 helicopters to the Afghan forces until 2024.
The new choppers are being upgraded to a UH-60A+ variant with more powerful engines, the Khaama Press quoted an American military newspaper as saying.
58 of the aircraft will be fitted with additional rocket pods and machine guns like the Mi-17s, it added.
According to the report, Army Maj. Alexmi Lugo, a program manager with NATO's Train, Advise, Assist Command-Air unit, has said that the pilots of the Afghan Air Force are being trained for the new helicopters.
Meanwhile, the U.S. administration is reportedly allowing the American troops in Afghanistan to participate in joint operations with Afghan forces and to call in air strikes when needed.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Chinese e-commerce major Alibaba Group Holding Limited registered USD 25.3 billion worth of gross merchandise volume (GMV), which was settled through Alipay on November 11, thus recording an increase of 39 per cent compared to 2016.
"More than USD 25 billion of GMV in one day is not just a sales figure. It represents the aspiration for quality consumption of the Chinese consumer, and it reflects how merchants and consumers alike have now fully embraced the integration of online and offline retail," said Daniel Zhang, Chief Executive Officer of Alibaba Group.
In the wake of the Global Shopping Festival, the total GMV was USD 25.3 billion, comprising 90 per cent mobile GMV, both settled through Alipay. Also, Alipay processed 1.48 billion total payment transactions, up by 41 per cent from 2016, and processed 2,56,000 transactions per second at peak.
Furthermore, Alibaba Cloud processed 3,25,000 orders per second at peak, while Cainiao Network processed 812 million total delivery orders, with the first delivery arriving 12 minutes and 18 seconds after midnight.
On the festival front, 167 merchants each generated more than USD 15.1 million in sales, 17 merchants surpassed USD 75.4 million and six merchants surpassed USD 150.9 million in sales. The top countries selling to China included Japan, United States, Australia, Germany, and South Korea.
Earlier, Alibaba reported USD 18 billion worth sales for Singles' Day in just 12 hours. The company had already surpassed last year's sales for Singles Day with nearly USD 18 billion USD in merchandise sold already, about USD 10 billion of which was sold in the first hour of the day.
In two minutes, Alibaba's gross merchandise volume totalled USD 1 billion and in the next 40 minutes, the site's sales had surpassed USD 7.5 billion, reports suggested.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) president Amit Shah on Sunday sought an explanation from Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan on steps taken by the state government to maintain law and order in the state.
Hours after the murder of Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) worker K Anand surfaced, Amit Shah took to his Twitter handle to condemn the death and question the CM about the state's security," CM Pinarayi must explain what his govt is doing to curb criminal elements in his rank."
Amit Shah's tweet further reads, "I condemn the brutal killing of a young RSS Swayamsevak K Anand in Guruvayur, Kerala. The continuous violence by CPM workers & the protection to such political killings is now before the nation."
A RSS worker, indentified as Anand, an accused in the murder case of a Communist Party of India (CPIM) activist four years ago was found death in Kerala's Thrissur on Sunday. BJP has been accusing the Left Government of killing the political leaders in Kerala.
BJP had recently organised a rally 'JanRaksha Yatra' in Trivandrum to protest against alleged political killings in the state. Amit Shah who was also a part of the rally had hit out at the LDF government and questioned whether Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan has come in power to kill BJP and RSS workers.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Anti-Pakistan protests were held in two different cities of Germany against the abduction of Baloch activists by Pakistani security forces.
The Baloch National Movement (BNM) held a protest in Hannover city of Germany, against Pakistani brutalities and abduction of women, children and students in Balochistan.
The Baloch Human Rights Organisation (BHRO) is also set to hold a two-day awareness campaign in Berlin, Germany about human rights violations in Balochistan and for the safe recovery of Nawaz Atta, Information Secretary of the BHRO, and eight other students, abducted by secret agents and rangers from Karachi.
"The state policy of using excessive force against civilians and whosoever talks about Baloch rights has intensified in recent days and has become the major cause of human right violations in Balochistan," said the general secretary of the BHRO, Abdullah Abbas.
He further said that Baloch activist Nawaz Atta was abducted from his home last month and eight others students were also abducted in a follow up raid from Karchi by Pakistani security forces.
"We demand from the Pakistan Government and security forces to release all the abductees immediately and if they have done any crime, to produce them in court; try them as per law and allow them their legal right of defending themselves," he added.
Abbas appealed to all human right organisations and human right activists to raise their voices against the enforced disappearances in Balochistan and for the safe recovery of all the abductees.
BHRO activist Tayiba Baloch also held a press conference in Quetta, Balochistan and announced future protest and demonstration for the safe recovery of Nawaz Atta and other students.
The BHRO will hold a protest demonstration on November 15 in Quetta and will organise a rally on November 19 in Karachi.
For decades in Balochistan, economic exploitation through the plundering of natural resources, and the systematic economic, social and political exclusion of indigenous Baloch people, has become a norm.
In addition to this, enforced disappearances, extra-judicial killings and an escalating crackdown on freedom of expression are used as covert tools to brutally repress the peaceful struggle for justice, rights and equality of the Baloch.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The Army doctors have come to the rescue of patients in Jodhpur during the week-long strike by doctors'.
The strike was called off late Sunday night after successful talks with the state government.
The Army's Jodhpur based Konark Corps pressed in medical help by fielding Army doctors here on the request of district administration.
Three doctors, one each was provided at the government medical facility at District Hospital Paota, operated the Out Patient Department (OPD) in these places and provided consultation to patients.
The doctors of Konark Corps were already assisting the civil administration in providing medical care at Jaisalmer for the last few days due to the strike.
On Sunday, Rajasthan Health Minister Kali Charan Saraf held a meeting with a five-member delegation representing the doctors.
The union decided to return to work after the last nine hours of talks which lasted from 2 pm to 11 pm yesterday.
Earlier on Sunday, 14 doctors were detained under the Rajasthan Essential Services Maintenance Act (RESMA) for refusing to call off their strike.
While 100 doctors agreed to resume their work, the police launched a search operation on Thursday evening for the rest, arresting six doctors on Thursday and eight on Friday.
The Rajasthan government had set November 9, the fourth day of the deadlock between them and the doctors, as the deadline for doctors to resume duty.
Earlier on November 6, all the practising doctors in Rajasthan decided to go on a mass leave, in support of their pending demands before the state government.
The 33 long-pending demands by the doctors of the state include the formation of a separate cadre for in-service doctors, Rs 10,000 grade pay benefit for doctors, and running government health centres in a single shift, among others.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The Bharatiya Janata Party slammed the Congress Party leaders for claiming credit for the Goods and Services Tax (GST) Council's decision to cut tax rates on 178 items of daily use.
BJP spokesperson Shahnawaz Hussain asserted, "Congress and Rahul Gandhi should stay away from such misunderstandings that we made the changes because of their remarks".
"Our government reduce the tax rates and people come to take credit. Ours is Bharatiya Janata Party, a party for the Janata(public). Congress is busy in worrying about themselves, but we solve the problems of the public. Therefore, the GST council held a meeting and solved the problems in rates," he said.
The Congress leaders on Saturday claimed that the government was forced to cut tax rates due to the pressure mounted by Rahul Gandhi and the "huge response" his campaign had been receiving in poll-bound Gujarat.
Prabhat Jha, the editor of BJP Mouth Piece Kamal Sandesh, mocked Rahul Gandhi and said he is free to take credits of the decision.
"What can we do if someone has a misunderstanding. There is a GST council responsible for making such decisions which also includes Finance Ministers of Congress governance. If Rahul Gandhi wants to gain praises from it, he is free to do so. The public of our nation is smarter than Rahul Gandhi at least," the politician said.
Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley on Friday announced moving 178 items from the 28 percent to the 18 percent tax bracket under the GST, applicable from November 15.
The changes in the tax system were decided at the 23rd GST Council meeting headed by the finance minister, at Guwahati.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Senior Congress leader and former Finance Minister P Chidambaram on Sunday once again teared into the Centre over its drive, citing it was a "colossal mistake," and that corruption thrived despite its implementation.
The former finance minister took to Twitter and posted a series of tweets that said: "A year after demonetisation, every justification trotted out for that decision has been rebutted and ridiculed. Let me begin with the justification that was disarmingly simple and had gained considerable traction: ending the counterfeiting of currency."
"One year later we are told that out of the Rs 15, 28,000 crore (by value, of demonetised currency notes) that was returned to the RBI, there was only Rs 41 crore, by value, of fake currency! Hence, was not the answer to fake Indian currency notes (FICN). The same could be said about the other two objectives declared by the Prime Minister on November 8, 2016: ending corruption and eliminating black money."
"Despite demonetisation, corruption thrives. Bribe givers and bribe takers are being caught regularly, often red-handed. As far as black money is concerned, income that is taxable is generated every day, a portion of that income escapes tax and is used for various purposes - such as giving bribes, funding elections, paying capitation fees, betting, hiring casual labour etc. was a thoughtless and rash decision that turned out to be a colossal mistake and imposed a huge cost in terms of denting economic growth and heaping misery on millions of ordinary people," he added.
He concluded his Twitter tirade with a scathing attack at the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led Central Government that said: "No elected government in a democracy has the right to inflict unbearable hardship and misery upon the people. In one of his works, Hippocrates said, 'Do no harm'."
1. A year after demonetisation, every justification trotted out for that decision has been rebutted and ridiculed. P. Chidambaram (@PChidambaram_IN) November 12, 2017
2. Let me begin with the justification that was disarmingly simple and had gained considerable traction: ending the counterfeiting of currency. P. Chidambaram (@PChidambaram_IN) November 12, 2017
3. One year later we are told that out of the Rs 15,28,000 crore (by value, of demonetised currency notes) that was returned to the RBI, there was only Rs 41 crore, by value, of fake currency! P. Chidambaram (@PChidambaram_IN) November 12, 2017
4. Hence, demonetisation was not the answer to fake Indian currency notes (FICN). P. Chidambaram (@PChidambaram_IN) November 12, 2017
5. The same could be said about the other two objectives declared by the Prime Minister on November 8, 2016: ending corruption and eliminating black money. P. Chidambaram (@PChidambaram_IN) November 12, 2017
6. Despite demonetisation, corruption thrives. Bribe givers and bribe takers are being caught regularly, often red-handed. P. Chidambaram (@PChidambaram_IN) November 12, 2017
7. As far as black money is concerned, income that is taxable is generated every day, a portion of that income escapes tax and is used for various purposes such as giving bribes, funding elections, paying capitation fees, betting, hiring casual labour etc. P. Chidambaram (@PChidambaram_IN) November 12, 2017
8. Demonetisation was a thoughtless and rash decision that turned out to be a colossal mistake and imposed a huge cost in terms of denting economic growth and heaping misery on millions of ordinary people. P. Chidambaram (@PChidambaram_IN) November 12, 2017
9. No elected government in a democracy has the right to inflict unbearable hardship and misery upon the people. In one of his works, Hippocrates said, Do no harm. P. Chidambaram (@PChidambaram_IN) November 12, 2017
Ever since the inception of the demonetisation drive last year, the BJP and the Congress-led Opposition have been facing off over the viability of the move in the nation.
While the Opposition observed 'Black Day' on the one-year anniversary of the move, the BJP celebrated it as 'Anti-Black Money Day'.
There are villains and there are villains.
Jose Sandoval stood in a Norfolk bank on Sept. 26, 2002, orchestrating death; murdering three people himself, abetting the killing of two more and terrorizing three others. In 40 seconds, he turned a would-be robbery into a homicidal frenzy.
He certainly rises to the top of the list for many Nebraskans especially in northeast Nebraska of the most heinous of villains.
In 2003, Sandoval was found guilty of killing customer Evonne Tuttle, 37, of Stanton, and tellers Samuel Sun, 50, of Norfolk, and Jo Mausbach, 42, of Humphrey. He was also convicted of the murders of bank employees Lola Elwood, 43, and Lisa Bryant, 29, both of Norfolk.
For those crimes, he was condemned to die. He also has two first-degree murder convictions for the unrelated deaths of a onetime roommate, 19-year-old Travis Lundell, and Lundell's friend, Robert Pearson Jr., for which he has life sentences.
Former state Sen. Mike Flood of Norfolk on Friday called Sandoval a "supreme risk to human life," someone about whom you have doubts could be held safely in prison.
"There's not many people locked up in the prison system that have seven murders on their record. ... He kills for sport."
Many people say Sandoval's death sentence is the only just punishment for the cold-blooded, execution-style murders he committed. They remember him looking into a news camera and smiling, defiant, flashing a gang sign as he was led out of a courthouse after his capture.
They say it's about time the punishment is carried out, 15 years too late, in fact.
Nebraska Corrections Director Scott Frakes served notice to Sandoval on Thursday of the lethal injection drugs that would be administered to cause his death if an execution takes place. Sixty days following the notification, Attorney General Doug Peterson can request the state Supreme Court issue Sandoval's execution warrant.
Those who are against the death penalty in Nebraska say he won't be executed any time soon. There are too many legal questions.
For Dave Mausbach, whose wife was killed by Sandoval, an execution would be 15 years too long in coming. He thinks about the senselessness of the crime, the money it has cost Madison County and the state to put on trial and to house the Norfolk killers, when there is no question about their guilt.
"They took a lot of innocent lives and ruined them. For what?" he said.
He resents all that he, his family and others had to put up with during those trials.
Jo Mausbach was a caring person and lived for their kids, he said. Her life was all about family.
"She was easy to get along with. It was always about somebody else instead of her," he said. "She'd drop everything and help you with anything."
That day 15 years ago, he had to pull their two kids out of school and watch as they came out, excited, thinking it must mean they would be getting to do something special. And then the heartbreak of telling them their mother was dead, gunned down at work.
"That's something I'll never forget," he said.
He's fortunate, though, he said, that in the ensuing years those two Rebecca, now 28, and Jacob, 24 continued to be excellent students, never got in trouble, graduated, got college degrees and then good jobs.
Sandoval's execution will bring him relief, he said.
"I'll feel a hell of a lot better, and I'm not a mean person," he said. "I hope I'm alive when this happens. It's what I'm waiting for."
Jo Mausbach's brother, Micheal Tichy, has a different take on the announcement that Sandoval has been served notice of his potential execution.
"To be honest with you I'm not a firm believer in the death penalty, even though what happened," he said in a phone call from his home in South Dakota. "If it does happen, well, he probably gets what he deserves."
He would rather have seen Sandoval's punishment be solitary confinement or hard labor for the rest of his life, he said.
With that said, though, he does not appreciate hearing death penalty opponents talk about the inhumanity of Sandoval being a test subject for a never-used cocktail of lethal injection drugs.
"I'll tell you what. What was cruel and inhumane is my sister down on her hands and knees choking on her own blood," Tichy said. "That wasn't a very pretty picture. I saw it."
So did their mother, Ina Mae Tichy, who died last year.
"She was like a rock through the whole thing, and took care of us kids," he said. "She did not believe in the death penalty, either. But she would have accepted it."
Joe Smith is the Madison County Attorney who prosecuted Sandoval, Erick Vela, Jorge Galindo and Gabriel Rodriguez, an accomplice also convicted of the five murders but given life sentences.
In 2003, after a jury held Sandoval responsible for four aggravators in the deaths of all five victims at U.S. Bank, paving the way for the death sentence, Smith said people in Madison County won't ever get over what happened in that bank.
Smith looks at the notification Thursday of Sandoval's impending execution as potentially the first step in the last part of a long process.
"It's something that I'm sure nobody is excited about. On the other hand, it's about time the process got off stall," he said.
Flood, as speaker of the Legislature from 2007-13, presided over multiple death penalty-related debates. Every time he would rise to speak in support of the death penalty, he would talk about the Norfolk bank killings.
As a reporter for his radio station, he was also on the scene of the murders that September day.
"What happened on that day was pure evil. Unconscionable," he said.
And then, Sandoval, Vela and Galindo were cold and indifferent at their trials, he said. Those jury panels were made up of teachers, farmers and pastors who had to listen to weeks of testimony about what occurred inside the bank. They had to decide the mitigating and aggravating factors to recommend whether the death penalty was appropriate.
"The justice system in Madison County has invested quite a bit, not just dollar-wise, more importantly though the human capital that went in to rendering a just verdict," he said.
Lincoln attorney Bob Evnen was a spokesman for death penalty proponents during a campaign to overturn the Nebraska Legislature's elimination of the death penalty, and is now a candidate for Nebraska secretary of state. He has studied capital punishment, researched death row cases and appeals and pondered the arguments.
It's not something anyone should take pleasure in, Evnen said. The best thing would have been if the crime had never been committed in the first place.
"But the punishment that he is receiving is a just one. And it's in accordance with what the people of the state of Nebraska have voted to retain, and rightly so."
Rachel Pokora, a Lincoln college professor, remembers meeting Sandoval in 2008 on two visits to the prison as a member of Nebraskans Against the Death Penalty. He was one of the more interesting people on those visits, she said.
"Of all the other people I talked to, a lot of them were maybe not as bright, but it also then really scared me because I thought, 'He knows what he's doing.'"
Shortly after that visit, she had said it stuck in her mind what he had said to her.
I'm a very bad man, he told her. I'm the worst man you've ever met.
India's star gymnast Dipa Karmakar has been conferred a D.Litt. degree from the National Institute of Technology (NIT) Agartala.
Expressing happiness on being honoured with the degree, Karmakar said she wanted to achieve such a degree once and that it would further add to her responsibility towards the people of the country.
The 24-year-old Tripura girl is the first Indian woman gymnast to have qualified for the Olympics. She finished fourth in the final round of the women's vault event at the Rio Olympics Games in Brazil last year.
The director of NIT, Agartala, Professor Ajoy Kumar Ray, handed over the degree to Karmakar, during the 10th convocation programme at the Rabindra Satabarshiki Bhavan here.
"In a recognition of her brilliant success and contribution in the field, the government of India had conferred upon her Padma Shri in 2017 and our institute NIT Agartala also felt it was very appropriate and truly inspiring to hundreds of very good athletes, sportsman and gymnast all over the state to know that this institute which stands for excellence to award Honoris Causa D.Litt. degree to Dipa Karmakar," Prof. Ray said.
Dipa is now preparing for the 18th Asian Games in Indonesia's Jakarta and 21st Commonwealth Games to be held in Australia's Gold Coast.
Besides Dipa, the NIT also conferred D.Sc. degree upon IIT Guwahati Director Goutam Biswas and Jadavpur University professor Biswajit Ghosh at its tenth convocation held on Saturday.
Degrees were given to 950 students and 31 PhD scholars. 20 students, including 11 girls, were given gold medals in various academic branches of the institute.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
George Takei has finally responded to a former model's claims that said she was sexually assaulted by him, saying he was "shocked and bewildered" by them.
In a series of tweets, Takei responded to Brunton by saying that he did not even remember Brunton.
He wrote, "Friends, I'm writing to respond to the accusations made by Scott R. [Brunton]. I want to assure you all that I am as shocked and bewildered at these claims as you must feel reading them. The events he describes back in the 1980s simply did not occur, and I do not know why he has claimed them now. I have wracked my brain to ask if I remember Mr. Brunton, and I cannot say I do."
Takei added he took the claims made by Brunton "very seriously," but also wanted to respond to the allegations "not out of the moment."
"Right now it is a he said / he said situation, over alleged events nearly 40 years ago. But those that know me understand that non-consensual acts are so antithetical to my values and my practices, the very idea that someone would accuse me of this is quite personally painful," added Takei.
In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Scott R. Brunton recounted in detail the night of the alleged assault, saying that he woke up to find Takei groping him without his consent.
Brunton, who was 23 at the time of the alleged incident, said he had developed a friendship with Takei, then in his mid-40s, through the gay nightlife scene.
One night, he said the two went back to the actor's home for a drink, which left him feeling dizzy.
Brunton alleged when he awoke, Takei "had my pants down around my ankles and he was groping my crotch and trying to get my underwear off and feeling me up at the same time, trying to get his hands down my underwear."
While Brunton said he had shared the story with friends over the years, he said he chose to come forward now because of Takei's strong condemnation of Kevin Spacey, who's at the centre of his own sexual misconduct scandal.
Takei is a new addition to the list of big Hollywood icons getting accused of sexual misconduct.
Harvey Weinstein, Kevin Spacey, James Toback, Dustin Hoffman and Louis CK have also been accused of sexual harassment.
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United States President Donald Trump seems to be extending the hand of friendship to Pyongyang as he said he tries 'so hard' to become North Korean leader Kim Jong-un's 'friend.'
"Why would Kim Jong-un insult me by calling me "old," when I would NEVER call him "short and fat?" Oh well, I try so hard to be his friend - and maybe someday that will happen!" Trump tweeted.
North Korea on Saturday called Trump as "destroyer" who "begged for nuclear war" during his tour of Asia.
Trump had warned North Korea on Wednesday to not underestimate the United States as he wrapped up his visit to South Korea.
North Korean state media had recently said that "no-one can predict when the lunatic old man of the White House, lost to sense, will start a nuclear war," referring to Trump's aggressive rhetoric against Kim Jong-un.
Trump and Kim have engaged in name-calling in recent months as tensions between the two countries increase over Pyongyang's threat of a nuclear attack.
Trump threatened to rain "fire and fury" on North Korea and also called Kim Jong-un as "Little Rocket Man", while Kim labelled Trump as a "mentally deranged US dotard.
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Baloch and Sindhi activists have pledged unity for a common struggle against Pakistan.
The Sindhi Baloch Forum (SBF), in a statement shared on their Facebook page, announced they would protest on December 10 in London against the gross human rights violations in Sindh and Balochistan by Pakistan.
The Baloch and the Sindhi activists will organise a rally in London to highlight the enforced disappearances and the 'kill and dump' policy of the Pakistani security agencies in Balochistan and Sindh.
The decision was taken during a meeting of the SBF, held in London on October 29.
The meeting deplored irrelevant statements from certain quarters regarding geographical boundaries of Sindh and Balochistan.
"The Sindhi Baloch Forum resolves to thwart all designs to create disunity among the Baloch and Sindhi nations London, UK. The destiny of the Sindhi and the Baloch nations are intertwined, and the alliance of their national struggles for sovereignty cannot be separated," a statement by the SBF read.
The meeting was attended by the Baloch and Sindhis, belonging to all walks of life and organisations including the Baloch National Movement (BNM), the Baloch Organisation (WBO), the Sindhi Congress (WSC) and the Baloch Human Rights Council UK (BHRC-UK).
Sindhi Congress Chairman Hidayat Bhutto will be attending and speaking at the event.
"The meeting called upon intellectuals, social-political activists, writers and all conscientious elements among the Baloch and Sindhis to take cognisance of the nefarious designs of individual personalities and groups on the pay role of enemy forces who have been given the duty of creating chasm of all kinds among the brotherly nations in order to weaken their national resistance against subjugation," the statement further read.
The SBF will also approach members of the British Parliament, the Members of European Parliament and other relevant quarters in the civilised world to highlight the plight of Sindhi and the Baloch masses and to present the case of human rights violation perpetrated by the state of Pakistan in Sindh and Balochistan.
"The meeting also took notice of the propaganda by hostile elements of the Baloch national struggle by exploiting the murders of innocent labourers belonging to Sindh in recent years," the statement added.
"It was declared that in the prevailing murky situation in Balochistan where it is quite impossible to ascertain who is targetting who and on whose behalf, exploiting the issue is not in the interest of the national struggles for national sovereignty and the historical alliance of both nations," it concluded.
The Sindhi Baloch Forum will also initiate a campaign of awareness among the Sindhi masses in order to convince them to avoid getting employment in conflict areas and especially in projects affiliated with China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC).
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After a video of the Mumbai Traffic Police towing a car while a woman was breastfeeding her seven-month-old baby inside it went viral, Commission for Women (NCW) chairperson Rekha Sharma on Sunday said a strict action should be taken against the policeman, but added if the woman acted irresponsibly, a case should be registered against her as well.
"When I saw the video last night, my first reaction was that the police personnel should be suspended and an action should be taken against him. But I read in the morning that the mother kept sitting inside the moving car. Our first concern is that of the child. If the case goes against the lady, then a case should be booked against her," Rekha Sharma told ANI.
"In any case, the police personnel is responsible and he should be taken to task," Sharma added.
The NCW chairperson also said the commission would write to the Director General of Police (DGP) requesting that an action be taken against the police personnel and a thorough investigation be done in the case.
A video of the incident, which took place in Malad West on Friday, is doing rounds on social media.
In the video, the woman can be seen sitting inside the car with her baby while the traffic cops are towing it.
The video shows that the policemen did not stop and continued speaking on the mobile phone even after the onlookers protested and warned that something untoward could happen to both the woman and the child.
The woman alleged that she pleaded the traffic policemen to stop but they did not listen to her and appeared unconcerned.
Talking to media, the woman named Jyoti Male said, "The policemen towing the car did not even for once ask me to get down, even when I told them that I am breastfeeding my baby they still did not stop."
Male further said that she had showed her medical prescription to the policemen saying she was unwell, but they did not stop.
She also demanded an apology from the cops for their act.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Underscoring the need of having a stable development of China-Japan bilateral relationship, Chinese President Xi Jinping has stated that in order "to improve China-Japan ties, the key is mutual trust."
President Xi Jinping met Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on the sidelines of the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in the Vietnamese resort city of Danang.
President Xi Jinping also urged Japan to take more "practical actions" to improve ties with China and properly manage differences between the two countries in a "constructive way," reported China's state-run news agency Xinhua.
He urged the Japanese side to adopt more specific policies to reflect the strategic consensus reached by the two countries.
A constructive way should be used to manage and control the differences between the two countries, President Xi said.
According to the reports, the two countries also agreed to deepen their cooperation on North Korea.
This year marks the 45th anniversary of the normalization of diplomatic relations between two major economies of Asia and .
Next year will mark the 40th anniversary of the signing of the China-Japan Treaty of Peace and Friendship, the report said.
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Prime Minister Narendra Modi departed for a three-day visit to Philippines, on early Sunday morning, to attend the 15th Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) India summit and the 12th East Asia Summit in Manila on November 14.
On November 13, the Prime Minister will attend the ASEAN business and investment summit.
Prime Minister Modi will also hold a bilateral meeting with the President of Philippines, Rodrigo Duterte, who is also the current chair of the ASEAN. He will also participate in special celebrations to mark the 50th anniversary of ASEAN.
On November 14, he will attend the regional comprehensive economic partnership meeting in Manila, endeavouring to further enhance India's trade and investment ties with ASEAN member states, which constitute a significant over 10 per cent of India's external trade.
In Manila, the Prime Minister will meet some of the other world leaders, who are participating in the East Asia summit.
Prime Minister Modi has said he looked forward to meeting the members of the Indian community at a reception to be hosted by the Indian envoy in Philippines.
He will also visit the international rice research institute and the Mahavir Philippines Foundation.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Terror and Trade related issues will be on top of the Prime Minister Narendra Modi's agenda as he arrived in the Philippines a short while ago.
Indian Ambassador to Philippines Jaideep Mazumdar on Sunday said that several bilateral issues, including terrorism, and poverty alleviation, will be discussed and various agreements will be signed during Prime Minister Narendra Modi's visit here.
Prime Minister Modi is on a three-day visit to attend the 15th Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) India summit and the 12th East Asia Summit in Manila on November 14.
The Indian Ambassador told ANI, "Prime Minister Modi is visiting Philippines for the first time and it will be the first substantive meeting between him and Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte."
Emphasising on the agenda of ASEAN India summit and East Asia Summit, Mazumdar said, "The summit will focus on the major issues such as terrorism, terror-funding, money laundering and poverty alleviation."
"ASEAN has a central role in India's Act East Policy," he added.
The ambassador further emphasised that India was also interested in concluding the negotiations for the Free Trade Pact.
"We look for balanced outcomes for goods, services and investment. This is the first time there will be leaders meeting along with East Asia and ASEAN summit and the idea behind that is to give a push to the negotiations," he said.
Sources also say that Prime Minister Modi will meet United States President Donald Trump on the sidelines of the summit.
Trump is also scheduled to arrive in Manila on Sunday as part of his five-nation Asia tour of Japan, South Korea, China, Vietnam, and the Philippines.
During his visit, Prime Minister Modi will participate in special celebrations to mark the 50th anniversary of ASEAN.
The Prime Minister will also attend the ASEAN business and investment summit on November 13 and regional comprehensive economic partnership meeting on November 14 in Manila, emphasising these meetings were important as they would further enhance India's trade and investment ties with ASEAN member states, which constitute a significant over 10 per cent of India's external trade.
Prime Minister Modi will also meet the members of the Indian community at a reception to be hosted by the Indian envoy in Philippines. He will also visit the international rice research institute and the Mahavir Philippines Foundation.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Prime Minister Narendra Modi and United States President Donald Trump will hold bilateral talks here on Monday.
The two will hold the meeting on the sidelines of the 15th Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) India summit and the 12th East Asia Summit in the Philippine capital.
The two leaders also met briefly on Sunday as they arrived for the event.
Later, PM Modi and Trump also posed for a family photograph with others leaders, including Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, and Japanese PM Shinzo Abe, participating in the event.
Prime Minister Modi is on a three-day visit to Manila to attend the ASEAN India summit and East Asia Summit on November 14. Terror and Trade related issues will be on top of Modi's agenda during his visit.
Meanwhile, Philippines is the last leg of Trump's five-nation tour of Asia that also took him to Japan, China and South Korea.
During his visit, Prime Minister Modi will participate in special celebrations to mark the 50th anniversary of ASEAN.
The Prime Minister will also attend the ASEAN business and investment summit on November 13 and regional comprehensive economic partnership meeting on November 14 in Manila.
Prime Minister Modi will also meet the members of the Indian community at a reception to be hosted by the Indian envoy in Philippines. He will also visit the international rice research institute and the Mahavir Philippines Foundation.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Protests against director Sanjay Leela Bhansali's magnum opus 'Padmavati' reached Surat on Sunday.
The Rajput Community, the Vishwa Hindu Parishad, the Bajrang Dal and the Karni Sena held a joint protest against the release of the film in Surat.
"The government must put a ban on the release of film because it is portraying Rani Padmavati in an objectionable way. The history has been distorted in this film. The government has to listen to us otherwise everyone will have to face consequences for this. We won't tolerate the disrespect on our community," a protestor said in Surat.
Meanwhile, in Maharashtra at least 15 members of the Akhand Rajputana Seva Sangh were detained while protesting.
"We have been arrested by the police. We are opposing the movie which is portraying our queen in wrong and objectionable way doing romance and all. We won't allow the film to be released if the objectionable part from the movie isn't deleted," one of the arrested protestors from the Rajput community in Mumbai told ANI.
Earlier, the Supreme Court rejected the petition filed against the release of 'Padmavati', saying the Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC) had not as yet issued a certificate to the movie.
While dismissing the petition, the top court said the CBFC was an independent body and the court should not intervene in their jurisdiction.
The period drama starring Deepika Padukone, Ranveer Singh, and Shahid Kapoor has been facing protests from various communal groups, including Shree Rajput Karni Sena, for allegedly tampering with historical facts.
The Karni Sena, which demolished the sets of the movie in Jaipur and also thrashed Bhansali, last month, again, had warned the director that he would face consequences if the movie distorted historical facts.
The movie is slated to hit the theatres on December 1.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
As a society we stand on the shoulders of those who came before us; of those men and women who made great strides and sacrificed to advance our nation.
On Saturday, people across the country and across the Midstate came together to honor those men and women who put on the uniform in service of the United States of America.
Across the globe, our military personnel are standing directly between our people and the worst dangers in the world, South Middleton Township Supervisor and retired U.S. Army Col. Tom Faley said during a ceremony at Spring Meadows Park in Boiling Springs. We must resolve to thank each day our veterans for their outstanding service to our nation.
Faley spoke Saturday in front of a newly built flagpole that was installed as part of local Boy Scout Matt Ottos Eagle Scout project.
The 70-foot flag pole sits at the entrance of the park and is accompanied by a memorial stone to U.S Army Master Sgt. Scott Ball, a South Middleton Township resident who was killed in Afghanistan in 2007.
The memorial to Scott Ball has been moved in front of the flagpole to give a better spot of honor within this park, Otto said. While Im never sure what is going on at the state and national level, I know the members of my community will step up and support a good cause. They will always remember and respect the men and women like Master Sgt. Scott Ball who fought for the freedoms we enjoy.
Members of the community also gathered Saturday morning in the old Cumberland County Courthouse in Carlisle to give thanks to all members of the armed services.
I dont have to tell you all that the world is a dangerous place, U.S. Army War College Commandant Maj. Gen. John Kem said. You watch TV, you see headlines, its a dangerous place. You can read those headlines and be worried. The problems and challenges of the world are complex and uncertain, and there are things to worry about.
However, while younger generations may at times be derided by the older generations, Kem said the nations armed services are in good hands.
I can tell you from having served in the Army for the last 32 years, the young Americans who serve in the Army today, the Marines, the Coast Guard, the Navy and the Air Force ... they are just like the veterans who sit here in the audience and those who served throughout history, Kem said. What makes them so good is the legacy of those who came before them.
Doctors in Rajasthan have ended their week-long strike after successful talks with the state government.
Rajasthan Health Minister Kali Charan Saraf held a meeting with a five-member delegation representing the doctors on Sunday.
The union decided to return to work after the last nine hours of talks which lasted from 2 pm to 11 pm yesterday.
Earlier on Sunday, 14 doctors were detained under the Rajasthan Essential Services Maintenance Act (RESMA) for refusing to call off their strike.
While 100 doctors agreed to resume their work, the police launched a search operation on Thursday evening for the rest, arresting six doctors on Thursday and eight on Friday.
The Rajasthan government had set November 9, the fourth day of the deadlock between them and the doctors, as the deadline for doctors to resume duty.
Earlier on November 6, all the practising doctors in Rajasthan decided to go on a mass leave, in support of their pending demands before the state government.
Saraf had assured that doors for talks were open but the fulfillment of the demands may take time.
The 33 long-pending demands by the doctors of the state include the formation of a separate cadre for in-service doctors, Rs 10,000 grade pay benefit for doctors, and running government health centres in a single shift, among others.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
A Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) worker was allegedly murdered in Kerala's Thrissur on Sunday.
The RSS worker, indentified as Anand, was an accused in the murder case of a Communist Party of India (CPIM) activist four years ago.
It is to be noted that this is not the first case of violence against the workers of the right-wing group in the state.
Earlier, many similar incidents of assault have been reported that have political tension in the state.
The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has been accusing the Left Government of killing the political leaders.
The saffron party had also held a rally 'JanRaksha Yatra' in Trivandrum recently to protest against alleged political killings in the state.
BJP president Amit Shah, who also participated in the rally, hit out at the LDF government and questioned whether Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan has come in power to kill BJP and RSS workers.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
At least 81 terrorists belonging to the al-Shabaab were killed by the security forces in Jilib province of Somalia.
The two different operations were carried out by the Somalian forces and international partners, the Anadolu Agency quoted Information Minister Abdurahman Osman as saying.
"Some 81 militants were killed, a number of vehicles and heavy weapons destroyed." Osman said.
Earlier in October, more than 300 people were killed in the massive twin truck bombings in Somalia's capital.
The officials called the explosion as the one of the deadliest attacks to hit the capital, Mogadishu, since an Islamist insurgency began in 2007.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
A thick layer of smog continued to blanket the capital and its adjoining region on Sunday even as reports claimed that the air quality was slowly, but steadily, improving.
The city's Air Quality Index has been in the range of 700 to 1,000, making it difficult for people in the state to even breathe.
One of the residents of the city told ANI, "It is tough to breathe and the situation needs to be fixed."
As the pollution has hit 70 times the World Health Organisation's safe limit, doctors have suggested people to wear N90 masks whenever they go out, as exposure to air pollution can lead to and heart disease.
Taking cognisance of it, people at the historical Gate were seen wearing masks.
A jogger at the Gate, Shubhankar Tomar, told ANI, "Today the fog is back. Yesterday, there was not much.
The should take an initiative to resolve this deadly situation."
Another jogger said, "We are facing breathing problems now. We are taking precautions to protect ourselves from respiratory problems."
Meanwhile, the Health Ministry has also issued an advisory, asking citizens to drink plenty of water and avoid areas with smoke or heavy dust.
The (CPCB) has identified four reasons for the sudden onset of pollution - temperature, wind speed, relative humidity and atmospheric boundary layer - for the worsening Delhi air.
The Green Tribunal (NGT) has banned construction, one source of particulate matter pollution, in the region through November 14, whereas truck and car travel has also been limited.
Trucks and heavy vehicles were barred from entering into Delhi last night.
United States President Donald Trump has said that he believes his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin's denials over his country's involvement in the manipulation of the 2016 presidential election.
"He said he didn't meddle. He said he didn't meddle. I asked him again. You can only ask so many times," CNN quoted Trump as saying to reporters aboard Air Force One as he flew from Da Nang to Hanoi in Vietnam.
"Every time he sees me, he says, 'I didn't do that. And I believe, I really believe, that when he tells me that, he means it." he added.
However, Central Intelligence Agency Director Mike Pompeo on Saturday stood by the U.S. intelligence assessment that Russia meddled in the 2016 election.
The CIA said in a statement that the "assessment with regard to Russian election meddling has not changed."
Trump reiterated his claims that Russian interference in the U.S. election is a conspiracy invented by Democrats to distract from their electoral losses.
Trump held a brief meeting with Putin on the margins of an Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (Apec) summit in Vietnam.
The meeting between the two leaders came amid controversy over collusion of Trump's campaign team with Russia.
Trump and his administration are facing multiple investigations focusing on Kremlin's role in the 2016 election meddling and whether members of his campaign possibly sought to collude with Russia.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
United States President Donald Trump has clarified his stand on his remarks over Russian meddling in the US 2016 presidential elections and said, "I believe in our intel agencies."
According to The Hill, Trump had, on Saturday, told reporters on Air Force One that he believed Russian President Vladimir Putin when he said he didn't meddle in the elections. He said, "Every time he sees me he says, 'I didn't do that,' and I really believe that when he tells me that, he means it."
After his Saturday remarks became a subject of backlash, Trump held a joint press conference with Vietnam President Tran Dai Quang on Sunday to clarify his stand.
"What I said is, I believe [Putin] believes that," Trump said at the press conference in Hanoi, Vietnam.
"I believe that he feels that he and Russia did not meddle in the elections. As to whether I believe it or not, I'm with our agencies, especially as currently constituted, with their leadership. I believe in our intel agencies. I've worked with them very strongly," he added.
Earlier yesterday, Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) director Mike Pompeo stood by the US intelligence assessment that Russia meddled in the 2016 elections.
The CIA, in a statement, said that the "assessment with regard to Russian election meddling has not changed."
Trump reiterated his claims that Russian interference in the US elections was a conspiracy invented by the Democrats to distract them from their electoral losses.
Trump held a brief meeting with Putin on the sidelines of an Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in Vietnam.
The president and his administration are facing multiple investigations focussing on Kremlin's role in the 2016 election meddling and whether members of his campaign possibly sought to collude with Russia.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
United States President Donald Trump has offered to serve as a mediator on the South China Sea territorial disputes, as he met with Vietnam President Tran Dai Quang at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in Hanoi.
Trump is telling President Tran Dai Quang he knows Vietnam has had a dispute with China over the strategic waterways.
He acknowledged China's position on the South China Sea, and said he knew Vietnam had a dispute with China over the strategic waterways, adding, "I am a very good mediator and a very good arbitrator and am willing to help," the local media reported.
Trump was speaking to Quang at the start of their meetings in Hanoi.
He also said North Korea "continues to be a problem" and that he was hopeful that Chinese President Xi Jinping would "be a tremendous help."
Trump added he hoped Russia would also "be a tremendous help."
He had visited Beijing last week and met Chinese President Xi Jinping.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
It may be considered as one of the most common "sleep aids" people employ to help them drift off at night, but according to a recent study, alcohol can actually be a roadblock to good sleep in teenagers.
The Rutgers University-Camden research linked insomnia to frequency of alcohol use among early adolescents.
"Parents, educators, and therapists should consider insomnia to be a risk marker for alcohol use, and alcohol use a risk marker for insomnia, among early adolescents," wrote researcher Naomi Marmorstein.
Marmorstein examined the associations between alcohol use and four sleep-related issues: initial insomnia; daytime sleepiness; sleep irregularity, defined as the difference in weekday and weekend bedtimes; and disturbed sleep, characterized as nightmares, snoring, sleepwalking, wetting the bed, and talking in sleep.
When sleep problems were found to be associated with frequency of alcohol use, she examined whether symptoms of mental problems or levels of parental monitoring accounted for these associations.
The research focused on seventh- and eighth-grade students participating in the Camden Youth Development Study, an initiative funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse at the National Institutes of . The study examines the development of mental problems and resilience among at-risk youth.
Youth completed questionnaires in the classroom that asked how long it took for them to fall asleep, what times they usually went to bed on a weekday and on the weekend or vacation night, how often they experienced sleep disturbances, and whether they ever fell asleep in class or had trouble staying awake after school. They were also asked the frequency of any alcohol use in the previous four months.
In addition, students answered questions which were used to assess depressive symptoms, as well as evidence of conduct disorder symptoms.
Teachers also completed questionnaires, which were analyzed to determine the presence of attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder symptoms.
Overall, there were associations between alcohol and both insomnia and daytime sleepiness. Importantly, Marmorstein determined that symptoms of mental health problems and parental monitoring did not account for the link between insomnia and alcohol use.
She said that these findings indicate that insomnia may be a unique risk marker for alcohol use among young adolescents.
The study is published recently in the journal Addictive Behaviors.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
West Bengal BJP president Dilip Ghosh has written a letter to Union Health Minister J.P. Nadda seeking his intervention in dengue and chicken gunia outbreak in the state.
"I am compelled to request you to kindly intervene in this "Dengue Epidemic situation" in West Bengal immediately and please take necessary steps to provide relief to the people," Ghosh said in the letter.
Ghosh also accused the Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee-led sate government of neglecting the matter.
Expressing concern over the menace, Ghosh said that the disease has attained a level of epidemic in West Bengal.
"The danger out of this epidemic has become more acute since the state government is not ready to accept the enormity of the crisis. The overall attempt is to put the crisis under the carpet without combating the fall out of the epidemic," he said in the letter.
The BJP leader further said that state health system has completely broken down and is incapable of combating the outbreak.
"State hospitals, district hospitals and local health centers are at present inadequately equipped to extend treatment to the patients. As a result majority of the patients are being sent back to their homes without any meaningful treatment," the letter reads.
Training his guns at the Chief Minister, Ghosh said she is not even accepting that there is any epidemic of Dengue in West Bengal.
"Chief Minister, who also happens to be the In-Charge of Health Department, has declined to accept that there is any epidemic of Dengue in Bengal, and said -'it is a conspiracy of the opposition political parties'."
He also alleged that state government is instructing the hospitals not to write the word 'Dengue' in the prescriptions or in death certificates , and write 'Unknown Fever' instead .
He further accused the state government of creating fear among the doctors due to which they are unwilling to issue death certificates of dengue deaths.
Ghosh also asserted that there is also shortage of Dengue Test Kit, in government hospitals due to which the count of dengue infected persons and death is mounting rapidly.
"Estimated Dengue cases so far have crossed 50000. Although government only accepted a meager number of 18000 those have been diagnosed as dengue virus infected and declared that 34 have died till date out of which only 18 are Dengue confirmed. But the media reported that more than 100 already died due to dengue attack.
He also accused the State Health Department of subverting the ground reality by not conducting any research on the disease.
"No research and initiative by NICED conducted till date to detect unknown lever and fight dengue-chicken gunia epidemic in Bengal. There is no special drive from this institute to create public awareness programme regarding Dengue - Chicken Gunia," the letter added.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Women activist Nilanjana Chakraborty on Monday condemned the triple talaq by an Aligarh Muslim University (AMU) professor to his wife on WhatsApp and said such actions cannot be accepted from an educated person.
Chakraborty told ANI, "If educated people like professors from respectable universities act do such things, then how regressive that can be. Irrespective of how educated a person is, they have basic religious fanaticism inside."
On the mindsets of women in the minority community, she said, "They are kind of indoctrinated with certain ideas and their rights have always been curbed."
She added that when the Supreme Court has already banned triple talaq per se than it does not make sense.
"He was probably finding an excuse to do it. It is very surprising that how can a professor defy the diktat of the apex court. This is something that needs to be seen and strict proceedings are required to be taken against him, so that in future there are no such incidents. One has to abide by the law," Chakraborty said.
Earlier on Sunday, a case was registered against Khalid Bin Yusuf Khan, a Sanskrit Professor in Aligarh Muslim University (AMU) after his wife accused him of divorcing her through triple talaq.
Yaseem Khalid said that she along with her children will commit suicide if justice is not delivered.
This incident came to light two months after the Supreme Court pronounced triple talaq as 'unconstitutional'.
Speaking to ANI, Yaseem said she was first given talaq via a text and later verbally, when she met him for compromise.
"On October 30, he gave me talaq via a text, again on November 8, he verbally gave me talaq when I and children went to him to seek his help," said Yaseem.
She also alleged that her husband had locked all the doors of the house they were staying in.
"My husband came back to our house and abused my children and locked our house," she alleged.
On the reason behind the entire dispute, Yaseem said, "My husband helped someone get a job in the University so the students in the Department wrote a letter to the Vice-Chancellor. However, he accused me of writing the letter."
She has registered a case in Aligarh's Civil Lines Police Station.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
YORK A typical day for York College senior Blair Hagelgans looks like that of most college students. She sits through classes, meets up with friends for lunch and has meetings around campus for various organizations shes a part of. Except, Hagelgans has a furry friend with her wherever she goes.
Hagelgans service dog Creed is not alone. Hes one of six service dogs at York College, and he fits into a growing national number of undergraduate students reporting a disability. As more students with disabilities pursue additional education, dogs are often coming with them.
I think the use of animals in general is becoming more recognized as a viable way to help mitigate symptoms, Linda Miller, director of Student Accessibility Services at York College says.
Hagelgans has Chiari malformation, a birth defect, and syringomyelia, a fluid-filled cyst in her spinal cord, among other conditions. She has problems with balance and coordination, and shes had 17 brain and spine surgeries.
Creed was originally trained as a seizure alert dog when Hagelgans was having seizures as a result of an epilepsy diagnosis. Shes now seizure-free, but Creed still helps with certain mobility tasks such as turning on and off lights, opening and closing doors and retrieving things.
Its a whole new territory when you constantly have your medical equipment thats a living creature with you, she says.
Its medical equipment that needs to be walked, fed and bathed at regular times. Service dogs also receive specialized training that their owners must keep up with. Hagelgans said its like having to take care of a 4-year-old while continuing her education.
Having a dog just as a pet is hard, she explains. You have to take them out, you have to feed them, you have to groom them, you have to take them to get baths. Trying to do all of that plus doing excessive training, plus going to class and doing your homework and your exams. its a lot for one person to handle.
At Dickinson College, training service dogs is not just a task for one person. The school has a Special Interest House called the Dickinson Dog House. Its a program run through Susquehanna Service Dogs where students in the club raise and train service dogs.
The students typically get an 8-week-old puppy and train the dog until its about 18 months old. They work on basic skills sit, stand, down, stay and pass the dogs on to SSDs advanced training where they learn specific tasks based on whom the dogs will be paired with.
Five students live in the house during any given year. However, the club has about 40-50 active members who have shifts training the dogs, hugging the puppies and just helping with daily tasks.
Because it is such a big club and we have so many volunteers helping us out, it makes it a lot more manageableespecially for the people living in the house, Dickinson Dog House Director Grace Crossland says.
Although there are difficulties with having service dogs on college campuses, advocates say the benefits outweigh the costs.
Warren Anderson, chief inclusion and diversity officer at HACC, Central Pennsylvanias Community College, says service dogs help with daily school tasks such as carrying books, guiding students to class and turning on classroom lights.
Service animals really do provide a tremendous service and resource for the institution, he says.
Hagelgans conditions are mostly invisible. She had an instance her freshman year in which another student bullied her on Yik Yak, an anonymous social media app, for having Creed when she didnt look sick.
Still, she says shes had plenty of students and professors helping her along the way. Shes made it her mission to educate more people about the role of service dogs, specifically for people who may not look like they need them. Shes even working with Miller on a service dog awareness project on York Colleges campus.
Hes not just a medical aid for me. Hes my pet. Hes my friend. Hes my best companion, she says.
At Dickinson, Crossland says shed like to see Dickinson Dog House do more educational events in the future. Shes seen firsthand what the dogs shes trained have been able to do for people who need them, and she wants to share that with the community.
It makes it easier knowing that theyre going off to do something really good for someone else and that youve been able to be a part of that process is a really amazing feeling.
Women activist Zeenat Shaukat Ali on Sunday came out in support of the lady whose car was towed while she was breast-feeding her child in Mumbai's Malad and dubbed the incident as inhumane.
"This was an inhuman way for how the cops to treat a mother breast-feeding her child. The duo would have got hurt because of such inhuman behaviour of cops," Zeenat told ANI.
"They could have asked the lady to step down from the car and not lift the car on such angle. That lady should have step down instantly when they were trying to lift the car or should have drawn public attention. This entire scenario was unorganised from both the side not just from the cops," added Zeenat.
A video of towing a car with a woman breast-feeding her seven-month-old baby in Malad created an uproar on social media.
However, the second video that surfaced on Sunday gave the entire argument over the incident a new twist. The recent video shot on a mobile phone shows that the seven-month-old baby was not inside the car but in the arms of another family member when the Mumbai Traffic Police warned to tow it away. The infant was taken inside, thereafter, indicating that situation could have been averted, on part of the parent.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The Turkish police on Sunday detained at least 34 Islamic State (IS) suspects in counter- operations across the city.
The suspects were reportedly planning to carry out attacks and had previously fought for the militant group, reports Xinhua news agency
Digital material and documents linked to the group were also seized in the operations.
The detainees will be deported following due procedures.
A total of 82 foreigners were captured in Istanbul as IS suspects on Friday.
On Thursday, 101 IS suspects were arrested in Turkey's capital Ankara following warrants issued for 245 people.
Between October 22 and November 1, the police has launched anti-IS operations in 25 provinces across Turkey detaining 283 IS militants and seizing 66 improvised explosive devices.
Since 2015, Turkey has suffered several deadly attacks that killed more than 300 people.
According to the Turkish Justice Ministry, at least 780 people, including 350 foreigners, remain in detention, some of whom have been convicted, for suspected links to the IS group.
--IANS
ksk/bg
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The second and final phase of the BharatNet project to provide high-speed broadband in all panchayats by March 2019 will be launched on Monday, according to an official announcement here.
With optical fibre connectivity now available at 1 lakh gram panchayats under Phase I of the project, the Central government will sign MoUs with the states for staring BharatNet Phase II, a Communications Ministry release said on Sunday.
"The national conference on signing of MoU with states and utilisation of network will be held in New Delhi on November 13 with states and service providers.
"DoT (Department of Telecom) will sign Memoranda of Understanding with states for implementation of BharatNet Phase II during the conference," it said.
According to the Ministry, DoT is organising the conference with state governments and service providers "to brainstorm and showcase various utilisation models leveraging BharatNet infrastructure" and IT Ministers and IT Secretaries from states will be present.
It also said that service providers like Airtel, Reliance Jio, Vodafone and Idea have shown interest in participating in BharatNet.
According to informed sources here, Telecom Minister Manoj Sinha, Information Technology Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad and Human Resource Development Minister Prakash Javadekar will be present at the conference on Monday.
--IANS
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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Britain and the US have been urged to respond to claims that they possess secret information on the mysterious death of a former UN secretary general in Africa more than 50 years ago, the media reported on Sunday.
Last month a UN report on the death of Dag Hammarskjold in a plane crash in 1961 found that there was a "significant amount of evidence" that the Albertina DC6 in which the Swedish diplomat was flying had been brought down in a forest near the city of Ndola in Zambia, by another aircraft, reports the Guardian.
The report took into account previously undisclosed information provided by the US, UK, Belgian, Canadian and German governments and noted that the American and British governments were in possession of intercepted radio traffic in the area at the time.
David Edward Lea, chairman of the trustees who established the Hammarskjold Commission, which persuaded the UN to reinvestigate the death, has written to UK Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson and the US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, saying the two governments must now state publicly whether or not they are in possession of the intercepts.
In his letter to the two senior politicians, Lea said it was "unthinkable that there are no transcripts (of the intercepted messages) in the US archives and perhaps also in the UK archives.
"I suspect that there is so far undisclosed and highly pertinent information in the transcripts. When the US authorities replied to the Hammarskjold Commission's very precise request for transcripts, they said that they had 'documents responsive to your request' but claimed that they were secret."
At the time of his death, Hammarskjold was attempting to unite Congo, the Guardian reported.
A former Belgian pilot known only as Beukels has claimed that he accidentally shot down the Albertina in an attempt to divert it from Ndola to another airport.
Beukels said he had shone a bright light down from his Fouga jet on to the DC6 while his radio operator called on the plane to divert.
After failing to receive a reply, Beukels has said that he fired several warning shots, at least one of which clipped the Albertina's wing, causing it to crash.
It was claimed that the US and possibly UK intelligence stations in Cyprus were monitoring radio traffic in the area at the time.
--IANS
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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
A ceremony was held here on Sunday to commemorate the 151st birth anniversary of the of Chinese revolutionary leader Sun Yat-sen.
The event was held by the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), the country's top political advisory body, in Zhongshan Park, which is named after Sun, reports Xinhua news agency.
Born in 1866 in Guangdong province, Sun was the founder of the Kuomintang Party and is a revered revolutionary leader who played a pivotal role in overthrowing imperial rule in China.
--IANS
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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
A minority community member was shot dead allegedly by cow vigilantes in Govindgarh in Alwar district in Rajasthan on the suspicion of cow smuggling. Another person was injured in the incident, informed sources said on Sunday.
Although police remained tight-lipped about the incident, sources close to the deceased's family told IANS that the incident occurred most likely on Friday morning when three persons were transporting some cows from Alwar to a village in Bharatpur.
As they reached near Govindgarh, they were stopped by some "gau rakshaks" (cow vigilantes) and attacked with firearms, they said.
One of the persons, Umar, around 35 years old, reportedly died in the firing while the other sustained bullet injuries. He has been admitted to a Haryana hospital.
"The body has been referred to a hospital in Jaipur for post-mortem examination. Only after that we will be able to know the real cause of death. We have filed an FIR against unidentified persons for murder," Anil Beniwal, Circle Office, Alwar told IANS.
He said the body of the deceased was found near a railway track on Friday morning, and as it was not identified, it was kept in an Alwar hospital mortuary. The body was identified by the relatives on Sunday morning.
Alwar Superintendent of Police Rahul Prakash said a case of cow smuggling had also been filed.
"We have also detained one person on charges of murder. Investigations are going on," he added.
Earlier in April, Pehlu Khan was allegedly beaten to death on suspicion of cow smuggling by cow vigilantes in Alwar district.
--IANS
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Outlawed All Tripura Tiger Force's former chief Ranjit Debbarma, who was pushed back by Bangladesh security forces into India four years ago, has been arrested on sedition charges, police said on Sunday.
Debbarma was arrested from his house at Sidhai in western Tripura late on Saturday on the charge of sedition and well as in connection with some cases pending at Teliamura police station in Khowai district, West Tripura district police chief Abhijit Saptarshi told IANS.
Khowai's Superintendent of Police Krishnendu Chakraborty said that the former terrorist leader would soon be produced before a local court.
"Debbarma, without permission of the police authority, held a public meeting at Teliamura last week and challenged erstwhile princely ruled Tripura's merger with the Indian Union. He also gave anti-national views in the meeting," Chakraborty told IANS over phone from Khowai.
Arrested by the Bangaladesh police in 2012 after an Interpol Red Corner Notice had been issued for him as he was allegedly involved in a number of massacres and many other crimes, he was handed over to Indian authorities through the Dawki border of Meghalaya in January next year. He was subsequently brought to Tripura and arrested by the state police.
He got bail from a Tripura court in 2015.
Debbarma has recently formed Tripura United People's Council involving surrendered militants of various former extremist outfits and demanded implementation of the government's assurances given to the outfits during signing of accords with different groups since 1993.
--IANS
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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
India and Canada will make expeditious efforts to finalise a Comprehensive Economic Partnership, or free trade agreement, on goods and services at the annual ministerial dialogue starting here on Monday, according an official statement.
A Canadian delegation led by its International Trade Minister Francois-Philippe Champagne is visiting India to attend the 4th Annual Ministerial Sialogue, while the Indian delegation will be led by Commerce Minister Suresh Prabhu, a Commerce Ministry statement said here.
"Efforts would be made to work towards expeditious conclusion of the Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (CEPA) for a progressive, balanced and mutually beneficial agreement covering both goods and services," it said.
Negotiations for the agreement were launched in November 2010.
The bilateral merchandise trade in 2016-17 was worth $6.13 billion.
The trade ministers are likely to discuss issues to explore ways of expediting an early conclusion of the CEPA and the Foreign Investment Promotion and Protection Agreement, the release said.
"They would also explore options for Indian interests in addressing the Temporary Foreign Workers Programme of Canada, which is affecting the movement of Indian professionals seeking short-term visas, address equivalence by the Canadian Food Inspection Agency for Indian organic product exports and exploring two-way investment opportunities," it added.
Canada now has over 1.2 million persons of Indian origin (PIOs), comprising more than 3 per cent of its population.
"Though India's commercial ties with the US have seen an upswing in the last few years, trade and investment relations between India and Canada are yet to realise their full potential," the release said.
--IANS
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India, the US, Japan and Australia, for the first time, together discussed the situation in the Indo-Pacific region and its future at a meeting in the Philippines' capital Manila.
"Officials from India's Ministry of External Affairs, Australia's Department of Foreign Affairs, Japan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs and United States' Department of State met in Manila on November 12 for consultations on issues of common interest in the Indo-Pacific region," the External Affairs Ministry said in a statement here.
"The discussions focused on cooperation based on their converging vision and values for promotion of peace, stability and prosperity in an increasingly inter-connected region that they share with each other and with other partners.
"They agreed that a free, open, prosperous and inclusive Indo-Pacific region serves the long-term interests of all countries in the region and of the world at large," it added.
The meeting was held as Prime Minister Narendra Modi left here on Sunday for a three-day visit to the Philippines during the course of which he will attend the 15th India-Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) meet and the 12th East Asia Summit on Tuesday.
The Asean, comprising Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam, has emerged as a key cornerstone of New Delhi's foreign policy, with the Look East Policy, launched by then Prime Minister P.V. Narasimha Rao in 1992 and turned into the Act East Policy under the current NDA dispensation, is focused at increased engagements with the regional bloc.
The annual East Asia Summit is held by leaders of the Asean countries and those of Australia, China, India, Japan, New Zealand, Russia, South Korea and the US.
Even as India, the US and Japan has a trilateral dialogue mechanism in place for issues relating to the Indo-Pacific region, Japanese Foreign Minister Tara Kono said last month that Tokyo was for a top-level quadrilateral dialogue that would also include Australia.
Kono said the idea was for the leaders of the four nations to promote free trade and defence cooperation across a stretch of ocean from the South China Sea, the Indian Ocean and all the way to Africa.
It would be aimed at counteracting China's aggressive maritime expansion under its Belt and Road initiative. China's plans would cement a sphere of influence for Beijing well beyond Asia.
India responded to Kono's comments by saying that New Delhi was open to work with like-minded countries that advance India's interests.
According to Sunday's ministry statement, the officials of India, the US, Japan and Australia also exchanged views on addressing common challenges of terrorism and proliferation linkages impacting the Indo-Pacific region as well as on enhancing connectivity.
--IANS
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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
India, Australia, Japan and the US on Sunday agreed that "a free, open, prosperous and inclusive" Indo-Pacific served long-term global interests, giving impetus to an emerging quad of democracies amid Chinas rising military and economic power.
It was the first dialogue of the quadrilateral formation of the democracies in which anti-terrorism cooperation was also discussed.
An External Affairs Ministry statement in New Delhi said foreign officials from India, Australia, Japan and the US met in the Philippines capital and held consultations "on issues of common interest in the Indo-Pacific region".
"The discussions focused on cooperation based on their converging vision and values for promotion of peace, stability and prosperity in an increasingly inter-connected region that they share with each other and with other partners," the statement said.
"They agreed that a free, open, prosperous and inclusive Indo-Pacific region serves the long-term interests of all countries in the region and of the world at large."
The officials also exchanged views on addressing common challenges of terrorism and proliferation linkages impacting the region as well as on enhancing connectivity.
Indian officials highlighted India's Act East Policy as the cornerstone of its engagement in the region.
The four countries are working to revive their quadrilateral dialogue.
The meeting was held as Prime Minister Narendra Modi arrived in Manila on Sunday on a three-day visit to the Philippines for the 15th India-Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) meet and the 12th East Asia Summit on Tuesday.
The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean), comprising Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam, has emerged as a key cornerstone of New Delhi's foreign policy, with its Look East Policy, launched by then Prime Minister P.V. Narasimha Rao in 1992.
The Modi government has turned it into the Act East Policy to focus on increased engagements with the regional bloc.
The annual East Asia Summit is held by leaders of the Asean countries and those of Australia, China, India, Japan, New Zealand, Russia, South Korea and the US.
Even as India, the US and Japan have a trilateral dialogue mechanism in place for issues relating to the Indo-Pacific region, Japanese Foreign Minister Tara Kono said in October that Tokyo was for a top-level quadrilateral dialogue that would also include Australia.
Kono said the idea was for the leaders of the four countries to promote free trade and defence cooperation across a stretch of ocean from the South China Sea, the Indian Ocean and all the way to Africa.
The emerging quadrilateral is seen to counter China's aggressive maritime expansion under its Belt and Road initiative. China's plans would cement a sphere of influence for Beijing well beyond Asia.
India responded to Kono's comments by saying that New Delhi was open to work with like-minded countries that advance India's interests.
--IANS
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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The 10-day winter session of the Karnataka legislature beginning here on Monday is likely to be stormy, as the opposition BJP has threatened to disrupt the proceedings on a number of issues, including its demand for a minister's resignation and discussion on income tax raids on another minister.
The winter session of the legislative assembly and the council is held at Suvarna Soudha in this border town, about 500 km from state capital Bengaluru since a decade to address the various issues of people in the state's northern region.
With assembly elections due in early 2018, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Janata Dal-Secular (JD-S) are also set to corner the ruling Congress on the "worsening" law and order situation in the state, especially Bengaluru, and graft charges against Chief Minister Siddaramaiah.
"We will not allow the assembly to function till Minister K.J. George resigns, as the CBI had filed an FIR against him on October 14, for abetment of suicide by a police officer," opposition leader and BJP lawmaker Jagadish Shettar told reporters at Hubballi on Sunday.
George was the Home Minister when Mangaluru Deputy Superintendent of Police M.K. Ganapathy accused him of harassment in a television interview before he committed suicide in July last year.
"As continuation of George in the cabinet has become untenable, he should resign or be sacked till the CBI investigation is complete and he is acquitted. He has no moral right to be minister till then," reiterated Shettar.
Ganapathy, 51, was found hanging on July 7, 2016 in a lodge in Madikeri of Kodagu district, about 250 km west to the state capital.
Siddaramaiah, however, ruled out the resignation of George, as "the FIR of the CBI was the same the state Crime Investigation Department registered and investigated", giving a clean chit to him in the case.
"George resigned once (July 18, 2016) after the Madikeri court ordered the local police station to register the case against him, but was re-inducted into the cabinet (September 26, 2016) after the CID found that he had no role in Ganapathy's suicide," asserted Siddaramaiah in Bengaluru on October 27.
The JD-S, however, urged the BJP not to disrupt the proceedings and wait for the outcome of the CBI probe on continuation of George in the ministry.
The Income Tax department raids on Energy Minister D.K. Shivakumar in early August led to war of words between the Congress and the BJP after the ruling party accused the BJP-led NDA government at the Centre of misusing the tax department to harass its minister in the state.
The demand by some ministers and ruling lawmakers for separate religious identity to Lingayats and opposition to it from a section of the same caste is also set to figure in the session as it has divided the dominant community.
The inter-state dispute over the sharing of the Mahadayi river water with Goa across the border is also likely to dominate the session as the issue had been pending over the last two decades.
Besides, opposition by the private hospitals and doctors to the bill to amend the Karnataka Private Medical Establishments Act and the BJP's objection to the bill on amending the Karnataka Prevention and Eradication of Inhuman Evil Practices and Black Magic Act are some other issue likely to cause disruptions in both Houses.
--IANS
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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Sunday unveiled a Blue Plaque to commemorate the 150th birth anniversary of the Scots-Irish social worker Sister Nivedita at her family home here.
Banerjee was the chief guest at the programme organised by the British government at the 21, High Street, address to honour the disciple of Swami Vivekananda.
The London blue plaques scheme run by English Heritage links the people of the past with the buildings of the present.
Speaking on the occasion, Banerjee said she felt privileged and honoured to attend the programme.
"There is an emotional and cultural relation between India and Britain. Calcutta (now Kolkata) was India's capital for long years when you (the British) ruled us. Calcutta is the cultural capital of India. There is a deep emotional and cultural bond between London and Kolkata," Banerjee said.
Ramakrishna Math and Ramakrishna Mission Vice President Swami Suhitananda, Indian Deputy High Commissioner in London Dinesh Patnaik were among those present on the occasion.
Sister Nivedita met Swami Vivekananda in 1895 in London and travelled to Calcutta (now Kolkata) in 1898.
Swami Vivekananda gave her the name Nivedita (meaning 'Dedicated to God') when he initiated her into the vow of Brahmacharya on 25 March 1898.
--IANS
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Prime Minister Narendra Modi interacted with world leaders, including US President Donald Trump, Chinese Premier Li Keqiang and Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, at a gala dinner reception hosted by Filipino President Rodrigo Duterte here on Sunday ahead of this year's India-Asean and East Asia Summits.
In a tweet attached with a picture, External Affairs Ministry spokesperson Raveesh Kumar said Modi spoke to Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak and Chinese Premier Li at the gala dinner to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the formation of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) here.
Kumar said that Modi engaged in a "warm and cordial conversation" with Li.
"Engaging conversation with a friend. PM @narendramodi with Dmitry Medvedev, Prime Minister of Russia at the Gala Dinner #Manila," he said in a separate tweet.
Another tweet by Modi showed him smiling warmly and shaking hands with President Trump.
Modi arrived here earlier on Sunday on a three-day visit to the Philippines to attend the 15th India-Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) and the 12th East Asia summits to be held here on Tuesday.
This is the first Prime Ministerial visit from India to the Philippines in 36 years since the visit of Indira Gandhi in 1981.
This year marks the 25th year of the India-Asean dialogue partnership and the golden jubilee of the formation of the Asean regional bloc.
The Association of South East Asian Nations (Asean) comprises Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.
Ahead of the summits, Modi will hold a bilateral meeting with Duterte here on Monday. He is also scheduled to hold a bilateral meeting with Trump on Monday.
Similar meetings between Modi and other visiting leaders are also being arranged on the sidelines of the summits.
--IANS
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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
With forests equal to the size of New Zealand having disappeared last year, new action from countries and corporations to cut emissions from forest use and establish sustainable forestry management featured at the ongoing UN Climate Change negotiations here on Sunday.
Initiatives from South America's Ecuador, Africa's Gabon, Walmart and Mars Inc were welcomed by delegates at the Forests Global Climate Action day at the Climate Change Conference named COP23.
"These ecosystems are high on the agenda for Small Island Developing States because we are among the most vulnerable nations to the impacts of climate change," said Fiji's Economy and Climate Change Minister Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum, whose country holds this year's presidency of the conference.
"While important progress has been made in protecting these ecosystems to enhance our resilience to a changing climate, we need all countries to make forest protection and rehabilitation and the financing of all forest ecosystems a priority. In particular, we need to create real incentives to attract both public and private finance to delivering nature-based solutions," he said.
Two years after the world united around the Paris Agreement and a year after its entry into force, the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change's (UNFCCC) 197 parties have been reconvened for the 23rd annual climate change talks in Bonn till November 17.
The Bonn talks, which began on November 6, are expected to take a number of decisions necessary to bring the Paris Agreement to life, including meaningful progress on the agreement implementation guidelines, to achieve a goal to cut greenhouse gases from burning fossil fuels.
The new actions to cut emissions from forest use included an Ecuadorean initiative to reduce 15 million tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions in the forest sector, launched by Maria Victoria Chiriboga, Ecuador's Under Secretary of Climate Change.
A commitment to deforestation-free commodities by Laura Phillips of Walmart's Senior Vice President of Sustainability.
Mars Inc's new policy to reduce their carbon footprint 27 per cent by 2025 and 67 per cent by 2050 by addressing deforestation throughout their corporate value chain was presented by Kevin Rabinovitch, Global Vice President of Sustainability.
Lee White, Director of Gabon's National Park Service, described efforts to halt an illegal logging operation that will stop the emission of 20 million tonnes of carbon dioxide.
Sustaining and increasing forests is vital to get on track in time to meet the Paris Climate Change Agreement's goal, which is to keep the average global temperature rise well below two degrees Celsius and as close to 1.5 degrees as possible.
The maths of climate science show that meeting this goal is impossible without nurturing forests, which from the atmosphere's point of view are a massive sink of carbon, locked up in trees, plants and the soil, and a source of oxygen through photosynthesis.
But destructive, often illegal, logging and deforestation continues. Last year, forests equal to the size of New Zealand disappeared.
"Our planet's forests are being decimated at an alarming rate. Putting a stop to this destruction is crucial to tackling climate change, reducing poverty and feeding a growing global population, in line with the Paris Agreement and the Sustainable Development Goals," said Director General of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Inger Andersen.
"Nature-based solutions such as protecting and restoring forests can contribute over one-third of the total climate change mitigation required by 2030 to keep the temperature rise below two degrees Celsius. More decisive, collective action is now needed to seize this opportunity," he added.
(Vishal Gulati is in Bonn at the invitation of the Global Editors Network to cover COP23. He can be contacted at vishal.g@ians.in)
--IANS
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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
In a bid to bring to the forefront the individuals who have carved a niche for themselves in various fields, a book featuring 25 such personalities from the Mithila region of Bihar has been released.
"The Living Legends of Mithila", authored by Vivekanand Jha, was released at an event at the Gandhi Peace Foundation here on Saturday.
The book brings tales of these 25 persons, who stand apart for their distinctive roles and contribution to the larger cause of the society.
Former Governor of Karnataka T.N. Chaturvedi, Magsaysay awardee Rajendra Singh, Jharkhand Food Minister Saryu Rai and author and professor Madhu Kishwar were present at the book launch.
"Mithila is the place where Sita was born. It has always been a scholarly place and is considered as the flag-bearer of ancient civilisation. So I wanted the youths to know about the achievements of the people who belong to this place," Jha told IANS.
--IANS
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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The National Investigation Agency (NIA) has busted an inter-state gang of cheats and nabbed its three members from Dholpur in Rajasthan, the agency said on Sunday.
The gang used to cheat people on the pretext of exchanging Fake Indian Currency Notes (FICN) or unbilled gold biscuits on attractive rates.
The NIA recovered 20 gold biscuits of 100 grams each from their possession and is conducting searches in Mumbai and Kolhapur (Maharashtra). The genuineness of the gold is also being verified.
"During the preliminary examination, it was revealed that an inter-state gang had been active since long in the states of Maharashtra, Rajasthan, Delhi and West Bengal. They lured people on the pretext of exchanging high-quality FICN or unbilled gold biscuits on attractive rates," an official said.
"They either looted their targets directly or carried out fake police raids with the help of associates. The off-guard targets would leave their money behind and not even lodge police complaints," he added.
While investigating a FICN-related case, the NIA had recovered fake currency of Rs 9,80,000 face value on March 31 last year from the possession of one Nasir Sheikh near the India-Bangladesh border.
He was arrested on the spot, though his associate from Bangladesh, Darul Sheikh alias Darul, managed to escape.
On Saturday, the agency received a "reliable input" that the same Bangladeshi absconder Darul Sheikh along with other associates was trying to strike a deal in fake currency at Dholpur.
The NIA teams swung into action and detained three suspects, Gagan Kumar Vyas alias Tiwari of Satara, Rashid Khan alias Biza of Thane and Iqbal Ahmad Ansari of Palghar, Maharashtra.
"All the above detained gang members along with seized 20 gold biscuits are being handed over to Dholpur police for initiating appropriate action," the official said.
--IANS
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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Congress on Sunday slammed Haryana Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar and BJP government in the state for party leaders allegedly trying to scuttle the police investigation into the murder of Class II student Pradhuman Thakur.
"Pradyuman Thakur Murder - CBI points fingers at BJP politicians and minister for scuttling police investigation as CM Khattar hurriedly gives clean chit," said Congress spokesperson Randeep Singh Surjewala on Twitter attaching a news story with a headline CBI scans politicians' role in Ryan police probe.
"Will justice be made a scapegoat at the altar of political expediency?" he asked.
In a twist to the murder of a Class 2 student of Ryan International School in Gurugram, the CBI said the crime was committed by a 16-year-old student of the school who wanted to delay upcoming exams.
The revelation derailed Haryana Police's claim that a school bus conductor, in jail since then, was the killer.
--IANS
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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Community welfare is "at the very heart of the social infrastructure that dominated our Indian civilization for millennia" and this message has been taken forward by reformers like Swami Prabhupada, Vice President M. Venkaiah Naidu said here on Sunday.
Addressing the East West Cultural Festival in commemoration of the 121st birth anniversary of Swami Prabhupada, founder of International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON), he said that Swami Prabhupada was an "exemplary ambassador of India's ancient civilisation".
"It is our great civilisation that gave the world the famous slogan of 'lokah samasta sukhino bhavantu/sarve janah sukhino bhavantu/sarva jiva jantu sukhino bhavantu' (May the whole world be happy and peaceful. May all the people in the world be happy and peaceful. May all forms of life be happy and peaceful)," he said.
Naidu said that while education is a key instrument in developing social infrastructure as it breaks the vicious cycle of poverty and underdevelopment, culture, on the other hand, is the life-sustaining force of social infrastructure.
"It enlivens ethical and moral values that seem to be eroding in our modern lives."
He also commended various social welfare projects being run by ISKCON such as Annamrita programme under which ISKCON members daily feed 12 lakh government school students free meals.
Under the tribal care initiative, the organisation is providing education, healthcare in remote parts of Assam, Tripura, Jharkhand, Odisha and West Bengal, Naidu said.
He said that the 15th century saint Chaitanya Mahaprabhu enjoined all Indians to do 'paropakara' (welfare activities for humankind) and this is what Swami Prabhupada promoted as he travelled worldwide.
"And he was so remarkably successful in doing this, that today we see hundreds of thousands of westerners who are exceptionally Indian in their outlook and remarkably Vedic in their lifestyles," Naidu said.
--IANS
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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy arrived in Barcelona for the first time after the central government applied the Article 155 of the Spanish constitution to sack Catalan government and take control over Catalonia.
Rajoy was welcomed by thousands of supporters after his arrival in Barcelona on Sunday, Xinhua news agency reported.
He then made a speech to the public, calling for the Catalan people to support the unity of Spain by encouraging "the silent or silenced majority to convert their voice into a vote".
Rajoy also expressed his worries about Catalan economy that has suffered due to the chaos caused by the unilateral declaration of independence, as more than 2,000 companies have left the region due to the continuous tensions.
Meanwhile, he made a commitment on the recovery of Spanish economy and job creation.
Talking about the application of Article 155 of Spanish constitution, Rajoy emphasised that he "has tried every way" before taking this step, saying that every other country that is responsible would do the same.
He described separatism as "toxic that destroys Catalonia", while expressing his expectation that the new general selection of Catalonia slated for December 21 will be "clean and legal elections that restore democracy".
Xavier Garcia Albiol, president of the People's Party of Catalonia, thanked Rajoy for applying Article 155 of the constitution and restoring the normalcy of Catalonia.
With the approval of Spanish Parliament, Rajoy applied Article 155 of the Constitution to suspend Catalan autonomy and to sack the former regional government hours after the Catalan Parliament made an unilateral declaration of independence on October 27.
Several former Catalan separatist leaders have already been sent to prison by court on charges of rebellion, sedition, and misuse of public funds.
--IANS
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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Thousands of people took to the streets here to demand the release of jailed Catalonian leaders for their outlawed drive to secede from Spain.
Barcelona's municipal police force said 750,000 people participated in the march on Saturday, called to demand the release of eight former members of the dissolved Catalan government and the presidents of the two main grassroots independence organisations - the Catalan National Assembly (ANC) and Omnium Cultural, reports Efe news.
The ANC and Omnium had organised Saturday's demonstration.
The jailed separatist leaders include former vice president of the Catalan regional government, Oriol Junqueras, who like the rest of his fellow Cabinet members is charged with rebellion, sedition and misuse of public funds for his role in enabling the region's October 27 declaration of independence.
The demonstrators, many waving pro-independence Estelada flags, marched past the Sagrada Familia church and other emblematic parts of Barcelona behind banners that read "Freedom for Political Prisoners" and "We Are a Republic".
Barcelona Mayor Ada Colau also participated .
The former speaker of Catalonia's Parliament, Carme Forcadell, who also is under investigation for rebellion, sedition and misuse of public funds, did not attend Saturday's march on the advice of her attorney.
On Friday, she was released from custody after posting a 150,000 euro ($174,000) bond.
Puigdemont, who fled to Brussels late last month, delivered a recorded message on Friday to the pro-independence movement.
He called on people to take to the streets and said the Spanish government's crackdown on independence leaders would not dissuade the region from freely deciding its future at the ballot box.
Puigdemont is scheduled to appear before a judge in a November 17 hearing on the European arrest warrants that have been issued for him and four officials of his administration who accompanied him to Belgium.
Hours after Catalonia's October 27 declaration of independence, the Spanish Senate approved Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy's proposal to invoke Article 155 of the constitution and rescind Catalonia's regional autonomy.
Rajoy dismissed Puigdemont and his Cabinet, dissolved the Catalan Parliament and called regional elections for December 21
Veteran actor Rishi Kapoor, 65, wishes to visit Pakistan before he dies.
"I am 65 years old and I want to see Pakistan before I die. I want my children to see their roots. Bas karva dijiye (Please make it happen)," Rishi tweeted on Sunday.
Rishi has a house in Peshawar, Pakistan. It was constructed between 1918 and 1922 by Dewan Basheswarnath Kapoor, the father of Prithviraj Kapoor, the first member of the family to enter the film industry. The Kapoors shifted to India after the 1947 partition.
On Saturday, former Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Farooq Abdullah said the part of Kashmir held by Islamabad will remain with Pakistan and this was not going to change. He said Jammu and Kashmir needed more autonomy and chided those seeking "azadi".
Rishi wrote: "Abdullahji, Salaam! Totally agree with you, Sir. Jammu and Kashmir is ours and Pakistan-occupied Kashmir is theirs. This is the only way we can solve our problem. Accept it."
--IANS
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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Chinese President Xi Jinping arrived here on Sunday for a state visit after attending the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Summit in Vietnam's Da Nang city.
Xi will be holding talks in Hanoi with General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Vietnam (CPV), Nguyen Phu Trong and is expected to meet his counterpart Tran Dai Quang and the Chairperson of the National Assembly of Vietnam, Nguyen Thi Kim Ngan.
The visit comes on the heels of the 19th CPC National Congress and is reciprocal for previous visits to China by Trong and Quang, earlier this year.
Trong made a four-day official visit to China in January, while Quang paid a state visit in May and attended the Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation in Beijing.
"The leaders of the two countries will have in-depth talks on promoting the bilateral relations between the two countries under the new circumstances," said Chinese Ambassador to Vietnam, Hong Xiaoyong.
In 2016, bilateral trade volume reached $98.23 billion. The figure is expected to reach $100 billion by the end of 2017.
China invested a total of $823.6 million in Vietnam in the first quarter of 2017, becoming the third largest foreign direct investor of the country.
Meanwhile, Vietnam is the first leg of Xi's two-nation Asia tour, which will also take him to Laos on Monday.
--IANS
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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Chinese President Xi Jinping has urged Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to take more "practical actions" to improve bilateral ties and properly manage differences in a "constructive way".
"To improve China-Japan ties, the key is mutual trust," Xi told Abe on the sidelines of the 25th Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Economic Leaders' Meeting on Saturday.
He urged the Japanese side to take more practical actions and adopt more specific policies to reflect the strategic consensus reached by the two countries, which reaffirms that China and Japan are cooperation partners, not threat to each other.
As China and Japan are neighbours and major economies in Asia and the world, a stable development of China-Japan relationship conforms to the interests of both sides and also has an important influence on the region and the world at large, Xi said.
This year marks the 45th anniversary of the normalisation of diplomatic relations between China and Japan, and next year will mark the 40th anniversary of the signing of the China-Japan Treaty of Peace and Friendship.
He suggested the two countries promote regional economic integration, and push for cooperation within the framework of the Belt and Road Initiative at an early date.
The two sides should continue to increase exchanges on culture, media and youths, and can also strengthen people-to-people bond through carrying out cooperation on Olympics as China will host the Winter Olympic Games in 2022 and Japan will host the Summer Olympics in 2020, Xi added.
Abe extended his congratulations on the success of the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China (CPC), which was held last month, and on Xi's re-election as general secretary of the CPC Central Committee.
He said the Japanese side was willing to work with China to push for the development of the strategic mutually-beneficial relationship between the two countries by marking the 40th anniversary of the signing of the China-Japan Treaty of Peace and Friendship next year.
Japan hopes to increase high-level exchanges with China, carry out reciprocal economic and trade cooperation, and explore cooperation in connectivity and under the Belt and Road Initiative, he said.
Abe also agreed to deepen exchanges on tourism, culture, youths and Olympics.
--IANS
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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
With reference to Ayan Pramaniks article, H-1B issues may affect people but not companies: Expert (November 11), the current US government started its term with a promise to prevent immigration of foreign nationals and ensure adequate job opportunities to its citizens.
Thousands of investors have made money in the current bull run in the Indian stock market. However, Arundhati Bhattacharya, former chairman of State Bank of India, expressed regret that she was not able to take advantage of the bull run. I was chairman of SBI, which meant I knew every Indian company from the inside and hence every trade (that I would have conducted) could have been construed as insider trading, she said at an event.
Six months before Karnataka was to vote, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) was searching for a catalyst to recharge the cadre, unify squabbling state leaders, birth a slogan and shape a comprehensive outlook. Its been wallowing in a welter of ideas that has resurrected the debate on populism versus pragmatism, as it has to pander to two important but incompatible constituencies. These being the freebie consuming masses and Bengalurus heavy hitters, craving for even roads, pristine lakes and unbroken power supply.
A revival plan for the 2019 Lok Sabha polls has asked the party leadership to take the lead in shaping an opposition alliance, form electoral understandings in states where the party is weak, decisively curb infighting and make efforts to bring moderate Hindus back to the party fold.
The Congress is all set to keep up the pressure on the Narendra Modi government on capping the goods and services tax (GST) at 18 per cent, and to include petrol, diesel as well as the real estate sector and electricity in the ambit of the new tax regime.
Modi's trade talks: Prime Minister Narendra Modi will be in Philippines to attend the India-Asean and East Asia summits on Monday and Tuesday. Bilateral trade and investments, among others, will be key discussion topics. Bilateral meetings between the prime minister and other leaders on the sidelines of these summits are being finalised.
Event management
Monday is the last day of the Blockchain summit and hackathon at IIT Delhi. The event started on Saturday and continued over the weekend. It was planned as a chain of events in the run-up to the Global Entrepreneurship Summit in Hyderabad at the end of the month. Sponsored by NITI Aayog, along with Proffer, a blockchain start-up founded by graduates of MIT and Harvard, the objective was to explore how blockchain architectures can enable a new digital infrastructure for India, improve efficiency, transparency, privacy, and cost across all sectors. About 1,500 students from the IITs, MIT, Harvard, Berkeley, and the top engineering institutions from across the world are participating, with 500 attending in person at the IIT Delhi campus. Microsoft, IBM, Accel, Coinbase, and Amazon AWS have sponsored $17,000 in prizes to reward the top five blockchain-based applications addressing problems in government/enterprise infrastructure, finance, energy markets, supply chain, decentralised Aadhaar identities, information exchange, etc.
Delhi's disaster management
The odd-even car rationing scheme will be enforced in the capital for five days from Monday, Delhi Transport Minister Kailash Gahlot said. The decision comes on the backdrop of a spike in air pollution level. Under the policy, private vehicles are allowed to ply based on the last number on their licence plates.Odd-numbered cars would run on odd dates, while the even-numbered ones on even dates. In 2016, the scheme was enforced twice January 1-15 and April 15-30. While traffic is expected to be smoother, public transportation and app cabs will see a surge.
Although he has fought back, T T V Dinakaran, commissar in the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK) of Tamil Nadu and keeper of many secrets, could be in serious trouble this time. He put up a brave front when income tax (I-T) authorities searched Jaya TV offices and 21 other locations in Tamil Nadu, following reports of tax evasion. The other sites being searched included the house of jailed ex-supremo Sasikala's brother, Ilavarasi, in Chennai (where V K Sasikala stayed while out on parole) and Dinakaran's residence at Mannargudi. People are watching everything. They understand what is going on. If the Centre thinks they can destroy us by conducting such raids, they are day-dreaming. It is political vendetta. People who have looted the state are sitting in power, said Dinakaran.
: MLA , 41
Pakistani police today arrested over 300 activists of the Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan (TLP) party in Punjab province for creating unrest.
The TLP is a recently-formed political party of the Barelvi sect.
Skirmishes erupted between the activists and police since yesterday. Over a dozen TLP activists and five policemen were injured during the clashes as protesters pelted stones at police who fired teargas.
The activists were protesting against federal and provincial law ministers Zahid Hamid and Rana Sanaullah for their alleged "soft corner" towards the minority Ahmadi community. They demanded the ministers' resignation.
The Ahmadis are among Pakistan's most persecuted minorities.
TLP activists also blocked the main road connecting Rawalpindi with Islamabad for the last few days. The PML-N government however refrained from using force to disperse them from there.
In other cities like Lahore, Faisalabad, Gujranwala, Sheikhupura, Sahiwal and Bahawalpur, the police launched a crackdown on their sit-ins and arrested protesters for blocking roads.
"We have arrested more than 300 TLP workers from different cities of Punjab for creating law and order situation in the province," Punjab Police spokesman Niyab Haider said.
He said the activists have been booked for blocking roads, damaging public property and injuring policemen during protests, adding that TLP workers will not be allowed to create unrest in the province in the name of religion.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
About 50 leading Indian machine tools and technology firms will participate in an international trade fair in Egypt this week to expand bilateral, commercial and economic relations in the sector.
Various ranges of latest machineries will be exhibited in the four-day-long fair from November 16, according to a statement by the Engineering Export Promotion Council, an investment promotion organisation supported by the Indian government.
The event has been organised by the EEPC in association with the Indian embassy in Egypt.
Indian Envoy to Egypt Sanjay Bhattacharyya said India is looking forward to collaborate and work with Egypt in these sectors through trade and investment.
The fair aims to expand bilateral, commercial and economic relations in general and machine tools sectors the statement said.
"The machine tool industry in India is a strategic industry segment as the manufacturing sector is dependent upon the machine tools," Bhattacharyya said.
This is another example of success of Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) in India, with some companies growing to become global leaders through efficiency, quality controls and technology improvements, Bhattacharyya added.
Major Indian cities like Bengaluru, Pune, Mumbai, Ahmedabad and Chennai contribute to almost 90 per cent of the total production of metal cutting machines in the country.
On the other hand, 90 per cent of total production of metal forming machines is from cities like Vadodara, Coimbatore, Batala, Jalandhar, Pune and Ludhiana.
Egypt has traditionally been one of India's most important trading partners in the African continent.
During the year 2016-17, the bilateral trade between India and Egypt was to the tune of USD 3.23 billion.
India is Egypt's 10th largest export destination and also the 10th largest import source, according to official data.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Four Army personnel, including an officer, were among seven persons injured in an accident involving two vehicles here, a police official said today.
An Army vehicle and a private car collided head-on in the Sarwal area here at around 11 pm yesterday, the official said.
He said all seven people, including the four Army personnel and three civilians, travelling in the two vehicles sustained injuries and were taken to a hospital, where their condition was stated to be "stable".
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) has barred here from admitting students for the academic year 2017-18 as it lacks basic facilities and infrastructure.
The apex regulatory body for technical education, in its notice, stated that the college lacks facilities like research labs, sick room, common room for boys and girls and placement office.
"Since the institute representatives have not submitted the compliance report for the deficiencies pointed out by the AICTE committee, hence the panel has recommended next academic session to be a no admission year," the notice read.
The AICTE has also issued a show cause notice to the administration of the college for failing to comply with the recommendation of a Standing Appellate Committee (SAC) issued in April.
By the time it got the notice, the college had already enrolled 200 students, Joshil K Abraham, Assistant Professor (English) and HOD (Humanities and Applied Sciences), told PTI.
The notice, issued last month, also said that the college has failed in producing important documents before the committee.
Started 10 years ago by the Delhi government, the college shares an ITI institute's campus in Okhla. The students have already been protesting for a campus since March.
On March 7, the students had launched a protest with the slogan - "we want campus". They had started their protest by sleeping in their classrooms at night.
The protest was called off on April 29 after Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal promised to fulfil their demands.
The construction work has not started even after Kejriwal's promise.
The students were earlier suffering due to lack of classrooms, labs and other essential facilities. Now they are in danger of not having a valid degree due to AICTE withdrawing the approval for this year, said Abraham.
"I am very concerned and hope that the government gives us the land and infrastructure and make sure that AICTE grants back the affiliation. I really hope that the chief minister keeps the promise he had made," he said.
Amara Raja Batteries Ltd (ARBL) is aiming to be a Rs 10,000-crore entity in the next 2-3 years as the Hyderabad-based company clocks a solid double-digit growth in its automotive segment, said a top company official.
ARBL expects that its automotive segment will contribute around two-thirds of its overall sales in the next 2-3 years as the vehicle sector grows and the rest will come from the industrial segment, ARBL CEO S Vijayanand told PTI.
Besides, the company sees potential in the solar segment, which requires clean batteries for energy storage, as thrust on green energy is on the rise.
ARBL's revenue in 2016-17 was Rs 5,981.39 crore.
Asked by when ARBL will achieve Rs 10,000-crore sales, Vijayanand said: "Since we are are in two different verticals, a lot depends as how these individual verticals are likely to grow, but if we have our way and able to realise plans which we have in blueprint, we should be getting there in the next 2-3 years timeframe probably."
The company is registering a CAGR (compound annual growth rate) of around 14-15 per cent in its revenue over the past five years, he added.
"We expect that kind of double-digit growth is still possible for the next 2-3 years," he added.
The automotive and industrial segments contribute in the ratio of 60:40 in the ARBL's revenue pie.
"Our typical (revenue) historically split between automotive and industrial is 60:40, but if you look at the market potential, it should stabilise to two-thirds to one-third ratio," he said, adding that "it would take a couple of years to reach there".
The industrial segment is driven by two large players -- the telecom industry and UPS - and solar has the potential to emerge as the third factor.
"Today, solar capacities are being added, which constitute a smaller percentage of the grid, but at some point of time, I am sure that solar component of the overall power generation would be at a powerful point," he said, while adding that a new market would be created by people who would store energy to "avoid peak consumption points" as well.
The company is also eyeing development of 100 smart cities by the government that require solar energy solutions and may participate directly if there is a large order.
"We would like to be neutral in providing our solutions to most players, but if there is a large project that requires a consortium bidding, we would be open to those project-specific associations," he said.
Various ultra mega solar parks are being set up in different states and ARBL has big bidding plans.
The company exports 12-15 per cent of its volumes to South-East, South Asia, the Middle-East and some African countries -- in both industrial and automotive segments.
"Our focus so far has been pretty much to grow in the domestic market, but going forward in the next 3-5 years, there would be much more focus on export to the identified countries where tariff structure is not a barrier," he said.
The overall battery market in India is estimated to be Rs 27,000 crore and dominated by two - ARBL and Exide.
ARBL is the flagship company of the Amara Raja group, with 26 per cent equity stake each from the Galla family and US-based Johnson Controls Inc.
The wife of an Aligarh Muslim University professor has accused her husband of seeking to divorce her through WhatsApp, the police said today.
The woman had last week approached the police alleging her husband was "torturing" her and had locked their house to prevent her from entering it.
SSP Rajesh Pandey said the wife met him last week and alleged her husband had sent her two "talaq" notices on WhatsApp.
"She requested us to settle the matter. The police informed the professor about the settlement process but he did not turn up before the settlement officer," Pandey said.
A case has been registered against the professor on charges of "harassment and wrongfully preventing his wife from entering their house", he said.
The AMU academic, however, said the case was subjudice since October first week.
He said that according to the law, he had served two notices on his wife after the stipulated period and was preparing for the last one.
The professor claimed he had documentary evidence to prove his wife misled him about her past.
"I have documents to prove that my wife had pledged to change her behaviour and save our marriage," he said.
The husband said he voluntarily left his official bungalow to avoid confrontations with his wife.
Meanwhile, the woman has written to Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath alleging that her husband went against the Supreme Court's recent judgement on "triple talaq".
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
When Arvind Kejriwal arrived with a bang on the Indian political horizon, two filmmakers, intrigued by the drama in Delhi, followed him around with their cameras. They ended up capturing the birth of the Aam Admi Party as it unfolded in real-time.
The one-hour-36-minutes-long documentary called "An Insignificant Man" has been directed by Khusboo Ranka and Vinay Shukla, and produced by the maker of "Ship of Theseus", Anand Gandhi.
Just before the party marks its fifth year on November 26, the documentary, after travelling to over 50 international film festivals, will commercially release in India on November 17.
Ranka and Shukla are not troubled by the problems that the fledgling party has been facing, for they believe their film is an impartial portrayal of a unique democratic development.
The directors often say, they were the only ones with a camera, which gave them access to vital meetings and discussions.
"The main reason we could persist as filmmakers was the access. We realised that it was a unique opportunity for us and we would be fools to waste it. We wanted to make a film that could be read in multiple ways it is not an immediate commentary, but introspective," says Ranka in an interview with PTI.
Ranka, who co-wrote "Ship of Theseus" with Gandhi, says there was no pressure from the party to show them in a good light. They also found two interesting figures in Kejriwal and Yogendra Yadav, the AAP founders who ended up parting.
"They are two different people and their style of politics is also different. Yogendra was more cautious, depended on the data and processes while Arvind was more instinctive. He would alter his speech depending on the crowd. While working on the film, we realised that there would be differences between the two," she adds.
Shukla, who has also shot another documentary, says that when they first started shooting the development in Delhi, they did not anticipate they would end up capturing a story.
"They had just announced that they were going to form a political party. We went there and said we would like to shoot every day and, at that time, they were happy at least someone was covering them," he says.
But the development took them by surprise.
"Over the next year, they became much bigger than any of us could have anticipated. We ended up covering a shape- shifting phenomenon in Indian politics," says Shukla.
He adds that when they were trying to raise money for the film, they were often advised to turn it into fiction.
The directors faced their fair share of struggle when former censor board chief Pahlaj Nihalani refused to certify the film, asking them to get No Objection Certificates (NoC) from Prime Minister Narendra Modi, former Delhi Chief Minister Sheila Dixit and other political leaders mentioned in the film, the two filmmakers say.
"Mr Nihalani also wanted us to keep the names of the BJP and Congress out, which would have made the film completely irrelevant. But Anand stood by the project from day one and we were lucky to have him on our side."
Gandhi does not believe that the film has been delayed as he feels the story is not bound by time.
"It's a contemporary story. It's a story of democracy today across the world. It is the story of American democracy as much as it is the story of Greece, Portugal or India," he says.
The focus of the film, Gandhi adds, is not on an individual.
"The individual, as they have rightly suggested, is insignificant to the larger scope of the narrative. Their focus has been on ideas, questions and challenges of the democratic process," says Gandhi.
The crowdfunded political thriller presented by the Vice Media, produced by Memesys Lab is co-produced by Sundance, Bertha Foundation, DocSociety, AND Busan, IDFA.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Members of the Andhra Pradesh legislature are an aggrieved lot and legislators from the ruling and opposition parties blame each for the current state of affairs.
On one hand the legislature sessions are being conducted for too few days a year and, on the other, the issues the members raise in the Council and the Assembly have been eliciting virually no response from the government.
In the nine sessions of the 14th legislature held since 2014, the House sat only for a total 80 days. The tenth session is currently on and it will be for ten days.
While the ruling Telugu Desam Party is accusing the YSR Congress of regularly disrupting the House and stalling its business, the lone opposition party says the TDP government is shying away from its responsibilities.
However, during the ongoing session, there will be no disruption as the Jaganmohan Reddy-led opposition party is staying away from the House.
For a variety of reasons, questions raised by members in both Houses remain unanswered for the past few sessions.
In the Assembly, as many as 296 questions raised by the members elicited no response from the government, said legislature sources.
In the Council where the proceedings relatively go on smoothly the number of unanswered questions is more than double at 603, including 58 special questions, they said.
"There is no accountability in this government and the House is not being run as it ought to be. The government is shying away from rules and responsibilities," Public Accounts Committee (PAC) Chairman Buggana Rajendranath Reddy alleged.
That issues raised by members in the legislature remained unaddressed only exposed the glaring lapses in the administration, the YSRC MLA told PTI.
TDP senior MLA Alapati Rajendra Prasad and first-timer Palla Srinivasa Rao blamed the opposition party for the state of affairs.
"The YSRC always adopted a single point agenda of disrupting the House. So the Question Hour took a beating and our questions never drew any response because of abrupt adjournment or postponement," they pointed out.
Rao said the government was not at fault in the issue.
"In some cases we are sent written replies but, yes, there is some delay in that. If the members' queries are not answered, it could well become a privilege issue," Prasad noted.
Irrigation and industries topped the list of "unresponsive" departments, the sources said.
Council Chairman (in charge) Reddy Subrahmanyam and Assembly Speaker Kodela Sivaprasada Rao are also sore over this.
"Replies to questions raised by members are not being furnished in time. One officer in each department should be entrusted with the specific responsibility of replying to legislators' questions," they told Chief Secretary Dinesh Kumar recently.
Kumar, on his part, asked his subordinate officers to act promptly in providing information.
"You should act responsibly and see that all information sought by legislators is promptly furnished. Designate one person in each department for the purpose," the cief secretary directed the government secretaries.
A principal secretary-level officer said the relocation of the government and the legislature from Hyderabad to Amaravati in the last one year was the main reason for not answering legislators' questions.
"There has been a lot of dislocation because of the transition. Reorganising things took time and hence the delay. Now we are back on track and everything will be sorted out soon," he added.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
An overloaded boat carrying 38 people capsized in the Krishna river near Vijayawada this evening, resulting in the death of 14 tourists while nine others are missing, the police said.
Fifteen people were rescued by local fishermen.
The deceased included six women and four children.
The ill-fated boat was being operated by a private company and was said to be on a trial run.
National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) teams and Krishna district authorities have launched a massive search and rescue operation to trace the missing people.
Tourism Minister Bhuma Akhila Priya ordered an inquiry into the incident and directed her department officials to ascertain whether the boat operator had requisite permissions.
The incident occurred when the boat set off for Pavitra Sangamam at Ferry village near Vijayawada from Bhavani Island, the police said.
"The boat was overloaded with 38 people and most of them were not provided life jackets. It capsized near a curve as it approached the Pavitra Sangamam point and most of the people were trapped underneath and were killed," an Assistant Commissioner of Police said.
Most of the passengers were said to be members of the Ongole Walkers Club in Prakasam district while some were from Nellore who were on a visit to Vijayawada.
Local fishermen at Ferry swung into action immediately and rescued 15 passengers.
Later, 14 bodies were fished out of the river.
Two teams each comprising 30 NDRF personnel, a 45-member team of the State Disaster Rescue Force (SDRF) and 60 members of the Disaster Response and Fire Services Department have been roped into the rescue operation.
Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu, Deputy Chief Minister (Home) N China Rajappa, Opposition leader Y S Jaganmohan Reddy and others expressed grief over the incident.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
An overloaded boat carrying 38 people capsized in the Krishna river near Vijayawada this evening, resulting in the death of 20 tourists while seven others are missing, the police said.
Fifteen people were rescued by local fishermen.
The ill-fated boat was being operated by a private company and was said to be on a trial run.
Disaster Response Force (NDRF) teams and Krishna district authorities have launched a massive search and rescue operation to trace the missing people.
Tourism Minister Bhuma Akhila Priya ordered an inquiry into the incident and directed her department officials to ascertain whether the boat operator had requisite permissions.
The incident occurred when the boat set off for Pavitra Sangamam at Ferry village near Vijayawada from Bhavani Island, the police said.
"The boat was overloaded with 38 people and most of them were not provided life jackets. It capsized near a curve as it approached the Pavitra Sangamam point and most of the people were trapped underneath and were killed," an Assistant Commissioner of Police said.
Most of the passengers were said to be members of the Ongole Walkers Club in Prakasam district while some were from Nellore who were on a visit to Vijayawada.
Injured brought to Andhra Hospital in Vijaywada
Later, 16 bodies were fished out of the river.
Two teams each comprising 30 NDRF personnel, a 45-member team of the State Disaster Rescue Force (SDRF) and 60 members of the Disaster Response and Fire Services Department have been roped into the rescue operation.
Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu, Deputy Chief Minister (Home) N China Rajappa, Opposition leader Y S Jaganmohan Reddy, state BJP president K Hari Babu and others expressed grief over the incident.
China Rajappa, who was supervising rescue operations at the accident spot, announced an ex-gratia payment of Rs 5 lakh each to the kin of the deceased.
Two persons, who were rescued from the tragedy, complained of sickness and were shifted to a government general hospital in Vijayawada, the officials said.
Pradesh Congress Committee president N Raghuveera Reddy visited the accident spot and later the hospital.
One of the deceased was identified as Prabhakar Reddy, a former president of the BJP Prakasam district unit.
(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.)
Bangladesh has assured India that compensation will be paid to those Hindus whose houses were torched over rumours that an offensive Facebook status was posted allegedly by a youth from the minority community.
Bangladeshi authorities have also assured adequate security to the affected persons, External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj said today.
Swaraj's remarks came after her attention was drawn to reports that a mob of protesters in Bangladesh set on fire at least 30 houses of Hindus following rumours that a youth from the minority community posted an offensive Facebook status.
She had said that the matter would be taken up by the Indian High Commissioner in Dhaka with the Bangladeshi government.
"We have received a detailed report of Indian High Commission in Dhaka. Bangladesh authorities have assured him that compensation will be paid to affected persons to rebuild their houses and adequate security will be provided," she tweeted.
According to Dhaka Tribune newspaper yesterday, one person was killed when police opened fire to disperse the crowd that launched the arson attack on the houses of Hindus.
The incident took place in Rangpur district's Thakurpara village, about 300 km from Dhaka.
The protesters claimed that they were infuriated by a defamatory status posted from the Facebook account of a person who hails from the Thakurbari village a few days ago.
Replying to separate tweet regarding the issuance of passport to Haryana boxer Jhalak Tomar, Swaraj assured that the process will be expedited and she will get her passport by tomorrow.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Insurgent group All Tripura Tiger Force chief Ranjit Debbarma was arrested from West Tripura district on charges of sedition, police today said.
He was arrested from his ancestral house at Sidhai late last night, West district Superintendent of Police Abhijit Saptarshi told reporters.
Debbarma, who was pushed back from Bangladesh four years ago, allegedly delivered a seditious statement at a public meeting last week at Teliamura in Khowai district, SP Krishnendu Chakraborty said.
He also attempted to form a new insurgent outfit with surrendered insurgents of ATTF and National Liberation Front of Tripura (NLFT), Chakraborty alleged.
A Khowai court remanded Debbarma to police custody for four days.
After he was pushed back by Bangladesh authorities in 2012 at Dawki border in Meghalaya, the ATTF chief was arrested and brought to Tripura. He was granted bail by a court here in 2015.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The talks between governments of Bangladesh and Myanmar should lead to voluntary return of Rohingya Muslims back to the Rakhine State, a senior US diplomat has said.
The diplomat had recently led a high-level US delegation to Myanmar and Bangladesh, where he visited refugees camps and met officials. He had described the situation on the ground as "serious" and the scale of problem as "immense".
US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson is scheduled to visit Myanmar early next week to hold talks with both the civilian and military officials.
Since August, more than 600,000 Rohingya Muslims have landed in neighbouring Bangladesh due to alleged atrocities by the security forces in Myanmar's Rakhine State.
Bangladesh, one of the poorest countries of the world, has gone out of the way to provide shelter and humanitarian assistance to these Rohingya refugees. A move which was appreciated by the governments and the humanitarian and relief organisations from across the world.
Given the strain that the refugees crisis has been putting on its economy, the Bangladesh government has been in talks with the government of Myanmar for the return of the refugees.
"I am not going to comment on the relations between the two countries other than to say that we support their talks and they have already held and further talks on solving the Rohingya issue," Acting Assistant Secretary of State for Population, Refugees, and Migration Simon Henshaw told reporters during a teleconference with South Asian media this week.
"We believe these talks should lead to voluntary return of Rohingya people back to Rakhine state. The conditions in Rakhine state must be made secure and stable so that people are willing to return and that people should be able to return to their land and that this process involve political reconciliation inside Rakhine State," he said.
"On the actions of the Bangladeshi government, we much appreciate them and praise the effort they've made to deal with this huge number of people coming into their country," he said, adding that the American delegation spoke with a number of different ministries when they were there.
In Myanmar, the delegation met with government officials, Rohingya and ethnic Rakhine community leaders including a visit to a camp for people who have been internally displaced.
"We urge the Myanmar government to act to restore the rule of law, protect local populations and investigate alleged human rights abuses and violations and to hold those responsible, accountable," he said.
The official welcomed the government's plans for repatriation and encouraged them to implement a peace plan soon as possible emphasising the importance of creating safe conditions that would allow refugees to voluntarily return to their villages.
The US delegation, during its visit to Bangladesh, had met with government officials, international organisation and NGOSs and visited refugee camps near Coxes Bazaar, which he said was so shocking.
"The scale of the refugee crisis is immense. More than 600,000 people displaced from their homes since August 25th and the conditions here conditions are tough with people still in makeshift tents and shelters as far as the eye can see," he said.
"People were suffering. Many refugees told us through tears accounts of seeing their villages burned their relatives kill in front of them. Some of them recalled being shot at as they fled. Despite this trauma many expressed a strong desire to return to their homes in Burma provided that their safety security and rights could be guaranteed," Henshaw said.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
At least 53 people have been arrested in Bangladesh for their alleged involvement in an arson attack on over 30 houses of Hindus following rumours that a youth from the minority community published an offensive Facebook status, media reports said today.
Police have alleged that the country's largest Islamist party Jamaat-e-Islami, a key ally of the opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) led by former prime minister Khaleda Zia, carried out the attack on Hindus to create unrest ahead of the next parliamentary elections, bdnews24.com reported.
"Jamaat tried to fuel unrest as elections are nearing," Rangpur Superintendent of Police Mizanur Rahman told reporters after inspecting the scene yesterday.
He said that the police have identified four persons who instigated the attacks.
The police have filed two cases over the incident at the Kotwali and Gangachara police stations and so far arrested 53 suspects, Rangpur's Additional Superintendent of Police Zakir Hossain was quoted as saying by Dhaka Tribune.
One person was killed when police opened fire to disperse the crowd that torched the houses of Hindus in Rangpur district's Thakurpara village, about 300 km from Dhaka, on Friday, the report said.
At least five persons were injured when police fired rubber bullets and lobbed tear gas shells to bring the situation under control, it said.
The protesters claimed that they were infuriated by a defamatory status published from the Facebook account of a person who hails from the Thakurbari village a few days ago, the report said.
Before the police intervened, the perpetrators had torched at least 30 Hindu houses before looting and vandalising them, the report said.
A crowd of 20,000 people had reportedly gathered from six to seven neighbouring villages before the attack was launched by a group of people, it said.
The police had a tough time dealing with the protesters and restoring the law and order situation in the area, the report said.
Six persons with bullet injuries were rushed to a nearby hospital when one of them succumbed to his injuries, the report said.
There were traffic snarls after the mob blocked the Rangpur-Dinajpur highway to protest against the police action.
A large number of police personnel have been deployed in the area where the situation was tense, Kotwali police station Officer-in-Charge (Operation) Moktarul Islam said.
The district administration has formed a three-member inquiry committee, headed by Additional District Magistrate Abu Rafa Mohammad Rafiq, to investigate the incident and submit a report in seven days, the report added.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The police, on the directions of a court here, today registered a case on the basis of a complaint by a man, who alleged that a reputed bank had illegally occupied his property in south Delhi.
The FIR was registered against former and current officials of the bank after the complainant approached a city court that directed the police to register a case, the police said.
The man alleged that the bank earlier used to pay the rent, but later stopped doing so. He also said that the bank later claimed that it owns the property, they said.
The police said that they have asked for the documents from both the parties.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
'Beyond the Clouds', a film by acclaimed Iranian filmmaker Majid Majidi, will be screened at the opening of the 48th International Film Festival of India (IFFI) in Goa on November 20, Union minister Smriti Irani said today.
This is perhaps the first time that an international film maker of repute has shot and produced an entire film in India with a complete Indian cast and crew, according to a blog by the IFFI.
"Iranian Director Majid Majidi's first Indian film 'Beyond the Clouds' is set to open at #IFFI2017," Irani, the information and broadcasting minister, said in a tweet.
The two-hour movie was also nominated for the best film award at the London Film Festival this year.
Apart from marking the official debut of the young talent Ishaan Khattar into the world of cinema, this movie is also the first Indian film by Majid Majidi.
'Beyond the Clouds' also features south Indian actress Malavika Mohanan in one of the lead roles.
The movie revolves around the adoration of love, life and human relationships between a brother and a sister which takes place in the ever-bustling city of Mumbai.
Majidi has a long list of awards and nominations such as the 1998 Oscar nomination for the best film and the Grand Prix Des Ameriques award at the 25th Montreal Film Festival, 2001.
Oscar winner A R Rahman has composed the music for the film.
The film will have its India premiere post the inaugural ceremony on November 20.
The festival, which takes place in Goa every year, will run from November 20 to 28.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Ahead of the urban local body polls in UP, the BJP today came up with its Sankalp Patra or election manifesto, wooing voters with the promise of free WiFi in prominent public places and construction of "pink toilets" for women.
The Sankalp Patra was launched at the UP BJP headquarters by Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, deputy chief ministers Keshav Prasad Maurya and Dinesh Sharma, Urban development minister Suresh Khanna and UP BJP chief Mahendra Nath Pandey.
Speaking on the occasion, Adityanath said, "As many as 652 urban local bodies across the state are going to polls, which is the highest number so far. This also includes 16 municipal corporations, which will also go to polls. Prior to this there were 12 municipal corporations in the state."
"It gives me pleasure to say that municipal corporations of Ayodhya and Mathura-Vrindavan have been constituted by our government. Both these municipal corporation are also going to polls for the first time."
UP BJP chief Mahendra Nath Pandey on this occasion said, "BJP never contests poll to fulfil the lust for power. Rather our aim is to serve the people of the country.
"The party is not contesting urban local body polls merely to bag posts of mayors or corporators, but to pledge that better quality of life can be given to people living in urban areas of the state," he said.
The Sankalp Patra comprises 28 sankalp (promises).
With a focus on cleanliness, the manifesto promises better drinking water facilities, better street lights, free community toilets, provision of pink toilets for women, grant of Rs 20,000 for construction of personal toilets, provision of adarsh nagar panchayat, e-tendering and provision of kanji house for stray animals.
It also seeks to protect interests of small shopkeepers, promises free water connections in every house, transparent administration, time-bound disposal of public grievances, proper bus service, clean environment, effective implementation of Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana, beautification of parks, house tax exemptions to freedom fighters and their dependents.
Development of cities as smart cities, proper parking arrangement, provision of auditoriums and exhibition grounds in cities, and awarding the best performing workers are among the other promises.
24 districts will go to polls on November 22, while 25 districts will go to polls on November 26, and 26 districts on November 29.
Counting of votes polled for 16 nagar nigams, 198 nagar palika parishads and 438 nagar panchayats will be done on December 1.
More than 3.32 crore voters will be eligible to cast their ballots at 36,269 polling booths and 11,389 polling stations.
These polls, being held eight months after the BJP came to power with a landslide victory, will mark the first electoral test for the Yogi Adityanath government.
Though, the BJP has traditionally been strong in urban constituencies, the acid test for Adityanath would be to match the performance of assembly elections.
In 2012, the BJP had swept mayoral polls, winning 10 of the 12 mayor posts. Lucknow mayor Dinesh Sharma is now a deputy chief minister of UP.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Britain says Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson has spoken to the husband of a British woman imprisoned in Iran as pressure mounts on the Conservative government to step up efforts to free her.
The Foreign Office says Johnson and Richard Ratcliffe spoke by phone today, but did not elaborate further.
Dual UK-Iranian citizen Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe is serving a five-year sentence for plotting the "soft toppling" of Iran's government.
Earlier this month, Johnson told lawmakers that Zaghari- Ratcliffe was "teaching people journalism" when she was detained last year. Her family and employer insist she was simply visiting her family.
Today, Environment Secretary Michael Gove said "I don't know" when asked what Zaghari-Ratcliffe was doing in Iran.
Family and friends say the confusion has put Zaghari- Ratcliffe at risk of a longer prison sentence.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Haj travellers can now fly to Saudi Arabia from multiple embarkation points in the country, which will make their travel "economical", Union Minority Affairs Minister Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi announced here today.
The facility will come into effect from November 15.
"There are 21 major embarkation points in the country, but Haj travellers have been using other cities as well to fly to Saudi Arabia. We are now offering them multiple embarkation facility, where people can choose the city to board the flight to Saudi Arabia," Naqvi told reporters at the Haj House.
He said the facility will prove more economical for pilgrims as charges at the major embarkation points like Mumbai, Delhi, Kolkata are cheaper than the tier-II cities such as Aurangabad, Indore, and Srinagar among others.
"It is going to be an optional service, but the pilgrims can still opt for tier-II embarkation point. The idea is to offer an economical option. For instance, a Haj pilgrim paid Rs 1,10,000 for embarkation point in Srinagar in 2016 whereas charges for the same were Rs 73,000 from New Delhi. Last year, the flexibility in selecting embarkation point was not available, from this year, we have provided it," said the minister.
Naqvi said the process for the Haj pilgrimage has begun.
"People can submit their applications through physically filling in the form as well as through online registration including the payment facility for the same. The government has begun the process a month in advance unlike last year, so that pilgrims can get more time for preparations," Naqvi said.
He said Haj 2018 will be performed according to the new Haj Policy.
"A high-level committee, constituted to frame the new policy, has already submitted its report and the Minority Affairs Ministry has been looking into its recommendations. The new Haj policy aims to make Haj pilgrimage more comfortable, smooth and transparent. Pilgrims' safety and their facilities are our priority," the minister said.
He said the new Haj policy includes maintaining reservation for people above 70 years of age, who wish to go for Haj, and allowing women over 45 years of age in a group of four or more for Haj without a male relative or "Mahram".
"We would allow a group of women to travel alone to Jeddah," he said.
"For the first time, for Haj 2018, details of total expenditure to be incurred by pilgrims are given in the application form. This is a step towards transparency. Haj application form for 2018 also contains the embarkation points-wise detailed air fare comparison which will be beneficial for the pilgrims as for the first time they will get option for embarkation points of their own choice," Naqvi said.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Century LED Ltd, the lighting company owned by Century Plyboards' promoters, is targeting revenues of Rs 100 crore in the current fiscal besides aiming to transform itself into an electronic major in the long-term.
"Our LED lighting is growing fast. We are growing at 8-10 per cent month-on-month. As a way forward, we propose to expand product portfilio and aim to establish ourselves as an electronic company in the long run," Century LED business head Anirudh Kajaria told PTI.
"We are expecting a Rs 100 crore topline in FY'18, the first full year of operation. In Kolkata, we are already the second largest LED brand by marketshare," he claimed.
Century LED, which sells Magik brand of LED products, is one of the organised players in the industry that began operations with a fully-owned manufacturing facility at a capex of Rs 45 crore in Howrah, West Bengal.
Kajaria said the company will expand capability in electronics with new products having synergies over the next few years.
In a year, the company will double its capacity to 20 million pieces a year, he said.
The company is expanding its product portfolio to strengthen institutional and industrial sales. It expects outdoor lighting applications to see faster growth in the coming years.
Currently, the lion's share of sales revenue comes from retail business.
Century LED mostly imports chipsets for the lighting business and sources the rest locally. It has presence in over 50 cities across 16 states with over 8,000 retailers.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Nacogdoches, TX (75965)
Today
Mostly sunny. High around 55F. Winds N at 5 to 10 mph..
Tonight
Partly cloudy early followed by cloudy skies overnight. Low 33F. Winds light and variable.
The Congress in Chhattisgarh will take out a foot march beginning tomorrow to mark former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi's upcoming birth centenary, during which the party will raise issues related to farmers.
'Indira Janadhikar Padyatra', which will cover a distance of 90 kms, will be held between November 13 and November 18 under the aegis of Rajiv Gandhi Panchayati Raj Sangthan's state unit, state Congress unit president Bhupesh Baghel said in a press conference here today.
He said various issues related to farmers as well as their demands would be raised during the foot march which will cover villages and areas in at least seven assembly constituencies--Dongargadh, Dongargaon and Rajanandgaon (Rajnandgaon district) and Durg urban, Durg rural, Bhilai Nagar and Vaishali Nagar (Durg district).
The main demands include the disbursal of pending bonus to farmers against procuring their paddy in previous years, waiving loans as well as power bills of farmers, free electricity to irrigation pumps, immediate disbursal of pending payment under MNREGA, and Rs 2100 MSP to farmers per quintal of paddy, he said.
The foot march will begin from Dongargarh after performing rituals at the famous Bamleshwari temple, he said.
AICC secretaries and Chhattisgarh incharge Arun Uraon and Kamleshwar Patel,Congress Legislative Party leader TS Singhdeo, along with other senior leaders including MPs Tamradhwaj Sahu and Chhaya Verma will be present on the occasion, Baghel said.
Public meetings will be held in several villages during the padyatra which will conclude at Supela Chowk in Bhilai on November 18.
Rajiv Gandhi Panchayati Raj Sangthan national president Meenakshi Natrajan will take part in the padyatra on November 16 while AICC general secretary and state in-charge PL Punia on the concluding day, Baghel added.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
China today commemorated the 151st birth anniversary of Sun Yat-sen, the founding father of the Republic of China (ROC) following the overthrow of the monarchy.
Sun played an instrumental role in the overthrow of the Qing dynasty (the last imperial dynasty of China) during the years leading up to the Xinhai Revolution. He was appointed to serve as Provisional President of the ROC when it was founded in 1912.
The ROC later became the People's Republic of China (PRC) after the Mao Zedong-led Communist Party of China came to power in 1949.
Today's event was held by the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), China's political advisory body, in Beijing's Zhongshan Park, which is named after Sun, state-run Xinhua agency reported.
Born in 1866 in south China's Guangdong Province, Sun was the founder of the Kuomintang Party and is a revered revolutionary leader who played a pivotal role in overthrowing imperial rule in China.
Officials from the CPPCC National Committee, the National People's Congress Standing Committee, the Revolutionary Committee of the Chinese Kuomintang Central Committee, the United Front Work Department of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee, and the Beijing municipal government, laid flowers at Sun's statue.
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Shanghai-based Juneyao Airlines has signed a USD 1.4 billion deal with General Electric (GE) for supply of new GEnx engines for its Boeing 787 aircraft.
Juneyao ordered engines for its 10 Boeing 787-9 aircraft, ordered in 2016 and to be delivered from 2018.
The GEnx engine is a high-thrust jet engine and it powers the four-engine Boeing 747-8, the Boeing 787 Dreamliner.
The USD 1.4 billion order includes a 15-year agreement with GE Aviation for maintenance and repair of the engines.
The deal is one of many contracts and two-way investment agreements signed by China and the US during the just concluded visit of President Donald Trump, worth more than USD 250 billion.
Earlier, China Aviation Suppliers Holding Company (CASC) signed an agreement with Boeing for 300 aircraft, valued at more than USD 37 billion.
It includes both orders and commitments for 300 Boeing single-aisle and twin-aisle aircraft, made up of planes from the 737, 787 and 777 families.
China has seen a surge in the civil aviation transportation market in recent years. The CASC has undertaken bulk purchases of Boeing aircraft to allow aviation transport companies to continuously expand their capacity and fleet structure, the CASC said in a press release.
In May, Boeing started construction of the first overseas production centre for its most popular 737 family of aircraft in the east China port city of Zhoushan, including a completion centre and delivery centre.
According to Boeing's latest market outlook, China is expected to need 7,240 new aircraft over the next 20 years, valued at nearly USD 1.1 trillion. Of these, 5,420 would be single-aisle aircraft.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Wang Enlin, an elderly farmer who left school when he was 10 years old and taught himself law armed with a single textbook and dictionary, makes for an unlikely eco-warrior.
Yet the 64-year-old is determined to reap justice as he readies for a fresh battle in his war with a subsidiary of China's largest chemical firm, which he accuses of polluting and destroying his farmland.
"In China, behind every case of pollution is a case of corruption," he said of his mission to bring Qihua Chemical Group (also known as Heilongjiang Haohua Chemical) to account.
Wang and others villagers from northeast Heilongjiang province have sued Qihua accusing it of contaminating their soil, rendering it untenable for crops, in a case that has stretched on for more than 16 years.
This February, Wang and his self-styled "Senior Citizen Environmental Protection Team" earned a rare victory when a local court ordered Qihua to clear up their chemical waste site -- adjacent to the farmers' land -- and pay a total of 820,000 yuan (USD 120,000) to compensate for lost harvests in 55 affected rural households.
But that ruling was overturned on appeal, and Wang is now gearing up to fight back on another day in court.
"We will absolutely win. The law is on our side," Wang told AFP.
His case is testing the possibilities of a national environmental protection law revised in 2015.
The legislation was widely touted as a way to open the courts to public interest environmental damage lawsuits, but has been criticised for poor implementation.
Qihua is a subsidiary of the state-owned ChemChina, the country's largest chemical enterprise. It specialises in crude oil processing and petroleum products.
Wang's battle began in 2001, when a village committee leased 28.5 hectares (70 acres) to Qihua for use as a chemical waste dumping ground without the villagers' consent.
The villagers claim that the company failed to take proper pollution control measures.
Wang says he felt compelled to teach himself law after realising he lacked the knowledge or resources to take on the might of an industrial giant.
China had just emerged from its Great Famine when Wang left school: "It didn't matter at the time whether you got an education," he said. "It wouldn't change your fate.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The Congress today retained the Chitrakoot Assembly constituency in Madhya Pradesh with its candidate winning the seat in a bypoll with an improved margin of over 14,000 votes.
In the 2013 Assembly polls, the party had won the seat with a margin of 10,970 votes.
Congress' Nilanshu Chaturvedi defeated his nearest rival, Shankar Dayal Tripathi of the BJP, by 14,133 votes in the bypoll which was held on November 9, returning officer A P Dwivedi said.
Chaturvedi polled 66,810 votes, while Tripathi had to be content with 52,677 votes. As many as 2,455 votes were polled under the 'none of the above' (NOTA) category.
The counting of votes began at around 8 am amid a tight security in Satna district, around 400 km from here.
Around 65 per cent voting was recorded in the bypoll, which was necessitated in the Assembly segment following the death of its Congress MLA Prem Singh (65).
Singh had won from Chitrakoot, bordering Uttar Pradesh, in the 1998, 2003 and 2013 state Assembly polls. In 2008, he had lost the seat to BJP's Surendra Singh Gaharwar.
Though 12 candidates were in the fray, the main contest in the bypoll was between Chaturvedi and Tripathi.
Accepting the defeat, Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister and BJP leader Shivraj Singh Chouhan tweeted saying public mandate was supreme in democracy.
"I thank the people for their support. Nothing will come in the way of Chitrakoot's development. My aim is to develop entire Madhya Pradesh," the tweet further read.
Congress workers celebrated the victory by bursting crackers outside the party's state headquarters, Indira Bhawan in Bhopal, whereas the state BJP headquarters, Deendayal Parishad, wore a deserted look.
As per the Hindu mythology, during his exile, Lord Rama had spent almost 12 years in the forests of Chitrakoot with wife Sita and brother Laxmana.
The BJP had invoked Lord Rama during its campaign for the bypoll.
After the bypoll victory today, the jubilant Congress workers raised slogans such as "BJP ke lag gaye kam, jai shri Ram, jai shri Ram (the BJP is defeated, hail Lord Rama)".
Asked about the saffron party invoking Lord Rama in the run-up to the bypoll, state Congress chief Arun Yadav told reporters that it was his partymen, who were the true worshippers of the Hindu god.
"Lord Rama helps the honest and upright, not the corrupt," he said.
Leader of Opposition in the Madhya Pradesh Assembly Ajay Singh said, "The exile of the Congress in the state has ended from the 'taposthali' of Lord Rama. The party has won from areas where Chouhan held public meetings. The BJP candidate has been defeated from his own village as well as the village of his in-laws."
In response to a query, Singh said the chief minister had made the Chitrakoot bypoll a prestige issue for himself.
"The poll results show that the people of the state want Chouhan's exit now," he added.
State BJP chief Nandkumar Singh Chauhan, however, played down the defeat in the bypoll saying the seat traditionally belonged to the Congress.
"This is one of the seats which traditionally belong to the Congress. However, in the 2008 election, BJP candidate Surendra Singh Gaharwar had won this seat.
"Chitrakoot does not reflect the mood of the entire state. We did expect to win. Now, we will review the poll outcome and find out the causes behind our defeat," he said.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Health-technology startup CureFit will invest about Rs 25 crore to expand its operations to Delhi-NCR and set up 30 'Cult' premium fitness centres by December next year, along with meditation facilities and health kitchens in the region.
Founded in 2016 by Myntra co-founder Mukesh Bansal and former Flipkart executive Ankit Nagori, CureFit operates in Bengaluru. It runs 16 Cult fitness centres, four Eat.fit kitchens -- these deliver food on a subscription model -- and two meditation centres (Mind.fit) in the technology city.
"While there are a number of players in the fitness category, our aim is to help people adopt a healthy lifestyle. We have a holistic approach, it's about the body, mind as well as what one eats. We have launched three products -- Cult, Eat.fit and Mind.fit that address these areas," Nagori told PTI.
He added that in Bengaluru, it already has about 25,000 paying customers.
"We want to adopt the same approach in Delhi-NCR. We will set up five Cult centres this year and add 25 more by December next year, taking the total to 30 centres. We will also have five kitchens and five Mind.fit centres (for meditation) next year," he said.
CureFit plans to invest about Rs 25 crore in setting up these company-owned and operated centres, Nagori said, adding that this will create employment opportunities for about 300- 400 people.
"By December 2018, we hope to have 40,000 paying customers in our Delhi-NCR operations and expand the same for Bengaluru to 60,000. So, by 2018-end, we should have about one lakh paying customers," Nagori said.
The average monthly subscription is about Rs 5,000 with many customers opting for both Cult and Eat.Fit subscriptions, he added.
The company has raised about USD 45 million in funding till date from investors like Accel Partners, Kalaari Capital, IDG Ventures and UC-RNT fund (a University of California and Ratan Tata's RNT Associates joint venture).
Asked about the path to profitability, Nagori said the company should be able to reach there in the "near future".
"Each centre has to be profitable for us to be profitable overall. The five-year road map is to be present in 20 cities. For 2018, it is to focus on operations in Delhi-NCR and look at another city by the end of that year," he said.
The company is looking at a revenue run rate of about USD 50 million by December 2018, from USD 10 million currently. Revenue run rate is a term used to indicate total sales value of merchandise sold through the marketplace over a certain period of time.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Maharashtra minister Deepak Kesarkar today met kin of a robbery accused, who allegedly died in police custody here earlier this week, and assured justice to his family.
"We will strictly deal with the accused. We are gathering evidence to nail them. The family has given me some names and the home ministry's work is to probe the matter. We will make sure that the family gets justice," the minister of state for home told reporters here.
Aniket Kothale, who was arrested by Sangli police on November 6, along with another man in a robbery case, allegedly died in police custody.
Seven police personnel were suspended in connection with the death.
The police had allegedly tried to burn his body twice to destroy evidence. Six people, including five personnel posted at the Sangli city police station, were arrested in this regard.
Kesarkar said Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis has agreed to his request for financial aid to the victim's family.
"I have requested the chief minister to financially help the bereaved family and he has agreed to it," he added.
According to reports, Kothale and another accused were allegedly taken from the lock-up to the detection branch room, where one of them was hung upside down from a ceiling fan with his head in a bucket of water.
The National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) has issued a notice to the Maharashtra DGP seeking a detailed report within four weeks in connection with the matter.
Meanwhile, Congress MLA Nitesh Rane today took a dig at Kesarkar over the incident.
"It is commendable that the police had the audacity to burn Kothale's body in the home district of minister of state for home," Rane tweeted.
Kesarkar, a Shiv Sena leader and Nitesh Rane, both hail from Sindhudurg district of the coastal Konkan region of Maharashtra.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The direct benefit transfer (DBT) scheme has shown mixed results for the education system, although it can have a major impact on poverty levels and nutrition, a senior official of the World Bank said today.
The DBT scheme can have major impact on poverty levels, access and nutrition, said Junaid Kamal Ahmad, Country Director for the World Bank in India, adding "whether it has any impact on outcomes of learning - mixed results so far."
Ahmad advocated that the DBT scheme be made a part of the broader reform programme in schools to achieve desired goals.
"DBT has to be part of a broader reform programme in the school system," he said in his address at a conference on DBT in education organised by the Centre for Civil Society (CCS).
Citing the huge impact of conditional grant in improving enrolment of girls in secondary education in his home country Bangladesh, he stressed on the importance of decentralisation of schools.
The conditional stipend for girls going for secondary education in Bangladesh led to a movement to bring girls to schools and the enrolments rose to 53 per cent of the total strength, he said.
Ahmad said the DBT scheme should be enabled across every single service through investing in capacity of states to bring together the functions of unique IDs, financial systems, financial transfers and registry.
CCS president Parth Shah called for complimentary interventions like ease of opening schools, fixing accountability and measuring learning outcomes to boost DBT's effects on education.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
A special Delhi court has directed the extradition of an Uzbek fugitive to her homeland to face proceedings in a case of human trafficking there.
Additional Chief Metropolitan Magistrate Gurmohina Kaur, who presides over the Special Extradition Court of India, directed the Centre to send Khakimova Lola Farmonova back to Uzbekistan, noting that the extradition request was received from the requesting country.
Farmonova was detained at the Goa airport on August 9 on a request of provisional detention by Uzbekistan.
"The prescribed procedure has been followed in as much as the extradition request has been submitted through diplomatic channel, along with documents including the duly authenticated and endorsed court decision containing direction of arrest and required information as per the Extradition Act and concerned extradition treaty," the court said.
The order of the Uzbek court containing directions for the arrest of Farmonova was submitted by advocate N K Matta on behalf of the external affairs ministry.
"In view of the above report, I hereby recommend to Union of India the extradition of the fugitive criminal for the offence of human trafficking...," the Delhi court said.
The court had in September denied her bail on the ground that the charges against her were serious.
Farmonova had earlier told the court that she was falsely implicated and there was no criminal record against her.
She had claimed that her husband was an Indian national and she would abide by all the conditions imposed by the court.
Farmonova was on her way to Dubai via Muscat by an Oman Airlines flight when the immigration officials stopped her as there was a look out circular and a red corner notice against her. She was then handed over to Goa Police.
The woman, who was living in Mumbai, had come to Goa to board the international flight, the police had said.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Booker Prize winner Ben Okri, Arabic poet Adonis, actress-turned-novelist Esther Freud, broadcaster-publisher Charles Glass and Indian authors Jerry Pinto and Karan Mahajan are some of the names that figure in this year's line-up of the Dhaka Lit Fest beginning Thursday.
The seventh edition of the three-day festival will be held at the Bangla Academy here and will see the participation over 200 speakers, performers and thinkers, representing 23 countries.
Apart from its more than 100 sessions, the festival will see the launch of the British literary journal Granta in Bangladesh besides other book releases, film screenings and special performances.
On the last day of the festival, the winners of the DSC Prize for South Asian Literature and Gemcon Literary Awards, the highest monetary value literary prize in Bangladesh, would be announced.
The directors of Dhaka Lit Fest are Sadaf Saaz, Ahsan Akbar and K Anis Ahmed and the event is supported by the Bangladesh's Ministry of Culture.
The festival would be inaugurated by Bangladesh's Minister of Cultural Affairs Asaduzzaman Noor and would be followed by a session featuring Adonis, who led the modernist movement in Arabic poetry in the second half of the 20th century.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The Election Commission of India will hold a pre-poll preparedness review meeting with Chief Electoral Officers (CEOs) of Meghalaya, Nagaland and Tripura at New Delhi tomorrow, officials said here today.
"At the meeting tomorrow, the EC will review the preparedness of these poll-bound states on the use of the VVPAT (Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail) machines and also discuss the launch of BLO-net in these states," Meghalaya Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) F R Kharkongor told PTI.
All 3082 polling booths in the 60 constituencies in the state will implement the VVPAT or VPR (Verifiable Paper Record), a method of providing feedback to voters to verify that the vote polled by a voter goes to the correct candidate/party, he said.
The Election Commission will also be briefed on the achievement of the targeted enrolment drives in the state aiming to reach to 18 lakh voters of the 3.2 million populations.
Among the other issues that will be discussed, will be the launching of BLO-net, a pilot project of the EC aimed at enabling booth level officers to map minute information about polling stations, nearest hospitals, roads and other landmarks, Kharkongor said.
The Meghalaya CEO said the purpose is to have a better idea of polling booths and the BLO-net will be rolled out in five constituencies in Meghalaya - East Shillong, South Shillong, North Shillong and North Tura and South Tura.
Earlier, the EC had also reviewed the security pre-poll preparedness of these states.
Following the meeting tomorrow, the EC officials will visit these poll-bound states, Kharkongor said.
Assembly elections in Meghalaya are due in March next year.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
While many farmers in Odisha are worried due to pest attack on their standing paddy crops, a farmer in Ganjam district is preparing for harvest as his crop is free from brown plant hopper (BPH) disease.
Having grown a special variety of paddy, Subrat Adhikari of Tentuapada village under Digapahandi block in the district claimed he is unaffected by the pest menace.
Vice Chancellor of Odisha University of Agriculture and Technology (OUAT), Surendranath Pasupalak along with some scientists on Friday visited his field and found the crop was free-from much talked BPH disease.
The 39-year-old farmer cultivated around 8 acres of paddy variety "Hasanta", which was developed by the OUAT about three years ago. The standing Hasanta paddy crop was free from BPH, said Adhikari, who took to cultivation as his occupation after completing his degree in science.
Like Adhikari, other farmers in the village who cultivated this variety of paddy, are also relaxed as their standing crop is also free from BPH. However, the standing paddy crops of other varieties in the village were damaged due to the pest attack.
At least four farmers, including Adhikari, cultivated the Hasanta variety in around 14-acres of land in the village. "It shows that the Hasanta, developed by the OUAT, is free from pest attack," said the OUAT VC who visited the area.
Stating that the paddy variety was introduced three years ago by the university, he said the team also held discussion with the farmers on the menace and loss suffered by them due to the pest attack.
Hasanta, a high-yielding and pest-resistant paddy variety which can be harvested in 145 days, was released by the scientists of OUAT in 2014.
"I had cultivated this new variety in a small patch of land the same year with the advice of a scientist of the university. In subsequent years, I grew it in more areas," said Adhikari.
The productivity of the variety was between 30 to 32 quintals per acre, he said adding the crop is in harvesting stage and we will cut the crop in a week.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Four people were killed today when a truck carrying them rammed into another moving truck in Rajasthan's Sirohi district, police said.
The truck, on its way to Jodhpur from Ahmedabad, rammed into another truck moving ahead on the NH-62, nearly three kilometers from Sirohi city, station house officer Kotwali Anand Kumar said.
The bodies of the deceased were handed over to the family after post mortem, he said.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Free WiFi at prominent public places, "pink toilets" for women and free water connections to all homes are among the key promises made in BJP's 'Sankalp Patra' released here today ahead of the Uttar Pradesh civic polls.
The polls are being seen as the first major electoral test for Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, who unveiled the 'Sankalp Patra', a virtual poll manifesto, at the BJP headquarters here along with deputy chief ministers Keshav Prasad Maurya and Dinesh Sharma, state Urban Development minister Suresh Khanna and UP BJP chief Mahendra Nath Pandey.
At the event, Adityanath spoke about providing services transparently and without "partiality".
"As many as 652 urban local bodies across the state are going to polls, the highest number so far. This includes 16 municipal corporations. Earlier, there were 12 municipal corporations in the state," Adityanath said.
He expressed happiness that the Ayodhya and Mathura- Vrindavan municipal corporations, constituted by his government, were going to polls for the first time.
The 'Sankalp Patra' comprises 28 promises (sankalps) including better drinking water facilities, improved street lighting, free community toilets, pink toilets for women, grant of Rs 20,000 for the construction of personal toilets, provision of adarsh nagar panchayat, e-tendering and 'kanji' houses for stray animals.
It also seeks to protect the interests of small shopkeepers, promises free water connections to every house, time-bound disposal of public grievances, proper bus service, clean environment, effective implementation of Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana, beautification of parks, house tax exemptions to freedom fighters and their dependents.
Development of cities as 'smart cities', better parking arrangements, auditoriums and exhibition grounds and awarding the best performing workers were among the other promises.
Adityanath said the state government had "ended partiality in power supply" in the state.
"In the urban areas of the state we have begun providing electrification to all households with focus on saving energy. In the unauthorised colonies, we have started the electrification process, and provided more than 20 lakh connections in these seven months. This has helped in curbing power theft," he said.
Adityanath added that all street lights in the urban areas of the state will be changed to LED lights. For this we have entered into an agreement with ESL and in the first phase the street lights in all the 16 municipal corporations will be changed, he said.
"Work in this regard has been completed in Varanasi and Allahabad, and is going on in Lucknow, Gorakhpur, Agra and Kanpur," he said.
Adityanath added that there will be no "corruption in the name of street lights", claiming it used to take place in the past.
"Rs 20,000 will be given for construction of personal toilets. Apart from this solid waste management will be strengthened. The door-to-door garbage collection system has started functioning in a few parts of the state. Our endeavour will be to increase its ambit, once the new urban local bodies under the leadership of the BJP begin functioning," Adityanath said.
On the issue of stray animals, the UP chief minister said that in the first phase, in 16 municipal corporations, along with one big 'gaushala', an old kanji house will be revived.
"In the 653 urban local bodies of the state, which are associated with traditional craft etc, we have come up with the concept of 'one district, one product' to promote these crafts and products. This will generate employment, and help urban local bodies to become economically self-reliant," he said.
The polls are important as far as the development of urban areas of the state is concerned, Adityanath said.
"So, when there is a BJP government at the Centre, at the state, and the urban local bodies are under BJP, then there will be no delay in development reaching the lower levels. The last person of the society had been deprived of the fruits of development and other civic amenities during the previous governments," the chief minister said.
Asked whether the civic election results will be seen as a referendum on the state government, Adityanath said, "We consider every election as an examination. But, the question is that opposition has already left the field."
He said the speed of developmental works would depend upon the constitution of the new urban local bodies.
"If the new urban local bodies are of the BJP, then there will be no problems, as the ideology will be the same. Else, like in the past there was government of rival party in the state. The Centre wanted to give funds for development..," he said.
UP BJP chief Pandey said the party was not contesting the polls merely to bag posts of mayors or corporators, but to ensure better quality of life to the people.
As many as 24 districts will go to polls on November 22, while 25 districts will go to polls on November 26, and 26 districts on November 29.
Counting of votes for 16 nagar nigams, 198 nagar palika parishads and 438 nagar panchayats will be done on December 1.
More than 3.32 crore voters will be eligible to cast their ballots at 36,269 polling booths and 11,389 polling stations.
The polls will be held eight months after the BJP came to power with a landslide victory in the state. Though, the BJP has traditionally been strong in urban constituencies, the acid test for Adityanath would be to match the performance of the Assembly elections.
In 2012, the BJP had swept mayoral polls, winning 10 of the 12 mayor posts. Lucknow mayor Dinesh Sharma is now a deputy chief minister of UP.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Good, bad or ugly, nostalgia captivates. So it's no surprise that author-journalist Mark Tully's latest offering, a collection of stories culled from memory and travel, catches your attention.
"Upcountry Tales: Once Upon a Time in the Heart of India" is set in tumultuous times. Then prime minister Rajiv Gandhi had taken over the reins of the country following the assassination of his mother, Indira Gandhi.
Along with political turmoil and social upheaval, the first green shoots of economic reform were sprouting. New 100 CC bikes were edging out old scooters and Maruti Suzuki cars were overtaking Ambassadors on India's potholed roads.
The old India hand, a long-time correspondent of the BBC, had seen the changes taking shape during his travels in north India. And this is the India that forms the backdrop for the stories, which are part fact, part fable.
"The Battle for a Temple" is the story of Dalit awakening: protagonist Budh Ram, a diminutive Dalit farm labourer, ousted from his home by his sons, wants to build a Ravi Das temple for his community.
And in the face of fierce opposition by the upper caste people and his own community's doubts over his ability to achieve the feat, he ends up successfully leading a movement to build the temple by sheer dint of his devotion to his dream.
"Murder in Milanpur" is about the killing of a politically influential Thakur in a sleepy hamlet of eastern Uttar Pradesh. The story brings to mind Munshi Premchand's "Namak Ka Daroga".
A bit like Munshi Vanshidhar, Tully's protagonist Prem Lal secures the job of a police sub inspector under pressure from his worldly-wise father.
The story of an honest police officer working out a murder case and the dubious investigation of the politically sensitive case by the CID is a familiar story, but carries the freshness of a cool morning breeze.
Tully's "Ploughman's Lament" captures a slice of rural India, while "The Family Business" is about a six-time MP's son Suresh Srivastava, who miserably fails to capitalise on his political lineage.
Of all the stories, "Slow Train to Santnagar" is possibly the most interesting, encapsulating drama, emotion, humour and political machinations.
An unscrupulous politician seeks to get a train service on a meter-gauge in Punjab scrapped to prop his rickety private bus service business in the area.
The story develops through a popular agitation to save the train service and eventually culminates in a hilarious bus versus train race to resolve the tangle at the advice of a local seer.
The introduction to the book, published by Speaking Tiger, is like a story in itself, with interesting tidbits about Tully's encounters with the high-and-mighty, including several prime ministers from Indira Gandhi to Manmohan Singh.
In one such encounter, former prime minister Charan Singh shares his frustration with Tully about his inability to tame errant sections of the Delhi police.
"When I was the chief minister (of undivided UP), I could punish an officer by transferring him to the hottest place in Bundelkhand or the coldest, most remote place in Kumaon. In Delhi, I can transfer someone from Chanakyapuri to Daryaganj," Singh had confided to Tully.
If Premchand's works carried both the fragrance and stench of pre-Independence rural India, Tully's stories make an ironical revelation of that stench persisting in modern India more than 35 years after Independence, leaving the reader wondering if in Tully, we have an 'angrej Premchand' among us.
For older readers, the book is a memory jogger. For younger readers, it may well read like a collection of stories from contemporary times.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Hardline separatist leader Syed Ali Shah Geelani today slammed National Conference president Farooq Abdullah for dismissing talk of an independent Kashmir, saying "power-hungry" politicians have always "played deceit" with people.
Blaming mainstream politicians for the prevailing "political uncertainty and chaos" in Jammu and Kashmir, the Hurriyat Conference chairman asked Abdullah to revisit annals of history and claimed that the latter was speaking against the wishes and aspirations of the people.
"These power-hungry politicians always played deceit. These irresponsible and short-sighted people have always served the interests of their masters. They are barefaced, follow their treacherous politics and are never ashamed of their absurd statements," Geelani said in a statement here.
Abdullah, who is an MP from Srinagar, had said yesterday that talk of an independent Kashmir was "wrong" as the Valley is landlocked and surrounded by three nuclear powers -- China, Pakistan and India.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
A woman employee of a government hospital in Idukki district has been suspended, after she was caught on camera behaving 'rudely' with patients and bystanders.
Health Minister, K K Shylaja, suspended the woman yesterday after a video purportedly showing her behaving rudely with patients and bystanders, went viral.
The suspension is on the basis of a preliminary enquiry. After a detailed probe, further action will be taken, the minister said in a Facebook Post.
The Idukki District Medical Officer (DMO) has been asked to file his report on the incident.
"Government hospitals have to be totally patient-friendly.. Those creating hurdles in government's efforts to achieve this goal, will not be spared," she said.
"Hospitals are not power centres, but service centres and each employee has to be conscious of it," she added.
The video has garnered 1,948,0833 views.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The Bombay High Court has directed a sessions court to return a sum of Rs 59 crore with interest deposited by Vyomesh Shah, owner of a real estate firm who is accused in a fraud and embezzlement case.
Former NCP MLA Ramesh Kadam is also an accused in the case. Kadam, who is in jail, has been accused of diverting funds from a Maharashtra government body to acquire a realty firm in which Shah had some stake.
In February last year, a city sessions court, while granting bail to the realtor, had ordered him to deposit a sum of Rs 59 crore.
Shah, owner of Hubtown Ltd (previously known as Akruti City Ltd), this year, approached the HC seeking quashing of the condition imposed by the sessions court. In his petition, Shah also sought a direction to defreeze the bank accounts of his firm.
After hearing the petition, a division bench of Justices R V More and P D Naik on November 10 accepted the contentions raised in the plea.
"It appears that arrest of the petitioner was not necessary and the conditions of bail are excessive, which are hereby quashed and set aside.
"We direct the Respondents and Registrar of Sessions Court to return to the petitioners the monies deposited by him along with interest accrued thereon," the HC said.
"From the record before us it does not appear at this stage that the petitioner had knowledge about the motives or intentions of Ramesh Kadam and his allies.
"The petitioner seems to be only unfortunate victim of the circumstances as it is apparent that they have entered into pure commercial transaction, which is valid and legal in the eyes of law and not benami or illegal transaction as alleged," the court said in its order.
The bench also noted that in a case of cheating, the sessions court cannot go on to recover the alleged amount while granting bail.
"Courts are expected to put reasonable conditions in exercise of judicial discretion and such conditions should be aimed at securing the presence of the accused at the time of trial and he should not hamper the evidence or prosecution witnesses during pendency of trial.
"The court is not expected to recover the amount in criminal proceedings by putting condition to deposit money while granting bail," the judges said.
Shah, in his petition, claimed he got acquainted to Kadam only in November 2014 when the latter sought to acquire a company, Comral Realty Pvt Ltd, in which Shah had some control and also an 800 square yards plot of land in Peddar Road, south Mumbai, owned by this firm.
The property at Peddar Road was acquired by Hubtown in 2010. "In the similar fashion it has been transferred to Ramesh Kadam. We see no illegality in the manner of transfer of shares of Comral Realty Pvt Ltd," the court said.
Shah's lawyer Aabad Ponda argued that Shah was arrested only to recover the amount allegedly misappropriated by Kadam.
Shah had no role to play in the offence of misappropriation, cheating and forgery committed by Kadam and the petitioner cannot be made to lose the land as well as the money, he told the court.
The HC, after perusing the facts of the case, observed that the petitioner as well as Hubtown were into the business of real estate for many years and there were attempted made in the past to sell the land at Peddar Road.
"We are, therefore, not inclined to believe that the petitioner has hatched a conspiracy with common intention to cheat the Corporation (a government body for Matangs) or to misappropriate its funds," the court said.
According to the state CID, Shah, arrested in February last year, had created a subsidiary company that allegedly received money routed through three cooperatives set up by Kadam.
Kadam was arrested in August 2015 for allegedly misappropriating funds from the Sahityaratna Lokshahir Annabhau Sathe Development Corporation, the government body set up for welfare of the Matang community. Kadam is a former chairman of the corporation.
According to the CID, the money that Shah received for his subsidiary company was part of the at least Rs 250 crore Kadam allegedly siphoned off from the corporation.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The Delhi High Court has denied bail to a man accused of raping a mentally-challenged girl three years ago in G B Pant Hospital where the minor had gone for a disabled-persons certificate.
Taking note of the seriousness of the offence and the fact that witnesses in the case are yet to be examined, Justice Sangita Dhingra Sehgal refused to grant any relief to the accused, who is in jail since October 26, 2014 when he was arrested.
The court also noted that the girl with special needs, who was 15-years-old at the time of the incident, had in her statement before the magistrate attributed a specific role to the accused and had also identified him correctly.
It also said that the girl had specifically stated that the accused had sexually assaulted her which made him liable to be prosecuted under The Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act.
"There is apprehension of influencing the witnesses. I am not inclined to grant bail to the accused/petitioner at this stage. Accordingly, the application is dismissed," the judge said.
The accused, in his bail plea, had contended that the FIR was ante-dated and ante-timed and that he was being made a scapegoat.
The police opposed the plea saying that the accused deserved no leniency as the nature of offence was "heinous and grave" as the victim was a child with special needs.
According to the complaint lodged by the girl's parents, she had gone to the hospital with her father on October 24, 2016, to obtain her handicap certificate.
When the father left to meet the doctor to show the documents needed for the certificate, the accused had sexually assaulted the girl who was sitting alone in a room there, the complaint alleged.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Actor Ayushmann Khurrana said he has never had the opportunity to show his fashionable side on the big screen as he often plays middle-class roles in films.
"I am hardly fashionable on-screen as the characters I play are real. I play middle-class roles and do films that show realism.
"So I can't portray that side (referring to fashionable) on screen... as I have not got any chance to portray that, but on-screen but off-screen I am happy showing it," he said on the sidelines of a fashion event here last night.
Talking about fashion trends, the 33-year-old actor said the '90s style is back in vogue.
"Everything is 90s... High waist pants, shoes, etc. Life has come full circle, as what we used to wear as kids in 90s is back in fashion now.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Soros says he wants to pay more taxes, but prefers Ireland where he paid less than $1,000 RT Business News
George Soros has joined a petition to scrap tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans. But the billionaire prefers Ireland, where his hedge fund paid just $962 in taxes in 2013, according to Bloomberg.
Four hundred wealthy Americans have appealed to the US Congress urging Republican lawmakers not to cut their taxes. They say the GOP shouldnt cut taxes for the wealthiest when the US debt is at all-time high and inequality is rising.
The letter, signed, among others, by George Soros and Steven Rockefeller, says the proposal would lead to deep cuts in critical services such as education, Medicare, and Medicaid, and would hamper our nations ability to restore investments in our people and communities.
The signatories are among the highest earning five percent of Americans, who have $1.5 million in assets or who are making $250,000 or more a year.
The proposed cuts are part of President Donald Trumps program aimed to spur growth and jobs in the country. They would add at least $1.5 trillion in tax cuts to the current national debt. This deficit would leave us unable to meet our countrys current needs and restrict us in advancing any future investments, the letter said.
One of the rich who signed the document is George Soros, who has always said wealthy people should pay more taxes. However, he prefers not to pay taxes in the United States, but in countries with more favorable tax laws.
In 2015 Bloomberg reported that Soros hedge fund paid $962 in tax in Ireland on $3,851 net income through 2013, while the remaining $7.2 billion operating income was allocated to investors.
A year later, Soros shut down the Irish company and set up another in the tax-friendly Caymans.
By the time the new company in the Caymans was created, Soros had reportedly funneled $13.3 billion in fees, which means he had dodged almost $7 billion in taxes if his business had been entirely located in the United States. Click to expand...
RT links this story posted from behind Bloomberg's paywall:So, how do you spell h-y-p-o-c-r-i-s-y again? And what is the difference between liberal billionaires and conservative billionaires? I'm betting that the rest of the 400 also have most of their wealth safely hidden from tax collectors they want to unleash on everyone else who doesn't have their level of tax sheltering capabilities.What I find most interesting about this simple hit-piece on Soros is that if it's been posted on Bloomberg that means the heavy hitters are no longer taking the shots from the handful of liberal billionaires and are firing back at them...at least through the media they own.Personally, I have no interest in taking sides in a war between billionaires(Koch Bros) who want to carbonize the atmosphere to maximize their profits vs 'liberal' billionaires like Soros, Buffet, Gates etc., who bleat on about how concerned they are for us unfortunate folks...while they continue merrily along increasing their net worths somehow and working closely...too closely with government institutions in their profit-generating ventures. There are no good guys among them...the only hopeful sign is that growing animosities among the oligarchs is a sign that they see no more value in staying in their lanes and not interfering with rival oligarchs. When the system is stagnant and not growing, the best profit potential is to destroy rivals.....maybe that's why they're all of a sudden taking Soros's rhetoric seriously now.
Veteran actor Rishi Kapoor said he agrees with National Conference president Farooq Abdullah, who claimed that Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK) belongs to Pakistan and "this won't change" no matter how many wars India and Pakistan fight against each other.
Abdullah had yesterday said that talk of an independent Kashmir was "wrong" as the Valley is landlocked and surrounded by three nuclear powers -- China, Pakistan and India.
His statement came days after Pakistan Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi had rejected the idea of an "independent Kashmir", saying it was not based on "reality".
Reacting to the same, Rishi wrote on Twitter, "Farooq Abdullah ji, Salaam! Totally agree with you sir. Jammu and Kashmir is ours, and PoK is theirs. This is the only way we can solve our problem.
"Accept it, I am 65-years-old and I want to see Pakistan before I die. I want my children to see their roots. Bas karva dijiye (Please make it happen). Jai Mata Di!"
The Kapoor clan has a house in Peshawar, Pakistan. It was constructed between 1918 and 1922 by Dewan Basheswarnath Kapoor, father of Prithviraj Kapoor, who was the first from the family to enter the Indian film industry.
The family shifted to India after Partition.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Officials from India, Australia, the US and Japan met here today and discussed issues relating to cooperation the Indo-Pacific region, seen as a first move to set up a quadrilateral grouping to pursue common interests amidst growing assertiveness by the Chinese military in the strategically key region.
The external affairs ministry said the discussions focused on cooperation based on converging vision and values for promotion of peace, stability and prosperity in an increasingly inter-connected region.
"They agreed that a free, open, prosperous and inclusive Indo-Pacific region serves the long-term interests of all countries in the region and of the world at large. The officials also exchanged views on addressing common challenges of terrorism and proliferation linkages impacting the region as well as on enhancing connectivity," it said in a statement.
The Indian side highlighted India's Act East Policy as the cornerstone of its engagement in the Indo-Pacific region.
Japanese Foreign Minister Taro Kono last month had said that Tokyo favours a dialogue between Japan, the US, India and Australia to further boost strategic partnership among them.
The move to set up the quadrilateral comes in the backdrop of growing Chinese assertiveness in the South China Sea.
China claims sovereignty on almost all of the South China Sea which is disputed by Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia, Brunei and Taiwan. The US has been accusing China of violating international rules and norms by laying claims on the disputed South and East China seas.
The US has been favouring a larger role for India in the strategically key Indo-Pacific region.
Reacting to the Japanese move, India had said it was open to working with like-minded countries on issues that advance its interests.
The US had said it was looking at a "working-level" quadrilateral meeting in the near term with India, Japan and Australia.
US President Donald Trump last week praised India's "astounding" growth, saying he has been working successfully to bring the vast country and its people together.
Speaking at a gathering of CEOs on the sidelines of the annual Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in the Vietnamese port city of Danang, Trump cited India as one of the countries in the Indo-Pacific region making strides.
The use of the term Indo-Pacific by President Trump has led to speculation that it may have something to do with Washington preparing the ground for a revival of the so-called Quadrilateral strategic alliance between the US, Japan, Australia and India to counter China's rise.
China has already reacted cautiously over the proposal by the Trump administration for a working-level quadrilateral meeting, saying Beijing hopes that it would not target or damage a "third party's interest".
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Signalling a widening of their security cooperation under the proposed quadrilateral coalition, officials from India, the US, Japan, and Australia today held extensive talks here to pursue common interests in the strategically important Indo-Pacific region where China has been aggressively expanding its military presence.
In the meeting, seen as the first major move in formation of the quadrilateral security dialogue or 'quad', the officials deliberated on evolving security scenario in the Indo-Pacific region besides delving into effectively combating threat of terrorism and other security challenges.
In a statement, the ministry of external affairs (MEA) said the consultations were held on issues of common interest in the Indo-Pacific region with a focus on cooperation based on converging vision and values for promotion of peace, stability and prosperity in the area.
"The discussions focused on cooperation based on their converging vision and values for promotion of peace, stability and prosperity in an increasingly inter-connected region that they share with each other and with other partners," it said.
The meeting took place ahead of the ASEAN and East Asia summits here for which Prime Minister Narendra Modi, US President Donald Trump, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull have already arrived here.
"They agreed that a free, open, prosperous and inclusive Indo-Pacific region serves the long-term interests of all countries in the region and of the world at large. The officials also exchanged views on addressing common challenges of terrorism and proliferation linkages impacting the region as well as on enhancing connectivity," the MEA said.
It said the Indian side highlighted India's 'Act East' Policy as the cornerstone of its engagement in the Indo- Pacific region.
Modi is scheduled to have a bilateral meeting with Trump and Abe tomorrow and the security scenario in the Indo-Pacific region may figure in the meetings.
The formation of a quadrilateral security dialogue comprising India, the US, Australia and Japan was first mooted around 10 years back but it did not see the light of day.
Japan's Foreign Minister Taro Kono last month had said that Tokyo favours the quadrilateral dialogue to further boost strategic partnership among the four countries.
Reacting to the Japanese move, India had said it was open to working with like-minded countries on issues that advance its interests.
The US had said it was looking at a "working-level" quadrilateral meeting in the near term with India, Japan and Australia.
The US and Japan have been pushing for a deeper Indian role in the Indo-Pacific region.
The issue of China's aggressive build up in the South China Sea is understood to have figured in today's meeting which was attended by officials from the MEA, Australia's Department of Foreign Affairs, Japan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and the US State Department.
Joint Secretary (South division) in the MEA, Vinay Kumar and Joint Secretary (East Asia), Pranay Verma attended the meeting.
The move to set up the quadrilateral comes in the backdrop of growing Chinese assertiveness in the South China Sea. The US has been favouring a larger role for India in the strategically key Indo-Pacific region.
The use of the term "Indo-Pacific" by Trump has led to speculation that it may have something to do with Washington preparing the ground for a revival of the Quadrilateral alliance between the US, Japan, Australia and India to counter China's rise.
China has already reacted cautiously to the proposal by the Trump administration for a working-level quadrilateral meeting, saying it hopes it would not target or damage a "third party's interest".
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Giving shape to their security cooperation under the proposed quadrilateral coalition, India, the United States (US), Japan and Australia on Sunday held their first official-level talks here with a focus on keeping the Indo-Pacific region "free and open", seen as a move to counter China's aggressive behaviour in the area.
Soon after the meeting, India, Australia and Japan issued separate statements listing the Indo-Pacific as the major area of the deliberations and resolved to expand cooperation to uphold a rules-based order and respect for international law in the strategically important region.
The meeting comes ahead of the ASEAN summit here on Tuesday that is also likely to discuss the security challenges facing the Indo-Pacific region and China's military expansion in the South China Sea.
In a statement, the ministry of external affairs (MEA) said the consultations were held on issues of common interest in the Indo-Pacific region with a focus on cooperation based on converging vision and values for promotion of peace, stability and prosperity in the area.
"They agreed that a free, open, prosperous and inclusive Indo-Pacific region serves the long-term interests of all countries in the region and of the world at large. The officials also exchanged views on addressing common challenges of terrorism and proliferation linkages impacting the region as well as on enhancing connectivity," the MEA said.
In its statement, the Japanese foreign ministry said officials discussed measures to ensure a free and open international order based on the rule of law in the Indo- Pacific.
"From this perspective, the participants discussed the direction for cooperation, including with countries in the region, in upholding the rules-based order and respect for international law in the Indo-Pacific," it said.
The Australian foreign ministry said the four countries shared a vision for increased prosperity and security in the Indo-Pacific region and will work together to ensure that it "remains free and open".
"The officials examined ways to achieve common goals and address shared challenges in the region. This includes upholding the rules-based order in the Indo-Pacific and respect for international law, freedom of navigation and overflight, increase connectivity," it said.
The MEA said the Indian side highlighted India's 'Act East' policy as the cornerstone of its engagement in the Indo-Pacific region.
The meeting also deliberated on enhancing cooperation in dealing with challenges of terrorism and talked about tackling proliferation threats, including North Korea's nuclear and missile programme.
"Officials also agreed to work together to address threats to international peace and security posed by the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, including the DPRK's (North Korea) nuclear and missile programmes," the Australian foreign ministry said.
It said the four countries committed to continuing the quadrilateral discussions and deepening cooperation on the basis of shared values and principles.
The MEA said, "The discussions focused on cooperation based on their converging vision and values for promotion of peace, stability and prosperity in an increasingly inter- connected region that they share with each other and with other partners".
ALSO READ: The quad conundrum
Prime Minister Narendra Modi is scheduled to have bilateral meetings with US President Donald Trump and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe tomorrow and the security scenario in the Indo-Pacific region may figure in the meetings.
The formation of a quadrilateral security dialogue comprising India, the US, Australia and Japan was first mooted around 10 years back but it did not see the light of day.
Japan's Foreign Minister Taro Kono last month had said that Tokyo favours the quadrilateral dialogue to further boost strategic partnership among the four countries.
Reacting to the Japanese move, India had said it was open to working with like-minded countries on issues that advance its interests.
The US had said it was looking at a "working-level" quadrilateral meeting in the near term with India, Japan and Australia.
The US and Japan have been pushing for a deeper Indian role in the strategically key Indo-Pacific region.
Joint Secretary (South division) in the MEA, Vinay Kumar and Joint Secretary (East Asia) Pranay Verma attended the meeting.
The move to set up the quadrilateral comes in the backdrop of growing Chinese assertiveness in the South China Sea.
The use of the term "Indo-Pacific" by Trump has led to speculation that it may have something to do with Washington preparing the ground for a revival of the quadrilateral alliance between the US, Japan, Australia and India to counter China's rise.
India and Canada will make efforts for expeditious conclusion of a Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (CEPA) on goods and services at the annual ministerial dialogue starting in New Delhi on Monday, said an official statement.
A high-level delegation led by the Canadian International Trade Minister Francois-Philippe Champagne is visiting India to attend the 4th Annual Ministerial Dialogue (AMD). The Indian delegation will be led by Commerce and Industry Minister Suresh Prabhu.
In the current round, India and Canada will be focusing on some of the key commercial drivers to enhance bilateral partnership, the release said.
"Efforts would be made to work towards the expeditious conclusion of the Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (CEPA) for a progressive, balanced, and mutually beneficial agreement covering both goods and services," it stated.
India-Canada merchandise trade stood at $6.13 billion in 2016-17, down 1.87 per cent from the previous year.
The negotiations for the agreement were launched in November 2010 to boost bilateral trade and investments.
According to the release, considering the high potential for bilateral trade, the trade ministers of both countries are likely to discuss issues to explore ways of expediting the early conclusion of the CEPA and the Foreign Investment Promotion and Protection Agreement.
"They would also explore options for Indian interests in addressing the Temporary Foreign Workers Programme of Canada, which is affecting the movement of Indian professionals seeking short-term visas, address equivalence by the Canadian Food Inspection Agency for Indian organic product exports and exploring two-way investment opportunities," it said.
Though geographically separated by a long distance, the historical ties between the two countries date back to the late 19th century when Indians began migrating in small numbers to British Columbia in Canada.
Canada now has over 1.2 million Persons of Indian Origin (PIOs), comprising more than 3 per cent of its population.
"Though India's commercial ties with the US have seen an upswing in the last few years, trade and investment relations between India and Canada are yet to realise their full potential," the release said.
Given enormous complementarities, a concerted effort to boost bilateral trade and investment from both sides would provide a fruitful outcome, it added.
An Indian-origin owner of a motel was shot dead and four other people were injured in a shootout in the US state of North Carolina, police said.
Akash R Talati, 40, who owned Knights Inn and Diamondz Gentlemen's Club in Fayetteville city, was an innocent bystander when a man who had been escorted out of the club returned soon and exchanged gunfire with a security guard yesterday, police Detective Jamaal Littlejohn said.
Police said they were called to the club at 1:51 AM on Saturday.
Littlejohn said Markeese Dewitt, 23, of Fayetteville has been charged with attempted murder and assault with a deadly weapon inflicting serious injury.
Littlejohn said Dewitt was shot four or five times and remained in serious condition at Cape Fear Valley Medical Centre, fayobserver.com reported.
He said only Dewitt and the security guard exchanged gunfire and the others were bystanders.
One of the victims was in a fair condition at the hospital. The two others were treated and released. Talati died at the hospital.
Talati is reportedly from Anand in Gujarat.
Police have not released the names of three other people who were injured. Littlejohn said they included the security guard and a female employee of the club who operated the cash register.
Littlejohn said security escorted Dewitt out of the club because he had caused a disturbance. He said Dewitt appeared to have gone to his vehicle, got a gun, went back inside the club and started shooting.
Littlejohn said police have no idea what caused Dewitt to get kicked out of the club.
"All we know is he got put out, he goes and gets a gun and it goes crazy from there," Littlejohn said.
Detectives are actively investigating the homicide and shooting and have appealed to the public to contact them if they have any information on the incident.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
A 52-year-old Indian-origin doctor in the UK has been charged with committing three sex assaults, according to a media report.
Vibhore Gupta, based at Edgbaston's Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham, was arrested in March this year, following a report made to the police.
In 2013, he added his weight to West Midlands Police's "Knives End Lives" campaign, aimed at raising awareness of the perils of carrying a knife, Birmingham Mail reported.
"A 52-year-old man from Harborne has been charged with three counts of sexual assault and one count of assault," a West Midlands Police spokesman said.
"The doctor is due to appear at Birmingham Magistrates Court on Tuesday November 21."
On University Hospitals Birmingham website, Gupta is described as a consultant in emergency medicine.
His area of professional interest is military medicine. A member of the emergency team said that he is also technical service head.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Iran has denied allegations it was behind a militant attack on a pipeline outside Bahrain's capital.
Foreign Ministry spokesman Bahram Ghasemi was quoted by the state-run IRNA agency today as rejecting the "baseless and fake claims" and "childish finger-pointing" from Bahraini authorities.
Bahrain has been combatting a low-level insurgency since the Sunni monarchy quashed a 2011 Arab Spring uprising led by majority Shiites.
Bahrain's interior minister, Sheikh Rashid bin Abdullah Al Khalifa, said yesterday's blast was "the latest example of a terrorist act performed by terrorists in direct contact with and under instruction from Iran."
Gulf tensions have intensified in recent days after Sunni-led Saudi Arabia blamed Shiite Iran for a ballistic missile fired by Yemen's Shiite rebels that was intercepted near Riyadh. Iran has denied any involvement.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
A 7.3 magnitude earthquake that struck northeastern Iraq and western Iran has killed at least six people, according to an initial assessment reported by Iranian state television.
The victims died in the border town of Qasr-e Shirin, governor Faramarz Akbari told state television.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Health Minister Bali Bhagat said that Jammu and Kashmir was lagging in specialised healthcare and appealed private players in the sector to invest in the state.
"Government intends to promote the private sector in the medical field and all such private players are welcome here. The government will facilitate them," Bhagat said.
Speaking at a continuing medical education (CME) event organised here to share ideas on liver-related ailments, the minister said that the state lags behind in specialised treatment and there was a greater need for better facilities.
A large number of patients suffering from critical ailments have to visit other states for treatment, he said.
He appealed private players to invest in the state to ensure quality healthcare to patients.
The CME was organised by Fortis Escorts Liver and Digestive Diseases Institute, New Delhi, in collaboration with the Maxxlyfe Hospital, Jammu.
Bhagat called for organising more such events for sharing new innovations in the medical sector.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Haryana Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar today paid rich tributes to Guru Gobind Singh, the tenth Sikh Guru, to mark the closing ceremony of 350th 'Prakash Utsav'.
On the occasion, Khattar announced the setting up of a 'Trust' named after famous Sikh warrior Baba Banda Singh Bahadur in Lohgarh here.
Khattar, who was speaking at the state-level function orgninsed to mark the closing ceremony of 350th 'Prakash Utsav', also announced that the road from Ladwa to Jhinwarhdi Gurudwara Sahib would be widened and it would be named as Guru Teg Bahadur marg.
Donning a turban, Khattar said that Punjabi has been accorded the status of second language in the state and with a view to promote this language, the process to fill up 397 posts of TGT and 352 posts of PGT in Punjabi has already been started.
He said that in view of the closing ceremony of 350th 'Prakash Utsav' of Guru Gobind Singh in Patna Sahib from December 22 to 25, special trains would be run fom Ambala and Sirsa so that maximum people could participate in the function.
He said that the state government has also prepared a scheme of providing financial assistance to the pilgrims intending to visit religious places such as Nankana Sahib (Pakistan), Hazur Sahib, Patna Sahib and Hemkund Sahib.
A similar scheme has also been prepared for pilgrims going on Sindhu Darshan and Kailash Mansarovar Yatra, he said.
He said an educational institute would be set up in this area after the name of a the Sikh Guru.
Khattar said that till 1998, many colleges of the state were affiliated with the Punjab University.
"Now again the university wanted to get some colleges of the state affiliated with it. We are considering the proposal and if it materialises, colleges of this area would also be affiliated with Punjab University," he said.
One of the colleges would be named after the Sikh Guru, he said.
On the occasion, he asked the people to follow the path shown by Guru Gobind Singh and other Sikh Gurus and serve the nation and the society.
Khattar said that the work for the construction of a gate on the Karnal-Kaithal road named after Guru Nanak Dev has been started.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
A people without children would face a hopeless future; a country without trees is almost as helpless, said Theodore Roosevelt, the twenty-sixth president of the United States.
A little over a century later and over 13,000 km away in India, bow and arrow wielding Jamuna Tudu, a fierce woman who knows the value of trees, protects the forest from the timber mafia like it was her own brother.
She even ties a rakhi to the trees on every Rakshabandhan for their well being.
Speaking at "enGendered Dialogues...Women Changing the World", Tudu remembered looking at the thinning forest on one of her runs to collect firewood several years ago, and realisation dawned upon her to save the area.
Born in Odisha, she settled in Muturkham village of Jharkhand's East Singhbhum district after marriage.
Surrounded by 50 hectares of forest land, Muturkham was plagued by the forest mafia and poachers before Tudu decided to take the matter in her hands.
"I didn't want to see the area lose the forest cover," says the 37-year-old activist, who has spent almost two decades protecting the forest.
As she formed the 'Van Suraksha Samiti' (Forest safety committee) in 1998 with a group of five women, her pledge to save the forest was met with opposition from the villagers.
"Initially, there was opposition even from the villagers as they asked me why I wanted to save the forest as it was the source of firewood," she recalled.
But she managed to persuade them to use only the smaller branches as fuel and leave the bigger ones untouched.
Now she has more than 300 such groups, with around 30 people in each group, working in the whole area to save the forest land from the mafia.
They work in three shifts morning, afternoon and evening carrying bows, arrows, sticks and even dogs to ward off the mafia.
Her group has filed many FIRs and helped the Jharkhand Armed Police, which now works with her in protecting the forests, and nabs several mafia men who refused to relent.
As expected, such deeds did not go down well with the mafia. She received many death threats, her house was looted and she was nearly killed in an attack near a railway station.
But that didn't deter her from continuing what she believed was a noble cause.
"We have vowed that we will protect the trees till our last breath."
While she wishes to get support from the State and Centre, the state forest department has adopted the village, where it now provides with water and education.
Tudu has set such an example that the village women plant 18 trees when a girl is born and 10 trees when a girl is married.
Her story not only promotes the spirit of brotherhood and tribal activism, but also has been a lesson for sustainable development.
Organised by Shift Series in association with Niti Aayog and The Global Education and Leadership Foundation (tGELF), the event was part of "Road to Global Entrepreneurship Summit (GES)", an important Indo-US initiative under the Trump administration.
The day-long event held here on Saturday was attended by eminent proponents of women's rights and empowerment including Sapna Bhavnani, Robin Chaurasiya, Kanchan Chander and Pooja Bedi.
"From grassroots warriors to theatre and TV personalities, no topic concerning women empowerment and uplift was left untouched.
"The speakers moved the audience from tears to laughter through their no holds barred presentation. Surviving sexual assault to fighting the forest mafias, the speakers shared their deepest personal journey at the event," the Shift Series team said.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
A meeting of the ruling CPI(M)-led LDF in Kerala today decided to entrust Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan with taking an appropriate decision on whether Thomas Chandy, who is facing allegations of land encroachment, should continue as the transport minister.
The meeting, which lasted for over three hours, was attended by the leaders of the LDF coalition parties here. It was called in the wake of the government receiving the legal opinion of the state Advocate General (AG) on a report of the Alappuzha district collector on the alleged encroachment.
The AG, C P Sudhakara Prasad, had recently informed the Kerala government that the Alappuzha collector's report on the alleged encroachment of land for a resort owned by Chandy was legally binding and that its findings could not be ignored.
The government had sought the AG's legal opinion on the matter after getting the report from Collector T V Anupama, wherein she had confirmedthat a paddy field had been reclaimed for laying a road to the lake resort.
Chandy had also allegedly encroached on the backwaters in order to construct a parking space for the resort, according to the collector's report.
Chandy, who belongs to the NCP, became a minister eight months ago, following the resignation of A K Saseendran from the state cabinet over the issue of a sleaze talk with a woman.
"The matter related to Chandy was discussed in detail and the general opinion was that he should resign," a senior LDF leader, who attended the meeting, told PTI.
"The meeting decided to entrust the chief minister with taking an appropriate decision on the matter, on the basis of the AG's report and the outcome of today's meeting," he said.
The NCP leadership, which is expected to meet at Kochi on Tuesday, was asked to inform about its decision to Vijayan in this regard after its parleys, the LDF leader said.
Left Democratic Front (LDF) convenor Vaikom Viswan, in a statement, said the meeting recommended to the chief minister to take a decision on the allegations against Chandy after going through the AG's legal advice on the Alappuzha collector's report.
A number of senior leaders were tightlipped about the outcome of today's meeting.
CPI state secretary Kanam Rajendran told reporters that his party, which had been taking a strong stand against encroachments in the state, was happy over the discussions. However, he did not divulge the details of the meeting.
"The talks were satisfactory...the CPI is happy," he said.
Shortly before the meeting, state NCP leaders, including T P Peethambaran Master, A K Saseendran and Chandy, met here reportedly to discuss the stand to be taken at the LDF meet.
"There is no evidence against Chandy as of now. So, there is no need for him to resign at present," Peethambaran told reporters.
Challenging the collector's report, Chandy had last week moved the Kerala High Court, contending that the collector conducted an unfair inquiry into the "wild and baseless" allegations against his company, Water World Tourism.
He had claimed that the allegations were levelled only to target him, "with the set agenda orchestrated" by his political rivals, interested parties and the media.
The petition is expected to come up before the court for hearing on Wednesday.
The opposition -- the Congress-led UDF and the BJP -- have been demanding Chandy's resignation over the controversy.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Four persons of a family, who met with a brutal accident after a truck hit their car leaving one dead and another disabled, have been awarded Rs 34 lakh compensation by a Motor Accident Claims Tribunal (MACT) here.
MACT Judge Pawan Kumar Jain decided two separate pleas, one by the wife of the deceased man and another by his son who lost an eye, and directed HDFC ERGO General Insurance Company Ltd to pay the compensation to the family.
The 48-year-old postman Rajesh Kumar Aggarwal along with his family was on his way to Garh Mukteshwar in Uttar Pradesh on September 7, 2009, to perform the last rites of a relative when a rashly and negligently driven truck hit their Innova car.
The head-on collision killed Rajesh on the spot, disabled his son Amit and injured other members, the petitions said.
While one petition sought Rs 80 lakh compensation for the death of Rajesh, the other filed by Amit sought Rs 50 lakh for the disability suffered by him.
The tribunal awarded Rs 27 lakh to Rajesh's mother, wife (now deceased) and two sons - Amit and Sumeet, for his death and separately Rs 7.4 lakh to Amit for the grave injuries suffered by him.
During the proceedings, the insurance company claimed that since truck driver did not have a valid driving licence, the company was not liable to pay the compensation.
However, the driver and owner contended that he had a valid driving licence and the vehicle was insured with the company.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
A 40-year-old man, who had set himself ablaze in front of the residence of Chhattisgarh Chief Minister Raman Singh in Kabeerdham district on November 8, succumbed to his injuries at a hospital in Raipur today.
"Bacchu Lal, who had sustained around 85 per cent burns, breathed his last this afternoon," said a doctor at the Raipur-based Kalda Burns and Plastic Surgery Centre.
Lal had set himself on fire after dousing himself in petrol in front of the CM's residence in Kawardha, the district headquarter of Kabeerdham.
After preliminary treatment at a local hospital, he was shifted to Dr Bhim Rao Ambedkar Memorial Hospital here on the same day.
Subsequently, he was admitted to Kalda hospital for advanced treatment.
Following the incident, Kabeerdham Collector Neeraj Bansod had visited the hospital and directed Additional Collector PK Mishra to probe the entire matter to ascertain the cause behind it.
According to police, Lal, who was working as a sweeper with Pandatarai nagar panchayat in Kawardha on contract basis, was demanding regularisation of his service.
Lal, who hailed from Amlai in Shahdol area of Madhya Pradesh, was living in Pandatarai along with his wife and children, a local police official told PTI.
His wife was also working with him, he said.
Lal had earlier lodged a complaint with the local police againstthe Nagar Panchayat president claiming that the latter "swindled" Rs 40,000 which he and his wife had deposited with him for regularisation of the service.
"Apparently upset over it, he attempted suicide but the exact cause that prompted him to take the extreme step was yet to be ascertained," the official said, adding that further probe was on.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Manipur Governor Najma Heptulla today accorded a warm welcome to Assam Rifles tri-nation motorcycle expedition team here.
The Assam Rifles, the country's oldest central para-military force, is conducting a tri-nation motorcycle expedition involving India, Bangladesh and Myanmar to promote force-to-force and people-to-people relations as part of its 183rd Raising Day celebrations.
The 2,150-km long expedition will cover Bangladesh and Myanmar besides Indias six northeastern states Meghalaya, Assam, Manipur, Nagaland, Mizoram and Tripura.
The expedition has been named as Sardar Vallabhai Patel Unity and Heritage Motorcycle Expedition.
Heptulla, interacting with the team at Raj Bhavan said, the 33-member expedition team will "foster force to force connection with the border guarding forces of Bangladesh and Myanmar".
She hoped that the team will pay homage to the martyrs of the Indian army who sacrificed their life during the Indo-Pak war of 1971 and World War II, as well as spread the "message of peace and brotherhood" and interact with the populace in social and cultural activities.
The commander of the team, Col PKS Gaur said the expedition was flagged off from Shillong in Meghalaya on October 30 last and will conclude on November 17 next.
The objective of the effort is to promote peace, prosperity and brotherhood, cultural exchanges, national integrity, interact with war veterans and foster contact with border guards of Bangladesh and Myanmar.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
British Prime Minister Theresa May is today coping with fresh turmoil as it emerged that as many as 40 of her own party MPs are ready to sign a letter expressing a lack of confidence in her leadership.
Conservative party MPs are now just eight short of the required number of 48 to force a leadership challenge as Theresa May struggles to steady her government following two high-profile resignations, 'The Sunday Times' reported.
Indian-origin MP Priti Patel stepped down as the international development minister amid a dramatic row over a series of unauthorised meetings with Israeli officials earlier this week.
Her resignation came days after Michael Fallon had been forced to quit as Defence Secretary amid allegations of sexual misconduct.
Two of May's other senior Cabinet minister, Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson and First Secretary of State Damian Green, continue to battle demands that they step down.
Johnson has been accused for endangering the life of a British-Iranian national, imprisoned in Tehran, by making an incorrect statement at a House of Commons committee meeting. Green is under investigation by the parliamentary authorities over allegations of sexual misconduct and that pornography had been discovered on his Commons laptop a few years ago.
The Opposition and her own party MPs believe that Theresa May's failure to take firm action against them reflects her weakness as a leader and it is time for her to quit Downing Street.
The embattled leader also faces mounting pressure from the European Union (EU) over Brexit negotiations, after Brussels issued an ultimatum that Britain must agree on its divorce bill payments with the economic bloc within weeks or face the prospect of no future trade deal with the EU once it is no longer a member.
May is headed for some further bruising in the House of Commons when the EU Withdrawal Bill returns to Parliament on Tuesday, with Labour expected to join Tory rebels to inflict a series of damaging defeats on the government.
One of Labours key demands is that "parliament, and not ministers, has the final say on whether to approve the withdrawal agreement and how best to implement it".
"Continuing uncertainty about the government's approach to Brexit is now the biggest risk facing our country. The prime minister must end the confusion, take on the 'no-deal' extremists in her government and back a jobs-first Brexit for Britain," Opposition Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn warned in an article in 'The Sunday Times' today.
He demanded that May should "govern or go" because she is now showing "every sign of being in office but not in power".
Corbyn also indicated that sacking Boris Johnson would be a sign of some strength as he had become a liability.
"We have put up with Johnson embarrassing and undermining our country with his incompetence and colonial throwback views and putting our citizens at risk for long enough. It's time for him to go," he said.
Johnson is reportedly set for a meeting with the husband of Nazanin Zaghari-Radcliffe, a dual British and Iranian national in jail on charges of an attempted coup against the Iranian regime.
Richard Radcliffe has been arguing his wife's innocence and campaigning for the UK Foreign Office to secure her release.
Johnson's future in the UK Cabinet is now tied to how the case progresses.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Prime Minister Narendra Modi tonight held separate pull-aside meetings with US President Donald Trump and Chinese Premier Li Keqiang on the sidelines of a gala dinner to mark the 50th anniversary of the ASEAN.
Modi was also seen chit-chatting with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev and Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak at the reception for the leaders who have arrived here for the 31st ASEAN summit and related meetings.
He also held brief interactions with several other leaders who attended the reception hosted by Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte at the mega SMX Convention Centre in Pasay City here.
The prime minister as well as all other leaders wore Barong Tagalong, an embroidered shirt which is the national dress of the Philippines. Renowned Filipino designer Albert Andrada has designed the shirts.
Modi also tweeted pictures of his interaction with several leaders.
The menu of the gala dinner featured various Filipino cuisines including Filipino steak sushi.
The brief interaction between Modi and Trump came ahead of their scheduled bilateral meeting tomorrow. The two leaders are expected to deliberate on a number of key issues of mutual interest including the evolving security situation in the Indo-Pacific region where Washington favours a greater role by India.
There have been concerns over China's growing military presence in the Indo-Pacific and the issue was understood to have figured in a meeting of officials from India, the US, Japan and Australia today under the proposed Quadrilateral coalition of the four countries.
"The discussions focused on cooperation based on their converging vision and values for promotion of peace, stability and prosperity in an increasingly inter-connected region that they share with each other and with other partners," the ministry of external affairs said in a statement.
"They agreed that a free, open, prosperous and inclusive Indo-Pacific region serves the long-term interests of all countries in the region and of the world at large," it said.
On Tuesday, Modi will attend the ASEAN-India and East Asia summits where he is likely to reassert India's push for crafting a global approach to deal with growing challenge of terrorism and radicalisation besides pitching for steps to boost regional trade.
Modi will hold bilateral meetings with Duterte tomorrow.
He also had a conversation with Li at the dinner.
"PM @narendramodi had a warm and cordial conversation with the Chinese Premier Li Keqiang at the Gala Dinner," MEA spokesperson Raveesh Kumar tweeted.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Moroccan cine goers are great lovers of Bollywood films and Shah Rukh Khan's popularity is no less there than that in his home country, a member of the Moroccan delegation to the 23rd Kolkata International Film Festival said here today.
A package of six films are being screened in the Contemporary Moroccan Cinema category of the KIFF. The package includes "Androma... Blood and Coal" and "Razzia" - films that won accolades in various festivals.
"Our audiences are mesmerised in real admiration for your vibrant cinema, which is part of Indian tradition and culture.... They like the stories, especially love stories, even without subtitles. We like the choreography and colours," Rachida Saadi said.
Shah Rukh Khan is a popular star in Morocco and his films are big hits, Saadi, a prominent film producer of the country, told a press conference.
"We appreciate, our audience appreciates the way you weave the dream, throw in some fun, and the audience live with the dream after the movie," she said.
Saadi said her country produces 25 odd movies a year and does not have many cinema theatres.
More over, a section of the people are increasingly hooked to DVDs and Internet creating a problem for theatre owners, she said.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Scientists have created a new artificial intelligence system that can identify a range of emotions - from happiness to disgust - in human speech.
For a long time, computers have successfully converted speech into text. However, the emotional component, which is important for conveying meaning, has been neglected.
Neural networks are processors connected with each other and capable of learning, analysis and synthesis.
This smart system surpasses traditional algorithms in that the interaction between a person and computer becomes more interactive.
Researchers at the National Research University Higher School of Economics in Russia trained a neural network to recognise eight different emotions: neutral, calm, happy, sad, angry, scared, disgusted, and surprised.
In 70 per cent cases the computer identified the emotion correctly, say the researchers.
The researchers have transformed the sound into images - spectrograms - which allowed them to work with sound using the methods applied for image recognition.
A deep learning approach was used in the research.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The NIA detained three people and recovered gold biscuits weighing 2kg today, and claimed to have busted an inter-state gang of conmen who allegedly cheated many people on the pretext of exchanging fake Indian currency notes (FICN) and smuggled gold.
The National Investigation Agency (NIA) said it had handed over Rashid Khan (40), Gagan K Vyas (49) and Iqbal Ahmad Ansari to Rajasthan Police after they were nabbed from Dholpur.
The trio, who were allegedly negotiating with a Bangladeshi FICN smuggler, Darul Sheikh, were apprehended during the agency's ongoing probe into an FICN racket case emerging from the Malda area of West Bengal, along the India- Bangladesh border.
NIA teams subsequently carried out multiple searches in Mumbai and Kolhapur as part of the morning operation and recovered 20 gold biscuits of 100 grams each, the agency said.
As per initial probe, the central probe agency said it came to light that "an inter-state gang had been active since long in the states of Maharashtra, Rajasthan, Delhi, and West Bengal".
They primarily lured people on the pretext of exchanging high-quality FICN or unbilled gold biscuits at attractive rates.
They either looted their targets directly or carried out fake police raids with the help of other associates.
The NIA said the gullible targets of these conmen used to leave their money behind and could not even lodge police complaints.
The investigation is on to ascertain more about the three and their alleged accomplices, it said.
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The Trump administration has ruled out moving the office of the Special Representative of Afghanistan and Pakistan from the State Department to the White House.
Alice Wells, Acting Assistant Secretary for South and Central Asian Affairs and Acting Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, was responding to reports that there are plans to shift the SRAP office from the State Department to the White House.
"I am not aware of a measure to move SRAP to the White House," Wells said.
Wells, however, said SRAP has been reintegrated with the South and Central Asia Bureau of the State Department.
"Within the State Department we have completed a reintegration, a combination of the South and Central Asian bureau with the Afghanistan and Pakistan office. And this has been an initiative that the State Department has sought since 2016," she said.
"It reflects very much this administration's view that the answer to Afghanistan is a regional one that we have to look beyond the stovepipe of Af-Pak and understand how the region is or as a whole is going to contribute to this stabilising," said Wells, who temporarily has been entrusted with the task of heading both the South and Central Asia and office of SRAP.
Wells was recently in the region with Secretary of State Rex Tillerson.
The SRAP Office was created in early 2009, within weeks of Barack Obama becoming the US president.
High-profile American diplomat Richard Holbrook was the first Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, which worked independently of the South and central Asia Bureau and reported directly to the Secretary of State.
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Instead of trading charges, the Centre and the Odisha government should come together and mitigate the plight of Odisha farmers who are facing a grave crisis due to drought and pest attack on crops, Union Minister of State for Agriculture, Gajendra Singh Shekhawat said today.
Farmers in Odisha are hit by a serious crisis. Drought conditions prevail in 14 districts. The areas, known as the rice bowl of the state, are hit by drought-like situation and pest menace," said Shekhawat, who is on a two-day visit to the state to review the problems facing the farmers.
Describing farmers as "annadata" (food providers), he said this is not the time to indulge in blame game and find fault with each other. It is necessary to hold the hand of the distressed farmers in order to give succour to them, he said.
The minister, who held a preliminary review meeting with state government officials here on crop loss caused by drought and pest attacks, said his visit is aimed at understanding the problems faced by the farmers and find solutions.
The Centre would also find ways and means of extending assistance and cooperation to the state government to enable it to deal with the farmers' woes, said Shekhawat, who is accompanied by a central team comprising experts.
Stating that he would visit the affected areas including Bargarh till tomorrow, the minister said he would also meet affected farmers and family members of those who have committed suicide.
The Director General of Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) is scheduled to visit Ganjam district, where paddy crops have been severely hit due to pest attack, he said.
Replying to charges levelled by a section of the BJD leaders that his visit is an interference on state affairs, the minister said it is the duty of the Centre to address the farmers issues and the visit of the central team is aimed at reviewing the situation and working together with the state to end peasants' miseries.
During the meeting between the central team and state officials today, the state government urged the union minister to take steps for modifying guidelines and hike compensation by 50 per cent to affected farmers.
As the affected farmers are now getting compensation of Rs 6,800 per hectare in rain-fed areas, the union minister was requested to raise the amount by at least 50 per cent, Special Relief Commissioner Bishnupada Sethi told reporters.
Since the state is following Centre's guidelines, these can be changed by them, he said adding, even if the state wants to revive lift irrigation (LI) points to provide irrigation facilities to the farmers, it is not possible because there are no provisions for such mitigation in State Disaster Response Fund (SDRF).
The state has written to the Centre to give powers to repair and revive LI points during drought, Sethi said.
Agriculture Secretary Saurabh Garg said the central team was apprised about the situation in areas affected by pest attacks and steps taken to deal with the problem.
"We also told them about the the package announced by the Chief Minister for the affected farmers," he said.
Central help was sought in undertaking measures for pest surveillance, setting up of insecticide laboratory and having deeper bore wells and tube wells to include more areas under irrigation for a permanent solution to the issue, said Garg.
A delegation of the state BJP also met the union minister here and urged him to take necessary steps to mitigate the plight of farmers.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Patients from far off places in the country and abroad can now consult specific doctors in the national capital using their smartphones.
Experts at Sir Ganga Ram Hospital here have developed a Mobile app - myFollowup - where patients can upload their clinical reports and get advice from specialists at an affordable consultation fee.
The patients, from Raipur in Chhattisgarh or living in Kenya, Indonesia and Malaysia, now need not travel all the way to Delhi to seek medical advice, saving them staggering travel cost and time.
However, in cases where physical examination is required, the app is useful only after meeting the specialist at least once.
"It's not a blind date. The relationship between a doctor and a patient is that of trust. We must know the diagnosis and patient's history," Dr Sudhir Kalhan, co-chairman of the Department of Minimal Access & Bariatric Surgery Centre at Sir Ganga Ram Hospital, told PTI.
"We have performed many surgeries on patients who came from different parts of the country but now they need not be present physically for post-surgery treatment. This app is making huge difference," Kalhan explains.
So far, over 10,000 users have downloaded this app and more than 200 doctors from Sir Ganga Ram Hospital are available for consultation after pre-approved online appointments.
With Delhi being reduced to a gas chamber due to severe air pollution and a health emergency declared, this app again became a saviour for the parents of a 11-year-old girl, who lives in one of the satellite towns.
She underwent a liver transplant at the hospital in August but developed fever a few days ago.
"The family panicked as fever in the post-transplant period can be an ominous sign. In view of the ongoing smog it was not advisable for the child to travel all the way to hospital for evaluation," explains Dr. Nishant Wadhwa, a paediatric gastroenterologist and hepatologist.
"Through this app not only the blood investigations were ordered, they were also able to share the results of the investigations via it. The treatment was initiated promptly and communicated to them through the app," he adds.
Dr Wadhwa says he has at least 12 patients from Malaysia, Indonesia, Kenya and Dubai who are consulting him via the app.
"Most liver transplant patients need to be protected from both bacterial and viral infections especially during the initial post-transplant period, so it not advisable for them to travel and get exposed to pollutants in air these days."
Asked how the idea of developing the app originate, Dr Kalhan explains: "Doctors used to struggle with patients calling at odd hours, trying to explain their health problems. This coupled with the challenge of recalling all patients by name and face, had become a nightmare."
"This led to the idea of developing myFollowup. It is a doctor's virtual OPD."
The physical examination of the patient can't be replaced, how it works in that case?
"This app is used only where physical examination is not needed. This is the reason that it is used at present for only patients seen by the doctors and who need a follow up. If any physical examination is required the patient is advised to meet the doctor personally."
The doctors, using the technology, say the app is a boon for them since they are able to effectively organise their work-life balance. Further, since the doctor's consultation fee is to be paid before booking a call, many unwanted calls are also filtered out.
Dr Kanav Anand, who is a paediatric nephrologist, also cites an example how it is helping outstation patients.
"A kid who hails from Raipur was suffering from renal failure due to HUS (a rare disease). For him to come and show his kidney function tests every now and then from Raipur was practically not possible.
"But with myFollowup app he keeps sharing his reports every 2-3 weeks from his hometown and gets his treatment prescriptions from my side," Anand says.
The kid's father, who is an additional district judge in Raipur, says the app proved to be a boon for him.
"Last year in November when my son started treatment in the hospital, I was asked to visit the doctor after every fortnight. It was very expensive to come to Delhi by flight with my son and wife and also very inconvenient.
"But now I consult Dr Kanav after 15 days via app and we are required to be there only after five months. See what difference it has made to our lives," he says.
In the next phase, the hospital is planning to introduce video calling facility where a face-to-face interaction with patients can happen.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The endangered Olive Ridley sea turtles have started arriving along the swirling sea waters of Gahirmatha marine sanctuary in Kendrapara district.
Pairs of mating sea turtles have started arriving on sea waters, marking the commencement of breeding and nesting season of these endangered aquatic animals, a senior Forest department official said.
He said Forest personnel on patrolling drives have sighted pairs of mating turtles. The sighting of breeding turtles marks the commencement of mass nesting season of these delicate marine species.
Gahirmatha beach off Bay of Bengal in Odisha coast is known as Worlds largest-known nesting ground of these animals. Apart from Gahirmatha, these threatened aquatic animals turn up at Rushikulya river mouth and Devi river mouth in the state for mass nesting.
While 6,00,362 had turned for mass nesting last time, 20,22,000 baby turtles had emerged from nest to crawl towards the seawaters, said the official.
"On serene surface of sea waters, the turtle surveying teams spotted hundreds of mating pairs along the Gahirmatha coast. Fishing prohibition is presently clamped in Gahirmatha zone to ensure disturbance-free mating of the marine animals.
"After the end of the mating season, most of the male turtles usually return leaving behind the female turtles to lay their eggs," said Divisional Forest Officer, Rajnagar Mangrove (Wildlife) Forest Division, Bimal Prasanna Acharya.
The female turtles virtually invade the nesting beaches usually at the dead of the night for laying eggs, the phenomenon otherwise described as 'arribada', he said.
After indulgence in instinctive egg-laying, the turtles leave the nesting ground to stride into the deep sea water. Hatchlings emerge from these eggs after 45-60 days. It is a rare natural phenomenon where the babies grow without their mother, said the Forest officer.
The ban on sea fishing has been clamped in accordance with provisions of Orissa Marine Fishing Regulation Act (OMFRA), 1982 and Wildlife Protection Act, 1972, he said.
Rise in mortality rate of mating turtles along the coastal water surface led to the clamping of prohibition as the gillnets used by the trawls prove to be messenger of death for breeding turtles.
The mute species, accorded as schedule-1 animal under wildlife protection act for its highly threatened status, get entangled in the nets for prolonged period and die of asphyxiation. The turtles also perish in large number after getting hit by the fast moving propeller of the fishing trawlers, the DFO said.
The rate of mortality of these endangered species is quite high. An Olive Ridley usually lays about 120 to 150 eggs from which hatchlings emerge after about 45 to 60 days. But not all eggs remain intact as predators devour it. Besides, eggs are also washed away by sea waves during high tide. The eggs are incubated in the nest and grow, sans mother, to emerge as hatchlings, he said.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The winter session of Karnataka legislature beginning here tomorrow is expected to be stormy as the opposition seeks to corner the Siddaramaiah government on a host of issues, including the demand for Minister K J George's resignation.
This will be the last session at Belagavi for the 14th Assembly, as polls are due early next year.
During the ten-day long session, other than demand for George's resignation, Income Tax Department raids on properties linked to senior Minister D K Shivakumar is also likely to come up, with Chief Minister Siddaramaiah accusing BJP-led central government of using the department to woo him into the party fold.
Issues that may also come up include demand for separate religion status to the dominant Lingayats as the session is being held in north Karnataka where the community's presence is predominant, and Mahadayi water sharing dispute with neighbouring Goa.
Among the bills, 'The Karnataka Prevention and Eradication of Inhuman Evil Practices and Black Magic Bill, 2017' is likely to be discussed as Law Minister T B Jayachandra after cabinet's approval had said that "It will be tabled in the next session."
Also expected is discussions on "Karnataka Private Medical Establishments Bill," against which private Doctors have announced 'Belagavi Chalo,' a protest march during the session.
The doctors contend that the provisions of the bill are too harsh on them.
Among various issues on which opposition is set to target the government ahead of elections next year, are farmers issue, especially concerning sugarcane growers.
Speaking to reporters here ahead of the session tomorrow, Assembly Speaker K B Koliwad said his intention is to give "priority" to issues pertaining to north Karnataka region, where the session is being held.
On the issue of attendance of the members, he said, "I can only request them to actively participate, they are responsible representatives of the people.... there is no law for this, I can request."
Stating that including 10 days of the current session, totally the House would have met for 40 days during the current year, Koliwad said his wish was for 90 days session with 45 days each in Bengaluru and Belagavi.
He said the finance department has approved Rs 21 crore for the winter session and based on the request of various departments including the police to make necessary arrangements, a request has been made for additional Rs 5 crore.
The session is expected to be stormy as BJP is expected to strongly demand the exit of George, who has been booked by CBI in a case related to the death of a police official, M K Ganapathy.
After party's core committee meeting in Mangaluru, BJP on November 9 had urged Siddaramaiah to seek George's resignation.
They have also said that the party would take up fight on the issue, both inside and outside the House, if the government does not agree.
Siddaramaiah had earlier rejected BJP's demand for resignation of George terming it as "totally politically motivated."
Deputy SP Ganapathy (51) was found hanging from the ceiling fan in a room at a lodge in Madikeri on July 7, prior to which he gave an interview to a local TV channel, saying the then home minister George, and two senior police officials, named by him, would be responsible "if anything happens to me".
George had resigned then but was brought back to the ministry after the CID probe gave him a clean chit.
Belagavi in north Karnataka has been hosting legislature session once a year since 2006 when the move was initiated by the JD(S)-BJP coalition government.
This was followed by construction of Suvarna Vidhana Soudha, modelled on the Vidhana Soudha, the state secretariat, by the BJP government as an assertion that Belagavi is an integral part of Karnataka.
Maharashtra claims Belagavi should belong to it.
District administration and the police have made elaborate security arrangements for the session with over 5,000 police personnel being deployed along with bomb disposal and other forces, officials said.
Expressing "sadness" over Suvarna Vidhana Soudha remaining non functional for the rest of the year, other than during the session once a year, Speaker Koliwad said his wish was to make it function for 365 days by shifting some departments here. "It is left to executive."
Asked whether the issue of two editors of Kannada tabloids, sentenced for one-year jail term by the Karnataka Assembly over their alleged defamatory articles against legislators will come up during the session, he said, "it is not for me to decide."
"The house has to take a decision on the matter....I have only heard their arguments and have taken their representations, I will place it before the House."
Editors - Ravi Belagere and Anil Raju of "Hai Bangalore" and "Yelahanka Voice" respectively had in July appeared before the Speaker and pleaded for a review of the House resolution following High Court's advise for finding an amicable solution to the controversy.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
More than 1.3 lakh Indian space enthusiasts have submitted their names to NASA to be carried to Mars onboard the US space agency's mission to the red planet next year.
Last month, NASA invited members of the public to send their names which will be carried on the InSight (Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport) mission to Mars.
Those who submitted their names were provided online 'boarding passes' for the mission.
The names are being etched on a silicon wafer microchip using an electron beam to form letters with lines one- thousandth the diameter of a human hair. The chip is affixed to the InSight lander deck and will remain on Mars forever.
This chip will be carried on InSight mission to the red planet, which launches on May 5, next year.
A lot of Indians responded to NASA's call for names for the Mars mission. The total number of names received by NASA from all over the world was 2,429,807.
US had the most number of people - 6,76,773 - sending their names, followed by China with 2,62,752 names. India stands at number three with 1,38,899 names submitted for the mission.
"Mars continues to excite space enthusiasts of all ages," said Bruce Banerdt, the InSight mission's principal investigator, of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in California.
"This opportunity lets them become a part of the spacecraft that will study the inside of the Red Planet," said Banerdt.
"The 'send your name to Mars' initiative is something we have done for a number of major NASA missions in the past
not just for Mars missions. It's just a fun outreach activity that lets people engage with the mission," Andrew Good of Nasa's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in California told PTI.
The deadline to submit names was last week.
Space enthusiasts who signed up shared their downloadable "boarding passes" on social media, complete with the total number of flight miles they have collected by participating in engagement initiatives for other Mars missions.
InSight, scheduled to land on Mars on November 26, next year, will be the first mission to look deep beneath the Martian surface, studying the planet's interior by listening for marsquakes.
These quakes travel through geologic material at different speeds and give scientists a glimpse of the composition and structure of the planet's inside.
InSight's role is not only to study Mars, but also to gain broader insight into the formation of rocky planets in the entire solar system.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Around 25 people of a Rajput community outfit today protested outside filmmaker Sanjay Leela Bhansali's office in suburban Juhu against his upcoming movie 'Padmavati', the police said.
The protesters demanded that the film should not be released, a senior police official said.
'Padmavati' helmed by Bhansali is slated to hit theatres shortly. The movie has been facing a lot of trouble since early this year.
Police said that they detained the protesters, but later released them.
The film starring Deepika Padukone as Padmavati, Shahid Kapoor as Maharawal Ratan Singh and Ranveer Singh as Alauddin Khilji, is based on the legend of Rani Padmavati, a Hindu Rajput queen.
Bhansali, had been assaulted by activists of a Rajput community group, the Karni Sena, during the shooting of the film in Jaipur in January. The outfit has been constantly seeking a ban on the movie, claiming it "distorts" history.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Fifty-five Indian fishermen have been arrested by the Pakistan Maritime Security Agency for allegedly fishing in the country's territorial waters.
The PMSA has also seized nine Indian fishing boats during a four-day operation (between Wednesday and Saturday) in the Arabian Sea, a PMSA spokesman said.
The spokesman said that speed boats were deployed to intercept the boats of Indian fishermen, who were arrested as they were fishing illegally in Pakistan's territorial waters.
"The fishermen, after initial investigations, have been handed over to the Docks police," he said.
A police official said that the fishermen would now be produced before a judicial magistrate.
Fishermen from Pakistan and India are frequently detained for illegally fishing in each other's territorial waters since the Arabian Sea does not have a clearly defined marine border and the wooden boats used by fishermen lack the technology to avoid them from drifting away.
On October 29, the Pakistan government had released 68 Indian fishermen from Malir jail as a goodwill gesture.
Pakistani authorities had released a total of 438 Indian fishermen between December 2016 and January 2017 from the Landhi and Malir jails in Karachi.
The Jammu and Kashmir unit of the BJP today said that the whole of J-K belongs to India and Pakistan must vacate illegally occupied areas of the state.
"Indian Parliament has made it clear that the whole of Jammu and Kashmir belongs to India and Pakistan has to vacate illegally occupied areas," state BJP president Sat Sharma said here.
Sharma was reacting to a statement by the Opposition National Conference president and former Chief Minister Farooq Abdullah, which said PoK belongs to Pakistan and "that won't change" even if India and Pakistan kept fighting wars.
Abdullahs statement yesterday came days after Pakistan Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi rejected the idea of an "independent Kashmir", saying it was not based on "reality".
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
News item: Disney has hired Rian Johnson, the director of "The Last Jedi," the eighth episode of the "Star Wars" films, to write and direct an all-new trilogy of "Star Wars" movies with new characters set in a different galaxy.
Memo to: Rian Johnson.
From: Mike McInally.
Regarding: Your new "Star Wars" movies.
First, Rian and I hope I can call you Rian congratulations! It's obvious that you have the Force (and, by the Force, of course, I mean Disney accountants) with you to get the green light to create a new trilogy of "Star Wars" flicks. And I know that, while you have said that you're having a blast working inside the "Star Wars" universe (and you appear to be, to your credit, the only director working on one of the new "Star Wars" movies to not get sacked), it must be a lot of pressure to try to create an entirely new trilogy.
That's why I thought I could be of assistance. Feel free to take any of the ideas outlined in this memo for your use, as you see fit. There's no need to pay me for any of these have those Disney accountants put their checkbooks away! but I wouldn't mind being listed as an assistant producer in the end credits. As I noted before in another column, no one really knows what those people do anyway.
As I started work on this column, I couldn't help but recall the opening crawl to Episode I, "The Phantom Menace." You know the one: "Turmoil has engulfed the Galactic Republic. The taxation of trade routes to outlying star systems is in dispute."
During the screening I was at, I remember the audience members around me groaning, saying things like "This movie is about taxation?" But I was excited! I thought to myself: "At last, a movie that will explain how the Empire raises all that money to build all those new Death Stars!"
So, as you might imagine, I was disappointed that "The Phantom Menace" did not appear to be about taxation. In fact, I still am not sure what exactly the movie was about. If you find the time to reply to this note, Rian, I would be grateful if you could explain the precise identify of "The Phantom Menace." Was it ... taxation? I can only hope.
In any event, surely you have noticed by now that the "Star Wars" movies (at least the ones with storylines that can be followed) have only one basic plot: The evil Empire or First Order or what have you somehow manages to build itself a massive weapon. Sometimes it's a Death Star. Sometimes it's an even bigger Death Star. Sometimes it's called Starkiller Base. You get the idea: It's a big damn thing that, in the words of the opening crawl to Episode VI, "Return of the Jedi," "will spell certain doom for the small band of rebels struggling to restore freedom to the galaxy."
I see no reason why you should stray from this basic plot, which has worked extremely well, not just for the "Star Wars" franchise but also for every James Bond movie. But it's time for a "Star Wars" movie to answer two important questions: First, how does the Empire or whatever find the dough to keep building these massive weapons? And second, even though the Empire presumably has at its disposal the finest engineers in the galaxy, how is it that they always leave behind one fatal design flaw that the rebels can use to destroy the weapon? I swear, it's kind of like that Highway 20 reconstruction project west of Corvallis, but in a different way.
In any event, I would start your "Episode I" ("Episode X?") with the bond-measure campaign the empire launches to raise money to build its new Death Star. Which sinister Sith lord will lead the political action committee that puts yard signs on every planet from Naboo to Alderaan? Oh, wait Alderaan no longer is available for yard-sign placement. Who will lead what the Episode I crawl termed the "endless debate" in the Congress of the Republic to set the precise tax rate? How much of the money raised will go to cover the unfunded liability in the pension fund for retired imperial troopers? And is it true about Jar Jar Binks and those sex harassment charges? You know, I always suspected something, but I never wanted to pursue it.
And if any of these ideas, Rian, seem to reflect on recent events in the mid-valley of Oregon, where I live, I can only say this: All of these occurrences, of course, could only occur "a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away."
Swiping your card to make payments? You are less likely to remember how much you spent, say scientists who found that cashless transactions make it easier for people to lose track of their expenditures.
According to current estimates, about three billion new so-called smart cards will be issued across the globe in 2017.
Scientists at the University of Cologne in Germany and the Alpen-Adria-Universitat Klagenfurt in Austria have recently examined the effect these shifting payment methods are having on the customers.
They carried out a field study to determine recall accuracy in relation to recently made payments.
Data was gathered at two separate time points in cafeterias at a German university; the first time point was during the summer of 2015, and then again during the summer of 2016 after a multifunctional card was introduced.
Researchers were able to analyse guided interviews, which were conducted with a total of 496 students immediately after the act of paying.
"We were able to show that individuals who pay by card have a less accurate recall of the amount paid than individuals who settle their bill with cash," they said.
The transparency of spending money depends on the mode of payment used - cash, single-function cards that offer only a payment function, or multifunctional cards which may also include bonus programmes, user identification or other functions.
"Individuals who use the non-payment functions of the multifunctional card are less likely to remember the transaction details accurately."
These results are relevant for the financial wellbeing of everyone.
"A precise recollection of past spending has an effect on the willingness to spend money in the future," researchers said.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
An Indian-American philanthropist has called for developing mentoring programmes for those in the community who want to be entrepreneurs and start-up or build their own businesses.
Asian-Americans excel in their academic performance, but remain severely underrepresented in leadership positions, entrepreneur-turned philanthropist Frank Islam said on Friday in his address to the NextGen Awards of NaisA Global, which recognised next generation of Asian leaders in the US.
Citing NaisAs statistics, Islam said Asian-Americans account for 25 per cent of Ivy League students and 50 per cent of the Silicon Valley workforce but constitute only two per cent of Fortune 500 CEOs, three per cent of US attorneys, and two per cent of college presidents.
"These discrepancies are disturbing. They can only lead me to conclude that when it comes to acknowledgement and advancement in the workplace Asian-Americans are being bamboozled," he said.
"It's time to end that bamboozling and to give those outstanding Asian-American students and young professionals the assistance they need to break through the bamboo ceiling. One of the best ways that can be done is through the naisA mentoring protegee programme," he said.
"Given my own background and personal experience, I would like to throw one idea into the pot for naisAs consideration. That is that it develop a mentoring programme for Asian- Americans who want to be entrepreneurs and start-up or build their own businesses," Islam said.
He exuded confidence that if naisA developed a mentoring programme focusing on would-be entrepreneurs it would drive that growth much higher.
The NextGen Awards Gala among others highlighted two Youth Leadership Awardees: Kavya Kopparapu, who founded a nonprofit to educate young girls to succeed in the STEM fields, and Hana Mangat, who started the youth-run organization, Sikh Kid 2 Kid, to develop a cultural and religious literacy training programme.
Among other awardees were Sachiko Kuno, founder & chair of Halcyon and President of S&R Foundation; Dr. Wallace Loh, president of the University of Maryland; David Kim, vice president of Government Affairs of Hyundai Motors; Sid Venketesan, Chief IP Counsel GE Digital; and Mei Xu, co- founder & CEO of Chesapeake Bay Candle.
Congratulating awardees, Congressman Jamie Raskin praised the contribution of Asian-Americans in the development of the country.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Days after the Punjab police claimed to have busted terror modules and solved most targeted killing cases in the state, Chief Minister Amarinder Singh has asked the DGP to work out a scheme to give awards and rewards to those involved in solving the cases.
He also instructed the DGP to set up a system of selecting and rewarding 'policeman of the month' to any personnel of the force who plays a remarkable role, either in solving criminal cases by investigations or providing community service of outstanding nature.
The chief minister, last night, hosted police personnel, across ranks, for a dinner at his residence here as a mark of appreciation for their efforts and role in busting several terror modules and criminal gangs over the past seven months, including those behind the targeted killings in the state.
More than 80 police personnel attended the dinner, where Singh thanked each of them for cracking some of the toughest cases of the recent past, the most notable of them being the six cases of murder of RSS, Shiv Sena and Dera Sauda leaders, an official release said.
The Chief Minister lauded their exemplary courage, determination and hard work, which led to the busting of the terror modules and arrest of several gangsters, it stated.
Addressing the police personnel, he extolled them for bringing honour to the force and saving the people of Punjab from further mayhem that the suspects would otherwise have unleashed on the state.
The chief minister ask DGP Suresh Arora to work out a scheme for giving awards and rewards to those involved in busting these modules and gangs and directed them to submit a detailed proposal in this regard for approval.
Singh reiterated his government's commitment for the welfare of the police force and cited various schemes launched since he became the chief minister.
Besides DGP Arora, DGP (Intelligence) Dinkar Gupta and DGP (Law & Order) Hardeep Dhillon, the event was attended by several other officials.
Eight AIGs, SSPs of Moga, Khanna, Batala and Nawanshahr, 20 inspectors, including SHOs of Bassi Pathana and Baghapurana, 17 head constables, 13 constables and two home guards were also hosted by the Chief Minister.
The star attraction of the dinner was the team that solved the targeted killing cases with the arrest of five persons, who were reported to be a part of a larger conspiracy hatched by Pakistan's ISI from foreign soil.
The team consisted of IG Intelligence Amit Prasad, DIG Counter-Intelligence Ranbir Khatra, SSP Moga Ranjit Singh, SSP Batala Opinderjit Ghuman, SP Rajinder Singh, SP Wazir Singh, DSPs Sulakhan Singh and Sarabjit Singh, Inspector Kikar Singh and ASI Haripal.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Actor Rebel Wilson has opened up about her experiences with sexual harassment in Hollywood.
In a series of tweets Wilson detailed two separate incidents in which men in the industry allegedly acted inappropriately towards her.
"A male star, in a position of power asked me to go into a room with him and then asked me repeatedly to stick my finger up his a**. All whilst his male 'friends' tried to film the incident on their iPhones and laughed. I repeatedly said no and eventually got out of the room," Wilson wrote.
She added that she called her agent and lawyer to complain about the incident and protect herself.
"I called my agent immediately and my lawyer made a complaint with the studio -- basically to protect myself that in the event something similar ever occurred I'd be able to walk out of the job and not obliged to return.
"Later I was threatened by one of the star's representatives to be nice and support the male star. I refused. The whole thing was disgusting. I've told hundreds of people in the industry the story in more graphic detail basically to warn them off this individual," she wrote.
The second incident occurred early on in her career in a hotel room with a "top director."
"Earlier in my career, I also had a 'hotel room' encounter with a top director. I thought we were there to talk comedy. Nothing physical happened because the guy's wife called and started abusing him over the phone for sleeping with actresses and luckily she was yelling so loud.
"I had the ability to escape both incidents. I realise not everyone is as lucky," Wilson wrote.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Saad Hariri pledged today he would return to Lebanon from Saudi Arabia "very soon," in his first television interview since his shock resignation as prime minister last weekend.
"I will return to Lebanon very soon," Hariri told his party's Future Television in an interview from Riyadh.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Noted actor Prakash Raj today said he respects superstars Kamal Haasan, Rajinikanth and Kannada actor Upendra as artistes but that does not mean he would accept them as political leaders due to their fame.
The actor, 52, told reporters at the Press Club here that the political aspirants will have to prove their mettle before the people choose them as their representatives.
"I have respect for them as actors but that does not mean that I will vote for them. They have to demonstrate how much they understand our culture, the problems and how they will respond to it," Raj said.
Referring to rumours that he would join superstar Kamal Haasan's yet-to-be-formed political outfit, the actor said politics was not on his "agenda" at this point of time.
"I have been repeatedly saying that I am not going to join any political party. At this point of time, joining politics is not on my agenda," he said.
Raj also alleged that his commercial advertisements were recently blocked from being aired.
Without taking any names, he said the advertising firm told him his name has been mired in a controversy and so it could not be broadcast.
He said even Bollywood stars Shah Rukh Khan and Aamir Khan have faced similar situations in the past.
"Weren't they removed from being ambassadors to certain things? Weren't some of their commercials stopped? They are stopping my commercials too. But I will not ask you why you are hitting me. I will not tell you the way you are hitting me is hurting me because that will make you stronger," Raj said.
The National Award-winning actor said the Internet trolls have been hitting at the thought process of the social media users since the last three years and dubbed it as a dangerous trend.
"Since 2014, whatever is happening, is becoming dirtier... (It) is taking away identities. That is very dangerous. It is hitting at the thought process," he said.
Raj also referred to BJP MP Pratap Simha's comments against him after he criticised Prime Minister Narendra Modi over his "silence" on those "celebrating" the killing of journalist Gauri Lankesh here in September.
"If you talk you will be trolled. Our own MP Pratap Simha... He should understand. I don't even know him. When I questioned the prime minister, you (Simha) talk below the belt? They believe their leaders are doing a good job, so nobody should question them," he said.
"But I feel they are not doing their work properly, so I will ask them and they need to answer me," the actor added.
Later, Raj took to Twitter to slam a section of the press for misquoting him.
"This is what I said... Actors should not come into politics only because they are popular. It's a disaster. They should come with a clear perception of the issues facing the country and win the trust of the people. And we should not vote as fans, but as responsible citizens," he posted.
He also wrote an open letter to the Bengaluru chapter of the Press Club, criticising the media for "distorting facts" in the presence of "journalists at their club".
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
An RSS worker was hacked to death, allegedly by CPI(M) workers at Nenmeni in the temple town this afternoon, police said.
The victim, Anandan,(23), was riding a motorcycle when he was attacked by the CPI(M) workers in a car. Though he was rushed to the hospital, his life could not be saved, police said.
Anandan, hailing from Brahmakulam, was an accused in a case relating to the murder of a CPI(M) worker in 2013.
BJP has alleged that as many as 120 BJP workers, 84 in Kannur alone, have been killed in Kerala since 2001. It has claimed that 14 of these killings have taken place since Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan took over the reins of the government last year.
The CPI(M) has in turn, accused BJP and RSS of resorting to violence and denied the involvement of its government and leadership in political killings.
(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.)
Russia, which is building the 6,000-mw Kudankulam nuclear plant, plans to raise localisation to more than 50 per cent for the upcoming units at the Tamil Nadu plant from the present 20 per cent levels.
Rosatom, the Russian partner for state-run Nuclear Power Corporation (NPCIL), is supplying the water-water energetic reactors (VVER reactors), for the Kudankulam nuclear plant, which currently generates 2,000 mw (2x 1,000 mw).
"Already, two units of 1,000 mw each have been commissioned and the next two are under-construction. These units have around 20 per cent localisation," consul general of Russian Federation in Mumbai Andrei Zhiltsov told PTI here over the weekend.
He said Moscow recently signed an agreement with New Delhi for the units 5 & 6, which will begin after the ongoing units 3 & 4 are completed.
"Currently, the extent of localisation in the commissioned units is near 20 per cent but going forward we expect it to increase over 50 per cent," he said.
At present, the Russians are sourcing locally manufactured parts and equipment to the tune of around 20 per cent. "But by the time we reach units 5 & 6, we hope local sourcing will increase to nearly 50 per cent," Zhiltsov added.
The fifth and sixth units will cost about Rs 50,000 crore with half of it being funded by Russia as loan. The third and fourth units began last year and will cost Rs 39,747 crore.
Russia has also offered India the latest "generation 3-plus" nuclear reactors -- the VVER-1200-powered by advanced fuel -- for the yet-to-be designated site in parallel to the ongoing 6,000-mw Kudankulam project.
"We expect a new site for the six reactors to be announced soon. If we do this project, it will allow us to lower the construction cost since we already have the expertise and equipment and so will not have to start afresh. Also, serial production is cheaper," Zhiltsov said.
He said for a fast-growing economy like India there will be no substitute for nuclear power and Russia will participate in the Indian growth story.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
125 YEARS AGO
November 5, 1892: With Bruce and Hull in the Assembly the taxpayers of Elko county will have two representatives who will look well to the interests of the county.
Two skilled carpenters wanted to work on the Presbyterian church. Apply to Rev. John Wallace, Elko, Nevada.
Sample ballots for the general election in this county will be out five days before election and can be obtained by application to the County Clerk. Every voter should get a sample ballot and study it and assist his friends in getting a clear understanding of the new system of voting. It is hardly safe to let the matter go until election day.
Dr. C.F. Moore, Elko Dentist, went up to Wells yesterday. He will remain there until after the races, when he will go to Deeth for a short time. If your teeth need fixing, call on the Doctor.
100 YEARS AGO
The museum is missing the 1917 newspapers from the Elko Daily Free Press and there is no microfilm from October 1917 through December 1917. Sorry for the omission.
75 YEARS AGO
November 5, 1942: According to Joseph Wilson and Helen S. Tremewan, County Extension Agents, farmers and their wives in Elko county have been organized to get quick results in wartime emergencies requiring their immediate action. These individuals are banded together as voluntary neighborhood leaders known as Extension War Leaders. The Extension War Leaders are as follows: Charleston: Mrs. Horace Shivley, Horace Shivley; Clover Valley: Mrs. Russell Weeks; Halleck, Mrs. Dan Glaser, Walter Glaser; Jiggs, Mrs. Rass Hankins, Mrs. John Peters; Lamoille, Mrs. Orville Ames, C.H. Reinken, Mrs. Lloyd Blume, C.R. Barigar, Mrs. Ed McKenzie, Mrs. C.H. Reinken; Lee, Mrs. Archie Dewer, Q.D. Boyd; Metropolis, Mrs. John Bake, Mrs. George Nelson; Mountain City, Mrs. Dale Reynolds, Dale Reynolds; North Ruby, Mrs. Jim Wright; South Ruby, Mrs. Charles Wines; North Fork, Mrs. Chester Laing, Chester Laing; ONeil, Mrs. Walter Gilmer, Walter Gilmer; Rowland, Mrs. Ray Rizzi, Ray Rizzi; Starr Valley, Mrs. Wesley Helth, Mrs. Edgar Hylton, Mrs. Stan Weathers, Mrs. Frank Winchell, Orville Smiley, S.V. Smiley, Wesley Helth, P.J. Scott; Tuscarora, Mrs. Pio Achabal, Mrs. Irene Williams, Burnell Doyle.
November 6, 1942: When gasoline rationing goes into effect those motorists receiving A cards will get 32 gallons of gasoline every two-month period. The gasoline can be used at one time or spread throughout the month. A books are issued to auto owners while D books will be issued to those owning motorcycles.
November 9, 1942: Three hundred dollars worth of government war bonds will be awarded at the Annual Elks Charity Ball here Saturday night. The grand prize will be $150 in war bonds. Gas rationing will go into effect on November 22nd and as a result many residents in this area are expected to drive to Elko for the occasion, taking one last fling before gas becomes hard to get.
November 10, 1942: The rationing of gasoline has been officially postponed until December 1, OPA officials announced today. The delay was caused by wartime congestion in transportation.
50 YEARS AGO
November 7, 1967: Ray Jayo was elected president of the Elko Basque Club, Euzkaldunak, last night as 38 voting members attended a meeting devoted to elections and the National Basque Festival. Joe Mendive is the new Vice-President; Mary Jane Moiola secretary; Jeanne Samper treasurer, and board members Joe Anacabe, John Aguirre and Jess Lopategui. Ray Goicoa, previous president, had declined to run again.
November 8, 1967: The Elko County board of commissioners yesterday passed three ordinances. Prior to yesterdays meeting, they had passed only one other ordinance during the 10 months of 1967. Ordinances adopted yesterday deal with a television district for the area around Elko, a subdivision ordinance, and a rabies vaccination ordinance. In passing the ordinance creating a television district around Elko for UHF transmission of KOLO-TV, Reno, the commissioners named Fred Vignolo and Fern Barnes as trustees until January, 1969, and Roy Young, Art Glaser and Bill Bellinger trustees until January, 1971. Art Glaser noted that it is hoped to make a change in the transmission setup, placing a 100-watt translater on Grindstone Mountain west of Elko and moving the 20-watt translater presently there to Argenta.
November 9. 1967: Elko Builders Mart will hold a grand opening celebration starting tomorrow and continuing through Saturday. The new mart features exhibits and displays of home decorating materials at Eleventh and Railroad streets, behind the J.C. Penney store near the Dairy Queen and Hawk Motors. Owners of the new business are Lloyd Kenley, Frank Aguirre, Dick Stoddard, Bernice Gregory and Jim Gregory.
25 YEARS AGO
November 5, 1992: Trustees of the Elko County School District last night made it official that the northern boundary for attendance of Spring Creek High School is Lamoille Summit. In addition, they approved extension of the Lee-Jiggs route to Harrison Pass. The effect of the two decisions is that all public school students in kindergarten through 10th grade who live between Lamoille Summit and Harrison Pass, except students in the Mound Valley rural school in Jiggs, will be bused to either Sage Elementary School or Spring Creek High School. Students in the extended area that includes South Fork, Ten Mile, Lee, and Te-Moak Reservation at South Fork, previously were bused to schools in Elko, Superintendent Paul Billings said.
November 6, 1992: Changes may be necessary in the Elko County Sheriffs Department in the wake of voters overwhelming defeat of a tax override to fund the department, said Sheriff Neil Harris. On Tuesday, 8,002 voters said no to Harris request for an eight-cent property tax to fund additional personnel for his department. Only 3,188 people voted for the proposal, which the sheriff said he hoped to raise $480,000 a year. Commissioner Norm Thompson told Harris he had heard many city people voted against the proposal because they did not want to fund a county department. Harris, though, stated people do use the department when they leave the city. People react that way, he said, but they dont think how much they use our service.
November 9, 1992: Elkos Festival of Trees has taken root and eventually its going to be a really big event, said Phyllis Peterson, Elko Convention Center executive director. It is on again this year and were looking at it being bigger and better next year. Conceived and organized last year by Karri Jones of the centers sales and marketing staff, the event this year will benefit Ruby Mountain Riding for the Handicapped. The trees will go on display Dec. 8 and will be sold at an open house from 1 to 5 p.m. Sunday, Dec. 13. Of the dozen trees entered for last years event, 10 were sold, Jones said, with one bought by Newmont Gold Company for $200.
Regulator is looking to rope in a media agency for the job of publishing its investor awareness advertisements on digital and traditional platforms, including TV, radio and newspapers.
For this, has issued a notice inviting expression of interest (EoI) from interested parties.
The chosen bidder will be responsible for helping the Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) fulfil its objectives of educating and creating awareness among existing retail investors, converting savers into investors and make the future generation aware of various avenues in the securities market.
Also, the agency will have to create awareness about and widen the use of several initiatives of Sebi, including the complaints redressal system, financial education programmes and the helpline.
The scope of the job also includes suggesting the appropriate media plan to and publish and broadcast advertisements in newspapers, magazines, TV and radio channels. Besides, they will have to collect copies of published advertisements and submit the same to the regulator.
"Advertisement material will be provided by Sebi. Agency shall print and broadcast the same in newspapers and TV channels, radio channels, digital media and any other media as approved by Sebi," the regulator noted.
Spelling out the eligibility criteria, Sebi said the agency should be a registered entity and must have been in operation for a minimum five years with at least three years of experience in providing service in media management.
Among others, it should have a gross media billing of at least Rs 100 crore as well as positive net worth during each of the last three financial years. The agency must have accreditation of the Indian Newspaper Society or the Advertising Standards Council of India or the Advertising Agencies Association of India.
The regulator further said the contract will initially be given for three years, which can be extended for a further three years. The interested agencies can submit applications till November 28.
Spanish authorities said they rescued over 250 migrants, including children, today who were making the perilous Mediterranean crossing to Europe.
"We saved 251 people from five improvised vessels all in the Alboran Sea," Spain's maritime safety authorities said on Twitter, referring to the westernmost portion of the Mediterranean Sea.
The number of migrants arriving by sea on Spanish shores has soared over last year, with the figure nearly tripling to 15,585 in 2017 by November 8, according to the International Organization for Migration (IOM).
Many Africans undertaking the long route to Europe are choosing to avoid crossing danger-ridden Libya to get to Italy along the so-called central Mediterranean route, and choosing instead to get there via Morocco and Spain.
However, Spain is still well behind Italy, which has recorded some 114,400 arrivals by sea since since the start of the year.
Since January nearly 15,600 migrants have made it to Spain by sea, with 156 dying during the crossing, according to the IOM.
The agency estimates that some 155,850 migrants have made the dangerous crossing to Europe this year and another 2,961 died or went missing while trying.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
A group of students of a private school at Chaitanyapuri here held demonstrations on the school premises against what they termed as "long school hours".
The protesting students of high school, who held a sit-in protest yesterday, accused the school authorities of running classes from 6.30 am to 6.30 pm and raised slogans- 'we want justice'.
"Our school classes are held from 6.30 am to 6.30 pm while in other schools, the classes are conducted from 8 am to 4.30 pm. After school hours, we again go to tuitions and there is homework also," a student is seen saying in a video circulated in media.
"By the time we go to sleep it is around 10.30 pm to 11 pm and again next morning we have to get up at 5.30 am to attend school by 6.30 am. We are deprived of sleep...parents also need to understand," the student said.
Asked on their demands, other protesting students said they wanted immediate change in timings of school classes.
City-based child rights NGO 'Balala Hakkula Sangham' accused the school management of subjecting the school children to stress.
The NGO's honorary president Achyuta Rao alleged that the school authorities are violating all the norms and moreover giving heavy homework to students.
"The students told us that they are hardly getting any sleep after studying 13 to 14 hours and again their parents are sending them to tuitions," Rao said.
He further said they have brought the matter to the notice of Ranga Reddy District Collector, seeking action against the school for "violating norms".
Meanwhile, a school official refuted the allegations and said they conduct classes from 8.30 am to 4.30 pm and the students are given 30 minutes break in between and the students are asked to do the homework within the school timings.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj said today that the government will provide all help to the family of the Indian-American motel owner, who was shot dead in the US.
Akash Talati, 40, who owned Knights Inn and Diamondz Gentlemen's Club in Fayetteville city, North Carolina, was shot dead yesterday during an exchange of gunfire between a man who had been escorted out of the club and a security guard, local police said.
In a series of tweets, Swaraj said the Indian Embassy in the US has informed her of the circumstances leading to the death of Talati.
"The deceased was shot by an assailant who was escorted out of his club. The security guard returned the fire and the assailant was also injured. We are in touch with the family of the deceased and will provide them all help," Swaraj said.
Talati was shot dead while four other people were injured in the shootout. Talati is reportedly from Anand in Gujarat.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The OMQ (Ore, Mines & Quarries) Division and Ferro Alloys & Mineral Division (FAMD) of Tata Steel have been honoured with the Aqua Foundation's Excellence Award 2017 under the category of Sustainable Development in the Mining Sector.
The award was presented at a ceremony held during an International conference, XI World Aqua Congress 2017 at New Delhi recently, a company release said.
The "Aqua Excellence Awards" are the highest awards given by Aqua Foundation to its members, stakeholders and contributors in recognition of their outstanding achievements in the field of water, environment, energy, earth sciences, atmospheric sciences, planetary sciences, pollution control and sustainability solutions, it said.
Aqua Foundation honours, in each World Aqua Congress, individual / nominees of corporate members who have made a mark in their respective fields of expertise or have made a significant contribution towards Humanity.
Tata Steel was nominated for the award for constantly complying with all regulations and mining laws in the country. With adoption of best practices, modern technologies and innovation to ensure in mining activities, the Company has been causing minimum environmental impact while contributing to social development in neighbouring communities, it said.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Telangana BJP today urged the Centre to directly purchase cotton from farmers of the state at the Minimum Support Price (MSP) of Rs 4,320 per quintal.
In two memorandums submitted to Union Agriculture Minister Radha Mohan Singh at the Telangana BJP office here this evening, the party requested him to issue directions to the Cotton Corporation of India (CCI) in this regard and also demanded setting up of a Turmeric Board in Telangana.
State BJP unit president K Laxman said the cotton grown area in Telangana stood around 19,07,275 hectares this year which is 5 lakh hectares more as compared to last year.
However, there was a deficit rainfall and a long dry spell prevailed during August and September due to which cotton crop got affected, he said.
"While the cotton boll opening was not satisfactory due to this dry spell, continuous heavy rains subsequently led to cotton boll getting rotten and cotton lint getting decoloured as a result of which farmers suffered heavy losses in terms of poor yield and quality of produce," Laxman said in the memorandum.
In another memorandum, Laxman said turmeric is one of the important crops in Telangana and its cultivation in Nizamabad, Karimnagar and Adilabad districts accounts for 40 per cent of production from the states of Telangana and Andhra Pradesh.
However, almost 95 per cent of the turmeric farmers are not financially sound enough and as such they are not in a position to wait for good market rate.
Even there are no proper godown facilities to store the final produce till farmers get good price and they are forced to sell their produce at the prevailing market price, he said.
There is an urgent need to take remedial measures to save turmeric cultivation in Telangana, otherwise the adverse market conditions may deter the farmers from its cultivation, Laxman said.
He said the Turmeric Board be set up at Armoor in Nizamabad through which value addition, grading, preservation, marketing and the latest technology access in cultivating turmeric can be ensured.
He further requested that turmeric be categorised under commodities rather than commercial/cash crop and that its future trading be abolished.
Turmeric cultivation should also be covered under the Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana and high yielding varieties of turmeric seed should be provided to farmers at reasonable rates, the memorandum said.
Laxman also suggested providing subsidy for construction of godowns to farmers cooperative societies.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
A day after former Jammu and Kashmir chief minister Farooq Abdullah stated that PoK belongs to Pakistan, VHP leader Pravin Togadia today said those talking about "independent Kashmir" should go to Pakistan.
"Kashmir is an integral part of India. People talking about independent Kashmir should go to Pakistan or else our security forces are ready with AK 47s at the border to deal with them," the VHP working International President said on the sidelines of an event here.
Abdullah said yesterday that PoK belongs to Pakistan and "this won't change" no matter how many wars India and Pakistan fight".
To a query on the controversy surrounding Bollywood film "Padmavati", the Hindu leader said the Censor Board should take a stand on the issue and stop its release.
"'Padmawati' was a great queen, why should people protest against the movie based on her life? It's the responsibility of the Censor Board. It should take a stand and shouldn't allow the movie to be released," he said.
Various Rajput organisations have been protesting the December 1 release of the film starring Deepika Padukone and Ranveer Singh in the lead, claiming that it is based on "distorted history" and is "hurtful" to Hindu sentiments.
To a query, Togadia said Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi's "frequent visits" to temples in poll-bound Gujarat is a "victory" for Hindus.
"Rahul Gandhi frequents temples in Gujarat every now and then. I see this as a victory for Hindus," he said.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Sri Lanka President Maithripala Sirisena has acknowledged that few troops were responsible for committing warcrimes at the behest of politicians during the three-decade-long civil war with the Tamil tigers.
According to the UN figures, up to 40,000 civilians were killed by the security forces during former president Mahinda Rajapaksa's regime that brought an end to the brutal conflict with the defeat of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelamin 2009.
The LTTE ran a nearly three-decade separatist campaign leading to a bloody war with the Sri Lankan security forces.
Sirisena had earlier vowed to defend the troops against warcrimes charges leveled against them.
"There is something that you should accept according to your conscience. There were things outside the control of the military. They were carried out by a few in the military to appease politicians. These were illegal, against democracy and the freedom of our people," he said.
"You know that investigations are underway into a small number of officers who acted at the behest of politicians. Those who are in custody will be freed if they are innocent.
"I hear allegations from (opposition) political stages that this is a witch-hunt of war heroes. I strongly reject those allegations," he said, adding that the military should clear its name.
Sirisena's reference was to the former regime of President Mahinda Rajapaksa. His administration faced warcrimes charges with UN Human Rights Council passing resolutions.
Since Rajapaksa's defeat, several incidents of military excesses have come to be highlighted with several military men under arrest and later given bail as part of the proceedings.
During the Rajapaksa's regime, the soldiers were prevented from facing the legal process and the UN's call for independent investigations were dubbed as attacks against Sri Lanka's sovereignty.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
US President said today that Chinese leader Xi Jinping had agreed to toughen sanctions against North Korea over Pyongyang's nuclear weapons programme.
"President Xi of China has stated that he is upping the sanctions against (North Korea)," Trump tweeted from Hanoi -- the latest leg on an Asian tour.
US President unleashed a twitter storm from his Asia tour today, slamming "haters and fools" playing politics with US-Russia ties and declaring that he would never describe North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un as "short and fat".
Currently on the Vietnam leg of a five-nation sweep through the region, the US president, who has been relatively quiet on Twitter since leaving Washington, put out half-a- dozen tweets in quick succession ahead of his official welcoming ceremony in Hanoi.
The missives covered a range of subjects from Trump's relations with Russian President Vladimir Putin, China's efforts to rein in Pyongyang's nuclear weapons programme, and a sarcastic tweet about his efforts to make "a friend" of North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un.
The US president, who met with Putin several times on the margins of the just-concluded APEC summit in the Vietnamese resort of Danang, took a fresh swipe at critics of his efforts to forge a close working relationship with the Russian leader.
"When will all the haters and fools out there realise that having a good relationship with Russia is a good thing, not a bad thing", he tweeted.
"There (sic) always playing politics - bad for our country. I want to solve North Korea, Syria, Ukraine, terrorism, and Russia can greatly help!" he added.
Speaking to reporters on Air Force One while flying to Hanoi on Saturday, Trump said he believed Vladimir Putin was being sincere when he denied meddling in the 2016 US presidential election.
Trump, whose key former aides are under the US investigation for possible collaboration with the Kremlin, said he had repeatedly asked Putin about the claims during their chats in Danang.
"He (Putin) said he didn't meddle. I asked him again", Trump, who is marking one year since his shock election victory, told the reporters.
"I really believe that when he tells me that, he means it," he added.
Trump's Sunday morning tweets also focused on North Korea and its nuclear weapons ambitions that have been a dominant theme on each leg of his Asia tour.
Taking exception to descriptions by North Korean officials and state media of him as an "old" man, Trump declared himself disappointed by what he took to be a personal attack from the North's young leader.
"Why would Kim Jong-un insult me by calling me "old," when I would NEVER call him "short and fat?" Trump said.
"Oh well, I try so hard to be his friend - and maybe someday that will happen!" he added.
North Korea is extremely sensitive to any remarks, even if not meant seriously that it sees as disrespectful of the country' ruling Kim dynasty, whose members are revered as near deities.
Since becoming president, Trump has engaged in an escalating war of words with Kim, trading personal insults and threats of military strikes and raising concerns about an outbreak of hostilities.
A school in the UK has been ordered to remove "mother" and "father" from its admission forms after a person complained to the authorities that their use discriminated against "separated, step and gay parents".
Until now the Holy Ghost Roman Catholic Primary School in southwest London's Wandsworth asked people to complete a form that had spaces only for the names of the "mother/guardian" and "father/guardian".
A local parent referred the school to the schools adjudicator, arguing that the use of "mother" and "father" discriminated against "separated, step and gay parents", The Sunday Times reports.
In a recent ruling by adjudicator Peter Goringe, the Catholic primary school was found to be in breach of the UK government's school admissions code because of its use of the traditional terms on a form that families fill in to supply evidence of church attendance.
"In the absence of any clarification of the term 'parent', the use of words 'mother' and 'father' might, as the objector suggests, be taken to imply that the school is restricting its definition," he said in his ruling last month.
The UK's Catholic Education Service is now drawing up a form that can be used by its 2,230 schools across England and Wales that instead refers to "the family".
Hundreds of schools have already replaced the titles with "parent 1" and "parent 2" or "parent/s".
"We expect all Catholic schools to comply with the admissions code," the service said in a statement.
However, not everyone is happy with this change, with some experts describing the move as undemocratic.
Chris McGovern, chair of the Campaign for Real Education, said: "To ensure fairness, we should not be placing 'mother' and 'father' on a list of forbidden words. We should, instead, be accommodating these cherished foundation stones of our civilisation within the admissions system.
"The decision to remove them is profoundly undemocratic and illiberal and is a capitulation to a form of politically correct fascism".
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Up to 33 people were feared dead in the Democratic Republic of Congo after a freight train carrying fuel plunged into a ravine.
The UN's radio Okapi spoke of 33 fatalities with others injured or burned in the accident that occurred in the sprawling mineral-rich province of Katanga, which is the size of Spain.
"Up until now the toll is eight dead and several injured. The toll could be significantly higher," Jean-Marie Tshizainga, the minister of mines of Lualaba province told AFP.
The train, in which the victims were travelling illegally, was running between the country's second city Lubumbashi to Luena in Katanga.
The train was transporting 13 oil tankers and derailed while climbing a slope near the station of Lubudi. It fell into a ravine and the tankers caught fire, radio Okapi said.
"It's a freight train that derailed and it wasn't supposed to be carrying passengers. If there were people on board, we consider them to be illegal travellers," said Sylvestre Ilunga Ilukamba, a senior official from the national railway company.
Katanga has witnessed several deadly train accidents. In 2014, a freight train derailed killing 74 people and injured 163, according to officials but the Red Cross said up to 200 corpses had been buried.
The national agency a month later spoke of 136 deaths.
Another train accident in July 1987 near the Zambian border killed 150 people after crashing into a truck.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The Congress's victory in the Chitrakoot Assembly bypoll in Madhya Pradesh signals the "winds of change" blowing in the political landscape in the country, its chief spokesperson said today.
Taking to Twitter, Congress's chief spokesperson Randeep Singh Surjewala thanked the voters for reposing faith in the party.
"The winds of change are in the air. Many thanks to the people of #Chitrakoot for their faith and trust in the Congress party," Surjewala said.
Congress candidate Nilanshu Chaturvedi defeated the ruling BJP's Shankar Dayal Tripathi by a margin of over 14,000 votes today.
Chaturvedi polled 66,810 votes as against Tripathi's 52,677 votes, returning officer A P Dwivedi said.
Around 65 per cent voting was recorded in the November 9 bypoll, necessitated following the death of sitting Congress MLA Prem Singh (65).
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
A woman and her daughter were today burnt to death when a state transport bus they were travelling in caught fire in Rajasthans Barmer district, police said.
Rekha Rawat (33) and her two-and-a-half-year-old daughter were aboard a sleeper bus headed for Barmer from Jaipur.
The bus caught fire soon after it left Balotara city, where it had halted for a brief period, Pachpadra police station SHO Devendra Singh said.
The bus was being evacuated after the fire was detected near Khed village in Barmer, Singh said. Twelve passengers were able to get down but the fuel tank exploded while Rekha and her daughter were still on the bus, he added.
Both the woman and her daughter died in the fire and their charred bodies were handed over to their family after postmortem, the SHO said, adding that a case has been registered under section 174 of CrPC and is under investigation.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
By James Pomfret and Enrico Dela Cruz
MANILA (Reuters) - Hong Kong signed free trade and investment agreements with the 10-nation Association of Southeast Asian Nations on Sunday, in what one of the Chinese territory's officials called a "loud and clear" vote against rising regional trade protectionism.
The pacts, which conclude nearly three years of talks, are expected to take effect on January 1, 2019, at the earliest. They aim to bring "deeper and bolder" integration of market access with the bloc, said Edward Yau, Hong Kong's commerce and development secretary.
"In the face of protectionist sentiments in other parts of the world, these two agreements are in fact a loud and clear vote from all of us here for freer and more open trade," Yau said.
"Hong Kong, being a free trade promoter and advocate of a strong, rule-based, multilateral trading system, will continue to take this pathway, continue to do our utmost."
Total merchandise trade between Hong Kong and ASEAN was HK$833 billion ($107 billion) last year, official figures show. Total services trade was HK$121 billion in 2015.
The ASEAN Hong Kong China Free Trade Agreement (AHKCFTA) was signed on the sidelines of a summit of the regional grouping in the Philippine capital of Manila.
It came after leaders attending an Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in Vietnam agreed to tackle "unfair trade practices" and "market-distorting subsidies" in a statement on Saturday that bore the imprint of U.S. President Donald Trump's efforts to reshape the global trade landscape.
That summit offered a contrast between the vision of Trump's "America First" policy and the usual consensus favouring multinational deals that China now seeks to champion.
Hong Kong has one of the world's freest and most open economies, and the pacts will see many ASEAN countries gradually reduce or eliminate customs duties on Hong Kong goods. Professional services should also benefit, with increased investment flows, Yau said.
The partnership "will usher in greater trade synergies and more job opportunities for people and businesses in the region," said Philippine Trade and Industry Secretary Ramon Lopez.
The ASEAN grouping includes Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.
($1=7.8009 Hong Kong dollars)
(Reporting by James Pomfret; Editing by Clarence Fernandez and Larry King)
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The nation's largest energy driller ONGC hopes to complete the acquisition of the state-run oil marketer Hindustan Petroleum Corporation by March, chairman and managing director Shashi Shanker said.
The ONGC chief also refused to comment on the reported government move to monetise up to 60 per cent of the oil and gas fields developed by it and Oil India to private parties, saying they have not heard anything from the government but read it in newspapers only.
When announced in July, ONGC, one of the richest PSUs with a mount of cash, had pegged the cost of acquiring the 51.11 per cent government stake for around Rs 32,000 crore, but since then HPCL stock has rallied and there are fears that the oil and gas explorer will have to shell out much more than the initial estimate.
When completed, ONGC will become the first fully integrated state-run oil and gas company with significant upstream and downstream operations with many refineries and over 14,400 retail outlets.
On July 19, the cabinet had approved the sale of its 51.11 per cent in the third largest oil retailer and refiner to ONGC as part of its effort to create an integrated energy behemoth and also to meet the hefty Rs 72,500-crore selloff target it had budgeted for this fiscal.
When asked about the cost-escalation for the deal and how the debt-free ONGC will raise the newly floating cash outgo, Shanker dismissed all such fears.
"There is an impression that this acquisition decision was thrust on us. That's not the case. It was announced by the finance minister in the Budget and then they consulted us on what we want. We chose HPCL after considering all the pros and cons. We are confident that we'll be completing the deal before March end," Shanker said.
But he declined to quantify what ONGC will pay to shareholders, citing that it is being evaluated by the advisors to the deal.
Explaining why they chose HPCL over BPCL, he said, "We've around 15 million tonnes refinery in Mangalore Refinery & Petrochemcials, but we've no retail presence, while HCPL has huge retail presence with over 14,400 outlets, but does not have enough refining capacity. So there is a perfect business sense in choosing HCPL."
On the reported government move to sell up to 60 per cent stake in producing oilfields and gas fields of ONGC, OIL, he said, "We have not got any such proposal. I too read in the newspapers."
The move comes as the oil ministry is unhappy with the near stagnant oil and gas production and believes giving out the discovered fields to private firms will help raise output as they can bring in technology and capital.
It hopes that the move may boost domestic output and help meet the prime minister's target of reducing fossil fuel imports by 10 per cent by 2022. Currently, the country- the world's third-largest crude importer--buys up to 80 per cent of its supplies from overseas.
It can be noted that after the discovery of the Bombay High oil fields in 1974 and the Bassein gas fields in 1976, the oil and gas behemoth ONGC has not been able to bring in any new major fields into production in the last three decades.
The country has failed to draw in global oil majors since 1990 despite easing fiscal terms. The only exceptions are Royal Dutch Shell and BP which bought stakes from firms that had won drilling rights.
| BY Lynchy |
Brett Wheeler, who moves into the new role of Executive Creative Director, said the agency was very lucky to have Hammond: Since joining Rare almost two years ago, Liz has proven to be an amazing asset. She thinks creatively and strategically, and the quality of her work has earned the praise of our clients.
| BY Ricki Green |
303 MullenLowe, Perth has changed the WIFI passwords in public pools across WA to encourage poolside parents to watch their children around water.
According to WA Lifeguards, there is a growing trend of parents watching their smartphones instead of their children. To add to this problem, more and more swimming centres now offer free WIFI to their guests. So, Royal Lifesaving WA gave 303 MullenLowe the challenge of encouraging families to refocus their attention away from their phones and back to their childrens safety.
The agencys solution was to simply change the WIFI passwords to safety messages from the kids themselves. Passwords such as p00L_123, became messages such as: you_are_my_lifeguard.
Says Richard Berney, ECD, 303 MullenLowe, Perth: Drowning is the number one cause of preventable death for children under five in Western Australia. By using WIFI passwords as the medium, well turn a distraction into a potentially lifesaving instruction.
Last year almost half of injuries recorded at public swimming pool facilities in Western Australia involved children under 14 years of age.
Says Lauren Nimmo, senior manager health promotion and research at the Royal Life Saving Society WA: It only takes seconds for a child to drown, and any distraction even if youre only checking your mobile phone for a moment places them at risk. This campaign will help to educate parents, so they are more aware of their supervision responsibilities while visiting public pools.
The Watch Around Water program has been promoting safe supervision messages at public swimming pools throughout Western Australia for over a decade.
This campaign will run at 126 community swimming pools in Western Australia throughout summer.
Client: Royal Lifesaving WA
Senior Manager Health and Promotion: Lauren Nimmo
Agency: 303 MullenLowe (Perth)
Executive Creative Director: Richard Berney
Art Director: Scott Pritchett
Business Director: Mike Naylor
Business Managers: Jessica Bunney/Jenna Hardie
In his letter to Canberra's building surveyors and certifiers, Mr Simmons wrote that the condition required "any engineering designs or certificates prepared by Mr Jan Ruckschloss for the purpose of a project which requires the engineering designs to be issued to a building surveyor, for a building or structure which requires building approval to be constructed in the ACT, will be checked and certified by an independent engineer prior to providing any certification".
Another of the building's residents, who asked not to be named, said thumping from the 24-hour gym was particularly disruptive when people would use it late at night or early in the morning.
"It's a very rewarding thing. You only have to commit an hour a week for it and as long as you've got access to the internet you could do it anywhere. You could be sitting on a beach in Noosa, it doesn't matter, as long as you've got an internet connection," he said.
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.
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Another Bugatti Chiron is trying to find a new home, and this time, its legit.
It also seems the person who ordered the car must have been a fan of George Barris work on the 1966 Batmobile not that its a bad thing, as the red accents nicely contrast the murdered-out body on this example.
Registered for the RMSothebys auction in New York City, on December 6, its the first one ordered for the US market, hence its Number One tag, and its estimated to sell for $3.5-$4 million.
From the time its assembly was completed in Molsheim, France, it has only been driven for 250 miles (402km), for pure testing purposes, and it hasnt even been registered for road-use in the United States, which is why is condition is described as new by the auction house.
Finished in black, with red accents both inside and out, this sinister-looking Bugatti Chiron craves to make its new owner happy every time it will leave the garage, hoping to unleash its 1,479hp (1,500PS) and 1,180lb-ft (1,600Nm) of torque from the stable.
Offered alongside the hypercar to the winning bidder are a number of accessories, such as the 1:8 scale model of this exact unit, aluminum Bugatti crate that contains a leather box with an extra key, speed key, flash drive, car cover, trickle charger, and owners manuals and reference guide.
So, unless youve already bought a Bugatti Chiron of your own, or lack the necessary funds to do so, whats your excuse for not doing it already?
PHOTO GALLERY
These days if you want to get yourself behind the wheel of a new Ferrari, youll be looking at a good $200k. More if you want it now, maybe less if youre willing to buy second-hand.
In that context, $150,000 doesnt seem like an awful lot to pay. But as you can see, this isnt a Ferrari automobile. Its a Ferrari book.
Or rather a book about Ferrari, we should say. Its the product of UK-based Kraken Opus, which publishes high-end tomes for those wealthy enough to afford them.
The publisher came out with The Official Ferrari Opus in 2011, with 852 twenty-square-inch pages to weigh a total of over 80 pounds. The book was offered in several versions, ranging from the Classic edition (for only $4,100) to the Diamante edition you see here.
The top edition featured a red leather binding with a diamond-encrusted Prancing Horse emblem on the over, placed in a carbon-fiber clamshell case, and hand-signed by the Scuderias drivers and the companys chairman at the time: Fernando Alonso, Felipe Massa, and Luca di Montezemolo. It even came with a set of white gloves with which to handle the pages.
Where the penultimate, $37,500 Enzo edition yielded 400 copies, the Diamante edition was limited to just one per country. Thatd make for fewer than 200 examples, but we doubt the publisher actually sold one in each country. It charged $275,000 for each, which makes this one apparently sold new to a customer in Belgium seem like a relative steal.
Consigned for RM Sothebys auction in New York next month, its valued between $125,000 and $175,000, and is offered without reserve. Of course, you could get yourself a used Ferrari road car for about that much even less if you go older with more miles but something tells us that whoever might be bidding on this tome already has a Ferrari or two in the garage, and is just looking for the right one to put on the (hopefully sturdy) coffee table.
Photo Gallery
Photo: Dawn Tucker Vernon residents crowd around Cenotaph on Remembrance Day despite the lack of a ceremony.
There was unhappiness again this year over the lack of an official Remembrance Day ceremony at Vernon's downtown Cenotaph.
Im very saddened by the lack of presence at the Cenotaph today by anyone in an official capacity for this Remembrance Day, posted resident Dawn Tucker on Facebook. I understand that services are held at Kal Tire Place as it is an artificial environment and it can hold people but we must never forget our memorial is the Cenotaph downtown.
Tucker said veterans at the Cenotaph felt forgotten and were dismayed at the lack of care given this important monument.
However, the vets stepped up and spoke to those who had showed up before two minutes of silence were held, she said.
This is not the ceremony of my youth at this monument. I understand we have shifted to another site, I understand we no longer have our Remembrance Day parade, I dont understand abandoning the Cenotaph, Tucker wrote.
A veteran also expressed his frustration over the lack of a ceremony.
"As a veteran who has seen how some cenotaphs get the respect they deserve, I was ashamed of the lack of representation/respect I witnessed earlier today," wrote Dean Roosevelt. "The veterans who were there, besides myself, were hurt and angered by the lack of imagination that resulted in a very embarrassing situation."
An estimated 2,000 people attended the official Remembrance Day ceremony at Kal Tire Place Saturday.
Photo: RCMP RCMP are looking for Lacey Tom who was last seen in Lillooet on Nov. 3.
RCMP in Lillooet are looking for a missing First Nations woman.
Lacey Tom, 26, was reported missing on Nov. 5th, two days after she was last seen in the Lillooet area.
Tom stands five-feet-four-inches and weighs 160 lbs, with brown eyes and long black/brown hair to her waist.
She was last seen wearing brown pants, brown Sketcher shoes, a black toque and a black puffy down jacket.
Anyone with information about Lacey's whereabouts is asked to contact local police services or the Lillooet RCMP at 250-256-4244 or via Crimestoppers at 1-800-222-8477.
The deal, part of the US Presidents official State visit to Vietnam, is valued at more than USD1.5 billion which include 44 PurePower Geared Turbofan (GTF) engines in accordance with comprehensive terms of warranty, maintenance and repair of engines.
The two parties also signed a memorandum of understanding on maintenance contracts covering these engines.
Mr. Duong Tri Thanh - President and CEO of Vietnam Airlines said: "The signing ceremony today marked a new step in the development of Vietnam Airlines' A321 fleet. The engine we choose is highly efficient, fuel efficient, especially environmentally friendly and comes with comprehensive repair arrangements which help Vietnam Airlines to increase operational efficiency and save on operating expenses. I believe that our agreement will further reinforce the important economic, trade and investment partnership between the two nations.
The signing ceremony held in Hanoi on November 12th. (Photo provided by Vietnam Airlines)
While Mr. Rick Deurloo, Senior Vice President of sales, marketing and customer support at Pratt & Whitney shared: We are proud to celebrate this momentous occasion with Vietnam Airlines. Weve been powering Vietnam Airlines since the early 1990s when the airline received its first PW4000-powered 767. We look forward to continuing our strong relationship and long history with Vietnam Airlines.
Since its first operation in 2016, the GTF engine has shown a strong performance with a reduction in 16% fuel consumption, 50% emission and 75% noise compared with the current engine. Vietnam Airlines A321 airplanes equipped by GTF engines are the new version of the A321 - the largest aircraft type in the Airbus A320 family.
The A321NEO will provide passengers with new standards that will optimize cabin space, increase the size of the exits and new design of passenger cabins. The national flag carrier expects to receive 20 A321NEOs in 2018 and 2019./.
The event was attended by ASEAN ambassadors to the Czech Republic, their families and several families of diplomatic officials of the host nation.
Ambassadors of ACP member states.(Photo: VNA)
According to Vietnamese Ambassador Ho Minh Tuan, who is also Rotary Chair of the ASEAN Committee in Prague (ACP), said the event is of significance to enhancing mutual understanding among ASEAN missions through games, art performances and cuisine festival.
The event also helps Czech guests understand more about the ASEAN bloc as well as solidarity among its members, he noted.
In the past years, the Vietnamese Embassy in the Netherlands have actively participated in ACPs activities, representing its responsibility for the ASEAN community as well as popularising Vietnamese images to international friends./.
Photo: Dinh Tang/CPV
In 20 years as an APEC member and having hosted two APEC Summits, Vietnam has made specific contributions to and benefited from this Forum. Some of 240 meetings have been organized along 10 localities with the participation of Ministers, high-ranking officials, business community and scholars in the region.
APEC has shown its dynamism, adaptability, and flexibility towards changes, as well as addressed urgent global challenges. They also approved the Da Nang Declaration, containing two annexes:
- APEC Action Agenda on Advancing Economic, Financial and Social Inclusion
- APEC Framework on Human Resources Development in the Digital Age
Leaders will meet again in Papua New Guinea in 2018 during its APEC chairmanship.
The Communist Party of Vietnam Online Newspaper would like to introduce full version of the Da Nang Declaration./.
THE 25TH APEC ECONOMIC LEADERS MEETING
Da Nang , Vietnam , November 11th 2017
Da Nang Declaration
Creating New Dynamism, Fostering a Shared Future
We, the Leaders of APEC, gathered in Da Nang, Vietnam under the theme Creating New Dynamism, Fostering a Shared Future, determined to take bolder and sustained collective actions to inject new dynamism into APEC cooperation to promote sustainable, innovative and inclusive growth, deepen regional economic integration, realize the full potential of the business sector, particularly micro, small and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs), and enhance food security and sustainable agriculture.
A quarter-century after the first APEC Economic Leaders' Meeting, APEC has proven to be the premier economic forum in the Asia-Pacific, a driver of economic growth and integration, an incubator of ideas for future economic cooperation, a coordinating mechanism of trade agreements, and a global leader in addressing pressing problems. For nearly three decades, APEC has contributed to sustaining growth and advancing economic integration in the Asia- Pacific region, a process that has created millions of jobs and lifted hundreds of millions out of poverty.
Photo: apec2017.vn
We meet at a time when the regional and global landscapes have experienced complex and fundamental shifts, coupled with the emergence of far-reaching challenges and opportunities. Regional and global economic recovery is on firmer footing, but medium and long-term risks remain. The Fourth Industrial Revolution and advancements in technology are altering the nature of work, transforming our societies and the ways we connect and interact. Trade and investment have brought unprecedented prosperity to the Asia-Pacific region, but serious challenges persist.
We, therefore, recommit to our common purpose to foster a shared future of a peaceful, stable, dynamic, inter-connected and prosperous Asia-Pacific community. We reaffirm our support for the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, as a framework for inclusive growth.
We reaffirm our long-standing commitment to APECs mission of supporting sustainable economic growth and prosperity in the Asia-Pacific region. Recognizing the significant challenges our economies face, we pledge to work together and take the following actions:
I. Promoting Innovative Growth, Inclusion and Sustainable Employment
Quality Growth, Structural Reform and Innovation
We reaffirm our aspirations towards balanced, inclusive, sustainable, innovative, and secure growth in the APEC region through monetary, fiscal and structural policies, individually and collectively, and highlight the importance of achieving quality growth.
We underscore that structural reform, including competition policy, ease of doing business, regulatory reform, strengthening economic and legal infrastructure, corporate and public sector governance, and promoting human capital development, is key to balanced, sustainable, innovative and inclusive growth, job creation, productivity and competitiveness. We reaffirm our commitment to foster integrity in the public and private sectors and fighting corruption and bribery, and denying safe havens for corrupt officials and stolen assets. We instruct economic and finance officials to work jointly on the 2018 APEC Economic Policy Report on Structural Reform and Infrastructure.
We emphasize the importance of innovation, science and technology as key drivers for economic growth and international trade and investment in the APEC region. We recognize the vital importance of continuing to work for quality and equitable education to enable people of all ages to meet the challenges of rapid changes in todays world. We commit to promoting science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) education and the pursuit of STEM-based entrepreneurship.
We resolve to enhance energy security to sustain economic growth in the APEC region. We encourage the facilitation of energy-related trade and investment, enhancement of access to affordable and reliable energy, and promotion of sustainable, efficient, and clean energy sources, which, in particular, would contribute to reducing global greenhouse gas emissions.
We note the need for urbanization to be people-oriented, sound and sustainable and encourage knowledge sharing and policy exchange in this area.
Economic, Financial and Social Inclusion in a Globalized World
Recognizing new opportunities and emerging challenges presented by globalization and digital transformation, we resolve to advance economic, financial and social inclusion, with a vision to build an inclusive, accessible, sustainable, healthy and resilient APEC community by 2030, consistent with the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. We endorse the APEC Action Agenda on Advancing Economic, Financial and Social Inclusion (Annex A) to guide our efforts moving forward. We commit to advance progress towards achieving full, productive and quality employment and equal pay for equal work; ensure access to banking, insurance and financial services, and increase financial literacy and capability of all to access finance; and progressively achieve and sustain income growth for all members of society, especially women, and youth, persons with disabilities and other vulnerable groups, and enable them to seize global opportunities. We encourage APEC economies to invest in their health systems to increase productivity and economic growth.
Acknowledging that greater economic participation by women spurs economic growth, we encourage economies and the private sector to implement initiatives that enhance womens economic empowerment, improve womens access to capital, assets and markets, increase womens participation in high-growth and high-wage sectors, and promote womens leadership, entrepreneurship, skills and competencies.
Quality Human Resources Development in the Digital Age
We place importance on the need to prepare our people and all workers, especially vulnerable groups, for the changing world of work. We endorse the APEC Framework on Human Resources Development in the Digital Age (Annex B). We are committed to strengthening human resources development, including through education and life-long learning, technical and vocational education and training (TVET), and up- and re-skilling to increase workers employability, mobility and preparedness for the digital age; and ensure that active labor market policies can better match the needs of the labor market with various aspects of skills training and development.
II. Creating New Drivers for Regional Economic Integration
Advancing Free and Open Trade and Investment
We commit to attaining the Bogor Goals of free and open trade and investment in the Asia- Pacific region. We agree to accelerate efforts to address WTO-inconsistent barriers to trade and investment and take concrete actions towards the achievement of the Bogor Goals by 2020. We also note the importance of non-discriminatory, reciprocal and mutually advantageous trade and investment frameworks. We will work together to make trade more inclusive, support improved market access opportunities, and address unfair trade practices. We urgently call for the removal of market-distorting subsidies and other types of support by governments and related entities.
We are committed to carrying out further actions to promote an enabling and conducive environment for investment in the Asia-Pacific region.
We will work together to realize the potential of the internet and digital economy, including through appropriate regulatory and policy frameworks, and taking into account fair competition to encourage investment and innovation. We welcome the adoption of the APEC Internet and Digital Economy Roadmap and the APEC Framework on Cross-border E- commerce Facilitation. We will consider actions to facilitate the development of the internet and digital economy, including e-commerce and digital trade.
We are committed to further actions to increase APEC's competitiveness in the services sector by 2025 and intensifying our efforts to address barriers that inhibit our businesses from competing or trading in services markets.
Free Trade Area of the Asia-Pacific (FTAAP)
We reaffirm our commitment to advance in a comprehensive and systematic manner the process toward the eventual realization of an FTAAP to further APECs regional economic integration agenda. We commend the efforts of economies to advance work related to the eventual realization of an FTAAP, including capacity building initiatives and information sharing mechanism. We encourage economies to make further progress and to develop work programs to enhance APEC economies ability to participate in high quality, comprehensive free trade agreement negotiations in the future.
Multilateral Trading System
We welcome the entry into force of the World Trade Organization (WTO) Trade Facilitation Agreement (TFA) and call for its full implementation, recognizing that it helps bring about meaningful and widespread benefits for all economies and businesses. We commit to work with other members of the WTO towards a successful 11thWTO Ministerial Conference.
We underline APECs crucial role in support of a rules-based, free, open, fair, transparent, and inclusive multilateral trading system. We commit to work together to improve the functioning of the WTO, including its negotiating, monitoring, and dispute settlement functions, to adequately address challenges facing the system, bringing benefits to all of our people and businesses. We will work to ensure the effective and timely enforcement of the WTO rules.
We note the importance of bilateral, regional and plurilateral agreements, and commit to working to ensure they complement the multilateral trade agreements.
We will strive for a climate conducive to investment and job creation. We will work to ensure a level playing field through continuing APECs leadership in pursuing open markets. We recall our pledge to extend our standstill commitment until the end of 2020 and recommit to fight protectionism, including all unfair trade practices, recognizing the role of legitimate trade defence instruments.
Fostering Regional and Sub-regional Comprehensive and Inclusive Connectivity
We reaffirm our commitment to build a seamless and comprehensively connected and integrated Asia-Pacific by 2025. In this regard, we welcome economies efforts in promoting cooperation to advance policy collaboration, trade facilitation, connectivity, financing, and people-to-people exchanges. We reiterate the importance of quality infrastructure for sustainable economic growth and pledge to promote infrastructure in terms of both quantity and quality through adequate investment and strengthened public-private partnership. We encourage further collaboration and synergy among various connectivity initiatives and work on advancing economic development and integration of sub-regional, rural and remote areas in the region, including efforts to develop safe, secure, resilient, efficient, affordable and sustainable transportation systems.
We underline the need to develop policies that take full advantage of global value chains. We encourage further actions to enable better participation, greater value added and upward mobility of developing economies and MSMEs in GVCs. We appreciate initiatives such as Asia-Pacific Model E-port Network and APEC Green Supply Chain Network and their positive contribution to supply chain connectivity.
We commit to promote sustainable tourism, and explore its potential for development in remote areas as an important part of APEC economic growth strategies and enhanced people-to-people connectivity. We are determined to reach the target of 800 million APEC tourist arrivals by 2025.
We express concern over the growing threat of terrorism in the APEC region, which stems from ISIL, Al-Qaida and other terrorist organizations, and is exacerbated by the cross-border travel of foreign terrorist fighters and emerging sources and channels of terrorist financing. APEC economies commit to continually and effectively respond to the terrorist challenges in the region and their economic impact, as guided by APECs strategy to secure supply chains, travel, finance, and infrastructure.
As the Asia-Pacific is highly exposed to natural disasters, we commit to strengthen cooperation, including with the private sector, to enhance resilience to disasters through effective mitigation, preparedness, disaster risk reduction, response and recovery efforts. This includes advancement in policy, innovation, science and technology, business continuity planning, early warning systems, and search and rescue. We underline the importance of financial instruments and policies against disaster risks.
III. Strengthening the Capacity and Innovation of MSMEs
We commit to strengthen the ability of MSMEs to compete in international markets and participate in global value chains through the following actions:
Increase MSMEs innovation capacities, including by facilitating their access to finance, technology and capacity building, especially for women and youth-led businesses;
Improve access to the internet and digital infrastructure;
Enhance MSMEs digital capabilities, competitiveness and resilience;
Create an enabling environment for MSMEs, including by promoting business ethics; and
Support start-ups through establishing an innovative start-up ecosystem with conductive regulatory frameworks that promote a business-friendly environment, ensuring access to resources, and building start-up networks and partnership.
Acknowledging efforts to promote supporting industries, we encourage economies to enhance competitiveness and facilitate industries participation in global value chains.
We welcome the endorsement of the APEC Strategy for Green, Sustainable and Innovative MSMEs.
IV. Enhancing Food Security and Sustainable Agriculture in Response to Climate Change
We underscore that APEC can play a key role in ensuring food security and sustainable agriculture, aquaculture and fisheries in the Asia-Pacific region and beyond, particularly in the context of climate change and rural-urban development. We reiterate our commitment to achieve a sustainable APEC food system by 2020. We welcome the adoption of the Food Security and Climate Change Multi-Year Action Plan 2018-2020. We urge economies to work together to promote sustainable agriculture, aquaculture and fisheries to assess and reduce food loss and waste, enhance food safety, agricultural productivity and resilience against climate change, and reduce greenhouse gas emissions, where appropriate.
We commit to take actions to enhance regional food markets, food standards and supply chain connectivity to reduce costs of food trade, improve market transparency and help both importing and exporting economies adapt to food price volatility. We recognize that APEC can contribute to addressing challenges to food security, including by taking steps to integrate food producers into domestic and global food supply and value chains, address chokepoints arising from infrastructure gaps, and burdensome and unnecessarily restrictive trade measures. We underscore the need for an enabling policy and regulatory environment to facilitate investment in rural infrastructure, logistics and agro-industry to improve the connectivity of food markets. We support public-private partnerships on strengthening rural- urban development at the economy and regional levels. We welcome the adoption of the APEC Action Plan on Rural-Urban Development to Strengthen Food Security and Quality Growth.
We reaffirm our commitment to promote sustainable management of natural resources in achieving sustainable food security and higher productivity of the agriculture, aquaculture and fisheries sectors. We commit to continue to foster APEC cooperation on sustainable use and integrated management of land, forest, marine and water resources, through trans- boundary cooperation and collective efforts.
V. Fostering a Shared Future
We appreciate deliberations on APEC toward 2020 and beyond that started in Peru in 2016 and furthered in Vietnam, as the Bogor Goals target date approaches and APEC is about to enter its fourth decade. We look forward to APEC intensifying efforts to achieve free and open trade and investment in the region by 2020 and setting a strategic, aspirational and action-oriented vision for its future.
We reaffirm our enduring commitment to underwrite dynamism, inclusiveness and prosperity of the Asia-Pacific region and to build a responsive, responsible and people- and business-centered APEC toward a shared future - resilient to challenges and accountable to its businesses, workers and people. We pledge to uphold the Asia-Pacific partnership based on mutual respect and trust, inclusiveness and mutually beneficial cooperation. We recognize APECs contribution toward achieving sustainable development. We further encourage the participation of relevant stakeholders in APEC cooperation so that cooperation achievements can benefit larger population across the Asia-Pacific.
We are committed to carrying out further concerted actions to maintain APEC as a key driver of regional and global economic growth and integration and a major contributor to the regional economic architecture. We welcome members initiatives that promote trade and investment in the region. In an increasingly interconnected world, we pledge to enhance synergy and complementarities with other regional and international institutions and fora. In this connection, we congratulate the ASEAN on its 50th Anniversary and commend its contributions to regional development and prosperity. We will strengthen APEC's global leadership in addressing the most pressing economic challenges.
We welcome the establishment of the APEC Vision Group to assist Senior Officials in shaping the post-2020 Vision, including through consultations with relevant stakeholders. This Vision would build upon past achievements, addresses unfinished business, and explore new areas of cooperation to better respond to new and emerging challenges and pressing issues in the coming decades.
We highlight the importance and welcome the contribution of capacity building efforts by member economies. In this regard, we note with appreciation new initiatives, including the establishment of the Women and the Economy Sub-fund, and encourage more contributions, especially untied contributions.
We thank Vietnam for its leadership this year, eleven years after its first hosting of APEC, in advancing the APEC process built on the vision and work of the previous APEC hosts.
We look forward to meeting again in Papua New Guinea in 2018.
Alberto Bocanegra, 38, of the 4300 block of Washtenaw Avenue in the Brighton Park neighborhood on the Southwest Side, was arrested on a felony charge of aggravated dishcarge of a firearm, police said. (Chicago Police Department )
A 38-year-old man got out of his car to confront another driver in the South Side's Bronzeville neighborhood when he saw the motorist flash a handgun Friday morning, Chicago police said.
The 38-year-old hurried back to his car to drive away from the 3700 block of South Indiana Avenue. That's when he heard several gunshots about 10:40 a.m., police said.
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Responding officers, who had a description of the suspect's car, arrested a man in the 2000 block of South Michigan Avenue in the South Loop, police said. A firearm was located.
Alberto Bocanegra, 38, of the 4300 block of Washtenaw Avenue in the Brighton Park neighborhood on the Southwest Side, was arrested in what Chicago police called a road rage incident.
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He was charged with felony aggravated discharge of a firearm, police said.
After stealing a Chevy Equinox in Morgan Park on Saturday morning, one or more armed teenagers used the SUV in four separate area robberies, police said in a community alert.
Police say the string of incidents began around 6:30 a.m., when the vehicle which was left running was taken from the 400 block of West 100th Place. Then, between 7:30 a.m. and 7:50 a.m., it was used for robberies in the 2600 block of West 106th Place, the 10600 Block of South Fairfield Avenue and another on the 8900 block of South Laflin Street, police said in the alert issued Saturday afternoon.
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During the incidents, a male exited the vehicle from the passenger side of the car, approached the victim while displaying a handgun and demanded property, police said.
Police said one of the armed gunmen is a black male between 14 and 18 years old, 5-foot-5 and between 130 and 150 pounds. He is said to have been wearing dark clothing at the time of the incidents.
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Police have asked community members to contact detectives at 312-747-8273 with information on these incidents.
Jack McCullough, left, smiles in court with attorney Russell Ainsworth of the Exoneration Project, Thursday, April 6, 2017, at the DeKalb County Courthouse in Sycamore, Ill.
Jack McCullough, left, smiles in court with attorney Russell Ainsworth of the Exoneration Project, Thursday, April 6, 2017, at the DeKalb County Courthouse in Sycamore, Ill. (Matthew Apgar / AP)
SYCAMORE, Ill. A Washington state man wrongfully convicted in 2012 of the 1957 kidnapping and killing of a 7-year-old girl has settled his lawsuit against an Illinois city.
The Daily Chronicle reports Sycamore City Manager Brian Gregory said Friday the city has agreed to pay Jack McCullough $350,000 to end all claims against Sycamore and its officers.
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Earlier this year, a DeKalb County judge formally declared McCullough innocent in Maria Ridulph's killing. The finding came after a prosecutor concluded evidence backed McCullough's alibi that he had been 40 miles (64 kilometers) away when Maria disappeared.
A judge then ordered McCullough's release after he had served four years of a life sentence
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McCullough still has a lawsuit pending in U.S. District Court against 12 defendants in Illinois and Washington.
HANOI, Vietnam President Donald Trump on Sunday ridiculed North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un as "short and fat," and he lashed out at critics of his relationship with Russia's leader, saying they are "haters and fools" who don't understand the merits of a good relationship with Moscow.
The morning tweetstorm came as Trump prepared for bilateral meetings with Vietnamese leaders, including a scheduled news conference where he could face more questions about the topics he addressed on Twitter.
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Trump's taunt of Kim came after the North Korean leader again called him a "dotard," a term describing an old person who is losing his mental faculties. Trump, 71, sarcastically responded that he hopes one day to be friends with Kim, who oversees a developing nuclear weapons and ballistic missile arsenal.
Why would Kim Jong-un insult me by calling me "old," when I would NEVER call him "short and fat?" Oh well, I try so hard to be his friend - and maybe someday that will happen! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 12, 2017
"Why would Kim Jong-un insult me by calling me 'old,' when I would NEVER call him 'short and fat?' Oh well, I try so hard to be his friend - and maybe someday that will happen!"
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- Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump)
Trump also returned to a favorite theme of bashing critics who have accused him of being soft on Russia in the wake of special counsel Robert Mueller's ongoing investigation into his campaign's ties to Russian officials and possible attempts at collusion. Trump has denied that his campaign coordinated in any way with Moscow during last year's presidential campaign, and he said Saturday that Russian President Vladimir Putin again denied any involvement in trying to influence the U.S. elections when Trump spoke with him at a regional summit in Danang, Vietnam.
"When will all the haters and fools out there realize that having a good relationship with Russia is a good thing, not a bad thing. There always playing politics - bad for our country. I want to solve North Korea, Syria, Ukraine, terrorism, and Russia can greatly help!"
- Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump)
On Twitter, Trump also slammed President Barack Obama and former secretary of state Hillary Clinton for failing to improve relations with Russia.
"Does the Fake News Media remember when Crooked Hillary Clinton, as Secretary of State, was begging Russia to be our friend with the misspelled reset button? Obama tried also, but he had zero chemistry with Putin."
- Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump)
The president's remarks in a wide-ranging talk with reporters on Air Force One en route to Hanoi on Saturday and in his Sunday morning tweets have sharply punctured the careful messaging he and his aides had sought to deliver on a five-nation, 12-day trip through Asia. Trump will travel to Manila, Philippines on Sunday evening for two days of regional conferences and a bilateral meeting with Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte.
World War II veteran Kenneth Olson, 91, walked the route Saturday during Aurora's Veterans Day Parade. "I have never missed a parade," the East Aurora High School alum said. (Linda Girardi / The Beacon-News)
Military veterans and high school students marching through cold temperatures received a warm welcome Saturday during Aurora's annual Veterans Day Parade and ceremony.
"As I look upon this crowd of veterans, I see heroes with a warrior's spirit that never dies," Aurora Mayor Richard Irvin told the crowd gathered in front of the Grand Army of the Republic Memorial Hall on Downer Place for the observances after the parade.
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Irvin, an Army veteran, praised the bravery of veterans past and present willing to give up their lives to serve their country.
"These are selfless men and women," he said.
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He said patriotism has no affiliation with politics, religion or color. "We serve because we are the United States of America," the mayor said to applause.
The keynote speaker was Lt. Lauren Carthan, who heads the East Aurora Naval Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps. While in the Navy, she served in various capacities and was deployed to Afghanistan in 2007, where she assisted in developing a tracking system for those injured on the battlefield.
A 22-year Navy veteran, Carthan was hired in 2011 as the first female NJROTC instructor at East Aurora High School and in 2015 was promoted to senior naval science instructor.
Carthan wondered if people would remember the sacrifices of veterans if there wasn't a federal holiday to remind them. Those sacrifices are many, she said.
"What makes our veterans unique is that most of us feel a need to continue to serve our community, country or fellowman," Carthan said. "The percentage that serves in the military is relatively small but everyone can serve their community in some capacity."
State Rep. Linda Chapa LaVia, D-Aurora, an Army veteran, also soke during the event.
"As veterans, we don't ask for anything in return. I would still die for each and every one of you right now," Chapa LaVia said.
The parade, which started at Benton Street and Broadway Avenue, featured 22 units, including representatives of the Aurora police and fire departments and veterans organizations. Among the student groups were the East Aurora High School Marching Band, East Aurora NJROTC and Marmion Academy Flannigan Rifles.
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U.S. Rep. Bill Foster, D-Naperville attended the event, as did Illinois gubernatorial candidate J.B. Pritzker.
Among those participating in the parade was Kenneth Olson, 91, who was in the U.S. Navy and assigned to an ocean mine sweeper during World War II.
"I have never missed a parade," the East Aurora High School alum said.
Olson said he attended summer school so he could get his high school diploma early and enlist in the Navy. He began serving in February 1945.
Among those in attendance were Mary and David Spencer, whose son is in the Army and has completed four tours in Iraq and Afghanistan. Matthew Spencer is currently a battalion leader at Ft. Campbell in Kentucky.
Mary Spencer had tears in her eyes when she spoke of her son's dedication to his country. "He has the utmost respect and love for our country," she said. "These are men and women who are fighting for our freedom. Nobody can really understand that unless they know someone in the military. They give it all up."
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Spencer said she can hardly believe all her son has accomplished. "God gave him a purpose," she said.
Shamone Seay returned to her hometown of Aurora to honor the nation's veterans. She was with her 5-year-old daughter Calyn.
"We can easily take for granted the sacrifices that veterans make, especially for those of us who have never been remotely close to combat or confrontation," the Bolingbrook woman said.
Vietnam veteran Ron Morin drove his 1943 WC 52 weapons carrier in the parade. Morin, of Aurora, sported an authentic 1945 military wool coat as well.
"We need to keep the history alive of what these guys sacrificed," he said.
Linda Girardi is a freelance reporter for The Beacon-News.
Three Batavia townhouses were damaged Friday night by a fire that broke out in an attached garage, officials said.
The Batavia Fire Department responded to a call at 8:16 p.m. about a car on fire inside a garage in the 400 block of Mill Street, according to a news release. Firefighters arrived to find heavy fire in a town home that had spread to units on each side of it, the release stated.
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Firefighters needed about 45 minutes to bring the blaze under control, the release stated. No one was injured, but two of the units were deemed uninhabitable.
The cause of the fire is under investigation, according to the release.
Five teens were arrested in Markham Saturday after allegedly crashing a vehicle stolen from a Lyft ride-sharing driver in Hammond, police said.
The incident started in Hammond, when four of the teens allegedly stole the vehicle at gunpoint at about 2:45 p.m. in the 7400 block of Madison Avenue.
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Hammond police Lt. Steven Kellog said police in Illinois arrested two 15-year-old boys, a 16-year-old boy and two 18-year-old men after they crashed the vehicle.
Markham Police Chief Mack Sanders confirmed a report the suspects entered a home that wasn't theirs near Hermitage Avenue and 163rd Street before being arrested. A weapon was recovered and the residents inside the home were not harmed, police said.
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Kellog said multiple Illinois police agencies responded to the incident.
"Charges are expected from Hammond police on all suspects involved," he said Sunday.
Frank Vaisvilas is a freelance reporter for the Daily Southtown.
College of Lake County students have another four-year university to choose from when looking at guaranteed transfer admission programs, officials said last week.
A new agreement with Illinois State University will help CLC students make a smooth transition to the four-year institution by communicating upfront what courses students need to take at CLC and offering them advising from both institutions, Karen Hlavin, associate vice president for student development at CLC, said in a news release.
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The agreements are part of a larger push by community colleges across the country to boost their completion rates through streamlined and fast-track degree programs and agreements with four-year institutions.
A report issued last month by the U.S. Department of Education's National Center for Education Statistics found that transfer students at public colleges and universities were more likely to complete their degree or certificate programs within eight years than their counterparts who enrolled in college for the first time.
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This is the 23rd agreement the College of Lake County has set up to lay out a clear and guaranteed pathway for students looking to earn a bachelor's degree, according to its website.
Illinois State is a good choice for College of Lake County students looking for a public, residential campus that's not too far away from home, Jeff Mavros, director of admissions at Illinois State, said in a news release.
More than 50 CLC students transferred to Illinois State in 2017, bringing the total number of transfer students currently there to 139, according to Samantha Meranda, transfer coordinator at Illinois State.
Business boost
A bill aimed at significantly reducing the fees charged for registering a limited liability company passed out of the Illinois Senate in a 55-0 vote last week.
One of the sponsors of the bill, state Rep. Carol Sente, has been pushing for the reductions for several years, a spokesman said.
The goal is that the reduction in fees from $500 to $150 for initial filing fees, and $250 to $75 for annual reporting fees would foster economic growth and promote job creation, the Vernon Hills Democrat said in a news release.
"As a small-business owner, I understand the challenges businesses in our region face, and know that it is incredibly difficult to start something from nothing," Sente said after introducing the bill earlier this year. "One of my objectives as a state representative is to remove barriers to new business formation and job creation."
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The bill was approved by the House in May and now heads to Gov. Bruce Rauner.
Seat to fill
The Township High School District 113 school board is looking to fill the seat left vacant by Julie Gordon, who resigned from the board earlier this month.
Gordon stepped down on Nov. 5, citing personal reasons, according to a news release.
Lake County News Sun Twice-weekly News updates from Lake County delivered every Monday and Wednesday >
She was first elected in April 2013, earning the most votes among the five candidates vying for three open spots that year, according to the Lake County Clerk's Office. She retained her seat this year, again earning the most votes out of the four candidates.
A certified pension actuary, Gordon had served as vice president of the school board and co-chaired its finance committee, according to Highland Park News reports.
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"I am thankful to have been part of such a great school district, with its strong leadership and exceptional staff that are all focused on best serving the needs of our remarkable students," Gordon said in her resignation letter.
The board will discuss the process for filling the vacancy at its meeting Monday evening.
Township High School District 113 includes Deerfield and Highland Park high schools.
emcoleman@tribpub.com
Twitter @mekcoleman
Marine Corps veteran Col. Harvey Barnum, a Medal of Honor recipient, delivers the keynote address Saturday at the annual Veterans Day ceremony at Veterans Park in Naperville. ( Diane Moca/Naperville Sun )
The chilly morning temperatures were not enough to deter the dozens who gathered Saturday for Naperville's annual Veterans Day ceremony at Veterans Park.
"We look to veterans who fought in the past and are fighting now," said Col. Harvey Barnum, a Medal of Honor recipient who served in the U.S. Marine Corps from 1961 to 1989 and delivered the event's keynote address. "Democracy is not an easy form of government to live under. It makes each of us responsible. We should all be proud to be Americans and show it. You're showing it by being here today."
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Members of American Legion Naperville Post 43 joined Barnum and about 70 other veterans participating in the ceremony. A crowd about the same size gathered in the parking lot to observe.
"I have family members still serving," said Vickie Egizio, owner of Orazio Pub in Naperville. "We need to show respect for men who have given their time and love of country, and I wanted my grandson to share in this and learn about the sacrifices given for the freedom he enjoys."
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Nan Romanowitz, of Aurora, who said her father and brother are both veterans, took a picture of her husband, Mark, next to the ceremonial wreath.
"It's a memory wreath for vets and those who died. Any one of us could've died there also," said Mark Romanowitz, a former lieutenant who spent eight years in the Navy.
Attending Veterans Day observances is "important," he said. "It's about us, but not about us. It's about our nation."
While dozens in the audience faced the speakers and flags as the ceremony began at 11 a..m., Jeff Jost turned to the right and faced the church across the street because, he said, "on the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month, you face east. That's the old tradition. It represents the end of World War I."
Jost, a former Air Force cook who served from 1964 to 1968, said he wished the tradition would return.
The ceremony did include many other traditions, such as a military gun salute followed by a rendition of taps on the bugle and the national anthem played by the Naperville Municipal Band.
"As we gather here today, we're at war," Barnum said. "Thousands are serving in harm's way in Iraq and Afghanistan. Where do we get these young men and women? We raise them. Young warriors of today carry on in the tradition of those vets.
"They didn't want war but did what needed to be done. A veteran knows why it was they would risk it all life itself for an ideal, a principle. Veterans represent our ties with one another. We must look to the challenge of the future. We will never lose faith or our courage."
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VFW Post 3873 Cmdr. Tom Parker also addressed the crowd and reflected on the "huge, diverse group of individuals with one common thing: a great love of this country and willingness to sacrifice."
The band concluded the event by playing the "Armed Forces Medley," as participants rose or stepped forward when they heard the song representing their branch of the service.
The band will perform more patriotic music during another tribute to veterans at 3 p.m. Sunday in Wentz Concert Hall at North Central College.
Conductor and musical director Ron Keller said the Naperville Municipal Band has spent time preparing "The NC-4 March," which was inspired by the U.S. Navy's first trans-Atlantic flight in 1919.
The free concert will also include "Concord," "Songs from the Great War," "Flight!," "Inchon," selections from "South Pacific," "Bullets & Bayonets March (Sousa)," "Those in Peril On the Sea (Navy Hymn)," "A Salute the Armed Forces" and "Stars & Stripes Forever," Keller said.
Dr. Harry Hindson, a former member of the U.S. Navy Band in Washington, D.C., will perform the saxophone solo "A Gershwin Fantasy," he said. Ann Lord will deliver commentary and history to accompany every selection.
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Diane Moca is a freelance reporter for the Naperville Sun.
All votes in the CO-3 election won't be counted until the end of this week
A design from the Phuong My Fall-Winter Collection 2017 by Vietnamese-American Phuong My.
(Photo from the designers Facebook)
Her collection features 30 designs in pink, white and pastel using quality silk, lace and linen, which will appear on the catwalk on November 17th.
The AFW is organised by the Arab Fashion Council, which organises the New York Fashion Week and London Fashion Week.
The five-day event will open on November 15, featuring the latest collections by veteran and young fashion designers and popular brand names in the region.
Born in Ho Chi Minh City, My moved to live in the US when she was 13 years old.
She graduated from the Academy of Art University in California and Academy of Art University in San Francisco.
She began her career after winning the top prizes at two prestigious contests, Are You Runway Ready and Discarded to Divine Project, launched in New York and San Francisco in 2010.
She has worked for key fashion magazines such as Elle, Harpers Bazaar and Vogue.
In 2013, My returned to her home city to develop her business by launching her own brand Phuong My.
She quickly rose to fame after her brand Phuong My was invited to collaborate with Bulgari at their store opening in March 2013 in Hanoi.
She later opened her flagship store in HCM City.
Her brands fabric production is entirely outsourced to select partners in Paris, Milan and Hong Kong, thus providing the optimum blend of both materials and exclusivity that has proven to be her goal.
Being a part of the global fashion scene, I dont create fashion, I create dreams, she said.
My has attended leading fashion events at home and abroad, including the Vietnam Fashion Week, Tokyo Fashion Fuse and New York Fashion Week.
She has collaborated with dozens of boutiques stores, stylists and magazines in the Americas and Europe, such as My Beautiful Dressing from Paris, Club Magazine in Venezuela, Vogue-UK and Vogue-Italia to expand her brand.
Her shops in District 1 and 3 offer more than a hundred eye-catching designs and accessories for women and have been well received by both Vietnamese and foreign customers./.
Nong Khanh Ly, a 21-year-old Vietnamese woman, amazed the Chinese audience at a television quiz show on culture with her fluent Mandarin and formidable recall of classical poetry.
Vietnamese student Nguyen Duc Tien speaks at the 16th Chinese Proficiency Competition for Foreign College Students in Ho Chi Minh City on May 26. [Photo/Xinhua]
She was praised for reciting the writing of Li Qingzhao, a household poetess of the Song Dynasty (960-1279).
"I like the sentimental mist that lingers among her lines," said the girl, "the more you learn about the language, the deeper you fall in love with it."
The senior student is majoring in Chinese at Guangxi University in Nanning, the Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region.
"Like most young students in Vietnam, I dreamed of going abroad after high school, and quite a number of us thought China was the best choice to see the world for both its ancient and modern civilization, which is full of charm," Nong said.
Cultural appeal is a big factor attracting her country's youth to pick up Chinese, she said.
"Since different Chinese TV series and films online are especially popular in Vietnam, if you know the language then you don't have to be limited by the translation," she said.
Meng Ruisen, a teacher at the International Education Institution at Guangxi University, said the institution helps make Chinese attractive to foreigners by promoting traditional Chinese culture as well as its dynamic modern civilization.
"We offer foreign students not only culture courses but also provide chances to experience day-to-day Chinese life in their spare time. During traditional festivals we hold homestays and at other times we have Chinese language corners or language competitions to improve their skills and broaden their horizons."
Chen Gang, deputy dean of the institution, told China Daily that financial support from the Chinese government is the other consideration contributing to the nation's popularity.
In 2016, 45 percent of the 1,679 international students that studied at Guangxi University were Vietnamese.
He said geographical proximity is another reason.
"Among the students from Asian countries with full Guangxi scholarships, 20 are from the four Vietnamese provinces bordering Guangxi," Chen said.
As one of those 20, Nong gets a 1,000 yuan ($150) subsistence allowance every month apart from free tuition and accommodations.
The university also maintains close connections with 30 universities and institutions in Vietnam to facilitate the promotion of Chinese culture by organizing Chinese training camps annually, Chen said.
Nguyen Van Tung, who teaches Chinese at Hung Vuong University in Vietnam's Phu Tho province, also noticed the growing popularity of Chinese. At his university, 120 students major in Chinese and over 600 are also learning Chinese while majoring in other subjects.
With the deepening cooperation between the two counties, it's quite common to see Chinese tourists and business executives in Vietnam, which creates job opportunities for those who know Chinese, he said.
"I once studied Chinese at Guangxi University. After studying for four years, the 28 graduates in my class were all hired by companies and institutions with higher salaries than those who learned English," Tung said.
Chinese has become more accessible in Vietnam, he said. Most universities offer professional courses and there are various training programs to choose from or you can learn by yourself using an online class, he added.
The 21st Beijing-Hong Kong Symposium on Economic Cooperation (Beijing-Hong Kong Symposium) will be held in Hong Kong on Nov. 28-29. The symposium will include a series of economic, cultural, and technological exchanges between Beijing and Hong Kong, while over 300 programs are expected to be announced to promote the development of the two cities.
During a news conference held on Nov. 8, Su Hong, deputy director of the Beijing Investment Promotion Bureau, said that, since 1997, the Beijing-Hong Kong Symposium has successfully facilitated a significant number of programs that are in line with the strategic positioning and industrial development of the two cities. From the eighth symposium in 2004 to the 20th in 2016, Beijing had launched over 7,000 two-way investment programs; from the 12th symposium in 2008 to the 20th in 2016, 208 programs had been contracted with US$62.2 billion worth of investment, Su added.
The upcoming 21st Beijing-Hong Kong Symposium will be centered around programs of high-tech and cutting-edge advancement. The symposium will consist of 15 events, including the opening ceremony, high-level exchange activities, a technological cooperation fair, and a promotion roadshow of key investment opportunities such as the construction of Beijings subsidiary administrative center.
Wu Ziheng, chief representative of the Hong Kong Trade Development Council, said that with the symposium as a bridge, the past 20 years have witnessed an expansion of exchange from key economic area to talents, housing, healthcare, infrastructure, and cultural and creative industries between Beijing and Hong Kong. This year, the symposium will highlight the success of Beijings innovation and pilot programs in the service industry and discuss Hong Kongs role in promoting trade in services with countries and regions along the Belt and Road. In addition, Beijing will share its experience on the construction and financing of Zhongguancun Science City, Huairou Science City, and Future Science City. The symposium will also feature entrepreneurs of innovative enterprises from Beijing and Hong Kong to talk about their experience in starting businesses.
Xu Zhijun, deputy secretary general of the Beijing Municipal Government, said that over 2,100 enterprises and institutions from Hong Kong have already expressed their intention in attending the symposium. During the preparation of the upcoming symposium, the Beijing Investment Promotion Bureau has facilitated 107 Hong Kong-invested programs each worth US$10 million or more, totaling US$5.65 billion.
By the end of this September, Hong Kong had set up 14,964 foreign-invested enterprises in Beijing, accumulating a total investment of US$59.13 billion, which accounted for 44.9 percent of Beijings foreign investment in actual use. At the same time, Beijing had invested US$26.34 billion in Hong Kong, accounting for 44.3 percent of Beijings outbound direct investment.
A China-Germany new businesses cooperation zone in east China's Jiangsu Province is expected to be home to 100 German enterprises by 2020, local authorities said Sunday.
The government of Kunshan City said that the number of European and American companies in the zone will reach 200 (including German companies) with an annual output of 30 billion yuan (4.5 billion U.S. dollars) by then.
The China-Germany (Kunshan) small and medium-sized enterprises (SME) cooperation zone was approved by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology in May.
In neighboring Taicang City, an increasing number of German companies have come to the city since first German company settled there in 1993. They cover a wide range of fields, including high-end equipment manufacturing, auto parts and services.
There are more than 280 German companies in Taicang with an annual output value of more than 40 billion yuan, according to Shen Mi, Party chief of the city.
Around 20 new companies from Germany have come to the city every year.
Taicang has platforms to promote development of German SMEs there, including a cooperation and innovation park and a China-Germany international education park.
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China's Ministry of Civil Affairs helped 3,000 lost people return to their families in the past 16 months, using the news provider toutiao.com mobile app.
Almost 2,000 agencies have posted information on the app since July 2016, Liu Tao, deputy director of the ministry department of social affairs, told a regular press conference last week.
Altogether 14,820 pieces of information were posted, with a success rate close to 20 percent, Liu said.
Among those reunited with their families, almost half suffer from mental disorders, according to Liu.
The elderly accounted for one third and minors 7.1 percent, Liu said.
They mostly lost contact with their families after wandering away, being abducted or being as a result of some criminal action.
Liu said the ministry will explore the use of facial recognition technology to assist the work.
U.S. President Donald Trump leaves Beijing on Nov. 10, 2017, concluding his state visit to China. [Xinhua/Zhang Ling]
President Trump's visit to China was highly successful and significant for many reasons. For a start, Trump's commitment of an extended trip to Asia, longer than any U.S. president in decades, is a sign of the importance he places in Asia.
One of his major priorities was peace in the region, especially in light of the nuclear threat from the DPRK. In this regard, the U.S. president stressed the importance for the world's nations to stick together and to use dialogue and economic pressure to bring about a peaceful solution.
President Trump mentioned that China's traditional relationship to and support of North Korea is the key to ensuring a peaceful resolution of this issue. According to him, if nations stand together threats will be resolved peacefully and to the benefit of all. This was coupled with Trump's earlier offer of a peaceful pathway to North Korea in his recent address made in South Korea.
It was also significant that President Trump was accompanied by 29 U.S. company CEOs. This led to signing trade deals worth over $250 billion -- a powerful example of the huge potential that exists when China and the U.S. work together. These deals included major contracts with Boeing (airplanes), Ford (electric vehicles) and General Electric (energy related infrastructure) and the sale of liquefied natural gas from Alaska.
On the issue of a trade imbalance, it was significant that both President Xi and President Trump emphasized the desirability of a reasonably balanced trade relationship, a level playing field and promotion of a win-win trading result for both countries. Indeed, the trade imbalance issue is far more nuanced than is usually portrayed. I am not an economist, but my understanding is that the imbalance focuses on the $350 billion (approx.) in Chinas favor, but ignores a number of factors and the complexity of the U.S.-China economic relationship. Chinese firms do a lot of manufacturing for foreign countries, including the U.S. This results in lower costs for U.S. consumers and, in many cases, also enables the U.S. to add value to the assembled components.
Note also that in services trade the balance is in favor of the U.S. Nor does the trade deficit figure include U.S. companies operating in China selling goods back to the U.S. There is also the economic contribution to the U.S. economy gained from Chinese tourists and students attending schools in the U.S.
It can also be argued that as a matter of economics a trade imbalance is not necessarily a bad thing. It is impossible to have 100 plus countries in the world all in trade surplus with one another. Trade imbalances reflect changes in times and different prices in different goods and services.
Trade deficit figures alone also ignore the fact that U.S. investment in China is greater than China's investment in the U.S. A recent study report in the Wall Street Journal suggests the actual investments by China and the U.S. in each other's economy is much larger than reported -- a good reason why closer economic cooperation is strongly in the interests of both countries. Rather than focus on trade imbalances, the major focus should be on creating a more transparent and open economy in China and growing trade between China and the U.S. as well as globally.
In terms of geo-politics and world economics, President Xi pointed out that there is room enough in the Pacific to accommodate both China and the U.S. and the world community. Indeed, working together the two leading economies in the world can do much to grow the pie and enhance the prosperity of the larger world economy. President Xi committed to follow through on China's commitment to further open its economy and continue mutual support and dialogue in promoting conditions for greater economic development and world peace.
Perhaps most importantly, is the obvious positive chemistry which appears to exist between President Xi and President Trump and their family members. This visit follows a very warm mutual family relationship developed during President Xis visit to the U.S. early in Trump's first year of office. This relationship was further strengthened by the collegiality, friendship and mutual respect evident in this visit to Beijing. Such relationships help to nurture the trust and commitment to build on that relationship in the future.
Finally, the key now will be on achieving further positive and concrete outcomes for both China and the U.S. This includes an increasing number of U.S.-China business deals and transactions as seen this week in Beijing. On a government-to-government level we will hopefully see continued work, for example, cooperation in the WTO and the Bilateral Investment Treaty with U.S.
Eugene Clark is a columnist with China.org.cn. For more information please visit:
http://www.china.org.cn/opinion/eugeneclark.htm
It is not a bad thing for us, that the route known as the Goldene Strae or the Golden Road as we will get to know it- has escaped the attention of so many. It has been spared being overrun by hordes of tourists and as you will discover the
Chinese President Xi Jinping met here Saturday with South Korean President Moon Jae-in on bilateral ties and the Korean Peninsula situation.
Chinese President Xi Jinping (R) meets with South Korean President Moon Jae-in in Da Nang, Vietnam, Nov. 11, 2017. (Xinhua/Ding Lin)
During the meeting on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Economic Leaders' Meeting, Xi told Moon that China and South Korea are close neighbors that can not move away and are natural cooperation partners.
The two countries share broad common interests in promoting their economic and social progress, and in realizing regional peace, stability and prosperity, said Xi.
He added that friendly exchanges and win-win cooperation have always been the main theme of China-South Korea diplomatic relations since they were forged 25 years ago, while China places importance on its relations with South Korea.
China stands ready to join hands with South Korea to push for the healthy and steady development of bilateral ties, Xi said, as good bilateral ties are in accordance with the trend of history and time, as well as the common expectation of the two peoples.
Noting that the China-South Korea relations are at a crucial stage, Xi said both sides need to respect each other's core interests and major concern, maintain political mutual trust, and enhance communication and coordination.
Xi reiterated China's stance on the issue of the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD).
He stressed that on such high-stake issues, the two sides should take an attitude that is responsible to history, to bilateral ties and to both peoples, and make decisions that can stand the test of history, so as to steadily move forward bilateral relations in the right direction.
Noting the important leading role of high-level interactions on bilateral ties, Xi welcomed South Korea's foreign minister to visit China this month.
Xi said the two countries need to make an over-all plan for developing bilateral ties in the next stage and discuss how to expand cooperation in international and regional affairs.
He urged both sides to deepen practical cooperation and communication in various fields, so as to better serve the interests of the two peoples.
Moon congratulated Xi on the successful conclusion of the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China (CPC) and his re-election as general secretary of the CPC Central Committee, saying he supports Xi's vision of building a community with a shared future for mankind.
South Korea supports the Belt and Road Initiative and is willing to actively participate in its implementation, he said, while calling for concerted efforts to resume bilateral high-level exchanges and cooperation in various fields as soon as possible.
South Korea attaches importance to China's concern on the THAAD issue, and has no intention to harm China's interests of strategic security, Moon said.
The two leaders also exchanged views on the Korean Peninsula situation.
Xi told Moon that China sincerely hopes for the best for the peninsula, and encourages South Korea to resume contact and dialogue with the Democratic People's Republic of Korea and restart cooperation for reconciliation.
China is willing to maintain communication with South Korea on promoting peace, stability and talks, as well as avoiding conflicts on the peninsula, said Xi.
South Korea appreciates China's positive role on the Korean Peninsula nuclear issue, stands ready to maintain close communication and coordination with China, and insists on solving the issue in a peaceful manner to protect peace on the peninsula, said Moon.
Last month, China and South Korea agreed to bring bilateral cooperation back to normal "as soon as possible."
"Enhancing communication and cooperation is in accordance with the common interests of China and South Korea. Both sides agree to return communication and cooperation in various fields to the normal track as soon as possible," the Chinese Foreign Ministry said in a statement.
Moon said days earlier that South Korea should rapidly develop relations with China, in accordance with the size of bilateral trade and beyond the issue on the U.S. THAAD missile interception system.
After attending the APEC meeting in Vietnam's Da Nang on Nov. 10-11, Xi will pay state visits to Vietnam and Laos on Nov. 12-14.
Chinese President Xi Jinping met Saturday with Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte on strengthening bilateral ties on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Economic Leaders' Meeting.
Chinese President Xi Jinping (R) meets with Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte in Da Nang, Vietnam, Nov. 11, 2017. (Xinhua/Fei Maohua)
Xi said that since Duterte's visit to China in October last year, bilateral ties have opened a new chapter.
With the two countries' cooperation enhanced, China-Philippines relations have seen healthy and stable development, bringing tangible benefits to both peoples and contributing to the region's peace and stability, he added.
Xi said good-neighborliness and friendliness is the right direction guiding China-Philippines relations, and China, together with the Philippines, is willing to continue considering the bilateral ties from a strategic and long-term perspective, enhancing political mutual trust, deepening cooperation and bringing more benefits to the two peoples.
Xi said the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China (CPC) concluded last month set the goal for China for a period in the future.
China's development needs an environment of lasting peace and stability, he added, noting that China will continue the road of peaceful development, as well as opening up and win-win cooperation.
China will treat neighboring countries with amity, sincerity, mutual benefit and inclusiveness, pushing forward the building of a community with a shared future for mankind, said Xi.
He said relations between the two countries stand on a new starting point, adding that they should enhance high-level exchanges, so as to ensure the development of bilateral relations on a right track.
He said the two sides should align the Belt and Road Initiative with the Philippines' development strategy, and deepen practical cooperation in infrastructure, agriculture, investment and other areas.
Xi said China is willing to offer assistance to the Philippines on poverty reduction, and continue support for the Philippine government's effort to safeguard national security.
Xi also said China is to work with ASEAN countries to maintain peace and stability, as well as development and prosperity in the South China Sea region.
Noting the great importance of bilateral ties, Duterte said the Philippines regards China as a sincere friend and is grateful for China's assistance on economy, anti-terrorism and maintaining stability.
He said the Philippines is willing to properly handle maritime issues through bilateral channels in accordance with consensus reached by the two sides.
Flash
U.S. President Donald Trump will discuss enhancing bilateral maritime and naval cooperation with Vietnamese leaders in his upcoming state visit to the Southeast Asian nation, a senior U.S. administration official said Saturday in a background press call.
The official told media via teleconference that the two nations are going to conclude a new three-year plan of action for defense cooperation involving an increase in bilateral naval activities
He said Washington is formally transferring the first U.S. Coast Guard cutter to the Vietnamese navy to help enhance Vietnam's maritime security and awareness.
Trump, who attended the APEC summit in Da Nang, Vietnam on Friday-Saturday, will also secure "the new commitments from Vietnam's leadership to support the maximum pressure campaign" to bring Pyongyang "back to the path of denuclearization," he said.
The official, who declined to be named, added that the two countries will also pledge to intensify discussions toward expanding bilateral trade and investment, adding the two nations are likely to reach commercial agreements worth 12 billion U.S. dollars.
On Sunday, Trump will fly on to Manila to meet with Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte and other leaders of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and of the East Asia Summit (EAS).
A number of things will "come out of the two summits, as well, in the way of cooperation and initiatives between the United States and ASEAN and some of the individual member states," said the official.
He said Trump and Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong will co-sponsor an EAS Leaders statement on chemical weapons to reaffirm the region's commitment against the development of those weapons by Pyongyang and beyond.
BRASILIA The BRICS bloc of emerging economies on Friday reaffirmed its commitment to promoting competition and combating monopolies.
The five BRICS members of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, gathering here for their 5th International Competition Conference, issued a joint declaration, pledging continued efforts to implement policies and practices that encourage competitiveness.
Organized by Brazil's Administrative Council for Economic Defense (CADE), the event gathered officials and experts from BRICS and other countries.
"In addition to discussions of an academic nature and topics of interest to policies for competition, we had concrete proposals that will help cooperation over the coming years," CADE President Alexandre Barreto told Xinhua.
"We will have an exchange of information that will help the respective authorities in (the area of) competition, in their daily work, which will be reflected in better services in their respective countries and for their people," said Barreto.
"Competition is fundamental to increasing productivity, adopting new processes, to innovation. Adopting new processes reduces costs and makes management efficient. The driver behind all of this is competition," said Brazil's Finance Minister Henrique Meirelles, who joined the conference Thursday evening.
Delegates from more than 25 countries attended this year's conference, said Barreto, including academics from 26 universities, and representatives from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) and the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO).
Previous conferences were held in Russia in 2009, China in 2011, India in 2013 and South Africa in 2015.
Shenzhen-based artificial intelligence company Malong Technologies has secured 220 million yuan ($33 million) in its B round funding, as it plans to expand its business overseas.
The investment was led by SoftBank China Capital, making it the first Chinese AI enterprise to obtain funding from the venture capital and private equity firm.
The capital will be used to further promote technological innovation and commercialization of AI-based product identification, expand the application of AI technology to more traditional fields and accelerate its pace to expand overseas.
Just as e-commerce helped upgrade traditional businesses in the internet age, Malong aims to upgrade traditional industries with AI in the new technological revolution, helping businesses enhance efficiency and save costs, said Huang Dinglong, the company's co-founder and chief executive officer.
ProductAI, a product recognition and image search platform launched by the company in October 2016, already has been used by over 200 enterprise customers, covering a variety of fields including fabric, home furnishings, retail, food and beverage.
"As a leading promoter of AI technology commercialization, Malong has great development potential. We are happy to invest in the company and expect to see it march into international markets and serve global customers," said Song Anlan, managing partner at SoftBank China Capital.
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Chinese President Xi Jinping (R) meets with South Korean President Moon Jae-in in Da Nang, Vietnam, Nov. 11, 2017. (Xinhua/Ding Lin)
DA NANG, Vietnam, Nov. 11 (Xinhua) -- Chinese President Xi Jinping met here Saturday with South Korean President Moon Jae-in on bilateral ties and the Korean Peninsula situation.
During the meeting on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Economic Leaders' Meeting, Xi told Moon that China and South Korea are close neighbors that can not move away and are natural cooperation partners.
The two countries share broad common interests in promoting their economic and social progress, and in realizing regional peace, stability and prosperity, said Xi.
He added that friendly exchanges and win-win cooperation have always been the main theme of China-South Korea diplomatic relations since they were forged 25 years ago, while China places importance on its relations with South Korea.
China stands ready to join hands with South Korea to push for the healthy and steady development of bilateral ties, Xi said, as good bilateral ties are in accordance with the trend of history and time, as well as the common expectation of the two peoples.
Noting that the China-South Korea relations are at a crucial stage, Xi said both sides need to respect each other's core interests and major concern, maintain political mutual trust, and enhance communication and coordination.
Xi reiterated China's stance on the issue of the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD).
He stressed that on such high-stake issues, the two sides should take an attitude that is responsible to history, to bilateral ties and to both peoples, and make decisions that can stand the test of history, so as to steadily move forward bilateral relations in the right direction.
Noting the important leading role of high-level interactions on bilateral ties, Xi welcomed South Korea's foreign minister to visit China this month.
Xi said the two countries need to make an over-all plan for developing bilateral ties in the next stage and discuss how to expand cooperation in international and regional affairs.
He urged both sides to deepen practical cooperation and communication in various fields, so as to better serve the interests of the two peoples.
Chinese President Xi Jinping (2nd R) meets with South Korean President Moon Jae-in in Da Nang, Vietnam, Nov. 11, 2017. (Xinhua/Ma Zhancheng)
Moon congratulated Xi on the successful conclusion of the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China (CPC) and his re-election as general secretary of the CPC Central Committee, saying he supports Xi's vision of building a community with a shared future for mankind.
South Korea supports the Belt and Road Initiative and is willing to actively participate in its implementation, he said, while calling for concerted efforts to resume bilateral high-level exchanges and cooperation in various fields as soon as possible.
South Korea attaches importance to China's concern on the THAAD issue, and has no intention to harm China's interests of strategic security, Moon said.
The two leaders also exchanged views on the Korean Peninsula situation.
Xi told Moon that China sincerely hopes for the best for the peninsula, and encourages South Korea to resume contact and dialogue with the Democratic People's Republic of Korea and restart cooperation for reconciliation.
China is willing to maintain communication with South Korea on promoting peace, stability and talks, as well as avoiding conflicts on the peninsula, said Xi.
South Korea appreciates China's positive role on the Korean Peninsula nuclear issue, stands ready to maintain close communication and coordination with China, and insists on solving the issue in a peaceful manner to protect peace on the peninsula, said Moon.
Last month, China and South Korea agreed to bring bilateral cooperation back to normal "as soon as possible."
"Enhancing communication and cooperation is in accordance with the common interests of China and South Korea. Both sides agree to return communication and cooperation in various fields to the normal track as soon as possible," the Chinese Foreign Ministry said in a statement.
Moon said days earlier that South Korea should rapidly develop relations with China, in accordance with the size of bilateral trade and beyond the issue on the U.S. THAAD missile interception system.
After attending the APEC meeting in Vietnam's Da Nang on Nov. 10-11, Xi will pay state visits to Vietnam and Laos on Nov. 12-14.
President Xi Jinping and his Chilean counterpart Michelle Bachelet witness the signing of a bilateral deal on upgrading the Free Trade Agreement (FTA) between the two countries in Da Nang, Vietnam, Nov 11, 2017. [Photo/Xinhua]
DA NANG, Vietnam - President Xi Jinping and his Chilean counterpart, Michelle Bachelet, on Saturday witnessed the signing of a bilateral deal on upgrading the Free Trade Agreement (FTA) between the two countries.
Xi underlined that this is China's first FTA upgrade completed with a Latin American country.
The upgraded agreement will unleash new impetus for the practical cooperation between China and Chile and set a new benchmark for China's cooperation with other Latin American countries as well as a new role model to the world, he said.
Bachelet congratulated Xi on the success of the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China and wished that greater achievements would be made in the implementation of the Belt and Road Initiative.
The Chile-China relationship has made many firsts in the course of developing relations between Latin America and China, said Bachelet, adding that her country will carry forward the pioneering spirit and advance the practical cooperation between the two sides.
Chile is the first Latin American country to sign a free trade agreement with China.
Negotiations for upgrading the FTA were initiated during Xi's state visit to Chile in November 2016 and the agreement was completed a year later.
President Xi Jinping attends the 25th Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Economic Leaders' Meeting in Da Nang, Vietnam, Nov 11, 2017. [Photo/Xinhua]
BEIJING - President Xi Jinping's remarks on economic globalization at the 25th Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Economic Leaders' Meeting in Da Nang, Vietnam, casts APEC in a new light and sets the course of future cooperation.
Addressing the summit Friday, Xi said globalization has contributed substantially to global growth for decades and is now irreversible.
"In pursuing economic globalization, we should make it more open and inclusive, more balanced, more equitable and beneficial to all," he said.
The remarks came barely one month after the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China (CPC), where Xi reaffirmed China's commitment to a new form of international relations characterized by mutual respect, fairness, justice and win-win cooperation.
"Xi's speech promotes peaceful development, economic prosperity and win-win cooperation in the Asia-Pacific region," said Zhao Gancheng of the Shanghai Institute for International Studies.
The latest evidence of China's commitment to economic globalization is more than 250 billion U.S. dollars worth of deals signed by Chinese and U.S. companies during U.S. President Donald Trump's state visit to China this week. The deals include purchases of Boeing aircraft, Ford automobiles, U.S. soybeans and joint development of liquified natural gas in Alaska.
As for regional cooperation, Xi told the 21 APEC members on Friday that an open economy which benefits all must be their goal, and should be pursued through innovation-driven development, with new growth drivers, better connectivity and acceptance of the interdependent nature of development.
Through the CPC congress to his APEC speech, Xi's thoughts on global governance have crystallized.
At the CPC congress, promoting the building of a community with a shared future for mankind was given as one of the 14 fundamental principles of Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era, and Xi reaffirmed China's principle of shared growth through discussion, collaboration and active engagement in global governance.
The Da Nang meeting's theme of "fostering new dynamism and creating a shared future" echoes the idea of a shared future for all.
"The shared future concept summarizes the development of economic integration in Asia-Pacific," said Liu Chenyang, director of the Nankai University APEC study center.
APEC members generate about 60 percent of global GDP and nearly half of world trade. Established in 1989, the forum gives leverage to the growing unity of the Asia-Pacific. China has advocated a fairer and more reasonable international order since it joined the bloc in 1991.
In 2014, the 22nd APEC Economic Leaders' Meeting in Beijing adopted a blueprint on regional connectivity, an important acknowledgement of the shared future of the Asia-Pacific.
"With China's economic rise and its foreign policy more clear, members of APEC have begun to accept Xi's vision of the future," said Zhao.
The Belt and Road Initiative, which comprises the Silk Road Economic Belt and the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road, illustrates well the philosophy and vision of a shared future, building trade and infrastructure networks connecting Asia with Europe and Africa.
At Friday's meeting, Xi declared his confidence that the Belt and Road Initiative would create a broader and more dynamic platform for Asia-Pacific cooperation.
"China has played a leading role as the world's second largest economy by contributing Chinese wisdom and strength to global governance," Zhao said.
Authorized by the United Nations, Panda Green Energy Group released the design of a customized Sustainable Development Goals power plant at the UN Climate Change Conference in Bonn, Germany on Thursday.
The design combines the UN logo, patterns of 17 sustainable development goals as well as the letters "SDG". The design will be presented with different colors of solar panels. According to the plan, the capacity will be 100 megawatts, occupying an area of approximately two million square meters.
The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development was achieved by 193 UN member states at 2015 United Nations Sustainable Development Summit. The agenda, carrying profound influence, laid out 17 sustainable development goals and 169 targets, aiming to mobilize global efforts to end poverty, foster peace, safeguard the rights and dignity of all people and protect the planet.
Panda Green entered the strategic cooperation with World Wildlife Fund Beijing Office and Shenzhen One Planet Foundation to build a new solar power plant in the shape of "WWF" in near future.
"Energy is the golden thread that connects all the Sustainable Development Goals," United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres told a high-level symposium on global energy interconnection at UN Headquarters in New York on Nov 1.
He said modern energy services are integral to poverty reduction, food security, public health and quality education for all. Moreover, they are the key to sustainable industrialization, healthier, more efficient cities and successful climate action.
Li Yuan, CEO of Panda Green, told China Daily the company will join hands with more best-in-class institutions such as WWF and the One Planet Foundation to build Panda Power Plants, serving as a role model in combating global climate change in the new era.
Panda Power Plants is the first panda-shaped solar power plant in the world. The capacity of its first-stage project is around 50 megawatts, equivalent to providing power for 120 Chinese families for a year.
President Xi Jinping arrives in the Vietnamese capital of Hanoi on Sunday for a state visit to the southeast Asian country. [Photo/Xinhua]
HANOI - President Xi Jinping, who is also general secretary of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee, arrived in the Vietnamese capital of Hanoi on Sunday for a state visit to the southeast Asian country.
It is Xi's second visit to Vietnam as China's head of state and top CPC leader.
Before flying to Hanoi, Xi concluded a busy two-day stay in Vietnam's central city of Da Nang, where he attended the 25th Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Economic Leaders' Meeting.
During his stay in Hanoi, Xi will hold talks with General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Vietnam (CPV) Nguyen Phu Trong and meet with Vietnamese President Tran Dai Quang and the Chairperson of the National Assembly of Vietnam, Nguyen Thi Kim Ngan.
The visit, which comes on the heels of the 19th CPC National Congress, is also reciprocal for previous visits to China by Trong and Quang earlier this year.
Trong made a four-day official visit to China in January, while Quang paid a state visit to China in May and attended the Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation in Beijing.
"The leaders of the two countries will have in-depth talks on promoting the relations between the two countries under the new circumstances, "said Chinese Ambassador to Vietnam Hong Xiaoyong.
In a signed article published on Nov 9 on Nhan Dan, the official newspaper of the CPV, Xi said China and Vietnam need, more than ever, to work in joint efforts in their pursuit of dreams of national strength and prosperity.
BEIJING Premier Li Keqiang left here on Sunday morning for an official visit to the Philippines and attending the 20th China-ASEAN (10+1) leaders' meeting in Manila at the invitation of Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte.
Li will also attend the 20th ASEAN-China, Japan and the Republic of Korea (10+3) leaders' meeting, and the 12th East Asia Summit.
Related: Premier's Philippines visit to promote cooperation with ASEAN neighbors
BEIJING - China's Ministry of Civil Affairs helped 3,000 lost people return to their families in the past 16 months, using the news provider toutiao.com mobile app.
Almost 2,000 agencies have posted information on the app since July 2016, Liu Tao, deputy director of the ministry department of social affairs, told a regular press conference last week.
Altogether 14,820 pieces of information were posted, with a success rate close to 20 percent, Liu said.
Among those reunited with their families, almost half suffer from mental disorders, according to Liu.
The elderly accounted for one third and minors 7.1 percent, Liu said.
They mostly lost contact with their families after wandering away, being abducted or being as a result of some criminal action.
Liu said the ministry will explore the use of facial recognition technology to assist the work.
Science fiction lovers wait for Liu Cixin, seated, an international science fiction prize winner, to sign his prize-winning novel during the 2017 China Science Fiction Conference held in Chengdu, Sichuan province on Saturday. [Photo by Huang Zhiling/China Daily]
Chengdu, capital of Southwest China's Sichuan province, will build the China Science Fiction Town with an investment of 12 billion yuan ($1.8 billion).
The town will consist of a base for the production of science fiction films and television programs, an incubator for science fiction authors and a so-called science fiction paradise. It will create between 6,000 and 8,000 jobs and draw 12 million visitors a year, said Chengdu mayor Luo Qiang.
He made the remarks during the 2017 China Science Fiction Conference held in his city Saturday.
The three-day conference, which ends on Sunday, has drawn some 200 participants from home and abroad. With the aim of spreading science and promoting the creation of science fiction, the China Science Fiction Conference is the country's only state-level conference in the science fiction sector.
The first conference was held in Beijing in 2016. In the wake of the 2017 conference in Chengdu, it will be permanently held in the city every two years, said Wan Shihong, vice president of the Science Fiction World magazine.
Launched in Chengdu in 1979, Science Fiction World is the world's largest science fiction magazine in terms of circulation.
The magazine is one of the organizers of the Fourth Chengdu International Science Fiction Conference, held together with the 2017 China Science Fiction Conference.
The Chengdu International Science Fiction Conference was held in 1991, 1997 and 2007.
Authorities released an official reply on Friday to an open letter about rice laced with cadmium in Jiujiang in East China's Jiangxi province. An investigation was made at the scene and at the same time the tainted rice was collected and rendered harmless after treatment, as reported by Beijing Youth Daily.
A public letter issued by a volunteer via social media on Nov 6 said that the cadmium that existed in the paddy near two villagers' homes exceeded the allowed amount in different degrees, as revealed in a third institution's test during the rice harvest near Gangkou Street in Jiujiang.
"Meanwhile the content of cadmium and arsenic from the irrigation water source at the farm and in the bottom of East Lake, a migrant bird habitat, also exceeded limits," the letter added.
Some detailed inspection results showed pollution levels exceeded the threshold of soil pollution, according to the report. The cadmium content in the soil was 0.312 mg/kg, 1.56 times the national standard. Arsenic also reached 7.13 times the soil pollution standard.
A copper sulfide mine nearby that drained sewage for a long term was cited in the letter as the source of the pollution. Established in June 1988, the mine's wastewater had gone through the village to East Lake.
The mine had been ordered to suspend operations on Aug 30, according to the official reply. Third party institutions were hired to investigate the pollution and prepare treatment plans.
Chinese Minister of Culture Luo Shugang and his Japanese and South Korean counterparts Yoshimasa Hayashi and Do Jong-whan attended the ninth China-Japan-ROK Cultural Ministers' Meeting on Aug 26, 2017. [Photo/Xinhua]
Japan and the Republic of Korea, both US allies, watched closely how the other hosted US President Donald Trump when he visited the two countries last week. Compared with his one-night stay in Seoul, Trump's three-day visit to Tokyo gave Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe more time to tee off and talk with the US president.
Also, the news that Trump and Abe have reached a consensus on building a free and fair "Indo-Pacific region" made some ROK newspapers speculate whether Seoul's diplomatic influence was waning.
Days before her father's first Asia visit as US president, Ivanka Trump visited Tokyo to address the World Assembly for Women. Abe stood at the doorstep of a restaurant for 13 minutes just to give her a treat, and pledged $50 million to a women's entrepreneurship fund initiated by Ivanka. The ROK media jeered Abe for paying such "obeisance" to Trump and his daughter.
During his visit, Trump addressed Abe by his first name, Shinzo, displaying a close personal bond between them, which Japanese officials and media preferred to call the "honeymoon" bond. Throughout Trump's stay, the two exhibited their "bromance", heaping lavish praise upon each other as exchanging fist-bumps on the fairway and told the world at their joint press conference that Tokyo and Washington "have never been closer".
The two leaders said their countries' alliance is "unshakable", although Trump made no bones about Japan's "massive" trade surplus, nearly $70 billion last year, and said he was committed to establishing a "fair, free and reciprocal" trading relationship with Japan.
After Trump landed in Seoul, it was Japan's turn to observe the proceedings.
Tokyo protested against the invitees to the banquet ROK President Moon Jae-in hosted for Trump on Tuesday night. The reason: an 88-year-old guest was one of the few surviving "comfort women", a euphemism for the tens of thousands of women, mostly from Asian countries, forced to serve as sex slaves of Japanese soldiers before and during World War II. Japanese Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga said the "comfort woman" should not have been invited because Japan and the ROK reached an agreement in 2015 to "finally and irreversibly" settle the issue.
Japan was not happy also because the shrimps served at the banquet were from the waters off a pair of islets that are at the center of a dispute between the two countries. They are known as Dokdo in the ROK and Takeshima in Japan.
Given that greater coordination among the United States, Japan and the ROK is required to deal with the Democratic People's Republic of Korea's nuclear issue, and that Trump chose Japan and the ROK as the first stops on his Asia visit, Suga said there is a need to avoid making moves that could weaken the "close coordination" among the three sides.
Trump's visit to the ROK has once again brought to the fore the frictions between the US' two allies. And Trump on his part, before leaving the ROK, tweeted that his visit to Japan and friendship with Abe will yield many benefits for the US while highlighting the "massive military and energy orders" he expects.
Trump's expectation will be a very good excuse for Japan to enlarge its defense budget, which has risen every year since Abe returned to power in December 2012. Japan has already decided to purchase 42 F-35 aircraft and introduce the expanded "Aegis Ashore" ground-based defense system. Next year, it will upgrade its Mid-Term Defense Program for 2019-23.
Both Japan and the ROK want to strengthen their respective alliance with the US. And some experts say it is time the US, Japan and the ROK built up a military alliance, too, which Moon has dismissed. The feud between Tokyo and Seoul will only make that even more difficult.
The author is China Daily Tokyo bureau chief.
caihong@chinadaily.com.cn
President Xi Jinping (R) meets with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in Da Nang, Vietnam, Nov 11, 2017. [Photo/Xinhua]
DA NANG, Vietnam - Chinese President Xi Jinping met with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe here Saturday, urging Japan to take more "practical actions" to improve ties with China and properly manage differences between the two countries in a "constructive way."
"To improve China-Japan ties, the key is mutual trust," Xi told Abe on the sidelines of the 25th Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Economic Leaders' Meeting in Vietnam's central city of Da Nang.
He urged the Japanese side to take more practical actions and adopt more specific policies to reflect the strategic consensus reached by the two countries, which reaffirms that China and Japan are cooperation partners, not threat to each other.
On history, Taiwan and other major issues of principle concerning the political foundation of the China-Japan relations, the Japanese side should always act in light of the four political documents and the consensus reached by the two sides, Xi said.
A constructive way should be used to manage and control the differences between the two countries, he said.
As China and Japan are neighbors and major economies in Asia and the world, a stable development of China-Japan relationship conforms to the interests of both sides and also has an important influence on the region and the world at large, Xi said.
This year marks the 45th anniversary of the normalization of diplomatic relations between China and Japan, and next year will mark the 40th anniversary of the signing of the China-Japan Treaty of Peace and Friendship.
The two sides should, bearing in mind the fundamental interests of the two peoples, correctly grasp the general direction of peace, friendship and cooperation, and work to enable the bilateral relations to keep improving and developing for the better through unremitting efforts and accumulating positive factors, Xi said.
Xi pointed out that mutually beneficial cooperation is the momentum to drive the China-Japan ties forward, and the two sides should improve the level of pragmatic cooperation in the new situation.
He suggested the two countries promote regional economic integration, and push for cooperation within the framework of the Belt and Road Initiative at an early date.
The two sides should continue to increase exchanges on culture, media and youths, and can also strengthen people-to-people bond through carrying out cooperation on Olympics as China will host the Winter Olympic Games in 2022 and Japan will host the Summer Olympics in 2020, Xi added.
Abe extended his congratulations on the success of the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China (CPC), which was held last month, and on Xi's re-election as general secretary of the CPC Central Committee.
He said the Japanese side is willing to work with China to push for the development of the strategic mutually-beneficial relationship between the two countries by marking the 40th anniversary of the signing of the China-Japan Treaty of Peace and Friendship next year.
Japan hopes to increase high-level exchanges with China, carry out reciprocal economic and trade cooperation, and explore cooperation in connectivity and under the Belt and Road Initiative, he said.
Abe also agreed to deepen exchanges on tourism, culture, youths and Olympics.
President Xi Jinping meets with Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte in Da Nang, Vietnam, Nov 11, 2017. [Photo/Xinhua]
DA NANG, Vietnam - President Xi Jinping Saturday met with Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte on strengthening bilateral ties on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Economic Leaders' Meeting.
Xi said that since Duterte's visit to China in October last year, bilateral ties have opened a new chapter.
With the two countries' cooperation enhanced, China-Philippines relations have seen healthy and stable development, bringing tangible benefits to both peoples and contributing to the region's peace and stability, he added.
Xi said good-neighborliness and friendliness is the right direction guiding China-Philippines relations, and China, together with the Philippines, is willing to continue considering the bilateral ties from a strategic and long-term perspective, enhancing political mutual trust, deepening cooperation and bringing more benefits to the two peoples.
Xi said the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China (CPC) concluded last month set the goal for China for a period in the future.
China's development needs an environment of lasting peace and stability, he added, noting that China will continue the road of peaceful development, as well as opening up and win-win cooperation.
China will treat neighboring countries with amity, sincerity, mutual benefit and inclusiveness, pushing forward the building of a community with a shared future for mankind, said Xi.
He said relations between the two countries stand on a new starting point, adding that they should enhance high-level exchanges, so as to ensure the development of bilateral relations on a right track.
He said the two sides should align the Belt and Road Initiative with the Philippines' development strategy, and deepen practical cooperation in infrastructure, agriculture, investment and other areas.
Xi said China is willing to offer assistance to the Philippines on poverty reduction, and continue support for the Philippine government's effort to safeguard national security.
Xi also said China is to work with ASEAN countries to maintain peace and stability, as well as development and prosperity in the South China Sea region.
Noting the great importance of bilateral ties, Duterte said the Philippines regards China as a sincere friend and is grateful for China's assistance on economy, anti-terrorism and maintaining stability.
He said the Philippines is willing to properly handle maritime issues through bilateral channels in accordance with consensus reached by the two sides.
President Xi Jinping (R) meets with Republic of Korea's President Moon Jae-in in Da Nang, Vietnam, Nov 11, 2017. [Photo/Xinhua]
DA NANG, Vietnam - President Xi Jinping met here Saturday with the Republic of Korea's President Moon Jae-in on bilateral ties and the Korean Peninsula situation.
During the meeting on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Economic Leaders' Meeting, Xi told Moon that China and ROK are close neighbors that can not move away and are natural cooperation partners.
The two countries share broad common interests in promoting their economic and social progress, and in realizing regional peace, stability and prosperity, said Xi.
He added that friendly exchanges and win-win cooperation have always been the main theme of China-ROK diplomatic relations since they were forged 25 years ago, while China places importance on its relations with ROK.
China stands ready to join hands with ROK to push for the healthy and steady development of bilateral ties, Xi said, as good bilateral ties are in accordance with the trend of history and time, as well as the common expectation of the two peoples.
Noting that the China-ROK relations are at a crucial stage, Xi said both sides need to respect each other's core interests and major concern, maintain political mutual trust, and enhance communication and coordination.
Xi reiterated China's stance on the issue of the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD).
He stressed that on such high-stake issues, the two sides should take an attitude that is responsible to history, to bilateral ties and to both peoples, and make decisions that can stand the test of history, so as to steadily move forward bilateral relations in the right direction.
Noting the important leading role of high-level interactions on bilateral ties, Xi welcomed ROK's foreign minister to visit China this month.
Xi said the two countries need to make an over-all plan for developing bilateral ties in the next stage and discuss how to expand cooperation in international and regional affairs.
He urged both sides to deepen practical cooperation and communication in various fields, so as to better serve the interests of the two peoples.
Moon congratulated Xi on the successful conclusion of the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China (CPC) and his re-election as general secretary of the CPC Central Committee, saying he supports Xi's vision of building a community with a shared future for mankind.
ROK supports the Belt and Road Initiative and is willing to actively participate in its implementation, he said, while calling for concerted efforts to resume bilateral high-level exchanges and cooperation in various fields as soon as possible.
ROK attaches importance to China's concern on the THAAD issue, and has no intention to harm China's interests of strategic security, Moon said.
The two leaders also exchanged views on the Korean Peninsula situation.
Xi told Moon that China sincerely hopes for the best for the peninsula, and encourages ROK to resume contact and dialogue with the Democratic People's Republic of Korea and restart cooperation for reconciliation.
China is willing to maintain communication with ROK on promoting peace, stability and talks, as well as avoiding conflicts on the peninsula, said Xi.
ROK appreciates China's positive role on the Korean Peninsula nuclear issue, stands ready to maintain close communication and coordination with China, and insists on solving the issue in a peaceful manner to protect peace on the peninsula, said Moon.
Last month, China and ROK agreed to bring bilateral cooperation back to normal "as soon as possible."
"Enhancing communication and cooperation is in accordance with the common interests of China and ROK. Both sides agree to return communication and cooperation in various fields to the normal track as soon as possible," the Chinese Foreign Ministry said in a statement.
Moon said days earlier that ROK should rapidly develop relations with China, in accordance with the size of bilateral trade and beyond the issue on the US THAAD missile interception system.
After attending the APEC meeting in Vietnam's Da Nang on Nov 10-11, Xi will pay state visits to Vietnam and Laos on Nov 12-14.
President Xi Jinping (L) meets with Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc in Da Nang, Vietnam, Nov 11, 2017.[Photo/Xinhua]
DA NANG, Vietnam - President Xi Jinping met here Saturday with Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc, urging the two neighbors to extend the breadth and depth of their comprehensive strategic cooperation.
Xi also extended his sincere condolences over the heavy casualties and property loss caused by Typhoon Damrey in southern and central Vietnam, saying that China will support Vietnam's rescue and relief efforts.
He stressed that under the leadership of the Communist Party of Vietnam (CPV) and the Vietnamese government, people in the affected areas will certainly be able to overcome the disaster and resume normal work and life as soon as possible.
Xi will fly to the Vietnamese capital of Hanoi on Sunday to start his state visit to the country.
He expressed satisfaction on the current development momentum of China-Vietnam ties, which now feature frequent high-level visits, deepening practical cooperation, vigorous people-to-people exchanges and close coordination on multilateral occasions.
China attaches great importance to ties with Vietnam, said Xi, adding that he hopes to have in-depth exchanges of views with Vietnamese leaders on relations between the two parties and the two countries as well as issues of common concern, so as to open a new chapter for the two countries' comprehensive strategic cooperative partnership.
The international and regional patterns are undergoing profound and complicated changes, while the reform and development of China and Vietnam are also at a crucial period, said Xi.
He suggested the two sides expand the breadth and depth of their comprehensive strategic cooperation and realize lasting peace and stability of the two socialist countries led by Communist parties.
China and Vietnam should maintain high-level contacts, strengthen strategic communication, and deepen experience sharing on party and state governance, he said.
He called on the two countries to speed up the alignment of their development initiatives -- the China-proposed Belt and Road Initiative and Vietnam's "Two Corridors and One Economic Circle" plan -- and deepen cooperation in such areas as economy and trade, finance, production capacity and infrastructure construction, so as to achieve mutual beneficial and win-win results.
The Chinese president called for more dynamic people-to-people exchanges to promote mutual understanding and friendship between people of the two countries.
He also suggested that both sides should properly deal with divergences to ensure the relations between the two parties and the two countries always move forward along the right direction.
For his part, Phuc thanked Xi for choosing Vietnam as his first overseas destination after the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China (CPC).
He also extended warm congratulations on the elevation of Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era into the party's guiding principles during the landmark congress and on Xi's re-election as general secretary of the CPC Central Committee.
Vietnam cherishes the traditional friendship with China and is happy to see the success of China's economic and social development, which Vietnam views as great achievements of socialist construction, said Phuc.
To upgrade Vietnam-China relations is the priority of Vietnam's foreign policy, he said, adding that Vietnam hopes to enhance cooperation with China in such fields as investment, trade, production capacity, science and technology, agriculture, electricity, infrastructure and the construction of cross-border economic cooperation zones.
Vietnam is committed to enhancing the level of bilateral cooperation, said Phuc, noting that Vietnam would dock its "Two Corridors and One Economic Circle" plan with the China-proposed Belt and Road Initiative and beef up cooperation with China in tourism, culture and local affairs.
The meeting was held on the sidelines of the 25th Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Economic Leaders' Meeting.
A delegation of 120 senior travel and tourism professionals from China is visiting Dublin this weekend.
(From left to right) Gao Zhongyin, Head of Delegation and Director General of Shaanxi Provincial Tourism Development Commission, Ceann Comhairle Sean O Fearghail, Dr Yue Xiaoyong, Chinese Ambassador to Ireland and Niall Gibbons, CEO of Tourism Ireland, at China Tourism Night in Dublin.
Representing 19 different provincial tourism administrations around China, the visiting group is here to attend China Tourism Night, which took place in Dublin Friday. The event was organized by the China National Tourism Administration (CNTA), the Chinese government authority responsible for the development of tourism.
The event involved workshops and a networking dinner, where the visiting Chinese group had the opportunity to share knowledge, experience and best practices with their Irish counterparts. It also was an excellent opportunity to build relationships between the tourism industries in Ireland and China. Similar events have taken place in London, in 2014 and 2016.
Dr Yue Xiaoyong, Chinese Ambassador to Ireland, as well as Ceann Comhairle Sean O Fearghail, the speaker of the Dail Eireann, the lower house of Ireland's parliament, were in attendance.
I am delighted that the China National Tourism Administration has chosen Dublin for its 2017 China Tourism Night, said Niall Gibbons, CEO of Tourism Ireland. The event and the visit provide an excellent opportunity to showcase Dublin and Ireland to this influential group of Chinese travel professionals. We look forward to working even more closely with the CNTA and regional Chinese tourism bodies in 2018, the special EU-China Year of Tourism.
China is an important emerging travel market and one that Tourism Ireland is committed to growing over the coming years. According to the latest data from the United Nations World Tourism Organization, China is now the worlds largest outbound travel market with 122 million people traveling overseas last year, spending about $261 billion.
Tourism Ireland has a strong network in China, with offices in Shanghai, Beijing, Guangzhou and Chengdu. The organization's activity in China involves establishing and building relationships with influential intermediaries, including the travel trade, airlines and media highlighting Ireland's natural attractions, cities, castles and proximity to Britain. The Chinese version of Tourism Irelands international website is www.ireland.com/zh-cn. Social media is increasingly important in helping to raise awareness of Northern Ireland and the island of Ireland in this mobile-dominant country.
Chinese Premier Li Keqiang (R, front) arrives in Manila, the Philippines, Nov 12, 2017, for an official visit to the Philippines and a series of leaders' meetings on East Asian cooperation. [Photo/Xinhua]
MANILA - Chinese Premier Li Keqiang arrived in the Philippines Sunday for an official visit and a series of leaders' meetings on East Asian cooperation.
During his five-day stay, Li is scheduled to attend the 20th China-ASEAN (the Association of Southeast Asian Nations) (10+1) leaders' meeting, the 20th ASEAN-China, Japan and Republic of Korea (10+3) leaders' meeting and the 12th East Asia Summit.
This is Li's first overseas trip since the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China (CPC), and is expected to deepen friendly cooperation with the Philippines, promote China-ASEAN ties and enhance regional cooperation in East Asia, Chinese authorities said ahead of the visit.
In Manila, Li will brief the leaders on the spirits of the 19th CPC National Congress as well as China's stance and policy on cooperation in East Asia, said Chinese Assistant Foreign Minister Chen Xiaodong in a press briefing earlier this week.
The Chinese premier will propose nearly 30 new initiatives under various mechanisms to deepen practical cooperation on interconnectivity, food security, poverty reduction, tourism and anti-corruption, Chen added.
In addition, Li will attend the leaders' meeting on Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), a free trade pact involving the 10 ASEAN members and six other countries - China, India, Japan, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand.
During the visit, the Chinese premier will also hold talks with Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte on bilateral ties and issues of common concern.
In a signed article published by major Philippine newspapers prior to his trip, Li said he hoped the visit would help enhance the friendship between the two peoples, deepen bilateral cooperation and open new prospects for China-Philippines relations.
It is the first visit to the Philippines made by a Chinese premier in 10 years.
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Xi Jinping, general secretary of the Communist Party of China Central Committee, walks with Nguyen Phu Trong, Xi's counterpart in Vietnam's Communist Party, during a welcoming ceremony in Hanoi on Sunday. FENG YONGBIN / CHINA DAILY
China and Vietnam signed documents to boost cooperation in such areas as the economy, investment, finance and cultural exchanges on Sunday during President Xi Jinping's state visit to the neighboring country.
The signing ceremony was witnessed by Xi, who is also general secretary of the Communist Party of China Central Committee, and Nguyen Phu Trong, general secretary of the Communist Party of Vietnam Central Committee.
The two countries will boost cooperation in building the Belt and Road, the economy and trade, as well as developing renewable energy and training officials.
Xi's visit marks an unprecedented level of exchanges between the top leaders of the two nations following Trong's visit to China in January and Vietnamese President Tran Dai Quang's visit in May.
It is also Xi's first trip overseas since the CPC's 19th National Congress. The congress elected a new CPC Central Committee.
During their talks, Xi and Trong agreed that the two nations, led by communist parties, should learn from each other, inject new impetus into each other's social development and make contributions to world peace, stability and prosperity.
They also agreed to properly handle maritime issues in accordance with the consensus reached by the leaders of the two countries, push forward cooperation including joint exploitation of resources, and be dedicated to maintaining the peace and stability of the South China Sea.
Xi expressed gratitude for the congratulatory message sent by the Communist Party of Vietnam and Trong on the success of the recent congress and Xi's re-election as general secretary.
The Communist Party of Vietnam has led the Vietnamese people to make remarkable progress and find an appropriate development strategy since the country started its reform and opening-up three decades ago, Xi said.
Noting that it is his second state visit to Vietnam, after the first in 2015, Xi expressed gratitude for the warm, considerate reception from the Vietnamese party, government and people.
When Xi's plane arrived in Hanoi, local people wearing Vietnamese traditional clothes greeted the Chinese delegation, holding the flags of both countries. Local people also gathered in front of Xi's hotel to welcome the delegation when his car arrived.
Calling Xi a kindly comrade and old friend of the Vietnamese people, Trong said Xi has made especially important contributions to Vietnam-China relations and once again congratulated him.
Trong said that the fact that it is Xi's first trip overseas after the congress shows the high level of attention of the CPC and Xi to advancing Vietnam-China relations.
Trong expressed gratitude for China's support of the APEC Economic Leaders' Week held in Da Nang, saying that China has made important contributions to regional and global peace and stability.
Xi attended the APEC Economic Leaders' Meeting held on Friday and Saturday in Da Nang, where he gave a speech that gained global attention with his proposal to boost open economies.
Zhang Mingliang, a researcher at the School of International Studies of Jinan University, said that both China and Vietnam attach great importance to bilateral relations and are willing to consolidate bilateral ties through high-level exchanges.
Strengthening mutual trust among the public and enhancing communication between the people of the two countries will help to enhance political trust, he said.
Through the idea of mutual benefit, China and Vietnam can find a solution to maritime disputes that benefits and is accepted by both countries, he added.
China and Vietnam have made pioneering moves to manage their differences, according to Ruan Zongze, vice-president of the China Institute of International Studies.
Previous success and experience in solving territorial disputes have given the two countries confidence, which will help in finding solutions through negotiation, Ruan said.
As close neighbors with highly complementary economies, China and Vietnam will promote cooperation in infrastructure construction and connectivity, Ruan said.
Vietnam is actively promoting China-ASEAN cooperation, he said, and the free trade agreement between China and ASEAN will also create favorable conditions for the two nations' development.
"China-Vietnam relations are special and have a long history," Ruan said, adding that strengthened communication in governance between the two countries and the two parties will help to enhance political trust.
He noted that high-level exchanges play an important role in guiding and leading bilateral ties, which are driven by the "two engines" of relations between the two parties and countries.
With the two countries having entered a new development period, high-level exchanges will create more opportunities for bilateral cooperation, he said.
Chinese premier's signed article lauds China-Philippines relations
Xinhua | Updated: 2017-11-12 22:25
MANILA - Chinese Premier Li Keqiang, in a signed article published on Sunday, lauded the China-Philippines relationship as "seeing a rainbow after the storm and showing a good momentum across the board".
In the article titled "Opening a new chapter of China-Philippines relations," Li said that since the complete turnaround in bilateral ties during Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte's successful visit to China in October 2016, the two sides have developed closer high-level exchanges and have advanced practical cooperation on all fronts with fruitful results.
The article could be seen on major Philippine newspapers including the Manila Times and the Philippine Star.
The two sides have signed over 20 cooperation documents at the governmental or departmental levels and identified a number of priority infrastructure projects, which are making important progress, the article wrote.
The first 10 months of this year also saw China become the Philippines' biggest trading partner, on the back of a surge in Philippine exports to China, it added.
The article also noted that the Chinese people and the Philippine people share a close bond and a long history of friendly association, which could be traced back to the periods of China's Tang (618 AD.-907 AD) and Song (960 AD-1279 AD) dynasties.
"In the context of our thousand-year friendly interactions, our differences are but brief interludes that will neither weaken our commitment to good neighborliness and friendship nor shake the solid foundation of our relations as good neighbors, good friends and good brothers," it wrote.
To take bilateral relations forward, Li stressed three aspects, namely good faith and sincerity, results-oriented cooperation, as well as affinity between the two peoples.
"China will work with the Philippines to continue to properly handle the maritime issues through friendly bilateral consultation by giving full play to such mechanisms as the Bilateral Consultation Mechanism on the South China Sea and the Joint Coast Guard Committee on Maritime Cooperation," the article wrote.
Li arrived here Sunday for an official visit to the Philippines and for a series of leaders' meetings on East Asian cooperation.
It is the first visit to the Philippines made by a Chinese premier in 10 years.
I had the privilege or reading a pre-release version of "God Shines Forth: How the Nature of God Shapes and Drives the Mission of the Church." Here are 20 quotes from the book, which you should pick up.
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It was the bloodiest year of the Vietnam War. During those 365 merciless days, the United States suffered 14,584 casualties, an average of 40 men per day. By war's end, an unbearable 58,220 casualties were recorded in the 20-year war that was so unpopular back home that protesters would confront those serving and lashed out at the defenseless war dead by spitting on their caskets.
It was only part of the pain of war felt by the families who knew the sting of losing loved ones.
While Veterans Day, or Remembrance Day as many older generations recall it, is reserved to celebrate the living veterans, Liberty ISD students remembered those who gave the ultimate sacrifice and gave thanks for those who came home to grateful families.
With rich poems penned at the hands of Liberty High School students, soul-stirring music by the band and choir, a contemporary dance by the LHS color guard and an ensemble performance by the American Sign Language class, every part of the ceremony tugged at the heart-strings of every patriot present in the competition gymnasium of Liberty High School.
Tears began to flow as ASL students performed to "God Bless The USA," and a river of tears came as Taps echoed throughout the student body and guests gathered in that solemn room.
A lot of it came as students listened intently and spell-bound as guest speaker Staff Sgt. David Dillard related his story of a fateful day in the jungles of Vietnam.
"It was about 4:30 in the afternoon when I heard a rooster crow. I was a farm boy from Northern California and hearing a rooster crow in the afternoon wasn't any unusual thing, but where I was I shouldn't have heard it because chickens don't live in the jungle. And that's where I was with 88 other paratroopers," Dillard said. "We were an Airborne Infantry Company. We were out there trying to find some newcomers that had crossed over the Cambodian border and swept away in Saigon and raised all kinds of havoc in an offensive called 'The Tet' of 1968."
Their offensive failed and pushed back into the jungle and American personnel were chasing them, trying to find them before they crossed back over into Cambodia.
"And when I heard that rooster crow, we knew that the enemy did carry their livestock with them. For them to have pigs, goats and chickens wasn't unusual and that could mean that we were very close. I was a radio telephone operator (RTO). The year was 1968. I was 18 years old. I worked for the company commander, the captain, but we called him the old man, but he wasn't. He was 25 years old himself," Dillard said.
And that's how Dillard began his 20-minute speech to Liberty Middle School and Liberty High School students, teachers and staff.
The compelling story drew tears, laughter, and plenty of applause for the California staff sergeant whose victory on the battlefield after being hit by shrapnel was to return home to his family. That, he says, was his Medal of Honor. He was able to go to college. He was able to return to life. He survived.
He volunteered to serve when he turned 17.
"I was born on a farm out in the country in Northern California where people don't live," he told the Dayton News.
"My father was a tanker in the Pacific in World War II. We were always taught to serve the country. It was part of our duty. I volunteered and wanted to be a paratrooper," he said, and he got his wish - good or bad. "Be careful for what you wish for."
Dillard stayed in the service for eight years. Following his first stint in Vietnam, the military sent him back to Fort Bragg, N.C., to join back up with the 82nd Airborne.
He was there for 18-19 months and then they sent him back for a second tour in Vietnam.
"I did two tours with the infantry. It was a lot better the second tour because 1968 was a tough year. We lost almost 30,000 that year alone," he said.
In 1974, he and the Army parted ways. He immediately had to go into hiding.
"I was a Vietnam veteran and that was something you didn't want people to know," he said, because of the political climate.
Dillard started college. He says he thought the best way to hide was to be somebody he wasn't, so he majored in theater.
"I graduated from San Francisco State University in 1982 in theater and have been on the San Francisco stage quite a bit," he said.
His talent took him from the stage to the screen where he did numerous commercials and bit parts in the industry.
He later moved into corporate communications and freight forwarding, moving freight around the world.
He retired and moved from California to the great state of Texas in 2005 and he and his wife Susie live in Livingston.
He works with MOTH, a New York-based operation, a dedicated group of professional storytellers. They tell their stories to groups and his Vietnam story can now be heard on National Public Radio along with some of his colleagues. They began on Nov. 7 with more than 500 stations broadcasting the same story he told Liberty ISD students.
"I hear rooster crows a lot, but there are certainly times you hear it and it brings back those memories again," he said.
He still has hearing issues.
"I've never heard the same since that night," he said about the explosion and shelling.
He also is involved with his foundation, the Hometown Release Foundation.
They go out with a film crew and listen to the stories of veterans of every branch.
He is also now working on two documentaries with his friend Morton Dean.
Dean is telling the story of Bucha and Dillard and their lifelong friendship, from the battlefield to business.
He served with Medal of Honor recipient Paul Bucha and still talk to one another weekly.
"Having the Medal of Honor is a heavy burden, and every time he speaks about it, he says he accepted it for all of us in his platoon," Dillard said.
A heartwarming experience for all at the conclusion of the ceremony occurred when students lined up impromptu to walk by and shake hands with the veterans and offer them their thanks and gratitude.
Dear neighbors,
It deeply saddens me to hear about the recent shooting in Sutherland Springs. My thoughts and prayers go out to the victims and their families. When situations like this arise, mental health is always a concern. To put it simply, I believe that mental illness is a topic that we have neglected far too long, and unfortunately, have left to our state corrections system to address.
One only has to take a peek behind the walls of our local jails and prisons in order to see that it is a concern that Texans cannot afford to sweep under the rug. I am pleased to say that the Legislature made great strides with mental health this past session and we continue to work to improve it.
During the 85th Legislative Session, crucial mental health reforms were passed to address needs in Texas. The treatment and care for those suffering from mental illness has been revamped and this is great news for all of us considering the amount of individuals who suffer. It is estimated that there are just as many Texans with family and friends dealing with a mental health issue as there are Texans who know someone with cancer.
I firmly believe TDCJ should not bear the burden of our State's mental health crisis, especially within our own backyard. Senate Bill 292, House Bill 10 and Senate Bill 74 are all new laws which specifically addresses the issue.
- SB 292 reduces the number of people with a mental illness languishing behind bars, primarily by using grants to increase jail diversion programs.
- HB 10 helps guarantee that insurance companies regard mental health coverage in the same fashion as physical health coverage.
- SB 74 is expected to increase statewide capacity for targeted case management and rehabilitative services for high-needs children, and their families. This will help an estimated 4,000 foster children.
Within HD 18, we are fortunate to have providers in all three counties, which includes: Huntsville Memorial Hospital (HMH) in Walker County; Tri-County Behavioral Healthcare serving Walker and Liberty counties; The Burke Center serving San Jacinto County; and the Texas Rural Hospital (formerly known as the Cleveland Regional Medical Center) in Liberty County.
Having these facilities is important in our district to help address mental health issues here in our local community and in the surrounding areas.
During the interim, it's important for the legislature to continue working to address these mental health needs. There are several interim charges that have been identified to focus on these issues.
The Texas House is looking to for the best way to improve identifying and treating mental illness in children, focusing on both trauma and grief. This would include utilizing the Texas Education Agency (TEA) and the region Education Service Centers to provide resources for teachers and school administration to identify and understand health services for the children who need them most.
I'm hopeful our committee work that will be done during the interim, and the continued conversations will provide a better chance and voice for change in mental health in our rural communities. As always, if you have any questions about mental health or if there is anything I can do, please contact my office at 936-628-6687 or by email at district18bailes@house.texas.gov.
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When Jason and Rachel Butler bought a tract of land in Montgomery, it seemed the perfect place to live out their dreams.
They could spread out and raise their children, have room for their dog to run.
But early Sunday, during a fight on the way back from his 20th high-school reunion, Jason Butler allegedly shot his wife of three years before killing himself in the driveway of that new Waterstone Court home.
Now Playing: A Montgomery County man is dead after allegedly shooting his wife in an attempted murder-suicide following a Saturday night reunion. Video: Scott Engle/Montgomery County Police Reporter
The shooting came barely a month after the 26-year-old mother of two had filed for divorce, citing "discord or conflict of personalities," according to court records.
While the beloved salon owner recovers from a gunshot to her chest in intensive care, some friends and family wondered what went wrong.
"Nothing that I have heard today sounds like my friend - nothing," said Danny Pechal, who'd known Jason for two decades.
The 39-year-old's friends admitted he'd hit a rough patch. But, seemingly, he'd come through it with a newfound faith.
The week before the shooting, Butler took to Facebook with an effusive post celebrating his birthday and family.
"I just want to sincerely thank each and everyone for the birthday wishes," he wrote. "I am truly a blessed man and by God's grace have people who touch me in such a way I can only thank him for leading me down whatever path he wants me to go on."
He went on to thank his wife and "two awesome babies" for a beautiful birthday dinner.
Four days later, just after midnight, the couple argued in the car on the way back from his high school reunion, Rachel later told investigators with the Montgomery County Sheriff's Office.
"They had some type of altercation that was verbal at first but then became physical," Lt. John Schmitt said. "It continued to the house, and when they got here, there was evidence that there may have been another physical disturbance here."
Eventually Jason ran out to his truck to fetch a Ruger semi-automatic handgun from the glove box, authorities said.
He allegedly shot his wife at least once before shooting himself in the head in the driveway.
The wounded woman called 911 around 12:10 a.m. to report the shooting. First responders rushed her to Conroe Regional Hospital. She was listed in serious but stable condition, deputies said. She's not expected to need surgery, her friend told the Chronicle.
"She will be in there at least a week," Courtney Lee Stiles said. "She is still in a lot of pain."
Jason was found dead outside. The Montgomery County Forensics Center will conduct an autopsy.
The Butlers' two children - ages 2 and 6 - were with his sister at the time, so they didn't witness the shootings and were not harmed.
As news of the tragedy traveled, the couple's friends poured out their grief, some mourning Jason and others describing Rachel as "strong, beautiful and courageous."
"We are in shock but leaning on God for peace and understanding," Stiles wrote on Facebook. "Please keep her and her family in your prayers."
Houston police have charged a man with intoxication manslaughter after a crash early Sunday that killed one of his passengers.
Luis Mendez, 24, was arrested and charged after the car he was driving hit a retaining wall along the South Sam Houston Parkway West service road, police said.
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Officials with the U.S. Small Business Administration want business owners who are still struggling from the impact of Hurricane Harvey to know they can still get help through the SBA.
It's been nearly three months since Harvey hit, but the livelihoods of scores of small-business owners across the region remain in jeopardy as they struggle to rebuild, or at least regain income lost as a result of the hurricane.
With an entrepreneurial spirit and typically an independent streak, owners of shops, stores and small companies enjoy the benefits of working free of confining corporate structures and rules. But they also walk a financial tightrope when a disaster strikes, because when their business has to close for the day, for weeks, or longer, no income comes in. And unlike those who work in the corporate world, small business owners have no guarantee of a paycheck this week, next week or any time in the future.
Charles Abell, a public affairs specialist with the SBA, said in an effort to help continue to get the word out about programs for loans, officials the SBA continues to host a series of seminars to let small business owners know what kind help is available from the agency, including disaster loans.
The loans that are still available are not only open to business owners of all sizes, but also for private non-profit organizations, homeowners and renters who experienced financial losses because of Harvey between the dates of Aug. 24 and Sept. 15.
"We will continue to do these workshops at least once a month in this area," said Charles Abell, SBA public affairs specialist.
During a workshop at Lone Star College-Tomball on Thursday, attendance was sparse, with only a handful of business owners turning out and SBA officials, who said they were delayed at an earlier event, showing up about 45 minutes late.
About 45 people had registered for Thursday's workshop, but with more than 200 people showing up at another earlier event in The Woodlands, Abell attributed the low attendance to the two programs being held on the same day.
Still, the handful of business owners who did show up seemed to find the information helpful.
"It's great information if you're really trying to develop your business," said Eric Weathersby, general manager of Pro Movers Houston, a moving company based in downtown Houston. Weathersby's business was not damaged by Harvey, but he's trying to expand the business he and his wife run by acquiring capital funding to buy more trucks and to hire more employees.
"If they really are trying establish their business, they [business owners] should come out to these meetings," Weathersby said.
Meanwhile, as the Tomball workshop was being held, SBA District Director Tim Jeffcoat issued a statement that the Houston office of the SBA had calculated figures showing an increase in the amount of money being made available for small businesses.
"When we take into account the 'Harvey-affect' the small business capital market in Houston showed a persistent year-on-year increase in dollars available for small business growth and start-up," Jeffcoat said in the statement.
According to SBA statistics, an average of more than six loans were being made every business day, with 46 percent of those loans going to startup businesses, while 33 percent of the loans went to businesses with women ownership.
Also, while the overall average loan grew to $575,000, over 29 percent of all loans are still for less than $50,000.
Most of the SBA loans out of the Houston office have been granted to applicants in Harris County, followed by Fort Bend, Brazoria and Montgomery counties.
Besides what the SBA terms its Physical Disaster Loans to help pay to repair damage from natural events like Harvey, the SBA also offers Economic Disaster Loans, which are loans to help meet financial obligations after a disaster. And the SBA also offers loans to homeowners and renters to repair or replace damaged property.
The process for getting a loan from the SBA is like applying for any other loan, with an application process that considers credit history, the ability to repay and available collateral.
For more information the SBA can be reached at is Disaster Assistance Customer Service Center at 800 699-2955 or at www.sba.gov/disaster.
On a crisp, cool Saturday morning, The Villager sat down with Mike Bass, the executive director of The Woodlands Arts Council, to discuss the organization's role in the community and his position in the organization. Bass was born and raised in Corpus Christi and went to Baylor University. He worked for Andersen Consulting for 35 years, traveling the world for his work which provided him with a broad cultural background, before settling in The Woodlands.
How did you first become involved with The Woodlands Arts Council?
Well, it's fairly interesting. I was taking pilates classes with the president, Cindy Hardin, and at the time I was serving on the Township board as a director. I served on the Township board from May of 2012 to November 2016. So Cindy asked me if I would get involved. This was right before The Woodlands Waterway Arts Festival 2013. She said, "Oh and by the way we need a treasurer, would you mind being the acting treasurer?" So I was the acting treasurer from 2013 until this last June.
The Arts Council never had any employees or executive directors. It was basically run by the president and the treasurer so I knew a lot about the Arts Council, the festival and all the things that we did. Instead of employees we had contractors-a festival director, community development director, fundraising director. So in January we decided we had too many moving parts and that we needed more full-time leadership, and so we wanted to hire an executive director. That came to fruition in June when I said, "I'm very much interested in the position." So, I got the position. Since then we've hired full time and part time employees.
The Arts Council was formed in 2005. That's when we got our IRS status and actually started organizationally in 2004. It was started by four entities: The Convention Visitors Bureau, the development company, Cynthia Woods Mitchell Pavilion and Dr. David Gottlieb, who has always been a big advocate in the community for the arts. They had this idea of forming the Arts Council to serve as an overall arching umbrella to be an advocate for the cultural arts in The Woodlands.
The executive director is a newly-created position for the TWAC. As the first person in this role, do you feel any extra sense of responsibility or pressure to do well?
Oh yes. There's lots of pressure to do well, especially when you have a new organization. I have a lot on my plate because we're working now on the April art festival. We started work back in August because the planning takes a long time. There's always areas where you can improve. Several years ago we began to branch out in several other areas in terms of the cultural arts. One is our outreach program and the other is in public art. We also work with children who have special needs. It could be juvenile detention system, some of the hospitals like Texas Children's. We do programs for seniors or "super adults." As executive director, getting ourselves organized, getting ourselves focused, putting the plans together-that's a big challenge.
What are some of the events the TWAC hosts?
Initially we've always been known for our Waterway Arts Festival that we hold every April. It's one of the top festivals in the nation. Typically we'll have somewhere between 225 to 250 artists. We'll have 16,000 to 18,000 attendees, so it's a pretty well-known and a high quality cultural arts show. When you put on something like the festival you have to appeal to a wide range of art buyers and art lovers. You've got to have different price points and appeal to different people, but it's always been very successful.
The multicultural festival event built around diversity and cultural arts that debuted this year will continue to be held. We also are working with the Township in their Art in the Park program where they bring an artist into their various parks. We'll start in December our student art contest for junior and seniors in high school, the winners of which are granted scholarships. We do art tours once a month of the art benches along the Waterway.
Why is it important to have a flourishing arts scene in the community?
I think the arts, whether it be performing arts or visual arts, brings about certain feelings and enrichment in people's lives. When you look at a painting or you look at a sculpture or you go to a photography show. Ask yourself, "What does that piece of art make me feel?" In addition, sometimes the art can have a feeling effect. Where would we be as a human race if we didn't have art? We've had art all the way from the cavemen days. There's also an economic benefit which we're just now beginning to think about in The Woodlands.
Where does funding come from to support the TWAC's programs?
We're better off than most because about half of our income comes from earned revenue-admissions fees, artist fees, etc. But the other half comes from sponsorships, donations and grants.
What are some of the challenges facing the art industry?
Funding. Look at the last national budget. Look at the Texas state budget. What got cut? The arts. The biggest problem that I think the art community has is it has lots of great ideas, lots of benefits it could bring forward, but it gets back to whether or not you have the funding. The other thing is space. Space to be able to have your performing arts, space to be able to have educational workshops.
What does art mean to you?
Art to me means, I just like art. I don't like all forms of art, but I know what I like and what I don't like. I collected different kinds of art my entire life as I've moved around the world. It brings up some feeling of enrichment and satisfaction when I look at a piece of art. I like learning about it and learning about the artist.
Several members of Mercedes F1 team emerged shaken but unhurt after their minibus was attacked by an armed robber as they left the track yesterday.
Lewis Hamilton revealed the thievery attempt on Saturday in a message on social media.
"Some of my team were held up at gun point last night leaving the circuit here in Brazil. Gun shots fired, gun held at one's head," said the 2017 world champion.
"This is so upsetting to hear. Please say a prayer for my guys who are here as professionals today even if shaken.
"This happens every single year here. F1 and the teams need to do more, there's no excuse!"
Mercedes confirmed the incident in which valuables were stolen although thankfully every one escaped the ordeal "safe and uninjured".
Team members from Williams and representatives of the FIA were also in the convoy of cars that were targeted but the group managed to speed away just as the lights went green.
Gallery: The beautiful wives and girlfriends of F1 drivers
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It wasn't so long ago that the founding members of the Buffalo Soldiers National Museum wondered how they would take a dilapidated building in Midtown and make it into something worth visiting.
"It was a mess," said Samuel Davis, one of the original board members recalls thinking before the facility's 2001 opening. "It's going to take too much for us to get this thing going."
But on Veterans Day, the U.S. Army veteran, along with city representatives, hordes of guest and other veterans, gathered on Caroline Street to celebrate the opening of the building's third floor, the latest expansion of the museum that pays homage to African-American soldiers who served from the Revolutionary War to the present.
"We get visitors from around the world," said Capt. Paul Matthews, the original founder. "They say 'We came to Houston to visit this museum.' "
Matthews, a Vietnam War veteran, started the museum in 2001 to honor Buffalo Soldiers, a nickname given to the first African-American military units, but now has become a term used for all African-American soldiers.
Buffalo Soldiers continued to serve in other wars, including the Spanish American War, the Philippine Insurrection, the Mexican Expedition, World War I, World War II and the Korean War.
It originally started inside a 3,500-square-foot-building on Southmore Boulevard but was moved in 2012 to a 23,000-square-foot building on Caroline Street so that more historical artifacts could be preserved. Now the building has three floors to host weddings and other significant events.
Matthews said the museum also holds the largest collection of African-American military memorabilia in the world, with visitors coming from as far as Europe.
'A lot of history'
On Saturday, guests milled around the first floor looking at exhibits that illustrated African-Americans' contributions to major wars fought across decades of history.
A video detailing the first African-American female soldier to enlist, Cathay Williams, was displayed on a small screen. During the ceremony, the "Buffalo Soldiers" song was performed and other city representatives spoke about the museum's contributions to the city.
Mayor Sylvester Turner, who gave $500,000 to the museum as a state representative, was also on hand to mark the museum's expansion.
"There's a lot of history to be told," Turner said. "You can't tell the history if you don't preserve it. This museum is all about preserving and being able to tell and showcase that history."
U.S. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, D-Houston, recognized all the veterans who attended.
"I'm so proud that you put on the uniform as a defender of freedom, justice and this little book called the Constitution," she said.
Educating others
Matthews announced during the celebration that he's exiting as the director and will hand over all responsibilities to his grandson, Desmond Bertrand-Pitts. He said he continues to find joy in educating others on African-American soldiers' contribution to war history. Many of the museum's memorabilia comes from Matthews' own personal collection.
"Every morning when I rise, I thank the Lord for giving me the opportunity to collect all these artifacts, documents and memorabilia to be able to show it to the world," he said.
From the outside it all looked like a relatively easy win for Ferrari and Sebastian Vettel in Brazil but the German driver insisted it was tough work inside the cockpit all afternoon.
Vettel overhauled poleman Valtteri Bottas at the start, inching ahead at the first corner as the Mercedes and the Ferrari battled for position.
It was all about race management, team work and keeping focused thereafter but Vettel admitted that his Finnish rival kept him on his toes all afternoon.
"It wasn't that easy inside, I was pushing all the way and I think Valtteri as well," said Vettel who delivered to Ferrari its first win since Hungary last summer.
"He was told to put a lot of pressure; he did but fortunately he never got in the DRS range. I think that was the key to make sure that always in the middle sector to make his life a bit tougher.
"I wanted to break free and control the race with a little bit more gap than 1.5 to 3 seconds. First part of the second stint, after the close stop, it worked well, I could jump a little bit on him.
"Traffic is always an unknown because I didn't know how much I was going to lose compared to him, but I think it was pretty equal.
"So in those first laps in the second stint I was able to stretch a bit of a gap and control that until the end, but basically we had the same pace."
Vettel also praised his team, and himself, for perfectly executing his pitstop.
"Yeah, they worked brilliantly," he said.
"I was really happy with my approach on the way in because I had a couple of wobbles this year at times, which doesn't help the guys if the car doesn't come in perfect position
"But the stop was really quick so we got going. I was told it was really close, but it was enough and I was happy it worked.
In the end, Vettel headed up a double podium finish for Ferrari, a result which follows up on his ambition to cap off the Scuderia's season with a win following a very difficult period for the Italian outfit.
"Im really happy especially for all the guys in the team and back home in Maranello," said Vettel.
"Theyve been working so hard. Its been a tough couple of weeks for us, but nice to get it to the end and have both cars up here."
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AKRON, Ohio - The term endangered species usually conjures up images of majestic cats or great white rhinos. But even the smallest creatures can be subject to the pressure of pending extinction.
Once such creature is the Partula snail. Once common in the French Polynesian Islands, the herbivorous snail went extinct in the wild in the 1990s, after a predatory snail species was introduced to the islands.
The predator, the carnivorous Florida rosy wolf snail, had been released by humans to help control a non-native African land snail - bred for escargot - that had escaped a cultivation program and was eating local crops.
Instead of controlling the African snail, the rosy wolf snail wiped out 76 species of the native Partula snail.
The Akron Zoo is one of six accredited U.S. zoos working to save the tiny snail through the Partula Conservation Programme, coordinated by the Zoological Society of London and the French Polynesian Government.
As a member of the Association of Zoos and Aquariums the Akron Zoo participates in 45 different species survival plans, from Partula snails to snow leopards and white-winged wood ducks.
"We think every creature is important and part of the ecosystem and the whole web of life," said Linda Criss, the zoo's vice president of communications.
The Akron Zoo became involved in the Partula conservation program early on, breeding the snails for release into the wild.
At the reserve in Tahiti, the released Partula snails are marked with different colors so they can be monitored in the field while data is collected on their movement and numbers.
"We've been breeding in the states for 20 years," Pete Mohan, the Akron Zoo's director of animal operations. "They're not hard to care for. You have to be careful with them, but it's not a stress on the zoo. The entire collection would fit on my desk."
The snails are fed a mixture of dried nettle powder, ground trout chow, cuttle bone, calcium and vitamins which is smeared on the side of their terrarium. The The Akron colony has thrived, hitting a record high of 500 snails.
Two groups of the Akron Zoo's snails - 62 in 2016 and group of 60 last month - have been released into a predator-free reserve in Tahiti, with the hope that the population will one day be restored in its native habitat.
In the wild, Partula snails commonly spend their time in the canopy of plants, on undersides of leaves shielded from predators. At the reserve, they're marked with different colors so they can be monitored in the field while data is collected on their movement and numbers.
It is too early to determine if the program will be successful.
"These programs tend to go on a long as they need to go on, to determine if there's any hope for the species at all," Mohan said.
For more information on the Akron Zoo's species survival programs, visit the website.
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AKRON, Ohio - The Ohio Shakespeare Festival's production of "Camelot" will run Dec. 1-17 at Greystone Hall.
Based on the classic novel by T.H. White, the Lerner & Loewe musical tells the tale of Arthur, Guinevere, Lancelot, and the Knights of the Round Table.
The production features Andrew Cruse as King Arthur, Joe Pine as Lancelot and Natalie Green as Guinevere, along with stage combat and acrobatic dancing.
Featured musical selections include "If Ever I Would Leave You," "The Lusty Month of May" and "Camelot."
The show runs Thursdays-Saturdays at 8 p.m. and Sundays at 2 p.m.
Tickets start at $20, and a $5 discount is available for students.
For tickets, call 1-888-718-4253 or visit www.ohioshakespeare.com.
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EUCLID, Ohio - Cleveland may be the grand poo-bah on Lake Erie, but Euclid, its third-largest suburb, is close to realizing a brilliant lakefront project that could serve as a precedent for the big city next door, if not the entire Great Lakes region.
After nearly a decade of spadework, Euclid could soon extend a public trail along three quarters of a mile of reconstructed shoreline on private property east of Sims Park, its main waterfront park.
The big idea is that in exchange for access to the land through easements, the city would take responsibility for solving erosion that threatens homes and apartment buildings.
Kudos all around
Observers have nothing but praise for the project, and believe it would set a precedent for Cleveland and other suburbs in Cuyahoga County, if not communities around the Great Lakes and perhaps even beyond.
"This is a watershed moment," said a punning Chris Ronayne, president of University Circle Inc. and the former Cleveland planning director who led the city's 2004 lakefront plan. "This has the opportunity to be a proof-of-concept for other communities."
With $7.5 million of the $11.5 million needed for the project in hand, Euclid hopes to start construction next year, Jonathan Holody, Euclid's director of planning and development, said in an interview last week.
"It's going to be a huge benefit for the entire community," he said.
There's reason to believe he's right.
Win-win-win
Owners of private homes and apartments on Euclid's nearly 4-mile stretch of lakefront have worried for years about erosion that's chewing away 2 to 4 feet of land a year in some spots, toppling trees and raising the possibility that homes could be threatened.
They've dumped chunks of concrete and other materials down the 30-foot lakefront bluffs to stabilize them, but have succeeded only in creating an eyesore.
"It's ugly; there's all kinds of fill," said developer Doug Price, who owns more than 2,200 apartments in Euclid, including 1,163 in the Water's Edge and Harbor Crest complexes that will directly overlook the new trail.
For its part, the City of Euclid, like other Ohio communities along Lake Erie, including Cleveland, has long yearned to leverage its proximity to one of Ohio's greatest and most beautiful natural assets.
Cleveland has lakefront parks that are separated from one another by the Port of Cleveland, Burke Lakefront Airport and other obstacles including private homes and institutional property.
Lakefront for a lucky few
Euclid has two smallish lakefront parks separated by a long, thin ribbon of private properties at the water's edge that restrict lake access and views to a lucky few.
It's a crazy, inequitable pattern repeated along much of Ohio's shoreline. It's wasteful, too, because property values away from the lake could be higher if the entire community had better access.
Working with design consultants from Detroit-based SmithGroupJJR, Euclid proposed to property owners that it would clean up and re-engineer the shoreline to make it erosion resistant and more habitat-friendly for wildlife, in exchange for the right to create the waterfront trail.
The trail will represent the next phase of the multi-part Euclid Waterfront Improvement Plan, initiated under former mayor Bill Cervenik, which included the snazzy, $1.7 million re-do of the Sims Park fishing pier, also designed by SmithGroupJJR, and completed in 2013.
Legacy of two mayors
The new pathway, taking shape under Cervenik's successor, Kirsten Holzheimer Gail, will extend east from the 30 acres of Sims Park at 23131 Lakeshore Blvd. to the future site of a marina the city hopes to build north of the boulevard at East 246th Street.
In the meantime, the city will create a "paddle craft beach" as part of a new, five-acre park at the east end of the trail.
On the water side of the trail, erosion will be controlled with new "cobble" beaches made of gravel and rocks that break up wave energy while providing habitat for small aquatic creatures, said Landscape Architect Jason Stangland, project manager for SmithGroupJJR.
On the uphill side, the city will plant native grasses and other vegetation designed to stabilize the crumbling clay and sand bluffs while providing "pollinator habitats" friendly to bees, butterflies and birds, he said.
Enabling the entire community to access a linear park will spread the benefits of Euclid's address on Lake Erie more democratically to all residents.
Happy neighbors
"I think it's a great project," said Paul Roba, president of the Luikart Homeowners Association, whose 19 members have voted in favor of the easement deal with the city. "It's going to add a lot of value to people who enjoy the outdoors in Euclid."
"It was a no brainer for me," Price said. "You're rid of the biggest problem we have, which is erosion control. That gets fixed, and the boardwalk becomes a real amenity for our residents. It's done in a way that's OK for everybody."
In a larger sense, the lakefront project offers a snapshot of an attractive, working-class Cleveland suburb addressing its future proactively at a time in which it is becoming a majority black community challenged by higher levels of poverty.
Controversy over alleged police brutality raised more concerns last summer. Yet with a major investment by Amazon in a new distribution center on the site of the former Euclid Mall and other big projects under way, Euclid has a lot going for it.
An update
Here's where things stand now on the lakefront project:
Owners of eight properties, including Price and the Luikart Homeowners Association, have agreed or are close to agreeing on the easements, and the city is working out a purchase agreement with the ninth owner, Holody said.
The $7.5 million raised for the project so far includes a $4 million loan, part of which is forgivable, from Cuyahoga County's casino tax fund.
The city is pursuing additional grants from sources including the Federal Emergency Management Administration, FEMA, on the grounds that erosion is threatening property on the lakefront bluffs.
Holody said the city is also close to receiving permits for submerged land leases from the Ohio Department of Natural Resources, and from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for modifications to stabilize the shoreline, including revetments and the cobble beaches.
Future connections possible
In future, the Euclid lakefront trail could grow and possibly connect to other planned resources including Cuyahoga County's East Side Greenway.
Brian Zimmerman, CEO of Cleveland Metroparks, said the Euclid lakefront trail might also dovetail someday with the agency's plans to expand its magnificent Euclid Creek Reservation north of Euclid Avenue with a trail or greenway connection to Lake Erie.
"If each agency can do a part, the heavy lift will be accomplished," he said.
Euclid first made planning history in 1926 when the Supreme Court affirmed the validity of the city's zoning code in the famous Euclid V. Ambler case. For better or worse, the 5-4 ruling made "Euclidean" zoning," which separates land uses into distinct, single-use zones, the law of the land.
If the new trail project succeeds, it would be the second time Euclid makes planning history - this time for something inarguably good - better public access to America's waterfronts.
CLEVELAND, Ohio - Peter Asher. Carol Kaye. Glen Campbell.
Unless you're as much a music historian as a music fan, the only one of those three you've probably heard of is Campbell.
Here's hoping you know all of them a lot more intimately after the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame announces its Class of 2018.
The Rock Hall has 18 acts on its ballot for the Hall of Famers who'll be enshrined during ceremonies in April in Cleveland. Music fans' favorite pastime between now and mid-December, when the inductees will be revealed, is debating who could, would or should be onstage at Public Hall, giving boring acceptance speeches and yesterday-once-more performances.
Between five and seven will get the votes of the 700 or so Hall of Famers and industry insiders who will cast ballots, and you can count on someone being ticked if their personal favorites aren't inducted.
For me, that would be the Moody Blues, the J. Geils Band, the Cars and maybe even Rage Against the Machine. I figure Bon Jovi is getting in, and while it's not my favorite band, I can see it, just based on commercial success. I love Dire Straits and the Eurythmics, but I just don't think they've got a chance this time around. Same with Depeche Mode.
The rest? Meh.
But here's the thing: The Rock Hall also will induct one, two or maybe even three other folks who aren't on the nominees list. Those can be industry types, sidemen, early influences and even those recognized for a lifetime in the biz.
Asher should have been in a long time ago as the latter example. His Peter and Gordon years were a nice start, but it's his post-singing work that dominated his career. He was the Beatles' first A&R head at Apple Records, in large part due to his relationship with Paul McCartney (McCartney dated his sister, Jane, lived in the Asher family home for a while and even wrote four hits for Peter and Gordon).
But Asher also managed a pair of other Hall of Famers - Linda Ronstadt and James Taylor. He's produced more than 100 albums, for artists ranging from Bonnie Raitt to comedian Robin Williams to 10,000 Maniacs to Neil Diamond and more.
Peter Asher first rose to fame as half of the British duo Peter and Gordon. But his post-singing career as a producer and as manager of both Linda Ronstadt and James Taylor should earn him a spot in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.
The guy, who also happens to be one of the nicest people in the business (maybe THE nicest), has earned a spot in the Hall.
Campbell and Kaye were members of what most call the Wrecking Crew and Kaye pointed out was actually known as the Clique in Los Angeles by producer Phil Spector back in the day. Most of us know that Campbell, who died this past August of complications of Alzheimer's disease, was an unofficial and frequent voice and guitar on Beach Boys albums.
But for all that, he wasn't nearly as big a part of the Crew/Clique as was electric bassist Kaye. She's appeared literally on THOUSANDS of cuts, both for Spector and the Beach Boys' Brian Wilson with the Crew and independent of that. It's her bass, for example, that you hear on the seminal "Pet Sounds'' album.
Her credits range from Simon & Garfunkel to Quincy Jones scores, from the Monkees ("I'm a Believer'') to Paul Revere & the Raiders ("Indian Reservation").
Some might argue - among them Kaye herself, who vehemently asked me NOT to recommend her for induction to "that place!'' -- that misogyny-fed politics has kept her on the sidelines. A few of her male counterparts in the Crew - keyboardist Leon Russell, drummers Hal Blaine (whom Kaye despised) and Earl Palmer, and sax player Steve Douglas -- are in the Hall, either as sidemen or as lifetime achievement award winners.
"Carol Kaye: Studio Musician: '60s #1 Bassist, Guitarist,'' tells the story of the famed musician's career as one of the top session players in the 1960s.
"Others have tried [to get her inducted] in order to please my dying daughter years ago, and including some names on [a] petition like Sting, Bono, Bonnie Raitt, ex-pres. Clinton etc.... and failed twice,'' Kaye wrote in an email. "I told them to STOP..... it's all politically motivated, I want NOTHING TO DO WITH PHONIES, never did. ''
Given the spice in her email, I'm honestly a little afraid to argue with her.
That being said, though, and knowing she wouldn't show up even if she were inducted, I still think she deserves the accolade. I would bet that Asher, who has always been the consummate gentleman in our conversations, would agree, as would Campbell if he were still around.
And they'd say Kaye should lead the way. After all . . .
Ladies first.
CLEVELAND, Ohio - There's a character on Season 8 of "The Walking Dead" that has lasted longer that anyone could have thought.
No, it's not Morgan or Carol (characters already gone in the comic book). And it's not Father Gabriel, who is trapped alone with Negan (Seriously, when are we getting back to that?).
It's Shiva, your neighborhood friendly Tiger who has been protecting the good folks at the Kingdom.
[SPOILERS for the comic book ahead]
Given just how much much CGI costs, it was expected "The Walking Dead" would do away with Shiva early in Season 8. After all, CGI expenses are the reason why Rick Grimes still has his hand (It's gone in the comic).
Yet, Shiva is still around. But is tonight the night we bid farewell to the most important animal on "The Walking Dead" since Rick rode that horse into Atlanta (We know how that ended)?
In the comic book, Shiva meets her demise when she defends Ezekiel against a herd of zombies, sacrificing herself for the Kingdom's leader.
Last week's episode ended with Ezekiel in serious trouble. A group of snipers have taken out most of Ezekiel's crew. This leads us to believe Shiva's death is imminent.
The trailer for Season 8 shows Shiva surrounded by a heard of zombies, which could be how tonight's episode plays out.
We certainly don't want Shiva to die. But this is "The Walking Dead." Fingers crossed for a walker-tiger hybrid.
The South Euclid Fire Department won the People's Choice Award at the chili cook-off. From left are Culinary Occasions' Eric Gaizutis and Chef Bob Sferra, Fire Inspector Scott Sebastian, and firefighter Ben Ovelgonne.
MAYFIELD HEIGHTS, Ohio -- For the fifth year, fire departments from five local communities come together to determine who makes the best chili.
The firefighters take seriously the competition centered on one of their favorite foods.
"We have chili all the time," said Highland Heights Lt. Bill Bernhard. "Especially when it's winter, we always have it around. It's good and it's something that we can easily put aside until we come back when we go away on calls."
The 5 City, 5 Alarm Chili Cook-Off took place Saturday afternoon at the Ross C. DeJohn Community Center in Mayfield Heights. The Mayfield Heights Fire Department had a lot of confidence going in, having won either the People's Choice Award, or the Judges' Award, in each of the four previous cook-offs.
One of this year's big winners did, indeed, go by the name of Mayfield, but it was the fire department from Mayfield Village that came away with the $500 check as the Judges' Award winner.
The equally coveted People's Choice Award went home, for the third time in five years, with the South Euclid Fire Department.
The chili cook-off, organized each by year by the Community Partnership on Aging's Therese Grida, is a benefit for the CPA's Aging in Place Services program, which provides lunches and makes safer the homes of seniors.
For this year's contest, Grida teamed firefighters with local chefs to add a little extra to the chili recipes.
Chili cook-off attendees included, from left, Jan Minadeo, of Mayfield Heights; Paul Moliff, of Willoughby and formerly of South Euclid; and South Euclid residents Mary Egensperger, Norm Schlessel, Roger Lefkowitz and Kathleen Lefkowitz.
Mayfield Village firefighters were aided by Chef Jameel Chambers, of Prepped for Life. Chef Bob Sferra, of Culinary Occasions, 4261 Mayfield Road in South Euclid, helped out the South Euclid team, along Culinary Occasions' Eric Gaizutis.
"We went away this year from our usual sweet chili," said SEFD Fire Inspector Scott Sebastian. "We went to a more smokey chili."
Many in attendance, such as Kathleen Lefkowitz and Jan Minadeo, loved South Euclid's chili.
"I hate to say it, South Euclid," said Minadeo, of Mayfield Heights, when asked what she thought was the best chili. "But they were all very good."
When asked what put South Euclid's chili over the top, South Euclid resident Lefkowitz said, "They had toppings."
Representing the Highland Heights Fire Department were, from left, firefighters Bob Tyler and Bryon Barna, Lt. Bill Bernhard, and firefighter Bob Tagg. Holding the helmet is Tagg's son, Dominic, 7.
Sferra said that those toppings included crispy onions, fried jalapenos, sour cream and cheddar cheese.
Mayfield Village Fire Department firefighter Matt Martin said that the whole team contributed to making the chili. "Then," he said, "(Chef Chambers) came in and put it all together.
"Now that we've won, we're for sure going to come back next year and we're going to be even better."
About 160 people were in attendance for the first cook-off to be held in Mayfield Heights. The event included raffles and several sponsors, including My Choice, which donated $1,000.
My Choice Nurse Practitioner Mandy Picone said the Hiram-based company serves the local senior population and works with the fire departments who took part in the competition.
Judges for the cook-off were South Euclid Mayor Georgine Welo; Highland Heights Councilman Chuck Brunello; Mayfield Village Mayor Brenda Bodnar; Lyndhurst Police Chief Rick Porrello; Mayfield Heights police Capt. Douglas Suydam; Chef Jeff Brown, of Primal Diner; and Chef Geoff Thomas, of Nevaeh Cafe.
Also participating was Chef Thomas Drummer, of Normandy Senior Living, who helped the Mayfield Heights firefighters.
Grida said Mayfield Village will host next year's event.
CLEVELAND, Ohio - Ohio could join the growing number of states and cities to ban suspensions of young students as damaging and counterproductive, under a new bill to be released this week.
State Sen. Peggy Lehner, who chairs the Senate education committee, says she is astounded that Ohio schools kick kids in kindergarten through third grade out of school more than 30,000 times a year.
There were 36,000 such suspensions - removal from school for up to 10 days - of Ohio's 540,000 PreK-3 students in 2015-16 and 34,000 in 2016-17.
Many were for serious offenses like vandalism, hurting other students, bringing a gun to school and even "unwelcome sexual conduct" by kindergarteners.
But others, she said, come from overzealous use of "zero-tolerance" policies and schools' inability to manage students. And just under half - 48 percent - are mainly for the lesser offense of disobedient or disruptive behavior.
"We have to come up with a better way to deal with those kids than to throw them out of the classtoom," said Lehner, who will spell out details of her long-anticipated bill to cut suspensions on Tuesday.
It's an issue that has been drawing increased scrutiny nationally and across Ohio in recent years, as educators worry that suspensions for misdemeanor-like offenses keep kids out of class and hurt learning unnecessarily. The new goal of states like Connecticut and California and cities like Cincinnati, Denver St. Louis and Milwaukee is to help young students manage their behavior, not just punish.
Most of the new bans allow suspensions and expulsions for serious offenses, but limit them for things like "disruptive conduct, rule-breaking and disobedience," or "willfull defiance."
Former U.S. Secretary of Education John King is among those who believe that tossing kids out of school rather than teaching them better behavior makes no sense.
"When a student fails a math quiz, we don't say to the student, 'No more math for you'," King said at a recent speech at the Cleveland City Club. "But we do say that around behavior. If you're struggling with behavior and struggling with a social environment, therefore we're going to exclude you."
"What we should say is, 'We are going to help you learn to adjust your behavior'," King added.
That has been the plan of the Cincinnati school district, which banned most suspensions for kids third grade and younger in 2003. That district also tries to avoid suspensions for older students.
"The solution to problem behavior is not to expel or suspend most students who misbehave," the district's website states. "Too often, students' behavior does not improve when they return to school, and, to make matters worse, the returning students now are behind in class work."
Lorain school district CEO David Hardy talks about reducing student suspensions at the Council of the Great City Schools national conference in Cleveland
David Hardy, the new CEO of the Lorain school district, said that was the approach he used in his last job as deputy superintendent for academics in St. Louis.
That district banned suspensions for K-2 students, before adding third grade to that ban this year.
"We were changing the narrative about how to best handle the choices our kids make," Hardy said. "We had leaned way too heavily on the punitive aspect."
Hardy wants to move Lorain away from suspensions to a more "restorative justice" approach, where students accept responsibility for their behavior and try to make amends. He said the district may be a year or two away from having teachers and principals ready to make that shift.
Lehner said she wants more schools to use methods like the Social and Emotional Learning that Cleveland and other districts have added in recent years to improve behavior and the "Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports (PBIS)" the state mandates.
"You can't learn if you're not in the classroom," Lehner said, concerned that suspensions bring unintended consequences.
"(If suspended), now they're feeling antagonistic toward the school for throwing them out, and some parent probably had to take time off from work, possibly lost their job, and now they're behind in school and we're looking at more failure."
King also worries about how suspensions affect students.
"What are the consequence of this for students' long-term futures?" he asked in his Cleveland talk. "What is the message that students take away when what they hear from school is that we don't want you here, beginning at four?"
There's also a huge racial and income division in how discipline is handed out.
King presented data from the civil rights office of the U.S. Department of Education showing that black boys are three times as likely to be suspended as white boys. Black girls were suspended six times as often as white girls.
The division is similar for Ohio's PreK-3 students that Lehner is looking at. About 64 percent of Ohio's suspended students in that age group are black, while black students make up just 16.5 percent of the state's enrollment.
Percentage of statewide enrollment Percentage of suspensions Black students 16.5 64 Students with disabilities 14.5 65 Economically disadvantaged students 49.9 90
The same kind of over-representation occurs with students with disabilities and economically disadvantaged students, as shown in the chart above, which shows a breakdown of suspensions in Ohio in 2016-17. Note that students that meet more than one of those characteristics will count in each category.
Lehner said these suspensions at young ages, mostly for minor things, add to the continuing gap in test scores between minority and white students.
"We don't have to condemn kids to a school career of failure," she said.
Multiple studies suggest that much of this disparity is not from worse behavior by students but by teacher bias and perception.
"A common fallacy suggests these disturbing statistics represent differences in these students' behaviors," say officials of the National School Climate Center. "The types of infractions whereby students of color are suspended are discretionary - subjective, non-violent offenses such as disrespect or excessive noise."
Denver school board member Allegra "Happy" Haynes said teachers and parents pushed back as her board has limited suspensions of students third grade and younger. She told a panel at the Council of the Great City Schools conference in Cleveland last month that fear and biases drive a lot of the suspensions there.
"They are afraid of four-year-olds," Haynes said. "That's the elephant in the room."
She and other board members, though, want the district and teachers to explore why kids are having behavior issues and examine how to resolve them without punishment.
Milwaukee schools CEO Darienne Driver said at the same conference that her district slashed suspensions for second grade and younger in 2015. Driver said though parents and teachers worried what would happen when punishments were eased, her district wants to build relationships with students so that they trust the school and want to be there.
That, she said, gives students a chance to fix their mistakes before being punished.
"I refuse to believe that kids at five years old are bad," she said.
CAMP SANTIAGO, Puerto Rico -- At a time when it can seem like reliable communication is as rare as snow on this island, the Ohio National Guard's 137th Signal Company, based in Newark, has stepped in to fill the gaps.
Capt. Denise Stewart, company commander, said the 45-member unit is located at six different locations, including this Puerto Rican National Guard base, to provide communication links for 37-40 other Guard units and some U.S. government agencies involved in the recovery from Hurricane Maria.
These links include mobile satellite, telephone, internet, video conferencing and information technology services.
Lt. Phil Franze noted, "A lot of these cities don't have working cell towers, and service is real weak. They're gradually repairing that, but until then they (Guard units) need a way to call back and forth."
Most of the teams are living in tents, and maintain a satellite dish and other communications gear powered by portable generators.
The biggest challenge thus far has been "knowing the best location because it has changed," said Stewart, of Johnstown, Ohio. "We're needed in so many places that we're not able to go everyplace that we're needed, unfortunately.
"Typically we're set up in one location," she added. But "if they find out another area needs us more, or if cell phone service comes up, they'll send you to another location."
One of the unit sites is located at an airfield where relief supplies are being flown in.
"We're coordinating with FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency) receiving goods from the international flights," said Franze, of Brunswick.
Additionally, "we're coordinating with the Air Guard and the Air Force that are receiving the humanitarian aid coming through the military," he added.
Both were struck by the degree of hurricane destruction in Puerto Rico.
"I was surprised," Stewart said. "Only because you're told about it, you see a few pictures by the time we got down here. But to actually see it, be in it and live it, is completely different from anything I've ever experienced."
The situation in Puerto Rico has improved since they arrived in mid-October.
"Completely," said Stewart.
"Drastically," added Franze.
How so? "With the electricity, the clearing of roads, of the brush and a lot of trees down, and the cell phone towers," Franze explained.
"The Puerto Rican National Guard is a lot more comfortable to assist us. That means their houses are being taken care of now, (there's) more food in the grocery stores, you start seeing more shipments come in."
Conditions in the mountains, however, are still challenging.
"That's pretty rough," according to Franze. "They're still having issues with mudslides right now.
"It's raining pretty consistently, usually once or twice a day," he added. "And when it rains up in the mountains, the ground is so saturated, and there are no trees left to hold the dirt down, so it just runs off."
Both officers said the chief lesson they have learned from the mission is patience.
"You've just got to be patient up front, and know when you really need to step in to make it happen," Franze said. "It takes a while for things to fall in place."
Stewart added, "Definitely patience. And how lucky we are that we don't have hurricanes.
"But also, it's a pride thing with being in the military and being able to be here to assist," she added. "To see so many organizations -- both branches of the military and civilians -- all come together for a common interest, is definitely a great thing."
Latitude 41 38.243 N, Longitude 81 54.198 W, a few miles off Avon Point, Ohio -- Murky, cold water wrapped its frigid fingers around the divers as soon as they leapt off the back of the Cleveland-based Holiday into the chilly whitecaps of Lake Erie.
Thick wetsuits and drysuits couldn't keep those waters from tightening their grip as the divers, heavily encumbered with everything from powerful underwater lights to reserve tanks made their eerie Erie way to the sunken tug Admiral.
Seas as high as five feet, current and scores of divers' fins kicked up silt, worsening still further the already poor conditions in which a hand is barely visible unless it's touching your mask.
Were it not for the guide ropes leading from the surface to the tug, which capsized and sank in a horrific winter storm in 1942, the divers from the National Museum of the Great Lakes may not have been able to find the 93-foot boat.
Indeed, one set of the Maritime Archaeological Survey Team volunteers sent down in an August weekend full of dives never found even the guide rope, much less the Admiral.
The teams' goal is to catalog the ship's current condition and track its fate as the years - and weather - wear on.
The museum uses these volunteers who combine a love of diving and history to handle the chore - for free. The divers, who come from Ohio, Michigan and other parts of the Midwest for the most part, come when they can - jobs ranging from professorships to owning an HVAC company to day-to-day life limit availability -- so it's rarely a case of the same dozen or so crew aboard every one of the monthly weekend trips during the summer.
Experienced divers boast about their buoyancy control - essentially controlling your depth with not much more than a deep breath in or out. It's a major point of pride. It's critical when hovering above fragile reefs or, as was the case of the Admiral dives, finding the bottom more than 60 feet below the surface without sinking mask-first into the silt. It is a skill the team members have honed to perfection, by necessity. Slamming into a fragile wreck can be dangerous for both diver and wreck.
Diving the warm, pristine waters of the Caribbean in exotic locales like Bonaire, Belize, Honduras or Mexico can't prepare a diver for Erie. Even excursions into the local quarries, where many Ohio divers here get their initial and advanced certifications and their first taste of breathing underwater, hardly qualifies.
Salt water is more conducive to buoyancy, and visibility in the Caribbean can be as much as 150 feet or more vs. the scant inches in Erie.
Additionally, in tropical waters, a T-shirt and swim suit can be protection enough for most against the cold. But in Erie, even at the height of summer, water temperatures in the 50s are the norm. Bulky, 7mm neoprene wetsuits - think the waterproof variations of "A Christmas Story'' kid brother Randy -- or drysuits over thermal underwear are necessary to stave off hypothermia.
If they find the boat - and most of these hardy divers do - they're under orders from the boss, marine archaeologist Carrie Sowden, to survey a certain part of the tug, which basically is piecemealed into sections marked by various tags. Is a porthole still there? How much rust is present?
An experienced scuba diver can spend a leisurely hour or more swimming at 50 feet or so on the reefs of Bonaire, a Caribbean island that's part of the Netherlands Antilles' "ABC Islands'' - Aruba-Bonaire-Curacao that includes "Divers Paradise'' on its license plates.
The chilly waters of Lake Erie reduce that to 20 minutes. The cold and the difficulty of navigation - plus the taking of intricate and precise measurements - mean the volunteers burn through air three times as fast than they would in warmer climes.
"Every shipwreck project is different and asks different questions,'' said Sowden in an email after one day's dives on a warm but windy day in August. "We (NMGL and MAST) are committed to documenting the 11 shipwrecks that are buoyed in Lake Erie.
"I, as an archaeologist, am committed to studying multiple ship types from multiple ages,'' said Sowden, who did her training in the rivers of Texas and Oklahoma before coming north to Ohio. "The site of the Admiral fulfills both of those requirements - it is a buoyed wreck, a tug (which we haven't studied before), that sank in 1942 - a time that we haven't studied yet.''
That's the academic reason for studying the Admiral, which was towing a fuel oil barge called the Cleveco when both went down - with the loss of all 14 hands aboard the Admiral and 18 on the Cleveco - in that fierce winter storm.
But it doesn't tell why the divers - all volunteers - do it.
"I've been diving for many years - I got certified in the cold waters of Puget Sound,'' said Todd Yeates, the most experienced of the divers in Sowden's group of about 20 divers, all of them trained by the Sowden and the Toledo-based National Museum of the Great Lakes in a springtime Maritime Archaeological Survey Team workshop.
"I've always been attracted to diving that means something and has some adventure along the way,'' Yeates said.
"I enjoy Caribbean diving as much as anyone, and I don't get the opportunity to do it enough, but that's just tourism,'' he said. "I find doing what we did this weekend more satisfying in some ways.''
"[One] reason I'd cite is my scientific background,'' said Brian Cobb, director of the immunology training program at Case Western Reserve University's medical school. "I am not trained in archaeology, but the underlying science and math associated with performing underwater surveys, and the science of preserving the historical record was very attractive to me.''
Todd Felton, who with Michigan resident Bob Lukofsky made up the two-man team that babysat a writer who's spent 14 years exclusively diving the warm waters of Caribbean, Hawaii and off the coast of Mexico, said he loves the idea of being an eyewitness to history.
"Yes, it is not easy,'' said Felton, who is from Columbus. "But I find diving wrecks in Lake Erie more exciting.
"The conditions have made me a better diver [and] our efforts help document and preserve wrecks for others,'' he said. "And perhaps we will make [diving] more accessible close to home.''
Accessible. Not warmer. And not for the faint of heart.
Working Cleveland
What: Volunteer diver for marine archaeology survey team.
Where: Off the coast of Avon Point, between 60 and 70 feet underwater in Lake Erie.
Organization: National Museum of the Great Lakes, Toledo.
In charge: Carrie Sowden, archaeological director, Inland Seas assistant editor, MAST coordinator.
Ohio Supreme Court Justice Bill O'Neill, a Chagrin Falls Democrat, announced Oct. 29 that he's running for governor. Yet he's not stepping down, despite Ohio's Code of Judicial Conduct, which requires a judge to resign "upon becoming a candidate in a primary or general election for a nonjudicial elective office."
O'Neill insists he's not an official candidate until his candidacy is certified -- in February. In the meantime, he plans to rule on pending cases, while recusing himself from future cases.
True, the Ohio judicial code is silent on when someone "becomes a candidate."
But O'Neill can't have it both ways. Now that he's an announced partisan political candidate, he can't pretend he's an impartial justice. He must step down.
Whatever the legalities, O'Neill's interpretation of the judicial canon goes against the canon's spirit. In the eyes of Ohioans, the others already running for governor before O'Neill's announcement -- at least four other Democrats and four Republicans -- are candidates, certified or not. Now O'Neill is, too. A candidate, to Ohioans, is a candidate.
This issue has arisen before. In January 1982, then-Chief Justice Frank D. Celebrezze, a Greater Cleveland Democrat, announced he was running for governor. He remained on the court. Roughly eight weeks later, Celebrezze decided against running, after he'd first resigned from the court, then, the next day, withdrew his resignation. All this prompted controversy and complaints from some lawyers that Celebrezze had violated the canon's "resign to run" provisions.
Even amid the best intentions, appearances matter. And Ohioans now see an announced candidate for governor on their state's highest court.
That's not what the Code of Judicial Conduct envisioned. If Justice O'Neill isn't prepared to end his candidacy now, he must resign.
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To be fair, half of The CW is about lusting for the undead.
The judges didn't say, "Wait a second ... are we making snuff porn?" at any point. Instead they offered comments like "Very beautiful, and dead" or "Death becomes you, young lady." They even scolded one of the models for not looking dead enough. To be fair, that's been about 75 percent of a model's job since the early '90s or so. (The other 25 percent is "smizing," and please do not question how we know that.)
The trend is oddly popular right now, but it's not new. Renowned fashion photographer Guy Bordain shot this for a calendar in 1980:
Guy Bordain
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Happy hemophilia awareness month!
Like other media, necrophiliac fashion photography is governed by a set of well-defined, ghoulish rules. If there's a man in the shot, he'll have a creepily calm, methodical expression. There's no anger on his face, and definitely no remorse. He isn't somebody who would kill a woman in a fit of rage; he's a focused and psychopathic killer. Take this Duncan Quinn ad from 2008. The guy's expression of mild, indifferent surprise would be more at home on the face of a man who's just received an extra side of fries than one holding an exquisitely designed noose.
Of course, as the story notes, there likely are many more filings stemming, in part, from Lularoe businesses, and these cases very likely are not representative of all the cases. But it was interesting to review them nonetheless. Lularoe reminds me very much of Rodan + Fields and Herbalife, two other well-known MLMs. Which led me to run the same search that BuzzFeed ran for Rodan + Fields and Herbalife.
Several days ago, Stephanie McNeal at BuzzFeed News published a short piece on Lularoe's intersection with consumer bankruptcy filings. I've blogged about multi-level marketing (MLM) companies' potential role in bankruptcy filings a couple times. So when BuzzFeed sent me a list of twenty-four chapter 7 and chapter 13 bankruptcy filings from the past two years in which the debtor listed Lularoe as a part of its DBA or FDBA, I was intrigued. Much of what I could glean from the sample of those petitions and schedules I reviewed is in the short piece. The debtors' reports of past years' income from their Lularoe businesses show a precipitous decline in income, some schedules include unsecured loans from online lenders (seemingly to fund purchases of inventory), and most schedules include a large amount of credit card debt. The debtors also are overwhelmingly married with children, and the couples together owe quite a bit in student debt (over $50,000 on average).
Some background on why I thought I might find something similar in recent bankruptcy filings. Rodan + Fields is similar to Lularoe in that it targets women--and from what I can tell, particularly women with children--to become "consultants" who buy product for resale to clients. Herbalife has operated longer, and recruits men and women to sell its line of nutrition supplements. Lularoe currently is embattled in two class action suits , one alleging that it is a pyramid scheme, and the other alleging that LuLaRoe sold its "independent fashion consultants" subpar products that ripped like "wet toilet paper." Herbalife too has been called a pyramid scheme, and entered into a settlement with the FTC in July 2016 which required it to change its business model.
My findings, in short, are that there are significantly less filings identifiable by searching debtors' names, and thus much, much less of note discernable from the filings. I found six cases in which Herbalife was listed as a DBA or FDBA, and four cases in which Rodan + Fields was listed as such. As with the Lularoe cases, some debtors list inventory among their assets and have loans outstanding to online lenders (such as Lending Club) combined with large amounts of credit card debt. There are less married couples among the debtors, fewer homes owned, and less student loan debt. All of which, ultimately, does not reveal much. One might conjecture that Lularoe's MLM business model includes greater encouragement of its consultants to refer to themselves as businesses, which would increase the number of petitions found via BuzzFeed's method of searching. Or one might conjecture that there is something to the two class actions alleging lightning-fast market oversaturation and unsellable products.
Networking News
SD-WAN Primed For Solution Providers Who Can Talk Business Outcomes, Not Technology
Gina Narcisi and Mark Haranas
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New opportunities around SD-WAN are opening up for solution providers ready to talk business outcomes, not the speeds and feeds of the technology.
SD-WAN might be the hottest buzzword in IT right now, but it's still a nebulous concept for many business customers. Solution providers that can position SD-WAN as a tool to help customers better achieve their business goals will land more sales in a market ripe for disruption, according to solution providers CRN spoke with at The Channel Company's XChange 2017 conference in Orlando, Fla., this week.
"If you just go in talking about SD-WAN, you're not going to get sales," said Michael Knight, CTO of solution provider Encore Technology Group. "It's similar to the IoT discussion in the sense that solution providers need to stop talking about SD-WAN, and talk about outcomes."
[Related: Talari President: SD-WAN Should Be A 'Small Part' Of Overall Solution Provider Offering]
Research firm IDC estimates that worldwide SD-WAN infrastructure and services revenues will grow 70 percent annually for the next four years, reaching more than $8 billion in 2021.
Greenville, S.C.-based Encore Technology Group just cinched its first major SD-WAN deal with a 35-site-plus customer. The solution provider has built its own SD-WAN solution in partnership with Cisco Meraki.
For Encore Technology Group, the SD-WAN sale didn't begin with a conversation about the latest service. The customer was seeking to reduce its MPLS costs. At the same time, Encore Technology Group realized that the customer had no insight into how much bandwidth it was using, which devices were connected, or what kind of traffic was traversing the network and "burning up" expensive MPLS links, Knight said.
Encore Technology Group posed a solution that combined network management, security and SD-WAN into a single dashboard that would allow the customer's IT team to understand the traffic, and match that traffic to users and applications.
Once you determine what the specific pain points are for a customer, SD-WAN becomes a very easy sell, Knight said.
SD-WAN takes a new approach to network connectivity aimed at lowering operational costs and improving resource usage for multisite deployments. The technology enables network administrators to use bandwidth more efficiently and ensure the highest level of performance for applications.
"The [customer] is getting full visibility and control, and SD-WAN, and they are able to manage their network down to each site," he said. "It's a complete solution for them, and they are going to reduce their MPLS costs."
Solution providers that are able to productize SD-WAN to help their customers solve problems such as network visibility will then free them to focus on more "interesting" IT ventures, said John Shaw, CEO of Austin, Texas-based Digital Nebula, a solution provider that specializes in artificial intelligence and data management.
"Once you have a handle on the network, the cost savings will also let customers [focus] on things like cloud adoption," he said.
Some solution providers are still waiting to see how the market plays out over the next 12 months before placing their bets. The SD-WAN vendor landscape is still maturing with several startups coming out of stealth over the past few years, including CloudGenix and VeloCloud.
Networking vendors Riverbed and Cisco Systems, meanwhile, have been doubling down on their SD-WAN technologies through acquisitions this year. Riverbed said it acquired Xirrus in a move to deliver an "unmatched SD-WAN offering" to fuel growth in the growing market, while Cisco spent $610 million to buy startup Viptela to boost its own SD-WAN portfolio.
John Samborski, vice president of Ace Tech Partners, an Elk Grove Village, Ill.-based solution provider, said his company has yet to take a serious look at SD-WAN.
"We don't do any [SD-WAN] business just yet. I don't know if it's for everyone quite yet. It's a new way of looking at things from a customer standpoint," said Samborski. "I know a lot of us are still waiting to see how some of this all plays out in customers' environments. We'll probably take another look at it in a few months."
Solution providers interested in capitalizing on the SD-WAN opportunity should start by learning more about their end customers such as their size, the vertical they play in, and what day-to-day operations look like, Encore Technology Group's Knight said. This will better inform solution providers of customers' specific needs and price points.
Solution providers also should consider wrapping their own solutions around SD-WAN to boost their value in the eyes of their customers.
"If you talk to [customers] about network visualization and controlling things down to a given endpoint, for example, they'll want to know about that and they'll see you as a thought leader," said Knight.
Also important is partnering with several SD-WAN providers so if one offering doesn't match a customer's budget, SD-WAN won't be ruled out, he said.
In addition to Meraki's technology, Encore Technology Group is also currently evaluating Barracuda Networks' NextGen firewall platform.
Ultimately, solution providers selling SD-WAN must choose to either become an agent partner that resells an SD-WAN service from a provider or invest in building their own SD-WAN solution, Knight said. The latter, he said, will make partners more money over time.
Sphere Of Influence
Now that container technology has firmly grasped the attention of major IT vendors, VMware is busy making the case that it is an essential part of any enterprise container strategy rather than a likely casualty in the battle for cloud supremacy.
Along with the promise of simplifying and streamlining software development, proponents of container technology also boast of the significant VMware licensing cost savings customers can realize by deploying containers on bare metal.
VMware has been busy fighting this assumption, launching the Pivotal Container Service (PKS) with fellow Dell Technologies family member Pivotal and Google Cloud last month, and arguing that containers work better and are more easily managed when they're inside vSphere virtual machines.
In a recent blog, VMware makes the case that containers deployed inside its vSphere 6.5 outperform those deployed on bare metal. The argument goes hand-in-hand with Dell Technologies Chairman and CEO Michael Dell's assertion that existing VMware customers are fertile ground for solution providers to make PKS sales.
Im not crying over the apparent demise of the General Assemblys propaganda arm, called CT-N.
Its the self-inflicted victim of broadcast creep, pleading poverty with $877,451 in the bank, according to its latest IRS statement.
Once dedicated to simply televising the General Assembly and its committees, the Connecticut Public Affairs Network grew and grew, after it was anointed by then-Senate President Kevin Sullivan back in 1999.
In response to their expanding telegenic opportunities, lawmakers became even more pompous, bloviating their under-informed monologues and colloquies for over-extended periods, to the dubious benefit of the states insomniacs and policy wonks.
Over the years, CT-Ns playpen expanded to include more exotic locations and assignments. One of the chief beneficiaries has been Gov. Dannel P. Malloy, whose frenetic tours of the state were often streaming on the web, or recorded for later.
Now, the Connecticut Public Affairs Network is essentially kicked out of the Capitol after rejecting a temporary deal for $5,000 a day in expenses, pending further negotiations in this year of the budget crisis. While singing the monetary blues, CPAN claimed that the General Assembly was attempting to take over editorial control of its coverage.
As CT-N defaulted last week into a death loop of a never-ending two-hour-and-22-minute meeting of the state Board of Firearms Permit Examiners, Gov. Dan Malloy even jumped on his high horse, promising the find $400,000 toward the $1.6 million haircut that the new state budget took toward CPANs previous $3.2 million budget. He asked for the legislative and judicial branches to find similar amounts.
Going over 15 years of CPANs IRS 990 filings for non-profit organizations, we see that President and CEO Paul Gigueres compensation was $107,071 in 2002. In 2016, CPAN reported that he was paid $161,587 plus $23,672 in benefits. The organization spent more than $25,000 in lobbying expenses. They paid out about $2.1 million for the more than 30 other employees, about a dozen of whom pawns in this game with real technical skills are in the process of becoming temporary workers for the Connecticut General Assembly, until bids go out to continue the operation. There is a roomful of video equipment in the first floor of the Legislative Office Building, dozens of stationary cameras throughout the Capitol complex and equipment for remote recording.
Back in 2015, when Giguere made $143,050 in salary and $24,385 in benefits, CPAN asked the General Assembly, unsuccessfully, for about $8 million. Last year it tried to piggyback on Connecticut cable bills and require every subscriber in the state to cough up 40 cents more per month for its state-designated monopoly, or another cool million bucks a year. Anyone familiar with cable bills know that charges eventually increase and are never reduced. The failed legislation was written to limit contract eligibility to a company with experience in providing gavel-to-gavel coverage of state government proceedings. Yeah it was pretty much dialed-in for CPAN.
One thing CPAN did, was allow reporters to be in multiple locations at the same time.
So after a week of checking on CT-Ns website with no change, it was finally time to check in with that Nov. 2 meeting of the state Board of Firearms Permit Examiners, held in the headquarters of the Department of Emergency Services and Public Protection in Middletown. The board hears the cases of people who once lost their gun permits and now theyre trying to get them back.
An attorney named Donald Celotto was in an uphill struggle, after his client, a dude from Cheshire wearing a mullet, admitted that he did not include his entire criminal history, in particular a 1994 domestic incident, on his application to be reinstated. Cheshire Police Chief Neil Dryfe was there in opposition. Celotto said that a different, 2001 domestic, in which, according to a board member, the dude threatened to kill his girlfriend, then threw something at a wall with the womans 6-year-old nearby, was reduced to breach of peace.
The victims testimony in a police report is hearsay, Celotto said. It went through the court system with trained assistant states attorney and judges, and it was adjudicated as a breach of peace... But under the circumstances that prevail for an allegation contained in a police report, is very serious on its face, to result in a breach-of-peace plea, I think puts the underlying circumstances in a far-less grave light than the lurid reading of it. I dont question the urgency of law enforcement to respond to such a thing, but the conviction resulted in a breach of peace violation.
The mullet finally got a chance to talk. This is stemming from a relationship from the past, he said. I have learned a lot since then. Celotto described his client, who was not named, as steadfast with good conduct for 16 or 17 years. I dont think hes very sophisticated, Celotto said. I do feel he has come in good faith and contrition.
Not exactly scintillating TV.
Ken Dixon can be reached in the Capitol at 860-549-4670 or at kdixon@ctpost.com. See twitter.com/KenDixonCT. His Facebook address is kendixonct.hearst.
Priti Patel has always been a bit on the tricksy side.
The now ex-International Development Secretary won her political break under David Cameron by posing as a hug-a-husky moderniser.
But when the doors slammed shut on her key selection meeting in white, working-class Witham in 2006, she morphed into a hang em and flog em cross between Norman Tebbit and Nigel Farage, and won the nomination at a canter.
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The now ex-International Development Secretary (pictured) won her political break under David Cameron by posing as a hug-a-husky moderniser
Boris Johnson is mourning the loss of former Defence Secretary Michael Fallon, forced to quit ten days ago over the sex harassment storm.
Johnson used to swap surreptitious text messages during Cabinet meetings with fellow classicist Fallon in Latin to keep the contents secret from less educated colleagues.
But not now. As Fallon would put it: Cursus honorum meorum finitus est My political career is over.
Pictured: Labour MP Laura Pidcock with Jeremy Corbyn on a visit to Geraldine's Cafe in Consett, County Durham
What's that strange reek now, Laura?
Rabble-rousing Labour MP Laura Pidcock has burnished her Corbynista credentials since entering the Commons in June by complaining Parliament reeks of the establishment.
Yet she fails to mention the achievement of her legal eagle father, Bernard, who collected his MBE from the Palace ten years ago.
Overcome by the reek of the establishment?
The row over whether Theresa Mays deputy, Damian Green, had porn on his Commons computer as alleged by former Met Assistant Commissioner Bob Quick is the latest twist in a long and bitter feud.
When the MoS revealed in 2008 that Quicks wife Judith was running a wedding chauffeur business on the side, using retired policemen as drivers, Quick claimed the story had been planted by the Tories to undermine his investigation into Whitehall leaks.
The copper was later forced into a grovelling retraction.
A squealing retreat
Friends of David Cameron watched gleefully as Lord Ashcroft fled to the gents to escape Paradise Papers questions over dodging tax.
Ashcrofts hatchet-job biog of Cameron featured a bogus story about the ex-PM, a lewd act and a pigs head.
It was wonderful to see Ashcroft flee like a squealing pig, chortled a pal of Dave.
Ashcroft loves to parade his hobby of collecting VCs. Dog doesnt recall the real recipients of those medals fleeing
Former Commons secretaries to Dover Tory MP Charlie Elphicke, who denies sexual harassment claims, have spoken of his control-freak style.
One day he ordered us to place our computers against the wall so that he could see all the screens all the time, said one.
It was weird.
Tory chiefs havent heard the last of Olympic rower Alex Story, who revealed he was propositioned by ex-Tory whip Chris Pincher dubbed a poundshop Weinstein in a bathrobe.
Next month the High Court will rule on Storys claim that the party used foul play to stop him becoming a Euro MP.
Many of us dream of being able to pack a suitcase so efficiently we arrive on holiday with a pile of uncreased garments and come home with equally neat piles of laundry.
Now a company that produces some very quirky storage products has sent shoppers into a frenzy with its packing solutions, including a carrier just for bras and a dedicated lingerie holder.
New York-based Nalai & Co, which advertises and ships worldwide, has racked up more than 60,000 followers on Facebook where products receive tens of thousands of likes and sell out within hours.
Its six-piece $24.99 (26) Travel Luggage Organizer set has thousands of positive reviews on Facebook with fans saying they wouldn't leave home without it.
'These are absolutely fantastic wouldn't travel now without them,' one said. 'Finally know where everything is and so neat and tidy.'
On the more quirky side, the last batch of its $24.99 (26) Brassiere Travel Bag, which holds six bras sold out in eight hours, with one reviewer saying: 'I have it and love it'.
Nalai & Co has racked up more than 60,000 followers on Facebook where products such as the Travel Luggage Organizer have amassed more than 11,000 likes
The last batch of its $24.99 (26) Brasserie Travel Bag sold out within eight hours, delighting some shoppers but leaving others baffled
Shoppers have also been tempted by a lingerie travel bag that sold out in seven-and-a-half hours
A lingerie travel bag sold out in seven hours and allows travellers to organise pants and bras into a neat pouch to go in the suitcase.
One Facebook commenter said owning the item would make her feel as if she had her life together.
However, not everyone is convinced by the unusual range of products with one asking: 'Have your bras every really complained about travelling without a special case?'
Others described it as the utlimate solution to a 'first world problem'.
Although the storage solutions might seem a little quirky, they have certainly been a hit with shoppers
Desperate for a glimpse of Decembers Vogue, the first under the helm of Edward Enninful (pictured), its first black, male, gay editor, I kept monitoring the website
Desperate for a glimpse of Decembers Vogue, the first under the helm of Edward Enninful, its first black, male, gay editor, I kept monitoring the website. There at the top was what I thought was a seminal cover from 1971: brows non-existent, lips sticky, a kaftan and a turban. Cmon! Wheres the new one?
Silly me. This is the new one. Its a homage, featuring mixed-race model Adwoa Aboah: she is not only black and a feminist, she has freckles! Hooray for diversity and openness and flaws, but just a small note of caution: shes the daughter of Camilla Lowther, a fashion photography super-agent.
I wonder when real diversity zero-tolerance for nepotism will arrive at this magazine. But still, its an arresting image, given that Enninfuls predecessor, Alex Shulman, failed to put a black solo star on the cover between 2003 and 2014.
Alongside Aboahs gorgeous face is a list of famous names but I wonder how readers will take to just a roll call.
For a new broom, the line-up Grace Coddington, Glenda Jackson, Kate Moss seems dusty. And inside? The theme is Britishness (a shoot has the heading: Remain. Please, stick to baubles). The editors letter (apart from the mention of his OBE) is heartfelt, as he talks about being the child of a seamstress who came to the UK from Ghana with her six children.
Some of his ideas are good, too: Victoria Beckham is interviewed in her childhood bedroom. Zadie Smith (I told you freckles are in) writes about the Queen; copy brilliant, but the illustration by Peter Blake is horrendous!
Desperate for a glimpse of Decembers Vogue, the first under the helm of Edward Enninful, its first black, male, gay editor, I kept monitoring the website. There at the top was what I thought was a seminal cover from 1971: brows non-existent, lips sticky, a kaftan and a turban. Cmon! Wheres the new one?
Diversity, diversity, diversity, on every stiff, perfumed page. But what troubles me is that New Vogues hirings are still musicians in an orchestra conducted by Louis Vuitton, Gucci, LOreal et al. They are therefore playing the same old tune.
For all the talk of a whole new ethos, they are still selling us the same expensive stuff we dont need.
There is not one word about challenging an industry that oppresses women and children in sweatshops, or promotes thinness. There is not one plumper beauty in the entire issue, unless you count the roast turkey on page 157.
The New Kids On The Block are so desperate to belong theres a piece so puffy about PR Matthew Freud it makes me want to hurl they have sold their souls and are peddling the same aspirations as Shulman and her privileged lot.
And even by the standards of celebrity fawning, describing contributing editor Naomi Campbell, sent to interview London Mayor Sadiq Khan, as a tireless philanthropist is frankly hilarious. Try telling that to the underlings on the receiving end of an airborne mobile phone.
Not every page works hard. There are still teeny cut-outs from the catwalk and a whole page on bows.
Finally to beauty, which is always near the back. Is that the end? No, thank the Lord. Ta da! Here at last is the fashion, styled by Enninful himself, if you please. The cover star is in a Nina Ricci feather coat, 3,070; Saint Laurent feathered boots, 4,715; Louis Vuitton lace dress, 8,400; sequined mini, 12,855; and De Beers and Van Cleef diamonds that must cost more than houses.
For a new broom, the line-up Grace Coddington, Glenda Jackson, Kate Moss (pictured with Enninful and her daughter Lila Grace Moss Hack) seems dusty
And even by the standards of celebrity fawning, describing contributing editor Naomi Campbell, sent to interview London Mayor Sadiq Khan, as a tireless philanthropist is frankly hilarious. Try telling that to the underlings on the receiving end of an airborne mobile phone
Zadie Smith (I told you freckles are in) writes about the Queen; copy brilliant, but the illustration by Peter Blake is horrendous!
Still, Aboah looks lovely, which I suppose is the point. Its certainly preferable to the photo elsewhere of a naked Asian woman aboard a cow, surrounded by blonde aristos.
The reception from Enninfuls beautiful friends has been orgasmic: Framing this masterpiece! But these are just people who desperately want to be in it next month.
Some of his ideas are good, too: Victoria Beckham (pictured) is interviewed in her childhood bedroom
Shulman and I had our spats, but I always respected the fact she seemed distanced from the farce that is fashion. Enninful is immersed without a snorkel. Advertisers are clearly happy: this issue clocks in at 356 pages. I collected every Vogue from September 1977. Will I collect the next 40 years worth? Am I seduced?
Much as I rail against it, I still want to know what Vogue thinks I should be wearing, even though, like most of its readers, I can only dream of a ten-grand frock by D&G.
I suppose if I stop buying it then I will have to admit my old life the one where I used to dress up, shop at Net A Porter, and do as the beauty pages told me is over. For all its (new) faults, Ill still open the magazine and bask in another world where everything is shinier.
Its an addiction, I suppose, but I still need that hit. And who knows, given time, the new editor may have the courage to feature not just beautiful black people, but maybe the odd person with cellulite.
I can but hope
She's already synonymous with her portrayal of the Queen, but now Helen Mirren wants to take on the role of another high-profile figure on the world stage.
The British actress, 72, has revealed she would love to play Donald Trump in a film, saying she would be 'so funny' in the role, adding: 'I've almost got the hair'.
Dame Helen made the comments in an interview for The Hollywood Masters series Loyola Marymount Universitys School of Film & TV, according to The Hollywood Reporter, describing the president at 'a fantastic sort of slightly Shakespearean character'.
'He may have a Shakespearean fall, I dont know but you know, he is an extraordinary character,' she said.
When asked if he would be a hard character to penetrate, Dame Helen said she would look to his upbringing to get a sense of who the real Donald Trump is.
'You have to start with the child, and the child is very much in Trump,' she explained.
Dame Helen Mirren, 72, has admitted she would love to play US president Donald Trump in a film, saying she would be 'so funny' in the role
Dame Helen joked that she's 'almost got the hair' required to play Trump, pictured today with Vietnamese president Tran Dai Quang on a visit to Hanoi
The actress was seen filming on set of the new movie, Anna, alongside Peaky Blinders star Cillian Murphy, 41, in Paris earlier this week.
But last night it was off to Hollywood where the star attended the Governors Awards with her husband Taylor Hackford.
Dame Helen looked striking in a black jumper with white lace bell sleeves and an elaborately embroidered floral skirt.
While she may be eager to immortalise Trump on the big screen, the star is no fan of the president, previously referring to him as a misogynistic 'dinosaur' with an 'enormous body' and a 'small head'.
Dame Helen attended the ninth Governors Awards in LA last night with her husband Taylor Hackford
The actress is not impressed by Ivanka who she accused of being all talk and no substance. However, she seems to have more time for Melania and her 'dark Slovenian soul'
She didn't mince her words when it came to the First Daughter Ivnaka, either accusing her of being all talk and no 'substance' in an interview with Allure.
'Her book is so ignorant about how the majority of women live, talking about "Make time for yourself to have a massage." Puh-lease,' she said.
However, the star appears to have a soft spot for Melania Trump, saying she's the most powerful woman in the world as she could take down her husband.
Im Eastern European, you know; [weve] got these dark souls. That dark Slovenian soul is about to come out.
The veteran actress said she would look to Trump's childhood to penetrate his psychology
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As President Trump continues his tour of Asia, Hope Hicks continues to add to her increasing list of fashion statements.
The White House communications director donned a pretty floral number as she walked into a news conference between President Donald Trump and Vietnamese President Tran Dai Quang at the Presidential Palace on Sunday.
The dress was ruffled at the hem, which rested just above the knee, and puffed at the shoulders, much like the grey sweater she wore earlier in the trip when Trump addressed the National Assembly in Seoul.
Walking the walk: Hope Hicks, 29, wore a pink and blue flower-printed dress as she arrived for a news conference between President Donald Trump and Vietnamese President Tran Dai Quang at the Presidential Palace on Sunday
Shady: The White House Communications director paired the look with a set of black high heels and sunglasses
A repeat: The dress included puffed sleeves, similar to ones Hope wore earlier in the five-country Asia tour. Her look was quite different from the one Melania was sported wearing this weekend as she stopped in Alaska (right)
Hope paired the pink, blue and black dress with a pair of simple black high heels and a burgundy Ivanka Trump tote bag. She added a hint of pink to her lips to match the floral pattern.
She also had her hair pulled back into a bun at the base of her head with a twist on either side, as she arrived behind White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders.
Carrying a brown bag, Sarah appeared in a long-sleeved black dress accessorized with a simple pearl necklace. Both women wore the same blue hexagonal pin.
A little extra: Hope also sported a lovely shade of pink lipstick to compliment the floral number
Top ladies: Hope arrived for the event alongside White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders, who wore a long-sleeved black dress
The White House fashionista: The 29-year-old appeared to be back to her stylish self after going casual last week
She appears to have returned to her stylish self after Friday, when she favored comfort over fashion as she donned a baggy men's shirt on her way to Vietnam for their eighth day of travel.
Although the White House communications director has been turning it up in the style department for most of President Trump's five-country tour of Asia, the 29-year-old didn't look quiet as put together in her wrinkled collared shirt as she waited to board Air Force One at the Beijing Airport in China.
Hope paired the ill-fitting button-down with black trousers and black pumps, and at one point she had her long, highlighted hair pulled up in an uncharacteristic high ponytail.
Morning flight: Hope favored comfort over fashion on Friday she wore a baggy men's shirt at the Beijing Airport in China, while carrying an Ivanka Trump tote and a $1,400 Louis Vuitton holdall
Not her usual 'do! The 29-year-old White House communications director had her hair pulled up in a ponytail at one point after arriving at the airport in Vietnam, but still appeared to have added a pink lip to her look
Just one week before: The former model opted for a ladylike pink dress in Hawaii last Friday before President Trump started his five-country tour of Asia, looking much more glamorous in the form-flattering number
Kicking off the trip: Hope was one of the staffers who traveled to Hawaii with him to pay a solemn visit to to Pearl Harbor and its memorial to the USS Arizona. She is pictured on a boat heading to the USS Arizona Memorial
The former model had a large brown leather carryall in the crook of her arm, and she carried a Louis Vuitton duffel bag ahead of her flight with the president.
While waiting outside on the tarmac, Hope wore her sunglasses on the top of her head as the breeze blew through her hair, which she had pulled back down.
It's been a whirlwind week for Hope who started the tour by giving First Lady Melania Trump a run for her money in the fashion department.
Within a week, Hope went from donning a ladylike pink dress in Hawaii to donning a wrinkled men's shirt on her way to Vietnam.
Hope also put fashion on the back-burner on Thursday evening when she wore a simple, slightly baggy outfit to a state dinner in Beijing.
Simple: Hope, who has given Melania a run for her money in the style department over the past few days, appeared to take a step back in a baggy outfit on Thursday while attending a state dinner in Beijing
Wowing: Melania Trump once again stepped up her fashion game during the state dinner, donning an ornate Gucci fur trim dress with an ornate pattern inspired by traditional Chinese clothing while meeting with China's first lady, , Peng Liyuan
Staff: Hope wore a bright pink dress underneath a plain black blazer with rolled sleeves. She kept out of the spotlight and was only photographed from the waist up, while Melania made a spectacular entrance with Madame Peng
The White House staffer opted for a bright pink dress underneath a plain black blazer, which she wore with the sleeves rolled up.
Hope kept out of the spotlight and was only photographed from the waist up, while Melania made a spectacular entrance with China's first lady, Peng Liyuan.
Melania stepped up her style game in an ornate Gucci fur trim dress with an ornate pattern reminiscent of traditional Chinese clothing.
The 47-year-old first lady exuded confidence as she strode in five-inch, baby pink stilettos, which matched the fur lining of her sleeves, next to her Chinese counterpart.
While Melania was clearly in the spotlight during Thursday's state dinner, Hope has upstaged her on a couple of occasions during President Trump's trip around Asia.
The duo joined the president in South Korea on Wednesday to listen to his address at the National Assembly in Seoul.
Sartorial: The style war between Melania and Hope waged on as the duo joined the president in South Korea on Wednesday, with Hope sitting behind Melania and in front of Sarah Huckabee Sanders
Classic: Although Melania was front and center as her husband addressed the National Assembly in Seoul, Hope certainly gave her a run for her money, looking incredibly chic in a grey turtleneck sweater
Hope looked notably chic in a grey turtleneck sweater as she sat a few rows behind the mother of one, and just a few feet away from White House senior advisor Jared Kushner.
The White House communications director cut a simple but chic silhouette in her sweater with puff shoulders. She wore her signature blowout during the event, and was seen tossing her long blond hair over her shoulder as she fixed her earpiece to listen to the commander in chief.r.
Hope is a former Trump Organization employee. She worked inside Trump Tower and helped Ivanka Trump grow her fashion line, before President Trump hired her away when he decided to run for president.
The communications director modeled the same chic sweater in an image posted to the president's official Twitter account on Wednesday afternoon, which he shared in celebration of the one-year anniversary of his election win.
Career: The current White House communications director is a former Trump Organization employee, who has in the past worked inside the Trump Tower and helped Ivanka Trump grow her fashion line before President Trump hired her away
Thumbs up! Jared Kushner put his arm on Hope's shoulder as they both posed for a picture, taken aboard Air Force One and posted to the president's official Twitter account in celebration of the one-year anniversary of his election win
Hope and Jared both were featured in the picture taken aboard Air Force One, which sees several key members of Trump's inner circle including White House Director of Social Media and Assistant to the President Dan Scavino and Stephen Miller, senior advisor for policy, posing with their thumbs up while posing next to the president.
The group looks very cozy in the image; Jared can be seen with his arm casually resting on Hope's shoulder while Stephen has his arm around her waist, as they all smile happily for the cameras.
All three are traveling with President Trump during his 12-day tour of Asia, while his daughter Ivanka has remained at home in Washington, D.C.
On Monday, the ever-glamorous Melania faced some serious competition in the style stakes, once again courtesy of Hope.
Both women showed their support for President Trump while attending a state banquet in Tokyo; however, while the first lady chose a very traditional floor-length gown for the occasion, Hope spiced things up a bit, ensuring she stood out from the crowd in a chic tuxedo.
Official: Melania opted to wear a traditional floor-length gown as she attended a state banquet in Tokyo on Monday night, held to mark her husband's visit to Japan during the couple's 12-day trip around Asia
Aide: Although the first lady looked glamorous, she was upstaged in the style stakes by Hope, who wore a much more unique tuxedo for the affair
Lost in thought: The first lady looked pensive during the event, which happened on the first stop of their trip around Asia. Hope also appeared contemplative in the room filled with dignitaries
Natural: In contrast with her impeccable suit, Hope wore her hair down, bringing a relaxed touch to her glamorous outfit
Hope wore the tailored black suit with a traditional white tuxedo shirt, accessorizing the look with an oversized black bow tie worn at her neck at the event, which was hosted by Japenese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe at the Akasaka Palace in Tokyo to mark Trump's visit.
Hope wore her long hair down in a blowout and added a splash of color to her monochromatic look with a slick of bold pink lipstick, finishing off her make-up with a smokey eye.
In contrast to Hope's androgynous style option, Melania donned a bright red, floor-length gown with short sleeves on the occasion.
Dressed in a fuchsia Moschino dress and heels, the diminutive Rachel Fay is immaculately turned out and impeccably polite, but she has some pretty brutal things to say about modern parties: she thinks theyre dull, tedious and making us miserable rather than happy.
I havent been a guest at a really good party in 15 years, she says, bluntly. But Ive been to plenty of bad ones people looking at their mobiles, shifting awkwardly from foot to foot, and stuck talking to the same person they were an hour ago. Were simply not mingling any more.
Horrified, she set herself up as the UKs first, and as yet only, professional introducer. For a fee from 250 to 2,500 depending on requirements she promises to make your party go with a bang.
You might wonder who would pay for someone to talk to their guests, but since starting the business in 2010, Rachel has played hostess at more than 100 parties and has never been so busy. Shes organised art gallery views, stellar private parties, introduced for Prince Charles and has the backing of the royals party planner, Lady Elizabeth Anson.
Rachel Fay (pictured) launched the UK's first professional introducer service in 2010, offering opportunities for guests to be introduced to each other at parties and corporate events
Such glitzy events dont sound like the mulled-wine-and-mince-pie gatherings we mere mortals throw, but she insists the principles are exactly the same.
Where were going wrong, she says, is that we no longer introduce our guests to each other.
Its the hostesss job to allow people to sparkle. They cant shine if they feel anxious about not knowing people and are left in a corner, says Rachel, 58, who lives in London. Its like that first day at school where you worry: Whos going to play with me?
She thinks we fret about all the wrong things the food, drink and decoration. Food and drink are peripheral you can have a great time without them, she explains. Ive eaten canapes that look like works of art, but theyre gone in an instant.
To be given an opportunity to meet someone I might form a friendship with or who might lead to my next job thats a lasting joy you take home.
One OF the worst celebrations she went to should have been one of the best. It was a New Years Eve party on the theme of film-star glamour, and the organisers had gone to town with it. But people had arrived in groups and didnt mix.
No one started introductions, so no one knew if it was all right to say hello to anyone else. It was almost impossible to penetrate any groups and my friend and I left miserable.
Rachel puts the crisis in hostessing down to the fact that more women work, so they understandably dont have time to plan ambitious get-togethers. When I was bringing up my son Matthew, whos now 21, hostessing was seen as part of the role of wife and mother.
Her idea was seen as a gap in the market by the Queens cousin and party planner, Lady Anson (file image)
She dates the decline to the mid-2000s, towards the end of her 15-year marriage to the partner of a City law firm.
After my divorce in 2007, I was obviously interested in meeting new people, but I found it really difficult. Id come away from parties knowing there were interesting people in the room, but I was too shy to introduce myself, and had no one to help me.
I was so frustrated to be given a glass of wine then left to get on with it. Thats when I had my aha moment.
At first, people didnt understand what I was trying to do. Because no one had done anything like this before, I had to try quite hard to persuade them that they needed me.
When I was bringing up my son Matthew, whos now 21, hostessing was seen as part of the role of wife and mother
Id give potential clients a free demo of my skills: offering to turn up at their next party and show them what I could do. Some were still sceptical until they got feedback from guests that theyd enjoyed themselves far more than at previous parties and met some terrifically interesting people.
Rachel had an early break after being invited to tea by the Queens cousin and party planner, Lady Anson. She loved my idea. Like lots of party-organisers, she admits she dislikes having to go round and talk to people at the event, so she could see the gap for my service and gave me her full encouragement.
Rachels first party as a paid introducer was at a London art gallery for 150 corporate guests, mainly lawyers and accountants.
I was nervous beforehand, but once I got into the room the adrenaline took over. The organisers had never seen such a buzz before and were thrilled with how much the guests talked to each other.
To this day, I love those moments where you see two people youve introduced really hitting it off.
Here, Rachel shares her tips on making the party a success . ..
HOW TO BE THE PERFECT HOSTESS
INVITE EXTRAS
A no-show rate of 30 per cent is standard, so invite enough people to fill the space you have: Ive found people prefer to be slightly squashed than be in a space thats too big.
Rachel recommends delegating duties such as greeting at the door to others to prevent the host from getting bogged down (file image)
If your invite says party on it, that suggests at least 20 people, probably 30 or 40 depending on space. So if youre in any doubt about numbers, put please come for drinks on the invite.
DO YOUR RESEARCH
The day before, I look at the guest list and work out who I think should meet whom, based on shared interest or life stage. I write it down as a list with prompts, which I keep in the kitchen so I can refer to it. Sometimes it can be as simple as someones son applying to a university where you know a guests daughter recently went.
DELEGATE DUTIES
A hostess can get bogged down with opening the front door or getting the food out.
Ask someone to greet people at the door (teenage children are useful here) and guide them towards someone who can give them a drink (husbands often like this role). Let guests take a drink and look round. They may spot someone they know; if not, introduce them.
To be given an opportunity to meet someone I might form a friendship with or who might lead to my next job thats a lasting joy you take home
BE A SHARK!
Your party is like a shark it has to keep moving, or it will die. Your aim is not to introduce everyone to everyone else meeting 40 people is overload.
A guest probably only needs to meet four or five people. They will go home thinking your party was fabulous if they met just one person they hit it off with. The important thing is to keep the energy up: never let things stall.
INTERRUPT AWAY
Leave people who have just met to chat as long as they want, but be tougher with those who know each other well. Dont be afraid to take others to meet them.
You need fine judgment dont constantly butt in and move people on as it may feel like speed-dating.
SAVE THE STUCK
I can always tell if people are desperate to get away from someone: shifting from foot to foot, looking around the room. You have to go boldly up to the stuck person and say to the other: Oh Pete, would you mind if I just took Bob away to meet Jess? Ill come back in a minute, I promise. As long as you do go back and introduce Pete to someone else, its fine.
She says introducing people to others creates a snowball effect where they begin introducing themselves (file image)
TWO-MINUTE RULE
Dont get entrenched in your own conversations: these should last no longer than two minutes.
It isnt easy as guests will gravitate towards you, but say something like: Id love to catch up properly, but as Im the hostess, Id like to introduce you to Jo and Karina.
If they ask: How are you or how was your holiday? reply: Im fine, thank you/It was great. Come and meet Jason, hes just got back from Turkey. People follow your lead. If you introduce them, they start introducing themselves to others, which creates a snowball effect.
. . . AND THE GUEST ON EVERY LIST
RSVP, RSVP, RSVP!
You would never have dreamed 20 years ago of not replying to an invite, not going if you said youd attend, or waiting for a better invitation or until the day before to see what you felt like doing.
If it says dinner at 7.30pm for 8pm, youll eat at 8pm, so arrive at 7.35 to 7.40pm. If its drinks and says 7.30pm, anything between 7.30pm and 8pm is fine, though the accepted time has slipped recently to anything within the first hour.
She advises speaking to strangers rather than looking at your phone if the host doesn't introduce you to someone (file image)
DITCH YOUR PHONE
Its tempting to use your phone as a crutch when youve no one to talk to, but it says, I dont want to meet anyone. If its on, you may be tempted to sneak a look, so turn it off before you arrive.
PREP CONVERSATION
If you're worried you might not have anything to say to people, prepare a few topics films, books or recent holidays.
Downplay your job: its tedious when people just talk about work. You might say: What do you do when youre not at work?
TALK TO STRANGERS
Your hostess should be introducing you to people, but you may have to take matters into your own hands.
Rachel (pictured) says others will follow suit if you show that you're enjoying yourself
Dont hesitate to walk up to people and say: May I say hello? Just introduce yourself and they will automatically do the same.
A good first question is: How do you know the hostess? If you want to move on, ask the person youre with: Do you know many people here? Theyll say: Oh, I know John over there, and you can ask them to introduce you.
BE THE HELP
Useful if youre struggling a bit or have arrived early. Perhaps offer to hand out drinks or fill up glasses, so you can mingle.
ITS OK TO ESCAPE
Making an excuse to go to the loo is a cop-out. Better to say: Its been great talking to you, but Id like to meet some other people here.
Better still, say: Its been great talking to you. Shall we go and say hello to Liz over there? Youre being a really good guest if you take them with you.
AND FINALLY . . .
Enjoy yourself, its contagious. If people see others having a good time, theyll follow suit.
And always send a thank-you note within a few days: any form is acceptable email, card or phone call as long as you do it.
Think youve got what it takes to be a party introducer? Rachel would like to hear from women with introduction skills. Go to www.rachelfay.co.uk
Ava and Austin Jayson were not breathing when they were born at 27 weeks and had to be placed in incubators after being resuscitated
Born prematurely, the future looked uncertain for twins Ava and Austin Jayson.
Neither was breathing when they came into the world at 27 weeks and they had to be placed in incubators after they were resuscitated.
Both were still weak and struggling to breathe weeks later until they were put in the same incubator at the request of their mother, Krystina, and immediately placed their arms around each other.
From that moment, their oxygen levels started to shoot up and their conditions improved dramatically.
There is no scientific explanation for the sudden change in their health although many parents of twins believe in what has become known as the rescuing hug.
Similar to the way a premature babys heart rate and breathing can improve with prolonged skin-to-skin contact with a parent, it is thought the comfort of physical closeness can work wonders not yet understood by experts.
Mrs Lake-Jayson, 29, said: It really was a miracle. They had been apart since they were born prematurely.
It was as if they knew they were together again and they were pulling each other through.
Mrs Lake-Jayson and her husband Luke Jayson, 33, had been overjoyed to discover she was pregnant with twins.
Both were still weak and struggling to breathe weeks later until they were put in the same incubator at the request of their mother, Krystina
Mrs Lake-Jayson and her husband Luke Jayson, 33 (left), had been overjoyed to discover she was pregnant with twins
Wed only been trying for a baby for a couple of months when I discovered I was pregnant but I started to bleed at six weeks and I was rushed to hospital, the laboratory stem cell collector said.
Luckily, everything was fine. But the sonographer had some news for me that I was pregnant with twins.
It was such a shock as I hadnt expected it. But both Luke and I were thrilled to be expecting two babies rather than one.
The pregnancy continued without incident until her waters broke 13 weeks early.
I was really panicking. Luke rushed me to hospital and a scan confirmed that I was in labour and I needed an emergency caesarean to deliver the babies. I was devastated, said Mrs Lake-Jayson.
Ava weighed just 2lb 1oz and her brother was 3oz heavier when they were delivered in May 2015 and instantly given urgent life-saving treatment
Ava weighed just 2lb 1oz and her brother was 3oz heavier when they were delivered in May 2015 and instantly given urgent life-saving treatment.
When I finally got to see them 11 hours later they were on separate sides of the room. Their skin looked transparent and they were covered in tubes, said Mrs Lake-Jayson.
I knew they should have been inside me growing. All I could think of was how they could possibly survive.
Over the next eight weeks they made slight progress but their oxygen levels were still wildly unpredictable until their mother asked if they could be placed together.
The theory of rescuing hugs dates back to 1995, when twin girls Brielle and Kyrie Jackson were born 12 weeks prematurely in Massachusetts, in the US
It was wonderful to see. They just couldnt stop staring at each other. They really improved from that moment on, she said.
The twins were finally allowed home in Stevenage, Hertfordshire, shortly afterwards but in September last year Ava suddenly collapsed in her mothers arms.
She was rushed to Addenbrookes Hospital in Cambridge where doctors discovered she had dilated cardiomyopathy, a condition that affects the hearts ability to pump blood around the body.
After being transferred to the Royal Brompton Hospital in London she went into cardiac arrest and was placed on a life-support machine to give her heart a chance to recover.
Austin (left) and Ava Lake-Jayson (right). They were together in the womb and they stick together like glue now,' their mother said
Ava needed 11 blood transfusions while hooked up to the device and suffered a stroke.
Fortunately, she pulled through, although she still suffers problems with her swallowing reflex and has to wear orthopaedic shoes to help her with walking after being left with mild cerebral palsy.
But once again, the special bond between the twins has helped her make considerable strides back to health.
Being with Austin helped Ava enormously, said Mrs Lake-Jayson.
Krystina Lake-Jayson with twins Ava and Austin with proud father Luke Jayson
He joined in with her physiotherapy and held her hand as she tried to take her first steps again. She copied Austin in everything he did too, which really helped her.
She will have to be on heart medication for the rest of her life now but with her brother by her side theres nothing she cant do.
They were together in the womb and they stick together like glue now. Their bond has been the best medicine for them.
The theory of rescuing hugs dates back to 1995, when twin girls Brielle and Kyrie Jackson were born 12 weeks prematurely in Massachusetts, in the US.
Jane Denton, director of the Multiple Births Foundation, confirmed there was anecdotal evidence that sick newborn twins could benefit from being together
Kyrie thrived but Brielle had breathing and heart-rate problems and went into a critical condition.
Medical staff feared she would die until a nurse suggested putting the siblings into the same incubator. Brielle snuggled up to her sister and within minutes her blood-oxygen readings had improved. Both were eventually discharged healthy.
Mrs Lake-Jayson said: There may not be any scientific proof that a twins bond and cuddling each other can help but I saw it with my own eyes.
They might not have been here today had they not had each other.
Jane Denton, director of the Multiple Births Foundation, confirmed there was anecdotal evidence that sick newborn twins could benefit from being together.
There does seem to be something in the fact that close personal contact for all babies seems to give them some stability, she said.
Krystina and Luke were supported with free Home from Home accommodation by The Sick Childrens Trust. Find out more at www.sickchildrenstrust.org.
With polling now over in Himachal Pradesh, the BJP has shifted its focus to Gujarat where it is locked in a close contest post-GST.
The party is working on a three-pronged strategy GST, Patidars and tribal displacement.
Party leaders have been told to reach out to traders and convince them about the long-term gains of the tax with the government contemplating some relief for business people too.
Union Minister Smriti Irani takes a selfie with her supporters during Gujarat elections door to door campaign at Navsari near Surat
More than a dozen cabinet ministers and central BJP leaders will be camping in Gujarat to oversee poll preparations.
BJP is facing a stiff challenge due to resentment in the trading community which is protesting the tax.
The party's leaders said that with the concessions in GST announced by the government on Friday, the burden on traders would reduce.
After joining the BJP, former Trinamool Congress leader Mukul Roy's (2nd left) first public meeting at Esplanade on November 10, 2017 in Kolkata, India. (L-R) BJP leaders Dilip Ghosh and Kailash Vijayvargiya were present
BJP representatives in Kolkata
Furthermore, sources claimed, more relief could be offered by the government in the coming days.
The GST council on Friday decided to cut the tax rate on 177 items from 28 per cent to 18 per cent, leaving only 50 items in the highest tax slab.
This, sources said, was aimed at wooing the large section of lower and middle class society who will directly benefit.
'This is one of the biggest concessions announced after the new tax system took effect on July 1.
'The tax cut is aimed at making the new indirect tax regime more acceptable to people and reduce the burden on businesses,' a BJP leader said.
According to political sources, the party is also wary of discontent among Patidars who have been its traditional voters, but have recently been left unhappy.
A large section of Patidars, dominant in Saurashtra, are engaged in trade and their displeasure with the BJP government has only aggravated after GST was introduced.
BJP poll managers said that the margin of votes between BJP and Congress has remained constantly around 10 per cent during the last five assembly polls and the party would be working hard to increase the margin.
The Congress, on the other hand, has been banking on Dalit, OBC and rural votes to win over these 10 per cent votes.
Chinese President Xi Jinping delivers a keynote speech at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) CEO Summit in Da Nang, Vietnam, Nov. 10, 2017. Photo:Xinhua
Chinese President Xi Jinping delivered a keynote speech at the APEC CEO Summit in Vietnams central city of Da Nang, Nov. 10. Journalists who covered the event have lauded the speech, saying that Xis speech very impressive, and Chinas initiatives, proposals, and new journey for building a strong and modern socialist country offer new hope for the Asia-Pacific region.
Helen Rei, senior reporter of The National, Papua New Guinea, told Peoples Daily Online that the most striking point was the Belt and Road Initiative. My prime minister said in his speech that PNG is at the Belt and Road network in terms of economy and trade. This initiative is good news for countries like Papua New Guinea with connectivity problems, adding that her country is looking forward to the leader of the worlds second largest economy bringing the Asia Pacific together.
Fausto Triana Pruna, a reporter for Latin America News Agency, pointed out President Xis estimation that China will import $24 trillion worth of goods in the next 15 years. This is a huge figure. But China is a big country, so its more than just a promise. Its something China will do well.
Lucille Talusan, reporter with CBN Asia in the Philippines said she liked how Xi presented Chinas new journey as one of working together with other countries to create new drivers of common development.
Photo:Wu Chengliang
Papua New Guinea sees China as a partner in its efforts to continue building and developing its economy. China exports and imports a lot of our goods and helps build infrastructure and connectivity, so of course China is good for us, and we looking forward to the years ahead, Rei said.
Talusan said, I liked it when Xi mentioned a new journey for future development. I saw hope in the grand economic program.
Doan Trong, with Little Saigon TV, which is based in the US state of California, called Xis speech very exciting. He said Chinas power in the world today is reality.
Gorethy Kenneth, a reporter with Post Courier who covered Xis speech, said Papua New Guinea has close connections with China. She has installed WeChat, a popular Chinese social media app, to connect her circle of Chinese friends. Shortly after Xis speech, she got the full text of the speech sent by the Chinese embassy in her home country.
Hailing the close relations between China and Papua New Guinea, Kenneth said she is looking forward to an even more fruitful partnership with China.
Quach Canh Toan, with Vietnamese news site Zing News, said Xis speech was impressive. Xi summarized Chinas great achievements in the past five years, elaborated on the Belt and Road Initiative, and provided the blueprint for building a great modern socialist country that was formulated at the 19th CPC National Congress last month, and reaffirmed Chinas commitment to reform and opening up. All of which are really impressive, Toan commented.
Beware before sharing your personal data on job portals, as criminals are extracting the information from these websites and luring job seekers before duping them.
A similar modus operandi has been busted by the Delhi Police, who recently arrested a 25-year-old man, accused of duping almost 500 people to enjoy a lavish lifestyle.
According to the police, Gaurav, one of the active members of a gang, is a resident of Ashok Nagar and had studied hotel management from Punjab.
He, along with other gang members, used to extract information from job portals.
They then contacted people by making calls and sending emails.
The gang would then persuade their victims to send money to fake bank accounts and fake paytm accounts as a registration fee or for preparing some needful documents to give them jobs.
They used to publish advertisements in different newspapers for jobs as tour agents abroad, for passport holders.
After checking the advertisement, jobseekers called them and the accused duped them by getting money transferred in their account on the pretext of insurance and visa expenditure.
The gang would then persuade their victims to send money to fake bank accounts
Once the money was transferred, there was no sign of the accused. A similar complaint was registered in Gandhi Nagar in which one Harvinder Singh alleged that he read an advertisement in the classifieds column of a newspaper seeking passport holders for a job abroad.
Singh transferred `44,000 but the company neither gave him a job nor returned the money.
'In the last one year, Gaurav has duped almost 500 people for lakhs of rupees. He spent the money on living a lavish life and touring various places,' a police officer said.
Fifteen-year-old Kunal (name changed) knew that if his parents attended the parent-teacher meeting at his school, the situation at the home front would deteriorate.
He conjured up images of his father blaming his mother for his bad grades and how the fallout of an inevitable squabble would ruin his peace of mind for the rest of the week.
So he devised a plan. He told his mother that the parent-teacher meeting had been cancelled because the principal's son had passed away; a seemingly innocuous lie to avoid a personal crisis.
Teachers conduct a candle march to pay tribute to seven-year-old Pradyuman Thakur, who was found murdered in Ryan International School in Gurugram
Fortunately for Kunal, he never got caught and he graduated from Ryan International School, Noida, in 2009.
There is nothing new in adolescents cooking up stories to save their skin. Almost every teenager, like this former Ryan student, has gone through a phase in life when they will be tempted to tell a lie to save themselves from punishment or humiliation.
True, peer pressure can be overwhelming. But allegedly killing someone to avoid an exam?
Ryan International School
CBI team at the school, collecting forensic evidence (stock photo)
Dr Akshay Agarwal, founder and director, The Pyschology Solutions, said: 'During our school days, we would wish bad things to happen in the fear of examination. The ways to react to exam fear has changed.'
Agarwal has routinely conducted counselling sessions with adolescents across the country.
'We are least bothered about the mental health of the child. Any analysis of his/her personality is zero,' said Agarwal.
A team of psychiatrists at Ganga Ram Hospital believes that human beings are guided by the theory of TEA, the letters independently stand for 'Thought', 'Emotion' and 'Action'.
What the society should be collectively worried about over the Ryan school murder is how adolescents are growing increasingly aggressive.
Psychiatrists have expressed shock that the accused student did not show any expression of guilt or fear after the gruesome act. So what can be done? Many recommend developing more areas of interest in a child other than just academics.
'Education is only a tool and not an end in itself. A child who is not performing well in academics is not necessarily an idiot,' said Dr Rajeev Mehta, a pyschiatrist at Ganga Ram Hospital.
'Anger towards society and school and hormonal surge can lead to over-confidence in adolescents, giving them a feeling of invincibility. They think that nothing can happen to them. This is specifically an age related problem,' said Mehta.
Bullying, trolling and abusing are some of the ways in which this latent aggression is often manifested.
'Then there is a craving for ten minutes fame, when a child thinks, "I will bully someone and get famous. Initially, we laugh it off, but bullying should be taken seriously from a nascent stage,' Mehta advised.
One of the ways to tackle this is to ensure that schools have counselors to deal with such students.
Teachers suggest engaging with problem students at four different stages.
'There is a need to map a child's growth at four levels primary, middle, secondary and senior secondary level,' said Nandita Basu Roy, senior teacher at Bal Bharati Public School.
People protested the death of Pradyuman Thakur (stock photo)
'There is a need to instil social, emotional and spiritual resonance in students and to deal with anger, we have to keep the channels of communication open.
'This is important,' said Sushmita Mitra, pastoral mentor, Vasant Valley School.
Good parenting also has its fair share to play. The new age dependence on cell phones and selfies can be traced to parenting with materialistic pleasures.
'These days a child either gets over-pampered or given restrictions. It also gives him/her the feeling that since I am able to get whatever I demand, I will also be able to get away, if things go wrong. This subconsciously gives them the feeling that they are always right,' said Dr Mehta.
'This "I am right behaviour" is something similar to that exhibited by adolescent weed addicts. They defend themselves by saying that we are right because we get our high from this,' Dr Mehta said.
He suggests bonding over dinner or what he calls the DFD formula (Device-free Dinners) as a strategy to enhance communication between parents and their kids: 'They should sit together and spend time with each other. Shock absorbers have gone missing in this fast paced life of nuclear families.'
A survey conducted by pyschiatrist Dr Samir Parikh and his team found that 69 per cent of students believe that teasing is done in fun and not to hurt people, while 40 per cent of teachers believe that teasing and getting into fights is a part of the natural process of growing up for children.
Twelve per cent of teachers do not intervene in an instance of bullying until someone is physically hurt.
Security personnel at Ryan International School, on September 12, 2017
Sixty-six per cent students have been bullied, and 47 per cent students admitted to having bullied someone in their lifetime.
The findings of the survey corroborate the impact of violence or aggression shown via media that increases aggression in children, as 77 per cent respondents report that watching violence in movies encourages children to be aggressive.
Sixty per cent of teenagers agree that rules are meant to be broken. Sixty-six per cent of teens admire people who can fearlessly do dangerous things like stunts.
Seventy per cent of teenagers believe being adventurous and taking risks makes one a daredevil. Despite 75 per cent of teenagers being aware of the consequences of risk-taking behaviour, 61 per cent have repeated behaviours which have got them into trouble.
Seventy one per cent teenagers believe teenagers begin to drink/smoke to appear 'cool' among their peers.
Fifty-five per cent of teenagers believe their peers are responsible for an increase in the prevalence of risk-taking actions. Seventy-nine per cent of teens believe greater parental/teacher supervision can help reduce risk-taking behaviour, and 35 per cent of teenagers prefer reaching out to their parents for managing such behaviour.
According to the team, students consider hitting or pushing to be common forms of bullying, with 23 per cent students reporting teasing and name calling as common forms of bullying, and 36 per cent of them reporting cyber bullying to be common.
As many as 69 per cent of students believed that teasing is done in fun and not to hurt people, while 62 per cent agreed that students who get bullied bring it on to themselves.
The London department store that inspired the TV drama series Mr Selfridge has handed its owners a gold-plated dividend after sales in the 12 months to January increased by 16 per cent to 1.6 billion.
Selfridges paid a 38.5 million annual dividend almost three times the previous year following a surge in sales as tourists swarmed to snap up its luxury brands and latest fashions.
The company was founded by US-born Harry Gordon Selfridge in 1906, but the group has been owned by Canadian Galen Weston and his family since 2003.
Current owner: Galen Weston (left) with Hollywood star Gwyneth Paltrow
Visitors from abroad went on spending sprees as foreign currencies have been going further in Britain since the pound dived after the Brexit referendum.
The payment increase follows a dip in the dividend paid last year. It suggests the 300 million transformation of its flagship store and online shop is paying off.
Galen Weston lives in Ireland and also owns Dublin store Brown Thomas. His cousin George is chief executive of Primark owner Associated British Foods, in which the family has a major stake.
Tony Hetherington is Financial Mail on Sunday's ace investigator, fighting readers corners, revealing the truth that lies behind closed doors and winning victories for those who have been left out-of-pocket. Find out how to contact him below.
G.W.L. writes: My wife and I face a situation causing us great anxiety. We are both 80 years of age and have a limited income from pensions that are not index linked.
In 1993, we bought a timeshare, now controlled by the Cameron House Owners Club. We have been asking since 2004 for this to be sold, and we paid all annual management fees until 2012, after which we returned our ownership certificate.
Recently we received a demand for 3,010 with threats that debt collectors would be involved. We have serious medical conditions and cannot use the timeshare. It appears worthless, yet we are still harassed for payment.
Ryan Giggs bought one of the timeshare lodges at the Cameron House
Tony replies: This is not some gangster- connected Tenerife rip-off that you joined all those years ago.
The Cameron House Hotel and the dozens of lodges that occupy its grounds stand on the shores of Loch Lomond, and have claimed famous names such as Sir Alex Ferguson and Ryan Giggs among timeshare buyers in the past.
The resort still advertises that, timeshare ownership at Cameron Lodges is a simple and affordable way to enjoy all the benefits of a luxury home on Loch Lomond. It tells owners: Share your luxury holiday home with family and friends to create memories that last forever.
But like so many buyers who have grown older, and whose income has fallen while fees rise, you have found that those golden memories can easily turn sour.
Cameron Lodges has admitted that it has failed completely to find a buyer for your timeshare. It insists that your debt will continue to rise, and it suggests you start paying by monthly instalments though ominously, it adds: Please note that even if the club does manage to sell the lodge, it is unlikely to sell in excess of the debt.
In short, even a sale will not get you off the hook, according to Cameron Lodges.
Worse still, Cameron Lodges has pointed out that its timeshare ownerships are in perpetuity.
Even death does not bring an end to the bills. It could claim against your estate, blocking bequests to family, friends or charities, while it pockets annual fees for a timeshare that will stand unused.
The resort is run jointly by Cameron House Lodges Limited controlled from the Cayman Islands and the Cameron House Owners Club, which collects fees from timeshare owners and pays the company to manage it.
The companys Allan Reich told me any debts were not its problem, as they are owed to the club. He added that although contracts are in perpetuity, his company operates an exit policy which covers this.
I asked for details of this exit policy, and how much owners have to hand over to be rid of a lifelong financial millstone around their neck. I also asked Reich how far he would like to see you pressed for management fees. Losing your home, perhaps? Bankruptcy even? He declined to say.
The Owners Club chairman Richard Coles told me he was sympathetic. He agreed that some owners have become distressed, and faced a heavy burden. But if those owners could not be made to pay, other owners would have to pay more.
I put the same questions to Coles about how far he would be willing to see you pressed for payment.
He told me your situation was very sad, and his club faced a significant dilemma, but he offered no clear answer. He denied knowing how much it would cost you to be rid of your unwanted and unusable timeshare.
This is not an issue that is going to go away. Timeshare boomed in the 1980s, slackened off in the 1990s and now attracts far fewer takers.
Early buyers are increasingly elderly, on reduced incomes and unable for financial or health reasons to make any use of what was sold to them as an investment as well as a holiday home.
This is a widespread problem that demands a legal and political solution. Cameron House bosses should see what others in their industry have done to provide a decent and simple exit policy or perhaps the Scottish Government might like to step in and force a solution on them?
If you believe you are the victim of financial wrongdoing, write to Tony Hetherington at Financial Mail, 2 Derry Street, London W8 5TS or email tony.hetherington@mailonsunday.co.uk. Because of the high volume of enquiries, personal replies cannot be given. Please send only copies of orginal documents, which we regret cannot be returned.
Tax incentive: Enterprise Investment Scheme is attractive to high earners because they can slash their income tax bills
Tax breaks designed to help ambitious start-ups succeed are facing a clampdown after wealthy investors exploited them to cash in on less risky schemes.
The 1.9 billion Enterprise Investment Scheme is attractive to high earners because they can slash their income tax bills if they make big start-up investments. But many have been claiming tax breaks on projects with little chance of losing money.
Chancellor Philip Hammond is set to launch a crackdown in the Budget, in a bid to ensure that anyone claiming the relief is at genuine risk of losing money if an investment fails.
Official figures seen by The Mail on Sunday suggest that almost two-thirds of investments in funds under the scheme were siphoned off by projects regarded as low risk. The EIS was launched to help small, high-risk companies, such as biotech or drug research firms raise cash.
Figures suggest more than 450 million of the 746 million pumped into EIS funds in 2016-7 was for schemes marketed to investors as capital preservation plans, where healthy returns are more than likely.
Such schemes either involve investments in projects with lucrative property assets or TV and film investments that have already been given the green light.
The Mail on Sunday revealed earlier this year that TV investors were being marketed schemes under the EIS, where a return was virtually guaranteed once the tax breaks were taken into account.Investors were providing cash to fund TV programmes already commissioned by TV channels.
Promoter Great Point Media said at the time that investments were absolutely at risk because there could have been a production failure. But Mr Hammond is likely to exclude film and TV investments from EIS in future.
Around 280 million of the 450 million of capital preservation deals relates to TV and film investments. There are also likely to be restrictions on investments in pubs and other property-backed investments.
The crackdown is part of the Governments Patient Capital Review, a lengthy probe into business finance that may also see an injection of cash for the British Business Bank to fill a gap created by Brexit.
Ian Hannam, the City dealmaker who was fined for market abuse three years ago, has suffered a setback at his new corporate advisory firm after a takeover it had engineered was scuppered by rebel shareholders.
Hannam & Partners, set up by the so-called King of Mining after his 450,000 fine by the financial watchdog, is understood to have been instrumental in driving the 32 million takeover of Australian miner Crusader Resources by Stratex, the AIM-listed gold miner it advises.
Stratex, which counts FTSE 100 miner Antofagasta as a shareholder, wanted to buy Crusader to expand into production, after years of struggling as an explorer.
Ian Hannam: Was fined three years ago for market abuse
However, shareholders of Stratex backed by South African gold mining giant AngloGold Ashanti and Canadas largest miner Teck Resources voted against the deal and ousted the chief executive.
Marcus Engelbrecht, a former BHP Billiton veteran, chose to step down as chief executive after he was voted off the board. This was despite backing for the deal from Institutional Shareholder Services, the corporate governance firm.
Stratex, which has projects in Africa and Turkey, parachuted in former chief executive Bob Foster to take the reins again.
It is a blow for Hannams new firm, which has been expanding its client list of mining and oil firms.
Known for his dealmaking, Hannam has helped mastermind some of the biggest takeovers in the industry, including Glencores 50 billion merger with Xstrata.
However, the former Territorial Army captain was fined by the Financial Services Authority in 2012 for giving insider information on Heritage Oil to Kurdistans oil minister. He resigned from JP Morgan shortly afterwards to fight the fine before setting up Hannam & Partners.
Isle of Man-based tycoon Trevor Hemmings likes to stay out of the limelight but behind the scenes he is determined to recoup some of his RBS losses.
In 2009 he was reported to have lost 700 million as a result of the financial crash, a chunk of it through the bailed-out bank.
Like many others, his companies turned to the RBoS Shareholders Action Group in an attempt to get some of that money back.
Advisers working for Trevor Hemmings are spearheading the fight to get 200m settlement from RBS
Now his firms are battling the action group and its controversial co-founder Gerard Walsh.
Mr Hemmings is motivated by his own interests of course but he could emerge as a champion for the small investors who could benefit on his coat-tails.
The 82-year-old is an unlikely white knight. He is best-known as the entrepreneur behind Preston North End FC, Blackpool Tower and for bringing Center Parcs to Britain.
A racing fanatic, his horse Hedgehunter was one of his three Grand National winners. Through some of his companies he is a major claimant in the shareholder group that won a 200 million settlement from RBS earlier this year.
Mr Hemmings supplied millions of pounds worth of backing for the action through his firm London and Northern, as well as through another of his businesses, Manx Capital Partners, to pay legal bills. Alongside others who funded the litigation, he will receive a financial return on some of his sizeable outlay.
But he appears to be driven for a desire for justice not just recouping some of his losses as he also put up 10 million at the eleventh hour to allow the case to go forward. He is making no return on that chunk of money.
When the action group won its 200 million settlement against RBS in the summer, all seemed rosy on the surface for the 9,000 investors from the large claimants like Mr Hemmings to the humblest small shareholder.
They were hailing a landmark victory for the RBoS Shareholders Action Group, paving the way for similar cases.
But those small investors have yet to be paid and firms and advisers working for Mr Hemmings are now spearheading the fight to get their money back amid serious questions over the running of the action group.
Once costs have been deducted, around half of the settlement or 100 million will be left to share out between investors. This is not unusual because the costs of bringing lengthy and complex cases are heavy.
But small investors are concerned about continuing delays and bills that could eat further into their eventual payouts. Phillip Croxson, 65, from Oxfordshire, is a former employee of RBS subsidiary NatWest. In 2008, he invested more than 20,000 in 10,000 RBS shares. Like so many others, he put his faith in the action group.
Now he says of it: I have quite a number of concerns. Its never been entirely clear to me who the action group actually are.
After cost's 100m will be shared between investors
Who runs it? Who set it up? How many people are on their payroll? Theyve never been transparent in my experience.
Its all become quite a mess, to put it mildly I dont know what payments have been made to third parties or other companies who might be doing work for them.
To fully understand the small shareholders angst, we have to go back to 2008 when they were persuaded duped, they would say into investing their money in the bank, paying between 200p and 230p per share. It was only months later after raising 12 billion from small investors and City institutions that RBS, then led by controversial chief executive Fred Goodwin, had to be rescued by the Government in a 45.5 billion bailout.
Devastation followed for RBSs small investors as the value of their shares in some cases a large part of their life savings plummeted.
This summer the action group was finally due to have its day in court. But at the last moment, before Goodwin could take the stand, RBS agreed an out-of-court settlement under which the bank would pay out 82p per share to avoid a public legal battle.
Five months on, investors have yet to be paid and lawyers from City law firm Signature Litigation have raised red flags over a 20 million bill for a firm called Evalusafety Limited.
They have also said they are investigating an overstatement of 75 million shares that formed part of the claim but appear never to have been verified by the action group.
And there is a legal battle holding up the payment process, as firms acting for Mr Hemmings seek to keep control of administering the settlement away from the action group and Mr Walsh.
Mr Walsh ceased to be a director of the action group in 2011 when he was made bankrupt. He has since acted as an adviser.
Mr Hemmings Manx Capital Partners says it believes Mr Walsh remains not only instrumental but effectively the main day-to-day manager and co-ordinator of the business of the action group company.
A Manx spokesman said Signature Litigation, acting for the claimants, is making good and quick progress. It said the main factor in the delay was the action groups failure to provide necessary information which it has within its possession and added it had recently received some key documents by order of the court.
Barry Middleton, 73, an ex-RBS employee from Aberdeenshire, bought 6,000 shares as part of the 2008 capital raising. He is also concerned about the 20 million the action group says it needs to hand over to Evalusafety Limited.
He says: They certainly never told me that this was requested from the pot.
Thats got me thinking: What have they done with all the money weve paid into the action group over the years?
For the likes of Mr Middleton, the long wait goes on.
Thousands of investors who won a 200 million payout from Royal Bank of Scotland in the summer are facing delays getting their money amid legal wrangling.
The Mail on Sunday can reveal serious questions have been raised about the running of the organisation behind the action.
The RBoS Shareholders Action Group was co-founded in 2009 by controversial Irish businessman Gerard Walsh, who as we revealed last week was described by a Jersey court in 2014 as a fraudster.
Waiting for cash: Investors who won payout from RBS are facing delays in getting their money
Sources close to Mr Walsh said he denies wrongdoing. They said he was neither a defendant nor a witness in the Jersey case and did not have an opportunity to contest the courts judgment.
Concerns relating to RBS include an agreement the action group made in 2015 to pay 20 million to a company called Evalusafety Limited, although the identities of those in line for a share of that payout have not been verified by lawyers.
Mystery also surrounds around 75 million phantom shares for which the action group claimed compensation. Lawyers say the shares appear never to have existed.
This has led to fears that small investors may suffer further delays and receive a lower payout than they hoped.
In an out-of-court settlement this summer that was heralded as a great victory, investors were compensated for losses on RBS shares they bought to help the bank bolster its capital during the financial crisis of 2008.
They claimed they were misled by the lender and its former chief executive Fred The Shred Goodwin.
Investors paid at least 2 per share in 2008 and were awarded 82p in the settlement.
However, there is likely to be around 100 million to distribute after all the costs have been taken off.
Mr Walsh, 60, is now up against a team of lawyers and investment experts acting for octogenarian tycoon Trevor Hemmings, the former owner of the Blackpool Tower.
Ross Mc Ewan: Chief executive of RBS has been criticised recently for his treatment of small businesses
Several of Mr Hemmings companies were claimants with the action group. Two of them provided finance and in return for additional funding one of them, Manx Capital Partners Limited, was given sole and exclusive management of the litigation on an irrevocable basis. Manx Capital is now working on the task of verifying and administering the claims so that investors can be paid out.
It is being assisted by law firm Signature Litigation. A spokesman for Signature said payments had been held up by difficulties caused by the unclear financial structure and costs created by the action group company.
In addition, Manx Capital has obtained a High Court order to prevent the action group from supplanting Signature and appointing its own law firm instead, which it says would increase costs and create further delay. The judge directed the order to be served on the Action Group and on Mr Walsh. Signature had raised red flags over the 20 million bill from Evalusafety.
Manx said it believed the deal is for success payments to be paid to Evalusafety including we believe a substantial sum to Gerard Walsh and added that it had to ensure any payments were made properly, with a full account being made to the claimants. It is not known whether Mr Walsh is a beneficiary.
While the payment may be legitimate, Signature is refusing to pay without first receiving full details about the charge and the names of the beneficiaries. Signature hopes to pay investors their compensation in the New Year.
However, a spokesman said much will depend on whether the action group and Mr Walsh continue to put pressure on us to make success payments that the firm is presently unable to verify as being appropriate. Signature is also disputing the existence of the 75 million shares for which the action group claimed compensation.
Mr Walsh said through his lawyers last night that he was unable to comment in the time available.
Property developer: Barratt homes in Regents Park
Barratt Developments paid out 30,000 to reimburse its deputy chief executive when he had to cancel his holiday for work reasons.
The benefit, tucked away in the housebuilders annual report, is the latest example of generous sums handed to Britains top executives.
It is understood that about half of the sum went directly to Steven Boyes for the costs of his holiday and half was spent in tax payments due on that benefit.
Barratt sources said Boyes could not have claimed on a personal insurance policy because travel insurance does not typically cover cancellation for work reasons.
Fiona Macrae from website Travel Insurance Explained said it was right to say it is not covered on many standard policies.
But she added: There are a few travel insurance products that allow customers to claim for any pre-paid trip costs which you cannot get back from anywhere else should you have to cancel your trip for any cause beyond your reasonable control.
For a trip anywhere in the world of up to two weeks that would cost 136.16, she said, giving you 7,500 of cover per person.
Investors will this week give their view on Barratts pay policies at the housebuilders AGM.
Boyes earned 3 million last year while chief executive David Thomas earned 3.3 million.
The Mail on Sunday revealed earlier this year that the benefits lavished on some of Britains top executives are now so vast that one received as much to move house as the average employee earns in a lifetime.
Prudential boss Mike Wells received more than 1.6 million to help him move to London from the United States.
Relocation payments are very common, but some bosses also receive allowances for clothing and for drinks, while others have had their home security upgraded by their employer.
Various housebuilding bosses have also taken advantage of company perks that allow staff to buy discounted homes their own company has built.
Challenger banker: Is he taking on the Queen's bank, Coutts? 'I would love to get Her Majesty's business,' says Vernon Hill, 72.
Vernon Hill, the American billionaire who runs Metro Bank, is showing me a Dad's Army-style map pinned to the wall of his Holborn branch in London.
On it are flagged 50 'stores' - he won't call them 'branches' as it sounds too 'banky'. 'We are a growth retailer that happens to be a bank,' he says.
While the big banks are shutting branches at a rate of knots - not to mention snared in a growing list of public relations disasters - Hill is expanding.
Originally confined to London, Metro is now opening branches to the West and North, as well as more outlets in the capital.
'Look at Slough,' he cries, pointing to a photograph. 'It is the first modern drive-through bank branch in the UK. We are going to Birmingham next year and Manchester and Liverpool are next. I'll get to places like Newcastle.'
Metro is the US government's bank in the UK and has a private banking business for wealthy individuals. Is he taking on the Queen's bank, Coutts? 'I would love to get Her Majesty's business,' says Hill, 72.
He is in effervescent mood - as well he might be, because the bank, which opened its first branch in 2010, is on track for its first full year of profits. Hill set up Metro with 127 million of capital.
Since it launched on the stock market, the bank's shares have risen 81 per cent and it now has a market value of 3.2 billion.
Metro has just announced a 77 per cent increase in profits to 7.2 million in the three months to the end of September, up from 4million in the previous quarter. It also notched up record quarterly customer growth as 79,000 new accounts were opened, taking its total to 1.1 million.
Hill's personal stake of 5.56 per cent is already worth about 180million on top of the huge fortune he has made in the US. Continued growth could put Metro within striking distance of the FTSE100.
Hill is now pointing excitedly to a glass door, behind which are ranged row upon row of different-sized lockers. 'These are our safe deposit boxes. All the other banks have stopped offering them, I am the only supplier in Britain. This one is maxed out. There are about 2,000 boxes here and people pay an average of 300 a year.
Expansion map: Originally confined to London, Metro is now opening in the West and North, as well as more outlets in the capital - and has the first modern drive-through bank in Slough
'Every branch has one, in the Asian areas they are very popular. We don't have problems with bank robbers, nowadays they don't use guns and jemmies to rob us by breaking safes, they use the keyboard.'
If Her Majesty were to wander into the Holborn branch to put her crown in the safe, she would be greeted by a lively scene. There is no disgruntled queue of downtrodden customers, but an open floor with people scattered about.
As he squires me around, Hill's voice is momentarily drowned out by the cascade of coins coming out of a machine as if someone had won the jackpot at Vegas.
'This is all fun, right?' he asks rhetorically. 'It's our counting machine. You dump your jar of coins in - you don't have to be a customer, they are free for everyone - and you can pay it in an account or get notes. You can guess the amount and if you are within a couple of pounds we give you a prize.'
There are lollipops, big blue M-shaped moneyboxes and free pens, which seems to be a big deal for Hill. 'We don't have pens chained to the counter. It's very important to protect that pen, right?' he says sarcastically.
'In America, we gave away 28 million pens, they were about a dime then so it cost about $2.8million. But wouldn't I rather have every household and business have my pen and know my brand?'
Hill reckons you can open a personal account in 15 minutes, including anti-money laundering and credit checks, printing a permanent debit and credit card and downloading a mobile app - compared with tortuous processes at other banks. To open a business account takes about an hour.
'The British banks treat the commercial customer even worse than the individuals,' he declares.
Metro may be the first high street bank to set up in the UK since 1840 and be a serious challenge to the big four, but it is best known for appealing to dog-lovers, like Hill himself and his wife Shirley.
They doted on their Yorkshire terrier Sir Duffield. Their current Yorkshire terrier is Sir Duffield II, the first having passed away a couple of years ago.
The couple have four adult children, which does not seem to have detracted from their doggie obsession.
Hill's American twang sounds broader than ever as he explains: 'We have treats for your dawgs, bowls of water for your dawgs, weekends when you can adopt dawgs - Battersea (dogs and cats home) brings dawgs in and people adopt them. Customers think if you love my dog, you must love me.'
But where is Sir Duffield? 'He's with his mother,' Hill says, referring to Shirley, who is in charge of branding and the decor of the stores. 'Everyone wants him, no one wants me.'
When in London, which is about two weeks out of every month, Hill, Shirley and Sir Duffield live in a two-storey penthouse flat in Park Lane.
'Here is a picture of my wife Shirley and Sir Duffield,' says Hill proudly, pointing at a huge portrait of the pair. 'She has her own company but she only works for us and she has done around 600 banks.
She is the brand queen.' Hill made his name in the US with Commerce Bank, opening the first branch in New Jersey in 1973 when he was aged just 27 and building it into a huge franchise.
Dog lovers' paradise: 'We have treats for your dawgs, bowls of water for your dawgs, weekends when you can adopt dawgs - Battersea (dogs and cats home) brings dawgs in and people adopt them. Customers think if you love my dog, you must love me,' says Vernon Hill
When he set his sights on Britain, Hill put in $30million of his own money to set Metro up, without knowing whether he would win approval from the regulators, who in the end granted Metro the first new licence in over a century.
He was at the elite Wharton Business School with Donald Trump. 'I didn't know him there, but I know him now, well,' he says.
'You Brits created Trump. If Brexit hadn't passed he probably wouldn't have won. Brexit and Trump are the same thing, it is all about a rebellion against the elite.'
Hill sees Britain as ripe for a revolution in banking.
'In Britain we weren't burdened with the past. The other banks have IT systems that are one step above a quill, they are antiques.
'They have had a cartel going here for 40 or 50 years where they overcharged, they underserved, and they massively underinvested. The philosophy has been, "We are doing you a favour by letting you bank with us."
'We are the revolution. A million people have switched to us already.'
Photo: APEC official website
Ministers from the 21 APEC member economies issued a joint statement today (November 11) following the two-day APEC ministerial meeting started on November 8.
The Joint Ministerial Statement describes collaborative actions to be implemented by APEC economies over the next year to sustain the momentum of regional cooperation and reinforce the profile of APEC as a driver of economic growth and integration in the Asia-Pacific.
The statement had originally been due on Wednesday (November 8), but different opinions over wording led to extended discussions, which was rare for the routine document.
Malaysian national news agency (bernama) quoted Malaysias International Trade and Industry Minister Mustapa Mohamed as saying that the United States was particularly unhappy with the use of the word protectionism and was more comfortable with the phrase fair trade.
The conclusion of the APEC Ministerial Meeting sets the stage for the APEC Economic Leaders Meeting today. APEC leaders are due to release a separate communique.
A United States citizen charged with subversion in Zimbabwe and accused of insulting its 93-year-old president as a 'selfish and sick man' on Twitter should be freed on $1,000 bail, a judge ordered Thursday.
Martha O'Donovan also must hand over her passport and report to police twice a week. The New Jersey native will return to court on Nov. 15.
The 25-year-old O'Donovan faces up to 20 years in prison if convicted on the subversion charge.
She also faces a charge of undermining the authority of or insulting the president, which carries up to a year in prison.
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U.S. Citizen Martha O' Donovan appears at the Harare Magistrates court escorted by a plain clothes police officer shielding her face in Harare, Saturday, November, 4, 2017
Police arrested and charged Donavan with subversion for allegedly insulting President Robert Mugabe on Twitter as a 'sick man,' lawyers said Friday. The offense carries up to 20 years in prison
President Robert Mugabe is shown gesturing as he addresses a rally in Harare, Zimbabwe, November 8,2017
O'Donovan, who was arrested on Friday, has denied the charges as 'baseless and malicious.'
It was the first arrest since President Robert Mugabe last month appointed a cybersecurity minister, a move criticized by activists as targeting social media.
Zimbabwe was shaken last year by the biggest anti-government protests in a decade.
Frustration is growing in the once-prosperous southern African nation as the economy collapses.
O'Donovan (C) talks with Zimbabwe Correctional Services officers as she leaves Chikurubi Maximum Prison near Harare, after being released on 1000 USD bail on November 10, 2017
On November 9, Zimbabwe freed O'Donovan, who is charged with subverting President Robert Mugabe on account of an alleged tweet that described the ageing leader as 'selfish and sick'
O'Donovan had been working with local social media outlet Magamba TV, which describes itself as producing 'satirical comedy sensations.'
A court over the weekend dismissed her lawyer's attempt to have the charge of subversion dropped.
The lawyer argued that police had not notified O'Donovan of the charge at the time of her arrest at her home in the capital, Harare.
The group representing O'Donovan, Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights says it has represented nearly 200 people charged for allegedly insulting Mugabe, the world's oldest head of state, in recent years.
Mugabe, in power since 1980, is already running for next year's elections.
Salim Mehajer's friend, who has been linked to the brutal slaying of an underworld figure, allegedly tricked the man into thinking he was a trusted locksmith.
Ahmed Jaghbir, 28, was charged with murder this week over the death of Hells Angel bikie Kemel Barakat, 29, after the man was 'executed' by four others while at a 'secure' waterfront home in May.
Barakat is said to have trusted the tradesmen with the location of the apartment, after asking for his help to replace his front door lock, The Daily Telegraph reports.
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Salim Mehajer's (left) friend Ahmed Jaghbir (right), who has been linked to the brutal slaying of an underworld figure, allegedly tricked the victim into thinking he was a trusted locksmith
The door to the house had been broken days prior after police carried out a search for firearms at the unit.
Jaghbir was allegedly contacted to help replace the lock, before reportedly taking a spare key.
Police allege the electrician passed the item on to Barakat's enemies, with the former Commanchero engaged in a feud with another clan.
Four men allegedly then entered the property about 2.30am on May 10 carrying gun, with Barakat shot more than a dozen times.
Ahmed Jaghbir, 28, was charged with murder this week over the death of Hells Angel bikie Kemel Barakat, 29, after the man was 'executed' by four others at a 'secure' home
Police allege the electrician (pictured) gave a spare key from a lock he fitted to Barakat's enemies, allowing them entry into the home
Barakat is believed to have only moved into the Mortlake apartment shortly before he was murdered.
Jaghbir faces charges of murder, accessory before the fact to murder and participating in a criminal group.
The tradesman recently tied the knot in September, with Mehajer one of the guests at the lavish ceremony.
Before the vows were exchanged, Mehajer posed for photos with the groom and placed cufflinks on his sleeves, one appearing to be in the shape of a handgun.
After Jaghbir married his bride Nadima, a convoy of luxury cars and a motorcade of gold-plated Harley-Davidsons escorted him from the private function.
'I would like to thank everyone that come and made it happen,' Jaghbir captioned a photo of himself with his new bride shortly after the wedding.
The tradesman recently tied the knot in September, with Mehajer one of the guests at the lavish ceremony
Jaghbir was arrested in dramatic raids at his Guildford home on Wednesday just a few days after he and his new bride returned to Australia from their honeymoon
Jaghbir was arrested in dramatic raids at his Guildford home on Wednesday just a few days after the couple returned to Australia from their honeymoon.
The 28-year-old was appointed sole director of Mehajer's wedding business, Mehajer Wedding and Event Planning, in September.
His arrest came after police released footage showing a group of men they believe gunned down the underworld figure in the hope it would help solve the murder.
The CCTV footage shows four men entering Mr Barakat's apartment building through a rear fire door, gaining entry to his apartment and then fleeing in a stolen Mercedes C63 wagon.
Jaghbir has a mention hearing scheduled for November 23 at Parramatta Local Court.
Daily Mail Australia does not suggest Mehajer is in any way involved with the underworld murder of Barakat.
Kemel Barakat (pictured) was found dead with multiple gunshot wounds at his home in Sydney's inner-west on March 10
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Mass graves containing at least 400 suspected Islamic State group victims have been found in the disputed Iraqi province of Kirkuk, Iraqi authorities said.
The string of grisly discoveries was made on Saturday at a military base around two miles (three kilometres) from Hawija in northern Iraq. The base was used by US troops prior to 2011.
Jihadists had turned the city 'into an execution ground' after seizing the territory in 2014, Kirkuk governor Rakan Saeed said.
'Not less than 400 people were executed,' he said, adding that some were clad in the uniform of prisoners condemned to death while others wore civilian clothing.
Mass graves containing at least 400 suspected Islamic State group victims were found at a military base around two miles (three kilometres) from Hawija in northern Iraq
Bones lie on the ground in an area recently retaken from the Islamic State group, at an abandoned base near the northern town of Hawija, Iraq
Jihadists had turned the city 'into an execution ground' after seizing the territory in 2014, Kirkuk governor Rakan Saeed said. He added that some of the victims were clad in the uniform of prisoners condemned to death while others wore civilian clothing. Pictured above, Iraqi forces and journalists inspect the site of the mass grave
'We are standing here, where ... at least 400 civilians were dragged, some in their red jumpsuits, and brutally executed by ISIS,' he added.
Colonel Murtada Abbas of the 60th Brigade in the Iraqi military said that people who had witnessed the executions led authorities to the graves.
The governor of Kirkuk has asked the Iraqi government and the Commission of Human Rights to work to try to identify the victims.
IS was forced out of Hawija - 150 miles (240 kilometres) north of Baghdad - by Iraqi forces in October in a sweeping offensive that has seen the group lose the vast bulk of territory.
Iraqi troops and Kurdish forces drove IS from the northern town of Hawija on October 10 after nearly three weeks of fighting. Hundreds of IS fighters and their families surrendered.
It was the last major unified operation by Iraqi federal forces and Kurdish forces known as the peshmerga.
Colonel Murtada Abbas of the 60th Brigade in the Iraqi military said that people who had witnessed the executions led authorities to the graves. Pictured above, Iraqi forces search the site of a suspected mass grave containing the remains of victims of the Islamic State group, near the former al bakara military base
A civil defense officer inspects blood-stained clothing and picks up what appears to be a bone in an area recently retaken from the Islamic State group
IS was forced out of Hawija - 150 miles (240 kilometres) north of Baghdad - by Iraqi forces in October in a sweeping offensive that has seen the group lose the vast bulk of territory
Shortly after the fighting ended, the two allies clashed over the oil-rich city of Kirkuk and other disputed territories, a sign that longstanding tensions were once again surfacing in the absence of a common threat.
As government troops have advanced across Iraq they have uncovered dozens of mass graves holding hundreds of bodies in areas that fell under the jihadists' brutal rule.
The burial pits near Hawija were discovered 'thanks to witness accounts from local residents' given to the Iraqi military, General Mortada al-Luwaibi said.
Saad Abbas, a farmer from the area, told AFP that during the three years of IS control the group's fighters could be seen 'driving around in cars with their prisoners'.
'They would shoot them and then throw them to the ground or burn their bodies,' Abbas said.
Elsewhere in Kirkuk, twin suicide attacks killed at least six people last Sunday in the disputed province's city of the same name, an official said.
The governor of Kirkuk has asked the Iraqi government and the Commission of Human Rights to work to try to identify the victims. Pictured above, Iraqi forces search the mass grave near Hawija
The burial pits near Hawija were discovered 'thanks to witness accounts from local residents' given to the Iraqi military, General Mortada al-Luwaibi said. Also found at the sight were containers used by IS to store oil (pictured above)
The attackers struck near a former police station used by Saraya al-Salam, a Shiite paramilitary force led by powerful Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, the official said on condition of anonymity.
Twelve people were also wounded in the two explosions, about 15 minutes apart. The first attacker blew up an explosives-rigged car, followed by the second, who used an explosive belt, the official added.
Sadr's force, formerly known as the Mahdi Army, is part of the Hashed al-Shaabi paramilitary alliance that has battled both the Islamic State group and Kurdish forces.
Iraqi security forces backed by the Hashed in mid-October seized oil-rich Kirkuk province from Kurdish peshmerga forces in the wake of a Kurdish independence vote held in defiance of Baghdad.
Kurdish media have since accused the Hashed, an alliance composed mainly of Shiite militias, of carrying out a campaign of retribution against Kurdish civilians
Struggling Accident & Emergency departments are set to be engulfed in a winter crisis experts warned last night, forcing soaring numbers of patients to wait far beyond the four-hour target time.
The grim prediction comes as a Mail on Sunday investigation reveals blackspot NHS trusts where it is feared less than half of A&E patients will be seen within four hours, if as expected a flu outbreak hits Britain with a vengeance.
Official figures reveal that a dozen NHS hospital trusts failed to treat even three-quarters of patients in the target time in October, despite the weather being mild.
At London North West Healthcare NHS Trust, which runs casualty departments at Ealing Hospital and Northwick Park Hospital in Harrow (pictured), only 50.7 per cent of A&E patients were treated in under four hours in January the worst monthly figure yet
Numerous trusts recorded monthly A&E figures below 67 per cent last winter, meaning that every third patient had to wait four hours or more. But in the blackspot trusts, the picture was worse.
At London North West Healthcare NHS Trust, which runs casualty departments at Ealing Hospital and Northwick Park Hospital in Harrow, only 50.7 per cent of A&E patients were treated in under four hours in January the worst monthly figure yet.
There was a similar situation at Hillingdon Hospital, West London, and campaigners believe the closure of two nearby A&Es in 2014 has increased pressures.
They say that A&E departments at Ealing and Charing Cross remain under threat of being effectively downgraded, despite Government assurances.
Taj Hassan, president of the Royal College of Emergency Medicine, said a chronic lack of hospital beds, exhausted staff and a flu outbreak look set to trigger a winter of discontent. He fears that waiting times will rocket, with potentially fatal consequences.
Dr Hassan said: Last winter was incredibly tough and all the indicators suggest this winter is going to be no better, and will probably be worse. NHS figures show the country is peppered with A&Es which struggled last winter and continue to do so with notable examples in Margate, Blackpool, Stoke, Truro, Portsmouth, Harlow, Coventry, York, Preston and Watford.
In September, Labour MP Rosie Duffield said Margates A&E had patients waiting up to 13 hours.
Taj Hassan, chairman of the Royal College of Emergency Medicine, said a chronic lack of hospital beds, exhausted staff and a flu outbreak look set to trigger a winter of discontent. He fears that waiting times will rocket, with potentially fatal consequences
Dr Hassan said: Its clearly recognised that a crowded emergency department is associated with enhanced harm to patients. More patients will die, and more will end up having a prolonged hospital stay.
Last winter was both mild and relatively benign for flu, he said, yet hospitals still ended up in dire straights with packed A&Es and a desperate shortage of beds. We may or may not get away with a mild winter this year, he said.
Averaged across all Englands 190 or so A&Es, 84.6 per cent of patients were treated in four hours in September, down on 86 per cent the previous September.
In October, the figure was 84.9 per cent, a slight rise on the same month in 2016, when it stood at 83.7 per cent.
While the figures are similar for these two years, they represent a marked deterioration since 2014.
NHS England said: The latest figures show A&E performance has improved on last year The NHS is now treating more than two million more patients in under four hours than was the case ten years ago.
Three days after the funeral for slain Greenacre school boy Jihad Darwiche, the Muslim undertaker responsible for recording and translating Ared Darwiche's message of forgiveness for his son's death has spoken out.
Ahmad Hraichie has praised the show of strength and kindness by the Greenacre community after the tragedy that saw two eight-year-old boys lose their lives, three children hospitalised and seventeen treated by paramedics.
The father-of-four and Lebanese Muslim Association funeral director is also the man responsible for bathing and preparing Jihad's body in the Islamic tradition.
Mr Hraichie has praised the show of strength and kindness by the Greenacre community
Jihad Darwiche and his friend, both eight, were killed after a car crashed into their classroom
Jihad's father Ahmed has forgiven the driver in an extraordinary speech videoed in the hearse
In the touching video, Mr Darwiche said that forgiveness was 'the way a proper Muslim acts in a time of calamity and tribulation'.
'No retaliation is coming from the family of the boy. They have forgiven - if anything they want to sit with this lady and tell her we forgive you,' Mr Hraichie translates for Mr Darwiche.
'Forgive her. It's an honest mistake. It could have happened to any one of us. We don't throw the world down on our brothers and sisters when an accident happens.
'When all of this is over she is welcome to come and sit with the family, have a meal and talk about how they can move forward.'
The footage also shows the moment that Mr Hraichie broke down and praised Mr Darwiche for his forgiveness, saying, 'I only hope I can be half the man he is.'
Mr Hraichie said on Saturday that he was 'overwhelmed' with positive comments after the video, and wants to extend the message to the rest of Australia.
Mr Hraichie said the 'vast majority' of the Aussie Islamic community is 'passionately patriotic'
The waiting hearse driven by Mr Hraichie containing the late little boy's coffin is pictured here
'People like Pauline Hanson need to be stopped,' said Muslim funeral director Ahmad Hraichie
He told the Daily Telegraph he was worried than anti-Islamic messages from politicians is driving misunderstanding and racism towards to the Muslim community.
'We all love living in Australia,' he said, noting that he calls himself a 'patriotic Muslim Aussie'.
Mr Hraichie said that the 'vast majority' of the Australian Islamic community is 'passionately patriotic' and misunderstood thanks to Islamophobia spread by public figures.
'People like Pauline Hanson need to be stopped,' he said.
He also said that young Muslims in the community are yearning for someone who they can look up to - a role model for them to emulate - and he has striven to be one of those people in the community.
Mr Hraichie (right) also said he hopes to be a role model for young Muslims in the community
Ms Al-Shennag allegedly accidentally drove her cat into the school's 3T demountable building
The classroom Ms Al-Shennag allegedly ploughed her SUV into has since been boarded up
Jihad and his friend, who cannot be named for legal reasons, were killed on November 7 when a when a car ploughed into Banksia Road Public School.
Maha Al-Shennag, 52, has been charged with dangerous driving and had her license suspended after she allegedly slammed her Toyota Kluger into a third grade classroom.
Speaking through her lawyer, she said she was 'very grateful' for the tenderness shared by Mr Darwiche on Thursday.
'Ms Al-Shennag has told me that she is very grateful for Mr Darwiche's message of forgiveness and compassion,' said her lawyer Nick Hanna.
'Ms Al-Shennag wishes to apologise with all of her heart to Mr Darwiche and to each of the victims, their families and the community in general. Her thoughts and prayers are with all of those affected by this tragedy,' News.com.au reports.
She has been charged with dangerous driving occasioning death and had her driver's licence suspended.
Investigators currently believe that Ms Al-Shennag's crash into the classroom was accidental
Ms Al-Shennag, 52, has been charged with dangerous driving and had her license suspended
A map shows the car-park where Maha Al-Shennag was allegedly driving before the accident
Following investigations, police laid an additional two charges of dangerous driving occasioning grievous bodily harm and causing actual bodily harm by misconduct.
Police will allege the new charges relate to the injuries sustained by the three girls, two aged eight and one aged nine, who remain in hospital recovering.
She has been granted conditional bail and is scheduled to appear at Bankstown Local Court on November 29.
Maha Al-Shennag cried as she left the Bankstown Police Station escorted by a police officer
Both boys have now been laid to rest in traditional Islamic funeral services at the Lakemba Mosque.
Dozens of men carried the boy's little coffin, swathed in an Islamic dressing, up the stairs and into the mosque on Thursday for the service, just hours after the touching video of Mr Darwiche and Mr Hraichie,
His heartbroken mother was comforted by a group of women as they entered around the side of the mosque moments later.
The boy's funeral was followed by traditional Islamic prayers. The mosque was so crowded mourners had to pray on the steps outside.
Goodbye, little one: The boy, eight, was carried from Lakemba Mosque following the service
Members of the community carried the small, fluoro green coffin in and out of the service
The funeral was followed by prayers - with the mosque so full the crowd had to pray outside
Grieving students returned to Banksia Road Public School on Wednesday, just on day after the tragedy.
Extra counsellors have been sent to the school to help traumatised children; many of whom watched on helplessly as their two classmates lay trapped beneath the 4WD.
'My grandson is a 6 generation at this school, all prefects, captains and community leaders,' a relative of one boy wrote. '(The boy) loved everyone and died with his best friend.'
Floral tributes line the footpath outside the small local primary school in Sydney's south-west
Heartbroken families pay tribute to the two eight-year-old boys outside Banksia Road Public
People gathered outside Banksia Road Public School on Wednesday evening to leave flowers
Parents, students and members of the wider community have come together to mourn the two young victims of the tragic car crash.
People gathered outside the school on Tuesday evening, laying flowers and remembering the young lives that were lost.
A large notice was posted, handwritten by students from the year above the 3T class that saw their room collapsed by the out-of-control vehicle.
'Rest in Peace...you will never be forgotten,' the sign reads.
Kevin Grace: Suing Tesco for loss of salary and benefits
Former Tesco commercial director Kevin Grace, sacked over a 246 million accounting scandal, is suing the firm for more than 600,000.
He lost his job after it emerged that Tesco had misreported profits in 2014. The dismissal letter accused him of serious negligence and gross misconduct. Grace has always insisted he was not responsible for the debacle.
Now he is suing Tesco for loss of his 605,000 salary and benefits. His lawyers say his wrongful dismissal claim totals 635,807, plus interest, according to a writ filed at the High Court.
In November 2014, a month after the scandal broke, Grace was given four days written notice in a letter which accused him of remaining silent about accounting issues and being culpable to a high degree. But Graces representatives claim in the writ the allegations were misconceived and his dismissal breached Tescos own disciplinary procedures.
It says he could not reasonably be held culpable and had responded appropriately when the scandal broke.
Carl Rogberg, former finance director of Tesco UK; John Scouler, ex- commercial director for food; and Chris Bush, former managing director of Tesco UK, have all been charged with fraud by abuse of position and false accounting.
It was reported last year that the Serious Fraud Office had told Grace he would not face fraud charges.
Tesco said: We are aware of this case and intend to strongly defend it.
Swimming star Grant Hackett has moved to Melbourne to be closer to his two children as he fights a custody battle.
The three-time Olympic gold medalist relocated form the Gold Coast late last month after returning from the U.S. in June where he spent a month in rehab.
Hackett was seeking a fresh start after a series of alcohol-fuelled disasters over the past two years that destroyed his public image.
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Swimming star Grant Hackett has moved to Melbourne (pictured there at the Sport Australia Hall of Fame Induction in October) to be closer to his two children as he fights a custody battle
The 37-year-old has twins Jagger and Charlize, seven, with ex-wife Candice Alley (all four pictured), who he split with in 2012 after five years of marriage
The 37-year-old has twins Jagger and Charlize, seven, with ex-wife Candice Alley, who he split with in 2012 after five years of marriage.
Spotted outside his new gym, Hackett wouldn't discuss the ongoing custody battle but said his move to Melbourne, where he works for wealth management company Austock Life, was going well.
'I am loving being back in Melbourne again. I feel great and am really happy to be back working and staying fit and healthy,' he told the Daily Telegraph.
Hackett claimed to have sworn of alcohol, calling it a 'destructive' influence, and was working on staying sober and being a better family man.
'Grant's determined to work on that relationship with his kids more than anything else in his life right now,' a close friend said.
'He's facing a tough battle though but he's doing well.'
Hackett posted a photo of himself on Instagram in February after a fistfight with his brother Craig, sporting a black eye and bloody face and saying his brother had 'beat the s**t out of me'
Hackett wouldn't discuss the ongoing custody battle but said his move to Melbourne, where he works for wealth management company Austock Life, was going well
He was regularly swimming to maintain his trim and muscular figure, but ruled out a competitive comeback or involvement with Swimming Australia.
Hackett's downward spiral began in April 2016 when he was questioned by police after allegedly groping a man's nipple on a flight.
In February he was arrested after a fistfight with his brother Craig at his parents' home on the Gold Coast, but was released without charge.
He was said to be 'going off' and 'stabbing a chopping board' before disappearing for several days.
Hackett posted a photo of himself on Instagram a day after his arrest, sporting a black eye and bloody face and saying his brother had 'beat the s**t out of me'.
Craig at the time said he had little choice but to throw the punch after a drunk Hackett ran at him during an intervention by his family.
Hackett spent a few months after rehab living with friend and U.S. swim star Michael Phelps (pictured training together)
He also played with Phelps' son Boomer (pictured) and went on family road trips
The sporting icon returned to Australia in time to mourn his friend and retired ironman Dean Mercer, who died from a heart attack in August (pictured left at memorial)
The next month he admitted he needed help and fled the country to a 30-day stint in rehab to treat his alcohol and sleeping pill dependency and mental health issues.
He then spent a few months living with friend and U.S. swim star Michael Phelps, training together and playing with Phelps' son Boomer.
Hackett also sailed around Bermuda with former ironman Ky Hurst and did a charity swim in the Cayman Islands.
The sporting icon returned to Australia in time to mourn his friend and retired ironman Dean Mercer, who died from a heart attack in August.
Staff at Channel Nine have reportedly led a mutiny to have an A Current Affair producer stood down after months of verbal abuse and mistreatment.
Grant Williams, who has been a producer on the show since 2009 and last year was named Deputy Director of News and Current Affairs, has grown 'increasingly erratic' since the arrest of paedophile Ben McCormack, the Daily Telegraph reported.
The executive producer, 47, particularly 'p***ed off' the women in the office, according to Nine staff, and has introduced a number of office rules to counter people discussing and supporting the former reporter.
Grant Williams (pictured) has grown 'increasingly erratic' since the arrest of Ben McCormack
In September, the 43-year-old senior journalist plead guilty to two counts of transmitting, publishing or promoting child pornography via a carriage service
The issues between Williams and his staff reportedly reached a head when several members of the ACA team used the RU OK Day platform to pledge their allegiance to McCormack, who has been admitted to mental health clinics several times since his arrest.
In September, the 43-year-old senior journalist plead guilty to two counts of transmitting, publishing or promoting child pornography via a carriage service, but that has not deterred ACA staff support.
Williams, who is a former policeman and cancer survivor, has reportedly unleashed repeated verbal tirades in the office at staff.
Among the details of his attempts at controlling his newsroom, Williams has tried to ban people congregating within the building out of fear they are gossiping about himself and McCormack.
Staff at Channel Nine have reportedly led a mutiny to have the A Current Affair producer stood down after he attacked staff for their support of McCormack
Williams, who is a former policeman and cancer survivor, has unleashed repeated verbal tirades in the office at staff
His agenda has particularly upset female staff, who have represented the majority of complainers.
Williams was forced to take leave in October after a string of grievances were filed against him, with many wanting to see the 47-year-old dismissed.
The free-to-air network investigated the situation and later that month he was reportedly demoted to manager of news content at the channel, with Robert Carmody taking the reigns on ACA.
Rowan Atkinson will become a father for the third time at the age of 62 with his 33-year-old girlfriend.
The Mr Bean star and his partner Louise Ford are expecting their first child together in the next few weeks.
Atkinson already has two grown-up children Ben, 23, and daughter Lily, 21, from his previous marriage.
He struck up a romance with Miss Ford, who plays Kate Middleton in the Channel 4 comedy The Windsors, in 2014.
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The Mr Bean star's partner Louise Ford, 33, is expecting their first child in the next few weeks
A source told The Sunday People: 'Rowan and Louise are over the moon and can't wait for their new arrival. It's a very happy time for them both.'
The news comes just a month after it was reported Atkinson's daughter Lily had decided to change her name.
The 22-year-old burlesque dancer ditched her father's surname and adopted the maiden name of her mother, Sunetra Sastry, whom the Blackadder star divorced in 2015.
A source told the Daily Mail at the time: Its a real mystery. Atkinson has been Lilys name all her life, but shes now dropped it and is styling herself as Lily Sastry.'
'I hope she hasnt fallen out with her dad. The divorce was really hard for everyone in the family.
Miss Sastry disappeared from social media and deleted all of her photographs online earlier this year.
Rowan Atkinson with his daughter Lily, left, and ex-wife Sunetra Sastry at a 2011 premiere, three years before they divorced
But what has now really set tongues wagging is her decision to eradicate all traces of her father from her public profile.
In 2014 that Atkinsons 24-year marriage to former BBC make-up artist Sunetra, 55, hit the rocks after it was reported he had a new woman in his life.
She was subsequently named as Louise Ford, a 33-year-old actress he met while they appeared in the play Quartermaines Terms in 2013.
Last year, it was reported that Atkinson, 62, had moved Louise into his 4.65 million cottage in North London just weeks after his divorce from Sunetra, with whom he also has a 23-year-old son, Benjamin.
The pair first met five years ago when they performed together in West End comedy Quatermaine's Terms but it took two years for romance to bloom.
Atkinson, who attracted almost 19 million viewers in his role as Mr Bean at its peak, has amassed a fortune of an estimated 70million.
Featuring in memorable roles such as the bumbling vicar in Four Weddings and a Funeral and scheming Blackadder in four series of the BBCs historical sitcom, Atkinson has enjoyed a four decades in the entertainment industry.
His silent Mr Bean character first seen in 1990 has appeared in three hit movies so far. And he played him in the opening ceremony of the London Olympics in 2012.
Its a dilemma for every modern parent how to keep children safe on social media without monitoring their every post.
Now the developers of a new smartphone app claim to have come up with the answer a friendly bot that warns youngsters to think again before they send naked photos, explicit messages or even personal details online.
Oyoty uses artificial intelligence which detects when a picture has too much flesh on show, and asks the child to think again.
The app can even send alerts to parents, but the aim is to get the youngsters to curb their own behaviour.
The app has a 'chat bot' which intervenes if it picks up a picture in which too much flesh is revealed
Sexting cases involving children sharing explicit images have more than doubled in two years, with police recording 6,238 offences in England and Wales last year.
Social media giants such as Facebook and Snapchat have been criticised by child-safety campaigners for failing to tackle the problem.
Computer experts in Switzerland have spent years programming the Oyoty app so it can immediately distinguish harmful material.
It also guards against abusive and bullying language and revealing sensitive information such as phone numbers.
The app is designed to run in the background of a device, sweeping for dangerous posts on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.
If it spots something suspicious, a chat bot engages with the youngster. In one example, the app sends a message to a child, asking: There is a lot of skin showing in this picture. I wonder if you might need to stop and think about sharing this?
Sexting cases involving children sharing explicit images have more than doubled in two years
It then asks: Would your parents/carer think it was a good idea, or will you be embarrassed if they happened to see it?
It then guides the youngster through how to delete the image. App developer Deepak Tewari said: This is not about telling children what to do but about educating them and helping them to make their own informed choices.
Very young children are going online in increasing numbers. The industry is not doing enough to recognise it as a problem. Studies suggest children aged eight, nine and ten are spending ten hours a day on their platforms unsupervised.
He said none of the harmful images or posts is ever retained by the app and he hopes that the technology will eventually come automatically installed on phones used by children.
The innovation has been hailed by Anne Longfield, the Governments childrens commissioner, who is among those campaigning to make the internet safer.
She said: The internet is difficult to police and it will require creative thinking to overcome that.
Apps like this make a start. It gives children the chance to reconsider a post, possibly sent in haste, but not in a preachy way.
This is giving some power back to children and parents.
President Xi Jinping (R) meets with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in Da Nang, Vietnam, Nov 11, 2017. [Photo/Xinhua]
Chinese President Xi Jinping met with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe here Saturday, urging Japan to take more "practical actions" to improve ties with China and properly manage differences between the two countries in a "constructive way."
"To improve China-Japan ties, the key is mutual trust," Xi told Abe on the sidelines of the 25th Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Economic Leaders' Meeting in Vietnam's central city of Da Nang.
He urged the Japanese side to take more practical actions and adopt more specific policies to reflect the strategic consensus reached by the two countries, which reaffirms that China and Japan are cooperation partners, not threat to each other.
On history, Taiwan and other major issues of principle concerning the political foundation of the China-Japan relations, the Japanese side should always act in light of the four political documents and the consensus reached by the two sides, Xi said.
A constructive way should be used to manage and control the differences between the two countries, he said.
As China and Japan are neighbors and major economies in Asia and the world, a stable development of China-Japan relationship conforms to the interests of both sides and also has an important influence on the region and the world at large, Xi said.
This year marks the 45th anniversary of the normalization of diplomatic relations between China and Japan, and next year will mark the 40th anniversary of the signing of the China-Japan Treaty of Peace and Friendship.
The two sides should, bearing in mind the fundamental interests of the two peoples, correctly grasp the general direction of peace, friendship and cooperation, and work to enable the bilateral relations to keep improving and developing for the better through unremitting efforts and accumulating positive factors, Xi said.
Xi pointed out that mutually beneficial cooperation is the momentum to drive the China-Japan ties forward, and the two sides should improve the level of pragmatic cooperation in the new situation.
He suggested the two countries promote regional economic integration, and push for cooperation within the framework of the Belt and Road Initiative at an early date.
The two sides should continue to increase exchanges on culture, media and youths, and can also strengthen people-to-people bond through carrying out cooperation on Olympics as China will host the Winter Olympic Games in 2022 and Japan will host the Summer Olympics in 2020, Xi added.
Abe extended his congratulations on the success of the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China (CPC), which was held last month, and on Xi's re-election as general secretary of the CPC Central Committee.
He said the Japanese side is willing to work with China to push for the development of the strategic mutually-beneficial relationship between the two countries by marking the 40th anniversary of the signing of the China-Japan Treaty of Peace and Friendship next year.
Japan hopes to increase high-level exchanges with China, carry out reciprocal economic and trade cooperation, and explore cooperation in connectivity and under the Belt and Road Initiative, he said.
Abe also agreed to deepen exchanges on tourism, culture, youths and Olympics.
Web giant YouTube has defied calls to take down a sickening video showing how to penetrate a stab vest because it claims it will enhance safety.
The astonishing refusal comes after Home Secretary Amber Rudd revealed a terror plot had been inspired by online videos showing how to attack someone who is wearing a stab vest.
The YouTube clip shows how to plunge a knife through a protective vest similar to the one worn by Westminster terror victim PC Keith Palmer.
The video's creator says the clip is designed to highlight the stab vest 'does not offer sufficient protection'
In April, The Mail on Sunday exposed how the video was available little more than a week after terrorist Khalid Masood mounted the pavement in a hired car in March killing three people plus a fourth who died two weeks later before murdering PC Palmer.
After the MoS alerted YouTube owners Google, the video was removed. But just two weeks later the footage was reposted under a slightly different name on YouTube.
And now the company is refusing to remove it, because the filmmaker says he is only exposing safety weaknesses.
Khalid Masood is pinned down by armed police after stabbing PC Keith Palmer in the Westminster terror attack
Last night, a YouTube spokeswoman said: Alongside our campaign to prevent abuse of our platform by those that seek to do harm, we must also protect the freedoms of people who dont, and where content does not cross the line and is clear in its intention, it stays up.
On a visit to the US last week to rally support for her campaign to combat extremist online content, Ms Rudd revealed: This summer we managed to disrupt a plot that involved an individual learning how to get through a stab vest from online videos.
Luckily he was caught before he was able to fulfil this terrible vision but it was instructive to know where he got his information from.
Last night, Rudd told the MoS: It is precisely videos of this nature that can encourage British extremists to commit acts of violence.
'The internet must not be used as a platform for material that inspires terrorism.
The funeral of PC Keith Palmer, who was stabbed to death by Khalid Masood in the Westminster terror attack
Yvette Cooper, Labour MP and chair of the Home Affairs Select Committee, said: Google needs to act to stop videos which clearly demonstrate how to carry out violent attacks being available on their platforms.
'How many times do we have to say the same thing before they act?
Given this is one of the biggest and richest companies in the world there is no excuse for this material not to be speedily identified and removed.
The film, Reupload: The Forbidden Stab Proof Vest Video, is made by German weapons obsessive Jorg Sprave.
Asked yesterday whether it was responsible of him to repost the video, he replied: Yes. My video does not show how to stab through a well-made vest, like the models issued to the police.
It shows how you can pierce a fairly cheap vest and clearly shows this popular product does not offer sufficient protection.
Jason Fairbanks, (right) shot and killed his wife, Annie Fairbanks, (left) and the couple's two young children before pulling the gun on himself
Four people are confirmed dead after an Arizona man shot his wife and two children before killing himself in a murder-suicide.
The horrific events took place Friday, while officers responded to the scene located near 100th Street and Frank Lloyd Wright Boulevard Saturday, police confirmed.
Jason Fairbanks, 39, shot and killed his wife, Annie Fairbanks, 39, as well as his daughter, 3, and son, 9 months, before turning the gun on himself.
The Fairbanks family resided in a 'two-story stucco home in a quiet upper-middle-class neighborhood,' according to a report by the local Arizona Central.
The four individuals were found in the home after Fairbanks failed to show up to work and a concerned co-worker went to check on him.
The father shot and killed his two children, his daughter, 3, and son, 9 months (both pictured above) in the murder-suicide
The Fairbanks family resided in a 'two-story stucco home in a quiet upper-middle-class neighborhood'
Further investigation revealed the family had been suffering financial woes before the horrific murder-suicide
When the co-worker entered the home, they discovered the bodies, said Sgt. Ben Hoster, spokesperson of the Scottsdale Police Department.
Investigation revealed the family had been suffering financial troubles - a possible motive in the murder-suicide.
The couple owned the Macrotherapy Physical Therapy & Rehabilitation clinic in Old Town Scottsdale.
The late wife was 'a Master CHEK Practitioner and a doctor of holistic nutrition,' according to an allevents.in page.
The murder-suicide took place Friday near 100th Street and Frank Lloyd Wright Boulevard Saturday in Scottsdale, Arizona, police confirmed
The couple had only been married for a year and a half, while the father's sister said, 'he loved his family so much'
'Annie studied and completed courses in Functional Diagnostic Nutrition, Advanced Metabolic Typing and is a licensed nutritionist.'
Fairbank's sister, Laura Fairbanks, described her brother as a 'protector' and a hard worker; however, she knew the family had been experiencing money woes as of late.
'I just wished he had asked for help,' the solemn sister said in an interview with the newspaper.
'He wasn't a bad person ... He loved his family so much.'
Laura described her brother as a 'protector' of his family as well as a hard worker
'Jason could make people laugh in ways you never thought you could,' his, sister, Laura said
Jason and Annie got married and started a family a year and a half after they moved in together.
'Boy, (Annie) loved those kids ... She loved them so much,' Laura added.
She remembered her late sister-in-law as someone who 'just made you feel all right' in her presence.
'Jason could make people laugh in ways you never thought you could ... He was an extraordinary big brother.'
Laura remembered her late sister-in-law as someone who 'just made you feel all right' when in her presence
They might not eat marmalade sandwiches, but these real-life Paddington bears are back home in deepest, darkest Peru thanks to the generosity of Mail on Sunday readers.
Your donations have helped rescue three more spectacled bears after the plight of the species was first highlighted by Paddingtons creator Michael Bond in this newspaper two years ago.
Initially, your generosity saved Cholita, who had been mutilated in a circus and then left for a decade in a tiny concrete zoo enclosure.
As Paddington 2 hits cinema screens, Mail On Sunday readers are revealed to have saved three more bears
Sabina was rescued from an illegal zoo where bears are kept in small cages and now enjoys a life in her forest home
The 30,000 raised helped return her to her natural jungle habitat in Perus Taricaya Ecological Reserve.
Now, as Paddington 2 opens in cinemas, we can reveal that the money has since enabled three more bears to be rescued from captivity by the charity Animal Defenders International (ADI).
Lucho and Sabina were rescued from an illegal zoo where they were kept in small cages soon after Cholita was saved.
And earlier this year, Dominga was brought to the sanctuary. She had been taken from the wild by animal traffickers along with her sister, who sadly died.
Before being rescued by the generosity of readers, Lucho was kept in an illegal zoo comprised of small cages
Dominga was brought to the sanctuary earlier this year. Prior to her rescue she was taken from the wild by traffickers with her sister, who died
The critically endangered bears the same species as Paddington are solitary creatures and it is unlikely that Cholita, who had been taken from the jungle as an infant, will ever live with the others.
But her enclosure is next to that of Lucho and Sabina, who it is hoped will breed during next mating season.
Cholitas fingers had been crudely cut off to remove her claws and her teeth were broken off, which meant she would never survive in the wild. The stress of captivity also caused most of her hair to fall out.
ADI president Jan Creamer said: It is a joy to see Cholita, Dominga, Lucho and Sabina enjoying their forest homes. Having suffered so much, our real-life Paddingtons have a new lease of life, surrounded by nature and their own kind.
To find out more or to make a donation, visit ad-international.org.
A man has been stabbed multiple times outside his suburban Sydney home.
The man is in a serious condition after being found in Sydney's south with stab wounds.
Emergency services were called to Omnibus Road about 3am on Sunday, where they found a man with multiple stab wounds
The man is in a serious condition after being found in Sydney's south with stab wounds (scene pictured)
Police believe the 21-year-old was stabbed outside the Kingsgrove home before the offender fled the scene.
He has been taken to hospital in a serious condition.
Officers from Campsie Local Area Command have established a crime scene and commenced inquiries.
Investigators are appealing for anyone with information to come forward.
Police are investigating if another man who arrived at Canterbury Hospital shortly after with a stab wound is linked to the incident.
The parents of a young woman addicted to heroin were not sure their daughter was alive until they saw a segment on CNN about homeless addicts in Boston.
Meghan DiGiacomo was profiled by the cable news network during Anderson Coopers program earlier this week.
The report by CNN correspondent Gary Tuchman was about Boston's infamous 'Methadone Mile' - a stretch of downtown that has become a haven for homeless heroin addicts.
DiGiacomo and another addict interviewed by CNN told their stories of how they were unable to wean themselves off of heroin despite many attempts at rehabilitation.
When Paul DiGiacomo and his wife, Julie Chandler, saw Meghan DiGiacomo on television, they knew for certain that she was alive.
A CNN report about heroin addiction in America last week was watched by two parents who saw their daughter being interviewed. CNN's Gary Tuchman is seen left interviewing Meghan DiGiacomo in Boston
Paul DiGiacomo (left) and his wife were unsure if their daughter, Meghan DiGiacomo (right), was alive before they watched the segment. DiGiacomo is seen above reunited with his daughter two weeks after the initial report ran on CNN
Paul DiGiacomo even took the extreme step of joining his daughter on the streets of Boston
He said he would also live as a homeless person alongside his daughter until she agreed to get help for her addiction. Paul DiGiacomo (left), Meghan DiGiacomo (center), and CNN's Gary Tuchman (right) are seen in the image above
Im never giving up on Meghan,' her mother, Julie Chandler (above), said. 'She wont die. She cant
Im never giving up on Meghan,' Chandler said. 'She wont die. She cant.
Paul DiGiacomo even took the extreme step of joining his daughter on the streets of Boston.
He said he would also live as a homeless person alongside his daughter until she agreed to get help for her addiction.
Meghan DiGiacomo told CNN she lost a boyfriend who like her had overdosed on heroin.
Meghan DiGiacomo was profiled by the cable news network during Anderson Coopers program earlier this week
She was living on the streets of Boston's notorious 'Methadone Mile' - an area of downtown that has become a haven for heroin addicts
DiGiacomo and another addict interviewed by CNN told their stories of how they were unable to wean themselves off of heroin despite many attempts at rehabilitation
Meghan DiGiacomo told CNN she lost a boyfriend who like her had overdosed on heroin
I lost the love of my life, she said. We both overdosed and when I woke up, he was dead
I lost the love of my life, she said.
We both overdosed and when I woke up, he was dead.
When asked if she was afraid to die, Meghan DiGiacomo said: Not really afraid. Honestly, sometimes, it just seems easier.
She was surprised one morning to see a visitor had arrived in the Boston neighborhood where she was sleeping on the street.
I was literally sleeping here and I woke up to my dog licking my face and I looked, and my dads like, Alright, were all moved in, she said.
What are you doing here? she asked her father.
Im not leaving until you get help or go to the hospital, he told her.
My kids are everything to me, they really are, Paul DiGiacomo told CNN.
When asked if his daughter was breaking his heart, he said: Of course she is.
Ironically, even though Paul moved out to the street to help his daughter, it is Meghan that is worried.
I feel alright for myself sleeping on the street, but I check on him 100 times during the night, she said.
Thats who I am. I always take care of other people before I take care of myself.
She wants to help others before shell help herself, Paul DiGiacomo said of his daughter.
Though Meghan DiGiacomo said she wants to recover, she keeps putting it off.
One moment I really want to [go to rehab], and the next moment I say to myself, Ill go later.
Im a procrastinator.
In the meantime, she and her father have taken up residence in a neighborhood where a dozen other heroin addicts live.
Methadone Mile is a stretch of Massachusetts Avenue south of downtown where methadone clinics, sober homes and other drug treatment services have grown in the shadow of Boston Medical Center, New Englands busiest trauma hospital.
Billy Donovan is another addict who has been sleeping on the streets in that area. He, too, was interviewed by CNN in the same segment.
Before the story aired, his mother also did not know if he was alive.
Its an area meant for healing that has instead become the citys most visible symbol of the national opioid crisis.
Mayor Marty Walsh promised to clean up the notorious drug haven last year, launching initiatives to break up the dealing and connect people to treatment.
But the slow pace of change has frustrated residents and business owners, who credit the city for its efforts but believe more dramatic steps need to be taken.
There was a time when skulduggery at the Flower and Produce Show would keep the villagers of Ambridge gossiping for weeks.
But no longer. As fans of BBC Radio 4s The Archers will testify, life in the fictional town has become a lot grittier lately.
Little more than a year since Helen Titcheners murder trial, Ambridge is once again wreathed in blue and white crime tape.
Marked man: Matt Crawford (Kim Durham) has brought chaos to Ambridge
A few days ago, dodgy businessman Matt Crawford was mown down by a mystery driver outside the hotel Grey Gables during the Hunt Ball. Now Middle England is gripped by the question: Who could possibly want him dead?
The answer, as Archers aficionados know at too well, is almost everybody this side of Borchester, thanks to a carefully woven plot that guarantees tension all the way to the opening of Lynda Snells Christmas panto.
Matt had absconded to Costa Rica in early 2015, taking with him thousands of pounds belonging to his former lover Lilian Bellamy and leaving behind the scrawled apology: Sorry, Pusscat.
But since his shock return to the show in April, he has attempted to destroy Lilians impending marriage to local landowner Justin, is accused of ruining the business run by horse enthusiast Shula Hebden Lloyd and her vet husband Alistair, and could now prevent the shows gay couple, Adam and Ian, from adopting a baby following an angry car-park punch-up.
IT COULD BE ANY ONE OF THESE ARCHERS-ENEMIES... Businessman Justin (Simon Williams) Ruthless shark Justin Elliott Businessman Justin (Simon Williams) can be as ruthless as a shark, but hes met his match in Matt. Justin scuppered his deal for a new racecourse and, in revenge, Matt worked his way back into Lilians heart. He has no alibi for the time of the crash and was last seen speeding from the Hunt Ball to confront his nemesis. Poison-pen victim Shula Hebden Lloyd Poison-pen victim Shula Hebden Lloyd The stable owner hates Matt after he forced her vet husband Alistair to dope a horse before a big race. Shula (Judy Bennett) has also noted that since Matt returned, her stables have been the subject of poison-pen attacks. She mysteriously disappeared at the time of the accident. Gambling addict Alistair Lloyd Gambling addict Alistair Lloyd With Alistair (Michael Lumsden) in the grip of a gambling addiction, Matt bought the vets 60,000 debt and forced him to tamper with a racehorse. Since Matts return, he has nearly ruined Alistairs business and his new partnership with Anisha Jayakody. Alistair was at the Hunt Ball at the time of the accident or was he? Gay farmer Adam Macy Gay farmer Adam Macy Fiercely protective of his aunt Lilian, eco-farmer Adam (Andrew Wincott) saw red when Matt goaded him about his plans to adopt a baby with husband Ian. Matt, smarting from a single punch, then threatened to ruin those plans by reporting the assault to police. The punch was also captured on CCTV. Bitter associate Tom Archer Bitter associate Tom Archer Tom has had several run-ins with Matt over the years but in the latest he was left furious after losing thousands of pounds in a deal with Justin due to Matts meddling. The tiresome young entrepreneur (played by William Troughton) was in The Bull as Matt knocked back whisky after whisky. PS... don't forget Mr Nasty The control freak Rob Titchener The control freak Rob Titchener The Archers nastiest villain was last heard of fleeing to the US after his attempts to control Helen and gain custody of their son failed. Is a shock return on the cards? A hit-and-run would be a bit of light relief for Rob (Timothy Watson). Advertisement
Kim Durham, who has played Matt for 20 years, says: Pretty much everybody in Ambridge has a reason to want to bump him off. It has been very subtly and cleverly done.
He adds: Matt is an extremely selfish and deeply flawed man. He is not a safe person to be around but it has been an absolute delight playing him.
He started off as a thoroughly bad lot but over the years we have rounded him out nicely.
I dont know if I would have a pint with him. He is a bit like Nigel Farage you might have one pint with him but if you had two it would get unpleasant.
But he genuinely loves Lilian and there is a sort of weird vulnerability. People either love him or hate him and a lot do both.
Archers fans are abuzz with theories. One posted a complex statistical study online that deduced that at least 29 people could have been behind the wheel, before narrowing it down to five major suspects.
So who could possibly hate Matt enough to want him dead?
Kevin Spacey breached Royal protocol when he sat on the Queen's throne during a private tour of Buckingham Palace, it has been alleged.
The disgraced Hollywood actor, who is facing numerous allegations of sexual misconduct, was understood to have been invited to the palace for a private tour with Prince Andrew.
A source claims the House of Cards star was shown the throne room which features a chair embroidered with EIIR, made for the Queen's coronation in 1953.
Kevin Spacey breached Royal protocol when he sat on the Queen's throne during a private tour of Buckingham Palace, it has been alleged. Above, the star with Prince Charles after receiving an honorary knighthood in June 2016
Then in what has been described as a 'breach of Royal protocol' the 58-year-old reportedly posed for photographs of himself sitting on her Majesty's throne.
It is understood the alleged incident happened several years ago when Spacey was artist director of the Old Vic theatre, between 2004 and 2015.
A source said told The Sunday Times: 'Going anywhere near the throne is a total non-no. If a member of staff did, there would be disciplinary action.
'The Queen would not have been amused.'
Buckingham Palace confirmed to the paper that Spacey had been invited for a tour by Prince Andrew, the Duke of York.
This is the second time in recent months Prince Andrew's private guests of Buckingham Palace have landed him in hot water.
The disgraced Hollywood actor, who is facing numerous allegations of sexual misconduct, was understood to have been invited to the palace for a private tour with Prince Andrew
In August he was accused of treating the historic residence as a 'theme park' after hosting David Beckham, his daughter Harper and her friends for her sixth birthday party.
Spacey's career is described as being 'finished' by critics after damning sexual assault allegations emerged last month.
He has recently flown into a so-called reputation rehab in Arizona for treatment for sex addiction.
Guests at the 28,000-a-month facility can enjoy an Olympic-size pool, state-of-the-art gym, private tai chi, yoga and riding lessons and New Age-y pursuits such as walking through a stone Serenity Circle at sunrise.
It is described by locals as somewhere that looks like a five-star hotel but has instead become the go-to place for stars in crisis.
Spacey reportedly flew in by private jet to a nearby airport shortly after disgraced movie mogul Harvey Weinstein arrived.
The Meadows has a reputation as the worlds leading facility to treat sex addiction a condition derided as pseudo science by critics. It isnt recognised as a legitimate psychiatric condition in the UK or US.
A Morrison's in West Yorkshire is planning to destress its customers by becoming the first in Britain to have an in-store bar.
The supermarket in Guiseley has opened up a bar called Barista, which will allow its shoppers to sip on a cold one while getting their shopping done.
Barista will boast a menu of refreshing beverages, from a Saltaire Blonde ale and Frizzante Italian wine, to a selection of ciders and lagers.
It is not known whether the shop will extend its plan to have a bar in-stores nationwide.
The new bar Barista at Morrisons in Guiseley, pictured, will sell local ales and wine to shoppers. It is the only supermarket in the UK to have a bar
A Morrison's spokesperson told the Yorkshire Post: 'Saltaire Blonde is a local brewery that's really popular with customers. We're looking forward to hearing what customers think of our new cask pump.'
A number of Morrison customers took to social media to celebrate - and critique - the supermarket's announcement.
Mark Cooke wrote on Facebook: 'Guiseley Morrison's is serving pints, they know their customer base.'
On Twitter, Martin King said: 'Guiseley Morrisons here I come, what a great idea.'
It is not known if and when Morrisons will extend its in-store bar to its branches nationwide. It's iniative has sparked both celebration and criticism
Also on Twitter, Daniel Shutt said: 'As if drink culture isn't bad enough in Leeds already, now we have to have a bar inside Morrison's!'
Last year Morrison's announced its first increase in sales in four years, a growth largely attributed to bulk alcohol sales.
The supermarket's chief executive, David Potts, told the Guardian in an interview in January that booze had been the 'standout department' contributing to a 0.2 per cent increase in Morrison's sales.
Many high-end supermarkets in North America sell booze for customers to drink at bars within the shops' premises.
Constable Arun Trevitt has now turned to Mr Price for help with his own trauma
Dan Price was about to jump off the Harbour Bridge in 2014 when he intervened
A man who tried to kill himself is now best friends with the cop who saved him
An unlikely friendship has emerged between a man who tried to kill himself by jumping from the Sydney Harbour Bridge and the heroic policeman who saved his life in 2014.
Dan Price admitted that he was just 'seconds away' from jumping when a security guard spotted him walking 'heel-to-toe' along a thin piece of railing on the outside of a safety fence.
Of all the emergency services personnel dispatched to the incident, Constable Arun Trevitt was the one who was able to get through to Mr Price, and held onto him through the fence for more than half an hour.
Constable Arun Trevitt (left) prevented Dan Price from committing suicide in December 2014
Dan Price is now a passionate advocate for mental health awareness and suicide prevention
But two minutes of talking with Constable Trevitt convinced the young man he was making a mistake, and he allowed himself to be rescued and taken to St Vincent's Hospital.
Constable Trevitt recalled that Mr Price had been driven to the brink of suicide by a relationship breakdown, and told the Daily Telegraph that he was able to identify with the struggle as he too was divorced.
'I said 'but there is nothing here that we can't fix or get you help for and we really want you to come back over,' Constable Trevitt said, which resonated with Mr Price as it made him feel as though the officer 'had his back'.
Mr Price, who is now a passionate advocate for mental health awareness and suicide prevention, said that he didn't think that supportive feeling existed.
'You think you're alone and no one cares,' he said, remembering that he had felt compelled to hide his shame, depression and suicidal thoughts from his family.
But Constable Trevitt approached him 'with compassion and without judgement', he said, which saved his life that morning.
Dan Price credits Constable Trevitt for helping him realise that he had many things to live for
The two met again face to face for the first time since the morning on the Harbour Bridge in back in December 2016.
'It was a very special moment. I got to experience meeting the person that save my life,' Mr Price said.
It prompted him to post a tribute to the police officers who brought him back from the brink and forced him to confront the depression and anxiety that pushed him to contemplate suicide.
Dan Price has completely turned his life around since he attempted to commit suicide in 2014
But in 2017, the tables turned. Mr Price was able to repay Constable Trevitt by helping him through the 'trauma' he suffered a after pulling the the sole survivor of a fatal high-speed car crash in Haymarket.
Constable Trevitt told the Daily Telegraph on Sunday that the outcome of the crash 'weighed heavily' on him, and that Mr Price is helping him process the trauma.
'I don't see myself as any better than any other police officer that goes out every day to just have a crack to try and make a difference,' he told the publication.
Constable Trevitt was 'traumatised' after he pulled the sole survivor out of a fatal car crash
Constable Arun Trevitt (left) and Dan Price enjoy a beer together in Manly on November 3
In December 2014, as he was being rushed into the emergency room, Mr Price made the policeman a promise that one day he would buy him a drink to thank him for saving his life.
He spent three weeks in hospital following his close call, and worked with doctors to create a plan of therapy and medication to help him tackle his mental illness.
And finally on November 3, 2017, Constable Trevitt finally enjoyed a beer with Mr Price at Manly's Hotel Steyne.
Almost three years later, the sight of the Harbour Bridge fills Dan Price with 'so much gratitude'
Mr Price documents their meetings on Instagram, writing, 'I've tried many times to put into words the immense amount of gratitude and admiration I feel so deeply for this incredible man.
'Arun Trevitt, the heroic police officer who spent 20 minutes talking to me through the safety fence of the Harbour Bridge that fateful morning nearly 3 years ago.
'We are now the very best of mates; a friendship founded upon a miracle, and I thank the universe for placing Arun on my path at 5am on the 4th of December 2014.
'The empathy, compassion, support and understanding he showed for me that morning without any judgement, saved my life... Always great catching up.'
President Donald Trump on Saturday said he was offended by North Korean ruler Kim Jong-un after official state media in Pyongyang referred to him as a 'lunatic old man.'
'Why would Kim Jong-un insult me by calling me "old," when I would NEVER call him "short and fat?"' Trump tweeted on Saturday.
'Oh well, I try so hard to be his friend - and maybe someday that will happen!'
In a related tweet on Saturday, Trump praised China's president, Xi Jinping, for 'upping sanctions against North Korea.'
'[Xi] said he wants them to denuclearize,' Trump tweeted. 'Progress is being made.'
President Donald Trump on Saturday said he was offended by North Korean ruler Kim Jong-un after official state media in Pyongyang referred to him as a 'lunatic old man'
North Korea's state-run media denounced Trump as a 'lunatic old man' in response to the American president's speech on Wednesday before the South Korean National Assembly.
'The US had better make a decisive choice...if it does not want a horrible nuclear disaster and tragic doom,' the statement from the North Korean government read.
Trump and Kim have been engaged in an exchange of insults - even though the US president has made a concerted effort to be relatively restrained during his current 12-day trip through Asia.
Last month, Trump dismissed the prospect of talks with North Korea as a waste of time a day after his own secretary of state said Washington was maintaining open lines of communication with Kim.
'I told Rex Tillerson, our wonderful secretary of state, that he is wasting his time trying to negotiate with Little Rocket Man,' Trump wrote on Twitter, using his sarcastic nickname for Kim and seeming to contradict the top US diplomat.
In late September, after Trump delivered a blistering speech warning North Korea at the United Nations, Kim released a statement calling the American president 'a dotard.'
The obscure word is old - late Middle English, or around the 14th century - and means senile old person, someone in their dotage.
On Saturday, Pyongyang accused Trump of making a 'warmonger's visit' to the region - a trip which showed he's itching for all-out Armageddon on the Korean peninsula.
'Trump, during his visit, laid bare his true nature as destroyer of world peace and stability and begged for a nuclear war on the Korean peninsula,' the hermit nation's foreign ministry spokesman said in a statement carried by the state news agency.
'Trump made his conceived attempt yet again to alienate our people from the government,' he said.
The North Korean spokesman said it will not be possible to deter Pyongyang from pursuing a fully fledged nuclear weapons program.
The US president said Wednesday in Seoul, South Korea that the 'sinister regime' to the North has become a dangerous menace, and warned dictator Kim Jong-un not to test his patience.
'Today, I hope I speak not only for our countries, but for all civilized nations, when I say to the North: Do not underestimate us. And do not try us,' he told South Korea's National Assembly in an impassioned speech.
Kim's North Korean regime has branded President Donald Trump a 'destroyer of world peace' and claimed he has 'begged for nuclear war' with statements he's made during his Asia trip this month
Trump, shown leaving the Vietnamese city of Da Nang en route to Hanoi on Saturday, has both blasted Kim during his 12-day Asia swing and called on him to cut 'a deal' with the West to give up his nuclear ambitions
The US president said Friday in Da Nang that 'the future of this region and its beautiful people must not be held hostage to a dictator's twisted fantasies of violent conquest and nuclear blackmail'
Addressing a global audience, he insisted Wednesday that 'the world cannot tolerate the menace of a rogue regime that threatens it with nuclear devastation.'
'All responsible nations must join forces to isolate the brutal regime of North Korea to deny it any form of support, supply, or acceptance.'
In a long soliloquy about North Korea, he said the totalitarian state is the result of 'a tragic experiment in the laboratory of history ... in which leaders imprison their people under the banner of fascism and oppression.'
It's 'a country ruled like a cult,' he said, fueled by 'a deranged belief in the ruler's destiny.'
And in a stern, direct message to Kim, he declared: 'The weapons you are acquiring are not making you safer. They are putting your regime in grave danger. Every step you take down this dark path increases the peril you face.'
'North Korea is not the paradise your grandfather envisioned, he said of the nation's founder Kim Il-sung. 'It is a hell that no person deserves.'
Kim Jong-un's regime is racing to complete a nuclear missile that can reach the United States, prompting Trump to leave all military options on the table
This July 28 picture released from North Korea's state news agency shows a Hwasong-14 intercontinental ballistic missile being test-lauched at an undisclosed place in North Korea
It has been 58 days since North Korea's last ballistic missile test. The regime had been quiet during Trump's Asia tour until the early morning hours of Saturday.
Trump continued blasted North Korea on Friday in Da Nang, Vietnam during a speech at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit, hammering the totalitarian state for developing nuclear weapons and long-range ballistic missiles to carry them.
'Earlier this week, I addressed the National Assembly in Seoul, South Korea and urged every responsible nation to stand united in declaring that every single step the North Korean regime takes toward more weapons is a step it takes into greater and greater danger,' he said.
'The future of this region and its beautiful people must not be held hostage to a dictator's twisted fantasies of violent conquest and nuclear blackmail.'
And the nation's hoped-for nuclear weapons, he pledged, are something 'we are not going to let it have.'
'We will not allow American cities to be threatened with destruction. We will not be intimidated. And we will not let the worst atrocities in history be repeated here, on this ground we fought and died to secure,' he said.
Trump's speech in Seoul comes at a time when he has been waging a war of words against Kim, derisively calling him 'Little Rocket Man' for his nuclear missile ambitions.
But on Tuesday he seemed to soften his rhetoric, saying Pyongyang should 'make a deal' with the West to stop developing weapons of mass destruction.
Trump warned the North Korean dictator on Wednesday not to tempt fate by threatening the United States with nuclear weapons
'Today, I hope I speak not only for our countries, but for all civilized nations, when I say to the North: Do not underestimate us. And do not try us,' Trump warned Kim
Trump told reporters that he had seen a lot of progress in recent days, but wouldn't say where he stands on the question of direct talks with the despot.
'It makes sense for North Korea to come to the table and make a deal that is good for the people of North Korea and for the world,' he said during a press conference with Moon.
At the same time, he held out the possibility that the Pentagon would act with 'unparalleled strength' if Kim doesn't do, in Moon's words, 'the right thing.'
During a military briefing at nearby Camp Humphreys on Tuesday, the president promised 'lots of good answers for you over a period of time.'
'And ultimately it will all work out,' he said.
'It always works out. It has to work out!'
The Hermit Kingdom has ramped up its ballistic missile testing program in recent months, and conducted its sixth nuclear weapon test in September. In all, Pyongyang has sent a dozen missiles into the air this year, but none since September.
Some experts believe Kim will soon be able to reach the continental United States with an intercontinental ballistic missile.
Trump fired off a series of tweets above after his Seoul speech before flying on to China
Three American aircraft carriers and a nuclear submarine are en route to waters off the Korean peninsula, underscoring the seriousness of Trump's threat to engage.
'As we work together to resolve this problem using all available tools short of military action, the United States stands prepared to defend itself and it its allies using the full range of our unmatched military capabilities, if need be,' he threatened on Wednesday.
Trump has said frequently that his predecessors, going back to the Bill Clinton era, have kicked the North Korean can down the road.
'This is not the right time to be doing it, but that's what I got. That's what I got,' Trump lamented Tuesday of the situation he inherited.
A few hours later he was on Air Force One to China where it was revealed that at the end of his Asia tour, Trump will decide whether to designate North Korea as a state sponsor of terrorism.
Press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders told reporters: 'The president said he'd make a determination at the end of the trip.'
President Obama removed the rogue nation from America's list of states that sponsor terror in a bid to ease relations.
Migrant workers line up for a train in Urumqi, Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region, on Monday. A total of 1,823 workers, many of them seasonal cotton harvest hands, recently completed their employment in the region and set off for home on a train that was scheduled especially for them. (Photo/China Daily)
Govt encouraging people to settle where they work played a role
China's population of migrant workers saw a decline for the second consecutive year in 2016 - to 245 million - according to a report released by the National Health and Family Planning Commission on Friday.
Last year, China's migrating population decreased by 1.7 million from 2015, the report said. Before 2015, the group had been growing, from 230 million in 2011 to a peak of 253 million in 2014, the report said.
Despite the shrinkage, the migrant population still accounts for a big share of China's total, and the number will remain at a high level over the long term, it said.
The total population of the Chinese mainland exceeded 1.38 billion as of the end of last year, an increase of more than 8 million over the previous year, according to the National Bureau of Statistics.
Over the past six years, the portion of all migrants who moved across provinces declined from nearly 70 percent in 2011 to less than 64 percent last year, while the percentage of those migrating to different cities within the same province rose from about 25 percent in 2011 to more than 27 percent last year, the report said.
Meanwhile, average age of migrants rose from 27.3 years to 29.8 years during the same period. The monthly income of migrant workers increased by 15 percent annually, on average, between 2014 and last year, the report said.
The drop in numbers over the past two years is largely the result of major policies issued by the governments to encourage migrants to settle down in the cities where they work, said Wang Qian, chief supervisor over the migrating population at the commission.
Some cities have set limits on total population in recent years, which led to a decrease in migrants, he said.
In Beijing, the total number of migrants declined by more than 150,000 last year from 2015, according to a report released by Beijing University of Technology in September.
Despite the drop in the migrating population over the past two years, one trend has not changed, Wang said: Migrants tend to flow to large city clusters along China's coasts, major rivers and railways. And they tend to take the whole family.
"Increasing whole-family migration will place more demand on public services such as education and healthcare," he said. "We will take this into consideration in providing healthcare and family planning services."
Theresa May is facing a backbench revolt with 40 jittery Tory MPs willing to sign a letter of no-confidence - just eight short of the number required to force a leadership election.
The Prime Minister, who this week announced legislation confirming the date of Britain's departure from the European Union, has been rocked by the forced departure of two cabinet ministers, Priti Patel and Sir Michael Fallon.
Mrs May has desperately tried to keep Brexit and Remain wings of her party unified, although both elements are not confident she is the best person to govern the country.
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Prime Minister Theresa May, pictured, is facing a backbench rebellion by jittery Tory MPs
Michael Gove and Boris Johnson are also reported to be on manoeuvers according to a leaked letter seen by the Mail on Sunday looking to force the PM to agree to a hard Brexit
According to The Sunday Times, only eight more signatures are required to launch a rebellion against Mrs May's leadership.
Last month, former Tory chairman Grant Shapps launched an abortive heave against Mrs May.
He was accused of misjudging the mood of the party after senior cabinet ministers expressed their fulsome support for the prime minister.
Veteran backbencher Michael Fabricant suggested Mr Shapps held a grudge because he is no longer a minister.
'I wouldnt buy a used car from one embittered colleague let alone take advice from him about who should be PM,' he said.
Tory MP Vicky Ford dismissed Mr Shapps support within the party, revealing 'hes not even in our WhatsApp group'.
Former Tory Party Chairman Grant Shapps, pictured, last month launched a botched heave against Mrs May but failed to secure the support of any major figures in the Tory party
Former Defence Secretary Priti Patel, pictured, smiled during a service of remembrance at Witham War Memorial in Essex yesterday afternoon just days after being sacked
Sir Michael Fallon, pictured, was forced to resign as Minister for Defence after becoming embroiled in the Westminster 'dirty dossier' scandal, weakening Mrs May's position
Hardline Brexiteers Boris Johnson and Michael Gove have been seeking to limit any transition arrangements claiming they should end by June 30, 2021 according to a leaked letter seen by the Mail On Sunday.
They also urged the Prime Minister to ensure members of her top team fall behind their Brexit plans by 'clarifying their minds' and called for them to 'internalise the logic', the newspaper said.
The leaked letter appears to make a thinly veiled attack Chancellor Philip Hammond, who backed remain and wants a softer Brexit, for lacking the 'sufficient energy' in preparing for the UK's future outside the bloc.
A senior Government source told the newspaper the Foreign Secretary and Environment Secretary had conducted a 'soft coup' and described Mrs May as 'their Downing Street hostage'.
The leaked letter to the PM from Mr Johnson and Mr Gove, titled EU Exit - Next Steps, is marked 'For your and Gavin's eyes only', a reference to the PM's chief of staff Gavin Barwell.
It states: 'Your approach is governed by sensible pragmatism. That does not in any way dilute our ambition to be a fully independent self-governing country by the time of the next election. If we are to counter those who wish to frustrate that end, there are ways of underlining your resolve.
'We are profoundly worried that in some parts of Government the current preparations are not proceeding with anything like sufficient energy.
'We have heard it argued by some that we cannot start preparations on the basis of 'No Deal' because that would undermine our obligation of 'sincere co-operation' with the EU. If taken seriously, that would leave us over a barrel in 2021.
'We all want you to push your agenda forward with confidence and have your Government articulate the following...'
No 10 said it did not comment on leaks and neither Mr Johnson or Mr Gove commented.
Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, meanwhile, called for Mrs May to 'govern or go' and demanded Mr Johnson to be sacked for 'undermining our country' and 'putting our citizens at risk'.
In an article for The Sunday Times, he wrote: 'Continuing uncertainty about the Government's approach to Brexit is now the biggest risk facing our country.
'The Prime Minister must end the confusion, take on the 'no-deal' extremists in her Government and back a jobs first Brexit for Britain.'
In a statement to the Observer, he wrote: 'We've put up with Johnson embarrassing and undermining our country with his incompetence and colonial throwback views and putting our citizens at risk for long enough. It's time for him to go.'
British Vogue has come under fire for allegedly making its new mixed-race cover star appear more light-skinned.
The first edition of the magazine under its first black editor Edward Enninful features a close-up of Ghanaian-British model Adwoa Aboah in bright blue eye-shadow and a headscarf.
But critics say the model's distinctive freckles were only slightly visible and her skin looks much paler than it does naturally.
Critics have complained that Adwoa Aboah's distinctive freckles were only slightly visible and her skin looks much paler than natural
Quoted in the Sunday Times, one critic, freelance writer Sharn Rayment, wrote: 'Is it just us or does she look extremely light and freckle-less in her cover shot?'
The blogger, who wrote the comments on the Shevolution website, added: 'Compared to many other editorial snaps of the modern-day supermodel, her Vogue cover feels almost washed out.'
Ghanaian-born former stylist Enninful was announced as Alexandra Shulman's replacement in April, after she chose to leave the magazine to pursue 'a different future'.
During Shulman's 25 years as the magazine's editor, only two black models featured on their own on the cover - Naomi Campbell and Jourdan Dunn.
When asked about Edward Enninful's decision to select her for the cover of Enninful's first issue, she said: 'My head's going this big. Being on this cover is the biggest thing that's happened in my career'
Enninful received an OBE in 2016 for services to diversify within the fashion industry. Enninful is close friends with Naomi Campbell, who he has given a role as contributing editor
When asked why she did not feature more black models on the magazine's cover she told the Guardian: 'You would sell fewer copies. It's as simple as that.'
Enninful was said to be planning a 'posh girl' exodus, with a view to diversify British Vogue.
He is the first black, first male and first gay editor of the magazine, which has been running since 1916.
When asked about Enninful's decision to select her for the cover, she said: 'My head's going this big. Being on this cover is the biggest thing that's happened in my career.
'There is this newfound love and space for activism within fashion. I never would have dreamt in a million years that I would have young girls coming up to me at Glastonbury or on the streets of LA, New York, London, and telling me how much GurlsTalk or seeing my picture in a magazine means to them, as a woman of colour.
'I love being a mixed-race woman in 2017. I feel part of something big. Theres this understanding that were all in it together'.
The company teased the cover last Sunday with a trailer featuring behind-the-scenes clips from upcoming fashion shoots as well as words from Enninful himself.
During Alexandra Shulman's 25 years as the magazine's editor, only two black models featured on their own on the cover - Naomi Campbell and Jourdan Dunn
Dynamic: The Ghanaian-British model is the first cover star under editor Edward Enninful
The clip drove fashion fans wild, with many saying they couldn't wait to go out and buy the new issue.
Enninful's first cover looks very different to Shulman's last issue, which hit shelves in August.
The September issue was themed around Vogue's 'past, present and future', and featured models Nora Attal, Edie Campbell, Jean Campbell, Kate Moss and Stella Tennant.
Enninful, who grew up in London as one of six children, was scouted as a model age 16 and has gone on to become one of the most famous faces in fashion, counting Naomi Campbell as a best friend. He has a penchant for partying and is regularly seen at the hottest fashion events.
The journalist was the youngest-ever fashion director for i-D magazine age 16 and has worked for Italian and American Vogue, and served as a consultant on major fashion campaigns, including Calvin Klein, Christian Dior and Dolce and Gabbana.
At the helm of W Magazine, he boosted ad pages by 16 percent in 2012.
The new editor, whose mother was a seamstress, was honoured at the British Fashion Awards in 2014 with the prestigious Isabella Blow Award for Fashion Creator, and he also won an OBE in 2016 for services to diversity within the fashion industry.
Models, and close friends to Enninful, Naomi Campbell and Kate Moss have both been given roles at Vogue as contributing editors.
An elderly couple living in Canada have built a 10,000 square-foot fallout shelter in preparation for nuclear war.
The Atomic Doomsday clock says now that nuclear war is more likely than it has been since 1953.
And that's why Bruce Beach and his wife Jean believe that 'now more than ever,' people should be thinking about their options for when war does break out, the couple told the National Post.
The couple have been preparing for nuclear holocaust for the past 50 years by building and keeping up a shelter sunk beneath several feet of concrete and soil on a 12.5 acre patch of land near their home.
They call the structure 'Ark Two'.
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Bruce Beach and his wife Jean built a 10,000 square-foot fallout shelter in preparation for nuclear war
The couple have been preparing for nuclear holocaust for the past 50 years by building and keeping up a shelter sunk beneath several feet of concrete and soil on a 12.5 acre patch of land near their home
Construction of the shelter started in 1980 when he bought 42 old-school buses for $300 a piece, he told the Post. He then excavated the property and buried the buses in the earth, covering them with concrete and soil
Bruce Beach, 83, is originally originally from Winfield, Kansas, and moved to Chicago later in life to work as a general contractor and electrical engineer.
That was around the time John F Kennedy was president, and advising Americans to stock up on canned goods and build bomb shelters in their backyards in case there was a nuclear war.
Beach figured that it would be better to ride out the war away from the city, so he moved to Canada in 1970 and eventually settled in the town of Hornig's Mills, about two hours northwest of Toronto, where Jean has lived her whole life.
After meeting her and discovering that her family lived on a significant plot of land, Beach said his idea to build a fallout shelter started to truly take form.
Construction of the shelter started in 1980 when he bought 42 old-school buses for $300 a piece, he told the Post.
He then excavated the property and buried the buses in the earth, covering them with concrete and soil. By 1982, everything was set and ready for what he thought was surely an impending worldwide disaster.
By 1982, everything was set and ready for what he thought was surely an impending worldwide disaster
The entryway to the bunker has a locked door and two locked gates and leads into a reception area with cubbyholes for firearms
Beach said he tried to make the underground sanctuary as comfortable as home, and built a brig, a mortuary, a dentist' s chair, a decontamination room. He also included multiple sets of chess to pass time and a box of radiation suits
Though there is currently some food in the underground bunker, there isn't nearly enough. He said that through the years he and his wife have had to throw away hundreds of tons of canned goods that have gone bad
The entryway to the bunker has a locked door and two locked gates and leads into a reception area with cubbyholes for firearms.
In one room there is a rusty exercise bike that at one time could be used as a pedal-powered grinding mill for wheat.
There are also several bins of toilet paper, which Beach said are for bartering.
Beach said he tried to make the underground sanctuary as comfortable as home, and built a brig, a mortuary, a dentist' s chair, a decontamination room. He also included multiple sets of chess to pass time and a box of radiation suits.
Though it is all still down there, things have become derelict over time.
The air in the bunker is damp and there isn't much lighting, and moisture beaded up on the ceiling. Walls and floors are covered in bad-smelling mold that has grown over time.
In one room there is a rusty exercise bike that at one time could be used as a pedal-powered grinding mill for wheat
Though it is all still down there, things have become derelict over tim
Pictured is a room of beds in the bunker, which was built to fit up to 350 people
The air in the bunker is damp and there isn't much lighting, and moisture beaded up on the ceiling. Walls and floors are covered in bad-smelling mold that has grown over time
'We got to get things tidied up,' Beach explained.
He said that one of the biggest challenges in getting things prepared in this day and age is how quickly technology is changing.
Currently the shelter's security monitors are from old computers and there is one working landline hooked up to a rotary phone.
And it's not stocked with food, either, because so much time has passed that the canned goods that once filled the bunker had to be thrown out.
'I don't know how many tons of food we have had to throw out over the years,' Beach explained.
Most weekends he said he invites volunteers to come and work on the site, but said that most people who come once don't come again.
The list has now narrowed down to about 50 semi-regular volunteers, and Beach says they each have a guaranteed spot in the Ark Two. It was originally built to accommodate up to 350 people.
And even though he said he probably won't be able to fill the shelter when the time for war does come, Beach is picky about who can enter.
For National Post reporters to enter, they had to chop and stack firewood for his home.
Pictured: Jeremy Corbyn is calling on Theresa May to sack Boris Johnson
Jeremy Corbyn is calling for Boris Johnson to be sacked from his post immediately as Foreign Secretary for 'putting citizens at risk'.
The Labour leader has launched a scathing attack on the former Mayor of London and is demanding the Prime Minister fire him with immediate effect.
This comes after Johnson made what has been described as an 'epic blunder' in the case of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, the British woman currently imprisoned in Iran.
Speaking in Parliament, Johnson said the mother-of-one had been teaching journalists in the middle eastern country - a mistake which could double her prison sentence for offences she has consistently denied.
Now today Corbyn has added to the growing pressure May faces in dealing with Johnson, as members of his own party say his position should be reconsidered.
While Labour London Mayor Sadiq Khan alsocalled for him to be sacked over the comments.
In a statement delivered to The Observer, Corbyn cites numerous undiplomatic and ill-chosen statements from Johnson since his appointment by May as foreign secretary in July last year.
Corbyn accuses him of having a 'colonial throwback take on the world', of repeatedly 'letting our country down'.
The Labour leader said it was the mishandling of the case of Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe that persuaded him to call for his dismissal.
His statement concludes with: 'We've put up with Johnson embarrassing and undermining our country with his incompetence and colonial throwback views and putting our citizens at risk for long enough. It's time for him to go.'
Mr Khan told BBC One's Andrew Marr Show: 'This is the latest in a long list of gaffes made by our Foreign Secretary.
This comes after Johnson made what has been described as an 'epic blunder' in the case of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, the British woman currently imprisoned in Iran
'He's offended the Libyans in relation to what he said about Sirte being the new Dubai should they get rid of the bodies.
'He's offended the Americans saying President Obama is anti-British because he's part-Kenyan.
'He's offended the Spanish, offended Sikhs with what he said about whisky tariffs in the gurdwara and stuff.
'I think he's got to go. I think he's our Foreign Secretary whose job is diplomacy and representing the best interests of our country and if Theresa May was a strong Prime Minister she would have sacked him a long time ago.'
But Tory Cabinet ministers Michael Gove and David Davis both rallied to his defence, saying he should not be sacked and that the real fault in the case lies with Iran.
Brexit Secretary David Davis, asked if Mr Johnson was unsackable, told Sky News' Sunday with Niall Paterson: 'Why would you want to sack him, he's a good Foreign Secretary.'
Last week former Tory minister Anna Soubry said: 'His words were wholly inaccurate. If they are continuing to damage this woman's well-being and putting her in more peril of continuing unlawful incarceration, then the Foreign Secretary must step down and he must go immediately.'
Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe (pictured with daughter Gabriella) is currently being held in prison in Iran
Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe's local MP, Tulip Siddiq said the Foreign Secretary's role was to protect British citizens abroad and that he had 'failed in the gravest way'.
She added: 'This is about a young mother's life, and he must now resign.'
Mr Johnson, who spoke to Iran's foreign minister Javad Zarif on Tueday, has insisted his remarks have not hampered efforts to free Ms Zaghari-Ratcliffe. Her family have always said that her 2016 visit was for her daughter, Gabriella, to meet her grandparents.
A Foreign Office spokesman told The Evening Standard last week: 'The Iranian foreign minister assured the Foreign Secretary that his earlier remarks at the Foreign Affairs Committee will have no bearing on Ms Zaghari-Ratcliffe's case and that he remains committed to working with the UK government to secure her release on humanitarian grounds.
'The Foreign Secretary made clear in Parliament that Ms Zaghari-Ratcliffe was visiting Iran on holiday and that was the sole purpose of her visit.'
Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe's family were outraged by the comments, saying they were inaccurate and put her at further risk of extending her jail sentence by five years.
They insist Zaghari-Ratcliffe was on holiday. Her employers say she had not taken part in the training of journalists.
Iranian state-run TV bulletins referred to Mr Johnson's comments as evidence she was acting illegally. 'The sole sentence uttered from the mouth of the UK foreign secretary put the efforts of the British media [propaganda] in vain,' said one.
This debacle comes at a bad time for the Prime Minster who is already smarting frm being forced to dismiss defence secretary Sir Michael Fallon for inappropriate behaviour and then losing Priti Patel as international development secretary.
Patel stepped down after it was revealed she had conducted trips to the Middle East without informing Number 10 or the Foreign Office.
Jared Kushner asked a Time Warner Inc. executive to fire '20 percent' of CNN staff
In a meeting earlier this year, Jared Kushner asked a media executive to terminate CNN staff members over their faulty 2016 election coverage.
The White House senior advisor met with Time Warner Inc.'s Gary Ginsberg and suggested the executive fire 20% of the team, the Wall Street Journal reported Friday.
Kushner cited 'they were wrong in their analysis of the election and how it would turn out.'
Sources told the newspaper Ginsberg rejected the proposition, while adding Kushner's proposal was simply meant to prove a point.
During the campaign, the President's son-in-law expressed his disapproval toward the media company, while Trump voiced the news outlet - among others - was 'fake news'.
Kushner formerly confirmed to CNN president, Jeff Zucker, that Trump campaign affiliates would not appear in any broadcast segments, according to the newspaper.
The White House senior advisor met with Time Warner Inc.'s Gary Ginsberg (pictured) earlier this year
During the campaign, the President's son-in-law expressed his disapproval toward the media company, while Trump voiced the news outlet, among others, was 'fake news'
Since then, Kushner and executives have repaired a relationship in order to benefit both parties.
The report comes immediately after AT&T proposed acquisition over Time Warner Inc. - a plan being scrutinized by the U.S. Department of Justice.
CEO of AT&T, Randall Stephenson, said in a press conference Thursday he was 'never told that the price of getting the deal done was selling CNN, period.'
He added: 'Likewise, I have never offered to sell CNN ... There is absolutely no intention that we would ever sell CNN.'
The U.S. Department of Justice demanded significant asset sales to approve the $85.4 billion deal, sources told Reuters.
The department asked AT&T to sell Turner Broadcasting or its DirecTV satellite TV operation in discussions on Monday.
'There definitely would be a huge concentration of content and distribution in one company and the net effect of that, as many people have highlighted in the press and to the Justice Department, certainly could have negative impact on the consumer,' Dish Network Corp Chief Executive Charlie Ergen said.
A new biography of Stevie Nicks has revealed claims that her relationship with Lindsay Buckingham was fraught with bullying and abuse.
The Queen of Rock and Roll's troubled relationship with her Fleetwood Mac bandmate is laid bare in Stephen Davis' new book, Gold Dust Woman, which hits the stands on November 21.
In one incident in 1987, the couple were arguing in front of the rest of the band when Buckingham 'manhandled Stevie, slapped her face and bent her backward over the hood of his car,' the book says.
'He put his fingers around her neck and started to choke her,' the book says. The other bandmates intervened and told him not to lay a hand on her again.
'I thought he was going to kill me,' Nicks said.
Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham (seen in 1998) met in college and went on to form a duo before joining Fleetwood Mac. A new biography details their turbulent relationship
In 1975, the book says Buckingham flew into a rage when Nicks was hesitant to take off her blouse in photos for the cover art on their debut album (pictured)
Nicks, who between her solo work and Fleetwood Mac has produced more than 40 top-50 hits, first met Buckingham when she was a senior and he was a junior at Menlo-Atherton High School in California.
They were in a Christian youth music group together when Buckingham started playing California Dreamin' and she harmonized.
The new book goes on sale November 21
The two were in a band called Fritz, when in 1971 they decided to strike out for Los Angeles and form their own rock duo, Buckingham Nicks.
Nicks waited tables and cleaned houses to support them while Buckingham lounged all day smoking hash with his friends, including Warren Zevon, she has said.
'I was making $50 a week cleaning,' Nicks once recalled to Rolling Stone
'I'd come in every day and have to step over these bodies. Me, I've just been cleaning. I'm tired. I'm pickin' up their legs and cleaning under them and emptying out the ashtrays,' she recalled.
The rock and roll couple were were posing for the cover art on their self-titled first album in 1975 when a photographer told her to take off her blouse, according to the book.
She didn't want to do it, and Buckingham lost it, shouting: 'Don't be a f**king child, this is art!'
Then in 1975, drummer Mick Fleetwood recruited the pair to join Fleetwood Mac.
Nicks and Buckingham are seen performing together with Fleetwood Mac in 1979. Their turbulent relationship continued for years until Buckingham reformed his ways, the book says
'When they first joined the band, Lindsey had control [over Nicks],' Mick Fleetwood told Davis. 'And, very slowly, he began to lose control. And he really didn't like it.'
With Nicks fronting the act, the band shot to stardom. But Buckingham was madly jealous that Nicks' songs 'Rhiannon' and 'Landslide,' about their fading romance, were more popular than his own, the new biography claims.
When recording the band's 1977 album, 'Rumours,' he demeaned Nicks' songwriting and told her she needed him to make her songs sound halfway decent.
She said he was 'hijacking' her music and told her mother that Buckingham had had 'thrown her down to the floor' when the two were arguing.
Nicks and Buckingham are seen performing in 2014, after they reconciled as friends
Nicks is seen performing earlier this year. The new biography details her many relationships and struggles with drug addictions, and her successful music career
Even after Nick's solo career took off, she remained with Fleetwood Mac, gritting her teeth as she and Buckingham would pretend to kiss after performing 'Landslide' every night on tour.
A representative for Buckingham did not immediately respond to request for comment from DailyMail.com.
After the confrontation in front of their bandmates in 1987, Buckingham reformed his ways and never laid hand on her again, according to the book.
The two made amends in 2013, and he agreed to treat her with respect.
Of course, by that time, Davis writes: 'Stevie was an American legend, but Lindseys star would eventually fade away.'
Chelsea Manning hit out at lawmakers on Veterans Day on Twitter with her opinion on how to best support former soldiers.
'Want to support veterans?! stop sending us overseas to kill or be killed for your nationalist fairy tales. we can do better,' she tweeted.
The tweet is likely referring to her opinion about the state of the military, which she made clear when she published more than 700,000 classified military and diplomatic documents via Wikileaks in 2013.
The move saw her sentenced to 35 years in prison, which was later commuted to seven years beginning with the date of her arrest by President Obama just days before he left office.
After she was convicted she said she was proud of what she'd done, because she wanted to expose what she considered to be US military's disregard of the effects of war on civilians.
Chelsea Manning hit out at lawmakers on Veterans day on Twitter with her opinion on how to best support former soldiers
The tweet is likely referring to her opinion about the state of the military, which she made clear when she published more than 700,000 classified military and diplomatic documents via Wikileaks in 2013
And after being released the 29-year-old said she doesn't believe any of her actions make her an American traitor. 'I believe that I did the best I could in my circumstances to make an ethical decision,' she said during a 'creative thinkers' conference on Nantucket in September (pictured)
She said she believed the information she released wouldn't harm the United States.
And after being released the 29-year-old said she doesn't believe any of her actions make her an American traitor.
'I believe that I did the best I could in my circumstances to make an ethical decision,' she said during a 'creative thinkers' conference on Nantucket in September.
On Thursday Manning was celebrated at an event as the Out 100's Newsmaker of the Year, receiving her award alongside fellow honorees Janet Jackson and Jonathon Groff
Chelsea, who has been has been documenting her time back in the real world ever since she was released back in May on social media, was named a Harvard Visiting Fellow over the summer.
However, due to backlash, the school decided to rescind the invitation. She was allowed to speak at the school, but no longer received the title.
The young woman , who was named Bradley at birth, was convicted in 2013 on 20 of the 22 offenses with which she was charged, including six Espionage Act violations, theft and computer fraud.
She was acquitted of the most serious charge she was facing, aiding the enemy.
On Thursday Manning was celebrated at an event as the Out 100's Newsmaker of the Year, receiving her award alongside fellow honorees Janet Jackson and Jonathon Groff.
In an interview with the magazine, the cover girl promised to continue making waves even after her release from prison.
'Theres no way theyre going to shut me up,' said Manning of her detractors.
'The more they intimidate me, the louder I get.'
Manning went from relative obscurity to transgender icon and role model in the seven years since she was first charged with giving classified government materials to WikiLeaks.
Chelsea, who has been has been documenting her time back in the real world ever since she was released back in May on social media, was named a Harvard Visiting Fellow over the summer. However, due to backlash, the school decided to rescind the invitation. She is pictured at Thursday's Out 100 award gala in New York
Manning went from relative obscurity to transgender icon and role model in the seven years since she was first charged with giving classified government materials to WikiLeaks in 2013. Manning is pictured before she started her transformation and while she still went by Bradley, her given name
It was her fight to receive hormone treatments while behind bars that earned her a new legion of supporters, with her successful struggle helping to create new precedents and increased access for other incarcerated members of her community.
In September of last year the army announced she would be allowed to undergo gender transition surgery while still incarcerated, six days after she started a hunger strike in protest of their refusal to allow her to have the operation.
'I am unendingly relieved that the military is finally doing the right thing. I applaud them for that. This is all that I wanted for them to let me be me,' said Chelsea at the time.
She was the first transgender inmate to ever be approved for the surgery.
Chelsea successfully petitioned to have her name changed in 2014, and began hormone therapy in February of the next year.
It marked the first time the Army had allowed the therapy in prison, and they still required that Chelsea keep her hair cut short as per their standards.
Two months after she was approved for hormone therapy, Chelsea wrote about how happy she was in a letter to Amnesty International, which the group posted on their Facebook accounts.
An eight-year-old Perth girl has died in a crash while trying to get her drag racing licence, three days after reaching the minimum age to compete.
Anita Board is believed to have lost control of her 210cc engine dragster before slamming into a wall at the Perth Motorplex at Kwinana Beach on Saturday.
Earlier, her father Ian told media on Sunday that his family are keeping vigil by his daughter's bedside.
'We are all hurting at this time,' Mr Board said, Perth Now reports.
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An eight-year-old Perth girl (pictured) has died in a crash while trying to get her drag racing licence, three days after reaching the minimum age to compete
Anita is believed to have lost control of her 210cc engine dragster (pictured) before slamming into a wall at the Perth Motorplex at Kwinana Beach
'Our baby girl is getting the best of care.
'We'd like to thank our family and friends and our motorsport family for the love and support.'
He also posted a photo of the girls in a car, saying 'Our angel setting out on what was meant to be day to remember for all the right reasons. My heart in a million pieces atm.'
The impact of the crash was so great, paramedics on scene had to revive Anita before rushing her to Rockingham Hospital.
The impact of the crash was so great, paramedics on scene had to revive Anita (left) before rushing her to Rockingham Hospital
Perth Motorplex released a statement on their Facebook page, offering their thoughts and condolences to the family
She was later taken to Princess Margaret Hospital in a critical condition to undergo emergency surgery
She was later taken to Princess Margaret Hospital in a critical condition to undergo emergency surgery.
Perth Motorplex released a statement on their Facebook page, offering their thoughts and condolences to the family.
'Unfortunately an incident occurred during racing at Perth Motorplex this afternoon and a driver has been taken to hospital,' they wrote.
'Police are currently at the scene and on their advice racing has been suspended until further notice.'
The accident occurred at Perth Motorplex (pictured) during a junior competition
An eight-year-old girl has died in Perth after she crashed her car in a drag racing competition on Saturday
The eight-year-old girl is believed to be from a drag racing family, racing in her own purple dragster words 'Pony Power' on the sides.
Competitors in junior drag racing can range in age from 8 to 17 and are placed in three classes depending on experience.
The beginners drive what are known as 'tin pots', reaching top speeds of 40-50km an hour.
Mr Ahmad Hraichie has had a remarkable life
A Muslim undertaker who filmed a touching message of forgiveness with the father of a child killed when a car ploughed into his school has captivated Australia.
Father-of-four Ahmad Hraichie, who describes himself as a good Muslim Aussie, has revealed his son is a terrorist currently serving time in Goulburns supermax prison, went to school with a bikie boss and has buried some of Sydneys most notorious crime figures.
On Thursday, he translated and shared a touching message from Ared Darwiche ahead of his son Jihads burial, and his extraordinary past was revealed in an interview with the Daily Telegraph.
Mr Hraichie has worked hard to carve a life for himself in Greenacre and become an integral part of the community.
Mr Hraichie said the 'vast majority' of the Aussie Islamic community is 'passionately patriotic
He has been a fully-certified Lebanese Muslim Association funeral director for twenty years, but he started working at a funeral parlour as a cleaner aged just 18.
The unusual job has seen him organise funerals for a huge range of community members, from small children to slain crime bosses.
Mr Hraichie said the people at gangland funerals often showed up to 'cover their own backside'.
'Everyone there is fake, everyone is there to show their face and say: 'Look I came',' he said. 'But it's a fake world and they know it. Most people in that circumstance, there is no honour in it.'
He was kept particularly busy during the Darwiche-Razzak War that peaked in the early 2000s, when the murder of underworld figures from three leading crime families was commonplace.
Mr Hraichie grew up in Penshurst alongside many men who eventually turned to a life of crime, including ex-Comanchero boss Mick Hawi.
But after graduating Hurstville Boys High School, he was determined to make a different future for himself - and worked hard as a excavator from dawn to dusk to make it happen.
'I would drive back at 8.30pm on King Georges Road and I would see a bunch of boys I know going out to a nightclub, like DCMs, and they would look at me and go 'ay Hraichie!',' he said.
He recalls looking out of his truck exhausted, and then choosing to go home to his wife, a hot shower and a good sleep rather than going out.
Former Comanchero boss Mahmoud 'Mick Hawi' pleaded guilty to manslaughter in late 2009
During the Cronulla Riots in December 2005, young men 'forgot to respect the law of the land'
After the Cronulla Riots in 2005, Mr Hraichie worked as an ethnic community liaison officer with NSW Police to help manage the fallout.
He laments that during that time, many young men 'forgot to respect the law of the land', and revealed that his own people called him a 'snitch' and a 'dog' for working with the government.
But that was nothing compared to the pain and betrayal that Mr Hraichie suffered within his own family, with his 20-year-old son Bourhan currently serving a prison sentence inside Goulburn Supermax, Australia's highest-security prison.
While serving his initial sentence in a Kempsey prison, Bourhan was charged with carving the Islamic State slogan 'e4e' (an eye for an eye) into a fellow inmate's forehead last year, as well as threatening the prison's boss.
'I pray for him every single day of my life, that he repents and regrets what he did and turns back to a normal person,' Mr Hraichie said.
Mr Hraichie's son, Bourhan Hraichie, allegedly carved Islamic State slogans into the head of former Australian Army reservist Micheal O'Keefe in April 2016, when they shared a jail cell in Kempsey
Islamic State sympathiser Bourhan Hraichie was afterwards moved to Goulburn Supermax
Mr Hraichie was called a 'snitch' and a 'dog' for working as an ethnic community liaison officer
'You can wear what you want and that is the beauty of being in a country like Australia,' he said
However, he has nothing but praise for Australia's approach to religious freedom.
'None of the laws here say anything against your religion; you can sit in a mosque and pray all day,' he said.
'You can sit in a temple and worship all day. You can wear what you want and that is the beauty of being in a country like Australia.'
Despite the fact that he spends so much of his time around death, his Muslim faith has never been shaken.
Rather, it has encouraged him to find a purpose in life, and carry out good deeds with 'sincerity and heart' - he believes that it is not about quantity but quality.
'People like Pauline Hanson need to be stopped,' said Muslim funeral director Ahmad Hraichie
Mr Hraichie also revealed his fear that anti-Islamic messages from politicians are driving cultural misunderstanding and promoting racism against the Muslim community.
'We all love living in Australia,' he said. He believes that the 'vast majority' of the Australian Islamic community is 'passionately patriotic' but misunderstood thanks to Islamophobia spread by public figures.
'People like Pauline Hanson need to be stopped,' he said.
'[Everyone has] the right to practise whatever they want to practise, we have the right to practise what we practise...It's what you teach [your kids] at home that counts at the end of the day.'
The waiting hearse driven by Mr Hraichie containing the late little boy's coffin is pictured here
Mr Hraichie drove the hearse with 8-year-old Jihad Darwiche's body from Lakemba Mosque to Rookwood on Thursday - one of two boys that were killed when a car smashed into their Greenacre school on Tuesday.
During the trip, he videoed a conversation with Jihad's grieving father, in which the men agreed that forgiveness was 'the way a proper Muslim acts in a time of calamity and tribulation'.
The exchange has gone viral with its message of compassion and understanding - with Mr Hraichie praising Mr Darwiche as 'a true Muslim'.
Saturday Night Live has set its sights on embattled US Senate candidate Roy Moore, lambasting him over allegations that he dated several teenage girls while in his 30s.
Republican Moore has vehemently denied a bombshell Washington Post report detailing claims from several women that he dated them in the 1970s, including one who was 14 at the time.
Defying calls from the GOP establishment to drop out of the race, Moore appeared publicly on Saturday for the first time since the report, and meanwhile a former colleague spoke out saying she found the allegations against him credible.
The SNL sketch opened with Vice President Mike Pence (Beck Bennett) meeting with Moore, played by Mikey Day in a cowboy hat and leather vest, in the White House.
Bennett's Pence, sounding much like the real-life GOP establishment, urges Moore to drop out of the race.
'It's all lies, I'm not that guy,' Day's Moore says.
'It's hard to convince people you're not into young girls when you're dressed like Woody from Toy Story,' the Pence character replies.
The SNL sketch opened with Vice President Mike Pence (played by Beck Bennet, right) meeting with Moore, played by Mikey Day (left) in a cowboy hat and leather vest
The show repeatedly lampooned Roy Moore (left) for his trademark look, calling it his 'naughty little cowboy outfit' and comparing him to 'Woody from Toy Story' (right)
The Moore character blamed the 'left wing media' for the allegations, sounding much like his real-life counterpart, who has blasted the claims as 'politically motivated'.
'This girl who accused you was 14, Roy, You've got to do the right thing here,' Bennett's Pence says, to which Day's Moore replies: 'Alright, if everybody thinks I did it, I'll marry her!'
The Pence character clarifies, saying he wants Moore to step down from the race.
'Don't think of it as ending your campaign, think of it as going to conversion therapy to become someone who's no longer a candidate,' Bennett's Pence says.
'Can't you call the boss?' Day's Moore asked, seeking a reprieve.
'I'm sorry, I'm not going to call Vladimir Putin about this,' Bennet's Pence replied.
Kate McKinnon, reprising her role as Jeff Sessions, then emerged from a nearby cabinet to offer some advice to Day's Moore.
Kate McKinnon, reprising her role as Jeff Sessions, also emerged from a nearby cabinet to offer some advice to Day's Moore
You check a lot of boxes for me, Roy. #SNL pic.twitter.com/Czstl2epSq Saturday Night Live (@nbcsnl) November 12, 2017
'I'm usually the creepiest one in the room but I look at you and I'm like, oof,' she told Day. 'You, sir, are too Alabama.'
She then dismissed Day's Moore and pulled out a stuffed possum from the cabinet, addressing the creature as 'Daddy'.
The episode didn't stop there with digs at Moore, who has blasted back defiantly in real life at calls from the GOP establishment to step down.
'I'm not saying he's guilty, but his naughty little cowboy outfit is screaming it,' said Colin Jost while hosting the show's Weekend Update segment.
'He looks like someone who shows up at Westworld and says 'Hey can someone show me where the middle school is.'
SNL didn't stop there with digs at Moore, with Weekend Update also blasting the candidate
Moore came under fire earlier this week, when four women said in the Washington Post that he had tried to have sexual or romantic relationships with them decades ago - when they were teenagers and Moore was in his 30s and an established attorney.
Though the age of consent in Alabama is 16, one of the women, Leigh Corfman, said that she was 14 at the time, and that Moore touched her over her bra.
Corfman said that she was with her mother at the courthouse when she met Moore, then a district attorney, got her number and took her on several dates.
She said that when things got sexual, she asked Moore to stop and take her home, and he did.
The other three women, Wendy Miller, Debbie Wesson Gibson and Gloria Thacker Deason were between the ages of 16 and 18 when they say Moore courted them in the 1970s, which never went beyond kissing.
Miller said that Moore asked her on a date when she was 16, which her mother forbade.
Deason said that she was 18 when Moore took her on dates that involved bottles of wine. The drinking age in Alabama was 19 at the time.
Gibson claimed in the report that Moore had dated her for several months when she was 17 and he was 34.
She recalled that he read her poetry and played his guitar for her, and that he kissed her twice in the course of the relationship.
Moore accuser Deborah Wesson Gibson is seen working as a sign language interpreter at a Hillary Clinton campaign rally in Florida in 2016. She claims Moore kissed her on a date
On Friday, photos emerged of Gibson working as a sign language interpreter at a Hillary Clinton campaign event, as well as posing with other Democrat politicians, causing some to question her motivation for accusing the Republican Moore.
Moore, who surged to prominence with the backing of right-wing crusader Steve Bannon, has vehemently denied the allegations, calling them a smear campaign orchestrated by Democrats and establishment Republicans.
But on Saturday, a former prosecutor who worked in Alabama with Moore in the early 1980s told CNN that it was 'common knowledge' that Moore dated teenagers.
'It was common knowledge that Roy dated high school girls. Everyone we knew thought it was weird,' former Etowah County deputy district attorney Teresa Jones told the network.
'We wondered why someone his age would hang out at high school football games and the mall. But you really wouldnt say anything to someone like that,' she said.
Jones, now a partner at a law firm based in Sarasota, Florida, served as deputy district attorney for Etowah County, Alabama from 1982 to 1985, according to her firm's website.
Moore worked as a deputy district attorney in that office from 1977 to 1982.
Moore made a Veterans Day speech in Alabama Saturday afternoon, using the occasion to accuse the Post of engaging in a 'desperate attempt to stop my political campaign for United States Senate'
Judge Roy Moore's wife Kayla joined him in support as he gave a Veterans Day speech Saturday
On Saturday afternoon, Moore made his first public appearance since the Washington Post published the report, and blasted its claims.
'I think that a grown women would wait 40 years to come right before an election to bring charges is absolutely unbelievable,' he said in a Veterans Day speech in Alabama.
Moore accused the Post of engaging in a 'desperate attempt to stop my political campaign for United States Senate.'
Moore also said it was 'strange' that such accusations came shortly before a general election, which is scheduled for December 12 to fill the seat vacated by Attorney General Jeff Sessions.
'That's not a coincidence. It's an intentional act to stop the campaign,' Moore said.
A wave of national Republican leaders, including Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, have called for Moore to drop out of the race if the allegations are true.
That hasn't sat well with local party officials in Alabama, who have declared that the scandal will only galvanize support for Moore against the DC establishment.
Chinese President Xi Jinping (L) meets with Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc in Da Nang, Vietnam, Nov. 11, 2017. (Xinhua/Fei Maohua)
President Xi Jinping, who is also general secretary of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee, arrived in the Vietnamese capital of Hanoi on Sunday for a state visit to the southeast Asian country.
It is Xi's second visit to Vietnam as China's head of state and top CPC leader.
Before flying to Hanoi, Xi concluded a busy two-day stay in Vietnam's central city of Da Nang, where he attended the 25th Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Economic Leaders' Meeting.
During his stay in Hanoi, Xi will hold talks with General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Vietnam (CPV) Nguyen Phu Trong and meet with Vietnamese President Tran Dai Quang and the Chairperson of the National Assembly of Vietnam, Nguyen Thi Kim Ngan.
The visit, which comes on the heels of the 19th CPC National Congress, is also reciprocal for previous visits to China by Trong and Quang earlier this year.
Trong made a four-day official visit to China in January, while Quang paid a state visit to China in May and attended the Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation in Beijing.
"The leaders of the two countries will have in-depth talks on promoting the relations between the two countries under the new circumstances, "said Chinese Ambassador to Vietnam Hong Xiaoyong.
In a signed article published on Nov 9 on Nhan Dan, the official newspaper of the CPV, Xi said China and Vietnam need, more than ever, to work in joint efforts in their pursuit of dreams of national strength and prosperity.
The two countries have made tangible progress on the strategic alignment of their development initiatives -- China's Belt and Road Initiative and Vietnam's "Two Corridors and One Economic Circle" plan.
Bilateral trade has also seen a rapid growth in the past few years. Statistics show that China has been Vietnam's biggest trading partner for 13 consecutive years, while Vietnam is China's largest trading partner in Southeast Asia.
In 2016, bilateral trade volume reached $98.23 billion. The figure is expected to reach $100 billion by the end of this year, according to Hong.
China invested a total of $823.6 million in Vietnam in the first quarter of 2017, becoming the third largest foreign direct investor of the country.
"It is of great significance for the leaders of the two countries to strengthen the top-level design and jointly work on the blueprint of the future development," the Chinese ambassador told Xinhua.
Vietnam is the first leg of Xi's two-nation Asia tour, which will also take him to Laos on Monday.
Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull seems to be making the most of his visit to Hong Kong.
While in the city for the APEC and EAS summits, the Prime Minister posed for a large group photo during a community event on Sunday.
And it seems the man who once graced the cover of GQ magazine was hard to spot in the 'Where's Wally' style photo.
Where's Wally? Malcolm Turnbull appears somewhere in this group photo during a community event in Hong Kong on Sunday
Mr Turnbull was visiting the Australian International School during a community event while in Hong Kong to discuss trade and security.
The school is home to more than 100,000 Australians, making it the second largest expatriate community after London.
The photo appears to feature parents and students from the school, with the Prime Minister surrounded by eager fans.
Many had their phone out to take selfies with Mr Turnbull, who seemed all to happy to oblige.
There he is: The Prime Minister is visiting Hong Kong for the APEC and EAS Summits on trade and security
Many had their phone out to take selfies with Mr Turnbull, who seemed all to happy to oblige
Take a selfie: Mr Turnbull practiced his selfie skills with eager families while in Hong Kong
The happy snaps follow a terrible week for the Prime Minister, with his cabinet in disarray following the resignation of Federal member John Alexander.
The 66-year-old announced his resignation on Saturday after revealing he may hold dual citizenship, continuing the government's citizenship saga.
With both Barnaby Joyce and Mr Alexander outed, the Coalition government will be relying on crossbenchers Rebecca Sharkie from the Nick Xenophon Team, and Independent Cathy McGowan, for numbers.
Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull meets with students during his visit to the Australian International School in Hong Kong
A Melbourne man has been taken to hospital after being found with gunshot wounds on Sunday morning.
The man, who is believed to be in his 20s, was located in the backyard of a home on Dunblane Road, Noble Park, shortly after 10.15am.
Emergency services said he had been shot and had injuries to the lower half of his body, Nine News reports.
The man, who is believed to be in his 20s, was located in the backyard of a home on Dunblane Road, Noble Park (pictured)
He was taken to hospital with serious, but non-life threatening injuries, police confirmed.
The exact circumstances surrounding the incident are still yet to be determined.
Officers are still in Melbourne's south-east as investigations into the crime continue.
Anyone with information is urged to contact Crime Stoppers on 1800 333 000.
US Air Force general Steve Kwast (shown in his official portrait) said China is ahead in space advancement
United States Air Force general Steve Kwast believes the country may be losing it's longtime lead in space advancement.
Kwast, the commander and president of Air University at the Maxwell Air Force Base in Alabama, said the states are falling behind China almost two years after its officials announced their cutting-edge 'Space Force' plan.
While speaking with CNBC this week, Kwast said: 'In my best military judgement, China on a 10-year journey to operationalize space. We're on a 50-year journey.'
Chinese military affairs specialist, Rick Fisher, confirmed the force would be created within the People's Liberation Army.
It's purpose is to strengthen China's military presence in low-Earth orbit, Fisher revealed to The Washington Times back December 2015.
China's Long March rocket carrying the manned spacecraft Shenzhou-11 is seen at the launch center in Jiuquan, China, October 10, 2016
China on June 15, 2017 successfully launched its first X-ray space telescope, named Insight, to study black holes, pulsars and gamma-ray bursts, state media reported
Fish eye view shows China's Long March rocket carrying the manned spacecraft Shenzhou-11 at the launch centre in Jiuquan, China, October 10, 2016
China has also been working to construct more anti-satellite weapons, while a model showing the latest hypersonic glide vehicle was revealed earlier this week.
Estimates say the missile delivery craft could move at up to 'ten times the speed of sound' (7,680 mph/12,360 kph).
Kwast told CNBC the US must follow the path and 'bring together the right talent to accelerate the journey.'
He said he hopes for a 'Kitty Hawk' moment - and accomplish a breakthrough development similar to the Wright Brothers in 1903.
Maj. Gen. Steven L. Kwast, stands in his office on Maxwell Air Force Base March 13. Kwast said 'China is on a 10-year journey to operationalize space' and the United States is 'on a 50-year journey'
Pictured: At Bagram Airfield, Brian Williams speaks with Steven Kwast, Brigadier general with U.S. Air Force, about the tempo of the battle in Afghanistan. Kwast believes a 'Kitty Hawk' moment will begin a new era in space
'We could be on a five year journey, because it's all about how aggressively we are going about this journey,' the commander added.
He further discussed the seemingly 'impossible' regulations entrepreneurs face amid the process.
'You have to detail everything in your suitcase each item's material, manufacturer, weight and more the government takes a year to go through it and then tells you what you can and can't take.
'If you have to update your request, then you have to start all over,' Kwast said.
China unveils its J-20 stealth fighter during an air show in Zhuhai, Guangdong Province, China, November 1, 2016
'You need technological innovations to reassure Congress that this is safe and effective, as the FAA cannot do this unilaterally.
'Low-cost access to space is the first domino to making this possible.'
In Kwast's list of recommendations earlier this year to the Air Force's U.S. Space Command titled 'Fast Space', he notes the nation's main focus should be on public-private partnerships.
'I think the balance between public and private is reasonable right now but we're still not doing enough, and we're not aggressive enough,' he said.
A former head of Scotland Yard knew of claims extreme porn was found on one of Damian Green's parliamentary computers.
Sir Paul Stephenson said he was briefed about the claims a raid on the MP's office in 2008 but he thought they were a 'side issue'.
Mr Green - who is Theresa May's defacto deputy - is battling to save his career and is being investigated by the Cabinet Office over the alleged porn.
The probe was already looking into claims Mr Green made an inappropriate sexual advance to reporter and Tory Kate Maltby.
Sir Paul Stephenson, Metropolitan Police Commissioner between 2009 and 2011, said the alleged porn discovery 'wasn't relevant' to the criminal probe into Home Office leaks - which was why Mr Green's office was being searched.
Mr Green issued a fresh statement insisting no allegations about improper material on his computer was put to him.
Former Met Police chief Sir Paul Stephenson said he was briefed that extreme porn was found on one of Damian Green's paramilitary office computers back in 20008
He said: 'I reiterate that no allegations about the presence of improper material on my parliamentary computers have ever been put to me or to the parliamentary authorities by the police.
'I can only assume that they are being made now, nine years later, for ulterior motives.'
A Whitehall inquiry into the First Secretary of State was widened last week after claims by ex-Met assistant commissioner Bob Quick that porn had been found.
Mr Green claimed he was the victim of an 'unscrupulous character assassination' at the hands of a 'discredited' former police officer.
Sir Paul told the BBC he had been told about the allegations but viewed the allegations as a 'side issue' and it was not Scotland Yard's role to police the workplace.
'I regret it's in the public domain,' he said.
'There was no criminality involved, there were no victims, there was no vulnerability and it was not a matter of extraordinary public interest.'
Damian Green is battling to save his political career as he is investigated by the Cabinet Office over claims there was extreme porn on his parliamentary computer and that he made an inappropriate secxual advance on Tory activist Kate Maltby
Then an opposition MP, officers searched Mr Green's office following a spate of leaks of Home Office information in 2008.
Mr Green's office and home were searched and he was arrested in connection with the probe in November that year, but he faced no further action.
A review of the inquiry found 'less intrusive methods' could have been used.
Mr Green is one of a number of Tory MPs who have been caught up in the Westminster sex harassment scandal.
Ms Maltby, the daughter of Oxford University friends of Mr Green, claimed he 'fleetingly' touched her knee during a meeting in a Waterloo pub in 2015.
And she said a year later he allegedly sent her a 'suggestive' text message after she was pictured wearing a corset in the newspaper.
Mr Green said any allegation that he made sexual advances to Ms Maltby was 'untrue (and) deeply hurtful'.
The First Secretary of State, Mr Quick and Sir Paul gave evidence to the latest inquiry, led by Sue Gray, on Monday, according to the BBC.
Mr Quick resigned his post with the Metropolitan Police in 2009 after he was photographed entering Downing Street carrying a secret briefing note on which details of the undercover operation could be seen.
He has denied disclosing the allegations regarding Mr Green's computers to the Sunday Times.
Gay rights activist Benjamin Law has promised to grill Star Trek actor George Takei about allegations he sexually assaulted a former male model in 1981 when he tours Australia this week.
The 80-year-old thespian has taken to social media to deny the claim he inappropriately touched Scott Brunton while the young man was passed out in his Los Angeles apartment 36 years ago.
Takei said that the event 'simply did not occur' and he added that he does not know why the model has made these claims now.
Law said the actor was still scheduled to appear in Melbourne and Sydney this week and next as part of the 'George Takei Phenomenon' tour, which includes an exclusive cocktail party.
'However, if I remain as host, I won't be ignoring these allegations at either event,' he tweeted on Sunday.
George Takei (pictured in February) has denied he sexually assaulted former male model Scott Brunton while the young man was passed out in his Los Angeles condo in 1981
Benjamin Law has vowed to grill George Takei on the serious allegations when the actor tours Australia
Gay rights activist Benjamin Law has promised to grill George Takei on the sexual assault allegations from 1981
The writer has says any allegation about sexual assault has to be taken seriously
'I acknowledge Takei has responded to these allegations and vehemently denies they took place.
'However, I'm also fully aware of the allegations and take them - and all victims of sexual abuse, assault and harassment, and their right to be heard - seriously.'
He also said he cannot even 'remember Mr Brunton'.
George began his Twitter chain with: 'I'm writing to respond to the accusations made by Scott R. Bruton.
'I want to assure you all that I am as shocked and bewildered at these claims as you must feel reading them.'
His next tweet read: 'The events he describes back in the 1980s simply did not occur, and I do not know why he has claimed them now. I have wracked my brain to ask if I remember Mr. Brunton, and I cannot say I do.'
His big role: The star played Sulu on Star Trek in both the TV show and the movies
Takei said that the event 'simply did not occur' and he added that he does not know why the model has made these claims now, 36 years later
The star's third tweet added: 'But I do take these claims very seriously, and I wanted to provide my response thoughtfully and not out of the moment.'
He continued: 'Right now it is a he said / he said situation, over alleged events nearly 40 years ago.
'But those that know me understand that non-consensual acts are so antithetical to my values and my practices, the very idea that someone would accuse me of this is quite personally painful..'
George then said his husband was fully supporting him: 'Brad, who is 100 percent beside me on this, as my life partner of more than 30 years and now my husband, stands fully by my side.'
He has been wed to George Altman since 2008.
'I cannot tell you how vital it has been to have his unwavering support and love in these difficult times,' added the Mulan actor.
At work: Scott Brunton said he met Takei in 1981 when he was living in Hollywood and had just broken up with his boyfriend. Takei is pictured (above) with James Doohan and DeForest Kelley
His last tweet was: 'Thanks to many of you for all the kind words and trust. It means so much to us. Yours in gratitude, George.'
Brunton came forward to claim he was groped by the actor when he was just 24, claiming Takei - then aged 43 or 44 - took advantage of him just after a break-up.
'This happened a long time ago, but I have never forgotten it,' Brunton told the The Hollywood Reporter.
'It is one of those stories you tell with a group of people when people are recounting bizarre instances in their lives, this always comes up. I have been telling it for years, but I am suddenly very nervous telling it.'
He is shocked by the claims: Takei is seen here in Los Angeles in July
The former model said he encountered Takei when he was living in Hollywood and working as a waiter at the beginning of his career at Greg's Blue Dot Bar.
He said he exchanged numbers with the actor, and on occasion the pair called each other or ran into each other at different clubs.
When Brunton broke up with the man he was dating at the time, he told Takei, who took the opportunity to invite the model to dinner and the theater.
'He was very good at consoling me and understanding that I was upset and still in love with my boyfriend,' Brunton told THR.
After dinner that night the two men went back to Takei's home for a drink.
Brunton alleged Takei invited him back to his condo and made him a drink that caused him to pass out. Takei is pictured on the set of Star Trek VI - The Undiscovered Country in 1991
Just a few sips into his second drink, which Takei made for him, he said he started feeling unwell.
'I have the second one, and then all of a sudden I begin feeling very disoriented and dizzy, and I thought I was going to pass out,' he explained.
'I said I need to sit down and he said sit over here and he had the giant yellow beanbag chair. So I sat down in that and leaned my head back and I must have passed out.'
'I came to and said, "What are you doing?" I said, "I don't want to do this," Brunton told THR.
His early years in Hollywood: George is seen here in Star Trek the TV series in the 1960s
'He goes, "You need to relax. I am just trying to make you comfortable. Get comfortable."'
Brunton alleged he he managed to gather enough strength to push Takei off of him and then went to his car and waited until he felt well enough to drive himself home.
'That was that,' he said of the encounter.
Four of Brunton's close friends told THR that he had confided in them about the alleged assault years ago.
Now, years after the incident, he said he is coming out with his story after seeing Takei's statement about Kevin Spacey to THR on October 30.
After Anthony Rapp alleged that Spacey took advantage of him, the actor used the opportunity to come out as gay.
Takei apparently took offense to that, and aid: 'Men who improperly harass or assault do not do so because they are gay or straight - that is a deflection,' in a statement to THR.
'They do so because they have the power, and they chose to abuse it.'
Brunton said the response infuriated him.
The 80-year-old veteran of the screen rose to fame in his role as Hikaru Sulu in the original Star Trek television series. Since then he has become an outspoken activist advocate for gay rights.
The American-born actor is scheduled to appear in Melbourne on November 16 followed by Sydney on November.
Event organiser Ticket Master has described Takei as a 'Star Trek legend, social media sensation and human rights activist'.
George Takei is still scheduled to appear on stage in Sydney and Melbourne from this week
The distraught father of a holidaymaker facing a drugs trial in Egypt has warned she might not survive long enough to face a court - but she is more worried about missing I'm a Celebrity.
Laura Plummer could be held for up to two years before she faces a judge on drug smuggling charges.
But her father fears the 33-year-old who has already spent over a month locked up and who reportedly begged to come home so she could watch reality TV programme I'm a Celebrity will not be strong enough to cope with any more time behind bars.
'As a father I just feel helpless when I hear that my daughter has said she would prefer someone let her out and slit her throat,' 70-year-old Neville Plummer told Mail Online.
British tourist Laura Plummer (pictured left, and right with husband Omar Caboo) who is facing the death penalty after being accused of trying to smuggle 290 powerful painkillers into Egypt
From left: Sister Jayne, brother Kirk and mum Roberta are the family of Laura, 33, of Hull, who is being held in an Egyptian prison. They are pictured on 10 November
'She has been in prison too long already and I don't know how she is going to cope given her mental state.'
The retired freight worker also slammed the Foreign Office saying they were doing little to help his daughter who was arrested on October 9 when she arrived in the Red Sea resort of Hurghada.
'All they say are their hands are tied, but they have done next to nothing for Laura. She has been left to rot in prison.'
Neville's fears come as Laura reportedly begged to be released from the Egyptian jail and allowed to fly home so she could watch I'm a Celebrity.
She told The Sun: 'I'm innocent and want to go home. I'm going to miss I'm a Celebrity. I've looked forward to it all year.
'This is ridiculous and I'm sick of it.'
Laura was carrying 300 Tramadol painkillers for her husband Omar Caboo to help him cope with a back injury from a car accident two years ago.
The drugs are considered illegal in Egypt.
But after being questioned she failed to persuade the Egyptian authorities that she was not a drug smuggler.
A police source told Mail Online Laura was unable to supply her husband's home address or his full name raising suspicion that she might be a 'drugs mule'.
They labelled her an international drug smuggler and she now faces up to seven years in jail or even the death penalty if convicted.
Laura had been expected to secure bail during a Saturday court hearing attended by her mother Roberta who had flown out to support her.
Ms Plummer's father, Neville, 70, fears his daughter may not live long enough to see a trial
New evidence submitted by Omas Caboo claims to prove his medical condition and need for the pills. The evidence could grant Laura her freedom
But amid a day which saw the 63-year-old anxiously waiting for hours she failed to appear.
The family were later old in a telephone call from Laura's lawyer Mohamed Osman that the case had been transferred to a court in the town of Safaga where she will stand trial.
He described the move as 'very worrying'.
The prosecutor in the case had persuaded a judge that only a full trial would establish the truth.
Under Egyptian law Laura, from Hull, East Yorks, could be held on remand for up to two years before she faces a judge.
However, legal experts believe the attention from foreign media will mean the case will be fast tracked but Laura will spend at least another 15 days in a detention centre before her case gets its first hearing.
Her dad Neville said Laura might not survive to even appear in court.
'Every time I go to bed and put my head on a soft pillow I think of Laura in her cell with a damp mattress and cockroaches everywhere.
'It is breaking my heart but I can't do anything. Laura is the baby of the family, the youngest, and we all just want her home. It is killing me just knowing that she is there all alone and no one to help her.'
Laura's mother Roberta, sister Jayne and brother Kirk flew out to see her in the expectation that she would appear in court last Thursday.
When that was cancelled Jayne and Kirk flew home leaving Roberta as the sole family representative in Hurghada.
The shop girl, 33, has been locked up for more than a month after being arrested at Hurghada International Airport
Laura's family, pictured here on This Morning, have been desperately trying to raise awareness of her plight
Neville said another concern was that his daughter would no longer receive food from outside the jail if she is held for months.
'Laura didn't eat for three days because the food was so bad and she hadn't been brought any. Relatives are allowed to drop off food but with all the family back here who will do that for her,' he said.
'I really don't think that he can make it. Out local MP has been involved but we need the Foreign Office to do more.'
A member of the British Embassy has visited the terrified shop worker on several occasions while being held in Hurghada.
The trial when it takes place will feature evidence from Caboo who has come forward to try and help his wife.
He fled from Hurghada after Laura's arrest and was persuaded this week to come out of hiding and hand over medical records that show he has an injured back.
He has told police he did not ask Laura to bring the strips of Tramadol tablets into the country.
Mohamed Osman, Laura Plummer's Lawyer, has told the family that the case had been transferred to a court in the town of Safaga where she will stand trial
X-rays and doctors notes back up his story the pills were for his back and not to be sold on the black market to junkies who use the powerful pain killer as a heroin substitute.
Neville said the family are happy that Caboo has come forward to help and he is likely to a vital witness at the trial to prove Laura's innocence.
'We are glad that he is helping and his evidence is crucial,' said Neville. 'He has all his medical records to show he has a back condition and that was why Laura had the painkillers.
'I take medication and if you look up Tramadol it recommends taking between 2-4 each day for bad pain.
'That means she had about a month's supply. Why would she try and smuggle in just a month's supply. It makes no sense.
The family in Hull are hoping the work mate who supplied Laura with the drugs will make a statement, but she is said to be reluctant to get involved.
Tramadol can only be prescribed by a doctor and the prescription for the almost 300 pills were not in Laura's name.
The friend is said to have handed over 290 pills when Laura told him about her husband's back problems.
Legal sources in Hurghada told Mail Online it is the large quantity of pills that has meant Laura was charged with drug smuggling.
'If she had twenty or thirty of the pills they would have been confiscated at the airport and told they were not allowed in Egypt,' said the legal source.
'But because there were almost 300 that is considered enough to bring charges.'
The adoptive father of tragic 18-month-old Elsie Scully-Hicks should be hanged for his crime, the girl's biological grandmother has said.
Sian O'Brien said that Matthew Scully-Hicks, 31, got off 'quite lightly' when he was jailed for life and ordered to serve a minimum of 18 years in prison for murdering Elsie just two weeks after formally adopting her.
O'Brien, who has adopted Elsie's older brother and sister, has previously voiced her frustration over being denied the chance to care for her granddaughter before she was handed over to Scully-Hicks, of Llandaff, Cardiff.
Elsie Scully-Hicks (left) was killed by one of her adoptive fathers, Matthew Scully-Hicks (right) after being taken out of the care of her biological family
'It's about justice for Shayla,' O'Brien told The Sun. 'I think [Scully-Hicks] has got off quite lightly.'
When reporters asked O'Brien if former fitness instructor Scully-Hicks should be given the death sentence, she said: 'He should have.'
Now O'Brien is asking people to sign a Facebook petition calling for the Government to hold an investigation into forced adoption and fostering.
The petition accuses the Government of forcing adoptions to meet target goals, and claims social workers act without reasonable warning.
The petition has more than 4,000 signatures and accuses the system of needlessly tearing families apart in favour of adoption when there are perfectly good and adequate options with family, grandparents, uncles, aunts, brothers and sisters'.
Director of social services at Vale of Glamorgan, Phil Evans, 65, retired this summer, and Hilary Southam, care leader at the Vale of Glamorgan social services, retired shortly after Elsie's death.
Scully-Hicks was given a life sentence after he subjected Elsie to months of horrific assaults.
The court was today told she suffered a cardiac arrest and was bleeding behind the eyes following a string of horrific assaults while she was alone with stay-at-home father Scully-Hicks.
Following months of abuse Scully-Hicks killed the youngster after violently shaking her and banging her head on a hard surface just two weeks after she was formally adopted by him and his 36-year-old husband Craig.
Mrs Justice Nicola Davies, when sentencing Scully-Hicks, took into account a victim impact statement - which was not read in court - provided by Elsie's birth family.
Matthew Scully-Hicks, 31, shook Elsie before she was 'thrown against a hard floor' while he was looking after her at his home in Llandaff, Cardiff, on May 25 2016
In the statement, written by Shayla O'Brien, she said the family was 'numb with pain'.
Speaking on behalf of the family, her birth grandmother Sian O'Brien said: 'I accept that at the time of giving birth my daughter was living a chaotic lifestyle and was not in a position to care for Shayla and she was removed from the hospital five days after birth by social services.
'As a family, we continued to have contact with Shayla whilst she was in the care of the foster family.'
Ms O'Brien said all of Elsie's family were 'extremely attached to her and loved her very much'.
She said: 'In January 2015, I started proceedings in the family court to become the legal guardian for Shayla.
'I wanted to bring her up in a happy, healthy and warm family environment, that was all taken away from me when social services and the family court decided I would not be able to cope.'
The statement continued: 'We all continue to fight on even though every day we are numb with pain and hurt deep in the knowledge that Shayla was loved unconditionally by us all as a family and knowing that had she not been taken away from us, she would still be alive today.'
The court heard in the weeks before her death, Elsie suffered a number of suspicious injuries including bruises and broken a leg after she had 'fallen down the stairs'.
Former director of social services Mr Evans had received a letter 17 days before Elsie's death that outlined the council's alleged failings.
The letter said: 'There is a management layer unable to recognise its own deficits and incapable of exercising critical self-analysis.
'The resulting practice is inefficient, costly, unprofessional and dangerous to service users and to social workers.'
A former social worker told the Sun that staff were under pressure, caseloads were high and there was a large turnover of employees.
The court heard Elsie suffered a number of shocking injuries including a fractured skull and internal bleeding
Scully-Hicks was emotionless when he was told he must serve a minimum of 18 years behind bars as Mrs Justice Davies said Elsie was a 'young, vulnerable and defenceless child'.
Social services in the Vale of Glamorgan now face an investigation after they visited the family 15 times but still raised no concerns - despite finding out the severity of her injuries.
A spokesperson for the Vale of Glamorgan Council said: 'The Regional Safeguarding Children Board, as the relevant statutory body, has commissioned an independent Child Practice Review into the tragic death of Elsie Scully-Hicks.
Social workers visited the couple 15 times January 9 - Initial visit by adoption manager Bethan James February 20 - Initial visit by Laura Neal, social worker, with the couple for assessment as potential adopters March 9, 20 and 30 - Further visits by Laura Neal to assess the Scully-Hicks April 13 - Further assessment visit by Laura Neal July 30 - Laura Neal and Mark Lloyd-Selby, Elsie's social worker, visit the Scully-Hicks September 17 and 28 - Elsie observed during social work visits to the Scully-Hicks' home by Hillary Southam and Laura Neal September 29 - Adoption review at the house with social workers and independent reviewing officer Erol Bowers December 2 - Visit by social worker Cheryl Longley January 26 - Social worker visit with Cheryl Longley February 26 - Social worker visit with Cheryl Longley March 14 - Social worker visit with Cheryl Longley April 29 - Social worker visit by Laura Neal Advertisement
'It would be inappropriate for the Vale of Glamorgan Council to comment further until this independent review has concluded.'
Passing sentence, Mrs Justice Davies, said: 'Elsie was aged just 18 months when you killed her, a young, vulnerable and defenceless child.
'She had been entrusted to the care of yourself and your husband, Craig Scully-Hicks, her adoptive fathers.
'Shortly before 6.19pm on May 25 2016 you inflicted injuries of such severity upon Elsie as to cause her immediate collapse and her death on May 29.
'In deliberately inflicting serious injuries upon your 18-month-old adopted daughter you abused the trust which had been placed in you as Elsie's adoptive father.
'It was a gross abuse of that trust. It was an abuse of the responsibility which had been placed upon you as her adoptive father to protect and care for this young, vulnerable and defenceless child.'
Listing her injuries, the judge added: 'Elsie suffered a cardiac arrest. She sustained hypoxic ischaemic encephalopathy, a brain injury including subdural haematoma, bleeding in the eyes, the retina, the perimacular folds and in the area of the optic nerve.
'These injuries were sustained when you gripped Elsie around the chest, your fingers were on her back exerting pressure which fractured her ribs.
'Having gripped Elsie you shook her with such force as to cause further injuries. The fracture to the skull was caused by an impact with a hard surface.
'Her collapse would have swiftly followed, that having occurred you called the emergency services.'
The judge added Scully-Hicks's case was aggravated by Elsie's vulnerability due to her age and an abuse of a position of trust.
She said: 'I am satisfied you inflicted injuries upon Elsie in November 2015 which caused the fractures to her leg and in December 15 the large bruise to her forehead.
Scully-Hicks was accused of hurting Elsie before but he had insisted that the baby gate (pictured) had just opened and that she had tumbled down the stairs
'You had, and were aware that you had, a predisposition to injure your adoptive daughter.
'You took no steps to prevent a recurrence of the earlier incidents when Elsie suffered injuries as a result of your actions.
'It has been submitted on your behalf that a statutory mitigating factor is the lack of premeditation. In finding that you acted in anger I accept that represents a lack of premeditation.
'However, the absence of premeditation is tempered by the fact that your anger towards Elsie did not represent an isolated occasion and you knew that your anger could lead to deliberately inflicted injury. No remorse has been shown.
'You were living in comfortable social circumstances with the close support of professional agencies, your husband and wider family.
'You have been assessed by two independent psychiatrists who found no psychiatric condition which would have affected your actions.'
Cardiff Crown Court heard Scully-Hicks, originally from Delabole, Cornwall, branded her 'a psycho', 'the exorcist' and 'Satan dressed up in a Babygro' in text messages.
Neighbours also heard the former lifeguard calling Elsie a 'little f****** brat' and a 'silly little c***'.
The judge also referred to text messages the defendant had sent describing Elsie's meal times and bed time as 'your worst nightmare'.
Mrs Justice Davies added that had a doctor spotted Elsie's double leg fracture in November 2015, the protocol at the hospital would have meant she would have been assessed by a consultant.
She said: 'Tragically the opportunity was missed.'
Matthew Scully-Hicks previously claimed Elsie had fallen down the stairs and hurt herself in the months before her death
She told him: You are an intelligent man. You would have known you were struggling to cope with Elsie.
'You knew that in November and December your frustration and anger towards Elsie had resulted in injuries to her. You told no one the truth of what had occurred nor the reason for it.
'Regular visits were made by social workers and the health visitor. To no one, not even your husband, did you have the courage to speak of your difficulties.
'You put your own self-interest before that of the young child you had been entrusted to protect.'
Scully-Hicks had presented himself as a loving and doting father but he inflicted injury after injury on Elsie before he killed her
Scully-Hicks, who sobbed when he was convicted, denied murdering her but was yesterday found guilty by a jury after a four week trial.
A Child Practice Review has been commissioned 'into the tragic circumstances' of Elsie's death, a spokesman for the Cardiff and Vale of Glamorgan Regional Safeguarding Children Board said.
Elsie was formally adopted by the couple on May 12 last year and suffered fatal injuries at their home in Llandaff, Cardiff, on May 25.
On the night of the attack, Scully-Hicks shook her and then threw her to the ground, leaving his daughter fatally injured.
In a 999 call at 6.18pm, he claimed: 'I was just changing my daughter for bed and she went all floppy and limp.'
Paramedics arrived at 6.26pm and Elsie was taken to the University Hospital of Wales, where she died four days later.
Tests showed she had suffered three separate areas of bleeding on her brain, bleeding in both eyes, a skull fracture and three rib fractures.
Consultant paediatrician Dr Stephen Rose said Elsie's injuries could be explained by her being 'shaken violently'.
Dr Rose said her fractured skull would have been caused by a blow to her head, with Elsie thrown against a hard floor or her head knocked against a wall.
Elsie's rib fractures were likely caused by Scully-Hicks gripping her, the court heard.
The court was told Elsie was placed with Scully-Hicks and his husband in September 2015, aged 10 months.
Paul Lewis QC, prosecuting, said Elsie was found unresponsive by paramedics after Scully-Hicks attacked her at his home.
He said: 'The injuries that caused her death were inflicted upon her by the defendant shortly before he called emergency services that day.
'His attack upon her that day was not the first time he had employed violence towards Elsie, nor was it the first time he had caused her serious injury.
Two Social Services executives retired in the months after Elsie's tragic death Two top social services executives in the Welsh county in which Elsie was killed retired in the mouths after the toddler's tragic death. Now reports claim the team in Vale of Glamorgan missed several chances to save Elsie from her abusive adoptive father, Matthew Scully-Hicks. Hilary Southam, care leader at the Vale of Glamorgan social services, retired just three months after Elsie was murdered in May 2016. The 61-year-old has since worked for the council as an emergency duty social worker on a freelance basis. When approached about Scully-Hicks's trial outside her Barry, South Wales, home she said: 'I'm retired. I don't want to talk about it.' Her former colleague, director of social services Phil Evans retired this summer, just before Scully-Hicks's murder trial began at Cardiff crown court. Mr Evans's wife told reporters: 'He is no longer at the Vale of Glamorgan council so its not really his issue.' Advertisement
'His actions on the late afternoon of May 25 were the tragic culmination of a course of violent conduct on his part towards a defenceless child - an infant that he should have loved and protected, but whom he instead assaulted, abused, and ultimately murdered.'
A post mortem examination found Elsie suffered bleeding behind both eyes as well as rib fractures and a skull fracture which the pathologist said was 'as the result of an impact to the head.'
Vale of Glamorgan director of social services Phil Evans retired this summer, just before Scully-Hicks's murder trial began
Craig Scully-Hicks worked five days per week, with Matthew Scully-Hicks the primary carer for Elsie.
Scully-Hicks insisted he never harmed Elsie but the jury rejected his account after hearing from 12 medical experts and six doctors who treated her.
A Child Practice Review was launched by the Cardiff and Vale Regional Child Safeguarding Board and the probe could take up to a year to complete.
They will discuss whether chances were missed with Elsie and whether any lessons can be learned to prevent similar cases in the future.
A spokesman for the board said: 'Now that the criminal proceedings have concluded, the Regional Safeguarding Children Board will seek assurance that the independent child practice review, which has already been commissioned, into the tragic circumstances of the child's death, will be progressed.
'It would therefore not be appropriate for the Board to comment further until the conclusion of the independent review.'
Speaking outside court, Temporary Detective Chief Inspector Stuart Wales, of South Wales Police, said the circumstances of Elsie's murder were 'extremely rare'.
He said: 'Our thoughts today are with little Elsie and those who knew and loved her.
'Her untimely death at just 18 months old has had a devastating effect, first and foremost on her family, who remain uppermost in our thoughts.
'Elsie's death has also impacted a wider community, including the many professionals involved in her care and the subsequent investigation.
'I would like to thank all of them, including the many witnesses who assisted the prosecution.
'This case represents an extremely rare and distressing set of circumstances.
'We at South Wales Police continue to respect and value the role that adoption, and those involved, play in our society.'
An Islamic imam who speaks out against Sharia law has slammed Muslim youth activist Yassmin Abdel-Magied for 'hijacking Remembrance Day'.
The Sudanese-born, Brisbane-raised writer has stirred more controversy by using the 99th anniversary of the end of the First World War to make a political point about asylum seekers in Papua New Guinea.
In an almost identical message to her polarising Anzac Day post, the 26-year-old former ABC host, who now lives in London, tweeted '#LestWeForget (Manus)'.
Muslim activist Yassmin Abdel-Magied has taken to Twitter to post about Remembrance Day
The post is almost identical to the Facebook post which landed her in trouble on Anzac Day
Adelaide-based Shia imam Mohammad Tawhidi said her social media message was disrespectful to the war dead, who included soldiers fighting against the Islamic caliphate of the old Ottoman Empire.
'Sister Yassmin, you should be ashamed of yourself for hijacking Remembrance Day for your political motives,' he tweeted.
'This means that your last apology for disrespecting ANZAC Day was a lie to the entire nation.'
The imam, who campaigns against Islamic fundamentalism and radicalisation, said Sharia law was responsible for the refugee crisis on Manus Island, not Australia, as asylum seekers protest being moved out of their Papua New Guinea compound.
'Violent Sharia law is responsible for the tragedies in Manus Island,' he claimed.
Adelaide-based Shia imam Mohammad Tawhidi said Yassmin Abdel-Magied had hijacked Remembrance Day
The Muslim imam said he was shameful for Yassmin Abdel-Magied to politicise the anniversary of World War I ending
The Iranian-born Muslim imam said Sharia law was responsible for the asylum seeker crisis
'The majority of refugees fled Sharia law and Islamic governments.
'If you want to blame a government, blame Islamic governments/caliphates.'
Asylum seekers have fled Sharia law nations like Iran - where Sheikh Tawhidi was born - and Somalia.
Ms Abdel-Magied has been widely slammed for her 'culturally insensitive' Twitter message.
Hundreds of disturbed Australians were quick to voice their disapproval of the provocative post - many accusing her of being deliberately inflammatory.
Yassmin Abdel-Magied's sincerity about her Anzac Day tweet apology has been questioned
In April she was slammed after a similar post which read 'Lest. We. Forget. Manus, Nauru, Syria, Palestine.'
After facing catastrophic backlash, she 'apologised unreservingly' for her 'disrespectful' words.
But it seems Ms Abdel-Magied didn't learn her lesson; once again outraging her followers with an identical jab.
'Remembrance Day is not about you,' a Twitter user stated.
Another called her out for what they believed was a move to intentionally try and provoke followers into an emotional response.
'You are just trolling now,' they wrote.
Hundreds of disturbed Australians were quick to reply their disapproval of the provocative post
Several called her out for what they believed was a move to intentionally try and provoke followers into an emotional response
She was also accused of using Manus Island as a tool to draw the public eye towards herself.
'You don't even care about Manus. This is just a publicity stunt to get attention. Any normal person would have learnt from last year,' one tweet read.
Several others called her 'selfish' and accused her of deliberately detracting attention from the true meaning of Remembrance Day.
'Seriously.... what is wrong with you? It upsets me that you deliberately use days that commemorate war dead to push political agenda...,' one reply read.
Twitter user Melissa wrote: 'Absolutely disgraceful. I'm convinced now that your point is to be disrespectful and distasteful.'
Queensland Premier and Labour leader Annastacia Palaszczuk and opposition leader Tim Nicholls along with other dignitaries attend the Remembrance Day ceremony in Brisbane
She was accused of using Manus as a tool to draw the public eye towards herself
'Absolutely disgraceful. I'm convinced now that your point is to be disrespectful and distasteful,' Melissa's popular reply read
Multiple concurred, with one responding: 'Totally agree Melissa. Yassmin is so self centred once again she's turned a day of remembrance into an all about her.'
The hypocrisy behind her new post, particularly in light of her Anzac Day apology earlier in the year, did not go unnoticed.
'What happened to 'my last post was disrespectful and I apologise unreservedly' - @yassmin_a on last Anzac Day when you posted a similar disgusting post. I think even if you do apologise most Australians have wisened up. You really have no morals or respect. #auspol #lestweforget,' a frustrated Twitter user wrote.
Many did their best to direct attention back to honouring fallen Australian soldiers by replying with true 'Lest We Forget' graphics.
The explosive post garnered nearly 400 replies and it was 're-tweeted' by more than 200 of her followers.
The hypocrisy behind her new post, particularly in light of her Anzac Day apology earlier in the year, did not go unnoticed
The HMAS Waterhen and Royal Australian Navy Band performs during the Remembrance Day Service held at the Cenotaph, Martin Place
People inspect wreaths layed at tye stone of remembrance after a Remembrance Day ceremony at the Australian War Memorial in Canberra
One of her followers tried to applaud the woman for being brave but his comment was quickly slammed by others.
'Not brave, just inflammatory and ignorant. As for insight. I've yet to see any display of insight, just immature ill thought out ideas aimed at hurting cultures that offered her a future instead of the oppression she'd have faced growing up in Sudan,' said one.
'Shakes head in disbelief that (Yassmin) really doesn't get it,' said another.
Toby Robyns, 53, an ambulance driver from West Sussex, was locked up in Turkish jail accused of smuggling artifacts
A British father-of-five has recalled 45 days of horror he suffered after being detained in Turkey over some ancient coins his children found while on holiday.
Toby Robyns, 53, an ambulance driver from West Sussex, has told how he was locked up alongside Mafiosos and ISIS terrorists at the notorious Mugla prison.
At one point he was forced into a 'fight to the death' against a 17st inmate dubbed The Executioner, he says.
Mr Robyns was released in October after Turkish authorities decided to give him a suspended sentence.
Now safely back in Shoreham with his wife Heidi and their children Baxter, eight, and 10-year-old Brody, Mr Robyns told of his ordeal.
He says he feared for his life among lags who spent their time screaming and crying late into the night.
Toby says he lost 2st during the harrowing 42-day ordeal and woke in shock and horror to find a fellow lag hanging.
He bribed guards with cigarettes so they would return his wedding ring and watch.
Explaining his fight against The Executioner, he said: 'One night I was escorted out by guards and pushed into a small room.
'There were no cameras and they locked the door. A prisoner who they called The Executioner was standing in the corner.
'He had arranged a fight to the death Gladiator-style because I had sung God Save the Queen over his shouting one night.
'He was part of the Georgian mafia and had shot a policeman in the head.'
Toby feared he had 'no chance' against the prisoner, who was over 6ft and pushing 17st. But a survival instinct kicked in.
His children Baxter, eight, and 10-year-old Brody had picked up 13 coins from the seabed in Turgutreis and had tried to take them home when Mr Robyns was arrested
He was held for a time in Milas Prison (pictured) before being moved to Mugla, where he claims he was forced into a 'fight to the death' with another inmate
'He was huge,' Toby says. 'He looked like Satan in a T-shirt. I turned round to try to get out and he punched me in the head.
'That's when I took my top off. I gestured for him to do the same. But as he was pulling it over his head, I punched him and kicked him in the groin.
'It was either him or me. I just remember the guards pulling me off and I saw a heap lying there, covered in blood. My hands were swollen and bruised.
'I've never had a fight before. A red mist just descended and all I could think of was my family.'
Toby's arrest in August - as he and his family prepared to fly home - made global headlines.
His GP receptionist wife Heidi, 43, and five kids were distraught and feared they would never see him again.
Toby, 53, was held after airport staff in Bodrum said 13 coins he and his sons had found snorkelling were historical artefacts and should have been declared to authorities.
Toby's sons Baxter, nine, and Brody, 11, found the coins.
Toby said: 'They were a memento - nothing special. I put the coins in a clear plastic bag and went through security.
'Next thing I knew there were police waving guns and I was slapped in handcuffs. I said to my wife I'll be back in a minute - knowing full well I wasn't coming back.'
He was hauled before a court the next day, accused of smuggling and sent to high-security Mugla Penitentiary.
Toby, who also has three grown-up kids by a former partner, says: 'It was the craziest place ever. I was searched and stripped. All I had was a T-shirt, shorts, flip-flops and a mattress.
'My cell was 20 metres long, two-and-a-half wide, metal beds, no blanket, no sheets or pillows.
'I lay awake all night. No one spoke English or Turkish. It was a foreign cell. People were praying all night, screaming and crying.
Prisoners would fight all day every day. They would charge at you and hit you over the head with prison-issue flip flops
'The shower was a Pepsi bottle with holes in it and there was hot water for an hour twice a week.
'I didn't have a toothbrush, there was no drinking water - you have to buy everything, even rubbish bags and electricity. I had no money when I arrived so I couldn't buy anything for 10 days.'
When he finally got cash, Toby bought cigarettes so he could barter with guards.
He explains: 'I used to get 40 cigarettes a week. I'd have a few but used the rest for bribes. I got my wedding ring back for five and my watch back for 10.
'The food was terrible. Soup, plain beans or chickpeas and a chicken drumstick once a week.
'Sometimes we got goat meatballs which you had to force down, or half a boiled egg.
The ocean where Mr Robyns' sons found the coins. At one point he was facing 13 years behind bars but was freed after just 45 days
Wife Heidi had a tearful reunion with her husband as he arrived at Gatwick on October 2, just a day before his 53rd birthday
'They would put on Turkish pop songs all afternoon. At night they'd show us films like Batman - all in Turkish, on a 1980s TV.
'Prisoners would fight all day every day. They would charge at you and hit you over the head with prison-issue flip flops.
'There was a bully I called Vlad the Impaler. He was kingpin in the prison and made grown men cry on their beds.'
Toby says he was able to outsmart some of the prisoners.
'There was an inmate I nicknamed Igglepiggle - like the dopey character from In The Night Garden.
'He kept stealing my water. So I filled a bottle with water from the bucket that prisoners used to wash their bits with. He got very sick but learned his lesson.'
Toby encountered a more sinister presence too - the IS fanatics.
He adds: 'They used to write letters to the warden for us as they were the only ones who could speak Turkish.
'One guy, Ali, said he was caught with bomb-making stuff in Marmaris. He was recruited in Belgium and sent to Istanbul.
'He had the vest and was planning an attack. He was a normal lad. He told me he wasn't brainwashed any more and was hoping to go back to his family.
'Every day I'd watch them go out of the cell and then an hour later see them on Turkish CNN appearing in court on terror charges.'
Eventually, through negotiations with lawyers and the British counsel, Toby was freed. But a court ruled that if he offends in Turkey within five years he must serve 13 months and pay a fine.
After the verdict Toby had to spend the weekend in a grim detention centre before he could get a flight home.
He says: 'The centre was split between terrorists and refugees. They didn't want me mixing with either.
The coins were found in the ocean near Turgutreis and Mr Robyns was arrested at the airport in Bodrum while going through security
'I got woken up by four terrorists They kept saying 'old man old man, talk to me, I hear you are English'.
'They were bullish but I told them I wasn't scared of them. I'd been to Mugla. I'd had a lot worse.
'One was from Yemen. He looked like the Devil - but he was pleasant enough to me. The other one had been arrested for having bomb-making equipment. He laughed and told me he'd just bought 'lots of nuts and bolts'.
'They were a pretty scary bunch, but they kind of liked me. In the end they made me tea and gave me cigarettes. On the last day I had breakfast with them - eight terrorists!
'One kept saying he'd been to Bristol and punching the air shouting Bristol City.'
Toby finally had an emotional reunion with his family at Gatwick on October 2.
But the drama wasn't quite over. Astonishingly, he found another old coin as he was going through his bag in arrivals. He quickly dumped it in the bin, saying: 'No more mementoes, no more sodding coins.'
Relieved wife Heidi said the family had been told Toby could have got 13 years.
She says: 'I wanted to collapse but I kept it together for the kids. They've now said they don't want to go abroad as they are scared going through airport security.'
Toby adds: 'I sobbed like a baby when I saw Heidi and the children. And it was my birthday the next day, the happiest ever.
'I looked like the wild man of Borneo with this giant beard when I got back.. I shaved it straight away and chucked the clothes I was wearing. I find it so surreal, all of it.'
Then, recalling a horrifying scene which faced him in jail, he says: 'I did manage to do some good. I saved a man's life in there.
'One night I woke and someone was hanging from their bed. He was dead as a dodo. Being ambulance, I rushed over and gave him CPR. When I left all the prison cheered for me.'
But there is no going back to Turkey.
Toby insists: 'I will holiday in Bournemouth next year.'
Child killer Ian Huntley who murdered 10-year-olds Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman has boasted how he will be free from jail in three years
Child killer Ian Huntley who murdered 10-year-olds Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman has boasted how he will be free from jail in three years.
Former school caretaker Huntley, now 43, received two life terms for the killings and was sentenced to 40 years behind bars in 2005.
He has reportedly said he is a 'reformed' character and believes he should be able to make a bid for freedom after 18 years of his sentence, which will be in just three years time.
Huntley, a former school caretaker, was first sent to HMP Belmarsh after being jailed for the 2002 murders of Holly and Jessica in Soham, Cambridgeshire.
He was later moved to HMP Wakefield and transferred to Frankland in 2008.
A prison insider told the Daily Star on Sunday: 'Huntley sees himself as a reformed character and has been complaining about his 40-year sentence.
'He has been banging on about it to fellow inmates and some of the prison guards.
'Huntley has been telling people he is a different person and believes he should be allowed to apply for parole after serving 18 years - which isn't even half his sentence.
Best friends Holly Wells (left) and Jessica Chapman (right) were murdered by Ian Huntley in 2003 in Soham, Cambridgeshire
'He also somehow thinks that he should now be moved to a lower category prison, where the regime is more liberal.'
The insider added that Huntley had gone to a number of self-help classes and meetings at HMP Frankland to convince bosses he was reformed.
But they said Huntley's only concern is 'for himself' and that he has not showed any remorse.
In HMP Frankland, Huntley has reportedly become friends with Yorkshire Ripper Peter Sutcliffe after bonding over their love of Planet Earth II.
The high-security jail also houses Milly Dowler's killer Levi Bellfield and Mark Bridger, who murdered five-year-old April Jones.
Huntley reportedly wants to move from high-security HMP Frankland to a 'cushier' prison
Huntley has seemingly never shown remorse for killing Holly and Jessica and denied murdering them during his trial, claiming both deaths were an accident.
Earlier this year it was reported Huntley had asked fellow prisoners to refer to him by a female name inside the all-male prison.
Huntley allegedly signed off a newspaper cutting for a friend with the name 'Lian'.
The revelation comes after it was claimed last month the 43-year-old wanted a sex change so he could spend his life term in a female prison.
Holly and Jessica had been at a family barbecue in August 2002, when they went to walk to a nearby shop for sweets.
Their bodies were found nearly a fortnight later, around 14 miles away in a ditch near Lakenheath, Suffolk.
Huntley was sentenced to two life terms, with a minimum 40-year tariff.
MailOnline have contacted the Ministry of Justice for a response.
Copies of the report delivered at the opening session of the 19th national congress of the Communist Party of China (CPC). [File photo: IC]
Sales of documents and books about the 19th national congress of the Communist Party of China (CPC) had hit 71.7 million copies as of Friday, authorities said.
The documents include the report delivered at the opening session of the congress and the revised Constitution of the CPC, as well as books including Q&A about the report and the CPC constitution.
They were compiled to help officials and the public study and implement the spirit of the congress, according to the State Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film and Television.
The material was published by the People's Publishing House, Party Building Books Publishing House, and Xuexi Publishing House.
The 19th CPC national congress was held from Oct. 18 to Oct. 24 in Beijing.
A former SAS sniper who claimed the elite unit was behind the death of Princess Diana has rejoined the regiment as a civilian contractor, it has been reported.
The sergeant, known only as Soldier N, was kicked out of the Army in 2012 after he was convicted of possessing illegal firearms.
Both he and fellow SAS sergeant Danny Nightingale were found guilty of possessing two Glock semi-automatic pistols and more than 300 bullets they had obtained in Iraq.
After he was convicted, it emerged Soldier N had claimed Princess Diana had been murdered, leading to Scotland Yard launching a fresh investigation.
Soldier N, pictured here next to an SAS Land Rover during the Iraq War in 2003, has reportedly rejoined the regiment as a civilian contractor
Soldier N was booted out of the Army for possessing illegal weapons. After his conviction it emerged he had claimed the SAS was behind the death of Princess Diana
Now he has rejoined the SAS and is back in Hereford, the home of the regiment, where he is helping with recruitment and sniper training, according to the Sunday Express.
A source told the newspaper: 'He has never really left Hereford. He isn't officially with the regiment but he is being contracted as a civilian. His duties involve helping with recruitment and also some sniper training.'
Soldier N and Nightingale, who were friends and former housemates, both admitted possessing the illegal weapons and were sentenced to time behind bars.
Soldier N was handed two years at the Military Corrective Training Centre in Colchester, Essex, while Nightingale was sentenced to 18 months.
But Nightingale's conviction was later quashed following a high-profile campaign and at a second trial he was found guilty but given a suspended sentence.
He was convicted after Soldier N, who served just over a year of his two-year sentence, less than the standard two-thirds minimum, gave evidence against him.
Sergeant Danny Nightingale, pictured here with his wife Sally, was also convicted of possessing illegal weapons. He was found guilty largely on the evidence of Soldier N
It has been claimed Soldier N was secretly visited by two Army officers who arrived at the corrective centre in a helicopter shortly after he was jailed.
Sources say after the visit Soldier N never complained about his imprisonment and, unlike former friend Nightingale, did not appeal his conviction.
The source alleges that Soldier N's reward for not saying anything was being able to return to the SAS as a civilian contractor.
It emerged Soldier N had said SAS troops used a bright light to blind the driver of Princess Diana's car, blinding him and causing him to crash.
Scotland Yard launched an investigation into the claims but found no evidence to support them.
A solicitor for Nightingale said last night if it is proven Soldier N is serving in the SAS there will be grounds for an appeal.
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A mob of angry Muslims burned down a Hindu village in Bangladesh after a rumor spread a local had insulted Prophet Mohammed on Facebook.
One person was killed and at least five more seriously injured after 20,000 Muslims attacked Hindu homes in the village of Thakurbari, in the Rangpur Sadar region of the country, on Friday.
Police fired rubber bullets and tear gas at the crowd after trouble flared when a villager allegedly posted a defamatory status about Prophet Mohammed.
A mob of angry Muslims burned down a Hindu village in Bangladesh after a rumor spread a local had insulted Prophet Mohammed on Facebook
By the time police arrived at the village at least 30 homes had already been burned down while others had been looted and vandalised, according to the Dhaka Tribune.
The crowd was made up of residents from between six and seven neighbouring villages, including Paglapeer, Mominpur and Horialkuthi.
They clashed with police who fired rubber bullets to control the crowds.
Six people went to Rangpur Medical College Hospital with bullet injuries and one of them, a youth named as Hamidul Islam, later died of his injuries, according to local media.
The mob later protested against the police response to the attack, blocking the Rangpur-Dinajpur highway for around four hours.
Local magistrates are investigating the incident and families affected by the riot were being assisted by authorities, it was reported.
Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi is holed up in an IS pocked of the eastern Syria town of Boukamal, according to a media outlet linked to the Syrian military.
Claims that he's in the small town come after it was reported that al-Baghdadi fled Iraq to Syria in a yellow taxi in a bid to avoid drawing suspicion.
Syrian opposition activists denied claims that al-Baghdadi was in Boukamal, also known as Abu Kamal, saying that the government is trying to make up for its losses it suffered while recapturing the city last week before again losing parts to extremists.
Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi is believed to be holed up in the eastern Syria town of Boukamal, which has been the focus of a recent battle between Syrian forces and extremists
Syrian opposition activists denied claims that al-Baghdadi was in Boukamal, also known as Abu Kamal. Pictured above, Syrian pro-government troops taking up positions and firing on militants' positions on the Iraq-Syria border.
Syrian's army declared victory over Boukamal on Thursday after a three-year occupation in the region.
But the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said Islamic State reclaimed half of the city by Friday.
Al-Baghdadi was reportedly seen during Hezbollah operations with Syrian forces, backed by the Russian Air Force.
The American-led coalition said that it does not have 'any reasonable information concerning the whereabouts' of al-Baghdadi.
The whereabouts of al-Baghdadi are not known, and if he is killed or captured it would be another blow for ISIS, which has lost more than 90 per cent of lands it once controlled in Iraq and Syria where the group declared a caliphate in June 2014.
The question of whether al-Baghdadi is dead or alive have been a continuing source of mystery and confusion.
The Syrian Central Military Media said that, as Syrian troops and their allies conducted search operations in Boukamal, they 'got the information' that Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi might be 'in one of the pockets' in the town.
The report did not elaborate on how the soldiers heard about al-Baghdadi or what they were doing about the information.
Syrian opposition activists said the government is trying to make up for its losses it suffered while recapturing the city last week before again losing parts to extremists. Pictured above, pro-government troops taking up positions on the Iraq-Syria border
Syrian's army declared victory over Boukamal on Thursday after a three-year occupation in the region. But the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said Islamic State reclaimed half of the city by Friday. Pictured above, Syrian Central Military officials firing on militants' positions on the Iraq-Syria border
Al-Baghdadi was reportedly seen during Hezbollah operations with Syrian forces, backed by the Russian Air Force. Pictured above, Syrian pro-government troops taking up positions during fighting with insurgents on the Iraq-Syria border
It was reported last week that al-Baghdadi had fled from Iraq, where he was believed to be hiding in the northeastern town of Rawa.
Al-Baghdadi felt his presence in Rawa 'threatened his life', so he scampered over the border to Deir ez-Zor in a vehicle synonymous with the western world of New York City.
Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi 1971: - Born in Iraq, believed to be in the city of Samarra, north of Baghdad 2003: - US invades Iraq. Baghdadi is believed to be working as a cleric at a mosque in Samarra 2004-2008: - Baghdadi, then known as Ibrahim Awad Ibrahim al-Badry, was held at the Camp Bucca detention centre by the US, accused of being an al-Qaeda leader. Experts dispute whether he was affiliated with the organisation before he was detained, or became radicalised in prison 2010: Baghdadi becomes leader of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, after the former leader blows himself up when cornered by US forces 2011: The US official designated Baghdadi a terrorist and puts a $10million bounty on his head 2013: Under Baghdadi's leadership ISI, as it was then known, merges with the Syrian terror group al-Nusra and becomes ISIS 2014: After seizing a vast swathe of territory across Iraq and Syria in a sudden uprising, Baghdadi makes a speech at the al-Nuri mosque in Mosul declaring a Caliphate and rebrands ISIS as Islamic State. This marks the last time was seen in public 2016: Baghdadi released an audio recording as the battle for Mosul starts in November, urging his follower to kill 'unbelievers' threatening the city 2017: Russia claims to have killed Baghdadi in an airstrike on Raqqa, but fails to provide proof Advertisement
The source was quoted by the Iraqi Media News Agency in Iraqi News as saying: 'After Iraqi troops invaded Qaim, Baghdadi was aware that his presence in Rawa threatens his life.
'In a yellow taxi, Baghdadi fled Iraq and headed to Syria. He is believed to have settled in Deir ez-Zor.'
'The IS leader insisted on taking a yellow cab in order not to be a source for doubts.'
Rami Abdurrahman, who heads the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group, and Omar Abu Laila, a Europe-based opposition activist originally from Syria's eastern province of Deir el-Zour both denied the report that al-Baghdadi is in Boukamal.
Boukamal, IS's last major stronghold in Syria, was taken on Thursday after IS militants withdrew from it. Abdurrahman said IS launched a counteroffensive on Boukamal capturing more than 40 percent of the town, mostly its northern neighborhoods.
'The fighting is ongoing, now close to the town's center,' Abdurrahman said, adding that when IS fighters withdrew from Boukamal on Thursday it was a trap they set to hit back at government forces and their allies.
Abu Laila said IS fighters control most of Boukamal adding that government claims that al-Baghdadi is in the town is to cover for their losses.
In September, al-Baghdadi released an audio in which he urged his followers to burn their enemies everywhere and target 'media centers of the infidels.' It was his first purported audio in nearly a year.
Al-Baghdadi has only appeared in public once in 2014 in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul.
Russian officials said in June there was a 'high probability' that al-Baghdadi was killed in a Russian airstrike on the outskirts of the Syrian city of Raqqa, the group's de facto capital that the extremists lost last month.
US officials later said they believed he was still alive.
The ravaged city of Deir ez-Zor which is said to be where Abu Bakr al-Bagdhadi was believed to be hiding after reportedly fleeing Iraq
Al-Baghdadi's whereabouts are unknown but he is believed to be in IS' dwindling territory in eastern Syria.
Opposition activists say he is also likely somewhere in the wide desert that stretches toward Iraq.
Officials then believed al-Baghdadi was likely hiding somewhere in a sparsely populated desert predicting it could take years to locate him.
US Army Lt. Gen. Stephen Townsend, who commands the coalition forces fighting ISIS in Iraq and Syria, said in September he believed Baghdadi is still alive.
Speaking to reporters at the Pentagon over video-link from his headquarters in Baghdad, Townsend said: 'Do I believe he's alive? Yes. There are also some indicators in intelligence channels that he's alive.'
In August, Kurdish counter-terrorism official Lahur Talabany said he was 99 per cent sure that al-Baghdadi had simply gone into hiding.
He said: 'Don't forget his roots go back to al-Qaeda days in Iraq. He was hiding from security services. He knows what he is doing.' 19
A former Tory activist who claims she was raped by a party employee says senior Conservative figures have repeatedly ignored a culture of harassment within their ranks.
Lisa Wade said she was so raped violently she was left nursing whiplash-style injuries - but the Crown Prosecution Service chose not to take her case to court.
Despite making an official complaint to the party about young girls being targeted by sex pests while campaigning on the Conservative 'battle bus' during the 2015 election, nothing of note was done about the incidents and she was hounded out of the party.
Former Tory activist Lisa Wade who claims she was raped by a party employee says senior Conservative figures have repeatedly ignored a culture of harassment within their ranks
The activist claims many of the worst offenders still hold senior positions in the party, while she has been sidelined for speaking out.
'I've been through hell and back. I have no faith the party will take any report of sexual abuse seriously,' Lisa told the Mirror.
'Months after I quit in disgust they knew I had reported my rape to the police and still had a duty of care towards me, but I was ignored.'
Revealing more of the sordid party culture, Lisa revealed she saw senior Tory figures targeting drunk girls as they toured Britain's marginal seats in 2015.
Lisa said she found one teenage girl crying in the toilets after an influential party figure tried to attack her.
She also claims a senior staff member tried to force himself on her during the same campaign, but she managed to fend him off.
Despite making an official complaint to the party about young girls being targeted by sex pests while campaigning on the Conservative 'battle bus' during the 2015 election, nothing of note was done about the incidents and she was hounded out of the party
To add further insult to injury, after complaining to party staff on the understanding it would be treated in confidence, she was subsequently intimidated his his allies.
Leaving Lisa with no choice but to quit the party.
But months later she claims she was raped by another Tory employee who was arrested and charged before the case was dropped by the CPS. The employee claimed the encounter was consensual.
After reporting the attack to police, Lisa made an official report about the incident to Conservative officials but heard nothing for months.
But messages reveal she was dubbed a 'sociopath' and a 'liar' by a fellow female campaigner, the Mirror reported.
The activist claims many of the worst offenders still hold senior positions in the party, while she has been sidelined for speaking out.Lisa said the culture of abuse and harassment is so entrenched that she saw serving MPs target girls so drunk they couldn't stand
Lisa said the culture of abuse and harassment is so entrenched that she saw serving MPs target girls so drunk they couldn't stand.
Explaining that spending time on the Tory campaigning bus at first seemed a good opportunity, after a while she realised MPs were using it to target drunk girls at the parties afterwards.
And then, some months later, she says a man acquainted with the party forced himself on her in an attack 'that felt it lasted forever'.
She claims the attack left her at rock-bottom and she very nearly washed down two packets of anti-depressants with a bottle of wine.
Despite being assured by a clerk the matter would be referred to Commons leader Andrea Leadsom and the then chief whip Gavin Williamson, she says she heard nothing but did receive a voicemail from her this past week.
Andrea Leadsom said: 'I am very concerned about any claims of sexual abuse, harassment and bullying. I was not aware of this case until last week. I'm sorry we couldn't speak on Friday and I hope we can talk soon.'
At least 29 people have been injured after a fire broke out on a passenger ferry, forcing it to divert in Majorca.
The vessel was on route to Algeria from the French city of Marseilles when the fire broke out in the cargo hold, forcing it to dock around midnight in Alcudia.
At least 20 cars have been damaged and 26 people, most of whom have been treated for smoke inhalation, were injured. Three others were rushed to hospital, although their injuries are not thought to be life-threatening.
Pictures of the ferry from the outside show the cargo hold has been burnt out
At least 470 passengers and 137 crew members were on board the Algerie Ferries vessel at the time of the fire and were eventually evacuated when the boat reached dry land.
Fire crews are believed to have brought the blaze under control.
A spokesman for a local emergency services coordination centre said in a tweet: 'Final toll. Twenty-six people affected and three people taken to hospital.'
Most of the passengers are believed to be French and Algerian.
As well as firefighters and paramedics, Red Cross officials and Civil Protection workers have also been involved in the major emergency response operation.
As well as firefighters and paramedics, Red Cross officials and Civil Protection workers have also been involved in the major emergency response operation
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The Prince of Wales led the nation in honouring the country's war dead on Remembrance Sunday, taking the role held for more than six decades by his mother Queen Elizabeth.
The Queen, 91, asked Charles to take on her duties as she observed the service from a nearby balcony alongside 96-year-old husband Prince Philip, whose wreath was laid by his Equerry.
Buckingham Palace announced the change last month, which is seen as an example of the shift of head of state duties from the Queen to her heir after 65 years on the throne.
A two-minute silence began at 11am and signalled by Big Ben, which chimed for the first time in months as the clock tower undergoes restoration work. The silence was broken only by a bugler playing 'The Last Post.'
Wreaths were then laid at the foot of the Whitehall memorial by senior royals and political leaders including Prime Minister Theresa May and Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn.
Prince Charles lays the head of state's wreath at the Cenotaph in London for the first time as the Queen watched from nearby
Charles led services down on Whitehall at the request of the Queen, while Prince Philip's wreath was laid by his Equerry after he retired from official duties earlier this year
The Prince of Wales took over the role from the Queen as he has stepped up his royal duties in recent years
Prince Charles stands in front of the Prime Minister, leader of the opposition and former leaders at the Cenotaph
Princes William (right), Harry (centre) and Andrew (left) also laid floral tributes during the Sunday service
Princes William, Harry and Andrew representing the Navy, Army and Royal Air Force at the Cenotaph on Sunday
Princes William and Harry also laid wreaths during services on Whitehall as Britain honoured its war dead
Prince Philip, who retired from official duties earlier this year, and the Queen were on a balcony of the Foreign Office
The Queen and Prince Philip were joined on the balcony by Camilla as she watched her husband lay the wreath
Prince Philip, 96, looked frail as he made his way from the balcony following the minutes of silence on Remembrance Sunday
The Queen appeared emotional as she watched the ceremony below for Remembrance Sunday
The Duchess of Cambridge looked sombre as she stood next to Sophie, Countess of Wessex, on the Foreign Office balcony
Kate and Sophie were joined on their balcony by Princess Alexandra, The Honourable Lady Ogilvy (left)
Prince Edward speaks with other dignitaries attending the Remembrance Sunday services in Westminster
Ten thousand people were expected in central London as millions around the world honoured Britain's war dead
Thousands paid a silent tribute to Britain's war dead as they remembered those who have served this country
The Queen, Prince Philip and Camilla took up their positions above a door into the Foreign Office, with Kate, the Countess of Wessex and Princess Alexandra on the balcony to the right
Theresa May led out politicians to the Cenotaph, followed by Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson
Theresa May stands in silence during ceremonies at the Cenotaph on Remembrance Sunday
Theresa May and Jeremy Corbyn prepare to lay their wreaths watched by former Prime Ministers and Cabinet members
Philip May, Theresa's husband, watched proceedings from the Foreign and Commonwealth Office balcony
Members of the armed forces parade prior to the annual Remembrance Sunday memorial at the Cenotaph on Whitehal
A cannon is fired in the courtyard of Banqueting House a ceremonies take place on Remembrance Sunday
Members of the Royal Navy march past the crowds on Whitehall ahead of Remembrance Sunday services
Veterans cross decked out in berets with war medals affixed to their chest make their way to the Cenotaph
Chelsea Pensioners talk among themselves ahead of services at the Cenotaph for Remembrance Sunday
Crowds gathered at the Cenotaph in London for services marking the 99th anniversary of the end of the First World War
Former members of the military gather in London as the country prepares to honour its war dead
Veterans pictured on Whitehall in London ahead of services at the Cenotaph to honour Britain's war dead
Members of the public approach the Cenotaph to inspect the tributes after services finish on Whitehall
Tributes to Britain's war dead hang underneath the Cenotaph inscription, which reads simply 'The Glorious Dead'
Earlier this year Philip retired from his solo public duties, but on occasion has joined the Queen at her official engagements.
The Duke of Cambridge, Prince Harry, the Duke of York, the Earl of Wessex, the Princess Royal and the Duke of Kent laid wreaths.
Other political figures laying wreaths included Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson, Liberal Democrats leader Vince Cable, and Commons Speaker John Bercow.
Joining the Queen in observing the service from Foreign Office balconies were the Duchess of Cambridge, the Duchess of Cornwall, the Countess of Wessex, Princess Alexandra, the Duke and Duchess of Gloucester and Vice Admiral Sir Timothy Laurence.
The firing of a gun marked the end of the silence, and The Last Post was sounded by the Buglers of the Royal Marines before the wreaths were laid.
Charles has laid a wreath before on behalf of the Queen, in 1983 when she was out of the country, and when the Queen was in South Africa in 1999 she laid a wreath at the Cenotaph in Durban.
In Ireland Taoiseach Leo Varadkar laid a laurel wreath at the site of an IRA Remembrance Sunday bombing in Northern Ireland.
It is 30 years since the attack at the Cenotaph in Enniskillen in Co Fermanagh killed 11 people outright and left 68 injured, while a 12th victim, Ronnie Hill, died after spending 13 years in a coma.
Mr Varadkar was continuing the tradition of his predecessor as Irish premier, Enda Kenny, in attending the Remembrance Sunday ceremony.
DUP leader Arlene Foster, Northern Ireland Secretary James Brokenshire, and Police Service of Northern Ireland chief constable George Hamilton also laid tributes.
The US government's representative in Northern Ireland, Dan Lawton, also placed a floral wreath beside the monument to the fallen.
Soldiers in Bristol stood stoic in the rain in Bristol as they honoured those killed during combat
A heavy downpour did nothing to stop tributes in Bristol, as crowds honoured the minute's silence
Irish Taoiseach Leo Varadkar, Secretary of State James Brokenshire and DUP leader Arlene Foster pay their respects to the 12 victims of the IRA's Remembrance Sunday bombing in Enniskillen
Flags from the Royal British Legion are held to the ground during services in Enniskillen on Sunday
Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon lays a wreath on the Royal Mile in Edinburgh to mark Remembrance Sunday
The laying of wreaths was followed by a military parade past the City Chambers in central Edinburgh
Crowds gathered against this spectacular backdrop in Spean, Scotland, in order to pay their respects
Serving and former commandos gather during the Commando Memorial Service in Spean
Ministers, servicemen and members of the public pay tribute in Glasgow city center on Sunday
Veterans attend a Remembrance Sunday Service in Fort William, Scotland, for Remembrance Sunday
Serving members of the armed forces pay tribute to their colleagues killed in action at Fort William on Sunday
Ben Parkinson, who lost both his legs in Helmand in 2006, lays a wreath in Doncaster alongside step father Andrew Dernie
Hundreds of service personnel and veterans join the Mayor of Sunderland to honour Britain's war dead on Sunday
Servicemen and women march through the centre of Sunderland to mark Remembrance Sunday
Veterans, loved ones and dignitaries gather beneath obelisk at the National Memorial at Alreas, Staffordshire
Remembrance Sunday services take place in Henley on Thames, Oxfordshire, to honour Britain's war dead
A policeman outside Number 10 has his hat adjusted before a picture is taken to mark Remembrance Sunday
Former Prime Minister David Cameron makes his way towards the Cenotaph for the Remembrance Sunday service
Jeremy Corbyn and Tony and Cherie Blair were also pictured arriving at the Cenotaph on Sunday morning
Former Prime Minister Gordon Brown and current leader of the Liberal Democrats Vince Cable arrive for the service
A man walks past Tommy, a statue of a First World War soldier by artist Ray Lonsdale, as the sun rises in Seaham
Charles will lay the head of state's wreath for the first time at the Cenotaph as the Queen watches from nearby amid a stepped-up security operation
Members of the public are filtered through security barriers at the event as it was reported police will be using facial recognition technology for the first time to identify potential troublemakers
This year marks the centenaries of women's service in the regular armed forces, the Battle of Passchendaele and the creation of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, as well as the 100th birthday of forces' sweetheart, Dame Vera Lynn.
It also marks the 75th anniversary of the Battle of El Alamein and the creation of the RAF Regiment.
Meanwhile Britons around the world held their own Remembrance services, including troops on deployment in Kabul, Afghanistan.
Officers laid wreaths at a military base in the Middle Eastern country as a brass band played to honour those killed in the First and Second world wars, and in conflicts since.
In Hong Kong services also took place at the city's Cenotaph - organised by the Hong Kong and China branches of the Royal British Legion and the Hong Kong Ex-Servicemen's Association.
Servicemen in Kabul, Afghanistan, held their own Remembrance service earlier in the day, marking 99 years since the end of the First World War
A British officer carries a wreath of poppies which was laid at a service in Kabul earlier on Remembrance Sunday
British soldiers play in a brass band as they honour Britain's war dead from their base in Afghanistan
A member of the military looks at floral displays laid at the Cross of Sacrifice in Hodogaya, Japan
British soldiers stand near wreaths during a Remembrance Day ceremony at the Commonwealth War Graves Commission Cemetery in Ramle, Israel
A bagpiper performs during a Remembrance Day ceremony at the Commonwealth cemetery in Israel
Visitors inspect a tombstone at the Commonweath cemetery in Ramle, Israel, on Remembrance Sunday
A French soldier looks at tombstones during a Remembrance Day ceremony in Israel
Dozens of people also gathered at the Cenotaph in Hong Kong for a service organized by the Hong Kong and China branches of the Royal British Legion and the Hong Kong Ex-Servicemen's Association
Members of the military in Hong Kong participate in a service to honour Britain's war dead
Billionaire inventor James Dyson has torn into the EU for demanding a sky-high divorce bill and said Britain should walk away from the Brexit talks.
The vacuum cleaner innovator blamed the current stalemate on Brussels and said it is 'outrageous' the EU is demanding 'billions and billions' of pounds from Britain.
And he said the UK should just walk away from talks because the member states of the bloc need Britain to sell its products to.
His intervention comes just days after the sixth round of Brexit talks again ended in deadlock.
The EU's chief negotiator Michel Barnier setting a two-week deadline for Britain to increase it divorce bill offer in order to move on to trade talks before the New Year.
James Dyson laid into the Eu for demanding billions from Britain to quit the Brussels club and said Britain should walk away from the talks
He told the BBC's Andrew Marr show: ' It is a problem with the people we are negotiating with.
'I think demanding billions and billions to leave is outrageous and I think demanding it before we leave is outrageous.
'I would walk away, that's the only way to deal with them.
'I have been dealing with the EU for years....there is no way to deal with them. we have to walk away.
'If we walk away they will come back to us because they sell all of their products to us. We are in a very strong position.
'We should walk away and they will come to us.'
David Davis and Michel Barnier in Brussels on Friday following the sixth round of Brexit talks. They ended with Mr Barnier demanding Britain finds more money for the Brexit divorce bill within two weeks in order to move on to trade talks by the end of the year
He said Britain has tried 'very hard' and been 'very reasonable' in the negotiations but Brussels has failed to engage the same way.
Theresa May has offered to pay another 20 billion euros (17.7bn) for a transition deal which will keep Britain in the single market and customs union for two years.
She is reportedly considering dramatically upping the amount of cash we pour into Brussels's coffers to unblock the talks.
While Brexit Secretary David Davis has said hinted at a shift in stance by saying the UK was willing to show 'flexibility'.
Speaking after the last round of talks in Brussels last week, EU chief negotiator Mr Barnier said the two sides were 'making some progress'.
But he delivered a stark threat to block discussions on trade unless the UK was willing to put more money in the pot within a fortnight.
Meanwhile, Brexit Secretary Mr Davis hinted at a shift in stance by saying the UK was willing to show 'flexibility'.
This is the moment a paedophile was arrested in a McDonald's after exchanging sexual messages with an underage teenage girl online.
Richard Palmer, a married father, was arrested two years after he began talking with a 15-year-old girl online, and months after police took over the social media account, Sunday Night reported.
Palmer, 32, spoke constantly with detectives, who used analysis of the girl's previous messages and a sheet showing how to write emojis to pose convincingly as her.
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Richard Palmer was arrested at a Parramatta McDonalds when he went to meet up with who he believed was a 15-year-old girl
The married father had been speaking to police acting as the girl for months before his eventual arrest
Chat messages show Palmer telling the 'girl' it was 'a nice surprise' to see her back online after she and her mother had blocked him.
Detectives acting as the teenage girl repeatedly remind Palmer of the girl's age, with messages reading: 'You don't treat me like I'm a dumb 15 yo [sic] girl'.
'You're not,' he responds.
'I think you're a nice young lady.'
Palmer asked the girl for pictures of herself, and eventually the conversation turns explicit before he asks to meet up with the 'girl'.
Pictured: Messages sent between the 'girl' and Palmer became increasingly explicit before he asked to meet up
Palmer was arrested at a McDonald's in Parramatta where he arrived believing he would be meeting the girl
At 11am at a McDonald's in Parramatta, Palmer arrives to meet the girl and is promptly arrested.
As he is led away by officers, Sunday Night asks the man what he was planning to do with the girl when they met.
'Honestly I would have just come here, had a feed,' he said calmly.
'I offered food, which obviously wasn't directly with her... it was probably you guys.'
Palmer told the program his behaviour was 'out of character' and called himself a 'stupid idiot'.
'For me to be here today, obviously I do [have a problem],' he said.
The father told the program he was 'curious to see what she would have to say, what she would do'.
'I hate paedophiles, so go figure,' he said.
Each case is different, as detectives must play the part of the exact child the predator is chasing.
'[We have to act] Not only as a 15-year-old girl - we have to take over this particular 15-year-old girl,' Detective Richard Long told the program.
NSW Police has been contacted for further comment.
He instead met police, and called himself a 'stupid idiot' for interacting with the teenager in a sexual manner
Mrs Brown's Boys creator Brendan O'Carroll and his family have purchased seven homes in the sunny state of Florida.
It comes as it was revealed three stars of the BBC sitcom used a complicated web of offshore companies and trusts to avoid paying tax on their earnings, according to the Paradise Papers.
Patrick Houlihan and married couple Martin and Fiona Delany - the daughter of series creator Mr O'Carroll - are said to have diverted over 2m of their earnings into companies based in Mauritius, before getting the cash sent back, purportedly as loans.
Mrs Brown's Boys creator Brendan O'Carroll and his family own six adjacent properties on a street in Davenport in the state of Florida (pictured)
Brendan O'Carroll has insisted his daughter Fiona, right, paid more than 176,000 in tax last year
Mr O'Carroll, 62, bought a 1.8million house at Indian Rocks Beach in 2016.
The family also own six adjacent properties in a street in Davenport, 90 miles away, the Sun reported.
Three Davenport homes, worth 280,000 and 240,000, are registered to Mr O'Carroll and his wife, fellow Mrs Brown's Boys actress Jennifer, 53.
A fourth, worth 280,000, is registered to Fiona, 37, and Martin, 44.
The final two are in the names of Brendan's sons Eric and Danny.
The revelation came as it was found Mr and Mrs Delany allowed some of their money to be transferred into a Mauritian trust before it was eventually 'loaned' back to them, according to the BBC's Panorama.
The suspicion is the 'loans' are artificially created with the purpose of avoiding tax, and that none of them were ever repaid, meaning they were in effect a form of income and so should have been taxed.
According to the leaked documents, dubbed the 'Paradise Papers', which expose how the rich and powerful shield their wealth offshore, accountant Roy Lyness was involved in setting up meetings which led to the actors participating in the scheme.
Mr Lyness was also behind the controversial K2 scheme, which in 2012 was discovered to be allowing thousands of the super-rich to pay as little as 1 per cent income tax, sheltering as much as 168m in Jersey.
Among those caught up in the storm was comedian Jimmy Carr, whose behaviour was denounced by David Cameron as 'morally wrong'. The comic issued a grovelling apology before withdrawing from the scheme.
The comedian said his daughter Fiona, right, wanted to 'regularise her income over a period of time so [she] could pay tax over a longer period of time'
This graphic demonstrates how the scheme helps the actors to avoid paying tax
However, Mr O'Carroll insisted no one involved with the show had done anything illegal and said his daughter paid more than 176,000 in tax last year.
The Dubliner said: 'Everybody that featured in that show did what they did for completely different reasons.
'Paddy and Fiona wanted to regularise their income over a period of time so they could pay tax over a longer period of time.
'What's really important is that nothing they did was illegal.
'In the case of Fiona, Paddy, and Marty, not one penny of their BBC money went into that fund. Not one penny of their TV appearances went into that fund, or overseas sales went into that fund. Not one fee went into that fund.'
Patrick Houlihan, who plays Agnes Brown's son Dermot, joined the scheme
He added: 'Panorama said that they are paid offshore. That's b*****ks. Their fees are paid to a UK agency called Pro Fid who represent them.
'They invoice us and we pay their fees to Pro Fid who organise whatever they organise with them to give them their monthly salary.
'In my daughter Fiona's case I know she paid 200,000 (176,000) in tax last year. At the time Fiona was ambushed by the BBC guy in Glasgow, she had just done a year-long audit and had a clearance certificate. All her loans were declared.'
Mr O'Carroll, speaking to the Irish Daily Star, further explained: 'What they did was when things started to go well for us, our earnings went up.
'They thought this was great, it was marvellous until the end of the year when they got their first tax bill, and now had to borrow money to pay tax on their money that they thought was theirs, which is not theirs because half of it was tax. So they were playing catch-up.
'Then this structure was introduced to them that they would put their money into a trust, draw a wage down every month, which was something like 8,800 (10,000 euros) a month which was good money.
'They then would pay tax and insurance on that 8,800 and it gave them an income for the entire year, which is 12 months that we work and the tax is already paid.'
A BBC spokesman told MailOnline: 'This investigation shows there is a clear public interest in the information being reported. It has been conducted in a fair and impartial way by our award-winning current affairs programme Panorama and BBC News journalists.
'A thorough and fair right of reply procedure was followed. We're satisfied that we've acted fairly and followed our editorial guidelines.'
Fiona O'Carroll and her husband Martin Delany, who invested their money in the scheme
Mr O'Carroll originally wrote a radio sitcom called Mrs Browne's Boys which was broadcast daily on the Irish station 2FM.
He also featured the fearsome Irish mother in a series of best-selling novels and a feature film.
A successful stage show and DVD releases followed before in 2009 Mr O'Carroll was approached by BBC Scotland to create a series, which quickly became a surprise hit, evolving into an internationally recognised brand.
A film, Mrs Brown's Boys D'Movie, came out in 2014 and was panned by critics.
But the show's Christmas specials are among the UK's most popular festive programmes.
Michael Gove today risked fuelling the problems for the British mother in an Iranian prison by saying he does not know why she was in the country before her arrest.
Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe was visiting her family when she was arrested in Tehran and jailed for five years after being accused of spying against the Government.
She is facing the devastating prospect of having her her sentence doubled after Boris Johnson gaffed and told MPs she was in the country training journalists.
His comments were seized upon by the Iranian judiciary who hailed her back before the court to face fresh propaganda charges and another five years behind bars.
Asked today what the British mother-of-one was doing in Iran, Environment Secretary Mr Gove said: 'I don't know.'
The remark risks casting doubt over the British mother-of-one's account of her time in Iran - even though the official Foreign Office position is she was visiting her family.
Mr Gove also defended his Cabinet colleague Boris Johnson, who is facing growing calls to be sacked as Foreign Secretary over his potentially costly gaffe.
It comes as Mr Johnson finally spoke to Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe's husband Richard today and agreed to meet with him either this week or next.
Michael Gove said he was not sure what Nazanin Zaghari-Ratclife was doing in Iran before she was arrested by the Revolutionary Guard on suspicion of espionage
Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe was visiting her parents in Iran with her young daughter Gabriella when she was arrested by the Revolutionary Guard in Tehran Airport and hit by espionage charges
Jon Trickett MP, Labour's shadow minister for the Cabinet Office, said: 'Boris Johnson's cavalier approach to international diplomacy is compounded this morning by Michael Gove claiming he has no idea what Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe was doing in Iran. It has always been clear, she was on holiday visiting her family.
Tory MP for Broxstowe, Anna Soubry, branded Mr Gove's comments a 'deeply concerning and irresponsible response'.
CORBYN CALLS FOR BORIS TO BE SACKED OVER IRAN BLUNDER Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, pictured today, has called for Boris Johnson to be sacked over the comments Jeremy Corbyn is calling for Boris Johnson to be sacked from his post immediately as Foreign Secretary for 'putting citizens at risk'. The Labour leader has launched a scathing attack on the former Mayor of London and is demanding the Prime Minister fire him with immediate effect. This comes after Johnson made what has been described as an 'epic blunder' in the case of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, the British woman currently imprisoned in Iran. Mr Corbyn has added to the growing pressure May faces in dealing with Johnson, as members of his own party say his position should be reconsidered. He said: 'We've put up with Johnson embarrassing and undermining our country with his incompetence and colonial throwback views and putting our citizens at risk for long enough. It's time for him to go.' London Mayor Sadiq Khan has also called for Mr Johnson to go over the blunder. Advertisement
Mr Gove insisted Mr Johnson should not be ousted and suggested calls for him to go are a distraction from those who should be blamed for Ms Zaghari-Ratcliffe's ordeal - the Iranians.
He told the BBC's Andrew Marr Show: 'We know that the Iranian regime is capable of abusing the human rights of its own citizens.
'It appears here to be harming the human rights of someone whose plight necessarily moves us all.'
Told that Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe and her husband Richard insist she was in Iran with her young daughter Gabriella to visit her parents, Mr Gove said: 'In that case I take exactly her husband's assurance in that regard.'
Asked if he thought she was training journalists, he said: 'Well, her husband says that she was there on holiday, and he's the person who should know.
'Her family should be the people who are in our thoughts at this time.'
He said criticism of Mr Johnson was part of an 'effort to shift the blame away from those who are really at fault here, and that is the Iranian regime'.
And he refused to say the Foreign Secretary should apologise for his blunder.
He said: 'There is nothing the Iranian regime would like more than for the blame to be shifted from them onto us.
'And I think we make a big mistake if we blame politicians in a democracy who are trying to do the right thing for the plight of a woman who is being imprisoned by a regime that is a serial abuser of human rights.
'Who's in the dock here? Iran.'
He added: 'If the Iranian judiciary wants to use the words of a democrat in order to justify an unjustifiable decision, it is our responsibility to call them out.
'Whatever we as democrats say is going to be seized upon by extremists for their own purposes - and we play their game if we point the finger at democrats who are trying to do the right thing.'
Tory MP Anna Soubry joined in the condemnation of Michael Gove's comments branding them 'concerning and irresponsible'
Michael Gove rallied to the defence of his Cabinet colleague Boris Johnson, saying calls for him to be sacked over his blunder - which could cost Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe another five years in person - is a distraction form the real villains in the saga - the Iranians
'It appears Gove is more interested in protecting Johnson's job than the liberty of a British citizen in jail in Iran.
'Theresa May must ensure Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe does not pay the price for her ministers' bungling.'
Jeremy Corbyn and London Mayor Sadiq Khan have both called for Mr Johnson to be sacked over comments.
Speaking this morning, Mr Khan said: 'I think he has got to go.
'If Theresa May was a stronger Prime Minster she would have sacked him a long time ago.'
Mr Corbyn said: 'We've put up with Johnson embarrassing and undermining our country with his incompetence and colonial throwback views and putting our citizens at risk for long enough. It's time for him to go.'
Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe's husband Richard has demanded that Mr Johnson 'get on a plane' to meet his wife after his blunder.
A captive finless porpoise swims in an aquarium in the Chinese Academy of Sciences' Institute of Hydrobiology in Wuhan, Hubei province, last year. [Photo/Xinhua]
A scientific survey on the Yangtze River to review the status of the endangered finless porpoise was launched in Wuhan, Hubei province, on Friday. Its findings are expected to be released in March.
Financed by World Wildlife Fund and local foundations in the province, the survey is the third to be undertaken by the Ministry of Agriculture since 2006. It is being led by the Chinese Academy of Sciences' Institute of Hydrobiology.
"Allowing for the decline in porpoise's population and distribution, the survey can show variations more accurately if carried out every five to six years," said Hao Yujiang, a researcher at the institute who is in charge of the work.
The survey will cover waters along the middle and lower stretches of the Yangtze and its two connecting lakes - Poyang and Dongting.
"We will calculate population and distribution of the finless porpoise in the survey and evaluate the environment in which they live. Information we gather will be used to help the government determine key protection areas and take targeted protection measures."
The 3,400-kilometer round trip will last about 40 days, with 32 members and volunteers from research institutes and NGOs involved.
Surveys along the river will conclude on Dec 20, while work at Poyang and Dongting lakes will start on Dec 25 and finish on Jan 10, said Wang Ding, another hydrobiology researcher.
Methods used in the survey include visual observation, acoustic and underwater noise detection and references to the surveys in 2006 and 2012, Wang said, adding that water samples, sediment and underwater noise data will be collected every 50 kilometers.
Team leader Hao said that drones will be used for the first time in the survey to monitor the porpoises and their habitat.
"Visual observation is a recognized method used in wildlife observation," Hao said. "We have seven members observing the porpoises on each of our two ships. Visual fatigue is an inevitable element that will affect the survey results. Drones, however, will help us to correct the results."
The population of the finless porpoise has seen a sharp decline in the past six years - 13.7 percent. The 2012 survey found 1,045 porpoises in the river, about half the number researchers calculated in 2006, Hao said.
Water pollution, environmental degradation and an inefficient food chain - the result of illegal and unregulated fishing activities - are thought to be the reason for the dramatic decline of the species.
Li Yanliang, chairman of National Aquatic Wildlife Conservation Association, said: "About 10 years ago, the Baiji dolphin was declared functionally extinct. Now the population of finless porpoise is nearly half that of the panda. Protecting the porpoises is a pressing task for us."
The mother of a teenage girl killed by a 50-year-old paedophile has recalled kicking the predator out of her house weeks before her daughter was murdered.
Carly Ryan was murdered in February 2007 after communicating extensively with her online predator, Garry Francis Newman, who had pretended to be a handsome 18-year-old musician from Melbourne called 'Brandon Kane'.
A month earlier, he flew from Melbourne to the 15-year-old's girl's home city of Adelaide pretending to be the fictitious Brandon's father Shane, dropping off some birthday presents for her.
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Carly Ryan was 15 years old when she was murdered in February 2007 by a paedophile she had met online
Paedophile Garry Francis Newman was 50 when he pretended to be a young musician
Not having a hotel booked, Sonya Ryan invited him to stay over at their Adelaide Hills home, only to discover the paedophile in bed with her daughter several days later.
'I walked past Carly's bedroom and he was lying on her bed on top of the covers and I immediately went "Oh God, why he is in there?",' she told the Seven Network's Sunday Night program.
'I just woke them up and said to him, "You need to get out of my house. You need to get your things, you need to get out".'
Several weeks later, out of revenge, Newman lured Carly to a remote beach, south of Adelaide, by pretending to be Brandon the young musician.
Sonya Ryan recalled seeing the paedophile in bed with her daughter during a stay at her Adelaide home
Sonya Ryan recalled the last time she saw her daughter alive.
'It wasn't until she was at the door that she kind of looked at me in a funny way and I thought, "Give me a hug",' she said.
'So I gave her a big hug and then she wanted another one and then she wanted another one and then by the end of it we had four hugs at the door and then she goes, "Love you, Mum," and just skipped off the verandah.'
While her daughter's killer was jailed for life in 2010, with a 29-year non-parole period, Sonya Ryan is continuing to campaign for tougher sentences for child sex offences.
The mother's horror started in 2006 when her daughter Carly, then aged 14, began communicating online with the fictitious 'Brandon Kane'.
Sonya Ryan educates children across Australia about the dangers of internet predators
Newman, the paedophile behind that cyberspace avatar, spent months manipulating Carly to win her love with online chats and phone calls.
He later pretended to be the fake Brandon's father 'Shane' and even attended her 15th birthday party in January 2007, arriving with wads of cash and intimate apparel.
This was when he touched her inappropriately and told her he loved her but she rejected his advances, calling him 'old, fat and gross'.
A month later, in February 2007, he lured her to a deserted beach at Victor Harbour , 80 kilometres south of Adelaide, as 'Brandon Kane'.
It was there, at Port Elliot Beach, that he bashed her unconscious, suffocated her by pushing her face into the sand and throwing the 15-year-old girl into the water to drown.
South Australian Supreme Court judge Trish Kelly, who presided over Newman's jury trial in 2010, described the predator as someone with a 'grossly perverted plan to deceive, seduce and murder Carly' because he couldn't get his own way.
The judge added Carly was a child who had fallen in love 'with the idea of the handsome, musically inclined and rather exotic Brandon Kane, the real man was infact an over weight, balding, middle aged paedophile with sex and murder on his mind'.
Sonya Ryan runs the Carly Ryan Foundation which educates children and parents on online safety and was the 2013 South Australian of the Year, which made her the state's finalist for Australian of the Year.
Prince Harry has been accused of breaking military rules by wearing a beard while on official duty in a British Army uniform.
The 33-year-old left the military in 2015 but appeared at the Cenotaph in London for the Remembrance Sunday service with a full beard.
Despite no longer being a member of the armed forces, a serving military member in the elite cavalry regiment was unhappy that Prince Harry had not shaved for the occasion.
They said: 'Prince Harry is letting us all down. There's no place for beards in the Queen's cavalry. He should have shaved it off for such an important day.'
British Army rules forbid all beards, except in a few rare circumstances, such as when a soldier is suffering from a skin complaint, or has strong religious reasons for retaining facial hair
Prince William and Prince Andrew both appeared at the Remembrance Sunday service clean shaven, yet Prince Harry had a beard when paying his respects at the Cenotaph service in London.
The British Army rules does not allow beards, except in a few rare circumstances, such as when a soldier is suffering from a skin complaint, or has strong religious reasons for retaining facial hair.
Sikhs are not allowed to cut their own hair, and can thus retain their beards while in uniform, for example.
Special Forces or others on covert operations are also permitted to grow beards when behind enemy lines, but they would not wear them on parade.
There is also a tradition that allows a very small number of Pioneer Sergeants to wear a beard when on official duty, but members of the Queen's personal guard have never been allowed to do so.
However as Prince Harry is no longer a serving officer, MoD rules do not require him to comply with any of these regulations.
His royal duties do sometimes require him to don a military uniform, but there is precedent for a royal doing so with facial hair - his great-great-grandfather, King George V, sported a beard.
The Queen, Harry's grandmother, is Colonel-in-Chief of the Blues and Royals, while the Colonel of the Regiment is Princess Anne, his aunt.
It is one of the two cavalry regiments of the Household Cavalry the other is the Life Guards and can trace its history back to Oliver Cromwell's New Model Army of the 17th Century.
Throughout the centuries, officers have been known for their clean-cut appearances, although some occasionally grew moustaches and connected side-whiskers, especially when serving in Muslim countries.
Britain's Prince William (centre), Prince Andrew (left) and a bearded Prince Harry (right) take part in the Remembrance Sunday Cenotaph service in London
Harry now concentrates on charity work and other Royal duties, but would normally be expected to abide by military regulations when in uniform
The Royal Navy in which Harry's father, Prince Charles, served has always been allowed beards, but officers are told to shave them off it they are not full enough
The Royal Navy in which Harry's father, Prince Charles, served has always been allowed beards, but officers are told to shave them off it they are not full enough.
Prince Harry left the Army in 2015, aged 31, after being commissioned as a Cornet, the equivalent of Second Lieutenant in the Blues and Royals, which after the Life Guards is the second most senior regiment in Britain.
Harry now concentrates on charity work and other Royal duties, but would normally be expected to abide by military regulations when in uniform.
Opposition Leader Bill Shorten is closing in on Malcolm Turnbull as the preferred prime minister as Labor increases its two-party preferred lead over the coalition government.
Labor increased its two-party preferred lead over the coalition government for the fourth Newspoll running to 55-45, according to the latest figures published by The Australian on Sunday night.
The coalition's primary vote fell by one point from 35 to 34 per cent, while Labor's primary vote rose from 37 to 38 points.
Malcolm Turnbull also suffered a blow in the preferred prime minister stakes, falling five points to 36 per cent
Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull also suffered a blow in the preferred prime minister stakes, falling five points to 36 per cent.
Meanwhile, Mr Shorten's support as preferred prime minister rose from 33 to 34 per cent.
The number of voters satisfied with Mr Turnbull's performance fell from 31 to 29 per cent, while the proportion of dissatisfied voters dropped from 59 to 58 per cent.
His net satisfaction - which spells out the difference between those who are satisfied and those who are dissatisfied with his performance - fell one point to minus 29.
Opposition Leader Bill Shorten is closing in on Malcolm Turnbull as the preferred prime minister as Labor increases its two-party preferred lead over the coalition government
Mr Shorten's net satisfaction rose from minus 24 to minus 19 points.
One Nation increased its primary vote from nine to 10 per cent, while the Greens slipped one point to nine per cent.
The Newspoll loss is Mr Turnbull's 23rd in a row. When he challenged Tony Abbott for the leadership in September 2015 he cited his 30 consecutive Newspoll losses as reason for taking him on.
The defeat comes after Mr Turnbull lost his parliamentary majority as MP John Alexander resigned over his dual citizenship.
Leading Brexiteer Michael Gove has today signalled his support for Theresa May to increase Britain's divorce bill offer in order to kick start trade talks.
The Prime Minister is said to be considering offering more cash to Brussels as she does everything she can to unblock the negotiations.
EU chief negotiator Michel Barnier on Friday set Britain a two-week deadline to cough up more cash if it wants to talk trade by the New Year.
And today the Environment Secretary said he would not block the PM from handing over more money as he said there is a need to be flexible.
Mr Gove said he had a duty to ensure his department was 'ready for every eventuality' in the talks over Britain's exit.
Michael Gove, pictured today on the Andrew Marr Show, said he would not block Theresa May from paying more money to the EU for a divorce bill
He told BBC One's The Andrew Marr Show the Government is 'doing everything we can' to secure a good deal but is making sure that whatever happens in the talks, Britain can 'make the best of them'.
'I am not worried but I am determined to ensure that in my own department that we have everything in place for every eventuality.'
Asked if he would block the Prime Minister if she had to hand over extra cash to secure a deal, he replied: 'I certainly would not.
'I would not block the Prime Minister in doing what she believed was right.'
Mrs May has already offered to pay the EU 20 billion euros (17.7bn) to secure a transition deal that would keep Britain in the single market and customs union for two years.
And she has promised that none of the remaining EU member states will be left poorer by the UK's departure form the bloc.
But Britain and Brussels have clashed over the details of the financial obligations Britain should cough up for on issues like pensions liabilities and future projects.
Meanwhile, Brexit Secretary David Davis said he does not recognise the two-week deadline set by Mr Barnier following last week's talks.
He told Sunday with Niall Paterson on Sky News: 'Taxpayers will not want me to just come along and give away billions and billions of pounds.'
He insisted progress is being made in the talks and dismissed calls to try to delay Brexit by dragging negotiations out for another 12 months.
David Davis, pictured with Michel Barnier at the end of last week's round of Brexit talks. Mr Barnier set a two-week deadline for Britain to move on the divorce bill in order to start trade talks by the end of the year
Mr Davis said: 'In order to pause it, well, not pause it, in order to extend it by a year, let alone pause it - I'm not sure you can pause it - even to extend it by a year takes unanimity of all the other 27.
'What do you think the price of that will be? When you require unanimity from 27 countries, I can tell you it'd be very expensive.'
Mr Davis dismissed the suggestion that a no deal scenario is 'more probable than it's ever been before', reiterating it is not an aim.
He also said the UK would be aware 'no deal' is coming as he sought to play down concerns about the potential consequences.
Mr Davis said: 'There will not be a circumstance where aircraft won't fly, there will not be a circumstance where we can't exchange data with the European institutions, there will not be those sorts of failures that people are fearing.
'We'll make sure that doesn't happen.'
The remarkable life of the Hollywood siren who pioneered groundbreaking scientific inventions that paved the way for wifi and Bluetooth will be told in a new film.
Hedy Lamarr, considered by her show business peers to be the most beautiful woman in the world during the 1940s and 50s, starred alongside the likes of Spencer Tracy, James Stewart and Clark Gable during her glittering acting career.
But she was also a brilliant scientist who helped devise a frequency-hopping system which eventually formed the foundation for modern technologies such as wifi, GPS and Bluetooth.
The remarkable life of Hollywood siren Hedy Lemarr who pioneered groundbreaking scientific inventions that paved the way for wifi and Bluetooth will be told in a new film
Lemarr was considered the most beautiful woman in the world during the 1940s and 50s by her Hollywood peers but was also a brilliant scientist and inventor
Her extraordinary life is the subject of a new Susan Sarandon-produced documentary titled Bombshell: The Hedy Lamarr Story, which will be premiered in London on Wednesday as part of the Jewish Film Festival, according to the Guardian.
The film contains interviews with Lamarr's children from six marriages and traces her remarkable career from Vienna to Los Angeles.
Born Hedwig Eva Maria Kiesler in Vienna, Austria in 1914, Lamarr was the daughter of a banker and a pianist, and of Jewish descent.
Lamarr, who was the basis for the cartoon portrayal of Snow White, got her start as an actress in her teens, debuting in her first film at 17, before appearing in the Czech film Ecstasy.
The film and Lamarr's appearance in it were controversial due to the sex scene which showed the young actress portraying the first female orgasm ever to be depicted in a non-pornographic film.
She went on to star in several other successful films, culminating in her pairing alongside muscle-bound hunk Victor Mature in Cecil B. DeMille's Samson and Delilah in 1949.
She also appeared in White Cargo in 1941 and co-starred with Judy Garland in the musical Ziegfield Girl that same year.
Lamarr is credited in a total of 35 films, but the actress was reportedly bored of the roles she was given that were often light on lines and focused on her looks.
Her life will is the subject of a new documentary titled Bombshell: The Hedy Lamarr Story, which will be premiered in London on Wednesday as part of the Jewish Film Festival
The film contains interviews with Lamarr's children from six marriages and traces her remarkable career from Vienna to Los Angeles
'Any girl can be glamorous,' she once famously said. 'All you have to do is stand still and look stupid.'
Led by her interest of military technology and science, which she acquired in part through her marriage to an Austrian munitions magnate, she devoted her time to developing a secret weapons communications system for the U.S. Navy during World War II.
Lamarr may have had a more personal reason to help defeat Hitler. In her autobiography she claimed that her former husband Mandl struck up close business ties with the Nazi government of Germany, despite having Jewish heritage.
She claimed that Hitler and the fascist Italian prime Mussolini attended parties at Mandl's home.
Susan Sarandon produced the documentary which will premier this week
The Nazi's practice of jamming the radios of the Allies prompted Lamarr to devise the invention she became most famous for.
Lamarr even had a room dedicated for inventing in her home and she, along with composer George Antheil, created a device that allowed 'frequency hopping' which made the Allies' radio harder to intercept.
She had realised that a constantly changing frequency is harder to jam.
This idea of changing frequencies served as the foundation for the torpedo guidance system she and Antheil devised together.
Using her 'frequency hopping' idea paired with Antheil's experience with 'Ballet Meanique', they came up with a way to synchronize quickly changing radio frequencies.
The pair created a system based on the 88 keys in a piano and submitted their patent for their idea on June 10, 1941.
A little more than a year later on August 11, 1942, they received a patent for it.
While their idea was not implemented until after World War II, history proved it to be both practical and years ahead of its time.
The US navy began using it in the 1960s and the same technology is still used today in our wireless phones, GPS and by the military.
Lamarr and Antheil were later showered with scientific testimonials for their work, and they were inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 2014.
In 1974, when she was honored on National Inventors Day, TIME wrote, 'Admirers of the 1930s movie Ecstasy liked the unadorned way Hedy Lamarr took to the water - but they might be surprised to learn that Hedy, now sixtyish, has genuine nautical skills.
Lamarr, pictured here in the 1949 film Samson and Delilah, died in 2000 in Florida
'She is co-inventor of a system for guiding torpedoes to their targets that was considered for use in World War II.'
Lamarr, who has a star on Hollywood's Walk of Fame, said in response to the acclaim, 'Improving things comes naturally to me.'
The inventor had plans to also join the National Inventor's Council which told her she would be most useful by using her celebrity status to bring in donations, The Scientific American reported.
In one single event, Lamarr raised $7million by selling kisses for $50,000.
In 1957, she retired from film before moving to Altamonte Springs, Florida.
There, she lived a mostly quiet life and continued working on inventions such as a pocket on the side of Kleenex box for used tissues.
She married a total of six times and was the mother to three children, James, Anthony and Denise.
The actress died in 2000 in Florida due to heart failure and chronic vascular heart disease.
A Japanese police probe into the attempted murder of an 82-year-old bedridden woman has reportedly led to an unlikely suspect: a stray cat.
Mayuko Matsumoto's daughter found her bleeding profusely from about 20 cuts to her face on Monday at her home in a mountainous town of Mifune in the Kumamoto Prefecture of southern Japan.
Police launched an attempted murder investigation after seeing the wounds, some of them relatively severe.
Mayuko Matsumoto's daughter found her bleeding profusely from about 20 cuts to her face on Monday at her home in a mountainous town of Mifune in the Kumamoto Prefecture of southern Japan
'When we found her, blood covered everything above her chin. Her face was soaked in blood. I didn't know what had happened,' Matsumoto's daughter told local broadcaster RKK.
Police turned their attention to the stray cats loitering around Matsumoto's house (file)
Matsumoto, who reportedly is unable to speak, had to receive emergency care, Kyodo News said.
Investigators found no sign of people entering or leaving the house at the time of the suspected attack, the private network NTV said.
They then realised that Matsumoto's wounds looked like cat scratches, it added.
Police turned their attention to the stray cats loitering around Matsumoto's house, and found traces of what may be human blood on one of them, the Nishinippon Shimbun newspaper said Friday.
'Police are analysing a blood sample taken from the claw of the cat which might have scratched the victim,' national broadcaster NHK reported.
A police spokesman declined to directly comment on the case on Friday, but told AFP that investigators were not disputing the media reports.
A controversial TV film about Paralympic champion Oscar Pistorius that provoked outrage from the families of both Reeva Steenkamp and her killer athlete lover has been aired in the US.
The film, titled 'Oscar Pistorius The Blade Runner Killer' stars South African actor Andreas Dammas as Pistorius and Toni Garrn, who once dated Leonardo DiCaprio, as Reeva.
It has been produced by US cable and satellite TV company and was released this week.
A controversial TV film about Oscar Pistorius, who murdered his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp, has caused outrage
Pistorius can be seen brandishing a gun during the film, which has now been released in the US
Pistorius earned worldwide fame after reaching the semi-finals of the 400m during the 2012 Olympic Games in London.
The following year, on Valentine's Day, the double amputee shot and killed his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp at his home in Pretoria, South Africa.
Miss Steenkamp, a model and law graduate, was locked inside a toilet when Pistorius fired four shots from a handgun through the bathroom door.
During his trial, the athlete maintained he thought he was shooting an intruder and denied being jealous or aggressive during his relationship with the 30-year-old.
'Oscar Pistorius: Blade Runner Killer' charts the run-up to the murder on Valentine's Day 2013 at his home in Pretoria, South Africa - and the courtroom dramas that followed. It stars Andreas Damm as the double-leg amputee and Toni Garrn (pictured) as girlfriend Steenkamp
Both the Steenkamp and Pistorius family have criticised the film, that has now aired in the US
After a series of legal delays and a trial over a six month period, he was found guilty in September 2014 of culpable homicide or manslaughter.
He was given a five year sentence, but the decision to free him from jail and out him under house arrest for the remaining four years of his term caused uproar.
Over a two year period, he was brought before the courts several times.
In 2015 the Supreme Court of Appeal convicted Pistorius of murder, saying his testimony was 'vacillating and untruthful', and last year he began a six year sentence.
The movie shows the athlete shooting his girlfriend, as well as their violent arguments before her death
The Steenkamp family said they were 'horrified' by the film's release which they described as 'untrue and incorrect'.
They are considering taking legal action.
The Steenkamp statement reads: 'They are horrified and upset to read a report that 'the movie is told from Steenkamp and her mother's perspective'.
'June Steenkamp was not approached by Lifetime to participate, comment or be part of the making of the film, and did not give the producers any assistance.
'Any impression that is created that this is June's view, or that the movie is endorsed by the Steenkamp family, is untrue and incorrect.'
Reeva's sister Simone dismissed the movie as simply 'a money making exercise and very wishy-washy.'
The 30-year-old has always maintained that he believed he was shooting an intruder, not his girlfriend, and rejected descriptions of a tumultuous relationship with Steenkamp marked by jealousy and arguments
The film, Blade Runner Killer, has been made by a US cable and satellite TV company. It stars Andreas Damm, a South African actor based in New York, and Toni Garrn, a German model
The film has been criticised by both the families of Steenkamp and Pistorius
She told MailOnline: 'My mother was mortified when she first found about it. When I told her about it, she said 'You have upset me now'. She was not happy.
'I watched a snippet today and the people don't even talk proper South African. They sound either British or American, but they certainly don't sound like South Africans.'
The model's father Barry was left reeling when the moment in the movie she was gunned down by Pistorius popped up on his Facebook feed, the family lawyer said.
Tania Koen told MailOnline they had 'no idea' any movie had been made.
She said: 'It has just opened all the old wounds for Barry and June.'
Pistorius (right) initially escaped a murder conviction for shooting Reeva (left) through a locked bathroom door three years ago. The pair are pictured together in 2012
Pistorius' family also slammed the movie and said they would be taking legal action.
Carl Pistorius, Oscar's brother, said in a statement: 'The film was made with blatant disregard of both the Steenkamp and Pistorius families, as well as complete disregard for Reeva and Oscar.
'Neither Oscar, the defence or the family were involved in the production of this 'film' in anyway.
'The 'film' is not true reflection of what happened on the day of this tragedy and the subsequent trial of the matter.
'The 'film' titled 'Oscar Pistorius The Blade Runner Killer' is a gross distortion of the findings of the court.
'Oscar was subjected to a month long psychological evaluation which was insisted upon by the prosecution; the psychological evaluation of Oscar was undertaken by leading minds in the field.
'Oscar was subjected to in depth assessments and on-going tests almost daily for a month long; at no stage was Oscar found to have the mind of a killer.
'The 'film' is a gross misrepresentation of the truth. The 'film' is rather a representation of what the prosecution tried to portray.
'We will be taking legal action'.
Last week prosecutors fought to increase Pistorius' prison sentence.
They urged five judges at South Africa's Supreme Court of Appeal to overturn the six-year sentence handed to the double-amputee athlete and give him the prescribed minimum of 15 years.
'Murder is murder,' said chief prosecutor Andrea Johnson, adding the sentence given to Pistorius by Judge Thokozile Masipa in 2015 was 'shockingly lenient.'
If the court agrees, Pistorius, 30, could remain in prison until after he is 40.
Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy urged Catalans to kick separatist leaders out of office when they go to the polls next month.
Mr Rajoy spoke to unionists in Barcelona on Sunday as he visited the divided region for the first time since abolishing the government of Carles Puigdemont after he tried to declare independence.
Catalans are due to vote for a new government on December 21 with Mr Puigdemont set to run and polls showing voters split between separatist and unionist parties.
Mariano Rajoy told unionists in Barcelona to reject independence during elections he scheduled for December 21 after kicking the previous government out of office
Mr Rajoy said the separatist movement has brought nothing but instability to the region and has harmed it economically
Supporters of Rajoy's conservative Popular Party gathered in Barcelona to hear him speak
Mr Rajoy is visiting Catalonia for the first time since he kicked the previous administration out of office and assumed control
'We want a massive turnout to open up a new period of normalcy,' Mr Rajoy told supporters in Barcelona.
'It's urgent to return a sense of normality to Catalonia and do so as soon as possible to lower the social and economic tensions,' Rajoy said Sunday.
'The threat of the separatists is destructive, sad and agonizing. Secessionism has created insecurity and uncertainty.'
Mr Puigdemont and four of his former ministers fled to Brussels as Mr Rajoy kicked their government out of office and jailed all those who remained behind.
It was thought that Mr Puigdemont would seek diplomatic immunity. He has since said this is not the case, but repeatedly stated he will not get a fair trial in Spain.
He has been quizzed by Belgian authorities and released from custody on the condition that he remains in the country and attends future court summons.
Meanwhile supporters of ousted president Carles Puigdemont held rallies in Brussels, where he fled after his government was dissolved last month
Mr Puigdemont is expected to run in the fresh elections on behalf of his party, but may fight the campaign from Brussels
The demonstrations in Brussels came after thousands gathered in Barcelona to renew their calls for independence on Saturday night
Rajoy's conservative Popular Party has won three national elections in Spain since 2011, but it won less than 10 percent of the vote in Catalonia's election in 2015.
It continues to poll behind several other parties in the region, including the pro-business Citizens and the Socialists, which are both against secession.
Rajoy defended his decision to temporarily take over running the region under the Constitution, which allows central authorities to intervene in regions whose officials have gone outside the law.
Catalonia's separatists, and even some moderates, have criticized the measures as heavy-handed.
'Exceptional measures can only be taken when there is no other option, and we adopted them to stop the increasing attacks to peaceful coexistence' in Catalonia, Rajoy said.
'For centuries Catalonia and Spain have built a country that is multi-cultural and diverse, and the separatists won't be allowed to break the ties that bind us.'
Apart from the Catalonia government takeover, a judge has jailed 10 separatist leaders while investigating their roles in promoting secession.
The wife of a Tory MP suspended from the party over claims kept secret from him has urged Theresa May to stop the 'kangaroo courts' or risk more politicians dying.
Natalie Elphicke said her husband Charlie has been effectively 'thrown to the wolves' by the party who removed the whip and referred him to police a week ago.
She said the Dover MP was left to find out about his suspension from the media who had been tipped off before he had been informed.
Mrs Elphicke said politicians are being accused of being sex pests by an anonymous spreadsheet and social media posts throwing them and their families into anguish.
Highlighting the tragic case of Carl Sargeant, a Labour Welsh Assembly Member who took his own life following groping claims, she warned that more politicians could die unless there is an end to the stampeded to judgement.
Her intervention comes after Commons Speaker John Bercow warned that MPs are being treated worse than terrorists who are always given a fair trial.
Natalie Elphicke, pictured with her husband Charlie on election night, accused the Tories of throwing her husband 'to the wolves' and hanging him out to dry' over allegations which have been kept secret from him
Writing in The Sunday Times, Mrs Elphicke, a mother-of-two, tore into the Tory high command for cutting her husband adrift.
She wrote: 'I ask Theresa May to show us her compassion and her commitment to the principles of justice and our British way of life.
'When Parliament returns this week I ask her to stop the desperate madness, to put an end to these kangaroo courts by political central offices and to support a creation of a truly independent and non-political arbitrator.
'To support the rule of law, and allow all claims made by any complainant to be handled in a professional, independent way.
'Rushing to judgment has lead to the death of one man who lived to serve those who elected him. It must not be allowed to lead to any more.'
Mrs Elphicke said she found it hard to believe that Mrs May could have ordered her husband to be treated the way he has been.
And she laid the blame on bad advisers in the Tory high command and the new chief whip, Julian Smith.
She wrote: 'But this isnt just about me and my family.
'Many politicians stand accused by spreadsheet and social media, their families privately scared and grieving, their families shamed and alone.'
She added: 'This past week another man, a respected and hardworking assembly member of the Welsh assembly, Carl Sargeant, took his own life after having the whip removed without knowing of what he was accused.'
Chief whip Julian Smith, pictured heading into Downing Street this week, has been accused of putting the media above the welfare of Tory MPs by Natalie Elphicke. She urged Theresa May to put an end to the kangaroo courts and ensure MPs are treated properly
The mother-of-two said recalled the moment just over a week ago when her husband began receiving calls from journalists about his suspension.
Oblivious at first to what they were saying, he later received a call from the chief whip saying he was being suspended form the party.
She wrote: 'The phone started ringing from a flurry of media outlets. It was many more minutes before the chief whip spoke to Charlie.
'Pressed for a reason for his action, the chief whip refused to give one, saying only that it was his and the prime ministers decision.
Labour Welsh Assembly member Carl Sargeant was found dead in an apparent suicide after he faced groping claims. His family say Labour refused to tell him the details of the allegations he faced (file pic)
'He would not tell Charlie of what he was accused. Before we even had a chance to tell our children, the news spread like wildfire across the national media.'
She added: 'By his actions on November 3, the new chief whip showed himself to be a man without any thought as to the welfare and wellbeing of my husband and our children.
'He put the news cycle and spin before doing the right thing.'
She said her husband has been 'thrown to the wolves - hung out to dry' - by the party's hierarchy.
And she called for a total overhaul in how MPs who are facing accusations are treated, calling for the police to investigate matters.
She said the ordeal has put a major strain on her and her family, and that those accused must be treated as innocent until proven guilty.
She added: 'It happened to my husband. It happened to Carl Sargeant. It could happen to anyone.
'These are serious matters. Where issues are potentially criminal, complainants must go to the police.
'No ifs or buts. They are the proper authority, not a bunch of politicians and party men.'
People who commit violent crimes against animals are walking free from courts, with suspended sentences, community service orders or fines.
Since 2012, only 27 people out of 614 convicted for animal cruelty have spent any time behind bars, The Daily Telegraph reported.
In the past two years, only seven people out of 132 convicted in NSW were jailed, with their sentences averaging only four months.
RSPCA chief operating officer Andrew Clachers told the Telegraph only one per cent of all cases even reach court, with prosecution used as the final option.
Pictured: Bouncer the staffordshire terrier (in a healthier condition), whose throat was slit by his owner
The dog's throat was slit with a boning knife, and Bouncer was left to die from his wounds
A man who slit the throat of his staffordshire terrier, Bouncer, with a boning knife and left him to die, was given a year's worth of community service.
His owner Jacob Vanderschoot had pleaded guilty to serious animal cruelty causing prolonged suffering, but still walked free from the court.
Heartbreaking pictures show the dog, who was about three years old at the time, with a large cut on his neck which has been stitched up.
A video shared by the Animal Welfare League revealed Bouncer needed months of behavioural therapy to overcome his horrific past.
His owner, Jacob Vanderschoot, was given 12 months community service for his crime
Bailey, a Labrador, was found starved, lying next to an empty food bowl barely able to lift his head.
He weighed only 15kg when he was found, and pictures show the pup's ribs protruding from his body.
His owner, a woman from Claremont Meadows, was given a good behaviour bond of two years and ordered to pay some of Bailey's care costs - a fine of $5250.
Bailey the labrador was found with his ribs protruding, lying next to an empty food bowl
The owner was given a good behaviour bond and ordered to pay $5250 towards the pup's care
In Goulburn, several hundred dead sheep were found at a property.
Crows had pecked out the eyes of some sheep and one ewe was dragged about 100 metres, with skin ripped off on one side.
The property owner, Peter Reardon, was charged with aggravated cruelty, failure to provide veterinary treatment and failure to provide proper and sufficient food.
He was handed only a 12 month suspended sentence for his crimes.
Several hundred sheep were found dead and decomposing at a Goulburn property (pictured)
Some of the sheep had their eyes pecked out by birds (pictured) and one was dragged behind a quadbike. Their owner was given a suspended sentence
A puppy farmer in the same area pleaded guilty in 2016 to animal cruelty involving 71 dogs and puppies.
They were given a good behaviour bond by the court, and paid a total of $33,213 in fines.
A woman in Newcastle who faced court on her second animal cruelty offence for the same animal was given only a three-month suspended sentence.
Animal Welfare League inspector Jamie Wakefield told the Telegraph the sentences handed down for animal cruelty crimes were much too lenient.
'We have often found the sentences imposed for serious animal cruelty offences are too lenient,' he said.
'[The sentences also] often fail to stop the perpetrator from becoming a repeat offender.'
Seven schoolchildren drowned in Egypt's Nile Delta governorate of Beheira on Saturday after the tuk-tuk in which they were riding flipped into a canal, state-run MENA news agency reported.
The vehicle was carrying eight children when it crashed into the Mahmoudeya canal in Damanhour city, killing six girls and one boy, with one student surviving.
Security forces in Beheira arrested the tuk-tuk driver. He is being interrogated by the prosecution, MENA added.
The governorate decided to pay EGP 1000 for the family of the injured kid, and EGP 5000 for each family of the seven victims.
In 2015, Egypt saw 25,500 road fatalities, while the total number of car accidents was 14,500, according to a study published by official statistics body CAPMAS in August 2016.
The high rate of accidents is often attributed to poor road safety, badly maintained infrastructure and loosely enforced traffic regulations.
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A strain of plague which has already killed more than 140 Madagascar could mutate and become untreatable, an expert has warned.
There are fears the disease could spread to Europe and America via plane travel as Ebola did in 2014, with ten African nations already put on alert for signs of infection.
Now Professor Paul Hunter has warned that, while it would be easy for an advanced country to contain the disease in its current form, he fears that it could evolve into something far more dangerous.
A disease expert has spoken of his fears that the strain of plague infecting Madagascar could mutate and become untreatable (pictured, a victim of the disease)
Professor Paul Hunter warned that, while the disease could be easily contained by advanced countries in its current form, it could turn into something far deadlier
In total 2,000 people have been affected and 143 killed by the pneumonic plague in Madagascar's worst outbreak in 50 years
Hunter, a disease expert at the University of East Anglia, told the Daily Star: 'If it reaches the UK, Europe or the US it would be similar to the Ebola outbreak.
'We would have a few isolated cases but it shouldnt spread like it has in Madagascar.
'As with any disease, it's a real worry that it mutates and become untreatable.'
In total 2,000 people have been infected and 143 killed during the current outbreak in Madagascar which is the country's worst for 50 years.
The majority of those cases have been pneumonic plague, a more-deadly form of the bubonic plague which devastated Europe's population in the 1300s.
While the bubonic plague is spread through the bites of infected fleas, pneumonic plague is spread through the air, usually by coughing.
Symptoms include severe fever, headaches and coughing, with patients often coughing up blood.
Ten African nations have been put on high alert over fears the disease, which spreads through the air, could be carried overseas on aircraft
Police in Madagascar say they have been forced to seize the bodies of dead victims in order to bury them because distraught loved ones refused to part with them
Pneumonic plague is related to the bubonic plague which devastated Europe in the 1300s, but is more deadly and kills quicker
It can be fatal within 72 hours of infection, though can also be cured with a course of antibiotics if administered quickly.
Despite fears the plague could spread to other countries, there are signs that the infection in Madagascar is slowing down.
Dr. Manitra Rakotoarivony, Madagascar's director of health promotion, said: 'There is an improvement in the fight against the spread of the plague, which means that there are fewer patients in hospitals.
'There are almost no more deaths due to the plague... in recent days.'
Health checkpoints are in place across the country, with passengers travelling on buses and taxis needing to pass a check with a thermometer.
Banks and schools have a similar check, and the trade of infrared thermometers has soared, with prices of 100,000 to 220,000 ariary (27-60 euros, $31-$69).
Schools and universities have been closed with a ban issued on public gatherings.
The current outbreak is unusual as it has affected urban areas increasing the risk of transmission, according to the World Health Organization.
WHO has delivered 1.2 million doses of antibiotics to fight the disease while the Red Cross has been training hundreds of volunteers on the island to publicise preventative measures.
Public servants are being offered counselling in case the Australian public votes against legalising same-sex marriage.
Victoria's Labor government has been slammed for funding a stand-by 'supported space' as the Australian Bureau of Statistics announces on Wednesday the result of the voluntary postal vote.
Liberal frontbencher Tim Smith said the 'LGBTI counsellors' were a waste of money.
Public servants are being offered counselling in case the Australian public votes against legalising same-sex marriage
'This money should be used to pay for counselling for victims of the crime tsunami under Daniel Andrews not for those who have simply taken part in a democratic process,' he told the Herald Sun.
Premier Daniel Andrews' department has defended the program, arguing the announcement would be 'particularly challenging' for some Victorian public service employees.
'The marriage equality debate has been held over a prolonged period and is having a substantial impact on some VPS staff,' a spokeswoman told the newspaper.
While opinion polls consistently show the 'Yes' case winning comfortably, Victoria's Department of Premier and Cabinet said two counsellors, who specialise in gay and lesbian issues, would be on hand to speak with all state public servants.
Victoria's Socialist Left Labor faction Premier Daniel Andrews leads a government with an 'LGBTI inclusion plan'
The Victorian government says a majority vote would be traumatising for some public servants
The funding of specialist counsellors comes as Australians await the results of the $122 million voluntary postal vote on redefining the Marriage Act.
Mr Andrews leads a government that this year unveiled an 'LGBTI inclusion plan', which includes a so-called 'LGBTI Network', 'ally' events and homosexual diversity training.
'Attitudes and ideas that might be adverse to LGBTI inclusion can be the result of conscious and unconscious behaviours,' the plan said.
Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull along with every state premier and territory chief minister have advocated a 'Yes' vote on same-sex marriage.
The Prime Minister has lost his parliamentary majority after a series of embarrassing citizenship scandals, and on Sunday he lost his 23rd consecutive Newspoll.
But Malcolm Turnbull does not appear to have been affected by the mess he left behind.
In Hong Kong for the APEC and EAS summits, Mr Turnbull has been pictured high-fiving children and taking selfies with locals.
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How do I look? Turnbull posted his selfie to Twitter over the weekend, though it appears President Tran Dai Quang did not squeeze in close enough to the photographic trio pictured
Pictured: Malcolm Turnbull takes a selfie with Vietnam's President Tran Dai Quang , US President Donald Trump and China's President Xi Jinping at APEC
Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull is pictured high-fiving children during his visit to the Australian International School in Hong Kong
Even when schmoozing other politicians, Mr Turnbull has been somewhat relaxed.
He was seen posing for a selfie at the APEC summit on Saturday with Vietnam's President Tran Dai Quang, US President Donald Trump and China's President Xi Jinping.
The Prime Minister was also spotted sitting down with Luke Nguyen in Vietnam to try banh mi for the first time ahead of the APEC summit.
Mr Turnbull told the Vietnamese MasterChef host, and reporters, the pork roll was 'superb'.
'This is a totally cosmopolitan dish - a French baguette and a Vietnamese filling,' he told SBS.
Let me take a selfie: Mr Turnbull practiced his selfie skills with eager families while in Hong Kong
Stopping for snacks: While in Vietnam, Mr Turnbull sat down with a celebrity chef for his first taste of Banh Mi
Flashing his pearly whites: Many fans had their phones out to take selfies with Mr Turnbull, who seemed all too happy to oblige
Meanwhile, back at home, Mr Turnbull has lost his parliamentary majority as MP John Alexander resigned over his dual citizenship on Saturday.
Mr Alexander is the seventh federal politician to lose their job to the citizenship scandal that has had many crying for an early election.
Of the seven who have left Parliament because of their confirmed or suspected dual citizenship, three have been members of the Coalition - which was only just able to form a majority Government after last year's election.
The losses have proved devastating to the Government, who no longer have a majority.
Liberal member for Bennelong John Alexander resigned on Saturday over citizenship concerns
Nothing to smile about: The new loss came just one day before Turnbull lost his 23rd consecutive Newspoll
Adding to the mess, Mr Turnbull on Sunday lost his 23rd consecutive Newspoll.
When he challenged Tony Abbott for the leadership in September 2015 he cited his 30 consecutive Newspoll losses as reason for taking him on, and this reasoning could leave him open to another spill in the near future.
One Nation's Pauline Hanson appeared ready for change when she spoke to Sky News on Monday night.
'Malcolm Turnbull should step aside. I'm sorry, he's not a leader for this country. People have had a gutful of it,' she said.
'People have had a gutful': Pauline Hanson is calling for Malcolm Turnbull to step down as Prime Minister
Last week, Greens leader Richard Di Natale told Andrew Bolt on Sky News it could be a matter of months before Australia returned to the polls to pick out a new Government.
'I don't think the prime minister's going to survive the Christmas period,' he said on Wednesday night.
'My prediction is that we'll be going to the polls within a matter of months.
'This is a government that is completely divided and it is only a matter of time before I think we see an election and a change of government.'
Arizona Senator John McCain slammed President Donald Trump for saying he believed that Russia didn't meddle in the 2016 US election
Arizona Senator John McCain has slammed President Donald Trump for saying he believes that Russia didn't meddle in the 2016 US election.
McCain's critique comes after Trump said he believed Russian President Vladimir Putin's denial of interfering on Saturday during the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit.
'There's nothing "America First" about taking the word of a KGB colonel over that of the American intelligence community,' McCain, a Republican, said in a statement.
'There's no "principled realism" in cooperating with Russia to prop up the murderous Assad regime, which remains the greatest obstacle to a political solution that would bring an end to the bloodshed in Syria.
'Vladimir Putin does not have America's interests at heart. To believe otherwise is not only naive but also places our national security at risk.'
'There's nothing "America First" about taking the word of a KGB colonel over that of the American intelligence community,' McCain said in a statement
At a separate side meeting with Putin during the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit, Trump made his comments of support to reporters.
'He said he didn't meddle. He said he didn't meddle,' Trump said.
'I asked him again. You can only ask so many times. I just asked him again. He said he absolutely did not meddle in our election. He did not do what they are saying he did.'
Trump continued stating that the Russian president always denied the accusations whenever the two had a chance to meet.
He added: 'I believe, I really believe that when he tells me that, he means it.'
'But he says, "I didn't do that." I think he is very insulted by it, which is not a good thing for our country.'
At a separate side meeting with Putin during the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit, Trump made his comments of support to reporters
Also included in his remarks were a condemnation of former FBI director James Comey, former CIA director John Brennan and former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper.
'I mean, give me a break, they are political hacks,' Trump said.
'So you look at it, I mean, you have Brennan, you have Clapper, and you have Comey. Comey is proven now to be a liar and he is proven now to be a leaker. So you look at that and you have President Putin very strongly, vehemently says he had nothing to do with them.'
Trump also blasted former FBI director James Comey (left), former CIA director John Brennan (right) and former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper
During a press conference in Hanoi, Vietnam, on Saturday Trump clarified his sentiments regarding the election and the investigation surrounding it.
'I'm surprised that there's any conflict on this,' said Trump.
'What I said there is that I believe he believes that - and that's very important for somebody to believe. I believe that he feels that he and Russia did not meddle in the election.'
Taking a firmer position, Trump added: 'As to whether I believe it or not, I'm with our agencies, especially as currently constituted with their leadership. I believe in our intel agencies, our intelligence agencies. I've worked with them very strongly.'
Trump said: 'So you look at it, I mean, you have Brennan, you have Clapper (pictured), and you have Comey. Comey is proven now to be a liar and he is proven now to be a leaker. So you look at that and you have President Putin very strongly, vehemently says he had nothing to do with them'
'As currently led by fine people, I believe very much in our intelligence agencies,' Trump said, backing the CIA, NSA, FBI and the Director of National Intelligence.
The President's flip-floppy rejection of the evidence that points to Russia meddling with the election has increased following indictments of Trump's former campaign staff.
Last month, special counsel Robert Mueller indicted Trump's former Paul Manafort, and his former campaign adviser, Rick Gates, for collusion with Russia.
He is said to be building a obstruction-of-justice case against Trump and he decision to fire Comey in May. While the White House had first asserted that the firing was in relation to Clinton, Trump would then tell NBC's Lester Holt that 'this Russia thing' helped aid his decision.
George Papdopoulos, a foreign policy adviser for the campaign, was also arrested in July and plead guilty in October to one count of lying to federal agents about his contacts with the Russian government.
It is believed that he is now cooperating with further investigations.
The father of an eight-year-old girl who died in a horror crash while drag racing said his heart is 'in a million pieces' and urges other parents to 'hug their little ones tight'.
Ian J Board lost his youngest daughter Anita on Sunday afternoon after she lost control of her vehicle and crashed into a cement barrier at Perth Motorplex in Kwinana yesterday.
She was trying to get her racing licence at the time.
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Ian J Board lost his youngest daughter Anita on Sunday afternoon after she lost control of her vehicle
An eight-year-old Perth girl (pictured) has died in a crash while trying to get her drag racing licence, three days after reaching the minimum age to compete
Mr Board has now addressed his devastated friends and family in a Facebook post, recognising he will need their 'love and support' in the 'days, weeks and months ahead.'
'Not much to say but hug your little ones tight. Remind them that you love them,' his post began.
'We know the racing family are the best bunch ever. It's the reason why our girls fell in love with the sport. It's the wonderful people not just the driving. So many messages... will get to them eventually. All the love in the world from Ian, Sonja and Zara.'
It was only three days ago the family celebrated Anita's eighth birthday - commemorating the day by go karting in preparation for 'hitting the dragstrip' on Saturday for her licence.
'Happy Birthday to our big little girl. Wishing you life long memories and fun. Mum, Dad & Zara xxx,' the post read.
She was later taken to Princess Margaret Hospital in a critical condition to undergo emergency surgery
Anita is believed to have lost control of her 210cc engine dragster (pictured) before slamming into a wall at the Perth Motorplex at Kwinana Beach
Anita passed away after suffering 'severe injuries' at Princess Margaret Hospital on Sunday.
Pictures of the young girl on her father's social media account show her standing alongside a 210CC purple dragster called 'Pony Power' emblazoned with the My Little Pony character Rainbow Dash, while her older sister Zara has a blue-streaked dragster named 'Night Fury'.
Members of the tight-knit dragster community have changed their Facebook profile pictures to the Rainbow Dash character in honour of the little girl.
Before Anita's death, Mr Board posted a photo of the girls in a car, saying 'Our angel setting (out) on what was meant to be a day to remember for all the right reasons. My heart in a million pieces atm.'
The siblings were among 26 entrants for the Goldenstates Junior Dragster event.
Racing was temporarily suspended while police investigated.
Perth Motorplex released a statement on their Facebook page, offering their thoughts and condolences to the family
The accident occurred at Perth Motorplex (pictured) during a junior competition
Police want to speak with anyone who saw or took video of the crash, and are preparing a report for the coroner.
Australian National Drag Racing Association (ANDRA) the venue and motorsports lovers posted messages of support for the Board family on social media.
'Everyone at the Australian National Drag Racing Association extends its sincere and deepest condolences to Anita's family, friends and the wider drag racing community at this tragic time,' the association said in an emailed statement.
'ANDRA will continue to work with VenuesWest and continue to assist police with their investigations while supporting Anita's family, and ask that the privacy of the family is respected at this tragic time.'
Friends and family members of the eight-year-old have rallied together
An eight-year-old girl has died in Perth after she crashed her car in a drag racing competition on Saturday
Under ANDRA rules, racers aged between eight and 10 must not exceed 96km/h, but it is understood the top speeds of vehicles driven by beginners are much lower.
Competitors in junior drag racing can range in age from eight to 17 and are placed in three classes depending on experience.
The beginners drive what are known as 'tin pots', reaching top speeds of 40-50km/h.
Mike Sprylan of West Coast Junior Dragsters said it wasn't unusual to see eight-year-olds competing in the sport.
'They get into all sport at that age,' he said.
Donald Trump has donned traditional Philippine formal attire to meet with President Rodrigo Duterte at a glitzy event in Manila, just days after the hardline leader admitted murdering a man when he was a teenager.
The US President was greeted by Duterte as he arrived with other world leaders to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations on Sunday.
Their meeting comes just days after the Filipino President admitted to stabbing a person to death as a teenager 'over a look' and hundreds staged violent anti-Trump protests over his arrival.
Donald Trump met with Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte at a glitzy event in Manila on Sunday for the 50th anniversary of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations
Trump arrived in Manila earlier on Sunday to attend two international world leader summits and close out his five-country tour of Asia.
Trump and Duterte shook hands twice and exchanged pleasantries at the glitzy event on Sunday night before fellow world leaders posed for a group photo and everyone filed into dinner.
Trump joined others in wearing Philippine formal attire - the Barong Tagalog, or long-sleeved white shirt.
Duterte sat to Trump's left at dinner and they engaged in conversation before the first course was served. At one point they were pictured toasting with champagne.
Trump and Duterte are set to hold more formal talks on Monday. The US President was originally scheduled to depart Manila on Monday but he added a day to the visit so he could more fully participate in one of the summits.
Duterte - sometimes described as the 'Trump of the East' because of his brash and mercurial style - had said earlier on Sunday that he was 'sure' Trump wouldn't raise human rights concerns when they met after the US President previously praised his deadly drug war.
The 72-year-old leader had said earlier in the week he would tell Trump to 'lay off' if he broached the subject.
Trump and Duterte shook hands twice and exchanged pleasantries as he arrived at the event
Trump joined his fellow leaders in wearing Philippine formal attire - the Barong Tagalog, or long-sleeved white shirt
Duterte won elections last year after promising to eradicate illegal drugs with an unprecedented crackdown that would see up to 100,000 people killed.
Since he has taken office, police have reported killing 3,967 people in the crackdown. Another 2,290 people have been murdered in drug-related crimes, while thousands of other deaths remain unsolved, according to government data.
Many Filipinos back Duterte, believing he is taking necessary measures to fight crime, but rights groups warn he may be orchestrating a crime against humanity.
Critics say executions are taking place with zero accountability, allegations the police reject.
Amnesty International on Saturday called on Trump to raise the issue with Duterte, either publicly or privately.
Trump, who has been criticized at home for neglecting rights issues in dealings abroad, in May had praised Duterte for doing an 'unbelievable job on the drug problem'.
Duterte said last year he would be 'happy to slaughter' three million drug addicts before branding then US president Barack Obama a 'son of a w***e' for criticizing the drug war and telling him to 'go to hell'.
Relations between the two nations then deteriorated, but ties began to improve when Trump told Duterte in a telephone call in April that he was doing a 'great job' with his campaign against narcotics.
Trump poses alongside Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte and his partner Cielito Avanceno
Despite Trump's praise, Duterte delivered yet another verbal attack on the US saying in July that he would never visit America because he has seen it and 'it's lousy'.
'There will never be a time that I will go to America during my term, or even thereafter,' Duterte said. 'I've seen America, and it's lousy.'
Duterte, who is notorious for his crackdown on drugs, has been open in the past about his own violent behavior.
Rodrigo Duterte: 'The Trump of the East' Rodrigo Duterte, like Trump, is a 'say it like it is' president. He called Barack Obama a 'son of a w***e' and Philip Goldberg, then US envoy to the Philippines, a 'f****t'. So far he has not insulted Trump. The pair actually had a 'friendly' phone-call after Trump was elected. Trump is under pressure from Congress to criticize Duterte's war on drugs in which thousands have been executed or imprisoned without trial - but he previously said Duterte is doing 'an unbelievable job on drugs'. Duterte said if any leader tried to intervene in his drug war he would tell them: 'Lay off. That is not your business. That is my business.' Advertisement
Back in December last year, he said he had personally shot dead criminal suspects when he was mayor of southern Davao city to set an example for the police. His then spokesman later sought to clarify the remarks, saying those killings were during a 'legitimate police action'.
He made the shocking confession that he stabbed someone as a teen while speaking to the local Filipino community in the Vietnamese city of Danang on Thursday.
'When I was a teenager, I would go in and out of jail. I'd have rumbles here, rumbles there,' said Duterte, who was in Danang for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit.
'At the age of 16, I already killed someone. A real person, a rumble, a stabbing. I was just 16 years old. It was just over a look. How much more now that I am president?'
Trump's arrival in the Philippines was met with violent protests by hundreds of left-wing activists who were marched against US militarism.
They were blocked by police with riot shields as they chanted and held signs reading: 'Ban Trump - Fight US Imperialist War and Plunder'.
The anti-war protesters fear Trump wants more military bases in the Philippines and will drag their country into the North Korea conflict.
Hundreds of left-wing activists in Manila marched on the US embassy to protest US militarism
Protesters throw red paint to a picture of U.S. President Donald Trump during a rally against his visit in Manila
A bloodied female hunt saboteur was hospitalised following a furious clash with a male opponent as she tried to monitor an event.
Footage filmed by fellow saboteurs shows the woman having an angry row with the unidentified man in a field, before she was pushed down onto a muddy track.
Seconds later the hunt supporter appears to slap or swipe at her face leaving her with cuts which required hospital treatment.
A woman the monitors claim to be the hunt master then claims the victim is 'not a woman' before branding her a 'monster'.
The West Midlands Hunt Saboteurs (WMHS) said the incident involving the Warwickshire Hunt members on Thursday in the village of Birdingbury, near Rugby, is now being investigated by county police.
The hunt supporter appeared to slap or swipe at the saboteur's face, leaving her with cuts
The bloodied female hunt saboteur was left with a cut eye which needed hospital treatment
The five minute video - which was recorded by a male saboteur - starts with the woman confronting a man on horseback, who tells her that he is hunting rabbits.
Shortly afterwards, a man in a brown fleece approaches them and says: 'You're not welcome here. Get gone, now.'
As the cameraman stumbles, the angry men then can be seen approaching the woman, and dramatic still images appear to show him slapping her across the face.
The furious man then shouts 'you do what you want, now get out', as he pushes the female saboteur - wearing a white jumper - to the ground.
Lying on the muddy footpath, she can then be heard saying to her radio 'I have just been assaulted. I've just be slapped in the face.'
The woman, with a cut above the eyelid, then gets up and tells the man 'so you hit women?' to which he responds 'you can hit me, if you want'.
The West Midlands Hunt Saboteurs had a furious row with this man, dressed in a brown jumper
After an angry row the man in the brown fleece shoved the saboteur onto the muddy path
The footage then cuts to the pair talking to another man sitting in a car, who apologises to the woman and admits: 'That shouldn't have happened.'
The female then approaches a car full of well-dressed men and women, who are asked about the alleged assault.
It was at that point the alleged victim is told 'you're not a woman'.
When asked what the saboteur is, the lady bluntly responds: 'A monster.'
This man sitting in his car apologised to the woman and said: 'That shouldn't have happened'
This woman told the female saboteur she was 'not a woman' but a 'monster'
A spokesperson for West Midlands Hunt Saboteurs said: 'We were concerned that the hunt were hunting a fox and that the hounds were heading towards a busy main road.
'Suddenly two hunt supporters approach us and start shouting aggressively before attacking us.
'It shows what type of people fox hunters are that they think it acceptable for men to attack women, punch them and then shove them over from behind.'
Lee Moon, spokesperson for the Hunt Saboteurs Association, added: 'Fox hunting, by its very nature, is a violent activity and it is only a short leap from using violence towards animals to using violence against people.
'This was a completely unprovoked attack.
'Fox hunting is a breeding ground for normalising violence with some very questionable attitudes towards women. We ask the question: 'who are the real monsters here?''
The Warwickshire Hunt describes itself as a 'friendly organisation' on its website, and promises that visitors 'will always be assured of the three Ws a Warm Warwickshire Welcome.'
The hunt currently has six joint masters, including three women.
A spokesman for the group said: 'The Warwickshire Hunt acts within the law to comply with the Hunting Act 2004.
'The Hunt does not condone any form of violence, even when faced with extreme provocation, personal harassment and other serial offences.'
Warwickshire Police did not return requests for comment last night.
Leicestershire Police are investigating that incident.
Last month a furious farmer drove his quad bike at the West Midlands Hunt Saboteurs and threw a flurry of punches in a shocking attack.
The video was filmed during the hunt near the Leicestershire village of Ratcliffe Culey.
The Tories are 'losing the battle of ideas' and must harness the zeal of Margaret Thatcher to 'save Britain from a Corbyn government', Lord Saatchi today warns.
The Tory peer, who with his brother Charles came up with some of the party's most successful ad campaigns, said there is a desperate need to 'fight back'.
He said Jeremy Corbyn's hard-left Labour Party was busy telling Britons that the 'rich get richer and the rest get screwed'.
He urged the Tories to take on the threat by making the positive case for free markets and conservatism, rather than attacking Labour for harking back to the 1970s.
In a joint article with Graham Brady, Tory MP and head of the influential backbench 22 Committee, he called for a new approach.
Former Tory Party chairman Lord Saatchi said the Conservatives must recapture the zeal of Margaret Thatcher's era and come up with policies like her flagship 'right to buy' scheme if it is to win back disaffected voters
They said Theresa May's government needs to some up with eye-catching game changer policies like Mrs Thatcher's right to buy programme.
The intervention is an attempt by the influential pair to kick start the re-invigoration of the Conservative Party after its election humiliation.
They wrote in The Telegraph: 'Politics is a battle of ideas. And at the moment, the wrong ideas are winning.
Tory MP Graham Brady (pictured at party conference last month) chairman of the influential 1922 backbench committee, is launching an initiative with Lord Saatchi to reinvigorate Tory Party after their disastrous election
'The British people think that business cant be trusted. That the free market isnt working. That the rich get richer, and the rest get screwed.
'That is why, rather than being terrified at the prospect of a hard-Left government, many of them actively welcome it to the point where at the last election, Jeremy Corbyn was only 2,227 votes from power.'
The pair are spearheading a new initiative Centre for Policy Studies think-tank to fast-track new policy ideas from the younger Tories elected in 2015 and 2017.
They said Britons want to 'be inspired' and tap back into the 'same zealous spirit' Mrs Thatcher did.
Huge challenges like automation and globalization loom on the horizon, and need addressing through thought-out policy, they say.
And the PM is throwing her support behind the initiative, which will be launched formally in London tomorrow.
Mrs May says it was thanks to groundwork by the CPS that the Conservatives 'successfully made the case for free markets and won the battle of ideas in the Seventies and Eighties'.
And she adds: 'Today we must win that argument again for a new generation.'
While Home Secretary Amber Rudd will deliver the keynote speech at the launch - in a sign which can be interpreted as leadership maneuvering while Mrs May's administration is on the rack.
Lords Saatchi's advertising agency came up with some of the most eye-catching media campaigns for the Tories over the years.
This includes the 1979 poster which showed a long dole queue with the tagline 'Labour isn't working'.
And the 1997 poster 'New Labour New Danger' which showed a picture of Tony Blair with evil devil eyes.
Emmerdale star Scarlett Archer showed her support for women speaking out against sexual harassment as she shared her own upsetting account.
The actress, who plays Nell Fairfax in the ITV soap, said she was left crying after being 'sexually harassed' while on the Tube this weekend.
Hitting out at the alleged attacker in a furious Twitter post, the 27-year-old wrote: 'To the guy who just sexually harassed me on the tube - I hate you.
'I hate you SO much but I didn't have the guts to say anything. I just took it. Then cried. Like too many women. I'm glad we're getting angry.'
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Emmerdale star Scarlett Archer said she was left crying after being 'sexually harassed' while on the Tube in London this weekend.
Her comments about the sexual harassent were met by a flood of support from followers
Archer said she broke down in tears after the man sexually harassed her. She said, however, that she's 'glad' women are 'getting angry'
She continued: 'Btw, I know this isn't a gender thing and plenty of men have to go through this too.
'It's just heartbreaking because all down to respecting your fellow humans. All my love is with you guys. I love you so much.'
Her comments were met by a flood of support from followers, with one replying: 'Hope you're ok Scarlett such an awful thing to happen and so upsetting.'
Another wrote: 'That's disgusting Scarlett hope you're OK ... don't let the scum drag you down ... Hopefully karma will do its thing.'
One fan urged: 'Hope that you are okay ... please please report this to the Police. He cannot be allowed to get away with it or be in a position to do this to another female.'
Archer played the role of Nell Fairfax on 46 episodes of Emmerdale over 2017. Her character befriended Jai Sharma, played by Chris Bisson, after meeting in a narcotics anonymous program.
She has also appeared on The Royals, Call the Midwife, and White Island.
After she wrote about her experience on Twitter, her fans were quick to support her with kind messages
The actress plays Nell Fairfax in the ITV soap Emmerdale. She's pictured above left in a scene from the show
Her comments come amid a wave of complaints made by actors and actresses about inappropriate sexual behaviour following a number of allegations against movie mogul Harvey Weinstein.
Archer played the role of Nell Fairfax on 46 episodes of Emmerdale over 2017. Her character befriended Jai Sharma, played by Chris Bisson, after meeting in a narcotics anonymous program
Weinstein, actor Kevin Spacey and comedian Louis CK are among the most prominent names to have been accused.
Five women detailed sexual misconduct accusations against Emmy-winning comedian Louis C.K. in The New York Times on Thursday.
He admitted to the misconduct alleged against him in a statement on Friday and apologized for his actions.
The New York Times reported in October that Weinstein, 65, had reached eight previously undisclosed settlements with women who accused him of sexual harassment and unwanted physical contact.
The New Yorker magazine reported that 13 women had claimed that Weinstein sexually harassed or assaulted them.
Weinstein has denied all of the accusations against him.
Archer's fans said they were 'sending lots of love' after she expressed anger over the tube incident
Archer's comments come amid a wave of complaints made by actors and actresses about inappropriate sexual behaviour following a number of allegations against movie mogul Harvey Weinstein
Earlier this month, Spacey apologized to actor Anthony Rapp, who had accused him of trying to seduce him in 1986 when Rapp was 14.
Spacey's representatives later said he was seeking treatment.
The allegations have inspired an online campaign, tagged #MeToo, that has encouraged men and women in all walks of life to reveal their own experiences with sexual harassment and assault, often years after they occurred.
Thousands of people are expected to march in Los Angeles on Sunday to support victims of sexual assault and harassment, inspired by the campaign.
"The conversation around harassment in Hollywood will broaden to include other industries if we force it to! Its not going to do it on its own," organizers said on a Facebook page for the event.
The events are scheduled to include a march to CNN's headquarters in Los Angeles and a rally at the intersection of Hollywood and Highland Avenue in the heart of Hollywood.
faces preliminary charges of reckless driving and operating while intoxicated causing death
An Indiana volunteer firefighter was allegedly driving drunk when he crashed his truck into three other vehicles, killing one firefighter.
Three firefighters from the Montgomery and Cannelburg, Indiana, fire departments were responding to a call close to 10pm when another arrived on the scene.
Colby Blake, 26, hit the rear of another truck with his truck when he arrived and kept going to strike another and eventually the firefighter.
Colby Blake, 26, (left) hit the rear of another truck with his truck when he arrived at a Indiana crash scene and kept going to strike another and eventually hit Kendall Murphy (right) who died
Kendall Murphy had been standing next to a car when he was hit.
Blake would eventually stop but only after he hit a third firefighter's vehicle, according to police.
Murphy, 27, died on the scene.
News of Murphy's death hit the two towns - which have a close relationship with each other - hard.
'This is going to have a tremendous impact on these folks,' said ISP Sgt. Philip Hensley to the IndyStar.
Kendall Murphy had been standing next to a car when he was hit. Blake would eventually stop but only after he hit a third firefighter's vehicle, according to police
'Our hearts certainly go out to the families involved.'
Blake, from Cannelburg, was not injured but did have a blood alcohol level of .21 per cent which is more than double the legal limit of .08,
The man faces preliminary charges of reckless driving and operating while intoxicated causing death, according to the news release.
Blake is currently being held at the Daviess County jail.
The firefighters had responded to the crash site along with the Daviess County Sheriff's Department because there was a driver who was stuck inside his vehicle.
He too was arrested on a preliminary charge of drunk driving, according to Hensley.
Ahead of his first-ever visit to Cairo, Al-Ahram daily newspaper interviewed the seventh prime minister since the Tunisian revolution in 2011, Youssef Chahed.
Chahed met with Egypt's President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi in Cairo on Sunday to discuss bilateral relations between Egypt and Tunisia.
Chahed, who assumed his post in August 2016, said that he was happy to be visiting Cairo, adding that he has always seen Egypt as an important cultural and political venue.
On the future of Egyptian-Tunisian relations, Chahed said that the governments of both countries should exert efforts to boost bilateral relations.
"Economic ties between the two countries remain weak considering what can be achieved," Chahed said.
The PM also said that the challenges and difficulties that have hit the economies of Egypt and Tunisia have led to decreased economic cooperation.
"When I announced that I would be visiting Egypt, many businessmen expressed their desire to join the visit to discover investment opportunities," the PM said.
"We as political leaders bear the responsibility of creating opportunities for the private sector to develop and increase trade between the two countries," Chahed said, adding that Egyptian businessmen "have an equal opportunity to come and invest in Tunisia."
Chahed also said that the visit would focus on bilateral relations and activating the Joint High Committee between Egypt and Tunisia, which has not been held since 2015.
Chahed is accompanied on his visit by a delegation of ministers who will meet with their Egyptian counterparts to follow up on the implementation of recent agreements and discuss further cooperation.
"I believe that a high level of cooperation can be achieved as Egypt and Tunisia share many cultural and historical ties, as well as a unique relationship between African countries," Chahed said, adding that Tunisia has historically had a good reputation among other African nations.
"[Tunisian President Beji Caid Essebsi] has always been keen on boosting relations within the African continent," the PM said, adding that he recently visited three African countries and would visit three others soon.
"There is a good opportunity for Egypt and Tunisia to partner in investment in Africa," he said.
On the possibility of protests erupting in Tunisia, Chahed said that protesting is a right guaranteed by the constitution.
On combating terrorism, Chahed said that three major terrorist attacks that hit Tunisia in 2015 have led the country to take several new security measures in response.
Chahed said that the budget allocated to Tunisia's interior and defense ministries have been doubled, and that the country has established a 500km security system on its border with Libya.
"The situation in Libya has had an effect on us; this is because Tunisian security is tied to Libyan security and vice versa. The measures undertaken were successful, and security and stability have been achieved," he said.
Chahed added that he predicts that by the end of the year, Tunisia will have hosted 6.5 million tourists, including 1.5 million Europeans.
"The return of security has made the return of tourism possible; however, terror threats remain a threat as in the rest of the world," he said.
On the situation between Lebanon and Saudi Arabia, the Tunisian prime minister said that his country does not interfere in the affairs of other states.
"Tunisia has maintained good relations with its Gulf brothers and other Arab states," he said, stressing that the Arab world does not need more conflicts.
"Our nations have major aspirations. Such crises do not add anything to the Arab nation. As politicians, our aim is to accomplish peoples' wishes, and the wish here is unity and rapprochement," Chahed said.
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The way Britons speak is changing rapidly due to the 'drastic erosion' of quintessentially British words such as 'quite', 'rather' and 'fairly'.
New academic research which analysed language trends over the course of the 20th century found there was a decline in 'gradable adverbs', which allows people to reduce or increase emphasis of a phrase, meaning words like 'extremely', 'terribly' and 'absolutely' are also in decline.
Britons are increasingly mimicking the American-style of speak, which is far more direct and to the point.
Professor Paul Baker, a linguistics expert from Lancaster University who carried out the research, said: 'Americans want to get to the point and say what they mean, whereas British people want to avoid conflict so use downtoners like "quites" and "rathers".
Brief Encounter (1945) starring Celia Johnson as Laura Jesson and Trevor Howard as Dr. Alec Harvey
'We are more cautious and apologetic, but it can also come across as long winded and means we take a bit longer to get to the point.
'My academic head tells me that it is an interesting change. But with a British person's head, I think it is a bit of a shame as it is a mark of identity.'
He said that a possible reason for the decline of gradable adverbs is that they are now seen as a middle or an upper-class way of speaking.
Prof Baker added: 'There is an awareness of that... people don't want to be associated with the upper classes, so they level out their language.'
Classic British films such as Brief Encounter are 'absolutely packed' with gradable adverbs, Professor Paul Baker said. His research found the decline of adverbs was most pronounced between 1930 and 1960s, before leveling off up to the 1990s.
Yet recently, Prof Baker's research has found there has been a steep decline from the 1990s to the present day.
The research was compiled using vast swathes of published writing, using a mixture of human analysis and computer-aided software to spot changes in the language.
People don't want to be associated with the upper classes, so they level out their language
There were a range of sources used, including newspapers, magazines, books, journals and academic sources, which examined trends in British and American English.
He admitted he did not examine the most recent examples used in conversation, adding: 'You'd need to go to a playground in Hackney and see what teenagers are saying.'
The research focused around language trends which have entered the mainstream and are being used by 'fuddy duddy middle-class people'.
The pioneering research found that American English is leading the charge for change, with British English nearly 30 years behind.
Included in the research was the use of shorter sentences and words which combine words with apostrophes. There has been an increase in the use of abbreviations, such as 'will not' becomes 'won't'.
The full research has been published in 'American and British English: Divided by A Common Language'.
An astronaut was knocked out and a pirate was battered in a tug-of-war fight over a crate of cider.
The two victims had just left a fancy dress party in Reading and were walking home with several cans of drink contained in a crate which one of them was carrying.
Part way into their journey they were attacked yesterday by two thugs, who came out of a Renault Scenic people carrier.
One of the attackers asked the pirate for one of the cans of cider. When he refused, a fight broke out in which both party-goers were seriously assaulted.
The dramatic robbery ended up with the astronaut and pirate being taken to hospital by ambulance.
An astronaut was knocked out and a pirate was battered in a tug-of-war fight over a crate of cider (file photos posed by models)
Police appealed for help from the public in tracking down the two assailants.
A spokesman for Thames Valley Police said: 'We are appealing for witnesses following a robbery in Beresford Road, Reading, near to the junction with Audley Street.
'At 1.20am two men left a fancy dress party in Audley Street, one dressed as an astronaut and the other dressed as a pirate.
'As they were walking from Audley Street to Beresford Road they were approached by two men in a dark blue Renault Scenic who engaged in conversation with them.
'One of the victims, dressed as the pirate, was carrying several cans of cider in a crate. The driver of the Renault asked the victim for one of the cans, and the victim refused.
'The other man in the Renault, the passenger, then exited the vehicle and confronted the victim, grabbing the crate.
'The driver then also got out of the vehicle and began to assault the other victim, dressed as the astronaut.
A spokesman for Thames Valley Police said: 'We are appealing for witnesses following a robbery in Beresford Road, Reading, near to the junction with Audley Street'
'The driver punched the victim, knocking him unconscious. The victim sustained injuries to his mouth and jaw, and was taken to hospital for treatment. He has since been discharged.
'The first offender, the driver, is described as a white man aged between 18 and 25 years old, between 5ft 8ins and 5ft 10ins tall with a slim build and short blond hair.
'The second offender, the passenger, is described as a white man also aged between 18 and 25 years old, between 6ft 1in and 6ft 2ins tall and with a slim build. Both men were wearing dark clothing.'
Teachers should allow primary school children to change their gender in school without seeking parents' consent, the Scottish government has said.
Parents who voice concerns about their children sharing a changing room or toilet with transgender children will be explained about the 'ethos of inclusion' by school staff under the new guidelines.
School staff have also been given the green light to inform local authorities about parents who 'struggle' with their child's transgender identity.
The official guidelines, produced by LGBT Youth Scotland, tells teachers 'not to deny' trans children's identity 'or overly question their understanding of their gender identity'.
The report has since been endorsed by Holyrood and 16 local authorities in Scotland.
It goes on to add that children as young as three develop their identity and 'should be supported to explore and express their identity regardless of their age'.
The official guidelines, produced by LGBT Youth Scotland, tells teachers 'not to deny' trans children's identity 'or overly question their understanding of their gender identity'
It advises that 'it is best to not disclose information to parents or carers without the young person's permission' and explicitly says this is also perfectly acceptable at a primary school level. The document also says parents should also not be told if their children are sharing rooms with trans pupils on school trips.
Children who feel uncomfortable changing or using lavatory a trans child is using should wait 'until after the trans person is done', the report says.
It is best to not disclose information to parents or carers without the young person's permission
It comes after the UK government held back on consultation on changes to the Gender Recognition Act. These controversial new changes which were due for consultation in autumn this year would allow anyone wanting to change their gender by simply informing authorities that they wanted to do so - yet this will not happen until at least the end of November.
Stephanie Davies-Arai, who runs Transgender Trend, a website for parents questioning the diagnosis and treatment of children as transgender, said: 'This is an alarming document. Schools should be basing their policies on the needs of all children, not looking at one group at the expense of other children, particularly girls.'
The Department for Education said: 'We will be consulting on amendments to the Gender Recognition Act in order to de-medicalise and streamline the process for trans people. We will be publishing the formal consultation shortly.'
The European Union's Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier has said pets won't be able to cross The Channel if the UK walks out of Europe without a deal.
Mr Barnier revealed today that he is making contingency plans for the 'possible' failure of divorce talks with Britain, which he has given two weeks to reach preliminary agreement on key issues.
But he warned that a collapse of the negotiations would have 'consequences in multiple areas', from 'the capacity of British planes to land in Europe to that of dogs and cats to cross the Channel'.
Mr Barnier set a two-week deadline for the UK to make concessions on the divorce bill or risk trade talks failing to start before Christmas
Brexit Secretary Mr Davis said the UK was willing to show 'flexibility' in the talks
Eu negotiator Michel Barnier (pictured right) has been holding the latest round of Brexit talks with David Davis (left) in Brussels today
'It's not my (preferred) option,' he told French weekly Le Journal du Dimanche (JDD). 'But it's a possibility. Everyone needs to plan for it, member states and businesses alike. We too are preparing for it technically.'
He recalled that without a deal on post-Brexit trade terms the EU and Britain would revert to World Trade Organization (WTO) tariffs, with trade ties 'like those we have with China'.
On Friday, Mr Barnier gave Britain a two-week ultimatum to make concessions on a divorce agreement if it wants to unlock the next phase of talks in December.
He said it was 'vital' for Britain to increase its offer on its exit bill - which a figure senior EU officials put at up to 60 billion euros ($70 billion) - to open up talks on a future trade deal.
The Prime Minister is said to be considering offering more cash as she does everything she can to unblock the negotiations.
Today the Environment Secretary, Michael Gove, said he would not block the PM from handing over more money as he said there is a need to be flexible.
Mr Davis and Mr Barnier have been locked in fraught negotiations since July
Michael Gove, pictured today on the Andrew Marr Show, said he would not block Theresa May from paying more money to the EU for a divorce bill
Mr Gove said he had a duty to ensure his department was 'ready for every eventuality' in the talks over Britain's exit.
He told BBC One's The Andrew Marr Show the Government is 'doing everything we can' to secure a good deal but is making sure that whatever happens in the talks, Britain can 'make the best of them'.
'I am not worried but I am determined to ensure that in my own department that we have everything in place for every eventuality.'
Asked if he would block the Prime Minister if she had to hand over extra cash to secure a deal, he replied: 'I certainly would not.
'I would not block the Prime Minister in doing what she believed was right.'
STICKING POINTS IN BREXIT TALKS Divorce Bill: Theresa May has said Britain will pay 20 billion euros for a two-year transition deal and honour the commitments we have made. But the EU are demanding Britain goes further in spelling out exactly what we will pay - squeezing out more cash before we move on to trade talks. Irish border: Probably the most complicated issue in the negotiations, both sides want to keep a soft Irish border, fearing a return to border guards and check points could reignite the violence of The Troubles. But it is unclear how this will be achieved when the UK leaves the customs union. The EU has suggested Northern Ireland will have to stay in the EU customs union post Brexit to avoid a hard border with the republic - effectively pushing the hard border to the sea. But the Government and the DUP - who are propping Mrs May up in No10 - say they will not accept a deal which involves a border between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK. Citizens Rights Theresa May has laid out an offer to guarantee the rights of the 3.2million EU citizens in the UK. They will be given a two-year grace period to apply for settled status, which they will be granted as long as they pass criminal and security checks. But this was rejected by the EU Parliament who say the status should be automatic and not involve criminal records checks. Advertisement
Mrs May has already offered to pay the EU 20 billion euros (17.7bn) to secure a transition deal that would keep Britain in the single market and customs union for two years.
And she has promised that none of the remaining EU member states will be left poorer by the UK's departure form the bloc.
But Britain and Brussels have clashed over the details of the financial obligations Britain should cough up for on issues like pensions liabilities and future projects.
Meanwhile, Brexit Secretary David Davis said he does not recognise the two-week deadline set by Mr Barnier following last week's talks.
He told Sunday with Niall Paterson on Sky News: 'Taxpayers will not want me to just come along and give away billions and billions of pounds.'
He insisted progress is being made in the talks and dismissed calls to try to delay Brexit by dragging negotiations out for another 12 months.
One of the paramedics who tried to save his life was Tasha Starkey, who posted a picture of the note on Twitter
The manager of a rehabilitation centre where a man died despite the efforts of paramedics has blasted a resident who left a moaning note on an ambulance.
The 42-year-old, who was 'vomiting blood', died after being rushed to hospital with 'massive internal bleeding'.
As they responded to the call West Midlands Ambulance Service found a hand-written note on the windscreen which read: 'You may be saving lives, but don't park your van in a stupid place and block my drive.'
The service said the ambulance was at the scene for no longer than 30 minutes.
The patient had been at Livingstone House, a charity and rehabilitation centre for drug and alcohol addicts, for three months.
Centre manager John Hagans said the man's family had been made to feel 'fifty times worse' after discovering the note had been left on the ambulance sent to help their son.
He said: 'They are absolutely horrified. They said it's hard enough as it is, with the loss.
'The man's father said to me that it has just made it 50 times worse. The man had been clean for three months before he collapsed.
'He was making active changes to change his life. He was somebody who had made poor choices but was now making the right ones.
'I have am absolutely disgusted that an individual complained about the ambulance's parking. An ambulance is a sacred space. What goes on inside there, it shouldn't be interfered with.'
Paramedics battled to save a man while mean-spirited neighbours left this note moaning about the ambulance blocking their driveway - he later died in hospital
Centre manager John Hagans said the man's family had been made to feel 'fifty times worse' after discovering the note had been left on the ambulance sent to help their son
Tasha Starkey, left by herself and left in the right picture with a colleague, who found the note
Mr Hagan added: 'One of these days, heaven forbid that the man who left the note or his family might need an ambulance. He would shut down all of Small Heath to get an ambulance through.
'We do have a problem with parking but on this particular day, the ambulance was parked down an alley and wasn't blocking anywhere.
'Ultimately, what kind of individual would be so vitriolic towards an ambulance crew.
Ms Starkey shared the note on Twitter after finding it on the windscreen
'It's very clear that if they're not moving, then there's obviously a significant amount of work going on in that ambulance.
'It's the mentality of some people - no public spirit, no empathy and no feeling. It's all about them.'
Residents in the street say the note was written by a man who 'should know better'.
A woman who answered the door of a house where the ambulance was reportedly parked, said: 'I have nothing to say. You will have to talk to my husband about it.'
When the woman was shown the note and asked if she recognised the handwriting, she slammed the door shut.
A neighbour of the man, who did not want to be named, said: 'Everyone says it was this guy (who wrote the note). If it was then he should know better.
'He's got a decent responsible job. It's terrible that anyone would take a pop at paramedics. They save lives for goodness sake.'
West Midlands paramedic Tasha Starkey sat with a colleague at the rear of an empty ambulance
The paramedics had positioned the vehicle outside a house as they helped a patient who was in a critical condition and vomiting blood - the 42-year-old man later died in hospital
John Hagans, a nurse consultant at the charity, said they were 'disgusted' by the note.
He said: 'Words fail me. This person deserves to be shamed. If the person who wrote it had had any idea of what was going on inside, they would not have dared.
'The resident collapsed in the home and was vomiting blood and our nurses and the ambulance crew battled extremely hard to save him.
'His condition was so severe they could not move the ambulance for half an hour because they were fighting so hard to save him.
'In that situation no ambulance crew should have to worry about annoying others because of parking. It's ridiculous.
'One of our staff members who was trying to help them spotted the note when they brought him to the ambulance. We were left completely stunned.
'What's worse is that another driver was trapped on an alleyway that runs down the back of our property for over 40 minutes.
'They did not say a word. They just respectfully sat in the car and waited, as you would hope anyone would do.'
He added: 'I feel so sorry for the man's family, knowing that the note was placed on the ambulance that tried to save their son. Our thoughts and prayers are with them.'
The patient passed away at Heartlands Hospital on Friday evening.
Several residents on the street in the Small Heath area of Birmingham expressed their disgust at the note.
A spokesman from West Midlands Ambulance Service NHS Foundation Trust said that 'patients come first'
Anamaria Dunne said: 'I did not see the ambulance come but my husband did. He said there was nowhere else it could go.
'It's not nice that they left the note when the ambulance crew is trying to save someone's life.
'But there are real problems with parking around here. People's drives get block a lot and it's incredibly frustrating.
DO YOU KNOW THE ANGRY NEIGHBOUR? Email news@mailonline.co.uk or phone 020 361 53729 Advertisement
'Sometimes people will park on their neighbour's driveways just because there is not enough space. It's a real problem.'
Another neighbour, who did not wish to be named, said: 'It's a ridiculous situation here. You see arguments in the streets about it sometimes.
'In a way I'm not surprised someone left an angry note, even though it is shocking to do it to an ambulance.
'There are too many people parking poorly.'
The patient had been at Livingstone House, a charity and rehabilitation centre for drug and alcohol addicts, for three months
This is the road in Small Heath, in Birmingham, where the note was left on the ambulance
Paramedic Tasha Starkey was first to share an image of the offending note on Twitter on Friday afternoon in a post saying: 'Crew alerted an extremely poorly patient to hospital... minimal on scene time, arrived at hospital to find this note... this patient was TIME-CRITICAL.'
Paramedic Clinical Team Mentor Sam Grimson wrote: 'One of our crews encountered this delightful note after assisting a patient suffering a major internal bleed! The crew were not on scene long due to how poorly the patient was.
'We always try to park appropriately but sometimes it is not possible.'
In a second separate incident over the weekend, the service was targeted by another angry resident understood to be complaining about an ambulance being parked in a place that prevented their car from moving
West Midlands Ambulance Service tweeted: 'Sometimes we just don't know what to say. This was the note left on an ambulance today. At the time, the crew were helping a man who was extremely unwell after vomiting blood.
'They took him on blue lights to hospital where he was in a critical condition. #patientscomefirst'
In a second separate incident over the weekend, the service was targeted by another angry resident understood to be complaining about an ambulance being parked in a place that prevented their car from moving.
A post read: 'Just heard from one of our staff that two crews were treating a cardiac arrest patient today - the most serious case we can attend - and someone banged on the side of the ambulance asking them to move as they couldn't get their car out! Sorry #patientscomefirst #sad'
West Midlands Police also tweeted that a marked police vehicle had been damaged at a Remembrance Sunday event and its windscreen smashed.
Judge Ian Lawrie handed paedophile John Chappell a suspended sentence - because he had a bad back
A judge allowed a paedophile who abused three girls to walk free from court - because he had a bad back that would cause him 'considerable discomfort' in prison.
John Chappell, 60, was convicted of sexually abusing the girls, two of whom were aged under 14, more than 40 years ago.
He got his victims alone and indecently touched them - in one case during a game of hide-and-seek.
At Plymouth Crown Court, where Chappell was finally facing justice last week, Judge Ian Lawrie handed him a suspended prison sentence - because he suffers from curvature of the spine.
Judge Lawrie said: 'This would cause you considerable discomfort in prison.
'The sentence is designed to punish you and is not an exercise in revenge, much as that might be the wish of those who suffered at your hands.'
Chappell, of Bristol, pleaded guilty to indecently assaulting two girls aged under 14 in 1974.
He also admitted inciting one of those girls to perform an indecent act - and, finally, pleaded guilty to a similar offence in relation to the third girl.
Prosecuting, Emily Pitts said that Chappell abused the first victim several times and asked the girl to touch him indecently.
At Plymouth Crown Court (pictured), where Chappell was finally facing justice last week, Judge Lawrie said: 'The sentence is designed to punish you and is not an exercise in revenge'
Ms Pitts said: 'She told a couple of people over the years before it all came out at a funeral.'
In 1975, the defendant was given a three-year conditional discharge for a similar incident in which is asked another girl to perform a sex act upon him.
And in 1977, Chappell was handed a 300 fine for gross indecency with a child.
Judge Lawrie called the sentences 'remarkable' - but Jason Beal, defending Chappell, said his client was full of shame and had written an apology letter to his victims.
Handing Chappell a suspended prison sentence, Judge Lawrie said: 'These offences were against vulnerable children.
'They were vulnerable because of their age and lack of experience of life.'
The judge warned Chappell that if the offences had been committed after 2003, when the law changed, they would have attracted long prison sentences.
Bahrain has accused Iran of blowing up a pipeline that temporarily stopped oil supplies from Saudi Arabia - but Tehran has rejected their 'lies' as 'childish'.
A huge explosion sent a towering inferno into the air, but Bahrain's foreign minister was quick to blame Iran for the fire, which broke out near the capital, Manama, early on Saturday.
'The attempt to blow up the Saudi-Bahraini pipeline is a dangerous escalation on Iran's part that aims to terrorise citizens and to harm the world oil industry,' Sheikh Khalid bin Ahmed al-Khalifa wrote on Twitter.
However, a spokesman for the Iranian foreign ministry on Sunday rejected the accusations.
Bahrain has accused Iran of being behind a pipeline fire that temporarily halted oil supplies from Saudi Arabia
'Obviously, the only thing Bahraini officials have learned to do after each incident in the emirate is to accuse Iran,' Bahram Ghassemi said.
'The era of childish accusations and lies is over,' he said, adding Iran wanted 'the stability and security of its neighbours'.
Bahrain relies on the Abu Safa field, which it shares with neighbouring Saudi Arabia, for much of its oil, pumped in via a 230,000-barrel-per-day pipeline.
National oil company Bapco on Sunday said it had fixed the pipeline, which would allow oil to flow back into the country.
Emergency services brought the blaze under control after it was discovered early Saturday, Bahrain's interior ministry said, and evacuated homes in the nearby village of Buri, 15 kilometres (10 miles) south of Manama.
The ministry blamed a 'terrorist act' for the fire.
'It is an act of sabotage, a serious terrorist act aimed at harming the interests of the nation and endangering the population,' it said on Twitter.
Emergency services brought the blaze under control after it was discovered early Saturda
Bahrain, a Shiite-majority kingdom ruled by a Sunni dynasty, has seen sporadic violence since the repression in 2011 of a protest movement demanding a constitutional monarchy and an elected prime minister.
Authorities have since tightened their grip on dissent, jailing hundreds of protesters and stripping a string of high-profile activists and clerics of citizenship.
The government denies it discriminates against Shiites and accuses neighbouring Iran, the predominant Shiite power, of stirring up tensions, which Tehran refutes.
Bahrain is home to the US Navy's Fifth Fleet and a British army base is currently under construction.
The Arab League will hold an extraordinary meeting next Sunday at the request of Saudi Arabia to discuss 'violations' committed by Iran in the region.
Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates supported the Saudi request, which was also approved by Djibouti, the current chair of the pan-Arab bloc, said the document shown to AFP by diplomats on Sunday.
Tensions have been rising between Saudi Arabia and Iran, including over League members Qatar and Lebanon.
According to the memo, the Saudi request was based on a missile the Sunni-ruled kingdom says its air defences intercepted near Riyadh after being fired from Yemen on November 4.
Boris Johnson bowed to pressure to apologise to Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe for wrongly claiming she was 'training journalists' in Iran today.
The Foreign Secretary said sorry if his clumsy remarks had caused Mrs Zaghari-Radcliffe 'anguish' and told MPs he would 'retract' the claim.
Shadow foreign secretary Emily Thornberry lashed Mr Johnson for putting his 'pride' before the welfare of a British citizen. Criticism came from all sides as he made a surprise appearance after rushing back from Brussels to answer MPs' questions.
Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe's husband piled on more pressure today and told the Foreign Secretary: 'I want you to solve this mess created in your name.'
Richard Ratcliffe said the charity worker is 'on the verge of a nervous breakdown' after she was jailed for five years on allegations of spying and their daughter Gabriella is also 'suffering' while separated from her mother.
Mr Johnson confirmed in the Commons he was considering extending diplomatic immunity to Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe to get her out of jail. The idea is controversial because it could be used by foreign powers on individuals in British jails.
Richard Ratcliffe said Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe is 'on the verge of a nervous breakdown' after she was jailed for five years and their daughter Gabriella is also 'suffering' badly
Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson answered an urgent question on the Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe case today and apologised and said: 'My remarks should have been clearer'
Mr Zaghari-Ratcliffe said his wife's hair is also falling out and she has experienced pain in her breasts and was been taken to hospital for an ultrasound, which found lumps, he said.
In his statement, Mr Johnson said: 'Of course I apologise for the distress, for the suffering, that has been caused by the impression that I gave that I believed that she was there in a professional capacity.
'She was there on holiday.'
Pressed by Labour to acknowledge a mistake he said: 'I retract any suggestion she was there in a professional capacity'.
Mr Johnson admitted 'my remarks should have been clearer'.
Mr Johnson will meet Mr Zaghari-Ratcliffe's tomorrow and plans to travel to Iran before the end of the year to lobby for her release.
20 female Iranian inmates step in to support bereft Briton arrested on holiday Iranian female political prisoners and human rights activists in the same jail as Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe have stepped in to support her, it was revealed today. The mother-of-one is said to be on the verge of a breakdown after being arrested while on holiday visiting her parents with her daughter. Her husband Richard said women including Narges Mohammadi in the Evin jail (pictured), which is known as 'Evin University' due to the number of academics, journalists and other professionals housed there, are supporting her. Mr Ratcliffe told the Evening Standard: 'A few of [the women] have been there for a very long time and make sure that everyone is kept busy. 'The easiest thing to do is to lie on your mattress feeling sorry for yourself. They sat her down and said why don't you teach English to the other prisoners. So she does that once a week. 'It's a way that everybody can contribute. They have a cleaning rota, they do craft work. This is experienced women saying 'we will be strong' and 'stand up for yourselves'. 'I am thankful for all they have done for Nazanin to remind her of the kindness in Iranian culture, and the hope to survive.' Advertisement
In an open letter to the Foreign Secretary, Mr Zaghari-Ratcliffe said: 'Your words are being used against her by Tehran to rationalise her imprisonment and as grounds for a new court case against her.
'The net effect of that is that she is in danger. I want you to solve this mess created in your name'.
Mr Ratcliffe cannot see his wife and child in Iran because they won't give him a visa and he wants his wife to get diplomatic immunity, which Downing Street say they will now consider.
His open letter, published in the Evening Standard today, asks that he is allowed to travel to Iran with him 'as soon as possible'.
He said her mood was 'uncontrollable' and revealed that she had experienced pain in her breasts and been taken to hospital for an ultrasound, which found lumps. The mother-of-one has a family history of breast cancer and a former cellmate described seeing her hair falling out in 'huge clumps'.
Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe, 38, was seen by a specialist in Tehran on Saturday. The consultant said he thought the lumps were likely to be benign but added that some cancers were linked to stress, her husband said.
Mr Ratcliffe also said that his daughter is 'suffering'. She is bereft, refusing to eat and can no longer remember what life is like in Britain.
He said: 'Her English is almost gone she speaks Farsi now. She asks what clothes she has in London, what toys, what her room is like.
'To her, her home here seems like Harry Potter another world of strange languages and sudden packages in the post'.
The father-of-one has previously said he had hoped he could get his family home by Christmas.
He told Mr Johnson: 'I don't want to be a campaigning husband and father any longer. I want to go back to being an ordinary husband and father, with my wife and child at my side.
'It is time for the UK government to take responsibility for Nazanin's suffering and its role in prolonging it. It's time for us to bring Nazanin home together'.
The Foreign Secretary said sorry if his clumsy remarks had caused Mrs Zaghari-Radcliffe 'anguish' and told MPs he would 'retract' the claim
Condemning Mr Johnson's response, Ms Thornberry said: 'We know, from the evidence of Richard Ratcliffe, that when Nazanin was told of the remarks and saw how the Iranian authorities would exploit them she became hugely distressed and upset.
CORBYN CALLS FOR BORIS TO BE SACKED OVER IRAN BLUNDER Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, pictured today, has called for Boris Johnson to be sacked over the comments Jeremy Corbyn is calling for Boris Johnson to be sacked from his post immediately as Foreign Secretary for 'putting citizens at risk'. The Labour leader has launched a scathing attack on the former Mayor of London and is demanding the Prime Minister fire him with immediate effect. This comes after Johnson made what has been described as an 'epic blunder' in the case of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, the British woman currently imprisoned in Iran. Mr Corbyn has added to the growing pressure May faces in dealing with Johnson, as members of his own party say his position should be reconsidered. He said: 'We've put up with Johnson embarrassing and undermining our country with his incompetence and colonial throwback views and putting our citizens at risk for long enough. It's time for him to go.' London Mayor Sadiq Khan has also called for Mr Johnson to go over the blunder. Advertisement
'So will the Foreign Secretary today accept the impact that his words have had, accept the distress that has been caused to Nazanin and apologise properly for that - not apologise for upsetting people, apologise for getting it wrong?'
Ms Thornberry, to cries of 'shame' from Labour MPs, also criticised Environment Secretary Michael Gove for 'incredibly' claiming it was not known why Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe was in Iran.
She went on: 'If it is a matter of pride that the Foreign Secretary is refusing to admit that simply he has made a mistake, well then I feel bound to say to him that his pride matters not one ounce compared to Nazanin's freedom.
'After a week of obfuscation and bluster, will he finally take the opportunity today to state simply and unequivocally for the removal of any doubt - either here or in Tehran - that he simply got it wrong.'
Today Downing Street admitted it is considering handing her diplomatic protection - usually a ticket out of jail and a hostile country - and Boris Johnson apparently discussed the prospect with her husband Richard last night.
Mrs May's spokesman said the possibility of offering Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe diplomatic immunity was 'one of the options' being considered in the case.
Asked whether the Government would grant Mr Ratcliffe the possibility of visiting his wife in jail with Mr Johnson, Theresa May's official spokesman said: 'I think what we need to look at is what will work best and what can be most beneficial in this case. We will look at his comments very closely, and we will do whatever is the best course of action to secure her release.'
The spokesman declined to respond to calls for Mr Johnson to face the sack, saying: 'The entire Government is working towards securing her release as quickly as possible.
'Our focus needs to be on the case itself and on doing everything we can to try secure her release. Her husband has said this morning that he wants us to be focused on securing her release, and that's what we are doing.'
Mr Johnson was lashed by shadow foreign secretary Emily Thornberry for putting his 'pride' before the welfare of a British citizen
Richard Ratcliffe said last night his wife Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, 38, was 'on the verge of a nervous breakdown' and angry at the Foreign Secretary for allowing the situation to become 'a shambles'.
He said her mood was 'uncontrollable'.
The mother-of-one has a family history of breast cancer and a former cellmate described seeing her hair falling out in 'huge clumps'.
Boris Johnson has faced calls to resign for suggesting last week that Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe was training journalists in Iran comments which could lead to her jail sentence being increased.
Her husband said yesterday he had a 'positive' phone call with Boris Johnson and added he should not resign despite him telling MPs she was in the country training journalists - a gaffe which could see her have her sentence doubled.
He said: 'I do not believe it is in Nazanin's interests for there to be any resignations'.
But her local MP, Labour's Tulip Siddiq has called on the Foreign Secretary to resign if a British woman spends 'even one more day' in an Iranian jail as a result of his claim that she was training journalists in the country.
She said: 'This issue isn't political point-scoring for me; this about getting an innocent mother home'.
She added: 'If the Foreign Secretary goes to Iran, meets Nazanin, takes Richard and officially retracts the statement he's made then at least he's trying to make amends for what he said.'
'If my constituent spends even one more day in prison as a result of what the Foreign Secretary said then he should resign.'
Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe was visiting her parents in Iran with her young daughter Gabriella when she was arrested by the Revolutionary Guard in Tehran Airport
Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe is pictured with her husband Richard who is desperate to see her back home with their three-year-old for Christmas
Despite days of political pressure over Mr Johnson's apparent gaffe, Michael Gove faltered yesterday when he was asked why Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe was in Iran, saying: 'I don't know.'
The Environment Secretary was asked on BBC One's Andrew Marr Show why Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe was in Iran and replied: 'I don't know'.
He went on: 'One of the things I want to stress is there is no reason why Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe should be in prison, so far as any of us know.'
Speaking of Michael Gove's comments to Andrew Marr, during which he suggested he didn't know why Nazanin was in Iran, Richard Ratcliffe said: 'Certainly there was all sorts of anger in our house. The government's position is that the government is clear, and has no doubt, that she was there on holiday.
'I asked the Foreign Office to remind all of the cabinet members that that's the government's position.
'There's obviously a wider politics attached to our case. Beyond me to understand it or follow it, I'm just in my bubble of just talking about Nazanin.'
The 38-year-old from London is pictured with her husband Richard and their now three-year-old daughter Gabriella
His ailing wife was seen by a specialist in Tehran on Saturday because of her breasts.
The consultant said he thought the lumps were likely to be benign but added that some cancers were linked to stress, her husband said.
Her husband said he wanted him to keep his job because if he left it would cause instability which could damage his wife's case.
Her husband said: 'New lumps had been identified in each of her breasts.
'Nazanin has been complaining of sharp stabbing pains in her breasts for some months - her breasts have been painful since month five of her detention.
'She had previously had been given an inconclusive mammography by the in-prison gynaecologist.'
He added: 'Nazanin notes that since her court appearance, she has been very angry for a number of days.
'Her mood has become uncontrollable. She loses her temper over the smallest things.
'Everything annoys her, but is unable to see why she gets so cross. Quick to feel like others are ganging up.
'She noted that she is very down, that she cannot handle all this. It is too much pressure, as she becomes part of hostile daily news.
'Nazanin reports feeling continually restless and out of focus, unable to concentrate on things like reading.
'This weekend she again suggested she is on the verge of a nervous breakdown - a perpetual sense of not knowing what to do.'
Mr Zaghari-Ratcliffe added: 'As her husband, my complaint is not that Nazanin's imprisonment has become a diplomatic incident this past week. It is that it wasn't for the 19 months before. I thank everyone for their part in making that shift.'
Mr Johnson's comments were seized upon by the Iranian judiciary who hailed her back before the court to face fresh propaganda charges and another five years behind bars.
Michael Gove said he was not sure what Nazanin Zaghari-Ratclife was doing in Iran before she was arrested by the Revolutionary Guard on suspicion of espionage
Michael Gove said yesterday that criticism of Mr Johnson was part of an 'effort to shift the blame away from those who are really at fault here, and that is the Iranian regime'.
And he refused to say the Foreign Secretary should apologise for his blunder.
He added: 'There is nothing the Iranian regime would like more than for the blame to be shifted from them onto us.
'And I think we make a big mistake if we blame politicians in a democracy who are trying to do the right thing for the plight of a woman who is being imprisoned by a regime that is a serial abuser of human rights.
'Who's in the dock here? Iran.'
He added: 'If the Iranian judiciary wants to use the words of a democrat in order to justify an unjustifiable decision, it is our responsibility to call them out.
'Whatever we as democrats say is going to be seized upon by extremists for their own purposes - and we play their game if we point the finger at democrats who are trying to do the right thing.'
Tory MP Anna Soubry joined in the condemnation of Michael Gove's comments branding them 'concerning and irresponsible'
Michael Gove rallied to the defence of his Cabinet colleague Boris Johnson, saying calls for him to be sacked over his blunder - which could cost Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe another five years in person - is a distraction form the real villains in the saga - the Iranians
'It appears Gove is more interested in protecting Johnson's job than the liberty of a British citizen in jail in Iran.
'Theresa May must ensure Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe does not pay the price for her ministers' bungling.'
Jeremy Corbyn and London Mayor Sadiq Khan have both called for Mr Johnson to be sacked over comments.
Speaking this morning, Mr Khan said: 'I think he has got to go.
'If Theresa May was a stronger Prime Minster she would have sacked him a long time ago.'
Mr Corbyn said: 'We've put up with Johnson embarrassing and undermining our country with his incompetence and colonial throwback views and putting our citizens at risk for long enough. It's time for him to go.'
Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe's husband Richard has demanded that Mr Johnson 'get on a plane' to meet his wife after his blunder.
Seven people have been shot at an Indiana nightclub during the early hours of Sunday morning.
Four men and three women were injured when two gunmen opened fire at the Dirtty's Jazz and Blues Club in Gary in northern Indiana on Sunday at about 2.30am.
An eighth person hurt his leg while trying to get to safety.
Four men and three women were injured when two gunmen opened fire at the Dirtty's Jazz and Blues Club in Gary (pictured)
Gary Police Detective Sgt. William Fazekas said one of the gunmen is in custody but officers are still searching for the other person involved.
Most of the victims are in a stable condition.
One victim was rushed to a Chicago hospital with more serious injuries.
Police would not reveal any further details about the circumstances of the shooting or a possible motive for the gunmen.
A house party held at a student apartment complex in Texas was quite literally ground-breaking early Sunday morning.
Video of a University of North Texas homecoming 'kickback' shows packed rowdily jumping in the living room of the Denton, Texas apartment at 1.45am on Sunday. A kickback is supposed to be a small gathering of friends.
And while dancing rapper Playboi Carti's What, the floor gives way and drops dozens of screaming people to the second floor.
Video of a University of North Texas homecoming party shows partygoers rowdily jumping in the living room of the Denton, Texas apartment early Sunday
While dancing rapper Playboi Carti's What, the floor gives way and drops dozens of screaming people to the second floor
HANG ON! Those lucky enough not to have fallen quickly turn on the lights as others hang on to the sides of the now sunken third floor room
Pipes spew water as debris and wood panels fall and folks scramble, trying to figure out what happened.
Those lucky enough not to have fallen quickly turn on the lights as those barely hanging on to the sides of the now sunken third floor room try to make their way to other areas of the apartment.
The party goers then try to create a human support chain and make their way out of the second floor apartment.
'Apparently, a UNT homecoming kickback at The Ridge in Denton got so packed and hyped, the floor broke and the students fell from the 3rd floor apartment to the floor(s) below,' said one person who posted videos of the incident on Facebook.
According to Denton Fire Marshal Brad Lahart to Dallas News, five to seven people at the scene needed to be treated and were released. No major injuries were reported.
The Fire Marshal added that at least 48 residents were displaced as a result of the collapse as management for the apartments need to get a structural engineer and construction crew to certify the building is safe.
Mass confusion! Pipes spew water as debris and wood panels continue falling and folks scramble, trying to figure out what happened
Tough climb! The party goers then try to create a human support chain and make their way out of the second floor apartment
Lahart also claimed that all the residents told authorities that they had a place to stay the night and that the apartment complex was looking for a permanent solution.
On social media, news of the floor collapse spread with many shocked by what had happened as videos and pictures from the party started circulating.
'Im going to forever remember the song that was playing when the floor collapsed What- playboicarti #UNTCloutComing,' one user said.
A user named Brittney claimed to have gone to the party and needed to go to the hospital, adding: 'Its 7:32 am. i just got back to my dorm from the hospital. i have a sprained knee and serious bruising. i fell through the 3rd floor at an apartment kickback. i have to wear a knee immobilizer for two weeks. Bro... i love UNT.'
'We just fell through a 3rd story floor..... S**t hurt #UNTCloutComing,' said a user.
'Im going to forever remember the song that was playing when the floor collapsed What- playboicarti #UNTCloutComing,' one user said
A user named Brittney claimed to have gone to the party and needed to go to the hospital, adding: 'Its 7:32 am. i just got back to my dorm from the hospital. i have a sprained knee and serious bruising. i fell through the 3rd floor at an apartment kickback. i have to wear a knee immobilizer for two weeks. Bro... i love UNT'
'We just fell through a 3rd story floor..... S**t hurt #UNTCloutComing,' said a user
Many made jokes and posted memes online.
'Meanwhile in Denton #UNT,' added one user along with a gif of the classic Disney film The Aristocats that depicts the cats partying so hard they too fall to the floor below.
Another user said: '#UNTCloutComing longlive the floor.'
'WOW UNT Homecoming was ..... wait for it.... Ground breaking. #UNTCloutComing,' wrote another.
'Meanwhile in Denton #UNT,' added one user along with a gif of the classic Disney film The Aristocats that depicts the cats partying so hard they too fall to the floor below
A user said: '#UNTCloutComing longlive the floor'
'WOW UNT Homecoming was ..... wait for it.... Ground breaking. #UNTCloutComing,' shared another
The jokes were a common sentiment on Twitter, with another writing: 'I heard whoever threw that UNT party ...really brought the house down.'
One user posted a gif of Cleveland Brown from Family Guy falling from his apartment while in a bathtub - a scene that is often revisited on the series as a recurring joke.
'Im f*****g dead. The floor f****n caved in #UNTCloutComing this why I stay in,' added a user.
One user posted a gif of Cleveland Brown from Family Guy falling from his apartment while in a bathtub, a scene that is often revisited on the series as a recurring joke
'Im f*****g dead. The floor f****n caved in #UNTCloutComing this why I stay in,' added a user
But one person called out the University of North Texas'
'I feel like UNT should get sued for these cheap ass student living apartments,' she said.
The University of North Texas was already a trending topic in the region on social media.
This weekend they celebrated Du-Rag Day and angered Historically Black College students across the country who felt that the trending celebration was only supposed to happen on HBCU campuses.
'I feel like UNT should get sued for these cheap ass student living apartments,' said a user
Related Bahrain accuses Iran over pipeline fire
Egypt condemns Friday night's terrorist attack on an oil pipeline near the Bahraini capital Manama, the Egyptian Foreign Ministry said in a statement on Saturday.
An oil fire broke out on the country's only pipeline from Saudi Arabia, temporarily halting oil supplies from its neighbor.
The Bahraini Foreign Ministry blamed Iran for the incident, calling it an act of sabotage, but Tehran denied the accusations.
Egypt asserted that its government and people stand by the Bahraini government and people against all terrorist and destructive actions that target their security and stability.
"This cowardly act will not succeed in interfering with the security and stability of the sister kingdom of Bahrain," the statement added.
National oil company Bapco on Sunday said it had fixed the pipeline, which would resume the flow of oil into the country.
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A close adviser to the Archbishop of Canterbury has quit over a 'liberal' Church of England 'agenda of revisionism' that fails to 'articulate the Gospel message'.
Lorna Ashworth, who opposes gay marriage, resigned saying the church's 'core message' is 'no longer believed'.
The 47-year-old former adviser to Justin Welby quit the Archbishops' Council and General Synod, saying unity has 'trumped the saving gospel message of Jesus Christ'.
Lorna Ashworth has quit the Church of England after saying a message of 'unity' has 'trumped the saving gospel message of Jesus Christ'
'We have a liberal agenda because the church is not anchored in the Gospel,' she said in The Sunday Times.
'There is no more conversation about heaven, hell, sin, forgiveness, judgment.'
Though she claims her departure is about more than gay marriage, the resignation could boos the agenda of conservatives fighting accommodation with gay rights.
A motion to permit the blessing of same-sex marriages has been submitted to the General Synod ahead of its next meeting in February but it is yet to be adopted for debate.
Mrs Ashworth says the true message of Christianity risks being drowned out by people who don't want to talk about sin, preferring instead to discuss social justice because 'if we talk about sin, then we have to talk about bad behaviour and people dont want to be judgmental'.
She added: 'When you try to say the simple Gospel in Synod you get booed down.'
An opponent of women bishops, Mrs Ashworth said in a statement online that the church is experiencing 'an ongoing and rapid erosion of faithfulness'.
In July she signed a letter to The Telegraph warning the Church had 'capitulated to secular values'.
The same month the General Synod voted to condemn 'conversion therapy' and pledged to explore special services for transgender people.
'Missionary bishop' Andy Lines of the Anglican Church in North America shares her concerns.
Mrs Ashworth was a key adviser to Justin Welby, who has called for a more inclusive attitude in the church
Since June he has overseen parishes disaffected with liberalism and says Mrs Ashworth's resignation raises concerns about the Church of England, adding: 'How long will God continue to use this institution as his witness in the nation?'
Dr John Sentamu, the Archbishop of York, disagrees but said he was sad about Thursday's resignation.
'I do not share her doubts that the Church of England will be part of Gods renewal of the Christian faith in this nation,' he said.
'I am convinced that the Church of England remains faithful to the Gospel of Jesus Christ and will move forward, rooted in the Christian faith.'
Bishop of Maidstone Rod Thomas said the church was 'squarely based on the authority of the Bible' but acknowledged Mrs Ashworth's concerns.
'She goes because she does not want to be drawn into compromise with those who seek to revise the plain teaching of scripture,' he said.
In February this year the Church of England's ruling body dismissed a House of Bishops report calling for a 'culture of welcome and support' for gay Christians.
But Justin Welby, who has led the church since 2013, backed the report, calling for 'radical new Christian inclusion'.
Legislation allowing same-sex marriage in Britain came into effect in 2014, but the government maintained a 'ban' on the practice in the Church of England and Wales.
A mother-of-three has been found dead in the middle of a quiet suburban street on the Gold Coast.
The 51-year-old woman's body was found in Arthur Payne Court, Worongary by a neighbour at 11.15pm on Sunday.
The neighbour tried to save the woman, but she was declared dead at the scene by paramedics.
A mother-of-three was found dead in the middle of a quiet suburban street on the Gold Coast
A 55-year-old man - said to be the woman's ex-husband - was later found badly injured in a nearby street.
He was taken to hospital, where he is under police guard, Sunrise reports.
Police are treating her death as suspicious.
Officers have established a number of crime scenes, including at the home of the woman on Arthur Payne Court.
The 51-year-old woman's body was found in Arthur Payne Court, Worongary by a neighbour
A 55-year-old man, said to be the woman's ex-husband, was found injured in a nearby street
Roy Moore (pictured) is accused of pursuing inappropriate sexual relationships with younger women during the 1970s
Keurig, makers of the home coffee brewing system, is being boycotted by angry consumers after the company announced over the weekend that it plans to remove ads on Sean Hanity's Fox News program following his coverage of Alabama senate candidate Roy Moore.
Keurig, Realtor.com, 23 and Me, Eloquii and Nature's Bounty all said over the weekend that they would no longer run ads on Hannity's show following his interview with the embattled candidate, prompting a backlash from protesters on social media.
Moore is being accused of having pursued inappropriate sexual relationships with younger women while he was a district attorney in Alabama during the 1970s.
The most troubling of allegations, according to The Washington Post which published the allegations in a story on Thursday, claims that Moore had inappropriate sexual contact with a then 14-year-girl named Leigh Corfman while in his early 30s.
Realtor.com, 23 and Me, Eloquii and Nature's Bounty also said over the weekend that they would no longer run ads on Sean Hannity's (pictured) show
Supporters of the host have begun posting #BoycottKeurig on Twitter, leading to the hashtag trending on the social media platform (stock images)
Moore vehemently denies the allegations, saying that he believes the timing of the accusations are aimed at undermining his candidacy.
Moore, who spoke with Hannity about the scandal on his radio show Friday, did admit however that after his return from the military, 'I dated a lot of young ladies.'
Some of the sponsors announced their decision not to run advertisements on Hannity's show via Twitter after the Fox News host asked his audience to give Moore the benefit of the doubt, according to CNBC News.
'We can confirm that we do not have advertisements running on this program,' Nature's Bounty said on Twitter Friday.
'While we continually strategize on where we advertise on and offline, we are not currently, and will not be running TV ads on Hannity,' Realtor.com posted, as well.
The companies did not cite Hannity's comments as the reason why they were pulling their sponsorship.
It appears, however, that the they made their decision after getting feedback from social media users and the general public to distance themselves from the program.
'We've received inquiries RE: advertising on Hannity,' 23 and Me wrote on Twitter on Friday. 'We are not running TV advertising on Hannity. We continue to closely evaluate where we advertise.'
But the move is not without consequence, with supporters of the host posting #BoycottKeurig on Twitter, leading to the hashtag treading on the social media platform.
Moore vehemently denies the allegations, saying that he believes the timing of the accusations are aimed at undermining his candidacy
The companies did not cite Hannity's comments as the reason why they were pulling their sponsorship.
Many of Hannity's supporters outrage that the company was taking a political stance on Moore
Some of Hannity's supporters vowed to return their Keurig coffee machines they purchased for Christmas.
'Keurig, thank you bringing this to our attention. Seeing you have opted to stop your ad from airing during the Sean Hannity Show, I will be returning two Keurigs I just bought as Christmas gifts & will be discarding my own,' one Twitter user posted.
'Dear Other Companies Considering Pulling Ads from Hannity: You too can be number one trending topic on Twitter for nationwide boycott, supported by half the country. Make our day,' wrote another.
Not all the feedback was negative, however, with some praising the coffee giants decision to distance itself from Hannity's program.
Not all the feedback was negative, however, with some praising the coffee giants decision to distance itself from Hannity's program
'Looks like my wife is switching from a Nestle machine to a @Keurig for Christmas. Bravo. We must speak out with our wallets. Do not #BoycottKeurig,' one person tweeted.
'Dont #BoycottKeurig, they pulled their ads from Hannity & deserve to be celebrated for it.'
Fox News has yet to comment on the matter and a representative was not immediately available for a reply.
The 70-year-old former Alabama Supreme Court Judge is currently Republican party's nominee to take over a senate seat vacated by Jeff Sessions, who became head of the Justice Department in the Trump administration in January.
Voting kicks off less than four weeks, with Moore going up against Democrat Doug Jones in a special election.
Julie Bishop has significantly more support as preferred Liberal leader than Malcolm Turnbull, the latest Newspoll survey shows.
The latest poll has Ms Bishop on 40 per cent to Mr Turnbull's 27 per cent, following by Peter Dutton on 11 per cent, The Australian reports.
The Foreign Minister's support lies mostly among Greens and Labor voters, with the Prime Minister just edging out Ms Bishop among Coalition voters with 42 to 39 per cent of the vote.
Labor increased its lead - 55-45 per cent - over the coalition in the latest Newspoll, published on Monday.
Julie Bishop (right) has significantly more support as preferred Liberal leader than Malcolm Turnbull (left), the latest Newspoll survey shows
And voters also delivered a damaging blow to Mr Turnbull's standing as preferred prime minister, cutting his ratings to a new low.
They cut Mr Turnbull's standing as preferred prime minister from 41 per cent to a new low of 36 per cent, narrowing his lead over Bill Shorten to just two points.
The number of voters satisfied with Mr Turnbull's performance fell from 31 to 29 per cent, while the proportion of dissatisfied voters dropped from 59 to 58 per cent.
His net satisfaction - which spells out the difference between those who are satisfied and those who are dissatisfied with his performance - fell one point to minus 29.
The latest poll has Ms Bishop (pictured on Monday) on 40 per cent to Mr Turnbull's 27 per cent
Voters also delivered a damaging blow to Mr Turnbull's standing as preferred prime minister, cutting his ratings to a new low
Mr Shorten's net satisfaction rose from minus 24 to minus 19 points.
One Nation increased its primary vote from nine to 10 per cent, while the Greens slipped one point to nine per cent.
Opposition Leader Bill Shorten is closing in on Malcolm Turnbull as the preferred prime minister
The worst Newspoll result for the coalition Mr Turnbull's 23rd consecutive loss - since February did not surprise cabinet minister Christopher Pyne.
'There's no doubt the last fortnight has been messy from the government's point of view because of this issue around dual citizenship' he told ABC radio.
'Obviously the media has been full of this issue and that would have affected people's thinking about the government.'
Mr Pyne noted an election was not due until July 2019.
'Polls come and go and people should remain unfazed by them.'
The Newspoll, if repeated at an election now, indicates a 20 seat loss for the coalition.
Labor is in its strongest overall position since Mr Turnbull replaced Tony Abbott as prime minister in September 2015.
The Labor primary vote rose from 37 to 38 per cent at the same time Mr Shorten gained ground on key leadership measures.
An elderly man has been bashed as he attempted to fight off three attackers during a brutal home invasion on Sunday night.
The 65-year-old was asleep in bed at around 11pm when he was awoken by the gang of three men breaking down the front door to his home at Hampton, in Melbourne's south-east.
Confronting the attackers, it's believed they demanded the man hand over keys to a luxury Porsche parked outside the home, which belonged to a neighbour.
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An elderly man has been bashed as he attempted to fight off three attackers during a brutal home invasion (pictured) at Hampton, in Melbourne's south-east, on Sunday night
Confronting the attackers, it's believed they demanded the man hand over keys to a luxury Porsche parked outside the home, but which actually belonged to a neighbour
The attackers turned on the man who sustained head injuries and was rushed off to hospital in a stable condition.
Victoria police say the three men, who are all described as tall and wearing hooded jumpers, were seen fleeing on foot down nearby Smith Street.
It reportedly comes just months after a neighbouring home was sprayed with bullets in a drive-by attack.
That incident was later confirmed to be a case of mistaken identity.
The veteran was told that he wold have to remove his beret before entering the club, where members of the Labour Party hold meetings
A club has been slammed for ordering a decorated veteran to remove his beret on Remembrance Sunday because they have a 'no hat policy'.
The veteran had been paying his respects at a war memorial in Harehills, Leeds, before moving on to Harehills Labour Club.
But the ex-soldier - who had five medals pinned to his chest - was told that he wold have to remove his beret before entering the club, where members of the Labour Party hold meetings.
The 'outrageous' policy angered locals, including Emma Bainbridge, whose father met the veteran while at the cenotaph.
She said: 'This is absolutely outrageous and they should be ashamed of themselves.'
Lisa Casey added: 'Please, this is not a hat it's a symbol of the regiment he was honouring today.'
But the club's assistant secretary has defended asking the unnamed man to remove his beret.
She told MailOnline: 'The club has a rule that nothing can be worn on your head at all.
The veteran had been paying his respects at a war memorial in Harehills, Leeds, before moving on to Harehill Labour Club (pictured)
'He was asked to remove it. He was not turned away.
'When he came in he was signed in by someone a member can sign in two guests.
'Someone mentioned to me that he had his hat on the lady who signed him in. I asked the lady who signed him in to ask him to take his hat off.'
The assistant secretary said the veteran then entered her office to asked whether he could join the club.
She added: 'I gave him an application form and he apologised for wearing his hat.
'It's just a rule of the club. Every club has its own rules. It does not matter what they have got on their heads. All I'm doing is following instructions.'
Outraged locals are demanding the club apologise for ordering the veteran to remove his beret
The club's assistant secretary said the veteran later came into her office to apologise for wearing the hat and to pick up a membership form
However locals are demanding the club apologise for ordering the veteran to remove his beret.
Christina King said: 'Unbelievable! He should be given a very full and public apology from the person who asked him and the club committee and steward - their staff should have more respect.'
Susan Traynor added: 'How disgusting. No respect shown to a wonderful gentleman.'
A spokesman for the club later told MailOnline: 'We have had a no headwear policy in this Club for a number of years and this was introduced for the safety of our members and guests.
'It was brought about because someone tried to batter our foyer door down with a baseball bat, but the police were unable to make an arrest as our CCTV proved useless because the perpetrator could not be identified because he was wearing a baseball cap.
'A member complained to my Assistant about a man in the Concert Room wearing a hat, she was never told that it was a veteran in uniform wearing his beret.
'The member moaned that it was okay for this man to wear a hat but not our members.
'My Assistant was told the name of the lady who had signed this man in and saw her a few seconds later and very politely and nicely asked her to ask her friend to kindly remove hishat.
'It would have been a different story if she had been informed that the man in question was actually a veteran and that the hat was, in fact, a beret.'
A plane crash changed legendary television journalist Mike Willesee's life after his chilling pre-take off premonition became reality.
Willesee, who was inducted into the Australian Media Hall of Fame last week, survived the 1997 crash along with cameraman Greg Low.
The experience led the 75-year-old back to his Catholic faith and he began travelling the world investigating religious miracles.
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A plane crash (pictured) changed legendary television journalist Mike Willesee's (pictured) life after his chilling pre-take off premonition became reality
Willesee (pictured), who was inducted into the Australian Media Hall of Fame last week, survived the 1997 crash along with cameraman Greg Low
The plane plummeted to earth in a game park after taking off from Nairobi, Kenya, on the way to southern Sudan
'I couldn't understand it. I had this fight in my own head before I got on the plane. How do I tell Greg that it's going to crash?' said Willesee, Australian Story reported.
'I had a premonition but I did not believe in premonitions. But did I believe it was going to crash? Absolutely.'
The plane plummeted to earth in a game park after taking off from Nairobi, Kenya, on the way to southern Sudan.
Emerging unhurt from the crash, Willesee was a changed man, becoming a devout follower of his childhood faith within two years.
The transformation came as a surprise to the journalist's family, and Willesee's daughter Amy said her upbring was atheist and the family 'very sceptical'.
Willesee then devoted his life to investigating Catholic miracles, travelling across South America.
He appeared on Signs From God, broadcast on American TV in 1999, in which he interviewed Katya Rivas.
The Bolivian woman claimed to experience Stigmata, bleeding from the crucifixion injuries suffered by Jesus, and said she had no doubt Rivas was authentic.
The transformation came as a surprise to the journalist's family (pictured are Willesee, ex-wife Carol, and children Jo, Amy and Lucy)
Willesee ended up spending 20 years investigating similar phenomena from Bolivia, Argentina and Mexico.
The iconic journalist, regarded as one of the best interviewers of his era, is now battling stage four throat cancer.
He recently completed radiation therapy after being diagnosed 12 months ago, and cites his faith and his family as instrumental is helping him through the pain.
Willesee said he believes his health will recover, and hopes to complete his work on miracles while also spending time with his family.
Security chiefs are concerned that free anti-virus software handed out by Barclays is spying on customers for the Russian government.
GCHQ officials have been concerned about the Kaspersky Lab, which is led by a former Soviet military intelligence expert and supplied the bank with the software, amid fears it may have been influenced by Vladimir Putin's Federal Security Service.
Kaspersky software has been sent out by Barclays to all customers who use its internet baking service since 2008, but is trying to cut ties with the Russian company.
Security chiefs are concerned that free anti-virus software handed out by Barclays is spying on customers for the Russian government
There are now fears that any Barclays customers who are in high-security jobs are at risk of having their personal files hacked.
However, both Barclays and GCHQ have confirmed that neither organisation has been in contact with the other about any potential breaches.
A spokesman for the relevant arm of GCHQ, the NCSC, told the Financial Times: 'The NCSC has never advised Barclays against the use of Kaspersky products.
'Any suggestion to the contrary is categorically untrue. The NCSC is not a regulator and does not mandate or ban any products.
'Our certification schemes do not currently cover anti-virus or anti-malware services.'
A Barclays spokesman corroborated this, adding: 'We have never received any advice or guidance from GCHQ or the National Cyber Security Centre in relation to Kaspersky.'
Kaspersky is based in Moscow and its founder, Eugene Kaspersky, is a former KGB-trained intelligence expert for the Soviet Union
Kaspersky is based in Moscow and its founder, Eugene Kaspersky, is a former KGB-trained intelligence expert for the Soviet Union.
A company spokesman told the Financial Times: 'No credible evidence has been presented publicly by anyone or any organisation.
'The accusations of any inappropriate ties with the Russian government are based on false allegations and inaccurate assumptions, including the claims about Russian regulations and policies impacting the company.'
A three-year-old girl has been left in a critical condition after she was allegedly raped and tortured by her mother's boyfriend.
The girl was taken to Redlands Hospital in Brisbane's southeast about 8pm on Thursday with serious injuries including fractures, bruising and bite marks.
Police alleged she was tortured and sexually assaulted between 7.30am and 5.30pm on Thursday while the girl's mother was at work.
The girl was allegedly raped and tortured at her house on Thursday (pictured are toys outside the Capalaba home)
A neighbour reported hearing screams from the Capalaba house, in Brisbane's south, on Thursday where the alleged attack happened.
One neighbour who knew the family said the three-year-old was 'a darling little girl'.
'She is a cute little muffin that didn't deserve this,' they told The Courier Mail.
'The mother obviously cares for the little girl. She looked well cared for, well looked after, beautiful manners.'
When the girl was presented to Redlands Hospital on Thursday, staff immediately contacted the police and an investigation was opened.
When the girl was presented to Redlands Hospital on Thursday, staff immediately contacted the police (pictured at the house) and an investigation was opened
Queensland police said a 25-year-old man was charged following investigations into the alleged 'violent assault' - police cordoned off the home after the alleged assault
The girl was transported to Lady Cilento Hospital, where she underwent surgery for her injuries.
She remains at the hospital in a serious but stable condition.
Queensland police said a 25-year-old man was charged following investigations into the alleged 'violent assault'.
He was charged with nine offences including torture, grievous bodily harm, sexual assault, leaving a child under 12 unattended, assault occasioning bodily harm, breach of a domestic violence order and drug offences.
Neighbours reported hearing screams from the Capalaba home (pictured) on Thursday
Nearly 400 years after the shipwreck of a Dutch sailing ship on a tiny Western Australian island, the story of what happened to those who swam ashore remains largely untold.
Beacon Island, later named Batavia's Graveyard for the atrocity that would occur, was the site of Australia's first and biggest massacre.
Scientists are still uncovering the bodies of 125 men, women and children who made it to the tiny stretch of land, part of the Abrolhos Islands in the Indian Ocean.
In a 60 Minutes segment on Sunday night, the story of the Batavia and her slaughtered crew was detailed.
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Beacon Island, later named Batavia's Graveyard for the atrocity that would occur, was the sight of Australia's first and biggest massacre
Scientists are still uncovering the bodies of 125 men, women and children who were slaughtered on the island nearly 400 years ago
In 1629, the Dutch ship was sailing south when she struck a coral reef 40km off the coast of Western Australia.
The ship was carrying 300 passengers and mutiny and violence was believed to have broken out on board.
Around 40 people drowned trying to make it to land, but those to did were soon to be slaughtered by surviving mutineers.
Dr Al Patterson (pictured right with journalist Liam Bartlett) is working with a team of scientists from Australia and the Netherlands
As they waited to be rescued for over three months, men, women and children were massacred on the island in what archaeologists have since dubbed 'a real life Lord of the Flies'.
Many of the women were raped repeatedly as the mutineers slaughtered all across the island.
Dr Al Patterson told the program the stranded passengers would have had 'no where to go'.
'Once the story got out, it would have been an intense experience to be here as those events were going on,' Dr Patterson said.
Dr Patterson told the program the stranded passengers would have had 'no where to go'
Scientists from both Australia and the Netherlands don't know just how many bodies are buried under the sand on the island.
As the 60 Minutes crew filmed the segment, another skeleton was unearthed, making it the fifteenth body to be found.
Those responsible for the bloody massacre were eventually discovered and hanged.
Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry on Sunday delivered a message from President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi to Jordan's King Abdullah that stated that widening regional conflicts and foreign interference in internal Arab affairs require strengthening methods of consultation and coordination to bolster Arab national security.
Shoukry also emphasized his government's firm policy of exerting all possible efforts to avoid further regional conflict and to reduce tensions and polarization, according to an official statement by Egyptian foreign ministry spokesman Ahmed Abu Zeid.
The King and the FM also discussed the latest political and security developments in Iraq and Syria.
The two additionally exchanged viewpoints over efforts to support the recent Palestinian national reconciliation, as well as efforts to revive peace talks between Palestine and Israel.
Prior to meeting with the King, the Egyptian FM discussed these issues in a meeting with his Jordanian counterpart Ayman Safady.
Shoukry is on a three-day regional tour that includes Saudi Arabia, UAE, Kuwait, Bahrain, and Oman to discuss various regional issues, including the ongoing situation involving Lebanon.
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Pauline Hanson has again refused to apologise for failing to denounce the 'skinhead thugs' who racially abused Sam Dastyari.
Sarah Hanson-Young called out the One Nation leader after she accused the senator of 'playing the whole thing up'.
'I've got absolutely no time for him whatsoever - I think he's smart arse,' Hanson said of Dastyari last week.
A far-right group called Patriot Blue approached the Iranian-born Senator at Footscray bar VU on Wednesday night, where he was promoting his new book.
The men hurled racist insults as the Labor powerbroker, labelling him a 'monkey' and 'terrorist' in a disgusting verbal assault.
Appearing together on Sunrise on Monday morning, the Greens MP accused Hanson of 'giving cover to these skinhead thugs' and demanded a public apology on behalf of Dastyari.
'You refuse to condemn those skinhead morons who attacked Sam Dastyari then said a couple of days later they were going to come after me,' Hanson-Young said.
'It is incredibly disrespectful irresponsible for a member of parliament to allow and encourage that kind of vilification, racism and violence.'
Pauline Hanson has again refused to apologise for failing to denounce the 'skinhead thugs' who racially abused Sam Dastyari
Mr Spalding is pictured pulling faces behind Mr Dastyari's face in the video that sparked a national debate on racial intolerance
Hanson through gritted teeth again skipped around the issue while appearing on the breakfast show, instead attacking her counterpart.
'I just want to ask her, does she have to work at being a nasty piece of work or does this just come naturally?' she replied.
Hanson referred to her own past as a political pariah, where she infamously was pelted by balloons filled with urine at a protest in 1996, and said Dastyari doesn't have it has bad as she did.
Hanson through gritted teeth again skipped around the issue while appearing on the breakfast show, instead attacking her counterpart
'Pauline, the victim again,' the Greens MP responded
'I never heard one member of parliament stand up and support me, it was not acceptable 20 years ago, and it was a lot worse what I received.'
'You've called me a racist, you're a nasty piece of work. I'm sick of your lies. You twist everything that I say.'
She also threatened not to return to the show in future to debate Hanson-Young, saying she 'hears from people all the time asking why I go on with her'.
'Pauline, the victim again,' the Greens MP responded.
A 21-year-old man who was among a group of men who ambushed Dastyari at a pub says he has no regrets about taking part despite his mother threatening to kick him out.
She also threatened not to return to the show in future to debate Hanson-Young, saying she 'hears from people all the time asking why I go on with her'
Ricky Turner (second left) continued to ambush Senator Dastyari on Wednesday night
Logan Spalding was with convicted stalker and racial vilifier Neil Erikson and fellow ultranationalist Ricky Turner when they approached the Iranian-born Senator at Footscray bar VU on Wednesday night, where he was promoting his new book.
They heckled the senator, calling him a 'terrorist' and 'little monkey' and demanded to know if he was a Muslim during the confrontation which was captured on camera.
Mr Spalding told Daily Mail Australia that although he regrets how the group approached Mr Dastyari, he doesn't regret taking part.
Logan Spalding (pictured) was among the group of men who racially taunted Sam Dastyari
Mr Spalding's mother Rosetta Milne said she was 'shocked and horrified' by the video which shows her son making faces and waving his arms behind Mr Dastyari's back as he is taunted by the other men.
She said her son's Asperger's Syndrome means he is easily swayed.
Despite this, she told the Daily Telegraph: 'I've told him if he ever does anything like that again, he's out of here.
'He's been apologetic and has agreed to co-operate so I'm hoping he's learnt his lesson.'
But Mr Spalding told Daily Mail Australia says although he doesn't condone name-calling, he believes his companions have a right to say what they want.
'I regret how we approached Sam in the video,' he said.
Mr Spalding's (above) mother said his Asperger's Syndrome means he is very easily swayed
'I would have loved to just ask him questions, and I would have been a little more friendlier, but no, I don't regret being in the video.'
He added that although he doesn't condone name-calling, he believes his companions have a right to say what they want.
'I didn't say anything,' he said.
'I already apologised to Sam about me being there, but that's my choice.
'It's not up to me what other people say. People should have the right to freedom of speech.'
Mr Spalding added that although he has spoken to his mother about the incident, he is not worried about being thrown out.
'Would the left agree with my mum kicking a disabled kid out on the street?' he said.
'My mum is a legend, not an idiot, she wouldn't do that.
Neil Erikson, founder of far-right group Patriot Blue, filmed himself and two others ambushing the Iranian-born politician inside a Melbourne university bar
'Because of my traditionalist upbringing, I actually respect my mother, unlike antifa, who would probably kill their mother if their mother was conservative.'
Senator Dastyari on Thursday said politics in Australia was heading to a 'very, very ugly place.'
He said attacks like the one he was subjected to 'makes me feel small, makes me feel horrible, it makes you feel kind of terrible and that's what they are designed to do'.
Senator Dastyari said he's considering a legal response to the incident, which may have infringed race discrimination laws.
Islamophobia and racism were getting worse in Australia on both the left and right of politics, he added.
In a subsequent Q&A session with fellow Labor MP Tim Watts, who was also at the pub, Senator Dastyari said he was regularly subjected to such taunts.
'All of this is the rise of the radical right in this country, it is the rise of One Nation right,' Senator Dastyari said in a video posted to his Facebook page.
Ricky Turner (left) was filmed harassing Senator Sam Dastyari (right) as he bought drinks
'These are people who feel incredibly empowered because of what Pauline Hanson has done for them.
'You dance so far to the right that it gives those a little bit further out a sense of entitlement.'
But Neil Erikson, who led the tirade, defended his stunt and called Senator Dastyari a 'sook' for complaining about the harassment.
He was filmed wearing a Toll logistics shirt, but the company says Erikson no longer works for them.
In 2014, Mr Erikson was ordered to do community service after pleading guilty to stalking a Melbourne rabbi.
He's also appealing a 2017 conviction for beheading a dummy outside a Bendigo council office in protest over plans to build a mosque.
Mr Turner, who also featured prominently in the video for the far-right Patriot Blue group, has also defended himself, insisting that calling Mr Dastyari a 'monkey' isn't racist.
In 2015, Erickson took part in a mock beheading outside Bendigo Council to protest against a planned mosque in the city
Both the Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull and Opposition Leader Bill Shorten have condemned the verbal attack.
Mr Turnbull said there was no place for racial vilification in Australia.
'That is because our society is built on a foundation of mutual respect. It should have zero tolerance for racist abuse like this,' he told the Seven Network.
Labor Leader Bill Shorten said he was disgusted by the 'ugly' incident.
'What is this country coming to when you cannot go out for a meal without being abused by racist idiots,' he said.
But One Nation leader Pauline Hanson refused to condemn the abuse and instead labelled Senator Dastyari a 'smart arse'.
'He's played up this whole thing,' she told reporters on the campaign trail in Queensland.
'I've got absolutely no time for him whatsoever - I think he's smart arse.'
Senator Hanson's chief of staff James Ashby told AAP: 'Sam Dastyari gets heckled because he's a wanker ... and not because he's a Muslim.'
With her glossy, dark hair and sky-high heels, there is little to set Tania Joya apart from the glamorous Texan women who file into the First Unitarian Church of Dallas each Sunday
With her glossy, dark hair and sky-high heels, there is little to set Tania Joya apart from the glamorous Texan women who file into the First Unitarian Church of Dallas each Sunday.
Sitting at her side in the pew, his arm draped protectively around her shoulder, is her wealthy, besotted fiance. On her engagement finger, the flashy diamond ring he bought her.
But if this British mother-of-four appears to be embracing the American dream, then her glitzy new life in the U.S. belies the extraordinary and sinister past she has left behind.
Tania is the ex-wife of one of ISISs most senior commanders, a U.S.-born white Muslim convert she met online. She was a passionate espouser of the jihadi cause until she fled Syria with her children four years ago.
Since then, the 33-year-old daughter of a postmaster has pulled off a remarkable metamorphosis, effortlessly transforming herself from Islamic extremist to suburban American housewife.
But over the past week, Tania appears to have taken her campaign to repackage what she calls my crazy whirlwind story even further, telling two carefully selected U.S. media outlets about the horrors of growing up in the UK and blaming the racism she claims to have suffered here, for driving her into the arms of Islamic extremism.
Her portrayal of the events that followed could have come straight out of a Hollywood studio the climax of her story coming at the moment she found herself, five months pregnant and leaking amniotic fluid, staggering through a minefield and dodging snipers bullets as she and her three sons fled across the border from Syria into Turkey in 2013.
I was living in a horror movie that wasnt ending, she says in a short film entitled The First Lady of ISIS which appears on the website of The Atlantic magazine.
The 12-minute film gives a flavour of Tanias reincarnation at the hairdressers, out shopping, sipping sparkling white wine at a bar with her fiance. Attending church.
Another article which appeared last week in Texas Monthly is accompanied by a flattering photograph of her standing in the middle of a field of long grass in a sleeveless white top, her doe-like eyes gazing wistfully at the camera, no evidence of her past as a jihadi.
But what is the truth about Tania and her journey into and out of the murderous heart of the ISIS caliphate?
What should we make of what many will regard as a highly self-serving account?
It was to escape, she says, that she went on a Muslim matrimonial website in February 2003 looking for a husband. Within a month, she met John Georgelas, youngest son of Colonel Timothy and Martha Georgelas, who had spent part of his childhood in Cambridgeshire when his father was stationed there during the Eighties
At the Thirties terrace house in Barking, Essex, where they live, Tanias British-Bangladeshi parents have lost touch with their youngest daughter.
We have no contact with her, one of her sisters told the Mail earlier this year. And last week, another told me that despite Tanias denunciation of her unhappy home life in the media, the family has made a decision to not engage with journalists.
Tania is one of five children born to Nural and Jahanara Choudhury who raised their children as Muslims but also encouraged them to embrace a university education and embark on professional careers.
Her birth name is Joya, but she was always known as Tania. While her moderate Muslim parents were hard-working her mother ran a catering business while her father moved between various jobs, including bank clerk and accounts assistant Tania said that as the fourth unwanted daughter, she felt unloved and wanted to run away.
Her unhappiness at home, she says, was exacerbated by the racism the family experienced when they were living in Harrow, North-West London, next-door to a halfway house for former prisoners who, she says, smashed their windows and urinated on the roof of the family car.
While it is impossible to verify these stories, one resident in the street, a Pakistani-born woman who still lives opposite the Choudhurys former home, told the Mail that she cannot recall ever experiencing racism in what has been for years a highly multi-cultural area.
After the Choudhurys moved across London to Barking, Tania began studying for A-levels at a new sixth-form college in East London. She had never taken religion seriously, but now she fell under the spell of a group of ultra-conservative students.
She began reading the Koran and wearing a loose robe called a jilbab and a niqab to cover her face even though her family hated it.
I thought I had been living a lie, been ignorant of Islam, she told Texas Monthly. I started wagging my finger at my family, judging them, calling them insincere Muslims.
The 2001 terror attack on the Twin Towers in New York, when she was 17, only hardened her resolve. Her new friends, she recalls, said the attack was retaliation for persecution of Muslims throughout time. By her own admission, she went on to become really jihadi, hardcore.
The 2001 terror attack on the Twin Towers in New York, when she was 17, only hardened her resolve
Her extremist views and the conservative clothes she wore led to rows with her parents. For them, it was going backward, and they didnt know why I wanted to go backward, she said in the interview.
It was to escape, she says, that she went on a Muslim matrimonial website in February 2003 looking for a husband. Within a month, she met John Georgelas, youngest son of Colonel Timothy and Martha Georgelas, who had spent part of his childhood in Cambridgeshire when his father was stationed there during the Eighties.
Like Tania, Georgelas had rebelled against his family and their politically conservative, Christian values.
Despite his military heritage his World War II hero grandfather was awarded the Purple Heart and his grandmother worked as a secretary at the Pentagon he had dropped out of school, become a prolific drug-user and converted to Islam shortly after 9/11 after meeting foreign students near his parents home in Plano, Texas.
Tania says Georgelas promised travel, a big family and a stable life. He also promised to take care of her.
It was the first time someone was really nice to me, she said.
They were married under Islamic law a month after meeting a union which became legal a year later, in October 2004, when they wed at Rochdale Register Office.
Their eldest son, Hassan, was born in the U.S. shortly after.
During the next ten years, Tania and her husband travelled extensively, flitting between Damascus, Cairo and Dallas.
John and I were so thirsty for an Islamic state, says Tania in the magazine interview.
I was so young and naive. I painted this rosy picture in my mind. I was picturing a Utopia.
But in Dallas, Tania struggled to play the role of subservient Muslim wife, and was reluctant to wear a robe and a veil.
I was getting in tune with American culture, she said. He wanted me to dress Islamically. I started questioning him, questioning his thinking.
'The idea of a caliphate was still important, but I was a mother now.
But she stuck by her husband. When he was jailed in the U.S. for three years in 2006 for hacking into the website of a pro-Israel lobbying group, loyal Tania waited for him.
In 2009, she gave birth to a second son, Laith, and two years later the pair relocated to Cairo.
A third son, Hari, was born there on Christmas Day 2011 and for a time, the family seemed to enjoy a comfortable life in the city.
Despite his military heritage his World War II hero grandfather was awarded the Purple Heart and his grandmother worked as a secretary at the Pentagon Georgegelas had dropped out of school, become a prolific drug-user and converted to Islam shortly after 9/11 after meeting foreign students near his parents home in Plano, Texas.
But by 2013, Georgelas was determined to go to Syria. Tania, who was pregnant with their fourth son, was reluctant to take her children into a war zone.
Her relationship with her husband became violent. At one stage, she says, she put a pillow over his head while he slept, but he woke up and forced her off.
I didnt really think Id kill him, she said in the magazine interview. It was more of a cry for help.
In August that year, they travelled across the border into Syria by bus, setting up home in Azaz, in the abandoned villa of a Syrian general.
Tanias stay in Syria lasted only a few weeks. There were shoot-outs on the street. Food was scarce. She and her sons became sick with vomiting bugs. She says she pleaded with Georgelas to let them return to Turkey. Finally, he agreed.
In September 2013, they hired a car and drove to the border, walking through a minefield for the final hour and pushing a buggy with the youngest child in it. Her fourth son was born in January 2014, yet despite the acrimonious way they had parted, he was named after her husband.
This dramatic escape from Islamic State as she was suffering premature contractions and leaking amniotic fluid is, of course, the climax of Tanias story.
But what followed upon her return to Texas is equally fascinating. In Dallas, she swiftly divorced Georgelas and dropped his surname. Georgelas, who now goes by the name of Yahya al-Bahrumi, is still believed to be in Syria.
With no money of her own, Tania had to move in with her former parents-in-law.
It wasnt long before she was frequenting the Dallas shopping malls, having her hair done at the salon and learning to shoot at the local gun range. Having abandoned Islam, friends say she describes herself as agnostic or sometimes even atheist.
Having attempted to use marriage as an escape route once before, with such disastrous consequences, she might have been expected to avoid men for a while.
But with four young boys on her hands, she seems to have been keen to replace their father. Speaking during her interview with The Atlantic, she said: Ive had these children for one reason only and that was so that they could serve God, as Muslims, as mujahideen.
And now I didnt know what to do with them. So I went to the dating website Match. I wrote: I have four kids. My husband abandoned me to go and become the next Osama Bin Laden. But I got 1,300 replies.
Tania said: And now I didnt know what to do with them. So I went to the dating website Match. I wrote: I have four kids. My husband abandoned me to go and become the next Osama Bin Laden (pictured). But I got 1,300 replies
She met IT executive Craig Burma within 24 hours of being on the site in June 2015. The twice-divorced 48-year-old, who lives in a $500,000 six-bedroom house with a swimming pool in the Dallas suburbs, was instantly smitten. He told the Mail this week: I love her and she is brilliant. She does great things.
It was Craig, who has three sons of his own, who introduced Tania to Unitarian Universalism, which has its roots in Christianity but embraces all faiths and offers an open exploration of the divine.
According to Tania: When I left Islam I was really trying hard to find another religion to replace it. I really missed having a community after Islam. It wasnt until we started going to this church that I really felt at home in Dallas. Certainly, fellow members of the congregation at the church she attends do not appear to be perturbed by having the former jihadi in their midst.
Instead, Tania, with her fragile, almost Disney-esque beauty, appears to have reinvented herself as a heroine in her tale of triumph over adversity, in which American values come out on top.
Footage filmed after one church service shows her chatting to another member of the congregation, telling him: I dont know if I want to show people my story. Its a horror story. He replies: Isnt this kind of like therapy, too. American-style. Tell the whole world. And Tania replies: I guess it is. If anything, its me trying to get my message out to people in similar situations and saying this is not how to live your life.
While she is being supported financially by her fiance, she says she is taking online courses in topics including counter-terrorism, human rights and global diplomacy, and hopes one day to work on deradicalisation programmes.
But her story has not gone down well with everyone. Among the many comments left on The Atlantic website, one says: It plays out like a pilot episode for a new Real Housewives of ISIL series.
And another: The Texas Monthly story assumes we can take everything she says at face value. And a third: Do we put it all down to a rather shallow woman with little sophistication getting caught up in propaganda? I trust the FBI has interrogated her at length and found her to be too vapid to be worried about.
ISIS expert Graeme Wood wrote about Tania in a book published earlier this year called The Way Of The Strangers: Encounters With Islamic State: Tania was no victim: she signed up for jihad, and she passed up nearly a decade of opportunities to ditch Yahya and take her kids far from his dreams of murder and mayhem.
Tania does not appear to be fazed by such criticism.
I love America. I feel very fortunate, she said in her interview.
Republican Texas may seem a strange choice of home for a woman who once detested the kind of values espoused by many of the people who live there.
But it is here, it seems, that Tania believes she will finally find the happy ending she has been searching for.
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The reality of life after Guantanamo Bay for former prisoners is revealed in a new photography exhibition.
New-York based photographer Debi Cornwall visited the Guantanamo Bay detention center over the course of two years, chronicling the day-to-day life of military personnel stationed there. Afterwards, she tracked down some of the men spread across nine countries who had been released to discuss their adjustment to life after Gitmo.
Their experiences were wide and varied, and for the most part, extremely lonely.
Cornwall told DailyMail.com: 'Theres a range of emotion and this is one of the questions Ive been consumed with throughout my professional career: what are the ingredients of resilience?
'How does someone survive this sort of trauma?'
Cornwall followed the stories of 14 men who were incarcerated for years at Guantanamo before being declared innocent and released. Many of the men, like this anonymous Chinese Muslim photographed in 2015, couldn't return home and were instead sent to third countries. This man was held for four years before being transferred to Albania to rebuild his life
In Beyond Gitmo, Cornwall tracked down former prisoners who were cleared of any wrongdoing against the United States. Sami, a Sudanese former prisoner pictured here, was held for five years before military decided he had not committed any crime. He was then transferred to Qatar in 2008 to start anew
Murat, a Turkish German, was one of the few men who was permitted to return to his home country after being released. He went on to become a refugee counselor, and is pictured at a refugee housing unit in Bremen, Germany
Widespread allegations of torture and abuse have been reported to have taken place at Guantanamo Bay - the forefront of America's war on terror that was taken on in earnest after the September 11th terrorist attacks. Pictured here is a 'Compliant Detainee Media Room' at Camp 5 in 2014
Five of the men, of Chinese and Uzbek descent, were transferred to Albania after their release. The Chinese men who were held at Gitmo were Uighurs indigenous Muslims who faced retribution from their native people were they to return to their home country.
Although they were cleared of any wrongdoing against the US, China would consider them to be treasonous separatists as practicing Muslims, Cornwall explained.
There were a total of 22 housed in Guantanamo and theyve been shipped all over the world - from El Salvador and Palau to places like Albania where I photographed a number of them.
After being sent to Albania, all five of the men she spoke with were granted asylum, which should have granted them the right to a national identification card. However none of the men were permitted the ID card, likely due to the reputation they carried as former Guantanamo prisoners.
In Albania, if you dont have a national ID card, youre basically a non-person. You cannot legally register for a drivers license, a car, a bank account, or a cell phone. Essentially you live under the table, Cornwall continued.
More of the former detainees, who were from Yemen and Tunisia, werent allowed to go to their home countries because the political situation was deemed too dangerous.
Many of the men released from Guantanamo, they dont have court declarations of innocence there was no formal process for them. There was no court proceeding, Cornwall said.
So when they return home theyre sort of branded for the rest of their lives from Guantanamo, and in our consciousness, is synonymous with: youre a terrorist even if thats not true. And for men who couldnt go home who were transferred to third countries, they are trying to rebuild lives in countries where they dont know anybody or even speak the language.
Men like Djamel, however, couldn't return to their home countries and were forced to restart in countries where they didn't speak the language. Djamel is now living in Algeria and was able to claim asylum, but has not been able to obtain a national identification card, meaning he cannot get a license, cell phone, or even a bank account
Cornwall decided to incorporate the 'no-face' rule that applied at Guantanamo Bay to her photography of former inmates, to help demonstrate the disorientation and loneliness experienced by many of the men such as Hamza, pictured here, a Tunisian native held at Guantanamo for 12 years before being cleared and transferred to Slovakia
Although the no-face rule did not apply to those who have been released from Guantanamo, Cornwall decided to incorporate it into her photographs of the former inmates to illustrate the disorientation experienced by these men. She collaborated with her subjects to decide on an environment that would be most meaningful for them to be photographed in.
One person who particularly impacted her, Hussein, was originally from Yemen - but was sent to Slovakia after being held at Guantanamo for 12 years.
Slovakia is the only country in Europe that has no mosques. As a practicing Muslim, when it is time for him to pray, Hussein has nowhere to go. He is pictured kneeling for midday prayer with his hands on bare rocks, alone in a field with a solitary tree.
Theres a range of responses from confusion and frustration and anger to grace and forgiveness. It really depends on the circumstances each man is facing, his family and social networks, and personality, Cornwall said.
I find that released men who have a sense of humor often are quite resilient. Everyone has a sense of humor, but those who can relate to what theyve been through with a measure of dark humor are also doing better. Those who have returned to strong family systems or been able to marry and start their own family that seems to help.
It is Ms Cornwalls hope that in showing the photographs of what she saw at Guantanamo Bay and in sharing the stories of the men who were detained there despite their innocence, she can encourage a greater discussion about the United States justice system.
Hussein, a Yemeni former prisoner living in Slovakia, prays alone on a rock bank because he lives in the only European country without a mosque. Cornwall hopes that her photography can create a greater discussion about humanity as a whole
My focus is more on posing the question that may disrupt an assumption no matter what you think of Guantanamo than the answer you come to. I think by posing the question - what do we have in common there are new conversations and new relationships that can arise, she said.
Since the exhibition has debuted, it appears that opposing viewpoints have begun to come together in a more cohesive way. At the Steven Kassler Gallery, where Ms Cornwalls photos are being shown, there was a recent panel comprised of a former Guantanamo prison interrogator, former inmate who appeared via Skype from Mauritania, an attorney, and Cornwall herself.
It is her belief that it was the first time in history that an open discussion between such a combination of people had taken place.
To have that range of people with first-hand experience at Guantanamo gave rise to a powerful conversation, and it was different in kind than a conversation that is solely about terrorism or solely about human rights, Cornwall said.
As an artist, being able to facilitate that different conversation felt very meaningful.
Boys as young as five should be able to wear tiaras at school without criticism, teachers in Church of England schools are to be told.
Male pupils should also be free to dress up in a tutu or high heels without attracting any comment or observation, according to anti-bullying rules sent out by the Church yesterday.
The instructions for the CofEs 4,700 schools said they should not require children to wear uniforms that create difficulty for trans pupils.
The new rules for faith schools say males should be able to wear items usually worn by females (picture posed by model)
This appears to give official backing to schools that ban skirts to avoid discrimination against transgender children.
Schools are also told they cannot use the Christian faith or Bible teachings to justify behaviour that is considered to amount to bullying for example, identifying a transgender pupil by a sex other than the one they have chosen. The advice contains instructions on how to report bullying, including sample forms on which teachers are encouraged to name the alleged bully and their target, and use tick boxes to describe what happened.
Examples include name-calling, social media trolling, or insulting gestures.
The rules to challenge homophobic, biphobic and transphobic bullying follow initial guidelines published by the Church three years ago which said being gay can be good and pupils should revere and respect all members of the diverse community.
The official teaching of the CofE, however, remains that gay sex is sinful and that members of the clergy should not be in an active sexual relationship with someone of the same sex. The Church also says marriage must continue to be between a man and a woman.
Conservative Christian activists condemned the new rules yesterday.
Andrea Minichiello Williams of Christian Concern an evangelical member of the CofEs parliament, the General Synod said: These rules are unkind, unloving and lacking in compassion. We are all against bullying, but the Church is using these guidelines to pursue an agenda that runs counter to the Churchs teaching.
Justin Welby said: 'This guidance helps schools to offer the Christian message of love, joy and celebration of our humanity without exception or exclusion.
She added: We are getting to the point where if you are not careful the slightest slip from the correct agenda in a Church of England school will get you punished. The anti-bullying agenda is aimed against people who step out of line the anti-bullies are becoming the bullies.
The new guidance came as a Christian teacher was suspended from a school in Oxfordshire after accidentally calling a transgender pupil girl instead of boy. Joshua Sutcliffe, 27, faces a disciplinary hearing this week in which he could lose his job, after the parents complained.
The CofE rules say children in nurseries and the primaries that make up the majority of Church schools should be free to follow their own inclinations when they dress. They state: In the early years context and throughout primary school, play should be a hallmark of creative exploration.
Pupils need to be able to play with the many cloaks of identity Children should be at liberty to explore the possibilities of who they might be without judgment or derision. For example, a child may choose the tutu, princesss tiara and heels and/or the firemans helmet, tool belt and superhero cloak without expectation or comment.
The rules add: Within school communities there will be members of staff who are co-habiting, in same-sex relationships, bisexual, trans or exploring their gender identity.
Same-sex parents and trans parents may be among the parent body and in most secondary schools a minority of pupils will come out as gay or lesbian during their years in the school.
An increasing number of children and young people are being referred to gender identity services an increasing number of primary and secondary schools are reporting incidences of children wishing to identify as other than the gender of their birth.
Any school that does not teach the importance of gay or transgender rights will be failing in their duty to prepare their pupils to live in modern Britain, the Church rules say.
'A child may choose the tutu, princesss tiara and heels and/or the firemans helmet, tool belt and superhero cloak without expectation or comment, say the new rules. Pictured: The Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby
The guidance adds that there can be no justification for this negative behaviour based on the Christian faith or the Bible. It states that the Church of Englands teaching on human sexuality and a range of Christian views should be taught, as well as a range of perspectives from other faiths and world views.
The Most Rev Justin Welby, the Archbishop of Canterbury, said: Central to Christian theology is the truth that every single one of us is made in the image of God. Every one of us is loved unconditionally by God. This guidance helps schools to offer the Christian message of love, joy and celebration of our humanity without exception or exclusion.
Roman Catholic schools are to cut the terms mother and father from admissions forms to avoid offending step-parents and same-sex couples.
It follows a complaint by a parent against Holy Ghost Roman Catholic Primary School in Wandsworth, south London, after it used mother/guardian and father/guardian on a form.
The Office of the Schools Adjudicator upheld the complaint, saying the wording might be taken to imply that the school is restricting its definition [of parent].
The Catholic Education Service is understood to be preparing a form using the family instead.
Drag queens to visit nursery schools to teach about LGBT
Drag queens are being brought into taxpayer-funded nursery schools to teach children about sexual diversity.
The Drag Queen Story Time organisation, based in Bristol, was formed to teach children about LGBT tolerance.
Nursery bosses say the sessions will help children to see people who defy rigid gender restrictions and grow up to combat hate crime.
Donna La Mode is one of the drag queens who will be sent in to read stories to children at nursery
They want to target two and three-year-olds to influence them early. The drag queens, including Donna La Mode, will read stories to the children.
The sessions are being held at seven London Early Years Foundation nurseries over the winter and if they are successful they will be rolled out across all the LEYFs 37 sites.
But leading child psychotherapist Dilys Daws, feared they could sow the seeds of confusion in young children about their own sexual identity.
Welby aide quits over the COfE's 'heretical teachings'
An adviser to the Archbishop of Canterbury has quit in protest over the Church of Englands liberal teaching.
Lorna Ashworth, a conservative evangelical who sat on the Archbishops Council, said the CofE has become revisionist and heretical. She also resigned from the General Synod.
Lorna Ashworth quit her position in the Church of England because of its 'liberal agenda'
Mother-of-three Mrs Ashworth, 47, is disappointed by CofE moves to condemn those who try to persuade gay people to become heterosexual, and by its deepening accommodation of the transgender lobby.
She said: In light of this revisionist agenda and the heretical teaching I am no longer willing to sit around the table, pretending we, as a governing body of the Church of England, are having legitimate conversations about mission.
Mrs Ashworth added that she and many others long for clear and courageous biblical leadership.
Christian Slater called a reporter a 'salacious c**t' after he was asked about if he regretted his past including an arrest for beating his girlfriend.
Slater - in London starring in Glengarry Glen Ross on West End - was finishing an interview with The Daily Beast's Nico Hines when he made the sudden outburst.
'What a salacious c**t this guy is!' the actor said of the reporter when asked for clarification regarding comments that he doesn't regret his past transgressions.
Christian Slater (left) - starring in Glengarry Glen Ross on West End - was finishing an interview with The Daily Beast's Nico Hines (right) when he had the outburst
Following the remark, Slater's PR representative rushed the actor away. The rep eventually sent an email to Hines to apologize.
Slater, a child star who rocked the 80s and 90s, has faced convictions for DUIs in 1989, fights with cops, an attempt at carrying a gun on a plane in 1995 and violence against his girlfriend in 1998. The latter forced the 48-year-old actor to participate in a domestic abuse program.
Hollywood's 'bad boy' was also charged with third degree abuse following an accusation of assault but those were later dropped in 2005.
'What a salacious c**t this guy is!' the actor said of the reporter when asked for clarification regarding comments that he doesn't regret his past transgressions (Slater pictured on October 31)
In the current climate where high-profile men in Hollywood and politics are being accused sexually harassing people, Hines wanted to see if the actor regretted any of his own brushes with law.
'No, no. I regret nothing,' he said to The Daily Beast.
'I've always taken my work extremely seriously and I think you learn from experience and it's a process. I started working at the age of nine, I have had an opportunity to grow up in this business, in front of everybody, so of course nobody gets through unscathed.
Hines asserted that it was 'jarring' to hear the actor speak in such a way given allegations against Harvey Weinstein and Kevin Spacey, who costarred in the 1992 version of the film that saw Al Pacino play Slater's Ricky Roma
'It's just how I grew up, so everybody has gotten an opportunity to see highs and lows and ups and downsthat's part of life.'
Hines asserted that it was 'jarring' to hear the actor speak in such a way given allegations against Harvey Weinstein and Kevin Spacey, who costarred in the 1992 version of the film that saw Al Pacino play Slater's Ricky Roma.
It was then that Slater made his comment to which he would later explain: 'the question of regret is hard for me to reckon with.
'I do regret my words this morning.'
Slater plays Ricky Roma in In Glengarry Glen Ross, a top salesman in David Mamet's real estate office who is surrounded by misogyny, power and a desire to be the best.
The character may be best known for when Al Pacino berates Kevin Spacey's office manager character in the 1992 film.
And for Sam Yates who is directing the West End showing, the character and a lot of the work is eerily similar to that of Donald Trump.
'I think a lot chimes with Trump,' he said.
'He learned his trade selling real estate in the '80s, so in terms of how these guys use language to sell an idea, whether it's a good one or a bad one, there's a load of bluster; a lot of playing for time; there's a lot of lying; there's lot of bullshit basically.'
'And manipulation, yeah,' added Slater.
'This is certainly a play that I can imagine Trump identifying with extraordinarily on many levels. These are all very Trumpian-type characters.'
The work will be playing in the West End until February 2018 at the time.
The British boss who exposed a 1.1 billion scandal at Japanese manufacturer Olympus has won a deal to turn his battle into a TV drama.
Michael Woodford discovered shocking irregularities when he became chief executive of the camera and medical gear maker in 2011.
Michael Woodford has sold the rights of his experiences at Olympus to TV
When he tried to get to the bottom of what had happened, he was sacked and forced to flee the country.
Police back in Britain even warned the boss that he could face assassination attempts from Japans feared Yakuza crime clans.
Woodfords efforts eventually saw several directors quit in disgrace and led to a criminal inquiry. The 57-year-old has now sold the rights to his tale to New York TV producer Tenafly.
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After 65 years as the focal point of a nations thoughts, it must have felt a little strange to be a spectator.
But at least the Queen was finally able to take in the full, humbling spectacle of Remembrance Sunday at the Cenotaph yesterday as she watched proceedings from a Whitehall balcony.
The Monarch had entrusted her wreath to the Prince of Wales for the most sacred date in the royal calendar. At one point a tear could be seen in her eye, though royal observers put this down to a harsh Arctic breeze ushering in a cold snap rather than a public display of emotion.
It was a powerful moment, nonetheless. Flanked by the Duke of Edinburgh and the Duchess of Cornwall behind her Foreign Office balustrade, the Queen could survey the one occasion of the year when all the Royal Family, all the party leaders, all former prime ministers and representatives of every Commonwealth nation gather in the heart of the capital.
On the six previous occasions when the Queen had been absent from the parade, she was either on an overseas tour or expecting a baby. Never before had she been an onlooker at the 11am ceremony. It will not have been a decision taken lightly.
The Duke of Edinburgh leans against the wall as he joins The Queen Elizabeth on a Whitehall balcony at Remembrance Sunday at the Cenotaph, London
Her Majesty's wreath was laid on her behalf by The Prince of Wales. The Monarch had entrusted her wreath to the Prince of Wales for the most sacred date in the royal calendar
Prince Charles stands in front of the Prime Minister, leader of the opposition and former leaders at the Cenotaph
Officially, she took it in order to be alongside the Duke of Edinburgh, following his retirement from public duties earlier this year. Unofficially, it defied common sense to expect a head of state in her 92nd year to walk down the Cenotaph step backwards on live television, as this ceremony has always required.
But if the Queen was not in her usual place, she was very much in evidence and taking a keen interest in everything.
Being on a balcony meant she was actually more visible than before to the vast crowds, ten deep in places. So was her splendid spray of poppies, held in place by Queen Marys gleaming Dorset bow brooch.
Prince Philip, who was wearing his uniform as Lord High Admiral, had none of his many medals on display. All were covered by his thick Royal Navy coat.
For the Prince of Wales, who has been quietly taking on a number of the Queens engagements at her behest, this was the most kingly and perhaps the most poignant role he has performed to date.
Yet while we may be witnessing a gradual transfer of duties, it is not a transfer of powers. The Queen remains very much in constitutional charge.
The Prince of Wales took over the role from the Queen as he has stepped up his royal duties in recent years
Charles, pictured with princes William and Harry, made a small piece of Cenotaph history yesterday when he became the first person to lay two wreaths in a single Remembrance Sunday service
But if the Queen was not in her usual place, she was very much in evidence and taking a keen interest in everything
Hence the fact that the Prince made a small piece of Cenotaph history yesterday when he became the first person to lay two wreaths in a single Remembrance Sunday service. After the two-minute silence, the Queens equerry, Major Nana Twumasi-Ankrah of the Blues and Royals, stepped forward with the Sovereigns wreath and handed it to the Prince who placed it in pride of place at the foot of the Cenotaph.
Once the Duke of Edinburghs equerry, Captain Ben Tracey of the Grenadier Guards, had laid the Dukes wreath on his behalf, Prince Charles then returned to lay a tribute all over again his own, complete with his distinctive Prince of Wales feathers. It meant that the only member of the royal wartime generation on parade was a shivering Duke of Kent, 82, who is both a Field Marshal and Colonel of the Scots Guards.
The bracing north-westerly wind had most people blinking hard against the elements, the Queen and the Duke, 96, included. They watched it all solemnly, occasionally swapping notes as the wreath-laying continued with the politicians and Commonwealth representatives. Labours Jeremy Corbyn was on his best behaviour, not only bowing his head but also singing (or at least moving his lips) during the national anthem later.
Just one glitch occurred when the Lord Speaker, Lord Fowler, representing the House of Lords, had a butter-fingered moment and nearly dropped his poppies on the Cenotaph instead of laying them.
The Queen observing from the Balcony with other members of the Royal Family attending the Remembrance service at the Cenotaph in Whitehall
Prince Philip, 96, looked frail as he made his way from the balcony following the minutes of silence on Remembrance Sunday
At the conclusion of the national anthem, the Queen returned inside the Foreign Office, Prince Philip insisting the Duchess of Cornwall go first before following. Despite his retirement, he was determined not to miss this event or Saturday nights Festival of Remembrance at the Royal Albert Hall.
BRISTLING AT HARRY'S BEARD Prince Harry caused controversy by turning up to the service with a beard with one critic saying he had let down the Armed Forces and broken military rules. The Army does not allow serving troops to have beards except in rare circumstances, such as for religious reasons. But his critics were wrong. The prince is exempt because he left the Army in 2015. Advertisement
The other VIPs withdrew, clearing the path for the Royal British Legion parade. More than 10,000 marchers from more than 260 organisations everyone from the Durham Light Infantry and Coastal Command to the Army Widows Association pushed shoulders back and started marking time. Like the main ceremony, it is a gloriously unchanging ritual, except, of course, in one regard the gradual decline in veterans from the Second World War.
Even so, many were determined to be here yesterday, among them a large contingent marking the centenary of women in military uniform. Joan De-Vall, 92, marched the full length of Whitehall and round to Horse Guards in the same ATS (Auxiliary Territorial Service) uniform which both she and the Queen wore in wartime.
Several comrades had elected to be wheeled round the same route. All agreed that the Queen had done exactly the right thing by delegating her wreath-laying to the Prince of Wales.
Sometimes I find it awkward enough walking forwards let alone backwards, said Joan.
It was a day for marking many other anniversaries, too. Its 75 years since the cruiser HMS Exeter was sunk in the Java Sea. It is also 35 years since the next HMS Exeter, a Type 42 destroyer, came within nine seconds of being sunk in the Falklands conflict.
The newly-created HMS Exeter Association was formed to bring together veterans and loved-ones from both of these great ships. Yesterday, the new organisation was marching for the first time.
Its very moving the way the whole country comes together. The response from the crowd was just amazing, said former Leading Hand Dougie Leask, 58, from Gosport, afterwards.
His thoughts, as ever, were on absent friends and on his commanding officer in the Falklands, the late Rear-Admiral Hugh Balfour, one of the finest leaders you could hope to serve.
The Queen appeared emotional as she watched the ceremony below for Remembrance Sunday
Yesterday, Dougie was thinking of the moment 35 years ago, when an Argentine Exocet missile was locked on to HMS Exeter, nine seconds from impact, and Captain Balfour coolly despatched every available piece of weaponry with the order: Thirty degrees starboard. Full steam ahead. Hit the deck. That was the longest nine seconds of my life, said Dougie yesterday, but that Exocet never arrived.
PS: STILL THE BEST OF ENEMIES Their time in power was marred by tension and this frosty look, as they stood side by side at the Cenotaph, seems to show there is still no love lost after Gordon Brown and Tony Blair attacked each other in their memoirs. Advertisement
Among the youngest on parade were Hannah Greetham, 14, and her brother, James, 17, both marching with the Monte Cassino Association in memory of their late grandfather, Lewis Greetham of the Royal Artillery.
He had come through the Battle of El Alamein with Monty in the North African desert.
He was fighting his way up through Italy when his unit came under attack while crossing a swollen river below the bloodbath that was Monte Cassino in 1944.
Gunner Lewis dived in to save two wounded comrades while under enemy fire, was himself injured and was later awarded the Military Medal. Two of his comrades were on parade yesterday. A third, however, was denied entry to the Cenotaph because he had not applied weeks in advance.
Jim Aston, 93, from Dudley, who served with the Royal Signals at Monte Cassino, had already been invited by the Royal British Legion to the Royal Albert Hall for Saturday nights event.
He had hoped to attend the Cenotaph parade for the first and possibly last time in his life. However, although his association had saved a place for him in the parade and he had his passport with him, the police said that he lacked the requisite security clearance.
Following the last-minute intervention of the Mail, Mr Aston was wheeled through an x-ray machine and on to parade by his grandson, Richard, just in time. I gather that a number of other Second World War veterans were refused.
Note to organisers: We wont have the wartime generation forever. Next year, if a few nonagenarians turn up with medals, ID and a heartfelt wish to pay their respects one last time, could someone show a bit of common sense?
The fur is still flying in the unseemly Vogue slanging match, Im sorry to report.
The bust-up entered a new round yesterday when former editor Alexandra Shulman hit back at claims she ran a Sloanie club with a diversity problem during her 25 years at the magazines helm, branding the accusations offensive and upsetting.
For weeks, the row has been thundering away between Vogues old guard and new editor Edward Enninfuls army of fresh (and more ethnically diverse) faces.
Former editor Alexandra Shulman, left, has attacked model Naomi Campbell, right
Leading the charge has been Edwards friend Naomi Campbell, who took Alexandra to task over comments she made that appeared to take a swipe at ex-stylist Edwards suitability for the role.
I find it racist, said Naomi, a contributing editor of Vogue whom Edward describes as one of the greatest models who has ever lived. She went on: Its like a vendetta and it should stop. I take it as racial abuse.
Now, in the week that saw Ghana-born Edward unveil his first cover, featuring mixed-race model-of-the-moment Adwoa Aboah, Alexandra has tried to set the record straight. I am upset by accusations of racism, she said. It was weird. Naomi is very vocal and she has chosen to take that view. I havent got a racist bone in my body. It does infuriate me.
I dont think it is very becoming of somebody who is contributing editor of a magazine to slag off the previous editors.
And on the issue of her former 54-strong, all-white team at the magazine, said to have been comprised mainly of ex-public schoolgirls, Alexandra added: The idea that there was this posh cabal who were having a kind of tea party when we made literally hundreds of millions of pounds as profit, I find offensive.
Alexandra appeared to hint that there was a whiff of hypocrisy behind Edwards decision to use Adwoa, who attended the 37,000-a-year Millfield boarding school, on his first cover. Shes sort of posh Notting Hill royalty, she said, adding: Wed actually offered her the cover and she turned us down when I was there maybe she knew she was going to get this cover.
Congratulations to designer Bella Freud who has found love with a dashing artist 24 years her junior.
He is Taz Fustok, with whom Bella has launched exclusive new West London members club Laylow yet to officially open but already hosting big names such as Alex Turner, Jeremy Clarkson and Alexandra Shulman. Taz, 32, who owns Laylow, while Bella, 56 daughter of artist Lucian Freud who has designed the waiters uniforms, leaving staff chuffed to bits with their woollies as a Bella Freud jumper retails for about 300 on the high street.
Bella Freud, left, has found love with dashing artist Taz Fustok, 32, right
Jenna Coleman was seen channelling her television character with some Victorian-style clothing last week, but Im not sure she pulled the look off it certainly didnt seem an outfit fit for a queen.
The 31-year-old star of ITVs Victoria teamed a 235 ruffle dress from designer Ganni looking like it came from the costume department of her hit show with trainers, black ankle socks and a beret.
Carrying a coffee and on the arm of her co-star boyfriend Tom Hughes, who plays Albert to her Victoria in the drama, Jenna looked centuries away from her character, even if her dress didnt.
Jenna Coleman, right, was photographed with her co-star Tom Hughes in London
The 31-year-old star of ITVs Victoria teamed a 235 ruffle dress from designer Ganni looking like it came from the costume department of her hit show with trainers and black ankle socks
And as she was a star guest at the Vogue December issue party last week, youd think she would have picked up some style tips!
Clever Carole Bamford wife of JCB billionaire Lord Bamford pulled a rabbit from her hat last week when she appointed two top chefs at her Cotswolds pub The Wild Rabbit.
Alyn Williams and Nathan Eades are now steering the ship at the Oxfordshire restaurant dubbed the poshest pub in Britain thanks to its well-heeled Chipping Norton set clientele.
Alyn Williams, pictured, and Nathan Eades are now steering the ship at Britain's poshest pub
The gastropub lost a Michelin star over the summer after head chef Tim Allen returned home to Manchester.
But with Alyn who trained with Marcus Wareing and Gordon Ramsay as chef patron and Nathan, a former Chef Of The Year nominee, taking over as head chef, locals predict the star will be reinstated in no time.
She is famed for her role as the feisty barmaid Michelle Connor in Coronation Street.
And Kym Marsh led the glamour when she joined a bevy of soap stars at the Royal Television Society (RTS) Awards at The Hilton Hotel in Manchester on Saturday.
Parading her incredible figure, the 41-year-old beauty looked sleek in her form-fitting grey Bardot midi dress.
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Wow: Coronation Street's Kym Marsh paraded her sensational figure in a Bardot dress as she led the glamour from bevy of soap stars at Royal Television Society Awards on Saturday
Proving accessories make an outfit, the soap star toted a circular shaped handbag which caught the eye with its detailed colourful embrodiery.
Adding to the sparkle, the actress sashayed through the glamorous venue in golden platform sandals which dazzled in the spotlight.
Hitting all the right style notes, the former musician wore heavy eye make-up and styled her locks in voluminous curls for a dramatic edge.
Parading her incredible figure: The 41-year-old Corrie beauty looked sleek in her form-fitting grey Bardot midi dress
Adding to the sparkle: The actress sashayed through the glamorous venue in golden platform sandals which dazzled in the spotlight
Proving accessories make an outfit: The soap star toted a circular shaped handbag which caught the eye with its detailed colourful embrodiery
Kym was in jovial spirits as she joined her Corrie co-star Bhavna Limbachia, who plays Rana Habeeb on the cobbles.
Glamorous Bhavana wowed when she showcased her slender figure and gravity-defying cleavage in her strapless emerald green dress.
The Corrie beauty drew further attention to her tiny frame as the slim-fit garment featured an elaborate ribbon detail which wrapped across the waist.
Hitting all the right style notes: The former musician wore heavy eye make-up and styled her locks in voluminous curls for a dramatic edge
Great company: Kym was in jovial spirits as she joined her Corrie co-star Bhavna Limbachia, who plays Rana Habeeb on the cobbles
Corrie beauties! Glamorous Bhavana wowed when she showcased her slender figure and gravity-defying cleavage in her strapless emerald green dress
By scooping her brunette tresses into a neat bun off her face, the stunner best showcased her dazzling tassel earrings which kissed her shoulders.
Accentuating her eyes with heavy make-up, the soap star opted for a nude lipstick to keep the attention on her glamorous ensemble.
The Real Housewives Of Cheshire star Nermina Pieters-Mekic stole the show at the awards when she showed off the most skin in her risque thigh-high split dress.
Racy: The Real Housewives Of Cheshire star Nermina Pieters-Mekic stole the show at the awards when she showed off the most skin in her risque thigh-high split dress
Ensuring all eyes are well and truly on her: The stunner teased a glimpse of her ample cleavage as the garment was slashed from the shoulder to her incredibly tiny waist
Ensuring all eyes are well and truly on her, the stunner teased a glimpse of her ample cleavage as the garment was slashed from the shoulder to her incredibly tiny waist.
Not missing the opportunity to show off her envy-inducing figure, the star oozed sex appeal in the slinky dress which featured semi-sheer panels.
Adding a scarlet lip and impressive tassel earrings, the stunner stood out from the bevy of soap stars in her sky-scraper high golden heels which added to her height.
Cosy: Sexy Nermina was in high spirits in the good company of her The Real Housewives Of Cheshire co-star Rachel Lugo
Stunning: Rachel showed off some serious flesh in the semi-sheer dress which caught the eye with its striking floral embroidery
Adding a scarlet lip and impressive tassel earrings, the stunner stood out from the bevy of soap stars in her sky-scraper high golden heels which added to her height.
Nerminas co-star Rachel Lugo was hot on her stilettos in a deep ocean blue floor-length ballgown.
Proving the devil is in the details, the reality star showed off some serious flesh in the semi-sheer dress which caught the eye with its striking floral embroidery.
Glamorous as ever: The Real Housewives Of Cheshire star Stacey Forsey looked sleek in her patterned high-low dress, flashing a glimpse of her envy-inducing limbs in heels
Aside from Corrie, Amanda Clapham was hot on the ladies heels as she represented her soap Hollyoaks at the star-studded bash.
The blonde, who is famed for her role as Holly Cunningham, flaunted her legs in a perilous split sequin floor-length gown.
Every inch the Eighties siren, the television queen sparkled in the slinky dress, featuring a sexy lace-up back detailing, teamed with metallic sky-scraper heels.
Posing up a storm: Amanda Clapham was hot on the ladies heels as she represented her soap Hollyoaks at the star-studded bash
Hollyoaks' Tamara Wall and Anna Passey also joined the great and the good of the showbiz world at the small screen affair.
Tamara paraded her legs in a thigh-skimming leopard print dress as she prowled around the red carpet.
Meanwhile, Anna exuded elegance as she graced the red carpet in her blue strapless gown which featured a form-fitting bodice to best showcase her tiny figure.
Dazzling: The blonde, who is famed for her role as Holly Cunningham, flaunted her legs in a perilous split sequin floor-length gown
The soap star looked blooming lovely in the ballgown, which featured intricate floral embroidery for an ethereal effect.
The Royal Television Society Awards came after Emmerdale swept the board at The Inside Soap Awards 2017 where the series scooped a whooping eight prizes.
Coronation Street didn't miss out on the awards as the cobbles were awarded with four prizes for their efforts at the bash.
Leggy lady: Tamara Wall paraded her legs in a thigh-skimming leopard print dress as she prowled around the red carpet
Aside from her career, Kym has a very hands-on family life as she has children Emily Cunliffe, 20, and David, 22, from a previous relationship and daughter Polly, six, with her ex husband actor Jamie Lomas.
Moving on from her heartache, Corrie's barmaid has been dating fitness expert Matt Baker, 25, for almost two years now.
Speaking to OK! magazine, she admitted: 'Hes wonderful Im very lucky. Matt and I have just moved in to a new home together so I feel like weve taken the next step in our relationship now. Its going well.'
A leopard never changes its spots: The beauty ensured all eyes were well and truly on her figure in her tiny frock as she kept her accessories simple
Speaking of her relationship with the fitness expert, she explained: 'I feel happier than ever really. Matt and I are coming up to our one-year anniversary and the times flown by.
'In the past, Ive made the mistake of rushing into relationships, but neither of us has put any pressure on this relationship and Im happier because of it.
The twice married star previously wed EastEnders heartthrob Jack Ryder in St Albans in 2002. However, after six years together the couple decided to go their separate ways and divorced in 2008.
Strike a pose! The Hollyoaks star oozed confidence as she posed with her hand on her hip in front of the cameras
Kym then began a relationship with Hollyoaks actor Jamie Lomas later in 2008.
The pair wed in Cheshire in 2012, and had son Archie who tragically passed away after being born 18 weeks early.
The welcomed daughter Polly in March 2011, but divorced in 2014. Kym split from her fiance Dan Hooper in 2015.
A blooming beauty: Anna Passey exuded elegance as she graced the red carpet in her blue strapless gown which featured a form-fitting bodice to best showcase her tiny figure
US President Donald Trump said Sunday that Chinese leader Xi Jinping had agreed to toughen sanctions against North Korea over Pyongyang's nuclear weapons programme.
"President Xi of China has stated that he is upping the sanctions against (North Korea)," Trump tweeted from Hanoi -- the latest leg on an Asian tour.
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He's known for his role in hit series, Breaking Bad.
And American star RJ Mitte is set to start shooting his new film, Standing Up For Sunny in Sydney, this week.
The 25-year-old appears in the romantic comedy alongside Australian star and Home and Away's Philippa Northeast, 23, with the film being her first.
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'I think it will hit home for a lot of people': Breaking Bad star RJ Mitte starts shooting his new film in Sydney with Home and Away's Philipa Northeast
The film centres around a guy - RJ's character - with cerebal palsy, who helps an up-and-coming comedian.
RJ was diagnosed with cerebal palsy when he was a child.
'We really hit some important things in this movie and I think it will hit home for a lot of people,' RJ told The Daily Telegraph.
Familiar face: He's known for his role in hit series, Breaking Bad (seen)
New gig: The 25-year-old appears in the romantic comedy alongside Australian star and Home and Away 's Philippa Northeast, 23, (seen) with the film being her first
Speaking about actors playing disabled characters, AJ admitted: 'I am OK with able-bodied actors playing disabled roles, my only problem with it is if they don't learn from it and evolve with it.'
He added: 'So many people look at disabilities as a negative thing, as something we need to get rid of and evolve from. That's obviously not the case.'
RJ is known for playing Walter 'Flynn' White Jr. on hit series, Breaking Bad, with his character also having cerebal palsy.
RJ has also dabbled in modelling, and has walked the runway for Vivienne Westwood.
Opening up: In May 2015, he told the UK's Telegraph that Breaking Bad changed his life, but didn't make him a millionaire
In May 2015, he told the UK's Telegraph that Breaking Bad changed his life, but didn't make him a millionaire.
He revealed that he is financially responsible for his family, with his adoptive mother being left paralysed for six years following an accident.
'Breaking Bad gave me a career,' RJ said.
Candid: He revealed that he is financially responsible for his family, with his adoptive mother being left paralysed for six years following an accident
He added: 'People see me and they think that I'm a millionaire and that I have an extremely significant living. That's not the case.'
The star also told The Guardian that while he's grateful for the role of Walt Jr in Breaking Bad, he doesn't want to be known 'forever' for playing the character.
'Nothing I do will ever compare with Breaking Bad,' he said.
'I have better performances in me.'
She's the former Miss Universe Australia who's known for her incredible toned and fit physique.
And on Saturday, Elyse Knowles revealed she landed landed her 'dream job' modelling for Australian swimwear brand Seafolly.
Taking to Instagram Stories, the 25-year-old shared the exciting news with her 842,000 followers whilst flaunting ample cleavage on a Melbourne beach.
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Her dream job! On Saturday, Elyse Knowles revealed she landed landed her 'dream job' modelling for Australian swimwear brand Seafolly
'Shooting Seafolly ahhhhh,' said Elyse excitedly.
'Pretty damn excited. Been a big dream of mine but dreams do come true.'
'Work hard, play hard,' she inspired her fans.
Hard work paid off! 'Pretty damn excited. Been a big dream of mine but dreams do come true'
The clip showed the blonde bombshell flaunt her taut washboard abs with her ample cleavage on display in a skimpy bikini top.
Donning their new foliage inspired range, Elyse was also seen modelling for the brand's activewear in the same print.
'BTS on something Very Special @seafollyaustralia #StayTuned,' she shared on Instagram.
Stunner: The clip showed the blonde bombshell flaunt her taut washboard abs with her ample cleavage on display in a skimpy bikini top
Beach babe! Another behind the scenes selfie showcased Elyse in a white two-piece swimsuit
Looking incredibly sun-kissed, the stunner sported a luminous complexion and had half her blonde locks styled up into a messy top knot.
Another behind the scenes selfie showcased Elyse in a white two-piece swimsuit.
The beauty's latest campaign comes after she and her long-term boyfriend Josh Barker, 28, were this year's winner's of The Block, where they took home $547,000.
He's been travelling around the country on his Conscious tour.
And on Friday night, Guy Sebastian shared a hilarious text he received from his mother Nellie, ahead of taking to the stage in his hometown of Adelaide.
The 36-year-old took a screenshot of his mother's text, which read: 'People are getting very impatient.'
'People are getting very impatient': Guy Sebastian's mother heckles him before his performance in Adelaide...before he tells her to 'take a chill pill'
The text was sent at 8:30pm - his call time - with Guy telling her that she needs to 'take a chill pill.'
'My mum sent me this. My stage time is 8:30. Take a chill pill ma,' his caption read.
The post got over 8,000 likes.
Keeping him in check! On Friday night, Guy Sebastian shared a hilarious text he received from his mother Nellie (seen)
Hilarious: The text was sent at 8:30pm - his call time - with Guy telling her that she needs to 'take a chill pill'
He's just played his last show on his tour, in Perth on Saturday.
Guy is married to stylist Jules Sebastian.
Jules told Yahoo Be this month why she thinks people are invested in the details of their relationship.
She said that their 'it couple' status could be due to how long the couple had been together.
'We have a really rare story': Guy is married to stylist Jules Sebastian. Jules told Yahoo Be this month why she thinks people are invested in the details of their relationship
'Because we're awesome,' the brunette beauty joked.
Continuing, Jules added she believed in an age of short-lived unions their relationship was somewhat refreshing.
'I think we have a really rare story. That's what's interesting about it,' she said.
'We've known each other for so long, since we were kids basically.
'So, that might be a little bit of the interest.'
Guy and Jules have been together for 17 years, and married in Manly, Sydney, in 2008.
Smitten: Guy and Jules have been together for 17 years, and married in Manly, Sydney, in 2008
They met at the Assemblies of God Paradise Community Church which they attended with their families in Adelaide.
The couple now have two sons together, Hudson, five, and three-year-old Archer.
Appearing on KIIS FM's Kyle and Jackie O recently Guy admitted that the marriage hadn't always been plain sailing, revealing that Jules once left him because he was a 'douche.'
'She left me before. I was a rubbish boyfriend and I was never there,' Guy confessed.
'I was not a gentleman. I didn't believe in opening doors...' Guy added, admitting it wasn't until they split up that he saw the error of his ways.
'It took her breaking up with me for me to realise I was being a douche,' he explained.
She had shared her heartbreak over her mother's illness in September, revealing she 'hasn't got long to live' after being diagnosed with Idiopathic Pulmonary Fibrosis.
But throwing her support behind her mum Amy, 64, as she battles the condition, Katie Price joined her at a charity spinathon on Saturday in a bid to raise funds for the British Lung Foundation.
The mother-of-five, 39, treated fans to a slew of intimate snaps with her loved ones from their day together, poignantly penning alongside her posts: 'Family is everything.'
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All for a good cause! Katie Price, 39, joined her mother Amy and her siblings at a charity spinathon on Saturday in a bid to raise funds for the British Lung Foundation
Throwing herself into the event, Katie, along with her brother Danny and sister Sophie, all sported charity t-shirts as they posed alongside their mum with huge smiles on their faces.
Keen to serve the charity well, with undoubtedly being a cause extremely close to her heart, Katie told fans: 'Raising as much as we can today for @britishlungfoundation for my Mums spinathon.'
She was also joined by her children and shared another snap to her Instagram page which showed her teenage son Harvey, 15, sitting on one of the bikes, while Junior, 12, perched onto another.
'Family is everything': She was also joined by her teenage son Harvey, 15, son Junior, 12, daughter Princess, 10, and daughter Bunny, three
Poignant: The charity is no doubt a cause close to Katie's heart, after she revealed in September that her mother 'hasn't got long to live' after being diagnosed with Idiopathic Pulmonary Fibrosis
Katie had her arms wrapped around daughter Princess, 10, while her three-year-old daughter Bunny, whom she shares with estranged husband Kieran Hayler, stood in front of her sweetly clutching onto a baby bottle.
The TV personality's mother Amy has been diagnosed with idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis and has been told she only has a few years left to live. Katie first shared news of her mother's condition back in September, revealing she is suffering with a terminal lung illness.
The former glamour model had told The Sun at the time: 'She's got something wrong with her lungs and she's been told she hasn't got very long to live. She's on tablets... at least I'm making her laugh. Whatever is happening, we've got to be upbeat about it.'
Amy, a constant support to Katie throughout her colourful showbusiness career, confirmed her daugheter had lightened her mood during her early examinations. 'During the tests which were really quite personal, she was making so many funny comments that both myself and the specialist were in fits of laughter,' she recalled.
'We've got to be upbeat': The former glamour model had told The Sun at the time: 'She's got something wrong with her lungs and she's been told she hasn't got very long to live. She's on tablets... at least I'm making her laugh
'That's what I like about Katie - her sense of humour. I was given some bad news and she said, "Mum, you haven't got long left, you might as well make the most of it."'
During a live appearance on Loose Women alongside her mum Amy, Katie admitted the news her mum is dying still 'hadn't hit' home.
Amy, meanwhile, spoke of her condition and revealed a chest infection had highlighted her illness, following five years of her suffering from asthma. Explaining her diagnosis, she said: 'It's like scarring of the lungs and it actually stops you breathing. It's progessive... in the end you won't be able to breath.'
Katie's latest Instagram posts come after she recently set the record straight on swirling rumours she is reuniting with her cheating husband Kieran.
She had set tongues wagging on social media, but has since vehemently denied the claims in an interview with The Sun's Fabulous magazine - insisting she won't be giving Kieran a second chance after uncovering his affair with their children's nanny, but he'll remain in her life forever.
No going back: Katie has vehemently denied that she is getting back with her beau after she claimed that he had bedded their nanny Nikki Brown
She said: 'Hell always be in my life just like Pete [Andre] will always be in my life Ive got kids with them. Do people need to see a removal lorry leaving my house?
'People can say what they like, I know whats going on. Hes a cheat, and Im not putting up with it. Thats it.'
The former glamour model admitted that Kieran needs to focus on his own issues and has lost her trust in the wake of the scandal, which was the tip of the iceberg of her personal woes in recent weeks.
Preparing to start filming for the latest series of her reality show, Katie explained that Kieran would not be starring in it.
Over: Speaking to The Sun's Fabulous magazine, she insisted she won't be giving him a second chance but he'll forever remain in her life
The Loose Women panellist also shared that the new series would be concentrating on her, her five children and her mother Amy - who was diagnosed with a terminal lung disease - spending as much time together.
Hurt by Kieran's actions, Katie admitted that finding love is the last thing on her mind and that her husband's actions have left her unable to trust anyone, admitting she can't have a nanny in her house after the revelations.
'Men are not a priority. Im not interested. Men are the bane of my life. The only faithful men in my life are my horses and dogs,' she said. 'I dont trust f**king anyone at the minute and you cant blame me for that.'
Trust: Hurt by Kieran's actions, Katie admitted that finding love is the last thing on her mind and that her husband's actions have left her unable to trust anyone, admitting she can't have a nanny in her house after the revelations (Pictured in 2014)
Despite her heartbreak, she added that she's still a romantic at heart and believes that she will find her fairy tale love.
Meanwhile, Katie left her fans 'confused' over her relationship status with Kieran Hayler after she revealed that she has pictures of him all over her bedroom in a candid Instagram video on Tuesday night.
The former glamour model was in the midst of displaying her newly-decorated velour-filled boudoir when she showcased a framed photo of her, Kieran and one of the children on her beside cabinet - alluding that she has forgiven his discretion.
In another shot, the Loose Women panellist panned to her dressing table in her mink and gold coloured room - which featured another loved-up snap of them looking longingly into their eyes.
Thrilled: Sharing the slideshow with her 1.6 million followers, she wrote: 'Absolutely love my new bedroom @myhomerocksx thanks so much its perfect'
Captured: The former glamour model was in the midst of displaying her newly-decorated velour-filled boudoir when she showcased a framed photo of her, Kieran and one of the children on her beside cabinet
Sharing the slideshow with her 1.6 million followers, she wrote: 'Absolutely love my new bedroom @myhomerocksx thanks so much its perfect'.
However her picture display didn't go unnoticed by her loyal fans, who were quick to point out the loved-up snaps. MailOnline had contacted Katie Price's rep for comment at the time.
One fan wrote: 'I'm confused are you and Kieran back together?'
'Love it but dunno why you still got Kieran on or dressing table lol,' another shared. 'Looks amazing, but the photo of Kieran on the side ruins it!!!'.
As another simply questioned: 'Am I the only one who noticed photos of Kieran still?'.
Mirror, mirror: She decorated her bedside lockers with numerous black and white photos
The display comes after she recently revealed she suffered a miscarriage four days before discovering husband Kieran was cheating on her with their nanny, Nikki Brown, 40.
She said: 'I had a miscarriage four days before. On the Monday I had a miscarriage and then four days later I found out and now this one [pointing at her mum]". It's like... Jesus.'
The news came shortly after the TV personality revealed she was separating from Kieran, a former stripper, after discovering his six month fling with their children's nanny.
Marriage split: The news comes shortly after the TV personality revealed she was separating from husband Kieran, a former stripper, after discovering his six month fling with their children's nanny (Pictured in 2015)
Discussing the separation on Loose Women, Katie admitted she had thought their 'marriage and sex life was perfect' - before hinting there was 'more to come out' regarding Kieran and their reason for ending the marriage.
She said: 'It is what it is, and what you've read. Years ago I caught Kieran cheating. I paid for therapy to get him help. As far as I knew our marriage and sex life was perfect, our family unit was perfect.
'I employed a nanny to come in and I've caught him again having an affair with my nanny for a year. Sleeping with her in my house - but there's other things that are going to come out.'
Referencing his previous infidelities, she then admitted she had not been hugely shocked by the affair, adding: 'Here I am again! I think when someone stabs the knife in the first time and they twist it, I was literally distraught.
Honest: Earlier this month, Katie appeared on This Morning where she elaborated further on the situation with her husband
'I suppose this time was I expecting it to happen again? Was my guard up? Because I'm acting completely different this time.'
'My kids are older, they know what's going on and for me I love coming to work. He's got to get help. It's not normal behaviour, especially when you're in a happy marriage.'
Earlier this month, Katie appeared on This Morning where she elaborated further on the situation with her husband.
She said: 'At the moment he has left the house. There are kids involved. hes got mental issues and more and more has come out. Hes seeing a therapist and going to group therapy sessions.
Talking: She said: 'At the moment he has left the house. There are kids involved. hes got mental issues and more and more has come out. Hes seeing a therapist and going to group therapy sessions'
'Things will happen when theyre ready. Our marriage is on the rocks, I told him youve got to sort yourself out. I'm not dismissing anything about Kieran, Ive got all this to deal with at the moment, I can't concentrate on one thing.'
The star said her kids are kept informed about what is going on and that her home is still 'happy'.
She said: 'The children know everything, I like to live in a happy home. The home is still a happy home.
'The Kieran I know is the family, nice Kieran who is lovely. But he has got this other side. I go "ugh you make me sick" and the kids go "mum!" but I say it jokingly. I'm so laidback, I dont argue, youve just got to deal with it.'
Erin and Sara Foster just want their dad to be happy.
The daughters of legendary songwriter David Foster said they would support him dating actress Katharine McPhee as the two have been romantically linked recently.
'We are really happy if our dad is happy. We love Katharine McPhee. We want our dad to be happy. We don't care who he dates,' they told E! News on Thursday.
Support: Sara and Erin Foster - daughters of legendary songwriter David Foster - said they would support him dating actress Katharine McPhee as the two have been romantically linked recently; (pictured October)
'We don't really care how old they are,' Sara added.
'We don't know if it's her,' they said regarding the 33-year-old American Idol alum.
Sara, 36, and Erin, 35, stated that their 68-year-old father is a 'very young-at-heart kind of guy'.
Their younger twenty-something friends have even tried to date the award winning producer.
Happiness is number one: "We are really happy if our dad is happy. We love Katharine McPhee. We want our dad to be happy. We don't care who he dates,' they told E!News on Thursday; (pictured October)
Having a blast: Katharine cosied up to David at the SAG-AFTRA Artists Awards in Beverly Hills last week
Another lovely pair: They were joined by Lionel Richie and his girlfriend Lisa Parigi
But Erin insisted of her father: 'He's like, "I draw the line there." I think thirties, forties is like a respectable age for a man in his sixties,' they added.
Katharine recently told Health magazine that she and the Canadian multimillionaire are 'very close friends, and we've been friends for a long time.'
However she continued to deny a romance with the four times married musician, insisting, 'I'm really, really fond of him, and I think that he's an incredible person.
'I've known him since I was 21 years old, you know? He produced my first single. So he's been really good to me.'
Katharine noted that 'People can say whatever they want.' She called herself 'pretty single.'
Pals: She told Health magazine she and the Canadian multimillionaire are 'very close friends'
The music star raised eyebrows in September when he walked the red carpet with his much younger rumoured lover at the Grammy Museum Gala, where he was the honoree.
Adding further fuel to rumours the pair are getting serious, David's 36-year-old daughter Erin captioned a snap of the couple on an Instagram story: 'Excited about my new step mom.'
They then reportedly traveled to Vancouver together after the event along with music director Michael Orland and Katharine's mother Patricia.
They first met in 2006 when he mentored her during doomed bid to win American Idol. They maintained a close bond, returning to perform together on the show two years later.
Inseparable: They raised eyebrows in September when they walked the red carpet at the Grammy Museum Gala
Derick Dillard is not backing down - or using proper pronouns.
The 28-year-old husband of Jill Duggar on Thursday engaged in a prolonged discussion with a Twitter user on Thursday expanding on his earlier comments about fellow TLC star Jazz Jennings, this time saying that he's got nothing against the 17-year-old transgender female, who he feels is being used to push 'a larger agenda.'
The initial issue between the Counting On personality and the I Am Jazz star began three months back, when Dillard dubbed Jennings' show 'an oxymoron' as a 'reality show which follows a non-reality.'
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At odds: Derick Dillard, 28, (L) said in a series of tweets Thursday that he pities transgender reality star Jazz Jennings, 17, as he feels she's being used to forward a presumably-liberal agenda
The Arkansas native declared in an August 2 tweet that '"Transgender" is a myth' as 'gender is not fluid,' but 'ordained by God.'
Jazz responded August 3: 'Every day I experience cyber-bullying, but I keep sharing my story. Today was no different.'
The hubbub seemed to die down until this past week, when a Twitter user named Shelbey told Dillard that while she can understand his rationale on some issues, he tends to generate negative responses to his tweets 'because they often come off as hateful,' adding that 'calling someones identity an oxymoron is very condescending.'
Dillard responded in saying that he feels sorry for Jazz, but refused to use female pronouns in talking about the Florida native, who 'is a transgender female and has been living as a girl since kindergarten,' according to her show's website.
Questionable: Derick said he doesn't have hard feelings against Jazz, but refused to address the transgender girl with female pronouns, referring to her as 'him'
'I pity Jazz, [for] those who take advantage of him in order [to] promote their agenda, including the parents who allow these kinds of decisions [to] be made by a child,' Dillard said. 'Its sad that [people] would use a juvenile this way. Again, nothing against him, just unfortunate whats on tv these days.'
'I really have nothing against the kid and wish him all the best in life. I just hate seeing him used this way.'
Dillard said that he 'never bullied anyone' with his previous remarks, but was expressing his beliefs that the show is a tool of propaganda.
Red carpet ready: Jazz was snapped at an NYC fashion show this past February in a red gown
Big city fun: Derick and wife Jill Duggar were snapped in NYC in 2014
Brushing it off: Jazz didn't name Derick in her presumed rebuttal on Saturday
Fast response: TLC was quick to distance themselves from Dillard and his remarks in a statement released via Twitter on Saturday
'Im expressing my view of what should be treated as reality; if I say I feel like I am Nepali, that doesnt make me so,' he said. Dillard noted that he believes 'its important to have a mature discussion' on the topic, as he's 'just expressing [his] concerns, as a Christian.
'The beauty of the world,' he tweeted, 'is that everybody is not like me.'
Jazz kept things cryptic in her presumable response to the tweets on Saturday. She wrote: 'In the face of constant ignorance and hatred I prefer to disregard negative opinions and continue moving forward with love.'
TLC on Saturday was swift to articulate in a statement that Dillard hasn't been on their airwaves 'for months,' and that there's no immediate plans to feature him on the program anytime soon. They made clear that they're not in agreement with his remarks, and support Jennings and her show.
'We want to let our viewers know that Derick Dillard has not participated in Counting On for months and the network has no plans to feature him in the future,' the network said. 'We want to reiterate that Dericks personal statements do not reflect the views of the network. TLC is proud to share the story of Jazz Jennings and her family and will continue to do so.'
She's the former Married At First Sight star who's notoriously known for her love of cosmetic enhancements and flaunting her curvaceous physique online.
And back to business on Saturday, Cheryl Maitland took to Instagram to showcase her washboard abs in a fishnet top.
Heading out for the night, the 26-year-old Gold Coast socialite took to a bathroom mirror to take a selfie of her racy outfit.
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Flaunting her best assets: On Saturday, Cheryl Maitland took to Instagram to flaunt her washboard abs and busty chest
'This nana is out and about #wheresmyfringe,' captioned Cheryl.
The reality star donned a red fitted mesh panel ensemble from House of CB that modestly covered up her busty cleavage.
Cheryl paired the top with a black faux leather skirt.
Ready to hit the tan! 'This nana is out and about #wheresmyfringe'
Ensuring her 150,000 fans could appreciate her surgically plumped lips, the star molded a slight pout in the mirror while her straight ombre locks effortlessly fell over her shoulders.
But times haven't been as happy for Cheryl of late, taking to the social media earlier in the week she revealed she had spent the last two years trying to remove a tattoo on her right shoulder.
The ink featured black calligraphy-style writing with a crown and red-inked love-heart jewels.
Lazer therapy: But times haven't been as happy for Cheryl of late, taking to the social media earlier in the week she revealed she had spent the last two years trying to remove a tattoo on her right shoulder
'So for everyone asking about my tattoo removal, I've been getting it removed for over two years and I only go every couple of months,' she told her fans in a video.
'I don't want any scaring, so I'm doing it super slowly.'
'It said perfectly imperfected which means I think my imperfections are what makes me, but I don't need that on a tattoo to say that anymore, so I just want to get rid of it,' she confessed.
'Yes, it does hurt a lot. It hurts the first time because there's more ink, but less ink you get, the less it hurts and the redness goes away, so it's not too bad,' she continued.
Her House Of Cards co-star, Kevin Spacey, is currently embroiled in controversy.
And Robin Wright made her first public appearance as she her pajama line Pour Les Femmes at Nordstrom in Century City, California on Saturday afternoon, amid the scandal surrounding her co-star.
The 51-year-old actress looked stunning for the debut as it's reported that showrunners for her hit show are scrambling to rewrite the sixth season after sexual misconduct allegations against Kevin resulted in his termination and put the Netflix show in serious limbo, according to CNN.
Comfort: Robin Wright's latest venture may be the most comfortable yet as she launched her pajama line Pour Les Femmes at Nordstrom in Century City, California on Saturday afternoon
The Wonder Woman actress donned a navy blue and white striped buttoned-down shirt for the launch with the massive retailer.
She wore a pair of skin-tight black pants over her long and lean legs, which highlighted her slender waistline.
Wright looked delightful as she added a few inches to her frame with a pair of short black booties.
Big smile: The 51-year-old actress looked stunning for the debut of her pajama line
Work it: The Wonder Woman actress donned a navy blue and white striped buttoned-down shirt for the launch with the massive retailer
Pour Les Femmes is a socially conscious sleepwear company founded by actress and activist Robin Wright and designer Karen Fowler.
The two friends started their company with one goal in mind: to make simple, beautiful, and quality pieces while creating economic opportunity for women in conflict regions around the globe.
House of Cards writers had to scrap season 6 of the show and find an entirely new direction after the series was terminated following allegations of sexual misconduct against Kevin Spacey.
The announcement of the Emmy-winning political satire's end came after Star Trek actor Anthony Rapp's claimed Spacey attempted to seduce him when he was 14.
Bosses: Pour Les Femmes is a socially conscious sleepwear company founded by actress and activist Robin Wright and designer Karen Fowler
Ready! Robin posed in front of the store front on Instagram before the grand debut of her clothing line
Anthony Rapp claimed that Spacey attempted to seduce him in 1986 - an incident Spacey says he does not remember. Rapp was 14 at the time while Spacey was 26.
Spacey has apologized for the incident, which he said he doesn't recall but would have stemmed from 'drunken behavior.' He also spoke publicly for the first time about being gay.
Netflix has removed Kevin Spacey from the cover photo of House of Cards on the heels of news that the company was cutting all ties to the actor.
The previous poster for the long-running political drama featured Spacey's character of Frank Underwood and Robin Wright's Claire Underwood.
The current cover photo features a still of just Wright, wearing a black coat and looking into the distance.
New look: Netflix has removed Kevin Spacey from the cover photo of House of Cards on the heels of news that the company was cutting all ties to the actor
Old poster: The previous poster for the long-running political drama featured Spacey's character of Frank Underwood and Robin Wright's Claire Underwood
In the next two weeks, staffers will know whether or not production will resume on the hit show, according to CNN.
Many of the crew members have contractual obligations to work on other productions and may find it difficult to return to the show, but will continue to be paid as usual.
In addition to writing woes, nearly 2,000 cast, crew and extras are waiting to hear if they'll return to their jobs in the Baltimore area.
House of Cards is one of Maryland's biggest productions.
Tough times: In the next two weeks, staffers will know whether or not production will resume on the hit show, according to CNN
She shot to fame in the Oscar drama 12 Years of Slave.
But Lupita Nyong'o is changing things up for her next role in the romantic-comedy flick, Little Monsters.
On Friday, the 34-year-old was spotted battling zombies on set in Sydney's Centennial Park.
Hard at work: Lupita Nyong'o was spotted battling zombies on set in Sydney's Centennial Park
Despite the gory nature of the film, Lupita still managed to look lovely in a ladylike yellow frock.
Little Monsters is directed by Australia's Abe Forsythe, best known for his film about the Cronulla riots, Down Under.
Lupita plays Miss Caroline, a plucky kindergarten teacher who must protect her students from a zombie outbreak during an excursion.
Scary: Despite the gory nature of the film, Lupita still managed to look lovely in a ladylike yellow frock
Aussie: Little Monsters is directed by Australia's Abe Forsythe, best known for his film about the Cronulla riots, Down Under
Fighter: Lupita plays Miss Caroline, a plucky kindergarten teacher who must protect her students from a zombie outbreak during an excursion
Alexander England plays Dave, a washed-up musician who volunteers to chaperone his nephew's school trip in order to get close to Caroline.
However, he runs into a love rival thanks to a children's entertainer who is also vying for Caroline's affection.
Following her blockbuster appearance in Star Wars, Lupita has become one of Hollywood's most in-demand actresses.
Co-star: Alexander England plays Dave, a washed-up musician who volunteers to chaperone his nephew's school trip in order to get close to Caroline
Hot stuff: Following her blockbuster appearance in Star Wars, Lupita has become one of Hollywood's most in-demand actresses
Crowded set: There were countless crew members on the sunny set of the Sydney film
Her next Oscar? Lupita delivered the perfect performance as a school teacher battling zombies
Oh no! One terrified crew member fought off a zombie with a boom mic
The beauty is currently rumoured to be a front-runner for the upcoming Charlie's Angels reboot.
Variety reports that Kristen Stewart is also said to appear in the reboot, which will be directed by Elizabeth Banks.
The original series premiered in 1976 and lasted for five seasons with the late Farrah Fawcett, Kate Jackson, 69, and Jaclyn Smith, 71, starring as the private detectives working for a benefactor named Charlie - voiced by John Forsyth.
Fawcett left the series and was replaced by Cheryl Ladd, 65, and then Shelley Hack, 69, and Tanya Roberts, 61, joined the show later in the series.
The success of the series led to two movie spin-offs starring Drew Barrymore, 42, Cameron Diaz, 44, and Lucy Liu, 48.
Her next role? Lupita is currently rumoured to be a front-runner for the upcoming Charlie's Angels reboot
Australian paparazzo wannabe Jayden Seyfarth was forced to catch a bus from Melbourne to Sydney, after the Melbourne Cup.
The Daily Telegraph reports the 20-year-old tried to get shots of Paris Jackson while at Flemington, and had a long trek back to Sydney after being banned from flying with Virgin Airlines.
The publication reports that Jayden tried to board a Tiger flight on Thursday, but was kicked off by security thanks to Virgin owning Tiger.
Australian paparazzo wannabe Jayden Seyfarth is forced to catch a BUS from Melbourne to Sydney after chasing Paris Jackson and being BANNED from flying with Virgin Airlines
Jayden is reportedly also on an 'interim' ban from flying with Qantas.
The youngster made headlines last month when he printed out Sophie Monk and Stu Laundy's boarding passes at a self-serve check-in system, prior to a flight they were booked on from Sydney to Melbourne.
He then used the passes to slip into the VIP lounge without having his identity verified.
His target: The Daily Telegraph reports the 20-year-old tried to get shots of Paris Jackson (pictured) while at Flemington
Making his mark: Jayden is pictured with Tom Cruise
'Someone who had different intentions could have got on that flight without any ID or anything,' Jayden told KIIS FM's Kyle Sandilands and Jackie 'O' Henderson.
'I was there a bit early so I thought I may as well go into the lounge because she (Sophie) was business class.'
The snapper said his downfall was posting his antics to social media, which he admitted was 'not a good move'.
Jayden was referred to the Australian Federal Police, prompting them to launch an investigation into the matter in the interest of national security.
A spokesperson from the AFP confirmed to Daily Mail Australia that they received a referral regarding 'the alleged unauthorised access of travel documents by an individual'.
Security breach: The youngster made headlines last month when he printed out Sophie Monk and Stu Laundy's (seen) boarding passes at a self-serve check-in system
They added: 'Serious penalties can apply when aviation security is found to have been breached.'
Security experts have recommended major airlines change screening processes for domestic flight check-ins following the incident.
A two-step verification system using finger-printing or codes received via SMS were among its recommendations.
Fall out: Jayden was referred to the Australian Federal Police, prompting them to launch an investigation into the matter in the interest of national security (seen with Justin Bieber)
Jayden also admitted to Kyle and Jackie O that he also assumed Richard Branson's identity before, with Richard owning Virgin.
He attempted the prank of Richard two years ago, when attempting to fly Virgin.
He claimed the English magnate saw the funny side in the stunt, despite Jayden exposing a flaw in his airline's check-in system.
'I got him (Richard) to actually sign the ticket,' Jayden said.
'He thought it was amazing. He was like "How did you get this?"'
Yemen's national airline said on Sunday it still lacks the security permits needed to resume commercial flights, a day after the transport minister said some flights would be allowed as a nationwide blockade is eased.
The Saudi-led military coalition fighting against Yemen's Houthi movement said last week that it had closed all air, land and sea ports in Yemen to stem the alleged flow of arms to the Houthis from Iran. The move came after Saudi Arabia intercepted a missile fired towards Riyadh, which it blamed on Tehran.
Transport Minister Mourad al-Halimi had said Yemenia flights to the pro-Saudi government-held cities of Aden and Seiyun would resume on Sunday, but the national carrier said in a statement that it "didn't acquire the necessary permits" to fly.
The United Nations had warned the total blockade could cause famine in the impoverished country where war has killed at least 10,000 people in the last 2-1/2 years and the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) expressed more concerns on Sunday.
It urged in a statement that humanitarian aid be allowed to enter the country immediately, as Yemen has registered one of the highest rates in postpartum deaths.
The government-held southern Yemeni port of Aden was reopened on Wednesday, but ports in Houthi-held areas are still shut. The coalition reopened the al Wadea border crossing linking Saudi Arabia with territory in eastern Yemen on Thursd
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She's a staple at red carpet events, often stealing the show.
And it was no different on Saturday as Alessandra Ambrosio dazzled during her entrance at the Baby2Baby Gala at 3Labs in the Culver City neighborhood of Los Angeles with her fiance Jamie Mazur, 36.
The Brazilian stunner, 36, wore a floral diamond choker with earrings and her dark locks pulled back, with an impeccable makeup job.
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Dressed to kill! Supermodel Alessandra Ambrosio, 36, dazzled at the Baby2Baby Gala at 3Labs in the Culver City neighborhood of Los Angeles on Saturday
She wore a shoulder-less ball gown gown with purple floral highlights, rounding out her ensemble with strappy silver heels.
The 5ft9 model's sleek shoulders and toned arms were well showcased in the elegant get-up, as she posed alongside Mazur, who she's been with for 12 years.
Mazur, who has two children with his stunning partner - daughter Anja, nine, and son Noah, five - kept it simple in a black suit with a white collared shirt.
Alessandra took to Instagram prior to leaving for the lavish gala Saturday, as she was posed inside a home with an enormous mirror next to a table flanked with flowers, family photos and a lavish lamp.
Silver screen stunner: The veteran catwalk presence appears in the holiday film Daddy's Home Two
Glamorous: The mom-of-two amazed in her floral ball gown at the event
The Victoria's Secret supermodel wrote, 'On my way out ... [to] @baby2baby, thanking beauty expert Christy Coleman, hair expert Dominick Pucciarello and stylist Jennifer Mazur for their assistance in putting together her get-up. She added the hashtag, '#lanights.'
The gorgeous mother-of-two was one in a procession of beautiful celebs to attend the event, as the organization is geared toward helping children in low-income families with necessities such as diapers and clothes.
Gwyneth Paltrow was slated to be honored as the organization's honoree for her efforts as a mom who devotes her time, energy and celebrity toward the organization's goals, following in the footsteps of predecessors such as Jessica Alba and Jennifer Garner, who were also both in attendance Saturday. Others at the swanky venue included actresses such as Zoe Saldana, Busy Philipps, January Jones, Jaime King, Eiza Gonzalez and Olivia Culpo.
Longtime loves: The Brazilian beauty posed alongside her fiance Jamie Mazur, 36
Belle of the ball: The statuesque stunner shared this shot of her preparation for the event
She's one of Australia's most successful acting exports who's married to country music star Keith Urban.
And on Saturday, Nicole Kidman attended the Los Cabos International Cinema Festival in Mexico.
The age-defying 50-year-old sported a feminine frock at the annual conference.
What's her secret? On Saturday, Nicole Kidman attended the Los Cabos International Cinema Festival in Mexico looking flawless
Nicole donned a lime knee-length dress that featured yellow flowers throughout.
Showcasing her lean and toned physique, the ensemble had buttons from her chest upwards.
Flaunting her fashion-forward style, Nicole added black strappy heels which had feathers coming out of a jewel-stone centre.
Fashion-forward: Nicole donned a lime knee-length dress that featured yellow flowers throughout
All smiles: The Big Little Lies actress kept her accessories minimal donning just floral statement drop earrings and her Cartier diamond encrusted wedding rings estimated to be worth around $50,000
The Big Little Lies actress kept her accessories minimal donning just floral statement drop earrings and her Cartier diamond encrusted wedding rings estimated to be worth around $50,000.
Nicole sported a luminous and radiant complexion for the conference.
Crediting sunscreen as her age-defying beauty secret, the stunner was seen with a sweep of bronzer and a nude lip.
Stunner: Crediting sunscreen as her age-defying beauty secret, the stunner was seen with a sweep of bronzer and a nude lip
Nicole's signature blonde locks were styled sleek and straight with a centre path.
And after multiple acting awards, earlier in the week it was confirmed Nicole had lent her vocal chords on Keith's latest hit, Female, inspired by disgraced producer Harvey Weinstein's sexual misconduct allegations.
'I thought it was nice and very personal to blend these girls into the song because it just felt very right for what the song means to me,' revealed Keith at the Country Music Awards after revealing his wife and co-writer Nicolle Galyon were featured in the tune.
Star Trek actor George Takei told Howard Stern last month that he grabbed men he was trying to persuade to be with him sexually, it was learned on Saturday.
Controversial audio surfaced on Saturday less than a day after Takei denied sexually assaulting male model Scott Brunton while he was passed out in his Los Angeles condo in 1981.
Takei appeared on Sterns radio show last month when the spate of sexual harassment scandals involving powerful Hollywood figures began to make headlines, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
The conversation between Stern and Takei touched on the irony of the allegations against movie mogul Harvey Weinstein, particularly in light of the 2005 Access Hollywood tape in which President Donald Trump is heard bragging about grabbing womens genitals.
Star Trek actor George Takei (left) told Howard Stern (right) last month that he grabbed men he was trying to persuade to be with him sexually
Stern then asked Takei if he ever grabbed a mans genitals against his will.
Takei appeared taken aback by the question.
Uh oh, he said with a laugh.
When Stern asked him again, he said: Some people are kind of skittish, or maybe, um, uh, afraid, and youre trying to persuade.
When Stern and his co-host, Robin Quivers, asked Takei if he ever held a job over somebody for sex, he said no.
Quivers then asked if he did this grabbing at work.
It was either in my home, Takei responded. They came to my home.
The Star Trek icon, 80, took to social media to defend himself on Saturday against Brunton's allegations.
Takei said that the event 'simply did not occur' and he added that he does not know why the model has made these claims now, 36 years later.
Takei has been denied he sexually assaulted former male model Scott Brunton while the young man was passed out in his Los Angeles condo in 1981; seen in February
His big role: The star played Sulu on Star Trek in both the TV show and the movies
He also said he cannot even 'remember Mr Brunton.'
George began his Twitter chain with: 'I'm writing to respond to the accusations made by Scott R. Bruton.
'I want to assure you all that I am as shocked and bewildered at these claims as you must feel reading them.'
His next tweet read: 'The events he describes back in the 1980s simply did not occur, and I do not know why he has claimed them now. I have wracked my brain to ask if I remember Mr. Brunton, and I cannot say I do.'
Nope: Takei said that the event 'simply did not occur' and he added that he does not know why the model has made these claims now, 36 years later
More: He also said he cannot remember the man who has made the accusation
He is taking this seriously: George added that he takes the claims 'very seriously'
His take on it all: George said it was a 'he said / he said situation'
His partner backs him up: He added that his partner of more than 30 years 'stands fully by my side'
He is happy that his fans have his back too: Takei ended by saying, 'Thanks to many of you for all the kind words and trust'
The star's third tweet added: 'But I do take these claims very seriously, and I wanted to provide my response thoughtfully and not out of the moment.'
He continued: 'Right now it is a he said / he said situation, over alleged events nearly 40 years ago.
'But those that know me understand that non-consensual acts are so antithetical to my values and my practices, the very idea that someone would accuse me of this is quite personally painful..'
George then said his husband was fully supporting him: 'Brad, who is 100 percent beside me on this, as my life partner of more than 30 years and now my husband, stands fully by my side.'
He has been wed to George Altman since 2008.
'I cannot tell you how vital it has been to have his unwavering support and love in these difficult times,' added the Mulan actor.
At work: Scott Brunton said he met Takei in 1981 when he was living in Hollywood and had just broken up with his boyfriend. Takei is pictured (above) with James Doohan and DeForest Kelley
His last tweet was: 'Thanks to many of you for all the kind words and trust. It means so much to us. Yours in gratitude, George.'
Brunton came forward to say he was groped by the actor when he was just 24, claiming Takei - then aged 43 or 44-years-old - took advantage of him just after a breakup.
'This happened a long time ago, but I have never forgotten it,' Brunton told the The Hollywood Reporter.
'It is one of those stories you tell with a group of people when people are recounting bizarre instances in their lives, this always comes up. I have been telling it for years, but I am suddenly very nervous telling it.'
He is shocked by the claims: Takei is seen here in Los Angeles in July
The former model said he encountered Takei when he was living in Hollywood and working as a waiter at the beginning of his career at Greg's Blue Dot Bar.
He said he exchanged numbers with the actor, and on occasion the pair called each other or ran into each other at different clubs.
When Brunton broke up with the man he was dating at the time, he told Takei, who took the opportunity to invite the model to dinner and the theater.
'He was very good at consoling me and understanding that I was upset and still in love with my boyfriend,' Brunton told THR.
After dinner that night the two men went back to Takei's home for a drink.
Brunton alleged Takei invited him back to his condo and made him a drink that caused him to pass out. Takei is pictured on the set of Star Trek VI - The Undiscovered Country in 1991
Just a few sips into his second drink, which Takei made for him, he said he started feeling unwell.
'I have the second one, and then all of a sudden I begin feeling very disoriented and dizzy, and I thought I was going to pass out,' he explained.
'I said I need to sit down and he said sit over here and he had the giant yellow beanbag chair. So I sat down in that and leaned my head back and I must have passed out.'
He said that after a while he woke up with his pants around his ankles and Takei groping his crotch and trying to get his underwear off.
'I came to and said, "What are you doing?" I said, "I don't want to do this," Brunton told THR.
His early years in Hollywood: George is seen here in Star Trek the TV series in the 1960s
'He goes, "You need to relax. I am just trying to make you comfortable. Get comfortable."'
Brunton said he he managed to gather enough strength to push Takei off of him and then went to his car and waited until he felt well enough to drive himself home.
'That was that,' he said of the encounter.
Four of Brunton's close friends told THR that he had confided in them about the alleged assault years ago.
Now, years after the incident, he said he is coming out with his story after seeing Takei's statement about Kevin Spacey to THR on October 30.
After Anthony Rapp alleged that Spacey took advantage of him, the actor used the opportunity to come out as gay.
Takei apparently took offense to that, and aid: 'Men who improperly harass or assault do not do so because they are gay or straight - that is a deflection,' in a statement to THR.
'They do so because they have the power, and they chose to abuse it.'
Brunton said the response infuriated him.
Takei's representative, Julia Buchwald, didn't outright deny the allegations to THR, but said they cannot give his comment at the present time.
'George is traveling in Japan and Australia and not reachable for comment,' she said in a statement.
The 80-year-old rose to fame in his role as Hikaru Sulu in the original Star Trek television series. Since then he has become an outspoken activist advocate for LGBTQ rights.
She just celebrated her 29th birthday on Monday.
And Emma Stone was looking every inch the mature fashionista as she navigated her way down the red carpet at the AMPAS Governors Awards in Los Angeles on Saturday.
The Birdman actress definitely turned a few heads thanks to her sophisticated cream-colored frock, which featured all sorts of interesting details.
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Chic: Emma Stone was looking every inch the mature fashionista as she navigated her way down the red carpet at the AMPAS Governors Awards on Saturday
On the top half, a plunging neckline showed off a hint of her decolletage, while an incorporated belt fastened shut with two small metal buckles.
The garment was secured with a stack of eyelet and hook clasps, which descended all the way to a thigh-high split that revealed a quick glimpse of her lithe legs.
Two large pockets were embedded, one on each hip.
Intricate: On the top half, a plunging neckline showed off a hint of her decolletage, while an incorporated belt fastened shut with two small metal buckles
Novel: The garment was secured with a stack of eyelet and hook clasps, which descended all the way to a thigh-high split that revealed a quick glimpse of her lithe legs
Shiny: Silver metallic strappy heels and a small purse boasting a complex graphic pattern completed her ultra-chic ensemble
Silver metallic strappy heels and a small purse boasting a complex graphic pattern completed her ultra-chic ensemble.
Her blonde tresses were parted on the right, and most were pulled back into a small ponytail, though several strands framed her youthful visage.
Dark eye-liner, light blush and rose lipstick ensured the La La Land actress was ready for the cameras.
Say cheese! Dark eye-liner, light blush and rose lipstick ensured the La La Land actress was ready for the cameras
It seemed as though things were proceeding normally until Emma was joined by Jennifer Lawrence, 27, who was apparently in a very playful mood.
Both of the ladies are Academy Award winners, and couldn't have looked happier to have some fun on the red carpet.
The Hunger Games star may have accidentally stepped into frame at one point, then decided to stick around and post up behind Emma.
Both women seemed to be having a ball in the subsequent photos.
Whoops! The Hunger Games star may have accidentally stepped into frame at one point, then decided to stick around and post up behind Emma
Double trouble: Both women seemed to be having a ball in the subsequent photos
He's set to star in 12 Strong - the upcoming war drama film about the first Special Forces team deployed to Afghanistan after 9/11.
And ahead of its January release, Chris Hemsworth paid his respects to the men and women portrayed in the film by visiting America's Response Monument in New York City.
The 34-year-old took to Instagram on Veterans Day to share the moment he visited the Manhattan monument, which is situated just across from the National September 11 Memorial.
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'They defined bravery': Chris Hemsworth visits America's Response Monument in New York City ahead of the release of drama film 12 Strong
A solemn Chris could be seen standing beside the statue with his hands in his pockets, as he took a moment to reflect.
'Humbled to visit the statue erected to commemorate the first-responders we portray in @12strongmovie,' he captioned.
'They rode horses into uncharted danger and defined bravery.
'Thank you to all the men and women around the world who have served and continue to serve.'
Solemn moment: The 34-year-old paid his respects to the men and women portrayed in the film (pictured) by visiting the Manhattan monument
New role: Chris plays the role of U.S. Special Forces Captain Mitch Nelson in the film (pictured), and his real-life wife Elsa Pataky, 41, plays his spouse
Chris plays the role of U.S. Special Forces Captain Mitch Nelson in the film, and his real-life wife Elsa Pataky, 41, plays his spouse.
And it appears working together has only strengthened the couple, who looked as loved-up as ever when they posed for a selfie on Thursday.
The Spanish actress uploaded a happy snap with her husband to Instagram as they prepared to work up a sweat together.
'Like old times': And it appears working together has only strengthened the couple, who looked as loved-up as ever when they posed for a selfie on Thursday.
'Whip him good, you're the boss': Elsa's fans gushed over Chris' large muscular arms in the selfie, but praised the mother-of-three (pictured in 2015) for her motivation towards keeping fit
Chris and Elsa appeared in high spirits, as they posed in their activewear in front of World Gym.
Chris, who is known for playing superstar Thor, showed off his bulging biceps in a black singlet as he leaned in for the photo.
Elsa, who wore a green camouflage hooded jacket, captioned the sweet post: 'Morning training session, like old times!'
Just two days ago she was looking glamorous at Shanghai's Global Shopping Festival.
And on Saturday night, Nicole Kidman jetted to the other side of the world to attend Mexico's International Cinema Festival, where she received the Lifetime Achievement Award.
The 50-year-old put on another elegant showing at the festival in Los Cabos, where she flaunted her dainty figure in a floorlength gown.
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On top of her game! Nicole Kidman stuns onlookers as she receives the Lifetime Achievement Award at Mexico's International Cinema Festival
The Big Little Lies star walked out on stage wearing the beaded dress, which featured a plunging neckline, spaghetti straps and a cream-coloured train.
Nicole's eye-catching number highlighted her slender frame.
Her long, luscious locks were loose and, parted in the middle, were worn in a free-flowing fashion.
For her makeup, the blonde opted for plenty of blush to accentuate her cheekbones and a pink lip.
Graceful: The 50-year-old put on another elegant showing at the festival in Los Cabos, where she flaunted her dainty figure
Big occasion: The Big Little Lies star walked out on stage wearing a beaded floor length gown with a plunging neckline and spaghetti straps
Sealed with a kiss! Nicole appeared humbled by the award, which recognised her immense contribution to the film industry over a career spanning four decades
Movie star glam: Kidman sparkled on the red carpet
And it was accessories galore for the Australian movie star, who wore several sparkly bangles, silver rings and matching dangling earrings.
Nicole appeared humbled by the award, which recognised her immense contribution to the film industry over a career spanning four decades.
She grasped onto it with a proud smile, before hoisting up the silverware and giving it a kiss.
Her appearance at the Mexican film festival came just a day after she raised the fashion stakes in a sheer black gown at the 'world's biggest shopping event' in Shanghai.
The monochromatic number included tulle fabric that placed her slender pins on display, as well as eye-catching sparkly applique.
Still on form! Her appearance at the Mexican film festival came just a day after she raised the fashion stakes in a sheer black gown at the 'world's biggest shopping event' in Shanghai
He's been accused of sexual harassment.
But on Saturday night, Dustin Hoffman stepped out for the ninth annual AMPAS Governors Awards with his wife Lisa.
The actor, 80, and his wife, 63, hit the carpet as a united front while attending the Hollywood event.
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Close: On Saturday night, Dustin Hoffman stepped out for the ninth annual AMPAS Governors Awards with his wife Lisa
Dustin and Lisa have been married since 1980.
They have four children: Jacob, 36; Rebecca, 34; Maxwell, 33; and Alexandra, 30.
Dustin and his first wife, Anne Byrne, have a daughter together: Jenna, 47; He adopted her daughter Karina from a previous marriage.
The screen star donned a dark colored blazer with matching trousers, adding patent dress shoes.
Dustin wore a white button up shirt with a bow tie.
Inseparable: The actor, 80, and his wife hit the carpet as a united front while attending the Hollywood event
Lisa looked lovely in her sheer accented black dress, complete with ruffle details.
The brunette styled the fancy frock with peep toe heels, multiple bracelets and rings and sleek hair.
His red carpet outing comes after he was accused of sexually harassing Anna Graham Hunter.
Hunter was a production assistant intern, age 17 at the time of the incident, and working on the 1985 TV film Death Of A Salesman.
She spoke about the alleged sexual assault to The Hollywood Reporter.
Happy: Lisa looked lovely in her sheer accented black dress, complete with ruffle details
Beaming: Dustin and Lisa have been married since 1980; seen at the awards show on Saturday
Hunter said asked her for a foot massage and 'was openly flirtatious' as he 'grabbed my a--,' and 'talked about sex to me and in front of me,' Hunter wrote in THR.
She also said: 'One morning I went to his dressing room to take his breakfast order; he looked at me and grinned, taking his time.'
Hunter continued: 'Then he said, "I'll have a hard-boiled egg and a soft-boiled clitoris." His entourage burst out laughing. I left, speechless. Then I went to the bathroom and cried.'
Hoffman told THR: 'I have the utmost respect for women and feel terrible that anything I might have done could have put her in an uncomfortable situation. I am sorry. It is not reflective of who I am.'
Another woman, Wendy Riss Gatsiounis, spoke to Variety about Hoffman allegedly propositioning her during a business meeting in 1991.
Director Agnes Varda was presented with an Honorary Oscar at the Governors Awards by Angelina Jolie on Saturday.
The actress pulled the accomplished director in for a warm embrace on stage of the star-studded ceremony.
Angelina, 42, looked incredible in a beige colored frock featuring gold and silver detailing.
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Strike a pose: Director Agnes Varda was presented with an Honorary Oscar at the Governors Awards by Angelina Jolie on Saturday
While on stage, the mother of six and Agnes began dancing together.
The pair no doubt charmed and delighted audiences as they began dancing with each other on stage.
Angeline looked overjoyed as she danced on stage, swaying from side to side alongside Agnes.
Having fun: The actress pulled the accomplished director in for a warm embrace on stage of the star-studded ceremony
Congratulations: Angelina looked incredible in a white frock featuring gold and silver detailing
The Tomb Raider actress was exquisitely dressed for the occasion in a flowing cream frock with an array of sequins.
She wore her brunette tresses down and had bold red lipstick on.
Agnes looked proud as she was presented with the award, wearing a floral print dress and multi-colored scarf.
So happy: Angelina, 42, looked incredible in a white frock featuring gold and silver detailing
Quick dance: Her most recent work is the movie, Faces Places; it was awarded Best Documentary at the Cannes Film Festival
The director released her first film in 1955, called La Pointe Courte.
Her most recent work is the movie, Faces Places; it was awarded Best Documentary at the Cannes Film Festival.
She spoke about her honorary Oscar to Variety: 'I never thought that people of Hollywood would like my work.'
Adding: 'I really love making films,' she told the website.
Her big heart and down to earth humour on The Bachelorette turned her into a Australia's darling.
And Sophie Monk no doubt endeared herself to fans even further when she proved she's happy to laugh at her star status as she took part in a hidden camera prank on Sunday.
The 37-year-old carried out a series of embarrassing dares as set by KIIS FM's Jackie 'O' Henderson at a crowded restaurant.
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'Mummy loves her Jesus juice!': Sophie Monk does everything Jackie 'O' Henderson tells her to in a hidden camera prank
Wearing an earpiece that was linked with Jackie's microphone, the blonde stunner was first asked by Jackie to do a twirl before sitting in her chair and then start taking selfies.
Things then kicked up a notch as she was forced to ask the waiter if he thought she was prettier on TV or in real life, and what he would 'rate her out of ten.'
The waiter appeared to take the bizarre questions in his stride though as he expertly replied: 'I think you're pretty in both ... 11 [out of ten].'
'Oh my god he's the nicest person in the world ... he just accepts that I'm a diva,' Sophie told Jackie after he walked away.
But despite his good manners, the polite waiter wasn't quite let off the hook as Sophie was then forced to ask him to blow bubbles in a drink with her.
Having a laugh! The 37-year-old was left red-faced as she carried out a series of embarrassing tasks administered by KIIS FM 's Jackie 'O' Henderson (pictured) at a restaurant
Roped in: A polite waiter wasn't free from the prank, as Sophie was forced to ask him to blow bubbles in a drink with her for an Instagram post
Jackie then began to push the boundaries with her requests, getting Sophie to take a photo of her food while standing on a chair, converse with strangers, and ask for a bottle of wine - to drink entirely by herself.
'Who has one glass these days. Mummy loves her Jesus juice,' Sophie was told to tell the waiter.
But arguably the most cringeworthy moment was when she stood in front of the entire restaurant and made a toast to herself.
Jackie then decided to end the embarrassing episode for Sophie by entering the restaurant and letting the waiter in on the prank.
It isn't the first time Sophie has taken on a dare, in 2015 she was part of a similar hidden camera prank at a Sydney yoga studio.
Embarrassing: Jackie then began to push the boundaries with her requests, getting Sophie to take a photo of her food while standing on a chair, converse with strangers, and ask for a whole bottle of wine for herself
It was her first serious relationship since her 14 year marriage to Wayne Roberts ended in 2012.
But Melinda Messenger has revealed that she endured a 'tough' split from boyfriend of three years Warren Smith in March due to the pair's 'incompatible' lifestyles and differing ideas about family.
A spokesman for 46-year-old Melinda told MailOnline: 'Its been a very tough time for Melinda but now she is looking forward to a happy 2018 with her children and pursuing her career in TV.
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Over: Melinda Messenger has revealed that she endured a 'tough' split from boyfriend of three years Warren Smith in March due to the pair's 'incompatible' lifestyles and differing ideas about family
Split: The pair's romance began in Austria in 2013 when the former glamour model appeared on reality show The Jump where Warren was a ski instructor (pictured in 2016)
'She has been studying psychotherapy for the past few years and hopes to merge this into her TV career and use it moving forward to help with producing programmes about mental health issues which affect all of us at one time or another.'
The pair's romance began in Austria in 2013 when the former glamour model appeared on reality show The Jump where Warren was a ski instructor.
Melinda told The Sun that right from the get-go their relationship was a 'whirlwind' and went from 'zero to a hundred' with the pair sharing a room and all the contestants knowing they were together.
Warren moved in with her and her three children Morgan, 17, Flynn, 15, and Evie, 13, when they returned, with Melinda saying the couple began to clash over their different lifestyles and parenting.
Different: A spokesman for 46-year-old Melinda told MailOnline: 'Its been a very tough time for Melinda but now she is looking forward to a happy 2018 with her children and pursuing her career in TV'
Hard times: Melinda told The Sun 'I just said, Right, thats it, I cant do this any more. Its a real shame that I had to end it. But we both had very different lives and they werent compatible.'
I just said, Right, thats it, I cant do this any more.
Its a real shame that I had to end it. But we both had very different lives and they werent compatible.
'I would be happy at home in between work but Warren has had a much different lifestyle, he travels constantly.'
Melinda and Warren sold their separate home and bought a six bedroom place together in Berkshire in July 2014.
But Melinda said within days of moving in she began to have doubts over their future, thinking 'what have I done' and wondering of their relationship would work.
Clash: The former Cowboy Builders host said the main issue the couple would row over was Warren's lengthy work trips and him wanting to go out, while she preferred a cosy night in
She also said their rows over parenting, with Warren having a teenage son of his own, intensified.
The split has come as a shock as less than a year ago the seemingly besotted couple spoke of their hopes for marriage and children in a candid interview with Hello! magazine.
However Melinda said despite this, she was cautious about tying the knot and having a child together and didn't want to rush into anything.
Melinda was previously married to Wayne Roberts, who she wed in 1998 and is the father of her children.
The former Cowboy Builders host said the main issue the couple would row over was Warren's lengthy work trips and him wanting to go out, while she preferred a cosy night in.
Ridin solo: The split has come as a shock as less than a year ago the seemingly besotted couple spoke of their hopes for marriage and children in a candid interview with Hello! magazine
Hunky; Last month Melinda set tongues wagging as she left the Float Like a Butterfly charity gala held at London's Grosvenor House Hotel hand in hand with hunky lawyer Joel Mason
Around the time of the Hello! interview the pair went into relationship counselling in a final attempt to save their romance, but it wasn't enough and Melinda decided to end it in March.
She said she had felt lonely in the relationship and that the pair were staying together for the kids and the house.
The former couple were then forced to carry on living in the same house, which they were trying to sell.
Former love: Melinda was previously married to Wayne Roberts, who she wed in 1998 and is the father of her children Morgan, 17, Flynn, 15 and Evie, 13
Melinda said she has no regrets about her relationship with Warren and is firmly focused on the future, with her life on a 'more stable, happier path'.
Last month Melinda set tongues wagging as she left the Float Like a Butterfly charity gala held at London's Grosvenor House Hotel hand in hand with hunky lawyer Joel Mason.
A source told MailOnline: 'His name is Joel Mason. Melinda and Joel hit it off so after the ball we all went for a drink at Groucho's.'
Melinda is now focused on her career and will be appearing as the Fairy Queen in Snow White And The Seven Dwarfs, at the Kings Theatre in Southsea next month.
The Arab League will hold an extraordinary meeting next Sunday at the request of Saudi Arabia to discuss "violations" committed by Iran in the region, according to a memorandum.
Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates supported the Saudi request, which was also approved by Djibouti, the current chair of the pan-Arab bloc, said the document shown to AFP by diplomats on Sunday.
Tensions have been rising between Saudi Arabia and Iran, including over League members Qatar and Lebanon.
Facing off across the Gulf, the two energy-rich powers have for decades stood on opposing sides of conflicts in the Middle East.
According to the memo, the Saudi request for an Arab League meeting was based on a missile the kingdom says its air defences intercepted near Riyadh after being fired from Yemen on November 4.
A Saudi-led coalition has been battling Shia Houthi rebels in Yemen, and it has accused the Iran-backed rebels of firing the missile.
Saudi Arabia's powerful Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman later accused Iran of "direct military aggression" against the kingdom by supplying the rebels with ballistic missiles.
But Iran denied any involvement in the missile attack, with President Hassan Rouhani warning that the Islamic republic's "might" would fend off any challenge.
According to the memo, Saudi Arabia also decried what it described as "sabotage" and "terrorism" over a pipeline fire in Bahrain on Friday that temporarily halted oil supplies from its territory.
Bahrain's foreign minister blamed Iran for the fire.
"The attempt to blow up the Saudi-Bahraini pipeline is a dangerous escalation on Iran's part that aims to terrorise citizens and to harm the world oil industry," Sheikh Khalid bin Ahmed al-Khalifa wrote on Twitter.
Tehran rejected any involvement in the incident.
In its request for the meeting of Arab foreign ministers, Saudi Arabia referred to those two incidents "in addition to the violations committed by Iran in the Arab region, which undermines security and peace, not only in the Arab region, but around the globe," according to the memo.
*The story was edited by Ahram Online.
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With her good looks and her powerful surname she's the teenager who's fast becoming a force to be reckoned with in the modelling industry.
And Lianna Perdis has acquired some very famous new friends as she continues her ascent in the fashion world.
The 17-year-old daughter of make-up king Napoleon Perdis was seen bonding with iconic designer Jenny Kee and stunning model Gemma Ward during recent Fashion Laureate events in Sydney.
Famous new friends! With her modelling career kicking off, Lianna Perdis, 17, made some very powerful connections at recent Australian Fashion Laureate events in Sydney
With today's top models Kendall Jenner, Gigi Hadid and Kaia Gerber all the progeny of famous fathers, it's believed Lianna could soon join them as one of the world's most in-demand catwalkers.
During her backstage meeting with Jenny, the brunette rocked an ensemble which highlighted her signature style.
The teen queen, who boasts more then 50,000 followers on Instagram, wore a black GCDS tee-shirt which was emblazoned with red lettering.
Instant connection! Jenny and Lianna share a flair and passion for fashion
Completing her rock star- inspired ensemble with black skinny jeans and a bold blue lipstick, Lianna appeared to immediately hit it off with Jenny.
The 70-year-old is one of Australia's most famous fashion designers, known for creating the iconic koala print sweater which was a favourite garment of Princess Diana's.
Like Lianna, Jenny is known for her outlandish style, and opted for a pair of bold red reading glasses for the event.
On the way up: Lianna got to spend time with Gemma Ward- whom she last came face to face with when she was a toddler
Meanwhile, the following day Lianna opted for a different- but similarly quirky- ensemble for her meeting with Gemma Ward.
The model rocked a strapless leather top complete with fishnet arms and, perhaps paying ode to the Sex Pistols, added a pair of tartan pants and a studded belt.
It wasn't the first meeting for Gemma and Lianna- who met when the former was just a toddler back in 2004, when her father was make-up artist for Gemma's Australian Vogue cover shoot.
She never fails to look glamorous, whether on or off the red carpet.
And Laura Whitmore cut a more casual figure on Saturday, as she took to the stage in London's Trafalgar Square to host a U2 gig - ahead of the band receiving the Global Icon award at the MTV Europe Music Awards.
The Irish presenter, 32, was typically chic in skinny jeans and a classic winter coat - but implied her busy schedule was starting to take its toll, as she displayed the beginnings of a breakout on her cheek.
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Leading lady: Laura Whitmore took to the stage in London's Trafalgar Square to host a U2 gig on Saturday - ahead of the band receiving the Global Icon award at the MTV EMAs
Laura took to the stage in a bright green blouse, layered beneath a classic black winter coat, which shrouded her slim figure.
Styling her hair into loose waves and adding a heavy, matte make-up look to conceal any imperfections, the presenter looked casually glamorous as she welcomed U2 onstage for the packed crowds.
After watching the famous rock band play their biggest hits, Laura was then seen heading to a private party in the city later on.
Letting her hair down: After watching the famous rock band play their biggest hits, Laura was then seen heading to a private party in the city later on
All black everything: Laura remained in her skinny jeans, but swapped her coloured top for a plain black blouse as she headed inside
Classically chic: She styled her hair into loose waves and added a matte make-up look as well as a slick of red lipstick, in a glamorous finishing touch
Opting for a more classically chic look, Laura remained in her skinny jeans, but swapped her coloured top for a plain black blouse as she headed inside.
Adding towering ankle boots and a slick of red lipstick in a glamorous finishing touch, the host looked ready to let her hair down as she headed into the swanky venue with a host of friends.
Laura has been incredibly busy in recent weeks, having also attended the star-studded ITV Gala on Friday night.
The blonde had dazzled in a low-cut navy trouser suit as she paraded the carpet, before joining her beau Iain Sterling, 29, inside.
Wrapping up: She sported the same black coat as she headed home later on
Statuesque: She also added height to her frame with towering heeled ankle boots
Suits you! Laura has been incredibly busy in recent weeks, having also attended the star-studded ITV Gala on Friday night
Laura confirmed her romance with the comedian in August, following the culmination of his voice over duties on ITV2's Love Island.
In the summer, sources close to the couple opened up to The Sun about their blossoming romance.
'They kept the relationship private to give it the best possible chance, but it's well known in their close circle of friends how happy they are,' the insider confirmed. 'They are very much in love and are boyfriend and girlfriend.'
Speaking about him for the first time soon afterward, Laura said: 'Yeah he's my boyfriend. He's lovely. I've got him as my screensaver. I've known him for ages.'
She has been nominated for countless awards for her feisty role as Gloria Delgado-Pritchett on Modern Family.
So it's no wonder Sofia Vergara took centre-stage on Saturday night, as she led the cast of the ABC series in celebrating its 200th episode at Catch restaurant in West Hollywood.
The Colombian actress, 45, showed off her age-defying beauty in a flirty floral dress with a seriously plunging neckline as she arrived at the bash.
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Budding beauty: Sofia Vergara took centre-stage on Saturday night, as she led the cast of the ABC series in celebrating its 200th episode at Catch restaurant in West Hollywood
The mother-of-one added height to her chic corset-style dress with a towering pair of black peep-toe heels.
Styling her glossy dark hair in a simple middle-parting, she plumped her pout with a slick of berry lipgloss and framed her eyes with lashings of mascara.
Vergara, who has been nominated for four Golden Globe Awards for her role, was joined by the likes of Julie Bowen, Eric Stonestreet and Jesse Tyler Ferguson on the night.
She's got a lot of front: The Colombian actress, 45, showed off her age-defying beauty in a flirty floral dress with a seriously plunging neckline as she arrived at the bash
Chic: The mother-of-one added height to her chic corset-style dress with a towering pair of black peep-toe heels
Glam: Styling her glossy dark hair in a simple middle-parting, she plumped her pout with a slick of berry lipgloss and framed her eyes with lashings of mascara
Clearly excited about the milestone episode, she shared several fun-filled snaps from the night on her Instagram account.
Posting one with Jesse and his husband of four years, Justin Mikita, she wrote: 'love u @jessetyler @justinmikita #200 so happy to be here tonight with all our cast and crew #modernfamily.'
Sofia's 25-year-old son Manolo - who she shares with ex-husband Joe Gonzalez - was also in attendance on the night.
Family affair: Sofia's 25-year-old son Manolo - who she shares with ex-husband Joe Gonzalez - was also in attendance on the night
Sweet! The actress beamed as she cradled Jeremy Maguire, who plays her son on the hit comedy show
Just hanging out! The actress seemed to be having a whale of a time as she danced away with the cast and crew
Leading lady coming through! Julie Bowen, who plays highly-stung mother Claire Dunphy on the series, looked incredible in a multi-coloured sequin gown
Killer footwear: The 47-year-old rocked a towering pair of gold platforms and carried anothr pair of vertiginous heels in her hand
No doubt enjoying the festivities, he shared snaps of himself cosying up to the Modern Family cast.
He joked in the caption: 'Sure, when they do 200 episodes, they call it a hit.
'When I have 200 episodes, they call me dramatic. Whatever. #ModernFamily200Episodes #CONGRATULATIONSFAMMMMMMMM.'
It's Manny Delgado! Rico Rodriguez, who plays Sofia's onscreen teenage son, looked dapper in a grey blazer over jeans and a burgundy shirt
Keeping it casual: Nolan Gould rocked simple grey jeans and a white T-shirt and trainers
Sofia divorced Joe in 1993 and married True Blood actor Joe Manganiello in November 2015.
The couple tied the knot in a lavish Palm Beach ceremony after getting engaged on Christmas day 2014 after six months of dating.
Sofia's star power seems to only get brighter as she was the named highest-paid television actress for the sixth year in a row with earnings of an incredible $42 million in just 12 months.
Loving life! Jesse Tyler Ferguson, who plays Mitchell Pritchett, seemed to have fully embraced the night's festivities
Happy couple: Eric Stonestreet stepped out with his pretty new nurse girlfriend Lindsay Schweitzer
She's a socialite known for putting on very busty displays.
And Demi Rose kept up appearances by showing off her ample assets as she arrived at a popular nightclub in Leeds on Saturday.
The dark haired beauty, 22, put on a smoldering display at the Veuve Clicquot party alongside DJ Tom Zanetti.
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Sultry: Demi Rose, 22, put on a busty appearance as she showed off her ample assets while arriving at a popular nightclub in Leeds on Saturday
She's got front! All eyes were on Demi's sensational figure as she mingled at the event
Stepping out in a black blouse with an extreme plunging neckline, Demi showed off her sizeable bust outside of city centre club Mission.
Adding a pair of black fitted trousers, the British-Colombian star put on a curvy show, with her famous hour glass figure attracting attention from club-goers and passersby alike.
Letting her long black hair flow past her shoulders, Birmingham-born Demi wore a smattering of makeup to highlight her natural good looks, and added a smudge of smoky eye-shadow to accentuate her smouldering look.
Demi was stood alongside the handsome DJ Zanetti, known for playing club-friendly EDM, who cut a stylish figure in a dressed down suit with paisley tie.
Smouldering: Stepping out in a black blouse with an extreme plunging neckline, Demi showed off her sizeable bust outside of city centre club Mission
Demi has been busy with her flourishing career after becoming Instagram famous, and told MailOnline in September that she has no time for her love life.
'I'm happy being single, but if someone comes along he just has to fit in with my busy life, really. So who knows?' she admitted.
However Tyga's rumoured ex Demi has now revealed she is using popular dating app Huggle, to find a new man.
Adding a pair of black fitted trousers, the British-Colombian star put on a curvy show, with her famous hour glass figure attracting attention from club-goers and passersby alike
Letting her long black hair flow past her shoulders, Birmingham-born Demi wore a smattering of makeup to highlight her natural good looks, and added a smudge of smoky eye-shadow
The underwear model rose to prominence after being romantically linked to rapper Tyga in May last year.
The beauty was seen with the Rack City hitmaker, 27, in Cannes, while he was on a break from his Keeping Up With The Kardashians star ex girlfriend Kylie Jenner.
Further discussing her love life with MailOnline, the brunette confessed she is still in contact with the rapper, although they are not together.
She said: 'I was quite known before I even met him. But I'm still referred to as Tyga's ex We still talk now and then, you know, just 'how are you?' and stuff.'
Rise to stardom: Demi has been busy with her flourishing career after becoming Instagram famous, and told MailOnline in September that she has no time for her love life
Aged just 17, her lesbian kiss was the first ever to be screened on British primetime television.
And now, 23 years since making waves on Brookside, Anna Friel, 41, has revisited a lesbian role in The Girlfriend Experience, playing a high-powered political executive who has a relationship with a female escort.
Racy photos from the episode show Anna in the throes of passion, writhing on a bed with her lover, in the third outing of the Washington DC-based raunchy show.
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Raunchy: Two decades since making waves on Brookside, Anna Friel, 40, has revisited a lesbian role in The Girlfriend Experience, playing a powerful political executive who has a relationship with an escort
Anna is pictured kissing and fondling her lover Anna Carr, played by Louise Krause, in the racy show, with a six-minute sex scene causing quite a stir in Hollywood.
The scene shows the pair having sex as Friel's character struggles to climax before they exchange some x-rated words with each other.
In another scene, the pair are seen kissing passionately, indicating their trysts are becoming deeper than just the physical.
Later in the episode, Anna's character Erica goes public with their relationship, taking her to an important political function.
Racy: Photos from the episode show Anna in the throes of passion, writhing on a bed with her lover, in the third outing of the Washington DC-based raunchy show
No holds barred: Anna is pictured kissing and fondling her lover Anna Carr, played by Louise Krause, in the racy show, with a six-minute sex scene causing quite a stir in Hollywood
Intimate: The scene shows the pair having sex as Friel's character struggles to climax before they exchange some x-rated words with each other
Discussing the scenes with Metro.us, Friel urged audiences to look beyond the writhing bodies at the drama taking place away from the sheets.
She said: 'Weve got to concentrate on it as a piece of work. I've never really had an issue with nudity as long as I didn't ever feel like I was made to do it or thought that it was salacious.
'But if you're dealing with something where you know that sex is going to be involved, it's something that we really shouldn't shy away from.'
Close: In another scene, the pair are seen kissing passionately, indicating their trysts are becoming deeper than just the physical
Flesh on flesh: Anna and co-star Louise leave nothing to the imagination after stripping off
I've got my eye on you: Louise stares longingly at her screen lover in the protracted scene
Tryst: Anna is pictures kissing and fondling her lover Anna Carr, played by Louise Krause, in the racy show, with a six-minute sex scene causing quite a stir in Hollywood
Elsewhere Friel has received critical acclaim for her most recent out as a talented but volatile detective.
In the ITV series Marcella, which wrapped filming on its new series over the summer, Anna played Detective Marcella Backland, who is devastated when her husband leaves her and their two children, but is forced to try and put her personal issues aside whilst on the hunt for a serial killer.
Anna - who is thought to be currently single - raises her 11-year-old daughter Gracie Fields, from her previous romance with David Thewlis, 54.
The former flames never married, but they parted for good after almost a decade together in December 2010.
Scenes of passion: Anna - who is thought to be currently single - raises her 11-year-old daughter Gracie Fields, from her previous romance with David Thewlis, 54
He recently made a successful a return to the world of showbiz, after a high-profile fall from grace in 2006.
But Mel Gibson certainly looked back to his best on Saturday night, as he made a playful arrival at the Cavalia Odysseo premiere in LA.
The actor, 61, appeared to be in very high spirits as he laughed and joked with his partner Rosalind Ross, 27, on the red carpet of Odysseo's Big White Top in Camarillo.
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Comeback kid: Mel Gibson certainly looked back to his best on Saturday night, as he made a playful arrival at the Cavalia Odysseo premiere in LA with partner Rosalind Ross, 27
The Braveheart star looked incredibly upbeat as he beamed and threw a cheeky thumbs up at photographers, on his way into the show.
Keeping comfortable for his rare red carpet appearance, the actor opted for a simple blue shirt and jeans combo, but sported a pair of dark Wayfarer sunglasses - which he balanced on his nose as he grinned for cameras.
Mel was joined on the carpet by his glamorous girlfriend Rosalind, who was casually chic in faded skinny jeans and a black silk vest top.
Here he is! The Braveheart star looked incredibly upbeat as he beamed and threw a cheeky thumbs up at photographers, on his way into the show
Say cheese! Keeping comfortable for his rare red carpet appearance, the actor opted for a simple blue shir , but balanced a dark pair of sunglasses his nose as he grinned for cameras
Making the look more striking, the writer then layered a stylish velvet blazer on top, and added height to her already leggy frame with leather ankle boots.
Leaving her hair in loose, tousled waves and opting for a minimal, glowing make-up look, Rosalind drew attention to her radiant complexion and naturally striking features, as she beamed arm-in-arm with her beau of three years.
It is no wonder she was keen to attend the famous equestrian acrobatic show with Mel, as a former champion equestrian vaulter herself.
Stunning: Mel was joined on the carpet by his glamorous girlfriend Rosalind, who was casually chic in faded skinny jeans and a black silk vest top
Besotted: Opting for a minimal make-up look, Rosalind drew attention to her radiant complexion as she beamed arm-in-arm with her beau of three years
Mel and Rosalind looked more loved-up than ever at the event, having welcomed their first child together earlier this year.
The actor has been dating the beauty, who is thirty four years his junior, since 2014, and the brunette gave birth to their son Lars Gerard in January.
Mel already has seven children with ex-wife Robyn Moore: Hannah, 36, twin boys Christian and Edward, 34, William, 31, Louis, 28, Milo, 26, and Thomas, 17.
Doting parents: Mel and Rosalind looked more loved-up than ever at the event, having welcomed their son Lars Gerard in January this year
Back again: Meanwhile Mel is currently riding a new wave of fame following his public fall from grace in 2006 - and has even allegedly signed on to another Lethal Weapon movie
He also has a six-year-old daughter, Lucia, with former girlfriend Oksana Grigorieva.
Meanwhile Mel is currently riding a new wave of fame following his public fall from grace in 2006 - and has even allegedly signed on to another Lethal Weapon movie.
It was reported last month that Mel would be returning to reprise his role as Detective Martin Riggs in the fifth installment.
According to Deadline the actor, co-star Danny Glover and director Richard Donner, have been 'huddling on the possibility.'
Back on track: It was reported last month that Mel would be reprising his role as Detective Martin Riggs in the franchise's fifth installment (pictured with co-star Danny Glover)
'In the scenario we've heard Donner would direct and Channing Gibson [writer of Lethal Weapon 4] would script,' it said.
'There are many moving parts, but we've heard that all are on board and exploring another film.'
'It would move forward, of course, at Warner Bros., the studio that has brought audience four in the franchise,' the report added.
All in! 'There are many moving parts, but we've heard that all are on board and exploring another film'
MailOnline has reached out to Mel Gibson's representatives for comment.
Released in 1987, the first Lethal Weapon followed two police officers who become unlikely friends - Mel's character, a widowed and depressed Vietnam veteran and his partner, family man Roger Murtaugh (played by Danny Glover).
The Lethal weapon franchise made Mel a household name in Hollywood and grossed $955.2 million worldwide.
Revising the role: Released in 1987, the first Lethal Weapon followed two police officers Mel's character - a young widowed and depressed Vietnam veteran and his partner, family man Roger Murtaugh (played by Danny Glover)
However, the Mad Max legend is currently enjoying a comeback to acting, after his infamous 2006 DUI arrest.
Following the arrest, a recording of the actor making anti-Semitic comments in his tirade against the police officer in question was released, causing him to be blacklisted in Hollywood for almost ten years.
However, it has been a year to remember for the Forever Young favourite, who received huge recognition for his directorial turn Hacksaw Ridge, starring Andrew Garfield.
Following the story of WWII veteran Desmond Doss, the film was nominated Best Picture, Best Director and Best Actor at the Academy Awards, and picked up the gongs for Best Sound Mixing and Best Film Editing.
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She has jetted off to Australia ahead of her presenting duties on I'm A Celebrity: Extra Camp.
And Scarlett Moffatt seemed to be relishing her free time ahead of the spin-off show's start next week, enjoying a relaxed day on the beach with her lookalike mum Betty on Sunday.
The former Gogglebox star, 27, looked chic as she soaked up the sun in a printed monochrome kaftan while stretched out on a lounger next to her youthful mother.
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Down time: Scarlett Moffatt seemed to be relishing her free time ahead of the spin-off show's start next week, enjoying a relaxed day on the beach on Sunday
The brunette beauty certainly looked beach-ready in her scarf-print dress, which featured a plunging neckline, flared 70s-style sleeves and a chic twist-front waist.
Showing off her radiant glow from several days spent in the sunshine, Scarlett ensured she packed in some time to top up her tan even further.
Sweeping her dark locks into a simple tousled ponytail, the Streetmate presenter appeared to go make-up free for the relaxed beachside outing.
Perching some stylish cat-eye shades on top of her head, the County Durham native looked utterly content as she chatted away happily to her mum and checked her phone.
Like mother, like daughter: The former Gogglebox star, 27, looked chic as she soaked up the sun in a printed kaftan while stretched out on a lounger next to her lookalike mum Betty
Soaking up the sun: The brunette beauty certainly looked beach-ready in her scarf-print dress, which featured a plunging neckline, flared 70s-style sleeves and a chic twist-front waist
Quality time: Showing off her radiant glow from several days spent in the sunshine, Scarlett ensured she packed in some time to top up her tan even further
Betty - who was axed from Gogglebox alongside husband Mark and youngest daughter Ava-Grace when it emerged Scarlett was leaving to pursue a presenting career - seemed equally carefree as she worked on her tan.
The pair are thought to be staying in I'm a Celeb's resident hotel, the Palazzo Versace Australia.
I'm A Celebrity returns on November 19 and will see both Ant McPartlin and Declan Donnelly reprise their roles as hosts.
Natural look: Sweeping her dark locks into a simple tousled ponytail, the Streetmate presenter appeared to go make-up free for the relaxed beachside outing
Some family time: The Gogglebox stars ensured they had ice-cold drinks and books to keep them occupied during the relaxed day out
Last month ITV2 finally confirmed that Scarlett will be presenting Extra Camp - replacing last year's hosts Stacey Solomon and Vicky Pattison.
Speaking about her new role, the reality beauty gushed: 'After last year's Jungle experience which was a dream come true, I can't believe I'm so lucky to have the dream continue by being part of this amazing show. It's going to be so much fun.'
Show bosses have revealed that Scarlett will join her hunky comedian co-star Joel Dommett, who had finished in second place on the 2016 series of I'm A Celebrity, on the presenting team, as well as returning star Joe Swash.
Loving life: Perching some stylish cat-eye shades on top of her head, the County Durham native looked utterly content as she chatted away happily to her mum and checked her phone
Content: Betty - who was axed from Gogglebox alongside husband Mark and youngest daughter Ava-Grace when it emerged Scarlett was leaving to pursue a presenting career - seemed equally carefree as she worked on her tan
Down under: The pair are thought to be staying in I'm a Celeb's resident hotel, the Palazzo Versace Australia
Scarlett's latest appearance comes after she addressed her split with boyfriend Luke - dropping the bombshell that the duo are better off as pals after 'friend-zoning' one another.
Speaking to The Sun about their break up, she revealed: 'We friend-zoned each other. I have no idea how it actually happened.'
Scarlett had previously revealed that her relationship with Luke, 28, came to an end for a second time when he had dumped the television personality on her birthday, earlier this month.'
Ready for the sun: Scarlett completed her laid-back ensemble with an understated pair of black slippers
Come here, you! The pair had a sweet moment as Betty reached over to adjust Scarlett's dress
Exciting: Last month ITV2 finally confirmed that Scarlett will be presenting Extra Camp - replacing last year's hosts Stacey Solomon and Vicky Pattison
The Gogglebox star, who previously hailed the hairdresser her 'best friend', said it was ultimately 'his choice' to end things for a second time.
The 27-year-old admitted the couple, who previously lived together in London, had grown to see each other in a 'friendly' way rather than 'romantic'.
She said she felt compelled to reveal the 'awkward' truth after several interviews of Scarlett gushing about Luke went to print before news of their split emerged.
New horizons: Speaking about her new role, the reality beauty gushed: 'After last year's Jungle experience which was a dream come true, I can't believe I'm so lucky to have the dream continue by being part of this amazing show'
Dream team: Show bosses have revealed that Scarlett will join her hunky comedian co-star Joel Dommett, who had finished in second place on the 2016 series of I'm A Celebrity, on the presenting team, as well as returning star Joe Swash
Clean break: Scarlett's latest appearance comes after she addressed her split with boyfriend Luke - dropping the bombshell that the duo are better off as pals after 'friend-zoning' one another
'Im gonna have to write it because I feel a bit awkward as Ive done some interviews about him being in my book that arent out for a while due to timings of the magazines ... but me and Luke have finished due to a number of different things,' she wrote on Facebook.
'It was Lukes choice in the end but its because we both just see each other in more of a friendly way than a romantic way.
'We both respect and love each other enough to know we need to call it a day and not be one of those couples thats off and on,' she added.
All Fired Up (Down Under)! The Saturdays star Vanessa White landed in Australia on Saturday, ahead of this year's I'm a Celebrity launch... following the likes of Georgia Toffolo and Jamie Lomas
Posh Tucker Trials! Made In Chelsea's Georgia Toffolo has landed in Australia ahead of the I'm a Celebrity launch
Campmates? Meanwhile, Hollyoaks and Casualty star Jamie Lomas arrived slightly ahead of Toff, earlier in the day
Explaining why she has failed to talk about him in recent TV interviews, she added: 'So its not that Im being a crap girlfriend and not mentioning him its just we are no longer together.'
She concluded graciously: 'I wish him all the luck and happiness in the world, just sometimes these things happen (happy birthday Scarlett by the way ha).'
As a fan reassured her that she would find love again, Scarlett responded that she cleared the air so people wouldn't think she was the 'bad guy'.
Into the jungle! Dennis Wise, 50, appeared to confirm his appearance on this year's I'm A Celebrity, as he was spotted arriving at Brisbane airport in Australia on Friday
Into the jungle! Jack Maynard looks to have confirmed his long-rumoured appearance in I'm a Celebrity... Get Me Outta Here when he was pictured walking through Brisbane Airport, Australia, nine days before the start of the show
They're the iconic British boy band who haven't toured Down Under since September 1995.
But Take That are set to break their 22-year drought as they prepare for a series of Australian shows that start on Wednesday.
Frontman Gary Barlow, 46, revealed the band members were so eager to finally return that they picked up the phone themselves to make it happen.
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'We just knew it'd been too long': Take That (pictured) to tour Australia for the first time in more than two decades
'We actually made the call, we found a promoter, we just knew it'd been too long,' he told News.com.au.
Take That have promised to play a wide spread of hits that stretch from their 1990s classics, such as Back For Good and Never Forget, to new songs like Giants.
Gary added: 'Regardless of which period you joined the bands career, youll get something you know.'
The last time the band toured Australia was only a few months after star man Robbie Williams left to pursue a solo career.
They would disband entirely the following year, only to reform - sans the Angels hitmaker - in 2005.
'We actually made the call': Frontman Gary Barlow (left), 46, revealed the band members were so eager to finally return that they picked up the phone themselves to make it happen
A long time between drinks! The last time the band (pictured in 1993) toured Australia was only a few months after star man Robbie Williams left to pursue a solo career
'Invited back whenever they like': Although band member Howard Donald said they are 'super happy' as a three-piece, he admitted past members would be welcomed back with open arms
And although band member Howard Donald said they are 'super happy' as a three-piece, he admitted past members would be welcomed back with open arms.
'Robbie and Jason [Orange] are always invited back whenever they like,' he said.
Supporting the act will be Dannii Minogue, who met the band for the first time in the early 1990s, News.com.au reported.
The 46-year-old said all she needed was a text from the band and she was 'literally in right away'.
Dannii and Take That will perform five arena shows across Australia's eastern states, and in Adelaide.
His most recent films include Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, Mississippi Grind and The Dark Knight Rises.
And actor Ben Mendelsohn looked every inch the movie star as he attended the annual Governors Awards in Hollywood, California, on Saturday.
The 48-year-old cut a dapper figure in a tailored black suit and crisp white dress shirt.
Suits him well! Ben Mendelsohn, 48, cut a dapper figure in tailored black attire, as he attended the annual Governors Awards in Los Angeles on Saturday
Ben sported a tailored black suit and black bow tie.
The Melbourne-born personality finished off his red carpet look with black dress shoes and a white pocket square.
Ben attended the exclusive event, which includes three different awards that recognise lifetime achievement within the film industry.
He polishes up well! The actor sported a tailored black suit, crisp white dress shirt and black bow tie
Details: Ben added a white pocket square to his red carpet look
The sighting comes shortly after it was reported that Ben is 'in talks' to play a villain in the upcoming superhero blockbuster, Captain Marvel.
Deadline reported late last month that the entertainer could very well claim the role and appear on screen in the flick opposite American actress Brie Larson.
The publication stated that the first 'female-fronted superhero movie' will be set in the 1990s.
Prestigious: The Melbourne-born personality attended the exclusive event, where three awards recognise a lifetime achievement within the film industry
New gig? The sighting comes shortly after it was reported that Ben is 'in talks' to play a villain in the upcoming superhero blockbuster, Captain Marvel, alongside Brie Larson
The film centres around character Carol Danvers, a pilot, who has an accident and has her DNA mixed with that of an alien.
Brie has spoken about the role - where she plays Carol - and said she's excited for the challenge.
She told Vanity Fair: 'Ultimately, I couldn't deny the fact that this movie is everything I care about, everything thats progressive and important and meaningful, and a symbol I wished I would've had growing up.
'I really, really feel like it's worth it if it can bring understanding and confidence to young womenI'll do it.'
It's the Australian reality show that was once once dubbed 'too mean' for US audiences.
But The Real Housewives of Sydney has garnered mixed reviews from English audiences after it went to air in the United Kingdom last week.
British celebrity Sam Giffen was among the viewers who took to Twitter to share his opinion of the show following its first explosive episode.
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'They're all bonkers': The Real Housewives of Sydney has garnered mixed reviews from English audiences after it went to air in the United Kingdom last week
'The Real Housewives of Sydney is my new fave housewives. They're all bonkers' the star wrote to his 42,200 followers.
The 2016 Big Brother star then added a crying-with-laughter emoji cementing his positive review of the show.
Many of Sam's social media followers replied with their own appraisal of the exploits of the seven Sydney stars.
He's a fan! British celebrity Sam Giffen was among the viewers who took to Twitter to share his opinion of the show
High praise! The 2016 Big Brother star added a crying-with-laughter emoji cementing his positive review of the show
Shocking antics: One viewer offered up an opinion on the series' breakout star, Lisa Oldfield
One happy viewer described the show as 'amazing', whilst another offered up an opinion on the series' breakout star, Lisa Oldfield.
'Lisa is unhinged' one fan wrote, referring to the 42-year-old's extravagant antics.
However, not all viewers were impressed- with one implying that it negatively represented Australia as a whole.
Not a fan? One found the antics of the seven Sydney Housewives too much to handle
'The women on Real Housewives of Sydney are absolutely nuts like I'm embarrassed for them' the critic tweeted.
It comes after The Daily Telegraph reported back in May that American TV bosses had labelled the show and the antics of its stars 'too extreme'.
According to the report, Foxtel's executive director of television Brian Walsh told the Telegraph that US feedback stated that the 'program didnt feature enough of the fun and friendship between the women'.
It's believed the show is returning for a second season, but will feature a cast shake-up after continuing feuds and fireworks between its seven current stars.
Saad Hariri, whose resignation as Lebanon's prime minister a week ago sent shockwaves across the region, said Sunday he is "free" in Saudi Arabia and will return to Lebanon "very soon".
In an interview from Riyadh with his party's Future TV, Hariri brushed aside rumours that he was under de facto house arrest in the kingdom, from which he announced his surprise departure on November 4.
In his first public comments since then, he said he was free to travel.
"I am free here. If I want to travel tomorrow, I will," Hariri said.
"I will return to Lebanon very soon," Hariri said, adding later that he would land in Beirut "in two or three days".
Lebanese President Michel Aoun has yet to formally accept Hariri's resignation and has said Hariri has been "restricted" in his movements.
Hariri, who also holds Saudi citizenship, told journalist Paula Yaacoubian on Sunday that he would "return to Lebanon very soon to initiate the necessary constitutional procedures".
"Yes, it would have been better that I come to Lebanon (to resign) but there was danger," he said.
"I wrote (my resignation) with my own hand. I wanted to create a positive shock, not a negative one."
Wearing a suit and tie and with a Lebanese flag in the background, Hariri looked tired and spoke softly but firmly throughout the interview.
Hariri has spent the past week in a string of meetings with diplomats and Saudi officials in Riyadh, punctuated by a single trip to Abu Dhabi.
On Saturday, he attended a reception ceremony for Saudi King Salman who had arrived in Riyadh from the holy city of Medina, and also met with British and Turkish envoys to the kingdom.
In his interview on Sunday, he said he has "excellent" ties with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
"Really, I consider him a brother and he considers me a brother. It's an excellent and special relationship," he said.
*The story edited by Ahram Online.
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Megan Fox and hubby Brian Austin Green have their hands full with three kids under the age-of-five at home.
But the couple was able to find a moment for some one-on-one time Saturday in Malibu, California.
The brunette bombshell, 31, looked casual and chic in a pair of tight green pants paired with a roomy blue thermal as she and her other half, 44, fetched lunch at Kristy's Village cafe.
Grown-up time: Megan Fox and hubby Brian Austin Green enjoyed some one-on-one time this Saturday in Malibu, California where they fetched a bite to eat
The mother-of-three teamed her laid back look with high top People Footwear sneakers on foot.
Megan hid behind aviator shades while letting her brown tresses hang long and loose.
Besides her hubby Brian was dressed in a white tee shirt that revealed his tattooed and muscular arms.
The Beverly Hills, 90210 star teamed his classic tee with ripped black jeans and New Balance sneakers.
Easy peasy: Megan was casual in tight green pants and a blue thermal while hubby Brian was dressed in a white tee shirt that revealed his tattooed and muscular arms
Happy surprise! Megan recently revealed that none' of her three little ones (above in May) were 'planned' during a chat with Extra earlier this month
He sported a swathe of stubble along his chiseled jawline while keeping the sun out with dark wayfarers.
Megan recently revealed that none' of her three little ones were 'planned' during a chat with Extra earlier this month.
The New Girl actress and Beverly Hills, 90210 star welcomed their latest addition, son Journey River, in August 2016.
Megan and Brian began dating in 2004 after they met on the set of Hope & Faith when he was 30 and she was 18. They tied the knot on June 24, 2010.
Lacey lady! The hot mama recently displayed her bombshell body while teasing her new lingerie collab with Frederick's Of Hollywood on Instagram
The hot mama recently displayed her bombshell body while teasing her new lingerie line on Instagram.
Megan offered an eyeful while sporting a white lace bodysuit from her collaboration with Frederick's Of Hollywood.
Fox will next be seen in the upcoming movie Zeroville, which is slated for release sometime in 2018.
She fuelled rumours she could enter the I'm A Celebrity jungle after joining boyfriend Ryan Thomas in Australia just days before the new series kicks off.
But Lucky Mecklenburgh stole the limelight for a very different reason on Sunday, as she showcased her incredible physique in a sizzling white swimsuit.
Soaking up the sun on a roof terrace, the 26-year-old former TOWIE star flashed her pert derriere as well as a hint of sideboob in the daringly plunging number.
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Looking good: Lucky Mecklenburgh stole the limelight for a very different reason on Sunday, as she showcased her incredible physique in a sizzling white swimsuit
The brunette beauty ensured all eyes were on her as she flashed a sultry glance over her shoulder.
Clearly relishing her time down under, she joked in the caption: 'Its been a hard day in Aus. Roof top sunbathing in my new insane @prettylittlething swimsuit.'
The star revealed she was nursing a weary head this morning, sharing a snap of a bowl of greens and writing: 'Salad with a hangover'.
Her social media snap comes after she shared a snap of herself relaxing on the same roof terrace as Corrie star Ryan - who is also hotly tipped to be heading to the jungle.
And eagle-eyed fans were quick to speculate that the couple might be tipped for the outback, with one follower writing 'Oh, I'm A Celeb is coming up... go figure!'
She's abreast of the situation: Soaking up the sun on a roof terrace, the 26-year-old former TOWIE star flashed her pert derriere as well as a hint of sideboob in the daringly plunging number
Cheeky: Clearly relishing her time down under, she joked in the caption: 'Its been a hard day in Aus. Roof top sunbathing in my new insane @prettylittlething swimsuit'
Lucy shared a shot of herself soaking up the rays on a lounger, which she captioned: 'Friday feeling #penthouse #melbourne #fridayvibes #travel #australia #penthousegoals.'
'So you and Ryan Thomas are in Oz, oh and I'm a celeb is coming up, go figure!' one fan wrote, while another speculated 'Jungle?'
Another defended Lucy, writing: 'She goes out with Ryan whos filming Neighbours so could just be out visiting him .'
Ryan posted a snap from the same spot, echoing his girlfriend's caption by writing 'Friday feeling'.
Rumour has it: It comes after she fuelled rumours she could enter the I'm A Celebrity jungle after joining boyfriend Ryan Thomas in Australia just days before the new series
Hmm: The TOWIE star shared a snap of herself relaxing on the same roof terrace as Coronation Street star Ryan - who is also hotly tipped to be heading to the jungle
Looks familiar: Ryan posted a snap from the same spot, echoing his girlfriend's caption by writing 'Friday feeling'
Interesting: Lucy has flown out to visit Ryan, while he settles into his new role on the Australian soap, and has been documenting her stay in Melbourne on her own social media channels - but has noticeably chosen to keep her reunion with Ryan private
One follower penned: 'How you look when you know the jungle will be a holiday compared to the island. Thought he might be killing two birds with one stone.'
Ryan has been hotly tipped for the new series of I'm A Celebrity... Get Me Out Of Here which is set to return to ITV on November 19. However, the lineup for the new series is yet to be confirmed.
Lucy has flown out to visit Ryan, while he settles into his new role on the Australian soap, and has been documenting her stay in Melbourne on her own social media channels - but has noticeably chosen to keep her reunion with Ryan private.
Speculation: Eagle-eyed fans were quick to speculate that the couple might be tipped for the outback, with one follower writing 'Oh, I'm A Celeb is coming up... go figure!
Exciting: Ryan has been hotly tipped for the new series of I'm A Celebrity... Get Me Out Of Here which is set to return to ITV on November 19 - although the lineup for the new series is yet to be confirmed
What split? Ryan and Lucy have reunited in Melbourne, following his move to Australia to work on Neighbours, and he was seen proudly filming her dancing on Tuesday
She did, however, share snaps of her partying with Olympia Valance during the couple's recent get-together with friends.
His addition to the Neighbours cast was confirmed in October, with Lucy gushing that she was 'proud' of the star for landing his new role as Rafael Humphreys - described as a loner with dark secrets - two years after leaving Coronation Street.
Meanwhile the couple were rocked by claims that Lauren Goodger planned to enter the I'm A Celebrity jungle to flirt with Ryan.
Sources claimed she wanted to seek revenge on Lucy Mecklenburgh, who dated her ex-fiance Mark Wright six years ago.
However, Lauren has furiously denied reports she is planning to 'get her own back' on Lucy by 'flirting' with the online fitness guru's boyfriend Ryan on the new series ofI'm A Celebrity, branding the claims 'absolute rubbish'.
Awkward: Lauren Goodger, 31, has found herself at the centre of claims she is still holding a grudge when it comes to Mark Wright's past romance with Lucy Mecklenburgh and is planning to seek revenge on her former TOWIE co-star
Lucy had dated Mark back in 2011, following the breakdown of his relationship with Lauren, but their romance had been brief, as Mark later reunited with childhood sweetheart Lauren and popped the question.
Sources had claimed to Closer magazine that Lauren is still 'furious' over the short-lived romance, telling the publication: 'Lauren's never got over Lucy's 'affair', as she called it, with Mark and has held a grudge ever since.
'As soon as she saw Ryan was rumoured to join her in the jungle, she saw it as an opportunity to give Lucy a taste of her own medicine.'
They added: 'She's got no serious plans to steal Ryan, but she would like Lucy to realise how humiliating it felt for her when she was linked to Mark.'
However, when contacted by MailOnline, a representative for Lauren denied this is the case. They said: 'This is absolute rubbish and no truth in any of it!'
MailOnline have also contacted a representative for Lucy for comment.
'Absolute rubbish': But she has furiously denied reports she is planning to 'get her own back' on Lucy by 'flirting' with the online fitness guru's boyfriend Ryan Thomas on the new series of I'm A Celebrity
Rise to prominence: Lauren's relationship with ex-fiance Mark Wright saw her thrown into the spotlight seven years ago, with their engagement and subsequent split shortly after playing out for fans to see on The Only Way Is Essex
Lucy had previously dated Mark, who is now happily married to his actress wife Michelle Keegan, six years ago, following his brief split from Lauren.
Their romance had dominated the first series of TOWIE, where Lauren and Lucy were pitted against each other as love rivals and the latter was ultimately dumped by Mark at the end of the series.
Following his split with Lucy, Mark then rekindled his romance with Lauren and had proposed to his ex of 10 years in front of the cameras during series two of the ITVBe reality series.
Their engagement, however, was short-lived and the pair later went their separate ways, following claims Lauren had been 'unfaithful' to Mark.
Onscreen engagement: Mark had proposed to his ex of 10 years in front of the cameras during series two of the ITVBe reality series - their engagement, however, was short-lived and the pair later went their separate ways, following claims Lauren had been 'unfaithful' to Mark
Single again: Lauren went on to find love with her jailbird ex-beau Joey Morrison, but the pair split in September following 15 months of dating, while Joey was still in prison
Smitten: Mark is now happily married to his actress wife Michelle Keegan whom he married in May 2015
Lauren went on to find love with her jailbird ex-beau Joey Morrison, but the pair split in September following 15 months of dating, while Joey was still in prison.
Remaining on friendly terms, she admitted that the pair didn't 'fall out' and she holds nothing but respect for him now that their relationship has come to an end.
For over a year, Lauren had been forced to visit Joey in prison, as he has been in the midst of serving a 16 year violent drugs-related prison sentence. He was convicted of a string of offences, including possession of a firearm, kidnapping, blackmail and actual bodily harm, and is due for a 2018 release.
Lucy, meanwhile, is now dating actor Ryan, after romance blossomed for the pair while filming for Bear Grylls: Celebrity Island and in the midst of water shortages, extreme hunger and tropical storms.
Tangled history: Lucy had dated Mark back in 2011, following the breakdown of his relationship with Lauren, but their romance had been brief, as Mark later reunited with childhood sweetheart Lauren and popped the question
Loved-up: The brunette beauty is now dating actor Ryan, after romance blossomed for the pair while filming for Bear Grylls: Celebrity Island
Strength to strength? They continued their romance back on home soil and things appear to be serious between the pair, as Lucy has been introduced to Ryan's eight-year-old daughter Scarlet, whom he shares with Tina O'Brien
They continued their romance back on home soil and things appear to be serious between the pair, as Lucy has been introduced to Ryan's eight-year-old daughter Scarlet, whom he shares with Tina O'Brien.
Ryan is currently in Australia after landing himself a role on soap Neighbours. Lucy had gushed how 'proud' she was of her beau, following news of his new addition to the cast surfacing, but the couple found themselves facing speculation they had split recently.
Lucy appeared to make a cryptic dig at her beau by sharing a photo of a frog to her Instagram story and posting: 'I seem to attract frogs.'
While she never addressed the break up claims, Lucy appears to have since put the rumours to bed by tagging her beau in her social media activity since.
New chapter: Ryan is currently in Australia after landing himself a role on soap Neighbours and Lucy had gushed how 'proud' she was of her beau, following news of his new addition to the cast surfacing
Known for wanting to keep their relationship private, she has made sure not to discuss the swirling claims, but did admit it can be 'confusing' when her social media posts are taken out of context in an interview with MailOnline.
'I am used to it, you can never please anyone no matter what you post. It's very, very odd. I've learnt to deal with it,' she claimed.
'I've been in the public eye since I was 19, I'm 26 now. It's confusing sometimes, but you have to let it go ahead over your head.'
Corey Feldman's been busy waging was against sexual predators on Twitter and TV.
But the former child star put his crusade on the backburner for a night Saturday, as he stepped out for some LA nightlife with wife-of-a-year Courtney Anne Mitchell, 26.
While the 46-year-old actor was happy to stop and chat with fans, he had no comment when it came to pal Corey Haim, explaining he 'promised' Haim's mother 'he'd stay out of it' adding, 'I'm doing my best to keep that honored ' to TMZ.
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Blowing off steam: Corey Feldman's put his worries on the backburner for a night Saturday, stepping out for some LA nightlife with wife-of-a-year Courtney Anne Mitchell
The star looked futuristic in a flashy metallic jacket that featured a blue snakeskin pattern with silver and black patches.
He teamed the jazzy jacket with silky slacks while Corey sported blue suede shoes that would have made Elvis proud.
Retro sunglasses with blue tinted lenses covered his eyes as the Gremlins favorite walked into Hollywood hotspot Tao besides his statuesque wife Courtney Anne.
The tall blonde looked fashion forward in a short dark frock worn with an imperial-looking jacket which appeared perfectly suited for the Galactic Senate.
Space case! While out the 46-year-old star looked futuristic in a flashy metallic jacket that featured a blue snakeskin pattern with silver and black patches
Life with sea-tinted glasses! Retro sunglasses with blue lenses covered his eyes as the Gremlins favorite walked into Hollywood hotspot Tao with his statuesque wife Courtney Anne
Mitchell, who plays keyboard in her husband's band Corey Feldman & the Angels, let her platinum tresses hang in textured waves while brushing a rusty-nude color across her lips.
The couple were joined by another blonde beauty in gingham peep toes who held onto Feldman's other hand.
Since the Harvey Weinstein sex scandals sparked a surge of Hollywood housekeeping, Corey's previous accounts of abuse at the hands of powerful showbiz executives have gain new traction.
Feldman first came forward with his account in his 2013 memoir, Coreyography, claiming that both he and Haim were repeatedly abused as up-and-coming actors.
One non-blonde: The tall blonde looked fashion forward in a short dark frock as she and her husband/bandmate left the restaurant with another blonde
Since the Harvey Weinstein sex scandals sparked a surge of Hollywood housekeeping, Corey's come forward alleging actor Charlie Sheen of raping Haim, seen with Feldman above in 1989
His since come out repeating his story, appearing on Dr. Oz scheduled to air Monday.
Feldman's story seems to support claims from a November 8 National Enquirer story alleging actor Charlie Sheen of raping Haim, who tragically passed in 2010 at the age of 38, as a minor.
Sheen, who worked on the film Lucas with Haim, has unequivocally denied such claims.
Feldman's story seems to support a National Enquirer story which alleges Charlie Sheen of raping Haim as a minor. The actors, who both starred in the film Lucas, are seen above in 1990
Another account: Judy Haim believes that her son was molested once and that there is not an inherent epidemic of pedophilia in Hollywood. She also denies that Sheen ever abused Corey
While Corey F was keen on keeping his promise to Corey's mom not to speak about his late pal, Feldman and Haim's accounts of Corey's abuse differ greatly.
While Feldman says it was a repeated occurrence with many predators involved, Haim's mom Judy believes that her son was molested once by a man, and that there is not an inherent epidemic of pedophilia in Hollywood.
Haim also denies that Sheen, who came out as HIV-postive in 2015, was the one who raped her son.
Meanwhile, Corey's Goonies castmate Sean Astin has spoken out in support of the actor's account.
'Aching for him' Corey's Goonies castmate Sean Astin (together in the 1985 film above) spoke out in support of the actor on Monday, saying 'Corey Feldman communicated to me at some point, what some of his experiences were' and 'I remember aching for him'
On Monday Astin released a statement which said: 'Corey Feldman communicated to me at some point, what some of his experiences were,' adding, 'I remember aching for him.'
The Lord Of The Rings star continued, writing: 'Victims of sexual assault are speaking. Their bravery and willingness to subject their lives to scrutiny, of the most painful kind, should be supported.
He concluded with conviction, saying: 'It is time for abusers to be stopped.'
She has been dealing with heartbreak after a messy split from Stephen Bear last month, accusing the star of cheating on her on a night out.
But Charlotte Crosby appeared to rebound nicely on Sunday night as she oozed confidence on the MTV European Music Awards 2017 red carpet, joined by close friend Sophie Kasaei.
The 27-year-old former Geordie Shore star showed off her incredible figure in a skintight baby pink gown as she posed on the red carpet in London's SSE Arena, telling MailOnline she was 'strong and single'.
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Bouncing back: Charlotte Crosby, 27, put on a fabulous display on Sunday night as she posed on the MTV EMAs 2017 red carpet
Charlotte oozed confidence ahead of the awards show as she made her arrival with Geordie Shore star Sophie, who looked equally stylish in a black and purple lace jumpsuit.
Charlotte had her brunette tresses styled into gorgeous half-up half-down waved style, keeping her makeup dewy with simple smoky eye makeup.
The brunette beauty seemed more than happy to reveal that she was back on the market, and was feeling better than ever in the light of her difficult split.
Pals: Charlotte also posed with her Geordie Shore pal Sophie Kasaei, after the pair enjoyed the pre-EMA's dinner on Friday night
Speaking on the carpet Charlotte told MailOnline: 'I'm very strong and very single.'
The star split from her former beau Bear after a tumultuous relationship, with Charlotte tweeting that the Celebrity Big Brother star cheated on her.
Taking to Twitter, she penned: 'Being single is strange... But I think I'll get the hang', before writing the cryptic message: 'Erase it all. Like it didn't exist. And start again'.
Stunning: The former Geordie Shore star looked stunning in a skin-tight baby pink dress as she put on a confident display in light of her split from former beau Stephen Bear
Slinky: Charlotte also showed off the results of her latest surgery, after having an operation on her 'uniboob'
Charlotte was joined at the event by her Geordie Shore co-star Sophie, who showed off her ample cleavage in her lace-inspired all-in-one.
The Newcastle beauty had her incredible curves on full display in the form-fitting ensemble, which tied together black and purple lace in a circular cut-out design.
Sophie rocked the deep v-neck with full confidence, keeping her chocolate brown tresses loose with a simple curl.
The star finished her look with sharp white and silver nails and a couple of simple silver rings.
Sophie put on a friendly display with pal Charlotte on the red carpet, after the duo were spotted enjoying a night out together at the pre-EMA's dinner on Friday.
Fierce: Sophie rocked a black and purple lace all-in-one jumpsuit, with her ample cleavage on full display
Incredible: Sophie had her brunette tresses in relaxed curls for the look with had a circular lace effect
Looking fine: Sophie teamed her look with sharp claw-like silver and white nails as well as a dynamic smoky eye
Charlotte also showcased the results of her latest surgery, after being body-shamed by online trolls for her 'uniboob.'
Charlotte told Heat Magazine: 'My uni-boob made me feel under-confident. It (congenital symmastia) really limited what I could wear without people saying, 'What the f***'s wrong with her boobs?
'Because I'm famous, if a picture of me is online, people say things like 'What is wrong with her boobs? They're deformed! They're stuck together!'
Moving on: Charlotte revealed that she is well and truly single in light of her split from Bear
Confident: The pair attended the music awards event in London's SSE Arena
Taking the plunge: Sophie showed off a liberal amount of cleavage in the ensemble
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The MTV Europe Music Awards 2017 in London kicked off on an especially glamorous note - with the likes of Demi Lovato, Camila Cabello, Pixie Lott, and Lana Del Rey showcasing their sartorial flair.
Songstress Demi oozed sex appeal as she went braless in a dangerously low-cut check blazer and matching trousers, while Camila showed off her sensational figure in a semi-sheer pink lace gown and Lana emphasised her curves in a figure-hugging eye-catching floral dress.
Demi proved to be absolutely flawless as she worked her angles on the red carpet in the bold look along a whole host of glamorous celebrities - including the likes of Charlotte Crosby, Sophia Kasaei and Ella Eyre.
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Bringing the glamour: The MTV Europe Music Awards 2017 in London kicked off on an especially glamorous note - with the likes of Demi Lovato, Camila Cabello, Pixie Lott, and Lana Del Rey showcasing their sartorial flair
Demi was keen on amping up the sexiness in her saucy ensemble, which saw her go braless under the unbuttoned blazer.
Teaming it with high-waisted matching trousers, the former Disney star commanded attention with her super sleek brunette mane and glamorous make-up look.
Keen on making a style statement at the awards ceremony, Camila looked sensational as she flaunted her figure in the blush pink number, which boasted see-through detailing, teasing at her bra.
The flirtatious number went on to cinch in her tiny waist before transforming into a flowing skirt - complete with delicate white floral detailing on the hem.
She's got front! Demi was keen on amping up the sexiness in her saucy ensemble, which saw her go braless under the unbuttoned blazer
Work it! The former Disney star commanded attention with her super sleek brunette mane and glamorous make-up look
Check mate! Her blazer was completed with high-waisted flared trousers which showed off her trim figure
Busty: A braless Demi enjoyed a quick catch-up with Lana with the pair standing out in their quirky ensembles
Glowing: Demi showed off her bronzed cleavage as she joined a smiley Lana for a stunning shot
Songstress: Demi later changed into a bejewelled jumpsuit with semi-sheer trousers for a stunning performance
Passionate; Demi positively glittered as she knelt down to belt out one of her hit songs
Peek- a-boo! Keen on making a style statement at the awards ceremony, Camila looked sensational as she flaunted her figure in the blush pink number, which boasted see-through detailing, teasing at her bra and high-waisted underwear
Pretty in pink: The former Fifth Harmony member oozed glamour as she had her glossy brunette locks tied up into a chic wavy ponytail, complementing her matching statement pink earrings
Ethereal: Camila looked beautiful as she posed for a romantic shot in the awards Studio
Wow: Pixie, also known for ruling past red carpets in her stylish ensembles, didn't disappoint as she rocked up in a striking black and gold look which showcased her slender figure
As she worked her angles on the red carpet, it was clear the garment was very semi-sheer as it flashed her underwear.
The former Fifth Harmony member oozed glamour as she had her glossy brunette locks tied up into a chic wavy ponytail, complementing her matching statement pink earrings.
Lana brought her chic glamour to the event, ensuring the show off her curves in a skin-tight floral plunging number, which showed off her toned legs.
The Summertime Sadness singer oozed old school Hollywood glamour with shoulder length brunette waves and a simple coat of make-up.
Flower power: Lana brought her chic glamour to the event, ensuring the show off her curves in a skin-tight floral plunging number, which showed off her toned legs
Glamour: The Summertime Sadness singer oozed old school Hollywood glamour with shoulder length brunette waves and a simple coat of make-up
Striking star: Lana kept it simple with a slick of eye-liner and mascara
Amazing: The star's looked was complemented with a large butterfly design under her assets
Is she having a bath? No one stood out more on the red carpet than the show's host Rita Ora, who seemed to have forgotten her ensemble for the evening as she arrived in a white robe and towel on her head
A soap opera! The R.I.P songstress put on an animated display to match her look as she arrived on the red carpet
Shower time! While she was keen on making a sexy statement, Rita made sure she didn't flash too much as she donned a clingy high-ride white bodysuit underneath
Pixie, also known for ruling past red carpets in her stylish ensembles, didn't disappoint as she rocked up in a striking black and gold look which showcased her slender figure.
The Mama Do hitmaker's sleeveless top boasted a tulip hem - flaring out over her hips and balancing out her matching skinny trousers.
No one stood out more on the red carpet than the show's host Rita Ora, who seemed to have forgotten her ensemble for the evening.
The R.I.P songstress arrived on the red carpet in a fluffy white robe and towel on her head, as she put on an animated display to match her look.
Straight out the shower! She pulled out all the stops with amping up the sex appeal, ensuring to cinch in her tiny waist with the belt detailing and flaunting the full extent of her immaculately toned leg
Posing for photographers: Rita was caught looking down at her underwear as she pulled at the skirt of her robe
Helping hand: Fortunately, a member of her style entourage was quickly on hand to cover the singer's modesty
Sparkling: When it came to her accessories, the singer was dripping with diamonds while rocking the bath time look
Beauty look: As well as her bizarre dressing gown, Rita also concealed her tresses beneath a bath towel as she made her big debut
Eye-catching: Charlotte Crosby swapped her short mini-dresses for a glamorous nude-coloured gown - which showed off her eye-popping curves
While she was keen on making a sexy statement, Rita made sure she didn't flash too much as she donned a clingy high-ride white bodysuit underneath.
While many wouldn't be able to pull of a shower look, Rita cut a glamorous figure as she showed off her unique ensemble on the red carpet.
She pulled out all the stops with amping up the sex appeal, ensuring to cinch in her tiny waist with the belt detailing and flaunting the full extent of her immaculately toned leg.
Posing for photographers, Rita was caught looking down at her underwear as she pulled at the skirt of her robe.
Nude ambition! The sleeveless bold look showcased every inch of the physique, before falling into a glamorous train
Pals: While Charlotte doesn't star on MTV's Geordie Shore anymore, she happily posed with her former co-star Sophie Kasaei
Saucy: Sophie cut an extremely sexy figure herself, exhibiting her ample assets and gym-honed figure in a plunging navy semi-sheer jumpsuit
Loving it! Clearly oozing body confidence, the reality star posed up a sexy storm on the internet
Adding to the glam factor: Sophie sported a heavily teased blow-dry and a heavy coat of make-up, while also sporting a white and metallic manicure
Romance: Chloe Ferry wowed in a busty sequin covered red strapless gown as new boyfriend Sam Gowland co-ordinated with her in a red jacket and waistcoat
Scarlet siren: Chloe opted for platinum blonde locks and a heavy coating of make-up for her dazzling turn on the red carpet
Geordie Shore pals; Nathan Henry and Abbie Holborn looked sizzling as they posed up a storm together
Baby doll: Meanwhile Maya Jama looked flawless as she looked undeniably flirty in a figure-hugging thigh-skimming baby blue dress which flaunted her lean legs, boosted with a pair of towering strappy silver heels
Gorgeous: The presenter showed off her pretty features with a fun slick of matching blue eye-liner and with half her raven tresses piled upon her head
Stunning: A pair of dangling silver earrings complemented her striking features
Trendsetter: Maya's beau Stormy let his other half take the spotlight by herself as he took to the red carpet after her
Looking good: The rapper kept it cool in an all-black ensemble and white puffa jacket
Swagger: Liam Payne struck a fierce pose as he took a quick breather between interviews during the glittering event
Cheery; Liam was all smiles as he took part in a fun-filled Q&A backstage at the star-studded music awards show
Smouldering: Liam struck a series of sultry poses as he posed in the Studio during the star-studded awards
Style queen: Ella Eyre also playfully teased her incredibly figure as she flaunted her ample assets in a skimpy bra and flaunted her toned legs
For the fans: Ella looked delighted as she leaned down to take a selfie with her legions of adoring fans
Fortunately, a member of her style entourage was quickly on hand to cover the singer's modesty.
Charlotte Crosby swapped her short mini-dresses for a glamorous nude-coloured gown - which showed off her eye-popping curves.
The sleeveless bold look showcased every inch of the physique, before falling into a glamorous train.
While Charlotte doesn't star on MTV's Geordie Shore anymore, she happily posed with her former co-star Sophie Kasaei.
Sophie cut an extremely sexy figure herself, exhibiting her ample assets and gym-honed figure in a plunging navy semi-sheer jumpsuit.
Clearly oozing body confidence, the reality star posed up a sexy storm on the internet.
Showstopper! American model Hailey Baldwin exhibited her envy-inducing figure in a sparkling black thigh-skimming dress which she paired with towering strappy black heels
Like pro! Knowing her angles fully well, Hailey posed sexily over her shoulder - which seemed to showcase the dangerously short length of her minidress
Racy: The daughter of actor Stephen Baldwin amped up the sex appeal on the red carpet as she showcased her statuesque frame in the racy look
Lithe: Hailey flashed her legs yet again as she posed for a shot in the awards Studio in her shimmering dress
Blonde bombshell: Hailey proved to be every inch the vision as her locks were swooped up into a bun, with a few loose tendrils framing her face
Shout out: Hailey looked confident as she took to the stage with Skylar Grey to present an award at the event
Leggy: The model showed off her stunning toned legs in the tiny minidress as she stared into the distance at the awards
Hard to miss: Jared Leto made an eye-catching display in a hot pink shirt, which was paired with a suede lilac blazer with floral detailing
Colourful: The American actor completed the look with metallic orange sports-inspired trousers
Multi-talented: Jared looked in high spirits as he posed with his band Thirty Seconds to Mars
Pink to make the boys wink! Zara Larsson stood out from the crowd in a bright fuchsia ensemble which swamped her petite figure
Making a statement: The Swedish songstress still managed to flash her impossibly flat stomach in her bright look, which she teamed with sparkling pink Converse shoes
Stunning: The blonde's make-up look matched her attire, with pink eye-shadow, a slick of gloss and blush-infused cheeks
Blonde beauty: Zara looked like an true beauty as she posed in the awards Studio during the event
American model Hailey Baldwin exhibited her envy-inducing figure in a sparkling black thigh-skimming dress which she paired with towering strappy black heels.
Knowing her angles fully well, Hailey posed sexily over her shoulder - which seemed to showcase the dangerously short length of her minidress.
The daughter of actor Stephen Baldin amped up the sex appeal on the red carpet as she showcased her statuesque frame in the racy look.
Hailey proved to be every inch the vision as her locks were swooped up into a bun, with a few loose tendrils framing her face.
Jared Leto made an eye-catching display in a hot pink shirt, which was paired with a suede lilac blazer with floral detailing.
The American actor completed the look with metallic orange sports-inspired trousers as he arrived with his Thirty Seconds to Mars bandmates.
Sensational: She completed the look with a dangerously low-cut embellished top and matching mini-skirt, along with a pair of glamorous fluffy red heels
Beautiful: Ella's curly blonde locks were scraped back into a slick high ponytail and showed off her dangling gold earrings
Here she is! Laura Whitmore looked undeniably trendy in a plunging corset inspired top and ankle-grazing trousers
Loving it: The blonde bombshell completed the look with a pair of studded black biker jacket
Sexy: Singer Madison Beer put on an eye-popping display in a plunging corsetted semi-sheer black dress, which boasted logo-clad straps
Meanwhile Maya Jama looked flawless as she looked undeniably flirty in a figure-hugging thigh-skimming baby blue dress which flaunted her lean legs, boosted with a pair of towering strappy silver heels.
The presenter showed off her pretty features with a fun slick of matching blue eye-liner and with half her raven tresses piled upon her head.
Maya's beau Stormy let his other half take the spotlight by herself as he took to the red carpet after her.
The rapper kept it cool in an all-black ensemble and a white puffa jacket.
Ella Eyre also playfully teased her incredibly figure as she flaunted her ample assets in a skimpy bra.
She completed the look with a dangerously low-cut embellished top and matching mini-skirt, along with a pair of glamorous fluffy red heels.
Sexy style: The Justin Bieber protege teamed her see-through look with an edgy choker as she posed on the red carpet
Striking: Her brunette tresses with tied up into a chic ponytail and she completed the look with heavily outlined eyes and chiselled cheekbones
Glamour: Nathalie Emmanuel and singer Anne-Marie looked stunning in their beauty shots taken in the Studio
Twins: Jedward were also hard to miss in their bedazzled gold blazers as they posed in unison on the red carpet
Ella's curly blonde locks were scraped back into a slick high ponytail and showed off her dangling gold earrings.
Zara Larsson stood out from the crowd in a bright fuchsia ensemble which swamped her petite figure.
The Swedish songstress still managed to flash her impossibly flat stomach in her bright look, which she teamed with sparkling pink Converse shoes.
The blonde's make-up look matched her attire, with pink eye-shadow, a slick of gloss and blush-infused cheeks.
Singer Madison Beer put on an eye-popping display in a plunging corsetted semi-sheer black dress, which boasted logo-clad straps.
The Justin Bieber protege teamed her see-through look with an edgy choker as she posed on the red carpet
Animated: Pixie Lott caught the eye in floral brocade co-ords paired with a bejewelled headband
Her brunette tresses with tied up into a chic ponytail and she completed the look with heavily outlined eyes and chiselled cheekbones.
Nominations for the 2017 MTV EMAs were announced last month, some five weeks ahead of the highly-anticipated awards ceremony.
Leading the way with a jaw-dropping five nominations was Taylor Swift, followed by Dua Lipa with three, and Ariana Grande, Miley Cyrus and Shawn Mendez, who each earned two nominations each.
A whole host of stars, including Drake, Eminem, Ed Sheeran and Kendrick Lemar also made the list, with Rihanna's Wild Thoughts, and Daddy Yankee & Luis Fonsi's record-breaking Despacito battling it out for Best Song.
Fun: The former X Factor stars couldn't resist turning up the fun factor as they jumped up in the air
Silver lining: Lady Victoria Hervey oozed glamour in an exquisite metallic dress
Leggy: Becca Dudley put on a saucy display in a figure-hugging thigh skimming playsuit
Stunning: Models Leomie Anderson and Cindy Kimberly showed off her sensational figures in skimpy leggy ensembles
Musician: Jonas Blue looked every inch the hunk in a baseball jacket and grey turtleneck
Hot pair: He coised up next to a very busty Melinda London
Red hot! Emma Miller looked sensational as she wowed in a slinky plunging red dress
Super cool: Donae'o looked undeniably cool in an all-black ensemble as he attended the red carpet
All eyes on her: Lali caught the eyes in a sparkling silver mini-dress and matching heels
Red hot: Stefflon Don showed off her sensational figure as she flashed her stomach in an eye-catching faux fur red jacket
Breathtaking; Ray BLK and Stefflon Don looked breathtaking on their furry ensembles for the big night
The ceremony, presented by RIP hitmaker Rita Ora at London's SSE Arena, also saw Taylor competing with former girlband member turned solo artist Camila Cabello, Demi Lovato, Miley Cyrus and Shawn Mendes the for Best Pop Award.
Not content with those nominations, 27-year-old Shake it Off hitmaker Taylor was also in the running for Best Video for Look What You Made Me Do, alongside Foo Fighters for Run, Katy Perry for Bon Appetit ft. Migos, Kendrick Lamar for HUMBLE and KYLE for iSpy featuring Lil Yachty.
Taylor Swift went head- to-head with Ariana Grande, Ed Sheeran, Kendrick Lamar, Miley Cyrus and Shawn Mendes for Best Artist.
And battling it out for Best Look, Taylor once again went up against Dua Lipa, Harry Styles, Rita Ora and surprise newcomer ZAYN.
Marking her fifth and final nominated category, Taylor battled it out again with Ariana Grande, as well as Justin Bieber, Katy Perry and once again Shawn Mendes for Biggest Fans.
Posing up a storm: After the show, Rita Ora was seen posing up a storm with her pal Nick Grimshaw at the official after-party
Pals: Rita wowed in a black ensemble as she posed alongside (l-r) The Vamps' James Bay, Tristan Evans and Bradley Simpson
We like to party: Twins Jedward were also spotted at the bash, which was held at the English capital's Fountain Studios
Let's hug it out: One of the former X Factor hopefuls broke away to share an affectionate hug with Charlotte Crosby
Nominations for the 2017 MTV EMAs were announced last month, some five weeks ahead of the highly-anticipated awards ceremony.
Leading the way with a jaw-dropping five nominations was Taylor Swift, followed by Dua Lipa with three, and Ariana Grande, Miley Cyrus and Shawn Mendez, who each earned two nominations each.
A whole host of stars, including Drake, Eminem, Ed Sheeran and Kendrick Lemar also made the list, with Rihanna's Wild Thoughts, and Daddy Yankee & Luis Fonsi's record-breaking Despacito battling it out for Best Song.
The ceremony, presented by RIP hitmaker Rita Ora at London's SSE Arena, also saw Taylor competing with former girlband member turned solo artist Camila Cabello, Demi Lovato, Miley Cyrus and Shawn Mendes the for Best Pop Award.
It's a wrap: Tallia Storm and Tessie Hartmann kept themselves warm in fluffy coats as they made their way over to the bash
Not content with those nominations, 27-year-old Shake it Off hitmaker Taylor was also in the running for Best Video for Look What You Made Me Do, alongside Foo Fighters for Run, Katy Perry for Bon Appetit ft. Migos, Kendrick Lamar for HUMBLE and KYLE for iSpy featuring Lil Yachty.
Taylor Swift went head- to-head with Ariana Grande, Ed Sheeran, Kendrick Lamar, Miley Cyrus and Shawn Mendes for Best Artist.
And battling it out for Best Look, Taylor once again went up against Dua Lipa, Harry Styles, Rita Ora and surprise newcomer ZAYN.
Marking her fifth and final nominated category, Taylor battled it out again with Ariana Grande, as well as Justin Bieber, Katy Perry and once again Shawn Mendes for Biggest Fans.
All white on the night: Tallia continued to pose for photographers, while Lil' Kleine, right, cut a dapper figure in a white blazer
Stunning: Nisrine Sbia showed off her toned pins in a daring thigh-high split gown as she also flashed her bust
Loving life: Footballer Dele Alli cracked a smile as he posed up in his double denim ensemble at the awards
Award: Dele joined Madison Beer to speak to the audience at the glittering event and looked over the moon
Leggy: Madison showed off her toned pins in a pink frilled minidress as Dele spoke to the audience
Front row: The star looked edgy in his ripped double denim ensemble as he enjoyed the musical performances
Living it up: AJ Tracey and Konan and music producer Naughty Boy (centre) were also among the night's revellers
It was Saturday Night Live's usual after party in Midtown Manhattan.
But producer Lindsay Shookus was on her own after saying goodbye to her beau Ben Affleck on Thursday.
The 45-year-old actor, who had spent a few romantic days with her in NYC, was spotted at JFK airport jetting back to Los Angeles to continue rehab at a West Hollywood facility.
Doing fine on her own: Producer Lindsay Shookus smiled brightly as she arrived without Ben Affleck at Saturday Night Live's after party at Maestro's Steakhouse in Midtown Manhattan
Still, the 37-year-old seemed to be staying upbeat without him.
The beautiful blonde smiled as she arrived at the SNL bash at Maestro's Steakhouse wearing a yellow coat on a night when the temperature plummeted to 40F.
And she chatted with cast and crew outside the ritzy venue.
Laughing and chatting: The 37-year-old seemed to be staying upbeat as she mingled with friends outside the glitzy venue
Lindsay teamed her eye-catching coat with a black sweater, skin-tight black leather pants and black high heels, accessorizing with a black leather handbag.
On Wednesday she and Ben, who have reportedly been dating for five months, bundled up to brave the chill for dinner at upscale Chinese restaurant Mr. Chow.
However, the Batman star has rededicated himself to sobriety after a recent intervention from ex-wife Jennifer Garner, 45, and his brother Casey, 42, which is why he returned to LA.
Bringing the sunshine: The beautiful blonde wore a bright yellow coat on a night when the temperature plummeted to 40F in the city
Chilly chic: She teamed her eye-catching coat with a black sweater, skin-tight black leather pants and black high heels
'He knows he cant get through this alone,' a source told Us Weeky.
'Friends and family have never seen Ben so proactive and serious about wanting to get better.'
Ben shares children Violet, 11, Seraphina, eight, and Samuel, five, with Jennifer.
Heading back to LA: Ben, 45, was spotted at New York's JFK airport on Thursday ready to jet back home to resume his rehab at a West Hollywood facility
She has built an impressive fitness empire since leaving Geordie Shore in 2014.
And Vicky Pattison flaunted her fabulous figure with envy-inducing confidence on the MTV EMAs red carpet at The SSE Arena Wembley in London on Sunday.
Making 'no apologies' for her size 10 figure, the 29-year-old former Geordie Shore reality TV star paraded her curves in a cutaway mirrored-inspired dress.
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She made the cut! Braless Vicky Pattison showed off her sideboob and curvy figure in slinky dress as she made 'no apologies' for her figure at MTV EMA awards in London on Sunday
The reality star went braless to best show off a cheeky flash of sideboob in the slinky backless garment.
Famed for her 'Transformation Tuesdays' Instagram posts, the television sensation promotes her healthy living and gym-honed physique.
So it is no surprise, the Ex On The Beach beauty was championing her curves in her skimpy sparkling ensemble at the star-studded event.
From the red carpet, Vicky told MailOnline: 'Here I am, size 10, all boobs and bum and no apologies.'
Forever glamorous, the stunner boosted her height in dazzling metallic sky-scraper heels which featured elegant straps that wrapped around her ankles.
Vicky also wore her brunette tresses in poker straight fashion and tucked behind her ears to show off her pretty face, accentuated by smoky eye make-up.
Racy ensemble: The reality star went braless to best show off a cheeky flash of sideboob in the slinky backless garment
While she is a gym-bunny, the Newcastle born beauty also admitted she loves to treat herself to a few cheeky G&Ts on the weekend.
Accepting who she is, Vicky added: 'I've always been a curvy girl, I always preach strong not skinny. I will never be a size six and I like to live my life and have fun.
'I like to go to the gym, train hard but I also like a few G&Ts at the weekend.'
Vicky's outing came as she recently celebrated moving into her new home with her long-term lover John Noble.
The lovebirds go way back as they used to date when they were 20 years old before they rekindled the flames of their romance years later.
Incredible: So it is no surprise, the Ex On The Beach beauty was championing her curves in her skimpy sparkling ensemble at the star-studded event
Of John, she divulged: 'John has done a lot of growing up in the last eight or nine years. It is meant to be.
'When we first started going out we were very wrapped up in ourselves and what we wanted to do. We're very lucky to have had a chance to find each other again.'
Although the couple are very loved-up, the I'm a Celebrity...Get Me Out of Here! winner revealed she is not ready for children yet.
She explained: 'Most of my friends are thinking of having children, but we're not quite at that stage.'
Next stage! The television sensation recently celebrated moving into her new home with her long-term lover John Noble (pictured together)
Nominations for the 2017 MTV EMAs were announced last month, some five weeks ahead of the highly-anticipated awards ceremony.
Leading the way with a jaw-dropping five nominations was Taylor Swift, followed by Dua Lipa with three, and Ariana Grande, Miley Cyrus and Shawn Mendez, who each earned two nominations each.
A whole host of stars, including Drake, Eminem, Ed Sheeran and Kendrick Lemar also made the list, with Rihanna's Wild Thoughts, and Daddy Yankee & Luis Fonsi's record-breaking Despacito battling it out for Best Song.
The ceremony, presented by RIP hitmaker Rita Ora at London's SSE Arena, also saw Taylor competing with former girlband member turned solo artist Camila Cabello, Demi Lovato, Miley Cyrus and Shawn Mendes the for Best Pop Award.
True love lasts forever: The lovebirds (pictured together) go way back as they used to date when they were 20 years old before they rekindled the flames of their romance years later
Not content with those nominations, 27-year-old Shake it Off hitmaker Taylor was also in the running for Best Video for Look What You Made Me Do, alongside Foo Fighters for Run, Katy Perry for Bon Appetit ft. Migos, Kendrick Lamar for HUMBLE and KYLE for iSpy featuring Lil Yachty.
Taylor Swift went head- to-head with Ariana Grande, Ed Sheeran, Kendrick Lamar, Miley Cyrus and Shawn Mendes for Best Artist.
And battling it out for Best Look, Taylor once again went up against Dua Lipa, Harry Styles, Rita Ora and surprise newcomer ZAYN.
Marking her fifth and final nominated category, Taylor battled it out again with Ariana Grande, as well as Justin Bieber, Katy Perry and once again Shawn Mendes for Biggest Fans.
A magazine has made a shock claim that Karl Stefanovic's girlfriend Jasmine Yarbrough is pregnant.
Woman's Day oddly alleged on Monday that Jasmine, 33, sported a 'small baby bump' as the striking couple attended last week's Melbourne Cup Day Carnival.
The publication also claimed Karl, 43, who is a father of three, has had his vasectomy reversed to start a family with Jasmine 'during a recent trip to Los Angeles'.
Magazine makes shock claim that Jasmine Yarbrough is 'PREGNANT after Karl Stefanovic reversed his vasectomy during a recent trip to LA'
'Everyone knows Karl can't stand being alone and he would do anything to make Jasmine happy,' a 'family friend' allegedly told the publication of the Today host.
The magazine went on to claim Jasmine was 'protectively cradling her stomach' and was 'glowing' when the lovebirds stepped out together for Derby Day.
Karl and Jasmine met roughly nine months ago, and getting pregnant after a vasectomy reversal is usually a six to 12 month process, according to the Vasectomy Reversal Center of America.
The twosome went public with their romance in February, after photos surfaced of the pair kissing on a luxury yacht in Sydney Harbour.
The magazine went on to claim that Jasmine was 'protectively cradling her stomach' and was 'glowing' when the lovebirds stepped out together for Derby Day. They are pictured here at Derby Day
They made their 'official debut' as a couple at Mercedes Benz Fashion Week in March.
Karl opened up to Stellar in March about their relationship, which made headlines less than six months after he revealed he was divorcing Cassandra Thorburn.
'I certainly did not expect to meet someone five months after I broke up with my wife. That was not planned, I did not know her before,' he relayed.
Daily Mail Australia has reached out to the Nine Network for further comment.
The couple made their 'official debut' as a couple at Mercedes Benz Fashion Week in March
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She recently made headlines after breaking away from Fifth Harmony to embark on a solo singing career.
And Camila Cabello showed just how much she can shine on her own as she took to the stage at Sunday's MTV Europe Music Awards to perform her debut hit Havana.
The 20-year-old singing beauty wowed as she stepped out in a ruffled flamenco-inspired red catsuit to belt out the sultry track - complete with sultry dance moves.
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Havana fab time! Camila Cabello performed at the MTV Europe Music Awards, held at London's SSE Arena on Sunday night
The Cuban-born stunner delighted the audience as she writhed around on the stage with a troupe of dancers supporting her.
After Camilla exited the stage following her scintillating performance, visibly impressed host Rita Ora gushed to the audience: 'Shout to Camilla bringing the sexiness to the EMAs!'
Her performance followed Liam Payne, who sang his hit Strip That Down, following on from show opener Eminem, who performed his new track Walk on Water.
Putting on quite the performance: The former Fifth Harmony member performed her debut hit track Havana at the show
Sensational: The Cuban-born stunner looked sensational as she strode her way onto the big stage for her sexy performance
Details: She teamed her flattering ensemble with strappy black heels, which a black sash belt highlighted her svelte waistline
Pretty in pink: A troupe of dancers complemented her look in flowing pink ensembles as they displayed their fancy footwork
Lip service: The raven-haired star playfully blew kisses at the audience as she sauntered down to the front of the large stage
Sheer delight: Camila's choice of ensemble featured semi-sheer lace panels throughout, adding further pizzazz to her look
Black to basics: As her sizzling routine progressed, she was joined onstage by a group of dancers wearing black lacy catsuits
Red alert: The US singer dazzled in her racy red ensemble
Making a statement: She was sure to make an impact as she arrived on stage
Demi Lovato followed Camilla's performance with a live rendition of her hit Sorry Not Sorry, keeping the audience captivated as she donned sparkly sheer trousers with a black corset.
As she showed off flawless vocals, she also proved to be visual delight, not only with her choice of eye-catching ensemble, but with her long raven tresses, which fell about her torso in a bone-straight style with centre-parting.
After he was introduced as 'south London's finest' by his pal Rita Ora, grime superstar took to the stage to perform his hit Big For Your Boots.
Nothing to be Sorry about: Singer Demi Lovato followed Camilla's performance with a live rendition of her hit Sorry Not Sorry
All that glitters: The star kept the audience captivated as she took to the stage in sparkly sheer trousers with a black corset
Bum deal: Her troupe of dancers flashed their shapely posteriors in skimpy outfits as they showed off their fancy footwork
Tress-ed to impress: The chart-topper's long raven tresses fell about her torso in a bone-straight style with centre-parting
Dramatic: She made sure to command attention for her dramatic performance
Triumphant: The American beauty looked sensational as she performed infront of the excited crowd
Sheer bliss: Her sheer sequin flares teased at her toned pins
High spirits: She beamed following her stellar performance
And he was followed by the host Rita, who kicked off her performance with Your Song, before transitioning into her latest track Anywhere.
While muted in choice of tones, her choice of ensemble was typically eye-catching style, removing her black blazer to show off her taut abs and toned physique in a black crop top and matching cycling shorts.
She put on an energetic performance as she took a break from her hosting duties to dance and sing on the stage, much to the delight of the audience.
Singer: Rita Ora, who served as the host of the show, took some time out of her duties to take to the stage for a performance
Great body of work: The London-raised beauty wowed as she peeled off her black blazer to reveal her toned physique
Star power: She kicked off her performance with Your Song, before transitioning into her latest dance track Anywhere
Tatt's the way to do it: As well as her enviably taut abs, Rita also displayed her array of tattoos in her barely-there ensemble
She's got sole: As her routine saw her pull out a selection of sexy moves, Rita opted to wear flat black boots for the occasion
Making a big step: During her performance, the former X Factor judge sat on a large staircase as she belted out her track
Hair we go: The star's wavy golden fell about her upper torso as she danced around onstage, much to the audience's delight
Figure-flaunting: The beauty looked sensational in her skimpy ensemble
Next up was Shawn Mendes, who entertained the screaming audience with his chart-topping hit There's Nothing Holding Me Back.
He was followed by Clean Bandit, who took to the stage alongside Zara Larsson, Julia Michaels and Anne-Marie, who added their vocals to the hits Symphony, I Miss You and Rockabye respectively.
Rock legends went big for their pre-recorded performance, opting to forgo the stage by entertaining crowds in the middle of London's Trafalgar Square instead.
Big performance: Kesha put on a winning performance as she took to the stage to belt out her latest track Learn To Let Go
Glittering: The American singer caught the eye as she performed in a glittering metallic ensemble over a sequinned green top
Focused: A group of dancers focused their attention on the star as they edged their way towards her on the darkened stage
Closer and closer: The star soon found herself surrounded by her backup crew as she sang into her bold gold microphone
Black and white: (Left to right) Singers Anne-Marie and Zara Larsson wowed in a combination of black and white outfits
Heart: Zara's ensemble included a sparkling heart placed at the navel of her black dress, which included a white ruffled skirt
Dare to bare: Anne-Marie bared her shoulders and abs in a black bandeau top, which she teamed with high-waisted trousers
Avoiding a wardrobe malfunction? As she performed, blonde beauty Anne-Marie strategically kept a hand on her skimpy top
Singing a medley of hits: The stars took to the stage at the glamorous show to perform a medley of hits alongside Clean Bandit
Sensational: Zara Larsson looked sensational on stage in her black mini dress with white feather hem
Khloe Kardashian's ex-boyfriend French Montana next took to the stage to get revellers on their feet as he performed his track Unforgettable.
He was followed by fellow rapper Travis Scott, who is reported to be expecting a baby with his girlfriend Kylie Jenner.
And he ensured that his performance was one to remember, as he floated on the stage atop a giant mechanical bird while rapping through his track Butterfly Effect.
Opening the show: American rap superstar Eminem opened the show with a performance of his new track Walk on Water
Casual: The hip-hop star sported a casual look for the occasion, wearing a hoodie over a baseball cap with jogging bottoms
Atmospheric: Eminem stood in the middle of the stage with only a spotlight on him
Guest vocals: Zara Larsson stepped in provide extra vocals for the track, replacing Beyonce, who is featured on the single
Like a pro! The American star looked in his element as he took to the mic to perform for the audience
Centre stage: The lights were dimmed to create a shadow illusion
Following up: Eminem's expletive-laden performance was followed by Liam Payne's energetic rendition of Strip That Down
Energetic: The former One Direction star showed off his fancy footwork as he performed the chart-topping hit for the crowd
Presence: The singer gave his all during his energetic performance
It's a dance off: The star, who shares baby son Bear with girlfriend Cheryl, matched his moves with one of his backing dancers
Stepping out in style: The star put on a stylish display, taking to the stage in a multi-coloured jacket and fitted black jeans
Dancing it out: Liam worked the stage while he was joined by two dancers
The Killers jetted in from Las Vegas for the big show, performing their track The Man, ahead of Kesha, who caught the eye in a glittering metallic ensemble and flowing pink extensions as she belted out Learn To Let Go.
And the show was closed out in rousing style, with Charli XCX and French Montana joining David Guetta for a performance of Dirty Sexy Money.
As host Rita bid farewell to the audience after enjoying 'the best night ever', she introduced a recording of late singer George Michael performing his track Freedom at the first ever MTV EMAs in 1994.
Storming the stage: Stormzy made an unforgettable arrival onto the stage, when he ascended his way out of a police car
Balancing act: The chart-topping grime superstar then showed off his agility and balance as he danced atop the vehicle
Comfy: The 24-year-old, real name Michael Ebenazer Kwadjo Omari Owuo, Jr., went for a casual look in a maroon tracksuit
Hit track: The grime star danced bounced around energetically on the stage as he performed his hit track Big For Your Boots
Greeting fans: The star, introduced by Rita Ora as 'south London's finest', went to the front of the stage to greet excited fans
Giving it his all: Stormzy looked in the zone as he entertained audiences with his tunes
911: Stormzy kept a steady balance on the police car as he was escorted along the stage
Crowd pleasing: The rapper wowed the crowd
Casual: The grime artist slipped into a burgundy tracksuit for the occasion
Flying high: Rapper Travis Scott took to the stage to perform his track Butterfly Effect - opting to do so atop a metallic bird
Big news: The star has been the focus of countless headlines recently, thanks to reports Kylie Jenner is expecting his baby
Swooping in: Travis wore a harness and was attached to the outlandish stage as he flew over the crowd
Nominations for the 2017 MTV EMAs were announced last month, some five weeks ahead of the highly-anticipated awards ceremony.
Leading the way with a jaw-dropping five nominations was Taylor Swift, followed by Dua Lipa with three, and Ariana Grande, Miley Cyrus and Shawn Mendes, who each earned two nominations each.
A whole host of stars, including Drake, Eminem, Ed Sheeran and Kendrick Lemar also made the list, with Rihanna's Wild Thoughts, and Daddy Yankee & Luis Fonsi's record-breaking Despacito battling it out for Best Song.
The ceremony, presented by RIP hitmaker Rita Ora at London's SSE Arena, also saw Taylor competing with former girlband member turned solo artist Camila Cabello, Demi Lovato, Miley Cyrus and Shawn Mendes the for Best Pop Award.
Closing out the show: Charli XCX was a part of the night's closing live performance when she took to the stage at the big event
Shine: Following the cue of many singers before her, the singer also went for a glittering outfit, in the form of a two-piece suit
Dirty cash: Superstar DJ David Guetta kept the crowd entertained as Charli belted her way through the track Dirty Sexy Money
Announced: Nominations for the MTV EMAs were announced last month, some five weeks ahead of the awards ceremony
Together: Charli was joined onstage by rapper French Montana, who had performed his hit Unforgettable earlier in the night
High spirits: Chart-topping star David appeared to be in decidedly jovial spirits as he danced away while manning the decks
Loving life: David looked in high spirits as he took to the stage with a different ensemble later on in the evening
Entertaining: The French DJ was sure to entertain the crowd as he played his set
Not content with those nominations, 27-year-old Shake it Off hitmaker Taylor was also in the running for Best Video for Look What You Made Me Do, alongside Foo Fighters for Run, Katy Perry for Bon Appetit ft. Migos, Kendrick Lamar for HUMBLE and KYLE for iSpy featuring Lil Yachty.
Taylor Swift went head- to-head with Ariana Grande, Ed Sheeran, Kendrick Lamar, Miley Cyrus and Shawn Mendes for Best Artist.
And battling it out for Best Look, Taylor once again went up against Dua Lipa, Harry Styles, Rita Ora and surprise newcomer ZAYN.
Marking her fifth and final nominated category, Taylor battled it out again with Ariana Grande, as well as Justin Bieber, Katy Perry and once again Shawn Mendes for Biggest Fans.
Big winner: Shawn Mendes - who donned Emporio Armani during the show - took to the stage to perform his hit track There's Nothing Me Back
Rockers: (Left to right) U2's Bono and Adam Clayton opted to forgo the stage to perform in London's Trafalgar Square
Pre-recorded: The stars' performance was pre-recorded in the central London location the night before the big awards show
Patriotic: Looking smart in a black coat, U2 frontman Bono took to the stage wrapped in Ireland's distinctive tricolour flag
Altogether now: Bandmembers The Edge and Larry Mullen Jr. were also on hand for the pre-recorded stage performance
Landmark: Nelson's column was illuminated in red light as the band performed a medley of hits for the large crowd of fans
Suit you: Lead singer of the The Killers, Brandon Flowers performed on stage in an eye-catching suit
Singing his heart out: The rock star commanded the stage as he performed
They were both objects of Matthew 'Matty J' Johnson's affection.
And Woman's Day reports Georgia Love, who rejected Matty on The Bachelorette, and Laura Byrne, who won his heart on The Bachelor, are 'anything but friendly'.
The magazine claimed on Monday that the brunette lookalikes had a 'stand-off' when they came face to face at the Melbourne Cup last week.
Feuding over Matty J? Reality star lookalikes Georgia Love (left) and Laura Byrne (right) reportedly had a 'stand-off' when they came face to face at the Melbourne Cup last week
'It's obvious the pair were ignoring one another,' the magazine's alleged 'source' claimed of tension between the ladies inside the Mumm marquee at the races.
But Laura has hit back at the article, telling Daily Mail Australia they are not true.
'The reports are utter crap,' she rebutted.
Laura's striking resemblance to Georgia had her tipped as the early favourite to win the last season of The Bachelor, which featured Matty as the leading man.
Similarities: Laura's striking resemblance to Georgia had her tipped as the early favourite to win the last season of The Bachelor, which featured Matty as the leading man
Matty was famously dumped by Georgia when she chose Lee Elliott over him in the finale of The Bachelorette in 2016.
Georgia once expressed how 'weird' it was watching Matty be courted by hopeful women on The Bachelor after having him romance her as a Bachelorette contestant.
'It is a bit weird seeing Matty because the last time I saw him was on that roof top in Singapore,' she told Confidential in August, referring to their emotional farewell.
Crushed: Matty was earlier famously dumped by Georgia when she chose Lee Elliott over him in the finale of The Bachelorette in 2016
'So its strange to see him there dating and kissing and stuff, but he had to sit there and watch me do that as well,' she admitted.
Matty chose Laura over Elise Stacy in the final episode of The Bachelor's most recent season, and the lovebirds have been spotted out together frequently since.
Meanwhile, Laura recently rushed to Sophie Monk's defense over rumours the latest Bachelorette's relationship with winning suitor Stu Laundy has been over for weeks.
'I think they are a great couple. People should get behind them,' she told YahooBe.
Starry-eyed: Matty chose Laura over Elise Stacy in the final episode of The Bachelor's most recent season, and the lovebirds have been spotted out together frequently since
Donald Trump said Sunday he backs US intelligence agencies who concluded Russia meddled in the 2016 US presidential election, but repeated his trust in the sincerity of Russian President Vladimir Putin's personal denials.
"As to whether or not I believe it or not, I'm with our agencies. I believe in our... intelligence agencies," Trump told reporters in Hanoi.
US intelligence chiefs have told congress Russia meddled in the election, but Putin has repeatedly denied any Russian involvement.
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He's Bindi Irwin's younger brother and budding wildlife photographer.
And it looks like Robert is growing up fast as the 13-year-old is said to have fallen for fellow wildlife enthusiast Tess Poyner.
According to Woman's day magazine, the pair met at the Australian Geographic Nature Photographer of the Year awards held in Adelaide in August.
Meet Robert Irwin's new sweetheart! Budding wildlife photographer Tess Poyner has stolen the 13-year old's heart as sister Bindi is 'over the moon' about the reunion
The publication further claims that zoo insiders have revealed the pair are well on their way to becoming an item.
In September Robert invited the Narooma High School student to stay with him for a week at Australia Zoo.
On September 25th, Robert uploaded a picture of himself with Tess to his Instagram account and captioned the post:
Smitten! In September Robert invited the Narooma High School student to stay with him for a week at Australia Zoo
Heaps of fun wrangling lace monitors with one of the best lizard catchers on the planet at Australia Zoo. Helped this gorgeous goanna that was having trouble getting through a fence!'
A day later, Tess uploaded an image of them photographing together along with a gushing post:
'Photographing at the most magical place in Australia. Here at Australia Zoo, I was super lucky to meet just about every animal up close and personally.
Together: On September 25th, Robert uploaded a picture of himself with Tess to his Instagram account
'From koala cuddles, giraffe kisses to jumping and rolling through bushes to catch water dragons.
'I had so much fun with the best photographer, herper and buggie driver on the planet! Thank-you so much for such an amazing week.'
Fans were equally enthused about the pairing saying the duo are 'very sweet' and are a 'cute couple'.
Meanwhile according to Woman's day Bindi is 'over the moon Bob's taken the first step to finding his soulmate.
'She couldn't be happier for her little brother,' they added.
The latest aide to fall from grace is Distorn Vajarodaya, a senior official in the Royal Household Bureau who served as Grand Chamberlain under the late Thai King Bhumibol Adulyadej
A senior Thai royal official has been sacked for "evil acts" including having an extramarital affair and forcing his alleged mistress to get an abortion, the palace said, the latest top aide to be axed under King Maha Vajiralongkorn.
Vajiralongkorn, 65, took the throne one year ago following the death of his widely revered father King Bhumibol Adulyadej, who reigned for seven decades.
He has yet to attain his father's widespread popularity but remains insulated from any criticism by one of the world's harshest royal defamation laws.
Since ascending the throne the new monarch has axed a number of powerful palace officials from his father's era.
The latest aide to fall from grace is Distorn Vajarodaya, a senior official in the Royal Household Bureau who served as Grand Chamberlain under the late King Bhumibol and was often seen by the ailing monarch's side during the final years of his reign.
A statement published by the Royal Gazette late Friday stripped Distorn of his royal decorations and listed his alleged wrongdoings -- including having an extramarital affair, "forcing" his mistress to get an abortion, and then coercing her into marrying another man.
"When the woman got pregnant for the second time, he forced her to have another abortion but the woman refused. So he forced her to get married with another man she hadn't had a relationship with," the statement said.
Distorn was also accused of "using the King's name to avoid taxation in importing a foreign vehicle" to replace a damaged royal car.
The aide also allegedly ordered staff to forge documents about a donation to a royal foundation he chaired.
Thailand's lese majeste law, which criminalises insulting the monarchy with up to 15 years in prison per offence, makes it impossible to publicly counter such charges.
Many of those purged from the new monarch's inner circle have been charged with lese majeste and jailed.
In one of the most dramatic episodes, Vajiralongkorn divorced his third wife in late 2014 after half a dozen of her relatives were charged with lese majeste -- and later jailed -- for allegedly abusing their royal ties to him.
All media inside Thailand must heavily self-censor when reporting on the royal family to avoid falling foul of the defamation law.
Actress Amy Adams attends the American Cinematheque's 2017 Award Show, in Beverly Hills, California, on November 10
Scandal-hit Hollywood left its woes behind Friday to honor Amy Adams for a glittering career that has seen her go from waitress to five-time Oscar nominee.
The 43-year-old -- famous for the diversity of her film roles -- told AFP ahead of being presented with the 31st American Cinematheque Award that her proudest moment was her first nod for 2005 comedy "Junebug."
"It really depends where I am in my life, but right now I'm looking for films with a specific message," she said on the red carpet in Beverly Hills as she weighed her 18-year career.
"It can be very subtle, but I want it to mean something to me and move me forward in my life."
A host of A-listers paid tribute to Adams in a rare celebration at the end of a week which has seen the industry tarnished by unprecedented allegations of sexual misconduct.
"I'm always happy when I show up at work and she's there," Michael Shannon, who starred alongside Adams in 2016 neo-noir thriller "Nocturnal Animals," as well as two "Superman" movies, told AFP.
"I've never seen her be anything but hard-working and easy to be around."
Adams's four other Oscar nominations were for best actress in "American Hustle" and supporting-actress roles for "Doubt," "The Fighter" and "The Master" -- but she has never won the coveted statuette.
"I think Amy and I have the same attitude about it. We just feel fortunate that we're a part of this business to begin with," two-time Oscar nominee Shannon told AFP.
Adams's award was a welcome moment of levity in a difficult week of soul-searching in Hollywood, which has seen the Harvey Weinstein sexual misconduct scandal expand to envelope Oscar-winner Kevin Spacey and comic actor Louis C.K.
- 'Striking' -
Amy Adams was presented with the American Cinematheque Award for 'making a significant contribution to the art of the motion picture'
"It's sad that people have been hurt and I'm glad that something is being done about it," said Shannon, 43.
Adams's movie credits have included awards season favorites such as "Arrival" and box-office smashes such as "Enchanted" and "Man of Steel."
She won Golden Globes for her work in "American Hustle" and "Big Eyes."
Adams was presented with the American Cinematheque Award for "making a significant contribution to the art of the motion picture" by "Doubt" co-star Meryl Streep.
Among those expected to attend the star-studded event at the plush Beverly Hilton were Tom Hanks, Jake Gyllenhaal, Chris Messina, Kristen Stewart and Natalie Portman.
Adams was raised in a Mormon family in Colorado -- one of seven children, all of whom, she says, liked to act.
She did not tread the boards in high school, but took a job at a theater where she worked as a waitress.
It was not until she moved to Minnesota that a producer saw her in the chorus line of "Anything Goes."
Her first film role was as Leslie in "Drop Dead Gorgeous" (1999), which tells the story of girls in a Minnesota town competing in a beauty pageant.
Her co-star in the film, Kirstie Alley, recognized her star power and urged her to move to Los Angeles.
Villeneuve, who directed Adams in "Arrival," told AFP he was captivated by her performance in "The Master," Paul Thomas Anderson's acclaimed 2012 psychological drama.
"I thought what she did in this movie is unique in her filmography. It was quite striking," he said.
Sierra Leone is working to overcome a history of cross-border diamond trafficking that fuelled Sierra Leone's civil war from 1991-2002
Sierra Leone said Saturday miners had unearthed a huge 476-carat diamond, eight months after an even more valuable find in the country's diamond-rich east.
It appears to be the 29th largest diamond ever found, according to experts, but it is unclear what the hefty stone might be worth.
The latest discovery came, as did its predecessor, in the province of Kono, said Sahr Wonday, director general of Sierra Leone's National Minerals Agency.
For Wonday, the latest find "provides a remarkable indication of the potential of the mineral resources" in the area.
He said the company that uncovered the stone, Meya Mining, has won government approval to export it and the diamond is to be sold at international auction.
Last month, Sierra Leone announced it plans to auction off a massive 709-carat diamond at a December sale in New York, aiming to make a clean break with the "blood diamonds" of its past.
The stone, which was unearthed in March, is the largest discovered in Sierra Leone in almost a half-century and is between the 10th and 15th largest ever found worldwide, experts say.
Sierra Leone authorities told reporters that the massive gem will go up for sale on December 4 at Rapaport Auctions, which specialises in the diamond trade.
The government has pledged to be transparent regarding the stone's sale, mindful of the history of cross-border diamond trafficking that fuelled Sierra Leone's civil war from 1991-2002.
Such "blood diamonds" were often found by enslaved members of the population, who were killed or maimed by rebel groups if they refused to dig.
Trump's relationship with Moscow has stalked the first year of his presidency, with key former aides under a US investigation for alleged collaboration with the Kremlin
President Donald Trump said Saturday he believes Vladimir Putin is being sincere when he denies meddling in the US election that propelled Trump to power, adding that the Russian leader felt "very insulted" by the allegations.
But in Washington, the director of the CIA said he stood by the US intelligence community's assessment that Russia did try to meddle in the election.
Trump, whose key former aides are under US investigation for possible collaboration with the Kremlin, said he repeatedly asked Putin about the claims during their chats at the APEC summit in the Vietnamese resort of Danang.
"He (Putin) said he didn't meddle. I asked him again," Trump told reporters on Air Force One as he flew to Hanoi for a state visit.
"You can only ask so many times... He said he absolutely did not meddle in our election," Trump said, adding he felt Putin seemed "very insulted" by the persistent accusations, which was "not a good thing for our country."
"I really believe that when he tells me that, he means it," added Trump, who is marking one year since his shock election victory.
In May, US intelligence chiefs told Congress that they agreed with their analysts' conclusion that Russia had meddled in the election.
And in January, 17 US intelligence agencies took the extraordinary step of stating publicly that they believed Russia did try to interfere in the election.
In a statement to CNN Saturday after Trump spoke, CIA director Mike Pompeo, who was appointed by Trump, said he still believes in that evaluation.
"The Director stands by and has always stood by the January 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment entitled: Assessing Russian Activities and Intentions in Recent US Elections. The intelligence assessment with regard to Russian election meddling has not changed," the statement read.
- 'Fantasies' -
The US president's latest comments suggest he accepts Russia's staunch denials that the Kremlin played no part in helping him get to the White House -- allegations that continue to dog Trump's administration.
Some US lawmakers criticised Trump harshly for his statement.
Representative Adam Schiff, the senior Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, said Trump "fools no one."
Schiff said Trump understands the Russians hacked into Democratic leaders' emails and dumped them, and used social media in a bid to hurt Hillary Clinton and help him win the election and divide the country.
"He understands all this and more," Schiff said in a statement. "He just doesn't understand how to put country over self. Or to put it in terms he is more familiar with - Mr. Trump simply can't bring himself to put America first."
John McCain, a longtime Trump critic, added: "There is nothing 'America First' about taking the word of a KGB colonel over that of the American intelligence community."
Putin also addressed the allegations on Saturday after his meeting with Trump, describing them as a US "domestic political struggle."
"I think these are some sort of fantasies," he told reporters in Danang.
"He (Putin) said he didn't meddle. I asked him again," US President Donald Trump told reporters on Air Force One as he flew to Hanoi for a state visit
Trump's former campaign chairman Paul Manafort and an associate are under house arrest on charges unrelated to the election brought by special counsel Robert Mueller, who is investigating the allegations that the Trump campaign colluded with Russia.
Revelations by Facebook and Twitter that Russian-sponsored fake news flooded US social media during the election run-up have further deepened scrutiny on ties between the nations.
Trump and Putin met three times on the margins of the APEC summit, sharing warm handshakes and brief words.
The pair appeared to have struck a chummy tone, with Trump describing a "very good feeling" after the talks, and Putin remarking on the "well-mannered" former reality TV star.
Asked by reporters on Air Force One if he believed Putin, Trump said he was keen to move on to other issues.
"Look, I can't stand there and argue with him," Trump said. "I'd rather have him get out of Syria, I would rather get to work with him on the Ukraine."
The exchanges produced a rare common ground on the war in Syria, a bloody six-year conflict which has seen the US and Russia back competing factions.
In a joint statement, the leaders said there was "no military solution" to the war, an agreement that may mark a small step toward peace.
- America First -
Trump also gave a loud airing to his "America First" rhetoric at the APEC summit.
In a speech on Friday, Trump said American jobs had been siphoned overseas by countries with cheap labour but little compunction to play by trade rules.
"We are not going to let the United States be taken advantage of any more," he said, adding his country would now use its economic might to cut favourable bilateral deals.
China's President Xi Jinping laid out a different narrative to the same hall, positioning the world's second largest economy at the heart of the future of global free trade as the US retreats.
As a first mark of a new trade era without the US as its pivot point, 11 Asia-Pacific countries on Saturday agreed to press ahead with the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) -- a major agreement abruptly abandoned by Trump at the start of the year.
Donald Trump said he backed the US spy agencies who blamed Russia for meddling in the American election, but slammed 'haters and fools' who question efforts to improve ties with Russia
Donald Trump said Sunday he backed the US intelligence agencies which concluded that Russia meddled in the 2016 US presidential election, but slammed "fools" who oppose better ties with Moscow.
Key former Trump aides are under US investigation for possible collaboration with the Kremlin, and the issue of whether Moscow interfered with last year's vote has overshadowed the tail end of the president's 12-day Asia tour.
Trump returned to the subject in a Twitter storm in Vietnam, which also saw him take a sarcastic dig at North Korea's "short and fat" leader Kim Jong-Un.
At a press conference in Hanoi, Trump was asked to clarify comments he had made the day before about Russian President Vladimir Putin's insistence that Moscow had never tried to affect the US vote.
"I believe he feels he and Russia did not meddle in the election," Trump said.
The issue of alleged Russian meddling in the US election and claims of possible collusion by his campaign has continued to dog Trump's presidency
"As to whether or not I believe it or not, I'm with our agencies. I believe in our... intelligence agencies," he added.
But in his barrage of tweets, Trump slammed "haters and fools" who questioned his efforts to improve ties with Russia.
"There (sic) always playing politics - bad for our country. I want to solve North Korea, Syria, Ukraine, terrorism, and Russia can greatly help!" he said.
In May, US intelligence chiefs told Congress they agreed with their analysts' conclusion that Russia had interfered in the election, and on Saturday, CIA director Mike Pompeo, a Trump appointee, said he still held to that evaluation.
But after sticking to script through most of his high-profile Asia trip, Trump lashed out at three former US officials whose agencies helped produce the original intelligence finding of Russian interference. He called former CIA chief John Brennan, former director of national intelligence James Clapper and former FBI chief James Comey "political hacks."
Appearing later on CNN, Brennan denounced Trump's attack as "reprehensible," and Clapper said that for Trump to so minimize a Russian attempt to undermine the US system was "astounding and, in fact, poses a peril to this country."
- 'Short and fat' -
Trump's tour of Asia, which began its final leg in Manila on Sunday, has been dominated by the issue of North Korea and its ambitions to become a full-fledged nuclear state.
US President Donald Trump disembarks Air Force One upon arriving in the Philippine capital Manila to attend regional summits
His public pronouncements on Pyongyang over the last week have veered from denouncing it as a "cruel dictatorship" to offering a hand of friendship to Kim.
On Sunday, his tone shifted back to one of hostility.
Citing descriptions by North Korean officials and state media of him as an "old" man, Trump suggested he was disappointed by what he took as a personal attack from the North's young leader.
"Why would Kim Jong-un insult me by calling me 'old,' when I would NEVER call him 'short and fat?'" Trump wrote.
"Oh well, I try so hard to be his friend -- and maybe someday that will happen!" he added.
He later insisted he hadn't been joking about eventually befriending a man he denounced last week as a "twisted" dictator.
"It's certainly a possibility. If that did happen, it would be a good thing," he told reporters.
Student activists hold anti-Donald Trump banners at a rally ahead of the 31st ASEAN Summit in the Philippine capital Manila
North Korea is extremely sensitive to any remarks that might appear disrespectful to the country's ruling Kim dynasty, whose members are revered as near deities.
Since becoming president, Trump has engaged in an escalating war of words with Kim, trading personal insults and threats of military strikes, and raising concerns about an outbreak of hostilities.
Pyongyang hit back Saturday, calling his Asia trip "a warmonger's visit for confrontation" and saying it would only serve to accelerate Pyongyangs nuclear program.
- South China Sea support -
In another tweet Sunday, Trump said Chinese leader Xi Jinping had agreed to toughen sanctions against North Korea, whose impoverished economy is hugely reliant on trade with its giant neighbour.
"President Xi of China has stated that he is upping the sanctions against (North Korea). Said he wants them to denuclearize. Progress is being made," he wrote.
US President Donald Trump (L) has offered to mediate in the South China Sea dispute, telling Vietnam's President Tran Dai Quang (R) he was a "very good mediator"
The US administration thinks China's economic leverage over North Korea is the key to strong-arming Pyongyang into halting its nuclear weapons and missile programmes.
Trump is in the Philippines for a gathering that includes leaders of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), which marked its 50th anniversary Sunday with a lavish dinner.
Several members of the group, including Hanoi and Manila, claim part of the resource-rich South China Sea, a key trade route over which Beijing says it has dominion and in which it has built militarised artificial islands.
Vietnam has sought support from Washington in the dispute, and dealmaker Trump said Sunday he could help solve the conflict.
"If I can help mediate or arbitrate, please let me know... I am a very good mediator," Trump told Vietnamese President Tran Dai Quang.
In the past, China has reacted angrily to any suggestion of US mediation, saying Washington has no role in the dispute.
burs-bbk/acb
Police in the US state of Delaware are poised to deploy 'smart' cameras in cruisers to help authorities detect a vehicle carrying a fugitive, missing child or straying senior.
The video feeds will be analyzed using artificial intelligence to identify vehicles by license plate or other features and 'give an extra set of eyes' to officers on patrol, says David Hinojosa of Coban Technologies, the company providing the equipment.
'We are helping officers keep their focus on their jobs,' said Hinojosa, who touts the new technology as a 'dashcam on steroids.'
A display shows a vehicle and person recognition system for law enforcement during the NVIDIA GPU Technology Conference, which showcases artificial intelligence, deep learning, virtual reality and autonomous machines
The program is part of a growing trend to use vision-based AI to thwart crime and improve public safety, a trend which has stirred concerns among privacy and civil liberties activists who fear the technology could lead to secret 'profiling' and misuse of data.
US-based startup Deep Science is using the same technology to help retail stores detect in real time if an armed robbery is in progress, by identifying guns or masked assailants.
Deep Science has pilot projects with US retailers, enabling automatic alerts in the case of robberies, fire or other threats.
The technology can monitor for threats more efficiently and at a lower cost than human security guards, according to Deep Science co-founder Sean Huver, a former engineer for DARPA, the Pentagon's long-term research arm.
'A common problem is that security guards get bored,' he said.
HOW THE AI DASHCAM WORKS The system can consolidate digital evidence from multiple sources, including up to six HD quality cameras, body cameras, and other sources. Current police dash cam systems typically only record video or ship the video back to the cloud for analysis. Using the new system, video feeds will be analyzed using artificial intelligence to identify vehicles by license plate or other features and 'give an extra set of eyes' to officers on patrol, says David Hinojosa of Coban Technologies, the company providing the equipment. Serving as a digital evidence hub, it can consolidates digital evidence from multiple sources, including up to six HD quality cameras, body cameras, and other sources. Coban plans to support a variety of third party applications on the FOCUS H1 that will allow agencies to identify a wide range of objects, such as vehicle make and model, faces, weapons, dangerous movements or behaviors, and other artificial intelligence-based applications. Over time, the system can be trained to find new objects as police agencies identify new crime-fighting needs. Advertisement
Until recently, most predictive analytics relied on inputting numbers and other data to interpret trends.
But advances in visual recognition are now being used to detect firearms, specific vehicles or individuals to help law enforcement and private security.
Saurabh Jain is product manager for the computer graphics group Nvidia, which makes computer chips for such systems and which held a recent conference in Washington with its technology partners.
He says the same computer vision technologies are used for self-driving vehicles, drones and other autonomous systems, to recognize and interpret the surrounding environment.
Nvidia has some 50 partners who use its supercomputing module called Jetson or its Metropolis software for security and related applications, according to Jain.
One of those partners, California-based Umbo Computer Vision, has developed an AI-enhanced security monitoring system which can be used at schools, hotels or other locations, analyzing video to detect intrusions and threats in real-time, and sending alerts to a security guard's computer or phone.
video feeds will be analyzed using artificial intelligence to identify vehicles by license plate. It can also look for faces, weapons, dangerous movements or behaviors, and other artificial intelligence-based applications
Israeli startup Briefcam meanwhile uses similar technology to interpret video surveillance footage.
'Video is unstructured, it's not searchable,' explained Amit Gavish, Briefcam's US general manager. Without artificial intelligence, he says, ''you had to go through hundreds of hours of video with fast forward and rewind.'
'We detect, track, extract and classify each object in the video. So it becomes a database.'
This can enable investigators to quickly find targets from video surveillance, a system already used by law enforcement in hundreds of cities around the world, including Paris, Boston and Chicago, Gavish said.
'It's not only saving time. In many cases they wouldn't be able to do it because people who watch video become ineffective after 10 to 20 minutes,' he said.
Facial recognition can be useful for law enforcement and public safety but raises questions about secret profiling
Russia-based startup Vision Labs employs the Nvidia technology for facial recognition systems that can be used to identify potential shoplifters or problem customers in casinos or other locations.
Vadim Kilimnichenko, project manager at Vision Labs, said the company works with law enforcement in Russia as well as commercial clients.
'We can deploy this anywhere through the cloud,' he said.
Customers of Vision labs include banks seeking to prevent fraud, which can use face recognition to determine if someone is using a false identity, Kilimnichenko said.
For Marc Rotenberg, president of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, the rapid growth in these technologies raises privacy risks and calls for regulatory scrutiny over how data is stored and applied.
Elliot Hirsch of Deep Science holds a fake gun as he demonstrates the company's security system to automatically detect firearms and thieves
'Some of these techniques can be helpful but there are huge privacy issues when systems are designed to capture identity and make a determination based on personal data,' Rotenberg said.
'That's where issues of secret profiling, bias and accuracy enter the picture.'
Rotenberg said the use of AI systems in criminal justice calls for scrutiny to ensure legal safeguards, transparency and procedural rights.
In a blog post earlier this year, Shelly Kramer of Futurum Research argued that AI holds great promise for law enforcement, be it for surveillance, scanning social media for threats, or using 'bots' as lie detectors.
'With that encouraging promise, though, comes a host of risks and responsibilities.'
SoftBank Group CEO Masayoshi Son seen after a December 2016 meeting with Donald Trump, wants to invest $100 billion in technology startups
Japan-based SoftBank is sending tremors through the tech world with a massive new venture capital fund for investing in startups that's expected to dominate the industry so thoroughly it's playfully referred to as a "gorilla."
The Vision Fund's $100 billion coffers nearly equals the total amount pumped into venture capital-backed companies last year, according to market intelligence firm CB Insights, and some say it may be a game-changer for Silicon Valley.
"SoftBank shows a remarkable amount of bravery, confidence and optimism to look to apply this much money in technology," said Bill Maris, who started Google Ventures nearly a decade ago and runs his own California-based investment firm Section 32.
"I can't say it's a wrong bet, if you think the trends in tech will continue in the future. I would be much more worried if SoftBank was saying tech is dead."
Last year, VC-backed firms received $100.8 billion across 8,372 deals around the world, according to CB Insights data.
The huge amount of cash could accelerate the trend where fast-growing startups remain private -- without the scrutiny and transparency of a stock market debut.
Some investors worry that the Vision Fund will buy into startups at high prices, overinflating the market, while crowding out other investors and prolonging the time it takes for young companies to go public.
SoftBank has outlined plans to focus on late-stage investments when startups are more established, and on investments of at least $100 million.
- Matchmaking -
One of the big investments likely for the SoftBank Vision Fund is US ride-sharing giant Uber
The SoftBank fund is widely expected to pump some $10 billion into ride-sharing giant Uber, which has a whopping valuation near $70 billion. Such a deal would boost the profile of the Japanese group in Silicon Valley.
Maris predicted the venture capital market would adapt to the Vision Fund, and in the end there would be more money available for entrepreneurs.
"I always think more dollars available to innovators and inventors is a good thing," Maris said.
"If it does shake up the market, maybe things do need to be shaken up a little bit."
SoftBank chief executive Masayoshi Son has demonstrated a strategic appreciation for bringing together startups with the potential to benefit one another, according to analyst Patrick Moorhead of Moor Insights & Strategy.
Moorhead added that he was expecting either spectacular wins or failures from the Vision Fund, nothing in between.
"It is looking for mega-investments," he said.
- Consolidation goals -
SoftBank's early, lucrative, investment in Alibaba was part of a strategy focused on booming e-commerce in China, according to GGV Capital managing partner Hans Tung.
SoftBank's recent investments in ride-sharing firms in various countries fits a pattern of seeking money-making synergies by bringing competitors together to share technology, learnings and more.
"Masayoshi Son understands the value of consolidation," said Tung.
"It is affecting the way society moves from less efficient to more efficient, and the amount of innovation that could happen."
"If consolidation is somewhat expedited with SoftBank money, that is not necessarily a bad thing," Tung said.
He added the caveat that the kind of power that comes with such a large fund could be abused.
"If that money is used correctly, he should do well and do better for society," Tung said of Son.
"We don't need five ride-share companies battling each other."
For example, making industries, financial institutions, and health care more efficient with big investments might be welcomed.
Analyst Moorhead likened Son's style of investing to "matchmaking," targeting diverse companies that could help one another in the future.
Targets for the Vision Fund were expected to include e-commerce, ride-sharing, robotics and machine learning.
SoftBank has shown preference for technology trends with the potential to spread across borders and have significant impact on society, according to those who have tracked the company.
And with all the data collected by ride-sharing, e-commerce and other platforms, investing in artificial intelligence to mine insights from mountains of information makes sense.
"I don't see it impacting the entrepreneurs in the garage; those are typically smaller seed rounds," Moorhead said of the Vision Fund.
Since SoftBank has indicated it will make late-stage investments, its moves could become signals startups are planning to go public.
That strategy also leaves early funding of entrepreneurs to others, but could squeeze the profits of those investors when SoftBank negotiates from a position of strength to buy them out down the road.
"I admire the fact he is doing something visionary, I imagine that is why they call it the Vision Fund," Maris said.
"It is about investing in other people's dreams instead of squirreling the money away for yourself. Someone is making a really optimistic bet on the future."
To rebuild trust, John Flannery, who has been CEO of General Electric for only three months, will roll out plans to revive the company on Monday
Iconic American industrial behemoth General Electric, which has lost investor confidence amid bad investment decisions, is preparing to slice up its empire again, selling major business segments and laying off thousands.
Hammered by financial markets, with its market capitalization down more than $100 billion since January, the maker of jet engines and power turbines is paying dearly after making losing bets that the energy sector, in particular oil and gas, would grow indefinitely.
Shareholders appear resigned to a cut in dividends, the first since 2009, as GE had only $7 billion in cash flow at the end of September but was due to pay out $8 billion.
"There is no sacred cow," newly installed CEO John Flannery has said repeatedly about the need to cut costs and restructure.
To rebuild trust, Flannery, who has been CEO for only three months, will roll out plans to revive the company on Monday.
Deutsche Bank analyst John Inch said there was no way to sugarcoat the situation.
"They have a crisis of investor confidence," he told AFP. "GE is in a cash crunch."
Scott Davis of Melius Research put it even more starkly, calling the company "disgraced" and saying it "needs to clean house as fast as possible."
Flannery took the helm after 16 years of leadership by Jeff Immelt, who sold off GE's stake in TV and movie giant NBCUniversal as well as its household appliance segment and much of its banking and finance business.
The newly installed GE chief will unveil another austerity plan that will include significant layoffs, according to a source who spoke to AFP on condition of anonymity. The power generation business GE Power will be particularly hard hit.
The belt tightening follows a $1 billion cost-cutting program this year and an announcement of $2 billion in cuts next year. Staff levels have fallen 11 percent, to 295,000, as of the end of last year.
- Sell anything 'not nailed down' -
GE will also close its research and development centers in Shanghai, Rio de Janeiro and Munich, leaving the company with R&D facilities only in New York and Bangalore, India.
The company declined to answer queries from AFP on the plan, but in mid-October Flannery told CNBC: "It's a pretty straightforward thing that we have to tighten the belt."
The company will cut more than $2 billion in additional costs, Flannery has said, and may announce the sale of its transportation and medical IT segments, according to a source familiar with the matter.
The transportation unit produces locomotives and last year had revenues of $4.7 billion. The medical data management group led by API Healthcare and its subsidiary Centricity EMR are part of a GE branch that took in $18.3 billion in 2016.
Selling these businesses could bring GE a big step closer toward its goal of shedding $20 billion in assets over the next two years.
Another route the company could take involves spinning off its aircraft leasing operation GE Capital Aviation Services, which maintains a fleet of nearly 2,000 aircraft.
"GE will likely sell anything that isn't nailed down," Davis said.
Beyond its financial picture, GE will have to repair damage to its corporate image following revelations that former CEO Immelt secretly traveled on a corporate jet at company expense.
Experts said the practice, which was halted in 2014 after an employee spoke out, was symbolic of the mismanagement, waste and lack of internal controls which led to the current crisis.
Under pressure from activist investor Nelson Peltz, Flannery has promised to change the company's culture and may announce new steps in that direction.
He already has put the company jets up for sale, canceled the corporate car service, and called off the annual three-day retreat for executives that was due to occur at a luxury resort in Boca Raton, Florida.
Australia's spy chief, Nick Warner, was criticised when he returned home from Manila in August to find the Philippine government had released photos of him clenching his fist with President Rodrigo Duterte
When US President Donald Trump and other world leaders meet in the Philippines from Sunday, copying their controversial host's signature fist salute could land them in hot water.
Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte has adopted a clenched fist, often stuck out in front of his chest or sometimes at eye level, as his trademark gesture.
Duterte often seeks to have visitors pose for photos with him doing the salute, with Chinese internet tycoon Jack Ma and Hollywood actor Steven Seagal among those pictured doing so.
But critics warn the gesture has come to represent the brutalities of Duterte's drug war, which has claimed thousands of lives.
They also say it has uncomfortable similarities with Nazi leader Adolf Hitler's salute.
"Foreign leaders should recognise that the fist... symbolises a purposeful attack by Duterte on rule of law that has inflicted a human rights calamity on thousands of Filipinos," Phelim Kine, Human Rights Watch deputy Asia director, told AFP.
"(They) should deny the architect of this human rights calamity the international recognition he undeservedly craves."
Australia's spy chief, Nick Warner, was criticised when he returned home from Manila in August to find the Philippine government had released photos of him clenching his fist with Duterte.
Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte often seeks to have visitors pose for photos with him doing his signature fist salute, with Chinese internet tycoon Jack Ma among those pictured doing so
"Completely inappropriate photo for the head of one our most important intelligent (sic) services to be in," federal opposition member of parliament Anthony Byrne said in a Twitter post.
With the photos becoming a major news item in Australia, Foreign Minister Julie Bishop was forced to publicly defend Warner. Bishop had previously criticised the drug war.
Trump and Duterte are expected to hold a one-on-one meeting in Manila on Monday on the sidelines of a 20-nation summit of Asia-Pacific leaders.
Eyes will be on whether Trump does the fist pump, having told Duterte in April he was doing a "great job" in his drug war.
Arriving back in Manila early Sunday, Duterte seemed confident he had Trump's backing for his deadly war on drugs.
"He said something about: 'You know, you handle it very well'," he told reporters.
Duterte might also expect support from Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who struck the pose when the pair met in Tokyo last year.
A photo posted by Duterte's aide on Facebook showed the two men smiling along with their officials, who also raised their fists against the backdrop of Japanese and Philippine flags.
Abe, whom Duterte has called a "true friend", has not criticised the drug war.
Egypt's Court of Cassation has rejected an appeal by the East Mediterranean Gas Company against a 2016 ruling obliging the company to pay off $174 million in debt to Egypt's National Bank.
The company was founded and previously headed by Mubarak-era business tycoon Hussein Salem.
The court did, however, accept an appeal by Egypt Insurance Company, which was also involved in the case.
The verdict is final and cannot be appealed.
The East Mediterranean Gas company was one of the parties involved in the gas export deal with Israel in 2005.
The Egypt Insurance Company was the gas companys guarantor with the National Bank, covering risks including terrorism and political violence.
The activities of the gas company were suspended prior to the economic court ruling in 2016.
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Farmer Wang Enlin (2nd L) sits in his house with fellow environmental activists who have taken on a subsidiary of China's largest chemical firm, accusing it of polluting and destroying farmland
Wang Enlin, an elderly farmer who left school when he was 10 years old and taught himself law armed with a single textbook and dictionary, makes for an unlikely eco-warrior.
Yet the 64-year-old is determined to reap justice as he readies for a fresh battle in his war with a subsidiary of China's largest chemical firm, which he accuses of polluting and destroying his farmland.
"In China, behind every case of pollution is a case of corruption," he said of his mission to bring Qihua Chemical Group (also known as Heilongjiang Haohua Chemical) to account.
Wang and others villagers from northeast Heilongjiang province have sued Qihua accusing it of contaminating their soil, rendering it untenable for crops, in a case that has stretched on for more than 16 years.
This February, Wang and his self-styled "Senior Citizen Environmental Protection Team" earned a rare victory when a local court ordered Qihua to clear up their chemical waste site -- adjacent to the farmers' land -- and pay a total of 820,000 yuan ($120,000) to compensate for lost harvests in 55 affected rural households.
But that ruling was overturned on appeal, and Wang is now gearing up to fight back on another day in court.
"We will absolutely win. The law is on our side," Wang told AFP.
His case is testing the possibilities of a national environmental protection law revised in 2015.
The legislation was widely touted as a way to open the courts to public interest environmental damage lawsuits, but has been criticised for poor implementation.
- Change your fate -
Qihua is a subsidiary of the state-owned ChemChina, the country's largest chemical enterprise. It specialises in crude oil processing and petroleum products.
Wang Baoqin and a fellow member of the 'Senior Citizen Environmental Protection Team' walk on farmland that they say was polluted by the Qihua chemical plant in Yushutun
Wang's battle began in 2001, when a village committee leased 28.5 hectares (70 acres) to Qihua for use as a chemical waste dumping ground without the villagers' consent.
The villagers claim that the company failed to take proper pollution control measures.
Wang says he felt compelled to teach himself law after realising he lacked the knowledge or resources to take on the might of an industrial giant.
China had just emerged from its Great Famine when Wang left school: "It didn't matter at the time whether you got an education," he said. "It wouldn't change your fate."
He was well into middle age when he found a textbook on environmental law at a local bookstore. It took him years to understand as he painstakingly looked up unfamiliar terms in a dog-eared dictionary.
After petitioning the local authorities to no avail, he received aid in 2007 from the Centre for Legal Assistance to Pollution Victims, which helped the villagers put together a lawsuit using evidence he had compiled.
A 2013 sampling of mercury levels conducted on the site by the Green Beagle Institute, a Beijing-based non-profit, found the land was "not suitable for agricultural use".
The Ministry of Environmental Protection included Qihua in a 2014 list of "major" environmental cases.
But it was still another year before Wang's case was accepted into China's justice system.
Prominent environmentalist Ma Jun told AFP that while the litigation process has been streamlined since 2015, pollution lawsuits can still take years to be heard partly because "local governments give some degree of protection to polluting companies".
Today Wang prepares his own legal paperwork and hosts daily gatherings at his home for villagers hoping to learn about their rights.
Wang, who suffers from lung problems and requires medicine to help him breathe, accuses Qihua of "pretending to be deaf and mute" on the issue.
He says he is frequently visited by police officers who urge him to drop the case and stop talking to the media.
Qihua's lawyers declined to comment on the case.
- 'Corrupt officials' -
In September, the Qiqihar Intermediate People's Court accepted Wang's request to appeal the ruling that overturned his initial victory.
"We're just farmers, without any resources or power," said Wang Baoqin (no relation), a member of Wang Enlin's senior citizens' environmental group.
"Against the government, we can't win. Against those corrupt officials, we definitely can't win. So we decided to take the side road and fight the company."
According to Rachel Stern, the author of "Environmental Litigation in China: A Study in Political Ambivalence," the number of new legal cases related to natural resources has increased tenfold over the past decade.
The Supreme People's Court heard 133,000 such cases last year.
Some complainants have found success: in 2015, a petrol giant was ordered to pay 1.68 million yuan ($265,000) to 21 fishermen whose livelihoods suffered from oil spills.
Qihua's plant did not appear to be in operation when AFP reporters visited in late August. The land was dry and marked by patches of overgrown grass, no longer the site of a massive wastewater pond.
But no crops will grow in the spot again, Wang Baoqin predicted.
"We may not even see justice in our lifetimes," she said. "We're doing this for the generations to come."
The 'One Belt, One Road' initiative, unveiled by Xi in 2013, envisages linking China with Africa, Asia and Europe through a network of ports, railways, roads and industrial parks
From a stalled Indonesian rail project to an insurgency-threatened economic corridor in Pakistan, China's push to revive Silk Road trade routes is running into problems that risk tarnishing the economic crown jewel of Xi Jinping's presidency.
The "One Belt, One Road" initiative, unveiled by Xi in 2013, envisages linking China with Africa, Asia and Europe through a network of ports, railways, roads and industrial parks.
Xi, the most powerful Chinese leader in decades, has pushed the infrastructure drive which is central to his goal of extending Beijing's economic and geopolitical clout.
The initiative was enshrined in the Communist Party's constitution at a key congress last month, and some estimates say more than $1 trillion has been pledged to it, with projects proposed in some 65 countries.
China's President Xi Jinping has pushed the infrastructure drive which is central to his goal of extending Beijing's economic and geopolitical clout
But on the ground it has run into problems. Projects traverse insurgency-hit areas, dictatorships and chaotic democracies, and face resistance from both corrupt politicians and local villagers.
"Building infrastructure across countries like this is very complicated," said Murray Hiebert, from Washington think tank the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), who has studied some of the projects in Southeast Asia.
"You've got land issues, you have to hammer out funding agreements, you have to hammer out technological issues."
Chinese foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying however insisted the initiative was "moving forward smoothly".
- Troubled train line -
Beijing won the contract to build Indonesia's first high-speed railway in September 2015, but more than two years later work has barely started on the route from Jakarta to the city of Bandung.
A recent visit to Walini, where President Joko Widodo broke ground on the train line in January last year, found excavators flattening land but no track laid for the train, which is meant to start operating in 2019.
"The first year after the ground-breaking ceremony, I did not see any progress at all," Neng Sri, a 37-year-old food stall owner from nearby Mandala Mukti village, told AFP.
Chinese infrastructure projects traverse insurgency-hit areas, dictatorships and chaotic democracies, and face resistance from both corrupt politicians and local villagers
The central problem has been persuading villagers to leave their land on the proposed route, which is often an issue in the chaotic, freewheeling democracy.
The Indonesian transport ministry declined to give an update on the project and the consortium of Chinese and Indonesian companies building the line did not respond to repeated requests for comment.
On another planned high-speed line from southern China to Singapore, the Thai stretch of the railway was delayed by tussles over financing and protective labour regulations, and it was only in July that the military government finally approved $5.2 billion to start construction.
Work is under way on the 415-kilometre (260-mile) part of the line in Laos, a staunch ally of Beijing.
But even there the project has stoked controversy due to its huge price tag -- at $5.8 billion, roughly half the country's 2015 GDP -- and the question of how much deeply poor Laos will gain from the project.
- Lopsided gains -
There have been concerns in many countries about how much they will benefit from One Belt, One Road initiatives.
Gains for China, such as access to key markets and tackling overcapacity in domestic industries, are often more obvious than those for their partners.
Such worries have bedevilled projects in Central Asia, part of a potential route from western China to Europe.
These include a free trade zone at Horgos on the China-Kazakh border, notable for flashy malls on the Chinese side and relatively little on the Kazakh side, and a planned railway to Uzbekistan that has stalled in large part due to opposition in Kyrgyzstan, through which the line would run.
"I am against this railway as it stands because the financial benefits that could accrue to Kyrgyzstan accrue to (China and Uzbekistan) instead," said Timur Saralayev, head of the Bishkek-based New Generation movement.
The China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), a $54-billion project launched in 2013 linking western China to the Indian Ocean via Pakistan, has been targeted by separatist rebels in Balochistan province, who have blown up gas pipelines and trains and attacked Chinese engineers.
But the Chinese foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua insisted the One Belt, One Road initiative enjoyed broad support.
"We have seen more and more support and approval of our projects. Many projects have delivered tangible benefits to the people in these countries," she said.
The view from the ground, however, is not always so positive.
"The high-speed train... is only for super busy people who think time is money," said the villager Sri, who lives next to the Indonesian rail project.
"We are not rushing to go anywhere."
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The reeking corpse of Robert Gilhooad was found at his rental property in Jimbaran, a resort area in the southern part of Bali
Two men have been arrested over the murder of an elderly Dutch man whose decomposing body was found at his home on the Indonesian holiday island of Bali.
The corpse of Robert Gilhooad, 80, was found on November 3 at his rental property in Jimbaran, a resort area in the southern part of the island.
An autopsy concluded the Dutch expatriate had been murdered, said policeman Aris Purwanto, the region's criminal investigative chief.
"He had injuries to the left of his head," he told AFP, adding that the perpetrator had used a steel object.
Two suspects have been detained in connection with the crime, Purwanto said, without providing names.
Police believe there was a monetary motive for killing Gilhooad, a long-term Bali resident who lived alone.
The murder is the second in as many months in Jimbaran, a fishing village famous for its seafood restaurants.
An elderly Japanese couple were found slashed and burned beyond recognition at their home on September 4.
Petty crime is common on Bali, a popular tourist destination known for its tropical climate and palm-fringed beaches, but grisly murders are rare.
US President Donald Trump and Vietnam's President Tran Dai Quang at the Presidential Palace in Hanoi
Vietnam and the United States signed a series of energy and aviation deals Sunday during a visit to Hanoi by US president Donald Trump, who railed against Washington's yawning trade deficit with the fast-growing nation.
Trump was in the communist capital at the tail-end of his swing through Asia where he has promoted his "America First" mantra on global trade -- prioritising "fair" bilateral deals over sprawling multilateral pacts.
Several agreements were signed during his state visit Sunday, including those covering the natural gas sector, transport and aviation.
National carrier Vietnam Airlines signed a deal worth $1.5 billion for engines and support services from US firm Pratt & Whitney.
"(The agreement) will further reinforce the important economic, trade and investment partnership between Vietnam and the United States," airline CEO Duong Tri Thanh said in a statement.
Low-budget Vietnamese carrier VietJet, best known for its bikini-clad flight attendants, also signed a deal for engines and maintenance services with Pratt & Whitney worth $600 million.
Trump is seeking to boost exports of American goods and services as part of a campaign pledge. He won office with strong support from blue-collar US workers.
He has accused Vietnam and China, two key Asian manufacturing hubs, of stealing American jobs and blamed previous US administrations for allowing trade deficits to grow unchecked.
On Sunday Trump again complained about the United States' gaping trade deficit with Vietnam, worth $32 billion in 2016.
"We have to get rid of the trading imbalance, we can't have a trade imbalance," he said at the beginning of a meeting with Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc.
"We have to take care of American companies and we have to take care of American workers," he added, in comments likely to play well with his base back home.
American energy firms Alaska Gasline Development Corporation and AES Corporation also signed deals Sunday, along with US truck company Navistar, though no details were provided.
Vietnam has eagerly sought to drum up trade and investment with the United States since Trump came to power, especially after he withdrew from the massive Trans-Pacific Partnership free trade deal from which Vietnam stood to gain enormously.
The US is a leading export market for Vietnam, whose booming manufacturing sector has largely driven dizzying economic growth in recent years.
US exports to Vietnam have soared in the past decade, increasing ninefold to more than $10 billion in 2016, according to the US Trade Representative. Vietnam's exports to the United States over the same period rose around fivefold.
Billionaire Alibaba founder Jack Ma celebrates taking $25 bn in the company's annual 'Singles Day' promotion
Chinese online shoppers spent a record $25 billion on this year's "Singles Day" promotion run by e-commerce giant Alibaba, up nearly 40 percent from last year, figures showed on Sunday.
At the peak, 256,000 payments were being processed per second on Saturday, the firm said, more than 90 percent of them placed via mobile.
The company's gross merchandise volume for its annual sales extravaganza known as "Double 11" representing November 11, came in at 168.3 billion ($25.3 billion), Alibaba said in a statement on its website.
The figure represents sales processed through Alibaba's online payment system Alipay.
The total sales were up 39 percent from last year's 120.7 billion yuan ($17.8 billion) -- a milestone this year eclipsed in under 14 hours, according to Alibaba.
Rivals such as JD.com also reported brisk business.
Analysts expect Chinese e-commerce retailers to take "Singles Day" -- which originally celebrated the idea of being unattached -- abroad as growth rates slow in the years ahead.
Chinese state news agency Xinhua reported that more than 140,000 overseas brands participated in this year's promotion.
"Alibaba looked to elevate this year's 11.11 from a shopping day to a virtual holiday," the company said in its statement, "complete with a motto -- 'Wishing you a Happy 11.11' -- that closely resembles the sort of greetings Chinese all over the world exchange at the Lunar New Year."
An Israeli general has warned fighters from the Islamic Jihad movement, shown here at a funeral for comrades killed in an Israeli operation to blow up a tunnel stretching from the Gaza Strip into Israel, against any revenge attack
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday warned Palestinian militants against carrying out attacks in revenge for the blowing up of a tunnel stretching from the Gaza Strip into the Jewish state last month.
The Islamic Jihad group meanwhile threatened to hit back at Israel over the destruction of the tunnel it says it dug.
The heated rhetoric comes at a sensitive time for the Palestinians, who are seeking to follow through on a landmark reconciliation deal signed last month aimed at ending a 10-year split between rivals Fatah and Hamas, the Islamist movement which runs Gaza.
Israel and militants in Gaza have fought three wars since 2008.
The UN special coordinator for the Middle East peace process, Nickolay Mladenov, expressed concern, saying "the reckless actions and statements of militants in Gaza risk a dangerous escalation".
"Palestinians have embarked on a course to solve the humanitarian crisis in the strip and bring back the legitimate authorities. They should not be distracted by extremists," he said in a statement.
Israel's October 30 blowing up of the tunnel resulted in the deaths of 12 Palestinian militants from Hamas and Islamic Jihad.
"There are still those who toy with trying new attacks on Israel," Netanyahu said at the opening of his weekly cabinet meeting.
"We will react forcefully to whoever tries to attack us or attacks us from any arena. I mean anyone -- rebel factions, organisations, anyone," he said in an apparent reference to Islamic Jihad.
"In any case, we hold Hamas responsible for any attack against us originating from Gaza or organised there."
Netanyahu's remarks followed a Saturday night Arabic-language video by Major General Yoav Mordechai, head of the COGAT defence ministry unit responsible for activities in the Palestinian territories.
Referring to the October 30 operation, he said that Israel "destroyed a terror tunnel in Israeli sovereign territory".
"We are aware of the plot that the Palestinian Islamic Jihad terror group is planning against Israel," said Mordechai.
"They are playing with fire at the expense of Gazan residents, the Palestinian reconciliation efforts and the stability of the entire region.
"Let it be clear: any attack by Islamic Jihad will be met with a harsh and determined Israeli response."
- 'We will respond' -
Mordechai also addressed the Damascus-based Islamic Jihad leadership, mentioning Ramadan Shalah and Ziad Nakhaleh by name.
He called on them to "take control over the situation" as they "will be held accountable" for any attack.
Islamic Jihad rejected Mordechai's message, saying "the enemy's threat to target the leaders of the movement" was "a declaration of war".
"We will respond to it," the militant movement said in a Sunday statement, stressing it had "the right to respond" to the tunnel being destroyed.
Hamas leader Ismail Haniya also reacted to Mordechai, though with a less forceful statement as his movement focuses on following through with the Palestinian reconciliation accord.
"The security systems we built in the Gaza Strip are a source of pride to all Palestinians and we will not withdraw from the option of resistance and we will not compromise on (the resistance's) weapons," he said.
Israel has said it is holding the bodies of five militants retrieved from the tunnel, and implied it could use them as bargaining chips to retrieve the remains of two soldiers believed to be held by Hamas.
Two Israeli civilians, said to be mentally unstable, are also believed to have entered Gaza and to be held by Hamas.
Hamas and Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas's Fatah signed a landmark reconciliation deal on October 12 aiming to end their decade-long split.
The deal is supposed to see the Palestinian Authority retake control of the Gaza Strip by December 1.
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Director Licinio Azevedo (C), flanked by actors Matamba Joaquim (L) and Thiago Justino, poses after receiving the Tanit d'Or award for his film "The Train of Salt and Sugar" at the Carthage Film Festival on November 11, 2017
The story of an epic train journey across war-torn Mozambique by a Brazilian director has been awarded the top prize at Tunisia's Carthage Film Festival.
"The Train of Salt and Sugar" by Licinio Azevedo, a Brazilian who lives in the African country, received the Tanit d'Or as the festival wrapped up on Saturday.
Like a Western, the film follows the perilous journey of a train that sets off across rebel-held areas to exchange salt for sugar in 1989 during Mozambique's civil war.
The Tanit d'Argent went to South Africa's John Trengove for his first feature "The Wound", which has sparked controversy at home over its portrayal of homosexual love and an ancestral initiation rite.
Veteran Moroccan director Faouzi Bensaidi received the Tanit de Bronze for "Volubilis", a social critique of extreme liberalism.
Among the documentaries, the jury awarded Palestinian director Raed Andoni's "Ghost Hunting", which recreates a notorious Israeli interrogation centre and has former prisoners re-enact experiences in a bid to free them of their demons.
Third place went to Nada Mezni Hafaiedh's "Upon the shadow", a frank documentary about the lives of gay Tunisians in a country where homosexuality is a crime.
Hafeidh said she was "surprised there were so few complaints" after her documentary's screening in its home country on Friday.
She said she was astonished her film had been selected for the festival at all, enabling Tunisians to see it, "because I know that sadly in Tunisia being gay is an abomination".
A picture taken on September 25, 2017 during the Kurdish independence referendum shows a Russian-made Iraqi military helicopter flying over Arbil, the capital of the autonomous Kurdish region of northern Iraq
An Iraqi army helicopter crashed Sunday south of Baghdad during a training exercise killing all three crew members due to a technical problem, military officials said.
"A Mi-17 military helicopter crashed during a training exercise and its crew was killed," the army said in a statement.
Three air force officers were killed in the crash in the province of Wasit, southeast of Baghdad, an air force official told AFP on condition of anonymity.
Another air force officer said the helicopter came down at 0530 GMT "due to a technical problem".
In January, a Russian-made Mi-35 attack helicopter went down south of the northern city of Mosul, killing all four crew members -- two pilots and two technicians -- also due to a technical failure.
The accident came as Iraqi forces were battling the Islamic State group and an Iraqi officer at the time said the intensity of the war on IS meant that necessary maintenance work on such helicopters was not always satisfactory.
In February 2016, the crash of another Mi-17 -- also Russian made and used for transport mainly -- killed nine, with the accident also blamed on a technical problem.
During a state visit to Hanoi, US President Donald Trump (L) offered to mediate in the South China Sea dispute, telling Vietnam's President Tran Dai Quang (R) he was a "very good mediator"
US President Donald Trump offered Sunday to mediate in a territorial dispute over the resource-rich South China Sea, after years of Chinese island-building in the contested waters.
Trump's surprise proposal to insert himself into the decades-long row risked a backlash from China, which has repeatedly said the United States has no role to play in what it insists is a series of bilateral issues.
"If I can help mediate or arbitrate, please let me know... I am a very good mediator," Trump told Vietnamese President Tran Dai Quang in Hanoi during an official state visit.
Hours later, the Communist leaders of China and Vietnam said they had reached a "consensus" on handling the disputed waters during a state visit by Chinese President Xi Jinping to Hanoi, according to the official Chinese news agency Xinhua.
The countries "reached an important consensus in accordance with leaders of the two parties and countries, to appropriately manage maritime issues, steadily advance all forms of maritime cooperation, including joint development and jointly strive to uphold peace and stability in the South China Sea," Xinhua reported.
China claims nearly all of the strategically vital sea, through which $5 trillion in shipping trade passes annually. It is also believed to sit atop vast oil and gas deposits.
US President Donald Trump attends a bilateral meeting at the Presidential Palace in Hanoi on November 12, 2017
Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia, Brunei and Taiwan also have claims in the sea, and the dispute has long been seen as a potential trigger for conflict in Asia.
Vietnam has courted support from Washington in the row, as it and other claimants have been powerless to stop China's efforts in recent years to cement its claims by building artificial islands in disputed areas.
Those islands are capable of serving as military bases, and some of the rival claimants are concerned that China will soon establish de facto control of the waters.
Tensions spiked this year when Vietnam suspended an oil exploration project in an area of the sea also claimed by Beijing, reportedly over pressure from its powerhouse communist neighbour.
In 2014, China moved an oil rig into waters off Vietnam's coast, sparking violent protests in several Vietnamese cities.
Trump's offer came just before he flew to the Philippine capital of Manila for another regional summit.
- Thanks, but... -
However, his proposal was not immediately accepted by the Philippines, which under President Rodrigo Duterte has sought to defuse tensions with China over the row in favour of closer economic ties.
US President Donald Trump arrives in the presidential limo, nicknamed The Beast, for a welcoming ceremony at the Presidential Palace in Hanoi on November 12, 2017
"We thank him for it. It's a very kind, generous offer because he is a good mediator. He is the master of the art of the deal," Philippine Foreign Affairs Secretary Alan Peter Cayetano said when asked about Trump's offer.
"But of course the claimant countries have to answer as a group or individually and not one country can just give an instant reply because mediation involves all of the claimants and non-claimants."
Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte said he had discussed the dispute with Xi when they met on the sidelines of APEC in the Vietnamese city of Danang on Saturday.
"He assured us again: 'Do not worry, you have all the rights of safe passage. That will also be applicable to all countries'," Duterte told reporters after arriving back in Manila.
But that assurance appeared to be based on a premise of China controlling the waters, and whether it would allow other countries to pass through them.
On Monday China and ASEAN are expected to announce in Manila that they have agreed to begin talks on a code of conduct for the sea.
Chinese Premier Li Keqiang will promote the agreement as an important breakthrough, Filipino foreign department spokesman Robespierre Bolivar told reporters last week.
US President Donald Trump, accompanied by his Vietnamese counterpart Tran Dai Quang, observe national anthems during a welcoming ceremony at the Presidential Palace in Hanoi on November 12, 2017
However, the talks are not expected to begin until "sometime next year" and, at China's insistence, any agreement will not be legally binding, Bolivar said.
Vietnam had been pushing for the code to be legally binding. But with the Philippines acceding to Chinas demands, ASEAN agreed in August that it would not have any legal force.
China agreed in 2002 to begin talks on a code, but has delayed actually doing so while carrying out its expansionist strategy.
A picture taken on September 14, 2017 shows Emirates planes parked on the tarmac at Dubai's International Airport
Emirates Airlines on Sunday agreed to purchase 40 Boeing 787-10 Dreamliners for $15.1 billion at list price, its chief Sheikh Ahmed bin Saeed Al-Maktoum said.
Emirates is already the world's largest client for Boeing's 777, with 165 jets and another 164 on firm order.
Sheikh Ahmed said the deal raises total outstanding orders from US aerospace giant Boeing, the global competitor of Europe's Airbus Industries, to as high as $90 billion.
Delivery of the Dreamliners is scheduled to start in 2022, he said on the first day of the Dubai Airshow.
Emirates, the largest carrier in the Middle East, is also the world's biggest client for Airbus 380 superjumbo jets with 100 planes. It has firm orders for another 46 jets.
"We have reached a conclusion that the Boeing 787-10 jets are the best choice for us," Sheikh Ahmed said.
"Emirates' orders today will be delivered from 2022, taking the airline well into the 2030s," he said in a statement.
"Some of these will be replacements so that we maintain a young and efficient fleet, and others will power our future network growth.
The ruler of Dubai, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum (L), attends the Dubai Airshow on November 12, 2017, in the United Arab Emirates
"We see the 787 as a great complement to our 777 and A380 fleet, providing us with more flexibility to serve a range of destinations as we develop our global route network."
Boeing welcomed the deal.
"We are excited that Emirates has selected the Boeing 787-10 Dreamliner to power its fleet expansion and future growth," said Kevin McAllister, head of the company's commercial aviation division.
"Emirates' endorsement of the 787 Dreamliner extends our long-standing partnership and will sustain many jobs in the United States."
Later, McAllister signed an agreement to sell Azerbaijan Airlines five Boeing 787-8 for a list price of around $1 billion. The carrier already has two 787-8 jets.
The announcement of the Boeing deal with Emirates came amid speculations the Dubai national carrier was also planning to announce another to buy more Airbus 380 superjumbo jets.
That deal may still ago ahead after the hammering out of final details, a source within the industry said.
Drones are displayed at the Dubai Airshow on November 12, 2017 in the United Arab Emirates
On Thursday, Emirates said its half year net profit rebounded strongly from a slump last year due to cost saving measures and favourable exchange rates.
The airline posted a net profit of $452 million in the period from April to September, up 111 percent on the same period last year.
That was more than the $340 million net income for the whole of the last fiscal year to March 31.
The rise in earnings was driven by "capacity optimisation and efficiency initiatives across the company, steady business growth, and a more favourable foreign exchange situation compared to the same period last year," the airline said.
Cigarettes have been sold at a discounted price to Vatican employees and pensioners
Pope Francis has ordered a ban on the sale of cigarettes inside the Vatican from next year because of health concerns, a spokesman said .
The motive is very simple: the Holy See cannot be cooperating with a practice that is clearly harming the health of people, spokesman Greg Burke said in a statement.
He cited World World Health Organization (WHO) statistics that smoking causes more than seven million deaths worldwide every year.
Cigarettes have been sold at a discounted price to Vatican employees and pensioners.
Vatican employees are allowed to buy five cartons of cigarettes a month. Many Italians ask their non-smoking friends who work in the Vatican to buy cigarettes for them because they cost much less than in Italy, where they are subject to heavy taxes.
Burke acknowledged that the sale of cigarettes has been a source of revenue for the Holy See, adding, However, no profit can be legitimate if it is costing people their lives.
The spokesman said the sale of large cigars would continue at least for the time being because the smoke is not inhaled.
The Vatican, a tiny walled city-state surrounded by Rome, is one of the few states to ban smoking. Bhutan, where smoking is deemed bad for ones karma, banned the sale of tobacco in 2005.
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Equatorial Guinea's President Teodoro Obiang Nguema is Africa's longest-serving leader.
Voting in Equatorial Guinea ended Sunday, with the opposition alleging fraud and irregularities in elections that the ruling party was expected to sweep and maintain its firm grip over the tiny oil-rich country.
Internet access was completely cut in a country where opposition websites have been blocked since 2013. Since the start of the election campaign on October 27, Facebook has been inaccessible as well.
In the capital Malabo, queues of people waiting to vote formed early as most polling stations opened on schedule and were very busy most of the morning, an AFP correspondent said.
Security forces were deployed and private vehicles banned for the day. Residents complained that this had left them unable to go to polling stations -- often located very far from their homes -- which were mostly closed by 1700 GMT, one hour before the official end of polling.
Around 300,000 people were eligible to take part in Sunday's election, which will choose 100 MPs and 75 senators as well as the mayors of Malabo and Bata, the country's economic hub.
State media said the vote took place in good conditions and without incident, but opposition representatives spoke out against fraud and irregularities and the arrest of activists who opposed such alleged discrepancies.
The election is widely expected to be dominated by the party of President Teodoro Obiang Nguema, Africa's longest-serving leader, who has ruled the former Spanish colony for 37 years.
His Democratic Party of Equatorial Guinea (PDGE) controls 99 percent of the seats in parliament, over which it has held sway since single-party rule was scrapped in 1991.
Despite the PDGE's immense power, opposition parties hope to make gains, even if they say they have no access to state media, which regularly broadcasts campaign ads by the ruling party.
Equatorial Guinea, which borders Cameroon and Gabon, is one of sub-Sahara's biggest oil producers but a large proportion of the 1.2 million population still lives in poverty.
A picture from July 07, 2015 shows the aftermath of air strikes by the Saudi-led coalition on Yemen's capital Sanaa
From a Yemeni missile attack to the resignation of Lebanon's prime minister, the "Cold War" between Middle East rivals Saudi Arabia and Iran has been heating up.
Experts believe the risk of a direct military clash is low, but why have tensions escalated now and how will the crisis evolve?
AFP looks at five questions on the Riyadh-Tehran rivalry and its implications.
- What are the origins of the rivalry? -
Sunni powerhouse Saudi Arabia and Iran, the predominant Shiite power, have a long-standing rivalry based as much in geostrategic interests as religious differences.
Facing off across the Gulf, the two energy-rich powers have for decades stood on opposing sides of conflicts in the Middle East.
The Iranian revolution of 1979 and the advent of the Islamic Republic -- with its fiercely anti-American slant -- were perceived as a double threat to the conservative Sunni monarchies of the Arabian Peninsula, allied with the United States.
Saudi Arabia was a key financial backer of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein during his 1980-1988 war with Iran.
Saudi-Iranian rivalries in the Middle East
With Iraq weakened following the 1991 Gulf War, Saudi Arabia and Iran became "the two main regional powers", said Clement Therme, a researcher at the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS).
- How have tensions escalated recently? -
The latest round of tensions began when Riyadh and Tehran broke off diplomatic relations in January 2016, after Iranians stormed Saudi Arabia's embassy and consulate in response to the execution of a prominent Shiite cleric.
That followed the 2015 nuclear deal between Tehran and six world powers, which Riyadh feared was a step towards ending Iran's international isolation.
Rhetoric between the two grew increasingly belligerent, including over Saudi Arabia's Gulf neighbour Qatar. Riyadh and several of its Sunni allies broke off diplomatic relations with Qatar in June 2017, accusing Doha of support for extremism and links with Iran, claims that it denies.
On the first weekend of November, the animosity reached new heights. First, the Saudi-supported prime minister of Lebanon, Saad Hariri, in a broadcast from Riyadh announced his resignation, blaming Iran's "grip" on his country via Shiite movement Hezbollah.
Several hours later, Saudi Arabia said its air defences near Riyadh intercepted and destroyed a missile fired from Yemen, where a Saudi-led coalition is battling Iran-backed Shiite rebels.
An October 24, 2017 picture of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman
That set off a fierce war of words between Riyadh and Tehran, with Saudi Arabia's powerful Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman accusing Iran of "direct military aggression". Tehran denied any involvement in the missile attack, with President Hassan Rouhani warning that Iranian "might" would fend off any challenge.
- Why now? -
"The main cause of the current tensions is related to the proxy confrontation between Iran and Saudi Arabia," Therme said, pointing to wars in Iraq, Syria and Yemen.
Recent months have seen changes in these confrontations that appear to have brought the tensions to a head.
Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, pictured on October 11, 2017
In Iraq and Syria, the increasingly successful campaign against the Islamic State group has changed the situation on the ground. Offensives in both countries have forced the jihadists from nearly all the territory they seized in mid-2014.
As the threat from a common enemy "has imploded, tensions between these historic adversaries have escalated", said Max Abrahms, professor of political science at Northeastern University in Boston.
As Iraq looks to a post-IS era, Riyadh has been taking steps to build stronger ties with the country's Shiite-dominated government. A flurry of visits between the two countries this year saw talk of a warming of ties, including a trip by Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi to Riyadh in late October.
In Syria, meanwhile, the Iran-backed government of President Bashar al-Assad has over the past year managed to reassert control over large parts of the country by defeating, among others, rebel groups backed by Riyadh.
"The Saudi-Iranian rivalry has become the organising principle for Mideast alliances, reminiscent of how the Cold War divided countries along US and Soviet lines," Abrahms said.
Analysts said the election as US president a year ago of Donald Trump has also contributed to the rise in tensions. Trump's open hostility towards Tehran has "released anti-Iranian energies in the Arabian Peninsula" and emboldened Riyadh, Therme said.
- How important is the Sunni-Shiite divide? -
The Sunni-Shiite divide between Saudi Arabia and Tehran is a crucial factor in conflicts between the two countries.
Religious tensions have heightened since the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq that brought the majority Shiites to power in Baghdad instead of Saddam's Sunni-dominated regime.
The 2011 Arab Spring uprisings, which saw Iran support the demands of sizeable Shiite minorities in Gulf monarchies, was another turning point, Therme said.
"Arab states appeared vulnerable and Iran was then defined as the main threat to regional stability," he said.
Iran has even called into doubt the suitability of the Saudi royal family to serve as custodians of Mecca and Medina, the holiest cities in Islam -- especially after a stampede at the annual hajj pilgrimage in 2015 left hundreds of Iranians dead.
- How will the crisis evolve? -
While the increase in tensions has raised serious concerns, few expect an outright military confrontation.
"A broader regional conflict remains unlikely," said Graham Griffiths, a senior analyst at consulting firm Control Risks, saying Riyadh would instead look to use the latest missile incident to push for further sanctions against Tehran.
Therme agreed that both sides would steer clear of open conflict.
"Iran has experience of the war with Iraq... and Saudi Arabia is bogged down in Yemen, after failing to define the future of the Syrian revolution... and counter Iran's influence in Iraq," he said.
"Saudi Arabia's rhetoric does not necessarily reflect interest in war," consulting firm Eurasia Group said, pointing to a potential domestic reason for Riyadh's combative tone.
Prince Mohammed is looking to "leverage the nationalist rhetoric to solidify his position" as he pursues an anti-corruption purge some see as an attempt to cement his hold on power, the group said.
"At the same time, escalatory statements against Iran help shift the media attention away from the domestic power struggle," it said.
Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (R) dramatically threatened to acquire a nuclear weapon if Iran
Relations between Middle East heavyweights Iran and Saudi Arabia have been fraught for decades as they spar over regional influence and religion.
Each considers itself to be the guardian of one of the two main branches of Islam: Saudi Arabia is a Sunni kingdom and Iran is Shiite.
On Thursday the young Saudi crown prince dramatically threatened to acquire a nuclear weapon if Iran does so, and likened its supreme leader to Hitler.
Here is a look over the high points of tension between the rivals.
- Iranian revolution, war -
After the Islamic Republic of Iran is established in April 1979 following a revolt, Sunni nations accuse Iran of seeking to "export" revolution to them.
Iraq attacks Iran in 1980, triggering an eight-year war in which Saudi Arabia financially backs the Iraq regime.
- Pilgrims killed, ties cut -
Security forces at the holy site of Mecca in Saudi Arabia crack down in July 1987 on an unauthorised anti-US protest by Iranian pilgrims. More than 400 people, mostly Iranians, are killed.
Angry Iranians loot the Saudi embassy in Tehran and, in April 1988, Saudi Arabia breaks off diplomatic relations for several years. Its pilgrims are absent from Saudi pilgrimages until 1991.
- Opposing sides in Syria, Yemen -
As Arab Spring demonstrations sweep the region in 2011, Riyadh sends soldiers to Bahrain where Shiites are protesting. Riyadh accuses Tehran of stoking tensions.
The rival capitals square off again in 2012 as the Syria crisis erupts. Iran backs President Bashar al-Assad and provides him with military forces and funds to battle Sunni rebels.
Saudi Arabia backs the rebels, but joins a US-led coalition fighting the Sunni extremist Islamic State group.
Saudi Arabia and Iran also take opposing sides in the Yemen conflict: in March 2015, Riyadh forms a Sunni Arab coalition to intervene in support of the Yemeni president, while Tehran backs the Shiite Huthi rebels.
Riyadh and Washington accuse Tehran of supplying weapons to the rebels, who from late 2017 fire several missiles towards Saudi territory. Iran denies the charge.
- Deadly hajj stampede -
A stampede at the hajj annual pilgrimage in September 2015 leaves around 2,300 foreign pilgrims dead, including hundreds of Iranians.
Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei says the Saudi ruling family does not deserve to manage Islam's holiest sites.
- Ties cut again -
In January 2016 Saudi Arabia executes prominent Shiite cleric Nimr al-Nimr, a driving force behind anti-government protests, for "terrorism".
Iran is furious. Protestors attack Saudi diplomatic missions in Iran, and Riyadh again breaks off relations.
- Hezbollah, Qatar -
Lebanon's powerful Shiite militia Hezbollah, an Iran ally, is in March 2016 classified as "terrorist" by the Gulf Arab monarchies.
In November 2017 it is from Riyadh that Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri announces his resignation, citing Iran's "grip" on his country through Hezbollah. He later recants.
In June 2017 Saudi Arabia and its allies break off diplomatic relations with Qatar, accusing it of fostering too close ties with Iran and backing extremism. The claims are rejected.
- Iran nuclear accord -
In October 2017 Saudi Arabia says it backs US President Donald Trump after he refuses to certify the 2015 nuclear deal aimed at halting Tehran's nuclear ambitions.
On March 15, 2018 Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman warns in a US television interview that if Tehran gets a nuclear weapon, "we will follow suit as soon as possible".
The prince also refers to Iran's supreme leader as "the new Hitler".
"He wants to create his own project in the Middle East, very much like Hitler who wanted to expand at the time," the prince says.
Rohingya Muslim refugees carry relief aid at the Thankhali refugee camp in Bangladesh
Myanmar soldiers "systematically targeted" Rohingya women for gang-rape during violence against the minority Muslim community which triggered an exodus to Bangladesh, an UN special envoy said Sunday.
Pramila Patten, a special representative of the UN Secretary-General on sexual violence in conflict, made the comments after visiting Bangladesh's southeastern district of Cox's Bazar where some 610,000 Rohingya have taken refuge in the last ten weeks.
Many of these atrocities "could be crimes against humanity", she said.
"I heard horrific stories of rape and gang-rape, with many of the women and girls who died as a result of the rape," Patten told reporters in Dhaka.
"My observations point to a pattern of widespread atrocities, including sexual violence against Rohingya women and girls who have been systematically targeted on account of their ethnicity and religion."
The sexual violence in Myanmar's northern state of Rakhine was "commanded, orchestrated and perpetrated by the armed forces of Myanmar", she said.
"The forms of sexual violence we consistently heard about from survivors include gang-rape by multiple soldiers, forced public nudity and humiliation and sexual slavery in military captivity."
"One survivor described being held in captivity by the Myanmar armed forces for 45 days, during which time she was repeatedly raped. Others still bore visible scars, bruises and bite marks attesting to their ordeal," Patten added.
Deadly raids by Rohingya militants on Myanmar police posts on August 25 sparked ferocious reprisals against the community by the military in the mainly Buddhist nation.
The special representative said others involved in the sexual violence include Myanmar border police and militias composed of Buddhists and other ethnic groups in Rakhine.
Refugees are still streaming across the border from Rakhine into Bangladesh, where hundreds of thousands have settled in squalid camps.
The UN now estimates the majority of the Rohingya once living in Rakhine -- previously estimated at around one million -- have fled a campaign of violence it has likened to ethnic cleansing.
Patten said the sexual violence was a key reason behind the exodus and occurred in the context of "collective persecution" of the Rohingya.
"The widespread threat and use of sexual violence was clearly a driver and push factor for forced displacement on a massive scale and a calculated tool of terror aimed at the extermination and the removal of the Rohingya as a group," she said.
For decades the Rohingya have faced persecution in Myanmar, where they are denied citizenship and denigrated as illegal "Bengali" immigrants.
French carmaker PSA signed a deal on Sunday with three Algerian firms to set up a car-manufacturing base in the North African country with production to begin next year
French carmaker PSA signed a deal on Sunday with three Algerian firms to set up a car-manufacturing base in the North African country with production to begin next year.
After two years of negotiations, the joint venture deal was inked at a ceremony attended by Algerian Foreign Minister Abdelkader Messahel and his French counterpart Jean-Yves Le Drian.
The first Peugeot and Citroen models will roll off the assembly line next year at a plant in a suburb of Oran, 400 kilometres (250 miles) west of Algiers.
Under the deal, worth 100 million euros, PSA will own 49 percent of the joint venture with the remaining 51 percent shared between Algerian firms Condor Electronics, Palpa Pro and Entreprise Nationale de Production de Machine-Outils (PMO).
Jean-Christophe Quemard, PSA executive vice president for the Middle East and Africa, said the Oran factory should be fully operational by 2019.
Quemard said 75,000 Peugeots and Citroens would be produced annually for the next five years, but without specifying the specific models.
PSA is hoping to sell 700,000 vehicles a year by 2021 across the Middle East and Africa, and one million cars by the year 2025.
Quemard said the agreement -- signed as part of the Franco-Algerian joint economic committee -- will create 1,000 jobs initially.
Sunday's ceremony was also attended by French Economy Minister Bruno Le Maire and Algerian Industry Minister Youcef Yousfi.
Once one of Africa's largest car markets, Algeria is embarking on an ambitious programme aimed at replacing hundreds of thousands of foreign imports with domestically produced vehicles.
It hopes to develop its domestic automobile industry to counter a sharp drop in the price of oil, its main source of revenue.
The industry has been given incentives to produce more models after the government radically slashed imports.
A Syrian man stands at a destroyed flat at the site of government air strikes which killed at least four civilians, including a child on November 2, 2017 in Douma, in the rebel-held Eastern Ghouta region outside Damascus
Desperately needed humanitarian assistance entered a besieged rebel-held town near Syria's capital on Sunday, the Red Cross said, in the first aid deliveries there in nearly three months.
The International Committee of the Red Cross said a joint operation with the United Nations had brought in 24 trucks full of humanitarian relief to Douma.
ICRC spokeswoman Ingy Sedky told AFP the deliveries included medicine, food parcels and nutrition items for 21,500 people.
"The last delivery to Douma was on August 17," Sedky confirmed.
Douma is the main town in the Eastern Ghouta region, an opposition-held enclave that is home to up to 400,000 people and which has been under a crippling government siege since 2013.
The blockade has caused serious food and medicine shortages, and pushed the prices for what remains beyond the reach of impoverished residents.
Jan Egeland, the head of the UN's humanitarian taskforce for Syria, dubbed Eastern Ghouta "the epicentre of suffering" in the country.
"Around 400 men, women, children... need to be evacuated now," said Egeland, adding that 29 of them, including 18 children, "will die if they are not evacuated".
The UN's World Health Organization said on Sunday it had prepared a plan to evacuate people from Eastern Ghouta.
"At this stage, however, no formal approval for evacuations has been received from the responsible national authorities," the WHO said.
Its representative in Syria said the situation was "heartbreaking".
"We have now reached a critical point, where the lives of hundreds of people, including many children, are at stake," said Elizabeth Hoff.
WHO said one civilian in Eastern Ghouta reportedly died on Sunday of kidney failure, and that other patients in the area had lost their lives because of the restrictions on aid.
The ICRC and the UN's humanitarian affairs coordination office (OCHA) in Damascus both told AFP there were no medical evacuations planned as part of Sunday's aid operation.
Eastern Ghouta is one of the last strongholds of rebels fighting Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's regime.
Earlier this year, rebel backer Turkey and regime allies Iran and Russia included Eastern Ghouta among four "de-escalation zones" established across the country in an attempt to decrease violence.
But the government siege has remained in place, and civilians in the enclave are suffering increasingly dire conditions.
A Russian Sukhoi Su-35 bomber lands at the Russian Hmeimim military base in Latakia province, in the northwest of Syria on May 4, 2016
Dozens of civilians have died in artillery fire and Russian bombardment of two displacement camps and surrounding territory in eastern Syria, a monitor said Sunday in a new toll.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said ongoing heavy bombardment in the Deir Ezzor province had killed 50 civilians, including 20 children, since late Friday night.
The new toll was nearly double the Britain-based monitor's count on Saturday of 26 dead.
The bombardment has targeted territory along the Euphrates River, as well as villages and displacement camps full of people fleeing fighting in the Syrian border town of Albu Kamal.
Russian-backed Syrian regime forces and allied militia seized Albu Kamal from the Islamic State group on Thursday but the jihadists retook it late Saturday.
On Sunday, Russian air strikes on two river crossings along the Euphrates killed 11 civilians, according to Observatory chief Rami Abdel Rahman.
"Five civilians, including two children, were killed in the strikes on Al-Soussa crossing about five kilometres east of Albu Kamal," Abdel Rahman told AFP.
"Six civilians were killed in raids on another river crossing 20 kilometres north of the town," he added.
The toll from earlier artillery fire and air strikes on two displacement camps and surrounding villages rose to 39 after 13 civilians succumbed to their wounds, the Observatory said on Sunday.
Albu Kamal is the last significant Syrian town IS controls. Losing it would cap the group's reversion to an underground guerrilla organisation with no urban base.
IS rose to prominence in the chaos of Syria's conflict, which broke out in 2011 with protests against President Bashar al-Assad.
It has since evolved into a complex war that has killed more than 330,000 people, forced millions more to flee, and left much of the country in ruins.
This January file photo shows (left to right) then FBI director James Comey, then director of national intelligence James Clapper and then CIA chief John Brennan, all of whom US President Donald Trump has called "political hacks"
Former US intelligence chiefs hit back at Donald Trump on Sunday, saying the president should be "ashamed" after he attacked as "political hacks" the intelligence leaders who concluded Russia meddled in the 2016 election.
"Considering the source of the criticism, I consider that criticism a badge of honor," former CIA chief John Brennan told CNN's State of the Union, where he appeared alongside former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper.
"I found it particularly reprehensible that on Veterans Day, Donald Trump would attack and impugn the integrity and the character of Jim Clapper, who served in uniform for 35 years," said the ex-CIA chief.
"I think it's something Mr. Trump should be ashamed of," he added.
Trump, now in the Philippines at the end of a 12-day Asia tour, had lashed out at Brennan, Clapper and former FBI director James Comey after facing stiff criticism at home for saying he believed President Vladimir Putin was sincere in insisting that Russia had not interfered in the US election.
- 'He means it' -
"I really believe that when he tells me that, he means it," Trump said later aboard Air Force One.
But then in a surprising attack -- especially from a president traveling abroad -- Trump suggested that he placed greater credibility in Putin's assurances than in the endorsement by Brennan, Clapper and Comey of the US intelligence agencies' finding of Russian interference.
"I mean, give me a break -- they're political hacks," Trump said, naming the three men and blaming Democrats for the talk of Russian collusion with his election campaign.
He said Comey, whom he fired in May as pressure was building over the Russia allegations, was "a liar," and he reiterated that Putin had "vehemently" denied any meddling.
Brennan and Clapper pushed back hard on Sunday, describing Trump's tepid response to the alleged Russian meddling as endangering US national security.
"Putin is committed to undermining our system, our democracy and our whole process," Clapper said. "And to try to paint it in any other way is, I think, astounding and, in fact, poses a peril to this country."
Brennan added: "I think he's giving Putin a pass. And I think it demonstrates to Mr. Putin that Donald Trump can be played by foreign leaders who are going to appeal to his ego and to try to play upon his insecurities. Which is very, very worrisome."
On Sunday, Trump revised his initial criticism a bit, saying of the Russian meddling charges: "As to whether I believe it or not, I'm with our agencies, especially as currently constituted with their leadership," a phrase that excludes Clapper, Brennan and Comey.
But one of the current leaders, CIA director Mike Pompeo -- a Trump appointee -- has reiterated his support for the finding of Russian interference.
The sacking of former army chief Paul Malong by South Sudan's President Salva Kiir (shown here) sparked fears of a clash between their supporters although that never materialised
South Sudanese troops have withdrawn from around the residence of powerful former army chief Paul Malong, a week after a tense standoff over his bodyguards sparked fears of clashes in the capital.
In a press statement on Sunday entitled "Misunderstanding Resolved", army spokesman Lul Ruai Koang said a peaceful resolution had been found to a dispute over the number of bodyguards in Malong's service.
Lul Ruai said scores of troops had been deployed around Malong's house as he had failed to comply with an order that he release most of his government-appointed bodyguards to return to their former duties.
"Withdrawal came about after Gen. Paul accepted (a) presidential order on reduction of his bodyguards," the army statement says.
Lul Ruai said troops were withdrawn after a "security review was undertaken which indicated lack of real security threats to the government in particular and residents of Juba in general (and) to reduce and eliminate uncertainty created by deployment of security forces."
The move was also an attempt "to build confidence between the Government and General Paul."
- 'Human rights violations, corruption' -
Malong is a hardline ethnic nationalist whose dismissal in May by President Salva Kiir had sparked fears of a clash between his supporters and troops loyal to the president, although that never materialised.
The deployment of troops around his house last Friday saw people holing up at home for fears of clashes.
Malong, who belongs to Kiir's majority Dinka tribe, is widely regarded as the mastermind behind fighting that erupted in Juba in July 2016 that killed hundreds of people.
The clashes also crushed hopes of a power-sharing government between Kiir and Riek Machar, his former deputy turned rebel chief, who is a member of the Nuer tribe.
South Sudan has been gripped by a brutal civil war that has lasted nearly four years. Initially putting the Dinka and the Nuer against each other, the conflict has metastasised, drawing in a variety of ethnic groups and grievances.
The general, who is under house arrest, was one of three senior South Sudan officials who was hit by US sanctions in September on charges of fomenting and profiting from the civil war.
Canada followed suit last week, with Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland saying the sanctions related to individuals "linked to human rights violations and corruption".
South Sudan gained independence after the Christian-majority south split from the Muslim north in 2011 after a 22-year civil war that killed hundreds of thousands of people.
But the world's youngest nation quickly fell into civil war in December 2013 after Kiir accused Machar of plotting a coup, with the conflict leaving tens of thousands dead and forcing a third of its 12 million people out of their homes.
A general view shows the Arab League headquarters in Cairo on July 27, 2017 during the meeting of Arab foreign ministers
The Arab League will hold an extraordinary meeting next Sunday at the request of Saudi Arabia to discuss "violations" committed by Iran in the region, according to a memorandum.
Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates supported the Saudi request, which was also approved by Djibouti, the current chair of the pan-Arab bloc, said the document shown to AFP by diplomats on Sunday.
Tensions have been rising between Saudi Arabia and Iran, including over League members Qatar and Lebanon.
Sunni Muslim powerhouse Saudi Arabia and Iran, the predominant Shiite power, are long-standing rivals based as much in geostrategic interests as religious differences.
Facing off across the Gulf, the two energy-rich powers have for decades stood on opposing sides of conflicts in the Middle East.
According to the memo, the Saudi request for an Arab League meeting was based on a missile the Sunni-ruled kingdom says its air defences intercepted near Riyadh after being fired from Yemen on November 4.
A Saudi-led coalition has been battling Shiite Huthi rebels in Yemen, and it has accused the Iran-backed rebels of firing the missile.
Saudi Arabia's powerful Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman later accused Iran of "direct military aggression" against the kingdom by supplying the rebels with ballistic missiles.
But Iran denied any involvement in the missile attack, with President Hassan Rouhani warning that the Islamic republic's "might" would fend off any challenge.
- Trading blame -
According to the memo, Saudi Arabia also decried what it described as "sabotage" and "terrorism" over a pipeline fire in Bahrain on Friday that temporarily halted oil supplies from its territory.
Bahrain's foreign minister blamed Iran for the fire.
"The attempt to blow up the Saudi-Bahraini pipeline is a dangerous escalation on Iran's part that aims to terrorise citizens and to harm the world oil industry," Sheikh Khalid bin Ahmed al-Khalifa wrote on Twitter.
Tehran rejected any involvement in the incident, calling the allegation "childish".
In its request for the meeting of Arab foreign ministers, Saudi Arabia referred to those two incidents "in addition to the violations committed by Iran in the Arab region, which undermines security and peace, not only in the Arab region, but around the globe," according to the memo.
Saudi Arabia has been at the forefront of a dispute with Qatar since June 5, leading a group of nations including Bahrain, Egypt and the UAE in accusing Doha of supporting terrorism.
Riyadh has for its part been accused of being behind last weekend's resignation of Lebanese prime minister Saad Hariri, in a televised address from Riyadh.
In his broadcast, Hariri accused Iran and its Lebanese ally Hezbollah of taking over Lebanon and destabilising the broader region, saying he feared for his life.
The Arab League has 22 members, but Syria's membership was suspended at the end of 2011 following months of brutal repression of anti-government demonstrations and an opposition movement supported by Gulf monarchies.
Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi has announced ten recommendations by the end of the World Youth Forum, including forming an international commission to combat illegal immigration and extremism, and establishing an Arab-African-international youth dialogue.
The week-long gathering, which brought together over 3,000 participants from around the world in the resort city of Sharm El-Sheikh, concluded on Thursday.
Sessions and discussions held over the week tackled issues including terrorism, refugees, illegal immigration, sustainable development, technology and entrepreneurship, El-Sisi's office said.
Speaking to the audience during the closing ceremony late on Thursday, El-Sisi announced the list of recommendations that also included holding the forum in the same month every year, adopting decisions of a simulation of the UN Security Council carried out during the forum, forming a cultural and civilisation integration centre to boost ties between world youth, and creating an African youth centre.
The recommendations also include forming an international commission to draw up a strategy to combat illegal immigration, terrorism and illiteracy and creating a regional centre tasked with supporting entrepreneurship and financing micro and small-sized enterprises.
"Our dream - the youth of Egypt, and I am with them is that this forum becomes an effective means of discussion, through which concrete and realistic results are achieved," El-Sisi said.
Earlier on Thursday, El-Sisi said the recommendations agreed upon by youth participants in a day-long simulation of the United Nations General Assembly, which took place as part of the forum will be presented to the international body in New York.
Participants in the Security Council simulation primarily discussed three main threats to international peace and security: terrorism, cybersecurity, and unregulated migration, according to the World Youth Forum's official website.
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Posters in support of Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri, who resigned last week, hang on Beirut's seaside corniche on November 10, 2017, with a caption reading below in Arabic: "#We_are_all_Saad"
Lebanese President Michel Aoun said Sunday that Saad Hariri, who resigned as prime minister in Saudi Arabia last weekend, has been "restricted" in his movements.
He spoke ahead of an interview Hariri is set to give to a Lebanese satellite channel later Sunday from Riyadh, in his first public comments since his shock resignation on November 4.
Since Hariri's departure, rumours have swirled that he is being held against his will in the Saudi capital.
Aoun on Sunday criticised "the obscure circumstances in which Prime Minister Saad Hariri is staying in Riyadh", a presidency statement said.
The situation has "reached the point where Mr Hariri's freedom has been restricted, and conditions have been imposed regarding his residence and the contacts he may have, even with members of his family," the statement said.
"These circumstances mean that any positions he may have taken, that he will take, or that may be attributed to him... are doubtful, and cannot be seen as positions taken on his own initiative," it said.
Aoun has yet to formally accept the resignation of Hariri, who also hold Saudi nationality, and has said he wants to meet him in person to discuss the situation.
After being cautious in his early comments, the Lebanese president has hardened his tone in recent days.
On Saturday, he called on Saudi Arabia to "clarify the reasons that have prevented the return of PM Hariri to Lebanon to be among his people and supporters".
In his announcement last week, Hariri accused Iran and its Lebanese ally Hezbollah of taking over his country and destabilising the broader region, saying he feared for his life.
Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah said on Friday that Hariri was "detained in Saudi Arabia" and "banned from returning to Lebanon".
A poster of Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri, who resigned last week in a televised speech airing from the Saudi capital Riyadh, hangs on the side of a roundabout in the northern Lebanese port city of Tripoli on November 10, 2017
Saad Hariri pledged on Sunday he would return to Lebanon from Saudi Arabia "very soon," in his first television interview since his shock resignation as prime minister eight days ago.
In an exclusive interview from Riyadh with his party's Future TV, Hariri brushed aside rumours that he was under de facto house arrest in Saudi Arabia.
"I am free here. If I want to travel tomorrow, I will," Hariri told journalist Paula Yaacoubian.
"I will return to Lebanon very soon to initiate the necessary constitutional procedures," Hariri said.
Hariri, who also holds Saudi citizenship, stepped down in a televised broadcast from Riyadh on November 4, a move that sent shockwaves throughout Lebanon and the region.
Lebanese President Michel Aoun has yet to formally accept Hariri's resignation and has said he wants to meet him in person to discuss the situation.
Just hours before Hariri's interview on Sunday, Aoun blasted the "obscure circumstances" around the resigned prime minister's stay in Riyadh.
In a statement from his office, Aoun said "Hariri's freedom has been restricted and conditions have been imposed regarding his residence and the contacts he may have, even with members of his family."
In his announcement last week, Hariri accused Iran and its Lebanese ally Hezbollah of taking over his country and destabilising the broader region, saying he feared for his life.
Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah said on Friday that Hariri was "detained in Saudi Arabia" and "banned from returning to Lebanon".
The anti-terrorist strikes came weeks after Somalia's capital Mogadishu was targeted by Al-Qaeda aligned Shabaab militants in October 2017
US forces have carried out three strikes in the past two days in Somalia against both the Al-Qaeda affiliated Shabaab group and Islamic State group jihadists, killing several, the military announced Sunday.
The first operation, launched Saturday at 1330 GMT, took place near Gaduud, about 250 miles (400 kilometers) southwest of the capital Mogadishu, killing one Shabaab militant, according to a US Africa Command (AFRICOM) statement.
"Prior to this strike, US forces observed the al-Shabaab combatant participating in attacks on a US and Somali convoy," the statement said.
Then in the first hour of Sunday, a strike targeted Shabaab fighters in the Lower Shabelle region, 40 miles west of Mogadishu. A second strike, some nine hours later, targeted IS militants in the semi-autonomous region of Puntland in the country's north.
The AFRICOM statement said "several terrorists" were killed.
"US forces will continue to use all authorized and appropriate measures to protect Americans and to disable terrorist threats," wherever they may be found, the statement said.
Earlier this month, the United States struck IS targets in Somalia for the first time, eight months after US President Donald Trump authorized the Pentagon to undertake anti-terrorist operations -- by air or on land -- in support of the fragile Somali government.
Al-Shabaab have been trying since 2007 to overthrow that government, which has the support of the international community.
The group proclaimed its allegiance to Al-Qaeda in 2010, a step formally accepted by Al-Qaeda two years later. However in recent years, some Shabaab members have defected to IS.
In August 2016, the US State Department placed Abdul Qadir Mumin, leader of IS's Somali affiliate, on a list of international terrorists.
The US Geological Survey said the magnitude 7.3 temblor was centred 30 kilometres (19 miles) southwest of Halabja, near Iraq's northeastern border with Iran
A strong earthquake that shook the Iran-Iraq border region on Sunday killed at least 13 people, authorities and state media in the two countries said.
The US Geological Survey said the magnitude 7.3 temblor was centred 30 kilometres (19 miles) southwest of Halabja, near the northeastern border with Iran.
In Iraq, officials said the quake had killed six people in Sulaimaniyah province and injured around 150.
"Four people were killed by the earthquake" in Darbandikhan, the town's mayor Nasseh Moulla Hassan told AFP.
Another two people were killed in Kalar, according to the director of the hospital in the town about 70 kilometres (45 miles) south of Darbandikhan.
Iranian state media reported seven people had died in the quake.
"According to the latest toll, six people were killed in Qasr-e Shirin and one in Azgaleh," Kermanshah province governor Houshang Bazvand told the ISNA news agency.
State television had previously reported six dead in Qasr-e Shirin, close to the Iraqi border, around 40 kilometres southwest of Azgaleh.
Both agencies reported 25 people had been wounded.
The quake struck the mountainous area of Sulaimaniyah province at 9:18 pm (1818 GMT) at a depth of 25 kilometres (15 miles), the monitor said.
It was felt for about 20 seconds in Baghdad, and sometimes for longer in other provinces of Iraq, AFP journalists said.
In the province of Sulaimaniyah, located in Iraq's Kurdistan region, residents ran out onto the streets at the time of the quake and some minor property damage was recorded, an AFP reporter said.
In Iran, ISNA said the earthquake was felt in several cities in the west of the country including Tabriz.
In southeastern Turkey, the earthquake was felt "from Malatya to Van", an AFP correspondent said. In the town of Diyarbakir, residents also left their homes before returning.
The quake took place along a 1,500 kilometre fault line between the Arabia and Eurasia tectonic plates, a belt extending through western Iran and into northeastern Iraq, the US Geological Survey said.
A 5.7 magnitude earthquake near Iran's border with Turkmenistan in May killed two people, injured hundreds and caused widespread damage, state media reported.
The last major earthquake to strike Iran was a 2003 tremor in Bam, in the southeastern province of Kerman, which killed at least 31,000 people and flattened the city.
Speculation has abounded in the US media, but the Pentagon has remained tight-lipped about the circumstances surrounding the ambush as well as the nature of the mission
US investigators on Sunday returned to a village in Niger where four American soldiers were killed in an ambush in October carried out by Islamist militants, the military said.
The news came a day after the Washington Post citing villagers reported that Sgt La David Johnson, one of the four, was found with his arms tied and a gaping wound to the back of the head.
The discovery suggested he was captured and executed.
The investigative team, comprising US and Nigerien officials, "returned to the village of Tongo Tongo, Niger, on Nov. 12 in order to gain a clearer understanding of the Oct. 4 ambush, the attack site and the surrounding environment, United States Africa Command (AFRICOM) said in a statement.
"This mission allowed the investigation team to gather information and determine the facts related to the ambush that killed four US soldiers and four Niger Force Soldiers," it added.
The US had previously said five Nigerien soldiers had died.
But the investigation -- which is being headed by Major General Roger Cloutier, chief of staff to the commander of AFRICOM -- won't publish its findings until January 2018, the Pentagon said last week.
The ambush occurred on October 4 as a unit of 12 American special forces soldiers and 30 Nigerien troops returned from the village that is near the border with Mali, according to US military chief General Joe Dunford.
They were attacked by a group of some 50 fighters affiliated with the Islamic State group and equipped with small arms, grenades and trucks mounted with guns.
French forces sent a Mirage 2000 fighter jet to their aid but it did not bomb the militants for fear of hitting their allied forces.
Speculation about the incident has abounded in the US media, but the Pentagon has remained tight-lipped about the circumstances surrounding the ambush as well as the nature of the mission.
DANANG, Vietnam (AP) - President Donald Trump stood before a summit of Asian leaders keen on regional trade pacts and delivered a roaring "America first" message Friday, denouncing China for unfair trade practices just a day after he had heaped praise on President Xi Jinping in Beijing.
"We are not going to let the United States be taken advantage of anymore," Trump told CEOs on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation conference. "I am always going to put America first, the same way that I expect all of you in this room to put your countries first."
The president - who pulled the United States out of the Pacific Rim trade pact known as the Trans-Pacific Partnership - said the U.S. would no longer join "large agreements that tie our hands, surrender our sovereignty and make meaningful enforcement practically impossible."
Vietnam's President Tran Dai Quang, right, shakes hands with U.S. President Donald Trump at the APEC Economic Leaders' Meeting in Danang, Saturday, Nov. 11, 2017. (Jorge Silva/Pool Photo via AP)
Instead, he said, the U.S. will pursue one-on-one trade deals with other nations that pledge fair and reciprocal trade. The message stood in sharp contrast to the behind-the-scenes negotiations taking place among other countries at the summit on a successor to TPP.
As for China, Trump said he'd spoken "openly and directly" with Xi about the nation's abusive trade practices and "the enormous trade deficits they have produced with the United States."
It was a stark change in tone from the day before, when Trump was Xi's guest of honor during a state visit in Beijing. There, Trump opted for flattering Xi and blaming past U.S. presidents for the trade deficit.
Trump said China's trade surplus, which stood at $223 billion for the first 10 months of the year, was unacceptable. He repeated his language from Thursday, when he said he did "not blame China" or any other country "for taking advantage of the United States on trade."
But Trump added forceful complaints about "the audacious theft of intellectual property," ''massive subsidizing of industries through colossal state-owned enterprises," and American companies being targeted by "state-affiliated actors for economic gain" - without singling China out by name.
U.S. officials have raised similar concerns in the past about China, especially with regard to intellectual property.
On Saturday, Trump attended meetings with leaders of the 21-member APEC countries. Later in the day, he was to fly to Hanoi, the capital, to attend a state banquet before formal meetings Sunday with Vietnam's president and prime minister.
In a major breakthrough, trade ministers from 11 nations remaining in the Trans-Pacific Partnership - representing roughly 13.5 percent of the global economy - said Saturday they had reached a deal to proceed with the free-trade pact after it was thrown into doubt when Trump abandoned it.
Behind the scenes, White House officials quietly negotiated with the Kremlin over whether Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin would hold a formal meeting on the sidelines in Danang, with the Russians raising expectations for such a session.
As speculation built, the two sides tried to craft the framework of a deal that Trump and Putin could announce in a formal bilateral meeting, according to two administration officials not authorized to speak publicly about private discussions.
Though North Korea and the Ukraine had been discussed, the two sides focused on trying to strike an agreement about a path to resolve Syria's civil war once the Islamic State group is defeated, according to officials. But the talks stalled and, just minutes before Air Force One touched down in Vietnam, White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders told reporters that the meeting was off.
When asked about the outcome, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov later snapped at reporters: "Why are you asking me? Ask the Americans."
Putin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that even without a formal meeting, "Both presidents are in town, and their paths will cross one way or another."
That they did Friday night during the summit's welcome gala: The two men, each wearing traditional Vietnamese shifts, shook hands and greeted one another as they stood side-by-side for the group photo of world leaders.
The two men shook hands and spoke briefly again during Saturday's meeting, according to a Fox News videographer who was the only American journalist allowed into the room. Journalists traveling with Trump were not permitted to observe any of the APEC events he participated in.
Trump and Putin were also seen chatting as all leaders walked to an outdoor location for their traditional group photo.
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Follow Colvin on Twitter at http://twitter.com/@colvinj and Lemire at http://twitter.com/@JonLemire
Leaders attend the APEC economic leaders meeting in Danang, Vietnam, Saturday, Nov. 11, 2017. Seen facing camera from left to right: are Peru's President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski; Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte; Russian President Vladimir Putin; Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong; Taiwan representative James Soong; Thailand Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha; U.S. President Donald Trump; Vietnam's President Tran Dai Quang; Australia's Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull; Brunei Sultan Hassanal Bolkiah; Canada Prime Minister Justin Trudeau; Chile's President Michelle Bachelet. (AP Photo/Hau Dinh)
U.S. President Donald Trump speaks on the final day of the APEC CEO Summit on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) leaders' summit in Danang, Vietnam, Friday, Nov. 10, 2017. (Anthony Wallance/Pool Photo via AP)
U.S. President Donald Trump speaks at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) CEO Summit at the Aryana Convention Center, Friday, Nov. 10, 2017, in Danang, Vietnam. Trump is on a five country trip through Asia traveling to Japan, South Korea, China, Vietnam and the Philippines. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)
U.S. President Donald Trump speaks at event to sign a proclamation honoring veterans at the Hyatt Regency Danang Resort in Danang, Vietnam, Friday, Nov. 10, 2017. Trump is in Vietnam to attend the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Summit. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein)
U.S. President Donald Trump speaks at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) CEO Summit at the Aryana Convention Center, Friday, Nov. 10, 2017, in Danang, Vietnam. Trump is on a five country trip through Asia traveling to Japan, South Korea, China, Vietnam and the Philippines. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)
FAIRBORN, Ohio (AP) - An Ohio firefighter-paramedic driving an overdose patient to the hospital needed rescue himself.
Fairborn Fire Department officials say the man wasn't seeing or feeling right Thursday evening, so his partner jumped to the front to stop the ambulance. The partner then administered the overdose-reversing drug naloxone, and drove the firefighter-paramedic and the woman they had been transporting to a Beavercreek hospital, in southwestern Ohio.
Authorities say both recovered . They haven't released their names.
Increased use of powerful synthetic opioids in Ohio and other states has heightened risks for police and firefighters who can be inadvertently contaminated when responding to drug overdoses.
Fairborn Police Capt. Terry Bennington says the woman who overdosed could face charges, depending on the results of police investigation into what caused the firefighter's apparent overdose.
For many evangelicals, fiery Alabama politician and judge Roy Moore has been a longtime hero. Others have sometimes cringed at his heated rhetoric and bellicose style.
Now, as Moore's U.S. Senate campaign is imperiled by allegations of sexual overtures to a 14-year-old girl when he was in his 30s, there's an outpouring of impassioned and soul-searching discussion in evangelical ranks.
"This is one of those excruciating decision moments for evangelicals," Albert Mohler, president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, said in a telephone interview. "These allegations, if true, are devastating. If true, this is a very big deal."
Former Alabama Chief Justice and U.S. Senate candidate Roy Moore speaks at the Vestavia Hills Public library, Saturday, Nov. 11, 2017, in Birmingham, Ala. According to a Thursday, Nov. 9 Washington Post story an Alabama woman said Moore made inappropriate advances and had sexual contact with her when she was 14. Moore has denied the allegations. (AP Photo/Brynn Anderson)
Mohler said Alabama voters face a potentially wrenching task of trying to determine if the allegations - Moore has emphatically denied them - are credible.
According the Pew Research Center, 49 percent of Alabama adults are evangelical Protestants. For some of them, the Moore allegations echo the quandary they faced last year, wrestling over whether to support Donald Trump in the presidential race despite his crude sexual boasts.
The Rev. Robert Franklin, professor of moral leadership at Emory University's Candler School of Theology in Atlanta, said The Washington Post's report about the Moore allegations represents a test of "moral consistency" for evangelicals.
"Evangelicals are steadily losing their moral authority in the larger public square by intensifying their uncritical loyalty to Donald Trump," Franklin wrote in an email. "Since this is Roy Moore and not Donald Trump, I think there may be significant disaffection with him, and increased demands for his removal from the ballot."
As for Moore himself, Franklin suggested there were "classic evangelical remedies" such as confession, prayer and remorse and isolation.
"Election to higher office is not one of them," Franklin wrote.
Although Trump won 80 percent of the white evangelical vote in his presidential victory, his candidacy exposed and hardened rifts among conservative Christians about partisan politics, the personal character of government leaders and the Gospel. Surveys by the Public Religion Research Institute found that the percentage of white evangelicals who said they still trusted the leadership of a politician who commits an immoral act rose from 30 percent in 2011 to 72 percent last year.
Still, a solid minority of conservative Christians adopted the #NeverTrump hashtag on social media and joined those outside of evangelicalism who said "values voters" had lost their values. Women and black evangelicals especially emerged as critics of Trump's remarks about women, immigrants, African-Americans and Muslims. Many of these same critics of Trump's behavior and rhetoric condemned Moore in recent days, and bemoaned the fact that some evangelicals were standing by him.
"Okay, seriously, we elected a man president who bragged about using his power and authority to sexually assault women," tweeted Kyle James Howard, an African-American student at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. "Why are we surprised that members of his party would now be defending a party member's sexual assault of a minor?"
One of the Southern Baptist Convention's leading public policy experts, the Rev. Russell Moore, expressed dismay after the allegations against Judge Moore - no relation - surfaced on Thursday.
"Whether in the hills of Hollywood or the halls of power, it doesn't matter," Rev. Moore tweeted. "This is true: sexual assault and child molestation are evil, unjust, satanic."
Roy Moore embraced controversy as he built his evangelical following. He was twice removed from his post as Alabama's chief justice, once for disobeying a federal court order to remove a Ten Commandments monument from the lobby of the state judicial building, and later for urging probate judges to defy the U.S. Supreme Court decision legalizing gay marriage.
Among those declining to break with Moore in the wake of the sex allegations was Jerry Falwell Jr., president of evangelical Liberty University in Lynchburg, Virginia.
"It comes down to a question of who is more credible in the eyes of the voters - the candidate or the accuser," Falwell told Religion News Service. "And I believe the judge is telling the truth."
Mohler, the seminary president, said many evangelical Alabama voters will find themselves facing a difficult choice when ballots are cast in the Dec. 12 special election.
"There's so much at stake," he said. "Those of us who are pro-life have got to be very concerned about losing even one seat in the U.S. Senate."
The Democratic candidate in the special election, Doug Jones, has said that a decision on whether to have an abortion should generally be left to the woman in question.
Abortion policy also was evoked by Ed Cyzewski, a Kentucky-based seminary graduate and author, in a series of Twitter posts Friday questioning why some of his fellow evangelicals would continue to stand by Moore.
"Right now there are evangelicals who feel trapped," Cyzewski wrote. "They think Moore did something reprehensible, but believe abortion is evil."
Katelyn Beaty, an editor at large with the evangelical magazine Christianity Today, suggested that among many of Moore's evangelical supporters, there's a "presumption of innocence" because of their mistrust of national media such as The Washington Post.
"Many Christian communities have trouble appropriately responding to sex abuse allegations," Beaty wrote in an email. "There is a default trust in powerful, charismatic male leaders, coupled with a discomfort with women who use their story or voice to challenge the status quo or power structures."
However, Beaty said more moderate evangelicals - notably those critical of Trump - were likely dismayed by the allegations against Moore.
"For them, the defense of Moore is another sign that both evangelicalism and the GOP have lost their credibility and their souls in the pursuit of power," she wrote.
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AP Religion Writer Rachel Zoll in New York contributed to this report.
JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP) - An Indonesian visual effects museum that encouraged visitors to take selfies with a waxwork of Hitler against a giant image of the Auschwitz extermination camp has removed the exhibit after protests.
The De Mata Trick Eye Museum's marketing officer said the statue was removed Friday night following an Associated Press story highlighting outrage from Jewish and rights groups.
Human Rights Watch had denounced the exhibit as "sickening" and the Los Angeles-based Simon Wiesenthal Center, which campaigns against Holocaust denial and anti-Semitism, had demanded its immediate removal.
In this Wednesday, Nov. 8, 2017 photo, a visitor uses her mobile phone to take a photo of the wax figure of Adolf Hitler displayed against the backdrop of an image of Nazi Death Camp Auschwitz-Birkenau at De Mata Museum in Yogyakarta, Indonesia. Rights groups have expressed outrage over the display calling it "sickening" and demanded its immediate removal. (AP Photo/Slamet Riyadi)
The museum, which has waxworks of about 80 famous people, had the Hitler figure on display since 2014.
It initially defended the exhibit as "fun" and said it was one of the most popular waxworks with visitors to the infotainment-style museum in the central Java city of Yogyakarta.
On Sunday, the space at the museum occupied by Hitler was empty and the image of Auschwitz, where more than 1 million people were exterminated by the Nazi regime, was gone.
It was not the first time Nazism and its symbols have been normalized or even idealized in Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim nation and home to a tiny Jewish community.
A Nazi-themed cafe in the city of Bandung where waiters wore SS uniforms caused anger abroad for several years until reportedly closing its doors at the beginning of this year.
In 2014, a music video made by Indonesian pop stars as a tribute to presidential candidate Prabowo Subianto stirred outrage with its Nazi overtones.
In this Wednesday, Nov. 8, 2017, photo, a wax figure of Adolf Hitler is displayed against the backdrop of an image of Auschwitz-Birkenau complex of concentration camps, at De Mata Museum in Yogyakarta, Indonesia. Rights groups have expressed outrage over the display calling it "sickening" and that "It mocks the victims who went in and never came out." (AP Photo/Slamet Riyadi)
In this Wednesday, Nov. 8, 2017 photo, visitors sit near the wax figure of Adolf Hitler and Indonesian President Joko Widodo at De Mata Museum in Yogyakarta, Indonesia. Rights groups have expressed outrage over the display calling it "sickening" and demanded its immediate removal. (AP Photo/Slamet Riyadi)
UNIONDALE, N.Y. (AP) - It wasn't the impressive showing he sought. Still, Danny Jacobs was happy to be back in the ring, and to be an easy winner over an outmatched Luis Arias.
Jacobs dominated on Saturday night in a middleweight bout as lopsided as a fight can get.
In his return to the ring since an outstanding performance in a loss to champion Gennady Golovkin in March, Jacobs easily swept the judges' cards, though he often was frustrated by the holding tactics and unorthodox style of Arias. Seeking a knockout in the final rounds, Jacobs punished Arias in the 10th, 11th and 12th, and earned a knockdown that looked more like a slip in the 11th.
"I wanted to impress the fans and put on a good show," Jacobs said. "I hurt him early and once I knew I could hurt him, I got a little more aggressive."
Jacobs, a former world champion and one of New York's most popular fighters, is 33-2 with 29 KOs. He is hopeful of another shot at a title in 2018, though Golovkin will be busy with a rematch with Canelo Alvarez after their draw in September.
Jacobs, who overcame bone cancer earlier in his career and is nicknamed "Miracle Man," held the WBA belt for two years. He remained a force in the division even after his close defeat to Triple G. Next up could be either David Lemieux of Canada or Billy Joe Saunders of England.
"I want to stay active, we have major plans," the 30-year-old Jacobs said. "We are going to invade Canada so they can see my face, and I will call them out later."
Arias, 18-1 of Milwaukee, annoyed Jacobs at times with his style, but Jacobs never was in anything but control.
Most of that aggression came late as Jacobs searched for the shot that would stop Arias. That punch never came, but it didn't matter.
Wearing trunks with the name of his young son, Nate, sewn on the belt, Jacobs entered the ring with a grin, and kept smiling throughout introductions. He was grimacing at points during the fight, but only because of the way Arias was carrying himself.
When Arias attempted to hug Jacobs after the 12th round, Jacobs refused.
"We are in there to hurt each other, but it took me a couple minutes to get it out of my system," Jacobs said.
On the HBO undercard before 6,921 at Nassau Coliseum - the former home of the NHL's Islanders - Long Island welterweight Cletus Seldin battered Mexico's Roberto Ortiz for most of three rounds before a deep cut on Ortiz's right eye and cheek caused a stoppage. Seldin, a Long Islander who has a loud following at the arena, knocked down Ortiz twice in the opening round, using powerful right hands.
Seldin is 21-0 with 17 knockouts as he climbs the welterweight division. Ortiz fell to 35-2-2 and complained that Seldin's elbow opened the cut further in the third round.
Seldin, naturally, disagreed.
"You could see how rough and tough and old school the fight was," Seldin said.
Another local fighter, Jarell Miller of Brooklyn, had little trouble with Poland's Mariusz Wach in a heavyweight bout stopped in the ninth round by the ring doctor. Wach was taking a beating from the undefeated Miller (20-0-1, 18 knockouts), who consistently got inside to land right uppercuts.
Miller was far ahead on the scorecards and could be in line for a title fight next year with either Deontay Wilder or Anthony Joshua. He'll need to show more movement and speed than he did Saturday night for that to be a prosperous venture.
Wach fell to 33-3.
TEHRAN, Iran (AP) - Iran has denied allegations it was behind a militant attack on a pipeline outside Bahrain's capital.
Foreign Ministry spokesman Bahram Ghasemi was quoted by the state-run IRNA news agency Sunday as rejecting the "baseless and fake claims" and "childish finger-pointing" from Bahraini authorities.
Bahrain has been combatting a low-level insurgency since the Sunni monarchy quashed a 2011 Arab Spring uprising led by majority Shiites.
In this photo released by Bahrain News Agency, Sheikh Rashid bin Abdullah Al Khalifa, Bahrain Minister of Interior talks with a member of the emergency services, during his visit to the scene of an explosion, in Bahrain, Saturday, Nov. 11, 2017. Bahrain says an oil pipeline that exploded overnight was attacked by militants in the island nation. (Bahrain News Agency via AP)
Bahrain's interior minister, Sheikh Rashid bin Abdullah Al Khalifa, said Saturday's blast was "the latest example of a terrorist act performed by terrorists in direct contact with and under instruction from Iran."
Gulf tensions have intensified in recent days after Sunni-led Saudi Arabia blamed Shiite Iran for a ballistic missile fired by Yemen's Shiite rebels that was intercepted near Riyadh. Iran has denied any involvement.
MANILA, Philippines (AP) - The Latest on President Donald Trump's visit to Asia (all times local):
3:35 p.m.
President Donald Trump is again thanking the president of the Philippines, Rodrigo Duterte (doo-TEHR'-tay), for hosting world leaders at the annual ASEAN summit.
U.S. President Donald Trump, left, accompanied by Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte, speaks during a bilateral meeting at the ASEAN Summit at the Philippine International Convention Center, Monday, Nov. 13, 2017, in Manila, Philippines. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)
Trump tells the leaders of member nations gathered in Manila that he's "here to advance peace, to promote security and to work with you to achieve a truly free and open Indo-Pacific."
Trump says Duterte provided "incredible hospitality" to the leaders during their visit, including entertainment at a dinner Sunday night that reportedly featured Duterte singing Trump a song.
Trump is also once again touting U.S. economic gains since the election, saying the country has been moving ahead "brilliantly."
After Trump's remarks, Duterte instructed "the media to leave us alone."
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1:25 p.m.
President Donald Trump is ignoring questions about human rights abuses as he meets with the president of the Philippines, Rodrigo Duterte (doo-TEHR'-tay), on the sidelines of an international summit in Manila.
Trump says he and Duterte have "had a great relationship." He's also applauding the Philippines' on their staging of the conference.
Trump says he enjoyed the event's opening dinner and says, "We very much appreciated the great treatment you've given."
Duterte has come under fierce criticism from human rights groups for overseeing a violent drug war complete with extrajudicial killings.
Trump has previously praised Duterte's handling of his nation's drug problems.
Trump did not respond to shouted questions about whether he'd raise the issue. Duterte says their bilateral meeting is not a press conference.
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11:50 a.m.
President Donald Trump says he'll be delivering a "major statement" Wednesday when he's back in Washington to discuss what he's accomplished on his big Asia trip.
Trump says during a meeting with Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and Malcolm Turnbull, the prime minister of Australia that "it will be a very complete statement as to trade, as to North Korea, as to a lot of other things."
He says, "We've made some very big steps with regard to trade_far bigger than anything you know," in addition to business deals forged between U.S. and foreign companies.
"Except us," Turnbull chimed in.
Trump says the three leaders will be talking about North Korea, trade and other subjects.
He says he'll wait to Wednesday to give the reporters traveling with him time to sleep.
Trump will also be having an informal dinner later Monday with Turnbull.
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9:00 a.m. Monday
President Donald Trump is winding down his lengthy Asia trip with trio of meetings with Pacific Rim allies, including his host in the Philippines who is overseeing a bloody drug war.
Trump on Monday attended the opening ceremonies of the Association for Southeast Asian Nations conference in Manila. The event opened with pageantry, including a group photo of the leaders and the summit's traditional handshake. That cross-body shake, during which each leader shakes the opposite hands of those next to him, briefly baffled Trump, who then laughed as he figured out where to place his arms.
One of the leaders on his flank was Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte, who has overseen a bloody drug war that has featured extrajudicial killings. Trump also is scheduled to meet with Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
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4:05 a.m. Monday
A day after being criticized by President Donald Trump, a former CIA director questioned whether Russian President Vladimir Putin was manipulating Trump with flattery during the president's lengthy trip to Asia.
Trump's trip is meant to be centered on trade and North Korea, and on Monday he is set to talk with Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte (doo-TEHR'-tay). But Trump remains dogged by things he has said, and not said, about Russia.
John Brennan said Sunday on CNN's "State of the Union" that Trump is trying to "delegitimize" the U.S. intelligence community's assessment that Russia meddled in the 2016 presidential election to help Trump defeat Democrat Hillary Clinton.
Brennan says Putin is "very clever in terms of playing to Mr. Trump's interest in being flattered." He says it demonstrates that Trump "can be played by foreign leaders."
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12:25 a.m.
President Donald Trump's lengthy Asia trip is winding down as it began, with a visit meant to be centered on trade and North Korea shadowed by questions about Russia.
Trump was in the Philippines on Monday and remains dogged by things he has said, and has not said, about Russia.
On Saturday, he dismissed the former U.S. intelligence officials who said Russia meddled in the 2016 presidential elections as "political hacks."
On Sunday, he tried to have it both ways, saying he believes both the U.S. intelligence agencies when they say Russia meddled and Russian President Vladimir Putin's sincerity in claiming that his country did not.
Former CIA director John Brennan said Sunday on CNN's "State of the Union" that Trump is trying to "delegitimize" the intelligence community's assessment.
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8:10 p.m. Sunday
President Donald Trump is attending a gala in the Philippines celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations.
Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte (doo-TEHR'-tay) greeted Trump and other leaders one by one as they arrived at a convention center in Manila for the glitzy event.
Trump and Duterte shook hands twice and exchanged pleasantries before the leaders posed for a group photo and everyone filed into dinner.
Trump joined his fellow leaders in wearing Philippine formal attire - the Barong Tagalog, or long-sleeved white shirt.
Duterte sat to Trump's left at dinner and they engaged in conversation before the first course was served.
Trump and Duterte will hold more formal talks on Monday
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5:50 p.m.
President Donald Trump has arrived in the Philippines to attend a pair of international summits and close his five-country tour of Asia.
Trump is slated to meet several times with Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte (doo-TEHR'-tay). Duterte has come under intense criticism from human rights advocates for overseeing a violent drug crackdown that includes extrajudicial killings. Trump has previously praised Duterte's handling of his nation's drug problems.
Trump was originally scheduled to depart Manila on Monday but he added a day to the visit so he could more fully participate in one of the summits.
He arrived in Manila on Sunday after a brief stop in Vietnam.
Trump also visited Japan, South Korea and China.
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4:20 p.m.
Questions about Russian meddling in the 2016 election have followed President Donald Trump to Asia.
Trump said during a news conference Sunday in Vietnam that he believes U.S. intelligence agencies, which have concluded Russia interfered in the 2016 U.S. presidential election to help him win.
But Trump also says he believes Russian President Vladimir Putin when Putin claims his country did no such thing.
Trump's comments came shortly before he took off for the Philippines, the final stop of his five-country Asia trip.
Trump is slated to attend a pair of international summits and meet with Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte.
Duterte has come under fierce criticism from human rights groups for overseeing a violent drug war complete with extrajudicial killings.
President Donald Trump, accompanied by Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, left, and Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, right, waves to reporters at a meeting during the ASEAN Summit at the Sofitel Philippine Plaza, Monday, Nov. 13, 2017, in Manila, Philippines. Trump is on a five country trip through Asia traveling to Japan, South Korea, China, Vietnam and the Philippines. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)
CORRECTS ID TO VIETNAMESE PRIME MINISTER NGUYEN XUAN PHUC - U.S. President Donald Trump, center, reacts when he realizes he is incorrectly doing the "ASEAN-way handshake" with Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc, left, and Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte, right, on stage during the opening ceremony at the ASEAN Summit at the Cultural Center of the Philippines, Monday, Nov. 13, 2017, in Manila, Philippines. Trump is on a five-country trip through Asia traveling to Japan, South Korea, China, Vietnam and the Philippines. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)
Back left to right; Russian President Vladimir Putin, and U.S. President Donald Trump, front row left to right; Vietnamese President Tran Dai Quang, and Indonesian President Joko Widodo pose for a photo during the family photo session during the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Summit in Danang, Vietnam, Saturday, Nov. 11, 2017. (AP Photo/Hau Dinh)
President Donald Trump, left, approaches to meet Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte at an ASEAN Summit dinner at the SMX Convention Center, Sunday, Nov. 12, 2017, in Manila, Philippines. Trump is on a five country trip through Asia traveling to Japan, South Korea, China, Vietnam and the Philippines. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)
Protesters hold pictures of U.S. President Donald Trump and Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte while trying to get near the U.S. Embassy in Manila, Philippines to protest against the visit of Trump on Sunday Nov. 12, 2017. Trump offered to mediate in the South China Sea disputes Sunday and his Chinese counterpart played down concerns over Beijing's military buildup and the prospects of war in the contested waters. (AP Photo/Aaron Favila)
President Donald Trump, accompanied by Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, left, and Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, right, speaks to reporters at a meeting during the ASEAN Summit at the Sofitel Philippine Plaza, Monday, Nov. 13, 2017, in Manila, Philippines. Trump is on a five country trip through Asia traveling to Japan, South Korea, China, Vietnam and the Philippines. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)
U.S. President Donald Trump smiles during the ASEAN-U.S. 40th Anniversary Commemorative Summit in Manila, Philippines Monday, Nov. 13, 2017. (AP Photo/Aaron Favila, Pool)
HANOI, Vietnam (AP) - Vietnam gave Chinese President Xi Jinping the red carpet treatment Sunday at the start of a state visit, as the two communist neighbors try to broaden their economic ties and work on resolving territorial disputes in the South China Sea.
Xi and Nguyen Phu Trong, general secretary of the Vietnamese Communist Party, reviewed an honor guard and headed for talks behind closed doors. It was Xi's first overseas trip since consolidating his power at a party congress last month.
Xi and U.S. President Donald Trump, among others, just finished an Asia-Pacific economic summit in the Vietnamese coastal city of Danang.
China's President Xi Jinping waves after attending the inauguration ceremony of Chinese sponsored Vietnam-China Cultural Friendship Palace in Hanoi, Vietnam Sunday, Nov. 12, 2017. (Kham/Pool Photo via AP)
Vietnamese President Tran Dai Quang said that his country wants to end disputes in the South China Sea through peaceful means.
"It's our policy to settle disputes in the East Sea through peaceful negotiations and with respect for diplomatic and legal process in accordance with international law, including the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea," he said, referring to the South China Sea.
Quang made the comments Sunday during a joint news conference with Trump. Trump had offered during a meeting earlier Sunday with Quang to serve as a mediator on the South China Sea disputes.
Vietnam and China, along with four other governments, claim all or parts of the South China Sea, which is believed to sit atop rich natural resources and occupies one of the world's busiest sea lanes.
China in recent years has built artificial islands and increased its militarization there, drawing criticism from Washington, which argues that the U.S. has a national interest in freedom of navigation in sea lanes critical for world trade.
Vietnam has become the most vocal opponent of China's moves after Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte softened his country's stance on China.
Tran Viet Thai of the Vietnam Diplomatic Academy said Xi's visit is important to build mutual trust.
"The visit marks a new step forward in Vietnam-China relations," he said. "Hopefully the relations will continue to stabilize, because the two sides currently share great interests in broadening their cooperation and maintaining stability."
Bilateral relations plunged to their lowest level in years when China in 2014 parked a giant oil rig in an area claimed by Vietnam. The incident sparked deadly anti-China protests for several weeks.
The two communist neighbors have in recent months experienced spats over the South China Sea. In July, Vietnam had to suspend an oil and gas exploration project conducted by Spain's Repsol company, under apparent pressure from China. In September, Vietnam protested live-fire drills by China near the Paracel islands.
China's President Xi Jinping, center, arrives for the inauguration ceremony of Chinese sponsored Vietnam-China Cultural Friendship Palace in Hanoi, Vietnam Sunday, Nov. 12, 2017. (Kham/Pool Photo via AP)
SYDNEY (AP) - Defending champion Sydney FC lost its footing atop Australia's A-League following a 2-0 loss to previously winless Central Coast in the weekend's sixth round.
Central Coast's victory and another to Wellington, which also won for the first time this season, changed the shape of the top half of the competition and left unbeaten Newcastle unexpectedly in first place. Melbourne City had a chance to go top when it faced Western Sydney in the last match of the round Sunday but squandered the opportunity in a 1-1 draw.
Newcastle had previously beaten Adelaide 2-1 to improve its record to four wins and two draws. It leads the league by a point from Sydney FC, which had its first loss after four wins and a draw. Melbourne City also has four wins, a draw and a loss.
Sydney had won eight of nine matches against Central Cost and hadn't lost to the Mariners since 2014 before the teams met Friday. Central Coast led with an 18th-minute goal to Andrew Hoole and clinched the win with a goal to Jake McGing.
Andrija Kaludjerovic scored twice and Roy Krishna assisted on three goals as Wellington thrashed Perth Glory 5-2, knocking Perth back to fifth.
MADRID (AP) - Spanish authorities say a fire broke out on a ferry in the Mediterranean Sea after it left the French port of Marseille, forcing it to make an emergency stop on the Spanish island of Mallorca.
Emergency services on Mallorca say three ferry passengers were taken to a hospital and another 26 people were treated on site for smoke inhalation and minor injuries.
Private news agency Europa Press reports the ferry was heading to Algeria when the fire brought out.
Emergency services say nearly 500 passengers were on board at the time.
ISTANBUL (AP) - Turkey has dismissed as "utterly false, ludicrous and groundless" a report that Turkish officials may have discussed paying millions of dollars to have a U.S.-based Muslim cleric kidnapped.
The Wall Street Journal reported Friday that Special Counsel Robert Mueller was investigating an alleged plot involving former U.S. National Security Adviser Michael Flynn and his son to hand Fethullah Gulen over to Ankara for as much as $15 million.
Turkey blames the cleric and his supporters for a July 2016 military coup attempt that killed 250 people. Gulen, who lives in Pennsylvania, has denied being behind it.
FILE - In this July 2016 file photo, Islamic cleric Fethullah Gulen speaks to members of the media at his compound, in Saylorsburg, Pa. Turkey on Sunday dismissed as "ludicrous and groundless" a report that Turkish officials may have discussed kidnapping Gulen, a U.S.-based Muslim cleric, in exchange for millions of dollars. (AP Photo/Chris Post, File)
The Turkish Embassy in Washington reiterated demands late Saturday for the United States to extradite Gulen so he can stand trial. The embassy in a statement rejected "all allegations that Turkey would resort to means external to the rule of law" to get Gulen back on Turkish soil.
Flynn's lawyers also have disputed the Journal report that Mueller was looking into a meeting where Flynn allegedly discussed a plan that would pay him and his son "to forcibly remove" Gulen.
Flynn, a retired lieutenant general, did lobbying work for Turkey last year.
"Out of respect for the process of the various investigations regarding the 2016 campaign, we have intentionally avoided responding to every rumor or allegation," the lawyers said in a statement.
"But today's news cycle has brought allegations about General Flynn, ranging from kidnapping to bribery, that are so outrageous and prejudicial that we are making an exception to our usual rule: they are false," they said. .
Michael Flynn Jr.'s attorney declined to comment on the allegations.
Gulen has been living in the U.S. for nearly two decades. He is a former ally of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan until their 2013 public falling-out led the government to declare Gulen's network a terror group.
Nearly 50,000 people are behind bars in Turkey and more than 100,000 civil servants have been dismissed from their jobs for alleged links to the cleric's network in the government's crackdown after the failed coup.
Also behind bars in Turkey for alleged links to Gulen is U.S. pastor Andrew Brunson, who has lived in Turkey for over 20 years. Erdogan said in September the U.S. was pressing Turkey to return a "cleric" while refusing to hand over another "cleric."
The Turkish Embassy said the Turkish people find Gulen's continued refuge in the U.S. "perplexing and deeply frustrating."
Complicating relations further is the case of a Turkish-Iranian businessman on trial in the U.S. for evading U.S. sanctions on Iran. A former Turkish economy minister and an executive of a state-owned Turkish bank have also been indicted.
In a meeting last week, Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim and U.S. Vice President Michael Pence discussed the cases among other sources of strain, including the U.S. backing of Syrian Kurdish militants in the war against the Islamic State group.
Turkey has been infuriated by the U.S. support for a group it considers an extension of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party or PKK, which has waged an insurgency within Turkey for more than 30 years.
MIAMI (AP) - Javier Gonzalez has joined a human tide of more than 130,000 U.S. citizens arriving in Florida since Hurricane Maria wrecked Puerto Rico, grateful for a place to start over but resenting how their island has been treated since the disaster.
More than a million Puerto Ricans - about 5 percent of Florida's population - already call the state home, and given the outrage many feel over President Donald Trump's handling of the storm, political observers say this voting bloc could loosen the Republican Party's hold on this battleground state.
Gonzalez, 38, saw the storm destroy the restaurant he opened with his father five years ago. Without power or reliable water, he became violently ill from food poisoning for three weeks. Finally, he packed his bags, determined to make his future in Miami instead.
In this photo taken Wednesday, Nov. 8 2017, Javier Gonzalez talks to a reporter in Hialeah, Fla. Gonzalez has joined the tens of thousands of Puerto Ricans moving to Florida after Hurricane Maria, grateful for a place to start over but not without resentment over how his island was treated in the disaster. (AP Photo/Alan Diaz)
"There is resentment, and we feel abandoned compared to Texas and Florida," Gonzalez said. "We were desperate for help."
Like any Puerto Rican, Gonzalez can vote in all elections now that he's moved to the mainland. He doesn't plan to register for any party, but he follows the news and understands their platforms. He's aware of Trump's tweets.
"It's not right that we've fought from World War I, to Vietnam and Afghanistan and that the first thing the president says is: 'You have a large debt, big problems and have cost us millions,'" Gonzalez added.
Puerto Ricans are not the gift to the Republican Party that the anti-Castro Cuban diaspora has been historically. They've tended to favor Democrats, given their support for public education and social services. Around 70 percent of Florida's non-Cuban Latinos voted for Hillary Clinton.
Both parties are courting the new arrivals to Florida, which Trump won last year by just 112,000 votes out of 9.6 million cast.
"There is an intent to grab those who are coming," said Rep. Robert Asencio, a Democrat of Puerto Rican descent who represents Miami in the Florida House and leads the Miami-Dade Committee for Hurricane Maria Relief.
"A lot of my colleagues say they are not politicizing this, but there is an effort to bring people either to the Democratic or the Republican side," Asencio said.
Newcomers must register by next July 30 to vote in 2018 for a new governor to replace term-limited Republican Gov. Rick Scott and choose Florida's congressional delegation, now 11 Democrats and 16 Republicans. Democratic U.S. Senator Bill Nelson also defends his seat next year, and Scott, who has been applauded for helping evacuees, is expected to challenge him in what could be a close race.
Scott set up three disaster relief centers to help arrivals with driver's licenses, job searches, and disaster aid applications. Scott also asked education officials to waive public school enrollment rules for evacuated islanders, and to give college-bound evacuees the same tuition breaks state residents get.
Asencio calls Scott's actions "damage control," given the multimillionaire governor's close relationship with Trump, who offended Puerto Ricans by tweeting they wanted "everything to be done for them" rather than taking responsibility for their own recovery. They also resent Trump's rating of his own disaster response as a "10 out of 10," blaming his administration for delays that exposed their families to illness and misery.
The island still faces a lengthy and painful recovery after the storm took down the entire electrical grid, leaving hospitals in the dark and closing schools for several weeks. Initial projections that 95 percent of the people will have power restored by year's end now look optimistic.
Maria's evacuees are following waves of people frustrated by Puerto Rico's unemployment and debt crisis who settled in Central Florida, shifting from New York, the favored destination of previous generations. Of the more than 140,000 islanders estimated to have left since the storm, more than 130,000 went to Florida, where Puerto Ricans may soon displace Cubans as the largest Latino group.
State Rep. Rene Plasencia, a Republican from Orlando, predicts that Scott's warm welcome will leave a bigger impression on the newcomers than any Trump tweets.
"For whatever people think of the president, you have to take into consideration the actions of Governor Scott," said Plasencia, whose mother and wife are from Puerto Rico. "People aren't making decisions out of a sequence of tweets ... It makes good news, but it doesn't make political shifts."
Billionaires Charles and David Koch also are involved, funding the Libre Initiative, which welcomed hundreds of evacuees on the first cruise ship to arrive from San Juan.
Cesar Grajales, who lobbies for Libre, says they're helping evacuees learn English and connect with community and business leaders.
Democrats hope Colombian-American Annette Taddeo's recent underdog state Senate victory against a well-funded Republican in South Florida shows her anti-Trump message will keep resonating.
"It is a strong indication that voters are paying attention, and they are angry," said Cristobal Alex, president of the Latino Victory Project. "We wouldn't have the devastation and abandonment of Puerto Rico without Donald Trump. People will look at that."
On the island, Puerto Rico's lack of statehood means they can't vote in general presidential elections, and can only send a non-voting representative to Congress. On the mainland, they'll have more power.
"I know for a fact that we are well educated and we are going to come here to work," Gonzalez said. "And yes, we are going to make a voice. We are going to make a bigger voice than before."
MANILA, Philippines (AP) - Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte has sanctioned a bloody drug war that features extrajudicial killing. He called Barack Obama a "son of a whore." This week, he boasted that he murdered a man with his own hands.
All that went unmentioned in public by President Donald Trump when the leaders held talks Monday in the Philippines.
Reporters saw the beginning of the leaders' bilateral meeting during which Trump praised Duterte's hospitality, the organization of the summit he was hosting and even Manila's weather. Trump said nothing about human rights and both leaders ignored shouted questions about the violent drug crackdown. The two men also shared a laugh in the meeting when Duterte called reporters "spies."
President Donald Trump speaks with Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte at an ASEAN Summit dinner at the SMX Convention Center, Sunday, Nov. 12, 2017, in Manila, Philippines. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)
Later, White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said that the 40-minute meeting focused on ISIS, illegal drugs, and trade. Human rights, she added, briefly came up in the context of the Philippines' fight against illegal drugs. She did not say if Trump was critical of the violence.
That appeared to conflict with the Philippines' version of the meeting. Harry Roque, a spokesman for Duterte, said "there was no mention of human rights. There was no mention of extralegal killings. There was only a rather lengthy discussion of the Philippine war on drugs with President Duterte doing most of the explaining."
Breaking with his presidential predecessors, Trump has largely abandoned publicly pressing foreign leaders on human rights, instead showing a willingness to embrace international strongmen for strategic gain. He has cozied up to autocrats such as Saudi Arabia's King Salman, Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi and Russian President Vladimir Putin. And earlier in this trip to Asia he made no mention of human rights during multiple appearances in Beijing with Chinese President Xi Jinping.
"Trump seems very comfortable with strongmen. It's not just that he won't criticize Duterte. I wouldn't be surprised if he patted him on the back," said Mike Chinoy, senior fellow at U.S.-China Institute at the University of Southern California, before the meeting.
Duterte's war on drugs has alarmed human rights advocates around the world who say it has allowed police officers and vigilantes to ignore due process and to take justice into their own hands. Government officials estimate that well over 3,000 people, mostly drug users and dealers, have died in the ongoing crackdown. Human rights groups believe the victim total is far higher, perhaps closer to 9,000.
"Human rights groups, I think, will be quite disappointed by the visit," said Amy Searight, director of the Southeast Asia Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. "It's unlikely that human rights or rule of law or due process are going to be topics that President Trump will raise."
Duterte has strenuously defended the violence and boasted of participating himself.
Late last year, he bragged that he personally pulled the trigger and killed three people years ago while serving as mayor of Davao City. And last week, while in Vietnam for an international summit, he said he took his first life years earlier.
"When I was a teenager, I had been in and out of jail, rumble here and there," Duterte said during a speech in Danang, where he briefly crossed paths with Trump on the sidelines of an international summit. "At the age of 16, I already killed someone."
He claimed he fatally stabbed the person "just over a look." His spokesman later tried to downplay the comment, saying, "I think it was in jest."
Trump has shown little interest in pressuring Duterte to rein in the violence, instead saluting him during a May phone call.
"I just wanted to congratulate you because I am hearing of the unbelievable job on the drug problem," Trump told Duterte, according to a transcript of the conversation that later leaked. "Many countries have the problem, we have a problem, but what a great job you are doing and I just wanted to call and tell you that."
Trump also criticized Obama during the call, noting that his predecessor "did not understand" the drug problem the Philippines faces. Meanwhile, Duterte was openly critical of Obama in the final year of his presidency, including cursing his name.
White House officials have suggested there is a strategy behind Trump's flattery of Duterte.
Advisers have said that while Trump was always unlikely to publicly chastise the Philippine president, he may offer criticisms behind closed doors. Trump would plan to hold his tongue in public in order not to embarrass Duterte, whom he is urging to help pressure North Korea and fight terrorism, and to avoid pushing him into the arms of China.
"If the administration is not going to care about human rights in China, why would you care in the Philippines?" asked Gordon Chang, Asia expert and author of "Nuclear Showdown: North Korea Takes On the World." He said the "logical thing to do is keep them close and not let Duterte flirt with China. In our struggle with China, we need all the friends when we can get."
Duterte has seemed less committed to the strategic partnership with the U.S. Searight said a good relationship is "vital to the United States given its location on the South China Sea and the enhanced access that the American military has gotten in recent years with the Philippines."
White House aides have suggested that Trump's strategy has worked before, pointing to his interactions with el-Sissi. Trump refrained from chastising the Egyptian leader but quietly worked with him to help engineer the release of American prisoner Aya Hijazi in April.
Trump dismissed the notion that he buddied up to dictators. He said Saturday he has great relationships with all sorts of leaders, "every person in that room today," after leaving a summit in Vietnam attended by Duterte and Putin, among others.
Human rights groups have expressed dismay at Trump's public silence, believing that the spotlight an American president can shine on human rights abuses overseas can rally pressure on an authoritarian regime to change its ways.
"In the old days, we used to call on the U.S. government to raise human rights issues during these trips," said John Sifton, Asia advocacy director at Human Rights Watch. But given the administration's lack of credibility in raising human rights abuses, he said, they have pivoted to a different tack, focusing on international attention.
"We haven't given up," Sifton said.
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Associated Press writer Jill Colvin contributed to this report.
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Follow Lemire on Twitter at http://twitter.com/@JonLemire
President Donald Trump, left, shakes hands with Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte at an ASEAN Summit dinner at the SMX Convention Center, Sunday, Nov. 12, 2017, in Manila, Philippines. Trump is on a five country trip through Asia traveling to Japan, South Korea, China, Vietnam and the Philippines. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)
President Donald Trump toasts Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte, right, at an ASEAN Summit dinner at the SMX Convention Center, Sunday, Nov. 12, 2017, in Manila, Philippines. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)
JERUSALEM (AP) - Israeli officials are giving a lukewarm reaction to an international agreement laying out principles for post-war Syria.
The agreement, announced in a U.S.-Russian statement on Saturday, confirmed the importance of "de-escalation areas" as an interim step toward reducing violence, enforcing cease-fire agreements, facilitating humanitarian aid and setting conditions for the "ultimate political solution" to a war that has claimed hundreds of thousands of lives.
It also affirmed what it said was a U.S.-Russian-Jordanian understanding calling for "the reduction and ultimate elimination, of foreign forces and foreign fighters from the area to ensure a more sustainable peace."
Israel has long complained about the involvement of archenemy Iran, and Iranian proxy Hezbollah, in the Syria war. The Shiite allies have sent forces to back Syrian President Bashar Assad, who appears to be headed toward victory after years of fighting. Israel has said it will not accept a permanent military presence by Iran and its Shiite allies in Syria, especially near the Israeli border.
Israeli Cabinet Minister Tzachi Hanegbi said Sunday that the agreement "does not answer Israel's unequivocal demands that there will be no developments that bring Iranian or Hezbollah forces closer to Israel's border with Syria in the north."
In an earlier interview, Israeli Intelligence Minister Israel Katz told The Associated Press that an international agreement on Syria would be a positive development, but stressed that Israel is not a party to this deal and would defend its interests.
"We have proved that before and we will prove it again in the future," Katz said on Thursday, ahead of the expected agreement.
Israel has largely stayed on the sidelines of the Syrian war, but officials have acknowledged carrying out dozens of airstrikes on suspected weapons shipments to Hezbollah. Israel has said it will not allow Hezbollah to obtain "game changing" weapons, and it has expressed deep concerns that Iran will carve out a "Shiite corridor" providing a land route to ship weapons from Iran to Lebanon.
On Saturday, Israel shot down a Syrian unmanned aircraft that it said tried to infiltrate Israeli airspace from neighboring Syria.
PLAYA DEL CARMEN, Mexico (AP) - Patton Kizzire had a four-shot lead with seven holes remaining, right about the time nerves can surface for a player trying to win his first PGA Tour title.
Kizzire made it look like a walk on the beach.
Never flinching during a 36-hole Sunday with Rickie Fowler, Kizzire saved par with big putts on three holes on the back nine, closed with rounds of 66-67, didn't make a bogey over the final 21 holes and won the rain-plagued OHL Classic at Mayakoba to earn his first trip to the Masters.
Fowler fell too far behind and began his rally too late. Two straight birdies brought him to within one shot going to the 18th at El Camaleon Golf Club, only for Fowler to hit a short iron some 35 feet left of the flag and leave his birdie attempt short.
"I was glad to get it done," Kizzire said. "Rickie made me work hard."
Kizzire began his marathon day by making a 12-foot bogey putt on the first hole of the third round. He began the final round by making a 10-foot par save.
"We could go on and on," he said. "I had a lot of critical saves or birdie putts. That's what you need to win golf tournaments."
He now speaks from experience. The 31-year-old Kizzire, who took a long road to the PGA Tour after leaving Auburn, won in his 62nd career start as he begins his third full season in the big leagues.
He finished at 19-under 265 and the perks were just starting to sink in. Kizzire earns a two-year exemption through the 2019-20 season. He starts next year on Maui for the Sentry Tournament of Championship at Kapalua. He'll be at the Masters in April and the PGA Championship in August.
"I've been thinking about this moment for a long time," he said. "I'm really excited, and it brings a big smile to my face to think about all those things."
Fowler made him work until the very end.
Kizzire's tee shot on the 18th hole came so close to a bunker that he had to stand close to the ball to avoid creating an awkward stance with his feet in the stand, and he hit 8-iron to about 25 feet. After Fowler left his birdie attempt well short, Kizzire rapped his putt within a few inches and tapped in for the winning par.
"We gave it a run, kept Patton honest, but he earned it out there today," Fowler said.
Si Woo Kim tried to get into the mix until a double bogey in the middle of his back nine. He still closed with a 65 to finish third, his best finish since he won The Players Championship in May. Charles Howell III (66) and Martin Piller (65) finished five shots behind. John Oda of UNLV, playing his first PGA Tour event as a pro, closed with a 70 to finish eighth. That gets him into the RSM Classic next week at Sea Island.
Patrick Rodgers began Sunday in a three-way tie for the lead with Kizzire and Fowler, but he started and ended the third round Sunday morning with a double bogey for a 72 that took him out of contention, and he shot 70 in the afternoon to finish nine shots behind.
Kizzire won the tournament with key putts on the back nine, but the tournament turned in his favor at the end of the third round. Fowler had a one-shot lead when he made bogey on the 17th hole and Kizzire made birdie. That two-shot swing gave Kizzire a one-shot lead, and he quickly expanded it in the fourth round.
Kizzire saved par with a 10-foot putt on No. 1 as Fowler made bogey, and then Kizzire birdied the second hole and is lead was already at three shots.
Fowler never got any closer until the final few holes, and by then it was too late.
Fowler, the only player in the top 10 in the world who played anywhere in the world this week, was playing for the first time since the Presidents Cup five weeks ago. With his runner-up finish - the 12th time in his PGA Tour career he has finished second - Fowler goes to No. 7 in the world ahead of Rory McIlroy.
SAO PAULO (AP) - Felipe Massa said his second and final goodbye to home fans in the Brazilian Grand Prix on Sunday with a seventh-place finish that the Williams driver insisted "was just like a victory."
The 36-year-old Massa delivered one of the best starts of the race and finished ahead of long-time rival Fernando Alonso of McLaren.
Massa announced his retirement before the Brazil race in 2016, but was eventually invited back to F1. This time he says his decision to leave is final.
Williams driver Felipe Massa, of Brazil, waves to towards the grand stand at the end of the Brazilian Formula One Grand Prix at the Interlagos race track in Sao Paulo, Brazil, Sunday, Nov. 12, 2017. Massa arrived on the seventh place at his final ever Brazilian Grand Prix, before retiring at the end of the season. (AP Photo/Nelson Antoine)
"I am going to miss you a lot. The thrill I felt today was immense, just like last year. I will never forget today," the Brazilian said after being invited to the podium in a crowded Interlagos track in Sao Paulo.
His 7-year-old son Felipinho was the first to congratulate him after the race, which was won by Sebastian Vettel of Ferrari.
"Daddy, I'm so proud of you... by the way, I loved your start!" Felipinho said on the team's radio. The Brazilian jumped from ninth to sixth and was only overtaken by world champion Lewis Hamilton.
An emotional Massa said he will spend more time with his family after his F1 retirement, but he is likely to join the electric-powered Formula E series in 2018.
Massa's first farewell to Brazilian fans was much less exciting. On the 48th lap of the Brazilian Grand Prix last year he lost control of his Williams and crashed onto the entrance of the pit lane.
A runner-up in the 2008 season, Massa has 11 wins in 269 starts in his F1 career.
Massa currently has 42 points and is 10th in the 2017 standings.
His last race in F1 will be in two weeks in Abu Dhabi.
Massa's retirement means there will be no Brazilian drivers in F1 for the first time since 1969.
Williams driver Felipe Massa, of Brazil, steers his car ahead of Force India driver Esteban Ocon, of France, on the first lap of the Brazilian Formula One Grand Prix at the Interlagos race track in Sao Paulo, Brazil, Sunday, Nov. 12, 2017. (AP Photo/Nelson Antoine)
CODY, Wyo. (AP) - U.S. Marine Corps veteran and Cody resident Bill Buntyn knew he had something special when he purchased an old German banner in 1983 at a military surplus auction in Ohio.
Last month, he had the chance to see just how special.
Buntyn, the former commander of the Cody VFW, traveled to the town of Insheim, Germany in October to personally deliver the banner to the town where it had once hung more than 100 years ago.
The banner once belonged to a worker's party from the area, the Insheim Workers Education Union, and was taken down due to fear of reprisals after World War I around the time of the rise of Adolph Hitler's National Socialists. Exact dates of when the banner, and the party itself, ceased to exist are still buried in history.
Insheim Mayor Martin Baumstark relayed much of the history during an event attended by around 300 residents to welcome the return of the banner and thank Buntyn for the gift.
Buntyn said it was as warm a welcome as he could have imagined.
In the leaders of Insheim, he found people who appreciated history as much as himself, even if the banner hung for a relatively brief period of the town's 1,235-year history.
"It's important to remember our history," he said. "All of it - good and bad."
Buntyn said he could have sold it to a collector in the U.S. for a tidy sum, but he had no doubts about wanting to return it to its rightful owners.
"When I purchased it I knew it'd be sacred to Germany," he told the Cody Enterprise . "I was offered a lot of money by collectors, but I turned them all down."
It was one of many military items he's collected over the years as a lover of history, and as someone committed to preserving it.
The actual trip was the conclusion of a long process undertaken by Buntyn because, he said, of his desire to not let history be forgotten.
Buntyn initially reached out to the communities of Insheim and Herxheim in 1985, at which point a notice was published in the weekly newspaper asking residents to be on the lookout for any information on where the banner had come from.
Nothing came from that, and life moved on in the small German towns and for Buntyn.
Recently Buntyn decided to jump back into the work of identifying the origins of the banner with the help of Bill Thielemann and Petra Hales. Their knowledge of German enabled Buntyn to learn more about the banner.
Buntyn then contacted a member of one of Insheim's historic boards to tell him he'd be delivering the banner during the summer.
Having been diagnosed with cancer, Buntyn said he wanted to make sure he did this while he was still able. After returning, he said while it wasn't always easy, he was glad he went. The residents of Insheim made sure he knew that they were glad as well.
"Ladies and gentleman, for us in Insheim the flag means history and remembrance," said Baumstark, via a translator, to the assembled crowd. "I am convinced with this flag an additional connecting link has been created between our American friends and Insheim."
Buntyn said Baumstark had talked about traveling to the United States soon and visiting Cody in particular.
It's a bond formed over a flag more than 100 years old, which is once again in the care of a small German town with a long history - a history Buntyn is now a part of.
The banner will now be displayed prominently along with other pieces of the town's history.
"I am sure this flag will find an exceptional place in the small historic town hall in Insheim," said attendee Heidi Braun, mayor of nearby town Herxheim.
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Information from: The Cody Enterprise, http://www.codyenterprise.com
The draining of a massive aquifer that underlies portions of eight states in the central U.S. is drying up steams, causing fish to disappear and threatening the livelihood of farmers who rely on it for their crops.
Water levels in the Ogallala aquifer have been dropping for decades as irrigators pump water faster than rainfall can recharge it.
An analysis of federal data found the Ogallala aquifer shrank twice as fast over the past six years compared with the previous 60, The Denver Post reports.
Water levels in the Ogallala aquifer have been dropping for decades as irrigators pump water faster than rainfall can recharge it. Also known as the High Plains Aquifer, the Ogallala underlies 175,000 square miles (453,000 square kilometers), including parts of Colorado, Wyoming Kansas, Nebraska, New Mexico, Oklahoma, South Dakota and Texas.
THE OGALLALA The aquifer lost 10.7 million acre-feet of storage between 2013 and 2015, the U.S. Geological Survey said in a June report. Also known as the High Plains Aquifer, the Ogallala underlies 175,000 square miles (453,000 square kilometers), including parts of Colorado, Wyoming Kansas, Nebraska, New Mexico, Oklahoma, South Dakota and Texas. Advertisement
The drawdown has become so severe that streams are drying at a rate of 6 miles per year and some highly resilient fish are disappearing. In rural areas, farmers and ranchers worry they will no longer have enough water for their livestock and crops as the aquifer is depleted.
The aquifer lost 10.7 million acre-feet of storage between 2013 and 2015, the U.S. Geological Survey said in a June report.
'Now I never know, from one minute to the next, when I turn on a faucet or hydrant, whether there will be water or not,' said Lois Scott, 75, who lives west of Cope, Colorado, north of the frequently bone-dry bed of the Arikaree River.
A 40-foot well her grandfather dug by hand in 1914 gave water until recently, she said, lamenting the loss of lawns where children once frolicked and green pastures for cows.
Scott's now considering a move to Brush, Colorado, and leaving her family's historic homestead farm.
'This will truly become the Great American Desert,' she said.
Also known as the High Plains Aquifer, the Ogallala underlies 175,000 square miles (453,000 square kilometers), including parts of Colorado, Wyoming Kansas, Nebraska, New Mexico, Oklahoma, South Dakota and Texas.
NASA ASTER image of a roughly 557 mi2 area of fields (1443 km2) in Kansas watered from the Ogallala Aquifer with center pivot irrigation systems
That's one of the primary agricultural regions of the U.S., producing $35 billion in crops annually.
Farmers and ranchers have been tapping into the aquifer since the 1930s to boost production and help them get by in times of drought.
This will truly become the Great American Desert
However, overpumping has dried up 358 miles of surface rivers and streams across a 200-square-mile area covering eastern Colorado, western Kansas and Nebraska, according to researchers from Colorado State University and Kansas State University.
If farmers keep pumping water at the current pace, another 177 miles of rivers and streams will be lost before 2060, the researchers determined.
'We have almost completely changed the species of fish that can survive in those streams, compared with what was there historically.
'This is really a catastrophic change,' said Kansas State University conservation biologist Keith Gido, one of the authors of a report on the aquifer published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
If all pumping stopped immediately, it would still take hundreds of years for rain-fed streams and rivers to recharge the aquifer, Gido said.
DETROIT (AP) - Japanese technology conglomerate SoftBank has reached a deal with Uber to invest billions in the ride-hailing giant.
Uber Technologies Inc. confirmed the investment in a statement Sunday without giving details.
But a person briefed on the deal told The Associated Press that SoftBank Group will buy about $1 billion worth of new Uber stock, then will offer to purchase shares from investors and Uber employees with the goal of reaching a 14 percent stake in the company. Uber currently is valued at $68.5 billion, but stock offers will be based on a lower valuation, so it's unknown just how much the total deal multibillion-dollar deal will be worth, said the person, who spoke on condition of anonymity because details were not released.
FILE - In this July 20, 2017, file photo, SoftBank Group Corp. Chief Executive Officer Masayoshi Son, left, speaks during a SoftBank World presentation at a hotel in Tokyo. Japanese technology conglomerate SoftBank has reached a deal with Uber to invest billions in the ride-hailing giant. Uber Technologies Inc. confirmed the investment in a statement Sunday, Nov. 12, without giving details. (AP Photo/Shizuo Kambayashi, File)
Uber's statement said it reached an agreement with a consortium led by SoftBank and Dragoneer Investment Group. The deal is a vote of confidence in the company's potential and "will help fuel our investments in technology and our continued expansion at home and abroad, while strengthening our corporate governance," the statement said.
The move also clears the way for Uber, among the most valuable tech firms in the world, to sell stock to the public. Under the deal, the initial public offering will take place before the end of 2019.
SoftBank in Tokyo declined comment.
Such IPO deals generally take some time to be finalized, as they involve many people.
The long-awaited deal was made public in October but was delayed by a corporate governance and legal dispute between investor Benchmark Capital and ousted CEO Travis Kalanick. Both sides ended their feud on Sunday, clearing the way for the SoftBank investment, the person said.
Kalanick, who controls three of 11 seats on the Uber board, agreed to allow a majority of board members to vote on any future appointments he makes, according to the person. Benchmark agreed to suspend a lawsuit against Kalanick and drop it once Softbank gets through a one-month tender offer period that will start in about two weeks. Benchmark, a major Silicon Valley venture capital firm that was among Uber's early backers, alleged in the lawsuit that Kalanick covered up turmoil and legal threats at Uber.
The deal allows early investors such as Benchmark to sell at least some of their shares at a handsome profit. But there will likely be some wrangling over how much shares are worth in the coming weeks.
___
AP Business Writer Yuri Kageyama in Tokyo contributed to this report.
CANBERRA, Australia (AP) - All Australian senators have three weeks to prove they were not foreign nationals when elected under an agreement the major political parties reached Monday to resolve a deepening citizenship crisis that could upend the government.
Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull's conservative coalition could lose two seats at by-elections next month after government lawmaker John Alexander on Saturday resigned from Parliament because he had likely inherited British citizenship from his English-born father.
Australia is rare if not unique in the world in banning dual nationals from sitting in Parliament. Pressure is growing to reform the 116-year-old constitution amid the growing uncertainty over how many by-elections might result from the current crisis and which party might end up forming government.
Turnbull's conservative Liberal Party and the center-left opposition Labor Party agreed to set a Dec. 1 deadline for senators to provide documented evidence that they are solely Australian citizens. Australian-born lawmakers will have to provide details of their parents and grandparents' dates and countries of birth to demonstrate that they have not inherited a second nationality. Immigrant lawmakers must document steps they have taken to renounce their original nationalities.
The bipartisan support ensures the Senate will endorse that agreement later Monday.
Acting Prime Minister Julie Bishop said she expected the House of Representatives would endorse a similar citizenship registry when it next sits on Nov. 27.
Having lost two seats and its majority in the House due to the citizenship crisis, the government could need the support of a single lawmaker from among the opposition and five independent legislators to get the House's endorsement of such a register.
Turnbull said he would have preferred if the High Court had accepted the government's argument last month that ignorance of a second nationality should be an excuse for breaching a ban on dual citizens that was designed to exclude lawmakers with divided loyalties.
"I didn't seek the decision of the High Court. I would've preferred they took a different approach," Turnbull told reporters in the Philippines where he attended a Pacific Rim leaders summit.
"But what they say is the law and our job now is to comply with it and what we are doing is going through a process that will enable everybody to put all the relevant facts on the line," he added.
Any lawmakers who remain under a cloud after declaring their citizenship status would be referred to the High Court to decide whether they were legally elected. A series of by-elections that could change the government could be scheduled for a single weekend early next year.
Earlier Monday, the government said it would invite the High Court to disqualify at least two opposition lawmakers from Parliament if they did not follow Alexander's example by quitting over questions about whether they renounced British citizenship in time to legally run for election last year.
The minor Greens party had offered to provide the single vote the government would need to get that referral through the House in the face of Labor opposition.
The nine lawmakers who have been scrutinized or referred to the court since July have acknowledged questions about their citizenship needed to be resolved by the court. Most were ruled ineligible.
The citizenship crisis has been blamed for Turnbull's popularity falling in an opinion poll published in The Australian newspaper on Monday.
The High Court last month disqualified Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce because he had inherited the citizenship of his New Zealand father. He immediately renounced his New Zealand citizenship and will contest his seat at a by-election on Dec. 2.
Alexander also plans to renounce any British citizenship and run for his Sydney-based seat on Dec. 16.
The dual citizenship ban was a rare issue until recently, but the High Court last month disqualified five lawmakers, including Joyce, in a rejection of the government's argument that ignorance of an inherited nationality was an acceptable excuse.
Senators are usually replaced from the same party without elections, but most crucial are the fates of lawmakers in the House of Representatives, where parties need a majority to form a government.
Many argue that the dual citizen ban is increasingly inappropriate for a migrant nation where half the population is an immigrant or has an immigrant parent. But changing the constitution requires all registered voters to cast ballots in a referendum, which rarely succeed.
A Nobel peace laureate has called on world leaders to dismiss the idea of just wars.
Mairead Maguire, who was awarded the accolade in 1976 after founding the Peace People campaign during the Northern Ireland Troubles, told a conference in the Vatican that lessons can be learned from the conflict.
We need to throw out the just war theory, a phony piece of morality, she said.
Instead, we can develop a new theology of peace and non-violence and articulate a clear, unambiguous rejection of violence. Religion cannot be used to justify war or armed struggle.
Jody Williams, Mairead Maguire, exec director of @nuclearban Beatrice Fihnand 8 other Nobel Peace laureatesmet with Pope Francis at the Vatican today to discuss nuclear disarmament https://t.co/LWsAMOY6yC pic.twitter.com/lrRBMtF32P Nobel Women (@NobelWomen) November 10, 2017
Ms Maguire, who was to meet Pope Francis after addressing the disarmament conference in Rome, said world leaders have yet to learn the lessons of the US nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
It is an illusion that we are in control and that these weapons give us security, she said.
Ms Maguire, who visited North Korea in 2015 and has appealed for dialogue amid nuclear threats, added: The policy of nuclear weapons show that we have lost our moral compass.
Francis poses with participants in the International symposium on a nuclear weapons free world
It is long overdue that we abolish nuclear weapons and put resources, human and financial, into abolishing poverty and meeting human security as set out in UN development goals.
Ms Maguire praised Pope Francis and said he gave clear moral and spiritual leadership in calling for the abolition of the death penalty and nuclear weapons.
She did not reference US president Donald Trump in her speech, but she said the international community must insist on dialogue and diplomacy to deal with the North Korea issue.
Pope addresses disarmament conference RV https://t.co/W5IhSrdRIW Vatican News (@VaticanNews) November 10, 2017
Ms Maguire said the experience of the Iran nuclear agreement could be replicated.
We can transform the erroneous mindset that violence and threats of violence works, weapons and war can solve our problems. Punitive policies do not bring peace, she said.
Ms Maguire, who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize along with Betty Williams, also said that many policies agreed in the Northern Ireland peace process have not been fully implemented.
Francis
What could have been set up was an independent body charged with the implementation of the (Good Friday) Agreement whose recommendations for resolving disputes would be binding on the parties, she said.
In the absence of this, the Executive is obliged to address every crisis on a case-by-case basis and with no commitment to accepting recommendations to resolve the crisis.
Ms Maguire said the key to progress lies in the community through integrated education, peace education and other initiatives.
At the heart of a peace culture is a recognition that every persons life and their humanity is more important than a persons ethnic inheritance, she said.
Gareth Bales availability for Wales will not be compromised by the latest injury of his Real Madrid career, according to his international manager Chris Coleman.
Bale has not played since September 26 because of a calf problem but he had been stepping up his recovery and a return to action was imminent before his latest setback.
The 28-year-old forward suffered a fibrillar rupture to the adductor muscle of his left leg on Thursday and could be sidelined for a further six weeks.
Gareth Bale
It is another blow to Bales injury-hit Real career with the Welshman having missed 91 of their 250 games since joining from Tottenham in 2013 for a then-world record fee of 85.3million.
FT: France 2-0 Wales
It's all over here in Paris, with @equipedefrance winning thanks to goals from Griezmann and Giroud.#FRAWAL pic.twitter.com/H3GrlSYBOM FA WALES (@FAWales) November 10, 2017
Bale sat out Wales 2-0 friendly defeat to France in Paris on Friday and his availability could become an issue when the Dragons play at the China Cup in March.
It is understood Wales will receive a greater participation fee if their top players make the 12,000-mile round trip to the southern Chinese city of Nanning.
What do the football players from Wales and Czech Republic expect in the upcoming China Cup on March pic.twitter.com/y0ZADemBsC Xinhua Sports (@XHSports) November 9, 2017
But the four-team tournament comes just before the quarter-finals of the Champions League, when Real will expect to be defending the trophy they have won for the last two seasons.
Coleman, however, was adamant over the issue of Bales availability for Wales. He said: Hopefully Gareth gets back before Christmas or just after and weve got two or three months before the China Cup.
We expect all our players if they are fit to play for their club then they are fit to play for us. Thats how we look at it. We never take risks, weve never done that and I dont see that changing in the future. But if hes fit for Madrid, then obviously hes fit for us.
Gareth will be devastated by this but he just needs to be settled again, get his fitness and not rush himself back.
Stuart McInally was not totally satisfied after Scotlands win over Samoa, even though his two tries helped set up Saturdays 44-38 success.
The hooker took full advantage of Ross Fords injury to turn out a man-of-the-match performance with two tries but saw the hosts concede five times in an 11-try thriller at BT Murrayfield.
Scotland were not at their best all afternoon and looked as though they could have been heading for an embarrassing defeat after the Pacific Islanders clawed their way back from 32-10 down.
Stuart McInally was named Scotlands man of the match
It's all over! Scotland secure an epic victory over Samoa. #OurDay pic.twitter.com/gJp518swL1 Scottish Rugby (@Scotlandteam) November 11, 2017
McInally, earning his first cap for more than a year, admitted there was plenty of work to be done before the visit of New Zealand next week.
It was 32-10 when I went off, with a bit of breathing space, he said. But it was a concern how quickly they responded to our tries.
In a way were disappointed, but in a way its probably better than it going perfectly at the beginning.
Ahead of next week we have a lot to work on, well look at our defence and in particular our defence in our 22; they seemed to score a wee bit too easily so were happy, but theres a lot to improve upon.
Your Eden Mill Man of the Match is Stuart McInally! #SCOvSAM pic.twitter.com/JbIHV2vUZm Scottish Rugby (@Scotlandteam) November 11, 2017
He added: It was frustrating that whenever we had the ball and holding onto it, we were either scoring or getting a penalty, and likewise whenever Samoa had it, it was the same story.
The refs are tightening up on the offside laws now and we got pinged for that a few times, so we will need to fix that for next week.
We need to work on looking after the ball, because when we did we did some really good stuff but we were just coughing up the ball a wee bit too easily.
Against a team like Samoa, theyre a really good team with good individuals especially in the back line, which caused us a lot of problems.
MATCH REPORT | Scotland secure their fifth successive home victory as both teams combine to score 11 tries in an epic back and forth tussle.
https://t.co/4YI7zhNub7 pic.twitter.com/3EnioheoeV Scottish Rugby (@Scotlandteam) November 11, 2017
Along with McInallys brace, tries from Stuart Hogg, Alex Dunbar, Pete Horne and Huw Jones made sure it was a winning start on home soil for Gregor Townsend ahead of exciting clashes with the All Blacks and Australia, and McInally is excited about the opportunity to test himself against the worlds best.
He said: They have a lot of really good individuals and play incredibly well as a team.
Their scrum is probably underrated. I think its really good and its something Im really looking forward to; challenging myself against the best team in the world.
If I get selected for that it would rank up there as one of the highest moments (of my career).
Irish Taoiseach Leo Varadkar has said bridges between the north and south of Ireland should be built over the shared suffering of the First World War.
He adopted the words of Irish nationalist MP Willie Redmond, who died in Flanders in 1917, a major in the British Army fighting for the defence of small nations.
Mr Varadkar envisaged a day when the poppy could lay side by side with the Irish shamrock and the lily worn by nationalists to commemorate the Easter Rising.
He became the first Irish premier to wear a shamrock poppy at the Remembrance Sunday ceremony at the war memorial at Enniskillen in Co Fermanagh, where he placed a green laurel wreath.
Thirty years ago 12 people attending the same event lost their lives to an IRA blast.
The Taoiseach said: I am a strong believer that history is something we should understand and remember. History should be our guide, we should never allow it to be our prisoner.
The dream that I have for Ireland is an Ireland in the future where the poppy, the shamrock and the lily can lie side by side.
I think it is good to have those kind of dreams.
Northern Ireland Secretary James Brokenshire, DUP leader Arlene Foster and Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) Chief Constable George Hamilton laid floral wreaths of remembrance at the monument to the fallen.
The Inniskilling Fusiliers based in the town fought on the Gallipoli peninsula in April 1915 and later on the Western Front.
War poet Francis Ledwidge was one of the Inniskillings most famous soldiers. He died at Passchendaele, an Irish nationalist in a British uniform.
Remembrance Sunday
The Taoiseach said: They came from all backgrounds, from the north and from the south, Catholic and Protestant, and fought for different reasons.
Some fought for king and country, others fought for the sovereignty of small nations and for Catholic Belgium.
He quoted Mr Redmond, who wrote home a few days before he died on Flanders Field in 1917.
He said it would be a fine memorial to the men who died if we could, over their graves, build up a bridge between north and south.
Previous taoiseach Enda Kenny made five consecutive visits to Enniskillen on Remembrance Sunday.
An honour to lay a wreath in Enniskillen today in remembrance of all those whose sacrifice allows us to enjoy the freedom and liberty we have today.
Pic courtesy @TrevorLucyPix pic.twitter.com/OTp03drZYX Arlene Foster DBE PC #ProudofNI. (@ArleneFosterUK) November 12, 2017
Mr Varadkar said the names of Irish who died in the First World War were engraved on the wall of the school he attended in Dublin.
Other identities were etched at his mothers home town of Dungarvan, Co Waterford.
He also recalled the innocents who died in the Poppy Day bombing in Enniskillen three decades ago.
In particular, we remember those who answered that atrocity with forgiveness and led the way for so many of us into the future.
Gordon Wilson was the father of 20-year-old-nurse Marie Wilson, who died from injuries she suffered in the blast.
Mr Wilsons response to the attack was to say he would pray for the bombers who took his daughters life.
DUP leader Arlene Foster said she was delighted to see Mr Varadkar.
This has now become a well-established tradition.
The Taoiseach first came on the 25th anniversary of the Enniskillen bomb and I think it is lovely that that continues every year now and has come to be expected from people in Enniskillen.
Britain has offered its full support to Lebanon following the shock resignation of Prime Minister Saad Hariri amid claims he is being held against his will in Saudi Arabia.
The Lebanese prime minister said on Sunday he would return to his country very soon, in his first interview after quitting last week while in Riyadh.
Mr Hariri insisted he was free but said he decided to resign to save the country from imminent danger.
Lebanon fears it is being dragged into growing tensions between Sunni Saudi Arabia and Shia-led Iran.
Tehran backs the Shia Hezbollah group in Lebanon, which has a powerful military wing. It has been claimed Mr Hariri was being held because he failed to confront the organisation.
Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson warned Lebanon should not be used as a tool for proxy conflicts.
Lebanon
He said: I spoke today to foreign minister (Gebran) Bassil on the latest developments in Lebanon. I reiterated to him the United Kingdoms full support for the sovereignty and independence of Lebanon.
Prime Minister Hariri has been a good and trusted partner for the UK, and we hope that he will return to Beirut without further delay, not least in the interests of Lebanons political stability.
We urge all parties with an interest in Lebanon to do all they can to encourage this and to work more broadly to reduce recent tensions.
I reassured the foreign minister that the UK will continue to support the people and institutions of Lebanon at this challenging time.
The Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) is the only legitimate authority within Lebanon and no militia groups or foreign forces should aim to challenge the LAF as the ultimate guarantor of the Lebanese peoples security.
We echo the concerns of the United States and our European partners that Lebanon should not be used as a tool for proxy conflicts and that its independence and integrity should be respected by all parties within the country and beyond.
Mr Hariri, a dual Lebanese-Saudi national, unexpectedly announced he was quitting in a clip broadcast on Saudi TV.
Sainsburys has turned to real customers and employees singing about the joys of the festive season in a change of direction for its latest Christmas campaign.
The supermarkets ad, filmed in black and white, is an extension of its Living Well campaign and celebrates the many ways that Brits live well over the festive season.
Sainsburys, which always waits until after Armistice Day to release its Christmas campaign, has turned away from a series of big budget productions in recent years.
In 2014 it worked with the Royal British Legion for an ad based on Christmas Day 1914 when British and German soldiers laid down their weapons.
That was followed by the well-received 2015 ad featuring childrens book character Mog the Cat which notched up almost 37 million online views.
Last years animated tale about a father who makes it home in time for Christmas featured the voice of British actor and The Late Late Show host James Corden.
This years campaign features a cast of 200 members of the public and three Sainsburys employees singing about living well at Christmas, but does also include cameos from actor Ricky Tomlinson and Kermit the Frog.
Sainsbury's
It was directed by We Are From L.A, the French directing duo behind Pharrell Williams Happy music video.
Sainsburys spokeswoman Laura Boothby said: Living Well has been at the heart of our advertising all year and there is no better time to celebrate that than at Christmas.
There are so many rituals and moments that makes each persons Christmas special, and we wanted to feature as many of these as possible.
The campaign is screening on terrestrial television and across the retailers social channels.
By Steve Holland and Mai Nguyen
HANOI, Nov 12 (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump said on Sunday he was prepared to mediate between claimants to the South China Sea, where five countries contest China's sweeping claims to the busy waterway.
Trump was speaking in Vietnam, which has become the most vocal opponent of China's claims and its construction and militarisation of artificial islands in the sea. About $3-trillion in goods passes through the sea each year.
"If I can help mediate or arbitrate, please let me know," Trump said in comments at a meeting in Hanoi with Vietnam's president, Tran Dai Quang.
Trump acknowledged that China's position on the South China Sea was a problem.
"I'm a very good mediator and arbitrator," he said.
President Quang said Vietnam believed in handling disputes on the South China Sea through peaceful negotiations and on the basis of international laws - which Vietnam says nullify China's claims.
Vietnam has reclaimed land around reefs and islets, but on nowhere near the same scale as China. Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines and Taiwan also have claims in the sea.
Since Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte has grown closer to China, Vietnam has emerged as China's main challenger in the region. In July, China pressured Vietnam to stop oil drilling in a disputed area, taking relations to a low.
Relations have since improved and Chinese President Xi Jinping is visiting Hanoi later on Sunday.
The South China Sea was discussed in Beijing on an earlier leg of Trump's 12-day Asian tour and U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said the United States and China had a frank exchange of views.
The United States has angered China with freedom of navigation patrols close to Chinese-controlled islands.
CODE OF CONDUCT
From Vietnam, Trump left for the Philippines - the last stop on his tour - for a meeting with leaders of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).
In August, the foreign ministers of the Southeast Asian countries and China adopted a negotiating framework for a code of conduct in the South China Sea, although critics see it as a tactic to buy China time to consolidate its power.
The framework seeks to advance a 2002 Declaration of Conduct (DOC) of Parties in the South China Sea, which has mostly been ignored by claimant states, particularly China, which has built seven man-made islands in disputed waters, three of them equipped with runways, surface-to-air missiles and radars.
All parties say the framework is only an outline for how the code will be established and critics raise doubts about how effective the pact will be.
The framework will be endorsed by China and ASEAN members at a summit in Manila on Monday, a diplomat from one of the regional bloc's countries said.
The next step is for ASEAN and China to start formal consultations and negotiations for the actual Code of Conduct, and the earliest that talks on this can start is February 2018, the diplomat said.
Relations between Vietnam and the United States have blossomed in the decades since their war ended in 1975. A recent survey put the favourability of the United States at 84 percent among Vietnamese.
But Vietnam's trade surplus remains an irritant for the Trump administration. At $32 billion last year, it was the sixth largest with the United States, though less than a tenth the size of China's.
"We want to get that straightened out very quickly," Trump said at a meeting with Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc.
Vietnamese and U.S. companies signed memorandums of understanding on gas development and automobiles as well as aircraft engine purchase and support during Trump's visit. The value of the deals was unclear. (Writing by Matthew Tostevin; Editing by Clarence Fernandez)
Colombo University community development project
Students performing for a song
A team of university students of the Faculty of Management & Finance of University of Colombo gifted a renovated Singithi Uyana and a class room turned - library for Yashodara Vidyalaya in Kelaniya on October 25, under a community development project.
The opening ceremony was held in the school premises, with the participation of academic advisor of the Team Flyers - CDP - W.A.S.P. Weerathunga, project coordinator Rajistha De Alwis Senevirathne, the parents and teachers, Kelaniya - Rotary club members and the flyers team.
Dayani Rajasekara, a school teacher, welcomed the audience with a speech and reminded how hard they worked for success and the difficulties they did overcome.They first came to our school, had permission from the former principal and started renovating Singithi Uyana and making the most required reading room. Today is an unforgettable day for our school. Now they have shining new books to read. Today our students are fortunate to have a library, first time ever in their school history. Even though we wanted to do this early, financially we werent stable . she articulated.
I have noticed that some of these university students had lunch in the evening while working here. Some worked even when they were suffering from illnesses. While they were painting the equipment in the playground, all of a sudden it started to rain and all the paint was washed away. They had to paint all over again. Finally, I asked them what was the point of painting in the pouring rain? They said it was okay and will paint again after the rain stops. We also helped them in many ways. They showed a great courage and dedication their goal regardless of obstacles. she reminded how they worked on through thick and thin.
We are feeling very grateful for what they have done to us. True this is a project, but I must say they showed great passion and enthusiasm. Children like you are needed for this country. She thanked them profusely.
Students playing in renovated Singithi Uyana
Pix by Kithsiri de mel
Rashini Prabuddhika, a team member of the Management Faculty clarified how the school appeared when they first visited. A student living close to the school had informed the team about Yashodara Vidyalaya, and as they were willing to help some school in need, they willingly chose the school. The team started their project soon. The hardest part was to raise funds, we even sold pens in buses in faraway cities like Matara, printed tickets, sold achcharu in university, and tried so hard to find sponsors until the Rotary club - Kelaniya and other sponsors offered their helping hand.
Establishing more than a century, Kelaniya Yashodara Vidyalaya has now become a solitary Oasis for differently-abled children. A teacher in the school, B.N.S Perera told us that there are only 48 students in the school now, with four students in the special needs section. The total number of teachers in the school is around six, according to a teacher, Dayani Rajasekara. Being a school located in close proximity to Colombo, the school lacks desks and other materials. Children with different abilities anyway have to have a lot more facilities compared to other schools. They lack the tables for grade 1 and 2, and they were willing if they could have more classroom facilities. While having no facilities at all, many students have passed the Grade 5 scholarship exam.
The group was led by Saroj Rajapaksha. Navodya Fernando was the secretary while the treasurer was Geethan Wanninayaka. The team members are R.P Gomez, K.K.N.H. Kannangara, R.I.S. Nawoda, H.D.S. Niwarthana, H.J.M.C Perera, H.S.U Perera, K.P Rathnasekara, B.K.J.M Rodrigo, K.K.D.B Sachithra, B.H Sandamal, N.P Sanjeewa, S.A.M.A.S.S Senanayaka, R.M Sewwandi, P.M.K.M Somarathna. H.D.N Upekshika, D.I.H Weerasinghe, M.E.I.D Wijesiri
This renovation took place under the community development project of these first-year students, which has been implemented to enhance the soft skills of undergraduate students of Faculty of Management and Finance (FMF) at the University of Colombo. The main objective of this project is to broaden the scope of the interaction of the students with the university community and the general public through planning and implementing a successful project to uplift and support the lives of identified groups in the society.
The flyers team with Advisors and Kelaniya Rotary Club members
Helping Hands Project at work
Over the past five years choir mates Andreas Palbrand and Franz Lundberg Palbrand of Gothenburg Sweden have collected funds through their Fb page Andras&Franz Helping Hands Project to help the children and the differently-abled community of Matara.
Since 2012 Helping Hands has provided financial assistance and equipment to many orphanages in Matara. They have established the Music for Youth (MFY) programme which provides free training on vocals as well as instruments to music-oriented youth. It is Helping hands that has provided all the instruments as well as pays the teachers wages said Conrad Francis Director of the Institute for Development of community Strengths (INDECOS) who assist Andreas and Franz in Matara. The Matara Childrens Center (MCC) was the first institution that Helping Hands assisted financially in 2012. A few days ago over 170 grade ten students were awarded Child Development Scholarships and also provided assistance for disabled persons he added.
We have been able to collect more than ten million rupees during the past five years from friends of our Facebook page Andras & Franz Helping Hands Project said the duo when I met them on the eve of their departure at hotel in Mirissa. Franz and I were members of Oscar Fredriks choir in our home town in Sweden. Franz was born in Kandy, Sri Lanka and adopted by Swedish parents when he was three months old. He is a musician while I work as a cabin crew member of a domestic airline in Sweden said Andreas explaining how Helping Hands was formed.
In 2012 we were contemplating on helping children with HIV in South Africa as Franz was in charge of music at a large concert held for African children and Swedish children in two Swedish cities. It was at this concert we met Dasun, who was working with the Matara Childrens Center which helped us decide to help orphaned children of Matara. We were invited for MCCs fifth anniversary celebration which we were happy to accept. We wanted to give the children something substantial so we went on Facebook and asked our friends for contributions towards these gifts. In less than a month we were able to collect Rs 850,000 which we donated to MCC. That was the start and for the past five years we have been able to collect more money from Swedish donors through our Facebook page. We were lucky to make contact with INDICOS and have been able to channel every cent we receive for deserving welfare projects in Matara. We are very proud to see the achievements of those who have benefited from our projects said Andreas.
Each year we invite our donors to join with us to come to Sri Lanka and join us in distributing their donations said Franz. Last year 32 friends joined us and this year it was a group of 50. I was amazed to see the accomplishments of the children who attend the MFY classes and so were our friends who were generous to fund the project. We hope to be back again next year.
Text and Pix by P D DE SILVA
Fb page of the Helping Hands project
I will have to plant thee, and will
Make thee full of growing.
Shakespeare: Hamlet
"The Bolshevik Revolution was a lagged continuation of the French Revolution: it heralded the emergence of the working class as significant wielders of political power, consequent on its own capture of State power"
That which presently lies in the past, once lay in the future,foreshadowing possibility.
The search for legacy is not a Proustian effort to redeem the past but a forensic exploration of what to forget, in order to revitalise the future. The Bolshevik Revolution, which was heralded with such heady acclaim, lies in ruins today with the rubble of the Berlin Wall. The State, established by the Revolution - The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) - and the system created by the Revolution- Soviet communism - no longer exist. What legacy of the Bolshevik Revolution, then?
The Bolshevik Revolution- led by Lenin- overthrew the Czarist feudal regime. It was a pivotal event in world history which took place a hundred years ago, on 7th October 1917. It was a mutation on the French Revolution which was also an overthrow of the ancient regime of the Royalist Bourbons- another pivotal event of world history which took place on 14 July, 1789 in Paris. The French Revolution symbolized the capture of State power from the Feudals by the newly empowered bourgeoisie and the entrenchment of the capitalist class in State power. After the French Revolution, politics became a lucrative game played by different contending segments of the capitalist class. Scams are not exceptions in capitalist government but an integral part of its governance- a part of its duality- as rice and parippu are an essential part of Sri Lankan cuisine.
The Bolshevik Revolution was a lagged continuation of the French Revolution: it heralded the emergence of the working class as significant wielders of political power, consequent on its own capture of State power. Its concern was to make sure that workers now become entrenched as permanent players in the political power game. The Post-Bolshevik Revolution shifted political focus from being an inter-capitalist jostle, to becoming an intra- political battle of capital and worker, in Sri Lanka symbolised by the Communist Party being a member in one of her bourgeois Cabinets.
"It was argued that since women hold up half the sky, they should be given equality with men. The Soviet Union became the beacon for womens rights and gender equality"
The Bolshevik Revolution was ideologically based on the Marxian model of history, best explained in the Communist Manifesto (1848), co-authored by Marx and Engels. Marxian ideology was a component part of the Whig interpretation of history- Hegel and Nietzche being among its distinguished adherents. In this interpretation, human progress lay in a constant and persistent upward movement towards the light. Its Marxian variant was that it was only social class and economic constraints which could sponsor such action, the history of all hitherto existing societies is the history of class struggles. In
elaborating on this propelling mechanism, Marx upended the Hegelian dialectic of thesis, anti-thesis and synthesis. Action starts with the thesis, which generates an anti-thesis and, eventually, the best of both elements merge into a synthesis. An example of this movement was where feudals (the thesis) would generate its anti thesis- the capitalistic bourgeoisie- who, in its turn, would capture State power.
The evolving movement continues on the same beat but on an elevated track. Capital (now entrenched as the thesis) would create workers (anti-thesis). Empowered capital had its French Revolution, it is not the responsibility of empowered workers to have their Bolshevik Revolution. A combination of the best of these two, would push towards a more humane work relationship and a greater productivity of capital, a win-win situation both for capital and workers. Revolutions will be generated from below and continue their democratic fervency, till they end by reaching the nirvana of communism.
Fifty years had passed since the Communist Manifesto appeared. Like today, post-1850s had lost faith in the political system, lost faith in their leaders, was not sure of its own values or even recognise who they are. There was an abyss- an emptiness- beneath the illusory sense of stability best captured by Dosteovsky in his books Crime and Punishment and Notes from the Underground.
Despite Europe being influx during this post-1850s turbulent period, with bitter strikes and industrial unrest, there was not seen a definitive revolution organised from below, though small, regular insurgent sightings did periodically appear, like Banquos ghost. It was at this time the Lenin, radicalised by reality, reshaped classical Marxism. In his, What is to be done? (1902), he opined that there was no automaticity in revolutions occurring, as Marx had forecast. Lenin argued that revolutions do not descend from heaven, but have to be made to happen when conditions were ripe. It was to be carried out by a professional, revolutionary Communist Party, this Party totally dedicated to The Cause.
The Communist Party must take a vanguard role in educating and making workers aware about their exploitation. Workers must be made to realise the unfair apportionment of the fruits of their labour- by owners of the means of production, distribution and exchange-to excessively reward capital, that is themselves. In this Leninist interpretation, Revolution was not a Marxian democratic event driven from below but an autocratic event, imposed from above.
"The Bolshevik Revolution- led by Lenin- overthrew the Czarist feudal regime. It was a pivotal event in world history which took place a hundred years ago, on 7th October 1917"
In the early 1900s, the most mature working class primed for revolutionary action was in Germany, as Germany was economically, technologically and culturally, the most advanced nation of the time. She also had a tried and tested leader in Rosa Luxembourg, to lead the capture of power. But German revolutionary grasp did not extend to German revolutionary reach. It was not in Germany but in Russia that the Revolution took place. Russia was the most backward of the European countries, economically, technologically and culturally, but contrary to Marxian Dialecticism, it was in this backward country where the revolution first took place. It was like Neanderthals detonating the first atom bomb. How come? Lenin tried to explain this contradiction. Europe was a weakly interlinked economic chain. It was also an assymetric linkage.
The Bolshevik revolution took place at the end of World War1, and like vultures, Europes victorious powers demanded more than their kilogram of pork, similar to demands made on defeated Germany. Trotsky, the foreign minister, had to concede lamely most of the demands, in the Brest-Litovsk treaty. Within the Soviet Union itself, there were insurgencies, White Russians, Cossacks etc. While attempting to build the new society in a bankrupt State, the new rulers had to simultaneously negotiate the end of this cruel and bloody civil war.
As appropriate to a movement that hegemonises humanitarian concerns over capital, the paradigmatic change made by the Bolshevik Revolution was mostly with respect to upgrading the abysmal condition of the Russian human stock at all levels and providing it with long overdue humanitarian solace. Capitalism concentrated on providing and extending legal rights: socialism concentrated on providing and extending humanitarian and social rights. The different treatments of poverty highlight the difference. For capitalism, poverty was an externality to be solved by individuals through hard work: for socialism, poverty was the most pollutant of pollutions, to be solved by collective effort.
In 1920, the Soviet Union was the first country in the world, despite its bankrupt status, to introduce free health care for all its citizens, regardless of their background. This comprehensive health package included medications and operations. This innovation enabled the Soviet Union to claim the moral high ground over capitalist countries placing her at odds with the USA, where even today, the USA does not provide this fundamental right of health care, the limited subsidies provided by Obamacare being under regular threat of substantial restrictions. To the USA, providing health care is not a moral obligation of the State, but an investment to earn profits.
It is interesting that the next country in the world to provide comprehensive free health care, is Sri Lanka (then Ceylon). It is not known whether George E de Silva, the father of the Sri Lankan scheme, studied the Soviet system, but full marks have to be given to him. It is mistakenly claimed that it was in Britain, after World War 11, that the first comprehensive National Health Scheme (NHS), was introduced.
"All education upto the University was provided free. It is not known whether these reforms were inspired by Bolshevik policies on education. Illiteracy was wiped out and Sri Lanka"
Education was another universal humanitarian initiative undertaken by the financially strained Bolshevik government. It has a widely proclaimed- and acclaimed- public policy of the Bolshevik government that good quality education was a right of all children and young people. Czarist Russia was one of the worst feudal countries in the world. Education was provided on payment by Imperial Russia, mostly to the aristocracy and a minuscule slice of the emerging bourgeoisie.
Within a few years of the Revolution, the government- the first initiative in the world- provided free, compulsory, primary and secondary education. In addition, education in universities and technical institutes were made free. The results were startling. In 1900, under the Czars, literacy was less than 30%, under the Bolsheviks, in 1930, it shot up to 75%, and in 1950 it reached the 98% mark which is the maximum possible, since there is a hardy, residual cohort of senior citizens who were averse to education. Like in Health policy, Sri Lanka (then Ceylon), under CWW Kannangara, followed similar humanitarian policies of the Soviet Union. All education upto the University was provided free. It is not known whether these reforms were inspired by Bolshevik policies on education. Here, again, the results were startling. Illiteracy was wiped out and Sri Lanka, with her upgraded human resources, is set on the path to becoming an upper middle income country.
Women, in Imperial Russia, had no rights. They were the most exploited segment of the populace, after serfdom was abolished. After the Bolshevik revolution this changed. It was argued that since women hold up half the sky, they should be given equality with men. The Soviet Union became the beacon for womens rights and gender equality.
Women were recruited to the labour force in droves and were given equal wages for equal work. For the first time, women worked in factories, in production lines and offices. They operated agricultural machinery, joined fishing crews and the police and defence forces. 8th of March was recognised as Womens Day, which subsequently became International Womens Day. Family planning was encouraged, the USSR was the first country in the world to provide paid maternity leave and abortions were provided on demand. The Soviet Union recognised that a woman has sovereignty over her own body. The eastern rite which was the official Christian religion and the sturdiest exploiting supporter of Imperial czars, was dis-established and atheism encouraged.
"Its Marxian variant was that it was only social class and economic constraints which could sponsor such action, the history of all hitherto existing societies is the history of class struggles
The greatest achievement of the Soviet Union was her rapid industrialisation, at a clip unheard of earlier. On an earlier occasion, Peter the Great ventured to do so, but there were no great successes though Russia incurred tremendous human costs. Great economic ventures result in great achievements but the downside human costs are harrowing. The great American drive to go West was through genocide- the wiping out of scores of Red Indian nations. Britain created famines, where, literally tens of millions of forefathers of those living in current India died of starvation, because food was exported elsewhere in British India. Industrialisation in the Soviet Union was carried out with an iron hand, by Stalin (The Man of Steel). He found Russia to be a wooden spoon and left her with the atom bomb.
The massive industrialisation saved the USSR from annihilation by the Nazi Wehrmacht during World War 11. The Russian Grand Army, under the Czars, collapsed in ruins in World War1, because it did not have the industrial infrastructure to sustain the Grand Armys resistance and meet the need for its arms and war material. Not so the USSR Army during World War11. With the years surcease gained by the master stroke of Russian diplomacy, the Ribbentrop-Molotov peace agreement, Stalin was able to push all USSRs heavy industry to East Russia, out of the reach of Germanys Wehrmacht (the Army) and the Luftwaffe (Air Force). Although the Soviet Union suffered a death toll of 22 million in World War11, if Stalin had not developed Soviet Unions heavy industry- at a heavy humanitarian price- the victory of Nazi Germany over the Soviet Union, would have led to the decimation of the total Russian population of 240 million. Hitler had no sympathy for the Untermensch, sub-humans like the Russian Slavs, as the Jews would knew well, of whom 6 million were gassed.Development is not a tea party. It has its extremely harsh side. The Bolshevik Revolution had its pluses and minuses, the pluses far exceeding the minuses. Its reforms, especially on the humanitarian side, inspired people around the world and set precedents for countries to emulate. The Bolshevik Revolution is a legacy to celebrate.
Jolly Somasundram read Modern History at the University of Ceylon, Peradeniya (1956-1960).
n November 15, 2017 the UN Human Rights Councils (UNHRC) Universal Periodic Review will once again be reviewing Sri Lankas human rights record. The major issue it will focus on will be the war crimes allegations against Sri Lankas armed forces and the LTTE.
Other than some extreme nationalists, Sri Lankans in general are not averse to trying those who had committed war crimes. Even the present government is not against charging and trying those accused of war crimes. The problem lies in the composition of the trial judges. A majority of Sri Lankans believe Sri Lankas legal system is capable of trying the case, but large sections of the Tamil community have no faith in local judges trying this particular case.
The UNHCR has called for an international panel of judges to try the case. Government on the other hand insists that imposing an international panel of judges infringes on the sovereignty of the country. And therein lies the problem.
In Sri Lankas case because the country is small, economically weak and dared to stand up in the face of opposition from the US, ex-colonial powers and India, now a US-aligned state which demanded the war be brought to an end through its mediation, it seeks to make the country an example of what happens to those who defy the neo-colonial diktat.
While this charade drags on we hope the human rights (HR )activists both at the UN, international HR organisations like Amnesty, Human rights Watch, etc., take note of the ongoing war crimes committed in Afghanistan, where the US continues to mete out collective punishment on a whole nation for a single crime committed by a single man -- Osama bin Laden, whom it has already killed.
"If the people of this world wait with bated breath, to see whether the persons responsible for the war crimes committed in Afghanistan, Syria, Iraq and Yemen by the US and its allies are brought to justice, perhaps all wars will end, for we would all have died"
US intervention in Afghanistan from 2001 to the present, according to The Cost of War project and published in the Huffington post estimates that the number who have died through indirect war-related causes may be as high as 360,000. The US invasion of Iraq in 2003 has led to some a half million war-related deaths in that country.
A research team from the University of Washington, Johns Hopkins University, Simon Fraser University and Mustansiriya University conducted the work on a volunteer basis using pooled internal resources instead of seeking outside funds. Researchers estimated there were an excess of 405,000 Iraqi deaths attributable to the war through mid-2011.
The US intervention in Syrias civil war has according to the World Report 2017 led to a dire humanitarian crisis, with 6.1 million internally displaced people and 4.8 million seeking refuge abroad, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. By mid-2016, an estimated one million people were living in besieged areas and denied life-saving assistance and humanitarian aid.
The Syrian Network For Human Rights (SNHR) reports a total of 5,381 civilians have been killed from January 2017 to June 2017, including 1,159 children, 742 women and 93 from torture. The US-led wars in Afghanistan, Syria and Iraq also led a mass exodus of refugees attempting to reach Europe by boat and seek asylum there. In 2015 over a million refugees crossed into Europe. More than 2,000 died making the perilous sea crossing.
In the aftermath of the Saudi-led invasion in Yemen, an outbreak of cholera took hold reportedly ten days after Sanas sewer system stopped working in the aftermath of the Saudi-led bombing campaign. UNICEF pins the blame as being the direct consequence of two years of heavy conflict.
Collapsing health, water and sanitation systems have cut off 14.5 million people from regular access to clean water and sanitation. During May, 74,311 suspected cases, including 605 deaths, were reported. By 24 June 2017, UNICEF and WHO estimated the total number of cases in the country since the outbreak began in October had exceeded 200,000, with 1,300 fatalities, and that 5,000 new cases occurring daily.
If the people of this world wait with bated breath, to see whether the persons responsible for the war crimes committed in Afghanistan, Syria, Iraq and Yemen by the US and its allies are brought to justice, perhaps all wars will end, for we would all have died.
Scott Olson/Getty Images(WASHINGTON) -- Three Republican senators who initially backed Alabama Senate candidate Roy Moore have rescinded their endorsements in response to allegations of sexual misconduct.
Sens. Mike Lee of Utah, Steven Daines of Montana, and Bill Cassidy of Louisiana have withdrawn their support. GOP Sen. John McCain of Arizona, meanwhile, has said Moore should "immediately step aside" from the election on Dec. 12, and Bob Corker of Tennessee tweeted Saturday that he had never supported the controversial former judge.
But at least some supporters of Moore in Alabama are standing by him, saying they don't believe the allegations.
I think most conservative Christians are going to vote for him because they believe in him, Nancy Fluker of Wilsonville, Alabama, about 32 miles southeast of Birmingham, told ABC affiliate WBMA-TV in Birmingham. They believe in his reputation. They believe in his record."
Moore, who is running to fill the Alabama Senate seat vacated by Jeff Sessions when he became attorney general, faces allegations first reported by the Washington Post that he engaged in sexual activity with a 14-year-old when he was 32 and pursued other girls when they were between the ages of 16 and 18 and he was in his 30s.
Some political observers in Alabama said they think fallout from the allegations against Moore may depress turnout at the polls and that many Republicans may choose to write in another name rather than vote for the former judge.
"I imagine there are going to be certain people who will not want to vote for the Democrat, but who will not want to vote for [Moore] and I imagine that there will be a write-in," said former Alabama Supreme Court Justice Gorman Houston who ran as a Republican but now considers himself an independent. "A lot of people will write in" candidates, he said.
But in Shelby County, Alabama, on the outskirts of Birmingham, many who spoke to WBMA-TV said they are sticking by Moore.
Nancy Fluker and her husband, Gordon, said they believe Moore's denial of having had a sexual encounter with a 14-year-old when he was 32.
I believe him that he didn't do it, Gordon Fluker said. I think it's something someone waited until an opportune moment to put on the news across the world, to downgrade him.
Similarly, Susan Conn, who owns Main Street Florist in downtown Columbiana, Alabama, told WBMA-TV, she is suspicious of the timing of the allegations.
I just don't see how he could be guilty now and not be guilty in all these other elections in which he ran, Conn said.
Conn said she voted for Moore's Republican rival in the primary runoff, Luther Strange, but will now vote for Moore in the general election.
Him being a Christian, I would hate to know he's guilty of anything like that, said Conn. He really does seem like he does what he thinks he's supposed to do. I just don't believe he's guilty.
Houston, the former Alabama Supreme Court justice, said Moore has a group of loyal supporters who are unlikely to abandon him.
Houston served on the state's high court during a battle over Moore's monument to the Ten Commandments that he placed in the state judicial building in Montgomery.
Moore was elected chief justice of the state Supreme Court in 1999 but was removed in 2003 by the Alabama Court of the Judiciary for willfully and publicly defying a federal court's orders to remove the monument.
Houston said that when he disagreed with Moore about the appropriateness of the monument, he received hate mail from supporters of his fellow judge.
"Just the hate that they had for those of that did not go along with Roy Moore. It was really something," Houston said.
Copyright 2017, ABC Radio. All rights reserved.
RICHMOND Results from Tuesdays statewide elections could be especially important for a few Republican members of Congress in Virginia.
Democrat Ralph Northam, now the governor-elect, carried a majority of votes in the congressional districts of Reps. Barbara Comstock, R-10th, in Northern Virginia and Scott Taylor, R-2nd, in Virginia Beach.
Taylor, a former state lawmaker and Navy SEAL, has represented the 2nd District since his election last year. Northam won it with 51.4 percent Tuesday, receiving 108,336 votes to GOP nominee Ed Gillespies 99,697.
Comstock was elected to the 10th District seat in 2014 and was already a target for Democrats this year in the district that extends from the Northern Virginia suburbs of Fairfax and Loudoun west to Clarke and Frederick counties and the city of Winchester.
Nine Democrats are seeking their partys nomination to challenge Comstock next year. On Tuesday, Northam received 55.6 percent in Comstocks district, with 148,684 votes to Gillespies 115,754.
Republicans now hold seven of Virginias 11 U.S. House seats to Democrats four. Tuesdays election means that a Democratic governor will preside over legislators redrawing of the states U.S. House and legislative districts after the 2020 census.
I will stop the gerrymandering, Northam said at a July debate in Hot Springs. And I will not sign a map unless it is drawn by a nonpartisan redistricting commission.
As for next years midterm elections, Stephen Farnsworth, a political analyst and professor at the University of Mary Washington, said the primary variable going in will be President Donald Trumps performance.
One never knows what happens in a presidential administration, Farnsworth said. President Trumps fortunes might get even worse if theres an economic or international crisis, and they might get much better if hes able to become more successful in policy making.
If youre a Republican right now looking at a competitive congressional election, your best hope is the turn of the next card.
The unpopularity of the Republican president was not lost on Taylor at the Gillespie election night party in Henrico County. He did numerous interviews with reporters there saying the Democratic landslide was a backlash against Trump and his rhetoric.
I dont know how you get around that this was a referendum on the president, Taylor said. The divisive rhetoric from the top contributed to a very high turnout.
Trumps Gallup approval rating in the third quarter of the year was 36.9 percent. His approval rating has been consistently lower than any elected presidents in his first year, according to Gallup.
Tuesdays vote totals are unofficial until they are certified by the State Board of Elections in late November. Until then, results in localities sometimes shift as local electoral boards complete their canvass of the tallies.
For instance, the Virginia Public Access Project noted Saturday that Chesterfield County has posted a swing of 750 votes to Northam in the Southside Precinct. VPAP said that means Northam could become the first Democratic candidate for governor to carry Chesterfield since 1961.
***
The results in Tuesdays governors race also could potentially signify a close race in the 7th congressional district, represented by Trump-backing Rep. Dave Brat, who upended then-House Majority Leader Eric I. Cantor in the Republican primary in 2014 and was easily re-elected in 2016.
Gillespie carried the 7th District with 51.1 percent of the vote, receiving 135,629 votes to Northams 124,987. Gillespies performance this year was on par with Trumps last year in the district, however Northam made gains for Democrats over Hillary Clinton, tightening the Republican margin of victory from 6.5 percentage points to 4.
Sixty percent of Brats district is made of voters from Chesterfield and Henrico counties, where the percentage of support for Republicans has dropped with recent statewide elections. But Farnsworth said Brat is buoyed by Republican strongholds to the north between Hanover County and Fredericksburg.
Those areas arent seeing nearly as much change as Chesterfield over the past four years.
Nonetheless, with an unpopular Republican president in the White House, there will be a serious Democratic effort to unseat Brat next year. Abigail Spanberger, a former CIA officer, and Dan Ward, a former combat Marine, are among Democrats seeking their partys nomination for the seat.
***
Like Taylor, another first-term Republican in Congress is carefully watching the fallout from Tuesday. Rep. Tom Garrett, a former state senator, represents the sprawling 5th District, which extends from the North Carolina border north through Danville and Charlottesville and all the way to Fauquier County. Gillespie carried the district Tuesday with 53.9 percent.
The Cook Political Report currently lists the districts held by Brat, Taylor and Garrett as likely Republican next year. Brats district was downgraded last month from safe Republican.
The report lists Comstocks district as a toss-up.
A three-judge panel imposed Virginias current congressional map in January 2016 after finding that Virginia lawmakers had packed too many additional African-American voters into the 3rd District, represented by Rep. Robert C. Bobby Scott, diluting their influence in adjacent districts.
In redrawing the 3rd District, the judges also tweaked the 2nd. It still is anchored in Virginia Beach, but lost a number of Newport News precincts, while gaining the city of Williamsburg and York and James City counties.
The 2nd has been one of Virginias more competitive congressional districts in recent years. In 2008, Democrat Glenn Nye knocked off Republican Rep. Thelma Drake, as Barack Obama carried Virginia en route to winning the presidential election. Two years later, Republican Scott Rigell ousted Nye after one term.
Rigell chose not to seek re-election in 2016. In the 2nd District Republican primary, Taylor defeated Rep. J. Randy Forbes, R-4th, who had left his own redrawn district in order to run in the 2nd.
Several Central Virginia localities next year will have the biggest insurance premium increases under the Affordable Care Act in the entire country.
The premiums offered on the individual marketplace by the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, will increase across Virginia and in most of the country in 2018, but people in the city of Charlottesville and Albemarle, Fluvanna and Greene counties who are ineligible for subsidies will see premium increases of between 195 percent to 247 percent in 2018, according to federal data. The average increase nationally is 17 percent to 35 percent.
Most people about 70 percent of those on individual plans will see rate increases absorbed by government subsidies, and some may even see lower premiums. The highest increases primarily affect the self-employed who make more than 400 percent of the poverty level or $47,520 for an individual.
The subsidy cliff falls particularly hard on the Charlottesville areas entrepreneurial community, where the 2018 premiums are forcing difficult conversations about money, careers and even moving out of the region.
Ian Dixon logged on to healthcare.gov early in the morning the day after Halloween. Hes received insurance through the Affordable Care Act since the end of 2016, when he quit his 9-5 job to start his own business. Currently, he pays $988 each month to cover himself, his wife and his two young daughters, one of whom has had health complications in the past.
In 2018, that same plan is projected to cost him $3,158 a month, with a high deductible.
Its a real emergency, Dixon said. What Im being asked to pay is more than my mortgage. Its like Im buying a $600,000 house.
Dixon is seeing if he can make his mother an employee of his small business; if she works 30 hours a week for him, he can claim group insurance for both of them at a lower rate.
Insurance premiums that are more than 8 percent of income are considered a hardship, allowing for a waiver to avoid an IRS penalty. Andrew Foss, a software developer in Albemarle, is considering claiming a hardship waiver and going without insurance until he qualifies for Medicare.
Karl Quist, who founded an online price comparison business, PriceBlink, is talking with his wife, who also is an entrepreneur, about which one of them should abandon their startup and look for a full-time employer that offers medical insurance.
Sara Stovall, who works for a small software company, and her self-employed husband rely on the individual marketplace. Initially, when they checked 2018 premiums, they laughed at the number, Stovall said. But then, they began considering their options moving to Richmond, limiting their income in order to qualify for a subsidy or taking a different job that offers insurance.
Its so hard to consider it all, said Stovall, a lifelong Charlottesville resident and a University of Virginia alumna. And its all about to change next year. If we move now, are we supposed to move again next year? Are we all going to be in the same boat, panicking, next year?
***
In the fifth year of the Affordable Care Act, the markets have worked surprisingly well, but thats small comfort to those who now find affordable insurance out of their reach, said industry expert Doug Gray, executive director of the Virginia Association of Health Plans.
For the people without a subsidy, its ridiculous. Its completely unaffordable, he said. It works very well for people who are at 100 [percent] to 400 percent of the poverty line. It doesnt work at all if youre over that.
The problem in Central Virginia, according to Carolyn Engelhard, an associate professor at UVa and director of the Health Policy Program, is that Charlottesville is relatively small and surrounded by rural areas there are not a lot of different options for doctors, clinics or hospitals.
All the things we love about a small college town may disproportionately affect us, she said.
Additionally, Gray said the UVa Medical Center increases costs for everyone else.
The cost of labor and services are more expensive when you have a research hospital nearby, he said.
For people who dont qualify for subsidies, Optima Health individual plans increased at an average of 81.8 percent, according to a September statement from the company.
CEO Michael Dudley said that when Anthem and Aetna decided to withdraw from Virginia markets, Optima tried to determine where in the state it could enter marketplaces.
Optima previously had not covered the Charlottesville area, but since its parent company, Sentara, operates Martha Jefferson Hospital, executives decided they could at least afford some people coverage.
We were between a rock and a hard place, Dudley said, describing factoring in the loss of government cost-sharing reductions and uncertainty in the industry. We decided it was better to come in even if rates were higher, so that 70 percent of people in the area would get coverage, referring to the estimated amount of people who receive subsidies through Obamacare.
Only about a tenth of people in the country buy insurance on the individual marketplace. That number grows smaller, Engelhard said, as individual premiums grow and people decide to either get a job with benefits or exit the market altogether.
***
Enrollment in the individual marketplace closes Dec. 15, and anyone who does not have insurance as an individual or through an employer by Jan. 1 faces the IRS penalty.
There are several stopgap solutions to avoid the high premiums and the penalty, but no one quite knows how they will work.
One option is to buy short-term insurance, which Quist is considering. These types of plans cover an individual for three months at a time, but theyre not compliant with the ACA a person can be declined for pre-existing conditions, and, unlike marketplace plans, benefits are capped, potentially exposing the customer to significant risks.
For me and my family today, were all healthy, so thats not a barrier, but the whole point of health insurance is to not be stuck if you have a catastrophic illness, Quist said.
Quist has been working with a local insurance broker, Lisa Garber, to assess his options. Hes also contacted Optima to get answers about the rate increases, and called his congressmen and senators to complain about the political impact on the health care marketplace.
I should be spending time on my business and not on this, he said. As someone who I feel has done the right thing over the past eight years and paid my premium every month, this system doesnt work anymore.
New Delhi: Adani Transmission is likely to clinch a deal of Rs 13,000-14,000 crore with Reliance Infrastructure to acquire the latter's Mumbai power business much before the January 2018 deadline to mark its foray into power distribution business.
"Adani Transmission and Reliance Infrastructure have almost finalised the deal and the negotiations would not drag till January 15, 2018 deadline for an enterprise value of Rs 13,000 crore to Rs 14,000 crore," an industry source privy to the development said.
The transaction would strengthen Adani Transmission's footprint in the power transmission sector and mark its foray into the distribution space, the Adani group firm had said earlier this month. Reliance Infrastructure (RInfra), on the other hand, wants to pare its debt.
This deal is expected to help the company bring down its standalone debt of Rs 20,000 crore by 60-70 per cent.
Earlier last month, RInfra had entered into a period of exclusivity until January 15, 2018, to discuss the sale of its integrated business of generation, transmission and distribution of power for Mumbai city to Adani Transmission.
RInfra had said, "It intends to utilise the proceeds of the proposed transaction entirely to reduce its debt, and further strengthen its financial position to tap mega growth opportunities in defence and EPC for the infrastructure sector."
Earlier this month, Adani Transmission had completed acquisition of operational transmission assets of WRSS Schemes of RInfra for Rs 1,000 crore.
In effect, its power-wheeling network crossed the 8,500 circuit km mark.
Adani Transmission had acquired operational transmission assets of Western Region Strengthening System Schemes (WRSSS) - B and C of RInfra.
New Delhi: Regulator Trai is firm on going ahead with the consultation process, including open house forum, on spectrum auction, effectively turning down the industry's demand for putting off the discussion for the time being.
Chairman of the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai), R S Sharma told PTI that the regulator is "duty-bound" to respond to matters referred to it by the government for recommendations, in this case on spectrum auction for various bands, pricing and other modalities.
Established operators like Bharti Airtel and Idea Cellular argue that there can be no case for holding spectrum auctions or even a consultation process in the prevailing scenario where the industry - locked in a tariff war - has been bruised by falling revenues and high levies.
"There is no question of scrapping...," Sharma said when asked if the regulator will agree to the operators' demand not to go ahead with the consultation process at this point.
"Obviously, we will go ahead with an open house discussion... we will complete the open house and give recommendations to the government... as required by them," he said.
Sharma further said there was nothing wrong in holding a consultation process to understand the views of various stakeholders as it underscored transparency.
"It (not allowing consultation) is like saying don't speak up... that is not correct... We are just consulting stakeholders, what is wrong with that" he quipped.
In its written submission to the Trai consultation paper on spectrum auction, Bharti Airtel has said an "opportune" time for holding the sale of airwaves would be the end of 2018-19.
Airtel has also contended that the consultation process on auction and pricing of spectrum should be initiated between September and December 2018, when operators are better placed to assess their future needs.
Idea, too, has said timing for the consultation is "inappropriate" and that there is no business case for acquisition of any more spectrum, considering the current industry scenario of "below cost pricing" and "hyper competition".
Newcomer Reliance Jio, however, said the auction schedule may be drawn up at the discretion of the regulator and the government, but that long-term visibility is imperative for advanced planning to be undertaken by telcos.
Jio has further suggested that the telecom department should provide a forward-looking timeframe for availability of spectrum for the next 10 years across multiple bands.
FPIs had pulled out more than Rs 24,000 crore in the past two months (August and September). (Photo: PTI)
New Delhi: Foreign investors have pumped ina staggering USD 1.5 billion in the Indian equity markets this month so far, propelled by the government's Rs 2.11 lakh crore bank recapitalisation plan.
This follows a net inflow of over Rs 3,000 crore in stock markets last month. Prior to that, FPIs had pulled out more than Rs 24,000 crore in the past two months (August and September).
According to depository data, foreign portfolio investors (FPIs) infused a net sum of Rs 9,710 crore (USD 1.5 billion) in equities during November 1-10. However, they pulled out Rs 780 crore from the debt market during the period under review.
The investment by FPIs started after the government's announcement of recapitalisation of public sector banks and over Rs 6 lakh crore outlay for road development, Vidya Bala, head of mutual fund research at FundsIndia.com said.
"The trend reversed (outflow) as they pumped money immediately after the announcement. Recapitalisation of banks and infrastructure spending are viewed by FPIs as providing a fresh lease of life for economy and markets," she added.
Finance Minister Arun Jaitley on October 24 announced the PSU bank recapitalisation programme of Rs 2.11 lakh crore, out of which Rs 1.35 lakh crore will come from recap bonds, and the rest from markets and budgetary support.
Furthermore, India moving up in the World Bank ranking of 'ease of doing business' also buttressed positive sentiment, said Himanshu Srivastava, Senior Analyst Manager Research at Morningstar India.
Additionally, slight improvement in global sentiment and stable currency could have also turned the tide in India's favour, he added. Going forward, FPI flows may sustain as second quarter earnings are progressing well, Sharekhan Head Advisory Hemang Jani said.
New Delhi: Veteran lyricist Javed Akhtar said Saturday that politicians, who think they are bigger than the nation, are wrong and should know that they do not build the nation, but people of the country do.
The 72-year-old lyricist was speaking at Sahitya Aaj Tak, where he said that some people have misinterpreted the definition of nationalism.
"The interpretation of nationalism for some people is quite strange. They think that they are the nation. If you oppose them, then you become anti-national.
"These politicians are like the harvesting crop. They change when the crop changes. They don't stay here for eternity. Nation is larger than a political party and a politician. Any politician who thinks that he is the nation, then he is wrong," Akhtar said.
Akhtar, who had last year criticised Union Minister V K Singh for proposing to rename Akbar Road in Lutyens Delhi to Maharana Pratap Road, said the country has produced many great leaders and Mughal emperor Akbar was one of them.
"This country has produced many great leaders and if you make a list of them, then without Akbar that list is incomplete," said Akhtar.
"That man was a huge personality with a vision nobody can match. About 400 years back when Europe had not even heard the word secularism. But here was a man in this country, who was not only secular, but also understood the philosophy and theory of secularism. He was working on it," he added.
Akhtar also said that a secular Muslim, like Akbar, is always abused by the fundamentalists and by people from other religions.
"It is saddening that a secular Muslim is always abused by fundamentalist people and the people from the other side.
"This is a very sorry state of affairs that any Muslim is not considered an Indian. Tipu Sultan is not an Indian and if I do not agree to this thought, then I become anti-national. Then I am an anti-national," he declared.
He said that Akbar was an Indian as he was born here and died contributing to the wealth of the country.
Vijayawada: Prevention is better than a cure for pneumonia, say doctors, who attended a conference on Saturday conducted by the IAP (The Indian Academy of Paediatrics) on the occasion of World Pneumonia Day. They suggested that mothers breastfeeding for up to six months and vaccinations were better solutions to control the scourge of pneumonia.
Experts from the AP State chapter of the Indian Academy of Pediatrics stress the importance of preventing pneumonia, one of the leading causes of death amongst children under 5 years of age in the country. The experts fully endorsed the Indian governments decision to include PCV (pneumococcal conjugate vaccine) in the countrys UIP (Universal Immunization Programme) as they believe it will be of great help in India. Dr. Chalasani Mallikarjuna Rao, Secretary, IAP Andhra Pradesh, said Pneumonia should not be allowed to take as many lives as it does, because we now have vaccines that can help protect millions of children from this life-threatening disease.
More than 140 countries in the world have introduced the PCV (pneumococcal conjugate vaccine) in their immunisation programmes. India recently made this decision and it will definitely help us achieve our goal of 90 per cent immunisation coverage by the year 2018. The streptococcus pneumoniae bacteria that causes pneumococcal pneumonia is responsible for about one-third of all pneumonia deaths, globally and in India.
According to a study published in 2015, there were an estimated 5,64,200 cases of pneumococcal pneumonia in children under the age of 5 in India, with 23,000 in Andhra Pradesh. Although death of those under the age of 5 has reduced significantly since 2011, we still have the unfortunate tag of having the largest number of deaths in 2016 when compared to any other country worldwide.
Now, with the inclusion of the pneumococcal conjugate vaccine in Indias UIP, we hope we can change this and come close to meeting the Sustainable Development Goal of reducing the under-5 mortality in India, said Dr. Y Guru Prasad, President, IAP, Andhra Pradesh. Under the UIP, the pneumococcal conjugate vaccine has been introduced to cover approximately 21 lakh children in the first year, in select states, with the support of GAVI (Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunisation).
In recent years, the IAP has focused on ways to educate parents about the disease, increase community awareness of healthy practices and reduce its risk and empower community health workers to recognize and report possible cases of pneumonia. Dr. Anil Kumar, Treasurer, IAP, and Dr. Venkateswara Rao, previous President, IAP, also presented their observations, and gameplan to control pneumon
Ahead of Ivanka Trumps arrival in Hyderabad to attend the Global Entrepreneurship Summit, the local administration has launched a campaign to make the city streets beggar-free. With hundreds of foreign delegates coming to Hyderabad for the summit, the Telangana Government wants to create a world-class impression of the town. However, this order would remain in force for two months.
While many have welcomed the move, the question is why does the authority wake up only ahead of an important international event? We are still living in an age of colonialism and white supremacy. I dont think they would have done it if it an African minister were visiting the city, says producer-director Elahe Hiptoola.
She adds, For us, it is far more important to impress the other person that what the citizens of this country go through. I feel that the government should initiate programmes to rehabilitate the beggars and provide them some kind of training which would help them live better lives. But it makes no sense taking the beggars off the streets for two months just to impress a foreigner. In fact, the authorities have been busy mending the roads and beautifying the areas Ivanka might cross. I think these initiatives should be taken up every time there is a need to repair the roads or a pavement after all the citizens do pay for these basic amenities, comments Elahe. Co-convener of INTACHs Hyderabad chapter, Anuradha Reddy feels that the issue of beggars is way deeper that what meets the eye. One has to look at the larger picture of why we have so many beggars on the streets before simply pushing them aside for a specific period of time to beautify the city.
It is the socio-economic situation of these people that lead them to live such lives. Putting on some lipstick and make-up will help hide the wrinkles of our faces from the world for some time; however, that certainly cannot be a long-term solution. Among those who feel that the order is extremely cruel, is activist Anju Khemani. I dont think such steps should be taken at all, whether or not a celebrity is coming to the city. We are talking about living things; we cant sweep them off like this! I dont say that there should be rehabilitation programmes, but to hide them like this is so inhumane, she opines.
Anandan, 23, hailing from Brahmakulam, was out on bail in the 2013 murder case. (Photo: ANI)
Thrissur: Political murder has returned to the state after a lull with the killing of an RSS worker near Nemini Balaraman temple near Guruvayur on Sunday noon. He was identified as Vadaketherikathu Anandan, 26, second accused in the murder of DYFI leader and student, Kunnamkorathu Fazil of Brahmakulam, in 2013.
Three assailants came in a white Swift car registered in the name of Shahis, brother of Fazil, knocked down the bullet bike driven by Anandan, attacked him with machetes and fled the place.
Anandan, who was hacked on his neck, was rushed to Rajah Hospital, but his life could not be saved. Vishun Chand Mohan, a friend of the deceased, suffered leg injuries in the attack.
Anandan, a truck driver, had come out on bail four months after he was arrested in the Fazil murder case. He is survived by his mother and a brother. His body was kept at Thrissur Medical College.
Guruvayur police are on the lookout for Fazil's brother Shahis and two of his friends who are the main suspects in the case. Fazil was murdered on November 4, 2013 by RSS men for damaging the flex boards erected for Astamironihi celebrations in Brahamakulam.
The BJP has called a hartal in Guruvayur and Manalur Assembly segments on Monday. A large posse of policemen was posted at Guruvyaur, Nemini and nearby areas.
BJP president Amit Shah condemned the killing of Anand. In a tweet on Sunday he said that Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan must explain what his govt is doing to curb criminal elements in his rank.
Shocker for police
The murder came as a shocker for the police as the state-level meet of Seva Bharathi of RSS was going on in Guruvayur.
Anandan's friends say that he had told them about a white Swift car following him for the past few days in the locality.
Guruvyaur police said that they had not received any complaints from the victim regarding stalking.
BJP state president Kummanam Rajashekharan blamed the CPM for the murder and said the incident was proof that the CPM could not give up revenge politics.
Guntur: AP minister for social welfare N. Ananda Babu praised Moulana Abul Kalam Azad saying he was instrumental in providing good education in India by becoming the first education minister. The 129th birth anniversary of Azad was celebrated at Guntur on Saturday. Speaking on the occasion he asked the public, mainly the minorities to get educated which would aid development. He claimed that Telugu Desam is working for the welfare and development of minorities and released welfare schemes.
In a separate programme organised by Muslim Hakkula Porata Samithi at SC Corporation hall, AP Food Corporation chairman J.R. Pushparaj praised Azad as a patriot who kept India united. He said that Azad emphasised on the importance of education to the public by starting educational institutions. Guntur Zilla Parishad chairperson S.K. Johny Moon stated that the education system and policy proposed by Azad swiftly developed India after independence. YSR Congress state secretary Gulam Rasool, Congress leader S. Rohit and others were present.
New Delhi: Senior Congress leader and former Finance Minister P Chidambaram on Sunday once again teared into the Centre over its demonetisation drive, citing it was a "colossal mistake," and that corruption thrived despite its implementation.
The former finance minister took to Twitter and posted a series of tweets that said: "A year after demonetisation, every justification trotted out for that decision has been rebutted and ridiculed. Let me begin with the justification that was disarmingly simple and had gained considerable traction: ending the counterfeiting of currency."
"One year later we are told that out of the Rs 15, 28,000 crore (by value, of demonetised currency notes) that was returned to the RBI, there was only Rs 41 crore, by value, of fake currency! Hence, demonetisation was not the answer to fake Indian currency notes (FICN). The same could be said about the other two objectives declared by the Prime Minister on November 8, 2016: ending corruption and eliminating black money."
"Despite demonetisation, corruption thrives. Bribe givers and bribe takers are being caught regularly, often red-handed. As far as black money is concerned, income that is taxable is generated every day, a portion of that income escapes tax and is used for various purposes - such as giving bribes, funding elections, paying capitation fees, betting, hiring casual labour etc. Demonetisation was a thoughtless and rash decision that turned out to be a colossal mistake and imposed a huge cost in terms of denting economic growth and heaping misery on millions of ordinary people," he added.
He concluded his Twitter tirade with a scathing attack at the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led Central Government that said: "No elected government in a democracy has the right to inflict unbearable hardship and misery upon the people. In one of his works, Hippocrates said, 'Do no harm'."
1. A year after demonetisation, every justification trotted out for that decision has been rebutted and ridiculed. P. Chidambaram (@PChidambaram_IN) November 12, 2017
2. Let me begin with the justification that was disarmingly simple and had gained considerable traction: ending the counterfeiting of currency. P. Chidambaram (@PChidambaram_IN) November 12, 2017
3. One year later we are told that out of the Rs 15,28,000 crore (by value, of demonetised currency notes) that was returned to the RBI, there was only Rs 41 crore, by value, of fake currency! P. Chidambaram (@PChidambaram_IN) November 12, 2017
4. Hence, demonetisation was not the answer to fake Indian currency notes (FICN). P. Chidambaram (@PChidambaram_IN) November 12, 2017
5. The same could be said about the other two objectives declared by the Prime Minister on November 8, 2016: ending corruption and eliminating black money. P. Chidambaram (@PChidambaram_IN) November 12, 2017
6. Despite demonetisation, corruption thrives. Bribe givers and bribe takers are being caught regularly, often red-handed. P. Chidambaram (@PChidambaram_IN) November 12, 2017
7. As far as black money is concerned, income that is taxable is generated every day, a portion of that income escapes tax and is used for various purposes such as giving bribes, funding elections, paying capitation fees, betting, hiring casual labour etc. P. Chidambaram (@PChidambaram_IN) November 12, 2017
8. Demonetisation was a thoughtless and rash decision that turned out to be a colossal mistake and imposed a huge cost in terms of denting economic growth and heaping misery on millions of ordinary people. P. Chidambaram (@PChidambaram_IN) November 12, 2017
9. No elected government in a democracy has the right to inflict unbearable hardship and misery upon the people. In one of his works, Hippocrates said, Do no harm. P. Chidambaram (@PChidambaram_IN) November 12, 2017
Ever since the inception of the demonetisation drive last year, the BJP and the Congress-led Opposition have been facing off over the viability of the move in the nation.
While the Opposition observed 'Black Day' on the one-year anniversary of the move, the BJP celebrated it as 'Anti-Black Money Day'.
Bengaluru: Karnataka Home Minister Ramalinga Reddy on Saturday said that the Special Investigation Team (SIT) of Karnataka Police had identified the persons involved in the murder of journalist-activist Gauri Lankesh, who was shot dead outside her home on September 5.
The SIT is within striking distance of those involved in the murder and the results of the investigation will be evident later this month, Karnataka Home Minister Ramalinga Reddy said, reported The Indian Express.
Unlike in the murder cases of (Narendra) Dabholkar and (Govind) Pansare (in Maharashtra), the SIT has definite clues and knows the identities of the people behind the murder of Gauri Lankesh. Their identities will be revealed this month, said Reddy.
The Indian Express reported that its sources in the SIT confirmed that they had made a breakthrough in the case by identifying its key components and also the individuals involved in it, the report added.
Four people have been identified and technical data is awaited, which will further clear all doubts.
Lankesh's brutal murder was captured on the CCTV outside her home.
During investigation, the SIT found that her killers researched the surroundings of her home not only on the day of the murder, but also a few weeks prior to it, the report added.
#WATCH CCTV footage of one of the suspects in #GauriLankesh case. Police say, he was conducting recce before the murder. pic.twitter.com/6jfNJjMO5e ANI (@ANI) October 14, 2017
In a major turn of events, last months, the SIT had released the sketches of suspects who may have been involved in the killing.
The SIT is of the view that the killers belonged to another state, who later returned post-murder, the report added. Whether the killers were provided with local assistance in Bengaluru is being investigated.
In spite of carrying out an extensive survey of the illegal arms racket in the region, with the help of police in Vijayapura district of Karnataka, the SIT has not yet found a lead in identifying the source of the 7.65 mm country-made pistol and ammunition used to kill Lankesh.
A key finding by the SIT has been the forensic evidence that the 7.65 mm country-made gun used to kill Lankesh was the one, which was used to kill Kannada scholar M M Kalburgi in Dharwad on August 30, 2015.
This has further led to the theory that both of them were killed by the same set of people.
The foundation partnered with state-run Hindustan Latex Limited (HLL), which makes a special brand of condoms for them.
Bengaluru: In a country, where taboo comes free of cost and condom use is limited to just five per cent of the contraceptive market, Indians ordered 10 lakh in just 69 days since the opening of Free Condom Store.
An online store, which was launched on April 28 by the AIDS Healthcare Foundation delivered over 9.56 lakh condoms for free, a TOI report read.
Researched data shows, out of the total, 5.14 lakh condoms were requested by communities and NGOs, while the remaining (4.41 lakh) were ordered by individuals. Demand from individuals was highest in Delhi and Karnataka.
The foundation partnered with state-run Hindustan Latex Limited (HLL), which makes a special brand of condoms for them.
The foundation's India programme director, Dr V Sam Prasad said that they were surprised with the response.
"We thought the stock of 10 lakh condoms would suffice until December but we ran out by the first week of July. We have ordered another 20 lakh which we will receive in the last week of November and orders for another 50 lakh have been placed for January," he said.
The report further adds that experts say, the huge response received online might be because of the fact that most Indians shy away or are embarrassed of walking into a store and asking for a condom since it is a product linked to 'sex'.
"That the delivery person does not know what's in the package, and those who take the order don't see the person placing the order does away with the awkwardness otherwise associated with the purchase or taking it from a volunteer," one expert says.
The contraceptive industry too agrees that stigma is still an issue in India.
"The sexual wellness category faces different challenges in different cultures. A developed market like UK has condom category penetration of 30 per cent while in India that number is only 5 per cent. The biggest challenge in India is the taboo around sex, which presents a barrier to creating awareness or even physical access," a spokesperson from Reckitt Benckiser, makers of Durex, said.
Multiple firms have been rebranding and redesigning condom packages. They have also launched innovative campaigns to spread awareness, the report added.
The Centre and various state governments also have schemes to promote condom use.
It is the cheapest way to plan a family and the only one that also protects people from sexually transmitted diseases (STD).
Yet, the latest National Family Health Survey shows only 5.6 per cent of those surveyed, used condoms for birth control. Even in a developing state like Karnataka, only 1.7 per cent use condoms. The number is 3.6 per cent in Bengaluru, which poorly compares will Kolkata (19 per cent) or Delhi (10 per cent)
On the positive side, the National AIDS Control Organisation (NACO) data shows increase in condom usage among sex workers and other high-risk groups, but the organisation observes that there is still a long way to go.
Karnataka High Court has banned the use of mobile phone by staff during office hours. (Photo: ANI | Twitter)
Bengaluru: Karnataka High Court has banned the use of mobile phone by staff during office hours.
A circular issued by acting Chief Justice H G Ramesh on October 30 says that use of mobile phones for personal purpose "has resulted in wastage of precious working time, and has also caused disturbance and distraction to other staff members."
The Chief Justice also warned of serious repercussions for any lapse or disobedience of the order.
The 129th birth anniversary of Dr Abul Kalam Azad was observed by the state government at the Osmania College in Kurnool on Saturday. (Photo: DC)
KURNOOL: Deputy Chief Minister K.E. Krishna Murthy hailed Dr Abul Kalam Azad as a visionary educationist, asking everyone, especially thel Muslims to take him as an inspiration. This will help in attaining 100 per cent literacy which would be a great tribute to the national leader who played a significant role in the countrys freedom struggle, the minister concluded.
Participating in a state-level event on the occasion of Kalams 129th birthday anniversary organised by the Andhra Pradesh government at the Osmania College in Kurnool on Saturday, he said that the National Education Day is celebrated in India on November 11 to commemorate the birth anniversary of the national leader Maulana Abul Kalam Azad.
He said that National Education Day is observed to raise the quality of education given to students across the country. The day also recalls the contributions of Azad in laying the foundations of the education system in an independent India. Tourism minister Bhuma Akhila Priya said that Muslims have been given high priority by the Naidu government. As a gesture, the Dulhan scheme raissed the marriage gift amount from Rs 25,000 to Rs 50,000, she added. She asked Muslim women to make use of the different schemes initiated by the Naidu government for the welfare of the community.
She said that Rs 1.45 crore has been distributed to 291 women in Kurnool under Dulhan scheme on Saturday. District-in-charge minister Kaluva Srinivasulu, MLA S.V. Mohan Reddy, Urdu Academy Chairman Dr Nauman and Kurnool MP Butta Renuka participated in the programme.
The city has lived through the experience of communication systems going down when Cyclone Hudhud struck and the rescue work got delayed. (Representational Image)
Visakhapatnam: To ensure that communication links remain uninterrupted during disasters, the Greater Visakhapatnam Smart City Corporation Limited (GVSCCL) has invited tenders for laying of underground MPLS link a data-carrying technique for high-performance telecommunications networks. The interested parties would have to start providing the service in the next three months. In the event of a disaster, the most important requirement is to keep communication lines intact so that all the stakeholders can coordinate and help could reach out to the affected people.
This apart, developing a Smart City, especially in coastal areas like Vizag, with an investment of crores of rupees becomes meaningless if the disaster management cell or the Command and Control Centre (CCC) is not set up properly. The proposed network will connect components of the CCC, which is being set up for effective surveillance, monitoring and coordination especially during disasters. The Centre will improve the response time, coordination among agencies and work for faster restoration of services post-disaster.
The link will connect smart urban infrastructures such as smart poles, CCTV cameras, public address systems (PAS), emergency call boxes (ECB), data centres, variable message boards, bus stops, intelligent transport and secondary Command & Communications Centre and also integrate utility systems. According to GVSCCL, 500 CCTV cameras at 80 locations, 50 smart poles, ECB, PAS, signals and other communication centres will be connected to the network. The last date for bid submission is November 25.
The city has lived through the experience of communication systems going down when Cyclone Hudhud struck and the rescue work got delayed. The Command and Control Centre which serves as a disaster management Centre is capable of communicating with other city systems such as early warning systems, emergency response forces, utilities (energy, water and sewage SCADA systems), transportation, city surveillance, citizen engagement platform.
Chief Minister Edappadi K Palaniswami addresses a press conference after reviewing monsoon preparedness with senior ministers and officials at the Secretariat. Deputy chief minister O. Panneerselvam and Chief Secretary Girija Vaidyanathan are also seen. (Photo: DC)
Chennai: To rejuvenate Kosasthalaiyar river and prevent flooding due to choking of drainages, the Tamil Nadu government on Saturday announced that it was planning to construct drains across the catchment areas of the river by spending a whopping Rs 1,887 crore.
Chief Minister Edappadi K. Palaniswami said the project, which will be executed with financial assistance from the Japan International Cooperation Agency (Jica), is being planned as part of the efforts to prevent flooding in Chennai and surrounding areas.
A detailed project report (DPR) is being prepared to develop permanent drains across the catchment areas of Kosasthalaiyar river with the assistance of Jica at an estimated cost of Rs 1,887 crore. Likewise, the government is also preparing DPR for building drains in Kovalam area at a cost of Rs 1,234 crore, Palaniswami told reporters here on Saturday.
While speaking to reporters about the recent rains, Palaniswami said rampant urbanization has meant little space for rainwater to drain by itself resulting in water logging in several low-lying areas. These buildings have not come now, but have existed for long and drainages have been designed to drain rain water up to 4 cm. Not just in Chennai, but across the globe, if there is excess rain, the rain water would drain through the roads and hence low-lying areas get flooded, he said.
He said late J. Jayalalithaa had granted Rs 1,101 crore to construct stormwater drain for a length of 386 km. Work on 300 km has been completed and work on the remaining 86 km is also on the full swing, Palaniswami said.
Ensure no waterlogging in low-lying areas: CM to officials
With Met department and weather bloggers predicting more northeast monsoon rains in the coming weeks, Chief Minister Edappadi K. Palaniswami on Saturday reviewed monsoon preparedness and instructed officials to ensure that waterlogging is prevented in all low-lying areas across the city by taking necessary precautions.
Palaniswami also said the state government has sent a detailed report to the Union government about the damages caused to city's infrastructure due to last week's rains and expressed optimism that the Narendra Modi-led dispensation would be generous in allotting funds for augmentation of civic infrastructure to prevent water logging. The Chief Minister had briefed Prime Minister Narendra Modi about the damages on Monday last when the latter was in the city.
Briefing journalists after the review meeting with deputy chief minister O. Panneerselvam, senior ministers and top officials, Palaniswami said the government had pressed into service almost all ministers and senior officials across the city and its suburbs after the last week's rain and restored normalcy within just a day.
We discussed ways to react during the northeast monsoon seasons and I have advised and directed officials to ensure that water is removed from low-lying areas across the city almost immediately after the rains. Amma's Government ensured that water does not get stagnated in low-lying areas due to its alertness last week, Palaniswami told reporters at Fort St George, the secretariat.
The Tamil Nadu Government has appointed senior IAS officers as nodal officers for each district to oversee monsoon preparedness and ensure that relief reaches the affected almost immediately. The state government has also kept ready 115 cyclone relief centres to house people moved from low-lying areas across the state.
To a specific question that the government allotted funds for desilting of lakes in Chennai and neighbouring districts only after the rains had begun, the chief minister dismissed it saying the government had allotted funds for such purposes well in advance. Everyone knows that rain water was pumped out from almost all areas immediately and as far as Chennai city is concerned, ministers and officials joined the relief work in all 15 zones of the metropolis and worked to end sufferings of the common man, the chief minister said.
Noting that more than 75 per cent of rains that Tamil Nadu gets during the three-month long monsoon have been received in just five days, Palaniswami asserted that the government was able to save water in water bodies due to its earlier decision of desilting them.
The chief minister also said the damage due to rains would be assessed only after the monsoon drifts away from Tamil Nadu in December end.
Anandan, 23, hailing from Brahmakulam, was out on bail in the 2013 murder case. (Photo: ANI)
Guruvayur: A RSS worker was hacked to death, allegedly by CPI(M) workers at Nenmeni in the temple town Sunday afternoon, police said.
The victim, Anandan, 23, was riding a motorcycle when he was attacked allegedly by the CPI(M) workers, who were in a car. Though he was rushed to hospital, his life could not be saved, police said.
BJP state president Kummanam Rajasekharan alleged that the CPI(M) was behind the attack. #LeftistTerror bloodshed continues in Kerala. BJP Karyakartha Anand murdered brutally in Guruvayur, Thrissur. Communist terror surging in the state with Jungle Raj In Kerala to aid, he tweeted.
#LeftistTerror bloodshed continues in Kerala.BJP Karyakartha Anand murdered brutally in Guruvayur, Thrissur.Communist terror surging in the state with #JungleRajInKerala to aid. pic.twitter.com/yuOGTz4SZT KummanamRajasekharan (@Kummanam) November 12, 2017
Anandan, hailing from Brahmakulam, was an accused in a case relating to the murder of a CPI(M) worker in 2013. He was out on bail.
BJP has alleged that as many as 120 BJP workers, 84 in Kannur alone, have been killed in Kerala since 2001. It has claimed that 14 of these killings have taken place since Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan took over the reins of the government last year.
The CPI(M) has in turn, accused BJP and RSS of resorting to violence and denied the involvement of its government and leadership in political killings.
The Class 11 student accused of killing Pradyuman Thakur at Ryan International School also searched online for various types of poisons. (Photo: PTI/File)
Gurgaon: The Class 11 student, accused in the murder of seven-year-old Pradyuman Thakur, at Ryan International School searched online for various types of poisons and methods of usage before carrying out the crime.
The teen also looked up for methods to remove fingerprints from knife, Hindustan Times quoted its sources as saying.
The information came to light when the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) checked the browsing details on his mobile phone and laptop.
"Investigators suspect that after killing the student by slitting his throat, the accused deliberately threw the weapon, a knife which he procured a day before the murder from Sohna, in the commode of the toilet where the incident took place on September 8," a CBI source told HT.
However, the CBI refused to divulge further information due to the sensitivity of the case.
Since the investigation is at a very sensitive stage, we would not like to offer any comment at this stage on any aspect of the probe, said CBI spokesman Abhishek Dayal.
Earlier on Saturday, the apprehended teenager was taken by the CBI to the school to recreate the crime scene.
The team asked the teenager to explain the events that took on the morning of September 8, when Pradyuman, a class 2 student, was found dead in the toilet of the school, they said.
The CBI team took various measurements and recorded time needed to commit the crime as part of a corroborative exercise. It said the drill was meant to ascertain the claims of the accused.
The CBI officials also used a dummy in the form of a soft toy to ask him how he killed Pradyuman.
A Gurgaon juvenile court on Saturday sent the boy to Faridabad observation home till November 22.
(With inputs from PTI)
Hyderabad: Students of Gowtham Model School staged a protest against the school authorities for conducting classes from 6.30 am to 7.30 pm. The students alleged that classes and tuitions are taking a toll on their health. The students staged the protest and assembled in front of the school on Saturday.
Once we reach home we are asked to go for tuition by our parents. By the time we get back from there it is late in the night. Then again the next day, we have to get up by 5.30 am to reach the school at 6.30 am. We hardly get time to sleep, said a secondary class student of Gowtham Model School in Chaitanyapuri.
When contacted, Mr Narasimharaju, principal of the school, said, We are conducting classes from 7.30 am to 6.30 pm. We allot 30 mi-nute break from 12.45 pm. We make them do the homework within the school timings. Conducting classes for such long hours is a clear violation of the rules, said HSPA joint secretary.
The infant was taken inside after police warned the owner, indicating that situation could have been averted, on part of the parent. (Photo: ANI)
Mumbai: Another video capturing Saturday's incident of a car being towed while a woman was breastfeeding her baby inside it, has surfaced Sunday, turning the whole argument over the incident on its head.
On Saturday, a video went viral on social media that showed a car being towed away in Mumbai's Malad West, while a woman was breastfeeding her seven-month-old baby inside it.
Also read: Video: Mumbai Police tows car with woman breastfeeding child inside
The internet came out at large to slam the Mumbai Traffic Police for their insensitivity.
However, the recent video shot on a mobile phone shows that the seven-month-old baby was not inside the car but in the arms of another family member when the Mumbai Traffic Police warned to tow it away. The infant was taken inside, thereafter, indicating that situation could have been averted, on part of the parent.
The footage contradicts with the account of the woman named Jyoti Male, who told ANI that the policemen did not even ask her to get down before towing the car, even when she told them that she was breastfeeding.
Earlier in the day, National Commission for Women (NCW) chairperson Rekha Sharma said a strict action should be taken against the policeman, but added if the woman acted irresponsibly, a case should be registered against her as well.
"When I saw the video last night, my first reaction was that the police personnel should be suspended and an action should be taken against him. But I read in the morning that the mother kept sitting inside the moving car. Our first concern is that of the child. If the case goes against the lady, then the lady should be booked," Rekha Sharma told ANI.
Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis had also condemned the incident and had told ANI: "It is very unfortunate and absolutely insensitive and dangerous to tow the vehicle with lady and the child inside. The cop is suspended and orders have been given to sensitise traffic cops so as to prevent such incidents."
Bengaluru: A second PU student committed suicide by hanging herself at her residence in Annasandrapalya in Vinayaka Layout on Saturday night.
The deceased has been identified as Marlin Diana (17), daughter of a bus driver with a reputed transportation company.
According to police, Marlin was pursuing second PUC at a college in Indira Nagar. On Saturday at around 10 pm, Marlin as usual ate her dinner and went to her room. A few minutes after she entered her room, she hanged herself from the ceiling.
However, Marlin's parents noticed it within seconds of she hung herself and rushed her to a hospital. But she succumbed on Sunday afternoon.
According to police, the reason for Marlin's suicide was not yet to be ascertained. However, her parents said that she was under stress for the past few days and was keeping quiet. A case has been registered at the HAL police station.
Hyderabad: The National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS) has been lying in the doldrums in Telangana state because the dues of the worker-beneficiaries have not been paid for the past three months.
The Centre, which funds part of the scheme that guarantees 100 days of paid work to every rural family that asks for it, owes Rs 250 crore in NREGS funds to Telangana. The government is thus unable to pay the workers. The Centre also owes another Rs 500 crore towards the material component.
Minister for panchayat raj, Jupally Krishna Rao, met Union rural development secretary Amarjit Sinha in New Delhi and requested him to release the funds.
The delay has been impacting the scheme. The payment of wages is getting delayed leading to resentment among workers, said Mr Rao.
Mr Sinha apparently told Mr Rao that the ministry would release arrears of Rs 200 crore soon in the first phase and the rest will be cleared by December.
Telangana has spent Rs 150 crore more than the Centre has released so far, Mr Rao said. Last year, workers in TS availed of 10.60 crore work days, four crore more than the Centre had sanctioned. This year, TS has sought an additional four crore work days.
The mangled remains of the car that was involved in an accident near Cathedral road on Sunday (Photo: DC)
Chennai: A 32-year-old auto driver was killed and at least five others suffered injuries after a speeding sedan driven by an inebriated college student rammed into parked auto rickshaws on Cathedral road during the early hours of Sunday. Five college students were travelling in the car.
Of them, two, including the driver, K. Naveeth Ahmed, were drunk, police said.
The incident happened around 1.30 am, police said. The quintet- K. Naveeth Ahmed (20), R. Vishal Rajkumar, 19, N. Hari Krishnan, 21, P. Vinoth, 20 and R. Kiran Kumar (20) had checked into a hotel in MRC Nagar.
After a few drinks they set out to the beach when the accident happened, police investigations revealed.
Except for Kiran Kumar, who is a 1st year BBA student at MGR University, the others are students of Loyola College.
Naveeth lost control of the car a Chevrolet Cruze (TN 18 AR 9999) and rammed into the auto rickshaws before coming to a halt on hitting an electric junction box.
A passerby, who witnessed the incident, alerted the police and helped move the injured auto drivers to a hospital where one of them, Rajesh, was declared brought dead.
The other auto drivers - Babu (42), Mohan (41), Perumal (38), Balan (40) and Pandavan (38) - were treated for their injuries. All the auto drivers are from Arakkon am, 80 km from the City and used to sleep in the vehicle overnight after their duty hours.
Personnel from the Adyar Traffic Investigation wing detained the occupants of the car and sent them to a hospital for medical tests and for treatment of their injuries. City police said that the student who drove the car, Naveeth would be booked under section 304 (II) (culpable homicide not amounting to murder) and 308 (attempt to commit culpable homicide) of IPC and drunk driving among other sections. Cases would be booked against the other four students travelling in the car too, police said.
Bereaved family members of the deceased auto driver expressed anguish at the Government Royapettah Hospital. He would usually sleep at Purasawalkam. Only for the past few days, he parked his vehicle on Cathedral road and this happened, Sampath, father-in-law of the deceased auto driver, said.
Sunday's accident took place on the same stretch on which an auto driver was killed in September last year when a Porsche car driven by professional racer Vikas Anand, driving under the influence, rammed into the vehicles.
Chennai: Uncovering a major exam scam at the Institute of Distance Education, the University of Madras has withheld the results of over 500 candidates from Tamil Nadu who wrote exams from the centres outside the state.
An inquiry by the university has revealed that students were given blank answer sheets by agents to write answers. To clear the exam they fixed Rs 15,000 per paper. Some touts who had joined hands with study centres from Mumbai, Hyderabad, Mysore and Mallapam in Kerala had been running this racket for several years. But for some complaints from disgruntled students the scam would not have come out.
A few months ago the university had received unanimous letters levelling allegations that candidates from Chennai were writing exams in Mumbai to clear their arrears. The letters also alleged that candidates were paying money to agents and that some staff members were also involved in the racket.
Following the letters, officials from Controller of Examinations verified the answer sheets of December 2016 exam. Why candidates from Chennai or Tiruvallur have to go to all the way to Mumbai to write their exams? was a troubling question that prompted the officials to start a full-fledged inquiry.
Some answer sheets had extraordinarily beautiful handwriting with no errors. This raised suspicion.
We found same handwriting in many papers. One candidate had over 10 different handwritings for his arrear papers, a source said adding that it strengthened suspicion.
Many of these candidates who had bulk arrears had cleared almost all the papers in one go. Some candidates who had more than 15 arrears cleared 14 or 15 papers at one go, which is very difficult for even regular students, the source disclosed.
Following the investigation, the Controller of Examinations had withheld the results of 500 candidates from Chennai and adjoining districts.
In connection with the scam, the university officials also caught an ex-temporary staff in IDE premises from whom they recovered register numbers and contact numbers of students.
Sources in the university said, after conducting enquiry with the students, the COE has released results of 50 candidates who gave credible reasons for writing exam in outside the state.
Madras University Vice-Chancellor S. Duraisamy, who took charge in May, formed an inquiry committee immediately after the matter was brought to his knowledge. I have taken serious action and constituted an inquiry committee.
The committee is about to conclude its inquiry. We will place the inquiry report in Syndicate meeting and take the appropriate action, Mr Duraisamy told DC
We have withheld the recognition for four exam centres which were involved in the malpractices. We are making the system foolproof, the VC reiterated.
Hyderabad: The state government will present a roadmap on filling up of thousands of vacancies in various government departments, in the ongoing Legislative Assembly session.
Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao is likely to make a statement on this issue in the House on Monday, as a short discussion on filling up of government vacant posts and unemployment issue' has been placed on the agenda of the House for Monday.
On Saturday, the finance department submitted a list of vacancies that were approved for recruitment, department-wise, to the Chief Ministers Office.
The TS Public Service Commission has also made a list of how many vacancies were filled in these three years, how many recruitment notifications were released, and how many notifications are in different stages of recruitment.
With Opposition parties accusing the state government of failing to fulfil its promise of giving one lakh jobs soon after coming to power in 2014, the government is trying to counter the charge with facts and figures on its recruitment drive and issue a roadmap on how vacancies will be filled in the coming months.
Telangana Joint Action Committee chairman Prof Kodandaram too has planned a Koluvula Kotlaata (fight for jobs) with unemployed youth in the city with the permission of the High Court after the state government denied him permission to conduct the meeting last month.
The Chief Ministers strategy is to use the debate in the House to send a message to the youth that the government is on the right track to fill around 1.12 lakh vacancies as promised, and they should not get carried away by what the Opposition and TJAC are saying.
The finance department has submitted a list of nearly 1.12 lakh vacancies that were approved during the past three years and issued instructions to the TS Public Service Commission, and police and electricity departments to issue notifications.
A short debate on Rs 8,000 per acre investment support to farmers, formation of farmers coordination councils has also been listed for Monday. If that debate runs long, the recruitment issue will be taken up on Tuesday.
Tirunelveli: Taking a dig at the DMK's working president, M K Stalin, the Chief Minister, Edappadi K. Palaniswamy said the opposition leader should at least now start working for the welfare of the people rather than finding fault with the ruling AIADMK in Tamil Nadu. He was speaking at the former Chief Minister and AIADMK founder MGR's birth centenary celebrations here on Sunday.
In an attacking speech, Mr. Palaniswami asserted they would not let "any family" capture power in the State that went against the welfare of the people. The remark was directed at Ms. V K Sasikala and the DMK 'parivars', seen as being bogged down by family rule.
Reacting to the DMK working president, M.K. Stalins recent criticism that the Chief Minister and the Deputy Chief Minister were functioning as double-barrel gun in making money, Palaniswami said that Stalins criticism about him and his cabinet colleague, O. Panneerselvam clearly showed the frustration of the DMK working president, who for anything and everything demanded the dissolution of the AIADMK government.
Having been in great frustration as his chance of becoming Chief Minister of the state remains an elusive fantasy, Stalin even forgets that an elected government enjoying peoples support and comfortable majority in the legislative assembly cannot be dissolved constitutionally, he said.
The DMK leader in fit of rage against the AIADMK too has failed to understand the peoples wrath against him and his father, whose rule till 2011 had ruined the state, criticised Palaniswami, adding that his government has been successfully implementing all the welfare schemes of MGR and Amma. Advising his party cadre to be cautious and work united, Palaniswami also declared that neither he nor any of his party colleague assumed themselves as heads of the party.
We are always the grass-root workers and Puratchi Thalaivar MGR and Puratchi Thalaivi Amma are our only leaders, he declared.
Deputy Chief Minister, O. Pannerselvam in his presidential address denied the general accusation that the ruling party has surrendered before the Central government, pledging the welfare of the state. He said the state government had accepted Central governments schemes like GST as they readily accepted to incorporate the amendments suggested by the former Chief Minister, J Jayalalithaa. Having been religiously following the foot prints of Amma, the welfare of the people are of paramount importance to our government, clarified Pannerselvam.
The AIADMK would never go against the Dravidian movement ideals, declared M. Thambidurai, Lok Sabha Deputy Speaker in his address here.
Palaniswami also launched an app, Talking temples of Tirunelveli to enhance spiritual tourism in Tirunelveli district. He also inaugurated completed schemes to the tune of around Rs 118 crore in the district and laid foundation stones for 142 more schemes at a total estimated cost of Rs 528.92 crore. Further, welfare measures to the tune of Rs 87.74 crore were distributed to around 34,655 beneficiaries in Tirunelveli district.
New Delhi/Manila: In a significant move indicating the first steps towards the formation of a quadrilateral comprising India, the US, Australia and Japan, officials of the four nations met on Sunday in Manila ahead of the East Asia Summit there.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who reached Manila on Sunday, held separate pull-aside meetings with US President Donald Trump and Chinese Premier Li Keqiang on the sidelines of the gala dinner to mark the 50th anniversary of Asean hosted by President of the Philippines Rodrigo Duterte. Mr Modi was also seen conversing with Japanese PM Shinzo Abe, Russian PM Dmitry Medve-dev and Malaysian PM Najib Razak at a reception for the leaders who arrived for the 31st Asean summit and its related meetings. Mr Modi later tweeted pictures of his interaction with world leaders.
At the Quadrilateral session, officials of the four nations met for consultations on issues of common interest in the Indo-Pacific region, with the discussions focused on cooperation based on their converging vision and values for promotion of peace, stability and prosperity. The four countries agreed that a free, open, prosperous and inclusive Indo-Pacific region serves the long-term interests of all countries in the region and of the world at large.
Modi, Trump meeting today
Mr Modi is scheduled to have a bilateral one-on-one hour-long meeting with the US President on the sidelines of the Asean summit on Monday afternoon. The two leaders are expected to deliberate on a number of key issues of mutual interest, including the evolving security situation in the Indo-Pacific region where Washington favours a greater role by India.
At Sunday evenings dinner, Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the other leaders wore Barong Tagalong, an embroidered shirt which is the national dress of the Philippines, designed by renowned Filipino designer Albert Andrada.
The formation of a Quadrilateral was a recent Japanese proposal and is being viewed by foreign policy experts as an attempt to rein in China, which has been asserting its might militarily and economically in its neighbourhood.
The reference to the importance of peace as also inclusiveness in the Indo-Pacific region is being seen as a reaction and veiled reference to the assertive Chinese military posture in the area. China has maritime disputes with several Southeast Asian nations as well as with Japan. Following the proposal, India said it was open to such an idea, pointing out that it was already part of many trilateral consultation processes. The term Indo-Pacific also seems to have replaced the term Asia-Pacific, highlighting the rising importance of India in US strategy in the region.
The direction given by the Centre on the headquarters issue favours the TS argument but the AP government has filed a petition opposing it.
Hyderabad: The deadlock over sharing of RTC assets will test the new resolve of the Chief Secretaries of TS and AP to the pending issues related to the State Reorganisation Act.
The AP government claims that it should get more than Rs 16000 crore as its share from RTC assets located in and around Hyderabad. The TS government has offered Rs 76 crore. The direction given by the Centre on the headquarters issue favours the TS argument but the AP government has filed a petition opposing it.
An RTC official said the corporation has 11 valuable properties in Hyderabad in the form of buildings and land. RTC has third largest bus station in the country at Imliban, a super-speciality hospital at Tarnaka apart from Bus Bhavan.
These properties are worth about Rs 35,000 crore as per rough estimates. AP expects this to be shared in the population ratio of 58:42. In addition, AP expects market valuation of thee assets. As per the Centres direction, TS has only offered a share in Bus Bhavan but at book value at the time of construction.
Going by market value, TS has to give AP `1,000 for Bus Bhavan, according to an official who was involved in the talks. Another senior officer said the Supreme Courts decision on the petition filled by the AP government on the matter may show a way on sharing of RTC assets.
Bengaluru: With increasing curiosity in the investigation into the murder of journalist and activist Gauri Lankesh, who was gunned down at her residence by unidentified assailants on September 5, Chief Minister Siddaramaiah reiterated that the Special Investigation Team (SIT) is on the right track and that it has got crucial leads.
At the Police Commemoration Day at the KSRP Grounds in Koramangala here on Saturday, he said that not revealing information does not mean that the investigating agency does not have it. Not all information can be made public at this juncture, but the team will do it at the right time, he said. Disclosure of crucial information at this stage may disturb the investigation.
Mr Siddaramaiah requested the media to understand the difficulty and the pressure the SIT is going through and cooperate with the investigating agency.
This high-profile murder case again hogged the limelight when the SIT released sketches of the suspects recently. But, so far, the team has not found any conclusive evidence which may lead to the arrest of the culprits.
KOCHI: The higher education sector in Kerala needed to create the best climate for the industry-oriented research and growth of entrepreneurship in the state, said T.P. Sreenivasan, a former diplomat and chairman of Kerala State Higher Education Council. Addressing the young entrepreneurs at the concluding day of the TiEcon 2017 at Kochi on Saturday Sreenivasan said better infrastructure, better utilisation of technology and internationalisation hold the keys for the higher education sector in the state.
Emphasising the need for internationalisation of higher education Sreenivasan said; We are players in a global market and therefore our universities have to reach out to the world. Looking at our old requirements would only help in reinventing the wheel again and again, confining us to something which has already been established and found, he said. He also called entrepreneurs to take the lead in establishing the new entrepreneurial trajectory for the higher education sector.
G. Vijayaraghavan, former member Kerala State Planning Board, Abraham Koshy, Professor Indian Institute of Management, Ahmadabad and several others addressed the session. A session on opportunities in rural areas for entrepreneurship took stock of the issues faced by the people in the sector. Addressing the session, Shivads B Menon, managing director, Sterling Group of Companies, said agricultural entrepreneurship suffers from lack of visibility, deficiencies in logistics, marketing and failure to establish well integrated consortium of stakeholders.
The state needs thousands of entrepreneurs in agriculture in order to disrupt the present concepts of agricultural and introduce innovative ways of doing agriculture he said. The second day also witnessed signing of MoU between World Trade Centre Kochi and TiE Kerala for facilitating and fostering entrepreneurship development in the state.
The owner of the quarry, M. Bharath Reddy, a BJP leader and the former district general secretary of the party, rushed to the spot and began beating the boys with a stick.
Nizamabad: A BJP leader behaved in a violent manner with two Dalit youths, who raised questions about his illegal gravel quarry in Abhangapatnam village of Navipet mandal in Nizamabad district.
A video clip of the incident went viral on social media on Sunday. As a result, the BJP leader allegedly whisked away the two victims to an unknown location.
Sources said Dalit youths Kondra Laxman and Rajeshwar of Abhangapatnam village went to the gravel quarry on the outskirts of their village to inquire about its permissions on September 17.
The owner of the quarry, M. Bharath Reddy, a BJP leader and the former district general secretary of the party, rushed to the spot and began beating the boys with a stick. He then made them take a dip in a muddy water tank, touch their noses to the ground, and apologise for visiting the quarry.
Dalits begged for mercy but in vain
The owner of the quarry, M. Bharath Reddy, a BJP leader and the former district general secretary of the party, also used filthy language and threatened the duo with dire consequences. The victims pleaded with folded hands but he refused to relent.
Mr Bharath Reddy has been accused of involvement in two murders and several other cases registered at various police stations in the district. After spending four years underground, he re-surfaced in his native village Gandhinagar in Navipet mandal and has been participating in party programmes. Speaking to this paper, G. Naresh, the SI of Navipe, said that the victims had not yet filed a complaint about the incident.
An unfortunate situation appears to have developed in the Supreme Court, suggestive of the fact that fissures may exist among judges of Indias highest court. This seems to have been exacerbated by apparent divisions within the Supreme Court Bar Association, some of whom may be dissatisfied with the courts current leadership, as became apparent in a dramatic hearing on Friday.
This is a pity and has the effect of lowering the respect the country has for the Supreme Court, although from time to time judges of high courts, and occasionally even of the Supreme Court, have been objects of whispers. As with other forums, these whispers pertain to corruption.
Last week, senior advocate Kamini Jaisawal filed a petition urging that Chief Justice of India Dipak Misra recuse himself from hearing a case in which an allegedly shady former high court judge had lent his services to the management of a Lucknow medical college to challenge its debarment by the Medical Council of India. Hearing the petition, a two-judge bench of Justice J. Chelameswar, the most senior judge after the CJI, and Justice Abdul Nazeer posted this for hearing by a five-judge Constitution Bench headed by the CJI.
The following day, CJI Mishra took exception to this, appropriately citing procedures to say that only the head of the Supreme Court could allot benches for hearings, and overturned the two-judge benchs decision. After that, the CJI also said the practice of hearings to determine the urgent taking up of matters that couldnt brook delay would henceforth be directly under the CJI. The second judge Justice Chelameswar had so far been handling this area. It doesnt take much to divine that the CJI and his number two are not on the same page.
While this isnt desirable, what should never be compromised in the our highest court is dispensation of justice in a transparent manner. The CJI has given no room for speculation or doubt that he could be influenced by extraneous considerations in the matter brought by Ms Jaisawal or the primary matter pertaining to alleged corruption by a former HC judge. The CJI has, in fact, constituted a three-judge bench to hear Ms Jaisawals petition.
Given the overall circumstances, or even in order to give no room for misrepresentation of the situation in any form and to reinforce the reputation of the countrys highest court, it would be ideal if the CJI took no part in the hearing of the case of the former HC judge which is linked to the matter of the debarment of the impugned medical college in Lucknow. Let all concerned desist from muddying the waters.
The rhythmic, lyrical literature of Rabindranath Tagores Gitanjali perhaps reflects the best possible description of Indian history invasions, infiltration, immigration, migration and streams of refugees down the ages. Keha nahi jane, kar ahbane, koto manusher dhara, durbar srote elo kotha hote, samudre holo hara! (Nobody knows from where or on whose invitation have such vast, endless streams of human heads arrived, only to be lost in the sea!). Thus, from the Black Sea to Baku, Buraydah to Basra, and Bushahar, Bandar Abbas to Bristol, Birmingham and from the British Isles and Central Asia to Asia Minor came invaders in hordes but, as their powers waned with the passage of time, a large number turned from forced invaders/infiltrators/intruders to forced immigrants and migrants, and ultimately to forced refugees. Its not that India turned powerful. The fact is that Indias geography and demography, with all its faultlines and inherent failures, always remained Saare jahan se achchha (the best of all nations). Why? Theres no definite answer to that. Its a simple reality that India was, and is, a powerful magnet even for the worst of invaders, greediest of traders, the most diabolical infiltrators, the most cunning intruders and the migrants/immigrants/ refugees for the Indian El Dorado. The tradition continues.
India has repeatedly been invaded over ages. In the last 1,000 years alone, as many as 40 major invasions occurred. This means an invader hit India every 25 years. Infiltration from East Pakistan (then Bangladesh) has been going on alarmingly since 1971 in eastern India, In 1989, Pakistani infiltration began in Kashmir. All this has disrupted Indias demography.
Though immigration is a legal procedure to enter a foreign country, there comes a time, as happened recently in several Western nations, when the growth of anti-immigration psyche, out of fear of economic loss and social tension, gives rise to a rightist and extreme-nationalism polity.
Then we have people from neighbouring countries like Nepal, Bangladesh and Pakistan migrating to India for work. Most of the migrants coming from Pakistan and Bangladesh stay back permanently. And finally, we have refugees. These are the people who flee or get expelled from their native country and seeks asylum in another country.
Independent Indias journey began with an unprecedented influx of millions of its uprooted nationals who became religious refugees overnight, thanks to Partition. The irony of this, however, is that whereas Hindu and Sikh refugees from West Pakistan, arriving in India, were settled in less than a year, Hindu Bengali refugees from East Pakistan are yet to be settled.
The result: India faces a grave threat to its existence today. Is it because the swathe of land towards the east of Mughal Sarai is too far for, and from, the creme de la creme of Lutyens Delhi durbars to realise how devastating the east possibly can be? Before 1971, East Pakistan occupied a similar space in the psyche of the elite martial races of West Pakistan.
Things have been allowed to drift for far too long. And if not taken seriously now, the demography of Indias eastern areas will become the future history of remnant Indias school and college textbooks. The reality today is stark.
India has had several types of refugees in the past 70 years. Before Hindus and Sikhs arrived from East and West Pakistan in 1947, a few lakh Chinese (Buddhists and Christians) left mainland China and settled in and around Kolkata to escape the Mao-Chiang civil war and the Second World War.
In the 1950s, three to four lakh refugees came to settle from Lhasa and elsewhere in Tibet due to Beijings ruthless suppression and killing of Tibetan Buddhists. Thus whereas India sheltered Tibetan Buddhists, whom China hypocritically claims as theirs; China attacked India, killed Indian soldiers and forcibly seized its territories. Can Beijing ever be trusted? Only the gullible, thinking of increased trade and US dollars, will say yes.
Then we have Sri Lankan Tamil refugees who arrived in the 1980s to escape the civil war, and Afghan Muslims, whose country is perpetually at war since 1979. Interestingly, the Afghans too had thrown out, in the late 20th century, virtually all Hindus and Sikhs from Kabul. There are also three lakh Kashmiri Hindus who are derogatorily referred to as internally displaced persons.
Now come thousands of Rohingya Muslims (from Arakan), whose past record does not inspire even a bare minimum level of confidence.
All this shows India has always been a safe sanctuary, even for invaders! Babur and Humayun ran from pillar to post as fugitives to escape death from their own Muslim fraternity in Central Asia and finally got refuge in India. From refugees they turned into rulers. Such is the civilised, humane beauty of Al Hind/Hindustan and the people who live there.
Like Babur and his son, the Afghans too were invaders and ruled several years (in patches) over the Indian populace. Afghans may have been friendly to Indians from time to time, but can anyone forget the repeated invasions and the culmination thereof! Remember the Third Battle of Panipat in 1761?
Although giving refuge is humanitarian, the government must keep a number of issues like political coalitions and chaos, economic disruption, social unrest, religious violence, demographic (im)balance, geographical/territorial usurpation, perilous safety, threatened unity, challenged sovereignty, the trampled Constitution, fair administration to anarchy, and the numerous attempts by inimical forces operating through harmless actors (refugees) and clandestine factors (renminbi and dollar) to divide India into pieces in mind before giving refuge to anyone.
Eternal vigilance is the price of Indias liberty, sovereignty, unity and integrity. Humanitarian assistance needs vigilance against hostility and harmful acts. The price for forgetting that could be extremely high.
The names are being etched on a silicon wafer microchip using an electron beam to form letters with lines one-thousandth the diameter of a human hair. The chip is affixed to the InSight lander deck and will remain on Mars forever.
More than 1.3 lakh Indian space enthusiasts have submitted their names to NASA to be carried to Mars onboard the US space agency's mission to the red planet next year.
Last month, NASA invited members of the public to send their names which will be carried on the InSight (Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport) mission to Mars. Those who submitted their names were provided online 'boarding passes' for the mission.
The names are being etched on a silicon wafer microchip using an electron beam to form letters with lines one-thousandth the diameter of a human hair. The chip is affixed to the InSight lander deck and will remain on Mars forever.
This chip will be carried on InSight mission to the red planet, which launches on May 5, next year. A lot of Indians responded to NASA's call for names for the Mars mission. The total number of names received by NASA from all over the world was 2,429,807.
US had the most number of people - 6,76,773 sending their names, followed by China with 2,62,752 names. India stands at number three with 1,38,899 names submitted for the mission.
"Mars continues to excite space enthusiasts of all ages," said Bruce Banerdt, the InSight mission's principal investigator, of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in
California.
"This opportunity lets them become a part of the spacecraft that will study the inside of the Red Planet," said Banerdt.
"The 'send your name to Mars' initiative is something we have done for a number of major NASA missions in the past not just for Mars missions. It's just a fun outreach activity that lets people engage with the mission," Andrew Good of Nasa's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in California told PTI.
The deadline to submit names was last week. Space enthusiasts who signed up shared their downloadable "boarding passes" on social media, complete with the total number of flight miles they have collected by participating in engagement initiatives for other Mars missions.
InSight, scheduled to land on Mars on November 26, next year, will be the first mission to look deep beneath the Martian surface, studying the planet's interior by listening for marsquakes.
These quakes travel through geologic material at different speeds and give scientists a glimpse of the composition and structure of the planet's inside. InSight's role is not only to study Mars, but also to gain broader insight into the formation of rocky planets in the entire solar system.
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Federal scientists and land managers whove been crafting strategies to protect a ground-dwelling birds habitat across the American West for nearly two decades are going back to the drawing board under a new Trump administration edict to reassess existing plans condemned by ranchers, miners and energy developers.
Federal officials are wrapping up a series of public meetings with three sessions starting Tuesday in Utah ahead of a November 27 cut off for comment on Interior Secretary Ryan Zinkes order last month to consider revisions to land management amendments for the greater sage grouse that were adopted under the Obama administration. Zinke says he wants to make sure the amendments dont harm local economies in 11 western states and allow the states to have maximum control over the efforts within their borders.
Conservationists say its a thinly veiled attempt to allow more livestock grazing and drilling, similar to Trumps efforts to roll back national monument designations, but on a much larger scale. They warn it could land the hen-sized bird on the endangered species list in 2020 when the US Fish and Wildlife Service is scheduled to review it's 2015 decision not to list it.
They appear to be dismantling the whole land-planning amendment system and starting over, said Patrick Donnelly, the Centre for Biological Diversitys Nevada state director. It is revisionist history, he told a Fish and Wildlife Service official during a scoping meeting-turned-brainstorming session at a Sparks hotel-casino Wednesday night. Instead of recording public testimony, agency officials marked up easel pads with lists of criticisms, concerns and suggestions. About 80 participants moved between five breakout groups including minerals, livestock grazing, and wildlife and vegetation.
They treaded familiar ground. Disagreement reigned over the size of protective buffer zones around grouse breeding grounds, states role in setting federal policy and whether cattle or wild horses cause more habitat degradation. There was general agreement that invasive cheatgrass is fuelling one of the biggest threats - catastrophic wildfires - but little consensus on what to do about it.
I dont understand why were starting all over again, shouted a man who briefly disrupted the meeting and refused to provide his name. Nevada Farm Bureau Vice President Doug Busselman said research increasingly suggests properly regulated grazing reduces fire fuels. But he said the existing policy is taking a restrictive approach ... and then watching massive fires sweep across the landscape, setting up the process for the expansion of cheatgrass, then more fire.
The US House Natural Resources Committee heard the same thing last month from Idaho House Speaker Scott Bedke, a fifth-generation rancher who blames grazing restrictions for a wildfire that wiped out his familys winter grazing allotment this year.
In the process of placating anti-grazing activists, federal agencies have made the Number 1 threat to the greater sage grouse in Idaho worse, Bedke said. Idaho Government CL Butch Otter, a Republican, filed one of a series of lawsuits aimed at blocking the Obama plans.
Conversely, Republican Government Matt Mead of Wyoming, Democratic Government John Hickenlooper of Colorado and Democratic Gov. Steve Bullock of Montana have expressed concern that altering existing plans could undermine efforts to prevent a listing. Nevada GOP Government Brian Sandoval also has cautioned against wholesale changes, although he applauded Zinkes recent lifting of a temporary ban on new mining claims across about 15,600 square miles (40,400 square kilometres) adopted under Obama.
Montana Fish and Wildlife Commission Chairman Dan Vermillion said existing protections took a diverse group of stakeholders years to work out. Those plans were essential to keeping sage grouse from becoming endangered, he wrote in a November 7 letter to Zinke. Thats the message Karen Boeger delivered in Sparks.
We all duked it out on these plans, said Boeger, a retired teacher and member of the Nevada Chapter of Backcountry Hunters and Anglers who previously served on a Bureau of Land Management advisory board. Weve hardly gotten out of the chute. Lets give it a chance. The bureaus acting deputy director, John Ruhs, understands the frustration.
A lot of folks have been engaged in this topic for a long time. Some have been at the table going back 15 years or more, said Ruhs, whos worked for the agency in Nevada, Oregon, Colorado and Idaho. Were trying to find the best methods to allow all users of the land to occur and still ensure the protection of habitat, he said. Its a tall order.
Donnelly, whose Arizona-based group has sued over failure to list hundreds of species, said the intent of the Obama amendments was very clear: Prevent the listing of the sage grouse. That goal seems to have gotten lost, he said. We heard a lot about mineral withdrawals and local collaboration, but all in the name of what? Donnelly asked. Are we still committed to conserving sage grouse, or is the intention to mine and drill every acre of the West? If thats the case, we are plunging head-long toward listing the grouse.
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Trump went on to say that the US would no longer turn a blind eye to violations, cheating or economic aggression. (Photo: AP)
Danang: Promising to put America first in his trade practices, President Donald Trump used a speech in Vietnam Friday to denounce multilateral agreements embraced by the region and deliver what appeared to be a rebuke to China, railing against trade practices he says have put Americans out of work.
From this day forward we will compete on a fair and equal basis, Trump told a gathering of CEOs on the sidelines of the annual Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Vietnam. We are not going to let the United States be taken advantage of anymore. I am always going to put America first.
In his speech, Trump told executives gathered in the coastal city of Danang that he was happy to enter into bilateral trading agreements with any of the nations in the Indo-Pacific region but only if they are reciprocal and fair.
What we will no longer do is enter into large agreements that tie our hands, surrender our sovereignty, and make meaningful enforcement practically impossible, Trump said.
As one of his first acts as president, Trump rejected the far-reaching Pacific Rim trade pact known as the Trans-Pacific Partnership, disappointing many nations in the region, including the summits host, Vietnam.
Leaders of the 11 remaining TPP members, representing roughly 13.5 percent of the global economy, were scheduled to meet on the sidelines of the APEC summit to seek an agreement in principle that would not require US involvement.
But the prospects of that deal appeared in doubt Friday, as a meeting of the leaders of 11 countries still involved in the pact was delayed. There was no word on whether they had given up reaching agreement in Danang or were still working toward an agreement on how to move forward without U.S. involvement.
Meanwhile, a 16-member region-wide pact called the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership is also under negotiation. It encompasses China and India but also does not include the US
Trump also took aim at what he described as abusive trade practices he said had hurt many people in our country. He described jobs, factories and industries being stripped out of the United States and out of many countries as a result.
Without singling out China by name, Trump argued the US had adhered to World Trade Organization principles, only to be taken advantage of by counties that had ignored the rules and engaged in harmful practices such as product dumping, currency manipulation and government subsidizing of goods.
We can no longer tolerate these chronic trade abuses and we will not tolerate them, he said.
In the speech, Trump said he had spoken openly and directly with Chinese President Xi Jinping during his visit about about Chinas unfair trade practices and the enormous trade deficits they have produced with the United States.
Trump said Chinas trade surplus, which stood at $223 billion for the first 10 months of the year, was unacceptable, and repeated his language from Thursday when he said he did not blame China or any other country for taking advantage of the United States on trade.
But Trump went on to say that the US would no longer turn a blind eye to violations, cheating or economic aggression.
We will no longer tolerate the audacious theft of intellectual property. We will confront the destructive practices of forcing businesses to surrender their technology to the state and forcing them into joint ventures in exchange for market access. We will address the massive subsidizing of industries through colossal state-owned enterprises that put private competitors out of business, all the time, he said.
All are allegations the US has lodged against China.
It was a striking change of tone from the day before, in China, where Trump had taken a friendlier toward China as he sought to establish a more balanced trade relationship.
Xi followed Trump to the microphone but in Danang did not directly respond to Trumps claims of trade unfairness toward the U.S.
Trump also continued to talk tough against North Korea and its development of nuclear and ballistic missiles weapons, as he has throughout the trip.
The future of this region and its beautiful people must not be held hostage to a dictators twisted fantasies of violent conquest and nuclear blackmail, he said.
APEC is the first of several summits Trump is scheduled to attend on his first official visit to Asia. It will be a change in pace the president, who has spent much of the week basking in elaborate welcome ceremonies and banquets between meetings with the leaders of Japan, South Korea and China.
Shortly before Trump landed, the White House announced he would not be having a formal meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin, as Trump had said had been expected. White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders blamed scheduling conflicts on both sides, but said it was possible the leaders could have a less formal encounter in Danang or at a later regional conference in the Philippines.
Putins spokesman Dmitry Peskov said there have been contradictory signals and we dont have full understanding yet, according to Russian news wires. But he added: Both presidents are in town, and their paths will cross one way or another.
US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson had told reporters in Beijing on Thursday that there was no reason to schedule a meeting if the US and Russia are unable to make significant progress on issues including Syria and Ukraine.
Both sides have been working to reach agreement on how they hope to resolve Syrias civil war once the Islamic State group is defeated. The potential understanding comes as an array of forces are near a final defeat of IS, the extremist group that once controlled vast stretches of both Iraq and Syria.
Akash R Talati, 40, who owned Knights Inn and Diamondz Gentlemen's Club in Fayetteville city, was an innocent bystander. (Photo: Facebook)
New York: An Indian-origin owner of a motel was shot dead and four other people were injured in a shootout in the US state of North Carolina, police said.
Akash R Talati, 40, who owned Knights Inn and Diamondz Gentlemen's Club in Fayetteville city, was an innocent bystander when a man who had been escorted out of the club returned soon and exchanged gunfire with a security guard Saturday, police Detective Jamaal Littlejohn said.
Police said they were called to the club at 1:51 AM on Saturday.
Detective Littlejohn said Markeese Dewitt, 23, of Fayetteville has been charged with attempted murder and assault with a deadly weapon inflicting serious injury.
Mr Littlejohn said Markeese Dewitt was shot four or five times and remained in serious condition at Cape Fear Valley Medical Centre, fayobserver.com reported.
He said only Markeese Dewitt and the security guard exchanged gunfire and the others were bystanders.
One of the victims was in a fair condition at the hospital. The two others were treated and released. Akash Talati, reportedly from Anand in Gujarat, died at the hospital.
External Affairs Minister, Sushma Swaraj confirmed Akash Talati's death in a series of tweets.
Indian Embassy in US has informed me of the circumstances leading to the death of Akash Talati, a US citizen of Indian origin. /1 Sushma Swaraj (@SushmaSwaraj) November 12, 2017
The deceased was shot by an assailant who was escorted out of his club. The security guard returned the fire and the assailant was also injured. /2 Sushma Swaraj (@SushmaSwaraj) November 12, 2017
We are in touch with the family of the deceased and will provide them all help. /3 Sushma Swaraj (@SushmaSwaraj) November 12, 2017
Police have not released the names of three other people who were injured. Mr Littlejohn said they included the security guard and a female employee of the club who operated the cash register.
The detective said security escorted Markeese Dewitt out of the club because he had caused a disturbance. He said Markeese appeared to have gone to his vehicle, got a gun, went back inside the club and started shooting.
Detective Littlejohn said police have no idea what caused Markeese to get kicked out of the club.
"All we know is he got put out, he goes and gets a gun and it goes crazy from there," Mr Littlejohn said.
Detectives are actively investigating the homicide and shooting and have appealed to the public to contact them if they have any information on the incident.
He pointed out that India was celebrating the 70th anniversary of its Independence and highlighted that the country was a sovereign democracy with a population of 1.3 billion as well as the largest democracy in the world. (Photo: AP)
Danang: US President Donald Trump praised Indias astounding growth on Friday after it opened its economy and also lauded Prime Minister Narendra Modi, saying he has been working successfully to bring the vast country and its people together.
At a gathering of CEOs on the sidelines of the annual Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in Danang in Vietnam, Trump said countries outside of the grouping were also making great strides in this new chapter for the Indo-Pacific.
He pointed out that India was celebrating the 70th anniversary of its Independence and highlighted that the country was a sovereign democracy with a population of 1.3 billion as well as the largest democracy in the world.
Since India opened its economy, it has achieved astounding growth and a new world of opportunities for its expanding middle class, Trump said.
And Prime Minister (Narendra) Modi has been working to bring that vast country and all of its people as one. And he has been working at it very successfully indeed, the US President said.
Read: Asia held hostage by Kim Jon Uns twisted fantasies: Trump
Prime Minister Modi is leaving for the Philippines on Sunday to attend the India-ASEAN and East Asia summits. Trump is also scheduled to attend the East Asia Summit, a key meeting between ASEAN and eight of its partners.
The US president also used his speech at the APEC business meet to promote his vision for a free and open Indo- Pacific region.
We have been friends, partners and allies in the Indo- Pacific for a long, long time, he said.
The story of this region in recent decades is the story of what is possible when people take ownership of their future.
The use of the term Indo-Pacific by President Trump has led to speculation that it may have something to do with Washington preparing the ground for a revival of the so-called Quadrilateral strategic alliance between the US, Japan, Australia and India to counter Chinas rise.
China has already reacted cautiously over a proposal by the Trump administration for a working-level quadrilateral meeting with India, Japan and Australia, saying Beijing hopes that it would not target or damage a third partys interest.
In his address, Trump also praised countries like Indonesia, Thailand, the Philippines, Malaysia and Japan, which also briefly touched on the bloody history of the Vietnam war, in which Danang was a key battlefield.
Today we are no longer enemies, we are friends, Trump said.
Manila: Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Sunday night held separate pull-aside meetings with United States' President Donald Trump and Chinese Premier Li Keqiang on the sidelines of a gala dinner to mark the 50th anniversary of the ASEAN.
Modi was also seen chit-chatting with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev and Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak at the reception for the leaders who have arrived here for the 31st ASEAN summit and related meetings.
He also held brief interactions with several other leaders, who attended the reception hosted by Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte at the mega SMX Convention Centre in Pasay City.
The prime minister as well as all other leaders wore Barong Tagalong, an embroidered shirt that is the national dress of the Philippines. Renowned Filipino designer Albert Andrada has designed the shirts.
Modi also tweeted pictures of his interaction with several leaders.
The menu of the gala dinner featured various Filipino cuisines including Filipino steak sushi.
The brief interaction between Modi and Trump came ahead of their scheduled bilateral meeting Monday. The two leaders are expected to deliberate on a number of key issues of mutual interest including the evolving security situation in the Indo-Pacific region where Washington favours a greater role by India.
There have been concerns over China's growing military presence in the Indo-Pacific and the issue was understood to have figured in a meeting of officials from India, the US, Japan and Australia today under the proposed Quadrilateral coalition of the four countries.
"The discussions focused on cooperation based on their converging vision and values for promotion of peace, stability and prosperity in an increasingly inter-connected region that they share with each other and with other partners," the ministry of external affairs said in a statement.
"They agreed that a free, open, prosperous and inclusive Indo-Pacific region serves the long-term interests of all countries in the region and of the world at large," it said.
On Tuesday, Modi will attend the ASEAN-India and East Asia summits where he is likely to reassert India's push for crafting a global approach to deal with growing challenge of terrorism and radicalisation besides pitching for steps to boost regional trade.
Modi will hold bilateral meetings with Duterte tomorrow. He also had a conversation with Li at the dinner. "PM @narendramodi had a warm and cordial conversation with the Chinese Premier Li Keqiang at the Gala Dinner," MEA spokesperson Raveesh Kumar tweeted.
In a response to North Korea calling Trumps speech in South Korea reckless remarks by an old lunatic, Trump tweeted from Hanoi on Sunday morning. (Photo: File)
Hanoi: Donald Trump is exchanging school yard taunts with North Koreas Kim Jong Un.
In a response to North Korea calling Trumps speech in South Korea reckless remarks by an old lunatic, Trump tweeted from Hanoi on Sunday morning: Why would Kim Jong-un insult me by calling me old, when I would NEVER call him short and fat?
Why would Kim Jong-un insult me by calling me "old," when I would NEVER call him "short and fat?" Oh well, I try so hard to be his friend - and maybe someday that will happen! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 12, 2017
Trump goes on to say sarcastically, Oh well, I try so hard to be his friend and maybe someday that will happen!
Trump has been working to rally global pressure against North Koreas nuclear weapons program on a trip to Asia. That includes a stern speech delivered in South Koreas National Assembly on Tuesday, in which he said: Do not underestimate us. And do not try us....The weapons youre acquiring are not making you safer, they are putting your regime in grave danger. Every step you take down this dark path increases the peril you face.
On Saturday, Kims government responded by accusing Trump of trying to demonize North Korea, keep it apart from the international community and undermine its government.
Reckless remarks by an old lunatic like Trump will never scare us or stop our advance, the Norths Foreign Ministry said in a statement. On the contrary, all this makes us more sure that our choice to promote economic construction at the same time as building up our nuclear force is all the more righteous, and it pushes us to speed up the effort to complete our nuclear force.
North Korea is not known to have tested any of its missiles or nuclear devices since Sept 15, a relative lull after a brisk series of tests earlier this year.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi being welcomed on his arrival in Manila to attend the ASEAN-India and East Asia Summits on Sunday. (Photo: PIB)
Manila: Prime Minister Narendra Modi arrived in Manila on Sunday on a three-day visit to attend the ASEAN-India and East Asia summits where he is likely to reassert India's push for crafting a global approach to deal with growing challenge of terrorism and radicalisation besides pitching for steps to boost regional trade.
The thorny issue of China's aggressive military manoeuvre in the disputed South China Sea, North Korea's nuclear missile tests and overall security architecture in the region will come up for discussion during the ASEAN summit on Tuesday, diplomats said.
On the sidelines of the main events, Modi is likely to have a series of bilateral meetings with a number of leaders including US President Donald Trump, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull and Russian Premier Dmitry Medvedev.
A host of leaders including Myanmar State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi, Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen, Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak, Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong and New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern have already arrived in the city to attend deliberations at the
ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asia Nations), a grouping of 10 influential countries.
The ties between India and ASEAN have been on an upswing in the last few years with focus being on ramping up cooperation in the areas of trade and investment as well as security and defence.
"Every single country in the ASEAN region wants India to be more engaged in the region in every possible way. That is the real synergy we have with ASEAN," Indian Ambassador to Philippines Jaideep Mazumdar said.
US, France and Japan have been pitching for a larger role by India in the strategically key Indo-Pacific region where China has been trying to increase its military presence.
Read: Donald Trump, Modi likely to hold talks on sidelines of ASEAN summit
Majumdar said terrorism is going to be one of the issues that will be discussed not only during the ASEAN summit but also at the East Asia summit. He said several documents are going to be adopted with an aim to contain terrorism including one on stopping money laundering for the purpose of terrorism.
While ASEAN summit is likely to focus more on trade and investment related issues, leaders at the East Asia Summit are expected to delve deep into issues relating to maritime security, terrorism, non-proliferation and migration.
Apart from the 10 ASEAN Member states, East Asia Summit includes India, China, Japan, Republic of Korea, Australia, New Zealand, United States and Russia.
Modi will address the ASEAN-India and East Asia summits on Tuesday. He would also take part in special celebrations of the 50th anniversary of ASEAN.
The ASEAN region along with India together comprises combined population of 1.85 billion people, which is one fourth of the global population and their combined GDP has been estimated at over USD 3.8 trillion.
Investment from ASEAN to India has been over USD 70 billion in the last 17 years accounting for more than 17 per cent of Indias total FDI. Indias investment in ASEAN during the same period has been more than USD 40 billion.
India's proposal to host an international conference on countering radicalisation may also be discussed during the deliberations at Manila as New Delhi is now looking at finalising the dates for the conclave.
Prime Minister Modi will also participate in the ASEAN business and investment summit as well as a meeting of leaders of Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP).
The RCEP, comprising 10-member ASEAN bloc and six other countries - India, China, Japan, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand - is engaged in negotiations for a free trade pact.
In his maiden visit to the Philippines as the Prime Minister, Modi will also attend a reception by the Indian community and visit the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) and Mahavir Philippines Foundation.
Trump was speaking in Vietnam, which has become the most vocal opponent of China's claims and its construction and militarisation of artificial islands in the sea. (Photo: AFP)
Hanoi: US President Donald Trump said on Sunday he was prepared to mediate between claimants to the South China Sea, where five countries contest China's sweeping claims to the busy waterway.
Trump was speaking in Vietnam, which has become the most vocal opponent of China's claims and its construction and militarisation of artificial islands in the sea. About $3-trillion in goods passes through the sea each year.
"If I can help mediate or arbitrate, please let me know," Trump said in comments at a meeting in Hanoi with Vietnam's president, Tran Dai Quang.
Trump acknowledged that China's position on the South China Sea was a problem.
"I'm a very good mediator and arbitrator," he said.
President Quang said Vietnam believed in handling disputes on the South China Sea through peaceful negotiations and on the basis of international laws - which Vietnam says nullify China's claims.
Vietnam has reclaimed land around reefs and islets, but on nowhere near the same scale as China. Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines and Taiwan also have claims in the sea.
Since Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte has grown closer to China, Vietnam has emerged as China's main challenger in the region. In July, China pressured Vietnam to stop oil drilling in a disputed area, taking relations to a low.
Relations have since improved and Chinese President Xi Jinping is visiting Hanoi later on Sunday.
The South China Sea was discussed in Beijing on an earlier leg of Trump's 12-day Asian tour and US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said the United States and China had a frank exchange of views.
The United States has angered China with freedom of navigation patrols close to Chinese-controlled islands.
Code of Conduct
In August, foreign ministers of Southeast Asia and China adopted a negotiating framework for a code of conduct in the South China Sea, a move they hailed as progress but one seen by critics as a tactic to buy China time to consolidate its power.
The framework seeks to advance a 2002 Declaration of Conduct (DOC) of Parties in the South China Sea, which has mostly been ignored by claimant states, particularly China, which has built seven man-made islands in disputed waters, three of them equipped with runways, surface-to-air missiles and radars.
All parties say the framework is only an outline for how the code will be established and critics raise doubts about how effective the pact will be.
The framework will be endorsed by China and members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) at a summit in Manila on Monday, a diplomat from one of the regional bloc's countries said.
The next step is for ASEAN and China to start formal consultations and negotiations for the actual Code of Conduct, and the earliest that talks on this can start is February 2018, the diplomat said.
From Vietnam, Trump flies to the Philippines for a meeting with ASEAN leaders before he heads back to Washington.
Relations between Vietnam and the United States have blossomed in the decades since their war ended in 1975. A recent survey put the favourability of the United States at 84 percent among Vietnamese.
But Vietnam's trade surplus remains an irritant for the Trump administration. At $32 billion last year, it was the sixth largest with the United States, though less than a tenth the size of China's.
"We want to get that straightened out very quickly," Trump said at a meeting with Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc.
It will be the first meeting between the two leaders following a proposal to have a quadrilateral alliance among India, the US, Japan, and Australia. (Photo: File)
Manila: Prime Minister Narendra Modi and US President Donald Trump are likely to have a bilateral meeting on Monday on the sidelines of the ASEAN summit.
Modi will arrive in Manila on Sunday to attend the 15th ASEAN- India summit and 12th East Asia summit on November 14.
President Trump is also scheduled to arrive Sunday as part of his five-nation Asia tour of Japan, South Korea, China, Vietnam, and the Philippines.
Official sources said the meeting between Modi and President Trump is likely to take place on Monday.
It will be the first meeting between the two leaders following a proposal to have a quadrilateral alliance among India,US, Japan and Australia.
Japan in October had indicated that it would propose a top-level dialogue with US, India and Australia. Sources said officials of the four countries may meet on the sidelines of the ASEAN summit.
Reacting to the Japanese move, India had said that it was open to working with like-minded countries on issues that advance its interests. US had said it was looking at a "working-level" quadrilateral meeting in the near term with India, Japan and Australia.
Japan's Foreign Minister Taro Kono in October had said that Tokyo favours a dialogue between Japan,US, India and Australia to further boost strategic partnership among the four countries.
The move to set up the quadrilateral comes in the backdrop of growing Chinese assertiveness in the South China Sea. US has been favouring a larger role for India in the strategically key Indo-Pacific region.
The use of the term "Indo-Pacific" by President Trump has led to speculation that it may have something to do with Washington preparing the ground for a revival of the so called Quadrilateral strategic alliance between US, Japan, Australia and India to counter China's rise.
In their meeting, Modi and Trump are likely to discuss a host of key issues of mutual interest including the security scenario in the region.
Trump on Saturday praised India's "astounding" growth after it opened up its economy and also lauded Modi, saying he has been working successfully to bring the vast country and its people together.
Speaking at a gathering of CEOs on the side-lines of the annual Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in the Vietnamese city of Danang, President Trump cited India as one of the countries in the Indo-Pacific region making strides.
He praised India as a sovereign democracy with a population of over 1 billion as well as the largest democracy in the world.
Modi is expected to meet many other leaders attending the two summits.
He will also participate in the ASEAN business and investment summit as well as a meeting of leaders of Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP).
The RCEP, comprising of 10-member ASEAN bloc and six other countries - India, China, Japan, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand, is engaged in negotiations for a free trade pact.
In his maiden visit to the Philippines as Prime Minister, Modi will also attend a reception by the Indian community and visit the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) and the Mahavir Philippines Foundation.
His area of professional interest is military medicine. A member of the emergency team said that he is also technical service head. (Photo: File/Representational)
London: A 52-year-old Indian-origin doctor in the UK has been charged with committing three sex assaults, according to a media report.
Vibhore Gupta, based at Edgbaston's Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham, was arrested in March 2017, following a report made to the police.
In 2013, he added his weight to West Midlands Police's "Knives End Lives" campaign, aimed at raising awareness of the perils of carrying a knife, Birmingham Mail reported.
"A 52-year-old man from Harborne has been charged with three counts of sexual assault and one count of assault," a West Midlands Police spokesman said.
"The doctor is due to appear at Birmingham Magistrates Court on Tuesday November 21." On University Hospitals Birmingham website, Gupta is described as a consultant in emergency medicine.
His area of professional interest is military medicine. A member of the emergency team said that he is also technical service head.
The jihadist rebound came as the United States and Russia issued a surprise joint presidential statement saying there was no military solution to Syria's grinding six-year war. (Photo: AP/Representational)
Beirut: ISIS recaptured Albu Kamal in eastern Syria on Saturday after a fierce fightback to save the last urban bastion of its collapsing "caliphate."
The jihadist rebound came as the United States and Russia issued a surprise joint presidential statement saying there was "no military solution" to Syria's grinding six-year war.
The two countries have long backed opposite sides in Syria, but the Kremlin on Saturday said US President Donald Trump and Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin made progress during a brief meeting on the sidelines of a summit in Vietnam.
Trump and Putin also "confirmed their determination to defeat ISIS".
The jihadist group overran swathes of territory in Syria and Iraq in 2014, but its self-styled "caliphate" has since been whittled down to a pocket of land along the border between the two countries.
ISIS is putting up a fierce defence there, particularly for the vital Syrian border town of Albu Kamal, said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group.
Syrian regime forces and allied militia from Lebanon, Iraq and Iran overran Albu Kamal on Thursday but lost the town again just two days later after a string of ISIS counter-attacks and ambushes.
"ISIS fully recaptured Albu Kamal, and regime forces and allied militia are now between one to two kilometres from the city limits," Rami Abdel Rahman, head of the Britain-based Observatory, said on Saturday.
ISIS Squeezed In Iraq
Across the border, Iraqi forces seized on Saturday several villages from the jihadists in an offensive to capture the last ISIS-held section of their country.
The operation's commander, General Abdelamir Yarallah, said his forces captured Rumana and 10 other villages as they worked their way towards the Euphrates Valley town of Rawa, the last Iraqi town still held by ISIS.
A rare statement from the Supreme Court in October said other top judges had refused to sit with him at the top bench after he was accused of serious crimes such as graft. (Photo: AFP/Representational)
Dhaka: Bangladesh on Saturday said its chief justice has tendered his resignation from overseas in the wake of government corruption allegations, as opposition groups raised fears that his departure was a blow to judicial independence.
Surendra Kumar Sinha, who led the Supreme Court to a landmark verdict on judicial oversight in August that went against the government, left Bangladesh in October amid widespread rumours that he had been pressured to step aside.
His resignation letter has reached the Bangabhaban (presidential palace), Joynal Abedin, press secretary to President Abdul Hamid, said, adding that once submitted his termination was irreversible.
Sinha, who is believed to be visiting his daughter in Canada, was accused of serious crimes in October including money laundering and financial irregularities, just a day after he departed on a month-long leave, expressing his fears for judicial independence in the nation.
Former law and justice minister Moudud Ahmed, now a member of the main opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), called the resignation unprecedented and shameful.
Weve never heard before of a sitting chief justice resigning, he said. He has been forced to resign.... This is a direct attack on the independence of the judiciary.
A rare statement from the Supreme Court in October said other top judges had refused to sit with him at the top bench after he was accused of serious crimes such as graft.
The saga comes just months after Sinha led the Supreme Court in scrapping parliaments power to sack top judges - a move hailed by lawyers as a crucial safeguard for a secular judiciary in the Muslim-majority nation.
The ruling overturned a 2014 constitutional change introduced by Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina allowing the parliament - controlled by her Awami League party -- to remove top judges.
In a written statement issued before his departure, Sinha expressed dismay over criticism he had faced from the government over that ruling and said he was a bit worried about the independence of the judiciary.
Sinha had previously insisted he would return to Bangladesh once his leave ended on November 10.
Hafiz Saeed has been under house arrest in Lahore since January 30. (Photo: File)
Lahore: Pakistani authorities have written to the Punjab home department asking it to take stringent measures for the security of detained Mumbai attacks mastermind Hafiz Saeed, claiming a "foreign intelligence agency" had planned to kill him.
In the letter, the National Counter Terrorism Authority said the foreign spy agency had paid Rs. 80 million to two activists of a banned outfit for the assassination of Saeed.
It asked the Punjab home department to ensure foolproof security for the Jamat-ud-Dawah (JuD) chief.
Saeed has been under house arrest in Lahore since January 30 under the Anti-Terrorism Act 1997.
The home department last month had extended his detention for another 30 days (till November 26) under public safety law.
The department's notification had said, "There is apprehension that Saeed shall create a law and order situation upon release".
The JuD has already been declared as a foreign terrorist organisation by the US in June 2014. The JuD chief carries a reward of USD 10 million announced by the US for his role in terror activities.
Islamabad: Only a day after former Pakistan military ruler Pervez Musharraf announced to form a grand political alliance to contest the 2018 polls, the potential allies have called it quits.
Several parties have dissociated themselves from the proposed Awami Ittehad alliance only a day after the announcement of its formation.
Pakistan Awami Tehrik was the first to distance from the Awami Ittehad. Soon afterwards, Majlis Wahdat-e-Muslimeen (MWM) also denied being part of the alliance.
MWM spokesman Allama Mukhtar Imami said his party had not decided to join any alliance.
Sunni Ittehad Council (SIC) Chairman Sahibzada Hamid Raza also clarified that his partys alliance with Awami Ittehad was not meant for the election.
He said the election politics will be done from the platform of grand alliance of Ahl-e-Sunnat parties the Nizam-e-Mustafa Muttahida Mahaz. He asked the Punjab government to stop arresting Ulema Ahl-e-Sunnat on the pretext of Islamabad sit-in.
More than a dozen parties among 23, earlier claimed to be members of Awami Ittehad. Most of them were unpopular with insignificant vote bank.
There exists dichotomy between standard guidelines on effecting arrest and their actual implementation by police on ground, according to a report of the Delhi High Court Registry.
Highlighting the contrasting situation, the report of Delhi High Court Registrar General Dinesh Kumar Sharma stressed the need to train and sensitise the police on proper implementation of standard norms on arresting accused in criminal cases.
The report said that a person cannot be arrested without a warrant, especially in family dispute cases, and this aspect is usually overlooked.
The report was filed in pursuance of a direction of a bench comprising Acting Chief Justice Gita Mittal and Justice C Hari Shankar in a case.
The bench was hearing a plea alleging absence of guidelines relating to arrest and summoning of a person to a police station.
Concerned over alleged harassment and threat of arrest by police, the Registrar General held a meeting with stakeholders and found that the guidelines on arrest were not being implemented properly.
"It is evident that guidelines regarding arrest and how police officials must proceed with their investigation already exist. However, there appears to be a dichotomy between the said guidelines and the manner in which the true essence of the guidelines are required to be realised," the report said.
The judicial officer had laid stress on the modes of practice to be followed while arresting someone by the police officers, who should issue a notice directing the person, against whom a reasonable complaint has been made, to appear before them.
He said that issuance of notice is in line with the right to life and liberty of the citizens and would help to bring down the numbers of arrest, which in turn would de-congest the crowded Indian jails.
"Simultaneously, the innocent too can feel secure in case they stand any chance of exposure to implication in a fake case," the 50-page report said.
The report further said that the police across the country need to place more emphasis on the manner in which guidelines should be implemented so that the said directions are actually beneficial for the state functionaries and the public at large.
"Application of directives in a mechanical manner without understanding their true import and the reasons for their conception are rendering the said directions nugatory," it added.
The report said that even a magistrate while authorising further detention of an accused should satisfy that the arrest made was legal and in accordance with law.
"The conclusions arrived at by a police officer, while effecting arrest, need to necessarily be considered by the magistrate while authorising detention and only after recording his satisfaction a magistrate can authorise detention," the report suggested.
The court is hearing a petition, moved through advocate Nikhil Borwankar, who has sought a direction to the police to refrain from arbitrarily summoning any person to the police station over telephone unless exigent circumstances exist, which should be recorded by the officer in writing.
The plea also sought a direction to the agency to frame rules and time-frame regarding an inquiry into allegations against an investigating officer in an extant probe.
Agreeing with the petitioner's concern, the status report suggested that police stations should mandatorily have a functional CCTV cameras at the entry and exit gate of the police stations, which should be preserved for four months, to ensure transparency.
It said the training programmes be specially formulated for police officers and judicial officers to sensitise them towards effective compliance of the Criminal Procedure Code.
"Directions should be issued to the DGP/SP/Commissioner/ Deputy Commissioner of the police concerned in the Union Territory of Delhi to prepare a circular, providing instructions to all police officials in relation to procedure to be followed while issuing notices under...," the report said.
It also said that an attempt has been made through these recommendations to enhance transparency and responsibility in the police system, during the process of investigation and ensuring the attendance of a suspect or accused during the probe.
The court has fixed the matter for further hearing on November 23.
In a major move, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has decided not to pursue a proposal for introduction of Islamic banking in the country.
Replying to an RTI query, the central bank said the decision was taken after considering "the wider and equal opportunities" available to all citizens to access banking and financial services.
Islamic or Sharia banking is a finance system based on the principles of not charging interest, which is prohibited under Islam.
The issue of introduction of Islamic banking in India was examined by the RBI and the government of India, it said.
"Taking into account, the wider and equal opportunities available to all citizens to access banking and financial services, it has been decided not to pursue the proposal further," the central bank said in its reply to the RTI application filed by this PTI correspondent.
The RBI was asked to provide details of steps being taken for the introduction of Islamic or 'interest-free' banking in India.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi had on August 28, 2014 launched Jan Dhan Yojana, a national mission to bring about comprehensive financial inclusion of all the households in the country.
In late 2008, a committee on Financial Sector Reforms, headed by former RBI governor Raghuram Rajan, had stressed on the need for a closer look at the issue of interest-free banking in the country.
"Certain faiths prohibit the use of financial instruments that pay interest. The non-availability of interest-free banking products results in some Indians, including those in the economically disadvantaged strata of society, not being able to access banking products and services due to reasons of faith," the committee had said.
Later, on the instruction of the central government, an inter-departmental group (IDG) set up in the RBI examined the legal, technical and regulatory issues for introducing interest free banking in India and has submitted its report to the government.
The RBI had in February last year sent a copy of the IDG report to the finance ministry and recommended an "Islamic window" in conventional banks for gradual introduction of Sharia-compliant banking.
"In our considered opinion, given the complexities of Islamic finance and various regulatory and supervisory challenges involved in the matter and also due to the fact that Indian banks have no experience in this field, Islamic banking may be introduced in India in a gradual manner.
"Initially, a few simple products which are similar to conventional banking products may be considered for introduction through Islamic window of the conventional banks after necessary notification by the government," it had said in a letter to the ministry.
The letter further reads: "It is also our understanding that interest free banking for financial inclusion will require a proper process of the product being certified as Sharia complaint will be required both on the asset and liability side and the funds received under the interest free banking could not be mingled with other funds and therefore, this banking will have to be conducted under a separate window."
US President Donald Trump on Sunday attempted to clear up confusion over whether he accepts Russian President Vladimir Putin's denials of meddling in the US election last year.
At a news conference in Vietnam, Trump distanced himself from remarks he made on Saturday in which he suggested he believed Putin when he said there had been no Russian meddling in the election that took him to the White House.
The comments had drawn criticism at home because US intelligence agencies have long since concluded there was Russian meddling.
"As to whether I believe it or not, I'm with our agencies, especially as currently constituted," Trump said at a news conference with Vietnamese President Tran Dai Quang.
"As currently led, by fine people, I believe very much in our intelligence agencies."
He was careful to make clear he sided with the intelligence agencies under his own leadership.
Former US intelligence director James Clapper had told Reuters: "The fact the president of the United States would take Putin at his word over that of the intelligence community is quite simply unconscionable."
The Russian issue has clouded Trump's first year in office and his comments on Saturday were a distraction from his five-nation Asia tour.
Trump said he still believed Putin did not think there had been Russian meddling.
"I believe that President Putin really feels, and feels strongly, that he did not meddle in our election," Trump said, while adding: "What he believes is what he believes."
Trump said he was not interested in arguing with Putin over meddling and wanted to get on with Russia to work on world problems, including North Korea, Syria and Ukraine.
Trump has called allegations of campaign collusion with Moscow a hoax. A special counsel, Robert Mueller, is conducting an investigation that has led to charges against Trump's former campaign manager Paul Manafort and his associate Rick Gates.
US intelligence agencies have also concluded Russians interfered to tip the election in Trump's favour through hacking and releasing emails to embarrass Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton and spreading social media propaganda.
US President Donald Trump took his verbal jousting with Kim Jong-Un to a new level on Sunday, taunting the North Korean leader over his height and weight before musing over the idea of them eventually becoming friends.
While they have never met, Trump and Kim have form when it comes to name-calling, with the US president a more than willing match for the highly rhetorical flourishes deployed by his adversary in Pyongyang.
Trump has referred to Kim as a "madman" and "Rocket Man", while the 33-year-old responded by calling the 71-year-old former reality TV star a "mentally deranged dotard".
On Sunday, Trump got down to basics, with a sarcastic tweet prompted by recent descriptions of him in the North's state media as a "lunatic old man".
"Why would Kim Jong-Un insult me by calling me 'old,' when I would NEVER call him 'short and fat'?" the president tweeted from Hanoi - the latest leg of a lengthy Asia tour that had, until then, appeared to have moderated his Twitter habit.
"Oh well, I try so hard to be his friend - and maybe someday that will happen!" he wrote.
Sarcastic or not, the dig about Kim's weight, which has increased significantly since he came to power following the death of his father Kim Jong-Il in 2011, is unlikely to go down well in Pyongyang.
The members of the ruling Kim dynasty - past and present - enjoy near god-like status in North Korea, which has demonstrated extreme sensitivity to any remark that might be seen as mocking or disrespectful of the leadership.
Questioned later about his tweet, Trump insisted he had not been entirely joking about one day befriending the man he described just last week as a dictator with "twisted fantasies".
"That might be a strange thing to happen but it's certainly a possibility," he told reporters at a press conference in the Vietnamese capital.
"If that did happen, it would be a good thing, I can tell you, for North Korea ... I don't know that it will, but it would be very, very nice if it did," he added.
US President Donald Trump said on Sunday he was prepared to mediate between claimants to the South China Sea, where five countries contest China's sweeping claims to the busy waterway.
Trump was speaking in Vietnam, which has become the most vocal opponent of China's claims and its construction and militarisation of artificial islands in the sea. About $3-trillion in goods passes through the sea each year.
"If I can help mediate or arbitrate, please let me know," Trump said in comments at a meeting in Hanoi with Vietnam's president, Tran Dai Quang.
Trump acknowledged that China's position on the South China Sea was a problem.
"I'm a very good mediator and arbitrator," he said.
President Quang said Vietnam believed in handling disputes on the South China Sea through peaceful negotiations and on the basis of international laws, which Vietnam says nullify China's claims.
Vietnam has reclaimed land around reefs and islets, but on nowhere near the same scale as China. Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines and Taiwan also have claims in the sea.
Since Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte has grown closer to China, Vietnam has emerged as China's main challenger in the region. In July, China pressured Vietnam to stop oil drilling in a disputed area, taking relations to a low.
Relations have since improved and Chinese President Xi Jinping is visiting Hanoi later on Sunday.
The South China Sea was discussed in Beijing on an earlier leg of Trump's 12-day Asian tour and US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said the United States and China had a frank exchange of views.
The US has angered China with freedom of navigation patrols close to Chinese-controlled islands.
Fifty-five Indian fishermen have been arrested by the Pakistan Maritime Security Agency for allegedly fishing in the country's territorial waters.
The PMSA has also seized nine Indian fishing boats during a four-day operation (between Wednesday and Saturday) in the Arabian Sea, a PMSA spokesman said.
The spokesman said that speed boats were deployed to intercept the boats of Indian fishermen, who were arrested as they were fishing illegally in Pakistan's territorial waters.
"The fishermen, after initial investigations, have been handed over to the Docks police," he said.
A police official said that the fishermen would now be produced before a judicial magistrate.
Fishermen from Pakistan and India are frequently detained for illegally fishing in each other's territorial waters since the Arabian Sea does not have a clearly defined marine border and the wooden boats, used by fishermen, lack the technology to avoid them from drifting away.
On October 29, the Pakistan government had released 68 Indian fishermen from Malir jail as a goodwill gesture.
Pakistani authorities had released a total of 438 Indian fishermen between December 2016 and January 2017 from the Landhi and Malir jails in Karachi.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi tonight held separate pull-aside meetings with US President Donald Trump and Chinese Premier Li Keqiang on the sidelines of a gala dinner to mark the 50th anniversary of the ASEAN.
Modi was also seen chit-chatting with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev and Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak at the reception for the leaders who have arrived here for the 31st ASEAN summit and related meetings.
He also held brief interactions with several other leaders who attended the reception hosted by Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte at the mega SMX Convention Centre in Pasay City here.
The prime minister as well as all other leaders wore Barong Tagalong, an embroidered shirt which is the national dress of the Philippines. Renowned Filipino designer Albert Andrada has designed the shirts.
Modi also tweeted pictures of his interaction with several leaders.
The menu of the gala dinner featured various Filipino cuisines including Filipino steak sushi.
The brief interaction between Modi and Trump came ahead of their scheduled bilateral meeting tomorrow. The two leaders are expected to deliberate on a number of key issues of mutual interest including the evolving security situation in the Indo-Pacific region where Washington favours a greater role by India.
There have been concerns over China's growing military presence in the Indo-Pacific and the issue was understood to have figured in a meeting of officials from India, the US, Japan and Australia today under the proposed Quadrilateral coalition of the four countries.
"The discussions focused on cooperation based on their converging vision and values for promotion of peace, stability and prosperity in an increasingly inter-connected region that they share with each other and with other partners," the ministry of external affairs said in a statement.
"They agreed that a free, open, prosperous and inclusive Indo-Pacific region serves the long-term interests of all countries in the region and of the world at large," it said.
On Tuesday, Modi will attend the ASEAN-India and East Asia summits where he is likely to reassert India's push for crafting a global approach to deal with growing challenge of terrorism and radicalisation besides pitching for steps to boost regional trade.
Modi will hold bilateral meetings with Duterte tomorrow.
He also had a conversation with Li at the dinner.
"PM @narendramodi had a warm and cordial conversation with the Chinese Premier Li Keqiang at the Gala Dinner," MEA spokesperson Raveesh Kumar tweeted.
Leader of Opposition in Assembly Jagadish Shettar on Sunday reiterated that the party legislators will not let Winter Session of legislature function smoothly if Minister K J George, accused in DySP M K Ganapathy suicide case, is not removed before the start of the session.
Speaking to reporters here on Sunday, Shettar said, "The BJP is keen to discuss development issues during the session in Belagavi. But the onus is on the state government to create a right ambience for smooth proceedings by removing George from the ministry."
He said that issues pertaining to sugarcane price and Karnataka Private Medical Establishments Bill among others will be raised in the session.
When asked whether the party would raise the Lingayat issue during the session, Shettar said, "The party will not raise Lingayat issue during the session as it is not a matter of public interest. It (campaign demanding separate tag for Lingayat) is a Congress ploy to divide the society."
Meanwhile, Law and Parliamentary Affairs Minister T B Jayachandra has urged the opposition not to disrupt the Winter Session, reports DHNS from Sirsi.
Reacting to a query on the BJP's move to disrupt the session over George's resignation, the minister said, " The BJP leaders are busy with Parivartan Yatre rally. Let them play politics on streets. The BJP legislators should let the session function smoothly."
"Bill reserving promotions for SC/ST employees will be tabled in the House during Belagavi session. Following the discussions, the government will take an appropriate decision on the said issue," the minister said.
Free WiFi at prominent public places, "pink toilets" for women and free water connections to all homes are among the key promises made in BJP's 'Sankalp Patra' released here today ahead of the Uttar Pradesh civic polls.
The polls are being seen as the first major electoral test for Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, who unveiled the 'Sankalp Patra', a virtual poll manifesto, at the BJP headquarters here along with deputy chief ministers Keshav Prasad Maurya and Dinesh Sharma, state Urban Development minister Suresh Khanna and UP BJP chief Mahendra Nath Pandey.
At the event, Adityanath spoke about providing services transparently and without "partiality". However, opposition parties termed it as an eyewash, with the SP terming the Sankalp Patra as "Chhal Patra" (Document to befool the people). The Congress also accused the BJP of not fulfilling past promises.
"As many as 652 urban local bodies across the state are going to polls, the highest number so far. This includes 16 municipal corporations. Earlier, there were 12 municipal corporations in the state," Adityanath said.
He expressed happiness that the Ayodhya and Mathura- Vrindavan municipal corporations, constituted by his government, were going to polls for the first time.
The 'Sankalp Patra' comprises 28 promises (sankalp) including better drinking water facilities, improved street lighting, free community toilets, pink toilets for women, grant of Rs 20,000 for the construction of personal toilets, provision of adarsh nagar panchayat, e-tendering and 'kanji' houses for stray animals.
It also seeks to protect the interests of small shopkeepers, promises free water connections to every house, time-bound disposal of public grievances, proper bus service, clean environment, effective implementation of Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana, beautification of parks, house tax exemptions to freedom fighters and their dependents.
Development of cities as 'smart cities', better parking arrangements, auditoriums and exhibition grounds and awarding the best performing workers were among the other promises.
Adityanath said the state government had "ended partiality in power supply" in the state.
"In the urban areas of the state we have begun providing electrification to all households with focus on saving energy. In the unauthorised colonies, we have started the electrification process, and provided more than 20 lakh connections in these seven months. This has helped in curbing power theft," he said.
Adityanath added that all street lights in the urban areas of the state will be changed to LED lights. For this we have entered into an agreement with ESL and in the first phase the street lights in all the 16 municipal corporations will be changed, he said.
"Work in this regard has been completed in Varanasi and Allahabad, and is going on in Lucknow, Gorakhpur, Agra and Kanpur," he said.
Adityanath added that there will be no "corruption in the name of street lights", claiming it used to take place in the past.
"Rs 20,000 will be given for construction of personal toilets. Apart from this solid waste management will be strengthened. The door-to-door garbage collection system has started functioning in a few parts of the state. Our endeavour will be to increase its ambit, once the new urban local bodies under the leadership of the BJP begin functioning," Adityanath said.
On the issue of stray animals, the UP chief minister said that in the first phase, in 16 municipal corporations, along with one big 'gaushala', an old kanji house will be revived.
"In the 653 urban local bodies of the state, which are associated with traditional craft etc, we have come up with the concept of 'one district, one product' to promote these crafts and products. This will generate employment, and help urban local bodies to become economically self-reliant," he said.
The polls are important as far as the development of urban areas of the state is concerned, Adityanath said.
"So, when there is a BJP government at the Centre, at the state, and the urban local bodies are under BJP, then there will be no delay in development reaching the lower levels. The last person of the society had been deprived of the fruits of development and other civic amenities during the previous governments," the chief minister said.
Asked whether the civic election results will be seen as a referendum on the state government, Adityanath said, "We consider every election as an examination. But, the question is that opposition has already left the field."
He said the speed of developmental works would depend upon the constitution of the new urban local bodies.
"If the new urban local bodies are of the BJP, then there will be no problems, as the ideology will be the same. Else, like in the past there was government of rival party in the state. The Centre wanted to give funds for development..," he said.
UP BJP chief Pandey said the party was not contesting the polls merely to bag posts of mayors or corporators, but to ensure better quality of life to the people.
Reacting to the BJP's Sankalp Patra, Samajwadi Party (SP) chief Akhilesh Yadav in a statement said, "The BJP has come up with 'Chhal Patra' like the one, which it had brought in UP Assembly polls. There is no credibility as far as the sankalp patra is concerned. The people of the state have not forgotten the fact that promises made by BJP in the assembly elections have not been fulfilled."
UP Congress spokesperson Ashok Singh, said, "The BJP only believes in dramatics, and is not bothered to redress the problems of the public. As a result, you can see that the basic civic problems plaguing the people of the state are yet to be resolved. But, I am confident that the people of UP will teach a lesson to the BJP."
As many as 24 districts will go to polls on November 22, while 25 districts will go to polls on November 26, and 26 districts on November 29.
Counting of votes for 16 nagar nigams, 198 nagar palika parishads and 438 nagar panchayats will be done on December 1.
More than 3.32 crore voters will be eligible to cast their ballots at 36,269 polling booths and 11,389 polling stations.
The polls will be held eight months after the BJP came to power with a landslide victory in the state. Though, the BJP has traditionally been strong in urban constituencies, the acid test for Adityanath would be to match the performance of the Assembly elections.
In 2012, the BJP had swept mayoral polls, winning 10 of the 12 mayor posts. Lucknow mayor Dinesh Sharma is now a deputy chief minister of UP.
Shia Waqf Board chairman Waseem Rizvi on Sunday met prominent Hindu seers in Ayodhya to work out a compromise formula on the vexed Ram Temple-Babri Masjid issue.
Rizvi, who held meetings with All India Akhara Parishad president Mahant Narendra Giri, Hanumangarhi temple mahant Dharam Das and Nirmohi Akhara's Mahant Suresh Das, said that a compromise formula would be submitted to the Supreme Court, which was hearing the matter, before December 6 this year.
The disputed structure in Ayodhya was demolished by the kar sevaks on the same day in 1992. Mahant Dharam Das also expressed a similar hope and said that all the parties wanted a negotiated settlement of the issue.
He also claimed that Iqbal Ansari, son of the oldest Ayodhya litigant Hashim Ansari, also attended the meeting and assured all cooperation in arriving at a peaceful settlement of the dispute.
The Hindu seers, however, made light of spiritual guru Sri Sri Ravishankar's reported efforts to help resolve the dispute and said that the latter should keep away from the matter as he was not a seer
Haji Mehboob, one of the Muslim plaintiffs in the Ram Janambhoomi-Babri Masjid title suits, however, said that Rizvi had not met him so far. "He should also meet Muslim parties if he wants a negotiated settlement," he added.
A few days ago, Rizvi held a meeting with Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath and apprised him about the progress in his efforts to resolve the dispute.
The Shia Waqf Board chairman had also met Art of Living founder Sri Sri Ravishankar at Bengaluru a few days ago and discussed the issue.
The Sunni Central Waqf Board, one of the main plaintiffs in the suits, however, has not shown any interest in the efforts by Rizvi.
At least 53 people have been arrested in Bangladesh for their alleged involvement in an arson attack on over 30 houses of Hindus following rumours that a youth from the minority community published an offensive Facebook status, media reports said on Sunday.
The police have alleged that the country's largest Islamist party Jamaat-e-Islami, a key ally of the opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) led by former prime minister Khaleda Zia, carried out the attack on Hindus to create unrest ahead of the next parliamentary elections, bdnews24.com reported.
"Jamaat tried to fuel unrest as elections are nearing," Rangpur Superintendent of Police Mizanur Rahman told reporters after inspecting the scene on Saturday.
He said the police have identified four persons who instigated the attacks.
The police have filed two cases over the incident at the Kotwali and Gangachara police stations and so far arrested 53 suspects, Rangpur's Additional Superintendent of Police Zakir Hossain was quoted as saying by Dhaka Tribune.
One person was killed when the police opened fire to disperse the crowd that torched the houses of Hindus in Rangpur district's Thakurpara village, about 300 km from Dhaka, on Friday, the report said.
At least five persons were injured when the police fired rubber bullets and lobbed tear gas shells to bring the situation under control, it said.
The protesters claimed that they were infuriated by a defamatory status published from the Facebook account of a person who hails from the Thakurbari village a few days ago, the report said.
Before the police intervened, the perpetrators had torched at least 30 Hindu houses before looting and vandalising them, the report said.
A crowd of 20,000 people had reportedly gathered from six to seven neighbouring villages before the attack was launched by a group of people, it said.
There were traffic snarls after the mob blocked the Rangpur-Dinajpur highway to protest against the police action.
The winter session of the legislature, scheduled to commence from Monday at Suvarna Vidhana Soudha in Belagavi, is expected to be stormy with principal Opposition party BJP deciding to mount pressure on the ruling Congress, demanding the resignation of Bengaluru Development Minister K J George in connection with the suicide of police officer M K Ganapathy.
The saffron party leaders are also up in arms against AICC general secretary incharge of Karnataka K C Venugopal over his reported involvement in the solar scam in Kerala and demanding that the Congress should remove him from his post immediately. However, the government has strongly defended both the leaders, rejecting the Opposition party's demand. The session is scheduled to be held till November 24.
The government is planning to counter the BJP by tabling a controversial report on irregularities in purchase of power during 2006 and 2013. It is likely to highlight irregularities and lapses in power purchase during the previous BJP governments. The JD(S), on its part, has chalked out a strategy to take on both the national parties. The regional party is likely to raise burning issues related to north Karnataka region during the session.
This apart, the much-awaited report of an Assembly committee on the encroachment of lakes in Bengaluru Urban and Bengaluru Rural districts is likely to be tabled during the session. The Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike and the revenue officials of both the districts are waiting for the report, to take action against the encroachers. The committee will recommend action to be taken against the lake encroachers in its report.
The controversial private medical establishments bill that seeks to regulate private hospitals is likely to be taken up for discussion during the session. Private medical doctors, who are opposing the bill, have threatened to stage a protest in front of the Suvarna Vidhana Soudha, Belagavi, on Monday, the opening day of the session.
Assembly Speaker K B Koliwad told reporters on Sunday that five new bills will be introduced during the session. These bills are: The Karnataka Prevention and Eradication of Inhuman Evil Practice and Black Magic Bill, 2017, the Karnataka Urban Development Authorities (Amendment) Bill, 2017, the Karnataka Repealing of Certain Enactments Bill, 2017, the Karnataka Extension of Consequential Seniority to Government Servants Promoted on the Basis of Reservation (To the Posts in the Civil Services of the State) Bill and the Karnataka Appropriation Bill, 2017.
All dental clinics which are part of the Indian Dental Association, will remain closed on November 13 as a mark of protest against the proposed amendment to Karnataka Private Medical Establishment Act. The IDA Karnataka chapter will conduct a march towards Belagavi on November 13.
In a press release, IDA Karnataka representative Dr Shivacharan Shetty stated that the government has not responded positively even though many memoranda have been submitted to it to shelve the proposed amendment. The provisions included in the amendment, such as setting up of a grievance committee, the imposition of fine, jail term and fixing of hospital charges will adversely affect the private hospitals and the private practitioners.
There is also a possibility of expert doctors migrating to other states, being unable to follow the obligations under the amended act.
If BJPcomes to power, it will make an effort to set up a branch of National Investigation Agency (NIA) in the coastal region, said BJP state president Yeddyurappa.
He, meanwhile, urged the state government to send a proposal to the Central government to sanction the NIA branch.
Addressing media persons in Mangaluru on Sunday, he said that the coastal region is sensitive. "ISIS has been spreading its activities in the state. Places like Mangaluru, Bengaluru, Bhatkal and Kasargod have become recruitment centres for ISIS. Therefore, there is an urgent need to open a NIAbranch in the region to fight terrorist acts," said Yeddyurappa.
He further said that the murders of Hindu activists in the coastal region resemble those in Kerala. "Organisations such as ISIS, KFD, PFI and SDPI have been involving in anti-social activities, he said, adding that the state government has not taken any action against them. In spite of urging the state government, the demand has not been placed before the Central government towards establishing NIAbranch in coastal region," Yeddyurappa said.
The former chief minister said that the Central government has reduced the import duty on areca. The state government should announce support price to areca, to protect the interests of the growers, he said.
'Corrupt government'
Yeddyurappa said that the scams by the Congress-led state government will be exposed by the BJP soon, with proper evidence. Chief Minister Siddaramaiah is involved in scams such as denotification, BBMPfund misappropriation, wrist watch issue and so on.
He added that Rs 4,600 crore was spent through the BBMPfor road development. "But, the funds have literally gone to the drains. The pothole-ridden roads are evident to this fact. The amount could have been used to concretise the entire Bengaluru roads, he said. Also, there has been a huge misuse of the BBMP funds in the purchase of sweeping machines," said Yeddyurappa.
"In Chamarajanagar district, children belonging to backward classes were given poor quality of school uniforms. The state government is engaged in misappropriation of funds. No funds have been provided to stitch the uniforms. The Suvarna Soudha in Belagavi, built at a cost of Rs 460 crore, is lying empty except during the sessions. Rs seven crore is spent for cleaning of the Soudha, before the session. The chief minister has no concern for public money," he said.
"In the district, Congress leaders are involved in sand and drugs mafia. Drug mafia is controlling the government right now. The poor and the eligible are not getting sand for construction activities," he alleged.
Stating that the law and order situation has deteriorated in the state, he said that kidnapping, murder and atrocity cases have increased. "Due to the acts of nepotism by the chief minister and Home Department advisor Kempaiah, the Police Department has lost confidence. The hands of honest officers are tied. Even though more than 30 cases have been registered against the chief minister, no investigation has been carried out so far. The institution of Lokayukta was weakened and the ACB has turned into a 'clean chit serving organisation'," said Yeddyurappa.
If the government is transparent, it should hand over these cases to CBI or appoint an investigation committee headed by a High Court judge, challenged Yeddyurappa.
Patients from far off places in the country and abroad can now consult specific doctors in the national capital using their smartphones.
Experts at Sir Ganga Ram Hospital have developed an app - myFollowup - where patients can upload their clinical reports and get advice from specialists at an affordable consultation fee.
The patients, from Raipur in Chhattisgarh or those in Kenya, Indonesia and Malaysia, now need not travel all the way to Delhi to seek medical advice, saving them staggering travel cost and time.
However, in cases where a physical examination is required, the app is useful only after meeting the specialist at least once.
"It's not a blind date. The relationship between a doctor and a patient is that of trust. We must know the diagnosis and patient's history," said Dr Sudhir Kalhan, co-chairman of the Department of Minimal Access & Bariatric Surgery Centre at Sir Ganga Ram Hospital.
"We have performed many surgeries on patients who came from different parts of the country but now they need not be present physically for post-surgery treatment. This app is making a huge difference," Dr Kalhan said.
So far, over 10,000 users have downloaded this app and more than 200 doctors from Sir Ganga Ram Hospital are available for consultation after pre-approved online appointments.
With Delhi being reduced to a gas chamber due to severe air pollution and a health emergency declared, this app again became a saviour for the parents of an 11-year-old girl, who lives in one of the satellite towns.
She underwent a liver transplant at the hospital in August but developed a fever a few days ago.
"The family panicked as fever in the post-transplant period can be an ominous sign. In view of the ongoing smog it was not advisable for the child to travel all the way to the hospital for evaluation," said Dr Nishant Wadhwa, a paediatric gastroenterologist and hepatologist.
"Through this app, not only the blood investigations were ordered, they were also able to share the results of the investigations. The treatment was initiated promptly and communicated to them," he added.
Dr Wadhwa says he has at least 12 patients from Malaysia, Indonesia, Kenya and Dubai who are consulting him via the app.
"Most liver transplant patients need to be protected from both bacterial and viral infections, especially during the initial post-transplant period. So it is not advisable for them to travel and get exposed to pollutants in the air these days."
Asked how the idea of developing the app originate, Dr Kalhan said: "Doctors used to struggle with patients calling at odd hours, trying to explain their health problems. This coupled with the challenge of recalling all patients by name and face, had become a nightmare."
"This led to the idea of developing myFollowup. It is a doctor's virtual OPD. This app is used only where a physical examination is not needed. This is the reason that it is used at present for only patients seen by the doctors and who need a follow-up," Dr Kalhan added.
Hyderabad, PTI: A group of students from a private school in Hyderabad held demonstrations on their campus against what they termed as "long school hours".
The students, who held a sit-in protest on Saturday, accused the school authorities of running classes from 6.30 am to 6.30 pm and raised "we want justice" slogan.
"Our classes are held from 6.30 am to 6.30 pm while in other schools, the classes are conducted from 8 am to 4.30 pm. After school hours, we again go to tuitions and there is homework too," a student is seen saying in a video circulated in the media.
"By the time we go to sleep it is around 10.30 pm and the next morning we have to get up at 5.30 am to attend school at 6.30 am. We are deprived of sleep...parents also need to understand," the student said.
Asked about their demands, other protesting students said they wanted an immediate change in timings.
City-based child rights NGO 'Balala Hakkula Sangham' accused the school management of subjecting the children to stress.
The NGO's honorary president Achyuta Rao alleged that the school authorities are violating all the norms and are giving heavy homework to students.
"The students told us that they are hardly getting any sleep after studying 13 to 14 hours and again their parents are sending them to tuitions," Rao said.
He further said they have brought the matter to the notice of Ranga Reddy district collector, seeking action against the school for "violating the norms".
Meanwhile, a school official refuted the allegations and said they conduct classes from 8.30 am to 4.30 pm and the students are given 30 minutes break in between.
The official also said that students are asked to finish their homework during school timings.
A police inspector, who is officiating as a Station House Officer (SHO) of a thana in Bihar's Munger district, has informed the local court that he can't act on an FIR written in English.
Reason being, no one in the police station is well-versed with the Queen's language and so it will be difficult to investigate the case as the FIR was written in English.
Sounds bizarre. But it's true in this part of the cow-belt where a Chief Judicial Magistrate, F Rehman has taken umbrage over the SHO Sriram Choudhary's reply which says "no officer in Kotwali police station knows English and therefore can't act on the FIR."
According to sources in Munger, the CJM had instructed the police to register an FIR in a complaint case (No. 499C/17). The complaint was lodged by a Gurgaon-based contractor Mahendra Singh against Y Kiren Kumar, CEO of a Hyderabad-based private company in the court of Munger.
The claim was that Hyderabad-based company had not paid Rs 30-lakhs to Singh who worked as a contractor for the Ganga bridge in Munger.
"Though the CJM asked the police to register an FIR, the cops did not comply with the court order for around five months," said the complainant's lawyer Sashi Shekhar Singh.
Miffed over the police approach, the CJM issued show-cause notice to the SHO and asked the Munger DIG Vikas Vaibhav to initiate contempt proceedings against Choudhary.
The SHO eventually replied to the court saying that "it would be difficult to investigate the case as no officer at the police station knows English."
The DIG, meanwhile, contended that a probe was on into the case, but admitted that the SHO should have got the FIR translated in Hindi.
Dr Ravindranath Shanbhag, Human Rights Protection Foundation (HRPF) Udupi president, said that although the district administration had sanctioned sites for 29 Koraga women, the authorities have not marked the layouts for these families.
Speaking to media persons here on Saturday, he said that the authorities have failed mark the layouts for the families even after seven years of sanctioning the sites. "The 29 families were living at Athrady, Ambagilu, Alevoor and Ellur had learnt that the state government would allot land to them. Accordingly, in 2010, they submitted their applications for sites. Finally, the authorities sanctioned eight cents of land in the 2.61-acre site on Survey No 229 of Kondady area in Bommarbettu village near Hiriyadka," said Shanbhag.
Title deeds on I-Day
He added that even the title deeds for the said land were handed over to them on Independence Day in 2011. "But, to their astonishment, they could not trace out the land allotted to them and hence contacted the Integrated Tribal Development Project (ITDP) Department. They then received information that the government had sanctioned Rs 1.5 lakh for the levelling the land allotted to them. Of this Rs 1.5 lakh, an amount of Rs 97,000 was released. Again, in 2013-14, Rs 3 lakh was sanctioned for the same project," he said and added, it remains a mystery as to how the amount was used. "When they approached the then Deputy Commissioner M T Reju, the latter asked to level the land themselves. The 29 beneficiaries pooled Rs 5,000 each and carried out the work. As the land was sloppy, they were not successful in levelling the land," he said.
Shanbhag said further that after two years, the beneficiaries approached the State Human Rights Commission and explained their plight. "Following the directions of the Commission in 2015, the then Deputy Commissioner Vishal R, visited the site and directed the officers to look into the issue. However, no concrete action was taken so far. The beneficiaries approached the HRPF a few months ago and explained their plight," he said.
The HRPF took up the cleaning of the land with the help of members of the Volunteer Service Organisation (VSO) of Manipal University on Sunday.
Dr Shanbhag urged the district administration to explain why the beneficiaries were made to wait for such a long years. What happened to the fund released by the government to level the land, he asked.
Beneficiary Subeda said, "We have approached the authorities several times in the past to mark the layouts. We tried to level the land but were not successful in it."
Leader of the Opposition in the Assembly Jagadish Shettar, on Sunday, said Bengaluru Development Minister K J George should have resigned by now taking moral responsibility after the CBI registered an FIR against him in the DySP Ganapathi suicide case.
The BJP will demand the minister's resignation and will not allow the House to function as neither George has resigned nor has Chief Minister Siddararamaiah sought his resignation.
He said the Belagavi session will be the last winter session for the Siddaramaiah government as it has failed to live up to the expectations of the people of the state, especially North Karnataka.
He said his party would also raise the issue of unscientific pricing of sugarcane, non-completion of irrigation projects and providing compensation to people displaced by the Upper Krishna project.
He said the government had failed to implement the provisions of Article 371(J) in education and in providing jobs to people of Hyderabad-Karnataka region. There are more than 60,000 vacant government posts in the region, he said.
Shettar demanded that the state government should bring government doctors also under the ambit of the Karnataka Private Medical Establishment (Amendment) Bill 2017. Extending support to the demands by private doctors, he said the BJP would not allow the bill to be passed, as there are certain draconian provisions in the bill.
After promise to pump in a whopping Rs 2.11 lakh crore in public sector banks, the government on Sunday said that it has decided to put in more capital in PSBs through the Union Budget in February, but everything will be performance linked.
The fresh commitment comes amid a slowing economy putting pressure on investments and squeezing banks' capacity to lend further for infrastructure projects. Public sector banks have been slow in lending to corporates because of lack of capital. Retail lending, however, has not been impacted much.
The government is planning to put in them Rs 2,11,000 crore over a period of two years, but the bulk of money is expected to be given this year itself.
"The government has decided to put in more capital from the Budget, through bonds and banks' equity expansion and therefore, it is the country which is virtually going to pay to keep the banking system in good health," Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said at PSB Manthan here.
The finance minister's fresh promise is an indication of more tax burden on the tax payers in the coming fiscal as the recapitalisation bonds as referred to by Jaitley and, their interest, will only increase the government's debt.
"We want a robust public sector banking system so that your ability to support growth itself increases," Jaitley said.
PSBs were major players in supporting agriculture, infrastructure, industry and financial inclusion, and therefore, India needed healthy PSBs, he said.
State-owned lenders' enhanced support to small and medium enterprises was discussed threadbare in the meeting as the sector contributes majorly in job creation, sources said.
Financial Affairs Secretary Rajiv Kumar said, "It is not an easy money that's going to come to PSBs. Boards to chalk out a clear action plan, they will use data analytics to leverage credit growth."
He said that the capital infusion will be reforms-linked.
Senior Congress leader and former minister Prof B K Chandrashekar on Sunday took exception to the party leaders, including some ministers, discussing openly the chief ministerial candidate in the event of the party coming back to power after the next Assembly election.
"Any comment on the issue at this juncture is unnecessary. The high command has already clarified that Chief Minister Siddaramaiah will lead the party campaign in the election," he said, on seeking his reaction to the party leaders commenting on the issue.
Home Minister Ramalinga Reddy had, on Saturday, expressed his support for Siddaramaiah getting a second term as chief minister if the party retains power in the state. KPCC working president S R Patil and Water Resources Minister M B Patil, too, had batted in favour of a second term for Siddaramaiah, recently.
On the issue of giving tickets to sons and daughters of party leaders to contest the next polls, Chandrashekar said honest party workers should be given priority. "I am concerned about the ordinary party workers. How will they come up if sons and daughters of party leaders are given priority over others?" he said.
Nearly two dozen leaders of the party, including some ministers, have started lobbying to get tickets for their sons and daughters for contesting the next election. Reddy said his daughter Sowmya would contest the election if the party fields her as a candidate.
By Bobby Magill 6 November 2017 (Climate Liability News) An environmental group and two Pennsylvania children filed suit against the Trump administration Monday, accusing the federal government of using junk science to reverse federal climate policies and knowingly increasing the damages, death and destruction that result from climate change.The suit, filed by Philadelphias Clean Air Council and the two children, asks the U.S. District Court to stop any Trump administration action that would increase greenhouse gas emissions and would make the effects of climate change worse.The case builds upon an Oregon federal court case, Juliana v. United States , which was filed in 2015 by a group of 21 children asking the court to recognize a stable climate as a constitutional right and force the government to cut carbon emissions. That case also inspired proposed legal action on behalf of six Portuguese children that would try to force 47 European countries to cut their climate pollution.The Clean Air Council case takes aim at what it describes as the Trump administrations goal to deconstruct the administrative state: reversing federal regulations, casting doubt on established climate science and repealing numerous Obama administration climate policies, including the Environmental Protection Agencys Clean Power Plan .The lawsuit says the Trump administrations climate policy rollbacks rely on junk science, which are part of Trumps war on facts. The suit cites 115 of President Trumps tweets denying established climate science or calling it a hoax and numerous other administration statements countering the accepted scientific consensus. One of those statements was made by White House Budget Director Mick Mulvaney, who said in May that the government will no longer fund crazy climate action.The administration has also sent a dramatically smaller contingent to the latest United Nations meetings to discuss the implementation of the Paris Climate Agreement, which kicked off Monday in Bonn, Germany. They are the first meetings since Trump announced the U.S. would withdraw from the agreement, and his representatives are instead reported to be promoting a continued reliance on fossil fuels and nuclear power.The administration continues to make those arguments despite the Friday release of the latest National Climate Assessment , which concluded unwaveringly that climate change is largely human-driven, is occurring swiftly and is an increasingly severe threat to human health and welfare.The Clean Air Council lawsuit alleges that the Trump administration is knowingly ignoring those dire warnings, and its climate policy rollbacks violate the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment and the Public Trust Doctrine , which requires the government to manage public resources for the common benefit of current and future generations. [ more ]
Citing Climate Change Death and Destruction, Philadelphia Group Sues U.S. Government
PHILADELPHIA, 6 November 2017 On behalf of Clean Air Council and two Pennsylvania children, Hausfeld filed suit today in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania against the federal government to prevent it from rolling back policies, programs, laws, rules, and regulations previously in place to address and ameliorate climate change and its consequences. This pro bono litigation focuses on the federal governments knowledge (dating back over fifty years) that climate change presents a clear and present danger to life, and represents an urgent and potentially irreversible threat to human societies and the planet. You can read the full complaint here.The United States has experienced a steady increase in extreme weather events caused by climate change, as exemplified most recently by the devastating impact of Hurricanes Harvey and Irma, and the October California wildfires. If not adequately addressed, climate change will cause human deaths, shorten human life spans, result in widespread damage to property, threaten human food sources, drastically affect human air quality, and dramatically alter the planets ecosystem to the detriment of the plaintiffs in this case, their children and grandchildren, and all future generations.The federal government has relied on junk science to implement reckless climate change policies in the face of indisputable U.S. and international scientific consensus. It is the governments responsibility to protect the lives and welfare of citizens and the life-sustaining resources they depend on. These acts of deliberate indifference are increasing U.S. contributions to climate change, thereby increasing the frequency and intensity of its life-threatening effects, and violating the constitutional rights of all U.S. citizens.Plaintiffs are leading Philadelphia environmental nonprofit Clean Air Council and two child plaintiffs who have been personally impacted by climate change. The Federal Government Defendants include President Donald Trump, the Department of Energy, Secretary Rick Perry, the Environmental Protection Agency, and Administrator Scott Pruitt.Clean Air Council Executive Director and Chief Counsel Joseph Minott said: We will not stand idly by while President Trump and his agencies raze crucial environmental protections, ignore climate science, dispute well-documented facts and force future generations of Americans to suffer the consequences of this administrations reckless choices and ignorant policies. We must hold the federal government accountable for the long-term environmental harm that is propagating under its direction. Its time to fight back.Scientists refer to climate change as the most important issue of our time. Human contribution to climate change, which exacerbates its effects, has reached a critical moment, the consequences of which are potentially irreversible. Hausfeld Chairman Michael D. Hausfeld stated: By deliberately engaging in this rollback of climate policies and programs, the government is affirmatively endangering the lives and welfare of its citizens.This lawsuit comes on the heels of the federal governments release of the National Climate Assessment, which, in stark contrast to the administrations environmental policies, affirms that climate change is almost entirely caused by human action and is a growing threat to the United States.Hausfeld attorneys working on this case include Michael D. Hausfeld, Seth R. Gassman, Katie R. Beran, Braden Beard, and Michaela Spero.
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By Rachel Leven
10 November 2017
(Vox) Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt doesnt hide his contempt for how the agency has been run, but he does profess to care about one of its key programs: Superfund, which oversees the cleanup of the nations worst toxic waste sites. In April, he toured a site in East Chicago, Indiana, contaminated with lead and arsenic, and told residents, We are going to get this right.
The following month, Pruitt Oklahomas attorney general before he joined the EPA tapped one of his former donors, banker Albert Kell Kelly, to find ways to accelerate and improve Superfund cleanups. Kelly started by consulting career staff members often knowledgeable officials who work at the agency regardless of who holds the White House. But then Kelly closed off the process, conferring with Pruitt to produce a final plan that altered or excluded many of the staffers suggestions. Gone, for example, was the idea that EPA officials be identified early on to lead discussions with communities on how contaminated land should be used after cleanup.
Were missing a huge opportunity to do something new and different with Superfund, said one of two EPA employees who described the process to the Center for Public Integrity on the condition of anonymity.
What happened with Superfund is hardly an anomaly. Todays EPA is wracked with internal conflict and industry influence and is struggling to fulfill its mission, according to more than two dozen current and former agency employees.
A few dozen political appointees brought in under the Trump administration are driving policy. At least 16 of the 45 appointees worked for industries such as oil, coal and chemicals, as this CIP graphic shows.Four of these people and another 21 worked for, or donated to, politicians who have questioned established climate science, such as Pruitt and Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK).Career staff members lawyers, scientists, analysts are largely being frozen out of decision-making, current and former agency employees say. These staffers rarely get face time with Pruitt and frequently receive top-down orders from political appointees with little room for debate. They must sometimes force their way into conversations about subjects in which they have expertise. [more]
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World War II often inspires thoughts of brave men in combat, and Veterans Day gives civilians an opportunity to thank such men for their service and sacrifice. However, though men stormed the beaches of Normandy and raised the flag at Iwo Jima, women did not sit on the sidelinesin fact, many women served their country as nurses during the greatest global conflict known to man. One of these women, Mary Lucile Cain, is a 96 year old resident of Enterprise, and with Veterans Day on the horizon, she took the opportunity to share a little of her story.
Born Sept. 25, 1921 in Quincy, Florida, Cain joined the Army Nurse Corps in July of 1943 and was transported to Camp Robinson in Arkansas after basic training. Cain, who had attended nursing school, said her decision to sign up was made partly because fellow nursing students wanted to join.
I joined because I had some friends that wanted to; we got together and we signed up, Cain said. Three or four of us had been to nursing school together, and they were needing a lot of nurses, so we just signed up. I really enjoyed my experience.
Once orders were received, Cain was sent to Boston, where she boarded a ship bound for England. The ship, USS Argentina, was an ocean liner that hadnt been fully converted to a troop ship at the time Cain boarded, so she recalls being required to dress for dinner. After arriving in the UK, Cain was sent to Abergavenny, Wales, to work in the station hospital there.
We were stationed near where troops were stationed, so we could take care of the soldiers while they were in waiting, Cain said. We were at a station hospital; there was a field hospital that was closer to the front line, so when they got them stable they would send them to us. We lived in Quonset huts while we were there, and I was in Wales for one year and 11 months. I never thought Id wind up in Wales.
Though Cain and the other nurses were healers instead of front line soldiers, certain precautions had to be taken to ensure their safety. Cain recalls being taught to handle guns despite her status as a Reserve Nurse.
In England, we had to learn how to fire every kind of gun they had, which scared me to death. It scared the people that were teaching us too -- really scared them, she laughed. I never had to shoot, but what happened was some of the people who werent ours had gotten behind the lines before, and they taught us to shoot so if it came down to protecting ourselves, we could do it.
When her time in Wales was concluded, Cain was sent to Berlin and Paris on various assignments before returning to the United States and being discharged in February of 1946. As a woman involved in what was primarily a mans war, Cains experience could have been difficult or isolating; however, she remembers that at the core of things, the difference between male and female wasnt such a great gulf.
There wasnt a whole lot of difference, except that you had to learn to put up with whatever situation you got into, Cain said. I learned to get along with any and every kind of people in situations that sometimes got intense, and I got to know a lot of people, a lot of male people too. It changed me in so many ways, meeting so many different people from so many different places in the world It really affected the whole world, our world.
Cain celebrated her 96th birthday in September and has done a lot of living since her involvement with WWII was concluded, but if given the choice, she said she would join up and do it all over again, and encouraged other young women who are considering joining the military to do the same.
I would do it over again, yes. And I would say join. Learn all you can about whats going on and where youre traveling. You have to know whats going on in the world, Cain said. We knew what we would be getting into then because they told us. But you never really know until you experience it.
Now in its 40th year, Landmark Parks Victorian Christmas is set for Dec. 10 from 1-4 p.m.
The event, first held when the park opened the doors of the Waddell House to the general public, is free to attend a thank you from Landmark for the communitys support during the year.
Sip hot apple cider or hot chocolate while listening to Christmas carols and visiting with Santa. Enjoy old fashioned desserts, syrup making, arts and crafts, music, wagon rides and handmade decorations. A circuit riding preacher will deliver a holiday message in the Headland Presbyterian Church.
Volunteers are invited to bake old-fashioned desserts from old family recipes for Victorian Christmas. If you would like to bake something, contact Landmark Park at 334-794-3452. Arts and Crafts vendors are also being accepted. Visit www.landmarkparkdothan.com for details on how to sell your handmade goods at the event. Victorian Christmas is sponsored by The Joy 94.3 FM and is an official AL200 Event, celebrating Alabamas Bicentennial.
Attendees are invited to bring nonperishable food items for donation to the Wiregrass United Way Area Food Bank. Since 1996, the Victorian Christmas food drive has led to the donation of 64,575 pounds of food or 50,449 meals.
Landmark Park is a 135-acre natural science and history museum located on the outskirts of Dothan. Features of the park include nature trails, a planetarium, playground, picnic areas, an elevated boardwalk, a turn-of-the-century farmstead with sheep, chickens, cows and other farm animals and crops typical of an 1890s farm. In addition, the park includes a drugstore with an operating soda fountain, one-room school house, general store, and historic church, all preserved from the surrounding area.
The park is open Monday-Saturday from 9 a.m.-5 p.m. and on Sundays from noon to 5 p.m. The park is located on U.S. Highway 431 North, three miles north of Dothans Ross Clark Circle.
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Chinas booming economy and rapidly growing middle-class present a wealth of opportunities for Australian businesses, particularly those companies able to tap into the rising demand for high quality goods and services. But many local SMEs with international expansion goals have discovered its not as simple as heading overseas and establishing operations.
In a culture such as Chinas, where a business survival rests on the success of understanding the unfamiliar market, Australian SMEs can thrive by making the most of their status as a preferred trading partner. This can be achieved by thinking outside the box establishing a basecamp in Hong Kong as a gateway to the Chinese market and taking advantage of Hong Kongs special administrative status.
The business benefits of a Hong Kong base
Hong Kong is a Special Administrative region of China, located in one of its richest and most developed provinces; serving as a two-way interface between the mainland and the global marketplace.
The principle of one country, two systems was established in the Sino-British Joint Declaration of 1984 as a way to reconcile mainland China, operating under a communist economy, with its capitalist counterparts; Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau. Under this law, Hong Kong is defined as a highly autonomous state with exceptional legislative and judicial power, and the Chinese central government is unable to interfere in its affairs.
As one of the worlds freest economies, Hong Kong has no barriers to trade, no restrictions on inbound or outbound investments, no foreign exchange controls and no nationality restrictions on ownership of property. For Australian businesses, this provides an attractive location in which to establish a basecamp for operations.
Recognising the main barriers in order to overcome them
Understanding the landscape
The Chinese regulatory environment is fraught with complexities that vastly differ depending on location. In addition, each province in China can differ by culture, dialect and economic situation with a different interpretation of laws and regulations.
Australian businesses that cultivate trusted relationships with local vendors and firms with an intimate knowledge of the various markets will have a greater understanding of what motivates their business partners in China and how to best navigate their relationships.
Protecting your intellectual property
China is well-known for intellectual property (IP) theft, and while the Chinese government is taking steps to improve this framework, SMEs need to ensure that they adopt a thorough approach to securing their intellectual property.
It is essential that SMEs patent any IP that they plan to use in China, regardless if it is already patented in overseas markets. This is important to note as patents are national rights and simply patenting IP in your native country will not protect it from international exploitation.
Business Disputes
For any business, dealing with disputes is a potentially costly and time-consuming process. For SMEs that operate in overseas markets who are often already dealing with issues relating to cash-flow and liquidity, the knock-on effects associated with a dispute can be fatal.
Knowing who to trust and where to turn at such a time is important, particularly in the Chinese business environment where importance is placed not so much on corporate rules, but rather on social reciprocity. It is important to note that the Australian government will be unable to provide companies or individuals with legal advice in foreign markets.
Seizing sector opportunities
Aged care
Chinas ageing population is expected to reach 248 million by 2020, and will require developed and established facilities to support their needs as well as a skilled workforce qualified to care for them both of which are currently in short supply.
With Chinas increased interest in Australias educational resources, experiences and inventions, there is significant opportunity for Australian SMEs that operate in this space to engage with these opportunities in the healthcare sector, through education, aged care training and operating aged care facilities.
Energy
There is a strong demand in China for renewable and clean technology as the Chinese economy shifts their focus from traditional coal power to sustainability in a bid to reduce air pollution. This is seeing the country accelerate its commercial expansion in overseas markets with the National Energy Administration announcing that it aims to invest 2.5 trillion yuan into renewable power by 2020.
Conclusion
For Australian SMEs, understanding and mitigating the risks associated with doing business in China is the key to establishing a prosperous and healthy business.
There is an increased demand for on the ground services in foreign markets to assist Australian SMEs and a necessity to foster trusted working relationships with businesses that are well versed in the complex market.
For businesses that are looking to expand overseas, seeking out an Australian firm that has expanded their international footprint and established affiliate relationships with firms overseas will help businesses to identify and mitigate any potential risks of doing business in unfamiliar markets.
About the authors
Mark Chapman, Bentleys & Ken Deayton, Hong Kong Corporate Services have experienced firsthand the challenges that many businesses face when navigating the complex, but lucrative Chinese market and have developed an affiliate relationship between their two firms, which allows for constant on the ground support for Australian businesses looking to expand overseas.
As an academic who works in the world of words, its been by turns horrifying and fascinating watching Alabama Republican Senate candidate Roy Moore and his defenders try to rationalize hisallegedhistory of sexual harassment, assault, inappropriate, and illegal (at the timethe statute of limitations now having expired) behavior with teenage girls.
Given that Moore and most of his supporters in the local Alabama political scene are attorneys, you might expect their statements to be peppered liberally with terms like evidence and proofthe kinds of words that lawyers use when arguing a case, and that carry very specific meanings in a court of law.
But instead, the phrase we see most often in these missives is neitherits true.
If these allegations are true, he must step aside, said Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell. Cory Gardner true, Roy Moore must drop out of the Alabama special Senate election. The allegations against Alabama Senate candidate Roy Moore are deeply troubling, said Sen.(R-Colo.), the chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee. If these allegations are found to be, Roy Moore must drop out of the Alabama special Senate election. These allegations are disqualifying if true. Anyone who would do this to a child has no place in public office, let alone the United States Senate, Speaker Paul Ryan said in a statement. true, this would disqualify anyone from serving in office, his spokesperson said. Vice President Mike Pence found the allegations in the story disturbing and believes, if, this would disqualify anyone from serving in office, his spokesperson said. The president (Trump) believes we cannot allow a mere allegation, in this case one from many years ago, to destroy a persons life. However, the president also believes that if these allegations are true, Judge Moore will do the right thing and step aside, said White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders.
While these statements seem to be critical of Moore, bestow an air of moral superiority on those who utter these words, and provide an aura of detachment from Moores disgusting behavior, their real impact is to inoculate Moore from any chance of being removed from the race by his partys leadership. By attaching if true to their faux condemnations of Moores heinous behavior, these powerful men are injecting an element of uncertainty into the womens accounts, and providing Moore with the cover he needs to remain in the race, secure in the knowledge that his party will not act against him
This is what power and male privilege look like. This is what happens when powerful men in powerful positions are allowed to change the terms of engagement from proof to truth.
But whose truth are we talking about here?
The truth of 4 womens tortured stories, bolstered by the testimony of over 30 supporting witnesses who have corroborated the womens accusations?
Or the truth of a wealthy, powerful man who believes hes entitled to his Senate seat, and sees these 4 women as nothing more than nuisanceshindrances to be squashed as he takes what is rightfully his.
Indeed, only a rich, entitled man like Roy Moore could be so arrogant, so self-absorbed, so full of hubris, as to believe that these women would risk the fallout that comes with their accusationsthe public humiliation, the shame, the damage to their reputationsjust to keep him from achieving his goal.
truth is that it took astounding courage for these women to come forward, knowing that their accounts would be subjected to great scrutiny, and possible Theis that it took astounding courage for these women to come forward, knowing that their accounts would be subjected to great scrutiny, and possible retribution from the powerful Moore
Corfman, 53, who works as a customer service representative at a payday loan business, says she has voted for Republicans in the past three presidential elections, including for Donald Trump in 2016. She says she thought of confronting Moore personally for years, and almost came forward publicly during his first campaign for state Supreme Court in 2000, but decided against it. Her two children were still in school then and she worried about how it would affect them. She also was concerned that her background three divorces and a messy financial history might undermine her credibility
Lets be clearthis is not merely a case of he said, she said. This is a case of: he said
she said
she said
she said
they said
they said
they said
they said
they said
they said
they said
they said
they said
they said
they said
they said
they said
they said
they said
they said
they said
they said
they said
they said
they said
they said
they said
they said
they said
they said
they said
they said
they said
they said
Alabama, and the rest of us, have a chance on December 12 to decide whose truth we believe. We already dropped the ball last November 8lets not do it again. And maybe its time for the lyrics of that famous song to get a much needed update:
Mine eyes have seen the glory
of the coming of the Lord,
She is trampling out the vintage
where the grapes of wrath are stored,
She hath loosed the fateful lightning
of Her terrible swift sword,
HER truth is marching on!
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http://www.elkgrovenews.net/2017/11/jerry-brown-tells-protesters-in-bonn.html
By Dan Bacher | November 12, 2017 |
Governor Jerry Brown doesnt always deal with critics of his controversial environmental policies well - and that was the case again today when he spoke at the UN Climate Conference in Bonn, Germany.
Californians, including indigenous water protectors and those on the frontlines of climate change, disrupted California Governor Jerry Browns speech at the Americans Pledge event at the UN climate talks to confront his strong support of fossil fuels in his state.
The banner-carrying protesters yelled, Keep it in the ground and other chants, referring to the governors strong support of fracking, both offshore and on land in California, and cap-and-trade policies that could prove catastrophic to the Huni Kui People of Acre, Brazil and other indigenous communities around the globe.
"I wish we have could have no pollution, but we have to have our automobiles, said Brown as the activists began disrupting his talk.
"In the ground, I agree with you, Brown said. In the ground. Lets put you in the ground so we can get on with the show here.
This is very California. Thanks for bringing the diversity of dissent here, the visibly disturbed Brown continued.
A video of Brown's reaction to the protest is available here: http://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/capitol-alert/article184097901.html?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter
This is not the first time that Brown has employed harsh words to blast his opponents. On July 25 of this year, Brown blasted critics of his oil industry-written cap-and-trade bill, AB 398, for practicing forms of political terrorism that are conspiring to undermine the American system of governance in an interview with David Greene of NPR (National Public Radio) http://bit.ly/2eLu3g6
Governor Brown, portrayed as a green governor, climate hero, and resistance to Trump by the mainstream media and corporate environmental NGOs, has come to the climate talks to promote California as a global model of climate leadership" at a time when increasing number of Californians are fed up with his pro-Big Oil and pro-Big Ag environmental policies.
"When cities and states combine together and then join with powerful corporations, that's how we get stuff done," said Governor Brown at today's event at the U.S. Climate Action Pavilion, the exhibition space sponsored by U.S. non-federal leaders at COP23. "We're here, we're in and we're not going away."
However, Indigenous Peoples, frontline communities, environmentalists and climate activists disagreed strongly with Brown's contention that cities and states collaborating with "powerful corporations" is "how we get stuff done" - and held this non-violent direct action to expose Browns deep ties to Big Oil and 'false solutions" such as carbon markets.
From refusing to ban fracking to letting oil companies dump toxic waste into underground water supplies, Governor Brown promotes policies that incentivize oil and gas production in the state, according to a news release from the Indigenous Environmental Network. His cap-and-trade extension includes provisions written by oil lobbyists that prevent state and local agencies from directly limiting carbon emissions from oil refineries. He has also failed to shut down the Aliso Canyon natural gas storage facility, where the largest methane leak in U.S. history forced thousands to flee their homes in 2015.
On November 9, a Center for Biological Diversity report released at the Bonn conference revealed that three-quarters of Californias oil is as climate-damaging as Canadian tar sands crude. "Oil Stain: How Dirty Crude Undercuts Californias Climate Progress" found that eight of the states 10 largest-producing oil fields produce very dirty crude with greenhouse gas emissions comparable to tar sands oil, according to the Center. The report detailed how the states dirty oil problem is compounded by policies that incentivize crude production.
The groups today called on Governor Brown to ban new drilling and fracking, phase out fossil fuel production, and commit to "a just transition to clean energy for all."
Northern California has five refineries stretching along our Bay on the North East side of San Francisco, said Daniel Ilario, Idle No More SF/Bay Area. Those living along this Refinery Corridor experience continuous negative health effects such as respiratory problems, birth defects, leukemia and cancers. Californias answer to our global climate crisis, the Cap and Trade extension (AB 398), will continue allowing refineries to expand, pollute, and ultimately destroy life.
The Phillips 66 Refinery in Rodeo, CA plans to expand their marine terminal to increase crude oil imports by water from 30,000 barrels a day to 130,000 barrels a day. We will not let this happen. Decision makers around the world need to understand that Governors Jerry Browns carbon market scheme will continue killing our people and poisoning our water, air, and soil. We will not accept the false solution of carbon trading that increase pollution in our hometowns while violating indigenous rights and human rights around the world. We must keep fossil fuels in the ground, said Ilario.
Ninawa Nuneshuni Kui, President of the Huni Kui People of Acre, Brazil, said Brown's "American Pledge," based on environmentally unjust carbon trading, would lead to the displacement of his people and the destruction of his land.
I wanted to leave a message here, for humanity and all of planet, that the peoples need to join to defend Mother Nature, the soil, water and air because they are being threatened, said Ninawa Nuneshuni Kui, President of the Huni Kui People of Acre, Brazil. And humanity needs Nature to survive. So I want to say that Nature and the air are not a means of commerce for anyone and its every humans right to live in peace. Jerry Browns American Pledge will lead to the displacement of my people and the destruction of my territory. We need to respect the rights of Nature and humans beings that need her to survive.
Eva Malis, a young person from Valencia, CA, pointed out that Californians have been asking Governor Brown for years to step up and "be a true climate leader."
"If he is going to be celebrated by the world as a climate leader, he needs to commit to the communities on the frontlines of fossil fuel extraction. Real climate leaders dont frack. This isnt just about Californians. The world needs Jerry Brown to do more in his own state," said Malis.
California Governor Jerry Brown is one of the biggest liars when it comes to being a climate leader, summed up Isabelle Zizi of Idle No More SF Bay. In 2014, hundreds of our drinking water and agricultural aquifers were contaminated with 3 billion gallons of fracking wastewater. The cap and trade bill that he passed in the summer of 2017 is in favor of more greenhouse gas emissions, more offsets for the fossil fuel industry, and is a false solution to stop climate change.
Zizi is in Bonn for the UN Climate Talks. Follow her for updates on actions from the #ItTakesRoots delegation of Indigenous people, frontline communities and people of color.
While Brown portrays himself as a "climate leader," he has in fact received over $9.8 million in contributions from oil, gas and utility companies, often within days of winning big political favors, according to Consumer Watchdog's "Brown's Dirty Hands" report released in August 2016.
The timing of energy industry donations around important legislation and key pro-industry amendments, as well as key regulatory decisions in which Brown personally intervened, raises troubling questions about whether quid pro quos are routine for this administration, said consumer advocate Liza Tucker, report author. While Brown paints himself as a foe of fossil fuels, his Administration promoted reckless oil drilling, burning dirty natural gas to make electricity, and used old hands from industry and government, placed in key regulatory positions, to protect the fossil fuel-reliant energy industry.
The report claims that twenty-six energy companies including the states three major investor-owned utilities, Occidental, Chevron, and NRGall with business before the statedonated $9.8 million to Jerry Browns campaigns, causes, and initiatives, and to the California Democratic Party since he ran for Governor. You can download the report here: http://www.consumerwatchdog.org/dirtyhands
Then on February 6 of this year, twelve public interest groups, led by Consumer Watchdog and Food & Water Watch, unveiled a comprehensive "report card" on Jerry Brown Administrations environmental record showing he falls short in six out of seven key areas, including oil drilling, fossil fuel generated electricity, toxic emissions, the California Environmental Quality Act, coastal protection and water.
The report calls for a moratorium on the building of natural gas powered electricity plants, given what they described as the glut of electric capacity, and calls for an outside audit of the states energy needs. The groups showed how California can improve its environmental protections to meet standards set in other states. The document also urged Brown to abandon his Delta Tunnels project and to make water conservation a priority
Read the report How Green Is Jerry Brown? at: http://www.consumerwatchdog.org/isbrowngreen
While Brown portrays himself as the "resistance" to President Trump's positions on climate change and other issues, it is worth noting that Brown and the Trump administration appear to share a lot of common ground on many issues, including water infrastructure, public lands, the Delta Tunnels and the expansion of fracking in California. On April 13, Brown and Secretary of Interior Ryan Zinke had a "positive and productive" meeting during the Secretary's visit to California, according to Zinke.
Telangana CM K Chandrasekhar Rao had said Thushar was behind an alleged BJP bid to poach TRS MLAs.
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Selena Gomez's past relationship with Justin Bieber was plagued by rumors of cheating but according to a new report, their recently reconciled relationship is starting off in a much better place.
One year after Gomez infamously called out Bieber on Instagram for cheating on her multiple times during their years-long relationship, a source claims Bieber is doing whatever it takes to prove himself to his on-again, off-again girlfriend.
Selena is blown away by Justins new integrity, a source close to the couple told Hollywood Life on Nov. 10. Since theyve reunited, Justin now keeps every promise he makes, and is doing everything he says he is going to do. Selena feels secure in their relationship because he is making it easy for her to trust him completely.
Gomez and Bieber started dating in 2010 and continued to date exclusively until 2012. Since then, the couple has been spotted together from time to time but never actually confirmed whether or not they were back together. At the same time, Bieber was seen with a number of other women, including Kourtney Kardashian, Hailey Baldwin, and Sofia Richie, but never confirmed if he dated any one of them.
Justin has grown, matured and has really changed a lot in the last few years, the source revealed. She is falling in love all over again with a new and improved Justin who calls when he says he is going to call, texts when he says he will and is doing everything right.
Gomez appeared to stay single in the years after her late 2012 split from Bieber but then, in January of this year, after being briefly linked to Orlando Bloom and even Brad Pitt, she went public with The Weeknd after enjoying a romantic meal in Los Angeles. Throughout her relationship with The Weeknd, Gomez was seen with her fellow musician on numerous occasions around the world and even enjoyed a days-long trip to Italy to sight see in Venice and Florence in February.
While Gomez and The Weeknd appeared to be going strong just weeks ago, the couple's split was confirmed earlier this month days after Gomez and Bieber attempted to reunite in secret at her L.A. home. Since then, Gomez and Bieber have been spending tons of time together and appear to be involved in a committed relationship once again.
Rebel Wilson is now telling her own story. The Pitch Perfect star is speaking up about her experience with sexual harassment
Wilson claims that she was harassed by a male co-star who she has not named. She did state that she told her agent about the incident immediately after it occurred and they made a complaint to the studio with her lawyer present. However, she was threatened by the star's agent to cooperate with him and 'support' him.
"(He) asked me to go into a room with him and then asked me repeatedly to stick my finger up his (butt)," she said. "All whilst his male 'friends' tried to film the incident on their iPhones and laughed. I repeatedly said no and eventually got out of the room."
"Later I was threatened by one of the star's representatives to be nice and support the male star. I refused. The whole thing was disgusting. I've told hundreds of people in the industry the story in more graphic detail basically to warn them off this individual," Wilson continued.
Wilson is joining the many actresses and actors who have recently come forward and bravely spoke on their past experience with harassment in the workplace. The allegations began after an expose was written about Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein in the New York Times.
Since then, director Brett Ratner, actor Kevin Spacey, and comedian, director Louis C.K. have all been accused of sexual abuse or misconduct. C.K. recently made a statement where he admitted to the allegations against him and apologized to all those affected. Spacey has checked himself into a rehabilitation center to seek professional treatment. Weinstein, Ratner and others have all denied these claims.
Wilson also claims she was harassed by a director.
"Earlier in my career, I also had a 'hotel room' encounter with a top director. I thought we were there to talk comedy. Nothing physical happened because the guy's wife called and started abusing him over the phone for sleeping with actresses and luckily she was yelling so loud..."
The actress did not name the director either.
Wilson rose to fame after starring in the film, Pitch Perfect. She went on to star in the film's sequels. Wilson was also starred in How To Be Single, Bridesmaid, and A Night at the Museum 3.
Wilson did not elaborate on when the incidents occurred.
You may want to take a look at the motorhome and caravan dealers in the immediate area around your property. Obviously, the transport costs will be much less if you're not moving your purchase all that far. (And many camper and caravan dealers do have a selection of used equipment available.)
I've been told that (at least in our departement), you don't have to get authorization to set up a "temporary structure" on even agricultural property. But you need to check that in the area where your property is located. We've got a neighbor who appears to have used that loophole to the limit in setting himself up originally in a caravan, and then branching out to one of those "portable classroom" structures on what is zoned agricultural land. He has been there for a good ten or more years now and while the town isn't happy about the situation, they aren't doing anything to hassle him, so I have to believe he has successfully exploited a loophole in the law.
In converting the barn, it's important to see not only whether the property is buildable, but also if it has all the various utilities available. (Our neighbor managed to connect to the local water and sewer systems, but he still runs a generator for his power, and heats his little home with a wood burning stove.) But I know of other folks who have lived in a caravan while converting or restoring a building on their property. It can be done.
Cheers,
Bev
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AUSTIN Without any big-name challengers from either party in sight, Gov. Greg Abbott made his reelection campaign official Saturday by filing for the Republican primary and rolling out a plan to improve veteran health care and employment.
It was the first day of the filing period for the March 6 Democratic and Republican primary elections.
As governor I will continue to fight for the men and women who fought for us, Abbott told a crowd gathered for his campaign-sponsored Veterans Day picnic in Austin.
Texas is home to roughly1.5 million veterans, the second-largest share in any state after California. Under the plan, Abbott is proposing to double state funding for veteran legal aid to $3 million a year and to authorize a local property tax exemption for veteran-owned businesses and those that employ veterans.
Another $3 million each year would go to the Texas Veterans Commission to help reduce wait times for health care overseen by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. That change would particularly benefit the Rio Grande Valley, Abbott said, because the closest facility is 200 miles away in San Antonio.
The VA healthcare system is a national disgrace. Texas cannot, and we will not, wait for the federal government to provide the healthcare that our veterans need and deserve, said Abbott, who was introduced by his older brother Bud Abbott, a veteran of the U.S. Navy. The proposals would need buy-in from the Legislature.
Though he announced his campaign in San Antonio earlier this year, Abbott officially filed paperwork for the GOP primary Saturday .
Democrats have railed this year against Abbotts support for policies banning so-called sanctuary cities and restricting the public restrooms transgender people could use. But so far, no big-name candidates have committed to run against him.
Rep. Gina Hinojosa, D-Austin, wouldnt reveal names of any potential candidates this week. But she said theres a lot of interest after recent elections in Virginia, where Democrats won up and down the ballot, including in the governors race.
Dallas County Sheriff Lupe Garcia and Andrew White, the son of the late former Gov. Mark White, are said to be exploring a potential run against Abbott. Others seem set against it, including Congressman Joaquin Castro and former State Sen. Wendy Davis, who unsuccessfully challenged Abbott in the 2014 contest. Davis said recently it would take a "brainwash, maybe" for her to run again.
Several little-known candidates have emerged, including Dallas businessman Jeffrey Payne and San Antonian Tom Wakely, who unsuccessfully challenged U.S. Rep. Lamar Smith last campaign cycle.
Manny Garcia, Texas Democratic Party deputy executive director, is expecting another Democrat to jump in, he said. Those considering it are taking their time, he said, because the gubernatorial candidate effectively becomes standard-bearer for the state party.
A lot of people are taking their time to make this decision. Its a change in their life and a really huge responsibility to take on, to lead the Democratic ticket. No one is taking that decision lightly, Garcia said, adding later. We fundamentally believe (Abbott) has been a weak governor and isnt willing to do the big things necessary to get the state on track.
Abbott, the states former attorney general, defeated Davis by more than 20 percentage points in 2014 to win his first four-year term as governor. As of last report, Abbott had more than $40 million in his campaign war chest, a figure that would be all but impossible for a competitor to match with less than a year until election day.
The lack of a big-name challenger at the point underlines that Abbotts reelections chances are pretty strong, said James Henson, director of the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas at Austin.
He has all the financial resources he needs, and then some, whether he has a challenger or not, Henson said. He has no serious opposition within his own party, he is the most popular Republican with the highest job approval rating among all the statewide officials.
Abbotts event Saturday, held outside an American Legion hall, drew more than 100 people, who afterward stood in a receiving line to snap photos with Abbott, ate burgers and drank beer. Abbott did not take questions from the news media.
Christian Salazar, who has been deployed with the military to Iraq and Afghanistan over the last ten years, said Abbotts views are in line with those of veterans.
We believe in freedom, he said. We dont think people should be restricted from protecting themselves.
amorris@express-news.net
Standing in front of his mothers grave, his daughter clinging to him, Santos Martinez thought back to a C-130 flight unlike any other, the one where several flag-draped transfer cases were strapped down in the cargo bay.
That was his freedom flight, the one that carried him out of harms way and back home.
My reaction, said Martinez, a Department of Homeland Security agent, was why do I get to come home and they dont?
On Veterans Day, he wasnt alone in thinking about those whove served. Many of the people who gathered Saturday at Fort Sam Houston National Cemetery, some of them older women who sat alone or with friends and families, contemplated the contributions of veterans as pomp, circumstance and patriotic music stirred through the cool air.
Each wartime story gave birth to new ones that have rippled through the generations.
Rhett Smith, a Navy veteran who served from 1979-83, talked of his father, a World War II veteran of the Pacific, and his mothers first husband, who disappeared while flying in the China-Burma-India theater and was never seen again.
Carolyn Cutright thought back to her husband, Billie V. Cutright, a combat medic who stayed three years in Vietnam after getting a Dear John letter from his soon-to-be ex-wife.
A tear rolled down the face of her sister, Jeannette Sorrell. This was her first Veterans Day ceremony at Fort Sam, where her husband, Clifford, was buried only last May after dying at 69.
It was too soon after my husbands funeral here, said Sorrell, 66, of San Antonio after wiping her eyes following a buglers sounding of taps.
Veterans Day began as Armistice Day, declared by the United States, Great Britain and France to mark the cease-fire that ended World War I at the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month of 1918. Congress redesignated the day in 1954 to honor all those who have served in Americas wars.
The ceremony in many ways looked much like those in recent years, right down to the rain that fell, forcing many at Fort Sam to don parkas and open umbrellas. Retired Air Force Master Sgt. Tom Earnest served as master of ceremonies, Fort Sams Memorial Services Detachment fired three rifle volleys, and the Texas Childrens Choir sang Mansions of the Lord, a classic popularized in the movie We Were Soldiers.
Other traditions were kept as well, one of them a ceremony honoring the Buffalo Soldiers, African-Americans who defended the West after the Civil War. There also was the annual Veterans Day Parade downtown.
A new generation of veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan were at Fort Sam, joining those from Vietnam, the Panama invasion and the Gulf War, but unlike past years, few if any from World War II appeared to be in attendance. Most were at rest under white headstones, one of them the father of the days keynote speaker.
Now Playing: At Fort Sam, a large crowd salutes veterans with pomp, circumstance, music and a citizenship ceremony. Video: Brandpoint
Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, told the crowd his dad was among 144,000 veterans interred on the cemeterys grounds. John Cornyn II was a B-17 pilot who flew with the Hells Angels the 8th Air Forces 303rd Bomb Group out of Molesworth, England. On his 26th mission over Germany, he was shot down and taken prisoner.
The elder Cornyns post-war narrative starts with him becoming an Air Force dentist. The family got around over his 31-year career, living in San Antonio; El Paso; Biloxi, Mississippi; Washington, D.C.; and Tachikawa, Japan. His son, John Cornyn III, graduated from Trinity University with a journalism degree and became a state district judge in Bexar County at age 32. He was elected to the U.S. Senate in 2002.
Veterans know something perhaps more acutely than the rest of us, that our citizenship requires something of each of us, that blessed as we are with rights, those rights come with responsibilities to serve, to protect, Cornyn told the crowd in a 9-minute speech. Veterans understand that our nation in the end is only as strong as the men and women who defend it.
Willis Garrett Smith is interred at Fort Sam, too. He was a Navy man in World War II, serving aboard an ammunition ship. His son, Rhett Rosenquest Smith, didnt see much of his father after the age of 6, when his parents divorced. He grew up in Eastland, between Abilene and Fort Worth, and learned of his mothers first husband, Lt. Bob Martin, a crewman on a B-25 bomber that vanished in the China-India-Burma theater.
My whole childhood was listening to stories about my mothers experiences in World War II, and all of my uncles. She had four sisters. All of them were married to guys who were in World War II, Smith, 67, of San Antonio explained.
Later the younger Smith served aboard the USS America, a Kitty Hawk-class supercarrier.
Cutright met her husband, Billie, after Vietnam. He joined the Army at 17 and retired as a command sergeant major. She described him as a man who loved soldiering and his soldiers. He served 26 years, she said, and thinks he likely held a grudge over the Dear John letter until his ex-wife was close to death.
Well, I think he did (forgive her) because when she was dying with cancer we went when we knew the time was near and took (the grandchildren) to Illinois and the children asked him to go in and asked him for forgiveness, Cutright, 73, of Selma said.
Long after Fort Sams ceremony had ended, Martinez, 45, of Cibolo stood before the grave of his mother, Texas Army National Guard Sgt. Anita Massey. He thought of her service in Vietnam and his last day in Iraq.
I was going home and being in the back of the plane with the red, white and blue-covered caskets. Man, what more can I say? he said. I got to come home, they didnt, and so my appreciation for them and the people before me, the soldiers before me, I mean, its a life-changer, it really is.
sigc@express-news.net
AUSTIN Long steeped in Wild West lore, Texas often evokes images of horses clip-clopping down city streets and residents with guns strapped on their hips as they go about their daily business.
But the Lone Star State was among the first to bar residents from carrying handguns in public that was back in 1871. It was one of the strictest prohibitions at the time and would remain in place for more than a century.
Even now, as state lawmakers continue to steadily remove gun restrictions, Texas doesnt allow permitless carry, which is allowed in at least 10 other states.
The American public thinks of Texas as an extreme case of American gun culture. They have the image of the Wild West, where theres no laws, its the place where you can do anything with guns, said Harel Shapira, an assistant professor of sociology at the University of Texas at Austin. Actually, in comparison to the rest of the U.S., Texas is in the middle of the road.
The Nov. 5 church shooting in Sutherland Springs, which left 26 dead and 20 more injured, has again thrust Texas gun laws into the spotlight.
A group calling itself Gun Free UT protests the campus carry law on the steps of the main building on the University of Texas campus last summer in Austin. A group calling itself Gun Free UT protests the campus carry law on the steps of the main building on the University of Texas campus last summer in Austin. Photo: John Davenport /San Antonio Express-News Photo: John Davenport /San Antonio Express-News Image 1 of / 1 Caption Close Despite popular stereotype, Texas isnt the Wild West 1 / 1 Back to Gallery
Devin Patrick Kelley was able to buy four guns, including two in Texas, even though he should have been blocked because of his criminal background. The Air Force is investigating why Kelleys 2012 conviction for assaulting his wife and infant stepson was never reported to a national database used to run background checks on potential gun buys.
State officials said Kelley was denied a Texas license to carry handguns in 2015 after failing to provide more information for his application when asked.
While Republican leaders, including Attorney General Ken Paxton, are calling for more residents to arm themselves as protection against future shootings, some Democrats are pushing to restrict the open carrying of shotguns and rifles, like the Ruger AR-556 Kelley used in his attack.
Before the Civil War, Texas, like most states, had few restrictions on firearms. On the frontier, weapons were a necessity for warding off intruders and getting food.
Though a prohibition on dueling was already on the books, the Legislature passed its first gun control measure in 1866, barring people from carrying guns on a plantation without the owners consent, according to Stephen Halbrook, a Virginia attorney who has written several books on the Second Amendment.
At the wars end, however, the states Reconstruction government expanded gun restrictions as a way to keep weapons out of the hands of Confederate sympathizers, the expert said. Under the new law, residents werent allowed to carry pistols in public, on his person, saddle or in his saddle-bags. A first offense was punishable by a fine of at least $25, and any subsequent violation could result in jail time.
Even as courts in other states struck down similar bans, Texas prohibition, which was among the most restrictive in the South, outlawing both the concealed and open carrying of handguns, remained state law until late in the 20th century, Halbrook said.
Some scholars suggest that it stayed on the books as a way for those in power to target their enemies, whether it was freedmen or Republicans, and help their friends. The laws main exception was for traveling, though that wasnt clearly defined.
Texas was really an anomaly all those years, Halbrook said. It was not the Wild West like you see in the movies at all. No pistols could be carried. That was it.
By the 1980s, the public mood was changing. States that had long-standing laws prohibiting firearms in public began removing restrictions. Texas joined in.
At the time, crime rates were surging. Hard-liners pushing anti-gun-control policies had taken over leadership of the National Rifle Association, according to Adam Winkler, a law school professor at the University of California at Los Angeles and author of Gunfight: The Battle Over the Right to Bear Arms in America.
The idea was that people had a constitutional right to carry their guns in public, Winkler said. Its the same idea behind the basic gun rights movement, which is personal protection.
A massacre at Lubys Cafeteria in Killeen helped accelerate a major shift in Texas gun laws that let people carry concealed handguns in public and opened the door to a further loosening of state gun restrictions in later years.
Suzanna Gratia Hupp, who watched her parents die in the 1991 massacre, told lawmakers she had a clear shot of the gunman, but her handgun was 100 yards away inside her car. She had stopped carrying it in her purse a few months earlier because that was illegal and she feared losing her license to practice chiropractic medicine if she were caught.
Still, the effort to loosen gun laws faced pushback. In 1993, then-Gov. Ann Richards vetoed a measure that would have let voters express their opinion on carrying concealed guns. As police chiefs, police officers and sheriffs cheered Richards, she thanked them for standing by her when we say no to the amateur gunslingers who somehow think theyre going to be braver and smarter with a gun in their hands.
The veto, however, came to haunt Richards in her re-election bid against Republican George W. Bush, who railed against the Democrat for rejecting the proposal, according to former lawmakers and staffers.
Bush prevailed in that election, surprising most political pundits. And in 1995, he signed into law a measure letting Texans with a state-issued license to carry concealed handguns for the first time in more than a century.
The Lubys shooting, the crime wave, all kind of worked together to make it happen, said Jerry Patterson, a former state land commissioner and the senator who sponsored the concealed carry bill. Of course the other thing, a prohibition on carrying a handgun, was in my view clearly unconstitutional.
The average person came to a realization that law enforcement cant always be there to protect you and it was up to them to be able to protect themselves and their family, Hupp said.
But that reasoning has only taken hold in recent decades, Shapira said. In 1999, the primary reason people said they owned guns was for hunting; self defense was a secondary purpose. By 2017, the reasoning was reversed, and self-protection had become peoples leading motivation for owning a gun.
Although we often think of gun culture as a seamless part of American history, the reasons people own guns has radically changed overtime, he said. Self-protection is now primarily the focus for owning guns, and now we see laws that enhance peoples capacity to access, carry and use guns for self-defense.
Texas has passed a slew of laws over the past three decades making it easier for people to access firearms and carry them in more places. Changes have ranged from the seemingly small reducing the classroom time needed for a permit to the monumental, such as letting licensed Texans openly carry handguns on their hips or in a shoulder holster.
By the end of 2016, roughly 1.15 million people had a Texas license to carry. Still, thats less than 5 percent of the population.
Gov. Greg Abbott in 2015 chided Texans for falling behind on gun purchases, writing on Twitter Im EMBARRASSED: Texas #2 in nation for new gun purchases, behind CALIFORNIA. Lets pick up the pace Texans. @NRA
I'm EMBARRASSED: Texas #2 in nation for new gun purchases, behind CALIFORNIA. Let's pick up the pace Texans. @NRA https://t.co/Ry2GInbS1g Greg Abbott (@GregAbbott_TX) October 28, 2015
At a time when a recent University of Texas at Austin poll shows that a majority of state Republicans say gun control laws should be left as they are now and Democrats overwhelmingly want them to become more strict, some lawmakers are pursuing efforts do away with the requirement for a handgun permit entirely.
House members unsuccessfully pushed for so-called constitutional carry this year, but some advocates want to try again in future legislative sessions. At least 10 states have passed constitutional carry already, meaning gun owners dont need to get a license, pass any tests or get any training to carry a firearm.
If ever approved, the shift would bring Texas law back in line to pre-Civil War days. But experts caution that times have changed.
Our guns are far better and more advanced than they ever were in the history of our country, said Alex del Carmen, executive director at the School of Criminology and Criminal Justice at Tarleton State University. Theres now the potential of shooting dozens of people within five minutes. The lethality of weapons, precision of users and massive concentrations of people, those variables were not in place in the 1800s.
amorris@express-news.net
Texas Church shooter was Antifa and wanted to start (a) communist revolution.
YourNewsWire.com on Nov. 5, in an internet post
A fake news story about the killer in a mass shooting at a Texas church said the gunman was an anti-fascist looking to sow chaos in the hope of starting a civil war.
The headline on a Nov. 5 story on ThirdEstateNewsGroup.com read, Texas Church shooter was Antifa and wanted to start communist revolution. Facebook users flagged the post as being potentially fabricated, as part of the social networks efforts to curb fake news.
The story appeared the same day 26-year-old Devin Patrick Kelley killed at least 26 people in First Baptist Church in Sutherland Springs. It said Kelley was an Antifa member who vowed to start a civil war by targeting white conservative churches and causing anarchy in the United States.
The post also said he was one of two shooters in the church, according to eyewitnesses, who also report Kelley carried an Antifa flag and told the churchgoers this is a communist revolution before unloading on the congregation, reloading several times.
None of those details have been confirmed by law enforcement agencies, or reported by reputable media outlets. Authorities said their initial investigation showed the attack was likely motivated by a family dispute, and not a broader movement.
The story was an incomplete copy of a longer post on fake news website YourNewsWire.com, which attributed many of its assertions to Kelleys alleged Facebook profile.
Devin Kelleys Facebook page stated that he was an atheist and his interests included Civil and social rights and Civil rights as well as endorsements for local Texan Democratic political candidates. His page also featured photos of several high powered weapons, the post read.
YourNewsWire.com claimed that they had Facebook images of Kelley and an AR-15-style rifle, although there was no indication it was the Ruger AR-556 rifle police have reported finding at the scene.
We could not find a Facebook profile for Kelley, so we could not independently verify the content of his alleged profile. The Washington Post and Los Angeles Times , among others, reported that the profile with those photos had been taken down shortly after the shooting.
The top of the YourNewsWire.com story contained the two images, plus a third of an Antifa flag. Antifa United debunked the use of the flag image in a Facebook post.
Lets go ahead and lay this to rest right now. The far-right (badly) put together a collage of images/mock up of a FB profile and are claiming the Texas shooter uploaded a picture of his antifa flag. How do we know its fake? the group posted on Nov. 5. Thats OUR picture. Pulled from our shop website when we had that flag design in stock. The person holding it in the picture is me. The admin of this page. In my office. You can only see a part of my torso but yeah.
For the record, the only official image of Kelley released by authorities was his drivers license photo.
The YourNewsWire.com post also contained an image that purported to show two individuals having a text conversation about the shooting, with one of them saying they had talked to some people who were inside.
There was no attribution for the conversation, which contained some of the bogus details YourNewsWire.com was reporting including the Antifa flag, the number of shooters and a reference to Das Kapital, a Karl Marx book criticizing capitalism.
We attempted to contact Baxter Dmitry, who is listed as the author on the post, to confirm the sources of these details, but did not get a reply.
The idea that Kelley was an Antifa member targeting conservatives was a popular talking point among the so-called alt-right following the shooting. Other conservative outlets focused on Kelleys supposed atheism and Facebook like of CNN.
The Texas Department of Public Safety confirmed on Monday that it appeared Kelleys attack was related to a family dispute.
This was not racially motivated, it wasnt over religious beliefs, agency spokesman Freeman Martin said in a news conference. There was a domestic situation going on within the family and the in-laws.
CNN reported that Kelley killed his wifes grandmother, Lula White, in the attack. NBC reported he may have been targeting his mother-in-law.
The suspects mother-in-law attended this church, Freeman said. We know that she had received threatening texts from him.
He declined to elaborate, saying the investigation was ongoing.
Our ruling
A fake news post said Kelley was Antifa and wanted to start a communist revolution.
The story originally came from YourNewsWire.com, a website we know to post articles full of bogus details. Law enforcement has not reported the sensational particulars in the sites story. A spokesman attributed the massacre to a domestic dispute among Kelley and his family members, not connecting Kelley to Antifa or communism.
We rate this statement Pants on Fire!
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Not long ago, Villa Arboles was a desolate street cutting through the ill-fated Mirasol Homes development. Vacant houses with boarded-up windows lined both sides of the road, casting an air of abandonment over the West Side neighborhood.
That will soon change. After demolishing 39 shuttered houses along Villa Arboles and other streets in Mirasols Blueridge neighborhood, the San Antonio Housing Authority has begun building new single-family homes on the cleared lots. Those will be sold to qualified buyers who earn limited incomes.
This is the first attempt to reinvent the landscape at the site of the troubled Mirasol housing development, a $48 million federally funded project built in 2000 to give low-income families a shot at becoming homeowners.
The Mirasol venture ultimately failed after its houses were beset with foundation problems, mold, leaky windows and other flaws. SAHA and many Mirasol residents later sued the companies behind the project the developer, Magi Realty, and the builder, KB Home and eventually won a $20 million settlement in 2011.
Now the housing authority is starting over with a different builder.
Earlier this year, SAHA hired San Antonio contractor Metrobuilt Homes to build 40 new houses in Blueridge, the largest of Mirasols four neighborhoods. The selected builder is owned by Imagine Built Homes, a local company founded in 2006 by James Bastoni and John Friesenhahn.
The development will cost up to $6.5 million. The settlement funds awarded to SAHA six years ago will pay for the work.
The houses will be priced much lower than typical new residential construction. Three-bedroom houses will start around $125,000, while the largest models, containing five bedrooms, will start around $155,000, current real estate listings show.
That is far below the average sales price for newly constructed single-family homes in San Antonios city limits, which was $218,276 in September, according to data provided by the San Antonio Board of Realtors. Across Bexar County, the average sales price for new houses that month was $237,101, SABOR officials said.
The Blueridge development will tap into a market that is desperately seeking new housing at affordable prices, SAHA chief executive David Nisivoccia believes.
If you look at the majority of builders and developers in the San Antonio area right now, on average, theyre building homes that start at $250,000, Nisivoccia said. The majority of people who live in San Antonio cant afford that.
The 40 new houses going up in Blueridge will be sold only to buyers whose household pay equals or falls below San Antonios area median income. That amounts to $44,500 annually for a person living alone, $50,813 a year for a couple living together or $63,500 annually for a family of four.
Anyone who owned a home within the previous 18 months wont be eligible to purchase one of the properties, SAHA officials said.
Buyers must satisfy other requirements as well. They have to complete SAHAs homebuyer readiness education workshop or a pre-purchase homebuyer class approved by the housing authority. The house they purchase must serve as their primary residence. They must get approved for an FHA, VA or conventional mortgage loan. And a down payment of at least 5 percent will be required.
Some buyers may qualify for down payment assistance. If so, they still must pay at least 1 percent of the purchase price from their own pockets.
SAHA has posted sales listings for 14 houses so far, with prices per square foot ranging from $93 to $107, according to the Realtor.com website.
None of the homes have been completed yet, so none have sold. Construction of the first five dwellings is expected to wrap up next month.
All 40 will be finished by the first half of 2019, SAHA officials said.
We think theres some jaw-dropping energy efficiency features about these homes, said Lori Hall, SAHAs assistant director of real estate and homeownership. Not only will they be affordable to buyers on the front end on the back end, theyll be more affordable to operate on a monthly basis.
The new houses monthly utility costs are projected to be 30 to 40 percent less than what neighborhood residents pay currently, Hall said.
Once Blueridge is finished, the redevelopment of Mirasol Homes will continue. Next, SAHA plans to demolish 28 vacant, boarded-up houses in Mirasols Villas de Fortuna neighborhood. All of those will be replaced with new single-family residences, most likely by 2020.
The housing authority is still assessing what to do with the vacant residences that remain standing in Mirasols Palm Lake and Sunflower neighborhoods. Its possible those could be substantially rehabilitated, Hall said.
Residents still living at two of the old Mirasol houses on Villa Arboles appeared skeptical about whether their neighborhood will benefit from the new construction or if SAHAs plans will be successful.
I dont know how its going to work out, said Juan Rodriguez, 68, who has lived there for 17 years.
Rodriguez questioned who will pay such prices to live on the West Side. Theyre asking too much, he said.
Hall is confident the houses will sell.
Theres just not any available housing product for working families right now at these prices, she said while standing in one structure that will serve as a model home.
The market is so high right now. And you have a shortage of construction workers, which also drives up housing prices, she said.
In some cases, qualified buyers may find monthly mortgage payments for Blueridges new houses to be lower than market-rate rental prices, Nisivoccia said. The average monthly rental price listed for a single-family house in September was $1,459, SABOR officials said.
SAHA will have to subsidize the new houses to some degree because actual construction costs will exceed what buyers are willing to pay in the current neighborhood, Hall said.
No builders have constructed any significant numbers of single-family houses on the West Side in the past 10 or 12 years, Hall added. However, some nonprofits, such as Habitat for Humanity, have built single-family houses on the West Side in recent years to help meet San Antonios housing needs.
I have hopes that we are providing a product to some families who have been waiting a long time, Hall said.
pohare@express-news.net
On Tuesday, the Democratic Party experienced its best night since Barack Obamas 2012 re-election.
On the eve of the first anniversary of Donald Trumps presidential win, Democrats received the first tangible evidence that what they want to believe a voter backlash brewing against Trumps leadership by insult might actually be happening. Gubernatorial victories in Virginia and New Jersey were nice, but the most telling sign came from the Virginia House of Delegates, in which Republicans lost a 66-34 majority overnight.
Two days after the partys promising election night, Ben Ray Lujan, the chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, sent out a memo stating that the DCCC is adding 11 Republican-held congressional districts to the 80-district offensive battlefield it already had established for the 2018 midterm elections. (One of those new battlefields is the district being vacated by San Antonio Republican Lamar Smith.)
All this good news for Democrats, however, comes at a bad time. This week saw the rupturing of some old intraparty wounds by a new book from Donna Brazile, a veteran operative who served as interim chair of the Democratic National Committee during Hillary Clintons doomed 2016 campaign against Trump.
Braziles campaign memoir, Hacks: The Inside Story of the Break-ins and Breakdowns That Put Donald Trump in the White House, has been received as proof that the DNC rigged the 2016 primary for Clinton. It has united disaffected Bernie Sanders supporters on the left and die-hard Republicans on the right in an orgy of invective against a Democratic machine that Clinton allegedly puppet-mastered to the party nomination.
Its a narrative thats easy to accept, so long as you read the hype surrounding the book, rather than the book itself.
Braziles big revelation, that Clintons campaign entered into a joint fundraising agreement with the cash-starved DNC before the 2016 primary race and rationed out money to the party, might be more of a bombshell if it hadnt already been extensively written about for more than two years (or if Sanders hadnt signed the same agreement two months after Clinton).
While Brazile writes that she was shocked to learn of the arrangement when she took over the party in the summer of 2016, an August 2015 Associated Press article revealed that the Clinton campaign far from seeking out the joint-fundraising deal as a way of controlling the partys operations actually delayed signing the agreement because of perceived disorganization at the DNC.
Thats the true story of Braziles book: Not that a powerful party machine engineered the nomination for Clinton, but that the party was so inept it couldnt have rigged the outcome of a one-horse Kentucky Derby. Clinton, with considerable reluctance, did the party a favor, not the other way around.
Braziles book teems with bitter nuggets about how associates of both Clinton and Obama treated the DNC like a neglected child. She writes: Almost as soon as I became interim chair I began to notice the ways that the Hillary campaign seemed not to respect the DNC and its staff.
And who could blame them? The DNC comes across as a useless instrument that struggles to raise money, has no clue about party building and cant protect its own computer system from hackers.
Bernie backers cant resist the argument that the DNC tipped the scales for Clinton, in the same way that Clinton fans will never give up their contention that Russian hackers (with possible collusion from Trumps campaign) stole the general election from her.
Neither argument is all that persuasive, and both are, in a way, beside the point. State party organizations, not the DNC, control the primaries, and Clinton won 55 percent of total primary votes to 43 percent for Sanders. By the most democratic measurement, she earned the nomination.
Trump connected with the voters he needed in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, and he did so even after the release of a repulsive 2005 Access Hollywood video that was more damaging to him than all the Russian hacking and social-media manipulation could have been to Clinton.
Russian hacking is a problem, not because it swung the election, but because of how it corrupts the system. After all, the problem with Watergate wasnt that it stole the 1972 election from George McGovern, because it didnt.
As for national party organizations, theyre usually too weak and incompetent to do much damage. And that might be the best thing you can say about them.
ggarcia@express-news.net | Twitter: @gilgamesh470
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When Salvatore Lucchese moved to San Antonio in 1883, he knew he wanted to be close to Fort Sam Houston. The Italian immigrant was a son of a shoemaker and knew that each officer that graduated from Fort Sam would need to buy two pairs of boots or shoes.
So when he and his brother Joseph emigrated from Palermo, Italy, to Galveston, they set their sights on opening up a shop in downtown San Antonio to capture that customer base.
Later joined by their other two brothers, Michael and Antonio, they opened up a boot and shoe shop at 317 E. Houston Street, an address now occupied by the Kress building. There Salvatore, who took on the English nickname Samuel, and his brothers received the first inseamer machine in the Southwestern United States.
Sam was the forefather of technology, Randy Steele, director of partnership marketing for Lucchese, said. If they came out with a new sewing machine, he had to have it. We still have equipment nearly 100 years old.
The Luccheses kept meticulous records. Each of their orders in the early days were documented in measurement books, in which a customers ball, waist, instep, and heel were recorded, with an outline of each foot. The oldest measurements on record are for Mr. W. Shock in 1897. His order for kangaroo boots totaled $9.
The earliest measurement books took a year to fill. But as the years went on, they filled much faster, as the word about Lucchese boots spread by officers from the base and also a growing local civilian clientele. Even Teddy Roosevelt bought a pair.
In total, 129 measurement books from 1897 to 1943 are stored at the Briscoe Center for American History in Austin.
While known for their Western boots today, the early Lucchese models came in boxes labeled Lucchese Boot Company, Inc. Cowboy and Military Boots. When Salvatore died in 1929, his son Cosimo Lucchese took over the business, bringing a superior eye for detail to the bootmaking craft.
When Cosimo takes over, he was such an artist, a perfectionist, that production volume actually went down, Steele said.
But it was during Cosimo Luccheses time that the companys legacy for celebrity custom orders really began.
In the 1940s and 1950s San Antonio was a mecca of the Southwest for movie premieres, Steele said. At a franchise called Interstate Theatres there was an executive named Raymond Willie. He introduced many celebrities to Lucchese. When they would have movie premieres in San Antonio, he would slide them down to see his friend Cosimo Lucchese for a pair of boots.
During Cosimos time at the helm, many celebrities graced the measurement books. In 1942 actress Josephine Hutchison ordered a pair of custom boots. In 1943 all three Andrews Sisters stood in the book to have their measurements taken. In 1944 Academy Award winner Gregory Peck made his order (the last, or mold, created from his foot measurements is on display at the Lucchese store in the Alamo Quarry Market). Hollywood cowboys Gene Autry and John Wayne also bought Lucchese boots.
Kathy Lucchese, Cosimos granddaughter who still resides in San Antonio, said they received Christmas cards from Autry every year and Wayne flew the family to his ranch in California to get his measurements.
It wasnt just a business and client relationship, Kathy Lucchese said. It was family.
During the first 50 years of the companys history, they moved locations several times as they accumulated inventory, from Houston, to Jefferson street, to Travis and then Commerce.
The location at 106 and 108 E. Commerce was a two-story building that sat on the triangle block now occupied by the Torch of Friendship. Kathy said she has fond memories of watching the Fiesta parades at the factory where her grandparents and her dad worked.
We had those huge windows that looked out on Commerce, Kathy said. You could sit like eight people in them. All the workers would bring their families and food. It was enough food to feed an army. I never had to buy a ticket to a parade.
In November 1961, Cosimo Lucchese died, and the business was then assumed by his son, Kathys father, Samuel James Lucchese.
The younger Sam Lucchese enjoyed a long friendship with President Lyndon Baines Johnson. First fitted for boots in 1952 as a senator, he ordered boots again as vice president and president of the United States. But to Lucchese officials, the most memorable order he placed was in January 1961 when he sent in measurements to have boots created for a 3-year-old Caroline Kennedy. Johnson and Lucchese exchanged personal correspondence into the 1970s.
During this Sam Luccheses tenure, the business saw its entry into wholesale.
Sam was the innovator, Steele said. Sam did certain things to perfect the last (a form shaped like a persons foot) and expand business into wholesale. He developed such a following, he would go to California and set up trunk shows. Celebrities would come to him there.
Lucchese continued to receive visits from celebrities in this era, including Johnny Cash and June Carter Cash.
My grandfather, my dad, my great grandfather, they all wanted perfection, Kathy said. They wanted the product to be perfect. For some movie stars they had to make five or six pairs to get the right fit.
After HemisFair, Sam moved his company above Paris Hatters on Broadway, where it remained through its sale in 1970. In 1974, the company purchased the property at 1226 E. Houston St., which today houses the Spaghetti Warehouse. Spaghetti Warehouse staff confirmed boot measurements are still written on the basement walls.
In 1986, the company moved its headquarters for production to El Paso, but still maintains a retail storefront at the Alamo Quarry Market. Store Manager Stacy Stone has worked there since the store opened 19 years ago.
Stacys one of the best Ive ever seen, Steele said. Lots of people come by to get fitted by Stacy and her staff. Shes got a lot of loyal customers.
Stone said that last month, a couple came in just to show them an old pair of Lucchese boots. Another customer had mailed them a pair of 1918 military boots from the Yellowstone area.
What happens after a while is they end up coming back over the years and they have a collection, Stone said.
The boots today can be bought off the shelf at prices ranging from $295 for women and $345 for men up to more than $12,000 for the anniversary edition. Cost varies based on customization requested. When the soles wear out, all Lucchese boots can be completely restored for $250, provided that no other companies have worked on the boot. Stone says she gets about five to 10 of these per week.
The Quarry store still sees its fair share of dignitaries and celebrities, having fit former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani and actor and former California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.
The name carries a lot of professionalism, Kathy Lucchese said. Everybody in the area of boots recognizes the name. Im proud of the quality.
On a day-to-day basis, the client base remains largely the same: San Antonians and even some military personnel, needing boots.
On a recent Friday afternoon, Kells Rumsey had driven down from Round Rock to try on a shoe called the Evan. Rumsey, who graduated from Texas A&M and is retired from the Army, bought his first pair of Lucchese boots in 1982, which he still owns. He owns six pair now.
He retired in Germany after being stationed there and went on to live in Amsterdam.
I wore Lucchese in Amsterdam for years, Rumsey said. I proselytized Lucchese all over the world.
Dr Raby was Australias Ambassador to China from 2007 to 2011 and following completion of his ambassadorial term, after 27 years in the public service which was mostly with the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT), he resigned and has since established a Beijing-based advisory firm.
Director Jaume Collet-Serra (Unknown, Non-Stop) makes their return for one of next years most anticipated movie releases with The Commuter, with three new images released this week teasing the film, and whilst they dont give too much away about what we should expect from the flick when it hits the big screen, the pictures should serve to stoke the fires of excitement for big fans of the two leading stars. You can check them out below:
As seen in the pictures, Liam Neeson and Vera Farmiga lead the story, with Patrick Wilson and Sam Neill also starring in the motion picture. Neeson takes on the role of insurance salesman Michael, whos enjoying his daily commute home but quickly becomes embroiled in one of the strangest journeys of his life.
Approached by a mysterious stranger, hes tasked with uncovering the identity of a hidden passenger on the train before it reaches its last stop, and it soon becomes clear that if he doesnt find out whos behind the criminal conspiracy on board the train, the lives of everybody could be taken.
You can see the first trailer for the film below:
Produced by Andrew Rona and Alex Heineman, The Commuter is based on a screenplay by Byron Willinger, Philip de Blasi and Ryan Engle. Filming started on July 25, 2016 at Pinewood Studios in Buckinghamshire, before moving to New York City and having various scenes involving Neeson and co-star Elizabeth McGovern in Surrey.
Though it was originally scheduled to hit movie theatres on October 20 of this year, it was pushed back by a number of months and is now predicted to quickly become one of the biggest successes of 2018. We cant wait to see how it does.
The Commuter hits cinemas across the UK on January 19, 2018, a week after its release of January 12 in the United States.
by Daniel Falconer for www.femalefirst.co.uk
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U2 paid tribute to the victims of the Manchester terrorist attack at a special London concert on Saturday (11.11.17) night.
U2 singer Bono
The Irish rockers kicked off their MTV Presents Trafalgar Square gig at the famous landmark by performing 'Sunday Bloody Sunday', with the names of those who had lost their lives when a bomb was detonated at an Ariana Grande concert in Manchester Arena in May were lit up on huge display boards.
The veteran group played a string of their biggest hits during the show, including 'Beautiful Day' - during which they referenced the late David Bowie's 'Starman' - 'One' and 'Pride (In the Name of Love)'
Announcing the latter track, Bono made a dedication to "the military".
He told the fans who had braved the chilly temperatures for the show: "I was never expecting to learn that the people who most value peace are the ones who pay the price for peace.
"So we dedicate this song to the military who have lost their lives on all sides."
But it wasn't just old songs the group played as they treated fans to a glimpse of their new album 'Songs of Experience' with tracks You're The Best Thing About Me' and 'Get Out Of Your Own Way', even filming part of the video for the second song during the performance.
The group urged the audience to stage their own protests, encouraging them to hold up their placards in front of MTV's cameras at the end of their set.
He said: "Protesting in the end works - it gets things done, slowly but surely."
After U2 left the stage, David Guetta then sent the crowd wild with a selection of hits, accompanied by smoke cannons and dazzling lights and pyrotechnics.
Netflix are set to make history a little later this year, when their first ever German original series Dark debuts on the streaming service. It looks to be one of the creepiest shows the streamers ever seen. This week, a brilliant new trailer and poster for the series has been revealed, which you can check out below:
Set in the present day in a German town where two young children have disappeared, the double lives and fractured relationships taking place within four families is exposed slowly, but surely. Across 10 hour-long episodes, the series soon turns supernatural, as its revealed theres a twist in the tale that takes the town back to 1986.
Written by Jantje Friese, the series is co-created by acclaimed director Baran bo Odar (who also directs all 10 of the episodes), with early viewings promising realistic performances and slick camerawork, with relatable characters who all have some sort of connection to the history embedded within the town. Whether or not they know about that history remains to be seen, but we imagine its something thats going to be exposed to each of them as the series progresses.
Friese previously spoke out about those who had compared the series to fellow Netflix original Stranger Things, saying: Its really exciting because if all those people who watched Stranger Things will at least think about watching Dark, I think thats a great opportunity for us. So keep comparing it.
Well have to see what the wider viewing public think of the show when it makes its official debut this December!
Dark comes to Netflix on December 1, 2017.
by Daniel Falconer for www.femalefirst.co.uk
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Driven by extremely favourable tax and input price conditions for foreign investors, Uzbekistans spinning industry has shown rapid growth in recent years. Gradual liberalisation of some economic regulations, like the recent liberalisation of currency exchange, and the decline of competing industries, such as Russias spinning sector, has aided this growth.
Driven by extremely favourable tax and input price conditions for foreign investors, Uzbekistan's spinning industry has shown rapid growth in recent years. Gradual liberalisation of some economic regulations, like the recent liberalisation of currency exchange, and the decline of competing industries, such as Russia's spinning sector, has aided this growth.#
Especially in the last three years, Uzbekistans promotion of a special set of investment incentives and a new textile cluster programme have generated strong interest and verifiable investments by spinners, the Foreign Agricultural Service of the US department of agriculture (USDA) said in its November 2017 report on Cotton: World Markets and Trends.
Driven by extremely favourable tax and input price conditions for foreign investors, Uzbekistan's spinning industry has shown rapid growth in recent years. Gradual liberalisation of some economic regulations, like the recent liberalisation of currency exchange, and the decline of competing industries, such as Russia's spinning sector, has aided this growth.#
According to Uzbekistan governments official estimate, its spinning capacity, which apparently includes projects underway but not yet fully operational, is about 2.6 million bales of cotton yarn in 2017.
Driven by extremely favourable tax and input price conditions for foreign investors, Uzbekistan's spinning industry has shown rapid growth in recent years. Gradual liberalisation of some economic regulations, like the recent liberalisation of currency exchange, and the decline of competing industries, such as Russia's spinning sector, has aided this growth.#
The recently concluded 77th annual International Cotton Advisory Committee (ICAC) Plenary Meeting in Uzbekistan gave the international cotton trade an opportunity to see the changes underway in the countrys cotton and textile sector, the report said.
Driven by extremely favourable tax and input price conditions for foreign investors, Uzbekistan's spinning industry has shown rapid growth in recent years. Gradual liberalisation of some economic regulations, like the recent liberalisation of currency exchange, and the decline of competing industries, such as Russia's spinning sector, has aided this growth.#
Since its independence in 1991, it has been difficult to account for the final destination of Uzbekistans cotton exports, due to incomplete, inconsistent or long delayed trade data. It has been difficult to determine the exact quantity of cotton exports, because Uzbekistan itself does not report consistent trade figures. However, information provided at the ICAC meeting indicated that exports in recent years were substantially overestimated. (RKS)
Fibre2Fashion News Desk India
HON PM BAINIMARAMA ADDRESS AT THE HIGH LEVEL EVENT ON HEALTH ACTIONS FOR THE IMPLEMENTATION OF THE PARIS AGREEMENT
The Director General of the World Health Organisation,The Executive Secretary of the UNFCCC,Governor Schwarzenegger,Excellencies,Ladies and gentlemen.Bula vinaka, guten tag and a very good afternoon to you all.We all know that climate change will have an increasingly serious effect on the health of our people and create some serious challenges for our health systems and infrastructure. And Im pleased to see that in the COP negotiations, health is now getting the priority it deserves. Because the evidence from the medical and public health community has been building for many years.For a long time, many people didnt see health as something that needed to be treated specifically in our climate negotiations. Yet the very first article of the UNFCCC treaty, signed in 1992, refers to protecting health and well-being from the adverse effects of climate change. And the right to health is enshrined on the first page of the Paris Agreement.To fulfil that promise, we need to invest in new infrastructure that can withstand what nature will deliver, and we need to make our health systems stronger and more agile. Climate change is already causing stress in our health systems, so now is the time to fix them. And we must embrace the fact that human health is inherently tied to modern, resilient infrastructure.This challenge hits wealthy nations and poor nations alike, but it is a fact that poorer people live under less-protected conditions than the more affluent. So improving health delivery, fortifying existing infrastructure, and extending resilient infrastructure to vulnerable communities are urgent tasks.And those tasks will require financing. This is a massive undertaking for developing countries, in particular, Least Developed Countries and Small Island Developing States.Health risks are also exacerbated by climate events which cause devastation, which we saw in the Caribbean just weeks ago. We in the Pacific and other parts of the world are equally vulnerable to climatic events that put pressure on our health systems. In Fiji, we are still recovering from the impact last year of the biggest cyclone ever to make landfall in the southern hemisphere, that killed 44 of our people and wiped out a third of our GDP and damaged much of our public infrastructure, including health centres.Unfortunately, only a small fraction of international finance for climate-change adaptation is for projects that aim specifically to protect human health, and Least Developed Countries and Small Island Developing States will see only a small fraction of that.That is why the initiative we are launching today is so welcome and so important. It is a joint initiative of the World Health Organization, the UN Climate Change secretariat and the Fijian COP23 Presidency. And its objective is to ensure that we will have health systems that are resilient to climate change by 2030. It also stresses the need to reduce carbon emissions worldwide to protect the most vulnerable.I am especially pleased that this initiative is a true partnership to produce solutions. And it backs that partnership by tripling international financial support to climate and health in Small Island Developing States.The whole point of our holding these meetings is that the world must face the challenge presented by climate change together, through collective action. This is one way collective action can be targeted to very specific outcomes.Like our neighbours in the Pacific, Fiji is already experiencing the effects of climate change on health but we are doing what we can to meet that challenge. Five of the eight objectives of Fijis National Climate Change Policy seek to reduce the vulnerability of Fijis population, health systems and public health environment to the impacts of climate change.Our health-care sector is currently in a period of rapid growth and improvement. We are building new hospitals and expanding and improving existing ones. We are building them stronger and better. We are encouraging young Fijians to take up medical careers by giving full scholarships. We have dedicated significant government resources to making pharmaceuticals available, in particular to those in the lower socio-economic bracket.We have also embarked on a major water project, with the collaboration of the European Investment Bank, the Asian Development Bank, and the Green Climate Fund. It will protect our water infrastructure in the greater Suva area -both fresh water and wastewater - against extreme weather events. And it will benefit approximately 300,000 people, nearly one-third of our population. It will also provide greater access to clean drinkable water.Friends, as well as its focus on resilience building in the health sector, our new initiative stresses reducing carbon emissions, because there is a simpler truth that goes beyond the particular concerns of small-island states: The things that we must do to reduce global warming over the long term are good for our health now. The cities with the poorest air quality in the world are in developing countries and are populated by millions of people who live on the edge. The poor cannot escape the contamination or afford routine medical care. So they are condemned to live with declining health.That is why major cities have been trying to reduce pollution for decades, long before we started talking about global warming. We need to push that effort forward, for climate and for health.I would like to thank Dr. Tedros for making climate and environmental change a top priority for the World Health Organization, and my friend Patricia Espinosa for elevating the relationship between climate change and health to the position it holds now.I also want to give a special welcome to Governor Schwarzenegger. Governor, thank you for being with us today and for your very public commitment to the struggle against climate change. By devoting your energy, your leadership, and the good will you have amassed over a lifetime to this campaign, you are making a real difference.Ladies and gentlemen, I look forward to a thoughtful and enlightening discussion today, and I thank you all for participating - and for caring.Vinaka vakalevu. Thank you.
Demander Justice, a Paris, France-based provider of a platform to file complaints, recently raised 2.8M (approx. $3.2M) in funding.
Backers included Partech Partners, Tekton Ventures, and NextStage.
The company intends to use the funds for the development of the platform.
Founded in 2012 by Jeremy Oinino and Leonard Sellem, Demander Justice provides an online platform for the resolution of litigation disputes with no lawyer involved. In particular, the company solution offers citizens the chance to resolve consumption, housing and professional life disputes up to 10k by filing an application in its websites DemanderJustice.com, Litige.fr, and SaisirPrudhommes.com. in order to stand in front of several jurisdictions.
It is currently used by nearly 500k users.
FinSMEs
12/11/2017
Anushka Shetty, who is now one of the most sought after actors after the success of the Baahubali franchise, has reportedly turned down a Karan Johar film. According to an India Today report, the director-producer approached her with a film. However, she was not completely satisfied with the role she was being offered and therefore, had to turn it down.
The report also suggests that she had earlier turned down Tamasha, Singham and an installment from the Golmaal series. Currently, she is busy filming Bhaagamathie, a contemporary thriller.
Apart from Shetty, Johar has also been trying to sign Prabhas for a Bollywood film as well. The talented actor had essayed the role of Baahubali to Shetty's Devasena in the SS Rajamouli magnum opus. Reports of Prabhas marking his entry in Hindi films with a Karan Johar project were rife soon after the record-breaking success of the period drama. However, it was later reported that Prabhas apparently quoted an exorbitant amount for the film, due to which the project had to dropped.
On the professional front, he is currently shooting for Sujeeth's trilingual Saaho, where he will be seen opposite Shraddha Kapoor.
Editor's note: In a prolific career spanning nearly four decades, Satyajit Ray directed 36 films, including feature films, documentaries and shorts. His films have received worldwide critical acclaim and won him several awards, honours and recognition both in India and elsewhere. In this column starting 25 June 2017, we discuss and dissect the films of Satyajit Ray (whose 96th birth anniversary was this May), in a bid to understand what really makes him one of the greatest filmmakers of the 20th century.
It is said that one of the responsibilities of an artist is to reflect the times he lives in, to paint an accurate picture of what he sees around him. In the beginning of the turbulent '70s, after witnessing the moral decadence of the world he found himself in, along with the complete breakdown of the very fabric of society, and the painful dilemma of seeing the slow death of the city he loved so dearly versus his staunch unwillingness to abandon that same city, Satyajit Ray did what he did best he made a film about it. The film was to go on to become the first of a trilogy of his observations on the myth of the urban life. The other two films in his now famous Calcutta Trilogy were Seemabaddha (Company Limited) and Jana Aranya (The Middleman) both of which have been discussed in this column. But the film that we are going to talk about today, the film that set it all off, way back in 1970, is Pratidwandi (The Adversary).
Ray adapted Pratidwandi from the novel of the same name by veteran Bengali writer Sunil Gangopadhyay. Siddhartha Chaudhuri is a 25-year-old man living in Kolkata who has had to give up his medical studies after the unexpected death of his father. He now lives with his widowed mother and two younger siblings. Siddharthas daily routine comprises walking the citys streets looking for a job, appearing in interviews, and hanging out with two of his friends who are continuing their studies. After roaming around the city with the cruel sun over his head all day, he returns home at night, only to face the usual middle-class household problems.
His sister is the only earning member of the family, and although Siddhartha is fiercely protective of her, he knows that she has secured her job not because of her merit, but thanks to her stunning looks. There are rumours of an affair between her and her boss a married and rather affluent man working for a private firm and although Siddhartha does not believe in the rumours, he suspects that the man in question might be taking advantage of his little sister. Also in the family is Siddharthas younger brother, who is actively involved in student politics. Despite being a brilliant student, the young boy is a revolutionary in spirit, and Siddhartha is worried for his safety. But neither of his siblings pay much attention to what Siddhartha has to say to them, and this adds to his steadily growing frustration. Despite his initial resistance to the idea, by the end of the film, Siddhartha is forced to leave the city and take up a job outside Kolkata.
There are several things that make Pratidwandi a great film. Perhaps chief among them is the way Ray handles the character of his protagonist. Frustrated beyond measure, and still keeping his sanity, his ethics and his decorum intact, Siddhartha is a man caught between a family that he cares for but cannot relate to anymore, a girl who is romantically interested in him but cannot commit to him because of her own problems, and a city that seems hell bent upon shoving him down to the ground every time he tries to stand up on his feet.
Take his two siblings, for example. They represent two completely opposite ends of the spectrum. While his sister has realised that it is all right to use ones physical charm to survive in this brutal and materialistic world where every single interaction is a transaction in one form or the other, his brother still believes in a dream state of equality for all, and is willing to achieve it through armed rebellion, if necessary. Whats really interesting to see is that in their own ways, they both think that their elder brother has changed beyond recognition since the death of their father. While his sister feels that Siddhartha doesnt have the necessary shrewdness to make a living for himself in the jungle out there, his brother detests his quest for a life of servitude and generally thinks of him as too weak to protest any injustice towards him. Both are right, as a matter of fact, and the more Siddhartha comes to realise this, the more his angst towards the city grows. One can literally see the exasperation simmering inside him as he sees his friends having a good time, as his brother and sister go about their lives in their own ways, and as the city strikes him over and over again with its corruption, its lack of ethics and its complete apathy towards his condition.
In a beautiful scene towards the beginning of the film, as he finds a bit of shade under a folly in a park and sits down for a moment of relaxation exhausted and defeated from one more unsuccessful job interview a bunch of hippies reach the spot, dancing and swaying under the influence of drugs and alcohol, having a good time, admiring the holy cows of India and the green trees and generally saying things which make absolutely no sense at all. Siddhartha watches them for some time, wondering what a happily oblivious state they were living in, and how their apparently silly behaviour could be justified only by the peace in their minds. Perplexing, as it is, he seems to find this peace in the minds of everyone around him as if everyone is happily going about their own lives, and here he was, running from pillar to post, unable to find acceptance anywhere.
Without a shred of doubt, the two greatest characters in Pratidwandi are the two adversaries Siddhartha and the city of Kolkata. Dhritiman Chatterji plays the calm, reserved, reticent young man who is barely holding it together, and he does it with such finesse that you can feel the tension building with each passing scene. The way Chatterji holds a frame is stuff younger actors of our generation can only dream of. His body language, his slight stoop, his impeccable diction, his expressions everything brings Siddhartha alive on screen. In one of his essays titled An Indian New Wave?, Ray proposed his own definition of a film star A star is a person on the screen who continues to be expressive and interesting even after he or she has stopped doing anything and he went on to name Dhritiman Chatterji as an example of a true film star. And you can see what he meant when you see Siddhartha Chaudhuri in Pratidwandi. All throughout the film, even as he battles on tirelessly, even with all the rejections he faces, and despite the bitter sense of insecurity looming large, Siddhartha cant help but recall the call of an unknown bird he had heard when he was a child. What an absolutely beautiful thought!
But at the end of the war between a vast city and a puny foot soldier, the inevitable happens. It is Siddhartha who finally accepts defeat. He crumbles under pressure and his patience gives away. He is forced to leave the city and take up a job in a small town. In one of the most beautiful ending scenes ever captured on film, Siddhartha finally finds peace in the most unexpected way, and accepts his fate.
Bhaskar Chattopadhyay is an author and translator. His translations include 14: Stories That Inspired Satyajit Ray, and his original works include the mystery novels Patang, Penumbra and Here Falls The Shadow
In a two-week span, a lot of changes have come about in the camp of Rajinikanth-Shankar's magnum-opus 2.0. On 29 October, when Akshay Kumar who plays the antagonist in 2.0 took to his Twitter page to confirm the release date of his R Balki-directed Padman as 26 January 2018, the makers of 2.0 maintained that the sci-fi thriller was on course for a 25 January 2018 release. However, after pondering about the exhaustive post-production work that's lying ahead, the makers have decided to change the date.
"The movie has been postponed since the visual effects work is consuming more time than expected. Currently, the team is deliberating various options regarding the new release date, and an official poster will be released soon. The makers have already informed the event management team involved in the teaser and trailer launch to hold back," a source privy to the development informed Firstpost.
Initially, the teaser of the film was slated to be launched in a grand event in Hyderabad on 22 November at the Shilpakala Vedika auditorium, and the trailer launch was planned in December. Now, the makers have decided to push both the events since the release date is getting postponed.
"Although 13 April 2018 is said to be the favourite choice of Tamil Nadu distributors since it marks the occasion of Tamil New Year festival, the makers are contemplating other options as well since North India is too huge a market to neglect because of the presence of Akshay Kumar in the film," the source added.
Marvel's The New Mutants, the 11th installment in the X-Men series, has also been scheduled to hit screens on 13 April and it will be a major threat to 2.0 in the US since the former has already earmarked a significant number of 3D screens there.
Made at a whopping budget of Rs 400 crores by Lyca Productions, 2.0 is directed by Shankar and is touted to be Asia's costliest "natively acquired" 3D film. Editor Anthony too confirmed at the audio launch a few weeks back that the run-time of the film will be around two hours and twenty minutes, making it the shortest movie of Shankar.
Various organisations, from more than 10 countries, are working round the clock with Legacy Effects, Tau Films, Quantum FX, Double Negative and national award-winning VFX-supervisor Srinivas Mohan on the film's visual effects.
The film fraternity is waiting with bated breath since 2.0's release date will lead to a ripple effect in reshuffling the other release dates of films from Tamil, Telugu, and Hindi industries. In Telugu, Mahesh Babu-Koratala Siva's Bharat Ane Nenu, and Allu Arjun-Vakkantham Vamsi's Naa Peru Surya have already confirmed 27 April as the release date, two weeks after the speculated release of 2.0.
Shakespeare would have been amused by the malleability of his oeuvre. Seated at a Bollywood premiere of an adaptation of Hamlet or Macbeth or Romeo and Juliet, he would perhaps have whispered:
it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.
Or, he would have been charitable to the efforts of Sanjeev Kumar, Moushumi Chatterjee, Pankaj Kapur, Irrfan Khan, Ajay Devgn, Kareena Kapoor, Tabu, Shahid Kapoor, Kay Kay Menon and legions of other actors and performers who have sung and danced, loved and lost, plotted and connived, frolicked and died to the cadence of his lines and verses. Shakespeares plays repertoires of every human romp, escapade, and predicament have not languished in libraries, nor have they been relegated to prescribed syllabi for disinterested high-schoolers or undergraduates. They have lived, in theatre, on celluloid, and on street corners, as universal declarations of the soul and of everything that stirs it. Bollywood has claimed several of the more popular ones, with themes that are familiar and adaptable star crossed love and political intrigue.
That Shakespeare should infiltrate the Kangra valley, where a film festival that celebrates independent cinema took place from 2-5 November this year, is hardly an incongruity. What is startling, though, is the play that writer-director Bornila Chatterjee picked to transmogrify into the gory narrative of The Hungry, screened amid the bustle and cheer of the sixth edition of the Dharamshala International Film Festival (DIFF). Shakespeares Titus Andronicus, believed to be his first tragedy, is perhaps his most macabre work; it was probably written between 1588 and 1593 and was thematically similar to the revenge plays that were popular in the late Elizabethan and early Jacobean eras. This is the play that prompted TS Eliots famous attack: It was, one of the stupidest and most uninspired plays ever written. A play in which it is incredible that Shakespeare had any hand at all, a play in which the best passages would be too highly honoured by the signature of Peele. Indeed, the lurid, sensationalist tenor of the play has been attributed to shared authorship Shakespeare supposedly collaborated with George Peele to write Titus Andronicus.
Critics and reviewers have mocked the play by counting the number of murders on stage. In 1955, David Levin calculated: Out of a cast of 17, my count was 12 corpses at the end with two probables offstage. According to the estimates of S Clark Hulse, in an article titled Wresting the Alphabet: Oratory and Action in Titus Andronicus, the play has, 14 killings, 9 of them on stage, 6 severed members, 1 rape (or 2 or 3, depending on how you count), 1 live burial, 1 case of insanity, and 1 of cannibalism an average of 5.2 atrocities per act, or one for every 97 lines. A 1986 production compelled reviewer Mike Gene Wallace to say, This is a great play. Were talking 14 dead bodies, kung-fu, sword-fu, spear-fu, dagger-fu, arrow-fu, pie-fu, animal screams on the soundtrack, heads roll, hands roll, tongue rolls, nine and a half quarts of blood, and a record breaking 94 on the vomit meter.
The Hungry is a faithful recreation of the blood and gore; what makes it an intriguingly ghoulish retelling is a plot that unravels in the farmhouse of a corporate tycoon. Shakespeares Titus Andronicus, a Roman noble who has returned to Rome after a 10-year campaign against the Goths, is the doddering but ruthless Tathagat Ahuja (Naseeruddin Shah) in Chatterjees reimagined universe. Tamora, Queen of the Goths, is Tulsi beautiful, bereaved, and seething with thoughts of vengeance (Tisca Chopra). The film, with Chatterjee as auteur, is stamped with Shakespearean motifs debauched heirs and treacherous lovers, sumptuous banquets and swift murders, dancing and tomfoolery, furtive glances, vital clues left by the dead, noise and a dreadful silence. In this unsettling household of deal makers, party throwers, ripped tongues and decapitated heads served on a platter, only the most vulnerable survive. Each atrocity has a silent witness Tathagats wife, propped on a wheelchair and breathing through an oxygen mask, watches with dead eyes that sometimes fill up as her family is slowly wiped out.
Chatterjee, who has a BFA in Film and Television from New York Universitys Tisch School of the Arts, admits to a fascination for Shakespeares intense and relentless probe into the human heart. He explores emotions in an almost aggressive manner; someone in love is really, really in love; hatred and betrayal are also examined with an equal intensity, she declares. Her decision to place her adaptation in the household of a north-Indian industrialist is somewhat influenced by news reports of disputes and murders in business families, particularly the sensational slaying of Gurdeep Singh Chadha (Ponty Chadha) by his brother Hardeep in 2012, who in turn was also killed in the gunfight that ensued at a farmhouse in New Delhis Chhatarpur. We wanted to capture the energy and hostility of the north, she elaborates.
The Hungry, co-written by Chatterjee and Tanaji Dasgupta, is a narrative of simmering hostilities and a quick succession of murders in the garb of suicide. Tathagat and Tulsi, caught in a web of deceit and revenge, are villainous protagonists who manage to rouse a brief rush of empathy despite his instinctive cruelty, Tathagats love for his vegetal wife and feisty daughter Loveleen is sincere and redeeming; Tulsi seeks to avenge the death of her son in a haze of grief. Tisca Chopra, who plays Tulsi, mentions preparing for the role of the wounded, melancholic character in a somewhat unconventional manner. Bornila gave me a photograph of a big cat a cougar with watchful eyes. Looking at it, one got a sense of something going on; a sense of Now Ill show you! she says, over a telephonic conversation. Tulsi, with her genteel manners and menacing eyes, is the wild cat of this adaptation brooding, stealthy and destructive.
Shakespeare's plays have been appropriated by Bollywood, but one might wonder how Hindi cinema was first enchanted by the Bard. Early films based on the plays were usually adaptations of Parsi Theatre productions, which thrived during the period 1870-1940. Plays like The Merchant of Venice, The Taming of the Shrew and Measure for Measure, performed by Parsi dramatists, were made into films. In 1927, The Excelsior Film Company produced Dil Farosh, a silent film based on The Merchant of Venice, and directed by Udvadia. The Taming of the Shrew, a colossal hit in Parsi Theatre, was made into Hathili Dulhan (The Stubborn Bride) by J.J. Madan in 1933. Hamlet had three screen adaptations: Khoon-e-Nahak (The Unjust Assassination) or Hamlet, directed by Dada Athawale in 1928; Khoon-ka-Khoon (Blood for Blood) or Hamlet, directed by Sohrab Modi in 1935; and Kishore Sahus 1954 production of Hamlet.
Rajiva Verma, retired professor of English at Delhi University, writes about the linguistic delight that Parsi Theatre dramatists took in Shakespeares work, in an essay titled Shakespeare in Hindi Cinema, from the 2011 collection Shakespeare: The Indian Icon: A Collection of Indian Responses: Social, Cultural, Academic, edited by Vikram Chopra: In the matter of language the Parsi theatre dramatists found in Shakespeare a kindred spirit. Shakespeare was obviously not as rich and powerful a linguistic resource to them as to the writers of the Anglo-Saxon world and yet they could not but have thrilled to the rhetoric of Shakespeares style, for their own style was highly and elaborately rhetorical.
Flamboyant rhetoric seeped into cinematic adaptations of Shakespeares plays as well. Admiration for rhetorical exchanges and sententious passages was as characteristic of the audience for the films as of the audience for the stage plays, writes Verma. By far the most charming version of The Comedy of Errors is Gulzars 1981 pastiche, Angoor. Witty dialogue, impish acting, and the pixie-dust of much flirting make this a peerless version of the play.
Other significant resonances of Shakespeare in Bollywood are Vishal Bahrdwajs adaption of three tragedies: Macbeth was made into Maqbool in 2003, Othello into Omkara in 2006, and Hamlet into Haider in 2014. Each version represents a radical departure from the original text; its contemporary contextualization is perhaps a post-colonial response to Shakespeare. Traditional heroes are replaced by underworld dons, and Indias political churn provides a compelling landscape replete with scandal, raunch, and filth.
Shakespeare has endured the breaking down, tearing apart, and remodelling of his plays. In fact, he has probably enjoyed it all the adulation of crowds far removed from the playgoers who flocked The Globe Theatre, the posthumous glamour bestowed on him by celluloid film, the adaptations in alien lands and tongues. His presence at the recently-concluded DIFF is a magnificent 100-minute confirmation of his hold on the imagination of men.
On November 9, when the Telugu dubbed version of Vijays Mersal finally released in theatres, it was the culmination of an intense drama that was plagued with delays in getting a censor certificate. Finally, when the film released, the Telugu version, Adhirindhi, had two of the longest audio cuts, suggested by CBFC officials, which were related to demonetisation and GST'. It didnt make any sense considering that both the dialogues and the related issues had been hogging the limelight ever since Mersal released in theatres in mid-October this year. And soon, fans of Vijay began lamenting that the film isnt the same without these two specific dialogues. Is it? The fact is its not just two dialogues, the film loses a lot more in the dubbed version.
In his recent column Southern Lights, film critic Baradwaj Rangan points out, .the hyperbolic hype that makes films impossible to live up to what the publicity machine wants us to believe. But this is also about the outsider/insider divide that among a thousand other factors makes a thousand people view the same film a thousand different ways. And it couldnt be truer in case of Mersal and Adhirindhi. When I saw Mersal last month, more than a film about corruption in medical industry, it felt like a melange of Vijays undeniable aura, his emergence as a leader in contemporary politics of Tamil Nadu, and more importantly, a film that without a shadow of doubt portrays Vijay as a successor to MGRs legacy. However, Adhirindhi had barely the same effect and this predicament brings up yet another question is it possible to make a commercial-pot boiler which is universal in its nature? Sure, Rajinikanth gets away with his films, especially those made by Shankar, because of their larger-than-life nature. Theres another sub-set of films like Baahubali which worked in every region, irrespective of the cultural barriers. But is it possible to view Mersal in the same manner?
There are numerous instances in Mersal where the political overtones are implied in a very subtle sense. Take that scene where Vijay is interrogated at an airport in Europe. When an official apologises to him in the end, he says, Great people like APJ Abdul Kalam and Shah Rukh Khan had to face a similar situation. Im nothing in front of them. This is a paradox, indeed. By denying that hes nowhere close to the people he mentions, ironically, we are forced to think of the star in the same bracket.
In another scene, which occurs in the films flashback sequence, Vijay walks into a cinema hall where a film of MGR is playing on screen. The image of Vijay is juxtaposed with that of MGR for few moments to let it sink in that you are watching a mass leader in action. More like, Leader 2.0 for the millennials. This particular sequence has a completely different effect in Adhirindhi, where Vijay walks into a cinema hall which is screening NT Rama Raos Dana Veera Soora Karna. We would put NTR and MGR on the same pedestal, but the image of Vijay walking into a cinema hall playing an NTRs film doesnt mean anything. It felt like two different worlds that had nothing in common.
Watching a dubbed version of any film, especially if you arent aware of the cultural and political significance of a monologue, is the cinematic equivalent of Ship of Theseus dilemma. You could try translating every word into another language, but is it the same film if it doesnt mean what its intended to?
Mersal isnt the only film which faces such a situation. In fact, almost every South Indian film, featuring a top star, is filled with so many references, either from their earlier works or political undertones, that its hard to grasp the gravity of the situation, if you dont know what or whom its aimed at. A case in point, when Balakrishna-starrer Legend released just before the 2014 elections, the film suddenly became a political turf where Balakrishna, a TDP member, takes on a dreaded politician named Jeethendra (played by Jagapathi Babu). At one point in the film, Balakrishna screams, Seat kaadhu kadhaAssembly gate kooda thakanivvani (Forget about an MLA seatI wont even allow him to touch the Assembly gate). He wasnt merely firing a salvo at the villains in the film; it was a subtle warning to his political opponents in real life too. In another film Simha (2010), starring Balakrishna and Nayanthara, the actor has a long monologue about family. The ensuring thunderous applause from his fans for that particular dialogue turned a simple monologue into a potent mix of legacy, politics, and caste factor.
At times, dialogues neednt even be political in their nature. For instance, in Ravi Teja- starrer Venky, when hes questioned about his background, Ravi Teja simply says, Naaku ee background ledhu. Nene ekkada nilchunte adhe naa ground (I dont have any background. Wherever I stand, thats my ground). Leaving aside the rhythmic nature of the dialogue, its a reference to his own emergence as a hero without any support. Telugu films for that matter, most South Indian films are also a celebration of legacy, larger-than-life aura of its stars, and only an insider would get all this. Considering the significance of all these subtle references, I wonder if they still carry the same meaning when films are dubbed in other languages.
Finally, does Adhirindhi work as a action entertainer, at least? Yes, it does. Its a smartly packaged action drama which is emotional and talks about an important social issue. But it isnt the same as Mersal, which was much more than all of this put together. In a strange way, this reminded me of Thor and his journey from Asgard to Earth. He might be a god and one of the most powerful people in a parallel universe, but once hes on Earth without his Mjolnir and armour, hes as good as a human being. And Vijay is no different.
Shillong: The Election Commission of India will hold a pre-poll preparedness review meeting with chief electoral officers (CEOs) of Meghalaya, Nagaland and Tripura at New Delhi on Monday, officials said on Sunday.
"At the meeting, the EC will review the preparedness of these poll-bound states on the use of the voter verifiable paper audit trail (VVPAT) machines and also discuss the launch of BLO-net in these states," Meghalaya chief electoral officer (CEO) F R Kharkongor told PTI.
All 3082 polling booths in the 60 constituencies in the state will implement the VVPAT or verifiable paper record (VPR), a method of providing feedback to voters to verify that the vote polled by a voter goes to the correct candidate/party, he said.
The EC will also be briefed on the achievement of the targeted enrolment drives in the state aiming to reach to 18 lakh voters of the 3.2 million populations.
Among the other issues that will be discussed, will be the launching of BLO-net, a pilot project of the EC aimed at enabling booth level officers to map minute information about polling stations, nearest hospitals, roads and other landmarks, Kharkongor said.
The Meghalaya CEO said the purpose is to have a better idea of polling booths and the BLO-net will be rolled out in five constituencies in Meghalaya; East Shillong, South Shillong, North Shillong and North Tura and South Tura.
Earlier, the EC had also reviewed the security pre-poll preparedness of these states.
Following the meeting on Monday, the EC officials will visit these poll-bound states, Kharkongor said. Assembly elections in Meghalaya are due in March next year
At least 16 people were killed after an overloaded boat capsized in Krishna district's Ibrahimpatnam Mandal, ANI reported. PTI reports that seven people are still missing since the incident.
#Visuals from Andhra Pradesh: 3 died after a boat capsized in Krishna river in Krishna district's Ibrahimpatnam mandal, Rescue operation & search for the missing underway. pic.twitter.com/SKAuzFhXpz ANI (@ANI) November 12, 2017
#UPDATE Krishna boat capsize incident: 14 bodies recovered so far #AndhraPradesh ANI (@ANI) November 12, 2017
The boat was navigating the Krishna river. According to IANS, there were 38 tourists on the boat belonging to a private operator and was said to be on a trial run. Locals and fishermen from the vicinity rescued 15 people.
The National Disaster Relief Force (NDRF) and Krishna district authorities are undertaking search and rescue operations to trace the missing people. Two teams each comprising 30 NDRF personnel, a 45-member team of the State Disaster Rescue Force (SDRF) and 60 members of the Disaster Response and Fire Services Department have been roped in for the rescue operation.
According to PTI, the police said that over 17 others are feared dead, but their bodies are yet to be recovered.
Tourism Minister Bhuma Akhila Priya ordered an inquiry into the incident and directed her department officials to ascertain whether the boat operator had requisite permissions.
The incident occurred when the boat set off for Pavitra Sangamam at Ferry village near Vijayawada from Bhavani Island, the police said.
"The boat was overloaded with 38 people and most of them were not provided life jackets. It capsized near a curve as it approached the Pavitra Sangamam point and most of the people were trapped underneath and were killed," an Assistant Commissioner of Police said.
Most of the passengers were said to be members of the Ongole Walkers Club in Prakasam district while some were from Nellore who were on a visit to Vijayawada.
Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu, Deputy Chief Minister (Home) N China Rajappa, Opposition leader YS Jaganmohan Reddy, state BJP president K Hari Babu and others expressed grief over the incident.
China Rajappa, who was supervising rescue operations at the accident spot, announced an ex-gratia payment of Rs 5 lakh each to the kin of the deceased.
This incident comes after 22 people died after a boat capsized on Yamuna River in Uttar Pradesh's Baghpat. In a separate incident, at least six people had drowned in river Ganga in Bihars Maranchi.
With inputs from agencies.
Manila: Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Sunday held separate pull-aside meetings with US president Donald Trump and Chinese premier Li Keqiang on the sidelines of a gala dinner to mark the 50th anniversary of the ASEAN.
Modi was also seen chit-chatting with Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe, Russian prime minister Dmitry Medvedev and Malaysian prime minister Najib Razak at the reception for the leaders who have arrived here for the 31st ASEAN summit and related meetings.
He also held brief interactions with several other leaders who attended the reception hosted by Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte at the mega SMX Convention Centre in Pasay City.
The prime minister as well as all other leaders wore Barong Tagalong, an embroidered shirt which is the national dress of the Philippines. Renowned Filipino designer Albert Andrada has designed the shirts.
Modi also tweeted pictures of his interaction with several leaders.
"PM @narendramodi had a warm and cordial conversation with the Chinese Premier Li Keqiang at the Gala Dinner," MEA spokesperson Raveesh Kumar tweeted.
PM @narendramodi in conversation with Malaysia Prime Minister Najib Razak and Chinese Premier Li Keqiang at the Gala Dinner to celebrate the 50th anniversary of ASEAN in Manila, Philippines. pic.twitter.com/BboORCsauq Raveesh Kumar (@MEAIndia) November 12, 2017
The menu of the gala dinner featured various Filipino cuisines including Filipino steak sushi. The brief interaction between Modi and Trump came ahead of their scheduled bilateral meeting on Monday. The two leaders are expected to deliberate on a number of key issues of mutual interest including the evolving security situation in the Indo-Pacific region where Washington favours a greater role by India. There have been concerns over China's growing military presence in the Indo-Pacific and the issue was understood to have figured in a meeting of officials from India, the US, Japan and Australia on Sunday under the proposed Quadrilateral coalition of the four countries.
"The discussions focused on cooperation based on their converging vision and values for promotion of peace, stability and prosperity in an increasingly inter-connected region that they share with each other and with other partners," the ministry of external affairs said in a statement.
"They agreed that a free, open, prosperous and inclusive Indo-Pacific region serves the long-term interests of all countries in the region and of the world at large," it said.
He also had a conversation with Li Keqiang at the dinner. Modi will hold bilateral meetings with Duterte on Monday.
On Tuesday, Modi will attend the ASEAN-India and East Asia summits where he is likely to reassert India's push for crafting a global approach to deal with growing challenge of terrorism and radicalisation besides pitching for steps to boost regional trade.
About 30 km from Patna, in Saran district, lies the town of Sonepur. Its the site of whats dubbed Asias largest cattle fair the buying and selling of cattle here has taken place for centuries, spread across an area of 500 acres. Local folklore has it that the horses and elephants for emperor Chandragupta Mauryas stables were bought here, after breeders travelled long distances to arrive at the site. Other historical figures believed to have visited the fair: Emperor Akbar, Lord Clive of the East India Company, freedom fighter Baabu Kunwar Singh.
Traders from west and central Asia would bring horses to the fair; until the 90s, a brisk trade in elephants would be conducted by those whod travelled up from Kerala, Tamil Nadu and Karnataka. Elephants, horses, cows, asses, even monkeys there were a wide variety of animals sold at the cattle fair.
These days, however, the Sonepur Pashu Mela wears a different look.
Gone are the crowds of animals, and bargaining over them isnt the first order of business on the minds of visitors. Instead, clothing and handicraft stalls, those selling sweetmeats, hawkers with knick-knacks, line the dusty fairgrounds. Hoardings that have celebrities peddling everything from hair oil to batteries vie for visitors attention. And then of course, there are the dance theatres no fewer than nine of them were put up this year where women dance suggestively to Bhojpuri songs full of double entendre.
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At the Sonepur grounds, one section of the fair is devoted exclusively to the buying and selling of elephants. The Haathi Bazaar was once the pride of the cattle fair, now its a reminder of glory days gone by.
This year, as the fair wrapped up over the first week of November, not a single elephant was brought to the Haathi Bazaar. Visitors made use of the empty space a cool grove of mango trees with open fields nearby to rest, cook food and dry their clothes, after taking a dip in the river nearby. Old-timers like Ram Shakal Rai, who has been associated with the Sonepur Pashu Mela since the early 70s, think of this as the beginning of the end.
In 2016, 13 elephants had been brought to the Haathi Bazaar (only to be exhibited the sale of elephants was banned by the government in 2004 under the provisions of the Wildlife Act of 1972); in 2015, there had been 14; 39 in 2014. A decade ago, in 2007, about 77 elephants had been brought to the fair, and 354 in 2004 the last noted instance of their numbers crossing two digit figures.
There isnt a single elephant this time, rued Rai, who sells jalebis and other dry snacks near the Haathi Bazaar. Without elephants the fair wont last long.
Rai, who lives in a village just 2 km away from the Mela site, recalled his childhood years when hundreds of elephants would be seen at the Pashu mela. Those days are gone now, he said.
Till the early 2000s, the Sonepur fair was famous for the buying and selling of elephants. The 2004 ban (mentioned above) affected the tradition, as did the halt on transportation of elephants from Assam. But even today, when there are no elephants at the fair, it remains a talking point among local visitors and foreign tourists.
Shayam Bahadur Singh, a JD-U MLA, used to bring his elephant, Gaman, ever year to the Sonepur fair for displaying. Until last year, I brought my elephant to Sonepur for the sake of the fair. If the elephants arent here, the fair is finished, he said.
Elephants hold religious significance for visitors to the fair, and are also the brand ambassadors/symbols, in a sense, of the Sonepur Pashu Mela.
The nearly two dozen tourists from Japan, the Netherlands, Italy and the UK at the fair this year were taken aback to find that there were no elephants here, and that numbers of other cattle too were small. There would be no sightings of elephants taking a dip in the river. I am feeling cheated as my tour operator promised me Id say an elephant bathe, said Eshino Kajumi, a Japanese tourist. She wondered why the tourism ministry and tour operators were using photos of elephants in their brochures to attract tourists if none were present.
Others like Van Oorschot, here from the Netherlands, and John Kiddy, from the UK, admitted that while they missed seeing the elephants, the local colour and crowds were interesting. Tour operator Suresh Giri said tourists had complained that the fair had no adventure since there were no elephants (the pachyderms taking a dip at the confluence of the rivers Ganga and Gandak was a big draw), and few other animals.
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It isnt just elephants though, the presence of other animals too is dwindling at Sonepur.
There were no camels this year; the numbers of cows, buffaloes and oxen was quite low. The Gai Bazaar wore a fairly empty look a place where 12,000-15,000 of the animals were once sold. In 2016, 81 cows were brought to the fair; half that number remained unsold. Old timers said cow politics had definitely hit Gai Bazaar hard.
Cow trader Kameshwar Singh said the next generation would only know about the Sonepur Pashu mela as an event on its deathbed. Not long ago, the market for cattle including, cows, buffaloes, oxen and goats used to be big one, spread over a large field covering hundreds of acres. It has become thing of past. In the coming years, the fair will die.
Only the horse market (Ghoda Bazaar) sees brisk business at Sonepur today. This year, about 5,000 horses were brought to the fair. It isnt known how long the Ghoda Bazaar will remain popular.
A horse trader, Munna Singh, points out that horses are only kept as a status symbol these days. He feels theyll go the way of camels and elephants, at the Sonepur fair, soon.
An official at the tourism department, who is part of the Saran district administration, said as society changed, the Sonepur fair too would have to keep up with the times. It will slowly become a space for modern gadgets, vehicles, agricultural tools and rural arts and crafts, the official said.
Delhi is a city that has always been bursting at the seams. When its foundation stone was laid by Emperor George Vth at the Delhi Durbar in 1911, only 4.13 lakhs of what was India's 25.2 crore population lived in Delhi, a measly 0.16%. In 1961, Delhi had an estimated 26.5 lakh citizens with a total urbanised area of 326 square kilometres out of its 1492 square kilometres. Delhi in 2011 stood at 75% urbanised land, 95% urbanised population and contained 1.68 crores i.e. 1.39% of the nations 120 crore population. Delhis environmental sustainability, ecology and air quality has been under pressure. The burden on the city has multiplied and deteriorated rapidly as it intrinsically suffers from the urban heat island effect compounded by the effects of urbanisation, climate change and unequal rural growth.
Cleaning Delhis aira problem that has now reached alarming proportionsthus, requires political will, unified planning, scientific thinking, engineering innovation, administrative compliance and cross-national cooperation, as it is indeed, a problem of north India. Unfortunately, all that the past week has brought us has been uncooperative federalism, unscientific remarks, angry courts and toxic air. Any debate and dialogue around air pollution must not revolve around personalities and politics and must rather adhere to principles of science and prudent policy.
After being elected in February 2015, the Aam Aadmi Partys Delhi government resolved to increase green cover of Delhi from the present 20 percent to 25 percent in the next 5 years, aided by tree plantation, census and audit. An overarching community-centric plan to improve the environment was envisioned. For example, communities were involved by devolving funds for environmental awareness and activities to 1650 eco-clubs in schools and 288 Resident Welfare Associations. The Delhi Dialogue Commissions first policy conference had enough foresight to debate and discuss solutions to municipal solid waste, not just as a civic issue but as a contributory source of air pollution. Several productive meetings with think tanks and non-profits on Delhis environment took place proactively at the Delhi Secretariat, as hopefully many environmentalists reading this piece will agree.
In 2015, Kejriwal risked political capital to help Delhi escape its toxic winter fury by piloting odd-even, a road-rationing scheme wherein for a specified period of time (15 days), vehicles, with the last digit of their number plates as odd or even, plied alternately on odd and even days.
Odd-even worked. The AAP governments road rationing experiment showed that with good intent and public support, innovative policy ideas had space for execution. During the odd-even scheme, the roads no longer choked with bumper-to-bumper traffic; public transport buses (DTC) increased their operational efficiency to 1.5 times; the scheme reduced the problem of vehicle engine idling, reducing harmful emissions; ambulances didnt get stuck in traffic leading to lesser deaths in hospital trauma centres; lesser traffic meant lesser emissions and the PM 2.5 & 10 levels came down drastically over a sustained period of time. The real victory of the odd-even scheme was that it made the citizens active stakeholders in resolving the problem of air pollution.
During odd-even, a 3-tier air monitoring was started across the city at 246 locations, something that was done for the first time in the country. The data wouldnt make Delhi or its government look good, but it gave us a picture of the entire pollution problem for the first time. This was something that even leading non-profits, think tanks or academic institutions hadnt conducted due to lack of resources and bandwidth. Past governments hadnt pursued it, since more data would put a large spotlight on the problem. The AAP government chose what was right over what was easy.
Whilst the media narrative was shaped around odd-even, several important policy measures were taken. Over the next one and a half years, Delhi made alternate arrangement for electricity through cleaner sources and shut down thermal and coal based power plants. Waste burning was cracked down by officers at over 550 sites, while control of dust due to improper construction was ensured through over 1300 fines, even against government organisations violating norms. Public transport as a budgetary priority and its usage as a political philosophy was refreshing to see in the car-free days, large-scale procurement of cluster buses, initially unsuccessful but repeated tenders and budgetary allocation for low-floor buses, appointment of bus marshals and even ministerial car-pooling!
However, the L-Gs interference and bureaucratic bungling created large roadblocks. For example, the largest recorded strike in Indias bureaucratic history of hundreds of IAS and DANICS officers took place one day before the odd-even scheme on 31 December, 2015, to scuttle its execution and possible success. It was a clear message to pick a side. Mostly under threat to career prospects or family stability with a few instances of open voluntary revolt, this unprecedented and alarming moment burnt bridges for many professional relationships. The Delhi government would not bow to the tyranny of the unelected, to use an old phrase, that was operating through a bureaucracy, while most officers took the path of least resistance, which was to comply with the powers that be.
The Delhi High Court gave further ammunition to the murky middle-ground that existed between the bureaucracy, LG and the Delhi Government with its judgment on 8 August 2016. In a moment of inspired obstinacy, the then L-G halted the PWDs plans to conduct vacuum cleaning of roads, one of the policy suggestions from the 2016 IIT Kanpur air quality report, stating that it was the MCDs prerogative. The Delhi Government was and is caught between the MCD, an organisation that wont work and the L-G, a constitutional post that wont allow it to work. The premium bus aggregator policy which sought to shift Delhis mobility patterns positively was scuttled by the L-G citing procedural and then criminal reasons. But in reality, no bureaucrat wanted to stick their neck out for innovations when career risk was involved.
The next winter in 2016, in the week that brought Trump and demonetisation to the world, saw crop residue burning across north India take centre-stage, as it has this year. NASA images showed us the massive crop-residue burning in North India with millions of tonnes being burnt in Punjab, Haryana, Uttarakhand and Uttar Pradesh. Delhi underwent through a similar cycle of emergency measures to ameliorate the toxic air and returned to normalcy yet again.
Knowing that this multi-fanged problem wouldnt go away, Kejriwal constituted a Group of Ministers on Air Pollution and Solid Waste Management, to propose structural, administrative and engineering solutions to all of Delhis agencies. The Group of Ministers report became the bedrock of the Delhi governments response in the judiciary and also its action plan for the year ahead, which it presented to all civic bodies and engineering officers concerned. Its contents also had the suggestions that formed the basis for Environment Minister Imran Hussains reminders this year to Punjab and Haryana to reduce crop burning.
It consisted of detailed short-term and long-term preventive and corrective measures. For air pollution, immediate and proven interventions like draft wind creation unit installations, virtual chimneys, road washing, conversion of road-dividers into bio-filters, usage of PCO paint to absorb pollutants, solar powered blowers and bio-filter green walls were proposed to be installed by the MCDs, DDA and PWD.
Long-term interventions and schemes to be coordinated or executed by the Environment Department and the MCDs included green crematoriums, 150-point city-wide real-time air pollution monitoring, PUC revamp, landfill bioventing, construction and demolition activity management, incentivising LPG, the idea of mohalla rasois, designs to end tandoor pollution, brick kiln redesign, market night cleaning, replanning of bus routes, congestion pricing, electric bus promotion, stringent parking policy and BRT redesign. It even suggested composting of agricultural waste and introduction of truck-mounted pyrolysis to replace crop-residue burning, a policy suggestion still relevant to north Indian states today.
We did not propose any products posing as solutions on Facebook videos, which can be attractive in times of crisis. White elephants and pipe dreams were a strict no-no. The Delhi government proposed tangible schemes, deadlines and budgets for Delhi-based agencies to execute these plans to improve air quality. These plans were feasible and viable given current personnel, administrative and financial capacity of each institution. And yet, you see very few of them being executed on ground. Despite proposing these detailed plans, Delhi's administrative structure and the High Court judgment give the Delhi chief minister no power to hold his officials accountable to their duties, responsibilities and projects. The LG enjoys this power entirely with Services reporting directly to him, and yet doesn't face public accountability, neither do the officers reporting to him.
On Saturday, the National Green Tribunal (NGT) showed some inspired interrogation techniques and was at its caustic best while questioning state policy. However, when they reconvene, regardless of the fate of odd-even, I hope that the NGT will bring up the plans described above with the LG, as the administrative head of MCD and DDA, and ask why these problems have been stalled. Why do the MCD and DDA play out a farce of landfills, land requirement and financial health emergencies to end up burning garbage, under his watch? It would do really well to ask the L-G if the current Chairperson and Member Secretary of DPCC are in violation of the NGTs (nearly a year old) order which sought to appoint technical experts to head and manage state pollution control committees, an issue which the Delhi government has attempted to fix to no avail. After all, the NGT has shown judicial enthusiasm to terminate 10 state pollution control board chiefs on this ground in June 2017.
It would be supreme if it followed up on a compliance check of NGT orders on air pollution of the last five years in Delhi, a majority of which directly address the MCD for action. A non-exhaustive list of 58 orders by authors from mid 2012 to mid 2017 is given below. And finally, while we are at it, it would be an unprecedented delight if the National Green Tribunal did more judicial reprimanding outside Delhi, where its immediate headquarters and residential quarters lie. Surely, there is more that is wrong with our Western ports or the KG River Basin than our geography allows us to see.
At its core, the problem is less technical, managerial or scientific than it is political and bureaucratic. For example, a recent Secretaries of Science Departments meeting was chaired by PM Narendra Modi on 18 July 2017, where he expressed the urgent need to address this (rice residue burning) problem in next one year. Within a few months, an October 2017 policy brief detailing possible solutions, budgetary constraints and technological pros/cons has been circulated. This brief has interestingly still not made it to the website of the National Academy of Agricultural Sciences website but has found its way in academic circles through the conference circuit. It estimates a Rs. 470 crore investment to cover 50% of all the rice-wheat cropping area in India, which would significantly contain North Indian toxicity levels.
The solution exists, at least, on paper. If the Union Government or BJP is serious about solving the air pollution crisis, we should be discussing how to operationalise the SMS combine and Happy Seeder plan, or discuss alternate plans and budgets, if any. We should not have the union environment minister discussing whether air pollution kills or not. We should certainly not have BJP ministers in other states like Anil Vij in Haryana asking Delhi to pay for Haryanas incompetence.
If the Congress and Captain Amarinder Singh are serious about curtailing air pollution, they must only meet and discuss with their fellow Congress state Karanatakas farm equipment rental model and find a place for promoting seeders and truck mounted pyrolysis in their agriculture budget. They must promote policies that either promote community seeder ownership or promote entrepreneurs to scale seeder time-sharing to incentivize proper waste disposal. As of now, they refuse to take even a seat at the table with the typical arrogance that brought down their electoral fortunes. One can only hope for change.
In a city of politics, negativity and one-upmanship, Kejriwal has put his cards on the table, used whatever tools are at his disposal to make the city better and is pitching plans to gather support to solve this for north India. To be honest, it seems unlikely the establishment politicians who are the reason for how things got this bad will respond. He hopes for support from the citizens of Delhi and clarity from the five judge constitutional bench at the Supreme Court of India.
The authors were Advisors to the Government of NCT of Delhi and have worked on problems of public infrastructure, administrative reform and environmental sustainability. Ankit Srivastava holds a Masters degree in Environmental Engineering from IIT Bombay, and can be reached at @ankit_delhii on Twitter. Roshan Shankar holds a double Masters degree in Engineering and Public Policy from Stanford University, and can be reached @roshankar on Twitter.
New Delhi: Stressing women safety issues in the capital, Delhi commission for women chief Swati Jai Hind on Saturday criticised the national green tribunal's (NGT) order against exemptions in the odd-even scheme and sought the inclusion of single women drivers.
She also condemned the NGT for its order on the inclusion of two-wheelers in the vehicle rationing scheme that was supposed to be enforced from 13-17 November but the Delhi government refused to implement without these two exemptions.
In a series of tweets, she asked whether the NGT had checked availability of buses and Metro services before ordering the 60 lakh people using two-wheelers won't be exempted, or consult women about concerns on women safety. "It's an impractical order which shall ensure odd even failure!" she said.
NGT also ordered that 60 Lac people using 2 wheelers wont be exempted. Did they check availability of bus & metro before passing d order? Did dey consult some women about concerns on women safety. It's an impractical order which shall ensure odd even failure! Swati Jai Hind (@SwatiJaiHind) November 11, 2017
She said she believed in gender equality and would herself never avail any exemptions but stressed that letting off women from the road rationing scheme was a necessity due to security reasons. "Like most women, I am against exemptions and wont avail any. But exemptions to women in odd even is a necessity due to serious security concerns. However, I totally support NO exemptions to VIP & Govt Servants," she tweeted.
Like most women, I am against exemptions and wont avail any. But exemptions to women in odd even is a necessity due to serious security concerns. However, I totally support NO exemptions to VIP & Govt Servants https://t.co/z50LljGlRv Swati Jai Hind (@SwatiJaiHind) November 11, 2017
Jai Hind said that they she met chief minister Arvind Kejriwal and have requested him that "in case such impractical decisions of NGT stay", the odd-even measure should be scrapped. "Can't compromise with already fragile women safety scenario in the Capital!" she said.
Just met CM @ArvindKejriwal ji and have requested him that in case such impractical decisions of NGT stay, odd even shud b scrapped. Can't compromise with already fragile women safety scenario in the Capital! Swati Jai Hind (@SwatiJaiHind) November 11, 2017
Noting that the NGT has banned all protests and demonstrations at Jantar Mantar, she said that in another wrong and "sad" move, the green court has "failed the odd-even plan", and should review its which is "impractical and far removed from ground reality". Good only 4 a perfect world, which we are not!" she said.
It's so sad. Ultimate losers are all of us. NGT shud imm review it's decision. It's impractical and far removed from ground reality. Good only 4 a perfect world, which we are not! https://t.co/lnJ5KhALBJ Swati Jai Hind (@SwatiJaiHind) November 11, 2017
Jai Hind also tweeted pictures of the paper carrying recommendations that the DCW had made for the second phase of the scheme enforced in April 2016 after soliciting the opinion of the women of Delhi in order.
Second Part of DCW detailed recommendations to Delhi Government during last odd even seeking exemption 4 women. The arguments remain the same even today. (Part 2) pic.twitter.com/TjIFuqTLYw Swati Jai Hind (@SwatiJaiHind) November 11, 2017
The April 2016 letter said that most of the women representatives unanimously agreed that exemption should be given to them during the second phase.
"The arguments remain the same even today," she said.
The first phase of the odd-even rule was implemented by the Delhi government from 1 to 15 January and the second phase from 15 to 30 April last year.
During these two phases, the restrictions did not apply to the CNG and electric cars, two-wheelers and cars driven by women with a male companion not above 12.
Vehicles for medical emergencies, occupied or driven by people with disabilities, VVIPs and enforcement cars were also allowed to run on all days.
Making changes in the plan that was implemented in the previous two phases, the NGT on Saturday ruled that only emergency vehicles such as ambulances and MCD garbage vans and fire brigade vehicles will be exempted.
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New Delhi: United Airlines has temporarily suspended flights to Delhi due to "poor air quality" in the national capital. The US-based carrier is possibly the first airline to suspend operations to the city, citing air pollution that has worsened in recent days and has forced authorities to resort to emergency measures.
"United temporarily suspended Newark-Delhi flights due to poor air quality concerns in Delhi and currently has waiver policies in place for customers who are travelling to, from or through Delhi," an airline spokesperson said in a statement on Saturday.
The spokesperson also said the airline is monitoring advisories as the region remains under a public health emergency, and is coordinating with respective government agencies.
United Airlines customers have been asked to check its website or download the mobile app for latest updates. The carrier operates flights to Newark from Delhi and Mumbai.
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Hyderabad: A 43-year-old man allegedly threatened and abused two Dalit men and made them to enter a small pond in Nizamabad district of Telangana, police said on Sunday.
The video of the purported incident, which took place at Abhangapatnam village in Navipet Mandal of the district in September, has gone viral on social media and being highlighted by television channels.
After the video went viral, the Madiga Reservation Porata Samithi (MRPS) approached the police and lodged a complaint, Navipet Police Station Sub-Inspector J Naresh said.
"Based on the complaint, a case under IPC section 506 (criminal intimidation) and under relevant sections of Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act was registered against one Bharat Reddy, a local businessman who allegedly threatened and abused the two agricultural labourers in filthy language," the SI told PTI over phone.
Police's preliminary investigation revealed that Reddy was getting gravel transported and had engaged a tractor for the purpose. However, the duo had allegedly stopped the tractor, which left Reddy fuming, following which he abused and threatened them.
The video shows a bearded man holding a stick and threateningly asking the two men, who are folding their hands (apparently requesting him to spare them), to enter the pond as a "punishment". The man is heard using filthy language against the duo.
The video also shows the two men get into the water and take dips even as the bearded man continues to hurl abuses against them.
#Nizamabad #BJP local leader canes, threatens & punishes 2 Dalit men for questioning him about illegal sand mining. Leader's men recorded incident on cam which has now gone viral. #Telangana @asadowaisi @realkeerthi @divyaspandana pic.twitter.com/2KvcrE8jIQ PAUL OOMMEN (@Paul_Oommen) November 12, 2017
"None of the two victims have lodged a complaint with police in this connection," the police official said.
Police are in the process of questioning Reddy.
When asked about the television reports, which claimed that the accused is linked to BJP, the police official dismissed reports.
Meanwhile, referring to the incident, Telangana BJP said it strongly condemns "misrepresentation" by sections of the media on the viral video.
"The individual exhibiting barbaric and unacceptable behaviour in Nizamabad on Dalits is not a BJP leader, nor does he hold any position in the party at any level," the party said in a statement.
"BJP Telangana will consider legal options against those, who are indulging in blatant misrepresentation," it added.
Srinagar: Jammu and Kashmir chief minister Mehbooba Mufti on Sunday sought the intervention of defence minister Nirmala Sitharaman for the return of the state land which is no longer required for operational purposes by the army.
Mufti had a one-on-one meeting with Sitharaman at Pahalgam in south Kashmir's Anantnag district where the defence minister had come to attend a meeting of the executive council of Jawahar Institute of Mountaineering and Winter Sports, an official spokesman said.
During the meeting with Sitharaman, the chief minister brought several issues pertaining to defence to the Union minister's notice.
The chief minister pressed for the speeding up of cases of revision and payment of rent in respect of the land owners of High Ground, Anantnag whose land is being used by the Army, the spokesman said.
He said the chief minister also sought intervention of the defence minister for the return of pockets of land which are no longer required for operational purposes by the Army.
Sitharaman assured Mufti to look into the issue of revision and payment of rent to the land owners of High Ground, Anantnag. She regretted the delay and inconvenience caused all these years to the land owners who have not been paid rent, the spokesman said.
Sitharaman said that it was only during her first meeting with Mufti recently that her attention was drawn towards this issue by the chief minister.
A delegation of land owners also met the defence minister and apprised her of their problem, the spokesman said.
Sitharaman assured the delegation that she would try to fast track their case of rent payment and revision, he said.
Maharashtra chief minister Devendra Fadnavis issued a warning to traffic policemen on Sunday and stated that the policeman who allegedly towed a vehicle with a woman and baby inside it had been suspended, ANI reported.
Very unfortunate. Absolutely insensitive & dangerous to tow the vehicle with lady and the child inside. The cop is suspended and orders have been given to sensitize traffic cops so as to prevent such incidents: Maharashtra CM Devendra Fadnavis to ANI ANI (@ANI) November 12, 2017
Fadnavis made the statement a day after a video circulated on Facebook reportedly showing a woman with a seven-month-old baby being towed away by the traffic police in Mumbai.
In the video, the woman, Jyoti Male, can be heard saying that there were two cars in front of her which were not towed.
She also added that there was no nameplate on the traffic policeman's uniform. Jyoti said that she was breastfeeding her child when this incident occurred.
She later told ANI that the policeman towing the car did not even ask her to get down from the vehicle.
She claimed she even informed them that she was breastfeeding her child, but they did not stop.
Maharashtra minister of finance and planning, and forests, Sudhir Mungantiwar, told India Today that it was an "inhuman action by police" and that "action will be taken."
ANI reported that the Mumbai Joint Commissioner of Police (Traffic) Amitesh Kumar ordered an inquiry into the case.
The report added that the joint commissioner ordered the DCP (Traffic) West to visit the location where the incident took place and begin an inquiry immediately. He added that a report must be filed by Sunday.
"It has been prima facie noticed that safety of the woman and the child was endangered in the incident. Hence, pending inquiry, the constable is being placed under suspension," Amitesh Kumar said.
A decision about departmental action against him will be taken after the report is received, he added.
With inputs from PTI
New Delhi: The National Green Tribunal has directed the Delhi government and the municipal corporations to ensure availability of appropriate parking facilities for cars and discourage road-side parking.
A bench headed by NGT Chairperson Justice Swatanter Kumar slammed authorities for not complying with its earlier orders to decongest traffic and asked them to take steps in a holistic manner.
Why have you not created appropriate parking place for cars? You people are responsible for creating mess on roads by creating two-three lanes of parking. Why dont you cancel the agreement with contractors who abuse their terms. These parking people become officers and traffic police just watch them, the bench said.
The green panel said that if new cars are being allowed to registered then they must be given proper parking spaces.
For instance, the multiple parking at Sarojni Nagar remains empty which is undisputed fact and all the vehicles are permitted to be parked on roads where some contractors collect money and add to congestion of traffic.
All the government authorities, corporations and NDMC should take immediate and effective steps to rectify these discrepancies and ensure better co-ordination between the corporations, government, police, departments and contractors who are engaged for parking purposes, the bench added.
It also directed the AAP government and the traffic police to challan and seize 10-year-old diesel vehicles and 15-year-old petrol vehicles to curb air pollution in the city.
The counsel appearing for NCT Delhi has informed that the site has already been provided for keeping the vehicles which are impounded/seized by the police being 10 years old vehicles in the case of diesel and 15 years old in the case of petrol.
We direct the Commissioner of Police, Delhi to ensure that vehicles which are violating the above directions of the Tribunal should be seized and compliance report be submitted to the Tribunal on the next date of hearing, the bench said.
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Ahmedabad: Defence minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Saturday termed as a "good humanitarian gesture" Pakistan's decision to allow Kulbhushan Jadhav, who is on death row there, to meet his wife.
Pakistan on Friday said it will allow Jadhav to meet his wife in jail, months after New Delhi had requested Islamabad to grant a visa to his mother on humanitarian grounds.
"It is a good humanitarian gesture," she said at a press conference in Ahmedabad when asked about Islamabad's decision.
"India is making all efforts to get Kulbhushan Jadhav released from Pakistani prison. India has also approached the International Court of Justice (on the issue)," she said.
Jadhav was sentenced to death by a Pakistani military court in April on charges of espionage and terrorism. The International Court of Justice in May halted his execution on India's appeal.
Sitharaman said she learnt about Pakistan's decision from the media. "I don't know what is the position on allowing his wife to visit him, but it is a good gesture. It will boost Jadhav's morale in jail."
The Union minister is in Gujarat to campaign for the BJP for the next month's Assembly polls.
Gandhinagar: Arunachal Pradesh is Indian territory and the opinion of others on the issue is not a concern for India, defence minister Nirmala Sitharaman said on Saturday, days after China objected to her visit to the state.
Asked about China's objection to her recent visit to Arunachal Pradesh, the defence minister said: "What is the problem? There is no problem here. It is our territory, we will go there."
"We are not concerned with someone else's opinion on this," she added.
Sitharaman visited a forward army post in Arunachal Pradesh on 5 November to take stock of the defence preparedness and the situation along the Line of Actual Control (LAC).
China had the next day reacted angrily to the visit, saying the visit to the "disputed" region would not be conducive to peace on the border. China has maintained that Arunachal Pradesh is a part of south Tibet, a claim which is not accepted by India.
Asked if the issue of giving shelter to Dalai Lama and the Tibetan refugees was a bone of contention in India-China relations, the minister said every issue has its own "weight".
"A relationship can't be made or broken over one issue. Every subject has its own weight," she said at a press conference in Gandhinagar.
The minister is campaigning in Gujarat for the coming assembly elections.
On the issue of Kulbhushan Jadhav, a former Naval officer who was arrested in Pakistan and accused of spying, the minister said India was making all efforts to get him back, and added that if Pakistan allowed his wife to visit him, it would be a good humanitarian gesture.
"The case of Kulbhushan Jadhav is pending in the International Court and India is making all efforts so that he is released. I don't know what is the position on Pakistan allowing his wife to visit him, but it would be good as a humanitarian consideration, and it will help in boosting his morale," she said.
Speaking on Jammu and Kashmir, the minister said the state government was taking steps to rein in terrorism, and lauded the state police for its actions.
"In the last one year, you have seen that stone-pelting has almost stopped and I want to give credit to the Jammu and Kashmir Police. The state government is an elected government and they are visiting villages to resolve these issues," she said.
Karachi: Fifty-five Indian fishermen have been arrested by the Pakistan Maritime Security Agency (PMSA) for allegedly fishing in the country's territorial waters.
The PMSA has also seized nine Indian fishing boats during a four-day operation (between Wednesday and Saturday) in the Arabian Sea, a PMSA spokesman said.
The spokesman said that speed boats were deployed to intercept the boats of Indian fishermen, who were arrested as they were fishing illegally in Pakistan's territorial waters.
"The fishermen, after initial investigations, have been handed over to the Docks police," he said.
A police official said that the fishermen would now be produced before a judicial magistrate.
Fishermen from Pakistan and India are frequently detained for illegally fishing in each other's territorial waters since the Arabian Sea does not have a clearly defined marine border and the wooden boats, used by fishermen, lack the technology to avoid them from drifting away.
On 29 October, the Pakistan government had released 68 Indian fishermen from Malir jail as a goodwill gesture.
Pakistani authorities had released a total of 438 Indian fishermen between December 2016 and January 2017 from the Landhi and Malir jails in Karachi.
An RSS worker was lynched in Nenmanikkara panchayat in the Thrissur district on Sunday by CPM workers, the Kerala BJP has claimed.
#Kerala: An RSS worker allegedly murdered in Thrissur. More details awaited. ANI (@ANI) November 12, 2017
The incident occurred at around 1.30 pm when Anand, who was on a two-wheeler, was knocked down when a group rammed their car into it. After he fell down from his vehicle, he was hacked to death.
Anand was pronounced dead while he was being taken to a hospital, Manorama Online reported.
DNA reported that the victim was accused in the murder of a CPM worker called Kasim in 2014. Anand was currently out on bail.
According to a Hindustan Times report, Anand was attacked in Nenmini near the temple town of Guruvayur. "The police suspect that his murder is a revenge killing," the report said.
Kerala has been witnessing a surge in political killings for some time now. As Firstpost had pointed out earlier, Kannur, the home district of chief minister Pinarayi Vijayan, has especially emerged at the centre of these politically-motivated killings.
In fact, according to this article, Vijayan's home district, alone reported as many as 301 incidents of political violence in the first four months of his tenure. The northern district, which is considered the cradle of communist movement in Kerala, is the epicentre of political violence in the state.
Last month, another RSS worker was hacked to death, allegedly by CPM workers, at Muzhuppilangad near Thalassery in the politically volatile Kannur district of Kerala. The police had suspected that the attack was carried out by bike-borne persons at around 5.30 pm on a road near the Muzhuppilangad beach.
With inputs from agencies
Raipur: Three Naxals were on Sunday gunned down in an encounter with security forces in forests in Chhattisgarh's Bijapur district, police said.
Three weapons, including one INSAS rifle, and explosives were seized from the encounter spot, around 450 km from Raipur, they added.
The gun-battle took place this afternoon near Mankeli village under Bijapur police station limits when a joint team of the Special Task Force (STF) and the District Reserve Guard (DRG) was on an anti-Maoist operation, Deputy Inspector General of Police (Dantewada range) Sundarraj P told PTI.
When the patrolling team reached Mankeli forests, an exchange of fire broke out between security forces and a group of ultras, he said.
After a brief gunfight, the rebels escaped into the core area of the forests, he said.
During a search operation of the encounter site, bodies of three rebels were recovered. Three firearms, including one INSAS rifle, and improvised explosive devices (IEDs) were also found, the DIG said.
Six Naxals, including five women, were gunned down in two separate encounters with security forces in Narayanpur district of Bastar region on 7 November.
Agartala: Outlawed All Tripura Tiger Force's former chief Ranjit Debbarma, who was pushed back by Bangladesh security forces into India four years ago, has been arrested on sedition charges, police said on Sunday.
Debbarma was arrested from his house at Sidhai in western Tripura late on Saturday on the charge of sedition and well as in connection with some cases pending at Teliamura police station in Khowai district, West Tripura district police chief Abhijit Saptarshi told IANS.
Khowai's Superintendent of Police Krishnendu Chakraborty said that the former terrorist leader would soon be produced before a local court.
"Debbarma, without permission of the police authority, held a public meeting at Teliamura last week and challenged erstwhile princely ruled Tripura's merger with the Indian Union. He also gave anti-national views in the meeting," Chakraborty told IANS over phone from Khowai.
Arrested by the Bangaladesh police in 2012 after an Interpol Red Corner Notice had been issued for him as he was allegedly involved in a number of massacres and many other crimes, he was handed over to Indian authorities through the Dawki border of Meghalaya in January next year. He was subsequently brought to Tripura and arrested by the state police.
He got bail from a Tripura court in 2015.
Debbarma has recently formed Tripura United People's Council involving surrendered militants of various former extremist outfits and demanded implementation of the government's assurances given to the outfits during signing of accords with different groups since 1993.
The wife of Aligarh Muslim University (AMU) professor Khalid Bin Yusuf Khan, has alleged that she was given instant triple talaq on WhatsApp recently, said several media reports.
According to The Times of India report, Yasmeen Khalid has threatened to commit suicide in front of the AMU vice-chancellor's house along with her kids if "justice is not done" to her.
Yasmeen said that Khan, who is a professor and chairman at the department of Sanskrit in AMU, "wrongly" gave her talaq first on WhatsApp and then as a text message, added the report.
"He (Khan) turned me out of the house and I have been running from pillar to post to get justice. But no one has helped me so far. However, with the help of police, I did manage to get access to my house on Friday evening," Yasmeen was quoted as saying by Times Now.
Khan, however, denied the allegations saying he not only gave her talaq on WhatsApp and SMS, but had also verbally told her in front of two other people and adhered to the time duration as per Sharia.
In October, in a similar incident, an NRI in Dubai gave instant triple talaq on WhatsApp to his wife.
Why are you calling me? I do not like you. Do not wait for me. If we like apples, will we keep eating them every day? We would want to eat other fruits also. Talaq Talaq Talaq, was the WhatsApp message the husband in Dubai sent his young wife barely 10 days after the marriage.
The Womens Commission had sent a notice to the parents of the man asking them to show up and explain this situation.
The AMU incident comes to light months after the Supreme Court, in a historic judgement, banned instant divorce by a 3:2 verdict as unconstitutional. The apex court held that the triple talaq was against the basic tenets of the Quran.
The verdict said any practice including triple talaq which is against the tenets of Quran in unacceptable. The three-judge bench also said the practice of divorce through triple talaq was manifestly arbitrary and violated the Constitution and must be struck down.
With inputs from agencies
Over three years of planning and execution, 228 artefacts from museums in two countries, and an exhibition divided into eight sections if you walk into the Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sanghralay (CSMVS) right now, you will encounter India and the World, a unique telling of the story of our country in the context of the world. This is denoted by the use of the world 'and' in the name of the exhibition; it is indicator that these curated pieces talk about how India has evolved over the years, in comparison to the cultures of the world. This first-of-its-kind exhibition is largely unmatched in terms of scale, and it is a joint effort by the CSMVS, National Museum, New Delhi, and the British Museum.
The nine sections Shared Beginnings, First Cities, Empires, State and Faith, Indian Ocean Traders, Courtly Cultures, Quest for Freedom, and Time Unbound denote different eras in human development. The historical objects displayed in them make the interconnectedness of the world evident; while Rembrandt's sketches of Mughal miniatures rest on one wall, a porcelain dish created in China and used by Muhammad bin Tughlaq lies on another platform.
Sabyasachi Mukherjee, Director General of the CSMSV and one of the minds behind the conception of this exhibition, spoke about the objectives they had in mind. Apart from the desire to showcase important moments from the history of India, they also wanted to explore and compare the collections possessed by India and the rest of the world. They wished to provide an opportunity for those people who cannot afford to travel abroad to learn about the historical artefacts displayed in museums outside the country.
"India and the World is the mother of all exhibitions, in terms of scale and extent," said Mukherjee. Dr Hartwig Fischer of the British Museum said that he takes pride in this exhibition's ability to contribute to cross-cultural discourse and for the beauty of its economy, because narrowing down the choice of objects requires both scholarship as well as curatorial knowledge. "You don't just see the objects created by people from different time periods; you also encounter the people who left their mark on them," said Dr Fischer.
But this is not merely a collection of historical objects; there is a distinct narrative running through the whole exhibition, and it has an underlying political comment to offer. Dr Fischer spoke about how India and the World can serve as a model conceived as a new kind of co-operation between organisations to tell stories that cannot otherwise be told.
He added that as opposed to telling the story of merely victors or dominant groups, it also sheds light on the lives of "simpler" people in societies, as is evident in the section where traded goods are displayed. It directly addresses political issues, such as empires and independence struggles, but is not about party politics, he explained. "It highlights what unites and binds together people, it shows how there was an exchange of mutual inspiration which could not be stopped by obstacles such as conflict. This is what human culture is about not wars," he said.
Mr Mukherjee spoke about the significance that this exhibition holds for both the CSMVS, as well as the country in general. "It shows us about how we are equal partners in the world narrative. The world belongs to us, not five superpowers," he said. Additionally, India and the World also seeks to question widely held notions about history, such as the dominant interpretation of the 'Dancing Girl' sculpture of the Indus Valley Civilisation. During a guided tour, this writer was offered an alternative explanation for what the subject may have been. If her "practical" dressing sense were to be taken into consideration, it would appear that she was a worker rather than a dancer or a member of royalty.
Naman Ahuja, one of the two curators of this exhibition, talked about what goes into staging an event of this magnitude. In order to pick artefacts and objects, he said that having a clear narrative in one's head. As an art historian, his job was to become familiar with vast amounts of the histories of Indian art and archaeology. He had to be familiar with what is lying in the major museums and storerooms, including those objects which aren't on display. Apart from Indian museums, he also had to gain familiarity about the relevant historical objects which could be found in territories which used to be part of pre-Independence India, such as Burma and Pakistan, or which had close connections with out country, such as Indonesia and Sri Lanka.
"It's only with the knowledge of this that you can arrive at a correct assessment of Indian history," he says. As a result of building an archive of tens of thousands of photographs of Indian artefacts from museums, archaeological sites, as well as private collectors over the years, Ahuja was aware of what strengths and weaknesses the country has in terms of museology and the preservation of artefacts. He faced several curatorial challenges, such as the sheer unavailability of certain historical objects, such as Mughal paintings and Gandharan art, both of which can be found in abundance in the West.
Cherry-picking some objects and thereby privileging them means that one is consequently silencing many others. "Every object has been lovingly made by somebody and it is representative of that person's community or history. So you feel a certain burden as a curator about not telling that person's history. As a historian, I was very conscious that we live in times when people's histories are being silenced, and we have to be able to tell their stories too, while telling the main story," he explains. Another challenge was finding those pieces which would allow him to tell a nuanced kind of story.
But the joys of putting together India and the World were several, too. It gave him the opportunity to travel to every part of the world and to see some of the most interesting artefacts and photograph them. "To be overjoyed and humbled by the sheer excellence of what you see around you, to have the opportunity to work with such a highly skilled team, to learn from their experiences on how to curate, and the joy of being able to introduce them to something they never knew," he adds.
For Ahuja, the greatest behind-the-scenes stories of this exhibition came from two states of India where he did not expect to find such treasures -- Haryana and Telangana. He was taken by surprise when he realised that Haryana has such an important and rich historical past. Recent excavations from Haryana have been awe-inspiring, and some of the jewels from the Harappan age which were discovered in this state have been exhibited as a part of India and the World, he said. "The Director of Archaeology of the state of Haryana kindly gave me access to their collections. They don't even have a museum to house their collections. In the Godrej cupboards placed in a basement storeroom, they had various things lying around in plastic boxes. I couldn't believe what I was looking at inside these boxes. At that moment, I realised I was looking at something absolutely historical and extraordinary, that gave me a chill," he recounts.
The second grand behind-the-scenes moment was in Telangana. At a site called Phanigiri, which has dozens ancient stupas, he found a piece of carving depicting Siddhartha (Gautam Buddha) giving up his titles and renouncing his status as king. Ahuja said the quality and intricacy of the carving far exceeded the Amaravati-style sculptures he had seen in Guntoor, Vijaywada or even the British Museum. "It was an astonishing new discovery," he added. This carving is an example of how the curators have managed to place the objects in a manner such that they seem to be in conversation with each other. It talks about giving up worldly concerns like empire building and power, and it is juxtaposed on all sides by symbols of kings, such as busts of rulers carved out of stone.
It may be divided into seven sections on the basis of time periods, but India and the World has an eighth section which questions its very premise as well as the way that history is told, because humans don't know how to measure history. In Time Unbound, we find ideas of ancient wisdom and modernity colliding, as well as the representation of those people who live in what we call modern times, but do not wish to subscribe to modern ways of thinking and believing.
When asked what he hopes visitors will gain from this exhibition, Ahuja says, "I think the biggest takeaway is that we must have a certain sense of openness, that we must be able to come to an exhibition with a sense of curiosity, and the awareness that people may have behaved the same way across cultures or across time periods. The spirit of questioning is very important for me too."
It was the best of times, wrote Charles Dickens, it was the worst of times. In our postcolonial condition, there is no impulse without vocabulary. But the commemoration of 10 years of the Delhi Queer Pride Parade evokes mixed, unintelligible sentiments. As hundreds, if not thousands, take to Barakhamba Road and its memorable Tolstoy Marg on Sunday, 12 November, they carry in brazen assertions of love, desire, and their very beings a veritable history that they make this history is implicit in its performance.
The idea of a queer pride parade emerged in the Western world, heralded by the US in the wake of the Stonewall riots of June, 1969. The Stonewall riots, or the riot as it has come to impinge on the imagination of pride parades, is a figure too central to exhibitions of pride and identity to be ignored. Queer pride parades have therefore, almost by convention, emphasised the political value of rage in their assertion of the self and its identity. The pride parade is a public spectacle of rage, its pride dovetailed with indignation at the many injustices of queerness. Pride, however, needs its public, and in the expression of rage, this public must necessarily be created in the global circulations of information and by consequence identity that modern globalisation has enabled, this has to be known as the LGBT (Lesbian-Gay-Bisexual-Transgender). As is apparent, the US heralds more causes than it can manage. The idea of the queer pride parade has, to that end, become the fulcrum of queer political engagement in the Third World in general and India in particular. To state its historical debt is not to berate a paradigm, and indeed, pride parades in South Asia have been remarkable for their vibrancy, for their textures of courage in a world that remains hostile, and for their temerity to demand an alternative political present.
Yet, the concept is marred with problems of its making, symptomatic of problems with queer politics in India. As Vqueeram Aditya (Sahai), a critic of pride wrote, I do not believe that a politics around pride can work without a politics of shame. Shaming is pervasive in queer cultures, as elsewhere one is only to visit queer, radical social media platforms to be greeted with groupings of No femme! No fatties! No uncles! Pride masks the lived reality of shame that queer cultures routinely pulverise towards bodies and identities that cannot, nay, are not allowed to be proud. What can the tropics of pride then mean but meaninglessness?
For the better part of this long and impassable decade in queer history, the movement has actively refused to acknowledge, let alone tend to, its own caste, class, and gendered contradictions, in the vain, foolish hope that a monolithic discourse on queerness will dissipate all cleavage among those who call themselves queer. The movement, if there is one, consequently continues to be dominated by upper-caste, cisgendered men. But contradictions, like shame, cannot be wished away. They reveal themselves most clearly when it comes on the queer movement, particularly its acclaimed radicals, to construct solidarities across other minorities and vulnerable groups. The queers and their movement both prefer a certain distance from the political struggles of other marginalised minorities, preoccupied with the delightful indulgence of the pride.
This has expressed itself most potently in queer encounters with the law. Despite vociferous and persistent critique, the queer movement stifles its own promise its political scope, particularly in public imagination, begins and concludes with an archaic penal legality, that is Section 377 and its crusade against sexual activities against the order of nature. It gives an archaic law needless life and perpetuates the impoverished political imagination that has become the face of queer politics in India. Strangely, queerness becomes too willing to surrender its politics of difference and takes recourse to normativity. Evidenced by the marital bliss of queer partners bound by the sacredness of tradition, marriage has become as much a public trope as pride. For the cause of queer normativity requires an affective public that understands the queer communitys constitutional, homonationalist betrayal, and pride parades are more than willingly to supply it.
Finally, just as pride is incomplete without shame, happiness is incomplete without grief. The narrative of the pride parade is to celebrate the proud happiness of being queer, but for many that the queer vision does not envision, there is no delight, no triumph in queerness. It is the inability of queer politics to speak to these aggrieved voices that is its greatest limitation. Many students in universities across the country take their own lives, year after year, to escape an accident of birth they know to be fatal. This makes universities, elite enclaves as they already are, further insulated from queer representation. It was the students who had asked for the pride parade to be rescheduled, for their reasons, from the terminal week of November. This demand was conceded, but not without stressing that students were thankless philistines who had done nothing for a movement they were now trying to patronise. To many of us, this was revealing. Notice how the movement becomes more important than the subjects it is supposed to unite, unable and unwilling to deal with the messiness of their aspirations prides happy facade does nothing but make mockery of subjectivities that the movement is only too happy to suppress. The pride narrative has its political investments, which, as we should know, are never to be forced unto question. But it is only in contestation that pride can be redeemed and reoriented towards voicing grievance as loudly as it voices aspirations of pride. Indeed, pride is condemned to incompleteness unless it can touch impulses it has not, engage with the gamut of expressions that gives Indian pride parades an enormous privilege and responsibility.
Yes, partake in pride. But speak also of the silenced, the shamed, and the many hopelessly forgotten, for there is no queerness without tension.
Being single can be hard, more so when you're in a bustling city, such as Mumbai. We've heard the horror stories of online dating, of meeting potential partners at a bar only to find out later that they're already in relationships. Here's where the Aphrodite Singles Club comes in. Named after the Greek goddess of love, the Aphrodite Singles Club connects people who arent interested in finding love online or on apps. Its based on the age-old concept of meeting, getting to know someone and seeing if theres a connection.
Shaan Khanna (founder of Networking Now and Spicy Sangria), Nitya Arora (owner of jewelry brand Valliyan), and Hanna Stromgren launched this boutique singles club in Mumbai, in August 2017. They wanted to meet the need in the market for a secretive, well organised and reliable networking service for singles in Mumbai: the Aphrodite Singles Club is not your regular matchmaking service; its a curated club of eligible singles in Mumbai.
The idea came to us when we realised there are so many single people who are finding it tough to meet anyone new," says Shaan, of how the club came about. "Singles often meet new people via friends, so why not through us? So far, the Aphrodite Singles Club has had two events in Mumbai. Their first event was at Cafe Zoe, and the second was a karaoke night at Woodside Inn, Lower Parel. The strictest rules of the Aphrodite Singles Club are that the guest list remains private and no cameras are allowed during their events.
The guest list for the Cafe Zoe event, originally intended for 25 guests, quickly expanded to encompass 100. Among the attendees were a movie star, a celebrity chef and a comedian. In the beginning, people were shy and kept to themselves; a few games and drinks later, they began to mingle and open up. A bunch of activities were planned and there was a separate bar for the event attendees. Conversation starters were organised to break the ice, including: Describe your perfect holiday; Whats the last movie you watched; Who was your hero, growing up?" and more.
The second karaoke event at Woodside Inn, Lower Parel, involved drinks, fun and lots of singing. Guests registered themselves for the event by paying a nominal fee, which included two drinks (beer or sangria). They had to wear name tags (their names, and a word that described them). Drinks were served, the guests mingled, and the karaoke began. Guests are free to exchange numbers and enjoy the event thereafter. We strictly do not share contact details of the guests. Only with the consent of both parties do we connect them over email, Shaan told us.
Keeping Aphrodite Singles Club exclusive and having an equal number of men and women for all their events are the key aims for the founders. "Weve had people asking us to host events twice a month. Theyve loved attending the events, and people new to the city have made a group of friends as well, Shaan said.
Another event is scheduled soon for the Aphrodite Singles Club, although the theme hasn't been revealed yet. Delhi and Bengaluru chapters are on the cards and the founders hope to expand the repertoire of their events as well (LGBT-inclusive, outdoor-friendly etc).
The cost of attending an Aphrodite event is approximately Rs 1,200 (which includes two drinks and a discount thereafter, at the bar). To register, a photo and basic information must be mailed to the Aphrodite team at BoutiqueSinglesClub@gmail.com.
As for whether or not you'll meet a potential partner there we suppose only time (and diligent attendance) will tell.
Ahmedabad: Fighting an unequal war on a rivals best-kept ground needs quite an effort and it often doesnt work if that doesnt come with conviction, though it may appear to be genuine. This exactly is the case with Congress scion Rahul Gandhi who on Saturday morning visited the famed Akshardham Temple Complex and signed out the day in the evening with prayers at the popular Ambaji Temple in north Gujarat.
Soft Hindutva is the cliched charge that gets immediately hurled on any Congress leader who begins his tour to Narendra Modis Gujarat by visiting popular temples. If this is what Gandhi is trying to do, though he does not mention any of it in his interactions with the local populace, it does not work out. Simply because seekers of Hindutva will prefer the real thing, Modi, and nothing less.
"But there is nothing new in Rahul visiting temples. His grandmother Indira Gandhi did, and she did it with finesse, wearing malas and properly touching all feet. His parents Rajeev and Sonia Gandhi did this and so he is doing it," points out Professor Ghanshyam Shah, a political scientist.
Sonia also starts her campaign from north Gujarat with a visit to Ambaji," chips in another political scientist Achyut Yagnik, adding, He is actually trying to emulate the generations practice to visit local deities.
Analysts say this is not soft Hindutva but an effort to get friendly with the local masses, since Rahul is trying to fashion himself as a common man of sorts, eating out at highway dhabas, staying in government guest houses and flying Air India and private airlines' scheduled passenger flights with his laptop bag hanging by his shoulders.
It is also new for the Congress rank and file in Gujarat, in particular, and in the country, in general, that the Gandhi scion or anyone from the Family stays for three days at a stretch in a particular region and visits key local deities to identify with the demographics on the ground.
He started it all from the legendary Dwarkadheesh temple in the historical town of Dwarka and concluded it with the popular hilltop Chamunda Mata Temple in Chotila, where Rahul climbed nearly 900 steep steps in 47 minutes when locals waiting on the foothill debated if he would be able to make it. This was in Saurashtra during the first leg of his three-day forays into all regions of Gujarat, while Rahul launched his fourth visit on Saturday.
Next, he went to the Khodaldham Temple in Kagvad near Rajkot to have a look at the local deity of the agitating Patidars, under the firebrand young leader Hardik Patel.
In the same way as his stoppages on local dhabas for tea and snacks, and road corner meetings and interactions, Rahul's visits to the temples are being weaved in in his itinerary. Both Shah and Yagnik agree that none of these temple visits would yield any electoral dividends, but this is basically to send the message that the Congress vice-president understands the local dynamics.
"This really does not help. But works in the negative in the longer run. The face and the body language say that there is little conviction behind these moves. Why is it important to show that you care for these values?" asks Shah.
Yagnik says, "The Ambaji Temple was a favourite of Indira. She always started from there. And then later, Rajiv did it and so did Sonia. Rahul is now following it. No big deal."
"I often jokingly say that Rahul is technically a Gujarati, his maternal grandfather was a Gujarati," grins Yagnik.
Belagavi: The winter session of the Karnataka legislature beginning in Belagavi on Monday is expected to be stormy as the opposition seeks to corner the Siddaramaiah government on a host of issues, including the demand for Minister KJ George's resignation.
This will be the last session at Belagavi for the 14th Assembly, as polls are due early next year.
During the ten-day long session, other than demand for George's resignation, Income Tax Department raids on properties linked to senior Minister DK Shivakumar is also likely to come up, with Chief Minister Siddaramaiah accusing the BJP-led central government of using the department to woo him into the party fold.
Issues that may also come up include demand for separate religion status to the dominant Lingayats as the session is being held in north Karnataka where the community's presence is predominant, and Mahadayi water sharing dispute with neighbouring Goa.
Among the bills, 'The Karnataka Prevention and Eradication of Inhuman Evil Practices and Black Magic Bill, 2017' is likely to be discussed as Law Minister TB Jayachandra after cabinet's approval had said that "it will be tabled in the next session."
Also expected is discussions on "Karnataka Private Medical Establishments Bill," against which private doctors have announced 'Belagavi Chalo,' a protest march during the session.
The doctors contend that the provisions of the bill are too harsh on them.
Among various issues on which opposition is set to target the government ahead of elections next year is farmers distress, especially among sugarcane growers.
Speaking to reporters ahead of the session on Monday, Assembly Speaker KB Koliwad said his intention is to give "priority" to issues pertaining to north Karnataka region, where the session is being held.
On the issue of attendance of the members, he said, "I can only request them to actively participate, they are responsible representatives of the people.... there is no law for this, I can request them to participate."
Stating that including 10 days of the current session, totally the House would have met for 40 days during the current year, Koliwad said his wish was for 90 days session with 45 days each in Bengaluru and Belagavi.
He said the finance department has approved Rs 21 crore for the winter session and based on the request of various departments including the police to make necessary arrangements, a request has been made for an additional Rs 5 crore.
The session is expected to be stormy as BJP is expected to strongly demand the exit of George, who has been booked by CBI in a case related to the death of a police official, MK Ganapathy.
After party's core committee meeting in Mangaluru, BJP on 9 November had urged Siddaramaiah to seek George's resignation. They have also said that the party would take up fight on the issue, both inside and outside the House, if the government does not agree.
Siddaramaiah had earlier rejected the BJP's demand for resignation of George terming it as "totally politically motivated."
Deputy SP Ganapathy (51) was found hanging from the ceiling fan in a room at a lodge in Madikeri on 7 July, prior to which he gave an interview to a local TV channel, saying the then home minister George, and two senior police officials, named by him, would be responsible "if anything happens to me".
George had resigned then but was brought back to the ministry after the CID probe gave him a clean chit.
Belagavi in north Karnataka has been hosting legislature session once a year since 2006 when the move was initiated by the JD(S)-BJP coalition government.
This was followed by construction of Suvarna Vidhana Soudha, modelled on the Vidhana Soudha, the state secretariat, by the BJP government as an assertion that Belagavi is an integral part of Karnataka. Maharashtra claims Belagavi should belong to it.
District administration and the police have made elaborate security arrangements for the session with over 5,000 police personnel being deployed along with bomb disposal and other forces, officials said.
Expressing "sadness" over Suvarna Vidhana Soudha remaining non functional for the rest of the year, other than during the session once a year, Speaker Koliwad said his wish was to make it function for 365 days by shifting some departments here. "It is left to the executive."
Asked whether the issue of two editors of Kannada tabloids, sentenced for one-year jail terms over their alleged defamatory articles against legislators will come up during the session, he said, "it is not for me to decide."
"The house has to take a decision on the matter....I have only heard their arguments and have taken their representations, I will place it before the House."
EditorsRavi Belagere and Anil Raju of "Hai Bangalore" and "Yelahanka Voice"respectively had, in July, appeared before the Speaker and pleaded for a review of the House resolution following High Court's advise for finding an amicable solution to the controversy.
Ahmedabad: With Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi pushing for rationalisation of Goods and Services Tax (GST) rates, Union HRD Minister Prakash Javadekar on Sunday said Congress leaders are "hypocrites" as they support the indirect tax at GST Council meets but speak against it in public.
Referring to Gandhi's promise to cap GST rates at 18 percent if voted to power, Javadekar said the Congress vice-president intends to increase the tax burden on the common people.
"I want to ask what kind of uniform tax structure he (Gandhi) wants? He is advocating for 18 percent GST on all items. It means that all those commodities that fall in zero percent, 5 percent or 12 percent slabs should be charged at 18 percent. It seems the Congress wants to increase the tax burden on people," Javadekar said at a press conference.
Gandhi, who has been spearheading an aggressive campaign against the BJP for the next month's Assembly polls said he would not rest till the five-slab "Gabbar Singh Tax" was converted into the "Goods and Services Tax" with an 18 percent cap.
"Congress leaders are 'pakhandi' as they are adopting double standards on GST. They were also involved in preparing GST rates. During the GST Council meetings, Congress ministers support GST, but after coming out of the meetings they tell people that they are against it," the senior BJP leader said.
He said Gandhi's visit to Surat, the country's diamond polishing hub, on 8 November, turned out to be a damp squib.
"Rahul visited Surat with a hope that a large number of people would turn up to listen to him. But, it did not happen. People on board his flight to Delhi told us that Rahul was very angry. It shows that people have rejected him and the Congress's politics of hypocrisy, something which we never do," Javadekar said.
He earlier participated in a door-to-door campaign in Sabarmati area of the city.
Bengaluru: Noted actor Prakash Raj on Sunday said he respects superstars Kamal Haasan, Rajinikanth and Kannada actor Upendra as artists but that does not mean he would accept them as political leaders due to their fame.
The actor, 52, told reporters at the Press Club in Bengaluru that the political aspirants will have to prove their mettle before the people choose them as their representatives.
"I have respect for them as actors but that does not mean that I will vote for them. They have to demonstrate how much they understand our culture, the problems and how they will respond to it," Raj said.
Referring to rumours that he would join superstar Kamal Haasan's yet-to-be-formed political outfit, the actor said politics was not on his "agenda" at this point in time.
"I have been repeatedly saying that I am not going to join any political party. At this point of time, joining politics is not on my agenda," he said.
Raj also alleged that his commercial advertisements were recently blocked from being aired.
Without taking any names, he said the advertising firm told him his name has been mired in a controversy and so it could not be broadcast.
He said even Bollywood stars Shah Rukh Khan and Aamir Khan have faced similar situations in the past.
"Weren't they removed from being ambassadors to certain things? Weren't some of their commercials stopped? They are stopping my commercials too. But I will not ask you why you are hitting me. I will not tell you the way you are hitting me is hurting me because that will make you stronger," Raj said.
The National Award-winning actor said the Internet trolls have been hitting at the thought process of the social media users since the last three years and dubbed it as a dangerous trend.
"Since 2014, whatever is happening, is becoming dirtier... (It) is taking away identities. That is very dangerous. It is hitting at the thought process," he said.
Raj also referred to BJP MP Pratap Simha's comments against him after he criticised Prime Minister Narendra Modi over his "silence" on those "celebrating" the killing of journalist Gauri Lankesh here in September.
"If you talk you will be trolled. Our own MP Pratap Simha... He should understand. I don't even know him. When I questioned the prime minister, you (Simha) talk below the belt? They believe their leaders are doing a good job, so nobody should question them," he said.
"But I feel they are not doing their work properly, so I will ask them and they need to answer me," the actor added.
Later, Raj took to Twitter to slam a section of the press for misquoting him.
"This is what I said... Actors should not come into politics only because they are popular. It's a disaster. They should come with a clear perception of the issues facing the country and win the trust of the people. And we should not vote as fans, but as responsible citizens," he posted.
Look how they distort what u say..clarifying on and all. This is what I said on ACTORS. coming into politics IN todays press meet ... pic.twitter.com/zLYvnhMpUK Prakash Raj (@prakashraaj) November 12, 2017
An open letter to the press club bengaluru .... and @ANI ...what was said and what was not said.. thank you pic.twitter.com/fbCT3vjGlj Prakash Raj (@prakashraaj) November 12, 2017
He also wrote an open letter to the Bengaluru chapter of the Press Club, criticising the media for "distorting facts" in the presence of "journalists at their club".
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Dubbing the tax as Gabbar Singh Tax, Gandhi said, "there is no need for five different taxes India needs only one tax." GST needs a structural reform, he added.
At a rally in Gandhinagar, Gandhi launched an attack at the Centre over its decision to revise the structure of the Goods and Services Tax (GST).
He will also visit the famous Ambaji temple in Banaskantha district on Saturday. In the recent weeks, Gandhi had conducted such campaign tours in Saurashtra, central Gujarat and south Gujarat.
In his three-day road trip, Rahul will cover six districts of North Gujarat. He will hold meetings with women, villagers and different communities during the tour, party officials said.
Rahul Gandhi's expected schedule during his Gujarat election campaign on Monday: 9.50 am: Arrival at Ahmedabad Airport 1045 am: Swagat at Chiloda Circle, Gandhinagar 11.10 am: Swagat at Chala, Gandhinagar 11.30 am: Swagat at Prantij, Sabarkanta District 12 pm: Corner meeting at Prantij, Sabarkanta 1.30 pm: Corner meeting at Mehtapura Himmatnagar, Sabarkanta 2.45 pm: Corner meeting at Pratap School Ground, Idar, Sabarkanta 3.40 pm: Swagat at Vadali, Sabarkanta 4.15 pm: Public meeting at Khedbrahma, Sabarkanta 6.15 pm: Swagat at Hadad, Banaskantha district 7 pm: Swagat at DK Trivedi Circle, Ambaji, Banaskantha 7.10 pm: Visit to Ambaji Temple, Ambaji, Overnight Stay at Circuit House, Ambaji, Banaskantha With inputs from Darshan Desai
As the Congress vice-president heads for lunch at a roadside outlet, people wearing Rahul Gandhi masks gather in Prantij in Sabarkantha district, according to The Indian Express
Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi was given a rousing reception in the Patidar dominated Majra village in Gandhinagar district where he also sported a garrison cap inscribed with the slogan Jai Sardar, Jai Patidar. He received the villagers standing on his campaign bus gate and soon after removed the cap, implying that the Congress and agitating Hardik Patel-led Patidar Anamat Andolan Samiti (PAAS) were yet to arrive at a conclusion on the issue of reservation for the Patidars under the OBC category.
"We are in a battle with China," Gandhi stated at the corner meeting in Sabarkanta. "In 24 hours, China gives over 50,000 youths a job...tell us how many youths in India have a job?" He asked comparing the two nations. "The answer is 450 jobs. This is Modi's startup India," the Congress vice-president said. "What China does in a day, Modi takes a year to do," he added.
"What China does in a day for employment, Modi takes a year to do," says Rahul Gandhi
A report in a news portal had alleged wrongdoings in the company owned by Jay Shah, a charge vehemently rejected by the latter and his father. Jay Shah has also filed a criminal defamation case against the news portal. PTI
"Modiji used to say he would be a chowkidar (watchman), but now people are asking whether he is a chowkidar or a bhagidar (collaborator)," he said, jabbing at Modi's claim that he was the watchman of India against corruption.
The Gandhi scion attacked Amit Shah's son at a rally in Khedbrahma. He said that Narendra Modi was silent about the company of Jay Shah, the turnover of which, as per a media report, rose from Rs 50,000 to Rs 80 crore in a few months after the BJP came to power at the Centre.
On Day 2 of the Navsarjan Yatra, Rahul Gandhi will travel from Banaskantha to Patan in Gujarat, meeting citizen groups along the way
"We reflect on ideas, there is a team of 3-4 people, to whom I give suggestions and after fine tuning them we tweet. Routine work, like birthday wishes isn't done by me, I give little inputs on it, tweets on political issues are mine."
On Sunday, during an interaction with social media and IT volunteers in Banaskantha, Rahul Gandhi said that there is a team of three to four persons who reflect on ideas and suggestions given by him before tweeting out of official Twitter profiles.
About Prime Minister Narendra Modi, he said, "Whatever we do, spot Modi's faults or disturb BJP, we won't disrespect PM's position. When Modi Ji was in the Opposition, he used to speak with disrespect about the prime minister (Manmohan Singh). That is the difference between us and them: no matter what Modi says about us, we'll not go beyond a certain point as he is the prime minister."
Rahul Gandhi on Sunday that said that the Congress speaks the truth and the truth about Gujarat is , "Development has gone crazy here".
Visuals from Danta in Banaskantha district, where Rahul Gandhi got down from the tour bus to meet the crowd that had gathered
Soft Hindutva is the cliched charge that gets immediately hurled on any Congress leader who begins his tour to Narendra Modis Gujarat by visiting popular temples. If this is what Gandhi is trying to do, though he does not mention any of it in his interactions with the local populace, it does not work out. Simply because seekers of Hindutva will prefer the real thing, Modi, and nothing less.
Fighting an unequal war on a rivals best-kept ground needs quite an effort and it often doesnt work if that doesnt come with conviction, though it may appear to be genuine. This exactly is the case with Congress scion Rahul Gandhi who on Saturday morning visited the famed Akshardham Temple Complex and signed out the day in the evening with prayers at the popular Ambaji Temple in north Gujarat.
He said the electoral battle between the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Congress was a "battle of truth versus lies", but asked his party to exercise restraint even while criticising the government's policies and not get personal. "(Prime Minister Narendra) Modi may say anything about us, but we will not indulge in any loose talks about him and maintain the decorum of the office of prime minister."
Rahul Gandhi on Sunday asserted that his party will sweep the Gujarat state polls in December, as a "tsunami is coming and the (ruling) BJP is scared of it", and exhorted his party not to speak ill of the office of prime minister even while criticising the government.
"I want to ask what kind of uniform tax structure he (Gandhi) wants? He is advocating for 18 percent GST on all items. It means that all those commodities that fall in zero percent, 5 percent or 12 percent slabs should be charged at 18 percent. It seems the Congress wants to increase the tax burden on people," Javadekar said at a press conference.
Referring to Gandhi's promise to cap GST rates at 18 percent if voted to power, Javadekar said the Congress vice-president intends to increase the tax burden on the common people.
With Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi pushing for rationalisation of Goods and Services Tax (GST) rates, Union HRD Minister Prakash Javadekar on Sunday said Congress leaders are "hypocrites" as they support the indirect tax at GST Council meets but speak against it in public.
"Gujarat is more corrupt than the entire country. Surat businessmen told me that policemen come to their units every two minutes (allegedly to demand bribe)," he said.
Speaking during his poll campaign tour of Gujarat, he claimed that the share market regulator has termed Rupani "beimaan" (dishonest) and imposed a fine on him.
Rahul Gandhi targeted Gujarat chief minister Vijay Rupani on Sunday over the SEBI slapping a fine on his firm for alleged manipulative share trade, and asked the Prime Minister to speak out on the issue.
My family also falls in general category, says Rahul. "RSS is a 'manuwadi' organisation. Many people in general category are not 'manuwadi'. We will work for the betterment of scheduled castes," he adds.
Speaking in Gujarat on Sunday, Rahul Gandhi had asserted that despite the political rivalry with the BJP, his party would never disrespect the Prime Minister, reported NDTV . "When Modi-ji was in the opposition, he used to speak with disrespect about the PM. That is the difference between us and them, no matter what Modi says about us, we'll not go beyond certain point as he is the Prime Minister."
Villagers met Rahul Gandhi's convoy in Harij village in Patan district, according to The Indian Express . The Congress vice-president broke security barricades to meet them.
"Gujarat is more corrupt than the entire country. Surat businessmen told me that policemen come to their units every two minutes (allegedly to demand bribe)," he said.
Speaking during his poll campaign tour of Gujarat, he claimed that the share market regulator has termed Rupani "beimaan" (dishonest) and imposed a fine on him.
Rahul Gandhi targeted Gujarat chief minister Vijay Rupani on Sunday over the SEBI slapping a fine on his firm for alleged manipulative share trade, and asked the Prime Minister to speak out on the issue.
The dalit leaders pointed out how people still have to go down into sewers and clean them. They asked Rahul to act against such practices.
My family also falls in general category, says Rahul. "RSS is a 'manuwadi' organisation. Many people in general category are not 'manuwadi'. We will work for the betterment of scheduled castes," he adds.
Hindustan Times talked to people in Gujarat and found out that while the BJP vote-share will dip, Modi will still ride home on the back of young, largely first-time voters, yet again.
Speaking in Gujarat on Sunday, Rahul Gandhi had asserted that despite the political rivalry with the BJP, his party would never disrespect the Prime Minister, reported NDTV . "When Modi-ji was in the opposition, he used to speak with disrespect about the PM. That is the difference between us and them, no matter what Modi says about us, we'll not go beyond certain point as he is the Prime Minister."
Villagers met Rahul Gandhi's convoy in Harij village in Patan district, according to The Indian Express . The Congress vice-president broke security barricades to meet them.
Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi, who is on a three-day campaign tour of north Gujarat from Saturday, will be campaigning from Banaskantha to Patan on Sunday.
On the first leg of the campaign on Saturday, Gandhi tore into the Centre's decision to revise tax rates for the goods and services tax (GST), saying a structural reform is necessary in the policy.
Seeking to take credit for the Centre's decision to reduce the GST rates on a number of items, Gandhi on Saturday said he would not rest till the five-slab "Gabbar Singh Tax" was converted into the "Goods and Services Tax" with an 18-per cent cap.
The Gandhi scion, who launched his poll campaign tour of north Gujarat after offering prayers at the Akshardham temple in Gandhinagar on Saturday, again raked up the issue of a company of Jay Shah, the son of BJP president Amit Shah.
"We pressured (the Centre), the people of Gujarat, small shopkeepers put pressure and I am happy to say that Arun Jaitleyji has shifted many items to the 18-per cent slab from the 28 percent tax bracket under the GST," he told a public meeting in this north Gujarat town.
"With five slabs, it is the Gabbar Singh Tax, but with one tax, it is the GST. Neither Gujarat nor India needs the Gabbar Singh Tax. The Congress had clearly told the BJP that there should be one tax with an 18 percent cap and a simple tax," Gandhi added.
The 47-year-old Amethi MP said the "Gabbar Singh Tax" had caused damage to the small and medium scale businesses in Gujarat and elsewhere in the country.
"This Gabbar Singh Tax is looting the small people of this country. This Gabbar Singh Tax is only aimed at breaking the back of the small and medium scale industries of Gujarat and (the rest of) the country.
"This GST has damaged Gujarat and India. Good that they (Centre) brought some changes in it on Friday. But, we will not stop at this. We will stop only when Gujarat and India get the GST and not the Gabbar Singh Tax," he added.
The Congress leader said the GST, a landmark tax reform which subsumed a host of central and state levies, needed structural changes.
"The GST cap should be at 18 percent. If they (Centre) do not do it, we will put pressure on them, and if they still do not do it, we will do it soon after forming the government. The GST requires structural changes," he added.
On Friday, the tax rates on over 200 items, ranging from chewing gum to chocolates to beauty products, wigs and wristwatches, were cut by the GST Council to provide relief to consumers and businesses in the backdrop of an economic slowdown.
The Gandhi scion said Prime Minister Narendra Modi was silent about the company of Jay Shah, the turnover of which, as per a media report, rose from Rs 50,000 to Rs 80 crore in a few months after the BJP came to power at the Centre.
"Modiji used to say he would be a chowkidar (watchman), but now people are asking whether he is a chowkidar or a bhagidar (collaborator)," he said.
A report in a news portal had alleged wrongdoings in the company owned by Jay Shah, a charge vehemently rejected by the latter and his father. Jay Shah has also filed a criminal defamation case against the news portal.
Gandhi claimed that the Congress government in Himachal Pradesh, where polling took place on 9 November, had done a better work than the BJP regime in Gujarat, which goes to the polls in December.
"The Congress government in Himachal Pradesh opened four medical colleges, but in Gujarat, no (new) medical college has come up.
"The Himachal government did not close down a single school, but the Gujarat government shut down 13,000 government schools. Himachal gave 14 lakh houses to the poor (under a scheme), but in Gujarat, the number of houses given by the government was half of that. Gujarat also lags behind Himachal in education and generating jobs," he said.
Meanwhile, BJP workers showed black flags to the Congress vice-president in Himmatnagar town of Sabarkantha district in north Gujarat.
The 182-member Gujarat Assembly will go to the polls in two phases on 9 and 14 December.
Palanpur: Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi targeted Gujarat Chief Minister Vijay Rupani on Sunday over the SEBI slapping a fine on his firm for alleged manipulative share trade, and asked the prime minister to speak out on the issue.
Speaking during his poll campaign tour of Gujarat, he claimed that the share market regulator has termed Rupani "beimaan" (dishonest) and imposed a fine on him.
Gandhi asked Prime Minister Narendra Modi to speak out against his "dishonest" chief minister.
"Gujarat is more corrupt than the entire country. Surat businessmen told me that policemen come to their units every two minutes (allegedly to demand bribe)," he said.
The 47-year-old Congress leader was addressing a public meeting in Banaskantha district on the second day of his campaign tour of north Gujarat.
"Jay Shah, son of (BJP chief) Amit Shah, increased the turnover of his company from Rs 50,000 to Rs 80 crore in a few months after the BJP came to power in 2014. The people of Gujarat know this cannot be done without corruption," he said. "Some days ago, the SEBI said your chief minister is beimaan (dishonest) and they fined him," he said.
"Modiji used to say 'na khaoonga, na khane doonga' (I will neither indulge in nor allow corruption). He should open his mouth on this subject now. But he is silent. Now his slogan is 'na bolta hu, na bolne dunga' (I will not speak myself and won't allow others to do so')," Gandhi said.
"The people of the country want to listen what you (Modi) have to say on Amit Shah's son's company, on Vijay Rupani. The people of Gujarat will believe that you are not 'chowkidar' (watchman) but 'bhagidar' (collaborator) if you don't say anything on the issue," he said.
The Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) has reportedly fined 22 entities, including Rupani HUF (Hindu Undivided Family), for alleged manipulative trading in the shares of a company, Saran Chemicals Ltd, during the January-June 2011 period. However, Rupani had said the Securities Appellate Tribunal (SAT) has set aside the fine of Rs 6.91 crore imposed on 22 entities, including his firm.
The fine amounts varied for the entities and it was reportedly Rs 15 lakh in the case of Rupani (HUF), who took over as chief minister in August 2016 and is currently in the thick of the BJP's campaign for the next month's assembly polls.
A report in a news portal had raised question about a company owned by Jay Shah, a charge vehemently rejected by him and his father. Jay Shah has also filed a criminal defamation case against the news portal.
Gandhi reiterated he and the Congress would not rest till 'Gabbar Singh Tax' of five slabs is converted into one slab Goods and Service Tax (GST) with rates capped at 18 percent. "The tax (structure) with five different slabs is not GST, but is Gabbar Singh Tax, meant to loot the poor and middle-class people of the country as only they pay taxes. We will not rest till the government changes GST and puts a cap of 18 per cent," he said.
On Twitter, Gandhi asked the government to stop levying GST on the maximum number of items of mass use and "stop giving excuses".
"It is the voice of the country - the government should stop giving excuses. It should abolish GST on maximum number of mass use items," he said. Gandhi also insisted that petrol, diesel and domestic gas cylinders are brought under the ambit of the tax regime.
Tiruchirappalli: Union Minister Pon Radhakrishnan on Sunday rejected some opposition leaders' charge that the Income Tax department was being used to target them, saying raids have been carried out against even companies owned by BJP leaders.
Against the backdrop of raids against jailed AIADMK leader VK Sasikala and her relatives, some opposition parties in Tamil Nadu alleged that the I-T department was being used by the Centre to target them.
In reply to a question on the allegation, Radhakrishnan said, "The income tax department is an autonomous body. We cannot question them if they take any action against any person. I-T raids are taking place in other states. There is no truth in the allegation that the Income Tax department is biased."
In fact, income tax raids had been conducted in companies owned by BJP members in other states, the minister of state for road transport, highways and shipping told reporters here.
I-T officials conducted raids at over 180 premises linked to Sasikala and her relatives in various cities in the past three days over suspected tax evasion. Sasikala's nephew and deposed AIADMK leader TTV Dhinakaran has alleged a conspiracy behind the raids to oust him and his aunt from politics.
On the GST rate cuts, he said it would benefit the people, especially the poor and traders, and industrialists would realise the advantage of the new tax regime shortly.
Referring to Prime Minister Narendra Modi's recent meeting with ailing DMK patriarch M Karunanidhi, Radhakrishnan said it has "scared some parasites" in the DMK-led alliance, although it was a courtesy call.
IANS
Vice President M. Venkaiah Naidu on 11 November said teachers play a key role in transforming the society and they can never be replaced by anything, including Google.
"No doubt Google is important, but it can never replace the place of guru (teachers) in the life of students," Naidu said addressing a congregation of graduate, post-graduate and doctorate degree recipients at the 13th Convocation Ceremony of KIIT University here.
"Hence the students should be grateful to their gurus and at the same time work to serve mother, mother tongue, and motherland."
"There is nothing wrong in learning English, Hindi or French, (but) students should also be proficient in their mother tongue which comes from the heart and helps one to express his feeling better," said the Vice President.
He said the country will grow when the higher education sector develops.
"We are in the age of LPG Liberalisation, Privatisation, and Globalisation. Life has become very competitive today. Therefore, students should prepare themselves for learning new skills and acquiring new knowledge in the contemporary world."
Hailing the country's great culture, he said there is need to go back to the roots.
"India has a great heritage and you should feel proud as inheritors of the great Indian culture. Unity in diversity and being rooted in our culture are important for the integrity of our country," he added.
Calling India a land of opportunities, he said one can achieve anything with hard work and passion irrespective of one's background, citing the examples of former President late A.P.J. Abdul Kalam and Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Odisha Governor S.C. Jamir, who also graced the occasion, advised students to work hard, be persistent as well as accommodating, be innovative and entrepreneurial, and to use technology to solve societal problems.
During the convocation, the University honoured three eminent personalities from different walks of life with D.Litt. Honoris Causa degrees Raghunath Mohapatra, eminent sculptor; Bithal Das Mundhra, Chairman Emeritus, Simplex Infrastructures Ltd; and Kishanlal Agarwal, Chairman, Bhartia Charitable Trust.
Tehran: From a Yemeni missile attack to the resignation of Lebanon's prime minister, the "Cold War" between West Asian rivals Saudi Arabia and Iran has been heating up.
Experts believe the risk of a direct military clash is low, but why have tensions escalated now and how will the crisis evolve?
AFP looks at five questions on the Riyadh-Tehran rivalry and its implications.
What are the origins of the rivalry?
Sunni powerhouse Saudi Arabia and Iran, the predominant Shiite power, have a long-standing rivalry based as much on geostrategic interests as religious differences.
Facing off across the Gulf, the two energy-rich powers have for decades stood on opposing sides of conflicts in the Middle East.
The Iranian revolution of 1979 and the advent of the Islamic Republic with its fiercely anti-American slant were perceived as a double threat to the conservative Sunni monarchies of the Arabian Peninsula, allied with the United States.
Saudi Arabia was a key financial backer of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein during his 1980-1988 war with Iran.
With Iraq weakened following the 1991 Gulf War, Saudi Arabia and Iran became "the two main regional powers", said Clement Therme, a researcher at the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS).
How have tensions escalated recently?
The latest round of tensions began when Riyadh and Tehran broke off diplomatic relations in January 2016, after Iranians stormed Saudi Arabia's embassy and consulate in response to the execution of a prominent Shiite cleric.
That followed the 2015 nuclear deal between Tehran and six world powers, which Riyadh feared was a step towards ending Iran's international isolation.
Rhetoric between the two grew increasingly belligerent, including over Saudi Arabia's Gulf neighbour Qatar. Riyadh and several of its Sunni allies broke off diplomatic relations with Qatar in June 2017, accusing Doha of support for extremism and links with Iran, claims that it denies.
On the first weekend of November, the animosity reached new heights. First, the Saudi-supported prime minister of Lebanon, Saad Hariri, in a broadcast from Riyadh announced his resignation, blaming Iran's "grip" on his country via Shiite movement Hezbollah.
Several hours later, Saudi Arabia said its air defences near Riyadh intercepted and destroyed a missile fired from Yemen, where a Saudi-led coalition is battling Iran-backed Shiite rebels.
That set off a fierce war of words between Riyadh and Tehran, with Saudi Arabia's powerful Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman accusing Iran of "direct military aggression". Tehran denied any involvement in the missile attack, with President Hassan Rouhani warning that Iranian "might" would fend off any challenge.
Why now?
"The main cause of the current tensions is related to the proxy confrontation between Iran and Saudi Arabia," Therme said, pointing to wars in Iraq, Syria and Yemen.
Recent months have seen changes in these confrontations that appear to have brought the tensions to a head.
In Iraq and Syria, the increasingly successful campaign against the Islamic State group has changed the situation on the ground. Offensives in both countries have forced the jihadists from nearly all the territory they seized in mid-2014.
As the threat from a common enemy "has imploded, tensions between these historic adversaries have escalated", said Max Abrahms, professor of political science at Northeastern University in Boston.
As Iraq looks to a post-IS era, Riyadh has been taking steps to build stronger ties with the country's Shiite-dominated government. A flurry of visits between the two countries this year saw talk of a warming of ties, including a trip by Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi to Riyadh in late October.
In Syria, meanwhile, the Iran-backed government of President Bashar al-Assad has over the past year managed to reassert control over large parts of the country by defeating, among others, rebel groups backed by Riyadh.
"The Saudi-Iranian rivalry has become the organising principle for Mideast alliances, reminiscent of how the Cold War divided countries along US and Soviet lines," Abrahms said.
Analysts said the election as US president a year ago of Donald Trump has also contributed to the rise in tensions. Trump's open hostility towards Tehran has "released anti-Iranian energies in the Arabian Peninsula" and emboldened Riyadh, Therme said.
How important is the Sunni-Shiite divide?
The Sunni-Shiite divide between Saudi Arabia and Tehran is a crucial factor in conflicts between the two countries.
Religious tensions have heightened since the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq that brought the majority Shiites to power in Baghdad instead of Saddam's Sunni-dominated regime.
The 2011 Arab Spring uprisings, which saw Iran support the demands of sizeable Shiite minorities in Gulf monarchies, was another turning point, Therme said.
"Arab states appeared vulnerable and Iran was then defined as the main threat to regional stability," he said.
Iran has even called into doubt the suitability of the Saudi royal family to serve as custodians of Mecca and Medina, the holiest cities in Islam especially after a stampede at the annual hajj pilgrimage in 2015 left hundreds of Iranians dead.
How will the crisis evolve?
While the increase in tensions has raised serious concerns, few expect an outright military confrontation.
"A broader regional conflict remains unlikely," said Graham Griffiths, a senior analyst at consulting firm Control Risks, saying Riyadh would instead look to use the latest missile incident to push for further sanctions against Tehran.
Therme agreed that both sides would steer clear of open conflict.
"Iran has experience of the war with Iraq... and Saudi Arabia is bogged down in Yemen, after failing to define the future of the Syrian revolution... and counter Iran's influence in Iraq," he said.
"Saudi Arabia's rhetoric does not necessarily reflect an interest in war," consulting firm Eurasia Group said, pointing to a potential domestic reason for Riyadh's combative tone.
Prince Mohammed is looking to "leverage the nationalist rhetoric to solidify his position" as he pursues an anti-corruption purge some see as an attempt to cement his hold on power, the group said.
"At the same time, escalatory statements against Iran help shift the media attention away from the domestic power struggle," it said.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi, US president Donald Trump, Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe and several other world leaders will descend in Manila on Monday for the ASEAN summit which is set to deliberate extensively on evolving security challenges facing South East Asia.
The annual summit of the Association of Southeast Asia Nations (ASEAN), a grouping of 10 influential countries, is taking place amid China's aggressive behaviour in the disputed South China Sea and North Korea's nuclear missile tests and both these issues are likely to figure prominently during discussions among the leaders, a senior diplomat told PTI in Manila. The ASEAN comprises Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam.
In a statement ahead of his departure on Sunday, Modi on Saturday said that his visit to the Philippines for the 15th India-ASEAN Summit, the 12th East Asia Summit and his bilateral meeting with President Rodrigo Duterte, symbolises India's commitment to continue deepening its ties with Southeast Asia and the Indo-Pacific region.
Besides the two summits, Modi would also participate in special celebrations of the 50th anniversary of the formation of ASEAN, the proposed Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) Leaders' Meeting and an ASEAN Business and Investment Summit. RCEP is a proposed free trade agreement between the 10 ASEAN member states and the six states with which the grouping has free trade pacts Australia, China, India, Japan, South Korea and New Zealand.
India-ASEAN ties
The ASEAN region along with India together comprises a combined population of 1.85 billion, which is one-fourth of the global population and their combined GDP has been estimated to be over $3.8 trillion.
The ties between India and ASEAN have been on an upswing in the last few years with the focus being on ramping up cooperation in the areas of trade and investment as well as security and defence.
"Every single country in the ASEAN region wants India to be more engaged in the region in every possible way. That is the real synergy we have with ASEAN," Indian Ambassador to Philippines Jaideep Mazumdar told PTI.
The US, France, and Japan have been pitching for a larger role by India in the strategically key Indo-Pacific region where China has been trying to increase its military presence.
Issues expected to be discussed at the summit
Majumdar said terrorism is going to be one of the issues that will be discussed not only during the ASEAN summit but also at the East Asia summit. He said several documents are going to be adopted with an aim to contain terrorism, including one on stopping money laundering for the purpose of terrorism.
India's proposal to host an international conference on countering radicalisation may also be discussed during the deliberations at Manila as New Delhi is now looking at finalising the dates for the conclave.
In the ASEAN-India summit, both sides are expected to explore ways to further enhance trade and investment ties. Investment from ASEAN to India has been over $70 billion in the last 17 years, accounting for more than 17 percent of India's total Foreign Direct Investment (FDI). India's investment in ASEAN during the same period has been more than $40 billion.
While ASEAN summit is likely to focus more on trade and investment-related issues, leaders at the East Asia Summit are expected to delve deep into issues relating to maritime security, terrorism, non-proliferation and migration.
Narendra Modi to hold separate talks with each quadrilateral
Official sources said the meeting between Modi and US president Donald Trump is likely to take place on Monday. It will be the first meeting between the two leaders following a proposal to have a quadrilateral alliance among India, the US, Japan, and Australia. In their meeting, Modi and Trump are likely to discuss a host of key issues of mutual interest including the security scenario in the region.
Trump on Friday praised India's "astounding" growth after it opened up its economy and also lauded Modi, saying he has been working successfully to bring the vast country and its people together.
Speaking at a gathering of CEOs on the sidelines of the annual Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in the Vietnamese city of Danang, Trump cited India as one of the countries in the Indo-Pacific region making strides. He praised India as a sovereign democracy with a population of over 1 billion as well as the largest democracy in the world.
According to The Indian Express, the first quadrilateral level talks will be delegation-level talks between the four countries followed by Modi meeting the leaders of the three nations separately Donald Trump, Shinzo Abe and Malcolm Turnbull.
"The idea is to generate a sense of solidarity among the quadrilateral leaders. The idea of a leaders-level meeting was knocked off keeping in mind Beijings concerns, but it was considered important that they should meet each other to convey their views separately," a source told The Indian Express.
Japan last month had indicated that it would propose a top-level dialogue with the US, India, and Australia. Sources said officials of the four countries may meet on the sidelines of the ASEAN summit in Manila. Reacting to the Japanese move, India had said that it was open to working with like-minded countries on issues that advance its interests. The US had said it was looking at a "working-level" quadrilateral meeting in the near term with India, Japan, and Australia.
Japan's foreign minister Taro Kono last month had said that Tokyo favours a dialogue between Japan, the US, India, and Australia to further boost strategic partnership among the four countries.
The move to set up the quadrilateral comes in the backdrop of growing Chinese assertiveness in the South China Sea. The US has been favouring a larger role for India in the strategically key Indo-Pacific region. The use of the term "Indo-Pacific" by Trump has led to the speculation that it may have something to do with Washington preparing the ground for a revival of the so-called "quadrilateral strategic alliance" between the US, Japan, Australia, and India to counter China's rise.
In his maiden visit to the Philippines as prime minister, Modi will also meet Philippines president Rodrigo Duterte.
"During my first visit to the Philippines, I look forward to having a bilateral meeting with the President of the Philippines Rodrigo Duterte. I will also have interactions with other Asean and East Asia Summit leaders," Modi said in a statement.
Modi is also set to attend a reception by the Indian community and visit the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) and the Mahavir Philippines Foundation.
With inputs from PTI and IANS
Baghdad: Mass graves containing the remains of civilians executed by the Islamic State terror group have been found in the Iraqi province of Kirkuk, the media reported.
The mass graves were discovered in the al-Bakara area, about 3 kilometres north of the city of Hawija, reports CNN.
The area was an American base prior to 2011, Kirkuk governor Rakan Saeed said on Saturday.
"We are standing here, where ... at least 400 civilians were dragged, some in their red jumpsuits, and brutally executed by the Islamic State," he said.
Colonel Murtada Abbas of the 60th Brigade in the Iraqi military said witnesses to the executions led them to the graves.
A witness told CNN that he saw members of Islamic State drive vehicles loaded with civilians to the site and execute them. He said there were five mass graves in the al-Bakara area.
Governor Saeed called on the Iraqi government and the Commission of Human Rights to come to the mass grave sites and conduct DNA examinations to identify the victims.
Kirkuk is an oil-rich province in the northern part of Iraq.
Islamic State forces drove the Iraqi military from the capital city of Kirkuk in 2014, and Kurdish forces in turn drove the Islamic State out of the city, which the Kurds had held for more than two years.
The Iraqi government ordered Kurdish forces to hand over the city. When the Kurds refused, the Iraqi military moved in and took control of the city in mid-October.
Hanoi: Vietnam gave Chinese president Xi Jinping the red carpet treatment at the start of a state visit, as the two communist neighbors try to broaden their economic ties and work on resolving territorial disputes in the South China Sea.
Xi and Nguyen Phu Trong, general secretary of the Vietnamese Communist Party, reviewed an honor guard and headed for talks behind closed doors.
It was Xi's first overseas trip since consolidating his power at a party congress last month.
Xi and US president Donald Trump, among others, just finished an Asia-Pacific economic summit in the Vietnamese coastal city of Danang.
Vietnamese president Tran Dai Quang said that his country wants to end disputes in the South China Sea through peaceful means.
"It's our policy to settle disputes in the East Sea through peaceful negotiations and with respect for diplomatic and legal process in accordance with international law, including the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea," he said, referring to the South China Sea.
Quang made the comments today during a joint news conference with Trump. Trump had offered during a meeting earlier today with Quang to serve as a mediator on the South China Sea disputes.
Vietnam and China, along with four other governments, claim all or parts of the South China Sea, which is believed to sit atop rich natural resources and occupies one of the world's busiest sea lanes.
China in recent years has built artificial islands and increased its militarization there, drawing criticism from Washington, which argues that the US has a national interest in freedom of navigation in sea lanes critical for world trade.
Vietnam has become the most vocal opponent of China's moves after Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte softened his country's stance on China.
Tran Viet Thai of the Vietnam Diplomatic Academy said Xi's visit is important to build mutual trust.
"The visit marks a new step forward in Vietnam-China relations," he said. "Hopefully the relations will continue to stabilize, because the two sides currently share great interests in broadening their cooperation and maintaining stability."
Bilateral relations plunged to their lowest level in years when China in 2014 parked a giant oil rig in an area claimed by Vietnam. The incident sparked deadly anti-China protests for several weeks.
The two communist neighbors have in recent months experienced spats over the South China Sea.
In July, Vietnam had to suspend an oil and gas exploration project conducted by Spain's Repsol company, under apparent pressure from China.
In September, Vietnam protested live-fire drills by China near the Paracel islands.
Manila: US president Donald Trump has offered to mediate in South China Sea disputes and his Chinese counterpart played down concerns over Beijing's military buildup and the prospects of war in the contested waters.
Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping spoke separately about the territorial rifts ahead of an annual summit of Southeast Asian nations and the US, China and other global players in Manila, where the disputes are high on the agenda.
Trump says "I'm a very good mediator," but his offer faces many obstacles: for one, China doesn't want the US meddling in the disputes and has balked at the US Navy's incursions into what Beijing considers its territorial waters in the South China Sea.
The long-simmering disputes are one issue where the two major powers' influence, focus and military might have been gauged, with the US and China both calling for a peaceful resolution but taking contrasting positions in most other aspects of the conflict.
Unlike China, the US is not a claimant to the potentially oil-rich and busy waters, but it has declared that it has a national interest in ensuring freedom of navigation and overflight and the peaceful resolution of the disputes. Several nations back an active American military presence in the region to serve as a counterweight to China's increasingly assertive actions, including the construction of seven man-made islands equipped with military installations.
The Philippines, the head of ASEAN's rotational chairmanship, said member states of the 10-nation ASEAN bloc have to consult each other but thanked Trump for the offer.
"He is the master of the art of the deal but, of course, the claimant countries have to answer as a group or individually ... mediation involves all the claimants and nonclaimants," Philippine foreign secretary Alan Peter Cayetano told reporters.
Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte said Xi, during a meeting in Danang, Vietnam, where they attended the annual Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum this past week, assured him of China's peaceful intentions in the strategic waterway, where Beijing, the Philippines, Vietnam and three other governments have overlapping claims.
When he raised concerns over China's increasing military capability in the South China Sea, Duterte said Xi replied, "No, it's nothing."
"He acknowledged that war cannot be promoted by anybody, (that) it would only mean destruction for all of us," Duterte told reporters after flying back to Manila. "He knows that if he goes to war, everything will blow up."
The Chinese leader, however, would not back down on Beijing's territorial claim, Duterte said, and justified his decision not to immediately demand Chinese compliance with a ruling by a UN-linked tribunal that invalidated China's sweeping claims in the South China Sea on historical grounds.
China has dismissed that ruling as a "sham" and did not participate in the arbitration case that the Philippines filed during the administration of Duterte's predecessor. Duterte took steps to thaw frosty relations with China after he won the presidency last year.
"If you go to the negotiating table and you start with the statement that I am here to claim validity of our ownership, you're wasting your time. They will not talk about it," Duterte said of China.
The ASEAN summit opens Monday under extra-tight security at a theater and convention complex by Manila Bay. Duterte will host a gala dinner for nearly 20 world leaders, including Trump, Russian prime minister Dmitry Medvedev, Chinese Premier Li Keqiang and Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe.
Riot police used shields and water hoses Sunday to push back hundreds of left-wing activists who tried to hold a protest at the US embassy and carried placards that read "Ban Trump." There were no immediate reports of injuries in the brief scuffle and the protesters left after burning a mock US flag.
Dubai: Iran rejected on Sunday a call by French president Emmanuel Macron for talks on Tehrans ballistic missiles, saying they were defensive and unrelated to a nuclear agreement with world powers.
On Thursday, Macron said during a visit to Dubai that he was "very concerned" by Irans ballistic missile programme, mentioning a missile fired from Yemen and intercepted by Saudi Arabia earlier in November. He raised the prospect of possible sanctions with regard to those activities.
"There are negotiations we need to start on Irans ballistic missiles," Macron said.
But Iranian foreign ministry spokesman Bahram Qassemi rejected that possibility. "France is fully aware of our countrys firm position that Irans defence affairs are not negotiable," he said.
"We have told French officials repeatedly that the nuclear deal is not negotiable and other issues will not be allowed to be added to it," Qassemi said, according to a statement on the ministrys website.
The United States accused Iran on Tuesday of supplying Yemens Houthi rebels with a missile that was fired into Saudi Arabia in July and called for the United Nations to hold Tehran accountable for violating two UN Security Council resolutions.
Saudi Arabia and its allies accuse Iran of supplying missiles and other weapons to the Houthis, saying the arms were not present in Yemen before conflict broke out there in 2015. Iran denies the charges and blames the conflict on Riyadh.
The United States has imposed unilateral sanctions on Iran, saying its missile tests violate a UN resolution that calls on Tehran not to undertake activities related to missiles capable of delivering nuclear weapons.
Iran says its missile programme is defensive and it has no plans to build nuclear-capable missiles.
Beirut: From the moment Saad al-Hariris plane touched down in Saudi Arabia on Friday, 3 November, he was in for a surprise.
There was no line-up of Saudi princes or ministry officials, as would typically greet a prime minister on an official visit to King Salman, senior sources close to Hariri and top Lebanese political and security officials said. His phone was confiscated, and the next day he was forced to resign as prime minister in a statement broadcast by a Saudi-owned TV channel.
The move thrust Lebanon back to the forefront of a struggle that is reshaping the Middle East, between the conservative Sunni monarchy of Saudi Arabia and Shiite revolutionary Iran.
Their rivalry has fuelled conflicts in Iraq, Syria and Yemen, where they back opposing sides, and now risks destabilising Lebanon, where Saudi has long tried to weaken the Iran-backed Hezbollah group, Lebanons main political power and part of the ruling coalition.
Sources close to Hariri say Saudi Arabia has concluded that the prime minister a long-time Saudi ally and son of late prime minister Rafik al-Hariri, who was assassinated in 2005 had to go because he was unwilling to confront Hezbollah.
Multiple Lebanese sources say Riyadh hopes to replace Saad Hariri with his older brother Bahaa as Lebanons top Sunni politician. Bahaa is believed to be in Saudi Arabia and members of the Hariri family have been asked to travel there to pledge allegiance to him, but have refused, the sources say.
When Hariris plane landed in Riyadh, he got the message immediately that something was wrong, a Hariri source told Reuters. There was no one was waiting for him.
Saudi Arabia has dismissed suggestions it forced Hariri to resign and says he is a free man. Saudi officials could not immediately be reached for comment on the circumstances of his arrival, whether his phone had been taken, or whether the Kingdom was planning to replace him with his brother.
Hariri has given no public remarks since he resigned and no indication of when he might return to Lebanon.
'No respect'
Hariri was summoned to the Kingdom to meet Saudi King Salman in a phone call on Thursday night, 2 November.
Before departing, he told his officials they would resume their discussions on Monday. He told his media team he would see them at the weekend in the Red Sea resort of Sharm al-Sheikh, where he was due to meet Egyptian president Abdel Fattah al-Sisi on the sidelines of the World Youth Forum.
Hariri went to his Riyadh home. His family made their fortune in Saudi Arabia and have long had properties there. The source close to Hariri said the Lebanese leader received a call from a Saudi protocol official on Saturday morning, who asked him to attend a meeting with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
He waited for about four hours before being presented with his resignation speech to read on television, the source said.
From the moment he arrived they (Saudis) showed no respect for the man, another senior Lebanese political source said.
Hariri frequently visits Saudi Arabia. On a trip a few days earlier, Prince Mohammed bin Salman had arranged for him to see senior intelligence officials and Gulf Affairs Minister Thamer al-Sabhan, the Saudi point man on Lebanon.
Hariri came back from that trip to Beirut pleased and relaxed, sources in his entourage said. He posted a selfie with Sabhan, both of them smiling. He told aides he had heard encouraging statements from the crown prince, including a promise to revive a Saudi aid package for the Lebanese army.
The Hariri sources say Hariri believed he had convinced Saudi officials of the need to maintain an entente with Hezbollah for the sake of Lebanons stability.
Hezbollah has a heavily armed fighting force, in addition to seats in parliament and government. Saudi-backed efforts to weaken the group in Lebanon a decade ago led to Sunni-Shiite clashes and a Hezbollah takeover of Beirut.
What happened in those meetings, I believe, is that (Hariri) revealed his position on how to deal with Hezbollah in Lebanon: that confrontation would destabilize the country. I think they didnt like what they heard, said one of the sources, who was briefed on the meetings.
The source said Hariri told Sabhan not to hold us responsible for something that is beyond my control or that of Lebanon. But Hariri underestimated the Saudi position on Hezbollah, the source said.
For the Saudis it is an existential battle. Its black and white. We in Lebanon are used to grey, the source said.
Sabhan could not immediately be reached for comment.
Hariri's resignation
Hariris resignation speech shocked his team.
Lebanese president Michel Aoun, a Hezbollah ally, told ambassadors to Lebanon that Saudi Arabia had kidnapped Hariri, a senior Lebanese official said. On Friday, France said it wanted Hariri to have all his freedom of movement.
In his speech, Hariri said he feared assassination and accused Iran and Hezbollah of sowing strife in the region. He said the Arab world would cut off the hands that wickedly extend to it, language which one source close to him said was not typical of the Lebanese leader.
Hariris resignation came as more than 200 people, including 11 Saudi princes, current and former ministers and tycoons, were arrested in an anti-corruption purge in Saudi Arabia.
Initially there was speculation Hariri was a target of that campaign because of his familys business interests. But sources close to the Lebanese leader said his forced resignation was motivated by Saudi efforts to counter Iran.
Hariri was taken to meet the Saudi king after his resignation. Footage was aired on Saudi TV. He was then flown to Abu Dhabi to meet Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed, the Saudi crown princes main regional ally. He returned to Riyadh and has since received Western ambassadors.
Sources close to Hariri said the Saudis, while keeping Hariri under house arrest, were trying to orchestrate a change of leadership in Hariris Future Movement by installing his elder brother Bahaa, who was overlooked for the top job when their father was killed. The two have been at odds for years.
In a statement, the Future Movement said it stood fully behind Hariri as its leader. Hariri aide and Interior Minister Nohad Machnouk dismissed the idea Bahaa was being positioned to replace his brother:
We are not herds of sheep or a plot of land whose ownership can be moved from one person to another. In Lebanon things happen though elections not pledges of allegiances.
Family members, aides and politicians who have contacted Hariri in Riyadh say he is apprehensive and reluctant to say anything beyond I am fine. Asked if he is coming back, they say his normal answer is: Inshallah (God willing).
Barcelona: Spanish prime minister Mariano Rajoy urged businesses not to abandon Catalonia after hundreds of firms moved their legal headquarters away as uncertainty over the region's independence drive drags on.
On his first visit to Catalonia since his government took direct control of the region in response to lawmakers declaring independence, Rajoy asked "all businesses that work or have worked in Catalonia not to go".
Rajoy last month dismissed Catalonia's government and parliament and called for new elections in the turbulent region for 21 December.
"We have to recover the sensible, practical, enterprising and dynamic Catalonia... that has contributed so much to the progress of Spain and Europe," Rajoy told members of his Popular Party in Barcelona.
Catalonia's independence crisis has pushed more than 2,400 firms to re-register their legal headquarters outside the wealthy northeastern region.
The International Monetary Fund last month warned that Catalonia could face recession were the uncertainty over secession to linger.
Hundreds of thousands of Catalans flooded Barcelona on Saturday to demand the release of dismissed regional lawmakers who were detained on the orders of a national judge over their
independence bid.
Barcelona: Thousands of people took to the streets in Barcelona to demand the release of jailed Catalonian leaders for their outlawed drive to secede from Spain.
Barcelona's municipal police force said 7,50,000 people participated in the march on Saturday, called to demand the release of eight former members of the dissolved Catalan government and the presidents of the two main grassroots independence organisations - the Catalan National Assembly (ANC) and Omnium Cultural, reports Efe news.
The ANC and Omnium had organised Saturday's demonstration.
The jailed separatist leaders include former vice president of the Catalan regional government, Oriol Junqueras, who like the rest of his fellow Cabinet members is charged with rebellion, sedition and misuse of public funds for his role in enabling the region's 27 October declaration of independence.
The demonstrators, many waving pro-independence Estelada flags, marched past the Sagrada Familia church and other emblematic parts of Barcelona behind banners that read "Freedom for Political Prisoners" and "We Are a Republic".
Barcelona Mayor Ada Colau also participated .
The former speaker of Catalonia's Parliament, Carme Forcadell, who also is under investigation for rebellion, sedition and misuse of public funds, did not attend Saturday's march on the advice of her attorney.
On Friday, she was released from custody after posting a $174,000 bond.
Carles Puigdemont, who fled to Brussels late last month, delivered a recorded message on Friday to the pro-independence movement.
He called on people to take to the streets and said the Spanish government's crackdown on independence leaders would not dissuade the region from freely deciding its future at the ballot box.
Puigdemont is scheduled to appear before a judge in a 17 November hearing on the European arrest warrants that have been issued for him and four officials of his administration who accompanied him to Belgium.
Hours after Catalonia's 27 October declaration of independence, the Spanish Senate approved Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy's proposal to invoke Article 155 of the constitution and rescind Catalonia's regional autonomy.
Rajoy dismissed Puigdemont and his Cabinet, dissolved the Catalan Parliament and called regional elections for 21 December.
Kansas City: A police interrogation of a Kansas City man charged with drug and gun offenses ended prematurely when an investigator was driven from the room by the suspects excessive flatulence.
A detective reported that when asked for his address, 24-year-old Sean Sykes Jr: Leaned to one side of his chair and released a loud fart before answering.
The Kansas City Star reports that Sykes continued to be flatulent and the detective was forced to quickly end the interview.
Sykes appeared in court Monday, charged with being a felon in possession of three firearms and possession with intent to sell cocaine.
The charges stem from police traffic stops this month and in September in Kansas City, Missouri.
The federal public defenders office hasnt responded to an Associated Press email seeking comment Friday.
Dubai: Both Saudi Arabia and the US now accuse Iran of supplying ballistic missiles to Shiite rebels in Yemen, including one that targeted the kingdom's capital of Riyadh and its international airport.
Here's what is known:
Where is Yemen and who is fighting there?
Yemen, the Arab world's poorest country, sits on the southern tip of the Arabian Peninsula, bordering Saudi Arabia and Oman.
It looks out onto the Gulf of Aden and the Red Sea. Shiite rebels known as Houthis seized the capital, Sanaa, in September 2014.
A Saudi-led coalition began battling the Houthis and their allies in September 2015 on behalf of Yemen's internationally recognised government.
The war has killed more than 10,000 civilians and pushed millions of Yemenis to the brink of famine.
What evidence does the US point to that Iran offered the missiles?
A top US Air Force general in the Mideast on Friday alleged that missiles fired by the Houthis bore "Iranian markings," without elaborating or offering pictures.
Saudi Arabia's Ministry of Culture and Information later sent military briefing material to The Associated Press showing what they allege to be part of a Houthi Burkan, or "Volcano," ballistic missile.
Writing on the side matched an image of an Iranian Qiam missile.
The markings on the alleged Houthi missile also largely matched an AP photograph of a Qiam missile on display in Iran on 21 September, 2012, areas of which read "CLAMP HERE" and "SUPPORT HERE." Another image offered by the Saudis showed the base of the rocket, which resembled that of the Qiam.
The US Air Force's Central Command on Saturday declined to discuss the Saudi military briefing papers, though the image of part of the Burkan bore US declassification codes.
What does Iran say?
Iran long has denied offering any arms to the Houthis. It has yet to specifically respond to the US general's comments.
However, Mehdi Taeb, an influential hard-line cleric who is a brother to the intelligence chief of the hard-line Revolutionary Guard, said in April that Iran tried three times to send missiles to Yemen, but were stopped by President Hassan Rouhani's administration over fears of disrupting its nuclear deal with world powers.
The Guard, answerable only to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, oversees Iran's missile program.
Has Iran been accused of sending anything else to Yemen?
The US Navy's 5th Fleet, based in Bahrain, repeatedly has accused Iran of running armaments into Yemen.
It points to seizures over a four-week period in early 2016, when coalition warships stopped three dhows, traditional ships that ferry cargo through the Persian Gulf.
The dhows carried thousands of Kalashnikov assault rifles, as well as sniper rifles, machine guns, rocket-propelled grenade launchers, anti-tank missiles and other weapons.
One dhow carried 2,000 new assault rifles with serial numbers in sequential order, suggesting they came from a national stockpile, according to the London-based group Conflict Armament Research.
The rocket-propelled grenade launchers also bore hallmarks of being manufactured in Iran, the group said.
Conflict Armament Research, with the permission of the United Arab Emirates' elite Presidential Guard, also examined seized drones used by the Houthis and their allies to crash into Patriot missile batteries in Saudi Arabia.
Destroying Patriot missile batteries allows the rebels to fire missiles into Saudi Arabia without interference, and costs the kingdom millions of dollars to repair and replace.
While the Houthis say they manufacture the drones themselves, the research group said the drones share "near-identical design and construction characteristics" of Iranian drones.
How would Iran get the missiles into Yemen?MEN?
Saudi military briefing material sent to the AP alleged Iran smuggled weapons into Yemen by boat and truck.
The material offered one set of images showing a truck with a false bottom that the Saudis said ferried weapons into the country.
There haven't been any major seizures of arms on the seas since 2016 and the Saudi-led coalition announced it would blockade the country's airspace and ports over the 4 November missile attack on Riyadh.
But a US defense official, who spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity to discuss intelligence matters, said American forces believed some weapons and materiel being used by the Houthis came from Iran or with the help of Iranian-backed groups.
"It's a difficult problem and we're convinced it's still occurring," the official said. "Weapons that were not in the arsenal of Yemen before the civil war continue to show up there."
What's the US role in all this?
The US already is involved in the war in Yemen. It has launched drone strikes targeting the local branch of Al-Qaeda and a January raid that killed a US Navy SEAL and 30 other people, including women, children and an estimated 14 militants.
The US military has stopped offering targeting information to the Saudi-led coalition as its airstrikes have hit schools, hospitals, and markets, killing thousands of civilians and prompting rights groups to accuse the coalition of committing war crimes.
The Air Force refuels Saudi coalition warplanes in the Yemen theater and offers support in managing airspace over the country. The Saudi-led coalition also uses American-made bombs and ordinance in its attacks.
The US has come under attack once amid the Yemen war. In October 2016, the US Navy said the USS Mason came under fire from two missiles launched out of Yemen that were Silkworm variants, a type of coastal defense cruise missile that Iran has been known to use.
Neither reached the warship, though the US retaliated with Tomahawk cruise missile strikes on three coastal radar sites in Houthi-controlled territory on Yemen's Red Sea coast.
Washington: Despite President Donald Trumps full-throated support for Saudi Arabia, the United States appears to be signaling a desire for Riyadh to take a more cautious approach in its regional power struggle with Iran, experts say.
The Trump administration, which shares Saudi Arabias view of Iran as a regional menace, has strongly backed the Kingdom in the wake of a failed missile attack from Iran-aligned forces in Yemeni territory that demonstrated an ability to strike the Saudi capital.
Trump has cultivated much warmer ties with the Saudis after a fraught relationship with the Obama administrationthe president made Riyadh his first stop on his maiden international tripand has vowed to take strong action to confront Iran.
Nevertheless, Washington, which has US forces in Syria and Iraq, is telegraphing a more tempered stance toward the confrontation in a region beset with turmoil.
On Thursday, the State Department called for unimpeded access for humanitarian aid to Yemen, after Saudi Arabia imposed a blockade on the country to stem the flow of arms to Iran-aligned Houthi fighters.
A day later, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson made clear he still recognized as Lebanons prime minister Saad al-Hariri, who unexpectedly announced his resignation on 4 November from Riyadh.
In announcing his decision on television, Hariri said he feared assassination and accused Iran and its Lebanese ally Hezbollah of sowing strife in the Arab world, thrusting Lebanon into the front line of the competition between Sunni Saudi Arabia and Shiite Iran.
Two US officials said the Saudis, led by Crown Prince Mohammed, had encouraged Hariri to leave office and Lebanese officials say he is being held in Saudi Arabia, a charge Riyadh denies. Hariri has not commented publicly on whether he is free to come and go as he pleases.
In a statement on Saturday, the White House said it rejects any efforts by militias within Lebanon or by any foreign forces to threaten Lebanons stability...or use Lebanon as a base from which to threaten others in the region.
When asked to comment on whether the United States was pushing for a more cautious Saudi response, both the White House and State Department referred to Saturdays statement on Lebanon.
Tillerson was not going along with the Saudi position in describing the Lebanese state as under capture by Hezbollah, said Paul Salem, the senior vice president of the Middle East Institute, a Washington think tank. Thats significant.
Tillerson was also signaling to the Israelis ... that now is not the time to go after Lebanon, said Salem, referring to long-standing Israeli concerns about Hezbollahs growing military prowess.
Ray Takeyh, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, said he believed the Trump administration was still seeking to help the Saudis advance their interests against Iran without destabilizing the region.
This is a delicate balancing act. It involves supporting allies in a policy that the administration agrees with, while trying to mitigate aspects of it that it (sees as) overstated, Takeyh said.
Tillersons statement also urged all parties both within Lebanon and outside to respect Lebanons independence and said there was no role for any foreign forces.
The United States regularly criticizes Iran and Hezbollah for their role in Lebanon. Tillersons backing of Hariri and the Lebanese government contrasted sharply with the approach taken by Saudi Arabia, which has lumped Lebanon with Hezbollah as parties hostile to it.
I see Rex Tillerson as being an old fashioned American diplomat and old fashioned American diplomacy in West Asia is all about stability, said F Gregory Gause, chairman of the International Affairs Department at Texas A&M University.
Im not entirely sure that that is the position of the chief executive of the United States, Gause added.
Concerns with Saudi purge
The Saudi actions coincide with an anti-corruption purge by the countrys future king that tightened his grip on power.
Trump tweeted on Monday that he had great confidence in King Salman and the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia following the mass arrests" - the biggest such purge of the kingdoms affluent elite in its modern history.
Trump also tweeted that they know exactly what they are doing.
Former and current US officials with deep knowledge of Saudi Arabia say Trumps enthusiastic support for Prince Mohammed has emboldened the youthful Saudi leader.
Tillerson told reporters the purge appeared well intended but the mass arrests, which have swept up officials long known in Washington, also fueled US concerns.
It raises a few concerns until we see more clearly how these particular individuals are dealt with, Tillerson added.
Trumps son-in-law, Jared Kushner, the presidents senior adviser, who has cultivated a close relationship with Prince Mohammed, recently returned from Saudi Arabia, fueling speculation on whether he may have had wind of the Crown Princes plans.
A senior administration official said they had no advance knowledge.
As AT&T (NYSE:T) prepares to fight the Department of Justice for its $85 billion acquisition of Time Warner (NYSE:TWX), Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai weighed in on the potential outcome.
This is not within the FCCs jurisdiction. It will be handled by the Justice Department, and so I have confidence in the professionals over there to make the appropriate judgement, Pai told the FOX Business Networks Stuart Varney.
The Department of Justice is reportedly demanding that AT&T sell some assets, which may include Turner Broadcasting, home to CNN, as a stipulation to approve the mega-merger. Critics are concerned the deal may give the combined companies too much pricing power over rivals. On Thursday, FOX Business reported AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson made it clear hell fight to get the deal done without shedding CNN. We are prepared to litigate now, he said, later noting that he believed any lawsuit would be completed by the mergers deadline of April 22, 2018, as reported from The New York Times DealBook Conference on Thursday.
While the FCC doesnt play a role in deciding whether the deal should win approval or not, it does oversee regulation for television, radio, cable and satellite, many businesses that the combined company would encompass. Pai acknowledged the industry is undergoing a sea change that is spurring the need to be more competitive.
One of the things that is noticeable about the 21st century is that theres all kinds of competition that could not have been conceived when the FCC established these media ownership rules all the way back in 1975, he said. I look at it from the consumers perspective. Consumers want as much news as they can get on a variety of devices from a variety of companies, and the last thing the government should do is stand in the way and saying, No, we demand the marketplace be as it was in 1975.
Under Pais direction, the FCC has been weeding through outdated regulations in efforts to make the commission more effective.
The FCC staff has been actually tremendous. Theyve been helping us do the legwork, the nitty gritty work behind the scenes to help this happen. And weve gotten rid of regulations that dated back to the FCCs telegraph division in 1936.
The stock market has been on a tear for nearly a decade. But in recent months the S&P 500 has fallen about 10% from its highs, entering correction territory on a number of fears, including uncertainty over global trade, rising interest rates putting pressure on the economy, and even fears that a recession could be just around the corner.
And while there's no predicting what the economy or the stock market will do in the near term, stocks remain likely to be the best long-term investment out there. For investors looking to weather the market's uncertainty but who also want to profit from stocks, high-quality dividend stocks should make your list.
Three that look particularly appealing are Nucor Corp. (NYSE: NUE), Retail Opportunity Investments Corp. (NASDAQ: ROIC), and TerraForm Power Inc. (NASDAQ: TERP). Not only has the recent market decline put all three on sale, but these are three of the best businesses in their industries, generating steady cash flows and paying generous dividends to shareholders while also retaining money to invest in future growth.
A steelmaking stalwart that can profit during any market
Steelmaking is notoriously cyclical. It's also very capital-intensive, and most steelmakers have high fixed operating costs. This combination makes them very susceptible to quick losses when the demand cycle turns.
While Nucor isn't immune to the cycles, it has a serious killer advantage over most other steelmakers: an operating model that gives it more flexibility to scale its production (and expenses) up or down based on market demand.
That has made all the difference at helping it generate consistent operating profits and positive cash flows, while competitors like U.S. Steel and AK Steel regularly see their results dip into the red:
This has helped Nucor to do two things other steelmakers haven't: pay a dividend every year and increase its base payout -- every year for over a half-century. It just announced a 5% increase. With shares down 21% from its 2018 peak, it now yields nearly 3%.
With Nucor's earnings at near-record levels, the big decline in its stock price has made Nucor relatively cheap at less than nine times trailing earnings. This is a best-in-class company with elite management, trading for a single-digit valuation. Dividend investors looking for a rock-solid payout should put Nucor at the top of their buy lists.
Brick-and-mortar retail is still alive -- this company is a top way to profit from it
E-commerce is significantly altering the retail landscape. Between the convenience of quick shipping and the growing selection of goods available online, the growth of e-commerce isn't going to slow anytime soon. And that shift is going to continue to disrupt retailers that can't compete with e-commerce's advantages or adapt to the new retail world quickly enough.
But even as e-commerce grows its share, traditional retail is doing far better than most people realize. And Retail Opportunity Investments Corp. -- called ROIC -- is one of the best investments to profit from this reality.
ROIC specializes in owning grocery-anchored shopping centers on the U.S. West Coast. Led by CEO Stuart Tanz, who has multiple decades of proven success operating in this niche, ROIC has increased its dividend by 225% since the first payout in 2011. This big dividend growth has driven its market-beating total returns since going public:
In Tanz, ROIC has one of the best capital allocators operating in retail real estate. Since taking ROIC public, Tanz and his team have done an incredible job identifying properties that fit the company's mold while remaining patient in their acquisitions and avoiding overpaying simply to meet a growth number at the cost of earnings. This cautious, disciplined approach has meant steady, profitable growth and allowed ROIC to keep a strong balance sheet.
It also generates about 45% in funds from operations -- the best proxy for earnings for real estate investment trusts like ROIC -- than it needs to maintain its dividend. Besides being a substantial margin of safety to support the payout, those extra cash flows also help fund growth.
At more than 15 times 2018 funds from operations, ROIC isn't particularly cheap, but it's a premium worth paying for such a high-quality dividend growth stock, particularly when its 4.4% dividend yield is factored in.
A company renewed
It's been a great year for TerraForm Power, though you might not know it just looking at its stock chart. But while the stock price is down about 5% from its 52-week high at this writing, the quality of its business has steadily gotten better under a new management team since Brookfield Asset Management bought a controlling interest in 2017.
Over the past year, management has taken steps to grow TerraForm Power, drive down operating costs, and make those operations work better. In the third quarter, TerraForm Power reported almost 46% growth in power generation, following the closure of its acquisition of Saeta earlier in the year.
At the same time, it grew cash available for distribution 142% -- 69% on a per-share basis -- as operating improvements helped drive more of that power generation growth to the bottom line. And there's more improvement coming, too. Management says a new maintenance agreement with GE will drive those costs down as much as 10%, while also helping improve power production from those facilities.
TerraForm Power doesn't have the margin of safety on its payout other stocks do, with 86% of CAFD going to pay the dividend last quarter, but if management keeps making the kind of progress we have seen in recent quarters, cash flows should grow substantially faster in coming quarters. With Brookfield Asset Management's track record with other subsidiaries, I think the extra risk here is well worth the reward, and my expectation is that the payout -- yielding 6.6% at recent prices -- is more likely to go up than down in both the short and long term.
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Jason Hall owns shares of Nucor, Retail Opportunity Investments, and TerraForm Power and has the following options: long January 2019 $15 calls on General Electric. The Motley Fool owns shares of Brookfield Asset Management. The Motley Fool recommends Nucor and Retail Opportunity Investments. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
British Prime Minister Theresa May is caught in a vise of pressure from both sides of the Brexit debate as she tries to get a key plank in the government's plans for leaving the EU through Parliament.
The European Union (Withdrawal) Bill returns this week to the House of Commons, where it will face a flurry of amendments from lawmakers.
The bill is designed to prevent a legal vacuum by converting some 12,000 EU laws into British statute on the day the U.K. leaves the bloc in 2019. Legislators are scheduled to hold several days of debate and votes starting Tuesday.
But many lawmakers claim the bill gives the government too much power to amend legislation without parliamentary scrutiny. They will try to pass amendments to water down those powers.
And opponents of Brexit both from the opposition and from May's Conservative Party will seek to give Parliament a binding vote on the final divorce deal between Britain and the EU.
Meanwhile, supporters of Brexit are pressuring May not to give ground by compromising with the EU or with anti-Brexit lawmakers.
Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson and Environment Secretary Michael Gove, leading euroskeptics in May's Cabinet, warned the prime minister in a note to stand firm in the ambition of making Britain "a fully independent self-governing country by the time of the next election" in 2022, the Mail on Sunday newspaper reported.
The note published by the newspaper accused some ministers of not preparing for Brexit with "sufficient energy."
May, weakened by the Conservatives' poor showing in a snap June election, has little room to maneuver. She relies on a small Northern Ireland party to prop up her minority government and is caught between warring factions in her Cabinet.
She also faces a sexual harassment scandal involving a growing number of politicians and the resignation of two Cabinet ministers so far this month.
Businesses, meanwhile, are clamoring for clarity on what the future relationship between Britain and the bloc will be, as economists warn that the uncertainty is slowing Britain's economy.
The government's negotiations with the EU have been slowed by a lack of agreement on the terms of the U.K.'s withdrawal, including how much Britain must pay to meet its financial commitments to the bloc.
EU chief negotiator Michel Barnier says there must be major progress in the next two weeks if EU leaders are to agree at a December summit to move on to discussing trade and future relations.
U.K. Brexit Secretary David Davis said Sunday that Britain is not about to commit to a firm figure for its Brexit bill.
"It's taking time, and we will take our time to get to the right answer" he told Sky News.
Davis denied the talks had stalled and said, "There has actually been a huge amount of progress" on what he called "the most complex negotiation probably in history."
Rep. Peter King on Sunday said he still refuses to support the House Republicans tax reform plan, saying hard-working people will get screwed by the proposal, which is expected to be voted on this week.
This is going to have a devastating impact on areas like mine on Long Island and its unfair, King, R-N.Y., told Maria Bartiromo on Sunday Morning Futures. If Im the last vote, then they better restore the state and local tax deduction. Otherwise theyre not getting my vote.
King has been fighting for weeks to have state and local tax (SALT) deductions remain intact. Under the Senate Republicans tax bill released Thursday, deductions on state and local taxes would be eliminated entirely.
Still there appears to be ongoing an ongoing back-and-forth within the party. After a series of meetings, House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Kevin Brady, R-Texas, agreed to keep the deduction for property taxes up to $10,000, though deductions on sales or income taxes would still be repealed.
However, on Sunday, Brady said he wouldnt accept the total elimination of SALT deductions in the final tax bill.
We want people to keep more of what they earn regardless of wherever they live, including in these high-tax states, Brady told Chris Wallace during an exclusive interview on Fox News.
The SALT dedications have put the spotlight on high-tax states and how budgets are being managed.
Last week, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, during an interview with Bartiromo, said high-tax states need to get their budgets in check, which would help eliminate the need for SALT in the first place.
I do hope that this sends a message to the state governments that, perhaps, they should try to get their budgets in line, Mnuchin said during a speech at the Economic Club of New York.
On Sunday, King explained the reason why New York is considered high-tax is because much of the revenue that goes to the federal government isnt returned to the state; about 79 cents on every dollar in the case for New York, while 61 cents on each dollar are returned to New Jerseys government, according to King.
We get murdered at one end and now were going to get it again by taking away most of the property tax deduction and all of the state income tax deduction, plus the individual exemption, he said.
Lawmakers and officials from President Donald Trumps administration are looking to put a tax bill on the commander-in-chiefs desk before Christmas.
Those who were pulled over for minor traffic violations in Billings, Montana this week got a meaty surprise.
Instead of a traffic ticket, police officers handed out frozen turkeys and a warning for the traffic violation.
"The individuals that received the warnings and the turkeys have been very happy," Lieutenant Neil Lawrence said, The Daily Meal reported.
HOW TO DONATE THANKSGIVING LEFTOVERS AND UNUSED INGREDIENTS
This generosity was prompted after an anonymous local businessman donated 20 turkeys to the department for police to hand out to families. Yahoo News reports that this is the first year the Billings police department has handed out turkeys in lieu of tickets, but the support has been strong.
"Our Facebook page has received a lot of positive comments regarding it. So far its been a very positive thing for the community, Lawrence said.
The turkeys only went to those being pulled over for very minor infractions.
"The turkeys were handed to, let's say, someone going over the speed limit a few miles an hour or rolling through a stop sign," Lawrence explained to Yahoo News.
Before handing over the Thanksgiving fowl, police officers did check to make sure there were no outstanding warrants.
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One driver, Larry Riddle, was extremely appreciative for the unexpected present after he was pulled over for not signaling a turn, the Associated Press reported.
Riddle, whose wife died of cancer, said he lives alone on a limited budget and the turkey surprise will make this years holiday meal he tries to cook for his daughter and himself each year, a little easier.
Is a fashion company telling Staten Islanders theyre garbage?
American Eagle Outfitters recently launched a line of sweatshirts featuring images of Peanuts gang characters and paired each one with a Big Apple borough.
Brooklyn was represented by Joe Cool Snoopy sporting his hipster shades.
Manhattan featured beloved Charlie Brown and Linus leaning on a brick wall.
Staten Island got stinky Pig Pen.
Staten Island is not happy.
The citys smallest borough, which hosted the worlds largest landfill for half a century until 2001, is still very sensitive when it comes to all things odorous.
Its about the Staten Island DUMP!! Pig-pen & the dump kinda go hand & hand, wrote one poster to silive.com, which first reported the story. But the dump has been closed for a while now they need to move on compare us to something else!!!!
American Eagle contends they werent dumping on the forgotten borough.
We are sorry if anyone took exception to the shirt. It is part of a line that was meant to showcase the lovable Peanuts characters and in no way make any statement about the good people of Staten Island, the company told The Post.
Staten Islanders can take solace in one thing: Queens and the Bronx didnt even get their own shirts.
This article originally appeared on the New York Post.
Stephen Willefords heroic actions last Sunday saved many lives at the First Baptist Church in Sutherland Springs, Texas. The killer, Devin Kelley, was shooting the wounded when Willeford showed up with a rifle. Willefords quick actions forced Kelley to stop his attack, presumably saving the lives of the twenty wounded and possibly many more.
The press derided President Trump for saying that Willeford saved many lives with his gun, and that stricter gun control regulations would have only made things worse.
It is only too bad that someone with a concealed handgun permit wasnt already at the church. We may never have heard of the shooting national news stories are virtually never done on permit holders stopping mass public shootings.
An article at Fox News this past week mentions four such cases. It talks about a 1997 shooting at a high school in Pearl, Mississippi; a 2007 church attack in Colorado Springs; and a Chicago Uber driver who in 2015 shot and wounded a man who opened fire on a crowd. The most recent case was a 2017 church shooting in Antioch, Tennessee. But those cases just skim the surface.
A 2014 FBI report claims that only once between 2000 and 2013 did a concealed handgun permit holder stop a public shooting (they claimed to look at all cases where guns were fired in public that werent part of a gang fight or some other crime). This single case occurred in Winnemucca, Nevada in May 2008, when a customer with a permit fatally shot an attacker who had just killed two people. They didnt even include the 2007 church shooting in Colorado Springs, where a killer had already taken two lives at the church before being stopped by a permit holder.
A 2014 FBI report claims that only once between 2000 and 2013 did a concealed handgun permit holder stop a public shooting. This false claim just shows how politicized the FBI became under the Obama administration.
This false claim just shows how politicized the FBI became under the Obama administration. Many times, police, sheriffs, and prosecutors have gone on the record and credited permit holders with saving many lives. These attacks didnt get national news attention, but they would have been on front pages everywhere if a permit holder hadnt intervened.
There are countless examples of people using guns in self-defense at their homes or workplaces. But I want to focus on a much narrower set of cases where permit holders stopped public shootings. Here are 10 additional recent cases.
-- Arlington, Texas, May 3, 2017: A police spokesman stated that the concealed handgun permit holder prevented further loss of life. A Dallas Morning News headline read: Hero stopped mass murder by crazed bar patron who was armed to the teeth, police say.
-- Lyman, South Carolina, June 30, 2016: Just a couple of weeks after the Orlando massacre, 32-year-old Jody Ray Thompson opened fire on another nightclub. Fortunately, permitted concealed handguns were allowed in South Carolina bars. Thompson was able to shoot three people before the permit holder fired back and wounded Thompson in the leg. Fox 5 in Atlanta reports: At least one South Carolina sheriff are crediting a man with a concealed carry permit with preventing further violence at a nightclub this past Sunday.
-- Winton, Ohio, July 26, 2015: A man started shooting at four people who were walking outside on a summers evening. Fortunately, a concealed handgun permit holder fired at the attacker, giving the four people a chance to escape into their home.
-- Conyers, Georgia, May 31, 2015: A man killed two people at a liquor store and continued shooting at others until a permit holder ran inside and exchanged fire. The killer then fled the store. I believe that if Mr. Scott did not return fire at the suspect then more of those customers would have [been] hit by a gun, said Rockdale County Sheriff Eric Levett. So in my opinion he saved other lives in that store.
-- New Holland, South Carolina, May 5, 2015: New Holland Fire Department volunteers were hosting a childrens day event with ice cream and fire truck rides, when a man started shooting. Fortunately, two firemen were permit holders and were able to stop the attack.
-- Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, March 22, 2015: A 40-year-old man started shooting at people in a barber shop. A permit holder who heard the gunfire ran inside and shot the attacker. The person who responded was a legal gun permit carrier. He responded and I guess he saved a lot of people in there, said Philadelphia Police Captain Frank Llewellyn.
-- Darby, Pennsylvania, July 24, 2014: Convicted felon Richard Plotts killed a caseworker at Mercy Fitzgerald Hospital and started shooting at Dr. Lee Silverman. Fortunately, the doctor had his own gun and returned fire, critically wounding Plotts, who still had 39 bullets on him. Without a doubt, I believe the doctor saved lives, said Yeadon police chief Donald Molineux.
-- Chicago, Illinois, July 7, 2014: Gang members started firing at four people who had just left a party. The attack started because one of the four people removed a cup of liquor that had been placed on top of her vehicle. Luckily, one of the four people a military member had a permitted concealed handgun and was able to wound the primary attacker.
-- Portland, Oregon, January 11, 2014: Convicted criminal Thomas Eliot Hjelmeland was ejected from a nightclub but returned 30 minutes later wearing a mask and carrying a gun. He shot the bouncer who had ejected him, and shot at others. Two others were wounded, and Hjelmeland was shooting all around the club. A concealed handgun permit holder who worked at the nightclub then fatally shot Hjelmeland.
And here are just two more cases from 2000 to 2013 the same period that the FBI claims only had one instance of a permit holder stopping a public shooting. Again, law enforcement say that permit holders saved lives in both of these cases.
-- Plymouth, Pennsylvania, September 9, 2012: William Allabaugh shot at people as he walked down the street in Plymouth, Pennsylvania. He wounded one and killed another. Permit holder Mark Ktytor fatally shot Allabaugh. Mr. [Ktytor] then acted, taking him [Allabaugh] down. We believe that it could have been much worse that night, said Luzerne County Assistant District Attorney Jarrett Ferentino.
-- Spartanburg, South Carolina, March 2012: Jesse Gates kicked open a door to a church and pointed a shotgun at the pastor and congregation. Parishioner Aaron Guyton, a concealed weapons permit holder, got the drop on Gates and held him at gunpoint. Sheriff Chuck Wright called Aaron and others at the church everyday heroes.
Permit holders haven't just stopped public shootings. They have stopped everything from public knife attacks to vehicle attacks.
I haven't found a single case where gun control advocates' fears were borne out by the facts. In not one of these cases did a permit holder accidentally shoot a bystander, or a police officer accidentally harm a permit holder.
There are many more of these cases. Imagine how different the gun control debate would be if some of these heroic permit holders got national coverage. But even the liquor store shooting in Conyers, Georgia couldnt get national coverage, despite being caught on video.
The more you learn about these cases, the more you appreciate that mass public shooters have good reason to keep attacking gun-free zones. These killers might be crazy, but they arent stupid. They realize that the longer it takes for a good guy to arrive with a gun, the more people they can kill.
As of late, it seems like nearly every city in America is vying for the attention of Amazon in hopes of attracting the planned HQ2 campus of the multibillion-dollar corporation. The second headquarters for Amazon promises to create 50,000 high-paying jobs and $5 billion in construction, for starters.
The city where I am mayor Little Rock, Ark. used to be one of the eager suitors.
Eager to sweep Amazon off its feet, I met with the Little Rock Regional Chamber of Commerce and a team of our best and brightest business leaders to discuss our proposal. But as we reviewed the list of traits Amazon was looking for in an HQ2 city, we realized it would never work out between us.
We know ourselves well enough to realize that an ill-fated courtship could ruin everything weve worked to achieve for our city, which is on track to become one of the best places to live, work and go to school in the South.
As mayor of Little Rock, I must admit that our city was at first blindly smitten by the glamour of HQ2. And really, who wasnt?
Amazon estimates its investments in Seattle from 2010 through 2016 resulted in an additional $38 billion to the citys economy. And every dollar invested by Amazon in Seattle generated an additional $1.40 for the citys economy overall.
My hat is off to Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos and his company for creating such competition, intrigue and hope for Americas cities, 238 of which are putting their best foot forward in an effort to attract attention.
Chicago has even hired actor William Shatner, best-known from his TV and movie roles as Captain Kirk on Star Trek to pitch the city to Amazon. And one city even offered to rename itself Amazon.
But in Little Rock, we decided to make a very public break-up announcement to let the world know that while we are not right for Amazon, our city is available for business. Thus, we embarked on a targeted campaign and launched a website called Love, Little Rock.
We even called a press conference to announce the campaign with several community partners, including our local U.S. Rep. French Hill a Republican and former Chamber president to create a conversation with Amazon and spur a sense of pride among Little Rock residents.
The letter we wrote to Amazon says is all the company is smart and wildly successful. It just wont work out, this time.
But our Amazon fantasy got us thinking about all the other businesses out there that we might actually be compatible with, and then it hit us: Instead of creating a proposal for a company that wasnt really interested in us, we decided to focus on attracting partners that are looking for a city just like ours and there are plenty out there.
Thanks to our short commute times, easy access to beautiful parks, urban office spaces, ample building sites and a thriving tech scene, a lot of companies find a lot to love here.
Our message to businesses we are trying to attract to our city can be summarized in our 10 Reasons To Love Little Rock: Inventive thinking; financial freedom; leisurely living; international connections; gifted residents; ample education opportunities; enthusiasm for environmentally friendly practices; picturesque natural areas; Southern comfort; and devotion to doing good.
As the incoming president of the National League of Cities, I strongly believe that the strength of Americas businesses is integral to our national economy. And there is no underestimating the power of competitiveness and innovation that is at the heart of our success.
Little Rock applauds Amazons game-changing success and the opportunity to showcase our amazing city. Weve started a conversation, and we look forward to finding the perfect fit.
Meanwhile, thank you, Amazon. The exciting race to find your HQ2 could only happen in America. For that, we salute you.
Embattled Alabama Republican Senate nominee Roy Moore is hitting back at the Washington Post, accusing the paper of having a political agenda as he denies allegations he sought romantic relationships with teenage females as an adult.
In the next few days there will be revelations about the motivation and the content of this article, Moore said during a campaign appearance Saturday at a library in Birmingham. I do not expect the Washington Post to stop. I think they have a political agenda.
'I have not been guilty of sexual misconduct with anyone' Alabama Republican Senate nominee Roy Moore
The Washington Post reported Thursday that Moore, the former chief justice of Alabamas Supreme Court and an ardent social conservative, pursued relationships with four teenage women dating back to the 1970s when he was in his early thirties and single. Moore has denied the allegations, though admitted on Sean Hannitys radio show that after my return from the military, I dated a lot of young ladies."
One woman told the paper she was 14 when the 32-year-old Moore asked her out and made sexual advances.
Top Republicans, including President Trump, Vice President Mike Pence and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, have said Moore should drop out of the race if the accusations are true. But Moore is showing no sign of doing that.
On Saturday, he insisted the accusations about his conduct nearly 40 years ago are completely false and untrue.
I have not been guilty of sexual misconduct with anyone, Moore said.
He also accused the left-leaning paper, which has endorsed his Democratic opponent Doug Jones, of yet another attack on my character and reputation in a desperate attempt to stop my political campaign for United States Senate.
TRUMP SIDESTEPS QUESTIONS ON ROY MOORE
The story has inflicted major damage to Moores campaign ahead of next months special election for the seat once held by Attorney General Jeff Sessions. There has been talk of possible write-in campaigns from other Republicans, though nothing has yet materialized.
Earlier Saturday, Trump, who has been traveling in Asia over the past week, did not seem interested in commenting further on the situation, saying he's been too busy reading documents and hasn't had time to catch up on television news coverage about Moore.
Fox News Joseph Weber contributed to this report.
Many national Republican leaders pulled their support for Roy Moore, the Alabama Senate candidate, in the wake of allegations claiming he had inappropriate sexual contact with teenage girls.
The Washington Post reported that four women accused Moore of initiating sexual contact with them in the late 1970s and early 1980s, when he was an assistant district attorney in his early 30s. One of the women, Leigh Corfman, told the newspaper that Moore had sexual contact with her when she was 14. The age of consent in Alabama is 16.
Several additional women have since come forward to accuse Moore of sexually inappropriate behavior.
Moore denied the allegations, saying in a statement obtained by Fox News that the allegations are "based on a lie supported by innuendo."
"It seems that in the political arena, to say that something is not true is simply not good enough. So let me be clear. I have never provided alcohol to minors, and I have never engaged in sexual misconduct," he said.
Multiple Republican lawmakers called on Moore to step aside from the Dec. 12 special election. However, President Trump offered his endorsement for the embattled politician, and the Republican National Committee began supporting Moore after having previously cut its fundraising ties to him.
The White House
White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said the president had no plans for an in-person appearance on Moore's behalf.
In addition, the president previously signed off on a decision by the Republican National Committee to cut off support for Moore's campaign.
But publicly, Trump unleashed his criticism on Democratic candidate Doug Jones instead of Moore.
The last thing we need in Alabama and the U.S. Senate is a Schumer/Pelosi puppet who is weak on crime, weak on the border, bad for our military and our great vets, bad for our 2nd Amendment, and wants to [raise] taxes to the sky. Jones would be a disaster, Trump tweeted on Nov. 26.
And just over one week before the election, Trump said he needed Moores vote in the Senate when it comes to certain issues, such as immigration, gun rights and judicial appointments.
Trump also encouraged his Twitter followers to vote for Moore on the morning of the election as he contended that Moore "will always vote with us."
Vice President Mike Pence found the allegations in the story disturbing and believes, if true, this would disqualify anyone from serving in office, his press secretary, Alyssa Farah, has told reporters.
Sen. Mitch McConnell
While speaking to reporters, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said he believes the women quoted in the Washington Post story. He urged Moore to step aside in light of the allegations.
Previously, McConnell said Moore should step aside if "these allegations are true."
Sen. Cory Gardner
Cory Gardner, the National Republican Senatorial Committee chairman, said he believes the women who have alleged Moore's misconduct. In a statement, he encouraged the Senate to "vote to expel" Moore should he win the election next month.
"He does not meet the ethical and moral requirements of the United States Senate," Gardner, R-Colo., said.
Sen. Mike Lee
A former backer of Moore, Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, pulled his endorsement from Moore after the allegations came to light.
"Having read the detailed description of the incidents, as well as the response from Judge Moore and his campaign, I can no longer endorse his candidacy for the US Senate," Lee said in a tweet.
He had also requested that Moore's campaign no longer use his image.
Sen. Lisa Murkowski
Im horrified and if its true, he should step down immediately, Murkowski told reporters.
She reportedly also urged Sen. Luther Strange, who was appointed to fill Jeff Sessions seat when he was tapped to become attorney general, to launch a write-in campaign. The deadline to take Moore off the ballot has passed.
Sen. Mike Rounds
If they are true, then he should seriously think about stepping aside," Sen. Mike Rounds, R-S.D., said.
Sen. John Cornyn
I find it deeply distrusting and troubling. Its up to the governor and the folks of Alabama to make that decision as far as what the next steps are," Majority Whip John Cornyn, R-Texas, said. He later withdrew his endorsement of Moore.
Sen. Tim Scott
If theyre accurate, he absolutely should [step aside]," Tim Scott, of South Carolina, said.
Sen. Susan Collins
In a tweet, Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, called for Moore to "withdraw from the Senate race in Alabama."
Collins wrote that she listened to Moore deny the allegations in a recent radio interview, but "did not find his denials to be convincing."
Collins' most recent statement comes after she previously tweeted: "If there is any truth at all to these horrific allegations, Roy Moore should immediately step aside as Senate candidate."
Sen. Steve Daines
"I am pulling my endorsement and support for Roy Moore for U.S. Senate," said Sen. Steve Daines, R-Mont.
Sen. John McCain
"The allegations against Roy Moore are deeply disturbing and disqualifying. He should immediately step aside and allow the people of Alabama to elect a candidate they can be proud of," Arizona Sen. John McCain said.
Sen. Richard Shelby
Its a devastating nasty story, Alabama Sen. Richard Shelby told reporters. If its true, I dont believe thered be a place for him in the U.S. Senate.
He said that he did not vote for Moore when he sent in his absentee ballot but voted instead for a "distinguished Republican write-in."
Sen. Jeff Flake
Like other Republicans, Flake called on Moore to step aside from the election.
"Just to be clear. If the choice is between Roy Moore and a Democrat, I would run to the polling place to vote for the Democrat," Flake tweeted.
Hes said that Republicans to support Roy Moore over Doug Jones is political tribalism at its worst.
Flake also tweeted a photo of a check made out to Jones for $100 with "Country over Party" written in the memo line.
Sen. Luther Strange
Alabama Sen. Luther Strange, who lost the special election primary to Roy Moore, called the allegations disturbing.
It is too late to take Moore off the ballot, but Strange has been encouraged to launch a write-in campaign.
Sen. Rob Portman
I think if what we read is true, and people are on the record so I assume it is, then he should step aside, Ohio Sen. Rob Portman said.
Sen. Ben Sasse
Sen. Ben Sasse, R-Neb., called the Washington Posts story "heartbreaking."
Sasse also slammed the Republican National Committee for providing funds to Moores race.
This is a bad decision and very sad day. I believe the women and the RNC previously did too. Whats changed? Or is the party just indifferent? Sasse said on Twitter. This sends a terrible message to victims its not that the party wont believe you if you come forward. It might. But just doesnt care.
The senator than warned that if the National Republican Senatorial Committee decided to contribute to Moore, he would no longer be a donor to or fund-raiser for it.
Sen. Ted Cruz
"These are serious and troubling allegations," Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, who previously endorsed Moore, said in a statement. "If they are true, Judge Moore should immediately withdraw. However, we need to know the truth, and Judge Moore has the right to respond to these accusations."
Sen. Bill Cassidy
Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., officially withdrew his support from the candidate.
"Based on the allegations against Roy Moore, his response and what is known, I withdraw support," he said.
Sen. Orrin Hatch
"I stand with the Majority Leader on this. These are serious and disturbing accusations, and while the decision is now in the hands of the people of Alabama, I believe Luther Strange is an excellent alternative," Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, tweeted.
But a week before the election, Hatch said Trump didnt have another choice but to endorse Moore, Bloomberg reported. He also said that many of the things he allegedly did are decades ago. So its hard to thats a decision that has to be made by the people in that state.
If they make that decision, who are we to question them? Hatch said.
Sen. Pat Toomey
We'll probably never know for sure exactly what happened," Sen. Pat Toomey, R-Pa., said on NBC's "Meet the Press."
"But I think the accusations have more credibility than the denial. I think it would be best if Roy would just step aside.
Sen. Lindsey Graham
South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham took to Twitter to say Moore should step aside in the Alabama Senate race.
"In light of the most recent allegations and the cumulative effect of others, I believe [Moore] would be doing himself, the state, the GOP, and the country a service by stepping aside," Graham said. "If he continues this will not end well for Mr. Moore."
He has also bemoaned Trumps attempt to throw a lifeline to Moore.
Rep. Paul Ryan
House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., said if the allegations are true, they would disqualify Moore from the special election.
These allegations are disqualifying if true. Anyone who would do this to a child has no place in public office, let alone the United States Senate, Ryan said in a statement.
Rep. Peter King
"I would say unless he can prove his innocence, the burden is now on him within the next day or so, I believe he has to step down. He owes it to himself, he owes it to the state and and he owes it to the U.S. Senate," New York Rep. Peter King said after the allegations came out.
Rep. Lee Zeldin
In a tweet, Rep. Lee Zeldin, R-N.Y., called for that "creepy Roy Moore dude" to step aside from the campaign.
"It's about that time for that creepy Roy Moore dude to exit stage left. He should step aside & let someone take his spot on the ballot who doesn't prey upon young teenage girls as a grown man," he said.
Gov. John Kasich
Ohio Gov. John Kasich said on Twitter that hes long opposed Moore and called on him to step aside from the race as well.
Ive long opposed Roy Moore [and] his divisive viewpoints. The actions described make him unfit for office. The GOP must not support him. He should step aside, Kasich said.
Former Gov. Mitt Romney
Mitt Romney, the 2012 Republican presidential nominee, slammed Moore on Twitter.
Innocent until proven guilty is for criminal convictions, not elections. I believe Leigh Corfman, the former governor said. Her account is too serous to ignore. Moore is unfit for office and should step aside.
"Roy Moore in the US Senate would be a stain on the GOP and on the nation. Leigh Corfman and other victims are courageous heroes. No vote, no majority is worth losing our honor, our integrity," Romney said in another tweet on Dec. 4.
Former Gov. Jeb Bush
Former Republican presidential candidate and Florida Gov. Jeb Bush said Moore should step down in light of the allegations.
"This is not a question of innocence or guilt like in a criminal proceeding; this is a question of whats right and whats wrong. Acknowledging that youre dating teenagers when youre 32 years old as assistant state attorney is wrong. Its just plain wrong," he told CNBC, adding that he agreed with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who said earlier Monday that Moore should "step aside."
"We need to stand for basic principles, and decency has to be one of those," Bush added. "In the really poisonous political environment we have right now, one of the rules I think has to apply is that when you attack somebody on the other party, and the other team for doing something wrong, when it happens on your team, you have an obligation I think to speak out as well."
Ivanka Trump
The president's daughter had some harsh words for Moore.
"There's a special place in hell for people who prey on children. I've yet to see a valid explanation, and I have no reason to doubt the victims' accounts," Ivanka Trump told the Associated Press.
Condoleezza Rice
While she didnt name Moore, former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice who is from Alabama encouraged voters to take a stand for our core principles and for what is right.
These critical times require us to come together to reject bigotry, sexism and intolerance, Rice said in a statement to AL.com.
"It is imperative for Americans to remain focused on our priorities and not give way to side shows and antics. I know that Alabamans need an independent voice in Washington. But we must also insist that our representatives are dignified, decent, and respectful of the values we hold dear, she said.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
On the homestretch of his whirlwind trip to Asia, President Donald Trump tweeted a defense of his efforts to establish a rapport with Russian President Vladimir Putin, saying that the Kremlin "can greatly help" Washington with global trouble spots.
"When will all the haters and fools out there realize that having a good relationship with Russia is a good thing, not a bad thing[?]" asked Trump before accusing critics of "always playing politics -- bad for our country."
"I want to solve North Korea, Syria, Ukraine, terrorism, and Russia can greatly help!" Trump added.
The tweet was part of a series of posts Trump made from Vietnam early Sunday morning. They included criticism of "Crooked Hillary Clinton," former President Barack Obama, and North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un.
"Why would Kim Jong-un insult me by calling me 'old,' when I would NEVER call him 'short and fat?'" the president wrote. "Oh well, I try so hard to be his friend - and maybe someday that will happen!"
The tweets came a day after Trump said he believed Putin was sincere when the Russian leader denied that Moscow had interfered in last year's presidential campaign.
"Every time he sees me, he said: 'I didn't do that.' And I believe I really believe that when he tells me that, he means it," said Trump, who also dismissed former top U.S. intelligence officials as "political hacks."
Multiple U.S. intelligence agencies have concluded that Moscow meddled in the 2016 election to try to help Trump win. But the president argued there's plenty of reason to be suspicious of their findings.
"I think that [Putin] is very, very strong in the fact that he didn't do it," Trump told reporters on board Air Force One Saturday as he traveled to Hanoi, Vietnam. " ... And then you hear it's 17 [intelligence] agencies [who say Russia interfered]. Well, it's three. And one is [former CIA Director] John Brennan and one is whatever. I mean, give me a break. They're political hacks.
"I mean, you have Brennan, you have [former Director of National Intelligence James] Clapper, and you have [former FBI Director James] Comey," Trump went on. "Comey is proven now to be a liar and he's proven to be a leaker."
Trump and Putin did not have a formal meeting while they were in Vietnam for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit, but the two spoke informally several times and reached an agreement on a number of principles for the future of war-torn Syria.
Trump made clear that the issue of Russian meddling in the election hovers over the leaders' relationship and said it jeopardized their ability to work together on issues including North Korea's escalating nuclear program and the deadly conflict in Syria.
"Well, look, I can't stand there and argue with him," Trump said. "I'd rather have him get out of Syria, to be honest with you. I'd rather have him, you know, work with him on the Ukraine than standing and arguing about whether or not 'cause that whole thing was set up by the Democrats."
Earlier Saturday, the Kremlin issued a statement saying the leaders had reached agreement on a number of principles for the future of civil war-torn Syria now that the Islamic State group has largely been pushed out. Among the agreements' key points, according to the Russians, were an affirmation of de-escalation zones, a system to prevent dangerous incidents between American and Russian forces, and a commitment to a peaceful solution governed by a Geneva peace process.
The Kremlin quickly promoted the agreement as the White House stayed silent. Trump told reporters that the deal was reached "very quickly" and that it would save "tremendous numbers of lives." And he praised his relationship with Putin, saying the two "seem to have a very good feeling for each other and a good relationship, considering we don't know each other well."
Video from the summit in the seaside city of Danang, Vietnam, showed Trump and Putin shaking hands and chatting, including during the world leaders' traditional group photo. The two walked together down a path to the photo site, conversing amiably, with Trump punctuating his thoughts with hand gestures and Putin smiling.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
The high-profile governors races decided last week have put the spotlight on 36 gubernatorial contests next year, in which Democratic and Republican candidates are positioning and repositioning themselves as outsiders, reliable choices, giant slayers and job creators.
Nine House members already have decide to run for governor instead of seeking reelection, including Rep. Jim Renacci, a four-term congressman competing in the closely watched Ohio governors race.
GOP Gov. John Kasich must leave office because of term limits, and the party that wins his seat in 2018 will play an influential role in the battleground state in the 2020 White House race.
Another race to watch is Floridas. State law keeps Republican Gov. Rick Scott from seeking reelection, in the early tossup race. With so many voters and Electoral College delegates in Florida, winning the governors seat is also key for both parties.
And control of governorships and state legislatures will give the political party in power at least some authority in redrawing congressional districts after the 2020 census.
To be sure, President Donald Trump will loom large over the races, with Democrats looking in part to build campaigns against GOP candidates who back the presidents agenda, while Republicans calibrate after last weeks losses in Virginia and New Jersey, the extent to which they support the Trump agenda.
In light of the huge Democratic victories on Tuesday, Republican candidates for governor around the country are growing uneasy about their chances heading into 2018, said the Democratic Governors Association. President Trump remains very unpopular, and Democratic voters showed they are fired up and prepared to turn out in record numbers.
Political analysts also predict record amounts to be spent on the races.
Democrats will defend nine seats and risk losing two, with no solid opportunity to take a GOP-held seat, according to the Cook Political Report. Republicans will defend 26 seats with the potential to lose five, and a strong chance of losing New Mexico, the Cook report also shows.
Given the number of GOP-held seats up, it is not unreasonable to expect Democrats to pick up seats, Cook handicappers write. The question now is how many.
Several of the seats that Republicans hold are in states that 2016 White House Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton won, including open ones in Maine, New Mexico and Nevada, and with incumbents in Maryland and Massachusetts.
In the Nevada race, Republicans and Democrats each have sizable primary fields, which include Republican Attorney General Adam Laxalt, the son of former U.S. Senator Pete Domenici.
GOP primary candidate State Treasurer Dan Schwartz launched a website Sunday highlighting Laxalts campaign financing.
Adam Laxalt is playing this regular guy, but hes being bought and sold by outsider money, says general campaign consultant Rory McShane. If voters go to (the) site, and the information is okay for them, then its okay for them.
The Democratic candidates in the race, so far, are Clark County Commissioners Chris Giunchigliani and Steve Sisolak.
Former White House National Security Adviser Michael Flynn and his son are reportedly being investigated by special counsel Robert Mueller in connection with an alleged multimillion-dollar plot to nab a Muslim cleric in the United States and deliver him to Turkey.
The purported incident and the Flynns potential involvement being part of Muellers Russia collusion-meddling probe was reported first by The Wall Street Journal.
People familiar with the investigation told the newspaper that Flynn, a retired Army lieutenant general, and son Michael Flynn Jr. were set to get as much as $15 million to deliver cleric Fethullah Gulen to the Turkish government.
Turkey officials were apparently anxious to get the cleric after President Recap Tayyip Erdogan tried and failed to get the United States to extradite Gulen, whom Turkish officials accuse of being a terrorist.
A Flynn spokesman declined to comment for the newspaper on the story.
On Sunday, the Turkish Embassy in Washington said Gulen was the mastermind behind an assassination attempt on Erdogen and a failed 2016 terror coup in which 250 people were killed in Turkey. However, embassy officials dismissed as utterly false, ludicrous and groundless" news reports that the Turkish government tried illegally to get the cleric to Turkey.
The fact that Fethullah Gulen continues to find refuge in the United States remains perplexing and deeply frustrating for the Turkish people, the statement in part reads. We continue to work in close coordination with our colleagues in the relevant U.S. agencies to ensure that they comprehend the full scope of the criminality of the Fethullah Gulen Terror Organization.
NBC is reporting that Muellers team, in its Justice Department investigation, is also looking into an alleged December 2016 meeting in which Flynn allegedly met with Turkish officials before President Trumps inauguration about perhaps trying to use his influence to help the Turkish government.
President Donald Trumps tour of Asia continued Sunday with his arrival in the Philippines, the last of five nations on his itinerary before he returns to the United States.
The president is scheduled to attend a pair of international summits and meet several times with Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte.
The leader of the Philippines has come under intense criticism from human rights advocates for overseeing a violent drug crackdown that includes extrajudicial killings. Trump has previously praised Duterte's handling of his nation's drug problems.
Trump arrived in Manila late Sunday afternoon local time after a brief stop in Vietnam.
Just hours before his arrival, riot police worked to prevent hundreds of protesters from reaching the U.S. Embassy in Manila, Reuters reported.
The demonstrators carried placards reading Dump Trump and Down with U.S. Imperialism, the report said.
In Manila, Trump was scheduled to meet with leaders of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and other East Asian nations.
In meetings with Duterte, Trump will reportedly try to win over a leader who has expressed a strong anti-U.S. sentiment.
The Associated Press contributed to this story.
One day after criticizing past leaders of U.S. intelligence agencies as political hacks, President Donald Trump clarified Sunday that he stands behind the agencies current leadership.
At a news conference in Hanoi, Vietnam, as he continues his 13-day Asia trip, Trump also said that he thinks Russian President Vladimir Putin believes it when he says Moscow did not interfere in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.
But Trump made clear that he sides with U.S. intelligence agencies, which have concluded that Russia did meddle in the election.
I believe that he feels that he and Russia did not meddle in the election, Trump said of Putin at the joint news conference with Vietnam's President Tran Dai Quang.
As to whether I believe it, I'm with our agencies, the president added. As currently led by fine people, I believe very much in our intelligence agencies.
"As to whether I believe it, I'm with our agencies. As currently led by fine people, I believe very much in our intelligence agencies. President Donald Trump
The U.S. intelligence community has concluded that Russia interfered in the election to help Trump defeat Democrat Hillary Clinton.
Speaking to reporters aboard Air Force One on Saturday, Trump had said that Putin again vehemently denied the allegations -- this time during an economic summit in Vietnam. Trump said he believed that when he tells me that, he means it.
Trump had also dismissed former U.S. intelligence officials as political hacks and accused Democrats of using the issue to try to sabotage relations between the two countries, putting lives at risk.
But Trumps Saturday comments drew sharp criticism in the United States, with U.S. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., and others asserting that the president seemed to side with Putin over U.S. intelligence professionals, Politico reported.
At the news conference, Trump reiterated his view that it's crucial for the U.S. to get along with Russia, and seemed to suggest that it was time to remove the sanctions Congress has slapped on Russia in retaliation for its election meddling efforts.
It's now time to get back to healing a world that is shattered and broken," said Trump. "Those are very important things.
As he traveled to Hanoi, the second-to-last stop of his Asia trip, Trump told reporters that Putin "said he absolutely did not meddle in our election. He did not do what they are saying he did."
Every time he sees me, he said: `I didn't do that.' And I believe -- I really believe -- that when he tells me that, he means it," Trump said, calling the accusation an "artificial barrier" erected by Democrats.
The president lashed out at the former heads of the nation's intelligence community, and said there were plenty of reasons to be suspicious of their findings.
I mean, give me a break. They're political hacks," Trump said, citing by name James Clapper, the former director of national intelligence, John Brennan, the former CIA director and his ousted ex-FBI director James Comey, whom Trump said was "proven now to be a liar and he's proven to be a leaker.
In a tweet sent Sunday from Hanoi, Trump bashed the "haters and fools" he said are questioning his efforts to improve relations with Russia and accused critics of "playing politics" and hurting the country.
Trump's comments about Putin and "political hacks" brought criticism from lawmakers with ties to the intelligence community.
U.S. Rep. Adam Schiff, the California Democrat who is his party's top member on the House's intelligence committee, said in a statement that Trump "fools no one" and that the president understands how the Russians intervened through hacking, social media and their own television coverage of the presidential race.
McCain, the GOPs presidential nominee in 2008, said in a statement that Trump's faith in Putin's denial was "naive."
"There's nothing America First' about taking the word of a KGB colonel over that of the American intelligence community," McCain wrote, referring to Putin's former career in Soviet intelligence. "Vladimir Putin does not have America's interests at heart."
Trump was in Hanoi for a brief state visit, including Sunday's meeting with Quang at the presidential palace.
In brief remarks after his arrival, Trump offered help negotiating with China on disputes over the South China Sea. Beijing's island-building there has drawn criticism from Washington, which argues the U.S. has a national interest in freedom of navigation in sea lanes critical for world trade. U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson earlier this month said China's "provocative actions" challenged international law and norms.
If I can help mediate or arbitrate, please let me know," Trump offered. "I'm a very good mediator and a very good arbitrator. I've done plenty of it from both sides."
The Associated Press contributed to this story.
A real estate investment firm owned by Bill Gates recently bought a giant plot of land in Arizona for $80 million to be developed into a smart city.
Arizona-based Belmont Partners, one of Gates investment firms, purchased close to 25,000 acres of land in Tonopah, around 50 miles west of Phoenix, to create a smart city called Belmont, KPNX reported.
SELF-DRIVING SHUTTLE CRASHES IN LAS VEGAS HOURS AFTER LAUNCH
Belmont will create a forward-thinking community with a communication and infrastructure spine that embraces cutting-edge technology, designed around high-speed digital networks, data centers, new manufacturing technologies and distribution models, autonomous vehicles and autonomous logistics hubs, Belmont Partners said in a press release, according to KPNX.
The community will transform a raw, blank slate into a purpose-built edge city built around a flexible infrastructure model, according to Belmont Properties.
Itll reportedly include space for 80,000 residential units, in addition to 470 acres for public schools and 3,800 acres designated for offices, commercial buildings and retail outlets.
BILL GATES PREDICTS POLIO WILL BE ELIMINATED THIS YEAR
The purchase is a smart move, Arizona Technology Councils Ron Schott told KPNX. He said the projected citys location is the right place -- near the newly opened Interstate-11 freeway, which is expected to expand its route to run through Belmont, to Las Vegas.
It remains unclear when Belmont would be built.
Gates smart city would follow in the footsteps of a similar metropolis being built in Columbus, Ohio.
The latest target of pro-ISIS hackers is none other than 800 school websites across the United States.
The widespread hack occurred last Monday, and lasted two hours, in which visitors were redirected to a YouTube propaganda video featuring Arabic audio, the text, I love Islamic State (ISIS) and images of former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein.
Unless we have irrefutable evidence to suggest otherwise, we need to assume confidential data has been compromised, Hamid Karimi, vice president of business development and the security expert at Beyond Security. That should be a cause for concern. To remedy the situation, all schools and institutions that serve minors must submit to (a) stricter set of cybersecurity rules.
The breached school websites, which spanned nationwide from New Jersey to Arizona and Virginia to Connecticut, are all powered by a company called SchoolDesk. The company since has handed over its server which runs out of Georgia to the FBI for investigation and also has hired external security firms to trace the hackers. The Atlanta-based company said after the hack that technicians detected that a small file had been injected into the root of one of its websites.
The websites were redirected to an iframed YouTube video. No data was lost or altered in any way. Because were currently working with the FBI in an active investigation of this incident, as well as forensic team from Microsoft, we cannot yet discuss any technical details or exact methods of access to SchoolDesks network or software, a spokesperson for SchoolDesk told Fox News.
The company has insisted that no personal or student information was exposed, but some security experts say the matter should be closely monitored, especially as minors are involved.
In most hacks, organizations do not have full visibility into what happened or what information was compromised, surmised Eric Cole, who served as commissioner on cyber security for President Barack Obama, and was formally a senior vice president at MacAfee and the chief scientist at Lockheed Martin. In almost every breach, what is initially reported is usually extremely conservative and over the weeks following a breach, it is always worse than what was originally reported.
The proud culprits of the hack? A shadowy pro-ISIS hacktivist outfit known as Team System DZ.
Lorraine Murphy of The Cryptosphere, a specialist hacking and malware news site, which long has been tracking Team System DZ, said that the group generally speaking is focused on making public deface rather than penetrating systems and getting information, and has been in-motion pre-dating ISIS, going back to at least 2013.
They used to support freedom for Palestine, #OpFreeGaza, and freedom for Kashmir, and now they support ISIS, Murphy said. Team System DZ basically has one trick: take advantage of outdated WordPress sites, and make bold, scary-looking defaces. Its a trick that has been working for them for three years, and there is no reason to believe that it will stop working anytime soon.
Over the course of more than three years, the group has hacked vast and a seemingly arbitrary range of thousands of websites across the world from scores of U.S. government sites including the Washington State Department of Health, the Ohio Department of Administrative Services and the Howard County, Maryland government site, which were replaced with a black screen, Islamic calligraphy, the Call to Prayer and the words: You will be held accountable, Trump, you and all your people every drop of blood flowing in Muslim countries. Canadas Prince Albert police station also was targeted last week, and the city council in Aberdeen, Scotland, and even a local West Yorkshire, England rugby team have been apprehended in the past.
The wide range of targets all had one common characteristic: they had weak network and web protection, Karimi pointed out. It appears that Team DZ was acting opportunistically as opposed to surgically.
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Cyber forensic data has indicated that the attacks waged by the group initially came from Algeria, also indicated by the use of the DZ, which is the countrys internet domain code.
However, it is likely that they have franchised their defacing operations without a central command, Harimi explained, thus have become both global and difficult to track. For example, Alex Kassirer, director of counterterrorism at intel firm Flashpoint, told Fox News that the group is known to have at least one member from Jordan based on the actors pseudonym zilzal jordan, with zilzal being the Arabic word for earthquake.
The threat they pose is largely limited to the propaganda and messaging war, she continued.
The FBI long have been reported to be investigating the notorious Team System DZ, but declined to comment on the matter. It is believed that no one directly part of the sympathizer hacking group, despite how long they have been operating, are believed to ever have been made.
What they typically do is cyber-graffiti, they are attempting to spread propaganda on behalf of ISIS to garner support, noted Dan McNemar, director of threat intelligence at Binary Defense Systems. A number of pro-ISIS groups have come and gone, Team DZ has certainly been around the longest.
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But alliance ties between Team System DZ and ISIS itself remain murky. To date, ISIS has not formally acknowledged the group or indicated they have any authority over the cyber outfit. Yet as long as such hacking groups remain unscathed, so too does the propaganda and recruitment machine along with their potential to go beyond the realm of website defacement.
They have not been arrested primarily because they are a low-level operator that is more nuisance than genuine threat at this point. Why waste time on a web defacer, when we can spend time on high value targets instead? But we should be thinking about how these attacks could evolve in the future, added Jeff Bardin, chief information officer of Treadstone 71, a security firm specializing in cyber-threat intelligence and analyzing online jihadists and extremist groups. To go beyond mere propaganda into more serious territory like cyber extortion and threats.
A Florida man was arrested after police caught him drunk driving his lawn mower down a major highway, Fox 13 reported.
Police in Port St. Lucie noticed a man driving unsteadily down U.S. Highway 1 on Nov. 3, according to the report. The man, Kenneth Burton Alleshouse, 56, was riding his red Snapper lawn mower down the road while carrying a case of Budweiser beer, Fox 13 said.
According to a news release from the police department, an officer pulled Alleshouse over and said they clearly detected the smell of alcohol.
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Authorities tested the suspects blood alcohol level, and while they did not release the exact number, they did say it was three times above the legal limit, Fox 13 said. The legal blood alcohol level in Florida is .08.
Alleshouse was arrested for driving under the influence and brought to the St. Lucie County Jail, Fox 13 said.
This is not the only odd DUI arrest police in Florida have made in this month. On Nov. 2, police arrested a woman in Lakeland who was drunkenly riding a horse down a highway.
An allegedly drunk firefighter in Indiana was arrested in connection with the death of another firefighter after he reportedly hit the victim with his car Friday night.
Sheriffs deputies and three volunteer firefighters, who drove their individual cars, responded to the scene of a crash in Daviess County, Ind., WDRB reported.
A fourth firefighter, Colby Blake, 26, reportedly arrived shortly afterward in his Dodge Ram. With a blood alcohol level of .21, police said Blake plowed his truck straight into another vehicle parked on the side of the street.
In Indiana, the legal blood alcohol level for driving is .08
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Without stopping, the truck continued down the road before hitting a firefighter, Kendall Murphy, 27, and his car, WDRB said.
Blakes truck also reportedly crashed into a third car before finally stopping.
Murphy was pronounced dead on the scene, according to police. The suspect was reportedly not injured in the crashes.
Blake was arrested by authorities and held at the Daviess County Security Center, WDRB said.
He was charged with operating a motor vehicle while intoxicated, causing death and reckless driving, WDRB said.
Police in Maryland said they arrested a man in connection to the murder of a woman whose body was found behind a dumpster.
Elmer Campos-Martinez, 47, was charged with killing Dania Mendez de Guerra, 21, following an argument the pair had around midnight on Monday, after which she was reported missing, Fox 5 DC reported.
Investigators said the suspected admitted that hed been dating the victim and on the night she went missing, she reportedly tried to break up with him.
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Campos-Martinez told authorities that he and the victim both worked at KFC and he was waiting for her to get off work, Fox 5 DC reported. But when the victim later tried to end the relationship, the suspect reportedly punched her in the face three times and pushed her to the ground where she ultimately hit her head.
He told police that Mendez de Guerra was unresponsive after the fall so he stole her purse and phone and left the scene in a cab, Fox 5 DC said.
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Police reportedly discovered her body on Friday behind a dumpster in Wheaton.
A coroners report said the victim died of multiple blunt force trauma and asphyxia and her death was ruled a homicide, Fox 5 DC said.
The suspect was charged with second-degree murder and remains in jail without bond, according to Montgomery County Police.
A young mother and her boyfriend were being held in a Florida jail after the womans 3-year-old daughter was found dead in a wooded area Friday afternoon.
Police said Destinee J. Merrell, 23, told them that her boyfriend, Cory M. Hagwell, 29, had kicked the girl in the head because she had climbed out of her car seat, the Northwest Florida Daily News reported.
The child, identified as Adelynn Merrell, was then locked in a closet, where she died, police told the newspaper, adding that the body was found later in the woods.
Authorities said the girl had suffered head trauma, but the Okaloosa County Sheriffs Office said an autopsy would determine the exact cause of death.
The couple initially reported the child missing, but police said the mother later told them what happened, the newspaper reported.
Meanwhile, a 5-year-old boy in the womans care was found to be suffering from malnutrition, with bones in all regions of his body exposed, the newspaper reported.
Merrell faces three counts of child neglect and one count of aggravated child battery. Hagwell faces one count of aggravated child abuse.
More charges were expected, the sheriffs office told the newspaper.
Click here for more from the Northwest Florida Daily News.
A man in Tennessee was arrested and charged with the death of a 1-year-old who was accidentally shot with his gun by a 3-year-old on Friday, Fox Carolina reported.
Memphis Police said they arrested Shawn Moore, 25, and charged him with criminally negligent homicide, being a convicted felon in possession of a handgun and tampering with evidence.
Investigators found that a 3-year-old reportedly shot Robin Keefer, 1, after Moore placed the younger child in a bed that also held the suspects gun.
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Witnesses said they heard the gun go off at an apartment complex and the little girl was rushed to the hospital but she ultimately died, Fox Carolina reported.
It was not immediately clear if the two children were related. The 3-year-old was not identified.
Moore reportedly took the weapon and fled the area, but later turned himself into authorities and was booked in jail, police said.
A woman who worked with Devin Patrick Kelley, the shooter in last week's Texas church massacre, has described him as "a dude on the edge" and as someone who "scared me at the time."
Former Air Force Staff Sgt. Jessika Edwards told The New York Times that Kelley would shake with rage and vow to kill his superiors when he was assigned menial tasks as punishment for poor performance. At one point, Edwards told the Times, she warned others in the squadron to go easy on Kelley, believing he was likely to come back and "shoot up the place."
"He would get so upset," said Edwards, "and just keep saying, 'I want to kill them.'"
Kelley shot and killed 26 people and injured 20 others Sunday when he walked into the First Baptist Church in Sutherland Springs, Texas and opened fire. He died of what appeared to be a self-inflicted gunshot wound after the massacre.
Edwards said she worked with Kelley in 2011 at Holloman Air Force Base in New Mexico. The following year, Kelley was court-martialed after admitting to choking his then-wife and fracturing her son's skull. He was sentenced to 12 months in confinement -- but according to the Times, he was released in June 2013 and given a bad-conduct discharge, having served just eight months.
Tessa Brennaman, Kelley's former wife, told the syndicated "Inside Edition" program that her husband was abusive and at one point, threatened to kill her after she received a speeding ticket.
"He had a gun in his holster right here," Brennaman recounted, "and he took that gun out and he put it to my temple and he told me, 'Do you want to die? Do you want to die?'"
Edwards told the Times Kelley called her after he left the Air Force and asked for a job reference. The two then began chatting on Facebook, and Kelley's messages deteriorated into complaints about his second wife, his mother-in-law, and his family's attempts to get him to take his medication.
In 2015, Edwards said Kelley became obsessed with Dylann Roof, the white gunman who killed nine black people in a Charleston, S.C. church.
"He was excited about it," she told the paper. "He went on and on and on about it, saying 'Isnt it cool? Isnt it cool? Have you watched the videos?'"
The following year, Edwards said, Kelley sent her photos of a military-style rifle he said he was building. This past spring, he told her he was buying dogs online and using them for target practice.
"I told him this was not normal, and he needed the kind of help I could not give him," Ms. Edwards said. "Before I unfriended him, I gave him my number. I told him, 'If you ever are thinking about hurting yourself or someone else, just call.'"
Click for more from The New York Times.
Two villagers who said they were among the first to find the body of Sgt. La David Johnson in Niger last month recalled discovering the body with a gaping head wound and the soldier's hands tied, a report said Friday.
The Washington Post reported that the villagers' accounts raise the possibility that Johnson was first captured in the Oct. 4 ambush before being killed.
His two arms were tied behind his back, Adamou Boubacar, 23, a farmer, told the paper in a phone interview. Another witness told the paper separately that the back of Johnson's head was a mess, as if they had hit him with something hard, like a hammer. They took his shoes. He was wearing only socks.
Johnson, 25, was one of the four U.S. soliders killed in an ambush believed to have been orchestrated by militants linked to the Islamic State group in Niger. The attack took place outside a remote village called Tongo Tongo.
Air support from French jets took an hour to arrive at the scene and the soldiers, who were joined by 30 Nigerian troops, had started to run out of ammunition, the report said.
An unnamed U.S. military official told the paper that Johnsons hands were not tied when Americans received his body, but the body was battered. The official warned about rushing to judgement until the investigations are completed.
The Pentagon and FBI are conducting a probe into the ambush to determine if any errors were made in intelligence prior to the mission.
The Post, citing an unnamed U.S. military official, reported that it appears that the soldiers' mission was changed after they left the base and were sent to assist another team in taking out a top ISIS target called Dadou. Five Nigerian soldiers were also killed in the ambush.
Boubacar told the paper that Johnsons remains were found on Oct. 6, two days after the ambush. The bodies of the other three soldiers, believed to have been killed in action, were reportedly found just hours after the fight, the report said.
Johnsons death made headlines after President Trumps phone call with his widow. The call lead to a public dispute between the Trump administration and Democratic Rep. Frederica Wilson over comments the president made during the call.
Wilson called Trumps remarks insensitive and Trump said she fabricated what he said.
A Chipotle employee in New York served a familiar face last week: the man she says robbed her during a home invasion in May.
Police told the New York Post the suspect placed his order with the worker, who immediately recognized him.
The woman then confronted the man about the May 18 incident, prompting him to grab his food and run from the eatery in an encounter captured on surveillance video.
The suspect, along with two other men, broke into the victim's apartment in Brooklyn through the fire escape, according to police.
At the time, the burglars encountered three women inside and showed a gun. After tying up the three women and covering them with a blanket, the three men made off with about $1,500, police told the New York Post.
The suspect in the Chipotle encounter is described as between 25 to 35 years old, and about 5-foot-6. New York Police have not yet released a description of the other two suspects.
The mother of the victim, both of whom asked not to be identified, told CBS 2: She recognized him, but she still scared.
The victims mother said she was at work during the 5:30 a.m. home invasion robbery. The suspects entered the apartment through a window they accessed from the fire escape.
Chipotle reportedly has transferred the worker to another location for her safety.
A Colorado girl who suffers from seizures joined a lawsuit to sue U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions in a bid to legalize medical marijuana nationwide.
Alexis Bortell, 12, told FOX31 Denver she was diagnosed with epilepsy and traditional medicine wasnt helping her seizures. Her doctors in Texas recommended an invasive brain surgery, but a pediatrician suggested medical marijuana.
"As the seizures got worse, we had to move to Colorado to get cannabis because it's illegal in Texas," Bortell told the news site. "I'd say [medical marijuana is] a lot better than brain surgery.
Bortell found that taking a drop of Haleighs Hope, a strain of cannabis oil, twice a day prevented the seizures from coming back. Shes been seizure-free for nearly three years, but she cant return to Texas because marijuana is illegal there. Colorado is one of several states that legalized marijuana for medicinal and recreational use.
"I would like to be able to visit my grandparents without risking being taken to a foster home," she said.
Bortell decided to join a lawsuit to legalize medical marijuana in all states. The case was first started by another child, a military veteran, a marijuana advocacy group and Marvin Washington, a former Broncos player. Twenty-nine states and the District of Columbia have legalized medical marijuana.
Sessions has been openly opposed to legalizing marijuana, saying in September: Ive never felt that we should legalize marijuana," according to Reuters.
It doesnt strike me that the country would be better if its being sold at every streetcorner, Sessions said during a news conference in San Diego.
Bortell said she hopes the lawsuit will normalize the substance for medical reasons.
She said, "We'll be able to be treated like what you call 'normal' families.
Dogged cold case detectives have linked a known sexual predator to the decades-old murder of a 19-year-old woman near San Francisco through DNA.
Leon Seymour, 71, was charged Wednesday with fatally stabbing Denise Lampe in Daly City, Calif., in 1976. Prosecutors said a blood stain on Lampes jacket matched Seymours DNA.
Were grateful to have the clarity that DNA evidence brings us, San Mateo County Chief Deputy District Attorney Karen Guidotti said, according to the San Jose Mercury News. Mr. Seymour can finally be brought to justice. Something he has avoided for many, many years.
Seymour was civilly committed to a state mental hospital after serving a 33-year prison sentence for sexually assaulting six women, the San Mateo Daily Journal reported Saturday. The charges against him included rape and attempted sodomy.
Seymour is being held on $10 million bail after being charged with Lampes death.
Authorities had long believed Lampe and four other San Mateo County women had been victims of a serial killer. The killings became known as the notorious Gypsy Hill Murders.
The victims were all stabbed multiple times and were all suspected to have been raped before they were killed. The murders occurred over a span of five months in 1976.
In 2015, Rodney Halbower, an Oregon inmate, was arrested in connection with two of the murders, the Mercury News reported Thursday. He goes on trial for the murders in January.
DNA evidence also linked him to the murder of a female student in Nevada in 1976.
Following the DNA hit, police worked on a timeline for Halbower and determined he was incarcerated at the time of Lampes death, according to the paper.
San Mateo prosecutor Sean Gallagher said it was a working assumption one person killed the five women.
They were all very similar, he said, according to the paper. The targeted ages of the victims, in how they were killed, close in time, close in geography to where they disappeared or where the bodies were found.
Seymours attorney Paul DeMeester said the DNA match is the only evidence hes aware of tying his client to the Lampe murder.
DNA is going to be front and center of this case, he told the Daily Journal.
San Mateo District Attorney Steve Wagstaffe told the paper that prosecutors notified members of Lampes family of the arrest.
We believe we are going to be able to obtain justice for them by holding the killer of their loved one accountable, he said.
The small Texas town that is still reeling from the church massacre that left 26 people dead including the pastors teenage daughter began to bury victims on Saturday.
Richard Rodriguez, 64, and his wife, Therese, 66, both cancer survivors, were buried in Sutherland Springs Cemetery as about 250 family members and friends attended the services, reports Reuters.
Gunman Devin Kelley opened fire on worshippers at the First Baptist Church last Sunday, killing 26 people and wounding 20 others before taking his own life.
Saturdays events were extra poignant, as they fell on Veterans Day. Half the victims had connections to the Air Force. Kelley himself also served in the Air Force, but he was kicked out after pleading guilty to assaulting his ex-wife and her young son.
This has been a trying day well, a trying week, Frank Pomeroy, the pastor at First Baptist Church, told the several dozen people gathered on a cemetery hill as he choked back tears, reports the New York Times. Pomeroy's 14-year-old daughter, Belle, was one of those murdered by Kelley.
TEXAS CHURCH GUNMAN 'SCARED ME,' EX-AIR FORCE COLLEAGUE SAYS
Rodriguez, a retired railroad worker, was fun-loving and a devoted family man, according to his younger brother Tony Rodriguez.
He was happy, joyful, always joking around. He loved his family, Rodriguez said through tears, reports Reuters. He was always there when we needed him.
At the Grace Bible Church in La Vernia, where the funeral service was held, about 500 people listened to tributes to the couple, who married in 2006. Rodriguezs first wife died 15 years ago.
Reuters reports that his only child, daughter Regina Rodriguez, 33, said it was a small comfort that her father and Therese died together, deeply in love and inside their church.
What a perfect way to leave this world, not one of them going through mourning and burying each other, because I know that my dad couldnt do it again, she said, Reuters reports.
TEXAS CHURCH SHOOTER'S EX-WIFE SAYS HE ABUSED AND THREATENED TO KILL HER
The Rodriguez burial at the cemetery in Sutherland Springs is the first of a series of grim burials this week, including eight members of the same family.
That family included a mother who was 18 weeks pregnant and an 18-month-old girl. The unborn child was among the 26 killed by Kelley.
The First Baptist Church reportedly said it would open its sanctuary to the public on Sunday as a memorial to the dead.
The scene of this unspeakable event has been transformed into a beautiful memorial that celebrates and pays tribute to the lives that were lost, the church said in a press release, according to Reuters.
Authorities have found nearly 50 pounds of cocaine that washed up on a central Florida beach.
A woman saw the cocaine wrapped in a package as she was walking along the beach in Melbourne Friday, the Brevard County Sheriff's Office said.
The package was found near where a sailboat washed ashore during Hurricane Irma.
You would think that South Florida would get the cocaine washing upnot middle, or central Florida. Its a surprise, Richard Threlfall, who was visiting the beach, told WFTV.
The special investigations unit with the sheriff's office seized the cocaine.
Investigators said there were no other reports of cocaine washing ashore.
Melbourne Beach resident Heather Pepe-Dillon told WFTV the cocaine package could have come from just about anywhere.
You could put together any story, but none of them are good, she said.
A New York City man accused of molesting a 6-year-old boy -- during the child's birthday party -- tried to escape the apartment where it took place, but instead plunged to his death Thursday.
Parents throwing a birthday party at the apartment of Edgar Collaguazo, 44, locked him in his bedroom of his Queens apartment after he allegedly was caught inappropriately touching the boy, The New York Post reported.
A drunk Collaguazo tried to escape out a window of his fourth-floor apartment, and fell to his death around 1 a.m. Thursday, according to reports.
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The 6-year-old reportedly lived inside Collaguazos apartment with his parents who rented a room from him. The boy was one of two other children who Collaguazo invited into his bedroom to watch a movie, the Post added.
One of the children, a 5-year-old girl, came out of the room looking different, the boys mother told the New York Daily News.
The girls mother looked inside the room and saw the birthday boy on Collaguazos lap, with the adult's hand down the child's pants, the Post reported.
The childrens fathers then started to beat Collaguazo while the victims mother called police -- and locked Collaguazo in his room while they waited for cops to arrive.
A witness said he saw Collaguazo trying to climb over security bars but let go and landed on an iron fence before falling over to the ground.
ELMO IMPERSONATOR ACCUSED OF SEXUALLY ABUSING YOUNG BOYS
Collaguazo was rushed to a hospital, but doctors couldnt save him. He reportedly had five prior arrests.
The 6-year-olds mother told the Post her son and Collaguazo were close but noted she didnt know of previous inappropriate touching.
I never imagined he was able to do something like that, the victims mother said.
Nearly two dozen people were injured Saturday night when a wooden platform collapsed during a birthday party at a San Diego gym, officials said.
The 21 children and two adults gathered at Vault PK in Barrio Logan, an indoor gym that specializes in parkour a military obstacle course training when the celebration turned into horror just before 8 p.m., FOX5 San Diego reported. The platform, which was 10 feet by 30 feet, collapsed while it was dangling about 10 feet above ground, striking several people who were standing below it.
It was a freak accident, Zachary Smith, who was standing on the platform at the time it fell, told the Los Angeles Times.
Smith added that the platform was a type of viewing area and that a stairwell below had buckled before the platform toppled. Children were also running up and down the stairwell to get pizza just before the incident, another parent told the newspaper. A snapchat video obtained by FOX5 shows broken wooden planks and shattered glass covering the floor while parents move children to a safer area.
At least 21 children were hospitalized, and at least four treated for major, including spinal, injuries, San Diego Fire Departments Deputy Chief Steve Wright told reporters Saturday night. The other 17 children suffered minor injuries.
Two women, ages 72 and 46, were also hospitalized in the incident, according to FOX5. The severity of their injuries is unclear.
Wright said its unclear if the number of people or the construction of the platform contributed to its collapse. Officials are investigating the incident.
An investigation of a reported plot by a Bloods gang member to kill a New Jersey police officer resulted in the arrests of three people on firearm and drug charges, authorities said Friday.
The probe began after a local gang member, Salik Hinton, told several people he was "plotting to kill an Asbury Park police officer," Sgt. Michael Casey said.
Authorities conducted a search of a home in Asbury Park early Friday and arrested Hinton, 28, and two other people -- 32-year-old Willie Clark and Shakira Smith, 31, -- on charges of possessing a defaced firearm, unlawfully possessing weapons, and drug possession.
Smith was arrested on two child endangerment counts, according to Asbury Park Police.
In addition to finding weapons, drugs, and cash at the home, police said they found a $800 bike that "one of the defendants admitted they had bought from a drug addict on the streets for $5."
At a second search of Hinton's parent's home in Neptune, police found "paraphernalia indicative of drug distribution," and $2,435 in cash from proceeds of drug transactions.
No charges have been filed in connection with the reported plot.
Seven people were shot, at least one sustaining serious injuries, in a single incident early Sunday at a nightclub in Gary, Indiana, authorities said.
Gary police Detective Sgt. William Fazekas said one man involved in the shooting is in custody and officers are seeking another. Police have described the incident as isolated.
Fazekas described most victims in the shooting in the northern Indiana city as being in stable condition and receiving treatment at hospitals. However, he said one victim was taken to a hospital in Chicago, about 25 miles (40 kilometers) away, with more serious injuries.
Police found four male and three female victims at Dirtty's Jazz and Blues Club. An eighth person hurt his leg while trying to get to safety.
There were no other details related to suspects, victims or circumstances of the shooting at the venue on the city's east side. Lt. Dawn Westerfield, a spokeswoman for the department, said she expected to have more information later Sunday or early Monday.
A representative of the club did not immediately return a message from The Associated Press seeking comment.
Turkey has dismissed as "utterly false, ludicrous and groundless" a report that Turkish officials may have discussed paying millions of dollars to have a U.S.-based Muslim cleric kidnapped.
The Wall Street Journal reported Friday that Special Counsel Robert Mueller was investigating an alleged plot involving former U.S. National Security Adviser Michael Flynn and his son to hand Fethullah Gulen over to Ankara for as much as $15 million.
Turkey blames the cleric and his supporters for a July 2016 military coup attempt that killed 250 people. Gulen, who lives in Pennsylvania, has denied being behind it.
The Turkish Embassy in Washington reiterated demands late Saturday for the United States to extradite Gulen so he can stand trial. The embassy in a statement rejected "all allegations that Turkey would resort to means external to the rule of law" to get Gulen back on Turkish soil.
Flynn's lawyers also have disputed the Journal report that Mueller was looking into a meeting where Flynn allegedly discussed a plan that would pay him and his son "to forcibly remove" Gulen.
Flynn, a retired lieutenant general, did lobbying work for Turkey last year.
"Out of respect for the process of the various investigations regarding the 2016 campaign, we have intentionally avoided responding to every rumor or allegation," the lawyers said in a statement.
"But today's news cycle has brought allegations about General Flynn, ranging from kidnapping to bribery, that are so outrageous and prejudicial that we are making an exception to our usual rule: they are false," they said. .
Michael Flynn Jr.'s attorney declined to comment on the allegations.
Gulen has been living in the U.S. for nearly two decades. He is a former ally of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan until their 2013 public falling-out led the government to declare Gulen's network a terror group.
Nearly 50,000 people are behind bars in Turkey and more than 100,000 civil servants have been dismissed from their jobs for alleged links to the cleric's network in the government's crackdown after the failed coup.
Also behind bars in Turkey for alleged links to Gulen is U.S. pastor Andrew Brunson, who has lived in Turkey for over 20 years. Erdogan said in September the U.S. was pressing Turkey to return a "cleric" while refusing to hand over another "cleric."
The Turkish Embassy said the Turkish people find Gulen's continued refuge in the U.S. "perplexing and deeply frustrating."
Complicating relations further is the case of a Turkish-Iranian businessman on trial in the U.S. for evading U.S. sanctions on Iran. A former Turkish economy minister and an executive of a state-owned Turkish bank have also been indicted.
In a meeting last week, Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim and U.S. Vice President Michael Pence discussed the cases among other sources of strain, including the U.S. backing of Syrian Kurdish militants in the war against the Islamic State group.
Turkey has been infuriated by the U.S. support for a group it considers an extension of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party or PKK, which has waged an insurgency within Turkey for more than 30 years.
Three U.S. Navy aircraft carriers joined South Korea forces on Saturday to begin joint naval exercises in the waters off the Korean Peninsula in a show of force against North Korea as President Donald Trump ends his five-country Asia tour.
The USS Ronald Reagan, USS Nimitz and USS Theodore Roosevelt strike groups operated together, marking the first time three American aircraft carriers have trained together since 2007, according to the U.S. Pacific Fleet which released a video of the training on Sunday. The carriers will conduct several training activities, including air defense drills, sea surveillance and defense air combat, until Tuesday.
Clearly theres no big message, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said Monday. This is what we normally do with allies. This is a normal operation of interoperability and working together.
He added that arranging such joint exercises is often a scheduling issue.
The four-day exercises also will involve 11 U.S. Aegis ships and seven South Korean naval vessels, including two Aegis ships. The Aegis technology refers to missile tracking and guidance.
They will aim to enhance combined operation and aerial strike capabilities and also display strong will and firm military readiness to defeat any provocation by North Korea with dominant force in the event of crisis, Seouls military said in a statement.
USS Nimitz then will proceed home to Washington State following a deployment to the Persian Gulf which included flying strike missions against ISIS. USS Theodore Roosevelt then will head to the Persian Gulf. USS Reagan, based in Japan, will continue operations in the area.
The last time three U.S. Navy aircraft carriers sailed together off the Korean Peninsula was 1969, shortly after North Korea shot down a U.S. spy plane killing 31 Americans, according to Naval History and Heritage Command.
The training comes as Trump concludes his five-country Asia tour, meeting with Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte on Monday and attending the 50th anniversary of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations. Trumps lengthy trip centered on trade and the North Korean missile and nuclear crisis. Trump met with Japan and South Korea officials early last week.
He directly addressed North Korea in a speech at South Koreas parliament on Wednesday, telling Kim Jong Un: Do not underestimate us. And do not try us.
Trump continued his tough talk against Pyongyang on Friday in a speech to business leaders at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Da Nang, Vietnam, saying that the regions future must not be held hostage to a dictators twisted fantasies of violent conquest and nuclear blackmail, referring to the North Korean leader.
Fox News Lucas Tomlinson and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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Britain says Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson has spoken to the husband of a British woman imprisoned in Iran as pressure mounts on the Conservative government to step up efforts to free her.
The Foreign Office says Johnson and Richard Ratcliffe spoke by phone Sunday, but did not elaborate further.
Dual U.K.-Iranian citizen Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe is serving a five-year sentence for plotting the "soft toppling" of Iran's government.
Earlier this month, Johnson told lawmakers that Zaghari-Ratcliffe was "teaching people journalism" when she was detained last year. Her family and employer insist she was simply visiting her family.
On Sunday, Environment Secretary Michael Gove said "I don't know" when asked what Zaghari-Ratcliffe was doing in Iran.
Family and friends say the confusion has put Zaghari-Ratcliffe at risk of a longer prison sentence.
More than 400 people were killed when a powerful 7.3 magnitude earthquake struck near Iraq-Iran boarder on Sunday, sending residents fleeing as thousands of residents were left injured, officials said on Monday.
The quake was centered 19 miles outside the eastern Iraqi city of Halabja and struck around 9:48 p.m. Iran time. Residents were retiring for the night at the time. Iran's western Kermanshah province, a rural mountainous region, bore the brunt of the temblor, with Iran's state-run news agency reporting the quake killed 407 people in the country and injured another 6,700.
In Iraq, the earthquake killed at least seven people and injured 535 there, all in the country's northern, semiautonomous Kurdish region, according to Iraq's Interior Ministry. Iraqi seismologist Abdul-Karim Abdullah Taqi, who runs the earthquake monitoring group at the state-run Meteorological Department, said the main reason for the lower casualty figure in Iraq was the angle and the direction of the fault line in this particular quake, as well as the nature of the Iraqi geological formations that could better absorb the shocks.
More than 100 aftershocks were felt after the quake that could be felt on the Mediterranean coast about 660 miles away. It struck at a depth of 14.4 miles, a shallow depth that can cause broad damage. Magnitude 7 earthquakes on their own are capable of widespread, heavy damage. Iranian social media and news agencies showed images and videos of people fleeing their homes. Kokab Fard, a 49-year-old housewife in Sarpol-e-Zahab, said she could only flee empty-handed when her apartment complex collapsed.
"Immediately after I managed to get out, the building collapsed," Fard said. "I have no access to my belongings."
Reza Mohammadi, 51, said he and his family ran out into the alley following the first shock he felt.
"I tried to get back to pick some stuff but it totally collapsed in the second wave," Mohammadi said.
The semi-official ILNA news agency said at least 14 provinces in Iran had been affected by the earthquake. Officials announced that schools in Kermanshah and Ilam provinces would be closed on Monday because of the temblor.
Provincial leaders in Kermanshah announced three days of mourning, Reuters reported. Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei offered his condolences on Monday morning and urged rescuers and all government agencies to do all they could to help those affected, according to state media.
In Iraq, Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi issued a directive for the country's civil defense teams and "related institutions" to respond to the natural disaster. Brig. Gen. Saad Maan, an Interior Ministry spokesman, gave the casualty figures for Iraq.
Meanwhile, neighboring countries have offered their condolences and support in the wake of the disaster. Turkey dispatched emergency aid to northern Iraq as officials expressed their "deep sadness" at the tragedy. Prime Minister Binali Yildirim said his country took immediate action to provide medical and food aid to northern Iraq. Kerem Kinik, Turkish Red Crescent's vice president, told the Associated Press from Habur border crossing that 33 aid trucks were en route to Iraq's city of Sulaimaniyah, carrying 3,000 tents and heaters, 10,000 beds and blankets as well as food.
A Turkish military cargo plane arrived in Iraq as the official Anadolu news agency reported multiple dispatches by Turkey's disaster agency. Ankara also said it would help Iran if Tehran requests assistance.
Relations between Iraq's semi-autonomous Kurdish region and Turkey were strained following the Iraqi Kurds' controversial September independence referendum.
Pakistan's government also extended its deepest condolences for the loss of life and injuries suffered by "our Iranian and Iraqi brethren."Foreign Minister Khawaja Muhammad Asif said Pakistanis' "thoughts and prayers are with the Iranian and Iraqi brothers who lost their lives in this tragic calamity and we pray for the speedy recovery of the injured."
Iran sits on many major fault lines and is prone to near-daily quakes. In 2003, a magnitude 6.6 earthquake flattened the historic city of Bam, killing 26,000 people. The last major casualty earthquake in Iran struck in East Azerbaijan province in August 2012, killing over 300 people.
The Iraqi city of Halabja, closest to the epicenter, is notorious for the 1988 chemical attack in which Saddam Hussein's regime killed some 5,000 people with mustard gas -- the deadliest chemical weapons attack ever against civilians.
The Associated Press contributed to this story.
Mass graves discovered at an Iraqi airbase that was previously under the Islamic State groups control could contain up to 400 bodies, an Iraqi official said Sunday after local residents described the atrocities the terror group carried out.
The bodies were found in an abandoned base near Hawija, a northern town retaken in early October, Kirkuk governor Rakan Saed said, adding that the place was turned into an execution ground. Hawija, about 150 miles north of Baghdad, was under ISIS control since 2013 until last month.
Officials discovered torn clothing and possible human bones and skulls in the area. Its unclear when the bodies, which include civilians and security forces, will be exhumed.
Khalaf Luhaibi, a local shepherd, led troops to the mass graves and said ISIS brought captives to the area, shot and killed them or poured oil over them and lit them on fire. Other residents also gave witness accounts of the atrocities ISIS carried out when it held control of the area, the BBC reported.
ISIS territory in Iraq has diminished significantly after Iraqi forces drove its fighters out of two key cities Mosul and Raqqa earlier this year. Iraqi forces have driven ISIS from nearly all of its territory, uncovering several mass graves in other newly liberated areas.
On Saturday, Iraq's Prime Minister announced an operation to capture a patch of territory on the western edge of the country near the border with Syria. Hours later, Iraqi Defense Ministry announced capturing Romana area, saying the troops will head to nearby town of Rawa.
According to Ahmed al-Asadi, a spokesman for the Shiite-majority paramilitary forces, Rawa is the last Iraqi town held by ISIS, which still controls some scattered small villages in mainly desert areas.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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President Trump said Saturday that he would never call North Korean leader Kim Jong Un short and fat, after Kims government slammed Trump as an old lunatic following a recent speech in neighboring South Korea.
Why would Kim Jong Un insult me by calling me old, when I would NEVER call him short and fat? Oh well, I try so hard to be his friend -- and maybe someday that will happen!, Trump tweeted Saturday evening while in Vietnam, as part of his five-nation Asian trip.
Trump was responding to North Korea calling his South Korea speech days earlier: reckless remarks by an old lunatic."
The president is visiting China, South Korea and other countries in the region in an effort to get them to help put pressure on North Korea to curtail its pursuit of a nuclear weapons arsenal. Trump said he also spoke while in Vietnam earlier this weekend with Russian President Vladimir Putin about the North Korea issue.
Do not underestimate us, Trump said Tuesday in a speech delivered to South Korea's National Assembly. And do not try us. ... The weapons you're acquiring are not making you safer, they are putting your regime in grave danger. Every step you take down this dark path increases the peril you face."
On Saturday, Kim's government responded by accusing Trump of trying to demonize North Korea, keep it apart from the international community and undermine its government.
"Reckless remarks by an old lunatic like Trump will never scare us or stop our advance," the North's Foreign Ministry said in a statement.
"On the contrary, all this makes us more sure that our choice to promote economic construction at the same time as building up our nuclear force is all the more righteous, and it pushes us to speed up the effort to complete our nuclear force."
North Korea is not known to have tested any of its missiles or nuclear devices since Sept. 15, after a brisk series of tests earlier this year.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
U.S. forces on Saturday conducted an airstrike in Somalia against al-Shabab, killing one enemy combatant in the fourth consecutive day of drone strikes, the military said.
The operation took place near Gaduud, about 250 miles southeast of the capital, Mogadishu.
"Prior to this strike, U.S. forces observed the al-Shabab combatant participating in attacks on a U.S. and Somali convoy," according to a statement from the U.S. Africa Command.
Al-Shabab, which has pledged allegiance to Al Qaeda and is resolved to providing a safe haven for terrorist attacks throughout the world, has publicly committed to attacking U.S. forces and its partners in the region.
There have been 23 other airstrikes carried out this year against the militant group and the far smaller Islamic State group in Somalia, the U.S. military reports.
In October, it also conducted strikes against ISIS in Yemen for the first timedays after the ISIS so-called capital in Raqqa, Syria had been recaptured by US-backed forces.
US DRONE STRIKE IN SOMALIA KILLS SEVERAL MILITANTS
The Trump administration approved expanded military operations earlier this year against extremists in the Horn of Africa nation.
In March, President Trump signed a command allowing the military to carry out airstrikes in Somalia against the militant group.
Al-Shabab has been blamed for the massive truck bombing in Mogadishu last month that killed more than 300 people. The deadly Oct. 14 attack signals the jihadist group was still prevalent in the African nation. It was Somalia's worst-ever attack and one of the world's deadliest in years.
Fox News' Lucas Tomlinson contributed to this report.
Stafford County registrar Greg Riddlemoser denied in a statement late Saturday that his office improperly disqualified a batch of absentee ballots.
The Democratic Party has leveled complaints about his offices handling of the ballots in Tuesdays election.
Riddlemoser said his office can only count absentee ballots that arrive by 7 p.m. the day of the election, the same time the polls close.
On election day last Tuesday, my office received our final pre-election delivery of absentee ballots by the United States Postal Service at approximately 6:30 p.m., said his statement, sent by email late Saturday. We followed all normal procedures with those ballots, including ... counting all those that were properly returned.
Riddlemoser said that his office typically receives absentee ballots for weeks after the election. On Wednesday, he said, his office received about 55 absentee ballotsthe number in questiontoo late to be counted without a court order.
Contrary to some reports, these ballots were not military ballots ... but rather a collection of all types of absentee ballots that happened to be in the postal pipeline at that same time, the statement continued.
In a conference call Friday reported by The Free Lance-Star, House Democrats said that 55 military ballots delivered to the Stafford registrars post office box on Tuesday were not counted because they were picked up a day late.
Riddlemoser did not respond to emails Friday and did not return a message left on his cellphone. No one at the registrars office answered the phone Friday. Stafford government offices were closed for Veterans Day.
In his statement Saturday, Riddlemoser said he and the Stafford County Electoral Board will address a separate issue about provisional ballots on Monday.
The American Civil Liberties Union in Virginia said that the registrar, with the support of the electoral board, would not make available for review and copying provisional ballot logs and called on them to do so. Voters who show up to the polls without a valid ID can cast a provisional ballot that will be counted only if the voter brings a copy of his or her ID to the electoral board before the vote is certified.
The Stafford Democratic Party announced on Saturday that it plans to gather at the Stafford Courthouse at 9 a.m. Monday about both issues.
It probably doesnt surprise anyone that drug overdoses are the No. 1 leading cause of accidental death in the United States.
In 2015 alone, 52,404 people diedmore from abusing prescription painkillers than heroin, according to a report by the American Society of Addiction Medicine.
The fatalities are staggering, but theres another death toll that warrants attention.
Cigarette smoking causes almost nine times more deaths a year than opioid drugs. Worldwide, the use of tobacco remains the single largest preventable cause of disease and premature death, says the American Cancer Society.
More than 480,000 people in this country perish each year from lung cancer, ischemic heart disease (the kind caused by narrowed heart arteries), chronic obstructive pulmonary disease or other cancers and diagnoses linked to the use of tobacco, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Smoking harms nearly every organ in the body, according to the CDC.
And even though its banned in many public places in America, smoking is still generally accepted among 21st-century earthlings who really ought to know better.
OK, that last statement was a bit of editorializing. In the event of full disclosure, I should say that I absolutely hate smoking. Always have, always will.
Its particularly maddening that I never once lit up and constantly preached the horrors of smoking to my children, yet both of them grew up to smoke like chimneys. It didnt help that their fathers second wife allowedeven encouragedthem to smoke as teenagers. Guess it made her look like the cool stepmom.
Along with my daughter-in-law, my kids developed habits theyve tried for years to kick and have made some progress, but not without damaging their health in the process.
Even with the feelings that I have against smoking, I was surprised to read the deathly comparisons between it and opioid drugs.
The enlightening moment came in an email from Phillip Sugarman, public relations director with a company called TimerCap. It produces a tobacco cessation kit that basically encourages people to put their cigarettes and lighter into a pill bottle, set a timer for how long they want to go between puffs and gradually increase the time between smoking until the urge is curbed.
The kit also suggests smokers record how often they light up and what triggers them to want a cigarette.
The product seemed like a good idea, but pricey, and the statistic that more than one of every 10 Americans are addicted to tobacco was interesting.
But what really got my attention was the deathly comparisons.
We are trying to say that smoking is a bigger problem than the opioid epidemic, Sugarman wrote.
Of course, all this is timely because the American Cancer Society is sponsoring its annual Great American Smokeout on Thursday. People are encouraged to use the date as the time to quit or suggest friends and family members do the same.
Spotsylvania Regional Medical Center will use social media to share information about the campaign, and Mary Washington Healthcare .
The American Cancer Society has all kinds of resources to help people quit. It offers apps for smart phones, support online and a toll-free helpline.
Likewise, a Google search on how to quit smoking yields everything from the American Lung Associations Freedom From Smoking program to local places that provide hypnosis or laser treatments. The website, smokefree.gov, has all kinds of programs, including those geared to teens and women, smokers over 60 and Spanish speakers.
The same websites that provide information about the prevalence of smokingthat 36.5 million Americans are still addictedalso say that tobacco is every bit as hard to quit as a drug like heroin.
But they also point out the immediate health benefits derived when a smoker stops, even for a day. The Great American Smokeout, always on the third Thursday in November, would be a great place to start.
Then, participants would really have something to be thankful for on the following Thursday.
Fredericksburg Commonwealths Attorney La Bravia Jenkins was honored as one of the 2017 Leaders in the Law by the Virginia Lawyers Weekly on Oct. 26 at the John Marshall in Richmond.
The 12th annual awards ceremony was held to honor 30 attorneys in the Commonwealth who have distinguished themselves through their legal work and service to the community throughout their careers.
Jenkins was honored for her role in the founding of the Safe Harbor Child Advocacy Center, presiding as the president of the Virginia Association of Commonwealths Attorneys, her work with the Rappahannock Regional Drug Court and Rappahannock United Way, and her tireless pursuit of justice as Commonwealths Attorney, which includes the recent conviction of Steven Vander Briel, who was found guilty of murdering a University of Mary Washington student in 2015.
Jenkins has served as Fredericksburgs chief prosecutor for nine years.
It couldnt happen here.
Thats what some Germanna Community College students told Holocaust survivor Jay M. Ipson when he spoke at the Fredericksburg Area Campus recently.
Ipson, a Jew who lived through Hitlers rise and fall, said that unless Americans exercise critical thinking, history could indeed repeat itself.
Ipson, co-founder of the Virginia Holocaust Museum, was raised in Lithuania, placed in a concentration camp at age 6 in 1941 and escaped with his parents in 1943. He arrived in Richmond with his parents in 1947, when he was 12.
He pointed to recent events in Charlottesville as evidence that similar forces are at work now in the United States and that only an educated, well informed electorate can defeat those who seek to gain power by turning us against one another.
The people have the power, Ipson told a room packed with about 150 mostly young people. You have the power. You elect the government. But sometimes some of us who elect the government dont know what theyre doing because theyre not informed.
The Nazi party, he said, never had a majority in taking over Germany. They only needed 44 percent, Ipson pointed out.
Then Hitler said, I am the chancellor. I am the leader. And what I say, you will do. The German Supreme Court fell under him and basically what he wanted is what they approved.
Ipson told the Germanna crowd: How important you are. You are our government. Dont blindly vote for a party. Dont vote Democrat. Dont vote Republican. Dont vote Independent. Dont vote who knows what. Know what you are in for and what you have in the person and how trustworthy he is. And that takes some study.
The 82-year-old Ipson said he hasnt missed voting in an election since he was 18 years old. Ill vote for dogcatcher, because if I dont get what I want, then I get what I deserve. Be a part of the government. Dont just read one newspaper or one commentators opinion. Check it out.
Too many Americans dont think critically about information fed to them; that is not altogether different from the propaganda Germans heard in the 1930s, he said.
The Internet, pardon me is full of s---, he said as students roared with laugher. Some jerk posts some stuff or pulls it off of who knows what and sends it off to his friends. And because your friends trust you, you have just given them a bunch of crap to go on. How many of you verify what you hear from your friends? Few in the crowd raised their hands. Its very important, he said.
He said there are 917 hate groups in the United States, including 39 in Virginia.
Theyll hate me as a Jew, theyll hate you as a Christian, theyll hate you as a white, theyll hate you as a black. Theyll hate. If you do a little research youll be able to find out who they are and what they stand for.
Recently, in Charlottesville, a woman died because some stupid fool hated a group so so bad he took his car to drive on them.Thats not good for this country. Its not good for us.
He said advances in communications devices like smart phones have turned the whole world into one big neighborhood and that should help us understand that we all have the most important things in life in common.
What happens if you cut your finger? You bleed. What color is it? Red. What happens when somebody in Europe cuts their finger? What color? Were all the same. It doesnt matter after that what the color of the skin is, it doesnt matter what color the hair is, it doesnt matter what country youre from. We are all the same.
Richard Lee "Rick" Stevens, 67, of Fredericksburg passed away Wednesday, November 8, 2017 at his home. Rick graduated as valedictorian from Liberty Center Public School in 1968. Rick had worked as a nuclear engineer instructor with Dominion Resources. Prior to that he was an instructor at the Navy's Nuclear Power School under Admiral Rickover. He loved studying and teaching. Rick earned a master's degree in physics and chemical engineering, Also he was an avid student of history. Rick was a favorite instructor in the training department at North Anna Nuclear Power Station. He was very passionate about what he taught resulting in many successful former students and professionals. Rick was member of Ferry Farm Baptist Church where he taught a Sunday school class. He had a unique sense of humor which endeared him to his peers and especially his five year old granddaughter, Ellie. Survivors include his wife, Elizabeth Stevens; step-son James Schneider (Nasim); granddaughter Ellie; mother Treva S. Stevens; sister Sally Speer (Alan); and numerous aunts, uncles and beloved cousins. He was preceded in death by his father, Richard E. Stevens. The family will receive friends from 6 to 8 p.m. Monday, November 13 at Covenant Funeral Service, Fredericksburg. A service will be held at 10:30 a.m. Tuesday, November 14 at New Life in Christ Church. Interment will follow at 1 p.m. at Quantico National Cemetery. Online guestbook available at covenantfuneralservice.com.
FENTANYL IS the synthetic opioid driving America's public health crisis. Its cheap price, widespread use, addictive quality and deadly effect make it more dangerous than other narcotics classified by the DEA.
It is, ultimately, a chemical. And it's being used as a weapon in China's 21st century opium war against America.
President Donald Trump's 12-day, five-nation Asia tour is focusing on North Korean nukes and international trade. In Beijing, however, he will address China's fentanyl production and distribution, an industry that fuels what the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission calls "China's deadly export to the United States."
Trump holds undeniable moral authority when it comes to substance abuse, having personally seen and felt the effects on his family. Forcing China's hand on fentanyl is the right thing to do.
Drug abuse is inherently a demand issue, with the underlying problem being America's insatiable need for narcotics. But there is an international-supply part to the drug equation that stretches from China's bottomless fentanyl manufacturing to its bulk shipping of the deadly white powder into global markets.
If Trump can get China to constrain its cheap supply, he might significantly reduce the problem.
And if any government can control its nation's industry, it is the one in Beijing. China already uses its authoritarian state structure to control the movement of people and ideas within its country with stunning efficiency. It even manages to do so in other jurisdictions as, for example, when it kidnaps book publishers in Hong Kong.
China is more passive, however, when asked to act responsibly or confront threats to the United States that are otherwise perceived as serving Beijing's strategic interests. North Korea is an example.
North Korea developed its nuclear capacity with China's acquiescence, if not outright support and blessing. Why? Because the Kim clan has provided the Chinese a strategic tool to leverage against the U.S.
Pyongyang's nukes make China indispensable to any Korean Peninsula negotiations and future. China's strategic moves introduced a nuclear wild card into the international security game. A nuclear-armed North Korea seemed a lesser concern to China than the perceived value of bullying South Korea and the regional neutering of America's military might.
Fentanyl is the nuclear narcotic that is killing thousands of Americans today and another example of China's two-faced approach.
The chemical, known as "China Girl" or "China White" on the street, may have some Chinese victims, but its true value is as a profitable opiate export that also destroys American communities and roils the U.S. political landscape.
Drug exports have allowed for the establishment of new Chinese-run drug cartels and distributors within the United States while untimely and tragic American deaths are recorded daily, as highlighted by the president when he declared the opioid crisis a "public health emergency."
China has a deep and visceral understanding of how an opium war can convulse a nation and collapse an empire. After all, it happened to them in the 19th century. Chinese call it their "Century of Humiliation."
Now the tables have turned. China has absorbed the Century of Humiliation's lessons of stealth attack and economic power and applied them globally. President Xi Jinping sits atop the world's power pinnacle, with a recent Economist cover story calling him "the world's most powerful man," and POTUS acknowledging Xi's king-like authority.
But either this omnipotent man can control his population or not.
Given China's authoritarian tech and police state tools, Xi's monopoly power gives him extraordinary abilities to monitor and manage domestic criminal activity. Trump should not call for efforts to crack down further on the general population, but appeal for a more targeted application of Beijing's honed control practices.
Since China already easily and regularly arrests bloggers, VPN users, artists, protesters and other innocents, it can certainly find and disrupt criminal cartels cooking up deadly street drugs for sale in America.
If not, then the United States needs to take an even more aggressive stance against China. It must be recognized that China's new opium war, combined with her cyberattacks on American infrastructure and information, is further tearing at the increasingly fragile fabric of American society, institutions and competitiveness.
Trade imbalances with China gnaw at the president. The trillions that flow one way have underwritten the Chinese economic juggernaut and fueled Communist Party power. American money built a peer competitor to the United States. Trump maintains that America's fat trade is now the key to leverage deals with China.
The U.S. regularly uses trade sanctions to punish foreign players or force them to the negotiating table. During Trump's meeting with freshly super-empowered Xi, he needs to align America's regional allies and lay out a tough approach to both North Korea and the drug war being waged against America's people.
Trump must use his plain talk and pushy style to make clear to President Xi that with Chinese fentanyl, America is under attack and a chemical weapons red line is being crossed.
THE FOURTH round of talks aimed at revamping the North American Free Trade Agreement ended in Washington last month, with Canada and Mexico rejecting a variety of U.S. proposals. The negotiators will be back at the table this month in Mexico City.
The trilateral trade pact has always had its critics. When it went to Congress for approval in 1993, the oppositions claims were so over the top, they were brutally lampooned in one of Saturday Night Lives classic fake advertisements.
The ad, Paid for by United We Stand American and the AFL-CIO, featured Rob Schneider as a stereotypical Mexican. He explained the trade deal this way: It is very simple. This pinata represents the United States economy. And this bat represents NAFTA. Watch what NAFTA does.
After smashing the U.S. economy with the NAFTA bat, Senor Schneider concluded: You see? All the goodies fall down south, to Mexico.
Fortunately, Congress did not fall for the arguments pushed by NAFTAs critics. NAFTA has proved to be a tremendous success for Canada, Mexico and the United States.
In 1994, critics said the United States would lose jobs. But the average U.S. unemployment rate has been lower in the 23 years since NAFTA took effect than in the 23 years prior to the pact. Post-NAFTA, our economy has added, on average, more than a million jobs annually.
Critics said U.S. manufacturing would suffer. Instead, manufacturing output increased by 80 percent. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, average hourly compensation for manufacturing workers increased from $20.72 in 1994 to nearly $40 today.
Critics said there would be a flood of companies leaving the United States to invest in low-wage Mexico. Instead, since 1994 the United States has attracted nearly $4.5 trillion in foreign direct investment from abroad. The United States remains the worlds most powerful magnet for foreign investment dollars.
The beneficial impact of NAFTA is not remotely controversial among economists who have studied the effect of the agreement.
A 2012 survey conducted by the University of Chicagos Initiative on Global Markets found that more than four of every five economists agreed that on average, citizens of the U.S. have been better off with the North American Free Trade Agreement than they would have been if the trade rules for the U.S., Canada and Mexico prior to NAFTA had remained in place.
NAFTA was a true win-win-win agreement, and all three countries have much stronger economies now than they did before NAFTA took effect.
Other countries have attempted to replicate NAFTAs benefits. Since 1994, foreign nations have entered more than 250 agreements liberalizing trade. The most recent is the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement between Canada and the European Union. It eliminates 98 percent of the tariffs between Canada and the member nations of the European Union.
Given the advantages America has gained under NAFTA and the free-trade advances other nations have made since 1994, it would be a big mistake to toss NAFTA and turn back the clock to 1993. But there are certainly some areas where the agreement could be improved.
NAFTA was accompanied by side deals on environmental and labor policies. Canadian negotiators have demanded that the United States abolish state right-to-work laws. And there have even been proposals to add gender equality requirements to a new NAFTA agreement.
Trade deals should stick to trade matters. Issuesold and newthat arent directly related to trade should be dealt with separately.
One way to improve NAFTA would to target it to areas directly related to international commerce, while resisting calls to impose new international environmental and labor regulations through the back door of a trade agreement.
Another possible improvement would be to make it harder for Canada and Mexico to tax competitive U.S. exports through their use of protectionist anti-dumping policies. Canada and Mexico have used these laws to restrict U.S. exports of products ranging from potatoes to steel. A true free trade agreement should give Americans full access to customers in Canada and Mexico.
NAFTA can also be updated to incorporate digital trade issues, which were not relevant back in 1994. For example, Americans should be able to make full use of trading platforms from eBay, Amazon, Google and other companies without interference from government-erected barriers.
NAFTAs model of economic freedom has been widely emulated by other countries. Instead of scrapping the pact, we should build on its success by negotiating an even better win-win-win deal for all three countries.
'TRUMPISM WITHOUT Trump' lost in Virginia. But don't write its obituary just yet.
President Donald Trump sent a pretty clear message when he tweeted about Ed Gillespie's loss after the Virginia governor's race Tuesday night: I reserve the right to throw any GOP candidate who doesn't bear-hug me under the bus.
"Ed Gillespie worked hard but did not embrace me or what I stand for. Don't forget, Republicans won 4 out of 4 House seats, and with the economy doing record numbers, we will continue to win, even bigger than before!
Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 8, 2017"
And plenty of the post-election analysis has focused on whether Republicans can embrace the kind of "Trumpism without Trump" strategy that Gillespie tried in Virginia. The results would suggest not so much, as Michael Tackett wrote in the New York Times:
"Lessons from off-year elections can be overdrawn, but the Virginia race strongly suggests that Republicans running in swing states will have to choose a side rather than try to straddle an uncomfortable line. Mr. Trump's blunt force, all-or-nothing approach has worked in deeply conservative areas, but Republicans will have trouble replicating that in certain states in the midterms next year when faced with a diverse, highly educated electorate like the one in Virginia."
So is it now A Time for Choosing? Will Republicans decide to fish with Trump or cut bait? And do they need to?
Don't be too sure.
Yes, the results in Virginia would seem to suggest that not fully embracing Trump while echoing his nationalist, culture-warrior messaging didn't exactly work. But as Tackett notes, we're talking about one race. We're also talking about movement of a few points in a tough state for Trump and Trumpism; Trump lost Virginia by five points last year, and Gillespie lost by nine points Tuesday. While other swing states trended toward Trump, Virginia continued its long-running path away from the GOP.
Second, the last time there was a big race featuring a highly educated electorate and a GOP candidate who conspicuously kept Trump at arm's length, it was Georgia special election candidate Karen Handel, R. She won, even beating Trump's margin in the well-to-do Atlanta suburbs by a few points.
No two races are created equal, but Georgia's 6th District is demographically similar to Virginia. It's 62 percent white, compared to Virginia's 63 percent. Its median income ranks toward the top nationwide, as does Virginia's. It has highly educated suburbs, and Virginia has lots of those.
The difference, of course, is that Georgia's 6th was much more GOP-leaning before Trump came along, having delivered wide margins for previous Republicans who ran there. Handel may have slightly bettered Trump's numbers, but she far underperformed previous GOP candidates there.
Still, the point is that were talking about movement on the margins here, relative to 2016. Gillespie did a few points worse than Trump with his "Trumpism without Trump" message, while Handel did slightly better while not fully embracing Trump. In the New Jersey governor's race Tuesday, Lt. Gov. Kim Guadagno, R, ran with a late message focused on "sanctuary cities" and illegal immigrant crime and actually did slightly better than both Trump last year and Mitt Romney in 2012, taking 42.5 percent of the vote in her loss to Gov.-elect Phil Murphy, D. And she did it despite being hampered by hugely unpopular outgoing Gov. Chris Christie's 22 percent approval rating.
The other data point that's worth emphasizing here is that Gillespie didn't have a turnout problem. In fact, the 1.18 million votes he's got so far is 17 percent more than 2013 GOP nominee Ken Cuccinelli received (1.01 million) in another closely watched race. The problem for Gillespie was that Democratic turnout was up even more. In other words, it didn't seem that Gillespie's choice not to fully embrace Trump turned off would-be voters who support Trump.
There is certainly evidence to suggest "Trumpism without Trump" isn't the best electoral strategy, but it's still not a totally compelling case. And Republicans in swing areas who have been gingerly dancing around Trump's tweets and controversies will probably still feel the need to do so. This strategy, after all, has never really been one of choice.
Britain is facing a growing shortage of vets that could be made worse by Brexit, according to veterinary organisations.
The warning was made in the British Veterinary Association (BVA) and Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons (RCVS) joint response to the Migration Advisory Committees Call for Evidence on the impact of the UKs exit from the EU.
The response said difficulties in recruitment and retention of vets mean there is already an 11% shortfall.
See also: Consultant charts where now for UK dairy
The organisations warned of a worsening shortage unless the government acts immediately to reduce restrictions on recruiting vets from abroad.
They called for the profession to be added to the Shortage Occupation List an official derogation that limits legislative barriers to overseas recruitment.
There have been previous calls for the profession to be placed on the Shortage Occupation List, and this will become a necessity post Brexit, the joint response said.
Following the exit from the EU, existing shortages will likely worsen, whilst changes in trade could increase the demand for veterinary skills, producing a shortfall in the UKs capacity to ensure animal health and welfare, food safety and public health, it added.
Half of UK vets from EU
Currently about half of vets registering each year in the UK are graduates from the EU.
If there are no appropriate immigration measures in place when the UK leaves the EU, this EU contribution could decline, leaving a large gap in the veterinary workforce.
A survey of BVA members has shown that about one-fifth of vets are finding it more difficult to recruit staff from abroad since the EU referendum in June 2016
A study commissioned by the RCVS has shown that nearly one-third of vets and vet nurses whose nationality is non-UK European are considering a move back home.
BVA senior vice president Gudrun Ravetz said: The situation will only worsen under Brexit unless appropriate measures are in place.
Across the UK, vets are needed to certify imports and exports, conduct cutting-edge research, prevent disease outbreaks, ensure food safety in abattoirs and achieve our world-leading standards in animal welfare.
We are setting out a very strong case to add the profession to the Shortage Occupation List now to help us manage the immediate shortfall in critical veterinary roles.
Longer-term immigration policy
A longer-term immigration policy must be negotiated to meet the UKs veterinary workforce needs post-Brexit without creating disproportionate administrative burdens for veterinary businesses, he added.
RCVS senior vice president Chris Tufnell added: We want the government to recognise there are significant current and potential shortages in the profession that can only be mitigated by putting it on the Shortage Occupation List.
Our ideal outcome is that EU veterinary surgeons currently living and working in the UK are allowed to stay indefinitely and that, in terms of any post-Brexit immigration system, graduates of European schools accredited by the European Association of Establishments for Veterinary Education (EAEVE) are allowed to work here with the minimum of restrictions.
A Pinch of Salt: The election is over, I think, so what now?
Regarding "It's Time to Dump Political Parties," John Frohnmayer's Nov. 9 op-ed: His timing was superb. He apparently discovered Donald Trump's disabilities of character, e.g., "liar," only 27 months after many Americans recognized them at the first Republican presidential debate in 2015. And Frohnmayer's op-ed appeared just two days after the Democratic Party achieved election victories across the country a resurgence for Democrats.
For Frohnmayer, a former Republican, the appropriate response was to tell "all patriotic citizens to dump their political party" and to advocate abolishing state funding of party primaries, which, of course, democratically select the most popular candidates for general elections.
Frohnmayer dedicated 25 percent of his words to posing questions, many of them about Trump. But he did not bother to explain how his brave new world of no-parties would work. Instead, he urged "collective" behavior twice: "pursuit of happiness," he said, "is collective," and urged us to "make collective decisions."
"Collective" sounds suspiciously like group activity, and humans have a penchant for appending names to groups, e.g., "Bolsheviks." Since the term "party" is anathema to Frohnmayer, I suggest the term "funeral" for his collective grouping.
Frohnmayer reminded us of the "seven deadly sins," which include pride. Then he wrote: "We can be proud of our country." There appears to be some ambivalence in Frohnmayer's mind about "pride."
Leo Quirk
Corvallis (Nov. 10)
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Who knew someone with a psychology background would wind up happily owning and operating a cider company, producing a popular brand of hard cider drinks.
John Washburn who graduated from George Washington High School in 1965, went on to Duke University and spent 10 years as a psychologist and counselor for Danville Public Schools has done just that.
Its been the most enriching thing I could have imagined, Washburn said of his work building his brand, Bold Rock Hard Cider.
Washburns adventure actually began when he moved to Charlottesville in 1986 and purchased a farm in Nellysford on Va. 151 in Nelson County.
A few years later, in 1990, he moved to New Zealand and met Brian Shanks.
He was the top-rated cider maker in the world, Washburn said.
Washburn laughed as he talked about his return to the U.S. 10 years later, his decision to turn his loved property in Nellysford into a cidery, and his plot to lure Shanks into joining him in starting up that company.
I flew him in here three times. The last time, he said, lets do it, Washburn said. The two have been partners in the business ever since.
The facility in Nellysford has been renovated several times since it opened in 2012. The Bold Rock Cider Barn simply had to get bigger, Washburn said.
We couldnt produce our ciders fast enough, he said.
Kirk Turner, key accounts manager at Danville Distributing which distributes Bold Rock hard ciders in the Danville area said Bold Rock ciders sales continue to grow here.
Turner said hard ciders did go through a resurgence for several years, but have mostly leveled off this year with Bold Rock being one exception.
Bold Rock is still showing strong, Turner said. This year, were up 40 percent in Bold Rock sales. Its been growing 20-40 percent, year after year.
In 2015, Bold Rock expanded, adding the Bold Rock Tap Room at Carter Mountain, just outside Charlottesville, and Mills River Cidery in Mills River, North Carolina.
The sites offer tours and tastings, spectacular views and at Carter Mountain the chance to pick apples at Carter Mountain Orchard. All of the sites use locally-sourced apples, Washburn said.
Recently, a second building was added to the Nellysford site, which they call the Barrel Barn, used for storing ciders and as a backup site for people to drop in to taste and purchase the ciders.
We had to turn people away when we had private parties at the cider barn, Washburn said. Now, even if its rented out, we can serve people.
Shanks operates from the Nellysford site, while Washburn is stationed in Chapel Hill, North Carolina the center of the companys current 10-state distribution area, Washburn said.
He may be stationed elsewhere, but he is in Nellysford often, traveling there at least once a week most of the time. Washburn said he has been enjoying driving through his hometown of Danville and stopping to enjoy the changes being made, particularly in the River District.
Robin Jones, co-owner of Vintages by the Dan, confirmed that hard cider sales have increased overall since she opened five years ago.
They come in multiple varieties and are very popular, Jones said. In five years, weve tripled our inventory.
Bold Rock is a strong seller in her shop, Jones said.
Its very popular, Jones said. The blood orange and peach are favorites.
Jones said Washburn visited her when the store opened and is knowledgeable about his product.
Hes a great guy, Jones said. Its nice when people are taking risks and having adventures and being successful.
Washburn is enthusiastic about sales, and said the company just keeps growing and he has a few ideas hes tossing around for new products to add.
Its been a fun, fun thing, Washburn said.
The cidery currently produces a dozen hard ciders, eight regularly produced and four seasonal varieties.
Washburn said he is particularly excited about a new cider they are releasing this week, Orchard Frost.
Its amazing, Washburn said. Were very excited about it.
Turner has visited the Nellysford cidery, and said it is beautiful.
[Washburn] has left it as natural as he could, Turner said. Its a comforting place to go sit, drink an adult beverage and enjoy a meal.
Turner said he is looking forward to the release of Orchard Frost.
It has just a hint of cinnamon and nutmeg, a seasonal blend, Turner said. Its delicious.
SAN DIEGO The University of New Mexico volleyball team received double-digit kills from Hailey Rubino and Lauren Twitty and strong performances from Ashley Kelsey and Mariessa Carrasco, but it wasnt enough in a 3-1 setback to San Diego State on Saturday.
Despite winning the first set and claiming a late lead in the second set, the Lobos (14-15 overall, 6-10 Mountain West) couldnt pull away from the Aztecs (16-13, 10-6) in the match, eventually falling by set scores of 20-25, 26-24, 25-13, 25-12.
Continuing a hectic season-closing stretch of five matches in seven days, the Lobos had their chances in the second of their final five matches. But San Diego State, entering the day winners of six straight home contests, proved to be a tough test for UNM.
Rubino led New Mexico with 13 kills on a team-high 34 attempts, while Twitty chipped in 10 kills on 32 swings. Carrasco added nine kills on a .400 hitting percentage.
Sarah Lobo dished out 41 assists to pace the Lobos inside Peterson Gym, as the team finished with 48 kills.
Defensively, Kelsey collected a team-high 18 digs, while adding a service ace and three assists. Twitty (nine digs) and Rubino (six) also contributed to UNMs back-row defense, which totalled 45 digs.
At the net, Rubino and Twitty both had a solo block, while Carrasco finished with a team-best four total blocks.
New Mexico opened the match scoring four of the first five points of set one, but neither team gained much separation early. UNM would hold a three-point lead at 14-11, only to have SDSU move ahead 17-16.
Undaunted, the Lobos closed the set on a 9-3 run, including the final four points, to win the opening set 25-20.
Rubino had six of her 13 kills in the opening set, with Twitty and Carrasco posting three each. New Mexico hit .483 in the set with 16 kills and just two errors.
The second set started in the Lobos favor, with UNM taking a 10-4 lead early. SDSU would pull to within two at 11-9, but New Mexico pulled back ahead by seven points at 19-12, maintaining that lead to 23-16.
But San Diego State closed with a flurry of points, finishing the set on a 10-1 run to win 26-24.
Rubino had another six kills and Twitty chipped in four of her own as UNM hit .220 in the set.
The Aztecs continued to score coming out of intermission, going up 15-4 to start set three. The Lobos would get to within nine points a couple of times, but they scored more than two consecutive points just once, that coming at the end of the set. SDSU won the set 25-13.
The fourth set started similarly, but New Mexico managed to make it a one-point affair at 5-4. But San Diego State built a 10-point lead at 17-7, riding that to a 25-12 win.
The Lobos return to action on Sunday, hosting UTEP at 5 p.m. MT in Johnson Center in Albuquerque. New Mexico then plays UNLV for Senior Night on Monday before traveling to Air Force for its season finale on Wednesday.
Fans can follow @UNMLoboVB on Twitter and Instagram for information and updates on the team!
The latest violent incidents involving F1 personnel is evidence Brazil "needs to evolve".
That is the view of retiring Brazilian veteran Felipe Massa, after it emerged that robberies involving guns affected Mercedes, Williams and FIA staff as they travelled from the Interlagos circuit to hotels in sprawling Sao Paulo.
On social media, world champion Lewis Hamilton did not hide his anger that his team members were caught up in the drama.
"I was horrified," the Mercedes driver admitted to reporters.
"The saddest thing is that I've been in formula one for ten years, and every year at least someone from the paddock becomes a victim like this.
"It's also the responsibility of formula one. They need to do something to ensure that everyone is safe," Hamilton added.
The FIA responded by saying "heavy police reinforcements" have been deployed for the rest of the weekend.
Mercedes boss Toto Wolff commented: "Brazil is a wonderful country, but we should not need armoured vehicles to travel safely from the hotel to the track."
Williams driver Massa is a Sao Paulo native, but he admitted to Globo on Saturday that he has no intention of returning to the troubled city to live with his family.
"It is so sad not only for those who are having the problem but also for Brazilians. But it just shows how much the country needs to evolve," he said.
The future of the race at Interlagos is already under a cloud, but Massa said the latest incidents are not evidence that F1 should end its association with Brazil.
"We race in Mexico, we've raced in India, and I don't know if it's any more dangerous than there," he said.
"But it is a problem for the people in charge who need to give security for whoever is here.
"I love Brazil," Massa insisted, "but at the moment I will not go back (to live).
"My son is studying in Monaco, he speaks three languages which is important for his future. Maybe in the future I would love to return to a better and safer country," he added.
(GMM)
Robert Kubica looks set to get yet another chance to prove himself at the wheel of a formula one car.
The Pole is a leading candidate to return to the grid next year with Williams, six years after almost severing his forearm in a rallying crash.
Kubica, 32, has had multiple opportunities to test for Renault and Williams this year, and his latest will be at the wheel of the British team's 2017 car in the post-Abu Dhabi test.
Also in the running to replace the retiring Felipe Massa are Paul di Resta and Daniil Kvyat, and - contrary to the latest rumours - Pascal Wehrlein.
When asked about likely Sauber refugee Wehrlein, Williams boss Paddy Lowe told Auto Bild in Brazil: "Pascal is still in the race."
But Kubica would be the more popular choice, and Lowe admitted that it is a real possibility.
"We will almost certainly give him a chance to be in the car during one of the two days of testing in Abu Dhabi," he is quoted as having told German television Sky.
"The topic is getting a lot of attention from the media and fans, but it's something we're working on inside the team and don't want to say any more at this point," Lowe added.
Lowe also said Williams is determined to improve in the future, and one way to do that would be to take more parts from the team's engine supplier Mercedes.
"One idea is to get not only the power unit but also the transmission and drivetrain," Lowe admitted. "That would definitely help us to progress."
(GMM)
Air Products and the Yankuang Group Co., Ltd., signed an agreement for a $3.5-billion coal-to-syngas production facility to be built in Yulin City, Shaanxi Province, China.
Under the agreement, Air Products and Shaanxi Future Energy Group Co., Ltd. (SFEC), a subsidiary of Yankuang Group, intend to form an Air Products majority-controlled joint venture company which would build, own and operate an air separation, gasification and syngas clean-up system to supply the SFEC site. The air separation units are expected to produce approximately 40,000 tons-per-day (TPD) of oxygen to support the production of about 2.5 million nm3/hour of syngas. SFEC would supply coal, steam and power and receive syngas under a long-term, onsite contract.
Air Products currently supplies SFECs Phase 1 project in Yulin with 12,000 TPD of oxygen. The addition of Phase 2 would make this complex one of the largest coal-to-fuel and -chemicals facilities in China, with SFEC Phase 2 producing four million tons-per-year of liquid fuels and downstream chemicals.
The parties are committed to finalizing the agreements as soon as possible, with the overall project expected onstream in 2021.
Yankuang Group Co., Ltd. is an extra-large State-Owned-Enterprise (SOE) mainly engaged in coal mining and sales, coal chemical industry, power generation and aluminum production and machinery manufacturing. The mining business commenced development in 1966, and Yanzhou Coal Mining Bureau was established in 1976. It was restructured into a sole State-owned company in 1996 and further developed into Yankuang Group Co., Ltd. in 1999. Now Yankuang Group is the largest coal exporter and producer integrated with coal further-processing in Eastern China, and one of the three chemical industry bases in Shandong Province.
The Garage, one of Winston-Salems oldest music venues, will suspend operations Jan. 1, the owner has announced.
Tucker Tharpe, the owner, said in a email to the citys business community that its last show will be the annual New Years Eve concert featuring the band The Genuine.
The closure will be indefinite until we re-evaluate our business plan to find a new and better way of enriching the musical arts of North Carolina, Tharpe said. We hope that everyone reading this is growing and changing all the time. The Garage is growing and changing, its not done. So ... stay tuned for whats next.
The Garage, which is at 110 W. Seventh St., opened in September 1999 and became one of the citys premier clubs. It has served as an intimate live-performance venue and nightclub. The club brought in national acts and served as a stage for local musicians.
After it opened, other music venues sprang up in downtown. The Garage, a former welding shop, was sold in May 2012 to Tharpe and his business partner Brian Cole. Richard Emmett started the business as a licensed music venue in 2000.
Its building on Seventh Street was constructed in 1907, according to Forsyth County tax records.
It is with a heavy heart we make this move. It was a tough decision, Tharpe said. The Garage walks a fine line between service and profitability. As life changes so do our needs and priorities.
Tharpe said the ending of Winston-Salem musical festival Phuzz Phest, which The Garage hosted from 2012 to 2016, was not a deciding factor in the decision.
When Phuzz ended, it obviously had a negative effect on The Garage. It was not a determining factor when deciding to suspend operations, Tharpe said. Weve hosted Cash Bash for nearly 18 years and JukeBot every Halloween. The point we are making is that there are several wonderful musical events that we count on hosting for profit.
The decision to suspend operations was made within the past year and will affect the eight employees, six of whom are part-time.
Sasha Shinault, the manager of the band, Seconds from Damnation, said that the news about The Garage was disappointing. Her band performed Friday night in the Test Pattern, a live-performance venue and bar at 701 Trade St.
I was hoping to send a couple of bands in there, Shinault said, referring to The Garage. There are only so many places where bands are booked.
Jason Thiel, the president of the Downtown Winston-Salem Partnership, said that The Garage is a wonderful asset for the city.
Tucker Tharpe and his team have done great things, Thiel said. Downtown is always better with The Garage and with Tucker, but change is constant.
I have faith in a positive outcome and am thankful for Tucker and all he has done for our city, Thiel said.
Doug Davis, a local musician and bandleader, said Tucker has brought passion in his role as the business owner.
Tuckers passion and energy picked up right where Richard left off, Davis said, but he also brought a youthful integrity that continued the aesthetic vision that Richard began, but also allowed the Garage to thrive with a younger audience.
Davis said that every musician in the Triad respects Tharpes work with The Garage.
Honest club owners who are doing what they do for the sheer love of music and musicians are an insanely rare lot, Davis said. For the Garage to be shepherded by nothing but honest, pure-hearted music lovers puts this venue in a class all by itself.
Scott Burton, the founder and executive director of The Forever is Tomorrow Foundation Inc., echoed Davis views about Tucker and The Garage. The foundation, which supports people with kidney disease, held a benefit concert in The Garage last year.
I will always have a huge amount of love and respect for both the venue and Tucker, so naturally, I am sad to see the doors of such a unique and diverse venue close, Burton said.
The suspension of operations at The Garage will only be a step toward something more and quite possibly unknown to anyone at this time, Burton said. Tuckers passion and dedication to both this city and the music industry will no doubt shine through, and I for one, look forward to seeing where things go.
However, Burton said that the clubs suspending its operation is sad.
As this city and all of us and our lives are always changing, so will the music scene, Burton said.
At the Test Pattern, Chris Scott of Mebane said he was also sad to learn that The Garage will suspend operations. He is a member of the band, Soul Season, which also performed Friday night in the Test Pattern.
It sucks to lose another venue for local bands, Scott said.
Steven Meyers of Saxapahaw in Alamance County said that other music venues likely will fill in the void left by The Garage. Meyers is a member of the band, Past Tense of Never, which performed Friday night at The Test Pattern.
When one door closes, another door opens, Meyers said. The music scene is too strong and too tight knit. There will be more places to open in its stead.
Tharpe said the closing of The Garage is bittersweet with downtowns revival, but inevitable at this time.
Downtown is thriving and will continue with the right amount of passion and determination, he said. The next couple of months will be bittersweet. We do plan to go out with a bang and look forward to seeing everyone for one last hoorah.
Staff writer Jenny Drabble contributed to this report.
GREENSBORO Students at the Early College at Guilford College helped raise awareness about suicide prevention and mental health issues at a blood drive on campus in honor of a friend who died over the summer.
She would always hint about her going to college with us and doing all those things that 20-year-olds do as best friends, said Thida Lee, an Early College at Guilford student. So when we found out, it was just like a punch in the gut because it was so unexpected.
Alyssa Gardella, a former Early College at Guilford student and a close friend of Lee, committed suicide July 13.
Lee heard about the death the next day when Julia Martins de Sa, another close friend of Gardellas, called to tell her the news.
I didnt believe it at first, Lee said. So I kept saying What? What? What? Can you say that again? She said it again and I didnt cry or anything. I just kind of stood there and I was like, Holy s---.
Lee and Martins de Sa had planned to host a blood drive during the 2016-17 academic year. After Gardellas death, they decided to hold the blood drive in honor of Gardella and to raise awareness for mental health issues.
They worked with Kristen Poteat, a graduate assistant in Guilford Colleges Office of Student Leadership and Engagement, to partner with the college on a blood drive that took place Friday.
They reached out to me and immediately I was excited to collaborate because, of course, after hearing the story and hearing the cause about their intent of wanting a blood drive, it just made complete sense to have the Office of Student Leadership and Engagement partner with the Early College to bring to light an issue that not only affects high school students, but a lot of college students, said Poteat.
To raise awareness on mental health issues, Early College student volunteers gave each donor a small teal-and-purple-striped ribbon, a symbol for suicide prevention. They also made available reading material, including information on the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline (800-273-8255).
At the blood drive, many Early College students, like senior Sydney Pierce, were first-time donors who donated to honor Gardella and support the mental health awareness initiative.
When I heard that she died, it was really upsetting to me, Pierce said. Im really glad that this drive is raising awareness for suicide prevention because it is such a big problem.
More teens and young adults die from suicide than from cancer, heart disease, AIDS, birth defects, stroke, pneumonia, influenza and chronic lung disease, according to the Jason Foundation, a nonprofit dedicated to the awareness and prevention of youth suicide.
Suicide is the second-leading cause of death for ages 10-24, the group said, citing 2015 data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Fridays Guilford College blood drive had only been prepared to collect blood from about 34 donors. Fifty-one people showed up.
Its actually pretty overwhelming, Lee said. I didnt realize so many people were going to sign up, especially the underclassmen. They never met her, obviously, because she left before they could. So I was just surprised that ECG could do that, and thats pretty amazing.
Ten Early College students volunteered to help during the blood drive, including junior Sophia Hazlett.
I think its very important that were all participating in this event, Hazlett said. I did not personally know Alyssa, but either way for me, for somebody to take their life as to live it, thinking thats an easier route, its very hurtful and hard that that has to be that way.
Early College Senior Joseph Chang said it was like helping two causes.
I get to donate blood for people who need blood. And with the mental awareness, people will learn about these issues and help others, if theyre in need, he said. We were all there for a purpose.
KERNERSVILLE They were both young.
The United States Air Force had just turned 2 months old when Reggie Powell joined. The Air Force hadnt even decided on a uniform and still used Army uniforms. When Powell got out of the military, his original paperwork indicated his branch as AR for Army, which was crossed out with a pen and changed to AF for Air Force.
Before Sept. 18, 1947, the Air Force had been the U.S. Army Air Corps.
Powell was an 18-year-old who entered the military after World War II and right away became part of the Berlin Airlift an American-led effort to fly food and other necessities into East Germany.
To me the greatest thing out of that was communism was stopped by the airlift, said Powell, who was responsible for keeping the records on the radio equipment aboard the DC-4s that flew in the supplies. Stalin would not have stopped if we had deserted the people in East Berlin.
The 87-year-old Powell of Winston-Salem was one of more than 500 current and retired veterans and their families who gathered Saturday at the Carolina Field of Honor to observe Veterans Day. Drums and bagpipes started the ceremony, which ended with the playing of taps. The keynote speaker, retired U.S. Army Gen. David Rodriguez, thanked the families for their support and the veterans for their service. Scott Matthews, chair of the War Memorial Foundation Board that oversees the memorial, said there has been a Veterans and Memorial Day ceremony at the Field of Honor since May 2013.
Veterans Day wasnt all that important to Powell until a few years ago when he took his grandson to an airshow. The two roamed around looking at the airplanes on display when they came upon a familiar plane, a Douglas DC-4.
It opened up a dialogue he had never had with anyone else.
When I came home from the war, I got a job, worked, got married and had kids, Powell said. When I took my grandson to an airshow, I was able to talk to him and give him the history of the plane from my experiences with it.
As veterans from the five branches of the military arrived at Saturdays ceremony, some sought out old friends while others made new ones.
Garfield Withers, 77, of Reidsville walked around, stopping to greet and chat with fellow U.S. Navy veterans. Hats with the names of the ships they were assigned to started most of the conversations among the sailors.
From 1958 to 1962, Withers worked on the flight deck of the USS Intrepid, an aircraft carrier that is now a floating museum in New York City. Being on the carrier was a far stretch from what he was used to in Reidsville.
The Intrepid was a learning experience for me, he said. Before I went into the Navy I had never been on a ship.
We were going through some rough seas in the Mediterranean and the flight deck was 70 feet above the sea and we saw waves coming onto the deck, Powell said.
Sharing and hearing stories from other veterans is what Afi Johnson-Parris enjoys about events at the Field of Honor memorial.
Johnson-Parris, an original board member of the memorial foundation and an Air Force veteran, said the stories from the various time periods are compelling and offer insight.
The times most of them served it was an obligation, she said of the men drafted into World War II and the Korean and Vietnam wars. When I went into the Air Force, it was on a voluntary basis.
Harry Youngblood knows all too well the greatest sacrifice a military member makes.
A little over a year ago his son, retired Sgt. Lenny Youngblood, died after bouts with a traumatic brain injury and PTSD sustained in Afghanistan.
Like his son, Youngblood is a retired U.S. Marine and didnt want to sit around crying; he wanted to do something. Heros Ride is what came of his sons death. The nonprofit organization carries the flag-draped casket during the funeral of any veteran.
Youngblood said they carried their first casket in September in Winston-Salem in a refurbished military Humvee.
He hopes they can honor more veterans.
Veterans Day is a day to honor all of our veterans, alive or gone, Youngblood said. This is something we want to do to honor our veterans.
In a different time and place, critics of Greensboro politics would often grumble legitimately that the city was being run by a group of middle-aged white guys in a smoky back room.
Not anymore. Last week, voters elected eight women and one man as their new City Council.
Specifically, they elected five white women, three black women and one black male. Which is to say, not a single white male. For the first time. Ever.
Among the 38 candidates who filed last summer, 22 were male. As of Nov. 7, the last man standing was District 3 Councilman Justin Outling, the councils youngest member who at age 34 won re-election to his second full term and may very well be mayor one day. If he settles for that. For now, the mayor also is a she. Nancy Vaughan handily won her third term, meaning the states three largest cities Charlotte, Raleigh and Greensboro all elected women as their mayors.
Voters throughout the city also elected the first openly gay council member. Interactive Resource Center Executive Director Michelle Kennedy edged at-large incumbent Mike Barber. Kennedy said in a pre-election interview that she didnt believe the council needed clear-cutting but that it could benefit from more diversity. Greensboro is not working well for everybody, she said of the citys majority nonwhite population. It needs to come to grips with that.
Meanwhile, in District 5, challenger Tammi Thurm ousted Tony Wilkins, the lone Republican on the nonpartisan board and the councils most conservative member.
Im anxious to see how a female-dominated board governs. If empirical data are any indication, theyll be an improvement. According to decades of data from around the world, The New York Times reported in a 2016 story, women govern differently than men do in some important ways. They tend to be more collaborative and bipartisan.
A study by the American Journal of Political Science also found that female members of in Congress tend to sponsor and co-sponsor more bills than their male counterparts and to bring 9 percent more in federal funding to their home districts. A variety of studies, the Times notes, have found the biggest gender differences appear during behind-the-scenes work that women interrupt less (but are interrupted more), pay closer attention to other peoples nonverbal cues and use a more democratic leadership style compared with mens more autocratic style. The result is that women build coalitions and reach consensus more quickly ... .
Women share their power more; men guard their power, Michael A. Genovese, director of the Institute for Leadership Studies at Loyola Marymount University, told the Times.
So maybe in this politically polarized climate, women leaders are a part of the cure for what ails us. Even so, some fear that the council may take a hard left turn away from businesses. I dont know about that.
First, to broad-brush this council as oblivious to the needs of business is to ignore who sits on it. For instance, Nancy Hoffmann is a retired corporate recruiter and a real estate investor who, if anything, has been criticized for her pro-business leanings. The same has been said of Outling, who is a corporate attorney. And dont forget, Marikay Abuzuaiter was a longtime restaurateur, and newcomer Thurm has extensive business experience. Finally, most newly elected council members seem to recognize the power of jobs to solve all kinds of problems.
A local developer, Marty Kotis, said last week that he views the new council with an open mind.
I dont feel any less represented as a white male because theres not a white male on the council, Kotis said. What concerns him more than gender, Kotis said, is where each council member stands on the issues.
Kotis added that he believes Wilkins may have been hurt by his own party. By trying to make this nonpartisan race more partisan, Kotis said, the Guilford County Republican Party may have cost Wilkins votes among Democrats in his district.
It was not a wise move, Kotis said.
As for whether women are more collaborative than men, that perception may have gotten more of them elected, Kotis said.
Maybe there is a belief that women are more personable and less likely to go on Twitter.
By Carter WrennThe aging UNC-Chapel Hill professor who met Miss Bikini World on the internet, then flew to Bolivia to meet her in the flesh but, instead, came face to face with a man standing in front of his hotel in La Paz holding an empty suitcase who said, She left this. Take it to her in Buenos Aires. Shell meet you there is back in the newspapers.
After the professor, Paul Frampton, landed in Buenos Aires, the police found 4 pounds of cocaine in the lining of the suitcase, and after that, he landed in an Argentinian prison.
Meantime, back in Chapel Hill, the deans, concluding that the professor couldnt very well teach his classes from a prison in South America, suspended his pay; then the professor, after telling the deans teaching his class from prison wasnt going to be a problem, sued the university.
The verdict was peculiar: The judge didnt show much empathy for the professors pursuit of Miss Bikini World but explained the way he saw it, after reading the law: UNC had violated its own policies when it came to paying tenured professors. He then ordered UNC to pay Frampton $263,000, which has to leave you shaking your head while wondering who on earth could have written a policy that said a tenured professor could go on getting paid while he was in prison for drug smuggling.
Anyhow, the university paid Frampton, regrouped and fired him outright. But now he is out of jail, demanding his tenure back.
Which leads to a second tale: At the professors trial the prosecutor produced a series of text messages the professor had sent Miss Bikini World which, the prosecutor told the jury, proved Professor Frampton knew that suitcase was full of cocaine. Back then, the professor admitted hed written the texts but he told The New York Times they were just jokes hed sent to his loved one to amuse her.
Now the professor has changed his story: He says he didnt write a single one of those texts that the prosecutor wrote them to frame him. And whats more, he says, he can prove it.
How? He explained to the newspaper that he had paid a scientist in London called a forensic linguist and the scientist has no doubt those texts were written by someone who speaks Spanish.
So how does this chapter end? Today, Professor Frampton is teaching at a university in Italy while arguing that a university in North Carolina (that paid him $263,000 while he was in prison) has a moral obligation to give him back his tenure.
WASHINGTON Desperation seems to be driving Republicans this grateful season as they seek to trade polar bears for tax cuts, while fervently praying that former Alabama Supreme Court Chief Justice Roy Moore didn't do what he's alleged to have done, which might give the U.S. Senate another Democratic vote.
The race is on to pass tax reform before Dec. 12, when Alabama will select a new senator to fill the seat vacated by Attorney General Jeff Sessions. Moore, best known as the "Ten Commandments judge," recently has been accused of having pursued teenage girls several decades ago when he was in his 30s. He is set to face off against Democrat Doug Jones, who prosecuted two of the Klansmen accused of setting off the bomb in a Birmingham church that killed four African-American girls in 1963.
Paging Flannery O'Connor. Not that this evolving Southern gothic narrative needs a fiction writer's labors. Even O'Connor, who once explained Southerners' tendency to write about "freaks" because "we are still able to recognize one," would be hard-pressed to embellish the already weird. We might also ping William Faulkner while we're at it, who noted that the past isn't past. In Alabama, where I once worked as a reporter, the past just keeps on truckin'.
In the wake of these accusations by four women, including one who was 14 at the time of Moore's alleged advances, several Republican senators have offered cautious remarks, saying that "if true," then Moore should step aside. If true, Moore should probably re-read those commandments more closely rather than forcing his courtroom audiences to study them as he presided over others' moral failings.
While it is neither right nor fair to condemn another without due process, the statute of limitations is well past on these allegations, which were published by Washington Post reporters who spent a month interviewing dozens of people in addition to the accusers. In the case of one teen, Moore allegedly offered alcohol to his underage date and modeled his "tight white" underwear. The swirl of allegations arrived at a moment when it seemed likely that Moore was to become Alabama's senator. The state hasn't elected a Democrat to the office in more than 20 years.
As momentum builds for Moore's possible retreat and optimism grows among Alabama Democrats, Republicans desperate to pass something before year's end have been trying to pull elephants out of hats. Or something. In addition to proposing tax cuts for the rich, they've turned from draining the swamp to thawing the Arctic to scrounge up more money. Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska has introduced a bill that would open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil and gas drilling.
Murkowski, usually the more rational member of Alaska's Senate duo, seems to have fallen under the spell of the greedy brotherhood. If we were desperate for oil, her bill might make more sense, but we're in the midst of a glut. Some environmentalists, meanwhile, have questioned the Congressional Budget Office's projection that Arctic drilling would produce $1.1 billion over a decade. For this to be true, they say, oil would need to earn $70 per barrel. Yet, in West Texas today, a barrel of crude oil is selling for about $57. Obviously, this is only a $13 difference. And the refuge contains 19 million acres, of which Murkowski proposes exploiting only 800,000.
For now. But what about later? And what refuge might be next?
More than 100 years ago, when the first national wildlife refuge was established by President Theodore Roosevelt, we seemed to have a better sense of our role as wardens of our nation's natural resources and the ecosystems that support wildlife. The idea that we no longer need to protect or manage animals humanely or that they still have more than enough acreage to sustain them ignores the reasons we created these protections in the first place and the reality that the planet does not, in fact, require our presence.
The fact that this is a partisan issue simply ignores reason.
That a few Republicans would sacrifice even a square inch of the Arctic unnecessarily for the profit of a political victory is, frankly, as stomach-turning as the image of a tighty-whitey-wearing Roy Moore pawing a 14-year-old. Surely, there's a better way to make a buck and a better soul to warm Sessions' seat.
Kathleen Parker's email address is kathleenparker@washpost.com.
Victims of domestic violence often turn to the court system for justice and safety. But sometimes that system the quintessential symbol of fairness is weaponized by abusers.
Victims, service providers, lawyers, cops and policy advocates described to Greenwich Time how domestic violence offenders may use the legal system as a new arm with which to manipulate and control their victims.
Legal abuse is any time the abuser uses or misuses the legal system to revictimize their partner, said Meredith Gold, director of Domestic Abuse Services for the YWCA Greenwich. It can be through threatening, harassment or intimidation.
Tyler Sizemore / Hearst Connecticut Media
In family court, abusers may file motion after motion to force their ex-partners to stay in court fighting them. They may refuse to pay child support or to follow court orders. They may appeal each decision of the court. Abusers may slander their ex-partners with false accusations, or paint victims as mentally ill if they bring up allegations of domestic violence.
Each day spent in court can mean wasted time, money spent on lawyers fees and lost wages for victims who may be trying to restart their lives after escaping an abusive cycle.
Across Connecticut, the majority of domestic violence victims cannot afford lawyers to represent them in family court, said Karen Jarmoc, executive director of the Connecticut Coalition Against Domestic Violence, an umbrella organization that supports the states 18 domestic violence service agencies and advocates for policy change. However, in wealthy areas, like Fairfield County, the ability to afford more lawyers and more litigation can exacerbate abuse cases further.
Its much more difficult to provide services in high-net-worth situations because the offender has immense resources that he can use to further harass, threaten, push down the victim, Jarmoc said. The way that the offender can continue to use the court to harm the victim in those high-net-worth relationships is deplorable. And the way that the court allows it is inexcusable. They know it. There is no doubt whatsoever that they know it.
Tyler Sizemore / Hearst Connecticut Media
Judges are limited by federal and state laws in what they can do. Judges may craft additional orders or sanctions to protect a victim, if they see fit. But they must allow everyone to defend their rights in court, while attempting to dismiss frivolous litigation.
More Information How to get help: Connecticut Coalition Against Domestic Violence Hotline: 888-774-2900 Find a domestic violence provider. National Coalition Against Domestic Violence Hotline: 1-800-799-7233 (SAFE) ============ Tell us your story Email reporter Emilie Munson at emunson@greenwichtime.com Join the conversation Facebook.com/GreenwichTime Twitter: @greenwichtime #gtdomesticviolence See More Collapse
Were always on kind of a tightrope to ensure due process, said Judge Elizabeth Bozzuto, who has been a family court judge for 15 years and serves as chief administrative justice for the Connecticut Family Court Division.
Jarmoc suggests Connecticut judges should have more training on domestic violence, conducted by outside experts instead of organized by the judges themselves.
At present, all Connecticut judges receive some training on handling domestic violence cases. Of the 14 days newly appointed judges spend in judge school, about four days are devoted to domestic violence, said Connecticut Appellate Court Judge Maria Kahn, who organizes domestic violence education for Connecticut judges. In a full day of classroom instruction, judges are taught to recognize typical offender and victim behaviors, and even role play how domestic violence cases may unfold in court. They spend approximately three days observing domestic violence cases in Connecticut courtrooms.
In 2015 and 2016, Kahn also prepared a voluntary full-day workshop on domestic violence, available to all judges and taught by local, national and international experts. Kahn said nearly every Connecticut judge attended.
Domestic violence has been at the forefront of the judicial education for more than 10 years, said Kahn.
Jarmoc, who has headed the CCADV for six years, said progress has been made, but there is more to be done. All court personnel from judges to clerks to family relations officers and prosecutors need to better understand the intricacies of domestic violence, she said.
A victim who has experienced trauma as a result of continuous domestic violence, perhaps even for decades, is not going to present themselves like Oh hello, good morning, Judge. Just wanted to make sure you knew, this is what Ive been experiencing. The trauma has really impacted their ability to convey succinctly and directly the circumstance, and so therefore they are looked at as a bit crazy, she said. I worry though, quite honestly, Ive been here six years, Ill look back at a couple things that I wasnt able to make fully better and that will be one of them.
Other stories in this series:
A survivor's tale
Wealth does not protect the abused
What the cops see
Special police squad wields handcuffs, bedside manner
The legal assault
Judge Bozzuto suggested the system could benefit from individual calendaring for Family Court judges. The term refers to one judge sitting through the entirety of a case from first motion to trial. Currently, all motions filed by litigants or lawyers are scheduled as filed, go onto a single general calendar and are divided up between the judges available that particular day. If one judge saw every pleading in a case, fewer individuals would be able to abuse the system with redundant litigation, Buzzuto said.
Individual calendaring is used in the Norwich Judicial District. Bozzuto said she hopes it can be expanded to three or four other judicial districts.
My wish list will go to Stamford, she said, referring to the Stamford Judicial District, which serves most of Fairfield County, Greenwich included. It cries out for that in Stamford.
What service providers term legal abuse offenders repeatedly using frivolous litigation to exercise control over their victims typically unfolds in family court, where individuals bring the cases. In criminal court, where the action is brought by the state following an arrest, victims receive support from victims advocates.
Victims advocates, employed by the state or by domestic violence service providers, contact victims after their partner is arrested on a domestic violence charge. A free, confidential service, advocates voice the victims wishes for example, what kind of protective order they might want in court and maintain relationships with judges, family relations officers and other court personnel. They can also answer a victims questions about court orders and processes.
Were sort of the mouthpiece for them, said Vanessa Wilson, a former victims advocate who is the court supervisor with the YWCAs Domestic Abuse Services.
Tyler Sizemore / Hearst Connecticut Media
Advocating for victims wishes has grown harder in the Stamford Superior Court due to changes in how domestic violence criminal cases are heard, Wilson said. Previously, one judge and prosecutor heard all domestic violence criminal cases during specific sessions during the week. In meetings prior to the court date, the Department of Children and Families, family relations and probation officers, the victims advocate and the prosecutor would discuss their recommendations for the judge.
In many other courthouses in the state, cases on the domestic violence docket still are handled in their own courtroom, apart from others. But Stamford judges now hear domestic violence cases sprinkled amongst all other criminal matters, instead of separating them into a distinct group.
It was really streamlined, said Wilson of the old model. Whichever case you were handling, the victim you were advocating for was getting the benefit of this whole team that was dedicated to helping in their situation of domestic violence. It felt like a safety net for them.
Frigid temperatures couldnt stop Greenwichs patriotic spirit as residents and officials gathered Saturday morning to thank and support the towns veterans.
The annual Veterans Day walk proceeded down Greenwich Avenue shortly before 10:30 a.m., bringing people to the towns World War II and Korean War memorials outside of the Havemeyer Building. A crowd of close to 200 braved the cold to attend a ceremony led by Vietnam veteran Peter LeBeau, commander of the Greenwich American Legion Post 29.
Far too many of us are more concerned about social media and the latest iPhone and far too few of us give any thought to how our country became such a great nation, LeBeau said. It was only possible because of the many millions of patriots who knew in order to preserve our union they must be willing to put themselves in harms way and sacrifice their very lives.
LeBeau said he hoped there would soon be, for all the right reasons, a resurgence in patriotism in the country, inspiring more people to recognize and be grateful for veterans and their service.
The keynote remarks were delivered by Vietnam veteran Edward Vick, a decorated Naval officer who led 100 combat missions on the river patrol force. Vick said he typically does not like to talk about his Vietnam service, except with other veterans, but made an exception to discuss a particular mission in 1969 in which two boats he was leading up to the Cambodian border were ambushed at night.
They faced weaponry from rocket propelled grenades to machine guns at close range during an attack from North Vietnamese forces. One rocket exploded below Vicks boat, sinking it. While they were able to continue the fight, when they evacuated to the other boat he left the American flag behind.
To this day I regret not having the presence of mind to try and save that flag, Vick said. I have viewed that night with remorse a thousand times since 1969. But I also believe that which does not break us makes us stronger, and a day later we raised that boat from the muddy bottom of the river and since she was made of fiberglass we patched up the bullet holes and the rocket hole in the bottom, polished up her weapons, dropped in a couple of new engines and 72 hours after she had been sunk she was almost as good as new and back in the fight with her flag only a little bit worse for wear.
First Selectman Peter Tesei delivered remarks as part of the ceremony and later, along with Vick, placed a wreath at the memorials. Tesei thanked everyone who braved the elements to honor those who braved more than this so we can all be here today.
We are indebted to you, all the veterans who are gathered here today, for your gallant efforts to protect our rights as a country and those of our allies, Tesei said, asking for a round of applause for all the veterans including those whose names were on the town memorials.
Also Saturday, the Byram Veterans Day Parade was to take place at 7 p.m., and feature a ceremony officially changing the name of New Lebanon Avenue to Veterans Way.
As part of the downtown morning ceremony, the American Legion handed out its Young Persons of the Year award to Greenwich High School senior Willa Doss and Brunswick School senior Diego Jasson. The two were given citations from the state and were credited for their patriotism, academic achievement and community spirit. It was also noted they had both excelled at Boys and Girls State with Doss being elected governor and Jasson representing Connecticut at Boys Nation.
They represent everything that is great about Greenwich, about Connecticut and about America, state Rep. Livvy Floren, R-149th, said before giving them their awards.
Both Doss and Jasson led attendees in the Pledge of Allegiance during the ceremony, which also included the national anthem and God Bless American sung by town employee Ruby Durant.
Schools throughout town held Veterans Day events on Friday, and Saturdays march was followed by a luncheon at the Redmens Home Association for all veterans and their families.
Members of the Byram Veterans Association, the American Legion Post 29, Cos Cob Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 10112 and the Ninth District Veterans all took part as did the Greenwich Police Department honor guard, and members of the Cos Cob, Sound Beach and Glenville volunteer fire departments.
Several of the veterans rode down Greenwich Avenue in style thanks to classic cars donated to the walk by residents Jerry Cotrone, Carmen Moretti, Sabrina Pray-Racquet, Warren Fratarola and Louis Ceci. And as the walkers proceeded by, GPD traffic officers saluted, and people came out of their stores or gathered by the windows to watch the brief parade.
Bonnie McKay Caie took part in the march along with her daughter, Jessie Owens Smith, while carrying a large photograph of her father James McKay, a 97-year-old World War II veteran who was unable to attend the event because of the cold weather.
I love that they have this and that as many people turn out as they do, Caie said. I wish more did but there have been so many wonderful ceremonies in this town and in the schools to honor the veterans. To teach the next generations about the sacrifice our men in uniform made is, I think, profound.
GPD Lt. James Bonney served as the bagpiper for the event and the march was led by a GPD motorcycle escort. Chief of Police James Heavey, himself a veteran, was among the marchers along with Tesei, Floren, state Sen. L. Scott Frantz, R-36th, state Rep. Fred Camillo, R-151st, and Selectman John Toner.
During his remarks, Tesei honored the memory of longtime town resident Charles Standard, a World War II veteran, who died in August.
While all veterans were honored and thanked as part of the ceremony, LeBeau paid a special tribute to those who had served and were killed in the Korean War.
It was a brutal struggle which regrettably became known as the forgotten war, LeBeau said. We must never forget them and we must always honor them together with the more than one million other Americans who have died since 1775 defending freedom and democracy throughout the world.
kborsuk@greenwichtime.com
Connecticuts two U.S. senators are urging the Department of Interior to clarify that a joint casino venture between the Mohegans and Mashantucket Pequot tribes planned north of Hartford complies with a gambling compact with the state.
The agency hasnt ruled one way or another on the legality of the project, creating a degree of uncertainty for the tribal owners of Mohegan Sun and Foxwoods as they look to build a casino in East Windsor to compete with an MGM resort that is scheduled to open next year in Springfield, Mass.
MGM is challenging the tribes exclusive rights to develop a third casino in the state and have unveiled plans for a $675 million privately funded waterfront casino in Bridgeport.
Democrats Richard Blumenthal and Chris Murphy, along with U.S. Rep. Joe Courtney, D-Conn., wrote to Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke Nov. 2 asking the agency to review and sign off on changes to the tribes existing compact with the state.
The genesis of the compact amendments is the desire of the state of Connecticut to authorize an additional casino operation within Connecticut borders, they wrote. This is a decision based on the states review of its gaming policies, the impact on the people of Connecticut and the state budget.
MGM officials say that the absence of a formal approval by the Interior Department, the parent agency of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, constitutes a denial.
They pointed to a recent opinion by state Attorney General George Jepsen, in which his spokeswoman said that going ahead with the project would pose grave potential risks to the state of Connecticut.
(This) letter raises no new issues and provides no new information that would change the Department of the Interiors decision not to approve the tribes submissions, said Uri Clinton, senior vice president and legal counsel for MGM Resorts International. It also does not address the risks to the state of proceeding with (tribes) proposed casino without Interior approval that have been emphasized by Attorney General Jepsens office.
The tribes plan to start work on their new casino, which will have 3,000 slot machines and 50 to 150 table games, by years end with the demolition of a former multiplex cinema on the site off Interstate 91.
They say that a Sept. 15 deadline came and went without the Interior Department raising objections.
In the 1990s, the state entered into a compact with the Mashantuckets and Mohegans giving them exclusive casino rights in return for them forking over 25 percent of annual slot machine revenues to the state.
The states cut of casino taxes has fallen precipitously from $430 million in 2007 to $260 million because of the economic downturn and casino competition in New York and Massachusetts, however.
MGM , represented by former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, unsuccessfully sued the state over what it claims is an unfair monopoly. It has vowed further litigation after its most recent challenge was denied by the Second Circuit Court of Appeals in New York City.
The Legislature and the governor would have to reopen the approval process that gave the tribes the green light to open their joint venture casino.
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The thick envelope thudded on the doorstep three days after she returned from the hospital.
It was Charlottes father who noticed the manila package. The gray-haired man carried it into the bedroom where his 41-year-old daughter was curled in bed breastfeeding her days-old son.
The new mother looked so blissful that he hesitated to tell her. Charlotte had been served.
The plaintiff was the babys father. Charlotte had met Lucas on a Hampton Jitney bus, and after three months of casual dating, discovered she was pregnant.
She paged through the documents in shock: Lucas filed on the same day he became a father. Her first court date was just three weeks away.
As she read, she discovered Lucas also requested that the court order Charlotte, a marketing executive, to pay his legal fees.
Why was any of this legal action necessary? a confused Charlotte wondered. Lucas met his son at the hospital; Charlotte had offered to allow him to visit the boy regularly.
Not for the last time, Charlotte called her lawyer.
* * *
One night, speeding down Interstate 495, Lucas had raged at Charlotte, then seven months pregnant.
I am the father and I can do whatever I want! he yelled, veins bulging on the side of his neck. Ill take him when you least expect it!
Although she refused to marry him, Charlotte said they could co-parent together and be friends. Lucas, knuckles white on the steering wheel, vowed to get full custody in court.
The shouting, which left Charlotte sobbing and terrified, was the last in a string of incidents throughout her pregnancy in which Lucas had grown increasingly controlling and aggressive. Constant calls and surprise visits turned into violence. He shoved her down on the examination table during an ultrasound appointment, when the technician left the room. Once, he grabbed her ankle, causing her to fall on her homes carpeted stairs. She was barely able to catch herself before her pregnant belly smashed into the steps.
When Lucas emptied a joint bank account they had set up for baby expenses, she knew it was time to do something.
Charlotte called the police, who informed Lucas she had obtained no trespass orders for her Greenwich house and her home out of state. But her efforts to protect herself only antagonized Lucas further. She saw his custody application as retaliation.
The idea of losing her son scared Charlotte more than anything Lucas had tried before.
Other stories in this series:
A survivor's tale
Wealth does not protect the abused
What the cops see
Special police squad wields handcuffs, bedside manner
Abusers use court system as weapon
Charlotte wanted to focus on her son and enjoy the first four months she had off from work in ages, but the case devoured her time, energy and emotions.
She spoke to her lawyer on the phone while breastfeeding. With her newborn in her arms, she dictated statements to her mother, who typed them. She fired back at Lucass custody application with four motions of her own, seeking custody and child support.
When she went to court for the first time, Charlotte was placed in a line of divorcees and other Family Court litigants waiting to meet with Family Relations counselors and a judge. She tried to explain her case to a female Family Relations counselor, but the woman treated her dismissively.
Hes not a big guy, she said. What are you worried about?
Charlottes lawyer the first of several told her that in Connecticut, joint custody is typically ordered, with frequent visitation given to fathers. Thinking she had no other choice, Charlotte agreed that Lucas could visit his son four days a week, for two hours during each visit.
The visits were fraught with tension. Lucas was sweaty, his hands shaky and he had developed a nervous tic in his neck. The stocky man reeked of alcohol on a few occasions. He would tell Charlotte to shut up, or ask her to leave the room when he was with the baby. Charlotte made sure she was never alone when Lucas came to see the child.
About this project Domestic violence is the second most investigated crime in Greenwich, behind only larceny. Yet it remains largely hidden from public view. In this ongoing series, Greenwich Time takes you deep inside the experience of victims, police, lawyers, counselors and abusers. This installment is based on interviews with lawyers, victims' advocates and additional reporting. Names have been changed to maintain the anonymity of the victim.
One morning as the sun was rising, Charlotte was nursing her 2-month-old in bed when she heard a noise downstairs. The rattling and banging sounded like someone was trying to force the front door open.
Fear charged through her body. She cradled the baby against her chest and ran to the next room to tell the baby nurse to dial 911. Charlotte went to the top of the stairs and looked out the window. She could see just part of the man who was standing at the door. It wasnt Lucas.
Open the goddamn door! Open the goddamn door! the man shouted in an angry voice. Im looking for (Charlotte).
Charlotte saw a stack of documents in his arms, and she realized the man was a server. Before the police arrived, he dropped the court papers on the doorstep and drove away.
The police explained that some process servers, private contractors, would serve court documents in an intimidating manner for an extra fee. It sounds like thats what happened to you, they told Charlotte.
She opened the documents to discover Lucas had started a new action in probate court. He wanted to change their sons first and last names. Charlotte alerted her lawyer to the new battlefront.
Then, about two weeks later, Lucas and Charlotte got into a dispute while Lucas was visiting the child at Charlottes parents house. The baby was vaccinated earlier in the day and needed to rest, the doctor had said, but Lucas wanted to play with him that afternoon.
As Lucas knelt to lift his son from his baby chair, Charlotte put a hand on his shoulder to stop him. Lucas threw himself onto the carpet shouting that Charlotte struck him in the head and he was now blinded.
Youve assaulted me! he cried. He reached for his cellphone and called the police.
When Greenwich police arrived minutes later, Charlotte, her mother and the babys nanny, all of whom witnessed the interaction, silently wrote statements. Officers examined Lucas but could not see any signs of redness, bruising or abrasion where Lucas said he was hit. Still, Lucas demanded an ambulance take him to Greenwich Hospital.
When he was discharged, Greenwich Police arrested him on a charge of disorderly conduct.
Now Playing: Staff from the CT Coalition Against Domestic Violence and YWCA Greenwich Domestic Abuse Services discuss the legal system for domestic abuse victims as part of the Greenwich Time series Behind the Front Door, which examines domestic violence in the community of Greenwich. Video: Greenwich Time
Charlotte was relieved to learn the charge helped her lawyer convince the probate court to dismiss Lucass request to change her sons name. However, Lucass arrest also dragged her into a third legal arena, criminal court.
A victims advocate, assigned to her case by the YWCA Greenwich, helped her navigate the new, intimidating branch of the justice system. She told Charlotte she had the right to address the judge through a victims statement.
A normally confident public speaker, Charlotte nervously read her one-page statement before the court. She explained how confused she was by Lucass hostile behavior, because she was not preventing him from seeing his child. Where did his malice start and stop? she asked. She knew he had a drinking problem. What was he actually capable of?
The judge granted Charlotte a 15-month criminal protective order, prohibiting Lucas from harassing, threatening or stalking Charlotte, or going to her house. The judge also assigned Lucas to family violence and parent programs. After completing them, the charges would be expunged from Lucas record.
With the order, Charlotte felt safer, knowing that Lucas was not permitted to show up at her front door.
But she would discover that there was one place Lucas could still reach her: the courts.
By the following autumn, Lucas had filed 41 applications, motions, requests, objections and stipulations in Family Court, all in the space of just over a year. He wanted custody, the appointment of a guardian ad litem, a paternity test for his son, a psychological evaluation for Charlotte and compensation for his legal fees. He fought Charlotte over their visitation schedule and child support.
Often, he refiled the same motion under new names, with minor alterations, after it had been denied. He refused to show up for subpoenaed depositions. In court testimony and complaints, he lied to the court in statements such as his continuing to maintain he had been assaulted prior to his arrest forcing Charlotte to scramble to debunk a growing litany of ridiculous claims.
Charlotte previously thought of the courts as stalwart enforcers of rules, but now she watched Lucas thumb his nose at court orders and procedures, with no meaningful consequence. Her frustration mounted.
The case was exhausting her. Each legal action meant less time focusing on her son. Her court appearances forced her to miss work. Her savings were quickly draining away, spent on lawyers fees.
Nerves and anxiety gnawed at her each time a motion affecting her son came before the court. Often, she was unable to eat or sleep for days before hearings. Already petite, Charlotte lost 10 pounds.
Her misery grew as she watched the treatment extend to her family. In November 2015, Lucas filed for an ex-parte civil restraining order against Charlottes father, whom Lucas accused of stalking him when he had the child. The request for a restraining order was denied without a hearing.
Lucas would not give up. A few months later, he brought a civil action against Charlottes parents, alleging they wrongly retained some $4,000 worth of his personal items, including an antique cabinet that he had given them as a gift. Again, the judge ruled against Lucas, finding that he failed to prove Charlottes parents had any liability for the items.
More Information THREE YEARS OF LEGAL PUMMELING FAMILY COURT 56 motions filed by Lucas since 2014 over custody, visitation and other matters. 27 immediately denied. Others are heard. APPEALS COURT 1 appeal of a Stamford family court decision filed by Lucas in 2016. Case is being adjudicated. CIVIL COURT 3 applications for temporary restraining orders filed by Lucas against Charlotte since spring 2016. All denied. 1 application for a temporary restraining order filed by Lucas against Charlotte's father in 2015. Application denied. 1 complaint filed by Lucas against Charlotte's parents seeking reimbursement for personal items in 2016. Claims dismissed. 1 complaint filed by Lucas against Charlotte seeking reimbursement for personal items in 2017. Case is being adjudicated. CRIMINAL COURT Judge ordered Lucas to participate in a family violence re-education program after his arrest in 2014. Charlotte, who appeared during hearing, was granted a 15-month criminal protective order. PROBATE COURT 1 complaint filed by Lucas against Charlotte seeking to change their child's last name from hers to his in 2014. Request denied. See More Collapse
It was two weeks before Christmas and Charlotte was riding Metro-North on the way to her office when her phone rang.
The caller was the chief operating officer at Charlottes employer, and he had bad news. Her legal cases were demanding too much of her time, he said. She seemed distracted at work. They wanted her to travel more, but she always had court dates. The company decided to let her go.
Surrounded by commuters, Charlotte began to quietly cry. She had never been fired before, and was overcome by shame.
The termination gave Charlotte more time to focus on the court cases and spend with her 1-year-old, but it deprived her of much-needed income. She received three months of severance, but it all wouldnt last long given her legal fees.
She managed to scrape up a few freelance clients, but without a regular paycheck, she soon struggled to afford an attorney to represent her in family court. She was forced to ask friends and family members for money, and had to continue most of her ligation pro-se, representing herself. Frequently, she stayed up late into the night researching family law and preparing her motions and exhibits.
Already, Charlotte had spent nearly $350,000 on litigation in family and criminal court. She mourned the loss of each penny of her savings, knowing it could have helped support her son through college and graduate school.
Moreover, Lucas owed her thousands of dollars in child support, child care and medical costs. Forcing him to pay required filing a motion for the court to hold him in contempt more litigation. But after the court granted the motion and Lucas still refused to pay, the court did not sanction him. Charlotte could not see a way to win.
Finally, in the fall, a family court judge ordered that Charlotte would have sole legal and physical custody of her son. It was a moment of celebration for Charlotte. She thought the judgment would halt Lucass legal activity.
Her joy was cut short, however. Lucas quickly filed an appeal of the judges order to the Connecticut Appellate Court. Charlotte had to hire a special appeals lawyer, for a $15,000 retainer, to represent her over the cases 10 trial days. It is still being adjudicated.
For Charlotte, the appeal was a sobering reminder; Lucas would not stop litigating until he got his way.
* * *
Battling Lucas feels like a roller-coaster Charlotte cant get off.
In three and a half years, two months have not passed without some sort of legal action in court. Charlottes savings are gone. Few of her friends know the full picture of what she has been experiencing. She lives in a state of exhaustion, preparing her responses to Lucass legal actions, working and raising her son alone. Lucas has not seen his son in eight months, because he refuses supervised visitation.
Even amid the ongoing gloom, there are fresh low points. This summer, Lucas launched a case against Charlotte in the New York Supreme Court, accusing her of unlawfully retaining $35,000 worth of his property and claiming she owes him over $100,000 for work he completed for her.
Days later, he filed for his third temporary restraining order against her and, in the sea of legal notices and paperwork she receives, Charlotte missed the notification of the hearing date. A judge, unfamiliar with their case, granted the order in Charlottes absence.
Lucas then tried to have her arrested for violating the restraining order when she contacted him about visiting his son. Despite Charlottes fears, authorities didnt fall for the attempt. Weeks later, Charlotte was able to present her side to another judge, familiar with their case, who vacated the restraining order.
Every once in a while, Charlotte is able to find a sliver of hope. In July, the judge in her family court case issued a Strobel order. The language is simple, but its ramifications are huge.
Neither party shall file, except in the case of a bona fide emergency concerning the minor child, any motion without first obtaining leave of court, the order stated.
To Charlotte and her new attorney, handling her case at a reduced fee, the order signifies recognition by the court of how Lucas is wasting the courts time, and Charlottes.
She is optimistic the Strobel order might be a turning point. Maybe now the court will finally begin to address the abuses of the legal system that Lucas has deployed frivolous motions, multiple cases in many courts, willful contempt of court orders, false statements in court documents with sanctions and additional court orders.
Lucas, true to form, has filed more motions since the Strobel order was issued. The next move lies with the judge.
Charlotte knows she likely will pass many more sleepless nights, preparing and thinking about what she will say in court.
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Published on 2017/11/12 | Source
Chinese tourists wait in line at a duty-free shop in Seoul on Friday.
Tourists from three Southeast Asian countries can enter Korea without a visa if they arrive at Yangyang International Airport near Pyeongchang, the venue of the 2018 Winter Olympics.
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The government made the announcement on Friday and said it is aimed at boosting tourism ahead of the sporting event. Tourists from Indonesia, Vietnam and the Philippines can enter Korea visa-free through the airport until April next year. The number of tourists from those three countries last year grew 45 percent compared to 2015 to 1.1 million.
The government will also waive the visa requirement for Chinese cruise passengers, while tourists from Southeast Asia who have visited other OECD member countries will be eligible for multiple-entry visas. A discount for electronic visas for Chinese group tourists will be extended until the end of 2018.
The visa waiver for individual Chinese cruise passengers aims to attract a wealthier class of tourists who, the government hopes, will spend more money here than tour groups.
Two large cruise ships dock at Sokcho near Pyeongchang during the Winter Olympics to provide around 2,200 rooms for visitors. Foreign visitors will also be able to buy rail passes to tourist spots in Gangwon Province.
Also planned is a flat rate for taxis ferrying customers to and from Incheon International Airport and Seoul. But tourism industry insiders said the measures will have only a limited impact, since visa-free benefits are limited.
Published on 2017/11/12 | Source
Korean men are growing increasingly overweight. In 1998, three out of 10 men were obese, but the ratio rose to four last year. The increase was particularly high among men in their 30s and 40s, while there was almost no change in the proportion of overweight women over the same period.
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According to a recent report by the Korean Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the adult obesity rate stood at 34.8 percent last year, compared to 33.2 percent in 2015. The government conducts annual studies on public health, including obesity and smoking. The adult obesity rate stood at 26 percent when the first study was conducted in 1998.
The male obesity rate reached 42.8 percent last year, surpassing 40 percent for the first time and up from just 25.1 percent in 1998. Among men in their 40s, the obesity rate rose from 33.3 percent to 45.6 percent, and among men in their 30s from 19.3 percent to 32.4 percent.
But the female obesity rate has been steady at around 26 percent, and among women in their 40s it actually fell slightly from 29.8 percent to 28.7 percent.
A KCDC official said this is due to more women paying attention to their physical shape and putting in the effort to watch what they eat.
One health expert said, "The latest statistics show Koreans may have grown more interested in how they look and what they eat, but still remain unenthusiastic when it comes to actually taking care of their health".
In reality, Koreans' eating habits have grown worse and they are also exercising less. The proportion who skip breakfast is rising, and more men than women go without the most important meal of the day.
One out of three Koreans eats out at least once a day. In 2005, 60.7 percent of Koreans walked more than 30 minutes a day more than five times a week, but that plunged to 39.6 percent last year.
Also, fewer people engaged in some 2.5 hours of intensive exercise a week.
Lee Byung-hoon at Chungang University said, "Koreans work such long hours that they do not have enough time for exercise, and the drinking culture requires people to drink and consume meat whether they feel like it or not at after-hours gatherings with co-workers".
Hypertension and diabetes are on the rise as a result. The smoking rate also rose from 22.6 percent in 2015 to 23.9 percent, while the proportion of people who drink alcohol at least once a month rose from 60.6 percent to 61.9 percent.
No wonder then that the proportion who said they feel healthy fell from 42.5 percent in 1998 to 32.3 percent last year.
The warning signs are appearing earlier and earlier, with obesity among teenagers rising from 8.2 percent in 2005 and 12.8 percent in 2016.
Kang Jae-heon at Seoul Paik Hospital said, "The government should do more to help youngsters take better care of their health from early on".
Published on 2017/11/12 | Source
Nine out of ten Koreans who took a trip overseas this year want to do it again next year, a survey suggests.
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In the survey of 1,000 people by the Korea Tourism Organization released Monday, 90.3 percent of respondents said they want to go abroad again next year.
Some 62.5 percent said in the summer.
Their favorite destinations are Asian countries, with Japan taking up the largest proportion or 48.7 percent, followed by Vietnam (36.8 percent) and Thailand (29.2 percent).
Only 16.7 percent want to visit China in the wake of the spat over the deployment of a Terminal High-Altitude Area Defense battery from the U.S. here and Chinese boycott.
Respondents went overseas on average 2.6 times from January to September, up 0.5 times on-year. Their overseas trips more than doubled over the past four years.
They stayed overseas for an average of 5.9 days, up from 5.7 days on-year.
Published on 2017/11/12 | Source
Seoul ranked 16th on the list of the Top 100 City Destinations released by global research firm Euromonitor International on Thursday. Korea dropped six slots from last year due to a decline in Chinese tourists.
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Hong Kong was the most visited city in the world last year. It maintained the top spot for nine consecutive years. Most visitors were from the mainland, while the number of foreign visitors decreased.
Bangkok came second, and London third thanks to a weak pound.
Asian cities dominated this year's rankings. Six cities were among the Top 10, with Singapore in fourth, Macau in fifth, Shenzhen at ninth and Kuala Lumpur in 10th, mostly thanks to Chinese travelers.
"In 2010, 34 cities from Asia Pacific were present in Euromonitor International's rankings. This jumped to 41 cities in 2017 and is expected to grow to 47 cities in 2025", the company said.
Published on 2017/11/12 | Source
UNESCO will build its new International Center for Documentary Heritage in Korea.
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The center will sit near the site in Cheongju, North Chungcheong Province, where the world's oldest surviving metal-printed work, the Jikji Simche Yojeol, was created.
The decision was made in a general conference at UNESCO headquarters in Paris on Monday. It had already been approved unanimously by the UNESCO Executive Board in October.
Since 1992, UNESCO has made efforts to protect documents on the Memory of the World Register from war, terrorism, natural disasters, and hacking. That means the center has to be built at a site that is considered relatively safe and stable.
The National Archives of Korea said it took a year's effort to persuade UNESCO to site the center in Korea. First of all, the archives and Cheongju city government will launch a taskforce after an agreement is signed by UNESCO and Seoul early next year.
Cheongju will spend W26 billion to build the center, and the National Archives subsidize the center's management with W500 million to W1 billion per year (US$1=W1,114).
The Jikji, a Buddhist text, was printed in the city's Heungdeok Temple, whose ruins were discovered in 1985. The Cheongju Early Printing Museum on the site and an annual festival are dedicated to celebrating it.
Land of the Free?
50 state study on how professional licensing laws lead to fewer jobs
From Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty November, 2017
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Occupational licensing laws, or state permission slips to work in certain regulated professions, serve as a major barrier to entry for workers in America. For aspiring cosmetologists, manicurists, massage therapists, and aestheticians, licensing requirements can mean thousands of hours of training, tens of thousands of dollars for school, and regular fees to the state. These laws force people with skills and aspirations to take on debt they cannot afford, defer their dreams, or conduct their trade underground with the accompanying threat of fines and prosecution.
In 1950 just 1 in 20 workers required a license to work, now close to 1 in 4 do. With more professionals, and aspiring professionals, running into licensing laws, the case for reform has found an increasingly broad and diverse audience. Coalitions of liberal and conservative activists and policy experts, Democrat and Republican governors, and the Obama and Trump administrations have all embraced the cause of licensing reform. And while progress has been made in this reform movement, rigorous research into the effects of licensing on workers and the broader economy are still in their infancy.
This peer-reviewed1 study examines, for the first time, the impact of licensing requirements across the country on ten low and moderate income professions. For each state we created a Red Tape Index which measures the license requirements, i.e. fees, training hours, exams required, and minimum age, for ten professions. Then we looked at how employment related to a states score on the Red Tape Index.
Our findings include:
1. States with more burdensome licensure requirements (fees, training hours, exams, and age requirements) had significantly lower employment in the ten professional occupations. 2. Our models show that 23 states could see employment growth of 5% or above for these ten professions if they lowered their licensing laws to those of the least burdensome state Hawaii. 3. Tennessee, Alabama, Nevada, Florida, and Wisconsin are ranked as the most burdensome states for the professions under study. 4. Hawaii, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, and Utah are ranked as the least burdensome states for the professions under study. 5. We estimate that employment in the U.S. for those ten professions would increase by 4.5% if licensing regulations were reduced to the level of the least burdensome state (Hawaii).
Our study shows whatever benefits regulation might bring must be weighed against the cost to those who are trying to make their way in the world and feed their families. Policymakers must consider if the current protections licensing provides are worth the price of lower employment. The results of this report provide opportunity advocates with the statistics to make the case that the current system of licensure has overcorrected and increasingly serves to cripple the dreams and aspirations of real people.
read Full Report
Daily Signal: New Study Shows Licensure Laws Kill Jobs in All 50 States
WE: The top ten states with the worst licensure requirements
Related: Bottleneckers in Hawaii: How licensing laws make it harder to get a job
ORGANISERS of the Henley Youth Festival are seeking peoples memories of the event from down the years to mark its 25th anniversary next year.
They are asking for past performers, parents or organisers to recall shows, events or memorable moments which its hoped will form an exhibition and possibly a book.
Celebration will be the theme of next years festival, which will run from March 10 to 18.
There will be music, drama, dance and song, education and sporting activities and art and writing competitions that will involve thousands of children.
Organisers hope to include some element of the anniversary in all the events.
The festivals biggest event will be a gala night at the Kenton Theatre on Saturday, March 17, when past and current performers will take part in a special performance.
Jo Dickson, who co-chairs the festival, said: We really want to mark the 25th anniversary in a special way and want the young people of Henley to be involved as well as inviting back as many past performers as we can find.
We would love to see artwork, films and performances that celebrate an event, a person, a special occasion or a fantastic achievement. We are hoping that everyone will be inspired by the theme and will have fun with it.
Co-chair Kate Swinburne-
Johnson said: We are working closely with the Kenton Theatre, the Mayor and many other groups to ensure that the festival is a success and as many young people are involved as possible.
The festival was founded in 1994 by a group of parents who hit upon the idea of organising an annual festival to celebrate the talents of Henleys young people.
Alfie Hay, who was then headteacher at Trinity Primary School, Janine FitzGerald and Felicity Rutland wanted to provide an opportunity for children and teenagers to become more involved with the performing arts.
Mrs Rutlands daughter, Lucy, who performed in the early years of the festival, was appointed a trustee of the event in July.
She said: As a child, I was very fortunate to take part in the festival.
From singing Row, Row, Row Your Boat at the Kenton to taking part in other musical and theatrical workshops, the opportunities it allowed me as a child were immeasurably wonderful.
To now be asked to be a trustee is an absolute honour and Im still not sure I really believe it.
It is especially lovely as it means there is a Rutland involved once more after my mothers contributions when it started 25 years ago.
I am so excited about next years festival and cant wait to see all the exceptional talents the young people of Henley have to offer.
For people submitting memories, these can be about a funny happening, preparing for a performance or your costume. Photographs of past performances would also be welcome.
To contribute, visit www.hyf.org.uk and click on the memories link at the top, share them on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram using #HYF25 or send an email to Mr Hay at alfiehay1@
googlemail.com
The festival will be launched in all schools in Henley in January.
On a rainy morning in early November, bridge inspectors Steve Lester and Jim Winebarger put on thigh-high rubber boots and stepped into the chilly water of Abrams Creek in northern Washington County, Virginia.
The men, wearing tool belts, hard hats and bright yellow safety vests, were inspecting a short bridge on Abrams Falls Road, which comes to a dead end off Rich Valley Road. Using hammers, a prod, measuring tape and good old-fashioned 20-20 vision, the inspectors were there to ensure that the bridge is safe for the 76 cars that use it on an average day.
Of the nearly 500 state and local bridges in the Twin City and Washington and Sullivan counties, about 7.5 percent of them 37 bridges are structurally deficient, according to a Herald Courier analysis of data from the state transportation departments.
The federal definition of a structurally deficient bridge states that the bridge is characterized by deteriorated conditions of significant bridge elements and potentially reduced load-carrying capacity.
Experts stress that the designation doesnt mean a bridge is unsafe or will collapse. Each bridge has three components that are rated: the deck, the superstructure and the substructure. The deck is the part of the bridge that cars travel on; the superstructure includes beams or other supports for the deck; and the substructure includes abutments, piers or the foundation.
Each of the three sections gets a numerical sufficiency rating from 0 to 9. If any section receives a 4 or less, the bridge is deemed structurally deficient.
Examples of conditions that could justify the rating include bridges that are pocked with pot holes, have rough riding surfaces or have some level of deterioration that requires attention.
Both states inspect all bridges in two-year cycles. Some bridges are inspected more often.
Tom Quinn, a civil engineering manager for the Tennessee Department of Transportation, compared the rating to the aging roof of a house.
You might be seeing a few leaks, but its not going to fall in or anything, Quinn said. But it needs some work
Bristol, Virginia
Seven bridges in the Bristol, Virginia city limits are deemed structurally deficient, according to data from the Virginia Department of Transportation.
According to the Federal Highway Administration, those seven bridges represent 14 percent of bridges in the city.
The most traveled of those, which sees a daily traffic average of more than 14,000 vehicles, is the State Street crossing over Little Creek, less than two blocks west of the Bristol Chamber of Commerce.
Michelle Earl, spokesperson for VDOTs Bristol District, said structurally deficient bridges take priority when the department determines repair and replacement schedules and funding. She reiterated that the designation does not mean bridges are unsafe.
If it were a bridge we felt was unsafe it would be closed, she said.
The Bristol District includes 12 counties and more than 7,400 miles of roads.
Other bridges in the city that are structurally deficient include the Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard crossing over Beaver Creek, across the street from the city Sheriffs Office; the West Mary Street crossing over railroad tracks between Washington Street and MLK Jr. Boulevard; and the Piedmont Avenue crossing over Beaver Creek, a block-and-a-half north of Blackbird Bakery.
Bristol received nearly $14.4 million of the statewide total of $157.4 million this fiscal year for bridge maintenance and inspection, according to Earl.
Washington County, Virginia
Eighteen bridges in the county are listed as structurally deficient, according to the latest VDOT data.
The two that have the highest average daily traffic are the northbound and southbound lanes of Interstate 81 near Exit 10, where they cross over state Route 808 and Sinking Creek. Those bridges see about 23,000 cars per day.
Those two bridges are now under construction. In 2016, the Commonwealth Transportation Board awarded $11.3 million to reconstruct them. They were built in the early 1960s and reached the end of their life span, VDOT said in a news release. Construction is expected to be completed in fall 2018.
In total, VDOT lists 324 bridges in Washington County, of which 5.5 percent are deficient.
The percent of deficient bridges in the county has improved over time. In 2006, about 17 percent of Washington County bridges were structurally deficient. By 2016, it had decreased to about 5.5 percent, according to VDOT.
Gary Lester, district bridge engineer for VDOT, said he isnt aware of any bridge collapses in the county.
Sullivan County/Bristol, Tennessee
About 11 percent of bridges in Sullivan County, including Bristol, are structurally deficient, according to an analysis of state data. That figure does not include one deficient bridge that is maintained by Kingsport.
Of the 12 bridges in the county deemed structurally deficient by TDOT, the oldest the 8th Street crossing over Beaver Creek, just south of the United Way of Bristol TN/VA building was built in 1926.
Tom Quinn said structurally deficient bridges take priority when TDOT chooses restoration or rehabilitation projects, which are funded through various grant monies and local programs.
We want to take care of those bridges before we try to upgrade another bridge, Quinn said.
Other bridges in the city and county that are deficient include the State Street crossing over Beaver creek, catty-corner from Quaker Steak & Lube; the Lee Highway crossing over Back Creek, less than a mile from The Pinnacle; and the Elizabethton Highway crossing over Indian Creek, just south of Ridgewood Barbecue.
Virginia
VDOT has 21,104 bridges in its inventory.
More than 5.7 percent of those more than 1,200 were classified as structurally deficient as of March 2016.
That number also includes large culverts, which allow water to flow under a road, usually through a large metal pipe.
The department conducts between 11,000 and 12,000 bridge inspections each year.
Tennessee
There are nearly 19,800 bridges in Tennessee, excluding about 400 that are federally operated.
Quinn said about 4.5 percent of all state and local bridges in the state were classified as structurally deficient as of late October. About 2.7 percent of those were state bridges.
In 1992, nearly 20 percent of bridges in Tennessee were structurally deficient. That number has continued to trend downward, hitting 10 percent in 2000 and about 6 percent in 2010, according to TDOT data.
On the job
Steve Lester and Jim Winebarger, the bridge inspectors, spent about 30 minutes examining and testing the bridge on Abrams Falls Road.
They started the inspection by looking at the surface of the bridge, where cars drive. Seeing no cracks, they got into the water to check the underside.
Using a pole, Lester poked underwater along the bottom of the foundation to check for undermining, which is when water slowly erodes the ground beneath the foundation. If undermining occurs, the bridge can slowly sink and settle in but Lester gave it the all clear.
The pair also checked the underside of the bridge and found signs of efflorescence, a deposit of salts that has emerged from within the bridge. Winebarger said that could have resulted from water being on top of the bridge before the final wiring surface was laid.
Between the two of them, Lester and Winebarger have nearly 60 years of experience. Lester has been with VDOT for 38 years. He joined the bridge team in 1995. His dad worked in the draft room designing roads for 43 years before retiring.
He asked me the other day if I was going to beat his record, Lester said. I said, Dad, I dont know thats five more years, he said, laughing.
Lesters team, which covers Washington, Dickenson and Buchanan counties, inspects about 30 bridges a month.
Old Glory blew in the cool breeze Saturday morning as Bristol celebrated Veterans Day with a parade.
The annual parade, featuring local veterans, law enforcement officers, high school bands and other organizations, cruised down State Street as hundreds of spectators watched from the sidewalks. Many people, bundled up in winter attire due to temperatures just above freezing, waved the American flag as parade participants passed by.
Richard Christensen, 84, of Port Charlotte, Florida, is in town for the weekend and attended the parade with his son, Wayne Christensen, and daughter-in-law, Sherry Christensen, of Bristol, Virginia.
I love to see the appreciation and respect, said Richard Christensen, a Navy veteran who served during the Korean War between 1951 and 1954.
The veteran wore a Navy hat and shook peoples hands that stopped by to thank him for his service.
I was recommended not to wear my uniform off the base, the veteran recalled of the 1950s. It was taboo.
But on Saturday, he said he was proud to wear his outfit.
With Veterans Day, what we have at church and the parade, we invited him up to spend Veterans Day with us, his son said. Its really special.
Richard Christensen, a Massachusetts native, was a deckhand and stayed out at sea on the USS Bennington. He later worked at the shipyard in Quincy, Massachusetts.
Recent developments on the Korean Peninsula scare him, the veteran said.
The family also attended the annual memorial ceremony held after the parade at Cumberland Square Park.
Another veteran, Leroy Duncan of Bristol, Tennessee, also wore his military attire on Saturday as he watched the parade.
I support the veterans and anything to do with the veterans, said Duncan, who served seven years in the Marine Corps, including in Vietnam, and 26 years in the Army. If theyre here, I will do it. Once a Marine, always a Marine.
Duncan has attended every Veterans Day Parade since he moved to Bristol from Texas in 2007.
I always celebrate Memorial Day and Veterans Day, because the others are all commercial, he said.
While serving, he said he didnt get a chance to celebrate the holidays, but he does now.
A few people watching the parade or participating in the event attended while family members and friends are serving in the military.
Local resident Lisa Grubb, holding a U.S. flag and a U.S. Marine Corps flag, watched the parade along State Street. Her son, Tyler Grubb, is currently deployed. Shes attended several Veterans Day Parades to honor those who have served and her son, who was also deployed last year.
"Why did you decide to move from banking to charity work? I had already moved from law to banking early on in my career. I want to give something back. I had an extremely successful banking career. The time was right for me to do something different. Through the charitys activities, I can see a way to make a real difference. Viet Nam has had an incredible war-torn history. My parents were ardent supporters of the anti-war movement. Once I learned more about the countrys history and then had the opportunity to go there and meet the people, I felt strongly that I wanted to do what I could. I put my hand up a few years ago to volunteer as the CEO. I do this 24/7" Katrin Kandel, FTW Voluntary CEO and Trustee
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Hertfordshire's F1 world champion, Lewis Hamilton, has called for heightened security after his team were held a gunpoint in Brazil.
Hamilton, who grew up in Stevenage and cut his teeth at Hoddesdon's Rye House kart circuit, has revealed a Mercedes staff van was held up in Sao Paulo on Friday evening (November 10).
He tweeted: "Some of my team were held up at gun point last night leaving the circuit here in Brazil. Gun shots fired, gun held at one's head.
"This is so upsetting to hear. Please say a prayer for my guys who are here as professionals today even if shaken.
"This happens every single year here. F1 and the teams need to do more, there's no excuse!"
Although no-one was hurt, valuables are reported to have been stolen.
Such incidents have occurred in the past, including an incident in which fellow British racer Jenson Button was rushed to safety by his driver after being approached by an armed gang in 2010, ramming his way through stationary traffic.
And last year in Mexico a Mercedes team member was targeted by two gunmen as he was driven from the airport to a hotel.
Hamilton added: "I was horrified to hear what had happened. I am very close to those guys.
"The frustrating thing is I have been in F1 for 10 years and every year that has happened to someone in the paddock.
"Things should be in place to keep everyone safe. And it's for the people at the top to take action to keep everyone safe.
"It's no good just the bosses or myself having security, everyone else needs to be looked after.
"I hope there is some way that we can move on without it happening again.
"I hope there will be meetings here about the future and that everyone is protected."
Hamilton will start at the back of the grid in this afternoon's race, after crashing out during qualifying yesterday.
However, he has already clinched his third world title by accumulating an unassailable points tally in Mexico.
CONOVER Folks gathered at Riverbend Park on Thursday afternoon for a dedication ceremony for the new observation deck, located a couple hundred feet downstream from the Oxford Hydro Dam.
Unfortunately, as you know in 2013, (the old) observation deck was washed away (building the new deck) has been a long process and a lot of work for folks in Catawba County, Barbara Beatty, vice-chair of the Catawba County Commissioners, said.
The new deck provides overlook access to Lookout Shoals Lake, Catawba River and the Oxford Hydro Dam, and was made possible through a grant from Duke Energy.
This pier will hopefully sustain any problems that may occur, and we appreciate that, Beatty said. Most of all, we appreciate the Duke Energy Water Resources fund, which awarded the county with $100,000 to assist us in the $245,000 project cost without that, this would not have been possible.
The concrete construction of the new deck ensures more stability for the shoreline and will be able to withstand future flooding unlike the previous wooden one.
We are so greatly thankful for Duke Energys assistance financially and for our county commissioners for allowing us to work with Duke and build a substantial facility here that will last for generations, Jacky Eubanks, county planning director, said. This will be a lasting legacy for our partnership here on the river.
The Duke Energy Foundation established a $10 million fund for projects benefitting waterways in the Carolinas and neighboring states in 2014.
Since (the funds) inception, we have supported 73 projects in the Carolinas and Virginia, totaling about $6 million to date, said John Crutchfield, director of public safety and recreation strategy planning services with Duke Energy.
The funds have helped improve water quality, water quantity and conservation, he said.
(The funds have also provided) additional enhancements to fish and wildlife habitats, and expanded public use facilities and environmental education in regards to the publics role in protecting water resources in our service area, Crutchfield added.
The partnership between Duke Energy and the county played a large role in the execution of this particular project.
One of the things you have heard from everyone today is the importance of partnerships, said Paul Beatty, chairman of the Parks Advisory Committee. Partnership is the reason why we have all the things we have here in Catawba County, and its the only way we are going to be able to move forward.
In addition to the observation deck, the platform also features educational kiosks with information about the Oxford Hydro Dam.
In addition to the Duke Energy Water Resources Fund, project partners included the Catawba County Parks Advisory Committee, the Historical Association of Catawba County, Lenoir-Rhyne University School of Natural Sciences, the Catawba Valley Community College Department of Science and the companies involved in designing and constructing the platform and printing the sign faces: TGS Engineers, R.E. Burns & Sons, and A Signco.
When the stress gets to you, all you have to do is come to a place like this, and there is a calming effect that takes hold, Eubanks said. This deck will be here for the citizens of Catawba County for many years to come.
To all those who voted in the City of Hickory elections this past Tuesday, I want to express my heartfelt appreciation for the trust that you have placed in me as the next mayor for the City of Hickory.
I want you to know that I am fully committed to representing all citizens and leading our city so that we all grow and thrive.
To all my friends and supporters who volunteered their time and energy to this campaign thank you, thank you, and thank you. Each of you came alongside of me and worked so hard, day and night, to bring our message of pro-community, pro-business, pro-growth and prosperity to the citizens of Hickory.
Its because of your hard work, that our message was heard loud and clear, and embraced by the voters. Just know, the City of Hickory would not be moving forward to a better and brighter future without you.
To all my family, I am so grateful for the support and encouragement you have provided me through this election. I could not have done this without you and I am continually thankful to God for each of you.
To my wife, Tammy, I want you to know that your belief in me and your tireless commitment to this campaign means more to me than any words could ever express.
To my fellow city council members, thank you for the solid foundation each of you provide for Hickory residents and visitors. I look forward to us working together to build upon our common goals of growth and prosperity for our city.
To our new council member David Williams, I say welcome, and I very much look forward to you joining the team to move Hickory forward.
To my co-workers of the City of Hickory, you are the best! Thank you for your hard work and dedication to our city. I know that without you, our city government doesnt run, and that its only with your support that I and the city council will be able to move Hickory forward.
To Will Locke, Lou Wetmore and Hamilton Ward, I am thankful for each of you, and I have tremendous respect and appreciation for the manner in which you conducted your campaigns. Your passion for and contributions to our city are invaluable, and I welcome your participation in helping to shape our future.
To all the citizens of our great city, I want to say thank you for the opportunity to serve as your mayor. Together, we will move Hickory forward through continued economic recovery and prosperity so that all our citizens can thrive.
And, last but certainly not least, to God, I am humbled and honored that you have allowed me the joy of serving Hickory for the past 38 years. Thank you for allowing me the continued joy of serving as mayor to this great city. I have truly been blessed to be able serve the wonderful people of Hickory and to call Hickory my home.
May God continue to bless each of us and our community.
Hank Guess
Mayor-elect
Hickory
Reaction to Jim Morrisons opinion
I agree with the recent opinion of Jim Morrison. I had already called my representatives and senators (all Republicans) asking them how they could look at themselves in the mirror every day and say nothing about the outright lies and damage our president is doing.
I got the same answer from all of them. The system of checks and balances works. However, that system only works when it is used.
It is not being used by the Republican-controlled house and senate because they are putting party before country; they want so much to pass tax reform to benefit the wealthy and get rid of the ACA. So they do nothing about the president. They botched the health care reform, I am hoping they do the same with their tax reform they tout as for the middle class, when it is really for the wealthy.
Trump has told 1,318 false or misleading claims as of Oct. 10, according to the Washington Post.
The New York Times took out a full-page advertisement just to print all of his lies. Politifact shows that 84 percent of what he says is half-truths or false.
Is this what we want from a president? A man who does not respect the truth? A man who has lessened our standing in the world? Whatever happened to truth, justice, and the American way as superman would say?
We know this president is not a fan of the truth or with the justice system, whether it be the courts or the Department of Justice. And certainly he is not my ideal of the American way.
A lot of other people think so, too. According to new polls, Trumps approval rating (37 percent) is now the lowest since polling began, and the first time a president has seen a net-negative since Harry Truman.
Finally people are saying enough is enough, even if their representatives won't.
Jan McCoy
Hickory
CATAWBA COUNTY The Newton Police Department is warning citizens about a phone scam where scammers try to solicit money from senior citizens.
Several calls have been reported where the caller tells the recipient they have failed to show up to court for jury duty or failed to pay a fine, and they must pay a specified amount of money or face jail time, according to a press release from the City of Newton.
Law enforcement agencies never call people by phone to solicit money for fines any legitimate fine would be court ordered, according to the release.
Paperwork for such fines would be issued by a judge, and the paperwork would be delivered by a law enforcement officer.
Also, a number of Catawba County departments were recently infected by an intrusive malware virus, which has now been contained.
Two weeks ago, we had an infection of malware, and it was shutting down (a number) of our servers all over the county, Catawba County Manager Mick Berry said. Nothing catastrophic happened other than some temporary interruptions in service in a number of our departments, but it didnt really shut down any of our operations.
Malware, short for malicious software, is an umbrella term used to refer to a variety of forms of hostile or intrusive software.
A side effect of this particular malware sent a number of spam emails to various residents in Catawba County.
That is a typical thing that malware does it will send out spam emails to addresses that I have emailed from another server, Berry said.
The county is working with a technology firm to diagnose the issue, and if any personal information has been compromised, the county is legally required to provide notification.
The good news is that from this experience and the company that we have worked with to shut that particular virus down, we feel very good about where we will be after the investigation is complete in terms of the security in our network, Berry said. Now, we will be even more prepared if anything like this happens again.
Berry added the county encourages residents to reach out when they receive suspicious emails or phone calls and gave advice on how residents can keep an eye out.
(Spam emails) are pretty easy to catch they tend to have misspellings or some bogus request or link, and the point of those spam emails is to get the recipient to click on that link, Berry said. Pay close attention to what you are getting if you have any suspicion, you should contact that person and verify.
Its the same advice that all of us live by in this day and age.
If you have any questions or receive a call you believe may be suspicious, contact a local law enforcement agency.
Despite a willingness to embrace bold and disruptive economic ideas, Narendra Modi has shown a strange reluctance to get the government out of businesses in which the private sector can do just as well. This is unusual for a man whose most famous quote before he became prime minister was that the government has no business to be in business, a statement he repeated even after becoming PM when he went to the US in September-October 2014. The chances are economic forces and circumstances will force him to chase privatisation sooner than later.
Of late we have seen moves to privatise Air India, the governments white elephant that flies on the wings of taxpayer money. But the sector that really needs a huge political investment in selling the idea of privatisation is banking. The government is in a double-or-quits situation, where public sector banks need massive doses of capital to stay alive and start lending again. If this does not happen soon, there is little possibility of a broad-based economic revival before 2019.
According to rating agency ICRA, just five public sector banks State Bank, Bank of Baroda, Bank of India, Punjab National Bank and IDBI Bank account for 47% of the bad loans in the system, which are now in the region of Rs 9-10 lakh crore. Barring IDBI Bank, the remaining four are probably too-big-to-fail banks.
Even on a conservative reckoning, the government will have to pump in Rs 50,000 crore in new capital into public sector banks over the next one year, but money is the lesser of the two problems staring at the government. The more, and bigger, threat to public sector banking is the massive disruptions looming ahead. The future direction of banking is technology, technology and more technology. Nimble, digitally-focused, non-banks are entering the business, and many of them are about to eat the public sectors future lunch.
Bad loans are almost yesterdays problem compared to the threat of digital banks which will be very cost-competitive with low branch and manpower overheads, with an instant ability to penetrate large customer segments quickly. This is not something the public sector banks do not know, and the new State Bank Chairman, Rajnish Kumar, went public with his concerns about the threats from new fintech companies recently.
Fintech is a broad term used by many types of financial services firms that may or may not be banks, but which can quickly scale up and attract lots of customers using digital technology. At one end, we have new types of banks payments banks like Airtel and Paytm, for example who are trying to convert hundreds of millions of existing customers acquired in other businesses (like e-wallets or mobile telephony) to becoming banking customers. At another end, we have entirely new animals with quaint names like Faircent, Wishfin and Loantap who are trying to do an Uber or Ola in financial services. The new fintech companies will use technology and data-mining techniques to bring lenders and borrowers on the same platform to allow the easy raising of money without banks even coming into the picture. Consider how disruptive that can be of traditional banking business models if lenders and borrowers no longer need banks to intermediate.
The fintech companies are minnows now, but agile private banks can see and react more aggressively to these future threats than the public sector behemoths. Thus, while HDFC Bank is said to have cut 11,000 jobs to digitise its operations more, the State Bank has been merging its subsidiaries and adding staff to itself. While IndusInd Bank has recently taken over Bharat Financial Inclusion, a microfinance lender, and Axis Bank has bought itself an e-wallet company in Freecharge, our leaden-footed public sector banks are still focused on how to get the bad loans out of their books. It will take them at least the next few quarters to fix this problem, but long after the bad loans are gone, they will be stuck with the usual public sector handicaps of high branch and employee overheads, and a low capacity to respond to competition and disruption. At least 10-15 public sector banks will either need mergers or euthanasia in the medium term.
If the smaller banks are not privatised quickly, they will become albatrosses around the taxpayers neck. The various banking nationalisation acts must be repealed, and this needs Congress or opposition cooperation to get these bills through the Rajya Sabha.
Time is running out for public sector banks, and government needs to reach out to the opposition to prevent banks from becoming burdens. Whether that will happen with state assembly elections being the priority right now is another matter.
A recent study released by The Lancets Commission on Pollution and Health throws up some alarming figures for India. According to the study in the science journal, pollution resulted in 2.5 million deaths in India in 2015 the highest anywhere in the world. The disturbing number underlines the urgent need to address this mounting public health challenge.
Experts at the Centre for Climate Change and Environmental Health (CCCEH) at IIHMR Delhi stress that with the rising pollution-related death toll, India can no longer afford to lose time in tackling the problem. The centre has been created to integrate more than two decades of expertise related to environment and health to accelerate evidence-based policy recommendations.
There is an urgent need to identify the main sources of air pollution through specialised research, and address the problem through innovative and targeted approaches.
While solutions like shutting down power plants, introducing traffic restrictions like the Delhi governments odd-even, and even the recent cracker ban on Diwali, appear well intentioned, Indias battle against pollution needs much more than such ad-hoc, knee-jerk reactions that end up working as mere window dressing.
There is no denying that air pollution is a major cause of preventable diseases and deaths in India. Gauging its precise impact on health needs intensive research, on how air pollution affects not just the lungs, but different organs of the body. The evidence available in this regard is more than adequate to formulate a well-targeted action plan.
Ultimately, the key to arriving at solutions to these issues lies in inter-sectoral action for health. The health sector is just one of the players in our fight against air pollution. Local bodies like municipalities, state and central governments need to work in tandem on this public health challenge, since pollutants travel long distances, beyond administrative, geographical and national boundaries.
The sources of air pollution are varied: industry and brick kilns, transport vehicles, diesel generators, domestic fuel, road dust, crop burning among others. The government has installed air-quality monitors at different locations in cities for outdoor air assessment. Since air pollution levels vary from location to location, increasing the number of monitors will result in better assessment. Information related to these monitors is easily available through the Internet on websites like SAFAR-India and ACQIN, as well as through mobile app versions which are freely downloadable. These offer indicators on both particulate matter constituents like PM10, PM2.5 and lead as well as gaseous components such as ozone, ammonia, NO2, SO2 and CO. These determine the National Air Quality Index, a system of air quality assessment that enables comparison across sites and time possible.
Among these it is PM 2.5 the tiny 2.5 micron size and smaller particles that can permeate the lining of the lungs and move into the blood stream which is the most harmful. It can lead not only to respiratory problems such as asthma but also increase problems of heart attacks, dementia, diabetes and possibly even depression.
It is crucial to understand the adverse implication of air pollution on human health. Priorities for pollution abatement often do not take into account its long-term health impact. Air pollution also makes children prone to obesity and cognition deficits. It can adversely affect pregnant women too, resulting in low birth weight and premature births which are already high and a leading cause of high infant mortality in India.
As the urgency for putting in place effective solutions gathers momentum, it is critical to prioritise options in the local context, particularly since resources are always limited.
A classic example is Delhi, which was till recently the most polluted among 1600 cities, according to the WHO. An IIT Kanpur report has brought out that only 30% of the pollution in Delhi is from local sources, while a staggering 70% is traced to sources outside the city, including the NCR and beyond including Punjab and Haryana.
Delhis Graded Response Action Plan is a step in the right direction but needs to be fine-tuned further. The plan envisages a series of measures depending on the level of the pollution in the city ranging from information dissemination measures at the lowest level, to curbing construction activity and even closing schools at the highest level.
In addition, abatement strategies which can yield tangible results in the short-term include regulating the movement of heavy commercial vehicles. They should be kept outside the NCR. For this the Western and Eastern Expressway bypass need to be completed on an urgent basis and non-polluting modes of transport need to be increasingly adopted.
An effective measure would be curtailing the use of solid fuel in households. Found in abundance in the rural areas surrounding Delhi, it is relevant to point out that emissions from this one source alone account for 25-50% of fine particles, according to an article published in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives. While schemes such as Ujjwala, one of the flagship programmes of the NDA government and the Give it Up subsidy transfer for LPGs are effective measures intended at rapid replacement of solid fuel use, the growing problem of air pollution calls for more sustained efforts. The expected health benefits of these initiatives need to be assessed on a continuing basis.
Another major source of air pollution, crop burning, needs to be replaced with measures which are affordable and can benefit small farmers too. Pollution from industry and brick kilns both within the NCR and outside need to be tackled.
By not focusing on core issues in the air quality crisis, we are all seeking solutions to the figurative Gordian knot without looking at the obvious approach; cutting straight through the problem.
Nitish Dogra is associate professor, IIHMR Delhi and convenor, Centre for Climate Change and Environmental Health
The views expressed are personal
Like all reserved constituencies for Scheduled Castes, the battle in Sabarkanthas Idar assembly constituency is not primarily for Dalit votes. It is for the votes of general castes. And that is where Ramanlal Vora of the BJP has consistently outperformed his Congress rival.
But this time, in this pocket of North Gujarat, the hub of Gujarats Patidar agitation and OBC unrest, the BJPs Dalit candidate will face the challenge of winning over precisely these castes. In a way, Idar sums up the BJPs challenge in Gujarat of substantial demographic blocks, for their own reasons, stitching an alliance against the party. This is most acute in North Gujarat, the home of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. But the BJP has a roadmap to overcome the challenge.
The fractured social coalition
Sample Idars demographics. Rough official estimates suggest it has 7,000 Thakors (an OBC group), 26,000 Muslims, 36,000 Dalits, and crucially, over 60,000 Patels besides Kshatriyas and a range of other OBC groups. In 2012, Vora got a little over 90,000 votes, winning with a margin of 11,380 votes.
But if Ketan Patels mood is anything to go by, the ground is shifting. The owner of Jai Bajrang Bali Transport in Idar bazaar, he says business is down because of the Goods and Services Tax. Patel was also a part of the Patidar agitation for reservation back in 2015, and spent a week in prison. We are not angry because we did not get reservation. We are angry because they dared fire on us. We have to teach BJP a lesson once.
Vora often, a local journalist says, ignored Dalit complaints of atrocities against general castes, particularly Patels, to curry favour with them. He now faces a situation where his community is angry with him, Muslims have always been hostile, Thakors have largely been with Congress, and the mainstay of his support, Patels, are moving away.
The mood is not unique to Sabarkantha. In the historic district of Patan, near the main bus stand, Hindustan Times spoke to Magnesh Prajapati, who runs a paint shop. He complained about the medias coverage of Modi (Is there no one else in this country?); he said business was down (Notebandi, demonetisation, destroyed our incomes for months), and felt that Congress was in the reckoning.
In Chanasma assembly segments Kamboi village, a group of Kshatriya men mocked BJPs attempt to link Congress leader Ahmed Patel with terrorism. (They have suddenly remembered terrorism as elections draw closer). And some distance away, Patel men launched a passionate attack on the BJP.
Jatinbhai Patel told HT, BJP tells us if we dont vote for them, it will mean Congress raj, which is equal to Muslim raj. But this time, even Muslim raj is better than BJP raj.
Back in Patan bazaar, Binodbhai Patel runs a sweet shop. He remains loyal to the BJP, and explains, Many of the voters you spoke to, Prajapatis, Thakors, the Kshatriya, are traditional Congress voters. The change is Patels have moved away and they add both critical numbers and shape opinions. That is our challenge.
Dealing with discontent
In Ahmedabads Magnet Corporate Park, off the Sarkhej-Gandhinagar highway, the BJP has set up a media centre. There is an air of quiet confidence. The partys strategy rests on many legs the first of which is managing the Patel unrest. Bharat Pandya is the Gujarat BJP spokesperson. He says, We have addressed Patel demand for reservations within the constitutional framework. BJP has given a model to the country of protecting reservations for the backwards and Dalits and tribals, and giving benefits to the poor of other castes by introducing Economically Backward Classes category. This is stuck in the Supreme Court. Congress cant give them anything.
Two, Pandya argued, all respected Patidar organisations he counted 38 had said they were not with Hardik Patel and backed the BJP. These organisations have done sewa, welfare work for decades. Modi wooing the Swaminarayan sect, which wields tremendous power over Patels, was a step in this direction. Three, he pointed out, the BJP has 39 Patel MLAs, five MPs and two ministers from the community; its state president, deputy CM and ten ministers were Patels. BJP has given the community space. Name me the tall Patel leaders in Congress.
And finally, BJP will remind Patels of the Congress era and how its formula of KHAM Kshatriya-Harijan-Adivasi-Muslim had sidelined them from the power structure. Congress rule led to lawlessness, Muslim domination, attacks on them. They need to remember they came to us for security and Hindutva, says another BJP leader.
But while trying to retain Patel support, BJP is also devising an insurance policy of wooing smaller castes, numerically fewer, scattered, but collectively a significant chunk.
n a meeting with party workers in a North Gujarat district, BJP chief Amit Shah, a source said, named specific OBC sub-castes, and asked who represented them.
Gujarat has over 145 OBC groupings. He then asked local leaders to give vehicles to these representatives, and said, Go to every family of your community, tell them BJP stands for their interests. Pandya points out that there have been specific women, youth and OBC centric meetings in each district and constituency; and there has been a big tribal-specific campaign.
A hawks eye on Congress
The third element of the strategy is to wait for Congress ticket distribution. There are many contenders within the party, and now Congress has promised a bunch of seats to Hardik Patel, Alpesh Thakor, and Jignesh Mewani. There will be rebels in each seat. Unlike the BJPs disciplined structure, the Congress is anyway anarchic. They wont be able to manage discontent, says a top BJP leader from Delhi, deputed in Ahmedabad.
Back in Patan district, this is playing out. A prominent Thakor leader is seeking the Congress ticket, but Hardik has asked for the seat for a close Patel aide. If Congress gives it to the Thakor candidate, we will work on the Patel votes; if they give it to the Patel candidate, their own Thakor votes will come to us. Something similar is happening in Himmatnagar of Sabarkantha, which has close to 50,000 Patels and 60,000 Thakors. If Congress gives the seat to a Patel, the BJP may put up a Thakor candidate. Their alliance cannot work on the ground. Fourth, the BJP is banking on its organisation. Bharat Pandya asks, Tell me, besides the Rahul Gandhi rallies, have you seen Congress activities on the ground? In our case, the national president is meeting party workers at the booth level, at the panna level; 50,000 of our party workers, vistaraks, have gone to each booth twice; we have mass contact programmes through which we will reach over a crore people.
And finally, BJP is depending on Modi. A senior leader says, In most states, including Bihar where we lost, our vote share of 2014 has broadly remained intact in assembly elections. This shows peoples continued faith in Modi. In Gujarat, we got close to 60% of the vote in 2014. You will see that repeat.
Only December 18 will tell whether that prediction comes true. For now, the ground situation in Gujarat presents a formidable challenge to the BJP.
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The Congress will criticise Prime Minister Narendra Modi but not disrespect him, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi said in an election speech in Gujarat on Sunday.
Whatever we do, spot Modis faults or disturb BJP, we wont disrespect the Prime Ministers position. When Modi ji was in Opposition, he used to speak with disrespect about the PM. That is the difference between us and them; no matter what Modi says about us, well not go beyond a certain point as he is PM, Gandhi was quoted by a news agency.
The Congress vice-president was referring to the BJPs attacks on Manmohan Singhs tenure as Prime Minister.
Gandhi, who is touring north Gujarat, alleged that the BJPs development plan in the state had floundered. We speak the truth, aur ye sach hai ke Gujarat mein vikas pagal hogaya hai, he said. (The Congress speaks the truth and the truth is that development has gone mad in Gujarat.)
The Congress on Saturday claimed credit for the GST councils decision to cut tax rates on 178 items, saying the government was forced to take the step under pressure from Gandhi and the huge response his campaign was receiving in poll- bound Gujarat. Gandhi also targeted Gujarat chief minister Vijay Rupani over share market regulator SEBI slapping a fine on his firm for alleged manipulative share trade, and asked the PM to speak out on the issue.
Gujarat is more corrupt than the entire country. Surat businessmen told me that policemen come to their units every two minutes (allegedly to demand bribe), he said.
The 47-year-old Congress leader was addressing a public meeting here in Banaskantha district on the second day of his campaign tour of North Gujarat.
Jay Shah, son of (BJP chief) Amit Shah, increased the turnover of his company from 50,000 to 80 crore in a few months after the BJP came to power in 2014. The people of Gujarat know this cannot be done without corruption, he said.
Some days ago, the SEBI said your chief minister is beimaan (dishonest) and they fined him. Modiji used to say na khaoonga, na khane doonga (I will neither take bribe nor allow corruption). Please open your mouth on this subject now, the Congress vice-president said.
Though farmers are protesting against Mukhyamantri Bhavantar Bhugtan Yojna (CM Price Deficit Payment Scheme) and a farmer allegedly made an attempt to commit suicide in Damoh on Friday frustrated over low price offered to his urad produce, armed with statistics the authorities concerned say the farmers have given great response to the scheme and several other states too are keen to implement it.
A NITI Ayog proposed scheme Bhavantar scheme is meant for government keeping away from procurement for certain agriculture produce, let the market play its role in the process and provide a cushion to farmers by giving them a certain amount of money between a model price and minimum support price (MSP) in case they get less price than the MSP for their produce from the traders at the mandis.
The crops covered under Bhavantar include soybean, groundnut, moong, urad, tuar, maize, til and ramtil. The pilot project covers the entire state.
At Agar-Malwa mandi farmers beat up some employees and traders some time back agitated over forming of an alleged cartel by traders to bring down the prices. There were reports of protests from farmers at several other mandis too including Bhopal compelling chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan to monitor the scheme on his own and preponing the payment to the farmers for sale of their produce up to October 31.
Sitaram Kurmi, the farmer who allegedly made an attempt to end his life told media persons in Damoh he was offered about Rs 1300 par quintal for his Urad crop. He was reeling under a debt of more than Rs 1.5 lakh.
Principal secretary Agriculture Rajesh Rajora said Rs 248.30 crore would be disbursed among 1.55 lakh farmers registered under the scheme for sale of their produce amounting to 509619 metric tonnes between October 16 and October 30, 2017.
He admitted that the payment was being preponed in view of confusion prevailing among farmers on payment issue. As per the scheme the farmers were to be given the amount after sale of their produce was over for kharif crop in December.
Rajora said in several states these crops were being bought by the respective government under MSP but the fact remained that they had capped upper limit up to a marginal percentage of the produce.
Like, he added, in Maharashtra, Rajasthan and Telangana only about 3 lakh metric tonnes of soybean was purchased whereas the produce in these states put together stood at about 50 lakh metric tonnes. Whereas in Madhya Pradesh soybean arrival in mandis was expected more than 30 lakh metric tonnes under Bhavantar scheme.
Rajora claimed several states including Maharashtra had shown interest in implementing the scheme. The Central government too was taking feedback from Madhya Pradesh at regular intervals so that the scheme could be implemented well across the country.
Madhya Pradesh State Agriculture Marketing Board managing director Faiz Ahmad Kidwai said it was wrong to say that rates at mandis had fallen due to Bhavantar scheme.
National general secretary Rashtriya Kisan Majdoor Sangh Ravidutt Singh said, The farmers in the state think they are going to get the difference amount between the MSP rate and the rate on which they sell their produce. They are hardly aware of model rate. The traders are also misleading them by purchasing the produce at very low price and saying to the farmers that the difference amount will be paid to them by the government under Bhavantar scheme.
Over 9200 Madhya Pradesh government employees, mostly teachers, in Rajgarh district have to provide a certificate by the middle of this month that they have a toilet at home and neither they nor any of their family members defecate in the open. If they fail to provide certificates in this regard, their salaries would be withheld. The order in this regard has been issued by the district education officer (DEO) Rajgarh. HT has a copy of the order.
The Rajgarh district is yet to be declared open defecation free (ODF). Nearly 65 % of individual households in the district toilet facilities, according to the website of union ministry of drinking water and sanitation
SK Mishra, DEO Rajgarh told HT on the phone that he issued the order, directing his subordinate officers like block education officers and cluster heads to ensure all employees provide the certificate to certify that they have a toilet at home, and neither they nor any of their family members defecate in the open.
The certificates for all 9200 employees of the education department here have to reach my office by around November 15. If they fail to do so, their salaries will be withheld, he said. Mishra added if his subordinate officers hide or provide wrong information about toilets and their usage by employees, disciplinary action would be taken against such officers.
Questioned if the employee uses the toilet but any of his family members dont use, would the department still take action against the employee, Mishra said, Yes, still his salary would be withheld. See the logic behind this is that teachers are the torchbearers of moral principles and role models for the students and the locality where they live. If they cant ensure use of toilet at home, how can they inspire their students towards good habits, he said.
The order has enraged the teacher community in the state. Ashutosh Pandey, general secretary Madhya Pradesh Teachers Association, which claims to have 2.5 lakh members, told HT that if the order was not rolled back at the earliest, they will start agitation and gheroe DEOs office. Some officers just to please their masters, are issuing whimsical orders, he said.
This is not the first time when teachers have been pushed to stop open defecation. In September this year, in a first of its kind case in the state, a government teacher was suspended for open defecation in Ashoknagar district, with the reasoning that it amounted to misconduct by a government official. The order said he had violated the governments ambitious scheme Swachh Bharat Mission by going for open defecation despite the fact there was a toilet at his home. In June last year, teachers in Satna district were ordered to keep watch on people who defecate in the open in the morning and evening time and take photos of such people on their mobile phones. Block education officer (BEO) who issued the order had even issued directions for the constitution of a six-member committee of teachers for implementation of the order.
In September, four people were also arrested in Panna district for not completing construction of toilets under swachh bharat mission. The arrests were made under section 151of CrPc (arrest to prevent the commission of cognizable offences.) on the order of sub-divisional magistrate (SDM) Panna.
Box: Pointers
With MP having around 52000 inhabited villages, the district administrations are racing against time to ensure their respective districts are declared ODF as soon as possible.
Of 51 districts in MP, 13 districts and 18,594 villages have been declared ODF so far.
The Centre, under Swachh Bharat Mission has set a target to make the country open defecation-free by October 2, 2019, which coincides with the 150th birth anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi.
Veteran actor Rishi Kapoor, who is in Lucknow for over a month, in is awe with the city and its residents.
I was here 41 years back when Laila Majnu (1976) was released. It was a big hit and ran for over 50 weeks here. I am thankful for the love we got from the audience but back then it was tough for actors as the crowd was very unruly. We used to struggle to get inside the theatre. It was very tough to walk on street. Actors used to be scared to come to Lucknow-Kanpur for movie promotions. But, that was then, says the veteran actor while sharing the experience of shooting for Anubhav Sinhas next Mulq.
Aaj main faqr se kehta hoon ki ek bhi bande ne humein pareshaan nahi kiya. (I can say with pride that no one misbehaved with me during my stay in Lucknow), he says while thanking the crowd for their cooperation.
Its a very civilized crowd now. People have gone out of the way to make the shoot easy for us. I am really amazed to see the transformation, he says. He feels that now its even better to shoot here compared to Mumbai.
Actor Rishi Kapoor, director Anubhav Singh (back) and Atul Tiwari (right) during the shooting of Mulq in Lucknow.
With film stars shooting, it is natural that people have the curiosity to watch the shoot but the way they have conducted themselves and cooperated with us is commendable. Credit goes to the government also for the help and inviting people to shoot but real compliments goes to the loving people out there, he says.
Kapoor has a grilling make-up schedule for the film. It takes me 2-2:30 hours to wear this look bald patch, wig, beard. Kapoor & Sons took five hours. I am playing a very civilized Muslim lawyer in Mulk. Then, something goes wrong and the family gets entangled in a problem. The story is about their fight back, he says.
Drawing a parallel between this younger years and now, he says, 25 years of my career was singing songs, romancing the heroines in mountains and around trees. My second innings is about real acting roles. Luck By Chance, Do Dooni Chaar, Patiyala House, Agnipath, D-Day all have power-packed roles. In real sense this is my era of acting which I am enjoying. I am thankful to God that at the age of 65 I am getting such good roles and am giving my best to do justice to them. I am able to do it or not this only audience can judge.
Read More: Rishi Kapoor surprises fans with his new look for Mulq. Then shares 102 Not Out bonanza pic
He is making special efforts to get different looks and roles. I am trying that I dont repeat myself. In between I did three negative roles in Aurangzeb, Agnipath and D-Day and am happy that audiences have liked them.
Of late he has been in news often for his tweets. I dont bother about anything...be it trolls. I am ready to take anyone head-on. Everyone has right to express. I write what I feel like when I get time. I am not finding time these days and I was looking forward to tweet on Kevin Species ban.
The actor has string of movies lined up. The movies that people will see me in are 102 Not Out, light comedy Jhoota Kahin Ka followed by Mulq. From November 15, I will shoot in Delhi for Rajma Chawal and after that I will start for The Body next year. So, its a packed schedule and I feel blessed for it, he signs off.
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Vidya Balan is not just the leading face of feminism and women-centric films in Hindi cinema. She is also someone who is quite vocal about the gender bias in the society and the need to change it.
In a candid chat with Hindustan Times, the actor opens about sexism in the film industry, working in women-centric films, her upcoming release Tumhari Sulu and much more.
The Ishqiya star made it clear that she has not faced sexual harassment but sexism is everywhere.
It is inherent in our attitude and we see it every day in different walks of life. It is about seeing everything from the male point of view. Of course, later I charted my own course and took charge of everything, she said, adding that in the last 10 years, she has not faced the issue as there is a certain kind of cinema that I work in.
But in my initial 23 years in the industry, I faced a lot of sexism, and it used to get my goat, she said.
There was this one extremely stressful incident. I was supposed to shoot for two films simultaneously, she said, refusing to name them. One of them got delayed because the hero didnt have dates. When I started working on the second one, they wouldnt begin the shoot as their hero had different dates. Only the heros opinions and dates mattered, she complained.
Vidya Balan and Manav Kaul play wife and husband in Tumhari Sulu. (PTI)
Asked if there was a reason why she became the face of films with strong female characters in todays cinema, the Parineeta star felt it was a matter of timing.
Nowadays, we see more women coming into their own personalities and becoming aware of the fact that they have the first right over their bodies and minds. I think I was lucky as I got such author-backed roles quite early in my career.
I entered the industry in 2005 and by 2008, I began working for Ishqiya. Before that, I did a few films that I thought were the right thing to do but did not enjoy working in those. These were Kismet Konnection and Heyy Baby. After Ishqiya, I decided I will only work for films that really interest me, she said.
On her films that are closest to her heart, Vidya is spot on with: Parineeta, because it was my first film; Kahaani, because it was a special shooting experience, and Tumhari Sulu, because of the kind of energy that we shared on the sets.
On Tumhari Sulu that releases on November 17, Vidya said it is the story of a housewife who chances upon a job after being the homemaker for 12 years.
The joy and thrill that you experience when you first step out there, is what makes Sulus journey exciting and interesting.
Talking about her experience of shooting the Suresh Triveni film, the leading lady of Kahaani said, The best thing about the film is the team. The kind of energy and craziness all of us had and how Suresh channelised it all into the film is wonderful.
However, all was not well with the shooting as much of it was done in the peak of summer in Mumbai.
It was supposed to be a middle-class house with no AC. So, it was very hot, she said, however, adding that it wasnt too hot for as she had shot Begum Jaan in Jharkhands summer.
On Padmavati Row
Reacting to the protests against Sanjay Leela Bhansalis Deepika Padukone-starrer Padmavati, Vidya said, I believe films are someones imagination. They shouldnt be taken too seriously. People should watch the film and then, if they dont like it, they can always express that. If they dont like it, then simply dont watch it. But let the film release and allow people to watch it!
Interact with the author @swetakaushal
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A women group on Sunday staged a protest against director Sanjay Leela Bhansalis upcoming film, Padmavati, in Varanasi, alleging the period drama distorted historical facts.
The protest comes a day after the Uttar Pradesh government assured to provide full security to theatres in the state for safe screening of the movie, starring Deepika Padukone, Ranveer Singh and Shahid Kapoor.
Shahid and Deepika in a still from the movie.
Yogi Adityanath government was determined not to let anyone disrupt the screening of the movie following the Supreme Courts refusal to grant a stay on its screening, government spokesperson and state health minister Sidharth Nath Singh told media persons in Allahabad on Saturday.
The movie is slated for release on December 1.
Holding rolling pins, around 40 protesters under the banner of the International Kshatriya Veerangana Mahasabha, an organisation representing Rajput women, also burnt Bhansalis effigy at Lahurabeer intersection of the city.
Leading the protests activist Vandana Raguvanshi alleged that Bhansali distorted facts to make good profits, and threatened to hold demonstrations at cinema halls if the movie is screened.
Despite the director clarifying there is no romantic or objectionable scenes between Padmavati and Khilji, the movie continues to face flak from various communal groups such as Shree Rajput Karni Sena, particularly in Rajasthan.
Bhansali was attacked and films sets were vandalised during the shooting of the film in January this year in Jaipur.
The SC on Friday dismissed a petition seeking a ban on the films release.
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In a major move, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has decided not to pursue a proposal for introduction of Islamic banking in the country.
Replying to an RTI query, the central bank said the decision was taken after considering the wider and equal opportunities available to all citizens to access banking and financial services.
Islamic or Sharia banking is a finance system based on the principles of not charging interest, which is prohibited under Islam.
The issue of introduction of Islamic banking in India was examined by the RBI and the government of India, it said.
Taking into account, the wider and equal opportunities available to all citizens to access banking and financial services, it has been decided not to pursue the proposal further, the central bank said in its reply to the RTI application filed by this PTI correspondent.
The RBI was asked to provide details of steps being taken for the introduction of Islamic or interest-free banking in India.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi had on August 28, 2014 launched Jan Dhan Yojana, a national mission to bring about comprehensive financial inclusion of all the households in the country.
In late 2008, a committee on Financial Sector Reforms, headed by former RBI governor Raghuram Rajan, had stressed on the need for a closer look at the issue of interest-free banking in the country.
Certain faiths prohibit the use of financial instruments that pay interest. The non-availability of interest-free banking products results in some Indians, including those in the economically disadvantaged strata of society, not being able to access banking products and services due to reasons of faith, the committee had said.
Later, on the instruction of the central government, an inter-departmental group (IDG) set up in the RBI examined the legal, technical and regulatory issues for introducing interest free banking in India and has submitted its report to the government.
The RBI had in February last year sent a copy of the IDG report to the finance ministry and recommended an Islamic window in conventional banks for gradual introduction of Sharia-compliant banking.
In our considered opinion, given the complexities of Islamic finance and various regulatory and supervisory challenges involved in the matter and also due to the fact that Indian banks have no experience in this field, Islamic banking may be introduced in India in a gradual manner.
Initially, a few simple products which are similar to conventional banking products may be considered for introduction through Islamic window of the conventional banks after necessary notification by the government, it had said in a letter to the ministry.
The letter further reads: It is also our understanding that interest free banking for financial inclusion will require a proper process of the product being certified as Sharia complaint will be required both on the asset and liability side and the funds received under the interest free banking could not be mingled with other funds and therefore, this banking will have to be conducted under a separate window.
Calling for a strong law to protect journalists and demanding that criminal defamation law be struck off, renowned journalist and one of Indias best-known TV faces, Rajdeep Sardesai, said strong institutions in the media were the only bulwark for the media to really play a role it was meant to asking tough questions in society.
Sardesai, who was at Chandigarh Press Club as part of their series of special lectures, said, It has become the new normal to brand a journalist nationalist or anti-nationalist. We have to realise that doing a story against someone does not mean we are their enemy.
He added that journalists needed to be held accountable, of course, but not by gagging them as Rajasthan attempted to do recently.
People see through attempts to favour or disfavour a particular ideology. On TV channels, the logic is: You are guilty till you prove yourself innocent? The same logic has now started applying in publics dealings with the media as well, he added.
He added, Increasingly, in times where sense is to being replaced by sensationalism, news is being replaced by noise; the audience becomes sceptical of the media.
Fake News is word of the year
On a question on social media, he said. The word of the year, according to the Collins dictionary, is Fake News. So, verification and due diligence will remain key. Only journalists can do that. To control social media, the need is to get bigger organisations like Facebook, Twitter to have systems in place to regulate content.
Journalists have to be the trend-setters, he said.
Saying that journalists were losing the capacity to ask questions and illustrating this, he said, Pollution was always a problem in Delhi, Yet, it is only now we learn that the Delhi government added no bus to its fleet in two years. Why?
He attributed this to the reduced distance between politicians and journalists, where netas (leaders) have bhakts. He said a reporter who was not a bhakt was increasingly being denied access.
He said increasing polarisation, where dialogue was being ignored was a challenge to the country and to the democracy.
We are not performers, but observers
The clash of ideologies is turning into a personal battle, he replied, to a question. Journalists are not performers, they are observers and have to do their duty, he added.
Ending on an optimistic note, he added the solution lays in the society that has to value good journalism and pay for it as well.
In the future, you could have a WhatsApp channel for Chandigarh, based on subscription, he added.
Journalism remains a good place to be. We are flag-bearers of truth, he concluded, adding that digital was the future, but its business model needed to be made more sustainable.
The video running on the television screen looked surreal. The countrys leading news channels were showing two young employees of IndiGo Airlines assaulting and pinning down an elderly man at Delhi airport. He was struggling to free himself from their grip even as everybody else remained a silent spectator. This barbaric behaviour with the elderly man happened on the tarmac of an airport considered to be a highly sensitive, high-security zone.
It was clear in the video how that man was first held by the waist and prevented from boarding the bus taking air passengers to the terminal and then mercilessly hurled on the ground. His agony was far from over. A third employee soon joined the shameful exercise. Such ganging up is generally seen among hoodlums beating up drivers on the streets of Delhi. Do these goons want to turn the tarmacs of our airports into lawless, mean streets?
The passenger could have made a mistake, but there are rules and regulations to deal with it. Where was the need to resort to violence instead of going by the standard protocol?
This case was shrouded in secrecy for three weeks. After making headlines in the media, policemen stationed at the Indira Gandhi Airport claimed that a compromise had been arrived at in the incident. The senior official who had kept silent till now clarified that the airline had penalised the individuals involved. It is the same airline that was accused of misbehaviour by international badminton star PV Sindhu. At that time it was said that it was Sindhu herself who had misbehaved and not the airline crew. This is a case of the culprits displaying unwarranted defiance. Sindhu is an extremely reticent woman. Global fame hasnt gone to her head, yet.
It is beyond doubt that air travel has become easier and more accessible since the advent of private airlines in the country. Initially IndiGo had even created new records for safety, cleanliness and punctuality. But allegations of misbehaviour by employees of every private airline have become more frequent of late. The question is what are the policy makers who are meant to fix these systemic flaws doing? How unconcerned they are about the plight of the common man was clear at the beginning of last week when bad weather, air congestion and VIP movement forced the diversion of 13 flights on a single day. This impacted 90 domestic flights. At that time few knew the next three or four days would prove to be even worse. One out of the national capitals three runways was closed on November 7 for repairs. The smog that has descended on Delhis skies owing to the pollution, VIP movement and the pressure from air travellers everything led to chaos.
People whose flights were cancelled could have included those whose loved ones were getting married, or those who had become a victim to disease or death. Someone may have had to miss an important job interview. Transport services sometimes get derailed owing to the natural calamities and maintenance requirements. At these times the responsibilities of important persons increase to a great extent. But these situations cannot be helped.
At times, for security reasons, those responsible for their well-being block the passage of other ordinary citizens. In India, more than 450 people have been officially given VIP status by the government. In 2012, this number was 332. In recent times, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has taken some commendable steps to end the VIP culture. Red beacons have been reined in and this category of individuals is being examined. One hopes there is a large-scale slashing of this list, but it may take some time before things actually change.
Since New Delhi is the Capital, the maximum VIP movement also happens from here. More than 1,000 civilian flights, numerous landings, military flights, air ambulances and the inevitable priority accorded to important individuals: even a small diversion can make the timetable go awry and affect all major aviation sectors.
In such a situation, in the interest of domestic and international fliers, shouldnt we create a separate airport for very important people? Till that becomes a reality, the travellers tickets could read: Be prepared for delays: VIPs are on the flight.
Shashi Shekhar is editor-in-chief Hindustan
letters@hindustantimes.com
To those who are discomfited by the somewhat regressive utterances and actions of Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath, I can only quote George Bernard Shaw: Progress is impossible without change and those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything.
To be fair to him, Adityanath, after his surprise elevation to chief minister has never really sought to project himself as something he is not. He is first and foremost a priest and is far more concerned with his spiritual duties than anything else. Is this all right for the chief minister of Indias most populous and politically volatile state? Of course not.
There are those who felt that with great political responsibility would come great change in the Yogi. But that is to reckon without his ingrained beliefs, among them righting the wrongs done to Hinduism, upholding its tenets on cow protection and the construction of a grand temple at Ayodhya. He is not about to change his mind in a hurry and become a secular moderniser, a cow-belt Mustafa Kemal Ataturk.
His latest outburst on the cow is an example of how much his beliefs take precedence over all else. Already, the position of the state government and attacks by self-styled gau rakshaks or cow protectors, have wreaked havoc on not just the bovine economy its centre of gravity, as chance would have it, is in Uttar Pradesh but also pastoral economics with farmers abandoning unproductive cattle that they can no longer afford to take care of because the option of selling these for slaughter is becoming a risky one. Adityanath, putting faith above all else, has declared that not an iota of meat would be exported out of his state.
The saint-cum-chief-minister said this at a recent meeting of gau-rakshaks in his state. These vigilantes have been at the centre of some horrible acts of violence. Apart from the sheer horror of people getting lynched on mere suspicion of being cattle rustlers, the image of India of which the government is so concerned about, took a real beating.
It seemed a throwback to medieval times that justice would be meted out on the streets by unemployed lumpens posing as gau rakshaks and indulging in their bloodlust. Adityanaths concern for cows and those harming them could set off another round of bloodletting despite the fact that the prime minister himself has expressed his anger against these cow vigilantes. To be fair to Adityanath, he did ask the gau rakshaks to exercise restraint.
It is now widely accepted that the promise of the promise of jobs and development, disenchantment with the politics of the ruling Samajwadi Party, the fading fortunes of the Bahujan Samaj Party, smart caste-based selection of candidates, and demonetisation won the Bharatiya Janata Party the state.
The cow was nowhere in the picture then.
Uttar Pradesh has many problems, none of which are of Adityanath or his partys doing.
For instance, this year, like every year, there has been an unacceptably high level of infant deaths in UP hospitals but apart from an angry outburst from the chief minister, this has not been taken as seriously as it should have been. The state has an infant mortality level equal to Mauritania, in west Africa.
While it all very fine to have cow ambulances and electronic tagging for cows, the people voted the BJP and Yogi Adityanath to power to improve their lives. Having the highest infant mortality rate in India at 64 deaths per 1,000 live births is hardly a badge of honour. This is not surprising, as a study by Observer Research Foundation shows, that the state has 84% fewer specialists than needed and only 19.9% of health workers, the lowest in the country. This has led to a situation in which 46.3% of children are stunted and 39.5% are underweight.
I wont go into all the promises of high-tech primary health centres and speciality hospitals which were to have been set up. It would be just too cruel to the parents who have lost their babies when timely medical intervention could have saved them.
I have always wondered how it is that young men seem to materialise with such rapidity whenever there is any perceived crime being committed like cattle being transported or young couples sitting together in public places. Why are they not at work? The answer is quite simple. They dont have any work.
At least 58 people per 1,000 are unemployed in UP; among the youth, it is 148. So the choice is to stay in the state and be jobless or leave for uncertain pastures elsewhere. But with poor education and poorer skills, most of them get low paying backbreaking jobs in cities and towns. Jobs were an important issue in the last election, but Adityanath has other things on his mind for instance, building the countrys biggest statue of Ram.
This isnt an either-or thing the new administration should do both, focus on reducing the infant mortality rate and building a huge statue of Ram.
The BJP has a chance to pull UP out of the morass it has been in since Independence. But the first few months of the party raise the obvious question: What happened to the development agenda? Television channels have been routinely showing the filthy conditions in the states hospitals, its broken-down schools, its poor infrastructure and its frightening law and order problems.
These are issues which should worry anyone, most of all the chief minister under whose watch young men seem to have assumed the licence to harass, even maim and kill under some misguided zeal over protecting cows and morals. He has been given a mandate that most politicians can only dream of. Initially, it was thought that he would settle into the job and get things done in the state where his word counts for a great deal. Instead, we have seen him push the real issues onto the backburner and focus on those which are not essential; indeed some of them are divisive.
How much more people would feel reassured if they saw photos of him with sick babies than patting well-fed cows! While no one denies him the right to practise his faith or be a protector of cows or builder of statues, his primary duty for which he was elected is to implement schemes to alleviate poverty, improve literacy and healthcare, ensure security and create jobs all in Indias most populous and politically important state.
But maybe I am being pessimistic. Adityanath still has a good four years and three months to go before the next state election. Having assured his core constituency that matters of the faith will not be ignored, perhaps he will eventually move from the spiritual to the corporeal world where real people live with their very real problems.
letters@hindustantimes.com
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The Uttarakhand capital, which was selected for the Centres Smart City project earlier this year, is yet to have its zonal plan in place that forms a detailed blueprint for area-wise development of the city.
Zonal plan lays down area-specific developmental plan within the broad framework of the overall Master Plan and is aimed at ensuring planned growth in an urban area.
Dehraduns Master Plan was released in 2013, and the citys zonal plan one each for the nine zones the city is divided into was supposed to have been put in place soon after.
However, the proposed zonal plan was brought out only in October last year, after which it drew a series of objections, hearings on which began around two months ago.
In the absence of a zonal plan, many parts of Doon have witnessed haphazard development over the years, which has already caused much damage to the vision of a planned smart city, said Devendra Singh Rana, president of the Uttarakhand Engineers and Draftsmen Welfare Association.
Rana alone had raised more than 200 objections on the proposed zonal plan. Ironically, Dehraduns Smart City proposal has smart, planned, sustainable city and congestion free city as two of its goals.
Ashish Kumar Srivastava, vice-chairperson of Mussoorie Dehradun Development Authority (MDDA), said the process of hearing objections raised on the proposed zonal plans was almost over and that efforts will be made to release it soon.
As for the haphazard development over the years, we will seek inputs from the town planning department on how to rectify it once the zonal plan is finalised, he told HT.
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To reduce chaos at Delhi airport during the upcoming fog season, Airports Authority of India (AAI) has recommended airlines to change slots and operate to airports expected to witness fog only between 10am and 4pm.
From the last Sunday of October, airlines operate under winter schedule and AAI has asked to prepare a subset profile schedule, which they can implement for two months only.
For instance, if an airline is operating to Patna from Delhi at 6am and another flight to Ahmedabad at 10:30am, they can swap the slots as Ahmedabad does not witness low visibility. Since, flights can take off from Delhi airport in low visibility, the destination point should be an airport where fog is not expected, said Guruprasad Mohapatra, AAI chairman.
In foggy conditions, airports and aircraft use sophisticated landing systems with pilots trained to deal with low visibility, known as Category-III or CAT-III.
There are guidelines already in place which says that the aircraft which are not CAT-III compliant should not come before 10am and after 4pm. We have analysed last years figures and found that the disruptions were less and between 10am and 4pm, and almost no flights were affected. By adopting the profile schedule, we can accommodate more than 100 slots, he added.
The Indira Gandhi International Airport in New Delhi, which recorded 55 million passengers last year, has a long runway and equipment to assist instrument landing systems in extreme low visibility.
Apart from Delhi, Kolkata, Jaipur, Lucknow and Amritsar are equipped to handle low visibility operations.
The AAI has also asked the airlines to follow the time schedule as the Air Traffic Controller has been asked to give priority to landings.
If your scheduled time is 10am and you are coming at 9:30am or 10:30am, you will not get the priority to land. We call it block time and currently only 35% of airlines are following block time. We would like it to go to 100%, said an AAI officer.
The proposals are in discussion stage and aviation ministry is likely to take a call soon.
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The Global Entrepreneurship Summit, which will be held in Hyderabad from November 28 to 30, will see a galaxy of dignitaries, among them Ivanka Trump, the daughter of United States President Donald Trump.
To ensure that the summit, being held in South Asia for the first time, is a success, the authorities are going the extra mile. But they seem to be going about this in a most insensitive manner.
In an order passed last week, the Hyderabad police commissioner banned begging within the city limits till January 7, during which time the capital city will also host the World Telugu Conference and the Indian Science Congress.
The commissioners order states that begging at main road junctions is dangerous to the safety of the vehicular traffic and public in general. Now thats a revelation! What kept the officials from realising this till now? Or, will begging be less dangerous two months from now? The Hyderabad police posted on social media photographs of its efforts to make the city beggar-free.
If the K Chandrashekhar Rao governments intent was to present a pleasing image of the capital city and the state, its order has managed to do precisely the opposite. Both national and international media were quick to report on the Rao governments attempts to cover up what it considers eyesores.
An American news reports suggested that the Telangana government took the measure in an attempt to show Ms Trump the capital in the best light possible and not the slum dog millionaire stereotype that Americans often associate with India.
The Telangana government is not alone in adopting such temporary and ineffective measures. In 2000, Hyderabad cleared beggars off the streets to host the then-US President Bill Clinton. In 2010, to hold the Commonwealth Games, New Delhi erected facades across the capital to shut out slum dwellers from public view. Brazil did it in 2016 and similar moves have been reported in the US.
Such cleansing was also done in Beijing prior to the 2008 Olympics. Clearing beggars off the streets will not address urban poverty. Moving the underprivileged people out of sight is not even a temporary solution. It is one which insults human dignity and tries to mask the real reasons why people are on the streets. The government must enable them with tools that can afford them a livelihood which does not involve begging. For this the root cause must be addressed: give people alternative forms of work so that they will not have to demean themselves by asking others for sustenance.
There is massive and as yet untapped space in India for museums. The scope for documenting and presenting, in a museum format, the rich and varied culture of every region is immense. It was with this in mind that the chair of AusHeritage, Australias cultural heritage network, Vinod Daniel, suggested that Indian museums have a bigger problem than just funds. Even the word museum evokes, in India at least, the image of dusty, boring, antiquities that have no relevance to the present. Thus the pejorative museum piece to describe someone either boring or behind the times or simply old.
To change this, Mr. Daniel suggests, museums must reinvent themselves as places younger people would want to visit and be a part of. To engage youth and local communities in museums and their own history is a good idea that needs to be incorporated into the way that India thinks about its museums. Whether it be a museum of artefacts, of culture, or of natural history; involving those whose histories are being told must always be a priority. Currently, while some museums in India have really made an effort to ensure that art and culture are readily accessible to the lay person; many museums are badly organised, and have no real engagement with those who visit. In spite of the wealth of history that India has, a lot of it lies dusty and ignored in some corner of a badly planned museum.
Organising events music, dance, or even simply parties, as Mr. Daniel recommends that would encourage young people to visit these spaces might be a great way to reinvent how we think about museums not as spaces that are dead and reflect a time long past; but as living breathing spaces that can speak to us today about what we can learn from our rich history. A society that seeks to be a leader of the future cannot afford to ignore the lessons that its past can teach it.
City commuters could soon see an end to regular hassles that they face while crossing the Delhi-Gurgaon Expressway, from east to west and vice versa, by the end of this year.
While the authorities had planned to open a clutch of underpasses and flyovers at three major junctions by the end of this year, the ban on construction work imposed in the wake of rising pollution levels in the city might push back the launch of these key infrastructure projects.
Authorities banned all construction activities on Friday till November 14 after the citys air quality was marked as severe. Officials of the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI), however, said they will make an effort to make up for lost time and deliver the projects on schedule.
Commuters who find it difficult to take right and left turns to and from from the city towards Delhi and Jaipur and vice versa are in for some respite as well. The hassles faced by commuters in crossing the Gurgaon expressway goes back to 2008 when it opened to traffic. However, it has multiplied many times over since work on these infrastructure projects flyovers, U-turns and underpasses began in September 2016.
The National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) will open two underpasses at Rajiv Chowk, one at Hero Honda Chowk, one at Signature Tower and another at at Iffco Chowk in December. At Iffco Chowk, one elevated road, an elevated U-turn and one underground L-shaped U-turn are also proposed to be thrown open to the public.
So far, the flyover at Hero Honda chowk, an underpass near tau Devi Lal Stadium, a flyover at Maharana Pratap Chowk and an elevated u-turn at Iffco chowk have opened to traffic.
I live in South City I, which is situated barely 500 metres from Signature Tower. I am forced to take a left at Signature Tower to reach the Sector 31 underpass crossing for the U-turn towards Delhi. Similarly, on the way back, we have to exit the highway 500 metres before Signature Tower, towards Leisure Valley park to South City, driving through a maze of traffic, needlessly burning time and energy. I am eagerly waiting for the underpass to open, JS Chadha, a resident of South City, said.
Read I Gurgaon: Jinxed Dwarka Expressway project hits fresh hurdle
Hemant Kumar, a resident of New Colony, said, The expressway construction was poorly planned. The flyover and underpass projects will bring us huge relief, but will not resolve the problem entirely. Traffic jams will still pose a hindrance to commuters on the left and right turns after exiting the expressway.
At all four junctions Hero Honda Chowk, Rajiv Chowk, Signature Tower and Iffco Chowk the traffic police have enforced left and right turns for smooth construction of flyovers and underpasses.
Geographically, the expressway divides Gurgaon into east and west from the middle of the city. Old Huda sectors from 1 to 23 and colonies under MCG are located west of the highway. Huda sectors 24-57, which were developed in the first phase, are located on the east of the highway.
Sectors 58-115 were developed in the later phase. Of these, sectors 58-80 are located on the east of the highway, while the rest fall on the west. Two major Huda road projects Northern Peripheral Road (NPR) and Southern Peripheral Road (SPR) are on the extreme east and west of the city, respectively.
In the last decade, theres been a surge in population and housing projects in areas along the NPR and SPR, but connectivity continues to be a concern. The expressway posed a big challenge to commuters with regard to crossing these junctions. The state government strongly pursued the matter with the NHAI and urged them to suggest ways to make commuting easy. We believe commuting between SPR and NPR as well as between localities would be much easier from next year once the work on these projects end, Yashpal Yadav, administrator, Huda, said.
In 2014, the NHAI announced plans to decongest the highway and two years later, in September-October 2016, the work on unclogging the expressway got under way.
Ashok Sharma, project director, NHAI, Gurgaon, said, These are four major junctions that need to be decongested urgently. By December 31, all underpasses and flyovers will open to traffic.
In July, the NHAI opened the flyover at Hero Honda chowk, while the underpass at Rajiv Chowk and the flyover at Maharana Pratap Chowk opened in August. The elevated U-turn at Iffco Chowk was opened a week ago.
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The district administration announced that all government and private schools in the city will remain closed on November 13, Monday, due to continuous smog over the last 48 hours. After a slight improvement of the air quality on Saturday, the conditions deteriorated again on Sunday as an air quality index (AQI) of 460 was recorded, as per data provided by the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB).
The air quality of the city continued to be severe, despite the implementation of the Graded Response Action Plan (GRAP) by the district administration.
Gurgaons air has been marked severe for the last five days and no action has been taken to turn the situation around, residents alleged. The AQI on Saturday had improved to 436 from 485 on Friday.
On Sunday, residents woke up to a smoggy day and commuters had a tough time travelling during the morning and evening hours, as the visibility was less than 50 metres. Many vehicles had to switch on their fog lights while travelling at 7am.
It was difficult to drive from Delhi to Gurgaon. As it was a Sunday, the traffic was less, but because of low visibility, I found it hard to make my way to Gurgaon, Sumit Arora, a visitor at the Aravalli Biodiversity Park, Gurgaon, said.
Experts attributed the worsening air quality to the low wind speed of 0.66 m/s on Sunday, down from 0.92 m/s on Saturday.
The concentrations of pollutants are unable to get dispersed because of low wind speed. However, as the region is predicted to witness rainfall on Wednesday and Thursday, the situation is expected to improve, JB Sharma, regional officer, Haryana State Pollution Control Board (HSPCB), said.
Besides the weather, the ban on construction activities in the city till November 14 will also help the air quality to improve, he added.
Residents of as many as 15 high-rise societies in the city on Sunday decided to launch a campaign on November 14, to reach out to market areas and to spread awareness among the citizens regarding the grim situation.
Incidents of waste burning are witnessed at Gold Course Extension, Sohna Road and other parts of the city. There are several instances in which construction norms are being violated but these issues are not being addressed properly. GRAP is not being implemented in spirit, Ruchika Sethi, a resident of Nirvana Country, Sector 50, said.
Another resident, Parikshit Sharma, a resident of Vakita City, Sohna Road, said, We could smell the pollutants in the air. We have even found the MCG staff burning the waste despite knowing the situation.
Municipal Corporation of Gurugram (MCG) officials also accepted that the allegation about their staff burning waste openly is true.
We are aware that a few of our staff members are involved in burning waste in the city. We will take action against them, Sudhir Chauhan, senior town planner (STP), MCG.
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On a visit to the Gurgaon civil hospital on Saturday, Haryana health secretary Amit Jha enquired about the state of the facility and said that the both the government hospitals in the city should increase its bed count by 100 each.
At present, the civil hospital has 200 beds and the Sector-10 government hospital has 100 beds, which falls far short of adequate at a time theres been a rise in the number of patients visiting thehospital every day.
Around 3,000 patients visit the civil hospital every day, while a 1,000 more visit the Sector-10 hospital.
The city should have a 300-bed civil hospital. We need to prepare an estimate within a month regarding the feasibility of the project, Jha said.
He also directed the district administration to conduct a survey in order to find out suitable land to build a hospital with 300 beds. He advised the hospital to explore feasibility of expanding the facility or plan an annexe that can house 300 patients.
Apart from the scarcity of beds, the infrastructure at the civil hospital is rickety at best and needs an urgent overhaul, the secretary pointed out during his visit.
BK Rajora, the chief medical officer, civil hospital, said, The health department had sent a proposal two years ago to increase the number of beds from 200 to 300. We will submit a practicability report related to the proposal to the government soon.
The hospital is facing a crisis, as the creaky and inadequate infrastucture at the facility has been unable to support the rising count of patients over the last few years. There has been no significant improvement in infrastructure as desired by patients and visitors.
Read I Gurgaon civil hospital has one ambulance per 500 patients
Over the last four years, there have been many incidents of patients sustaining injuries after portions of the ceiling gave way.
On April 12, a part of ceiling in the emergency ward collapsed. However, no one was hurt in the incident.
In April 11, 2016, a portion of the ceiling of the maternity ward collapsed injuring a mother and an infant. The incident prompted the state government to act.
In June 25, 2016, a portion of the ceiling had collapsed injuring a staff nurse, a patient and a newborn.
In September 2014, a woman suffered minor injuries when large chunks of cement fell on her bed in the maternity ward.
The dropout rate of the Measles-Rubella (MR) vaccine has fallen from 44% to 13% since the vaccine was introduced in 13 states in January 2017, shows data from Union ministry of health.
Measles affects 2.7 million children and kills an estimated 49,000 children in India each year, which is about 37% of the global deaths, estimates the World Health Organisation (WHO).
Measles is a highly contagious viral infection and congenital rubella syndrome (CRS) causes serious and irreversible birth defects.
India has set an ambitious goal to eliminate measles from the country and plans to expand MR vaccination to cover 41 crore children in all states by the end of 2018.
The country is fully committed to achieving the goal of measles elimination and rubella control to protect its children from these diseases, Preeti Sudan, Union health secretary said on Saturday.
We will make appropriate programmatic and strategic modifications based on learnings during the different phases of the campaign for the success.
Read more: Health department to go tough on schools opposing drive against measles-rubella
Two doses of measles vaccine fully protect children against measles infection.
In the past, while the first dose coverage was close to 90%, the second dose lagged behind by 45%.
To reach those children who fall through the cracks, health ministry launched Intensified Mission Indradhanush programme last month.
The programme has been intensified and it is already showing results at the ground level. We have a robust programme in place, and what we are trying is to plug the gaps so that maximum coverage can be achieved, said a senior health ministry official.
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Millions of students detest exams and many thousands get into trouble for bunking school to evade critical tests, but it is one in several million that commits a crime to get out of writing an unwelcome test.
It may have been a fear of exams that drove a 15-year-old student to allegedly stab an 8-year-old to death in Gurugrams upscale Ryan International School, but the trigger could just as easily have been something more trivial.
Whether its driving too fast or experimenting with drugs, teenagers tend to take more risks than adults because they have poor impulse control and are biologically primed to seek external stimulation, says Nimesh Desai, director of the Institute of Human Behaviour & Allied Sciences (IHBAS) in Delhi. But in exceptional cases of delinquency, criminal behaviour is likely to be a precursor to adult psychopathy and antisocial, violent behaviour.
If the teenager did in fact kill the little boy, it is an example of impaired, antisocial behaviour that makes the perpetuator incapable of gauging how his behaviour will harm others, says Dr Samir Parikh, director of mental health and behavioral sciences at Fortis Healthcare, Delhi.
Conduct disorder
The Gurugram case has all the signs of a conduct disorder, which is a mental health diagnosis defined by behaviours that violate the rights of others, or major social norms, Dr Parikh says.
A study of 519 boys in the juvenile justice system in the US found that 80% met the criteria for conduct disorder.
People with conduct disorders are a threat to others and to themselves. They are three times more likely to have anxiety disorders, major depression or alcohol dependence and 2.7 times more likely to be convicted for a criminal offence. And they are 25 times more likely to have attempted suicide by age 32 than men without behavioral disorder, show data from the US study.
If your child is lashing out, especially physically, and talking hasnt helped, approach a counsellor. A few months of behavioural therapy can help ease violent behaviour. (Getty Images / iStock)
Psychiatrists blame growing desensitisation on increased exposure to aggression, not just in the media and in video games, but also in real life.
Every day, there is a reinforcement of aggression at every level home, school, workplace, commute, popular media and the message that goes out is that if you shout and threaten, work get done, says Dr Rajesh Sagar, professor in the department of psychiatry at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences.
Risk-taking behaviour adds to the explosive mix. Studies done by Fortis in several schools in Delhi and NCR have shown that while three in four teenagers are aware of the consequences of risk-taking behaviour, 61% still repeat behaviours that have got them into trouble in the past, Dr Parikh says.
Hostile world
The most easily identifiable cause for displaying aggression is video games and violent television shows, says Dr Jyoti Sangle, a psychotherapist at Mumbais LH Hiranandani Hospital. Several studies have found that violent video games increase physiological arousal, cruel thoughts and aggressive behaviour. Games desensitise children by trivialising violence and brutality to make them hostile and insensitive to pain. They also make always winning imperative for their happiness and self-esteem, so they are willing to go to great lengths to get what they want, says Dr Sagar.
Violent video games do far more damage than watching violent shows and movies because they are interactive and often involve role-playing where the player identifies with the aggressor. Studies have shown that violent games lower pro-social behaviour such as caring about the welfare and rights of others, feeling concern and empathy for them and acting in ways that benefit others.
Role models
Every day, there is a reinforcement of aggression at home, at school, in popular media and children are growing up thinking that if you shout and threaten, work gets done, says Dr Rajesh Sagar, professor of psychiatry at AIIMS.
Stressful family or peer group situations, parental conflict and financial problems can aggravate hostility and social alienation in children too.
Rohan Kadam (name changed) began to get more and more aggressive after his classmates found out he was adopted and began taunting him about it.
His parents were focused on pacifying him, so they would take his smacks, give him what he wanted. They thought it was phase and it would pass. But smaller and smaller irritants began to set him off, says Dr Parul Tank, consultant psychiatrist at Mumbai-based Fortis Hospital.
It started with him hitting his classmates, then his friends, even his parents. When he hit his grandmother, his parents knew it was time to get help.
After four months of behaviour therapy, the 14-year-old is more stable. He still shows aggression verbally, but not physically, Dr Tank says.
A lack of consequences can heighten the aggressive impulse. Parents hesitate to take punitive measures to curtail their childs aggressive behaviour, says Dr Sangle.
In one such case, the parents had served, unwittingly, as role models for aggressive behaviour.
Nine-year-old Rishabh Mehta (name changed) had to seek counselling in Mumbai after complaints that he was hitting children smaller than him out of frustration over scoring low on exams. He hit his teacher once, which is when his parents brought him in for therapy, says Dr Tank. The parents had been under a lot of stress and argued in front of Mehta, which led him to pick up this behaviour.
After five months of behaviour therapy, he is calmer and understands the implications of indulging in violent behaviour.
Talk therapy
In times of stress, there is often less interaction with adult role models such as parents, extended family and neighbours, and many children cannot pick up the empathetic skills needed for social interactions and conflict resolution, says Dr Sagar
Adding to social isolation is over-dependence on social networking platforms. Instead of talking to people IRL [in real life], social interactions for many people not just teenagers are now about superficial witty remarks and emoticons, which lower personal involvement and empathy, Dr Parikh says.
Vigilance is the easiest defence against such behaviour.
When you see the first sign of aggression, ask the child to stop right there. Talk to the child about using mouth versus hands, words versus action. If the behaviour persists, dont hesitate to seek a counsellors help, Dr Tank says.
Agrees Dr Sagar: Talk, talk, talk. You have to know what your child is thinking and feeling to make them feel safe, cared for and connected so they become emotionally secure adults.
Enraged with her affair with a neighbourhood boy, a man in south western Bihar district headquarters town of Sasaram allegedly killed his daughter for the sake of his familys honour. He has been arrested and confessed to the crime during interrogation by the police.
Priti Kumari, 20, daughter of Ravindra Singh alias Daya Singh of Mahaddiganj locality of Sasaram, district headquarters of Rohtas, located about 153 km south west to state capital, Patna, died in mysterious circumstances on November 8.
The boy, an intermediate student, remains traceless and his father has registered a missing person case in this connection. It is suspected that he, too, may have been killed.
Earlier, her neighbor Chandan Kumar, 19, son of a teacher and an intermediate student, who was allegedly in love with Priti, went missing on September 19 afternoon.
The police were zeroing in on the girls family when the body of a youth was found hanging from a tree adjacent to Gita Ghat Ashram near Kaimur hills, some 15 days back. However, the body was such in a decomposed state that family members of the missing boy could not identify it as his.
The body was disposed of as per the rules for disposal of unidentified bodies.
Mobile call records of Priti and Chandan, accessed by the police, showed the two were in contact even on the day on which Chandan went missing. The girl had failed in intermediate examination and her wedding was fixed by her father for next summer.
The information led police to investigate the girls family members role in the boys disappearance.
When the girl died on November 8, her father told police that she had committed suicide by setting her clothes on fire. But the police suspected foul play in her death when her post mortem examination indicated death by strangulation. It showed burns on her body occurred after her death.
Thereafter, the girls father was taken in to custody, on Saturday, and confessed that he had killed the girl. He had even forced the girl to write a suicide note blaming therein the police for harassing her and her family since Chandan went missing. The idea was to push the police on back foot.
Post-midnight on November 7 (technically on November 8), the father strangulated the girl to death with the help of other family members and set her clothes on fire the morning, before informing the police, said Sasaram sub-divisional officer Alok Ranjan.
The police had yet to recover the suicide note, Ranjan said.
We will apply to the court court on Monday for securing its permission to exhume the unidentified body and hold a DNA test of bones to identify it and ascertain whether or not it is Chandans body, Ranjan added.
The police fear the girls family may have killed Chandan to avoid any problem during Pritis forthcoming wedding. The girl was killed probably because she threatened to disclose the murder of her lover, said a police officer.
The Supreme Courts registry has issued an administrative order saying that lawyers can only ask the Chief Justice of India (CJI) to list their cases for an early hearing, barring them from making such a request to any other judge.
The usual practice in the court was for lawyers to approach the CJIs bench for matters that required early intervention. But when the CJI was sitting in a Constitution bench, urgent cases could be mentioned before the judge next in seniority, which at present is justice J Chelameswar.
Released on Saturday, November 11, the circular by the courts registry is silent on who can hear such urgent cases if CJI Dipak Misra is on leave.
The circular was put out a day after a two-judge bench headed by justice Chelameswar referred a PIL filed by advocate Kamini Jaiswal about a medical admission scam to a Constitution bench of the courts five most senior judges. The CJI was not to be a part of this Constitution bench.
On Friday, another five-judge bench headed by the CJI, while hearing a similar petition filed by the NGO Campaign for Judicial Accountability and Reforms (CJAR), annulled the order passed by justice Chelameswars bench. The bench laid down that the CJI is the master of the court and the prerogative of the constitution of benches rested squarely with him. Then, on Saturday, a three-judge bench was set up by CJI Misra to hear the matter next week.
At the heart of this controversy is a case filed by the Prasad Education Trust seeking relief from a government order barring it from admitting students to its medical college in 2017-18 and 2018-19. On September 18, a bench of the Supreme Court headed by the CJI denied it relief for 2017-18 and asked the Medical Council of India to reassess the college regarding its admission of students for 2018-19. The CBI also filed a case against justice (retired) IM Quddusi and Bhavna Pandey under the anti-corruption law. They were accused of assuring the college representative of getting favourable orders from the top court.
The two PILs by CJAR and Jaiswal are seeking a court-monitored probe into the alleged medical college admission scam.
Signed by two registrars of SC, Kapil Mehta and Rajkumar Choubey, Saturdays administrative order informs members of the bar that oral mentioning, in respect of matters not being listed or assigned to any other bench, will be allowed only before a bench headed by CJI at 10.30am.
It supersedes an earlier circular issued on November 6, which said that whenever the CJI is hearing a matter pertaining to a Constitution bench, mentioning could be made before the Number 2 judge at 10.30am, but if there was a need for listing of cases on the same day, it had to be referred to the CJI for hearing at 3pm.
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The Parliaments audit watchdog has pulled up the government for not utilising the funds generated through a levy on telecom operators for funding expansion of telecom services in rural India.
The Centre has so far disbursed only 40% of the fund collected since 2002-03 under the Universal Access Levy (UAL). Government data showed that Rs 87,500 crore has been collected through the levy but only Rs 39,172 crore of it has been utilised.
A Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) report tabled in the Parliament stated, The pace of expansion of services in rural India... has been very slow.
This indicated that the objectives of establishing the Universal Service Obligations Fund (USOF) exclusively for accelerating the growth of rural telephony were not achieved despite substantial collection of funds through Universal Access Levy (UAL), the CAG concluded.
Private telecom operators pay 5% of their average gross revenue (AGR) from mobile services towards the USOF. The operators complained that the proportion of AGR they pay is much higher than what is mandated in other countries and demanded that the mandatory payment should be scrapped.
On Thursday, a sub-committee of Parliaments audit watchdog, Public Accounts Committee, met to discuss the issue. Sources said finance ministry officials argued that the amount they extended for expansion of telecom services in rural India was dependent on the fund allocated for it in the Union budget.
Money from USOF is given to BSNL. Is BSNL in a position to utilise this money? Given their bad financial conditions, it is not possible to give them more funds and expect them to deliver, so the allocations are also low, said a finance ministry official.
Sub-committee chief Bhartruhari Mahtab and other members said that since a large proportion of the fund was unused, the levy collection should be stopped.
Why dont you leave it to private players to invest in telecom expansion? It is in their own interest to invest in rural connectivity, given that a large part of their subscription revenue is from rural India, said Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI) secretary-general Rajan Mathews.
Congress managed to retain the Chitrakoot assembly seat in a Madhya Pradesh bypoll on Sunday, with party candidate Nilanshu Chaturvedi securing 66,810 votes to defeat his nearest rival Shankar Dayal Tripathi of the BJP by a margin of 14,333 votes.
The saffron candidate polled 52,677 votes.
The bypolls to the assembly seat, held on November 9, witnessed a voter turnout of over 65%. The results were declared on Sunday.
The Congress also managed to improve its performance, as compared to the 2013 assembly elections, on this occasion. Its candidate Prem Singh, whose demise necessitated the bypoll, had won the previous electoral contest by a margin of 10,970 votes.
There were 12 candidates, including nine independents, in the fray. Interestingly, NOTA (none of the above) turned out to be the third-highest vote-getter with a count of 2,455.
The BSP, which had garnered 19.55% votes in 2013 assembly elections, didnt field its candidate in the bypoll. Experts believe this decision went in favour of the Congress.
Chitrakoot has been a Congress bastion, and the BJP managed to emerge victorious (with a low margin of 772 votes) here just once in 2008. Nevertheless, the bypoll assumed significance in view of the Bhavantar Yojna a first-of-its-kind scheme introduced by the state government for farmers a couple of months ago. There has been widespread resentment ever since the scheme was launched, with farmers alleging that it has enabled traders to reduce the price of agriculture produce at mandis across the state.
Chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan, who was in Katni to attend an event, tweeted his acceptance of the BJPs defeat before the results were officially announced. Chitrakoot upchunav me janata ke nirnay ko shirodharya karta hun. Janmat hi loktantra ka asli aadhar hai (I accept peoples mandate in the Chitrakoot by-poll. Public mandate is the real foundation of democracy), he said, adding that the party would review the reasons behind its (poor) performance.
The chief minister had addressed over a dozen public meetings prior to the polling in a bid to turn the tide in favour of the BJP.
The ruling party, however, took pains to assert that the development was only a case of the Congress retaining its traditional seat and did not signify any anti-incumbency sentiment or resentment among voters. There are certain (assembly) seats in the state that traditionally go to the Congress, said state BJP president Nandkumar Singh Chauhan, whose campaign strategy for the bypoll has now come under the scanner.
State Congress president Arun Yadav, on the other hand, hailed the victory as the beginning of the BJPs end in Madhya Pradesh. This is a defeat of arrogant, corrupt and dictatorial forces, he declared.
It was a result of untiring efforts by party workers. The Congress will ensure the development of the constituency, said Ajay Singh leader of the Opposition in the state assembly who led the party campaign during the bypoll.
Jyotiraditya Scindia, Congress MP and senior Congress leader, also termed the bypoll results as a reflection of the peoples discontent with the Chauhan government. It is clear from the Chitrakoot victory, which comes after the Ater win, that Madhya Pradesh wants to be rid of the BJPs misrule, he said.
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A day ahead of a meeting between Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and US President Donald Trump in Manila, the two countries along with Japan and Australia on Sunday stressed on a free and inclusive Indo-Pacific region, signalling a broader alliance to counter China.
Modi arrived in the Philippines capital on Sunday for a three-day visit during which he will attend the 15th Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean)-India summit and the 12th East Asia meet on Tuesday.
But ahead of the two meetings, Modi and Trump, who met briefly at an Asean dinner on Sunday, would discuss counter-terrorism, trade and the security situation in the Indo-Pacific region, where China has been expanding its military presence, sources said.
The two leaders are expected to discuss the common strategy for Indo-Pacific, a great deal of which figured in Sundays meeting (of the quadrilateral), an official said in New Delhi on Sunday.
Seen as a first major move towards the quadrilateral security dialogue, or the quad, the first meeting between officials from the four countries stressed on cooperation for promoting peace and stability in an increasingly inter-connected region, a release issued after the meeting said.
A free, prosperous and inclusive Indo-Pacific region would serve the long-term interests of all countries in the region and of the world at large, it said.
The term Indo-Pacific gained currency recently, with its usage growing across diplomatic and security circles in US, Australia, India and Japan. Beijing prefers Asia-Pacific but to many the term placed an authoritarian China too firmly at the centre.
Trump and his officials used the term repeatedly through his five-nation tour that concludes in Manila. In fact, White House recently described the alliance as a linchpin for stability, security and prosperity in the Indo-Pacific.
Chinas One Belt, One Road plan to build a new Silk Route through a network of roads, rails and ports has caused a concern, with Japan proposing a similar project with India and US.
The US and Japan have also been pushing for a deeper Indian role in the region.
Addressing a group of CEOs on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Vietnam on Friday, Trump cited India as one of the countries in the Indo-Pacific region making strides.
This should be seen as a regional architecture of India, Japan, Australia ably assisted by Washington in diverse areas such as connectivity, maritime and counter terrorism cooperation with an aim to check the Chinese influence, said Sachin Chaturvedi, director general of the Research and Information System for Developing Countries, a New Delhi-based think tank.
The views found an echo in Washington.
The return of the Quad is a big geopolitical win for both the US and India. And it only brings them closer, tweeted Michael Kugelman, a South Asia expert with Wilson Center, a think tank.
Modi and Trump were also expected to discuss designation of terrorists by the United Nations as well as the US, sources said.
China has repeatedly blocked Indias efforts to get Pakistan-based Jaish-e-Mohammad chief Masood Azhar included in UN sanctions list, which would lead to a travel ban, freezing of assets and other step that would cripple his ability to carry out terror strikes.
This issue continues to be of utmost importance to us. In their last meeting in Washington two leaders took up this particular issue and they would be discussing this and other counter-terrorism related issues, an Indian official said.
India needed the help of US and other countries to highlight the threat it faced from Pakistan-based terrorist outfits, said Lalit Mansingh, a former foreign secretary.
And this persuasive approach is needed to bring the worlds attention to the issue of cross-border terrorism and safe havens for terrorists that threat regional peace and stability in the region, Indias former envoy to the US said.
Indias Act East policy and stronger collective approach to fighting terrorism would be the focus during Modis discussions at the Asean and EPC meetings, officials said.
India also offered to host an international conference to counter radicalisation, a worry faced by several countries of the region.
(with inputs from Yashwant Raj in Washington)
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The killers of senior journalist Gauri Lankesh, who was shot dead in an audacious attack here over two months ago, would 100 per cent be nabbed in a few weeks, Karnataka Home Minister Ramalinga Reddy said on Saturday.
He said the Special Investigation Team (SIT) probing the killing had clues about the assailants, but those could not be disclosed at the moment.
Who has done it...I am aware of it thanks to an update provided by the SIT. But I cannot disclose it now, Reddy said at a meet-the-press programme organised by the Press Club of Bangalore and the Bangalore Reporters Guild here.
Gauris killers will 100 per cent be caught. This will happen in a few weeks, he added.
The minister, however, clarified, Weeks do not mean one or two weeks. It (the arrest of the killers) will happen in a matter of a few weeks. This will happen 100 per cent.
Reddy said whether Lankesh was killed by left-wing or right-wing extremists or was it due to some other thinking was one issue.
Lankesh, known to be an anti-establishment voice with strident anti-right wing views, was shot dead at close range by unidentified assailants outside her residence here on the night of September 5.
The killing had led to a national outrage and protests by several groups over rising intolerance in the country and attempts to muzzle dissent, with the criticism targeted at the BJP-led central government and right-wing groups.
Reddy had made similar claims about the SIT having gathered some clues in connection with the case earlier too.
The Congress government in Karnataka, which constituted the SIT headed by Inspector General of Police (Intelligence) B K Singh, has also announced a reward of Rs 10 lakh for anyone providing clues about the perpetrators of the crime.
As the killing gave way to a political slugfest, Lankeshs family had made a plea not to give a political colour to it.
They had said the investigators should look into all possible aspects of the case, as reports had emerged about a possible Naxal hand in the crime, besides the suspected involvement of right-wing extremists.
Income Tax searches on premises linked to jailed AIADMK leader V K Sasikala, her kin and associates over suspected tax evasion were almost over, a senior official said on Sunday.
The official though declined to give details of seizures made during the exercise.
The search part is over, now recording of statements and questioning are remaining, the I-T official said when he was asked if searches, which began on November 9, on the premises of Jaya TV and others had concluded.
Asked if the search exercise, undertaken to detect tax evasion as part of Operation Clean Money, was completed on all 187 premises, he said: Yes, almost.
Asked if the search exercise, undertaken to detect tax evasion as part of Operation Clean Money, was completed on all 187 premises, he said: Yes, almost.
Whatever is left to be examined (articles, valuables, material) and documents... has been put under Prohibitory Orders (PO), the official told PTI.
Asked about the value of cash and type of documents seized during the raids, the official declined to answer saying compiling was yet to be done.
The raids on 187 locations including in this metropolis, Bengaluru, Hyderabad and New Delhi were conducted by over 1,000 officials, who split into more than a dozen teams on day one of the searches on November 9.
Subsequently, the number of officials carrying out the task shrunk with the conclusion of the searches at some places.
The raids were conducted based on inputs, including those from the Finance Ministrys Financial Intelligence Unit.
The allegations included suspicion of shell companies, dubious investments, suspicious fund flow and its transfers and fudging of accounts.
The office of Tamil channel Jaya TV here, TTV Dinakarans farm house off Auroville near Puducherry and premises of several other relatives of Sasikala at various other places were searched.
Dinkaran, deposed deputy general secretary of the AIADMK, has termed the searches a conspiracy aimed at ousting him and his aunt from politics.
External affairs minister Sushma Swaraj said on Sunday the government will provide all help to the family of an Indian-American motel owner who was shot dead in the US.
Akash Talati, 40, who owned Knights Inn and Diamondz Gentlemens Club in Fayetteville city, North Carolina, was killed on Saturday during an exchange of fire between a patron and a security guard, police said.
In a series of tweets, Swaraj said the Indian Embassy in the US had informed her of the circumstances leading to the death of Talati.
Indian Embassy in US has informed me of the circumstances leading to the death of Akash Talati, a US citizen of Indian origin. /1 Sushma Swaraj (@SushmaSwaraj) November 12, 2017
The deceased was shot by an assailant who was escorted out of his club. The security guard returned the fire and the assailant was also injured. /2 Sushma Swaraj (@SushmaSwaraj) November 12, 2017
We are in touch with the family of the deceased and will provide them all help. /3 Sushma Swaraj (@SushmaSwaraj) November 12, 2017
The assailant, Markeese Dewitt, 23, was charged with attempted murder and assault with a deadly weapon, CBS News reported, citing Fayetteville police.
According to reports, Talati, reportedly from Anand in Gujarat, sustained fatal injuries after Dewitt opened fire at the club around to 2am on Saturday.
A Diamondz Gentlemans Club security guard fired back, hitting the suspect five times, Talatis family said, according to a CBS report. Four others were injured in the shoot-out.
Police detective Jamaal Littlejohn said Dewitt was shot four or five times and remained in serious condition at Cape Fear Valley Medical Centre, fayobserver.com reported.
Littlejohn said security escorted Dewitt out of the club because he had caused a disturbance. He said Dewitt appeared to have gone to his vehicle, got a gun, went back inside the club and started shooting.
CBS North Carolina quoted Talatis family as saying the shooting happened after the man was kicked out of the club, got mad, grabbed a gun and began shooting.
Littlejohn said police had no idea what caused Dewitt to get kicked out of the club.
All set to become the national president of the RJD for the 10th consecutive term, Lalu Prasad, said here on Sunday that he would uitlise the new innings to unite all anti-BJP forces to oust the Narendra Modi government at the Centre and JD (U)-led NDA government in Bihar.
Speaking to newsmen, soon after filing his nomination papers to the election officer for the ongoing organisational polls Jagdanand Singh, at the state party office, Lalu said he was committed to the party constitution. It is a reflection of partys resolve to maintain the unity, integrity and secular fabric of the country, he said.
Lalu, who became the party chief for the first time on July 5, 1997,was the only one to file paper for the top party post. Unless he chooses to back out on his own on Monday, the last date for withdrawal, he will once again head the party. The official declaration will be made at the RJD national council meeting on November 21.
The RJD is facing the same challenges as is being witnessed by the country, he said, taking a dig at the anti-people policies being pursued by the Centre. Terming the high value currency note ban and GST as reckless decisions, he demanded their immediate roll back, given the hardships caused to the millions of digitally illiterate people in the country.
The RJD chief also came down heavily on UP chief minister Yogi Adityanaths promise that there would be Ram Rajya in the country by 2022. Who has seen Ram Rajya? It is like selling a pipe dream with the express intent of diverting attention from failures that too with a hope of getting an extension, he said.
The people are not going to fall into the trap for making an advance booking for a cinema show. We will force Modi government to explain what it has done for improving the lives of the people, Lalu said, adding, it will not work this time.
Senior RJD leaders Abdul Bari Siddiqui and Raghuvansh Prasad Singh also endorsed Lalus unopposed elevation as the national president saying, the party needs an accepted leader like him to play out a crucial role at national level to shape politics for helping the country fight the grave challenges staring at it.
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A group of men have claimed that the body of a 35-year-old man found on railway tracks in Rajasthans Alwar was that of their relatives and alleged that he was shot dead by cow vigilantes for transporting cattle, triggering tension in the region.
Police, however, said they were investigating two different cases that of the mans body found on tracks in Ramgarh area on Friday, and that of a badly-damaged pickup van with five cows and a dead one found about 15 km away in Fahadi village of Govind Garh area on the same day and refused to draw connections between the two for now.
Maulana Haneef, a social worker, said the body belonged to Umar Mohammed, a dairy farmer who along with Tahir Khan and Jabba were taking their pet cows to Ghat Mika village from Bharatpur on Friday night when some people opened fire on them near Govindgarh, killing Mohammad on the spot.
Tahir Khan suffered a bullet wound and was taken to a hospital in Ferozepur in Haryana while Jabba was not traceable, he said.
Jamshed Khan, village head of Tuleda, who is leading the Meo community in a sit-in outside the local hospital mortuary, said VHP workers were behind the shooting, although it was a matter of investigation as to how Mohammeds body was found on railway tracks, far from the place of incident.
The Meo community will not accept the corpse until and unless the perpetrators are brought to justice. Till then, we will be sitting on dharna outside the hospital gates, he said.
Anil Beniwal, assistant superintendent of police, Alwar (south), said the whole incident was being wrongly presented by combining two different incidents.
We have found one body in Ramgarh on Railway tracks while police has found five cows and one dead cow in a pickup near Govindgarh, he said.
These two are different occurrences while the victim party is viewing them in concurrence, which is a matter of investigation. Victim party is claiming that a group of gau rakshaks (cow vigilantes) attacked them and they were taking the name of one Rakesh repeatedly, said Beniwal.
Ramgarh station house officer, Ajit Singh said the body found on tracks had several injuries on it, suggesting that a train had passed over it.
Police said it was so mangled that they could not confirm whether it had bullet injuries.
ASP Beniwal said efforts are being made to identify the deceased and the body would be sent to Jaipur for post mortem, only after which it would be confirmed whether the body sustained bullet injuries.
This is a repeat of the Pehlu Khan incident as these men were also attacked while transporting cattle, said Haneef.
In April this year, Pehlu Khan, a 55-year-old dairy farmer from Haryana was lynched by an angry mob in Alwars Behror when he was transporting cattle.
This was a joint operation by the cow vigilantes and the police. Its quite evident that the police shot Mohammed and later dumped his body to destroy evidence, said Kavita Srivastava of the Peoples Union for Civil Liberties.
Meanwhile, a case of cow smuggling has been registered against unidentified persons under the Rajasthan Bovine Act.
Jammu and Kashmir chief minister Mehbooba Mufti requested defence minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Sunday to get state lands, which are no longer required by the army, vacated.
The defence minister arrived in Srinagar on Sunday afternoon and proceeded directly to south Kashmirs Pahalgam tourist resort to attend the executive council meeting of Jawahar Institute of Mountaineering and Winter Sports.
Mufti met Sitharaman in Pahalgam and discussed several issues with her, officials said here.
Mufti sought intervention of the defence minister for the return of state lands no longer required for operational purposes by the army.
The CM brought several issues pertaining to defence to the union ministers notice.
The chief minister also pressed for speeding up of cases of revision and payment of rent in respect of the land owners of Anantnag, whose land is being used by the army. The defence minister assured the chief minister to look into the issue of revision and payment of rent to the land owners of Anantnag, an official said.
Sitharaman regretted the delay and inconvenience caused all these years to the land owners who had not been paid rent so far, he said.
She said that it was only during her first meeting with the chief minister recently that her attention was drawn towards this issue.
A delegation of land owners also met the defence minister and she assured the delegation that she would try to fast-track their cases of rent payment and revision, the official added.
Home ministry is meeting next week to discuss prison facilities in India after Vijay Mallyas lawyers recently raised the issue to block the fugitive liquor barons extradition from the UK, where he has taken refuge.
The move comes after the external affairs ministry sought information from it on the facilities in the wake of Mallyas defense counsels argument.
Home secretary Rajiv Gauba is likely to chair a meeting on November 13 to prepare its reply to the external affairs ministrys request.
The development comes days ahead of the next case management hearing in Westminster Magistrates Court in London where the future course of 61-year-old Mallyas extradition trial--scheduled to start on December 4-- will be discussed.
The next case management hearing is due on November 20.
Mallya is wanted in India on loan defaults amounting to about Rs. 9,000-crore.
The MHAs stance will be that the prison facilities in India are as good as any other place in the world. A prisoners legal rights are protected here, they are given accesses to medical facilities and their safety and security is protected by the authorities, a senior home ministry official told HT on Friday.
The official viewed the argument put forward by Mallyas lawyers in the UK court as an obvious effort to delay his extradition.
In the past chief ministers and even corporate honchos have been lodged in the different prisons so what is so different about Mr Mallya? the official asked.
The official said it would be little pre-mature to discuss in which prison Mallya would be lodged if he was extradited as the decision would lie entirely with the concerned Indian court where Mallya is being tried.
Given that his case is being looked at in a UK court as well, the MHA will be asked by a court here to give an undertaking that the human rights of the accused will be protected in the prison.
The same will be then sent to lawyers of the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS), the principal public prosecuting agency for conducting criminal prosecutions in England and Wales, the official added.
Sources said the government is being extra careful about Mallyas case owing to some past instances where the UK refused extradition requests because of prison conditions in India.
Another senior government official, requesting anonymity, confirmed that the meeting due to take place in MHA next week will discuss all issues related to Mallyas extradition.
Two of Indias extradition requests were denied last month by UK after their defense lawyers argued the move would violate their clients rights.
On October 16, a Westminster Magistrates Court ruled in favour of UK-based alleged bookie Sanjeev Kumar Chawla and also discharged a fraud case against a British Indian couple, Jatinder and Asha Rani Angurala.
In Chawlas case, the ruling was based on human rights grounds over severe conditions in Tihar Jail.
In the other case the ruling was related to human rights but not pertaining to jail condition.
Other instances of extradition request being refused because of poor jail conditions in India include Purlia Arms drop case where Indian government had sought extradition of Kim Davy from Denmark.
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The condition of Congress leader Narayan Dutt Tiwari has stabilised, although he is not completely out of danger yet, doctors treating him at a private hospital in New Delhi have said.
The 92-year-old politician who has been the chief minister of Uttar Pradesh as well as Uttarakhand was admitted to the Max Super Specialty Hospital after he suffered a stroke on September 20.
Tiwaris condition remains the same. He is still in the intensive care unit (ICU), said a hospital official on the condition of anonymity.
A statement from the hospital said Tiwari was being closely monitored by a team of senior specialists from the neurology and cardiology departments.
The politician had been in the ICU until October 12, and was later moved to a private ward after his health improved. However, he was again admitted to the ICU on October 26.
A week later, he was placed on life-support. Doctors said he also suffered a paralytic attack on the right side of his body.
Reports said that though Tiwari had stopped acknowledging people after being moved to the ICU, he responded to ragas sung by his wife and son. The politician is fond of classical music.
Tiwari had served as the minister for external affairs in Rajiv Gandhis cabinet, and then as the governor of Andhra Pradesh. He is the only Indian to have served as the chief minister of two states.
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Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Sunday departed for a three-day visit to Philippines, to attend the 15th ASEAN summit and 12th East Asia summit on November 14.
Modi and US President Donald Trump are likely to have a bilateral meeting on Monday on the sidelines of the summit in Manila.
Trump is scheduled to arrive on Sunday as part of his five-nation Asia tour of Japan, South Korea, China, Vietnam, and the Philippines.
Official sources said the meeting between Modi and Trump is likely to take place on Monday.
It will be the first meeting between the two leaders following a proposal to have a quadrilateral alliance among India, the US, Japan, and Australia.
The Prime Minister on Saturday said his visit to the Philippines symbolises Indias commitment to continue deepening its ties with Southeast Asia and the Indo-Pacific region.
Modi said that besides the two summits, he would also participate in special celebrations of the 50th anniversary of the formation of the Asean, the proposed Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) Leaders Meeting and an Asean Business and Investment Summit.
RCEP is a proposed free trade agreement between the 10 Asean member states and the six states with which the grouping has free trade pacts - Australia, China, India, Japan, South Korea and New Zealand.
The Asean Business and Investment Summit will boost our close cooperation to further enhance our trade ties with Asean member states, which constitutes a significant 10.85% of our overall trade, the Prime Minister said.
Stating that he looked forward to connecting with the Indian community in Philippines, Modi said that he would also visit the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) and Mahavir Philippines Foundation Inc. (MPFI).
I am confident that my visit to Manila will give a new boost to Indias bilateral relations with the Philippines and also further strengthen the politico-security, economic and socio-cultural pillars of our engagement with Asean, the Prime Minister added.
A Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) worker was stabbed to death on Sunday by alleged activists of the ruling Communist Party of India (Marxist) in Kerala, which has been of late witnessing frequent political clashes.
Police said Vadekkethala Anandan (28), an accused in the murder of CPI(M) activist Mohammed Kasim five months ago, was on his motorbike around 1pm when he was waylaid and attacked in Nenmini near the temple town of Guruvayur.
Anandan was stabbed repeatedly. He was rushed to a private hospital where he died.
He was on bail and the police suspect that his murder is a revenge killing.
The RSS-BJP called a shutdown on Monday in temple town Guruvayur in protest.
Police said they have identified the car in which Anandans assailants travelled.
Security has been beefed up in the area to avert further violence. Senior police officials have rushed to the spot to monitor the situation.
The CPI(M) and the RSS-BJP are engaged in a violent turf war in the state.
Earlier the red-saffron violence was confined to north Keralas Kannur district, but of late it has started spilling over to other parts of the state.
In Kannur more than 200 persons belonging to both camps were killed in three-decade-long bloodbath.
In the bloody saga of gore and revenge, the party leaders are evidently fast losing their grip on marauding cadres who are intoxicated with their ideology.
State BJP president Kummanam Rajasekharan had carried out a state-wide yatra recently against what his party called red and jihadi terror. Many senior BJP leaders including its national president Amit Shad took part in the march.
The Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP), the student wing of the RSS had organised a rally at the state capital on Saturday to protest against growing political intolerance in Kerala.
The latest killing again exposed the criminal face of the CPI(M). It never believed in democracy and annihilation of political rivals is the trademark of the party, said the BJPs state president while condemning the murder.
The CPI(M) Thrissur district unit denied its role in the killing.
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Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Sunday held separate pull-aside meetings with US President Donald Trump and Chinese Premier Li Keqiang on the sidelines of a gala dinner to mark the 50th anniversary of the ASEAN.
Modi was also seen chit-chatting with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev and Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak at the reception for the leaders who have arrived here for the 31st ASEAN summit and related meetings.
He also held brief interactions with several other leaders who attended the reception hosted by Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte at the mega SMX Convention Centre in Pasay City here.
The prime minister as well as all other leaders wore Barong Tagalong, an embroidered shirt which is the national dress of the Philippines. Renowned Filipino designer Albert Andrada has designed the shirts.
Modi also tweeted pictures of his interaction with several leaders.
Prime Minister Modi with Chinese Premier Li Keqiang and Malaysian PM Najib Razak #ASEANSummit #Manila pic.twitter.com/gFIyPNBOao ANI (@ANI) November 12, 2017
The menu of the gala dinner featured various Filipino cuisines including Filipino steak sushi.
The brief interaction between Modi and Trump came ahead of their scheduled bilateral meeting tomorrow. The two leaders are expected to deliberate on a number of key issues of mutual interest including the evolving security situation in the Indo-Pacific region where Washington favours a greater role by India.
There have been concerns over Chinas growing military presence in the Indo-Pacific and the issue was understood to have figured in a meeting of officials from India, the US, Japan and Australia today under the proposed Quadrilateral coalition of the four countries.
The discussions focused on cooperation based on their converging vision and values for promotion of peace, stability and prosperity in an increasingly inter-connected region that they share with each other and with other partners, the ministry of external affairs said in a statement.
They agreed that a free, open, prosperous and inclusive Indo-Pacific region serves the long-term interests of all countries in the region and of the world at large, it said.
On Tuesday, Modi will attend the ASEAN-India and East Asia summits where he is likely to reassert Indias push for crafting a global approach to deal with growing challenge of terrorism and radicalisation besides pitching for steps to boost regional trade.
Modi will hold bilateral meetings with Duterte on Monday.
He also had a conversation with Li at the dinner.
The United Arab Emirates (UAE) has told New Delhi that it will not allow any underworld activity on its territory that threatens India and will act to enforce the law on the basis of actionable intelligence from India, in a move to prevent Pakistan-based mafia don Dawood Ibrahim and his associates from operating with impunity from the UAE, specifically Dubai, a top official said, asking not to be identified.
The cooperation between intelligence agencies of the two countries comes ahead of Prime Minister Narendra Modis second visit to the UAE in the first quarter of 2018 to increase bilateral business relations between the two countries.
According to Indian intelligence officials, there is nothing wrong with Ibrahim, as some reports have claimed, and he is frequently moved by Pakistani intelligence to keep him safe; the officials add that D-company, as Ibrahims unit is known, is still a force to reckon with in Mumbai, where extortion is its main line of work, and that it is involved in the real estate business in the UAE through proxies.
Indian diplomatic sources are tight-lipped about the enhanced security co-operation with UAE, and the attempt to crack down on the D-company, but agree that the bilateral relationship between the two countries has undergone a sea change (for the better) after PM Modis visit to Abu Dhabi in 2015 and Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed bin Sultan Al- Nahyans visit to India this year as chief guest during the Republic Day.
There is no secret memorandum of understanding between the two countries but a robust security relationship between security agencies of both sides. The information exchange varies from who among the Indian diaspora in West Asia joined the so-called Islamic State to the activities of Indian underworld/terror fugitives based in Pakistan, said a senior diplomat on condition of anonymity.
India and the UAE are also closely cooperating to counter religious radicalisation and violent extremism with the Hedayah Centre in Abu Dhabi at the forefront of this activity.
It is working with Indian Muslim scholars apart from national security officials.
The two countries are also establishing a joint cyber-security centre in India with the aim of leveraging technology in the fight against terrorism, radical extremism, and underworld activities in the region.
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Even as the love jihad debate continues to rage in Kerala, a woman approached the state high court on Saturday to seek the nullification of her marriage with a Muslim man who had converted her and was allegedly planning to sell her as a sex slave in Syria.
The woman claimed that her husband, Mohamed Riyaz (26), forcibly flew her to Saudi Arabia with forged papers and was planning to smuggle her into Islamic State-controlled territory. Though the complainant was reportedly locked up in a room in the middle-eastern nation, she managed to procure a mobile phone with which she contacted her parents back home. She was rescued last month with the help of some NRIs, after which she was flown back to India.
She also alleged that her husband a native of New Mahe in north Kerala is an active worker of the Popular Front of India, a fundamentalist outfit suspected of carrying out conversions in Kerala.
Riyaz, who is still in Saudi Arabia, could not be contacted for his version of the incident.
The 23-year-old woman, who hails from Pathanamthitta in central Kerala, was brought up in Gujarat. It was when she was studying in Bengaluru that she came in contact with Riyaz. She said they had sex on a certain occasion, during which he secretly shot videos of the act and began blackmailing her.
The complainant alleged that she was later admitted to a madrassa in north Kerala by force, where she was tutored in Islamic tenets. Their marriage was solemnised by a cleric in May 2016.
According to the woman, she had even managed to escape from her husbands clutches on a certain occasion. Riyaz filed a habeus corpus petition in the high court alleging that she was illegally confined by her parents, following which she was forced to return to him. He took her to Saudi Arabia on a tourist visa in August.
Interestingly, the case has surfaced only a few weeks before the Supreme Court is expected to hear Muslim convert Hadiya Jehans testimony on November 27. The case made nationwide headlines after the 24-year-old woman originally called Akhila Ashokan converted to Islam and married one Shefin Jehan from Kollam in south Kerala. Her father approached the Kerala high court in May, claiming that his daughter was forcibly converted after being indoctrinated. The judicial body annulled their marriage, following which Shefin moved the apex court.
After meeting Hadiya last week, National Women Commission chairperson Rekha Sharma alleged that indoctrination and forced conversions were being carried out in many parts of the state. The Kerala government has rejected her statement.
Women and children stranded in Syria
Police have reportedly intercepted messages indicating that many women and children hailing from north Kerala are still stranded in Syria.
In one of the audio clips, a woman is heard telling her kin that her husband was martyred recently and she now has nowhere to go. She goes on to say that there are many other women and children like her, some of whom were even ready to return.
Kannur deputy superintendent of police PP Sadanandan, who is investigating these cases, said it was likely that over 100 people hailing from north Kerala had joined the Islamic State over the last few years.
It was on April 2, 2016 that Virmaram, a resident of Sata village in Barmer district was allegedly attacked by four people. A badly injured Virmaram was taken to hospital and an FIR was registered against four named accused the next day.
Virmaram died on September 24 this year during treatment, eighteen months after the attack. His death would have been written off as just another statistic in the annual crime record of the state, but for the fact that the attack on him had a political angle and that it was allegedly masterminded by a member of Charan community. Virmaram belonged to Jat community.
The victim Virmaram. (HT file photo)
Now, politics, first over the attack on him, and now on his death has led to polarization of the two communities Jats and Charans. Both the communities, led by political leaders, have already exhibited their show strength taking to roads over what has now come to be known as the Sata episode. Both have issued warning about bigger and intense protests if their demands were not met.
Spread just over 971 hectares, Sata is a village located along the Indo-Pak border under Chohtan block of Barmer district. Home to around 2,200 people, the village is also a gram panchayat, an election to the same allegedly being the root cause behind the murder.
Leela Kanwar, wife of Tejdan Charan, a resident of Sata village, won the sarpanch election defeating her nearest rival Tuggi Devi, wife of Bankaram Jat, a resident of neighbouring Rangwali village. Later, Bankaram lodged a complaint against Leela Kanwar alleging that she had contested the election by submitting fake documents. The complaint turned into a prestige issue, creating a rift among the Charans and the Jats in the area.
A protest rally by the Charan community. photo- ht (HT file photo)
When that attack took place on April 2, 2016, Bankaram was allegedly the prime target. He was accompanied by Virmaram and Prabhuram. While the other two sustained minor injuries, Virmaram bore the brunt of the attack and was rushed to the hospital with critical head injury. It was alleged that the attack was planned by Tejdan Charan. A case was filed a day later naming four accused Maheshdan, Jasdan, Karnidan and Goridan at Bakhasar police station under Sections 147, 148, 341, 323, 307 and 149 of IPC.
The FIR didnt mention the name of Tejdan Charan. Jat community has been alleging that it was under political pressure that police did not lodge any case against Tejdan.
Even as politicking began over the attack and the FIR, the investigation changed hands at least five times --- beginning with the Bakhasar police station to being handed to the Crime Investigation Department-Crime Branch (CB-CID, which is currently probing the case.
Meanwhile, Virmaram died on September 24.
Following his death, Jat community intensified the protest, demanding that Tejdan Charan be booked under Section 302 and arrested. On October 5, they organized a protest led by BJP MP Col Sonaram Choudhary at district headquarters. Stating that community had strength in numbers, Choudhary warned that if immediate action was not taken against the accused, they wont think twice before going violent. The community once again organised protests at various blocks in Barmer on October 16.
A week later, on October 23, Jats organized another massive protest at Barmer city. Apart Sonaram Choudhary, former MP and Congress national secretary Harish Choudhary also joined the protest attended by thousands from the community. They also handed over a memorandum to the district collector in the name of chief minister stating that if no action was taken against the accused by November 15, the community will be forced to adopt violet measures.
Following the Jat protests, the Charan community too showcased their strength with a massive demonstration at district headquarters on October 30. Prominent leaders of Rajput community extended their support. Apart from this, leaders of Rajpurohit, Prajapat, minority and many others also joined hands with Charans. A huge number of Charan community members from Gujarat too reached Barmer to lend muscle to the agitation.
Among others, former MLA and national president of Akhil Bhartiya Charan (Gadhvi) Mahasabha C D Deval, national president of Rajput Karni Sena Sukhdev Singh Gogamedi, Rajpurohit community leader Ram Singh Bothiya, minority leader Maulwi Abdul Kareem, Prajapat community leader Balram Prajapat and prominent Rajput leaders Hari Singh Sodha, Rajendra Singh Bhiyand, Roop Singh Rathore, Ratan Singh Bhakhasar attended and addressed the gathering of the Charan community. BJP leader and Sheo MLA Manvendra Singh could not attend the demonstration but extended his support to the Charans.
The Charan community has warned the government against any action against innocent people under any political pressure. They also warned that undue favor to any community will force them to adopt violent means.
Khetaram Choudhary, a Jat leader, who led the community protest, says, We are not protesting against any community or creating pressure (on government). We are demanding justice for the man from our community who was killed over a minor dispute. He was the only earning member in his family and his death has created starvation-like situation for the family. His only son, who was studying in Class 8, had been forced to quit school.
One should not look at this from caste angle, as we are only demanding justice.
Rajendra Singh Bhiyand, a social activist who joined hands with the Charan community, says that some political leaders were instigating both the parties for violence. Such a practice is not good and hence we are opposing it. We favour fair investigation and demand that no innocent should be victimized, he added.
Incidentally, local BJP MP Col (retd) Sonaram Choudhary has warned of dire consequences if justice is denied and action not taken against culprits. He claims that some people are intentionally doing caste politics to deprive justice to the victim.
Hitting out at Rajput Karni Sena, Choudhary alleged that Gogamedi, the outfits chief, was indulging in caste politics. Stating that every action has an equal and opposite reaction, Choudhary warns that if such people were not stopped, he would be forced to form a Kisaan Sena or a Teja Sena to teach them a lesson.
The face-off between the two communities has complicated the situation for political parties, especially as the assembly polls are scheduled in the state late next year. Jats constitute around 20 per cent of the vote bank in Barmer-Jaisalmer region. On the other hand, Rajputs, Charans, Rajpurohits, Prajapats and Rana Rajputs together make up for another 25 per cent of the total voter base. Ignoring any one group can cost the political parties dear.
The issue found resonance in Assembly too. Last month, replying to a question related to the killing of Virmaram, state home minister Gulab Chand Kataria had confirmed that case was being investigated by CID-CB and that two accused have already been arrested.
After introducing parent-teacher meeting in government schools this year, the state education department is for the first time organising a mother-teacher meeting. The department officials were issued directions on Friday for making arrangements in view of the meet.
The child spends maximum time with his or her mother. We have been holding parent-teacher meetings, but we want to sensitise the mother towards childs education, said Nathmal Didel, director, secondary education.
The schools have to hold four parent-teacher meetings in a year, Didel said, and the department decided to turn the third meeting, slated for November 18, into one exclusively for the mother. The two preceding parent-teacher meetings of this year were held in May and September.
The order from the department says that the mothers (or any other female guardians) link with the childs learning progress is crucial for overall academic development of the child. In the same context, the order gives the example of Maratha ruler Shivaji and his mother Jija Bai, under whose tutelage he grew up.
The schools were earlier instructed to inform and invite the mothers (or any other female guardian) 10 days ahead of the meeting. The schools have also been instructed to publicise the meet and go door-to-door encouraging the mothers to attend it.
The school principals have been told to ask their staff to behave respectfully and in a cooperative way with the guardians. Furthermore, the schools are required to register the details of attendees and upload them on the departments web portal the next day. The guardians shall also be apprised and reminded of the dates for the next parent-teacher meet.
On the other hand, the district education officers have been asked to ensure maximum attendance on the day. The decision to hold parent-teacher meeting in government schools is one of the many reforms steered by education minister Vasudev Devnani. School mergers, staff rationalisation, roping in philanthropists and creation of Adarsh Schools are some of the other reforms introduced by him.
KOTA.
A Pakistani national, caught in Sultanpur of Kota district for illegally entering India, was remanded to a five-day police remand on Sunday.
Pakistani national Mohammad Haneef (50), who was caught from the house of history-sheeter Khalik Hussain (35) in Sultanpur town on Friday night without visa and passport, was produced before a court in Kota, which sent him to a 5-day remand of Kota rural police for further probe into the case, said Gautam Bhaskar, additional SP (intelligence), Crime Investigation Department (CID), Kota.
Haneef belongs to Baldiya town of Pakistan and was a former aide of Karachi smuggler kingpin Haji Usman.
Haneefs family had migrated to Pakistan from Jamnagar in Gujarat during the partition. He was also caught in 2006 in Ahmedabad without visa and passport documents, and deported to Pakistan in 2007, Bhaskar told HT.
The Central Information Bureau, CID, Military Intelligence and Rajasthan police are interrogating the accused about why he entered India illegally, he said.
Sultanpur police station circle inspector Devesh Bhardwaj said, It appears that Haneef arrived in India for visiting Ajmer Dargah and meeting acquaintances in India, but more details behind his arrival would be known after probe. He said police were also interrogating Khalif Hussain.
Police have booked Haneef under section 3 of Passport Act for entering India without visa and passport; Khalik has been booked under section 7/14 of the Foreigners Act for not informing authorities about the stay of a Pakistani national at his house.
Kota: Rajasthan government has reduced its rebate on khadi and also has made a deduction in the number of discount days on the fibre.
It has been a cause of disappointment for the khadi lovers after the imposition of Goods and Services Tax (GST) on ready made khadi and now the reduction on the duration of discount.
Secretary of the Hadauti Khadi Gram Udhyog Samiti, Kota, Kamal Kishore Sharma said that the state government has been offering 10% discount over the last three decades and the union government has been providing 20% discount for over the last three months to ensure a cumulative rebate of 30% on khadi in Rajasthan.
Rajasthan government has reduced the Khadi rebate from 10% to 5% this year, lowering the total rebate from 30% to 25%, Sharma said. The government used to provide the discount for 108 days (not in a single stretch) till last year from October 2 to February 28, barring public holidays, which has been reduced to 80 days this year, whereby discount will be available only from October 2 to January 18 (2018).
The annual budget allocated by for subsidy on khadi has been reduced from Rs 4 crore to Rs 2.80 crore, added Sharma. Union government had also imposed 5% GST on khadi earlier this year which was withdrawn after the protests of the khadi organisations across the country. The reworked tax imposed on the fibre is 12%.
There are around 164 khadi organisations in the state with the annual turnover of Rs 125 crore.
The Secretary of the Rajasthan Khadi Gramudhyog Sansthan Sangh, Jaipur, Ramdas Sharma said, Reduction in the discount on khadi has affected 30% of its sale over the last one month.
Pradesh Congress committee, general secretary, Rajasthan, Pankaj Mehta said, BJP government does not believe in khadis significance and so they are discouraging it through taxation and reduction of rebates.
When asked about the decision of reducing rebate from the Khadi Board of Rajasthan assistant secretary, Faridullah Khan, he said that the Khadi Board (KB) of Rajasthan works as per the policies of the Khadi Village and Industry Commission (KVIC), Mumbai. So when KVIC decided to withdraw rebate on Khadi, the state board had no option but to follow. Rajasthan, too, decided to withdraw rebate and propose State Marketing Development Assistance (SMDA).
Since approvals for SMDA would have taken time, KB decided to continue with 5% rebate on khadi for the current year. But such rebate will be done away with once SMDA is launched, said Khan.
Japanese Encephalitis has made its way to Rajasthan with the death of a woman. This is the first case of Japanese encephalitis in the state.
The 30-year-old woman, from Bundi, died last month. Now, the National Institute of Virology (NIV), Pune, in its report has confirmed that she was suffering from Japanese encephalitis.
Manju Panchal, a resident of Keshoraipatan region in Bundi district, was admitted to the New Government Medical College Hospital of Kota on October 8 with complaints of fever, but soon she went into a coma.
I took my wife to a private hospital (Sudha Hospital) in Kota where neurosurgeon Dr Amit Dev treated her for four days and later she was referred to the Government Maharao Bhim Singh Hospital for treatment, where her blood samples were sent to NIV through the laboratory at the hospital, said her husband Brajesh Panchal (39).
Manju died at the Government Maharao Bhim Singh Hospital during treatment on October 16.
Now, the diagnostic report from NIV, Pune, confirmed that its Japanese encephalitis said Brajesh, who works as a taxi driver.
When asked about the case, the chief medical and health officer, Bundi, Dr Suresh Kumar Jain, said that he has received the report from the Government Medical College Kota. Anti-larval activity is on in the region to prevent seasonal diseases. The case has been forwarded to the health directorate from where a health department team is likely to arrive at Bundi on Monday for further action, he said.
Principal, Government Medical College Kota, Dr Girish Verma said that the viral encephalitis is a mosquito-borne flavivirus, which primarily affects children. Most JE infections are characterised by rapid onset of high fever, headache, neck stiffness, disorientation, coma, seizures, spastic paralysis and others, he said.
Japanese encephalitis is transmitted to humans through bites from infected mosquitoes of the Culex species (mainly Culex tritaeniorhynchus). The virus exists in a transmission cycle between mosquitoes, pigs and water birds, said Dr Verma.
There is no specific treatment to JE and has only supportive treatment but there is effective JE vaccines available to prevent the disease, informed the doctor.
A 25-year-old woman and her two-year-old daughter were charred to death when a moving passenger bus caught fire in Rajasthans Barmer district on Sunday morning, the police said.
The Rajasthan State Road Transport Corporation (RSRTC) bus, carrying 13 passengers from Jaipur, was on its way to Barmer when the accident took place at 5 am near Khed Road in Balotra, about 100 km from the district headquarters.
Devendra Singh Kaviya, station house officer at Pachpadra police station in Barmer, said the bus caught fire soon after it left Balotara city, where it had stopped for a brief period.
According to police, the driver and the conductor tried to evacuate the passengers. The bus was being evacuated after the fire was detected near Khed village in Barmer, Singh said. Twelve passengers were able to get down but the fuel tank exploded while Rekha and her daughter were still on the bus, he added.
The deceased has been identified as Rekha, wife of Ajit Singh and their daughter Kavya.
The charred bodies were handed over to their family after postmortem, the SHO said, adding that a case has been registered under section 174 of CrPC and is under investigation.The cause of the fire hasnt yet been ascertained, police said.
Both the driver and the conductor were rushed to the local hospital after they fell unconscious due to smoke.
With inputs from agencies
Faced with rising rebellion in its ranks ahead of the month-end civic elections, the Bharatiya Janata Party has sought and got the support of its ideological mentor Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) in placating rebels.
These elections are the first popular test for the Yogi Adityanath government that assumed power in March this year.
The damage-control exercise has been initiated at the level of the UP BJP general secretary (organisation) Sunil Bansal. The placate bid showcases the partys anxiousness to win over the members who are upset at being ignored in the ticket distribution.
Bansal is the Sangh nominee in the BJP.
Bansal has started meeting those upset with ticket distribution during his regional visits. State BJP chief Mahendra Nath Pandey too has started speaking to the rebels. Sanghs pracharaks too are out, meeting party workers in Nagar Palika Parishads and Nagar Panchayats (semi-urban bodies).
For instance, in Muzaffarnagar Palika Parishad, the party got former lawmaker Sushila Agarwal to drop out of the race for the semi-urban bodys chairperson post. Agarwal had filed her nomination against the partys official candidate Sudha Raj Sharma.
Even in municipal corporations where BJP has always done well, the party recently deployed the states deputy chief minister Dinesh Sharma to pacify rebels who had filed their candidature against the partys official candidates in various wards.
In Ayodhya, from where chief minister Yogi Adityanath is to launch the campaign for the civic polls on November 14, the BJP quickly placated Raju Das, the priest of the famous Hanumangarahi temple, who had turned a rebel after being denied a mayoral ticket from the temple town.
Das, who had announced plans to contest the polls on a Shiv Sena ticket, backtracked at the last moment amid the buzz that senior BJP leaders had immediately got busy in pacifying him.
We hear that he even met Yogiji at the Devi Patan temple. For a party like the BJP, such a proactive approach in containing dissent does indicate more to it than meets the eye, says Shoaib Khan, who is contesting for corporators post from Laxmanghat ward. It is the same ghat from where Yogi lit the lights on Diwali eve.
Indeed, this anxiousness BJP is showing in winning over disgruntled party cadre has made many, both within the party and outside, suspect a possible advancement of the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, at least by a few months if not more. Political experts say the prospect could brighten considerably if the BJP does take Gujarat again, that too by a big margin.
The BJP under Modi and Shah is known to spring surprises. Advancement of national polls could be one of them because no matter how good a government is, it inevitably ends up fighting anti-incumbency nearer to its term. The advancement theory thus could hold water from that perspective, especially if they do well in Gujarat and with a healthy margin, said Irshad Ilmi, a veteran journalist.
The UP civic poll results would be known on December 1 just ahead of the two-phased Gujarat polls on December 9 and 14.
Though we doubt if they would be able to do well in either civic polls of UP or the Gujarat elections where the BJP appears to be on the backfoot, if they beat the odds, the preponement of national polls then would be a reality. That probably could well explain the effort BJP is now making to placate its cadres and keeping them in battle-ready mode, says UP Congress vice president Pankaj Malik.
The BJP has also decided to come out with a manifesto for these civic polls. This manifesto, a first for the BJP in civic polls, would be released on Sunday by chief minister Yogi Adityanath, deputy chief ministers Keshav Prasad Maurya and Dinesh Sharma, urban development minister Suresh Khanna and the partys state unit chief Mahendra Nath Pandey.
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Until that fateful night in July 2014, the over 70-year-old issue of a connecting bridge in Birahimpur village was just one of the many problems Deshraj Kashyap, 32, and his fellow villagers grappled with.
But things changed and the bridge became the main issue for the residents of the village, which falls in the mango belt of Malihabad, 40km from Lucknow.
That night, Deshrajs youngest brother, Gopal, 26, attempted suicide by consuming pesticide. Deshraj and his two other brothers were clueless about how they could save their sibling as the temporary wooden bridge, which connects the village with the town and is also the nearest way to reach the hospital, was in a shambles, unfit for bearing the load of an ambulance or even a two-wheeler.
The alternative was a pucca road, around 21km from the village. Since a delay could prove fatal for Gopal, they called an ambulance at one end of the wooden bridge and with the help of a charpoy, carried him across the bridge to the vehicle.
Gopals life was saved but the situation is worse for Birahimpur inhabitants now as the bridge has broken. Since my brother was rushed in time to hospital, he could be saved. But now villagers dont have any option as the bridge is broken, said Deshraj.
Birahimpur gram sabha has two villages Rampur Basti and Birahimpur and a population of around 7,000. Villagers say the demand for a bridge on river Betwa, which separates the village from the town, is pending since the British era, but no government has paid heed to it.
Maiku, a villager in his late 60s, said he grew up hearing about the issue. We have lost faith in the government. Many came and went but the problem is intact. I dont know if I will be able to see the bridge in my life, he said.
In the 2017 assembly polls, the villagers decided not to vote, saying Pul nahi, toh vote nahi (no bridge, no vote). They are now planning to raise the demand before 2019 Lok Sabha polls.
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Months after it announced that it would demolish bicycle tracks constructed during the Samajwadi Party regime in Uttar Pradesh, the ruling BJP declared on Sunday its plans to promote bicycle culture in the state, prompting the SP to demand an apology.
The bicycle, which is also the election symbol of the SP, has found a mention in the first-ever BJP manifesto for civic polls to 16 municipal corporations, 198 nagar palika parishads and 439 nagar panchayats (semi-urban bodies).
In the manifesto, the BJP has promised to set up bicycle stands in various cities from where people will be able to hire bicycles after depositing their identity cards as security.
The 12-page manifesto or the Vijay Sankalp Patra (victory commitment) bearing photographs of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and BJP chief Amit Shah was released by chief minister Yogi Adityanath in the presence of senior ministers and UP BJP chief Mahendra Nath Pandey on Sunday.
We want to win this election as it would help in better coordination and implementation of policies of the Centre and state government. Whether it is the Modi government at the Centre or the UP government, all are committed to transforming the state, said Adityanath who is scheduled to launch the BJPs civic poll campaign from Ayodhya on November 14.
Stands with 20-50 bicycles each in all main areas of the state will be set up from where people can get bicycles after depositing their identity cards, reads a section of the manifesto on traffic that also promises walking plazas and an integrated traffic management plan in 100 days of coming to power in urban local bodies along with multi-storied parking plazas.
The manifesto, however, did not make it clear if the existing bicycle tracks would be used by the BJP government to promote bicycle culture in the state.
Read more: Akhilesh Yadav will not campaign for UP local body polls: Samajwadi Party leader
The BJP manifesto instantly kicked up a controversy with the SP seeking an apology from the BJP for its earlier announcement to demolish bicycle tracks constructed by Akhilesh Yadavs government.
Those who talked of demolishing bicycle tracks built by our government are now promoting bicycle culture. The BJP must tender an unconditional apology to our leader Akhilesh Yadav as he was the first to think of promoting use of bicycles in the state, former UP minister Rajendra Chowdhary said.
Bicycle tracks were constructed in Lucknow, Noida and Bareilly by the SP government and former chief minister Akhilesh Yadav had said his government had plans to develop cycle tracks in all parts of the state.
An ambitious Rs 100 crore bicycle highway was also constructed from Etawah, the home district of SP patriarch Mulayam Singh Yadav, to Agra.
The BJP manifesto also spoke of pink toilets for women at marketplaces, cow shelter in all cities, free sewer connections to Dalits and OBCs, regularisation of illegal colonies, and regularisation of house and water tax.
The partys manifesto also mentions upgrading anthyasthi sthal (cremation grounds or graveyards). During the Samajwadi Party regime, the BJP had criticised the decision to allocate funds for construction of boundary walls of burial grounds for Muslims by the then urban development minister Azam Khan as discriminatory.
The issue was also taken up by Prime Minister Narendra Modi during an election rally in Fatehpur district in February 2017 ahead of the UP assembly elections where he had accused the administration of discrimination on the basis of religion.
If you create kabristaan (graveyard) in a village, then a shamshaan (cremation ground) should also be there. If uninterrupted electricity is supplied in Ramzan, it should be also given in Diwali. Bhedbhaav nahin hona chahiye (there should be no discrimination), Modi had said at the rally.
They must clear if the plan to upgrade cremation grounds includes Muslim burial grounds too, an SP leader said.
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Heres one man who cant just sit still: He runs a hugely-successful fine diner in New York, his auction of a 16kg tome on Indian cuisine raised Rs 30 lakh that will go to feeding 200,000 underprivileged children, and he scored a hat-trick at Cannes with the premier of a documentary on his journey from Amritsar to the Big Apple. Now, Michelin-starred Chef Vikas Khanna returns to his alma mater with Indias first living culinary museum that will eventually display over 10,000 objects.
Life is so much about a second chance and survival. I think that saving even just one of a kind is... a victory. Most of the pieces (displayed) are so iconic that they are being showcased as a witness to our culture, Khanna, the museums founder and curator, told IANS of the $4 million venture at the Welcome group Graduate School of Hotel Administration, Manipal University, Karnataka.
The idea for a museum came to me after I started living in the US, which has over 5,000 museums. There is a museum in the US to showcase how the computer was invented, somebody has put together one on the origin and developments of making glass. It is fascinating to know how the glass in your hand has been made. They have spent billions of dollars to showcase their culture and I thought our children too need to understand their heritage and culture, Khanna explained.
Our latest edition to the family. #18Century #museumofculinaryarts #wgsha @manipaluniversity A post shared by Vikas Khanna (@vikaskhannagroup) on Nov 4, 2017 at 8:24pm PDT
It is a very big project, I want to preserve all of our countrys rich culinary history in our humble way. There is no other place in the world, believe me, which has such diversity. And what better way to do it than with food. The history of Indias rich tradition of culinary arts must be preserved to educate the generations to come, he added.
Noting that he has been collecting bartans (utensils) all his life, he said: My New York apartment was literally overflowing with them. There were so many rolling pins, utensils of all shapes and sizes, tea strainers of different types -- people didnt even know what some of these were used for. One can find vessels from Kashmir (and cities like) Jammu, Pune, Hyderabad, Kochi and so on.
One out of thousands of treasures from #MuseumofKitchenArts #ThankYouPapa #WGSHA A post shared by Vikas Khanna (@vikaskhannagroup) on Sep 26, 2017 at 12:25pm PDT
The museum, spread approximately over 25,000 sq ft, is shaped in the form of a giant pot very similar to the ones found in Harappa. Though it is set to formally open only next April, the museum already boasts of thousands of objects such as the plates made by the Portuguese in India, a 100-year-old ladle used to dole out food at temples, vessels from the Konkan, Udipi and Chettinad regions, an old seed sprinkler, bowls dating to the Harappan era, an ancient samovar -- the list is endless. The displays will be rotated all the time.
I have one of the oldest Indian Jewish Seder plates (the focal point of the proceedings on the first two nights of Passover), unique churners, and measuring and weighing tools are really fascinating, Khanna said. The display will be in a staggering 17 categories, among them samovars, pots, cups and saucers; tiffins and containers, pots and pans; plates and thaals; spoons, ladles, strainers; graters and knives; whiskers, mixers, churners; spice grinders and boxes; serving dishes; rolling pins, boards, tawas; stoves, chulhas; rice sieves and measuring tools for dry and liquid goods.
This is a living museum; people can donate their unique utensils and we will display them after screening. I will keep adding to the collection as long as I am alive. The museum should feature over 10,000 objects in the near future. Once the museum is completed for the public, we have a full global plan to loan utensils to museums in New York, Madrid, Tokyo, Beijing, London and many more cities around the world to showcase our heritage, Khanna said. This would help us to bring these pieces of art, culture, traditions and evolution to global attention, he added.
What of the challenges faced while pursuing the project? The greatest challenge was travel. So, while I was on scheduled tours for MasterChef (India Seasons 2-5 and Masterchef Junior on which he was a judge) and UTSAV (the 16 kg tome), we clubbed everything together. I have handpicked most of the stuff. I still remember a phone call from Mumbai at 4 am (NY time) and the guy was super excited to tell me about a bucket that fits in 36 utensils from burners to plates to rolling boards to kadhais to pots. I told him in my sleep, just buy it. Its one of my favourite pieces, Khanna said. That sure signals the satisfaction one gets for a job well done.
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Last week the Bombay high court said that the Maharashtra government had discriminated against the Christian community living in the citys western suburbs by denying them their portion of a composite cemetery in Goregaon.
While Hindus and Muslims have started using their sections for funerals, Christian groups, which petitioned the government to find out when they will be given possession of their share of the cemetery land, were told that their allotment had been cancelled.
Mumbai, like other cities, is running out of burial space, forcing communities to change funeral practices. Cremation, which has become popular in the West, faces a theological barrier in India among communities that bury their dead. Churches in Mumbai have restricted the practice of buying a permanent grave or reserving a funeral plot for a family. Graves are being reused and many churches have above-ground burial niches, but shortage of burial space remains a grave problem. Christians living in the eastern side of the Western Railway between Dahisar and Khar stretch have been complaining that there is no public cemetery in the area. The cemeteries at churches in the area, for example in Vakola and Kalina, are small and available only to local families. Funerals for other families mean a long journey to cemeteries on the western side of the railway line.
This newspaper has been reporting regularly about the decade-long struggle to get a cemetery closer to their homes. One plot was provided in a composite cemetery at Kandivli in 1998, but the municipal corporation did not secure it with a boundary wall and another community started using it for burials. The dispute is unresolved, but the Christian groups, who did not want to get caught in a communal dispute, petitioned the government again.
One group, the United Christian Community Centre, applied for a plot next to the Hindu and Muslim burial grounds near Aarey Milk Colony, Goregaon, around eight years ago. They were told that the approval was in the final stages. There was one problem: the land was reserved for use by the dairy department.
Even as they were waiting for the allotment, there were reports that another community had started using the plot as a cemetery. In February 2014, they met the vice-president of the Maharashtra State Minority Commission, Janet Dsouza who arranged a meeting with the then city commissioner of police Rakesh Maria. We did not want a dispute with another community, said Dsouza. We did not want a fight and all we wanted was land with a clear title.
Subsequent police investigation found that the reports of encroachment were unfounded. In May 2016, the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) approved the use of the plot as a cemetery, but its allotment as a cemetery was delayed further when it was found that debris from the neighbouring Muslim burial ground was causing waterlogging in the plot. The BMC spent a few more months constructing a storm-water drain to keep the plot flood-free.
When the allotment of the plot was further delayed, community members filed an application under the Right To Information Act to find out the status of the proposal. They were shocked when they were told that the government, in January 2017, had unilaterally cancelled the allotment of reserved Christian cemetery land at Aarey. We were told that the allotment was cancelled, said Joachim Colasso. They gave us no proper explanation, so we decided to go to the courts.
Today, the groups campaigning for the cemetery will gather at the Bombay high court, where officials from the dairy department and other ministries will be explaining why the burial plot was denied to the Christian community.
We do not know if this is discrimination but it is now prime land located on an important road, said Colasso. The government officials may want it for other uses.
A 17-year-old biker died in an accident and the pillion rider received seriously injuries after he jumped a signal in Bandra-Kurla Complex on Saturday.
The police said deceased Siraj Ahmed Shaikh and Atis Chudiwala, 18, were part of a group of bikers who were out on a joy ride to Bandra. The bikers were speeding and after two bikers, who were ahead of Shaikh, jumped a signal at Platina junction in BKC, Shaikh did that too. He soon dashed into a car, said the police. Shaikh came at a very high speed after jumping the signal and dashed into the car, said an official.
While the minor was a junior college student and a resident of Kurla, Chudiwala lives in Kalina and works in a call centre. The accident occurred around 9pm on Saturday after the bikers met in Kalina and decided to ride to Bandra. Shaikh was riding a Honda Activa, said the cops.
Complainant Arvind Yadav, 27, was driving towards Bandra from Kurla in his car when the Shaikh crashed his bike into his car. Police rushed to the accident spot, which is merely a km away from BKC police station, took the bikers to a hospital where Shaikh was declared dead on arrival. Chudiwala was admitted in Sion hospital and his condition is now serious, added the official. While Shaikh sustained severe head and died on the spot, Chudiwala fell few feet away owing to the impact of the collision and received injuries to his head and other parts of the body, added the official.
A case has been registered against Shaikh under section 304 (A) (causing death by doing any rash or negligent act not amounting to culpable homicide), 279 (driving any vehicle, or riding, on any public way in a manner so rash or negligent as to endanger human life), 337 (causing hurt by act endangering life or personal safety of others) of the Indian Penal ode along and section 184 (driving dangerously) of the Motor Vehicle Act 184.
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Will the central government retain the travel subsidy given to Haj pilgrims in the coming year? The uncertainty follows a 2012 Supreme Court order that directed the central government to gradually reduce and eventually abolish Haj subsidy by the year 2020.
The minister for minority affairs Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi gave an ambiguous response when the question was raised at Mumbais Haj House on Sunday. Naqvi, who was there to announce the registration process for Haj 2018, said that the policy on Haj subsidy would be announced at a later date. He added that subsidy provided in the previous years was not distributed equitably, as many Hajis did not benefit from the subsidies.
Chief executive officer of Haj Committee of India (HCOI), Maqsood Ahmed Khan, in an interaction with HT, said that they were revising the air fare to Jeddah, Saudi Arabia (where the pilgrims disembark) given that they are not expecting a subsidy this year. If the subsidy is at all declared at a later date, we will distribute the amount among the pilgrims accordingly, he said.
During the announcement, Naqvi added that the 21 embarkation points in the country used by pilgrims to travel to Saudi Arabia will be retained, but subsidised travel, currently offered for 12 of these, will be discontinued. While Saudi Arabia fixes a quota for pilgrims from India, travellers using the government share of the quota get subsidy on air fare.
Naqvi, with the aim to launch Digital Haj 2018, introduced a revamped mobile app which would accept Haj application forms. Mehboob Ali Kaiser, Chairman, HCOI, said, The Haj committee uploads around five lakh forms every year manually. The online process would make our task easier.
Clarifying the question of whether a woman above the age of 45 would require a mehram (next of kin male companion), Kaiser said women in a group of four would be allowed to travel without a male companion. He added that they were working on simplifying the process of immigration for pilgrims to save time after landing in Saudi.
Registration for Haj 2018 will start on November 15 and continue till December 7.
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Continuing with their drive against polluting factories, the Uttar Pradesh Pollution Control Board (UPPCB) on Sunday ordered another 90 factories in different industrial areas of Ghaziabad to stop production till further orders.
On Saturday, 69 factories were told to suspend production.
The drive was initiated after the November 9-order by the National Green Tribunal (NGT) which came down heavily on different agencies failing to strictly enforce earlier directions to check pollution in the state.
We have further ordered nearly 90 different units in areas, like Sahibabad Site IV, Meerut Road, Bulandshahr Road, South Side GT Road and Udyog Kunj, to stop production. The drive (against polluting units) will be conducted further and no emissions would be allowed. The verification of factories is in progress, said Ajay Sharma, regional manager, UP Pollution Control Board.
Twenty-three factories in Sahibabad Site IV Industrial Area and 33 other at Bulandshahr Road and South Side GT Road Industrial area, are among the units told to stop operations on Sunday. These include meat processing plants and a major carbon black manufacturing unit near NH-24.
According to official records, Ghaziabad has nearly 356 polluting factories/units. The NGT in its November 9 order had said, All the industrial activity in NCR of Delhi which releases emission would also not be carried till the next date of hearing (sic).
According to officials, they have so far verified and taken action against nearly 223 factories since November 10.
Reacting to the action being taken by the UPPCB, president of Sahibabad Site IV Industrial Area association Dinesh Mittal said, The factories are facing major issues even though most of them are adhering to pollution norms. We have approached the district officials earlier in Udyog Bandhu meet but there is hardly any assurance given to us. Even none of our members have approached us on the issue of suspension of production.
Meanwhile, the Ghaziabad development authority, in its ongoing drive against the construction sites, levied a penalty of nearly 2.80 lakh from 14 erring developers and private persons.
The development authority has taken up the drive against sites which are flouting construction site norms laid down by the NGT in April 2015.
The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Sunday released its election manifesto, sankalp patra, for local body polls and promised a host of sops such as free Wi-Fi, pink toilets for women, extension of Metro, AC buses and improved public grievance system.
The manifesto, the first of its kind by the BJP for civic polls, was launched at the partys UP headquarters in Lucknow on Sunday. To woo voters in 16 municipal corporations across the state, it comprises 28 points related to cleanliness, better streetlights, grant of Rs20,000 for construction of private toilets and shelter homes for stray animals, among others.
The manifesto includes various points for big cities and NCR cities. All points highlighted will be fulfilled and work is already going on for completing our promises in sankalp patra rolled out before the assembly elections, said Dr Chandra Mohan, spokesperson, UP BJP.
Sources said that area-specific points will be touched upon by BJP leaders and CM Yogi Adityanath, who is likely to visit western UP districts for campaigning.
The party, to woo shopkeepers, also promised a separate place for weekly markets, closed, GPS-fitted vehicles for door-to-door solid waste collection, tax exemption for kin of freedom fighters and martyrs, metro extensions, deputing MBA graduates as executive officers of local bodies and management training for present officers.
Election manifestos are always full of promises but successive governments have failed to address our localised issues. This is why RWAs and apartment owners associations have fielded their candidates for the polls this time. Instead of a wide range of topics covered in the manifesto, we need parties to highlight local issues that are pending for long, said Anil Sharma, president of Ashisan Upvan AOA, Indirapuram.
The civic polls have been a stronghold of the BJP. During the last elections in 2012, the party had swept the mayoral posts by winning 10 of the 12 seats.
The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) has also rolled out its manifesto. In Ghaziabad, the AAP is the second largest party with regards to the number of councillor candidates for the polls.
The BJP has fielded its candidates in all 100 wards of Ghaziabad while AAP has done so in 83 wards.
Most of our development agenda is on the lines of Delhi. Apart from fielding 83 candidates, we have also got support from nine independent candidates, said Dr Sachin Sharma, district convener, AAP Ghaziabad unit.
AAPs manifesto comprises a host of promises such as waiver of house tax pending till October 31, 2017, free water, installation of water ATMs, mohalla clinics, women safety, public toilets and other civic amenities.
Residents said that apart from the manifesto, the parties should also look to select the right candidates.
A majority of candidates have very less education. In fact, a local representative acts as a bridge between residents and government. In many cases, such representatives are unable to highlight issues and find it difficult to deal with officers. To improve their performance, the parties should also send qualified candidates for local body polls, VK Mittal, president of Kaushambi apartment residents welfare association, said.
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Following intense criticism over Savitribai Phule Pune Universitys (SPPU) vegetarians and teetotallers only clause for a gold medal, University vice-chancellor Nitin Karmalkar on Saturday assured to either discontinue the medal or convince its sponsors to drop the discriminatory clause. The vice-chancellor also added that all discriminatory clauses for other medals will be reviewed.
Addressing a press conference on Saturday, Karmalkar said, Under no circumstances should this create any divide among communities. As per the constitution, every individual has the right to eat and drink what they wish, and the University is aligned with it. We will abandon any such clause.
He said that the university will undertake a review of 40 other medals to examine whether they carry any objectionable clauses.
We will take a strong review of that and either cancel those clauses or abandon the award. This controversy has given an opportunity to the University to rectify what happened in 2006, he said.
On Friday, the Universitys gold medal in the memory of yoga guru Shelar Mama became a talking point on social media after the SPPU invited applications for gold medal from meritorious post-graduate students from the non-science streams for the academic year 2016-17.
The university circular, in its terms and conditions stated that the applying student should be vegetarian and non-alcoholic.
In addition, the circular specified that the selected student should also believe in Indian culture and tradition, and practice all these values in daily life and should be versatile in activities like dance, singing, oratory and theatre. Students practising yoga, pranayam and meditation would be given preference, it added.
A number of political parties and student associations, including the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) and Sambhaji Brigade had threatened to hold a chicken party in protest of the clause. One organisation called Bhim Army organised a chicken party outside the main building as a mark of protest.
Bipin Bihari, additional director general of police (law and order), Maharashtra and Vikas Nangre Patil, special inspector general, Kolhapur range, visited the kin of the man who was killed on the day he was remanded to police custody for three days.
Mummy, was pappa killed? Are these the men who killed him? asked Pranjal, the three-year-old daughter of the deceased man who was in police custody in a case of robbery.
She has a very receptive mind. We try to keep her away from these discussions. I dont even cry in front of her. We dont watch TV or read newspaper in the house. Today everyone came and she was distracted. But when this all dies down, I have to face her questions. She was closer to him than me. It is stuck in her mind. She is not going to forget this easily, said Sandhya Kothale, the wife of the deceased man.
They are offering me a government job and all. But who is going to look after her now if I start going to work now that Aniket is gone? I want to tell her that her father is no more, but I have to wait till she is old enough, Sandhya added.
Family members of Kothale said that they will immolate themselves if justice is not done. The family also demanded strict action against the suspended police officials for their alleged role in the custodial death of Kothale.
I spoke to the family and assured them that the department will make every effort to ensure that the guilty are punished, said Deepak Kesarkar, minister of state for home.
Until the senior police officials showed up at Kothales house, Pranjal was under the impression that her father, who worked as a driver for four to five years, was in Kolhapur on a trip. Collector Vijay Kalam Patil has offered to give Sandhya a government job.
Seven more policemen were suspended from Sangli city police station for being aware of the murder during interrogation and not reporting it, according to Dattatray Shinde, superintendent of police, Sangli.
The seven were identified as lock-up guards Sarupa Santosh Patil, Jyoti Ramchandra Vaje, Shrikant Suresh Bulbule, lock-up guard in-charge Pradeep Ramchandra Jadhav, wireless operator Subhadra Vitthal Sable, data entry official Gajanan Jaggannath Vhaval and station dairy in-charge Milind Shivajirao Shinde.
While the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) has started investigating the original complaint against Kothale, SP Shinde claimed that the case against him was genuine and that there is no foul-play there, as claimed by his family members. Whether CID officials will consider the suspended officials as suspects in the murder case or not is a matter of investigation, said additional DGP Bihari.
City Beautifuls love for Urdu was reflected in the enthusiastic response to qissebaaz Danish Husains performance on Day 2 of Chandigarh Literature Festival at the open-air theatre on Saturday. Known to be at the forefront of the revival of dastangoi, a lost art of Urdu storytelling, Husain also regaled the audience with a Sanskrit story.
To most newcomers Chandigarh seems like an island, a breath of fresh air removed from the chaos surrounding us. But Husain begs to differ. Chandigarh is not isolated from the chaos in the rest of the country, he says with a poker face. His sarcasm is often mistaken for humility, or so his Twitter bio says.
Tale of languages
Husain has taken his qissebaazi, a form of storytelling he invented, far and wide to cities such as Mumbai, Pune, Tripura as well as to New York and Boston. A popular theatre personality, Husain also performed with actor Denzil Smith and musician Beven Fonseca as part of Poetrification, an ongoing project, on the opening day of the festival.
Thats not all. When it comes to his Bollywood career, you will be reminded of his cameo as a DIG in Newton, Indias entry to the Oscars this year. Is he happy? You bet. But qissebaazi trumps all.
In 2015, Danish Husain returned his Ustad Bismillah Khan Yuva Puraskar that he received in 2010 from Sangeet Natak Akademi.
Qissebaazi is storytelling and a form that I have created. We perform in different languages; for those who dont understand the language of the stories, we make it bilingual. The story has a core language component and a bridge language component. Hindi and English are our bridge languages while others are core. We have a Sanskrit, a Marathi, two Malayalam and scores of Hindi and Urdu tales. And even those who don't know the language, understand our story.
Such is the power of stories. But as a prominent dastango, Husain feels we are losing touch with our indigenous languages. According to him, the ongoing movement at PU to put Punjabi on the signboards on the campus is valid. Distinguishing regional chauvinism from preserving languages, he says bureaucrats need to cater to citizens of a place when talking about placement of text on signboards.
Indians resorting to fake news, mass media
Husain says listening is less strenuous than reading and he wants to impart this idea to the world through his creative expression in a way that the text and performer do not feel different. Dastangoi has helped him achieve that goal to large extent. His own theatre company, The Hoshruba Repertory, is also another feather in the cap of the man who quit a banking job in his twenties.
However, he feels the country is too busy consuming fake news, resorting to watchdogs such as the mass media, social campaigns and blatant advertising before using their own minds. But this doesnt impact or suffocate his medium, he adds.
Even if I do 10 shows a month, I get an audience of about 3,000. That is too small a number for the government to care about, said Husain. In 2015, he returned his Ustad Bismillah Khan Yuva Puraskar that he received in 2010 from Sangeet Natak Akademi. This was the time when many writers and poets started returning their Sahitya Akademi Awards following the murders of rationalists Govind Pansare, Narendra Dabholkar and MM Kalburgi.
However, he confesses that he feels fortunate to have been offered roles that he loved, his personal favourite being Aankhon Dekhi (2013). He is inspired by actors Naseeruddin Shah and Pankaj Kapur as they have maintained their acting methodology both on stage and in films. The actor was spotted in Dhobi Ghat (2010), Alif (2016) and Welcome 2 Karachi (2015).
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The number of women arrested in drug-related cases in Chandigarh have risen by 700% in the last seven years, reveals data accessed from police records.
In 2011, only three women were arrested in these cases. However, over the years, the figure increased to 11 in 2014 and 22 in 2015. This year, 24 women have been arrested with drugs in the city so far. The figure was 18 last year.
This comes at a time when cases related to the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances (NDPS) Act are being registered regularly in city police stations.
Women were used as drug couriers because they could easily slip through nakas. People still believe that women cannot be involved in such practices.s
Senior police official
Police officials say the high profit margin is attracting more and more women into the trade. Most of them are reportedly living colonies, they say.
Furthermore, women in the city no longer act as mere couriers for drug supply, but are now also running their own trade. While a majority of them are involved in supplying banned injections, some have nonetheless ventured into trading drugs like heroin, smack and opium.
Speaking about the trend, a senior police official, on condition of anonymity, said, Initially, women were used as drug couriers because they could easily slip through the nakas. Generally speaking, people still believe that women cannot be involved in such practices.
Meanwhile, deputy superintendent of police (DSP) (crime), Pawan Kumar, said, Looking at the changing scenario we are now deploying women cops on the nakas so that even women can be frisked. This is reason that more women are being arrested off late.
Women peddlers prefer trading injection
Police say women usually supply banned injections like Buprenorphine (a pain medication that contains opium) and Pheniramine Maleate (used to treat allergies, but has high concentration of drugs). These medicines are banned for retail sale and are administered only to inpatients at de-addiction centres.
Police sources informed that these injections are being sourced from Ambala at a price ranging between Rs 70 to Rs 100, and are being sold in Chandigarh for anything between Rs 250 to Rs 300.
The use of synthetic drug is also on the rise among youngsters in the city because these drugs are cheaper, said DSP Kumar.
Meanwhile, police sources add that unauthorised medical stores in villages pose a challenge because they sell drugs even without prescription. They informed that synthetic drugs are being sold by drug peddlers that operate from residential areas, and that their clients are aged between 14 and 38 years.
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The Mohali boy who police claim was the last to meet Tanishq Bhasin, 19, the night before he was found dead on Thursday did not turn up to join investigations on Saturday.
The boy, whose identity has not been revealed yet, was summoned on Friday after the Panchkula police found that the two friends had the same mobile phone tower location in Mohali on Wednesday night, after which Tanishq had switched off his phone.
Phone has pictures of gun Tanishq, a resident of Sector 4, Panchkula, and a second-year commerce student at SD College, Sector 32, was found with a gunshot wound to his head. A revolver was found lying on his lap when his body was recovered from his car on the Morni road on Thursday morning. Police are still groping in the dark as to from where the 19-year-old got the revolver. Sources said Tanishqs Mohali friend, who is missing, might have helped him procure the German-made weapon. Meanwhile, data retrieved from Tanishqs mobile phone, which had been sent to a Gurgaon-based digital laboratory, includes pictures of a gun, said police. However, they are yet to verify if it is the same weapon as the one that took Tanishqs life.
However, the boy is missing and his mobile phone is also switched off after police tried to reach out to him on Friday. His family, too, claims they are not aware of his whereabouts, said police.
The boys father, who works in Verka, met local police officials on Saturday and told them that he too was worried about his sons disappearance, said a police officer, involved in the probe. He said the fact that the boy has gone missing has deepened the mystery surrounding Tanishqs death.
Hopefully, he will join the probe soon and help us piece together the missing links, the officer said. Sources said even Tanishqs family is not aware about his Mohali friend. Police said the victim had a huge friend circle beyond his classmates, and the Mohali boy was among them.
Also read | Panchkula: College student found dead in car wasnt depressed, didnt own gun
Was not alone in car: Family
While sources in the police department said they believe it is a case of suicide, the SD College students family still suspect foul play. Tanishqs uncle Anil Bhasin told HT that things recovered from inside the car hinted at the presence of another person at the time of the teens death.
Bhasin said recovery of a pack of cigarettes and matchsticks from the car and a stub from outside raises suspicion. He said Tanishq never smoked, and they had reconfirmed this fact from his close friends.
f he wanted to commit suicide, then what was need to procure a sophisticated weapon?
The uncle said there was also a pack of chips lying below the rear seat. Tanishq was very particular about cleanliness and never allowed anyone to eat inside his vehicle, he said.
Anil, who is younger brother of Tanishqs father, said that police have based the suicide theory on the fact that the car was locked from inside and the keys were also recovered from inside the car.
But we have found that it is easier to lock the car from outside without the keys, he said. Bhasin said the family wants the police to take all required steps to dig deeper into the incident.
To us, it does not appear to be a case of suicide, he said. Sources said Tanishqs mother had shared contacts of his 10 close friends, but all claimed that they had not seen any behavioural change in him that could suggest that he would take such an extreme step.
If he wanted to commit suicide, then what was need to procure a sophisticated weapon? questioned a person close to the family, who did not want to be named.
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Actor Prakash Raj has said he is worried about the ambiance of intolerance in the country and people taking the law into their own hands. The veteran actor said his commercials were being cancelled because of his views.
Asked if there was an attempt to silence actors, Raj said this is not new. Wasnt Shah Rukh Khan sidelined? Wasnt Aamir Khan sidelined? Wasnt he removed from being an ambassador? Werent some of his commercials stopped? My commercials are being stopped too, he said.
However, the actor did not reveal details about the commercials as he felt the people who had invested in them would face trouble if he did so.
Reacting to the controversy over dialogues in the Tamil movie Mersal that criticised the Goods and Services Tax (GST), Raj said it was necessary to question people on facts. But then why question him on the basis of his religion?
Raj also weighed in on actors joining politics, asking people to not vote for them as fans. If people from cinema only become leaders based on their popularity it is a misfortune for our country.
Talking to reporters in Bengaluru, he further said, For trolls, terrorism is ISIS. But any act that terrorises people is terrorism.
Raj also spoke about the protests against the release of Sanjay Leela Bhansalis Padmavati, citing it as a worrying instance of people taking the law into their own hands.
Calling on people to respect democratic institutions, he said those who had problems with a movie must approach the Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC) with their concerns.
Instead [they] go to the sets and slap the director... Two months later [they] set fire to the sets. If the Censor Board has done wrong, question it. But everybody wants to take the law into their own hands. Who is responsible for this ambiance in society? I am worried about this, RaJ said, adding that people must not indulge in moral policing.
Raj also criticised the Supreme Court order that mandated playing the national anthem in cinema halls before every screening. Even if it comes on TV, I will stand for it even if Im at home. What is so special about cinema halls? You should not inject it, he said.
The actor said he was raising his voice now because he was in a position of comfort. It is easy for me to raise certain issues now, probably it was not easier when I was struggling, he said.
When your voice is heard when you can give power to those who [arent]... I feel it is very important [to speak out].
The actor further said even during the Emergency under the Congress rule, dissent was silenced in order to hold on to power. But this time, there is a prejudiced approach to every statement, there is a hunger to hold on to what they have. It is not like I will hit and you keep quiet, but it is hitting the thought process, which is dangerous, Rai said.
He added that such a situation had come into being since the National Democratic Alliance government had come to power in 2014.
The actor said anybody who raised questions nowadays was trolled. But, he clarified, that trolling was not just done by the Hindu right wing. Todays trolling is done by 300-400 people who are paid to do it by the Congress, BJP, other parties, and rich people.
He said he was repeatedly called names because he had raised questions about the ruling dispensation. He added that he also received threats from people. I just feel pity for those who threaten me, and I feel that it is bad, but I dont take them very seriously, he said.
The actor said there was a shift of mood in the country and the tide was turning against the central government. I believe there is a silent majority in this country, which given a chance, wants to correct its mistake.
The national award winner also spoke about the recent controversy in the sate about the imposition of Hindi language. Mother tongue is very important. We can learn another language, but dont impose it, he said.
Raj, who was a friend of slain journalist Gauri Lankesh said he wanted to believe in the investigation. He called for people to have trust in the Special Investigation Team. There should be trust. Trust with such conviction that, when they mislead you, you can hold them by the collar, he said.
The actor ruled out the possibility of joining any political party. I do not want to become the face of any party because I will then have to answer for their past, he said.
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Actor Prakash Raj held a press meet on Sunday in Bengaluru where he spoke about a wide range of things - from actors joining politics to national anthem in theaters. One of his comments as quoted by ANI was, Film actors becoming leaders is a disaster for my country.
His comments went viral on social media, and Prakash Raj had to clarify what he actually meant. He took to Twitter and wrote, Look how they distort what u say..clarifying on and all. This is what I said on ACTORS. coming into politics IN todays press meet
They distort what you say again. This is what I said Actors should not enter into politics only because they are popular. Its a disaster. They should come with a clear perception of the issues facing the country and win the trust of the people. And we should not vote as fans. But as responsible citizens (sic), the tweet said.
Look how they distort what u say..clarifying on and all. This is what I said on ACTORS. coming into politics IN todays press meet ... pic.twitter.com/zLYvnhMpUK Prakash Raj (@prakashraaj) November 12, 2017
I'm not joining any political party. I don't like actors joining politics because they are actors & have fans. They should always stay aware about their responsibility towards them: Prakash Raj in Bengaluru pic.twitter.com/CCmECJgycE ANI (@ANI) November 12, 2017
Film actors becoming leaders is a disaster for my country: Actor Prakash Raj in Bengaluru pic.twitter.com/zYFEgiu49N ANI (@ANI) November 12, 2017
I don't think someone should stand in cinema hall and show his or her patriotism: Actor Prakash Raj in Bengaluru pic.twitter.com/I5UyIEqwhK ANI (@ANI) November 12, 2017
About joining politics himself, Prakash Raj was also quoted as saying Im not joining any political party. I dont like actors joining politics because they are actors & have fans. They should always stay aware about their responsibility towards them.
He was also asked about playing the national anthem at the theaters and he said, I dont think someone should stand in cinema hall and show his or her patriotism.
Other than the latest comments, Prakash Raj has been writing weekly columns about societal reforms and politics, in Kannada dailies. His tweets are hashtagged #Justasking, and through them he questions and comments on politics everyday.
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Theres something for everyone in Peru. Whether youre a nature lover, a culture vulture, or someone interested in trying out local cuisine, youll find plenty of interesting things to do in the country.
Five-star hotel on the shores of Lake Titicaca: The scenic view produced by the highlands and the highest navigable lake in the world makes a perfect destination for visitors. Its surroundings features a living culture transmitted to the visitor both, tangibly and intangibly. The many high-end lodging options make sure you do not astray from your comfort and well being, while on a crusade to immerse in Peruvian Culture.
First Class train to Machu Pichu: Set in vintage wagons, it offers breakfast and appetisers and includes a private tour guide during the three and a half hour journey to the Machu Picchu sanctuary.
Northern beaches and luxury resorts: For a much needed escape from city life, there is nothing like visiting Perus resorts such as Playas de Tumbes with their long beaches and warm water, or internationally famous beaches like Mancora, a paradise for both surfers and those searching for a more relaxing environment. Mancora, is also favourite among spa and massage lovers.
Pisco Sour: Known as the national drink of Peru, Pisco is a spirit made from grapes that emerged in these lands during the colonial era, after introduction of the first vineyard in the country by the Spanish. The history of this iconic drink can be traced back to the 17th century. Today pisco is only produced on the coast (up to 2,000 masl - 6,562 fasl) in the departments of Lima, Ica, Arequipa, Moquegua and Tacna with the aim of protecting the designation of origin. A long list of cocktails is based on pisco. However, the most emblematic is the pisco sour, an entirely Peruvian drink that combines the taste of grapes with the sharp acidity of lemon. The basic pisco sour recipe uses home-made sugar syrup.
A post shared by Lize-Mari Vermeulen (@dasushimuncher_feasts) on Nov 11, 2017 at 12:15pm PST
Wildlife observation: Perhaps connected to the ancestral compliance with nature, today Peru is a privileged country with diversity of animal and plant species which man has managed to live in harmony for thousands of years. Each year, the wildlife observation packages in Peru, attracts thousands of nature-lovers.
Participating in Peru festivals: Trickling from both native and European ancestors, Peru upholds a wide variety of festivals and traditions that make up its cultural heritage. With a long list of festivals and events through out the year, theres no chance of nothing happening around the corner each day. From vibrant dances to profound religious acts of devotion, these celebrations fill Peruvian life with passion and happiness.
Peruvian cuisine: Peruvian cuisine is another expression of a national identity with multiple cultures co-existing in one territory. Peruvians culinary veterans expert at experimenting with new flavours, harmonizing aromas and discovering new ways of cooking. The diversity of Perus agricultural production, climate, geography, multiple cultures and the genius of its chefs have taken the culinary culture of Peru to the point where it is now recognised as one of the finest expressions of the global cuisine. Mistura is the main gastronomic fair in Peru. It is held every year in Lima, bringing together the leading chefs and restaurants of Peru.
A post shared by Peruano con hambre (@papeaperu) on Nov 10, 2017 at 12:03pm PST
Handicrafts shopping: Ancient Peruvians were remarkable craftsman with profoundly creative abilities. Pre-Hispanic Peruvian can be dated back to times through the revelation of weaving, gourds, wood, stone, gold, silver, ceramics and even mud, which were utilized for everyday living. Keeping up with the legacy in coastal, mountain and jungle towns, where a variety of woven items, silver filigree, cut gourds, Ayacuchan sacred places, Huamanga stone and wood carvings, Chulucanas stoneware and Monsefu ponchos, among others, are exceedingly liked and valued around the world.
Sandboarding: Challenge the sands sliding face-down, Sand-boarding on the steep dunes of many desert zones on the Peruvian Coast including Sarapampa (Lima), Camana (Arequipa) and Acari (Arequipa) which is the second highest dune in the World. There are many other sites like La Libertad and Ica that offer sand boarding facilities and equipments. Comfortable clothing and expert advice is recommended before you venture in.
The Machu Picchu Historic Sanctuary (SMH) is Perus most visited protected range. Pronounced a Natural and Cultural Heritage to Humanity, the sanctuary secures archaeological buildings, and biological communities with a wide variety in flora and fauna, some enlisted endangered. The main gem: Machu Picchu, associated with different archaeological sites through the Qhapaq Nan series (known as the Inca Trail).
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Bahrain said the explosion which caused a fire at its main oil pipeline on Friday was caused by terrorist sabotage, linking the unprecedented attack to its arch-foe Iran, which denies any role in the Gulf island kingdoms unrest.
A key Western ally and host to the US Fifth Fleet, Sunni Muslim-ruled Bahrain has for years grappled with protests and sporadic violence coming from its Shiite majority.
The incident was an act of sabotage and a dangerous act of terrorism aimed at harming the higher interests of the nation and the safety of the people, the interior ministry said on its website.
Terrorist acts witnessed by the country in the recent period are carried out through direct contacts and instructions from Iran, the statement quoted Interior Minister Sheikh Rashid bin Abdullah al-Khalifa as saying.
In this photo released by Bahrain News Agency, Sheikh Rashid bin Abdullah Al Khalifa, Bahrain Minister of Interior talks with a member of the emergency services, during his visit to the scene of an explosion, in Bahrain, Saturday, Nov. 11, 2017. (AP)
In Tehran, Foreign Ministry spokesman Bahram Qassemi rejected the allegations as false talk and childish accusations, the ministry said on its website.
Bahraini authorities said they had brought under control the fire at the oil pipeline.
Saudi Arabias oil flows to Bahrain gradually resumed after a brief halt, Bahrains national oil company BAPCO said.
Operations are under way to increase the refining output gradually, in cooperation with Aramco, upon completion of repairs soon, BAPCO said in a statement late on Saturday.
Saudi Arabias energy ministry said on Saturday that oil pumping to Bahrain had been suspended. It said it was stepping up security precautions at its own facilities.
Residents close to the incident near Buri village, some 15 kilometres (10 miles) from the capital Manama, were evacuated to a safe shelter, the statement added.
After authorities quashed Shiite-led Arab Spring protests in 2011, militants have launched deadly bombing and shooting attacks against security forces that Manama blames on Tehran.
Iran denies any role in Bahrains unrest.
Bahrain relies on the Abu Safa oilfield for the majority of its oil. It shares the field with Saudi Arabia. Oil to Bahrain is transported via the 55 km A-B pipeline which has a capacity of 230,000 barrels per day (bpd).
A new 350,000-bpd oil pipeline between the two countries will be completed next year and will serve the planned expansion of Bahrains refinery capacity.
Arabian Light crude oil will flow from Saudi Aramcos Abqaiq plant via the 115-km new pipeline, 73 km of which will run overland and the rest under the Gulf.
Two silver hearses carrying the bodies of a couple killed in last weekends shooting at a Texas church were followed by a long procession of vehicles Saturday that avoided passing the small church where more than two dozen people died.
Mourners instead drove around the tiny community of Sutherland Springs before reaching a cemetery on the edge of town, where dozens more vehicles waited along a rural road for the private burial of Therese and Richard Rodriguez. Sheriffs SUVs shielded mourners at the cemeterys three entrances.
The services for the recently retired couple followed a ceremony earlier in the day where about 100 people gathered to commemorate Veterans Day and to honor the shooting victims, nearly half of whom had ties to the Air Force.
The caskets of Richard and Therese Rodriguez arrive at the graveside after the husband and wife were killed in the shooting at the First Baptist Church of Sutherland Springs in Texas, US, November 11, 2017. (REUTERS)
Maybe this will start the healing process that will get Sutherland Springs and Wilson County to put this horrific tragedy behind us and look to the future, county Judge Richard Jackson, his voice breaking, told the crowd, which included first responders and law enforcement officers.
Jackson, the countys top administrator, thanked the first responders and others who rushed to First Baptist Church in the aftermath of Sundays shooting. What they saw there will affect them the rest of their lives, Jackson said during the ceremony outside the towns community center, where a wreath was placed near flags to remember those killed.
The gunman killed 25 people authorities put the number at 26 because one was pregnant and wounded about 20 others. The gunman died of what appeared to be a self-inflicted gunshot wound after being shot and chased by two men who heard gunfire from the church.
Investigators have said the shooting appeared to stem from a domestic dispute involving the attacker, Devin Patrick Kelley, and his mother-in-law, who sometimes attended services at the church but wasnt there the day of the shooting.
Kelley had a history of violence. He was given a bad conduct discharge from the Air Force after pleading guilty to assaulting his first wife and stepson. The ex-wife, Tessa Brennaman, told Inside Edition that Kelley once put a gun to her head because shed received a speeding ticket and threatened to kill her and her family. A former Air Force colleague told The New York Times that Kelley, after leaving the military, contacted her about his obsession with Dylann Roof, who killed nine people at a church in Charleston, South Carolina, in 2015.
Sutherland Springs is about 30 miles (48 kilometers) southeast of San Antonio and not far from several military posts, including Lackland Air Force Base. The Air Forces chief of staff, Gen. David Goldfein, said 12 of those killed were either members of the Air Force or had family ties to it.
Among them were Scott and Karen Marshall, both 56, who had decided to retire in nearby La Vernia after meeting when they were in the service together more than 30 years ago. On Thursday, a military funeral was held for them at Joint Base San Antonio-Randolph.
Retired Chief Warrant Officer Mike Gonzales, who led Saturdays Veterans Day ceremony, moved to Sutherland Springs with his wife to raise their children in 2009. He said many veterans choose to live in the San Antonio area because of its deep military ties, and families tend to migrate to the citys surrounding rural areas.
We come here to enjoy life, to get quiet and to raise our children, he said. Weve been to war zones and seen that tragedy firsthand. Never did we think that tragedy would strike here.
US Rep. Henry Cuellar told the gathering to lean on one another for support. The Texas congressman said $10 million in federal assistance has been secured to help cover overtime costs for law enforcement agencies involved in the investigation.
Jessica Mires leaves flowers on crosses named for the victims outside the First Baptist Church, which was the scene of the mass shooting that killed 26 people in Sutherland Springs, Texas on November 9, 2017. (AFP)
Some in the crowd Saturday wore shirts that said Sutherland Springs Strong and included an outline of Texas with a heart of the towns location. The shirts were donated by Brenda Bierd, who lives on the Gulf Coast and whose home was damaged by Hurricane Harvey in late August.
I hadnt even heard of Sutherland Springs before the shooting, but this is what you do, she said. I just had this feeling I needed to be here.
A steady stream of people also visited a makeshift memorial of crosses adorned with flowers, photographs, red hearts and white, purple and pink balloons.
Among the visitors was Jackie Lee, who said she asked her friends on Facebook if anyone would come with her from San Antonio this weekend. She said about two dozen people quickly said they would.
It was on my heart since it happened, she said. I needed to come to show the community some support, to show these people some support.
An 18-year-old Indian-American dental student was killed in the US in a hit-and-run case when the driver of a pick-up truck ran his vehicle over her after a minor collision, according to media reports.
Taranjit Parmar was on her way home when she got into a minor accident on Hempstead Turnpike near Gardiners Ave in Levittown on Thursday, New York Daily News reported.
Parmar and the truck driver pulled over into the parking lot of a nearby gas station after colliding, police said.
But when she got out to inspect the damage to her vehicle, the driver of the pickup truck took off and ran over Parmar while speeding away, it added.
Parmar was on the phone with her mother when she was run over in the middle of rush-hour traffic, her father was quoted as saying by the report.
She had called my wife and said, Hi, Mom, Parmars father, Ranjit Parmar said.
Then she said Oh, no, Stop! and the call got disconnected. There was no answer after that, he added.
Medics rushed Parmar to Nassau University Medical Center, where she died from massive head and chest injuries.
Parmar, who was studying to be a dentist at Adelphi University, was 10 minutes from her home when the tragedy occurred, the report added.
An Indian-American was fatally shot in a shooting at his nightclub in Fayetteville, North Carolina on Saturday morning. Multiple people, including the shooter, were wounded in the incident.
Akash R Talati, 40, is reported to have come to the United States from Anand, Gujarat. The shooting took place at Diamondz Gentlemens Club, which Talati owned along with the adjoining Kinbhts Inn motel at around 1.50 am local time.
The alleged shooter, identified as Markeese Dewitt by authorities, had been thrown out of the club and returned with a gun and began shooting. A security guard returned fire, injuring the shooter, according to local news outlets.
Talati was hit by a stray bullet; he was not the intended target, according to local witness accounts and police. He died in hospital.
Police detective Jamaal Littlejohn told The Fayetteville Observer security had escorted Dewitt, 23, out of the club because he had caused a disturbance. He said Dewitt appeared to have gone to his vehicle, got a gun, went back inside the club and started shooting.
All we know is he got put out, he goes and gets a gun and it goes crazy from there, Littlejohn said.
He said only Dewitt and the security guard exchanged gunfire. The others were bystanders, he said.
Fayetteville police tweeted: Warrants have been secured for Markeese Dewitt, B/M, 23 yoa, for attempted murder ref last nights shooting at Diamondz. Hes being treated at a hospital & will be arrested upon release.
Indian officials in the US are monitoring the situation. Detailing the incident in a string of tweets, external affairs minister Sushma Swaraj said: We are in touch with the family of the deceased and will provide them all help.
Among his millions of admirers across the world, music maestro A R Rahman has got another admirer in Ivanka Trump. As per sources, the daughter of the US President Donald J. Trump will be present at AR Rahman ENCORE, the concert that begins on November 26 in Hyderabad. It will act as an official opening night of the Global Entrepreneurship Summit that will be held between November 28 and November 30 at Hyderabad International Convention Centre.Yes, Ivanka Trump has been approached and she has shown interest. If things fall in place, then she is expected to attend the concert at Hyderbad, says a source close to the event organiser.
Now with this new development, the promoters of the show are taking every measure possible to ensure that the security for the event is not compromised, considering there are over 30,000 fans expected not just from Hyderabad but also from other cities, says the source.
Rahman is performing in India after almost 5 years. The concert celebrates his 25-year-long journey in the music industry that began with Mani Ratnams Roja (1992). The four city tour that begins with Hyderabad, will progress to cities including Ahmedabad, Mumbai and New Delhi. When we contacted Rahmans team regarding Ivanka Trump attending his concert in Hyderabad, his publicist could not confirm the development. No idea at all, is what he said.
Insiders reveal that Ivanka Trump, who is intrigued by Indian culture and performing arts, also plans to explore India. She will be visiting Charminar, Laad Bazaar and Chowmahalla Palace. Prime Minister Narendra Modi will host a dinner for Ivanka at Falaknuma Palace on November 28, while the Telangana chief minister K Chandrasekhar Rao will host a dinner for the GES delegates at Golconda Fort on November 29.
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Lebanons president called on Saudi Arabia on Saturday to clarify why Lebanese Prime Minister Saad al-Hariri could not return home, a week after he stunned his country by resigning while in the kingdom.
A senior Lebanese official said President Michel Aoun had told foreign ambassadors Hariri had been kidnapped and should have immunity.
Hariris shock resignation has thrust Lebanon back into the frontline of a power struggle between Sunni Saudi Arabia and Shiite Iran - a rivalry that has wrought upheaval in Syria, Iraq, Yemen, and Bahrain.
Lebanon does not accept its prime minister being in a situation at odds with international treaties, Aoun said in a statement. He said any comment or move by Hariri does not reflect reality due to the questions over his status following his resignation in a broadcast from Saudi Arabia.
Lebanese authorities believe Riyadh is detaining Hariri who flew to Saudi Arabia on Nov. 3, two top Lebanese government officials, a senior politician close to Hariri and a fourth source have said.
French President Emmanuel Macron echoed similar concerns, saying in a call with Aoun on Saturday that Lebanese political leaders should enjoy freedom of movement.
Macron, who made an unscheduled visit to Riyadh earlier this week, will receive the Lebanese foreign minister in Paris on Tuesday, the Elysee statement said.
A handout picture provided by the Saudi Royal Palace on November 11, 2017, shows King Salman bin Abdulaziz al-Saud (R) shaking hands with former Lebanese prime minister Saad Hariri in the capital Riyadh. (AFP photo/ Saudi Royal Palace/ Bandara al-Jaloud)
Riyadh says Hariri is free and decided to resign because Irans Lebanese ally, Hezbollah, was calling the shots in his coalition government.
Hariri has made no public remarks since quitting last week, when he said he feared assassination and accused Iran along with Hezbollah of sowing strife in the Arab world.
Hariri, whose family made its fortune in the Saudi construction industry, has also given no sign of when he might return to Beirut.
The Lebanese premier took part in a ceremony in Riyadh on Saturday welcoming Saudi King Salman from Medina, his media office said. Hariri met with the Turkish and British ambassadors at his Riyadh home in the afternoon, it said.
Sources close to Hariri say Saudi Arabia has concluded that the prime minister - a long-time Saudi ally - had to go because he was unwilling to confront Hezbollah.
His phone was confiscated after he arrived in Riyadh, and the next day he was forced to resign on a Saudi TV channel, senior sources close to Hariri and top Lebanese political and security officials said.
FREEDOM OF MOVEMENT
Aoun wants Saudi Arabia, with which we have brotherly ties and deeply rooted friendship, to clarify the reasons preventing Prime Minister Hariris return, his office said.
France and other Western countries have looked on with alarm at the rising tensions in the region.
We would like Saad al-Hariri to have all his freedom of movement and be fully able to play the essential role that is his in Lebanon, a French foreign ministry spokesman said on Friday.
Hariris resignation unravelled a political deal among Lebanons rival factions that made him prime minister and Aoun, a Hezbollah ally, president last year. The coalition government included Shiite Hezbollah, a heavily armed military and political organisation.
Lebanon's Prime Minister Saad al-Hariri attends a general parliament discussion in downtown Beirut, October 18, 2017. (Reuter File Photo)
Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah said on Friday that Saudi had declared war on Lebanon and his group, accusing Riyadh of forcing Hariri to resign to destabilise Lebanon.
The comments mirrored an accusation by Riyadh earlier this week that Lebanon and Hezbollah had declared war on the Gulf Arab kingdom.
Hariris political party denounced on Saturday Iranian intervention in Arab countries and attacks against Saudi Arabia.
The Future Movement party said it stands by the premier and was waiting impatiently for his return to Lebanon to handle his national responsibilities in leading this stage.
In a statement, the United States called Hariri a trusted partner and referred to him as prime minister.
The White House rejects any efforts by militias within Lebanon or by any foreign forces to threaten Lebanons stability ... or use Lebanon as a base from which to threaten others in the region, it said.
US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson had told reporters on Friday there was no indication Hariri was being held against his will but that the United States was monitoring the situation.
The resignation of Hariri comes amid an anti-corruption purge in Riyadh in which dozens of senior princes and businessmen have been rounded up.
Iran rejected on Sunday a call by French President Emmanuel Macron for talks on Tehrans ballistic missiles, saying they were defensive and unrelated to a nuclear agreement with world powers.
On Thursday, Macron said during a visit to Dubai that he was very concerned by Irans ballistic missile programme, mentioning a missile fired from Yemen and intercepted by Saudi Arabia earlier this month. He raised the prospect of possible sanctions with regard to those activities.
There are negotiations we need to start on Irans ballistic missiles, Macron said.
But Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Bahram Qassemi rejected that possibility. France is fully aware of our countrys firm position that Irans defence affairs are not negotiable, he said.
We have told French officials repeatedly that the nuclear deal is not negotiable and other issues will not be allowed to be added to it, Qassemi said, according to a statement on the ministrys website.
The United States accused Iran on Tuesday of supplying Yemens Houthi rebels with a missile that was fired into Saudi Arabia in July and called for the United Nations to hold Tehran accountable for violating two UN Security Council resolutions .
Saudi Arabia and its allies accuse Iran of supplying missiles and other weapons to the Houthis, saying the arms were not present in Yemen before conflict broke out there in 2015. Iran denies the charges and blames the conflict on Riyadh.
The United States has imposed unilateral sanctions on Iran, saying its missile tests violate a U.N. resolution that calls on Tehran not to undertake activities related to missiles capable of delivering nuclear weapons.
Iran says its missile programme is defensive and it has no plans to build nuclear-capable missiles.
Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy will on Sunday visit Catalonia for the first time since Madrid imposed direct rule on the region, a day after hundreds of thousands of Catalans marched to demand the release of jailed regional officials.
Mariano Rajoy is expected in Barcelona, the Catalan capital, at 11:00 am (1000 GMT) to show support for his Popular Partys campaign ahead of a vote next month.
His visit comes two weeks after he dismissed Catalan leader Carles Puigdemont, his government and the parliament, suspended the regions autonomy and called for new elections there on December 21.
On Saturday hundreds of thousands of Catalans protested the jailing of regional officials for their push for independence from Spain, which has left the country mired in a political crisis.
The demonstrators gathered on an avenue next to the regional parliament building waving Catalan independence flags and chanting Freedom! while some held up banners announcing: SOS Democracy.
People hold banners reading "Freedom" during a demonstration in Barcelona on November 11, 2017 calling for the release of jailed separatist leaders. (AFP)
Rajoy, who is due to attend a presentation by a party candidate at a station hotel, will not make a public appearance in the city.
The protest followed the release from jail of the regions parliament speaker -- one of dozens of lawmakers sacked by Madrid last month -- after posting 150,000 ($175,000) bail.
Children in riding helmets climbed castells -- the regions traditional human towers -- as others held placards bearing caricatures of some jailed lawmakers.
Barcelona municipal police put turnout for the march at some 750,000 people as crowds stretched for more than 15 blocks along the boulevard.
The Catalonia crisis has caused concern in the European Union as the bloc deals with Brexit and uncertainty over the fate of the regions 7.5 million people. More than 2,400 businesses have moved their legal headquarters elsewhere.
On Wednesday a general strike called by a pro-independence union caused travel chaos, blocking 60 roads and train lines including Spains main highway link to France and the rest of Europe.
Since lawmakers in Catalonia -- a wealthy region with its own language and distinct culture -- declared independence on October 27 following a banned referendum, pro-separatist officials have come under huge pressure from Madrid.
Barcelonas popular mayor earlier slammed the actions of Puigdemonts government.
Theyve provoked tensions and carried out a unilateral independence declaration which the majority do not want, Ada Colau told a meeting of her party members.
Theyve tricked the population for their own interests.
Eight members of the axed Catalan cabinet are currently detained on charges of sedition, rebellion and misuse of public funds.
A further six fired officials including parliament speaker Carme Forcadell were granted bail this week on similar charges by Spains Supreme Court.
Puigdemont is in self-imposed exile in Belgium awaiting a hearing on possible extradition back to Spain after Madrid issued an EU-wide warrant.
The situation is sad, the politicians havent done their jobs, said Robert Muni, who was protesting with his children, although some protesters shouted their support for Puigdemont, our president.
A woman holds a placard reading "I smile at the republic and cry for the prisoners" from a balcony where Catalan pro-independence Estelada flags hand during a demonstration in Barcelona on November 11, 2017 calling for the release of jailed separatist leaders. (AFP)
We want freedom
Puigdemont and four ex-ministers say they are in Brussels because they cannot be guaranteed a fair trial back home.
Although some of us are far away from you and others are in prison, we have an opportunity to express loudly and clearly that we want freedom and democracy, Puigdemont told Catalan television.
Saturdays protest was organised by two pro-independence lobby groups, ANC and Omnium, whose two leaders are also detained.
We dont know whats going to happen but we know what we want: the release of political prisoners, said demonstrator Maria Angels Quintana.
Puigdemont has said he travelled to Brussels after declaring independence in order to raise international awareness on the treatment of separatists in Spain.
But the European Union, nervous that Catalan independence could stir up separatist tensions in several member states, has repeatedly backed the government of Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy over the crisis.
Some participants at the rally betrayed their frustration at the lack of support from Brussels for their cause, holding banners printed in English asking Europe, where are you?
Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy urged Catalans on Sunday to oust separatists from their regional parliament in an early election he has called for December 21.
Rajoy told members of his conservative Popular Party in Barcelona that we want a massive turnout to open up a new period of normalcy.
Rajoys visit to Catalonias main city was his first to the northeastern region since he used extraordinary powers to stifle its secession push. After Catalonias Parliament voted October 27 in favour of declaring independence, Rajoy responded by firing its government, dissolving its parliament and calling the early election.
Spains Constitution says the nation is indivisible.
Its urgent to return a sense of normality to Catalonia and do so as soon as possible to lower the social and economic tensions, Rajoy said Sunday. The threat of the separatists is destructive, sad and agonizing. Secessionism has created insecurity and uncertainty.
Polls show a tight race ahead in Catalonia between separatists and those who want the region to remain a part of Spain. In Brussels on Sunday, those favoring independence for Catalonia rallied near the European Union quarter.
Rajoys conservative Popular Party has won three national elections in Spain since 2011, but it won less than 10 percent of the vote in Catalonias regional election in 2015. It continues to poll behind several other parties in the region, including the pro-business Citizens and the Socialists, which are both against secession.
Rajoy defended his decision to temporarily take over running the region under the Constitution, which allows central authorities to intervene in regions whose officials have gone outside the law. Catalonias separatists, and even some moderates, have criticized the measures as heavy-handed.
Exceptional measures can only be taken when there is no other option, and we adopted them to stop the increasing attacks to peaceful coexistence in Catalonia, Rajoy said. For centuries, centuries, Catalonia and Spain have built a country that is multi-cultural and diverse, and the separatists wont be allowed to break the ties that bind us.
Apart from the Catalonia government takeover, a judge has jailed 10 separatist leaders while investigating their roles in promoting secession. Catalonias deposed president and four former members of his Cabinet have fled to Brussels where they will fight extradition.
Rajoy linked the continued economic recovery of Spain, and especially Catalonia, to the removal of pro-independence parties from power.
Over 2,000 companies have relocated their headquarters from Catalonia due to fears of being cast out of the European Unions common market in the case of secession. Employment numbers also showed that Catalonia fell behind other parts of Spain in October.
The instability is slowing Catalonias capacity to create jobs, Rajoy said. But I say that the recovery of legality and normalcy will help reactivate the economy.
Vietnam and the United States signed a raft of energy and aviation deals Sunday during a visit to Hanoi by US president Donald Trump who railed against Washingtons yawning trade deficit with the fast-growing nation.
Trump was in the communist capital at the tail end of his swing through Asia where he has promoted his America First mantra on global trade, prioritising fair bilateral deals over sprawling multilateral pacts.
Several agreements were signed during his state visit Sunday, including in the natural gas sector, transport and aviation.
National carrier Vietnam Airlines signed a deal worth $1.5 billion for engines and support services from US firm Pratt & Whitney, which the airline said would boost US-Vietnam ties.
(The agreement) will further reinforce the important economic, trade and investment partnership between Vietnam and the United States, Vietnam Airlines CEO Duong Tri Thanh said in a statement.
Trump is seeking to boost exports of American goods and services as part of a campaign pledge that ushered him into office with hefty support from blue-collar workers in the United States.
He has accused Vietnam and China, two key Asian manufacturing hubs, of stealing American jobs and blamed for previous US administrations for allowing trade deficits to grow unchecked.
On Sunday he again complained about the United States gaping trade deficit with Vietnam, worth $32 billion in 2016.
We have to get rid of the trading imbalance, we cant have a trade imbalance, he said at the beginning of a meeting with Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc.
We have to take care of American companies and we have to take care of American workers, he added in comments likely to play well among his base back home.
American energy firms Alaska Gasline Development Corporation and AES Corporation also signed deals Sunday, along with US truck company Navistar and Vietnamese budget airline VietJet, though no details were provided.
Vietnam has eagerly sought to drum up trade and investment with the United States since Trump came to power, especially after he withdrew from the massive Trans-Pacific Partnership free trade deal that Vietnam stood to gain enormously from.
The US is a leading export market for Vietnam, where a booming manufacturing sector has largely driven dizzying economic growth in recent years.
American exports to Vietnam have soared in the past decade, increasing ninefold to more than $10 billion in 2016, according to official figures from the US Trade Representative. Vietnams exports to the United States over the same period rose around fivefold.
US President Donald Trump said on a visit to Vietnam on Sunday he was prepared to mediate between claimants to the South China Sea, where five countries contest Chinas sweeping claims to the busy waterway.
Vietnam has become the most vocal opponent of Chinas claims and its construction and militarisation of artificial islands in the sea, through which about $3-trillion in goods pass each year.
If I can help mediate or arbitrate, please let me know, Trump said in comments at the start of a meeting in Hanoi with Vietnams president, Tran Dai Quang.
Trump acknowledged that Chinas position on the South China Sea was a problem.
Im a very good mediator and arbitrator, he said.
Vietnam has also reclaimed land around reefs and islets, but on nowhere near the same scale as China. Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines and Taiwan also have claims in the sea.
Read | Explained: What the South China Sea dispute is all about
The South China Sea was discussed in Beijing on an earlier leg of Trumps 12-day Asian tour and US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said the United States and China had a frank exchange of views.
The United States has angered China with freedom of navigation patrols close to Chinese-controlled islands, which have been continued by the Trump administration.
In August, foreign ministers of Southeast Asia and China adopted a negotiating framework for a code of conduct in the South China Sea, a move they hailed as progress but one seen by critics as a tactic to buy China time to consolidate its maritime power.
The framework seeks to advance a 2002 Declaration of Conduct (DOC) of Parties in the South China Sea, which has mostly been ignored by claimant states, particularly China, which has built seven man-made islands in disputed waters, three of them equipped with runways, surface-to-air missiles and radars.
All parties say the framework is only an outline for how the code will be established but critics say the failure to outline, as an initial objective, the need to make the code legally binding and enforceable, or have a dispute resolution mechanism, raises doubts about how effective the pact will be.
The framework will be endorsed by China and members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) at a summit in Manila on Monday, a diplomat from one of the regional blocs countries said.
The next step is for ASEAN and China to start formal consultations and negotiations for the actual Code of Conduct, and the earliest that talks on this can start is February 2018, the diplomat said.
From Vietnam, Trump flies to the Philippines for a meeting with ASEAN leaders before he heads back to Washington.
President Donald Trump says he believes Russian President Vladimir Putin believes it when he says Moscow did not interfere in the 2016 US presidential election. But Trump says he also believes US intelligence agencies, which have concluded that Russia did meddle in the election.
I believe that he feels that he and Russia did not meddle in the election, Trump said of Putin at news conference with Vietnams President Tran Dai Quang in Hanoi As to whether I believe it, Im with our agencies.
As currently led by fine people, I believe very much in our intelligence agencies, he added.
The US intelligence community has concluded that Russia interfered in the election to help the Republican defeat Democrat Hillary Clinton.
Speaking to reporters aboard Air Force One on Saturday, Trump had said that Putin again vehemently denied the allegations this time during an economic summit in Vietnam. Trump said he believed that when he tells me that, he means it.
Trump had also dismissed former US intelligence officials as political hacks and accused Democrats of using the issue to try to sabotage relations between the two countries, putting lives at risk.
At the news conference, Trump reiterated his view that its crucial for the US to get along with Russia, and seemed to suggest that it was time to remove the sanctions Congress has slapped on Russia in retaliation for its election meddling efforts.
Its now time to get back to healing a world that is shattered and broken, said Trump. Those are very important things.
As he traveled to Hanoi, the second-to-last stop of his Asia trip, Trump told reporters that Putin said he absolutely did not meddle in our election. He did not do what they are saying he did.
Every time he sees me, he said: I didnt do that. And I believe I really believe that when he tells me that, he means it, Trump said, calling the accusation an artificial barrier erected by Democrats.
The president lashed out at the former heads of the nations intelligence community, and said there were plenty of reasons to be suspicious of their findings. I mean, give me a break. Theyre political hacks, Trump said, citing by name James Clapper, the former director of national intelligence, John Brennan, the former CIA director and his ousted ex-FBI director James Comey, whom Trump said was proven now to be a liar and hes proven to be a leaker.
In a tweet sent Sunday from Hanoi, Trump bashed the haters and fools he said are questioning his efforts to improve relations with Russia and accused critics of playing politics and hurting the country.
Trumps comments about Putin and political hacks brought criticism from lawmakers with ties to the intelligence community. Rep. Adam Schiff, the California Democrat who is his partys top member on the Houses intelligence committee, said in a statement that Trump fools no one and that the president understands how the Russians intervened through hacking, social media and their own television coverage of the presidential race.
Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., the partys presidential nominee in 2008, said in a statement that Trumps faith in Putins denial was naive.
Theres nothing America First about taking the word of a KGB colonel over that of the American intelligence community, McCain wrote, referring to Putins former career in Soviet intelligence. Vladimir Putin does not have Americas interests at heart.
Trump was in Hanoi for a brief state visit, including Sundays meeting with Quang at the presidential palace.
In brief remarks after his arrival, Trump offered help negotiating with China on disputes over the South China Sea. Beijings island-building there has drawn criticism from Washington, which argues the US has a national interest in freedom of navigation in sea lanes critical for world trade. US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson earlier this month said Chinas provocative actions challenged international law and norms.
If I can help mediate or arbitrate, please let me know, Trump offered. Im a very good mediator and a very good arbitrator. Ive done plenty of it from both sides.
Trump also said he hoped to have more help from Chinese President Xi Jinping as well as Russia, when it comes to isolating North Korea. The North Korean situation continues to be a problem. President Xi I think is going to be a tremendous help. I hope Russia likewise will be a tremendous help. I think they can make a big difference, he said.
Trump and Putin did not have a formal meeting while they were in Vietnam for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit, but the two spoke informally several times and reached an agreement on a number of principles for the future of war-torn Syria.
Trump made clear that the issue of Russian meddling in the election hovers over the leaders relationship and said it jeopardized their ability to work together on issues including North Koreas escalating nuclear program and the deadly conflict in Syria.
Having a good relationship with Russias a great, great thing. And this artificial Democratic hit job gets in the way, Trump told reporters. People will die because of it.
Trump had danced around the question of whether he believed Putins denials Saturday, telling reporters that pressing the issue would have accomplished little.
Well, look, I cant stand there and argue with him, Trump said. Id rather have him get out of Syria, to be honest with you. Id rather have him, you know, work with him on the Ukraine than standing and arguing about whether or not cause that whole thing was set up by the Democrats.
Multiple US intelligence agencies have concluded that Moscow meddled in the election to try to help Trump win. But Trump called the former heads of those agencies political hacks and argued theres plenty of reason to be suspicious of their findings.
The comments made clear that Trump still does not take the meddling seriously and sees little benefit in punishing a nation accused of undermining the most fundamental tenet of American democracy: free and fair elections. They also suggest that Trump is unlikely to work aggressively to try to prevent future meddling despite repeated warnings from senior intelligence officials that Russia is likely to try to interfere again.
Meanwhile, a special counsel investigation of potential collusion between Moscow and Trump campaign aides so far has resulted in two indictments for financial and other crimes unrelated to the campaign, as well as a guilty plea. Congressional committees have also been interviewing campaign and White House staff.
Trump really raised the topic of so-called interference in US elections, Putins spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, was quoted by Russian news agencies as telling reporters. Putin categorically rejected even the hypothetical possibility that Russia could have in some way interfered in the US electoral process.
Turkey has dismissed what it said were ludicrous reports that Turkish officials may have discussed a plan to seize a wanted US-based Muslim cleric and hand him over to Ankara in exchange for millions of dollars.
In a statement, the Turkish embassy in Washington repeated Ankaras request for the extradition of the cleric, Fethullah Gulen, who it says masterminded last years failed military coup, but said Turkey would not operate outside the law to achieve that goal.
The statement followed a Wall Street Journal report that Special Counsel Robert Mueller was investigating an alleged proposal under which former US national security adviser Michael Flynn and his son would receive up to $15 million for seizing Gulen and delivering him to the Turkish government.
NBC also reported an alleged December 2016 meeting, saying Muellers team was investigating whether Flynn met senior Turkish officials before President Donald Trumps inauguration about a possible quid pro quo in which Flynn would be paid to do the bidding of Turkeys government while in office.
Turkey and the Turkish people expect the immediate extradition of Fethullah Gulen from the United States to Turkey, so that he can stand trial, the embassy statement said, in the first official Turkish reaction to the newspaper report.
As we stated previously... all allegations that Turkey would resort to means external to the rule of law for his extradition are utterly false, ludicrous and groundless.
Flynns lawyer said on Friday that allegations made against him ranging from kidnapping to bribery were outrageous and false.
Failed Coup
Around 250 people were killed in the attempted military coup against President Tayyip Erdogan in July last year. Turkey says Gulen orchestrated the failed coup from the United States, where he has lived for nearly two decades.
Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim said he raised the Gulen issue with US Vice President Mike Pence during talks in Washington last week, but said that the extradition request was being handled by the two countries justice ministries.
We are not dealing with Michael Flynn, Yildirim told CNN in an interview. We are dealing with the government of the United States.
Gulens fate is one of several disagreements between Turkey and the United States. Turkey has been angered by US support for Kurdish fighters in Syria and the indictment of a Turkish former economy minister over alleged violations of US sanctions against Iran.
Washington has complained about the detention of two locally employed staff at US consulates in Turkey, and a month ago suspended issuing visas in the country. It partly resumed visa services last week, prompting Ankara to follow suit.
More than 50,000 people, including soldiers, teachers and journalists, have been jailed pending trial in a sweeping crackdown following last years coup attempt.
European allies fear Erdogan is using the investigations to stifle opposition and undermine the judiciary. He has responded by saying that the purges are necessary to maintain stability in a pivotal NATO country bordering Iran, Iraq and Syria.
Despite President Donald Trumps full-throated support for Saudi Arabia, the United States appears to be signalling a desire for Riyadh to take a more cautious approach in its regional power struggle with Iran, experts say.
The Trump administration, which shares Saudi Arabias view of Iran as a regional menace, has strongly backed the Kingdom in the wake of a failed missile attack from Iran-aligned forces in Yemeni territory that demonstrated an ability to strike the Saudi capital.
Trump has cultivated much warmer ties with the Saudis after a fraught relationship with the Obama administration - the president made Riyadh his first stop on his maiden international trip - and has vowed to take strong action to confront Iran. Nevertheless, Washington, which has US forces in Syria and Iraq, is telegraphing a more tempered stance toward the confrontation in a region beset with turmoil.
On Thursday, the state department called for unimpeded access for humanitarian aid to Yemen, after Saudi Arabia imposed a blockade on the country to stem the flow of arms to Iran-aligned Houthi fighters.
A day later, US secretary of state Rex Tillerson made clear he still recognized as Lebanons prime minister Saad al-Hariri, who unexpectedly announced his resignation on November 4 from Riyadh.
In announcing his decision on television, Hariri said he feared assassination and accused Iran and its Lebanese ally Hezbollah of sowing strife in the Arab world, thrusting Lebanon into the front line of the competition between Sunni Saudi Arabia and Shiite Iran.
Two US officials said the Saudis, led by Crown Prince Mohammed, had encouraged Hariri to leave office and Lebanese officials say he is being held in Saudi Arabia, a charge Riyadh denies. Hariri has not commented publicly on whether he is free to come and go as he pleases.
In a statement on Saturday, the White House said it rejects any efforts by militias within Lebanon or by any foreign forces to threaten Lebanons stability...or use Lebanon as a base from which to threaten others in the region.
When asked to comment on whether the United States was pushing for a more cautious Saudi response, both the White House and State Department referred to Saturdays statement on Lebanon.
Map of the Middle East showing allies of Saudi Arabia and of its rival, Iran, plus selected countries where Riyadh and Teheran are competing for influence. (AFP)
Tillerson was not going along with the Saudi position in describing the Lebanese state as under capture by Hezbollah, said Paul Salem, the senior vice president of the Middle East Institute, a Washington think tank. Thats significant.
Tillerson was also signalling to the Israelis ... that now is not the time to go after Lebanon, said Salem, referring to long-standing Israeli concerns about Hezbollahs growing military prowess.
Ray Takeyh, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, said he believed the Trump administration was still seeking to help the Saudis advance their interests against Iran without destabilizing the region.
This is a delicate balancing act. It involves supporting allies in a policy that the administration agrees with, while trying to mitigate aspects of it that it (sees as) overstated, Takeyh said.
Tillersons statement also urged all parties both within Lebanon and outside to respect Lebanons independence and said there was no role for any foreign forces.
The United States regularly criticizes Iran and Hezbollah for their role in Lebanon. Tillersons backing of Hariri and the Lebanese government contrasted sharply with the approach taken by Saudi Arabia, which has lumped Lebanon with Hezbollah as parties hostile to it.
I see Rex Tillerson as being an old fashioned American diplomat and old fashioned American diplomacy in the Middle East is all about stability, said F. Gregory Gause, chairman of the International Affairs Department at Texas A&M University.
Im not entirely sure that that is the position of the chief executive of the United States, Gause added.
CONCERNS WITH SAUDI PURGE
The Saudi actions coincide with an anti-corruption purge by the countrys future king that tightened his grip on power.
Trump tweeted on Monday that he had great confidence in King Salman and the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia following the mass arrests - the biggest such purge of the kingdoms affluent elite in its modern history.
Trump also tweeted that they know exactly what they are doing.
Former and current U.S. officials with deep knowledge of Saudi Arabia say Trumps enthusiastic support for Prince Mohammed has emboldened the youthful Saudi leader.
Tillerson told reporters the purge appeared well intended but the mass arrests, which have swept up officials long known in Washington, also fueled U.S. concerns.
It raises a few concerns until we see more clearly how these particular individuals are dealt with, Tillerson added.
Trumps son-in-law, Jared Kushner, the presidents senior adviser, who has cultivated a close relationship with Prince Mohammed, recently returned from Saudi Arabia, fueling speculation on whether he may have had wind of the Crown Princes plans. A senior administration official said they had no advance knowledge. (Additional reporting by John Walcott, Warren Strobel, Steve Holland and Phil Stewart; Writing by Phil Stewart; Editing by Tom Brown and Mary Milliken)
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Saudi Arabia is undergoing revolutionary change with the sudden arrests of the princes and top ministers, triggering uncertainty in the Middle East, global oil markets and here in Houston, where the energy industry's ties to the kingdom are deep and long, stretching back for decades.
Whether the purge by 32-year-old Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman sparks a civil war, ignites an armed conflict with Iran or peacefully drags the conservative Islamic regime into the modern world could have huge implications for Houston and its economy, beyond its impact on oil prices. Saudi Arabia is not only a major market for some of the region's biggest employers, including energy services companies Schlumberger, Halliburton and Baker Hughes, but also a large and growing investor in the Texas Gulf Coast as it seeks to diversify the Saudi economy and holdings.
Just this year, the Saudis' U.S. refining arm, Houston-based Motiva Enterprises, bought out Royal Dutch Shell's stake for $2.2 billion for sole ownership of North America's largest oil refinery in Port Arthur. The country's government-owned industrial company known as Sabic is investing billions more as part of a partnership with Exxon Mobil to develop a $10 billion petrochemical plant near Corpus Christi.
Sabic's CEO, Yousef Al-Benyan, calls Houston its hub for global growth after moving its Americas headquarters to Houston last year. Saudi Aramco, the state-owned oil company, has maintained its America's headquarters in Houston for 40 years. The Saudi companies employ well more than 1,000 people in Houston offices.
"I think (Salman) has hitched his wagon to the U.S.," said Chris Ross, a University of Houston finance professor focused on international oil.
Salman, known by his initials MBS, last weekend ordered the arrest of 11 princes of Saudi Arabia's sprawling royal family, as well as various ministers and other prominent officials in what was portrayed as a crackdown on corruption. Salman, who leapfrogged uncles and older brothers to become heir to the throne, is considered a modernizer looking to develop industries and investments beyond oil, and soften the harsh brand of Islam practiced in the country, including allowing women to drive.
His move to consolidate power less than six months after he was named crown prince by his father, King Salman bin Abdul-Aziz Al Saud Salman, coincides with his "Vision 2030" modernization plans to open Saudi's oil sector to foreign investors, while diversifying globally, especially along the Texas Gulf Coast. The crown prince also plans to take Saudi Aramco, valued at some $2 trillion, public as soon as next year, possibly on the New York Stock Exchange.
If the younger Salman succeeds in opening the Saudi economy and society, it likely will mean more opportunities for U.S. and Houston energy companies,
But, said Bruce Everett, an adjunct associate professor of international business at Tufts University, "if he can't pull this off, and there's a civil war within the House of Saud, all bets are off. Who knows what can happen."
Good news for Texas, for now
The modernization efforts already are helping smaller Houston energy firms, such as McDermott International and Rowan Cos., which have landed deals in Saudi Arabia. Rowan, for example, recently launched an offshore drilling joint venture with Aramco, called ARO drilling. "While there have been a number of changes in the country and it is certainly a very dynamic atmosphere," said Rowan Chief Executive Tom Burke, "we believe the future is bright for Saudi Arabia."
Texas oil and gas companies also are getting a lift at home from the Middle East developments. Rising global demand, slowing production and declining petroleum stockpiles already were boosting U.S. crude prices, which climbed to $55 a barrel last weekend - before the arrests.
The Saudi shake-up added almost $2 more per barrel.
"If I'm a Permian producer, I'm feeling better than I was a year ago," said Dave Pursell, a managing director and research manager at Houston energy investment bank Tudor, Pickering, Holt & Co.
While drillers in the Permian and other Texas shale plays need higher prices, so do the Saudis to ensure the Aramco initial public offering is a success, Pursell said. Some members of the Saudi royal family have opposed the IPO and the scrutiny it would bring, but the arrests last weekend mean that the IPO is moving forward, Pursell said.
That, in turn, maintains incentives for Saudi Arabia, which controls about 10 percent of global production, to support higher prices. "It says economic reforms are happening and, if you don't like it, here's this ankle bracelet," Pursell said.
The Saudis played a key role in the 2014 oil bust when they led the decision of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries to reject oil production cuts late that year. But, the subsequent collapse in oil prices triggered a shift, with the Saudis dragging OPEC into cutbacks in 2016. The reductions are expected to be extended beyond March at OPEC's upcoming Nov. 30 meeting, especially with the support of the crown prince.
That's creating more certainty and stability for American energy companies, said Jim Krane, a fellow for energy studies at Rice University.
"OPEC has basically been giving a police escort to shale producers," Krane said. "If you're in the oil business in the U.S., it's more good news."
Not so fast
Salman has branded himself a modernizer, but he's also proving hawkish and calculating, consolidating power behind the scenes even before he was named the successor to the crown in June. He already had taken charge of the kingdom's economy and defense, and begun to lay the groundwork - rhetorically - for the anti-corruption crackdown for more than a year, stoking populist support with young working-class Saudis, many unemployed.
"He has to be taken at his word now," said Matt Reed, vice president of Foreign Reports, a Washington, D.C.-based consulting firm focused on Mideast oil politics. "Systemic corruption is poison for privatization."
A one-off, shock-and-awe move against potential rivals is OK as long as it doesn't indicate a bigger pattern of instability within the top levels of Saudi government, Reed said. Foreign investors need predictability, and ongoing chaos could scare them away.
But the changes also represent dramatic shifts from how Saudi Arabia has functioned since its founding in 1932 by the crown prince's grandfather, Abdul-Aziz Al Saud. A country traditionally ruled by the consensus of tribal leaders under a king is moving toward a more authoritarian monarchy, in which the ruler makes unilateral, sweeping decisions, analysts said.
Greater dangers are lurking, too. If the rifts in the massive royal family destabilize the political system, leading to territorial grabs by certain factions and civil war, it would jeopardize the flow of oil and disrupt both global markets and Saudi investment in the Texas Gulf Coast, analysts said.
Careful what you wish for
At the same time, the crown prince's hawkish approach to regional rivals, particularly Iran, raises the specter of a broader regional conflict that could send oil prices soaring to $100 a barrel and higher. The crown prince has signaled he wants Saudi Arabia to play a larger role in Middle East geopolitics, particularly as a counterweight to an aggressive Iran.
The two countries have engaged in ongoing proxy wars in Syria and Yemen, each offering support to opposing sides. Last week, when Saudi Arabia shot down a missile fired at the kingdom's capital of Riyadh by the Iranian-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen, officials blamed Iran, and Salman called it an "act of war" by the Islamic Republic. The U.S. Air Force on Friday said the missile had Iranian markings.
At first glance, a surge in oil prices that would likely follow Middle East conflict would seem a windfall for the Houston energy industry. But it's also a case of being careful what you wish for, said Ross, the University of Houston professor. If prices rise too high, too fast, it could hasten the end of the world's reliance on oil.
"If we get $4 gasoline," Ross said, "then it makes the Chevy Volt much more attractive."
WASHINGTON - Two top former U.S. intelligence officials said Sunday that President Donald Trump is being "played" by President Vladimir Putin on Russia's interference in the 2016 election and accused him of being susceptible to foreign leaders who stroke his ego.
"By not confronting the issue directly and not acknowledging to Putin that we know you're responsible for this, I think he's giving Putin a pass," former CIA director John Brennan said on CNN's "State of the Union." "I think it demonstrates to Mr. Putin that Donald Trump can be played by foreign leaders who are going to appeal to his ego and try to play upon his insecurities, which is very, very worrisome from a national security standpoint."
Appearing on the same program, former director of national intelligence James R. Clapper Jr. said he agrees with that assessment.
"He seems very susceptible to rolling out the red carpet and honor guards and all the trappings and pomp and circumstance that come with the office, and I think that appeals to him, and I think it plays to his insecurities," Clapper said.
Trump told reporters traveling with him in Asia that Putin had assured him at a conference in Danang, Vietnam, on Saturday that Russia did not interfere in the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign, and he indicated that he believed Putin was sincere.
Later, in a news conference Sunday in Hanoi with Vietnamese President Tran Dai Quang, Trump appeared to be trying to parse his earlier remarks, saying, "What I said is that I believe (Putin) believes that."
In his earlier remarks to reporters, Trump also referred to Brennan and Clapper as "political hacks." Brennan said Sunday that he considers Trump's characterization "a badge of honor."
Both men were highly critical of Trump for not saying more definitively that Putin was behind the Russian interference in the U.S. election, a conclusion strongly endorsed by the U.S. intelligence community.
"I don't know why the ambiguity about this," Brennan said. "Putin is committed to undermining our system, our democracy and our whole process. And to try paint it in any other way is, I think, astounding, and, in fact, poses a peril to this country."
Clapper said, "It's very clear that the Russians interfered in the election, and it's still puzzling as to why Mr. Trump does not acknowledge that and embrace it and also push hard against Mr. Putin."
Appearing later on CNN, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin came to Trump's defense, brushing aside the comments of Brennan and Clapper.
"Those were the most ridiculous statements," Mnuchin said. "President Trump is not getting played by anybody."
Mnuchin said Trump wants to focus on thorny issues posed by North Korea and Syria and is trying to get Russia on board with the U.S. strategy.
"I think the country is ready to move on off of this and focus on important issues," he said.
Marc Short, Trump's director of legislative affairs, said Sunday that the president does concur with a January 2017 assessment by the intelligence community about Russian meddling.
"But let's be careful and be straight about what it is the president believes right now," Short said during an appearance on NBC's "Meet the Press."
"He believes that after a year of investigations of tens of millions of taxpayer dollars, there is zero evidence of any ballot being impacted by Russian interference," Short said. "What the president is trying to do right now is recognize the gravest threat that America faces is North Korea developing nuclear weapons. And nuclear weapons in North Korea is a greater threat than Russia buying Facebook ads in America."
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The congregation of about 220 people at River Bend Baptist Church in Fulshear would have been nearing the end of Sunday service when the shots rang out 150 miles away at First Baptist Church in Sutherland Springs.
Senior Pastor John Crowe learned only later that evening what had occurred: A lone shooter. A car chase. Twenty-six parishioners left dead.
A scene of horror that had unfolded in a sacred space, not unlike the one where Crowe preaches.
Places of worship have known violence before. And conversations about security have been ongoing for years in many, including Crowe's, where volunteers help patrol with walkie-talkies and a police officer is always on site. But the Sutherland Springs attack came as an unavoidable reminder that mass shootings remain part of today's culture, a threat that does not disappear even in a religious place meant to offer people refuge, not turn them into targets.
The shooting has forced faith leaders across the Houston area to analyze the uncomfortable question of whether they are doing enough to protect those who come to worship. They are trying to strike the right balance. They cannot turn their sanctuaries into fortresses or places of fear, but they also must protect those who seek to practice their religion there.
"A church should be safe," Crowe said. "A church should be a place of peace. A church should be a place of coming together, and not having to fear the things that happen in our world that can be so scary at times."
And yet.
African-American churches were the targets of arson, cross burnings and bombings throughout the civil rights era and deep into the 1990s, when more than 30 were set on fire.
Nine people were killed during Bible study in 2015 in Charleston. Seven died after a gunman opened fire in 1999 in a Fort Worth church.
Over the last year, a wave of more than 100 bomb threats against Jewish community centers unnerved that community. This week, in fact, marks the anniversary of Kristallnacht, when more than 250 synagogues were burned during pogroms targeting Jews across Nazi Germany.
Reviewing protocols
After Sutherland Springs, there have been both calls for prayer and security plan reviews.
The tragedy had "deeply touched the core of who we are as faithful people," Gov. Greg Abbott stated in a written proclamation. He called for a statewide day of prayer on Sunday and, at 11:30 a.m., for a moment of silence.
"The best security is people in the pews praying," as Father Paul Felix, the pastor of Annunciation Catholic Church, put it. Still, police officers attend services at the church, where he had asked staff before the shooting to review their protocol.
Felix isn't alone in revisiting plans. After the shooting in Sutherland Springs, the Archdiocese of Galveston-Houston, which includes 147 parishes, asked all pastors to work with local law enforcement to develop safety plans.
At the iconic Wheeler Avenue Baptist Church, which has a membership of about 16,000 and between 6,000 to 8,000 regular Sunday worshippers, church leaders met with the security team on Thursday night to review safety measures.
The church security force, in place for years, consists of 11 to 14 security police officers every Sunday, who enforce the law, and about eight additional volunteers who enforce house rules. After Sutherland Springs, Associate Pastor Alexander E.M. Johnson said, the church will always have a constable with a long gun on site during service.
"We don't want our officers outmatched," Johnson said. "We want weaponry that will take care of any significant threat."
He added that mass shootings have tarnished what should be a refuge. "It is most disheartening and disgusting that a sacred space has been violated in this regard and manner."
Barkley Thompson, dean of the Christ Church Cathedral, said they revisited their security protocol, too, and felt comfortable with what they had in place. They feel safe downtown, he said, and work hard to ensure a balance between maintaining prudent security measures while also being gracious and hospitable to all, including strangers and people who live on society's margins.
They don't allow duffel bags or backpacks in the worship space. They also don't allow guns. Legal phrasing banning them is printed on the church leaflets, and the police officers on site don't enter the worship space unless there is an emergency.
"We worship the prince of peace who beats swords into plowshares," he said, referencing a biblical verse in the Book of Isaiah. "When we gather as the body of Christ, we gather in peace."
The Southern Baptists of Texas Convention, which has offered church security training for several years, received so many requests this week for consultations that they decided to plan five regional conferences to address the issue in the state.
Authorities offer help
More churches become aware of their vulnerability after attacks like the one last Sunday, said Mark Yoakum, director of church ministries for the Convention. They begin to realize that Sutherland Springs, as he put it, is "Anytown USA." An attack could happen in their city, too, making training all the more important.
"It is necessary in this day and time," Yoakum said. "It saddens me that is the case, but that is reality. ... A lot of our training is to avoid that happening."
Fort Bend County Sheriff Troy Nehls and his staff brainstormed ways to help, too, and decided to publicize an offer to help local churches put together security plans. The attack had caused the Sheriff to wonder if his own church had safety measures in place, and he thought it was an important issue to consider.
They heard in the days that followed from at least five congregations who wanted help reviewing their security, and planned to offer active shooter training, too.
"Unfortunately, in today's environment, we have to try to help prepare churches and others for the worst," Nehls said.
Many larger churches have officers on site, even if mainly to address traffic needs. Nehls expressed specific concern with smaller churches, "country churches," as he put them, which dot still-rural portions of the county and operate on smaller budgets.
There are places like Simonton Community Church, a congregation of about 350 people, which meets in the small city of Simonton, drawing people from the surrounding area. A retired police officer attends in plainclothes, and staff have gone through active shooter trainings, with refresher courses periodically given. They know to distract the shooter and, if someone is armed, understand that person should shoot not to wound but to kill.
"We're not going to live in fear," Senior Pastor Steve Littlefield said, "(God) gives man free choice ... so we can choose to respond."
'There is no one solution'
And there are places like Greater Zachery, a church of around 125 people in Fulshear, which relies on regular police patrol to keep an eye on their services. Attentiveness to one's congregation is important, Pastor Jackie Gilmore said, but he didn't see a need to hire security, not yet. That would draw from a budget he prefers to direct to helping others.
"And then what am I serving?" he said.
He knows the congregation is not bulletproof, he said, noting, "We can't become so 'holier-than-thou' that we overlook what's going on in our society." But he also saw no reason to keep a pistol in the pulpit.
The issue has resonated across cultural boundaries. President of the Islamic Society of Greater Houston MJ Khan said he hesitated to turn mosques into fortresses with metal detectors and barricades. But he said they need to continue to pay attention to what can be done to alleviate the problem.
"The whole concept of a place of worship is for people to come anytime and pray," he said. "We have to be really paying attention to what as a society we can do to alleviate this."
Partha Krishnaswamy, president of Hindus of Greater Houston, agreed that finding the right balance was important. People come to Hindu temples, or mandirs, to meet others. They bring children. They have happy dispositions. They want to relax. Were temples now supposed to frisk people? Check on them in the parking lots? Place guards at the doors?
He expected one answer would not apply to all. At the next gathering of local Hindu leaders, he imagined they would begin to discuss what to do. "It's a question that needs to be answered," he said. "There is no one solution for all."
On Nov. 5, Devin Patrick Kelley entered the First Baptist Church in Sutherland Springs and began shooting. By the end of his rampage, 26 people were dead, and 20 more were injured - many of them seriously.
This wasn't the deadliest mass shooting in American history. That happened six weeks ago in Las Vegas at a country music festival. But Sutherland Springs, an unincorporated town southeast of San Antonio, will be remembered as the site of one of the worst mass shootings in modern Texas as well as an unusual one, in certain respects.
In recent years America has experienced enough mass shootings that these tragedies and the reactions to them have come to seem grimly routine. The dead are tallied. Their murderer is identified. His social media profiles are scrutinized for clues about the beliefs or experiences that warped his soul and cost his unsuspecting neighbors their lives.
Democrats suggest that maybe it's time we talk about gun violence or an even more polarizing topic: gun control. Republicans scold them for trying to politicize the latest round of bloodshed before the bodies left behind have even grown cold.
Two things about the Sutherland Springs shooting, however, may make it possible for us to respond to this tragedy with a serious conversation about how to prevent the next one rather than an overheated and polarized debate - if we're willing to try.
The first is that the carnage was in fact ended, thankfully, by a good guy with a gun. Stephen Willeford, a neighbor of First Baptist and former National Rifle Association instructor, grabbed his rifle and ran across the street after his daughter called to tell him that she heard gunfire at the church. He confronted Kelley, who tried to flee the scene, and pursued him after enlisting the help of a stranger who was driving by, Johnnie Langendorff.
By the time police caught up with them just minutes later, Kelley was already dead, having been shot in his leg and torso then killed by a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head.
Second, although Texas has a reputation as an aggressively gun-friendly place, it's actually not the state's fault that Kelley had access to guns in the first place. His service in the Air Force ended several years ago with a demotion and discharge for bad conduct after serving a year in a military prison for beating his then-wife and fracturing his toddler stepson's skull. Per state law, he was therefore not eligible for a license to carry. Gov. Greg Abbott told CNN on Monday that Kelley had applied for one anyway, and the state rightly rejected it.
Another loophole
What enabled this mass shooting, in other words, wasn't our state or federal gun laws; it was lackadaisical enforcement of the latter. Per federal law, people convicted of domestic violence are barred from purchasing firearms in the first place. Kelley was nonetheless able to pass a background check because the Air Force failed to submit the information about his conviction to the National Crime Information Center's database.
This is an oversight that occurs frequently enough that it's probably correct to call it a loophole, and several Republicans have joined Democrats in doing so. Sen. John Cornyn told CNN on Tuesday that he is working on legislation that would improve the military's reporting rates, which are currently, as he put it, "staggeringly low."
Cornyn added that the Senate Judiciary Committee, on which he serves, is looking into whether the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives has the authority to regulate bump stocks, which can be used to modify semi-automatic weapons and were used accordingly to such devastating effect in Las Vegas.
More guns?
Those ideas are not even controversial from a conservative perspective. It's a shame, then, that some of Cornyn's peers remain as fatalistic as ever, reluctant to engage with any of the questions or concerns that all mass shootings raise.
Last Sunday, in the immediate aftermath of the shooting, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton appeared on Fox News and weighed in: "This is going to happen again."
"I wish some law would fix all of this," he continued, before dismissing the possibility that some law, such as the ones that Cornyn and others have proposed, might address any of it. Paxton offered an alternative prescription. More Texans should bring their guns to church, in the attorney general's opinion: "There's always the opportunity that the gunman will be taken out before he has the opportunity to kill very many people."
Abbott, in an appearance on Fox News the following day, encouraged everyone to keep things in perspective.
"Look at what happened with Hitler during the horrific events during that era," the governor said.
Mussolini, he continued, was also a bad apple, and "horrific" things happened in the Middle Ages, to boot.
"Evil is something that has permeated this world," Abbott said. "And that force of evil must be combated with the force of good that is offered by God."
I don't disagree with that, but I've been going to church my whole life, and I've never heard anyone suggest that God's plan precludes us from taking certain commonsense precautions against the force of evil, such as closing well-documented loopholes in our extant gun laws.
That being the case, it would be nice to see Cornyn's fellow Republicans support his efforts here. If that's a bridge too far, I hope we can all at least agree that it's not actually true that there is literally nothing we can do to address the problem at hand.
Democrats sometimes dismiss the role that prayers may play in the healing process for a community, like Sutherland Springs, that has suffered such an overwhelming blow; in my view, they shouldn't. With that said, I can understand why some Americans, in the wake of such an event, might pray for a legislative branch that legislates.
Everything's a weapon
It may be impossible to end mass shootings once and for all in a country where gun rights are enshrined in the Constitution and supported by most Americans, We should, of course, remember that the underlying cause of gun violence is that there are people who are driven to use the tools at their disposal, whatever they are, to cause harm; on Nov. 1, a man in New York killed eight people and injured 11 using a truck. Ultimately, we may not even be able to reliably minimize the number of people an aggrieved individual has the "opportunity", as Paxton put it, to kill.
But we don't really know that, do we? On Dec. 14, 2012, a young man in Newtown, Conn., killed his mother, then got in her car and drove to Sandy Hook Elementary School, where he killed 20 children and six adults. That mass shooting resulted in an anguished debate about federal gun laws - which were, in the end, not changed at all.
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On the Sunday that changed everything in Sutherland Springs, Lorenzo Flores and his girlfriend, Terrie Smith, had just parked at a Valero gas station on U.S. 87 when Flores saw the man with the rifle.
The gunman across the street had hopped out of a gray SUV.
"Terrie, look at that," Flores said. He knew a sheriff's deputy lived nearby. Maybe there was a training exercise.
To Flores, it looked like the man dressed in black tactical gear was having an internal debate with himself, trying to decide whether to approach the First Baptist Church of Sutherland Springs.
About 50 people were inside, worshiping God the way they usually did on a Sunday morning - with song and laughter and kinship.
The sense of family is what most people liked about the tiny wisp of a community about 30 miles southeast of San Antonio.
Flores watched as the man with the rifle seemed to make up his mind, heading toward the church.
B B B
Forty miles away in New Braunfels, a security guard named Devin Patrick Kelley hadn't shown up for work at the Summit Vacation and RV Resort.
Kelley, 26, went home early the day before, complaining of a headache. His absence was the first problem the RV park had with Kelley, who had passed a criminal background check and had a security license issued by the Texas Department of Public Safety.
There was a lot DPS officials didn't know about Kelley. They didn't know he had been kicked out of the Air Force after assaulting his first wife, Tessa, and infant stepson so severely that he had fractured the boy's skull. He was convicted in 2012, served 12 months, was demoted and received a "bad conduct" discharge in 2014.
In the Air Force, Kelley also had been sent to a mental health facility after trying to sneak weapons onto Holloman AFB in New Mexico, where he made death threats to his commanding officers.
Kelley's domestic assault case should have prohibited him from buying firearms. But the Air Force didn't report it to the FBI, which meant Kelley could pass criminal background checks.
Over the span of four years, he bought at least four weapons - including the Ruger AR-556, a semi-automatic rifle that Flores saw him with Sunday.
Tessa had divorced Kelley after the assault. In 2014 Kelley married Danielle Shields, 22. Shields' mother, Michelle, was a member of the First Baptist Church.
Kelley sent his mother-in-law angry texts before his arrival at the church, but authorities won't disclose the contents.
B B B
First Baptist Church Pastor Frank Pomeroy was out of town that day. Associate pastor Bryan Holcombe, whose family was at the service, said a few words and the congregation began singing the hymn, "Are You Washed in the Blood?"
They stopped partway through the hymn to hear announcements about the success of their recent fall festival. Holcombe's wife, Karla, presented a trophy to Julie Workman, a nurse whose festival costume of a hospital patient was a hit.
As members of the congregation talked, the shooting started.
"Everybody get down!" somebody shouted. Glass from an overhead fan light shattered and shards showered around Workman, who was in the second row on the left side with her two sons. She crawled over the glass to hide under a pew.
"Everybody die!" the gunman shouted, firing at pews on the right side of the church.
The killer turned and aimed at worshipers on the left side. He walked all the way to the back, firing as he went. He stopped and reloaded.
"Oh, my God," Workman thought. "Here he comes again."
B B B
About a block away, Stephen Willeford, a former gun instructor with the National Rifle Association, heard the gunshots but didn't realize what they were at first. It sounded like someone tapping hard on his window.
His daughter, Stephanie, came in the room.
"Doesn't that sound like gunfire?" she asked.
Willeford followed her into the kitchen, where they could hear better.
Pop pop pop. That was definitely gunfire.
Willeford ran to his safe and pulled out his AR 15 semi-automatic rifle and a box of ammo. While he was arming himself, his daughter drove around the block and came back in a panic. Someone in tactical gear was shooting at the Baptist church, she said.
Every time he heard a shot, Willeford knew that probably represented a life lost.
B B B
He ran toward the church. He was scared to death. But he kept running.
As Willeford approached the site of the massacre, he took cover behind a parked truck. Across the street was the church and an empty SUV was in the road, its driver-side door open. It looked out of place.
A man in black tactical gear walked around the front of the vehicle. He was carrying a handgun. He spotted Willeford.
The two men were about 20 yards from each other. Willeford noticed the gunman was wearing a Kevlar vest and a tactical helmet - the kind SWAT teams use.
Even as it was happening, the gun battle seemed surreal to him. Willeford shot Kelley twice - once in the torso, where he was aiming, and once in the leg. Willeford wasn't hit.
A wounded Kelley climbed into his Ford Expedition. He fired two more times at Willeford. Willeford returned fire, aiming for the man's head. He saw the window shatter.
The SUV sped off, heading north on FM 539 past the church toward U.S 87, where the Valero station sits. Willeford aimed at the SUV and squeezed the trigger. His last shot shattered the back window.
Willeford was barefoot and without a vehicle.
He saw a pickup nearby, sitting at a stop sign. The driver was inside.
B B B
Johnnie Langendorff had been headed to his girlfriend's house when he stumbled across the gun battle. Unarmed, he watched the two men exchange fire. He didn't know either of them.
After the Ford Expedition raced off, Willeford ran to Langendorff's truck and knocked on the window. "That guy just shot up the Baptist church," Willeford said. "We've got to stop him."
"Let's go," Langendorff said, unlocking the door.
Their speed topped 95 mph as Langendorff tried to make up lost ground.
As they drove, Langendorff called 911 and said they were pursuing the killer. No deputies or police officers were around. They were on their own.
The Ford Expedition came into view. They could see the busted back window. The dispatcher asked for the suspect's exact location. They gave it.
B B B
Inside the SUV, Kelley was bleeding. He pulled out his cellphone and called his father, Michael.
Kelley told him he'd been shot. He didn't think he was going to make it.
Willeford and Langendorff watched the Expedition veer off the road. and hit a highway sign as he sped onward about 100 yards. The SUV finally crashed in a ditch.
Langendorff stopped and Willeford hopped out. He rested his rifle across the truck's hood, aimed at the SUV, and yelled at the man to get out. There was no movement.
He kept his eyes locked on the wrecked Expedition. He didn't notice the arrival of the deputy until he heard a voice on a loudspeaker: "Driver, get out of the vehicle with your hands up." Sharpshooters aimed at the wrecked SUV while a small drone overhead scouted the vehicle. They were patient and cautious. When deputies finally closed in, they found Kelley's body.
Authorities believe he killed himself.
B B B
Staff writers Kelsey Bradshaw, Caleb Downs and Silvia Foster-Frau contributed to this report, which contains material from public records and interviews conducted with other media outlets.
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The long stretch of land flanking Blume Road in Rosenberg could easily be mistaken as abandoned or an unused swath of the adjacent horse ranch.
But behind the crooked, broken wooden fence and 6-foot-high grass sits Byrd Cemetery, the resting place of around 200 Rosenberg residents - land forgotten after years of neglect with no municipal oversight or infrastructure to maintain it.
The Fort Bend Heritage Society is working to return the historic burial site to its former glory with the help of Christ Church Sugar Land, the Needville Ministerial Alliance and other community partners.
"We take on the role of keeping it clean," said Fort Bend Heritage Society Vice President Sha'Terra Johnson-Fairley, 30. "Hopefully we can beautify it and make it what it should be."
Around 30 volunteers answered Johnson-Fairley's call Saturday to help clear the thick clumps of grass and weeds, fill in sunken grave sites and cut down trees choking several headstones from one of the over 60 neglected cemeteries in Fort Bend County.
"It's been so encouraging," said Virginia Morrison, 83, a volunteer from Christ Church. "We mowed this place two years ago and two years before that, but now we have a lot of people here at once to help."
The deed for the land is held by the descendants of Edward Bird, a Mississippi-born farmer who moved to Texas in the early 1900s. But for decades, a lack of sponsors led to a lack of effort to maintain the property or preserve the almost century-old graves in it.
"But now we have a good hold of community stakeholders that want it to be maintained," Johnson-Fairley said. "We don't want it to get back to this point."
The 2 acres that became the Rosenberg Colored Cemetery were sold as part of a 28-acre parcel to Bird in 1923, according to Fort Bend County historical records. An unknown number of freed slaves are buried on the property.
Clearing graves
The cemetery has changed names at least three times since the first person, Pernettie Bird - Edward Bird's relative of uncertain relation - was laid to rest there in 1927. At some point, the Rosenberg Colored Cemetery became the Byrd Cemetery or Bird Cemetery. It's officially called the Rosenberg Cemetery.
The exact number of people buried at Byrd has been lost to time - it's 196 to over 230, depending on the record keeper - and the shoulder-high bushes and grass covering almost all of the cemetery make attempts to count the graves futile.
What is known, Johnson-Fairley said, is that the last group of burials happened in the 1960s, with a smattering of interments in the '70s, '80s and '90s. The newest gravestone is dated 1993, but Byrd Cemetery is no longer an active burial site.
Saturday's event, she said, helped clear the graves of the 24 known World War I and World War II veterans buried at the site. Trampled, faded red, white and blue flags mark where they are buried.
"We have several veterans buried here. Today we also want to recognize all they did for the community and the country," Johnson-Fairley said.
Hopie Solomon called her nephew Hollis Giles, 55, Friday night when she heard there was a group heading out to clear the cemetery. Giles' uncle, Bubba Franks - Solomon's brother - was buried there, and she wanted him to clear the plants off his grave.
"I knew the cemetery had gotten bad," Giles said solemnly, looking out at the thick brush rendering the back acre and a half impassable without a weed eater. "I didn't know it'd gotten like this."
Making discoveries
Byrd Cemetery was never divided into a grid or plots, and the only directional feature is the graves facing east.
The result is a hodgepodge of flat gravestones and tilted - or buried - headstones sinking into the soft ground.
Most families buried there, however, grouped their members into the same general area. Bubba's gravestone, Giles said, is somewhere in the 4 feet of tangled, thorny bush between his uncle John "Big Six" Franks and his nephew Danny Wayne.
Solomon called Giles again at the gravesite. He'd found the general area where the grave was, he told her, but he was late for work at a local remodeling business and would come back later in the afternoon to make a suitable place for her to visit her brother.
"We're going to discover all kinds of stuff here," Giles said.
It's slow, tedious work that can be done only in the southeast Texas autumn, when the midday sun isn't blistering and the humid air dries out. Once cut down to a manageable height, the swamp grass needs to be mowed by hand, as riding a lawn mower runs the risk of knocking over a hidden gravestone or falling into a ditch sunken in by years of heavy rainstorms.
'We're all a part of this'
But the work, Johnson-Fairley said, is rewarding for a community with roots in Rosenberg as deep as this one. The Heritage Society is aiming to raise the involvement of the community in the cemetery's maintenance - dozens of present-day Rosenberg residents have ancestors buried at Byrd Cemetery.
"It's our responsibility as community members to maintain and preserve these legacies," Johnson-Fairley said. "We're all a part of this, and people should take pride in people that came before us."
WASHINGTON - Moments before the polls closed in Virginia's Democratic sweep, Houston-area Republican Ted Poe, across the Potomac River on Capitol Hill, announced his retirement in 2018 after 14 years in Congress.
Poe cast his move Tuesday night as a personal decision: "You know when it's time to go," he told the Chronicle. "And it's time to go, and go back to Texas on a full-time basis."
But a wave of retirement announcements from Texas Republicans in both Congress and the Legislature already had sparked a lot of speculation that the pendulum of power might swing against the GOP, even possibly to some degree in a deep red state like Texas.
Poe and other Republicans dismissed that notion, arguing that their prospects in 2018 are strong, particularly in the Senate, where 10 Democratic incumbents face the voters in states won by President Donald Trump.
Democrats, however, celebrated Ralph Northam's victory over Republican Ed Gillespie in Virginia's hard-fought governor's race as the start of an anti-Trump wave that could only grow as the president's approval ratings continue to sink.
However coincidental, Poe's announcement - following those of Texas U.S. Reps. Lamar Smith, Jeb Hensarling and Sam Johnson - seemed to add to the buzz.
Personal reasons cited
All four represent strong Republican districts. But Democrats believe that Poe's suburban Harris County district could be within reach if 2018 turns into an anti-Trump backlash.
"We've worked from the beginning of this election cycle to expand the battlefield, and that means making sure there are strong candidates who fit their districts ready to capitalize on whatever environment 2018 brings," said Cole Leiter of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, the campaign arm of the House Democrats.
Democratic hopeful Todd Litton, a nonprofit executive in Poe's district, has raised more than $256,000 for the race, outpacing Poe's fundraising in the three-month period between April and June.
Poe, however, called the suggestion that he is running away from a tough reelection "nonsense." He noted that he won reelection last year with 61 percent of the vote, a substantially better showing than Trump, who won 52 percent of the district's vote for president.
"I don't appeal to people on the party label," said Poe, a former teacher, prosecutor and judge. "I appeal based on who I am."
GOP strategists say that none of the GOP retirements, particularly Poe's, should come as a surprise. In June, 2016, Poe announced that he had been diagnosed with leukemia, though it has since gone into remission.
"I'm in good health," said Poe, 69. "My health was not an issue in my decision. The good Lord has taken care of me."
But he acknowledged that with the passage of time, he would like to spend more time with his family, including four grown children and 12 grandchildren. "I never intended to make a career out of being in Congress," he said.
The retirement of Johnson, an 87-year-old ex-fighter pilot and Vietnam POW, also had been expected.
Hensarling's exit is more surprising. The 60-year-old Dallas Republican is chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, a post that puts him at the center of the regulatory debates over Wall Street and the insurance industry, including proposed reforms to the troubled National Flood Insurance Program.
First elected in 2002, Hensarling is still considered one of the GOP's young Turks. He's a close ally of Speaker Paul Ryan and one of a record seven Texas committee chairs in the House.
Next year, however, Hensarling faces the GOP's self-imposed six-year limit on committee chairs, which he acknowledged as a factor in his decision to leave Congress.
He also said he wants to hew to the "Jeffersonian model of the citizen-legislator" who serves in office and then retires to private life. Some observers note that as a leading opponent of federal intervention in the banking system, Hensarling could have a lucrative future in finance.
Hensarling gave only vague indications about his future. "I have a noble aspiration shared by a lot of Americans, and that is I want to work less hard, make more money, and spend more time with my family," he said.
Smith, a 69-year-old San Antonio Republican, also faces a term-limit as chairman of the House Science Committee, where he has made a name for himself as a leading national skeptic of the idea of man-made climate change.
GOP and Democratic strategists say the prospect of returning to the back benches, possibly under Democratic control of the House, would clearly have little appeal to once powerful committee chairmen.
But Smith, like Poe, said he is not worried about a Democratic wave. "I think we're in pretty good shape in the midterms," he said. "I think we're going to have some positive pieces of legislation to show the American people, starting with tax reform."
A GOP tax cut bill, still taking shape in Congress, is seen by many Republicans as their ace in the hole after a year of frustration on Obamacare repeal, restrictions on refugees, border wall funding, and a host of other Trump campaign promises. The Democrats' election gains on Tuesday, coupled with a wave of Republican retirements around the country, have raised the stakes.
"I rarely agree with Nancy Pelosi," Hensarling said, referring to the House Democratic leader. "But I agree with her on one thing, and that is that everything kind of hinges on tax reform."
For now, however, Texas Republican Party Chairman James Dickey said he sees no broader significance in the wave of Republican turnovers, and little cause for alarm.
"It's a healthy changing of the guard," Dickey said. "It's a chance for new candidates to step up."
'Canaries in coal mine'
But Democrats sense momentum in a toxic, post-Trump political environment where they believe anything is possible.
Gilberto Hinojosa, chair of the Texas Democratic Party, called Tuesday's Democratic gains in Virginia and New Jersey "the beginning of a blue wave."
But amid GOP recrimination about what went wrong, particularly in Virginia, some Republicans said it is too early to tell.
Texas U.S. Sen. John Cornyn, the No. 2 Republican in the Senate, said he "wouldn't read too much" into the results in Virginia and New Jersey, two states that clearly skew Democrat and went to Hillary Clinton in 2016. But, like Hensarling, he hedged his bet. "The single most important thing that will determine our success in 2018 is for us to pass this historic tax reform," Cornyn said.
Either way, most consultants - Democrats and Republicans - said the Virginia election results will mean more in Washington than they will in Texas. Gillespie, once a top staffer for former Texas U.S. Rep. Dick Armey, was not only beat in a Southern state, but beat convincingly by nine points.
"In some ways, our 25 Republicans are canaries in the coal mine," said Mark Jones, a political scientist at Rice University, said of the Texas Republicans in the U.S. House. "There is a growing belief that Republicans might lose their majority in the U.S. House in 2018, and it's nice if you're in the majority, but not nice at all if you're not in the majority. If you're Reps. Poe or Hensarling or Smith, you could find yourself in the minority in 2019 - that makes re-election not so attractive."
Republicans can afford to lose 23 seats to retain their majority in the House.
Party activists say Republicans in GOP-leaning districts such as U.S. Reps. John Culberson's and Pete Sessions' need to be much more attentive to their re-election campaigns, and not take anything for granted. In Virginia, Democrats did particularly well among the sort of affluent, educated suburban voters Culberson needs to stay in office.
In toss-up districts like Rep. Will Hurd's, re-election promises to be a battle - wave or no wave. In Republican-safe districts such as those held by Poe, Hensarling, Smith and Johnson, GOP candidates should have a smoother ride to election - unless, as Jones puts it, "Republicans nominate a nightmare candidate."
But a smooth ride is a relative term in the polarized world of Congress, where GOP majorities have had a hard time passing their agenda. Poe is no stranger to those divisions, having broken with the hard-right House Freedom Caucus this year in a dispute over the group's role in derailing a Republican health care bill.
"It is promising to be an atrociously terrible election year for Republicans," said Texas Democratic strategist Harold Cook. "A lot of these people would have won anyway because their districts are so heavily Republican. But they were going to have to work harder at it than they normally would have, and that can't seem like a very fun prospect either."
Who knows?
David Crockett, a political scientist at San Antonio's Trinity University, said the question lingering after Virginia's election results: Is this the beginning of something different?
"Texas is still pretty red, but the result of all these retirements could be opportunity for a Democrat in the right circumstances," he said. "It's always easier for an opposition party to pick off an open seat but I still think we're a decade away from any significant change."
Texas Democrats, for the most part, have their sights set on Hurd, Sessions and Culberson, whose districts went to Clinton in 2016. Recent internal polling also has bolstered their hopes of flipping the suburban San Antonio district where Smith is retiring.
Around Houston, it would take a pretty big wave for Poe's 2nd Congressional District to fall into the Democratic column, but in the current political climate, some analysts say, who knows?
"I wouldn't go to Las Vegas and bet on it," said Craig Goodman, a political scientist at the University of Houston in Victoria. "But every election cycle, there's always one or two districts where you're like, 'Wow, how did that happen?' Maybe the 2nd would be that district."
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WARSAW, Poland - Tens of thousands of nationalists marched in a demonstration organized by far-right groups in Warsaw Saturday, as Poles celebrated their country's Independence Day.
The far-right march was one of many events marking Poland's rebirth as a nation in 1918 after being wiped off the map for 123 years. Earlier in the day, President Andrzej Duda presided over state ceremonies also attended by European Union president Donald Tusk, a former Polish prime minister.
But the march has become the largest Independence Day event in recent years, overshadowing official state observances and other patriotic events. Some participants expressed sympathy for xenophobic or white supremacist ideas, with one banner reading, "White Europe of brotherly nations."
Participants marched under the slogan "We Want God," words from an old Polish religious song that President Donald Trump quoted during a visit to Warsaw earlier this year. Speakers spoke of standing against liberals and defending Christian values.
'March of patriots'
Many carried the national white-and-red flag as others set off flares and firecrackers, filling the air with red smoke. Some also carried banners depicting a falanga, a far-right symbol dating to the 1930s.
Police estimated that 60,000 people took part. Many were young men, some with their faces covered or with beer bottles in hand, but families and older Poles also participated.
The march has become one of the largest such demonstrations in Europe, and on Saturday it drew far-right leaders from elsewhere in Europe, including Tommy Robinson from Britain and Roberto Fiore from Italy.
State broadcaster TVP, which reflects the conservative government's line, called it a "great march of patriots," and in its broadcasts described the event as one that drew mostly regular Poles expressing their love of Poland, not extremists.
"It was a beautiful sight," Interior Minister Mariusz Blaszczak said. "We are proud that so many Poles have decided to take part in a celebration connected to the Independence Day holiday."
A smaller counter-protest by an anti-fascist movement also took place. Organizers kept the two groups apart to prevent violence. However, there was one incident in which the nationalists pushed and kicked several women who chanted anti-fascism slogans and had a banner saying "Stop Fascism."
Wreath-laying ceremony
Independence Day marks Poland regaining its sovereignty at the end of World War I after being partitioned and ruled since the late 18th century by Russia, Prussia and the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
Duda oversaw ceremonies at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. After delivering a speech he took part in a wreath-laying ceremony, kneeling and crossing himself at the monument to all unknown soldiers killed fighting for the country.
Tusk, who attended at Duda's invitation, also paid his respects at the monument.
NEW DELHI - As Ivanka Trump's visit to India nears, the south Indian city of Hyderabad is getting ready to dazzle its foreign guests - by locking its homeless and destitute people out of sight in prison rehabilitation centers.
Nearly 400 beggars were picked up from city streets and to trucked away to one such center at the Chanchalguda jail, the Indian Express reported.
As the city scrubs up to impress its foreign guests, police plan to clear away 6,000 beggars and have banned begging entirely in the city until the first week of January.
The beggars are "employing children and handicapped persons to seek alms at the main junctions of roads," said the ban order. "Such acts are causing annoyance and awkwardness."
"Some beggars argued that we were taking their freedom to live anywhere they want but we told them it was for their own good because they are going to the rehab centre where they will be taken care of," an unnamed official told the Express.
The beggar clearance comes weeks ahead of the three-day Global Entrepreneurship Summit which starts Nov. 28, where the first daughter will lead the American delegation to co-host the summit.
Authorities told ABC News that they want Trump and foreign delegates to see India's good side, and not the "Slumdog Millionaire" stereotype commonly associated with the country.
The event's theme, is "Women First" and its tagline, "Prosperity for All."
In the past few decades, Hyderabad has rapidly rebranded itself as India's Silicon Valley, as an outsourcing hub for global firms and the Indian headquarters of international tech companies, including Apple, Google and Microsoft. But despite rapid growth, wealth is unevenly distributed and a huge homeless population lives off the scraps of the city's techie middle class.
In recent years, the city's fortunes have begun to turn for the worse. Automation threatens jobs and new visa restrictions in multiple countries, including changes to H1-B in America have dampened the hopes and ambitions of many young technology students.
To bring back some of its sparkle, India's government is keen to portray the country as a pioneering technology hub and attract foreign investment.
George Rakesh Babu, founder of the homeless charity Good Samaritans in Hyderabad, said, "The preparations are happening in every corner of our city. But the prison capacity in Hyderabad is not enough to look after all these people." He pointed out that the central jail's maximum capacity was only 1,000.
Vanishing acts like this are not unprecedented when foreign dignitaries come to India, and happened in Hyderabad in 2000 when President Bill Clinton visited the city.
To judge from some of the reaction on the police department's Twitter account, the move was welcomed by many.
"We want to see beggar free Hyderabad for ever. Hyd witnessed such things in the past when Presidents of America visited. Nevertheless we appreciate your efforts and best of luck.
- Ravikiran Reddy (Rkrchama) November 8, 2017"
Others lamented that the roundup was temporary.
" After the international conference has completed, situation remains same," tweeted one man.
"Super job," tweeted another. "But see that they r not allowed again on road."
"We hope it should be implemented successfully but after the international conference has completed situation remains same "
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BEIRUT - Lebanon's president called on Saudi Arabia Saturday to clarify the reasons why the country's prime minister has not returned home since his resignation last week, announced from the kingdom, as the United States and France expressed their support for Lebanon's sovereignty and stability amid heightening tensions between Beirut and Saudi Arabia.
A political crisis has gripped Lebanon and shattered the relative peace maintained by its coalition government since Prime Minister Saad Hariri's stunning announcement Nov. 4 from the Saudi capital that he was resigning.
Saudi officials respond
Lebanese officials have insisted on the return home of Hariri from Saudi Arabia amid rumors he is being held against his will. Saudi officials have said that their measures against Lebanon are in response to the militant Hezbollah's group support of anti-Saudi rebels in Yemen known as Houthis.
Lebanese President Michel Aoun called on Saudi Arabia to clarify why Hariri hasn't returned home since announcing his resignation saying that "the obscurity regarding Hariri's conditions makes anything that he says or does not reflect truth." It was an indication that Aoun does not recognize Hariri's resignation.
In statements released by his office, Aoun called on Saudi Arabia "that is linked to us through deep brotherly and friendly relations to clarify the reasons that are preventing" Hariri from returning to Lebanon.
White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said in a statement that Washington calls upon "all states and parties to respect Lebanon's sovereignty, independence, and constitutional processes."
U.S. weighs in
Saudi Minister for Gulf Affairs Thamer al-Sabhan warned earlier this month that his government would deal with Lebanon as a hostile state as long as Hezbollah was in the Lebanese government. The Lebanese unity government that Hariri formed a year ago includes Hezbollah members - the result of a tacit Saudi-Iranian agreement to sideline Lebanon from the other proxy wars in the region.
"In this sensitive time, the United States also rejects any efforts by militias within Lebanon or by any foreign forces to threaten Lebanon's stability, undermine Lebanese government institutions, or use Lebanon as a base from which to threaten others in the region," Sanders said. She was apparently referring to Hezbollah and Saudi Arabia.
Sanders described Hariri as "a trusted partner of the United States in strengthening Lebanese institutions, fighting terrorism, and protecting refugees." Sanders said the Lebanese army and security forces are the only legitimate forces in Lebanon.
Iran's Foreign Ministry spokesman said Saudi Arabia is aiming to create unrest in Lebanon after doing so in the Gulf region and Yemen. Bahram Qasemi said in comments carried by state news agency IRNA that the kingdom is trying to destabilize the region.
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BONN, Germany - A group of U.S. states, cities, businesses and universities said Saturday they are still committed to curbing global warming even as U.S. President Donald Trump's administration is walking away from the Paris climate accord.
But the alliance, which has an economy larger than Japan and Germany combined, says it won't be able to achieve the necessary cut in greenhouse gas emissions without some efforts at the federal level.
"It is important for the world to know, the American government may have pulled out of the Paris agreement, but the American people are committed to its goals, and there is nothing Washington can do to stop us," former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg said at a global climate meeting in Bonn, Germany.
'We are doing real stuff'
Gov. Jerry Brown of California echoed those comments.
"In the United States, we have a federal system, and states have real power as do cities. And when cities and states combine together, and then join with powerful corporations, that's how we get stuff done," he said.
His speech was briefly interrupted by anti-coal and anti-fracking protesters, who held up banners and shouted "We're still in! Trump's still out!"
The group calling itself "America's Pledge" said states, cities and private groups have been taking considerable steps to reduce emissions by promoting renewable energy use and climate-friendly transportation systems.
"This is a pledge, and it's a pledge that you can cash, because it's real," Brown said. "We are doing real stuff in California."
In a report, however, the group said that "we cannot underscore strongly enough the critical nature of federal engagement to achieve the deep decarbonization goals the U.S. must undertake after 2025."
Aren't prepared to wait
Daniel Firger, one of the report's contributors, said it was intended to show that many in the U.S. aren't prepared to wait for Trump to change his mind on climate change again or wait for the next administration to tackle the issue.
"The good news around Trump's announcement to withdraw is that it has galvanized a groundswell of bottom-up support from all corners of the U.S. economy," Firger said.
He noted that the lessons learned by local authorities and businesses in the U.S. could be applied elsewhere.
Also Saturday, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said in her weekly podcast that every country needs to pitch in to keep global temperatures from rising.
Merkel also said it's the responsibility of the industrial countries to develop environment-friendly technologies that are future-oriented, but "don't lead to a loss of jobs."
"We don't gain anything if steel mills, aluminum plants and copper mills leave our countries and go somewhere else where environmental regulations are less strict - because then we haven't made any gains for world climate," she said.
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Borrowing sound equipment from a rock-and-roll band performing on the courtyard stage of Katy's No Label Brewing Company, U.S. Senate candidate and current U.S. Rep. from El Paso, Beto O'Rourke, got a crowd going on Saturday as he addressed campaign issues varying from universal background checks for gun ownership to clean energy jobs.
"This is the JFK of Texas," said Constance Tran, 47, who came to express her support from Cypress.
O'Rourke's grassroots approach to his candidacy, namely avoiding any funding from political action committees, has struck a chord with constituents in the Katy area who have expressed dismay at Republican Sen. Ted Cruz's stint in Senate, including voicing concerns over his support for Alabama Senate candidate Roy Moore, who last week found himself embroiled in a sexual misconduct with minors accusation.
In an interview with the Houston Chronicle, O'Rourke criticized the Republican House's latest tax reform proposal, claiming cuts to programs such as Medicaid and university Pell grants, for the sake of corporate tax cuts will ultimately serve as a disinvestment in the country's economy.
"This is an expensive way to help people who are already wealthy," O'Rourke said.
He said he finds no logic in the top-down approach to the House's proposal, adding that it's in line with the current administration's lack of trust in science.
The Senate hopeful also delved into his support for the investment in storm-surge infrastructure in the wake of Hurricane Harvey's devastation. At the Saturday rally, one constituent thanked him for having co-sponsored an appropriations bill in 2016 meant to grant $311 million to the Army Corps of Engineers for flood control projects and storm damage reduction projects shortly after the Tax Day floods.
"Trump's pouring the concrete in the wrong place," O'Rourke said, referring to President Donald Trump's continued call for the construction of a border wall between Mexico and the United States.
Addressing the recent shooting in the First Baptist Church in Sutherland Springs, O'Rourke affirmed his belief in the need for universal background checks with no exceptions. Noting the Texan tradition of gun ownership, he added that he has found support from voters across the state and across party-lines for this policy.
"Texans get it," he said.
Though it's been over 30 years since Texas has had a Democratic senator, and while O'Rourke admits not accepting PAC funds poses a "very real risk" to his campaign, he feels the state and the country has reached a turning point that calls for leaders with his ideals.
"People (are) believing in something that perhaps before they didn't think was possible in Texas: a Democrat representing the state in the Senate," he said.
Much has been written about the remarkably similar talking points Republicans parrot whenever the country suffers another mass murder at the hands of a killer wielding a semi-automatic assault weapon: "thoughts and prayers go to victims," "not the right time to talk about guns," "politicizing this tragedy is disrespectful to the dead." The statements are so consistent it's not unreasonable to imagine that they are coordinated by and disseminated from a central authority - could it be the National Rifle Association? - in an attempt to shield the gun industry.
The pattern was depressingly, predictably repeated after Devin Kelley shot and killed 26 people at the First Baptist Church in Sutherland Springs, with a notably egregious response from Attorney General Ken Paxton, who declared that the solution to gun violence is more guns.
But there was a modest break from the Party line by our own U.S. Sen. John Cornyn, who has introduced legislation that could help prevent future massacres. He proposes to strengthen background checks by ensuring that all federal departments and agencies properly transfer criminal records to the FBI's National Instant Criminal Background Check System. Under current law, Kelley's criminal conviction while in the Air Force would have prevented him from buying a gun, but the records never made it into the system. "According to the Department of Justice, the number of these records that are actually uploaded is staggeringly low," Cornyn said.
Paxton, of course, stuck to the party line. "It's going to happen again," he opined, "so we need people in churches - either professional security or at least arming some of the parishioners, or the congregation, so they can respond when something like this happens again."
Setting aside for a moment the sheer callousness of blaming the victims for the tragedy because they didn't have the foresight to pack heat for their morning worship service, let's take a strictly clear-eyed look at what he is proposing. An AR-15 rifle, firing at least 50 rounds per minute, is terrifyingly loud, like a string of explosions going off in very rapid succession. Shell casings are spewing forth in all directions. People are screaming, children are wailing, the person next to you has been hit and you are covered in her blood. The guy walking down the aisle and killing your neighbors is dressed all in black, with a black mask and a bullet-proof vest.
Now, Mr. AG, as the parishioners are trying to keep their loved ones from being killed, you are suggesting that each should dig into a pocket or a purse, extract a pistol, release the safety, aim at a moving target and take the madman out. Trained police officers in New York City achieved a hit rate of about 28 percent in a 2006 Firearms Discharge Report described in The New York Times, so the likelihood of hitting an innocent bystander is far greater than hitting the killer.
But the real fallacy of foolish statements like Paxton's is the simple fact that most people don't want to shoot another human being. We would all like to keep our families safe, but we would prefer to do that by preventing violence before it happens. The percentage of Americans who own guns has been declining, which may explain why the gun industry doesn't want any limits on the sale of assault weapons. These guns are among their most profitable products.
Sen. Cornyn, who has never seemed completely comfortable with the Republican's hardline opposition to sensible gun legislation, has waded into the Second Amendment thicket before. After 49 people were gunned down in a nightclub in Orlando, Fla., last year, he introduced legislation that would prevent anyone on the FBI's terrorist watch list from buying a gun; it was voted down by his Republican colleagues. In the wake of the country's deadliest mass shooting at an outdoor concert in Las Vegas in October, he was "open," at least tentatively, to legislation that would ban the sale of bump stocks, the attachment that allowed Stephen Paddock, who killed and injured more than 600 people in a 10-minute fusillade, to convert his semi-automatic weapons into the equivalent of automatic rifles. That legislation has stalled.
Cornyn's efforts so far have been in vain, but this time seems different. If he is successful with this piece of legislation to strengthen background checks, we hope it will encourage him to rethink his misguided proposal to nationalize concealed carry laws, meaning a permit granted in one state would have to be recognized in all other states. Beyond its blatant trampling on the authority of each state to decide how to protect its own citizens, it flies in the face of strengthening background checks since the rigor with which states "check" gun owners for these permits varies wildly. The NRA supports the bill; many law enforcement officials do not.
This page has long advocated restrictions on assault weapons, but we will take what we can get, and Cornyn's proposals for stronger background checks and preventing terrorists from buying guns aren't a bad start. Neither of these regulations would impede any citizen from owning a gun for sport shooting, hunting or protecting home and family, but they would be far more effective than "thoughts and prayers" at preventing the gut-wrenching tragedies that have become far too commonplace in America.
Alex Brandon/STF
It's shocking, absolutely shocking, that Americans prefer the peace of mind that comes with having health care coverage for themselves and their families. It's shocking, maybe even unpatriotic, that they don't believe a president who brays that Obamacare is "dead" and that he and his pals in Congress will - one day, some day - provide them with something so much better.
Shocking it may be, but the fact is, they're not listening. Instead, they're buying insurance on the Affordable Care Act exchanges at record rates, despite the Trump administration's efforts to undercut enrollment figures by halting TV and radio advertising, cutting funds for "navigators" and spreading horror stories about skyrocketing premiums and inadequate coverage. Ignoring these termitic efforts, more than 600,000 people selected plans in the first 12 days of open enrollment, according to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. Total daily sign-ups were up 79 percent compared to the equivalent period last year.
Gun influence
Regarding "Inaction on gun laws is not the NRA's fault" (Page A15, Friday) and "Guns, politics and hunting" letters (Page A14, Friday), which are all commentaries about the latest mass shooting in Sutherland Springs. Yes, we had another mass shooting which, in my opinion, could not have been prevented. Innocent people again lost their lives for no apparent reason.
Some writers want more gun control and others argue against it. It is now estimated that there are between 5 million and 8 million assault rifles in our society. More gun control would not be able to take all of these weapons out of our society. It would be like closing the barn door after the cows have already gone out.
Others argue that any type of gun control violates the Second Amendment so our law enforcement can not restrict those on terror lists, with mental problems or even criminals from purchasing weapons (the criminals can purchase firearms at gun shows without any background check).
However, the telling thing to me out of all of these arguments is the total control that a lobby can have on our government legislators. It is a very true example that our legislators can be bought and paid for by lobbyists. This is the scary thing to me, and no one seems concerned about it.
Jose Rodriquez, Huntsville
Simply stuck
In reading the many articles regarding the recent mass shootings and the many articles regarding the damage caused by Hurricane Harvey, I couldn't help but focus on the strange similarity.
First, the immediate hysteria, then the call for a solution to prevent a recurrence, then the total lack of any action to address the next such happening.
In the case of the mass murders, there are calls for more strident measures to control just who can buy guns, more attention to those with mental disorders, bans on certain kinds of guns, etc.
In the case of Harris County and surrounding area flooding, there are calls for more reservoirs, stricter building standards, dredged bayous and creeks and on and on.
Although the shootings and the flooding are starkly dissimilar in nature, the similarity comes about in that in both situations, nothing has been done in the way of even an attempt to stave off the next such happening. Lots of committees, meetings, etc., but no direct actions.
How many of these disasters does it take to get the authorities in power to act? When will something be done because it is the right thing to do even though that action may be contrary to the wishes of the lobbyists supporting no further restrictions? I am afraid that the old saying of "follow the money" is well exemplified here.
Jim Putnam, Cypress
Possible action
Regarding "Another massacre" editorial (Page A13, Tuesday), the editorial explains the urgency of the gun issue in the United States. This issue is especially critical for those living in Texas, as our state is heavily involved in the politics of gun control.
No matter to what side we lean politically, we need to get a grip on this issue. Our country can no longer be torn apart by disagreement because the overall goal is to achieve peace. One way that we can resolve this issue is by requiring universal background checks for all gun sales and transfers of ownership. This idea is supported by 90 percent of Americans and even 72 percent of NRA members support the policy, according to a new national Public Policy Polling survey of gun owners. The momentum is there, and it is up to us to resolve a critical issue in our community.
R.J. Shah, Houston
The way we pass laws in this state is failing young Texans.
What we're talking about is how elected officials use lies to pass bad laws.
Turning lies into laws hurts our state and risks alienating a rising generation of Texans when we should be doing everything possible to encourage their participation in the political process.
That politicians ignore or distort facts for the sake of their agenda is nothing new, in Texas or across the country. But it's something that seemed to go into overdrive this year, with devastating effects.
Here are a few examples.
This year, Texas lawmakers passed a law allowing child-welfare providers that contract with the state to discriminate against LGBT families in foster care and adoption placements. The law's supporters argued that the legislation would protect "religious freedom." The reality is protections for that freedom already exist, carefully balancing the convictions of religiously affiliated child welfare service providers with the needs and beliefs of children they serve. But the truth didn't matter, and the governor signed the bill into law anyway.
The issue of abortion should be guided by established science, but instead we again saw how politics and misinformation dominate. This year lawmakers passed another unnecessary law that bans a safe, medically-proven method of abortion. They also enacted a new requirement on fetal remains.
Medical experts and others pointed to the deeply flawed arguments behind these measures, but legislators passed them anyway. The truth was legislative leaders were simply looking for excuses to put more obstacles in the way of women seeking safe, legal abortion care.
The Legislature also passed a "show your papers"-style law that targets immigrants and people of color. Law enforcement officials decried the law as making their communities less safe - the complete opposite of what its supporters assured us was needed to protect public safety.
And let's not forget about a bill that didn't become law but triggered a debate dominated by fake facts. The so-called "bathroom bill" targeted transgender Texans for discrimination and was based on numerous lies, the most pernicious of which was the outrageous suggestion that transgender people are an inherent danger to women and children.
The bill's supporters can't cite incidents in which a transgender person entered a public restroom to harm someone else. The bill was defeated, but there's a real possibility it - and the lies - will return next legislative session.
It's time to end this shameless tactic at the Texas Capitol. That's why our organizations, Texas Rising and Deeds Not Words, will travel to the state's universities this November for a series of campus forums. Our message is simple: No more lies into laws.
We're taking this message to our universities as the country nears a major milestone. It is estimated that in 2018, people ages 18-34, sometimes called Millennials, will surpass Baby Boomers to become the country's largest voting-eligible generation.
This generation of Texans has already been directly affected by another bad law based on misinformation - a voter ID measure from 2011 that bars them from using student identification to vote. Experts pointed out that the kind of voter fraud targeted by this law is virtually nonexistent. But lawmakers passed it anyway because its real purpose was to suppress voting among targeted populations, including young people.
The future of this state is increasingly in this generation's hands, and some of these Texans will one day represent us at the Capitol. So it is vital to create an environment that encourages as many members of this diverse group to get involved in the political process, on everything from voting to running for office.
Our fear, however, is that too many members of this generation will see what happened at the Legislature and choose to take a pass. And who can blame them when they see politicians who can't deal in basic facts?
We hope our forums on college campuses across the state will start a conversation about how this rising generation can lead and return our politics to a place where reality rules the day.
Untruths will only continue to produce bad policy. Our state can't continue to run on lies.
Davis, a former state senator and gubernatorial candidate, is founder of Deeds Not Words. Ayala is a student at the University of Texas-San Antonio and a member of Texas Rising, a Texas Freedom Network project focused on college campuses.
Two short months ago, our city suffered one of the most devastating natural disasters in its 180-year history. But the calamities Hurricane Harvey rained down upon us are the same as those homeless Houstonians face every single day. And they are no less deserving of our empathy, creativity and resources than are the victims of Harvey's floods.
Everyone agrees that the conditions in homeless encampments are no way for anyone to live. Mayor Sylvester Turner, his predecessor Annise Parker and the Houston City Council have taken compassionate and effective steps toward housing people in encampments. In fact, we have become national leaders in ending homelessness, bringing our veteran homelessness rate to a functional zero and reducing the overall homeless population by half.
Even so, our shelters for the homeless are full beyond capacity. People are living in encampments because they have nowhere else to go. Instead of treating encampment residents with dignity, Houston has made it a crime to live in tents, which is neither compassionate nor effective. This law does not address the root causes of homelessness or reduce it, but rather displaces homeless Houstonians by discouraging them from remaining in any one place for too long.
Criminalizing tents effectively criminalizes homelessness itself - which is unconstitutional. So encampment residents sued. And last August, they won an injunction in federal court that prevents law enforcement from citing or arresting anyone just for using a tent.
Since that injunction went into effect, Mayor Turner has used every sensationalized press conference and Facebook Live appearance to hold the American Civil Liberties Union and our clients responsible for the unsanitary conditions and crimes in the midtown and downtown encampments, while giving short shrift to other, equally serious crimes where convenient scapegoats are in shorter supply. In his court testimony and public remarks, the mayor suggests that since he is no longer permitted to arrest his way out of the problem, his hands are tied.
Of course, any crimes committed in the encampments should be investigated, and those committing them should be held responsible. Nevertheless, neither our clients nor the tents they live in are the source or the cause of violent crime on Houston's city streets.
The unsanitary conditions are not created by the tents, but because Houston's homeless have nowhere else to go. Even the mayor has conceded on numerous occasions that our homeless would not run afoul of the ordinances for merely sleeping on public property, but rather for doing so in a tent. Following that logic, it appears the City approves of the homeless living on our streets, so long as they don't get too comfortable.
Public health problems require public health solutions, not criminalization. To the mayor's question as to what the ACLU is trying to achieve in its defense of Houston's homeless, we answer: The City has not even begun to exhaust potential remedies for this crisis.
Other cities have developed innovative solutions for the very problem Houston is facing today. San Francisco's Navigation Center, for example, permits mixed-gender sleeping arrangements for homeless couples, does not prohibit entry of people with pets, provides storage for belongings and does not require sobriety or participation in religious services of its clients.
There is no particular mystery to ending homelessness. Housing ends homelessness and, thus far, the City of Houston has provided no new facilities to address the problem.
As the mayor said when he announced the ordinance, the City cannot tell its homeless that they cannot be in a particular place if it cannot provide them with somewhere else to go. To which we would add, nor can it punish people for sheltering themselves on the street in the meantime.
Surely a city with the demonstrated mettle to weather a disaster as destructive as Harvey can tackle its homelessness problem without having to create a new category of criminal whose only crime is wanting to shelter where they can; to create a new category of criminal who has no place in the Harris County jail; to create a new category of criminal by initiating cruel and unconstitutional measures like arrests and incarceration.
No one, including the ACLU and its clients, wants people to live in encampments or in the street. The only question is how we go about solving that problem collectively, effectively and humanely.
If we respond to this crisis with even a fraction of the energy, urgency and compassion we brought to Harvey's victims, we could find solutions that protect both the rights and dignity of the poorest and most vulnerable among us.
Burke is executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Texas.
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So Louis C.K. has finally been unveiled as a serial harasser of women; Hollywood's answer to the creepy mac-clad flasher in your local park. On Thursday the New York Times broke the story, which has been bubbling furiously beneath the surface of the Harvey Weinstein allegations for weeks. Five brave women came forward to tell the Times that C.K. had masturbated, or had asked to masturbate, in front of them. And guess what - no one in comedy is shocked, because everyone in the industry knew about it. Articles have been dripping out about C.K. at a rate of a couple a week for months, but a lack of named sources prevented the story from becoming an official accusation; the allegations were, until now, not allegations, more just rumours that dogged him like a swarm of flies around a cow pat. C.K. played it as masterfully as a politician - refusing to comment on 'rumours'. On Friday, he released a reluctant apology - a statement detailing his 'remorse' at the pain he had caused his victims. It is too little, too late.
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I shared one of the earlier articles on Facebook - this one, by Emma Healey. I was met with disgust by some of the men on my friends list. Because Louis C.K. was not convicted, had not even been officially accused. And more importantly, Louis C.K. is a comic genius, alright? He's one of the funniest guys of a generation. His body of work is unparalleled. And there's the reason I shared the article. I am a woman - a woman who has experienced sexual assault and harassment, and a woman who has very much enjoyed C.K.'s stand up and sitcom. The fact that I was reading an article accusing someone who I had developed respect for of harassment, intimidation and assault repulsed me - and not only was I revolted at Louis C.K.: I was revolted at myself.
I wondered why I hadn't taken C.K.'s comedy at face value; why I found his jokes funny, rather than examining them and realising they weren't jokes at all; they were just the truth, said in a deadpan way, making eye contact with members of the front row, telling them what he'd done. C.K. put it all out there for us to see; we just weren't looking hard enough. His affable shoulder shrugs, his hand wiping sweat from his balding brow - he was a nice guy, a funny guy, a father of daughters for goodness' sake. Why would we question any of that?
We didn't question it. And C.K.'s body of work grew; C.K. maintained his position as one of the greatest comedians of his generation, and with that came great power; the power to silence women, and the ability to exploit them because of that. And now we are left with the body of work, and the knowledge about the person behind it, and the question: what do we do? Is it still possible to enjoy C.K.'s work?
If you can still enjoy his comedy, by all means, I'm not going to tell you to stop watching his shows. But for me - my respect for him stopped when I began to read the steady trickle of stories about him. I will always believe women. One of the first rules when I began to volunteer for Rape Crisis was exactly that: to believe women. But I grew up in a culture where sexual assault is acceptable and rape apology is taught, and if they are believed, women are at least blamed, so that policy seemed revolutionary to me. Nowadays, it is simply terrifying to me that the default is to believe men.
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So, no. I can't watch Woody Allen films, or Polanski, or listen to Bowie. There will always be someone there to tell you that these men are 'deeply flawed', yet fantastic in their field. And I'm here to tell you that leaving the toilet seat up is a flaw. Sexual assault is a crime. The two are definitively different.
After telling you these men are flawed, these people begin to list their enormous and influential output, to remind you of their achievements. But as women, we are constantly undermined, attacked and silenced, and we do not need reminding of the great contributions to the Arts by abusive men. All this reminds us of is the fact that they are still allowed to make art; that the lived experiences of hundreds of women silenced is still not enough to silence their abusers.
BERTRAND GUAY via Getty Images
It's a sad fact of life that not everyone behaves well all of the time. We knew this long before Harvey Weinstein and Kevin Spacey were accused of sexual harassment and assault. And we knew about sexual harassment in the workplace long before recent Westminster revelations.
The key thing for me is power. This is what links the current investigations being undertaken in Westminster, Holyrood and Cardiff on the one hand with the Hollywood scandal on the other. It's about power in the workplace. Sexual harassment is wrong anywhere and has no place in our society, but the difference in the workplace is that your livelihood, perhaps even your future, is at stake.
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We need to remember that men are more than twice as likely as women to be in a senior management role; we need to remember that three quarters of pregnant women suffer discriminatory treatment in the workplace, and one in 9 lose their jobs as a result of that pregnancy; and we need to remember that the gender pay gap starts the day you graduate.
This means that, too often, the power dynamic at work disadvantages women. So those suggestive texts, that inappropriate language, that questing hand, will come not from some stranger, nor from your mate but from your boss.
Where women encounter sexual persecution in their place of work, we have to take it seriously or we may as well give up on gender equality and apologise to our daughters and admit it was all just a bit too difficult. Because there is a vicious cycle at work where the less we challenge barriers to women's careers, the more we will find them in vulnerable positions in the work place and the more we find them in junior positions, the more they will be held back by sexual harassment.
And also, to be honest, because it's the right thing to do. We need to address sexual harassment in the workplace because no woman should have to feel demeaned and humiliated by some bloke who hasn't learned that women aren't just sex objects but might be in the office to earn, to learn and to make a contribution as an equal.
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It's a particular problem in politics, where women are still under-represented and employment and engagement systems do not appear fit for purpose. We need transparent, independent and robust HR processes and we need a culture where MPs are role models not sources of embarrassment. Parliament can and must do better. It should lead. It can start by taking a look at how people are employed by MPs.
The Commission has an important role here. We will seek to use all our powers, including legal enforcement where appropriate, and we are writing to businesses to tell them the steps they should be taking to protect and empower their female employees.
And because culture is set from an early age we will be making recommendations to government on how to best educate children of both genders to understand what respect and equality mean in everyday life, so that they grow up in a world where this stuff is history.
Now go back and read those paragraphs again, because nothing in what follows should take away from that.
People should learn to behave themselves. But sadly, we should remember that they don't always. And given that, we have to ask the difficult question, which is about differentiation.
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As an extremely fortunate CEO of a national body I am not in a position of being held to ransom by some middle-aged man's testosterone-fuelled ego these days. It wasn't always thus. I remember, as a junior government lawyer, attending a reception with one of the Minister's guests draped all over me, like a cloak. What stung was a subsequent remark from a senior colleague, who asked "Who was that old geezer with his arm all over you?" I felt accused; I felt guilty; I felt embarrassed. Nevertheless, the arm wound around me (from a bloke old enough to be my dad and certainly old enough to know better) constituted foolishness rather than harassment and I am quite clear I know the difference, especially because I know women who have suffered far more serious intrusions on their person. Respect for them demands a differentiated response.
It strikes me that we need a cultural change. We need Man with Long Arms to know that his behaviour is unacceptable.
We need to end the gender pay gap and have a culture which empowers young women so that instead of feeling guilty and embarrassed, women have the confidence that they can put people's arms and hands back where they belong, in no uncertain terms, without the need for formal or public intervention but in the knowledge that they will not face retribution and their complaint will be taken seriously.
And we need to avoid the hysteria of trial by media, with all the risk that it entails of a lack of transparency and fair process. We need to remember that everyone is innocent until proved guilty. We need to have a proportionate and sustainable approach to wrongdoing, and learn the lessons America learned at the hands of Senator McCarthy - but save ourselves the price.
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Over the last few weeks, media around the world have been saturated with stories about how technology is destroying politics. In autocracies like China, the fear is of ultra-empowered Big Brother states, like that in George Orwells 1984. In democracies like the United States, the concern is that tech companies will continue to exacerbate political and social polarization by facilitating the spread of disinformation and creating ideological filter bubbles, leading to something resembling Aldous Huxleys Brave New World.
In fact, by bringing about a convergence between democracy and dictatorship, new technologies render both of these dystopian visions impossible. But that doesnt mean that there is nothing to fear.
Much of the coverage of the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China (CPC) focused on President Xi Jinpings consolidation of power. He is, observers warn, creating an information-age dictatorship, in which the technologies that were once expected to bring freedom to Chinas 1.4 billion citizens have instead enabled him to entrench his own authority. By providing the government with highly detailed information on the needs, feelings, and aspirations of ordinary Chinese, the Internet allows Chinas leaders to preempt discontent. In other words, they now use Big Data, rather than brute force, to ensure stability.
And the data are big indeed. More than 170 million face-recognition surveillance cameras track every step citizens make. An artificial-intelligence-enhanced security system can spot criminal suspects as they cycle beside a lake or purchase dumplings from a street vendor, and immediately alert the police. Data surveillance cameras feed into Chinas social credit data bank, where the regime compiles thick files on its peoples creditworthiness, consumption patterns, and overall reliability.
The CPC is also using technology to manage its own ranks, having developed dozens of apps to communicate with party members. Meanwhile, it blocks some of the empowering features of technology: by forcing all tech companies to have their servers within China, it effectively in-sources censorship.
The impact of technology on American politics has been even more visible, but it is analyzed in terms of the market, rather than the state. Among the most eye-catching stories has been the role that fake news played in shaping last years presidential election. Facebook has admitted that 126 million Americans might have seen fake news during the campaign.
More recently, Special Counsel Robert Mueller, who is conducting an investigation into whether US President Donald Trumps campaign colluded with Russias interference in the 2016 election, charged one-time campaign chairman Paul Manafort with 12 counts including conspiracy against the United States for his actions prior to the campaign. A foreign policy adviser to the Trump campaign, George Papadopoulos, was also indicted for lying to the FBI about meetings with individuals closely associated with the Russian government during the campaign, though he has already pleaded guilty and has been cooperating with investigators since the summer.
But beyond such bombshell developments is a broader anxiety about the ability of tech companies to control the information people receive. With Big Techs secret algorithms determining how we perceive the world, it is becoming increasingly difficult for people to make conscious decisions what philosophers perceive as the basic dimension of free will.
Big tech companies, worth more than some countries GDP, seek to maximize profits, not social welfare. Yet, at a time when attention is supplanting money as the most valuable commodity, the impact of their decisions is far-reaching. James Williams, a Google engineer turned academic, argues that the digital age has unleashed fierce competition for our attention, and few have benefited more than Trump, who is for the Internet what Ronald Reagan was for television.
At the same time, the impact of technology on politics is relatively independent of regime type. Technology is blurring the comforting distinction between open and closed societies, and between planned and free economies, ultimately making it impossible for either to exist in its ideal form.
By revealing the US National Security Administrations massive government surveillance, Edward Snowden made clear that the states desire for omniscience is not limited to China. On the contrary, it is central to the idea of national security in the US.
In China, things are moving in the opposite direction. To be sure, the Chinese government is pressuring the biggest tech companies to give it a direct role in corporate decision-making and direct access to their data. At the same time, however, the Internet is changing the nature of Chinese politics and the Chinese economy, pushing both to become more responsive to consumer needs.
For example, a friend who worked for the search engine Baidu explained to me how the company tries to enhance the consumer experience of censorship, testing the ways in which people prefer to be censored. Jack Ma of tech giant Alibaba thinks that China can use Big Data to design perfectly calibrated state interventions that enable it to outperform free-market economies. In the coming decades, Ma believes, the planned economy will get bigger and bigger.
In the digital age, the biggest danger is not that technology will put free and autocratic societies increasingly at odds with one another. It is that the worst fears of both Orwell and Huxley will become manifest in both types of system, creating a different kind of dystopia. With many of their deepest desires being met, citizens will have the illusion of freedom and empowerment. In reality, their lives, the information they consume, and the choices they make will be determined by algorithms and platforms controlled by unaccountable corporate or government elites.
Writer is Director of the European Council on Foreign Relations.
E-Government and e-Participation for sustainable development in Azerbaijans districts was the main topic of a training course organised in the city of Ganja by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), Ministry of Transport, Communications and High Technologies of Azerbaijan and Regional Development Public Union, according to AzVision.
Participants were informed about global trends in e-Government and e-Participation concepts and infrastructure, and Internet security.
The course brought together over 70 participants from the government agencies, businesses and civil society from Ganja and surrounding districts, as well as international and local experts. They discussed the access of citizens to public services, employment opportunities, best practices in strengthening ICT capacity of civil servants in the regions, e-signature and e-document.
Participants were also informed about global trends in e-Government and e-Participation concepts and infrastructure, Internet security, as well as e-Government portal and its services.
"ELECTRON AZERBAIJAN" handbook was presented during the training course. The handbook describes the infrastructure of the e-Government and its key components, as well as e-Gov.az e-Government Portal, the service teams available on the portal, the e-Signature and its application areas.
At the end of the training, the participants received certificates from the UNDP Azerbaijan.
The training course was organised as part of the project on modernization of sustainability and efficiency of ICT infrastructure and ICT services in Azerbaijan.
Source: https://news.az/articles/economy/126640
Lanesborough, Williamstown Voters Face School Regionalization Question Tuesday
WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. Tuesday's special town meetings in Lanesborough and Williamstown are the culmination of a process that began nearly a decade ago.
It was 2008 when Williamstown Elementary School and Lanesborough Elementary School joined together to form Superintendency Union 71 and share central administrative services. Two years later, SU71 joined forces with the junior-senior high school to which elementary students matriculate, Mount Greylock, creating the so-called "Tri-District" shared services agreement.
Back when those relationships were formed, they were seen as stepping stones on the path to fully regionalizing the North County school districts.
On Tuesday, voters in Mount Greylock's two member towns will have a chance to finish the process. Lanesborough holds its special town meeting at 6 p.m. and Williamstown at 7 p.m., both at their respective elementary schools. Both towns also have other, unrelated articles on their warrants. Child care will be available at both schools as well.
At contemporaneous town meetings in each community, residents will be asked whether to consolidate the three schools of the Tri-District into a single, expanded Mount Greylock Regional School District. If they do so, the current practice of electing a separate school committee for each elementary school will be a thing of the past, and the budgets for both preK-6 schools will be incorporated into a single spending plan that voters will be asked to approve each spring at annual town meeting.
Other than those two changes, the operation of the schools will appear very much as it does now from the outside looking in. School committee members, who are driving Tuesday's proposal, point out that the schools already share a superintendent and have been doing so for nine years (in the case of the elementary schools) or seven years (in the case of Mount Greylock), depending on how you look at it.
The bigger change, school officials say, will be the increased efficiency that comes with full regionalization efficiency that, among other things, will make it easier for the expanded district to hire a permanent superintendent and other administrative staff.
"This governance creates the structure in which our administration has to operate," WES Committee Chairman Joe Bergeron said recently of the Tri-District arrangement. "It's like being a CEO of three separate companies or if we shared the town manager with Lanesborough and New Ashford."
Bergeron and his counterpart on the LES Committee, Regina DiLego picked up the ball and ran with it last spring after the Mount Greylock School Committee decided that the regionalization effort should be led by the two elementary schools after years of study by the junior-senior high school district.
Along with other collaborators, DiLego and Bergeron developed the final proposed regional agreement that will be put to voters on Tuesday, including the critical elementary school funding piece that school officials hope satisfies concerns at the town level around the issue of local control.
They also have been at the heart of a public information effort to spread awareness of the regionalization issue in advance of the Nov. 14 special town meetings. Bergeron, DiLego and Mount Greylock School Committee Chairwoman Sheila Hebert filmed a 45-minute primer on the topic for community access television in the two towns. Bergeron has presented the plan to both the Williamstown Finance Committee, which unanimously voted to recommend voters' approval, and the Williamstown Board of Selectmen, which is scheduled to make its advisory vote on Monday, the night before town voters weigh in.
Bergeron made the "CEO" analogy during his presentation to the Williamstown Fin Comm, continuing:
"[The Tri-District superintendency] is not a desirable job among superintendents in Massachusetts. I haven't spoken to a past superintendent or a superintendent in another part of the state who thinks we have a desirable job for a superintendent to thrive in."
Bergeron said there are 275 licensed superintendents in the commonwealth, and the average tenure in a district is three years. Since Rose Ellis' retirement in 2014, the Tri-District has had two interim superintendents and one full-time superintendent whose stormy tenure of just more than a year ended abruptly amid criticism from school committee members and a letter of no-confidence signed by principals of all three schools.
"We're creating, in our corner of the state, a really challenging space to recruit and retain staff," Bergeron said. "It's not just the superintendent, but the business manager and special education director. It's across the board. We're not doing ourselves any kind of good service right now."
The Tri-District currently is led by interim Superintendent Kimberley Grady, whose former post as director of pupil personnel services is also being filled on an interim basis. The school committee members agreed to put off a search for a permanent superintendent until after the regionalization question is decided leaving the door open for a dissolution of the complicated Tri-District structure and, potentially, a return to two or three superintendents if voters reject the idea of full regionalization.
No school leaders are expressing a preference for such a drastic step. All agree that the curriculum alignment and economies of scale created by the current collaboration between the three districts have benefited students and local taxpayers.
But the school committee members are just as unified in their assertion that the current mechanism for collaboration is cumbersome and not sustainable long term.
"We're trying to create a situation where we can have many of the benefits of collaboration while putting it in a manageable structure," Bergeron told the Williamstown BOS. "I think the best you can hope for is to have a balance [between collaboration and local control].
"For me, it comes down to: Do we have a better alternative? I don't think any structure we can propose would be perfect, but we've walked the line to find the best solution."
Below is some background on elements of the 14-page agreement voters will be asked to approve on Tuesday:
Section I Type of School District
The one change here is semantic, changing the definition of the Mount Greylock Regional School District from a 7-12 district to a pre-kindergarten through 12th grade district.
Section II Location of Regional District Schools
This specifies the schools that constitute the district and specifies the process by which an additional school could be built in the unlikely event one is needed.
It also addresses the question of how a school could be closed in the district, specifying that such a step would require a majority vote in each member town. In other words, if the voters of one town reject the school closure, the school will remain open.
It is tempting to think that this language was a reaction to last spring's elementary school closure in the neighboring Adams-Cheshire Regional School District, but in fact this was a feature of the proposed regional agreement that issued from Mount Greylock's 2013 Regional District Amendment Committee.
Mount Greylock formed a committee back then that spent a year studying the regionalization question from every angle, with particular attention to the educational impacts, and the district was close to putting the regionalization question to voters four years ago. But when, after numerous applications, Mount Greylock was invited into the Massachusetts School Building Authority's building program, the regional school committee decided it needed to focus its energy on the successful completion of that process and put regionalization on the back burner.
Section III Lease of Schools in Member Towns
This is an entirely new section that deals with lease agreements between the district and the towns, which will continue to own the elementary school properties (the Mount Greylock Regional School District owns the junior-senior high school on Cold Spring Road in Williamstown).
This section was the last one modified, a modification that required a brief special meeting of the Mount Greylock School Committee to approve after the "final" agreement language was sent to the towns. The last-minute alteration, in response to a request from Lanesborough town officials, specifies that the elementary schools will continue to be available for use by the town for events, like town meetings, as long as priority is given to educational needs.
Section IV (formerly Section III in the current agreement) Pupils
This section deals with who is eligible to attend the schools, namely children who reside in the two member towns, and adds language around out-of-town placement of special education programs.
Under the proposed agreement, moving a special ed program outside the town of the affected child would require a majority vote of the school committee.
Section V The Regional School District School Committee
This section defines the composition of the regional school committee, which ultimately would look like the current Mount Greylock School Committee: seven members elected by voters from both towns with four members who reside in Williamstown and three members who reside in Lanesborough.
All seven positions would be up for election in November 2018, with staggered terms (four four-year terms and three two-year terms) in the first election and four-year terms for all seats after that.
In the meantime, the expanded district would be governed by a transition committee that includes four of the current Mount Greylock School Committee members (two residents of each town), two members of the current WES Committee and one member of the current LES Committee.
Section VI Transportation
This is a new section required by the commonwealth to specify that regional school districts are required to provide transportation for students, something that all three districts in the Tri-District already are doing.
Section VII (formerly Section V) Budget
It is fair to say that this section and the one that follows have generated the most discussion in the run-up to Tuesday's town meetings.
The text in Section VII tracks closely with the text of the current agreement with the notable exception of adding references to the School Council.
"Each such school building budget shall be prepared with the participation of a school council established as required by [Massachusetts General Law] c. 71 sec. 59C. The principal shall certify to the Superintendent that such school council is established as required by M.G.L. c.71, sec. 59C, that the council has participated in the preparation of the school building budget and that the budget is necessary and appropriate to implement the school improvement plan pursuant to M.G.L. c.71, sec. 38Q1/2 and any other applicable requirements."
The school council includes an equal number of faculty members and parents in a school and may include other community members. The parent representatives are elected by the school's Parent Teacher Organization while the teachers union appoints its representative. The school's principal serves as one of two co-chairs on the council.
As this section notes, the council is required by state law, but it is fair to say that at least one of the three Tri-District schools, WES, the council has had a low profile, to put it mildly. The reality on the ground in a single school district is that the elected school committee is the nexus of power, but in a region, school officials say, the school council would take on a greater role in advocating for the needs of its building.
Regionalization advocates say a more empowered school council addresses fears of losing "local control" over the elementary school budget, and the proposed regional agreement goes further than state law by requiring the principal to submit the budget to the superintendent and school committee.
"The school council is critical," interim Superintendent Grady told the Williamstown Board of Selectmen. "It will be working at each individual school, advocating for that school as they bring the budget forward. The local school committee goes away but then you have a robust school council at each school."
This fall, the Tri-District brought in a trainer from the Massachusetts Association of School Committees to educate members of the school councils at all three member schools about their role in school governance.
Section VIII Apportionment and Payment of Costs Incurred by the District
This piece caused the longest delay in getting the blessing of the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, which ultimately must approve all regional district agreements in the commonwealth.
And it is the section that is most changed from the proposal that came out of the 2013 RDAC process, addressing local control questions that were raised four years ago, specifically the fear that one town's decisions could drive the elementary school budget in the other town.
That has been a particular concern in Williamstown, where some have pointed to recent struggles at Mount Greylock in getting a budget through the town committee process in Lanesborough. Some have questioned Lanesborough town officials' commitment to full collaboration with their partners to the north, pointing to efforts to scuttle SU71 as recently as 2014 by a member of the LES Committee and a 2015 bid by the Lanesborough Board of Selectmen to send the town's 7th- through 12th-graders to Hoosac Valley in an effort to save money.
School committee members from both towns maintain that while town officials sometimes have challenged the Lanesborough-Williamstown partnership, Lanesborough's voters have been strong in their support. They can point to the 2016 vote on the bond to pay for the addition/renovation project at Mount Greylock, which passed with 56 percent of the vote in Lanesborough, where nearly 50 percent of registered voters turned out.
The other concern expressed by Williamstown officials: incorporating the smaller Lanesborough Elementary School into a district budget that included all three schools would disproportionately impact Williamstown's tax bill. Why? Because a smaller school, like LES, has higher per-pupil cost than does WES because of fixed costs that both schools incur, like a principal. If you took all the operating costs for all three schools into one budget and simply divide them by number of students each town sends to the three schools, the per-pupil cost for Lanesborough taxpayers would go down and the per-pupil cost for Williamstown residents would go up.
To allay all those concerns, the school committees are recommending a funding mechanism in which each town will be assessed based on the operating cost of its elementary school, without regard to the cost of operating the school in the other town.
That is what caused regulators in Boston to take more time to consider the proposed Mount Greylock agreement. Ultimately, DESE signed off on the non-traditional funding mechanism, which is rare, but not entirely without precedent in the commonwealth.
In a more traditional regional funding scheme like that currently used at Mount Greylock's junior-senior high school towns are given an assessment based on the percentage of students it has in the system.
Costs for grades 7-12 would continue to be split that way under the proposed regional agreement. But costs for the elementary schools would be separated out. The town would receive one assessment, but that number would only reflect the operating cost for the elementary school in the town (along with what it's already paying for grades 7-12).
One last note about finances:
The commonwealth, in an effort to encourage regional school districts, offers transportation subsidies to regional districts that are not available to single-school districts like Lanesborough and Williamstown. For the current fiscal year, that would have meant an additional $191,000 coming to the two towns from Boston. That is partly offset by a projected $70,000 cost that will come from aligning union contracts at the three schools.
Regionalization proponents recognize the potential $121,000 windfall, but they are not emphasizing it. They also note that current shared services, which would be made permanent under full regionalization, save the towns a combined $400,000 per year, and those savings could go away if the Tri-District goes away without regionalization.
But the thrust of their argument is not finances.
"The reason to vote in favor of this is better governance and the administration," Bergeron said. "We will be able realize savings in the future, and all of our students will benefit from the ability to better manage the schools."
Section IX Incurring of Debt
Section X Admission of Additional Towns to the District
Neither of these sections are changed from the current regional agreement.
Section XI Withdrawal
This section has new language required by the state to clarify how payment of Other Postemployment Benefits would be handled in the event of either town's withdrawal from the district.
Section XII Amendments
This section is not changed.
Section XIII Retiree Costs
This new section was required by the state to specify how retiree costs at the current elementary schools would be handled if those schools are added to the Mount Greylock district.
Volunteers from the community and Chevron employees collected tons of driftwoods and garbage during the coastal clean-up of Chevrons annual Week of Caring
Employees of Chevron Philippines Inc. (CPI), marketer of Caltex fuels and lubricants, teamed up with over 200 townsfolk and local government officials of San Pascual, Batangas to fill more than 400 trash bags which amounted to 1.47 tons of rubbish during the coastal cleanup or day four of CPIs annual Volunteer Week activity.
CPI, which maintains a terminal nearby, coincides the annual cleanup during the breeding season of the vulnerable Olive-Ridley sea turtles. Because of the coastal cleanup which started in 2007 and regular patrols of CPI security, turtle sightings along the beach have increased steadily over the years and CPI has notified the Department of Environment and Natural Resources-Protected Areas and Wildlife Bureau (DENR-PAWB) which has officially declared the area an Olive-Ridley Sea Turtle Nesting Ground in 2014.
The DENR-PAWB also trained the personnel of Chevrons Batangas Terminal in a sea turtle encounter seminar. This resulted in an increase in survival rates of newly-hatched Olive-Ridley turtles along the coastline. With the ongoing cleanup and regular patrols of CPI, even whale sharks were sighted feeding around the maritime area along Chevron Batangas Terminal.
This years coastal clean-up is made even more special as it marks the tenth year CPI has been holding the Volunteer Week.
Aside from CPI employees, the volunteers were comprised of teachers from San Pascual Central School, San Pascual Baylon Parish, barangay officials, and members of the municipal government. Caltex retailers were also part of the cleanup, as well as employees of Chevron Holdings Inc.(CHI), which provides office support to various Chevron offices worldwide.
The shoreline along Chevron Batangas Terminal is also San Pascuals only coastline. Helping clean the environment is not new to CPI employees as we have been doing this annually for the past ten years. We get to reconnect with the local community and highlight our culture of safety and health which is a key part of our operational excellence, shared Louie Zhang, CPI Country Chairman.
The yearly coastal clean-up is the final activity of the week-long WOC program which saw Chevron employees and Caltex retailers engaged in social investment in livelihood, health, safety and environment.
Attorney General Becerra Calls on Trump Administration to Enforce Rule That Prevents Dangerous Waste of Natural Gas
Sacramento, California - California Attorney General Xavier Becerra and New Mexico Attorney General Hector Balderas called on the Trump Administration to enforce and keep in place the Waste Prevention Rule. The Rule went into effect on January 17, 2017. It requires oil and natural gas producers to cut wasteful leakage of methane on federal lands. In a letter to the U.S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM), Attorney General Becerra underscored that eliminating key provisions of the Rule would be arbitrary and capricious as well as contrary to BLMs statutory mandate to prevent waste and ensure the safe and responsible development of oil and gas resources on public lands.
As a result of the Waste Prevention Rule, oil and gas operators on federal and Indian lands are required to prevent the dangerous waste of natural gas. This is a significant development, as natural gas emissions threaten the health of nearby residents and our environment, said Attorney General Becerra. If the Trump Administration suspends this Rule, we are ready to take any necessary steps to help our children breathe cleaner air and to protect our planet.
Since December 2016, California and New Mexico have been defending the Waste Prevention Rule from legal challenges brought in U.S. District Court for the District of Wyoming by industry groups and the States of Wyoming, Montana, North Dakota, and Texas. On July 5, 2017, Attorney General Becerra and Attorney General Balderas filed a lawsuit against the Trump Administration for illegally delaying the implementation of the Rule. On October 4, 2017, the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California ruled in favor of the Attorneys General, forcing the Administration to immediately implement the Rule. The next day, the U.S. Department of the Interior published a notice of proposed rulemaking in hopes of formally repealing this critical environmental measure.
Attorney General Becerra Announces Gang Takedown in Los Angeles, Riverside, San Bernardino, and Orange Counties
Sacramento, California - California Attorney General Xavier Becerra Thursday announced the arrest of 47 individuals; seizure of 36 firearms, including assault weapons; and seizure of 12 pounds of methamphetamine, three pounds of heroin, 120 pounds of marijuana, 60 pounds of cocaine, and $35,000 in criminal proceeds as part of a takedown of gang members in Los Angeles, Riverside, San Bernardino, and Orange Counties.
Todays operation targeted suspected criminal activities of the Mexican mafia and members of the Mexican drug cartel, including suspected high-ranking Mexican mafia members or associates. The alleged criminal activities included extortion, illegal firearms possession, narcotics trafficking, and assaults, for the benefit of the Mexican mafia.
There's nothing more important for any family than securing the peace of mind that the neighborhood our children play in and that we work in is safe. We took a step in that direction with today's arrest of gang members and seizure of firearms and drugs in Southern California, said Attorney General Becerra. Todays bust is a prime example of law enforcement working together at all levels to put criminals behind bars.
The operation was the product of a joint investigation by the California Department of Justices Bureau of Investigation, Special Operations Unit (SOU), the Inland Crackdown Allied Task Force, the Riverside Police Department, and the Riverside County Sheriffs Department.
With the help of the Riverside County District Attorneys Office and the Orange County District Attorneys Office, the SOU obtained approximately 30 felony arrest warrants, which included charges related to solicitation to commit murder, assault with a deadly weapon, narcotics trafficking, firearms violations, extortion, and conspiracy for the benefit of a criminal street gang.
The criminal intelligence obtained during this investigation has been shared with other law enforcement agencies in California and in other states to help combat criminal street gangs.
Governor Brown Reaffirms U.S. Commitment to Paris Agreement with Michael Bloomberg at COP23
Bonn, Germany - In his first day at the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP23), Governor Edmund G. Brown Jr., the conference's Special Advisor for States and Regions, joined Michael R. Bloomberg, the United Nations Secretary-Generals Special Envoy for Cities and Climate Change, to reaffirm the commitment of America's states, cities and businesses to the Paris Agreement and later welcomed Virginia to the Under2 Coalition at a signing ceremony with Governor Terry McAuliffe.
"When cities and states combine together and then join with powerful corporations, that's how we get stuff done," said Governor Brown at today's event at the U.S. Climate Action Pavilion, a purpose-built exhibition space sponsored by U.S. non-federal leaders at COP23. "We're here, we're in and we're not going away."
Governor Brown and Bloomberg joined forces to launch America's Pledge on climate change in July to help compile and quantify the actions of states, cities and businesses to drive down their greenhouse gas emissions consistent with the goals of the Paris Agreement. Ahead of today's event, the America's Pledge report was submitted to the United Nations detailing, for the first time to the international community, the scope and scale of non-federal climate action in the United States following the Trump administrations decision to withdraw from the Paris Agreement. Cities, states and businesses representing more than half the U.S. economy and population have declared their support for the Paris Agreement, including more than 2,300 signatories to the We Are Still In declaration.
Governor Brown delivers remarks at U.S. Climate Action Pavilion.
Front row, left to right: United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change Executive Secretary Patricia Espinosa; Bloomberg; COP23 President Prime Minister of Fiji Frank Bainimarama; and Governor Brown. Second row, left to right: Pittsburgh Mayor Bill Peduto; Senator Ed Markey of Massachusetts; Californias Secretary for Environmental Protection Matt Rodriquez; Rocky Mountain Institute CEO Jules Kortenhorst; Senator Ben Cardin of Maryland; and Walmart Senior Vice President of Sustainability Laura Phillips.
The group of American cities, states, and businesses who remain committed to the Paris Agreement represents a bigger economy than any nation outside the U.S. and China, said Bloomberg. Together they are helping deliver on the promise of the agreement and ensuring the U.S. remains a global leader in the fight against climate change. In Paris, the U.S. pledged to measure and report our progress reducing emissions alongside every other nation. Through Americas Pledge, were doing just that, and were going to continue to uphold our end of the deal, with or without Washington.
Today's event also featured remarks from United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) Executive Secretary Patricia Espinosa, COP23 President Prime Minister of Fiji Frank Bainimarama, as well as Senator Ben Cardin of Maryland, Senator Ed Markey of Massachusetts, Pittsburgh Mayor Bill Peduto, Walmart Senior Vice President of Sustainability Laura Phillips and Californias Secretary for Environmental Protection Matt Rodriquez.
If the challenge of climate change is to be solved and the opportunities of a low carbon transition harvested we need all sectors of society in all nations fully on board, said UNFCCC Executive Secretary Espinosa. Cities, states, regions and territories have, along with business and civil society, been an inspiration before, during, at and following Paris. Here I want to pay tribute to Jerry Brown, Californias Governor, UN Special Envoy Michael Bloomberg and all the states and cities of the USA who have been aligning their pledges and actions with the Paris Climate Change Agreement. You are part of an unstoppable movement that is stretching North and South, East and West. With greater speed, ever higher ambition and by joining hands with all actors world-wide, we can together reach our shared goals.
"To achieve the goals of the Paris Agreement, we are helping to build a Grand Coalition to accelerate climate action across all nations and at every level of society, said COP23 President Prime Minister Bainimarama. So I am delighted to welcome the commitments that have been made through Americas Pledge from members of that coalition in the US among the non-state actors such as governors and mayors. This imaginative initiative by Governor Brown and Michael Bloomberg shows that the campaign for climate action in America remains strong. I also hope that it is a model that can be followed elsewhere in the world as we bring everyone together to pursue a more ambitious response to the challenge of climate change"
Later in the day, Governor Brown joined Virginia Governor McAuliffe at an Under2 Coalition signing ceremony. With the addition of Virginia, the Under2 Coalition now includes 189 cities, states and countries collectively representing more than 1.2 billion people and $29.4 trillion GDP equivalent to over 16 percent of the global population and 39 percent of the global economy.
Virginia is driving clean energy investment and carbon reduction despite the Presidents decision to withdraw from the Paris Climate Agreement, said Governor McAuliffe. In the absence of leadership in Washington, Virginia is stepping up to sign the Under2 Memorandum of Understanding. Virginia will meet the challenge of climate change head on, and we will do so in a way that grows our clean energy sector and supports our new Virginia economy.
Today's signing ceremony followed a meeting organized by The Climate Group the Secretariat of the Under2 Coalition featuring leaders representing dozens of member governments. The signing ceremony was witnessed by Oregon Governor Kate Brown; Baden-Wurttemberg Minister-President Winfried Kretschmann and Minister of the Environment, Climate Protection and the Energy Sector Franz Untersteller; Quebec Minister of Sustainable Development, the Environment and the Fight Against Climate Change Isabelle Melancon; North Rhine-Westphalia Minister for Economic Affairs, Innovation, Digitization and Energy Andreas Pinkwart; and KwaZulu-Natal Member of the Executive Council (MEC) for Social Development Weziwe Thusi.
"It is great to see another US state ready and willing to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions by committing to the Under2 Coalition," said The Climate Group CEO Helen Clarkson. "This is another example of the strong leadership on climate action that weve seen from US states over the past few months, despite the position of the federal government. We hope that more sub-national governments around the world take up such ambitious climate action.
Members of the coalition, formed in 2015 ahead of COP21, pledge to limit greenhouse gas emissions to 2 tons per capita or 80 to 95 percent below 1990 levels by 2050, and support the Paris Agreements goal of keeping the increase in global average temperature to below 2 degrees Celsius, the level of potentially catastrophic consequences.
Governor Brown meets with officials from Under2 Coalition member governments.
Left to right: MEC Thusi; Oregon Governor Brown; Minister Untersteller; Climate Group CEO Clarkson; Minister-President Kretschmann; Governor McAuliffe (seated); NextGen Amercica President Tom Steyer; California Governor Brown; and Minister Melancon.
Governor Brown also participated in a panel discussion on the role of California businesses in advancing climate policy and achieving the goals of the Paris Agreement featuring Fetzer Vineyards Chief Operating Officer Cindy DeVries, PG&E Senior Vice President, Strategy and Policy Steve Malnight and Kaiser Permanente Vice President and Environmental Stewardship Officer Kathy Gerwig.
Governor Brown joins panel discussion on decarbonizing the economy.
Tomorrow in Bonn, Governor Brown will deliver keynote remarks on local and regional climate action at the opening session of ICLEI's COP23 Climate Summit of Local and Regional Leaders, co-hosted with the City of Bonn and State of North Rhine-Westphalia; join state and regional members of the Under2 Coalition for a panel discussion organized by The Climate Group; deliver a keynote address at a renewable energy event organized by IRENA featuring leaders from the UNFCCC, Fiji, Germany and Deutsche Post DHL; and give remarks at an event hosted by the United Nations Environment Programme's Climate and Clean Air Coalition recognizing efforts to curb super pollutants.
Yesterday in Oslo, Governor Brown met with Norway's Prime Minister Erna Solberg and convened a first-of-its-kind meeting with representatives of the world's leading independent national academies of science to review climate impacts and discuss how scientists and policymakers can more effectively translate research findings into meaningful action.
Over the past week in Brussels, Belgium, Governor Brown delivered opening remarks at a high-level conference on clean energy organized by the European Parliament and European Commission, met with the president of the European Parliament and the European Union's top representatives at COP23, joined members of the European Parliament's top climate and environmental committee and the leaders of the Parliament's political parties for an extensive discussion on opportunities for further collaboration on climate action, and highlighted California's local and global efforts to fight climate change at an event organized by the German Marshall Fund. In Stuttgart, Germany, the Governor also met with Under2 Coalition co-founder Baden- Wurttemberg's Minister-President and delivered remarks before the state parliament. Last weekend, Governor Brown delivered keynote remarks at a symposium on climate change hosted by the Pontifical Academy of Sciences at the Vatican.
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The eight prototypes for Donald Trumps Great Wall now stand solid on the US-Mexico border an open sign of hostility to the residents of Tijuana, an ominous and foreboding statement of unwelcome. For onlookers they stand as real, tangible evidence that Trump intends to follow through with the central promise to his presidential campaign.
The construction, which is set to cost $21.6bn and take three years to complete, could end up being the most expensive capital project in US history.
Its no surprise that the Trump administration has found no difficulty in attracting contractors hoping to get a piece of the action.
The prototypes, erected in late October, will now be subject to months of rigorous testing to ensure no one is able to slip through the cracks.
The brief is to create a wall that can withstand up to an hour of high impact drilling, sawing and hammering. In order to minimise tampering all exposed fixtures must be on the US side while remaining visually pleasing (on just the US side of course) and fit into local surroundings.
The minimum height requirement on the prototypes is 18ft, though many it appears have scarcely strayed away from around the 30ft mark. All structures must extend at least 6ft below ground (though patrol officers have alluded to reporters that many extend much further than that).
Creatively, it appears border enforcement has given designers free rein. All eight prototypes vary greatly in material, shape and colour. Though the enforcement agents have insisted the wall must be mechanically impossible to scale, the construction companies have interpreted this in different ways.
Some have included Berlin Wall-esque tubing at the top to prevent homemade ladders or ropes from being able to make purchase. Others have created ramps, and wider bases. Of the six bidders for the project, just one is based outside of the United States.
Tests will determine how effective the walls are to potential assaults (Reuters)
WG Yates and Son: based in Philadelphia, Mississipi, the family-owned construction company is one of the countrys biggest, having dabbled in everything from airports and luxury apartments to prisons. It made the Forbes list of Americas 200 largest privately owned companies in 2015.
Yates was contracted to create two prototypes, the first made of corrugated metal panelling and the second concrete. Both have a large round pipe at their height to prevent scaling. They appear to look the same on either side of the border.
Texas Sterling Construction: the contractors from Houston, Sterling describes itself as the premier civil contractor in Texas, and specialises ordinarily in highways and bridges. Its design greatly differs depending on which side of the border you are on.
The US side uses brick patterning to fill the aesthetically pleasing quota, while the Mexican side is made up of metal panelling with barbed wire spikes hanging over the top.
Caddell Construction: another company to land two commissions, Caddell is based in Montgomery, Alabama. Its website features testimony from the warden of a prison in its home state as the best construction team of his career. The company has recently been establishing itself further afield, winning contracts for US embassies in Athens, Nairobi... and Mexico City.
Caddells walls differ greatly. The first is concrete, with a slender neck that expands at the base, but only on the US side on the Mexican side it is a sheer concrete drop. The second features see-through metal bars at the bottom, with concrete blocks at the top. The second design looks the same on either side of the border.
Fisher Sand & Gravel: Arizona-based Fisher Sand is part of Fisher Industries, which was selected as one of Prairie Business magazines 50 best places to work. It appears prepared for the task ahead if its company motto We like the TOUGH jobs! is anything to by.
Its wall features a gradual slope to the top, making climbing incredibly difficult the wall looks the same on either side and has been painted brown to fit into local surroundings.
The blue design of ELTA makes it stand out from the rest of the contenders (REUTERS)
KWR Construction Inc: Fellow Arizonians KWR created the most expensive prototype on-site. In a statement released on its website after being chosen as one of the eight successful designers, it insisted that if the fence was inevitable it might as well be built well, and by us. They carried on their cheery tone by declaring: All of us can make lemonade out of what some might call a lemon.
Its design is made of metal, and is see-through to ensure visibility on either side. It features a round pipe at the top.
ELTA North America: ELTA, or Israel Aerospace Industries, is one of Israels leading defence contractors, specialising in military aircraft, missiles and target acquisition. It is the only shortlisted bid to come from outside of the US, and the only company which doesnt specialise in civil construction.
Its wall is the most colourful of the lot, with a pale blue concrete base and an electric blue metal grating at the top.
There isnt likely to be a single winner to come from the tests on the eight prototypes. Instead the US Border Patrol will take whatever it learns from the tests and incorporate it into a final design.
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This coming Thursday is Beaujolais Nouveau Day and the excitement is, er, mounting. Or not. Since its heyday in the late 1980s, interest in this annual marketing wheeze for the first release of the fresh young wine made from gamay grapes, picked just a few weeks previously in the Beaujolais region of France, has declined massively.
While its still a bit of a thing in France, there are no longer any competitions to get the wine to the UK as soon as possible by trains planes and cars after its release at midnight on the third Thursday in November. And we consume a fraction of what we did at the peak, apart from, curiously, South Wales and particularly Swansea where the event has become an embedded local tradition and, even more curiously, in Japan, which imports around seven million bottles, compared to say, the UKs 300,000.
Reasons for the decline were simple: enthusiasm was eventually dampened by a glut of a poor quality, mass-produced plonk, which tasted thin and acidic and, even at its best, this is a light, fruity, fresh wine, best drunk chilled: who wants that in the middle of a cold and damp British November? And as wine tastes broadened, we discovered different wines and the New World.
What both the fuss and subsequent disenchantment with the wine obscured and which the area is now anxious to celebrate are the glorious wines of the Beaujolais Villages AOC region and in particular the 10 villages accorded cru status, each of which have their own distinctive, beguiling and subtly different qualities determined by the work of individual producers and combinations of soil and climate which create elegant, seductive wines. And they are not allowed to produce nouveau, which comes from the broader region; most dont actually mention Beaujolais very much on their labels.
So which Beaujolais wines should you be racing to try?
Regnie, the most recent cru to be recognised, in 1988, is one of the villages to produce lighter wines and was also allegedly where some of the first vines of the region were planted, by the Romans. The old vines used by an Anglo-Canadian husband and wife team to make Cuvee Helene Maison Des Bulliats, Regnie 2016 (12.99 Laithwaites.co.uk) may not date back that far but they impart an intensity to this wines succulent, brambly fruit flavours. In summer, this would be better slightly chilled, but in winter, drink cool ie from a cellar or pantry with chicken, charcuterie and robust fish dishes.
The 2015 vintage was widely recognised as one of the best for years, producing wines that were generally riper and rich than most. For a great example try the Bernard Metrat Fleurie La Roilette Cuvee Vieilles Vignes 2015 (14.75 Agwines.com; 14.99 Twelvegreenbottleswine.co.uk) more old vines and brambly fruit again, this time from the village of Fleurie, but delivering a focused, wine, with plenty of tannic structure and shot through with the characteristic supple freshness that makes all these wines so drinkable. Drink now, with full flavoured foods and hard cheeses but will get better over the next few years. From the equally gorgeously named village of Saint Amour comes another 2015 gem, the Piron St Amour (13 Marksandspencers.com) which is lighter bodied and has fresh, crisp flavours of red fruit and a touch of spice, making it ideal, as M&S recommend, for seared tuna. Again, drink cool for better effect.
The wines of the Morgon cru are among the heavier of the region and the hillside of Cote du Py, where the soil is schist, rather than the dominant granite, is said to be where the richest and earthiest wines are produced. The Domaine Jean-Marc Burgaud, Morgon Cote du Py 2014 (12.95 Thewinesociety.com) is powerful, concentrated and elegant and from a highly rated producer.
Not all Beaujolais villages are accorded cru status, but many aspire to it, including the village of Lantignie, north of Regnie, where the soils are said to be similar to those of the Cote de Py and which may lead to it being awarded the accolade in the future. Here, Burgauds cousin Alexandre creates his own distinctive wines, where the dominant flavours are of black fruits; Alexandre Burgaud Beaujolais-Villages Lantignie, 2015 (10.95 Bbr.com) is also, at 14% ABV, at least 1.5% higher in alcohol than other Beaujolais wines. But as a 2015 bottling, at this price, its a bargain and a great wine to stock up for the festive season.
Cant decide which cru might deserve your cash? Then try the excellent Henry Fessy Beaujolais Villages 2015 (10.00 Bcfw.co.uk) from a very reliable producer (who also do some excellent cru wines) and made with grapes drawn from a number of villages in the north of the region; its floral, juicy, supple flavours should soon convert you to the real wines of the region. Even if you are from Swansea...
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Thousands of pro-Brexit tweets sent the day of the EU referendum were from the Russian troll factory behind similar pro-Trump tweets sent during last years US presidential election, it has been revealed.
Tweets in English, made to look like individual users from the UK and the EU, were posted on the day of the referendum using hashtags such as #EUref, #BrexitInOut, #BritainInOut and #BrexitOrNot as part of a campaign to influence the vote.
They are believed to be part of the thousands of tweets written at the Internet Research Factory, a troll factory in St Petersburg which is thought to have been behind the thousands of fake news posts spread on social media during the US Presidential election.
These Brexit-specific tweets are thought to be included in the 2,700 handed over to the US House Intelligence Committee as part of its probe into whether Russia interfered with the US election and whether the Trump Campaign colluded with them.
Many tweets mocked the warnings of the Remain campaign, which said the country faced years of economic uncertainty and a potential recession if it voted to leave, with memes such as one which said: If you Brexit your car wont start in the morning.
An anonymous whistleblower at the Kremlin-backed centre told the Mail on Sunday: We were active on social media, including Twitter, mainly posting on contentious topics obsessing the Brits.
The trolls are believed to work around 8am-8pm Moscow time (5am-5pm UK time) posting thousands of tweets encouraging partisan political divisions in European countries.
The scale and speed at which the tweets were produced suggested they are not spontaneous or genuine one account, called @PeterMagLob who was pretending to be German, tweeted 20 times an hour during polling day.
UK news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 UK news in pictures 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 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Haaland went on to score a hattrick, his third of the season in the Premier League. City beat United 6-3. Manchester City FC/Getty UK news in pictures 1 October 2022 Protesters hold up flags and placards at a protest in London. A variety of protest groups including Enough is Enough, Don't Pay and Just Stop Oil all demonstrated on the day AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 30 September 2022 British Prime Minister Liz Truss, who has not been seen in days, leaves the back of Downing Street after a meeting with Office For Budget Responsibility following the release of her governments mini-budget Getty UK news in pictures 29 September 2022 The Virginia creeper foliage on the Tu Hwnt i'r Bont (Beyond the Bridge) Llanwrst, Conwy North Wales, has changed colour from green to red in at the start of Autumn. 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Damian Collins, the chairman of the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport select committee, said he was not surprised at the news as he had already written to social media giants such as Twitter and Facebook asking them to reveal the Russian accounts which posted about UK politics.
He said: This is the tip of the iceberg. From even the limited research that has been done, it is clear Russian organisations sought to target and influence voters during the Brexit debate.
These are early days in understanding the scale of this threat to our democracy, but it is vital that we do.
'Thats why Ive asked Facebook and Twitter to give full disclosure in UK elections and the Brexit referendum to the DCMS committee inquiry into fake news.
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The night before Kristallnacht the infamous date in November 1938 when synagogues burned across Germany and the Nazis arrested tens of thousands of Jews my fathers family escaped from Berlin and fled to one of the few places in the world willing to take in Jewish refugees. They settled in Sosua, a remote beach town on the northern coast of the Dominican Republic, whose dictator, Rafael Trujillo, had offered Jews safety for a promise to develop the land.
This is the story I heard countless times. It was paradise, my 89-year-old Aunt Hella would say, weaving my familys heritage into a little-known part of Holocaust history.
But the story never entirely made sense.
As it was told to me, a small Caribbean country saved my family at a time when more powerful nations such as the United States and Britain refused to do the same. In return, the Jews transformed a jungle coastline into a peaceful settlement with a hospital and a school. My grandfather, a salesman by trade, became the village baker. Hundreds of others accountants, nurses, tailors learned to ride horses and clear roads.
When the settlers arrived in Sosua, the beach was a quiet, peaceful spot. Today it is a site for prostitution (American Jewish Joint Distributi)
The story always ended the same way, and with little explanation. Sosua had been ruined, I was told, its streets overrun by prostitutes and foreigners. The town had become a destination for sex tourism, tainted by pickpockets and drugs. My family moved away, like so many others, and never returned.
My father lives in Santo Domingo, where I was raised, and his parents and two sisters ended up in Miami. People often act surprised when I tell them that Im Jewish and Dominican, and Ive yet to meet anyone who knows about Sosua. Never forget, people say about the Holocaust. But this part of Jewish history has been almost entirely lost, and the story Id been told seemed incomplete.
I thought I knew the beginning and the end. In July, I left for Sosua to find out the rest. It quickly became clear why so many chose to forget.
The first thing I wanted to see was the beach. I remembered seeing photos of my fathers family along the shore. The refugees would hang their clothes on sea grape trees and wade into the shallow waters. After school, the village children would often have the beach to themselves.
My father warned me to stay away. The beach, he said, had become a site for prostitution and crime.
Gathering place: the Codik family home (Sosua Virtual Museum)
Could it really be that dangerous? I remembered going there as a kid, but I hadnt been back to the town in more than a decade. I asked Ivonne Strauss de Milz, a family friend and a descendant of refugees who lives in Sosua, to take me there. Is that the purse youre taking? she asked, then instructed me to zip it shut.
The shore was strewn with mismatched umbrellas and beach chairs scattered in front of hundreds of shacks selling cigars, souvenirs, Presidente beer and Dominican aphrodisiacs. It didnt look that unsafe. But around the beach, several people later told me, tourists can find any type of sex they might want: straight, gay, sex with trans people even illegal sex with minors.
Prostitution has long been a part of Dominican culture, but nowhere does it feel more entrenched than in Sosua. Elsewhere, the industry exists in the grays of life, largely unregulated, widely known but rarely seen.The sex trade took off there in the 1980s and 90s, after a nearby airport opened and foreign tourists flooded the town. Over the next few decades, the hotel industry boomed, and Dominican women, facing insecure and low-paying job prospects, headed for Sosua hoping to find more profitable work. As prostitution increased, it drew more tourists looking for sex, and the town got a reputation as a major sex-tourism destination. Today, a short walk from the beach, on the main drag of Calle Pedro Clisante, dozens of prostitutes line the sidewalk in front of the busy open-air restaurants and bars filled with foreign men.
Sosua has a before and after, said Alexandra Lister, a program manager with CEPROSH, a health organization based in Puerto Plata, who has worked with sex workers in the region since the 1990s. And the after isnt pretty.
The Codik family pose for a portrait in Santa Domingo, Dominican Republic (Family photo)
Many longtime locals, like Ivonne, are upset that prostitution has consumed Sosuas reputation. Efforts to discourage the trade have failed, and its prevalence means that the towns businesses hotels, restaurants, cafes benefit from it, whether the owners condone sex work or not.
As we drove away, Ivonne pointed out one hotel. It was a three-story building, painted lime green and white, where she said my grandparents house had once stood.
A man named Joe Benjamin had lived next door. Before my trip, several people had told me to speak with him. He understood why Sosua had changed. He was the one I was going to see next.
Joes family arrived in Sosua in 1947, part of the last refugee group selected by the Dominican Republic Settlement Association, an organization founded by the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC) in New York, which sought safety and relief for Jews. In 1938, Trujillo had offered to take in up to 100,000 refugees. In turn, the association funded and populated Sosua, but the outbreak of World War II and a 1941 Nazi ban on Jewish emigration meant that only about 4,000 visas were ever issued.
The association gave farmers like Joes father a mule, a horse, 10 cows and 75 acres of land. In the early days, urban transplants wearing wide straw hats rode horse-drawn wagons from one plot to the next. Joe told me that his father, once a furniture maker, got up at 4:30am every day to milk his cows.
On weekends, a projector would light up at the theatre in town for a matinee movie. Joe and his sister would make the two-kilometre walk back to the family farm in the dark. He never told his parents where he was going. Nobody feared anything then.
The writer's aunt, Hella Blum, a teacher, with her class (American Jewish Joint Distributi)
For decades, Joe, now 76, was an executive with a successful dairy and meat co-operative founded by Sosuas Jews. Today, he lives in a spacious house on the outskirts of town, in a plush development behind a guarded security gate. He told me how hed slept with his windows open as a kid. He remembered the town library, the cafe, the nights when everyone gathered around a record player to listen to opera.
But I had heard those stories before. I wondered if that was all he knew.
There was a long pause. What else is important for me to know? I asked.
There are things you wont find in the history books, he said.
Then he made a reference to a best-selling book I had never read, about a fictional small town where sex, gossip and scandal hide behind the pretence of paradise.
Sosua, he said, was a small Peyton Place.
I didnt understand. What did a racy novel have to do with my familys past?
The few published works about Sosua read like history textbooks. But there were other texts and documents that I had never seen, and I knew where to find them.
Next door to the town synagogue that the refugees founded is a small Jewish museum. The synagogue offers services only a few times a year and isnt visited much, and peeling paint covers the museum doors. Inside, I found a damaged photo of my Aunt Margots wedding. Documents on display showed the stains of age. A map of Sosua had lost one of its adhesive letters and now read only Sosu. A group of descendants, including Ivonne and Joe, had planned to raise funds for a renovation, but the efforts have yet to get off the ground.
Developing the land in exchange for refuge (American Jewish Joint Distributi)
The museum archives were in a tiny air-conditioned room in the back. Dozens of boxes sat on industrial steel shelves, some labelled, others not. It was overwhelming. There was so much history here, little of it digitized, none of it known to me. I started pulling tan and crinkled sheets out of folders, searching for clues.
I found a file for my Uncle Max, my Aunt Hellas husband. Stashed inside, a form detailed my aunts journey from Germany to the Dominican Republic. I had to read it twice. What it said went against every story I had been told about my familys escape from the Nazis.
They didnt flee Berlin the night before Kristallnacht. Theyd left a month earlier Oct. 12, 1938 and arrived in the Dominican Republic in November. A separate list of settlers revealed that the family arrived in Sosua in stages, starting in 1947, much later than Id thought.
Leaving on the eve of Kristallnacht had always been a key part of our story, a hurried exit from Berlin at just the right moment, before Nazi mobs stormed Jewish neighbourhoods, killing at least 91 Jews, and antisemitism took a more violent and radical turn. So was their time in Sosua, but the reality was that they didnt arrive there until after the war.
I had never asked about the timeline. Instead, I pictured them abandoning an apartment in Berlin and finding refuge in a rustic home in Sosua. It was a reminder of how stories, consciously or not, can be romanticized as we retell them, even to ourselves.
Max Blum, the writer's uncle, sells homeware at his store (American Jewish Joint Distributi)
I started digging deeper into the archives, looking for anything that could provide a hint about what Joe had told me. Fraying papers, many stashed haphazardly in folders and boxes, detailed transcripts of meetings, vital records, academic papers and memos sent from Sosua to the settlement association in New York.
On one shelf, I saw a narrow light-blue box labeled exit interviews. Ivonne, who helps run the museum, had never seen it before, and from the looks of what was inside, nobody had seen it for years. I pulled it onto the table. Inside were several testimonials from refugees, all men, who had abandoned Sosua and were apparently questioned by the settlement association about why theyd left.
I could not stay [sic] the sun, said a 29-year-old Austrian.
I had nothing to do there, said a 27-year-old Romanian.
The agricultural work was too hard for me, said a 34-year-old Pole.
Then there were two others, Tibor Meister, a 24-year-old Hungarian textile technician, and Louis Lajos Klein, a 28-year-old Czech mechanic, who cited not the towns conditions, but tensions in Sosua that left them both feeling panicked.
The synagogue in the 1940s (Sosua Virtual Museum)
Meister said he was threatened by a group of German Jews in the dormitory.
I have been attacked by some twelve men while sleeping in my bed, Klein said. That is why I preferred to leave Sosua of fear they might repeat it or kill me.
Until then, Id heard that people left Sosua in search of better work or education. No one had ever mentioned violence. Could it have been true?
The JDC doesnt have a record of the incident, but in Tropical Zion: General Trujillo, FDR and the Jews of Sosua, historian Allen Wells says the settlement association asked 45 troublemakers discontented colonists whose presence was undermining morale to leave Sosua for Ciudad Trujillo in 1942. Meister and Klein and the others could have been part of that group.
Among other files, I found an analysis written by former settler Ann Bandler for Columbia University in 1956. She suggested that Sosuas administration had demonstrated an impractical idealismand blamed it for much of what had gone wrong. With proper planning and management, these middle-class, white-collar Europeans could have built the new life they had been promised. Instead, the early settlers had felt dispirited and pessimistic from the start.
They came to Sosua unprepared, unexperienced, unselected, the document said. It is not sufficient to benevolently take these people away from their past sufferings and only deposit them in an undeveloped area.
A parade of experts, Bandler wrote, had made plans for Sosua, advising the refugees to plant bananas, raise livestock or grow tomatoes; that last effort resulted in such a failure that a large surplus of tomatoes spoiled and was thrown into the sea.
The land they had been instructed to develop turned out to be better suited for pasture than farming, and the Jews ended up finding success in a dairy and meat operation that ironically sold pork.
But the administrations unkept promises and poor directions bred resentment, Bandler wrote, until antagonism toward it became the main bond among the settlers.
The JDC acknowledges that Sosuas refugees faced considerable challenges. The context under which these efforts occurred was totally unprecedented: a war raging, the Holocaust in full force and many countries closing their doors to Jews, Linda Levi, director of the JDC archives, later wrote me in an email.
A Star of David monument stands near the shore at Sosua (Washington Post)
Still, with every page I read, the story that Sosua had been some sort of paradise, the story I had always been told, started to come apart.
Documents hidden away in the archives revealed tensions I had never heard about, between Austrians and Germans, between those who lived in town and those on farms, and those who wanted to improve the community and those who wanted to abandon it and immigrate to the United States.
It wasnt unusual for the Jews to fight among themselves. People screamed at each other at community meetings. Divisions emerged over who would be the boss and how to address the towns problems.
On a warm night, while one refugee listened to a German radio broadcast, another became enraged by the propaganda, according to a manuscript written by a former resident, Ernest B. Hofeller. He entered his room, ripped the radio out of its socket causing a short circuit and smashed it, Hofeller wrote.
One main reason Sosua fell apart, several refugees said in interviews, was simple. It wasnt only the backbreaking agricultural work, the infighting, the culture shock or the desire to find a better life in the States.
There were very, very few girls, refugee Ruth Kohn, 90, now living in Springfield, Va., told me. Single men had trouble finding marriageable partners in Sosua, giving them even less reason to stay. In 1942, according to the JDC, among a population of 472 were 158 single men and 38 single women.
The settlement association had looked for young men with an agricultural background who could develop the land, and women were less likely to leave Europe on their own. Trujillo also sought out men, hoping that the wave of immigrants from Europe would intermarry with Dominicans and whiten his nations people.
History lesson: The Jewish Museum at Sosua (Washington Post)
Settlers had to ask the administration for permission any time they wanted to leave Sosua, and the nearest major town was hours away by horseback or about an hour by car, making romance between Dominicans and Jews difficult. These conditions helped spawn cases of adultery in the small community, constantly witnessed and whispered about.
You never knew in the morning when you woke up which young man had slept with a married woman, Kohn said.
But it wasnt only single men sleeping with married women. The settlers gossiped about both husbands and wives engaging in affairs, Joe Benjamin told me, and the Columbia University analysis mentioned a sexual turpitude that had resulted in cases of syphilis.
It made me think of a short passage in Dominican Haven: The Jewish Refugee Settlement in Sosua, one of the few books published about the town, that now made a lot more sense. In the 255-page book, a few paragraphs, easily overlooked, mentioned these dalliances: In 1942, doctors warned men to stay away from bordellos and unknown women and, assuming their advice would be ignored, to use condoms.
The bordellos in question were in Charamicos, a poor neighbourhood on the south end of the beach. The refugees had populated El Batey on the north end, and those looking for sex would discreetly venture south. Todays sex industry is completely different, employing women from across the Dominican Republic and Haiti, who take spins around town and on the beach looking for clients.
The beach at Sosua today (Washington Post)
Everything is just much more visible, said Denise Brennan, a Georgetown University professor who wrote the book Whats Love Got to Do With It? about Sosuas sex industry.
Still, it was the Jews not the tourists blamed for Sosuas demise who first visited prostitutes. But that part of the story had been conveniently lost in the retelling.
When I got back from Sosua, I called my Aunt Hella and told her that the archives told a different story about our familys journey. She said that the night before Kristallnacht must have been when they arrived in the Dominican Republic, not when they left Berlin.
She told me that the first few years in the country were hard my grandparents struggled to learn Spanish and earn money. Records the JDC sent me revealed more details: In Santo Domingo, then called Ciudad Trujillo, my grandfather tried selling tableware, peddling kitchen coal, working as a carpenter and serving as a messenger. But despite working hard, he said he still couldnt make a living.
Maybe thats why he decided to move to Sosua. My Aunt Hella was the first to go, after marrying my Uncle Max, one of Sosuas early settlers, at 19. The rest followed her. Hella and Max stayed in Sosua only a few years. My grandparents lived there through the late 1950s, while my Aunt Margot and Uncle Vittorio remained until the 1960s.
It was hard getting used to life in Sosua, Aunt Hella said, but she refused to believe the story about the attack in the barracks. That must have happened before she got there, she said. She never saw any violence like that.
I asked her about the affairs.
Yes, people would trade partners, she said. That was a mess.
Why dont people talk about those things? I told her that Id gone to Sosua to find out what had happened. I left thinking that idealism has always been a part of the town, woven even into the stories we tell.
There were challenges in Sosua, she said, but everyone could live however they wanted, far from the Nazis and without fear of persecution.
They were free, she said.
That was what mattered, of course. Sosuas legacy is that it saved so many lives. Its easier to hide the storys difficult aspects in a dusty box in a locked room in a small beach town, and its more comfortable to remember the town as a perfect haven.
But the stories we tell ourselves become history, and the full version of what happened in Sosua is being lost. The town has become so foreign to those who left that some have vowed never to return, pushing it deep into their memories.
My Aunt Hella told me about one of the last times she visited, with her brother-in-law, Vittorio, more than a decade ago. She stood in the middle of the town, stunned at how things had changed, and turned to her brother-in-law.
Lets forget about this, she said.
Washington Post
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Nasa has released awe-inspiring new images of Jupiter sent back by its Juno probe.
A mass of clouds swirling in a huge storm over the planet's southern hemisphere can be seen in intricate detail in one picture taken by the spacecraft.
The colour-enhanced image was captured on 24 October during Juno's ninth close flyby of the gas giant, said Nasa.
The spacecraft was 20,577 miles (33,115km) from the tops of the clouds in the 'String of Pearls' - one of the planet's eight massive storms - when the image was taken.
The picture was processed by citizen scientists Gerald Eichstadt and Sean Doran using data from Juno's camera, the agency said.
It is part of a trove of new pictures released by Nasa this week.
Nasa releases raw data to the public allowing scientists to create stunning images of Jupiter (NASA/SwRI/MSSS/Gerald Eichstadt/Sean Doran)
The agency releases raw data captured by the probe to the public, allowing scientists, artists and photographers to create stunning images of the planet.
The images require processing because Nasa and its ship take pictures with red, green, blue and infrared filters which then need combining.
That means that they can be altered and changed as they are pulled into full colour, allowing for different colours and textures.
The new images were captured during Juno's eighth close flyby of the planet (Nasa/SwRI /MSSS)
Juno successfully entered Jupiter's orbit in July 2016, five years it launched from Earth.
The spacecraft completed a high-risk manoeuvre to slow down as it approached the planet, firing a rocket based on calculations which, if only slightly wrong, would have seen the 890m probe drift blast into oblivion.
As well as capturing images, Juno is also equipped with sensors to explore the Jupiter's magnetic field and atmosphere.
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Its Saturday evening. Lakhvinder Kaur is in her room eating dinner alone. She can hear the noise of elderly residents shouting in the dining room as staff try to calm them down. Her friends are going to a gig tonight, but as usual she cant join them. She is 28, but her social life is practically non-existent.
Ms Kaur has spinal muscular atrophy, meaning she uses a wheelchair and needs round-the-clock support. Since an argument with her parents at the age of 21, she has lived in residential facilities. Most recently, she was moved to Sahara Care in Barking, where she is the second youngest resident, living among mainly elderly people with severe learning disabilities.
A receptionist in a hotel, Ms Kaur is proud of holding a job despite her disability and not receiving benefits. But her care package has been reduced in recent years, meaning shes less able to get out and do things. Her care home sets a curfew for midnight, meaning she isnt able to have friends round when she finishes work at 11pm.
My friends go to concerts, gigs, boat parties, holidays, travelling. But me, I usually go to bed at 9pm. As I dont have much travel support, I often cant go out. Im restricted on having friends round, so I just go to sleep, Ms Kaur tells The Independent.
Nearly everyone else in this home is three or four times my age. There is one 26-year-old but she has severe learning difficulties. Most of them have challenging behaviour. I do speak to them. Theres an old lady who is lovely so I colour with her. I try to have conversations with people, even though theyre not always mentally there.
But theres a lot of noise at dinner. I need to be comfortable where I am. I dont want food flying around or somebody trying to grab my food, so I eat in my room alone.
Ms Kaur currently receives just three-and-a-half hours of support a day, and another one-and-a-half hours at night. This means she only has enough support while at work for care home staff to take her there, support her to use the toilet just once, and then bring her home again at the end of her shift.
In June, she was effectively evicted from Sahara Care after making a number of complaints about the strict requirements and a lack of support. The home has reportedly raised objections to her organising birthday parties and occasionally inviting friends over for late-night drinks, as well as objecting to the 28-year-olds demands that she be supported by female staff who are properly trained to assist with her personal care needs.
On her birthday this year, Ms Kaur said she informed staff that she was organising a gathering, which they agreed was OK. It was going to be a barbecue, but because it was so cold, they decided to do it inside my flat. We got food, we got some drinks, some quiet music, she said.
There were about 20 people, but it was all contained in my flat. The staff didnt need to assist with anything. One of my friends who I work with works as a chef and didnt finish until 11:30. He came in just to say hello to me and have a quick drink, but a senior staff came in and said my party was supposed to finish at 9pm. He had to leave.
I want to be a 28-year-old living like a 28-year-old, having the right care, but Im treated like a child.
Despite being told she has been evicted, Ms Kaur is refusing to leave the home, saying it will only see her sent to another residential home with even less of the facilities she requires to meet her physical needs.
Im just fighting. The local authority say theres nothing they can do, but theyve taken away one of the big factors in my life the care package which allows me to have a shower the way I want to have a shower, go to the toilet when I need to go to the toilet. Its dehumanising. Dont all lives matter? she said.
This package covers human rights only. I feel isolated, depressed. Ive gone through periods of feeling suicidal. Whats the point in being alive when I only have this?
Faced with being moved to a different care home, Ms Kaur has raised the issue that it would place her far from her workplace. But she said that in response, she was told by staff in the care home and social service officers that she should sort out her priorities and that work is not important right now a claim she rejected with vehemence.
Ive had my job for four years. Im on a zero-hours contract but Ive held it down for four years. My employer has always been very supportive. I cant let my job go. Its everything to me; its my independence. It makes me who I am. I earn my own money. Im not on benefits. Im trying to be independent, she said.
So then being told that I need to think about quitting my job really hurts. They want me to quit my job so they can put me anywhere.
Ms Kaur said she was also told by a social worker that instead of receiving the support she needs to use the toilet, she should use incontinence pads or have a catheter fitted, even though she does not have a problem with incontinence.
I was told by a duty social worker that I only needed to drink one glass of water a day, to avoid needing to go to the loo without support, she said. They said you can catheter yourself, or you can wear a nappy. At that point I broke down. My mum didnt train me to go to the toilet for nothing.
Ms Kaurs situation has come to light after it emerged that disabled people in the UK face being interned in care homes due to NHS new cost-cutting measures, in what amounts to a potential breach of their human rights.
The Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) warned that caps to funding for NHS care outside hospital means disabled people may be prevented from living at home despite being well enough to do so, as they fail to take into account a persons specific circumstances.
Separately, the Government was recently accused of evading disability rights by ignoring the recommendations of a major UN committee, in what has been described as a continuing retrogression of disabled peoples rights in the UK. The United Nations accused ministers of failing to uphold the rights of disabled people through austerity policies.
In a complaint Ms Kaur has lodged with Newham council, she wrote: As an Asian disabled woman, being forced to live in a care home or supported living dehumanises me and disconnects me from my community and the everyday life of society, and hinders any aspirations and life chance opportunities I may have. This is my cry for help I refuse to move from one care home to another care home.
A Newham council spokeswoman said they had been working closely with Ms Kaur to ensure the care and support she receives meets her needs, saying in a statement: She has an allocated social worker who has been supporting her to review all her options.
We know she wants to live independently and this is something we are actively exploring. She has highly complex care needs and finding a solution to enable her to live independently in the community is not easy.
UK news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 UK news in pictures 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 UK news in pictures 21 September 2022 A flock of birds in the sky as the sun rises over Dungeness in Kent PA
The spokesperson added that the council was in the process of investigating whether direct payments could assist with this and said they would update Ms Kaur once they had completed all their assessments, adding: The current accommodation we have found for her is an interim measure until there is a long-term plan in place.
A full assessment has been completed on the interim accommodation sourced for her and was found by the provider to be suitable for her needs. We will carry out an additional review of this accommodation.
A spokesperson for Sahara Care said: Providing residents with the most appropriate package of care is core to the ethos of our business. In this case the needs of one service user need to be balanced with the safe and efficient operation of the home for all other users.
We have been working closely with the local authority which has found alternative accommodation with the necessary support that better suit the service users needs.
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False widow spiders are set to invade British homes this winter as they search for warmth, experts are warning.
With temperatures diving as low as -7C across the UK this weekend, some Britons have already started spotting the eight-legged critters in their homes, taking to social media to tweet photos of the arachnids.
Outch. I got bitten by a darn false widow spider in the night. So painful, one Twitter user wrote earlier this week.
Recommended Man tries to kill spider with blowtorch and burns house down
The venomous insect, which has been in Britain for the last 130 years, is a cousin of the deadly black widow spider, but unlike its close relative, its bites are not fatal to humans.
There have been isolated cases of people needing hospital treatment after being bitten, but generally, symptoms are typically limited to pain around the bite and swelling. Most serious cases are often due to an allergic reaction to the spiders venom.
The false widow, or steatoda nobilis, is native to Madiera and the Canary Islands. It is believed it may have arrived in England in the late 1800s as a stowaway critter on cargo ships.
It is one of roughly 670 different species of spider present in Britain, according to the British Arachnological Society (BAS).
The spider is widespread along the south coast of England, but has become increasingly common as far north as Norfolk and south Wales, the BAS says.
The organisation has stressed that people should not be alarmed by the arrival of the false widow and that while it is venomous, serious bite injuries are rare.
The fact that harm caused by them is very rare should tell you something about how dangerous they really are, the organisation says on its website, though it advises against trying to handle one of the critters.
To prevent the insects from making your home their own this winter, pest control company Rentokil recommends ensuring your home is not a haven for woodlice, millipedes or centipedes to avoid spiders following their prey indoors, as well as filling in gaps around pipework and entryways and vacuuming regularly to avoid a buildup of cobwebs around and outside the house.
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A man who successfully predicted the unlikely victory of Donald Trump and the UK's vote to leave the European Union has come up with a new round of prophecies for 2018.
Craig Hamilton-Parker has prophesied there will be a terrorist attack on a British motorway, revolution in North Korea which overthrows Kim Jong-Uns regime, and a chemical weapons attack by drones on a European city.
2018 will be a year of political turmoil and environmental crisis caused by dramatic and unprecedented weather, he said in a blog post.
On a less morbid note, Mr Parker also predicted Prince Harry would become engaged to Meghan Markle.
The Southampton-born man, who has had an uncanny propensity to predict improbable global events, also guessed a series of terrorist attacks, an international economic recession, and Theresa May managing to hold onto power.
In terms of the US, Mr Parker, who accurately guessed Hillary Clinton would step down from politics in 2017, predicted President Donald Trump would dodge impeachment proceedings and a US warship would drown next year.
In Europe, he said cultural friction would worsen in Germany and France and intensifying racial troubles and riots were to come.
Protest in Manila against Donald Trump's visit to the Philippines Show all 14 1 /14 Protest in Manila against Donald Trump's visit to the Philippines Protest in Manila against Donald Trump's visit to the Philippines Riot police block protesters during a rally near the US embassy AFP/Getty Images Protest in Manila against Donald Trump's visit to the Philippines Protesters shout slogans while displaying portraits of U.S. President Donald Trump and Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte AP Protest in Manila against Donald Trump's visit to the Philippines Activists clash with riot police EPA Protest in Manila against Donald Trump's visit to the Philippines Protesters burn a banner of Donald Trump AFP/Getty Images Protest in Manila against Donald Trump's visit to the Philippines Protesters against Donald Trump's visit AP Protest in Manila against Donald Trump's visit to the Philippines Protesters deface portraits of Donald Trump and Rodrigo Duterte AP Protest in Manila against Donald Trump's visit to the Philippines Protesters clash with anti-riot police officers as they try to march towards the U.S. embassy REUTERS Protest in Manila against Donald Trump's visit to the Philippines A mural bearing the image of Donald Trump and Rodrigo Duterte is burnt REUTERS Protest in Manila against Donald Trump's visit to the Philippines Activists march on a road leading to the US embassy during a protest in Manila EPA Protest in Manila against Donald Trump's visit to the Philippines Protesters scuffle with riot police AFP/Getty Images Protest in Manila against Donald Trump's visit to the Philippines Protesters shout anti-US slogans as they burn a banner featuring the image of US President Donald Trump AFP/Getty Images Protest in Manila against Donald Trump's visit to the Philippines Activists clash with riot police EPA Protest in Manila against Donald Trump's visit to the Philippines Protesters display placards as they shout anti-US slogans AFP/Getty Images Protest in Manila against Donald Trump's visit to the Philippines Anti-riot police officers block protesters REUTERS
He made a number of troubling predictions in terms of environmental catastrophes and said the environment was his number one prophesy for the forthcoming year.
Environment is top of my list because I feel 2018 will see unprecedented earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, and ferocious weather, he said. I have been saying for some years that we can expect this not just because of global warming but also because of increased activity of the Sun. We have seen terrible hurricanes but I feel there is worse to come.
Mr Parker predicted Mount Vesuvius in Italy would erupt and Naples will be evacuated, there would be a rise in seismic activity - including in areas that have been tremor free for as long as a thousand years, with a very serious earthquake hitting New Zealand.
He predicted record level hurricanes ravaging the Caribbean, wildfires in California and Australia, and flooding in China and India. Whats more, the southern seas will be impossible to travel along in certain areas due to a massive ice shelf breaking from the Antarctic.
But Mr Parkers conjectures were not all doom and gloom and he predicted there would also be a concurrent growth in spirituality.
Many of the above predictions are pretty gloomy but I feel that there will be a simultaneous growth in spirituality for the people of the world that will now start to lead us into a Golden Age, he concluded. Conflict and hardship plus growing environmental problems will bring good people together and ignite a desire to seek the true purpose of human life.
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Cowards who prompted a bomb alert near a cenotaph in Northern Ireland are sickening, police said.
A suspicious object was discovered on Sunday morning in Omagh, Co Tyrone, and the area has been closed off.
A senior officer said it was too early to say whether the Remembrance Sunday ceremony will be affected.
Police Service of Northern Ireland chief inspector Graham Dodds said: "This is a sickening attempt by cowards to create fear and disruption on a day when many gather to pay their respects to the brave men and women who paid the ultimate sacrifice, and must be unreservedly condemned."
Many people are due to attend the event at the cenotaph.
The chief inspector added: "I would like to reassure the public that we are working hard to make the area safe and that we will continue to provide updates on any impact to today's event."
PA
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A secret letter from Boris Johnson and Michael Gove giving Theresa May instructions on how to orchestrate a hard Brexit has emerged.
The memo demands the Prime Minister, who looks increasingly fragile following the departure of two of her Cabinet ministers in as many weeks, "underline her resolve" for leaving the European Union, according to The Mail on Sunday.
The letter also sets out a date for transition arrangements between the EU and UK to end of 30 June 2021, the newspaper said.
Mr Johnson and Mr Gove are also said to have urged the Prime Minister to ensure members of her top team fall behind their Brexit plans by "clarifying their minds" and called for them to "internalise the logic".
The leaked letter appears to make a thinly veiled attack on Chancellor Philip Hammond, who backed remain and wants a softer Brexit, for lacking the "sufficient energy" in preparing to the UK's future outside the bloc.
A senior Government source told the Mail the Foreign Secretary and Environment Secretary had conducted a "soft coup" and described Ms May as "their Downing Street hostage".
The letter, titled EU Exit - Next Steps, is marked "For your and Gavin's eyes only", a reference to the PM's chief of staff Gavin Barwell.
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 states: "Your approach is governed by sensible pragmatism. That does not in any way dilute our ambition to be a fully independent self-governing country by the time of the next election.
"If we are to counter those who wish to frustrate that end, there are ways of underlining your resolve.
"We are profoundly worried that in some parts of Government the current preparations are not proceeding with anything like sufficient energy.
"We have heard it argued by some that we cannot start preparations on the basis of 'No Deal' because that would undermine our obligation of 'sincere co-operation' with the EU. If taken seriously, that would leave us over a barrel in 2021.
"We all want you to push your agenda forward with confidence and have your Government articulate the following..."
The letter suggests both men have set aside their differences following last year's Tory leadership contest, when Mr Johnson dramatically ruled himself out of the race after Michael Goves shock entry into the contest.
PA
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David Davis has dismissed the two-week deadline set by the chief EU Brexit negotiator for the UK setting out how it will meet its financial obligations.
The Brexit Secretary laughed in an interview when he was asked about the deadline set out by Michel Barnier on Friday.
He said the real deadline was in December and warned the EU not to expect a figure or a formula by which the UKs obligations would be calculated.
Recommended May to push back toughest fight on Brexit Bill to after the Budget
It comes after the most recent round of Brexit talks once again failed to make substantial progress towards completing negotiations on withdrawal issues including the divorce bill.
Mr Barnier indicated that the UK would have to set out a commitment more clearly within two weeks, or it would not be possible to move talks on to transition and trade at the December European Council.
But asked about the deadline on Sky Newss Sunday with Paterson, Mr Davis said: In every negotiation each side tries to control the timetable. The real deadline on this, of course, is December. Its the December council.
Your viewers are all taxpayers I suspect, one way or another, and they would not want me to just come along and give away billions of pounds.
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
So we are being very, very careful and its taking time, and we will take our time to get to the right answer.
If Theresa May fails to gain an agreement in December from European national leaders to move talks on, it could substantially delay the already tight schedule of negotiations and even destabilise her administration.
She is under pressure from Tory Eurosceptics to walk away from talks if the EU does not allow progress before Christmas.
But Mr Davis made clear what his EU counterpart should not expect, when asked about whether the UK would be able to secure sufficient progress on the divorce bill to move talks forward.
He said: They invented this phrase sufficient progress, right? Its in their control what it really is.
But one of the reasons they did that is because we said alright, well do this sequencing, but dont imagine youll have a number or a formula at the end of it. Well get towards that process, but you wont have a number or a formula before we move on to the next stage.
Barnier: The Brexit agreement will not be based on concessions
They accepted that, so its not to be expected that someone is going to come along and say here is an extra 5bn or whatever.
At the end of the latest round of Brexit talks, Mr Barnier was asked whether the UK only had two weeks to make progress before the December Council meeting, to which he replied simply: My answer is yes.
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Theresa May is set to push back the toughest fight over her Brexit legislation until after this months Budget, The Independent understands.
The move allows her time to talk with Tory rebels who want her to fundamentally change how Parliament approves the final Brexit deal so MPs have more control.
Ms May is currently understood to be unwilling to consider changing her plans, but knows she needs to make some compromises to win their support or her Brexit legislation will not get through unamended.
Recommended May amends EU Withdrawal Bill to put Brexit date and time into law
To that end she made an early minor concession last week to show rebels that she is in listening mode, one Government insider told The Independent.
It comes as Ms Mays administration takes her EU withdrawal Bill into the critical committee stage of the legislative process on Tuesday.
If passed, the Bill will mean that on Brexit day, all laws affecting the UK currently enshrined in Brussels will be transferred on to the British statute book with Henry VIII powers then granted to ministers to tweak the laws without full parliamentary scrutiny.
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
The committee stage has been allocated eight days of parliamentary debate. But The Independent understands only three of the days will occur before the Budget on 22 November.
It means the Government can try to gain some momentum, make friendly overtures to rebels and have more time to discuss with them how the final Brexit deal is approved, before the later days of the committee stage that must deal with that issue which The Independent understands will now not be scheduled until December.
In an opening minor concession earlier this week, ministers revealed they would write the exact exit date on to the face of the EU withdrawal Bill.
Its absence up to now had led to fears among some Tory and Labour MPs that ministers might mischievously name a date later than March 2019, as that which applies to the expiry of the Henry VIII powers so called because they let the despotic king rule by dictat allowing Ms Mays Government to hang on to them longer than they should.
One minister told The Independent: What this change shows is that not only are we in listening mode, but actually that we are prepared to clarify and adapt where necessary.
The exit day change should give people peace of mind about the sunsetting clauses that are in the Bill [relating to the Henry VIII powers], showing that they operate around a date and will definitely expire around March 2021.
Brexit: Article 50 author says Theresa May is misleading the public on reversing result
The frontbencher went on: I really hope that colleagues observe this and come to the conclusion that this Bill is not a power grab, but will do the job its supposed to, deliver a smooth Brexit.
But the concession does not deal with the far more substantial and contentious issue of how Parliament gets to exercise its final say over Brexit.
Up to now Ms May has offered Parliament a straight vote on the deal, but with the motion being a choice between her deal and crashing out of the EU with no deal something which even many Tories fear would be catastrophic for the economy.
Keir Starmer is set to back Tory rebels in their push to make Theresa May enshrine the final Brexit deal in British law (Getty)
Ex-Conservative attorney general Dominic Grieve is instead proposing a whole new piece of wrap legislation, that if passed would enshrine Ms Mays deal in law and tie together all the other smaller pieces of Brexit legislation into a more comprehensive legally sound footing.
It would also give MPs far greater powers of scrutiny over the deal and the process of Brexit.
He is proposing his change in an amendment to the EU (Withdrawal) Bill that has considerable support on the Tory backbenches and is likely to be supported by Labour as well.
Shadow Brexit Secretary Sir Keir Starmer said Ms May would have to give more ground before her legislation passed through Parliament smoothly.
He said: Theresa May cannot keep ignoring the serious concerns Labour and her own MPs have about the withdrawal bill.
Gordon Brown on Brexit: Britain will hit a 'crisis point' next Summer
The Prime Minister could have used the bills delay [from earlier in the year] to rethink her approach and accept Labours reasonable and considered demands on what needs to change in particular the wide use of Henry VIII powers, protections for workers rights and environmental standards, and ensuring strong transitional arrangements are in place when we leave the EU.
Instead, she has sought to marginalise Parliament and come forward with amendments that are more about keeping her in powers than ensuring Britain can negotiate a strong Brexit deal.
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Jeremy Corbyn has branded the prospect of a no deal Brexit amid Conservative uncertainty the biggest risk facing the UK.
The Labour leader attacked Theresa May for failing to manage her Cabinet which is split down the middle and said it was time to get a grip on her govern in order to end the Brexit confusion.
Writing in The Sunday Times, Mr Corbyn said: The government cant give a lead because the cabinet is split down the middle, spending more time negotiating with each other than with the EU.
That gives the whip hand to grandstanding EU negotiators. One week the Home Secretary says a no-deal exit from the EU would be unthinkable. The next week the Brexit Secretary insists no deal must be an option.
He claimed the Conservatives were using Brexit as a device to drive down wages and conditions, deregulate consumer and environmental protections and slash corporate taxation in a destructive race to the bottom.
The Islington North MP said the Brexit talks were currently at a crucial stage but the Tories chaotic dithering risked a jobs meltdown if the UK were to crash out of the union with no deal and job-creating investment decisions are delayed or moved to another country.
He said that Labour is instead proposing a jobs-first Brexit which will include a new co-operative relationship with Europe and a time-limited transitional deal on the same basic terms as now.
Mr Corbyn called on Ms May to get a grip on her government, he said it was time for her to stop dithering and decide whether to govern or move out of the way and let Labour deliver a Brexit that works for the many, not the few.
He also castigated Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson for his many interventions on Brexit including his 4,000 word opinion piece in the Daily Telegraph in September where he laid out his own plan for leaving 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
He said Mr Johnson should be focusing on his day job and Ms May should ensure the Foreign Secretary can cause no further damage to our citizens abroad.
He was talking about the controversy surrounding Mr Johnsons remarks about the fate of British-Iranian Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe who has been detained in Iran.
Ms Zaghari-Ratcliffe was sentenced to five years in prison in Tehran for undisclosed crimes but her plight was made worse by Mr Johnson wrongly claiming she had been in the country training journalists she was on holiday visiting her parents with her young daughter.
Mr Corbyn went further in a similar opinion piece for The Observer where he called on Ms May to sack Mr Johnson outright and said she should never have appointed him as Britains top diplomat as he is known for making outrageous gaffes.
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The EUs chief negotiator has warned that the bloc is drawing up contingency plans in case Brexit talks collapse.
Michel Barnier said that failing to reach a deal with the UK was not his preferred option but was a possibility.
He told French newspaper, Le Journal du Dimanche: Everyone needs to plan for it, member states and businesses alike. We too are making technical preparations for it. On 29 March 2019, the United Kingdom will become a third country.
He said the UK must increase its financial offer, which is currently believed to be around 60bn (53bn), before the talks are to move on to discuss the future trading relationship the UK desperately wants to map out before they leave.
The divorce bill go towards the pensions of EU officials and various EU-wide schemes, such as infrastructure projects, that the UK had already agreed to before the referendum.
Member states are due to decide at a summit in Brussels on 14 and 15 December whether sufficient progress has been made on the core separation issues such as the divorce bill, the Irish border and rights for EU citizens in the UK before they move onto the next stage of the talks.
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
The remarks come just after Mr Barnier gave the UK just a two-week deadline to give the other 27 EU members greater clarity on their proposal for the financial settlement or divorce bill.
But Brexit Secretary David Davis rejected his calls for greater clarification during an interview on Sky News, saying: In every negotiation each side tries to control the timetable. The real deadline on this, of course, is December. Its the December council.
Your viewers are all taxpayers I suspect, one way or another, and they would not want me to just come along and give away billions of pounds.
David Davis explains his interpretation of 'sufficient progress' on Brexit talks
The Government has been widely criticised for its approach to the Brexit negotiations which has seen Cabinet members saying contradictory things about what they want to come out of the process.
Home Secretary Amber Rudd said she thought the idea of the UK crashing out without a deal would be unthinkable but Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson then wrote an opinion piece insisting no deal must be an option.
Jeremy Corbyn, writing in The Sunday Times, said Theresa May must get a grip on her government and said it was time for her to stop dithering and decide whether to govern or move out of the way and let Labour deliver a Brexit that works for the many, not the few.
He said instead Labour would offer a jobs-first Brexit which will include a new co-operative relationship with Europe and a time-limited transitional deal on the same basic terms as now.
It comes as MPs on both sides of the aisle warned Ms May that she faces defeat in the Commons if she continues to deny Parliament a meaningful vote on the final deal.
On the other side, a leaked letter to Ms May from prominent leavers Mr Johnson and Environment Secretary Michael Gove was revealed by the Mail on Sunday.
It is believed to have been a veiled attack on Chancellor Philip Hammond, a noted Remainer, for being soft on Brexit and lacking sufficient energy.
The letter called on members of her team to clarify their minds and internalise the logic.
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If the Government is serious about maintaining its pretence of leaving the EU with no trade deal, it will have to pave paradise and put up a parking lot.
Just off the M20 at Folkestone, 10 miles out from the port of Dover, there is a smallish lorry park with 82 spaces. Almost unseen behind the KFC and the WHSmith, Turkish truckers wash their underwear in coin-operated laundry machines.
Its privately run, and serves a niche market. It provides customs clearance for lorries driven to the UK from outside the EU. Such clearance is not completely straightforward, and if the UK leaves the EU with no deal, it is estimated a thousand or more such parking spaces will be required.
Dover is the worlds busiest port for freight lorries, but for understandable reasons, less than 1 per cent of its arrivals have driven all the way across the European Union to get here. The vast majority of this 1 per cent have come from Turkey or Switzerland. The customs requirements made of them are not straightforward, and if hard Brexit occurs, these are requirements that are likely to require replication for the other 99 per cent. The risks are huge.
It is a bewildering proposition. Brexiteers both in and out of government like to repeat the claim that processing these lorries takes 20 seconds, but any of the drivers who stop here for lengthy periods will tell you a different story.
"First you are driving in, then parking, then taking a form to be signed. It's not 20 seconds, it is long time," says Ahmet, a 44-year-old Turkish driver who regularly calls in here on long drives between Turkey and the UK.
Twenty seconds is the time it takes the computer to check the documents, which are actually approved by a customs centre in Manchester. They earmark the taxes that must be paid on the goods and send it on its way. It does not include the time spent parking up and bringing the documents to the desk.
Most significantly, it does not include the 35 minutes lorries are routinely made to wait to satisfy EU rules on the transit of goods.
When the Turkish delight and Swiss chocolates arrive in the UK, they are subject to certain duties. But France, Germany and everywhere in between need to know that none have fallen off the back of the lorry en route, and avoided duties there.
Once out of the EU, it has been claimed, the UK will be free to ignore these EU directives, but it is not that simple. If the UK retreats on to WTO rules, taxes will have to be collected on absolutely everything that arrives, from every country. Currently the facilities simply do not exist to do this.
In nearby Stanford, there has been talk of building a huge lorry park to end Operation Stack. That is the procedure that turns the M20 in to a temporary lorry park when relatively rare problems at Dover cause miles and miles of queues. In theory, that lorry park could also be used for customs checks, but approval for its construction was granted two years ago, and work has not begun. It involves covering wide acres of green pasture in wide acres of tarmac. Unsurprisingly, local residents are furious. A local campaign against it is making glacial progress through the court system, with residents ruling out an out-of-court agreement. The time for further delays is rapidly running out.
The consequences of delays at Dover are fatal. Recent estimates suggest even two minutes per lorry would create 17-mile tailbacks. Dovers MP Charlie Elphicke, who has been undertaking exhaustive research into finding a solution to the problem, says significant delays would leave the Northern Powerhouse powered down, the Midlands Engine switched of.. Parts for virtually all cars made in the UK come through Dover. Delays have knock-on effects for productions lines everywhere, and those knock-on effects would come fast.
Factories hold inventory for a matter of hours, knowing the next load is on the way up the motorway from Dover. Having to be resilient to potential delay involves holding vast amounts of extra stock. Privately, government advisers says it makes the UK a risky place to do business. If no clarity emerges on the situation by "very early next year", manufacturers will have to strongly consider moving operations to within the borders of the European Union.
Effectively, the country must start to make extensive preparations for an outcome it doesn't want and that may never happen. Customs officials admit in private that hiring processes would need to "start now", without any real idea of the needs that will ultimately be required.
The customs checks are carried out by small, private companies, who only call in an HMRC inspector as a matter or last resort. Technological changes, and massive simplifications that came into effect in 1993, mean very few such companies remain. Of those that do, there is little evidence that they even want the vast amounts of business that could come their way. Margins are already extremely tight. If they are overwhelmed, prices will be driven down, requiring either the Government itself, or a huge, DHL-type operator to step in.
The Institute for Government estimate that up to 5,000 more staff will be needed. And if these staff are to be trained and ready for work on 1 April 2019, the recruitment process will need to begin early in the new year at the latest. And they would have to recruit for jobs that, in the event of a deal or even a transitional arrangement, may never need to be filled. Customs officials describe Brexit as impossible to plan for.
What we should be doing now is investing in world-class systems, Mr Elphicke said. Systems that you can get in place that do it on fast turnaround.
Currently, such systems do not exist. Nor does the money to pay for them, the staff to operate them, nor the facilities in which to install them. Dont it always seem to go, that you dont know what youve got til its gone.
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CCTV will be made compulsory in all animal slaughterhouses under new government plans announced today.
Michael Gove, the Environment Secretary, said that, from next spring, all abattoirs where live animals are present will be forced to install cameras in an attempt to clamp down on mistreatment.
The footage from the cameras will be accessible to official vets working for the Food Standards Agency, who will highlight cases in which animals have been poorly treated. Those responsible could then lose their license or face prosecution.
Slaughterhouses will have to give vets unrestricted access to the last 90 days of footage.
Recommended We need to end the meat and dairy industry altogether
It follows a number of disturbing videos appearing online showing slaughterhouse staff abusing animals. Last year, footage obtained by The Independent showed the dirty and cramped conditions endured by hens on battery farms that supply major UK supermarkets.
Other videos, including a number filmed secretly by animals rights group Animal Aid, showed abattoir staff punching, kicking and stamping on animals and stubbing out cigarettes on pigs faces.
A number of major UK supermarkets already insist that all their meat and dairy suppliers have CCTV installed.
New legislation making cameras compulsory will be introduced early in 2018 and will come into force next spring, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs said. Owners of slaughterhouses will be given six months to comply with the new regulations.
It follows a month-long consultation with industry groups, animal welfare campaigners and members of the public that, ministers said, showed widespread support for the introduction of mandatory CCTV.
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Ninety nine per cent of the 4,000 respondents gave their backing to the proposal, which was also included in the Conservatives manifesto at the last general election.
Announcing the plans, Mr Gove said: We have some of the highest animal welfare standards in the world and want to cement our status as a global leader by continuing to raise the bar.
The reaction to this consultation highlights the strength of feeling among the public that all animals should be treated with the utmost respect at all stages of life and be subject to the highest possible welfare standards.
These strong measures also provide a further demonstration to consumers around the world that as we leave the EU we continue to produce our food to the very highest standards.
Animal welfare groups, many of which have been calling for compulsory CCTV for years, welcomed the change.
CCTV: Slaughterhouse cruelty
David Bowles, the RSPCAs Head of Public Affairs, said: This is a very welcome and crucial step towards introducing higher welfare right across the food chain.
We applaud the Secretary of State for his steadfast and focused commitment to ensuring the highest possible animal welfare standards in the UK once we have left the EU.
The RSPCA looks forward to seeing the details of the proposal as issues such as where the cameras will be located, footage quality and storage, and who can have access to it are essential to making the legislation meaningful.
Heather Hancock, Chairman of the Food Standards Agency, said: The Secretary of States decision to require CCTV in all slaughterhouses is a welcome step towards ensuring that animal welfare and hygiene standards are met across the meat industry.
Last year, the FSA Board concluded that, without mandatory CCTV in slaughterhouses, we would see minimal further progress in businesses improving animal welfare or complying with official controls to protect public health.
We look forward to working with the industry as CCTV plans are implemented, and to seeing public confidence rise as a result.
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Jeremy Corbyn has called for Boris Johnson to be immediately sacked as Foreign Secretary following his diplomatic blunder in the case of imprisoned British woman, Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe.
Mr Corbyn accused Mr Johnson of undermining our country and putting UK citizens at risk after he said that Ms Zaghari-Ratcliffe, who has been in an Iranian jail for the past 18 months, was training journalists there.
In a statement given to The Observer, the Labour leader lists a series of other diplomatic gaffes and poorly-chosen statements from Mr Johnson, who was appointed as Foreign Secretary by Ms May when she took over as Prime Minister last summer.
Mr Corbyn said: Weve put up with Johnson embarrassing and undermining our country with his incompetence and colonial throwback views and putting our citizens at risk for long enough. Its time for him to go.
His call adds to the growing pressure on the Prime Minister to sack Mr Johnson following his remarks about Ms Zaghari-Ratcliffe.
Ms May has suffered a tumultuous fortnight with two members of her cabinet forced to resign Michael Fallon for his past behaviour towards women and Priti Patel for holding unauthorised meetings with Israeli officials.
The political future of Mr Johnson now hangs in the balance with the Iranian judicial system considering whether or not to increase the five-year sentence handed down to Ms Zaghari-Ratcliffe for charges of plotting against the Iranian Government.
Boris Johnson tries to dodge reporter's question on jailed British-Iranian Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe
Ms Zaghari-Ratcliffe, who has dual citizenship and lives in West Hampstead in London, worked as a charity project manager with the Thompson Reuters Foundation and was in Iran to visit her parents with her toddler daughter, Gabriella.
She was detained while trying to board a plane back to the UK with Gabriella, and was at first unaware of the charges against her. Her daughter, now aged three, remains in Iran in the care of her grandparents.
Her family, including her husband Richard Ratcliffe, were furious at Mr Johnsons comments, which they maintain are completely without foundation and place Ms Zaghari-Ratcliffe at further risk.
Mr Ratcliffe has not called on the Foreign Secretary to resign - rather, he wants to meet him and accompany him on a trip to Tehran. The pair are due to meet for the first time since the crisis errupted on Sunday.
Ms Zaghari-Ratcliffe with her daughter, Gabriella (PA)
The Government has previously been accused of being slow to act in her case, although diplomatic sources insist work has been going on behind the scenes.
Some have suggested that Ms May cannot afford to lose such a high-profile Brexiteer MP from her Cabinet hard on the heels of fellow Leave backer Ms Patel. Mr Johnson remains popular with many of the party faithful while others see him as a liability.
Brexit Secretary David Davis leapt to the defence of Mr Johnson as the calls for him to go mounted.
Why would you want to sack him? Hes a good Foreign Secretary, he told Sky News.
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The UKs former top police chief knew of allegations pornography had been found on one of Damian Greens parliamentary computers during a 2008 criminal investigation into government leaks.
Sir Paul Stephenson, who was Metropolitan Police Commissioner between 2009 and 2011, told the BBC the alleged discovery wasnt relevant to the probe that involved a search of the MPs Commons office when he was a shadow minister.
A Whitehall inquiry into the First Secretary of State, effectively the Prime Ministers deputy, was widened last week after The Sunday Times reported that ex-Met assistant commissioner Bob Quick had discussed the alleged discovery in a separate review into Home Office leaks.
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Mr Green said the story was completely untrue and the allegations amounted to false, disreputable political smears.
He added: More importantly, the police have never suggested to me that improper material was found on my parliamentary computer, nor did I have a private computer, as has been claimed.
Sir Paul said he had viewed the claims as a side issue and it was not Scotland Yards role to police the workplace.
I regret its in the public domain, he said.
There was no criminality involved, there were no victims, there was no vulnerability and it was not a matter of extraordinary public interest.
Officers searched Mr Greens office and home following a spate of leaks of Home Office information in 2008, when he was an opposition MP.
He was arrested in connection with the probe in November that year, but faced no further action.
A review of the inquiry found less intrusive methods could have been used.
Damien Green said the allegations were false, disreputable political smears (Getty)
A Cabinet Office inquiry into Mr Greens conduct began earlier this month after Kate Maltby, who is three decades younger than the minister, told The Times that he fleetingly touched her knee during a meeting in a Waterloo pub in 2015, and a year later sent her a suggestive text message after she was pictured wearing a corset in the newspaper.
Mr Green said any allegation that he made sexual advances to Ms Maltby was untrue [and] deeply hurtful.
The First Secretary of State, Mr Quick and Sir Paul reportedly gave evidence to inquiry into Mr Green on Monday.
Mr Quick resigned his post with the Metropolitan Police in 2009 after he was photographed entering Downing Street carrying a secret briefing note on which details of the undercover operation could be seen.
He has denied disclosing the allegations regarding Mr Greens computers to The Sunday Times.
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The Government is to establish an independent watchdog to ease fears that Britains exit from the European Union will harm environmental standards.
Michael Gove pledged the statutory body would hold the powerful to account and deliver a green Brexit.
The Environment Secretary said the world-leading organisation would maintain environmental standards and a national policy statement will embed protections for land, water, air and wildlife into policy-making as the UK leaves the EU.
It follows warnings that Brexit gravely threatens the UKs fight against climate change amid concerns environmental regulations enshrined in European law will be watered down.
The Government wants to head off amendments to the EU Withdrawal Bill, which will go before MPs for debate on Tuesday.
In an article for The Telegraph, Mr Gove wrote: Outside the EU, we have an opportunity to learn from both the Commissions successes and failures. We can develop new institutions which do a better job and hold us to higher standards.
So we will consult on using the new freedoms we have to establish a new, world-leading body to give the environment a voice and hold the powerful to account. It will be independent of Government, able to speak its mind freely.
And it will be placed on a statutory footing, ensuring it has clear authority. Its ambition will be to champion and uphold environmental standards, always rooted in rigorous scientific evidence.
We will consult widely on the precise functions, remit and powers of the new body but we are in no doubt that it must have real bite.
We also need to ensure that environmental enforcement and policy-making is underpinned by a clear set of principles. Environmental principles are already central to Government policy.
Climate change might be worse than thought after scientists find major mistake in water temperature readings
Speaking on The Andrew Marr Show on Sunday morning, Mr Gove rejected the suggestion that Britains departure from the EU could to lead to certain environmental and food standards being lowered.
It comes after a key adviser to Donald Trump said a post-Brexit trade deal with the US could hinge on the UK scrapping rules set by Brussels, such as regulations on importing chlorinated chicken.
Mr Gove said: While we do want a trade deal with the United States, we wont be lowering environmental or animal welfare standards.
Free trade is a good thing, but free trade flounders on the rocks of public opinion if people try to use it as a Trojan horse ... for lowering environmental protections. We are not going there.
Environmental campaigners, scientists and some politicians have voiced serious concerns about the impact Brexit will have on the UKs plans for a greener future.
A group of leading scientists, ecologists and engineers last month wrote to Mr Gove and Brexit Secretary David Davis to warn Britains departure from the EU could gravely threaten climate change protections.
The Environmental Policy Forum, which represents several environmental professional bodies, said the Governments new Brexit legislation did not go far enough in safeguarding environmental laws or offering parliamentary scrutiny of changes.
Last year, Greenpeace UK expressed a very real fear that Brexit could lead to a bonfire of anti-pollution protections, while Friends of the Earth warned clean beaches, air quality and bees were among the factors put at risk by the loss of EU legislation.
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Michael Gove has said he does not know why Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe was in Iran when she was arrested and accused of plotting to overthrow the countrys leaders, despite it being the UKs official position that she was there on holiday.
Pressed on the issue, the cabinet minister said he accepted her husbands assurance that she was there on a family trip.
But Mr Goves noncommittal response comes amid the ongoing fallout of Boris Johnsons botched comments on the case, which left Ms Zaghari-Ratcliffe facing an extra five years in an Iranian prison.
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Speaking about the case on BBCs The Andrew Marr Show, Mr Gove was asked why the 38-year-old woman was in Iran, replying: I dont know.
One of the things I want to stress is that there is no reason why Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe should be in prison in Iran so far as any of us know. No evidence has been produced which suggests she should be detained.
When it was put to him that her husband, Richard, says she was on holiday, Mr Gove said: In that case I take exactly her husbands assurance in that regard.
Michael Gove speaking to Andrew Marr (BBC/PA Wire ) (BBC/PA Wire)
Asked if she was training journalists, as has been claimed by the Iranian authorities, Mr Gove said: Her husband said that she was there on holiday and her husband is the person who should know.
Ms Zaghari-Ratcliffe has been jailed for five years after being accused of plotting against the Iranian government, but she also defended herself against claims she was spreading propaganda by teaching journalists something she and her family have stringently denied.
But after Mr Johnson mistakenly told MPs in a public hearing that she had been teaching journalists, Ms Zaghari-Ratcliffe was hauled in front of an Iranian court and threatened with another five years in prison.
Boris Johnson claims no connection between his comments and Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe's sentence
In a bid to repair the situation, Mr Johnson apologised in the House of Commons if his words had been misconstrued, and he said: The UK Government has no doubt that she was on holiday in Iran when she was arrested last year and that was the sole purpose of her visit.
He also spoke to Ms Zaghari-Ratcliffes husband ro reassure him that the Foreign Office is working to bring his wife back to the UK.
But in the wake of the gaffe, Mr Johnson has faced calls to resign from the Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, privately from some MPs in his own party and most recently from Sadiq Khan, the Mayor of London.
UK news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 UK news in pictures UK news in pictures 15 November 2022 Lesley Sutcliffe shelters from the rain next to a life-sized replica of the innermost coffin of King Tutankhamun by artist Amanda Stoner as it goes on display inside a traditional red telephone box which has been converted into a museum, in Barnsley, South Yorkshire PA 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
Shadow cabinet office minister Jon Trickett said: Boris Johnsons cavalier approach to international diplomacy is compounded this morning by Michael Gove claiming he has no idea what Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe was doing in Iran. It has always been clear, she was on holiday visiting her family.
It appears Gove is more interested in protecting Johnsons job than the liberty of a British citizen in jail in Iran.
Theresa May must ensure Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe does not pay the price for her ministers bungling.
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Priti Patel has spoken out for the first time since she was forced to resign as Secretary of State for International Development.
The MP attended an Armistice Day service in her Essex constituency of Witham where she told reporters she had been overwhelmed with support since she was effectively sacked by Theresa May.
Ms Patel was summoned to Downing Street to explain herself after she admitted holding unauthorised meetings with Israeli officials including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu - while she was supposed to be on holiday.
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She quit her post last week, admitting the meetings had lacked transparency and that she had failed to uphold the standards expected of her office.
It emerged the Brexiteer MP had asked officials in Israel to look into whether the UK could support humanitarian operations carried out by the Israeli army in the occupied Golan Heights territory.
Ms Patel did not answer questions put to her, but she told the BBC: Ive been overwhelmed with support from colleagues across the political divide.
Of course, nothing is more humbling than the support Ive received from my constituents.
UK news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 UK news in pictures UK news in pictures 15 November 2022 Lesley Sutcliffe shelters from the rain next to a life-sized replica of the innermost coffin of King Tutankhamun by artist Amanda Stoner as it goes on display inside a traditional red telephone box which has been converted into a museum, in Barnsley, South Yorkshire PA 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
I look forward to returning to Parliament on Monday where I will continue to be a strong voice for Witham and Britain.
Fellow Brexiteer Penny Mordaunt was appointed to take over Ms Patels role.
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Theresa Mays ability to deliver Brexit is in doubt amid a growing threat to her leadership and concerns over whether she still has the political clout to govern.
Ms May must this week renew the drive to push her EU withdrawal Bill through the House of Commons, with Tory MPs who backed Remain in the referendum threatening to join forces with Jeremy Corbyns party to impose changes.
But Labour and other opposition parties warned that Ms May no longer has enough authority over the Conservatives to secure the Bills passage, after it emerged some 40 Tory MPs may now be willing to sign a letter of no confidence in her and a note emerged in which two cabinet ministers appear to direct her Brexit policy.
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It also follows reports that the EU is preparing for the collapse of Brexit talks and of her Government, which is torn between trying to give more ground in Brexit talks to achieve progress while also maintaining the support of Eurosceptic Tories who want no further compromise.
Labours Shadow Brexit Secretary Sir Keir Starmer wrote a letter to the Prime Minister on Monday raising concerns that she no longer has the influence over her own party to deliver key facets of a successful Brexit in particular, securing a transition period to smooth the withdrawal.
The letter said: Over recent weeks, it has become increasingly clear that you alone do not have the authority to deliver a transitional deal with Europe and to take the necessary steps to protect jobs and the economy.
Brexit: Article 50 author says Theresa May is misleading the public on reversing result
The letter urged the Government to work with Labour, accepting its amendments to her Bill to come to an agreed position in the national interest.
The most difficult Commons battle over her EU withdrawal Bill will not occur until December, after the Budget, but even if it clears its stages in the lower House, Liberal Democrat Leader Sir Vince Cable has told The Independent it will be amended in the Lords by a coalition of opposition and crossbench peers and Tory rebels.
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
Sir Keirs letter went on to point out how cabinet ministers, including Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson and International Trade Secretary Liam Fox, had appeared to make statements that contradicted her Brexit plans as set out in a major speech in Florence earlier in the year.
Reports also emerged at the weekend that Mr Johnson and fellow Brexiteer Michael Gove, the Environment Secretary, wrote a secret memo to the Prime Minister setting out how a transition should occur and indicating that she should be underlining your resolve over withdrawal.
The SNPs Stephen Gethins said: If it wasnt clear before, it is now Theresa May has lost all authority and credibility in government.
The revelation that leading Brexiteers Boris Johnson and Michael Gove are now brazenly able to dictate their hard Brexit demands goes to show that they think they can say and do as they please, knowing fine well Theresa May is powerless to act.
Theresa May is Prime Minister only by title.
EU chief negotiator: UK has two weeks to agree Brexit 'divorce' bill or no trade talks this year
A torrid 10 days has seen Ms May lose two cabinet ministers, Sir Michael Fallon and Priti Patel, while her deputy Damian Green is still under investigation over allegations of inappropriate behaviour which he denies, and Mr Johnson is defending himself against calls to resign over a diplomatic gaffe relating to British woman Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, who is imprisoned in Iran.
Amid the turmoil the number of MPs willing to put their name to a letter of no confidence is reported to have risen to 40, just eight short of the number needed to trigger a vote on Ms Mays future.
A senior Tory MP told The Independent: Patience is wearing very thin and in some cases, it has snapped.
But Brexit Secretary David Davis said he is quite certain Ms May will remain Prime Minister at least throughout Brexit, dismissing the Governments recent series of crises as flurries and adding that all governments have issues that come up and go.
Gordon Brown on Brexit: Britain will hit a 'crisis point' next Summer
The EUs chief negotiator Michel Barnier confirmed reports that Brussels is planning for Brexit talks to collapse, though he said it is not the preferred option.
On other reports of EU leaders actively planning for a situation where Ms May is not Prime Minister, Mr Davis said: I know it was in the papers, I would be very surprised if they really are planning that.
The Prime Minister will be here right through Brexit, to my retirement as it were until the end of Brexit and shell be my boss for that Im quite certain of it.
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Prince Charles has come under fire after it came to light that he blamed the influx of foreign Jews for causing unrest in the Middle East and called on the US to take on the Jewish lobby in a letter penned in 1986.
Writing to his friend Laurens van der Post, the Prince argued that the exodus of European Jews in the middle of the last century helped to cause the great problems in the Middle East.
I now appreciate that Arabs and Jews were all a Semitic people originally and it is the influx of foreign, European Jews (especially from Poland, they say) which has helped to cause the great problems, the Prince wrote in a letter published by the Daily Mail.
I know there are so many complex issues, but how can there ever be an end to terrorism unless the causes are eliminated? he added.
Surely some US president has to have the courage to stand up and take on the Jewish lobby in the US? I must be naive, I suppose!
The letter was found in a public archive and was written on 24 November 1986, following an official visit the then-38-year-old Prince made to Saudia Arabia, Bahrain and Qatar with the late Princess Diana.
The Prince of Wales wrote that the tour was fascinating and that he had learned a lot about the Middle East and Arab outlook.
Tried to read bit of Koran on way out and it gave me some insight in to the way they [Arabs] think and operate, he wrote in the letter.
Dont think they could understand us through reading Bible though!
A Clarence House spokesperson said in a statement that the opinions expressed in the 1986 letter were not The Princes own views, but instead reflected the opinions of those he met on his trip.
The letter clearly states that these were not the Princes own views about Arab-Israeli issues but represented the opinions of some of those he met during his visit which he was keen to interrogate, the statement said.
He was sharing the arguments in private correspondence with a longstanding friend in an attempt to improve his understanding of what he has always recognised is a deeply complex issue to which he was coming early on in his own analysis in 1986.
UK news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 UK news in pictures 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 A villager cooks roti bread at the site of the annual Camel Fair in Pushkar, in India's desert state of Rajasthan AFP via Getty Images UK news in pictures 2 November 2022 A red squirrel gathers nuts in Pitlochry, Scotland Reuters UK news in pictures 1 November 2022 Englands Tara-Jane Stanley scores their sides seventh try against Brazil during the Womens Rugby League World Cup group A match at Headingley Stadium, Leeds PA UK news in pictures 31 October 2022 GBs James Hall competes during the mens parallel bars qualification at the World Gymnastics Championships in Liverpool AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 30 October 2022 People dressed in Halloween costumes paddle board along the river Avon in Christchurch, Dorset PA UK news in pictures 29 October 2022 Members of the public take pictures as police officers remove activists from a road during a Just Stop Oil protest, in London Reuters UK news in pictures 28 October 2022 A cosplayer attends the MCM Comic Con London 2022 at the ExCel Centre in London Reuters UK news in pictures 27 October 2022 98-year-old D-Day Veteran Bernard 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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 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Haaland went on to score a hattrick, his third of the season in the Premier League. City beat United 6-3. Manchester City FC/Getty UK news in pictures 1 October 2022 Protesters hold up flags and placards at a protest in London. A variety of protest groups including Enough is Enough, Don't Pay and Just Stop Oil all demonstrated on the day AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 30 September 2022 British Prime Minister Liz Truss, who has not been seen in days, leaves the back of Downing Street after a meeting with Office For Budget Responsibility following the release of her governments mini-budget Getty UK news in pictures 29 September 2022 The Virginia creeper foliage on the Tu Hwnt i'r Bont (Beyond the Bridge) Llanwrst, Conwy North Wales, has changed colour from green to red in at the start of Autumn. The building was built in 1480 as a residential dwelling but has been a tearoom for over 50 years PA UK news in pictures 28 September 2022 Criminal barristers from the Criminal Bar Association (CBA), demonstrates outside the Royal Courts of Justice in London, as part of their ongoing pay row with the Government PA UK news in pictures 27 September 2022 David White, Garter King of Arms, poses with an envelope franked with the new cypher of King Charles III 'CIIIR', after it was printed in the Court Post Office at Buckingham Palace in central London AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 26 September 2022 A gallery staff member poses next to a painting by Lucian Freud - Self-portrait (Fragment), 1956 - on show at a photocall for the Credit Suisse exhibition - Lucian Freud: New Perspectives at the National Gallery in London PA UK news in pictures 25 September 2022 Labour leader, Sir Keir Starmer is interviewed by Laura Kuenssberg in Liverpool before the start of the Labour Party annual Conference which he opened with a tribute to Queen Elizabeth II and sang the national anthem PA UK news in pictures 24 September 2022 Handout photo issued by Buckingham Palace of the ledger stone at the King George VI Memorial Chapel, St George's Chapel, Windsor Castle PA UK news in pictures 23 September 2022 A climate change activist protests against UK private jets while lighting his right arm on fire during the Laver Cup tennis tournament at the O2 Arena in London EPA UK news in pictures 22 September 2022 Woody Woodmansey, Lee Bennett, Kevin Armstrong, Nick Moran and Clifford Slapper attend the unveiling of a stone for David Bowie on the Music Walk of Fame at Camden, north London PA UK news in pictures 21 September 2022 A flock of birds in the sky as the sun rises over Dungeness in Kent PA UK news in pictures 20 September 2022 Flowers which were laid by members of the public in tribute to Queen Elizabeth II at Hillsborough Castle in Northern Ireland are collected by the Hillsborough Gardening Team and volunteers to be replanted for those that can be saved or composted PA UK news in pictures 19 September 2022 The ceremonial procession of the coffin of Queen Elizabeth II travels down the long walk as it arrives at Windsor Castle for the committal service at St Georges Chapel AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 18 September 2022 A man stands among campers on The Mall ahead of the Queens funeral Reuters
Over the years, the Prince has continued his study of the complex and difficult themes he referenced here. He has built a proven track record of support for both Jewish and Arab communities around the world and has a long history of promoting inter-faith dialogue and cultural understanding.
Prince Charles is not the first to use the term Jewish lobby, with former Ukip leader Nigel Farage coming under fire earlier this month after alleging there was a powerful Jewish lobby in the United States.
And in 2006, former leader of the Lib Dem MEPs Chris Davies was forced to resign over his use of the term.
Editor of the Jewish Chronicle Stephen Pollard called the Prince of Waless comments both shocking and entirely predictable in a Twitter post.
He said the Princes use of the Jewish lobby term was the most astonishing.
To me, the Jewish lobby is one of the antisemitic themes that have endured for centuries. It is this myth there are these very powerful Jews who control foreign policy or the media or banks or whatever.
That [the comments] come from the heir to the throne is unsettling, to put it mildly, he added.
Prince Charles has enjoyed a relatively strong relationship with both Britains Jewish and Arab communities in the past.
The Prince had met with Austrian-born Holocaust survivors who are now British citizens earlier this year on a trip to Vienna, where he shared how his grandmother, Princess Alice of Battenberg, took in a Jewish family during the war and hid them, describing her efforts as amazing.
He has also been a patron of the Oxford Centre for Islamic studies for the past two decades, with the centres director, Farhan Nizami, describing the Prince as a friend of Muslims in 2013 and stating: I dont think there is another major figure in the Western world who has as high as a standing as he has in the Muslim world.
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Britains biggest supermarket Tesco is facing backlash from certain customers vowing to boycott the supermarket chain over its new inclusive Christmas advert.
The advert, which features families from all walks of life, shows clips of a Muslim family celebrating the holiday, exchanging presents and cooking Christmas dinner.
The new advert is part of a series of five short videos set to be released in the run up to Christmas to promote diversity. Tesco ends the advert with the phrase Everyone welcome.
But some customers are far from happy about the inclusion of a Muslim family in an advert that celebrates a Christian holiday, also commenting on the supermarket selling halal meat in Tesco stores.
One customer tweeted: I object strongly to your anti- Christian Xmas advert how dare you politicise our festival in order to appease lefty political correctness. You have lost me as a customer now, you should rethink your advertising campaign, British people still live here.
Hey, Tesco. .. I dont mind ONE BIT about your Xmas ads featuring Muslims wearing headscarves. .... Im looking forward to your Eid ads. .. Featuring Christians wearing crucifixes, wrote another Twitter user.
Tesco is trying to appeal to Muslims to buy their food at Tesco . So that raises a point. Muslims use my local Tesco but nothing is marked up as HALAL . So it follows all meat sold in Tesco must be HALA. WHY IS TESCO ALLOWED TO SELL HALAL MEAT TO CHRISTIANS, wrote one irate user.
Everyone is welcome at Tesco this Christmas and were proud to celebrate the many ways our customers come together over the festive season, said the supermarket in an official statement.
We want our customers to know that however they choose to do Christmas, and no matter what they need, we can help Everyones Welcome at Tesco.
The supermarket also said that it will celebrate the many ways we come together at Christmas, and how food sits at the heart of it all.
Diversity is the message behind Tesco's 2017 Christmas ad, with the supermarket saying that 'food sits at the heart of it all'. (Tesco/YouTube)
Many shoppers welcomed Tescos advert and see the marketing campaign as a representation of a modern, inclusive Britain.
If youre offended by the Tesco Christmas advert then PLEASE boycott the stores so I dont have to see your racist faces when Im choosing my Brussels sprouts, wrote one supportive Tweeter.
Imagine being so empty and full of hate that a Muslim family in a Christmas advert offends you, said another Tweet in support of Tescos message of diversity.
The advert also features a black family, a same sex couple, a single parent family and a stressed mother ordering people out of her kitchen.
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The founder of Gaydar, one of the world's first gay dating websites, has reportedly died at the age of 51.
According to BuzzFeed News, Henry Badenhorst died in South Africa on 11 November 2017. Initial reports suggest he took his own life.
Badenhorst, who was named one of the most influential LGBT people in Britain by The Independent on Sunday, founded Gaydar in London in 1999.
According to the report, he died after falling from a tower block in his native South Africa.
A local media report detailed the accounts of witnesses who claimed to have seen a 51-year-old man falling from the 23rd floor of the Michaelangelo Towers, a hotel in Sandton, Johannesburg.
BuzzFeed UK's LGBT editor, Patrick Strudwick, said Badenhorst was "one of the sweetest men you could ever know. He changed life for gay and bisexual men and will be greatly missed by all."
Badenhorst founded Gaydar alongside his business and romantic partner Gary Frisch in November 1999. Frisch passed away in 2007 - having also fallen to his death from a building's balcony.
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. 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The London-based South African couple came up with the idea for the dating website after a single gay man they were friends with vented his frustrations about how hard it was to find a boyfriend on online dating sites.
Built in 1999, Gaydar was the first of its kind and was initially just created for desktop purpose only. It did not transform into an app until 2009.
The current managing director of Gaydar, Rob Curtis, said Badenhurst and his partner totally changed the way gay men were able to meet.
"It's a sad day at Gaydar HQ as we adjust to the news of Henry's passing," he told The Independent. "Henry and Gary built Gaydar from their home, so the company has always been like a family. Thanks to Henry, LGBT people all around the world realised that they weren't alone. We send love to his friends and family at this difficult time."
Eighteen years ago, Henry and his partner Gary revolutionised the way that gay men meet, and in doing so created a safer environment for LGBT people everywhere, he said in an official statement. The Gaydar team is shocked and saddened to hear of Henrys passing and send our sincerest sympathies to Henrys friends and family.
Gaydar is massively popular in everywhere from South Africa to the UK to Australia, Ireland and also in North America and continental Europe but to a lesser extent in the two latter areas. At the zenith of the sites success in the late noughties, it was home to more than five million subscribers.
It has of course laid the groundwork for well-known mobile phone dating apps such as Grindr, Scruff, and Tinder.
As well as being famed for irreversibly shaking up the dating scene, it also found its way into the headlines on more occasion than one. After Boy George was convicted for falsely imprisoning a male escort in 2009, it emerged he had come across the escort on Gaydar. Labour MP Chris Bryant was discovered pictured on the dating site wearing just his pants.
Badenhorst is survived by his siblings and parents.
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Malawi has been put on high alert over fears the plague, which has killed at least 140 people in Madagascar, could hit the East African country.
It is now the 10th nation in Africa to be put on alert over concerns surrounding the Black Death, which was behind one of the most devastating pandemics in history, wiping out a third of Medieval Europe in the 1300s.
South Africa, Mauritius, Mozambique, Seychelles, Tanzania, La Reunion and Mayotte, Kenya, Ethiopia and Comoros have all been warned to prepare for a potential outbreak of the deadly disease.
Recommended WHO steps in as plague in Madagascar kills 124
The World Health Organisation (WHO) said it has also helped Ethiopia and Kenya prepare for a potential spread due to their direct airline connections with Madagascar.
The plague has swept across the island nation since late summer, moving beyond the areas where it traditionally occurs, with at least 2,034 suspected or confirmed cases reported between 1 August and 8 November, according to the WHO.
The WHO has pledged 3.8m to fight the disease and prepare surrounding countries for a potential spread, but it says it could take months to bring the outbreak under control.
WHO representative Tarik Jasarevic told The Independent the organisation has seen a decline in reported cases, as well as the number of people hospitalised with the disease in Madagascar.
As of 8 November, there were only 16 people hospitalised with plague, compared with 106 on 29 October, he said.
This trend is encouraging, and shows that the quick steps taken to support the Malagasy Government to contain the outbreak have been effective. However, we must remain vigilant and cannot rule out the possibility of future flare-ups.
Dr Dan Namarika, the principal secretary in Malawis ministry of health, said his country is working closely with Mozambique to prepare for any possible spread, Mail Online has reported.
We have infection prevention materials ready and groups and teams ready to be activated if there is a trigger, he said.
The deadly disease is caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis, which is generally spread by flea bites or contact with an infected animal.
World news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 World news in pictures World news in pictures 30 September 2020 Pope Francis prays with priests at the end of a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican AFP via Getty World news in pictures 29 September 2020 A girl's silhouette is seen from behind a fabric in a tent along a beach by Beit Lahia in the northern Gaza Strip AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 September 2020 A Chinese woman takes a photo of herself in front of a flower display dedicated to frontline health care workers during the COVID-19 pandemic in Beijing, China. China will celebrate national day marking the founding of the People's Republic of China on October 1st Getty World news in pictures 27 September 2020 The Glass Mountain Inn burns as the Glass Fire moves through the area in St. Helena, California. The fast moving Glass fire has burned over 1,000 acres and has destroyed homes Getty World news in pictures 26 September 2020 A villager along with a child offers prayers next to a carcass of a wild elephant that officials say was electrocuted in Rani Reserve Forest on the outskirts of Guwahati, India AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 September 2020 The casket of late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is seen in Statuary Hall in the US Capitol to lie in state in Washington, DC AFP via Getty World news in pictures 24 September 2020 An anti-government protester holds up an image of a pro-democracy commemorative plaque at a rally outside Thailand's parliament in Bangkok, as activists gathered to demand a new constitution AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 September 2020 A whale stranded on a beach in Macquarie Harbour on the rugged west coast of Tasmania, as hundreds of pilot whales have died in a mass stranding in southern Australia despite efforts to save them, with rescuers racing to free a few dozen survivors The Mercury/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 22 September 2020 State civil employee candidates wearing face masks and shields take a test in Surabaya AFP via Getty World news in pictures 21 September 2020 A man sweeps at the Taj Mahal monument on the day of its reopening after being closed for more than six months due to the coronavirus pandemic AP World news in pictures 20 September 2020 A deer looks for food in a burnt area, caused by the Bobcat fire, in Pearblossom, California EPA World news in pictures 19 September 2020 Anti-government protesters hold their mobile phones aloft as they take part in a pro-democracy rally in Bangkok. Tens of thousands of pro-democracy protesters massed close to Thailand's royal palace, in a huge rally calling for PM Prayut Chan-O-Cha to step down and demanding reforms to the monarchy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 18 September 2020 Supporters of Iraqi Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr maintain social distancing as they attend Friday prayers after the coronavirus disease restrictions were eased, in Kufa mosque, near Najaf, Iraq Reuters World news in pictures 17 September 2020 A protester climbs on The Triumph of the Republic at 'the Place de la Nation' as thousands of protesters take part in a demonstration during a national day strike called by labor unions asking for better salary and against jobs cut in Paris, France EPA World news in pictures 16 September 2020 A fire raging near the Lazzaretto of Ancona in Italy. The huge blaze broke out overnight at the port of Ancona. 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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
Without antibiotics, the bubonic strain of the disease can spread to the lungs, turning into a more virulent pneumonic form, which can easily be spread through coughing or sneezing.
Early symptoms of the disease include sudden fever, headache, nausea and vomiting, fatigue and extreme weakness.
The Black Death has been responsible for widespread pandemics with high mortality rates, claiming more than 50 million lives in Europe during the 14th century.
Today, however, the plague can be easily prevented and treated with antibiotics if detected early on.
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Al Gore has suggested America could stay in the Paris Climate Agreement if a new president gets into the White House in 2020.
President Donald Trump announced he would be withdrawing the US from the Paris Climate Agreement in June, making the US as the only country in the world not to get behind the framework deal to tackle greenhouse gas emissions.
The agreement states that signatories cannot withdraw until 4 November 2019 but the actual departure would not become official until the following year.
If there is a new president a new president could simply give 30 days notice, and the United States is back in the agreement, the former US Vice President told an audience at COP23, the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Bonn, Germany.
Mr Gore added: The first date upon which the United States could actually leave the Paris Agreement happens to be the first day after the next presidential election in 2020 so that's good news.
But he interrupted his comments during the climate finance panel at the US Climate Action Centre with a quick pause before adding Excuse me a moment and bowing his head and folding his hands in prayer.
The former Democrat presidential candidate joked: That was not a partisan comment there. You can't quote me on that.
The accord was signed by nearly 200 countries in December 2015 in an attempt to restrict global greenhouse gas emissions and limit global warming to within two degrees Celsius.
The United States of America is still in the Paris Agreement, and we are going to meet and exceed our commitments, Mr Gore continued.
He said: The United States of America is very seriously moving forward. This train, if you'll forgive the metaphor, left the station in Paris.
Protest in Manila against Donald Trump's visit to the Philippines Show all 14 1 /14 Protest in Manila against Donald Trump's visit to the Philippines Protest in Manila against Donald Trump's visit to the Philippines Riot police block protesters during a rally near the US embassy AFP/Getty Images Protest in Manila against Donald Trump's visit to the Philippines Protesters shout slogans while displaying portraits of U.S. President Donald Trump and Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte AP Protest in Manila against Donald Trump's visit to the Philippines Activists clash with riot police EPA Protest in Manila against Donald Trump's visit to the Philippines Protesters burn a banner of Donald Trump AFP/Getty Images Protest in Manila against Donald Trump's visit to the Philippines Protesters against Donald Trump's visit AP Protest in Manila against Donald Trump's visit to the Philippines Protesters deface portraits of Donald Trump and Rodrigo Duterte AP Protest in Manila against Donald Trump's visit to the Philippines Protesters clash with anti-riot police officers as they try to march towards the U.S. embassy REUTERS Protest in Manila against Donald Trump's visit to the Philippines A mural bearing the image of Donald Trump and Rodrigo Duterte is burnt REUTERS Protest in Manila against Donald Trump's visit to the Philippines Activists march on a road leading to the US embassy during a protest in Manila EPA Protest in Manila against Donald Trump's visit to the Philippines Protesters scuffle with riot police AFP/Getty Images Protest in Manila against Donald Trump's visit to the Philippines Protesters shout anti-US slogans as they burn a banner featuring the image of US President Donald Trump AFP/Getty Images Protest in Manila against Donald Trump's visit to the Philippines Activists clash with riot police EPA Protest in Manila against Donald Trump's visit to the Philippines Protesters display placards as they shout anti-US slogans AFP/Getty Images Protest in Manila against Donald Trump's visit to the Philippines Anti-riot police officers block protesters REUTERS
Mr Gore, who gained an Oscar for his 2006 documentary about climate change An Inconvenient Truth, said it was unlikely Germany, Japan, and other American allies would ever succeed in persuading President Trump to reverse his plans to withdraw the Paris climate agreement.
The politician, whose world-renowned work in climate change activism with the IPCC gained him the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007, rebuffed President Trump's declared readiness to re-engage in the 2015 agreement if he gained better terms for US taxpayers and businesses, saying it was merely a smokescreen".
"It's a classic political effort to have things both ways. He's made his decision but he wants to give the other side a faint hope that ... that he might yet change his mind," he told Reuters from the sidelines of the 200-nation meeting.
It's pointless for me to continue trying to persuade him to change his mind," he said. "Can somebody else? (German) Chancellor Angela Merkel? (Japanese) Prime Minister (Shinzo) Abe? Somebody else? I don't know. I doubt it.
Syria, the last nation outside the pact, became a signatory of the Paris climate agreement last week.
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Ex-army analyst and veteran Chelsea Manning has targeted the Trump administration in a Veterans Day message.
The transgender veteran, 29, took aim at the US president and urged him to stop sending troops overseas in what she described as "fairy tale" manoeuvres.
Her comments seemingly refer to how military campaigns often overlook the effects of war on civilians.
Ms Manning has previously rejected the label "pacifist", which was given to her following the leaking of confidential military information in 2010.
Taking to Twitter, Ms Manning formerly known as Bradley Manning tweeted on Sunday: "Want to support veterans !? Stop sending us overseas to kill or be killed for your nationalist fairy tales. We can do better."
The tweet prompted a somewhat predictable backlash from conservatives in the US, with Twitter users accusing her of committing treason and claiming she does not have "the right to voice an opinion".
Manning published over 700,000 classified military documents via WikiLeaks in 2010 after serving as an intelligence analyst in Iraq.
She was subsequently sentenced to 35 years in prison for Aiding The Enemy and six violations of the Espionage Act, alongside numerous other charges.
Her prison sentence was commuted to the seven years she had already served by President Barack Obama in his final days of office.
Chelsea Manning tearfully says thank you to Barack Obama
Ms Manning was released from prison in May of this year after having her sentence cut by 28 years and has been documenting her return to civilian life on social media.
She filed a transgender rights case in prison which allowed her to transition while held at Fort Leavenworth military prison in Kansas.
I appreciate the wonderful support that I have received from so many people across the world over these past years, Ms Manning told ABC News at the time.
The remainder of Ms Manning's prison sentence was commuted by then-President Barack Obama (EPA)
Recently, Ms Manning was awarded a Harvard Visiting Fellow honour over the summer, but the university rescinded the invitation and she did not receive the title, although she was still allowed to talk at the education establishment.
We invited Chelsea Manning to spend a day at the Kennedy School. On that basis, we also named Chelsea Manning a Visiting Fellow.
"We did not intend to honour her in any way or to endorse any of her words or deeds, as we do not honor or endorse any Fellow," said Douglas Elmendorf, the dean of the university's John F Kennedy School of Government.
Ms Manning has also been named "Newsmaker Of The Year" by Out100 magazine, a leading LGBTQ lifestyle magazine.
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Disneyland shut down two water cooling towers that gave off a mist potentially carrying the bacteria causing Legionnaires disease, after a victim died and 11 others were struck by the killer disease found in the theme park, officials said.
Nine had visited the attraction in Anaheim, in California, while the man who died and two others lived in the city where the amusement centre is based but had not been to the landmark site.
Ten of the victims who were aged from 52 to 94 - were taken to hospital after being hit with the bacterial lung infection. One of those infected was a Disney worker.
The patient who died had succumbed to additional health issues, doctors said.
Eighteen water cooling towers in total stand in an area that is 100 feet from guests, Disney officials said. The units, which give off a mist, treat water used in appliances such as fridges.
Officials with Orange County Health Care Agency contacted bosses of the theme park after they detected the 12 cases of Legionnaires disease among both visitors and residents in Anaheim.
Disney took action and shut down the two water cooling towers after officials detected high levels of the bacteria from the virus.
Jessica Good, a spokeswoman for the Orange County Health Care Agency, told CNN: "To date, no additional Legionella cases have been identified with potential exposure in Anaheim after September.
She added: "There is no known ongoing risk associated with this outbreak."
Health officials have ordered that the two water cooling towers remain shut until is proven they are free from contamination of Legionella bacteria.
Pamela Hymel, Chief Medical Officer for Walt Disney Parks and Resorts, said that Disney was told by local officials over the outbreak just over two weeks ago.
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
These towers were treated with chemicals that destroy the bacteria and are currently shut down, Ms Hymel said in an email, according to a report by Voice of Orange County. We have proactively shared this information with OCHCA (Orange County Health Care Agency) and given our actions. They have indicated there is no longer any known risk associated with our facilities.
There have been 55 reported cases of Legionnaires disease in Orange County this year, a number that is increasing annually, according to a health care agency.
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Donald Trump has performed a drastic U-turn after saying he believes Vladimir Putins claim there was no Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election.
The US president was forced to backtrack after he was fiercely criticised for saying he still believed the Russian President did not think Russian meddling had taken place.
He said he didnt meddle, President Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One on Saturday. I asked him again. You can only ask so many times... He said he absolutely did not meddle in our election. He did not do what they are saying he did."
He added: And I believe, I really believe that, when he tells me that he means it.
Despite the fact multiple US intelligence agencies concluded Moscow interfered in the presidential election in the attempt to push the vote in the Republicans favour, President Trump also said the accusations had hurt Mr Putins feelings.
But President Trump has now desperately sought to distance himself from his remarks in a news conference in Vietnam.
As to whether I believe it or not, Im with our agencies, especially as currently constituted, President Trump said at a news conference with Vietnamese President Tran Dai Quang.
As currently led, by fine people, I believe very much in our intelligence agencies.
Protest in Manila against Donald Trump's visit to the Philippines Show all 14 1 /14 Protest in Manila against Donald Trump's visit to the Philippines Protest in Manila against Donald Trump's visit to the Philippines Riot police block protesters during a rally near the US embassy AFP/Getty Images Protest in Manila against Donald Trump's visit to the Philippines Protesters shout slogans while displaying portraits of U.S. President Donald Trump and Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte AP Protest in Manila against Donald Trump's visit to the Philippines Activists clash with riot police EPA Protest in Manila against Donald Trump's visit to the Philippines Protesters burn a banner of Donald Trump AFP/Getty Images Protest in Manila against Donald Trump's visit to the Philippines Protesters against Donald Trump's visit AP Protest in Manila against Donald Trump's visit to the Philippines Protesters deface portraits of Donald Trump and Rodrigo Duterte AP Protest in Manila against Donald Trump's visit to the Philippines Protesters clash with anti-riot police officers as they try to march towards the U.S. embassy REUTERS Protest in Manila against Donald Trump's visit to the Philippines A mural bearing the image of Donald Trump and Rodrigo Duterte is burnt REUTERS Protest in Manila against Donald Trump's visit to the Philippines Activists march on a road leading to the US embassy during a protest in Manila EPA Protest in Manila against Donald Trump's visit to the Philippines Protesters scuffle with riot police AFP/Getty Images Protest in Manila against Donald Trump's visit to the Philippines Protesters shout anti-US slogans as they burn a banner featuring the image of US President Donald Trump AFP/Getty Images Protest in Manila against Donald Trump's visit to the Philippines Activists clash with riot police EPA Protest in Manila against Donald Trump's visit to the Philippines Protesters display placards as they shout anti-US slogans AFP/Getty Images Protest in Manila against Donald Trump's visit to the Philippines Anti-riot police officers block protesters REUTERS
Difficult relations between the two world leaders were renewed after Mr Putins spokesman initially said election meddling did not come up when they spoke despite President Trump saying it did.
During his five-nation Asia tour, the billionaire property developer spoke to Mr Putin three times on the sidelines of the summit where the topic of Russia meddling came up.
President Trumps initial remarks were condemned by senator John McCain who tweeted there was nothing America First about taking the word of KGB colonel [Putin] over the US intelligence community.
CIA chief Mike Pompeo also hit back at President Trumps remarks in a statement issued by the agency, saying: The director stands by and has always stood by the January 2017 intelligence community assessment entitled: Assessing Russian Activities and Intentions in Recent US Elections. The intelligence assessment with regard to Russian election meddling has not changed.
American intelligence agencies have long concluded Russians interfered to push the presidential race in Mr Trumps advantage via hacking and releasing emails to humiliate his Democrat rival Hillary Clinton and disseminating propaganda on social media.
Investigations are also underway to discern whether Trump campaign officials colluded with the Russians.
Mr Trumps former campaign manager, Paul Manafort, has been indicted in the investigation along with his former deputy Rick Gates, on charges including conspiracy to defraud the US. His former foreign policy adviser George Papadopoulos was also charged and has admitted lying to the FBI.
On Saturday, the US leader claimed the allegations of election meddling were an artificial Democratic hit job that gets in the way of relations between Moscow and Washington, saying Mr Putin was insulted by the claims.
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Donald Trump took to Twitter during his trip in Vietnam to trade barbs with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, calling the dictator short and fat.
Why would Kim Jong-un insult me by calling me old when I would NEVER call him short and fat? he wrote.
Oh well, I try so hard to be his friend and maybe someday that will happen!
Mr Trump made the comment after attending the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (Apec) summit in Danang.
Speaking later in Vietnams capital, Hanoi, the US President said it would be very, very nice if he and Mr Kim could become friends.
That might be a strange thing to happen, but its a possibility, he said.
North Koreas state media agency KCNA had accused the US President of escalating tensions between the two countries to the extremes and called on America to oust its leader.
No-one can predict when that lunatic old man of the White House, lost to sense, will start a nuclear war, KCNA had said. The world is undergoing unprecedented throes because of Trump, a notorious political heretic.
The US must oust the lunatic old man from power and withdraw the hostile policy towards the DPRK at once in order to get rid of the abyss of doom.
The US had better make a decisive choice ... if it does not want a horrible nuclear disaster and tragic doom.
The KCNA's calls for Mr Trump's removal come after the billionaire attacked the haters and fools who he said are preventing the development of good relations forming between the US and Russia.
When will all the haters and fools out there realise that having a good relationship with Russia is a good thing, not a bad thing, Mr Trump tweeted.
The President came under fire after making remarks on Saturday that suggested he believed Russian leader Vladimir Putins assertions that his country had not meddled in the election that took Mr Trump to the White House.
The comments drew criticism as US intelligence agencies had already concluded there had been Russian meddling in the election race.
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A man has been arrested after police say they witnessed him riding a lawn mower on a Florida highway while carrying a case of beer.
Kenneth Burton Alleshouse, 56, was seen by a Port St Lucie police officer on 3 November just after 6 in the evening.
The police officer prevented Mr Alleshouse from continuing to drive the lawn mower and claimed he could detect a potent smell of alcohol coming from him.
He carried out a driving under the influence investigation and police said his blood alcohol level was three times over the legal limit for intoxication when he was pulled over by police.
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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Firefighters have brought the fire under control but they expected to keep working through the day EPA World news in pictures 15 September 2020 Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny posing for a selfie with his family at Berlin's Charite hospital. In an Instagram post he said he could now breathe independently following his suspected poisoning last month Alexei Navalny/Instagram/AFP World news in pictures 14 September 2020 Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga, former Defense Minister Shigeru Ishiba and former Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida celebrate after Suga was elected as new head of the ruling party at the Liberal Democratic Party's leadership election in Tokyo Reuters World news in pictures 13 September 2020 A man stands behind a burning barricade during the fifth straight day of protests against police brutality in Bogota AFP via Getty World news in pictures 12 September 2020 Police officers block and detain protesters during an opposition rally to protest the official presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus. Daily protests calling for the authoritarian president's resignation are now in their second month AP World news in pictures 11 September 2020 Members of 'Omnium Cultural' celebrate the 20th 'Festa per la llibertat' ('Fiesta for the freedom') to mark the Day of Catalonia in Barcelona. Omnion Cultural fights for the independence of Catalonia EPA World news in pictures 10 September 2020 The Moria refugee camp, two days after Greece's biggest migrant camp, was destroyed by fire. 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Investigators say Mr Alleshouse, who has now been arrested on a drunk driving charge, was carrying a case of beer and driving the red snapper lawn mower erratically.
Mr Alleshouse was in turn arrested and taken to the St Lucie County Jail in Florida.
This comes after police arrested a woman in Lakeland, Florida, who was drunkenly riding a horse down a highway earlier in the month.
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A substitute teacher at an Ohio high school told detectives that she performed oral sex with one student and had intercourse with another, police say. She also confessed to sending nude pictures through social media to a student, according to a warrant for her arrest.
Madeline Marx, 23, faces two charges of sexual battery.
She worked as a substitute teacher at Fairmont High School in Kettering, Ohio, according to police records.
Teachers are entrusted with the responsibility of educating children who are becoming young adults, Montgomery County Prosecutor Mat Heck Jr. said in a statement to the Dayton Daily News. This defendant took advantage of her position and developed a sexual relationship with minor students.
Online court records do not indicate whether Marx has an attorney, and courts were closed for Veterans Day.
Kettering City School District Superintendent Scott Inskeep said a student or students alerted school officials to allegations of Marxs inappropriate actions. An investigation began immediately, Inskeep said.
On Wednesday, police detectives went to Fairmont High School to investigate a report of two minor students having sexual contact with a substitute teacher, according to the warrant.
By early afternoon, the authorities had enough evidence to arrest Marx, police spokesman John Jung said. Marx was formally charged Thursday, he said.
An 11th-grade student told detectives that Marx performed oral sex on him in July in a commercial parking lot. Another 11th-grade student said he had sex with Marx in September in an apartment building parking lot.
During Marxs interview with detectives, she admitted to having oral sex with a student and added that she sent several nude pictures through Snapchat and Instagram to that student. She also admitted to having intercourse with the other student, the warrant states.
Detectives arrested Marx at the end of her interview, and the Dayton Daily News reported that she was physically removed from the school.
The names of the victims are redacted from the police report because they are minors.
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 case will be presented to a grand jury, the Daily News reported. Court records indicate that Marx could be released on her own recognizance, with instructions that she must reside with father at his residence while case is pending.
Marx began working a substitute teacher last school year, and Inskeep, the superintendent, said there had not been any previous problems with her.
There were no signs or anything that we knew about that wouldve caused us to be concerned, Inskeep said.
Online education records show that Marx was issued a four-year teaching license in June 2016, to teach kindergarten through 12th grade. The Daily News obtained personnel records for Marx and reported that she wrote in her application that she was passionate about children and their education. She described herself as a hard worker and mentioned working with special needs children since high school, the newspaper said.
The Washington Post
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Senator John McCain has said there is nothing America First about "trusting President Vladimir Putin, following President Donald Trumps meeting with the Russian leader at the APEC summit in Vietnam on Saturday.
The comments follow the recent Robert Mueller probe into the Kremlin's suspected "meddling" in the 2016 US presidential elections, which saw the first charges filed in the case but are sealed under order from a federal judge.
In a statement on his official website, McCain said: "There's nothing 'America First' about taking the word of a KGB colonel over that of the American intelligence community.
Vladimir Putin does not have America's interests at heart. To believe otherwise is not only naive but also places our national security at risk," McCain said.
But Trump still gave his blessing to Putin, saying: Every time he sees me he says, I didnt do that, and I really believe that when he tells me that, he means it, aboard Air Force One after the meeting in Vietnam, reported The Hill.
Trump and Putin shake hands at the APEC summit
Senator McCain, who is chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, also spoke of the Trump and Putins apparently "brief" discussions on the Syrian civil war.
The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation Show all 17 1 /17 The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation Paul Manafort Mr Manafort is a Republican strategist and former Trump campaign manager. He resigned from that post over questions about his extensive lobbying overseas, including in Ukraine where he represented pro-Russian interests. Mr Manafort turned himself in at FBI headquarters to special counsel Robert Muellers team on Oct 30, 2017, after he was indicted under seal on charges that include conspiracy against the United States, conspiracy to launder money, unregistered agent of a foreign principal, false and misleading US Foreign Agents Registration Act statements, false statements, and seven counts of failure to file reports of foreign bank and financial accounts. Getty The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation Rick Gates Mr Gates joined the Trump team in spring 2016, and served as a top aide until he left to work at the Republican National Committee after the departure of former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort. Mr Gates' had previously worked on several presidential campaigns, on international political campaigns in Europe and Africa, and had 15 years of political or financial experience with multinational firms, according to his bio. Mr Gates was indicted alongside Mr Manafort by special counsel Robert Mueller's team on charges that include conspiracy against the United States, conspiracy to launder money, unregistered agent of a foreign principal, false and misleading US Foreign Agents Registration Act statements, false statements, and seven counts of failure to file reports of foreign bank and financial accounts. AP The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation George Papadopoulos George Papadopoulos was a former foreign policy adviser for the Trump campaign, having joined around March 2016. Mr Papadopoulos plead guilty to federal charges for lying to the FBI as a part of a cooperation agreement with Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation. Mr Papadopoulos claimed in an interview with the FBI that he had made contacts with Russian sources before joining the Trump campaign, but he actually began working with them after joining the team. Mr Papadopoulos allegedly took a meeting with a professor in London who reportedly told him that Russians had "dirt" on Hillary Clinton. The professor also allegedly introduced Mr Papadopoulos to a Russian who was said to have close ties to officials at the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Mr Papadopoulos also allegedly was in contact with a woman whom he incorrectly described in one email to others in the campaign as the "niece" to Russian President Vladimir Putin. Twitter The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation Donald Trump Jr The President's eldest son met with a Russian lawyer - Natalia Veselnitskaya - on 9 June 2016 at Trump Tower in New York. He said in an initial statement that the meeting was about Russia halting adoptions of its children by US citizens. Then, he said it was regarding the Magnitsky Act, a US law blacklisting Russian human rights abusers. In a final statement, Mr Trump Jr released a chain of emails that revealed he took the meeting in hopes of getting information Ms Veselnitskaya had about Hillary Clinton's alleged financial ties to Russia. He and the President called it standard "opposition research" in the course of campaigning and that no information came from the meeting. The meeting was set up by an intermediary, Rob Goldstone. Jared Kushner and Paul Manafort were also at the same meeting. Getty Images The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation Jared Kushner Mr Kushner is President Donald Trump's son-in-law and a key adviser to the White House. He met with a Russian banker appointed by Russian President Vladimir Putin in December. Mr Kushner has said he did so in his role as an adviser to Mr Trump while the bank says he did so as a private developer. Mr Kushner has also volunteered to testify in the Senate about his role helping to arrange meetings between Trump advisers and Russian Ambassador to the US Sergey Kislyak. Getty Images The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation Rob Goldstone Former tabloid journalist and now music publicist Rob Goldstone is a contact of the Trump family through the previously Trump-owned 2013 Miss Universe pageant, which took place in Moscow. In June 2016, he wrote to Donald Trump Jr offering a meeting with a Russian lawyer, Natalya Veselnitskaya, who had information about Hillary Clinton. Mr Goldstone was the intermediary for Russian pop star Emin Agalaraov and his father, real estate magnate Aras, who played a role in putting on the 2013 pageant. In an email chain released by Mr Trump Jr, Mr Goldstone seemed to indicate Russian government's support of Donald Trump's campaign. AP images The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation Aras and Emin Agalarov Aras Agalarov (R) is a wealthy Moscow-based real estate magnate and son Emin (L) is a pop star. Both played a role in putting on the previously Trump-owned 2013 Miss Universe pageant in Moscow. They allegedly had information about Hillary Clinton and offered that information to the Trump campaign through a lawyer with whom they had worked with, Natalia Veselnitskaya, and music publicist Rob Goldstone. Getty Images The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation Natalia Veselnitskaya Natalia Veselnitskaya is a Russian lawyer with ties to the Kremlin. She has worked on real estate issues and reportedly counted the FSB as a client in the past. She has ties to a Trump family connection, real estate magnate Aras Agalarov, who had helped set up the Trump-owned 2013 Miss Universe pageant which took place in Moscow. Ms Veselnitskaya met with Donald Trump Jr, Jared Kushner, and Paul Manafort in Trump Tower on 9 June 2016 but denies the allegation that she went there promising information on Hillary Clinton's alleged financial ties to Russia. She contends that the meeting was about the US adoptions of Russian children being stopped by Moscow as a reaction to the Magnitsky Act, a US law blacklisting Russian human rights abusers. Getty Images The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation Mike Flynn Mr Flynn was named as Trump's national security adviser but was forced to resign from his post for inappropriate communication with Russian Ambassador to the US Sergey Kislyak. He had misrepresented a conversation he had with Mr Kislyak to Vice President Mike Pence, telling him wrongly that he had not discussed sanctions with the Russian. Getty Images The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation Sergey Kislyak Mr Kislyak, the former longtime Russian ambassador to the US, is at the centre of the web said to connect President Donald Trump's campaign with Russia. Reuters The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation Roger Stone Mr Stone is a former Trump adviser who worked on the political campaigns of Richard Nixon, George HW Bush, and Ronald Reagan. Mr Stone claimed repeatedly in the final months of the campaign that he had backchannel communications with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and that he knew the group was going to dump damaging documents to the campaign of Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton - which did happen. Mr Stone also had contacts with the hacker Guccier 2.0 on Twitter, who claimed to have hacked the DNC and is linked to Russian intelligence services. Getty Images The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation Jeff Sessions The US attorney general was forced to recuse himself from the Trump-Russia investigation after it was learned that he had lied about meeting with Russian Ambassador to the US Sergey Kislyak. Getty Images The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation Carter Page Mr Page is a former advisor to the Trump campaign and has a background working as an investment banker at Merrill Lynch. Mr Page met with Russian Ambassador to the US Sergey Kislyak during the 2016 Republican National Convention in Cleveland. Mr Page had invested in oil companies connected to Russia and had admitted that US Russia sanctions had hurt his bottom line. Reuters The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation Jeffrey "JD" Gorden Mr Gordon met with Russian Ambassador to the US Sergey Kislyak during the 2016 Republian National Convention to discuss how the US and Russia could work together to combat Islamist extremism should then-Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump win the election. The meeting came days before a massive leak of DNC emails that has been connected to Russia. Creative Commons The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation James Comey Mr Comey was fired from his post as head of the FBI by President Donald Trump. 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Getty Images The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation Sally Yates Ms Yates, a former Deputy Attorney General, was running the Justice Department while President Donald Trump's pick for attorney general awaited confirmation. Ms Yates was later fired by Mr Trump from her temporary post over her refusal to implement Mr Trump's first travel ban. She had also warned the White House about potential ties former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn to Russia after discovering those ties during the FBI's investigation into the Trump campaign's connections to Russia. Getty Images
Mr Mueller was appointed in May to determine if Mr Trump's campaign advisers colluded with the Russian government to influence the 2016 presidential election.
It is unclear what the charges are but the development suggests Mr Mueller and his team believe crimes were committed by at least one person in relation to last years election.
Special Counsel Robert Mueller, seen here on Capitol Hill in Washington on June 21, 2017, is facing augmented criticism from Republicans (REUTERS/Joshua Roberts)
Meanwhile, Mr Putin branded the claims of interfering with the election as "absurd", and claimed that the accusations were "designed to hurt" the president.
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Donald Trump has defended efforts by him and his administration to maintain close ties with the Kremlin amid intense and growing scrutiny of Russian meddling in the US election, insisting a good relationship with Vladimir Putin was a "good thing".
He called out "haters and fools" who questioned the benefits of maintaining friendly relations with Moscow, claiming Barack Obama tried and failed to foster closer links with Mr Putin because of a lack of "chemistry".
He also claimed "progress is being made" in efforts to reign in North Korea's nuclear programme after China vowed to increase sanctions against the pariah state.
In a series of tweets on Saturday evening that ranged from the Korean crisis to the "fake news media" and "crooked Hillary Clinton", the US President wrote: "President Xi of China has stated that he is upping the sanctions against #NoKo [North Korea]. Said he wants them to denuclearize. Progress is being made."
Tweeting from Vietnam - the penultimate stop on his five nation Asia tour - Mr Trump added: "Met with President Putin of Russia who was at #APEC meetings. Good discussions on Syria. Hope for his help to solve, along with China the dangerous North Korea crisis. Progress being made.
"When will all the haters and fools out there realize that having a good relationship with Russia is a good thing, not a bad thing. There always playing politics - bad for our country [sic]. I want to solve North Korea, Syria, Ukraine, terrorism, and Russia can greatly help!"
He claimed Ms Clinton and Barack Obama had "begged" Russia for closer ties, but added that his predecessor in the White House had "zero chemistry with Putin".
His comments followed several brief conversations between the Russian and US leaders during the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (Apec) summit.
The men reportedly discussed the North Korea nuclear crisis, the Syrian civil war and Russian meddling in the 2016 US presidential election.
Recommended Donald Trump is no longer the centre of attention in America
Speaking after their meeting, Mr Trump said the accusations had hurt Mr Putins feelings.
He said he didnt meddle, the US leader told reporters aboard Air Force One. I asked him again. You can only ask so many times... He said he absolutely did not meddle in our election. He did not do what they are saying he did.
And I believe, I really believe that, when he tells me that he means it.
Mr Trump also appeared to respond to reports last week that North Korean leader Kim Jong-un had described him as a "lunatic old man".
And he said he had tried "so hard" to be Mr Kim's "friend...and maybe someday that will happen!".
On Sunday, Mr Trump travels to the Philippines capital, Manila, to meet President Rodrigo Duterte for the last leg of his 12-day Asia trip.
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The former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper said that US President Donald Trump's downplaying of Russia's meddling in the 2016 US election "poses a peril to this country."
Mr Clapper was speaking alongside former CIA Director John Brennan on CNN regarding Mr Trump's tepid comments on his current Asia tour after conversations with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
"The threat posed by Russia, as John just said, is manifest and obvious. To try to paint it in any other way is, I think, astounding, and in fact, poses a peril to this country," noted Mr Clapper.
Mr Brennan said that by not confronting the issue directly and not acknowledging to Putin that we know you are responsible for this, I think hes giving Putin a pass."
The US President's lack of seriousness on the matter shows that he "can be played by foreign leaders who are going to appeal to his ego and to try to play upon his insecurities," based on Mr Brennan's estimation.
The Russian leader reportedly denied the hacking allegations once again during a brief meeting with Mr Trump at the Asia-Pacific Economic Summit.
"I believe that he feels that he and Russia did not meddle in the election," Mr Trump said at a news conference in Hanoi, Vietnam.
"As to whether I believe it or not, I am with our agencies, especially as currently constituted with the leadership," he added.
However, the US president did not categorically say Russia was behind the meddling which could have contributed to his ultimate victory, though US intelligence officials have confirmed as much.
The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation Show all 17 1 /17 The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation Paul Manafort Mr Manafort is a Republican strategist and former Trump campaign manager. He resigned from that post over questions about his extensive lobbying overseas, including in Ukraine where he represented pro-Russian interests. Mr Manafort turned himself in at FBI headquarters to special counsel Robert Muellers team on Oct 30, 2017, after he was indicted under seal on charges that include conspiracy against the United States, conspiracy to launder money, unregistered agent of a foreign principal, false and misleading US Foreign Agents Registration Act statements, false statements, and seven counts of failure to file reports of foreign bank and financial accounts. Getty The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation Rick Gates Mr Gates joined the Trump team in spring 2016, and served as a top aide until he left to work at the Republican National Committee after the departure of former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort. Mr Gates' had previously worked on several presidential campaigns, on international political campaigns in Europe and Africa, and had 15 years of political or financial experience with multinational firms, according to his bio. Mr Gates was indicted alongside Mr Manafort by special counsel Robert Mueller's team on charges that include conspiracy against the United States, conspiracy to launder money, unregistered agent of a foreign principal, false and misleading US Foreign Agents Registration Act statements, false statements, and seven counts of failure to file reports of foreign bank and financial accounts. AP The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation George Papadopoulos George Papadopoulos was a former foreign policy adviser for the Trump campaign, having joined around March 2016. Mr Papadopoulos plead guilty to federal charges for lying to the FBI as a part of a cooperation agreement with Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation. Mr Papadopoulos claimed in an interview with the FBI that he had made contacts with Russian sources before joining the Trump campaign, but he actually began working with them after joining the team. Mr Papadopoulos allegedly took a meeting with a professor in London who reportedly told him that Russians had "dirt" on Hillary Clinton. The professor also allegedly introduced Mr Papadopoulos to a Russian who was said to have close ties to officials at the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Mr Papadopoulos also allegedly was in contact with a woman whom he incorrectly described in one email to others in the campaign as the "niece" to Russian President Vladimir Putin. Twitter The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation Donald Trump Jr The President's eldest son met with a Russian lawyer - Natalia Veselnitskaya - on 9 June 2016 at Trump Tower in New York. He said in an initial statement that the meeting was about Russia halting adoptions of its children by US citizens. Then, he said it was regarding the Magnitsky Act, a US law blacklisting Russian human rights abusers. In a final statement, Mr Trump Jr released a chain of emails that revealed he took the meeting in hopes of getting information Ms Veselnitskaya had about Hillary Clinton's alleged financial ties to Russia. He and the President called it standard "opposition research" in the course of campaigning and that no information came from the meeting. The meeting was set up by an intermediary, Rob Goldstone. Jared Kushner and Paul Manafort were also at the same meeting. Getty Images The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation Jared Kushner Mr Kushner is President Donald Trump's son-in-law and a key adviser to the White House. He met with a Russian banker appointed by Russian President Vladimir Putin in December. Mr Kushner has said he did so in his role as an adviser to Mr Trump while the bank says he did so as a private developer. Mr Kushner has also volunteered to testify in the Senate about his role helping to arrange meetings between Trump advisers and Russian Ambassador to the US Sergey Kislyak. Getty Images The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation Rob Goldstone Former tabloid journalist and now music publicist Rob Goldstone is a contact of the Trump family through the previously Trump-owned 2013 Miss Universe pageant, which took place in Moscow. In June 2016, he wrote to Donald Trump Jr offering a meeting with a Russian lawyer, Natalya Veselnitskaya, who had information about Hillary Clinton. Mr Goldstone was the intermediary for Russian pop star Emin Agalaraov and his father, real estate magnate Aras, who played a role in putting on the 2013 pageant. In an email chain released by Mr Trump Jr, Mr Goldstone seemed to indicate Russian government's support of Donald Trump's campaign. AP images The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation Aras and Emin Agalarov Aras Agalarov (R) is a wealthy Moscow-based real estate magnate and son Emin (L) is a pop star. Both played a role in putting on the previously Trump-owned 2013 Miss Universe pageant in Moscow. They allegedly had information about Hillary Clinton and offered that information to the Trump campaign through a lawyer with whom they had worked with, Natalia Veselnitskaya, and music publicist Rob Goldstone. Getty Images The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation Natalia Veselnitskaya Natalia Veselnitskaya is a Russian lawyer with ties to the Kremlin. She has worked on real estate issues and reportedly counted the FSB as a client in the past. She has ties to a Trump family connection, real estate magnate Aras Agalarov, who had helped set up the Trump-owned 2013 Miss Universe pageant which took place in Moscow. Ms Veselnitskaya met with Donald Trump Jr, Jared Kushner, and Paul Manafort in Trump Tower on 9 June 2016 but denies the allegation that she went there promising information on Hillary Clinton's alleged financial ties to Russia. She contends that the meeting was about the US adoptions of Russian children being stopped by Moscow as a reaction to the Magnitsky Act, a US law blacklisting Russian human rights abusers. Getty Images The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation Mike Flynn Mr Flynn was named as Trump's national security adviser but was forced to resign from his post for inappropriate communication with Russian Ambassador to the US Sergey Kislyak. He had misrepresented a conversation he had with Mr Kislyak to Vice President Mike Pence, telling him wrongly that he had not discussed sanctions with the Russian. Getty Images The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation Sergey Kislyak Mr Kislyak, the former longtime Russian ambassador to the US, is at the centre of the web said to connect President Donald Trump's campaign with Russia. Reuters The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation Roger Stone Mr Stone is a former Trump adviser who worked on the political campaigns of Richard Nixon, George HW Bush, and Ronald Reagan. Mr Stone claimed repeatedly in the final months of the campaign that he had backchannel communications with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and that he knew the group was going to dump damaging documents to the campaign of Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton - which did happen. Mr Stone also had contacts with the hacker Guccier 2.0 on Twitter, who claimed to have hacked the DNC and is linked to Russian intelligence services. Getty Images The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation Jeff Sessions The US attorney general was forced to recuse himself from the Trump-Russia investigation after it was learned that he had lied about meeting with Russian Ambassador to the US Sergey Kislyak. Getty Images The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation Carter Page Mr Page is a former advisor to the Trump campaign and has a background working as an investment banker at Merrill Lynch. Mr Page met with Russian Ambassador to the US Sergey Kislyak during the 2016 Republican National Convention in Cleveland. Mr Page had invested in oil companies connected to Russia and had admitted that US Russia sanctions had hurt his bottom line. Reuters The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation Jeffrey "JD" Gorden Mr Gordon met with Russian Ambassador to the US Sergey Kislyak during the 2016 Republian National Convention to discuss how the US and Russia could work together to combat Islamist extremism should then-Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump win the election. The meeting came days before a massive leak of DNC emails that has been connected to Russia. Creative Commons The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation James Comey Mr Comey was fired from his post as head of the FBI by President Donald Trump. The timing of Mr Comey's firing raised questions around whether or not the FBI's investigation into the Trump campaign may have played a role in the decision. Getty Images The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation Preet Bharara Mr Bahara refused, alongside 46 other US district attorney's across the country, to resign once President Donald Trump took office after previous assurances from Mr Trump that he would keep his job. Mr Bahara had been heading up several investigations including one into one of President Donald Trump's favorite cable television channels Fox News. Several investigations would lead back to that district, too, including those into Mr Trump's campaign ties to Russia, and Mr Trump's assertion that Trump Tower was wiretapped on orders from his predecessor. Getty Images The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation Sally Yates Ms Yates, a former Deputy Attorney General, was running the Justice Department while President Donald Trump's pick for attorney general awaited confirmation. Ms Yates was later fired by Mr Trump from her temporary post over her refusal to implement Mr Trump's first travel ban. She had also warned the White House about potential ties former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn to Russia after discovering those ties during the FBI's investigation into the Trump campaign's connections to Russia. Getty Images
The latest comments also appear to be backtracking on his initial statements following the meeting, when Mr Trump said: "Every time he sees me he says I didn't do that, and I really believe that when he tells me that, he means it...I think he is very insulted by it, which is not a good thing for our country."
However, Mr Trump also took to Twitter later to call out "haters and fools" for fomenting bad relations between the US and Russia.
He also noted that his attempt at better relations with Mr Putin was more beneficial than that of former President Barack Obama's, adding they had "zero chemistry."
Mr Clapper called Mr Trump's initial comments "unconscionable" and is not the only US official to be wary of the President's comments.
Senator John McCain was concerned about Mr Trump's naivety in "taking the word of a KGB colonel over that of the American intelligence community."
Adam Schiff, the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, commented: "You know who else is insulted by it, Mr President? The American people. You believe a foreign adversary over your own intelligence agencies."
Current CIA Director Mike Pompeo issued a statement that the agency stands by it and the intelligence community's findings from January 2017.
Mr Trump is currently on a 12-day Asia tour and meeting with Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte today.
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Pope Francis has denounced "short-sighted human activity" for causing global warming and rising sea levels, and urged world leaders at climate talks in Germany to act in tackling heat-trapping emissions.
The pontiff spoke out as he met a delegation of Pacific leaders in the Vatican and told them he shares their concerns about rising sea levels and increasingly intense weather systems that are threatening their small islands.
He decried in particular the state of oceans, where overfishing and pollution by plastics and micro-plastics are killing fish stocks and sea life that are critical to Pacific island livelihoods.
Recommended Pope Francis bans sale of cigarettes at the Vatican
While several causes are to blame, "sadly, many of them are due to short-sighted human activity connected with certain ways of exploiting natural and human resources, the impact of which ultimately reaches the ocean bed itself," the pontiff warned.
History's first Latin American pope has often spoken out against global warming and the impact it has in particular on poor and indigenous peoples. Praise Be, his landmark 2015 encyclical (a type of letter concerning Catholic doctrine), denounced how wealthy countries exploit the poor, risking turning God's creation into an "immense pile of filth.
The Pacific leaders praised the encyclical for drawing attention to those most vulnerable to climate change, including residents of small Pacific islands for whom rising sea levels pose an existential threat.
The president of Nauru, Baron Waqa, told Pope Francis that Pacific island leaders would urge negotiators at Bonn to uphold the Paris climate accord, where governments made commitments to keep global temperature rise this century below 2C above pre-industrial levels, and pursue efforts to limit it to 1.5C.
Mr Waqa warned that the 1.5C-rise was a crucial threshold: "There only remains a few years before we exceed carbon dioxide levels that will make temperature rise to levels that will see many parts of the Pacific disappear," he said.
World news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 World news in pictures World news in pictures 30 September 2020 Pope Francis prays with priests at the end of a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican AFP via Getty World news in pictures 29 September 2020 A girl's silhouette is seen from behind a fabric in a tent along a beach by Beit Lahia in the northern Gaza Strip AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 September 2020 A Chinese woman takes a photo of herself in front of a flower display dedicated to frontline health care workers during the COVID-19 pandemic in Beijing, China. China will celebrate national day marking the founding of the People's Republic of China on October 1st Getty World news in pictures 27 September 2020 The Glass Mountain Inn burns as the Glass Fire moves through the area in St. Helena, California. The fast moving Glass fire has burned over 1,000 acres and has destroyed homes Getty World news in pictures 26 September 2020 A villager along with a child offers prayers next to a carcass of a wild elephant that officials say was electrocuted in Rani Reserve Forest on the outskirts of Guwahati, India AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 September 2020 The casket of late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is seen in Statuary Hall in the US Capitol to lie in state in Washington, DC AFP via Getty World news in pictures 24 September 2020 An anti-government protester holds up an image of a pro-democracy commemorative plaque at a rally outside Thailand's parliament in Bangkok, as activists gathered to demand a new constitution AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 September 2020 A whale stranded on a beach in Macquarie Harbour on the rugged west coast of Tasmania, as hundreds of pilot whales have died in a mass stranding in southern Australia despite efforts to save them, with rescuers racing to free a few dozen survivors The Mercury/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 22 September 2020 State civil employee candidates wearing face masks and shields take a test in Surabaya AFP via Getty World news in pictures 21 September 2020 A man sweeps at the Taj Mahal monument on the day of its reopening after being closed for more than six months due to the coronavirus pandemic AP World news in pictures 20 September 2020 A deer looks for food in a burnt area, caused by the Bobcat fire, in Pearblossom, California EPA World news in pictures 19 September 2020 Anti-government protesters hold their mobile phones aloft as they take part in a pro-democracy rally in Bangkok. Tens of thousands of pro-democracy protesters massed close to Thailand's royal palace, in a huge rally calling for PM Prayut Chan-O-Cha to step down and demanding reforms to the monarchy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 18 September 2020 Supporters of Iraqi Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr maintain social distancing as they attend Friday prayers after the coronavirus disease restrictions were eased, in Kufa mosque, near Najaf, Iraq Reuters World news in pictures 17 September 2020 A protester climbs on The Triumph of the Republic at 'the Place de la Nation' as thousands of protesters take part in a demonstration during a national day strike called by labor unions asking for better salary and against jobs cut in Paris, France EPA World news in pictures 16 September 2020 A fire raging near the Lazzaretto of Ancona in Italy. The huge blaze broke out overnight at the port of Ancona. Firefighters have brought the fire under control but they expected to keep working through the day EPA World news in pictures 15 September 2020 Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny posing for a selfie with his family at Berlin's Charite hospital. In an Instagram post he said he could now breathe independently following his suspected poisoning last month Alexei Navalny/Instagram/AFP World news in pictures 14 September 2020 Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga, former Defense Minister Shigeru Ishiba and former Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida celebrate after Suga was elected as new head of the ruling party at the Liberal Democratic Party's leadership election in Tokyo Reuters World news in pictures 13 September 2020 A man stands behind a burning barricade during the fifth straight day of protests against police brutality in Bogota AFP via Getty World news in pictures 12 September 2020 Police officers block and detain protesters during an opposition rally to protest the official presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus. Daily protests calling for the authoritarian president's resignation are now in their second month AP World news in pictures 11 September 2020 Members of 'Omnium Cultural' celebrate the 20th 'Festa per la llibertat' ('Fiesta for the freedom') to mark the Day of Catalonia in Barcelona. Omnion Cultural fights for the independence of Catalonia EPA World news in pictures 10 September 2020 The Moria refugee camp, two days after Greece's biggest migrant camp, was destroyed by fire. Thousands of asylum seekers on the island of Lesbos are now homeless AFP via Getty World news in pictures 9 September 2020 Pope Francis takes off his face mask as he arrives by car to hold a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican AFP via Getty World news in pictures 8 September 2020 A home is engulfed in flames during the "Creek Fire" in the Tollhouse area of California AFP via Getty World news in pictures 7 September 2020 A couple take photos along a sea wall of the waves brought by Typhoon Haishen in the eastern port city of Sokcho AFP via Getty World news in pictures 6 September 2020 Novak Djokovic and a tournament official tends to a linesperson who was struck with a ball by Djokovic during his match against Pablo Carreno Busta at the US Open USA Today Sports/Reuters World news in pictures 5 September 2020 Protesters confront police at the Shrine of Remembrance in Melbourne, Australia, during an anti-lockdown rally AFP via Getty World news in pictures 4 September 2020 A woman looks on from a rooftop as rescue workers dig through the rubble of a damaged building in Beirut. A search began for possible survivors after a scanner detected a pulse one month after the mega-blast at the adjacent port AFP via Getty World news in pictures 3 September 2020 A full moon next to the Virgen del Panecillo statue in Quito, Ecuador EPA World news in pictures 2 September 2020 A Palestinian woman reacts as Israeli forces demolish her animal shed near Hebron in the Israeli-occupied West Bank Reuters World news in pictures 1 September 2020 Students protest against presidential elections results in Minsk TUT.BY/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 31 August 2020 The pack rides during the 3rd stage of the Tour de France between Nice and Sisteron AFP via Getty World news in pictures 30 August 2020 Law enforcement officers block a street during a rally of opposition supporters protesting against presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus Reuters World news in pictures 29 August 2020 A woman holding a placard reading "Stop Censorship - Yes to the Freedom of Expression" shouts in a megaphone during a protest against the mandatory wearing of face masks in Paris. Masks, which were already compulsory on public transport, in enclosed public spaces, and outdoors in Paris in certain high-congestion areas around tourist sites, were made mandatory outdoors citywide on August 28 to fight the rising coronavirus infections AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 August 2020 Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe bows to the national flag at the start of a press conference at the prime minister official residence in Tokyo. Abe announced he will resign over health problems, in a bombshell development that kicks off a leadership contest in the world's third-largest economy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 27 August 2020 Residents take cover behind a tree trunk from rubber bullets fired by South African Police Service (SAPS) in Eldorado Park, near Johannesburg, during a protest by community members after a 16-year old boy was reported dead AFP via Getty World news in pictures 26 August 2020 People scatter rose petals on a statue of Mother Teresa marking her 110th birth anniversary in Ahmedabad AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 August 2020 An aerial view shows beach-goers standing on salt formations in the Dead Sea near Ein Bokeq, Israel Reuters World news in pictures 24 August 2020 Health workers use a fingertip pulse oximeter and check the body temperature of a fisherwoman inside the Dharavi slum during a door-to-door Covid-19 coronavirus screening in Mumbai AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 August 2020 People carry an idol of the Hindu god Ganesh, the deity of prosperity, to immerse it off the coast of the Arabian sea during the Ganesh Chaturthi festival in Mumbai, India Reuters World news in pictures 22 August 2020 Firefighters watch as flames from the LNU Lightning Complex fires approach a home in Napa County, California AP World news in pictures 21 August 2020 Members of the Israeli security forces arrest a Palestinian demonstrator during a rally to protest against Israel's plan to annex parts of the occupied West Bank AFP via Getty World news in pictures 20 August 2020 A man pushes his bicycle through a deserted road after prohibitory orders were imposed by district officials for a week to contain the spread of the Covid-19 in Kathmandu AFP via Getty World news in pictures 19 August 2020 A car burns while parked at a residence in Vacaville, California. Dozens of fires are burning out of control throughout Northern California as fire resources are spread thin AFP via Getty World news in pictures 18 August 2020 Students use their mobile phones as flashlights at an anti-government rally at Mahidol University in Nakhon Pathom. Thailand has seen near-daily protests in recent weeks by students demanding the resignation of Prime Minister Prayut Chan-O-Cha AFP via Getty World news in pictures 17 August 2020 Members of the Kayapo tribe block the BR163 highway during a protest outside Novo Progresso in Para state, Brazil. Indigenous protesters blocked a major transamazonian highway to protest against the lack of governmental support during the COVID-19 novel coronavirus pandemic and illegal deforestation in and around their territories AFP via Getty World news in pictures 16 August 2020 Lightning forks over the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge as a storm passes over Oakland AP World news in pictures 15 August 2020 Belarus opposition supporters gather near the Pushkinskaya metro station where Alexander Taraikovsky, a 34-year-old protester died on August 10, during their protest rally in central Minsk AFP via Getty World news in pictures 14 August 2020 AlphaTauri's driver Daniil Kvyat takes part in the second practice session at the Circuit de Catalunya in Montmelo near Barcelona ahead of the Spanish F1 Grand Prix AFP via Getty World news in pictures 13 August 2020 Soldiers of the Brazilian Armed Forces during a disinfection of the Christ The Redeemer statue at the Corcovado mountain prior to the opening of the touristic attraction in Rio AFP via Getty World news in pictures 12 August 2020 Young elephant bulls tussle playfully on World Elephant Day at the Amboseli National Park in Kenya AFP via Getty
Pope Francis told the Pacific leaders that he hoped the Bonn talks would take their plight into consideration, and look for a shared strategy to confront the "grave problems" facing the environment and oceans.
World leaders are meeting in Bonn in the first major conference on climate change since US president Donald Trump announced the US withdrawal from the Paris climate accord.
Additional reporting by agencies
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Eleven-year-old Jabrah Jaber Ali Shamla was asleep when the bullets started flying.
Now accustomed to the routine of waking her children to flee their village during Houthi rebel attacks, her mother went to shake her out of sleep.
The girl didnt respond. In the dark, she realised her daughter's pillow was wet with blood.
Jabrah was still breathing, but a bullet had passed through the mud brick wall of the house and penetrated her skull.
Eleven-year-old Jabrah Jaber Ali Shamla died on 29 May after being shot in the head in crossfire in her village of Mantaba, Al Jawf province, Yemen (Supplied)
The family drove for five hours from their village, Mantaba, to get to the nearest medical facilities in Marib, the neighbouring province.
When they arrived, officials said Jabrah would not be admitted to one of Marib General Hospitals two ICUs until 2,000 rials (6) in fees were paid for her treatment. They didnt have it.
By the time a local doctor stepped in with the money, it was too late. The little girl died later the same day.
Marib General Hospital is the best health facility in the only province that has managed to prosper during Yemens war (Bethan McKernan)
We knew she was going to die. We just wanted it to have been an easier and better death, her brother said in an interview with The Independent, which gained rare access to report from inside Yemen earlier this month.
No more than a handful of foreign reporters have been able to shine a light on this forgotten conflict since it began almost three years ago.
The factors that led to Jabrahs death illustrate the hardships forced on a country buffeted by the competing interests of Saudi Arabia and Iran.
A boy who lost his left leg to a landmine is examined by a doctor at Marib General Hospital. Up to 16 people a week have been admitted needing amputations in recent months, hospital authorities said (Bethan McKernan)
Marib General Hospital is the best health facility in the only province that has managed to prosper during Yemens war yet even in the relatively well supplied, government-loyal town, medical services are cracking under the strain of a war where in many places, the front lines have cooled to a stalemate.
On the hospitals roof, countless bullet holes and damage to a wall hit by a Houthi rocket serve as reminders that in this fight, both sides have targeted civilian infrastructure.
Inside, the same bullet hole-riddled walls are wet with damp, and in one corridor a puddle of unidentified liquid reflects the daylight from a nearby window.
Landmines are killing and maiming so many that three rooms at Marib General are now a dedicated prosthetics workshop; in recent months up to 16 people a week have been admitted needing amputations.
Inside, bullet hole-riddled walls are wet with damp, and most beds are occupied by soldiers (Bethan McKernan)
Many of the 120 beds available are occupied by soldiers injured at the frontline and every two or three months, treating troops hurt in big Houthi offensives takes up almost all of the doctors time.
The hospitals director, Mohammed al Qobati, said that most treatment was provided for free, but even he admits that resources and certain drugs are scarce.
Outside in the courtyard, 22-year-old Abdul Rahman al Subari, sitting in a wheelchair, was among several others waiting to be seen by staff for complications arising from a traffic accident. He did not know how much the visit would cost. Sometimes I find a doctor, sometimes I dont, he said.
The price of prescription drugs which cost Mr Subari 2,500 rials (7.60) last time has also begun to bite in a country where GDP reached a record low of 515 in 2016, and has only decreased since.
With the countrys airports as well as land and sea borders controlled by neighbouring Saudi Arabia, unlike the conflict in Syria, Yemeni refugees have not fled to Europe in their thousands and journalists are not getting in, either.
Without any overspill of violence and amid a media blackout, the war has remained largely invisible to the outside world.
Inside Yemens borders, internally displaced persons from the rest of the country have fled to Marib to make new lives for themselves in a town that is relatively calm and stable thanks to oil reserves and the political clout of its governor, influential tribal leader Sultan al Aradah.
Sultan al Aradah, Governor of Yemens Marib province (Sanaa Centre)
With the province largely secured from the Houthis, he now commands forces focussed on the threat of al Qaeda.
Mr Aradah hosted a group of foreign journalists on a visit organised by the Sanaa Centre for Strategic Studies, an international research group seeking to raise awareness of the situation in Yemen in part to showcase his power and Maribs boom.
But the impact of the war can only be blunted up to a point, even in Marib, where US drone strikes and raids targeting al Qaeda have killed civilians.
And behind the Houthi frontlines, the humanitarian situation is far worse.
[An] environment of impunity has surrounded and protected Saudi aggression from March 2015 until today, said Sherine El Taraboulsi-McCarthy, a research fellow at the Overseas Development Institute.
The humanitarian situation is far worse now and likely to be more protracted; more loss of life, more frustrated youth finding a safer space in terrorist groups and more destruction in (sic) Yemens infrastructure.
A government allied soldier looks towards Houthi-controlled mountains from the damaged roof of Maribs General Hospital (Bethan McKernan)
Yemens internationally backed government which operates in exile from Riyadh relies heavily on Saudi and UAE airpower, ground forces and funding in its fight against both extremist groups and the Iran-backed Houthis, who have control of the capital, Sanaa.
On the other side of the front line, bridges, roads and sometimes civilian buildings such as homes and hospitals have been hit in large-scale Arab coalition air strikes since 2015.
In some cases, Western governments can be fairly accused of making matters worse.
Much of the devastation has been caused by arms sold to the kingdom by allies such as the UK and US a move that officials within Barack Obamas administration worried could amount to complicity in war crimes.
Johnson: We do not think Saudi have 'crossed threshold' of humanitarian laws, despite bombing Yemen
Since Operation Decisive Storm in Yemen began, the British government has sold more than 4.6bn of bombs and missiles to Saudi Arabia, The Independent reported earlier this month. The figure represents an increase of almost 500 per cent.
Riyadhs blockade on Yemens air and sea ports has prevented the import of food and medicine, leaving approximately 19 million people in desperate need of humanitarian aid and 7.3 million staring at a famine. And the country's cholera crisis mercifully almost non-existent in Marib is now the worlds worst ever outbreak, with one million cases expected before the end of the year.
My own experience is that we are in a proxy war, said powerful local sheik Ali Abdurabbu al Qadhi.
The US and Europe could pressure Iran and Saudi Arabia to end it.
Bullet holes pockmark Marib General Hospitals walls and roof (Bethan McKernan)
Welcome to what is unfortunately basically a police state. The international aspect of this conflict has created this, not Yemenis, he added.
The ends will be decided by the beginning you choose.
It seems barely possible, but the situation is about to get worse: as part of a series of bold moves impacting the region this week, Saudi Arabia retaliated to a 4 November Houthi ballistic missile that landed near Riyadhs airport with a complete shutdown of even government-controlled routes in and out of the country.
The Independent eventually had to leave taking the road east to Oman, which is dotted with military checkpoints and runs through several al Qaeda hotspots.
Yemen was already on the brink, said Farea al Muslimi, co-founder of the Sanaa Centre.
The price of food and fuel has doubled in a few days, even in wealthy Marib.
This was the last possible thing you could do to push Yemen off the cliff. For the first time in the war, even if you have money it makes no difference.
On the eastern edge of town, new cinderblock building projects occupy the middle distance but so does a new war cemetery, which contains the remains of around 1,000 people who have died in the fighting to date. Both will continue to grow so long as Yemens war rages.
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Almost as soon as the Dubai Air Show opened, Boeing extended its 2017 lead in aircraft orders over arch-rival Airbus.
Emirates ordered 40 Boeing 787 Dreamliner jets, with a list price of over $15bn (11.4bn), with deliveries starting in 2022.
The deal was announced by Sheikh Ahmed bin Saeed Al Maktoum, chairman and chief executive of Emirates, which is based in Dubai. He said: We see the 787 as a great complement to our 777 and A380 fleet, providing us with more flexibility to serve a range of destinations as we develop our global route network.
The type ordered is a 787-10, which is 18 feet longer than the existing 787-9, and seats up to 330 people in Emirates planned two-class configuration.
Boeings president and chief executive for commercial aircraft, Kevin McAllister, said: This is an airplane that will set a new benchmark for operating economics in the commercial aviation industry
The capacity is comparable with the old Boeing 777-200 and the new Airbus A350-900 which lost out in the race for the Emirates order.
Boeing also sold five 787s to Azerbaijan Airlines. The US planemaker is outselling its European rival, Airbus, by about two to one so far this year.
Rumours abound in Dubai that Emirates is about to order more Airbus A380 Superjumbo jets. The airline already flies almost half the A380s in service worldwide.
The Airbus sales chief, John Leahy, is expected to announce an order from Emirates for an upgraded version of the double-deck jet, the A380plus. The plane would be capable of carrying 80 more passengers, partly by adding an extra seat to each row in economy and premium economy.
The planemaker says: Thanks to an innovative seating concept developed by Airbus and its seating partners, Airbus is able to maintain an 18-inch seat width while offering airlines an 11-abreast economy class on the main deck in a 3-5-3 configuration. No current plane has more than 10 seats in each row.
Emirates is also the worlds biggest operator of the Boeing 777.
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The airline battle for big spenders has intensified, with Emirates launching what it claims to be game-changing First Class with design inspired by a car maker.
At the start of the Dubai Air Show at its home base, the airline said each First Class passenger on its Boeing 777 jets will be assigned up to 40 square feet of personal space with suites measuring 7ft by 5ft 8in.
While passengers at the back of the plane are seated 10-abreast, First Class travellers will have ample elbow room. They are in a separate cabin with just six seats or more precisely fully-enclosed private suites configured three abreast, with privacy ensured by floor-to-ceiling sliding doors.
Emirates promises each seat will have a window view though the passenger in the middle suite has to make do with virtual windows which project the view from outside the aircraft. Passengers with a real window are offered a pair of Steiner safari binoculars to study the scenery.
The airline says the design is inspired by the Mercedes-Benz S-Class.
Emirates president, Sir Tim Clark, said: This is the first time an Emirates product has been so influenced by another luxury brand, but it is a natural fit as both Emirates and Mercedes-Benz have the same unwavering commitment to fine detail, uncompromising quality, and a drive to push the boundaries.
The seats themselves promise a zero gravity function that is said to be inspired by Nasa technology.
Qatar Airways becomes first airline to offer double bed suites
Rather than pressing the call button to summon a member of cabin crew, the passenger can use a video link to order food and drink, which is then served through a hatch.
First Class passengers are also entitled to up to 70kg of checked baggage, more than three times the industry standard for economy passengers.
Yet 10 economy passengers can fly to Australia and back for less than the lowest Emirates First Class fare.
While a London-Dubai-Sydney return ticket next May is priced at just 700 in economy, the cheapest First Class fare from the airline is 7,220.
Earlier this month, Singapore Airlines unveiled the upgraded First Class cabin aboard its Airbus A380 Superjumbo jets. It describes each suite as a personal oasis complete with lavish furnishing and finishes, and offers couples travelling together the option of a double bed. And the six first-class passengers share two toilets, one of which has a sit-down vanity counter.
At a speech in London on Tuesday, the British Airways chief executive, Alex Cruz, vowed: First Class is here to stay. But he indicated that it will be restricted to some high-performing routes.
There are a number of markets that do not need 14 seats in First Class every single day, Mr Cruz said.
Federal government retirees have called on the Government to urgently pay their outstanding 18 per cent of the 33 per cent pension increase.
Some officials of the National Union of Pensioners, who spoke to press men , stated this after the organised labour and the Federal Government had agreed to set up a committee to review the current minimum wage of N18,000 in the country.
The union said it was imperative for the government to clear the arrears and commence the process to reviewing the pension of federal retirees as it was making moves to review the minimum wage.
The Chairman, Federal Branch, Lagos, NUP, Dele Joseph, said the demand was in line with the law that the pension of the retirees should be reviewed whenever the minimum wage of workers was reviewed.
We are appealing to the government to pay us the outstanding 18 per cent of the 33 per cent increase, because this money has been delayed for a long time. The year is fast coming to an end and the retirees will appreciate if they can be paid this money to enjoy the festive period in December, he stated.
According to him, the recent verification exercise of retirees by the Pension Transitional Arrangement Directorate, will enable the Federal Government to know the amount needed to clear all other pending problems confronting retirees such as those who are not on pay roll and short-paid retirees among others.
The Vice-Chairman of the union, Arashi Lawal, said retirees had continued to visit government secretariats with different complaints.
He stated that it was important to clear the backlog of the 33 per cent and immediately commence the review of pensions, which was long overdue.
The NUP had demanded a minimum pension of N25,000 for each retiree.
The National President, NUP, Dr. Abel Afolayan, noted that the situation where different minimum pensions were paid should be corrected and that the approval of the minimum wage applicable to workers should also apply to pensioners.
He said, It needs to be pointed out here that very many pensioners under the Defined Benefits Scheme receive less than N10,000 per month. This can never be regarded as minimum (or living) pension.
With the present economic situation in the country, we believe no pensioner should be paid less than N25,000.
Afolayan complained about the non-compliance with the constitutional provision stipulating that pensions should be reviewed every five years or whenever the civil service salary was reviewed, whichever was earlier.
The last pension review was in July 2010; the next increase, in accordance with the provisions of the 1999 Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria (as amended), was due in July 2015, he added.
Source: ( Punch Newspaper )
One of the reasons Kourtney Kardashian ended her relationship with her baby daddy was his hard partying. According to TMZ, Scott has started to slow down with his wild ways since dating new girlfriend, 19yr old Sophia Richie. Read their report below
All Scott Disick needed to settle down and lay off the nightclub scene was the love of teenaged, yet very mature, Sofia Richie. Who knew?? Sources connected to the couple tell TMZ Scotts backed off his hard partying ways since he and 19-year-old Sofia started hanging out romantically a couple months ago.
Were told 34-year-old Scott feels her age isnt an issue, because shes used to the spotlight after growing up with her father, Lionel. Although theyve traveled a ton in a short time Milan, Miami and Mexico theyve been laying low wherever they go, hanging mostly in restaurants instead of clubs. Scotts well aware of the change, telling friends Sofias been really good for me. And lets face it, this relationships going way smoother than his previous with a 19-year-old no offense to Bella Thorne.
As for his other ex? Scotts accepted Kourtney Kardashians moved on, and were told hes happy to be doing the same.
Source: TMZ
The Public Complaints Commissioner, overseeing Benue State, Abubakar Tsav, has urged the Inspector-General of Police, Alhaji Ibrahim Idris, to intervene in halting the rising incidences of assassination in the state.
Tsav, a former Commissioner of Police in Lagos State, according to the News Agency of Nigeria, made the appeal in a letter he wrote to the IGP.
He recalled that seven high- profile assassination cases had been recorded in the state, in the last two years, regretting that none had been resolved.
He said, Insecurity is on the rise in Benue; people are being killed, but none of the cases has been investigated. We want you to act quickly to check these killings.
Tsav also made copies of his letter available to the Chief of Staff to the President, Abba Kyari, and the National Security Adviser, Maj.-Gen. Babagana Monguno (retd.).
In the six-page letter, Tsav listed victims of the assassinations to include elder statesman and politician, Mr. Atoza Hindan, who was killed in Katsina-Ala; Dr. Tondo, from University of Mkar, and Mr. Denen Iggana, who was Senior Special Assistant (Security) to Gov. Samuel Ortom.
Also killed, according to Tsav, were Dr. Tavershima Adyorough, Principal Special Assistant to the Governor on Knowledge Economy and Investment, and two traditional rulers in Katsina-Ala.
He said, Benue people are worried about the killings, but they are afraid to say anything; they are afraid of being targeted for murder.
Out of fear, even the Tiv Traditional Council has said nothing about the murder of the two chiefs. Everyone is quiet and in fear.
Journalists are also living in fear. Some of them have been assaulted, arrested and detained for writing the truth. The Police must move in to restore public confidence so that people can enjoy the dividends of democracy.
But reacting to Tsavs letter, the Benue State Police Command said it was doing everything possible to stop the assassinations and also track down those involved.
The Police Public Relations Officer in the state, Mr. Moses Yamu, said, It is not right for anyone to say that we are not investigating the killings. We cannot sweep such high-profile killings under the carpet.
Source: ( Punch Newspaper )
The lawyer of the whistleblower, Yakubu Galadima who informed the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission of the $43m, N23.2m and 27,800 (N13bn) recovered from an Ikoyi apartment, has threatened to sue the Federal Government for fraud if he is not paid his money soon.
Galadima said this during an interview with our correspondent in Abuja on Saturday.
He told newsmen that he was disappointed in the President Muhammadu Buhari-led Federal Government as it had failed to keep its promise regarding the payment of commission on recovered loot.
When asked if he would sue the government, he said, That is one of the options but we have many options.
He added, Before now I had a discussion with Alhaji Lai Mohammed who directed me to speak with a lady in the office of the Ministry of Finance, Mrs. Tolu Kasali. I had a discussion with her and she told me that she would see what the government could do about it.
My clients concern is that time is of the essence. The guy wants to relocate from the country. There is no time and his life is in danger. He is jobless at the moment. He is not doing anything right now and in fact he is a burden on me.
The lawyer said his client had also suffered psychological trauma caused by the Federal Governments inaction.
He further berated the acting Chairman of the EFCC, Mr. Ibrahim Magu, for saying the commission was counselling the whistleblower as he is now a millionaire.
Source : ( Punch Newspaper)
Popular Muslim activist, Prof. Ishaq Akintola, on Saturday shunned the wedding reception of his daughter, Dr. Jihad Anjorin (nee Akintola )
Akintola said shunning the wedding reception was a way to discourage lavish spending. The activist, who doubles as the President of the Muslim Rights Concern, explained that two of his daughters had got married without holding a reception.
While the husband, Abdulganiy Anjorin, is a lawyer, the wife, Jihad, is a dentist. It was learnt that the wedding reception had Akintolas approval. It was learnt that the wedding ceremony had about 24 persons in attendance.
Speaking on the issue, Akintola said, Let me state, ab initio, and for the avoidance of any doubt, that I love my daughter, the lucky bride. She is an obedient girl, highly disciplined. She has never been wayward and I have never had cause to reprimand her in any way.
She is the ideal daughter any father would crave. My son-in-law too, Barrister Anjorin, meets all my dreams of a husband for my daughter. I launched a struggle against wasteful spending a long time ago.
I also made it a duty to publicly articulate strong objections to profligacy, both in public and private spending. I have called on governments to impose cow tax on anyone who slaughters more than one cow for a ceremony.
I have publicly condemned the aso ebi syndrome. I know how to spend any amount on the education of my sons and daughters, but I cant see any reason why I should spend lavishly on their nikah.
Expensive weddings scare young men, keep them single and waste the ladies time. Society wedding is not haram and it is in order for those who have more than enough money to spend on it.
But, I frown upon those who go out of their way to pose as if they are comfortable, even though they are suffering and smiling. Nigerians love to live false life. They take loans and continue paying the loans for two or more years after the wedding. This is what I detest. I do not hate rich people.
The Federal Government said on Sunday that it had stocked enough food to address possible shortages in some states in 2018.
Audu Ogbeh, the Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, made the disclosure in Katsina.
The minister spoke at the Joint International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD)/Federal Government 2nd Supervision Mission for Climate Change, Adaptation and Agribusiness Support Forum.
Mr. Ogbeh was represented at the event by his Senior Technical Adviser, Auta Appeh.
Some states in North-east and other parts of the country will likely experience low agricultural yield in 2018 due to climate change and weather issues.
However, starvation is out of the issue, I can assure you that we have reserved enough food for them through our food security program, he said.
The minister advised farmers to desist from indiscriminate felling of trees to preserve the environment.
Mr. Ogbeh said that cutting down trees exposes soil to desertification, erosion and other effects of climate change that have negative impact on the environment.
He said statistics had put the rate of desert encroachment in Nigeria at about 12 miles per annum.
So, the effects can be felt everywhere, for us to address the problem, all hands must be on deck.
The News Agency of Nigeria, NAN, reports that Food and Agricultural Organisation had predicted low agricultural yield in some states in the country due to late commencement of rains in 2018.
Source : (NAN)
Queen Elizabeth II stepped down from her official duties on Sunday, leaving heir to the throne Prince Charles to lay a tribute to Britains war dead on her behalf.
The queen traditionally lays a wreath at the Cenotaph national war memorial in London, but for the first time she observed the annual Remembrance Sunday service from a balcony.
Her eldest son Charles instead stepped forward following a nationwide two-minute silence, placing a wreath of poppies at the monument close to parliament.
Other members of the royal family, including princes William and Harry, also took part in the ceremony along with senior politicians and veterans.
Prime Minister Theresa May and opposition leader Jeremy Corbyn also placed wreaths at the Cenotaph, while the ceremony was attended by former premiers including Tony Blair.
The queen has missed the ceremony only six times in her 65-year reign and handing over her role to Charles is a visible sign to her subjects that she is reducing her official duties.
Buckingham Palace announced in advance that the 91-year-old monarch would view the service from a Foreign Office balcony, alongside her husband Prince Philip, 96, who retired from public duties in August.
Queen Elizabeth has already reduced her schedule, with official engagements dropping 22 percent from the 425 in her 2012 diamond jubilee year to 332 in 2016.
Remembrance Sunday is the Sunday nearest to Armistice Day on November 11, the anniversary of the 1918 signing of the peace treaty that ended fighting in World War I.
More than one million people from the then British empire died in the four-year conflict, but the day has become a time to remember all the troops killed in wars since then.
Source : ( AFP)
The Socio-Economic Rights and Accountability Project, has submitted a petition to the Independent Corrupt Practices and other related offences Commission ( ICPC) against the Governor of Imo State, Rochas Okorocha.
The group said it wants Okorocha probed for abuse of office on account of his erecting statues of the South African and Liberian presidents, Jacob Zuma and Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, respectively, in his state.
SERAP said both statues might have cost N1bn, adding that it was concerned that they might have been funded with public funds.
The group particularly questioned the legality of Okorochas involvement in his Rochas Okorocha Foundation, while holding public office as Imo State Governor.
Its Executive Director, Adetokunbo Mumuni, said the groups petition, dated November 10, 2017, seeking Okorochas probe, was copied to the Code of Conduct Bureau and the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission.
SERAP wondered whether spending N1bn to erect Zuma and Johnson-Sirleafs statues was in the public interest, especially at a time that Imo State owed its teachers and pensioners.
It maintained that Okorocha must be jointly probed by the three anti-graft agencies, to minimise the risks of bad government by public officials.
SERAP said, The spending on statues and apparent misuse of public resources may have violated constitutional provisions and international standards on code of conduct for public officers.
The initiatives cannot be justified under any circumstances whatsoever, especially at a time when Imo state is unable or unwilling to pay teachers salaries and pensioners entitlements.
Inviting Zuma and Johnson-Sirleaf to attend the opening of his foundation and then honouring them with statues suggests abuse of office and apparent conflict of interest situation, as such acts were undertaken by Governor Okorocha in the exercise of his public functions to presumably promote and advance the commercial and other interests of the foundation.
SERAP believes that rather than serving the common interest of the public, spending over N1bn, possibly of public funds, on Zuma and Johnson-Sirleaf in the context of their participation in the opening of the Rochas Okorocha Foundation would seem to put Governor Okorocha in a conflict of interest situation.
SERAP notes that the Nigerian Constitution 1999 (as amended) and the United Nations Convention against Corruption to which Nigeria is a state party prohibit conflict of interests and set ethical standards for public officers. Indeed, both the constitution and the convention require public officers to abstain from all acts that may compromise the exercise of their public office and functions, or are inconsistent with their entrusted positions.
Source : ( AFP)
Nigerian musician, Ruggedman blasts Nigerian ministry for using N700m to build web portal The rapper shared a post on his social media page, placing a curse of those looting Nigerias funds His reaction was fueled over the recent news of the Ministry of Mines and Steel Development using N700m in creation of we portal for ease of doing business Following the recent news of Ministry of Mines and Steel Development using N700 million to build website to aid the ease of business of Nigerians, veteran musician, Ruggedman has reacted by placing a curse on those who he believes are looting Nigerias funds.
The rapper shared the post on his Instagram, expressing disappointment on the Nigerian ministry and government for letting huge sums of tax payers money be used for such. Ruggedman also made mention of the N250 million reported to be used in raising a Jacob Zuma statue in an eastern state in Nigeria. He shared the photo of the news and said: 700 million to build website 250 million to erect statue. Any government that allows this is a corrupt and shameless one and does not have the interest of its citizens at heart. May God punish all the people looting Nigerias funds and making life hard for the ordinary man. If you are a looter, you will never know peace. If you allow the looting, may you never know peace in Jesus name.
source: Naij.com
The German employer of six members of a cargo ship that were kidnapped has confirmed the release of his workers.
The Hamburg based group said in a statement, Peter Doehle Schiffahrts-KG are pleased to report that the six crew members of her container vessel Demeter who were taken hostage on October 21 and have spent the past two and a half weeks in captivity, were released and are now safe.
Peter Doehle Schiffahrts-KG wishes to thank all the relevant authorities for helping to secure the release of our much valued seafarers, added the statement, which did not elaborate on the rescue mission.
The group, which would not comment on the nationalities of the six, said they were in good health.
Nigerian authorities had not commented on the rescue by mid-afternoon.
The six were abducted when the Demeter was attacked by an armed criminal gang off the southeastern port of Onne.
The Liberian-registered vessel had been sailing from the Equatorial Guinean capital Malabo to Monrovia.
In a report published last week the International Maritime Bureau listed 21 incidents of maritime piracy in internationals waters, including shootings and attempted kidnappings as well as hijackings.
The Bureau cited the Gulf of Guinea off western Africa as remaining dangerous, even though incidents had fallen off elsewhere.
The IMBs director Pottengal Mukundan cited Nigerias Bayelsa state, Bonny Island and the oil hub of Port Harcourt, as particular areas of concern.
Source: ( AFP )
Nigerian slay queens, Diamond Sophia Oyemen, Goya Success and the rest of the crew who accused each other of spreading HIV and using juju to trap men, have reportedly met in a Police Station in Benin to settle their quarrel.
According to Goya Success, the HIV result she shared was fake and everything they shared on social media are all fake and done out of annoyance.
Heres a video of the friends at the Police Station
A 35-year-old man is due in court next week following the death of a woman in Dublin City Centre last month.
37-year-old Anne Colomines was found stabbed to death at her home at Dorset Square Apartments on the 24th of October.
Wed., Nov. 16, 12-1 p.m.
Chatham Area Public Library 600 E. Spruce, Chatham Chatham
Free
Books & Authors
This month we will read To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee! This book discussion group meets at noon on the third Wednesday of each month in the Librarys meeting room. Bring a sack lunch, if you wish, and savor some lively discussion. If you would like to attend, please call or visit the Library, and we will try to get each months book for you. 217-483-2713
Lisa Short, an employee of the Village of Clemmons, has received a career development scholarship award from the Local Government Federal Credit Union. She will use the money to attend the N.C. Association of Municipal Clerks Summer Academy for Government Professionals at the School of Government at UNC Chapel Hill.
Derek Bast has joined the Charlotte office Bell, Davis & Pitt, PA. He served as a law clerk for two years at the North Carolina Business Court in Charlotte one of four such courts in the state where businesses have the opportunity to resolve cases before a specialized judge well versed in business-related matters. Bast will focus his practice on business litigation. He graduated from the Wake Forest University School of Law in 2015. While in law school, Bast completed internships at the North Carolina Business Court in Greensboro and the Guilford County Office of the Public Defender.
Spilman Thomas & Battle has been ranked as a Best Law Firm by U.S. News & World Report-Best Lawyers in 55 areas of law. In the Winston-Salem/Greensboro area, the firm was ranked in the Medical Malpractice Law Defendants, Product Liability Litigation Defendants and Tax Law categories.
Kelly J. Austin joined the Bailey & Thomas, P.A. law firm as an associate attorney. She earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in Psychology and a Bachelor of Arts degree in English Language and Literature from The College of William and Mary in 2013. Austin is a 2016 graduate of Wake Forest University School of Law. She has served in many volunteer roles, of which some are, the Elder Law Clinic, the Innocence and Justice Clinic and Guardian Ad Litem.
Chris Nitzsche has joined Nester Hosiery as vice president of sales. He will be responsible for expanding sales of Nester Hosierys Farm to Feet brand in the specialty channel and creating new opportunities for its private label business.
Wall Babcock has been ranked in the 2018 U.S. News & World Report Best Lawyers Best Law Firms list regionally in six practice areas. The areas are: Regional Tier 1, Commercial Litigation; Corporate Law; Medical Malpractice Law Defendants; Mergers & Acquisitions Law; Personal Injury Litigation Defendants. Regional Tier 2, Health Care Law.
Reynolds American Inc. and its companies have been certified as a great workplace by the independent analysts at Great Place to Work. The companies earned this credential based on extensive ratings provided by their employees in anonymous surveys. Reynolds American Inc. is an indirect, wholly owned subsidiary of British American Tobacco p.l.c., and the U.S. parent company of R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company; Santa Fe Natural Tobacco Company, Inc.; American Snuff Company, LLC; Niconovum USA, Inc.; Niconovum AB; and R.J. Reynolds Vapor Company.
Seven partners at Wall Babcock have been included in The Best Lawyers in America list for 2018. They are:
- John W. Babcock in Mergers and Acquisitions Law, and Corporate Law.
- J. Dennis Bailey in Commercial Litigation, Personal Injury Litigation Defendants, and Medical Malpractice Law Defendants.
- Joseph T. Carruthers in Commercial Litigation, Personal Injury Litigation Defendants, and Medical Malpractice Law Defendants.
- Michael L. Drye in Mergers and Acquisitions Law.
- James D. Wall in Health Care Law, and Corporate Law.
- Karen M. Wilson in Corporate Law.
- Jan E. Yarborough in Health Care Law.
Margaret (Meg) S. Shipley has joined Wall Babcock LLP as an associate attorney with a practice focused on litigation and employment law. She has been an associate attorney at Constangy, Brooks, Smith & Prophete LLP and Ogletree, Deakins, Nash, Smoak & Stewart, P.C. in Raleigh. Both firms specialize in employment law. Shipley is a native of Houston, Texas, and received a B.S. degree in communications from the University of Texas at Austin in 2006. She received a J.D. degree from the Wake Forest University School of Law in 2012.
Sergeant James Gravely and Sarah Wojcik-Gross have been named Wake Forest Universitys 2017 Employees of the Year. Gravely is with the university police department and Wojcik-Gross is the assistant director of client services in Information Systems. The awards were presented during the annual Staff Rewards & Recognition Luncheon held Oct. 24. The winners were nominated by faculty and staff for their contributions in the areas of innovation, integrity, accountability, inclusion and Pro Humanitate. Gravely was honored for his leadership in the police department. Wojcik-Gross was honored for her commitment to Information Systems and the Staff Advisory Council, of which she serves as president.
Four faculty members in the Wake Forest University English Department received honors. They are:
- Susan Harlan, an associate professor of literature, won first prize for the 2017 Mark Twain House & Museum Royal Nonesuch Humor Writing Contest for her series of humorous literary pieces entitled Grate House Therapy.
- Eric Ekstrand, an assistant teaching professor of writing, has been awarded a Tulsa Artist Fellowship by the George Kaiser Family Foundation.
- Joanna Ruocco, an assistant professor of creative writing, awarded a Yaddo residency fellowship. She will spend the winter of 2018 at Yaddo, one of the nations oldest and most established art colonies working on a new novel-in-progress.
- Sarah Hogan, a professor of literature, gave an invited lecture at the Matters on Invention symposium sponsored by the University of Cyprus. Her talk, Narrating the Novum: Utopia and the Question of Origins, considered how Thomas Mores Utopia has the potential to shape contemporary historical narratives about the transition from feudalism to capitalism, in ways that acknowledge its immanent, multiple, contested, geographically displaced, and crucially, cultural and origins.
A disabled woman who has lived at Winston Summit Apartments for 20 years is facing eviction for non-payment of rent, following a dispute with the apartment management over mold and other problems she claims the apartment building suffers.
Deborah Roberts believes the apartment owners are evicting her in retaliation because she filed a complaint with the citys Human Relations Department in 2016 over the conditions in the building.
Thats a claim the apartment owners dispute. Their attorney says that the move to evict Roberts began before they were made aware of Roberts complaint, and that she was served notice of eviction for breaking the apartment rules.
Roberts said that after a Nov. 3 court ruling in favor of the apartment, she has just been told that she has to be out of her apartment by Wednesday, even though shes paid rent through the end of November.
Winston Summit is a six-story apartment building on Columbine Drive behind the Pine Ridge Plaza shopping center on Reynolda Road. The building was constructed in 1981 and has 100 units of subsidized Section 8 housing.
The building is owned by Winston Affordable Housing LLC, which is based in Atlanta, and managed by Ambling Management Co. with offices in Georgia and South Carolina.
The apartment owners started their effort to evict Roberts on Oct. 3, 2016. In a court filing, they said Roberts had harassed the staff, made false claims and bothered the other tenants.
Among other claims, the apartment owners said Roberts was spreading a powder in common areas and in tenants apartments to control pests, against the wishes of the tenants and the management. They said Roberts wouldnt stop despite being told to leave pest control to the professionals hired by Ambling.
The apartment owners also claimed that Roberts kept her apartment cluttered and unclean, and that she had violated rules against smoking. The notice said Roberts had to leave by Dec. 31.
Roberts acknowledges that she spread a powdery substance called diatomaceous earth in her apartment and in the apartments of others as a method of bedbug control, but says that it was done with the permission of the apartment tenants.
We have had a constant presence of bedbugs for three years, Roberts said, adding that she personally does not have bedbugs because she uses the powder to keep them away.
We are low-income people, she said. People are having to throw away their furniture because of bedbugs. The building is designated for disabled and senior citizens. If you are old, how are you supposed to get a couch out?
Roberts said she has sleep apnea and uses a CPAP to help her breathe at night, but believes that mold is causing allergies that cause her nasal passages to swell and prevent her from using the device.
Roberts has been disabled since 1991, and suffers from emphysema, multiple spine issues such as scoliosis and arthritis, along with other health issues.
Wanda Allen-Abraha, the director of the Winston-Salem Human Relations Department, confirmed that Roberts filed a complaint with her department in 2016. The complaint was investigated and closed in July, but Allen-Abraha said she is not able to talk about the outcome of the investigation.
Allen-Abraha said that over the past four or five years the city has had a couple housing discrimination complaints to arise from Winston Summit.
They were allegations of bedbugs, mold and things of that nature, she said. We did refer several of the callers to code enforcement.
Bruce Bailiff, the citys housing inspector supervisor, said hes familiar with the complaints that Roberts has made about the apartments, but that in most cases his hands have been tied because the tenant was not the one making the complaint.
She would report about violations in other peoples apartments, Bailiff said. We basically told her that you need to have that individual to call us and schedule an inspection.
Inspectors have found problems in Roberts apartment, Bailiff said. In 2010 there was a citation for loose wall and ceiling material, defective switches and siding. The problem was found corrected in an inspection six months later.
In 2015, Bailiff said, Roberts reported her air conditioning had failed. The inspection case was opened in late July and closed in August. In November 2016, Bailiffs office opened a complaint on Roberts apartment for defective switches, loose wall and ceiling materials and holes in the walls. The problems were corrected by mid-January.
Although Roberts has complained about mold, Bailiff said, every time we went out we didnt find anything. Roberts said the problem is that the leaking water is behind the walls.
Bailiff said the codes dont cover mold and mildew, but that the problem can be addressed as a cleanliness issue.
Other units have been cited, Bailiff said: one had roaches in 2010, and one had a black residue on walls, ceilings and in a closet in 2010-11. One had a brown residue near a shower drain in 2012.
This year, a sixth-floor unit was cited for pests and defective switch or outlet covers, and a fourth-floor unit was cited for lavatory and other repairs needed, and lack of a working smoke detector.
Bailiff said the violations that have been found are not on the scale requiring massive intervention, like Rolling Hills or New Hope Manor, complexes that became bywords for terrible conditions and subjects that focused city attention on remedies.
You are not looking at that kind of thing at Winston Summit, Bailiff said. Most of these cases, when I look across the report, they are either single violations or two or three violations. The violations are not the kind like in some of the complexes where heating systems dont work and badly exposed wires. This is not that caliber.
When Roberts did not leave her apartment after that 2016 eviction notice, the apartment owner went to small claims court for eviction on Jan. 5, 2017. The court ruled against Roberts on Feb. 7, and she appealed to district court.
The court case kept the eviction at bay, but the eviction notice did cause Roberts to lose her housing subsidy, raising her rent from $139 to $532 per month for the time she has stayed there waiting for the outcome of the case.
Judge Denise Hartsfield ruled against Roberts on Oct. 3, and the apartment issued notice that Roberts had to leave by Nov. 14, Roberts said.
In her judgment, Hartsfield faulted Roberts for failing to pay rent in January and part of February this year, in between the time Roberts was supposed to leave her apartment and when her appeal temporarily kept her from being evicted.
The judge also said that because Winston Summit had accepted rent from Roberts in late 2016, it had waived its right to evict her based on the alleged rules violations.
A spokesman for Legal Aid of North Carolina, which is handling Roberts case, said a decision has not yet been made on whether to appeal Hartsfields judgment.
Lisa Wannamaker, an attorney representing Ambling, called Roberts a troublemaker because of her actions in spreading around the white powder as a bedbug antidote.
She has the right to do what she wanted in her apartment as far as putting out the diatomaceous earth, as long as it didnt create a hazard, Wannamaker said. She was putting it into the electrical outlets and in the fan in the bathroom. She was going out into the hall and common areas (with the powder) and manipulating her way into other apartments. We had too many residents complaining and had to ask her to stop.
But some people randomly approached in the apartment spoke with admiration about Roberts for speaking out. When asked about conditions at Winston-Summit, they spoke Roberts name without prompting. They requested that their names not be used, however.
Its like she said weve all had roaches, one woman said. Ive been here five years. Ive had mold in the bathroom and all around my air conditioner. I have to put a glove on when I turn on my air conditioners because I dont want to touch the button.
When asked if she had ever filed a complaint, the woman said, We just let Debby do it, referring to Roberts.
An acquaintance of Roberts who agreed to talk anonymously said the apartments are severely neglected as far as the upkeep and tenants complaints not being addressed.
It is inhumane for people to have to suffer things that are health-related due to some of the conditions that are not addressed, the acquaintance said. Every year at the beginning of summer my air conditioner would fail. That is every single summer. I would have to get them to come up and fix it. They would put a Band-Aid on it and not do anything to solve the problem.
Thats not every residents view, though. One woman approached at random said she has no complaints about conditions, and gives management high marks for quickly taking care of problems.
(Roberts) complains, complains, complains, the woman said. If you dont like something, move. This is not a bad place to live.
Bailiff said city inspectors cant go from apartment to apartment knocking on doors, but Roberts believes thats what it would take to get the complete picture of conditions from residents.
We have contacted so many people over the years and nothing happened, so they are all leery, Roberts said.
Salem College to hold environmental forum
Salem Colleges Center for Women Writers will hold the forum, The Natural World: Environmental Racism and Reproductive Justice, at 1 p.m. at the colleges Gramley Library, the college said in statement.
Scholar Danielle Purifoy will join Tammy Melody Gomez to discuss the impact of environmental waste on communities of color, the college said.
Gomez is a writer, multimedia artist, and theater maker who has performed throughout the United States, Mexico and Nepal. Gomez is a member of the Macondo Writers Workshop and a 20152018 Black Earth Institute Fellow.
Purifoy is a lawyer and a current doctoral candidate in environmental politics and African American studies at Duke University. Her current research focuses on the intersection of racial segregation and local political place in the production of environmental inequality in North Carolina. Purifoy is a board member of the North Carolina Environmental Justice Network.
WSSU celebrates international studies
The Office of International Programs will celebrate International Education Week with events highlighting the international scope of Winston-Salem State University. The events will be held Monday through Thursday.
International Education Week provides a sampling of the global curricular and co-curricular engagement of WSSU students and faculty throughout the year, and allows us to celebrate what we do and explore new ideas for expanded opportunities for global citizenship, said Joti Sekhon, WSSUs director of international programs. We make an effort to highlight international education and global curricular priorities in the WSSU Strategic Plan.
The weeks events include faculty and student panel discussions and presentations, films screenings and study abroad information tables. All events are free and open to the public.
Among the events, WSSU faculty will present on Transforming Teaching and Learning through International Faculty Scholarship and Curriculum Development at 2 p.m. Monday in the Thompson Center, Room 207A.
Students from the Bahia and Brazil study abroad program will discuss the use of Photovoice to examine race, identity and culture, at 3:30 p.m. Monday in Hill Hall, Room L05, WSSU said. Students who have studied abroad and international students will share their experiences at a panel at 2 p.m. on Tuesday in the Reaves Student Activities Center, Room 100B.
Wake Forest hosts Turkeypalooza
Wake Forest University students, faculty and staff will prepare and deliver more than 350 Thanksgiving meals to Winston-Salem residents during Turkeypalooza, WFU said in a news release. This annual event, hosted by The Campus Kitchen at Wake Forest, will be held today through Thursday.
Each year, The Campus Kitchen works to incorporate dishes cooked from scratch, using as many local ingredients as possible. These Thanksgiving meals include a variety of favorites, including locally sourced turkeys, cranberry sauce and pumpkin cookies.
Volunteers prepare meals during cooking shifts and make deliveries to Triad-area organizations like Samaritan Ministries, Azalea Terrace Senior Apartments and El Buen Pastor Latino Community Services.
This event sheds light on the large amount of Winston-Salem residents that experience food insecurity while providing a way to help alleviate some of that insecurity as best we can, WFU senior Hannah Hulshult said. Sharing these Thanksgiving meals with our community organizations is so meaningful.
Turkeypalooza, which coincides with National Hunger and Homelessness Awareness Week, has been hosted by The Campus Kitchen for 12 years.
This time of year, theres a craft fair on every corner, and some of them are excellent from last weekends traditional Gingerbread Craft Fair to the quirky Whimsical Women event coming up next weekend.
But the Grande Dame of them all is the annual Piedmont Craftsmens Fair that opens Nov. 18 at the Benton Convention Center.
Founded by a group of craft makers and collectors in 1963, this juried membership guild attracts the most respected artisans working in their craft media. A rigorous two-part peer jury process ensures that those accepted for membership are masterful and innovative in their genres.
One-of-a-kind pieces are made by one-of-kind people. Of the 105 craftspeople presenting work at the fair, 17 will be demonstrating their techniques. Some artists demonstrate in their booths.
Other demonstrations, including clay-wheel throwing and hand-building, glass-bead making, metal forming, basketry and paper-pulp painting, are scheduled at specific times at two separate education areas. A demonstration schedule is at www.piedmontcraftsmen.org.
Two of those demonstrating will be Erica Stankwych Bailey, a jewelry-maker, and Rachel Smith, who makes pottery.
Bailey went to high school at UNC School of the Arts and received a bachelors degree in metal design from East Carolina University in 2001. She knew from an early age that she wanted to be an artisan.
From the first metals survey course I was hooked on metal-smithing, enamored by the malleability of the metal, she said in an artists statement. After graduation, I began teaching metal-smithing and jewelry fabrication courses at the local community college. Teaching became an integral part of my creative life.
She founded Erica Stankwytch Bailey Jewelry in a tiny studio in her backyard in Fayetteville.
I became the owner, operator, designer and maker of my own handmade business, a dream come true. In the years that have followed my contemporary sterling silver jewelry has found its way around the world, she said. The business is growing, and the work is constantly evolving. In 2014, I was given the amazing opportunity to move my family to Asheville where we now live happily adjusting to the splendor of mountain living.
Q: What do you like about demonstrating your craft?
Answer: I really enjoy watching people have that aha moment, when they are seeing for the first time how something is made. For some it may be the answer to a question they already had, but often it is the I never considered that moment that is so much fun to share with people. Education/knowledge inherently leads to appreciation, and cultivating an appreciation for things made by hand is one of my many life goals.
Q: How would you describe your craft?
Answer: Handmade jewelry made with sterling silver and semi-precious minerals. My designs are inspired by the material at hand, metal and mineral. Currently, I am exploring the atomic and molecular structure of the materials I work with to create metal interpretations of their crystal structure.
Q: How have you evolved as a craftsperson?
Answer: My work is constantly evolving (I hope). My creative process has always involved an intense fascination with a topic, followed by tons of research, then technical exploration, eventually stumbling onto new visual interpretation of that topic. I suppose a lot of my creative evolution comes in what I am fascinated with at the time, in my lifetime my jewelry has found its muse in historical womens fashion, natural/animal/ancient dwellings, cellular structure, DNA and crystal structure to name a few. I strive to be a constant learner and hope that reflects in the work that I create.
Q: Who has influenced your craft?
Answer: The short answer ... My college professors, most specifically Mi Sook Hur (of East Carolina University). My peers ... the amazing, creative, resilient, small business owners who make their living through their hands.
Q: What is your biggest challenge?
Answer: My biggest challenge is balancing the business side of my creative business with the creative side. Hahaha, that seems like a such a funny way to put it, but as my business grows finding the time to actually make jewelry can be a challenge sometimes.
Q: What does craft do for you?
Answer: In the most simple terms ... Craft makes me happy, pays my bills, feeds my soul (and my belly), has helped me to reach many of my goals and keeps creating new ones for me.
Q: Any advice for other craftspeople?
Answer: Be true to your creative vision, trust your instincts and be a part of your broader creative community, there are a lot of really kind and talented people who would love to answer your questions.
Rachel Smith
Potter Rachel Smith grew up in Seattle and now lives in Lexington.
When I was about 5 years old my mother, who was discovering her own love of art, showed me how to make a hollow bird from a pinch pot. She went on to painting, but that first touch of clay stuck with me, Smith said in her artists statement. Japanese pottery is a big influence for me, partly because of being raised in Seattle and the strong Asian presence there. My Norwegian ancestry and the Seattle Scandinavian community gives me an additional appreciation of decoration and function. I love the textures and patterns of Indonesian batik, forties curtain fabric, Oriental carpet, African sculpture.
Q: Why do you like to do demonstrations?
Answer: I have taught off and on over the years. I like to share my thought process. I think thats part of educating people about what craft is. I like explaining why I do what I do, such as why I push my thumb in here to make that shape.
Q: How would you describe your craft?
Answer: Functional stoneware clay, mostly thrown on the wheel, some hand-building. I alter the thrown pieces, and on the hand-building, I get to play with textures.
Q: How have you evolved as a craftsperson?
Answer: Ive been doing craft shows since 1972, so the evolution is an organic thing. I did take six years off from doing functional clay work and just do sculptures and didnt really try to sell anything. That informs the work that I do now. The work now is primarily functional, but all my experiences effect the work that I do now. The work I learned in high school on the wheel, I still do now.
Q: Who has influenced your craft?
Answer: The teachers that Ive had. I had some very good teachers at the University of Washington in Seattle. Influence is an on-going thing. I go to museums and see how other people work, and the way that peoples brains work will sometimes trigger my own brain in a different way. Everything around me influences my work. I could hang out in the Metropolitan Museum all day. And its not just what youd think of as art but also things that are made by indigenous people all over the world.
Q: What is your biggest challenge?
Answer: Making a living and still doing the work that Im interested in. I make functional work. OK. Ive got to make a couple of dozen cups, so how do I do it in a way that is creative and truthful. Im going to make a dozen cups, and theyre going to be related to each other, but they will each be the best, most interesting cup they can be.
Q: What does craft do for you?
Answer: It keeps my eyes open, so that when I am driving somewhere or looking outside, I am always really trying to see. In my day-to-day life, I feel that information comes to me in a different way. Im always looking at forms and colors and textures. Its something that Ive very aware of all the time. Im happy to say that it keeps me in the moment.
Q: Any advice for other craftspeople?
Answer: I have people who come to shows saying, Id like to do what you do. I would say: Its possible to make a living as an artist. Its hard to make a big living. You need to have the reason you do it be the love of doing it.
MITCHELL The Nebraska Sheep and Goat Producers Association (NS&GP) honored Harlan and Janet Brown posthumously for their many contributions to the sheep and wool industry at the annual meeting held in Mitchell, Nebraska. The award named the Ted and Alice Doane Outstanding Contribution Award was presented to the Browns daughter, Peggy Wells who owns and manages the Brown Sheep Company, along with her husband Robert. Just recently their son, Andrew, and wife Brittany joined the Brown Company.
Harlan and Janet had a long history of involvement and contributions to the sheep and wool industry in Nebraska. Harlan was a major lamb feeder in the valley near Haig for many years where he utilized the latest technology in lamb feeding. After transporting wool to the east coast and visiting several wool mills doing research, he and Janet decided to establish a wool spinning mill on their property west of Scottsbluff where the final product was yarn ready for knitting or weaving. Currently it is one the largest spinning manufacturers in the US that ships wool all over the United States and some foreign countries.
It is fitting that this award be presented to the Browns as it is named after the late Ted Doane and Alice Doane whom were very good friends of the Browns and had a lot of common interests. Ted Doane was a former sheep specialist with the University of Nebraska Animal Science Department.
He once said that if he had an issue that he was dealing with, I called Harlan as I knew he would offer straight forward and solid advice.
Alice Doane succeeded Janet as the State Director of the Make It With Wool program and communicated frequently with Janet about the program. The Browns were large donors and sponsors of the program and Brown Sheep Company continues to donate to the program.
The plaque that was presented has the following statement A person has not lived until he has done something which does not benefit himself, but rather benefits another. This is not only Christianity in practice, it is the finest principle upon which a person can base his life. Those words were very fitting for the Browns service to the sheep and wool industry.
Unfortunately, the award was presented to the Browns after their passing. It is very gratifying to see their legacy carried out by their daughter and family.
CRAWFORD A cold fog clung to the edges of Legends Buttes on Saturday, Nov. 4.
But below in downtown, the streets were alive with the bustle of bundled-up area ranchers and curious onlookers who braved the cold to peruse between the pens full of heifers and bulls at the fourth annual Crawford Cattle Call.
The event drew 36 pens of cattle and about 15 vendors from Nebraska and Wyoming.
Ranchers exhibit pens of three head of bulls and bred heifers and heifer calves for competition. Other cattle are welcome to be on display. Cattle may not be clipped or fitted in order to qualify for judging.
The day began with a 5K Run sponsored by the PEO Chapter AX. The overall male winner was Dimitrius Selby with a time of 25:09 and the overall female winner was Jilian Brennan with a time of 24:22.
At The Crawford Eagles Beef Cook-off, Hannah Sprock captured both the Peoples Choice and Youth Awards. Mandy Morava was the adult winner.
In the Hay Bale Decorating Contest, sponsored by the Dawes County Farm Bureau, the Corn Valley 4-H Club took first, followed by the Marsland Cowbelles in second, and third went to Bev Dyer and her grandchildren.
And at the Main Event, the Cattle Pen Winners are as follows:
Grand Champion Heifer Calf Pen Sellman Ranch
Reserve Champion Heifer Calf Pen Kelly and Tami Dyer
Grand Champion Bred Heifer Pen Dyer Ranch
Reserve Champion Bred Heifer Pen Nickel Cattle Company
Grand Champion Heifer Pen Overall Sellman Ranch
Reserve Champion Heifer Pen Overall Dyer Ranch
Grand Champion Bull Pen Vin Mar Cattle Co.
Reserve Champion Bull Pen Kearns Cattle Company.
Peoples Choice Chester Ranch
The blustery weather didnt dissuade people from showing up, however some did duck in to warm up by the portable heaters in the vendor tent, or into one of the bars to grab a drink and catch a glimpse at the Husker game.
I think its been a huge success despite the weather, Samantha Dyer, Cattle Call organizer, said. But we couldnt have done it without all the people who donated time, panels and helped set everything up.
As the festivities wrapped up, the cows were loaded back up, the pens taken down and the wood-chips sweeped off the streets, returning quiet to downtown Crawford until next years Call.
ALLIANCE Nathaniel Jensen, the son of Ed and Amy Jensen and a senior at Alliance High School will travel to Atlanta with other Nebraska 4-Hers to participate in the 2017 National 4-H Congress Nov. 24 through 28. Nebraska youth are selected for this honor through the evaluation of their Career Portfolio which is based on leadership, community service and educational activities through 4-H. 25 4-H members are selected statewide for this trip.
National 4-H Congress is the flagship event of the 4-H program. For more than 80 years, youth from the United States and its territories have participated in this youth leadership development conference. Congress provides youth, ages 15-19, a quality, educational and cross-cultural experience. It is designed to address the needs and issues of youth while helping to develop capable, competent and caring citizens.
Congress delegates experience an educational program including a variety of recreational and networking opportunities. The workshop presenters and speakers motivate as well as share the most current information in their area of expertise. A cultural evening exposes the youth to a variety of forms of fine arts. The conference emphasizes leadership, youth empowerment, and cultural diversity. Delegates visit venues in the city including the Centennial Olympic Park, The World of Coca-Cola, CNN Center, the Carter Presidential Center, and the Martin Luther King Center.
WASHINGTON U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Purdue announced Friday, Nov. 3, that two Nebraskans appointed by President Donald J. Trump would lead the Farm Service Agency and Rural Development state offices.
Nancy (Montanez) Johner, a Scottsbluff native, will serve as Executive Director of the FSA, and Karl Elmshaeuser of Ogallala will direct Rural Development.
These state directors will help ensure that USDA is offering the best customer service to our farmers, ranchers, foresters, and agricultural producers across the country, Perdue said in a statement. FSA and RD both play a critical role in helping the people of agriculture, and are able to connect with people in their home states. They are the initial points of contact for millions of our USDA customers. Our goal is to help rural America prosper, and these state leaders will be of great assistance in that task.
Sen. Deb Fischer also released a statement congratulating the two appointees.
President Trump has selected two outstanding Nebraska leaders to serve as our USDA state directors, Fischer said.
Johner, a 1978 Scottsbluff High School graduate, graudated from University of Nebraska at Kearney in 1994. Following college, she started the Professional Partner Program and then joined the Nebraska Department of Health and Human Services, first in Lexington and then in Gering in 1999. In 2004, she was appointed by then-Gov. Mike Johanns to serve as the director of HHS. As director, she oversaw nearly 5,000 employees responsible for the Administration of the Food Stamp Program, Medicaid, Child Welfare, Aid to Dependent Children and Child Support Enforcement, Behavioral Health and Developmental Disabilities.
In August 2006, Johner was appointed by President Bush as USDA Undersecretary for Food, Nutrition and Consumer Services.
Johner joined the staff of then-Sen. Johanns as his state director on Jan. 15. 2009. She is currently the CEO for Pathfinder Support Services, a children and family services firm in Omaha.
I was also happy see Nancy Johner nominated to head our other USDA state agency, Fischer said. Her long career in public service, as an Under Secretary at USDA and the State Director for former Senator Mike Johanns, have prepared her to serve Nebraskans well once again at the Farm Service Agency.
Elmshaeuser, an Ogallala native, graduated from the University of Nebraska at Omahas Aviation Institute with a degree in General Studies. He served as manager and owner of Pioneer Aviation, L.L.C. for thirteen years. Currently, he serves as executive director for the West Central Nebraska Development District. He has served on the Ogallala City Council and was a candidate for the District 47 seat in the Nebraska legislature in 2015.
Karl Elmshaeuser is a former U.S. Marine with a strong passion for building prosperous Nebraska communities, she said. His first-rate management and development skills will enable him to make invaluable contributions to rural areas across the state.
In their respective roles, Karl and Nancy will be in good positions to promote Nebraska agriculture and effectively communicate the common sense policies our producers and communities need to be prosperous, Fischer said. I look forward to working with both of them to advance the priorities of our great state.
INDIANAPOLIS Scottsbluff FFA members, Blake Hill, Lauren Nichols, Marlee Neu, and Carson Willmot attended the 2017 National FFA Convention and Expo in Indianapolis, Indiana from Oct. 25 through 28. On Oct. 26, the members attended the first session of the FFA Convention, where the keynote speaker was Laila Ali, daughter of the famous boxer Muhammad Ali.
There were 65,000 FFA members who attended the National Convention from every state in the country. National FFA Officers spoke at each session. There were numerous career development booths FFA members toured.
On the last day the Scottsbluff FFA chapter had the privilege of watching one of its own, past president Hunter Hill receive his American Degree.
The American FFA Degree is awarded to members who have demonstrated the highest level of commitment to FFA and made significant accomplishments in their supervised agricultural experiences (SAEs). Its the highest degree an FFA member can receive.
SCOTTSBLUFF High winds in eastern and central Nebraska last month downed a lot of corn, delaying harvest. And based on Nov. 1 conditions, Nebraskas 2017 corn crop is forecast at 1.66 billion bushels, down 2 percent from last years production, according to the USDAs National Agricultural Statistics Service. Area to be harvested for grain, at 9.30 million acres, is down 3 percent from a year ago. Yield is forecast at 179 bushels per acre, up 1 bushel from last year.
Howerver, nationally corn production is forecast at 14.6 billion bushels, down 4 percent from last year but up 2 percent from the October forecast. Based on conditions as of Nov. 1, yields are expected to average 175.4 bushels per acre, up 3.6 bushels from the October forecast and up 0.8 bushel from 2016. If realized, this will be the highest yield on record for the United States. Area harvested for grain is forecast at 83.1 million acres, unchanged from the previous estimate but down 4 percent from 2016. Despite increased production and ending stocks forecasts, prices are expected to remain in the same range due to increased demand from feed and export markets.
Americas corn farmers continue to face challenging economic conditions, highlighting the incredible importance of growing and supporting markets for the crop we produce so well, National Corn Growers Association President Kevin Skunes, a farmer from North Dakota said in a release Thursday. From growing our ethanol and livestock markets to advancing trade opportunities abroad, whether it be by protecting the Renewable Fuel Standard in Washington or building demand for higher blends of ethanol across the world, NCGA strives to help farmers grow markets for their growing crop.
Notably, this report demonstrates the importance of the North American Free Trade Agreement in supporting the economic health of Americas farmers and rural communities, he said. Despite the record supply projections, increased demand from Mexico helped support prices. While this may not have been the price drive we need today, it is certainly of the utmost importance to avoiding further declines. Without market-opening trade agreements, we might not be in this position in the future.
The next round of negotiations to NAFTA are set to begin this week in Mexico City on Nov. 15 through 17. The talks broke down during the fourth round in Washington last month after negotiators from Mexico and Canada balked at U.S. Trade Rep. Robert Lighthizers list of demands, making the future of the two decade-old trade deal uncertain.
The Wall Street Journal reported on Nov. 9 that none of the 59 business, financial and academic economists it surveyed said a withdrawal from NAFTA would contribute to stronger U.S. economic growth, and 85 percent said economic growth in the long run would be weaker than if the nation stays with the trilateral trade deal.
Demand from exports, feed and residual markets were both raised by 75 million bushels. Despite increased demand forecasts, ending stocks are projected to be 147 million bushels higher than anticipated a month prior. The prices expected for the crop remain to have an idle range at $3.20 per bushel.
September pork export volume was steady with both the August and year-ago levels, while beef exports edged higher in volume and jumped substantially in value, according to statistics released by USDA and compiled by the U.S. Meat Export Federation (USMEF).
Pork exports totaled 183,481 metric tons (mt) in September, nearly identical to both the September 2016 and August 2017 volumes. September export value was $503.8 million, up 3 percent year-over-year. Through the first three quarters of the year, pork exports were 8 percent ahead of last years record pace at 1.79 million mt.
September exports accounted for 23.6 percent of total pork production and 19.8 percent for muscle cuts only both down slightly from a year ago. For January through September, these ratios improved about one percentage point from a year ago, to 26.5 percent of total production and 22.1 percent for muscle cuts. Through the first three quarters of the year, per-head export value was $52.79, up 7 percent.
Although lower than the previous month, September beef export volume improved 2 percent from a year ago, to 103,552 mt. Export value topped $600 million for the fourth consecutive month at $616.9 million, up 16 percent from a year ago. January-September volume was 926,985 mt, up 9 percent from the first three quarters of 2016, while export value was $5.27 billion up 16 percent year-over-year and 2 percent above of the record pace established in 2014.
Beef exports accounted for 12.5 percent of total production in September, down one percentage point from a year ago, but the percentage of muscle cuts exported increased from 10.2 percent last year to 10.4 percent. For January through September, beef exports accounted 12.8 percent of total production (down from 13.2 percent) and 10.1 percent for muscle cuts (steady with last year).
September beef export value averaged $289.14 per head of fed slaughter, up 13 percent from a year ago. January-September export value averaged $277.31 per head, up 10 percent.
Pork exports to leading volume market Mexico edged modestly lower in September at 63,771 mt down 4 percent from a year ago while export value slipped 7 percent to $122.1 million. But through the first three quarters of the year, exports to Mexico remained well ahead of last years record volume pace at 585,998 mt (up 15 percent), while export value was up 18 percent to $1.1 billion.
September pork export results were bolstered by year-over-year increases to South Korea, Canada, Central and South America, the ASEAN region and Taiwan, while export volumes trended lower to leading value market Japan, China/Hong Kong and Australia.
The September export results really illustrate the importance of having a diverse range of pork export markets, said USMEF CEO Philip Seng. Even with our three largest markets down, year-over-year, volume kept pace with last year and value posted an increase.
USMEF said strong momentum for U.S. beef continued in most Asian and Western Hemisphere markets in September, though exports faced some new headwinds. Exports to leading market Japan held up well in September that countrys recent duty rate increase (from 38.5 percent to 50 percent) on imports of frozen U.S. beef. September exports of frozen beef to Japan were up 44 percent from a year ago to 10,512 mt.
For January through September, exports to Japan increased 22 percent in volume (236,536 mt) and 30 percent in value ($1.45 billion).
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President Donald Trump waves during the gala dinner marking ASEAN's 50th anniversary in Manila, Philippines, Sunday Nov. 12, 2017. Legal experts huddled together at a recent conference to ponder a question that could go from being a distant hypothetical to one that dominates Canada-U.S.-Mexico relations: can an American president unilaterally cancel a trade deal? THE CANADIAN PRESS/AP-POOL, Athit Perawongmetha
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is greeted by Chinese President Xi Jinping during the official welcome at the G20 Leaders Summit in Hangzhou, Sunday, September 4, 2016. A sweeping federal report shows that Canadian businesses aren't sure a free trade pact will solve all the concerns they have about dealing with the Asian giant. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Adrian Wyld
In this Saturday, Nov. 11, 2017 frame grab from video, Iraqi security forces speak to shepherd Khalaf Luhaibi next to bones on the ground, in an area recently retaken from the Islamic State group, at an abandoned base near the northern town of Hawija, Iraq. Kirkuk governor Rakan Saed said Sunday that the bodies of civilians and security forces have been found at the mass grave that could contain up to 400 bodies. (Kirkuk Governor's Office via AP)
President Donald Trump and Vietnamese President Tran Dai Quang toast during a State Dinner at the International Convention Center, Saturday, Nov. 11, 2017, in Hanoi, Vietnam. Trump is on a five country trip through Asia traveling to Japan, South Korea, China, Vietnam and the Philippines. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)
In this photo released by Bahrain News Agency, Sheikh Rashid bin Abdullah Al Khalifa, Bahrain Minister of Interior talks with a member of the emergency services, during his visit to the scene of an explosion, in Bahrain, Saturday, Nov. 11, 2017. Bahrain says an oil pipeline that exploded overnight was attacked by militants in the island nation. (Bahrain News Agency via AP)
Those who dwell on the fine print in the state of Wisconsins $3-billion contract with Foxconn Technology Group run the risk of missing the screaming headlines of global change.
Will the rest of the 21st century be a second American Century like the 20th, or a Chinese Century in which the worlds most populous nation dominates trade, technology and innovation?
The answer to that question remains up for grabs. States such as Wisconsin that are positioned for the inevitable competition with China and other rising powers in Asia stand to come out ahead.
In the same week Gov. Scott Walkers team completed an agreement with Taiwan-based Foxconn to invest up to $10 billion and hire up to 13,000 workers in Wisconsin, President Trump visited China as a part of a larger Asian tour.
It was a timely stage to announce about $262 billion in deals between Chinese firms and U.S. companies vested in everything from mobile phone chipsets to soybeans to jetliners. It was all done in hopes of increasing bilateral trade and narrowing a yawning trade deficit, currently in Chinas overwhelming favor.
Meanwhile, the trade winds were also blowing in Vietnam, where 11 countries left behind 10 months ago when Trump pulled the United States out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership announced Nov. 8 they are close to an agreement in principle to trade more with China. For Beijing, its an insurance policy against American trade sanctions.
China is also placing on-shore bets. Chinese companies such as Tencent Holdings Ltd., which is about the size of Berkshire Hathaway Inc. in the United States, are busily working deals here.
Best known for its WeChat messaging app, Tencent recently became one of the largest investors in Snap. The company is also an investor in Tesla and has invested in 40 U.S. tech startups since 2011, joining reported fundraising rounds of $3.5 billion. The trend is consistent with Tencents goal to stay current on ideas and products from Americas tech sector.
Is it all part of larger Chinese plan? Yes, and its called Made in China 2025. Announced in 2015, the goal is to dominate cutting-edge technologies such as advanced microchips, artificial intelligence and electric cars within a decade.
China is directing billions of dollars to invest in research at home and to acquire innovative technology from abroad. The effort is changing how trade rules are conceived, written and enforced. Ideas and intellectual property available over the internet could become as tightly watched and regulated as hard goods delivered by ship.
Foxconn is not a mainland Chinese firm, but it has extensive holdings there as well as the rest of Asia. Its leaders believe planting a foot on American soil is the best way to win over consumers in the worlds largest electronics market and to survive possible trade wars. By building the first liquid crystal display plant outside Asia in Racine County, Foxconn will gain access to American markets, know-how and regulatory shelter.
It is why Terry Gou, the chairman of Foxconn, took the unusual step of personally guaranteeing Foxconn will perform as promised on investment and jobs. When the Bill Gates of Asia puts up $500 million of his own money, thats a sign Foxconn is here to stay. Gou and Foxconn want to be safely inside America, not outside looking in, as trade and monetary tensions inevitably grow with competition.
The same forces appear to be driving Broadcom, a semi-conductor maker that has announced plans to move its legal headquarters from Singapore to the United States. It has offered to buy another major chip-maker, QualComm, for a reported $105 billion. That would be the biggest takeover in the history of the tech industry.
Critics will continue to ask whether Wisconsin should have invested $3 billion over 15 years to lure one company. Over time, however, as the worlds fourth-largest tech company builds its mega-plant in Racine County and begins to transform the Wisconsin economy through its investments in artificial intelligence, robotics, virtual reality and more, opinions may change.
Measured only by the terms of the contract, the states investment in Foxconn will take years to pay off. Against the backdrop of global trends, the strategy of luring an Asian giant to the shores of Lake Michigan will someday take on the luster of a strategic success.
Tom Still is president of the Wisconsin Technology Council.
The emergency ambulance cover for Kilkenny - revealed in this weeks edition - would create a very uneasy feeling for anyone living in the county.
The ratio of ambulances to population size is concerning, of course. But theres a potentially larger problem here - thats the lottery of dynamic deployments.
This idea of roaming ambulances and resources from elsewhere being deployed must be mooted when Kilkennys complement of ambulances is so small.
The on-call ambulances ready to cross county boundaries as need dictates is not comforting - when the bottom line of this countys ambulance cover is revealed.
Theres a need for fluidity with regard to emergency ambulances, of course. The HSE have more than enough phrases to try and convey this message in the hope the wording will instill confidence.
They use words like resources are dynamically deployed - which sounds active and lively.
They say that ambulances are dispatched on a nearest available (to incident) basis and not a county boundary basis. That statement is also carefully worded.
Thats why those sentences are constructed. But strip the fanciful language back.
Ultimately, Kilkenny has two emergency ambulances on duty at weekends and just two for each night of the week. Four ambulances are on duty during the day - now ask yourself, how safe do these figures make you feel?
The HSE again will say that resources come from adjacent stations like Carlow, Waterford, New Ross and Clonmel. Fine, keep the dynamic deployment alive.
Travel times to a place like Thomastown would be the same from those areas as it would be from Kilkenny City - with the exception of Clonmel.
But when an emergency happens; that call-out and dynamic deployment is a lottery to see whats available if Kilkennys contingent is occupied.
Surely, providing more ambulances for each county, vehicles that are static in that county, would serve the public better. More ambulances are needed. Its a matter of life and death.
There is just one day left to make a submission on a planning application to construct a major photovoltaic solar farm measuring almost 100 acres at Ballyconra, Ballyragget.
The final date for submissions on Tuesday, November 14. The application is due to be decided by Kilkenny County Council on December 5.
Elgin Energy Services Ltd wants to build the power installation at a 39.6-hectare site near the north Kilkenny village. The company recently got permission to build a smaller, 35-acre solar farm in Carlow, as well as for farms in Offaly, Laois, and Westmeath.
Last year, Elgin sought planning for an 11 hectares (just over 27 acres) site near Goresbridge, also for a solar farm.
Regarding plans at Ballyragget, the company's application to Kilkenny County Council seeks:
'Proposed works which will include a solar farm on an area of approximately 39.6 hectares, comprising photovoltaic panels on ground mounted frames, 20 no. single storey inverter/transformer stations, 1 no. onsite 38 KV substation, 2 no. steel storage containers, security fencing, CCTV and all associated ancillary development works. Elgin Energy Services Ltd, are applying for the proposed solar farm to have planning permission that is effective for 10 years (and an operational period of 30 years)'.
(Recasts with Freeport comment, adds details)
JAKARTA, Nov 12 (Reuters) - The Indonesian unit of Freeport-McMoRan Inc has temporarily shut the main supply route to its Papua mine after a shooting incident, a spokesman said, amid escalating tensions between security forces and an armed rebel group in the area.
No one had been reported hurt after shots were fired at a vehicle, but the main supply route to the world's second-biggest copper mine had been temporarily closed while the security situation was assessed, Freeport Indonesia spokesman Riza Pratama said in text message.
Authorities in Indonesia's eastern province of Papua are delivering food and aid to villages near the mine where security forces say the rebel group has blocked residents' movement, as security personnel surround the area, a police official said.
Police say a group linked to the Free Papua Movement (OPM) is preventing about 1,000 people from leaving five villages near the Grasberg mine operated by the U.S. company.
"We continue to try a persuasive approach and dialogue," said Viktor Mackbon, police chief of the Mimika area, where the villages are located. Talks with the group would be conducted through public and religious figures in the region, he added.
Officials on Saturday said about 200 police and military personnel had been deployed in preparation to secure the area by force, if necessary.
Police sad they will distribute on Monday a notice in the area for the "armed criminal group" to give themselves up and surrender weapons.
Reuters could not immediately reach members of the rebel group, the West Papua National Liberation Army (TPN-OPM), to seek comment.
On Friday, the group denied occupying villages near the mine, but said it was "at war" with the police, military, and Freeport.
A resident from one of the villages, Banti, said security forces had blocked access to the village.
Residents he had spoken were not being held hostage by separatists but "are only worried about what might happen if the police and military come into their area", he said.
A state of emergency has been declared in the area and security stepped up after a string of shootings since Aug. 17 that killed one police officer and wounded six.
Papua has had a long-running, and sometimes violent, separatist movement since it was incorporated into Indonesia after a widely criticised U.N.-backed referendum in 1969.
The incident is the first escalation of violence under President Joko Widodo, who has sought to ease tension in the region by stepping up investment, freeing political prisoners and tackling human rights concerns.
The Grasberg mine has been dogged by security concerns for decades. From 2009-2015 shootings within the mine project area killed 20 people and wounded 59. (Reporting by Agustinus Beo Da Costa and Fergus Jensen; Writing by Kanupriya Kapoor and Ed Davies; Editing by Clarence Fernandez and Peter Graff)
(Adds Iran denial; paragraph 5)
By Reem Shamseddine
KHOBAR, Saudi Arabia, Nov 11 (Reuters) - Bahrain said an explosion which caused a fire at its main oil pipeline on Friday was caused by "terrorist" sabotage, linking the unprecedented attack to its arch-foe Iran, which denies any role in the Gulf island kingdom's unrest.
A key Western ally and host to the U.S. Fifth Fleet, Sunni Muslim-ruled Bahrain has for years grappled with protests and sporadic violence coming from its Shi'ite majority.
"The incident was an act of sabotage and a dangerous act of terrorism aimed at harming the higher interests of the nation and the safety of the people," the interior ministry said on its website.
"Terrorist acts witnessed by the country in the recent period are carried out through direct contacts and instructions from Iran," the statement quoted Interior Minister Sheikh Rashid bin Abdullah al-Khalifa as saying.
In Tehran, Foreign Ministry spokesman Bahram Qassemi rejected the allegations as "false talk and childish accusations", the ministry said on its website.
Bahraini authorities said they had brought under control the fire at the oil pipeline.
State-run Bahrain Petroleum Company (Bapco) closed the flow of oil to the stricken pipeline, the civil defence said in a statement earlier on Saturday.
Residents close to the incident near Buri village, some 15 kilometres (10 miles) from the capital Manama, were being evacuated to a safe shelter, the statement added.
Saudi Arabia's energy ministry said pumping to Bahrain had been suspended and the kingdom was stepping up security precautions at its own facilities.
"The attack on the pipeline ... was followed by the suspension of the pumping of oil to the State of Bahrain," the Saudi Ministry of Energy, Industry and Mineral Resources said.
"The Ministry of Energy also confirmed that it has increased its security precautions at all its facilities, and that all these facilities enjoy the highest levels of protection and safety," it added in a statement.
After authorities quashed Shi'ite-led "Arab Spring" protests in 2011, militants have launched deadly bombing and shooting attacks against security forces that Manama blames on Tehran.
Iran denies any role in Bahrain's unrest.
Bahrain relies on the Abu Safa oilfield for the majority of its oil. It shares the field with Saudi Arabia. Oil to Bahrain is transported via the 55 km A-B pipeline which has a capacity of 230,000 barrels per day (bpd).
A new 350,000-bpd oil pipeline between the two countries will be completed next year and will serve the planned expansion of Bahrain's refinery capacity. Arabian Light crude oil will flow from Saudi Aramco's Abqaiq plant via the 115-km new pipeline, 73 km of which will run overland and the rest under the Gulf.
(Reporting by Reem Shamseddine, Noah Browning and Dubai newsroom, editing by Louise Heavens)
Arkis BioSciences opens state-of-the-art facility at Cherokee Farm Innovation Campus
KNOXVILLE -- Arkis BioSciences, a high-tech medical device company that has brought more than $6 million in investments and employment opportunities to the region, has officially opened a new state-of-the-art facility at Cherokee Farm Innovation Campus, the University of Tennessees research and development park.
Cherokee Farm Innovation Campus officially welcomed high-tech medical device company Arkis BioSciences at the University of Tennessees research and development park on Oct. 23. Ceremony participants included (from left) Cherokee Farm Development Corporation President and CEO Cliff Hawks; UT Interim Vice President for Research, Outreach, and Economic Development Stacey Patterson; UT Chancellor Beverly Davenport; UT President Joe DiPietro; and Arkis BioSciences CEO Chad Seaver.
Since its founding in 2013, Arkis BioSciences has operated from the University of Tennessee Research Foundation Business Incubator before expanding to Cherokee Farm Innovation Campus, a strategic move that provides access to the resources of the Joint Institute for Advanced Materials (JIAM), the University of Tennessee, UT Medical Center and Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL).
Arkis BioSciences offers a portfolio of neurosurgical tools and advanced catheters that are designed to streamline surgeries, reduce risks, enhance treatment outcomes and lower the overall cost of care. In August, Arkis obtained U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) clearance of its new external ventricular drainage (EVD) catheter, CerebroFlo, marking an expansion of Arkis surgical line and extending its reach into neurocritical care.
Arkis provides innovative surgical solutions designed to be less invasive and more reliable, which incorporate new advanced materials, said Chad Seaver, CEO of Arkis BioSciences. Our move to the Innovation Campus and collaboration with JIAM will accelerate Arkis expansion of advanced materials-based devices.
Cherokee Farm offers tenants like Arkis BioSciences unparalleled resources, including access to JIAM, a world-class materials science research facility. The $56 million, 140,000-square-foot JIAM facility offers research capabilities, including polymer labs and advanced microscopy.
The resources of Cherokee Farm are an ideal fit for Arkis BioSciences, Cherokee Farm Development Corporation President and CEO Cliff Hawks said. Our goal is to provide companies the most powerful research and development resources, and we designed this campus with companies like Arkis BioSciences in mind.
The grand opening event, which took place at Arkis BioSciences 6,000-square-foot, state-of-the-art facility, drew researchers, educators, elected officials and business and community leaders.
Partnerships with outstanding companies like Arkis BioSciences benefit all parties as we work towards our goal to increase innovation and entrepreneurship as part of Vol Vision 2020, UT Chancellor Beverly Davenport said. We are particularly proud that a company with roots in our business incubator is expanding to Cherokee Farm Innovation Campus. Cherokee Farm Innovation Campus is the only research and development park in the Southeast affiliated with both a major research university and a national research laboratory. It includes more than 77 developable acres along the Tennessee River and is a collaboration of UT and ORNL.
At the University of Tennessee, we are on a mission to advance knowledge and solve problems through research, said Stacey Patterson, interim UT vice president for research, outreach, and economic development. Cherokee Farm is playing a key role in fulfilling our research mission as home to the Joint Institute for Advanced Materials, an unmatched center for high-end research.
In addition to the expertise of JIAM, Cherokee Farm tenants have access to world-leading resources in computational science, advanced materials research and testing, neutron science and biological sciences. Tenants can work in collaboration with the university and ORNL in a way that not only benefits the company, but also benefits the community by advancing the commercialization of research.
The quality of innovation that will be generated from companies like Arkis BioSciences at Cherokee Farm will have a widespread positive impact, UT President Joe DiPietro said. Todays announcement is evidence of years of steady progress toward the vision for Cherokee Farm.
Cherokee Farm Innovation Campus is an ideal fit for firms that will benefit from close partnerships with UT and ORNL and access to the research capabilities of the Joint Institute for Advanced Materials. The campus is located in the heart of Innovation Valley, the corridor linking ORNL and McGhee Tyson Airport and provides regional economic development and world-class resources in science, technology and business. For leasing information, visit www.cherokeefarm.org.
Arkis BioSciences is a leading innovator and provider of minimally invasive surgical instrumentation and advanced catheter technology, for neuro-, general-, and plastic-surgeries. The companys surgical instrumentation product line and its proprietary Single Pass workflow aim to provide less invasive and less traumatic procedures. Arkis additionally provides advanced materials for neuro catheters, which incorporate Endexo. Arkis BioSciences is headquartered in Knoxville, Tennessee, and began operations in 2013. For further information, please visit www.arkisbiosciences.com.
Cherokee Farm Innovation Campus in Knoxville, Tennessee, is the Southeasts only research and development (R&D) park where the resources of a major research university and a leading national laboratory are combined with globally recognized researchers expressly for the benefit of tenants. The campus is a collaborative effort of the University of Tennessee and the Oak Ridge National Laboratory. Located on 188 acres on the banks of the Tennessee River, the campus has 77 developable acres and includes 16 building sites that support approximately 1.6 million square feet of development. Parcels are available for immediate development, and space is available for leasing. For more information, visit www.cherokeefarm.org.
Automobile, cosmetics, retail industries expect gradual sales rebound
By Lee Hyo-sik
Automakers, airlines, duty free shops and other businesses heavily dependent on China are welcoming improving Korea-Sino relations in recent weeks as the two sides work to get the soured ties back on track.
Korean companies, which have been grappling with China's economic retaliation since March when Korea officially decided to deploy a U.S. anti-missile battery here, are expressing hopes that business will get better amid growing signs of a thaw in icy relations.
Things began picking up after the two countries announced an agreement to normalize ties Oct. 31, with China's backlash against local firms diminishing over the past two weeks.
Meetings between the leaders of the two nations are adding to an optimistic view of relations in the coming months, company officials said.
Chinese tourists are also expected to return to Korea as the authorities there are moving to normalize exchanges with Asia's fourth-largest economy.
"Korea-Sino ties have improved substantially over the past month. The two sides are now in the process of getting their relations back on track," said an official from the Korea Chamber of Commerce and Industry.
President Moon Jae-in and his Chinese counterpart President Xi Jinping met Saturday on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in Vietnam, agreeing to take bilateral ties to the next level.
Moon plans to visit China in December, while Xi is expected to come to Korea next February during the PyeongChang Winter Olympics.
By Lee Hyo-sik
The government has decided not to dispose of its remaining 18.5 percent stake in Woori Bank this year as Korea's third-largest commercial bank has been reeling from an unprecedented hiring scandal.
Financial regulators had initially planned to complete the privatization of the bank by the end of the year, but had to delay the schedule after Woori CEO Lee Kwang-goo stepped down Nov. 2 amid the alleged illicit hiring of the children of government officials as its employees.
Instead, they will attempt to sell a 7 percent stake, or 47.32 million shares, in the bank next year, according to the government's 2018 budget proposal submitted to the National Assembly, Sunday.
In the proposal, the Korea Deposit Insurance Corp. (KDIC), which holds the 18.5 percent stake in Woori, said it plans to raise about 500 billion won ($446 million) by unloading the 7 percent stake next year. But it did not say what they would do with the remaining 11.5 percent stake.
In November 2016, the state deposit insurer unloaded a 29.7 percent stake in the bank to seven strategic and financial investors, including IMM Private Equity and Mirae Asset Global Investments.
KDIC is also expected to sell the 7 percent stake next year to multiple institutional investors in block deals.
The government has tried to privatize Woori Bank since 2001 as it sought to retrieve its investment in the bank. It injected about 12.8 trillion won into the bank in the aftermath of the Asian financial crisis in 1997.
"It has become difficult to dispose of Woori shares this year because of the unexpected event," said Park Kyung-seo, co-chairman of the Public Fund Oversight Committee (PFOC), a government body overseeing the management of financial institutions that received taxpayers' money.
Park, who is also a professor in business administration at Korea University, cited Woori Chairman Lee's abrupt resignation as an unforeseen obstacle to the committee's initial plan to sell the 18.7 percent stake.
Following the allegations of illicit hiring, the bank has been raided by prosecutors twice. It is alleged that Woori hired more than a dozen people who were either children or relatives of officials from the Financial Supervisory Service and the National Intelligence Service. The former is the country's financial regulator while the latter is its spy agency.
"The bank should hold a board of directors meeting and a shareholders meeting soon to elect a new CEO," Park said. "We will consider various options as to how we will unload the 7 percent stake to raise as much money as possible."
A PFOC official said the committee will decide exactly how many shares it will sell by considering market conditions at the time. "As soon as Woori Bank normalizes its operations, the committee will take the necessary steps for the stake sale."
By Robert Neff
Luigi Casati
C ourtesy of John Wheeler/Robert Neff Collection Asako Yamada
Courtesy of John Wheeler/Robert Neff Collection
On the northern bank of the Han River near Hapjeong lies Yanghwajin Foreign Cemetery -- a quiet oasis that, according to historian Donald Clark, "represents the life of the foreign community in Korea, its purposes, its diverse people, the contributions they made, and the hardships they suffered." He further went on to say that "a walk along the cemetery paths is a tour back through the entire century of the Western impact on Korean life."
Missionaries and their families, such as Appenzeller, Underwood and Hulbert, and even a few non-missionaries such as Ernest T. Bethell -- an English newspaperman -- are well-remembered and honored but for the most part the interred have long been forgotten -- even by their fellow countrymen. Luigi Casati is one of them.
We don't know much about Luigi's early life save that he was an Italian born on September 29, 1850 possibly in Garbagna (Piemonte) near Torre Di Ratti. At some point he joined the Italian diplomatic service and was stationed in Tokyo as an interpreter in 1880 where he served for a number of years. Unfortunately, he appears to have led a quiet life and was rarely mentioned in the contemporary press except for a notification in 1886 that he was being transferred to Shanghai in the near future. Whether it happened or not is unclear but we do know that 36-year-old Casati was in love with a much younger Japanese woman. According to family history, she was Asako Yamada (later known as Asa Maria), the 16-year-old daughter of the Chief of Police for Tokyo, and they were married the following year.
"It must have been quite unusual for a European to marry into Japanese high society at that time" suggested John Wheeler, a grandson of Casati, who then added, perhaps even in the present day it would be viewed as unusual.
Directories indicate that Casati was at his post in Tokyo until 1894 when suddenly his name disappears from the directories -- did he return to Italy on a year-long furlough? Adding to the mystery, the couple's first child, Angelo -- their only son, was born in Garbagna in 1889. Their subsequent daughters, Margherita, Ione and Emila appear to have been born in Japan.
By the end of the 1890s, Casati's name again appeared in the directories as interpreter in Tokyo. As their names do not appear in the social events published in the local press we can merely speculate that the family was happy but generally kept to themselves. But tragedy would soon rip the family apart. In early 1902, Asa became pregnant with their fifth child and while visiting Yokohama in August, tragically fell into a pond and drowned.
Casati and his family remained in Tokyo until late 1905 when he was transferred to Seoul. Life in Korea at this time was one filled with change -- Joseon was in its dying hours -- but Casati appears to have been invisible, even in the foreign community. His daughters, on the other hand, were outgoing. As evidenced by a photograph, they were some of the earliest passengers of the "first" automobile to be introduced to Korea in 1909 -- their youthful faces seemed transfixed with fear and excitement. Their father is conspicuously missing from the picture -- perhaps he was already ill at this time.
In early December 1909, Casati grew deathly sick. He was hospitalized at the Tai Han hospital but there was little that could be done for him. According to the local newspaper, "As Mr. Casati had no staff to whom to entrust the transactions of official business on his behalf" he requested the Japanese authorities to notify the Italian Embassy in Tokyo of his dire situation. On December 11, at 2:30 a.m., Casati passed away.
His funeral was held on the 13th and was well attended. The various consulates and government offices in Seoul kept their flags at half-mast throughout the day in honor of the man that we know so little about save that he died in Seoul and is buried at Yanghwajin.
As for his children, only Emilia continued to have a link to Korea but her story is for another time.
Robert Neff is a historian and columnist for The Korea Times. He can be reached at robertneff103@gmail.com.
U.S. President Donald Trump on Sunday tweeted a derisive message on North Korean leader Kim Jong-un in response to Pyongyang's repeated insults against him.
"Why would Kim Jong-un insult me by calling me 'old,' when I would NEVER call him 'short and fat?'" Trump said in a tweet from Hanoi, the latest leg of his 13-day Asia tour.
"Oh well, I try so hard to be his friend - and maybe someday that will happen!" he added.
On Saturday, North Korea criticized his Asia trip saying, "Reckless remarks by an old lunatic like Trump will never scare us or stop our advance."
Last week, it called on the U.S. to oust the "lunatic old" man from power and withdraw its hostile policy toward it.
Throughout his trip, Trump has denounced the North Korean regime's nuclear adventurism, brutal dictatorship and human rights abuses.
On Friday in the Vietnamese resort city of Danang, Trump warned that the Asia-Pacific must not be held hostage by a dictator's "twisted fantasies."
But the feisty American leader has been seen modulating his combative rhetoric against the North, refusing to use highly provocative terms as he has done in recent months to threaten the pugnacious state.
Trump had warned of "fire and fury" on Pyongyang, threatened to "totally destroy" it and called its supremo a "Rocket Man on a suicide mission," in his angry response to a raft of provocations, including its sixth and most powerful nuclear test on Sept. 3.
The subtle shift in tone came as South Korean President Moon Jae-in ruled out the possibility of war and stressed a "peaceful" solution to the nuclear standoff with the North refraining from major provocations for nearly two months. (Yonhap)
By Yi Whan-woo
South Korea has asked China to hand over North Korean defectors being held in Shenyang, Cheong Wa Dae said Sunday.
The issue was raised at a high-level meeting involving Foreign Minister Kang Kyung-wha and Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi in Danang, Vietnam.
The meeting took place prior to the summit between the leaders of the two countries on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit.
China responded that it will "look into the matter," according to the presidential office.
President Moon Jae-in, left, and first lady Kim Jung-sook, second from left, greet Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte, right, and his partner Honeylet Avancena before joining a gala dinner event to mark the 50th anniversary of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations at the SMX Convention Center in Manila, the Philippines, Sunday. / Yonhap
By Jun Ji-hye
President Moon Jae-in arrived in Manila, Sunday, for meetings with member countries of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) this week.
Moon attended a gala dinner marking the 50th anniversary of the association comprised of the Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, Brunei, Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar and Vietnam.
Moon traveled to Manila after wrapping up a trip to the Vietnamese city of Danang for an Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) meeting as well as bilateral talks with his Vietnamese and Chinese counterparts.
On Monday, Moon will participate in the ASEAN Business and Investment Summit and deliver a speech on ways to improve relations between South Korea and ASEAN. He will then attend a meeting with the heads of ASEAN countries to discuss cooperation in various fields.
On Tuesday, Moon will take part in an Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) +3 forum, which brings ASEAN leaders and those from South Korea, Japan and China together, to check their cooperation and future vision.
He will next attend an East Asia Summit (EAS) to discuss challenges in the region, including evolving threats from North Korea's nuclear and missile programs.
Moon will also attend a meeting about the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), a free trade deal sought by 16 nations in the Asia-Pacific region.
During his visit to Manila, Moon is expected to talk with Chinese Prime Minister Li Keqiang.
The Philippines is the last destination on Moon's trip to three Southeast Asian countries that included Indonesia and Vietnam.
The tour aims to boost momentum for Moon to diversify the nation's diplomatic horizon.
In Jakarta, Moon unveiled his New South Policy aimed at greatly improving Seoul's diplomatic and economic relations with ASEAN countries, stressing that ties with these countries can play an important role in resolving the North Korean issue peacefully.
Moon will return home Nov. 15.
4 medical institutions accredited for foreign patients-focused service
By Lee Kyung-min
"Is there anything inconvenient or unsafe to foreign patients here? How can we best tend to their needs?"
These are the two questions constantly playing in the back of the mind of a woman, surnamed Hong, a manger of international healthcare center at Gachon University Gil Medical Center in Incheon.
Everywhere she goes, the first thing that comes to her mind is how a foreign patient would feel during and after receiving medical treatment at where she works.
"We know it is not an easy decision for patients to come to a foreign country to seek advanced treatment. The decision is all the more hard since it concerns their health, which is the most important thing in people's lives."
"That is why we devote our utmost attention to the smallest details trying to make them feel at home, not to mention maintaining top quality of medical services."
Hong said she became so "thoroughly exacting" after trying to meet stringent standards set by the Ministry of Health and Welfare which oversees and manages the Korean Accreditation Program for Hospitals Serving Foreign Patients (KAHF).
Fifteen staffers of 10 units under the medical center prepared over four months, before applying for the program whose recognition is effective for two years.
Of the 31 medical institutions applied, only four Gachon University Gil Medical Center, Inha University Hospital, HanGil Eye Hospital and JK Plastic Surgery Center were accredited. Other than JK Plastic Surgery Center in Gangnam, southern Seoul, the three are located in Incheon.
Under the program, jointly run by Korea Health Industry Development Institute and the Korea Institute for Healthcare Accreditation, medical institutions are evaluated on up to 130 standards.
They include whether there were "competent medical coordinators," to fully explain in detail their services before, during and after treatments in a language that patients could understand.
This is a perfectly apt and much-appreciated standard, according to Inha University Hospital.
"Foreign patients' needs vary greatly depending on their countries. We have to consider cultural differences, languages and all other sensitive aspects while they are staying here for what is considered the most valuable to people: health," a hospital staffer said.
"By establishing this program, and having medical institutions meet the requirements, the ministry set a new standard in what we should prioritize in treating foreign patients."
The program also evaluates whether medical institutions have measures to prevent medical disputes, and employ arbitration following possible dissatisfactory treatments.
An Uzbekistan girl, second from left, smiles with a doctor who performed a successful operation on her spinal cord injury at a hospital in Incheon in December 2015. / Courtesy of the Ministry of Health and Welfare
Other criteria include whether they have infection control measures, emergency response measures, as well as certified anesthetists, important indications of whether medical institutions maintain services that meet patients' expectation of safety.
JK Plastic Surgery Center Founder and CEO Joo Kwon said winning the government program was as hard as winning that from the Joint Commission International (JCI), which is considered a recognized leader in international health care accreditation.
"Some of the standards were more exacting and required more resources and attention," he said.
"But I think it's commendable that the health ministry established this system amid the growing number of foreign patients seeking advanced treatment in Korea. I think the ministry should maintain the current high standards because it concerns patients' safety."
Joo said he will undoubtedly apply for recognition in two years time.
"Earning the accreditation for two consecutive times is more difficult than getting it for the first time. It needs much work, devotion and principles. I will definitely apply in two years."
KAHF gave not only an additional boost in maintaining the reputation of the medical institution, but also in the government, according to HanGil Eye Hospital.
"We held a joint meeting with a medical agency in Kazakhstan, where representatives said this program would certainly help patients choose our hospital. They said they felt we were more trustworthy with the government accreditation," a staffer said.
He said many patients that underwent operations there said they would recommend their friends to go to medical institutions that have KAHF.
"While preparing to apply for the program, we learned our strengths and weaknesses. We are happy we had the chance to review our management as a medical institution."
A ministry official said the efforts will continue to strengthen capabilities through the implementation of KAHF to guarantee safety and convenience for foreign patients.
By Choi Ha-young
Rep. Choo Mi-ae
Ruling Democratic Party of Korea (DPK) Chairwoman Rep. Choo Mi-ae will visit the United States, Tuesday, to discuss North Korean affairs and trade issues with American policymakers.
Three DPK lawmakers Yun Ho-jung, Kim Kyung-hyup and Hong Ihk-pyo will accompany Choo, DPK spokeswoman Kim Hyun said Sunday.
On the first day in Washington D.C., Choo will meet Gary Cohn, President Donald Trump's economic adviser, to talk about the ongoing renegotiations of the two countries' free trade agreement (KORUS FTA). She will also talk with House Speaker Paul Ryan.
The DPK chief will deliver a speech at a seminar at the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University, Wednesday. Later in the afternoon, Choo is scheduled to meet House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi.
"There, she will emphasize international cooperation to keep imposing sanctions on North Korea, coupled with seeking a diplomatic resolution for the nuclear crisis," Kim said.
Meetings with politicians in the relevant parliamentary committees are confirmed Ben Cardin, ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee; Cory Gardner, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on East Asia and the Pacific and International Cybersecurity Policy; and Ed Royce, chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee.
Choo will also explain Seoul's stance on the KORUS FTA to U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer, who is leading the renegotiation process.
"Choo will broaden understanding for a win-win FTA renegotiation," the spokeswoman said.
On her visit to the White House National Security Council, Thursday, Choo will meet Ricky Waddle, deputy national security adviser to President Trump, in place of H.R. McMaster who is on an Asia tour with the President.
The DPK is also envisioning a meeting with Dina Powell, deputy national security adviser for strategy, who is in charge of advising the President on economic initiatives.
On Friday, Choo will move to New York to deliver a keynote speech at a conference organized by the Korea Society, where officials from renowned investment banks will attend. Her speech will focus on bilateral investment and the KORUS FTA.
At the United Nations headquarters, she will encourage Korean officials and hold a press conference to ensure the successful organization of PyeongChang Winter Olympic Games.
From Nov. 30 to Dec. 3, the chairwoman will head to Beijing to participate in an event arranged by the Communist Party of China International Liaison Department. At the opening ceremony, Dec. 1, Chinese President Xi Jinping will deliver a keynote speech in which he will stipulate his visions in front of world party leaders.
The DPK is pushing for a meeting between Choo and Chinese leader Xi Jinping on the sidelines of the event. The DPK said in a press release that with the thawing relationship between Seoul and Beijing, the ruling party accepted the invitation with a view to building deeper ties.
Another summit planned in Beijing next month
By Yi Whan-woo
President Moon Jae-in and Chinese President Xi Jinping have agreed to restore relations between Seoul and Beijing in all sectors.
They reached the agreement during a summit on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation meeting in Danang, Vietnam, Saturday.
Their bilateral talks came after the governments of South Korea and China struck an agreement on Oct. 31 to end the diplomatic row over a U.S. Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) battery deployed in South Korea.
Moon accepted Xi's invitation to visit China next month, while Xi said he will "make efforts" to come to the Winter Olympics, slated for Feb. 9 to 25, 2018, in PyeongChang, Gangwon Province.
The two leaders also agreed to bolster efforts to resolve the North Korea nuclear crisis, something Xi had refused to discuss with Moon over the past few months.
"I'm so glad that the two countries have agreed to restore exchanges and cooperation in every field through diplomatic consultation, and put their relationship on a normal track," Moon said. "We had hardship in our relations, but now is the time for us to reconfirm how South Korea and China are precious to each other. I hope the two sides will work together to recover the time we lost."
Citing a Korean proverb, "After the rain, the ground is stiff," and also a Chinese idiom with a similar connotation, Moon said he is confident about the positive impact to be brought about by his summit with Xi.
"My meeting with President Xi will be a signal to resume cooperation in politics, the economy, culture, human resources and other fields," he said.
Moon's remarks came in response to Xi's opening speech, in which the latter expressed hope that their summit will be a "significant turnaround for the two sides to cooperate on bilateral development and issues on the Korean Peninsula."
"Both China and South Korea have common interests in a wide range of areas on world peace, the development of economies and societies among others," he said
Xi stressed mutual respect, communication and cooperation on the key national interests of the two sides, saying, "China-South Korea relations and the situation on the peninsula are at a critical point."
The two leaders agreed to discuss "future-oriented relations" in December when Moon visits Beijing for another summit.
When asked by Moon to visit South Korea on the occasion of the PyeongChang Winter Olympics, Xi said he will try to come and also promised to send a high-level delegation if he cannot do so.
Three U.S. nuclear-powered aircraft carriers lead South Korean warships during combined drills in The East Sea, Sunday. From left in the front row are the USS Nimitz, USS Ronald Reagan and USS Theodore Roosevelt. The rare convergence of the three carrier strike groups for the joint exercises was made to show the allies' overwhelming power and send a strong message to North Korea. The exercises will run through Tuesday. / Courtesy of Republic of Korea Navy
By Jun Ji-hye
The South Korean Navy and three U.S. aircraft carriers and their strike groups began joint exercises in the East Sea, Sunday, in yet another show of force against North Korea, according to the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS).
The rare drills involving the USS Ronald Reagan, USS Nimitz and USS Theodore Roosevelt are designed to show the allies' overwhelming military power to better deter the North's nuclear and missile provocations, the JCS said.
The exercises, which will take place until Tuesday, are also aimed at strengthening the U.S. "extended deterrence" protection of South Korea against mounting threats from the North, it added.
Extended deterrence refers to Washington's stated commitment to defend its ally by mobilizing all military capabilities nuclear and conventional to deal with the North's aggression and provocations.
Military sources said one of the three carriers entered the operational area in the East Sea, called the Korea Theater of Operations (KTO), Saturday, while the others joined it Sunday after conducting drills with Japan.
The KTO is an area declared by a commander of the Republic of Korea-U.S. Combined Forces Command for military operations in the event of war. It could also involve open seas.
"The U.S. Navy mobilized three aircraft carriers and 11 Aegis destroyers, while the Republic of Korea Navy mobilized seven warships including two Aegis destroyers," the JCS said in a release.
The JCS added that the rare maneuvers show the allies' strong willingness to punish any kind of provocation by the North.
The carriers participating in the drill are Nimitz-class supercarriers with an overall length of about 330 meters and full-load displacement of over 100,000 long tons. Such a carrier is capable of carrying up to around 90 aircraft including F/A-18 Super Hornet fighters and E-2C Hawkeye early warning aircraft. In addition to aircraft, the vessels carry short-range defensive weaponry for anti-aircraft warfare and missile defense.
During his speech to the National Assembly last week, U.S. President Donald Trump noted that in addition to the three aircraft carriers, "we have nuclear submarines appropriately positioned."
The U.S. 7th Fleet said the strike forces will conduct air defense drills, sea surveillance, replenishment at sea and defensive air combat training, and close-in coordinated maneuvers.
The exercises come after the defense chiefs of the two countries agreed in their annual defense talks last month to expand the rotational deployment of U.S. strategic military assets to the Korean Peninsula and its surrounding area to better cope with North Korean provocations.
According to the 7th Fleet, this is the first time that three carrier strike groups have operated together in the Western Pacific since exercises Valiant Shield in 2006 and 2007 off the coast of Guam.
U.S. Pacific Fleet Commander, Adm. Scott Swift, said earlier, "It is a rare opportunity to train with two aircraft carriers together, and even rarer to be able to train with three."
By Park Si-soo
/ Captured from local media
A South Korean judge-lawyer couple has been accused in Guam of child abuse. They reportedly went shopping on Monday with their two children locked in a car in sweltering weather.
U.S. law punishes parents who leave minors unattended inside a car as child abuse.
The children, aged six and one, were found "slumped forward" in the car parked near a shopping center Monday afternoon. The engine was off and the windows closed.
Two people noticed the children and called police after failing to find their parents. Police rescued the children who had "sweat streaming down their foreheads and the sides of their faces." They are now recovering, according to local media.
Former President Lee Myung-bak speaks to reporters at Incheon International Airport, Sunday, before leaving for the Middle East. Lee, who ruled Korea from 2008-13, said the investigations into an election-meddling allegations against him were "nothing more than (the Moon administration's) expression of pent-up emotions and political reprisals." / Yonhap
Former President Lee Myung-bak expressed his dismay on Sunday over ongoing probes into the state organs' alleged political meddling during his term, raising suspicion that they may be "political reprisals" driven by old grudges.
Speaking to the press before he departs for Bahrain, Lee warned that the investigations would divide the public and stymie efforts for national security and economic growth.
"I am one of the people with a bit of expectation for the new government, but while watching the campaign to eliminate 'accumulated ills,' I have started to have suspicions about whether they really are reforms, or an expression of pent-up emotions or political reprisal," said Lee who ruled the country from 2008-2013.
"Such an act would not only divide public opinion, but also be unhelpful for our security at a crucial juncture and for South Korea's economy when it has to take advantage of the global economic recovery," he added.
Lee also stressed that the probes into the military and intelligence organizations would undermine national defense.
The National Intelligence Service and the military intelligence and cyberwarfare commands are under probe over suspicions that they mobilized operatives to post online comments in support of the former government, in violation of their obligation to maintain political neutrality.
The probes come as the liberal Moon Jae-in government conducts sweeping reforms under the name of "eliminating accumulated ills." But conservatives have dismissed the endeavors as "political retribution."
Lee embarked on a four-day visit to the Middle East country to deliver a lecture on South Korea's economic rise at the request of the Manama government. But the trip was overshadowed by public calls to bar him from leaving the country pending the investigations. As of Sunday morning, some 70,000 people filed petitions online for a travel ban.
On Saturday, former Defense Minister Kim Kwan-jin was arrested over his possible link to the cyberwarfare command's online activities allegedly aimed at swaying public opinion in favor of Lee's conservative government.
Kim's arrest has triggered calls for Lee to face justice as speculation persisted that the ex-commander-in-chief might also be involved in the political maneuvering scheme, either directly or indirectly.
In a Facebook post in September, Lee chafed at the Moon government's campaign to redress alleged wrongdoings of past governments, saying that it would not only compromise national interests, but also end in failure. (Yonhap)
By Park Si-soo
A court in South Korea has issued a "stern warning" to a judge who was arrested in Guam last month after she and her husband left their children unattended in a parked car.
The judge, surnamed Sul, 35, and her husband, Yoon, were arrested on Oct. 2 after two women saw their children, aged one year and six years, locked inside a gray Mitsubishi Lancer parked outside Kmart.
The parents were originally accused of child abuse, but pleaded guilty to leaving children unattended or unsupervised in a car, which is classified as a petty misdemeanor.
They were each ordered to pay a $500 fine and $80 in court costs, and allowed to leave the island.
Former President Lee Myung-bak smiles against a backdrop of protesters at Incheon International Airport, Sunday, demanding a prosecution investigation into his alleged illicit political activity while he was in office. Yonhap
Cornered ex-President refuses to clarify on alleged political meddling via military
By Lee Kyung-min
Former President Lee Myung-bak criticized the ongoing prosecution investigation into alleged illicit political activity sanctioned by his administration, Sunday, saying the country was being further divided due to what he called a "political vendetta."
Lee refused to clarify whether he was regularly briefed about online activities orchestrated by the National Intelligence Service (NIS) and the military to shape public opinion to suit his administration's interest. Lee said, "Do not ask questions that go beyond common sense."
"I am worried that the social rift will continue to deepen following the six month-investigation under the current administration," Lee said at Incheon International Airport before he left for Bahrain for a four-day trip to give lecture to government officials there.
The prosecution, Lee added, has treated the state intelligence agency and the military unfairly, further endangering the country's national security and diplomacy.
"The country, as we all know, has achieved economic development and democracy in a short period of time, which entailed not only positive but also negative aspects. That is why we should not destroy what is positive to rid of what is negative."
The remarks are considered a move to distract focus amid an intensified investigation into wide ranging corrupt activities while he was in office.
The Seoul Central District Court issued arrest warrants for former Defense Minister Kim Kwan-jin and his deputy Lim Kwan-bin, Friday, increasing the prospect of Lee being questioned.
Kim told the prosecution that under orders from Lee, he increased the number of officials at the Cyber Command unit to 79 shortly before the 2012 Presidential election, a near 10-fold increase from a year earlier.
Of the total, 47 were posted at a psychological warfare unit, members of which allegedly posted comments criticizing then candidate Moon Jae-in, while supporting his conservative opponent Park Geun-hye. Park won the election by a narrow margin.
Kim served as defense minister for nearly four years under both the Lee and Park administrations, and as the National Security Office chief until May.
Meanwhile, Lee's former chief press secretary Lee Dong-kwan also denied the allegations, saying the former president did not give orders micromanaging the military and the NIS, adding he had more important things to do.
The former secretary said, "We had to hire more workers to fight North Korea's growing psychological threats. What government in the world would give orders to post online comments? I hope the country maintains its dignity."
Meanwhile, more than 70,000 people signed an online petition at the Cheong Wa Dae website, asking for a travel ban to be imposed on Lee.
Presidential spokesman Park Soo-hyun said "President Moon Jae-in is of the stance that the ongoing investigation does not seek to punish individuals involved, but to fundamentally reform the unfair institutional structure that has long protected the establishment."
By You Soo-sun
Taxi drivers in Seoul will be required to wear uniforms from today, according to the Seoul city government.
Drivers affiliated with taxi companies in the city will now wear designated uniforms bright blue striped shirts and black vests for the first time in six years.
This applies to 35,000 drivers working for 255 cab companies operating in the Seoul metropolitan area. Self-employed drivers are not mandated to wear such attire, but are recommended to dress in similar outfits.
A driver caught violating the dress code will be fined 100,000 won. The company of that driver may be fined up to 100,000 won or be suspended for three days for a first offence and five days for a second offence.
The city government expects uniforms to improve the quality of service and increase customer satisfaction, as citizens have increasingly filed complaints on the drivers' attire.
Since city-designated uniforms were abolished in 2011, many drivers violated the dress code, wearing "inappropriate" attire such as ripped shorts, flip flops, and tank tops.
Complaints have also been made about barefoot drivers and those wearing caps which made it difficult for passengers to confirm their identities.
According to the city government, the taxi association reached a consensus on the need to wear uniforms in 2014 but the plan has been delayed due to technical difficulties, especially regarding its funding.
Until now, only some of the companies chose to distribute uniforms to their employees.
Based on a survey conducted this February, 187 or 73.3 percent of the companies provided their drivers with uniforms. Of the 68 companies which chose not to distribute them, 39 percent attributed the reason to the financial burden, 38 percent to high employee turnover, and 19 percent to difficulties in washing and hygiene maintenance.
Most drivers responded they would prefer wearing shirts and vests also appropriate for outside the work setting.
The agreement to implement the policy was established in March with the city government deciding to provide 1.6 billion won for the initial purchase of the uniforms.
The Seoul Taxi Association distributed two shirts and one vest to each taxi driver with this funding. Cab companies will be responsible for covering costs incurred in the future.
A uniform has been chosen based on the opinions of 255 taxi companies and the drivers' labor union.
Drivers will be obligated to wear the attire while on duty, but may also wear shirts similar in color to the uniform.
Cynthia McCaffrey, director of the UNICEF's Global Innovation Office
By Kim Se-jeong
The United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) is testing the use of drones to deliver HIV test results and vaccines to people in rural areas, to improve the quality of humanitarian aid.
Cynthia McCaffrey, director of the UNICEF's Global Innovation Office, said technology is a tremendous help in saving lives and UNICEF wants to work with Korean companies which are willing to share their expertise and experience.
"Seoul is a smart city. Korea is a smart country. We are interested in engaging with the private sector," McCaffrey said during a recent interview with The Korea Times. She was in Seoul to attend a meeting to celebrate the Korean Parliamentarian Friends of UNICEF's 10th anniversary.
Her office works with Google which offers the assistance of their engineers, data scientists and designers. "They helped us use data from temperature to see where the heat is and the poverty level is (in Brazil)," the director said. The overlapped data helped the Brazilian government identify areas in which the Zika virus outbreak could be the most prevalent.
Facebook helped UNICEF communicate with people in Latin America in the aftermath of Hurricane Irma using its messenger service.
She couldn't have been more optimistic that technology is making a difference in the development field.
"Can you imagine instead of trying to send helicopters up, small drones getting there quickly and seeing where roads are? We can target our response," McCaffrey said.
With drones, her office opened testing corridors in Malawi and Vanuatu where companies with up-to-date drones can test their technologies, with the condition that if the technology can be used by UNICEF and aid recipient governments, they are able to use it for free.
Drones aren't the only technology being tested by UNICEF.
U-Reporter is a tool which people with registration can instantly ask questions and answers.
"When Hurricane Irma was coming, country offices in Latin America said, We don't have enough tools to communicate with people on the ground.' So we rolled out U-Reporter and invited people and said to tell us what you know to prepare for the storm. People said we have no information. So we worked with the government and sent back the message saying when the hurricane hits, these are the things you have to do to protect yourself and your family. The more exciting fact is that 90 percent of U-Reporters said they had used the information given the impact of information," the director said.
The director said her center is paying close attention to artificial intelligence "to make communication more automatic," and Bitcoin.
"We need to partner with other companies to see how we can adopt it more," McCaffrey said.
By Alex Doukas
Governments around the world have recognized that coal is in terminal decline and have committed to rapidly phase out coal-fired power.
Countries with phase-out commitments include France, the U.K., Canada, Denmark, and many others. In October, Italy committed to phasing out coal by 2025, and the newly-formed government in the Netherlands by 2030, including 3 plants only completed in 2015.
Investment trends reflect this shift: the International Energy Agency reports renewable electricity investment in 2016 reached $297 billion, nearly four times more than coal-fired power. While renewable electricity is already cheaper than coal in many parts of the world, the World Economic Forum projects by 2020, solar will be cheaper than coal worldwide (without even counting the massive health and climate costs of coal pollution).
I had the privilege of participating in the international conference on coal phase out and the energy transition in Chungnam province on October 24. The conference showed that Korea has taken its first steps toward phasing out coal, realizing the best way to deal with the rapid decline of coal is to plan for it, not ignore it.
Planning for a coal phase out can protect the dignity of coal workers, while seizing on clean energy's economic opportunity. Korea is already a world leader in renewable energy technologies, and is home to three of the world's top six battery companies, a market expected to grow rapidly alongside renewable energy sources.
However, Korea can show greater leadership.
In July and October, I co-authored two reports that show, among the G20 countries, relative to the size of its GDP, Korea was the largest provider of fossil fuel finance overseas, funneling billions of dollars to dirty energy projects through government-backed institutions like the Export-Import Bank of Korea, K-Sure, and the Korean Development Bank.
To make matters worse, these studies also found that Korea's public finance for clean energy abroad appears to be negligible, a shocking finding given Korea's business leadership in clean energy technology.
But the future is still to be written: the new government can choose to end public finance for overseas coal projects, and position Korea as a clean energy leader around the world, helping to address climate change and reduce air pollution while creating economic opportunity for Koreans.
Private banks and global ratings agencies already have a bleak view of coal: in October, global ratings agency Standard and Poor's warned that the economic viability of assets such as coal-fired power stations will be "vastly impaired" in the future.
By ending its public finance for overseas coal projects, Korea can help other countries avoid the mistake of locking into a dirty energy system, when the cost of solar and wind is dropping rapidly and coal technology is past its sell-by date.
Just weeks ago, Canada and the UK launched a Global Coal Phase-out Alliance, which will gain momentum through the UN climate negotiations in November and the Paris summit on climate finance in December. Korea could add its leadership to this effort, securing its place as Asia's climate leader.
"Alex Doukas is a program director for Oil change international, research and advocacy group for energy transition based in Washington D.C."
By Doug Bandow
Until a century ago, Karl Marx was an unpracticed intellectual, a prolix babbler who's thoughts remained an ideal rather than a reality. Then came the Bolshevik Revolution. On November 7 (October 25 in the old Russian calendar) the Soviet Union was effectively born.
This event may have been as momentous as the war which spawned the first Communist state. Tens of millions of people died as communism transformed nations. We continue to live with the consequences of Marxism today.
Life was good in 1914. The industrial revolution delivered entire populations from immiserating poverty. Liberal currents affected even the great autocracies of Austria-Hungary, Germany, and Russia. The future beckoned.
But on June 28 Austro-Hungarian Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the venerable Hapsburg throne, and his wife Sophie were visiting Sarajevo in the recently annexed province of Bosnia. In a plot backed by Serbian military intelligence, the young Serbian nationalist Gavrilo Princip assassinated the pair, setting in motion diplomats and statesmen, generals and admirals, and armies and fleets around the globe.
War came in August. Russian peasants died in a war started by aristocrats for reasons no one truly understood.
This was the central tragedy of the conflict. Before troops began marching in August 1914, common people's lives were improving. Even those at bottom in the great Tsarist despotism were doing better. Then came the continental war.
No where was the tragedy greater than in the mysterious, mystical, antiquated Russian Empire. For a long time St. Petersburg was a force of conservatism, even reaction, opposed to Western liberalism and especially the French Revolution.
However, Imperial Russia eventually made common cause with France, the paragon of revolution. But the former was a giant with feet of clay. The regime staggered along unsteadily amidst peace and prosperity.
Then came June 28, 1914, when a Serbian terrorist assassinated the heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne. Austro-Hungary followed an ultimatum against Belgrade with a declaration of war, dragging in Russia, which defended Serbia.
Russian elites had various grievances against Germany, but none could justify war. When pressed to mobilize the army, Tsar Nicholas for a time temporized, at one point declaring that "I will not become responsible for a monstrous slaughter." But on July 30 he surrendered to St. Petersburg's clamorous war party.
Alas, the losses in manpower and materiel were horrific. By the end of 1916 Russia had lost some five million men, killed, wounded, captured, and missing.
In March 2017 (February in the old calendar) liberals and moderate socialists staged a revolution, forcing the Tsar to abdicate. But the Provisional Government's control was tenuous and it continued the war amid a series of revolts, mutinies, protests, and disturbances.
Which opened the way for political radicals, most importantly the Bolsheviks, led by Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, or Lenin. He began the war in exile in Zurich, Switzerland, but Germany arranged for his passage home to spread the revolutionary virus.
He initially had little success, but understood that the people were desperate for peace, land, and food. On November 7 Lenin and his colleagues staged what amounted to a coup against the hapless Provisional Government.
The Bolsheviks outmaneuvered more moderate forces on the left, made peace with Germany, and won a bitter, four-year civil war against the counterrevolutionary Whites. Lenin then set the repressive foundation of the brutal Soviet state.
Lenin died in 1924, leading to a bitter succession battle won by manipulative Joseph Stalin. Under him millions died, including many of his supporters. Although revolutionary fervor had dissipated, the U.S.S.R. staggered along, murdering and impoverishing its people, until Christmas 1991. The Soviet flag finally was lowered from the Kremlin for the final time.
Scholars figure that Communism killed between 8 and 61 million Soviets; 15 to 20 million seems most accurate. Estimates of the total number of dead due to Communismnot counting from warsrun from 85 million to upwards of 200 million.
Communist rulers both murdered promiscuously and implemented policies which resulted in mass death, through famine, for instance. The hardship, including poverty, starvation, oppression, and inhumanity, is incalculable. Equally brutal was the assault on the human spirit. Marxism as adapted by Leninism squeezed the very life out of people.
History is a long series of "what ifs?" Communism was not destined to take over Russia, transforming the 20th Century for the great ill of mankind. But today we must confront the consequences of the birth of the Soviet state a century ago.
Doug Bandow is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute.
Korea's diplomacy has traditionally prioritized the four major powers the United States, Japan, China and Russia. President Moon Jae-in has announced a new diplomatic roadmap of putting more focus on Southeast Asian nations in what he calls his "New Southern Policy."
The President unveiled the policy during his state visit to Indonesia on Nov. 9 at the Korea-Indonesia Business Forum, saying he hoped to "elevate Korea's ties with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) to the level of our relations with the four major powers."
Moon's push to forge stronger ties with ASEAN is timely in diversifying our diplomacy. It is necessary to reduce our excessive dependence on certain countries for trade and tourism.
One of the key objectives of the policy is to increase the trade volume between Korea and ASEAN to $200 billion by 2020, which is equal to our trade volume with China.
The new focus on ASEAN comes a few weeks after Moon announced his "New Northern Policy" in Russia in September, with the aim to build stronger economic and cultural ties with countries in the Far East and Northeast Asia. Both policies should be pursued vigorously to reduce our dependence on the U.S. and China for trade and enter new markets in economies that have much growth potential.
With the spread of hallyu, the people of ASEAN have been taking more interest in Korea, but Koreans still do not know much about these countries and our companies have not been active in entering the ASEAN market. This underlines the need for more active cultural and economic exchanges.
For the "New Southern Policy" to succeed, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs needs to foster more professionals with expertise in the languages and the business environment of ASEAN.
Dongwon Industries President and CEO Lee Myoung-woo, left, poses with Daesun Shipbuilding & Engineering President Ahn Jae-yong during a signing ceremony, Wednesday. Under the deal, Daesun will build two fishing ships for Dongwon. / Courtesy of Dongwon Industries
By Jhoo Dong-chan
Dongwon Industries has ordered two new fishing ships from Daesun Shipbuilding & Engineering. The deal is a part of the nation's largest fishing company's efforts to refurbish its fleet to take the upper hand in the cutthroat rivalry in the global fishing industry, Dongwon said.
According to Dongwon, it signed a deal to have Daeun build two fishing ships, Wednesday. Under the contract, Dongwon is set to spend a total of $54 million to buy the two 2,200-ton vessels.
The ships are expected to be delivered in June and August, 2018.
Dongwon Industries said the two feature Daesun's latest refrigeration system. The Busan-based shipyard has already built two fishing ships for Dongwon, and expectations are very high for the two new ships.
"Dongwon Industries has ordered four new fishing ships over the last three years. Featuring the latest refrigeration system, each ship can deliver the so-called super tuna, sashimi tuna that creates an added value worth three times more than canned tuna products," a Dongwon official said.
"Due to global climate change, the catch environment is getting worse every year. Dongwon Industries also suffered a 25 percent catch decrease this year from last year, but is expected to have improved sales and operating earnings this year thanks to the company's continuous efforts in enhancing its operating capacity."
Dongwon has also actively participated in the global movement for sustainable fishing, the so-called Keystone Act, along with other fishing powerhouses Marine Harvest, Maruha Nichiro, Thai Union and Skretting. It is also the only Korean firm that is joining the act.
"Dongwon Industries has faced a number of crises, including the two oil crises, but managed to overcome them with its characteristic challenging spirit and bold investment," Dongwon President & CEO Lee Myoung-woo said.
"Dongwon Industries is representing the nation's fisheries industry, and will do its best to lead the global competition."
Dongwon currently has a total of 41 ships sailing the Pacific, Indian, Atlantic and Antarctic oceans to catch various kinds of fish including tuna. Also, it recently acquired Dongbu Express to expand its logistics operation.
Lawyers wage war against patent attorneys
By Lee Min-hyung
The Korean Bar Association (KBA) is waging war against patent attorneys here, urging them to drop the word "attorney" in their English job titles.
The KBA claims it is proper for them to use "patent agent" as their official job title, as they offer limited legal services regarding patents and intellectual property. The lawyers association also called for the Korean Intellectual Property Office (KIPO) to accept their demand and threatened to take legal steps unless the state-run body denies the KBA request.
The Korea Patent Attorneys Association (KPAA), however, strongly opposes the idea, issuing a statement over the legal validity of calling themselves patent attorneys.
"The claim appears to have originated from your misunderstanding of the definition of the word attorney," the KPAA said in a statement sent to the KBA.
"The Oxford Dictionary of Law calls an attorney a person who is appointed by another and has authority to act on behalf of another,'" it said. "According to the definition, the KBA claim does not make sense. Attorney is often used as an abbreviation of attorney-at-law here, but this does not mean patent attorneys should stop using the attorney title in their jobs, according to the statement.
The KPAA added the term patent attorney is also widely used in regions such as the United Kingdom, Europe and Japan. Patent attorneys in those countries do the same work as the members of the KPAA do here, so it is not in line with international standards for the KBA to make such a claim, according to the patent attorneys association.
The statement was in response to the initial KBA complaint to the KIPO last month. In the statement, the lawyers association claimed the KIPO should revise the current "patent attorney act," as the term is inaccurate and may confuse some clients here and abroad.
The KIPO said the state-run patent body sides with the claim of the KPAA, as the term attorney, in itself, does not necessarily refer to those who conduct the same tasks as attorneys-at-law.
"We do not have any plans to change the job title of patent attorneys to agents, as the former is more internationally used when referring to those who do similar work as the patent attorneys do in Korea," a KIPO spokesman said. "Technically speaking, patent attorneys in the United States do somewhat different tasks, but we do not have to follow the case of the U.S."
/ Captured from Nextshark
By Park Si-soo
A Thai woman threw her newborn baby out of a 17th-story window after her married South Korean boyfriend dumped her, according to local reports. The boyfriend, 40, identified only by his surname Kim, was the baby's father.
According to reports, Netchanok Nokyungtong, 20, told police she had been in a relationship with the South Korean man for two years, but after she became pregnant he urged her to abort the baby and then returned to Korea.
The woman gave birth in her flat, put the baby in a bag and threw it out of the 17th-floor window of her flat in Pattaya, a resort city.
Speaking to local paper the Chiangrai Times, Colonel Apichai Khemphet, head of Pattaya Police, said, "Miss Netchanok Nokyungtong gave birth in a bathroom where blood was found on the floor. She said she was shocked and not ready for the birth.
"The boyfriend is a married foreigner from South Korea who did not want to stay with her. She was heartbroken because he returned to his family."
A man who lived in the same building reportedly saw an object fall past his window and hit the ground. Police said they found the dead baby, with its umbilical cord still attached, inside a green plastic bag.
Colonel Khemphet added: "This is a very brutal crime. The baby was born in a healthy condition and the mother did not express grief about what had happened.
"Her boyfriend had left and tried to tell her to abort the baby."
He said the woman claimed she did not have money to support the child.
PRESS RELEASE
Former Pentagon Whistleblower: Trump Was Fed Fake Intelligence on Iran
Oct. 17, 2017 (EIRNS)Anti-neo-con activist and former U.S. Air Force analyst Lt. Col. Karen Kwiatkowski (ret.) told Sputnik that she believes that President Donald Trump was misled by fake intelligence.
"I suspect that Mr. Trump is being fed information regarding Iran as a nation and as a government that is cherry-picked and creatively elaborated, largely outside of intelligence channels, by his neo-conservative advisers,"
she said. She noted despite Trumps 2016 promise to "drain the swamp" of discredited foreign policy interventionists, many of them have managed to weasel their way back into government service.
"This faction has always slated the destruction of Iran as a regional power for several decades now, and if they have the ear of the President, there is never a better time than the present to press their case,"
she said. She insisted, however, that neither Trump himself, nor the U.S. military is determined on war against Iran.
The Twitter ad seemed too good to be true: fares starting at $20 on JetBlue Airways.
A few hours after the ad appeared Tuesday on the social media site, it was gone, leaving wanna-be travelers frustrated that they missed the remarkable deal.
Those who clicked too late ended up on a page advising: This promotion has ended. Act fast! In some cases, a fare may not even last an hour.
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Such flash sales are a traditional tactic used by the airline industry to fill empty seats during slow travel periods and lure travelers to an airline website where they may be tempted to book a more expensive flight.
Airlines also have used flash sales to inflict economic pain on rivals. Cutting prices on routes dominated by competitors often forces the other airlines to try to match the lower fares.
Its like kids in the airfare sandbox, fighting, said George Hobica, a fare expert and president of Airfarewatchdog.com.
But such flash sales are on the decline, industry experts say, partly because the airline industry has become more consolidated through mergers and acquisitions, which has diminished competition and reduced the need to undercut rivals with limited-time fares.
And with demand for travel reaching record levels, carriers can sell seats without resorting to deep discounts.
Flash sales are also used less often today because sophisticated computer programs have made airlines more accurate at estimating the number of seats needed for a particular route so that empty seats are more rare.
They can manage inventory more tightly, said Richard Golaszewski, a senior economist with GRA Inc., a Pennsylvania-based aviation consultant.
That means travelers looking for deep discounts are going to have fewer opportunities to book a bargain seat.
When did getting a flight turn into trying to get tickets for a Rolling Stones show? Twitter user who missed a flashed sale
Since 2008, the nations biggest carriers have been buying smaller or weaker competitors, solidifying their dominance in specific markets and hubs throughout the country.
For example, Delta and its regional carriers fly nearly 80% of all passengers who travel out of the nations busiest airport, Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport. American Airlines carries nearly 85% of all passengers at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport. United Airlines is dominant in Newark Liberty International Airport, flying about 51% of all passengers who use the New Jersey airport.
Combined, Delta, United, American and Southwest Airlines control more than 70% of all domestic flights in the U.S.
Strong demand for travel and sophisticated computer programs have enabled airlines to reach record rates of occupied seats per plane, known as the load factor. Commercial flights flew with an average of 82% of all seats filled in 2016, compared with a rate of 72% in 2002, according to the most recent federal data available.
The combination of these factors mean less competition, fewer empty seats and little urgency to discount tickets to fill planes.
Airlines actively manage their flights and capacity to meet, but not exceed, market demand, said Henry Harteveldt, a travel industry expert with Atmosphere Research Group.
Flash sales are now used primarily by low-cost airlines, such as JetBlue, as they continue to battle with the major carriers to win greater shares of the countrys most popular markets and hubs.
A JetBlue representative declined to comment on the carriers use of flash sales.
But industry experts say the restrictions imposed on such sales are so numerous that the goal is not to make money from the low fares but to boost publicity and interest in the carrier.
From a marketing perspective, you want to get [Facebook] likes or visitors or Twitter followers, said Rick Seaney, who heads fare comparison site Farecompare.com.
Thanksgiving travelers wait in line to check in at Los Angeles International Airport in 2011. (Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times )
On Thursday, Jetblue launched a two-day sale, with flights out of Long Beach Airport for as low as $39 each way to several popular destinations such as San Francisco and Las Vegas. The deals seemed perfect for Southern Californians wanting to visit family or friends for the holiday.
But to get the deal, passengers had to book within two days for flights departing Monday through Thursday and on Saturdays with blackout dates from Dec. 18 to Jan. 5.
Usually, flash sales are over within hours or minutes.
When Jetblue offered a $20 flash sale Aug. 30, it sold out in less than 60 seconds, according to the response from Twitter followers who tried, unsuccessfully, to book the bargain deals.
When did getting a flight turn into trying to get tickets for a Rolling Stones show? groused one Twitter user.
Instead of flash sales, Delta, United and American say they are competing against upstart low-cost carriers by offering bare-bones fares called basic economy seats which are offered on highly competitive routes but come with fees for carry-on bags, rebookings and many other extras.
We prefer to adjust prices on a longer-term basis including reducing fares when needed, based on demand, said Joshua Freed, a spokesman for American Airlines. For us, flash sales are just not a great way to do that.
Southwest, which has grown to be the nations largest domestic carrier, has cut back on flash sales over the last decade as it has established itself as a dominant carrier across the country, according to industry experts.
As a result, the Dallas-based carrier now offers flash sales primarily during the slow travel season to fill seats on flights mostly flown by leisure travelers to vacation spots.
Southwest spokesman Dan Landson declined to discuss the carriers pricing tactics, but said: Flash sales are a great way to generate demand for Southwests world-class product.
hugo.martin@latimes.com
To read more about the travel and tourism industries, follow @hugomartin on Twitter.
Uber said Sunday that it has struck a deal clearing the path for an investor group led in part by Japanese conglomerate SoftBank to buy a stake in the ride-hailing giant.
The deal could be worth as much as $10 billion and would include changes to Ubers board operations, according to a person with knowledge of the deal who was not authorized to discuss it publicly.
We believe this agreement is a strong vote of confidence in Ubers long-term potential, an Uber spokesman said in a statement. Upon closing, it will help fuel our investments in technology and our continued expansion at home and abroad, while strengthening our corporate governance.
Rajeev Misra, chief executive of SoftBank Investment Advisors and a board director of SoftBank Group Corp., said in a statement that the deal was months in the making, and it is still "by no means" done.
"We are interested in Uber but the final deal will depend on the tender price and a minimum percentage shareholding for SoftBank," Misra said.
The investor group which along with SoftBank is led by San Francisco investment firm Dragoneer plans to buy about $1 billion worth of newly issued shares and make a tender offer for about 14% of Ubers existing shares, the source familiar with the deal said. That tender offer could total about $9 billion, based on the company's current valuation of $69 billion.
If the deal closes, San Francisco-based Uber will in turn enact corporate governance changes that hew closely to an overhaul its board approved last month. A source with knowledge of the matter said the deal comes with a resolution to have an initial public offering of stock by 2019.
Whats in it for Uber?
First off, the deal would bring in money, which Uber could use to help fund expansion and operations amid growing competition from U.S. rival Lyft.
Running a ride-hailing company isnt cheap. Low fares attract more passengers, but they force ride-hailing firms to dip into their fundraising hauls to subsidize drivers.
A hefty new investment could help persuade Lyft to stop challenging Uber on price, said Evan Rawley, an associate professor at the University of Minnesota who has followed the trajectory of both companies since their beginnings.
They need the money in the sense that they need to be strong enough so Lyft isnt tempted to continue the price war, Rawley said.
If they didnt have enough cash in the bank, Lyft might be tempted to continue fighting them tooth and nail.
But perhaps more important, the deal could help bring peace to a company defined in 2017 by scandal and infighting.
The long-anticipated SoftBank investment could soon be finalized because of an accord between former CEO Travis Kalanick and early Uber investor Benchmark.
Kalanick resigned as CEO in June after a string of controversies, including a lawsuit by Google self-driving-car spinoff Waymo alleging theft of trade secrets, a lawsuit by a woman in India who alleged Uber obtained her medical records after she was raped by one of the companys drivers and widespread allegations of sexual harassment at the firm.
Benchmark filed a suit against Kalanick in August, alleging that the Uber co-founder committed an act of fraud when he persuaded the board in 2016 to give him appointment power over three new board seats without first informing board members of scandals that would soon consume the company and lead to his forced resignation.
Benchmark has agreed to suspend a lawsuit it filed against Kalanick while the SoftBank investment is being hashed out, according to a person with knowledge of the matter who was not authorized to speak about it. In the event that the deal closes, Benchmark would drop its lawsuit entirely, the person said.
A spokeswoman for Benchmark did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Putting to rest the spat between Kalanick and Benchmark could help Uber's new CEO, Dara Khosrowshahi, lead the company away from a period of tumult.
The deal could also give board members who are dissatisfied with the companys direction a way to cash out before an IPO. A sell-off could further ease tensions, which could allow Khosrowshahi to lead the company with less boardroom infighting.
A third benefit is that Uber would get connected with SoftBank a hugely influential Japanese corporation that has a lot of money it wants to put into tech firms.
So what is SoftBank?
SoftBank is a Japanese multinational corporation best known as a domestic telecommunications company and internet service provider. But its founder and chief executive, Masayoshi Son, has also pushed it to aggressively invest in overseas companies across different categories. It bought Sprint in 2013 for $20 billion. It was an early investor in Yahoo and Alibaba. It put $4.4 billion into New York commercial real estate start-up WeWork in August. And it has invested in ride-hailing companies across Asia such as Didi Chuxing, Grab and Ola.
Its also in the process of distributing a $100-billion Vision Fund (with money from Apple, Foxconn and the investment funds of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates) and claims it will put together an even larger follow-up fund for global investments.
That seems all over the place?
SoftBank isnt interested in being just a telecommunications company, according to analysts and business experts who have followed its evolution. Even though it got its start in 1981 as the mobile phone division of Japan Telecom and later bought Vodafone Japan, its chief executive has always had an eye on the rest of the world.
SoftBank is an incredibly unique company in Japan in the sense that it is very aggressive, both domestically and internationally, said Jesper Koll, chief executive of WisdomTree Investments Japan unit. Its very much driven by Masayoshi Son.
Unlike Japans conservative business leaders, the 60-year-old Son, who was born in Japan but is of Korean descent, is described by analysts as an outsider given to bucking trends. A UC Berkeley alumnus with an engineering background, Son was quick to embrace the American venture capital and networking style.
Hes an upstart and hes completely not Japanese establishment, Koll said.
Whats Softbanks goal?
SoftBank wants to be a global leader in tech, said Kirk Boodry, an analyst with New Street Research who has covered the telecommunications industry in Asia. And I dont mean just in internet. They look all the way up and down the value chain.
The companys investments span industries such as telecommunications, finance, media, e-commerce and transportation, with bets on companies that Son believes could be major players in the coming years, decades or even centuries.
Hes laid out a 300-year plan for SoftBank, James Moore, director of Georgetowns Business, Society and Public Policy Initiative, said of SoftBanks CEO. Thats one of the things thats been unnerving for some of the outfits that have put up money for him hes not getting a return on investment in the next 24 hours. He takes the long view. Like with his investment in Alibaba, hes looking for opportunities he can invest in today, recognizing that their returns can be massive down the road.
Analysts see the acquisition of Sprint as one such investment. The U.S. telecom might be ranked fourth in the country, but with the right merger or acquisition, it could potentially give AT&T and Verizon a run for their money.
SoftBanks investments across multiple on-demand transportation companies many of which are rivals are also seen as part of a long play. In the event that ride-hailing turns out to be a winner-takes-all industry, SoftBank will at least have backed the winning horse. And if theres room for two, SoftBank wins, too.
Isnt it weird to invest in competitors?
Its extremely unique, Moore said. For American entrepreneurs, theres a certain competitiveness. Steve Jobs would not have invested in Bill Gates. We pit companies against one another and see who comes out.
That has been the case with the U.S. on-demand transportation industry, too. Venture capital firms that invest in Uber generally do not also invest in its rival Lyft.
For Son, though, investing is less about pride and more about getting the most value out of something, analysts said.
In Japan, the company has facilitated numerous mergers, and its always trying to figure out how to win through consolidation, said Hans Tung, managing partner at GGV Capital, an Alibaba investor that saw firsthand how SoftBank helped the Chinese e-commerce company grow.
Overseas, SoftBank secured itself a stake in Chinas largest taxi app by investing in Kuaidi Dache, which in 2015 merged with rival Didi Dache. The combined entity later acquired Ubers China business and renamed itself Didi Chuxing.
By investing in Uber, SoftBank would have a stake in the biggest ride-hailing players across Asia and the West.
Is SoftBank about to become a household name in the United States?
Its easy to forget that SoftBank owns Sprint. But the company was harder to ignore last December when Son was seen shaking hands with then-President-elect Trump in Trump Tower, promising to bring some 50,000 jobs to the United States and invest $50 billion from SoftBanks $100-billion Vision Fund in American businesses.
When youre walking in the door with $100 billion, youre the 800-pound gorilla in the room, said Moore.
Son has an even more ambitious target for his next fund, which he has already discussed with Japans Nikkei Business Daily.
And though its an impressive sum of money, analysts dont believe SoftBank will pose a threat to other major players in the United States anytime soon.
When you look at SoftBank in terms of the global internet universe, its not that big, said Boodry. Amazon, Google, Facebook, Alibaba and Tencent all have market caps of more than $450 billion, whereas SoftBanks is around $100 billion.
What Son does have going for him is a strong investment track record, said analysts, many of whom are confident that the Vision Fund will at the very least make back its money.
Another thing he has going for him: Nobody else is bringing close to $100 billion to the private equity and start-up table, and few firms are investing as ambitiously around the world. It might not pay off right away, analysts said, but SoftBank is playing the long game 300 years long, in fact.
Whats are the details of the deal?
The group led by SoftBank and Dragoneer would buy $1 billion to $1.25 billion worth of new shares issued by Uber. The group also would issue a tender offer expected in about two weeks to buy about 14% of existing shares from current investors at a price that is not yet determined.
If that happens, the person said, the following corporate governance changes would kick in:
Uber would adopt a one share, one vote model to ensure parity in decision-making. The change would revoke super-voting rights, under which some shareholders have outsized power.
Ubers board would grow to 17 seats from 11. SoftBank would hold two of those six new seats. There would be three new independent seats and one independent chairperson.
Uber could not appoint a new CEO without approval from two-thirds of the board. This requirement would be lifted after the companys IPO.
Nobody could be appointed to any of the three board seats controlled by former CEO Kalanick without approval from a majority of the board. Under the deal, Kalanick would not have a lot of power, Rawley said.
Uber would resolve to go public by 2019.
tracey.lien@latimes.com
Twitter: @traceylien
Times staff writer Lauren Raab contributed to this report.
UPDATES:
Nov. 13, 4:50 p.m.: This article was updated to include comment from Rajeev Misra, CEO of SoftBank Investment Advisors.
Nov. 13, 12:25 p.m.: This article was updated to include a statement from an Uber spokesman.
Nov. 12, 6:05 p.m.: This article was updated with terms of the deal.
Nov. 12, 4 p.m.: This article was updated with Ubers confirmation of the deal.
This article was originally published on Nov. 12 at 2:15 p.m.
Hello! Im Mark Olsen. Welcome to another edition of your regular field guide to a world of Only Good Movies.
This weekend saw the academys Governors Awards, which besides being an event where honorary Oscars are given has become a key moment for awards campaigning. Its a whirlwind weekend of press events, Q&As, parties and the like.
This year there were four honorees, Charles Burnett, Agnes Varda, Owen Roizman and Donald Sutherland.
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Josh Rottenberg talked to Sutherland, who has astonishingly never been nominated for an Academy Award.
I never expected to be nominated ever, Sutherland said. Ive been an actor for as long as I can remember. The idea that I was making movies was beyond my expectation.
Josh also talked to Roizman, cinematographer on such films as The French Connection, The Exorcist and Tootsie. A five-time Oscar nominee, Roizman said, The thing Im probably the most proud of in my career is the fact that my five nominations were all for different genres.
Trevell Anderson talked to Burnett, the filmmaker behind Killer of Sheep, To Sleep With Anger and The Glass Shield, who had this simple advice for young filmmakers, learn your craft, and try to say something.
Justin Chang spoke to French filmmaker Agnes Varda, who wondered aloud about how an honorary Oscar is different from a regular Oscar, asking Do they give four little Oscars? Or are they the same size?
Justin also surveyed some of the best selections from the AFI Fest, which is happening now. It is one of the best annual film events in the city and well worth checking out.
On Monday weve got a very exciting screening of this years Cannes Palme DOr winner The Square, followed by a Q&A with the films star Claes Bang. For updates on future events, or go to events.latimes.com.
Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri
Writer-director Martin McDonagh crafts a bold, funny, deeply moving meditation on the elemental emotions of grief, rage, regret and revenge with his new Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri.
In the film Frances McDormand gives a towering performance as Mildred Hayes, a divorced mother who rents three billboards near her house to needle the local police over the fact they have arrested no one for the rape and murder of her teenage daughter seven months earlier. Woody Harrelson plays the local sheriff, while Sam Rockwell plays a difficult deputy.
In his review of the film, Kenneth Turan said bleak humor notwithstanding, Three Billboards, concerned as it is with grief, revenge, the nature of violence and the pervasiveness of despair, has serious issues on its mind. But if youre expecting anything close to pious moralizing, you are very much in the wrong place.
I spoke to McDonagh and Rockwell during the Toronto International Film Festival. You can watch the video here.
Amy Kaufman also interviewed Rockwell, who said, It was just a great part. The journey this guy takes is just amazing, you know? Barney Fife into Travis Bickle.
Manohla Dargis reviewed the film for the New York Times, writing of McDormand and her performance, In this movie, she makes pain so palpably all-encompassing that you see it in her characters every glance and gesture: It squares Mildreds jaw, hardens her mouth and turns her face to stone, as if she were further fortifying her defenses. But pain also makes her ugly, maybe irredeemable, which also makes her joltingly, excitingly human.
It Happened In L.A.
The debut as feature writer and director for Michelle Morgan, who also stars in the movie, It Happened In L.A. is a look at the romantic lives of a group of young people in the creative enclaves of Los Angeles that has drawn comparisons to Woody Allen and Whit Stillman. The movie also stars Kentucker Audley, Jorma Taccone, Dree Hemingway, Margarita Levieva and an extended supporting cast.
In her review for The Times, Katie Walsh took note of the characters weaponized disdain and added Ultimately, the grumpy young folks of It Happened in L.A. discover that misery does love company, and they all might as well be miserable together. For these characters, thats as close as a happy ending as they can muster.
I interviewed Morgan back when the film premiered at Sundance (and was called LA Times). As she said then, Nothing in the movie is particularly autobiographical. I mean, is the character me? Every character that you write as a writer is a little bit of you. I think that if youre going to make a movie and youre going to star in it, you should poke fun at yourself, and I tried to do that.
Reviewing the film for the New York Times, Andy Webster noted that glimmers of promises abound in the film, and that as a screenwriter, Ms. Morgan is nimble with glib conversation, and she is fearless at playing an often unlikable character You sense that Ms. Morgan can deliver harder punches. Maybe someday she will.
Email me if you have questions, comments or suggestions, and follow me on Twitter @IndieFocus
Some wore T-shirts with the words Me Too emblazoned across the front, while others held up signs that said No more sexual abuse and Rape is not a joke.
On Sunday, several hundred survivors of sexual harassment and assault and their supporters gathered in front of the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood to draw attention to their cause. Recently, there has been an uprising of women who have gone public with their stories of abuse and systemic sexism.
Im really happy to come here, because really its Hollywood that opened this floodgate, said Tarana Burke, who co-founded an organization called Just Be Inc. Its really symbolic to have this march happen, not with Hollywood stars, but in Hollywood.
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Last week, comedian Louis C.K. became the latest Hollywood figure to be felled by a sex scandal, following producer Harvey Weinstein, producer-director Brett Ratner, writer-director James Toback and actor Kevin Spacey. Also, Sacramento politicians and Washington lawmakers have been ensnared in their own scandals.
1 / 8 Sexual assault survivors and supporters rally down Hollywood Boulevard for the #MeToo Survivors March against sexual abuse. (Gary Coronado / Los Angeles Times) 2 / 8 Elvira Herrera, center, of Indio rallies outside the CNN headquarters during the #MeToo Survivors March against sexual abuse in Los Angeles. (Gary Coronado / Los Angeles Times) 3 / 8 Tiffany Ramirez of Whittier participates in the #MeToo Survivors March against sexual abuse in Los Angeles. (Gary Coronado / Los Angeles Times) 4 / 8 Street performer guitarist Naia Izumi performs while the #MeToo Survivors March against sexual abuse in Los Angeles goes by along Hollywood Blvd. (Gary Coronado / Los Angeles Times) 5 / 8 Alexandra Granchelli, left, and Kaila Nielsen of Los Angeles take part in the #MeToo Survivors March against sexual abuse in Los Angeles. (Gary Coronado / Los Angeles Times) 6 / 8 Norma Smithee of Los Angeles marches to the CNN headquarters in Los Angeles during a rally supporting sexual assault survivors. (Gary Coronado / Los Angeles Times) 7 / 8 Magdalena Hernandez, center, of Los Angeles, marches to the CNN building on Sunset and Cahuenga boulevards during the #MeToo Survivors rally against sexual abuse in Los Angeles. (Gary Coronado / Los Angeles Times) 8 / 8 Gregg Rugolo, right, of Santa Monica shows support for sexual assault survivors at the #MeToo Survivors March against sexual abuse in Los Angeles. (Gary Coronado / Los Angeles Times)
TV journalist Lauren Sivan, who has accused Weinstein of making unwanted sexual advances, wore a red shirt to Sundays demonstration that said Take Back the Workplace. She also stood up to speak to the assembled crowd.
You are all brave, she said. Bravery comes in many different forms. You dont have to wear a flak jacket to make America a better place to live and to work and youre all doing it by being here today.
Sivan then took her place at the head of the crowd as it began to march through Hollywood, chanting, No more secrets, no more lies no more silence that money buys!
As the marchers passed tourists snapping photos along Hollywood Boulevard, their chants echoed along the street: Survivors united, will never be divided, and Whatever we wear, wherever we go, yes means yes and no means no.
Among the crowd were three friends, each with their own stories of survival. All of them work in the entertainment industry and live in Los Angeles.
We think its really important to bring a voice and a face to the survivors that are literally all around us, said Diana Varco, who held a sign that read Rape is not a joke. We joke about it like it doesnt happen and that just perpetuates the cycle.
Beside her, Christy Lee Hughes, also a survivor, held a sign that read: Stop victim blaming.
I feel like people are finally starting to listen, Hughes said. But I do have to emphasize this: This is the tip of the iceberg. There are so many more, Im telling you there are so many more.
Their friend, Jozanne Marie, an immigrant from Jamaica, said she dealt with abuse from within her family for a 10-year period. She wore a shirt that read: The shame does not belong to you.
This is a bigger issue, its all over the world. Im glad people are talking about it right now, she said. Im hopeful this movement will help remove shame. I believe things are going to change and this is going to set us up for the next generation.
Burke said that Sundays #MeToo march was just the first step in a larger campaign to raise awareness about sexual misconduct in the workplace and elsewhere.
I think its just the beginning, she said. This goes so far beyond Hollywood, this goes so far beyond the glitz and the glamour of what were seeing in the media deep into the crevices of all parts of the world.
Actress and activist Frances Fisher was among those who joined the demonstrators.
Theres a tsunami of women and men coming forward for the first time in the history of the world and finally the mainstream media is paying attention, Fisher said. Its an incredible moment in the history of something that has been endemic in society ever since the cavemen.
Were putting everyone on notice who are predators, that this will not stand all the way up to the predator in chief, she added. She was referring to President Trump, who was caught bragging in vulgar language on a 2005 video, recorded for the Access Hollywood show, about grabbing and kissing women without their permission.
Trump has maintained his innocence during his presidency, as he did in the campaign.
Protesters marched to the CNN building on Sunset and Cahuenga boulevards. They rallied about 11:30 a.m. in front of the building with several demonstrators speaking to the crowd.
We will no longer be intimidated, we will no longer be dismissed, we will no longer be silenced, we will no longer feel alone, said Tess Rafferty, co-organizer of the Take Back the Workplace March that joined forces with #MeToo organizers for Sundays rally. And if you try and silence or intimidate or discredit one of us, youre going to have to deal with all of us. We are no longer the ones who have to fear for their jobs, you are.
State Sen. Connie Leyva (D-Chino) also spoke to the crowd, saying she is going to introduce legislation to ban secret settlements in sexual harassment cases.
Its about time, right? she said. To all the women here, I want you to know that the California Legislature has your back.
Sivan, a Weinstein accuser, then addressed the crowd again.
This is 2017, the time is ripe for a reckoning, for a reordering of power, she said. Today were here to tell you that you will no longer keep us quiet, you will no longer label us gold-diggers or psychos. That ends now, because we want our daughters and sons to go to a workplace where they will never have to take a meeting with a dude in a bathrobe.
The crowd later marched back toward Hollywood Boulevard and Highland Avenue, walking past Spaceys star on the Walk of Fame. Some pointed out other notables.
This is a perfect place to hold this rally, one demonstrator said, gesturing toward Trumps star.
Demonstrator and lead organizer Brenda Gutierrez said she was heartbroken when she first saw her social media feeds fill up with survivors of sexual assault sharing their stories alongside the hashtag #MeToo.
So she, along with other survivors of sexual assault, decided to take the social media movement which was spurred by allegations of sexual assault by powerful men in Hollywood to the streets with a survivors march.
I guess as survivors were used to keeping it to ourselves, not knowing who to turn to, Gutierrez said. It makes me want to cry just seeing everyone here. Growing up, I thought I was alone. Im looking at the audience and I realize Im not alone.
We will get through this together, she said, and we will make a change.
brittny.mejia@latimes.com
Los Angeles Times staff writer Ruben Vives contributed to this report.
UPDATES:
2:20 p.m.: This article was updated with new comments from demonstrators.
1:35 p.m.: This article was updated with news comments from demonstrators.
12:40 p.m.: This article was updated with new comments from demonstrators.
11:55 a.m.: This article was updated with more comments from demonstrators.
Nov. 12, 11:10 a.m.: This article was updated with the commencement of the march and comments from participants.
This article was originally published Nov. 11 at 7:15 p.m.
Earlean Paige sat quietly in the shade of a towering tree on the lawn of Los Angeles National Cemetery and listened as a chaplain said a prayer honoring U.S. military veterans.
Dressed in her sons Army uniform and earrings painted to resemble the American flag, Paige spent Veterans Day the way she has for decades: remembering her deceased son and husband, both of whom served in the Army, while honoring her eldest son, who served in the Air Force.
Veterans deceased and living did a lot for us, said Paige, who was part of a crowd of about 100 people attending the ceremony on the 114-acre Westwood property. Its just an honor to be able to show that respect to them.
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Nearly 88,000 veterans and family members are buried in the cemetery, which opened in 1889.
Noboru Don Seki attended the celebration with his daughter and his wife. Seki served during World War II as part of the 442nd Regimental Combat Team, a unit composed of Americans of Japanese ancestry.
The 94-year-old helped drive out remaining Germans in mop-up operations after the celebrated Battle of the Lost Battalion, where Japanese American soldiers were sent to rescue a Texas battalion trapped in France. The Japanese Americans sacrificed four lives for every Texan saved but ultimately succeeded in their mission.
Seki would lose his arm a week later in a subsequent battle in France, earning the Purple Heart. The 100th Infantry Battalion, another unit mostly composed of Americans of Japanese ancestry, later combined with the 442nd Infantry Regiment into a single fighting team that became one of the nations most highly decorated military units. Their motto Go For Broke was embroidered on the beret and shirt Seki wore Saturday morning.
He said it was important to come out and support the military and celebrate the memories of veterans deceased.
Sekis daughter, Tracey Seki Matsuyama, said she wanted to honor her fathers sacrifice.
They felt they had to prove their loyalty to America, so they did what they had to do, Matsuyama, 59, said of Japanese American soldiers, adding that Seki lied about his age to enlist at the age of 17.
The Westwood ceremony was one in a host of Veterans Day celebrations throughout Southern California. Parades were held in the San Fernando Valley and Long Beach, and Pasadena hosted a commemoration in front of City Hall with a flyover of World War II-era fighter planes.
Not far from the gathering at the cemetery, Ori Barasch walked among the tombstones and visited the graves of three fallen soldiers the same three he has visited every Veterans Day and Memorial Day for the last 18 years.
He never knew the men he stops to remember each year, whose headstones sit in a column on the lawn. Two served during World War II, and one during the first World War. Like Barasch, all three were Jewish. That was bond enough for the 53-year-old.
I just wanted to stop and say thanks, said Barasch, a history teacher who also works in the U.S. Coast Guard Auxiliary. He started the tradition after his son was born to teach him the concept of commitment.
We have a duty to remember, Barasch said. I wanted him to appreciate that his freedom and things he enjoys didnt come for free.
Veterans Day is celebrated annually on Nov. 11 and coincides with other holidays in other countries that mark the anniversary of the end of World War I, which formally ceased hostilities on the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month in 1918.
As Barasch placed his hand on one of the tombstones a little after 11 a.m., an American flag flying above the ceremony was lowered to half-staff. When the clock struck 11:11, the flag flapped overhead once more. The veterans in the crowd stood and saluted.
sarah.parvini@latimes.com
For more California news follow me on Twitter: @sarahparvini
Two new reports from government watchdog agencies say the Border Patrol is losing agents faster than it can hire new ones, and that border and immigration enforcement agencies face significant challenges in hiring and training new personnel.
The reports from the inspector general for the Department of Homeland Security and the Government Accountability Office were released separately over the last week. Both highlight the difficulties that federal agencies have filling the ambitious hiring goals laid out by President Trump.
In a January executive order Trump called for hiring 5,000 more Border Patrol agents and 10,000 officers for Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Both agencies are key components of the administrations crackdown on illegal immigration and desire to bulk up border security.
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The GAO report examined how the Border Patrol deploys agents and the effectiveness of checkpoints it staffs. Auditors say the agency has fewer agents now than it is supposed to have under a 2011 congressional mandate, which required 21,370 agents.
But as of this May the agency had just 19,500, or 1,870 fewer than required.
Compounding the problem is that agents are leaving faster than they can be replaced. Auditors say that between 2013 and 2016 the Border Patrol hired an average of 523 agents each year and saw an average of 904 leave.
Reasons include better pay at competing agencies, a hiring process that requires applicants to pass a polygraph exam (which other agencies dont require) and assignments that often send new agents to remote locations along the border.
The audit also sheds new light on where immigrants without permission to enter are apprehended and where drug are seized.
Four in 10 apprehensions between 2012 and 2016 occurred within half a mile of the border.
However, between 64% and 70% of all drug seizures by the agencies occurred more than 10 miles from the border, where immigration officials operate a network of checkpoints.Only 11% of drug seizures occurred close to the border, and checkpoints account for less than 2% of apprehensions of unauthorized immigrants.
The checkpoints are controversial, with critics saying they are not effective, easily circumvented and violate constitutional rights.
The audit said that the effectiveness of these checkpoints cant be resolved in large part because the agency still does not have good data collection practices. Auditors have urged better data collection as far back as 2009 but say there are still gaps in reporting that make analyzing the checkpoints effectiveness problematic.
The inspector generals report examines the management challenges facing Homeland Security, which includes Customs and Border Protection, the Border Patrol and ICE, and says the agencies cant yet justify hiring thousands more agents and officers.
Neither CBP nor ICE could provide complete data to support the operational need or deployment strategies for the 15,000 additional agents and officers they were directed to hire, the report said, adding that the agencies faced notable difficulties in making hires.
In a report one year ago the inspector general said that it took about nine months to hire a single Border Patrol agent and about seven months to hire an ICE officer.
The new report noted that while hiring times have improved there are still significant delays. It attributed those delays to not having enough hiring staff or the internal systems needed to hire staff efficiently.
Moran writes for the San Diego Union-Tribune.
It has been a rough few days for Republicans, who lost big in mayoral and gubernatorial races across the country in Tuesdays election. But Shirlene Ostrov knows it can be much worse.
She is the chairwoman of the Republican Party in Hawaii.
The job can be lonely and thankless. Her party is teetering on the edge of extinction here.
The last time Hawaii had a Republican in the U.S. Senate was 1977. Since becoming a state in 1959, its had just two GOP members in the U.S. House of Representatives, most recently in 2011.
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In the state Senate, all 25 members are now Democrats, since a lone Republican, Sam Slom, lost his reelection bid last November after 20 years in office.
In the 51-member state House, there are five Republicans down from six in March, when one switched parties after denouncing President Trump.
Obviously, its disappointing to lose, Ostrov said about the defeats of Republicans last Tuesday in gubernatorial races in Virginia and New Jersey. But I see the numbers, and the Republican Party in the contiguous United States is doing amazing.
Republicans not only have the presidency and Congress but a lock on the majority of statehouses and governorships, she was quick to point out.
In Hawaii, the picture is different, she said.
Last year she ran for the U.S. House and lost to a Democrat who received nearly three times as many votes. It was a typical showing in what is essentially a one-party state.
The success of Republicans nationally has had little effect in Hawaii, said Patricia Saiki, a Republican who represented the state in the U.S. House from 1987 to 1991. If anything, it solidified the Democratic grip here.
Shirlene Ostrov, the Hawaii Republican Party chairwoman, campaigns for a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives in 2016. She lost to Democrat Colleen Hanabusa. (Cathy Bussewitz / Associated Press )
There was a time when Republicans held most of the power: when Hawaii was still a territory and controlled by white landowners. But as statehood approached, Native Hawaiians and Asian immigrants working on sugar plantations waged union campaigns the beginning of a Democratic takeover.
The Republican Partys best stretch since then was the eight years that Republican Linda Lingle served as governor, the second member of her party to hold that office. Her term expired in 2010.
Its not as though Democrats have solved all the states problems. Hawaii has the nations highest homelessness rate, and in Honolulu, some of its worst traffic. Still, Republicans keep losing.
Last November, it was no surprise when Trump received 30% of votes cast by Hawaii residents his lowest total in any state. Perhaps already knowing the results, many Hawaii residents didnt bother to vote. Turnout was 43%.
Things have only gotten worse for the party since then.
After backlash for speaking out against President Trump at the Womens March in Honolulu, state Rep. Beth Fukumoto left the Republican Party and became a Democrat. (Cathy Bussewitz / Associated Press )
In January at the Womens March in Honolulu, state Rep. Beth Fukumoto, one of the partys biggest hopes in Hawaii, criticized Trump for racist and sexist remarks.
Her five Republican colleagues responded the next month by telling her to drop her post as House minority leader.
Fed up, she left the party in March and became a Democrat. This month, 34-year-old Fukumoto announced she was considering a run for Congress.
Many Republicans in Hawaii lean to the left of their mainland counterparts, having taken up causes such as climate change and income inequality.
Fukumoto says statements by Trump on Muslims, women and immigrants are likely to damage the Republican Partys standing in Hawaii even more.
The party in Hawaii is now the party of Trump, and I think the association is going to hurt them, she said.
Miriam Hellreich, a Honolulu-based member of the Republican National Committee, disagreed.
Elections go in cycles, and weve been in a difficult downward cycle thats hard to escape, she said. But we have a lot of people who are Republicans but just dont know it. They are traditional Democrats because thats how their family voted.
Republican Party officials say they hope Trumps 19-hour overnight stop in Oahu this month his first visit to Hawaii as president would boost morale.
Party members wanted him to formally meet with them, but the closest they got was the tarmac at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam, where they snapped selfies next to him in a lei after Air Force One landed.
Checked hospital records in Honolulu and found no birth certificate indicating I was born here. pic.twitter.com/yIP572lc75 Gov. Mike Huckabee (@GovMikeHuckabee) October 24, 2017
His schedule included visits to U.S. Pacific Command, the USS Arizona Memorial at Pearl Harbor and a stop at the Trump hotel in Waikiki the owners license the Trump name before he flew to Japan.
Hawaii Republicans got more face time late last month with one of the presidents surrogates, Mike Huckabee.
At a fundraiser outside Honolulu, the former Arkansas governor and father of White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders spoke for nearly an hour about the future of the party, both locally and nationally.
Boy, were a minority here, you think? he said.
Huckabee said it didnt have to be that way. You are not destined to be the minority party for the rest of your lives, because you have a message, he said. You have core convictions and values that, quite frankly, I believe resonate with people wherever they live.
Ostrov, the state party chairwoman who helped organize the event, said one of its goals was to raise money to bring more diverse communities into the Republican fold.
There are a lot of people who are not happy with how the state is run, such as with our incredibly high taxes, she said. I hope for Hawaii to one day have a healthy, vibrant two-party system.
For now, though, when things go wrong in Hawaii, Ostrov said, You dont have to think hard about whos responsible.
Its Democrats.
Jaweed Kaleem is The Times national race and justice correspondent. Follow him on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.
jaweed.kaleem@latimes.com
Two former senior intelligence officials Sunday offered an extraordinary critique of President Trumps mode of dealing with foreign leaders, portraying the president as cowed by Russias Vladimir Putin and overly susceptible to flattery by rivals likely seeking to manipulate him.
The broadsides by ex-CIA Director John Brennan and former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper followed months of tension between the White House and the intelligence community over the presidents reluctance to publicly accept intelligence assessments that Russia sought to sway the 2016 vote in his favor.
That long-running contretemps flared again over the weekend when Trump, speaking to reporters aboard Air Force One as he traveled in Asia, implied that he took Russian President Vladimir Putin at his word that Russia had not acted to influence the U.S. election. Trump also said that raising the issue was insulting to Putin.
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On Sunday, in Hanoi, Trump partially walked back those remarks, telling reporters that Im with our agencies, especially as currently constituted in their assessment implying he still mistrusted former intelligence chiefs who served in the Obama administration. A day earlier, he described the ex-directors of major intelligence agencies as political hacks.
Brennan, appearing on CNNs State of the Union, said the presidents stance, even somewhat softened, was incompatible with established facts.
Its very clear that the Russians interfered in the election, and its still puzzling as to why Mr. Trump does not acknowledge that and embrace it and also push back hard against Mr. Putin, he said.
Trump, he said, should state very clearly and strongly that this is a national security problem, and to say to Mr. Putin, We know you did it, you have to stop it, because there are going to be consequences if you dont.
Brennan was unusually explicit in suggesting that the Russian leader had some sort of hold over Trump a theory often voiced by Democratic political figures, but one that intelligence veterans generally avoid.
I think Mr. Trump is, for whatever reason, either intimidated by Mr. Putin or afraid of what he can do, or what might come out as a result of these investigations, Brennan said, apparently referring to the wide-ranging probe being carried out by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III and several separate congressional investigations.
Characterizing Trumps dealings with Russia as colored by naivete, ignorance or fear, the former CIA chief said the tenor of Trumps encounters with Putin the latest of which came during his Asia trip fueled the belief, especially among authoritarian or adversarial leaders, that it was easy to take advantage of the U.S. president.
I think it demonstrates to Mr. Putin that Donald Trump can be played by foreign leaders who are going to appeal to his ego and try to play upon his insecurities, which is very, very worrisome from a national security standpoint, Brennan said.
Clapper, also appearing on CNN, said Trumps reluctance to fully acknowledge Kremlin interference was both puzzling and dangerous.
I dont know why the ambiguity about this, because the threat posed by Russia is manifest, and obviously has been for a long time, he said. To try to paint it in any other way is, I think, astounding, and in fact poses a peril to this country.
Clapper concurred with Brennans view that Trump seems very susceptible to rolling out the red carpet and honor guards and all the trappings and pomp and circumstance afforded by overseas visits.
I think that appeals to him, and I think it plays to his insecurities, Clapper said.
The former intelligence chiefs comments drew a sharp response from Treasury Secretary Steven T. Mnuchin, also interviewed on CNN. He said Trump was not getting played by anybody and that it was ridiculous to suggest he was being manipulated by Putin or anyone else.
Some Republican lawmakers have also been critical of the president on the Russia issue, directly or indirectly. A day after a harsh response to Trumps initial remarks by Arizona Sen. John McCain, the GOP former chair of the House Intelligence Committee, Mike Rogers, tweeted Sunday that the intelligence community had concluded that Russia interfered in last years vote and we should expect them to attempt to do so again.
Thats a clear and present danger to our democracy, he added.
Trump surrogates sought again Sunday to frame Russia campaign interference as having led to a fruitless investigation of whether the Trump campaign colluded with the Kremlin even though Mueller has given no sign that the probe is winding down, and the intelligence community did not attempt to address whether the interference affected the election outcome.
White House legislative director Marc Short, interviewed on NBCs Meet the Press, said Trump believes that after a year of investigations, of tens of millions of taxpayer dollars, there is zero evidence of any ballot being impacted by Russian interference.
Muellers investigation, which Trump again over the weekend decried as being based on a Democratic hoax, has led to the indictment of Trumps former campaign manager, Paul Manafort, and another aide, along with a guilty plea from a junior Trump campaign associate who is apparently cooperating with investigators. More indictments are expected.
Following another of Trumps often-used talking points, Short stressed the benefits of a cooperative relationship with Putin on security matters.
I think the president is more interested in figuring out how can we partner with them to help prevent North Korea from developing nuclear weapons, he said.
Trump on Sunday repeated that a good working relationship with Putin could pay big dividends.
Having Russia in a friendly posture, as opposed to always fighting with them, is an asset to the world and an asset to our country, not a liability, he told reporters in Vietnam.
laura.king@latimes.com
@laurakingLAT
For a decade, self-proclaimed filmmaker Matt Hickey combed the internet and scoured Seattles Capitol Hill, looking for the next adult film star. Or so he said in his online ads.
A journalist and photographer, Hickey didnt have film credits in his resume. But he did have the sales pitch of a Hollywood agent: the power to make someone a star.
His studio of sorts was his modest Seattle apartment, and his staff consisted of himself and a female recruiter who, prosecutors say, was actually Hickey himself, posing as a woman named Deja Stwalley the name of a grade school classmate who was unaware of the charade.
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Some of the women who answered his online ads told authorities they were sexually attacked after arriving for a screen test. In all, Seattle police interviewed six women who alleged they were forced to have sex with Hickey, though some said they couldnt recall details of the encounter because they were drugged or plied with alcohol.
Hickey, 41, is now charged with four counts of rape and after a year in custody could be tried as soon as this month.
Hickeys alleged trail of sexual offenses was exposed by the alternative newspaper where he once worked as a freelance journalist.
Some of the alleged victims in Seattle said they first turned to police but came away feeling that investigators werent interested in pursuing their allegations. But when their stories began showing up on Facebook pages, an editor at the Stranger an aggressive alternative newspaper for which Hickey had once covered Seattle nightlife took note.
The editor, Charles Mudede, passed along the tip to one of his reporters, Sydney Brownstone, who got one of the women whod posted their stories on Facebook to talk on the record. She led Brownstone to two other women who agreed to talk.
The story snowballed from there, Brownstone said.
She said the newspaper, which is published biweekly, had no hesitation about investigating one its own former writers, who had also freelanced as a technology writer for Forbes, CNET and other online sites.
When King County prosecutor Dan Satterberg filed rape charges against Hickey last year, his office and police credited the Stranger for doing the initial detective work. Several other alleged victims had also come forward after publication of the story, The Audition.
Police said their investigation had since turned up alleged rapes dating to 2001, and detectives speculated there could be dozens of victims. Hickey, who was arrested last November in Las Vegas where he relocated after the Stranger published its story has pleaded not guilty. He maintains that any sex with his accusers was consensual.
Ads that Hickey placed on Craigslist in Seattle and Las Vegas described the screen tests as consisting of a question-and-answer session to establish sexual preferences, posing for nude photos and having an audition.
Youll audition with one of our specially selected guys. Its not for everyone, and if its not for you, thats ok. But keep in mind, were auditioning for hardcore, so the ability to have sex with a [stranger] while keeping a smile on your face is important, the ads read.
Hickey allegedly sought a mostly anonymous pool of candidates, typically women between the ages of 17 and 25 he spotted on Facebook, according to court records.
He then contacted those young women through the [fake online] Stwalley profile and presented them with an opportunity to audition for a local indie/alternative adult film studio, and eventually earn up to $3,500 a day as a porn star, court records state they just had to audition with one of our specially chosen hunks.
In each case, prosecutors said, the audition was conducted by Hickey.
One alleged victim said she blacked out and in the morning woke up in bed naked, a condom wrapper nearby. She told authorities she didnt remember having sex with Hickey and certainly didnt want to. The woman told Seattle Police Det. Michelle Gallegos that she cried and vomited through the day [and] felt disgusted and embarrassed.
Hickey has already been found liable of civil fraud in a consumer-protection case the first of its kind in Washington brought by the state attorney general. In March, King County Superior Court Judge Ken Schubert hit Hickey with $332,000 in fines and court costs for posing as a filmmaker and as his own female assistant to deceive six women with a porn scam.
Hickey, the state complaint charged, posed as a talent recruiter named Deja Stwalley in order to deceive women for his own personal gain [with] no intention of securing jobs for these women. He created a fictional business and audition process to obtain nude photos for his photography portfolio and to satisfy his sexual desires.
The complaint said that Hickey continued to maintain possession of the nude photos he took of women who responded to his ads.
Hickey is being held on $200,000 bail.
Anderson is a special correspondent.
It was a somber Veterans Day in the small south Texas town where more than two dozen people were killed in a mass shooting nearly half of them from military families with ties to the Air Force.
Around 100 residents, law enforcement officers and first responders gathered Saturday morning outside the community center in Sutherland Springs to pay tribute to the shooting victims with military backgrounds.
Six days earlier, 26-year-old Devin Kelley walked into the First Baptist Church of Sutherland Springs and shot churchgoers. Among the dead was a pregnant woman whose fetus also perished in the gunfire.
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At least 12 of the people killed were either Air Force members or had ties to that branch of the military, according to Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. David Goldfein.
The special Veterans Day ceremony included a full military salute and remarks from U.S. Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-Texas), Wilson County Judge Richard Jackson and other dignitaries.
During the event, Jackson said he hoped the ceremony would help residents in the quiet town start the healing process. Later, first responders gathered in a circle and bowed their heads in prayer.
Alice Garcia, president of the Sutherland Springs Community Assn., who attended the ceremony, said it was a way to honor those who had dedicated years of military service to their country and died in the horrific tragedy.
The mood at the ceremony was emotional but at the same time honorable, especially to have dignitaries here that showed support for the community, Garcia said.
Among the victims with military backgrounds were Robert Scott Marshall and his wife, Karen Sue Marshall, both 56.
Robert, who was a retiree, joined the Air Force after graduating high school. Karen served in the Air Force for nearly 25 years, according to a statement by the Texas Military Department. She was also a master sergeant in the Air National Guard and was in the process of retiring.
She recently finished a posting at Joint Base Andrews in Maryland before returning to Texas with her husband.
Other victims who had ties to the military include Shani Louise Corrigan, 51, and eight members of the Holcombe family, including Crystal Holcombe, who was eight months pregnant.
Sutherland Springs is a quiet small town about 30 miles southeast of San Antonio. Its also near several military installations, including Lackland Air Force Base.
The shooting victims ranged in ages from 1 to 77 years old, according to authorities.
Kelley also had ties to the military, having served in the Air Force from 2010 until 2014. He was sentenced in 2012 to 12 months in military prison for assaulting his wife and young stepson, and received a bad-conduct discharge.
On Nov. 6, investigators said the Air Forces failure to report the gunmans history of domestic violence to an FBI database allowed him to pass background checks that would have otherwise barred him from purchasing guns.
Officials also said Kelleys motive may stem from a domestic dispute he had with relatives who were congregation members, though they were not in church at the time of the shooting.
At the ceremony Saturday, residents of the grieving Texas town sat outside on white folding chairs, not far from the church where the shooting took place.
Taps is played during a Veterans Day ceremony outside the Community Center on November 11, 2017 in Sutherland Springs, Texas. Residents of the community are still trying to heal following the shooting at the First Baptist Church of Sutherland on November 5. (Scott Olson / Getty Images )
melissa.etehad@latimes.com
Follow me on Twitter @melissaetehad
There are two ways to impeach a president and remove him from office. Only one of them has ever worked.
The first way is to let evidence from investigations slowly build a bipartisan consensus for impeachment. Thats how Richard Nixon was pushed out of office in 1974. (Nixon resigned before he was formally impeached.)
The second way is for just one party to launch impeachment without bipartisan support and hope the country comes along. Thats what Republicans did to Bill Clinton in 1998, and it didnt work. Instead, it backfired, making Clinton more popular.
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Tom Steyer, the hedge fund billionaire who may be running for a U.S. Senate seat in California, is trying to invent a third way to impeach President Trump without any of the advantages of the first two.
Tom Steyer is trying to build support for himself as a potential candidate in deeply Democratic California.
Steyer, the Democratic Partys largest donor, seems unconcerned that his party doesnt have a majority in the House of Representatives, where impeachment proceedings must begin.
Hes urging Democrats in Congress to make Trumps impeachment their goal right now, and a major focus of their congressional campaign next year. Hes demanding that every candidate publicly support impeachment to make it clear where we all stand for Democrats voting in 2018. And hes putting $20 million into a petition drive thats gathered some 2 million signatures in favor of his view.
Trump is a threat to the American people, Steyer said last week in an interview with ABC News. Why arent people willing to stand up and say that? I dont understand it.
Most Democratic leaders think his strategy is self-defeating beginning with Rep. Nancy Pelosi, whos in charge of winning back the House.
Im not making [impeachment] a priority, Pelosi told me last week. If youre going to go down the impeachment path, you have to know you can do it not in a partisan way.
We have an investigation in the Justice Department that is seeking facts, she added. We dont want it to look political.
Her top goal, she said, is for our country is to come together to win the next election.
That includes trying to win seats in districts where Trump is relatively popular. Pelosi worries that making impeachment an explicit goal will alienate voters who might otherwise be winnable.
Polls suggest that shes right. Most Democrats support impeaching Trump, but independent voters arent there yet. A Politico/Morning Consult Poll this month found that 40% of voters believe the House should begin impeachment proceedings, but 49% disagree.
Steyer disdains that thinking as small-minded.
Youre asking us not to tell the truth, not to do whats right, because it doesnt fit into the way political tactics are organized in Washington, he said on ABC. Its not clear whether hes even thinking very hard about winning the House. Dont we have to do the right thing, not do a political calculation for whats going to happen 14 months from now? he asked.
But hes gotten pretty tart about his critics.
I dont look at this as something between Nancy and me, he told the San Francisco Chronicle last month. Its something between Nancy and the American people.
Pelosis not rising to the bait not for a debate with her partys biggest contributor.
I dont have any complaints with what Tom Steyer is presenting, she said. I have great respect for Tom.
If Democrats are wondering whether they need to endorse impeachment to mobilize anti-Trump votes in an off year, last weeks election in Virginia provided a pretty clear answer.
Their candidate for governor, a colorless establishment Democrat named Ralph Northam, won a resounding victory with a margin of 9 points in a state Hillary Clinton won by only 5 points last year.
In the Democratic primary campaign, Northam faced pressure from his challenger, progressive candidate Tom Perriello, to endorse Trumps impeachment. He resisted.
Let the facts play out, he said.
Northam made clear he didnt like Trump. I believe that our president is a dangerous man, he said, a narcissistic maniac.
But on impeachment, he essentially followed the Pelosi line: Its too early to go there.
On Tuesday, Democrats turned out for Northam in record numbers. Exit polls showed that many of them came out to register a vote against Trump.
The lesson: Democrats dont need impeachment to win a general election. They already own the anti-Trump franchise.
Signing Steyers impeachment petition will make anti-Trump voters feel good, and thats about all with one exception.
If Tom Steyers campaign will help anyone, its Tom Steyer. Hes trying to build support for himself as a potential candidate in deeply Democratic California, where hes mused openly about running for senator or governor next year. Maybe Californians will now come to think of him not just as another wealthy donor, but as the guy whos hot to impeach Donald Trump.
But if the cost of his new stature is a narrower path to a Democratic majority, that will be a high price for his party to pay.
doyle.mcmanus@latimes.com
Twitter: @DoyleMcManus
Hours after President Trump taunted North Korean leader Kim Jong Un on Twitter, suggesting he is short and fat, the White House chief of staff insisted he doesnt carefully follow Trumps comments on social media and tells other aides not to react to them.
Someone, I read the other day, said we all just react to the tweets, said Chief of Staff John F. Kelly, speaking with a group of reporters after a presidential news conference Sunday in Vietnam. We dont. I dont. I dont allow the staff to. We know what were doing.
For the record: An earlier version of this article said that during a group handshake, President Trump reached cross-wise to connect with Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte and Tran Dai Quang, the president of Vietnam. Trumps handshake was with Duterte and Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc.
Believe it or not, I do not follow the tweets, Kelly said.
I find out about them, he continued. But for our purposes, my purpose, is we make sure the president is briefed up on what hes about to do.
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Kellys comments came as Trump prepared for another controversial moment in his five-nation Asia tour a scheduled meeting with Rodrigo Duterte, the Philippine president, who has a history of human rights abuses. Trump had an initial encounter with Duterte in Manila on Sunday, exchanging handshakes and toasts with him at a gala dinner opening an international conference.
By Monday morning, the 11th day of Trumps grueling Asia tour, the U.S. president looked increasingly tired, crossing his arms and struggling to keep his eyes open during a multi-national dance tribute that served as part of the welcome ceremony for the Assn. of Southeast Asian Nations summit.
Minutes before the dance ceremony, he grew confused when the assembled leaders of the member countries were asked to perform a cross-body handshake. He laughed and then grimaced, exaggeratedly, as he reached cross-wise to connect with Duterte and Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc.
Trumps physical stamina on the lengthy trip and his Twitter habits, and how to treat them, have been concerns for the White House staff on the Asia trip. To handle the former, aides have tried to pace the president, building down time into the schedule. To handle the latter, Kelly suggested, he tries not to focus too heavily on them.
The tweets dont run my life good staff work runs it, he said.
Trump has been less active than usual for him on Twitter during his 12-day trip. But that changed in Vietnam with a short burst of tweets that hit the internet Saturday night in the U.S., commenting on Russia, all the haters and fools, the Fake News Media and Crooked Hillary Clinton.
His third tweet of the series was of the type that had the potential to ramp up tensions with a dangerous nuclear foe, North Korea. Rallying Asian nations to the cause of ending North Koreas nuclear program is the central focus of Trumps trip.
He has exchanged personal insults for months with Kim, a leader about whom U.S. intelligence agencies know relatively little. The Kim government recently called Trump a lunatic old man, according to state media.
Trump retaliated in kind: Why would Kim Jong-un insult me by calling me old, when I would NEVER call him short and fat? he tweeted. Oh well, I try so hard to be his friend -- and maybe someday that will happen!
Referring to Trumps tweets, Kelly said, They are what they are. And, in response to a question about whether he needs to take them into account to develop policy, Kelly insisted he does not.
We develop policy in the normal traditional staff way, he said.
Asked about the meeting with Duterte, Kelly said human rights would be a hot topic in the Philippines but declined to make definitive statements about Dutertes possible role in abuses or whether reports of abuses were true.
I mean theres an awful lot of reported extrajudicial heavy-handedness, Kelly said.
Reporters asked Kelly whether he believed those reports. Well, well have to see, Kelly replied.
A reporter pressed him again: Youre not sure?
Im not sure, Kelly responded.
Philippine police, at Dutertes direction, have killed thousands of people accused of drug crimes without trials, incurring condemnations from human rights groups, the United Nations, Congress and the European Union. The White House has said Trump shares a warm rapport with Duterte.
Kelly downplayed the meeting, saying the presidents primary purpose for traveling to the Philippines is to attend two conferences that will attract leaders from around the world.
I would say the conference is the most important thing in the Philippines, Kelly said. And, obviously, since the presidents there, hell meet with [Duterte] but nothing formal.
Trump, who has also spoken warmly of Russian leader Vladimir Putin and Chinas Xi Jinping, was asked by reporters aboard Air Force One on Saturday about having close relationships with strongmen.
Ill be honest with you, I think I have a great relationship with every single one every person in that room today, Trump said, referring to leaders from around the world who joined him at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Vietnam, including leaders from many democratic nations.
But even as Trump and Duterte have exchanged some kind words, the traditional U.S. ally is also courting China. Two hours before his dinner with Trump on Sunday, Duterte cast further doubt on American economic leadership by describing China, which has the worlds second biggest total economic output, as the global economic leader.
Today China is the No. 1 economic power, and we have to be friends, Duterte said, speaking at a business forum held at a Manila casino.
Special correspondent Simon Roughneen in Manila contributed to this report.
noah.bierman@latimes.com
Twitter: @noahbierman
ALSO
After new revelations, Sessions faces another grilling on Russia contacts in Trump campaign
North Korea denounces Trumps Asia tour as a warmongers visit
Democrat Doug Jones charts an unlikely path in Alabama Senate race as scandal isolates GOPs Roy Moore
UPDATES:
7:05 p.m.: This story was updated with the opening of the ASEAN summit in Manila.
The story was first published at 5:55 a.m.
Many politicians might seize on allegations that Alabama Republican Senate candidate Roy Moore pursued sexual relations with teenage girls. But Democrat Doug Jones isnt going there.
The former prosecutor, who won convictions against Ku Klux Klan members for killing four young girls in the infamous 1963 Birmingham church bombing, has his own story to tell as his unlikely campaign gains sudden momentum.
At a Friday night fish fry in this modest, working-class neighborhood outside Mobile, Jones spent more time talking about his own record and what he would do in Washington than about the scandal engulfing Moore.
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Those are issues that he has to address, not me. serious allegations that he needs to face the people of Alabama and talk about, Jones told reporters afterward.
Our message is the same. Kitchen-table issues jobs, the economy, he continued. Healthcare is such an important issue for the state. Were a poor state, were an unhealthy state and healthcare is probably the biggest issue thats causing folks to take a look at this race and hit a political reset button.
My history has been of trying to be a unifying force to reach across the aisle, to find common ground so that we can move the state forward, he said.
Alabama hasnt sent a Democrat to the U.S. Senate in more than 20 years.
And Democrats have downplayed their chances in the race, wary of turning the contest into a liberal cause celebre that could backfire.
But the accusations against Moore first reported last week by the Washington Post have turned this race into something close to a tossup, focusing new attention on the Democratic candidate once consider a long shot.
Moore has not fully denied the allegations and now finds himself increasingly isolated as national party leaders withdraw support.
This is the toughest campaign in Alabama for a Republican in decades, said Matt Carroll, a GOP activist in Mobile. He worries that Jones could win.
Oh, yeah, he said. He has a chance.
Moore, though, has almost legendary status among Alabamas Republicans for his unflinching conservatism. Voters reelected him to the states high court after he was ousted for failing to remove a Ten Commandments display in the courthouse, and he later stepped aside after refusing to enforce the Supreme Courts decision supporting gay marriages.
At the same time, many of Moores most dedicated voters, including those waving signs to passing motorists Saturday in Mobile, voiced doubts that the womens claims against their candidate are true.
The more I pondered the whole thing, I thought, you know, this man and Ive known him many, many years theres no way he could have done that and lied about it, said Janet Ogelsby, 70, a retired hairdresser active in party politics, waving to the cars. Were not going to let him go under.
Many also are resentful of outsiders such as Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and other GOP senators who have spoken critically of Moore.
Republicans need to leave us alone, said Chu Green, an immigrant from Vietnam who has lived in the country for decades and supports Moore. Were smart. We know what were doing.
For his part, Jones has been criss-crossing Alabama, walking in Mobiles Veterans Day parade before visiting the fish fry and heading back to the central part of the state Saturday.
His path to the Senate requires not only turning out Democrats, who are a minority, but also appealing to centrist Republicans who may reject Moore.
In a sign that strategy may be working, Jones campaign lawn signs have begun popping up in unexpected neighborhoods tonier parts of Birmingham and Mobiles historic Spring Hill district.
For many voters, its not just Moore, but Trumps election and the sense that the country can do better than the current divisive politics. That compelled Lee Dorsey, a counselor, to stake a sign in her Midtown neighborhood lawn for the first time since she started voting to make the case for Jones.
The question I have to ask myself is, Who can represent the state? said Dorsey, who has voted for both parties. There are some really good people in Alabama, some really kind people, some really generous people; I do not see Roy Moore being able to represent them all.
Others see the election as a moment for Alabama to show the rest of the country another side of a state that often ranks low on national measures and carries the burden of its segregated past.
I remember segregation, said Hattie Brown, 70, a retiree who still sells cosmetics and holds other jobs. She stopped by the fish fry to meet Jones.
It feels like historys in the making and Im part of history, she said. She introduced herself to Sen. Jones.
Republican leaders in Alabama and Washington are considering their options with a month to go before the Dec. 12 special election for the seat that had been held by Jeff Sessions, now Trumps attorney general.
Moore shows no signs of withdrawing, and its too late under state rules to remove him from the ballot so some Republicans have floated the idea of asking the governor to change the date of the election as a way to ease Moore out.
lisa.mascaro@latimes.com
@LisaMascaro
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For Atty. Gen. Jeff Sessions, questions about the Trump campaign and Russia have become a nagging headache that wont go away.
Three times, he has appeared before his former colleagues in the Senate and answered questions about what he knew about contacts with Russians during the campaign. Three times, Sessions stumbled, issuing denials that later proved to be incomplete or wrong.
For the record: An earlier version of this article gave the wrong location for a meeting in March 2016 attended by then-Sen. Jeff Sessions and George Papadopoulos. It was held in Washington, not New York.
On Tuesday, the nations highest lawman will face another grilling on Capitol Hill, this time prompted by claims in court documents and congressional testimony that he was told of at least two aides meetings with Russian officials despite his claim last month that he was unaware of any such contacts.
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The facts appear to contradict your sworn testimony on several occasions, all 17 Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee wrote to Sessions last week in advance of his appearance there.
Sessions will appear a day after the Justice Department informed the committee that he is considering appointing a second special prosecutor this time to investigate allegations involving Hillary Clinton, a move that President Trump has long demanded.
The letter to Rep. Robert W. Goodlatte (R-Va.), chairman of the committee, said senior prosecutors were looking into whether a special counsel should be named to investigate the Clinton Foundation, Clintons use of a private email server while secretary of State, former FBI Director James B. Comeys decision not to prosecute Clinton, and a 2010 decision by the Obama administration regarding sales of uranium to a Russian company.
The prospect that the Justice Department will investigate the losing candidate in a presidential race drew sharp criticism late Monday and is sure to come up when Sessions testifies.
No evidence has yet emerged to show that anyone in the Trump campaign was directly involved with Russias attempts to influence the election through computer hacking and social media much less that Sessions knew about it.
But Sessions serial inconsistencies have given Democrats an opening to hammer his credibility. They also helped fuel congressional investigations into the Russian meddling and the possible involvement of the Trump campaign, the focus of the criminal investigation led by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III.
Its a potential crime to lie to Congress, though prosecutions for perjury are extremely rare. But the controversy already has damaged trust in Sessions, who also endured an extraordinary public flogging by Trump over the summer for recusing himself from the Russia probe.
The shifting accounts will dog him throughout his tenure as attorney general, said Laurie Levenson, a former federal prosecutor who now is a professor at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles. Sessions has been neutered by questions about his probity, she said.
If the person on the highest level sworn to uphold the law is the one you cannot trust, thats a big problem for the entire Justice Department, she said.
A former U.S. prosecutor and four-term U.S. senator from Alabama, Sessions endorsed Trump in early 2016, boosting the novice candidate when most GOP leaders were shunning him. Sessions became head of the campaigns foreign policy team, and he soon echoed Trumps friendlier policies toward Russian President Vladimir Putin.
That March, Trump named several foreign policy advisors to work under Sessions, including energy consultants Carter Page and George Papadopoulos. Neither was known in foreign policy circles, and both soon met with Russian intermediaries and say they told Sessions about it.
According to court papers, Papadopoulos, who lived in London, met a professor there who said the Russians had dirt on Hillary Clinton, including thousands of emails. This was several months before the first hacked emails were released to the public. He also met a woman who he believed was Putins niece.
In follow-up emails, Papadopoulos was urged to arrange a meeting between Trump or his top aides and senior Kremlin officials.
On March 31, 2016, Papadopoulus sat at a long conference table in Washington with Trump on one end and Sessions at the other. At one point, the 30-year-old aide bragged about his Russian connections and his efforts to set up a meeting with Putin.
He was shut down pretty quickly by Senator Sessions, and no such meeting [with the Kremlin] ever happened, said J.D. Gordon, a former Pentagon spokesman who was also at the meeting. Gordon said Sessions said he would prefer that nobody speak about this again.
Papadopoulos has pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about his Russian contacts. He secretly cooperated with the FBI for three months after his arrest in July, court documents show.
Page also says he informed Sessions about his contacts in Russia.
Page told the House Intelligence Committee that in July 2016 he confided in Sessions, after a dinner at the Capitol Hill Club, about his plans to deliver a speech in Moscow. While there, Page also told the committee, he had a private discussion with one of Russias deputy prime ministers and met several Russian lawmakers.
Page told the panel that he just mentioned it [to Sessions] in passing, according to a transcript. He had no reaction whatsoever.
In an email, Page said he wasnt surprised that Sessions didnt recall the encounter and said the trip was totally unrelated to the campaign.
Bear in mind that he was one of the most important and senior people of Congress last year, he wrote. If he HAD remembered our brief interaction, which peripherally alluded to a complete irrelevancy, I would have been completely shocked.
Sessions tried to distance himself from the Russia investigation soon after he was confirmed as attorney general. On March 2, he recused himself from supervising the investigation because he said his work on the campaign posed a potential conflict.
But his answers about his contacts have only entangled him more deeply.
During his Senate confirmation hearing in January, he told Sen. Al Franken, (D-Minn.) that he did not have communications with Russians during the campaign. He said the same thing in follow-up responses to Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.).
Media reports later revealed that Sessions spoke at least three times with then-Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak during the campaign.
On June 13, appearing before the Senate Intelligence Committee, Sessions repeatedly denied knowing of any other meetings between Russian officials and anyone connected with the campaign, including Page.
I dont recall any, he said.
On Oct. 18, Sessions returned to the Senate Judiciary Committee and denied lying about his meetings with Kislyak, explaining that he was trying to deny something else.
It was referring directly to the suggestion that there was a continuing exchange of information between Trumps surrogates and intermediaries for the Russian government, which did not happen, at least to my knowledge, and not with me, he said.
Pressed again by Franken, Sessions said: I did not, and Im not aware of anyone else that did. He added, I dont believe it happened.
After Papadopoulos guilty plea was disclosed on Oct. 30, Franken said he could not believe Sessions did not recall his strong reaction to his aides proposal to meet with Putin.
Sessions again apparently failed to tell the truth, under oath, about the Trump teams contacts with agents of Russia, Franken wrote in a letter to the attorney general. He said the episode suggests the Senate and the American public cannot trust your word.
A Justice Department spokeswoman declined comment, saying Sessions would address the issue at the hearing.
joseph.tanfani@latimes.com
Twitter: @jtanfani
UPDATES:
Nov. 13, 8 p.m.: This article was updated to include information about Atty. Gen. Jeff Sessions considering appointing a special prosecutor to investigate Hillary Clinton.
This article was originally published at 3 a.m. on Nov. 12.
After running for elected office 12 times since 1970, Gov. Jerry Brown is about to exit the center stage of California politics, no longer the brash upstart but now a senior statesman who could be a model for the next person who will lead the state.
Every successor promises to be better, and different, than the person they replace. In 2018, one of the most wide-open races for governor in some two decades, the Jerry question looms large for both candidates and voters.
A new USC Dornsife/Los Angeles Times poll found a tepid reaction to Brown the man. His job approval rating among all Californians was just 44%, and almost one-third of those surveyed said they didnt have any real impression of him. One possible reason is that he often flies under the radar for weeks at a time. Though hes made news in recent days for preaching on his visit to Europe about the dangers of climate change, Brown prefers to govern behind the scenes.
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When asked whether the next governor should continue Browns agenda, 50% of voters said yes. Among Democrats, it was 71%. In several other subsets young voters, those with a college degree, Latino voters a majority or even close to a supermajority wanted the next governor to carry on.
So far, the candidate most preferred among the keep doing what Jerry Brown is doing crowd is Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom, picked by 49% of the primary voters who want to extend the life of the current governors agenda. Twenty-six percent of that group supported former L.A. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and 14% supported Treasurer John Chiang. The USC/LAT poll finds support for all other candidates in single digits (or less) among the Brown policies voters.
Political Road Map: Its hard for Republicans to win statewide in California without more candidates
Newsom, whose relationship with Brown stretches back a couple of family generations and deep into San Francisco politics, has been the most effusive in his praise. Last week, he repeated one of his favorite quips about Browns record as Californias chief executive: Hes proven you dont have to be profligate to be progressive.
But the lieutenant governor is also swinging for the fences when it comes to liberal causes embracing the Legislatures stalled single-payer healthcare bill, criticizing President Trump on an almost hourly basis on social media an activist path far beyond the more cautious Brown. While softening his stance of late, Newsom has sounded at times as though he would reverse course on high-speed rail and water tunnels in the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta two of the current governors toughest policy slogs. Villaraigosa, at this point the other leading candidate, has already tried to paint Newsoms evolution on some parts of the Brown agenda as a flip-flop.
Then theres Chiang, the states longtime fiscal watchdog, and Eastin, the former schools chief who also must navigate when to praise or pan the legacy of the man about to leave office. For Republican hopefuls Assemblyman Travis Allen and businessman John Cox, of course, the whole campaign is about a break with the status quo.
Because Brown will hand over a state budget in better condition than the one he found in 2011, as well as substantial efforts on a higher minimum wage and the criminal justice system, his fellow Democrats will tread carefully. A lot of voters may not be paying attention to the current governor, but they seem to want more of what hes been doing.
john.myers@latimes.com
Follow @johnmyers on Twitter, sign up for our daily Essential Politics newsletter and listen to the weekly California Politics Podcast
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Two years ago, as others in California were limiting cooperation with federal immigration agents, the Fresno County Sheriffs Department welcomed them into its jail.
Sheriff Margaret Mims gave U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement unrestricted access to databases and private rooms to interview inmates. She reorganized release times so agents could easily pick up people who had served their sentences.
The policy sparked outrage among immigrant rights groups, who called it a pipeline from incarceration to immigrant detention, one that they said disproportionately and unfairly affects Latinos.
We are not anti-immigrant for working with ICE, Mims said in defense of the approach. We are anti-criminal activity.
That belief is held by many of Californias 58 county sheriffs who will be on the front lines of implementing the landmark sanctuary state law, which Gov. Jerry Brown signed last month. It takes effect on Jan. 1.
Senate Bill 54 was introduced as a sharp rebuke from Democrats to President Trump s call for more deportations. It is designed to limit the people that California law enforcement agencies can detain, question or investigate at the request of federal immigration officials. But its impact will largely rely on county sheriffs whose departments play a vital role in immigration enforcement and most of whom, like Mims, were opposed to SB 54.
Fresno County Sheriff Margaret Mims is one of many county sheriffs opposed to the sanctuary state law that will soon be implemented. (Gary Kazanjian / For The Times)
As keepers of jails across the state, sheriffs will retain control over who has access to the citizenship status of hundreds of thousands of people booked into their facilities every day. As elected officials, many represent conservative or rural areas, where voters might be more likely to oppose the new state law.
Sheriffs could also be subject to direct attacks from the Trump administration, which has threatened to slash federal funds from sanctuary cities, jurisdictions where local officials have passed ordinances and regulations limiting interactions between law enforcement and immigration agencies.
Trump built much of his campaign on anti-immigrant sentiment, showcasing the relatives of people killed by immigrants in the country illegally. His appointees have suggested illegal immigration is tied to increases in violent crime, though studies show immigrants generally commit fewer crimes than U.S. citizens.
U.S. Atty. Gen. Jeff Sessions has called SB 54 unconscionable. Thomas Homan, the presidents ICE director, has said his agency would have no choice but to conduct at-large arrests in local neighborhoods and at work sites," prompting some in California's congressional delegation to request a meeting with Homan over his reprehensible comments.
In an opposition letter penned in March, Orange County Sheriff Sandra Hutchens saw the conflict coming, saying SB 54 would put sheriffs like her in an unenviable position.
Top, a look inside a jail holding block at the Fresno County Jail. From left, Sheriff's deputy Alicia Perez books a prisoner at the Fresno County Jail. Sheriff's deputy Joshua Anderson prepares a prisoner for booking at the Fresno jail facility. (Gary Kazanjian / For The Times)
Though Trump has added new fuel to the debate, clashes between sheriffs and lawmakers over immigration enforcement have long existed in California, where previous legislative efforts to protect more than 2.3 million people living here illegally have sought to disentangle state and local law enforcement and federal immigration forces.
In 2014, the Trust Act prohibited law enforcement officials from holding immigrants past their release dates unless they have been convicted of one of roughly 800 crimes. The California Truth Act, which went into effect in January, requires officers to provide immigrant defendants notice of their rights prior to any ICE interviews.
The new sanctuary state law was introduced to build on those laws. Officially dubbed the California Values Act, it will largely prohibit state and local law enforcement agencies from using personnel or funding to hold, question or share information about people with federal immigration agents unless they have been convicted of one or more offenses listed in the Trust Act.
Some sheriffs said the new law is unlikely to change the day-to-day work of deputies, who dont question victims or witnesses about their immigration status while on patrol.
But unlike some city and campus police chiefs who threw their support behind SB 54, at least 40 of the 58 sheriffs in the state remained staunch opponents of the legislation through its passage. At least two Jim McDonnell of Los Angeles County and Scott Jones of Sacramento County drew protests for lobbying against it.
Now, they will be tasked with crafting new policies and training officers to limit their communication with ICE. Their agencies will also have to gather new statistics on the arrests made by task forces and on the people they transfer to immigration officials, reporting requirements under the law that are designed to provide insight into who is being swept up in the federal immigration dragnet.
Until now, counties have taken various positions when it comes to cooperation with ICE.
In San Francisco, for example, County Sheriff Vicki Hennessy filed a declaration in support of the city in its lawsuit against the Trump administrations crackdown on sanctuary city policies. In accordance with the citys laws, she wrote, the department maintains policies that limit notifying immigration officials on inmates release dates.
But in Orange County, Hutchens has a $7.27-million contract to incarcerate immigrant detainees convicted of crimes, as well as a $22-million annual lease to provide ICE with jail beds. Other sheriffs have granted federal immigration agents assistance behind the scenes. In L.A., McDonnell allowed them to set up an office with computers that provided information on released prisoners, according to a report released last month by an independent inspector.
In light of the new law, a statewide coalition of immigrant rights groups is already at work reaching out to sheriffs and drafting model policies of their own in hopes of creating parity among counties. Whether the new law can compel a cultural shift within departments will be up to sheriffs, advocates said.
There is the letter of the law and specific things that the law states officers can or cant do, said Joseph Tomas Mckellar, co-director of PICO California, a faith-based community-organizing network. But there is also the spirit of the law, which is, Can we begin to look at immigrants differently? To see them as full human beings that can and do rehabilitate.
A sheriffs deputy prepares a prisoner for booking at the Fresno jail facility. (Gary Kazanjian / For The Times)
In Fresno, where City Council leaders voted down a plan to provide legal services for immigrants and where former Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio , accused of racial profiling of Latinos, recently made an appearance at a GOP fundraiser, deputies and ICE officials have a closer working relationship.
Here, Mims has gone from being a registered Democrat to a Republican and has publicly quarreled with Brown over what she calls the Democratic Partys hostility toward law enforcement issues, including gun rights and recent ballot measures to revamp the criminal justice system.
She also has been locked in battles with immigration advocates over the jail access she allows ICE, feuds that precede the election of Trump.
In September 2014, an Oregon federal court ruling prompted hundreds of cities and counties nationwide to stop holding inmates for immigration officials past their release dates, which had been permitted under a 2008 program by the Obama administration. After she heard the decision, Mims said she walked over to ICEs nearby office in downtown Fresno to discuss ways they could continue their collaboration.
The meeting resulted in temporary work space for immigration agents at her jail, which holds about 25,000 to 30,000 people annually, and a restructuring of inmate release times that she wont have to change under the new sanctuary state law.
Mims said her department is once more looking for ways to increase its collaboration with ICE in the wake of new communication restrictions.
If ICE cant do their job in a local, safe, controlled environment, they are going to put together teams, and they are going to go out into our communities, she said. I dont think people are going to like the unintended consequences.
Times reporter Mina Corpuz contributed to this report.
jazmine.ulloa@latimes.com
@jazmineulloa
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Trump promotes sons Justice with Judge Jeanine interview President Trump promoted via Twitter an interview with his son Eric Trump just before it aired Saturday night on Fox News Justice with Judge Jeanine. Eric Trump on @JudgeJeanine on @FoxNews now! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 21, 2018 Eric Trump called into the show to defend his father from criticism prompted by the first government shutdown in more than four years, as well as a series of Womens March events that saw protesters in dozens of cities take to the streets to oppose the presidents policies. .@EricTrump joined me over the phone from Mar-a-Lago ! pic.twitter.com/Hro3TzUW52 Jeanine Pirro (@JudgeJeanine) January 21, 2018 Speaking to host Jeannine Piro who is reportedly an old friend of the presidents Eric Trump offered effusive praise for his father, ticking off glowing statistics to illustrate the strength of the U.S. economy and gains against Islamic State fighters overseas. My fathers working like no ones ever worked before to bring back this country and to fulfill his promise to make America great again, said the executive vice president of the Trump Organization. He also repeated a sentiment recently expressed on Twitter by his father: That Democratic lawmakers forced a government shutdown on the anniversary of the presidents inauguration in a bid to distract from his achievements. You look at this whole government shutdown, and the only reason they want to shut down government is to distract and to stop his momentum, Eric Trump said. I mean, my father has had incredible momentum. Hes gotten more done in one year than arguably any president in history. Facebook
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Trump tweets: a perfect day for all Women to March President Trump hailed the nationwide Womens March gatherings Saturday. On Twitter, the president called it a perfect day for all Women to March, seeming to imply that those taking part were celebrating his administrations accomplishments: Beautiful weather all over our great country, a perfect day for all Women to March. Get out there now to celebrate the historic milestones and unprecedented economic success and wealth creation that has taken place over the last 12 months. Lowest female unemployment in 18 years! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 20, 2018 Participants in the marches across the United States were actually seeking to deliver a powerful rebuke to Trumps policies and mount a crucial mobilization for this years midterm elections. But Trump continued to tout his administrations unprecedented success in tweets sent later in the day: Unprecedented success for our Country, in so many ways, since the Election. Record Stock Market, Strong on Military, Crime, Borders, & ISIS, Judicial Strength & Numbers, Lowest Unemployment for Women & ALL, Massive Tax Cuts, end of Individual Mandate - and so much more. Big 2018! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 20, 2018 The Trump Administration has terminated more UNNECESSARY Regulation, in just twelve months, than any other Administration has terminated during their full term in office, no matter what the length. The good news is, THERE IS MUCH MORE TO COME! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 21, 2018 In addition to the roll call of major American cities where womens marches took place including New York, Washington, Los Angeles, Dallas, Philadelphia, Chicago, San Francisco, Atlanta protesters also raised their voices in suburbs and small towns, reflecting the aim of coalescing a broad-based movement on the anniversary of Trumps inauguration to oppose the presidents stance on immigration, healthcare, racial divides and an array of other issues. Read More This post contains reporting from Times staff writer Laura King. Facebook
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Trump calls shutdown a present from Democrats By Associated Press President Trump is blaming Democrats for the government shutdown tweeting that they wanted to give him a nice present to mark the one-year anniversary of his inauguration: This is the One Year Anniversary of my Presidency and the Democrats wanted to give me a nice present. #DemocratShutdown Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 20, 2018 That comes after Senate Democrats late Friday killed a GOP-written House-passed measure that would have kept agencies functioning for four weeks. Democrats were seeking a stopgap bill of just a few days in hopes that would build pressure on Republicans, and they were opposing a three-week alternative offered by GOP leaders. Democrats have insisted they would back legislation reopening the government once theres a bipartisan agreement to preserve protections against deporting about 700,000 immigrants known as Dreamers who arrived in the United States illegally as children. Trump on Saturday accused Democrats of holding our Military hostage over their desire to have unchecked illegal immigration: Democrats are holding our Military hostage over their desire to have unchecked illegal immigration. Cant let that happen! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 20, 2018 Democrats are laying fault for the shutdown on Republicans, who control both chambers of Congress and the White House and have struggled with building internal consensus. In a series of tweets hours after the shutdown began, the president tried to make the case for Americans to elect more Republicans to Congress in November in order to power through this mess: Democrats are far more concerned with Illegal Immigrants than they are with our great Military or Safety at our dangerous Southern Border. They could have easily made a deal but decided to play Shutdown politics instead. #WeNeedMoreRepublicansIn18 in order to power through mess! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 20, 2018 He noted that there are 51 Republicans in the 100-member Senate, and it often takes 60 votes to advance legislation: For those asking, the Republicans only have 51 votes in the Senate, and they need 60. That is why we need to win more Republicans in 2018 Election! We can then be even tougher on Crime (and Border), and even better to our Military & Veterans! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 20, 2018 #AMERICA FIRST! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 20, 2018 The stopgap spending measure won 50 votes in the Senate, including five from Democrats. Although the House and Senate were in session Saturday, it was unclear whether lawmakers would take any votes of consequence. Trump had been set to leave Friday afternoon for a fundraiser at his estate in Palm Beach, Fla., where he intended to mark the inauguration anniversary. But he remained in Washington and ended up scrapping his plans to attend the Saturday fundraiser. Read More Facebook
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Trump tweet casts doubt on likelihood of averting shutdown President Trump appeared to cast doubt on the likelihood of reaching a deal to avert a government shutdown Friday night in a tweet. Trump also sought to blame Democrats for what would be the first shutdown since 2013. His message came just hours before the midnight deadline by which lawmakers must pass a measure to fund government agencies, or some operations will cease. Not looking good for our great Military or Safety & Security on the very dangerous Southern Border. Dems want a Shutdown in order to help diminish the great success of the Tax Cuts, and what they are doing for our booming economy. Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 20, 2018 Despite last-minute negotiations Friday between Trump and Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer, Congress remained deadlocked over a spending bill and the federal government was headed toward a shutdown at midnight. Senate Democrats joined by some GOP deficit hawks and immigration allies were set to filibuster a stopgap funding bill approved by the House on Thursday. A Senate vote was planned for 10 p.m. Eastern, and even White House officials predicted it would fail. Read More This post contains reporting from Times staff writer Lisa Mascaro. Facebook
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Trump signs surveillance law after confusing tweets By Associated Press President Trump on Friday signed a bill into law to renew a foreign intelligence surveillance program, announcing his action in the latest in a series of confusing tweets about the spy program: Just signed 702 Bill to reauthorize foreign intelligence collection. This is NOT the same FISA law that was so wrongly abused during the election. I will always do the right thing for our country and put the safety of the American people first! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 19, 2018 Trumps tweet on Jan. 11 created chaos in the House just before it voted to reauthorize what is known as Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. He linked the intelligence program to a dossier that alleges his presidential campaign had ties to Russia. That caused people to wonder if he didnt support the program that allows U.S. spy agencies to collect intelligence on foreign targets abroad. Trump and other Republicans have alleged that Obama administration officials improperly shared the identities of Trump presidential transition team members mentioned in intelligence reports. Democrats say there is no evidence that happened. Shortly before the House vote, and after conferring with House Speaker Paul Ryan, Trump did an apparent about-face. This vote is about foreign surveillance of foreign bad guys on foreign land, he tweeted. We need it! Get smart! In his tweet announcing that he had just signed the bill, Trump wrote: This is NOT the same FISA law that was so wrongly abused during the election. I will always do the right thing for our country and put the safety of the American people first! There are no obvious links between the dossier Trump spoke of, which includes salacious but unsubstantiated allegations against him, and the reauthorization of the spying program, or between the program and Trumps oft-repeated claims that the Obama administration conducted surveillance on Trump Tower during the presidential campaign. Facebook
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In tweet, Trump suggests that Pennsylvania trip is a political one The White House press office was once again forced to walk back a tweet from President Trump on Thursday morning after he described a trip to Pennsylvania later in the day as a political one a statement that would force the Republican Party, not taxpayers, to pay for the journey. The White House had said Trump was going to an industrial equipment company outside of Pittsburgh to highlight the good economy and new tax cuts, making it an official, policy-oriented event. It was widely assumed that the trip had a political cast the area is holding a special election to fill a congressional seat vacated by a Republican who resigned. Trump, by his tweet, seemed to confirm that politics was the whole purpose: Will be going to Pennsylvania today in order to give my total support to RICK SACCONE, running for Congress in a Special Election (March 13). Rick is a great guy. We need more Republicans to continue our already successful agenda! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 18, 2018 Trump later shared via Twitter a pair of video clips of his speech at H&K Equipment, in which he touted the tax cuts he signed into law just before Christmas and tried to turn the conversation back to his accomplishments after weeks dominated by distractions, including questions about his mental health and comments about immigration that some considered racist: Departing Pittsburgh now, where it was my great honor to stand with our incredible workers, and to show the world that AMERICA is back - and we are coming back bigger and better and stronger than ever before! pic.twitter.com/kWPgylqFzj Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 18, 2018 AMERICA will once again be a NATION that thinks big, dreams bigger, and always reaches for the stars. YOU are the ones who will shape Americas destiny. YOU are the ones who will restore our prosperity. And YOU are the ones who are MAKING AMERICA GREAT AGAIN! #MAGA pic.twitter.com/f2abNK47II Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 18, 2018 The Republican National Committee, rather than the White House, is supposed to pay for political travel so that taxpayers are not financing party activities; for trips that combine policy and politics, parties have split the cost under past presidents. Neither the RNC nor the White House responded to emails sent Thursday asking who would pay. White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders released a statement later Thursday suggesting that taxpayers would foot the bill. She insisted that Trump would be conducting government business while in Pennsylvania. Read More This post contains reporting from the Associated Press and Times staff writer Noah Bierman. Facebook
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Trump tweets praise of Bob Dole after awarding him Congressional Gold Medal By Associated Press Former Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole knew the art of the deal before President Trump published the 1987 book of the same name. The two shared a stage under the Capitol dome Wednesday as Dole, 94, accepted Congress highest civilian honor, the Congressional Gold Medal, for his World War II service and decades of work in the House and Senate. Trump later praised Dole in a tweet, attaching to his message a video composed of clips from the ceremony: Today, we witnessed an incredible moment in history the presentation of Congress highest civilian honor to our friend, and true AMERICAN HERO, Bob Dole. #CongressionalGoldMedal pic.twitter.com/qNQqDLRmCk Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 17, 2018 At the ceremony, the president saluted Dole as a patriot and gave tribute to Doles struggle as a veteran who worked his way back from a grievous shoulder wound he suffered in Italy. He knows about grit, said Trump. But it was Doles penchant for working across the aisle that earned him his latest award, according to the legislation. Bob Dole was known for his ability to work across the aisle and embrace practical bipartisanship, reads the legislation Trump signed in September. Some of the awards 300 recipients include George Washington and Mother Teresa, according to the Congressional Research Service. Read More Facebook
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Trump touts report that seeks to link terrorism cases with immigration By Joseph Tanfani The Trump administration on Tuesday released a report attempting to link terrorism with migration, arguing that it was evidence of the need to dramatically reshape the nations immigration system. New report from DOJ & DHS shows that nearly 3 in 4 individuals convicted of terrorism-related charges are foreign-born. We have submitted to Congress a list of resources and reforms.... Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 16, 2018 ....we need to keep America safe, including moving away from a random chain migration and lottery system, to one that is merit-based. https://t.co/7PtoSFK1n2 Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 16, 2018 The report, ordered by President Trump in an executive order last year, said that 75% of the 549 people convicted of terrorism charges since 9/11 were born outside the U.S. Administration officials called that a sign that the U.S. needs to scrap its policy of family preferences for visas, which they call chain migration, and a diversity visa lottery program. But the report did not specify how many if any of the convicted terrorists entered the country through those means. It also did not detail how many of the convictions were related to attacks or plans in the U.S. versus overseas and how many involved people who went to fight overseas for the Islamic State or another terrorist group. Those details were not available, officials said. The report, due last year, is being released in a highly charged moment in the immigration debate, as Trump and some Republicans in Congress seek tough new border and immigration measures in return for a deal protecting the 690,000 people in the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. Trump also fired off a pair of tweets on the topic earlier Tuesday: We must have Security at our VERY DANGEROUS SOUTHERN BORDER, and we must have a great WALL to help protect us, and to help stop the massive inflow of drugs pouring into our country! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 16, 2018 The Democrats want to shut down the Government over Amnesty for all and Border Security. The biggest loser will be our rapidly rebuilding Military, at a time we need it more than ever. We need a merit based system of immigration, and we need it now! No more dangerous Lottery. Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 16, 2018 The focus of our immigration system should be assimilation, a senior administration official said on Tuesday, speaking on condition that his name not be used. He said the nation should give priority to potential immigrants who speak English, who have an education and those who are committed to supporting our values not family members of people already here. The official said the timing of the report was coincidental. Read More Facebook
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Trump tweets welcome to president of Kazakhstan By Associated Press President Trump said Tuesday that he and the president of Kazakhstan are united in a shared determination to prevent North Korea from threatening the world with nuclear devastation. Trump and President Nursultan Nazarbayev discussed North Korea along with other issues during meetings at the White House. Today, it was my honor to welcome President Nursultan Nazarbayev of Kazakhstan to the @WhiteHouse! pic.twitter.com/TerYFZViax Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 16, 2018 Trump said Kazakhstan, once part of the Soviet Union, is a valued partner in our efforts to rid the Korean peninsula of nuclear weapons. Together we are determined to prevent the North Korean regime from threatening the world with nuclear devastation, he said, as both presidents addressed journalists between meetings. Nazarbayev noted that his country once had one of the worlds largest nuclear arsenals but voluntarily gave it up after the Soviet Union collapsed. He said his country is in talks with Iran, which was the focus of a global deal that lifted some economic sanctions in exchange for Irans curbing its nuclear program. Trump has sharply criticized the Iran nuclear deal and threatened last week to pull out soon unless other countries fix what he says are terrible flaws. Read More Facebook
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Trump falsely claims his approval rating among black Americans has doubled By Alex Wigglesworth President Trump lashed out at the news media Tuesday morning in a tweet denouncing the special counsel investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election and possible collusion among members of his campaign team. Do you notice the Fake News Mainstream Media never likes covering the great and record setting economic news, but rather talks about anything negative or that can be turned into the negative. The Russian Collusion Hoax is dead, except as it pertains to the Dems. Public gets it! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 16, 2018 It wasnt immediately clear exactly what prompted the presidents tweet, but it appeared as though he was watching Fox & Friends. A short time later, Trump tweeted a headline from a report that aired during that mornings episode: 90% of Trump 2017 news coverage was negative -and much of it contrived!@foxandfriends Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 16, 2018 The segment focused on the latest survey results from conservative watchdog Media Research Center, which purportedly analyzed the evening news broadcasts on ABC, CBS and NBC from Jan. 20 to Dec. 31 and found that 90% of the statements made about Trump were negative. Study: 90% of Trump media coverage in 2017 was negative pic.twitter.com/vbrwup4Drg FOX & friends (@foxandfriends) January 16, 2018 But believe it or not, through all this negative coverage, they did a survey of 600,000 people about how black America views this president, co-host Brian Kilmeade said. His numbers have actually doubled in approval. Trump highlighted the statement in another tweet: Unemployment for Black Americans is the lowest ever recorded. Trump approval ratings with Black Americans has doubled. Thank you, and it will get even (much) better! @FoxNews Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 16, 2018 But its not true. The claim appears to have originated from a misreading of data from the online polling firm SurveyMonkey, according to factcheck.org. The firm polled 600,000 Americans in 2017 and found that Trumps approval rating among blacks actually dropped from 23% early in his presidency to about 17%, as of the week ending Jan. 3. Some conservative outlets, including Breitbart, produced an average from those and other SurveyMonkey figures and compared them to the scores Trump received from black voters in the 2016 exit polls. That methodology is not sound. And since the statistics measure different things, the comparison is misleading. Facebook
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Trump goes after senator who surfaced his immigration remark By Associated Press President Trump turned his Twitter torment Monday on the Democrat in the room where immigration talks with lawmakers took a famously coarse turn, saying Sen. Richard J. Durbin misrepresented what he had said about African nations and Haiti and, in the process, undermined the trust needed to make a deal. Senator Dicky Durbin totally misrepresented what was said at the DACA meeting, Trump tweeted, using a nickname to needle the Illinois senator. Deals cant get made when there is no trust! Durbin blew DACA and is hurting our Military. Senator Dicky Durbin totally misrepresented what was said at the DACA meeting. Deals cant get made when there is no trust! Durbin blew DACA and is hurting our Military. Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 15, 2018 Trump was referring to the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which protects young people who came to the United States illegally as children. Members of Congress from both parties are trying to strike a deal that Trump would support to extend that protection. Trump also cast doubt on the likelihood of reaching an agreement in tweets sent earlier Monday: Statement by me last night in Florida: Honestly, I dont think the Democrats want to make a deal. They talk about DACA, but they dont want to help..We are ready, willing and able to make a deal but they dont want to. They dont want security at the border, they dont want..... Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 15, 2018 ...to stop drugs, they want to take money away from our military which we cannot do. My standard is very simple, AMERICA FIRST & MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 15, 2018 On a day of remembrance for the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., Trump spent time at his golf course with no public events, bypassing the acts of service that his predecessors staged in honor of the civil rights leader. Instead, Trump dedicated his weekly address to Kings memory, saying Kings dream and Americas are the same: A world where people are judged by who they are, not how they look or where they come from. That message was a distinct counterpoint to words attributed to Trump by Durbin and others at a meeting last week, when the question of where immigrants come from seemed at the forefront of Trumps concerns. Some participants and others familiar with the conversation said Trump challenged immigration from shithole countries of Africa and disparaged Haiti as well. Without explicitly denying using that word, Trump lashed out at the Democratic senator, who said Trump uttered it on several occasions. Read More Facebook
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Trump thanks pundit for laudatory Fox & Friends spot By Alex Wigglesworth President Trump thanked Fox News personality Stuart Varney after Varney praised Trump during an appearance on Fox & Friends. In a pair of tweets early Sunday, Trump quoted from Varneys commentary, in which he argued that Trump deserves more credit for the booming economy. The pundit, who also hosts a show on Fox Business Network, cited moves by some corporations to raise workers minimum wage or pay out one-time bonuses in response to the GOP tax cuts. President Trump is not getting the credit he deserves for the economy. Tax Cut bonuses to more than 2,000,000 workers. Most explosive Stock Market rally that weve seen in modern times. 18,000 to 26,000 from Election, and grounded in profitability and growth. All Trump, not 0... Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 14, 2018 ...big unnecessary regulation cuts made it all possible (among many other things). President Trump reversed the policies of President Obama, and reversed our economic decline. Thank you Stuart Varney. @foxandfriends Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 14, 2018 Varney was reacting to a quote from House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco), who on Thursday called the bonuses handed down to workers pathetic in comparison to the gains corporations are expected to see from the tax cuts. In terms of the bonus that corporate America received versus the crumbs that they are giving to workers to kind of put the schmooze on is so pathetic, Pelosi told reporters. Its pathetic. Varney shot back Sunday that the bonuses, along with explosive stock market growth, are enriching all Americans. This is a huge shot in the arm, its the result of this tax cut deal and I think President Trump should get the credit for it, he said. .@Varneyco Sets the economic record straight after Nancy Pelosi calls U.S. mass bonuses crumbs pic.twitter.com/BvjIHGm3HE FOX & friends (@foxandfriends) January 14, 2018 The sweeping tax plan passed last month lowers the corporate tax rate from 35% to 21% and cuts personal income taxes. Analysts say the benefits will largely flow to corporations and the wealthy, as theyre more likely to be in positions to share in corporate profits. For instance, Wells Fargo & Co., which responded to news of the tax overhaul by announcing it will raise workers pay to at least $15 an hour, also reported that it expects to pay an effective tax rate of 19% this year, down from about 31% in previous years. That should amount to tax savings of more than $3 billion annually. On average, middle-class Americans are expected to see a very small tax cut in the near term and a tax increase after 2025, when all of the tax cuts for individuals expire. The tax cuts for corporations, however, are permanent. This post contains reporting from Times staff writer James Rufus Koren. Facebook
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Trump touts MLK proclamation in tweet, but ceremony is overshadowed by reports of racist remarks By Associated Press President Trump signed a proclamation Friday for Martin Luther King Jr. Day, noting the contributions of a great American hero. Today, it was my great honor to proclaim January 15, 2018, as Martin Luther King Jr., Federal Holiday. I encourage all Americans to observe this day with appropriate civic, community, and service activities in honor of Dr. King's life and legacy. pic.twitter.com/samlJsz1Nt Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 12, 2018 Overshadowing the event was mounting backlash from Trumps comments during a private meeting with lawmakers the day before. A short time after the meeting, which was called to discuss a possible immigration deal, reports emerged that Trump had asked participants why the United States should accept immigrants from shithole countries in Africa, Central America and the Caribbean. Illinois Sen. Richard Durbin, the Senates second-ranking Democrat, appeared to confirm those reports on Friday. Trump did not respond Friday to several questions about the incident, including whether he actually used vulgar language to describe African nations, or if he is racist. The president said at the White House that love was central to the slain civil rights leader. Trump said the nation celebrates King for standing up for the self-evident truth Americans hold so dear, that no matter what the color of our skin or place of our birth, we are all created equal by God. This post contains reporting from Times staff writer Noah Bierman. Facebook
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Trump criticizes Democrats in tweet calling for stricter immigration rules President Trump hit out at Democrats on Thursday night in a tweet calling for stricter immigration rules. Trump wrote that members of the party seem intent on having people and drugs pour into our country from the border with Mexico: The Democrats seem intent on having people and drugs pour into our country from the Southern Border, risking thousands of lives in the process. It is my duty to protect the lives and safety of all Americans. We must build a Great Wall, think Merit and end Lottery & Chain. USA! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 12, 2018 It wasnt immediately clear exactly what prompted the tweet. Earlier Thursday, Trump rejected a bipartisan compromise to resolve the standoff over so-called Dreamers, young immigrants who were brought to the United States illegally as children but have temporary permits to work, attend school or serve in the military. The president drew widespread condemnation after reports emerged that he had asked participants in an Oval Office meeting about the proposal why the United States should accept immigrants from shithole countries in Africa, Central America and the Caribbean. Read More Facebook
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Trump touts bill aimed at improving border screening for fentanyl By Associated Press President Trump signed legislation Wednesday aimed at giving Customs and Border Protection agents additional screening devices and other tools to stop the flow of illicit drugs. Speaking at a surprise bill-signing ceremony while flanked by members of Congress from both parties in the Oval Office, Trump described the bill as a significant step forward in the fight against powerful opioids such as fentanyl, which he called our new big scourge. He echoed that language Thursday in a tweet: Yesterday, I signed the #INTERDICTAct (H.R. 2142) with bipartisan members of Congress to help end the flow of drugs into our country. Together, we are committed to doing everything we can to combat the deadly scourge of drug addiction and overdose in the United States! pic.twitter.com/ELZvFol5Lo Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 11, 2018 The legislation will pay for new portable and fixed chemical screening devices to detect and intercept fentanyl at ports of entry and in the mail, along with other laboratory equipment and personnel, including scientists. Trump has made fighting the opioid epidemic a centerpiece of his administration, though critics say he hasnt dedicated nearly enough money or resources to make a difference. Trump suggested during his remarks on Wednesday that hed like to take a more aggressive approach to the drug crisis but the countrys not ready for what he has in mind. So were going to sign this. And its a step. And it feels like a very giant step, but unfortunately, its not going to be a giant step, because no matter what you do, this is something that keeps pouring in, he said. And were going to find the answer. There is an answer. I think I actually know the answer, but Im not sure the countrys ready for it yet, he added. Does anybody know what I mean? I think so. Facebook
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Trump applauds news that Toyota-Mazda plant is slated for Alabama By Associated Press Japanese automakers Toyota and Mazda on Wednesday announced plans to build a mammoth, $1.6-billion joint-venture plant in Alabama that will eventually employ about 4,000 people. President Trump lauded the news in a tweet: Cutting taxes and simplifying regulations makes America the place to invest! Great news as Toyota and Mazda announce they are bringing 4,000 JOBS and investing $1.6 BILLION in Alabama, helping to further grow our economy! pic.twitter.com/Kcg8IVH6iA Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 10, 2018 Good news: Toyota and Mazda announce giant new Huntsville, Alabama, plant which will produce over 300,000 cars and SUVs a year and employ 4000 people. Companies are coming back to the U.S. in a very big way. Congratulations Alabama! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 11, 2018 Several states had competed for the project, which will be able to turn out 300,000 vehicles per year and produce the Toyota Corolla compact car for North America and a new small SUV from Mazda. Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey and company executives held a news conference to announce that the facility is coming to the Huntsville area not far from the Tennessee line. Production is expected to begin by 2021. The decision to pick Alabama is another example of foreign-based automakers building U.S. factories in the South. To entice manufacturers, Southern states have used a combination of lucrative incentive packages, low-cost labor and a pro-business labor environment, because the United Auto Workers union is stronger in Northern states. Read More Facebook
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Trump highlights call for border wall in tweets on visit with Norways prime minister By Associated Press President Trump praised Norways prime minister in a tweet on Wednesday after Erna Solberg became the first foreign leader to visit with the president in 2018. Today, it was my great honor to welcome Prime Minister Erna Solberg of Norway to the @WhiteHouse - a great friend and ally of the United States! Joint press conference: https://t.co/qWR1BhfQZI pic.twitter.com/PJvwznjRCO Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 10, 2018 Trump also shared via Twitter a video clip of a joint news conference he held with Solberg on Wednesday afternoon. In the clip, Trump responds to a question from a reporter by saying there can be no bipartisan immigration deal absent funding for his long-promised wall along the U.S. border with Mexico. Republican and Democratic lawmakers have been seeking a solution for hundreds of thousands of so-called Dreamers, young people who were brought to the United States as children and are living here illegally. The United States needs the security of the Wall on the Southern Border, which must be part of any DACA approval. The safety and security of our country is #1! pic.twitter.com/4CFzQXb5aS Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 10, 2018 We need the wall for security, we need the wall for safety, we need the wall for stopping the drugs from pouring in, Trump said Wednesday. Any solution has to include the wall because without the wall, it all doesnt work. On Tuesday, Trump drew widespread attention when he said during a meeting with a bipartisan group of lawmakers that he would be agreeable to signing a stand-alone bill to protect the Dreamers, before moving on to a more comprehensive immigration bill. That contradicted the Republican consensus that Dreamers fate needed to be part of a broader immigration bill that would include some version of Trumps promised border wall and other immigration reforms. Trump backed away from a stand-alone Dreamer bill in subsequent tweets and public comments. Read More This post contains reporting from Los Angeles Times staff writer Noah Bierman. Facebook
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Trump praises Cabinet in tweet touting meeting By Associated Press President Trump promoted a meeting of his Cabinet on Wednesday, sharing via Twitter a link to a video of the session posted on the White House YouTube account. In his tweet, Trump thanked his Cabinet for working tirelessly on behalf of our country and wrote that the last year has been one of monumental achievement. I want to thank my @Cabinet for working tirelessly on behalf of our country. 2017 was a year of monumental achievement and we look forward to the year ahead. Together, we are delivering results and MAKING AMERICA GREAT AGAIN! https://t.co/ptXa1hAPwW pic.twitter.com/yv6RALkQf3 Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 10, 2018 The former reality television star continued to dispense accolades at the meeting Wednesday, greeting reporters in the Cabinet Room by saying: Welcome back to the studio. Then he proceeded to relive a Cabinet Room session from the prior day, when he had allowed reporters and TV cameras to stick around for much of his meeting with a bipartisan group of legislators on the thorny issue of immigration. It was a tremendous meeting. Actually, it was reported as incredibly good. And my performance you know, some of them called it a performance I consider it work, Trump said. Trump went on to say he had received letters from news anchors calling it one of the greatest meetings theyve ever witnessed. He added that the media will ultimately support Trump in the end, because theyre going to say, if Trump doesnt win in three years, theyre all out of business. Asked for examples of letters received from news anchors, the White House said it had received private communications. It also offered a series of positive on-air comments and tweets from journalists about the unusual access to the meeting. During his remarks, Trump swung from praising his own meeting coverage to telling journalists that they were dependent on his presidency for ratings to threatening a strong look at libel laws. Still, Trump thanked the journalists in front of him, joking: Youve gotten very familiar with this room. I appreciate your nice comments yesterday. Facebook
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Trump blasts DACA ruling in tweet calling courts broken and unfair By Lisa Mascaro President Trump denounced the federal courts Wednesday as broken and unfair after a district judge in San Francisco issued a nationwide injunction keeping protections in place for so-called Dreamers. Trump tweeted: It just shows everyone how broken and unfair our Court System is when the opposing side in a case (such as DACA) always runs to the 9th Circuit and almost always wins before being reversed by higher courts. Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 10, 2018 On Tuesday night, U.S. District Judge William Alsup in San Francisco temporarily blocked the Trump administrations decision to phase out the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, known as DACA, which has protected from deportation some 700,000 people who came to the country illegally as children. Alsup granted a request by the state of California, the University of California and other plaintiffs to stop Trump from ending DACA on March 5. The administrations decision to end DACA, which was announced in September, was based on a flawed legal analysis, Alsup wrote in his decision. Dreamers would be irreparably harmed if their DACA protections, which allow them to live and work legally in the U.S., were stripped away before the courts had a chance to fully consider their claims, he ruled. The action is the mirror image of a ruling in 2015 by a federal judge in Texas who ruled in favor of that state when it sought to block President Obama from expanding DACA to include the parents of Dreamers. Trump administration officials praised that judicial ruling. By contrast, they sharply criticized Alsups decision. Read More Facebook
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Trump thanks lawmakers for productive immigration meeting, says deal must include border wall President Trump thanked a bipartisan group of lawmakers for participating in a meeting on immigration legislation on Tuesday. Much of the discussion involved so-called Dreamers, an estimated 700,000 young people who were brought to the country illegally as children and are now facing deportation. In a tweet, Trump wrote that there was strong agreement to negotiate a bill to protect Dreamers, as well as put into place some of the reforms favored by Republicans. Thanks to all of the Republican and Democratic lawmakers for todays very productive meeting on immigration reform. There was strong agreement to negotiate a bill that deals with border security, chain migration, lottery and DACA. https://t.co/SdqAQ3aL3z pic.twitter.com/8DYHZHspAy Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 9, 2018 The most notable exchange of the meeting came when Sen. Dianne Feinstein, the San Francisco Democrat, asked Trump whether he would be agreeable to signing a stand-alone bill to protect the Dreamers, before moving on to a more comprehensive immigration bill. Yeah, I would like to do it, Trump responded. The statement drew widespread attention because it contradicted the Republican consensus that Dreamers fate needed to be part of a broader immigration bill that would include some version of Trumps promised border wall and other immigration reforms. Trump later backed away from a stand-alone Dreamer bill, tweeting that a wall along the U.S. border with Mexico must be part of any deal: As I made very clear today, our country needs the security of the Wall on the Southern Border, which must be part of any DACA approval. Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 10, 2018 Pressure has been mounting for Congress to broker an immigration deal by Jan. 19 as part of a must-pass budget package to fund the government. This post contains reporting from Times staff writer Noah Bierman. Facebook
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Trump thanks officers and veterans in tweets President Trump doled out a slew of accolades Tuesday via Twitter. He thanked the nations law enforcement officers, including in his message a hashtag denoting a day of appreciation organized by a national support group for law enforcement families. On behalf of the American people, THANK YOU to our incredible law enforcement officers. As President of the United States - I will fight for you, and I will never, ever let you down. Now, more than ever, we must support the men and women in blue! #LawEnforcementAppreciationDay pic.twitter.com/Qb4uxB4JRm Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 9, 2018 Trump later expressed gratitude for federal immigration agents, in particular: .@ICEgov HSI agents and ERO officers, on behalf of an entire Nation, THANK YOU for what you are doing 24/7/365 to keep fellow Americans SAFE. Everyone is so grateful!#LawEnforcementAppreciationDay
President @realDonaldTrump https://t.co/HXCpTlruVo Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 10, 2018 The president thanked veterans as he cited his administrations efforts to curb the number of veteran suicides by improving mental health treatment for the high-risk group: Today, it was my great honor to sign a new Executive Order to ensure Veterans have the resources they need as they transition back to civilian life. We must ensure that our HEROES are given the care and support they so richly deserve! https://t.co/0MdP9DDIAS pic.twitter.com/LP2a8KCBAp Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 9, 2018 Trumps tweet included photos of the president signing an executive order Tuesday directing the secretaries of Defense, Homeland Security and Veterans Affairs to develop a plan to provide seamless access to mental health and suicide prevention resources for 12 months for members leaving the armed forces. Also on Tuesday, Trump touted a law he signed the day before designating the birthplace of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. a national historic park: It was my great honor to sign H.R. 267, the Martin Luther King, Jr. National Historical Park Act, which redesignates the Martin Luther King, Junior, National Historic Site in the State of Georgia as the Martin Luther King, Jr. National Historical Park. https://t.co/Qe0b6HBFTY pic.twitter.com/QTgaqTawPT Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 9, 2018 And he thanked House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Bakersfield) for sharing a video compilation comprised of clips of politicians and commentators praising the GOPs tax cut bill: Thank you @GOPLeader Kevin McCarthy! Couldnt agree w/you more. TOGETHER, we are #MAGA https://t.co/QaxtqpyXTR Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 10, 2018 This post contains reporting from the Associated Press and Times staff writer Alex Wigglesworth. Facebook
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Trump hails tax bill in tweets recapping speech to farmers By Associated Press Connecting with rural Americans, President Trump on Monday hailed his tax overhaul as a victory for family farmers. Farm country is Gods country, Trump told the annual convention of the American Farm Bureau Federation. Trump became the first president in a quarter-century to address the federations convention. His Southern swing also included a stop in Atlanta for the national college football championship game. Cant wait to be back in the amazing state of Tennessee to address the 99th American @FarmBureau Federations Annual Convention in Nashville! #AFBF18
On my way now - join me LIVE at 4:00pmE: https://t.co/QaljAqekdD. pic.twitter.com/Wm7Io0hYT8 Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 8, 2018 Joined by Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue, Senate Agriculture Committee Chairman Pat Roberts (R-Kan.) and a group of Tennessee lawmakers, Trump said most of the benefits of the tax legislation are going to working families, small businesses, and who the family farmer. The package Trump signed into law last month provides generous tax cuts for corporations and the wealthiest Americans, and more modest reductions for middle- and low-income individuals and families. In every decision we make, we are honoring Americas PROUD FARMING LEGACY. Years of crushing taxes, crippling regs, & corrupt politics left our communities hurting, our economy stagnant, & millions of hardworking Americans COMPLETELY FORGOTTEN. But they are not forgotten ANYMORE! pic.twitter.com/MdYS7xnukQ Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 8, 2018 The president vastly inflated the value of the package in his speech, citing a total of $5.5 trillion in tax cuts, with most of those benefits going to working families, small businesses and who? The family farmer. The estimated value of the tax cuts is actually $1.5 trillion for families and businesses because of cuts in deductions and the use of other steps to generate offsetting tax revenue. We have been working every day to DELIVER for Americas Farmers just as they work every day to deliver FOR US. #AFBF18 pic.twitter.com/QDH7fvFkZ7 Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 8, 2018 From Nashville, Trump traveled to Atlanta to watch Alabamas Crimson Tide and Georgias Bulldogs face off Monday night in the College Football Playoff National Championship. We are fighting for our farmers, for our country, and for our GREAT AMERICAN FLAG. We want our flag respected - and we want our NATIONAL ANTHEM respected also! pic.twitter.com/16eOLXg6Fi Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 8, 2018 Before departing for the game, Trump referenced his ongoing defense of the American flag and the national anthem, saying there was enough space for people to express their views. We love our flag and we love our anthem, and we want to keep it that way, he said. Facebook
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Trump tweet hails drop in unemployment rate for African Americans By Associated Press President Trump touted a drop in the unemployment rate for African Americans on Monday in a tweet. African American unemployment is the lowest ever recorded in our country. The Hispanic unemployment rate dropped a full point in the last year and is close to the lowest in recorded history. Dems did nothing for you but get your vote! #NeverForget @foxandfriends Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 8, 2018 The rate fell to 6.8% in December, the lowest level since the government began tracking such data in 1972. The reasons range from a greater number of black Americans with college degrees to a growing need for employers in a tight job market to widen the pool of people they hire from. Trump also hailed the development via Twitter on Saturday. His latest tweet on the topic came about an hour after it was discussed during an episode of Fox & Friends, according to Mediaite. Facebook
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Trump talks up the economy and dresses down the media in Sunday tweets With President Trump cheering from the sidelines, the White House on Sunday pressed its defense of the presidents fitness to govern, as fired former aide Stephen K. Bannon reversed course and apologized for his role in a new books explosive portrait of Trump. The presidents critics, meanwhile, said Trumps stream of taunts and insults in response to the book Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House, released last week served only to underscore the authors unsettling portrayal of Trumps year-old presidency, depicting a leader whose own aides consider him childish, ignorant and dangerously erratic. Trump provided more ammunition Sunday morning, as he continued to attack the book via Twitter while preparing to depart Camp David for the White House: Leaving Camp David for the White House. Great meetings with the Cabinet and Military on many very important subjects including Border Security & the desperately needed Wall, the ever increasing Drug and Opioid Problem, Infrastructure, Military, Budget, Trade and DACA. Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 7, 2018 Ive had to put up with the Fake News from the first day I announced that I would be running for President. Now I have to put up with a Fake Book, written by a totally discredited author. Ronald Reagan had the same problem and handled it well. So will I! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 7, 2018 The most vehement defense of Trump on Sunday came from senior advisor Stephen Miller, a onetime Bannon acolyte who distanced himself from his former mentor. In a combative appearance Sunday on CNNs State of the Union, Miller called the book grotesque and writer Michael Wolff the garbage author of a garbage book. Trump is known to closely monitor aides televised performances in putting forth his case, and he gleefully weighed in within moments of Millers televised clash with host Jake Tapper. CNN has long been a particular target of Trumps ire. Jake Tapper of Fake News CNN just got destroyed in his interview with Stephen Miller of the Trump Administration. Watch the hatred and unfairness of this CNN flunky! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 7, 2018 Trumps reaction, however, seemed to bolster Tappers on-air depiction of Miller as using his appearance on the show to play to the president rather than addressing questions put to him. I get it theres one viewer that you care about, the host said exasperatedly after Miller turned the discussion repeatedly to negative news coverage of the president while deflecting specific queries. Later on Twitter, Trump took up two themes that have been prevalent on his social media feeds recently. The president again went after the news media, tweeting that the recipients of his self-proclaimed most dishonest & corrupt media awards of the year, which he promised earlier in the week to announce on Monday, would actually be revealed the following Wednesday: The Fake News Awards, those going to the most corrupt & biased of the Mainstream Media, will be presented to the losers on Wednesday, January 17th, rather than this coming Monday. The interest in, and importance of, these awards is far greater than anyone could have anticipated! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 7, 2018 Trump later lauded a New York Post opinion piece that compared him favorably with his predecessor, President Obama, as well as Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton. In quoting the op-ed, Trump initally misspelled consequential as consensual, but he deleted those tweets and re-sent the messages. His is turning out to be an enormously consequential presidency. So much so that, despite my own frustration over his missteps, there has never been a day when I wished Hillary Clinton were president. Not one. Indeed, as Trumps accomplishments accumulate, the mere thought of... Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 8, 2018 ...Clinton in the WH, doubling down on Barack Obamas failed policies, washes away any doubts that America made the right choice. This was truly a change election and the changes Trump is bringing are far-reaching & necessary. Thank you Michael Goodwin! https://t.co/4fHNcx2Ydg Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 8, 2018 Trump also continued talking up the economy, which has been enjoying a period of strong gains. The Stock Market has been creating tremendous benefits for our country in the form of not only Record Setting Stock Prices, but present and future Jobs, Jobs, Jobs. Seven TRILLION dollars of value created since our big election win! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 7, 2018 In addition to Miller, other senior administration officials made the rounds of Sunday news talk shows to decry the claims made in Wolffs book. CIA Director Mike Pompeo said Wolffs characterization of Trump as averse to digesting classified briefing material was ludicrous, and the ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, insisted that that those around Trump love their country and respect their president. Read More This post contains reporting from Times staff writer Laura King. Facebook
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Responding to book that mocks his intelligence, Trump tweets hes like, really smart By Tracy Wilkinson President Trump declared himself a very stable genius on Twitter on Saturday and later in a televised news conference called the author of a book that questioned his mental fitness a fraud. His comments came on a bone-cold day at Camp David during a weekend retreat with top administration officials and Republican congressional leaders strategizing on the years legislative agenda, including matters such as infrastructure, immigration, welfare reform and national security. Now that Russian collusion, after one year of intense study, has proven to be a total hoax on the American public, the Democrats and their lapdogs, the Fake News Mainstream Media, are taking out the old Ronald Reagan playbook and screaming mental stability and intelligence..... Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 6, 2018 ....Actually, throughout my life, my two greatest assets have been mental stability and being, like, really smart. Crooked Hillary Clinton also played these cards very hard and, as everyone knows, went down in flames. I went from VERY successful businessman, to top T.V. Star..... Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 6, 2018 ....to President of the United States (on my first try). I think that would qualify as not smart, but genius....and a very stable genius at that! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 6, 2018 Still, Trumps explosive rebuttal to author Michael Wolffs claims not only opened the day, but it also ensured the presidents capability to fill the highest office in the land was a topic that would not go away. In his early-morning tweets, Trump said two of his greatest assets have been mental stability, and being, like, really smart. He noted that his former Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton, played these cards [about competence] very hard and, as everyone knows, went down in flames. I went from VERY successful businessman, to top T.V. Star to President of the United States (on my first try). Read More Facebook
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In morning tweets, Trump touts job numbers and takes digs at news media By Associated Press President Trump used Twitter on Saturday morning to tout a drop in the unemployment rate for African Americans. He also used the tweets as an opportunity to take digs at media outlets whose past coverage he has found to be critical. The African American unemployment rate fell to 6.8%, the lowest rate in 45 years. I am so happy about this News! And, in the Washington Post (of all places), headline states, Trumps first year jobs numbers were very, very good. Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 6, 2018 The unemployment rate for African Americans fell to 6.8% in December, the lowest level since the government began tracking such data in 1972. The reasons range from a greater number of black Americans with college degrees to a growing need for employers in a tight job market to widen the pool of people they hire from. Still, the rate for black workers remains well above those for whites and some other groups, something experts attribute in large part to decades of discrimination and disadvantages. Robust job creation has lowered unemployment for all Americans. U.S. employers added nearly 2.1 million jobs in 2017 the seventh straight year that hiring has topped 2 million. In his tweet, Trump praised a report that noted the numbers, touting the fact that it appeared in the Washington Post (of all places). Minutes later, Trump renewed his attack on an ABC News reporter who was suspended last month after filing an erroneous report on Michael Flynn, Trumps former national security advisor. Brian Ross, the reporter who made a fraudulent live newscast about me that drove the Stock Market down 350 points (billions of dollars), was suspended for a month but is now back at ABC NEWS in a lower capacity. He is no longer allowed to report on Trump. Should have been fired! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 6, 2018 The reporter, Brian Ross, was reportedly reassigned within ABC News upon returning from his unpaid suspension. But on Saturday, Trump wrote that he should have been fired. Trumps tweets came hours before he was set to host congressional Republicans and administration officials at Camp David. The meeting scheduled to begin at midmorning Saturday was expected to touch on the budget, infrastructure, immigration, welfare reform and the shape of the midterm election this fall. Facebook
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Trump commends Sen. Rand Paul after he proposes eliminating all U.S. aid to Pakistan President Trump commended Sen. Rand Paul after the Kentucky Republican announced plans to introduce legislation that would eliminate all U.S. aid to Pakistan. Trump tweeted Friday night: Good idea Rand! https://t.co/55sqUDiC0s Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 6, 2018 On Thursday, the Trump administration announced it was suspending security assistance to Islamabad until the country moves aggressively against local militants who have attacked U.S. troops in neighboring Afghanistan. Trump has repeatedly expressed frustration at the apparent inability of Pakistani authorities to rein in militants who cross out of the countrys rugged tribal areas to attack U.S. troops in Afghanistan. Read More This post contains reporting from Times staff writer Tracy Wilkinson. Facebook
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Trump continues to lash out at Sloppy Steve Bannon in tweets on tell-all book By Associated Press President Trump is praising a major Republican donor family for distancing themselves from his former advisor Steve Bannon. Trump tweeted Friday: The Mercer Family recently dumped the leaker known as Sloppy Steve Bannon. Smart! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 5, 2018 Trump has continued to lash out at Bannon over an explosive new book that quoted his former aide as questioning Trumps competence and describing a June 2016 meeting at Trump Tower among Donald Trump Jr., Trump campaign aides and a Russian lawyer as treasonous and unpatriotic. On Thursday, billionaire GOP donor Rebekah Mercer issued a statement distancing her family from Bannon. Mercer is a co-owner of Breitbart, the populist website Bannon helps run. I support President Trump and the platform upon which he was elected, Mercer said. My family and I have not communicated with Steve Bannon in many months and have provided no financial support to his political agenda, nor do we support his recent actions and statements. The book, Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House, quickly shot atop Amazons best-seller list, and the publisher moved up its release date by four days, to Friday. Trump took up the topic again on Twitter on Friday night, denouncing both Bannon and the books author, Michael Wolff, in starkly personal terms: Michael Wolff is a total loser who made up stories in order to sell this really boring and untruthful book. He used Sloppy Steve Bannon, who cried when he got fired and begged for his job. Now Sloppy Steve has been dumped like a dog by almost everyone. Too bad! https://t.co/mEeUhk5ZV9 Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 6, 2018 Trumps message linked to a meme depicting a parody book cover titled, Liar and Phony, that featured a photo of Wolff and disparaging quotes about the author. In a tweet sent earlier Friday morning, Trump suggested the book was intended to serve as a distraction from the FBIs investigation into possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia, which Trump wrote is proving to be a total hoax. Well, now that collusion with Russia is proving to be a total hoax and the only collusion is with Hillary Clinton and the FBI/Russia, the Fake News Media (Mainstream) and this phony new book are hitting out at every new front imaginable. They should try winning an election. Sad! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 5, 2018 That came amid reports that Trump directed his White House counsel to tell Atty. Gen. Jeff Sessions to not recuse himself from the Justice Departments Russia investigation. Trumps effort to keep Sessions, a vocal and loyal supporter of his election bid, in charge of an investigation into his campaign offers special counsel Robert Mueller yet another avenue to explore as his prosecutors work to untangle potential evidence of obstruction. Read More Facebook
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Trump praises the economy ahead of meetings at Camp David By Associated Press President Trump is praising the strength of the U.S. economy ahead of meetings at Camp David with congressional Republicans. Trump tweeted early Friday: Dow goes from 18,589 on November 9, 2016, to 25,075 today, for a new all-time Record. Jumped 1000 points in last 5 weeks, Record fastest 1000 point move in history. This is all about the Make America Great Again agenda! Jobs, Jobs, Jobs. Six trillion dollars in value created! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 5, 2018 The president also told reporters on the South Lawn that the tax cuts are really kicking in after Congress passed a package of tax cuts at the end of 2017. And the president praised the December jobs report, which found U.S. employers added 148,000 jobs in December and the unemployment rate stayed at 4.1%, the lowest level since 2000. The modest but steady pace of hiring is a reassuring sign for investors who have been buoyed by the just-passed Republican tax plan and have been sending stock market indexes roaring to uncharted heights. The president is meeting with Republican congressional leaders and members of his Cabinet on Friday and Saturday to discuss the 2018 agenda. Read More Facebook
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Trump tweets as Dow crashes through 25,000 By Associated Press President Trump dispatched a congratulatory tweet as the Dow Jones industrial average rose above the 25,000-point mark Thursday, just five weeks after its first close above 24,000. Dow just crashes through 25,000. Congrats! Big cuts in unnecessary regulations continuing. Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 4, 2018 After the Dow closed above 25,000, Trump shared a graphic depicting the stock indexs record-setting rise. MAKING AMERICA GREAT AGAIN! pic.twitter.com/iONbr1DkVk Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 5, 2018 Later in the day, the president was back on Twitter, complaining that news outlets had barely covered the stock market milestone. He suggested that the strength of the economy would be the biggest story on earth, had it unfolded during the presidency of his predecessor. The Fake News Media barely mentions the fact that the Stock Market just hit another New Record and that business in the U.S. is booming...but the people know! Can you imagine if O was president and had these numbers - would be biggest story on earth! Dow now over 25,000. Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 5, 2018 The Dow broke past 1,000-point barriers in 2017 on its way to a 25% gain for the year, as an eight-year rally since the Great Recession continued to confound skeptics. Strong global economic growth and good prospects for higher company earnings have analysts predicting more gains, although the market may not stay as calm as it has been recently. The Dow has made a rapid trip since it reached 24,000 points Nov. 30, partly on enthusiasm over passage of the Republican-backed tax package, which could boost company profits this year with across-the-board cuts to corporate taxes. Read More Facebook
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Trump reacts to Fire and Fury book in tweet lashing out at author and Sloppy Steve President Trump lashed out at the author of a soon-to-be-released book about the chaotic first year of his presidency Thursday night. In a tweet, Trump called Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House, a phony book and claimed that hed never spoken to its author, Michael Wolff. Look at this guys past and watch what happens to him and Sloppy Steve! Trump wrote. He appeared to be referring to former White House chief strategist Stephen K. Bannon, whose stunning criticisms of Trump and his circle figure prominently in the title. I authorized Zero access to White House (actually turned him down many times) for author of phony book! I never spoke to him for book. Full of lies, misrepresentations and sources that dont exist. Look at this guys past and watch what happens to him and Sloppy Steve! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 5, 2018 Trumps tweet came hours after he had his lawyer demand that Henry Holt & Co. and Wolff stop publication the book. Instead, the publisher expedited the books release to Friday, four days before it was slated to hit bookstore shelves, in response to unprecedented demand. Published excerpts on Wednesday and Thursday whetted that appetite and roiled Washington. Bannons comments, including that it was treasonous and unpatriotic for Trumps son Donald Trump Jr., son-in-law Jared Kushner and campaign manager Paul Manafort to have met in 2016 with Russians said to have dirt on Democratic rival Hillary Clinton, prompted Trump on Wednesday to rebuke his former advisor, saying Bannon had lost his mind. Read More This post contains reporting from Times staff writers Brian Bennett and Alex Wigglesworth. Facebook
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Trump thanks senators who attended meeting on immigration President Trump tweeted thanks to Republican senators who attended a meeting about possible immigration legislation on Thursday. In his message, Trump also listed his top priorities when it comes to any type of overhaul of the nations immigration system. Thank you to the great Republican Senators who showed up to our mtg on immigration reform. We must BUILD THE WALL, stop illegal immigration, end chain migration & cancel the visa lottery. The current system is unsafe & unfair to the great people of our country - time for change! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 4, 2018 Trumps tweet echoed his remarks at the beginning of Thursdays meeting, when he insisted again that constructing a border wall and overhauling two legal immigration programs must be part of any deal with Democrats to protect the so-called Dreamers from deportation. Two-year deportation protections and work permits given under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program begin to expire March 6 under an executive order. Trump announced in September that he was ending the Obama-era program, but told Congress to draft a law to continue protections for people brought to the country illegally as children a group that has widespread public support. Read More This post contains reporting from Times staff writer Brian Bennett. Facebook
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Trump resumes Twitter war against kneeling NFL players President Trump has resumed his Twitter war against NFL players who kneel during the national anthem to protest social injustice and racial inequality. In a tweet early Thursday, Trump replied to a supporter who shared a meme that appears to depict family members lying on the grave of a fallen soldier with the caption: This is why we stand. Show this picture to the NFL players who still kneel! Trump wrote. So beautiful....Show this picture to the NFL players who still kneel! https://t.co/tJLM1tvbvb Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 4, 2018 The president has denounced players who kneel during the anthem in previous tweets. Hes also called for the firing of players who do so. His latest message came amid news that the NFL finished the regular season with TV ratings that fell nearly 10% below the previous season. Analysts attribute the drop to controversies facing the league, as well as changing viewing habits and a possible saturation point in the number of games available. Read More This post contains reporting from Times staff writers Stephen Battaglio and Alex Wigglesworth. Facebook
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Trump credits himself with facilitating talks between North and South Korea By Associated Press President Trump says his tough stance on nuclear weapons on the Korean peninsula is helping push North Korea and South Korea to talk. Trump tweeted early Thursday: With all of the failed experts weighing in, does anybody really believe that talks and dialogue would be going on between North and South Korea right now if I wasnt firm, strong and willing to commit our total might against the North. Fools, but talks are a good thing! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 4, 2018 That assertion is in conflict with some of the presidents own statements. Last year, he ridiculed Secretary of State Rex Tillerson for talking about negotiations with the North. This week, Trump seemed open to the possibility of an inter-Korean dialogue after North Korean leader Kim Jong Un made a rare overture toward South Korea in a New Years Day address. But Trumps ambassador to the United Nations insisted that talks wont be meaningful unless the North is getting rid of its nuclear weapons. The overture about talks came after Trump and Kim traded more bellicose claims about their nuclear weapons. In his New Years Day address, Kim repeated fiery nuclear threats against the United States. Kim said he has a nuclear button on his office desk and warned that the whole territory of the U.S. is within the range of our nuclear strike. Trump mocked that assertion Tuesday evening in a tweet. Facebook
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After disbanding his vote fraud panel, Trump still says voting system is rigged By Brian Bennett One day after disbanding his troubled voter fraud commission without any findings of fraud, President Trump continued to call the U.S. voting system rigged and said states should require that Americans have voter-identification cards. In two tweets on Thursday morning, Trump blamed the commissions failure on the lack of cooperation from mostly Democrat States that refused to hand over voter rolls because they know that many people are voting illegally. However, voting supervisors in Republican-led states refused as well, objecting on privacy and other grounds. Many mostly Democrat States refused to hand over data from the 2016 Election to the Commission On Voter Fraud. They fought hard that the Commission not see their records or methods because they know that many people are voting illegally. System is rigged, must go to Voter I.D. Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 4, 2018 As Americans, you need identification, sometimes in a very strong and accurate form, for almost everything you do.....except when it comes to the most important thing, VOTING for the people that run your country. Push hard for Voter Identification! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 4, 2018 Despite Trumps assertions, analysts have not found evidence of widespread voter fraud. Trump created the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity in May after alleging, without proof, that millions of illegal votes were cast for Hillary Clinton in the 2016 election. Trump was elected after winning a majority in the electoral college, but the nationwide count showed Clinton received nearly 3 million more votes. The commission sought personal data on voters across the country and faced mounting lawsuits in recent months over privacy concerns. Read More Facebook
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Trump touts another good day for stocks, credits tax cut By Associated Press President Trump touted another good day for the stock market Wednesday in a tweet. Stock Market had another good day but, now that the Tax Cut Bill has passed, we have tremendous upward potential. Dow just short of 25,000, a number that few thought would be possible this soon into my administration. Also, unemployment went down to 4.1%. Only getting better! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 4, 2018 Big gains for technology and healthcare stocks helped U.S. indexes set records again Wednesday. Some analysts attributed the surge to investor enthusiasm for Trumps $1.5-trillion tax cut. All told, Wall Street analysts estimate the tax package should boost earnings for companies in the Standard & Poors 500 index by roughly 8% this year. Thats much more generous than the average tax cut of 1.6% that middle-class families will receive, according to the Tax Policy Center. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 4, 2018 The public has been less enthusiastic about the tax law. A Monmouth University poll last month found that nearly half of Americans disapproved of it, with only 26% in support. Still, as Trump also noted on Twitter, some workers have seen a benefit: So far, dozens of companies have announced bonuses and higher minimum wages as a result of the tax cut. AT&T, Comcast, Bank of America, and American Airlines have all pledged to pay $1,000 bonuses to their employees. Some 40 U.S. companies have responded to President Trumps tax cut and reform victory in Congress last year by handing out bonuses up to $2,000, increases in 401k matches and spending on charity, a much higher number than previously known. https://t.co/bmWrwWzxMR Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 4, 2018 Investors also appear less concerned than many politicians about how the additional profits will be used. The Trump administration says it expects companies will plow much of the extra profit back into their businesses, purchasing more software, machinery, and other equipment. Those investments will make workers more productive and provide a key boost to the economys long-run growth. They should also boost wages and salaries for employees. Opponents of the tax law respond that companies are more likely to pass the windfall on to shareholders in the form of higher dividend payments and share buybacks, which raise the price of those shares still in investors hands. Previous cuts in corporate tax rates, in the United States and overseas, havent always led to higher wages. For Wall Street, its all good, at least in the short run. Most analysts take the view that either way, companies and the economy will benefit. Facebook
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Trump reacts to death of Mormon Church president By Associated Press President Trump mourned the death of Mormon Church leader Thomas S. Monson on Wednesday evening. Trump tweeted a link to a statement in which he said that Monson demonstrated wisdom, inspired leadership, and great compassion and delivered a message of optimism, forgiveness, and faith. Melania and I are deeply saddened by the death of Thomas S. Monson, a beloved President of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints...https://t.co/ETD3fWtfU3 Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 4, 2018 A church bishop at the age of 22, Monson became the youngest church apostle ever in 1963 at the age of 36. He served as a counselor for three church presidents before assuming the role of the top leader of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in February 2008. After a life of church service, Monson died Tuesday at his home in Salt Lake City, according to church spokesman Eric Hawkins. He was 90. Read More Facebook
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Trump tweets that Iranian protesters will see great U.S. support at the appropriate time By Associated Press President Trump continued to express support for Irans anti-government protesters on Wednesday. In a tweet, Trump commended the protesters and pledged that the United States will support them at the appropriate time. Such respect for the people of Iran as they try to take back their corrupt government. You will see great support from the United States at the appropriate time! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 3, 2018 Trumps tweet Wednesday morning came as Iranian Ambassador Gholamali Khoshroo sent a letter to United Nations officials complaining that Washington was intervening in a grotesque way in Irans internal affairs. The President and Vice-President of the United States, in their numerous absurd tweets, incited Iranians to engage in disruptive acts, the ambassador wrote to the U.N. Security Council president and U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres. The U.S. didnt immediately respond to the letter, which maintains that Washington has crossed every limit in flouting rules and principles of international law governing the civilized conduct of international relations. At least 21 people have been killed and hundreds arrested in Iran during a week of anti-government protests and unrest over economic woes and official corruption. Meanwhile, tens of thousands of people took part in counter-demonstrations Wednesday backing the clerically overseen government, which has said enemies of Iran are fomenting the protests. Trump has unleashed a series of tweets in recent days backing the protesters, saying Iran is failing at every level and declaring that it is time for change in the Islamic Republic. Facebook
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Trump congratulates Sen. Orrin Hatch upon news of his retirement By Associated Press President Trump congratulated Sen. Orrin Hatch for an absolutely incredible career upon news of Hatchs impending retirement. In a tweet Tuesday afternoon, Trump called Hatch a tremendous supporter and wrote that he will be greatly missed in the Senate. Congratulations to Senator Orrin Hatch on an absolutely incredible career. He has been a tremendous supporter, and I will never forget the (beyond kind) statements he has made about me as President. He is my friend and he will be greatly missed in the U.S. Senate! pic.twitter.com/0VjzLEeHTl Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 2, 2018 Hatchs decision to retire from the Senate after four decades lets the Utah Republican walk away at the height of his power after helping to push through an overhaul of the tax code and persuading Trump to downsize two national monuments. Retirement also preserves the 83-year-olds legacy by allowing him to avoid a bruising reelection battle that would have broken his promise not to seek an eighth term. Read More Facebook
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Trump tweet exaggerates progress in improving veterans care By Associated Press President Trump played up tremendous progress in improving care for veterans in his first year on Tuesday in a tweet. His message linked to an Instagram video describing eight accomplishments that show Trump is fighting for our veterans. But it overstates the impact of these steps. We will not rest until all of Americas GREAT VETERANS can receive the care they so richly deserve. Tremendous progress has been made in a short period of time. Keep up the great work @SecShulkin @DeptVetAffairs! https://t.co/ir25vW15hx pic.twitter.com/OtuzIgxMn6 Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 2, 2018 Of the eight achievements cited, two are ceremonial proclamations recognizing National Veterans and Military Families Month and National Pearl Harbor Remembrance Day. Two are pieces of legislation that extended the troubled Veterans Choice program on a temporary basis. This became necessary because the Trump administration repeatedly miscalculated the amount of taxpayer dollars available to pay for care from private doctors outside the Veterans Affairs system when veterans had to endure long waits for treatment at VA medical centers. The departments poor budget planning caught lawmakers off guard. A fifth claim involves telehealth, a step letting doctors practice medicine across state lines using digital technology. Announced in August, it has yet to take full effect because a proposed VA regulation hasnt been completed. The VA wants authority to practice across state lines to come from legislation, not a regulation. On Wednesday, the Senate approved a telehealth measure that now goes to the House. A sixth claim refers to legislation that streamlines the appeals process for disability compensation claims within the VA. This step has had limited effect so far because it applies to new disability claims, not the 470,000 pending claims. The last two initiatives make it easier for the VA to discipline employees. The department has pointed to more than 1,300 employees who have been fired under Trumps watch. Because their infractions are not detailed in public documents, the effect on veterans care is not fully known. Facebook
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Trump unleashes his first tweetstorm of 2018 By Noah Bierman President Trump clearly didnt resolve to change his Twitter habits this year. With nine disparate tweets over three hours on Tuesday morning, the first working day of 2018, Trump continued to exploit social media to be the most aggressive commentator in chief in American history. For any other president, his posts would have made for a monumental day of (mis-)statements. Yet for Trump, the series attacks on political foes and media, provocations of foreign leaders and self-praise for events he had nothing to do with was all but unremarkable. His Twitter barrage sent between 7:09 a.m. and 10:16 a.m. reflected a familiar gamut after nearly a year in office: Attacks on political foes: Nearly 14 months after his election, Trump called for the jailing of Huma Abedin, Crooked Hillary Clintons top aid (his misspelling, another occasional feature of Trump tweets). Crooked Hillary Clintons top aid, Huma Abedin, has been accused of disregarding basic security protocols. She put Classified Passwords into the hands of foreign agents. Remember sailors pictures on submarine? Jail! Deep State Justice Dept must finally act? Also on Comey & others Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 2, 2018 In the same tweet, he disparaged the Deep State Justice Dept, headed of course by his appointees, calling on it to act against James B. Comey, the FBI director he fired for investigating the Russia thing. Diplomatic provocations: Trump again called North Korean leader Kim Jong Un Rocket man, ridiculed the volatile nuclear-armed foe for recent military defections and openly speculated about potential talks between North and South Korea. Sanctions and other pressures are beginning to have a big impact on North Korea. Soldiers are dangerously fleeing to South Korea. Rocket man now wants to talk to South Korea for first time. Perhaps that is good news, perhaps not - we will see! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 2, 2018 Perhaps that is good news, perhaps not we will see! Trump wrote. Later Tuesday, Trump tweeted: North Korean Leader Kim Jong Un just stated that the Nuclear Button is on his desk at all times. Will someone from his depleted and food starved regime please inform him that I too have a Nuclear Button, but it is a much bigger & more powerful one than his, and my Button works! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 3, 2018 Also later Tuesday, Trump tweeted an attack on Pakistan, his second in as many days, and added a new one against Palestinians: It's not only Pakistan that we pay billions of dollars to for nothing, but also many other countries, and others. As an example, we pay the Palestinians HUNDRED OF MILLIONS OF DOLLARS a year and get no appreciation or respect. They dont even want to negotiate a long overdue... Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 2, 2018 ...peace treaty with Israel. We have taken Jerusalem, the toughest part of the negotiation, off the table, but Israel, for that, would have had to pay more. But with the Palestinians no longer willing to talk peace, why should we make any of these massive future payments to them? Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 2, 2018 Undermining media: Trump offered Congratulations! to A.G. Sulzberger, who took over as publisher of the New York Times this week. The Failing New York Times has a new publisher, A.G. Sulzberger. Congratulations! Here is a last chance for the Times to fulfill the vision of its Founder, Adolph Ochs, to give the news impartially, without fear or FAVOR, regardless of party, sect, or interests involved. Get... Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 2, 2018 ....impartial journalists of a much higher standard, lose all of your phony and non-existent sources, and treat the President of the United States FAIRLY, so that the next time I (and the people) win, you wont have to write an apology to your readers for a job poorly done! GL Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 2, 2018 But the two-part post was really yet another slam against a perceived media foe: Trump said the paper had a last chance to fulfill its journalistic mission, and accused it of relying on phony sources and substandard reporters just days after he granted another exclusive interview to the paper. As a bonus, the tweet contained a recycled falsehood, that the paper apologized after the election for reporting on him unfairly. It didnt. Trump later said on Twitter that he would soon announce the most dishonest & corrupt media awards of the year. Stay tuned! I will be announcing THE MOST DISHONEST & CORRUPT MEDIA AWARDS OF THE YEAR on Monday at 5:00 oclock. Subjects will cover Dishonesty & Bad Reporting in various categories from the Fake News Media. Stay tuned! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 3, 2018 The president also tweeted a quote from Fox Business Networks Lou Dobbs Tonight, which aired a segment praising Trumps first-year accomplishments. Dobbs reportedly joined Trump at Mar-a-Lago on Sunday for a gala to celebrate New Years Eve. President Trump has something now he didnt have a year ago, that is a set of accomplishments that nobody can deny. The accomplishments are there, look at his record, he has had a very significant first year. @LouDobbs Show,David Asman & Ed Rollins Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 3, 2018 Taking credit: Trump congratulated himself for policing the border with Mexico, an area where his policies and anti-immigration rhetoric are believed to have had some effect on reducing illegal crossings. Thank you to Brandon Judd of the National Border Patrol Council for your kind words on how well we are doing at the Border. We will be bringing in more & more of your great folks and will build the desperately needed WALL! @foxandfriends Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 2, 2018 He took credit for employee bonuses by companies after he signed Republican tax cuts into law last month. Companies are giving big bonuses to their workers because of the Tax Cut Bill. Really great! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 2, 2018 But the jaw-dropper was Trump congratulating himself for planes not crashing. Since taking office I have been very strict on Commercial Aviation. Good news - it was just reported that there were Zero deaths in 2017, the best and safest year on record! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 2, 2018 It was the safest year on record worldwide, but the American streak without commercial jet passenger deaths goes back to 2009. Trump, who has promoted deregulation as one of his top accomplishments, has not signed off on any new airline safety regulations. The White House pointed to new security screening of passengers, to electronic devices to prevent terrorist attacks and to Trumps support for privatizing air traffic control a proposal that has gotten nowhere in Congress. Falsehoods: Trump said President Obama, in brokering the 2015 nuclear arms limitation deal with Iran, foolishly gave money to the brutal and corrupt Iranian regime. He didnt. The people of Iran are finally acting against the brutal and corrupt Iranian regime. All of the money that President Obama so foolishly gave them went into terrorism and into their pockets. The people have little food, big inflation and no human rights. The U.S. is watching! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 2, 2018 The nuclear deal, which included major U.S. allies as signators, released Irans own funds that had long been frozen. Trumps art of the deal: When Trump sees a big deal looming, he often blasts the other side to gain leverage, as hes written. This week he resumes a showdown with Democratic lawmakers over funding the government and immigration protections for so-called Dreamers, who were brought to the country illegally as children. Democrats are doing nothing for DACA - just interested in politics. DACA activists and Hispanics will go hard against Dems, will start falling in love with Republicans and their President! We are about RESULTS. Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 2, 2018 Trump, who in September ordered a gradual end of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, sought to shift blame for the resulting controversy, saying Democrats are doing nothing for DACA and are just interested in politics. Trump has insisted that any help for Dreamers be paired with funding for a border wall and a crackdown on legal immigration. Democrats, and some Republicans, are opposed. Read More Facebook
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In tweet, Trump suggests U.S. will withdraw financial assistance to Pakistan By Shashank Bengali Pakistan lashed out Monday after President Trump accused its leaders of lies & deceit and suggested the United States would withdraw financial assistance to the nuclear-armed nation it once saw as a key ally against terrorism. It was the presidents latest broadside against Pakistan after a speech in August in which he demanded its leaders crack down on the safe havens enjoyed by Taliban militants fighting U.S.-backed forces in neighboring Afghanistan. The United States has foolishly given Pakistan more than 33 billion dollars in aid over the last 15 years, and they have given us nothing but lies & deceit, thinking of our leaders as fools. They give safe haven to the terrorists we hunt in Afghanistan, with little help. No more! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 1, 2018 U.S. Ambassador David Hale was summoned to the Foreign Ministry to discuss the presidents statement, U.S. Embassy spokesman Richard Snelsire said. Pakistan lodged a strongly worded protest and asked for clarification about Trumps comments, according to two foreign office officials who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly. Pakistans prime minister, Shahid Khaqan Abbasi, called a Cabinet meeting for Tuesday and a meeting of the National Security Committee on Wednesday to discuss Trumps New Years Day tweet. Read More Facebook
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Trump continues to tweet in support of Iranian protesters By Laura King President Trump expressed renewed support Sunday for protesters in Iran, declaring that people are finally getting wise as to how their money and wealth is being stolen and squandered on terrorism. In a tweet from his Florida estate, Mar-a-Lago, the president said the nationwide economic protests that began on Thursday and have taken on wider political overtones as they have grown in size were a signal that Iranians will not take it any longer. Big protests in Iran. The people are finally getting wise as to how their money and wealth is being stolen and squandered on terrorism. Looks like they will not take it any longer. The USA is watching very closely for human rights violations! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 31, 2017 Trump has tweeted about the protests for three days straight as Iranians took to the streets despite a heavy police presence, tear gas and scores of arrests. The defiance gained urgency after two people were reported shot to death in the city of Dorud, about 200 miles southwest of Tehran. As the conflict escalated, Iranian authorities on Sunday slapped a temporary ban on Instagram and the messaging app Telegram, which were widely used to fan protest fervor. Iran, the Number One State of Sponsored Terror with numerous violations of Human Rights occurring on an hourly basis, has now closed down the Internet so that peaceful demonstrators cannot communicate. Not good! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 31, 2017 Irans leaders already are casting Trumps increasingly effusive expressions of support for the demonstrators as opportunistic meddling and are painting the demonstrators as foreign pawns, adopting a strategy that some analysts say could jeopardize the legitimacy of the nascent antigovernment protests. Read More Facebook
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Trump tweets condolences after Colorado deputies are shot in ambush, one fatally By Associated Press A man fired more than 100 rounds at sheriffs deputies in Colorado early Sunday, killing one and injuring four others, before being fatally shot himself in what authorities called an ambush. Two civilians were also injured. President Trump expressed sorrow, writing on Twitter: My deepest condolences to the victims of the terrible shooting in Douglas County @DCSheriff, and their families. We love our police and law enforcement - God Bless them all! #LESM Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 31, 2017 Douglas County Sheriff Tony Spurlock said deputies came under fire almost
Wait did the president really say, Mission Accomplished? By Marc Olson Some are recalling the last time a president declared Mission accomplished, in May 2003 when George W. Bush was talking about Iraq. (Stephen Jaffe / AFP/Getty Images) President Trump on Saturday morning thanked his allies in a tweet that declared the airstrikes on Syria perfectly executed, but he might have wished hed stopped there. Instead, he ended his message with the phrase, Mission Accomplished! Thats a line that might have a previous president shaking his head. On May 1, 2003, President George W. Bush declared an end to major combat in Iraq under a Mission Accomplished banner aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln. That war, which began in March 2003, grew into a prolonged conflict that didnt end until 2011. In 2008, the White House said it had paid a price for the backdrop. A perfectly executed strike last night. Thank you to France and the United Kingdom for their wisdom and the power of their fine Military. Could not have had a better result. Mission Accomplished! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 14, 2018 Facebook
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Auditor says Pentagon is censoring key data on the war in Afghanistan By Shashank Bengali The Pentagon is blocking the release of data showing how much of Afghanistans territory lies outside government control, censoring a key metric used to gauge progress in the 16-year war, a watchdog agency said Tuesday. The Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, an auditing agency established by Congress, said in its latest report that the Pentagon instructed it not to release unclassified data on how many districts and people are controlled or influenced by insurgent groups. This is the first time SIGAR has been specifically instructed not to release information marked unclassified to the American taxpayer, the head of the agency, John F. Sopko, wrote in a letter. Sopko also said the U.S.-led military coalition, for the first time since 2009, classified information about the size and attrition rates of the Afghan security forces, important indicators of progress in building up army and police forces on which the U.S. already has spent $70 billion since 2002. The decision to withhold more information from congressional oversight and the public comes amid growing violence in Afghanistan and an intensifying combat mission involving a greater number of American troops. Following a series of bombings in Kabul that left at least 136 people dead in 10 days, President Trump signaled on Monday that he was focused on trying to win the conflict militarily, saying, We dont want to talk with the Taliban. But data released by SIGAR since 2015 have shown how the insurgents have gained ground against Afghan security forces. In its previous quarterly report, the watchdog said that only 57% of Afghanistans 407 districts were under Afghan government control or influence as of August 2017, the lowest level of control since it began tracking the statistic in December 2015. The steady decline in government control should cause even more concern about its disappearance from public disclosure and discussion, Sopko wrote. The watchdog also accused the Pentagon of overstating the impact of its efforts to combat drug cultivation and trafficking, among the Talibans main sources of revenue. The Pentagon touted airstrikes that destroyed 25 drug labs in November and December, saying it eliminated nearly $100 million of Taliban revenue. The labs being destroyed are cheap and easy to replace, SIGAR said. According to some estimates, they only take three or four days to replace. Facebook
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Women journalists shunted to rear for Pences visit to Western Wall By Noga Tarnopolsky The view from the womens section. (Noga Tarnopolsky / Los Angeles Times) Vice-President Mike Pences 48-hour visit to Israel stumbled into a public storm Tuesday when female reporters covering his final stop at Jerusalems Western Wall were penned behind four rows of their male colleagues. White House officials told stunned journalists that the arrangement emanated from a request made by the Western Wall rabbi, Shmuel Rabinowitz, and followed Western Wall rules. Some women journalists said they could not recall such treatment in the past. In a statement to Israels Channel 10 news, the Western Wall Heritage Foundation said it was exactly as it was during the visit of the U.S. president to the Western Wall last May. Later in the day, in a statement to the newspaper Haaretz, the foundation blamed the United States embassy in Tel Aviv and Israeli security officials for the segregation, and announced they would reexamine the way they handle such events. Women who covered previous VIP visits said the Pence arrangements were significantly more onerous than previous visits, when male and female journalists were separated but not offered substantially different work conditions. LIVE coverage of our male colleagues granted access to cover VP at Western Wall as we are penned into #PenceFence pic.twitter.com/k3svkxfQsa Noga Tarnopolsky (@NTarnopolsky) January 23, 2018 The arrangement reflected procedures at the Western Wall, Judaisms holiest site, where on regular days, men have access to two thirds of the area available for prayer. Tal Schneider, the diplomatic analyst for Globes, a financial newspaper, protested that the separation of men and women may be valid for the requirements of Orthodox prayer, but no one is praying here. We are here to work. I dont appreciate being restricted in my ability to work because I am a woman, she said. The discriminatory attitude towards women is infuriating and is unbefitting of a modern country. Yael Freidson, the Jerusalem affairs correspondent for Yediot Ahronot, Israels widest circulation newspaper, said she worried that her editors could choose male colleagues for the next assignment, knowing they would have better access. Before Pence arrived, journalists were herded onto a specially constructed platform in the middle of the Western Walls esplanade, with women guided to the right behind a white fence, and men, many carrying cameras, directed to the left, where they had more than double the space. Towards the end of the vice presidents 10-minute visit, male journalists were permitted into the VIP tent where he received a gift from Rabinowitz, while the women remained in their enclosure. None of the men publicly protested the treatment of their female colleagues. Israels Association of Women Journalists filed a formal complaint with Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked, herself a woman. Facebook
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Former Sheriff Joe Arpaio, after his pardon from Trump, says hell run for Senate in Arizona By Kurtis Lee (Mary Altaffer / Associated Press) (Mary Altaffer / Associated Press) Former Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio, who last year was pardoned by President Trump in a case stemming from his enforcement tactics aimed at immigrants, announced Tuesday he will run for the open Senate seat in his home state. I am running for the U.S. Senate from the Great State of Arizona, for one unwavering reason: to support the agenda and policies of President Donald Trump in his mission to Make America Great Again, Arpaio, 85, said on Twitter. Hell enter a Republican primary for the seat being vacated by Republican Sen. Jeff Flake. Last summer, Trump pardoned Arpaio, who was convicted in July of criminal contempt for violating a federal court order to stop racially profiling Latinos. It was Arpaios roughly quarter-century as sheriff that gave him a national reputation for his tough treatment of people suspected of being in the country illegally. Repeated court rulings against his office for civil rights violations cost local taxpayers tens of millions of dollars. In the early 1990s, Arpaio directed construction of a tent city for immigration detainees, a measure he said was intended both to alleviate overcrowding and to underscore his aggressive enforcement measures. But it was open to the burning Arizona sun, and drew widespread criticism. After Trump entered the presidential race in July 2015, Arpaio invited him to Phoenix to talk about a crackdown on illegal immigration. He endorsed Trump just before the first votes in the Iowa caucuses in 2016 and frequently spoke out on behalf of Trumps campaign. Facebook
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President Trump ends controversial voter fraud commission By Kurtis Lee President Trump signed an executive order late Wednesday ending the voter fraud commission he launched last year as the panel faces a flurry of lawsuits and criticism from Democrats and Republicans alike. Trump signed the order disbanding the commission rather than engage in endless legal battles at taxpayer expense, White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said in a statement. The Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity, created by executive order in May with the stated goal of restoring confidence and integrity in the electoral process, has faced a barrage of lawsuits in recent months over privacy concerns, as the commission sought personal data on voters across the country. Read More Facebook
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Congress returns to work with slimmer GOP majority to accomplish Trumps agenda By Lisa Mascaro Congress returns to work this week with unfinished business on spending, immigration and other crucial issues, but with an even narrower GOP majority that will make it tougher to move on President Trumps agenda. The House and Senate will convene Wednesday, swearing in the newly elected Democratic senator from Alabama, Doug Jones, and Minnesotas Tina Smith to replace a fellow Democrat, Sen. Al Franken, who is resigning as the latest high-profile public figure sidelined by allegations of sexual misconduct. The change gives Republicans only a one-seat margin in the Senate. Trump, fresh off passage of the GOP tax cuts bill, is pushing lawmakers to pivot quickly on his new year priorities of infrastructure investment and immigration, as well as his foreign policy agenda. But another legislative victory seems far off. Republicans have struggled to hold their majority together and Congress first must tackle critical stalled agenda items that leaders punted to 2018. Read More Facebook
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Trump threatens to cut off U.S. aid to Palestinians By Tracy Wilkinson President Trump on Tuesday angrily threatened to cut off U.S. aid to Palestinians as punishment for what he called their failure to show appreciation or respect to the United States. Writing on Twitter, the president compared the Palestinians to Pakistan, a nuclear-armed ally that abruptly drew his ire this week and a similar threat to drastically curtail aid. He accused the Palestinians of recalcitrance in what he described as their refusal to negotiate a peace deal with Israel. Palestinian officials have said they can no longer use Washington as a broker to restart peace talks with Israel following Trumps Dec. 6 decision to overturn decades of U.S. policy and recognize the disputed city of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, and ultimately to move the U.S. Embassy there. The Palestinians also claim part of Jerusalem as the capital of an eventual independent state. Until now, the United States and most of the world agreed the citys political status was a matter to settle in final peace talks. The United Nations General Assembly overwhelmingly condemned any effort to recognize Jerusalem as Israels capital, and the Palestinian leadership said it would not meet with Vice President Mike Pence, who had planned a trip to the region. That trip is on hold. [W]e pay the Palestinians HUNDRED [sic] OF MILLIONS OF DOLLARS a year and get no appreciation or respect, Trump wrote on Twitter. [W]ith the Palestinians no longer willing to talk peace, why should we make any of these massive future payments to them? In response to Trumps tweet, Hanan Ashrawi, a senior Palestinian official, issued a statement saying: Palestinian rights are not for sale. By recognizing Occupied Jerusalem as Israels capital Donald Trump has not only violated international law, but he has also singlehandedly destroyed the very foundations of peace and condoned Israels illegal annexation of the city. We will not be blackmailed, she said. President Trump has sabotaged our search for peace, freedom and justice. Now he dares to blame the Palestinians for the consequences of his own irresponsible actions! The United States does not pay large amounts of money directly to the Palestinian Authority, the government that rules over parts of the Palestinian West Bank. Instead, most money goes to the U.N., refugee or aid agencies and even Israel to pay for roads, welfare, schools, security and other Palestinian projects. The U.S. ambassador to the U.N., Nikki Haley, said Tuesday that the administration was planning to cut off one of those organizations, the U.N. Relief and Works Agency, until the Palestinians return to the negotiating table. UNRWA, which receives around $300 million annually from the U.S., for years has been the lifeline to hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees living in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. It was not clear if Haley was threatening to cut all U.S. support for the agency. Special correspondent Noga Tarnopolsky in Jerusalem contributed to this report. Facebook
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The White House stops short of calling for government overthrow in Iran By Brian Bennett President Trump wants Iran to give its citizens basic human rights and stop being a state sponsor of terror, his top spokeswoman said, but the White House stopped short of calling for a change of government in Tehran. If they want to do that through current leadership, if thats possible, OK, White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders told reporters. Sanders praised the organic popular uprising, which she said the widespread protests in Iran represented. The protests grew out of years of years of mismanagement, corruption, and foreign adventurism have eroded the Iranian peoples trust in their leaders, she said. Earlier Tuesday, Trump called Irans government brutal and corrupt and wrote in a tweet: The people have little food, big inflation and no human rights. The U.S. is watching! Trump also blamed President Obama for foolishly giving Iran money that he said went to fund terrorism. The money he referred to were funds belonging to Iran that had been frozen by the U.S. and were released as part of the deal in 2015, which blocked Irans development of nuclear weapons. The people of Iran are finally acting against the brutal and corrupt Iranian regime. All of the money that President Obama so foolishly gave them went into terrorism and into their pockets. The people have little food, big inflation and no human rights. The U.S. is watching! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 2, 2018 Facebook
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Retirement of Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch clears the way for a Mitt Romney revival By David Lauter The retirement of Utahs senior senator, Orrin G. Hatch, opens the way for a widely expected Senate bid by Mitt Romney, the Republicans 2012 presidential nominee and a frequent critic of President Trump. Although Romney previously served for two terms as governor of Massachusetts (and was raised in Michigan, where his father was governor and his mother ran for the Senate), he comes from a prominent Mormon family with strong ties to Utah. He also served as chief executive of the 2002 Salt Lake City Olympics. Hes viewed as a strong candidate for the Senate seat. Romneys criticisms of Trump, however, could prompt a challenge in a Republican primary. Trump was widely reported to have tried to convince Hatch to run for a seventh term, in part to head off a Romney candidacy. Last month, Romney and Trump were on opposite sides of one of the biggest political fights of the fall the battle over the Senate seat from Alabama. The president strongly supported Roy Moore, the Republican candidate who had been accused of sexual misconduct by several women. Romney called Moore a stain on the GOP. Roy Moore in the US Senate would be a stain on the GOP and on the nation. Leigh Corfman and other victims are courageous heroes. No vote, no majority is worth losing our honor, our integrity. Mitt Romney (@MittRomney) December 4, 2017 On Tuesday, Romney tweeted praise for Hatch, but did not immediately reveal his own plans. I join the people of Utah in thanking my friend, Senator Orrin Hatch for his more than forty years of service to our great state and nation. Read my full statement: https://t.co/YwjUpjez5y Mitt Romney (@MittRomney) January 2, 2018 Facebook
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U.S. calls on Iran to unblock social media sites amid protests By The Associated Press The Trump administration is calling on Irans government to stop blocking Instagram and other popular social media sites as Iranians are demonstrating in the streets. Undersecretary of State Steve Goldstein says the U.S. wants Iran to open these sites. He says Instagram, Telegram and other platforms are legitimate avenues for communication. The United States is encouraging Iranians to use virtual private networks, known as VPNs. Those services create encrypted links between computers and can be used to access blocked websites. Goldstein says the U.S. is still communicating with Iranians in Persian through State Department accounts on Facebook, Twitter and other platforms. He says the U.S. wants to encourage the protesters to continue to fight for whats right. Goldstein says the U.S. has an obligation not to stand by. Read More Facebook
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Trump blasts Democrats in advance of immigration meeting By Brian Bennett The day before a meeting of administration officials and congressional leaders on outstanding legislative business, President Trump accused Democrats of doing nothing to hammer out an immigration deal to protect from deportation people brought to the country illegally as children. Democrats are doing nothing for DACA just interested in politics, Trump wrote in a Tweet on Tuesday morning, referring to the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program by its acronym. Democrats are doing nothing for DACA - just interested in politics. DACA activists and Hispanics will go hard against Dems, will start falling in love with Republicans and their President! We are about RESULTS. Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 2, 2018 House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer along with the Republican leaders, House Speaker Paul D. Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, are scheduled to meet on Wednesday at the Capitol with Trumps legislative director, Marc Short, and budget director, Mick Mulvaney. The White House on Tuesday said the meeting is to discuss separate spending caps on military and domestic programs. Yet the Democrats insist the discussion also must include a variety of legislative issues that Trump and Congress punted into the new year on immigration, the budget, healthcare and more. That stance reflects Democrats leverage: Republicans need Democratic votes to pass a government-funding bill and avert a federal shutdown when the current funding expires Jan. 19. Democrats especially want separate legislation replacing the Obama-era DACA program; Trump in September ordered a phase-out of the program, beginning March 6, and called on Congress to act before then on an alternative way to address the plight of the group. However, Trump has demanded that any alternative must be part of a package including both money for a border wall and immigration limits. Democrats are opposed. Facebook
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Pakistan hits back after Trump accuses its leaders of lies and deceit By Aoun Sahi Pakistan lashed out Monday after President Trump accused its leaders of lies and deceit and suggested the United States would withdraw financial assistance to the nuclear-armed nation it once saw as a key ally against terrorism. U.S. Ambassador David Hale was summoned to the Foreign Ministry to discuss the presidents statement, U.S. Embassy spokesman Richard Snelsire said. Pakistan lodged a strongly worded protest, according to two foreign office officials who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly. Pakistans prime minister, Shahid Abbasi, called a Cabinet meeting for Tuesday and a meeting of the National Security Committee on Wednesday to discuss Trumps New Years Day tweet. It was the presidents latest broadside against Pakistan after a speech in August in which he demanded its leaders crack down on the safe havens enjoyed by Taliban militants fighting U.S.-backed forces in neighboring Afghanistan. Read More Facebook
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Trump again cheers on Iran protests By Laura King President Trump expressed renewed support Sunday for protesters in Iran, declaring that people are finally getting wise as to how their money and wealth is being stolen and squandered on terrorism. In a tweet from his Florida estate, Mar-a-Lago, the president said the nationwide economic protests that began on Thursday and have taken on wider political overtones as they have grown in size --- were a signal that Iranians will not take it any longer. Big protests in Iran. The people are finally getting wise as to how their money and wealth is being stolen and squandered on terrorism. Looks like they will not take it any longer. The USA is watching very closely for human rights violations! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 31, 2017 The presidents earlier hailing of the protests drew condemnation from Irans government. A Foreign Ministry spokesman called his comments deceitful and opportunistic. Following an overnight report of the first two fatalities stemming from the protests, Trump raised some eyebrows by expressing concern over human rights violations as authorities move to crack down on the demonstrations. During his first year in office, the president has shown scant inclination to press foreign governments to respect the fundamental rights of their citizens. The USA is watching closely for human rights violations! Trump said in his tweet Sunday. Some domestic critics have pointed to the presidents inclusion of Iranian nationals in his travel ban, suggesting he was more interested in bashing the Tehran government than in supporting freedom of speech in Iran. Even some of the presidents allies said that supporting the protesters on social media did not amount to making policy. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said he had urged Trump to give a national address laying out his Iran strategy. President Trump is tweeting very sympathetically to the Iranian people, Graham said on CBS Face the Nation. But you just cant tweet here. You have to lay out a plan. Facebook
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Australian diplomats tip a factor in FBIs Russia inquiry By Associated Press Australian High Commissioner Alexander Downer. (Alastair Grant / Associated Press) An Australian diplomats tip appears to have helped persuade the FBI to investigate Russian meddling in the U.S. election and possible coordination with the Trump campaign, the New York Times reported Saturday. Trump campaign advisor George Papadopoulos told the diplomat, Alexander Downer, during a meeting in London in May 2016 that Russia had thousands of emails that would embarrass Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton, the report said. Downer, a former foreign minister, is Australias top diplomat in Britain. Australia passed the information on to the FBI after the Democratic emails were leaked, according to the Times, which cited four current and former U.S. and foreign officials with direct knowledge of the Australians role. The hacking and the revelation that a member of the Trump campaign may have had inside information about it were driving factors that led the FBI to open an investigation in July 2016, the newspaper said. White House lawyer Ty Cobb declined to comment, saying in a statement that the administration is continuing to cooperate with the investigation now led by special counsel Robert Mueller to help complete their inquiry expeditiously. Papadopoulos has pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI and is a cooperating witness. Court documents unsealed two months ago show he met in April 2016 with Joseph Mifsud, a professor in London who told him about Russias cache of emails. This was before the Democratic National Committee became aware of the scope of the intrusion into its email systems by hackers later linked to the Russian government. The Times said Papadopoulos shared this information with Downer, but it was unclear whether he also shared it with anyone in the Trump campaign. Facebook
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Trump offers fresh support for protesters in Iran as demonstrations continue By Lisa Mascaro Oppressive regimes cannot endure forever, and the day will come when the Iranian people will face a choice. The world is watching! pic.twitter.com/kvv1uAqcZ9 Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 30, 2017 President Trump again offered support Saturday for anti-government protesters in Iran, where a third day of demonstrations, the largest in years, spilled across the country amid fears of a crackdown. Oppressive regimes cannot endure forever, and the day will come when the Iranian people will face a choice. The world is watching! Trump wrote on Twitter. Trump took a break from playing golf near his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida to tweet clips from his speech to the United Nations General Assembly in September when he called for Iranian democratic reforms. Iranian authorities warned of potential violence as the street demonstrations, which began over economic conditions, swelled into frustrations with the theocratic rule of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Trump has maintained a hawkish stance toward Iran, sharply criticizing the landmark nuclear disarmament accord that Tehran reached with then-President Obama and five other nations in 2015. In October, Trump declined to certify the accord to Congress although the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency says Iran is complying with it. Several conservative GOP senators signaled their support for Trumps position and backed the protesters in Iran. Others in Congress did not immediately respond, however, amid conflicting reports over who had organized the demonstrations. Even after the billions in sanctions relief they secured through the nuclear deal, the ayatollahs still cant provide for the basic needs of their own people, said Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), a Trump ally and opponent of the nuclear deal. We should support the Iranian people who are willing to risk their lives to speak out against it, he added. Trump initially tweeted his support on Friday night. White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders issued a statement at that time as protests spread. There are many reports of peaceful protests by Iranian citizens fed up with the regimes corruption and its squandering of the nations wealth to fund terrorism abroad, Sanders said. The Iranian government should respect their peoples rights, including their right to express themselves. The world is watching. Facebook
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When it comes to U.S.-Russia relations, it takes two to tango, Kremlin says By Sabra Ayres The deteriorating relationship between the United States and Russia is one of the biggest disappointments of 2017, Russian President Vladimir Putins spokesman told reporters today. Russia would like to rebuild relations between the two adversaries, but it takes two to tango, Dmitry Peskov said today during a conference call with the press. We want and are looking for good mutually beneficial relations based on mutual respect, mutual trust with all countries, primarily with European ones, including the United States, but it is necessary to dance tango, as they say. Peskov blamed the ongoing anti-Russian Russophobia in Washington for playing a major role in blocking the two countries from moving forward in their relationship. U.S. investigations into the Trump presidential campaigns alleged collusion with the Kremlin during the 2016 U.S. election and accusations that the Kremlin tried to interfere with the electoral process continue to cast a dark shadow over the relationship, he said. Peskov told reporters that Moscow was perplexed by the investigations. The Kremlin has continued to deny having any involvement with the Trump campaign or doing anything to interfere with the American election. This is definitely a U.S. domestic affair, but in this case it naturally hurts our bilateral relations, which is regrettable, Peskov said. Relations between the U.S. and Russia have been categorized as the worst theyve been since the end of the Cold War. This year, Washington and Moscow have engaged in a diplomatic tit-for-tat in which both sides have been forced to reduce diplomatic staff, embassy properties have been repossessed by the hosting countries and visa services have been interrupted. The U.S. diplomatic mission to Russia shrank from 1,200 personnel, including some Russian local staff, to just over 450 across all its three consulates and embassy in Moscow. In the U.S., Russia was forced to vacate its San Francisco consulate. Moscow has also blamed anti-Russian sentiments on the recent decision by the International Olympic Committee to ban Russian teams from wearing their tricolor uniforms or flags during the upcoming games in South Korea. The international body accused some of the Russian national teams of doping. Facebook
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U.S. and Turkey resume reciprocal issuing of visas but frictions remain By Tracy Wilkinson The United States and Turkey began issuing reciprocal visas again on Thursday, more than two months after normal visa service was suspended in a dispute over the arrest of two U.S. diplomatic staffers in Istanbul the latest friction between the two nominal allies. The State Department said it was lifting the visa restrictions after it was assured by the Turkish government that U.S. Embassy employees would not be arrested when performing their official duties. But the Turkish Embassy in Washington denied assurances were offered concerning the ongoing judicial processes, and suggested that the arrests were legal and justified. It is inappropriate to misinform the Turkish and American public that such assurances were provided, the embassy said in a statement. The dispute has aggravated the already tense relationship between the United States and Turkey, which is a member of the NATO military alliance. The two countries have clashed over U.S. support for Kurdish rebels in Syria and over Turkeys demands that the U.S. extradite a Turkish cleric who lives in rural Pennsylvania. After a failed coup attempt killed more than 250 people in July 2016, Turkeys autocratic president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, launched a harsh crackdown on his political opponents, arresting or firing tens of thousands of teachers, police, journalists, military officers and others. Erdogan accused Fethullah Gulen, an Islamic educator and former political ally, of orchestrating the coup. Gulen, who has lived in a compound in the Pocono Mountains, has denied any involvement. The Justice Department has so far denied Turkeys repeated demands to extradite Gulen. Erdogan raised the issue again at the White House in May, but his visit ended in a public relations disaster when his security guards brutally beat peaceful protesters outside the Turkish ambassadors residence. Two Turkish employees of the U.S. Consulate in Istanbul were arrested this fall for alleged ties to the 2016 coup attempt. The U.S. responded by suspending most visa services at its missions in Turkey in October. The Turkish government reciprocated in November. State Department officials said they have repeatedly demanded more information about any formal charges against the two employees. They reiterated on Thursday that serious concerns about the allegations remained. Facebook
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Trump: China caught RED HANDED allowing oil to reach North Korea By Brian Bennett (Andrew Harnik / Associated Press) President Trump isnt taking a holiday vacation from Twitter. In one of three tweets early on Thursday from his West Palm Beach golf club, he charged that China was caught RED HANDED allowing oil shipments to reach North Korean ports. Pronouncing himself very disappointed, Trump in effect was acknowledging the failure of his months-long effort to convince China to clamp down further on energy shipments going to the isolated country, which relies heavily on Beijing, as a way to pressure North Korea to abandon its nuclear weapons program. Caught RED HANDED - very disappointed that China is allowing oil to go into North Korea. There will never be a friendly solution to the North Korea problem if this continues to happen! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 28, 2017 Trumps tweet came after a South Korean newspaper published what it said were U.S. spy satellite images of Chinese ships selling oil to North Korean ships. The United Nations Security Council, which includes China, has voted repeatedly to restrict fuel shipments to North Korea. Trump asked Chinese President Xi Jinping in November to cut off North Koreas oil supply entirely, the American ambassador to the U.N., Nikki R. Haley, said at the time. It is unclear if Trumps admonishment of China was based on news reports or classified information he received from U.S. intelligence officials. There was no daily intelligence briefing on Trumps public schedule Thursday. He is expected to return to Washington next week after spending the Christmas holiday and New Years Eve at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Fla. Facebook
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President Trump again falsely claims hes signed more bills than any president By Brian Bennett President Trump visits a firehouse in West Palm Beach, Fla., on Wednesday. (Nicholas Kamm / AFP) After another morning at his Florida golf club, President Trump visited firefighters and paramedics at a West Palm Beach firehouse and praised his own performance as president, including with a false boast. Trump touted his administrations work to roll back government regulations and cut taxes and claimed credit for the stock market hitting record highs. He also said hes signed more bills into law than any other president, which isnt true. We have signed more legislation than anybody, Trump said, standing in front of a rescue vehicle inside the fire station. We have more legislation passed, including the record was Harry Truman a long time ago, and we broke that record, so we got a lot done, Trump said. An analysis by GovTrack, a website that tracks bills in Congress, shows that Trump has signed the fewest bills into law at this point than any president in more than 60 years, back to Dwight D. Eisenhower. Facebook
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Trump administration urges Russia to reinstate monitors in Ukraine, lower violence By Tracy Wilkinson Sergei Lavrov (AFP/Getty Images) Secretary of State Rex Tillerson asked Russia on Wednesday to reinstate its military personnel at a monitoring station in eastern Ukraine intended to quell escalating bloodshed. In a telephone conversation with his Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov, Tillerson also urged Russia to lower the level of violence and underscored the Trump administrations concern over increased fighting in Ukraine, the State Department said in a statement. Russia last week withdrew its monitors from the Joint Center on Coordination and Control, which is tasked with verifying a much-violated ceasefire between Ukrainian forces and Russia-backed separatists. Moscow cited what it called restrictions and provocations from Ukrainian authorities that made it impossible for the observers to do their jobs. Washington has accused the pro-Russia forces of being responsible for many of the truce violations. Late last week, the State Department also announced plans to provide Ukraine with lethal defensive weapons, including Javelin anti-tank missiles, a decision that angered Moscow. The State Department statement did not say whether the weapons deal came up in Tillersons conversation with Lavrov. The two also discussed North Korea, its destabilizing nuclear program and the need for a diplomatic solution to achieve a denuclearized Korean peninsula, the statement said. Russia has offered to serve as a mediator between Washington and Pyongyang, but direct talks do not seem likely at this point. Facebook
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U.S. sanctions two more North Korean officials for ballistic missile program By Tracy Wilkinson The Trump administration announced sanctions Tuesday against two more North Korean officials for their alleged role in Pyongyangs expanding ballistic missiles program. The Treasury Department is targeting leaders of North Koreas ballistic missile programs, as part of our maximum pressure campaign to isolate [North Korea] and achieve a fully denuclearized Korean Peninsula, Treasury Secretary Steven T. Mnuchin said in a statement. The nuclear-armed country tested an intercontinental ballistic missile last month that U.S. officials said appeared capable of reaching New York or Washington, a significant milestone in the countrys growing arsenal. The Treasury Department identified the two North Korean officials as Kim Jong Sik, who reportedly is a key figure in the ballistic missile program and led efforts to switch missiles from liquid to solid fuel (which makes them easier to hide before launch), and Ri Pyong Chol, who was reported to be a key official in the development of intercontinental ballistic missiles. The sanctions block banks, companies and individuals from doing any business with the targeted officials. It also allows the U.S. government to freeze any American assets owned by the officials. On Friday, the United Nations Security Council unanimously voted to add more sanctions on North Korea, its third round this year. The new measures order North Koreans working abroad to return home within two years, and ban nearly 90% of refined petroleum exports to the country. In a statement published Sunday by North Koreas state-run KCNA news agency, the foreign ministry denounced the new U.N. sanctions as an act of war. We define this sanctions resolution rigged up by the US and its followers as a grave infringement upon the sovereignty of our Republic, as an act of war violating peace and stability in the Korean Peninsula and the region and categorically reject the resolution, it said. Facebook
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Salt Lake Tribune calls on Sen. Orrin Hatch to not seek reelection in scathing editorial Perhaps the most significant move of Hatchs career is the one that should, if there is any justice, end it. The last time the senator was up for reelection, in 2012, he promised that it would be his last campaign. That was enough for many likely successors, of both parties, to stand down, to let the elder statesman have his victory tour and to prepare to run for an open seat in 2018. Clearly, it was a lie. Read the editorial>> Facebook
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Christmas Eve, Trump on Twitter: New attacks on FBI official, decrying Fake News By Laura King President Trump launched a Christmas Eve attack on FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, whom he accuses of favoritism toward his former opponent, Hillary Clinton, and also returned to a longtime favored theme, excoriating the news media for failing to sufficiently extol his accomplishments. .@FoxNews-FBIs Andrew McCabe, in addition to his wife getting all of this money from M (Clinton Puppet), he was using, allegedly, his FBI Official Email Account to promote her campaign. You obviously cannot do this. These were the people who were investigating Hillary Clinton. Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 24, 2017 Thank you President TRUMP!! pic.twitter.com/LKdkT0FL99 oregon4TRUMP (@shawgerald4) December 23, 2017 The Fake News refuses to talk about how Big and how Strong our BASE is. They show Fake Polls just like they report Fake News. Despite only negative reporting, we are doing well - nobody is going to beat us. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 24, 2017 Trump, who is spending the holidays at his Florida resort, Mar-a-Lago, also sent Christmas greetings to deployed military personnel, praising them for success in the fight against terrorism. The early-morning swipe at McCabe followed a flurry of tweets attacking the deputy FBI chief on Saturday. McCabe, who has been a lightning rod for Republican attacks on the FBI, is expected to retire early in the new year. How can FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, the man in charge, along with leakin James Comey, of the Phony Hillary Clinton investigation (including her 33,000 illegally deleted emails) be given $700,000 for wifes campaign by Clinton Puppets during investigation? Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 23, 2017 FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe is racing the clock to retire with full benefits. 90 days to go?!!! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 23, 2017 Critics say the president and his allies are in the midst of a systematic campaign to denigrate the FBI and special counsel Robert S. Mueller III, who is looking into potential collusion by the Trump campaign in Russias attempts to sway the 2016 presidential election. In a pair of statements on Twitter, Trump again expressed scorn regarding news coverage of his administration. For months, the president has been particularly critical of reports regarding the Russia investigation and more recently has repeatedly complained he does not receive enough credit for a booming stock market. In his video conference message to troops overseas, the president made apparent reference to the fight against the militants of Islamic State, who over the last year have lost most of the territory they previously controlled in Iraq and Syria, including former strongholds in Mosul and Raqqah. Were winning, Trump told military personnel deployed in Qatar, Kuwait, Guantanamo Bay and aboard the guided missile destroyer Sampson. Reporters traveling with the president heard his address, but were ushered from the room before he took questions from the troops. The president often breaks with longtime custom and makes politically charged statements at events in which he addresses military personnel. Facebook
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Trumps Wells Fargo tweet cited in court hearing as reason to remove Mulvaney as CFPB acting chief By Jim Puzzanghera A recent tweet by President Trump about possible penalties against Wells Fargo & Co. was cited during a court hearing Friday as a reason for removing White House official Mick Mulvaney as acting director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. The attorney for Leandra English the bureaus deputy director who has said she is the rightful acting head said Trumps tweet showed he was trying to exercise improper influence over the independent consumer watchdog. I think that [tweet] shows you this isnt just some hypothetical concern, the attorney, Deepak Gupta, told Judge Timothy J. Kelly of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia during a nearly two-hour hearing. Read More Facebook
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Trump administration recognizes Honduran presidents reelection By Tracy Wilkinson The Trump administration on Friday formally recognized the incumbent president of Honduras, conservative Juan Orlando Hernandez, as the winner of a bitterly contested presidential election held last month. In a statement, the State Department congratulated Hernandez while also acknowledging widespread irregularities in the Nov. 26 vote and calling for a robust national dialogue to overcome political discord in the Central American country, a close ally of the administration. The Organization of American States, which monitored the election, said it was so flawed that only a new round of voting could establish a fair and transparent outcome. But the U.S. rejected that determination. Uproar over the contest led to demonstrations in Honduras that left numerous civilians dead after state security forces opened fire on the protests. Activists and others voiced criticism Friday of the administrations decision. Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Mass.), a leading Democratic voice on Central American issues, said he was angry and deeply disturbed by the State Department decision. The recent elections in Honduras were deeply flawed, chaotic and marred by numerous irregularities, McGovern said. U.S.-Honduran cooperation on matters such as drug-trafficking, violence and immigration requires a credible, legitimate government that has the support of its people, in Honduras, McGovern said. Hernandezs victory also was controversial because it was the first time a sitting president was allowed to run for re-election, barred until now by the Honduran Constitution. Facebook
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Senate Leader Mitch McConnell says fixing DACA is no emergency until March By Lisa Mascaro Amanda Bayer, left with banner, and Marisol Maqueda, right, join a rally in support of so-called Dreamers outside the White House. (Manuel Balce Ceneta / Associated Press) Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said Friday hes committed to allowing a vote on a bill for so-called Dreamers in January, but sees no rush to resolve the deportation threat posed by President Trumps decision to end a program protecting immigrants brought to the country illegally as children. There isnt that much of an emergency there, he said. There is no emergency until March. Well keep talking about it. Trump called for phasing out by March the Obama-era program that allows the young immigrants, many of them longtime residents, to get two-year deferrals of any deportation threat so they can legally attend school or work. Beneficiaries must be vetted for security purposes. Trump told Congress to come up with a legislative alternative for the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which President Obama created by executive order, to protect those currently eligible. A bipartisan Senate group has been working with the White House, but talks stalled this week amid administration demands for curbs on legal immigration flows in exchange for protecting the DACA recipients. Meanwhile, Dreamers and immigrant advocates stormed the Capitol in recent days pressing for the help promised by Trump and Democratic congressional leaders that failed to materialize in the years final legislation. Advocacy groups say more than 120 immigrants each day are falling out of compliance without DACA renewals, putting them at risk of deportation. The number that is projected to swell to more than 1,000 a day in March. Weve been gridlocked on this issue for years, McConnell said. We want to have a signature. We dont just want to spin our wheels and have nothing to show for it. Facebook
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President Trump signs tax bill By Noah Bierman (Alex Brandon / Associated Press) President Trump on Friday morning signed a sweeping tax-cut measure his first major legislative achievement before heading off for a Christmas vacation at his Mar-a-Lago property in Palm Beach, Fla. The president also privately signed a short-term spending bill to fund government operations through Jan. 19. Congress approved it Thursday, after Republican leaders were unable to bridge differences in their own party as well as with Democrats to get agreement on funding for the full fiscal year. The stopgap bill punts fights on immigration and other issues to January. The tax bill, approved earlier this week in Congress in largely party-line votes, slashes corporate tax rates from 35% to 21% and also includes a host of other provisions for individuals, all intended to boost the economy. Critics point to nonpartisan analyses showing that the package, including changes greatly reducing the number of estates subject to taxes, steers the bulk of tax benefits to top earners and the wealthy, including Trump, despite his repeated claims that hell take a hit. Trump signed the bill quietly Friday, but held a public ceremony with Republican lawmakers on Wednesday after the bills passage; he also tweeted about the measure extensively. He is expected to hold another public ceremony after the New Years holiday. Facebook
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Pelosi urges Ryan to prevent Republicans from curtailing Houses Russia probe By Chris Megerian House Speaker Paul D. Ryan of Wisconsin greets House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi of California. (J. Scott Applewhite / Associated Press) House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi sent a letter to Speaker Paul D. Ryan on Friday urging him to ensure the Houses investigation into Russian interference with last years presidential campaign is not cut short. The American people deserve a comprehensive and fair investigation into Russias attacks, wrote Pelosi, of San Francisco, in her letter. Political haste must not cut short valid investigatory threads. The House Intelligence Committee has been probing the issue since March 1, and Democrats have repeatedly warned that Republicans are trying to wrap up its work prematurely. Pelosi said Ryan, a Republican from Wisconsin, should take urgent action to ensure this investigation can continue. AshLee Strong, a spokeswoman for Ryan, said Pelosi simply wants to see this investigation go on forever in order to suit her political agenda. Whether it concludes next month, next year, or in three years, she will say it is too soon, Strong said in a statement. She added, The investigation will conclude when the committee has reached a conclusion. The committees work is led by Rep. K. Michael Conaway (R-Texas). His spokeswoman, Emily Hytha, said he remains committed to conducting this investigation as thoroughly and expeditiously as possible. With more interviews scheduled, the investigation shows signs of extending into next year, Bloomberg reported Friday. BREAKING: Steve Bannon and former Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski have been sent letters requesting they testify to House Intel panel in early January, per @HouseInSession Laura Litvan (@LauraLitvan) December 22, 2017 Facebook
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Congress votes to avert government shutdown, but Senate fails to pass disaster aid package By Lisa Mascaro ( (J. Scott Applewhite / Associated Press)) Congress approved a temporary spending bill to prevent a government shutdown, but failed to complete work on an $81-billion disaster aid package to help California, Gulf Coast states and Puerto Rico recover from wildfires and hurricanes, as lawmakers scrambled Thursday to wrap up business before a Christmas break. The stopgap measure continues federal operations for a few more weeks, setting up another deadline for Jan. 19. But it left undone a long list of priorities that members of both parties had hoped to finish this year. Read More Facebook
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Wells Fargo says raises were not linked to tax bill passage then backtracks By James Rufus Koren Wells Fargo & Co.s move to raise its minimum pay to $15 an hour was part of a long-term plan and not related to the passage of the Republican tax overhaul as the company implied, said a bank spokesman, who later backtracked and stated the hikes were a result of the bills approval. The bank was among several large corporations to publicly announce pay raises or new investments immediately following the final House vote in an apparent public relations offensive to boost the popularity of the tax bill The San Francisco bank had implied the direct linkage to the tax legislation in a news release Wednesday, shortly after Congress passed the tax overhaul, which slashes the corporate tax rate to 21% from 35% starting Jan. 1. Read More Facebook
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Obamacare signups beat expectations, despite Trump administrations opposition By Noam N. Levey President Trump with Seema Verma, administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. (Evan Vucci / Associated Press) Despite Trump administration efforts to discourage people from signing up, the number of people enrolling for Affordable Care Act coverage nearly hit last years level, the government revealed Thursday. Exchange open enrollment for 2018 coverage ended w/ approx 8.8M people enrolling in coverage. Great job to the @CMSGov team for the work you did to make this the smoothest experience for consumers to date. We take pride in providing great customer service. Administrator Seema Verma (@SeemaCMS) December 21, 2017 The 8.8 million people who enrolled in the 36 states that use the federal governments healthcare.gov system significantly exceeded most forecasts. The Trump administration stopped most outreach and other efforts this year aimed at getting people to sign up. The president also repeatedly said publicly that Obamacare was dead. Open enrollment continues in California and several other states that run their own healthcare marketplaces. The figures from the federal government indicate that when those states wrap up for the year, the number of people covered by Obamacare will be nearly the same as in 2017. Read More Facebook
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U.N. General Assembly overwhelmingly condemns U.S. policy change on Jerusalem despite Trumps threats By Tracy Wilkinson The United Nations General Assembly overwhelmingly voted Thursday to condemn President Trumps decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, despite Trumps threats to punish countries that voted against the U.S. position. The resolution passed in an emergency session at U.N. headquarters in New York with 128 in favor, nine opposed and 35 abstentions. The nonbinding resolution demands that Washington rescind its declaration, which included a plan to transfer the U.S. Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem in coming years. The resolution value is mostly symbolic, showing how isolated the U.S. is in the move. Nikki Haley, the U.S. ambassador to the U.N., warned this week that she would be taking names of countries that opposed the U.S., and Trump on Wednesday suggested he might cut U.S. aid to governments that voted in favor of the resolution. Let them vote against us, Trump said. Well save a lot. We dont care. The U.S. recognition of Jerusalem reversed decades of international consensus on the political status of the divided city. Palestinians claim East Jerusalem as their capital in a future independent state. Palestinian Foreign Minister Riad Malki said the U.N. was facing an unprecedented test and that history would remember those who stand by what is right. Facebook
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Democrats defend Robert Mueller, saying Russia investigation must be allowed to continue By Chris Megerian Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Los Angeles) speaking during a committee hearing earlier this year. (Molly Riley / Associated Press) House Democrats said they will fight Republican attempts to discredit and undermine the work of special counsel Robert S. Mueller III, who is investigating whether President Trumps associates helped Russian meddling in last years election. There is an organized effort by Republicans, in concert with Fox News, to spin a false narrative and conjure up outrageous scenarios to accuse special counsel Mueller of being biased, Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Los Angeles) said. Trump has said he has no plan to fire Mueller, but Democrats are alarmed by escalating criticism of the special counsels work. Why is the president afraid of the facts and the truth? Rep. Dan Kildee (D-Mich.) said. He added, No matter what the facts are, were satisfied if the investigation is complete. A letter of support signed by 171 Democratic members of Congress will be sent to Deputy Atty. Gen. Rod Rosenstein, who appointed Mueller, a former FBI director, and oversees his investigation. Rosenstein has defended Mueller in the face of Republican criticisms. Facebook
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U.S. blacklists Myanmar army general who it says oversaw atrocities against Rohingya Muslims By Shashank Bengali The Trump administration on Thursday blacklisted a Myanmar army general who it said oversaw human rights abuses committed by security forces against Rohingya Muslims. Imposing economic sanctions against the general, Maung Maung Soe, was the toughest action the United States has taken in response to a brutal army offensive that Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has described as ethnic cleansing. In a statement, the Treasury Department said it had examined credible evidence of Maung Maung Soes activities, including allegations against Burmese security forces of extrajudicial killings, sexual violence and arbitrary arrest as well as the widespread burning of villages. The Rohingya are an ethnic and religious minority of about 1 million people in predominantly Buddhist Myanmar, also known as Burma. The United Nations says that more than 640,000 Rohingya have fled the country since August, after the army launched clearance operations in response to attacks carried out by a Rohingya insurgent group against security forces. Rohingya refugees in crowded camps in neighboring Bangladesh have described horrific violence by Myanmar forces, including mass rapes, summary executions and children being burned alive. The aid group Doctors Without Borders estimates that 6,700 people were killed in the first month of the operation. Myanmar authorities deny committing atrocities and say that only a few hundred fighters were killed. Maung Maung Soe was chief of the armys Western Command, which carried out the offensive. He was transferred from his position last month, according to news reports. He was one of 13 individuals worldwide who were blacklisted Thursday under a new U.S. law that gives the Treasury Department authority to target officials for human rights abuses and corruption. Others included former Gambian President Yahya Jammeh; Gulnara Karimova, daughter of the late Uzbekistan dictator Islam Karimov; and Artem Chaika, son of Russias prosecutor-general. Today, the United States is taking a strong stand against human rights abuse and corruption globally by shutting these bad actors out of the U.S. financial system, said Treasury Secretary Steven T. Mnuchin. The sanctions freeze any assets Maung Maung Soe holds in the United States and bars Americans from doing business with him. It is also a sign of how quickly U.S. relations with Myanmar have soured. Under the Obama administration, the United States forged closer ties with the former military dictatorship and eased economic and political sanctions as the country began implementing democratic reforms. But Myanmar, which does not regard the Rohingya as citizens, has lashed out at the international community over the current crisis. It has jailed journalists, blocked access to affected areas in the western state of Rakhine and this week barred a U.N. human rights investigator from entering the country. Rohingya activists said the U.S. action would not have much effect on a country that survived under economic sanctions for years. It is the whole military institution that has a policy to persecute these people, said Nay San Lwin, a Rohingya activist and blogger in Germany. According to the U.S.s own definition, the army is carrying out ethnic cleansing. They have a responsibility to protect these people. Sanctions on one person are really not enough. Facebook
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Dreamers will have to wait until next year for Congress long-promised protections By Lisa Mascaro Amanda Bayer, left with banner, and Marisol Maqueda, right, join a rally in support of so-called Dreamers outside the White House. (Manuel Balce Ceneta / Associated Press)) A promised year-end deal to protect the young immigrants known as Dreamers from deportation collapsed Wednesday as Republicans in Congress fresh off passage of their tax plan prepared to punt nearly all remaining must-do agenda items into the new year. Congressional leaders still hope that before leaving town this week they can pass an $81-billion disaster relief package with recovery funds for California wildfires and Gulf Coast states hit during the devastating hurricane season. But passage even of that relatively popular measure remained in doubt as conservatives balked at the price tag. Rather than finish the year wrapping up the legislative agenda, the GOP majorities in the House and Senate struggled over their next steps. Read More Facebook
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Chants of protest drown out any caroling this holiday season at the Capitol By Lisa Mascaro U.S. Capitol Police arrest a man wearing a Santa Claus hat during a protest against the Republican tax bill. (Alex Edelman / AFP/Getty Image) Outside the U.S. Capitol, the lights on a towering Christmas tree are flipped on each evening, giving the Engelmann spruce a festive twinkle; inside the marble halls, wreaths and garlands decorate doorways and alcoves ahead of the holidays. But the spirit of the season has been punctuated by other sights: a Jumbotron parked across from the Capitol reflecting pool broadcasts images of young immigrants who face deportation; Little Lobbyists, children with complex medical needs, were featured in a recent news conference; protesters filed into the visitor galleries to shout against the Republican tax plan. While its beginning to look a lot like Christmas at the Capitol, its also shaping up to be a holiday season of protest. Read More Facebook
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Tax bill simplifies filing for some but complicates it for others and dont count on that postcard By Jim Puzzanghera A priority of the Republicans tax overhaul was simplification, and they drove home the point this fall with an omnipresent prop: a red-white-and-blue postcard. Were making things so simple that you can do your taxes on a form the size of a postcard, House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wisc.) said last month, pulling one from his jacket pocket as he and Republican leaders unveiled their bill. They gave a couple of the cards to President Trump at a White House meeting a few hours later and flashed them often during news conferences and TV interviews in the coming days. Read More Facebook
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Top U.N. human rights official reportedly wont seek reelection The top United Nations official for human rights, who has frequently criticized the Trump administration, has reportedly decided not to seek a second term, saying his work had become untenable. Zeid Raad Hussein, the U.N. high commissioner for human rights, notified his staff in an email that was obtained by several news outlets, including Agence France-Presse. Staying when his four-year term is up for renewal at the end of August might involve bending a knee in supplication, AFP quoted Husseins email as saying. Hussein is a Jordanian prince who has criticized, among other things, President Trumps attempts to ban visitors or refugees from six predominantly Muslim countries. The news comes a day before the U.N. General Assembly is expected to vote on a nonbinding resolution condemning the Trump administrations formal declaration of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, a decision that went against international consensus. Nikki Haley, the U.S. ambassador to the U.N., has warned she will be taking names of those who vote against the United States on Thursday. Trump echoed that sentiment Wednesday, voiced support for Haley and implying to reporters that he would consider cutting off U.S. aid to countries that vote against the U.S. Well, were watching those votes, Trump said. Let them vote against us. Well save a lot. We dont care. On Monday, the United States lost a Security Council vote 14-1 on a binding resolution that would have required Washington to rescind its declaration. Haley then vetoed the resolution. Facebook
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Top Democrat warns Trump not to fire Mueller or interfere with his investigation By Chris Megerian Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia, one of the top Democrats involved in the congressional inquiries into Russian interference in last years election, said Wednesday that any attempt by President Trump to interfere with the separate criminal investigation would be a gross abuse of power. Warner, who is vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, delivered his warning from the Senate floor as Republicans escalate their criticism of special counsel Robert S. Mueller III and his team of prosecutors and FBI agents. Some Democrats believe Trump is laying the groundwork to fire Mueller even though the president has publicly denied it. Mueller was appointed in May after Trump fired FBI Director James B. Comey. In the United States of America, no one, no one is above the law, not even the president, Warner said. Congress must make clear to the president that firing the special counsel or interfering with his investigation by issuing pardons of essential witnesses is unacceptable and would have immediate and significant consequences. Some Democrats say the White House may try to in effect short-circuit the Mueller investigation by replacing Deputy Atty. Gen. Rod Rosenstein, who is the only official empowered to fire Mueller. Rosenstein recently told Congress that the special counsel is acting appropriately and that he would not dismiss Mueller without just cause. Facebook
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We have essentially repealed Obamacare, Trump says after tax bill passes By Brian Bennett President Trump at a Cabinet meeting on Wednesday at the White House. (Chris Kleponis / Getty Images) President Trump is celebrating Republicans passage of the tax overhaul bill as a two-fer: On Wednesday, in addition to tax cuts, he checked off his promise to repeal Obamacare, pointing to a provision in the bill to end the penalty on Americans who dont get health insurance. We have essentially repealed Obamacare, Trump told reporters during a Cabinet meeting at the White House. Other provisions of the 2010 Affordable Care Act are still in place, and Trump and congressional Republicans failed completely on the replace half of their vow to repeal and replace the program. In Trumps view, however, stripping away the laws individual mandate to get insurance or else pay a tax penalty amounts to repeal of the whole law. Congressional analysts have said that millions of people would lose insurance as a result, either by choice or because they cannot afford it without subsidies, and that premiums would increase for others as younger, healthy people drop coverage. We will come up with something much better, Trump said, adding that block grants to states could be one approach. By his comments, Trump tacitly acknowledged that repeal of the mandate is likely the best he can do following Republicans failure this year to agree on a repeal-and-replace bill. Looking back on his first year, Trump also boasted of his administrations efforts against the Islamic State and increased immigration enforcement. He said he had not given up on funding a border wall or tightening immigration law to limit citizens ability to resettle foreign relatives in the country. He said he would very shortly visit the border with Mexico near San Diego to see wall prototypes that have been built. He didnt answer a reporters shouted question about how he would personally benefit from the tax bill. Facebook
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House gives final OK to GOP tax plan, sending it to Trump By Lisa Mascaro Congress gave final approval to the GOP tax plan Wednesday, 224-201, after the House took an unusual do-over vote to clear up differences with the Senate-passed bill. The $1.5-trillion package now heads to President Trump, who plans to sign it into law. The House had approved the tax bill on Tuesday but was forced to take another vote Wednesday because a couple of provisions in the version it approved were found to be in violation of Senate procedures. Those provisions were dropped before the Senate gave its approval early Wednesday. Critics complained the Republicans rushed to pass the sweeping tax plan to deliver Trump a year-end legislative victory, but supporters shrugged off the problems as minor. The tax plan dramatically cuts corporate rates and provides some individual rate reductions, overhauling the tax code for the first time in 30 years. Facebook
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Trump administration effort to block immigrant from having an abortion fails By David Savage Scott Lloyd is director of the Office of Refugee Resettlement at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. (Drew Angerer / Getty Images) President Trumps lawyers rushed to the Supreme Court and U.S. appeals court in Washington on Monday evening to file emergency appeals seeking to prevent an immigrant in detention, dubbed Jane Roe in court, from having an abortion. That set the stage for a legal showdown on whether the administration can block pregnant minors in custody from choosing to have an abortion. But the legal clash, which the administration has seemed eager to have, fizzled out Tuesday when the governments lawyers admitted the 17-year-old unaccompanied minor in their custody was actually 19. They said they had obtained her birth certificate and realized she was not a minor after all. As a result, Roe, who is 10 weeks pregnant, will no longer be held in a detention center for immigrant minors, and will not be subject to an administration policy that tries to prevent minors in immigration detention from having abortions. Administration lawyers told appeals court judges Tuesday night that Roe was being sent to a facility for adults and likely would be released until her immigration status can be resolved. In a brief order, the D.C. Circuit Court agreed to put the case on hold, but told government attorneys to confirm that she will be permitted to obtain an abortion. The administration had earlier tried to delay another young woman, referred to in court as Jane Poe, from having an abortion, but officials relented on Monday because she was 22 weeks pregnant and nearing the time limit for a legal abortion. Facebook
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Senate panel rejects Trumps pick to lead Export-Import Bank, a leader in the effort to shut it down By Jim Puzzanghera A Senate committee on Tuesday rejected President Trumps nominee to lead the Export-Import Bank, extending the chaos at the embattled agency whose job is to help U.S. companies sell their goods abroad. Two Republicans joined all Democrats on the Senate Banking Committee in voting against former Rep. Scott Garrett (R-N.J.) to be the banks president. Garrett had been a vocal critic of the Ex-Im Bank and a leader of a conservative effort that shut the bank down for five months in 2015 by blocking its congressional authorization. He and other bank opponents branded the banks aid as crony capitalism. Read More Facebook
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Congress proposes $81-billion disaster aid package, including funds for California wildfires By Lisa Mascaro Congress is set to consider an $81-billion disaster aid package that includes wildfire recovery money for California and other Western states as well as hurricane relief with a price tag reflecting a year of record-setting natural calamities. The legislation, the text of which was released late Monday, would provide almost twice as much as the $44 billion the White House sought last month to cover relief efforts along the Gulf Coast and in the Caribbean. Republican congressional leaders added more money after California lawmakers objected that the administration had failed to include help for areas damaged by wildfires and Democrats protested that the overall amount President Trump asked for was insufficient. Read More Facebook
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White House blames North Korea for worldwide WannaCry cyber attack By Noah Bierman The Royal London Hospital, a victim of the unprecedented global cyberattack in May. (Niklas Hallen / AFP/Getty Images) The White House officially blamed North Korea on Tuesday for the cyberattack in May known as WannaCry that infected hundreds of thousands of computers in 150 countries, affecting healthcare, financial services and vital infrastructure. Thomas P. Bossert, assistant to the president for homeland security and counter-terrorism, noted in a briefing with reporters that the consequences were beyond economic. He warned that North Koreas malicious behavior is growing more egregious. Bossert did not specify what evidence American officials have to blame North Korea, citing security issues, but he cited the countrys prior attacks as revealing hallmarks of how Pyongyang and its network of hackers operates. He said other allied countries had joined the United States in making the determination. The administration did not announce any penalties on the regime, which is already subject to severe sanctions over its nuclear program. They want to hold the entire world at risk, Bossert said of North Koreas rulers, referring to the nations nuclear and missile provocations as well as its alleged cyberattack. Given its isolation and international sanctions, North Korea is desperate for funds. Bossert said the country did not appear to make much money on the ransom attack, as word spread that paying a ransom did not result in getting computers unlocked. Its primary goal, he said, was spreading chaos. Bossert and Jeanette Manfra, assistant secretary of homeland security for cybersecurity and communication, said the United States, through a combination of preparation and luck, escaped the worst of the attack, as a patch to the malware was found before U.S. companies and other interests were severely crippled. However, Manfra said, We cannot be complacent. Bossert added, Next time were not going to get so lucky. Manfra praised Microsoft and Facebook for their efforts to combat WannaCry and to block more recent attempts to hack U.S. systems. She and Bossert urged more cooperation and information-sharing from American and multinational companies, arguing a united front is vital to protecting against bad actors who do not differentiate between government and business. Bossert rejected criticism that the the Trump administration has more aggressively called out North Korean cyberattacks than it has Russias meddling in the 2016 election. He said the administration has continued the national emergency initiated by President Obama. Facebook
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GOP lures some mountain bike groups in its push to roll back protections for public land By Evan Halper When their vision of creating a scenic cycling trail through a protected alpine backcountry hit a snag, San Diego area mountain bikers turned to an unlikely ally: congressional Republicans aiming to dilute conservation laws. The frustrations of the San Diego cycling group and a handful of similar organizations are providing tailwind to the GOP movement to lift restrictions on the countrys most ecologically fragile and pristine landscapes, officially designated wilderness. Resentment of these cyclists over the longstanding ban on mechanized transportation in that fraction of the nations public lands presents a political opportunity for Republicans eager to drill fissures in the broad coalition of conservation-minded groups united against the GOP environmental agenda. Read More Facebook
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Vice president postpones Israel trip a second time in case his vote is needed to pass tax cut bill By Noah Bierman (Ethan Miller / Getty Images) Vice President Mike Pence is delaying his trip to Egypt and Israel for a second time in case he is needed to break a tie in the Senate for the tax bill that is expected to pass narrowly this week. Two White House officials confirmed the changed schedule, which they say is unrelated to to protests in the region over the administrations decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israels capital. Pence had initially been scheduled to leave last Saturday. Late last week, the White House moved the trip back a few days to Tuesday night, in case Pence was needed to break a Senate tie. But Monday, they decided to postpone the trip further, to January, given the possibility of a late Senate vote and the coming holidays. He wants to see it through the finish line, said a White House official, referring to the tax measure that is a centerpiece of the Republican legislative agenda. We dont want to leave anything to chance. The mid-January dates will allow Pence more breathing room to merge schedules with embassies and hotels, the official said. Trump still plans to address the Israeli Knesset, a high-profile venue to discuss the Jerusalem decision where it is most popular. Facebook
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Trump judicial pick who drew ridicule at hearing withdraws By Associated Press A White House official says the Trump judicial nominee whose qualifications were questioned by a Republican senator has withdrawn his nomination. Matthew Petersen, who was nominated by President Trump to the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, has been the subject of widespread ridicule since he was unable to define basic legal terms during his confirmation hearing Wednesday. A White House official says Petersen has withdrawn his nomination and that Trump has accepted the withdrawal. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because the official was not authorized to discuss the development publicly. Louisiana Sen. John Kennedy pressed Petersen, a former chairman of the Federal Election Commission, who testified he had never tried a case, on his qualifications to the bench. Facebook
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Trump says McCain will return to Washington if needed for tax vote By Laura King President Trump said Sunday that Sen. John McCain, who is battling an aggressive form of brain cancer, was returning home to Arizona for the holidays but would come back to Washington if needed to cast a vote on the Republicans tax overhaul bill. The Arizona Republicans office announced last week that McCain was receiving treatment at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center outside Washington for complications from his cancer treatment. McCains daughter Meghan tweeted earlier Sunday that her 81-year-old father would be spending Christmas in Arizona. The Senate is expected to vote early this week on the tax cut legislation, but the GOP appeared to have secured sufficient support without McCains vote. John will come back if we need his vote, Trump told reporters as he returned from a weekend at the presidential retreat at Camp David. Hes going through a very tough time. Facebook
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Putin calls Trump to thank him for U.S. help foiling terrorist strike By Laura King Vladimir Putin phoned President Trump to thank him for what the Russian president said was CIA help in foiling a terrorist attack, the Kremlin said on Sunday. White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders confirmed the two leaders conversation to reporters. It was the second time that the two leaders had talked in four days; Trump called Putin on Thursday to thank the Russian leader for lauding the U.S. economy. Putin, in his annual year-end news conference, had praised Trump for a strong performance by the U.S. stock market. Perhaps ironically, given his credit to the CIAs recent help, Putin at that news event dismissed as hysteria the consensus among American intelligence agencies that Russia interfered in the 2016 presidential campaign. In reporting Putins call to Trump on Sunday, the official Russian news agency Tass said Putin thanked his American counterpart for information shared by the US Central Intelligence Agency that had helped break up a plot to set off explosives in St. Petersburgs landmark Kazan Cathedral and elsewhere in the city, which is Russias second-largest. Russian authorities last week had credited their countrys counter-intelligence service, the FSB, for foiling the attacks. They reported that seven people affiliated with Islamic State had been detained in St. Petersburg in connection with the plot. The FSB, the successor organization to the KGB, announced Friday that the group had planned to carry out the attacks on Saturday, and that one of those in custody had confessed to the cathedral bomb plot. Facebook
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Mnuchin: Government shutdown unlikely but could happen By Laura King Treasury Secretary Steven T. Mnuchin said on Sunday that a government shutdown this week was unlikely but possible. A two-week stopgap spending bill passed by Congress earlier this month provided enough funding to keep the government running through Friday. A deadlock on another temporary funding measure would open the door to a possible shutdown. I cant rule it out, but I cant imagine it occurring, Mnuchin said on Fox News Sunday, suggesting everyone had an interest in avoiding the government grinding to a halt and federal workers going unpaid, especially in the holiday season. I would expect that both the House and Senate, Republicans and Democrats, understand if they cant agree on this, they need to have another short-term extension to move this to January, the Treasury secretary said. We cant have a government shutdown in front of Christmas. In May, irate over concessions made to Democrats in hammering out a spending measure, President Trump tweeted that a good shutdown might help matters. While both parties agree that a government shutdown involves a degree of disruption that is not beneficial to either side, shutdowns in 1995-96 and in 2013 mainly caused a backlash against Republicans. The latest funding measure is to be taken up after a vote on a massive GOP tax overhaul, expected by midweek. Facebook
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Trump transition team says sensitive emails should not have been shared with Robert Mueller By Chris Megerian (J. Scott Applewhite / Associated Press) President Trumps transition team is crying foul over how special counsel Robert S. Mueller III obtained emails for his investigation into Russian meddling in last years campaign and possible Trump campaign complicity. Kory Langhofer, a lawyer for the transition team, sent a letter to Congress on Saturday saying there was an unauthorized disclosure of emails. While the Trump transition is long over, the transition team remains a nonprofit organization. Its emails were hosted by the General Services Administration, a federal agency. Mueller reportedly obtained the emails directly from the agency. There are attorney-client communications, Langhofer said in an interview. There are executive-privileged communications. He added, What were asking Congress to do is to take some legislative action to make sure this never happens again. Peter Carr, a spokesman for the special counsels office, defended the process for obtaining emails. When we have obtained emails in the course of our ongoing criminal investigation, we have secured either the account owners consent or appropriate criminal process, he said. The letter was first reported by Fox News. A request for comment from the General Services Administration was not immediately answered. This story has been updated with a comment from the special counsels office. Facebook
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Virginia house arrest is ending for Paul Manafort By Chris Megerian (Mark Wilson / Getty Images) A federal judge agreed Friday to end Paul Manaforts house arrest in Virginia, allowing President Trumps former campaign manager to return to Florida while awaiting trial. The decision followed a dispute between Manaforts legal team and prosecutors working for special counsel Robert S. Mueller III, who accused Manafort of violating a court order restricting public statements about the case. Under the terms of the judges order, Manafort will be allowed to live at his home in Florida as long as he stays within Palm Beach and Broward counties and obeys a curfew from 11 p.m. to 7 a.m. If he misses a court appearance, he would forfeit four properties valued at $10 million total. The deal, which includes GPS monitoring, is not as permissive as Manafort originally sought. He had asked to be able to travel freely among Florida, New York, Virginia and Washington. Manafort faces criminal charges of fraud, conspiracy and money laundering. He has pleaded not guilty. Facebook
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GOP negotiators enhance child tax credit to win over Sen. Rubio By Lisa Mascaro Republican negotiators slightly increased the refundable portion of the expanded child tax credit in their tax plan, raising it to $1,400 in hopes of winning back Sen. Marco Rubios (R-Fla.) support ahead of next weeks vote. Rubio announced Thursday he was withholding support after negotiators ignored his push to make the expanded tax credit, which increases from the current $1,000 to $2,000 in the proposed bill, fully refundable for lower- and moderate-income filers. The refundable portion in the original bill was $1,100. The Florida senator argued that was not enough to help working-class Americans, many of whom already view the GOP plan as tilted toward the wealthy. Rubios office was waiting to see the final text before commenting on whether the change was enough to win him over. We have not seen the bill text, and until we see if the percentage of the refundable credit is significantly higher, then our position remains the same, Rubios spokeswoman said. Negotiators meeting Friday before unveiling the bill said they thought they had the support they needed from Rubio and other holdouts. Im confident both chambers will pass it next week, said Sen. Pat Toomey (R-Pa.). Facebook
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Sen. Marco Rubio opposes GOP tax bill, depriving leaders of crucial support By Lisa Mascaro 20.94% Corp. rate to pay for tax cut for working family making $40k was anti-growth but 21% to cut tax for couples making $1million is fine? Marco Rubio (@marcorubio) December 12, 2017 Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) says he is currently opposed to the GOP tax plan because it fails to include his proposed enhancements to the child tax credit, leaving leaders without crucial support ahead of next weeks expected vote. Republicans can only lose two GOP senators from their slim 52-48 majority as they push the plan forward under special budget rules to prevent a Democratic filibuster. Vice President Mike Pence on Wednesday altered his planned Israel trip so he could be on hand, if needed, to cast a tie-breaking vote. Rubio, and GOP Sen. Mike Lee of Utah, have fought to increase the child tax credit, doubling it to $2,000 in the GOP plan, but they also want to increase its refundability. They argue it will lower taxes on middle-income families at a time when the tax plan is being criticized as tilted to the wealthy. Sen. Rubio has consistently communicated to the Senate tax negotiators that his vote on final passage would depend on whether the refundability of the Child Tax Credit was increased in a meaningful way, Rubios spokeswoman said. Lee stopped short of opposing the bill, but his spokesman said Wednesday he is undecided. GOP leaders, though, have said they believe they have the support for passage. Facebook
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White House gives Roy Moore a unsubtle shove: Time to concede By David Lauter (Alex Wong / Getty Images) The White House sent a clear signal Thursday to the defeated Republican candidate for Senate in Alabama: Its time to concede. Roy Moore refused to concede the race on Tuesday night when Doug Jones, the Democrat, was declared the winner. Election night results show Jones winning by about 1.5 percentage points, three times more than the states standard for a recount. Although a few absentee and provisional ballots remain to be counted, theres no indication they would change the result. On Wednesday, Moore notably did not call to congratulate Jones even as President Trump and other leading Republicans did. Instead, he released a video declaring the battle rages on. Asked at the daily news briefing whether the White House thinks Moore should concede today, Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said, It probably sounds like it maybe should have already taken place. Sanders also dismissed the idea, pushed by some Moore supporters, that Jones victory was tainted in some fashion. Asked if the Democrat had won fair and square, she said, I think the numbers reflect that. The states Republican senator, Richard Shelby, offered a similar comment in an interview with MSNBC in which he said he was willing to work with Jones. If I was 25,000 votes behind, its not going to change much, Shelby said. Facebook
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House Speaker Paul Ryan says hes not leaving anytime soon By Lisa Mascaro House Speaker Paul D. Ryan shot down suggestions Thursday that he might soon be retiring. Stories often circulate that party leaders, especially the House speaker, are stepping aside. Ryans tenure has been as rocky as that of his predecessor, Rep. John Boehner, who abruptly resigned in 2015 amid GOP infighting. Asked Thursday if he would be leaving, Ryan answered a simple no, as he left his weekly press conference in the Capitol. Ryan, the Wisconsin Republican who reluctantly took over the speakers gavel after Boehners departure, had just finished talking up the GOP tax plan, which leaders hope to pass next week. He also outlined his sweeping agenda for his longtime goal of entitlement reform of welfare benefits next year. Two stories published Thursday suggested Ryan may soon be out. This is pure speculation, said spokeswoman AshLee Strong. As the speaker himself said today, hes not going anywhere anytime soon. Facebook
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GOP leaders reach tax deal, cutting corporate rate to 21% and top individual rate to 37% By Lisa Mascaro Republican leaders on Wednesday agreed on a revised plan to cut taxes that would lower the corporate rate from 35% to 21% and drop the top individual rate for the richest Americans to 37%, according to GOP senators and others briefed on the deal. The tentative accord marked a significant step in the Republican push to have a tax bill on President Trumps desk by Christmas. Leaders did not release details of the compromise or the text of a final bill as negotiations continued. Its critically important for Congress to quickly pass these historic tax cuts, Trump said Wednesday, promising that Americans could begin to reap the benefits of the plan as early as February, if passed. Critics, however, said the latest changes particularly the lowering of the top individual rate from the current 39.6% only reaffirmed several independent analyses that show the bulk of the savings from the Republican plan would go to businesses and the wealthy. Read More Facebook
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Farenthold to retire from House amid harassment accusations By Associated Press Texas Republican Rep. Blake Farenthold wont seek reelection next year, two Republicans said Thursday, adding his name to the list of lawmakers leaving Congress amid sexual harassment allegations that have cost powerful men their jobs in politics, the arts and other fields. The accusations against Farenthold surfaced in 2014, when a former aide sued him alleging sexually suggestive comments and behavior and said shed been fired after she complained. The lawmaker said he engaged in no wrongdoing and the case was settled in 2015. But the House Ethics Committee said last week that it would investigate Farenthold after congressional sources said hed paid an $84,000 settlement using taxpayers money. Though Farenthold said hed reimburse the Treasury Department, such payments have drawn public criticism from people saying lawmakers should use their own money for such settlements. A House official said Farenthold spoke twice Wednesday to House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.), while another official said the congressman spoke once with Rep. Steve Stivers (R-Ohio) who heads the GOPs House campaign committee. Those discussions suggested that Farenthold may have come under pressure from leaders to step aside. Both officials spoke on condition of anonymity to describe private conversations. Last week, three lawmakers facing accusations of sexual harassment announced their resignations. Reps. John Conyers (D-Mich.) and Trent Franks (R-Ariz.) have already left Congress while Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) has said he will step aside soon. Mike Bergsma, Republican county chairman in Farentholds home county of Nueces, Texas, said Fare
Former first daughters Jenna Bush Hager and Barbara Pierce Bush are running a bit of a tight schedule.
The twins had just spent Tuesday morning in Houston, visiting family and friends, while also volunteering to install a front porch and drywall at a home damaged by Hurricane Harvey.
At 7:30 p.m., the pair was set to take the stage in front of a sold-out audience at the Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum, where they recounted stories and memories during a West Coast debut of their autobiographical book, Sisters First: Stories from Our Wild and Wonderful Life.
Dont mind us, Jenna Bush Hager said in a private room as she brushed lint off her sisters black dress. Weve had a lot of fun so far, and the volunteers we worked with today gave off the best energy.
In Sisters First, the two wrote alternating chapters, sharing personal insights about their family, their roles as both presidential children and grandchildren, their loves and losses, and their bond as sisters.
We thought if we shared our story, we could help lift other women up, Jenna Bush Hager said.
Moderator SuChin Pak, left, talks with Barbara Pierce Bush, center, and Jenna Bush Hager during an event at the Nixon Library on Nov. 7. (Scott Smeltzer / Staff Photographer )
Being born in a political dynasty brought a series of challenges for the sisters at times, comedic ones, they said.
Barbara Pierce Bush, named after her paternal grandmother, the former first lady, reflected on her famous namesake.
As an 8-year-old, I would offer to order pizza for our family, relishing my mature and responsible position, she wrote.
Id like to order a pizza.
Great, your name?
Barbara Bush.
This isnt funny.
Aggressive click.
I was constantly hung up on. No one believed that first lady Barbara Bush wanted to order Miss Nelson is Missing! Little girl, big name.
They also opened up about emotional challenges on the pages, sharing painful memories of losing their maternal grandfather, Pa, to Alzheimers disease and a high school friend to suicide.
That was a hard chapter and decision to make on whether or not to include it largely because of his family, Barbara Pierce Bush said. It was cathartic for me to share it and that moment impacted my life, making me the person I am now.
Writing a chapter like that of Pa felt therapeutic, and it was to pay tribute to our grandfather, who most dont know about, Jenna Bush Hager said.
The book follows their fathers White House years and Jenna Bush Hagers life as a wife, mother of two daughters and correspondent on NBCs Today show. It also delves into Barbara Pierce Bushs work as CEO and co-founder of Global Health Corps.
President George W. Bush and Laura Bush were protective, providing their children a normal life largely out of the spotlight. They said their father is a private man who loves his kids, is self-deprecating and a source of strength.
Barbara Pierce Bush said he was the first person she called after her first breakup. Each morning, he would send her a text message with a Bible verse followed by several emojis.
Jenna Bush Hager said when she conflated two Best Picture nominees during her NBC red carpet arrival show earlier this year, she received a message from her dad that reassured her that her family loved her.
Their mother read their manuscript and their father read two rounds, only making grammatical changes. No one in the book, they said, changed the content.
In the audience at the Yorba Linda presidential library were Barbara Pierce Bushs roommates from Yale University.
Its OK if you didnt vote for our dad, Jenna Bush Hager said, eliciting laughs.
The Bush daughters also noted difficulty in watching their grandfather, George H.W. Bush, lose to Bill Clinton in the 1992 presidential election, but they admired his character in becoming close friends with the man who defeated him.
Our family jokes that Bill Clinton is the sixth Bush, Jenna Bush Hager said, and Bill said, Every family needs a black sheep.
Guests who purchased one of the nights 1,000 autographed books said they were interested in learning more about the sisters bond.
Susannah Shortall of Villa Park learned of Sisters First by watching the Today show.
I wanted to hear their perspective, being the parent of multiples, and they have a compelling story, Shortall said.
Alexa Vander Meer of Brea attended with her three sisters.
Were all excited about that, Vander Meer, 24, said of their plans to read the book.
The Bush twins will have stopped in 12 cities in a three-week period before they close their tour Nov. 18 in Atlanta.
As for plans to celebrate their 36th birthday on Nov. 25?
We dont know, something anti-climactic for sure, Barbara Pierce Bush said.
I probably need to see my children, Jenna Bush Hager said. We want a quiet birthday. Well talk in four years.
For more information, visit sistersfirst.com.
kathleen.luppi@latimes.com
Twitter: @KathleenLuppi
(Catharine Hamm / Los Angeles Times)
The windows in Martin Cervantezs towering artworks never look the same, their gentle colors changing subtly with the arc of the sun.
They also never look like what they once were: tower windows from which guards watched inmates at the notorious Lorton Reformatory.
Those windows are emblematic of the change from correction facility to a haven for artists called the Workhouse Arts Center, created from the bones of the onetime reformatory in southern Fairfax County, outside the nations capital.
The beauty of the artworks made here and the energy that accompanies their creation are a surprise in a place where ugly events once were the norm, including one so horrifying it was called the Night of Terror.
Not ringing a bell? Not surprising. But what happened here on Nov. 14, 1917 it was called Occoquan Workhouse then changed U.S. history.
Teddy Roosevelt could never have imagined that the workhouse he had created in 1910 to help minor criminals develop useful skills would become the pivot point in the struggle to pass the 19th Amendment, which gave American women the right to vote.
The struggle took 72 years, the efforts of hundreds of thousands of people, and unfathomable violence at Occoquan directed at champions of the cause who did nothing more than quietly picket the White House.
In answer to the banners these advocates carried that asked, Mr. President, what will you do for woman suffrage? they were arrested, detained, beaten, kicked, choked, stripped naked, chained to the bars in a workhouse cell, stabbed with a stick that once carried a protest banner and force-fed until they became ill.
The unusual and intriguing art created here today could almost make you forget what happened on these grounds.
But not quite.
Silent Sentinels
Women picket in front of the White House in February 1917. (Library of Congress)
Before any discussion about the history of the right to vote, note that the U.S. women who fought for it are called suffragists, not suffragettes.
It is a distinction with a difference: In Britain suffragettes, as they were called there, used more radical means to attract attention to the cause, which included property damage and demonstrations.
But Alice Paul, a Quaker from New Jersey, believed that peaceful methods would win the day. That is why Paul, founder of the National Womans Party; Lucy Burns, her right hand; and dozens of others picketed the White House using words as their weapons.
Alice Paul, left, national chairman of the Congressional Union for Woman Suffrage, and Lucy Burns, vice chairman of the organization in 1913 (Library of Congress)
Their strategy: Embarrass President Woodrow Wilson into paying attention, not just giving lip service, to their cause.
The Silent Sentinels, who often wore purple, gold and white sashes, the colors of the National Womans Party, began carrying banners as 1917 unfurled. Those words stung Wilson, who was preoccupied with World War I.
Kaiser Wilson, one banner said, have you forgotten your sympathy with the poor Germans because they were not self-governed? 20,000,000 American women are not self-governed. Take the beam out of your own eye.
The arrests of the picketers began a couple of months after the U.S. entered the war that April. They were charged with obstructing traffic, absurd given that they were standing on the sidewalk outside the presidential home.
On Nov. 13 more than 30 sentinels were arrested around the White House, and by 5 p.m. the next day many were on their way to the Occoquan Workhouse. (Alice Paul remained in a District of Columbia jail, presumably because her opponents wanted to separate the head from what they perceived as the snake.)
Four hours later, Occoquan Superintendent W.H. Whittaker set his guards upon the women. Dora Lewis, thrown into a cell, hit her head on an iron bed. Cellmate Alice Cosu thought Lewis was dead (she survived) and suffered a heart attack.
Lucy Burns was stripped naked, her hands raised over her head and chained to the bars until the next day.
Some of the women protested the physical abuse of that one night by going on a hunger strike. For their troubles they were force fed raw eggs and milk, which made them violently ill.
Those who did not fast were given food so horrific, part of the psychological cat-and-mouse game, that they sent worms found in their soup and bread to the warden.
Lucy Burns in the Occoquan Workhouse, left; the Washington Times from July 19, 1917, top center; the workhouse circa 1905-1945, bottom center; some of the cells at the onetime Lorton Reformatory, right. (Catharine Hamm / Los Angeles Times (left, top center and right); Library of Congress (bottom center))
Lawyers for the women said that because they had been sentenced in the District of Columbia, it was illegal to place them in the Virginia workhouse.
A Virginia judge agreed, and they were returned to D.C. after their Nov. 23 trial. By months end, all had been released, weakened and, in some cases, permanently worse for the wear.
By early January 1918, Wilson expressed his support for the voting rights amendment, which passed the House but failed in the Senate. Some opponents argued that women already had the right to vote in some states, but proponents wanted an amendment to ensure that women had the right in every state.
On June 4, 1919, the Senate passed the amendment, which the House had passed two weeks earlier.
Tennessee became the 36th state to ratify the amendment on Aug. 18, 1920. Eight days later, it became part of the U.S. Constitution, more than seven decades after the first womens rights convention in Seneca Falls, N.Y.
Honoring the suffragists
Cheryl VanderMolen Neway, an artist at the Workhouse Arts Center, looks at a scarf she created using the colors of the National Womans Party. (Catharine Hamm/Los Angeles Times)
Occoquan Workhouse had its own happy ending after years of turmoil as Lorton Reformatory, a badly run, crowded and occasionally corrupt prison. It was closed in 2001 and sold to Fairfax County.
The cells where the women were brutalized are long gone, but the remaining buildings, made of bricks manufactured by the prisoners, are being or have been rehabbed, creating a handsome quadrangle of buildings where artists work, art education classes are given and, in a small museum, history is recounted.
The workhouse center has 65 artists in residence and 25 more who exhibit here. Halls are filled with handcrafted artworks as diverse as the people who make them. Many of the artists works, which also include photography, painting, textiles, jewelry and glass, are for sale.
On a recent Sunday afternoon, Cheryl VanderMolen Neway was finishing new batik pieces that would become hats, dresses and skirts. Hanging from the ceiling were eight purple, gold and white silk scarfs the colors of the National Womans Party.
I wanted to create some light where there was once darkness. Cheryl VanderMolen Neway
I wanted to honor the suffragists in prison here 100 years ago, she said. They fought for our right to vote and I wanted to thank them because they worked very hard to get us where we are today.
The exuberant colors used in her pieces put some healing energy into the grounds of the onetime reformatory.
I wanted to create some light where there was once darkness, she said.
Suffragist museum in the works
The Workhouse Arts Center is a work in progress; the restoration of a 350-seat theater and the addition of a restaurant may be in the offing.
Perhaps most important, the Lucy Burns Museum, honoring not only that suffragist leader but also those who gave their all to get the vote, is expected to be completed later this year.
If you visit the center, its because youve been drawn here by the art and by classes, festivals and even weddings. It is off the beaten path, said Ava Spece, president and chief executive of the Workhouse Arts Foundation, which manages the center. If youre here, its because you want to be, she said.
A study of the handsome brick buildings, a listen to the murmur of artists at work, a look at the beauty of the objects they create, raises this question: Who would not want to be here, on a campus cloaked in important history thats almost been obscured by time?
An Hour Before Dawn, by Sassona Norton, at the Workhouse Arts Center in Virginia (Catharine Hamm/Los Angeles Times)
Its like having the keys to a secret history book that tells a story whose moral is about perseverance.
At the entrance to the campus, a bronze sculpture An Hour Before Dawn, on loan from artist Sassona Norton, faces where the buildings that housed the female prisoners once stood.
I sculpt the figure to express yearning, its plaque says. While yearning may be rooted in conflict and dissatisfaction, it also points to our ability to rise above insurmountable obstacles and cross over boundaries to realize our dreams.
Where to see suffragist history
This wagon was used from the 1870s to 1920 in the suffrage movement. It is on display at the National Museum of American History in Washington, D.C. (Catharine Hamm / Los Angeles Times)
Workhouse Arts Center, 9518 Workhouse Way, Lorton, Va.; (703) 584-2900, www.workhousearts.org. Galleries and the visitor center are open 11 a.m.-6 p.m. Wednesdays through Saturdays and noon to 5 p.m. Sundays. A small museum devotes part of its space to suffragist history and the rest of the history of Lortons penal system. It is open noon-3 p.m. Wednesdays through Saturdays and noon-4 p.m. Sundays. The center is building a Lucy Burns Museum, not only to honor the suffragist who was jailed and brutalized here, but also to highlight the work that led to the 19th Amendment giving women the right to vote.
National Museum of American History, 1400 Constitution Ave. N.W., Washington, D.C.; (202) 633-1000, www.americanhistory.si.edu. The Nation We Build Together exhibit devotes some space to voting, including suffragist history. Among the artifacts is a suffrage wagon used at rallies and speeches between the 1870s and 1920.
Belmont-Paul Womens Equality National Monument House, 144 Constitution Ave. N.E., Washington, D.C.; (202) 543-2240, www.nps.gov/bepa. Open 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Wednesdays-Sundays; guided tours at 9:30 and 11 a.m. and at 2 and 3:30 p.m.
This is the home of the National Womans Party, founded in 1916 by Alice Paul, the godmother of the push for the constitutional amendment that gave women the right to vote.
On the grounds are the concrete steps that once stood at the entrance to the now-gone womens workhouse at Occoquan.
On the hourlong tours, youll see museum exhibits that tell the story of the National Womans Party, especially focusing on the fight for passage of the 19th Amendment. Youll see some of the banners that women carried as they picketed the White House, although not necessarily the most controversial ones, which often were ripped apart by counter-protesters. Youll also see Susan B. Anthonys desk, given to Paul after the death of the early crusader for womens suffrage. Paul is said to have used it as part of her workspace and also for inspiration.
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A Taiwanese air force jet has been missing for five days, the military says, prompting speculation about what happened including the possibility that the pilot defected to mainland China.
Military search-and-rescue crews, as well as Taiwans coast guard, have turned up no sign of the French-made Mirage 2000 combat fighter or its pilot, the only person on board, Taiwanese Defense Ministry spokesman Chen Chung-chi said.
The pilot, an air force captain who had flown since 2013, lost contact with controllers during a routine training exercise Tuesday evening about 100 miles off the islands north coast. The jet disappeared about half an hour after takeoff at an altitude of 5,200 feet.
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Two Taiwan Mirage 2000-5 jets take off for a training flight from Hsinchu Airbase in Hsinchu, western Taiwan, on June 18, in this handout photo made available by the Taiwan Military News Agency on Nov. 7. (EPA / Shutterstock )
The prolonged search prompted questions at a legislative committee session Friday about whether the pilot, Ho Tzu-yu, had defected to nearby China. Chen rejected that possibility as impossible, although he acknowledged that Taiwanese officials have not asked China.
Chinese officials see self-ruled Taiwan as part of their territory and insist on eventual unification, though government surveys on the island, 100 miles from the mainland, show most Taiwanese prefer their autonomy.
Political friction since the 1940s, when Chiang Kai-sheks Nationalists fled to Taiwan after losing the Chinese civil war to the Communists, has led to military buildup on both sides as well as occasional defections.
China would have held a news conference if the pilot defected, Chen said, declining to speculate on what might have happened to the plane.
Were still searching and have never stopped searching, Chen said. Were still looking in that area.
Japan will be asked to help with the search, Taiwans Central News Agency reported. Some outlying Japanese islands are near Taiwan.
The pilot possibly lost control or ran into a mechanical problem, said Andrew Yang, former defense minister and secretary-general of the Chinese Council of Advanced Policy Studies think tank. The plane was 20 years old.
Taiwan operates 60 Mirage fighters, three of which were with the missing plane on the mission Tuesday. The air force grounded its fleet after the disappearance.
Taiwan, which has the worlds 18th strongest military, according to the database GlobalFirePower.com, places particularly strict limits on what more junior pilots can do, Yang said.
Pilots sometimes experience three-dimensional confusion and go down into the sea, he said, recalling at least two similar cases.
Rough seas or strong currents in the Taiwan Strait, where the plane was headed, may extend the search period, he added. The Taiwan Strait is very difficult and dangerous water, Yang said.
Taiwan saw five Mirage 2000 accidents between 1999 and 2013, three of them fatal, an industry news website, the Aviationist, reported.
The air force will follow up the disappearance with tougher pilot training in keeping with international standards, Chen said.
Jennings is a special correspondent.
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Growing up in Bethlehem, Roseann Clavelli didn't think much about the vowel-heavy, Italian last names of many of her classmates and neighbors.
Years later, tracing her own family history back to the Italian village of Foiano di Val Fortore, she was struck that many of her old friends shared the same surnames of Foianese villagers.
She wasn't alone in this realization.
A great number of the Italian Americans who settled in Bethlehem can trace their roots back to the village of 1,500 in the Campania region, just northeast of Naples.
Social media paired with a rising interest in using DNA testing to trace genealogy, has connected these Foianese descendants with current residents of the village. Facebook groups have formed, virtually connecting those with Foianese roots all around the world.
Current Foiano residents have been eager to learn the fate of ancestors who left and never returned. And they've been eager to help Americans fill in the blanks of their family tree, looking up official Italian records for people they've only met online.
These friendships and familial relationships are moving offline later this month when a group of five residents of Foiano, including Foiano's Vice Mayor Giuseppe Antonio Ruggiero and a local priest, arrive Nov. 17 in the Lehigh Valley.
The visitors have a jam packed agenda, including a flag raising at city hall and a public meet-and-greet at the Bethlehem Area Public Library on Monday, Nov. 20. They'll enjoy a traditional Thanksgiving meal and be hosted by various local families.
The group will also head to the predominantly Italian-American borough of Roseto, made famous by a landmark 1950s study that tied good health and long life to the town's close-knit Italian family structure.
All six of Clavelli's Foianese grandparents' living grandkids plan to meet in Bethlehem for the visit. Clavelli is flying from California on the busiest travel week of the year, her brother is coming in from South Carolina, a cousin is coming from New Jersey while the rest still live in the area.
"I think it is the most wonderful opportunity that I have experienced," Clavelli, an avid genealogy-enthusiast, said in a phone interview. "I can't begin to tell you about how excited I am."
The organizers of the trip admit their curiosity about their family history came later in life.
"By the time I got interested there was no one left to tell me the stories," Clavelli said.
Only as they became adults did they realize how unique it was growing up surrounded by fellow Italian Americans, many who were relatives.
"I grew up in a very tight community of people that came from that town," Bethlehem resident Maria DelGrosso Dangelmajer, who has visited Foiano herself, said. "I guess I didn't think much about it growing up. Now that people have been inquiring about us, it is kind of interesting to know they wonder about us just as much as we wonder about them."
Many descendants share similar stories of how their families came to settle in Bethlehem.
Their grandfathers, uncles, fathers and brothers came to the United States in search of job opportunities, driven by economic depression in their homeland. Many settled to Bethlehem based on word of mouth; other residents of Foiano, who immigrated to America found jobs, community and success in the city.
"They only knew they would fail if they stayed in this impoverished town," Mark Iampietro, whose family settled in South Bethlehem, said.
The men came first, often leaving behind their wives and children, scraping and saving until they could afford to send for their families.
Many of the Italian immigrants settled in the South Side and founded Our Lady of Pompeii Catholic Church, where they continued to celebrate the feast of Foiano's patron San Giovani -- Saint John the Hermit.
DelGrosso Dangelmajer's grandparents were some of the original founders of the church.
"My grandparents came here and they really gave all of us an opportunity to have a better life," she said. "That was pretty brave of them to do that as many did," she said.
When residents of Foiano began inquiring about the now-closed Bethlehem Catholic Church that once held the festival, several people tagged DelGrosso Dangelmajer on Facebook asking her to chime in.
"All of the people that immigrated here continued those traditions here in Bethlehem and the church was a very strong part of that," she said.
About two years ago, Clavelli, who visited Foiano in 1987, had her DNA tested and she linked up with several folks with roots in the village and they began sharing information. She can now trace her family history seven generations on one side and 10 on the other.
Technology is allowing the long lost stories of immigrants, who bravely left all they knew for a new land, to resurface and in the process creating new connections and bonds with an ancestral village.
It has given Clavello a great appreciation for the childhood she experienced.
Her grandparents Francesco Saverio Tutolo and Maria Rosina Servodio Tutolo married in Foiano in 1912 and had a daughter the following year. Francesco immigrated to Bethlehem alone and the family joined him in 1919. Clavelli's mother was the first to be born in America and two sisters followed.
Her mother and her three sisters lived within blocks of each other in Bethlehem all of their lives. Clavelli's grandmother, who had two sisters in Bethlehem herself, lived into her 90s and was a major influence on her granchildren's lives.
"Every afternoon when I came home from school they'd all be gathered in our kitchen chattering away in Italian," Clavelli said. "Maybe that is one of the reasons the cousins were so close. We grew up in that kind of environment where we had family around us all the time and it was wonderful."
DelGrosso Dangelmajer's father Antonio DelGrosso was born in Foiano and immigrated to the U.S. in 1920 at the age of 20 after World War I ended. He was single much of his life, serving in World War II as a military police officer, who helped to free his homeland from fascism.
"The story goes he promised his mother he would visit the family (while serving)," she recalled. "When he came home (to Bethlehem), she was on her deathbed and he lied to her. But he felt guilty and he went back in 1954 and met my mother."
While her father's entire family immigrated to Bethlehem, her mother Carmela DelGrosso was the only member of her family to come to the country.
Her father's family embraced her, but DelGrosso Dangelmajer realizes how brave her mother was to take the leap from all she ever knew.
Things will come full circle on Thanksgiving, when DelGrosso will find herself surrounded by Foianese residents around her daughter's holiday table in Bethlehem.
Sara K. Satullo may be reached at ssatullo@lehighvalleylive.com. Follow her on Twitter @sarasatullo and Facebook. Find lehighvalleylive.com on Facebook.
Gerrymandering is alive and well in Pennsylvania, but that could change in a matter of months, following the Pennsylvania Supreme Court's surprising decision to fast-track a constitutional challenge of the state's congressional district maps. Last week, in a 4-3 vote, justices ordered a lower court to hear the case and render a decision by Dec. 31.
If you're thinking this could throw a wrench into next year's elections, you're correct -- assuming, of course, the Commonwealth Court tosses the current congressional map and directs the Legislature to create a new one.
That's a pretty big "if," but we say: Bring it on. A constitutional wrench should have been tossed into this uber-partisan machinery years ago. It is critical that both Pennsylvania and the United States have a fair, democracy-protecting standard in place.
Just a few weeks ago Commonwealth Court issued a stay on a lawsuit brought by the Pennsylvania League of Women Voters, which claimed the 2012 rewrite of congressional districts was designed to maximize Republican victories. The evidence is clear, both in the crazy-quilt patterns of districts and in Republicans taking 13 of the state's 18 congressional districts despite being outnumbered by Democrats. (As of this month, it's 4 million vs. 3.2 million.)
The lower court said it wanted to wait to see how the U.S. Supreme Court rules in a highly anticipated gerrymandering case from Wisconsin.
The Pennsylvania case is independent of the federal case, and doesn't rely on the U.S. Constitution. The League of Women Voters claims the congressional map violates the state constitution's equal protection and freedom of association clauses.
The state Supreme Court said that case must go forward, under a tight deadline in case a new set of maps is needed for 2018.
It's encouraging that Pennsylvania -- considered by many the most gerrymandered state in the U.S. -- could set this partisan abuse on its head. At the beginning of mid-term election year, no less.
If that happens, it could only help the stalled effort in Harrisburg to have congressional and state legislative maps redrawn every 10 years by an independent commission.
Both sides are gearing up for a fight. State GOP leaders say they're prepared to defend their map. The Public Interest Law Center, which is arguing the case for the League, said it expects to "ensure the map is struck down and a new map that complies with the constitution is created in time for the 2018 election."
A remapping could mean the Lehigh Valley would again be the nucleus of one congressional district, instead of being split between ultra-red and ultra-blue districts. All the hopefuls jockeying to replace retiring U.S. Rep. Charlie Dent next year would have to wait to find out out what congressional district they live in. Candidates begin circulating nominating petitions for the May primary in late winter.
The state Supreme Court's reversal is sure to be seen as a partisan act itself; all four "yea" votes were cast by Democrats. The inescapable reality, however, is that Pennsylvania's congressional districts -- like those in many other states -- are an embarrassment to democracy constructed of, by and for Republicans. Given the chance, though, Democrats are equal-opportunity gerrymanderers.
Either way, the people who are supposed to convey power in our form of government -- the voters -- are being in marginalized by power brokers and their computer programs. Here's hoping Pennsylvania finds a constitutional remedy, and demonstrates to the rest of the nation how to write it into law.
Temperature records fell along with the mercury on a frigid Veterans Day.
The Lehigh Valley's lowest temperature for Nov. 11 had been 19 degrees -- it happened twice, in 1954 and again in '56.
A new record for the date of 18 degrees was set Saturday morning in Allentown, according to the National Weather Service. And the Valley wasn't alone: There was record-breaking cold across the region.
It's possible Allentown's Nov. 12 record low could fall as well. The forecast for Saturday night into Sunday morning calls for a low of 20 degrees, which would beat the previous record of 21 set in 1926, according to weather service meteorologist Sarah Johnson.
Normal temperatures for this time of year are between 34 and 55 degrees.
Fortunately, things will begin to warm up again over the next few days as daily highs are expected creep up into the 50s by midweek.
NJ Advance Media staff writer Craig McCarthy contributed to this report.
Steve Novak may be reached at snovak@lehighvalleylive.com. Follow him on Twitter @type2supernovak and Facebook. Find lehighvalleylive.com on Facebook.
The war of words over Portlaoise Hospital is escalating, as its fate continues to hang in the balance.
What is manifestly evident from the correspondence revealed over the weekend in the Sunday Business Post is the determination of the HSE and the Dublin Midlands Hospital Group to implement their plan for Portlaoise.
The Chief Executive of the Dublin Midlands Hospital Group, Dr Susan O'Reilly cites clinical risks at Portlaoise due to the failure to implement the plan.
She also invokes patient risk as a consequence
The pressure being put on the Minister for Health, Simon Harris is palpable in this correspondence.
He should resist it at all costs.
This insidious campaign to downgrade Portlaoise has been underway for a long time now.
We are probably approaching a moment of truth, and that may prove inherently dangerous for the hospital.
The forces ranged against the hospital are formidable, and this is even all the more so when you consider their almost insular focus on getting their way on the issue.
They are not going to let it go, or indeed pay heed to any local concerns.
Indeed, these have been dismissed as lobby groups.
And it's not as if there is any grand blueprint for hospital services post Portlaoise downgrade.
Nowhere are credible alternatives offered. Nowhere is the issue of capacity addressed in any meaningful way.
If patients are at risk and this is quite arguable, it's due to the shambolic way this hospital has been treated for years, the way it has been underfunded and under resourced.
Time and again it has been stated here and elsewhere about the many advantages Portlaoise has in its favour.
It's literally as simple as looking at a map.
But no. The myopic determination of bureaucrats to downgrade this hospital persists, like the proverbial dog with the bone.
Minister Harris should do the people of Laois and beyond the service of not publishing this report.
Rather an opportuntity to invest and resource this hospital should now be taken and an end should be put once and for all to the uncertainty regarding its future.
This would be for the greater good.
A MAN has pleaded guilty to charges relating to a break-in at a house in County Limerick during which a significant quantity of cash and a rifle were taken.
When formally arraigned at Limerick Circuit Court, Tyrone OConnor, aged 28, of St Brendans Drive, Charleville pleaded guilty to a charge of burglary relating to an incident at Lackelly, Knocklong on March 31, last.
The defendant was charged a number of weeks after the burglary and a file prepared for the Director of Public Prosecutions who directed that the matter proceed on indictment at the circuit court.
During an earlier court hearing, Limerick District Court was told the defendant and a co-accused took around 7,000 from a cash box which was in a safe at the house.
A legally-held rifle, which was subsequently recovered by investigating gardai, was also stolen from the house.
After Lily Buckley BL, prosecuting, confirmed that Mr OConnors plea was acceptable to the State she requested an early sentencing date.
Brian McInerney BL, representing Mr OConnor, said while his client was previously granted bail subject to conditions he has not taken up bail and remains in custody.
Noting this, Judge Tom ODonnell remanded the defendant in continuing custody ahead of a sentencing hearing on November 27, next when he will hear details relating to the offence.
The maximum sentence for burglary offences prosecuted on indictment is 14 years imprisonment.
THE former Minister for Foreign Affairs Gerard Collins will deliver the 2017 John Fitzgerald Kennedy Memorial Address to mark the death of the late US president.
The address, which is the only event of its type held to commemorate the anniversary of the death of the president, will be performed in the Thomas Fitzgerald Centre in Bruff which is the ancestral home of the Fitzgerald side of the late presidents family.
The centre was officially open by Caroline Kennedy in June 2013.
Each year the organisers of the event, Bruff Heritage Group invite a politician or former politician to deliver the address. Last year, Sean Haughey TD, the grandson of Sean Lemass who was a close friend of President John Fitzgerald Kennedy, delivered the address.
The Chairman of Bruff Heritage Group - who organise the annual address and who operate the Thomas Fitzgerald Centre - Paul Dennehy told the Limerick Leader that he was delighted that Mr Collins would deliver the 2017 John Fitzgerald Kennedy Memorial Address, adding that given his outstanding contribution to Irish politics for over 37 years, Gerard Collins has established himself as one of Irelands greatest statesmen
The address will take place on Wednesday November 22 at 7.30pm in the Thomas Fitzgerald Centre in Bruff and is open to all to attend. Admission is free. Gerard Collins has a long and distinguished political career and was first elected to the Dail in 1967 - this week 50 years.
He served as parliamentary secretary to the minister for industry and commerce from 1969 to1970. He was appointed minister for posts and telegraphs from 1970 to 1973. He was later appointed as minister for justice, the youngest ever person to hold such an office.
He was subsequently appointed as minister for foreign affairs where he quickly established himself as an international politician. He was highly regarded by other European ministers and is credited with establishing important economic and social links.
SMALL firms across Limerick have an opportunity to win three months rent-free space in one of the citys major shopping centres.
The Parkway Shopping Centre has teamed up with Revo, the retail property group, to offer the space.
The scheme, codenamed Free Space+ is a national initiative designed to support start-up and independent compaies.
Firms from across Britain and Ireland can apply for free space in up to 100 shopping centres, including the Parkway at the Dublin Road.
As part of the application, small companies locally will be asked to demonstrate how trading in the Parkway will accelerate growth rates.
A judging panel will select ten winners in January 2018, which will then be able to occupy space in their chosen shopping centre for three months.
The successful applicant will also receive a support package, including insurance, financial rates and legal advice.
The winners will also be partnered with mentors relevant to their particular business.
On top of this, there will be design, online brand mentoring available too. The value to each winning business, including the market rent for the retail space, could be up to 35,000.
The Free Space+ scheme is backed by Harcourt developments, the owner of the Parkway Shopping Centre.
Revo chief executive Ed Cooke said: Physical retail space is not only a point of sale, it is integral to building a retail brand and driving website traffic. Free Space+ is the first business incubation initiative of its kind, not only allowing businesses to trade from some of Britain and Irelands leading retail destinations for free, but providing them with the support they need to fully realise its potential.
To apply for a free spot visit the following website
www.parkwaysc.com/competitions/2010/
AN iconic symbol of Atheas past now points confidently to the future following a huge community-wide effort which has seen a defibrillator installed in a new home on Con Colbert Street: an old-fashioned telephonebox.
The green-and-white painted phonebox with its new defibrillator was unveiled on Sunday afternoon in an all-party ribbon-cutting ceremony. And there was much joking as the scissors but not the knives were brought out as Cllrs John Sheahan, Francis Foley, Liam Galvin and Seamus Browne did the honours.
The entire ceremony was bestreamed live to Athea-born emigrants in Canada, Australia, USA and Britain as well as in Dubai and Dublin as MC Henry Moran of Athea Tidy Towns acted as master of ceremonies.
It was all a long way from the days when queues would form outside the old phonebox and three-minute calls were made through the operator. On Sunday though, the sense of wonder hinged on the ability of local craftsman Tommy Hassett to recreate that old P&T phonebox so faithfully. Its probably the most high profile job I have done, Tommy laughed as locals inspected his handiwork.
Earlier, Fr Brendan Duggan blessed the box and Henry Moran listed all those who had contributed towards making the project possible, including the four councillors who had allocated GMA funding to it.
You couldnt put something like that unless people wanted it there, Mr Moran continued, explaining that when the suggestion went out to the parish, people were 100% behind it. It took a lot of good will from a lot of people, he said.
Sean Liston, on behalf of Athea First Responders pointed out that the defibrillator doesnt work by itself. And he appealed for more people to get involved. CPR in conjunction with a defibrillator can bring somebody back, he stressed.
Local GP, Dr Kieran Murphy welcomed the new defibrillator in its new, custom-built home which is CCTV secured and at the right temperature to maintain the equipment.
Athea, he pointed out, was pretty rural, located 27 miles from hospitals in Tralee and 37 miles from Limerick, with the nearest ambulance depots in Listowel and Newcastle West.
The national target for emergency help is eight minutes, Dr Murphy said. That is not going to happen here, he continued. The best case scenario for an ambulance in Athea is 20 minutes, he pointed out, and Athea was going to have to rely on its own resources. But Athea is now a Heart Safe village, he said.
THE team behind the redevelopment of the former gasworks site on OCurry Street in Limerick city have won a major award.
Staff from Ervia and Gas Networks Ireland have been working to pump out tar from deep underground the land, and make it ready to be used again.
Having been fully on site for the past year, the team has received the Public Sector Project of the Year award at this years Irish Project Management Institute Awards. in Dublin.
Kevin McSherry, head of major projects with Ervia, said: We are extremely proud of the success of the project to date, which we can very much attribute to the great work by our innovative team to solve a legacy environmental issue.
"Managing our environmental impact, including legacy impacts from many years ago, is a key priority for Gas Networks Ireland and the wider Ervia group, and we look to reduce our carbon footprint where possible.
The pump and treat method which we have used has a significantly lower impact on the environment than other, more traditional, remediation methods.
Congrats the Ervia team who scooped Public Sector Project of the Year (sponsored by Institute of Public Administration) at #ProjectAwards17 pic.twitter.com/N169mUAJtc Ireland Chapter PMI (@pmiirl) November 2, 2017
Mr McSherry also paid tribute to local businesses and the community.
The gasworks site played an important role in Limericks industrial past.
Before the introduction of natural gas, in the 1800s, the gas used to light Limericks street lights was made from coal. The coal tar, a by-product of that, is what is being removed.
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City Manager Horacio De Leon's employment contract shows he is making around $9,000 a year more than his predecessor Jesus Olivares, and the city will be forced to pay up if he is removed from the position anytime soon.
De Leon's annual salary is now $260,000, plus a car allowance of up to $1,200 a month and a cellphone allowance of up to $150 a month. All told this comes out to $276,200 a year.
When he retired, Olivares' salary was $259,745.52 a year, and his car allowance was $500 a month, plus $100 for his cellphone $266,945.52 total.
The $9,254.48 difference between De Leon and Olivares' income comes mainly from De Leon's increased car allowance. He told LMT that the city managers' car allowance had been around $500 a month for about 15 years, so he asked for the same allowance as the mayor, which he was granted.
RELATED: Only 4 qualified candidates applied for Laredo city manager position, records show
Of note, however, is that just before Olivares retired on May 15, he received a significant $17,743.20 salary increase.
Since he signed his first employment agreement on April 20, 2015, Olivares had been been receiving a $242,002.32 salary, according to his previous contracts.
At an April 3 City Council meeting this year, council unanimously voted to renew Olivares' contract for a year, and stipulated that his salary would remain the same.
"There would be no changes to the contract from last year as far as pay," Councilman Roberto Balli said at the meeting.
However his contract shows his base salary shot up to $259,745. Mayor Pete Saenz said Friday that when City Council reviewed Olivares' contract, the $259,745 number was what was provided to them as his current salary. Human Resources Director Monica Flores could not be reached Friday to comment as it was a city holiday.
READ MORE: Laredo mayor considering suspending previous city manager in wake of FBI raids
Olivares enjoyed his raise until May 15, when he abruptly retired. A few weeks prior, the FBI searched various city and county offices, including City Hall, on a public corruption probe. Olivares was one of 17 people named by the FBI as a "target subject," including four current members of City Council.
Saenz was bothered by Olivares' name on this list and what that implied. So at the May 15 City Council meeting, council discussed behind closed doors whether to put Olivares on paid administrative leave. After Olivares joined the discussion, he announced that he would be retiring effective immediately.
City Council appointed De Leon, who at the time was an assistant city manager, to fill Olivares' position in the interim. He was named permanent city manager Aug. 7 and his employment contract was unanimously approved by City Council on Sept. 5. However it was not signed by the mayor and city manager until Oct. 11. A copy of the contract was not obtained by LMT until this week.
MORE ON LMTOnline.com: Laredo students' blackface, Hitler costumes prompt social media outrage
The city manager earning the closest base salary to De Leon's is in Richardson, Texas, making $262,254 a year, according to a survey recently conducted by the City of Laredo's HR department. Richardson's population is about 113,000 while Laredo's is around 257,000.
The City of Lubbock's population is just below Laredo's at 253,000. The Lubbock Avalanche-Journal reported in 2016 that their newly-appointed city manager's salary was $250,000.
San Antonio's city manager looks to be making the most in the state with a $450,000 base salary, according to the city's survey.
Much of De Leon's contract matches Olivares', but several sections mark significant changes in these administrations, namely in severance payment.
If De Leon were to be removed from his position before Sept. 1, 2018, he would receive a lump sum equal to three years' salary, or $780,000. If he is removed between Sept. 1, 2018 and Aug. 31, 2019, he would receive two years' salary, or $520,000. And if he is removed between Sept. 1, 2019 and Aug. 31, 2020, he would receive one years' salary.
RELATED: City Manager Horacio De Leon implements major changes to City of Laredo's management structure
De Leon said this is a common provision found in other city manager contracts it's basically a retention incentive package. This is good for the city because it encourages continuity over this three-year period, he said.
The following instances are considered "removal" and would qualify De Leon for these severance packages.
City Council votes to remove him
He is discharged less than six months after receiving a notice of separation from the city
He resigns less than six months after giving a notice of separation to the city
He resigns at any time following a City Council decision to reduce his salary or benefits
He resigns at any time after notifying the city of its failure to comply with his contract
He resigns following an act that suggests his services are no longer wanted by a majority of City Council
He involuntarily retires or permanent disability
Olivares' severance pay was one years' salary regardless of time of removal.
Another new provision in De Leon's contract has to do with his performance evaluation. Under Olivares' administration, City Council would evaluate him annually, and that would be the end of it. De Leon's contract specifies that the deputy city manager and all city directors will be given anonymous employee feedback forms, which will be submitted to the internal auditor. City Council will take this feedback into consideration when they assess De Leon's yearly performance.
The city will pay for De Leon's health insurance premium, as it did for Olivares. However, now if De Leon's contract is renewed after a year, he is entitled to health insurance coverage for life. This was not a part of Olivares' employment agreement.
As it had in previous administrations, the city will pay for the city manager's life insurance and disability insurance premiums. Now, the City of Laredo will also pay premiums for a travel-related insurance policy of up to $5 million if De Leon is traveling outside the continental U.S. for city business.
De Leon's contract shows he is serving as city manager for an indefinite term. Olivares' last employment contract was also for an indefinite term.
Julia Wallace may be reached at 956-728-2543 or jwallace@lmtonline.com
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A foundation overseen by billionaire industrialist Charles Koch is making major investments in foreign policy programs at elite American universities, including a soon-to-be-announced $3.7 million grant to Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
The latest grant, which is expected to be made public early next week, is part of a larger effort to broaden the debate about an American foreign policy Koch and others at his foundation argue has become too militaristic, interventionist and expensive. It follows about $10 million in similar grants the Charles Koch Foundation has given in recent months to Notre Dame, Tufts University, Catholic University and the University of California, San Diego.
"This is the beginning of a much bigger project to ask questions about America's proper role in the world and how we move forward," said Will Ruger, vice president for research at the Charles Koch Foundation.
Charles and his brother David Koch have stirred controversy in recent years as symbols of big money run amok in American politics. They typically support Republican candidates who advocate for smaller government, less regulation, free trade and are skeptical about humans' role in contributing to climate change. The money the Charles Koch Foundation is spending on foreign policy amounts to only a fraction of the $300 million to $400 million the brothers are expected to pay out over the next two years on policy and political campaigns - up from $250 million during the 2016 elections.
In the world of foreign policy, the grants are a major investment aimed at generating new ideas about how America should use its military power and vast economic influence.
On foreign policy, Charles Koch has been an iconoclast, and has frequently broken with mainstream Republicans to raise doubts about the wisdom of America's wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. He pointedly declined to back President Donald Trump's campaign for the White House but is seen as an ideological ally of Vice President Mike Pence, especially on matters related to domestic policy and politics.
At the height of the Vietnam War, he took out a full-page ad in the Wichita Eagle calling for an end to American involvement in the conflict.
The foundation's grants are designed to encourage research that advances the realist school of foreign policy, a view that is skeptical of American-led humanitarian interventions, abhors nation-building in places such as Iraq or Afghanistan and preaches the importance of restraint on the world stage.
Foreign policy realists typically support big investments in naval and air power to dissuade potential adversaries, such as Russia and China, and to safeguard global commerce and free trade.
"We are not pacifists," Ruger said, "but we want to be smarter. . . . This isn't a liberal or conservative issue. It's looking at what we've been doing and saying what's a better approach."
The investment at Harvard and MIT, like the Koch foundation programs at the other universities, will primarily pay for graduate-level and postdoctoral fellowships. Stephen Walt, a professor at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, and Barry Posen, the director of MIT's Security Studies program, will oversee the Koch-funded program at the two schools.
Both professors are known as realists who have criticized the Republican and Democratic foreign policy elite for overstating America's capabilities and too quickly defaulting to the U.S. military to deal with threats they say are only peripheral to American interests. The goal, they said, is to break the bipartisan Washington consensus on American foreign policy.
"There's been no disagreement on American exceptionalism and global leadership in a lot of places. For example, Iraq had bipartisan support initially," Walt said. "There are nasty debates about tactics but most of those happened between the 45-yard lines."
Posen said during the Cold War there were often big debates over nuclear weapons and U.S. policy in places such as Latin America or Asia. "The debate that was quite spirited became somewhat somnolent in the post-Cold-War world," he said.
Trump's "America First" foreign policy philosophy, which is skeptical of free trade, NATO and other big security alliances, has opened up some of the debate. But, he has also led the Republicans and Democrats who make up the foreign policy elite to close ranks in opposition to him.
Posen and Walt said the fellowships wouldn't be limited to foreign policy realists.
"This is not about politics," Posen said. "This is about policy and training graduate students and scholarship."
The foundation is also bankrolling a foreign policy debate series with the Brookings Institution that kicked off last week in St. Louis and will be followed with similar discussions over the next few weeks in Las Vegas and other U.S. cities.
The first debate focused on America's global leadership role and future debates will cover China policy, trade, military power and the relationship with Russia and NATO.
Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte wants one thing from his main meeting with President Donald Trump in Manila on Monday: a Ferdinand Marcos moment. Back in 1981, then-Vice President George H.W. Bush toasted the dictator's third inauguration by cooing, "We love your adherence to democratic principle and to the democratic processes."
Bush's support confounded Marcos's critics and burnished his strongman image. Today, compliments from Trump are likely to have the same benefits for Duterte. The Philippine president will almost certainly find an opportunity to point out that a Pew Research Center poll published in June placed Filipino confidence in Trump at 69 percent. (Of course, their subordinates won't be reminding the two men that President Barack Obama enjoyed 94 percent confidence among Filipinos in 2015.)
Duterte's infatuation with China and Russia will be of little use to him while he plays host to his fellow Southeast Asian leaders at a regional summit meeting. Neither Xi Jinping nor Vladimir Putin is going to Manila. In the Philippines, which remains one of the most pro-American countries in the world, the public still measure their leaders by the Washington yardstick.
By that standard, Duterte has a lot to be happy about. Trump's advisers originally envisioned an overnight visit to the Philippines, but that has now been extended to two days. A simple pull-aside on the sidelines of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations summit has been elevated to a bilateral meeting. Notably, Duterte managed to get through the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit without making any major gaffes. Because by now everyone knows Duterte is only uncouth when politically expedient, it's well worth asking why he has been on his best behavior with his global peers. The reason is domestic: As Tip O'Neill famously observed, all politics is local.
Duterte's illiberal political agenda is running out of steam. He has been meeting strong resistance in the form of criticism from human rights advocates at home and abroad, cautious but increasingly public concern on the part of the Roman Catholic hierarchy, and growing alarm among civil society groups and the media. All this has been accompanied by a sharp drop in public support for the president and his methods. Even more ominously, the business community has been expressing quiet but steady concern over the economy losing steam.
The president has had to beat a strategic retreat on two fronts. First, and most painfully, was in the case of his war on drugs. In October, Duterte had to publicly - though grudgingly - relieve the police of responsibility for conducting operations, giving the job to the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency while announcing he fully expected the effort to fail. The previous head of the agency had been fired for contesting Duterte's claim of 4 million drug addicts, and the agency's supervisor, retired Gen. Dionisio Santiago, was fired last week for daring to suggest that an immense rehab facility funded by a Chinese billionaire was a white elephant. This, despite Santiago having provided Duterte with dossiers that provided the intelligence basis for the drug war itself. It may be that the cosmetic changes (such as rolling out the harmless but unsatisfyingly unbloody slogan "Love Life. Fight Drugs") Santiago proposed to the drug war had already riled up the president.
Second, Duterte has had to temporarily shelve an idea proposed by some of his supporters, who have suggested that he simply scrap the 1987 Philippine constitution and proclaim a revolutionary government with himself at its head - effectively an old-fashioned Latin American-style self-coup. Duterte's official agenda is extraordinarily ambitious. It encompasses tax reform, reorganizing the executive branch, shifting the form of government from presidential to parliamentary and the adoption of federalism.
The start of impeachment proceedings against the chief justice of the Supreme Court and the widely expected impeachment of the ombudsman (who has stirred Duterte's ire by investigating killings in the war on drugs and allegations of malfeasance by administration officials, including Duterte's own son), has caused additional delays. As a result, there is almost no chance that Duterte will be able to push his plans through before the 2019 midterms, as he had originally planned. Hence the temptation to leapfrog constitutional and procedural obstacles by proclaiming a revolutionary government.
But such a high-risk move requires three things. Public opinion would have to embrace it. The military would have to allow it. And foreign governments would have to turn a blind eye to it. The first two requirements have foundered on embarrassing realities. First, Duterte supporters have been notably lax about attending pro-government rallies, in stark contrast to the days when they reliably turned out in huge numbers. Second, Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana and the armed forces chief of staff were both reported to have told the vice president that they would not support a revolutionary government. So Duterte has been forced to shelve the proposal for now.
In short, the chance to burnish his standing by playing host to Trump and his Southeast Asian peers couldn't come at a better time. At the very least, it gives him an occasion to remind friends and foe alike that he is still the man who matters in Manila.
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Manuel Quezon III is a columnist for the Philippine Daily Inquirer newspaper and the host of the political affairs show "The Explainer" on the ABS-CBN TV news channel.
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AUSTIN -- Gov. Greg Abbott, using a red-white-and-blue Veterans Day event to officially file for reelection, Saturday unveiled a plan to put Texas' military service personnel at the "front of the line" for expanded state services and employment opportunities, tax breaks and expedited healthcare services.
His plan also calls for the all-volunteer Texas State Guard to be more than doubled in size, from about 2,300 soldiers to 5,000, to allow the state to respond faster to emergencies and disasters.
It would also give provide contract incentives for businesses relocating to Texas through the Texas Enterprise Fund to hire more veterans.
Abbott filed for a second four-year term by submitting more than 6,000 signed petitions to Republican Party of Texas Chairman James Dickey, rather than signing a form declaring his candidacy. It's the first time in recent state history that a gubernatorial candidate does that, aides said.
In other filing action Saturday, incumbent Republican Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick said he filed for reelection and Grady Yarbrough, a retired educator who ran unsuccessfully last year for the Texas Railroad Commission and unsuccessfully in 2012 for the U.S. Senate, filed to run as a Democrat for governor.
Filing for 2018 midterm elections in Texas -- covering everything from Congress to the governor's mansion to the Legislature to local county courthouses -- ends Dec. 11.
"When I launched my reelection campaign this summer I made a promise to elevate Texas to even greater heights," said Abbott, noting that his proposed veterans' plan would fulfill a key pledge.
"I promised to strengthen our education system, crack down on gangs and violent crime and grow our economy and create more jobs. And I also promised to do more to empower our veterans, whether they are returning to the workforce after their service, looking to become an entrepreneur and start a business, or trying to get access to the healthcare they need."
While many of the details in Abbott's plan need the approval of the Legislature or local officials, the governor said he is confident that they will draw support.
Statistics show Texas is home to the second largest number of veterans in the United States, after California -- and the most, if World War II veterans are not included. More than 1.5 million veterans are reported to live in Texas.
Under Abbott's proposal, Texas would fully fund the veterans mental health program at the state Health and Human Services Commission, doubling the number of ex-soldiers who can receive care with an additional $10 million in state funding.
Officials said the program now serves about 152,000 veterans.
Mental and behavioral health programs for veterans would also be enhanced under the proposal, and the state would push to allow federal Veterans Administration benefits to be used to visit private health providers, as a way to avoid long lines at VA hospitals and medical centers.
Abbott said that could have the greatest impact in the Rio Grande Valley, where the closest VA facility is hours away in San Antonio.
Under Abbott's plan, local taxing authorities would be allowed to grant personal property tax exemptions of up to $30,000 to veteran-owned businesses during their first five years of operation.
"For a small business with a lot of physical inventory, such as a restaurant, this tax relief could be the difference between an unaffordable dream, and a thriving enterprise," Abbott's proposal states. "A veteran-owned business would, under the existing definition in Texas law, be a business in which each owner is a veteran."
In addition, local taxing entities could grant businesses a $15,000 reduction on the assessed value of their commercial property for each new veteran they hire -- not to exceed $300,000 per property or 20 percent of the property's total assessed taxable value.
Local occupational licensing and registration fees could be waived for veterans. State grants to assist veterans with legal issues -- primarily in accessing military and other benefits and employment issues, among other matters -- would be doubled to $3 million.
The plan would also create a special 22-member gubernatorial commission to "support the U.S. military in Texas" in preparation for expected additional base closures in coming years, to minimize the loss of additional facilities.
Texas' 15 major military installations generate more than $136.6 billion in economic activity in the state each year, and add $81.4 billion to the gross state product, according to a 2016 report by state Comptroller Glenn Hegar.
Jeffrey Cleland, a former Marine corporal who manages the military service initiative at the George W. Bush Center in Dallas, applauded Abbott's plan as a significant step forward for Texas veterans.
"This is going above and beyond what a lot of states do," he said, noting that the plan will allow the state to tap the myriad talents that veterans have to offer. "It's great."
Dave Lewis, director of veterans programs for the VetStar health services program in Lubbock, echoed that sentiment.
"This plan involves filling in the gaps where the VA struggles . . . and it will allow the state to make veterans successful," he said.
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Thiruvananthapuram: The Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan on last day warned police force to be vigilant against corruption and third degree torture practices. He was addressing the passing out
parade of fresh batch of Special Armed Police (SAP) constables. During his speech he said that a good police officer should have the capacity to understand the pulse of local populace of their respective area.
The Chief Minister urged the force to root out corruption practices within the force like third degree torture. He cautioned of taking stringent measures against those who are found guilty.
Apart from training lessons, a police officer should have practical knowledge, clear perception and approach to excel in his duty during critical situations.
Hawks & Reed Performing Arts Center in Greenfield will screen the 1973 rock opera "Jesus Christ Superstar" with three of the film's cast members present,
Screenings will be held at 289 Main St. on Nov. 17 and 18 at 7 p.m., doors open at 6 p.m.
The showing of the digitally restored "Jesus Christ Superstar" is a singalong event with subtitles to assist audience members. There will also be having a costume contest.
Stars Ted Neeley (Jesus), Bob Bingham (Caiaphas), and Kurt Yaghjian (Annas, Friday only) will be the judges for the costume contest with a prize awarded.
Neeley, Bingham and Yaghjian will host meet and greets after the screening.
Everyone will get a chance to chat with them, have their pictures taken and items signed.
There will also be a sneak peek at the documentary, "Superstars: The Making of and Reunion of the Film" with rare behind-the-scenes footage and recent cast interviews.
The screenings will include a tribute to Barry Dennen (Pontius Pilate), who died earlier this year.
Advance tickets are $20 and available at hawksandreed.ticketfly.com Tickets will be available at the door for $25.
VIP packages are available at tedneeley.com
A Boston firefighter was injured Saturday night while battling a 4-alarm blaze inside a warehouse on Border Street.
The Boston Fire Department said on Twitter that the firefighter was taken to an area hospital with a back injury. The fire at the vacant warehouse began around 6 p.m.
Streets around the warehouse, located next to a shopping center in Central Square, were closed.
Firefighters had to use saws to gain access into the building during the fire. The fire remains under investigation.
HOLYOKE - Fire investigators have not been able to determine the cause of a Newton Street fire that killed a 30-year-old man and displaced 36 residents from five homes Saturday.
The name of the victim has not been released yet. The man's body has been turned over to the state Medical Examiner's office, Fire Capt. Kevin Cavagnac said.
Investigators from the Holyoke Fire Department and State Fire Marshal's Office left the cause as "undetermined" but said it was not suspicious, he said.
The fire started in 113 Newton Street, which was so badly damaged that firefighters could not find enough evidence remaining to determine a cause. "There wasn't a scene left," Cavagnac said.
The fire also displaced 36 people from five homes at 113, 111, 109, 107 and 105 for at least Saturday night. The residents of 105 may be able to return to their homes soon because the damage was not extensive, he said.
The Pioneer Valley Chapter of the American Red Cross assisted 12 residents. The remaining people are staying with family or friends, Cavagnac said.
The fire started at about 5 a.m. and quickly spread to the other three units. When firefighters arrived, flames were showing from some of the back windows of 113 Newton St. and heavy smoke and possibly fames were coming out of the front windows, he said.
The homes are row houses built in 1890 and are narrow, each measuring about 15 feet in width. The fire spread quickly mainly through the attic and the roof, Cavagnac said.
Each home, which is owned by a different person, have brick fire walls diving them. "They are older and not built to the same codes as today so their effectiveness is questionable," Cavagnac said.
Firefighters eventually stopped the flames from spreading more by cutting a line through the roof with chainsaws. That break serves as a trench would in a brush fire and stops the fire from continuing, he said.
The fire was so severe it went to a third alarm and a total of nine fire apparatus responded from the city. Fire crews were also assisted by those in South Hadley, Chicopee and Westover Air Reserve Base, he said.
When firefighters arrived the received a report that the 30-year-old man was missing from 113 Newton Street. The other residents of the home were able to escape safely, he said.
Once the fire was controlled and the structure was determined to be safe to enter, fire investigators from Holyoke and the Massachusetts State Police entered the building and found the man, he said.
The fire was brought under control by late morning but firefighters remained at the scene all day. They officially turned the homes over to the city Building Inspector's Office in the late afternoon, Cavagnac said.
Each of the homes has two floors and a basement. They are assessed at between $31,000 and $44,000, according to Holyoke records.
This is the second fatal fire in Holyoke this year. A New Year's Day fire in a five-story apartment block left three people dead and displaced 49.
Killed in the blaze were Holyoke residents Maria Cartagena, 48, and Jorge Munoz, 55, as well as 34-year-old Easthampton resident Trevor R. Wadleigh.
The fire, which was caused by an electrical problem in a third-floor outlet, created major fallout afterward when the union that represents firefighters complained that Engine 2 was taken off-line because there were not enough people to man it.
Several firefighters, including the union president, were also disciplined due to problems at the fire. People were not rewcued as quickly as they could because one of the ladder trucks malfunctioned.
WARREN - Police are warning residents about a new phone scam that is targeting jury duty scofflaws.
The scam is mostly happening in Worcester County, but people everywhere should be aware of the false phone calls.
In the past week a caller has been identifying himself as Worcester County Sheriff's Department officer and threatening residents with prosecution for failing to show up for jury duty in state and federal courts.
Sturbridge Police and Warren Police are reporting several residents there have received scam calls of the nature.
The caller is telling people they can avoid prosecution by providing pre-paid money cards or to give their credit card number and confidential data, which could lead to identity theft.
No Sheriff's Office or Police Department will call residents and demand payments of any type and never on behalf of the courts. The courts always contact prospective jurors through the U.S. mail and never request personal information, police said.
People should never give personal information to anyone over the phone. Any government entity including police, the Internal Revenue Service, the courts or the sheriff's department, will ever demand payment through pre-paid money cards, police said.
Anyone who gets a demand for payment over the phone for any reason should hang up immediately. If the caller is posing as an official from any agency, residents should contact that agency before giving any money.
The Cape and Islands district attorney will meet with the son of Heather Unruh after he accused actor Kevin Spacey of sexually assaulting him on Nantucket in 2016.
The Boston Globe reports the meeting will take place soon and District Attorney Michael O'Keefe wants all the information relevant to the alleged sexual assault.
In an announcement last week, former WCVB-TV news anchor Heather Unruh accused Spacey of sexually assaulting her then 18-year-old son at the Club Car bar in Nantucket in July 2016. Unruh's son worked as a busboy there.
"Kevin Spacey bought him drink after drink after drink and when my son was drunk, Spacey made his move and sexually assaulted him," she said.
Unruh accused Spacey of forcing his hand down her son's pants. Her son left when Spacey went to the bathroom and told his sister. He has since reported what happed to Nantucket police.
Mitchell Garabedian, the lawyer for many of the victims in the Boston clergy sex abuse scandal, is representing Unruh's son.
Several men have accused Spacey of sexual misconduct. Netflix severed ties with the "House of Cards" star and Spacey was removed from his role in the upcoming movie, "All the Money in the World."
The second trooper to file a federal lawsuit against the Massachusetts State Police, Col. Richard McKeon and other troopers over the redaction of a police report involving the arrest of a judge's daughter said she refused to shred her report despite direct orders to do so.
Trooper Ali Rei filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court Friday, just days after Trooper Ryan Sceviour filed a federal lawsuit in connection with the redaction of an arrest report involving Alli Bibaud, the daughter of a Worcester County judge.
Rei claims she was told to shred and redact reports containing embarrassing statements made by Bibaud, but that she ultimately did not redact or shred reports. Rei feared she would lose her job or be disciplined for disobeying an order, the lawsuit says.
Both troopers claim orders to redact the arrest report, which contained alleged statements made by Bibaud about performing sex acts for drugs, came from McKeon. A 35-year veteran of the State Police and Worcester native, McKeon announced his retirement Friday as the allegations he ordered the removal of embarrassing details from Bibaud's arrest report appeared in the federal lawsuits.
Bibaud, who is the daughter of Judge Timothy Bibaud and once worked as a victim/witness advocate for the Worcester County District Attorney's Office, was involved in a crash on Oct. 16 on Interstate 190 in Worcester.
Sceviour and Rei both responded to the crash. Troopers said they discovered a yellow handbag containing syringes, a metal spoon and plastic baggies - all signs of possible heroin use. Bibaud was arrested on charges she was driving under the influence of drugs and alcohol.
Rei is a trained drug recognition expert with the State Police. She was called to the crash scene and evaluated Bibaud only to find the judge's daughter had signs of drug use, Rei wrote in her lawsuit.
"The suspect stated that she had used heroin 'this morning' and drank two nips of alcohol," Rei claims in her lawsuit. Bibaud failed field sobriety tests as well, both troopers wrote in their lawsuits.
At the Holden barracks, Bibaud allegedly told Rei she "regularly used two grams of heroin" daily. Bibaud claimed she crashed the car on I-190 on purpose because she was upset with her boyfriend, the passenger in the vehicle, Rei said in her lawsuit.
"Ms. Bibaud stated that she was 'sick of living like this. Trooper Rei asked what she meant by that statement and Ms. Bibaud responded by stating that she had to perform multiple sexual acts in order to obtain the drugs for 'us' (presumably, her and her boyfriend)," the lawsuit said.
As Bibaud was booked, Rei heard Bibaud offer Sceviour sexual favors for leniency. The allegation was made in lawsuits filed by both troopers.
Rei said she made detailed notations in the electronic Administrative Journal about the evaluation of Bibaud. She also completed her report on Oct. 17.
Both Rei and Sceviour say they were told to redact Bibaud's arrest report to remove comments about the sexual favors and also a comment where Bibaud said her father is a judge.
Sceviour made redactions to his report, but according to Rei's lawsuit, she did not shred copies of her journal extract and did not alter her report. The troopers both say they were given the orders during meetings or phone calls on Oct. 19 with Major Susan Anderson.
Anderson, the troopers say, told them both the orders to change or shred reports in Bibaud's arrest came from McKeon. The troopers claim Gov. Charlie Baker's public safety chief, Daniel Bennett, also made the order, but Bennett's office said he never asked for anything to be done to the report.
Rei claims Anderson told her she deleted Rei's log notes from the computer, removed the journal pages and shredded them. Anderson allegedly to Rei to create new journal entries to replace the deleted ones and shred the original journal entry copies. Anderson told Rei to alter her original report as well, the trooper claims in the lawsuit.
"Despite Major Anderson's direct order, Trooper Rei did not shred the copies of the Administrative Journal extract and did not alter her DRE report to remove the incriminating statements made by Ms. Bibaud," the lawsuit said. "Trooper Rei is in fear of being disciplined and terminated from her employment because she did not obey Anderson's illegal orders. As a result, Trooper Rei suffered and continues to suffer from severe emotional distress as a result of the orders that were given to her by Major Anderson to commit illegal acts."
Bibaud's case was transferred to Middlesex County and out of Worcester County as it continues in court. According to Rei's lawsuit, she sent her original, unaltered report to prosecutors on Nov. 9.
Rei is claiming her state and federal rights were violated and the situation caused emotional distress. Sceviour filed similar claims.
The state's attorney general is investigating the altered arrest report. Sceviour and Sgt. Jason Conant, the trooper's supervisor at the Holden barracks, were both given reprimands in the Bibaud case. State officials said the reprimands will be invalidated. McKeon's retirement is effective Nov. 17.
Trooper Ali Rei lawsuit against Massachusetts State Police by Scott Croteau on Scribd
SOUTHWICK - The town observed Veterans Day with a parade and ceremony at the War Memorial Saturday.
Organized by the Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 872 and American Legion Post 338, Southwick's celebration included the laying of wreaths by Gold Star Mother Marie Alamed and an invocation by Ben Giancola of the American Legion.
Giancola asked that everyone pray for the military and ask "for blessings" for all those who have served.
Select Board Chairman Douglas Moglin thanked those who have served and continue to serve in the military. He also recognized the sacrifices made by military families.
Master of Ceremonies Matt Egerton of the VFW also thanked the Southwick Police and Fire for their service and said a $700 contribution to the police K9 officer would be made.
SPRINGFIELD -- The city of Springfield commemorated Veterans Day Saturday by honoring veterans who have served the United States with a parade and ceremony.
The event, held under crystal clear blue skies with a cool brisk breeze, kicked off from the Springfield Technical Community College grounds on Federal Street.
Marchers then made their way down State Street to Main Street before turning onto Court Street and ending at the steps of City Hall.
Hundreds of Springfield High School students in R.O.T.C. units took part in the parade and ceremony, lining up on the steps under the watchful eyes of parents and friends who gathered for the event.
Springfield's Veteran of the Year, Paul Seifert, along with Parade Marshall Dr. Mark Mullan addressed the crowd following remarks by Mayor Domenic J. Sarno.
Massachusetts Army National Guard Captain Mustafa Thompson, the featured speaker, meanwhile, thanked veterans from all conflicts for their service, as well as their families for the support they have given to those who have served.
Sarno further honored all the Vietnam-era veterans on the 50th anniversary of that war, contending it is time for them to be respected for serving their county at a very difficult time in U.S. history.
WESTFIELD - The city showed its love and appreciation for veterans on Saturday with a ceremony at Parker Memorial Park, the site of numerous monuments honoring Westfield residents who made the ultimate sacrifice.
The 11 a.m. ceremony took place across the street from South Middle School, where the front lawn is decorated with American flags for the annual Park of Honor display.
"Very simply put, today we honor those who put the welfare of others before themselves," said Westfield state Rep. and U.S. Army Reserve Capt. John Velis, the ceremony's keynote speaker.
He marveled at the brave service members in every branch of the military who volunteer to serve in the Korean Peninsula, an unstable area on a hair-trigger for war.
"As long as we have people willing to do that ... we are A-OK as a nation," said Velis.
On April 6, 2013, while Velis was serving in Afghanistan, a Taliban suicide bomber killed three of his fellow soldiers and two American civilians. He described the fear, shock and anger that followed such cruel violence, but said it did not delay the mission for a single day.
"It was a simple mindset. You may have hit us yesterday, but today is gonna be our day," he said. "That is the courage, that is the fortitude that separates our service members from everybody else."
Velis also read a poem he found during a recent visit to the Holyoke Soldiers' Home, "It Is The Soldier" by Charles Province. The poem lauds veterans as the protectors of Americans' constitutional rights.
State Sen. Don Humason reflected on the lyrics to a folk song called "Old Soldiers Never Die," saying that it's up to all of us to keep veterans' memories alive.
"As citizens of this great country and great commonwealth, (we) must take time to remember each and every person who wore a uniform and served this country," said Humason.
Saturday's ceremony was organized by Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 1847, American Legion Post 124, American Legion Whip City Memorial Post 454, Westfield Marine Corps League Detachment 141 and Vietnam Veterans Chapter 219.
Donald Wielgus was honored with a mayoral proclamation, endorsed by Velis, Humason and the Westfield City Council, for his efforts to extend the Purple Heart Trail through the city. Mayor Brian Sullivan also thanked Frank Mills and Dennis Yefko for their work on the project.
"To serve is an honor, to salute is a sign of respect, and to say thank you is a must," Sullivan said.
The ceremony was preceded by a short march from the downtown Westfield Bank branch to Parker Memorial Park. The Westfield Marching Band, led by band director Patrick Kennedy, played several patriotic selections.
GREENFIELD -- A company that wants to lay a high-voltage transmission cable under Lake Champlain in Vermont has pledged $20 million for low-income energy retrofits in Western Massachusetts if its New England Clean Power Link wins a major utility contract in the Bay State.
TDI New England has pledged 20 years of funding, at $1 million annually, to Community Action of the Franklin, Hampshire and North Quabbin Regions for deep energy retrofits to low-income homes, said Don Jessome, CEO of Transmission Developers, Inc.
In a telephone interview, Community Action director Clare Higgins said the investment would stabilize aging housing stock in the state's four western counties, provide steady work to local contractors and help veterans, the elderly and families with young children stay warm.
"The payments from TDI would cover things other programs won't pay for," said Higgins. "Such as replacing certain types of insulation, or upgrading heating systems. It will make a big difference over time."
But the funding will materialize only if TDI prevails in the Massachusetts Clean Energy RFP -- a competition to import renewable energy into Southern New England for purchase by Massachusetts utilities.
The race is on and the stakes are high for the multi-billion-dollar energy contracts. The bids were submitted to state regulators in July.
TDI plans 98 miles of underwater and 56 miles of underground cable to deliver 1,000 megawatts of hydro, or hydro and wind, from Canada.
Several other transmission developers submitted bids in the Massachusetts Clean Energy RFP and are proposing to work with dozens of hydro, wind or solar power generators in Canada, northern New England and New York.
The winners will be announced Jan. 25 by the Massachusetts Department of Public Utilities and electric utilities Eversource, National Grid and Unitil.
While the proposals will be evaluated on the basis of hard criteria -- such as the ability to deliver reliable, cost-effective power during the winter -- subjective issues of "community benefit" will also be taken into consideration by the decision-makers.
As such, TDI is not the only firm offering enticements to the people of Massachusetts.
Northern Pass Transmission -- a partnership between Eversource and Hydro-Quebec -- has offered $10 million to Action for Boston Community Development if it gets to build its 192-mile power line through New Hampshire.
The Atlantic Link, a 375-mile undersea cable from Atlantic Canada to Southeastern Massachusetts, would provide $750,000 per year to South Shore Community Action Council. Developer Emera, Inc. also promises tax payments to the town of Plymouth at $2.5 million per year and 200 in-state construction jobs.
National Grid did not respond to an email asking for that company's plans to benefit Massachusetts. National Grid, partnering with the nonprofit Citizens Energy, proposes the Granite State Power Link and the Northeast Renewables Link through Vermont and New Hampshire.
Central Maine Power's New England Clean Energy Connect bid includes $50 million for battery hardware storage, as well as low-income energy initiatives in the Bay State. The initiatives are structured "to allow for maximum flexibility by state officials in determining the best use of those resources so they will ensure maximum impact in Massachusetts' communities," said a Central Maine Power spokesman.
TDI's buried cable is privately funded by Blackstone, a private equity group.
"We believe we have the best proposal," Jessome said in a telephone interview. He said the project already has its state and federal permits and has gained the support of environmentalists, state agencies and communities in Vermont.
While the Northern Pass has been dogged with controversy and delays, Eversource executives have expressed certainty that project will prevail in the Massachusetts solicitation.
National Grid, Central Maine Power and Emera have also asserted that their transmission proposals are the best and will win.
Hydro-Quebec is in the catbird seat, with proposals to work with either TDI, Eversource or Central Maine Power.
The bid process was launched in March in response to legislative mandates to diversify and clean up the power sector in Massachusetts.
Gov. Charlie Baker's 2016 energy bill requires that utilities procure around 9,450,000 megawatt-hours of wind, solar, hydro or energy storage -- so-called "Class I renewables" -- to meet the state's clean energy goals.
Concerns have been raised about Eversource and National Grid sitting on both sides of the negotiating table, because the conglomerates run electric utilities, are proposing transmission infrastructure, and are part of the bid evaluation team. It could be that the companies end up buying power from themselves.
To prevent self-dealing, the corporations barred company officials from the utility side from talking to their colleagues on the development side. Also, an independent evaluator is monitoring the overall contracting process.
Each project developer promises to lower energy costs for Massachusetts consumers while reducing the greenhouse gas emissions that lead to climate change.
Mary Serreze can be reached at mserreze@gmail.com
Under its current contract with the state, CoreCivic, the prisons owner, controls a fund that contains $32 million in state money, set aside as a potential down payment for the state to buy the 20-year-old, 600-bed private prison.
The company has said it would release the money to the state, to help balance the budget if the state agrees to extend the companys contract up to 10 years. The current contract expires in 2019.
By Mike Dennison MTN News
Full Story: http://www.kxlh.com/story/36816723/gop-has-votes-to-expand-session-shelby-private-prison-looks-like-a-flash-point
Its a friendly competition that does well for two communities in Western Montana, the Can the Cats and Can the Griz Food Drives.
While Bozemans won 15 of the 17 years of the competition, the Missoula Food Bank just got a big boost.
It just received a donation of 50,000 pounds of food, its the largest single donation in organization history.
Friday the Missoula Federal Credit Union https://missoulafcu.org/ packed the 50,000 pounds of food that they donated to the Missoula Food Bank for the Can the Cats Food Drive.
By Kaitlin Miller
http://www.abcfoxmontana.com/story/36817084/missoula-food-bank-received-the-largest-single-donation-in-history-for-can-the-cats-food-drive
Bear Paw Development Corporation is a private non-profit organization created for the purpose of administering programs to help improve regional economic conditions in Hill, Blaine, Liberty, Chouteau and Phillips Counties and the Fort Belknap and Rocky Boy's Indian Reservations.
Yes Lean Startup is ideally suited to fixing and improving operational activities! In most instances (90%+) this is possible and we have several examples of using the methodology for these type of challenges. However, there are three situations where applying the Lean Startup is less appropriate and/or requires extra care:
by Colin Duff
Eleven young enterprising Africans, among them two Nigerians, who have been named Young Global Leaders (YGL) by the World Economic Forum (WEF) for 2021, are to benefit from the Aliko Dangote Fellowship endowed to support African Young Global Leaders.
The beneficiaries are among 112 persons under 40 years of age, selected as Young Global Leaders by WEF, from across 56 countries.
The two Nigerians, Dr. Abasi Ene-Obong, founder, 54gene and Obi Ozor, the founder of Kobo360, joined the ranks of past Nigerian winners, Ambassador Debo Adesina, former Editor-in Chief of the Guardian Newspapers and current Nigerian Ambassador to Togo, and Mr. Simon Kolawole, CEO of Cable Newspapers Ltd.
While announcing the winners, the WEF confirmed that the African YGLs will benefit from the Aliko Dangote Fellowship, made possible by the Aliko Dangote Foundation (ADF). Till date, 73 Young Leaders from Africa have benefitted from the fellowship.
The aim of the fellowship is to increase the quality and quantity of young African leaders by supporting the engagement of African YGLs in the community, such as those from small enterprises or the non-business sector. The fellowship, WEF added, supports YGLs from Africa to participate in global YGL and Forum events.
The YGL award, according to WEF, is to recognise and create a platform for a dynamic community of exceptional people with the vision, courage, and influence to drive positive change in the world.
We are excited to welcome 112 Young Global Leaders for the Class of 2021. From a gender justice and human rights activist to a multi-award winning artist and advocate for indigenous literacy, to a celebrated leader from the worlds youngest country as well as leaders from business, civil society, healthcare and government.
Giving a breakdown analysis of the winners, the WEF said among the 56 countries represented in the award, eleven leaders hail from Africa and their work brings the promise of a brighter outlook at a difficult time. They join a group of Nobel Prize recipients, Pulitzer winners, Heads of state and chief executive officers committed to improving the state of the world, it noted.
Chief Executive of Aliko Dangote Foundation (ADF), Zouera Youssoufou, congratulated Ene-Obong and Ozor for this accomplishment and urged them to continue raising the Nigerian and African flags.
She said ADF was pleased to have worked with 54gene and Kobo360 at the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, when CACOVID partnered various organisations for collaborative efforts to complement the governments intervention to fight the pandemic.
We are very pleased to see Dr. Abasi Ene-Obong and Obi Ozor recognised in this way given the remarkable work they and their young team have been able to accomplish recently and especially in this past year. 54Gene and Kobo360, have been integral part of the national rapid response to the COVID-19 pandemic displaying exemplary professionalism, efficiency, dedication, and patriotism. Truly inspirational and further proof that Nigerian and African youth are capable of anything given the right opportunities, Zouera enthused.
Many of the past winners have gone ahead to prove their leadership and enterprising ability in their various fields of endeavour to justify the essence of the award and the genuineness of their nomination.
A past recipient, Ambassador Debo Adesina said, I am delighted to have two more Nigerians on the Young Global Leaders list of the World Economic Forum. This is a great honour and I trust that my compatriots appreciate the responsibility this laurel carries as well as the duties that come with it. Of course, it is a recognition that challenges them to be better at whatever they do, given the illustrious cast of honourees before them.
In my 2005/2006 class of YGLs were accomplished young men and women who, afterward, went to greater heights by expanding the frontiers of excellence in public service, academia, the professions, innovations and all sorts of fields. I was inducted on the same day with Daron Acemoglu, the cerebral economist-academic who co-wrote the best-selling book, Why Nations are Poor, Sergei Brin and Larry Page who both founded Google, Ndidi Nwuneli of LEAP Africa, Brian Molefe in South Africa and Prince Harkon of Norway. Gavin Newsom was Mayor of San Francisco then. He went on to be Lieutenant Governor and is now Governor of the State of California in the USA. There were many more across the world in that class and in the years after who are still working hard to make our world a better place. I welcome the new inductees and urge them to keep the light shining for all.
There is, indeed, no better time than now for all young men and women all over the world, especially these awardees, to commit themselves anew to the goal of charting a clear course of service to humanity and be veritable tools for global development.
Another recipient in 2012, Mr. Simon Kolawole while reacting to the latest list expressed happiness that more Nigerians are being recognised at the international level for good reason.
He stated; I had a most rewarding experience as a Young Global Leader (YGL) in every sense of it. I gained incredible knowledge from attending short courses at topmost universities and participating in conferences. I interacted with YGLs from diverse cultures and professional backgrounds. The entire experience has helped in shaping my professional career.
To underscore his nomination, WEF said Dr. Abasi Ene-Obong, Chief Executive Officer and Founder, 54gene, has quietly been making waves at the head of one of Africas foremost health technology companies, working in the field of gene technology. 54gene was created in 2019 and its stated mission is to understand the genetic factors that lead to disease in Africa.
The African genome has been understudied and misunderstood, according to 54gene, which addresses a vital gap in research and new healthcare solutions. 54genes work is included in Time Magazines list of the 12 innovations that will change healthcare in 2020.
Ene-Obong was also listed as one of the 30 most innovative entrepreneurs on the African continent in 2019 by Quartz Africa. Prior to 54gene, he worked in a range of pharmaceutical companies and research organisations. He gained a doctorate from the University of London, holding a PhD in Cancer Biology. He also has a Masters in human molecular genetics from Imperial College London and a Masters in Business Management from Claremont Colleges, California. As Africa starts punching its weight in science and technology, Ene-Obong is sure to lead the charge for gene-based innovation.
On his own part, Kobo360 floated by Obi Ozor, is a logistic technology company that aggregates end-to-end haulage operations to help cargo owners, truck owners, drivers, and cargo recipients to achieve an efficient supply chain framework.
With only a click of a button, cargo owners can simply request for any truck of their choice and have their goods picked up and delivered to the required location through an all-in-one robust logistics ecosystem. Kobo360 raised $30 million USD in 2019, backed by Goldman Sachs, an impressive feat for a startup.
It would be recalled that the Forum of Young Global Leaders was founded in 2005 by Klaus Schwab, Founder and Executive Chairman of the World Economic Forum, to create a world where leaders take responsibility for a sustainable future while meeting increasingly complex and interrelated challenges. There are 1,400 members and alumni from more than 120 countries till date.
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All of those free speech hating, SJWs are trying to abuse our constituti-- oh wait, it's actually Brad Wall and the Muslim haters.Huh.Can you really just ignore the constitution if you feel like it? Canada's notwithstanding clause explainedIts been a big week for Canadas famed notwithstanding clause. Quebec is hinting that it might use the clause to protect their new anti-niqab law from a federal court challenge.And in Saskatchewans speech from the throne, outgoing premier Brad Wall again promised to use the clause to override a court order mandating that the provincial government stop paying for non-Catholics to go to Catholic school.We will introduce legislation that will protect the right to school choice by invoking the notwithstanding clause of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, it read.The notwithstanding clause (section 33 of the Constitution Act) is exactly as strange as it sounds: Its a magical section of the Canadian constitution that allows provincial governments to simply ignore a key section of the constitution if they dont like it.The only rule is that the governments have to first announce that theyre doing it. Specifically, they have to stand up in their legislature and announce that theyre going to pass an act notwithstanding whatever it says in the constitution.Whats most surprising about the clause is that it allows provinces to override what are arguably the most important parts of the constitution: The fundamental freedoms and legal rights of Canadian citizens.Freedom of religion, freedom of association, freedom of the press, protections from arbitrary imprisonment and search, the right to life, liberty and security of the person all of these can technically be ignored by a provincial government provided they announce it first.To be sure, the Constitution does insert a time limit on how long a province can get away with this. A declaration shall cease to have effect five years after it comes into force, reads the clause.However, this is easily overridden by the fact that the province can simply re-enact their constitution-flouting declaration.Naturally, other democratic countries dont this. As our own Library of Parliament notes in a summary, the idea of building an escape clause into a human rights code appears to be a uniquely Canadian development.The Constitution of Japan specifically states that the document overrides every other law, ordinance, imperial rescript or other act of government. Its a similar deal in South Africa, where the constitution is held as supreme and any other contradictory law is declared invalid.The U.S. Constitution, which is taken particularly seriously by its adherents, definitively states that it shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby.
We will remember them: Kate, Queen and Theresa May pay tribute as Prince Charles lays Cenotaph wreath for the first time while Britain falls silent to remember our war dead
By Chris Pleasance for MailOnline 12 November 2017Prince Charles led services at the Cenotaph on Remembrance Sunday as millions around the country honoured Britain's war dead with a silent tribute.The Prince of Wales laid the head of state's wreath at the Cenotaph for the first time, followed by Prince William, Harry and Andrew as the Queen, Prince Philip and Camilla watched from the Foreign Office nearby.Theresa May led out politicians including Jeremy Corbyn, Vince Cable, John Bercow and Boris Johnson as they also laid floral tributes at the monument to those killed in combat.Meanwhile, Britons around the world held their own Remembrance services, including troops on deployment in Kabul, Afghanistan.Officers laid wreaths at a military base in the Middle Eastern country as a brass band played to honour those killed in the First and Second world wars, and in conflicts since.In Hong Kong services also took place at the city's Cenotaph - organised by the Hong Kong and China branches of the Royal British Legion and the Hong Kong Ex-Servicemen's Association.Back in London crowds were pictured being filtered through security barriers as The Observer revealed that police will be using facial recognition technology for the first time in an attempt to avoid trouble.Officers are reported to be using a database of 50 people who are known for obsessive behaviour to public figures, and will be using the cameras to keep them away.Around 10,000 current and former members of the military, dignitaries and members of the public are expected to attend the service, which marks 99 years since the end of the First World War.
First BTK freight train reaches Kars
The first freight train running along the Baku-Tbilisi-Kars (BTK) railway reached Kars on Nov.3.ADY Express , a subsidiary of Azerbaijan Railways, told Trend on Nov.3 that the first operation on cargo transhipment on the BTK rail line took place at the Akhalkalaki station."From Kars, the train has already left in the direction of Mersin (in the south of Turkey), this road will take about 40 hours," the company said.The train, consisting of 32 containers loaded with grain, travelled from Baku to Kars in 40 hours. The train departed from Kazakhstan Oct. 24. Its final destination will be the Turkish Mersin.The opening of the BTK railway took place in Baku Oct.30.The first train departed from the Azerbaijani port of Alat after its inauguration by Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Georgian Prime Minister Giorgi Kvirikashvili. In order not to miss such an historic event, the leaders and high-ranking officials of a number of countries, including Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan and Kyrgyzstan attended the solemn ceremony.The BTK railway was constructed on the basis of a Georgian-Azerbaijani-Turkish intergovernmental agreement. The railways peak capacity will be 17 million tons of cargo per year. At an initial stage, this figure will be one million passengers and 6.5 million tons of cargo.
Ambassador says crimes harm image of country
By Messenger Staff
Georgias Ambassador to Greece Ioseb Nanobashvili says that crimes committed by Georgian nationals in Greece harm the two countries relations.Nanobashvili stated this in response to the recent detention of a Georgian criminal group in Greece, composed of both males and females, who brutally tortured an old woman to extort money from her.The Greece police posted the photos of the detainees.I would like to remark first that currently, crimes related with Georgian citizens remain the main problem in Georgia-Greece relations, Nanobashvili stated.He said it was not necessary to explain that this problem harmedGeorgias international image as well as the embassys activity.Similar cases create significant obstacles in terms of holding negotiations with the Greek government regarding issues that are important for our country. Such cases also create a very negative background and mood in the Greek people towards Georgians, the ambassador wrote on his Facebook page.Nanobashvili said despite the situation, the embassy has been conducting a dialogue over two key issues.First we demand the rights of the detained Georgian citizens to be protected despite the serious crimes they are accused of. Secondly we demand no false or vague information to be reported on our compatriots that are charged for this or other crimes, he added.The detention of the Georgian gang in Greece caused a large-scale outcry among Georgian social network users.People shared the photos of the detainees and stated that people of this kind harmed the reputation of their homeland.It is a sad fact for Georgia that some people who go abroad to find jobs fail to do so and later become engaged in criminal activities. These people almost never think how they harm the image of the state and how many problems they create for other Georgians who are working abroad or just visiting.One of the reasons why some Georgian citizens fail to find jobs abroad and choose to enrol in crime gangs is due to lack of education or proper vocational skills. If they had received adequate training in their homeland some of them would have selected another path. When it comes to the result, the issue is for law-enforcement bodies to look at, but the cause of the problem partially lies in lack of or no education at all. The Georgian authorities should pay more attention to the quality of education the country provides to its citizens and the opportunities of retraining for those whose skills never meet demands of the labour market. If the Georgian government takes better responsibility on their citizens rights on quality education, they will be more proud of those who try to establish themselves abroad.
Thousands brave rain for Lord Mayor's Show
11 November 2017BBC NewsThousands of people have braved the rain in London to watch the annual Lord Mayor's Show.More than 7,000 people, alongside 70 floats, took part in the parade, which is in its 802nd year.The procession marks the first public engagement of the new Lord Mayor of the City of London, Charles Bowman.It sees Mr Bowman, the 690th Lord Mayor, travel from the Guildhall to the Royal Courts of Justice before swearing allegiance to the Crown.The Lord Mayor's Show began in 1215 as a river pageant on the Thames.Mr Bowman said: "The Lord Mayor's Show celebrates the historic and thriving City of London - the very centre of our strong and diverse capital - which, in turn, supports a globally successful country."It is a joyous occasion, full of colour, fun and ceremony, and it is wonderful that so many people come along and enjoy the carnival atmosphere."It is entirely right that the show brings together so many diverse groups and communities from London and the UK, including hundreds of young people who love taking part."The end of the day saw a fireworks display between Blackfriars and Waterloo bridges.
and, just to add..Just as Remembrance Day ceremonies got underway Saturday morning, a war memorial was defaced in the Montreal borough of Saint-Laurent.Berj Merdjani saw the red graffiti, that said "F--k war" and "F--k the army" in French, as he was entering his photography studio across the street from Beaudet Park.It was about 8:30 a.m. ET and Merdjani called the city right away. He feared the writings would still be there as people arrived to pay their respects at 11 a.m., just as he's watched them do for the past 35 years.The words especially stung on Remembrance Day."For me, it's too sad," said Merdjani, whose great-grandparents were killed in the Armenian Genocide. "This is embarrassing. It's an insult." City workers showed up and promptly removed the defacement. Montreal police say they have launched an investigation.
Petronet LNG has dropped plans to buy 25 per cent stake in GSPC's almost-complete Rs 4,500-crore Mundra LNG import terminal in Gujarat to allow its promoter IOC to pick a larger stake, a company official said.
State-owned Indian Oil Corporation (IOC) has been talking to Gujarat State Petroleum Corporation Ltd (GSPC) for almost two years now for acquiring 50 per cent stake in the 5-million tonne (mt) a year Mundra liquefied natural gas (LNG) import terminal.
Petronet, India's biggest gas importer, entered the fray earlier this year. It is keen on buying a stake in IOC's under-construction 5-mt a year LNG import facility at Ennore in Tamil Nadu.
"We have decided not to pursue Mundra as our promoter firm IOC is more interested," the official, who wished not to be named, said.
In lieu of letting go Mundra, Petronet wants IOC to give it 25 per cent stake in the Ennore terminal. "For us, Ennore is more strategically important as we already have two terminals on the west coast - Dahej in Gujarat and Kochi in Kerala. Talks on Ennore are on," he said.
GSPC first offered its 50 per cent stake in the Mundra project to IOC, but the company was willing to take not more than 25-26 per cent.
So, GSPC opened talks with Petronet for selling 25 per cent stake. But now, IOC is willing to look at a higher stake.
The Adani group holds 25 per cent interest in the LNG import terminal.
Petronet operates a 15-mt a year LNG import facility at Dahej in Gujarat and has another 5-mt a year terminal at Kochi in Kerala.
IOC, the country's largest oil company, is looking to build the 5-mt a year LNG import terminal at Ennore in Tamil Nadu by 2018-end.
Besides the Dahej LNG import facility of Petronet, Gujarat has another 5-mt terminal of Shell at Hazira.
Initially, GSPC was to hold 50 per cent stake in the Mundra LNG terminal and Adani 25 per cent. The remaining 25 per cent was to be offered to a strategic partner.
IOC as also India Gas Solutions Pvt Ltd -- the equal JV between the Mukesh Ambani-led Reliance Industries and Europe's second-largest oil firm BP -- and state-owned Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC) were short-listed to pick 25 per cent stake earmarked for the strategic partner in the project.
GSPC is looking at a partner which can bring in LNG or consume the imported liquid gas, sources said.
The Mundra terminal, which is to be financed in a debt to equity ratio of 70:30, is expandable up to 10 mt per annum in the near future.
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Net debt of India's largest realty firm DLF rose by Rs 900 crore during the September quarter to Rs 26,800 crore and the borrowing could rise further to meet construction cost of its ongoing projects amid a demand slowdown in the property market.
DLF expects to reduce its debt significantly from the proposed infusion of over Rs 13,000 crore into the company by the end of this fiscal, mainly from promoters' stake sale to GIC.
Net debt increased to Rs 26,799 crore as on September 30, 2017, from Rs 25,899 crore at the end of the previous quarter, DLF said during an investor presentation.
The company had a negative cash flow during the second quarter of this fiscal as it stopped sales bookings during May-October, but they continued construction of their projects.
"Operating shortfall shall continue till new sales volume and collections pick up while at the same time construction spend shall continue.
"Continued CapEx in new office complexes and construction spend on residential (units) shall result in temporary negative cash flow and spike in net debt levels for which financing is already in place," the presentation said.
On sales bookings, the company said it had suspended sales in May 2017 taking a cautious, conservative approach to understanding the rules and regulations under the real estate regulatory Act and GST. New sales booking have now been opened with effect from November 1.
The company said operating cash deficit of about Rs 750 crore per quarter will continue for the next two quarters.
DLF's CFO Ashok Tyagi had earlier said the company has an unsold inventory of about Rs 15,000 crore.
"Out of 15 million sq ft under construction in our residential business, 13 million sq ft will be completed by March next year. Around 8 million sq ft is ready to be handed over to customers shortly," Tyagi had said.
On the debt reduction, the company is banking on the infusion of funds from promoters.
In late August, the DLF promoters decided to sell their entire 40 percent stake in the company's rental arm DLF Cyber City Developers Ltd (DCCDL) for Rs 11,900 crore.
This deal included the sale of 33.34 stakes in DCCDL to Singapore's sovereign wealth fund GIC for Rs 8,900 crore and a buyback of the remaining shares worth Rs 3,000 crore by DCCDL. Post this deal, DLF will have 66.66 percent stake in DCCDL.
On, DLF said it expects the sale of its promoters' stake to GIC to be concluded by December and infusion of proceeds into the company by February 2018.
DLF expects an infusion of over Rs 13,000 crore into the firm, which will include Rs 10,500 crore from promoters and another Rs 3,000 crore from institutional investors to maintain the minimum public shareholding.
The deal has been approved by DLF's public shareholders as well as fair trade regulator CCI.
"We are hopeful of concluding this deal and subsequent infusion of funds into DLF within this fiscal," DLF's Senior Executive Director (Finance) Saurabh Chawla had said. The promoters will receive the proceeds this calendar year and will infuse funds into DLF by February 2018, he added.
challenge as May struggles to steady her government following two high-profile resignations, 'The Sunday Times' reported.
19:47 Those talking about independent Kashmir should go to Pakistan: VHP leader Pravin Togadia
A day after former Jammu and Kashmir chief minister Farooq Abdullah stated that PoK belongs to Pakistan, VHP leader Pravin Togadia today said those talking about "independent Kashmir" should go to Pakistan. "Kashmir is an integral part of India. People talking about independent Kashmir should go to Pakistan or else our security forces are ready with AK 47s at the border to deal with them," the VHP working International President said. PTI report
19:45 Adityanath to kickstart UP civic poll campaign from Ayodhya
Aiming to ensure that the BJP registers a comprehensive win in the Uttar Pradesh urban local bodies' elections, Chief Minister Aiming to ensure that the BJP registers a comprehensive win in the Uttar Pradesh urban local bodies' elections, Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath will start his poll-campaign from the temple town of Ayodhya on November 14, a senior party leader told PTI. The civic polls, to be held in three phases from November 22, are seen as a litmus test for the Adityanath government's popularity. The BJP had stormed to power in UP in March with a landslide victory.
19:25 PM Modi meets Donald Trump at ASEAN gala dinner
Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Sunday held separate pull-aside meetings with US President Donald Trump and Chinese Premier Li Keqiang on the sidelines of a gala dinner to mark the 50th anniversary of the ASEAN.
Modi was also seen chit-chatting with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev and Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak at the reception for the leaders who have arrived here for the 31st ASEAN summit and related meetings.
19:24 CAIT threatens to move court against Infosys on GSTN glitches
CAIT , which has blamed Infosys for glitches in the GST Network, today said if no action is taken against the company, it will have no other option left but to take "shelter of the court of law".
In a statement, CAIT said GST portal has brought much harassment and mental agony to traders by its non-smooth functioning and has proved a major roadblock in success of a good taxation system like GST. The traders body said that "it has failed to understand why no action is being taken against Infosys and other companies who have taken the contract of GST portal at a huge cost of about Rs 1,400 crore".
Infosys has already denied the allegations as "completely inaccurate".
Earlier this month, Traders body, which has blamedfor glitches in the GST Network, today said if no action is taken against the company, it will have no other option left but to take "shelter of the court of law".In a statement,said GST portal has brought much harassment and mental agony to traders by its non-smooth functioning and has proved a major roadblock in success of a good taxation system like GST. The traders body said that "it has failed to understand why no action is being taken againstand other companies who have taken the contract of GST portal at a huge cost of about Rs 1,400 crore".has already denied the allegations as "completely inaccurate".Earlier this month, CAIT demanded a CBI inquiry against Infosys and other companies for the failure of the goods and services tax (GST) portal in spite of the large amount of investment and time that has gone into the system.
British Prime Minister Theresa May was facing fresh turmoil as it emerged Sunday that as many as 40 of her own party MPs are ready to sign a letter expressing a lack of confidence in her leadership. Conservative party MPs are now just eight short of the required number of 48 to force a leadership
18:43 BJP's defeat in MP Assembly bypoll shows people are angry: Akhilesh Yadav
The Bharatiya Janata Party's (BJP) defeat in the Chitrakoot Assembly bypoll in Madhya Pradesh shows in which direction the wind is blowing and that the people are angry at the party, Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav said here.
The BJP's defeat in Chitrakoot shows there is distrust and anger among the people. They now know the truth of the GST and demonetisation, he said.
"The result shows in which direction the wind is blowing. The wind of the BJP's defeat will reach Gujarat too," Yadav said.
Congress candidate Nilanshu Chaturvedi defeated the ruling BJP's Shankar Dayal Tripathi by a margin of over 14,000 votes today in Chitrakoot (MP).
18:25 Delhi air pollution level shoots up after a brief let-up
Pollution levels skyrocketed by the hour in Delhi Saturday, turning the air quality hazardous, which agencies consider unfit for inhalation even by healthier people. The hourly graph of the Central Control Room for Air Quality Management, which had briefly fallen below emergency levels on Saturday, recorded PM2.5 and PM10 concentration at 478 and 713 micrograms per cubic metre by afternoon.
The corresponding 24-hour safe standards are 60 and 100. The air quality index of the CPCB had a score of 460, as against yesterday's 403. The most dominant pollutants were PM 2.5 and CO, according to the CPCB air bulletin.
The PM2.5 reading of the Centre-run SAFAR (System of Air Quality and Weather Forecasting And Research) was also above 400, which is in the severe category as well.
If the prevailing levels of PM2.5 and PM10 persist for another 24 hours, the odd-even scheme is supposed to be implemented, according to the Graded Response Action Plan (GRAP) being enforced by the Environment Pollution (Prevention and Control) Authority.
The NGT had on Saturday said that the odd-even scheme should be implemented "without any default" as and when PM (particulate matter) 10 level goes above 500 microgrammes per cubic metre and PM 2.5 level crosses the limit of 300 microgrammes per cubic metre during a span of 48 hours.
18:19 6 of top-10 most valued companies lose Rs 60,422 crore in market-cap
The m-cap of RIL dived Rs 39,328.34 crore to Rs 5,59,526.33 crore. HDFC's valuation plunged Rs 10,782.84 crore to Rs 2,72,402.31 crore and that of ITC tanked Rs 4,935.13 crore to Rs 3,18,468.37 crore.
The market cap of HDFC Bank dropped Rs 3,116.2 crore to Rs 4,70,454.76 crore and that of Maruti came down by Rs 1,554.2 crore to Rs 2,46,646.86 crore. ONGC's valuation fell by Rs 705.83 crore to Rs 2,44,858.13 crore. In contrast, the m-cap of Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) surged Rs 17,343.44 crore to Rs 5,17,489.36 crore.
The valuation of Hindustan Unilever Limited (HUL) soared Rs 11,395.98 crore to Rs 2,79,380.07 crore and that of Infosys jumped Rs 7,799.17 crore to Rs 2,20,649.17 crore. SBI added Rs 7,078.28 crore at Rs 2,87,619.92 crore in its m-cap
18:07 British jetpack inventor sets new World Record
A British inventor has set a new Guinness World Record with his Iron Man-style jetpack which achieved the fastest speed in a body controlled jet engine powered suit.
Richard Browning, founder and chief test pilot of British tech company Gravity Industries, set the record in the UK.
Guinness World Records adjudicator Pravin Patel verified the achievement, making sure that the speed was measured accurately over a minimum distance of 100 metres.
Browning achieved an impressive speed of 51.53 kilometres per hour.
17:29 Gujarat has rejected Congress' politics of hypocrisy: Javadekar
With Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi pushing for rationalisation of Goods and Services Tax (GST) rates, Union HRD Minister Prakash Javadekar today said
Javadekar
Congress leaders are "hypocrites" as they support the indirect tax at GST Council meets but speak against it in public. Referring to Gandhi's promise to cap GST rates at 18 percent if voted to power,said the Congress vice- president intends to increase the tax burden on the common
people.
16:47 Rahul Gandhi targets PM Modi, Rupani over SEBI fine issue
Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi targeted Gujarat Chief Minister Vijay Rupani today over the SEBI slapping fine on his firm for alleged manipulative share trade, and asked the prime minister to speak out on the issue.
Speaking during his poll campaign tour of Gujarat, he claimed that the share market regulator has termed Rupani "beimaan" (dishonest) and imposed fine on him. Gandhi asked Prime Minister Narendra Modi to speak out against his "dishonest" chief minister.
16:24 Centre to launch Rs 34,000 crore Phase-2 of BharatNet project
The government will tomorrow start its second and final phase of BharatNet project -- with an outlay of around Rs 34,000 crore -- to provide high-speed broadband in all panchayats by March 2019, Telecom Secretary Aruna Sundararajan said today.
Under the project, the government aims to connect 1.5 lakh panchayats through 10 lakh kilometres of additional optical fibre and give bandwidth to telecom players at nearly 75 percent cheaper price for broadband and wifi services in rural areas.
PSBs
Jaitley
Finance Minister Arun Jaitley today said the government has decided to inject more capital in state-owned banks to strengthen the banking system and spur economic growth.
Last month, the government had unveiled a staggering Rs 2.11 lakh crore two-year road map to bolster NPA-hit public sector banks, which includes recapitalisation bonds, budgetary support and equity dilution.
Addressing heads of state-owned banks at 'PSB Manthan' here, Jaitley said the government has decided to put in more capital from the Budget, through bonds and banks' equity expansion and "therefore, it is the country which is virtually going to pay to keep the banking system in good health".
16:05 Mamata wishes to acquire Tagore's London residence
West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee wants to acquire the London house where Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore had lived, and convert it into a museum-cum-memorial to the world-famous poet and writer, according to a PTI report.
Tagore had lived at No 3, Heath Villas in Hampstead Heath, north London, for a few months in 1912 while he translated his collection of poems 'Gitanjali'.
During a meeting with acting Indian High Commissioner to the UK, Dinesh Patnaik, on arriving in London for a week-long tour of the UK on yesterday, Banerjee expressed her state's desire to buy the privately-owned lodgings.
15:51 London mayor Sadiq Khan said on Sunday he supported efforts by the citys transport regulator Transport for London to try to reach a compromise with Uber after the taxi app confirmed it would appeal in a running row over workers rights, according to a Reuters report.
Uber are challenging Transport for London through the courts as is their right to do so ... I support the TFL commissioner meeting with the global CEO of Uber to see if we can reach a compromise, Khan told the BBCs Andrew Marr show.
15:36 The Malaysian Budget carrier AirAsia today announced a discount sale, offering passengers one-way base fare at Rs 99 for a domestic journey across its Indian JV airline network and Rs 444 for international flights under a limited period offer.
However, the travel period under the offer, for which the bookings commence tonight, will be between May next year and January 2019, as per an airline statement today.
"Enjoy (base) fares from as low as Rs 99 to domestic destinations and (base) fares of Rs 444 for international destinations," the airline said.
15:20 The probe into the murder of activist and journalist Gauri Lankesh is nearing completion and the names of the perpetrators will be revealed in a matter of weeks, said Home Minister Ramalinga Reddy, according to a Hindu report.
Interacting with reporters on Saturday, Mr. Reddy said the probe had narrowed down on suspects responsible for the killing of Gauri Lankesh.
There is no deadline for the completion of the probe, but it is only a matter of weeks now. Unlike the murders of Dabholkar and Pansare (who were killed in Maharasthra in the past three years) where the probe has stretched on for years, the Special Investigation Team here has definite clues and knows the identities of those who killed Gauri Lankesh. The process of evidence collection is on, he said in a meeting organised by Press Club Bengaluru.
15:12 The Delhi government today called off the odd-even scheme, which was to be implemented from Monday, after the National Green Tribunal ordered the withdrawal of exemptions under it, Transport Minister Kailash Gahlot said.
Gahlot said the government's decision came in view of the directive by the National Green Tribunal (NGT), which ordered the withdrawal of all exemptions, including to two-wheeler riders and woman-only vehicles, under the odd-even scheme.
14:39
The government is not ready "to compromise with the safety of women" after the NGT ordered that there should be no exemption to anyone expect emergency vehicles such as ambulances and fire tenders, he said.In a big setback for the BJP, Congress candidate Nilanshu Chaturvedi won the Chitrakoot Assembly bypoll in Madhya Pradesh by over 14,000 votes. BJP candidate Shankar Dayal Tripathi was a distant second. Around 65 percent voting was recorded in the bypoll necessitated following the death of sitting Congress MLA Prem Singh (65).
13:50 Ahead of urban local body polls in Uttar Pradesh, the BJP today came out with its 'Sankalp Patra' or election manifesto, promising free WiFi at prominent public places and "pink toilets" for women. The Sankalp Patra was launched at the UP BJP headquarters by Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath.
12:38 Congress candidate Nilanshu Chaturvedi established a comfortable lead of more than 17,000 votes over his nearest BJP rival Shankar Dayal Tripathi at the end of the 12th round of counting in Chitrakoot Assembly bypoll in Madhya Pradesh. The counting of votes polled in the November 9 by-election began at around 8 am amid tight security in Satna district.
Whatever we do, spot Modi's faults or disturb BJP, we won't disrespect PM's position. When Modi Ji was in opposition he used to speak with disrespect about PM. That is the difference b/w us & them, no matter what Modi says about us we'll not go beyond certain point as he is PM-RG pic.twitter.com/lzdDgjzNSq
ANI (@ANI) November 12, 2017
Rahul Gandhi who is on a campaign trail in Gujarat hit out against Modi and government.
11:31 Veteran actor Rishi Kapoor has stepped into the controversy stirred by Farooq Abdullah on Saturday by agreeing with the National Conference supremos statement that Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK) belongs to Pakistan and those on the Indian side should stop talking about azadi.
Farooq Abdhulla ji, Salaam! Totally agree with you,sir. J&K is ours, and PoK is theirs. This is the only way we can solve our problem. Accept it, I am 65 years old and I want to see Pakistan before I die. I want my children to see their roots. Bas karva Dijiye. Jai Mata Di ! Rishi Kapoor (@chintskap) November 11, 2017
11:01 Investments in the Indian capital market through participatory notes (P-notes) plunged to an over eight-year low of Rs 1.23 lakh crore at September-end in view of stringent norms put in place by regulator Sebi.
10:48 For the first time, the nation's financial capital will host the 34th annual conference of the Asian Bankers Association (ABA) this week. The two-day conference will be held in the megapolis from November 16 and will be hosted by State Bank, with the theme of 'Asia's turn to transform', SBI said.
10:20 The Reserve Bank continued to remain net purchaser of the US currency after it bought USD 1.259 billion in September from the spot market. In the reporting month, the central bank bought USD 3.788 billion, while it sold USD 2.529 billion in the spot market, according to the latest RBI data.
10:08 The Supreme Court collegium will take a call on appointing 40 new judges to nine courts, a senior functionary said even as 106 judges have been appointed to the constitutional courts this year.
10:06 Prime Minister Narendra Modi today left for the Philippines, where he will participate in various bilateral and multilateral programmes, including the India-ASEAN Summit.
10:04 For the fourth day in a row, the Income-Tax department continued its searches at the premises linked to jailed AIADMK leader V K Sasikala and her kin over suspected tax evasion but did not elaborate on the value of cash and types of documents seized, reports CNBC-TV18. There could allegedly be at least 20 shell companies owned by Sasikala and family, reports the channel.
Former Finance Minister P Chidrambaram has fired off a series of tweets this morning hitting out at the government's demonetisation.
8. Demonetisation was a thoughtless and rash decision that turned out to be a colossal mistake and imposed a huge cost in terms of denting economic growth and heaping misery on millions of ordinary people. P. Chidambaram (@PChidambaram_IN) November 12, 2017
Iowas pheasant season kicked off on Oct. 28. Ive seldom greeted an opener with lower expectations.
DNRs August Roadside Survey indicated pheasant numbers were down 38 percent compared to last year.
A wet October had harvest delayed, providing birds lots of standing corn for loafing and escape cover.
My part-time job at the Humane Society of North Iowa had morphed into full-time with overtime due to a serious staffing shortage (theyre hiring, folks!) meaning preseason training for my Labs was sorely neglected.
Thirteen-month-old Toby remained a work in progress, while eight-year-old Hank had been off his feed and lacking his usual energy the previous few days.
Further, I feared fatigue and disuse may have diminished my shooting skills from marginal to downright abysmal.
Yet my enthusiasm, while dampened, was far from doused. And I had a 20-plus year tradition of sharing the inaugural weekend with John Cross of St. Peter, Minnesota, to uphold.
So opening morning I bundled up against the unseasonable 30-something degree chill and ventured to my parents farm north of Ventura.
Hank showed no sign of whatever had ailed him, weaving through the restored native grasses with abandon.
Although Cross young Springer spaniel Scout demonstrated similar gusto, neither flushed a bird as we made our first pass across the little prairie and along the edge of a dense willow thicket.
Where to now? Cross asked as we reached an old fenceline splitting the parcel in two.
Lets stay on this side of the creek, I suggested. Its mostly Reed canary grass on the other side, and I dont think they use that much unless theyre pushed into it.
As we worked the gently sloping prairie Hank veered into the creek bottom where he flushed a big, long-tailed rooster from a thick patch of Reed canary.
The fleeing bird offered a longish right-to-left crossing shot. I shouldered my Ruger Red Label and was a touch surprised when the rooster folded neatly on my first attempt.
That was 20 minutes, Cross reported as Hank delivered the rooster. Things were off to a fast start.
From there they would slow to a crawl.
We quickly flushed another rooster just out of range and saw nothing after that as we worked the fencline back to the yard.
A much larger field lay across the road. After three hours of stomping every type of cover it offered wed seen only a handful of roosters and taken no shots.
Adding insult to injury, two small ponds along the Winnebago River at the south edge of the property held well over 100 ducks.
We should have been hunting ducks, Cross observed.
Watching the birds take flight in waves elicited pangs of regret that Id neglected this honey hole all season while pulling extra shifts at the Humane Society. (Did I mention theyre hiring?)
Two miles to the west is the farm my wife and I own. While not as large as my parents', it has produced more birds per acre in recent years.
Although there were several hundred acres of standing corn adjacent to that piece, which we usually save for day two, Cross and I decided to finish the day there.
Hank was tiring, so I took him home and brought Toby for this segment of the hunt.
Unsurprisingly the green pup wasnt quite sure what we were about and showed more interest in dogging Scout than hunting birds.
Cross offered to leave him in the truck, but I preferred to have an experienced dog along in case there was a crippled bird to track.
This proved wise.
We saw a few roosters and several hens before a longtail flushed in range halfway between us. A gentleman would have deferred to his guest, but instinct trumped manners as I dropped the bird just I learned later as Cross was drawing a bead.
Both dogs ran to the mark. Toby puttered around where it fell while Scout soon charged out of sight and returned shortly with the winged rooster.
We flushed a few more birds after that but had no shooting opportunities.
While Crosss Browning remained unfired wed both had enough for that day and seen enough to restore our optimism for the next.
Starting at the same spot the following morning, flushing a rooster out of range and at least eight hens on the first pass.
On the second the dogs put five roosters into the air at once. The nearest was within striking distance, but I missed.
Cross missed a longer attempt soon thereafter and followed up by whiffing a chip shot.
I hadnt missed a bird yet this year, Cross lamented.
(Although Scout is the only witness to his reported 5-for-5 start to the Minnesota season, I can attest that Cross is an above-average wingshot most days.)
A couple passes later Hank flushed a rooster in perfect range. I dropped it with a single shot.
Minutes later I nearly stepped on a longtail the dogs had bypassed. Again I shot and it fell.
A second rooster took flight at the report. I emptied the bottom barrel and filled my limit.
I walked to the first mark as Hank retrieved the second bird. I relished the moment briefly before realizing Id failed to follow the script for the day.
Id planned to shoot only a pair of roosters that morning and take Toby out by himself later.
While Cross hadnt killed a bird (he would soon thereafter), Iowa law prohibits one hunter from shooting birds towards anothers limit. Legally and ethically I was done for the day.
Despite the change of plans I was hardly disappointed.
Wed seen a fair number of birds, Hank had performed well and I had held up my end with 5-for-6 shooting.
And theres plenty more pheasant season to come. The corn will eventually come out, things will settle down at the Humane Society (where they are hiring, by the way!) and Toby will eventually get that first rooster.
My low expectations have been raised.
GTPL Hathway | In FY21 so far, the stock price has gained 237 percent to Rs 137.35 as of October 14. The company's FY20 total debt reduced by 49 percent to Rs 148 crore compared to its previous fiscal year while it has witnessed decent sales and profit growth of 91 percent and 253 percent respectively.
The government will tomorrow start its second and final phase of BharatNet project with an outlay of around Rs 34,000 crore to provide high-speed broadband in all panchayats by March 2019, Telecom Secretary Aruna Sundararajan said today.
Under the project, the government aims to connect 1.5 lakh panchayats through 10 lakh kilometres of additional optical fibre and give bandwidth to telecom players at nearly 75 per cent cheaper price for broadband and wifi services in rural areas.
"We will tomorrow launch phase 2 of BharatNet to connect 1.5 lakh gram panchayats with high-speed broadband by March 2019. Phase 1 of the project, under which 1 lakh GPs were to be connected, will be completed by the end of this year. We expect telecom operators to provide at least 2 megabit per second speed to rural households," Sundararajan said.
Telecom Minister Manoj Sinha, Law and IT minister Ravi Shankar Prasad and Human Resource Development Minister Prakash Javadekar will launch the project on Monday.
The telecom ministry will sign agreements with seven states Maharashtra, Gujarat, Chhattisgarh, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Tamil Nadu and Jharkhand which will roll out the project on their own with partial funding from the central government.
"The total project cost of BharatNet is around Rs 45,000 crore, of which Rs 11,200 crore have been used for the first phase. After rural exchange rollout in the country when telecom services started, this is the biggest project involving domestically manufactured products for the entire project," Sundararajan said.
She said around Rs 4.5 lakh crore value can be added to the national gross domestic product on completion of BharatNet phase 2 as a study has suggested that every 10 per cent usage of Internet in India drives up GDP by 3.3 per cent.
BSNL will roll out optical fibre in eight states Assam, Haryana, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal, Jammu and Kashmir and Sikkim that were not covered under the first phase of BharatNet. Power Grid Corporation of India has been awarded contract for three states Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand and Odisha.
The government estimates that the second phase of BharatNet will double the existing optical fibre footprint in the country and generate employment of 10 crore mandays during the rollout of the project.
It is setting up connection point or exchange for optical fibre at each panchayat under the scheme. Thereafter, telecom operators can buy connection or bandwidth from the government to sell the same in rural areas.
Broadband services rates, Sundararajan said, are expected to be low because of intensive competition in the sector and the government is offering bandwidth under the project to telecom operators at 75 per cent lower rate than they currently buy it.
She added that telecom operators Reliance Jio, Bharti Airtel, Idea Cellular and Vodafone are interested in providing services under BharatNet.
The government will provide support of Rs 3,600 crore to telecom operators for rolling out wifi in villages.
"India at present has 38,000 wifi hotspots. Under BharatNet phase 2, around 6-7 lakh wifi hotspots will be added with 2-5 hotpsots in each panchayats. Some of the wifi hotspots may not be commercially viable initially. So (we) will provide viability gap funding of around Rs 3,600 crore to telecom operators," the secretary said.
The total wifi rollout cost is estimated to be around Rs 10,000 crore, she said.
Under BharatNet phase 1, the government has set up 15,000 wifi hotspots of which around 11,000 are in rural areas and the rest in semi-rural.
The other IPO which also received huge responses were Happiest Minds Technologies and Chemcon Speciality Chemicals, which was subscribed 150.98 times and 149.3 times respectively. Interestingly, both these stocks have seen bumper listing gained over 100 percent. Let's see how the IPO subscription and listing happened in 2020 so far, considered only IPOs issue size over Rs 100 crore.
The country's largest general insurance firm New India Assurance Company, which recently concluded its initial public offer, will be making its stock market debut on Monday, November 13, and most likely at a discount or to a slight premium.
The Rs 9,600-crore IPO was oversubscribed 1.19 times during November 1-3. The portion set aside for qualified institutional buyers (QIBs) was oversubscribed 2.34 times, non-institutional investors 12 percent and retail investors 11 percent, according to data available with the NSE.
The IPO was fully priced and slightly towards premium valuations. Investors who are hoping for a robust listing might be disappointed. However, it is still a good bet for long-term investors.
I think the listing of the stock may be at a discount price. The issue seems to be fully priced, which is clearly reflected when we compare its valuation with its recently listed peers like ICICI Lombard General Insurance, Sanjeev Jain, AVP - Equity Research at Ashika Stock Broking Ltd told Moneycontrol.
At the upper price band of Rs 800, its P/E works out to be 75x on its FY17 EPS of Rs 10.72, and the price-to-book value (P/B) including fair change account is 1.6x and excluding fair change account is 4.3x.
Whereas, ICICI Lombard is quoting at a P/E of 38x and at a P/B of 7.2x including fair change account and 7.5x excluding fair change account.
For a long-term perspective, one can stay invested in the company. The kind of growth the company has shown in its financials over the last several years provides ample scope for the company to grow its business portfolio at a faster pace, said Jain.
New India Assurance which is the largest general insurance company in India and a leader across segments has assets of over Rs 69,000 crore and has been growing at CAGR of over 15 percent for the last five years.
Although most brokerage firms recommended a Subscribe rating to NIA citing good business potential, highlight valuation concerns as well.
We see a lackluster listing for New India Assurance as the same was sold to investors at very high valuations leaving no listing gains on the table. When compared to other listed private sector peers the IPO was overpriced by some 40 percent, Jimeet Modi, CEO, Samco Securities told Moneycontrol.
Below average operating parameters, single digit ROE will lead to stock price correcting handsomely post listing. Bottom fishing should be avoided during first few initial days after listing, he said.
Good long-term bet?
The NIA might list at a discount to a slight premium but it is a good long-term bet as the future looks promising for the insurance industry with several changes in the regulatory framework.
New India Assurance Company has been the leader and has the largest market share in its business. However, its RoNW (Return on Net Worth) is 7.6 percent which is lower than its peer in listed place ICICI Lombard which has RoNW of 16 percent, Anita Gandhi, Whole Time Director at Arihant Capital Markets told Moneycontrol.
Considering its leadership there is the possibility of marginal premium. However, a recent listing of GIC Re was disappointing. Outlook on the insurance sector for India as a whole is positive going forward & more such listings are possible going forward, she said.
The insurance sector can witness high growth as more awareness about the product and risk cover as well as the shift of savings to financial assets accelerates over the next decade.
NIA is the largest general insurance company in India and a leader across segments, growing business over the next couple of years will not be a challenge, suggest experts.
Taking a gauge at the renowned position in the industry, NIA (New India Assurance Company) is expected to continue its robust performance. Though it seems at a premium, investors may look at the fundamentals of the company for long-term horizon, Dyaneshwar Padwal, AVP Technical Analysis, KIFS Trade Capital told Moneycontrol.
The future looks promising for the insurance industry with several changes in the regulatory framework which will lead to further change in the way the industry conducts its business and engages with its customers. 20 percent of Compound Annual Growth Return (CAGR) is anticipated industry wise over the next few years which is currently at 17 percent, he said.
Foreign investors have pumped in a staggering USD 1.5 billion in the Indian equity markets this month so far, propelled by the government's Rs 2.11 lakh crore bank recapitalisation plan.
This follows a net inflow of over Rs 3,000 crore in stock markets last month. Prior to that, FPIs had pulled out more than Rs 24,000 crore in the past two months (August and September).
According to depository data, foreign portfolio investors (FPIs) infused a net sum of Rs 9,710 crore (USD 1.5 billion) in equities during November 1-10.
However, they pulled out Rs 780 crore from the debt market during the period under review.
The investment by FPIs started after the government's announcement of recapitalisation of public sector banks and over Rs 6 lakh crore outlay for road development, Vidya Bala, head of mutual fund research at FundsIndia.com said.
"The trend reversed (outflow) as they pumped money immediately after the announcement. Recapitalisation of banks and infrastructure spending are viewed by FPIs as providing a fresh lease of life for economy and markets," she added.
Finance Minister Arun Jaitley on October 24 announced the PSU bank recapitalisation programme of Rs 2.11 lakh crore, out of which Rs 1.35 lakh crore will come from recap bonds, and the rest from markets and budgetary support.
Furthermore, India moving up in the World Bank ranking of 'ease of doing business' also buttressed positive sentiment, said Himanshu Srivastava, Senior Analyst Manager Research at Morningstar India.
Additionally, slight improvement in global sentiment and stable currency could have also turned the tide in India's favour, he added.
Going forward, FPI flows may sustain as second quarter earnings are progressing well, Sharekhan Head Advisory Hemang Jani said.
The nation's largest energy driller ONGC hopes to complete the acquisition of the state-run oil marketer Hindustan Petroleum Corporation by March, chairman and managing director Shashi Shanker said on Saturday.
The ONGC chief also refused to comment on the reported government move to monetise up to 60 percent of the oil and gas fields developed by it and Oil India to private parties, saying they have not heard anything from the government but read it in newspapers only.
When announced in July, ONGC, one of the richest PSUs with amount of cash, had pegged the cost of acquiring the 51.11 percent government stake for around Rs 32,000 crore, but since then HPCL stock has rallied and there are fears that the oil and gas explorer will have to shell out much more than the initial estimate.
When completed, ONGC will become the first fully integrated state-run oil and gas company with significant upstream and downstream operations with many refineries and over 14,400 retail outlets.
On July 19, the cabinet had approved the sale of its 51.11 percent in the third largest oil retailer and refiner to ONGC as part of its effort to create an integrated energy behemoth and also to meet the hefty Rs 72,500-crore selloff target it had budgeted for this fiscal.
When asked about the cost-escalation for the deal and how the debt-free ONGC will raise the newly floating cash outgo, Shanker dismissed all such fears.
"There is an impression that this acquisition decision was thrust upon us. That's not the case. It was announced by the finance minister in the Budget and then they consulted us on what we want. We chose HPCL after considering all the pros and cons. We are confident that we'll be completing the deal before March end," Shanker said.
But he declined to quantify what ONGC will pay to shareholders, citing that it is being evaluated by the advisors to the deal.
Explaining why they chose HPCL over BPCL, he said, "We've around 15 million tonnes refinery in Mangalore Refinery & Petrochemcials, but we've no retail presence, while HCPL has a huge retail presence with over 14,400 outlets, but does not have enough refining capacity. So there is a perfect business sense in choosing HCPL."
On the reported government move to sell up to 60 percent stake in producing oilfields and gas fields of ONGC, OIL, he said, "We have not got any such proposal. I too read in the newspapers."
The move comes as the oil ministry is unhappy with the near stagnant oil and gas production and believes giving out the discovered fields to private firms will help raise output as they can bring in technology and capital.
It hopes that the move may boost domestic output and help meet the prime minister's target of reducing fossil fuel imports by 10 percent by 2022. Currently, the country- the world's third-largest crude importer buys up to 80 percent of its supplies from overseas.
It can be noted that after the discovery of the Bombay High oil fields in 1974 and the Bassein gas fields in 1976, the oil and gas behemoth ONGC has not been able to bring in any new major fields into production in the last three decades.
The country has failed to draw in global oil majors since 1990 despite easing fiscal terms. The only exceptions are Royal Dutch Shell and BP which bought stakes from firms that had won drilling rights.
Venezuela is likely to be declared as bankrupt nation, which could start a global financial crisis, as the Latin American country has not made any debt payment to many entities including Indian oil and gas major ONGC.
The financial crisis would be amounting to USD 60 billion as Venezuela's President Nicolas Maduro announced last week that the country was going to restructure bonds worth around USD 60 billion, Sunday Express reported. A large amount of these bonds are held by PDVSA.
The derivatives' participant body ISDA will meet on November 13 to determine whether the debt-laden country has reached a stage for defaulting.
Venezuelas state-owned oil firm PDVSA has not made a payment to ONGC since April. Over and above that, PDVSA also owes USD 540 million as a backlog of dividends to ONGC for an investment the Indian company had made on an energy project in Venezuela.
ONGC Videsh, which is the foreign investment vertical of ONGC, told Reuters that PDVSA had fallen behind on the payments. However, it still seemed to be giving Maduro a benefit of doubt as it said: They have assured that they are working on it (the due payments). In due course it will be settled and follow-on steps will be undertaken.
Amid internal political catastrophe, Venezuela still has India lending it a hand; the ONGC underlined in its email to Reuters that it shared a good relationship with PDVSA.
PDVSA has not only delayed this, but other payments for oil services and supplies as well, says Reuters.
The country was formerly using a public sector bank in Russia and another Indian energy company as mediators for making debt payments.
However, bankruptcy is still on the cards as the OPEC members economy has collapsed since global oil prices plunged in 2014 and it has been suffering since. Venezuelas economy dependent on oil and ropes in above 90 percent of export revenue from oil.
Venezuela has often used oil to repay debt; it owes billions of dollars to both Russia and China and is paying both with oil.
As per the Sunday Express, International banks have either stopped or severely cut credit available to PDVSA .
PDVSA also failed to make a USD 1.1 billion payment due last Friday.
Siobhan Morden, Head of Latin American bond strategy at Nomura, told the Express, "There has been no official communication on the payment delays. It is really odd that funds havent been received with sufficient time to process if the funds were sent last week as officials indicated."
As per Bloomberg, the International Swaps and Derivatives Association (ISDA) will review an appeal to determine if a default stage has emerged due to the lack of payments
The Express report says ISDA is meeting on November 13 for a bond restructuring meeting. But US investors are not at all confident about the outcome of the meeting.
Russia can still save Venezuela as the two nations are expected to sign a debt restructuring deal on November 15 with a term of around 10 years where payments will rising gradually, a source told the newspaper.
But Venezuela will have to pay Russia back with a large bulk of money before the end of 2017 for the agreement to come into effect, the source told the newspaper.
When Indian actress Divya Unny flew into Kerala in 2015, she thought it was for a business meeting with an award-winning director about a role in his upcoming film.
Instead, she was called to the directors hotel room at 9 pm, where the man propositioned her for sex and told her she would have to make compromises if she wanted to succeed in the film industry.
You always hear of actresses getting called by directors to hotel rooms at night, but I didnt think twice because I was going in with a reference, she told Reuters.
Unny said she rejected the advances of the director, whom she declined to name, and left without a role in the movie. Reuters was unable to confirm her accusations.
Three other women involved in Indias film industry, the worlds largest, told Reuters that Unnys experience isnt unique. But even after allegations of sexual assault and harassment levelled at Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein prompted a wave of similar complaints, Bollywood has been reluctant to name and shame perpetrators.
The way men are being called out in Hollywood right now, I dont know if it can happen in India, said Alankrita Shrivastava, a director whose last film, Lipstick Under my Burkha was acclaimed for its examination of women and sexuality.
In terms of how our psychology is, how patriarchy functions, it is much more entrenched, she said.
The vast majority of Bollywoods biggest producers and film-makers are men, many from prominent film families who until recently controlled most of the industry.
Mukesh Bhatt, who co-heads production house Vishesh Films, said Indias film industry should not be singled out and was limited in what more it could do to prevent harassment.
What can we do? We cannot do any moral policing, Bhatt told Reuters in a telephone interview. We cannot keep moral cops outside every film office to see that no girl is being exploited.
The industry also had to be cautious about false allegations, said Bhatt, who was previously the chairman of apex industry body, the Film and Television Producers Guild of India.
I am not saying men have not been exploitative. They have been for centuries. But todays woman is also not as simple as she pretends to be, he said. But just as there are good men and bad men, so also there are women who are exploitative and very cunning. Also blatantly shameless to offer themselves. He declined to provide any examples.
Despite laws requiring Indian companies to form internal committees to investigate sexual harassment at the workplace, very few of cases are reported to the police, said womens rights activist and lawyer, Flavia Agnes.
They (companies) may have a committee or they may not have one. They may do an investigation or they may not do one. And they may or may not file a complaint. It could go wrong at every stage, she said.
A 24-year-old Indian-origin woman was on Sunday found killed with injuries on her body at her house in New Zealand's Auckland city, media reports said.
Arishma Archana Singh, who lived with her three-year-old daughter and parents at the Maich road house, was found lying "in a pool of blood" on the floor of her bedroom in the early hours, NZ Herald reported.
The woman, who worked as a child educator and had studied at the University of the South Pacific, may have been killed after disturbing an intruder or burglar, police said after launching a homicide investigation into the incident.
She was out to a friend's birthday party and it appears she was killed soon after she arrived home, the report said, adding that her parents Rakesh and Aradhana Singh were also out visiting relatives and found her body when they returned.
"When they (Archana's parents) went in her room, they found her on the floor in a pool of blood. She had injuries to her face and body," the report quoted a source as saying.
Born in Nasinu in Fiji, Archana was separated from her husband three years ago and shared the custody of her daughter with her husband who had picked the girl yesterday.
Police are in the process of interviewing Archana's family, the report said.
No arrests have been made and it is not clear exactly how she died, it said.
"It is still unclear what has gone on inside house. It's early days but hopefully our scene examination and post mortem will reveal more," said Detective Inspector Gary Lendrum.
A neighbour said that they were "friendly and very nice people".
No 1 | United States of America | Contribution: $115.8 million | Wealth: $105.99 trillion (Image: Reuters)
The Trump administration wants to have the Taliban on the negotiating table as soon as possible to end the military conflict in war-torn Afghanistan, a top US diplomat has said.
President Donald Trump in August laid out his South Asia policy vowing to keep American troops on Afghan soil so that a hasty recall does not create a void which may be filled by terror groups like the al-Qaeda and the Islamic State.
A variety of diplomatic initiatives continue to work very closely but fundamentally, there is a need to get the parties to talk to one another directly and that involves changing the Taliban's calculus, acting Assistant Secretary for South and Central Asian Affairs and Acting Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan Alice Wells told lawmakers.
"The president's strategy specifically does not attach a calendar to this commitment. It has to be conditions based. I am not able to answer you on how long this will take.
"We would like to get it (the Taliban) to the negotiating table as soon as possible," Wells told lawmakers during a Congressional hearing this week.
She was responding to Congressman Al Brooks who asked how long the US forces are going to stay in war-torn Afghanistan.
"This war began in 2001. Now it's ongoing for roughly 16 years; that is the longest active military conflict in the history the United States. Early on the Taliban government was toppled and al-Qaeda to a very large degree was destroyed and quite frankly goals were achieved. Our American military won.
"Later on, Osama bin Laden was killed as a result of our presence in Afghanistan. Another goal was achieved," he said.
The US has persisted in Afghanistan despite those victories and achievements and the cost in monetary terms is estimated to be as low as 800 billion to a trillion dollars as high as four to six trillion dollars, Brooks said.
"Are you talking years... are you talking decades and at what cost? he asked.
Wells said: "I am sorry I can't answer that question, but I would note as the president said in his speech that the reason he reverted was because he was convinced that the national threat to our own national security remained".
The US has about 8,400 troops in Afghanistan.
Congressman Brad Sherman wanted to know from Wells if Pakistani leaders knew about the presence of Osama bin Laden.
"I've never heard any Pakistani leader suggest that Pakistan knew where Osama bin Laden was located," Wells said.
Congressman Eliot Engel asked the US diplomat about the peace process and negotiated settlement with the Taliban.
The US remains very active in all of the regional architectures that have existed and supports a negotiated political solution, she said, adding that she recently hosted a quadrilateral meeting with the Chinese, the Afghans and the Pakistanis.
Wells said a victory in Afghanistan would not come on the battlefield.
"Victory is a sustainable political settlement that results in a stable Afghanistan whose territory is not used to threaten the United States and our partners," she said.
Referring to her recent visit to Afghanistan, Pakistan and India accompanying Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, Wells said that there she was to see the impact of the strategy in each of those countries for Afghanistan.
"It is a recommitment to that country, the knowledge that we're prepared to stay with them as they have to undertake what are very difficult and necessary reforms. It's telling the Pakistanis that we're not leaving, it's not 1989 that you need to count on our presence and instead of hedging identify how to mediate the legitimate interests that you have in Afghanistan at a negotiating table.
"In India, it is recognising the role, positive role that India can play in Afghanistan's economic stabilisation. So I found across the region the strategy was extraordinarily resonant. I do believe that after four years of counting us out we've changed the dynamic and changed the conversation and we're going to see progress as a result," Wells said.
The key impediment to achieving a peaceful negotiated settlement is the unwillingness to engage the Taliban directly with the government of Afghanistan.
"We have to change that calculus of the Taliban using both military and political means," she said.
The Trump administration has not set preconditions to negotiations but "in conditions" that have been a cessation of violence, cessation of ties to terrorist networks and respect for the Constitution including the provisions for women and minorities and that continues to be the case, Wells said.
She said the Taliban should enter into negotiations with the government of Afghanistan whether privately or publicly.
Tillerson has been quite explicit that there is a role and a place at the table for moderate Taliban, Wells said.
"The task right now is how do we get the Taliban to the negotiating table. There has to be increased military pressure... but second there has to be political pressure and coordinated international pressure on the Taliban that includes ensuring that the Taliban political commission in Doha is doing its essential function which is facilitating peace negotiations," Wells added.
CEDAR FALLS Authorities continue to investigate an early Saturday shooting near College Hill that left one man dead and another injured.
Alex Michael Bullerman, 18, of Waterloo, died of a single gunshot wound after he was found behind an apartment building at 2303 Olive St., according to Cedar Fall police.
A short time later, 18-year-old Dylan James Gehrke, also of Waterloo, arrived at a hospital by private vehicle with a single gunshot wound to his lower right leg. He was treated and released from the hospital.
Police Chief Jeff Olson said there doesnt appear an ongoing threat in the College Hill area, but said Cedar Fall police will give the area additional attention.
At this point, we dont believe there is an ongoing threat, but we will have a little more of a presence there, Olson said.
Details of the shooting werent immediately available, but Olson said the two victims had been at a College Street establishment earlier that evening and were injured when gunfire erupted outside after they left. Olson said it appeared the victims were targeted.
Witnesses called police around 12:45 a.m. Saturday after hearing several shots, and officers with the Waterloo Police Department, University of Northern Iowa Police as well as Black Hawk County sheriffs deputies and state troopers assisted Cedar Falls officers.
It wasnt clear how many shots were fired or if a weapon has been found.
On Saturday, authorities blocked off the section of 23rd Street near the Olive Street intersection as well as adjacent buildings and the parking lot in the 2200 block of Olive behind the College Street businesses.
The slaying comes one week after Cedar Falls police responded to gunfire in the same area, but Olson said the two incidents dont appear to be related. In that incident, an Evansdale man allegedly broken into an apartment at 2304 Olive St. and a parked vehicle in the early morning hours of Nov. 3 and then fired a shotgun in the air when he was confronted by people in a nearby parking lot.
US President Donald Trump today said the Asia-Pacific region was being held hostage by the "twisted fantasies" of North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un, as he called on countries to stand united against Pyongyang.
Trump has embarked on a tour of Asia this week trying to rally regional support for curbing North Korea's nuclear weapons programme, warning that time is running out over the crisis.
"The future of this region and its beautiful people must not be held hostage to a dictator's twisted fantasies of violent conquest and nuclear blackmail," he said during a speech in Vietnam to the annual Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum.
The region, he added, must "stand united in declaring that every single step the North Korean regime takes toward more weapons is a step it takes into greater and greater danger".
The US administration thinks China's economic leverage over North Korea is the key to strong-arming Pyongyang into halting its nuclear weapons and missile programmes.
Yesterday, Trump was in Beijing meeting President Xi Jinping, where he called on China to "act fast" over North Korea.
"China can fix this problem easily and quickly, and I am calling on China and your great president to hopefully work on it very hard," he said.
Washington has also worked in recent months to convince allies across Asia to oppose Pyongyang, an issue that will remain prominent during his two day trip to Vietnam, which is currently hosting a major regional summit.
Alongside Trump, the leaders of Japan, Russia, China and South Korea are also attending the APEC summit.
Narendra Modi
Prime Minister Narendra Modi arrived in Manila on Sunday, on a three-day visit to attend the ASEAN-India and East Asia summits, where he is likely to reassert India's push for crafting a global approach to deal with growing challenge of terrorism and radicalisation besides pitching for steps to boost regional trade.
The thorny issue of China's aggressive military manoeuvre in the disputed the South China Sea, North Korea's nuclear missile tests and overall security architecture in the region will come up for discussion during the ASEAN summit on Tuesday, diplomats said.
On the sidelines of the main events, Prime Minister Modi is likely to have a series of bilateral meetings with a number of leaders including US President Donald Trump, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull and Russian Premier Dmitry Medvedev.
A host of leaders including Myanmar State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi, Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen, Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak, Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong and New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern have already arrived in the city to attend deliberations at the ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asia Nations), a grouping of 10 influential countries.
The ties between India and ASEAN have been on an upswing in the last few years with the focus being on ramping up cooperation in the areas of trade and investment as well as security and defence.
"Every single country in the ASEAN region wants India to be more engaged in the region in every possible way. That is the real synergy we have with ASEAN," Indian Ambassador to Philippines Jaideep Mazumdar told PTI.
The US, France and Japan have been pitching for a larger role by India in the strategically key Indo-Pacific region where China has been trying to increase its military presence.
Majumdar said terrorism is going to be one of the issues that will be discussed not only during the ASEAN summit but also at the East Asia summit. He said several documents are going to be adopted with an aim to contain terrorism including one on stopping money laundering for the purpose of terrorism.
While ASEAN summit is likely to focus more on trade and investment-related issues, leaders at the East Asia Summit are expected to delve deep into issues relating to maritime security, terrorism, non-proliferation and migration.
Apart from the 10 ASEAN Member states, East Asia Summit includes India, China, Japan, Republic of Korea, Australia, New Zealand, the United States and Russia.
Modi will address the ASEAN-India and East Asia summits on Tuesday. He would also take part in special celebrations of the 50th anniversary of ASEAN.
The ASEAN region along with India together comprises a combined population of 1.85 billion people, which is one-fourth of the global population and their combined GDP has been estimated at over USD 3.8 trillion.
Investment from ASEAN to India has been over USD 70 billion in the last 17 years accounting for more than 17 percent of Indias total FDI. Indias investment in ASEAN during the same period has been more than USD 40 billion.
India's proposal to host an international conference on countering radicalisation may also be discussed during the deliberations at Manila as New Delhi is now looking at finalising the dates for the conclave.
Prime minister Modi will also participate in the ASEAN business and investment summit as well as a meeting of leaders of Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP).
The RCEP, comprising 10-member ASEAN bloc and six other countries - India, China, Japan, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand - is engaged in negotiations for a free trade pact.
In his maiden visit to the Philippines as the prime minister, Modi will also attend a reception by the Indian community and visit the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) and Mahavir Philippines Foundation.
US President Donald Trump said in a tweet on Sunday that North Korean leader Kim Jong Un had insulted him by calling him "old" and said he would never call Kim "short and fat."
Trump made the comment after attending the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in Vietnam.
In a series of tweets, he also said Chinese President Xi Jinping was "upping sanctions" on North Korea in response to its nuclear and missile programs and that Xi wanted Pyongyang to "denuclearize."
During Trump's visit to Beijing, last week Xi reiterated that China would strive for the denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula but offered no hint it would change tack on North Korea, with which it fought side by side in the 1950-53 Korean war against U.S.-led forces.
One of Trump's tweets read: "Why would Kim Jong-un insult me by calling me 'old,' when I would NEVER call him 'short and fat?' Oh well, I try so hard to be his friend - and maybe someday that will happen!"
Speaking later in Vietnam's capital, Hanoi, Trump said "it would be very, very nice" if he and Kim became friends.
"That might be a strange thing to happen but it's a possibility," he said.
INSULTS AND THREATS
Trump has traded insults and threats with Kim in the past amid escalating tension over Pyongyang's nuclear and missile programs as North Korea races toward its goal of developing a nuclear-tipped missile capable of reaching the United States -something Trump has vowed to prevent.
North Korea conducted its sixth and most powerful nuclear bomb test on Sept. 3, prompting another round of U.N. sanctions.
In September Kim described Trump as a "mentally deranged US dotard" whom he would tame with fire. His comments came after Trump threatened in his maiden United Nations address to "totally destroy" the country of 26 million people if the United States were threatened.
After North Korea's Foreign Minister Ri Yong Ho addressed the U.N. General Assembly in September Trump tweeted: "Just heard Foreign Minister of North Korea speak at UN. If he echoes thoughts of Little Rocket Man, they won't be around much longer!"
North Korea has conducted dozens of ballistic missile tests in defiance of UN sanctions. It has vowed to never give up its weapons programs, saying they are necessary to counter hostility from the United States and its allies.
The United States has said that all options, including military, are on the table, although its preference is for a diplomatic solution.
Russia's President Vladimir Putin talks to U.S. President Donald Trump during their bilateral meeting at the G20 summit in Hamburg, Germany July 7, 2017. REUTERS/Carlos Barria - RC1C662BA130
President Donald Trump said Saturday he believes Vladimir Putin is being sincere when he denies meddling in the US election that propelled Trump to power, adding that the Russian leader felt "very insulted" by the allegations.
But in Washington the director of the CIA said he stood by the US intelligence community's assessment that Russia did try to meddle in the election.
Trump, whose key former aides are under US investigation for possible collaboration with the Kremlin, said he repeatedly asked Putin about the claims during their chats at the APEC summit in the Vietnamese resort of Danang.
"He (Putin) said he didn't meddle. I asked him again," Trump told reporters on Air Force One as he flew to Hanoi for a state visit.
"You can only ask so many times... He said he absolutely did not meddle in our election," Trump said, adding he felt Putin seemed "very insulted" by the persistent accusations, which was "not a good thing for our country."
"I really believe that when he tells me that, he means it," added Trump, who is marking one year since his shock election victory.
In May, US intelligence chiefs told Congress that they agreed with their analysts' conclusion that Russia had meddled in the election.
And on January, 17 US intelligence agencies took the extraordinary step of stating publicly that they believed Russia did try to interfere in the election.
In a statement to CNN Saturday after Trump spoke, CIA director Mike Pompeo, who was appointed by Trump, said he still believes in that evaluation.
"The Director stands by and has always stood by the January 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment entitled: Assessing Russian Activities and Intentions in Recent US Elections. The intelligence assessment with regard to Russian election meddling has not changed," the statement reads.
The US president's latest comments suggest he accepts Russia's staunch denials that the Kremlin played no part in helping him get to the White House -- allegations that continue to dog Trump's administration.
US Democratic lawmakers criticized Trump harshly for his statement.
Representative Adam Schiff, the senior Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, said Trump "fools no one."
Schiff said Trump understands the Russians hacked into Democratic leaders' emails and dumped them, and used social media in a bid to hurt Hillary Clinton and help him win the election and divide the country.
"He understands all this and more," Schiff said in a statement. "He just doesn't understand how to put country over self. Or to put it in terms he is more familiar with - Mr Trump simply can't bring himself to put America first."
Putin also addressed the allegations on Saturday after his meeting with Trump, describing them as a US "domestic political struggle."
"I think these are some sort of fantasies," he told reporters in Danang.
Trump's former campaign chairman Paul Manafort and an associate are under house arrest on charges unrelated to the election which were brought by special counsel Robert Mueller, who is investigating the allegations that the Trump campaign colluded with Russia.
Revelations on Facebook and Twitter that Russian- sponsored fake news flooded US social media during the election run-up have further deepened scrutiny on ties between the nations.
Trump and Putin met three times on the margins of the APEC summit, sharing warm handshakes and brief words.
The pair appeared to have struck a chummy tone, with Trump describing a "very good feeling" after the talks, and Putin remarking on the "well-mannered" former reality TV star.
Asked by reporters on Air Force One if he believed Putin, Trump said he was keen to move on to other issues.
"Look, I can't stand there and argue with him," Trump said. "I'd rather have him get out of Syria, I would rather get to work with him in the Ukraine."
The exchanges produced a rare common ground on the war in Syria, a bloody six-year conflict which has seen the US and Russia back competing factions.
In a joint statement, the leaders said there was "no military solution" to the war, an agreement that may mark a small step toward peace.
BLUE BELL There are two kinds of veterans: the ones who talk about what they did and those who dont want to talk about anything, said Arthur Breyer, a Normandy Farms Estates resident who was captured by the Nazis during World War II. I want to talk about everything. In 1943, Art was drafted into the Army Specialized Training...
DES MOINES | The Historic Park Inn in Mason City.
The Orpheum Theatre in Sioux City.
Hotel Russell-Lamson in Waterloo.
The Hotel Blackhawk in Davenport.
Those are just a few among hundreds of renovation projects across Iowa that have been aided by a federal tax incentive program that is on the chopping block in Congress tax reform proposal.
How historic tax credits have helped projects in Mason City MASON CITY | When Sharon Steckman was first elected to the Iowa House of Representatives abo
The federal historic rehabilitation tax credit was used by more than 250 projects in Iowa between 2002 and 2016, helped spur more than $1 billion in development and produce nearly $230 million in tax revenue, according to the National Park Service, which implements the program.
The program also helped create nearly 9,000 temporary construction jobs and nearly 11,000 permanent jobs in the state, according to the National Park Service.
But that tax credit soon could be gone.
Republicans in Washington, D.C., are crafting legislation that would reform federal tax laws; its one of the top priorities for the party after taking control of the federal lawmaking process in the 2016 elections.
The two proposals that have been introduced include significant cuts to the historic rehabilitation tax credit, which has been around for more than three decades.
The U.S. House tax reform bill eliminates the historic tax credit.
The U.S. Senate tax reform bill cuts the credit in half.
Local officials, especially in economic development, expressed concern that ending the historic rehabilitation tax credit could severely limit future renovation projects.
Its crazy, said Amy Gill, a developer with St. Louis-based Restoration St. Louis, which has done work in the Quad Cities. Studies back up the fact that these tax credits work. They provide jobs and renovate downtowns. How do you argue with that?
The House and Senate tax reform bills make significant changes to a number of tax credit and incentive programs across the business and industry spectrum. The historic rehabilitation credit program is just one of them.
But its one that local officials are loathe to lose.
In general, as an economic development professional, I favor tax cuts and stimulating the economy through tax reform and so on. But, in this case, I think they havent really considered the implications of (eliminating the historic credit), said Marty Dougherty, economic development director for Sioux City. Absolutely, were very concerned about it.
The state of Iowa also has a historic tax credit program. That is not impacted by the proposed federal legislation.
Economic development officials say the federal historic rehabilitation tax credit program is worth maintaining because it provides a return on investment.
In Iowa, from 2002 to 2016 nearly $195 million in historical tax credits were awarded; the resulting renovation projects produced $230 million in tax revenue. By that math, every $1 in tax credits produced $1.17 in tax revenue.
That is roughly in line with national studies that have showed the historic credit returns $1.20 to $1.25 in tax revenue for every dollar invested, according to the National Trust for Historic Preservation.
I just dont see why theyre messing with a tax credit that actually puts people to work and returns money on the investment, said Jim Hobart, of Hobart Historic Restoration in Cedar Rapids.
The historic tax credit program allows developers to claim 20 percent of eligible expenses against their federal tax liability. The program is designed to provide financial assistance to expensive renovation projects involving old buildings; such projects might not ever happen without the financial boost given by the tax credit, economic development officials say.
There are a lot of buildings that would continue to sit empty or would have been demolished by now had that tax credit not been available to make the project economically sound, said Steve Dust, president and CEO of the Greater Cedar Valley Alliance and Chamber. And thats repeated all over Iowa.
Common projects include restorations of old buildings and converting abandoned warehouses into both commercial and residential properties.
This is one of the few government programs where people can actually see and feel the impact, said B.J. Hobart, also of Hobart Historic Restoration in Cedar Rapids.
Dougherty said the program has helped a number of projects in downtown Sioux City, including the Orpheum.
Its really sparking a renaissance in the downtown area, Dougherty said. Im not sure any of (the renovation projects) would be successful without that tax credit program.
Economic development officials said they have pleaded with Republicans in Congress to maintain the historic rehabilitation tax credit program. At least one of Iowas federal representatives, U.S. Rep. Rod Blum, has pledged to fight for the program.
Blum, a Republican who represents eastern Iowa, said he has lobbied U.S. House leaders to preserve the program.
Dubuque, which is in Blums district, has featured 36 projects totaling nearly $180 million in historic tax credits, according to the National Park Service data.
I am continuing to work very hard to educate my colleagues of the benefits of historic tax credits to ensure they survive tax reform, Blum said in an emailed statement. Although they were absent from the version that recently passed through the Ways and Means Committee, the fight is not over. I am hopeful the Senate version will include this important program and I will continue to push for its inclusion through conference.
The Senate version keeps the program, but reduces the percent of eligible, deductible expenses from 20 percent to 10 percent.
U.S. Sen. Chuck Grassley, an Iowa Republican, said tax reform is about growing the economy and increasing wages and jobs by lowering rates and reducing deductions and loopholes. But he added the Senate bill recognizes the importance of the historic tax credit by maintaining it at 10 percent for the future while allowing projects already under way to retain the 20 percent credit.
Jim Hobart said the Senate version would save a few more buildings.
Would I rather see 10 percent than zero? Yeah, Hobart said. Would I rather see them not fool with it at all and leave it at 20 percent? That would be my choice.
Dougherty said economic development officials will continue to lobby their federal representatives and in the meantime will be holding our breath to see what theyre going to do.
A lot of these buildings are part of the fabric of your community, part of the character of your community. I just cant imagine Sioux City without the Orpheum Theater, Dougherty said. I think (cutting the historic tax credit program) is a little bit short-sighted.
State officials announce $2.85M for new police station in Upper Moreland
November 12, 2017
Open Thread 2017-41
Last week's posts on Moon of Alabama:
Nov 7 -Defeated Elsewhere, Saudi Tyrant Declares War On Lebanon
The quasi kidnapping of Saad Hariri has been reported in detail by Robert Fisk in The Independent, David Ignatius in the Washington Post and by a team of Reuters reporters. It is undeniable that Hariri is held against his will and was pressed to resign. Neither Trump nor Macron nor Merkel will be able to defend that. With the kidnapping MbS has achieved something everyone thought to be impossible. He made Saad Hariri likable.
Tonight Hariri will be interviewed in Saudi Arabia by a reporter of his own Future TV station. The interviewer will use a Saudi camera crew. She is also a parliament candidate for Hariri's party and on the Saudi payroll. The President of Lebanon has warned of believing anything Hariri says while he is in Saudi Arabia and under duress.
Nov 9 - Priti Patel Resigns - Israel Lobby Mourns The Loss Of A Valuable British Asset
It was too obvious that Patel was a tool of the Israel lobby. Many other politicians in "western" polities are similar tools, but better at hiding it.
Nov 10 - Saudi Arabia - This "Liberal Reformer" Is An Impulsive Tyrant
The stars are slowly turning against MbS. Only paid lobbyist still speak of him as a "liberal reformer". The kidnapping of Hariri seems to have broken the camels back. A real Bedu would have avoided that.
Nov 11 - Trump Points To Falsehoods In "Russian Hacking" Claims - Media Ignore What He Says
Trump makes one point every reasonable men should be able to agree to. Curiously it is the very one point on which the borg is united in fighting him.
Donald J. Trump @realDonaldTrump - 1:18am 12 Nov 2017 When will all the haters and fools out there realize that having a good relationship with Russia is a good thing, not a bad thing. There always playing politics - bad for our country. I want to solve North Korea, Syria, Ukraine, terrorism, and Russia can greatly help!
Please use the comments as open thread ...
Posted by b on November 12, 2017 at 20:01 UTC | Permalink
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Hanoi, Vietnam, Nov. 12, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) --
Hanoi, Vietnam - Alongside President Donald J. Trump and Vietnamese President Tran Dai Quang, Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC) President and Chief Executive Officer Ray W. Washburne presented today a letter of intent to Virginia-based energy company AES. The letter supports the construction of a liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminal plant and 2,250MW combined cycle power plant in Vietnam which would provide around 5 percent of the countrys power generation capacity and support its continued economic development. The presentation took place at the Presidential Palace in Hanoi.
"This project is in line with OPIC's initiative to promote the expansion of LNG markets in the Indo-Pacific region, said Washburne. "We are excited about the opportunity to support AES and look forward to facilitating critical investment into Vietnam's energy infrastructure and supply, added Washburne.
With this project, AES plans to leverage from our experience and replicate the success of our LNG businesses in Central America and the Caribbean, said President of AES' Eurasia Strategic Business Unit Mark Green, . AES has been partnering with OPIC on various state-of-the-art power generation projects around the world and is grateful for the agencys expertise and support with this new project in Vietnam, Green added.
The project will help bring sustainable and cost-effective energy to Vietnam, while at the same time satisfying a growing demand for electricity and need for natural gas in Asia. Creating sustainable energy solutions, including renewables and natural gas, contribute to economic and social development. Integration of multiple sources of energy will help ensure reliability of energy supply as the country continues to grow.
OPIC President and Chief Executive Officer Ray W. Washburne is traveling throughout Asia, including Japan and Vietnam, in conjunction with President Trumps visit to the region.
###
The Overseas Private Investment Corporation
The Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC) is a self-sustaining U.S. Government agency that helps American businesses invest in emerging markets. Established in 1971, OPIC provides businesses with the tools to manage the risks associated with foreign direct investment, fosters economic development in emerging market countries, and advances U.S. foreign policy and national security priorities. OPIC helps American businesses gain footholds in new markets, catalyzes new revenues and contributes to jobs and growth opportunities both at home and abroad. OPIC fulfills its mission by providing businesses with financing, political risk insurance, advocacy and by partnering with private equity investment fund managers.
OPIC services are available to new and expanding businesses planning to invest in more than 160 countries worldwide. Because OPIC charges market-based fees for its products, it operates on a self-sustaining basis at no net cost to taxpayers. All OPIC projects must adhere to best international practices and cannot cause job loss in the United States.
About AES
The AES Corporation (NYSE: AES) is a Fortune 200 global power company. We provide affordable, sustainable energy to 16 countries through our diverse portfolio of distribution businesses as well as thermal and renewable generation facilities. Our workforce of 18,000 people is committed to operational excellence and meeting the worlds changing power needs. Our 2016 revenues were $14 billion and we own and manage $36 billion in total assets. Follow us on Twitter: @AES
Attachments:
A photo accompanying this announcement is available at http://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/04040a3b-1372-45fd-a27e-9ea503b565fb
The highlights of our Top 100 Brokers report, including all one hundred brokers and key findingsOur annual Top 100 Brokers report has picked out the industry's finest for over a decade. We rank brokers by the volume of residential loans they have written over the financial year, with all figures verified by aggregators. You can also read the full lists here:
Brokers #100-50: http://www.mpamagazine.com.au/sections/features/mpa-top-100-brokers-2017-10050-243317.aspx
Estimados amigos,
Les doy cordialmente la bienvenida a este Blog informativo con articulos, analisis y comentarios de publicaciones especializadas y especialmente seleccionadas, principalmente sobre temas economicos, financieros y politicos de actualidad, que esperamos y deseamos, sean de su maximo interes, utilidad y conveniencia.
Pensamos que solo comprendiendo cabalmente el presente, es que podemos proyectarnos acertadamente hacia el futuro.
Las convicciones son mas peligrosos enemigos de la verdad que las mentiras.
There are decades when nothing happens and there are weeks when decades happen.
You only find out who is swimming naked when the tide goes out.
No soy alguien que sabe, sino alguien que busca.
Only Gold is money. Everything else is debt.
Las grandes almas tienen voluntades; las debiles tan solo deseos.
Quien no lo ha dado todo no ha dado nada.
History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce.
If you know the other and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles.
We are travelers on a cosmic journey, stardust, swirling and dancing in the eddies and whirlpools of infinity. Life is eternal. We have stopped for a moment to encounter each other, to meet, to love, to share.This is a precious moment. It is a little parenthesis in eternity.
With a treasure chest stuffed with 2 million acres throughout the Permian Basin including 1 million to 1.5 million acres in the Midland and Delaware Basins Chevron is ready to get busy.
Chevrons Permian Basin holdings are one of three legacy positions that anchor the companys upstream business, according to Bruce Niemeyer, vice president, Chevron North America Exploration & Production Co. (The other two are Kazakhstan and the Gorgon and Wheatstone fields offshore Australia.)
We have a desire to make (these assets) profitable for our shareholders. Approximately 85 percent of our Permian acreage is low- or no-royalty acreage so theres no clock running, Niemeyer said at last weeks Executive Oil Conference at the Horseshoe. This helps us be disciplined in our approach.
But now, were beginning to step on the accelerator and monetize assets, he said.
Niemeyer said Chevron ended 2016 operating 10 rigs, and recently stood up its 15th rig as the company moves toward its goal of operating 20 rigs by the end of next year.
Other efforts to monetize its portfolio in an increasingly aggressive manner include identifying between 150,000 and 200,000 acres for transactions, he said. Seven deals already have been closed. Niemeyer estimated 60,000 of those acres will have been impacted by the end of the year through deals that range from sales or trades or swaps, farmouts or contributed to joint ventures.
Chevrons production volume from the Permian Basin was 187,000 barrels a day in the third quarter and generating internal rates of return in excess of 30 percent, the company reported at the end of October. Niemeyer told his audience the company expects that to rise to between 325,000 and 450,000 barrels per day by 2020 as part of ongoing development efforts.
Current efforts are exceeding expectations, he said.
Were seeing improved well results and improved efficiencies, he said.
With more than 5 million well attributes encompassing most Permian wells in its proprietary database, Chevron is applying data analytics and petrophysical technology to drive those improvements.
The Permian Basin is a world-class asset that has the opportunity to create reliable, affordable energy that enables the way of life we all enjoy, Niemeyer said.
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Revenues from the crude and natural gas found in the Delaware Basin are flowing into state coffers, benefiting the states general fund, transportation funding and the states public schools and universities, among others.
Now, water is about to be added to the resource riches found in the Delaware that will benefit the states residents. The Texas General Land Office has signed a long-term agreement with Layne Christenson Co. to develop non-potable water resources owned by the office in Reeves and Culberson counties.
Part of this emanated with (Land Commissioner) George P. Bush, who wanted to create more revenue streams, J. Michael Anderson, chief financial officer and president of Layne Water Midstream, said in a phone interview from his office in The Woodlands.
Theyd never done anything with water, and they felt we could tackle Reeves and Culberson counties and help generate a revenue source, he said.
Partnering with a state agency is a first for the 135-year-old company, he said, just as he believes partnering with a private company is a first for the land office.
Under the agreement, revenues from water sales will be shared between Layne and the Permanent School Fund, which is managed by the General Land Office.
The five-year agreement calls for Layne to develop, construct and operate water infrastructure on the land offices approximate 88,000 acres scattered across Reeves and Culberson counties to produce and sell non-potable water for use in oil and gas exploration and production operations.
Anderson said the company already has teams at those 88,000 acres and expects to begin drilling some test wells this week with a goal of starting water sales very early next year.
He said its a challenge because the state doesnt know where the water sources are and the acreage is broken up into chunks of few contiguous parcels. Anderson said the company has pinpointed four areas in the two counties as initial areas to focus on because they have some of the biggest contiguous and are close to large amounts of production.
There are 58 rigs operating within three miles of the land offices acreage in Reeves and Culberson counties, which is nearly 15 percent of all operating rigs within the Permian Basin. Anderson said those rigs also represent a potential water demand market for fracturing operations approaching 500 million barrels a year.
One of our selling points was time is of the essence, Anderson said. We need to get going out there and start participating in those operations.
He said that the intent is to develop these water resources in as environmentally responsible a way as possible. For example, General Land Office acreage that could impact the fresh-water San Solomon Springs has been excluded from the lease.
Merger activity in the Permian Basin has cooled significantly from the headline-generating multi-billion dollar deals of last year and early this year. But a strengthening price environment is bringing attention back to the market.
Things can change in a heartbeat, said Maynard Holt, chief executive officer of Tudor, Pickering, Holt & Co. Inc. at last weeks Executive Oil Conference.
Until recently, sellers were looking at this market and saying, This is not the time to try to sell a Cadillac. And buyers were looking at this market and saying, This is not the time to be buying a Cadillac, he said.
Jeff Seiler, managing director and co-head of acquisitions and divestitures at Citigroup Inc., participating in a panel discussion with Holt, said his office expects the pace to speed up.
Whats underpinning activity is a focus on the rock and the quality of the rock the deals are based on, he said.
Holt agreed and said that hedge funds that had avoided the energy market are again taking a look, but their focus is on results and returns on investment.
Michael Wichterich, president of Three Rivers Operating Co. III LLC, said his companys deals have gotten smaller in the last year.
We look at our customers, and all our customers are private companies, and theyre saying to us A year ago we wanted 16,000 acres in the Delaware. Today we want bolt-on transactions of 5,000 to 10,000 acres, smaller deals.
In the last six months, said Seiler, midstream is what has jumped out at us. Were seeing well production rates go up, but the question is: How do we get it out of the basin? Theres been quite an influx of midstream deals weve been involved with lately.
Amid the low commodity price environment, he said investors are now focused on shareholder returns, and that has caused operators to change their investor presentations and their focus to help look at the full cycle of the well, not just acquisitions.
One of the things thats been a real eye-opener is the decline in commodity prices, Seiler said. What were seeing today is an agreement on $50 oil, maybe $57.
Holt said investors are also asking about mergers and acquisitions and about returns as a tool to generate margins. Mergers and acquisitions have long been a tool to generate strong margins, but he said technology could be another, more effective tool.
Some companies are seeing results in buying components, such as frac sand or chemicals, separately rather than in one bundle, said Seiler. He cited the example of an operator who was paying 16 cents a pound for sand and, after looking at where the sand came from, how it was transported and where it was stored before its use, they took on that task and cut costs to 1 or 2 cents a pound. What companies are looking at now is getting maximum value from the unit, not maximum locations.
There is a lot of pent-up dollars that have to go somewhere, Wichterich said. It would not surprise me to see the industry go to some form of yield instrument.
At the end of the day, said Seiler, where you have so much strategic life is the Permian Basin. Thats why it has so much attention.
Holt agreed, and said, This will be the epicenter of all thats great about the industry.
The Midland Hospital District will have to ask local taxpayers to contribute more than it has historically.
That was the message from Midland Health CEO Russell Meyers earlier this month at the Midland Chamber of Commerce State of the Economy luncheon.
Meyers said the hospital has been impacted by federal funding issues, by a historically conservative board of trustees and by people not paying their hospital bills either because they dont have the funds or because they opt not to pay them. Meyers said uncompensated care tops the list -- the total reached $72 million in fiscal year 2016, and he expects that number to reach $75 million this upcoming fiscal year.
He said Midland enjoys low tax support compared to other districts. A chart provided during the presentation showed that Midland receives 8 percent of its total revenue from taxes. That compares to 17 percent support in Odessa, 19 percent in El Paso, 25 percent in Dallas, 26 percent in Bexar County (San Antonio), 29 percent in Harris County (Houston) and 25 percent in Tarrant County (Fort Worth).
Contrasting us with other hospital districts (8 percent) is a low number, Meyers said. We will have to move that from 9 to 10 percent of revenues to 14 to 15 percent to do all the work we have to do.
One way that might happen is through property taxes. The tax rate is 12.9994 cents per $100 valuation. It is the second lowest property tax rate of the five taxing entities inside the city of Midland (the lowest belongs to Midland College).
Hospital officials are likely also laying the foundation to put the districts name in the hat for the quarter-cent of sales tax available inside the city of Midland. Currently, the sales tax rate is 8 percent. The cap for the sales tax is 8.25 percent. That quarter of a cent would raise around $10 million based on previous years collections. The city of Midland also is eyeing that quarter-cent for infrastructure.
Hospital district officials look west to Odessa, where its hospital district collects three-quarters of a cent of sales tax. That large amount has left other entities, especially Ector County, struggling to keep pace with its counterparts. Such a substantial share has helped lower Odessa hospital districts property tax rate to less than 9 cents per $100 valuation.
Meyers said at the event that he would rather keep his focus and efforts on making sure the federal government continues to feed the district that $20 million in funding he said is at risk.
We will have to ask our local taxpayers to contribute something more than they have historically, Meyers said. We have been blessed by having a very conservative perspective for a very long time, and it has left the hospital district with pretty minimal support relative to other people who do the kinds of work that we do. That will be an important part of it.
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City of Midland Engineering Services Director Jose Ortiz said utility work on road projects made possible the passage of a $100 million road bond will begin this fall.
He also said pavement work will follow in the spring and summer.
Ortiz, in a question-and-answer with the Reporter-Telegram, called three of the four first-year projects shovel-ready and that the other project is in a design phase.
Midlanders approved the road bond this past Tuesday. The lopsided victory will provide the city the funding for 26 projects over the next five years.
Ortiz sat down with the Reporter-Telegram after Election night.
MRT: What was the statement made by Midland voters on Election night?
ORTIZ: Midland voters told us they want to see road and utility improvements. Now its the citys job to go out and make those improvements happen.
MRT: What percentage of failing roads will be replaced with the $100 million?
ORTIZ: The bond funding will be devoted to replacing pavement and utility lines in approximately 20 percent of failing collector and arterial roadways. These are the major thoroughfares that receive the most vehicle traffic. As opposed to residential streets, these are the roadways used by the greatest proportion of Midlanders. Because of the heavy traffic they handle, these roadways are also the most expensive to work on. (The pavement to be removed and replaced is thicker). However, by focusing on the areas outlined in the plan, we can improve driving conditions for the greatest number of people.
Of the $100 million, 60 percent will cover the cost of removal and repaving, 24.4 percent will be devoted to utility line replacement, 5.2 percent to engineering costs, and 10.4 percent will be devoted to Americans with Disabilities (ADA) compliance modifications. (We are required by state and federal law to become ADA compliant when construction costs exceed a certain threshold).
In addition to work funded by the road bond, the city has budgeted $7 million in our current fiscal year (fiscal year 2017-18) for road maintenance to treat and preserve local and residential roads through mill and inlay, hot-in-place, mastic seal and other treatments.
MRT: What is the projected cost of replacing the other roads that are considered unrepairable, according to the pavement condition index?
ORTIZ: The pavement condition index captures only the direct cost of new pavement. We are waiting for results from our 2017 pavement condition analysis; based on the preliminary results from 2017 data, $126.5 million (2017 dollars) would be needed to replace the pavement on remaining roadways.
If we were to replace all failing roads in a comprehensive way design and engineering, drainage improvements, ADA modifications, and paving as we are doing with the bond-funded projects, the total cost would be approximately $200 million.
MRT: What is the timeline moving forward as far as bonds, engineering, hiring a construction manager, replacing roads, etc.?
ORTIZ: In year one, we plan to complete four projects: (parts of) Green Tree Boulevard, Cuthbert Avenue, Taylor Avenue, and Hicks Avenue. Of these, the only project still in design is Cuthbert. The others are shovel-ready. Residents can expect to see utility work this fall and winter; in the spring and summer we will begin pavement work.
Staff is currently in discussions with our bond advisor and the bond counsel to work toward an early 2018 bond issuance. We intend to issue $25 million per year over a four-year period beginning in 2018.
The Midland City Council will consider a reimbursement resolution at its Nov. 21 meeting. The resolution would allow the city to spend funds out of its general and utilities fund budgets and be reimbursed by the bond. This reimbursement resolution would allow the city to move forward on design and construction before the actual issuance of a portion of the $100M.
The Council also will consider a resolution on Nov. 21 which would authorize the city manager to advertise for bids for the Year 1 projects.
MRT: Will the city have a website that allows residents to monitor the progress being made on these projects?
ORTIZ: Transparency is important. Residents will be able to monitor progress online on our website: www.midlandtexas.gov/roadbond. We are currently working to build out the website; as soon as it is live we will share it.
MRT: Is there anything else you need to address about the process with our readers?
ORTIZ: The calendar flipping past Election Day doesnt mean that the public comment period is over. Please continue to stay in touch with city staff and let us know if you have a question or problem. We know that road work can be frustrating. We endeavor to communicate clearly and often about any road closures or repairs that might interfere with your daily routine.
The Hale County Commissioners discussed a variety of issues Thursday during their regularly scheduled work session including what to do about mineral rights the county owns in Bailey County and how future appraisal numbers might affect tax revenues.
Hale County Judge Bill Coleman informed the assembled commissioners that Hale County owns mineral rights in Bailey County and that Coleman had recently been contacted by Jack Benham who owns the land and is seeking executive power of ingress and egress on his farm. According to Coleman the land was originally school land and was sold to the Benhams with Hale County retaining 50 percent of the mineral rights. According to Coleman, Benham has recently been contacted by Innovative Solar Systems, which is looking to put a solar farm on the property. Coleman said that his recommendation during next Mondays regularly scheduled meeting will be to refer the matter to County Attorney Jim Tirey to have him determine the countys legal status regarding the property and what they can do about the situation.
The discovery of an abandoned SUV in a South Texas town resulted in the seizure of nearly $900,000 of marijuana.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents discovered the abandoned vehicle parked in a shed at a residence in Rio Grande City, Texas, on Tuesday. Upon searching the vehicle, CBP agents found 95 bundles of marijuana, which weighed over 1,100 pounds, according to a CBP news release.
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It's no secret that millennials make up a large percentage of the consumer market, but what are they really buying?
Branding agency, Moosylvania has been looking into that question for five years.
WHERE TO WORK: The top jobs for millennials, according to U.S. News and World Report
According to their website, each year the company has been putting out a list of the brands millennials are most loyal to.
Now Playing: American millennials say they would rather live in a socialist or communist country than a capitalist democracy. Veuer's Nick Cardona (@nickcardona93) has that story. Video: Buzz 60
To get their results, Moosylvania asked over 1,000 millennials about their favorite brands taking into account values like "how the [consumer] views themselves, how they connect with brands, and what emotions their favorite brand evokes."
While some higher-end names on the list like Gucci, Audi and Kate Spade are somewhat surprising, it's easy to see millennials loving most of the other brands on the list, such as Apple, Target and Chipotle.
Take a look through the gallery above to see the top brands the millennial generation are loyal to.
Daniela Sternitzky-Di Napoli is a digital producer at Chron.com. You can read more of her stories here and follow her on twitter at @Dani_DiNapoli.
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Cohoes
When I last saw Scott Gilligan, he was crying outside an Albany County courtroom. He had just accepted a plea deal that would send him to prison for burglary.
He isn't there yet. His sentencing is still a couple of weeks away.
When I saw Gilligan on Friday outside his home in Cohoes, he was in better spirits. He had received encouraging news.
The New York State Council of Veterans Organizations, a coalition of 32 groups, had decided to weigh in on his case. It asked Albany County District Attorney David Soares to keep Gilligan out of prison.
"Here's a kid who did something wrong," said retired Marine Bob Becker, 78, the council's legislative director. "But he's put himself back together, and he deserves a second chance. I don't know why the DA isn't looking at it in that manner."
Gilligan is 48. Twenty-two years ago, he was a Navy petty officer stationed in Puerto Rico when he was violently attacked off base and left for dead, according to court documents.
Gilligan returned to civilian life in Cohoes soon after, but struggled despite keeping steady jobs. He drank too much. He had two sons. He got divorced. He was often anxious or depressed, but he held it together.
Two years ago, everything fell apart.
More Information Contact columnist Chris Churchill at 518-454-5442 or email cchurchill@timesunion.com See More Collapse
He lost his factory job. His mother was diagnosed with Lou Gehrig's disease, and he became her primary caretaker. He drank more. He started smoking crack. He slid into addiction.
"I wasn't in my right mind," Gilligan told me.
The veteran hit rock bottom when he broke into a house on Lark Street in Cohoes and left with a TV, two iPads and a laptop. He was arrested within hours and immediately confessed to the crime.
For the victim, a longtime acquaintance of Gilligan's who asked not to be named here, the crime still stings. "It's the feeling of being violated in your house you get that sick feeling," he told me Friday. "Nobody's home is safe."
For Gilligan, the arrest was a turning point.
He devoted himself to treatment and got clean at the VA hospital in Albany. What's more, doctors there told him he had undiagnosed post-traumatic stress disorder from the attack in Puerto Rico.
Gilligan has been sober for 18 months now. He works at Saratoga National Cemetery, where he digs and maintains the graves of veterans. He typically attends seven Alcoholics Anonymous meetings a week, where he tries to be a mentor to other veterans.
"I find his message to be a very powerful one, and he's been an inspiration to the true 'newcomers' who come into meetings," a man who knows Gilligan from AA wrote after one of my earlier columns on his plight.
Given that he has no prior criminal record, and given that his crime stems from addiction, Gilligan would seem to be an ideal candidate for a diversion program that would keep him out of prison while allowing him to continue treatment under probation and supervision.
Albany County Judge William Carter, who is overseeing the case, has publicly said Gilligan does not belong behind bars. But Soares has insisted on prison time.
Last month, Gilligan accepted the best plea deal he'd been offered 2 to 7 years in prison, but with eligibility for Shock incarceration, a grueling boot-camp program that could shorten his sentence to six months if he makes it through and doesn't get injured.
That's a big if. Keep your fingers crossed for him.
"I'll be the old guy there, I'll tell you that," Gilligan said Friday.
The veterans council is still hoping it doesn't come to that. It wants Soares to change course and recommend a diversion program before Gilligan's Nov. 27 sentencing.
In its letter, the council said Gilligan volunteered for the military during the first Gulf War and was not only honorably discharged, but repeatedly cited for superior service. It also noted the appropriateness and history of leniency for veterans.
While Gilligan's PTSD did not result from combat, that didn't matter to the council.
"Of the 25 veterans at our meeting, every single one of them felt that he was a wounded warrior," said Anne Rabe of the Veterans Defense Program at the New York State Defenders Association.
"His trauma is equal to combat experience," Rabe said. "They felt that he has redeemed himself, and that his experience really raises questions about why the DA is being so punitive."
Since this column is being published on Veterans Day weekend, let's remember the struggles of so many who have served and the isolation and despair they too often feel.
A recent VA study found that the suicide rate among veterans has climbed 32 percent since 2001, and that veterans 18 to 34 years old took their lives five times more often than civilians of the same age.
I won't pretend to know how to change those depressing statistics, but the numbers do suggest that we need to help veterans whenever we can. We need to do more than just claim that we appreciate their service. Without action, the words are empty.
Sometimes, as with Gilligan, helping might require leniency when vets get into trouble, even while we remain sympathetic to those they have victimized.
In Gilligan's case specifically, it means allowing him to work with other struggling veterans. That's the good that can come out of his crime.
Locking Gilligan up doesn't help anybody. It accomplishes nothing.
Albany
For years, numerous people with connections to NXIVM made troubling reports about the Colonie-based self-help group to a host of law enforcement agencies. They shared allegations of money laundering, tax evasion, immigration fraud, kidnapping plots and perjury.
Despite the litany of complaints, no criminal charge has ever been leveled against the secretive organization or its leader, Keith Raniere.
Rather, on several occasions, it is critics of NXIVM who have found themselves subject to investigation and damaging lawsuits.
But recent scrutiny by national media, including reports that some women loyal to NXIVM were secretly branded with Raniere's initials, may have changed the equation.
Now Playing: This video contains excerpts from a recorded telephone call attributed to Kristen Keeffe, who was part of NXIVM co-founder Keith Ranieres inner circle. Keeffe fled the organization in February 2014. The conversation was recorded on March 24, 2015, by Barbara Bouchey, a former NXIVM board member who has battled lawsuits and criminal charges that were filed against her after she left NXIVM in 2009. The recording was filed in Albany County Court on Oct. 7, 2015. Computer trespassing charges filed against Bouchey by NXIVM were later dismissed. (Emily Masters / Times Union)
New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman's office has begun examining NXIVM's dealings, according to two people with knowledge of the matter. The new interest comes after multiple law enforcement agencies, including Schneiderman's office, had for years brushed aside the concerns from Raniere's critics and others about the murky inner workings of NXIVM, which one expert has characterized as an "extreme cult." A spokesman for Schneiderman did not respond to questions about the investigation.
The agencies that have fielded complaints but declined to pursue deep investigations of NXIVM also include the U.S. attorney's office in Albany, the New York State Police, the U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement Agency, the Internal Revenue Service and the FBI, according to interviews with law enforcement sources and people who said they provided information to those agencies.
Questions have also been raised about the response of state health officials to a complaint filed in August against a NXIVM-connected doctor who allegedly subjected multiple women to brain-activity studies that apparently did not follow standard research protocols. Gov. Andrew Cuomo last month ordered a review of the Health Department's handling of the complaint.
NXIVM officials and associates have repeatedly denied any wrongdoing and dispute any allegation they are a cult. They did not return calls seeking comment for this article.
Aides to Schneiderman met this week with actress Catherine Oxenberg, who has been waging a high-profile battle to get her 26-year-old daughter, India, to leave NXIVM. Oxenberg said she suspects her daughter was one of those branded. She declined to discuss her meeting with officials from Schneiderman's office.
"I have one goal, which is to get attention from the authorities," Oxenberg said, in an interview with the Times Union. "It seems like things have slipped through the cracks. ... Nobody has taken responsibility."
Still, it's unclear what the governor's review or the renewed attention from the attorney general may mean for NXIVM, which has been a focus of concerns from its defectors dating back at least eight years.
In May 2009, Barbara J. Bouchey, a former NXIVM board member, and two of her attorneys met with federal authorities in Albany as she outlined questionable activities involving people associated with the group.
Bouchey, who had been a financial adviser to Clare Bronfman, one of NXIVM's largest financial supporters, had abruptly resigned from the organization a month earlier. Bouchey's departure came after she and eight other women met with Raniere, NXIVM's co-founder, to address their concerns about unethical practices and the alleged abuse of his leadership status to sexually manipulate women in the organization.
In her meeting that spring with federal prosecutors a group that also included agents with the FBI, ICE and the IRS Bouchey said she told them that after she left NXIVM she uncovered troubling emails and documents that were in her office computer system without her knowledge. She said they indicated there may have been irregularities in the organization's accounting office, which Bouchey said she was never allowed to enter.
Bouchey, who was with NXIVM for about a decade, also told the federal agents of her uneasiness when two Mexican citizens who were associated with NXIVM had suddenly married U.S. citizens. She said other Mexican immigrants associated with NXIVM also were apparently being paid cash for their work.
"I shared with them everything I knew, which at that time wasn't much," Bouchey said. "They were already investigating NXIVM, that's what they told me."
Bouchey's meeting that May would be one of multiple times that people who have separated from NXIVM would provide New York or federal law enforcement and regulatory agencies with information about the inner workings of NXIVM, which offers human growth and executive training programs to thousands of clients, including residents of Mexico and Canada.
In December 2014 and January 2015, Bouchey met again with members of the FBI and U.S. attorney's office in Albany. Officials in those offices declined comment on their meetings with Bouchey.
Those meetings, Bouchey said, were prompted by a September 2015 Times Union story which, citing court records, reported allegations that Bronfman, who has been described as NXIVM's operations director, paid a Canadian private investigative firm to examine the banking records of U.S. federal judges and others, including journalists.
The U.S. attorney's office did not fully investigate the allegations, according to a person with direct knowledge of the matter. The involvement of numerous agencies has raised questions about whether law enforcement should have dug deeper or whether they determined there were no issues worth pursuing.
"The question has always been, 'Why don't they want to deal with it?'" said Pamela Hayes, a Manhattan attorney who has represented Bouchey. Hayes sat in on six meetings last year that she set up between Bouchey and representatives of the state attorney general. "There have been so many people who just refuse to get involved, and look the other way," she said.
The 2016 meetings between Bouchey and the attorney general's office followed numerous other complaints to that office about NXIVM over the years.
Former NXIVM associates Susan Dones, Toni Foley and Joseph O'Hara all said that in 2011 they turned over records and information to investigators in Schneiderman's office. The information included banking records and internal emails attributed to NXIVM officials who were discussing issues ranging from property transfers to the use of a NXIVM-related charitable foundation, the Ethical Science Foundation, to help Mexican women gain access into the United States.
The documents that Foley and O'Hara gave to the attorney general included a May 2008 email attributed to Bronfman, who was a large financial contributor to the Ethical Science Foundation, that stated the nonprofit might be used as a mechanism "to bring in the nannies through a scientific endeavor and provide them with the necessary Visa's."
Foley and O'Hara provided the Times Union with copies of dozens of pages of documents they sent to Schneiderman's office that year. Foley, who had been Raniere's girlfriend before she left the organization in 1999, said that in November 2011, a prosecutor in the attorney general's securities fraud unit, Brian Whitehurst, abruptly asked them to stop sending the materials.
"We are getting bombarded with stuff and need to evaluate where we are at," Whitehurst said in an email that month. "I promise we will be in touch ASAP."
Foley and O'Hara said they never heard back from Whitehurst or anyone else in Schneiderman's office. A spokesman for Schneiderman's office declined to comment on Whitehurst's email.
"Each and every time someone says, 'Look at NXIVM,' they become the brunt of the investigation. It's happened to me four or five times," Foley said, referring in part to a computer-trespass charge filed against her and three others by State Police in 2012 based on allegations from NXIVM. The charges were later dismissed against Foley, O'Hara and Bouchey.
Dones is a former NXIVM trainer from Washington state who successfully defended herself against a NXIVM lawsuit that accused her of violating a confidentiality agreement after she and Bouchey left the organization. In 2011, Dones said, two officials with Schneiderman's office contacted her seeking information about NXIVM.
"Then they just said, 'Stop sending us stuff,'" Dones recalled of her dealings with Schneiderman's office.
Before founding NXIVM, Raniere had operated Consumers' Buyline Inc., a nationwide buying club that offered discounts to members who could recruit more members. In 1996, Raniere signed a consent order with the New York attorney general, in which he did not admit any illegal activities but agreed to be permanently barred from "promoting, offering or granting participation in a chain distribution scheme," according to a 2012 Times Union story. The agreement included a fine of $40,000 against Raniere and his business.
Many of the women who worked for Raniere at Consumers' Buyline stayed with him when he later co-founded NXIVM.
Bouchey and others said that during their interaction with officials from the attorney general's office in 2011, the investigators' questions focused on whether Raniere may have violated the 1996 consent order that settled allegations his company operated like a pyramid scheme. Bouchey said they asked her about the structure of NXIVM and how it had been designed, including whether it was a multilevel marketing operation.
"Anybody who's ever spent any amount of time in NXIVM knows that Keith runs everything," Dones said.
In 2012, the Times Union reported that Dones and Bouchey had given sworn depositions in a federal court proceeding alleging that Raniere advised his close associates to avoid paying taxes. In a recent interview, Dones said that she told the investigators with the New York attorney general's office that she also had been scolded by another high-ranking NXIVM official for paying government taxes.
Dones said she told the attorney general's investigators about those conversations related to not paying taxes. Dones said that she also raised questions about whether NXIVM had paid taxes in the state of Washington during her personal bankruptcy case filed in U.S. District Court there in 2010. She filed for bankruptcy as a result of the financial fallout from her business dealings with NXIVM, records show.
Dones also reported to New York investigators that many of the Mexican immigrants who have been involved with NXIVM paid cash for their NXIVM-related training, and that there were large amounts of cash flowing across the U.S.-Mexican border related to NXIVM's work, echoing allegations in court filings.
In October 2015, the Times Union published a story highlighting allegations about the organization some of which, if true, would be criminal offenses that were made by Kristen M. Keeffe, a paralegal who was once part of the inner circle that ran NXIVM. The accusations by Keeffe, who left the group in 2014, were outlined in a March 2015 telephone conversation that was secretly recorded by Bouchey, and later filed in Albany County Court as part of Bouchey's defense against criminal trespass charges that were later dismissed.
The accusations were never fully investigated and did not result in any charges being filed.
Keeffe, according to a transcript and recording of the conversation, also alleged that undocumented cash tied to NXIVM's programs was flowing in from Mexico.
In addition, she alleged that the Ethical Science Foundation, which acquired tens of thousands of dollars in brain-monitoring and other medical equipment, was involved in the effort to help Mexican citizens gain legal status in the United States.
"Some people were just flat-out illegal ... some people were in the country on fraudulently obtained visas," Keeffe said during the conversation. "Clare was involved with every aspect of this. What they would do is, Clare's foundation, the Ethical Science Foundation, was obtaining visas for teachers in connection with an alleged scientific study about the language development in children. ... And the teachers were required, and had to be paid a certain amount of money in order to get the visa, and they had to kick back the money, they had to kick back a portion of the money, or they had to work it off. That was one level of fraud."
Keeffe, who for many years did paralegal work on behalf of NXIVM, also accused its top members of other activities, including using a Canadian private investigative firm to research U.S. judges and journalists. In the transcript filed in Albany County Court, Keeffe also alleged that Raniere and Emiliano Salinas, a high-ranking NXIVM official and son of a former Mexican president, had unsuccessfully plotted to lure Bouchey, Foley, Dones and another NXIVM defector to Mexico.
"The thing with Keith, Nancy, Emiliano, and Clare are the heart of the foundation, the money, and the operations," Keeffe told Bouchey, according to court records. "All three of them have done criminal acts, but none of them knew what the others had done. Clare did the stuff getting the financial records, Nancy hid the money and did the tax fraud, and Emiliano set up the scheme to get you and Toni thrown in a Mexican prison."
A U.S. Justice Department document obtained recently by the Times Union indicates the Internal Revenue Service has also investigated NXIVM, including gathering recordings of telephone calls that were made to the group's Capital Region headquarters in 2007. A spokesman for the U.S. attorney's office in Albany said they would not comment on their meetings with former NXIVM associates or any investigations they may have conducted of the organization.
Bouchey and Foley both said they have endured years of crippling litigation filed against them by NXIVM officials as well as criminal charges later dismissed accusing them of logging into the organization's servers without permission.
Two years ago, the Times Union reported that attorneys for NXIVM were heavily involved in the State Police investigation that resulted in criminal charges against four people accused of hacking into the organization's computer system.
Records from the two-year investigation showed the State Police's lead investigator in the case, Rodger Kirsopp, had contact dozens of times with NXIVM's attorneys, who pressured him to file criminal charges. The records, filed in the criminal cases in Albany County Court, indicated NXIVM officials, and their attorneys, also provided much of the evidence used by Kirsopp to build the unusual criminal case against the defendants, all of whom were considered adversaries of NXIVM.
By the time the investigation ended in March 2014, three attorneys from the Albany law firm of O'Connell & Aronowitz, whose attorneys had represented NXIVM for years, had contact with the investigator Kirsopp more than 30 times, including attending interviews he conducted with NXIVM employees and delivering documents and other evidence, including computer records, to the investigator's State Police barracks in Clifton Park.
Foley said she and Joseph O'Hara, another former NXIVM adversary who was charged in the criminal trespass case, are still fighting the State Police to return their computers that were seized more than five years ago.
"Nothing seems to happen to them," Foley said. "Every time a story comes out, one of us gets arrested."
blyons@timesunion.com 518-454-5547 @brendan_lyonstu
1 Bacterial infection: Disneyland has shut down two cooling towers after people who visited the Southern California theme park came down with Legionnaires disease. A dozen cases of the bacterial lung infection were discovered about three weeks ago, the Orange County Health Care Agency said. The patients, ranging in age from 52 to 94, lived or had spent time in Anaheim, and nine had visited Disneyland in September. One patient, who hadnt visited the park, has died, the agency said. There havent been any new cases linked to Anaheim since September. Disneyland found that two cooling towers had elevated levels of Legionella bacteria. They will remain offline until tests confirm they are free from contamination.
2 Launch scrubbed: A supply run to the International Space Station has been delayed a day by a stray plane. Everything was going well in Saturdays launch countdown in Virginia. But at the last minute, a plane flew into the restricted airspace at Wallops Island. That prompted NASAs commercial shipper, Orbital ATK, to call off the liftoff. The company will try again Sunday morning to launch its unmanned Antares rocket with 7,400 pounds of cargo for the six station astronauts.
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140 days.
That's the amount of time allotted for the Texas Legislature to get their job done until the next biennium. While it's a tightly choreographed calendar, the pressure is on for legislators to wheel and deal, build relationships and get the work of their constituents back home done.
The only interruption to that running clock is when the governor, who has the power, calls a special session forcing legislators back to the capital to finish the people's business or take on special agenda items.
Now that the legislature has convened until the next biennium, Rep. Ernest Bailes said he's back spending time taking care of constituent work in House District 18 that entails Liberty, San Jacinto and Walker counties.
"We're answering calls from the folks we represent, and we're working on upcoming legislation," he said.
The Speaker of the House also assigns Interim Committees and Bailes was assigned to one of those, the Coastal Barrier System.
"We're actually a joint sub-committee of the House and the Senate together on trying to find the most feasible aspect to protect the Port of Houston and the Gulf Coast," the state rep said.
Bailes said their task not only included the shipping system, but the consideration of a 1,200-foot floating gate system that would halt the storm surges from coming in and damaging the Port of Houston and all of the refineries along the Houston Ship Channel.
"The cost is a very fluid number," he smiled.
The first term legislator filed 12 bills going in, 11 of which were signed by the governor. He was also ranked the sixth-most effective member of the Texas House on his ability to get his authored bills signed.
"That took a lot of work and building a lot of relationships," Bailes said on Tuesday to Dayton Chamber of Commerce membership.
"There are very few votes that we take on the House floor that are actual party line Republican vs. Democrat," he said. "You have to have conversation, and know that it's legislation that's best first and foremost for the people of House District 18."
He also lamented that every vote in the Texas Legislature for public education is considered by some to be a liberal vote. His vote to uphold the pension plan for the firefighters in the city of Houston, some of whom live in the Dayton area, was also considered a liberal vote by some of his colleagues.
"These people did a job, they were promised this, and we simply made a vote to uphold what those promises were and that their pensions were taken care of. Their side of the deal was done," he said.
Bailes received the full attention of the members as he read off the population growth numbers predicted for Dayton.
Between 2017 and 2022, the growth rate predicted is 145 percent. The total number of households in 2017 to 2022 is expected to reach approximately 123 percent.
His growth numbers also were connected to another topic near to the hearts of drivers in and out of Dayton across the railroad tracks.
"That thing is so popular that it has its own social media page," he said to laughter in the room.
Bailes said it was one of the most hot, pretentious topics that he has heard about since we came into the race two years ago.
"That is not an easy thing to work on. Something called the railroads are stouter than any other thing in the state of Texas. I sometimes think they have more power than Governor Abbott," he smiled.
The state rep said they were a hard group to negotiate with and bring to the table.
"On the flip side of that coin, I think we've made some very positive strides with them the last year-and-a-half in being able to move the Dayton train," he said.
A couple of things were factored into the talks.
The initial conversations were halted by the SH 99 Grand Parkway.
Among the proposals was a triple flyover (overpass) with the train on the ground, US 90 above that, and SH 99 above that.
"With that, they had already started Oct. 27 to give GPI the right of acquisitions, utility adjustments and design with a scheduled completion of 2022," Bailes told the chamber members.
That's with Sections H & I.
"With that time frame, we weren't to a point where we could get a resolution with Union Pacific, the county and all other entities to move that track.
A lot of people thought that once those contracts went forward, that was the end of the negotiations
"Union Pacific, nonetheless, is a business. They're going to have a lot more increased traffic, the trains are getting longer and then you have the logistics of the CNC rail yard where a lot of the trains are and you also have the Union Pacific and BNSF yard on the other side of US 90," he said.
The logistics that had to be factored in is how to seamlessly get trains into the yard and out to make a continuous loop to Houston to service the growth and the area plants.
The current conversation is to move the track farther out of town with an overpass.
There were questions as to why not just put an overpass right where it is.
"In order to time that elevation and get an overpass at a minimum of 14-foot clearance, the new Stripes on SH 146, would get completely cut out of that and all of those properties along there.
"The only viable option is to go farther down US 90 and that's where the conversations are headed," the state representative said.
Now that the need is being considered, so is the funding mechanism.
"Even though they are a business and very wealthy as a national business, they say it's really not their problem. Anyone who has waited there for the train knows it's a problem," Bailes commented.
The overpass will be separate from SH 99, further out of town and with two turn tracks so that the trains could go both directions and it wouldn't halt the trains and keep them from moving their cargo one way or another.
"The degree of the turn based on the length of the trains must have a gradual turn so that it doesn't tear up the tracks whenever they pull the long trains through there," he said.
It will cost several million to reconfigure the yards for the trains coming in and out and be able to tie the tracks together.
"That's been one of the limiting factors and then you figure out the cost of the overpass with TxDOT then you have to see where the money comes from," Bailes said.
Negotiations continue.
The days after The Woodlands Township Board of Directors election have been a "whirlwind" for new elected township board member Carol Stromatt.
In a campaign that had its nasty moments, Stromatt rode a strong early voting lead to victory and ousted incumbent Laura Fillault for the Position 7 seat on The Woodlands Township Board of Directors.
Stromatt's win came despite the entry of the political action committee Texas Right to Life into the campaign, with the PAC making thousands of robocalls into The Woodlands about a week before the election on behalf of Fillault. The Houston Association of Realtors and The Texas Patriots PAC had also put their backing behind Fillault.
Still, even with Fillault getting the support of those groups, 2,694 voters, or 54 percent, cast their ballots for Stromatt. Fillault ended up with 2,214 votes, or more than 45 percent.
"I am ecstatic. I am so grateful," a victorious Stromatt said shortly after getting word she was the winner on election night. "So humbled. I'm here, we are celebrating. This is one for the community."
Stromatt's victory came despite the robocall assault that described her as a "pro-abortion liberal Democrat," a term many voters in the conservative township wouldn't take to kindly to. The calls also claimed that she gave "money to the radical pro-abortion group Annie's List."
The robocall campaign came just days after a fake campaign flier falsely attributed to Stromatt was posted in a Facebook group. The fake flier listed what were clearly false claims about some of Stromatt's positions.
Stromatt had said she was "disturbed and saddened" by the bogus claims and added her views on the "full spectrum of national issues" should have "no relevance" to the township race.
"Residents in The Woodlands chose unity and commitment for our community," Stromatt said Thursday. "They rejected the false character attacks and the ideology of division pushed by the PACs which engaged. My non-partisan stance and reputation for commitment to our community was enthusiastically supported at the polls, because young families and seasoned residents alike want a leader who shows-up for them and maintains our warm and friendly hometown."
Fillault declined a request to comment for this article, but did provide a statement hours after the final election results were in.
"It has been a pleasure serving The Woodlands Township. Congratulations to Carol Stromatt and I wish her the best of luck."
LOCAL DEMOCRATIC PARTY CHAIR NOT SURPRISED BY OUTCOME
The chairman of the Montgomery County Democratic Party, Marc Meyer, was not surprised by Stromatt's win.
"I thought she had a chance from the beginning because we knew this would be a low turnout election and we can put together a GOTV [get out the vote] effort, though to be clear, the Montgomery County Democratic Party was not directly involved in the campaign," Meyer said. "As for the margin of victory [I can] tell you I was at Election Central on election night observing the process and was shocked at Carol's lead in the early voting. After the first couple of Woodlands boxes came in, I was sure Carol would win."
FILLAULT LIKELY HURT BY TWEET CONTROVERSY
Election observers noted that Fillault, who was serving her first term on the township board, was apparently hurt at the polls by a controversy involving a series of posts Fillault made on Twitter during the summer of 2017 where she used profane language against other Twitter users. Fillault is a prolific user of Twitter, often posting or re-Tweeting other messages dozens of times per day.
During a forum hosted by The Woodlands Area Chamber of Commerce in September, Fillault apologized for the abusive language in some of her tweets, saying she hoped that residents would accept her apology and forgive her.
Montgomery County Republican Party Chairman Dr. Walter (Wally) Wilkerson said he believed the profane Tweets didn't help Fillault's cause.
"She made some bad errors," Wilkerson said, in speaking of the tweets. "I'm sure that she apologized for that but once it's out there, it's out there. I do feel bad for her. [But] if you live in one of the most Republican areas in the country and you can't beat a liberal Democrat, then that's something else again."
Meyer agreed the series of Tweets over the summer hurt Fillault's campaign.
"I think it is likely the Tweets cost her the election," Meyer said. "But there was also a bunch of negative campaigning by groups that supported Ms. Fillault, such as the robocalls by Texas Right to Life and public statements by Eric Yollick, Reagan Reed and Paul Geboyls added to a general negative tone from Carol's opponent. Based on the conversations I have had with some of Carol's volunteers, I believe the general negative tone of Fillault's campaign after she realized that Carol was a viable candidate sealed her fate."
Although Fillault did not respond to a request for comment on the controversial tweets, Fillault supporter John LeFevre, who was working on election night in support of the incumbent, agreed the matter cost her votes.
"Yes, it did hurt her," LeFevre said Thursday. "Carol's team made a big point of highlighting it."
With the election now over, Stromatt, who has lived in The Woodlands for nearly 20 years, has said she will be focusing on "solutions to the mobility challenges" and other issues, including possible incorporation of The Woodlands Township.
The possibility of The Woodlands becoming a city was also brought up during the election, with those attacking Stromatt claiming she would push to have The Woodlands become a "sanctuary city."
Stromatt denied those claims.
"I have never made a statement for or against sanctuary cities, and at this time I think it would be irresponsible for anyone to speculate what will happen if or when The Woodlands becomes a city," she said.
Stromatt, like all township board directors, will serve a two-year term. The board members serve as volunteers, with no compensation. She is scheduled to be sworn in and take office at the Wednesday, Nov. 29, meeting of the township's Board of Directors. Also retaining their board seats for another term following the Nov. 7 election were incumbents John McMullan and Ann Snyder, who were not challenged in the race.
The Woodlands local Marlo Saucedo says she has been an artist all her life. She originally did sculptures but opted to build her business on portraits. She created the first piece in her current style of constructing pictures from words in 1995 with a portrait of cars moving across the Brooklyn Bridge out of lyrics from early 1990s songs.
Saucedo says she's enjoys research and has spent time as a writer, which is reflected in her versatile style that combines her love of art and writing in each of her unique pieces.
"I'm able to get two very big interests of mine taken care of in one piece. The process of creation with the research and writing," Saucedo said. "I think every artist changes and morphs over their career and so this is where my career is right now. It's very, very satisfying for me in [the] way of doing art."
Inspiration comes from a variety of sources for Saucedo, who said anything from a quote on television that catches her attention to the area she lives in could be included in her next work.
Past pieces have been based upon the Houston library, downtown Houston and loblolly pines here in The Woodlands. A more recent piece of a bee was created from the names of flowers, foods and plants pollinated by bees.
"It's almost like where don't I draw my inspiration from," Saucedo said.
The artist grew up in Houston from the age of 1 in the Briargrove and Tanglewood neighborhoods. She recalled how she would ride bicycles and go swimming with her sister. Saucedo attended Episcopal High School and obtained a Bachelor's degree in psychology from Davidson College. She then went on to get a Master's degree in business from the University of Texas in Austin.
Saucedo has been married to her husband, who is originally from New Mexico, for 18 years. They moved to The Woodlands with their two sons in 2007. The two boys each attend public schools in The Woodlands. Saucedo said her 14-year-old is a Level 9 gymnast, and the couple's 11-year-old is more artistic-like her-and makes origami pieces.
Being able to give her children the opportunities she had as a child is a source of happiness and joy, she said.
"We're giving our kids the same kind of upbringing that I was able to have. The free-you know-ride your bike by yourself, go down to the park, walk to school," she said.
Saucedo added that her husband is very much involved in raising their sons. They both work from home, which helps create a balance between work and family life, she added. To learn more about Saucedo and see examples of her art, visit marlosaucedo.com.
Patricia and Misty Spann were married on March 26, 2016.
Court records say Patricia Spann had convinced Misty Spann that their marriage was legal - even though they're biologically related. Patricia, 44, is Misty's mother.
Both women were arrested and charged with incest in September 2016, six months after they got married. On Tuesday, Misty Spann, 26, pleaded guilty to incest.
Patricia Spann's complicated relationship with her children drew scrutiny in August 2016, after a child welfare investigator found that she and Misty Spann, who were living in Duncan, Oklahoma, may have been having an incestuous relationship.
Patricia Spann told the child welfare investigator with the state's Department of Human Services that she had three children from a previous marriage: daughter Misty and two sons, according to an affidavit. Spann had long since lost custody of her children, who were adopted by their paternal grandmother. She had no contact with any of her children until about two years ago, when she and Misty Spann reunited and "hit it off," she told the investigator, the affidavit said.
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Patricia Spann also said she "had looked into" the laws and concluded that marrying her daughter is not illegal because her name is no longer listed on the birth certificate. A police investigator found that Misty Spann's birth record with the state's Office of the Inspector General lists her paternal grandmother as her birth mother. Police believe the record was changed after Spann's children were adopted.
However, Misty Spann's original birth certificate from the hospital where she was born lists Patricia Spann as her birth mother, according to the affidavit.
Patricia Spann also was not using the same last name as her daughter. She was identified as Patricia Ann Clayton on the marriage license, which the two obtained from a neighboring county.
It's unclear why Spann lost custody of her children or when they were adopted by their grandmother. But police found that Misty Spann is not the only biological child Patricia Spann has married.
In December 2008, she married one of her sons, who was 18 at that time. Court records show that he filed for an annulment in March 2010. He listed "incest" as the reason, the affidavit said. It does not appear that incest charges were filed at that time.
Misty Spann filed for an annulment in September, citing fraud and incest as the reasons. The petition says Patricia Spann told her daughter that she had consulted with three lawyers who each advised her that there would be no problems with their marriage. In a ruling that voided the marriage last month, a district court judge found that Patricia Spann "induced" her daughter "by fraud to enter the marriage."
Incest is punishable by up to 10 years in prison in Oklahoma. Misty Spann received a 10-year deferred sentence in a plea deal, the Tulsa World reported. This means a judge has postponed imposing a sentence for 10 years, after which Misty Spann will have to go back to court and the case against her will be dismissed.
She also will be placed under supervision for two years.
The charge against Patricia Spann remains pending. She is scheduled back in court in January.
The Washington Post was unable to reach the women's attorneys on Saturday.
Brett Talley, a 36-year-old lawyer whom President Donald Trump nominated for a lifetime federal judgeship, has practiced law for only three years and has yet to try a case.
Before his nomination in September, he had been unequivocal about his political views. "Hillary Rotten Clinton might be the best Trumpism yet," says a tweet from his account, which has since been made private. "A Call to Arms: It's Time to Join the National Rifle Association" was the title of a blog post he wrote in January 2013, a month after a gunman in Newtown, Connecticut, killed 27 people before taking his own life.
Talley, who also writes horror novels on the side, moved a step closer to becoming a federal district judge in his home state of Alabama on Thursday. Voting along party lines, the Senate Judiciary Committee, on which Republicans outnumber Democrats, approved Talley's nomination, which now goes to the Senate for a full vote.
Talley is the latest federal judicial nominee to draw scrutiny for what some say is his limited experience in practicing law and the level of partisanship he had shown on social media, on his political blog, and on several opinion pieces he had written for CNN. He has also received a "not qualified" rating from the American Bar Association, which vets federal judicial nominees.
The vote on Talley's nomination comes as Trump and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., continue to intensify efforts to place conservative jurists, some of whom are young, on the federal bench. As he stood next to McConnell during a news conference in October, Trump said the judicial nominations are the "untold" success stories of his presidency.
"Nobody wants to talk about it. But when you think about it, Mitch and I were saying, that has consequences 40 years out, depending on the age of the judge, but 40 years out," Trump said. "So numerous have been approved. Many, many are in the pipeline. The level of quality is extraordinary."
In a statement defending Talley's nomination, Sen. Charles E. Grassley, R-Iowa, chairman of the Judiciary Committee, said he does not believe "extensive trial experience" is the only factor in deciding on a nominee's qualifications.
"Mr. Talley has a wide breadth of various legal experience that has helped to expose him to different aspects of federal law and the issues that would come before him," Grassley said.
Talley graduated from Harvard Law School in 2007. Shortly after, he became a law clerk in Alabama, spending two years at a federal district court and another two at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit. He worked as a political speechwriter for three years, first for Mitt Romney's presidential campaign in 2012 and then for Sen. Rob Portman, R-Ohio, from 2013 to 2015.
In April 2015, Talley became an Alabama deputy solicitor general, a position he held for nearly two years until he became deputy assistant attorney general for the Justice Department in January.
Talley's lack of experience in the courtroom and his partisan commentaries, however, were repeatedly questioned by Democrats on the Judiciary Committee.
"Your overall qualifications and preparation for becoming a lifetime-appointed federal judge are a concern to me," Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., said, according to her written questions to Talley.
Sen. Richard J. Durbin, D-Ill., did not mince words, asking questions like: "How can you claim to be qualified for a lifetime appointment to supervise federal trials on a daily basis when you have never yourself tried a single case?" and "Do you think it is advisable to put people with literally no trial experience on the federal district court bench?"
In response, Talley said he had previously argued motions in federal district court on behalf of the state of Alabama, often through written briefs than in person. He also said he had argued cases before the 11th Circuit appeals court and the Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals.
Talley said it would be "inappropriate" for him to comment on the decision to recommend him for the federal bench - a decision made by two U.S. senators from Alabama, Richard C. Shelby and Luther Strange.
"Federal judges come to the bench from a variety of legal backgrounds, each with something to learn and something to contribute," Talley wrote. "I have worked in all three branches of the federal government, in state government, and in private practice."
In his previous job in Alabama, he said, he was "one of the highest-ranking lawyers in the state, handling the most sensitive and most important legal matters Alabama faced."
Feinstein, the top Democrat on the committee, also spent a good portion of her 14-page questionnaire asking Talley about partisan statements he'd made in the past, including tweets such as:
"The press cares when you lie to the American people. Unless you are @HillaryClinton #LochteGate"
"The worst part of #NeverTrump is that they are helping Hillary win the election. Their self-righteousness while doing it is a close second."
Talley had written political commentaries for CNN, including a 2016 article in which he said Clinton "has committed acts that would have resulted in the prosecution of ordinary citizens." In the blog post in which he called on his readers to join the NRA, he criticized gun-control advocates, who, he said, "have exploited" the Newtown mass shooting to advance an agenda to strip people of their Second Amendment rights.
"These politicians either do not know or do not care that an armed, responsible citizenry is the last and greatest bulwark against tyranny that a nation can have," Talley wrote in his blog, Government in Exile. "They certainly do not care about our right to bear arms, enshrined in the Constitution and reaffirmed by recent Supreme Court rulings."
Talley said the post was meant to attract opposing views and encourage constructive discussion. He also said that he would recuse himself in cases in which his impartiality is questioned, as required by federal statute, and that his personal views on the Second Amendment and other issues "will have no bearing on how I would rule in a case."
"Rather, I would be duty-bound to apply relevant Supreme Court and circuit precedent to the facts before me," he wrote.
Talley is one of five judicial nominees whom the Judiciary Committee approved Thursday.
The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights questioned his ability to be fair, particularly in presiding over cases with political overtones.
"Brett Talley is entirely unqualified for a federal judgeship because he lacks the breadth and depth of experience necessary for the job, and he has demonstrated ideologically extreme views that call into question his temperament and judgment," Vanita Gupta, president and chief executive of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, said in a statement.
In a Nov. 7 letter to Grassley and Feinstein, the American Bar Association did not raise questions about Talley's temperament but said his lack of trial experience was a concern.
Carrie Severino, counsel for the conservative Judicial Crisis Network, criticized the American Bar Association, saying the group is not a nonpartisan organization.
"The ABA is a liberal interest group. They have a long history of giving lower ratings to Republican nominees," she told the Los Angeles Times.
The bar association gave a "not qualified" rating to four Trump judicial picks. Two, Talley and Leonard Grasz, an Omaha lawyer nominated to fill a vacancy on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 8th Circuit, were unanimously deemed to be unqualified. Two others, Charles Goodwin and Holly Teeter, nominees for federal district judgeship in Oklahoma and Kansas, respectively, were rated as "not qualified" in a split decision.
Previously, the association, which has been vetting judicial candidates since 1989, unanimously rated only two other judicial candidates as unqualified, both of whom were nominated by then-President George W. Bush.
Another Trump judicial nominee, Jeff Mateer, attracted controversy over earlier speeches in which he said transgender children are proof that "Satan's plan is working," described same-sex marriage as a harbinger for "disgusting" practices such as polygamy and bestiality, and advocated for conversion therapy. He also had previously admitted discriminating based on sexual orientation.
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LA VERNIA From the day Therese and Richard Rodriguez were married in 2006, they were inseparable. Last Sunday, they died together.
In these tragic circumstances, family found comfort in that.
What a perfect way for them to leave this world, said Regina Rodriguez, Richards daughter at the couples funeral Saturday afternoon.
The Rodriguezes were two of the 26 killed at the First Baptist Church last week in the largest mass shooting in recent Texas history.
Now Playing: Latest updates: Sutherland Springs church shooting Video: San Antonio Express-News
At the funeral services, family and friends even those who were strangers to each other embraced, held hands, and exchanged whispered words of strength.
RELATED: Dreams cut short for high school student
It has been a very, very difficult week, said Pastor Erin Weaver to the nearly 100 people who had come to pay their respects to the Rodriguezes at Grace Bible Church in La Vernia.
One woman lingered at Thereses casket. When she turned away, she covered her shaking lips with her hand, muffling sounds of anguish. She collapsed in anothers open arms.
In the slide show before the services, guests saw a photo of Richard, as his friends and family called him, holding his newborn in his arms, the child barely larger than his hand.
They also saw one of a younger Therese, her hair in a short wavy bob, long necklaces draping over her shoulders.
RELATED: Tara McNulty tended bar, and treated patrons like extended family
And then there were many of the two together: on their wedding day, behind frosted birthday cakes, and one close-up of the two just smiling at the camera, Therese's head resting on Ricardo's shoulder.
Around 2 p.m. the lights of the church dimmed and the shadows of the crosses on the wall grew. Weaver gave an opening prayer, and Martin Bencik sang I can only Imagine.
Relatives of the couple then took turns remembering them, offering colorful anecdotes about Thereses love of thrift shopping and how Richard would dance with his daughter Regina to the 8-tracks he played in the living room.
They stuck together like glue. Wherever he went, she was there, too, Kie Sagan, Theresas older brother, said to the Express-News earlier this week.
Thereses family, the Sagans, had faced darkness before. They fled Germany during World War II, and, finding themselves in freezing cold weather when they arrived on Ellis Island, they took the first train out to go as far south as they could go and ended up in Texas, Weaver said.
RELATED: Joann Ward's life was all about family
At the conclusion of the services, there was a procession to the Sutherland Springs Cemetery nearby. Upon the Rodriguezes interment, the family released a multitude of bright balloons, which floated up into the gray evening sky.
Its one step at a time, and today is another step, Weaver had said. its a big one, its a hard one, but youre not alone.
Sfosterfrau@express-news.net |@SilviaElenaFF
San Antonio Express-News
Several workers at a South Side rail yard were injured Saturday afternoon when steel bars fell on them, according to the San Antonio Fire Department.
Firefighters responded to what they believed was a structural collapse at the Southton Rail Yard on the 12000 block of Center Road about 1 p.m.
Saudi Arabia was a hotbed of activity this week, which spooked the oil market to a two-year high near $58 per barrel.
The Middle Eastern Kingdom is undergoing internal turmoil after the heir to the throne, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, fired numerous government ministers and detained other princes on the premise of anti-corruption efforts. The moves are being seen by many as a consolidation of power, as the Crown Prince takes out many of the ruling class, some of whom rank among the wealthiest in the world.
On top of the internal struggles, Saudi Arabia shot down a missile this week that was fired at its capital from neighboring Yemen. U.S. intelligence officials confirmed that the missile came from Iran and was fired by pro-Iranian Houthi rebels in Yemen. Saudi Arabia has been at war with these rebels for years, but now declared that the missile attack may be an act of war by the Iranians.
If war were to break out between two of the Middle Easts major military powers, and two of the worlds largest oil producers, the impact on the global oil market would be devastating on a scale not seen since the First Gulf War.
Corn yields reach new record
Despite hot and dry weather this summer, U.S. corn yields hit a new record high this year at 175.4 bushels per acre, according to Thursdays update from the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Crop yields have risen sharply in recent years due to crop genetics, better pest management, improving machinery, and increasingly efficient farming techniques. Rising yields have allowed the U.S. to continue providing a surplus of grain despite a rising global population, increasing livestock herds (that are largely grain-fed), and the additional demand from biofuel production.
This years harvest is projected to exceed 14.3 billion bushels, which could leave an excess, or carryover, of more than 2.3 billion bushels of corn. Fears of oversupply knocked corn to a new low price near $3.40 per bushel, cutting deeply into farmers profitability for those that waited until harvest to price their grain.
A San Antonio man has been charged with sexually assaulting a 5-year-old girl, according to an affidavit.
Brandon Perritte, 30, was arrested Friday and charged with continuous sexual abuse of a child, a charge filed when someone is accused of having sexual contact with a child younger than 14 at least twice within a 30-day-period or longer.
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A man was hospitalized early Sunday with multiple stab wounds after an argument between family members on the West Side, police say.
San Antonio police responded to a residence around 1:35 a.m. on the 3200 block Monterey Street to find a man suffering from stab wounds.
In Sutherland Springs, Texas, a Veterans Day ceremony outside a community center was grim as about 100 people gathered under cloudy skies, honoring the more than two dozen people killed a block away at a church last Sunday.
An Air Force official has said 12 of the massacre victims had direct connections to the Air Force, "either members or with family ties." Sutherland Springs is near Lackland Air Force Base.
More than two months have passed since the attorney general of the United States announced the end of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which has allowed hundreds of thousands of people brought to the U.S. as children to obtain employment authorization.
The clock is ticking, but Congress has not come close to creating a legislative fix.
If Congress fails to act, then on March 6, DACA recipients will begin going out of status, losing the ability to work and drive, and losing their protection if encountered by immigration authorities.
DACA exists because, for more than a decade, Congress failed to act. The first legislation that would have provided a path to legal status for children brought to and raised in the U.S. was introduced in 2001. There were close votes on the different versions of the DREAM Act Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors in 2007 and 2010, but efforts fell short.
A group of brave young people started organizing, and out of their activism sprung a mantra: We are here to stay. These activists refused to accept that there was no place for them in this country. In June 2012, seeing a lack of congressional action, President Barack Obama announced a plan to provide some limited, temporary protection.
Since 2012, nearly 800,000 youths have come forward, undergone background checks and obtained DACA, according to statistics compiled by the Interfaith Worker Justice national network. Texas is home to a large percentage of the nationwide number: More than 124,000 Texans have obtained DACA. More than 110,000 renewals have been filed for Texans, according to the network.
But the benefits from DACA are not just for the individuals who obtained DACA. On Sept. 20, hundreds of CEOs and business leaders wrote an open letter urging Congress to act, stating that DACA holders are vital to the future of our companies and our economy. Texas stands to lose more than 100,000 workers and $6.3 billion in annual gross domestic product, according to Interfaith Worker Justice.
DACA was never a long-term solution. If you believe that hard work and education are valued in our society, prove it to these young people. Speak up now.
There is a myth about our immigration system that there is a right way to come to the United States, and if you just fill out the right paperwork and get in line, your time will come. With very few exceptions, there is no line to permanently immigrate to the U.S. if you are poor and brown. There are lines for investors, professional athletes, engineers, doctors and a host of other sought-after professionals. But there is no line for the 18-year-old daughter of a bricklayer who was brought here when she was 7, even if she is valedictorian of her high school class.
While U.S. citizens and lawful permanent residents can file petitions for certain family members, the system is fraught with delays. For those with a U.S. citizen or permanent-resident relative who can petition for them, any time spent in the U.S. without legal status, including overstaying a visa, accumulates and can cut off the path to a green card.
If DACA recipients lose their employment authorization, we all lose. We lose workers and revenue.
But most of all, we lose young people who have made it against the odds. They studied. They went to college with no federal financial aid. They joined the military. They started businesses. They excelled in many fields all the time knowing they could be deported someday. They embody the American dream, and they deserve a path to citizenship.
We can no longer trust that Congress will do the right thing. If you value hard work, education and determination, call your congressional representatives and demand action on the bipartisan DREAM Act (S. 1615/H.R. 3440).
Erica B. Schommer is a clinical assistant professor of law at St. Marys University with expertise in immigration law. The opinions expressed in this piece are her own.
Twelve years ago, Edward Lees New Orleans home was severely damaged by Hurricane Katrina. Lee is a 96-year-old, proud World War II veteran who built his house on his own upon returning from the war. After Katrina, this American hero suffered contractor fraud and, with nowhere else to go, ended up living in his damaged home in untenable conditions for years.
Long story short, Lee moved into his newly built home within four months of our first encounter.
SBP is a national nonprofit organization committed to helping residents and communities like those in Texas recover from disaster in a prompt, efficient and predictable way.
Sharing in our mission are partners such as Toyota, Zurich, UPS and Farmers Insurance that support long-term disaster recovery by providing skill-based volunteer and financial support. Hurricane Harvey struck particularly close to home for Toyota, which has its national headquarters in Plano and a truck plant here in San Antonio. The company stepped up and donated $1 million to SBP for our long-term recovery work in Texas. Also, the J.J. Watt Foundation recently announced SBP as a recipient of funds for the rebuilding of Texas homes.
After 11 years of helping eight different disaster-impacted communities recover, SBP has learned some lessons:
Mold scams
I met a woman whose husband deployed to Iraq two weeks after Hurricane Isaac ravaged Slidell, Louisiana. Trying to ensure his wife and two young children would be safe in his absence, he wanted to do whatever he could before he left. That led to giving a company his entire FEMA payment of $8,000 to remediate mold and provide a certificate of proof.
Mold remediation should not cost thousands of dollars.
Mold certificates may be required by your builder for liability reasons, but you can remediate mold yourself (or with volunteers) and get a certificate later.
Follow SBPs guide to DIY mold remediation and supplies needed dont use bleach!
FEMA and SBA
The FEMA/SBA application process is confusing and frustrating, especially for those who are hesitant to ask for help in the first place. FEMA typically gives an initial payout to help with immediate needs, then points you toward applying for an SBA loan for long-term rebuilding. You are your own best advocate be as detailed as possible about disaster losses. You cant get assistance for losses and those needs that your insurance, SBA or FEMA dont know about. So:
Appeal decisions if you are denied or offered insufficient amounts from FEMA/SBA.
Document everything take pictures of damages, and keep copies of all forms and communications.
Contractor fraud
SBP is still rebuilding homes in New Orleans 12 years after Katrina. Eighty percent of our clients today suffered some sort of contractor fraud when they tried to rebuild. So:
Only hire experienced contractors ask for references.
Always insist on written bids and estimates.
Read your contract and ask questions before signing.
Never pay in full or upfront; pay in increments.
The first action SBP takes in any disaster-impacted community is to share recovery guides on these and other topics to help homeowners avoid common recovery pitfalls. These guides can be found at sbpusa.org/start-here.
Next steps, as in Texas where 150,000 homes were lost, include mucking and gutting damaged houses. Next is the rebuilding process which is now underway. We will rebuild homes for the most vulnerable residents and train other nonprofits for free to utilize our model for rebuilding, case management and volunteer management.
Through the devastation of these disasters, there are many reasons to have faith that a complete recovery is possible. SBP has witnessed more than 180,000 volunteers who come from all over the world to rebuild for people they never met. Our clients benefit from the exemplary service of AmeriCorps members, who dedicate at least 10 months of their lives to help others.
Zack Rosenburg is co-founder and CEO of SBP. See sbpusa.org for more information.
A historic Helena inn and bathhouse that long sat empty is now open to the public as a dinner house and pub.
What was once an inn with seven exterior doors one for each guests room is now separated into two intimate dining rooms. Ferdinand Wassweiler, a German immigrant, came to Helena during the gold rush. He built an inn and bathhouse west of Helena, but never had money to show for it and closed it in the early 1900s.
Now, the inn is the Wassweiler Dinner House and Pub with a menu featuring what owner Marci Anderson said is advertised as a 22-ounce cowboy cut ribeye, but is closer to 30 ounces.
Ive asked everybody what they want in a restaurant and almost everyone says I want a really good steak, she said.
Anderson said she splurged for an infrared broiler that sears steaks at up to 1,100 degrees.
While the restaurant is fine dining, its not pretentious, Anderson said. Customers wont have to research items to understand the menu. In addition to steaks, Anderson said the restaurant stands out with an extensive wine list.
With only one weekend under its belt, Wassweiler has already had a waiting list.
Everybodys been loving the food, Anderson said.
Anderson said she wanted to buy the place for years and was always drawn to the front porch. Anderson and her husband lived in the house for several years before deciding to open it to the public. She started catering and managed restaurants before, but Wassweiler is the first shes opened. Despite some changes, the building is still full of Wassweilers history.
Each time Anderson goes to the Montana Historical Society, she learns more about Wassweiler and tries to make it available to customers. He owned a hotel and bathhouse that he sold in 1874, and opened the one that still stands today in 1883. The restaurant features a picture of his wife and a letter on June 4, 1869 from Wassweiler claiming rights to the water that flowed into the original hot springs.
The business directory of 1868 says these springs, both hot and cold, are pronounced by able physicians as possessing medicinal properties of rare virtue. ... The stranger, visiting Helena, should by all means pay these noted springs a visit.
Although many people became millionaires during the booming growth in Helena, the Wassweilers were not as fortunate. The application to have the inn listed on the National Register of Historic Places said Wassweiler was a wheeler-dealer who lived from loan to loan through fraud, deception and clandestine activities. Eventually, Wassweiler was forced to sell his first business to Colonel Broadwater, who operated it for 15 years while completing the famous Broadwater Hotel and Natatorium. Wassweiler later opened a new hotel and bathhouse in 1883, that now exists as the dinner house and pub. But Wassweiler was never out of financial trouble and lost control of the hotel and bathhouse in 1904. Since then, its served as housing for State Nursery employees and was once a chicken farm.
Anderson is only part way through her plans to keep the history of Wassweiler alive. The building that held the bathhouse will soon be a pub with more casual food. The Baxendale School House also sits on the property and will eventually be a bed and breakfast. Anderson said shes waiting on photos of Myrna Loy sitting on the steps of the school house. And despite being a few miles from town, Anderson said Wassweiler is a place people come for a special occasion.
Its kind of like a destination, she said.
Wassweiler is open Wednesday and Thursday from 5 to 9 p.m. and Friday and Saturday from 5 to 10 p.m. at 4528 West Highway 12. Reservations are highly encouraged.
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The Zimbabwe Anti-Corruption Commission has opened fresh investigations into former Mines and Mining Development Minister Walter Chidhakwa over diamonds that allegedly disappeared from Government vaults during his stint at the ministry.
Zacc investigators told The Sunday Mail that Chidhakwa will soon be interviewed on the precious stones which vanished in 2015.
Also likely to be quizzed are former Cabinet ministers Ignatius Chombo and Walter Mzembi on fresh charges of abuse of office and corruption.
The anti-graft bodys spokesperson, Ms Phyllis Chikundura, could neither confirm nor deny the development, saying she could only check the facts tomorrow.
I am out of office, so I cant check today but on Monday, she said.
Government ordered diamond mining companies in Chiadzwa to cease operations in 2015 because of opaque dealings that could have prejudiced the country of millions of dollars.
Zacc suspects some diamonds that were kept in vaults at the time could have been stolen.
(Mr) Chidhakwa should answer pertinent questions about diamonds which were stolen from the vaults. People are making noise about the so-called missing US$15 billion, but we have unearthed that some diamonds were stolen when mining operations were consolidated, said a top Zacc investigator, who cannot be named for professional reasons.
The value of the stolen diamonds could not immediately be ascertained yesterday as investigators are still busy compiling the data.
The investigation comes after Chidhakwa was arrested weeks ago for criminal abuse of office.
It is alleged Chidhakwa corruptly dissolved the MMCZ board in December 2013 and appointed former permanent secretary in his ministry, Professor Francis Gudyanga, to act as the sole MMCZ board member until 2016.
Prof Gudyanga later claimed US$28 910 in sitting fees when no board was in existence.
Zacc investigators also revealed that former Home Affairs Minister Chombo was also facing fresh charges of corruption and criminal abuse of office.
He is already on bail for criminal abuse of office, fraud and corruption.
Former Tourism and Hospitality Industry Minister Mzembi is also likely to be interviewed over alleged abuse of US$2 million from the Infrastructure Development Bank of Zimbabwe.
Mzembi is also accused of diverting money donated by Mbada Diamonds for Zimbabwe to co-host the United Nations World Tourism Organisation General Assembly in 2013.
The arrest of the three former ministers (Chidhakwa, Chombo and Mzembi) is imminent because investigations are at an advanced stage. We want to interview the former ministers in relation to various fresh criminal charges, said an investigator.
Sunday Mail
Breaking News via Email
The future is bright for ICT in the South East according to Dr Padraig Kirwan, Head of the Department of Computing & Mathematics at Waterford Institute of Technology.
Computing is thriving in the South East judging by the number and diversity of ICT companies here today. Even more encouraging is the number of second level students who attended from Waterford, Kilkenny, Carlow, Tipperary and Wexford and how interested they are about the career opportunities in this exciting industry.
Over 50 companies who are working together as Crystal Valley Tech showcased their rapidly growing industry in the WIT Arena on Thursday morning to approx. 2,000 members of the public, college and second level students, recruiters, government agencies and other industry.
Elaine Fennelly, Bluefin Payment Systems General Manager and co-founder of Crystal Valley Tech is very excited about the industry in the South East and todays showcase event. People who work in the industry already know that Tech is well established in the South East and the number of opportunities and companies continues to grow and grow. According to a recent Tech Ireland report there are over 60 indigenous and multinational companies employing well over 1,500 people from their bases in Waterford, Wexford, Kilkenny and Carlow.
However, we werent so sure that people in the region realised just how big the ICT industry is becoming and to ensure the industrys future growth in the South East a group of us came together to form Crystal Valley Tech. Our remit is fairly simple, to create a Tech hub in the South East to which international companies are happy to relocate, indigenous companies and start-ups can thrive. Part of that is showcasing just how vibrant the industry already is to college and second level students which is what today is all about.
The 50 exhibitors included Bluefin Payment Systems, Sun Life Financial, Routematch, Red Hat, TSSG, Nearform and many more. Throughout the morning, each company had information booths to discuss career opportunities with recruiters and students as well as demonstrations of their exciting new technologies.
A major feature of the event was the great line-up of speakers from different local companies. James Mernin from Red Hat opened the event speaking about Red Hat in Waterford, Mick O'Brien from Routematchs talk was entitled Born, bred, educated & returned for Success in CVT Region, Bank of Irelands Adrian Mullet talked about BOI in the Tech sector in Ireland and Richard Roger from Metsitaba spoke about creating a start-up company. A full list of the 17 speakers can be found on www.wit.ie/ictday.
Speaking at the event, WIT President Prof Willie Donnelly said, The institute is committed to working with Crystal Valley Tech to position Waterford and the South East as a location of choice for indigenous and FDI industry investment in ICT. WIT provides a holistic integrated education, research and innovation framework which acts as a catalyst for the sector. The quality of our teaching programmes coupled with industry partnership ensures that our graduates are the most sought after by the industry nationally and internationally and students choosing to study in computing in WIT are guaranteed access to continuing the career in the region.
The Tech and ICT industry in the South East is large and vibrant, offering rewarding careers in exciting technology companies to computing, electronics and business graduates and to anyone interested in an exciting career change without leaving Irelands sunny South East.
Betty and Mel Humphrey, previously of Helena, commemorated their 70th wedding anniversary with a weekend of family festivities in Beaverton, Oregon, Nov. 3-5. Their children hosted a reception on Saturday afternoon, Nov. 4, at their new place of residence, Hearthstone at Murrayhill in Beaverton. There were 36 family members in attendance, including Mels two youngest siblings, Evelyn (Bob) Ellison from North Dakota and Owen (Bing) Humphrey of California, and Bettys youngest brother Ron (Corky) Pigman of Hamilton, nieces, nephews, nine grandchildren, and seven great grandchildren, as well as their many new friends from Hearthstone.
Betty Pigman and Mel Humphrey met in Helena when Mel returned home after serving in the Navy on the aircraft carrier U.S.S. Lexington during WWII. They were married Oct. 30, 1947, at the courthouse/fire station in Wallace, Idaho. Two firemen slid down the pole into the Justice of the Peace office to witness the event.
Mel worked as warehouse officer and chief auditor for the Montana National Guard, retiring as a lieutenant colonel in 1980, after 32 years of service. Betty was a stay-at-home mom and an accomplished homemaker. They have traveled extensively during their retirement years, taking many trips to visit family and friends all over the world.
They lived in Helena for 69 years and last year moved to Beaverton to be nearer their children. They have embraced their new home and the independent living style with grace and enjoyment.
Their children and spouses are Terry and Sharon Humphrey of Olympia, Washington; Diane and Mike Brook of Mesa, Arizona; Kristi and Todd Barth, of Beaverton; and Thad and Wendy Humphrey of Tigard, Oregon. They have 19 grandchildren (including spouses) and 18 great-grandchildren.
By Online Desk
Ranveer Singh looks intense and menacing as Alauddin Khilji in the latest 'Padmavati' poster shared by the actor on his Twitter page on Saturday.
The actor who plays Alauddin Khilji in Sanjay Leela Bhansali's magnum opus looks every bit as regal as the most powerful ruler of the Khilji dynasty of the Delhi Sultanate while he sits atop a bejewelled throne with his head adorned by an ornate crown. The elaborate and exquisite details in the poster, typical of the filmmaker's obsession towards perfection, is captivating.
A love ballad from the film featuring Deepika Padukone and Shahid Kapoor titled Ek Dil Ek Jaan' was released yesterday. WATCH VIDEO HERE
'Padmavati', which is scheduled to release on December 1 has been facing a lot of controversy since early this year.
Various groups, most of them from the Rajput community, have accused Bhansali of "distorting" historical facts in the film which features Deepika Padukone, Shahid Kapoor and Ranveer Singh.
The group has been constantly seeking a ban on the release of the film, which they claim is distorting history.
During a session at Sahitya Aaj Tak, veteran lyricist Javed Akhtar was asked about the controversy surrounding the movie, and the lyricist said, "I was listening to a history professor on TV who said that there is a difference of 200-250 years between Khilji's rule and the writing of 'Padmavat'. There was no mention of Padmavati before Malik Muhammad Jayasi wrote the 'Padmavat'.
"A lot of history has been written about that time. There are a lot of records available of that time but there is no mention of Padmavati in them." Citing the example of Ashutosh Gowariker's "Jodha Akbar", Akhtar said as per the history Akbar never had a wife by the name of Jodha Bai and people should not confuse a work of fiction with history.
"Stories get created. Don't misinterpret films for history and history for films. You watch cinema and enjoy it.
If you are interested in history, then read it seriously," he added.
Bhansali had earlier said that the film is his tribute to the "sacrifice, valour and honour" of Rani Padmavati. He has also said there is nothing in the film that will hurt anyone's sentiments and sensibilities.
The Supreme Court last week refused to entertain a plea seeking a stay on the release of Bollywood film 'Padmavati' starring Deepika Padukone in the lead role, saying the Censor Board was yet to certify the movie.
(With PTI inputs)
Ranveer Singh looks intense and menacing as Alauddin Khilji in the latest 'Padmavati' poster shared by the actor on his Twitter page on Saturday. The actor who plays Alauddin Khilji in Sanjay Leela Bhansali's magnum opus looks every bit as regal as the most powerful ruler of the Khilji dynasty of the Delhi Sultanate while he sits atop a bejewelled throne with his head adorned by an ornate crown. The elaborate and exquisite details in the poster, typical of the filmmaker's obsession towards perfection, is captivating. A love ballad from the film featuring Deepika Padukone and Shahid Kapoor titled Ek Dil Ek Jaan' was released yesterday. WATCH VIDEO HERE 'Padmavati', which is scheduled to release on December 1 has been facing a lot of controversy since early this year. Various groups, most of them from the Rajput community, have accused Bhansali of "distorting" historical facts in the film which features Deepika Padukone, Shahid Kapoor and Ranveer Singh. The group has been constantly seeking a ban on the release of the film, which they claim is distorting history. -SULTAN ALAUDDIN KHILJI- December 1st #Padmavati pic.twitter.com/LdMI4tzjhP Ranveer Singh (@RanveerOfficial) November 11, 2017 During a session at Sahitya Aaj Tak, veteran lyricist Javed Akhtar was asked about the controversy surrounding the movie, and the lyricist said, "I was listening to a history professor on TV who said that there is a difference of 200-250 years between Khilji's rule and the writing of 'Padmavat'. There was no mention of Padmavati before Malik Muhammad Jayasi wrote the 'Padmavat'. "A lot of history has been written about that time. There are a lot of records available of that time but there is no mention of Padmavati in them." Citing the example of Ashutosh Gowariker's "Jodha Akbar", Akhtar said as per the history Akbar never had a wife by the name of Jodha Bai and people should not confuse a work of fiction with history. "Stories get created. Don't misinterpret films for history and history for films. You watch cinema and enjoy it. If you are interested in history, then read it seriously," he added. Bhansali had earlier said that the film is his tribute to the "sacrifice, valour and honour" of Rani Padmavati. He has also said there is nothing in the film that will hurt anyone's sentiments and sensibilities. The Supreme Court last week refused to entertain a plea seeking a stay on the release of Bollywood film 'Padmavati' starring Deepika Padukone in the lead role, saying the Censor Board was yet to certify the movie. (With PTI inputs)
By PTI
NEW DELHI: The tussle within top judiciary today came to the fore with the Supreme Court overturning the order of a two-judge bench to set up a larger bench to hear a graft case allegedly involving judges, asserting that Chief Justice of India was the "master of the roster".
The showdown was over the issue of supremacy of constituting a bench in which the authority of Chief Justice Dipak Misra was allegedly undermined by a bench of Justices J Chelameswar and S Abdul Nazeer, which had yesterday set up a five-judge bench to hear a case of alleged bribery of judges in which a retired judge of Orissa High Court, Justice Ishrat Masroor Quddusi, is an accused.
Justice Chelameswar, who is the senior-most judge after the CJI, had ordered setting up of the five-judge bench of top judges of the apex court as a petition by an NGO and an advocate had claimed there were allegations against Justice Misra.
However, in a dramatic development, the CJI today set up a five-judge bench headed by him and overturned yesterday's order of the two-judge bench, saying the Chief Justice had the sole prerogative of setting up a bench and allocating matters.
In fast-paced events, the five-judge bench, also comprising Justices R K Agrawal, Arun Mishra, Amitava Roy and A M Khanwilkar, assembled at 3 PM and commenced an urgent hearing on the question as to who can direct the setting up of a bench of specific judges to hear a particular matter.
"There cannot be a command or an order directing the CJI to constitute a bench of specific strength," the bench said while making it clear that neither a two-judge nor a three-judge bench can direct the CJI to constitute a specific bench.
"Needless to emphasis that no judge can take up a matter on its own unless allocated by the CJI as the CJI is master of the court," the bench said and annulled the decision of the two-judge bench, in the hearing which witnessed heated exchange of words between the judges and advocate Prashant Bhushan, representing the petitioners.
"Any order passed contrary to this order (by the constitution bench) should not hold the field and shall be treated to be annulled," the CJI said in hard-hitting remarks while refusing the request of a lawyer to bar the media from reporting the case, saying he believed in "freedom of speech, freedom of expression and freedom of press".
The bench said if the principle of law, judicial discipline and decorum of the court was not followed, there would be "anarchy" and "chaos" in the administration of justice as well as the functioning of the institution.
Perturbed by yesterday's order, the CJI, without taking names of the concerned judges, said there were hundreds of matters listed in the court daily and if the orders were passed like this, then the court cannot function.
Members of the Supreme Court Bar Association (SCBA), including its President R S Suri, vice-president Ajit Sinha, Secretary Gaurav Bhatia and several senior advocates including Ashok Bhan, Aman Sinha and others strongly countered the allegations levelled in the petitions and said strong action should be taken against any attempt to "browbeat" the judges.
"Getting orders by terrorism should not be tolerated by this court. Strong action needs to be taken against any such attempt," SCBA members said while requesting the bench to initiate contempt proceedings in the matter.
The hearing in the jampacked courtroom saw allegations flying thick and fast with Bhushan even raising his pitch while asking the CJI to recuse himself from hearing the matter as his name has allegedly figured in the CBI's FIR.
The CJI retorted by asking Bhushan, who was accompanied by advocate Kamini Jaiswal, one of the petitioners, to read the contents of the FIR and warned against losing his temper.
"We have been giving you indulgence and you cannot deny that, despite you levelling wild allegations against me. You can afford to lose your temper but we cannot", the CJI said.
Bhushan, who was representing an NGO 'Campaign for Judicial Accountability' and Jaiswal, seeking constitution of an SIT to probe the corruption case allegedly involving judges, said the CJI's name features in it.
"What FIR against me? It is nonsense. There is not a word in the FIR naming me. Read our orders first. I feel sorry. You are liable for contempt now," the CJI said.
Bhushan dared the bench to issue a contempt notice to him and said the hearing cannot be conducted in this manner without allowing him to speak.
The activist advocate was also rebuked by Justice Arun Mishra, who observed that FIR cannot be lodged against sitting judicial officer of lower courts, judges of the higher judiciary, the Vice President of India or the President of India because they have immunity.
He said the contents of the petition filed before it was per se contemptuous.
Bhushan left the court in a huff midway during the hearing, alleging that he was not being allowed to speak while the court has heard "all and sundry". He was seen apparently being pushed and jostled while he was leaving the courtroom.
The court proceedings were extraordinary in that the CJI was asking all kinds of lawyers who were not parties to say things against the order of Court 2, w/o hearing petitioner. He tried to justify his role in the medical college case & speak against 'impropriety' of Court 2 https://t.co/iBAf4YwuCg Prashant Bhushan (@pbhushan1) 10 November 2017
The CJI also said he had set up the five-judge constitution bench as a two-judge bench comprising Justices A K Sikri and Ashok Bhushan, while hearing a separate plea with similar allegations of bribery earlier in the day, had said that the matter should be placed before the CJI for passing an appropriate order.
At the fag end of the hearing, one of the bar members requested the bench to pass an order gagging the media from reporting the case, claiming it would tarnish the image of the institution which is a "temple of justice".
The CJI refused to accept the oral submission, saying "I believe in freedom of speech, freedom of expression and freedom of press".
"Prime facie, I am always of the view that freedom of speech and expression should be respected. I am not going to pass any order restraining the press," CJI Misra said.
The constitution bench also made it clear that the pleas regarding alleged bribes taken in the names of judges would be taken up by an appropriate bench after two weeks.
The CBI, in its FIR, has named several persons, including former Orissa High Court judge Ishrat Masroor Quddusi, as accused in the alleged corruption case.
(With Express News Service inputs)
NEW DELHI: The tussle within top judiciary today came to the fore with the Supreme Court overturning the order of a two-judge bench to set up a larger bench to hear a graft case allegedly involving judges, asserting that Chief Justice of India was the "master of the roster". The showdown was over the issue of supremacy of constituting a bench in which the authority of Chief Justice Dipak Misra was allegedly undermined by a bench of Justices J Chelameswar and S Abdul Nazeer, which had yesterday set up a five-judge bench to hear a case of alleged bribery of judges in which a retired judge of Orissa High Court, Justice Ishrat Masroor Quddusi, is an accused. Justice Chelameswar, who is the senior-most judge after the CJI, had ordered setting up of the five-judge bench of top judges of the apex court as a petition by an NGO and an advocate had claimed there were allegations against Justice Misra. However, in a dramatic development, the CJI today set up a five-judge bench headed by him and overturned yesterday's order of the two-judge bench, saying the Chief Justice had the sole prerogative of setting up a bench and allocating matters. In fast-paced events, the five-judge bench, also comprising Justices R K Agrawal, Arun Mishra, Amitava Roy and A M Khanwilkar, assembled at 3 PM and commenced an urgent hearing on the question as to who can direct the setting up of a bench of specific judges to hear a particular matter. "There cannot be a command or an order directing the CJI to constitute a bench of specific strength," the bench said while making it clear that neither a two-judge nor a three-judge bench can direct the CJI to constitute a specific bench. "Needless to emphasis that no judge can take up a matter on its own unless allocated by the CJI as the CJI is master of the court," the bench said and annulled the decision of the two-judge bench, in the hearing which witnessed heated exchange of words between the judges and advocate Prashant Bhushan, representing the petitioners. "Any order passed contrary to this order (by the constitution bench) should not hold the field and shall be treated to be annulled," the CJI said in hard-hitting remarks while refusing the request of a lawyer to bar the media from reporting the case, saying he believed in "freedom of speech, freedom of expression and freedom of press". The bench said if the principle of law, judicial discipline and decorum of the court was not followed, there would be "anarchy" and "chaos" in the administration of justice as well as the functioning of the institution. Perturbed by yesterday's order, the CJI, without taking names of the concerned judges, said there were hundreds of matters listed in the court daily and if the orders were passed like this, then the court cannot function. Members of the Supreme Court Bar Association (SCBA), including its President R S Suri, vice-president Ajit Sinha, Secretary Gaurav Bhatia and several senior advocates including Ashok Bhan, Aman Sinha and others strongly countered the allegations levelled in the petitions and said strong action should be taken against any attempt to "browbeat" the judges. "Getting orders by terrorism should not be tolerated by this court. Strong action needs to be taken against any such attempt," SCBA members said while requesting the bench to initiate contempt proceedings in the matter. The hearing in the jampacked courtroom saw allegations flying thick and fast with Bhushan even raising his pitch while asking the CJI to recuse himself from hearing the matter as his name has allegedly figured in the CBI's FIR. The CJI retorted by asking Bhushan, who was accompanied by advocate Kamini Jaiswal, one of the petitioners, to read the contents of the FIR and warned against losing his temper. "We have been giving you indulgence and you cannot deny that, despite you levelling wild allegations against me. You can afford to lose your temper but we cannot", the CJI said. Bhushan, who was representing an NGO 'Campaign for Judicial Accountability' and Jaiswal, seeking constitution of an SIT to probe the corruption case allegedly involving judges, said the CJI's name features in it. "What FIR against me? It is nonsense. There is not a word in the FIR naming me. Read our orders first. I feel sorry. You are liable for contempt now," the CJI said. Bhushan dared the bench to issue a contempt notice to him and said the hearing cannot be conducted in this manner without allowing him to speak. The activist advocate was also rebuked by Justice Arun Mishra, who observed that FIR cannot be lodged against sitting judicial officer of lower courts, judges of the higher judiciary, the Vice President of India or the President of India because they have immunity. He said the contents of the petition filed before it was per se contemptuous. Bhushan left the court in a huff midway during the hearing, alleging that he was not being allowed to speak while the court has heard "all and sundry". He was seen apparently being pushed and jostled while he was leaving the courtroom. The court proceedings were extraordinary in that the CJI was asking all kinds of lawyers who were not parties to say things against the order of Court 2, w/o hearing petitioner. He tried to justify his role in the medical college case & speak against 'impropriety' of Court 2 https://t.co/iBAf4YwuCg Prashant Bhushan (@pbhushan1) 10 November 2017 The CJI also said he had set up the five-judge constitution bench as a two-judge bench comprising Justices A K Sikri and Ashok Bhushan, while hearing a separate plea with similar allegations of bribery earlier in the day, had said that the matter should be placed before the CJI for passing an appropriate order. At the fag end of the hearing, one of the bar members requested the bench to pass an order gagging the media from reporting the case, claiming it would tarnish the image of the institution which is a "temple of justice". The CJI refused to accept the oral submission, saying "I believe in freedom of speech, freedom of expression and freedom of press". "Prime facie, I am always of the view that freedom of speech and expression should be respected. I am not going to pass any order restraining the press," CJI Misra said. The constitution bench also made it clear that the pleas regarding alleged bribes taken in the names of judges would be taken up by an appropriate bench after two weeks. The CBI, in its FIR, has named several persons, including former Orissa High Court judge Ishrat Masroor Quddusi, as accused in the alleged corruption case. (With Express News Service inputs)
By Online Desk
A Muslim man was shot dead by alleged cow vigilantes, and his body was thrown onto railway tracks in Rajasthan's Alwar on November 10.
According to a News 18 report, the victim Ummar Khan and two others were transporting cows to Fahari village near Alwar's Govindh Gadh when they were attacked. His companions were also attacked and sustained injuries.
Ummar Khan's uncle has filed a complaint with the Alwar police, identifying one among the attackers, who is a member of the "Gau Raksha group," the report said.
Though the police are yet to make an official statement on the murder, medical officials confirmed a bullet injury to be the reason for Ummar's death.
The three were reportedly rounded-up by a group of eight before being assaulted around five in the morning. They were accused of transporting cows for slaughter by the group.
Ummar's uncle Iliyas Muhammad said the injuries found in the body indicates that he was lynched before being shot. He also alleged that the murder happened in the presence of police officers, who did nothing to stop the attackers.
Ummar Khan is survived by his wife and eight children.
In a similar incident earlier this year, a dairy farmer Pehlu Khan from Jaisinghpur village in Haryana, was lynched by cow vigilantes in Alwar while he was returning home after purchasing two cows and two calves from a Jaipur cattle fair. In September, the Rajasthan police had given a clean chit to the six attackers named in Pehlu Khan's dying statement, trigerring nationwide outrage. Following this, Khan's family had sought a Supreme Court probe into the killing, demanding that the case be shifted out of the state.
The head of Meo community panchayat, Sher Mohammad, said that even if Ummar Khan was involved in cow smuggling, there are laws to deal with smugglers. "Who has given the cow vigilantes the right to take the law into own hands. Police should act against cow vigilantes," he said.
Social worker Maulana Haneef claimed that Khan, along with two others, was ferrying cattle in a vehicle when unidentified men opened fire at them. Khan died on the spot.
"We staged a protest outside the mortuary at a hospital in Alwar where the body was kept and have demanded early arrest of the accused," he said.
The Mewat region is known for rearing cows and now "self-proclaimed cow sympathisers" of various right wing outfits are targeting those who rear cows, the social activist said.
"The matter is under investigation. We are awaiting the post-mortem report," Govindgarh police station SHO Daulat Ram said.
The post-mortem will be conducted in Jaipur.
(With PTI inputs)
A Muslim man was shot dead by alleged cow vigilantes, and his body was thrown onto railway tracks in Rajasthan's Alwar on November 10. According to a News 18 report, the victim Ummar Khan and two others were transporting cows to Fahari village near Alwar's Govindh Gadh when they were attacked. His companions were also attacked and sustained injuries. Ummar Khan's uncle has filed a complaint with the Alwar police, identifying one among the attackers, who is a member of the "Gau Raksha group," the report said. Though the police are yet to make an official statement on the murder, medical officials confirmed a bullet injury to be the reason for Ummar's death. The three were reportedly rounded-up by a group of eight before being assaulted around five in the morning. They were accused of transporting cows for slaughter by the group. Ummar's uncle Iliyas Muhammad said the injuries found in the body indicates that he was lynched before being shot. He also alleged that the murder happened in the presence of police officers, who did nothing to stop the attackers. Ummar Khan is survived by his wife and eight children. In a similar incident earlier this year, a dairy farmer Pehlu Khan from Jaisinghpur village in Haryana, was lynched by cow vigilantes in Alwar while he was returning home after purchasing two cows and two calves from a Jaipur cattle fair. In September, the Rajasthan police had given a clean chit to the six attackers named in Pehlu Khan's dying statement, trigerring nationwide outrage. Following this, Khan's family had sought a Supreme Court probe into the killing, demanding that the case be shifted out of the state. The head of Meo community panchayat, Sher Mohammad, said that even if Ummar Khan was involved in cow smuggling, there are laws to deal with smugglers. "Who has given the cow vigilantes the right to take the law into own hands. Police should act against cow vigilantes," he said. Social worker Maulana Haneef claimed that Khan, along with two others, was ferrying cattle in a vehicle when unidentified men opened fire at them. Khan died on the spot. "We staged a protest outside the mortuary at a hospital in Alwar where the body was kept and have demanded early arrest of the accused," he said. The Mewat region is known for rearing cows and now "self-proclaimed cow sympathisers" of various right wing outfits are targeting those who rear cows, the social activist said. "The matter is under investigation. We are awaiting the post-mortem report," Govindgarh police station SHO Daulat Ram said. The post-mortem will be conducted in Jaipur. (With PTI inputs)
By ANI
MANILA: Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Sunday met the United States President Donald Trump, hours after he landed in Philippines.
Prime Minister Modi is on a three-day official visit to the country, where he will be attending the 15th Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) India summit and the 12th East Asia Summit in Manila on November 14.
Terror and Trade-related issues will be on top of the Prime Minister Narendra Modi's agenda.
Indian Ambassador to Philippines Jaideep Mazumdar on Sunday said that several bilateral issues, including terrorism, and poverty alleviation, will be discussed and various agreements will be signed during Prime Minister Narendra Modi's visit here.
Prime Minister Modi is on a three-day visit to attend the 15th Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) India summit and the 12th East Asia Summit in Manila on November 14.
Russian PM Dmitry Medvedev, Japanese PM Shinzo Abe and POTUS Donald Trump with PM Narendra Modi #ASEANSummit #Manila pic.twitter.com/eMthX5nt70 ANI (@ANI) November 12, 2017
The Indian Ambassador told ANI, "Prime Minister Modi is visiting Philippines for the first time and it will be the first substantive meeting between him and Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte."
Emphasising on the agenda of ASEAN India summit and East Asia Summit, Mazumdar said, "The summit will focus on the major issues such as terrorism, terror-funding, money laundering and poverty alleviation."
"ASEAN has a central role in India's Act East Policy," he added.
The ambassador further emphasised that India was also interested in concluding the negotiations for the Free Trade Pact.
"We look for balanced outcomes for goods, services and investment. This is the first time there will be leaders meeting along with East Asia and ASEAN summit and the idea behind that is to give a push to the negotiations," he said.
Sources also say that Prime Minister Modi will meet United States President Donald Trump on the sidelines of the summit.
Trump is also scheduled to arrive in Manila on Sunday as part of his five-nation Asia tour of Japan, South Korea, China, Vietnam, and the Philippines.
During his visit, Prime Minister Modi will participate in special celebrations to mark the 50th anniversary of ASEAN.
The Prime Minister will also attend the ASEAN business and investment summit on November 13 and regional comprehensive economic partnership meeting on November 14 in Manila, emphasising these meetings were important as they would further enhance India's trade and investment ties with ASEAN member states, which constitute a significant over 10 per cent of India's external trade.
Prime Minister Modi will also meet the members of the Indian community at a reception to be hosted by the Indian envoy in Philippines. He will also visit the international rice research institute and the Mahavir Philippines Foundation.
MANILA: Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Sunday met the United States President Donald Trump, hours after he landed in Philippines. Prime Minister Modi is on a three-day official visit to the country, where he will be attending the 15th Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) India summit and the 12th East Asia Summit in Manila on November 14. Terror and Trade-related issues will be on top of the Prime Minister Narendra Modi's agenda. Indian Ambassador to Philippines Jaideep Mazumdar on Sunday said that several bilateral issues, including terrorism, and poverty alleviation, will be discussed and various agreements will be signed during Prime Minister Narendra Modi's visit here. Prime Minister Modi is on a three-day visit to attend the 15th Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) India summit and the 12th East Asia Summit in Manila on November 14. Russian PM Dmitry Medvedev, Japanese PM Shinzo Abe and POTUS Donald Trump with PM Narendra Modi #ASEANSummit #Manila pic.twitter.com/eMthX5nt70 ANI (@ANI) November 12, 2017 The Indian Ambassador told ANI, "Prime Minister Modi is visiting Philippines for the first time and it will be the first substantive meeting between him and Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte." Emphasising on the agenda of ASEAN India summit and East Asia Summit, Mazumdar said, "The summit will focus on the major issues such as terrorism, terror-funding, money laundering and poverty alleviation." "ASEAN has a central role in India's Act East Policy," he added. The ambassador further emphasised that India was also interested in concluding the negotiations for the Free Trade Pact. "We look for balanced outcomes for goods, services and investment. This is the first time there will be leaders meeting along with East Asia and ASEAN summit and the idea behind that is to give a push to the negotiations," he said. Sources also say that Prime Minister Modi will meet United States President Donald Trump on the sidelines of the summit. Trump is also scheduled to arrive in Manila on Sunday as part of his five-nation Asia tour of Japan, South Korea, China, Vietnam, and the Philippines. During his visit, Prime Minister Modi will participate in special celebrations to mark the 50th anniversary of ASEAN. The Prime Minister will also attend the ASEAN business and investment summit on November 13 and regional comprehensive economic partnership meeting on November 14 in Manila, emphasising these meetings were important as they would further enhance India's trade and investment ties with ASEAN member states, which constitute a significant over 10 per cent of India's external trade. Prime Minister Modi will also meet the members of the Indian community at a reception to be hosted by the Indian envoy in Philippines. He will also visit the international rice research institute and the Mahavir Philippines Foundation.
Rogers project faces $20 million shortfall. What's next.
The numbers are a part of the construction firms 60% Construction Documentation Estimate, one of the deliverables requested by the city.
Champaign, IL (61820)
Today
Cloudy and windy with on and off snow showers mainly during the morning. High 33F. Winds W at 20 to 30 mph. Chance of snow 30%..
Tonight
Cloudy. Low around 25F. Winds W at 10 to 20 mph.
The financial hit to higher education won't be as large as anticipated if Gov. Steve Bullock's proposed budget stands.
Bullock, a Democrat, called a special session of the Montana Legislature next week to resolve the state budget and revenue shortfalls.
Earlier, the Montana Office of the Commissioner for Higher Education was anticipating a cut as steep as 10 percent, or some $44 million for the biennium, but the governor's proposal spares higher education and calls for a 1.2 percent reduction in the 2018 and 2019 fiscal years.
Kevin McRae, deputy commissioner for communications in the Commissioner's Office, said the proposal coming out of the governor's office seems to recognize that students shouldered one of the largest real-dollar cuts $10 million to the state budget from the regular legislative session.
The amount represented a cut of just 2.6 percent a year for the university system, but McRae said it also created a $20 million unfunded obligation.
In May, the Montana Board of Regents approved a tuition increase that took effect this fall and covers roughly 75 percent of the unfunded obligation, McRae said. He said the university system is cutting its way through the remaining $5 million.
"We're grateful that the recommended budget takes that into account, that students are already paying more for education that is continually challenged in terms of access and affordability," McRae said.
As proposed, the cut to higher education would be some $4.5 million over the biennium, but approval isn't certain.
Manila/New Delhi: India, Australia, Japan and the US on Sunday agreed that "a free, open, prosperous and inclusive" Indo-Pacific served long-term global interests, giving impetus to an emerging quad of democracies amid China's rising military and economic power.
It was the first dialogue of the quadrilateral formation of the democracies in which anti-terrorism cooperation was also discussed.
An External Affairs Ministry statement in New Delhi said foreign officials from India, Australia, Japan and the US met in the Philippines capital and held consultations "on issues of common interest in the Indo-Pacific region".
"The discussions focused on cooperation based on their converging vision and values for promotion of peace, stability and prosperity in an increasingly inter-connected region that they share with each other and with other partners," the statement said.
"They agreed that a free, open, prosperous and inclusive Indo-Pacific region serves the long-term interests of all countries in the region and of the world at large."
The officials also exchanged views on addressing common challenges of terrorism and proliferation linkages impacting the region as well as on enhancing connectivity.
Indian officials highlighted India's Act East Policy as the cornerstone of its engagement in the region.
The four countries are working to revive their quadrilateral dialogue.
The meeting was held as Prime Minister Narendra Modi arrived in Manila on Sunday on a three-day visit to the Philippines for the 15th India-Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) meet and the 12th East Asia Summit on Tuesday.
The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean), comprising Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam, has emerged as a key cornerstone of New Delhi's foreign policy, with its Look East Policy, launched by then Prime Minister P.V. Narasimha Rao in 1992.
The Modi government has turned it into the Act East Policy to focus on increased engagements with the regional bloc.
The annual East Asia Summit is held by leaders of the Asean countries and those of Australia, China, India, Japan, New Zealand, Russia, South Korea and the US.
Even as India, the US and Japan have a trilateral dialogue mechanism in place for issues relating to the Indo-Pacific region, Japanese Foreign Minister Tara Kono said in October that Tokyo was for a top-level quadrilateral dialogue that would also include Australia.
Kono said the idea was for the leaders of the four countries to promote free trade and defence cooperation across a stretch of ocean from the South China Sea, the Indian Ocean and all the way to Africa.
The emerging quadrilateral is seen to counter China's aggressive maritime expansion under its Belt and Road initiative. China's plans would cement a sphere of influence for Beijing well beyond Asia.
India responded to Kono's comments by saying that New Delhi was open to work with like-minded countries that advance India's interests.
New Delhi: Debt-laden Air India has received a loan worth of Rs 1,500 crore from Bank of India to meet urgent working capital needs less than a month after floating a tender in this regard, an airline source said.
For the second time in recent months, the flagship carrier has received loans from a public sector lender.
Battling multiple headwinds, the disinvestment-bound airline has been working on ways to reduce its debt, including by way of selling non-core assets and expanding operations.
The source said the airline has received Rs 1,500 crore loan from Bank of India after the tender for the amount was floated last month in order to meet "urgent" working capital needs.
A query sent to Bank of India remained unanswered.
A tender was issued by the carrier on October 18 in which it had sought government guarantee-backed short-term loans totalling up to Rs 1,500 crore to meet "its urgent working capital requirements".
Prior to that, the airline had borrowed around Rs 3,250 crore as short tenure loans from two lenders -- IndusInd Bank and Punjab National Bank, sources had said. This loan too was for meeting urgent working capital needs and the tender was floated in September.
In the last nearly three months, at least two public sector lenders -- Bank of India and Punjab National Bank -- have provided loans to the airline.
As part of efforts to revive the ailing carrier, which has a debt burden of more than Rs 50,000 crore, the government is in the process of finalising the contours of its strategic disinvestment.
Air India is surviving on taxpayers' money under the bailout package extended by the previous UPA government in 2012.
As part of the turnaround plan, the national carrier is to receive up to Rs 30,231 crore from the government over a ten-year period subject to meeting certain performance thresholds.
The Air India group flies to 44 overseas and 75 domestic destinations. There are flights to Copenhagen, Tokyo, Washington, Stockholm, Sydney, Hong Kong, Kabul, Colombo, Seoul, Singapore and London, among other foreign cities.
New Delhi: An overloaded boat carrying 38 people capsized in the Krishna river near Vijayawada on Sunday evening, resulting in the death of 16 tourists while seven others are missing, the police said.
The ill-fated boat was being operated by a private company and was said to be on a trial run.
The NDRF personnel have rescued 20 people alive and recovered 11 bodies so far. National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) teams and Krishna district authorities have launched a massive search and rescue operation to trace the missing people. Two teams each comprising 30 NDRF personnel, a 45-member team of the State Disaster Rescue Force (SDRF) and 60 members of the Disaster Response and Fire Services Department have been roped into the rescue operation.
The death toll may rise, police said, adding that the boat was overloaded because of which it overturned, leading to the tragedy.
The unfortunate incident occurred at the confluence of Krishna and Godavari rivers. The passengers were going from the Bhavani Island to Pavitra Sangamam to witness Pavitra Harati, a daily ritual attracting thousands of tourists.
NDRF teams and Krishna district authorities launched a massive search and rescue operation to trace the missing people. (Photo courtesy: NDRF)
"The boat was overloaded with 38 people and most of them were not provided life jackets. It capsized near a curve as it approached the Pavitra Sangamam point and most of the people were trapped underneath and were killed," an Assistant Commissioner of Police said.
Most of the passengers were said to be members of the Ongole Walkers Club in Prakasam district while some were from Nellore who were on a visit to Vijayawada.
Tourism Minister Bhuma Akhila Priya ordered an inquiry into the incident and directed her department officials to ascertain whether the boat operator had requisite permissions. The incident occurred when the boat set off for Pavitra Sangamam at Ferry village near Vijayawada from Bhavani Island, the police said.
Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu, Deputy Chief Minister (Home) N China Rajappa, Opposition leader Y S Jaganmohan Reddy, state BJP president K Hari Babu and others expressed grief over the incident.
China Rajappa, who was supervising rescue operations at the accident spot, announced an ex-gratia payment of Rs 5 lakh each to the kin of the deceased.
Pradesh Congress Committee president N Raghuveera Reddy visited the accident spot and later the hospital. One of the deceased was identified as Prabhakar Reddy, a former president of the BJP Prakasam district unit.
(With PTI inputs)
Department of Agriculture officials say a decision to limit the number of federal scientists attending a major fire conference was an exercise in good management, not information control.
What it really comes down to is the agency managers at the research-station level are using critical thinking skills about who are the best people to send to these conferences, USDA spokesman Mike Illenberg said. Were not just sending employees to random conferences. Were looking across the board where they can get their best bang for the buck.
The issue arose when members of the Association for Fire Ecology protested the reduction by nearly two-thirds of the number of federal fire experts attending the seventh International Fire Ecology and Management Congress in Orlando, Florida, later this month.
About 20 fire researchers from the Rocky Mountain Research Station in Missoula were planning to present or participate at the conference, but only six were approved to travel.
Association for Fire Ecology President and University of Idaho professor Leda Kobziar wrote Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke and Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue that more than 100 USDA and DOI scientists and managers werent approved for attending the conference. The sixth annual conference in 2015 gathered 578 fire experts, including 180 federal employees. Only 50 federal fire experts are expected to attend the 2017 conference.
As taxpayers, our members share the goal of avoiding wasteful government spending, but restricting fire managers and scientists from meeting at conferences is a case of being penny-wise, pound-foolish, Kobziar wrote. We believe that the opportunity for scientists and managers to meet face-to-face to address current problems is a worthy investment of taxpayer dollars that holds one of the best hopes of developing solutions for reducing rising wildfire losses.
Illenberg said the Forest Service allocated $110,000 for the 2017 conference, which was expected to be enough to cover about 50 participants. The agency budgeted $160,000 for 76 employees in 2015. Those figures dont include participation by agencies in the Department of the Interior, such as the Bureau of Land Management, National Park Service or Bureau of Indian Affairs.
USDA Forest Service leadership in Washington did not consider the topic/title of the presentations and they were not included in the meetings management package sent up for final approval, Illenberg added in an email. Forest Service researchers and managers have many ways to communicate their research findings, professional conferences being but one of them. Professional journal articles are a primary source of publishing and sharing research.
Illenberg added that the participation limit was made at the Forest Service level, not at the Secretary of Agriculture level as previously stated. Forest Service spending decisions dont need Cabinet-level approval unless they exceed $450,000.
We dont micromanage by agency, Illenberg said. This isnt something the secretary or the political staff at the department would weigh in on.
Several of the Missoula-based researchers were planning to present work showing how climate change was affecting forest fire behavior. Their lack of participation in the Orlando conference followed other examples of government employees facing restrictions on publicizing climate-change-related subjects, including at the Environmental Protection Agency, National Park Service and U.S. Geological Survey.
On Wednesday, Sen. Jon Tester, D-Mont., sent a letter to Forest Service Chief Tony Tooke asking for an explanation of the fire expert travel restrictions and encouraging Tooke to increase participation. On Friday, Tester spokeswoman Marnee Banks said the agency had not replied to the letter.
However, the conference organizers, Forest Service managers and USDA officials all denied there was any topic-related censorship apparent in the conference travel restrictions. Association for Fire Ecology development director Tony Ingalsbee said his personal impression was that climate-related research was being muzzled, but later added the travel restrictions appeared to be indiscriminate.
Andy Stahl of the organization Forest Service Employees for Environmental Ethics raised a different point about the controversy. Conferences depend on participants to pay the cost of the gathering, and losing a significant number puts the event in its own budgetary squeeze.
The whole notion of conferences is antiquated, Stahl said. I dont have to leave the computer to interact with anybody I want. And when the major theme of the conference was going to be effects of climate change on wildfire, isnt the single most damaging thing an individual can do is to jump in an airplane and fly across the country?
Lucknow: The BJP has launched, for the very first time, a manifesto called Sankalp Patr for the upcoming municipal elections in Uttar Pradesh. UP Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath launched the policy statement at the party's state headquarters in Lucknow on Sunday, he was accompanied by state party president Mahendra Nath Pandey, co-Deputy CMs Keshav Prasad Maurya and Dinesh Sharma. Urban Development Minister Suresh Khanna was also present.
The BJPs Sankalp Patr is divided into 18 parts with an emphasis on cleanliness, traffic management and nationalism; it was made under the leadership of Suresh Khanna.
The Sankalp Patr promises Pink Toilets for women in all the major markets along with free toilets at public places. Cow shelters on the lines of Kanha Upvan for stray cows have been proposed, along with better arrangements for tax collection in Municipal Corporations. Sops for youth, working people and roadside vendors of the state is also on the cards.
The BJP is also promising better traffic arrangements with traffic planning system, underground parking lots and multi-storey parking. Apart from this, renewal and expansion of city bus stands, call centres for cleaning services and mobile app, GPS monitoring of door-to-door waste collection. Sewage Treatment Plants and new sewer lines in the cities are also promised in the manifesto.
Speaking on the occasion, UP CM Yogi Adityanath said, BJP will fulfil all promises made in the Sankalp Patr. Development is important and for that, public transport system is very important. Our government is already successfully operating metro in three UP cities of Noida, Ghaziabad and Lucknow. In other eight cities, the basic work for metro or equivalent public transport system has already begun. We are also going to focus on improving regional connectivity in the state.
Regional specialities of different cities will be promoted through our project One City One Product. Under this, a specific product of the city will be promoted in order to generate employment opportunities for the youth. Our main aim is to provide safe drinking water and proper roads to the people, he added.
For the municipality election, Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath will campaign in all 16 corporations of the state. The CM's election campaign will begin on November 14 from Ayodhya.
More than three crore voters in 16 municipal corporations, 199 municipal councils, 438 Nagar panchayats of the state will go to polls on November 22. On November 26, during the second phase, 25 districts will go to polls and on November 29, the remaining 26 districts will vote. The counting is set to take place on December 1.
New Delhi: A burial ceremony of two Indian soldiers from the 39th Royal Garhwal Rifles, who laid down their lives in World War I in France, will be held on Sunday at the French Military Cemetery in La Gorgue, the Army said.
On September 20 last year, during an excavation on the southern side of Richebourg village near Laventie Military Cemetery, nearly 70 km (43 miles) from Dunkirk, two human remains were found. On examining their belongings, they were identified as causalities of the 39th Royal Garhwal Rifles.
"The office of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission (CWWGC), which is the curator of graves of these unsung heroes, in consultation with the French government and the Indian embassy in France, decided to hold a burial ceremony at the Laventie Military Cemetery, with full military honours," a statement said.
A delegation of the Indian Army comprising the commandant and subedar major of the Garhwal Rifles Regimental Centre, two bagpipers from the Garhwal Rifles Regimental Pipe band and Colonel Nitin Negi was nominated to attend the ceremony.
Colonel Nitin Negi is the grandson of late Naik Darwan Singh Negi, who was awarded the Victoria Cross for his gallantry in the Battle of Festubert.
In a symbolic gesture, the soil from the graves of these soldiers would be brought back to their homeland. In an interaction earlier this week with the PTI, Sqn. Ldr. (retired) Rana Chinna, a military historian, who has done extensive work on the participation of Indian soldiers in the world wars, said nearly 1.5 million soldiers from the country had participated in World War 1.
Nearly 4,500 of them died in France and Belgium, he had said.
"During World War I, the Garhwal Brigade comprising of 1st/39th and 2nd/39th Royal Garhwal Rifles showed unparalleled bravery in those treacherous trenches of France and Flanders. The Garhwal Brigade earned six Battle Honours and two Victoria Cross in France and Flanders Theatre," the statement said.
On this occasion, homage will also be paid to the soldiers of Indian Meerut Division at Nueve Chapelle War Memorial in France by laying wreaths on behalf of Gen. Bipin Rawat, chief of the Army staff, by Brigadier Indrajit Chatterjee and Subedar Major Trilok Singh Negi of the Garhwal Rifles Regimental Centre.
Bengaluru: Karnataka Home Minister Ramalinga Reddy has said that the killers of senior journalist Gauri Lankesh, who was shot dead outside her home over two months ago, would 100 per cent be nabbed in a few weeks.
The minister claimed that the case would not follow the trajectory of the Narendra Dabholkar and Govind Pansare murder cases and the identity of the accused would be revealed soon. Unlike in the murder cases of Dabholkar and Pansare (in Maharashtra), the SIT has definite clues and knows the identities of the people behind the murder of Gauri Lankesh, said Reddy..
He said the Special Investigation Team (SIT) probing the killing had clues about the assailants, but those could not be disclosed at the moment.
"Who has done it...I am aware of it thanks to an update provided by the SIT. But I cannot disclose it now," Reddy said at a meet-the-press programme organised by the Press Club of Bangalore and the Bangalore Reporters' Guild here.
"Gauri's killers will 100 per cent be caught. This will happen in a few weeks," he added.
The minister, however, clarified, "Weeks do not mean one or two weeks. It (the arrest of the killers) will happen in a matter of a few weeks. This will happen 100 per cent."
Reddy said whether Lankesh was killed by left-wing or right-wing extremists or was it due to "some other thinking" was "one issue".
Lankesh, known to be an anti-establishment voice with strident anti-right wing views, was shot dead at close range by unidentified assailants outside her residence on the night of September 5.
The killing had led to a national outrage and protests by several groups over "rising intolerance" in the country and attempts to muzzle dissent, with the criticism targeted at the BJP-led central government and right-wing groups.
Reddy had made similar claims about the SIT having gathered "some clues" in connection with the case earlier too. The Congress government in Karnataka, which constituted the SIT headed by Inspector General of Police (Intelligence) B K Singh, has also announced a reward of Rs 10 lakh for anyone providing clues about the perpetrators of the crime.
As the killing gave way to a political slugfest, Lankesh's family had made a plea not to give a political colour to it.
They had said the investigators should look into all possible aspects of the case, as reports had emerged about a possible Naxal hand in the crime, besides the suspected involvement of right-wing extremists.
Manila: Prime Minister Narendra Modi departed for a three-day visit to Philippines on Sunday to attend the 15th ASEAN-India summit and 12th East Asia summit, but all eyes will be on his expected bilateral meeting with US President Donald Trump.
Official sources said the two leaders will hold one-on-one talks for 45 minutes on Monday afternoon. Trump is also scheduled to arrive in Manila on Sunday as part of his five-nation Asia tour of Japan, South Korea, China, Vietnam, and the Philippines.
Mondays meeting assumes significance as it will be the first between the two leaders following a proposal to have a quadrilateral alliance among India, US, Japan and Australia.
Modi is also scheduled to have bilateral meetings with the two other members of the proposed alliance - Australian PM Malcolm Turnbull and Japanese PM Shinzo Abe on Tuesday. He will also meet Vietnamese PM Nguyen Xuan Phuc, New Zealand PM Jacinda Ardern and the Sultan of Brunei Sultan Hassanal Bolkiah.
Japan last month had indicated that it would propose a top-level dialogue with the US, India and Australia. Sources said officials of the four countries may meet on the sidelines of the ASEAN summit here.
The move to set up the quadrilateral comes in the backdrop of growing Chinese assertiveness in the South China Sea. The US has been favouring a larger role for India in the strategically key Indo-Pacific region.
The use of the term "Indo-Pacific" by Trump has led to speculation that it may have something to do with Washington preparing the ground for a revival of the so-called Quadrilateral strategic alliance to counter China's rise.
In their meeting, Modi and Trump are likely to discuss a host of key issues of mutual interest including the security scenario in the region.
Trump on Friday praised India's "astounding" growth after it opened up its economy and also lauded Modi, saying he has been working successfully to bring the vast country and its people together.
Speaking at a gathering of CEOs on the sidelines of the annual Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in the Vietnamese city of Danang, Trump cited India as one of the countries in the Indo-Pacific region making strides.
He praised India as a sovereign democracy with a population of over 1 billion as well as the largest democracy in the world.
Modi is expected to meet many other leaders attending the two summits. He will also participate in the ASEAN business and investment summit as well as a meeting of leaders of Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP).
The RCEP, comprising the 10-member ASEAN bloc and six other countries - India, China, Japan, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand, is engaged in negotiations for a free trade pact.
In his maiden visit to the Philippines as prime minister, Modi will also attend a reception by the Indian community and visit the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) and the Mahavir Philippines Foundation.
New Delhi: At a time when a Love Jihad case from Kerala has been making headlines, another intriguing instance of inter-faith marriage has come up before the Supreme Court, but with a twist.
This time, a Muslim man has converted to Hinduism and married a Hindu girl at an Arya Samaj temple. He recited shlokas and took the seven vows walking around the fire as they got married at Bhopal in April 2016.
But the girls family in Madhya Pradesh lodged an FIR, claiming the girl is a minor and that the man kidnapped her. The police then took away the girl and placed her in the custody of her father.
The man then moved the Supreme Court and filed a habeas corpus petition. He submitted that he had validly converted to Hinduism and wanted his wife back.
The 24-year-old, who is a sepoy in Army, also produced letters to show that he did inform his superior in the Army about his religious conversion. The girls statement to a magistrate, supporting his version that she was a major, was also shown to the court.
However, his year-long quest reached a dead end, with the Supreme Court dismissing his case without issuing any directive to reunite him with his wife.
A bench of Justices Adarsh K Goel and Uday U Lalit, which interacted with the girl at least twice during the pendency of the case, closed the case, saying it was not possible for the court to pronounce upon the validity of the marriage since the factors about the mans conversion and validity of conversion required adjudication.
Whether the petitioner has factually converted his religion and whether conversion only to marriage is in accordance with law is a dispute which require adjudication. In absence of such adjudication, it is not possible to accept that a valid marriage has taken place between the petitioner and the daughter of respondent No.4 so as to grant the relief sought, stated the court order last week.
The court also took note of the Madhya Pradesh Freedom of Religion Act, 1968 which requires a procedure for conversion of religion, under which an intimation has to be sent to the district magistrate about conversion.
It observed that the man would have to first prove before the authorities concerned that he converted to Hinduism and then satisfy that conversion only for the purpose of getting married was a valid act under the relevant law.
Accordingly, this petition is dismissed without prejudice to any other remedy in accordance with law, held the bench, wrapping up the case being heard since October last year.
Advocate NS Dalal, who represented the man in court, told CNN-News18 that it was unfortunate that the apex court chose to steer clear of the matter and not exercise its jurisdiction to give justice to the couple.
While the Kerala Love Jihad case is getting so much attention that the Supreme Court has now decided to call the woman to the court only to know about her wishes, this case got shut abruptly even though the girl had expressed her desire and recorded her statement before the magistrate as well, added Dalal.
Another bench in the Supreme Court has sought the presence of a Hindu woman, who converted to Islam and got married to a Muslim man. Her marriage was annulled on a habeas corpus petition filed by her father. The Supreme Court in August ordered a NIA probe into such cases, but has now decided to hear her side of the story first on November 27.
Manila: Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Sunday held separate pull-aside meetings with US President Donald Trump and Chinese Premier Li Keqiang on the sidelines of a gala dinner to mark the 50th anniversary of the ASEAN.
Modi was also seen chit-chatting with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev and Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak at the reception for the leaders who have arrived in Manila for the 31st ASEAN summit and related meetings.
He also held brief interactions with several other leaders who attended the reception hosted by Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte at the mega SMX Convention Centre in Pasay City in Manila.
The prime minister as well as all other leaders wore Barong Tagalong, an embroidered shirt which is the national dress of the Philippines. Renowned Filipino designer Albert Andrada has designed the shirts.
Modi also tweeted pictures of his interaction with several leaders. The menu of the gala dinner featured various Filipino cuisines including Filipino steak sushi.
The brief interaction between Modi and Trump came ahead of their scheduled bilateral meeting tomorrow(Monday). The two leaders are expected to deliberate on a number of key issues of mutual interest including the evolving security situation in the Indo-Pacific region where Washington favours a greater role by India.
There have been concerns over China's growing military presence in the Indo-Pacific and the issue was understood to have figured in a meeting of officials from India, the US, Japan and Australia today under the proposed Quadrilateral coalition of the four countries.
"The discussions focused on cooperation based on their converging vision and values for promotion of peace, stability and prosperity in an increasingly inter-connected region that they share with each other and with other partners," the ministry of external affairs said in a statement.
"They agreed that a free, open, prosperous and inclusive Indo-Pacific region serves the long-term interests of all countries in the region and of the world at large," it said. On Tuesday, Modi will attend the ASEAN-India and East Asia summits where he is likely to reassert India's push for crafting a global approach to deal with growing challenge of terrorism and radicalisation besides pitching for steps to boost regional trade.
Modi will hold bilateral meetings with Duterte on Monday. He also had a conversation with Li at the dinner.
"PM @narendramodi had a warm and cordial conversation with the Chinese Premier Li Keqiang at the Gala Dinner," MEA spokesperson Raveesh Kumar tweeted.
Ahmedabad: Rebuffing China's objection to her visit to Arunachal Pradesh, Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Saturday said the northeastern state is an Indian territory and the country is not concerned about someone else's opinion on it.
On Monday, China had objected to Sitharaman's first visit to the border state on Saturday and Sunday, saying her tour of the "disputed area" was not conducive to peace in the region.
India had rejected Beijing's objection and asserted that Arunachal Pradesh is an integral part of the country.
"What is the problem? There is no problem. It is our territory, we will go there," she said in a reply to a query on China's reaction on her visit to Arunachal Pradesh.
"We are not concerned with someone else's opinion on this," the minister, who is campaigning for the BJP in poll-bound Gujarat, said in a press conference in Ahmedabad.
Sitharaman had visited forward army posts in remote Anjaw district of the state bordering China to take stock of defence preparedness.
The minister had visited Nathu La area on the India-China border in Sikkim last month and greeted the People's Liberation Army soldiers across the border. Her "friendly gesture" had earned appreciation from the Chinese media.
Asked if giving shelter to Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama was the reason for strained relationship between India and China, she said it was not so.
"One issue can not make or break a relationship. There are many issues. Every issue has its own weight," she said.
The desire for identity and development is the focal point of todays politics, political discourse mobilisation. Whenever we talk about aspiration of identity, we emphasize the social and political identity. We are neither sensitive nor conscious about the role of religion in the construction of 'identity in any social group.
When political parties build their agenda on the identity of Dalits, tribals and marginalized groups, or make an attempt to understand it, they dont pay much attention to the religious feelings of these groups. While researching on Dalit and marginalized social groups, we have found that their 'desire of religious identity and respect is coherently interwoven in their desire for social respect. For them, the meaning of respect is equal participation in religious space as well.
This desire of religious space is not a new phenomenon, it has been there since the realisation of untouchability by the marginal groups. Their relationship with freedom from untouchability has been closely associated with the desire of food and water, and equality in Hinduism.
Maybe, that is why BR Ambedkar started movements like the Mahad Satyagraha and temple entry. Many contemporary social movements and Arya Samaj have also spoken for movements like temple entry. In the same sequence, the entry of some untouchable SC and Dalits in a temple of Uttarakhand under the leadership of Tarun Vijay was seen.
Mahatma Gandhi had realized this and tried to carve respect for untouchables and Dalits in Hinduism. Another effort was made by Arya Samaj, as it constructed a religious identity of Dalits, marginalised and provided respect by associating them with Vedic culture.
The Aadi Hindu movement of Swami Achhootanand around 1920 was also another important effort to provide religious identity to Dalits. We must understand that such groups need religious space along with their daily bread. They have an urge for a religious space where they may be equals and experience spiritual relief to confront conflicts, struggles of their everyday life.
They also want to experience a brotherhood based on such equality which they easily find in everyday life. The Dalits and the marginalised need a religious space where they can pray to their gods for relief and cry. How unfortunate that we haven't even given them the space to cry.
For Marx, religion is the opium of the masses, but he has also admitted that religion is the distressed cry of the depressed heart. If you ever visit the Ravidas fare in Varanasi, you will find many people in queues with their eyes full of tears throwing coins and gold at the idol of Ravidas. Even the Dalit groups who have gained economically independence desire a religious space and respect. You will find NRIs along with poor people eating together onion-chapati in Ravidas fare.
Kabir Panth, Ravidas Panth, Shivanarayan Panth have emerged as religious spaces where marginalised communities get space for plea of pain, desire for equality and social respect.
Understanding this desire of Dalits, political leaders like Kashi Ram and Mayawati have worked rigorously on the politics of paying respect to Saints and Gurus of Dalit groups and to mobilise, organise Dalits around them.
They constructed idols of saints like Kabir and Ravidas and developed their 'memorials. Maybe, this was not enough for the Dalit society they needed more space. They aspire for temples of gods and goddesses of Hinduism.
Those who are economically better, need the freedom to visit religious sites and celebrate religious festivals in public space. Many of them have reinvented Buddhism as their religious space. Not only that, rural Dalits have the aspiration of freedom to worship their ancestral god/goddess. Earlier, they tried to fulfil their desire by installing and worshipping small idols on the mud platform (chaura) below peepal trees. Now, they are asserting more by constructing small temples in their hamlets.
As Dalit marginalised groups in villages become economically independent, they need grand temples. Maybe, the aspiration is expressed through the desire for their own temple (mandir).
Jayapura, close to Varanasi, is the village that was adopted by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. In Jayapura, there is a separate hamlet of Musahar community named Atalnagar. On the entrance to this hamlet, close to a tree, a small temple has been constructed, in which, along with Shiva, the idol of Mother Shabari (goddess of Musahar Community) has been placed.
The Musahar community has thought about a Mother Shabari temple for quite some time but they neither had the economic capacity nor social strength to construct a temple. Today, they are a happy group, after the construction of the temple. They assert with pride that there is no other temple of Mata Shabari in the 50-kilometre radius.
Similarly, the snake charmers community aspires to construct a temple of "Peer Goga", who is considered the God of snakes. As in the previous case, they do not have the socio-economic strength to realize their wish. They would demand it during the next elections.
There are many Dalit communities in Uttar Pradesh who have their own gods/ goddess. The construction of temples or religious sites attributed to them, not only instil a feeling of self-respect in them but also a pride of having their own religious space, where they can pray in their own way among their own people.
The Dusadh in Bihar are an important Dalit community. One will find temples of various gods and goddesses close to their settlements along with temples of Chuharmal, Sahle and Goreya Dev. I am not trying to say that there should be separate temples of gods of every Dalit community. I am trying to make a point that like other social groups, Dalit and marginalised have the aspiration of their own religious space and it is increasing in recent times. They need religious equality and temples to share their pain and misery. They also need the freedom to worship whichever god or goddess they want, within the fold of Hinduism.
Some need the temple of their ancestral god. Some are aspiring for different religious identities. Few want to live like Buddhists, while others want their identity as Ravidasi, Kabirpanthi and Shivanarayani.
Community gods are important signatures of their identities. For them, the "religious space" along with daily bread and livelihood is the essential for respectable life and identity, now we will have to understand that.
- As told to Eram Agha
(Badri Narayan is a Social Scientist at GB Pant Social Science Institute in Allahabad. Views are personal.)
Aligarh: The wife of an Aligarh Muslim University professor has alleged that her husband pronounced triple-talaq to her on WhatsApp, months after the Supreme court of India struck down the practice calling it unconstitutional un-Islamic.
"He divorced me via WhatsApp, text, and verbally, too," the woman said, adding that he had threatened her with talaq throughout their married life, "despite staying with me and having kids".
The wife said that the professor had hired a girl for a job, and his department filed a complaint against him with the V-C. "They said he had an illicit relationship with her and I have nothing to do with that complaint," she said, "I approached the AMU V-C, but no one came to help me."
The woman has also threatened to end her life in front of the Vice-Chancellor's office if justice was not served to her. The husband, in his defence, said that his wife had concealed several facts from him before getting married. He alleged that she was harassing him.
The photographs that have surfaced after the "pronouncement of triple talaq" show the woman urging Prime Minister Narendra Modi to help her.
Drinking kills. Those ads along the road are right. Cirrhosis. Heart attacks. Kidney failure. Stupidity. What was the last thing I said? Yes, stupidity. There are men, famous for many reasons, who despite being drunkards, did not give in to cirrhosis or heart failures, those natural modes of dying from alcohol.
Instead, the poor fellows mixed alcohol with a generous quantity of stupidity and woke up at the other side of life the following day. Completely dead.
All of you have heard of Alexander the Great. But how many of you know what killed him? A few people say typhoid. A few others vote for yellow fever (AIDS became fashionable only later). Some others believe poisoning.
There are many stories doing the rounds about the mysterious death of the great conqueror at the prime age of 33. Sorry sir, but one man cannot die many deaths, unless he is that Shakespearean coward (Cowards die many a death)
I pick what is yummy for a drink columnist. One historical account tells us that Alexander, despite all his shrewdness, entered into a drinking contest with his rival. The first round went like soft pineapple juice to our hero. He downed 12 pints of alcohol. And smiled at his opponent. But pretty soon his smile vanished. He saw his rival upped the ante by downing one more.
Alexander geared himself up for the ultimate challenge and ordered the next batch of 12 pints to beat his rival. He drank as he had to live up to that sobriquet or whatever it was the Great. At the end, he might have lost the match, but didnt despair a bit seeing the joy of his opponent. He simply died on his rival.
Alexander was nothing before Attila the Hun, that scourge of god and fierce leader of millions of barbarians who pillaged country after country in the 5th Century BC.
He met his worst foe on his wedding night.
After a drinking bout related to his wedding, he stumbled out of his tent in pitch darkness to take a leak. While peeing, he tripped, fell over and broke his nose (Dont imagine. Only his nose). Too drunk to check his bleeding face, he got back to his bed and passed out. He was too dead to wake up in the morning. The man who shed the blood of millions, died suffocating on his own blood.
Some cynics downplay this last heroic act of the warrior by spreading the canard that, Attila had an injury in his oesophagus and died of it. But the drink writer throws his weight behind the first historic version. Death by alcohol.
If it was Attilas decision to take a leak that undid him, it was a resolution not to pee that killed Tycho Braho, a 16th century Danish astronomer, whose pioneering work led to Newtons discovery of gravity.
Statutory warning: Muscles will involuntarily tighten far below your bellybutton, when you read this account.
Well, Tycho Braho was attending a feast where wine was flowing freely. He drank copiously and listened to the bubbly banter around him. Then his face grew grim. He felt the first waves of pressure building up in his bladder.
But, those days, it was considered a breach of etiquette to leave a hosts table to go for a pee. One had to control ones urge. Tycho the astronomer, threw his eyes skyward in silent prayer, crossed his legs to dam(n) it and continued drinking, suffering with a plastered smile, all the bores yapping around him. He hid his pain behind the long floating moustache, now drooped down, reflecting his flagging spirits.
Sadly, Tychos bladder didnt share his sense of decorum. It burst finally, as one historical account tells us. The poor man died a very painful death, after 11 days. FIR. Death by alcohol. To be exact, death by unnecessarily holding on to all that beer sloshing inside a fragile, small, intestine.
Many believe it was after this incident, pee-breaks were introduced in drinking sessions around the world. I think it is time for one.
(Manu Remakant is a freelance writer who also runs a video blog - A Cup of Kavitha - introducing world poetry to Malayalees. Views expressed here are personal)
New Delhi: A Mewar royal on Saturday penned a letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Minister of Information and Broadcasting Smriti Irani and censor board chairperson Prasoon Joshi, among others, urging them to withhold the certification and release of the controversial film Padmavati.
Maharajkumar Vishvaraj Singh, son of Mahendra Singh Mewar - the 76th Maharana of the Mewar dynasty and a former Lok Sabha member - on behalf of his parents and sister Baijiraj Trivikrama Kumari Jamwal, has written the letter, a copy of which is with IANS.
"You are requested not to certify or permit the release of the film in its present form," Singh has urged, listing out seven reasons to justify his request.
"Allowing commercial interests to override the sanctity of national pride and heritage would be a failure on the part of the government and will not behoove well for times to come," he added.
Filmmaker Sanjay Leela Bhansali has maintained that his movie is a tribute to the valor of Rajput queen Rani Padmavati.
However, Singh said that reports have indicated that Padmavati is based on "Padmawat" - a "poetic imagery" by Sufi poet Malik Muhammad Jayasi - which, according to him, is not regarded as "historically accurate".
He pointed out that the makers of the movie have not clarified about "any well established and accepted historical source" relied upon for this movie.
On the argument that one cannot judge a film until it has been seen, Singh said: "The song Ghoomar and publicity material that has released establishes gross inaccuracies that transgress the limits of dramatic license. If the film professes to be history and its maker goes on record to claim that he has kept in mind cultural sensitivities, it is an artistic and historic fraud to portray an incorrectly attired courtesan-like painted doll in the song as the very 'queen' the film purports to pay obeisance to."
Singh complained that since the "film is about my family and a chapter in the history of Mewar", the filmmakers neither approached the family to verify the facts nor sought permission to use the family's name.
While he is concerned how the film portrays the period of warfare, Singh also wants the makers to clarify the movie's genre to avoid giving the present and future generations a "colored view of history".
Lastly, Singh said, "it is the responsibility of the government to safeguard the history of our country and the dignity of its citizens".
The letter has also been addressed to Minister for Human Resource Development Prakash Javadekar, Rajasthan Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje, and the Collectors and Superintendents of Police of Udaipur, Chittorgarh, Rajsamand, Banswara and Dungarpur.
Padmavati is slated to release on December 1, and the makers are awaiting a censor screening and subsequent clearance.
In an exlusive interview to CNN-News18's Rupashree Nanda, CPI(M) General Secretay Sitaram Yechury lamented that the Gujarat model is being being implemented throughout the country. Yechury said, in northern Kerala, where there is a sizeable Muslim population, the BJP and the RSS are resorting to violence in order to weaken the Left so that they can achieve their objectives. They want to be a threat everywhere through their use of politics of violence and terror, said Yechury. Here is the complete interview.
Q: Sir, you have emerged as one of the strongest critics of PM Modi when it comes to demonetisation. Do you feel this has an echo amongst the people?
Sitaram Yechury: I think so. Definitely this has an echo and we can see that resonating among the people. All that demonetisation has achieved for the bulk of the Indian people is greater misery. I mean, you have huge losses, as a result, you have a virtual elimination of what was called the informal sector of our economy, which contributes more than half to our GDP and nearly 80% of your non-agricultural employment. With that being shattered, lives of crores of people have been completely crippled. So the effect of demonetisation, finally, has been that more money has come back. That is my estimate, because if you add the money that is yet to come back from countries like Nepal, Bhutan, Dubai, Singapore, then it'll be more than what was actually demonetised. So what does this mean? This means that the black money has been legalised as white and has come into the banking system. Mr Raghuram Rajan says that the banks are now paying an additional interest of Rs 20,000 crore annually because this money has now come into the banking system. You've legitimised the black money and you have actually legitimised even counterfeit currency. I mean that is the meaning of all the extra money coming back.
Q: Why is it not reflecting politically on the BJP's fortune? How is it that Mr Modi still remains very popular?
Sitaram Yechury: No. The point here is that peoples' discontent is being channelised into communal polarisation, and if you look at the election results post demonetisation by then the effect of demonetisation had not been felt so much by the time the UP elections took place. But in UP elections also it was very, very rabid communal polarisation that took place. It was a very scientific caste-based social engineering that was done targeting specific groups and that is the reason why they have won, not because people are happy with demonetisation. Not at all.
Q: When you look at PM Modi how would you rank him on his performance, even though he has a couple of more years to go, amongst all the prime ministers that India has seen so far?
Sitaram Yechury: In my political experience from the time I came into politics, from Indira Gandhi as a prime minister till today, I've seen various prime ministers. But what I can say today is that I have never seen such an assault on the entire secular democratic foundations of our constitution. We've seen Indira Gandhi's Emergency, I've been victim of that. But the assault that we are seeing now is a multi-dimensional thing: on parliamentary institutions on educational institutions on the rabid communal polarisations, interference in the institutions of our democracy. You see the RBI, you see the other institutions like the cultural bodies. This sort of an all-round attack has not been seen earlier.
Q: How would you rank him as a Prime Minister?
Sitaram Yechury: Well, isn't it obvious? If this is the sort of an attack I would say that today in order to safeguard the fundamental constitutional values of a secular democratic republic, it is important to see that this sort of a government and these sort of policies cannot continue.
Q: What is your strategy for 2019? You have given a call for all non-BJP leaders to unite and take on the BJP and the Prime Minister, but what is your strategy? Look at Nitish Kumar. Then you have Mamata Banerjee. How do you even say that anybody looking at this would have confidence?
Sitaram Yechury: What 2019 requires is alternative policies and that is why, in Hindi you say, Desh ko neta nahi niti chahiye (country doesn't need a politician but policies). Now alternative policies and, such policies we believe exist, and there is no shortage of funds in India for an alternative economic policy direction rather than this neo-liberal economic reforms. And therefore on the basis of such policies we'll try to mobilise all other left and democratic forces. That would be our strategy. My call to the non-BJP chief ministers was essentially on the attacks that we are seeing on Centre-State relations today. Now with the GST, the manner in which it is being implemented, the states' financial authority is completely eliminated. They have to come to the Centre with a begging bowl in case a national disaster strikes. So, in this situation we said all the non-BJP chief ministers should come together. But politically for 2019 it all depends on the alternative policy... policy alternative.
Q: Is this invitation also for Bengal CM Mamata Banerjee?
Sitaram Yechury: Well, Mamata Banerjee... today the Trinamool Congress government is acting as the B team of the BJP. The reason is that there is a competitive communalism on communal polarisation that is taking place in the state which, I think, is disastrous. Not only for Bengal but for India. Remember, I know people forget, but when India became independent, 15th of August 1947, Mahatma Gandhi was on an indefinite hunger strike in Calcutta to stop the communal mayhem that was taking place during the time of partition. Noakhali communal riots- one of the worst to have ever happened in our History. Bengal has that history. We have been able to subdue that and create an atmosphere where communal harmony during the Left government rule. Now, that is entirely breaking up. With this competitive communalism - which will squeeze out space for any democratic movement, not only Left, so in this situation it is very dangerous to have that sort of a competitive communalism continue in Bengal. So, given that, I don't think it's possible to have anything to do with the TMC. Unless it stops this sort of politics. Stop the politics of violence and terror that continues in Bengal.
Q: What are your own plans of reviving Left in West Bengal? You allied with the congress party you suffered terribly. Cadres are demoralised?
Sitaram Yechury: That is not true... just now we had a huge padyatra in Bengal... starting from many corners and converging in Calcutta. The point is that will they be allowed to vote? That is where the crucial thing comes. If you are measuring anything in terms of electoral results, then what is crucial is will there be a free and fair poll.
Q: Do you think that the Left is suffering in West Bengal because there are no free and fair polls, as you have termed it?
Sitaram Yechury: Yes. Electorally, I would say.
Q: Would it not be an exaggeration?
Sitaram Yechury: Even the Election Commission is on record saying that their remit is to a certain limit... along the polling booth or they can only ask the forces to take some action in the areas. Now, if terror is instilled in the villagers themselves, preventing people from coming out of the village to the polling booth, nobody can do anything. That is what we are fighting. We lost 176 of our comrades during these fights so it's not an exaggeration. Definitely, the Left has weakened in Bengal, there is no doubt about it. We have introspected... we have understood from the mistakes we have done and we have corrected them.
Q: Politically, what was your biggest mistake?
Sitaram Yechury: Politically, the mistake was in the manner of industrialisation that was envisaged.
Q: The Vishakhapatnam party congress that elected you as a general secretary has called for equidistance from the BJP and the Congress. What has changed to force a rethink within the CPM now?
Sitaram Yechury: First of all, at Vishakhapatnam Congress, we identified the BJP as our main enemy, but in order to fight that main enemy we said we shall have no electoral understanding or an alliance with the Congress; probably, because the Congress is the progenitor of all these economic policies. And because of the Congress' misrule the BJP gained. Apart from the BJP's communal polarisation etc... so given that fact we say that without any electoral understanding or alliance with the congress this is what we decided. Now the fact that BJP is our main enemy continues and now in these three years of experience this is becoming even more starker. So, therefore, our next party congress will be in Hyderabad, in April, next year. They will take stock of the situation and see how to proceed forward.
Q: But what is the reason you went ahead with the congress in West Bengal?
Sitaram Yechury: West Bengal at that point in time as I told you it's a very extraordinary situation. And the situation was to fight the terror. That was unleashed and which continues even today in many parts. The victims of the terror were both Congress and the Left and many places... initially it happened in many places and we were not in a position to field a candidate because of this terror and, therefore, we had said that we will contest only certain amount of seats. And for the rest of the seats, we will support a candidate who will defeat TMC and the BJP. That's how it began, but as the campaign from below started... it turned out be virtually, sort of a joint campaign in many parts, many constituencies. That was not the idea. That is why central committee criticised West Bengal, saying that they went beyond the brief. The process of how to correct has been initiated.
Q: You have a kabhi haan Kabhi na relationship with the Congress. Now looking at 2019 what will be your relationship with the Congress.
Sitaram Yechury: Again, as I said the whole strategy will depend on the set of alternative policies. That depends on which party agrees and which doesn't.
Q: So you're open to coming together?
Sitaram Yechury: No. I mean, it's not a question of open, it's not merely electoral.
Q: Jairam Ramesh has said that Congress is facing an existential crisis. That it has to renew, reinvent itself in order to even survive. Do you think that is more true of the Left also? And if the Congress party is in such a bad shape, why is the left even keen to appear to be even willing to talk to the Congress?
Sitaram Yechury: No, we never said that. We are fighting the Congress tooth and nail in Kerala. We'll be fighting them tooth and nail in Tripura. So wherever we are they are there. The fight is with the Congress because they are the main opponents. So, there is no question of keeping any doors open with them. The question right now is on issues concerning the people. Suppose in a situation of communal riots, all the forces who are opposed to it and want peace restored, we'll go with all of them.
Q: Does the Left also perceive that it has a need to reinvent itself?
Sitaram Yechury: Well, Left is always a dynamic process. It has to be. Because the essence of Marxism - the ideology we believe in is a concrete analysis of concrete condition. As conditions keep changing our analysis has to change. Otherwise, I personally think that if it doesn't change, then you are not a Marxist. So as a Marxist party we continuously have to update our analysis in accordance with the conditions. So we are in the process of a constant reinvention.
Q: The Left party, specially your party, is perceived to be extremely rigid and a more recent example of that was how it denied you an opportunity in the Rajya Sabha. So are you disappointed that the party did not send you to the Rajya Sabha?
Sitaram Yechury: No.
Q: Don't you think it was another demonstration of its rigidity? Not unhappy at all?
Sitaram Yechury: No. I am not at all unhappy. In fact, as early as April, I had said that I will not be contesting again. That's because we have a norm in the party that does not allow more than two terms. In addition to that my getting re-elected would mean obviously it would have only been possible with the support of the Congress party. And that is an election to the Rajya Sabha and that would mean an electoral understanding. That was something that was ruled out. And lastly, as a general secretary, I am preparing for the party Congress.
Q: You dont have any regrets?
Sitaram Yechury: None at all!
Q: You are happy that your party didnt elect you?
Sitaram Yechury: I was initially very unhappy when they sent me there. Only when Somnath Chatterjee became the speaker then the Politburo thought that you required a voice in the Parliament. So, therefore, I was asked to go. It all happened very suddenly, I was completely unprepared for it when I entered and completely prepared when I left.
Q: Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi is all set to take over as president of the Congress party. How would you see that, how would you rate his skills vis-a-vis current Congress president Sonia Gandhi?
Sitaram Yechury: These are all internal matters of the Congress. So, that is their decision - whatever they decide. I mean there is a lot of speculation in the media. But when that'll happen it will be the Congress party's decision. But, I think Mrs Gandhi, Sonia Gandhi, played a very crucial role in the formation of the UPA and in the entire effort to get rid of the NDA government of Mr Vajpayee which was then necessary for the country. So she has played that role and she continues to be the glue, both, in keeping the party together, and also many secular allies together. So she played her role. We are very very critical of the policies that they followed when they were in government and we think those were anti-people and they were wrong. If the new president of the congress party comes in, all that we can do is wish him all the success, our good wishes are with them.
Q: In your experience, do you think he can play the role his mother has played? Do you think he has demonstrated those skills: the aptitude, the energy, the tenacity that has been demonstrated by his mother?
Sitaram Yechury: Well, he has been showing that around the campaigns - I mean, his recent campaign in Gujarat, he showed that he is capable of both the (tenacity) as well as getting well with the people at the grassroots and things like that. So I mean, just remember, anybody entering into a position of responsibility for the first time naturally cannot be compared to somebody who is leaving that position after a long time. That would be unfair, not only in this case, but in any other case.
Q: Is he a natural politician or a reluctant politician: Mr Rahul Gandhi?
Sitaram Yechury: Well, I think all of them begin reluctantly, but then with the responsibility they grow up.
Q: So you think he is not a natural politician?
Sitaram Yechury: Well, I won't say unnatural politician, thats not the case... but I will say that his commitment will only be demonstrated when he is in a position of responsibility.
Q: Coming back to Kerala, there's a lot of political violence in Kerala. Your party and the BJP have accused each other of the killings. What do you think is the solution there?
Sitaram Yechury: First of all, accusations apart, allegations apart, there are facts. These are facts for the last forty years or so. In northern Kerala, where there is a sizeable Muslim population, the BJP, the RSS have been viewing it as a fertile ground for them to grow. Now, that has not been happening because of the strong Left presence. So they have been resorting to violence in order to weaken the Left so that they can achieve their objective. These sort of violent periods have been going on periodically. But, this time the round of violence that started began on the day of the assembly election results, when the BJP hurled the bombs killing our comrades and these attacks continue. It's literally the chor calling the kotwal (thief calling out the police). But the solution - you asked for the solution. Earlier also what was the solution? The solution is for a political settlement, you'll have to have discussions between both the warring parties. We have invited them at the level of the state government and the chief minister, at the level of the party and the general secretary but nothing is emerging out of that. We are prepared for talks. We asked them to come for talks, we want to put an end to this violence. Even though Mr Amit Shah was there the violence continued.
Q: BJP and RSS have also lost their men. It's on both sides.
Sitaram Yechury: No it's not... I mean we lost more that is also a fact. But it's not a good sign at all. We don't want this violence. But then somebody has to respond to stop it.
Q: Your statement that 'we are capable of giving a fitting reply' almost seems like an eye for an eye answer, so is that a responsible answer?
Sitaram Yechury: Otherwise what do I say? Kill more of my comrades? If you're at the receiving end how do you protect your own people?
Q: But killing is not protection.
Sitaram Yechury: That is why I say... once the spree of violence begins please understand it's a natural thing... I mean there are two soldiers on a battle field. If one is killed by the enemy's bullet the other one is not, you can't speak rationally to him at that time. His reaction would be the most violent one.
Q: Do you perceive BJP to be a threat in Kerela?
Sitaram Yechury: Well, they want to be a threat everywhere through their use of politics of violence and terror or, they have a variety a combination effect- either through threats and intimidation or straight forward bribery or through the creation of violence of this sort. What the BJP has mastered in these three years is to form governments even after losing elections. Misusing the CBI. Not a single corruption case where the BJP is involved is being investigated. With every other opposition leader you'll find something being done. Now what is all this? There is no legitimate political discussion.
Q: Sir, you used the term post truth to describe or understand Mr Modi's hold over the masses. What is your response to that?
Sitaram Yechury: Post truth is to portray as truth. The leader and his exhortations are completely unrelated with the actual ground realities. We have to bring the ground realities back to the centrestage of political discourse. And that is what we are trying to do through these people's movements.
Q: Discontent is there. I had gone to Nagpur in Maharashtra there was discontent about demonetisation, but they (BJP) won the local elections.
Opposition is not being seen as an alternative.
Sitaram Yechury: Precisely, because of the post truth we are talking about what we discussed earlier of diverting that discontent into communal polarisation or caste based social engineering. For example, these three days when you had nearly a lakh of working class people protesting every day in front of the parliament, tell me where was it shown?
Q: Parliament sessions being curtailed or deferred or delayed perhaps due to Gujarat elections. How do you see that?
Sitaram Yechury: Very, very, very anti-democratic. I think the Gujarat model is being implemented now in India. In Gujarat, in the calendar year, if you look at it - I don't think the assembly sits for more than a month. We as a party have been spearheading the move asking or a constitutional amendment saying that the India parliament must meet at least 100 days in one calendar year. The record has been dismal, and has been declining rapidly since this government came. A curtailed parliament (session) is a very very dangerous move. That's why initially I had said this is all round attack on the constitutional order. This curtailing of the winter session is only for the sake of your Gujarat elections. And you didn't want any debate on the series of corruption charges their own leaders are facing amid the economic mess that has happened because of demonetisation and GST. In order to stop these debates coming on to the national discourse, people' discourse, you stopped the Parliament. Most anti-democratic completely condemnable.
Q: Sir, Thank you so much for joining us.
Sitaram Yechury: Thank you so much.
Ahmedabad: Congress Vice-President Rahul Gandhi on Sunday once again attacked the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party, challenging it to abolish the Goods and Services Tax (GST) on essential commodities, bring petrol, diesel, LPG under the GST, and cap the upper limit of the 'One Nation One Tax' at 18%.
Rahul's remarks assume political significance as Gujarat goes to polls in an atmosphere of widespread angst among manufacturers, traders and consumers over both - the rates of GST and its implementation.
The Gandhi scion, who is in Gujarat for the last leg of his Navsarjan Gujarat Yatra, called the GST council's decision to slash GST from 28% to 18% on 178 items "a victory of the people's voice".
Rahul has continuously taken on the Central government over its demonetisation drive and the implementation of GST. He said that the government should listen to people's voice and stop giving excuses.
At Palanpur, Rahul Gandhi attacked Prime Minister Narendra Modi over demonetisation, saying, "Notebandi helped every thief in the country convert his black money into white. Still, Modiji is not willing to accept that it was a mistake."
Meanwhile, continuing his strategy of meeting people one-to-one, Rahul Gandhi met and talked to children and gave them chocolates, spoke to people from denotified tribes of North Gujarat, had an interaction with Congress Social Media volunteers and got off the bus several times to shake hands with enthusiastic youth along the route.
While most top BJP leaders state that Rahul Gandhi is not a serious political contender as far as campaigning for the Gujarat elections is concerned, the fact that they are responding to each of his charges is perhaps an indication of his impact on the ground.
Surat: With the assembly elections in Himachal Pradesh now concluded, Amit Shah has turned his undivided gaze to Gujarat. The BJP president is increasingly spending more time on his home turf but according to party sources, the micro-level strategy has already been mapped out. Shah's trump card, a Gujarat BJP leader, said it was to appoint BJP supporters across the state as the local "page pramukh". This is the strategists way to ensure last-mile campaigning, the source said.
"Around six months ago, Shah held a meeting with several key functionaries and announced that the party was creating a new post of 'page pramukh' for the Gujarat elections. We were all confused because we had never heard that term before but he went on to explain," a BJP source said.
"You see, every constituency has several booths and every polling booth has its voter list. These voter lists run into several pages and each page has the names of 20-30 voters. The idea is to take one person from every page and appoint them as the BJP's page pramukh."
The responsibility of the page pramukh, another BJP leader said, was to ensure that he or she was in touch with every single voter on their page and spread the party's message ahead of the polls. "On polling day, the page pramukh will make sure that the people listed on his or her page don't have any problem in getting to the polling booth. It is a mammoth task and won't be easy to manage, but it's a masterstroke if we can pull it off."
This, the source added, will follow a pyramidal structure. Gujarat will have over 45,000 polling booths set up in its 182 Vidhan Sabha constituencies. BJP has also set up 'Shakti Kendras', each of which will have the responsibility to look after the area under 5-6 polling booths. Each constituency area has around 50 polling booths. The page pramukh will be answerable to the booth in charge, who in turn will be answerable to their respective Shakti Kendras. The Shakti Kendra will be accountable to the local MLA or Vidhan Sabha in charge, who, in turn, will report to BJP's state leadership.
While it is not clear how many people BJP has actually enlisted as 'page pramukh', party leaders say that both macro and micro-campaigns are important to win elections. "This is in line with the way Amitbhai has been running the party. He likes to delegate work at all levels and it has proven to be effective," a leader said.
Meanwhile, the party has also planned a massive carpet bombing campaign with rallies addressed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, BJP President Amit Shah, a host of Union Minister and Chief Ministers of BJP-ruled states. The party's initial focus will be on the 89 seats that will go to polls in the first phase on December 9.
New Delhi: BJP president Amit Shah lashed out at Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan after an RSS worker was hacked to death in the temple town of Guruvayur on Sunday, and asked what his government was doing to "curb criminal elements" in the ranks of his CPI(M).
Twenty-three-year-old Anandan was attacked with swords and knives in broad daylight allegedly by CPI(M) workers at Nenmeni in Guruvayur on Sunday afternoon when he was riding a motorcycle. Anandan died soon after.
"The continuous violence by CPM workers & the protection to such political killings is now before the nation. CM Pinarayi must explain what his govt is doing to curb criminal elements in his rank(sic)," Shah tweeted.
Anandan, hailing from Brahmakulam, was an accused in a case relating to the murder of a CPI(M) worker in 2013.
The BJP has alleged that as many as 120 of its workers, 84 in Kannur alone, have been killed in Kerala since 2001. It has claimed that 14 of these killings have taken place since Pinarayi Vijayan took over the reins of the government last year.
Shah undertook a 15-day 'Jan Raksha Yatra' in Kerala last month to target the state's CPI(M) government over a "killing spree" against BJP and RSS workers.
Guruvayur: A Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh worker was hacked to death allegedly by CPI (M) workers on Sunday afternoon in Kerala's Thrissur district, police said. Twenty-three-year-old Anand was attacked by CPI (M) workers when he was riding a motorcycle.
Police said that Anand was immediately rushed to the hospital, but he couldn't survive. The victim was an accused in a case relating to the murder of a CPI (M) worker, killed in 2013.
CPI (M) General Secretary Sitaram Yechury told CNN-News18 that RSS and BJP's desperateness to spread influence in Kerala had led to political killings. Yechury alleged that the political killings, this time, began on the day of assembly election results when "BJP workers hurled bombs at our comrades", and the attacks have continued since then.
BJP has alleged that as many as 120 BJP workers, 84 in Kannur alone, have been killed in Kerala since 2001. It has claimed that 14 of these killings have taken place since Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan took over the reins of the government last year.
The CPI(M) has, in turn, accused BJP and RSS of resorting to violence and denied the involvement of its government and leadership in political killings.
(With PTI inputs)
Dubai: Bahraini Shia opposition leader Sheikh Ali Salman will face trial later this month for "spying" for Qatar, the state prosecution said on Sunday.
Salman will be tried alongside two of his colleagues, Hassan Sultan and Ali Mehdi, from November 27 after they were charged earlier this month of espionage.
"The prosecution has referred the case in which Ali Salman, Hassan Sultan and Ali Mahdi are accused of spying for the state of Qatar to the High Criminal Court," the state prosecution said in a tweet.
Salman has been behind bars since 2014 serving a nine-year sentence for allegedly inciting hatred.
On November 1 the state prosecution charged him with "spying on behalf of a foreign country ... with the aim of carrying out subversive acts against Bahrain and harming its national interests".
Salman was also charged with "revealing defence secrets to a foreign country and disseminating information that would harm Bahrain's status and reputation".
The investigation into purported links between Salman and Qatar was first launched in August, after a quartet of Arab countries -- Bahrain included -- accused their gas-rich neighbour of supporting terrorism and close relations with Shiite Iran.
State-run Bahrain Television aired a report which claimed that neighbouring Qatar was behind anti-government protests that have shaken the tiny kingdom for the past six years.
It alleged that Qatar's former premier Sheikh Hamad bin Jassem Al-Thani contacted Salman -- then head of Bahrain's largest opposition group, Al-Wefaq -- in 2011 and asked him to urge protesters to flood the streets and ramp up pressure on the state.
Al-Wefaq was the largest group in parliament before its lawmakers resigned en masse in protest at the crushing of Arab Spring-inspired demonstrations in 2011 calling for an elected government.
The Shia Muslim movement has called for Bahrain to become a constitutional monarchy.
The Shia majority in Bahrain, which has been ruled by the Al-Khalifa dynasty for more than two centuries, has long complained of marginalisation and the country has been rocked by sporadic unrest since 2011.
The start of the trial comes amid rising regional tension between Sunni-ruled Saudi Arabia, a close ally of Bahrain, and rival Shiite powerhouse Iran.
Bahrain on Saturday accused Iran of being behind a pipeline fire that temporarily halted oil supplies from Saudi Arabia.
A spokesman for the Iranian foreign ministry on Sunday rejected the accusations.
Manila: Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau hopped from one table to the next, chatted with people and posed for selfies on Sunday at a fastfood chain store in Manila, charming residents of the Philippines capital for the second time in two years.
Trudeau, in Manila for a summit of regional leaders, dropped in at an outlet of fastfood giant Jollibee Foods Corp after a visit to a nearby women's clinic that advocates family planning, a touchy subject in the Catholic-majority Philippines.
He greeted nearly everyone in the store, shaking hands and exchanging hugs with fans after ordering fried chicken and a strawberry float.
"Can I get it to go? I'll eat it in the car," Trudeau said, before going behind the counter for a photograph with Jollibee staff.
Earlier, when he landed at Clark airport, a smiling Trudeau waded into a crowd of children gathered to greet dignitaries arriving for the summit, exchanging high fives and waving to others.
During his last visit to Manila, Trudeau won a Twitter poll with the hashtag #APEChottie that asked people to vote for the most attractive leader at the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in 2015.
"He's so handsome! And he's very nice," said 29-year-old Rina Aparicio, among the customers at the fastfood outlet. "I asked for a selfie and he said yes right away."
Outside the store, hundreds of people screamed and shouted as Trudeau got into his car, waving what appeared to be hastily written placards saying "Welcome to the Philippines!"
Trudeau visited the first Jollibee store in Winnipeg, Canada in January, a country with hundreds of thousands of Filipino immigrants.
Jollibee, a $5 billion company that has been dubbed the McDonald's of the Philippines, is looking to go global with primary targets including China and the United States.
The company, which also serves burgers and sweet spaghetti, is opening another outlet in Winnipeg this month and plans are to increase that to 30 in five to 10 years, said Jose Minana, a Jollibee executive.
Minana said the company did not seek out Trudeau for the visit, and said it was requested by Canadian officials.
"We're very humbled by him taking time from his obviously busy schedule to give us a slice of his time," said Minana.
"I'd like to also think that he enjoys the food."
Beirut: From the moment Saad al-Hariri's plane touched down in Saudi Arabia on Friday November 3, he was in for a surprise.
There was no line-up of Saudi princes or ministry officials, as would typically greet a prime minister on an official visit to King Salman, senior sources close to Hariri and top Lebanese political and security officials said. His phone was confiscated, and the next day he was forced to resign as prime minister in a statement broadcast by a Saudi-owned TV channel.
The move thrust Lebanon back to the forefront of a struggle that is reshaping the Middle East, between the conservative Sunni monarchy of Saudi Arabia and Shi'ite revolutionary Iran.
Their rivalry has fuelled conflicts in Iraq, Syria and Yemen, where they back opposing sides, and now risks destabilising Lebanon, where Saudi has long tried to weaken the Iran-backed Hezbollah group, Lebanon's main political power and part of the ruling coalition.
Sources close to Hariri say Saudi Arabia has concluded that the prime minister - a long-time Saudi ally and son of late prime minister Rafik al-Hariri, who was assassinated in 2005 - had to go because he was unwilling to confront Hezbollah.
Multiple Lebanese sources say Riyadh hopes to replace Saad Hariri with his older brother Bahaa as Lebanon's top Sunni politician. Bahaa is believed to be in Saudi Arabia and members of the Hariri family have been asked to travel there to pledge allegiance to him, but have refused, the sources say.
"When Hariri's plane landed in Riyadh, he got the message immediately that something was wrong," a Hariri source told Reuters. "There was no one was waiting for him."
Saudi Arabia has dismissed suggestions it forced Hariri to resign and says he is a free man. Saudi officials could not immediately be reached for comment on the circumstances of his arrival, whether his phone had been taken, or whether the Kingdom was planning to replace him with his brother.
Hariri has given no public remarks since he resigned and no indication of when he might return to Lebanon.
'NO RESPECT'
Hariri was summoned to the Kingdom to meet Saudi King Salman in a phone call on Thursday night, November 2.
Before departing, he told his officials they would resume their discussions on Monday. He told his media team he would see them at the weekend in the Red Sea resort of Sharm al-Sheikh, where he was due to meet Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi on the sidelines of the World Youth Forum.
Hariri went to his Riyadh home. His family made their fortune in Saudi Arabia and have long had properties there. The source close to Hariri said the Lebanese leader received a call from a Saudi protocol official on Saturday morning, who asked him to attend a meeting with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
He waited for about four hours before being presented with his resignation speech to read on television, the source said.
"From the moment he arrived they (Saudis) showed no respect for the man," another senior Lebanese political source said.
Hariri frequently visits Saudi Arabia. On a trip a few days earlier, Prince Mohammed bin Salman had arranged for him to see senior intelligence officials and Gulf Affairs Minister Thamer al-Sabhan, the Saudi point man on Lebanon.
Hariri came back from that trip to Beirut "pleased and relaxed", sources in his entourage said. He posted a selfie with Sabhan, both of them smiling. He told aides he had heard "encouraging statements" from the crown prince, including a promise to revive a Saudi aid package for the Lebanese army.
The Hariri sources say Hariri believed he had convinced Saudi officials of the need to maintain an entente with Hezbollah for the sake of Lebanon's stability.
Hezbollah has a heavily armed fighting force, in addition to seats in parliament and government. Saudi-backed efforts to weaken the group in Lebanon a decade ago led to Sunni-Shi'ite clashes and a Hezbollah takeover of Beirut.
"What happened in those meetings, I believe, is that (Hariri) revealed his position on how to deal with Hezbollah in Lebanon: that confrontation would destabilize the country. I think they didn't like what they heard," said one of the sources, who was briefed on the meetings.
The source said Hariri told Sabhan not to "hold us responsible for something that is beyond my control or that of Lebanon." But Hariri underestimated the Saudi position on Hezbollah, the source said.
"For the Saudis it is an existential battle. It's black and white. We in Lebanon are used to grey," the source said.
Sabhan could not immediately be reached for comment.
RESIGNATION
Hariris resignation speech shocked his team.
Lebanese President Michel Aoun, a Hezbollah ally, told ambassadors to Lebanon that Saudi Arabia had kidnapped Hariri, a senior Lebanese official said. On Friday, France said it wanted Hariri to have "all his freedom of movement".
In his speech, Hariri said he feared assassination and accused Iran and Hezbollah of sowing strife in the region. He said the Arab world would "cut off the hands that wickedly extend to it," language which one source close to him said was not typical of the Lebanese leader.
Hariri's resignation came as more than 200 people, including 11 Saudi princes, current and former ministers and tycoons, were arrested in an anti-corruption purge in Saudi Arabia.
Initially there was speculation Hariri was a target of that campaign because of his family's business interests. But sources close to the Lebanese leader said his forced resignation was motivated by Saudi efforts to counter Iran.
Hariri was taken to meet the Saudi king after his resignation. Footage was aired on Saudi TV. He was then flown to Abu Dhabi to meet Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed, the Saudi crown prince's main regional ally. He returned to Riyadh and has since received Western ambassadors.
Sources close to Hariri said the Saudis, while keeping Hariri under house arrest, were trying to orchestrate a change of leadership in Hariri's Future Movement by installing his elder brother Bahaa, who was overlooked for the top job when their father was killed. The two have been at odds for years.
In a statement, the Future Movement said it stood fully behind Hariri as its leader. Hariri aide and Interior Minister Nohad Machnouk dismissed the idea Bahaa was being positioned to replace his brother:
"We are not herds of sheep or a plot of land whose ownership can be moved from one person to another. In Lebanon things happen though elections not pledges of allegiances."
Family members, aides and politicians who have contacted Hariri in Riyadh say he is apprehensive and reluctant to say anything beyond "I am fine". Asked if he is coming back, they say his normal answer is: "Inshallah" (God willing).
WASHINGTON -- President Trump may have been 7,000 miles away in Seoul on Tuesday, but make no mistake: He was on the ballot in Virginia when his imitator, Republican Ed Gillespie, lost the closely watched gubernatorial race to Democrat Ralph Northam.
This was, in part, because Trump himself embraced Gillespie, endorsing him and, as Election Day arrived, tweeting about the "terrible" Virginia economy, its "high crime" and its gangs, and urging support for Gillespie.
But more than that, Trump was on the ballot because Gillespie, in the general election, attempted to remake himself as a Trump clone. He played down conventional Republican talk about tax cuts in favor of a racially charged campaign right from the Trump playbook: support for Confederate monuments, fear of immigrants and outrageous calumny about Northam being a friend of pedophiles.
The commonwealth on Tuesday night gave a resounding rejection to this filth. Northam won by more than eight percentage points.
The half of voters who said in exit polls that Trump was a factor opposed the president by 2 to 1. Among the half who said that Trump wasn't a factor -- they favored Gillespie by 15 points -- well, perhaps it was more that they wished Trump weren't a factor in the race.
Though polls had showed a tightening race (which many attributed to Gillespie's embrace of Trump-style cultural warfare), Northam's margin of victory was greater than Hillary Clinton's over Trump in this swing state. And Northam, it must be said, was not exactly an electrifying candidate; he ran a campaign that often seemed hesitant and confused.
Essentially, Gillespie turned the Virginia gubernatorial race into a cultural war, much as Trump did with the 2016 election. But this time, the cultural warrior lost, as he sorely deserved to.
The ads were disgraceful: Gillespie's "Kill, Rape, Control" ad falsely warning that "Northam cast the deciding vote in favor of sanctuary cities" and, therefore, the MS-13 gang. The reckless ads casting Northam as protector of "sex offenders" and "convicted sexual predator[s]." And Gillespie's ad about Confederate statues: "I'm for keeping 'em up, and he's for taking 'em down."
Views on race were perhaps the clearest predictor of how Virginians voted. Ninety-seven percent of those who trusted Northam more on race, exit polls showed, supported him. For Gillespie the number was 98 percent. Gillespie did have a 44-point advantage among the 57 percent of Virginians who want Confederate monuments to stay -- but Northam had a whopping 83-point advantage among the 38 percent who want them down. Four in 10 Virginians named health care -- the issue at the center of Northam's candidacy -- as their top issue, while only 1 in 8 named immigration, which Gillespie tried to make front and center.
Democrats will rightly celebrate Northam's win, but that comes with a depressing asterisk. Gillespie's campaign shows even more clearly than the Trump victory did that, among Trump (and Gillespie) supporters, racial animus and cultural grievances are a greater factor than conventional issues such as economic well-being.
In Virginia, there was a pure test of this. Its 3.7 percent unemployment rate is among the lowest in the country, and a large majority of Virginians say the local economy is good. And Gillespie is the very epitome of the Washington swamp: party boss, K Street lobbyist, Capitol Hill and White House staffer. He was even once a Senate parking-lot attendant.
What was left to Gillespie, then, were mostly the cultural issues -- and Trump voters embraced him anyway. Among the 40 percent in exit polls who approved of Trump's job performance, fully 91 percent voted for Gillespie. There weren't enough Trump voters for Gillespie to win, but there were a lot -- and there will be enough to allow some Republicans who run similar campaigns to win elsewhere next year.
Gillespie may have been doomed even if he remained the mainstream Republican candidate he was when he barely survived the primary against a Trump-inspired gadfly, when he properly denounced white supremacists in August, or when he set out to run a campaign about the economy and taxes. We'll never know.
But we do know that Trump was 180 degrees off when he sent this defensive tweet Tuesday night after Gillespie lost: "Ed Gillespie worked hard but did not embrace me or what I stand for."
No, Mr. President. The problem was precisely Gillespie's embrace of you.
Dana Milbank is a columnist for The Washington Post.
Quetta: Two days after a suicide bomber killed a top-ranking police officer, the security forces gunned down three suspected militants in the Zarghoonabad area of Nawan Killi in Pakistan's restive Balochistan province.
Home Minister, Balochistan, Mir Sarfaraz Bugti said a joint search operation was carried out by the Frontier Corps and Counter Terrorism Department (CTD) in the Zarghoonabad area on Friday night following information about the presence of militants in a house.
"The militants opened fire on the search party and in retaliation three of them were killed," he said.
The operation was conducted after DIG Telecommunications Hamid Shakeel Sabir, along with ASI Ramzan Muhammad Hasani and constable Jalil Ahmed Kurd, was killed on Thursday when a suicide bomber struck his convoy while he was coming out of his house here.
Bugti said the security forces seized a large cache of ammunition, suicide vests and communication equipment from the house.
All the three militants belonged to an extremist organisation, he said.
Their bodies have been shifted to the Civil Hospital for identification, the home minister said.
The Tehreek-e-Taliban, also known as the Pakistani Taliban, had claimed responsibility for the deadly attack on Sabir, who had worked in a senior position with the CTD and carried out several operations against terrorists before he was transferred as the DIG Telecommunications.
Colombo: Sri Lanka President Maithripala Sirisena has acknowledged that few troops were responsible for committing war crimes at the behest of politicians during the three-decade-long civil war with the Tamil tigers.
According to the UN figures, up to 40,000 civilians were killed by the security forces during former president Mahinda Rajapaksa's regime that brought an end to the brutal conflict with the defeat of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelamin 2009.
The LTTE ran a nearly three-decade separatist campaign leading to a bloody war with the Sri Lankan security forces. Sirisena had earlier vowed to defend the troops against war crimes charges leveled against them.
"There is something that you should accept according to your conscience. There were things outside the control of the military. They were carried out by a few in the military to appease politicians. These were illegal, against democracy and the freedom of our people," he said.
"You know that investigations are underway into a small number of officers who acted at the behest of politicians. Those who are in custody will be freed if they are innocent. "I hear allegations from (opposition) political stages that this is a witch-hunt of war heroes. I strongly reject those allegations," he said, adding that the military should clear its name.
Sirisena's reference was to the former regime of President Mahinda Rajapaksa. His administration faced war crimes charges with UN Human Rights Council passing resolutions.
Since Rajapaksa's defeat, several incidents of military excesses have come to be highlighted with several military men under arrest and later given bail as part of the proceedings. During the Rajapaksa's regime, the soldiers were prevented from facing the legal process and the UN's call for independent investigations were dubbed as attacks against Sri Lanka's sovereignty.
Ankara: Turkey has rejected as "ludicrous" allegations that it offered several million dollars to the United States to extradite a political rival to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
US media reported that investigators in Washington are probing whether former White House national security advisor Michael Flynn discussed expelling Muslim preacher Fethullah Gulen in exchange for a secret payout.
Ankara blames Gulen's movement for the July 15, 2016 failed coup against Erdogan, and has pressed for his extradition from the United States, where he has lived since 1999.
Gulen, who has a large Turkish following, strongly denies the charges.
"All allegations that Turkey would resort to means external to the rule of law for his extradition are utterly false, ludicrous and groundless", Turkey's embassy in Washington said on Twitter Saturday.
NBC News and the Wall Street Journal said Friday that US special prosecutor Robert Mueller is examining a meeting Flynn had with senior Turkish officials weeks after Donald Trump won the presidential race last year.
The meeting allegedly discussed a secret payout of up to $15 million dollars if, once in office, Flynn would engineer the deportation to Turkey of Gulen as well as help free Erdogan-linked Iranian-Turkish businessman Reza Zarrab from prison.
NBC and the Journal both cited multiple people familiar with the probe by Mueller, who is leading the investigation into whether members of Trump's campaign colluded with Russian meddling in the election.
The Journal said it is not clear how far the proposal went and that there was no sign that any payments were made.
Lawyers for Flynn have labelled the allegations "outrageous" and "false".
According to the two reports, the discussions included details of how Gulen could be flown secretly by private jet to the isolated Turkish prison island of Imrali.
Paris: The United States will fail to meet its commitments for reducing greenhouse gas emissions under the Paris climate treaty, according to a report released on Saturday at UN negotiations in Bonn.
A crescendo of efforts at the sub-national level to shrink the country's carbon footprint will not fully counteract US President Donald Trump's decision to scrap his predecessor's climate policies and promote the use of fossil fuels, it found.
"Given the stated policies of the present US administration, currently committed non-federal efforts are not sufficient to meet the US commitments under the Paris Agreement," concluded the 120-page analysis, entitled "America's Pledge."
California Governor Jerry Brown and former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg unveiled the report in Bonn, flanked by UN climate chief Patricia Espinosa and Fijian Prime Minister Frank Bainimarama, who is presiding over the 12-day talks.
Under the 196-nation treaty, agreed outside the French capital 2015, the United States made a voluntary commitment to cut the country's emissions 26-28 percent below 2005 levels by 2025.
The Paris pact marked the first time that all countries including emerging giants such as China and India laid out specific targets for greening their economies.
Despite the US shortfall, a surge of climate action will keep the US emissions curve on a downward path, said the report, jointly issued by the World Resources Institute and the Rocky Mountain Institute.
"States, cities, and business have emerged as the new face of American leadership on climate change, and are stepping up with commitments to reduce greenhouse gas emissions," they said in a statement.
"If these non-federal actors were a country, their economy would be the third largest in the world."
Twenty US states, 110 cities, and over 1,400 businesses with US operations have adopted quantified emissions reduction targets, the report found.
Collectively, they represent USD 25 trillion in market capitalisation and nearly a billion tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions per year.
Total global emissions were about 42 billion tonnes in 2015, according to the Global Carbon Project.
Among US states, California has adopted the most ambitious targets, requiring greenhouse gas emissions to fall at least 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2030.
"America's Pledge and coalitions like 'We Are Still In' are showing that, despite reversals in Washington, US climate action is strong and growing," said Bob Perciasepe, president of the Center for Climate and Energy Solutions in Arlington, Virginia.
Hanoi: President Donald Trump says he believes Russian President Vladimir Putin believes it when he says Moscow did not interfere in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. But Trump says he also believes U.S. intelligence agencies, which have concluded that Russia did meddle in the election.
"I believe that he feels that he and Russia did not meddle in the election," Trump said of Putin at news conference with Vietnam's President Tran Dai Quang in Hanoi. "As to whether I believe it, I'm with our agencies."
"As currently led by fine people, I believe very much in our intelligence agencies," he added.
The US intelligence community has concluded that Russia interfered in the election to help the Republican defeat Democrat Hillary Clinton.
Speaking to reporters aboard Air Force One on Saturday, Trump had said that Putin again vehemently denied the allegations this time during an economic summit in Vietnam. Trump said he believed "that when he tells me that, he means it."
Trump had also dismissed former US intelligence officials as "political hacks" and accused Democrats of using the issue to try to sabotage relations between the two countries, putting lives at risk.
At the news conference, Trump reiterated his view that it's crucial for the US to get along with Russia, and seemed to suggest that it was time to remove the sanctions Congress has slapped on Russia in retaliation for its election meddling efforts.
"It's now time to get back to healing a world that is shattered and broken," said Trump. "Those are very important things."
As he traveled to Hanoi, the second-to-last stop of his Asia trip, Trump told reporters that Putin "said he absolutely did not meddle in our election. He did not do what they are saying he did."
"Every time he sees me, he said: 'I didn't do that.' And I believe I really believe that when he tells me that, he means it," Trump said, calling the accusation an "artificial barrier" erected by Democrats.
The president lashed out at the former heads of the nation's intelligence community, and said there were plenty of reasons to be suspicious of their findings. "I mean, give me a break. They're political hacks," Trump said, citing by name James Clapper, the former director of national intelligence, John Brennan, the former CIA director and his ousted ex-FBI director James Comey, whom Trump said was "proven now to be a liar and he's proven to be a leaker."
In a tweet sent Sunday from Hanoi, Trump bashed the "haters and fools" he said are questioning his efforts to improve relations with Russia and accused critics of "playing politics" and hurting the country.
Trump's comments about Putin and "political hacks" brought criticism from lawmakers with ties to the intelligence community. Rep. Adam Schiff, the California Democrat who is his party's top member on the House's intelligence committee, said in a statement that Trump "fools no one" and that the president understands how the Russians intervened through hacking, social media and their own television coverage of the presidential race.
Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., the party's presidential nominee in 2008, said in a statement that Trump's faith in Putin's denial was "naive."
"There's nothing 'America First' about taking the word of a KGB colonel
over that of the American intelligence community," McCain wrote, referring to Putin's former career in Soviet intelligence. "Vladimir Putin does not have America's interests at heart."
Trump was in Hanoi for a brief state visit, including Sunday's meeting with Quang at the presidential palace.
In brief remarks after his arrival, Trump offered help negotiating with China on disputes over the South China Sea. Beijing's island-building there has drawn criticism from Washington, which argues the U.S. has a national interest in freedom of navigation in sea lanes critical for world trade. U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson earlier this month said China's "provocative actions" challenged international law and norms.
"If I can help mediate or arbitrate, please let me know," Trump offered. "I'm a very good mediator and a very good arbitrator. I've done plenty of it from both sides."
Trump also said he hoped to have more help from Chinese President Xi Jinping as well as Russia, when it comes to isolating North Korea. "The North Korean situation continues to be a problem. President Xi I think is going to be a tremendous help. I hope Russia likewise will be a tremendous help. I think they can make a big difference," he said.
Trump and Putin did not have a formal meeting while they were in Vietnam for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit, but the two spoke informally several times and reached an agreement on a number of principles for the future of war-torn Syria.
Trump made clear that the issue of Russian meddling in the election hovers over the leaders' relationship and said it jeopardized their ability to work together on issues including North Korea's escalating nuclear program and the deadly conflict in Syria.
"Having a good relationship with Russia's a great, great thing. And this artificial Democratic hit job gets in the way," Trump told reporters. "People will die because of it."
Trump had danced around the question of whether he believed Putin's denials Saturday, telling reporters that pressing the issue would have accomplished little.
"Well, look, I can't stand there and argue with him," Trump said. "I'd rather have him get out of Syria, to be honest with you. I'd rather have him, you know, work with him on the Ukraine than standing and arguing about whether or not 'cause that whole thing was set up by the Democrats."
Multiple US intelligence agencies have concluded that Moscow meddled in the election to try to help Trump win. But Trump called the former heads of those agencies "political hacks" and argued there's plenty of reason to be suspicious of their findings.
The comments made clear that Trump still does not take the meddling seriously and sees little benefit in punishing a nation accused of undermining the most fundamental tenet of American democracy: free and fair elections. They also suggest that Trump is unlikely to work aggressively to try to prevent future meddling despite repeated warnings from senior intelligence officials that Russia is likely to try to interfere again.
Meanwhile, a special counsel investigation of potential collusion between Moscow and Trump campaign aides so far has resulted in two indictments for financial and other crimes unrelated to the campaign, as well as a guilty plea. Congressional committees have also been interviewing campaign and White House staff.
"Trump really raised the topic of so-called interference in US elections," Putin's spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, was quoted by Russian news agencies as telling reporters. "Putin categorically rejected even the hypothetical possibility that Russia could have in some way interfered in the US electoral process."
Washington: Despite President Donald Trump's full-throated support for Saudi Arabia, the United States appears to be signaling a desire for Riyadh to take a more cautious approach in its regional power struggle with Iran, experts say.
The Trump administration, which shares Saudi Arabia's view of Iran as a regional menace, has strongly backed the Kingdom in the wake of a failed missile attack from Iran-aligned forces in Yemeni territory that demonstrated an ability to strike the Saudi capital.
Trump has cultivated much warmer ties with the Saudis after a fraught relationship with the Obama administration - the president made Riyadh his first stop on his maiden international trip - and has vowed to take strong action to confront Iran. Nevertheless, Washington, which has U.S. forces in Syria and Iraq, is telegraphing a more tempered stance toward the confrontation in a region beset with turmoil.
On Thursday, the State Department called for "unimpeded access" for humanitarian aid to Yemen, after Saudi Arabia imposed a blockade on the country to stem the flow of arms to Iran-aligned Houthi fighters.
A day later, U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson made clear he still recognized as Lebanon's prime minister Saad al-Hariri, who unexpectedly announced his resignation on Nov. 4 from Riyadh.
In announcing his decision on television, Hariri said he feared assassination and accused Iran and its Lebanese ally Hezbollah of sowing strife in the Arab world, thrusting Lebanon into the front line of the competition between Sunni Saudi Arabia and Shi'ite Iran.
Two U.S. officials said the Saudis, led by Crown Prince Mohammed, had "encouraged" Hariri to leave office and Lebanese officials say he is being held in Saudi Arabia, a charge Riyadh denies. Hariri has not commented publicly on whether he is free to come and go as he pleases.
In a statement on Saturday, the White House said it "rejects any efforts by militias within Lebanon or by any foreign forces to threaten Lebanon's stability...or use Lebanon as a base from which to threaten others in the region."
When asked to comment on whether the United States was pushing for a more cautious Saudi response, both the White House and State Department referred to Saturday's statement on Lebanon.
Tillerson was "not going along with the Saudi position in describing the Lebanese state as under capture by Hezbollah, said Paul Salem, the senior vice president of the Middle East Institute, a Washington think tank. "Thats significant."
Tillerson was also "signaling to the Israelis ... that now is not the time to go after Lebanon," said Salem, referring to long-standing Israeli concerns about Hezbollah's growing military prowess.
Ray Takeyh, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, said he believed the Trump administration was still seeking to help the Saudis advance their interests against Iran without destabilizing the region.
"This is a delicate balancing act. It involves supporting allies in a policy that the administration agrees with, while trying to mitigate aspects of it that it (sees as) overstated," Takeyh said.
Tillerson's statement also urged "all parties both within Lebanon and outside" to respect Lebanon's independence and said there was no role for any foreign forces.
The United States regularly criticizes Iran and Hezbollah for their role in Lebanon. Tillerson's backing of Hariri and the Lebanese government contrasted sharply with the approach taken by Saudi Arabia, which has lumped Lebanon with Hezbollah as parties hostile to it.
"I see Rex Tillerson as being an old fashioned American diplomat and old fashioned American diplomacy in the Middle East is all about stability," said F. Gregory Gause, chairman of the International Affairs Department at Texas A&M University.
"I'm not entirely sure that that is the position of the chief executive of the United States," Gause added.
CONCERNS WITH SAUDI PURGE
The Saudi actions coincide with an anti-corruption purge by the country's future king that tightened his grip on power.
Trump tweeted on Monday that he had "great confidence in King Salman and the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia" following the mass arrests - the biggest such purge of the kingdom's affluent elite in its modern history.
Trump also tweeted that "they know exactly what they are doing."
Former and current U.S. officials with deep knowledge of Saudi Arabia say Trump's enthusiastic support for Prince Mohammed has emboldened the youthful Saudi leader.
Tillerson told reporters the purge appeared "well intended" but the mass arrests, which have swept up officials long known in Washington, also fueled U.S. concerns.
"It raises a few concerns until we see more clearly how these particular individuals are dealt with," Tillerson added.
Trump's son-in-law, Jared Kushner, the president's senior adviser, who has cultivated a close relationship with Prince Mohammed, recently returned from Saudi Arabia, fueling speculation on whether he may have had wind of the Crown Prince's plans. A senior administration official said they had no advance knowledge.
A woman wades through the water carrying the child as hundreds of Rohingya refugees arrive under the cover of darkness by wooden boats from Myanmar to the shore of Shah Porir Dwip, in Teknaf, near Cox's Bazar in Bangladesh. (Image: Reuters)
Elizabeths Early Learning Center, a nonprofit child care center that serves infants to preschoolers, has a waitlist of 90 children, and its growing.
The waitlist is so long, Jane Gerdy, the executive director said, that some people will call as soon as they learn theyre pregnant.
Some people tell us before they tell their families, she said. Dont tell anyone Im pregnant, but please put me on the list.
Gerdys story isnt uncommon in Lynchburg, where parents seeking child care often face waits and high prices.
Brittany Tweedy, a Lynchburg mother who works full time and attends school, said shes had a horrible time finding child care she could afford. After learning a local licensed provider would cost more than her monthly rent to get care for her 2-year-old daughter, Tweedy turned to family.
Its just very, very, very tough, she said.
Right now, shes paying a family member to watch her daughter, and wishing her daughter could be with other kids her age.
Its just a different experience versus having your child in day care, learning, being with other kids, she said. I just really wish that I could have some type of assistance or just something affordable for her so she can experience that before she starts school, so she can experience what school would be like, she said.
Child care for infants in particular is scarce in Central Virginia, according to Director of the Child Care Resource Center at HumanKind Joan Rowe. She reviewed child care centers in Region 2000 which comprises the city of Lynchburg and Bedford, Amherst, Appomattox and Campbell counties and found only 35 licensed providers that serve infants. Its unclear how many unlicensed child care centers are operating in the region.
Seventeen, or about half, of the licensed providers responded to her email that asked how many infants they serve: 159, in total. So Rowe doubled this number to extrapolate the total number of child care slots for infants in the region: 318.
Rowe said there were 2,851 babies born in the region in 2015. Thats nine times as many infants as there are spaces. The definition of a child care desert, Rowe said, is when there are more than three times as many children younger than age 5 as there are child care slots for those children.
Were in a huge child care desert, she said, adding in all of Bedford County, there are only three licensed providers that can serve 22 infants in total.
Rowe attributes the shortage to the expense of maintaining a quality, licensed child care facility, especially for infants. The state-mandated ratio for infants is one teacher per four infants at all times. After children are 16 months old, the number of teachers can be reduced by half at nap time.
Those costs are reflected in tuition. In Lynchburg, for example, at Elizabeths Early Learning Center, parents pay between $187 per week for infants and $151 per week for preschool-age children. Gerdy, the centers executive director, said the center loses money on infants. The Madison Heights Caterpillar Clubhouse charges $135 per week for infants and $100 per week for 2- and 3-year-olds. Demand is so great at EELC the center plans to build a new wing with four classrooms that would provide space for 36 children, on top of the 142 it already serves.
Ashley Graham, the director of HumanKinds Healthy Families, a home-visiting program, said the most alarming gap she sees in Lynchburg is the lack of quality, affordable child care for 2- and 3-year olds, such as Tweedys daughter. Theres no public option for children younger than 3, she noted.
Dr. Teresa Brennan, a developmental pediatrician at Centra, explained at a recent Poverty to Progress meeting that a childs development the year before kindergarten essentially predicts whether they will be reading on grade level by third grade, and that in turn predicts whether they will be successful for the rest of their school career. Poverty to Progress is the citys initiative to raise families out of poverty through a number of topic-based subgroups. Brennan leads the education subgroup dedicated to access to pre-K, preschool for 4-year-olds.
At the moment, public pre-K is far from universal. Out of 135 school divisions in Virginia, 120 have a state-funded pre-K program. Of those, 55 percent use 100 percent of the slots they receive funding for. Thirteen school divisions have 100 or more unused slots.
Lynchburg City Schools has a free pre-K program for 4-year-olds designed for low-income and otherwise disadvantaged families. Pam Thomas, LCS coordinator for early childhood and English language learners, said the Virginia Preschool Initiative provides enough funding for 239 pre-K students in Lynchburg, and Title I funds provide money to teach an additional 32. The LCS pre-K program had a wait list of 49 children as of Sept. 1, up from 35 in September 2016. Thomas said she doesnt foresee receiving additional funding from the state to take on more kids.
Head Start, another free option for 3- and 4-year-olds in low-income families, is funded by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and shares an application with LCS pre-K. Dolores Holmes, the director, said it has a waitlist of 53 children, which actually has decreased in recent years. She attributes this to Head Starts competition with LCS pre-K.
Debbie Wilson, a pre-K teacher at Carl B. Hutcherson School, badly wants to see an expansion of pre-K, both in terms of who qualifies and the sheer number of spots available.
Honestly, all of these: quality day care, quality pre-K, its going to take funding, she said. If we could have solved this thing without money, somebody would have solved it before now.
The stakes are high for solving these child care shortages, Rowe said.
Without quality, affordable options, people start looking for providers who are not licensed, she said.
Not all unlicensed providers are negligent, she said. Some follow state regulations. But some dont, simply because theyre ignoring the regulations or because they dont know about them. That can result in catastrophes. She referenced a 2014 fire at an unlicensed day care on Ramsgate Lane in Lynchburg that killed two children as an example.
[Unlicensed providers] may not have first aid/CPR [training]; they may not have training for medication administration, Rowe said. Its unlikely that theyre getting just the 16 hours of training thats required by the state. Its potentially a dangerous situation.
Rowe said either the government needs to step in and provide subsidies for quality, licensed child care, or businesses need to step up and either put child care in their business or subsidize families who require child care.
BLACKSBURG L. J. DOSS JR. 70.
The name now carved into stone means so much to Dave Doss.
Its the name of a brave soldier who died in the line of duty, a Virginia Tech student and, most importantly to him, a father whom fate would dictate he never knew.
And now its a name that is part of Virginia Techs campus.
Almost five decades after former Virginia Tech student Luther Jim Doss Jr. died in action during the Vietnam War, his name was added to Techs Memorial Pylons. The distinction adds to a long list of accomplishments for a man who died at 22, including being awarded a Purple Heart and three Bronze Stars.
Doss, a U.S. Army Ranger, was shot and killed in 1970 the year he should have graduated from Tech while attempting to rescue fellow soldiers on a recon mission. He left Virginia Tech to take care of his family before being drafted into the Army.
The pylons are inscribed with the names of Virginia Tech students and graduates who died in battle since World War I. The iconic memorial is above War Memorial Chapel on Techs Drillfield. They were constructed in the 1950s and feature 431 names with the addition of Doss. Doss name is the first to be etched into the memorial since 2012.
Friday, Techs Corps of Cadets and the universitys Alumni Association the organizations responsible for maintaining the Pylons held a Veterans Day ceremony to honor Doss and officially unveil the name.
Dave Doss, his mother and Jim Doss widow Barbara Rookstool and a group of more than a dozen family and friends gathered to commemorate the young soldiers life, along with almost 100 cadets and the present day members of the fraternity of which Doss belonged.
It speaks to the type of person my dad was, Dave Doss said. Almost 50 years after his death he brings us together.
Doss story was discovered thanks to Dana Hesse, a Tech alum still involved as an unofficial historian in his fraternity Phi Gamma Delta commonly called FIJI. Doss had been a member of a precursor fraternity when he was a Tech student called Phi Alpha Chi.
Hesse was going through an old scrapbook as part of a digitization project for the fraternitys records last spring when he saw Doss composite picture. For some reason, the name rang a bell as a man who an old timer had told Hesse had fought and died in Vietnam. Hesse then submitted the name to Col. Patience Larkin, alumni director of the Corps of Cadets.
Larkin then went through the process of verifying the three qualifications to put names on the memorial: that the person enrolled in Tech, served in the military and died in the line of duty. The university then sprung into action, engraving the Pylons in August in preparation for the official ceremony to fall around Veterans Day.
Its pretty special to see his name up there, Hesse said. I mostly feel quiet satisfaction for the part I played. This is a meaningful thing for his family.
Rookstool said that having his name on the Pylon memorial would have meant a lot to Doss. Born in Meadows of Dan, Doss spent part of his childhood in Southwest Virginia before moving to Baltimore where he later attended high school before gaining admittance to Virginia Tech. The school was his dream, she said.
He loved Tech, he really did, Rookstool said. It is quite the honor for him to go here. And its quite the honor for his name to be here now.
David Doss who said hes spoken not just to his fathers classmates but also about 50 men who served alongside him in Vietnam said Jim Doss excelled at the school but was forced to make a decision to provide for his family after his wife became pregnant shortly after their marriage. He worked full time before being drafted.
Doss military service was marked with distinction, rising from a drafted private to an officer in the Rangers over the course of 14 months. He served as a team leader. Then in April 1970, he volunteered on a reconnaissance mission for a group of soldiers trapped behind enemy lines. He died during the rescue attempt, but the team was able to help get the men out safely, Dave Doss said during the ceremony.
During the ceremony, Dave Doss was thankful to Virginia Tech for recognizing his fathers bravery in those final moments. Holding back tears, he said his father shaped the lives of many people including two grandchildren born decades after his death.
You havent only carved in these stones the name of my father, Doss said. But youve etched in our hearts gratitude that could not be described with words.
BOSTON Boston's art scene is getting a Dutch treat with a twist: a flurry of donated 17th-century masterpieces that experts say will change the city's museum landscape for decades to come.
First, collectors gifted the Museum of Fine Arts with 113 leading Golden Age masterpieces including a prized Rembrandt portrait and works by Rubens and Brueghel and established a new center dedicated to the study of Dutch and Flemish art.
Now, the Harvard Art Museums have been bequeathed 330 drawings dating to the 1600s.
Practically overnight, scholars say, the gifts have made Boston a global center for the period.
"I can't remember a time when a city has been a beneficiary of such significant gifts in such a short time," said Arthur Wheelock Jr., a curator at the National Gallery of Art in Washington and a leading expert on Rembrandt, Vermeer and the other Dutch masters who left such an indelible mark on the art world.
Boston-area collectors Rose-Marie and Eijk van Otterloo and Susan and Matthew Weatherbie last month donated works by 76 artists to the Museum of Fine Arts. The gift included funding for a new research library and a Center for Netherlandish Art at the museum, the first of its kind in the U.S.
It's the largest gift of European paintings in the museum's history and will nearly double in size its collection of Dutch and Flemish paintings.
The collection includes Rembrandt's 1632 portrait of Aeltje Uylenburgh, a cousin of Rembrandt's wife-to-be. Experts say the work is in nearly perfect condition. Other donated paintings include landscapes, seascapes, cityscapes and still lifes, some of which are included in "Masterpieces of Dutch and Flemish Painting," a new exhibition that runs through Jan. 15 at the MFA.
Then, last week, the Harvard Art Museums were pledged a trove of drawings including works on paper by Rembrandt and his students by George Abrams, a Harvard-educated lawyer who has amassed a vast collection and had donated 140 other sketches in past years. Select pieces are on display through mid-January at Harvard, where the government of the Netherlands knighted Abrams to recognize his contributions to the art world.
Harvard Art Museums director Martha Tedeschi called the most recent gift "truly transformative," saying it will help make Boston "a major destination for the study and presentation of Dutch, Flemish and Netherlandish art."
Together, the donations mean Boston now boasts one of the largest U.S. collections of Golden Age art. The National Gallery, New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Detroit Institute of Arts also house considerable Dutch and Flemish galleries.
Four centuries on, the works still captivate.
"You find the world depicted in such detail," Wheelock said. "Whether it's Rembrandt exploring the mystery of the human psyche, or Vermeer's wonderful sense of grace and elegance, they capture all kinds of worlds."
After the latest mass shooting, President Trump and GOP politicians, including Virginia gubernatorial candidate Ed Gillespie, once again sent their thoughts and prayers to victims and their families.
It was, as always, too soon to talk about gun policy, they agreed.
But with 26 dead and 20 more wounded in Sutherland Springs, Texas, last Sunday, just 35 days after a shooting massacre in Las Vegas claimed 58 lives, prayer, while comforting, wasnt enough for many Americans.
Lets not pray, the Rev. Robert C. Wright, Episcopal bishop of the Diocese of Atlanta, said in a Facebook post widely circulated on social media.
Please do not invite me to pray in response to the horror of Sutherland Springs, Texas, unless it is to pray courage over elected officials who intend to work for the ban of automatic and semi-automatic weapons, he said.
People feel powerless following gun violence; its human nature to want to respond and fix things, said comedian and social commentator Stephen Colbert.
Five thousand years ago, if your village had a tiger coming into it every day and was eating people, you wouldnt do nothing. You would move the village, you would build a fence or you would kill the tiger, Colbert said on the Late Show Monday.
You wouldnt say, Well, I guess someones gonna get eaten every day because the price of liberty is tigers. You take some action, he said. You can go vote. Vote for someone who will do something.
Most Americans must wait for congressional mid-term elections next year to vote. So all eyes Tuesday were on state races in Virginia and New Jersey.
In Virginia, whose lax gun laws have supplied weapons to criminals from Baltimore to New York City, voters had a clear choice for governor between Democrat Ralph Northam, who advocates tougher guns laws, and Gillespie, a strong ally of the NRA.
After the Texas shooting, Gillespie was on Fox News talking about prayer for victims and his A rating and endorsement from the NRA.
Northam has said thoughts and prayers arent enough. Proud of his F rating from the NRA, he called for universal background checks for gun buyers, an assault weapons ban and smaller ammunition clips. He promised to reinstate the one-gun-a-month limit on gun purchases.
Northam beat Gillespie 54 to 45 percent.
To be sure, gun policy was only one issue in the campaign, but it was a significant factor. When asked to rank five issues, voters cited health care first by a wide margin, followed by gun policy as No. 2. Those who chose gun policy as their top issue split evenly between Northam and Gillespie.
But among voters with a gun in their home, 37 percent voted for Northam, as did 73 percent of those who didnt own guns.
We as a society need to stand up and say its time to take action and stop talking, Northam said at a forum in October.
He had the support of Americans for Responsible Solutions, the gun control group founded by former Rep. Gabrielle Giffords who was shot in her home district in Arizona, and the Everytown for Gun Safety Action Group, funded by former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg.
Northam campaigned with Lori Haas, whose daughter survived being shot twice at Virginia Tech in 2007. Haas is state director of the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence.
Gillespie promised to uphold Second Amendment rights and to reverse the ban on guns in state government buildings imposed by Democratic Gov. Terry McAuliffe. Four years ago, McAuliffe touted his F rating from the NRA, as did Tim Kaine when he won his race for governor.
Recounts in several districts will determine which party controls the House, but Democrats already have erased much of the Republican advantage with the election of political newcomers. Among them is Chris Hurst of the Blacksburg area, who said the fatal shooting of his fiancee, fellow journalist Alison Parker, on live television two years ago was one reason he entered politics.
Virginians showed Tuesday voters can choose prayers and policy. Theyre counting on Northam and the General Assembly to deliver concrete action to stop gun violence, and the nation will be watching.
Mercer writes from Washington. Email her at marsha.mercer@yahoo.com. 2017 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.
DECATUR Students came for homelessness awareness and are leaving with a whole different perspective, said their professor, Mary Garrison said. She organized a Box City event to give students an example of what its like to be homeless in Decatur.
They described their night sleeping on the cold ground in the elements in cardboard boxes at the Millikin quad as painful and long. Temperatures dropped to about 24 degrees that night. In the morning, they walked to the Salvation Army to talk about their experiences and hear from formerly homeless people.
I didnt get any sleep, I tried so hard to sleep but it was sleeping on hard surface and really painful, said Erik Laroo, a senior at Millikin University.
He fasted the day of as well to experience the hunger aspect of being homeless. He said he planned to go back to campus and sleep, which he admitted was a luxury.
If you were homeless, you wouldnt have a house to catch up on sleep, he said.
The Box City event was the eighth annual program put on with the help of Garrison. The experience is part of the performance learning aspect of the university, she said. The Good Samaritan Inn brought soup to the participants for supper because often times the only meal people get is from the lunch they serve.
The students also spoke with people at the Salvation Army. Darin Harnsberger told the group about his journey from homeless to recently securing himself a permanent living situation. He explained that a life on the street can fill a person with despair and no hope.
It was just a horrible, horrible existence, he said.
The impact of a community was important for Harnsberger as well. He encouraged the students not to think about homeless people and people in poverty as us versus them but instead as part of the community who needs help.
Harnsberger said the social services and community in Decatur helped save him and help him get back on his feet.
They saved me when I couldnt save myself, tolerated me when I couldnt tolerate myself, he said.
Garrison said it is important for students to experience a night outside, but she also encourages the students to get involved with the social service and homeless community in Decatur to continue learning.
Community is something that solves a lot of problems, Laroo said, he learned about the importance of community to help people recover from chronic homelessness and stay off the streets in the first place.
They are all our brothers and sisters and they have stories, he said. (Its important) not look at anyone differently.
This woman and her goals have no national interests at heart. She is more interested in surrounding herself with men who can satisfy her on request. he added.
FORMER vice-president Joice Mujuru yesterday urged people to register to vote in their millions to prevent the creation of a Mugabe dynasty, saying Zimbabweans do not deserve the untold suffering they endure on a daily basis because of Zanu PFs misrule.
Mujuru, who fronts the National Peoples Party (NPP), said she humbly accepted the Peoples Rainbow Coalition (PRC) nomination to stand as its presidential candidate against President Robert Mugabe, before expressing confidence of electoral victory in the 2018 polls.
The former VP made the remarks during the unveiling of the PRC at Stanley Square in Makokoba high-density suburb in Bulawayo.
The PRC brings together the breakaway Peoples Democratic Party led by Lucia Matibenga, Zimbabweans United for Democracy led by Farai Mbira and the Democratic Assembly for Reform and Empowerment whose leader is Gilbert Dzikiti.
The parties also signed their coalition agreement yesterday.
Our signing ceremony signifies a milestone journey for the coalition as we prepare for the 2018 elections, Mujuru told the crowd.
It is very satisfying that we have reached this milestone. Our nation is at stake, and at risk of a dynasty, and it is our duty as a nation that we come together to face this challenge [dynasty].
Dzikiti weighed in, saying Zimbabwe does not belong to any other person but all Zimbabweans.
We are at a risk of having a dynasty but we must reject this as Zimbabweans as Zimbabwe is not a monarchy. We are a constitutional republic.
Fears abound Mugabe is pushing for a dynasty following calls by his Zanu PF structures to elevate first lady Grace to the vice-presidents post with a view of choosing her as his successor.
According to the PRC agreement, Mujuru is the presidential candidate while parliamentary, senatorial and council candidates will be chosen by members of all the four parties in the respective areas, through primary elections where necessary.
Mujuru said the PRC frowned upon Zanu PFs one centre of power policy, which she condemned for cultivating a dictatorship and sowing seeds of poverty among Zimbabweans.
On October 20, I was humbled by the PRC nomination as the parties presidential candidate for the 2018 elections, she said.
It is a responsibility that I will not take lightly. The leadership that the PRC is striving for is people-centred.
We reject the one centre of power; we should not entertain that as the PRC.
We are people-centred and people-driven and so we must respect the people we lead. We dont deserve to be in this predicament we find ourselves in
Matibenga called on ex-combatants to close ranks with opposition parties to fight Zanu PF and ensure what they fought for during the liberation struggle was fulfilled when the ruling party is out of power.
It is important for us to acknowledge these women and men [war veterans] for what they have done to liberate this country, she said.
Former Zanu PF politburo member Kudakwashe Bhasikiti now opposition Zimbabwe People First (ZPF) top official has urged ailing MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai to hand over power.
He suggested MDC vice president Nelson Chamisa as the capable Tsvangirai successor. This comes amid growing calls for Tsvangirai to take a backseat in politics on the back of his ill health.
The long-time President Robert Mugabe foe is suffering from colon cancer and has of late been in-and-out of hospital in South Africa.
Bhasikiti claims Chamisa has the mettle to galvanise the opposition family into one political force to successfully challenge Mugabe in next years elections.
If...Tsvangirai is overwhelmed by current medical procedures lets take a young focused candidate in the name of...Chamisa, he said.
I want to agree with all progressive forces that we join hands to be one opposition movement to remove the ravaging Zanu PF monster, Bhasikiti said
His pronouncements come as an awakening of sorts as ZPF elders Didymus Mutasa and Rugare Gumbo, both formerly in Zanu PF have previously disassociated themselves with the MDC Alliance saying its name and logo are tantamount to marketing Tsvangirai.
MDC Alliance is a union of seven opposition political parties, which joined forces to challenge Mugabe in the 2018 elections.
The Alliance is led by Tsvangirai. Commenting on Tsvangirais continued leadership, director of a UK-based think tank APPRI (Africa Public Policy Research institute), Lloyd Msipa, said: It will be a test of how great a leader Tsvangirai can be if he does the right thing and steps down. Tsvangirai has fought his fight, he has run his race. He has the chance to live behind a credible legacy if he steps down now and leaves a credible successor with time to put together a team to take his party to the next level. That will change the entire political discourse and even boost the voter registration process that is happening.
However, MDC Alliance principals have remained firmly behind Tsvangirai, insisting they will continue to support him as their presidential candidate, despite panic over his health.
MDC Alliance spokesperson and leader of the smaller MDC, Welshman Ncube, said they still have faith in Tsvangirai and he still remained the oppositions best chance to topple Zanu PF which has been in power since 1980. Daily News
So I want to get to know him properly. If I do meet him I will ask him a lot of things, she claimed then in a South African newspaper, adding: They (people who had supposedly promised to broker a meeting between Zodwa and Mugabe) called and asked to meet me and I said yes.
No Charges for Cops
in Killing of Man Who
Was 'Biking While Black'
President Trump calls him "rocket man"but what if the nuclear bomb we're fearing isn't what we should be afraid of when it comes to North Korea? At FiveThirtyEight, Michael Wilner makes the case that what we really should be worried about are biological and chemical weapons, which the scientists and former defense officials he spoke with believe Kim Jong Un is much more likely to unleash, particularly during "a pre-crisis stage." Wilner's take: "These weapons are easier to produce, to deliver, to conceal and to calibrate, and their use would be less likely to trigger the same international response as a nuclear strike." And the country has the goods, per an October report authored by Harvard scientists that acknowledges the difficulty in accurately assessing North Korea's capabilities.
Per the report, intelligence reports and defector statements suggest North Korea possesses 13 biological pathogens including anthrax, cholera, smallpox, and the plague, and may have the capability to cultivate and weaponize them in as few as 10 days. Just "a few kilograms of anthrax, equivalent to a few bottles of wine" could wipe out half a city's population, notes the report, which posits potential delivery methods: everything from putting pathogens into a city's water supply to employing "sleeper agents" posing as cleaning and disinfection workers equipped with backpack sprayerswith South Korea's people and the American troops there within reach. But Melissa Hanham of the Middlebury Institute of International Studies is skeptical in comments to Mic. "Part of the reason [biological weapons] were so easy to ban was because armies didnt like using them. It risked their own soldiers too much." (Read more North Korea stories.)
On Thursday, allegations surfaced in The Washington Post from not one, but four women, who said they had been pursued as teenagers by the Steve Bannon-backed conservative candidate for US Senate in Alabama, Roy Moore.
One of the girls making the allegations says she was 14 -- and Moore was 32 -- during an encounter in which she says Moore stripped to his white underpants, took off her clothes and touched her through her bra and underpants and led her hand toward his genitals, before she pulled her hand away.
If this sounds familiar, it may be because a similar accusation was made about Kevin Spacey this week by the mother of a then-18-year-old man, who says the actor grabbed his genitals. This followed on another accusation against Spacey from actor Anthony Rapp. (Spacey said he couldn't remember the incident with Rapp but apologized if it happened. The actor is now seeking unspecified treatment, according to his one-time publicist.)
What was the response from Hollywood? Spacey was fired from not just his award-winning television show, "House of Cards," ironically about the culture of corruption in Washington, but he was cut from a movie he had already shot -- "All the Money in the World" -- and replaced with Christopher Plummer. For good reason.
And what was the bold response from the morally superior Republican elites in Washington to accusations that the Senate candidate in Alabama had allegedly sexually assaulted an underage woman? (Moore has denied the accusations.)
The National Republican Senatorial Committee finally decided to end its financial commitment to supporting Moore's candidacy in a Friday afternoon announcement. But the response from the majority of elected Republican leaders in Washington was a series of mealy-mouthed statements, from President Donald Trump down to both male and female senators condemning the alleged actions but leaving a huge carve-out "if they are proven true."
So in the case of an actor, the word of the accuser is good, but when it comes to a Senate candidate, the word of four women who come out publicly -- on the record -- about what happened to them as teenagers is not good enough?
As The Washington Post explained about its bombshell story, neither Leigh Corfman (the then-14-year-old) nor any of the other women -- who did not know each other -- sought out the newspaper. Reporters unearthed the allegations in the process of earlier reporting on Moore's Senate campaign and based the new article "on interviews with more than 30 people who said they knew Moore between 1977 and 1982," the paper said.
What more exactly is needed to prove the accusations are true?
The crude political question is what happens now? It could be a slow fade away for Moore now that the NRSC has cut off him off.
But it may not be entirely over. Moore has said he has no plans to leave the race.
Bannon and his grass-roots movement have also remained firmly in Moore's corner. The former White House chief strategist even blamed The Washington Post report, with its brave statements from the four women, on the Democratic Party.
Much of the leadership within the Alabama Republican Party has also rallied around Moore.
Alabama State Auditor Jim Zeigler even compared Moore to Joseph, as in the Mary and Joseph of the Christian Bible, with this eye-popping statement, "Take Joseph and Mary. Mary was a teenager and Joseph was an adult carpenter. They became parents of Jesus."
Never mind that Joseph was not the father of Jesus in the biological sense, and Mary was a virgin. The state auditor of Alabama justified allegations of sexual assault of a minor by referencing the birth of Jesus.
And who is this savior-like character?
Roy Moore is the same guy who was suspended from his role as chief justice of the Alabama Supreme Court for ordering other judges in the state not to abide by the US Supreme Court ruling on same-sex marriage, with the justification, "This was a politically motivated effort by radical homosexual and transgender groups to remove me as chief justice of the Supreme Court because of outspoken opposition to their immoral agenda."
So let me get this straight. It is OK to allegedly pursue underage girls, and, in at least one case, allegedly assault one, but immoral for an adult same-sex couple who love each other to marry.
Moore is a test for the moral compass of the Republican Party. Is it going to push him out of the race and applaud the bravery of four women in Alabama, following the lead of Mitt Romney and John McCain, or is it going to hide behind carefully worded statements out of fear of Steve Bannon and the Trump movement?
CNN's Sophie Tatum contributed to this report.
The Navy is investigating a slapping incident near San Diego that left a SEAL candidate in a coma, the AP reports. The San Diego Union-Tribune reports that the candidate was injured on Oct. 12 during a study session at the Naval Special Warfare training complex in Coronado. The paper says as an incentive to answer questions correctly, the sailor and a friend had agreed to slap whichever one got an answer wrong. One candidate was slapped and fell to the floor, striking his head. Surgeons placed him in a medically induced coma.
SEAL spokesman Lt. Trevor Davids says the sailor is now in good condition and is recovering. The Naval Criminal Investigative Service and members of the warfare center are reviewing the incident.
(Read more Navy SEALs stories.)
As the sexual misconduct allegations roil the Alabama Senate race, Saturday Night Live waded right in with a sketch portraying candidate Roy Moore meeting with VP Mike Pence (Beck Bennett). Pence's advice: Get out. "Dont think of it as ending your campaign, think of it as going to conversion therapy to turn yourself into someone whos no longer a candidate," he said. But as Pence takes his leave, Kate McKinnon as Jeff Sessions pops out of the cupboard, which as Mashable notes, is "where we can just assume Keebler elves live when theyre in town from the forest."
"Now, Roy, youve been doing some controversial stuffwave a gun around on stage, tell folks Muslims shouldnt be allowed in Congress and that 9/11 was Gods punishment for sodomyI love it! You check a lot of boxes for me, Roy!" she chortles, before admonishing him that admitting to dating 16-year-olds might be a bridge too far. Moore responds that he's just kidding, and Sessions breathes a sigh of reliefbut not for long. "No, 'kidding' is the term I use for dating young ladies," Moore clarifies. Sessions then throws Moore out, saying, "I'm Alabama, but you, sir, are too Alabama!" Catch the sketch's end, which Slate notes includes a swipe at Louis CK, and other show highlights in the gallery. (Read more Saturday Night Live stories.)
A stash of frozen treats and other supplies rocketed toward the International Space Station on Sunday, this time from Virginia's cold eastern shore. NASA's commercial shipper, Orbital ATK, launched the cargo ship just after sunrise from Wallops Island, aboard an unmanned Antares rocket. The Cygnus capsule should reach the orbiting lab Tuesday, reports the AP, and its 7,400 pounds of cargo include treats for any of the station's six astronauts with a sweet tooth. There are frozen fruit bars, ice cream bars, ice cream sandwiches, and cups of chocolate and vanilla ice creamabout 80 in all, according to NASA. This marked Orbital ATK's first launch from its home turf in more than a year. The last time it made a space station delivery, it used another company's rocket flying from Cape Canaveral.
Crowds gathered at Wallops in freezing temperatures and cheered as the rocket soared toward the southeast. Sunrise made it hard to see the launch farther afield. The field of visibility stretched from New England to the Carolinas. A launch attempt on Saturday was nixed after a plane strayed into the restricted airspace. Sunday's try was almost foiled by a couple of boats that briefly wandered into the keep-out zone. Orbital ATK named the capsule after the last man to walk on the moon, Apollo 17's Gene Cernan, who died in January. During the final minutes of the countdown, a launch controller paid tribute to Cernan as well as JR Thompson, a high-ranking NASA and Orbital ATK official who died last week. SpaceX is making a station delivery next month.
(Read more International Space Station stories.)
The line of cars already stretched for miles before noon when Gage Laubach arrived at a tiny church outside San Antonio where a barbecue was being held to raise money for victims of the mass shooting in nearby Sutherland Springs. The steady stream of cars was still coming Saturday evening, hours after the Smokin' Angels BBQ Ministry opened its doors at Saint Mark's Lutheran Church. Organizers expected to feed maybe a few thousand people. But within an hour, the group ran out of the 5,000 pounds of meat volunteers stayed up smoking overnight. Another quick post on social media, and more than 6,500 pounds of additional meat arrived: turkeys, chickens, slabs of beef and pork. The carsand donationskept coming. "I don't know if we've slept in the last three days, but we felt a calling," said Mike Ritch, who co-founded Smokin' Angels BBQ Ministry after Hurricane Harvey. Ritch estimated tens of thousands of meals would be served by the end of the night.
The victims' families are "lost right now, and not much can take that away. But if they see this support, they'll see that their neighbors care," said Labauch, who along with his friends unfurled a 30-foot Texas flag over the parking lot. People honked and stopped to take photos and selfies with the flag. Plates were priced at $10, but Ritch said dozens of people paid more for to-go orders. He said all the money will go directly to the families. "There was one guy who came through the line and ordered four plates, and he gave us $400," Ritch said, grinning. "There's not just one story of generosity worth telling. It's everyone who came." Ritch, 34, and his wife started the ministry after volunteering during the recovery efforts for Hurricane Harvey. "We saw what we could do with barbecue," Ritch said. Ritch will announce the total raised on Sunday, reports WITN.
(Read more church shootings stories.)
The first polls coming in after sexual misconduct claims against US Senate nominee Roy Moore broke on Thursday arent looking good for the GOP hopeful. According to Politico, three flash polls conducted after the Washington Posts story captured national attention found Moores lead shrinking in the Alabama race, while a fourth put Democratic nominee Doug Jones ahead by four percentage points. Conservative-leaning firm JMC Analytics released the latter poll, conducted from Thursday through Saturday, which found Jones ahead of Moore 48%-44%. (A September/October poll from the same firm had Moore up by eight points.) The other polls saw Moore up by two to four percentage points with a greater share of undecided voters reporting.
Per the LA Times, Moore had an eight-point lead in the typically solid red state prior to the claims from four women that Moore had sexual contact with them as teenagers made headlines. (Moore has denied the allegations.) Politico notes that polls conducted after a scandal breaks can be a misleading predictor of a races outcome, citing President Trumps drop in polling after the Access Hollywood tapein which Trump is heard bragging about sexually assaulting womenwas released during the 2016 election. While GOP leaders are distancing themselves from Moore, polling found Republicans in Alabama split on whether to support the nominee in Decembers special election. (Read more Alabama stories.)
Lebanon's Prime Minister Saad Hariri said his resignation was his decision, dismissing reports he was forced to quit a unity government with his rival Hezbollah militant group. Speaking from Saudi Arabia Sunday in a live interview to his station Future TV, Hariri held back tears. "I am free," he told the interviewer. He said he decided to resign to save the country from imminent danger, the AP reports. Hariri said he will return to Lebanon "very soon," ''in days," and that his resignation was designed to "cause a positive shock" in the country. He warned that Iranian interference is ruining relations with other Arab countries and that he "can't be the only one making concessions while the others do whatever they want."
Hariri added that Saudi Arabia, his ally, wants Lebanon to stay clear of regional conflicts, and not to side with Iran. He said that withdrawing his resignation is conditional on Lebanon's militant group Hezbollah committing to remaining neutral on regional conflicts. Hezbollah has sent thousands of fighters to Syria, Lebanon's neighbor, to support the forces of Syria's President Bashar Assad. Hariri said the unity government he formed a year ago was supposed to stick to an agreement not to interfere in regional affairs. He said Hezbollah has not kept up its end of the deal. "We are in the eye of the storm," he said.
(Read more Lebanon stories.)
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The mother-daughter duo of Kristin and Julie Loeffelholz opened Sweet Tea Cakes on Sept. 1 at 7414 Mineral Point Road. Sweet Tea specializes i
Bhubaneswar:
The OMQ (Ore, Mines & Quarries) Division and Ferro Alloys & Mineral Division (FAMD) of have been honoured with the Aqua Foundation's Excellence Award 2017 under the category of Sustainable Development in the Mining Sector.
The award was presented at a ceremony held during an International conference, XI World Aqua 2017 at New recently, a company release said.
The "Aqua Excellence Awards" are the highest awards given by Aqua Foundation to its members, stakeholders and contributors in recognition of their outstanding achievements in the field of water, environment, energy, earth sciences, atmospheric sciences, planetary sciences, pollution control and sustainability solutions, it said.
Also Read: Tata Steel taking steps to stop theft of company products
Aqua Foundation honours, in each World Aqua Congress, individual/nominees of corporate members who have made a mark in their respective fields of expertise or have made a significant contribution towards Humanity.
was nominated for the award for constantly complying with all regulations and mining laws in the country. With the adoption of best practices, modern technologies and innovation to ensure in mining activities, the Company has been causing minimum environmental impact while contributing to social development in neighbouring communities, it said.
Also Read: Ratan Tata testifies in Netanyahu graft case, claims Israeli media
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New Delhi:
A 28-year-old girl was found shot dead at her residence in Lucknow's PGI. Police said, her father's licenced weapon was recovered near her body.
According to Lucknow Police, at least five rounds of bullet were pumped into her body or she shot herself. The reasons behind the killing or suicide are yet to be ascertained.
The deceased has been identified as 28-year-old Martia, a civil service aspirant.
"We are investigating the matter in all angles. It would too early to comment," said a police officer investigating the case.
The body of the deceased has been seized by the police and sent for post-mortem.
Also Read: Ryan murder case: Accuseds father says his son was tortured by CBI
The officer added, they received a call from her parent's after she did not respond for more than five hours or so. The girl's parents were shocked to find the girl lying in a pool of blood when police broke the door to recover her body.
New Delhi:
Noted Urdu poet and lyricist Javed Akhtar has come down heavily on politicians saying that those who think they are bigger than the nation are wrong and should know that they do not build a nation but people of the country do.
Akhtar was speaking at Sahitya Aaj Tak. He rued the fact that some vested interests have misinterpreted the definition of nationalism.
"The interpretation of nationalism for some people is quite strange. They think that they are the nation. If you oppose them, then you become anti-national.
"These politicians are like the harvesting crop. They change when the crop changes. They don't stay here for eternity. The nation is larger than a political party and a politician. Any politician who thinks that he is the nation, then he is wrong," Akhtar said.
"This is a very sorry state of affairs that any Muslim is not considered an Indian. Tipu Sultan is not an Indian and if I do not agree with this thought, then I become anti-national. Then I am an anti-national," he said.
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Also read: Bigg Boss 11: THIS Yeh Hai Mohabbatein actress calls Salman Khan's show as 'FAKE'
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New Delhi:
Award winning Bollywood actor Prakash Raj, who is known for not mincing his words, once again made the headlines after he took a jibe on Prime Minister Narendra Modi and BJP.
While speaking to media in press club of Bengaluru, targeted the Modi government and stated there is a section of the country who would like to correct their mistake of 2014.
"I believe there is a silent majority in this country, which given a chance, wants to correct its mistake," Prakash was quoted as saying.
He further added, "Things have changed since 2014. Even earlier dissent was silenced, but that was because they wanted to hold on to power, like emergency. But today it is done for ideological reasons. There is a hunger to hold on to what they have".
Interestingly, this is not the first time Actor Prakash Raj has targeted PM Modi. Earlier, the veteran actor had on PM Modi last month when few people were celebrating death of Gauri Lankesh on social media.
Prakash Raj said, We dont know who killed my dear friend Gauri Lankesh, but we can see the people who are celebrating her murder. In my life, I have never seen so much abuse like what happens on social media. Some people followed by our Prime Minister on Twitter spew venom. And the Prime Minister turns a blind eye to this.
He said he is not worried about trolling on social media and he will continue to speak. He said trolling makes you more stronger.
When he was asked about National Anthem row, Prakash said," I will stand for it even if I'm at home. What is so special about cinema halls? You should not inject it".
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New Delhi :
Cow vigilantes have struck again in Alwar, where a Muslim man identified as Ummar was shot dead by unknown assailants in the wee hours of November 10. Police have not registered an FIR until now.A
Police have so far not given any statement concerning the unfortunate incident that took place in Fahari village near Govindh Gadh in Alwar district of Rajasthan.
According to media reports the killers did not just stop after shooting Ummar. They put the body at the railway tracks so as to make it look like an accident.A A
We're told there were 3 people, one of whom was shot dead when they were going with their cows. Neither relatives nor anyone else was there so we'll investigate to know what happened: Anil Benwal, Police on a man allegedly shot dead while transporting cows in Rajasthan's Alwar pic.twitter.com/n9KH454CMt a ANI (@ANI) November 12, 2017
The relatives of Ummar alleged police presence at the scene of the crime. The left limb and the head got severed but the rest of the body with bullets is intact.A
As per Sher Muhammad, the family members of deceased Ummar are not willing to take his body for burial because they want to make sure that justice is served.A
Earlier in April this year another case of cow related death surfaced when diary farmer Pehlu Khan died due to injuries sustained as a result of an assault by the vigilantes.A
All the six accused were given clean chit by the investigating team. Ummar is survived by a wife and eight children.A
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Telangana:
A group of students from a private school at Chaitanyapuri held demonstrations on the school premises against what they termed as 'long school hours'.
The protesting students of high school, who held the protest on Saturday, accused the school authorities of running classes from 6.30 am to 6.30 pm and raised slogans- 'we want justice'.
"Our school classes are held from 6.30 am to 6.30 pm while in other schools, the classes are conducted from 8 am to4.30 pm. After school hours, we again go to tuitions and there is homework also," a student is seen saying in a video circulated in media.
"By the time we go to sleep it is around 10.30 pm to 11 pm and again next morning we have to get up at 5.30 am to attend school at 6.30 am. We are deprived of sleep...parents also need to understand," the student said.
Also Read: Class 10 student bids suicide in Hyderabad after teacher scolds her
Asked about their demands, other protesting students said they wanted immediate change in timings of school classes. City-based child rights NGO 'Balala Hakkula Sangham' accused the school management of subjecting the schoolchildren to stress.
The NGO's honorary president Achyuta Rao alleged that the school authorities are violating all the norms and moreover giving heavy homework to students.
"The students told us that they are hardly getting any sleep after studying 13 to 14 hours and again their parents are sending them to tuitions," Rao said.
He further said they have brought the matter to the notice of Ranga Reddy District Collector, seeking action against the school for "violating norms".
Also Read: Lucknow: 28-year-old shot dead inside house
Meanwhile, a school official refuted the allegations and said they conduct classes from 8.30 am to 4.30 pm and the students are given 30 minutes break in between and the students are asked to do the homework within the school timings.
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Thiruvananthapuram:
A 25-year-old Hindu woman in Kerala has moved to the high court against a man who allegedly forged documents to marry her, forced her to convert to Islam and was planning to sell her as sex slave to Islamic State of Iraq and the Syria (ISIS) terrorists.
The Kerala woman in her plea has stated that she had met one Muhammed Riyaz in Bengaluru and the they got into a relationship.She in her complaint further alleged that Riyaz forced her to change religion by blackmailing with a private video.
The 25-year-old Hindu woman in her complaint has also mentioned that she believes Riyaz is member of Popular Front of India (PFI), a fundamentalist group.
The woman has asked the Kerala High Court to nullify her marriage to one Muhammad Riyaz and requested that the National Investigation Agency look into the case. The Kerala High Court will hear the petition on November 13. She claims Riyazs motives only after she shifted to Saudi Arabia with him, from where she somehow managed to escape and contacted her parents.
Also read| Ranchi: After fatwa, Muslim woman Yoga teacher Rafia Naaz's house attacked
The woman in her complaint has also mentioned that Riyaz forced her to watch Zakir Naiks video and made her attend Islamic classes. In the first week of October Riyaz has planned their travel to Syria but she learnt his move and returned to Ahmedabad.
Also Read: Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi says Muslim woman above age of 45 can go on Haj pilgrimage alone
The woman had filed the petition at the Kerala High Court on Friday and the court will hear the case on November 13. She has also requested the National Investigation Agency to look into the case.
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New Delhi:
A Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) activist was allegedly murdered in Thrissur on Sunday.He was an accused in the murder case of a CPIM activist four years ago.
The victim, Anandam, was riding a two-wheeler when he was attacked down by a group of men in a car. Later, he was hacked to death.
On October 15, another RSS activist was brutally attacked by miscreants in Keralaas Kannur district.
The Kerala BJP unit had claimed that the attack was carried out by Communist Party of India (Marxist) or CPI-M suuporters, at Muzhuppilangad near Thalassery in the politically volatile Kannur district of Kerala.
#UPDATE RSS worker Anand was allegedly murdered in Kerala's Thrissur. He was an accused in the murder case of a CPIM activist 4 years ago pic.twitter.com/Bvm3wmNs8M a ANI (@ANI) November 12, 2017
The activists of RSS-BJP and the CPI(M) have been allegedly targeting each other in the state with Kannur being the epicentre.
#Kerala: An RSS worker allegedly murdered in Thrissur. More details awaited. a ANI (@ANI) November 12, 2017
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Ahmedabad:
A day after Pakistan announced to allow former Indian Navy officer Kulbhushan Jadav to meet his wife, Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Sunday called the move a good humanitarian gesture.
Sitharaman during a press conference in Ahmedabad said, I learnt about Pakistan's decision from the media. I don't know what is the position on allowing Jadhavs wife to visit him, but it is a good gesture. It will boost Jadhav's morale in jail."
The defence minister also added that India has approached the International Court of Justice (on the issue). We are making all efforts to get Kulbhushan Jadhav released from Pakistan prison, she added.
Jadhav a former Indian Navy officer has been accused of being an agent of India foreign intelligence service, Research and Analysis Wing. He has been sentenced to death for alleged espionage by Pakistan court and is currently in Pakistan prison.
Pakistan had been denying repeated requests from New Delhi consular to allow Jadhav meet his wife. But, on Saturday Islamabad informed the Indian High Commission that it would allow the former navy officer to meet his wife.
Also read: Pakistan allows meeting of Kulbhushan Jadhav with his wife on humanitarian grounds
Pakistan foreign office spokesperson Dr Mohammad Faisal on Saturday had said, The government of Pakistan has decided to arrange a meeting of Jadhav with his wife in the country, purely on humanitarian grounds."
Also read| Pakistan's claim on Jadhavs swapping with Peshawar attacker another imaginary lie: India
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Palghar:
A 23-year-old youth accusing the police department of continuous harassment and bribe demands allegedly set himself ablaze at the office of a senior officer at Virar in Maharashtra's Palghar district . The deceased youths family members allege Virar police responsible for the incident.
A video of the deceased, Vikash Jha, has gone viral on social media, where he can be seen blaming the Virar police for continuous harassment and bribe demands. He can be seen accusing a local corporator of asking for money to help him out of the case.
However, the Maharashtra Police has denied the allegations made by the deceased. According to Palghar police, Jha had eight offences registered against him since 2014, including robbery, assault and cheating.
The police added the he was wanted recently for a latest case against him. The case was registered on Thursday accusing him of outraging womans modesty, assault and criminal intimidation.
Palghar Superintendent of Police Manjunath Singe said, We have initiated a inquiry on the allegations made by Jha. We have sent the video clip for forensic test, if the video is found to be genuine proper actions will be taken.
Also read: Delhi: Youth attempts suicide near India Gate
According to reports, the deceased, Vikash Jha, set himself on fire at the office of Vishwas Walvi, Vasai Sub-divisional Police Officer on Friday evening. The police officers poured water on him to douse the fire and rushed him to a nearby private hospital for early medical treatment.
According to the doctors of the private hospital, Jha was admitted with 80%-90% burns. He was later shifted to Kasturba Hospital, where he succumbed to his injuries on Saturday.
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New Delhi:
It seems that there is no sign of relief for Chennai people. The Met office has predicted about 2 cm-6 cm of rain on Sunday and it is expected that will continue until Wednesday.
According to weather blogger Pradeep John, "This will be the second spell of the northeast monsoon. Usually, one spell brings rainfall for only 3-4 days, but the first spell had brought rainfall for nine days."
The coastal districts will likely to get rainfall, precisely in the stretch connecting Chennai and Nagapattinam.
As per the area cyclone warning centre director S Balachandran, the city will witness sporadic showers on Sunday.
Most parts of north coastal TN and some parts of south coastal TN will get rainfall on Sunday. The interior districts of Chennai will face irregular rainfall.
But in between isolated rainfall, some spells will bring heavy (7-11cm) or very heavy rainfall (12-20cm) in Chennai, Kanchipuram and Tiruvallur.
According to an IMD bulletin, a fresh low-pressure area is likely to form over southeast Bay of Bengal around Tuesday.
Since October, Tamil Nadu has received 25cm, against the normal of 26cm. Chennai, however, has recorded excess rainfall, receiving 68cm against the normal of 41cm.
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New Delhi:
The Arvind Kejriwal-led Delhi government is planning to move to the Green Court on Monday to file an appeal to reconsider its "no exemption" for women and two-wheelers after it scrapped the odd-even scheme on Saturday evening.
"On Monday, the government will file an appeal in the Green Court to reconsider its no exemption for women and two-wheelers," said Delhi Transport Minister Kailash Gehlot.
Amidst alarming situation of air pollution in Delhi, the Delhi government had canceled its plan to implement the five-day odd-even scheme for cars in the National Capital after the National Green Tribunal (NGT) said that the plan cannot exempt VIPs, two-wheelers, and women.
The odd-even scheme was scheduled to be rolled out in Delhi for five days from November 13 to November 17. The plan was meant to curb the level of pollution in the National Capital.
The decision was declared after an emergency cabinet meeting held after the green panel accepted the odd-even scheme with some conditions.
Also Read: Delhi Air Pollution: NGT gives Kejriwal Govt green signal to implement odd-even scheme
The NGT asserted that "it seems that you just want to reduce vehicles from roads... What is the basis of exemptions if you want to improve air quality?"
As high-intensity dense smog choked the city, the Delhi government had announced the relaunch of the odd-even scheme. Under the plan, cars with number plates ending in an odd number and even-number are allowed to ply on alternate days.
Delhi Transport Minister Kailash Gahlot said the Delhi government could not compromise on the safety of the women. He also added that we also did not have enough public transport alternatives to accommodate the over-60-lakh two-wheeler riders.
"At the moment we are calling it off. We will again approach the NGT and will ask them to allow exemptions to women and two-wheelers," he added. On Monday, the government will file an appeal in the NGT to reconsider its "no exemption" for women and two-wheelers.
And the other reason for the decision to withdraw the scheme was low pollution levels.
The green panel also pointed that "Odd Even scheme must be implemented in Delhi NCR as and when PM 10 crosses 300 level and PM 2.5 crosses 500". The NGT said that the emergency vehicles shall get an exemption during the odd-even scheme.
Also Read: Delhi Air Pollution: NGT to take call on Kejriwal Govts Odd-Even scheme today
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New Delhi:
Bharat Nirman Foundation, a non-profit organisation on Sunday awarded over two dozen people from various walks of life for their contributions to the governments Make in India initiative at an event in New Delhi.
A socio-ethical fashion show was organised at the event.
According to a statement issued by the organisation, Union Minister of State for Health and Family Welfare Ashwini Kumar Choubey attended the event.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi launched his flagship initiative Make in India on September 25, 2014, with a clear-cut objective to boost indigenous manufacturing in India and reduce dependency on overseas imports.
ALSO READ | Rahul Gandhi in Gujarat: PM Modis Make in India project is bogus as every shop sells Made in China goods
The campaign encourages and motivates multi-national and national companies to manufacture their products in India. Devised to transform India into a manufacturing hub, the drive shall also help in generating employment opportunities in the core manufacturing sectors.
(With PTI inputs)
ALSO READ: From Make in India to GST, PM Modi's 10 key decisions to spearhead India's social and economic development
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New Delhi:
In-Service Doctors in Rajasthan have called off their 7-day strike on Sunday after asuccessfula talks with health minister Kali Charan Saraf and other top government officials.
The doctors said the government has agreed on most of their demands and they shall resume their duties from Monday morning.
"The government gave nod to all our 33 demands including grade pay scale of Rs 10,000 and arrears. All in-service doctors will return to their duties from Monday morning," said Dr. Ajay Choudhary, president of All Rajasthan In-Service Doctors Association (ARISDA).
Doctors in Rajasthan end strike after talks with state Govt representatives were successful a ANI (@ANI) November 12, 2017
Earlier on Saturday, fourteen doctors were arrested in the state under the Rajasthan Essential Services Maintenance Act (RESMA).
The doctors were arrested from Tonk, Jaipur, Kota, Swai Madhopur, Bharatpur, Jhalawar and Banswara districts, ADG (Law and Order) NRK Reddy said.
The arrests came after the deadline set by the government for the medical practitioners to resume work expired on Friday evening, the officer said.
On Friday, six doctors were arrested and on Saturday, eight, Reddy said, adding that 100 doctors have joined work to avoid arrest.
The major demands of the agitating doctors included single shift, hike in the grade pay scale and promotions.
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New Delhi:
The government will provide all help to the family of the Indian-American motel owner, who was shot dead in the US, External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj said on Sunday.
Akash Talati, 40, was shot dead on Saturday during an exchange of gunfire between a man who had been escorted out of the club and a security guard, local police said.
Talati owned Knights Inn and Diamondz Gentlemens Club in Fayetteville city, North Carolina.
The Indian Embassy in the US has informed about the circumstances leading to the death of Talati, Swaraj said in a series of tweets.
Indian Embassy in US has informed me of the circumstances leading to the death of Akash Talati, a US citizen of Indian origin, Swaraj tweeted.
Indian Embassy in US has informed me of the circumstances leading to the death of Akash Talati, a US citizen of Indian origin. /1 Sushma Swaraj (@SushmaSwaraj) November 12, 2017
ALSO READ | US: Indian-origin man kills wife, gets 20 years in prison
The deceased was shot by an assailant who was escorted out of his club. The security guard returned the fire and the assailant was also injured, she said in another tweet.
We are in touch with the family of the deceased and will provide them all help, she added.
(With PTI inputs)
ALSO READ: Indian origin man kills wife, two daughters, self
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New Delhi:
American Space agency NASA was gearing up for the launch of its latest rocket on Sunday morning, while a stray plane flew into the restricted airspace at Wallops Island to delay the plan.
"We have confirmed that the aircraft that aborted today's launch attempt was a small aircraft flying at about 500ft approximately 6 miles offshore." NASA's Twitter account for the Orbital ATK stated.
The unexpected incident prompted NASAs commercial shipper, Orbital ATK, to call off the liftoff though the Virginia-based company had reportedly attempted again to launch its unmanned Antares rocket with 7,400 pounds of cargo.
According to reports, the Cygnus capsule is carrying fresh fruit, vegetables and ice cream bars for the six station astronauts, plus mealworms and micro clover to ease the process of student experiment.
Though the launch was expected to be visible as far north as Boston and as far south as Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, sunrise has made it hard to enjoy the breath-taking sight.
Also Read: SpaceX's latest rocket engine explodes during test in Texas
This was Orbital ATK's first mission from its home base in more than a year. The last time it made a space station delivery, it used another company's rocket flying from Cape Canaveral, Florida.
We were working no issues until an aircraft flew into restricted airspace. We are currently de-tanking and will be ready to go tomorrow morning Orbital ATK (@OrbitalATK) November 11, 2017
The space station crew, meanwhile, took advantage of the lull to beam down thanks to US veterans and wish everyone a happy Veterans' Day.
(With PTI inputs)
Also Read: NASA releases SoundCloud playlist to make this Halloween extra spooky
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New Delhi :
Giving shape to their security cooperation under the proposed quadrilateral coalition, India, the US, Japan and Australia today held their first official- level talks here with a focus on keeping the Indo-Pacific region "free and open", seen as a move to counter China's aggressive behaviour in the area.
Soon after the meeting, India, Australia and Japan issued separate statements listing the Indo-Pacific as the major areaof the deliberations and resolved to expand cooperation to uphold a rules-based order and respect for international lawin the strategically important region.
The meeting comes ahead of the ASEAN summit here on Tuesday which is also likely to discuss the security challenges facing the Indo-Pacific region and China's military expansion in the South China Sea.
In a statement, the ministry of external affairs (MEA) said the consultations were held on issues of common interestin the Indo-Pacific region with a focus on cooperation based on converging vision and values for promotion of peace,stability and prosperity in the area.
"They agreed that a free, open, prosperous and inclusive Indo-Pacific region serves the long-term interests of allcountries in the region and of the world at large.
The officials also exchanged views on addressing common challengesof terrorism and proliferation linkages impacting the region as well as on enhancing connectivity," the MEA said. In its statement, the Japanese foreign ministry said officials discussed measures to ensure a free and open international order based on the rule of law in the Indo-Pacific. "From this perspective, the participants discussed the direction for cooperation, including with countries in theregion, in upholding the rules-based order and respect for international law in the Indo-Pacific," it said.
The Australian foreign ministry said the four countries shared a vision for increased prosperity and security in theIndo-Pacific region and will work together to ensure that it "remains free and open".
"The officials examined ways to achieve common goals and address shared challenges in the region. This includesupholding the rules-based order in the Indo-Pacific and respect for international law, freedom of navigation and overflight, increase connectivity," it said.
The MEA said the Indian side highlighted India's 'Act East' policy as the cornerstone of its engagement in the Indo-Pacific region. The meeting also deliberated on enhancing cooperation in dealing with challenges of terrorism and talked about tackling proliferation threats, including North Korea's nuclear and missile programme.
"Officials also agreed to work together to address threats to international peace and security posed by the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, including the DPRK's (North Korea) nuclear and missile programmes," the Australian foreign ministry said. It said the four countries committed to continuing the quadrilateral discussions and deepening cooperation on thebasis of shared values and principles.
The MEA said, "The discussions focused on cooperation based on their converging vision and values for promotion of peace, stability and prosperity in an increasingly inter- connected region that they share with each other and with other partners".
Prime Minister Narendra Modi is scheduled to have bilateral meetings with US President Donald Trump and JapanesePrime Minister Shinzo Abe tomorrow and the security scenario in the Indo-Pacific region may figure in the meetings.
The formation of a quadrilateral security dialogue comprising India, the US, Australia and Japan was first mooted around 10 years back but it did not see the light of day. Japan's Foreign Minister Taro Kono last month had said that Tokyo favours the quadrilateral dialogue to further booststrategic partnership among the four countries.
Reacting to the Japanese move, India had said it was open to working with like-minded countries on issues that advance its interests. The US had said it was looking at a "working-level" quadrilateral meeting in the near term with India, Japan and Australia.
The US and Japan have been pushing for a deeper Indian role in the strategically key Indo-Pacific region. Joint Secretary (South division) in the MEA, Vinay Kumar and Joint Secretary (East Asia) Pranay Verma attended the meeting.
The move to set up the quadrilateral comes in the backdrop of growing Chinese assertiveness in the South China Sea. The use of the term "Indo-Pacific" by Trump has led to speculation that it may have something to do with Washingtonpreparing the ground for a revival of the quadrilateral alliance between the US, Japan, Australia and India to counterChina's rise.
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News Delhi:
Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Sunday briefly met US President Donald Trump and Chinese Premier Li Keqiang on the sidelines of a gala dinner to mark the 50th anniversary of the ASEAN.
According to the official sources, PM Modi and US President Trump shall also hold a bilateral meet on Monday, where both leaders are expected to discuss counter-terrorism, trade and the security situation in the Indo-Pacific region.
It will be the first meeting between the two leaders following a proposal to have a quadrilateral alliance among India, the US, Japan, and Australia.
India, Australia, US, Japan hold first meet on 'Quad' coalition to counter rising China
Giving shape to their security cooperation under the proposed quadrilateral coalition, India, the US, Japan and Australia today held their first official- level talks here with a focus on keeping the Indo-Pacific region "free and open", seen as a move to counter China's aggressive behaviour in the area.
Soon after the meeting, India, Australia and Japan issued separate statements listing the Indo-Pacific as the major areaof the deliberations and resolved to expand cooperation to uphold a rules-based order and respect for international lawin the strategically important region.
Japan last month had indicated that it would propose a top-level dialogue with the US, India and Australia. Sources said officials of the four countries may meet on the sidelines of the ASEAN summit in Manila.
Reacting to the Japanese move, India had said that it was open to working with like-minded countries on issues that advance its interests. The US had said it was looking at a "working-level" quadrilateral meeting in the near term with India, Japan and Australia.
The move to set up the quadrilateral comes in the backdrop of growing Chinese assertiveness in the South China Sea. The US has been favouring a larger role for India in the strategically key Indo-Pacific region.
The use of the term "Indo-Pacific" by Trump has led to speculation that it may have something to do with Washington preparing the ground for a revival of the so-called Quadrilateral strategic alliance between the US, Japan, Australia and India.
Earlier on Saturday, Trump had praised India's "astounding" growth after it opened up its economy and also lauded Modi, saying he has been working successfully to bring the vast country and its people together.
The Modi-Abe-Trump trio at Gala dinner:
The trio of PM Narendra Modi, Japanese PM Shinzo Abe and US President Donald Trump was seen chit chatting on Sunday on the sidelines of a gala dinner.
PM also met Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev and Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak at the reception for the leaders who have arrived in Manila for the 31st ASEAN summit and related meetings.
He also held brief interactions with several other leaders who attended the reception hosted by Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte at the mega SMX Convention Centre in Pasay City here.
The prime minister, as well as all other leaders, wore Barong Tagalong, an embroidered shirt which is the national dress of the Philippines. Renowned Filipino designer Albert Andrada has designed the shirts.
Modi also tweeted pictures of his interaction with several leaders. The menu of the gala dinner featured various Filipino cuisines including Filipino steak sushi.
(With PTI Inputs)
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Guards stand next to the U.S. Constitution in the rotunda of the National Archives in Washington in 2003.
New Delhi:
A burial ceremony of two Indian soldiers from the 39th Royal Garhwal Rifles, who laid down their lives in World War I in France, will be held on Sunday at the French Military Cemetery in La Gorgue, Army Said.
On September 20 last year, during an excavation on the southern side of Richebourg village near Laventie Military Cemetery, about 230 km from Paris, two human remains were found.
On examining their belongings, they were identified as causalities of the 39th Royal Garhwal Rifles.
The office of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission (CWWGC), which is the curator of graves of these unsung heroes, in consultation with the French government and the Indian embassy in France, decided to hold a burial ceremony at the Laventie Military Cemetery, with full military honours, a statement said.
A delegation of the Indian Army comprising the commandant and subedar major of the Garhwal Rifles Regimental Centre, two bagpipers from the Garhwal Rifles Regimental Pipe band and Colonel Nitin Negi was nominated to attend the ceremony.
Colonel Nitin Negi is the grandson of late Naik Darwan Singh Negi, who was awarded the Victoria Cross for his gallantry in the Battle of Festubert.
In a symbolic gesture, the soil from the graves of these soldiers would be brought back to their homeland.
In an interaction earlier this week with the PTI, Sqn. Ldr. (retired) Rana Chinna, a military historian, who has done extensive work on the participation of Indian soldiers in the world wars, said nearly 1.5 million soldiers from the country had participated in World War 1.
Nearly 4,500 of them died in France and Belgium, he had said.
During World War I, the Garhwal Brigade comprising of 1st/39th and 2nd/39th Royal Garhwal Rifles showed unparalleled bravery in those treacherous trenches of France and Flanders. The Garhwal Brigade earned six Battle Honours and two Victoria Cross in France and Flanders Theatre, the statement said.
On this occasion, homage will also be paid to the soldiers of Indian Meerut Division at Nueve Chapelle War Memorial in France by laying wreaths on behalf of General Bipin Rawat, chief of the Army staff, by Brigadier Indrajit Chatterjee and Subedar Major Trilok Singh Negi of the Garhwal Rifles Regimental Centre.
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New Delhi:
The Pakistani government has asked Punjab Home Department to provide high-level security to Hafiz Saeed, the mastermind of 2008 Mumbai terror attacks and wanted by Indian authorities in view of threat to his life claiming that a foreign intelligence agency has devised a plan to eliminate him.
The National Counter Terrorism Authority has in a letter said the agency had paid Rs 80 million to two activists of a banned outfit to kill Saeed asking Punjab Home Department to ensure foolproof security for the Jamat-ud-Dawah (JuD) chief who is under house arrest in Lahore since January 30 under the Anti-Terrorism Act 1997.
The JuD has already been declared as a foreign terrorist organisation by the US in June 2014 while Saeed carries a reward of USD 10 million announced by the US for his role in terror activities.
(With PTI inputs)
Also read: Burial ceremony of two Royal Garhwal Rifles soldiers killed in WW-I to be held in France today
Also read: Nuclear deal 'not negotiable': Iran tells France
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New Delhi:
At least 328 people died and over 1700 were injured after a massive earthquake of 7.3 magnitudes rattled northern Iraq near the border with Iran on late Sunday evening.
The deaths have occurred on the Iranian side and the numbers of the dead & wounded are swiftly increasing after earthquake magnitude 7.3 shook Iran's western province. The latest numbers of death were 328, reported news agency AFP.
Earlier, Iranian news agency ISNA reported that 61 people killed and over 300 were injured in Kermanshah province on the Iraqi border and "some (people) might be buried under the rubble."
Six others were reported dead on the Iraq side of the border.
aWe are in the process of setting up three emergency relief camps,a said Mojtaba Nikkerdar, the deputy governor of Iranas Kermanshah province.
The Iranian officials said, at least eight villages were hit in Iran and rescue teams have been dispatched to those areas. The quake-hit villages suffered electricity cut while telecommunication services were also disturbed.
The quake struck in Halabja, southeast of Sulaymaniyah, a city in the Kurdish region of Iraq near Iran border at around 9:20 PM and had a depth of 33.9 kilometres (21 miles), the USGS said.
The tremors of the massive quake were felt as far away as Turkey, Israel, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates.
As it happened:
#A Iran earthquake toll rises to 207 dead, 1,700 injured
#A Iran quake toll rises to 164 dead & 1,600 injured
# Over 140 killed, 860 injured in 7.2-magnitude earthquake along Iran-Iraq border
# Canada PMA Justin Trudeau expresses hisA deepest sympathies to the families affected by the earthquake.
Tragic news from Iran and Iraq today. Canadians offer their deepest sympathies to the families affected by the earthquake in the region. a Justin Trudeau (@JustinTrudeau) 13 November 2017
#A Death toll rises to 129 in Iranian quake: state media (Source: AFP)
Death toll rises to 129 in Iranian quake: state media (Source: AFP) a ANI (@ANI) November 13, 2017
# Death reports also coming from Iran. Six people are reportedly killed. Death numbers increase to 67.
# Official death toll in earthquake on Iran-Iraq border: 61, Injured: More than 300
Iranian officials raise death toll to at least 61, more than 300 injured during earthquake on Iran-Iraq border region: AP a ANI (@ANI) November 12, 2017
# Water supply in the province has been disrupted, being repaired.
#A Airborne Emergency team of Qazvin was on standby for the rescue operation of earthquake victims in Kermanshah
# Iraq-Iran earthquake: The numbers of the dead & wounded are swiftly increasing after earthquake magnitude 7.2 shook Iran's western province.
#A Death toll rises to 61, over 300 injured in Kermanshah province on the Iraqi border: Iranian news agency ISNA
#A "For the moment, we have 30 deaths in different cities," Mojtaba Nikkerdar, the deputy governor of Kermanshah province said, underscoring that the toll could rise further.
People took to Twitter and posted videos and pictures of post-earthquakeA chaos.
First shots from #Iraq #Iran border #earthquake #deprem@Toplumsal_Afet pic.twitter.com/95IX4ePri4
Iraq: video showing the chaos in coffee shop in #Sulaymaniyah after an #earthquake pic.twitter.com/f8cSmXcYIM
a Ali Al Shouk (@alialshouk) November 12, 2017
# Rescue teams have been deployed in the area amid fears the death toll will rise.
#A At least six people have died so far and as much as 50 are reportedly injured. Death toll to riseA further.
# Massive earthquake magnitude 7.3 hits Iraq-Iran border region: US Geological Survey (USGS)
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Tehran:
Iran's nuclear deal is 'not negotiable', Iranian foreign ministry spokesman Bassam Ghassemi said on Sunday in response to remarks by the French president.
Emmanuel Macron called for vigilance towards Tehran over its ballistic missile programme and regional activities, in an interview published Wednesday by the Emirati daily Al-Ittihad.
"We have told French leaders on several occasions that the Iran nuclear deal is not negotiable and that no other issues can be included in the text of the 2015 agreement", state news agency IRNA quoted Ghassemi as saying.
France, the foreign ministry speaker said, is "fully aware of our country's intangible position concerning the issue of Iran's defensive affairs which are not negotiable".
In the interview with Al-Ittihad, published during Macron's 24-hour visit to Abu Dhabi, the French president said: "It is important to remain firm with Iran over its regional activities and its ballistic programme."
Macron also said there was no immediate alternative to the Iranian nuclear deal -- long lambasted by US President Donald Trump -- which curbs Iran's nuclear programme.
Read more: IS recaptures last Syrian city of its collapsing 'caliphate'
France has been trying to salvage 2015 nuclear which Iran signed with six world powers -- Britain, China, Germany, France, Russia and the United States.
On October 13, Macron told Iranian President Hassan Rouhani in a phone call that France remained committed to the deal.
But the French leader stressed it was also necessary to have a dialogue with Iran on other strategic issues, including Tehran's ballistic missile programme and regional security, a proposal ruled out by Iran.
Macron's visit this week to Abu Dhabi came amid renewed tensions between regional arch-rivals Iran and Saudi Arabia.
Iran's nuclear deal saw sanctions imposed on Tehran lifted in exchange for limits on its atomic programme.
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New Delhi:
In a move to ban deadly firearms, Pakistan Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi has suspended licences for all the deadly automatic weapons in the country.
After assuming office in August, Abbasi delivered an inaugural speech in Parliament wherein he had promised that he would outlaw all deadly weapons.
The ministry through a notification on November 7 has suspended all automatic weapons, an official of interior ministry said.
All the owners of automatic weapons have been asked to swap the current firearms with semi-automatic ones or surrender them for Rs 50,000.
ALSO READ | Rex Tillerson to PM Abbasi: Eliminate terrorists operating from Pakistan soil
We have given the owners of automatic weapons the deadline of January 15, 2018 to surrender the weapons, the official said.
Another official said the step has been taken as part of efforts to rid the country of the menace of dangerous weapons that end up in the hands of criminals and terrorists.
(With PTI inputs)
ALSO READ: Pakistan appoints Zafar Mahmood Abbasi as new Navy Chief
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Manila:
Prime Minister Narendra Modi and US President Donald Trump are likely to have a bilateral meeting on Monday on the sidelines of the ASEAN summit.
Modi reached Manila to attend the 15th ASEAN- India summit and 12th East Asia summit on November 14.
Trump will visit five Asian countries which include Japan, South Korea, China, Vietnam, and the Philippines. According to official sources, Modi and Trump meeting will likely to happen on Monday.
This meeting will be the first one between the two leaders after a proposal to have a quadrilateral alliance among India, the US, Japan, and Australia.
Japan last month had indicated that it would propose atop-level dialogue with the US, India, and Australia. Sources said officials of the four countries may meet on the sidelines of the ASEAN summit here.
Reacting to the Japanese move, India had said that it was open to working with like-minded countries on issues that advance its interests. The US had said it was looking at a"working-level" quadrilateral meeting in the near term with India, Japan, and Australia.
Japan's Foreign Minister Taro Kono last month had said that Tokyo favors a dialogue between Japan, the US, India, and Australia to further boost strategic partnership among the four countries.
The move to set up the quadrilateral comes in the backdrop of growing Chinese assertiveness in the South China Sea. The US has been favouring a larger role for India in the strategically key Indo-Pacific region.
The use of the term "Indo-Pacific" by Trump has led to speculation that it may have something to do with Washington preparing the ground for a revival of the so-calledQuadrilateral strategic alliance between the US, Japan, Australia, and India to counter China's rise.
In their meeting, Modi and Trump are likely to discuss a host of key issues of mutual interest including the security scenario in the region.
Trump yesterday praised India's "astounding" growth after it opened up its economy and also lauded Modi, saying he has been working successfully to bring the vast country and its people together.
Speaking at a gathering of CEOs on the sidelines of the annual Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in the Vietnamese city of Danang, Trump cited India as one of the countries in the Indo-Pacific region making strides.
He praised India as a sovereign democracy with a population of over 1 billion as well as the largest democracy in the world. Modi is expected to meet many other leaders attending the two summits.
He will also participate in the ASEAN business and investment summit as well as a meeting of leaders of RegionalComprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP).
The RCEP, comprising the 10-member ASEAN bloc and six other countries -- India, China, Japan, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand, is engaged in negotiations for a free trade pact.
In his maiden visit to the Philippines as prime minister, Modi will also attend a reception by the Indian community and visit the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) and the Mahavir Philippines Foundation.
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Airports around the world have found an unconventional, eco-friendly way to take advantage of all the unused open space around their runways and buildings: hosting beehives.
Hamburg Airport created a buzz when it installed its first apiary in 1999, and other airports in Germany were quick to follow suit. Soon enough, the trend spread to airports in European and North American cities, from Copenhagen and Malmo, Sweden, to Chicago and Seattle.
Since 2016, the Hagi-Iwami Airport in Shimane has been the proud home of Asia's first and only airport apiary. The airport is located in Masuda, a city that lies on the coast of Shimane with a population of around 46,000. It is a small seaside city that could be described as idyllic, with an abundance of greenery and the Sea of Japan to the north. Busan is close enough for Masuda residents to pick up Korean programs on their radios.
The Airport Honey Project has become a labor of love for Haruhiko Motohashi, the president of Iwami Airport Terminal Building Co. Ltd. He views the project as a perfect match for the airport because, he says, "Large airplanes and tiny honeybees both have wings and fly. It's an excellent combination."
Although airport apiaries are still a bit of a novelty, the Hagi-Iwami Airport is an ideal location for bees, as the nearby Takatsu River and expansive prefectural park offer a varied and plentiful natural environment for the insects.
When the idea for the project was first floated two years ago, Motohashi knew little about keeping bees and collecting honey, so since then he has been on a steep learning curve. But luckily, he has had plenty of support along the way. And airports and apiaries, it turns out, have something in common: "Everyone must work together as a team."
Sure enough, the project is a community effort. Motohashi himself has a hands-on role in tending to the apiary, and his beekeeping team consists of airport employees and a handful of Masuda residents, one of the most active being Etsuji Ohata, the president of local company Masuda Kosan Ltd.
The project started as a small "why not" idea and grew into a full-fledged operation within six months, largely thanks to the help of Atsuo Tanaka, the founder of the Ginza Honey Bee Project, and Nina Jinsekikogen, a Hiroshima-based NPO that instructed Motohashi and Airport Honey Project members on the ins and outs of beekeeping.
The honey is packaged in simple glass jars by Himawari no Ie, an NPO that supports local residents with disabilities. All excess honey is used for tasting events and sold to nearby bakeries and shops for their pastries and other treats. One of the goals of the project is to strengthen Masuda's economy and empower the local citizens by including them in the production process, thereby creating jobs.
The airport began setting up beehives in April 2016. By the end of the year, the Airport Honey Project had produced 320 kilograms of honey, filling 2,000 jars, all of which sold out within three months. The unexpected success of the project's pilot year prompted Motohashi to acquire more beehives, and the second year of the project produced 600 kg of honey. It was also the year Airport Honey became a double-award winner in the Honey Meister Honey of the Year contest.
Associate Editor John Nichols has been with The Capital Times since 1993 and has become one of Wisconsin's best-known progressive voices. He is the author of seven books on politics and the media and he also writes about electoral politics and public policy for The Nation magazine.
Huckleberry Finn was a notorious fictional pranksteris it possible his creator Mark Twain had the same tricky spirit? Long after Twains death, a historian uncovered Is He Dead? Twains unpublished play about the value of art while an artist is alive.
Playwright David Ives then adapted the script, it was published in 2003 and hit Broadway in 2007. Now University Theatre is taking on Twains witticisms as well as his social comment.
I think whats wonderful about this play is that it asks us to look, UW-Madison theater professor and director David Furumoto said. What is important about art? What makes it valuable? Is it simply a fad that everyone picks up paintings by people after their death and then (the artist) simply becomes the toast of whatever?
The play centers around French painter Jean-Francois Millet living in Paris and Barbizon circa 1846. Although based on Millets life, the situations around him are fictional.
Millet, an impoverished painter, fakes his own death in order to increase the value of his paintings. He passes himself off as his sister Widow Tillou, sells his paintings while living as his sister and prospers. It is in his prosperity that Millet encounters further, often hilarious, complications maneuvering his masquerade.
University Theatres production runs Thursday through Dec. 10 in the Mitchell Theatre.
Furumoto said the production was chosen, in part, because of the departments graduate students who needed the experience of producing a period piece. But Is He Dead? also serves a comedic purpose in the midst of an otherwise heavy theatrical season that started this fall with Our Town and will end in the spring with The Laramie Project.
While the show is undoubtedly stuffed with Twains renowned humor, Furumoto continually reminds his performers of the shows underlying importance.
Something I lay into my actors in this play is that there are a lot of farcical parts in the play, but dont lose sight of the fact that there is a lot of social commentary being made, he said.
Part of the shows commentary is in the plays villain, moneylender and art dealer Bastien Andre who would love nothing more than to burn Millets paintings. Having the wealthy character serve as the antagonist is one of the ways in which this play goes against what would have been Twains status quo, Furumoto said.
Twains social circumstance was seemingly not far removed from the plays focal character, Millet, whose work wasnt exactly praised for its artistic merits.
Millet was an artist making social commentary about the downtrodden people of his time and people thought his work was horrible, Furumoto said.
A realist painter, Millets artistic focus was the peasants. One of his most celebrated paintings, The Gleaners, featured poor women and children picking up the pieces of grain left behind after the harvest.
When Millet debuted his work on the common people, the general public thought his work was horrible, depressing and dreadful, according to Furumoto.
So then again comes the question: Why cant artists enjoy the fruits of their labor while they are alive?
Twain, who himself had times of financial hardship, was traveling through Europe when a rumor spread claiming that Twain caught ill and died. It was then, in 1897, when his famous quip, the report of my death was an exaggeration, hit the presses in the New York Journal.
It could have been Twains rumor of death that sparked this long lost play, which he penned in 1898.
That experience with the rumor must have played into the creation of this play, Furumoto said.
Although adapted by Ives, Furumoto sees much of Twains voice in the play. He cant be sure what was Twains original phrasing versus Ives adaptation, but he feels secure in believing the show is still largely Twains creation especially when the cast digs into the heart of the piece.
Despite the darker themes of the play, the characters still have to find humor in their situations, much like people have to find humor in the climate of today, he added.
While the play is a study in humor, University Theatres production is also a study in beauty on stage as the graduate student designers have created a stunning showcase of 1840s Paris.
People will be astounded by the costumes and the set arrangements, Furumoto said with a smile. They will also see a lot of Millet paintings on stage as well, which is a challenge in itself for our scenic painters to re-create those paintingsthey are having a lot of fun with that.
Furumoto ultimately hopes that audiences are as drawn to the play as he was upon his first read-through of the script. He said he was immediately taken by the work.
The cast of 11 performers have been immersed in the excitement of Parisian culture of yore and the situational comedy concocted by Twains creative mind. Though they will bask in the warmth of audience laughter when the show opens, Furumoto will continue to remind them to seek the deeper meanings of the work and not focus their energy on the laughs.
I tell the actors: Dont look at this simply as a comedy, he said. When you do that you lose your soul and it wont be as funny.
The usual loud and public spats over state budget pain have taken an odd turn in Connecticuts biggest cities.
Two weeks after the governor signed a budget into law, four months overdue, its becoming clear theres a stealthy war on cities not named Hartford. While the capital city gained a restructuring worth at least $40 million, Bridgeport and New Haven stand to lose millions of dollars through various cuts in the new spending plan.
And yet, the mayors and other officials in those shoreline cities have kept their heads down and their voices low as they sort through the carnage.
Im glad we got a budget, but I have to tell you that it hurts, Bridgeport Mayor Joe Ganim said in a low-key Nov. 3 news conference aimed largely at opposing a library referendum. Its a better product than the interim budget was. Well dig out of this locally.
It hurts? Well dig out? Wheres the fire-and-brimstone Ganim we might have expected? Bridgeport could be short by $6 million this year alone, probably more, maybe less, depending on how we count and on whether the General Assembly fixes some errors it made in adopting the 2017-19 budget.
New Haven could come up short by $5.9 million or more, compared with spending in the year that ended June 30. But Mayor Toni Harp, who previously headed the Legislatures spending committee and prefers to work behind the scenes, has said little if anything publicly. One source said that citys delegation and municipal officials have been told point-blank, keep your mouths shut, it could have been a lot worse.
The hit to cities goes beyond those millions of dollars in municipal aid cuts. For example, a cut in the earned-income tax credit, for working poor families, is likely to reduce the amount of cash going to Bridgeport households by about $2.4 million and the amount in New Haven by $1.7 million. Thats not state aid to city halls, but it certainly affects the economies of those cities.
Also, when the state cuts back on social services and other agency spending which could happen to the tune of about $100 million this year a lot of that hits the biggest cities hardest, in mental health, rental assistance, property tax credits and family intervention, for example. And the cities cant just turn their backs.
When you get cuts of those types of services, municipal officials will tell you that population still needs those services and the first place they go is the municipalities, said George Rafael, director of government finance and research at the Connecticut Conference of Municipalities.
Yes, the state needs to cut spending, but this Stealthy War on Cities Not Named Hartford the result of chaos and back-room horse trading is the wrong economic path for the state. Connecticut needs to spend money to bring its cities into the 21st century urban American economy, as Gov. Dannel P. Malloy recognized in his original budget proposal back in February.
Chew on this: The latest budget analysis shows that among 20 cities and towns that will see more state aid over the next two years, the biggest winner by far is Greenwich, at $838,5523. Greenwich!
Outrage remains muted in part because, as Ganim said, it could have been worse. The budget adopted in September by Republicans (read: non-urban lawmakers), which was vetoed by Malloy, cut far deeper in the two biggest cities, by many millions of dollars, than the final, bipartisan result. Likewise, Malloys executive order that kept the state open without a budget from July through October devastated cities.
Confusion is a great weapon in any war and theres plenty of that here. First of all, the various parties havent sorted out all the numbers yet. And second, in two key areas the motor vehicle property tax rebate program and rental assistance lawmakers appear to have made errors in the bill language, which could be corrected this week. Until all that happens, no one wants to make waves.
There are still interpretations that are being debated between the Executive and Legislative branch at the State, even with the governor signing the budget, Michael Gormany, the acting New Haven city budget director, said in an email. The City is continuing to assess various aspects of the state budget.
As for the details, in the biggest state program for cities and towns, education cost-sharing, or ECS, the cities come out even Bridgeport, at $181 million, and New Haven, at $154 million. In payments for non-taxable property, New Haven appears to lose $5.1 million, bringing it down to $42 million, while Bridgeport is flat at $9.8 million, a figure the city says is unfairly low.
The motor vehicle property tax rebate program is so much in flux that we cant know how it will turn out, but in one version, Bridgeport loses $4.1 million.
Some of these cuts also hit Hartford, as the bailout mainly helps in debt restructuring, not operations, but the capital city obviously cant complain.
Bridgeport, unlike Hartford and New Haven, has no lawmakers in the power group of top leaders that craft the budget every year behind closed doors. Bridgeport also has the problem that it adopted a budget and set a tax rate that assumed a $10 million state aid increase, which was half of Malloys plan and seemed reasonable at the time.
It isnt far ahead of Hartford in its finances and New Haven has plenty of problems as well. In short, the Stealthy War on Cities Not Named Hartford could take a heavy future toll on the whole state.
dhaar@hearstmediact.com
It can be tough to find the perfect holiday gift for the beer snob in your life, but Samuel Adams is making it a little easier this year.
The brewery announced in late October the release of its 2017 Utopias line. Sam Adams releases a batch every two years, according to Fortune.com, and the most recent creation is a doozy.
A combat support battalion of the Connecticut National Guard will deploy for active duty next Sunday bound for Eastern Europe.
Maj. Gen. Thaddeus J. Martin, adjutant general and commander of the Connecticut National Guard, announced the 143rd Combat Sustainment Support Battalion will ship out to a mobilization station next Sunday.
Masked men stopped Maria Gomez and her partner last month as they traveled along a dirt track through the western Colombian Andes. It was the drug cartel and they had a job offer.
The former guerrillas had been enjoying their first weeks of civilian life after handing over their weapons to the United Nations. They bought a motorbike with the money the Colombian government gave them after disarming, and were visiting relatives they hadn't seen during the years of fighting.
"We told them we were just normal people going to visit family, and they said, don't lie, we know you're guerrillas," Gomez said. "They said that, as guerrillas we could work with them, since we have a lot of valuable knowledge."
As the new political party formed by ex-combatants under the 2016 peace accord prepares for its first elections next year, cocaine traffickers are consolidating their grip on the rebels' rural heartland. The cartel recruiting drive is being helped by government blundering in its efforts to reintegrate 6,000 former guerrillas into civilian life. So, while Gomez turned down the job offer, she says some of her former comrades in arms have had fewer scruples and have returned to the jungle.
Colombia is still a long way from real peace. Even after the 50-year Marxist insurgency by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, wound down, the country still has a murder rate higher than that of Mexico, a country that has become a byword for drug cartel brutality. The post-conflict chaos threatens to loom large in the 2018 elections, potentially boosting opponents of the peace deal such as allies of former President Alvaro Uribe.
University teacher Peter Ortiz is on the front line of government efforts to reintegrate guerrillas into society. It isn't going as well as hoped.
On a Monday morning in late October, he was sitting in front of an empty classroom near the village of Santa Lucia in northern Colombia. Not one of the former combatants he was meant to be teaching showed up for a course that covers the basics of math, science and Spanish language.
"We're in the coffee harvest, so they prefer to go out and pick coffee, or do day work," said Ortiz as he stared at his desk. "Money is the main reason."
The classroom is in a former guerrilla hideout in a canyon whose upper slopes are sown with home-made landmines. The camp itself never got finished and 40 percent or more of the 250 former rebels from a FARC unit have abandoned it in recent weeks. Those who remain -- most have nowhere else to go -- are trying in various ways to supplement the approximately $220 a month the government gives them, equivalent to 90 percent of the minimum wage.
They are supposed to be receiving not just general education, but skills training. They've had classes on topics including fish farming, photography and how to operate a computer, but none of the "productive projects" that were supposed to generate employment for them are anywhere near starting.
The government "could hardly be doing more to encourage ex-guerrillas' desertion," said Adam Isacson, a Colombia expert at the Washington Office on Latin America. "I think resources are there. Decision-making has not been. Meanwhile nobody seems responsible or accountable."
As well as the trickle of former rebels joining up with drug traffickers, a movement of FARC dissidents is spreading, and has now grown to about 400 people, according to Ministry of Defense estimates.
Many of the former rebels say they fear for their safety. The two-hour journey from the FARC camp to the town of Ituango has become increasingly hair-raising since a cocaine-trafficking organization known as the Pachellys moved into the area.
When the guerrillas controlled the region, traffickers could be shot if they entered without permission, or failed to pay the "tax" levied by the FARC on each kilo of coca paste, a kind of unrefined cocaine produced by the farmers.
The temptation to join the dissidents or the drug cartels is obvious.
Many guerrillas never finished school, and still lack the skills they need to make a decent living in Colombia's big cities, but they know the mountains better than anyone. They know who works with who, where the drug routes are, and they know how to handle a rifle. What's more, they are much more disciplined than the urban hoodlums and juvenile delinquents the traffickers normally hire.
Security forces believe that in the region around Ituango one of the major buyers of coca paste is a former FARC member known by his alias "Carnitas".
Gomez says she expects many more to join the traffickers when the government's monthly payment ends after two years, and as ex-guerrillas get tired of living in flimsy huts. The traffickers pay as much as 2 million pesos ($670) per month, she says.
The government of President Juan Manuel Santos spent four years negotiating a peace accord with the guerrillas, who then appeared to drop far down its list of priorities once they had handed over their weapons and registered as civilians. The implementation of the peace accord has turned into a "disaster," said Sandra Borda, dean of the Social Sciences Department at Bogota's Jorge Tadeo Lozano University.
"It's incredible that after all the political effort that this government did so that this accord could finally be signed, now they have come to this," Borda said. "It's a combination of negligence and lack of concern for the topic."
After a few weeks doing low-paid work near the camp, Gomez moved to one of Colombia's major cities and will stay there if she can find work. As she tries to start a new life, one of the first things she needs is medical treatment. She was badly wounded in firefights with the security forces, and was patched up in the mountains by FARC nurses without proper equipment or qualifications.
She doesn't know what she'll do for a living, but she's given up on waiting for the government to get its act together.
"The government is going to give us this subsidy for two years, and after that how are we supposed to live, if the projects still aren't ready?" she said. "I don't see our future in a prefabricated hut."
---
Maria Gomez's name has been changed to protect her identity.
A 76-year-old woman was arrested early Sunday morning for her tentative fifth OWI charge after she crashed her vehicle into a parked car, the Janesville Police Department said.
Around 12:45 a.m., police went to the 1700 block of South Willard Avenue for a vehicle collision. Sharon Rowley, of Footville, had crashed into a vehicle parked legally, police said. She was unable to perform field sobriety tests, and chemical testing was done on her blood, police said.
After she was treated for non life-threatening injuries, Rowley was taken to the Rock County Jail, police said.
Are you in a dark place? Are obstacles on every side of your path? Then, perhaps, have you become so discouraged, fearful or drained emotionally, that you may begin to doubt yourself and lose all hope for a better tomorrow.
But you have struggled long enough. Dont draw negative conclusions from situations, or be down on yourself or your future. For when challenges occur, you have a choice. You can make assumptions and listen to the unconstructive voice in the back of your head that says, There is nothing that you can do that will make a difference now, and just give up. Or, you could set your heart and mind toward God, believe in your amazing ability to rise above the challenge, and then take constructive positive steps forward.
Years ago, I read a book titled, A Turtle on the Fencepost, by Allen C. Emery. In the story, the author describes a memorable time in his life when he visited a prairie in Texas.
While there, Emery watched in awe as a shepherd was tending to thousands of his sheep. Then, night came. As they were making a bonfire, all of a sudden, Emery heard coyotes howling in the distance. Quickly, the shepherd ran to care for his sheep, as the sheep dogs were not on guard.
As Emery looked in the direction of the sheep, he saw thousands of tiny, sparkling lights. I realized, he wrote, that these were reflections of the fire in the eyes of the sheep.
Emery continued, In the midst of danger, the sheep were not looking out into the darkness but were keeping their eyes set toward the shepherd.
Similarly, when you are confronted with a challenge, do not look into the darkness. Rather, start the day off grateful and keep your eyes set on God. Put your faith, trust and confidence in Him. That difficulty is not going to plague you anymore. Let God shine on all of your circumstances. Kind and merciful, God will lift your burdens and take the undeserved and unfair situations that have occurred, and ultimately, turn them around for your good. Therefore, do what you can and trust that God will step in and do the rest.
But they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run and not be weary; and they shall walk and not faint. (Isaiah 40:31)
A few weeks back, Dr. Bernie Siegel told me a remarkable story about a patient with extensive abdominal cancer. Dr. Siegel is a physician and a best-selling author who has cared for and counseled innumerable patients.
Two months later, the patient returned to the office. She had no signs of cancer. Dr. Siegel asked her to tell him what she did. The lady smiled and said, Oh, you know. Quickly, Dr. Siegel replied, Yes, but tell me.
Contented, the lady uttered, I left my troubles to God.
Dr. Siegel suggests, Our potential when we have faith is amazing. As the Serenity Prayer tells us, leave it to God and rest.
So place your worries and cares in Gods Hands. Give them over to Him, because He can look ahead to where you cannot see and make the wrongs turn out right. Your life is not over. Youre going to be set free. For you havent seen, heard or imagined what God has prepared for you (1 Corinthians 2:9). There are incredible blessings in your future. You have higher heights to climb, exceptional people to meet and many goals yet to make manifest.
In the Bible, it tells about a five-year-old boy named, Mephibosheth (2 Samuel 4:4). Born into royalty, the boy had a bright, abundant, blessed future. However, in a raging battle against the Philistines, Mephibosheths father Jonathan, and his grandfather King Saul died on the battlefield.
Upon hearing the news, Mephibosheths nurse became fearful. The nurse thought the Philistines might seek to take the life of the young boy. So the nurse quickly picked up little Mephibosheth into her arms. She began to flee, looking for a safe hiding place for them.
Yet, in her anxious effort and desperation, while she was running, she dropped the boy. Mephibosheth fell to the ground. He was badly injured, and his ankles were crushed. Through no fault of his own Mephibosheth was dropped. He didnt do anything wrong. It wasnt fair. It was not his mistake. But Mephibosheth became crippled, never to walk again. (2 Samuel 9:1-13)
Years passed, and Mephibosheth grew up in poverty in a very poor city. He was basically alone, in a desperate situation, and missing out on the best that life had to offer. Then, one day, out of the blue, King David inquired, Is there anyone left alive from the house of Saul? Ziba, who was a servant of the house of Saul, said to King David, Jonathans son Mephibosheth is still living. (2 Samuel 9:1)
So King David told his soldiers to go into the city and find Mephibosheth. They found him and carried him back to the palace. Terrified and, perhaps, not knowing what would happen to him next, Mephibosheth was placed in front of King David.
David comforted, Dont be afraid! Next, David said to Mephibosheth. I intend to show kindness to you because of my promise to your father, Jonathan. I will give you all the property that once belonged to your grandfather, Saul, and you will eat here with me at the kings table! (2 Samuel 9:3-7)
Gods light shined on the situation, for King David was gracious to Mephibosheth and made him a part of the royal family. In absolute awe and wonder, Mephibosheth was given a new identity, a new position, and a new freedom.
David restored to him the land of his grandfather and gave him an open, kind invitation to dine with him at the Kings table, forever changing him and his surroundings.
Today, regardless of what you face, ask your all-loving, all-knowing heavenly Father to help you. Right now, He is acting mightily on your behalf. God is going to bring your hopes, dreams and goals to pass. Thus, lift up your hands in praise to Him. Be a blessing to others. Live with a positive frame of mind and let the light of God shine upon you.
Email Catherine Galasso-Vigorito at cgv@anewyouworldwide.com. To order a copy of her new book, The Open Window, 8 Weeks to Creating an Extraordinary Life, visit www.anewyouworldwide.com or bookstores nationwide. Like me on Facebook!
A bloody clash was on Saturday recorded in Port Harcourt, Rivers State between the security convoys of Governor Nyesom Wike and that of ...
A bloody clash was on Saturday recorded in Port Harcourt, Rivers State between the security convoys of Governor Nyesom Wike and that of the Transportation Minister, Rotimi Amaechi.Security officials of Governor Wike allegedly attacked the convoy of the Transportation Minister.Amaechis escort details were, however, unlucky during the 3 p.m. attack, as one of them, Sgt. Eteng Ewelu, was battered, with blood on his face, while the AK-47 rifle of Sgt. Princewill Ubaji was snatched, while being forcibly disarmed.Wike, through his Special Assistant on Electronic Media, Simeon Nwakaudu, in his reaction, however, claimed that personnel of the Federal Special Anti-Robbery Squad (F-SARS) and soldiers attached to the minister of transportation attacked his convoy, while allegedly attempting to assassinate him.Report of the sad incident was immediately lodged at the State Criminal Investigation Department (SCID) of the Rivers Police Command, headed by Zaki Ahmed, while Ubajis rifle had not been recovered, with Ewelu and other injured policemen still receiving treatment in undisclosed hospitals in Port Harcourt, as at press time.When contacted for his reaction through the telephone yesterday evening, the Rivers Police Public Relations Officer (PPRO), Nnamdi Omoni, a Deputy Superintendent of Police (DSP), stated that he would find out the details.He asked our reporter to call back in ten minutes, but when contacted twice, after thirty minutes, he did not take the calls, and he had not called back, as at press time.Nwakaudu said: Rivers State Governor, Nyesom Ezenwo Wike, on Saturday escaped assassination, as Special Anti-Robbery Squad operatives and soldiers of the Nigerian Army in the motorcade of the Minister of Transportation, Rotimi Chibuike Amaechi, attacked his convoy.The governor, who was on project inspection, was attacked at Nwanja Junction on Trans-Amadi Road. The SARs personnel and soldiers in the ministers convoy hit down the governors escort rider and attacked the policemen in the pilot car. Mr Debewari, Aide-de-Camp (ADC) to the minister of transportation, supervised the attack, which included damage of cameras held by journalists.Also part of the attack was the Commander of F-SARS in Rivers State, Mr. Akin Fakorede (a Chief Superintendent of Police), who received the minister of transportation at the Port Harcourt International Airport and accompanied on his trip.After the attack, the Rivers State governor continued with his inspection of projects. Governor Wike was not harmed, despite the attack. The minister of transportation had over 50 personnel of F-SARS, soldiers and mobile policemen in his motorcade.The reaction of Amaechis Spokesman, David Iyofor, was still being expected as at press time.
Rivers State All Progressives Congress (APC) describes the plot to assassinate Rt. Hon. Chibuike Rotimi Amaechi the erstwhile Governor of...
Rivers State All Progressives Congress (APC) describes the plot to assassinate Rt. Hon. Chibuike Rotimi Amaechi the erstwhile Governor of Rivers State and current Minister of Transportation by Governor Nyesom Wike and his agents as heinous, evil, despicable and madness taken too far.Amaechi who was on official tour to Rivers State was on 11th November, 2017 attacked to be assassinated on the orders of Governor Nyesom Wike of Rivers State.Report made available to us by Prince Tonye Princewill an associate to Rt. Hon. Chibuike Rotimi Amaechi who happens to be in the same car with the Minister indicates that Governor Wikes Dispatch Rider pulled a pistol to assassinate Rotimi Amaechi but missed his target after which Amaechis ADC, Debiwari intervened to save the Minister from further assassination attempt.According to Prince Tonye Princewill, I am at a loss if this was not an assassination attempt on the Minister, somebody should explain to me in a clearer sentence why did the Wikes despatch rider failed to stop the two security vehicles of the Minister which had already crossed but decided for whatever reasons to block the vehicle in which the Minister was driving? Tonye Princewill went further to ask, why did an attempt by Amaechi who was behind the steering to navigate his vehicle out of danger was accosted by two security men from the Governor's convoy who had pulled out their pistol and gun to shoot him. Why did these men of darkness after realising that the vehicle that the Minister was driving was a Bullet Proof resorted to hitting the jeep with the butt of their guns and in the process broke the right driving mirror and attempted to break Amaechis windscreen and after which he pulled his pistol to kill Amaechi?The party in the press statement circulated on Saturday by Chief Eze Chukwuemeka Eze the SSA Media and Public Affairs Consultant to the APC Rivers State Chairman, Dr Ibiamu Davies Ikanya further stated that after the failed attempt to kill the Minister, his escort Team was physically assaulted by the CSO Government House SP Promise Wosu and Governor Wike along Trans Amadi road, Port Harcourt with the FSARS operatives on the Ministers convoy dislodged and forcefully disposed off of one of their AK 47 Rifles.The entire world is aware of how dangerous Governor Wike is and how he has killed many APC members to usurp powers in Rivers State and how he has supervised and turned Rivers State into Rivers of blood but to attempt to assassinate a Minister of the Federal Republic of Nigeria in the mode of Amaechi, his benefactor and predecessor is to us is an affront not only on our nascent democracy but an attempt to truncate our hard earned democracy and to plunge this country into a chaotic situation which consequences may be unimaginable. This is a dangerous trend which if not nipped to the bud and arrested may jeopardise the current peace pervading the Niger Delta region at the moment.We have reiterated that Governor Wike main desire is to truncate our hard earned democracy after the failed plot by PDP to win the 2015 presidential election as his disdain for President Muhammadu Buhari, APC and Amaechi is legendary. He exhibited this hatred recently during his misguided Lecture at Chatham House, London where he disparaged the Federal Government, demarketed and rubbished all the efforts of the APC led Federal Government to right most of the wrongs of the past PDP government in a foreign land.This hater of Amaechi used his disgraceful London outing to discuss petty local politics, throwing up fallacious statistics on revenue allocation, disparaging our electoral laws and even indicting the law enforcement agencies of our Country in a foreign land. Wike during his misguided lecture complained about the non-completion of the East West Road, the Port Harcourt International Airport forgotten that he collaborated with Goodluck Jonathan and wickedly abandoned these projects for several years just to "punish" Amaechi.The party in this regard, requests for the immediate arrest and prosecution of SP Promise Wosu and all his men before Gov Wike succeeds to turn Rivers State into a theatre of unwarranted war zone only obtainable during the Omehias era when Port Harcourt was rated as the most risky place in the world.Finally, the party asked, must the Federal Government continue to play with kids glove with such a man like Wike who is a danger to the unity and peace of this nation until he plunges this nation into a monumental disaster?
Peoples Democratic Party PDP stalwart Chief Femi Fani-Kayode has decried assassination attempt on Governor, Nyesom Ezenwo Wike of Rivers...
Peoples Democratic Party PDP stalwart Chief Femi Fani-Kayode has decried assassination attempt on Governor, Nyesom Ezenwo Wike of Rivers state, saying that President Muhammadu Buhari should should call his mad dog to order.Fani-kayode on hos Twitter handle said: using SARS thugs to attempt to murder Gov. Wike and knocking down his outrider with a car will not help Rotimi Ameachi win Rivers state. It will only lead to bloodshed, reprisals and a vicious cycle of violence,death and destruction.I urge @MBuhari to call his mad dog to order. A statement by the governors media aide, Mr Simeon Nwakaudu, said the ugly incident happened at Nwanja junction, Trans Amadi road when the governor was inspecting ongoing road construction job in the area. The statement said the governors out rider was allegedly hit by the convoy and the Policemen in the Pilot car attacked.Wike according to the statement was not hurt, he continued with his inspection of the road project after the incident.
CHICAGO Last week, I spent about $2 on a tube of ChapStick lip balm for one of my students who showed up to school with a mouth so dry and cracked that his bottom lip was bloody.
The week before that, I witnessed Halloween classroom celebrations at my elementary school where 98 percent of students come from low-income homes in which students ate cupcakes, candy (the good stuff, like Hersheys bars, Skittles and Twix) and got such favors as pencils and stickers. All of this was provided by teachers, out of their own paychecks.
For many of our students, this was their only Halloween activity, as some live in neighborhoods where gang activity made trick-or-treating an impossibility. So, yes, the teachers brought in their own party supplies.
This was in addition to the list of provisions that teachers especially those who teach in poorly resourced, high-poverty districts routinely bring in for their students so that kids dont miss out: books for classroom libraries, dry-erase markers for small-group work, bulletin board decorations, nameplates, crayons and colored pencils, snacks for the hungry, and, with the weather changing, extra coats, scarves and mittens for recess and walking home.
No one requires teachers to provide for their students. We do it because we care about offering the best possible educational experience under tremendously difficult circumstances.
This is another way of saying that we dont do it for the tax break.
Even so, there are people in Washington who seem to feel education is a worthy place to make cuts to shore up the countrys bloated budget. According to preliminary reports about the proposed Republican tax bill, the $250 educator-expense deduction, which K-12 teachers can claim for out-of-pocket spending on anything from supplies to professional development courses and computer equipment and software, is on the chopping block.
In my two-teacher household, this represents $500 but weve probably spent more than that already this school year on things like filing systems for classrooms, packing tape, board erasers and assorted flashcards, tissues, disinfectant wipes and hand sanitizer, math board games, progress monitoring software and even a sewing machine to prepare for a clothing class.
According to a 2016 survey by Scholastic Corp., the education publishing and media company, K-12 public-school teachers spent an average of $530 of their own money in the previous year for classroom or student use. And teachers in high-poverty schools spent nearly 40 percent more than their peers elsewhere.
I asked Randi Weingarten, the president of the American Federation of Teachers, what she thought of the GOPs idea to end the educator-expense deduction. Her response was cutting: Ripping away [this] tax credit ... to fund tax breaks for the rich and corporations is not just hurting the middle class, it is heartless and disrespectful to educators and children alike. ... The combination of eliminating this credit and the state and local tax deduction shows President Trump and the GOPs clear commitment to the rich and powerful at the expense of children, educators and families.
And hey, lets not forget that this is in addition to the late-summer plan floated by the Trump administration to end the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program, which helps teachers who take on these super challenging public service assignments. The GOP has also considered a grab-bag of other cuts that help train teachers and keep class sizes small.
But the truth is that even if these tax cuts go through, the short-term fall out will be minimal.
Teachers will continue to go above and beyond to ensure that the students in their care are as well taken care of as possible during the school day.
In the long term, however, the antagonism the federal government seems to have toward its teaching corps will wear. Teachers close to retirement will flee, while bright-eyed, idealistic new teachers will enter crumbling schools, spend their own money to help their students, and devote 18-hour days to the daunting task only to quickly burn out and leave the profession.
There will be more impassioned speeches, op-ed columns and news stories about how difficult it is to staff the neediest schools with the most high-performing educators.
And in the end, millions of public school teachers will continue forking over their own hard-earned money to provide their students a small measure of comfort in the face of a federal government that doesnt value their efforts.
The Inspector-General of Police, Mr. Ibrahim Idris, has said that there is no law that prevents him from marrying a serving female police...
He challenged the lawmaker representing Bauchi Central Senatorial District, Senator Isa Misau, who accused him of having an affair with a junior female colleague, to prove him otherwise.Idris stated this in a written defence he presented through his lawyer, Dr. Alex Iziyon (SAN), to the Senate ad-hoc committee investigating the allegations against him by the senator.Our source obtained a copy of the written defence, in which the allegations against the IG were listed in six categories and responded to.He specifically asked the senator to cite a section of the law that prevents him from having romantic relationship with a policewoman.The police boss recalled that Misaus father married the lawmakers mother while in service.On the allegation that Idris was having affairs with two female officers who also got questionable promotions as a result, Iziyon said, This allegation is laughable and showed lack of understanding of the provisions of the Police Act and regulation.The Inspector-General of Police challenged the senator to cite the section of the Police Act and Regulation which forbids a police officer from marrying another police officer.He said, Until he brings such section of the Police Act, it will amount to discussing the Inspector-General of Polices private life, which ordinarily should not have been entertained on the floor of the Senate.It might be appropriate to remind the senator, whose mother retired from the police as an Inspector of Police and a father who retired from the police as an Assistant Inspector-General of Police, that the Inspector-General of Police is a Moslem and, according to Islamic Law, can marry four wives provided he can love them equally.The senator also alleged that the Inspector-General of Police is in a relationship with one Corporal Amina whom he claimed was promoted from the rank of Corporal to an Assistant Superintendent of Police within 12 months.This allegation is false and the senator is under obligation to give the full particulars of the female police (officer), where she is serving and her duty post. It is not possible to promote a corporal to the rank of an ASP except the officer has attended an in-service cadet course.The IG, who earlier declined the committees invitation due to pending court cases over the matter, appeared before the Senate panel on Wednesday, accompanied by Iziyon; and the Special Assistant to the President on National Assembly Matters (Senate), Senator Ita Enang.
The United Nations Deputy Secretary-General, Amina Mohammed, has said she was involved in the alleged illegal export of African rosewo...
The United Nations Deputy Secretary-General, Amina Mohammed, has said she was involved in the alleged illegal export of African rosewood, also known as kosso, from Nigeria to China.The trade is estimated to be worth $1 billion in the last four years. The Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA), a non-governmental organisation, which specialises in investigating environmental crimes, had claimed that Mohammed might have derived personal benefits from signing thousands of allegedly backdated permits in January 2017 which it said were used to clear illegal rosewood exports to China.This was at a time she had been appointed UN deputy secretary general.The environmental agency had reported that over 1.4 million illegal rosewood logs from Nigeria, worth $300 million, were detained at the ports in China in 2016 but were released after the presentation of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) certificates signed by her.However, Mohammed at the weekend in an interview with TheCable, an online newspaper, she maintained that she spent her time at the ministry working to eliminate the illegal export of the tropical hardwood used for rosewood furniture in China.According to her, No permits were backdated or illegally signed by me. We are therefore appalled if any legally obtained or forged certificates were used by unscrupulous rosewood traders to circumvent exportation procedures.She emphatically told the online medium, Not only do I decry fraud and corruption, we also categorically reject any allegations of corruption or coercion in our effort to better address illegal logging and exportation.I categorically deny receiving any bribe. It has never been in my character. I never demanded neither did I collect any bribe, either cash or material.The former presidential adviser, who was appointed by the UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres as deputy secretary general in December 15, 2016, was recently named Diplomat of the Year by the Foreign Policy Group.She said when she was appointed minister of environment in November 2015, one of the first issues I had to deal with was deforestation. It was a huge concern as Nigeria was losing its forest cover at an alarming rate For me, protecting the environment is sacrosanct. When I was minister, one of my first acts was to tackle illegal logging. What I found on ground was alarming.However, Guterres, the secretary-general, has said Mohammed, has his full support and confidence. This is coming amid claims that she retroactively authorised the exportation of the protected wood while she was minister of environment.Stephane Dujarric, the UN secretary-generals spokesman, expressed the secretarys confidence in Mohammed.He said, I will say the following. First of all, just to be clear that the secretary?general was informed by the deputy secretary?general about the reports, and he reiterates his full support and confidence in her. She, the deputy secretary?general, Amina Mohammed, of course, categorically rejects any allegations of fraud.Dujarric added, The deputy secretary?general welcomes the effort to shine more light onto the issue of illegal rosewood logging and exportation that she fought hard to address during her tenure in the Nigerian government. She says that her actions as Nigerian environment minister were intended to deal with the serious issue of illegal wood exportation.As a result, she instituted a ban and set up a high?level panel to find policy solutions to the crisis of deforestation in Nigeria. Ms. Mohammed says the legal signing of export permits for rosewood was delayed due to her insistence that stringent due process was followed. She said she signed the export certificates requested before the ban only after due process was followed and better security watermarked certificates became available.An environmental advocacy group, the Washington-based Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA), had alleged that multiple sources told its undercover investigators that over $1 million was paid to top government officials in Nigeria to release wood stopped by Chinese authorities because there were no CITES certificates.CITES on Thursday released a 40-page report alleging that Mohammeds approval of the kosso exports violated the CITES agreement.According to report, the former environment minister spent her final days as minister doing something that has angered activists. It added that despite a ban then in force on the export of rosewood, an endangered resource, she signed thousands of certificates authorizing the shipment of vast quantities of the wood.The certificates came in bags, and I just signed them because that is what I had to do, she recalled in an interview last month in her U.N. headquarters office I dont remember how many, she admitted.EIA said rosewood is coveted in China for furniture and over the past five years exploding Chinese demand has depleted forests across West Africa. As supplies in Gambia and Benin dwindled, it said Chinese traders moved to Nigeria, which had the largest untapped resource.Mohammeds last minute decision to approve the kosso shipments was first documented by the Washington-based environmental group and is now part of an inquiry by the secretariat of CITES, to which Nigeria is a signatory.In a letter to Nigerian authorities in August 2017, John Scanlon, CITESs secretary-general, raised concern about information his agency had received indicating that as many as 10,000 containers of Nigerian rosewood had been stopped by Chinese authorities between May and December 2016, because they were not accompanied by the proper CITES documentation, according to Michael Osakuade, the acting director of Nigerias Department of Forestry. On Dec. 31, 2016, Mohammed herself imposed a three-month ban on the trade in rosewood. Yet following her mass signings, more than two weeks after the ban went into force, the trade quickly resumed: Chinese trade data show that between then and April, as many as 12,000 containers of kosso logs were cleared to enter the country.EIA estimates that Mohammeds approval of certificates in January 2017 allowed the delivery of more than 1.4 million kosso logs that had been illegally exported between May and December 2016 and were detained in Chinese ports. EIA furnished FP with six copies of certificates signed by Mohammed and dated Jan. 16, a little more than two weeks after she ordered the temporary three-month ban on the export of kosso wood. A senior Nigerian forestry official confirmed the authenticity of the certificates but denied that they were issued for rosewood that had already left for China.
Yakubu Galadima, the lawyer of the whistleblower who informed the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission of the $43m, N23.2m and 27,8...
Yakubu Galadima, the lawyer of the whistleblower who informed the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission of the $43m, N23.2m and 27,800 (N13bn) recovered from an Ikoyi apartment, says his client is prepared to sue the Federal Government for fraud if he is not paid his money soon.Galadima said this during an interview with our correspondent in Abuja on Saturday.He told newsmen that he was disappointed in the President Muhammadu Buhari-led Federal Government as it had failed to keep its promise regarding the payment of commission on recovered loot.When asked if he would sue the government, he said, That is one of the options but we have many options.He added, Before now I had a discussion with Alhaji Lai Mohammed who directed me to speak with a lady in the office of the Ministry of Finance, Mrs. Tolu Kasali. I had a discussion with her and she told me that she would see what the government could do about it.My clients concern is that time is of the essence. The guy wants to relocate from the country. There is no time and his life is in danger. He is jobless at the moment. He is not doing anything right now and in fact he is a burden on me.The lawyer said his client had also suffered psychological trauma caused by the Federal Governments inaction.He further berated the acting Chairman of the EFCC, Mr. Ibrahim Magu, for saying the commission was counselling the whistleblower as he is now a millionaire.When contacted, the Chairman of the Presidential Advisory Committee Against Corruption, Prof. Itse Sagay (SAN), said his panel would look into the matter.
Academic activities in the nations polytechnics will be disrupted from Monday, November 13, 2017 as the Academic Staff Union of Polytech...
Academic activities in the nations polytechnics will be disrupted from Monday, November 13, 2017 as the Academic Staff Union of Polytechnics (ASUP) commence an indefinite strike to press government to meet their demands.The union accused the Ministry of Education of failing to attend a conciliatory meeting called by the Ministry of Labour and Employment aimed at resolving their demands.It said the Ministry only sent a deputy director without a mandate to attend the meeting.National President of the union, Comrade Usman Dutse said the union was declaring a total and indefinite strike, adding that the government was using endless verification exercises to delay the payment of entitlements of members of the union.He said while the union is not against government carrying out verification exercises, it should not endless and the exercise should not be used to denied workers their rights.He said that despite the 21 days notice given to the government, they did not consider it necessary to address their demands for an improved funding of polytechnic education in the country, adding that an additional seven days given to the government has also not yielded any positive result.Our union is constrained to lament again that our sector is on the verge of collapse and needs all the emergency attention it urgently deserves. Until now, it should be noted that the issues raised here today have been there since 2014 and none of these issues has since 2014 been concretely resolved to improve the sector.It is against this background that we wish to remind governments at all levels and indeed all Nigerians that we cannot continue to be complacent in the face of imminent and seemly strategic annihilation of a sector that feeds and caters for millions of youths and families.A sector that if well harnessed will boost Nigerias technological knowhow, improve ICT, create millions of employment opportunities and raise the level of both theoretical and practical technological literacy.The polytechnic lecturers are demanding the implementation of the NEEDS assessment report which recommended the injection of N6.5 billion into the polytechnic education in 2014.They said the amount has risen to about N8 billion, adding that without Imo,emerging the report, the essence of using tax payers money to embark on the exercise is wasted.They are also demanding passage of the Amendment Bill of the Polytechnics Act, noting that the delay and indifference to the passage of this bill is viewed as a ploy to fester chaos and continued crises in the sector. Recall that this bill passed through public hearing since December 2016.He said One wonders why an all important bill such as this still remains unattended to even when assurances have been extracted from the Senate Committee on this bill, our regulatory agencies and ministry of education.Passing this bill will go a long way to resolving majority of the contending issues in the sector, reduce conflicts, improve on the efficiency levels of the administrative organs and ultimately bring the sector in tune with global best practices. Same bill died with the 6th and 7th assemblies and the current effort is now being threatened to go same way as it is stuck in the Senate since the public hearing in December, 2016.They also want the government to pay the shortfall in Personnel Releases and Withdrawal of Allowances and emoluments due to cuts in personnel releases which it said has persisted till date and accused government of withdrawing allowances which hitherto were part of salaries.Equally, unpaid arrears of promotions have continued to mount. While verifications of staff have been conducted over and over, only five institutions have received repayment of their 2016 shortfalls. This situation is compounded by the continued penchant of Governing Councils to siphon the meagre internal resources of institutions in order to assuage their unbridled appetite for luxury.They are also not happy with the sorry state of state government owned polytechnics and monotechnics which they said have continued to be in deplorable conditions, with salaries of staff not paid while union officials are victimized.Also included in their demand is the Release of CONTISS 15 Migration arrears that has lingered since 2011 when the approval to migrate to the CONTISS 15 salary scale was secured from the government effective 2009.Since then, only the upper cadre has been fully taken care of. Staffs in the lower cadre are being short changed since then as they are yet to get the full benefit of this policy. In response, government continues to set up committees without terminal dates and any meaningful response to the unions protests.It is worthy to note that a lot of these issues constitute violations of the agreement signed between our union and the government in 2010. This is in tandem with the now well documented penchant of government to renege on agreements. Recently efforts to address these issues led to the convening, on the 24th of October 2017, of a conciliatory meeting by the Federal Ministry of Labour in Abuja.Curiously, the ministry in eye of the storm (The Federal Ministry of Education) was so poorly represented that no memorandum of action was agreed upon. This clearly showed the level of disdain and disrespect with which issues of the polytechnic sector are being handled by relevant agencies of government.In view of the above, our union rising from this emergency meeting hereby resolved to commence an indefinite and comprehensive strike action effective 13th November, 2017. This action shall be sustained until our demands are met or an implementable memorandum of action is agreed upon by our union and relevant agencies of government.We therefore call on well meaning Nigerians and indeed the public to prevail on the government to do the needful and avoid this imminent shutdown of the sector on an indefinite basis.
In a bid to check drug abuse on campus, the University of Lagos has provided a drug test kit in its medical centre to examine students s...
In a bid to check drug abuse on campus, the University of Lagos has provided a drug test kit in its medical centre to examine students suspected to be on hard drugs.The institution said no less than 100 illicit drug users were caught within a year of commencement of the tests.Outgoing Vice-Chancellor of the institution, Prof. Rahaman Bello, confirmed this at a forum with News Agency of Nigeria in Lagos.Bello said the initiative was necessary because drug abuse was on the increase, generally, in the nations tertiary institutions.Drug abuse is a major problem for every institution, particularly those in the cities. We have gone ahead in the University of Lagos to address it.With the test kit, anyone who is suspected, his/her urine or blood depending on what we want to do is collected for test.The thing about drug is that when you take it, it will be in your blood for a long time, so you cannot say, I did not use it once the test kit detects it.Before we started using the test kit, everyone we picked denied using drug since we could not find any evidence, he said.According to him, with the test kit, the university has been able to pin down victims, but granted them amnesty.He said although the universitys regulation provides that any student found dealing with drug should be expelled, the management had been warning and rehabilitating culprits.With the rehabilitation, the victims are given two or three semesters to get clean. By this, we mean they will visit the medical centre on a monthly basis to get tested.If, after two or three visits, you are found clean, we will admit you back to the system; if not, you are sent out.This we do not to unnecessarily punish them, but to assist them to find a way to regain themselves, he said.Bello said about 100 students of the university were detected to be using hard drugs in 2016.One hundred out of over 50,000 students (35,000 full-time and 15,000 to 17,000 part-time) may seem insignificant, but to us, one person on drug is a problem to the university community .If the individual is not stopped, he or she will influence so many others, he said.On cultism, Bello said it was a cankerworm in the education sector, just as are examination malpractice and drug abuse.He said cultism affects even secondary schools and sometimes, primary schools also.According to him, some institution in cities such as the University of Lagos would need to intensity efforts to check cultism because they are located in infested communities.Bello said the universitys management keeps a watch on cult activities through intelligence network.We get to know once anything comes up, and we nip it in the bud. We may not have completely wiped off cultism, but it has been drastically reduced, he said. (NAN)
The Federal Government says it is succeeding in cleaning up the rots, looting, impunity and plundering of the nations economy, perpetra...
The Federal Government says it is succeeding in cleaning up the rots, looting, impunity and plundering of the nations economy, perpetrated by the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP).The Minister of Information and Culture, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, who stated this on Sunday in Lagos at a media briefing, said the task was tough, but the government was determined and succeeding.He said the government has been working round the clock to take Nigeria out of the hell hole the PDP dumped the nation and it will be a tragedy if the party is ever allowed to come back to power in 2019.Mohammed said that the President Muhammadu Buharis administration had made tremendous progress in the fight against corruption, insecurity and in revamping the economy.Specifically, the minister said that with the enforcement of Treasury Single Account (TSA) policy, N3 trillion had accrued to government purse.He said the government had successfully removed the N108 billion in maintenance fees payable to banks, pre-TSA and monthly saving of N24.7 billion.The minister said that N120 billion had also been saved with the elimination of thousands of ghost workers in the system.He stressed that nothing showed rot of the PDP more than the level of corruption which the President Muhammad Buhari administration inherited.Our commonwealth was looted with impunity by the same people who now say they want to come back.Indeed, it will not just be a tragedy, but a double tragedy, if we ever allow these same people topreside over our commonwealth.Where do we start? Do we want a Diezani back as Petroleum Minister, after the recovery of at least 43 million dollars and 56 houses from this one person?Do we want the 2.9 billion dollars that has been successfully traced and recovered from looters by the EFCC since the inauguration of the present administration, to be re-looted?What about the 151 million dollars and N8 billion in looted funds that have been recovered from just three sources as a direct result of the introduction of the whistle-blower policy? he saidMohammed said that under the PDP, the Joint Admission and Matriculation Board (JAMB), only remitted an aggregate of N51 million, whereas in September 2017, the same JAMB announced it was ready to remit N7.8 billion.As the pace of politics gradually picks up ahead of 2019, it is important that we let Nigerians know the enormous progress that the Buhari administration has made in just a little over two years.It is a mark of the contempt in which the PDP holds Nigerians that the party is even talking of returning to power, even when the rot it left behind is yet to be totally cleared.Never again must Nigeria be bedeviled by a rapacious, impunity-prone and plunderous party like the PDP, he said.Mohammed reiterated the commitment of the government to ensuring that those who plundered the nations treasury would face the music.(NAN)
JERSEY CITY -- A 27-year-old man was found climbing a fire escape with a backpack full of burglary tools in Downtown, authorities said.
Casey Collado was arrested on Wednesday after a brief foot pursuit with plain clothes officers, a police report of the incident indicates.
At about 12:20 a.m., police were called to Wayne Street on reports of a man on the second floor fire escape of the building. The officers found Collado trying to climb a nearby fence when they arrived, the report states.
Police told him to stop and he refused. The officers called for backup and Collado was arrested on Christopher Columbus Drive a short time later, authorities said.
Collado was carrying two crowbars, a hammer, and a screwdriver in his backpack. Police also found nine credits cards, a hospital ID card, and a drivers license, the report states.
He was charged with criminal trespassing, possession of burglary tools, and resisting arrest.
Caitlin Mota may be reached at cmota@jjournal.com. Follow her on Twitter @caitlin_mota. Find The Jersey Journal on Facebook.
On Sept. 7, my column featured "The Adventures of Imam Adam," a Muslim doll and children's story book by Danny Shakoj, a U.S.-born Muslim.
Within hours of its online posting, there were scores of vicious and hateful comments.
Imam Mohammad Al-Hayak, the outreach coordinator at the North Hudson Islamic Center in Union City, gave his senior students at Al-Ghazaly High School in Wayne an assignment to read and respond to the comments with facts. In other words, combat hate with education.
I was so impressed, I traveled to Wayne recently to meet with the entire Class of 2018 - 64 students -- twice as many girls as boys. For a while, we talked about how they feel growing up Muslim in a multi-cultural society. They seem happy and adjusted and do not experience much prejudice, though the girls wearing the hijab, or headdress, saw some.
The students attributed most of the prejudice to ignorance and not knowing any Muslims personally.
The international discussion about terrorism attributed to extremists also has poisoned the well, they said, and they can understand how people can stereotype. But they said Islam is a peaceful religion.
Beyza Anil, 17, said she is a feminist and was quite articulate in a small group discussion how "Islam is the most forward-thinking religion on women's rights." The Verona resident said that from its founding, Islam gave women the right to own property and wives are not a possession of their husbands.
"At an intellectual level, there is a big difference between Muslim women and other women," the aspiring artist or astronomer said, defending the role of women in Islam.
The school uniform requires the girls to wear maroon or red hijabs and full-length dresses that cover their arms and legs. Yet, they do not see that as subordinating themselves. They are free outside to wear it or not.
Confronted with hateful comments, Yousuf Tariq-Shuaib, 17, said "stay calm." The Paterson resident said some people want to be "edgy" to elicit a laugh.
"If we respond in kind, we add fuel to the fire," he said.
He said we should simply try to inform.
"Some people are afraid of what they do not understand," 17-year-old Salma Zaiter, who lives in Clifton, said. She said to keep a cool head and inform so people get a little bit of insight.
Rama Saadi, 17, advised: "Don't get angry and treat them well.''
The Hawthorne resident said to "smile at them with respect."
The students are proud to be Muslim.
"As a child, love has been instilled in us," Beyza said.
"Islam is a tolerant religion," Rama added.
Salma said that the Quran respects different religions.
Yousuf acknowledged that there is a very small group of terrorists who are Islam and most Muslims condemn them for this.
After he graduates, he wants to combine engineering with business at MIT or Cornell; Rama has her eyes on the same schools for engineering. Salma intends to study graphic design and illustration in Chicago or Rhode Island.
Khaldiya Mustafa , the principal, said that the senior class in general scores above average SAT scores with some reaching almost perfect scores. Past graduates have gone to the best schools.
The 350 students in Grades 7-12 come from many communities, including several Hudson County towns. Seventh- and eighth-grade students are separated by sex; high school classes are mixed.
The school also has an elementary school in Prospect Park.
The schools got their start from Al-Ghazaly School, which is still in Jersey City, where the principal grew up.
"I have a rewarding feeling benefitting youth to become great people in society," Mustafa said.
When listing strengths of Islam, Beyza said "women's rights." Rama said "equality." "Getting to know your neighbors," said Salma. Yousuf noted the "concept of charity."
And I would add: the bright, articulate, caring students at Al-Ghazaly, who represent a new generation of Muslim-Americans.
EDITOR'S NOTE: The Rev. Alexander Santora is the pastor of Our Lady of Grace and St. Joseph, 400 Willow Ave., Hoboken, 07030, FAX: 201-659-5833; Email: padrealex@yahoo.com; Twitter: @padrehoboken.
A North Bergen man has been arrested and 200 pounds of high-grade marijuana was seized following an investigation by the Hudson County Prosecutor's Office, which also recovered $100,000 and a gun.
Miguel Capellan, 33, was arrested on Wednesday and 15 additional pounds of marijuana was also recovered during a search of his home at the culmination of a three-month investigation by the Prosecutor's Office Narcotics Task Force, Hudson County Prosecutor Esther Suarez announced.
Along with the $750,000 worth of marijuana, the Task Force also recovered a stolen gun and seized five vehicles, Suarez said in a statement, adding that the Hudson County Sheriff's Office K-9 Unit assisted in the arrest.
The charges against Capellan include two counts of possession with intent to distribute, possession with intent to distribute near a school, possession of a gun during commission of a drug crime, money laundering, receiving stolen property and two counts of endangering the welfare of a child, the prosecutor said.
Capellan made his first appearance on the charges on Thursday in Criminal Justice Reform Court in Jersey City via video link from the Hudson County jail in Kearny.
At the hearing, the state moved to detain him through the course of his prosecution and a detention hearing is scheduled for Wednesday before Hudson County Superior Court Judge Paul DePascale in the Hudson County Administration Building in Jersey City.
NEWARK -- United Airlines has suspended its flights from Newark to New Delhi due to toxic smog that has blanketed the Indian capital in a brown cloud.
The company said in a statement Saturday that it had waivers in place for customers traveling to, from or through New Delhi. It did not specify how long the flight suspensions would last.
"We are monitoring advisories as the region remains under a public health emergency, and are coordinating with respective government agencies," United said.
Customers scheduled to travel this past Thursday through Monday can book a new flight that departs on or before Nov. 18 without paying change fees or any difference in fair, United said on its website. Travel must be rescheduled for the same cabin.
Air quality in New Delhi is famously poor, but the smog over the past week created what doctors in the city called a public health emergency. Pollution levels reached nearly 30 times what the World Health Organization considers safe, The New York Times reported.
Most of the city's schools have closed, and the smog is causing traffic pileups, the Times reported.
Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal has called his city "a gas chamber" and has blamed the problem on farmers in neighboring states burning their crops, combined with emissions from construction and vehicles, NDTV reported.
Marisa Iati may be reached at miati@njadvancemedia.com. Follow her on Twitter @Marisa_Iati or on Facebook here. Find NJ.com on Facebook.
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Gov. Scott Walker just issued an executive order prohibiting current or future state contracts with any business entity that engages in the constitutionally protected right to boycott Israel for its human rights violations.
Republicans are pushing two similar bills in the state Legislature that would compel individuals as well as companies to support Israel if they want to do business with local or state government agencies. The provisions against boycotts, divestment and sanctions (often referred to as BDS) are to be written into contracts, and long-standing low-bidder requirements are to be superseded.
Our state politicians are not alone in singling out Israel including the Palestinian territories it illegally occupies by military force for this special status. In Congress, the proposed Israel Anti-Boycott Act would make it a felony to choose not to engage in commerce with companies doing business in Israel and its illegal settlements. According to the American Civil Liberties Union, violations would be punishable by a civil penalty that could reach $250,000 and a maximum criminal penalty of $1 million and 20 years in prison.
Such laws, resolutions and executive orders have been sprouting like mushrooms after the rain. Twenty-four U.S. states now have them on the books. Nationally, Republicans and some Democrats have gotten on board thanks to well-funded efforts by the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and the Israeli government of Benjamin Netanyahu.
Bipartisanship may be dead when it comes to things the American people really need, but not when it comes to government overreach on behalf of the foreign state of Israel.
The absurd and dangerous consequences are becoming increasingly clear. Last month, people in a Houston suburb were required to sign an anti-BDS pledge to receive hurricane relief. (Individuals, but not companies, were eventually freed from this requirement after protests.)
And a Kansas math teacher who refused to sign an anti-BDS pledge was de-selected from a position in a state-funded teacher training program. A Mennonite, she follows her church policy to avoid purchasing goods and services from Israeli companies and those doing business with Israeli settlements. (Apparently, religious freedom exempts you from the law to provide womens reproductive health services, but not from the duty to support Israel.) She is now suing the state of Kansas.
This Palestine exception to the First Amendment is of obvious concern to the millions of people who support the global BDS campaign called by Palestinian civil society to get Israel to comply with international law and basic standards of human rights.
But it should alarm anyone who values their freedom to engage in collective economic action to right wrongs and build a better society. How long before others such as those in the burgeoning movement to divest from fossil fuels will have their own exceptions written into law? Contact your state legislators and ask them to oppose these bills and Gov. Walkers executive order.
Detwayne Williams, 23, and Martell Williams, 18, were booked into Orleans Justice Center Saturday afternoon (Nov. 11) on charges of possession of a stolen vehicle and resisting an officer.(NOPD)
Police stand in the 1400 block of Flanders Street during an investigation of a fatal shooting in Algiers Saturday evening (Nov. 11). (Marie Simoneaux, NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune)
Bill Gates has been one of the worlds richest people for decades. To build a legacy beyond Microsoft and to build a better world in 2000 he and his wife launched the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which has spent billions of dollars on numerous good causes.
The worlds largest private charity has had some great successes helping sharply reduce the prevalence of malaria worldwide, for one. But the Gates Foundations efforts to improve U.S. public education havent gone as well as hoped, as Gates admitted in remarks last month at an education conference. As a result, he said the foundation is evolving our education strategy as it looks to invest close to $1.7 billion in U.S. public schools over five years.
While the Gates Foundation has funded many education initiatives, its biggest splash came with its Common Core campaign, launched in 2009. Forty-two states are in the program, which mandates centralized curriculum standards for student learning in math and language arts in each grades K-12. Test results are used to rate school and teacher effectiveness.
But Common Core has come under fire from teachers unions and their political allies because of its emphasis on testing and teacher accountability. And Common Core faces criticism from conservatives because it seeks to require independent-minded states to use standards mandated at the national level.
Bipartisan opposition to top-down education policy-making is why Congress scrapped the No Child Left Behind education law in 2015 and shifted school responsibilities back to the states.
These changing political waters suggest that if the Gates Foundation truly wants to advance public education, the last thing it should do is advocate national standards. Instead, it should urge states to copy what has worked in other states. This approach would be much more difficult to criticize than Common Core.
In liberal, pro-union states like California, an educational campaign that pointed to how much better the public education system is in liberal, pro-union Massachusetts could build momentum for change. The Massachusetts Education Reform Act of 1993, crafted with input from teachers, established standardized basic methods to assess the performance of students, teachers, administrators and superintendents and hold them accountable.
While Massachusetts has clusters of struggling students in poor minority communities, its public schools are widely seen as Americas best.
In conservative, non-union states wary of national dictates, an educational campaign could emphasize how much better the public education system is in conservative, non-union Texas. Since 1984, the Texas government has passed a series of education reforms that like those in Massachusetts set up basic accountability requirements for schools and districts while tracking the performance of four student groups: whites, Hispanics, African-Americans and the economically disadvantaged.
A 2015 Urban Institute report ranked Texas behind only Massachusetts and New Jersey in school quality in an evaluation that adjusted for student demographics.
Gates seeming to lose faith that Common Core can succeed will be music to the ears of people like Gov. Jerry Brown, who famously rapped the siren song of trendy school reform in 2011.
But no critic can explain away the years of comprehensive success seen in Massachusetts and Texas. Whether you live in a red state or a blue state, no one should accept so-so schools. There is a better way.
OMAHA A Boston software company with ties to Google and Al Gore plans to open an office in Omaha early next year.
Toast Inc., founded in 2013 to modernize the restaurant industrys computer technology, confirmed Thursday that it would open an Omaha office but would give no details.
The Omaha World-Herald reported last week that Toast officials had been in Omaha looking at downtown locations. The company at the time declined to comment. Its visit sparked discussions among city leaders, who speculated that Toast may add hundreds of workers in good-paying, technology-related jobs.
Toast offers point-of-sale systems the electronic payment devices at retail locations that are integrated with online ordering, gift cards, inventory, wages and other restaurant business functions.
It has outgrown its headquarters in the Fenway Park neighborhood of Boston, according to The Boston Business Journal, and said in July that it planned to hire 1,000 people over the next year and a half.
The company opened a location in Dublin, Ireland, in October.
Toast is already looking for Omaha workers, posting job openings for a help desk manager and a customer support team leader, among others. A company spokeswoman declined to elaborate on plans for the Omaha office.
A spokeswoman for the Nebraska Department of Economic Development, which recruits businesses to the state and would deal with any tax or other incentives offered to a prospective employer, said the agency would not comment.
The states economic incentives depend on how much a company invests and how many jobs it creates.
Investing at least $10 million and hiring at least 75 people, for example, can qualify for sales tax refunds on capital purchases, tax credits for investments and employee wages and personal property tax exemptions for up to 10 years.
Toast has about 500 employees and was founded by MIT graduates Steve Fredette, Aman Narang and Jonathan Grimm. The Business Journal said the three had worked together at Endeca of Cambridge, a search engine that Oracle bought for about $1 billion in 2011. Endeca co-founder and former CEO Steve Papa is on Toasts board.
Toasts CEO is Chris Comparato, a former executive at Endeca and at the software company Acquia Inc. In 2016, Toast raised $30 million to finance its operations through GV, formerly called Google Ventures.
In July, Toast announced that it had raised another $101 million in growth funding led by Generation Investment Management of London, which was co-founded by former Vice President Al Gore, along with Lead Edge Capital of New York and Bessemer Venture Partners of Boston.
The restaurant industry has historically been slower than others to adopt technology, leading to operational inefficiencies and missed opportunities, Greg Wasserman, a partner at Generation Investment Management, said in a statement in July.
Toast said it planned to use the money to continue building its cloud computing platform, including its online ordering system, and to expand its use of restaurant data to improve efficiency and customer service.
For example, Toast said that in 2016, its restaurant customers served 4.1 million burgers, 7 million pizzas and 6 million pops, that 40 percent of customers prefer their meat cooked medium-well and that 54 percent of online orders came from mobile devices.
The restaurants sold $7 million worth of gift cards that year, averaging $47 each, Toast said.
Earlier this year, Forbes magazine listed Toast as one of the top cloud software companies.
Although the company doesnt report its financial figures publicly, its revenue grew by 31,250 percent from 2013 to 2016, according to a ranking by the Deloitte & Touche accounting firm. That placed third in Deloittes Technology Fast 500 list of North American companies.
Superintendent Vickie Murillo has released a plan of action to move the Council Bluffs Community School District forward. The plan was developed after she held listening sessions with faculty, staff and community members.
Murillo, who started in July, has set six goals for the district for the coming three years:
Optimize organizational effectiveness and efficiency
Advance student achievement
Develop an early college academy
Expand opportunities in career and technical education
Enhance mental health supports
Develop and implement a district marketing plan
I think they are attainable goals, she said.
The district has consultant Ted Blaesing of HYA Associates studying ways to make district administration operate more efficiently and effectively, Murillo said. She hopes to have a report from him in hand by the end of the year.
Improving academic achievement is, of course, an ongoing challenge, Murillo said.
Our goal is to create an academic plan to move the needle, she said. Right now, Council Bluffs kind of sits in the middle of the pack, and its our goal to move up to the top (group) in the state.
Murillo believes one of the first things that needs to be done is to adopt a district assessment that will align with curriculum and help school officials track student growth.
Id like to have a growth model assessment that teachers can use to guide instruction, she said.
Murillo would also like to expand the districts preschool program. She is seeking local funding sources and hopes to implement changes in the fall of 2018.
Murillo plans to launch a Council Bluffs Community School District Early College Academy in January 2018 at Iowa Western Community College. It will begin with a small cohort of a dozen students or less. Students will spend their junior and senior years of high school at the college, except to participate in extra curricular activities at their high schools. They will follow a course sequence that will allow them to finish their high school diplomas and associates degrees at the same time.
Students will have to apply to be admitted to the program, and preference will be given to those who have already taken some dual-credit courses, she said.
The state of Iowa will reimburse the district for money spent on college credits for its students, Murillo said. That means students in the program will be able to move on to a four-year college and pay for only two years of their college education.
Its a really positive thing that the State Department of Education has set up to encourage students to take more advanced courses, she said.
Murillo wants to expand career and technical education, partly by expanding the Tucker Career & College Center. The district will work closely with Iowa Western to make classes conform to the colleges articulation requirements and will partner with local businesses to create opportunities for job shadowing and internships.
To improve mental health supports for students, the district will reach out to state agencies and private providers, Murillo said. Efforts will be made to develop a system of interventions.
Were really working to see what we can do to support these students and families, she said. Its our goal that all students are successful in our district.
The district is working with Emspace to put together a marketing plan, Murillo said.
We believe our destiny is to be a district of choice, she said. I think one of the things a lot of people dont know is all the opportunities available in Council Bluffs schools.
That includes advanced placement courses, dual credit courses, activities and special academic areas, Murillo said.
We have a fabulous robotics program that is second to none, she said.
We want our students to succeed at whatever path they choose, she said.
Tuesdays election was the culmination of a Council Bluffs mayoral and City Council campaign that became divisive in the final weeks, to the chagrin of many involved.
Half-truths, trollish Facebook posts, alleged dirty tactics, misplaced hysteria the Council Bluffs election season seemed to reflect the tone of the presidential election a year ago.
It made it more tense and stressful for everybody, said Councilwoman Melissa Head, who won re-election, coming in first in the four-person city council race.
Matt Walsh won another four years as mayor, while newcomer Mike Wolf was elected to the council.
The most egregious activity was first alleged during the Politics and Pints forum at Whiskey Roadhouse on Nov. 2, when Walsh claimed that three of the people who had assisted with his campaign had been targeted by calls to their employers. He said the callers tried to get the campaign volunteers fired.
His opponent, Pottawattamie County Supervisor Scott Belt, said he and his campaign had no involvement in the tactics.
Trailing by hundreds of votes with only a few precincts left to report on Tuesday night, Belt attempted to offer a concession to Walsh at the Pottawattamie County Courthouse.
Walsh initially declined Belts handshake and was visibly angry at his opponent. A short while later, Walsh approached Belt, and the two men shook hands.
Belt told Walsh he wasnt involved in the calls. Walsh said the calls were horrible. Belt blamed much of the negativity of the campaign on social media.
You didnt see me go on there and post anything, ever, Belt said.
The county supervisor told The Nonpareil: He thinks my people were involved. They told me they werent. I cant control everything.
Walsh decried the calls.
They were going after peoples livelihoods, he said.
About not shaking Belts hand, Walsh said his reaction was out of frustration from the campaign.
Thats my fault, he said.
Division lines were clear in the race at least among many supporters and groups working to influence the election with Walsh and council candidates Lynne Branigan and Wolf on one side, Belt and incumbent City Council members Al Ringgenberg and Head on the other.
As Belt mentioned, much of the trouble came in the form of social media criticism and negativity.
The Council Bluffs Business Cooperative, whose members declined to identify themselves publicly, criticized Walsh, Wolf and Branigan in Facebook posts. These included sponsored posts which feature users paying to make the post more prominent. Some of the posts accused Wolf of being a puppet of the Iowa West Foundation and not an independent.
Im an independent, Wolf said in response during the Politics and Pints candidate forum on Nov. 2.
A post also accused Wolf of wanting to filter donations away from poverty programs to his employer, Google.
On election night, Wolf said, We really tried to run a positive campaign. Im proud of my campaign. We stayed positive the entire time. It was tough at times, with people throwing out things that arent correct.
The Cooperative was created prior to the October primary election during the debate over medians on West Broadway. The pages first post was a link to a Change.org petition to remove the medians from the West Broadway renovation plan. The petition link is also the groups listed website.
The City Council voted to remove medians from the plan in March. The group was inactive online afterward until a late-October post criticizing Walsh for noting at a campaign forum that he disagreed with the councils decision on medians.
The page increased the number of its posts as November hit, including posts that went after the Iowa West Foundation for spending money on BLink public Wi-Fi instead of donating more to poverty causes. The page also discussed household median income levels and the citys poverty level.
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the poverty level in Council Bluffs in 2000 was 10.3 percent. The 2015 American Community Survey by the bureau put the poverty level in 2015 at 16.3 percent.
Since 2009, Iowa West has given $1.15 million to the Micah House homeless shelter, $1.06 million to Heartland Family Service for homeless services and $239,000 to New Visions Homeless Services, which operates Mohms Place, according to the foundations grant archive at bit.ly/2iKCbvs and the most recent round of Iowa West grants and initiative funding. The foundation doesnt have grant information from before 2009. Those are donations to the Charles E. Lakin Campus entities that work on homelessness, while there are grants to other homelessness and poverty programs throughout the metro area.
Iowa West has donated $250,000 to the BLink project thus far.
When The Nonpareil reached out to the Cooperative page, one of the people involved responded and discussed the page but asked to remain anonymous and would not disclose the names of other people connected to the group.
The operators of the page have been criticized in the community for remaining anonymous.
Asked about the posts over the weekend criticizing Wolf, BLink and the Iowa West Foundation, the person who spoke to The Nonpareil said theyd like to see the city tackle poverty.
Wed like to see something done on the poverty level. I dont know what they need to create. But if you look at median income, its something we need to address, the person said.
Asked about the foundations work to curb poverty, the person said, I have nothing against BLink and the Iowa West Foundation.
The person added that, as the election wraps up, the page is going to go away.
City Councilwoman Sharon White, who wasnt up for re-election, drew ire online when, on her personal Facebook page, she criticized Head over a personal matter related to the West Broadway median vote.
Citizens for A Successful Council Bluffs, a registered political action committee, ran advertisements, including sponsored and unsponsored posts on Facebook, related to the race.
The group criticized Belt for his vote on the county board to raise the salary of supervisors. It also criticized a vote in 2014 that raised county property taxes.
The PAC targeted Ringgenberg for no votes on the council and for a video in which he discussed the disrepair of West Broadway and need for improvements while comparing it to Detroit.
The PAC gave a set of questions to each candidate in the mayoral and council races, which Walsh, Branigan and Wolf answered. The group criticized the other three candidates for not answering the questions.
Citizens for a Successful Council Bluffs endorsed Walsh, Branigan and Wolf.
The PAC is a group of about 11 people, according to Chairman Tom Whitson. The publicly-known members are Whitson, treasurer Kathy Penkert and John Burns. As with the Cooperative, many in the community criticized the group for not revealing the names of all members.
Disclosure filings due in January will include information on donations to the PAC.
The group lists Childrens Square as its parent organization. Whitson said it did so because if the PAC dissolves, it will donate its remaining financial balance to the organization.
Jason Hacker with the Iowa Campaign Disclosure and Ethics Board said the group is allowed to list a nonprofit as its parent organization. To dissolve, the group would have to zero out its bank balance.
Hacker said PACs are fairly autonomous in what they can do with their money when they dissolve, including donating their funds to charities or other PACs.
Carol Wood, president and CEO of Childrens Square, said she was aware that we were identified as the charity to receive any funds if the group dissolved.
We dont take positions on candidates, support, that kind of thing. Thats outside what we would do, Wood said, noting its a Childrens Square policy to not get involved in races. Our job, with legislators or other elected officials, is to educate, not choose sides.
Generally speaking, Hacker said nonprofits that are listed as parent organizations can participate in campaign activities if employee salaries are covered by a PAC for the campaign work.
The PAC has to pay for anything political, he said.
For example, if an employee spent two hours out of the work day on political activities, the PAC would cover that portion of the days pay. The PAC would also have to cover the cost of campaign materials and other items.
After the election, Whitson said the group is in the process of evaluating the election results, including comparing the voting numbers from past elections.
We are evaluating whether or not we had sufficient success for us to stay in place, Whitson said of the future.
The group deactivated its Facebook page and website because the election is over, Whitson said.
The 2017 election season wasnt terribly unlike the 2015 campaign season, which saw the Veterans Defending Truth political action committee make waves through a series of flyers and an argument between candidates after a forum. That argument stemmed from a Facebook post.
At Politics and Pints this year, a somber Belt lamented the negativity.
It looks like were getting to the federal politics level, he said.
On Tuesday night, Belt said he hopes divisions can heal.
Walsh said the current political climate could deter qualified candidates who could help the city from coming forward to run.
Thats just unfortunate, the mayor said.
After the results were in, Wolf said, We all need to come together. Lets keep moving forward.
Wolf said the community needs to look at the big picture.
Im excited about the future, he said.
Head said shes hopeful both factions can set aside the negativity of the campaign and work together.
Its our duty to put our differences aside and learn to work together, she said.
A Council Bluffs native who went on to become one of the United States Department of Agricultures top administrators recently received Iowa State Universitys College of Veterinary Medicines Stange Award, the colleges highest award presented to distinguished alumni.
The Stange Award for Meritorious Service in Veterinary Medicine is presented annually for outstanding professional achievement in the education, government, industry, practice or other professional endeavors in veterinary medicine.
The recipient, Jack Shere, was born in Council Bluffs in 1957, the son of Jack Albert Shere, Sr. and Patsy Lou (Schwartzlander) Shere. He graduated from Thomas Jefferson High School in 1976.
While a student at Thomas Jefferson, Shere was involved with National Honor Society, Quill & Scroll, the student newspaper, student council and several sports. He was inducted into the Thomas Jefferson High School Hall of Fame in 2014.
He went on to earn a Bachelor of Science in biology and chemistry from Iowa State University in Ames before earning a doctorate in veterinary medicine from ISU in 1987. The following year he earned his Master of Science in education with a minor in counseling, also from Iowa State. In 2001, Shere completed work at the University of Wisconsin to earn a joint Ph.D. in poultry science and microbiology.
Shere joined the USDAs Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service in 1990 after three years in private practice.
For the past 27 years, he has been on the leading edge of the worlds responses to animal disease outbreaks. He has extensive experience with animal disease outbreaks, including salmonella enteritidis, foot-and-mouth disease in England, Exotic Newcastle Disease and highly pathogenic avian influenza.
During the 2002 Exotic Newcastle Disease outbreak in California, Texas, New Mexico and Utah, Shere, as task force joint area commander and incident commander, headed a massive federal and state eradication effort for nine months.
During the recent highly pathogenic avian influenza outbreak in the Midwest, he again led the USDAs efforts to combat the devastating disease that led to the death of more than 48 million birds in a dozen states.
Iowa, the hardest hit, euthanized more than 31 million birds, including approximately 40 percent of the states 60 million laying hens, according to figures compiled by the Iowa Poultry Association. Turkey farmers in the state, while affected to a lesser degree, also suffered. Minnesota, the leading turkey producer, lost at least nine million turkeys.
Shere continues to serve in his role as the USDA Animal and Plant Health Inspection Servicess deputy administrator for Veterinary Services and the Chief Veterinary Office of the United States.
A meeting on fair housing is planned next week in Council Bluffs.
The Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing program will host a meeting from 6 to 8 p.m. Wednesday at the Council Bluffs Public Library, 400 Willow Ave. The Council Bluffs Community Development department is hosting the event.
The department and others with the metro area effort gathered community members stories about access to opportunity in Council Bluffs and southwest Iowa, according to a release.
It is time to turn your concerns into goals and create a plan to make fair housing a reality for all, the release stated.
According to the Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing website, the effort involves taking meaningful actions, in addition to combating discrimination, that overcome patterns of segregation and foster inclusive communities free from barriers that restrict access to opportunity based on protected characteristics.
The program aims to address significant disparities in housing needs and in access to opportunity, replacing segregated living patterns with truly integrated and balanced living patterns, transforming racially and ethnically concentrated areas of poverty into areas of opportunity and fostering and maintaining compliance with civil rights and fair housing laws.
Go to affh.cityofomaha.org for more information.
The following editorial ran Nov. 1 in The Des Moines Register.
Republicans call idea half baked but offer no plan to address faltering private market.
Sen. Matt McCoy and Rep. John Forbes are exactly right. Iowans who cannot find affordable, private health insurance should be able to buy into Medicaid coverage.
The proposal, unveiled last week by the two Democratic state lawmakers, is especially welcome now, as the states individual private insurance market is faltering.
Why not allow more Iowans and the premiums they will pay into an established government health insurance program that already insures more than 600,000 of their neighbors?
The proposal could offer an eventual lifeline to more than 70,000 Iowans who shop on their own for coverage without help from an employer. It would also repeal former Gov. Terry Branstads costly and disastrous privatization of Medicaid management.
Unfortunately, Republicans, who control the Iowa Legislature and governors office, immediately attacked the proposal.
Its a half-baked idea that hasnt even worked in the most liberal of states, said House Speaker Linda Upmeyer, R-Clear Lake.
What states would those be? Because when lawmakers in Nevada unveiled a similar idea this year, the problem was not the plan. It was politicians.
The Nevada Legislature passed a bill to offer Medicaid coverage alongside private health insurance on the states health insurance exchange. All residents could be covered. The state would need permission from the federal government, but the lawmaker who sponsored the bill said Washington officials were open to the idea.
Then Republican Gov. Brian Sandoval vetoed the legislation.
Upmeyer rightly notes details would need to be worked out for Medicaid to cover more Iowans. But the so-called half-baked idea is more than Republicans have in the oven. The majority party isnt offering any recipe for helping constituents.
Those constituents include Bill Zook, 57, of Ankeny. After retiring early and losing coverage through his employer, he bought a plan on his own from Wellmark Blue Cross & Blue Shield. He currently pays $1,458 per month for a policy with a $13,000 annual deductible.
But Wellmark is among the insurers exiting the individual market next year. A comparable policy from the only remaining insurer, Medica, will cost Zook and his wife about $2,400 per month, he said.
Zook is frustrated and took the time to travel to the Statehouse last week to hear what McCoy and Forbes were announcing. Now he and other Iowans should consider contacting Republican lawmakers and Gov. Kim Reynolds and telling them to support the idea of letting Iowans buy into Medicaid. Premiums could be based on income and would likely be much cheaper than private coverage.
Thats because Medicaid costs much less per beneficiary than private insurance. The program contains costs by using its market power to ratchet down reimbursements to health providers. It dedicates its money to paying for actual health care instead of shareholder dividends and CEO salaries.
State efforts to build on existing Medicaid could move the country toward a universal system of health insurance. It could create a desperately needed public option alternative to private coverage.
The government program already insures 75 million Americans. Created in 1965, Medicaid is a reliable insurer with an existing infrastructure in every state. It has low administrative costs and provides comprehensive benefits, including coverage for prescription drugs and hospitalization.
Three-fourths of the public, including a majority of Republicans, have a positive view of Medicaid, according to a recent poll from the Kaiser Family Foundation.
Most important, it is operated by the government. And the government will be there for Americans even when private insurers jump ship or charge an Iowa couple $2,400 per month for health coverage.
Veterans and community members were treated to a very special performance Saturday evening at the 20th Century Veterans Memorial.
North Platte celebrates Veterans Day every year. A parade marches through the downtown area in the morning. Later, the 20th Century Veterans Association invites veterans, their families and everyone else to a ceremony at the memorial. Lee Bird Civil Air Patrol cadets raise flags while attendees sing the national anthem and recite the pledge of allegiance. Gary Smith, the chaplain for local law enforcement, leads a prayer. Association president Kevin Kennedy says a few words.
And this year, Dr. Kim Baxter took the stage.
When Kevin asked me if I would speak at this event, I asked, Are you sure you know what youre doing? Baxter said. I dont know if Im the guy you want, I said, Im not a veteran.
Baxter said the United States forces were pulling out of Vietnam when he graduated high school in 1972, so he was not drafted for military service. He said he has always felt guilty for not serving, and a great indebtedness to those who have.
I dont feel worthy to stand up here speaking to people Im in such awe of the veterans and their families.
Baxter said each person who has served their country is a hero.
Although he wasnt in the military, Baxters family has many veterans. His father and uncle served in World War II, where is uncle was awarded a Silver Star for his acts of heroism.
During Saturdays ceremony, Baxter also played guitar and performed a song he wrote in honor of friends, family and anyone who has served.
Its important that veterans and their families know how much I admire you all, he said as he began.
Smith also named several veterans in the audience and encouraged them to stand and be recognized at the end of the event. He reminded residents that the citys government features several veterans on the police force, at the sheriffs office; mayor Dwight Livingston is a veteran, as well as county commission Duane Deterding.
Next time you see them, remember to say thank you, Smith said.
The Friday meeting of the Board of Public Roads Classifications and Standards has been canceled for want of a sufficient agenda. In the interest of costeffective stewardship of state funds, the meetings business will be combined with the next meeting agenda.
A nation reveals itself not only by the men it produces, but also by the men it honors, the men it remembers. Former President John F. Kennedys words ring true now more than ever. Each year, Veterans Day is an opportunity for Americans to set aside the things that divide our country, and celebrate the men and women who have served our country through the years. This day is set apart to honor their service and sacrifice which have protected the freedom and liberties we hold in common as Americans.
This Veterans Day marks 98 years since we first observed this celebration. On Nov. 11, 1919, Armistice Day commemorated the cessation of fighting in World War I on the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month, 1918. After World War II, a veteran developed the idea to expand the meaning of Armistice Day to celebrate all veterans, and it became known as Veterans Day.
As Nebraskans, we not only recognize Veterans Day in our state, but we also look for opportunities to honor our veterans all year long. Our veterans sacrificed much to keep us safe on overseas battlefields, and they also continue to serve at home in their communities. I know from personal experience how much the continued service of our veterans contributes to the Good Life. As the chief operating officer of the online brokerage firm Ameritrade, I had several key team members who previously served in the military. As governor, I have hired a former Navy officer as chief human resources officer, a U.S. Army officer to lead Administrative Services, and a captain from the JAG Corps to lead Veterans Affairs.
This year, my administration worked with the Legislature on a number of new initiatives that are helping make Nebraska a better place to live, work and raise a family for veterans.
My mission as governor is to make state government more effective, more efficient and more customer-focused. This year, senators and I streamlined services for Nebraska veterans by merging the two state agencies that serve them. This is something Nebraska veterans have been seeking for years. Through LB 340, we unified the Nebraska Department of Veterans Affairs and the Division of Veterans Homes, formerly part of the Department of Health and Human Services. A single agency created a united team working for the men and women who have sacrificed so much for our state and country.
The Legislature and I also worked together to break down barriers for veterans and military families seeking job opportunities. We eliminated unnecessary requirements for military spouses with occupational licenses and expanded the hiring preference in Nebraska to include spouses of service members. We also waived the requirement for veterans to resubmit certification for a key property tax exemption if no change in medical condition has occurred. Finally, we created five additional military honor license plates to recognize the service of members of the reserves of the armed forces.
These are just some of the ways we are making state government work for our veterans and their families. My administration will continue to look for additional ways to make the Good Life an even better place to be a veteran.
This month, it is my hope that each Nebraskan takes the opportunity to honor all past and present servicemen and women as well as their families. This can be as simple as attending an event on Veterans Day; stopping at the local VFW or American Legion chapter for a meal; or taking the time to visit a neighbor to let them know youre grateful for their service. They have made incredible sacrifices. Taking the time to share your appreciation through a few words or time out of your day will mean the world to them.
Please join Nebraskans and Americans from across our country in honoring veterans for their service. Throughout the year, you can visit www.veterans.nebraska.gov for a calendar of veteran-related events. I hope you will check it out. Additionally, if you would like to share a story about a veterans service, I want to hear from you. Please call my office at 402-471-2244 or email me at pete.ricketts@nebraska.gov.
Saudi Arabia was a hotbed of activity this week, which spooked the oil market to a two-year high near $58 per barrel.
The Middle Eastern kingdom is undergoing internal turmoil after the heir to the throne, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, fired numerous government ministers and detained other princes on the premise of anti-corruption efforts. The moves are being seen by many as a consolidation of power, as the crown prince takes out many of the ruling class, some of whom rank among the wealthiest in the world.
On top of the internal struggles, Saudi Arabia shot down a missile this week that was fired at its capital from neighboring Yemen. U.S. intelligence officials confirmed that the missile came from Iran and was fired by pro-Iranian Houthi rebels in Yemen. Saudi Arabia has been at war with these rebels for years, but now declared that the missile attack may be an act of war by the Iranians.
If war were to break out between two of the Middle Easts major military powers, and two of the worlds largest oil producers, the impact on the global oil market would be devastating on a scale not seen since the First Gulf War.
Corn yields hit new record
Despite hot and dry weather this summer, U.S. corn yields hit a new record high this year at 175.4 bushels per acre, according to Thursdays update from the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Crop yields have risen sharply in recent years due to crop genetics, better pest management, improving machinery, and increasingly efficient farming techniques. Rising yields have allowed the U.S. to continue providing a surplus of grain despite a rising global population, increasing livestock herds (that are largely grain-fed), and the additional demand from biofuel production.
This years harvest is projected to exceed 14.3 billion bushels, which could leave an excess, or carryover, of more than 2.3 billion bushels of corn. Fears of oversupply knocked corn to a new low price near $3.40 per bushel, cutting deeply into farmers' profitability for those who waited until harvest to price their grain.
Alison Luff is happy to be introducing Chicago audiences to the exciting new musical production featuring the compositions of Jimmy Buffett.
Luff stars as character Rachel in "Escape to Margaritaville," which opened in previews Thursday at Chicago's Oriental Theatre. The musical will enjoy a three-week run in the Windy City prior to heading to Broadway next year.
"Chicago is unique as a theater community," Luff said, adding it's also a perfect town for testing out shows before they head to Broadway.
The musical was in development at La Jolla Playhouse in California over the summer and also played for a brief time in New Orleans before heading to Chicago for its official pre-Broadway engagement.
The actress said "Escape to Margaritaville" is a special show.
"It has a great message. It's a boy-meets-girl love story and a romantic comedy but it's about friendship as well," Luff said.
"Escape to Margaritaville," featuring Buffett's popular tunes, is directed by Christopher Ashley. Its book was written by Greg Garcia and Mike O'Malley. Choreography is by Kelly Devine.
Luff said she has long enjoyed Buffett's music and said it's an honor to be working with the musician.
"He's a joy to work with and so much fun. It's important for him that we're having a good time (on stage)," Luff said, adding Buffett has definitely had much input on the show as it was being developed.
"He's put a ton of trust in the creative team (and the actors)," Luff said.
The actress, who has starred in a number of Broadway and touring productions, said she's been interested in the theater art since she was a child. "I can't imagine myself doing anything else," Luff said.
Luff has starred in the Broadway revival of "Les Miserables," where she was Fantine. She also performed as Miss Honey in "Matilda," and as Elphaba in the first National Tour of "Wicked."
In addition to Luff's acting endeavors, she and her husband Matt Magnusson formed the singing duo The Bones. They founded the band in 2015 and write and perform various original compositions.
INDIANAPOLIS Gov. Eric Holcomb is not taking a public position on three key issues almost certain to roil the 2018 legislative session that begins in January.
The first-term Republican last week told reporters that he will defer to state lawmakers on whether Indiana should legalize Sunday retail alcohol sales, permit cold beer sales at locations other than package liquor stores and allow Hoosiers to carry handguns in public without obtaining a state license.
"I'll see what actually comes to fruition and makes its way through the General Assembly," Holcomb said. "(Those issues are) not part of my agenda."
Holcomb did, however, rule out signing into law any measure that legalizes marijuana for medicinal or recreational use in Indiana, despite support for the policy change from typically favored groups such as the American Legion.
"The FDA (U.S. Food and Drug Administration) is the organization that approves drugs in this country and they've not yet, and so we're not there in this state," Holcomb said. "I'm trying to get drugs off the street and not add more into the mix."
Drug epidemic
Indeed, tackling the state's opioid abuse crisis through tougher criminal penalties in some cases, and increased drug treatment opportunities in others, is one of the top items on Holcomb's legislative wish list.
He's asking lawmakers to give county prosecutors explicit authority to file murder charges against individuals who illicitly manufacture drugs that cause a user's death.
Holcomb also plans to work with coroners to broaden the drug screen applied to overdose victims, so the state can obtain more consistent and specific data on the size and scope of Indiana's drug problem.
Hoosiers ready to kick their drug habits will have more treatment options available if Holcomb succeeds in persuading lawmakers to set a standard that no person should have to drive more than one hour to reach a treatment facility.
In addition, he's working to establish a twice daily "open beds" tracking system for drug treatment centers, enabling individuals to call the 211 helpline and find out immediately if there is a treatment spot available for them.
"It's all about access to treatment," Holcomb said. "We need to do more, and we need more access for those who are in the dark and they're scratching and reaching out for help."
Rail and water infrastructure
Holcomb plans to seek assistance next year to finally secure federal funding for the double-tracking of the South Shore Line between Gary and Michigan City, and to build the West Lake extension between Hammond and Dyer.
Indiana lawmakers last session approved the state contribution necessary to qualify those long-sought projects for federal matching funds, which Holcomb said the state strongly will advocate be included in next year's federal spending legislation.
The governor said he believes speeding transit to Chicago on the commuter rail line is key to growing the population of Northwest Indiana.
Holcomb also is planning to get involved in another infrastructure realm of concern to the Region generally, and state Sen. Ed Charbonneau, R-Valparaiso, in particular water.
His agenda calls for creating a multiagency working group to devise strategies to manage the state's water resources and infrastructure, as well as developing asset management plans for high-need water and wastewater utilities.
Charbonneau said he's grateful Holcomb recognizes that the water infrastructure issues he's been working on for five years in the Senate warrant special attention from Indiana's chief executive.
"This is going to take everybody," Charbonneau said. "I look forward to working with the governor to protect our water asset, which is so critical to the state's economic development efforts and the quality of life for every Hoosier.
A broad agenda
Other items on Holcomb's legislative agenda, in addition to the previously reported workforce development plan, run the gamut from futuristic to firefly-tastic.
For example, the governor is working with state Rep. Ed Soliday, R-Valparaiso, chairman of the House Roads and Transportation Committee, to authorize the testing and operation of autonomous vehicles on Indiana's roads.
Holcomb also is calling for more direct flights to popular destinations from airports throughout the state, incentives to expand affordable broadband access to currently underserved communities and taking steps to ensure computer software is considered a service exempt from sales tax.
State employees are likely to soon get paid time off following the birth or adoption of a child, and a new state task force will oversee large government technology purchases to guarantee they are delivered on-time and on-budget.
Finally, Holcomb enthusiastically declared that he supports the repeatedly thwarted efforts of the students at West Lafayette's Cumberland Elementary School to convince the General Assembly to make Say's firefly the official state insect of Indiana.
CROWN POINT Lake County government gets a little larger financially next year.
The Lake County Council approved a 2018 budget that would disburse about $269 million.
The new year will bring a 3-percent across-the-board raise for full-time county government employees, an added $2.1 million cost to taxpayers.
County government, which spends 55 percent of its budget on employee salaries and benefits, has been a story of rising costs. An earlier Times study shows budgets rising from 2000 to 2010 when the recession and state-mandated tax reductions forced several years of wage and job freezes.
Expenditures resumed their upward march after 2013, as revenues recovered with the economy, the passage of a personal income tax on local residents and workers, and a federal mandate to spend more on county jail inmates' health care.
So did demands for county government wages, prompting the county to grant 3 percent across-the-board raises in 2014, 2016 and again, now, in 2018.
Council members said the budget is balanced. "Yes, it continues to grow, but it's in control," Councilman Dave Hamm, D-Hammond, said.
Hamm said the state is permitting Lake County's property tax levy to grow by 3.7 percent, and the salary hike is justified. "People need a raise to let them better themselves," he said.
The council is still dealing with Lake Superior Court judges, who filed a mandate suit earlier this year demanding higher pay for their approximately 350 secretaries, bailiffs, office managers, stenographers and administrators.
The two sides are in settlement talks. Council members privately hope to keep these raises in line with the 3-percent standard they already have set.
Wage controls
As demands on the public purse grow, council members said they also are working to keep escalating salary demands within fiscal reason.
Two years ago, the council passed a strategic plan to rein in government wages by the future hiring of fewer, but better paid, trained and qualified, personnel.
Council President Ted Bilski, D-Hobart, said the council is taking a concrete step in this direction by creating and funding a human resources department that would establish civil service examinations for county job applicants.
Bilski said the county has earmarked $1.17 million to create a system of "pay bands" that would equalize salaries across county government in dozens of departments, and base pay on job performance.
Councilman Eldon Strong, R-Crown Point, agrees. "Currently, if you want to be hired in Lake County, you have to know somebody. We need honest evaluations," Strong said.
The 2018 budget will include a property tax increase to raise $850,000 next year to pay for bridge and stormwater drainage ditch repairs, which previously were paid for with local income taxes. The average tax increase on the owner of a $100,000 home is estimated to cost $16 next year.
County spending by the numbers
The 2018 budget will require $167 million in property and income taxes, Dante Rondelli, the council's financial director said. The rest of the money will come from fees charged to customers of county casinos, telephone users and in connection with special government services as well as state and federal grants.
The payroll amounts to nearly $80 million in base salary for more than 1,800 full-time workers, and nearly $69 million for benefits ranging from longevity pay to health insurance coverage.
The county also will enlist the service of more than 2,700 part-time and seasonal workers, most of whom work summers for the county parks and recreation department.
The county will purchase about $50 million next year in supplies, equipment and other capital outlays. That includes $20.7 million to repay the county's outstanding debt for previous road, building and park construction.
The county also will pay service vendors $70 million for legal advice and other services the private sector provides county government.
Law enforcement and the courts also will account for much of next year's Lake County government budget.
This includes:
$31 million to pay and equip prosecutors, public defenders and other county court support staff.
$22.5 million to house, feed, guard and provide health care for county jail inmates.
$19.2 million for county police to patrol county roads and investigate crimes.
$16.6 million to pay the county's E-911 dispatchers and public safety communications equipment for most of the county.
$3.4 million to house young delinquents in the juvenile detention center.
$1.2 million for the coroner's staff to investigate homicides, suicides and a rising number of opioid-related deaths.
$140,000 to shelter and feed stray and abused dogs and cats at the county animal control center.
MERRILLVILLE Support is needed from multiple town panels before plans for the Chinmaya Mission of Northwest Indiana can advance.
It is associated with the Indian American Cultural Center and the Bharatiya Temple of Northwest Indiana, which are located adjacent to the property for the educational facility.
The Plan Commission is considering a request to combine two parcels of property in the 8700 block of Merrillville Road into one lot for the center. Merrillvilles Board of Zoning Appeals and Town Council also will review a special exception application that would allow the center to operate at the site.
The Chinmaya Mission offers a place to experience spiritual growth and learn virtues and values. It is open to those of all beliefs and backgrounds.
Classes primarily will be held on Sundays, but there could be some sessions during the week. Between 50 and 60 students are expected to participate, Matt Zurbriggen, of Abonmarche, told the Plan Commission.
The proposed one-story building will have about 10,000 square feet of space, Zurbriggen said. It will have several classrooms, an office, library, prayer room and a dining area. A playground area will be created outside of the facility.
A ceremony involving prayers and blessings recently occurred to prepare the land for the Chinmaya Mission building.
Representatives for the center said they want to break ground for the facility before the end of the year. The timing depends on how long it takes to gather all the approvals from the municipality.
The commission is expected to consider giving initial approval to the parcel request later this month. Members of the panel seemed pleased with the project when they received details in a recent workshop session.
The special exception will go before the BZA Nov. 15. It will then move to the Town Council for a final decision.
The American Red Cross encourages people to share their good health this holiday season by donating blood for patients in need.
A decline in donations occurs from Thanksgiving to New Years Day when donors are busy with holiday activities and travel. However, patients dont get a holiday break from needing lifesaving transfusions. In fact, every two seconds, someone in the U.S. needs blood.
By giving blood or platelets, donors may give patients more time and more holidays with loved ones. Make an appointment to give blood by downloading the free Red Cross Blood Donor App, visiting redcrossblood.org or calling 1-800-RED CROSS (1-800-733-2767).
Upcoming blood donation opportunities Nov. 16-30:
2 to 7 p.m. Thursday, Holy Spirit Church, 7667 E. 109th Ave., Crown Point
8 a.m. to noon Saturday, Merrillville Blood Donation Center, 791 E. 83rd Ave., Merrillville
8 a.m. to 1 p.m. Saturday, Boys & Girls Club of Porter County - Valparaiso, 354 Jefferson St., Valparaiso
12:30 to 5:30 p.m. Nov. 19, Momentum Church, 2200 N. Main St., Crown Point
9 a.m. to 2 p.m. Nov. 19, Conservation Club House, 1 Mill Pond Road, Union Mills
noon to 5 p.m. Nov. 20, Merrillville Blood Donation Center, 791 E. 83rd Ave., Merrillville
1 to- 6 p.m. Nov. 20, St. John Township Community Center, 1515 Lincoln Highway, Schererville
1 to 6 p.m. Nov. 21, Bethany Lutheran Church, 102 G St., LaPorte
7 a.m. to 1 p.m. Nov. 24, LaPorte Hospital, 1007 W. Lincolnway, LaPorte
1 to 6 p.m. Nov. 24, American Legion Post 485, 7485 Burr St., Schererville
2:30 to 6:30 p.m. Nov. 27, Hobart Community Center, 111 E. Old Ridge Road, Hobart
Noon to 5 p.m. Nov. 27, Merrillville Blood Donation Center, 791 E. 83rd Ave., Merrillville
11:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. Nov. 27, St. Peter Lutheran Church, 6540 Central Ave., Portage
12 to 7 p.m. Nov. 28, Valparaiso University - Harre Union, 1509 Chapel Drive, Valparaiso
11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Nov. 29, Fitness & Recreation Center, 2300 173rd St., Hammond
8 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. Nov. 30, Hebron High School, 509 S. Main St., Hebron
Horseshoe Hammond was able to raise $20,000 to donate towards American Cancer Societys Making Strides Against Breast Cancer.
Not only did Horseshoe Hammond raise funds through their annual Battle of the Bras fashion show, they also had two food sales, Bacon for Boobs and a Walking Tacos for Tatas fundraiser. The mostly uniformed employee workforce also donated money to be able to wear pink shirts and jeans two different days during the month with stickers proudly announcing their support of the cause. Horseshoe Hammond also encouraged their guests to take part in their fundraising efforts by featuring a pink punch and pink frosted brownie in their food outlets with a portion of the proceeds benefitting the cause. To top it off, they once again had their Pink Ribbon Donation bin on the casino floor to help generate funds.
We are proud to support important causes like Making Strides. Many of us have been impacted by the devastation of cancer and it is more important than ever to fight for a cure. Thanks to our amazing team members who seem to find a way every year to raise the bar on support efforts. We will continue to support efforts until cancer is no longer a word we have to use, Dawn Reynolds Pettit, Horseshoes regional vice president of human resources.
Last month eight male and two female Horseshoe leaders strutted down a runway with breast cancer themed bras and boxers to help raise awareness for breast cancer.
For the last five years, Horseshoe Hammond employees design bras themed around breast cancer for the month of October. This year they added the option for their employees to also decorate boxer shorts to highlight the fact that men also get breast cancer. Examples of some of this years bra and boxer titles are: Bad & Boobies, Be Hip & Save the Nip, Save the Droops, Superheroes to the Res-cure and many other themes. Employees were excited to show off their creativity and rally with their team members to raise money for the cause while enjoying some friendly competition.
A representative from the American Cancer Society was in attendance along with employees and guests laughing and cheering for the models.
The Rev. Larry Starett, pastor at the First Baptist Church in Chesterton, said he is planning a moment of silence on Sunday for the shooting victims at the church in the small South Texas town of Sutherland Springs.
"We can identify with the church because we also are a small Baptist church inside a small town," Starett said.
Starett and fellow clergy throughout the area were spending time this week carefully crafting messages of what they will say to their parishioners as well as addressing security measures.
"I'm still working on what I want to say, but it will be sensitive as to what happened and carry a message of hope," Starett said.
The Texas church gunman, identified as Devin Kelley, walked into the First Baptist Church in Sutherland Springs on Sunday yelling, "Everybody is going to die," before fatally shooting 26 people, including children, according to news reports.
Prayers are where to start
The Rev. Ericka Kilbourne, pastor at the First Presbyterian Church of Michigan City, said she too has been working on the words she wants to say to her fellow parishioners on Sunday.
"I have been without words because it's so shocking. I'm still developing a response because my spirit has been shaken," Kilbourne said.
Kilbourne said she understands those who have said thoughts and prayers aren't enough, but believes prayers are a place to start.
"We need to start with prayers then move to action," Kilbourne said.
Security training
Kilbourne said she would like to see deacons and elders in her church trained to respond in any type of event, whether violent or nonviolent.
Bishop Emeritus Dale J. Melczek of the Catholic Diocese of Gary on Tuesday released a statement on behalf of him and Bishop Donald J. Hying, who was out of town.
"Bishop Hying and I extend our deepest sympathy to all who suffered the tragic loss in Sutherland Springs, Melzcek said. We know that the people of our diocese offer prayers for the deceased and, at the same time, ask the Lord to extend comfort to those who mourn, as well as those who are struggling to heal from this senseless violence.
"It is critical for our legislators, both statewide and nationally, to address sensible gun control to prevent further loss in our communities."
Debbie Bosak, director of communications for the diocese, said "each of the parishes in the diocese are aware that security needs are to be a priority in this culture we now find ourselves in."
"Individual pastors would be the best judge on how to keep their people as safe as possible, and they would be the decision makers for any procedural changes," Bosak said. "Not feeling safe in our sacred worship place is totally foreign to us as Catholics, as I'm sure it is to our brothers and sisters in other denominations. We're now in a place we don't want to be, with little experience in how to deal with it in this new realm of reality."
Taking action
The Rev. Bob Vale, pastor at the First Methodist Church LaPorte, issued through social media a prayer chain to his parishioners in response to the shootings, said church secretary and youth director Jennifer Casper.
The prayer, in part, said: "When our brother or sister in the faith is suffering, we pray. We pray for each family who has lost a loved one, or been wounded and is holding on to life. We pray for the small Baptist church congregation as they heal through the loss of 26 Christian saints and another 20 wounded brethren in their congregation. We pray for the small Texas community as they surround these families with love, support and presence. We pray for the police and first responders as they bravely perform their duties. We pray for our country as we seek solutions to these senseless acts of violence that are happening across all parts of America."
Rabbi Leonard Zukrow, of the Congregation Beth Israel in Munster, agrees with Kilbourne that action is needed to end this cycle of shooting including the one earlier this fall in Las Vegas.
"Enough is enough. Action is needed to end this cycle. The responses from leaders have been lukewarm and condescending at the most. When a sacred institution is no longer sacred there should be outrage, continuous outrage. I am surprised there hasn't been more," Zukrow said.
Zukrow said that the place where people go to worship is a sanctuary.
"It's a sanctuary where God resides. It's a small sanctuary. ... We imagine God's presence among that place," Zukrow said.
Cautious, but not overreacting
Imam Mongy-El-Quesny, leader of the Northwest Indiana Islamic Center, said he has met with board members in his office to discuss security issues at his mosque in Merrillville.
"You should feel calm when you come here and not troubled," El-Quesny said.
The mosque, which also includes a school, is a place where security is taken seriously with the use of key cards used at doors and cameras everywhere.
"We have discussed having gates outside. ... We have a school here. How do we take care of the children?" El-Quesney said.
The Rev. James Greania, priest at St. Iakovos Greek Orthodox Church in Valparaiso, said religious leaders and the faithful living in the area need to be cautious and use common sense but not to overreact when it comes to security issues.
"It boils down to the expression, 'be as wise as a serpent but as peaceful as a dove.'"
Franciscan Health has been well represented at the annual Influential Women of Northwest Indiana awards program. Laura Mannion, director of development for the Franciscan Health Foundation, received the Healthcare Up and Coming Nominee honor; Lori Postma, director of Emergency Preparedness for Franciscan Health Hammond, Munster and Dyer, chosen as Healthcare Influential Woman of 2016; and Julie Mallers, nurse practitioner and manager of St. Clare Health Clinic in Crown Point, received top honors this year as Healthcare and Overall Influential Woman. Mallers, a nurse since 2000, and with Franciscan Health since 2003, said she was completely shocked, when chosen for the top award. I am truly blessed and emotionally honored to receive the prestigious award of Overall Influential Women for 2017."
CROWN POINT In March 2016, Tracee Jury started an online business Steamwhistle Coffee Roasters to make more available the organic coffee beans she roasted and sold at local farmers markets.
Her husband, Brett Jury, said the business was a way to share the couple's passion and excitement for coffee with other people. In an interview with The Times that October, Tracee Jury, who roasted the beans from her Winfield home and then later a commercial kitchen, said ideally she would like to have a store at some point.
Just over a year later that time has come.
Steamwhistle Coffee Roasters opened shop earlier this month at 924 S. Court St. across from the Lake County Fairgrounds.
"It's time to take the leap and do the shop and continue to grow our business and service our customers," Tracee Jury said.
The couple also have purchased a coffee trailer that they plan to roll out next year for farmers markets and festivals. The new coffee shop and roastery offers fresh coffee and a light breakfast and lunch menu.
"It's a fun new thing for us," Tracee Jury said.
Steamwhistle, which got its name because of Brett Jury's employment in the railroad industry, is roasting seven different beans, including Guatemalan, Mexican, Ethiopian, Honduran and Sumatra with plans for more and all are organic.
"We try to do fair trade," she said.
Steamwhistle is open from 6 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday, 7 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday and 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. Sunday.
For more information, visit steamwhistlecoffee.com
WINFIELD The town got a little help while it continues to work on development of its 10-acre downtown park.
The electrical material and labor for the new park is being donated by two local companies, town officials said.
Rob Burnett, of Hammond-based Wesco Distribution, donated all of the electrical material while Tom Anderson, of A/E Electric Co., in Crown Point, will be donating all of the labor to install the electricity, officials said.
Town Council Vice President Jim Simmons said the donations will save the town money that can be used in other areas of the park for additional improvements.
"Both Mr. Burnett and Mr. Anderson are Winfield-area residents and take great pride in seeing the community grow," Simmons said. "They were both quick to jump at the chance to help when asked."
Plans for the park, south of 117th Avenue and north of the Stonegate subdivision, began several years ago when the town obtained the land from Providence Real Estate Development.
The park project was delayed while the town worked with Providence, the developer of the subdivision that borders two sides of the park property.
Providence helped save the town money by digging a large water detention basin for the subdivision, which provided needed fill for the park, town officials said.
The town has saved about $415,000 to develop the park, officials said.
The parks overall unique theme will be a nod to modern literature and literary classics.
LAPORTE Guy Gruters recalls being brutally tortured amid deplorable conditions at a Vietnamese prison camp, and his hunger pains vanished only when his weight dwindled to a skeletal 120 pounds.
It was only then that the small amount of bread and water given to him each day was enough to fill his ravaged stomach.
Gruters credits a close relationship he developed with God for being able to endure more than five years at the same prison camp where U.S. Sen. John McCain was held captive during the Vietnam War.
''It was hell on earth. It really was,'' Gruters said Friday night at Sacred Heart Church in LaPorte.
The U.S Air Force fighter pilot was captured 45 minutes after his plane was shot down in Vietnam.
The prisoners of war in each cell had just one bucket for disposing of waste, he said. Many had skin sores along with parasites in their bodies from the filth.
Temperatures dropping below freezing without heat or a stitch of clothing made matters even worse, he said.
Gruters said many POWs stopped eating as a way out. But with a wife and two young children at home, he dropped to his knees in prayer.
He said he kept praying, and later was able to ask God to forgive his captors.
Gruters said he also experienced feelings of hope and joy, even giving thanks for the extreme suffering as others perished.
''Solitude was great for me. It gave me a chance to really believe in God's infinite power. It became a blessing to me,'' Gruters said.
He even started directly forgiving the guards and advising them to repent, but his evangelism landed him in a hot box a special area reserved for punishment. Just as things were getting very humid inside, two inches of rain fell in just a half hour.
''The hot box was no longer hot,'' he said.
It wasn't long before conditions at the prison camp improved slightly.
The POWs were given enough food to start putting some of their weight back on, he said.
The war ended two years later in 1973, and soon he was back home in Florida getting to know his children, then 7 and 8.
Gruters was one of 591 POWs from all military branches to survive the war.
Gruters and his wife, Sandy, had five more children.
After retiring from the military, he became a commercial airline pilot, then later a salesman for IBM.
Gruters now lives near Dayton, Ohio, and is a motivational speaker using his life-changing experience as a POW to inspire others.
The primary message he tries to convey during his presentations is that God answers prayers.
Originally, Gruters said he was more of a casual believer in God and didn't realize until he was at the brink that he's actually there for people who ask for help.
''He wants all of us to turn to him and pray," Gruters said. "When you do, he solves the problems."
Advancing Christ Kingdom Ministries Michigan City is in the midst of its 6th annual Feeding The Multitudes food drive in which they annually give away nearly 400 turkeys.
The turkey give-away will take place at 11 a.m. Wednesday at 1407 E. Michigan Blvd. ACKM-MC also operates a food bank at this same address every Wednesday from 8 a.m. to 10 a.m.
Dierre Glenn, senior pastor of ACKM-MC believes thanks giving is an attitude, not a season; so hes requested the assistance of church members and local businesses in giving back to the community.
No one knows how much you care until you show them, so what better way than to extend a loving hand? Glenn said.
The ministrys food bank not only provides local residents with donations of food throughout the year, but also serves as a resource center for individuals in need. The winter months are the food banks busy season since many are without work, paying high utility bills, and dealing with other stressful issues.
The majority of the food banks donations come from the Feeding The Multitudes event in which members of the church donate non-perishable goods. ACKM-MC also hosts a month-long turkey drive in which donations are taken in to purchase turkeys for distribution.
For more information, visit ackm-mc.org or visit the food bank from 8 to 10 a.m. Wednesdays.
Just as their slogan promises, you really will Eat Well, Feel Great when you dine at Third Coast Spice Cafe in Chesterton. The restaurant likes to call itself the New American Diner, and they make good on the promise of delicious food thats oh-so-healthy.
You can order breakfast all day, enjoying delicious fare often made with organic products in this relaxed but artsy eatery. Customers rave about the fabulous omelets such as the Third Coast special, with peppered bacon, caramelized onion, avocado, tomato, and sharp cheddar cheese. Or you might try one of the vegetarian options Florentine, that includes spinach and Asiago cheese or the Mediterranean with Kalamata olive relish and feta cheese among its many ingredients. Or build your own omelet from an extensive list of veggies, meats, and cheeses.
Whatever egg dish you try, youll be eating cage-free Indiana eggs. We buy organics whenever possible and use locally grown cage-free eggs, bison, fruit, honey and whatever else we can get our hands on, Third Coast promises. The most important thing is that we serve real food that you can feel good about eating and serving to your family.
But eggs arent the only stars at Third Coast. Choose from four different hash options, including buffalo hot hash, a spicy dish made with bison. Third Coasts own creations spice up the breakfast menu, with everything from morning glory flapjacks or oatmeal (think orange, cranberries and pecans) to raspberry cheesecake French toast.
Lunchtime unfolds with another tantalizing list griddle sandwiches, buffalo burgers, award-winning chili and daily soup specials. You might expect salads to be in abundance in a diner that takes pride in healthy eating, and Third Coast provides something for every palate. For example, you might choose the cardinal rule, which features roasted red beets and herbed goat cheese, or the salmon salad with a delicious lemon garlic dressing. As with the omelets, you can build your own salad. Third Coasts menu invites you to Blaze Your Own Trail, Create Your Own Path, Be You, in choosing from what goes on your greens. Salad has never been so much fun!
Third Coast says it is not necessarily a health food restaurant. It is simply an evolution of a beloved restaurant style. We are elevating the classic diner to fit the 21st century lifestyle. Youre sure to agree that this new style of diner cant be beat!
Third Coast Spice Cafe, 761 Boundary Road, No. 6, Chesterton; ThirdCoastSpice.com; (219) 926-5858. Open 6 a.m. to 3 p.m. daily. Also try Third Coasts sister restaurant, Lemon Tree Mediterranean Grill, for delicious lunch and dinner fare; 356 Indiana Boundary Road, Chesterton; LemonTreeGrill.com.; (219) 926-8733. Open 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. daily.
Maura Healey will be the first openly lesbian governor in U.S. history. Here's a look at 20 candidates who made history in the 2022 midterms.
America has come a long way in its treatment of veterans. In 1783, its general ambivalence about professional soldiers along with the governments inability to pay those actually in its service resulted in soldiers besieging Congress in Philadelphias Independence Hall, demanding redress. Congress fled to Princeton.
But the Pennsylvania Mutiny, as the larger incident is known, resulted in long-lasting effects for both the nations civilians and military. It showcased significant cracks in the Articles of Confederation government, helping set in motion the Constitutional Convention and the inclusion of a constitutional provision for Congress to support federal armies.
It also forced the public to recognize the legitimacy of Gen. George Washingtons insight, that civic virtue alone couldnt sustain even patriotic citizen-soldiers in a democracy whose foundational principles were a set of individual rights.
Washington had argued during the War of Independence that it wasnt reasonable or just to expect one set of men to sacrifice their property, comfort and happiness to encounter the vicissitudes of war to obtain those blessings which every citizen will enjoy without some adequate compensation.
But Washington also asked soldiers to take the most conciliating dispositions with them on their return to civilian life and funnel their energies into farming, commerce, settling the West or similar endeavors.
As he explained in his Farewell Orders, veterans needed to prove themselves not less virtuous and useful as citizens than they (were) persevering and victorious as soldiers.
Regardless of any contractual obligations on the governments part, Washington wanted veterans to understand their well-being would depend largely on their own efforts.
Their experience of military service would mutually reinforce the meaning of their democratic citizenship. While acknowledging the difficulties of ironing out what a nation might owe its citizen-soldiers in material terms, Washington was convinced that for the health of veterans and civil society, veterans couldnt remain a tribe apart from their fellow citizens.
With every major military conflict involving Americans since then, the nation has re-evaluated its relationship with the veteran, partly in consequence of the demands each specific war has required it to lay upon the soldier. The changing face of industrialized society, war technology and thoughts about the role of government have influenced each generations consensus, reflected concretely in laws pertaining to veterans pensions.
The early practice of granting only disability pensions to war veterans grew to include service pensions after the War of 1812, vocational training after World War I, college tuition assistance and low-interest home loans after World War II, and finally to include all who have served in uniform, whether during war or peacetime.
The dynamics of the all-volunteer force have further affected national attitudes toward the veteran in the 21st century. After a contentious period surrounding the Vietnam War, Congress and the public today overwhelmingly favor a wide range of public assistance programs for veterans and regularly allocate billions to the Department of Veterans Affairs to care for a variety of veterans needs, from education to health care and headstones.
And by and large, the socio-demographic factors of veterans reflect positively the publics investment in them. Veterans today are more likely to have completed high school, be married and be homeowners with health insurance than their non-veteran peers.
This October, the Bureau of Labor Statistics revealed a historically low unemployment rate for veterans 2.7 percent. Similarly, recent research revealed that in 2015, the post-9/11 veteran median household income was $80,000 compared to the median national income of $68,000.
By multiple markers, veterans are doing well, thanks in part to civilian tax dollars and public programs of the government they swore to preserve and protect while in uniform.
But our veterans still deserve better.
Around the same time that WWII veterans were stepping into the middle class thanks to the GI Bill, Americas public education system drastically reduced the time it spent on teaching young Americans the history, principles and institutions of its democratic way of life. Students today spend only 7.6 percent of their school time in social studies, only one part of which is civic education the most crucial vehicle of transmitting an appreciation of the value of the American political order.
American soldiers exist primarily to protect the American people and American democratic principles. Yet how can a nation support such soldiers in the most fundamental way needed when it is no longer self-aware?
Ronan Farrow is on a roll.
His investigative reporting on the Harvey Weinstein scandal is putting other so-called journalists to shame. It already has been reported how NBC mysteriously rejected the explosive Weinstein story before it was picked up by New Yorker magazine, and Farrow has tweeted praise for his NBC producer, Rich McHugh, who supported Farrow in the face of tremendous pressure from the higher-ups to kill the story.
But there is more to be learned from the increasingly sordid story about Weinstein's abuse of power and the concerted efforts to protect him.
One startling revelation not noted by Farrow is the strange similarity between Weinstein's tactics to avoid exposure, and those of the Democratic National Committee to sabotage and destroy Donald Trump during and since the presidential election.
Farrow's most recent piece in New Yorker magazine titled "Harvey Weinstein's Army of Spies" chronicles Weinstein's campaign to silence accusers. According to Farrow, Weinstein paid plenty of media and gossip columnists to smear actresses who might dare tell tales. He also hired "private security agencies" to look for dirt.
"The explicit goal of the investigations ... was to stop the publication of the abuse allegations against Weinstein that eventually emerged in the New York Times and The New Yorker."
Among the companies hired was Black Cube, an entity owned and operated by former members of Mossad, the Israeli intelligence agency.
Although Weinstein apparently selected Black Cube, the enterprise received its contract and the first $100,000 of a $600,000 fee from the law firm of Boies Schiller Flexner. Named partner David Boies has been one of Weinstein's attorneys.
If that name sounds familiar, it should. Boies is the famous lawyer who represented Democrat candidate Al Gore in the 2000 presidential election and Bush v. Gore litigation.
As Farrow explains, the beauty of having one's law firm hire the "intelligence" firm is that investigative attempts to get information about those business relationships get stiff-armed behind claims of attorney-client privilege.
Black Cube claims its methods are legal and above board, but two of their employees were arrested in Romania last year on charges of computer hacking.
Seeing any parallels yet?
The Democratic National Committee accused Donald Trump of "collusion" with the Russians to impermissibly sway the election in his favor. But as we now know, it was the DNC that paid Fusion GPS for opposition research on Donald Trump.
FBS Fusion was paid by the law firm Perkins Coie. That firm represented former President Barack Obama for years in campaign-related matters and in litigation related to Obama's birth certificate and academic records.
The DNC, Clinton campaign staff and Perkins Coie partner Marc Elias lied and denied for months that they had anything to do with Fusion GPS. In fact, the Clinton campaign paid Perkins Coie $5.6 million, a big chunk of which was then funneled to Fusion GPS and Steele.
No one associated with the Clinton campaign seems to know who made the decision to hire Fusion GPS. Current DNC chair Tom Perez claims he knew nothing. Former DNC Chair Donna Brazile says she was told she "didn't need to know." Hillary Clinton says she didn't know.
So, let's recap the similarities, shall we?
Attorney who is a reliable foot soldier for the Democratic Party.
Investigative queries foreclosed by claims of "attorney-client privilege."
Opposition research firm populated by foreign operatives using questionable methods.
Surveillance, deceit, intimidation, outright distortions, possible illegality.
Media in the back pocket, guaranteed to ignore or bury the story.
If you think these are all coincidences, I have a Russian dossier to sell you.
One of the most challenging and important jobs for an economics professor is teaching students how little we know and can possibly know. My longtime friend and colleague Thomas Sowell says, "It takes considerable knowledge just to realize the extent of your own ignorance."
Nobel laureate Friedrich August von Hayek admonished, "The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design."
The fact that we have gross ignorance about how the world operates is ignored by the know-it-all elites, who seek to control our lives. Let's look at a few examples of the world's complexity.
According to some estimates, there are roughly 100 million traffic signals in the U.S. How many of us would like the U.S. Congress, in the name of public health and safety, to be in charge of their actual operation?
Congress or a committee it authorizes would determine the length of time traffic lights stay red, yellow and green and what hours of the day and at what intersections lights flash red or yellow.
One can only imagine the mess Congress would create in the 40,000 cities, towns and other incorporated places. But managing traffic lights and getting good results is a far less complex task than managing the nation's health care system and getting good results, which Congress tries to do.
Here's another task I'd ask whether you would like Congress to control. The average well-stocked supermarket carries 60,000 to 65,000 different items. Walmart carries about 120,000 different items. Let's suppose Congress puts you in total control of getting just one item to a supermarket say apples.
Let's not make it easy by having the help of apple wholesalers. Thus, you would have to figure out all of the inputs necessary to get apples to your local supermarket. Let's look at just a few. You need crates to ship the apples. Count all the inputs necessary to produce crates. There's wood, but you need saws to cut down trees. The saws are made of steel, so iron ore must be mined, and mining equipment is needed. The workers must have shoes. The complete list of inputs to get apples to the market comes to a very large, possibly an unknowable, number.
Forgetting any one of them, such as spark plugs, would probably mean no apples at your supermarket.
The beauty of market allocation of goods and services, compared with government fiat, is no one person needs to know all that's necessary to get apples to your supermarket. Free markets, accompanied by free trade, including international free trade, make us richer by economizing on the amount of knowledge or information needed to produce things.
Think about this morning's breakfast. Let's suppose you and your spouse each had four slices of bacon and two eggs. You had coffee, and your spouse had cocoa. The breakfast might have cost you $22.
But what might it have cost you if instead of being dependent upon others, you were independent and produced your own breakfast? What do you know about raising pigs and their subsequent slaughter? Do you know how to cure pork to make bacon? Then there are the eggs, which require knowledge about the care of chickens. What about getting pig and chicken feed? You'd have a big problem with the coffee and cocoa. I doubt whether you could simulate the growing conditions in Brazil and West Africa.
One thing that's guaranteed is your breakfast would be far costlier than in the case where you depended upon the benefits of skills of others that emerge from the division of labor and trade.
The bottom line is that each of us is grossly ignorant about the world in which we live. Nothing's wrong with that ignorance, but we are stupid if we believe a politician can produce a better life than that which is obtained through peaceable, voluntary exchange with our fellow man anywhere on earth.
An approximately 15-hour search for a missing autistic teen in Opelika ended with authorities locating him Saturday afternoon under a home in a trailer park.
Justin Mims was found under a trailer located on the edge of his home community in the Oak Haven Mobile Home Park and near another mobile home park, according to Opelika Police Capt. Shane Healey.
Were very grateful to everyone who pitched in and helped, Healey said. We couldnt have done it without this big team effort.
Authorities searching for the teen were tipped of his whereabouts after a resident from the neighboring mobile home park called the Opelika Police Department, Healey explained.
They called and said theyd saw him and pointed out the general direction, he added.
Multiple local agencies banded together in conducting an intensive search for Mims after his disappearance on Friday night. Appearing scared, cold and hungry, the teen was located around 4:05 p.m. and taken to the East Alabama Medical Center for evaluation, Healey said.
Having helped provide food and drinks to the search party groups from her Oak Haven residence, Barbara Sims was relieved to hear her neighbor had been found.
He was hungry, and I sent him a bag of food and water, she said. And weve all been praying and so glad that hes been found.
Crane bank held about Shs 1 trillion in depositors money at the time Bank of Uganda (BoU) took over the bank late last year, documents now in court show.
This information is contained in documents filed by BoU lawyers; MMAKS Advocates and AF Mpanga Advocates in response to a counter claim lodged against the central bank by city businessman Sudhir Ruparelia.
The lawyers were responding to Sudhirs defence in which he says that Crane bank ran into trouble as a result of the poor state of the general economy, and not because of fraud by him as the central bank had stated.
The central bank filed the document showing accounts of depositors to prove that Crane bank was insolvent but legal analysts, speaking off the record, say this does not necessarily help its case.
In the main case, the businessman is accused by BoU of overseeing the theft of about Shs 400 billion from the bank where he was a majority shareholder.
Dfcu bank acquired some assets and liabilities of Crane bank in January 2017 after BoU had taken over control. At the time its core capital, which stood at Shs 12 billion, had fallen far below the Shs 25 billion minimum requirement set by the regulator.
Banking rules dont permit exposure of clients deposits but since they were submitted to court, they became public documents. Under common law, banks have a legal duty to protect the confidentiality of existing and former customers.
Confidentiality is a cornerstone of the bank-customer relationship.
In the information released by BoU, some of the top depositors at the time of the takeover included; National Social Security Fund which held 11 accounts totaling Shs 71bn; Uganda Wildlife Authority (UWA) with Shs 6b; Dr James Rwanyarare with Shs 2.2bn, National Water and Sewerage Corporation with Shs 2.1bn; city businessman Godfrey Kirumira with Shs500 million; Fountain Publishers Shs 1bn, Crane Financial Services with Shs 451 million.
Others are Capt Sanday Newman with Shs 300m, John F.Z. Barenzi with Shs 300m, Prof. GW Kanyeihamba with Shs 221m, Lohana Community of Kampala had Shs 220m, UAP Financial Services with Shs 400m, Children of Grace Uganda with Shs 436m and Hotel Africana staff saving scheme that had Shs 480m, and BV Ruparelia had Shs 2m.
Though Sudhir is accused of singlehandedly running down the bank, in August Dfcu revealed that acquisition of Crane bank in January 2017 was one of the major reasons dfcu became Ugandas largest bank by profitability.
In its 2017 half year results, dfcu revealed an after-tax profit surge of Shs 114 billion, compared to Shs 23 billion over the same period in 2016.
Last week, I drove through New York city and across the Hudson river on my way to the United States Military Academy at West Point.
Only days earlier, a man claiming allegiance to the terrorist and jihadist ISIS group drove down a bicycle lane along the Hudson river, mowing cyclists and pedestrians in a grisly act of terrorism.
It was yet another act of terrorism in what has become a new terror method: driving into other vehicles or, more devastatingly, into crowds of people.
As I crossed the Hudson river, I couldnt help but exercise my mind on the subject of contemporary terrorism. It has delivered shifting manifestations and permutations that shake our human sensibilities.
New York is not just the worlds most important financial centre, it is also an expanse city with dense traffic along its litany of roads and interchanges.
Both democratic governments, accountable to citizens, and autocratic regimes that terrorise the same people they are supposed to protect are in unison in vowing to defeat terrorism.
They dismiss terrorism as cowardly and those who commit terror as deranged. Yet it appears that with every passing year, the situation gets trickier as terrorism adapts to new forms and the authors of jihadist ideology innovate new repertoires for their agenda.
If the suicide bomber, willing to die so as to kill, made fighting terrorism a nightmare, the new method of driving trucks into crowds now makes defeating terrorism close to futile.
Even with its highly-sophisticated intelligence apparatus and enormous coercive power, the government of the United States of America can do little if not nothing to stop someone from driving a vehicle into human bodies to kill and maim. We live in terrifying times!
One deadly act is enough victory for the agenda of terrorism. Governments and state agencies around the world remain set up, often overreacting and inevitably playing into the hands of terror organizations.
Actions of governments like that of the USA have done exceedingly well in recruiting fighters for Al-Qaeda and now ISIS.
These two, along with their regional affiliates in Africa and Asia, are happy to cash in when the USA and its so-called allies, including our own government of Uganda, make defeating terrorism the frontal focus of foreign policy.
The singular determination to defeat terrorism, which primarily means investing in intelligence infrastructure and coercive arsenal, drives governments into measures that are seen by targeted groups and individuals as cultural assaults and religious infringements.
Worse still, for the USA, the focus on counterterrorism through primarily military measures has fuelled militarization around the world perhaps to a scale that parallels the Cold War era.
Yet militarism as the core strategy against terrorism has been perilous. From the military interventions in Somalia, Libya, Iraq and Afghanistan, among others, the trail of missteps and tragic outcomes has entailed unspeakable chaos and runaway terrorism where it didnt exist.
We need to step back and introspect. One thing is instructively apparent: it is meaningless to think terrorism can be denounced and defeated through the resources at the disposal of state agencies.
If we can figure out how we got to this frightening state of affairs, we may well find a way around. Todays runaway terrorism can, in part, be seen as a posterchild of state activities during the final decades of the last century.
Faced with opposition, whether in terms of an ideological nemesis or a regional competitor, states around the world resorted to terror tactics and building up networks that underwrote todays terrorism.
Closer home in Uganda today, the expedience of fighting opponents and dealing with threats to his power has led General Museveni to preside over the steady creation of criminal networks and the fragmentation among the police, security and intelligence agencies.
What is likely to emerge out of the current cocktail once the ruler exits is simply disheartening to imagine. But the same acts akin to terrorism on full display will be clothed anew under fully private actors.
Aside from the shift from state-sponsored terrorism that became privatized, the other foremost root of todays extreme ideology can be found in material deprivation.
Far from being a cultural or civilizational war/clash as the eminent political scientist Samuel Huntington appears to have so presciently predicted if one keeps it at the face value todays terrorism feeds off dashed hopes and failed expectations.
The promise of modernity, of a good life and prosperity which instead has delivered misery and desperation to many has left innumerable young men and women around the world vulnerable to recruitment in jihadism.
From north Africa to the Middle East, Central and South Asia, the kleptocracy of the political elite and the greed of the business sector leave behind disenchanted populations that have nothing to lose if they joined an otherwise misleading jihadist agenda.
Those living at the margins in northern Nigeria and the Sahel region are more than happy to become fulltime foot soldiers enticed with a jaundiced ideology and a luring promise of eternal heavenly enjoyment of everything missed on earth.
Without constructing fair and just societies, purporting to fight terrorism is a decidedly dead end.
moses.khisa@gmail.com
The author is an assistant professor of political science at North Carolina State University.
Many times when I drive past traffic police officers, especially in heavy jam where I have ample time to observe them, I am distracted by thoughts about the circumstances of their work.
Sometimes it is in the hot sun, but this man/woman has to stand through it. He wipes streams of sweat with his palm as he struggles to regulate unruly drivers and boda bodas.
Signs of exhaustion can be seen on his face, but he doesnt tire, occasionally choking on dust and motor emissions as he shouts at indisciplined motorists.
There is this very tall traffic lady who used to operate around Nakulabye roundabout. Taxi touts have a funny nickname for her. I have seen her on the streets for years. You spot her greeting and waving at drivers, quarrelling with some crazy ones, yet remaining sober enough to smile in the next minute.
You sometimes feel like stretching your head through the window to tell her: Mama, you are a heroine.
For at least this could help to let them feel appreciated and respected for what often passes unnoticed. Yes, I know it is their work, and many of us toil too.
But I also can imagine how hard it is to do such a job and wait for peanuts at the end of the month. Yet, like others, you also want your family to yield a decent life out of their parents day-long stand in the scorching sun amidst pessimistic reports about your work.
They want to be seen as human too, although the brutish behaviour of some of their colleagues is often used against all.
Some genuinely belong to the jungle, but many are good, struggling humans. I try to imagine how it feels to do all this sacrificial work knowing that, at the end of the day, you are going back to join your family in a tiny, dilapidated uniport, to sleep only a little more decently than a Marabou Stork (kalooli).
I think some of these gallant officers even envy birds in their nests. No wonder many harbor intense anger, which they displace onto innocent citizens.
Does anyone practically care how they raise their families in those miserable colonial tins that we choose to call houses?
When they put their heads down in bed with children under, what really runs in their exhausted minds about their value in this nation as keepers of law and order?
I pass by Kira Road police station in bewilderment about the slum-like view of their residences that still peep through the billboards that seem to be vainly aimed at shielding the shame of their abandonment. From a distance, it looks like a huge dump of rusty tins.
In many organograms, the lower you are in the picture, the more waste you receive from above. Many officers in low ranks live a life of a spoon. They carry food to Aboves mouth without tasting it even when it is served very hot.
Yet for those that enjoy the fruits of these poor officers labour, the latters risks are only job hazards! And by the nature of their profession, orders should be followed.
While relegated to a position worse than that of a church mouse (for it sleeps better), how do these good officers feel to learn that their department takes one of the biggest budgets but that buying tear gas and tracking opposition politicians enjoy more privilege than their wellbeing?
How does it feel to hear that money for bettering their salaries and accommodation cant be found, yet, just in a blink, billions of shillings are available for short-circuiting the Constitution?
Nevertheless, in one mans attempt to drunkenly hold onto power, they have to bear the raw brunt of the angry masses and take the stones, plus insults. They are the unfortunate tongs with which he turns his meat on the hot fire.
Have you seen these wretched officers caught up in the middle of tear gas and flying rocks? Struggling to find water to wash their faces and sometimes bleeding profusely? Their blood to be let for the power ambitions of another from whose table only crumbs fall.
And, despite all the brutality that they are made to exercise onto the populace, people still love them. They extend them water to wash their faces when they choke on the substance they administer on behalf of the powerful. We know that the low-ranking officer is equally trapped.
The words of Asas song to the Jailor capture it aptly:
Im in chains, youre in chains too
Im a prisoner, youre a prisoner too Mr Jailor
You suppress all my strategy
You oppress every apart of me
What you dont know
Youre a victim too Mr Jailor
So you better rearrange your philosophies
And be good to your fellow man.
Sometimes, in their pain and desperate efforts to appease their bosses for a bigger cut, they forget that we are in this mess together perhaps with them in a worse position. We are in a scenario where one lame cow kicks the other, both on a truck to the slaughterhouse.
Some of the people you brutalise are the ones that want to give you back your humanity, to make you feel counted.
They know that after your public display of might and violence, you go home and cry helplessly.
You are not really a violent man, Mr Policeman. Ugandans are generally gentle and humane people. So, when I see you throw a fellow Ugandan onto a truck like garbage, I tell myself that deep within you must be a crisis you are struggling with.
But dont bite the syringe. As you raise your club to hit the next person, be reminded that those Ugandans wish you well, and you can be a better person.
jsssentongo@gmail.com
The author heads the Center for African Studies at Uganda Martyrs University, Nkozi.
Its tough to come up with the right answer in a job interview, particularly if the question could run afoul of the law.
An Associated Press-CNBC poll found that half of all Americans who have ever applied for a job have been asked questions that could be used to discriminate against a protected class under equal opportunity law.
The poll of 1,054 adults was conducted by the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.
Among those who have ever interviewed for a job, 35 percent of the people polled had been asked about their age, and the same percentage had been asked their marital status. Twenty-one percent had been asked about their medical history or whether they have a disability, 11 percent said they had been asked whether they or their partner is pregnant or if they have plans to have children, and 9 percent were asked about their religious beliefs.
Under the laws enforced by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, it is illegal to discriminate against someone employee or applicant because of race, color, religion, national origin, disability or genetic information. It also is illegal to discriminate against anyone because of age 40 and older and gender, which includes gender identity, sexual orientation and pregnancy.
Asking a question related to these characteristics generally isnt illegal in and of itself. But if the person who was asked the question does not get the job, it could be used as evidence of discrimination. Even if the person is hired, the improper question could help build a case down the road of a pattern of discrimination.
For example, a question about marital status isnt a direct violation, but is generally not asked, to avoid perceived discrimination against parents or potential parents.
Its pretty common to be asked questions that are inappropriate, said Donna Ballman, an employment lawyer in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Usually the bad stuff happens verbally.
An inappropriate question can signal an effort to discriminate on the employers part. But experts say it typically occurs because the interviewer lacks an understanding of the law.
Interviewers also may accidentally step over the line to make conversation, such as asking a candidate who arrives on crutches how he was injured.
Applicants may also offer up information that would highlight sensitive information such as what language they speak at home or whether they have children that is off-limits for the interviewer to ask.
While experts say larger employers have instituted more training and made an effort to be aware of these issues, the problems persist on the whole. The experiences were no less common among those who interviewed for a job in the past year than among those who last interviewed more than 10 years ago.
Its concerning, because when we do discriminate against people, its typically because of an unconscious bias, said Kelly Marinelli at Solve HR, a consulting firm.
Employers should make every effort to stay current on the law both at a federal and local level to avoid any problems. Local laws may be more restrictive than federal ones. New York City, for example, prohibits employers from asking applicants about their salary history, in an effort to eliminate the gender wage gap.
The rule of thumb for employers is to ask only job-related questions.
Applicants should be aware of their rights. If an applicant is asked a question that is outside the boundary of the law, experts suggest they gently point out that its not appropriate, or steer the conversation back to job-related or skill-based topics.
You need to be very professional but firm, said Dan Ryan of Ryan Search & Consulting.
And if an interview is completely inappropriate, its fine to end it and leave.
People who feel they have been a victim of discrimination through the hiring process can file a charge with the EEOC or file a lawsuit, typically with the help of an employment attorney.
Employers and applicants interested in finding out more about the rules and rights surrounding discrimination should visit the EEOC website at eeoc.gov.
An Omaha woman was taken to the Nebraska Medical Center with life-threatening injuries Saturday after a crash just north of the Martha Street exit on Interstate 480.
The crash, which occurred just before 8:30 a.m., involved two vehicles.
A pickup with a dump-truck box had stalled in the northbound lane of I-480, police said. A sedan driven by Laura Hogan, 67, attempted to avoid the truck, but hit the rear passenger-side bumper.
The pickup driver, Uriah Yates, 26, of Omaha, was out of his vehicle at the time of the crash. He suffered minor injuries and declined treatment.
Hogan was taken to the hospital in extremely critical condition. Once at the hospital she was taken to surgery for treatment of head injuries, said Omaha Police Sgt. Jason Menning.
The northbound lanes of I-480 from Interstate 80 to Martha Street were closed until about 11:45 a.m.
WASHINGTON Thousands of people gathered Saturday in front of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial to pay tribute to the 3 million Americans who served in that war.
Standing before the iconic black granite wall etched with names of the fallen, keynote speaker Chuck Hagel recalled the memorials dedication 35 years before.
It was built to honor, remember and recognize the sacrifices of over 58,000 Americans and all the men and women who served in a confusing and unpopular war in a very distant land, Hagel said. This memorial was built for future generations, so they would learn from this war and would always remember that wars have serious and lasting consequences.
Other speakers included Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke and Maya Lin, the architect who designed the memorial.
Hagel was seriously wounded while serving as an enlisted soldier in Vietnam alongside his brother Tom, who attended Saturdays event.
After representing Nebraska for two terms in the Senate, Hagel went on to serve as secretary of defense under President Barack Obama the only Vietnam veteran to hold the position.
During Saturdays ceremony, he joined Zinke and others in presenting wreaths at the center of the memorial, while a bagpiper played Amazing Grace on the knoll above.
Hagel has spoken at ceremonies at the memorial numerous times over the years. Asked in an interview what has changed, he said the crowds have grown and include more and more young people.
That, he said, goes to the heart of the purpose of these memorials: to remind the next generation of the past.
Its a time when America is reflecting more and more on a lot of things, Hagel said.
In his speech, Hagel spoke of the courage and compassion shown by those who served in Vietnam and the unkind reception that greeted many when they returned home.
They rebuilt their lives understanding better than most that the price they paid included a large measure of injustice, Hagel said. Not all succeeded. Many struggled and still struggle from that experience in that faraway land.
He said many veterans ultimately were inspired by their experiences to work on improving the world.
Their recognition came far too late, but look around you now, he said. It is here today.
He told the Vietnam veterans present at the ceremony to celebrate their day of recognition, because they earned it.
For you are the quiet heroes of your generation, Hagel said.
A proper tribute to those who fought in World War I will be erected next year at Memorial Stadium, University of Nebraska-Lincoln Chancellor Ronnie Green said Friday.
Green said he expects two plaques to be placed a year from now, one on each side of an archway along the original wall of the East Stadium. He also envisions plans to be unveiled about the same time for some kind of memorial east of the stadium.
So all of thats been progressing very, very well, Green said. All of thats under development.
The tributes will coincide with the 100th anniversary of the end of World War I.
A Lincoln businessman, however, who has spoken to the NU Board of Regents and others about the need for such a memorial, says he will believe it when he sees the tribute come to fruition.
Richard Zierke, who was in the Marines in the 1970s, said he suspects its just talk.
Theyve been working on it a year, and so far they havent got jack, Zierke said Friday. Three-hundred-six-five days plus, and I dont see anything.
Zierke spoke to the regents last November with a plan to have 93 plaques placed in Memorial Stadium, one for the war dead of each Nebraska county.
Last week he said he was willing to scale that back to two plaques honoring the more than 50 NU students who died in World War I.
Michelle Waite, assistant to the UNL chancellor for community relations, said she received a call about 18 months ago from the Nebraska Department of Veterans Affairs. The department hoped UNL in November 2018 would celebrate the 100th anniversary of Armistice Day, the end of World War I.
Waite said she has talked to members of the military and veterans on and off campus about such a tribute.
This is one of my major projects, Waite said. I know this is going to happen.
The plaques pose a challenge. The universitys 1924 yearbook contains a drawing of the East Stadium archway with a plaque on each side of the opening. Now, though, there are only indentations for two plaques.
Waite said she has tried to find the old plaques or photos of them. She is asking the public for help.
Ultimately, she said, she would like to replicate what was on the plaques, assuming they existed.
She and Green envision a ceremony about a year from now that will reveal new plaques and a concept for a memorial that might be placed near Loop Road east of the stadium.
But Waite said some military members caution her against listing NUs World War I dead on the plaques, because some might be left off.
Zierke produced names and photos of the dead in an old NU yearbook. Waite is familiar with that yearbook but said she has seen another list that differs from that one.
She said she continues to seek input about the plaques and what should go on them. No decision has been made on the kind of memorial that will be placed east of the stadium, either.
But it will be a group effort, a group decision, she said. I can only assure you that Im very serious about this.
Green said that when Zierke raised the issue of plaques a year ago at the regents meeting, his comments about the need to memorialize war dead at Memorial Stadium were valid. He and Zierke walked the stadium together sometime after that meeting.
So its a very fitting thing to do, Green said. So we feel very good about it, (and) are excited about it.
And Zierke said he will continue to press forward. He has informed Varner Hall staffers that he plans to speak to the regents again at their Dec. 5 meeting in Lincoln.
KEARNEY, Neb. It may have taken 50 years, but Willmer Matson finally was issued his high school diploma, though posthumously.
In a Veterans Day program at Loomis High School, Matsons older sister, Joyce Daake of Milford, with a little help from her brothers classmates, accepted the diploma her brother never received.
We had no idea. It was like a 50-year secret, said one of Matsons classmates, Dave Thorell of Loomis.
Matson went through graduation ceremonies with his classmates in 1967. They didnt know he hadnt completed all the graduation requirements and was given a certificate of attendance.
In May 1969 Matson was drafted into the Army and sent to fight in Vietnam. He was killed in March 1970.
Daake was thumbing through papers this summer and came across a piece of folded notebook paper.
It was a senior high school composition by Matson.
Written on April 27, 1967, the letter talks about My Best Year in School. Thorell guesses it was part of an English assignment.
Matson wrote that he was taking his diploma unsigned because school wasnt his best subject, and if he did come back from the war, he would farm.
Where I am going you dont need an education, because over in Vietnam you dont have to be smart to fight in a war or be smart to get killed.
I thought For somebody who knew what he was facing, I felt like he was really at peace with it, Daake said.
Daake sent a copy of the composition to Matsons classmates, who were celebrating their 50th reunion this summer. Classmates talked about what could be done to get Matsons family his diploma, Thorell said.
They approached the school board about giving his family his diploma posthumously, and the idea was approved.
This is something we thought we could do to correct something we felt wasnt right, Thorell said.
This weekend, a grateful nation honors 23.2 million living military veterans, along with those who came before, including more than 960,000 who made the ultimate sacrifice in service to their country.
Its important this Veterans Day weekend to honor those who have served during war or peace, at home or overseas.
In civilian life, veterans blend in as business owners, mechanics, doctors, teachers, fellow worshippers and next-door neighbors.
But this weekend they stand out, as Americans gather in churches, parks, cemeteries, parking lots, sidewalks and fields to celebrate the men and women who have served in the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps, Coast Guard or National Guard and Reserve. Ceremonies recognize the sacrifices of their families and friends, too, for carrying on at home.
This is a weekend for patriotic music and speeches. For discussing the bonds of service that never die. In numbers large and small, groups will honor and remember those who did not come home, along with those who did.
There is also a swelling of pride, as people remember how the worst of times can reveal the best of human character.
This month the Navy honored the selfless acts of Miguel Keith, a Marine lance corporal from Omaha who died in Vietnam in 1970. Keith was killed while charging an enemy position to save other men in his unit. He fought ferociously until he was gravely wounded. In his last act, he mustered the strength to spare many of those he served beside. This 18-year-old mans bravery led the Navy to posthumously award him the Medal of Honor.
Now Keith will be honored more publicly. The Navy has named an Expeditionary Sea Base ship after him, as part of the services effort to honor its heroes. Soon, military planners will stand on a deck built on the foundation of Keiths unbendable courage.
Midlanders have served valiantly in every war, most recently the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. This is a good time to remember the service of veterans such as Army Staff Sgt. Daniel Bader of York, Nebraska, and 15 others who died when their helicopter was hit by enemy fire over Fallujah, Iraq, in 2003. And Tech. Sgt. Joseph Lemm, a Beemer, Nebraska, native who was killed in 2015. He was serving in the New York Air National Guard in Afghanistan when he and five comrades were killed by a suicide bomber near Bagram Airfield. Or Army Sgt. James Jamie Skalberg Jr., a native of Emerson, Iowa, who was killed in 2012 in Afghanistans Wardak province by an improvised explosive device.
Many surviving veterans come home to serve in other ways, volunteering with youth sports, raising money for local charities and joining local service organizations.
Our 11-member congressional delegation in Nebraska and Iowa is a national rarity these days. It includes two combat veterans: Omaha U.S. Rep. Don Bacon and Iowa Sen. Joni Ernst, both of whom served in the Middle East during Operation Iraqi Freedom. Bacon served in the Air Force, Ernst in the Iowa Army National Guard.
The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and other fighting that followed Sept. 11, 2001, have added to the ranks of veterans and the lives we have lost. But the all-volunteer nature of our armed forces means the number of families directly touched by military service continues to dwindle.
Veterans Day, which began in 1918 as Armistice Day to celebrate the end of World War I, has become an occasion to honor all veterans who served our country.
Americans need to understand the value of service, which U.S. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., a decorated Navy veteran, described in an Oct. 30 speech to midshipmen at the U.S. Naval Academy.
I know what you will risk and what you will receive in return, he told them. I know America is lucky to have you, and that you will think yourselves lucky to serve America. Even in the worst of times and they come for most of us youll know that to serve this country is to serve its ideals the ideals that consider every child on Earth as made in the image of God and endowed with dignity and the rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. It is a noble cause. It is your cause, and its worth living and dying for.
Divided as our politics might be, Americans can still come together to honor the people of all creeds, colors and backgrounds who serve together under our national flag. Their service makes us better.
The writer, of Omaha, represents District 39 in the Nebraska Legislature.
As property taxes climb ever higher, frustration mounts and the finger-pointing escalates.
Currently, Millard Public Schools supporters are spending tens of thousands of dollars trying to convince their voters that they need to raise property tax rates due to insufficient state aid. In rural areas, where the economy is frustrated by low commodity prices and slumping farm incomes, agricultural producers are also demanding relief.
But ever-increasing property taxes are not the only tax challenge facing Nebraskans.
Business owners in Nebraska face some of the highest tax rates in the nation. Neither the property nor the income tax challenge will be solved by shifting the burden on to other taxes. The Legislature needs to focus on solutions that are fair and work for both rural and urban Nebraskans. We should start by demystifying K-12 funding.
Nebraskans spend on average $12,000 per student per year, or over $4 billion annually, on K-12 education. For perspective, in 2017 the Legislature appropriated $4.4 billion for all general fund expenses.
State-funded programs including welfare, Medicaid, State Patrol, prisons, courts, universities, colleges, community colleges, K-12 education and 40 other state agencies exceeded Nebraskas K-12 spending by only 10 percent.
Following the 1980s farm crisis, Nebraska significantly increased funding for K-12 education through the Nebraska Tax Equity and Educational Opportunities Support Act.
As the title clearly states, the act is supposed to equalize available resources and help provide opportunities for every student in Nebraska. In fiscal 2017-18, the Legislature appropriated nearly a billion dollars to fund TEEOSA.
However, TEEOSA represents only two-thirds of state K-12 funding.
The state also appropriated over $224 million for K-12 special education, over $2.3 million for high ability learners and $8.6 million for early childhood programs.
During the 2017 session, the Legislature also contributed $44 million to the Nebraska teachers retirement fund. In addition, approximately $45 million flows to schools from the state apportionment of funds from school lands and investments.
Finally, in an effort to relieve the property tax burden on Nebraskas property owners, the Legislature funded $72.5 million for homestead exemptions and $224 million to the property tax relief credit fund. Approximately 60 percent of property tax credit and homestead funds, or $178 million, goes to school districts. In total, almost $1.5 billion of K-12 education is funded by the state.
Unfortunately, the multiple sources of state funding and the TEEOSA formula blend into an equation few can decipher, leaving taxpayers, school boards and teachers feeling that the system is unfair. Consequently, school districts often unravel state funding numbers to paint a dire story, blaming funding shortfalls on the Legislature or governor, even though K-12 state funding has increased year over year for decades. However, Nebraskans are right to be concerned. There are inequities built into the formulas.
Of the 245 school districts in Nebraska, only 65 school districts receive any of the $850 million of equalization aid distributed through TEEOSA.
For the most part schools receiving equalization aid are in the areas of highest population density.
There are exceptions. Westside Schools in Omaha receives no equalization aid. On the other hand, Nebraskas Native American schools in sparsely populated areas are funded almost totally by state and federal sources. Some school districts, including Millard, receive 42 percent or more of their funding from state sources.
The majority of school districts in Nebraska receive only a small portion of their funding through the TEEOSA formula, but they receive funding from other state appropriated funds.
There are multiple schools whose free and reduced lunch rate is over 50 percent, but yet they do not receive equalization aid.
School levy amounts vary widely throughout the state, as do the curriculums offered. The property tax relief funds are dispersed so widely, property owners hardly notice them.
Nebraskans are right to be frustrated. We need a school financing system that is transparent and fair and that can be understood by all Nebraskans.
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Rumble 15 Nov 2022
'I'm going to be making a very big announcement on Tuesday, November 15 at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach,..
BY SUSHEELA JAYAPAL
Over the past few months, we in Multnomah County have seen and heard the evidence of racial inequity in our governmental institutions. And we're seeing nationally the consequences of keeping harassment of women in the shadows.
We all suffer when people in our community are made to feel less than, treated unfairly or worse. As a woman of color, an immigrant, a long-time Portland resident and a candidate for the Multnomah County Commission, I know we can do better.
Multnomah County has led before on issues of workforce equity, as with the adoption of the $15 minimum wage and with one of the first paid parental leave policies in the region. Now we need to lead on racial equity.
This fall the Multnomah County Commission made a good start by adopting a Workplace Equity Resolution that was the product of years of hard work by a coalition of employees of color and community organizations. In wrenching testimony, employees of color told their stories, speaking bravely and with raw emotion about the alienation, disparagement and disrespect they've experienced while working for all of us as county employees.
It's through these personal stories that everyone in our community can learn about and bear witness to what racism feels like. And bearing witness to each other's experiences helps us take responsibility for those experiences and drives us more urgently to solutions.
That's what we need to do -- not simply talk about the issues, but drive toward solutions.
Adoption of the Workplace Equity Resolution was a good beginning. And the coalition that drafted the resolution must be integrally involved in creating strategies to implement it.
Here are four suggestions for additional steps the county can take to make itself a more equitable workplace. As the next Multnomah County Commissioner from District 2, I'll work to make sure these steps are implemented.
Employees must have a safe, open channel of communication through which to report experiences of racial and other discrimination. In many of the stories we heard, employees said they did not feel they could safely tell anyone about their experiences. If we don't know what's happening, we can't change it.
We need independent investigations of all allegations of racial discrimination. When managers investigate their own departments, as appears to be the case now, it's difficult for employees to trust the process.
We need to make it a priority to hire and retain senior personnel with a proven track record of being champions of racial equity.
And we need to reconsider our reliance on confidentiality agreements that prevent employees from disclosing their experience with racial discrimination. Too often, as we've seen in the sexual harassment cases now in the spotlight, confidentiality agreements allow powerful institutions to bury systemic problems. They silence the stories we need to share, to hear and to act on.
Multnomah County can and must be a leader on racial equity and justice. When the county leads on this internally, all of us as a community will be lifted up.
Susheela Jayapal lives in Northeast Portland and is a candidate for the Multnomah County Commission, District 2.
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Submit your 500-word essay on a highly topical issue or a theme of particular relevance to the Pacific Northwest, Oregon and the Portland area to commentary@oregonlive.com. Please include your email and phone number for verification.
BY TIM NESBITT
In the wake of mass shootings, like the one at a Texas church last Sunday, the debates over how to prevent such horrific acts of carnage invariably turn on who should be allowed to buy guns or what kinds of guns should be banned from the market. But the fundamental question is who should be allowed to have access to guns of any kind.
You would think that putting the question in this fashion would be the worst way to ease into the debate over gun control with gun owners. But a strong majority of gun owners and non-gun owners alike support the idea that our judicial system should provide a mechanism to remove guns from those deemed a danger to themselves or others.
Washington state voters enacted such a mechanism last year, with 69 percent approving Initiative 1491. The Oregon legislature followed suit with the passage of Senate Bill 719 spearheaded by Sens. Ginny Burdick, D-Portland, and Brian Boquist, R-Dallas. Such "gun removal laws," carefully tailored to address situations of "extreme risk," are now on the books in close to a dozen states. And it appears that these are the kinds of laws that could have improved the chances of averting the Texas shooting - if only the Air Force hadn't failed to provide information on the shooter's domestic violence conviction to civil authorities.
Federal law and laws in most states, including Texas, prohibit the purchase or possession or firearms by persons convicted of domestic violence crimes. So the failure to identify the Texas shooter and apply this prohibition can easily be construed as a system failure, to be corrected mechanically with better data bases, rather than with better laws.
But every law requires resources to ensure enforcement. And, even more importantly for gun laws, a culture in our communities that supports their enforcement. This is why "extreme risk" laws are needed. They empower families to bring the threats they see, which might otherwise go unreported, to the attention of local law enforcement and ensure the removal of guns when warranted.
Despite the media's tendency to call Americans hopelessly polarized on this issue, there are large areas of agreement on ways to improve our gun laws. In a national survey last spring, the Pew Research Center found that strong majorities of both gun owners and non-gun owners agree that gun purchases should be barred to the mentally ill and to those on terror watch lists. Similarly strong majorities in both groups support expanding background checks to private sales and gun shows.
Even more significantly, a 2015 poll by the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Policy and Research recorded majority support among gun owners and non-gun owners for gun removal laws of the kind recently enacted in Washington and Oregon and for requiring a license for purchasing a gun.
Positions diverge when it comes to banning assault weapons and high-capacity magazines. But, even these proposals garner the support of two-thirds of all Americans and a near majority of gun owners.
I have grown weary of hearing politicians calling for "common sense gun control," a phrase as meaningless as it is off-putting to gun owners, who hear a dismissal of their views as nonsensical. Even worse, pundits tend to respond to every mass shooting with a cynical disdain for our political deadlock, which reinforces a sense of fatalism and resentment among us.
But surveys confirm that there is broad common ground for the best next steps forward on gun control that need not become a slippery slope for gun advocates, provided reformers show respect for gun ownership. Those best steps should build on the broadly-shared view that, because guns are so lethal and so easily misused - which gun owners know only too well, we need to apply more scrutiny to who purchases or owns them and promote greater responsibility in their use.
Focusing on "extreme risk," as Washington and Oregon have done, can help to counter the extremism that has plagued our politics on this issue. Advocates of this approach have proven that they can overcome the opposition of the National Rifle Association, which opposed both the Washington and Oregon laws.
Even better, moving forward with state laws of this kind can counter the fatalism which has sapped our will to forge protections against the threat that guns in dangerous hands pose for all of us in our homes, our churches and our public places.
Tim Nesbitt writes regularly on public affairs. He can be reached at nesbitt.columns@gmail.com.
BY CHERYLE KENNEDY
Earlier this year, the federal government released the long-awaited plan to cleanup decades of pollution in the Willamette River. The plan is the culmination of extensive consultation with Oregon's state and local governments, as well as federally recognized tribes. Recent news about the Environmental Protection Agency working behind closed doors with industry representatives, possibly delaying the cleanup, is disturbing. As an elected official of the Confederated Tribes of the Grand Ronde, I join the members of our congressional delegation in urging the federal government to proceed with the cleanup of the Portland Harbor.
Our tribe is a party to the 2001 Portland Harbor Memorandum of Understanding setting the framework for the coordinated management of the site. We have worked and collaborated with the other partners faithfully in the ensuing 16 years. We have also engaged in government-to-government consultation with EPA and the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality to ensure the cleanup is completed in a way that meets the needs of our tribal members and the broader community.
The people of the Grand Ronde have a deep connection to the land and water that will be affected by the cleanup. The Grand Ronde is a sovereign tribal nation made up of nearly 30 antecedent tribes and bands. Since time immemorial, the area we now call the Portland Harbor, including the bed and banks of the Willamette River as well as adjacent upland areas, has been inhabited and used by indigenous Chinookan peoples. These Chinookan tribes, along with the Multnomah, Clackamas and Cascades bands of Chinook, were signers to the Willamette Valley Treaty of January 22, 1855. That treaty ceded the entire Willamette River Basin to the United States in exchange for certain rights and benefits for the tribes in their traditional homelands.
Subsequent to treaty signing, the Portland-area tribes and bands, along with neighboring tribes and bands from the Willamette, Lower Columbia, Umpqua and Rogue Basins, were removed to the Grand Ronde Indian Reservation at the western edge of the Willamette Basin. Although removed to Grand Ronde, the tribes maintained strong, unbroken connections to the sacred places in their treaty homelands, including Willamette Falls and other areas on the lower Willamette River. Grand Ronde's traditional use of the lower Willamette River continues to this day with practices including fishing, Pacific lamprey harvesting and an annual First Salmon ceremony at Willamette Falls.
Oregon has a proud tradition of working together with tribes on a government-to-government basis. We are unique when it comes to state-tribal relations and we want to make sure that this administration and the Environmental Protection Agency understands the commitment from the state and tribes when it comes to ensuring that this cleanup happens expeditiously. This is something that all tribes, and all Oregonians want to see happen as quickly as possible for the benefit of all.
Cheryle Kennedy is the chairwoman of the Confederated Tribes of the Grand Ronde. She lives in Dallas, Ore.
Former West Linn Police Chief Terry Timeus' retirement last month didn't mark the most dignified end to a police career. The longtime chief had been on paid administrative leave since June due to drunk-driving allegations made by two of his patrol officers. While Timeus was not criminally charged - and a recent city investigation found no fireable offenses - such accusations against him were nothing new. It was clear his time was up.
But dignity is a small price to pay in return for the $123,000 that West Linn leaders gave Timeus to soften the blow, as The Oregonian/OregonLive's Everton Bailey, Jr. reported. That amount - nine months' salary plus wages, unused vacation and management leave - was part of a separation agreement between the city and Timeus aimed at ensuring he doesn't sue the city. The agreement also expressly prohibits Timeus from ever seeking employment with the city again.
Not that the public would know any of that if it were up to West Linn leaders. Transparency with the public hasn't been a priority for West Linn City Manager Eileen Stein, who has declined to release the city's completed investigation, shared little with the public for the three months Timeus was on paid leave and agreed to give Timeus input on crafting the press release about his retirement to ensure the message is "satisfactory to both parties."
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To be fair, the city's hands were tied somewhat by the botched handling of the allegation of drunken behavior. The two patrol officers who suspected Timeus of driving drunk earlier this year failed to take any action at the time to stop Timeus, test him or otherwise treat him as they would anyone else who slurred their words and appeared inebriated as they say Timeus did, according to Bailey's story.
Instead, they waited until the next day to report their suspicions to their sergeant, who passed them to a lieutenant who concluded the chief had not been drunk based on a phone call he had with Timeus the night before, around the same time the officers encountered Timeus. The complaint went nowhere until one of the patrol officers again raised the issue in an exit interview a month later as he left the West Linn police department, as Bailey reported. Not surprisingly, the Washington County District Attorney's Office concluded it did not have a strong enough case to bring charges against Timeus, despite the officers' accounts.
The city, however, owes its residents a little more than a happy-faced press release, perhaps explaining how it plans to help rebuild a police bureau roiled by transfers and low morale. Timeus has been the subject of multiple accusations of drunken behavior over the years, lodged by his own police officers. As Bailey reported, a lawyer for three officers had warned the previous city manager in 2014, that Timeus' behavior had "destroyed morale" and was "causing a mass exodus of veteran officers to other jurisdictions."
City leaders should quit trying to sweep the entire episode under the rug. They should release the internal investigation. They should make clear that holding people accountable for their actions, regardless of position, is a responsibility for all employees and that they will be protected from retaliation. And they should address what policy or reporting changes the city is implementing to ensure that allegations against top ranking officers are appropriately vetted and promptly investigated.
Considering the taxpaying public is footing the bill of their generous retirement gift to Timeus, it's the least that Stein and West Linn leaders can do.
-The Oregonian/OregonLive Editorial Board
"Tell me about this standoff."
And with that, Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy found a biographer behind bars.
Bundy had invited a fellow inmate to sit down at a table with him. They chatted about farming, raising cattle, growing melons and grandchildren.
Soon, they were walking regular laps together around the inside of a large unit that housed 94 bunk beds between concrete cinderblock walls about 60 miles west of Las Vegas.
And when the time seemed right, inmate Michael Stickler broached the subject of why the Bundy patriarch was in custody at the Southern Nevada Detention Center in Pahrump.
At first Bundy seemed reluctant to talk about the notorious face-off with federal rangers in the desert in 2014, Stickler said. Bundy explained that he didn't know who he could trust, that the FBI had an undercover agent pose as a journalist and interview his family members on videos that now were being used against him.
But Stickler kept urging the 71-year-old cattleman: "You need to write a book."
The two eventually shook hands. And now Stickler is preparing to sell a biography about Bundy that offers a glimpse of his life in prison, his surprise at being arrested in Portland last year, his family history and Mormon faith and his two-decade-old battle with the federal government.
Michael Stickler, of northern Nevada, met Cliven Bundy at the Southern Nevada Detention Center earlier this year as Stickler was serving the last two months of a two-and-a-half-year federal prison sentence for theft of public money.
Stickler is self-publishing the book through his company, Vision Group, and promised to contribute proceeds to Bundy's legal defense, though no formal contract was signed.
Bundy has been in custody for a year and nine months and is about to go on trial, accused of leading a "massive armed assault'' in April 2014 that thwarted federal officers from impounding his cattle. Bundy was grazing them on public land near his ranch in defiance of court orders. He owed more than $1 million in fees and fines that he'd refused to pay for years.
He was recently moved to a jail in Henderson, Nevada, to be closer to the federal courthouse in downtown Las Vegas.
'HE DIDN'T SEE IT COMING AT ALL'
Stickler, who was released in June after serving out the last two months of a 2 1/2-year sentence for theft of public money, described Bundy's routine when he was at the Pahrump lockup, a transfer center for federal inmates.
Bundy was housed in the same unit with sons Davey and Mel, but sons Ammon and Ryan were held separately, often kept in solitary confinement for rule violations, including refusing to undergo strip searches when taken to and from federal court.
The father and his four sons all face charges in the standoff near Bunkerville. The senior Bundy, Ammon and Ryan Bundy are on trial now. Thirty days after that trial ends, Davey and Mel Bundy are scheduled for trial.
Because of Cliven Bundy's length of time at the detention center, he snagged a coveted lower bunk bed against the wall. Son Davey's bunk bed was next to his, and Mel's was a couple of rows away, Stickler said.
The elder Bundy was among the few early risers. He'd wake up at 5 a.m., and would read the Book of Mormon quietly on his bed.
"Pretty much others left them alone,'' Stickler said.
Bundy often spoke with his wife, Carol, on the phone. One time, Stickler recalled, Bundy was talking to his son-in-law, who's helping out at the family ranch, instructing him how to fix a broken water pipe.
Cliven Bundy told Stickler that he had no worries except for his sons when his plane touched down at Portland International Airport on Feb. 10, 2016.
He had come to visit Ammon and Ryan Bundy, both in jail in downtown Portland after their arrests in the armed takeover of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in southeastern Oregon. Cliven Bundy had heard Ryan had been wounded and hoped to see him.
Investigators believe Ryan Bundy has a "metallic object" in his shoulder from when officers fired into occupation spokesman Robert "LaVoy" Finicum's truck as he sped away from a police stop. Ryan Bundy was in the back seat.
Cliven Bundy got bumped from his first flight and didn't know why. He was placed on a later flight. FBI agents were waiting for him at the airport.
"He didn't see it coming at all,'' Stickler said. "He had felt like the whole thing in Bunkerville had passed.''
'LOOK WHAT I STARTED'
Earlier this spring, when supporters camped outside the Nevada detention center in tents in protest of conditions the Bundys faced inside, Cliven Bundy and Stickler weren't sure what was going on.
The institution suddenly went into a panic mode, with inmates ordered to keep their TVs off and visits halted for about two weeks. Corrections officers let it be known that the Bundys were at fault for the increased security, Stickler said.
One night, Bundy and Stickler saw fireworks shooting off outside, he said.
"Look what I started,'' Cliven Bundy remarked to Stickler. "He said, 'You know, 20 years ago, I decided to stand up to the federal government. I'm still surprised many people care about this,' '' Stickler recalled.
Cliven Bundy regularly ate his meals at a table in the unit with Mel and Davey Bundy. Two other inmates would share their food with Cliven Bundy, often making their own dinners from left-over scraps, Top Ramen and meat bought in the commissary.
The detention center, filled with drug smugglers and bank robbers, could get extremely noisy and irritating, Stickler said. Through it all, Cliven Bundy remained calm. "He was even-keeled, and polite and kind to everyone,'' he said.
As he shared his personal story, Bundy would draw rudimentary maps or sketches with a pencil and pad to help Stickler understand what he was describing. Though he has little education, he has a tremendous memory, often quoting passages from the Constitution, Stickler said.
When Stickler pressed if he regretted any of what he's done or would consider a plea deal, Bundy "got a little uppity,'' he remembered.
"I raised my sons to be strong and independent and follow the Constitution,'' Bundy told him. "Now's not the time to do otherwise.''
At the same time, Bundy can't help but worry about the future, especially whether his sons will be able to be fathers again to their children, Stickler said.
Still, Bundy has hope: Stickler said: "He recognizes that if convicted, he could spend the rest of his life in prison. He prays and believes that can't happen, though. He stands with a conviction that this is much bigger than the Bundys.''
Stickler, 57, of northern Nevada, was in court last week and plans to attend Cliven Bundy's trial. He knows what it's like to go to trial. A federal jury found him guilty in March 2014 of theft of public money, ruling he pocketed $200,000 from a $500,000 federal grant awarded to his Faith Based Solutions company in Reno. The money was supposed to be distributed to other nonprofit groups. Stickler's business taught other nonprofit groups how to apply for federal grants. He also pleaded guilty in a separate federal case for failing to pay taxes, and has a felony conviction from 1993.
He's completed his book and expects to publish it in December. He said he's sent pages to Cliven Bundy to read and edit. Carol Bundy confirmed that her husband agreed to let Stickler write his story, but said her husband hadn't reviewed a final draft.
Stickler, who until now wrote Christian books, plans to ship a copy to Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke, as well as to President Donald J. Trump.
But Stickler said he won't be able to send the finished product to Bundy. The jails won't allow hardcover books behind bars.
-- Maxine Bernstein
mbernstein@oregonian.com
503-221-8212
@maxoregonian
One man died and another was injured when a car veered off Oregon 240 in Yamhill County on Saturday night.
The crash happened about 10:30 p.m. near milepost 9. Deputies said that a 2016 Ford Mustang was headed west when the driver failed to travel around a curve. The vehicle drove off the road and into a ditch, hitting a tree. An unidentified male passenger died at the scene. The driver, who was not identified either, was taken to an area hospital with serious injuries.
Deputies closed the highway for nearly seven hours for the investigation and removal of the car. Oregon State Police, who assisted the Yamhill County Sheriff's Office, suspect the driver was impaired.
The identities will be released within 48 hours, pending notification of next of kin.
-- Lynne Terry
Scott Brunton just wants an apology from George Takei.
Brunton has accused the Star Trek actor of sexually assaulting him when he was passed out in Takei's condo nearly 40 years ago.
"I would hope that he could bring himself to just apologize," Brunton told The Oregonian/OregonLive. "I don't want anything other than that."
Takei has denied the accusation.
The incident, first reported by the Hollywood Reporter, happened in 1981, Brunton said, when he was living in Hollywood and was a budding model and actor.
Brunton, who was with his boyfriend, met Takei at a bar on La Cienega Boulevard. Brunton later broke up with his boyfriend and moved out. He kept running into Takei, Brunton said. The two exchanged numbers. One day, Takei invited him out to dinner and a play at a small theater, Brunton said.
They talked about lots of things, including Takei's internment in a Japanese camp in California during World War II. Brunton said Takei whipped out two Star Trek cocktail glasses and made drinks. After the second, Brunton said, he felt as if he were going to faint.
"The room was swirling," Brunton said.
Brunton said he started to plop down in a yellow bean bag chair but that Takei led him to the couch before he passed out.
When he was coming to, Brunton said Takei was on top of him, shirt and shoes off. Brunton said his own pants were crumpled around his ankles and that Takei had his hand in his underwear, trying to get them off.
Brunton said he jumped up, got dressed and told Takei he didn't want to have sex and left, sobering up in his car.
"I know unequivocally he spiked my drink," said Brunton, who's 6-feet-2 and weighed 175 pounds back then. "It takes a lot more than two drinks to put me out."
On Facebook, Takei denied assaulting Brunton:
"I'm writing to respond to the accusations made by Scott R. Brunton. I want to assure you all that I am as shocked and bewildered at these claims as you must feel reading them.
The events he describes back in the 1980s simply did not occur, and I do not know why he has claimed them now. I have wracked my brain to ask if I remember Mr. Brunton, and I cannot say I do. But I do take these claims very seriously, and I wanted to provide my response thoughtfully and not out of the moment.
Right now it is a he said / he said situation, over alleged events nearly 40 years ago. But those that know me understand that non-consensual acts are so antithetical to my values and my practices, the very idea that someone would accuse me of this is quite personally painful."
Brunton said he is hurt but not surprised by Takei's denial.
"Why would he own up to it," Brunton said.
He said he's been attacked in social media by strangers who've accused him of being an opportunist and tarnishing the reputation of a man who's backed the LGBTQ community.
"I was torn by that," Brunton said. "He's done a lot toward LGBTQ rights and causes. But I'm not sure if it was from the heart."
Brunton said he's recounted the story to friends and even hoped to question Takei about it in 1994 when the actor came to Portland on a book tour. He said he called Takei at the Benson Hotel and that the actor remembered him.
At the signing, Brunton backed down. The setting wasn't appropriate to ask Takei about his motives, Brunton said.
The incident left him with a sour memory.
"I was rather disappointed in him as I thought he was becoming my friend," Brunton said. "All he really wanted to do was get in my pants. It hurts your sense of self worth."
He left Hollywood shortly after the attack, he said, and returned to Portland where he had a successful modeling career. He later moved to London and traveled the world, strutting down runways and posing for commercials.
He came back to Portland, owned a hair salon and a business that sold bath mats. Five years ago, he moved to Bandon with his husband, Duke Wolf, a retired lawyer.
Brunton said he felt the time was right to speak up, with others doing the same.
"My hope was that if he has done this to other people that they would come forward and substantiate my story," Brunton said. "I'm not sure that's necessary. He's hung himself with the Howard Stern interview."
In October, Stern asked him if he had ever grabbed another man. Takei said he had -- but in his home and not on the work.
"But it didn't involve power over the other," Takei said. "It was consensual."
-- Lynne Terry
By PTI: New Delhi, Nov 12 (PTI) At least 110 kg of gold has been seized from smugglers at the Indira Gandhi International Airport here from January till October this year, a senior customs official said today.
Though the number of gold smuggling cases registered this year by the customs is slightly more than last years figure, the quantity of gold seized is 78 kg less compared to the total seizure made in 2016, the official said.
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The official credited demonetisation for the decline in smuggling of gold.
A total of 114 cases of smuggling were registered by the customs between January and October at the airport, he said.
In these cases, 110 kg of gold, valued at about Rs 37 crore, was seized, the official said, adding that 62 smugglers were arrested in these cases for their alleged involvement in illegal ferrying of the yellow metal.
In 2016, 110 cases were registered by the customs in which a whopping 188 kg gold, valued at Rs 48 crore, was seized, he said.
Seventy-nine people were arrested for their alleged involvement in gold smuggling by the customs last year, the official said.
Gold smuggling has taken a hit due to demonetisation as hawala transactions, used to bring the yellow metal into the country, was completely stopped, he claimed.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced on November 8, 2016, a ban on old Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes.
The demand of gold has been traditionally high in the country as people prefer to invest in it for better returns.
Nearly 355 cases of gold smuggling were reported at the international airport in the financial year 2015-2016.
In these cases, authorities had seized 450 kg of gold, valued at a whopping Rs 132 crore, the customs official said.
As many as 190 people were arrested in these cases.
About 240 cases of gold smuggling were reported in 2016- 17 fiscal. About 260 kg of gold, valued at Rs 76.31 crore, was seized by the customs at the Delhi airport, he said.
As many as 100 people were arrested in these cases, the official said.
The seizure is also the result of stepped up surveillance at the airport to check smuggling.
The customs officials maintain high vigil at the Delhi airport as it is one of the entry points in the country which registers maximum number of cases of gold smuggling. PTI AKV ZMN RCJ
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By PTI: Washington, Nov 12 (PTI) Scientists have discovered fossil fragments of 260 million-year-old trees in Antarctica, a finding which shows that the frozen continent had a thriving forest before the first dinosaurs roamed the Earth.
During Antarcticas summer, scientists from University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee (UWM) in the US climbed the McIntyre Promontorys frozen slopes in the Transantarctic Mountains.
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They combed the mountains grey rocks for fossils from the continents green, forested past.
"People have known about the fossils in Antarctica since the 1910-12 Robert Falcon Scott expedition," said Erik Gulbranson, assistant professor at UWM.
"However, most of Antarctica is still unexplored. Sometimes, you might be the first person to ever climb a particular mountain," said Gulbranson.
The Permian Period ended 251 million years ago in historys greatest mass extinction, as the Earth rapidly shifted from icehouse to greenhouse conditions.
More than 90 per cent of species on Earth disappeared, including the polar forests. Researchers believe that the trees in the Antarctic forests were an extremely hearty species and is trying to determine why they went extinct.
Many scientists now believe that a massive increase in atmospheric greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide and methane, caused the Permian-Triassic extinction.
It is likely that over the course of 200,000 years, volcanic eruptions in Siberia released many tonnes of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.
John Isbell, professor at UWM, has previously studied Antarcticas Permian glacial deposits to determine how the climate changed.
On this expedition, he used the rocks around the fossilised trees to determine how the fossils fit into Antarcticas geologic history.
"This forest is a glimpse of life before the extinction, which can help us understand what caused the event," Gulbranson said. It can also give clues to how plants were different than today.
At the Permian Periods end, Antarctica was warmer and more humid than it is today. It was part of Gondwana, the supercontinent spanning the Southern Hemisphere that also included present-day South America, Africa, India, Australia and the Arabian Peninsula.
There would have been a mixture of mosses, ferns and an extinct plant called Glossopteris, and it is likely that this forest stretched across the entirety of Gondwana.
"This plant group must have been capable of surviving and thriving in a variety of environments," Gulbranson said.
However, not even these robust forests survived the high carbon dioxide concentrations of the mass extinction.
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The resilient plants also must have survived through the polar extremes of perpetual light and total darkness.
Even in a warmer past, the polar regions would have experienced months of darkness in winter and would have gone without sunset during the summer months. PTI MHN MHN
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NORMAL A Canadian agriculture equipment company is eyeing a manufacturing plant between Hudson and Normal that could bring up to 500 jobs to the area.
Brandt Group of Companies' Illinois operation is expected to make agricultural equipment, including augers, belt conveyors and grain carts. The company is the largest John Deere dealer network for construction in the world.
Brandt would acquire a 200,000-square-foot facility formerly used by Kongskilde Industries north of Normal, on North 1425 East Road, which is in a county enterprise zone that allows for tax abatements.
McLean County Unit 5 School District, Heartland Community College, Normal Township and McLean County must sign off on the proposal, which calls for a tax abatement during tax years 2018 to 2027.
The Unit 5 school board has scheduled a meeting for Monday. The McLean County Board will meet Tuesday.
This is similar to the Rivian (Automotive) deal, Barry Hitchens, Unit 5 school board vice president, said Saturday. The abatement is setting targets for the number of employees they would need to reach each year. If they meet those goals, they would get an abatement of their property taxes.
Hitchens said Brandt hopes to hire between 300 and 500 employees over seven years. Current annual property tax revenue from the site and adjacent land for Unit 5 is $79,800, he said.
Yes, were getting nearly $80,000 in taxes, but if no one purchases this property, it will start to deteriorate and the property value would go down significantly, said Hitchens. If theyre bringing the potential for 500 new jobs to the community, that would have a definitely economic impact.
Unit 5 Board President Jim Hayek said "it's always tough" for the district to consider tax abatements.
"Our largest source of revenue is from property taxes. It's always difficult when we are asked to give up some of that," said Hayek. "On the flip side, we have to look at it in terms of a benefit for the community and we will have to weigh that risk."
According to the abatement proposal, Kongskilde is downsizing and moving elsewhere in the Twin Cities.
The Denmark-based company sold its grass and soil divisions to CNH International in 2016, about a year after it unveiled a $10 million expansion at its Hudson plant. Kongskilde and neighbor Nussbaum Transportation both had asked for a sales tax incentive when they developed the sites in 2012.
Credited with building one of the first grain augers available in Canada, Canada-based Brandt employs more than 1,800 people in Canada and the United States, with markets in more than 20 countries and six continents. It recently surpassed $1 billion in annual revenue, according to its website.
Despite our 80 years of perpetual growth and success, in many ways it feels like were just getting started. Look for many exciting things to come from Brandt. The best is yet to come, President Shaun Semple says on the company website.
Brandt, based in Regina, is the largest privately owned company in Saskatchewan and among Canadas 50 Best Managed Companies program.
Brandt companies include Brandt Agricultural Products Ltd., Brandt Developments Ltd., Brandt Engineered Products Ltd., Brandt Equipment Solutions Ltd., Brandt Finance Ltd., Brandt Positioning Technology and Brandt Road Rail Corp. Brandt Tractor Ltd. is the largest privately held John Deere construction and forestry dealership in the world, the website said.
Visitors to the Grand Canyon often hear all about John Wesley Powell, the one-armed Civil War veteran who led the first recorded expedition down the Colorado River and through the granddaddy canyon itself.
The epic, three-month expedition in 1869 is one of the great rip-roaring adventure tales of western exploration, with Powell leading nine men (six of whom survived) through roiling rapids in boats made of pine and oak as they ventured through the last unexplored swath of the contiguous United States.
But not many of todays tourists will learn that Powell, a self-taught geologist, archaeologist and ethnologist, fell in love with the West two years earlier, while leading a ragtag group of Illinois Wesleyan University students and Bloomington-Normal residents into the Rocky Mountains.
After the Civil War, Powell (who lost his right arm, slightly below the elbow, at the Battle of Shiloh) accepted an offer to teach natural sciences at Illinois Wesleyan University. It was a good place to begin such a career, because one and a half miles to the north, on the Normal University campus, was the museum of the Illinois Natural History Society. Although a private society, this statewide group of amateur naturalists had a magnificent museum at the university, located on the third floor of the Old Main building, showcasing its impressive collections of everything from fossils to stuffed birds.
As a member of the Natural History Society, the ambitious Powell then lobbied the state legislature for an annual appropriation to support the museum, a proposal which included a paid curator. And to the surprise of no one, when state agreed, it was Powell who was appointed curator of the museum.
This appointment altered the trajectory of Powells life and career, for he now had the financial wherewithal to pursue his dream exploring the American West. And so it came to be that prior to the celebrated 1869 Colorado River expedition, he organized two academic-oriented western trips under the auspices of the Normal museum, the first in 1867 and the second the following summer.
Eleven students, educators and interested observers joined Powell on his first westward trek, their ostensible purpose being to collect plants, insects, minerals and everything and anything to boost the museums collections. The party included Emma, Powells wife; Almon H. Thompson, his brother-in-law and superintendent of Bloomington schools; and Martin Titterington, Marion Francis Bishop and Joseph Hartzell, all Wesleyan students.
In late May, Powell ventured to Council Bluffs, Iowa, to purchase wagons, equipment and horses, with the other members of the collecting party arriving soon thereafter. They then ventured across the Great Plains, following the south bank of the Platte River to Denver (this was before completion of the transcontinental railroad). Titterington, a 19-year-old junior, recalled the wrecked wagons, new-made graves and deserted sod houses they encountered on the journey to Nebraskas Fort McPherson.
Along the banks of the Platte, the group also faced a series of hardships, none greater than the incessant July heat. Water was poor, feed and fuel scarce, no shade trees at all, and the insect pests sure a fright, recorded Titterington. They got in our ears and under our clothes. My face was one solid mess of sores. I couldnt wash it.
The weary travelers arrived in Denver on July 1, and from the territorial capital they traveled south across the Rampart Range and into a long, narrow valley bounded by Pikes Peak on the south and Devils Head on the north.
Joseph Hartzell, another Illinois Wesleyan student, penned a dispatch detailing a two-day ascent of Pikes Peak by eight members of the expedition, including Emma Powell. Mounted upon a white-eyed pony, Hartzell wrote of Emma, she kept pace with the rest, dismounted and climbed when necessary, and in the end bore the fatigue with hardly an equal. Their climb was blocked by a large rock slide, forcing the party to take an alternate route and camp overnight on the mountainside.
After several weeks of further explorations, the party returned to Denver. With the fall 1867 school semester fast approaching, the group separated, with most heading back to Central Illinois. But Powell remained in the mountains, spending September and October exploring the Rockies and pushing west to the headwaters of the Colorado River.
A result of the summers study was to kindle a desire to explore the canyons of the Grand, Green, and Colorado rivers, Powell would later recall of his inaugural journey to the Rockies. Thus, this 34-year-old science professor from Illinois was now firmly dedicated to the West, and he would spend the greater part of the next 35 years in the federal government exploring, mapping and defending its lands.
The members of the 1867 expedition collected a vast amount of material, ranging from rocks to butterflies. Crates packed with specimens were sent back to Normal, and when Powell returned later that fall he found the already cluttered museum in disarray. From his salary as curator, he paid several assistants to help unpack, sort, label and catalog the new material.
But such tedious (though critically necessary) work couldnt keep the restless Powell in Normal. No sooner was he back than he began organizing a second, more ambitious academic-oriented collection trip to the Rockies. When the second summer-long field trip ended in the fall of 1868, Powell wintered out West to prepare his planned expedition down the Colorado River for the following spring.
Hailed nationally as the Conqueror of the Grand Canyon after the 1869 adventure, Powell increasingly divided his time between Washington, D.C., and the West, though he still maintained tenuous connections with his former hometown. In 1872, he attended commencement services at Illinois Wesleyan, and invited professor H.C. Demotte to accompany him out West. Powell spent that summer occupied with surveying northern Arizona and southern Utah, but before leaving he resigned as curator of the Illinois Natural History Society museum. He then split his time between the arid lands beyond the Rockies and the nations capital, where he helped establish and lead the Smithsonian Institutions Bureau of Ethnology and the U.S. Geological Survey.
Back in the summer of 1869, atop Pikes Peak, IWU student Joseph Hartzell was awestruck at the immensities before him. Surely the Creator intended the grandeur and beauty of the world as foretastes of the hereafter, he reflected. What a prediction of the unknown! Eternity itself may easily seem short.
Yes He does:
Exodus 9:8-11 (RSV) And the LORD said to Moses and Aaron, Take handfuls of ashes from the kiln, and let Moses throw them toward heaven in the sight of Pharaoh. [9] And it shall become fine dust over all the land of Egypt, and become boils breaking out in sores on man and beast throughout all the land of Egypt. [10] So they took ashes from the kiln, and stood before Pharaoh, and Moses threw them toward heaven, and it became boils breaking out in sores on man and beast. [11] And the magicians could not stand before Moses because of the boils, for the boils were upon the magicians and upon all the Egyptians.
Exodus 9:8-11 (RSV) And the LORD said to Moses and Aaron, Take handfuls of ashes from the kiln, and let Moses throw them toward heaven in the sight of Pharaoh. [9] And it shall become fine dust over all the land of Egypt, and become boils breaking out in sores on man and beast throughout all the land of Egypt. [10] So they took ashes from the kiln, and stood before Pharaoh, and Moses threw them toward heaven, and it became boils breaking out in sores on man and beast. [11] And the magicians could not stand before Moses because of the boils, for the boils were upon the magicians and upon all the Egyptians.
Exodus 9:8-11 (RSV) And the LORD said to Moses and Aaron, Take handfuls of ashes from the kiln, and let Moses throw them toward heaven in the sight of Pharaoh. [9] And it shall become fine dust over all the land of Egypt, and become boils breaking out in sores on man and beast throughout all the land of Egypt. [10] So they took ashes from the kiln, and stood before Pharaoh, and Moses threw them toward heaven, and it became boils breaking out in sores on man and beast. [11] And the magicians could not stand before Moses because of the boils, for the boils were upon the magicians and upon all the Egyptians.
Exodus 15:26 . . . If you will diligently hearken to the voice of the LORD your God, and do that which is right in his eyes, and give heed to his commandments and keep all his statutes, I will put none of the diseases upon you which I put upon the Egyptians; for I am the LORD, your healer.
Exodus 15:26 . . . If you will diligently hearken to the voice of the LORD your God, and do that which is right in his eyes, and give heed to his commandments and keep all his statutes, I will put none of the diseases upon you which I put upon the Egyptians; for I am the LORD, your healer.
Exodus 15:26 . . . If you will diligently hearken to the voice of the LORD your God, and do that which is right in his eyes, and give heed to his commandments and keep all his statutes, I will put none of the diseases upon you which I put upon the Egyptians; for I am the LORD, your healer.
Deuteronomy 7:15 And the LORD will take away from you all sickness; and none of the evil diseases of Egypt, which you knew, will he inflict upon you, but he will lay them upon all who hate you.
Deuteronomy 7:15 And the LORD will take away from you all sickness; and none of the evil diseases of Egypt, which you knew, will he inflict upon you, but he will lay them upon all who hate you.
Deuteronomy 7:15 And the LORD will take away from you all sickness; and none of the evil diseases of Egypt, which you knew, will he inflict upon you, but he will lay them upon all who hate you.
Genesis 12:17 But the LORD afflicted Pharaoh and his house with great plagues because of Sarai, Abrams wife.
Leviticus 26:21 Then if you walk contrary to me, and will not hearken to me, I will bring more plagues upon you, sevenfold as many as your sins.
2 Chronicles 21:18-19 And after all this the LORD smote him in his bowels with an incurable disease. [19] In course of time, at the end of two years, his bowels came out because of the disease, and he died in great agony. (cf. 21:15)
2 Chronicles 21:18-19 And after all this the LORD smote him in his bowels with an incurable disease. [19] In course of time, at the end of two years, his bowels came out because of the disease, and he died in great agony. (cf. 21:15)
2 Chronicles 21:18-19 And after all this the LORD smote him in his bowels with an incurable disease. [19] In course of time, at the end of two years, his bowels came out because of the disease, and he died in great agony. (cf. 21:15)
2 Chronicles 21:12-14 And a letter came to him from Elijah the prophet, saying, Thus says the LORD, the God of David your father, `Because you have not walked in the ways of Jehoshaphat your father, or in the ways of Asa king of Judah, [13] but have walked in the way of the kings of Israel, and have led Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem into unfaithfulness, as the house of Ahab led Israel into unfaithfulness, and also you have killed your brothers, of your fathers house, who were better than yourself; [14] behold, the LORD will bring a great plague on your people, your children, your wives, and all your possessions,
Numbers 11:33 While the meat was yet between their teeth, before it was consumed, the anger of the LORD was kindled against the people, and the LORD smote the people with a very great plague.
Numbers 11:33 While the meat was yet between their teeth, before it was consumed, the anger of the LORD was kindled against the people, and the LORD smote the people with a very great plague.
Numbers 11:33 While the meat was yet between their teeth, before it was consumed, the anger of the LORD was kindled against the people, and the LORD smote the people with a very great plague.
Isaiah 10:16 Therefore the Lord, the LORD of hosts, will send wasting sickness among his stout warriors, . . .
2 Kings 15:5 And the LORD smote the king, so that he was a leper to the day of his death, . . . (cf. 2 Chr 13:20)
2 Kings 15:5 And the LORD smote the king, so that he was a leper to the day of his death, . . . (cf. 2 Chr 13:20)
2 Kings 15:5 And the LORD smote the king, so that he was a leper to the day of his death, . . . (cf. 2 Chr 13:20)
Acts 12:23 Immediately an angel of the Lord smote him, because he did not give God the glory; and he was eaten by worms and died.
Acts 12:23 Immediately an angel of the Lord smote him, because he did not give God the glory; and he was eaten by worms and died.
Acts 12:23 Immediately an angel of the Lord smote him, because he did not give God the glory; and he was eaten by worms and died.
2 Kings 6:18 And when the Syrians came down against him, Elisha prayed to the LORD, and said, Strike this people, I pray thee, with blindness. So he struck them with blindness in accordance with the prayer of Elisha.
2 Kings 6:18 And when the Syrians came down against him, Elisha prayed to the LORD, and said, Strike this people, I pray thee, with blindness. So he struck them with blindness in accordance with the prayer of Elisha.
2 Kings 6:18 And when the Syrians came down against him, Elisha prayed to the LORD, and said, Strike this people, I pray thee, with blindness. So he struck them with blindness in accordance with the prayer of Elisha.
2 Maccabees 9:4-6 . . . But the judgment of heaven rode with him! For in his arrogance he said, When I get there I will make Jerusalem a cemetery of Jews. [5] But the all-seeing Lord, the God of Israel, struck him an incurable and unseen blow. As soon as he ceased speaking he was seized with a pain in his bowels for which there was no relief and with sharp internal tortures [6] and that very justly, for he had tortured the bowels of others with many and strange inflictions.
2 Maccabees 9:4-6 . . . But the judgment of heaven rode with him! For in his arrogance he said, When I get there I will make Jerusalem a cemetery of Jews. [5] But the all-seeing Lord, the God of Israel, struck him an incurable and unseen blow. As soon as he ceased speaking he was seized with a pain in his bowels for which there was no relief and with sharp internal tortures [6] and that very justly, for he had tortured the bowels of others with many and strange inflictions.
2 Maccabees 9:4-6 . . . But the judgment of heaven rode with him! For in his arrogance he said, When I get there I will make Jerusalem a cemetery of Jews. [5] But the all-seeing Lord, the God of Israel, struck him an incurable and unseen blow. As soon as he ceased speaking he was seized with a pain in his bowels for which there was no relief and with sharp internal tortures [6] and that very justly, for he had tortured the bowels of others with many and strange inflictions.
Numbers 12:9-11 And the anger of the LORD was kindled against them, and he departed; [10] and when the cloud removed from over the tent, behold, Miriam was leprous, as white as snow. And Aaron turned towards Miriam, and behold, she was leprous. [11] And Aaron said to Moses, Oh, my lord, do not punish us because we have done foolishly and have sinned.
Numbers 12:9-11 And the anger of the LORD was kindled against them, and he departed; [10] and when the cloud removed from over the tent, behold, Miriam was leprous, as white as snow. And Aaron turned towards Miriam, and behold, she was leprous. [11] And Aaron said to Moses, Oh, my lord, do not punish us because we have done foolishly and have sinned.
Numbers 12:9-11 And the anger of the LORD was kindled against them, and he departed; [10] and when the cloud removed from over the tent, behold, Miriam was leprous, as white as snow. And Aaron turned towards Miriam, and behold, she was leprous. [11] And Aaron said to Moses, Oh, my lord, do not punish us because we have done foolishly and have sinned.
Romans 1:27 and the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another, men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in their own persons the due penalty for their error.
1. God says: dont do x, because its sinful (because He knows the consequences will be bad for them).
3. They then receive in their own persons the due penalty.
3. They then receive in their own persons the due penalty.
3. They then receive in their own persons the due penalty.
The difference is that it is a natural consequence rather than supernatural. Yet God warns about it, so it seems to me its almost the same as judgment (especially considering the word penalty).
The difference is that it is a natural consequence rather than supernatural. Yet God warns about it, so it seems to me its almost the same as judgment (especially considering the word penalty).
The difference is that it is a natural consequence rather than supernatural. Yet God warns about it, so it seems to me its almost the same as judgment (especially considering the word penalty). Bernard Orchard, Catholic Commentary (1953), notes the phrases in Romans 1:24, 26, 28:
Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, . . . For this reason God gave them up to dishonorable passions. . . . And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a base mind and to improper conduct.
Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, . . . For this reason God gave them up to dishonorable passions. . . . And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a base mind and to improper conduct.
Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, . . . For this reason God gave them up to dishonorable passions. . . . And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a base mind and to improper conduct.
He observed that Chrysostom and Theodoret interpreted this as God permitting men to follow their own free will. But Augustine thought this was an instance of God abandoning them and withdrawing actual grace.
In a USCCB commentary on Romans 1, its stated (bolding in original):
[1:24] In order to expose the depth of humanitys rebellion against the Creator, God handed them over to impurity through the lusts of their hearts. Instead of curbing peoples evil interests, God abandoned them to self-indulgence, thereby removing the facade of apparent conformity to the divine will. Subsequently Paul will show that the Mosaic law produces the same effect; cf. Rom 5:20; 7:1324. The divine judgment expressed here is related to the theme of hardness of heart described in Rom 9:1718.
My thought about AIDS in particular (which was brought up) would be like all the other diseases that result from promiscuous homosexuality (and promiscuous heterosexuality): its the consequence of sin that God warned against; in other words, natural, not supernatural.
We know that God judged many sinful people with disease. My list of passages established that beyond doubt (including a NT one). And he judged Ananias and Sapphira with death in the NT (Acts 5:1-10). Thats not disease, but death is, one could say, the ultimate disease.
What we see above is not normative judgment. But there is a lot of judgment going on in Scripture, and with the use of disease. STDs are (mostly) the result of promiscuity or sexual acts that violate natural law (even if not promiscuous), just as there are problems when junkies share needles or a bunch of people live in unsanitary conditions. Natural results . . .
But its similar to judgment because the dynamic is the same:
1. God: Dont do x.
2. We do x.
3. Oftentimes, the sin will have its own natural negative consequence.
4. Or, God judges a person supernaturally in relatively rare and extraordinary circumstances.
In both instances, God warned not to do certain things, or bad results will happen. Then the bad stuff happens, either from the laws of nature, or supernatural judgment.
Heres an interesting passage from proverbial literature (which, of course, allows a lot of exceptions):
Patna: Bihar celebrated the birth anniversary of Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, freedom fighter and an educationist, at a function held at the Sri Krishna Memorial Hall in Patna on Saturday where Chief Minister Nitish Kumar talked about the state's glorious academic past despite present degradation in Bihar education that remains in the news for all the wrong reasons.
{gallery}newsimages2017/nov/111117{/gallery}After briefly describing the ideas and philosophies of Maulana Azad, Kumar, without acknowledging the collapse of education in Bihar during his 12-year old regime both under the NDA and the Grand Alliance, conceded that there was a need for improvement in education in the education sector.
"It is my goal to usher fundamental changes in education in Bihar so the future is bright for our young students in schools and colleges," he said. He also brought up his initiative to provide school uniforms and bicycle to school girls as a sign of improvement in education in Bihar saying it had brought 'significant social changes' in the state.
The Chief Minister also engaged in the customary praise of Bihar students saying he had faith in them to go far in their lives.
"No matter what kind of exam the nation is holding, Bihari students are always on the top of the successful students list," he said.
Kumar stressed on the need for innovative education where the students did not only spend all of their times in school classrooms but also learnt about the nature and why it was not a good idea to mess with it.
On the occasion, the Chief Minister honored retired IIT Kanpur Principal Prof. Harish Chandra Verma with the Maulana Azad Education Award and asked him to start a school in Bihar on the model of his school in Kanpur that relies heavily on nature to prepare students for the future.
"I will provide all the help you need in this endeavor," Kumar told Prof. Verma.
Bihar Education Minister Krishna Nandan Prasad Verma and Principal Secretary (Education) R K Mahajan were among many who were present on the occasion.
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The Greater Accra Region chairman of the opposition National Democratic Congress has mounted a robust defence of the decision of NDC Chairmen to back former President John Mahama's second-term bid.
In defending the decision by the ten regional chairmen to ask ex-president John Mahama to consider leading the party to the 2020 general elections, Ade Coker who leads the party in the Greater Accra Region says the critics are lending credence to Vice-President Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia's mantra that members of the opposition party do not read.
Background
On Thursday ten regional chairmen of the opposition NDC issued a communique after meeting with ex-president John Mahama.
The communique had two major requests of the ex-president with the ten chairmen appending their signatures to it.
They Invited the former president to, as a matter of urgency, embark on the delayed and much awaited Thank you tour to the supporters of the NDC for supporting him through his tenure and the party over the years.
Called on HE John Dramani Mahama to consider the request of teeming supporters of the NDC and Ghanaians to lead the party to the 2020 General elections.
But the Communique has triggered some controversy within the party with some party members of the party as well some flagbearer aspirants insisting the call by the chairmen will give an unfair advantage to the ex-president.
Former Member of Parliament for Ablekuma Central, Theophilus Tetteh Chaie said the call by the chairmen was misplaced and in bad taste.
We have regional chairmen whose conduct has made the party lose several seats in some of the regions. Greater Accra Region is part of it. Central Region is part of it.
This is the time for the regional chairmen to sit down and assess what led to the defeat in these regions and help reorganize the regions.
People should not behave as if they love the former president more than any member of the party," he stressed.
He would rather the party structures concentrated on building a formidable party rather than throwing its weight behind one candidate.
Let us restructure the party at the grassroots and then the people themselves will come out and choose their leader. What we are trying to do is we are trying to shut the door on others who have intentions to contest.
Nobody should be fighting for the former president, he said. But Ade Coker says their communique is not an endorsement of the ex-president and charged critics to take their reading lessons seriously.
The communique is explicit. I dont know why we are making a hue and cry over all this thing. People should read. We make Bawumia have some justification. People are not reading," the Chairman said.
He explained as part of the Regional meeting every quarter which addresses the concerns of party members they decided to issue a communique about a concern which some members have and the best person to meet was the person the communique was about.
He downplayed suggestions the intent of the meeting with the ex-president was to endorse his candidature.
Source: myjoyonline.com
Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority.
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Reports from Bangladesh suggest that a Hindu village in Rangpur district was allegedly torched by 20,000-strong crowd over a rumoured Facebook post.
By India Today Web Desk: A mob of angry protesters has set on fire at least 30 houses of Hindus in Bangladesh following rumours that a youth from the minority community posted an offensive Facebook status.
According to a Dhaka Tribune report, one person was killed when police opened fire to disperse the crowd that launched the arson attack on the houses of Hindus on Friday. The incident took place in Rangpur district's Thakurpara village, about 300 km from Dhaka.
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The report also said that the attackers looted and vandalised a good number of houses in that village. A rumour shaped and vented the anger of the Muslims in the neighbouring villages against the Hindu community.
The rumour was that one Titu Roy, originally from Thakurbari village but currently living in Narayanganj, put up a Facebook post defaming Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) a few days ago, the paper said.
The attack was carried out by a section among the 20,000-strong crowd that was reportedly mustered out from six to seven neighbouring villages after the Jumma prayers, the daily reported.
There was a melee of chases and counter chases between the law enforcers and the crowd. At one point, police fired tear gas shells and rubber bullets to control the situation, the report said.
POLICE TAKE CONTROL OF SITUATION
At least five persons were injured when police fired rubber bullets and lobbed tear gas shells to bring the situation under control, it said. Before the police intervened, the perpetrators had torched at least 30 Hindu houses before looting and vandalising them, the report said. A crowd of 20,000 people had reportedly gathered from six to seven neighbouring villages before the attack was launched by a group of people, it said.
The police had a tough time dealing with the protesters and restoring the law and order situation in the area, the report said. Six persons with bullet injuries were rushed to a nearby hospital when one of them succumbed to his injuries, the report said.
Police have detained 33 people in connection with the incident, bdnews24 reported. There were traffic snarls after the mob blocked the Rangpur-Dinajpur highway to protest against the police action.
A large number of police personnel have been deployed in the area where the situation was tense, Kotwali police station Officer-in-Charge (Operation) Moktarul Islam said. The district administration has formed a three-member inquiry committee, headed by Additional District Magistrate Abu Rafa Mohammad Rafiq, to investigate the incident and submit a report in seven days, the report added.
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(With PTI inputs)
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U.S. President Donald Trump exchanged schoolyard taunts this weekend with North Korea's leader Kim Jong-un during his five-country tour of Asia.
On Saturday, North Korea denounced Trump's Asia trip, calling it a "warmonger's visit" and again described the president as a "dotard" - a centuries-old insult for an elderly person.
"Why would Kim Jong-un insult me by calling me "old," when I would NEVER call him "short and fat?" Trump tweeted from Vietnam, adding: "Oh well, I try so hard to be his friend - and maybe someday that will happen!"
Why would Kim Jong-un insult me by calling me "old," when I would NEVER call him "short and fat?" Oh well, I try so hard to be his friend - and maybe someday that will happen! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 12, 2017
Trump was in Hanoi for a brief state visit. He was traveling to the Philippines later Sunday -- the last stop of his five-country trip -- for a pair of summits.
Asked whether he could really be friends with Kim, Trump said, "I think anything's a possibility. Strange things happen in life."
Trump also said he hoped to have more help from Chinese President Xi Jinping as well as Russia, when it comes to isolating North Korea, in an effort to pressure the country to abandon its nuclear weapons program.
"President Xi I think is going to be a tremendous help. I hope Russia likewise will be a tremendous help," Trump said. "I think they can make a big difference."
A 25-year-old man being chased by police went on Facebook Live during part of the nearly three-hour-long incident.
In the video, Brenton Hager wears his seatbelt, honks at other drivers, sends messages to his friends about needing a lawyer, asks someone to call his mom, contemplates the charges he'll face, and tells various people he loves them.
"Hey, wanna see me in a high-speed chase?" he yells to someone outside the vehicle at one point. "I'm in a high-speed chase, bro!"
Warning: Video below contains profane language.
From WSPA.com, a CBS station:
Police threw stop sticks in front of the truck several times, but the driver always managed to get around them. And several times, officers had their guns trained on the suspect but didn't shoot.
He stopped at one point to pull the tool box out of the back of the truck. That's when someone with a gun shot out his back tire.
The chase ended when Hager drove into a field and then a pond. Police used a stun gun on him and took him into custody.
KOKO News 5 in Oklahoma said his mother was relieved he wasn't killed in the chase.
ISTANBUL (AP) -- Turkey on Sunday dismissed as "ludicrous and groundless" a report that Turkish officials may have discussed kidnapping a U.S.-based Muslim cleric in exchange for millions of dollars.
On Friday, The Wall Street Journal reported that Special Counsel Robert Mueller was investigating an alleged plot involving former U.S. National Security Adviser Michael Flynn and his son to forcibly remove Fethullah Gulen and hand him over to Ankara for as much as $15 million.
Turkish Islamic preacher Fethullah Gulen at his home in Saylorsburg, Monroe County, Pa.
Turkey blames Gulen for last year's failed coup attempt. Gulen, who lives in Monroe County, Pa., denies the claim.
In a statement on Twitter, Turkey's embassy in Washington reiterated demands that the U.S. extradite Gulen so he can stand trial. The embassy said Turkey has been working with U.S. agencies to provide evidence of Gulen's culpability and rejected "allegations that Turkey would resort to means external to the rule of law."
Turkish officials say they have provided U.S. officials with ample evidence for Gulen's involvement in the coup that killed 250 people. Nearly 50,000 people are behind bars in Turkey and more than 100,000 civil servants have been dismissed from their jobs for alleged links to the cleric's network in the government's crackdown after the failed coup.
Yet questions remain whether Gulen would receive a fair trial in Turkey.
The Turkish embassy said the Turkish people find Gulen's continued refuge in the U.S. "perplexing and deeply frustrating."
Gulen has been living in the U.S. for nearly two decades. He is a former ally of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan until a public fallout in 2013 led the government to declare Gulen's network a terror group.
Relations between Turkey and the U.S. have been tense over disagreements on multiple fronts. The two countries suspended non-immigrant visa services in October in a tit-for-tat following the arrest of two local U.S. embassy employees. The services resumed on a limited basis this month.
Also behind bars in Turkey for alleged links to Gulen is U.S. pastor Andrew Brunson, who has lived in Turkey for over 20 years. Erdogan said in September the U.S. was pressing Turkey to return a "cleric" while refusing to hand over another "cleric."
Complicating relations further is the case of a Turkish-Iranian businessman on trial in the U.S. for evading U.S. sanctions on Iran. A former Turkish economy minister and an executive of a state-owned Turkish bank have also been indicted. The case starts on Nov. 27.
In a meeting last week, Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim and Vice President Michael Pence discussed the cases among other strained issues, including the U.S. backing of Syrian Kurdish militants in the war against the Islamic State group.
Turkey has been infuriated by the U.S. support for a group it considers an extension of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party or PKK, which has waged an insurgency within Turkey for more than 30 years.
BY ZEYNEP BILGINSOY, Associated Press
A man burned several American flags honoring veterans that were placed outside of Lancaster Catholic High School, according to Lancaster Online.
School staff found an ash pile outside the front doors of the school on Juliette Avenue early Thursday morning.
Security footage shows a man with a beard burning flags just before 1 a.m. that morning, school president Tim Hamer told Lancaster Online. Police estimate 10 flags were burned, and 10 flags were broken.
No one has been charged, but police continue to investigate the incident. Sgt. Michael Piacentino of Manheim Township Police Department told Lancaster Online the man would face a misdemeanor charge of institutional vandalism if charged.
About 200 flags were set up around the school on Wednesday, and the ones destroyed were replayed on Thursday, according to the report. Hamer said the school celebrates Veterans Day each year by lining the perimeter with American flags.
"It's certainly disappointing. We will pray for whoever the perpetrator is. Our response is to focus our attention on the veterans that we are honoring, not let this dampen our celebration of their service," he said.
As we went to the polls last week, most of the advertising was focused on elections statewide appellate judges and local municipal officials.
Republican strategist Charlie Gerow (PennLive file)
However, Pennsylvanians also voted for a Constitutional amendment that could pave the way for property tax elimination or reduction.
Voters approved, by a relatively narrow margin of less than eight points, a ballot question on a Constitutional amendment to the homestead property tax assessment Exclusion.
For the past two decades, local taxing authorities (school districts, local and county governments) have been allowed to exclude from taxation up to 50 percent of the median assessed values of individual homes. Under the provisions of the amendment passed on Tuesday, that number could become 100 percent.
The amendment to Article VIII of the Pennsylvania Constitution now allows up to that number.
It's interesting to note that there was a precipitous drop-off in voting from the top of the ticket to the ballot question.
In an "off-year" election that drew only about a quarter of the state's registered voters to the polls, there was a roughly 15 percent drop from those who voted for one of the two candidates for the state Supreme Court and those who voted on the ballot question.
There are a lot of plausible explanations for that, not the least of which was the confusion over how the question was worded and what it really meant.
It's also curious to see how support for and opposition to the proposed amendment fell, politically, demographically and geographically.
The southwest corner of the state (Philadelphia and the suburban "collar counties") voted against the proposal by a roughly 60-40 margin. Centre County (home to PSU students and faculty) and Allegheny County also voted against the amendment.
A cluster of largely rural counties in the northwest corner of the state also voted against the measure, although by smaller margins.
For those expecting that the amendment means their property taxes are going away, there's a word of caution: don't hold your breath.
The legislature still needs to act. This amendment gave those seeking property tax elimination an important tool. Now they have to use it.
Of course the biggest hurdle to all of this is deciding what taxes will be imposed to replace the revenue lost by elimination of property taxes.
There's one universal truth: Nobody likes property taxes. You won't find a defender of the current system in any corner of the Commonwealth. Pennsylvania has some of the highest property taxes in the nation. All told, they make up nearly a third of the revenue collected by state and local governments.
Many seniors and those on "fixed Incomes" (aren't we all?) find property taxation particularly onerous and noxious.
For decades there have been moves to do away with property taxes. Yet, if today you ask each of the 253 members of the General Assembly the best way to get rid of property taxes, you'll probably get 300 different answers.
Ultimately, tax elimination proposals have all stalled at the point where new taxes to replace them must be determined. People may hate their property taxes, but they often hate the alternatives (generally increases in income taxes or sales and use taxes) as much.
There's also concern that taking decision making power over these taxes out of local hands and transferring it to Harrisburg, takes it farther away from individual citizens. That's an argument that connects with some conservatives who otherwise oppose property taxes.
The heart of the issue may not be so much HOW taxes are collected as HOW MUCH is being extracted from taxpayers overdrawn wallets.
It's especially the school property tax that draws the most fire. There's less outrage over county/local property taxes.
That's because the school property taxes are much bigger. Many school districts have spending that outpaces "sustainability" or the ability of local taxpayers to afford it.
Many of these same districts hold large "reserves." That's money taxpayers have already paid but that hasn't been spent.
Taxpayers are increasingly asking why they have to pay more while at the same time their money hasn't yet been spent.
The debate over property taxes will continue.
Ordinarily we wouldn't see definitive action in the time leading up to next year's mid-term elections. The vote on Tuesday might, just might, cause some surprises in the legislature.
Conservative commentator Charlie Gerow is the CEO of Quantum Communications, a Harrisburg public affairs firm. His "Elephants & Donkeys" column appears weekly opposite progressive commentator Kirstin Snow.
By PTI: From M Zulqernain
Lahore, Nov 12 (PTI) Pakistani police today arrested over 300 activists of the Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan (TLP) party in Punjab province for creating unrest.
The TLP is a recently-formed political party of the Barelvi sect.
Skirmishes erupted between the activists and police since yesterday. Over a dozen TLP activists and five policemen were injured during the clashes as protesters pelted stones at police who fired teargas. The activists were protesting against federal and provincial law ministers Zahid Hamid and Rana Sanaullah for their alleged "soft corner" towards the minority Ahmadi community. They demanded the ministers resignation.
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The Ahmadis are among Pakistans most persecuted minorities. TLP activists also blocked the main road connecting Rawalpindi with Islamabad for the last few days. The PML-N government however refrained from using force to disperse them from there.
In other cities like Lahore, Faisalabad, Gujranwala, Sheikhupura, Sahiwal and Bahawalpur, the police launched a crackdown on their sit-ins and arrested protesters for blocking roads.
"We have arrested more than 300 TLP workers from different cities of Punjab for creating law and order situation in the province," Punjab Police spokesman Niyab Haider said.
He said the activists have been booked for blocking roads, damaging public property and injuring policemen during protests, adding that TLP workers will not be allowed to create unrest in the province in the name of religion. PTI MZ KUN
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A war memorial defaced with spray paint is shown in Montreal in this Sunday, Nov. 12, 2017 handout photo. A Montreal man said he and other residents were shocked and saddened after a war memorial was defaced with graffiti on Remembrance Day. Berj Merdjanian says he saw the lettering early Saturday morning when he went to work at his photo studio in the city's Saint-Laurent borough. THE CANADIAN PRESS/HO - Berj Merdjanian *MANDATORY CREDIT*
The Site C Dam location is seen along the Peace River in Fort St. John, B.C., Tuesday, April 18, 2017. The fate of the largest public project in British Columbia's history, the $8.3 billion Site C hydroelectric dam, will be the focus of intense scrutiny in the coming days when provincial cabinet ministers travel north as the New Democrat government agonizes over its looming decision to cancel or complete the project that has been under construction for more than two years. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Jonathan Hayward
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau speaks with Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte and Honeylet Avancena as he arrives at the 50th Anniversary celebration of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations in Manila, Philippines, Sunday, November 12, 2017. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Adrian Wyld
SP chief Akhilesh Yadav is all set to unveil a grand statue of Lord Krishna, almost secretly installed at Saifai, his hometown.
By India Today Web Desk: The Lok Sabha elections 2019 may see totally different electoral battle in Uttar Pradesh. Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath has proposed to install a 100-metre tall statue of Lord Ram on the bank of Saryu in Ayodhya. Now, his predecessor and Samajwadi Party president Akhilesh Yadav has hurled a surprise.
Reports suggest that Akhilesh Yadav has been secretly working for erecting a 50-ft high copper statue of Lord Krishna at Safai, his hometown. Krishna is seen here in his Rathangpani form wielding a chariot wheel in his hand. The work on the statue is in progress for about six months now.
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The statue is inspired from a depiction in the epic poem, Mahabharata where Krishna wields the chariot wheel as weapon and charges towards Bhishma, a warrior leading the rival army of the Kauravas. This is the only instance of Krishna picking up a weapon during the 18-day long Mahabharata war.
The theme of the statue is said to have been conceptualised by Akhilesh Yadav himself. Reports say that the statue is almost complete and ready for unveiling except for final polishing to be done days before Akhilesh Yadav finalises the date for its inauguration.
The Krishna statue has come up in a school ground at Saifai. Akhilesh Yadav is understood to time the unveiling of Krishna statue with the launch of united Opposition's poll campaign for 2019 Lok Sabha elections.
Several top Opposition leaders including RJD chief Lalu Prasad Yadav and possibly Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi - who still has an alliance with the Samajwadi Party - are likely to attend unveiling of Krishna statue early next year.
This makes the UP battle of 2019 elections lot more interesting. Ram Rajya and a Ram temple at Ayodhya have already become poll planks of the BJP. With Akhilesh Yadav planning to make unveiling of Lord Krishna's statue a political event ahead of the Lok Sabha election, the 2019 polls may be heading towards a showdown between the believers in the two mythical heroes.
Lord Krishna is widely hailed a Yadav hero from the mythical past in India. Yadavs form a dominant political group among the OBCs in Uttar Pradesh. With a grand Krishna statue at his hometown, Akhilesh Yadav may be eying the backing of not only the Yadavs but also other OBCs in the 2019 elections.
The copper statue of Lord Krishan is has been designed by experts using latest 3D technology. Gas Tungsten Arc technology, commonly used in aerospace projects, was used to weld different parts of the statue.
Reports suggest that the angles and pipes used in the statue at Saifai have been imported from Japan while the paint of the statue was provided by an American firm.
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The Krishna statue project has been funded by the Saifai Mahotstava Committee. It is the same body that organises the annual Saifai Mahotsava, known for its high glamour quotient. The committee is headed by SP leader Mulayam Singh Yadav while Akhilesh sits on the body as a member.
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By PTI: Etah (UP), Nov 12 (PTI) As many as 96 sacks of foodgrains, meant to be sold in fair price shops, have been seized from two areas here while being smuggled for sale in blackmarket, the police said today.
In the first incident, 65 bags of rice were recovered, they said.
On a tip-off that a ration dealer in Fatehpur village was going to sell the rice in blackmarket, a police team along with a sub-divisional magistrate intercepted a tractor trolley and seized 65 sacks, the police said.
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The driver of the tractor managed to escape, they said.
In another incident, 31 sacks of foodgrains were seized from a tractor trolley in Kotwali Nayagoan, the police said.
During investigation, it was found that the sacks belonged to a ration dealer in Kharsulia village, they said. PTI CORR APA NSD
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In general, men are twice as likely to cheat on a spouse than women are. That frequency increases over the lifespan, peaking among the elderly. Among men 18 to 29 who have ever been married, about 1 in 10 is
Mold tech Haley George takes parts to a rack to cool after they have been molded at the JSP International plant in Tullahoma, Tenn. JSPs U.S. corporate headquarters are in Wayne. Just over a year ago, George was in jail, recovering from a drug addiction. Now, she says, her life has completely changed for the better. Read more
WINCHESTER, Tenn. Scott Crago says everyone deserves a second chance. That goes for ex-criminals fresh out of jail.
Crago has heard all the tales of heartbreak in rural Tennessee absent daddies, grannies raising babies, mamas dying young, drinking, drugs and what that all means for folks locked up in the Franklin County jail.
Sounds like a country-western song.
But Crago, as nice as he is, has a strong interest in welcoming ex-offenders onto his payroll at JSP International, a factory making parts for cars made in Tennessee and Alabama. Franklin County's unemployment rate is 2.9 percent, making it hard to find help. Turnover is high.
So a coalition of folks came up with a simple plan to keep people from returning to jail. Ask employers such as plant manager Crago what they need, listen, and supply them with workers trained to order; in this case, with industry-recognized certificates in injection molding and computer-machining fundamentals, both earned in jail.
The Middle Tennessee Rural Reentry Program effort is attracting attention.
Could it work in Philadelphia? Not as easily in the region's diverse economy, although similar efforts are underway, said H. Patrick Clancy, who heads Philadelphia Works, the city's workforce development agency. The city's manufacturers, he said, would have to devise a set of basic skills applicable to all their workplaces and find a way to certify them. And they'd still have to agree to enroll and hire people released from prison.
In Franklin County, when reentry program graduates get out of jail, they head to the factory neatly dressed, screened for drugs, resume in hand, ready to interview and begin working. Since January 2016, 61 have participated in the injection molding training and been released. And of those, 16 have returned to jail that's 26 percent, compared with 80 percent, the county's usual recidivism rate. The number is even lower for successful graduates: less than 10 percent.
Christine Hopkins is a relentless 82-year-old grandmother who makes a mean banana pudding and never takes no for an answer.
She partnered with a county sheriff whose attitude about rehabilitation took a 180-degree turn about 15 years ago.
"In a lot of places, it's not politically correct to have a law enforcement officer who believes in rehabilitation," said Sheriff Tim Fuller. "Locking people up is not the answer. Building more prisons is not the answer. I'm a firm believer that there's some good in everybody. While you have them in custody, do something with them, besides them sitting there soaking up food."
In 2006, Fuller, then deputy sheriff, ran for sheriff and shared those beliefs on the stump. Listening was Hopkins, now executive director of the Rural Reentry program, who had a 50-year career in social services and workforce development.
"Are you serious?" she asked him afterward.
He was, and Hopkins had him hooked. For decades, she had found jobs for the disabled and the mentally ill, after they took job-readiness training, including soft skills such as attendance, punctuality and etiquette.
Same for the folks in jail, she figured, developing the reentry program as a nonprofit contracted to serve Franklin and nearby counties.
The inmates needed more. They needed group therapy, which helps people understand the impact of their behavior, so they change how they think about themselves and life's challenges. (In Philadelphia, a similar program is called "Thinking for a Change.") There was also training in parenting, budgeting and computer literacy.
The inmates Hopkins and Fuller wanted to serve weren't the serious offenders in state penitentiaries. These inmates, housed in Fuller's county jail, were convicted of less serious crimes. Even so, he and Hopkins enrolled those most likely to wind up back behind bars.
Hopkins was determined to offer specific job training and to make sure the trainees got actual jobs. She had seen too many training programs fail to lead to jobs, wasting money and hope.
Working in Hopkins' favor was the region's strong focus on automotive manufacturing.
In Franklin County, about 2,000 people build engines for Nissan North America, and motors and power trains for Mercedes Benz and Nissan Infiniti. An additional 3,000 to 4,000 work in automotive-related companies, such as Crago's JSP, officials say. The annual median wage is $29,173, about $14.50 an hour, possible for successful graduates.
Hopkins buttonholed employers. What did they need? Graduates from the local community college's heating and ventilation program landed jobs immediately, so that was an early focus. And most inmate graduates got those jobs. But employers said they probably wouldn't hire more because residential clients didn't want the formerly incarcerated in their homes.
Time for Plan B.
After networking with employers, a consensus emerged: injection molding and CNC machining. Trained in a jail annex classroom, graduates earned industry and community college certificates. The secret sauce is determined mentoring by Hopkins and her staff. "I don't give up on them," said case manager Michelle Perkins.
A three-year federal Second Chance Act grant of $747,619 covers machine installation and curriculum development to reduce recidivism for 120 participants. It's not cheap. But Hopkins likes to compare what graduates' wages add to the economy versus the $59 daily tab to keep one in jail.
"Can you imagine the ripple effect on families and kids?" she said. "It's not about saving dollars. It's about saving lives."
To entice employers, Hopkins joined the Rotary Club, the Chamber of Commerce, and the local Private Industry Council. She got buy-in before starting the program, letting employers know about government grants.
No one was safe from Hopkins. She telephoned Crago nonstop until he attended a graduation and taught a class. Her tactic? Flatter them until they participate. When they do, they're hooked.
It happened to Crago:
"I didn't want anything to do with it," he said. "What changed me was coming to a graduation. Some of the personal stories they shared how their childhoods were and what they went through. They were begging me, `Let me prove myself.' "
"To be honest, it makes me feel really good."
And to be honest, it's not a bad deal. The program graduates dress properly for interviews. They show up for work. If there's a problem, counselors intervene.
Most graduates are on parole or probation, subject to random drug testing. "I know they're clean and it's not costing me to know it," Crago said.
So far, JSP, which employs 149, has hired seven graduates. Of them, two fell off the wagon and were fired, including one who had earned a promotion. That broke Crago's heart. But even so, two of seven represents a turnover rate of 29 percent, compared with his plant's normal 40 percent turnover. And, each new hire costs more than $1,000 to train.
The program's rising national profile resulted in Hopkins, some staffers, Crago, and mold technician Haley George, 28, traveling to New York late last month to speak at the Training Summit for Second Chance Act grantees.
For George, who got out of jail in October 2016, it represents a trip of firsts first time in New York, on a plane, and seeing a Broadway show, Wicked. "This is so big for me," she said in October.
Her mother died of breast cancer when George was 18. Pregnant when she graduated from high school, she was soon addicted to stimulants, using her baby's diaper money to buy drugs. In 2011, she was arrested for theft and later flunked probation when a drug test came back hot. "I couldn't get out of bed without a pill," she said. "Instead of chasing jobs, I chased pills.
"Jail was my help."
In 2015, drug charges sent her to prison. While there, she lost custody of her children, now 4 and 9, who were living with a relative. In jail, she joined the injection molding program and secured a job at JSP on her release.
"I was so afraid I was going to be judged on my past," she said, "but I've never been judged. They just took me in, they loved me, and they didn't even know me. My life has been totally turned around."
Last week, for example, she regained full custody of her children.
Crago smiled, obviously proud. "Haley is not a number to us," he said.
George strode through the factory to her machine. It hisses and steams plastic pellets into a styrofoam-like material, spitting out five platforms; each supports the rear seat of a Honda Pilot.
In less than two minutes, George inspects the platforms, lines them up to dry, and packs others for shipping. In between, there's documentation. That happens 250 times a shift, six days a week.
Before each shift, she inspects her machine, and if something goes wrong, she fixes it.
"Press 10, that's my baby," her Tennessee twang turning baby into a three-syllable word. "I take care of Press 10, just like I take care of my kids."
One in an occasional series, part of a collaborative news project
about the challenges and solutions of prison reentry in Philadelphia. Read more here.
This combination photo shows, top row from left, film producer Harvey Weinstein, former Amazon Studios executive Roy Price, director James Toback, New Orleans chef John Besh, bottom row from left, fashion photographer Terry Richardson, New Republic contributing editor Leon Wiseltier, former NBC News political commentator Mark Halperin, former Defy Media executive Andy Signore.. In the weeks since the string of allegations against Weinstein first began, an ongoing domino effect has tumbled through not just Hollywood but at least a dozen other industries. Read more
The real revolutions are the ones that you never see coming. Just ask Czar Nicholas II or Marie Antoinette.
Or Harvey Weinstein.
Our October Revolution of 2017 is rapidly becoming the greatest social upheaval of the young 21st century: We are witnessing an all-out assault on the Bastille-like fortress of male domination, patriarchy, and the sexual reign of terror that has come with that. The proverbial heads are rolling from Hollywood to Washington to Madison Avenue faster than a French guillotine, circa 1793.
The realization that we've crossed an epic tipping point came on a chilly Friday afternoon when just minutes apart the Washington Post reported that Bible-and-pistol-toting Alabama GOP Senate candidate Roy Moore once had a warped proclivity for hitting on girls as young as 14 (when he was 32) and the New York Times revealed comedian Louis C.K.'s forced sexual perversions on unwilling women and, as has been the case in almost all of these stories, C.K.'s use of clout to enforce silence from both those who experienced it and the media.
The bombshell revelations are coming not daily but hourly. They are big names from the movies, the news media, Silicon Valley, and electoral politics. The men are liberal and conservative; invariably, some are celebrities that you loved and some are celebrities that you loved to hate. The allegations vary dramatically, as well, from verbal harassment to allegations of flat-out rape, and there's now an offshoot of men accused of using their position and power to sexually abuse or to silence other men. Some have confessed their sins, but others deny the allegations, and it's important to note that the accused are fully entitled to a day in court either a real courtroom or at least the court of public opinion.
But what is striking about the fall of 2017 and maybe the looming fall long overdue and yet also hard to believe it's happening of several millenniums of male supremacy are what all of these stories have in common. It's all about power, frankly, much, much more than it is about sexual desire. The shared element in each of these divergent downfalls is not only that men abused positions of authority and, often, trust to make unwelcome sexual advances, but that when things went wrong, society had their back the wall of support from others in their male-dominated universes, media that too often craved access over truth, and the knowledge from both female and male bystanders who knew better that "speaking truth to power" would cost them their career and their source of income.
The amazing thing we are now witnessing is a sudden, radical shift in the power equation. That is the very definition of a revolution, when a long-oppressed majority be it the French peasantry in 1789, or 51 percent of the U.S. population in 2017 finds first its voice and then the weaponry it needs, whether that is the armaments inside the Bastille or the 280 characters (sigh) of Twitter. With powerful men dropping around us like bombs, let's pause for a minute and ask two questions: How did we get here? And where on earth is this thing going?
This didn't start overnight, of course. In recent years, there has been a handful of what you might call "John the Baptist moments" none more powerful than the flood of women willing to tell the truth about disgraced comedian Bill Cosby, whose problems with sexual assault and Quaaludes had been hiding in plain sight for a decade before a comedian in a Philadelphia nightclub finally asked: "What's up with that?" Months later, the army of women with the courage to answer that question filled the entire cover of a magazine, and Cosby would be indicted.
Social media which have played a critical role in all the great political and cultural uprisings of the 21st century, from the Arab Spring to #BlackLivesMatter clearly helped to connect women and inspire the bravery in telling their stories. And it helped that today's more outspoken women are largely the first generations to grow up after the women's liberation movement of the 1970s, which brought gains in the workplace, on college campuses and elsewhere yet has clearly fallen well short of the dream of full equality between the sexes.
But there were two key dates in the road to revolution. The first was Nov. 8, 2016, when the election of a president who not only drew accusations from more than a dozen women of predatory sexual behavior but also had been caught on tape bragging about grabbing women's private parts led, for millions, to both existential despair over what that said about American society, but also to aggrieved calls for fighting back. That led to the second and arguably more important date of Jan. 21, 2017 the amazing turnout of four million women and male allies for the Women's March not just in Washington, but in cities and towns across the nation and around the globe.
The massive crowd inspired awe but also questions. Trump had been president for less than 24 hours, and critics said the goals of the Women's March were vague and unfocused. In fact, the simple vision of the march, and what it inspired, was earth-shattering: a new spirit of female empowerment. There is incredible strength in numbers, and the sea change is that women who were cowed and intimidated are now imbued with the strength to speak out. Despite the failings of the media, a few intrepid reporters over the years had gone after the epic tales of Harvey Weinstein's abuse, only to be blocked by a wall of intimidation and fear. In 2017, two New York Times reporters found that the women who'd suffered Weinstein's abuse were now ready to tear down that wall.
The most powerful weapon in patriarchy's arsenal had been shaming the shared understanding among women that telling their story would end up damaging their reputation or their career, while the men in authority who harmed them would skate free. But today, with solidarity, that sense of shame has been all but obliterated. A couple of weeks ago, a Twitter hashtag called #MeToo prompted thousands of women to share their stories of predatory and abusive men, with a candor that can only be called revolutionary.
"I find this recent eruption of truths being told is disruptive of all our polite repressions," a woman recently told a Chicago Tribune columnist writing about the assault on male supremacy. "And most of that disruption seems healthy and necessary, and if we pay a price for some of it, then to hell with that, too. It's time to be paying a price for opposing patriarchy instead of paying the price of buckling under."
Indeed. So where next? No doubt, a part of the solution is political, which is why a third date last Tuesday, Nov. 7, 2017 also looms large. Women not only flexed their muscles at the ballot box, tipping the scales in favor of the Democrats in unexpected places such as Pennsylvania's Delaware County, but scores of first-time female candidates energized by the Women's March won their races last week. The long-term goals of this movement include not just policy changes such as equal pay for women and stopping the nationwide rollback of reproductive rights, but also eventually undoing the patriarchal restorations of the Trump administration appalling things such as appointing 42 consecutive men as new U.S. attorneys.
But it won't be a true revolution unless it goes beyond politics, and beyond the peccadilloes of just the rich and famous. As one article noted this weekend, the abuses of Hollywood's casting couch pale in scope to the sexual assaults and degradation heaped upon the least-powerful hotel and cleaning workers. It's a reminder that patriarchy and its sins are deeply embedded in ways both obvious and subtle.
True, the dream of electing a woman to the White House stands unfulfilled, but it's worth celebrating small victories, such as when a funny woman of color with an unconventional backstory such as Tiffany Haddish chips away at the glass ceiling by hosting Saturday Night Live, an iconic liberal institution that has long skewed too male and too white. In Hollywood, real change won't come when men stop behaving badly although that would be helpful but when more women are writing the scripts, sitting in the director's chair, and running the studios. Ditto for Washington and Harrisburg. The flowers of revolution are starting to bloom, but to paraphrase the famous cigarette ad from the last era of women's liberation: You've got a long way to go, baby.
A year ago, children roamed the halls of Kenderton Elementary in North Philadelphia. Now, under the administration of Principal Victoria Pressley, the school is on the rise. Read more
Kenderton Elementary was in full-blown crisis at the beginning of last school year: There were frequent fights, students roaming the school, walking out of the building. Teachers quit, and parents said they feared for their children's safety and worried they weren't learning much.
"It was just bad," said Aliyah Alexander, who was in fifth grade at the time. "Students weren't listening, they were running the hallways, having attitude, slamming doors, ripping stuff down."
These days, Kenderton is on the rise, thanks to a back-to-basics approach consistency, a proven principal, and a host of investments and extra supports provided by the Philadelphia School District.
Kenderton illustrates much about the challenges and promise of urban education, and what the shifting sands of school reform can mean to a neighborhood: The school at 15th and Ontario has been frequently tagged in Philadelphia school-reform efforts that have not panned out.
For nearly two decades, periodic upheaval has been the norm for the school. In the early 2000s, the district gave Kenderton to Edison, a for-profit education company, to run. That relationship did not last; eventually the struggling school was given to Scholar Academies, a charter company, to administer.
But the charter company abruptly abandoned Kenderton in June 2016, citing the high cost of educating its large special-education population.
Such a business transaction is always a possibility when the district relies on outside companies to educate its students Scholar Academies had the contractual right to leave, but that left the school system with less than three months to hire staff, get curriculum in order, and deal with student records and registration.
In September 2016, a staff of mostly new educators and administrators reopened Kenderton as a district school.
Linda Stevens-Whiteside watched it happen. Stevens-Whiteside grew up blocks from the school, graduated from it, then taught science there until her retirement in 2011. She remained in the neighborhood and sat on the School Advisory Council directed in 2013 to choose a charter company to run Kenderton, where more than three-quarters of students live below the poverty line and many have complex learning and emotional needs.
When Scholar Academies left, "no one was prepared," said Stevens-Whiteside. "When the children came back to school, they had no one to fall back on, no familiar faces. We had a lot of turmoil." (The staff members who had worked for the charter company were invited to stay at Kenderton, but few opted to return when the school reopened under district control.)
Stevens-Whiteside is back at Kenderton as a long-term substitute: science last year, math this year. She can put a date on when things began to change: Nov. 1, 2016, when R. Victoria Pressley came to the school.
Pressley is a no-nonsense veteran: a product of North Philadelphia schools herself, an acclaimed school leader who also worked as an assistant superintendent and curriculum director. When district leaders removed the Kenderton principal who started the 2016-17 year, they turned to Pressley to restore order.
"I've always been one who liked challenges," Pressley said on a recent day, pausing from classroom observations to walk visitors through the school's blue-and-yellow hallways.
Before she started at Kenderton, Pressley parked her car on multiple days and just watched how the school operated at the beginning of the day and at dismissal.
"What I saw was chaos," she said. "And if you start the day with chaos, you're going to end it with chaos."
Pressley got quickly to work, putting new rules and systems in place. There was a staff deployment plan to make sure every area of the building had someone covering it. If children acted up, their parents had to come to school to address it; if they ripped down a bulletin board, they were given a stapler and told to reconstruct it.
"The kids just needed the consistency," said Keith Freeman, a Kenderton special-education teacher for five years, one of a few educators who have remained at the school through its various incarnations. "They can tell whether you're real or not."
Because of Kenderton's unique circumstances and the turmoil of last year, the school of 465 students in grades K-8 also got a host of supports not available to every school and it has kept them. Kenderton has an assistant principal, a school police officer, a school psychologist, six climate workers, two counselors, and a cohort of classroom assistants. It has the luxury of small class sizes, with no more than 20 students in grades K-3.
Ralph Burnley, a respected retired district administrator, works at the school two days a week to cultivate partnerships. Kenderton children can now walk a few blocks to Temple University's medical school, where they work with students. There is a renewed relationship with Zion Baptist Church, which pays for one-on-one reading help for struggling students in the early grades, and a new connection with Dobbins High School, where children learn about film and media. There are after-school clubs and electives for middle-school students.
Kenderton still has miles to go just 2 percent of students scored proficient on state math exams last year, and 13 percent met standards in reading.
But it is headed in the right direction.
Parents were one key constituency Pressley has had to work to win over; a core group that spent hours in the school's family-engagement room clashed with her last year. ("They used to run the building," the principal said.) Part of that parent group, which publicly complained about Kenderton's conditions before Pressley arrived, was even escorted out of the school by police at one point last year.
Shereda Cromwell, one of that group, thought of pulling her children from the school. She still has worries about teacher turnover, mainly but she also admits progress.
"Things are a complete 180 [degrees] from where they were last year," Cromwell said. "Last year, I felt like I had to be there every day, because at any moment, something could happen to my children. That worry is gone now."
Joyce Wilkerson joined the School Reform Commission in part because of Kenderton. Wilkerson, an administrator at Temple, read an Inquirer and Daily News story about its challenges and felt compelled to help overcome them, she said in a recent interview.
Last month, she was gratified to see Pressley's leadership and the investments the district has made at Kenderton paying off.
"We went around to classroom after classroom, and saw education like we expect it to be everywhere in the district," Wilkerson said. "This is what we're trying to do in all our schools."
Now, hope that it lasts, said James "Torch" Lytle, a University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education professor and former district administrator, who has written extensively about urban school reform. As Philadelphia's history shows, educational progress can be swept away by administrators eager to put their stamp on things.
"If Kenderton can be given a three-year time frame to really see how this emergent set of reforms works, then that will be key," Lytle said.
For now, neighbors are cautiously optimistic, said Stevenson-Whitehead, the retired Kenderton teacher.
"They've noticed the changes; we all have," she said. "There are so many programs and activities now. The children want to stay here."
About Kenderton Elementary School
Address:1500 W. Ontario St., Philadelphia
Principal: R. Victoria Pressley
Enrollment: 450 students in grades K-8
Percent of students who are economically disadvantaged: 76 percent
Percent of students who require special-education services: 17 percent
Casino patrons play some of the 600 slot machines at the Lady Luck Casino Nemacolin in July 2013. The Pennsylvania legislature last month passed a massive gambling expansion bill that contains special protections for just one politically connected casino: Mount Airy Casino Resort in the Pocons. Read more
HARRISBURG In a last-minute maneuver before the state Senate last month passed a sweeping expansion of casino gambling in Pennsylvania, lawmakers added a 28-word amendment, cloaked in legalese.
"A category 4 slot machine license may not be located in a sixth-class county which is contiguous to a county that hosts a category 2 licensed facility," said the phrasing, tucked halfway into the 939-page bill.
Pennsylvania has 12 casinos. But that single sentence could be worth millions of dollars to one: Mount Airy Casino Resort.
The bill paved the way for so-called mini-casinos to open around the state, requiring only that they be at least 25 miles from one of the larger, established gambling halls. The amendment nearly triples that buffer zone for the Monroe County casino, barring mini-casinos from contiguous Carbon, Pike, and Wayne Counties.
More important, it guarantees that the Mount Pocono destination remains the closest and most accessible casino for the thousands of New Yorkers who flock each week to the commonwealth to gamble.
Who inserted the amendment which, with the rest of the bill, was passed by the legislature and signed into law by Gov. Wolf and why they did it remains an open mystery in Harrisburg.
Mount Airy Casino Resort was founded by businessman Louis DeNaples, who nearly a decade ago was forced to sell his share in the establishment to a daughter after he was dogged by claims of ties to organized crimes. A public relations firm representing it said casino executives had no comment on the legislation.
Steve Crawford, president of the lobbying firm representing Mount Airy, said many establishments were worried about the bill and had lobbied for a larger buffer zone, not a carve-out. He said Senate leaders came up with the language that seems written exclusively to protect Mount Airy's business.
"As to who put pencil to paper, I can't answer that question," said Crawford, adding: "But I'm glad they did."
Senate Republican leaders didn't respond to request for comments. Their spokeswoman, Jennifer Kocher, said late Friday that she could not determine who crafted the amendment.
Sen. Mario Scavello, a Republican whose Monroe County district includes the Mount Airy casino, did not respond to a request for comment. He voted against the bill.
State Rep. Maureen Madden, who also represents the district that includes the casino, voted for the measure when it reached the House.
"To protect all of that Mount Airy has committed to in Monroe County, we need to make sure it thrives," the Democrat said in an interview Friday, adding: "I understand that there are always winners and losers in every piece of legislation."
But the mysterious amendment is starting to generate criticism.
"Something smells here," said Rep. Mark Rozzi (D., Berks), who voted against the legislation. "Why are we giving special treatment to one casino?"
Rozzi said he expects Penn National, which is headquartered in his region and which owns the Hollywood casino, and other casino operators to sue over the new law, which he believes creates an uneven playing field. The irony, he said, is that a lawsuit could ultimately freeze the planned gaming expansion, preventing the state from cashing in on new revenue and pad its troubled finances.
Eric Schippers, a top executive with Penn National, said the firm was researching its legal options. Hollywood, located in a less densely populated area near Harrisburg, says it is unusually vulnerable because it draws half its gamblers from outside the 25-mile radius defined in the law.
"What's upsetting to us is that Penn National is being uniquely negatively impacted by this massive expansion of gaming," he said. "At the same time, they give this gift to Mount Airy. It's unequal treatment. This is an eleventh-hour giveaway."
The gambling expansion bill was among the GOP-controlled legislature's solutions this year for raising new dollars for Pennsylvania without raising taxes. The legislation set into motion one of the biggest expansions of gambling in the state since the 2004 law that legalized casinos.
Despite its complexity, it was cobbled together and approved by both legislative chambers in a breathtaking 24 hours. It passed the Senate in a 31-19 vote, with no debate. Wolf, a Democrat, signed it four days later.
Among other changes, the bill will allow 10 new mini-casinos to open around the state, with each being able to operate from 300 to 750 slot machines and 30 table games.
In what may have been a drafting error by the legislature, the same language that helps Mount Airy might also extend a lesser amount of protection to one other operation, Rivers Casino in Pittsburgh. Its home county, Allegheny, touches a sixth-class county, Armstrong, a rural area to the northeast, which would also be barred from hosting a mini-casino. Rivers Casino declined comment. State Rep. Madden said she had not heard of any talk that the measure would assist anyone but Mount Airy.
Because a number of the state's existing casinos are clustered around high-population areas such as Philadelphia and its suburbs the 25-mile buffer zone was, if not embraced, at least considered enough protection from having a mini-casino open nearby and eat away at their profits.
And some casinos are located close enough to each other to benefit by piggy-backing on a rival's buffer zone, in effect extending their own protection beyond 25 miles. Some casinos around the Philadelphia area, for instance, have an effective buffer zone of more than 90 miles. One, the Harrah's casino in Chester, has an effective range of 127 miles.
Crawford, president of the Wojdak Government Relations lobbying firm, said Mount Airy was among a long list of establishments concerned about the new mini-casinos "cannibalizing" business at the state's existing gambling halls, which pay more than 50 percent in taxes on slot-machine revenue.
"From the very beginning, all of us were concerned about the dramatic expansion of gaming and what it will mean to the brick-and-mortar casinos," he said, adding there was nothing "new" or unique about Mount Airy's position.
Among the dozen casinos, Mount Airy is seventh from the top in terms of revenue, taking in about $190 million last fiscal year. It has a controversial history.
DeNaples, 77, a politically connected Scranton millionaire, relinquished his ownership of the Poconos gambling hall in 2009, shifting his stake to his daughter, Lisa DeNaples. The move was part of a deal with prosecutors in Dauphin County, who had charged him with perjury, believing he had lied to Pennsylvania's Gaming Control Board about his ties to organized crime when applying for a casino license.
Still, the casino came under scrutiny again in 2011, when the state Attorney General's Office released a stinging grand jury report questioning the process by which casino licenses were awarded in Pennsylvania.
These days, it reports annual gaming revenues of about $235 million.
Over the decades, DeNaples has been a heavy campaign donor, giving to both Republicans and Democrats, but known primarily as a GOP backer. In the last two years, state records show, he gave $20,000 to the Northeast Leadership Fund, a political action committee that has supported, among others, the State Sen. Joe Scarnati of Jefferson County, the top Republican in the chamber.
Joseph Weinert, a veteran business analyst with the Spectrum Gaming Group, which serves as a gambling-industry consultant, said Mount Airy had skillfully played its cards.
"You can't fault Mount Airy for trying to protect its marketplace," Weinert said. "Like other owners and operators, they have invested a substantial amount in their operation. But if I was another operator in Pennsylvania, I would be questioning why I didn't receive special protection."
By PTI: New Delhi, Nov 12 (PTI) Adani Transmission is likely to clinch a deal of Rs 13,000-14,000 crore with Reliance Infrastructure to acquire the latters Mumbai power business much before the January 2018 deadline to mark its foray into power distribution business.
"Adani Transmission and Reliance Infrastructure have almost finalised the deal and the negotiations would not drag till January 15, 2018 deadline for an enterprise value of Rs 13,000 crore to Rs 14,000 crore," an industry source privy to the development said.
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The transaction would strengthen Adani Transmissions footprint in the power transmission sector and mark its foray into the distribution space, the Adani group firm had said earlier this month.
Reliance Infrastructure (RInfra), on the other hand, wants to pare its debt. This deal is expected to help the company bring down its standalone debt of Rs 20,000 crore by 60-70 per cent.
Earlier last month, RInfra had entered into a period of exclusivity until January 15, 2018, to discuss the sale of its integrated business of generation, transmission and distribution of power for Mumbai city to Adani Transmission.
RInfra had said, "It intends to utilise the proceeds of the proposed transaction entirely to reduce its debt, and further strengthen its financial position to tap mega growth opportunities in defence and EPC for the infrastructure sector."
Earlier this month, Adani Transmission had completed acquisition of operational transmission assets of WRSS Schemes of RInfra for Rs 1,000 crore. In effect, its power-wheeling network crossed the 8,500 circuit km mark.
Adani Transmission had acquired operational transmission assets of Western Region Strengthening System Schemes (WRSSS) - B and C of RInfra. PTI KKS ARD
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The Museum of the American Revolution was evacuated Saturday after a bomb threat was called in. Read more
A called-in bomb threat cleared the Museum of the American Revolution late Saturday afternoon, Veterans Day.
No one was injured, and no explosives were found.
The call to 911 was made at 4:41 p.m. by a person who said his name was Robert, and reported there was a bomb inside the museum at 101 S. Third Street. The caller said the bomb would go off in eight minutes.
The building was evacuated, and the bomb squad and K-9 unit responded and searched the building. No bomb was found.
NEW BRAUNFELS, Texas The former wife of the man responsible for killing 26 people in a Texas church last week said he had threatened to kill her over the course of their relationship, once putting a gun to her head and asking her whether she wanted to die.
The comments, the first public statements made by gunman Kelley's first wife, Tessa Brennaman, add to the growing portrait of Devin Kelley as an unstable young man whose path through life was marked by disruption, anger, and the potential for violence.
In an interview with Inside Edition published in part on CBS' website, Brennaman, 25, described her former husband as someone with "a lot of demons or hatred inside of him" and said he once threatened her for getting a speeding ticket.
"He had a gun in his holster right here, and he took that gun out and he put it to my temple and he said, 'Do you want to die? Do you want to die?'" she told a television interviewer.
Kelley's treatment of Brennaman, then Tessa Kelley, during their marriage has come into harsh focus in the aftermath of the mass shooting the worst in Texas history leaving unanswered questions about how the conviction and prison sentence he was given for domestic abuse against her and her son were not reported to federal authorities.
Brennaman and Kelley divorced after the incident, which resulted in him being court-martialed and sentenced to a year of confinement. The domestic violence charges should have prevented him from being able to buy the guns he used in the shooting, the Air Force said.
Other information about Kelley's turbulent life has emerged in recent days.
Officials in New Braunfels, where Kelley lived with his family, have been unable to explain why his court file is marked with a yellow flag, which denotes psychiatric issues, in their digital records. "We can't figure out who put it in and why," the county's sheriff, Mark Reynolds, said.
Records released by the New Braunfels Independent School District show that Kelley racked up a lengthy disciplinary record in high school, including seven suspensions for falsifying records, insubordination, profanity, and a drug-related offense. He graduated 260th in a class of 393 in 2009, with a 2.32 grade-point average.
His martial arts instructor from those years said Kelley had signed up because he had been bullied as an adolescent. "He had it tough," said the instructor, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, saying he hoped to avoid unwanted attention. "He didn't quite fit in. He was a good athlete, not a great athlete. He was a good student, not a great student. So I think he was struggling to find his place."
The instructor said he had believed that Kelley's karate work Kelley earned a black belt about midway through high school after about four or five years of training, he said had helped set the teenager on solid footing.
Unlike other family members who went to Texas A&M University in nearby San Antonio, including his father and two sisters, Kelley joined the Air Force after high school. But his problems seemed only to grow there.
Jessika Edwards, a former Air Force staff sergeant who said she worked with Kelley at Holloman Air Force Base in New Mexico, told CNN that he was constantly getting into trouble.
"It was problem after problem," she said.
His behavior caused her to worry about his potential for violence toward others; Edwards said he displayed a fascination with mass murders.
"He would make jokes about wanting to kill somebody," she said.
Edwards said Kelley had threatened to harm himself before the Air Force referred him for mental-health treatment, according to CNN. He escaped from a mental-health facility near the base in 2012; police dispatched to find him said they were told that he "was a danger to himself and others." A police report said he had been caught sneaking guns onto an Air Force base "attempting to carry out death threats" against military superiors.
After Kelley was given a bad-conduct discharge from the Air Force in 2014 stemming from his domestic violence case, Edwards said, he reached out to her, asking her whether she'd be a reference for him as he applied to jobs. But some discussions they had over social media continued to alarm her, she said. He told her that he bought dogs on Craigslist so he could shoot them, and he expressed admiration for Dylann Roof, who killed nine people at a South Carolina church in 2015, CNN reported.
"He would say, 'Isn't it cool? Did you watch the news?'" Edwards said, according to CNN. "He would say he wished he had the nerve to do it, but all he would be able to do is kill animals."
Kelley was charged in 2014 with a misdemeanor count of animal mistreatment in El Paso County, Colo., where he lived at one point, after neighbors complained that a man matching his description had punched a dog.
Edwards said that though she blocked Kelley on Facebook because of his messages, she didn't think he would act on them.
"In a sane person's mind, when people say something like that, you don't think it's something they're going to do," she said.
She gave him her number and an instruction to call if he felt as if he was going to hurt himself or someone else. He never did. Instead she got a text from a friend after Kelley had been identified as the gunman last Sunday evening. "I dropped a glass and started crying," Edwards said.
Two parishioners of the First Baptist Church also said that Kelley's demeanor at a recent fall festival held by the church had concerned them. Judy and Rod Green told CBS that Kelley had showed up in all black and seemed "completely distant and way out in thought." Rod Green told the outlet that he had tried to determine whether Kelley was armed at the time, saying he would have escorted him from the area if he had been.
A woman who identified herself on Saturday to the Washington Post as Kelley's grandmother said the whole family was devastated.
"I know he lost it," she said. "It's broken all of our hearts. We feel so very sad."
Of Kelley's parents, she said: "They're walking through a living hell right now."
Todd Friesenhahn, justice of the peace for Guadalupe County's Precinct 4, said a complete autopsy report on Kelley's body, which will include toxicology information, might be done "within three weeks."
Eva Ruth Moravec contributed to this report.
One person died and two others were taken to area hospitals Saturday afternoon after a truck carrying frozen turkeys overturned in Goshen Township.
Diesel fuel and the tractor-trailer's cargo of turkeys spewed out onto Route 202 after the 12:25 p.m. accident, according to a Chester County dispatcher.
Hazmat workers cleaned up the fuel. However, Route 202 between South High Street and Westtown Road remained closed to traffic through the afternoon.
Police did not release the names of the dead or injured. The cause of the accident was not immediately known.
Asaf, 9 and Raul Berrios, 64, in the living room of their South Philadelphia home on Thursday, November 9, 2017. They left Carolina, Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria destroyed the island. Read more
Victor Torres wasn't in Puerto Rico when Hurricane Maria hit, but the storm has battered him nonetheless.
In the six weeks since, he moved from Florida, where his temporary work and housing dried up, to New Jersey, where he slept on a cousin's living-room floor, and to Philadelphia, where his sole relative here took him in.
On Tuesday, three days after arriving, he sat at the disaster center the city opened in North Philadelphia for those who have left the island. His father and uncle, who were visiting him in Florida when the storm hit and now can't return home, were beside him. He hopes to bring his four children and their mother, his longtime girlfriend, here, too, but on Tuesday, he had other things on his mind.
"Something we can eat. We've been having just one meal a day. Clothes. I mean we don't have nothing for winter," Torres said. "I'm not working. It's a mess."
More than 850 others who fled Puerto Rico for Philadelphia have come through the center over the last four weeks, according to city officials. And more are coming every day. The Center for Puerto Rican Studies at Hunter College estimates as many as 27,000 Puerto Ricans could move to Pennsylvania in the year after Hurricane Maria, second behind only Florida.
Philadelphia officials trying to help the transition have called the challenge unprecedented, especially given the limited funding coming from the federal government.
"We need longer-term housing options and other financial support to help families integrate, at least temporarily, in Philadelphia," Lauren Hitt, Mayor Kenney's spokeswoman, said in a statement. "Our city has never had to beg for these supports before with every other natural disaster that's happened on the mainland where individuals affected fled to Philadelphia, we received significant federal support."
Puerto Ricans have left the island in large numbers for years, many settling in Philadelphia because of its relatively low cost of living and existing Puerto Rican community. About 134,000 Puerto Ricans call the city home. That is nearly 50 percent more than did two decades ago. An additional 23,000 live in Camden, about a third of the city's population.
The conditions fueling the diaspora, including high poverty and low employment, have only worsened since Hurricane Maria and are likely to drive more people to the mainland in the coming months and years, experts say.
"Unemployment is going higher and higher as we speak," said Edwin Melendez, director of the center at Hunter College. "That means you should expect, just for unemployment reasons, about two times what was the [normal migration]."
Jose Gonzalez, standing beside a downed bridge in Utuado, Puerto Rico, last week, said the lack of jobs was the main reason he had decided to leave. He said he works in the construction industry but worries that only the politically connected will get contracts as the island rebuilds after Maria. As soon as he can sell his trucks, he plans to join his wife and son, who moved to Newark in August.
"I'm going to leave maybe for a year or two," Gonzalez said. "I need money. There's no jobs here."
Philadelphia officials, while anticipating later waves of evacuees, are trying to meet immediate needs.
At the disaster center, housed at the Rivera Recreation Center, the folding chairs in the middle of the room filled up quickly Tuesday morning. Half a dozen local, state, and federal agencies were set up at tables around the room where people got help filling out FEMA assistance forms, securing food stamps and Medicaid, accessing Section 8 housing, and connecting with medical care.
Housing is a chief concern. Last week, FEMA activated its Transitional Shelter Assistance program, which pays for evacuees to stay at hotels for up to 60 days. Hitt said the city has received no federal funding for longer-term options.
Melissa Wiehenstroer, a FEMA spokeswoman, said that before the vouchers run out many people will have had their homes in Puerto Rico inspected, allowing them to receive additional funding for rental assistance. Each household can receive up to $34,000 in FEMA disaster assistance.
As federal funding slowly materializes, the city has made do with a patchwork of other options.
Raul Berrios and his 9-year-old son, Asaf, were the first in Philadelphia to receive hotel vouchers. They previously were living in a South Philadelphia Airbnb through a partnership between the city and the company.
The father, a 64-year-old cancer survivor with high blood pressure, said he worried about his health and that of his son. He saw no option but to leave his home in Carolina, just east of San Juan. He picked Philadelphia, where Asaf's mother lives, though she did not have room for them to stay with her.
One afternoon last month, the two sat in the Airbnb's living room after Asaf returned from his first day at Southwark Elementary School. (About 725 other students from Puerto Rico have enrolled in Pennsylvania schools since the storm, according to the state Department of Education.)
"The teachers are very nice. I'm doing the best I can. The food is pretty good. And I love it," Asaf said. "And I made a friend. He's called David."
Berrios, a musician by trade, included among the few belongings he brought to Philadelphia a steel drum made from the bottom of a trash barrel. Asaf stood at the drum that afternoon, his father tapping the bottoms of enamel pots pulled from the kitchen cabinets. The father picked "Kumbaya," the campfire spiritual.
"We need to give thanks to God," Berrios said. "Because we are here."
Democrat Denny Wolff, a dairy farmer from Columbia County, is hoping to be the first Democrat to win Pennsylvanias 11th Congressional District since 2008. Read more
GREENWOOD TOWNSHIP, Pa. Democrats looking to reconnect with rural voters could stop at Denny Wolff's dairy farm to raid his closet, borrow his pickup, and brush up on jargon in the milking barn.
That's a grain moisture tester, not a thermos, Wolff would tell them. Fixing a TMR mixer will get you elbow-deep in grease, he'd say. Birthing a calf won't get you elbow-deep in anything, if all goes well.
But for a candidate, faking any ounce of the farming life or donning some rugged costume bought on a quick run to Bass Pro Shops can be perilous. John Kerry got goosed when he went hunting. Michael Dukakis rode in a tank.
"People here can pick out a phony a mile away," Wolff, 66, said at his Pen-Col Farms in Columbia County.
Wolff, who was agriculture secretary under Gov. Ed Rendell from 2003 to 2009, is hoping voters in the 11th Congressional District will send a real farmer to Washington next year. He's one of two Democrats seeking the seat, as its current Republican occupant, U.S. Rep. Lou Barletta, switches his sights to the Senate and Democratic incumbent Bob Casey.
"When I look at Washington, I don't see many people who've lived the kind of life I have," Wolff said.
In a recent study, four members of the Senate and 25 in the House of Representatives identified as farmers, ranchers, or cattle farm owners. Sen. John Tester, a Democrat from Montana, was an organic farmer who lost three fingers in a meat grinder accident. Sen. Joni Ernst, a Republican from Iowa, made her agricultural background a centerpiece of her 2014 campaign. "I grew up castrating hogs," she said, " so when I get to Washington, I'll know how to cut pork."
Wolff, a father of five whose farming roots go back five generations, pronounces Washington as "Waarshington." A mounted buck hangs on his office wall, and he's dressed in just about the same clothes he wears in pictures on his campaign web site: flannel shirt, jeans, camouflage ball cap.
"Send a farmer to change Washington" is his slogan.
Wolff's lone competitor, so far, for the June Democratic primary is Robert "Alan" Howe, a retired Air Force veteran
from Carlisle. Howe, who grew up in rural Chenango County, N.Y., said he's no novice when it comes to agriculture and the outdoors. He moved to Carlisle just to be closer to Letort Spring Run, a hallowed trout stream that confounds fly fisherman.
Any Democrat in the 11th has to contend with a district cited as one of the more gerrymandered in the nation. It stretches 150 miles, nearly to New York and Maryland, leaving Harrisburg and its 20,000-plus registered Democrats carved out.
The boundaries, Wolff said, "defy common sense."
The district of 707,150 is predominantly white, with 11.5 percent of its population living below the poverty level. It lost Scranton and Wilkes-Barre to redistricting in 2012.
Last year, the 11th voted overwhelmingly for Donald Trump, and Barletta breezed to his fourth term after becoming the first Republican to hold the seat in 30 years. As of this week, Republicans had a 22,493 voter advantage, though nearly 62,000 voters were unaffiliated.
Four Republicans have entered the race: Andrew Lewis, an Army combat veteran and Dauphin County business owner; State Rep. Stephen Bloom, from Cumberland County; Dan Meuser, a former state Revenue Secretary from Luzerne County; and Andrew Shecktor, a councilman in Berwick, Columbia County.
Wolff knows why his former schoolmates, neighbors, and fellow farmers came out for Trump.
"They feel like they live in the forgotten land, that no one understands what a blue-collar, working-class family has to go through in rural Pennsylvania today," he said. "They're good, hard-working people, and they were ready for a change. They saw someone who had a different strategy, and they said it's worth a try."
If support for Trump has slipped in rural America, as some polls suggest, Wolff, a moderate, thinks he can win over Democrats who voted outside the party. His main argument, again, is that he's one of them: "I know what they face every day."
Rendell, the only boss Wolff ever had besides his father, said his former agriculture secretary is a perfect fit for the district if a long shot.
"I encouraged him," Rendell said. "If I thought he had zero chance to win, I would have said, 'Denny, save your money.' What he needs to do is learn how to ask for money. He's not a glad-hander. He's the real deal."
As agriculture secretary, Wolff created "PA Preferred," a branding program that told consumers about products made in the state.
While Barletta found national attention with his hard line on illegal immigration as mayor of Hazleton, Wolff said his approach is more realistic.
"There's 11 million undocumented residents in this country," he said. "Deporting 11 million people is not an option."
Wolff said he believes in strong borders, but when pressed for policy specifics on immigration, he said the answer lies in a middle ground. "Amnesty is probably not the right term," he said, "but the Democrats and Republicans need to sit down and figure out what we need to do to bring these folks into the system."
Howe, his opponent, also says immigration can revitalize struggling towns, not ruin them. "A town like Shamokin," he said, "could use an influx of 500 immigrants."
Wolff is concerned about a lack of skilled workers in the 11th. He wants high school students to have opportunities to learn trades and focus on career paths.
"Everybody doesn't want to go to college," he said. "When I talk to local businesses, it's one of their biggest concerns, and they feel they'll have to hire skilled operators from outside the area to work machines."
On the farm, where work is mostly muddy, Wolff sells cattle embryos to farms around the world, reading genome reports over the morning coffee. In the barn, a Holstein calf named Jewel nudged between the bars of her pen to get a scratch from Wolff. Jewel is nearly perfect, genetically.
"She knows she's special," he said.
Wolff's children are not farmers, he said, and he's still got some hard work left in him whether in the barn, or in Washington.
Democrat Denny Wolff, a dairy farmer from Columbia County, gives his prize calf, Jewel, some attention.
Adam Swope, chair of the Willistown/Malvern Democrats, was described as "one of the most brilliant political minds" and key to major party wins in last Tuesday's election. Read more
The Chester County Democratic Committee was reeling Sunday over the death of Adam Swope, an activist described as a "major, major player" in the organization who was killed Saturday in a fiery crash on Route 202 in Chester County involving nine vehicles, including a tractor-trailer.
"It's absolutely tragic," said Brian McGinnis, chairman of the Chester County Democratic Committee. "He was an unbelievable person and one of the best, most brilliant political minds I've ever met."
Swope, 38, of Malvern, was chair of the Willistown/Malvern Democrats and executive assistant to Chester County Commissioner Kathi Cozzone, who is now a candidate for lieutenant governor. She met Swope in 2005 when he managed her campaign for county controller and "orchestrated an unprecedented 48.19 percent of the vote that year," Cozzone wrote in a tribute posted Sunday afternoon on the Chester County Democratic Committee's Facebook page.
"Words cannot describe the loss to this world of a man so incredibly bright and kind and funny," Cozzone said, adding that second only to her husband, Swope knew her best. "He knew before I did how I would react or feel about a situation."
Cozzone described Swope, son to Kathy and Bob Swope of Reading, and a graduate of West Chester and Villanova Universities, as "an eternal optimist who loved his parents, his Nana, cats, the Steelers, Game of Thrones, his fraternity, musicals, weird strategy games, Super Mario, Sunny in Philadelphia, the Daily Show, and politics."
"Our hearts," Cozzone said, "are broken."
Just last week, Swope was rejoicing with party officials at the Social Lounge in West Chester over what McGinnis called "historic" victories in Tuesday's election. That included Democratic candidates winning election to four countywide offices: clerk of courts, controller, coroner, and treasurer.
"He was instrumental in our success this year," McGinnis said of Swope. "We're going to somehow have to try to fill that void, and I don't know how we are going to do it."
Similar sentiment was expressed on the Chester County Democratic Committee's website by Dick Bingham, chair of the CCDC Zone Leader Caucus.
"I am extremely saddened to report that Adam Swope, Zone Leader, Zone 16 [Malvern and Willistown], died yesterday in a tragic automobile accident," Bingham wrote. "Few details are available at this time, but I am sure I speak for us all when I say how shocking and devastating this news is. Adam will be truly missed by us all."
Also posted there was this tribute by the Chester County Democratic Committee: "Adam has been a hero among activists and organizers."
According to a report issued Sunday afternoon by West Goshen Township Police, Swope was killed when his vehicle, traveling south on Route 202, was struck by a northbound tractor-trailer carrying frozen turkeys that had overturned onto the southbound lanes near South Matlack Street and caught fire shortly before 12:30 p.m. Police did not disclose what kind of vehicle Swope was driving or any additional details about the accident, including whether charges are likely.
Police reported "several minor to moderate injuries" along with Swope's death. They are asking anyone who witnessed the crash or has video or photographs of it to contact the West Goshen Police Department Traffic Safety Division at 610-696-7400 or trafficsafety@westgoshen.org.
By PTI: The wife of an Aligarh Muslim University professor has accused her husband of seeking to divorce her through WhatsApp, the police said today.
The woman had last week approached the police alleging her husband was "torturing" her and had locked their house to prevent her from entering it.
SSP Rajesh Pandey said the wife met him last week and alleged her husband had sent her two "talaq" notices on WhatsApp.
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"She requested us to settle the matter. The police informed the professor about the settlement process but he did not turn up before the settlement officer," Pandey said.
A case has been registered against the professor on charges of "harassment and wrongfully preventing his wife from entering their house", he said.
The AMU academic, however, said the case was subjudice since October first week.
He said that according to the law, he had served two notices on his wife after the stipulated period and was preparing for the last one.
The professor claimed he had documentary evidence to prove his wife misled him about her past.
"I have documents to prove that my wife had pledged to change her behaviour and save our marriage," he said.
The husband said he voluntarily left his official bungalow to avoid confrontations with his wife.
Meanwhile, the woman has written to Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath alleging that her husband went against the Supreme Courts recent judgement on "triple talaq".
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By Denis Pinchuk
DANANG, Vietnam (Reuters) Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Saturday that Russia would respond in kind to what he said were Washingtons measures to restrict the freedom of speech of Russian media organizations operating on U.S. soil.
Putin said however that possible plans to retaliate by declaring U.S. media operating in Russia as foreign agents may be a little too harsh, and that the Kremlin was still formulating its exact response.
Kremlin-backed broadcaster Russia Today has been told to register in the United States as a foreign agent. U.S. intelligence officials say the broadcaster tried to influence the U.S. presidential election on the Kremlins behalf, an allegation the broadcaster and the Kremlin deny.
On Friday, the pro-Kremlin speaker of the lower house of Russias parliament, Vyacheslav Volodin, said legislation could be introduced next week designating U.S. and some other foreign media operating in Russia as foreign agents.
Speaking to reporters at the end of an Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation Summit in Vietnam, Putin said: An attack on our media in the United States is an attack on freedom of speech, without a doubt. Were disappointed.
What is being discussed in the State Duma (lower house of parliament), I saw it yesterday, it might be a little too harsh but its natural because at the level of the legislative arm you often hear extreme views, harsh judgment and tough proposals.
But we will have to formulate some kind of response and it will mirror, the measures adopted by U.S. authorities towards Russian media in the United States, Putin said.
I want to draw your attention to the fact that there is no and there cant be confirmation that Russian media meddled in election campaigns, Putin said.
Being designated as foreign agents in Russia would oblige foreign media to submit regular reports to the authorities about their staffing and their sources of funding.
(Reporting by Denis Pinchuk; Writing by Maria Kiselyova; Editing by Louise Heavens)
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Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) had to school the press on why it is fair to call out Trumps love for authoritarians during an interview on CBSs Face The Nation.
Video:
Transcript via CBSs Face The Nation:
DICKERSON: All right, Senator Scott, thanks so much for being with us.
Joining us now is Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders. Hes in Burlington.
Senator Sanders, you tweeted something this morning about the president and his meetings overseas.
You said quote President Trump has never met a leader of an authoritarian nation that he didnt like.
And you named Russia, China, Saudi Arabia.
Is that really fair? President Obama hosted a state dinner with the Chinese president. He was quite solicitous of the Saudi king. And he tried a reset with Putin in Russia. Isnt this what presidents do?
SEN. BERNIE SANDERS (I), VERMONT: No, you want to make friendships. You want to have good relationships.
But, at the same time as we have a president attacking the media every day as fake news, encouraging Republican governors around the country to suppress the vote, playing the race card in the sense of trying to divide us up by the color of our skin, by the country that we came from, while hes doing all of these things, he has wonderful things to say about Mr. Putin.
The idea that he reports back to us that Mr. Putin said that Russia did not have anything to do in terms of interfering with our elections is and he believes him, while he does not believe the intelligence agencies of the United States of America, is beyond absurd.
Face The Nation host John Dickersons question had to have been a joke because it contained all the elements of Republican bias. Dickerson pulled the complaint about fairness straight from Trump. The CBS host made a false equivalency to Barack Obama, while also ignoring the evidence of Trumps own words and behavior.
Trump has spent his presidency questioning democratic leaders, attacking domestic Democratic institutions, and lavishing praise on authoritarians like Putin. It is more than fair to say that Trump admires authoritarians. Its a fact, and any member of the press who ignores this fact is helping this president undermine democracy.
Bernie Sanders sought right through the question and delivered a reminder that the media that facts, not fairness should be the focal point when discussing Trump.
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Republicans have seen the polling, and with Democrat Doug Jones leading the Alabama Senate race, Senators like Pat Toomey (PA) are calling for Moore to drop out of the race.
Sen. Toomey is a perfect example of the increasing desperation among Republicans to get rid of Moore.
Video:
Transcript via Meet The Press:
CHUCK TODD:
Happy to have you here. Let me start with the Roy Moore situation. Is it worse if Roy Moore loses or wins for Senate Republicans?
SEN. PAT TOOMEY:
Oh, I dont know, Chuck. I dont know how this is going to turn out. You know, this is a terrible situation: a nearly 40-year-old allegation. Well probably never know for sure exactly what happened. But, from my point of view, you know, I have to say I think the accusations have more credibility than the denial. I think it would be best if Roy would just step aside.
CHUCK TODD:
It doesnt appear right now hes going to step aside. So I guess the question is what does the party do? Do you run a write-in? Or do you try to ensure that he doesnt win?
SEN. PAT TOOMEY:
You know, I think a write-in is something we should certainly explore. I think Luther Strange would be a strong candidate for a write-in. But a write-in is very difficult, lets face it. So theres no easy solution to this. I think we should consider a write-in.
The write-in candidate that Toomey was referring to would likely be Sen. Luther Strange, who is the candidate that the Republican Party wanted in the first place.
It would be nice to say that the Republican Party has experienced some great awakening and found their morals, but the truth is that the party wants to be rid of Moore because they are looking at a realistic possibility of defeat with him as the candidate.
The same party that backed Trump after he admitted to sexually assaulting women on tape is not less than a year later turn their back on Moore because of what he did.
If Moore loses, the Republican agenda is dead in the Senate. It is the polling not the sexual assault of underage girls that are driving the calls for Roy Moore to drop out.
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The following post, written by the Rev. Robert A. Franek, is a part of Politicus Policy Discussion, in which writers draw connections between real lives and public policy.
The month of September began with the Trump Administration rescinding the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program. And a few weeks later the month ended with Congress failing to renew funding for the Childrens Health Insurance Program (CHIP).
With these two actions alone millions of families face uncertainty in providing healthcare for their children and hundreds of thousands of Dreamers are suddenly fearing whether or not they will be sent away from the only home they have ever known. This is not right. Moreover, the fear and anxiety now faced by these families was completely avoidable.
There was no need for the DACA program to be rescinded. And if the Republicans in Congress could focus on something other than appeasing their wealthy donors, perhaps they would not have let the funding for the CHIP program lapse.
Contending with the propaganda promoting the Republican tax plan, the latest developments in Special Counsel Robert Muellers investigation, and now the thought of a child molester being seated in the United States Senate, it is easy for the DACA and CHIP stories to get drowned out in all the noise.
It is imperative that the lives of these vulnerable neighbors of ours not be lost in the news cycle where the only news is breaking news whether another mass shooting or new testimony in the Trump-Russia investigation.
It is now the middle of November and little has been done to provide Dreamers with the assurance of legal statues, a path to citizenship, and most crucially the knowledge that they need not live in fear of be being separated from family and friends, school or job, and sent to a country they have never known and where they may not even know the language.
It is especially despicable that nine million children have become subject to whims of Congressional Republicans who failed to fund an essential health insurance program.
The moral depravity of these inactions is only further compounded by what Congressional Republicans are spending their time on, namely a tax plan that is built on an economic fiction and promises a two trillion-dollar wealth transfer from the poor and middle-class to the richest people and corporations in the country.
It might be understandable if the crafting of something as complex as immigration reform were tabled for a short while so Congress could pass some commonsense gun reform laws that the majority of the public want like background checks and reinstituting the ban on assault rifles. Still, there is no excuse for failing a simple vote to fund a program that provides health insurance for nine million children.
Time is running short for Dreamers and state funds for CHIP are running low. In the flurry and frenzy of new scandals and tragedies that wear on the spirit of our country, we must not forget the nine million children who have no say in these matters and the 700,000 Dreamers who enrich our country with their lives and service.
Reach David Wren at 843-937-5550 or on Twitter at @David_Wren_
The Associated Press contributed to this report
Watchdog and Public Service reporter
Thad Moore is a reporter on The Post and Couriers Watchdog and Public Service team and a graduate of the University of South Carolina. To share tips securely, reach Moore via ProtonMail at thadmoore@protonmail.com or on Signal at 843-214-6576.
By PTI: Filmmakers
New Delhi, Nov 12 (PTI) When Arvind Kejriwal arrived with a bang on the Indian political horizon, two filmmakers, intrigued by the drama in Delhi, followed him around with their cameras. They ended up capturing the birth of the Aam Admi Party as it unfolded in real-time.
The one-hour-36-minutes-long documentary called "An Insignificant Man" has been directed by Khusboo Ranka and Vinay Shukla, and produced by the maker of "Ship of Theseus", Anand Gandhi.
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Just before the party marks its fifth year on November 26, the documentary, after travelling to over 50 international film festivals, will commercially release in India on November 17.
Ranka and Shukla are not troubled by the problems that the fledgling party has been facing, for they believe their film is an impartial portrayal of a unique democratic development.
The directors often say, they were the only ones with a camera, which gave them access to vital meetings and discussions.
"The main reason we could persist as filmmakers was the access. We realised that it was a unique opportunity for us and we would be fools to waste it. We wanted to make a film that could be read in multiple ways ? it is not an immediate commentary, but introspective," says Ranka in an interview with PTI.
Ranka, who co-wrote "Ship of Theseus" with Gandhi, says there was no pressure from the party to show them in a good light. They also found two interesting figures in Kejriwal and Yogendra Yadav, the AAP founders who ended up parting.
"They are two different people and their style of politics is also different. Yogendra was more cautious, depended on the data and processes while Arvind was more instinctive. He would alter his speech depending on the crowd. While working on the film, we realised that there would be differences between the two," she adds.
Shukla, who has also shot another documentary, says that when they first started shooting the development in Delhi, they did not anticipate they would end up capturing a story.
"They had just announced that they were going to form a political party. We went there and said we would like to shoot every day and, at that time, they were happy at least someone was covering them," he says.
But the development took them by surprise.
"Over the next year, they became much bigger than any of us could have anticipated. We ended up covering a shape- shifting phenomenon in Indian politics," says Shukla.
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He adds that when they were trying to raise money for the film, they were often advised to turn it into fiction.
The directors faced their fair share of struggle when former censor board chief Pahlaj Nihalani refused to certify the film, asking them to get No Objection Certificates (NoC) from Prime Minister Narendra Modi, former Delhi Chief Minister Sheila Dixit and other political leaders mentioned in the film, the two filmmakers say.
"Mr Nihalani also wanted us to keep the names of the BJP and Congress out, which would have made the film completely irrelevant. But Anand stood by the project from day one and we were lucky to have him on our side."
Gandhi does not believe that the film has been delayed as he feels the story is not bound by time.
"Its a contemporary story. Its a story of democracy today across the world. It is the story of American democracy as much as it is the story of Greece, Portugal or India," he says.
The focus of the film, Gandhi adds, is not on an individual.
"The individual, as they have rightly suggested, is insignificant to the larger scope of the narrative. Their focus has been on ideas, questions and challenges of the democratic process," says Gandhi.
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The crowdfunded political thriller presented by the Vice Media, produced by Memesys Lab is co-produced by Sundance, Bertha Foundation, DocSociety, AND Busan, IDFA. PTI BK BDS SHD
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He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how, wrote philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, and this midterm election suggests he was on to something. Read moreCommentary: The story of the midterms 'the cult' vs. 'the cause'
Across South Carolina, from the coast to our mountainous state line, new and expanded trails have certainly made a lot of headlines in recent months. Here are just a few of the exciting developments: Read moreEditorial: From the SC coast to the mountains, welcome progress on new trails
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By PTI: compensation to victims
New Delhi, Nov 12 (PTI) Bangladesh has assured India that compensation will be paid to those Hindus whose houses were torched over rumours that an offensive Facebook status was posted allegedly by a youth from the minority community.
Bangladeshi authorities have also assured adequate security to the affected persons, External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj said today.
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Swarajs remarks came after her attention was drawn to reports that a mob of protesters in Bangladesh set on fire at least 30 houses of Hindus following rumours that a youth from the minority community posted an offensive Facebook status.
She had said that the matter would be taken up by the Indian High Commissioner in Dhaka with the Bangladeshi government.
"We have received a detailed report of Indian High Commission in Dhaka. Bangladesh authorities have assured him that compensation will be paid to affected persons to rebuild their houses and adequate security will be provided," she tweeted.
According to Dhaka Tribune newspaper yesterday, one person was killed when police opened fire to disperse the crowd that launched the arson attack on the houses of Hindus.
The incident took place in Rangpur districts Thakurpara village, about 300 km from Dhaka.
The protesters claimed that they were infuriated by a defamatory status posted from the Facebook account of a person who hails from the Thakurbari village a few days ago.
Replying to separate tweet regarding the issuance of passport to Haryana boxer Jhalak Tomar, Swaraj assured that the process will be expedited and she will get her passport by tomorrow. PTI PYK ASK ASK
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The editors of City Journal have given me permission to post my account of the 2016 Somalis-only security tour of the Twin Cities airport. The City Journal piece includes links I have omitted. My account represents 18 months of work off and on. It took a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed on my behalf here in federal district court earlier this year by Dorsey & Whitney attorneys Theresa Bevilacqua and Tiana Towns to spring the documents I have posted at the bottom. I am grateful for the efforts of Theresa and Tiana on my behalf. It took a question from Weekly Standard editor Richard Starr to help me understand the story recounted here. I am grateful to Richard for his help. If you havent read my account, please check it out:
A sidebar to the story of the ISIS-affiliated Somali men convicted on terrorism charges last year in federal district court in Minneapolis: one of the men who pleaded guilty and cooperated with the prosecution had worked on the tarmac at MinneapolisSt. Paul International Airport (MSP) and could have done serious harm. So had the one who turned informant and was never charged in the case. When his FBI interlocutors persuaded him to turn, he had a question for them: Can I get my job at the airport back?
Thats not all. In his March 29, 2016 Star Tribune story, Stephen Montemayor reported in passing that local imams and Muslim community leaders had received a behind-the-scenes security tour in February last year at MSP. Montemayor mentioned the tour when he noted that Hassan Mohamudalso known as Sheikh Hassan, an imam working as a legal assistant for one of the defendantshad been uninvited from the tour.
What was that tour for Muslims only all about?
I asked MSP spokesman Patrick Hogan, who Hogan referred me to the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) and to U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), agencies under the umbrella of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). A TSA spokesman denied knowledge (wrongly, as it turned out). Several calls to CBP led me to Midwest CBP spokesman Kristoffer Grogan, in Michigan. Grogan explained by email:
Per our conversation U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) conducted a community engagement tour at the St. Paul International Airport on February 18th. The tour included roughly 20 community members from the greater Minneapolis area and was facilitated through the DHS Office of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties. The tour showed the participants the process that all arriving passengers go through when arriving at the Federal Inspection Services (FIS) area at Minneapolis St. Paul International Airport. CBP conducts these types of tours regularly as part of our outreach efforts to improve ties between CBP and our community members. The tour was conducted by U.S. Customs and Border Protection leadership assigned to the Minneapolis St. Paul International Airport. I currently do not have a list of those who attended the tour. You would need to reach out to the DHS Office of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties for that information.
I followed up with calls and inquiries to the DHS Office of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties at the number provided by Grogan. I received an unilluminating response from DHS press secretary Marsha Catron, who advised me of the departments procedure for submitting a Freedom of Information Act request. Catron didnt respond to further inquiries.
Getting information about the tour from DHS has been like pulling teeth without benefit of anesthetic. After two FOIA requests, two appeals of the responses to my FOIA requests, and one FOIA lawsuit filed in federal district court here, I have received 78 heavily redacted pages about the 2016 tour. (Ive posted the documents below.) Two pages listing the tour participants and their nationalities are blacked out. The text of the invitation, however, was provided:
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) would like to invite you to participate in a tour of the MinneapolisSt. Paul International Airport as part of our ongoing efforts to engage with community leaders and members. During the event, participants will be provided with a step-by-step tour of our operations, designed to offer a greater understanding of airport processes and procedures. Throughout the event, we will discuss traveler expectations, rights, and procedures. Participants will have the opportunity to ask questions of representatives from DHS, U.S. Customs and Border Protection and the Transportation Security Administration. . . . Participants will be met by airport officials and led into the secure area of the airport. . . . Please note that this event will be closed to the press and participants will not be allowed to take pictures or video recordings during the event.
I wrote to DHS, seeking a spokesman or officer who would give me background on the rationale for the tours. I heard back again from Grogan, who responded: Every year CBP conducts numerous events and programs around the country in which civic, religious and community leaders, as well as interested residents, are afforded an inside look at how CBP secures the border at and between ports of entries. CBP is committed to fostering a positive relationship within the communities we live and serve.
One such group, it turns out, is the immigration-law section of the Minnesota State Bar Association, whose members I joined for the tour given on October 12 by Minneapolis CBP Chief Brian Nevanen and Officer Abby Hair at MSP. Walking us through the international-arrivals area on the west end of MSP, the CBP officers explained the current processing of passengers arriving at the airport for admission to the United States. The officers took us to an area that I hadnt seen before, where passengers get interviewed by officers. The immigration lawyers asked technical questions about forms, detention and removal procedures, attorney-client communications, and other such matters. Nevanen and Hair answered every question, including one asking about the officers strangest experience. Answer: an arriving physician slit his throat awaiting an interview (his life was saved). We received some useful advice regarding the CBPs protection of trademarks. CBP officers seize trademarked product knockoffs, we were told, but one knockoff per trademark is allowed. (Rolex is an exception: none is permitted.)
In truth, the lawyers tour only occasionally escaped the mundane. The documents produced in response to my FOIA request, however, show the lawyers tour to be something like a poor mans version of the 2016 edition given to local Somalis. They received the deluxe version.
Invitations to take the February 18, 2016, tour went out to selected imams and Somali community leaders. It was a big event: unlike the bar association tour, the Somali tour included TSA representatives to provide an overview of their operations and processe and address what the memo calls stakeholder community questions. After the tour, community members . . . shared comments about their experiences with DHS at a roundtable discussion. TSA representatives discussed steps being taken to improve ties with local Somali community members. CBP and TSA job vacancies were also discussed: Attendees responded with requests for DHS outreach efforts during Somali community events to further advertise these positions to interested individuals.
Security concerns permeate the documents. Those Somalis invited to attend the 2016 tour were required to submit passport and other such identifying information. (The bar association required us to submit only our full names and birthdates.) Some did not submit the required information; if they failed to supply it on further request, they were excluded from the tour.
The documents refer to four closed cases involving those invited and a man who gave Chicago CBP a hard time after attending the last outreach eventguessing that they might bring it up so whoever is going to be there might want to read over the [redacted]. One case is described as open, but barely. The United States Attorney was to be consulted on that one. At least two of those invited failed the security screening. We know that one who had already taken the tour the year before (Hassan Mohamud) failed it. The Star Tribune reported that a group of 50 had been invited on the tour; the documents show that, after vetting, just 17 were permitted to take it.
All of which raises the question: Why was this tour given in the first place? Grogan told me that tours like the one I took with the bar association have been given at MSP since 2005, but he could not tell me how long the deluxe version, given to Somalis only, has been conducted. As usual, my inquiry to Marsha Catron in the DHS Office of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties went unanswered.
Chief Nevanen told us that the tours are intended to educate the public and publicize the agencys good work at the airport. DHSs approach to my requests for basic information regarding the Somali tour, however, suggests reluctance to get the word out. The tour given to Somali community leaders appears to be little more than another extraordinarily foolish legacy of the Obama era of good feelings.
Ruling on administrative appeal of CBP FOIA request about 2016 MSP International Airport tour for Somalis o by Scott Johnson on Scribd
President Trump returned today to the question of Russian meddling in 2016 president election. He stated that Vladimir Putin, in response to his questions about the matter, has repeatedly denied meddling. Trump added that he believes Putins denials are sincere.
Trump didnt say he believes Putins denial, only that the denial is sincere. Its unlikely, however, that if Putin meddled, his denial is sincere. Putin almost surely has a firm grasp of reality and would remember whether he meddled.
I view Trumps statement as an attempt to avoid calling Putin a liar. Trump explained that to deny Putins sincerity would insult Putin and might stand in the way of decent relations between America and Russia.
Trump also said that those pushing him to denounce Putin want to create an artificial barrier between the U.S. and Russia, preventing the two major powers from working together on issues of mutual interest. He characterized them as haters and fools.
I believe that it is Putins desire to harm American interests that prevents us working with him (or should). Thus, I prefer a frosty relationship with Russia and its thuggish ruler, and would not give him the benefit of the doubt (if there is any doubt) either as to whether he interfered with our election or whether he believes he interfered.
But Trump is the president and he campaigned on having a go at improving U.S. relations with Russia. If thats a good idea, I dont blame Trump for resisting pressure, much of it politically motivated on the part of Democrats who were soft on Putin for years, to torpedo relations with the Russians.
I expect Trump will learn the hard way, as Presidents Bush and Obama did, that his optimism regarding Putin is badly misguided. Well see.
In any case, its the dangerous naivety (as I see it) of Trumps view that Russia will help the U.S. solve North Korea, Syria, Ukraine, [and] terrorism that bothers me not his desire to move past the Russian meddling issue and not his characterization, close enough to the mark, of James Clapper, John Brennan, and Jim Comey as political hacks.
WOODBINE Chase Jackson grew up in the military town of Norfolk, Virginia.
Her family wasnt in the military, but its influence was all around her, she said.
I lived around a naval base housing complex named after Doris Dorie Miller, she said. I leaned who he was. He was known for bravery during the attack on Pearl Harbor and was the first African American to receive the Navys third-highest honor, the Navy Cross.
He was killed in action two years later, she said.
His story started her on a quest to learn more about African American soldiers and their contributions throughout American history.
She has collected stories from people all over the country and will present them in a talk, Victory and Valor Beyond the Color Line, next Saturday at the Woodbine branch of the Cape May County Library.
I was also in the performing arts, and there was a theater in town named for Crispus Attucks. He was the first American casualty of the American Revolution, said Jackson, 69, who lives in Cape May Beach in Lower Township.
A friend in New York City told her about the Harlem Hell Fighters, the all-black 369th Infantry Regiment known for its bravery in World War I, spending more time in combat than any other American unit.
She will talk about them and the first black armored unit, the 758th Tank Battalion, founded in 1941 during World War II; the all-black Womens Army Corps called the 6888th Central Postal Directory Battalion, which kept the mail flowing to and from soldiers in the European theater, and more.
They got to Birmingham (England) and found warehouses crammed full of mail that hadnt moved in a year or two. They broke the logjam in three months, Jackson said of the womens battalion, by working seven days a week in rotating, eight-hour shifts.
Jackson had a 30-year career in arts administration, she said. She is the co-founder of the Natchel Blues Network, a blues society and founding director of AFRAM Fest, both in Norfolk.
Currently, she is the outreach coordinator at the Bayshore Center at Bivalve.
NORTHFIELD Lester Johns, 90, was in two of the toughest battles in the Pacific theater of World War II Saipan in 1944 and Okinawa in 1945.
He remembers being in a foxhole for four days, with them shooting at me, he said of the Japanese at Okinawa.
Johns, of Egg Harbor City, was one of 17 veterans honored Saturday at the Atlantic County Veterans Day ceremony at Meadowview Nursing and Rehabilitation Center, owned by the county.
The Meadowview residents came from various branches of service and types of experiences.
County Executive Dennis Levinson said the county has been trying to help families of veterans get their loved ones care at the states Veterans Memorial Home in Vineland, but it has such a long waiting list, the county has put a priority on getting them into Meadowview.
He would like the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs to pay for their care at Meadowview, he said.
All 17 honorees were presented certificates and hats by 2018 Miss Atlantic County Avery Wythe, of Port Republic, a sophomore at the University of Notre Dame.
She thanked the veterans for everything they did and the difficulties they endured.
For Johns, the toughest assignment was Okinawa.
It was the last big battle before Japan, Johns said. In the 27th Infantry, he expected to be sent next to invade Japan.
So he was immensely relieved when that didnt happen.
If we went to Japan, we would have lost 100,000 men, he said. So I was happy that we dropped the bomb.
The United States dropped a nuclear bomb on Hiroshima, Japan, on Aug. 6, 1945, and on Nagasaki, Japan, on Aug. 9, 1945. The second bomb resulted in Japanese surrender.
Alvin Dickson, 72, of Pleasantville, said he served between the Korean and Vietnam conflicts, driving a forklift on the Marshall Islands in the Pacific.
Bill Reich, 87, of Mays Landing, served in the Coast Guard based in Jersey City from 1961-64, he said.
Veterans advocate Marco Polo Smigliani, of Egg Harbor Township, is an immigrant from Italy.
Because of veterans like you, I had the opportunity to come from Italy after World War II, Smigliani said. Im forever grateful.
The average hourly count of migrating monarch butterflies through Cape May Point increased to about 95 this year from about 15 last year, according to the Monarch Monitoring Project.
It certainly was encouraging to see numbers higher than the last four lean years, Project Director Mark Garland said.
Counts are performed at 9 a.m., noon and 3 p.m. by an intern driving the same 5-mile route in and around Cape May Point from early September to the end of October. The project is a program of New Jersey Audubons Cape May Bird Observatory.
While the numbers rebounded strongly from recent years, they were still just about half that of 2012, when an average of about 183 were spotted per hour.
There were so many monarchs migrating in week 9 of the count the last week in October that the project decided to continue it an extra week into November, for the first time ever.
Thousands of monarchs were seen roosting in trees along Cape May Point beach in late October.
Photographer to talk Pinelands
Photographer Albert D. Horner, of Medford Lakes in Burlington County, will offer a free lecture on the history, flora and fauna of the Pinelands at 6:30 p.m. Thursday at the Edwin B. Forsythe National Wildlife Refuge in the Oceanville section of Galloway Township.
Horner also will discuss efforts to preserve the Pinelands.
Images from Horners 2015 coffee-table book, Pinelands: New Jerseys Suburban Wilderness, illustrate the lecture. There will also be a book signing.
Part of the Evenings at Forsythe series, the event is hosted by the refuge and Friends of Forsythe.
Pollinator garden opens in Middle
The Middle Township Environmental Commission worked with the Conserve Wildlife Foundation of NJ to create a pollinator meadow at the Ockie Wisting Recreation Complex in the township, the foundation said last week.
The complex was officially opened in the end of October and will have playing fields, a playground and a wooded trail that leads to a lake and fishing pier, the CWF said.
With funding from Atlantic City Electric, volunteers planted 138 native perennials. Next spring and summer, there will be plants for bees, butterflies and birds to use for food and habitat.
The meadow will be great for wildlife and wont have to be mowed, the CWF said.
Some of the plants chosen were common milkweed, which is used by the monarch butterfly as its larval food plant; various asters, which provide nectar to migrating butterflies in the fall as well as to other pollinators; Cardinal Flower and Scarlet Bee balm (Monarda), favorites of hummingbirds; and purple coneflowers, which feed pollinators in midsummer.
South Jersey is home to some of the best places on the East Coast for marshes, plants and animals to survive sea level rise, according to a new study by The Nature Conservancy funded by the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service.
The study looked at more than 10,000 coastal sites in the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic to see where conditions are right for marshes to migrate inland as sea level rises.
That migration would allow the marsh to continue to provide habitat for fish, birds and other wildlife. It also would protect property farther inland from flooding, said study author Mark Anderson, science director for TNCs Eastern region.
The Delaware Bayshore is the largest, most resilient area in the whole region, Anderson said. It has room for the marsh to migrate, a gentle rather than steep slope to nearby lowlands, enough of the right sediments available, and good water quality.
That area just looks really about the best area in the East for those conditions, he said.
Other areas that stood out as best able to absorb sea level rise include the Lester G. MacNamara (Tuckahoe) Wildlife Management Area on the Great Egg Harbor River, Island Beach State Park, the Mullica River and Great Bay, which includes Forsythe National Wildlife Refuge.
On the South Jersey coastline, the area around Tuckahoe is one of our poster children for a great place, Anderson said. Migration could happen and coastal systems could be sustained, even with up to a 6-foot sea level rise.
He said 6 feet is the maximum sea level rise considered possible by the end of this century, while the rise is expected to be something more than 2 feet for sure.
Rutgers University Professor Robert E. Kopp, one of the authors of the Climate Science Special Report released last week by the U.S. Global Change Research Program, has said the report found global average sea level will likely rise by 1 to 4 feet over this century, with the higher values more likely with more carbon emissions.
The report also warned sea level could rise by as much as 8 feet, if Antarcticas ice proves more unstable than currently thought.
Rising seas already have caused a fivefold to tenfold increase in tidal flooding since the 1960s in several American coastal cities, including in New Jersey, Kopp has said.
I am not surprised that the Great Egg Harbor Estuary received a Resilience Score far above average, said River Administrator Fred Akers, who oversees local management of the river under the National Wild and Scenic River System.
He said the state Division of Fish and Wildlife has purchased and preserved most of the estuary, including adjacent uplands, through the creation of Wildlife Management Areas and preserves. The Tuckahoe WMA alone preserved more than 17,500 acres, he said.
It has been a priority for open space preservation for the New Jersey Green Acres program, Akers said. Recently, Green Acres purchased 5,000 acres around Gibson Creek and Stephen Creek for $10 million, Akers said.
Atlantic County also has preserved thousands of acres of the tidal estuary and nearby uplands in its park system, he said.
The barrier islands are a different story, Anderson said.
The barrier islands look much more vulnerable than the bayshore, said Anderson. Many of them would virtually disappear underwater, and the marshes on their bayside would have little space to migrate, so would likely end up as ribbons of marsh, he said.
TNC wants the study to help land preservation efforts be targeted to places that can most protect against sea level rise.
With no action, (the Northeast and mid-Atlantic) could see an 83 percent loss of existing tidal habitats to severe inundation, the studys executive report said. But with proper management, there are thousands of individual sites where tidal habitats could increase and expand through landward migration, reversing this trend.
The study estimated the resilient sites could offset more than 50 percent of tidal habitat loss, providing critical habitat for birds and wildlife, and buffering people from the effects of storms and floods.
The sites identified as best able to handle migrating marshes in South Jersey are in places that are already largely conserved, which is a big plus for the region, Anderson said.
GALLOWAY TOWNSHIP Dozens of people gathered Sunday afternoon in the cold to get a look at a recently restored 189-year-old Quaker meetinghouse.
Members of the Atlantic City Area Friends Meeting, the group that maintains the historic meetinghouse, gave visitors a brief presentation on the building and the history of Quakers in South Jersey.
We think it looks very much like it did originally, said Rick Goldberg, of Galloway Township, who has been attending services at the meeting for about 20 years.
Its a small, simple building that features several rows of wooden benches on each side. The walls are plain and white and dotted with glass pane windows.
Theres no heating system and only limited electricity. Bob Barnett, the meetings unofficial historian, said the building originally had a wood stove in the center, but that knowledge didnt warm up those in attendance Sunday.
The meetinghouse was built in 1828 by Quakers in Woods-town, Salem County. After falling into disrepair, it was moved to Historic Smithville in 1969 to become part of an exhibit.
Then, in 1987, the Atlantic City Area Friends Meeting took custody of the building, and it was moved to its current location next to the groups more modern meetinghouse on Pitney Road.
Meeting Clerk Alice Gitchell said the structure had been hoisted up on blocks in the parking lot. Funds from the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting, the regional Quaker group, were used to build a foundation, and members have been making smaller improvements ever since, Gitchell said.
More recently, the meeting used funds from the Philadelphia group and donations from members to replace the roof and get the building repainted, Gitchell said. The renovations totaled less than $10,000, she added.
It was getting fragile, said Gitchell, of Galloway Township. Now, we think its pretty well preserved.
Gitchell said meeting members occasionally worship in the old meetinghouse in the summer. Its surrounded by trees and can be quite beautiful on a warm day, she added.
Many people have told me that if you sit here, you can get terrific vibes in the silence and listening to the quiet, Goldberg told the audience during the presentation.
Atlantic City has seen casino closings, financial hardship and a state takeover of the city in the past four years.
After Tuesdays election, the city will see two new leaders who have promised to work together to help the city prosper.
Governor-elect Phil Murphy and Atlantic City Mayor-elect Frank Gilliam both say they want to move the city forward as partners.
Murphys commitment to the state and his governing style could help heal the wounds between the city and Trenton, said Brigid Harrison, a political science professor at Montclair State University.
In Atlantic Citys mind and in the minds of many people in the region, the state has essentially taken, taken and taken, she said. Weve turned the page on that chapter.
Murphy has discussed openness in governing the entire state, including growing and diversifying the economy, which will be attractive for the city a different tone than outgoing Gov. Chris Christie provided, she said. Murphy has shown willingness to learn about the challenges the city faces, she said.
He also has pledged to undo the state takeover of the city, instead saying the city needs a governor who is a partner.
With Murphy and Gilliam both Democrats, there could be more cooperation between the state and the city, said John Froonjian of the Hughes Center for Public Policy at Stockton University.
Murphy has cited his opposition to the state takeover from a social justice perspective, he said.
Its a real change in the type of message thats been coming out of Trenton, he said. The need for that intervention and the need for being so directly controlling the city has lessened.
On election night, Gilliam said to a crowd of supporters and media around him hes looking forward to having a prosperous relationship with governor-elect Murphy and looked forward to meeting with him.
Several polls conducted by Stockton University showed Christies unpopularity, which might have had an effect on the election outcome. In Atlantic City, Christie is especially unpopular, experts said.
But the tone is different with Murphy, Harrison said.
He is much more willing to listen and learn about the challenges Atlantic City has historically faced, the solutions that have been tried, she said.
While there have been improvements in the city, challenges could remain ahead for the city and state.
Murphy and Gilliam will have to agree on which direction the city will go in terms of marketing it, for example, as a tourist destination or a family-friendly city, Froonjian said.
Another challenge ahead could be the idea of North Jersey gaming. Murphy has said before the election that he is in full support of bringing in North Jersey casinos, citing the creation of jobs in the state.
But during the November 2016 election, voters overwhelmingly rejected a plan that would have cleared two casinos to be built about 72 miles from Atlantic City.
Gilliam said after claiming victory Tuesday he wanted to bring a Democratic leadership to the Democratic city, and looked forward to improving the condition of the city.
That optimism extends across party lines, at least with Chris Brown, a Republican who was elected state Senator in Atlantic County Tuesday.
Brown said while he endorsed Kim Guadagno for governor, he sees common ground with Phil Murphy in ending the state takeover and letting local officials regain control of the city.
Brown consistently clashed with Christie over the takeover.
Now that the hard fought campaign is behind us, I look forward to working in a bi-partisan manner with the new governor and the new mayor to continue stabilizing the citys finances while making the city clean and safe, Brown said.
Another Republican, Atlantic County Executive Dennis Levinson, said he met with Murphy during the gubernatorial campaign in person and spoke with him on the phone.
Levinson said they did not get into the meat of any policies regarding the Atlantic City takeover or the payments in lieu of property taxes for Atlantic City casinos, but added Murphy promised to have more meetings once he is sworn in as governor.
Phil Murphy is a gentlemen, and I was really impressed with his demeanor, Levinson said. He was extremely gracious (during the meeting and phone call) and I am rooting for him to succeed.
By PTI: Dhaka, Nov 12 (PTI) At least 53 people have been arrested in Bangladesh for their alleged involvement in an arson attack on over 30 houses of Hindus following rumours that a youth from the minority community published an offensive Facebook status, media reports said today.
Police have alleged that the countrys largest Islamist party Jamaat-e-Islami, a key ally of the opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) led by former prime minister Khaleda Zia, carried out the attack on Hindus to create unrest ahead of the next parliamentary elections, bdnews24.com reported.
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"Jamaat tried to fuel unrest as elections are nearing," Rangpur Superintendent of Police Mizanur Rahman told reporters after inspecting the scene yesterday.
He said that the police have identified four persons who instigated the attacks.
The police have filed two cases over the incident at the Kotwali and Gangachara police stations and so far arrested 53 suspects, Rangpurs Additional Superintendent of Police Zakir Hossain was quoted as saying by Dhaka Tribune.
One person was killed when police opened fire to disperse the crowd that torched the houses of Hindus in Rangpur districts Thakurpara village, about 300 km from Dhaka, on Friday, the report said.
At least five persons were injured when police fired rubber bullets and lobbed tear gas shells to bring the situation under control, it said.
The protesters claimed that they were infuriated by a defamatory status published from the Facebook account of a person who hails from the Thakurbari village a few days ago, the report said.
Before the police intervened, the perpetrators had torched at least 30 Hindu houses before looting and vandalising them, the report said.
A crowd of 20,000 people had reportedly gathered from six to seven neighbouring villages before the attack was launched by a group of people, it said.
The police had a tough time dealing with the protesters and restoring the law and order situation in the area, the report said.
Six persons with bullet injuries were rushed to a nearby hospital when one of them succumbed to his injuries, the report said.
There were traffic snarls after the mob blocked the Rangpur-Dinajpur highway to protest against the police action.
A large number of police personnel have been deployed in the area where the situation was tense, Kotwali police station Officer-in-Charge (Operation) Moktarul Islam said.
The district administration has formed a three-member inquiry committee, headed by Additional District Magistrate Abu Rafa Mohammad Rafiq, to investigate the incident and submit a report in seven days, the report added. PTI CPS
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Respect Richard Stocktons life, honor and sacrifice
Regarding the Nov. 4 letter, Richard Stocktons acts unclear, require research:
The removal of Richard Stocktons bust from the Stockton University library because of his ownership of slaves has progressed to questioning his patriotism and quite possibly could lead to the removal of Stocktons statue from Statuary Hall in the U.S. Capitol. There is even some talk about renaming the university after a less controversial figure.
Richard Stockton had a distinguished career and was one of five New Jersey signers of the Declaration of Independence. Because of his revolutionary actions, he was captured by the British and held in deplorable conditions. After several months Stockton was released from his brutal captivity, likely only after signing an oath and promising to discontinue his activities.
Even John McCain eventually made an anti-American confession while in captivity. McCain explained, Every man has his breaking point. One may question McCains performance as a senator but, outside of Trump, no one, to my knowledge, has ever questioned his heroism.
Why shouldnt we afford Richard Stockton the same respect? Because he was an owner of slaves? Thats my guess. Should we also question the greatness of slave owners like Benjamin Franklin, Plato or Muhammad? Slavery is inexcusable today, but we have to be careful judging past history with todays morality.
Richard Stockton was the only signer subjected to torturous conditions. He nearly sacrificed his life, and did sacrifice his liberty. Lets not also take away his sacred honor.
Dennis Levinson
Linwood
Atlantic County executive
A.C. must fix suit woes
I almost choked on my English muffin when I read Atlantic City was paying former police chief John Mooney $2.3 million to settle a lawsuit. Send the bill to former Mayor Lorenzo Langford. He coerced Mooneys demotion and subsequent resignation.
Most municipalities belong to the Joint Insurance Fund, but it doesnt want Atlantic City, which must self-insure. Council must require that all city employee suits against the city go to arbitration, preferably out of town. Meanwhile, the city should make every effort to convince JIF it would be a responsible member.
Alan Stowe
Atlantic City
Player protests disgraceful
I know everyone in this country has a right to exercise their constitutional right to do what they see is right, but as a U.S. citizen and son of a man who fought for this country to give us what we have today, I think this is disgraceful.
I know players want to make a statement. Heres an idea, donate one weeks salary to the people in Puerto Rico. People are dying and begging for a glass of water. I understand Black Lives Matter. But blacks are killing each other in inner cities. I guess black lives dont matter there.
Police officers have to worry if theyre coming home to see their spouses and children after their shifts. When I was young, being a police officer was a prestigious job. Maybe we need something like North Korea to bomb us to wake up and smell the coffee.
Armonda DeCiceo
Buena
New Delhi/Kohima, Nov 9 : Strange are the ways of the bureaucracy. A private firm that had spent about Rs 1,000 crore for laying 329 km of roads in Nagaland, with little visible results on the ground, will again be in the running when the project is re-tendered next month, with the cost having tripled to Rs 3,000 crore, according to officials.
The project -- part of the central government's Special Accelerated Road Development Programme in North East (SARDP-NE) -- was to be executed by the Nagaland PWD in 2010 at a cost of Rs 1,130.66 crore.
However, private company Gayatri Constructions, which was awarded the work, spent six times more than the estimated cost just for earthwork and almost ran through the original budget. This had led to a dispute between the authorities and the contractor, following which the latter abandoned the project.
The matter remained in various courts till last year, when the Supreme Court ordered the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways (MoRTH) to re-tender the project. The court also directed the ministry and the Nagaland government to ensure the project is completed within 42 months.
The stretches include the 35-km Longleng-Changtongya Road, the 100 km Tamlu-Merangkong road, 66-km Phek-Phutsero Road and the 128-km Zunheboto-Chakambama road. The fresh tenders will now be issued by the National Highways Infrastructure Development Corporation (NHIDCL) -- a three-year-old PSU under MoRTH.
As part of the re-tendering process, officials from the Nagaland government and the ministry recently held several deliberations and finalised the formalities, including a fresh Detailed Project Report (DPR) for the four roads, which will also ease connectivity between Nagaland and other northeastern states.
"We have got a fresh DPR made and are in a position to issue the tenders either by December 2017 or January 2018," a senior official said.
Emphasising that the road projects can become lifelines in remote parts of Nagaland, the government says that the stretches will also boost trade in the state, helping it to be at par with Assam, which is doing better economically.
Sources in the ministry have said that after the tendering process, the government will monitor every phase of the work and will fine the contractors if the work is delayed.
"We do not want any type of dispute this time like what had happened earlier. There has been a huge loss to the exchequer as the project cost has risen from Rs 1,100 crore to Rs 3,000 crore. Strict measures will be taken against the contractors if the work is delayed or not performed as per the standards," the official told IANS on condition of anonymity.
Asked if the government would prevent Gayatri Constructions from participating in the tender due to its failure to execute the work given by the Nagaland PWD, the official said that they still had the right to participate in the tender as they were not debarred by the government.
"We cannot stop Gayatri Constructions from participating in the fresh tenders until they are officially debarred," the official said.
NHIDCL also has the mandate to execute several road projects in Nagaland, including NH-39 that connects Dimapur and Kohima -- considered Nagaland's main business route which is in a pathetic state during the monsoon.
The PSU, created in 2014, has recently been given the task of constructing over 4,000 km of roads in the northeast and Jammu and Kashmir. It was established after the Border Roads Organisation (BRO) and Public Works Departments of the states failed to carry out road construction in many remote parts in hilly terrain.
(Rupesh Dutta can be contacted at Rupesh.d@ians.in)
New Delhi : New Delhi Nov 11 (IANS) Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Saturday said his visit to the Philippines for the 15th India-Asean Summit, the 12th East Asia Summit and his bilateral meeting with President Rodrigo Duterte, symbolises India's commitment to continue deepening its ties with Southeast Asia and the Indo-Pacific region.
In a statement ahead of his departure on Sunday for a three-day visit to the Philippines, Modi said it will be his first bilateral visit to the Asean member state.
He said his participation in the two summits symbolises India's commitment to continue deepening relationship with Asean member states, in particular, and with the Indo-Pacific region, in general, within the framework of the government's Act East Policy.
The Association of South East Asian Nations (Asean) comprises Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.
Modi said that besides the two summits, he would also participate in special celebrations of the 50th anniversary of the formation of the Asean, the proposed Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) Leaders' Meeting and an Asean Business and Investment Summit.
RCEP is a proposed free trade agreement between the 10 Asean member states and the six states with which the grouping has free trade pacts - Australia, China, India, Japan, South Korea and New Zealand.
"The Asean Business and Investment Summit will boost our close cooperation to further enhance our trade ties with Asean member states, which constitutes a significant 10.85 per cent of our overall trade," the Prime Minister said.
"During my first visit to the Philippines, I look forward to have a bilateral meeting with President of the Philippines Rodrigo Duterte. I will also have interactions with other Asean and East Asia Summit leaders."
Stating that he looked forward to connecting with the Indian community in Philippines, Modi said that he would also visit the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) and Mahavir Philippines Foundation Inc. (MPFI).
He said that the IRRI "through scientific research and development has developed better quality of rice seed and helped the global community in addressing food scarcity issues".
Stating that a large number of Indian scientists are working in IRRI, he said: "My cabinet approved on July 12, 2017, a proposal for IRRI to set up its South Asia Regional Centre at Varanasi. This will be the first research centre by IRRI outside its headquarters in the Philippines. The Varanasi centre would help increase farmers' income by enhancing and supporting rice productivity, reducing cost of production, value addition, diversification and enhancement of farmers' skills."
As for his visit to the MPFI, he said that it would demonstrate India's support for its activities in distributing free prosthesis Jaipur Foot among the needy amputees.
"Since its establishment in 1989, MPFI has fitted nearly 15,000 amputees in the Philippines with Jaipur Foot making them capable of living a new life," he said, adding that the Indian government was making "a modest contribution" to the foundation to support its noble humanitarian activities.
"I am confident that my visit to Manila will give a new boost to India's bilateral relations with the Philippines and also further strengthen the politico-security, economic and socio-cultural pillars of our engagement with Asean," the Prime Minister added.
Mayor Sampath Raj said that if the people of Bengaluru think it isn't necessary to have such helipads, "we are ready to scrap the idea." "But let's at least think about it," he said.
By Rohini Swamy: Bengaluru could have eight helipads soon to help fly patients to hospitals during medical emergencies.
Bengaluru Mayor Sampath Raj came up with the idea, which is expected to be presented in the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) soon.
There are plans for eight helipads in the city corporation's eight zones.
Speaking to India Today, Bengaluru mayor Sampath Raj said, "These helipads will be helpful for the citizens. So much of precious time is lost when ambulances are stuck in traffic. We will look at providing such services at nominal prices.
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"Also, when you can pay lakhs of rupees for treatment, I am sure people won't mind spending a few thousands to save lives using helicopters to fly to the nearest hospital," he said.
How will the BBMP, which is unable to manage the pothole-dotted roads, be able to sustain this?
"We appreciate the criticism, but we are working on potholes too. The roads will be done, but helipads are a different ball game and will help the fast-growing city of Bengaluru to be able to handle traffic problems better," Sampath Raj said.
The plan is to name the helipads after former mayors of the city. But all this will happen only if the idea is approved by the BBMP Council.
Sampath Raj said that if the people of Bengaluru think it isn't necessary to have such helipads, "we are ready to scrap the idea."
"But let's at least think about it," he said.
--- ENDS ---
New Delhi, Nov 11 : The Congress on Saturday demanded that petroleum products, real estate and electricity be brought under the GST's ambit, as it claimed that persistent pressure by it and its Vice President Rahul Gandhi had forced the GST Council and the BJP government to reduce tax rates on several items from 28 per cent.
The party also said that "Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Gabbar Singh Tax" (as Rahul Gandhi dubbed it) is shrewdly designed" to help his wealthy friends but hurts millions of small traders.
Congress spokesperson Randeep Singh Surjewala said in a statement that Finance Minister Arun Jaitley spoke "post-truths" after the GST Council meeting on Friday while the will of the people did partially prevail the government's "arrogance".
"Persistent pressure built by the Congress Vice President Rahul Gandhi and the Congress party forced the GST Council and the BJP Government to reduce taxes on items of daily usage being taxed under the 28 per cent bracket. The political turmoil and widespread protests have made Modi Government extremely nervous and partially backtrack," he said.
"But people of India, particularly shopkeepers, traders, MSMEs, are distressed with the lopsided architecture, design and implementation mechanism of Modi ji's 'Gabbar Singh Tax'," he added.
The Congress, which has been demanding to constitutionally cap the Goods and Services Tax (GST) at a maximum of 18 per cent, said that if electricity, petroleum, real estate are kept out, 50 per cent of total revenue stays out of GST ambit.
"This means that the Modi government can continue to fill its coffers with Rs 2,67,000 crore annually by its back-breaking dose of taxation on petrol and diesel," Surjewala said.
Seeking to reduce GST's "compliance burden", he said that complex process of form filing has brought businesses, trades and MSMEs to a grinding halt, "while GSTN continues to crash repeatedly".
Stressing the challenges being faced by textiles sector and agriculture sector, Surjewala said the GST Council had not addressed them "owing to the sheer ineptitude and amateurish handling of the biggest tax reform by BJP government".
"As Finance Minister Jaitley and the Modi government pay lip service and create havoc, the Congress is determined to fight this battle for turning GST from flawed to flawless," he said.
He said textiles was second biggest employment generator after agriculture but continues to face deep stress owing to "distorted" duty structure, where fibre is taxed at 12 pe rcent, the end-product, i.e. fabric, attracts a tax of 5 per cent.
"This is threatening the livelihood and profitability of non-integrated textile players of man made fibre (70 pe rcent of total), while helping the big fish to make huge profits," Surjewala said, adding that this "gross discrimination" has not been corrected, jeopardising the livelihood of millions from Surat to Panipat and Ludhiana to Tirupur.
He also said agriculture sector was being taxed for the first time with tractor and all other agricultural implements (12 percent), tyres, tubes and transmission parts (18 per cent), pesticides (18 per cent), fertilisers (5 per cent) and cold storage 18 per cent.
"There is no relief to 62 crore people engaged in agriculture," he said.
He said implementation of TDS (Tax Deduction at Source) and TCS (Tax Collection at Source) remains postponed till March 31 next year, Reverse Charge Mechanism (RCM) requiring the purchaser to deposit GST on purchase from a GST unregistered individual/entity also remains postponed for the period and 'E-Way Bill' concept has already been deferred till April next year.
New Delhi : Title: India Turns East - International Engagement and US-China Rivalry; Author: Frederic Grare; Publisher: Penguin/Viking; Pages: 265; Price: Rs 599 As Prime Minister Narendra Modi heads to the Philippines to attend the Asean and East Asia Summits, a new book provides some valuable insights into India's growing engagements with East Asia and its response to the rise of China.
In "India Turns East: International Engagement and US-China Rivalry", author Frederic Grare enlightens readers about India's move to reclaim its status in a rapidly-changing Asian environment under its Look East Policy, now called the Act East Policy, which primarily focuses on the the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean).
Grare is a non-resident senior fellow in the Carnegie Endowment's South Asia Programme and his research focuses on security issues, Afghan, Indian and Pakistani regional policies, and tension between stability and democratisation. He has served at the French Defence Ministry's Directorate for Strategic Affairs, at the French Embassy in Pakistan, and as Director of the Centre for Social Sciences and Humanities in New Delhi.
Grare throws light on how the Look East Policy, launched in 1992 by then Prime Minister Narasimha Rao and initially aimed at developing regional trade and attracting foreign direct investments from capital-rich Asian economies to finance India's economic reforms, turned into a a comprehensive strategy with political and military dimensions concerning the entire Asia-Pacific region.
He describes the Look East Policy as the most important foreign policy initiative of India in the immediate post-Cold War period and New Delhi's attempt to reconnect with Asia as part of India's economic globalisation.
"Political and strategic considerations were present very early on in the elaboration of the policy," the book states.
"Frustration with the process of integration within South Asia, and the manner in which Pakistan was seen to be subverting the efforts at energising the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (Saarc), had convinced Indian decision-makers that it was necessary to look beyond the region."
As for China, Grare is of the view that despite New Delhi's concerns about potential Chinese military threats, a conflict with China is not pre-ordained, if not inconceivable.
"While China's increased maritime presence in the Indian Ocean and India's participation in naval exercises in the Pacific do create new security dilemmas in the region, these are often a reflection of the aspirations of India's partners, who seek a larger role for India as an economic and military balancer in the region," he writes.
Regarding southeast Asia in India's geo-strategy, the author opines that changes in the configuration of the international system post-Cold War, rather than geographical proximity, have cemented the importance of southeast Asia for India.
"The acceleration of economic growth following trade and investment liberalisation reforms initiated in 1991 required India to play the role of regional peacekeeper and stabiliser, ensuring the free flow of energy and goods to and from the global market," he states.
Grare explains that with the development of the Look East Policy, more and more of India's international trade takes place within Asia, leading to increased worries about the future of freedom navigation in an area of potential importance to the country's energy security.
"The northeast of the Indian Ocean, including the Bay of Bengal and the Andaman Sea, is therefore another key strategic space," he states.
"India's strategic presence in the area provides it with the stability to control the sea lines of communication that cross the Bay of Bengal and the Andaman Sea to and from the Malacca Straits."
Coming to Japan's role in India's Look East Policy, Grare argues that as long as Beijing remains the epicentre of Asia, relations between New Delhi and Tokyo will remain but these are, and will be, based on a quid pro quo.
"For India, the objective is to leverage its relation with Japan to generate enough uncertainty in China about a possible alignment or partnership with an anti-China coalition in order to ensure that Beijing does not engage in any action likely to push India too far into the US sphere of influence," he states.
However, the author adds that the difficulty for India will be in sufficiently engaging Japan without ever being committed enough to the relationship to lose its strategic decision-making autonomy while Tokyo will expect New Delhi to continue with its reforms in order to get the expected return on Japanese investments.
Regarding India-US equations vis-a-vis China, Grare argues that the objectives of New Delhi and Washington need not necessarily be congruent.
"Like every foreign policy, India's policy vis-a-vis China is a mix of integration, balancing, and deterrence," he states.
"In each of these categories, the United States can bring India some useful support. But the discourse on the commonality of the China threat to the United States and India, as useful as it may be by justifying the quid pro quo that forms the basis of the India-US relationship as for arms sellers and buyers in both countries, represents only a limited aspect of the reality of the relationship as seen by actual policy-makers. The asymmetry of power between the United States and India and their geographic separation make the persistence of significant divergences inevitable," Grare opines.
(Aroonim Bhuyan can be contacted at aroonim.b@ians.in)
Islamabad, Nov 12 : Pakistan has suspended the licenses for all prohibited bore weapons through which automatic weapons have been registered, a media report said.
The Interior Ministry had issued a notification regarding the move earlier this week, reports Dawn news.
The owners of automatic weapons will be able to get their weapons replaced with semi-automatic firearms or get 50,000 Pakistani rupees ($475) in return for their weapons from the district administration, the notification said.
The owners of automatic weapons have until January 15, 2018, to submit their weapons or get them replaced following which all licenses will be considered revoked, the ministry announced.
This decision has been taken in tune with Pakistan Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi's promise to ban all automatic weapons.
"There is not a single country in the world which allows the licensing of automatic rifles for citizens. However, if you go outside the Parliament right now, you will see a private militia," Abbasi had said during his speech on the floor of National Assembly after taking oath as the Prime Minister in August.
"Action will be taken against them if my Cabinet allows for it. The federal government will seize all automatic weapons, compensating people in return."
Ghazala Tasneem, a housewife and mother of two from Katihar district of Bihar, was selected for the Bihar Judicial Services Competitive Examination with 65th rank Image Source: IANS News
Neyaz Ahmad Daudi opened the Fatima Girls Inter College because there were not enough girls colleges at nearby villages and towns Image Source: IANS News
Katihar (Bihar)/Azamgarh/New Delhi, Nov 12 : For Ghazala Tasneem, October 31 was not a normal day. It was the day her dream came true and she was rewarded for her hard struggle of three years. She was selected for the Bihar Judicial Services Competitive Examination with 65th rank and can soon aspire to be a judge.
"Indeed, it was difficult, but thanks to Allah, due to the continuous support and motivation from my husband and other family members, I have achieved what I deserved," says Tasneem, a housewife from Katihar district of Bihar with two sons.
There is a general perception that Muslim women rarely pursue higher education, or go for competitive exams, and the social odds are stacked even higher once they get married and have kids. But women like Tasneem challenge such stereotypes.
India has the largest Muslim population after Indonesia, which is about 14.2 percent of its 1.34 billion population, and the 2011 census says that about half of the population of Muslim women is illiterate. But women like Tasneem think that the situation is changing fast.
"Though in areas like law and judiciary, still the number of Muslim girls is very less. But in general, the situation is changing now and there are many more Muslim girls going to school," Tasneem said.
Zebun Nisa Khan, associate professor at the Department of Education in Aligarh Muslim University, says that situation has already changed. "The trend is not changing, but it has already changed. For the last few years, the number of Muslim girls in schools has increased massively," Khan said.
Muslim women's literacy rate is on the increase in Uttar Pradesh, but the situation in states like Bihar and West Bengal needs to further improve.
Moonisa Bushra Abidi teaches Physics at Maharashtra College of Arts, Science and Commerce in Mumbai. She also thinks that educating the girl child is an increasing trend among Muslims and an increasing number of Muslims girls -- encouraged by their parents, particularly mothers -- are going for higher education.
"One can see a larger number of girls with hijab in many institutions now. In the early 1990s, when I was pursuing my M.Sc. from the University of Mumbai, I was the only girl in the entire university with a hijab," Abidi explains.
She says that during her days in the same college, at the intermediate level, there used to be one division of girls against four of boys, but now there are four divisions of girls against one for boys. At UG and PG levels, there are hardly 8 to 10 boys in each class against 80 to 90 girls.
The college is being run under the presidentship of a woman, Fatima Zakaria, a Padma Shri awardee, journalist and academician, and mother of veteran journalist Fareed Zakaria.
"The situation is not good because the number of boys is decreasing and now our college is becoming a girls' college," Abidi said.
But what had been the major issues for educating Muslim girl child in India? Khan lists poverty and lack of awareness as some of the major problems in the path of girl child education.
"The major obstacles are poverty and lack of awareness. Many Muslim families are below the poverty line and they are unable to educate girls," she explained.
Sadia Rahman, PhD scholar of international relations at National Chung Hsing University in Taiwan, thinks that widespread poverty and financial constraints are the major causes that prevent Muslim girls from accessing modern education. "Also, the poor quality schools in Muslim populated areas is also responsible for it," says Rahman who hails from Kolkata and completed MA from Presidency University.
According to Islamic teaching arrangements of classes, male and female students should be separated and many people believe that it is also one of the important reasons for the low literacy rate of Muslim women in various places.
"I think the biggest obstacle for girls' education was co-education and less availability of Muslim-management colleges. Sometimes a girl with a hijab becomes the butt of jokes, because of which religious-minded girls are hesitant to go to colleges run by non-Muslim managements," Abidi added.
Abidi believes that Muslim girls from conservative families don't feel comfortable in the co-education system and the community should think about opening more separate colleges for them.
"In rural areas, even Hindu girls prefer girls-only colleges and avoid co-education," Khan pointed out.
Neyaz Ahmad Daudi, who runs Fatima Girls Inter College in Daudpur village in Azamgarh district of eastern Uttar Pradesh, has another story to tell. Daudi, who has doctorate in Psychology from Banaras Hindu University and served at Shibli National Intermediate College as principal for over a decade, says that he chose to start a girls' college because boys can go far and there were not enough girls' colleges at nearby villages and towns.
Non-availability of schools and colleges nearby is also one of the major obstacles and a major issue in many areas.
Daudi says that in places like Azamgarh, where most of the guardians away in the Gulf countries or in metro cities earning a livelihood, people are cautious about the security of girls and don't allow them to be sent too far; they also seek a safe and secure transportation system from home to school.
At 73.01 percent, Azamgarh has the highest Muslim female literacy rate in Uttar Pradesh. But being a small place, it is still difficult to gain higher education here.
"Now girls are educated but they have less opportunity for higher studies and competitive exams because usually it is available only in bigger cities," Daudi explained.
There is another misconception that some people think that educating a girl child -- especially modern education -- is against the religion, but Khan believes that getting an education is a religious duty.
"The very first revelation on Prophet Mohammed was the word 'Iqra' which means 'you read' and such words are mentioned in many places in the Holy Quran. It is general guidance for both males and females," Khan says.
"Islam and Muslims are not against education. Islam teaches one to gain knowledge from cradle to grave, but some people misinterpret Islam," says Tasneem.
"All educational goals can be achieved being in veil. There are a number of examples in the early Islamic period where women were very much involved in education and nursing sectors," Tasneem added.
(This feature is part of a special series that seeks to bring unique and extraordinary stories of ordinary people, groups and communities from across a diverse, plural and inclusive India, and has been made possible by a collaboration between IANS and the Frank Islam Foundation. Abu Zafar can be contacted at abuzafar@journalist.com)
Islamabad, Nov 12 : Pakistan Finance Minister Ishaq Dar is likely to skip the trial proceedings on November 14 in the assets reference when the accountability court is scheduled to resume the hearing, a media report said on Sunday.
Dar intended to file an application before the accountability court seeking an exemption from personal attendance and the appointment of a pleader who would represent him during the trial proceedings, informed officials told Dawn news.
Accountability judge, Mohammad Bashir, on November 8 had ordered Dar to appears before the court on November 14.
According to the officials, Dar could not personally attend the proceedings as he is undergoing medical treatment.
In the reference against Dar, the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) alleged that "the accused has acquired assets and pecuniary interests/resources in his own name and/or in the name of his dependents of an amount of 831 million Pakistani Rupees", Dawn news reported.
The reference alleged that the assets of Dar were "disproportionate to his known sources of income for which he could not reasonably account for".
During the hearing on November 8, the NAB prosecution had requested the court to issue non-bailable warrants for Dar.
However, the court reissued bailable warrants with a direction to NAB to verify the medical reports of the minister.
Thiruvananthapuram, Nov 12 : The Congress in Kerala continued to slam the Justice G. Sivarajan (Retd) panel's report on the solar scam indicting then Chief Minister Ooomen Chandy and several of his ministers with the party state chief on Sunday terming it a "sex novel".
The report, tabled in the Kerala Assembly last Thursday, spoke of corruption, sexual harassment the scam prime accused, Saritha Nair, had to face and other charges in the multi-crore solar energy investment fraud that rocked the then Chandy government in 2013.
Continuing to assail the report, state Congress President M.M. Hassan said that while there have been numerous reports that have been submitted by various commissions in the past, this one stands out.
"This is no report, instead this is one that can be termed as a 'sex novel'," he told media in Kozhikode.
Among the tormentors that Saritha Nair named in her letter, that has been published in the more than 1,000-page report, include Chandy, his then cabinet colleagues, present and former legislators, Lok Sabha members and top leaders.
Former state Minister and senior Congress legislator K.C. Joseph told media on Sunday that the credibility of the commission report is indeed questionable.
"The findings of the commission cannot be seen as one with good intention... it is one that describes the 'beauty' of Saritha Nair," said Joseph.
Leader of Opposition Ramesh Chennithala told media that the contents of the report reveal the callous way it has been prepared by the commission.
"It would have been better had the job of writing the report given to the state CPI-M state secretary," he said.
The top leadership of the party at the national level has fully backed Chandy and in the coming days, the party's state leadership, which by now has held widespread consultations with legal experts, is likely to initiate legal steps against the report.
Thrissur (Kerala) : Thrissur (Kerala) Nov 12 (IANS) An RSS activist was killed here on Sunday by CPI-M workers, the state Bharatiya Janata Party office has claimed.
The incident occurred at around 1.30 p.m. when Anand, who was on a two-wheeler, was knocked down by a car. He was then hacked to death.
Anand was pronounced dead in a hospital.
The victim was an accused in the murder of a Communist Party of India-Marxist worker in 2014.
Anand was currently out on bail.
Manila, Nov 12 : India, Australia, Japan and the US on Sunday agreed that "a free, open, prosperous and inclusive" Indo-Pacific served long-term global interests, giving an impetus to an emerging quad of democracies amid Chinas growing military and economic power.
An External Affairs Ministry statement said foreign officials from India, Australia, Japan and the US met here and held consultations "on issues of common interest in the Indo-Pacific region".
"The discussions focused on cooperation based on their converging vision and values for promotion of peace, stability and prosperity in an increasingly inter-connected region that they share with each other and with other partners," the statement said.
The countries "agreed that a free, open, prosperous and inclusive Indo-Pacific region serves the long-term interests of all countries in the region and of the world at large", said the statement.
The officials also exchanged views on addressing common challenges of terrorism and proliferation linkages impacting the region as well as on enhancing connectivity.
Indian officials highlighted India's Act East Policy as the cornerstone of its engagement in the region.
The four countries are working to revive their quadrilateral dialogue. Another meeting of the officials from the countries is likely to take place on the sidelines of the East Asia Summit in Manila on Monday.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Sunday morning arrived here to attend the summit.
Japanese Foreign Minister Taro Kono in October said Tokyo favoured a dialogue between Japan, the US, India and Australia to boost strategic partnership among them in the region amid growing Chinese assertiveness over the South China Sea.
New Delhi, Nov 12 : India, the US, Japan and Australia, for the first time, together discussed the situation in the Indo-Pacific region and its future at a meeting in the Philippines' capital Manila.
"Officials from India's Ministry of External Affairs, Australia's Department of Foreign Affairs, Japan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs and United States' Department of State met in Manila on November 12 for consultations on issues of common interest in the Indo-Pacific region," the External Affairs Ministry said in a statement here.
"The discussions focused on cooperation based on their converging vision and values for promotion of peace, stability and prosperity in an increasingly inter-connected region that they share with each other and with other partners.
"They agreed that a free, open, prosperous and inclusive Indo-Pacific region serves the long-term interests of all countries in the region and of the world at large," it added.
The meeting was held as Prime Minister Narendra Modi left here on Sunday for a three-day visit to the Philippines during the course of which he will attend the 15th India-Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) meet and the 12th East Asia Summit on Tuesday.
The Asean, comprising Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam, has emerged as a key cornerstone of New Delhi's foreign policy, with the Look East Policy, launched by then Prime Minister P.V. Narasimha Rao in 1992 and turned into the Act East Policy under the current NDA dispensation, is focused at increased engagements with the regional bloc.
The annual East Asia Summit is held by leaders of the Asean countries and those of Australia, China, India, Japan, New Zealand, Russia, South Korea and the US.
Even as India, the US and Japan has a trilateral dialogue mechanism in place for issues relating to the Indo-Pacific region, Japanese Foreign Minister Tara Kono said last month that Tokyo was for a top-level quadrilateral dialogue that would also include Australia.
Kono said the idea was for the leaders of the four nations to promote free trade and defence cooperation across a stretch of ocean from the South China Sea, the Indian Ocean and all the way to Africa.
It would be aimed at counteracting China's aggressive maritime expansion under its Belt and Road initiative. China's plans would cement a sphere of influence for Beijing well beyond Asia.
India responded to Kono's comments by saying that New Delhi was open to work with like-minded countries that advance India's interests.
According to Sunday's ministry statement, the officials of India, the US, Japan and Australia also exchanged views on addressing common challenges of terrorism and proliferation linkages impacting the Indo-Pacific region as well as on enhancing connectivity.
Manila/New Delhi, Nov 12 : India, Australia, Japan and the US on Sunday agreed that "a free, open, prosperous and inclusive" Indo-Pacific served long-term global interests, giving impetus to an emerging quad of democracies amid Chinas rising military and economic power.
It was the first dialogue of the quadrilateral formation of the democracies in which anti-terrorism cooperation was also discussed.
An External Affairs Ministry statement in New Delhi said foreign officials from India, Australia, Japan and the US met in the Philippines capital and held consultations "on issues of common interest in the Indo-Pacific region".
"The discussions focused on cooperation based on their converging vision and values for promotion of peace, stability and prosperity in an increasingly inter-connected region that they share with each other and with other partners," the statement said.
"They agreed that a free, open, prosperous and inclusive Indo-Pacific region serves the long-term interests of all countries in the region and of the world at large."
The officials also exchanged views on addressing common challenges of terrorism and proliferation linkages impacting the region as well as on enhancing connectivity.
Indian officials highlighted India's Act East Policy as the cornerstone of its engagement in the region.
The four countries are working to revive their quadrilateral dialogue.
The meeting was held as Prime Minister Narendra Modi arrived in Manila on Sunday on a three-day visit to the Philippines for the 15th India-Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) meet and the 12th East Asia Summit on Tuesday.
The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean), comprising Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam, has emerged as a key cornerstone of New Delhi's foreign policy, with its Look East Policy, launched by then Prime Minister P.V. Narasimha Rao in 1992.
The Modi government has turned it into the Act East Policy to focus on increased engagements with the regional bloc.
The annual East Asia Summit is held by leaders of the Asean countries and those of Australia, China, India, Japan, New Zealand, Russia, South Korea and the US.
Even as India, the US and Japan have a trilateral dialogue mechanism in place for issues relating to the Indo-Pacific region, Japanese Foreign Minister Tara Kono said in October that Tokyo was for a top-level quadrilateral dialogue that would also include Australia.
Kono said the idea was for the leaders of the four countries to promote free trade and defence cooperation across a stretch of ocean from the South China Sea, the Indian Ocean and all the way to Africa.
The emerging quadrilateral is seen to counter China's aggressive maritime expansion under its Belt and Road initiative. China's plans would cement a sphere of influence for Beijing well beyond Asia.
India responded to Kono's comments by saying that New Delhi was open to work with like-minded countries that advance India's interests.
By India Today Web Desk: Bigg Boss 11's Weekend ka Vaar episodes are always exciting to watch, thanks to host Salman Khan. And last night was as action-packed as ever. From fights to fun, here's what happened in Bigg Boss 11:
Priyank and Benaf's love story
The fight between the housemates intensifies in front of @BeingSalmanKhan. Catch all the action only on #WeekendKaVaar. pic.twitter.com/ySYTMAVjj8- COLORS (@ColorsTV) November 11, 2017
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Despite having romantic relationships outside the house, both Priyank and Benaf have been flirting with each other. And they did the same in the Weekend ka Vaar episode as Benaf complimented Priyank's eyes, lips, and dimples, and planted a kiss on his cheek. Hina interrupted their time when she burst in the room teasing the couple by singing a romantic song. Benaf asked her to not sing, while Priyank blushed.
Bandgi breaks down while speaking with Salman
Bandgi slammed Priyank for discussing her relationship with former boyfriend Dennis Nagpal. She confessed that she has feelings for Puneesh, and that Dennis was a man who was willing to 'share' her with his friends. After making this shocking revelation, Bandgi broke down, and asked Salman to warn Priyank about discussing private matters on the show.
Salman warns Bandgi and Puneesh about getting intimate on the show
While discussing Bandgi's issue with Priyank, Salman warned Bandgi and Puneesh to not get overboard with their romance on national television, telling them that the entire nation is watching them, including their parents.
Salman thinks Hina instigates everyone to fight
The host said that while watching the earlier episodes of the show, he has come to the conclusion that Hina "Aag mein ghee dalti hai." A confused Hina said that she has never done anything of the sort. And the contestants were surprised when the host took Arshi's side twice and told Hina to try and solve fights, and not get mixed up in them.
Kapil Sharma's fun time inside the house
Comedy king Kapil Sharma, who entered the Bigg Boss house to promote his upcoming movie Firangi, played a game with the participants as he asked the contestants to hit an effigy of the housemate they dislike the most. Arshi kicked Hina, while Akash hit Priyank.
The show ended with Salman announcing that two contestants will get evicted in Sunday's episode.
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Gurugram, Nov 12 : A heritage steam engine named 'Akbar', which has featured in over two dozen Bollywood and other movies, was damaged in a derailment after it ran without a pilot in Haryana's Rewari, a railway official said on Sunday.
The incident occurred at the Heritage Loco Shed in Rewari on Saturday. No one was injured in the episode, said railway officials.
As the 52-year-old Akbar started moving on its own, scared loco pilot Bharatbhushan jumped off as he believed there was a malfunction.
The engine broke the main gate wall of the shed and rolled on for about 2 kilometres towards the main track of the Rewari-Rohtak-Hisar route, before getting derailed just four metres away from it.
"Akbar was brought out of the shed for a trial on Saturday afternoon, two hours before a scheduled inspection by the Executive Director and his team in the day," said a loco official.
But as Bharatbhushan switched on the ignition, the engine started moving on the tracks on its own.
Bharatbhushan said he had only switched on the ignition and had not pressed the accelerator.
But "it suddenly became uncontrollable and started running on the tracks at a notable speed. I got scared and jumped off the engine. It continued the run for about nearly five minutes, covering around 2 kilometers without me.
"Akbar (WP 1761) has suffered a lot of damage. A crane was called from Delhi to put it back on the tracks," he added.
The engine was inducted in 1965 after being manufactured at the Chittaranjan locomotive factory in Bengal.
It has featured in Sunny Deol's "Gadar: Ek Prem Katha", Salman Khan's "Sultan", "Bhaag Milkha Bhaag", "Rang De Basanti", "Gandhi My Father", "Gangs of Wasseypur", "Qarib Qarib Singlle", Malayalam movie "Pranayam", Tamil movie "Vijay 60", "Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose: The Forgotten Hero" and some documentaries, an official told IANS, adding it earned the railways lakhs of rupees per hour during film shootings.
"A large sum of money is spent on its maintenance every year. Now repairs may require a lot more money," he added.
New Delhi, Nov 12 : Despite a temporary economic slowdown post implementation of the Goods and Services Tax (GST) in July, India is poised on the threshold of sustainable growth, industry chamber Assocham said on Sunday citing its latest report.
"There has been a temporary slowdown even though government has ideated and implemented a number of initiatives to improve business conduciveness," an Assocham release said here citing its joint study with EY.
"But a consensus view is that India is poised towards a sustainable growth in the near future," the report titled 'Ideate, Innovate, Implement: Invest in India,' said.
'
The report said that GST will have a significant impact on all aspects of business operating in the country, including supply chain, sourcing and distribution decisions, inventory costs and cash flows, pricing policy, accounting and transactions management.
It also said that GST will have an impact on prices agreed for contracts entered under the pre-GST regime and proposed to be executed either partly or completely under the GST regime.
"Also, introduction of GST should entail a reduction in overall process on account of reduced tax costs," the report added."
Highlighting that a complex legal framework makes investors wary of investing in an otherwise promising market, the study suggested that government urgently carry out effective judicial reforms.
Making the biggest revamp of the new indirect tax rate structure the GST Council on Friday decided to slash tax slabs of 178 items from 28 per cent to 18 per cent, leaving only 50 items, including sin and luxury goods, in the highest bracket.
West Bengal Finance Minister Amit Mitra earlier told reporters on the sidelines of the Council meeting held in Guwahati that the loss on account of a "hasty and ill-designed" GST had resulted in the exchequer losing around Rs 60,000 crore for the Centre and Rs 30,000 crore for the states in just the first three months.
Finance Minister Arun Jaitley revealed to reporters that the GST collections in the first three months had been in the range of Rs 93,000-Rs 95,000 crore per month.
Bhopal, Nov 12 : Congress candidate Nilanshu Chaturvedi was on Sunday declared elected to the Madhya Pradesh Assembly from Chitrakoot constituency, defeating his BJP rival by 14,133 votes.
Chaturvedi led right from the start of vote count at 8 a.m. and kept increasing his winning lead, officials said. After 19 rounds of counting, he worsted the Bharatiya Janata Party's Shankar Dayal Tripathi.
According to a statement from the office of the chief electoral officer here, Chaturvedi received 66,810 votes and his BJP rival 52,677 out of the 126,903 votes declared valid.
It said that by the end of the fifth round, Chaturvedi had established a lead of over 10,000 votes over Tripathi and at the end of the tenth, was ahead by 17,959. However, Tripathi then rallied and by the end, had shrunk the lead to 14,133.
The election to the constituency in Satna district was called after the death of sitting Congress legislator Prem Singh. A total of 12 candidates were in the fray including nine independents.
In New Delhi, Congress spokesperson Randeep Singh Surjewala termed his party's victory in the bypoll an indication of change, and thanked the people for their faith in the party.
"The winds of change are in the air. Many thanks to the people of Chitrakoot for their faith and trust in the Congress party," Surjewala tweeted.
Bonn, Nov 12 : With forests equal to the size of New Zealand having disappeared last year, new action from countries and corporations to cut emissions from forest use and establish sustainable forestry management featured at the ongoing UN Climate Change negotiations here on Sunday.
Initiatives from South America's Ecuador, Africa's Gabon, Walmart and Mars Inc were welcomed by delegates at the Forests Global Climate Action day at the Climate Change Conference named COP23.
"These ecosystems are high on the agenda for Small Island Developing States because we are among the most vulnerable nations to the impacts of climate change," said Fiji's Economy and Climate Change Minister Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum, whose country holds this year's presidency of the conference.
"While important progress has been made in protecting these ecosystems to enhance our resilience to a changing climate, we need all countries to make forest protection and rehabilitation and the financing of all forest ecosystems a priority. In particular, we need to create real incentives to attract both public and private finance to delivering nature-based solutions," he said.
Two years after the world united around the Paris Agreement and a year after its entry into force, the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change's (UNFCCC) 197 parties have been reconvened for the 23rd annual climate change talks in Bonn till November 17.
The Bonn talks, which began on November 6, are expected to take a number of decisions necessary to bring the Paris Agreement to life, including meaningful progress on the agreement implementation guidelines, to achieve a goal to cut greenhouse gases from burning fossil fuels.
The new actions to cut emissions from forest use included an Ecuadorean initiative to reduce 15 million tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions in the forest sector, launched by Maria Victoria Chiriboga, Ecuador's Under Secretary of Climate Change.
A commitment to deforestation-free commodities by Laura Phillips of Walmart's Senior Vice President of Sustainability.
Mars Inc's new policy to reduce their carbon footprint 27 per cent by 2025 and 67 per cent by 2050 by addressing deforestation throughout their corporate value chain was presented by Kevin Rabinovitch, Global Vice President of Sustainability.
Lee White, Director of Gabon's National Park Service, described efforts to halt an illegal logging operation that will stop the emission of 20 million tonnes of carbon dioxide.
Sustaining and increasing forests is vital to get on track in time to meet the Paris Climate Change Agreement's goal, which is to keep the average global temperature rise well below two degrees Celsius and as close to 1.5 degrees as possible.
The maths of climate science show that meeting this goal is impossible without nurturing forests, which from the atmosphere's point of view are a massive sink of carbon, locked up in trees, plants and the soil, and a source of oxygen through photosynthesis.
But destructive, often illegal, logging and deforestation continues. Last year, forests equal to the size of New Zealand disappeared.
"Our planet's forests are being decimated at an alarming rate. Putting a stop to this destruction is crucial to tackling climate change, reducing poverty and feeding a growing global population, in line with the Paris Agreement and the Sustainable Development Goals," said Director General of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Inger Andersen.
"Nature-based solutions such as protecting and restoring forests can contribute over one-third of the total climate change mitigation required by 2030 to keep the temperature rise below two degrees Celsius. More decisive, collective action is now needed to seize this opportunity," he added.
(Vishal Gulati is in Bonn at the invitation of the Global Editors Network to cover COP23. He can be contacted at vishal.g@ians.in)
Gurugram, Nov 12 : It is the Indian taxpayer who will foot the bill for the banks' recent recapitalisation plan and the state-run lenders cannot expect to get easy money in this manner, the government said on Sunday.
Briefing reporters here following the "PSB Manthan" brainstorming event of Finance Minister Arun Jaitley with senior officials of public sector banks (PSBs) and financial institutions, Financial Services Secretary Rajiv Kumar said Jaitley told the meeting that the government had decided to put in more capital from the Budget, through bonds and banks' equity expansion and it is, thus, the country which is virtually going to pay to keep the banking system in good health.
"Everything is linked to the reforms which each board will consider within a short time as to what kind of business and how they want to go ahead. Its not easy money which is going to come, that is the main point. It has to be followed with a whole lot of reforms," Kumar said.
In a stimulus package aimed to boost flagging economic growth, create jobs and increase credit flow, the cabinet last month approved a Rs 2.11 lakh crore recapitalisation plan for state-run banks and massive road infrastructure investment of nearly Rs 7 lakh crore over five years.
Of the support to banks, Rs 1.35 lakh crore will be raised through recapitalisation bonds and the remaining sum through budgetary support and market borrowings.
Announcing the package here, Jaitley said the details of the reform measures for the public sector banks would be unveiled at a later date.
Chief Economic Advisor Arvind Subranmanian clarified that the recapitalisation bonds would count as debt, while their exact nature would be made available in due course.
Kumar said the reforms also include bank boards coming up with a clear plan on consolidation.
He also said the Rs 1.35-lakh crore recapitalisation bonds will be "front-loaded", that is most of it would happen in the current fiscal and the contours of the bonds are being decided by the Finance Minister.
Kumar added that Sunday's discussions centred around reforms, including strengthening of bank boards and resolution of non-performing assets (NPAs), or bad loans.
Accumulated NPAs of state-run banks have increased to Rs 7.33 lakh crore as at the end of June 2017.
Bhopal, Nov 12 : Congress candidate Nilanshu Chaturvedi was on Sunday declared elected to the Madhya Pradesh Assembly from Chitrakoot constituency, defeating his BJP rival by 14,133 votes.
The Congress hailed the victory as an "indication of change", Samajwadi Party President Akhilesh Yadav termed it a sign of increasing distrust and resistance of people in the BJP, while Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan accepted the result as the people's mandate.
Chaturvedi led right from the start of vote count at 8 a.m. and kept increasing his winning lead, officials said. After 19 rounds of counting, he worsted the Bharatiya Janata Party's Shankar Dayal Tripathi.
According to a statement from the office of the chief electoral officer here, Chaturvedi received 66,810 votes and his BJP rival 52,677 out of the 126,903 votes declared valid.
It said that by the end of the fifth round, Chaturvedi had established a lead of over 10,000 votes over Tripathi and at the end of the tenth, was ahead by 17,959. However, Tripathi then rallied and by the end, had shrunk the lead to 14,133.
The election to the constituency in Satna district was called after the death of sitting Congress legislator Prem Singh. A total of 12 candidates were in the fray including nine independents.
Chouhan said, in a tweet, that he accepted the result as the people's mandate was the real basis of democracy. Thanking the people for their support, he said development works in the area would continue unabated.
Congress spokesperson Randeep Singh Surjewala tweeted: "The winds of change are in the air. Many thanks to the people of Chitrakoot for their faith and trust in the Congress party."
In his reaction, Akhilesh Yadav said the aftermath of this would be seen in the Gujarat polls too.
"Defeat of BJP in Chitrakoot assembly bypoll is showing the direction of wind. People now have understand the reality of GST and demonetisation. The result is a sign of increasing distrust and resistance of people towards BJP. Now, wind of BJP's defeat will reach Gujarat too," he said in a tweet.
New York, Nov 12 : An Indian-American teenager has been killed in a road rage incident when a driver ran his truck over her after a minor collision in the city's suburb of Levittown, according to media reports.
On Sunday, police in Nassau County adjoining New York City were looking for the driver who allegedly attacked dental student Taranjit Parmar, 18, on Thursday.
WPIX TV reported that police told the family that the pickup truck's license plate could not be seen on a surveillance video of the incident. Police released the video and asked the public to help find him.
Parmar's brand new jeep was hit by a red pickup truck that was attempting to make a turn, the station quoted police as saying.
The two vehicles then pulled off the roadway and when Parmar got out got out the jeep, the truck, the driver mowed her down and drove away, according to police.
Parmar suffered fatal injuries to her chest and head.
Her tearful father, Ranjit Parmar, told the station: "She bore all the responsibility to carry the family, carry her education. I always told everybody who would listen to me, if you're going to have a daughter, this is the one."
Bhubaneswar, Nov 12 : Union Minister of State for Agriculture Gajendra Singh Shekhawat visited Odisha on Sunday to assess the drought situation and pest menace, sparking a war of words between him and the Biju Janata Dal state government.
While Odisha Agriculture Minister Damodar Rout accused the Central government of infringing into the state government's rights, Shekhawat said there is no need for discussion with it on farmers' problems as the Centre is committed and answerable to the people of the country.
Rout said even though agriculture is a state subject, the Union Minister has visited the state without taking the state government into confidence.
"There is no problem in the visit of a Union Minister. But, Centre sends a team to analyse crop loss on the state's request," he said Rout also blamed Shekhawat of "campaigning for the BJP on public funds" and contended that while the state government is taking all possible steps for farmers' benefit, the Central government is not cooperating.
In response, Shekhawat said it is the duty of the Union government to address the farmers' issue.
"Farmers of 14 districts are now facing drought and pest menace in Odisha. It is the duty of the Union government to address the farmers' issue and for that we do not need the permission of the state government," he said.
He, however, assured to solve the farmer's issue in cooperation with the state government.
Shekhawat also held a review meeting with state government officials over the drought and pest attack situations, where the state urged him to hike agriculture input subsidy by 50 per cent to affected farmers.
"Presently, affected farmers are getting compensation of Rs 6,800 per hectare in rain-fed areas. We requested him to raise this amount by at least 50 per cent. Since we are following Government of India guidelines this can be changed by them," said Special Relief Commissioner Bishnupada Sethi.
Shekhawat, along with a Central team, is on a two-day visit to the state
Manila, Nov 12 : Prime Minister Narendra Modi interacted with world leaders, including US President Donald Trump, Chinese Premier Li Keqiang and Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, at a gala dinner reception hosted by Filipino President Rodrigo Duterte here on Sunday ahead of this year's India-Asean and East Asia Summits.
In a tweet attached with a picture, External Affairs Ministry spokesperson Raveesh Kumar said Modi spoke to Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak and Chinese Premier Li at the gala dinner to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the formation of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) here.
Kumar said that Modi engaged in a "warm and cordial conversation" with Li.
"Engaging conversation with a friend. PM @narendramodi with Dmitry Medvedev, Prime Minister of Russia at the Gala Dinner #Manila," he said in a separate tweet.
Another tweet by Modi showed him smiling warmly and shaking hands with President Trump.
Modi arrived here earlier on Sunday on a three-day visit to the Philippines to attend the 15th India-Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) and the 12th East Asia summits to be held here on Tuesday.
This is the first Prime Ministerial visit from India to the Philippines in 36 years since the visit of Indira Gandhi in 1981.
This year marks the 25th year of the India-Asean dialogue partnership and the golden jubilee of the formation of the Asean regional bloc.
The Association of South East Asian Nations (Asean) comprises Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.
Ahead of the summits, Modi will hold a bilateral meeting with Duterte here on Monday. He is also scheduled to hold a bilateral meeting with Trump on Monday.
Similar meetings between Modi and other visiting leaders are also being arranged on the sidelines of the summits.
Kolkata, Nov 12 : Seeking steps from the Centre to combat the "dengue epidemic" in West Bengal, BJP's state President Dilip Ghosh has written to Union Health Minister J.P. Nadda, alleging that test kits were being smuggled out to private health centres due to "corruption of the ruling party".
"There is also huge shortage of dengue test kits in government hospitals. The kits are being smuggled out to private nursing homes and hospitals and the poor are advised to get tested in those private health centres at exorbitant costs. This practice is going on due to corruption of the ruling party," Ghosh said in the letter.
According to the letter, the estimated dengue cases so far have "crossed 50,000", although the government only "accepted a meagre number of 18,000 of those diagnosed as dengue virus infected" and declared that 34 persons have died to date, out of which only 18 were confirmed dengue cases.
Ghosh also alleged that the state health system had completely "broken down" and was unable to combat this manace and the danger from this epidemic had become more "acute" since the "state government is not ready to accept the enormity of the crisis".
Highlighting the "pathetic attitude" of the National Institute of Cholera and Enteric Disease (NICED) in Beliaghata here, he said the institute was not taking any pro-active initiatives, instead it was "taking cue from the state Health Department and acting on their behalf to subvert the ground reality".
He also mentioned that the state government had created a huge fear psychosis among the doctors and they are "unwilling to even issue death certificates of dengue deaths".
By India Today Web Desk: Bigg Boss 11 is being watched by many people, including some of the biggest names in Indian television industry. From former contestants to actors, the show has caught everyone's attention. The latest one to binge-watch all the episodes of the reality show is Yeh Hai Mohabbatein star Anita Hassanandani.
Yes, you read that right. The actress revealed in a recent Twitter post that she has finally completed watching all the episodes of BB 11, and finds Shilpa Shinde and Vikas Gupta quite likeable. However, the actress said that Season 11 is probably the most fake season in the history of the show.
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Wow, now that is a strong opinion.
Here's the actress' post:
So finally caught all the episodes of #BB11 ... Fakest season ever!!! Specially d romance. And ShilpaVikas r super likeable ??????- Anita Hassanandani (@anitahasnandani) November 10, 2017
Anita had appeared in the introduction of the show in a video, where she was seen supporting producer Vikas Gupta.
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Srinagar, Nov 12 : Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti on Sunday requested Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman to get state lands, which are no longer required by the army, vacated.
The Defence Minister arrived here on Sunday afternoon and proceeded directly to south Kashmir's Pahalgam tourist resort to attend the executive council meeting of Jawahar Institute of Mountaineering and Winter Sports.
Mufti met Sitharaman in Pahalgam and discussed several issues with her, officials said here.
Mufti sought intervention of the Defence Minister for the return of state lands no longer required for operational purposes by the army.
The Chief Minister brought several issues pertaining to defence to the union minister's notice.
"The Chief Minister also pressed for speeding up of cases of revision and payment of rent in respect of the land owners of Anantnag, whose land is being used by the army. The Defence minister assured the Chief Minister to look into the issue of revision and payment of rent to the land owners of Anantnag," an official said.
Sitharaman regretted the delay and inconvenience caused all these years to the land owners who had not been paid rent so far, he said.
"She said that it was only during her first meeting with the Chief Minister recently that her attention was drawn towards this issue.
"A delegation of land owners also met the Defence Minister and she assured the delegation that she would try to fast-track their cases of rent payment and revision,", the official added.
London, Nov 13 : West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Sunday unveiled a Blue Plaque to commemorate the 150th birth anniversary of the Scots-Irish social worker Sister Nivedita at her family home here.
Banerjee was the chief guest at the programme organised by the British government at the 21, High Street, address to honour the disciple of Swami Vivekananda.
The London blue plaques scheme run by English Heritage links the people of the past with the buildings of the present.
Speaking on the occasion, Banerjee said she felt privileged and honoured to attend the programme.
"There is an emotional and cultural relation between India and Britain. Calcutta (now Kolkata) was India's capital for long years when you (the British) ruled us. Calcutta is the cultural capital of India. There is a deep emotional and cultural bond between London and Kolkata," Banerjee said.
Ramakrishna Math and Ramakrishna Mission Vice President Swami Suhitananda, Indian Deputy High Commissioner in London Dinesh Patnaik were among those present on the occasion.
Sister Nivedita met Swami Vivekananda in 1895 in London and travelled to Calcutta (now Kolkata) in 1898.
Swami Vivekananda gave her the name Nivedita (meaning 'Dedicated to God') when he initiated her into the vow of Brahmacharya on 25 March 1898.
Los Angeles, Nov 13 : Actress-model Olivia Culpo says her guilty pleasure is fried chicken butter biscuit sandwich, which is a concoction that her beau Danny Amendola introduced her to.
"I love this one guilty pleasure my boyfriend has made for me before. It's fried chicken cutlets with honey mustard and then jalapeno and they're between two butter biscuits - like a sandwich - a fried chicken butter biscuit sandwich. It's so good," Culpo told people.com.
But when she is eating clean she will enjoy eggs, turkey bacon and quinoa, although she may swap one ingredient with multigrain bread, or she will opt for a nutritious smoothie bowl.
She said: "That's one of my favourites or I have it with multigrain bread. For breakfast, I love making smoothie bowls. There's so many different ingredients you can use.
"Basically you would take everything you would put into a smoothie but you can make it a little bit more firm by using frozen bananas, frozen fruit and extra ice, and you put it into a bowl.
Baghdad, Nov 13 : An earthquake measuring 7.2 on the Richter scale hit has Iraq's Sulaimaniyah province, killing four persons and injuring 50 others, the media reported.
The epicentre of the earthquake on Sunday was 32 km southwest of the Halabja area near the Iranian border at the depth of 33.9 km, according to the US Geological Survey (USGS), Xinhua news agency reported.
The earthquake was felt in many Iraqi provinces in the north and central regions, including the Iraqi capital Baghdad, witnesses said.
Most casualties occurred in the town of Darbandikhan, around 35 km from the city of Sulaimaniyah.
The casualties in Darbandikhan could rise as some houses have collapsed and it is not clear yet whether there were people buried under the debris, Nasih Mala Hassan, Mayor of Darbandikhan, was quoted as saying.
Iraqi Minister of Water Resources warned the people down the Darbandikhan Dam to be in highest alert as the condition of the dam is not clear.
In Erbil, the capital of the semi-autonomous Kurdish region, dozens of people were taken to hospitals. Some were treated from injuries and others fainted or shocked, said the online newsite.
Many of the injured in Erbil were students who live in dormitories, the health department was quoted as saying.
Saad Maan, spokesman of the Iraqi Interior Ministry, told reporters that cracks appeared in some buildings in central Baghdad, while an old house was seriously damaged.
In Iraq's eastern province of Diyala, five people were wounded in the city of Khanaqin, some 165 km from Baghdad, due to the collapse of their houses and shops, Head of the City Hall Samir Mohammed Noor told Xinhua.
Faris al-Azzawi, head of Diyala's provincial health department, told Xinhua that at least 140 people fainted due to the earthquake and were sent to hospital, but no casualties were reported so far from the collapse of some houses and buildings.
InventHelp
Two inventors from Converse, Texas, who are interested in hunting, were dissatisfied with the quality and effectiveness of conventional game animal feeders. So they decided to improve the design with additional features.
They developed the patent-pending ELUSIVE FEEDERS to better control the feeding habits of game animals at remote hunting locations. As such, it attracts deer and other game and encourages them to return to the same area. At the same time, it allows the hunter to monitor game activity at the feeder and improves the chances of a successful shot, especially at night. Whats more, it prevents the waste of feed intended for deer or other game, saving the time and effort otherwise needed to replace the lost feed. Also, this innovative feeder increases quality visibility at night for more effective night hunting, and it's designed for cost efficiency, reliability, durability and ease of use. In addition, it is convenient, effective, low maintenance and affordably priced.
The inventors personal experience inspired the idea. I got tired of buying everything individually for my feeder setup when I prepared for a hunting trip, one of them said, especially when I found what I bought to be inferior products.
The original design was submitted to the Austin office of InventHelp. It is currently available for licensing or sale to manufacturers or marketers. For more information, write Dept. 16-AUP-815, InventHelp, 217 Ninth Street, Pittsburgh, PA 15222, or call (412) 288-1300 ext. 1368. Learn more about InventHelp's Invention Submission Services at http://www.InventHelp.com. - [https://www.youtube.com/user/inventhelp
The event will serve as a one-stop option for students, parents and community members who have questions or are interested in attending Kalamazoo Valley
Art, Detective Fiction and the History of Rock and Roll are just a few of the many hundreds of courses available for the Winter 2018 semester at Kalamazoo Valley.
Help registering for classes is one of the many services that will be available at the Get it Done Get Ready for the Winter Semester event held at Kalamazoo Valley Community Colleges Texas Township Campus Nov. 29 from 4 7 p.m. in the Student Commons.
The event will serve as a one-stop option for students, parents and community members who have questions or are interested in attending Kalamazoo Valley. Representatives from the Financial Aid Office, Office for Enrollment Management, the Admissions, Registration and Records Office, Student Activities and Organizations and Student Success Services will be on hand to assist those in attendance. Academic deans and faculty members also will be present.
Kalamazoo Valley offers a wide variety of programs in a number of different career pathways. These programs will be on display at our November 29 event with academic deans and a number of faculty on hand to answer specific questions you may have, said Executive Vice President for Instructional and Student Success Services Dr. Dennis A. Bertch. Take advantage of this opportunity to learn more about the services and programs of study available at Kalamazoo Valley.
Additionally, attendees at the Nov. 29 event can complete a number of the necessary steps to becoming a Kalamazoo Valley student, including: touring the Texas Township Campus, completing placement tests, talking to an academic advisor or counselor, registering for New Student Orientation and enrolling for the winter semester, which begins Jan. 8. If available, participants should bring any educational documents, including high school and college transcripts and placement test scores to ensure proper course placement.
For more information about this event and how to apply to the college and register for classes visit http://www.kvcc.edu/getitdone. The event is free and open to the community.
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By PTI: Kolkata, Nov 10 (PTI) West Bengal Home Secretary Atri Bhattacharya today said the Bishwa Bangla brand and logo are registered in the name of the state government for use in many capacities.
The Bishwa Bangla brand and the logo were created by Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee and she has given them to the state government on her own, Bhattacharya told reporters.
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His statement came in the wake of newly-inducted BJP leader Mukul Roys claim that Bishwa Bangla is not a government entity but a private company owned by Abhiskeh Banerjee, nephew of Mamata Banerjee.
"This (Roys claim) is absolutely wrong and baseless. It does not belong to anybody and nobody holds any copyright over it," Bhattacharya said.
In fact, the state government has initiated legal action against one individual for "misusing" the Bishwa Bangla brand and logo last week, he said. PTI SCH PNT SUN NN
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Former FBI director James Comey tweeted out two quotes about truth and justice after President Donald Trump attacked him Saturday morning and again cast doubt on the intelligence community's assessment that Russia interfered in the 2016 election.
Trump said he believed Russian President Vladimir Putin when he said he did not order Russia's election meddling. Trump also lashed out at Comey, along with former CIA director John Brennan and former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, calling them "political hacks." All the men have consistently emphasized that Russia mounted an elaborate campaign to undermine the election and to propel Trump to victory.
"'If you want truth to go round the world you must hire an express train to pul it; but if you want a lie to go round the world, it will fly; it is light as a feather and a breath will carry it,'" Comey tweeted after the president criticized him, quoting an 1855 sermon from the Rev. Charles Haddon Spurgeon.
The movie star covered the pages of lifestyle and fashion news platform, Wow Magazine, where she shared details about her past relationship with men which led her to make some unique decisions which will cause one to raise a brow.
Having a baby was an ambition she had been nursing since she clocked 29, but that hardly provided the needed motivation to accept the proposal of a man who wanted her to relocate to London, England.
Despite her desire to get hitched at the time, she could not fathom having to make such change all because of a man.
A few years down the line, she has a protruding belly as a result of her pregnancy just like she had been anticipating, but marriage is not on her list of offers. According to the actress, finding someone with an assurance of happiness is what really counts.
Getting a ring on one's finger is only just a physical activity and does not guarantee fulfillment, she submitted.
After confirming that she was knocked up, the major challenge for Nelson seemed to be how she to disclose the news of her pregnancy to her traditional mother who was first shocked by the idea but has now proved to be quite supportive.
The Kennis Music label executive thinks nothing positive can result from the current state of rancour between the pair who already recorded over a 100 songs together.
He lamented over the belligerent nature of Nigerian music stars who often let issues aggravate due to their enormous pride. Ogungbe thinks such instance applies to the twin who reportedly put up a shared property for sale.
The fighting between the P-Square will not bring out anything good; they are brothers and have produced over 100 songs, but they are fighting, it is going to affect their music.
I dont care about what anybody says, it is a bad development for them; they should settle whatever they have against each other.
Most Nigerian musicians are very pompous and have no respect; they derive pleasure in fighting which always lead to their downfall.
For me, I want all Nigerian musicians to be successful, that is what I want and pray for. They should succeed," Ogungbe told the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in a chat "on the sidelines of the All Africa Music Awards (AFRIMA) 2017 in Lagos."
ALSO READ: Kenny Ogungbe considers beef between pop duo a publicity stunt
This is following an earlier submission by the media personality who initially claimed that their altercation was a P.R stunt but the latest development has revealed that to be unlikely.
READ MORE: Good news for Barbara Mahama as Parliament passes trust fund bill
The Defence Minister Dominic Nitiwul first laid the bill in the house on Tuesday, 24 October.
This was to fulfil the promise made by President Nana Akufo-Addo's after Barbaras husband was lynched by a mob in Denkyira-Obuasi now New Oboase.
It is a tough call but my advice is that you [Akufo-Addo] should not give assent to the Major Mahama Trust Fund Bill. Rather, you should return it to Parliament for it to be replaced by a comprehensive Bill that provides timely, predictable and easy to access benefits to the families of ALL SECURITY PERSONNEL who pay the ultimate price while serving the nation, Prof. Asare advised in a Facebook post.
Discriminatory
According to him, the "Major Mahama Bill flouts the principles of generality and non-discrimination and cannot withstand constitutional scrutiny."
Adding that: "The bill targets Major Mahama and appears to ignore other security personnel we have lost in the past. It is a cardinal principle of the rule of law that laws must apply to broad categories of people and must not single out individuals or groups for special treatment.
"The power of parliament to isolate people for rewards, punishment or different treatment is dangerous and must not be countenanced in this Republic. We must not traverse that path."
He said even though the Bill is well intentioned, it sets a very bad precedent.
"It treats equally situated persons differently; it creates bitterness for families in similar situations who are hardly recognized; and it affects the collective morale of service personnel," he said.
He, therefore, charged the President to "seize this opportunity to reiterate your commitment to the rule of law, which requires that our laws conform to the generality principle and are not discriminatory."
Major Mahama was the commander of a military detachment stationed at Diaso in the Upper Denkyira West District of the Central Region to check the activities of illegal miners, popularly known as galamseyers.
Some residents of then Denkyira-Obuasi lynched him on suspicion that he was an armed robber.
READ MORE: NDC MP demands release of Kwesi Botchwey report
Recent development in the National Democratic Congress (NDC) points to a Mahama come back.
Speaking on moves by Mahama surrogates, especially the endorsement of his candidature by the party's 10 regional chairmen, Abronye DC said the New Patriotic Party (NDC) is not sacred of Mr Mahama, saying he will be defeated in the 2020 election.
He catalogued series of unpopular decision the ex-President took while in office, wondering what his come back will mean to Ghanaians.
He accused Mr Mahama of cancelling the nursing and teacher training allowance, leaving behind huge debt in the energy sector and failing to meet statutory payments such as the National Health Insurance Scheme and the School Feeding Grant.
He said: "As the immediate past president of the Republic of Ghana, you couldn't get money to settle energy debt, NHIS, Feeding grant for SHS and colleges of Education, canceled the nurses and Teachers allowances, left behind 27 000, nurses at the hook.
READ MORE: NDC MPs blast regional chairmen for endorsing Mahama
Bawumia in response asked the former president to refrain from propaganda saying, Mahama, while in office, engaged in propaganda which did not inure to his benefit and so wondered why he would still be wallowing in it while in opposition.
READ MORE: Bawumia urges Mahama to refrain from propaganda
Addressing the National Democratic Congress(NDC) Unity walk in Cape Coast in the Central Region last week Sunday, Mahama said new governments, all over the world, are often given honeymoon periods to roll out their policies.
However, he said the Akufo-Addo administration is committing so many mistakes and that the President is not acting boldly to correct them.
One of such mistakes, the ex-president said, is the launch of the Ghana Post GPS App.
"How can you launch a Google GPS system that is freely available on our mobile phones and say it is a national addressing system," he quizzed, adding: "It is such a pity. Why do you embarrass the President so much?
"You go and bring a whole president to launch a system that is essentially a 419," he noted.
Responding to comments by Mahama, Dr Bawumia said: "We know a 419 scam when we see one and that, unfortunately, was the hallmark of the administration of former president Mahama.
"Ghanaians will find out more soon as people are held legally accountable. With the record that former president Mahama has in the area of governance, it is incredible that he would have the effrontery to talk about '419 scams'...I should note that propaganda did not help former President Mahama when he was in government and it is certainly not going to help him in opposition.
"We welcome constructive criticism but before you criticise, please take your time to make sure you know what you are talking about otherwise you would be sadly exposed as being ignorant of simple facts as in this case."
Ankara blames Gulen's movement for the July 15, 2016 failed coup against Erdogan, and has pressed for his extradition from the United States, where he has lived since 1999.
Gulen, who has a large Turkish following, strongly denies the charges.
"All allegations that Turkey would resort to means external to the rule of law for his extradition are utterly false, ludicrous and groundless", Turkey's embassy in Washington said on Twitter Saturday.
NBC News and the Wall Street Journal said Friday that US special prosecutor Robert Mueller is examining a meeting Flynn had with senior Turkish officials weeks after Donald Trump won the presidential race last year.
The meeting allegedly discussed a secret payout of up to $15 million dollars if, once in office, Flynn would engineer the deportation to Turkey of Gulen as well as help free Erdogan-linked Iranian-Turkish businessman Reza Zarrab from prison.
NBC and the Journal both cited multiple people familiar with the probe by Mueller, who is leading the investigation into whether members of Trump's campaign colluded with Russian meddling in the election.
The Journal said it is not clear how far the proposal went and that there was no sign that any payments were made.
Lawyers for Flynn have labelled the allegations "outrageous" and "false".
An autopsy concluded the Dutch expatriate had been murdered, said policeman Aris Purwanto, the region's criminal investigative chief.
"He had injuries to the left of his head," he told AFP, adding that the perpetrator had used a steel object.
Two suspects have been detained in connection with the crime, Purwanto said, without providing names.
Police believe there was a monetary motive for killing Gilhooad, a long-term Bali resident who lived alone.
The murder is the second in as many months in Jimbaran, a fishing village famous for its seafood restaurants.
An elderly Japanese couple were found slashed and burned beyond recognition at their home on September 4.
Referring to the Israeli operation on October 30, he said that Israel "destroyed a terror tunnel in Israeli sovereign territory," which resulted in the death of 12 Palestinian militants from Hamas and Islamic Jihad.
"We are aware of the plot that the Palestinian Islamic Jihad terror group is planning against Israel," said Mordechai, whose defence ministry unit is known as COGAT.
"They are playing with fire at the expense of Gazan residents, the Palestinian reconciliation efforts and the stability of the entire region.
"Let it be clear: Any attack by Islamic Jihad will be met with a harsh and determined Israeli response.
"This will not only apply to Islamic Jihad but also to Hamas," the Islamist movement that runs the Gaza Strip.
Mordechai also addressed the Damascus-based Islamic Jihad leadership, mentioning Ramadan Shalah and Ziad Nakhaleh by name.
He called on them to "take control over the situation," as they are the ones "who will be held accountable" for any attack.
Israel has said it is holding the bodies of five militants retrieved from the tunnel and implied it would try to use them as bargaining chips to retrieve the remains of two Israeli soldiers believed held by Hamas.
Two Israeli civilians, said to be mentally unstable, are also believed to have entered Gaza and to be held by Hamas.
Indirect negotiations led to a 2011 deal which saw Israel release more than 1,000 Palestinian prisoners in exchange for soldier Gilad Shalit, who had been held for five years.
Hamas and Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas's Fatah signed a landmark reconciliation deal on October 12 aiming to end their decade-long split.
With that, we can see that their share in the European landscape has steadily increased and is now anywhere between 42% and 45% of all flights in Europe are with low-cost carriers. And a percentage which is significantly larger than in the US where its about a third.
By PTI: London, Nov 12 (PTI) Had an argument with a friend? Sitting under blue lighting can help you calm down and alleviate such psychosocial stress, scientists claim.
Scientists including those from the University of Granada (UGR) in Spain have proven, by means of an objective evaluation using electrophysiological measurements, that blue lighting accelerates the relaxation process in comparison with conventional white lighting.
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Psychosocial stress is a kind of short-term stress that occurs during social or interpersonal relationships, for example while arguing with a friend or when someone pressures you to finish a certain task as soon as possible.
The researchers note that psychosocial stress produces some physiological responses that can be measured by means of bio-signals. This stress is very common and negatively affects peoples health and quality of life.
For the study published in the journal PLOS One, the researchers induced stress in twelve volunteers using MIST - a well-described method to cause stress in humans.
The session elicited a uniform level of stress in all participants. After a training period of three minutes, the MIST lasted six minutes.
Participants lay down in a room with no stimulus but either a blue or white lighting.
Diverse bio-signals, such as heart rate and brain activity, were measured throughout the whole session using an electrocardiogram and an electroencephalogram, respectively.
The results showed that blue lighting accelerates the relaxation process, in comparison with conventional white lighting. PTI MHN MHN
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By the time Larry Krasner entered the William Way LGBT Center in Philadelphia Tuesday night, his victory party had already become something like a family reunion.
The ballroom was packed, sweaty with supporters. Dotted around the room were the local activists who led canvassing efforts that helped drive the civil-rights attorney to a landslide victory in the Philadelphia district attorneys race.
"This is not another story about kings and queens. This is a story about a movement," Krasner told the ecstatic crowd. "This is what a movement looks like."
Talking with activists in the city, there is a clear sense that his victory is theirs. And the path to that victory began with the election of President Donald Trump last November.
I cant sit on the sidelines anymore.'
Like it was for most liberal cities in America, the day after last years presidential election was dispiriting in Philadelphia.
Rick Krajewski, a software developer, woke up every day with a sense of dread.
Philadelphia's activists and organizers create 'a united front'
Service Employees International Union and UNITE HERE! efforts to unionize airport workers and raise their wages in 2011. And Holston and his fellow pastors had worked with more than a dozen groups, including the teachers union, the Media Mobilizing Project, and 215 People's Alliance, on a long-running campaign to raise school funding and retake control of the citys school system. (It has been under state control since 2001.)
who helped found 215PA and was at the meeting. "We're representing the same kind of folks and we need to build together."
the Martin Luther King DARE Table, named after a landmark 2015 post-Ferguson march led by POWER that many consider "the birth of the citys modern justice movement."
"If the president wants to take credit for a victory, he can take take credit for bringing all of us together,"Mark Tyler, a pastor at Philadelphias Mother Bethel AME Church and a founding member of POWER, told Business Insider.
A surprise turned an accountability campaign into a wide-open race
Making Krasner a viable candidate took a massive canvassing operation
"Do you feel safe in your neighborhood? Has anyone in your family suffered from opioid addiction?"
Reclaim and 215PA were far from the only ones in the field
ACLU Pennsylvania launched a Smart Justice campaign in the final month of the primary, sending formerly incarcerated individuals to canvass 10,000 of its members about issues in the campaign important to them, like cash bail reform and mandatory minimum sentences.
The Working Families Party ran its own independent canvassing operation, talking to 21,000 voters in the spring.
POWER's Action Program, through a national affiliate, launched a phone-banking effort to talk to low-frequency African American voters about why the race was so important; they reached more than 16,000 people.
"Voters are not apathetic or low frequency," said Holston. "They are only that way because we fail to make the link between why your vote makes a difference and the vote thats being voted over."
A debate in April showed how much the DA's race had changed
By mid-April, Krasner was neck-and-neck with Khan, the establishment frontrunner, and steadily gaining ground as canvassing efforts ramped up.
Then came the Decarcerate DA forum.
The new tenor of the race became apparent at the forum, which was organized by the Coalition for a Just DA. More than 500 people filled the Arch Street United Methodist Church, a landmark center of activism in the city, to hear what the candidates had to say. Only one Democratic candidate didnt attend.
Clarise McCants, who helped organize the forum and has worked on numerous DA races as COC's criminal justice campaign director, said the energy was something she "hadnt seen before."
Residents who had been directly affected by DA policies showed up and asked questions. A man held in jail for a year because he could not post bail asked about cash bail reform. A Hispanic woman asked candidates how they would've handled a situation involving her mentally ill son who was detained by Immigrations and Customs Enforcement.
The forum ended with a series of yes-or-no questions on specific policies. Many in the city say that was the moment it became apparent who would commit to the reforms progressives wanted and who wouldnt.
"You could see the looks on their faces like, 'I have to get this right,'" said McCants. "That was exciting. They felt accountable to us."
Then came the air support.
The 'Soros money' takes the race from close to a 'blowout'
As early as December, there had been rumors that a PAC associated with billionaire financier George Soros would be throwing its considerable weight behind a DA candidate.
But when the PACs chosen candidate, Public Defender Association chief Keir Bradford-Grey, declined to run very publicly in January, it was unclear whether the PAC would enter the race. Despite constant rumors that Krasner was their second choice,
Krasner wins a decisive victory twice
Philadelphia's progressive community isn't done organizing
President Donald Trump on Sunday walked back some of his comments about Russian President Vladimir Putin and Russia's interference in the 2016 election.
On Saturday, Trump said that Putin insisted during a meeting on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit that Russia did not interfere in the election, and that he believed the Russian leader meant it.
"He said he didn't meddle. He said he didn't meddle," Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One. "I asked him again. You can only ask so many times. I just asked him again. He said he absolutely did not meddle in our election. He did not do what they are saying he did."
He added that whenever they had met, Putin denied ordering Russia's election meddling. "I believe, I really believe that when he tells me that, he means it," Trump said. "But he says, 'I didn't do that.' I think he is very insulted by it, which is not a good thing for our country."
On Sunday, Fox News Washington correspondent John Roberts asked Trump to clear up his remarks, which had sparked immediate backlash from lawmakers and former intelligence officials.
Roberts told Trump that his remarks were interpreted by some, including Sen. John McCain, "to think that you believe that [Putin] is saying he did not interfere in the election." He then asked Trump to answer definitively with a "yes" or "no" as to whether he believed Putin and Russia meddled in the race.
Trump said he was "surprised" at the blowback his comments had received.
"What I said there is that I believe he believes that," he said, referring to Putin. "And that's very important for someone to believe. I believe that he feels that he and Russia did not meddle in the election."
Trump refused to say whether he believed Russia interfered, but he said he stood with US intelligence agencies, who concluded with high confidence earlier this year that Russia mounted an elaborate and multi-faceted effort to undermine the election and propel Trump to victory, while damaging his opponent, Hillary Clinton.
"As to whether I believe it or not, I am with our agencies, especially as currently constituted with the leadership," Trump said.
Trump fighting with former intelligence officials
On Saturday, Trump blasted three former intelligence officials, all of whom have strongly urged the president to take a harder stance against Russia's aggression toward the US and the West.
Trump called former FBI director James Comey, former CIA director John Brennan, and former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper "political hacks."
"So you look at it, I mean, you have Brennan, you have Clapper, and you have Comey," Trump said. "Comey is proven now to be a liar and he is proven now to be a leaker. So you look at that and you have President Putin very strongly, vehemently says he had nothing to do with them."
On Sunday, the president said that he believed the intelligence agencies as they were currently led, adding that he had "worked with them very strongly."
After, he again downplayed the intelligence community's assessment of Russia's interference and its efforts to help Trump win, referring to the New York Times' and Associated Press' reports that had to be corrected earlier this year to clarify that four agencies, not 17 as was first reported, were involved in compiling a January intelligence report about Russia's meddling.
"There weren't 17 as previously reported there were four," Trump said. "But they were saying there were 17, there were actually four. But as currently led, by fine people, I believe very much in our intelligence agencies."
The four agencies involved in putting together the January report were the CIA, NSA, FBI, and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, which oversees all 17 intelligence agencies. Multiple national security experts have confirmed that whether the report was drawn up by four or 17 agencies is irrelevant.
More importantly, the four that did put together the assessment are, as Brennan noted on Sunday, primarily tasked with counterintelligence and examining the risk Russia poses.
Trump drew additional scrutiny on Saturday, when he asked on Twitter when all the "haters and fools" would realize that having a good relationship with Russia "is a good thing."
"There [sic] always playing politics - bad for our country," Trump said. "I want to solve North Korea, Syria, Ukraine, terrorism, and Russia can greatly help!"
He continued, asking whether the "Fake News Media" remembered "when Crooked Hillary Clinton, as Secretary of State, was begging Russia to be our friend with the misspelled reset button? Obama tried also, but he had zero chemistry with Putin."
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According to the woman Eniola Omoshalewa Eunice, who is now a Realtor, Fabiyi demanded for a sexual favour in exchange for a role in a movie.
She wrote:
"This stupid guy, I remember my encounter with him about 9 years ago wen I was so passionate about acting.
I was happy wen I met him as he promised that he would feature me in a movie that very day. I was so excited, I quickly called my people that I wouldnt be coming home. I dey go location.
Only for him to be telling me that shey I know I cant sleep in a separate room when we get to the location o. At ikorodu. That we have to sleep together and he will have sex with me before he can feature me at all. He say na normal tin for all actresses o. I was so heart broken.
You know what dis guy now did? As I told him I cant do it, he just dropped me along the expressway in the middle of the busy road in Ketu. I cried till I arrived home. My mama just dey console me like baby."
Fabiyii has denied the allegation. He described the events as "pull him down by all mean syndrome," and explained that he didn't own a car nine years ago.
He further blamed "too much CNN" for the sexual harassment allegations against him.
In another Instagram post, Fabiyi offered 20, 000 naira to anyone, who can provide vital information about his accuser.
He also said that the blackmailer is an actress, who created the "fake" account to blackmail him is actually very close to him.
He has promised to call her out soon.
ALSO READ: NICK MUTUMA DENIES SEXUAL HARASSMENT ALLEGATIONS
Nigerian music acts for the fourth time in a row again dominate the West African class of the regional nomination categories of the All African Music Awards (AFRIMA).
Wizkid, Tiwa Savage win at music award ceremony
Wizkid took home two awards. He won the prestigious Artiste of the Year, and also Song of the Year. There were also wins for Tiwa Savage, Simi, Ycee and filmaker Adasa Cookey.
African stars from all over the continent graced the event which celebrated their achievements in music.
Check out the complete winners list below.
ARTISTE OF THE YEAR: Wizkid (Nigeria)
AFRICAN FANS FAV: The Dogg (Namibia)
ALBUM OF THE YEAR: Eddy Kenzo - Biology (Uganda)
BEST AFRICAN COLLABORATION: Alikiba - Aje ft M.I Abaga (Tanzania)
BEST AFRICAN CONTEMPORARY: Wande Coal - Iskaba ft DJ Tunez (Nigeria)
BEST AFRICAN ELECTRO: Nsoki - Africa Unite ft DJ Maphorisa, Paulo Alves (Angola)
BEST AFRICAN GROUP/DUO/BAND: Toofan - Tere Tere (Togo)
BEST AFRICAN HIP HOP: Ycee - Juice (Nigeria)
BEST AFRICAN JAZZ: Nduduzo Makhatini - Igagu (South Africa)
BEST AFRICAN POP: Toofan - Tere tere (Togo)
BEST AFRICAN REGGAE,RAGGA,DANCE-HALL: 2baba - Holy holy (Nigeria)
BEST AFRICAN RnB AND SOUL: Alikiba - Aje ft M.I Abaga (Tanzania)
BEST AFRICAN ROCK: Gilad - Angel Uriel ft Omer Millo (Kenya)
BEST AFRICAN TRADITIONAL: Halmelmal Abate - Harar (Ethiopia)
BEST FEMALE INSPIRATIONAL: Asikey - Earth Attack (Nigeria)
BEST MALE INSPIRATIONAL: Gilad - Angel Uriel ft Omer Millo (Kenya)
MOST PROMISING ARTISTE OF THE YEAR: Neza - Uranyica (Rwanda)
SONG OF THE YEAR: Wizkid - Come closer (Nigeria)
REVELATION OF THE AFRICAN CONTINENT: Shyn - Resim Pitia (Madagascar)
PRODUCER OF THE YEAR: DJ Coublon - Yolo Yolo by Seyi Shay (Nigeria)
SONGWRITER OF THE YEAR: Simi - Smile
AFRICAN LEGEND AWARD: Salif Keita (Mali) and Oliver Tutu Mtukudzi (Zimbabwe)
VIDEO OF THE YEAR: Adasa Cookey - Cooking Pot by Orezi
Central Africa (Best Female)
Reniss Mamamuh (Cameroon)
Ewube Fall On You (Cameroon)
Nsoki Africa Unite ft DJ Maphorisa & Paulo Alves (Angola)
Daphne Calee (Cameroon)
Mimie Dance Fi You (Cameroon)
Merveilee Toi (Cameroon)
Bussine All Africa Party (Gabon)
Central Africa (Best Male)
Maitre Gims Tout Donner (DRC)
Hiro Ton Pied, Mon Pied ft Chidinma (DRC)
Big Nelo O Legado Da Lenda (Angola)
Fally Ipupa Eleko Oyo (DRC)
Jovie Ou Meme (Cameroon)
Anselmo Ralph Casas Comigo (Angola)
Ke Black Bazardee (DRC)
East Africa (Best Female)
Juliana Kanyamozi I Am Still Here (Uganda)
Chess Nthusi Give It to You (Kenya)
Victoria Kimani Giving You ft Sarkodie (Kenya)
Lady Jaydee Sawa Na Wao (Tanzania)
Vanessa Mdee Cash Madam (Tanzania)
Wayna Wondersonn You Are Not Alone (Ethiopia)
East Africa (Best Male)
Diamond Platnumz Eneka (Tanzania)
Sinishaw Legesse Selam Ethiopia (Ethiopia)
Qritiqual Malika (Kenya)
Kibrom Birhane Eskista ft Nassmbu Burasa (Ethiopia)
Alikiba Aje ft MI Abaga (Tanzania)
Octopizzo TBT (Kenya)
Mure K.E Excuse my Language (Kenya)
Southern Africa (Best Female)
Sally Boss Madam Bimbim ft Busiswa (Namibia)
Babes Wodumo Family ft Maphorisa & Cassper Nyovest (South Africa)
Busiswa Inggongo (South Africa)
Lebo Segobela Lion of Judah (South Africa)
Amanda Black Amazulu (South Africa)
Ru Down (Zimbabwe)
Southern Africa (Best Male)
Hugh Masekela Shango (South Africa)
AKA The World is Yours (South Africa)
Nasty C Down South ft Seyi Shay & Ma E (South Africa)
Tay Grin Tola ft Vanessa Mdee (Malawi)
Jah Prayzah Watora Mari ft Diamond Platnumz (Zimbabwe)
Nduduzo Makhathini Igagu (South Africa)
West Africa (Best Female)
Oumou Sangare Yere Faga ft Tony Allen (Mali)
Aramide Why So Serious (Nigeria)
Viviane Chidid Lon Kelen (Senegal)
Yemi Alade Tumbum (Nigeria)
Seyi Shay Yolo Yolo (Nigeria)
Becca Na Wash ft Patoranking (Ghana)
Zeynab Noctambule ft Shadow Chris (Benin)
West Africa (Best Male)
Runtown Mad Over You (Nigeria)
Sarkodie Pain Killer (Ghana)
DJ Arafat Agbangnan (Ivory Coast)
Mr Eazi Leg Over (Nigeria)
MHD La Puissnace (Guinea)
YCee Juice (Nigeria)
Davido Fall (Nigeria)
Tekno Rara (Nigeria)
North Africa (Best Female)
Zaho Tant De Choses (Algeria)
Assma Lmnawar 3ndou Zine (Morocco)
Sherine Koul Maghani (Egypt)
Zina Daoudia Sayidati (Morocco)
Cheba Maria Kheltini (Algeria)
North Africa (Best Male)
Its a common question wondered by gym-goers everywhere: Does when you work out really matter for muscle gain? Are there really any benefits to getting your heart pumping first thing in the morning? Or is it actually better to work out after your body has had the chance to fuel up throughout the day?
Like many questions in the fitness field, there doesnt seem to be a clear-cut answer. Still, there has been some research on the topic, and the evidence seems to favor later workouts. In fact, a 2016 study from Finland found that a combined program of strength and endurance training could lead to greater gains in muscle mass when performed in the evening rather than the morning (Here are 7 reasons you aren't building as much muscle as you could).
An earlier study looking at upper body and lower body power output in the morning vs. the evening found something similar: There was greater muscle strength and power later in the day. But, the researchers found, when people ingested caffeine before the morning workout, that raised their performance to the levels seen in the evening.
So, what gives? When should you really workout to get the greatest gains?
It all depends on your unique schedule and preferences. If you're trying to build muscle, there are different perks to working out in the morning or at nightbut the pros are more about your how your personal schedule and habits correlate with the time of your workout, rather than the time of day itself, says Menachem Brodie, C.S.C.S., an exercise physiologist and trainer at Human Vortex Training.
One perk to working out in the morning is that you often end up fitting in more workouts over the course of the weekand the cumulative effect can lead to greater gains, he says.
"A benefit to working out in the morning is that you get the workout over with early. That way, if things crop up during the day, you won't miss your training session," he says. Sure, your boss may ask you to come in early, but usually that request will be made the night before, giving you time to plan a workout later in the day. Not so when you've got your gym bag packed and a last-minute proposal gets tossed on your deskmeaning you're not making it to your date with your weight rack.
One drawback of the morning workout, though, is you may not be fueled properly to give it your best. Lauren Mangainello, M.S., R.D., a New York-based nutritionist and certified personal trainer, points out that you run the risk of running on empty.
If you tend to skip breakfast, strength training in the morning isnt your best option, she says. Working out on an empty stomach can hinder your progressif your body doesnt have enough energy to support your workout, it will start burning through muscle and possibly increase cortisol levels. Plus, youll likely be lacking energy and thus not get the most out of your workout.
With afternoon or evening workouts, though, an empty tank isnt as likely an option. Plus, studies, like those listed above, have shown increased performance in later workouts. And if youre putting more into them, well, youll probably be reaping more results in return.
The boost in performance likely has to do with the fact our bodies are warmed up and ready to go later in the day, says Brodie.
[In] strength training we're really training the nervous system, so that makes sense, as the nervous system has had all day to warm-up, he says.
Now, with evening workouts, you dont have to worry about sleeping through your alarm. But you do have to consider how itll affect your shuteye later on.
If youre hitting the gym too late in the evening, Mangainello says it could end up working against your gains. If youre trying to build muscle, working out too late in the evening can affect our circadian rhythm and make it difficult to fall asleep at night (because of the exercise high), she explains. This can affect muscle development because our bodies need adequate rest in order to build muscle. Working out is important, but muscle growth is actually occurring when were restingso getting 7 to 9 hours of sleep per night is just as crucial.
Bottom line: The most important considerations for building muscle mass are consistency, nutrition, recovery and ensuring proper training stimulus, says Brodie.
When choosing what time of day to train, the deciding factor should be selecting a time period that allows you to adequately perform in these four key areas. If youre a night owl whose early-morning wakeup calls leave you zonkedand the thought of putting something in your stomach leaves you queasyyou may want to stick with the evening. But if youre constantly getting held up at work, or find yourself skipping on the gym to run other errands after leaving the office, you might have to make time for it in the morning.
What's more, Mangainello points out that going against your bodys natural inclination can have a negative impact on your muscle building efforts. If youre forcing yourself to workout in the morning when you naturally have more energy in the evening (or vice-versa), this can stress out our bodies and increase levels of certain hormones such as cortisol (which can hinder muscle growth), she explains.
The key is to be consistent and allow your body to settle into a rhythm, Brodie says. Choose what works best for you, stick with it and be consistent.
In a statement on the clash, the minister's aide explained how the clash between Amaechi and Governor Wike occurred in Port Harcourt on Saturday, November 11, 2017.
The statement reads: "In a blatant show of nak*d raw power, minister of transportation, Rt Hon Chibuike Rotimi Amaechi, this afternoon narrowly escaped being shot by security men attached to the Governor of Rivers state, Nyesom Wike. His car wasnt that lucky though. The car was vandalized with a broken side mirror.
"The incident occurred in Port Harcourt, Rivers state, along Trans-Amadi road, Nwaja axis. The minister had arrived Port Harcourt this afternoon.
"Accompanied by cars of many of his supporters, the ministers black jeep was intercepted and blocked at the junction by the security motorcycle outrider attached to Wike after two cars had passed through.
"One of the two cars had security men assigned to protect the minister in Port Harcourt. Suddenly, gun-toting security men attached to Wikes convoy, surrounded the ministers car, threatening to shoot him. They hit the car, tried to smash the windscreens, back and side windows and broke a side mirror.
"All through this attack, Amaechi remained calm, inside the fortified Jeep. While the attacked occurred, remained inside his vehicle.
"The minister eventually passed through after the intervention of the security team on ground to protect him in Port Harcourt. However, when Governor Wike got to the point where the incident occurred after Amaechis vehicle had gone by, his security men blocked the road again, dragged out from a vehicle and thoroughly beat up a police man attached to protect Amaechi in Port Harcourt. The policemans riffle was also taken from him.
"Wike came out of his car, and with his security team was going from one vehicle to another, of Amaechi supporters, charging at them, harassing and abusing them. Wikes security men were heard loudly insulting Amaechi and called him all sorts of derogative names."
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Wike and Amaechi faceoff
Governor Wike had earlier alleged that his convoy was attacked by security details attached to the minister, who was on projects inspection tour in the state.
The recent rancour between both political figures reached another crescendo on November 11, 2017 after it kicked off in 2014.
Idris made this know while replying the Senate ad-hoc committee investigating the allegations against him by Bauchi Central Senatorial District rep, Senator Isa Misau.
In a report by Punch, the police boss noted that there is no law that prevents him from marrying a serving female police officer.
Idris also challenged Senator Misau to prove him otherwise saying the lawmaker's father, who is a retired police officer dated and married his mum while they were both in the police force.
Idris stated this in a written defence he presented through his lawyer, Dr. Alex Iziyon (SAN), to the Senate ad-hoc committee.
He said, Until he brings such section of the Police Act, it will amount to discussing the Inspector-General of Polices private life, which ordinarily should not have been entertained on the floor of the Senate.
It might be appropriate to remind the senator, whose mother retired from the police as an Inspector of Police and a father who retired from the police as an Assistant Inspector-General of Police, that the Inspector-General of Police is a Moslem and, according to Islamic Law, can marry four wives provided he can love them equally.
The senator also alleged that the Inspector-General of Police is in a relationship with one Corporal Amina whom he claimed was promoted from the rank of Corporal to an Assistant Superintendent of Police within 12 months.
ALSO READ: IGP sues Senator N5b for defamation
This allegation is false and the senator is under obligation to give the full particulars of the female police (officer), where she is serving and her duty post. It is not possible to promote a corporal to the rank of an ASP except the officer has attended an in-service cadet course.
Mr Israel Ajibola, team leader of the committee, currently on inspection of road projects in the North-East region, spoke in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN), on Sunday in Bauchi.
Ajibola, who had earlier led members of the committee and journalists to various road project sites, said that it seemed the contractors had abandoned the project as they were nowhere to be found.
Their project, particularly Kirfi Junction portion of the road in Alkaleri Local Government Area of Bauchi, seemed to us that the contractors have abandoned the site.
We are not happy about it and we will not take it lightly; we are going to put up our recommendations to the Federal Ministry of Works.
They either call the contractor back to site or revoke the contract so that the contract could be awarded to a competent contractor that will do the work, Ajibola said.
Commenting on other projects visited in the state, he described the quality of the jobs done as good and up to standard.
From level of job done it seemed the contractors are working within the contractual time frame and ready to deliver the projects, the team leader said.
Documents made available to NAN by the Federal Controller of Works, Bauchi, Mr Charles Ezike, showed that the contract was awarded at the cost of N15.89 billion.
By PTI: By K J M Varma
Beijing, Nov 12 (PTI) Shanghai-based Juneyao Airlines has signed a USD 1.4 billion deal with General Electric (GE) for supply of new GEnx engines for its Boeing 787 aircraft.
Juneyao ordered engines for its 10 Boeing 787-9 aircraft, ordered in 2016 and to be delivered from 2018.
The GEnx engine is a high-thrust jet engine and it powers the four-engine Boeing 747-8, the Boeing 787 Dreamliner.
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The USD 1.4 billion order includes a 15-year agreement with GE Aviation for maintenance and repair of the engines.
The deal is one of many contracts and two-way investment agreements signed by China and the US during the just concluded visit of President Donald Trump, worth more than USD 250 billion.
Earlier, China Aviation Suppliers Holding Company (CASC) signed an agreement with Boeing for 300 aircraft, valued at more than USD 37 billion.
It includes both orders and commitments for 300 Boeing single-aisle and twin-aisle aircraft, made up of planes from the 737, 787 and 777 families.
China has seen a surge in the civil aviation transportation market in recent years. The CASC has undertaken bulk purchases of Boeing aircraft to allow aviation transport companies to continuously expand their capacity and fleet structure, the CASC said in a press release.
In May, Boeing started construction of the first overseas production centre for its most popular 737 family of aircraft in the east China port city of Zhoushan, including a completion centre and delivery centre.
According to Boeings latest market outlook, China is expected to need 7,240 new aircraft over the next 20 years, valued at nearly USD 1.1 trillion. Of these, 5,420 would be single-aisle aircraft. PTI KJV SMJ
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"The State of Israel regards with utmost seriousness any violation of its sovereignty and will respond with force to any provocation," Israeli Defence Minister Avigdor Lieberman said in a statement.
"We will not allow the consolidation of a Shiite axis in Syria" as a base for operations against Israel, he added, referring to the presence of Syrian regime allies Iran and Lebanese militant group Hezbollah in the war-torn neighbouring country.
Israel and Syria are still technically at war, though the armistice line on the Golan Heights had remained largely quiet for decades until civil war erupted in Syria in 2011.
Israel seized 1,200 square kilometres (460 square miles) of the Golan Heights from Syria in the Six-Day War of 1967 and later annexed it in a move never recognised by the international community.
In September, Israel's military shot down what it said was an Iranian-made drone operated by arch-foe Hezbollah on a reconnaissance mission over the Golan.
Israel has also seen regular spillover fire from the Syrian conflict and acknowledges carrying out dozens of air strikes to stop advanced arms deliveries to Hezbollah.
"We have to recover the sensible, practical, enterprising and dynamic Catalonia... that has contributed so much to the progress of Spain and Europe," Rajoy told members of his Popular Party in Barcelona.
"We want to regain a Catalonia for everyone, democratic and free," he added.
The Catalonia crisis has caused concern in the European Union as the bloc deals with Brexit and uncertainty over the fate of the region's 7.5 million people. More than 2,400 businesses have moved their legal headquarters elsewhere.
Rajoy on Sunday urged those businesses "not to go".
Separatist lawmakers, who were dismissed by Madrid after declaring their region independence from Spain last month, insist that they were given a mandate for secession by a banned October 1 referendum.
However, pro-unity camps say that the vote was deeply flawed and largely boycotted by opponents of independence, though more than 90 percent of those who turned out backed a breakaway.
Several officials have been detained over their role in pushing for independence, which is outlawed under Spain's post civil-war constitution.
The region -- which accounts for a fifth of Spanish GDP -- remains deeply divided on independence and Barcelonas mayor on Saturday slammed separatist lawmakers for dragging Catalonia into chaos.
A poll commissioned Sunday by the Madrid-based El Pais daily showed that less than a third of Catalans now believed independence was possible in the near future.
The 28 percent of respondents who said they thought swift secession was viable was down sharply from a similar poll in October.
Rajoy has used his powers as head of Spain's central government to dismiss Catalan lawmakers, suspend the region's autonomy and call for fresh regional elections on December 21.
The prime minister, who attended a presentation by a party candidate at hotel in Barcelona, did not appear in public.
'Independence is toxic'
Rajoy's Party Popular won only 8.5 percent in Catalona's last election two years ago that saw pro-independence parties sweep to power.
His candidate Xavier Garcia Albiol on Sunday said events since the October 1 referendum showed that "independence is toxic and is destroying Catalonia."
Eight ministers under Catalan ex-leader Carles Puigdemont have been detained on charges of sedition, rebellion and misuse of public funds. Two heads of pro-independence lobby groups are also behind bars.
Six former parliamentarians were granted bail last week by Spain's Supreme Court on similar charges.
Local police said 750,000 people turned out in Barcelona on Saturday to demand the release of detained officials.
The demonstrators gathered on an avenue next to the regional parliament building waving Catalan independence flags and chanting "Freedom!" while some held up banners announcing: "SOS Democracy".
Children in riding helmets climbed castells -- the region's traditional human towers -- as others held placards bearing caricatures of some jailed lawmakers.
"The situation is sad, the politicians haven't done their jobs," said Robert Muni, who was protesting with his children, although some protesters shouted their support for Puigdemont, "our president".
But Barcelona's charismatic mayor, Ada Colau, on Saturday slammed the behaviour of Puigdemont and his former ministers.
"They've provoked tensions and carried out a unilateral independence declaration which the majority do not want," Colau told a meeting of her party members hours before Saturday's march.
"They've tricked the population for their own interests."
The premier has yet to return to Lebanon and rumours have swirled that he is being held in Saudi Arabia against his will.
President Michel Aoun on Saturday called on the kingdom to "clarify the reasons that have prevented the return of PM Hariri to Lebanon to be among his people and supporters."
"The obscurity surrounding the condition of PM Saad Hariri since his resignation a week ago means that all positions and actions declared by him or attributed to him do not reflect the truth," Aoun added.
"They are instead a result of the ambiguous and obscure conditions (under which) PM Hariri is living in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia."
Aoun has yet to formally accept Hariri's resignation and has criticised the circumstances surrounding it as "unacceptable."
In his shock announcement, Hariri accused Iran and its Lebanese ally Hezbollah of taking over his country and destabilising the broader region, saying he feared for his life.
His statement prompted fears that Lebanon -- dominated by rival camps led by Hariri and Hezbollah -- would be caught up in spiralling tensions between Riyadh and Tehran.
Hariri's week-long absence from Lebanon has sparked rumours that the former prime minister -- who also holds Saudi nationality -- is under de facto house arrest in the kingdom.
"The head of the Lebanese government is detained in Saudi Arabia, he is banned from returning to Lebanon until now," Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah said in a televised address Friday.
Members of Hariri's own Al-Moustaqbal (Future) party said they had no information on his fate.
And Lebanese Foreign Minister Gebran Bassil announced on Friday that he was launching a "diplomatic campaign to bring back the head of our government of his own free will."
Even world powers have appealed for calm and freedom of movement for Hariri.
US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson on Friday described Hariri as "a strong partner" and warned against "any party, within or outside Lebanon, using Lebanon as a venue for proxy conflicts or in any manner contributing to instability in that country".
Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah has accused Saudi Arabia of declaring war and detaining Lebanon's prime minister Saad Hariri, who resigned last week in a statement from Riyadh citing Iran's "grip" on Lebanon.
Saudi Arabia, which in turn accused Hezbollah and Iran of declaring war against the kingdom, urged its citizens to leave Lebanon.
Shoukry "will affirm Egypt's firm position on the need to preserve Arab unity," the ministry statement said.
He will also "affirm Egypt's policy... that pushes for political solutions to crises and the need to spare the region any more turmoil and polarisation."
Egypt, which has the most powerful Arab army and has depended on Saudi Arabia for aid, has supported the Gulf country against its regional arch-rival, Iran.
But it has displayed little enthusiasm for a Saudi-led coalition's devastating war in Yemen against Iran-backed Huthi rebels.
Cairo has backed the coalition with only a few naval vessels after having pledged to send ground troops if needed.
Sisi told a press conference on Thursday that Egypt fully supported Gulf countries, whose security he called a "red line."
But he also urged caution. "I am not for war. We have had our experience with war," he said.
WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. Science education at Purdue is poised to take an important step forward with the announcement of plans to build what would be the first new facility dedicated to teaching labs constructed on campus in nearly 50 years.
On the West Lafayette campus, roughly 60 percent of entering freshmen are pursuing a science, technology, engineering or mathematics (STEM) degree, and courses in science form part of the core curriculum for every student on campus. Purdues explosive growth in STEM fields places the university among the top three in the nation for the number of STEM graduates produced annually.
Plans for the new building would allow for the first time the integrated teaching of biological sciences and chemistry, strengthening links between these departments and within the College of Science and beyond, for Purdue students in all majors.
As a leading STEM university, Purdue must have the facilities to match the rapidly evolving sciences, and I cant emphasize enough the pressing need we have for this. In fact, it is the single most important project that we are considering, and waiting isnt an option, said Purdue President Mitch Daniels. As our economy becomes more and more STEM-based, Indiana and the nation will need a growing number of people grounded in STEM disciplines in order to stay competitive. This new building will play a crucial role in achieving that goal.
Campus facilities currently housing the College of Science biological sciences and chemistry teaching lab areas Lilly Hall of Life Sciences and Brown Laboratory of Chemistry were originally occupied in 1950 and 1970, respectively. More than 9,000 students annually take chemistry laboratory classes in Brown and more than 5,600 take biology laboratory courses. While these buildings have served the campus well, Daniels said the growing need for lab teaching space and the chance to integrate these disciplines have obviated previous proposals to renovate and modernize the teaching labs in Brown.
Patrick J. Wolfe, the Frederick L. Hovde Dean of the College of Science and the William F. and Patty J. Miller Professor of Statistics, said the ambitious scale and timeline of the new teaching labs show that Purdue recognizes the importance of its students and puts them first.
We commissioned a College of Science master plan last year, which identified this need as critical, and so Im very pleased at how quickly weve been able to move, he said.
Wolfe said given the rapid global evolution of science, the university must stay ahead of developments with top-flight facilities to help students succeed in modern science and STEM fundamentals.
For the thousands of Purdue students who study in our labs each year, this flagship building means not only state-of-the-art, forward-looking teaching spaces that ignite a passion for science and reflect our reputation for innovation, but even more importantly the chance to experience a newly reimagined, integrated multidisciplinary science curriculum that enhances connections across the sciences and across campus, he said.
As a first step, the university is soliciting proposals from qualified construction firms in preparation for the project, which will require approval from the universitys Board of Trustees and other governing bodies. Prospective construction timelines, sites and project costs have not yet been finalized, but it is anticipated that support will come from donors and university funds, and Purdue may also seek additional assistance from the state.
Sources: Mitch Daniels, president@purdue.edu
Patrick J. Wolfe, patrick@purdue.edu
WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. - Purdue University professor of food science Suzanne Nielsen was honored as one of two recipients of the U.S. Department of Agriculture National Excellence in College and University Teaching Awards for Food and Agricultural Sciences for 2017. Nielsen has been a professor at Purdue since 1983. She served as department head for 10 years, currently serves as a faculty fellow for the Office of Corporate and Global Partnerships, and continues to teach her signature course, Food Analysis.
Dr. Nielsen lives our colleges mission every day. She is dedicated to the students she teaches as well as to her research, said Karen Plaut, interim dean of Purdues College of Agriculture. We are incredibly grateful to her and proud of this recognition of her extraordinary dedication and achievements.
Nielsen received this national recognition at a ceremony held in Washington, D.C., on Sunday (Nov. 12). Launched in 1992, the USDA National Excellence in College and University Teaching Awards are the product of a partnership among the USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture, the University of Florida, and the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities.
In nominating Nielsen, associate dean and director of the Office of Academic Programs Marcos Fernandez wrote, She is personable, establishes clear expectations and continually connects course and curricular topics to real-world issues to make her students become better problem solvers.
Fernandez also explains that Nielsen is the author of Food Analysis, a book and lab manual, now in its fifth edition, which is the most widely used book on this topic in the U.S., and is also used extensively worldwide.
Nielsen, who grew up in central Nebraska, says her interest in teaching began in the one-room schoolhouse she attended. One of my earliest childhood memories is lining up my dolls on a sofa and teaching them, just like I was being taught, she said.
Nielsen later discovered what she wanted to teach when, as a freshman at the University of Nebraska, she took an elective introductory food science class.
Nielsen has received numerous teaching, research, and mentoring awards from Purdue University; teaching and achievement awards from the Institute of Food Technologists; and alumni awards from both of her alma maters, the University of Nebraska and the University of Minnesota. She earned a B.S. from the University of Nebraska and M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Minnesota.
Praising Nielsens contributions, Food Science department head Brian Farkas said: It has been said that the influence of a teacher is infinite and this is never truer than for Dr. Suzanne Nielsen. She has inspired, motivated and educated students who have gone on to impactful careers, including in teaching, thus continuing her legacy.
Writer: Maureen Manier, 765-494-8403, mmanier@purdue.edu
Source: Suzanne Nielsen, 765-496-1727, nielsens@purdue.edu
Agricultural Communications: (765) 494-8415;
Shari Finnell, Manager/Media Relations and Public Information, sfinnell@purdue.edu
Agriculture News Page
CHICAGO -- If a judge falls asleep during a murder trial, should the defendant automatically get a new trial?
A divided Illinois Appellate Court panel recently said no; so long as the judge was not dozing through crucial evidence or motions, an inadvertent nap is harmless. "We find that a judge falling asleep during a trial does not constitute ... reversible error," Judge Daniel Schmidt wrote in the majority opinion.
The decision builds on more than a century of Illinois bench nap law dating to a five-minute judicial snooze in 1899. But some critics say the latest ruling should come as a wake-up call for the standard to change.
"Of course it should be automatic reversal if the judge falls asleep," said longtime criminal defense attorney Steve Greenberg. "It sends an awful message to the jurors that whatever is going on is just not important."
The appellate decision is tied to the case of spree killer Nicholas Sheley, who was on trial for four murders in Judge Jeffrey O'Connor's western Illinois courtroom in 2014 when the lights were dimmed so the jury could watch security camera footage on a monitor. When the presentation ended, an assistant attorney general asked that the lights be turned back on, according to the ruling. The judge didn't reply.
"Judge?" the defense attorney asked, according to a transcript cited in the ruling. "Judge O'Connor?"
"Judge could we get the lights back on?" the assistant attorney general asked, approaching the bench.
"Hmm," O'Connor replied, according to a transcript. A clerk allegedly poked him awake. When it was suggested now was a good time to break for lunch, the judge agreed. "Excellent time," he said.
A Whiteside County, Ill., jury later convicted Sheley of the slayings, part of a 2008 rampage in Illinois and Missouri that took the lives of six people. He is set to stand trial next year for the Missouri slayings. Sheley, now serving a life sentence, had sought a new trial based on the judge's nap. In fact, the defense team said the judge repeatedly fell asleep during the murder trial.
But at the time the judge, O'Connor, denied both the request for a new trial as well as allegations that he had fallen asleep multiple times, saying only one instance had been documented and that even then he had heard the evidence.
"If I was not looking at the video, that does not mean that I was not listening and hearing everything that was being said," said O'Connor, who called the motion "disgusting," according to a transcript cited in the appellate ruling.
"The test on that is whether the judge ever lost control of the courtroom in these proceedings, and the answer to that is absolutely not."
In its latest ruling, the state's appeals court agreed, saying it had no effect on the trial, noting that the evidence against Sheley was overwhelming.
But in a sharply worded dissent, Judge Mary O'Brien disagreed, citing the 1996 conviction of Israel Vargas that was thrown out after a Cook County judge left the bench during a murder trial to take a phone call from another judge.
"A judge cannot be actively present on the bench when he is asleep," O'Brien wrote.
O'Connor did not return messages seeking comment.
Experienced trial attorneys say judicial napping is rare but sometimes happens during jury trials, when the judge serves more as referee than fact finder. While juries render their own verdicts, at bench trials a judge solely decides the case. Both Sheley and Vargas were convicted by juries and, while the cases had different outcomes on appeal, Illinois courts ultimately decided that so long as a judge was actually in the courtroom, those verdicts stand.
And it can be difficult to tell if a jurist is sleeping or just closing his or her eyes in profound contemplation. A Michigan judge told jurors who thought he'd fallen asleep during a sexual assault trial that he was just leaning back in his chair, according to a 1988 appellate court ruling.
"I want to assure all of you ... I never fell asleep," said the judge, who is not named in the ruling that affirmed the jury's guilty verdict. "I never go to sleep ... I did lean back and do try to stay in low profile.
"I am not so different than other judges. Judges have been wont to fall asleep. That is not my concern. I didn't."
Illinois case law
Illinois case law on somnolent judges dates back more than a century. In that 1899 case _ which involved a Loop collision at Clark and Harrison streets between a train and a horse-drawn wagon loaded with 4 tons of hay _ the Illinois Supreme Court found that the Chicago judge's five-minute nap during the trial was harmless because lawyers had failed to stop testimony or rouse the sleeping jurist "in a voice sufficiently loud to awake him."
Judges have dozed off or slept outright during the O.J. Simpson trial, during U.S. Supreme Court oral arguments and even during war crime trials at the International Criminal Court at The Hague, where a snoring judge reportedly slept for half an hour. Former Australian judge Ian Dodd was such an inveterate napper he was dubbed "Judge Nodd" and eventually resigned in disgrace. Criminal defendants and civil litigants from California to New York have complained about judges sleeping during their trials, but for the most part higher courts have upheld convictions unless defendants could show the judges were actually asleep and that their slumber hurt the defendant's fair-trial rights.
An exception came earlier this year when a Kansas court ordered a new trial for a gun crimes defendant after the judge presiding over the case admitted he had "nodded off" _ an error the appellate court found as profound as denying a defendant the right to a public trial.
"How can a sleeping judge supervise anything other than his or her dreams?" the Kansas appellate panel wrote.
Sleepy jurors
Jurors are more likely to fall asleep. An Illinois appeals court ordered a new trial for a burglary defendant in 2006 after the trial judge noted that a juror "was half-asleep during almost the entire proceeding." The higher court has ruled that brief juror dozing is acceptable but "a juror who is inattentive for a substantial portion of a trial has been found to be unqualified to serve on the jury."
Even trial attorneys have been caught sleeping on the job. In 2001, a Texas appellate court halted the execution of a man whose attorney slept through much of his client's 1984 murder trial. The higher court said Calvin J. Burdine had been denied a fair trial because of the "consistent unconsciousness of his counsel."
"Unconscious counsel equates to no counsel at all," Judge Fortunato P. Benavides wrote for the majority, which awarded Burdine a new trial. Ironically, the courtroom naps may have saved his client's life. Burdine later pleaded guilty to murder, avoiding the death penalty in exchange for three life sentences in prison.
The Congress fought off challenge from the BJP to win the Chitrakoot Assembly bypoll.
By India Today Web Desk: The Congress today retained the Chitrakoot Assembly constituency in Madhya Pradesh with its candidate Nilanshu Chaturvedi defeating his BJP rival Shankar Dayal Tripathi by a margin of 14,135 votes.
The Chitrakoot Assembly seat fell vacant after Congress MLA Prem Singh, who had won the seat three times, died in May this year. Singh had won the Chitrakoot Assembly seat in 1998, 2003 and 2013, losing to BJP's Surendra Singh Gaharwar in 2008.
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Soon after the win, Congress spokesperson Randeep Surjewala said, "The winds of change are in the air. Many thanks to the people of Chitrakoot for their faith and trust in the Congress party."
The winds of change are in the air. Many thanks to the people of #Chitrakoot for their faith and trust in the Congress party. https://t.co/8AR6hc7qab- Randeep S Surjewala (@rssurjewala) November 12, 2017
BJP MP Nand Kumar Chauhan was quoted by ANI as saying, "We fought in Chitrakoot to win but did not succeed... as per the counting pattern, it seems Congress will win" but added that the Chitrakoot results are not reflective of the mood of the state.
With the Assembly election in Madhya Pradesh likely to take place in November next year, the results of the Chitrakoot bypoll hold significance for both the BJP and the Congress.
Voting for the Chitrakoot Assembly bypoll took place on November 9 with the constituency recording almost 65 per cent voter turnout.
As many as 257 polling booths with VVPAT (Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail) machines were set up for the bypoll, said an Election Commission official.
Congress MP from Guna Jyotiraditya Scindia, former Union Minister Kamal Nath, Leader of Opposition in Madhya Pradesh Assembly Ajay Singh campaigned for Nilanshu Chaturvedi.
ALSO WATCH: Madhya Pradesh: Private schools siphon off around Rs 600 crore meant for underprivileged children giving fake details
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A search warrant led Geneseo police to a Geneseo man and 233 child pornography pictures and video of an alleged 9-year-old victim.
Seth A. Shipley, 38, was charged Oct. 19 with three counts of Class X felony predatory criminal sexual assault and one count of Class 1 felony criminal sexual assault.
Investigator Mike Chavez Jr. was called to Henry County Circuit Court Friday as a state's witness in a motion hearing to reduce Mr. Shipley's $1 million bond.
Judge Jeffrey O'Connor denied the request, leaving the bond intact.
Investigator Chavez said the case came to light when the alleged victim was brought to Braveheart Children's Advocacy Center and described an ongoing two-year relationship with Mr. Shipley in which he sexually abused her.
She described sex items they would find in his bedroom and where they would find them, and police obtained a search warrant.
The investigator said the victim came to know Mr. Shipley as a gymnastics teacher for the Geneseo Park District, and because she did not have a father figure, he approached her grandmother and offered to fill the role.
He said police have not found any other victims at this time, but are investigating the possibility.
Mr. Shipley took the stand and said he'd lived in Geneseo for five years and in Seattle, Washington, before that. He said he has a passport and his father lives in Panama.
The judge said it was compelling that police found the items the girl described in the location in Mr. Shipley's bedroom where she said they would be.
There's no bond in this case. He is a flight risk and a potential danger, Judge O'Connor said.
The judge also granted Henry County State's Attorney Matt Schutte's request for Mr. Shipley to turn over his passport if he posts bond.
Kung Fu Panda, sponsored by Arconic.
Papa Smurf, sponsored by Carpenters Training Center of the Quad Cities.
Clown Fish, sponsored by the City of Davenport.
Wheres Waldo, sponsored by HON & Allsteel.
Cookie Monster, sponsored by the City of Bettendorf.
Two Storks with blue and pink blankets, sponsored by Genesis Health System.
Angry Birds, sponsored by Mediacom.
Red, White & Blue Stars, sponsored by the Regional Development Authority.
Santa Jingle All the Way, sponsored by Tri-City Electric.
Ski Bear, sponsored by VanDerGinst Law.
Santa Elmo, sponsored by NECA/IBEW.
Kyle the Car, sponsored by R.I.A. Federal Credit Union.
Rudolph, sponsored by John Deere.
The parade also will feature six logo balloons.
Sponsors
Holiday Parade co-title sponsors: Arconic, Genesis Health System, KWQC-TV6, John Deere, Regional Development Authority.
Supporting sponsors: City of Bettendorf, Carpenters Training Center of the Quad Cities, City of Davenport, HON & Allsteel, Illinois Casualty, Mediacom, NECA/IBEW, R.I.A. Federal Credit Union, Tri-City Electric, VanDerGinst Law.
Illinois courts, reacting to a new state law, are leaning away from monetary bails for people charged for some minor offenses, a change intended to ease jail overcrowding and prevent the poor from long jail stays because they have no money.
The Bail Reform Act of 2017 became law in June and is expected to go into full effect in January. It states the emphasis of pretrial release should not be on an accused person's ability to post a monetary bond. Instead, the focus should be on whether or not a person is a public threat or is likely to not attend court hearings.
When a person first comes to court, the bail already has been set, Rock Island County Chief Judge Walter Braud said. A monetary bail is blind to the financial circumstances of the defendant. The bail stands unless the defendant requests a reduction hearing.
Those who have the money get out, but the consequences for the poor who cannot post a monetary bond include losing a job, not being able to pick up their child or pay rent, Judge Braud said.
"If you are a person of limited means, a $100 bail could be a life changer to you because you don't have it," Judge Braud said.
The change in the law is meant to address this problem, the judge said.
The law states that the court must factor an accused person's socioeconomic circumstances into its consideration of the defendant's release conditions. When imposed, such conditions should emphasize alternatives to money.
Options including curfews, in-person reports to authorities and electronic monitoring, the law states. The judge is also expected to apply the minimum restrictions deemed necessary to ensure a person shows up for hearings and protect witnesses and other participants in proceedings.
The new law divides criminal offenses into two broad classifications: Category A for serious offenses and Category B for more minor offenses.
For anyone accused of a Category A offense, bail works like it always has, Judge Braud said. In cases that fall under Category B, judges are supposed to use alternatives to keeping people locked up.
The law states that anyone accused of a "B" offense who has been unable to post bail must be seen by a judge at the first available hearing, or within seven calendar days of when the bail was set, whichever is first. During that hearing, the bail and conditions of release will be examined by the judge.
In bail hearings, the defendant can have an attorney present, the law states. A public defender can be appointed if needed.
A person accused of a B offense can still get a monetary bail, Judge Braud said. That person might have a record, may be likely to skip hearings, commit another offense, or pose a safety risk.
If a person is released under the new system, then does not appear, a warrant is issued and a monetary bail is set in the traditional way, Judge Braud said.
Should a judge impose monetary bail in a Category B offense, then $30 will be deducted from the bail for each day the person is held, the law states.
The law does allow that the court can review the case of any defendant -- regardless of the offense category -- whose pretrial incarceration is based only on their lack of money.
The changes were brought about in part to address overcrowding in other jails, Rock Island County Sheriff Gerry Bustos and Rock Island County State's Attorney John McGehee said. That is not so much of an issue in Rock Island County.
The county does a good job of keeping its caseload moving, Mr. McGehee said. Rock Island County defendants, or their families, are usually able to raise the needed money for a bond.
If there is an issue with someone raising the money to post bond, it is usually early in the case, Mr. McGehee said. The county judges watch for people with limited means and try to prevent them from staying in jail solely because they lack money.
One concern Mr. McGehee has about the change, is that victim restitution and defendant fines are often drawn from bail moneys. A reduction in that pool means it could take longer for victims to receive compensation, as well as longer terms of probation for people serving their sentences.
The jail's maximum capacity is 326 people, Sheriff Bustos said. On Nov. 7, when this interview was conducted, he said there were 260 people being housed.
"I'm expecting a lower (jail) population," he said.
Judge Braud said he expected to see a decrease in the jail population of 15- to 20 percent when the law is fully in effect.
The drop could be higher than Judge Braud's estimate, Sheriff Bustos said.
The benefit for the sheriff's office and the county's residents is that the cost of jail operations should go down, Sheriff Bustos said. Those costs are a good-sized portion of the office's budget.
Another change will be a drop in revenue because of a fee the sheriff's office is allowed to collect each time bond is posted-- about $40, Sheriff Bustos said. That fee brings in about $150,000 annually. When the new system goes into effect, he anticipates a drop in that revenue.
He said he was not complaining, but that will be a revenue loss.
Other challenges he sees are making sure people get to their mandated bond hearings and tracking the incremental reductions in bail that are being applied in some cases, Sheriff Bustos said.
The county's probation office already gathers information from defendants in the hours after an their arrest, Trent Vandersnick, director of Rock Island County Court Services, said. That includes their financial health and criminal background. This information is used to develop a bond report the court uses during defendants' first appearance.
The probation office will be using a new risk assessment survey under the bond reform act, Mr. Vandersnick said. The state was still deciding which one to use as of Nov. 8, but the goal will be to provide the court with an idea of the defendants' likelihood of attending their hearings or their potential threat to the community should they be released.
People are already released on recognizance bonds under the traditional system, and they must telephone the probation office on a weekly basis-- usually, this is between 45 people and 80 people, he said.
"I think that's going to grow," he said. "How much, we don't know."
Under the new system, electronic monitoring and drug testing will be costs carried by the county, Mr. Vandersnick said. That cost will be covered through the probation office, which will likely draw from probation fees to do so.
The purpose of bail is to ensure the appearance of the accused in court, Rock Island County Public Defender Baron S. Heintz said. It also serves to protect the public. The overuse of cash bail impacts persons of low income disproportionately.
All too often people are pressured into making plea agreements simply because they don't have the money to get out of jail and wait for trial, he said. Their decision is based on their need to get out of jail rather than their guilt or innocence.
The change will be a tool for the public defenders office to ensure the right things are getting done, Mr. Heintz said.
There will be extra work, but it will be balanced by the accused getting out of custody sooner than they would under the old system, he said. There will be a presumption that the court should not impose a cash bond without specific circumstances.
If the state is going to punish someone, the court should only impose punishment after a defendant is found guilty, he said.
PORT BYRON -- Nineteen military banners flew from the light poles of in Port Byron in honor of Riverdale graduates currently serving in the military as part of the village's Veterans Day ceremony and celebration.
We have had a positive response to the addition of the banners, Chief Warrant Officer 3 (Retired) Patrick Strobel, guest speaker at the Veterans Day Ceremony said. About 60 people attended the actual ceremony, but because of the cold most viewed the banners by car rather than march before heading to Dueys for conversation."
Boy Scout Leader John Vaughan agreed.
The banners represent what small town America is all about. So many in the military come from small towns. I spent 22 years as a Marine, and my wife served for three years. I hope the banner program expands, Mr. Vaughan said.
The banners, Military Mamas Operation Hometown HEROES Project, began last summer after five women got together as a support group while their children were serving in the military.
Krystal Pridemore, who has two sons serving in the military, saw beautiful banners in Huntington Beach, California, and wanted to re-create it in Port Byron. She and her friends, Suzette Garza, Kelli Franklin, Colette Saathoff and Donna Strobel, whose children were serving in various branches of the military, approached the village board.
After being approved by the trustees in June, Military Mamas Operation Hometown HEROES Project was created.
RAD, a local business, is the printer. The banner includes the service members name, branch of service, military photo and whoever is sponsoring the hero. The group hoped to start with 12 banners. ... By Veterans Day, we had 19 ready to go and another in the process of printing, Mrs. Strobel said.
Mrs. Garza, who helped place the banners, explained all active duty personnel are eligible to have a banner if they have graduated from Riverdale High School.
Applications will be accepted at any time. We have a 20th currently being printed that will join the others at the next hanging, May 10, on Armed Forces Day. Individuals or organizations may sponsor banners. The cost is $100. Those who would like to sponsor a hero but dont have a hero can be assigned one, Mrs. Garza said.
Once printed, the banners will be displayed as long as the service member is serving. Upon leaving the service, the banner then will be retired and given to the hero.
We have 60 light poles in Port Byron to get us started, and we hope eventually the project can spread to other towns in the district. We feel it is important to show community support for our brave men and women that sacrifice so much to join the armed forces, Mrs. Strobel said.
Port Byron plans to line Main Street with these banners on four different days of the year:
Armed Forces Day, May 10
Veterans Day, Nov. 11
Independence Day, July 4
Tug Fest Week, mid-August.
The banners are expected to remain hanging until Wednesday.
Others participating in the event included local Boy Scout Troup 351 who raised colors, and Trustee Wes Wells who performed a song he wrote Thank the Soldiers. Scott Angelici distributed green light bulbs as part of the American Legion COE-LAMB Post 42 as part of the Green Light a Vet project.
FIREFIGHTERS TRAIN AT ARSENAL
ROCK ISLAND ARSENAL -- Local elected officials braved cold weather, fire, heights and smoke as they learned about firefighting in an event held Oct. 28 at the firefighting training center at Rock Island Arsenal.
Conducted by the Moline Fire Department, the outreach effort was designed to provide an insight into firefighting operations, according to Jeff Snyder, Moline interim fire chief.
It lets them see a bit into what we do so that when we have to come to them with a request for equipment or additional facilities, they have more (of a) foundation, Chief Snyder said.
Participating in the event were Illinois 72nd District Rep. Mike Halpin; Illinois 71st District Rep. Tony McCombie; Dick Potter and Mike Waldron, Moline City Council members; J.D. Schulte, Moline director of public works; Public Works employee Sarah Mark; Courtney Nelson, Moline Finance Department; and Ken LeMaster, a member of the Moline Fire Department Second Alarmers volunteer group.
The event provided training in extracting a victim from a burning building, using a fire hose, dismantling a wrecked car using the Jaws of Life and other emergency equipment, and rappelling, or using ropes to descend from a high structure. Chief Snyder said all are part of the basic techniques learned by firefighters in their official training.
Chief Snyder said the training is realistic, although it was abbreviated. Its a glimpse of what we do, using the real techniques we use, he said.
Rep. Halpin said the experience helped him understand what firefighters do.
I thought it was a good introduction to what firefighters go through, he said. Everything happens very fast. I cant imagine doing the things we learned to do with the speed they need to be done in a real fire.
Rep. McCombie said the training was interesting. My husband is a volunteer firefighter. Until youve done it, you dont realize the weight of the gear theyre moving around in, she said. These men and women have to maintain their fitness just to wear the equipment.
Rep. McCombie praised the Rock Island Arsenal training facility. Its very complete. The fire house or smoke house was large enough that we could do different things on different levels, and we could do everything in the one facility, from CPR to working on the cars to rappelling, she said.
Firefighters showed the trainees how to use a fire ax to let the air out of car tires, so they cant explode during an incident, how to use a spring-loaded punch to fracture a cars window to extract an injured party, and how to use multiple settings for different circumstances using a fire hose.
What gets everyone excited is going into the smoke house, where they experience a bit of the heat and the lack of visibility in a real fire. Thats what makes the Arsenals facility very valuable -- its a regional resource for firefighters, Chief Snyder said. The other one is rappelling. When theyre suspended from a rope 30 feet in the air, you see a lot of smiles.
Rep. McCombie said rappelling was something shed done before, when her father had been a Reserve Officer Training Corps instructor, but she found stepping over the railing to begin slightly daunting. Im not super comfortable with heights. Its different when youre a kid, so for me that first step over the railing was a challenge, she said.
Rep. Halpin also praised the Arsenal facility. I can see how valuable it is, he said. Its a good place for regional firefighters to go to get training.
After manufacturing industry leaders campaigned hard last year to show why our state can no longer sustain its job-killing policies, how did Illinois policymakers respond?
Not only did leaders in Springfield refuse to address the anti-business climate, they exacerbated it.
It was one of the worst legislative sessions for the business community and manufacturing in decades, Mark Denzler, vice president and chief operating officer of the Illinois Manufacturers Association, told our editorial board recently.
The facts back him up.
While lawmakers passed a $5 billion tax hike, they failed to include meaningful reforms that would signal that Illinois is a good place to do business, Mr. Denzler said.
Businesses got more taxes and more regulations without the stability and predictability needed to plan for the future.
Take, for example, lawmakers' penchant for playing now-you-see-it-now-you-don't with a research and development tax credit that just disappeared for the fifth time in 15 years. For development, businesses are looking 5, 10, 15 years down the road. Many are moving their research and development out of state, Mr. Denzler said.
We continue to be confounded by lawmakers who say they are champions of middle class workers on the one hand, and then support policies which export the jobs they, their children, and grandchildren need.
Ask Quad-Citians struggling to get the kind of well-paying jobs, with top-quality benefits their parents once enjoyed. Those $26-an-hour jobs are going somewhere. They're just not coming to Illinois.
Gov. Bruce Rauner is far from blameless. His give-no-quarter style, and the volume of reforms he demanded - 46 by Mr. Denzler's count - made it harder to foster an environment conducive to crafting good public policy.
Of course, many believe that, no matter what he had proposed and how he had proposed it, Democratic leaders were never going to give an inch on a Turnaround Agenda they already had signaled dead on arrival.
Sadly, even as rank-and-file Democrats talk job creation back home, they act in concert with leaders to enact anti-business policies. We were happy to see that, with the exception of state Rep. Mike Halpin, D-Rock Island, Mr. Denzler gave high marks to most Quad-Cities' lawmakers, for both parties, present.
The challenge continues for our pro-business leaders is finding a way to convince colleagues such as Rep. Halpin that they can and must act to reverse a downward trajectory that has made Illinois go from 900,000 manufacturing jobs at the turn of the century to 570,000 today.
While some manufacturing jobs have been lost to global competition and technology, it doesn't explain why other states grow and Illinois doesn't.
In the last year, the IMA reports, Illinois added just 600 jobs compared to 6,000 in Indiana, 1,800 in Iowa, 9,900 in Wisconsin and 5,800 in Missouri. Each of those jobs, said Mr. Denzler, supports two-and-half new ones in the supply chain. All those jobs, in turn, support service and other sectors in our community.
We cannot afford to lag behind our neighbors, so we were pleased to discover that despite the losses in the spring session, the IMA isn't giving up on its efforts to provide stability and predictability manufacturers require.
Among the IMA goals on which they, and we, are not ready to surrender are meaningful worker compensation reform, fairer tax policy, property tax reform, permanent tax credit and manufacturing purchase credits, and a better education and workforce development system.
To make any of those things happen, Illinoisans will have to demand them.
Readers can help. As you talk to legislative and gubernatorial candidates in the year ahead, tell them to enact the reforms necessary to grow our state back to good economic health.
By P S Gopikrishnan Unnithan: The Left Democratic Front (LDF) meeting convened in Thiruvananthapuram today assigned Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan to take a final call on the fate of Minister Thomas Chandy. This after the opposition intensified their protest demanding the resignation of Thomas Chandy after his firm was alleged of levelling wet land and encroaching government property.
The emergency meeting was convened in the state capital after the call for minister 's resignation intensified over the last few days. CPI, the second largest ally in the coalition informed the meeting that the government cannot go any further in this condition. Each moment the minister continues in the cabinet is damaging the reputation of the whole LDF system. CPI (M) also decided not to support the minister any longer as collectors report confirmed the allegations against him. Janata Dal United representative stepped in and said that there is no solution other the resignation of the minister.
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However NCP continued to defend their minister claiming that the allegations were only politically motivated. NCP state secretary N Peethambaran said in the meeting that the coalition system cannot go ahead without recognising all allies. This lead to a difference of opinion between the NCP and other representatives. Following this, LDF decided the leave the issue to Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan. Though, Vijayan said that NCP should make a decision at the earliest, NCP leaders requested more time to discuss the situation with their national leaders.
After the meeting, CPI state secretary Kaanam Rajendran said that CPI is happy with the outcome of the meeting. Other members refrained from making a comment. However, it is learned that the minister will have to resign very soon after consulting with their national leadership.
At the same time NCP is also exploring the possibilities of bringing back A K Saseendhran to the cabinet. Thomas Chandy was sworn in as transport minister after A K Saseendhran stepped down on charges of honey trap by a female journalist.
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By PTI: Kolkata, Nov 10 (PTI) West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee left for London this evening to participate in a programme to commemorate Sister Niveditas 150th birth anniversary, state government officials said.
Banerjee will be unveiling the London Blue Plaque Scheme, run by the English Heritage, which links major historical figures and the buildings in which they lived or worked.
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Recognising Sister Niveditas contribution to social work, the English Heritage decided to install the Blue Plaque at her family home to commemorate her 150th birth anniversary.
The chief minister has been invited as the chief guest at the programme in Wimbledon on Sunday. She is likely to return on November 18.
Born Margaret E Noble, the Scottish-Irish social worker and disciple of Swami Vivekananda got the name Nivedita or "the dedicated one" from the great monk himself. PTI SCH RBT
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'At the end of the day, we want to see maximum items out and only few items remaining in the 28 per cent slab.'
Illustration: Dominic Xavier/Rediff.com
Another 5 to 6 items may come down to 18 per cent from 28 per cent at the next GST Council meeting, Assam Finance Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma tells Dilasha Seth.
Any further reduction beyond that may need to wait to gauge the revenue implications, Sarma says.
It was one of the most hectic council meetings since the GST rollout. What benefits do you foresee for consumers and industry from the decisions taken?
When we implemented GST, we had promised the taxpayers that after three months we will have a review. Some review had already been taken place in Delhi. Some were still left for further examination.
On Friday, we completed one part of it because except sin goods and white goods, we have brought down items in the 28 per cent slab.
Many procedural changes have happened. For small traders, composition limit has been hiked.
Exempted goods will now not be taken into account for calculating taxes under the composition scheme. This is a huge relief for the people.
I think consumers will get the benefit straightaway as tax rates on restaurants have been reduced to 5 per cent..
Do you see a scope for further reduction in items in the 28 per cent slab in the next council meeting?
At the end of the day, we want to see maximum items out and only few items remaining in the 28 per cent slab.
But that depends on how much revenue the government is generating.
What my own understanding is that another five to six goods can come down to 18 per cent instantly. But beyond that you have to wait for the revenue implications. These items will be taken up for discussion in thenext meeting.
What will be the revenue implication of sharp reduction in rates?
We cannot calculate the revenue implications as you don't know the revenues against the items.
A lot of amount is stuck in IGST (integrated GST), refund is also due.
We have discussed the matter. Revenue may be reduced by Rs 20,000 crore (Rs 200 billion) due to shifting of products to lower tax brackets, including tax rate for restaurants. But that is again a notional figure.
Will inclusion of real estate in GST be discussed in the next meeting now? What else will be taken up in the next meeting?
We had thought of discussing (the possibility of) inclusion of the realty sector under GST. We could not discuss it on Friday, but will take it up in the next meeting.
There are many more things which we need to discuss in the next meeting. In the next meeting, we will also discuss ways to give relief to the handloom and handicraft sector.
What sort of relief does the handloom and handicraft sector require?
Some discussions took place and finally we have decided that this is a very important issue because HSN (harmonised system of nomenclature) code is similar.
Suppose there is a handmade soap and a soap produced by a large company, how do we give relief to the handmade soap when the HSN code is same?
One way to give relief is to increase the revenue threshold for the composition scheme. That we have done. But that may not be the final thing.
Ultimately, you need to examine how HSN codes may be differentiated between handmade, handloom, powerloom and other products. So we have set this thing in motion.
But you will have to wait for the final outcome.
What were your key recommendations for the real estate sector?
It was on the agenda. Since we could not take it up on Friday, it will be premature to talk about it.
'We are only talking about 65,000 H1B visas a year, it is not going to go down drastically.'
'If the number reduces and when you spread that reduction across all the top IT services companies, the impact will be marginal.'
Ayan Pramanik reports from Bengaluru.
Illustration: Uttam Ghosh/Rediff.com
The US government's increased scrutiny of H1B visa applications would have a bigger impact on skilled professionals than on IT services firms, says Timothy J Zanni, US technology sector leader, KPMG.
After becoming US President in January, Donald J Trump is making efforts to implement his election promise of restricting immigrants into the country.
Since then, the US administration has pushed a few items of legislation seeking to increase the minimum wages for H1B visa holders and has backed immigration of highly skilled workers 'to protect the jobs of Americans'. Trump has issued multiple executive orders to beef up the H1B visa issuance process.
A large chunk of such visas is issued to professionals working with Indian IT companies. Many individuals who filed applications for H1B visas this April received requests for further evidence -- RFE -- or information to prove that they were taking up jobs at higher salaries in the US.
Law firms witnessed a surge in queries for further justification from the US Citizenship and Immigration Services -- USCIS -- against entry-level (Level 1) petitions based on wages.
"From the business side, we are only talking about 65,000 visas a year, it is not going to go down drastically. If the number reduces and when you spread that reduction across all the top IT services companies, it will be marginal," says Zanni.
"I have talked to executives of the companies in India and the US and they can manage with a marginal reduction and they are planning for it. The impact is only on the individual," he added.
There was stricter verification of many petitions this time, unlike in previous years, said people who facilitate H1B visa processing for Indian IT and other companies.
Business growth will sort out these problems, Zanni says, and executives he spoke to were clear that they "would figure out a way".
Companies such as Infosys, Wipro, TCS and others have stepped up local hiring in the US, their largest software services export market.
While Infosys has committed to hiring 10,000 people in the US in a couple of years, Wipro said it had increased the mix of local citizens in the US workforce and more than half of its employees there now were local.
US-based technology companies were "very vocal" in their opposition to any change in the regulations (for visas) as this would affect how they brought their employees to the US on projects too, Zanni points out.
The software services industry has seen disruption with newer technologies such as artificial intelligence, machine learning coming in. This is forcing technology companies and educational institutions in the US to train people in the right skills.
"I don't think this is any different from the industrial revolution when you had the labour market moving faster than the creation of talent. With all the innovation, do we have enough people for artificial intelligence? No, says Zanni when asked whether the US had adequate talent to meet the demand of technology companies.
"So what are businesses going to do? They are going to go to college campuses, they are going to demand that colleges change curriculums to create more programmes in AI."
The Congress on Sunday retained the Chitrakoot assembly constituency in Madhya Pradesh with its candidate winning the seat in a bypoll with an improved margin of over 14,000 votes.
In the 2013 assembly polls, the party had won the seat with a margin of 10,970 votes.
Congresss Nilanshu Chaturvedi defeated his nearest rival, Shankar Dayal Tripathi of the Bharatiya Janata Party, by 14,133 votes in the bypoll which was held on November 9, returning officer A P Dwivedi said.
Chaturvedi polled 66,810 votes, while Tripathi had to be content with 52,677 votes. As many as 2,455 votes were polled under the none of the above category.
The counting of votes began around 8 am amid a tight security in Satna district.
Around 65 per cent voting was recorded in the bypoll, which was necessitated in the Assembly segment following the death of its Congress MLA Prem Singh.
Singh had won from Chitrakoot, bordering Uttar Pradesh, in the 1998, 2003 and 2013 state Assembly polls. In 2008, he had lost the seat to BJPs Surendra Singh Gaharwar.
Though 12 candidates were in the fray, the main contest in the bypoll was between Chaturvedi and Tripathi.
Accepting the defeat, Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister and BJP leader Shivraj Singh Chouhan tweeted saying public mandate was supreme in democracy.
I thank the people for their support. Nothing will come in the way of Chitrakoots development. My aim is to develop entire Madhya Pradesh, the tweet further read.
Congress workers celebrated the victory by bursting crackers outside the partys state headquarters, Indira Bhawan in Bhopal, whereas the state BJP headquarters, Deendayal Parishad, wore a deserted look.
As per the Hindu mythology, during his exile, Lord Rama had spent almost 12 years in the forests of Chitrakoot with wife Sita and brother Laxmana.
The BJP had invoked Lord Rama during its campaign for the bypoll.
After the bypoll victory, the jubilant Congress workers raised slogans such as BJP ke lag gaye kam, jai shri Ram, jai shri Ram (the BJP is defeated, hail Lord Rama).
Asked about the saffron party invoking Lord Rama in the run-up to the bypoll, state Congress chief Arun Yadav told reporters that it was his party men, who were the true worshippers of the Hindu god.
Lord Rama helps the honest and upright, not the corrupt, he said.
Leader of Opposition in the Madhya Pradesh assembly Ajay Singh said, The exile of the Congress in the state has ended from the taposthali of Lord Rama. The party has won from areas where Chouhan held public meetings. The BJP candidate has been defeated from his own village as well as the village of his in-laws.
In response to a query, Singh said the chief minister had made the Chitrakoot bypoll a prestige issue for himself.
The poll results show that the people of the state want Chouhans exit now, he added.
State BJP chief Nandkumar Singh Chauhan, however, played down the defeat in the bypoll saying the seat traditionally belonged to the Congress.
This is one of the seats which traditionally belong to the Congress. However, in the 2008 election, BJP candidate Surendra Singh Gaharwar had won this seat.
Chitrakoot does not reflect the mood of the entire state. We did expect to win. Now, we will review the poll outcome and find out the causes behind our defeat, he said.
Image: Members of Congress celebrate outside MP Congress committee as its candidate Nilanshu Chaturvedi wins the bypoll. Photograph: ANI/Twitter
Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Sunday held separate pull-aside meetings with United States President Donald Trump and Chinese Premier Li Keqiang on the sidelines of a gala dinner to mark the 50th anniversary of the ASEAN.
IMAGE: PM Modi is all smiles as he interacts with US President Donald Trump ahead of the 31st ASEAN summit. Photograph: @narendramodi/Twitter
Modi was also seen chit-chatting with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev and Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak at the reception for the leaders who have arrived in Manila for the 31st ASEAN summit and related meetings.
He also held brief interactions with several other leaders who attended the reception hosted by Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte at the mega SMX Convention Centre in Pasay City.
The prime minister as well as all other leaders wore Barong Tagalong, an embroidered shirt which is the national dress of the Philippines. Renowned Filipino designer Albert Andrada has designed the shirts.
Modi also tweeted pictures of his interaction with several leaders.
IMAGE: The PM chats with Chinese Premier Li Keqiang at the Gala Dinner. Photograph: @narendramodi/Twitter
The menu of the gala dinner featured various Filipino cuisines including Filipino steak sushi.
The brief interaction between Modi and Trump came ahead of their scheduled bilateral meeting on Monday. The two leaders are expected to deliberate on a number of key issues of mutual interest including the evolving security situation in the Indo-Pacific region where Washington favours a greater role by India.
IMAGE: The PM also had discussions with Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak at the reception.
Photograph: @narendramodi/Twitter
There have been concerns over Chinas growing military presence in the Indo-Pacific and the issue was understood to have figured in a meeting of officials from India, the US, Japan and Australia on Sunday under the proposed Quadrilateral coalition of the four countries.
The discussions focused on cooperation based on their converging vision and values for promotion of peace, stability and prosperity in an increasingly inter-connected region that they share with each other and with other partners, the ministry of external affairs said in a statement.
They agreed that a free, open, prosperous and inclusive Indo-Pacific region serves the long-term interests of all countries in the region and of the world at large, it said.
IMAGE: The PM with Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev. All the world leaders were wearing Barong Tagalong, an embroidered shirt which is the national dress of the Philippines.
Photograph: @narendramodi/Twitter
On Tuesday, Modi will attend the ASEAN-India and East Asia summits where he is likely to reassert Indias push for crafting a global approach to deal with growing challenge of terrorism and radicalisation besides pitching for steps to boost regional trade.
Modi will hold bilateral meetings with Duterte on Monday.
He also had a conversation with Li at the dinner.
PM @narendramodi had a warm and cordial conversation with the Chinese Premier Li Keqiang at the Gala Dinner, MEA spokesperson Raveesh Kumar tweeted.
A 23-year-old Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh worker was hacked to death in broad daylight allegedly by Communist Party of India-Marxist workers at nearby Nenmeni on Sunday afternoon, the police said.
The incident occurred around 1.30 pm.
The victim, Anandan, was riding a motorcycle when he was attacked with swords and knives, allegedly by the CPI-M workers, who came in a car. He was rushed to a hospital, but his life could not be saved, the police said.
Anandan, hailing from Brahmakulam, was an accused in a case related to the murder of a CPI-M worker in 2013.
The police said Anandans body was shifted to Thrissur medical college hospital.
The Bharatiya Janata Party will protest against the incident on Monday.
In a statement, party state president Kummanam Rajasekharan said the ruling CPI-M was not prepared to give up violence and this is clear from Sundays incident.
A strike is being observed by the saffron party in Guruvayoor and Manaloor in Thrissur district.
The BJP alleged that as many as 120 of its workers, 84 in Kannur alone, have been killed in Kerala since 2001.
It claimed that 14 of these killings have taken place since Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan took over the reins of the government last year.
The CPI-M in turn accused the BJP and the RSS of indulging in violence and denied the involvement of its government and leadership in political killings.
Image: Anandan, hailing from Brahmakulam, was an accused in a case relating to the murder of a CPI-M worker in 2013. Photograph: ANI/Twitter
Party workers and volunteers are flocking towards the Gujarat Pradesh Congress office in Ahmedabad's affluent Paldi area. For the first time in the last three state elections, the Congress believes it has a genuine chance when polls open on December 9 to defeat the BJP. Rahul Gandhi has been drawing large crowds. And part of the confidence also stems from the potential effect on the elections of three young disruptors - Hardik Patel, Alpesh Thakore and Jignesh Mevani - who command significant followings in their respective castes and are opposed to the BJP.
Is the BJP in trouble in a state it has controlled, except for a brief, negligible period, since 1995? Rajdeep Sardesai, consulting editor at the India Today Group, argues that "only anger can unseat the BJP in Gujarat and at the moment there is unhappiness at most rather than outright anger". Veteran Gujarati journalist Kanti Patel, who has been covering state elections for 35 years, is even more dismissive. "There might be anti-incumbency against the BJP," he says. "But with Narendra Modi as the party's face, the BJP will win comfortably. The only thing that the party has to guard against is its apparent arrogance."
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The obstacles to a Congress win are significant.
POOR TICKET DISTRIBUTION
In the past three Gujarat assembly polls, the Congress has failed at distributing tickets while keeping those it has disappointed on board. In both 2007 and 2012, those who had lost out on tickets responded with violence at the party headquarters. Insiders estimate that mistakes in ticket distribution have cost the Congress at least 30 seats in previous elections. Under national secretary Ashok Gehlot and his no-nonsense deputies, Bharatsinh Solanki and Shaktisinh Gohil, ticket distribution is expected to be more transparent. But the party's hand is forced. It must give its 44 sitting MLAs tickets, having lost 13 MLAs to the BJP in the rebellion led by former Congress leader Shankersinh Vaghela.
Nishit Vyas, Gujarat Congress general secretary, acknowledges the need to be "careful that ticketless malcontents don't react negatively". This could prove to be easier said than done if it is true, as one Congress leader confesses anonymously, that "in this election cycle there are 15 to 20 contenders for almost each seat in rural areas".
Dealing with Thakore, Patel, and Mevani may also prove difficult, with all three reportedly striking deals with the Congress leadership for ticket allocations. Thakore, in particular, is said to be unrelenting. Patel, some insiders claim, has asked for 15-20 tickets. And while Mevani has been the most accommodating, between them the trio want control over at least 40 seats.
THE HARDIK AND ALPESH QUESTION
Photo: Shailesh Rawal
While on paper the prospect of Patel, Thakore and Mevani being in the Congress corner is enticing, in reality their interests clash. For instance, in north and central Gujarat, and some crucial districts in Saurashtra, Thakore and the Congress enjoy a strong following in the OBC Kshatriya community. At the village level, though, the Patels are traditionally in conflict with OBC Kshatriyas. When the two communities have united in the past, it has been because the BJP has persuaded them that their interests are best served by Hindu solidarity.
How will the Congress handle their competing demands? In major parts of rural Gujarat, the Patels are opposed by nearly all OBC castes, not just OBC Kshatriyas. The BJP, party workers say, is already planning to divide the electorate along caste lines in areas where the Congress's Patel candidate, handpicked by Hardik, enjoys strong support.
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Gehlot, the party's Gujarat in-charge whose leadership has been essential to the Congress's apparent resurgence, insists that the "BJP's attempts at polarisation along caste and communal lines won't succeed because anger on various counts against the BJP has united the people". The feeling of anti-incumbency, many in the Congress claim, is so strong that caste divisions can be papered over. Still, as many as 38 Patel organisations, both small and large, have come out in opposition to Hardik, describing him as a politically ambitious, self-interested leader who continues to mislead the Patel community when the BJP state government has already acceded to most of his demands.
As with Hardik, a significant number of Thakores dispute Alpesh's leadership of the community. Former followers of his Gujarat Thakore Sena have complained that Alpesh vowed he was a social worker and would never enter party politics. The BJP is keen to emphasise their sense of betrayal. Bharat Pandya, a spokesman for the Gujarat BJP, says, in obvious reference to Hardik and Alpesh, that "it's not as easy as the political pundits think to maintain a grip over large communities". Natuji Thakore, the BJP's OBC Kshatriya face, is more direct, claiming that "Alpesh's strength is highly overrated".
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CONGRESS's URBAN NIGHTMARE
Even if the Congress is able to resolve some of the issues outlined above, how will it reverse the BJP's dominance of 100 urban and semi-urban seats? A dominance that was proven in 2012 when the BJP won nearly every seat in cities like Ahmedabad, Vadodara, Surat, and Rajkot, though it suffered heavily in rural north and central Gujarat.
In the 2015 civic polls, after the emergence of Hardik Patel, the BJP won just eight of the 31 district panchayats and 80 of the 230 taluka panchayats, but held sway in urban areas, winning all seven municipal corporations. Supporters argue that the BJP's commitment to development has been evident over the last few decades, that there is a track record at both state and national level.
The proposal to raise the Narmada dam to its full height of 138 metres, for example, was pending for a decade under the UPA at the Centre until Modi became prime minister. In 2012, as Gujarat chief minister, Modi announced a project to divert the excess waters of the Narmada stored in the Sardar Sarovar dam to 115 dams to ease drought-like conditions in some 5,000 villages in Saurashtra. As prime minister, he followed through, inaugurating the first phase of the Saurashtra Narmada Avataran Irrigation (SAUNI) Yojana in 2016. The project, the BJP says, is a boon to farmers and will help the party counter Congress attacks in rural Saurashtra.
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MODI AND HINDUTVA
Finally, for all the Congress's tom-tomming of anti-incumbency, it knows that Modi has attained almost mythical status in his home state. So much of what some call 'Gujarati pride' is invested in the image of Modi as leader. A senior Congress figure admitted that all the progress his party has made in the last three months "could collapse like a house of cards in the face of Modi's appeal. It is the factor that we most fear".
And in the state known as the laboratory of Hindutva, BJP president Amit Shah is not shy about playing the Hindutva card. A clumsy attempt has already been made, trying to link Congress Rajya Sabha member and Sonia Gandhi confidante Ahmed Patel to ISIS via a suspected operative who worked in a Bharuch hospital where Patel had been a trustee. Another Shah trump card is D.G. Vanzara, a former deputy inspector general of the Gujarat police and popular 'encounter cop'. He spent eight years in prison, suspected of extra-judicial killings. It made him a hero among many Hindus. His popularity, the BJP believes, can negate the Congress's caste strategy.
If Modi is the figurehead, Shah's tactics and expert booth management mean it is hard to see how the Congress's dream of taking Gujarat will be realised.
--- ENDS ---
Soldiers fighting the enemy will receive state-of-the-art assault rifles, other soldiers will get 'Make in India' rifles, reports Ajai Shukla.
IMAGE: The Indian Army will buy 250,000 assault rifles from the international market for soldiers on the front lines. Photograph: Danish Ismail/Reuters
The Indian Army's highest levels have arrived at a vital decision that could open the doors to buying new rifles for the entire army, while remaining within a strained procurement budget.
The decision is to equip infantry soldiers with a world-class assault rifle.
Non-infantry soldiers would get a cheaper, less effective, indigenous rifle.
Earlier, the army had planned to procure some 800,000 state-of-the-art assault rifles from the global market, each costing about Rs 200,000. That would have cost about Rs 16,000 crore (Rs 160 billion) -- significantly more than what the army can afford.
Now, army chief General Bipin Rawat has decided to buy only 250,000 assault rifles from the international market, and issue them only to combat infantrymen -- the frontline soldiers who are directly in contact with the enemy.
The remaining 550,000 soldiers who are authorised rifles but serve mainly in non-infantry arms and services will get a new indigenous rifle.
The army will choose between the INSAS-1C, designed by the Defence Research and Development Organisation, and the Ghatak, designed by the Ordnance Factory, Kirkee.
These are less lethal than the infantry's assault rifles, but also significantly cheaper, at about Rs 50,000 apiece.
"My thinking is: Since a state-of-the-art assault rifle will cost about Rs 200,000 each in the global market, let us issue these only to frontline infantry soldiers who confront the enemy armed only with their rifles," General Rawat said.
"Let us provide a cheaper indigenous option to other soldiers for whom the rifle is not a primary weapon," the general added.
The army, General Rawat explained, has evaluated two different weapons philosophies.
The assault rifle it has chosen for the infantry is a weapon optimised for conventional war, with a longer range and a larger bullet that kills or completely incapacitates enemy soldiers that it strikes. It is also equipped with a night vision sight.
The second type of weapon, which will arm non-infantry units, is optimised for counter-insurgency operations, being lighter and with a smaller bullet that a soldier can carry in larger numbers.
Features of the foreign rifles >> 7.62 mm calibre rifle >> Reflex sight >> Costs Rs 2 lakh each
A variation of this debate played out in the Indian Army in the 1970s when it was looking to replace its old 7.62 millimetre self-loading rifles.
At that time, it was argued that the army should get a 5.56 mm rifle since that would not just be lighter, but it would also injure, rather than kill, an enemy soldier.
That would take out of battle not just the enemy who was shot, but additional enemy soldiers who would be tied up in evacuating the casualty.
This resulted in the army equipping itself with the 5.56 mm INSAS-1B1, manufactured by the Ordnance Factory Board.
However, the army was unhappy with the INSAS-1B1, complaining that it was prone to stoppages, and that jihadis (and Pakistani soldiers in the Kargil conflict) who were shot by its lighter bullet did not always get incapacitated.
"We would shoot a militant with the INSAS and he would just keep coming at us. That is why we have always preferred to use the 7.62 mm AK-47 in Kashmir, rather than the INSAS," says Lieutenant General V P Singh, a recently retired officer who has served multiple tenures in Jammu and Kashmir.
Notwithstanding this, only the infantry is going back to 7.62 mm calibre rifles.
The bulk of the army will get 5.56 mm rifles, which means that the stock of older AK-47 rifles, which equip specialist Rashtriya Rifles' counter-insurgency units, would have to remain the mainstay of operations in J&K and the North East.
IMAGE: The decision to buy a mix of foreign and indigenous rifles will cost up to Rs 7,750 crore (Rs 77.50 billion), saving Rs 8,250 crore (Rs 82.5 billion). Photograph: Amit Dave/Reuters
The army currently fields 382 regular infantry battalions, 28 mechanised infantry battalions, 23 Guards battalions and nine Vikas and Scouts battalions, adding up to 442 battalions of infantry and its equivalent.
Even within an infantry battalion, not every one of its 800-odd soldiers will be issued a 7.62 mm assault rifle.
These will go only to soldiers who can expect to be in direct contact with the enemy: Its four rifle companies and the commando platoon (called Ghataks), totalling up to about 565 persons per battalion.
The remaining will be issued other weapons such as 5.56 mm carbines and rifles.
At 565 rifles for each of these infantry units, the total adds up to 250,000 rifles.
At Rs 200,000 for each foreign assault rifle, equipping these 250,000 infantrymen will cost Rs 5,000 crore (Rs 50 billion).
For the remaining 550,000 non-infantry soldiers, their indigenous rifles -- the INSAS-1C or the Ghatak rifle, whichever is chosen -- would be priced more cheaply at Rs 50,000 each, totalling up to Rs 2,750 crore (Rs 27.50 billion).
This foreign and indigenous mix of 800,000 rifles adds up to Rs 7,750 crore -- saving Rs 8,250 crore, or more than half the total cost of buying foreign assault rifles for the entire army.
The Ghatak and INSAS 1C both remain works in progress, with the army chief confirming that there were minor problems during trial firing in summer, including stoppages that exceeded permissible limits.
"However, there are significant improvements in those indigenous rifles too, and we expect the OFB and the DRDO to improve them quickly to meet our expectations," General Rawat said.
"We will not delay any further on the procurement process. I have passed orders for the Request for Proposals, as the tender is called to be issued by the end of this year," General Rawat added.
The Rs 2 lakh price tag for a state-of-the-art 7.62 mm assault rifle includes the cost of 'reflex sights' and 'night sights' that make it easier to aim and shoot with a high degree of accuracy, including at night.
Without these add-ons, an assault rifle is fired with the help of its in-built sights -- the soldier aligns a 'rear sight' and 'fore sight' on the rifle's barrel with the target before squeezing the trigger.
This requires a degree of skill and is tiring to the eye.
With a reflex sight, which is fitted onto a small rail on the rifle (called a Picatinny Rail), the soldier only has to look towards the target through a small telescope, and align a red dot in the sight with the target before firing.
A modern reflex/night sight today costs as much as the rifle on which it is fitted -- up to Rs 100,000.
For years, the Indian Army approached the acquisition of personal weapons, such as rifles and carbines, as part of the expansively named 'Future Infantry Soldier as a System' programme.
This aspired to integrate a soldier, along with his personal weapons and communications equipment, into a digitally networked battlefield management system.
With this proving too ambitious, the army has now split the F-INSAS initiative into two distinct parts -- the acquisition of personal weapons and, separately, a digitisation project termed the 'Battlefield Management System' that is being pursued as a 'Make' project in India.
Infantry weapons and equipment have seldom received the attention that is lavished on more glamourous and expensive weaponry like aircraft, warships, submarines or tanks.
However, with the infantry constantly engaged in live operations on the Line of Control with Pakistan, the Line of Actual Control with China and in counter-insurgency operations in J&K and the North East, there is a growing recognition of the need to upgrade the infantry soldier, particularly his personal weapon, says General Singh.
The need for infantry modernisation is especially urgent in India's operational milieu, where rugged mountain and jungle terrain limits the applicability and effectiveness of support weapons and air power, making the infantryman the final arbiter of a battle.
The defence ministry can spend Rs 58,000 crore on just 36 Rafale fighters. But it finds it difficult to spend Rs 16,000 crore on giving modern assault rifles to 800,000 soldiers.
Sitting on our border posts at 15,000 feet, we marvel at these priorities.
The role of India's infantry has remained largely unchanged since Independence: To close in with and destroy the enemy.
In defensive operations, the infantry physically holds ground against all forms of enemy attack.
The infantry is trained and tasked to fight to the end, firing rifles and machine guns and, when ammunition runs out, fighting hand to hand with bayonets -- a long knife attached to the rifle.
In an attack, while tanks often lead and the artillery provides fire support, eventually it is the infantryman -- no women are allowed yet into this most physical of combat arms -- who must physically occupy the enemy's positions, charging at them in the face of their firing.
All he can rely on with certainty is his personal weapon -- the rifle or the LMG.
The basic simplicity of the infantry's role and the tenacity needed to discharge it eminently suit the Indian soldier.
In active service around the world, including through two World Wars, the Indian infantryman has earned a formidable reputation for tenacity and courage.
"The defence ministry can spend Rs 58,000 crore (Rs 580 billion) on just 36 Rafale fighters. But it finds it difficult to spend Rs 16,000 crore (Rs 160 billion) on giving modern assault rifles to 800,000 soldiers," says the commanding officer of an infantry battalion, speaking over the phone.
"Sitting on our border posts at 15,000 feet, we marvel at these priorities."
When we spoke to Scrap Box founder Karen Ensminger in 2015, she said that as usual, the local creative reuse center was hanging by its fingernails financially. Since then, Ensminger has retiredand the nonprofit has gone through a rebranding, a complete leadership change, and the loss of its long-term employees.
The thirty-five-year-old organization dedicated to childrens education and creative reuse of unconventional scrap materials, is now SCRAP Box, operating under the national nonprofit SCRAP USA.
In a recent interview, Ensminger explains that as her retirement approached, the pressure to find a sustainable solution increased. Karens never taken a paycheck in her life, a former employee says, and finding the money to pay a new director only added to the long-term financial trouble.
The solution reached by the Scrap Box executive board was to turn over operations to the Portland-based national reuse network SCRAP USA. Its national director, Kelley Carmichael Casey, tells us that SCRAP operates its six locations around the country from a centralized hub in Portland that handles administrative, legal, and financial decisions. Typically people who go into creative reuse dont do it because they love to crunch numbers or they love to do the administrative work. Theyre eager to do the creative part of it, says Casey. We can provide those services at a very high level, and with a high level of understanding of the financial and legal management of a creative reuse center.
SCRAP USAs usual method is to help people start their own creative reuse centers in their own areas, so taking over a long-established institution was new territory. Soon, friction developed between the longtime employees, the Scrap Box board, and SCRAP USA.
We met with Ensminger and a group of former employees and volunteers; the latter asked not to be named, concerned they they might be blackballed from using the store if theyre identified as publicly criticizing SCRAP USA. In their account, the executive board brought up merging with the national group soon after Ensminger announced her retirement last year. It seemed like the [executive] board were in communication with them [SCRAP] a lot more than they let on to the rest of us. They acted like they didnt really know if they wanted us, or they were waiting to find out things, and that really wasnt true, says one employee. When we would ask if theyd made an offer, theyd say, no, but what they were waiting for was Karen to give her blessing, and then as soon as that happened, boom.
And I never gave them my blessing, Ensminger interjects. They said you did, someone says. Well, I abstained! says Ensminger indignantly.
Employees say the executive board asked them for their thoughts on SCRAP and its other locations, and they gave opinions that werent that positive. Two SCRAP locations, one in Traverse City and another in Kennewick, Washington, have closed in the last two months.
Then, it was a Tuesday, says a former employee, and they said, this weekend SCRAP voted and they want us and weve signed the contract. And I had asked them on Friday if there was any kind of offer. They said no on Friday, and on Tuesday they said it was a done deal.
Two Scrap Box employees, the bookkeeper and webmaster, were let go immediately, since they were unneeded due to SCRAPs central hub format. Theyd known that was a possibility from the start.
The other employees, some of whom had been there for more than twenty years, said they were willing to give SCRAP a chance. They said, Everyone keeps their job, and everyone can apply for the local director job. They said, You have a lot of great things going here and we just want to add our bit to it and create something really magical, so we had a little bit of hope that that would happen, says one.
Instead, employees say they started feeling the pressure right away, first in the form of a warehouse sale they saw as rushed, and then as SCRAP leadership pressed them for information on how things were being run. They say they struggled to keep up with SCRAP leaderships demands and organizational methods, and one of the employees called a board member and expressed concern about the claws coming out.
Within one half hour [of that call], we had an email stating that we were to meet in the annex room at 9 a.m., one says. The three employees who had been at the Scrap Box the longest were told they had fifteen minutes to clear out their desks. Meanwhile, Ensminger says she was told to stay away during the national directors visit.
The former employees are concerned that SCRAP USA is taking the Scrap Box in a direction of serving adults and away from children, and dont like some of the changes in the materials available there. We didnt start to become a Kiwanis club number two, says Ensminger. Others raised questions about a new policy where potentially swallowable items within reach of toddlers do not get washed.
National director Casey denies that the new SCRAP Box is moving away from children and families at all. We want kids and adults to be able to access materials they might find at home or work or school, she says. Casey says its true they dont wash their materials, but says thats standard practice at their other locations. She also says they plan on creating a new education coordinator position, to focus on childrens education, on top of providing crafting workshops for adults, and opportunities for local students.
Asked about closed locations, she acknowledges that not everyone is a fit for SCRAP, but she says recent numbers indicate the Ann Arbor location is now breaking even. She says she sympathizes with those who were let go, but that she felt the need to cut payroll while also getting a team together that could be fully onboard with SCRAPs methods: We got to a point where there was too much resistance.
Still, she says she would probably feel the same way if she had been in the employees shoes. Some of the decisions I had to make were absolutely heart-wrenching Its the toughest job Ive ever done. My mandate from my board of directors is to make any changes necessary for the SCRAP Box to be sustainable and survive for another thirty-five years, and I know how to do that.
When we bring up Ensmingers concerns to her, Casey sighs. Im sorry that she feels that way because thats really her heart and soul I hope shed be happy to know that were actually expanding the education program pretty significantly What she did was not short of a miracle.
On top of a larger social media presence, the new SCRAP Box is holding a grand reopening on October 28, with crafts, a costume contest, and a raffle. It also has a brand-new director, Stormy Trotter-Lloyd, who says we are gracious and thankful for the community members that have embraced the changes and that are still strong supporters of the SCRAP Box.
According to news reports, Pakistani authorities said a "foreign spy agency" planned to kill Saeed, and asked for more protection for the 26/11 attacks mastermind. One of them, published in a leading newspaper, said it was a "veiled reference" to RAW.
By Kamaljit Kaur Sandhu: Congress leader Salman Khurshid has said he is encouraged that "most-wanted terrorist" Hafiz Saeed "feels threatened" by Research and Analysis Wing (RAW), India's external spy agency.
"If he feels awe, (a) threat from the government of India, Indian agencies...there can be nothing better than that," Khurshid said.
According to news reports, Pakistani authorities said a "foreign spy agency" planned to kill Saeed, and asked for more protection for the 26/11 attacks mastermind. One of them, published in a leading newspaper, said it was a "veiled reference" to RAW.
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ON MODI GOVT'S HANDLING OF KASHMIR ISSUE
Salman Khurshid was critical of the Narendra Modi government's handling of the Kashmir crisis.
"There will be talks with Pakistan eventually, but the Modi government is bankrupt about solving the Kashmir problem. They joined PDP in J-K, it hasn't worked. They sent a former bureaucrat to JK, it hasnt worked," he said.
The Modi government "believed in optics" when "it came to issues of talks with Pakistan," he said.
Political outreach is the need of the hour, he added.
"It is difficult to say when there will be talks...but I don't know if any conflict has ended without talks."
ON FAROOQ ABDULLAH'S REMAKS ON P.O.K
On National Conference patron Farooq Abdullah's saying that PoK is a part of Pakistan, Khurshid said, "Anyone who says PoK knows it is Pakistan-occupied Kashmir, which obviously means if it is occupied, it belongs to India."
"It means Pakistan has occupied it," he said.
Khurshid defended Abdullah, saying the senior leader may be concerned about the future.
ON RAHUL GANDHI AND NARENDRA MODI
Khurshid said Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi was working hard, and that the BJP should accept that he had unconditional support. He said Narendra Modi didn't respect the prime minister's post, after Rahul himself said the BJP didn't respect the PM's post like the Congress did.
"BJP should be more respectful of other people who have been prime ministers of India," Rahul Gandhi said.
WATCH | 'Foreign intelligence agency' planning to kill Hafiz Saeed, Pakistan authorities say
--- ENDS ---
TORRINGTON United States Navy submarine lieutenant Jack McGrane of Torrington was the eldest veteran, perhaps the few left in the area who served in World War II, present at the annual Veterans Day ceremony at Coe Memorial Park Civic CenterSaturday morning.
Speeches from veterans, local politicians, a militia rifle salute, and the veterans saluting of the wreaths for local military veteran organizations also happened during the event, which was attended by about 175 people.
McGrane, 93, said after the ceremony, What can you say? I lost a lot of friends during World War II and the Korean War. A lot of friends were lost during D-Day and the Battle of the Bulge. McGrane, originally from Brooklyn, New York, but living in Torrington currently, said he had served five years in war duty, and 12 during inactive duty.
McGrane continued, If you were in World War II, there was nothing else like it. We have had other wars since then, but none so all-encompassing that everybody got drafted. Fifteen million men and some women were armed.
About one hour earlier, the Veterans Day ceremony at Coe Memorial Park was rung in by an invocation by veteran and chaplain Roger Geiger, who called upon God to guide them (veterans) through their travels.
State Sen. Craig Miner, R-30, issued a Veterans Day proclamation from Gov. Dannel P. Malloy, joined by state Rep.Michelle Cook and Jay Case. Miner said, It is incumbent upon us for to provide care for those who have encountered hostile territory care, these returning veterans.
Cook acknowledged during her speech that fathers, sons, and mothers serving in the armed forces missed out during the upcoming Thanksgiving/Christmas/New Years Eve holidays. We thank each and every veteran for their service, Cook said, and issued a proclamation recognizing that veterans from the American Revolutionary Wars militias to those involved in modern warfare had exhibited patriotism and courage. She added, We direct attention their selfless deeds. Bless you all and God bless America.
During his speech, Rep. Jay Case said, This is our appreciation of your service and of your leadership, and of your sacrifice while defending the country.
Torrington Mayor Elinor Carbone, in issuing the citys proclamation for Veterans Day, took a different approach to celebrating Veterans Day in her speech. Saying thank you for your service doesnt seem enough, she said, citing a recent article that suggested ways of showing appreciation for U.S. war veterans: The appeal is for young people here for citizens of the world just to not utter words but to put words into action.
She noted the article said Twitter hashtags and installing green light bulbs were good gestures but veterans had suggestions for concrete actions, such as volunteering at veterans hospitals, donating to a military cause, and getting to know veterans in ones community.
Torrington Veterans Support Committee chairman Leo Martigneni, who emceed the event, said during a break in the event: It is great to see everyone come out, especially the Boy Scouts and the Girl Scouts, to express gratitude.
The event was moved outside into Coe Memorial Park by 11 a.m. Torrington resident Steven Heintz played Taps on the trumpet and 10 members of the Northwest Honor Guard gave a rifle salute. The ritual recognized the 11th day of the 11th hour of the 11th month in order to mark the original Armistice Day cessation of international hostilities during World War I.
The event resumed back inside the Coe Memorial Park Civic Center, with guest speaker and United State Air Force veteran Joanne Brogois giving a speech. Brogois, who served in active duty in Desert Storm and Desert Shield and who spent 30 years in the Torrington public school system, said she was honored and humbled to be representing veterans.
While growing up, she said her Catholic school system and the national antipathy toward the Vietnam War had never given her an option for a military career. That changed in 1979, when she decided to join the U.S. Air Force. All privileges were taken away for six weeks, she said, adding that when it came time to be assigned duties, she said, I told my recruiter: Just dont give me a desk job. Brogois worked for 30 years in transportation services in the U.S. Air Force, landing military aircraft such as C-130s and C-141s.
It was fulfilling, she said, despite the challenges of balancing military duty with having three children. We still had to give 100 percent, she said, adding later, It is a personal sacrifice and knowing full well there was a chance of not returning.
Afterward, Rachel Harrel of Torrington expressed her delight with the event.
I am pretty impressed with the turnout, Harrel said. Both of my grandfathers were in World War II, and my uncle from Florida was in Vietnam. Harrel supervised the four troops from the Girl Scouts of America Troop 4004, who had sung the ceremonys inaugural Star Spangled Banner and, after the ceremony, gave handwritten thank-you letters to present veterans.
Human rights lawyer Gao Zhisheng is being held in secret police custody in a darkened room with no access to the outside, according to a rights group that has been advocating for him.
Gao, 53, has been incommunicado after disappearing on Aug. 13 from his previous house arrest in a cave dwelling in a remote village in the northern province of Shaanxi.
Now, the Gao Zhisheng Lawyers' Concern Group headed by rights activist Ai Ming says it has tracked him down, publishing a brief audio clip of Gao talking about the conditions he is being held in.
"I haven't seen the light of day, nor taken any exercise in eight years," Gao can be heard saying in the audio recording, saying that his conditions are even worse than during his three-year jail term at Shaya Prison in a remote area of the northwestern region of Xinjiang.
"Things weren't so bad in Shaya Prison," Gao says in the undated audio sent to RFA by Ai. "During my time there, I got to leave the closed cell at times. I also got to leave the prison building twice during those three years."
Gao said he is currently locked up in total darkness, in a room where the windows have been blacked out to prevent any natural light from coming in. He said it feels like being confined in an "infinite darkness."
"He is currently being held in secret detention, so they definitely won't be allowing him access to the outside, nor any medical treatment," Ai told RFA on Sunday.
"We are very worried about his situation in secret detention, that he will be subjected to torture like he was before," she said. "The denial of medical treatment is a form of slow torture ... and we are worried that he might [die in custody] if this continues."
Ai said Gao had a number of illnesses. "For example, his teeth have all fallen out, so he can only eat liquids," she said.
However, officials gave conflicting information about Gao's whereabouts when contacted by RFA on Sunday.
'Stability maintenance'
An official who answered the phone at the Jialu township government in Shanxi's Jia county, which administers Gao's home village, said his case is being managed by the local "stability maintenance" team."
"I don't know the details. I think the stability maintenance team is handling it. I can give you the number of a Mr. Xue who's in charge of it," she said.
But Xue declined to give a direct answer when asked about Gao's whereabouts on Sunday.
"As far as I recall, he is still in the village, but maybe he is here.
Yes, he is. He never went [to Beijing]. He spent some time at a friend's place," Xue said.
His account contradicted that of Gao's brother, who told RFA last month that his brother had been placed in detention by authorities in Beijing.
Asked when Gao went to the friend's house, he replied: "I don't know.
This wasn't part of our remit. It was the Jia county [police]. But he's fine, anyway. Nothing happened to him, nothing at all."
"[The Jia county police] told us that he's fine. OK, I have to go now," Xue said.
And Gao's defense attorney Zhang Lei said the Jia county police had denied being in charge of Gao's case when he went there in person on Nov. 9 to enquire about his client's whereabouts.
"We don't know what our next move should be, and we have no way of finding out what is really happening," Zhang told RFA. "Under the law, if he is implicated in a case, the family should be informed. If he's not, he should be a free man."
Gao Zhisheng, once a prominent lawyer feted by the ruling Chinese Communist Party, began to be targeted by the authorities after he defended some of Chinas most vulnerable people, including Christians, coal miners, and followers of the banned Falun Gong spiritual movement.
In a published memoir, Gao details the torture he later endured at the hands of the authorities during his time in prison, as well as three years of solitary confinement, during which he said he was sustained by his Christian faith and his hopes for China.
Activists say his continuing house arrest even after being "released"
from jail mirrors the treatment meted out to fellow rights lawyers and activists detained in a nationwide police operation since July 2015.
Gao's wife Geng He fled to the U.S. with the couple's two children after Gao's last disappearance in 2009, where she has continued to speak out on his behalf.
Reported by Qiao Long for RFA's Mandarin Service, and by Hai Nan for the Cantonese Service. Translated and edited by Luisetta Mudie.
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By PTI: New Delhi, Nov 12 (PTI) A special Delhi court has directed the extradition of an Uzbek fugitive to her homeland to face proceedings in a case of human trafficking there.
Additional Chief Metropolitan Magistrate Gurmohina Kaur, who presides over the Special Extradition Court of India, directed the Centre to send Khakimova Lola Farmonova back to Uzbekistan, noting that the extradition request was received from the requesting country.
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Farmonova was detained at the Goa airport on August 9 on a request of provisional detention by Uzbekistan.
"The prescribed procedure has been followed in as much as the extradition request has been submitted through diplomatic channel, along with documents including the duly authenticated and endorsed court decision containing direction of arrest and required information as per the Extradition Act and concerned extradition treaty," the court said.
The order of the Uzbek court containing directions for the arrest of Farmonova was submitted by advocate N K Matta on behalf of the external affairs ministry.
"In view of the above report, I hereby recommend to Union of India the extradition of the fugitive criminal for the offence of human trafficking...," the Delhi court said.
The court had in September denied her bail on the ground that the charges against her were serious.
Farmonova had earlier told the court that she was falsely implicated and there was no criminal record against her.
She had claimed that her husband was an Indian national and she would abide by all the conditions imposed by the court.
Farmonova was on her way to Dubai via Muscat by an Oman Airlines flight when the immigration officials stopped her as there was a look out circular and a red corner notice against her. She was then handed over to Goa Police.
The woman, who was living in Mumbai, had come to Goa to board the international flight, the police had said. PTI UK ZMN DV
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Row after row they marched thousands of larger-than-life figures frozen in clay, a phalanx of officials guarding the tomb of Chinas first emperor.
Silently they patrolled beneath the soil for 2,200 years, until a farmer digging a well in 1974 found fragments of unparalleled significance near Chinas early capital city, Xianyang.
Now those fierce warriors have reached the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts to tell their extraordinary story in Terracotta Army: Legacy of the First Emperor of China. The exhibition will be on display at VMFA from Saturday, Nov. 18, through March 11, before traveling to the Cincinnati Art Museum.
Ten of the clay figures will stand with a total of 130 objects from 14 museums and archaeological institutes in Chinas Shaanxi province, where the current city of Xian is located. Forty of the objects have never left China before. Beyond the life-size clay figures, the exhibit brings perspective with objects that range from bronze spearheads found in the emperors mausoleum to a small gold tiger that predated him by more than 250 years.
They will illustrate the life and legacy of Ying Zheng, who became king at age 13 and gained full control at his coronation nine years later in 238 B.C. By the time he was 38, he had conquered six other states to create a unified Chinese nation in 221 B.C. He declared himself Emperor Qin Shihuang, the first emperor of Qin (pronounced Chin).
No Chinese ruler before or after Qin Shihuang constructed a mausoleum of similar size. Its discovery rivaled that of King Tuts tomb in archaeological importance, said Alex Nyerges, VMFA director.
There was nothing to this scale. Thats what really makes it so important, so different, Nyerges said. You look at the Qin and even the Han dynasty (which followed it). They all have considerable burial complexes that in most cases bring together things the emperor would need in the afterlife animals, soldiers, servants. Its the scale, the enormity, the sheer size of what he did, to create an army of larger than life size figures. Its unparalleled.
The fascination attracts hordes of visitors wherever the terracotta figures have traveled. The National Geographic Museum in Washington had a record-setting 280,000 people at its four-month exhibit of 15 figures in 2009-2010. Chicagos Field Museum attracted 460,000 to its 10-month exhibit that ended in January.
In an unusual juxtaposition with the VMFA exhibit, Philadelphias Franklin Institute has a current terracotta warriors exhibit that focuses on the science and technology that went into their creation. VMFA focuses on why they were created and how they fit into Chinas long sweep of history. Each institution has 10 life-size terracotta figures on display, giving an unprecedented opportunity to study them in depth.
People who go to Xian are swept away by the number of figures and massive size of the complex.
When you are on site, when you look at a figure, you are at least 30 feet away. You cant have that close range to look at all the detail, said Li Jian, exhibit curator. When we bring it to the museum, you are only 3 feet away. You can really see everything in detail. You can walk around every figure.
At the VMFA, the display includes:
An armored general, one of only nine discovered in the massive complex. His elaborate hat once held two feather tails modeled after a pheasant. His hands once rested on the hilt of a sword. He is the tallest of the figures, standing over 6 feet tall.
A middle-ranking officer. He may have held a spear in one hand and likely held a short bronze sword in the other. With rolled-up sleeves beneath leather and armored protective coverings, he appears ready for action.
An armored infantryman, one of hundreds found in the burial complex. His hair is tied in a topknot. His robe has a thick collar to protect his neck, and plated armor covers his shoulders and torso. This figure would have held a crossbow behind the defensive lines.
A calvaryman. He wears a skullcap made of hide, and a short sleeveless armor that would allow him to easily pivot on horseback.
A cavalry horse. Details on his saddle include tacks, tassels, girth straps, buckles and a blanket. His bridle and reins would have been made of bronze or stone.
A standing archer. Wearing a long padded field robe, hes depicted drawing back his crossbow. A group of standing archers encircled the kneeling archers.
A kneeling archer. Wearing armor on his chest and shoulders, hes positioned so that the crossbow would be pointed upward and away from the ranks.
An armored charioteer. With hands outstretched to hold the reins, he wears heavy armor and a high-collared robe for protection. His cap identifies him as a low-ranking officer.
A civil official. Bureaucrats were also necessary for the afterlife. This figure with curving hat and long robe was among a dozen civil officials who stood in waiting.
A stable attendant. Found near the remains of a horse about a quarter-mile from the emperors burial complex, the simple figure sits with legs folded beneath him, hands on his knees, awaiting orders.
The VMFA exhibition is divided into three sections. The first one introduces the emperor; the second puts him in context with artifacts from the warring states; the third shows his journey into the afterlife.
In simple terms, said Li Jian, the exhibit curator, first is the emperor, who he is; second is where hes from; last is where hes going to.
Outside of the terracotta figures, highlights include a 5-foot bronze chariot reproduction of a painted bronze chariot and horses found in the burial complex. The chariot likely represents the emperors travels across China after unification.
Other treasures include horse ornaments, coins from the emperors first standardized currency and its predecessors, a small nephrite goddess carved wearing her hair in pigtails, and a 9-inch terracotta mounted warrior thats thought to be the oldest depiction of a cavalryman ever found in China.
We want to give visitors the experience to understand emperor Qin and how valuable he was to world history, Nyerges said, and of course do it from the artistic perspective. The things that we have in this exhibition are just so beautiful.
When looking at the terracotta army, pay attention to the faces, each of which was different.
Creating them took the talent of an army of artists that could create more than 8,000 soldiers that were all live portraits of real people, Nyerges said. You look at the faces and you can feel humanity across that span of time. ... The word unbelievable keeps coming to the forefront as I try to find the words to describe something that has been a continual source of amazement.
A Place for All Conservatives to Speak Their Mind.
While the Delhi government invokes women's safety for not starting odd-even from Monday, ex-AAP leaders say it's all about not upsetting the party's two-wheeler vote-bank in the city.
By Arpan Rai, Sneha Agrawal: The removal of two-wheelers and women from the new exemption list of the odd-even scheme has led to the withdrawal of the scheme that was scheduled to begin from Monday.
As per the state government, it was pulled out keeping in mind the preparedness as well as women safety.
However, former AAP leaders have said two-wheeler users comprise a major vote bank for them and hence they do not want to upset them.
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The government might not be directly saying it, but this move can find its roots in the vote-bank agenda of the party, suggested Swaraj India's spokesperson.
"The government has been incompetent in the face of Delhi's pollution crisis. They cannot attribute the pollution to stubble burning. They have not provided. The government has just provided 3,000 buses, while the required figure is 10,000. It has been inept solving the issue," Anupam, Swaraj India's national spokesperson told Mail Today.
The Delhi government withdrew the scheme post the directions of National Green Tribunal that directed it to not exclude two wheelers nor women, but only CNG and other vehicles used for public service and during emergencies at the time of implementation of oddeven rule.
Delhi transport minister Kailash Gahlot has said: "We respect the NGT decision, but its condition of removal of two wheelers and women from the exemption list has made it difficult to implement the odd-even rule, as we do not have adequate buses. "At the same time, we cannot compromise with the safety of women. We cannot take risks. PM2.5 and PM10 levels have also come down. So, at the moment, we are calling it off. We will file a review application in NGT on Monday."
However, the NGT bench headed by its chairperson Justice Swatanter Kumar observed that diesel vehicles and two wheelers are much bigger contributors to air pollution than petrol-operated cars. Scientists present for CPCC and DPCC told the court that vehicular pollution contributes to nearly 20 per cent of the total air pollution in Delhi and out of this, two wheelers contribute to a bit less than one-third.
They pointed out that the city had more two wheelers running on its streets as compared to other vehicles and also that they emit serious pollutants like Carbon monoxide and Hydrocarbon unlike petrol vehicles.
NGT, while laying down few conditions that had to be adhered every time the pollution level increased beyond permissible limits, said: "It shall be mandatory for NCT Delhi and all its government departments to implement oddeven without default and it shall not be optional for any officer of the government or institutions."
The court granted exemption to vehicles used for carrying municipal solid waste, ambulances, fire service vans and vehicles meant for carrying out emergency services and government vehicles as listed by the government.
NGT order said: "Every entry point in Delhi shall be properly managed by concerned department and the police to ensure that there are no traffic jam at the borders. "State governments of Rajasthan, Haryana and Uttar Pradesh shall depute special force at the borders with NCT Delhi to ensure that no inconvenience is caused and congestions are avoided with an aim to control air pollution even at those points."
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According to the order, all the private transporters who are granted permits by respective state governments and NCT Delhi would provide CNG buses in co-ordination with the transport department and NCT of Delhi for carrying passengers, free of charges, in discharge of their corporate social responsibility as they are the beneficiaries of the state's Largesse.
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The elected leaders of Blacksburg and Montgomery County plan to meet over coffee Tuesday to begin mending a relationship that took a blow earlier this year when the two localities failed to reach a deal on a piece of real estate.
Blacksburgs mayor-elect Leslie Hager-Smith said she doesnt plan to delve into numerous serious topics with county Board of Supervisors Chairman Chris Tuck. She said she instead plans to leave the discussion wide open.
I dont have an elaborate agenda, Hager-Smith said. This is just a chance to get to know each other a little bit better.
Hager-Smith edged her closest challenger and council colleague Krisha Chachra Tuesday night to be elected Blacksburgs first female mayor. Tuck had said prior to election day that he planned to reach out Wednesday morning to ask the winner to coffee.
On the campaign trail, Hager-Smith and other candidates were asked about how they would improve Blacksburgs relationship with the county.
The grudge was also obvious during a few moments earlier this year.
Perhaps the most telling sign occurred in late March shortly after the county struck a deal with a local developer on the old Blacksburg High School when Blacksburg Town Council directed its senior staff to dig up a decades-old study that explored the feasibility of the town converting to a city. Council also asked its town manager to later deliver a presentation on the topic.
The old study, produced in 1982, stated that there are political benefits to converting to city status. Among those benefits is that local elected figures who reside outside the town could no longer make decisions that directly affect Blacksburg.
For example: Three of the four county supervisors who passed a deal this year on the old Blacksburg High School do not represent districts that include Blacksburg.
The other benefit the town would gain is complete control of its schools, according to the study.
The county owns all school properties in Blacksburg and Christiansburg and is often under some pressure to sell defunct campuses to make some extra cash and boost funding to the schools.
The towns control zoning, which governs land use. In Blacksburg, town officials lean on zoning to carefully direct the placement of real estate and soften the effects of growth mostly caused by Virginia Tech.
The old Blacksburg Middle School closed in 2002, but that property has since sat in limbo due to years of disagreements on the future of the site between the town, the county and the school board.
In 2013, council hesitated on a proposal to build a mixture of commercial and multi-family residential real estate on the old middle school site. Last month, developer Jeanne Stosser filed a rezoning application for a plan sharing a resemblance to the proposal from a few years ago.
The county didnt oppose the towns preference for the old high school, but disagreed with the town on the propertys price. When talks between the two localities reached a stalemate, county officials turned to the market and struck a deal in March to sell the old high school site to a real estate arm of Shelor Motor Mile for $3 million.
Town council has been interested in the old high school site out of a desire to keep the property as open recreational space and protected from intense development. The council in February even voiced reluctance against a county-backed proposal from developer Bill Ellenbogen that would have involved building a storage facility for Virginia Tech on the 36-acre site while giving a portion of the land to the town.
The old high schools negotiation process itself saw some difficulties.
Town council criticized the use of letters to communicate bids or changes in bids. Council members called the method ineffective and criticized county officials for not sitting down with the town in private to discuss the old high school.
In the countys defense, Tuck said his board had concerns about the private meetings not being inclusive enough.
There had been some misunderstandings with the old middle school property, and we didnt want to repeat that, he said. If you have letters and all seven board members there, there are no misunderstandings.
Tuck said the county also offered to go to mediation to definitely resolve the matter. Town officials argued the old high school was not a legal dispute and viewed mediation as an unnecessary step.
Chachra added to the debate during her campaign by saying the county never made it clear that the town could have stretched payment on the old high school over a period of three years. Tuck and some of his supervisor colleagues dispute that claim.
I dont see problems, except with these two properties, Hager-Smith said. Otherwise its mostly a success story.
Hager-Smith pointed to the regional 911 center, the water authority and the completion of a rescue squad in Blacksburg as signs of successful cooperation between the town and county.
One, I think communication will be helpful, being able to work through issues, Tuck said, and not let them rise to the level that they did with the high school and middle school properties, [but] similar to what we did with the 911 center and water authority.
Tuck said the county should try to look at Blacksburgs perspective.
Blacksburg is part of Montgomery County, he said.
We may not always get along, but were part of the same family.
Some readers have been wondering how I did at the polls Tuesday, using a scratched, scuffed, completely unrecognizable Roanoke Times employee identification card as my voter photo ID. Before we get to that minor adventure, lets briefly recap.
On Nov. 2, this column plumbed the nooks and crannies of Virginias voter photo ID law. Republicans in the General Assembly engineered that in 2013; it took effect in 2014.
Intentionally or not, it favors job holders over senior citizens and people on public assistance.
Thats because in many respects a work photo ID is the most powerful kind for voting. First, most employee IDs have no expiration date. Second, theres no government-issue requirement. Third, the employer doesnt even have to be based in Virginia.
Conversely, voters on food stamps or welfare or Medicaid carry Virginia-issued ID for those services. But those IDs are useless for voting because they have no photo. Perhaps thats an unfortunate coincidence. Perhaps not.
Lets review the relevant language in the Virginia Code:
The [election] officer shall ask the voter to present any one of the following forms of identification: his valid Virginia drivers license, his valid United States passport, or any other photo identification issued by the Commonwealth, one of its political subdivisions, or the United States; any valid student identification card containing a photograph of the voter and issued by any institution of higher education located in the Commonwealth or any private school located in the Commonwealth; or any valid employee identification card containing a photograph of the voter and issued by an employer of the voter in the ordinary course of the employers business.
Some other oddities arise from that wording. For example an aide at a privately operated assisted living center can use his employee photo ID to vote. But a senior citizen who lives there cannot use his resident photo ID at the polls, even though the IDs are issued by the same place. Thats because a resident is not an employee.
Anyway, I wondered if my 20-year-old employee ID for The Roanoke Times would work for voting, and promised to try it.
Tuesday I took it over to the polls at Grandin Court Elementary School. The election officer accepted it without question, even though the handsome devil on the card no longer resembles me, and the picture is blurred, and even though half my last name is scratched off. None of those circumstances amounted to disqualifiers.
But thats not where the story ends on this subject. One of my colleagues here in the newsroom, Sara Gregory, tried to vote elsewhere in the city using her work ID. And it got rejected.
Gregory, who joined the paper in May 2015 and covers education, walked into her polling precinct, Calvary Baptist Church on Campbell Avenue, around 9 a.m. on Tuesday.
When the election officer told her the work ID was no good, I questioned it, Gregory told me.
Gregory asked the election officer: Oh, I thought employer IDs were acceptable. and she said no, she didnt think so. The woman offered to check with the precinct chief. But by then Gregory was pulling out her Virginia drivers license.
That passed muster, so Gregory got to vote. It was no big deal that her work ID got turned down. Like mine, the photo on hers is scuffed and faded. Maybe thats the reason it was disqualified. (Still, Gregorys ID photo resembles her way more than mine resembles me.)
Shes not the only one whose work ID was rejected. It also happened to Aaron Stevenson, who moved from Roanoke to Vinton a few months ago.
Tuesday evening, Stevenson took his work ID with him to vote at the Charles R. Hill Senior Center and the election officer there wouldnt accept it.
I got the impression that my employer ID was rejected solely because the poll worker didnt want to be bothered with it, Stevenson told me in an email. When I presented it, she barely glanced at it before asking if I had my drivers license. I asked if my employer ID was no good, and the answer I got was, I need to see something else.
I didnt get any explanation for why my employer ID was not accepted this time. It was fine when I voted in Roanoke City, Stevenson wrote. He intends to file a complaint with state Department of Elections.
I agree with you that the laws regarding voter ID are far from perfect, he added. But still, I think public officials ought to adhere to the law, and citizens ought to complain when they dont.
Another account of a less-than-perfect photo ID law came from Danielle Dery, 25, of Charlottesville. She graduated from James Madison University in 2014, after which Dery moved to North Carolina for work.
She moved back to Virginia in August but hasnt yet updated her drivers license. When she went to the polls at the University of Virginia, the election officer said Derys North Carolina license was no good as voter ID. He was following the law.
Dery registered to vote in October and received a Virginia voter registration card in the mail. But the elections officer wouldnt accept that because it doesnt have a photo. He asked her if she had a student ID. So she whipped out her old one from JMU, which she happened to be carrying.
He looked at it for about 60 seconds, Dery told me. Then he allowed her to vote.
In terms of voting, the law makes student IDs almost as powerful as employee IDs, because student IDs typically dont have an expiration date either. The chief drawback is, only student IDs issued by a Virginia school will work for voting.
Its so dumb, Dery said. I get that my drivers license is from out of state. But its a hell of a lot more valid than my student ID from the school where I graduated three years ago.
Perhaps the craziest story I heard about voter photo ID came from Fred Landis of Roanoke. The Nov. 2 column inspired him to test the system the way I did. Like me, he votes at Grandin Court Elementary.
Unlike me, Landis is 89. He retired long ago. One of his pastimes is collecting aviation-related bric-a-brac. Another is hanging out with some pals at a private hanger at Roanoke-Blacksburg Regional Airport. He does that two or three days a week.
Though hes not an employee, Landis has an airport-issued photo ID that gets him through the general aviation terminal there.
On Election Day, Landis donned a Royal Canadian Air Force cap, clipped his airport ID badge to his collar and got in line at Grandin Court Elementary.
After telling the registrar my name and address and showing her my airport ID, she passed me through, he said.
Under the letter of the law, was Landis ploy legal? I doubt it unless the regional airport commission counts as a political subdivision of the commonwealth.
But hey, such are the vagaries voter photo ID in Virginia.
CHRISTIANSBURG The windows of the old Hill School where black children were educated in the decades after the Civil War have looked out over the town for 150 years.
Today the rooms they have lit for generations are getting a new lease of life.
A new $60,000 metal roof shone brightly in the autumn sun on Friday, recently installed with funds from Christiansburg Town Council and Schaeffer Memorial Baptist Church, which owns the building.
David Moore is president of the Christiansburg Community Center that leases the building from the church and has for years offered it to nonprofits for office, meeting and program space. He gave a tour of interior renovations now underway.
Moore said the centers four-member board of directors decided to close the building earlier this year until some needed construction could be completed. Until then, it had provided space for the NAACP and the Ruritan Club, as well as other groups and programs.
But the building was falling down around our feet, he said.
Moore is a deacon at Schaeffer and has been a member of the church for 25 years. The son of a West Virginia coal miner, Moore worked hard to escape the mines. Today hes a controls engineer at Corning.
The legendary Christiansburg civil rights leader and Schaeffer member Nannie B. Hairston talked Moore into joining the Community Center board about 15 years ago, he said. She had worked to keep it open and draw attention to the need to preserve it.
Hairston died in July.
Without repairs, the historic structure had a tenuous future, and the loss would be significant.
In Christiansburg, we have a lot of history of what Virginia Tech and the white people did here in Christiansburg. But a lot of people dont know there were black people here. They dont know that we are here, Moore said.
As the elders who attended the Hill School or who have helped to preserve it over many years die, our history is slowly dying away, he said. And a couple of generations just moved away. And so if we dont preserve it, its going to be gone.
Christiansburg Town Council has so far given $37,515 to the center for the renovation, spokeswoman Melissa Demmitt wrote in an email.
The church paid about half the cost of the new roof, Moore said. And it pays for insurance and electricity and water service for the building.
Constructed in 1885 by Union Army veteran and Freedmens Bureau agent Charles Schaeffer to give area African-Americans a classical education, the centers building is listed on the state and national historic registers.
In its early years, the building was known as Christiansburg Institute. Eventually it outgrew the building. With advice from noted black educator Booker T. Washington, the institute eventually expanded to offer secondary and vocational education on 200 acres off Scattergood Drive.
It was then renamed Christiansburg Industrial Institute.
The old Hill School continued to operate as a primary school for African-American children until 1953, when the county moved those students to a new all-black primary school to avoid integration.
The Christiansburg Institute continued to offer secondary education until 1966 when school desegregation finally came to Montgomery County.
In 1963, members of the community and Schaeffer came together to renovate the old Hill School and put it back into use. Eventually it became the property of the church, which sits next door and was also built in the 1880s with guidance from Charles Schaeffer.
Currently, the community center is working on the main entrance hall restoring its high ceilings and installing new floors and lighting. Moore said the plan is to reopen that section by the end of the year.
Itll be a showcase for us, he said.
A rededication ceremony and fundraiser will be held sometime next month to show the community what has been done there. But a lot of renovations will still be needed, he said.
There is no official estimate of what it will cost to refurbish all the rooms in the two-story building. But the board has a 10-year plan to do the work one room at a time, as funds can be found.
Theyve also decided to restore the original windows, which stretch nearly from floor to ceiling and will cost $3,800 each to renovate, Moore said.
The center has had donations, like lighting design work and a woodworker who built custom trim to restore the original window casings.
Moore said the center is looking for additional board members, volunteers and donors to complete the project.
Donations for the Christiansburg Community Center may be made through Schaeffer Memorial Baptist Church at 580 N. High St., Christiansburg, Virginia 24073, or by calling 382-0562.
By India Today Web Desk: In a bizarre tweet, US President Donald Trump said that he would never call North Korean leader Kim Jong Un "short and fat". Trump also said that he tries so hard to Kim Jong Un's friend and maybe one day they will.
Why would Kim Jong-un insult me by calling me "old," when I would NEVER call him "short and fat?" Oh well, I try so hard to be his friend - and maybe someday that will happen! - Trump's tweet read.
Why would Kim Jong-un insult me by calling me "old," when I would NEVER call him "short and fat?" Oh well, I try so hard to be his friend - and maybe someday that will happen!- Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 12, 2017
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This tweet comes after North Korea's comment last week where North Korea's state news agency called President Donald Trump a "lunatic old man". North Korea state media accused Trump of driving tensions "to the extreme" and also said that "no-one can predict when the lunatic old man of the White House, lost to senses, will start a nuclear war".
Trump's tweet has led to hilarious responses from Twitter users (obviously).
You should want him in office forever. Think of all the free comedy material you will have.- Ron Parry (@hobbledegaagaa) November 12, 2017
Someone please get Kim Jong-un a Twitter account. We can settle this right here right now!!- HonorTheCall ???? (@HonorTheCall_) November 12, 2017
What is this, Mean Girls the Sequel?- Matt Friedrichs (@FriedrichsMatt) November 12, 2017
If someone told me this tweet came from a 12 year old girl's diary I would 100% believe them- Lauren Kahn Torre (@hereslauren) November 12, 2017
Do you want us all to be killed? Because THAT'S how you get us all killed. Shut up you mean old bastard and go to bed. After your Ensure of course.- Schuylar Croom (@Crucialdude) November 12, 2017
I thought I was reading a school yard playground interaction...oh wait, the president of the UNITED STATES. ??- Ling An (@linglingan33) November 12, 2017
Wow. It's like having a 12 year old as president.- Ginger Resists (@gingwing23) November 12, 2017
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Thirteen candidates who signed a pledge refusing to accept campaign cash from Virginias two big utilities won seats in the House of Delegates on Tuesday. Seven of those support prohibiting Dominion Energy and Appalachian Power from making political donations.
The pledge, signed by nearly 60 mostly Democratic House of Delegates candidates, made headlines earlier this year.
And in the traditionally business-friendly General Assembly, where no corporate concern has held more sway of late than Dominion, the states largest utility, an influx of Democratic lawmakers who see the companys clout as excessive could augur a shift in debate on major issues during the legislative session next year.
I just felt their influence might be too big, said Democratic Del.-elect Cheryl Turpin, an environmental science teacher in Virginia Beach who unseated Republican Del. Rocky Holcomb, of her decision to sign the pledge to refuse campaign contributions.
In a statement, Democrat Schuyler VanValkenburg, a government and history teacher who defeated Republican Eddie Whitlock for the Henrico County seat vacated by retiring GOP Del. Jimmie Massie, said the pledge was not anti-Dominion but rather a statement of good governance.
Dominion is a state-regulated monopoly and as a first-time candidate, I wanted my constituents to know that I would be overseeing Dominion with their interests at heart, VanValkenburg said.
Several other candidates who signed the pledges could not be reached or declined interview requests.
The election, which saw Democrats make stunning gains in the House, came near the end of a year roiled by controversial Dominion plans. Those include capping and closing its coal ash ponds, a much-opposed natural gas pipeline it wants to build across the state, and transmission line projects in Prince William County and across the James River near Jamestown that have been fought tooth and nail.
In perhaps one of the few points of common ground with her vanquished conservative opponent, Del. Bob Marshall, R-Prince William, Del.-elect Danica Roem, a former journalist and Virginias first openly transgender delegate, vowed vigilance Friday on the companys unpopular proposed transmission line between Gainesville and Haymarket to power an Amazon data center expansion.
Theyre dealing with an investigative reporter now in the 13th District. Im not going to put up with B.S. from them for even a minute. If they do anything that screws over the people of Gainesville and Haymarket, theres going to be hell to pay, Roem said.
And in September, the Virginia Supreme Court upheld a 2015 law that froze the State Corporation Commissions ability to review utility electric rates and order refunds to customers, a decision that could allow Dominion, the top corporate donor to state campaigns, to reap a $1 billion windfall by 2022.
Sen. Chap Petersen, D-Fairfax City, who had few allies during the past session when he attempted to repeal the rate freeze and unsuccessfully pushed a bill that would ban candidates from accepting donations from public service corporations such as Dominion and Appalachian, sees the political winds changing.
I look up on the hill and I see the U.S. Cavalry riding to my rescue, said Petersen, who intends to revive both bills in the session that begins in January. He added that he felt vindicated by the success of candidates who tossed conventional Virginia political wisdom to the wind and swore off the support of Dominion, whose muscular presence in campaign finance and lobbying might at the General Assembly are seen as matters of course.
I think the people that go around touting how you cant cross Dominion and you cant get elected or re-elected, or our party caucus cant raise money without Dominion, that way of thinking is going the way of the Dodo bird, Petersen said.
Petersen noted that Gov.-elect Ralph Northam campaigned on banning corporate and business donations and imposing a $10,000 cap on all donors except party committees. Eliminating contributions from public service corporations, Petersen said, is a much lighter lift and less legally fraught.
I think if we got a bill to his desk, I think hed sign it, period, Petersen said. So thats my goal.
Asked whether Northam would support a ban on public service corporation contributions, a Northam spokesperson said that he believes in comprehensive campaign finance reform and will work with the General Assembly in a bipartisan fashion to get it done.
Josh Stanfield, executive director of Activate Virginia, the political action committee that circulated the pledge to candidates, said no one expected the Democrats to win so many races, including coming within two seats of capturing the majority in the House, with recounts still pending.
Still, it shouldnt come as a surprise that the pledge didnt prove to be a liability, he said.
This is popular, Stanfield said. People are not stupid. For-profit entities do not give money to anyone without expecting something in return. ... When you have a candidate that says, Im not going to take that money because I want to represent your interests, how can that not be appealing?
Stanfield said a cadre of 13 lawmakers who campaigned on limiting the influence of the utility in state government will make it harder for other Democrats to sweep the issue under the rug when it comes to campaign contributions.
There is a traditional, pro-business coalition that has always ruled Virginias legislature, he said. They get insulted when you suggest theres something uncouth going on.
Asked how the election might affect the crucial issues that could come before the legislature, including the rate freeze, coal ash cleanup and others, Dominion spokesman David Botkins said the company is looking forward to getting to know the new members and working together on keeping low, stable rates; ever more reliable service by investing in the grid; and more clean energy.
These are bipartisan priorities, Botkins said. Its things like that Facebook and Microsoft considered when deciding to locate their job-creating data centers in Virginia.
Bob Holsworth, a longtime political analyst and former Virginia Commonwealth University dean, said the shift against Dominion recalls the 1970s crusade led by populist gubernatorial candidate Henry Howell against what he called the Very Expensive Power Company, with an important distinction.
Then, ire at what was then called the Virginia Electric and Power Company was stirred up by the companys customer service and cost. This backlash, Holsworth noted, is more about controversial projects, such as the proposed Atlantic Coast Pipeline, and the sense that Dominion has too much influence in state government.
My sense is even with these elections, these remarkable elections last night, thats unlikely to be a majority position in the assembly, Holsworth said Wednesday. I think Dominion is unlikely to want this to become far more extensive.
Holsworth predicted Dominion, possessed of a very sophisticated government relations operation, will become more attentive to potential objections to its actions and even more comprehensive in the education and information it tries to provide to lawmakers.
He noted, though, that many of the new lawmakers lacked the backing of the state Democratic Party and are likely to maintain the grass-roots orientation that brought them into office.
Certainly I think with more Democrats in the legislature, with more candidates who are successful through grass-roots organization, there are going to be more bills proposed about changing Virginias campaign finance law, but Im not sure theres a critical mass to accomplish that, Holsworth said. I think its significant because what it represents is a populist wing of the Democratic Party that has probably gained more seats last night than at any time in the last 30 or 40 years.
Del. David J. Toscano, D-Charlottesville, the House minority leader, said Wednesday that its hard to predict how a rate freeze repeal and a bill to end utility donations to candidates will play out during the next session.
Depending on what happens with these vote totals, we could have 17 new people who will have many different points of view on this, Toscano said. I can tell you that there are a number of folks who are very concerned about the regulated utilities giving contributions to candidates, and I think that bills going to come up and I think theres going to be a lot of support for it and well just have to see how much support there is.
A handful of lawmakers from both parties have expressed support for rolling back the rate freeze, which was pitched in 2015 as necessary to protect consumers from potential price shocks that might be imposed by then-President Barack Obamas Clean Power Plan to limit carbon emissions from power plants.
The State Corporation Commission has said the 2015 law would not have shielded customers from any rate increases from the plan, which has stalled in federal courts and is being rolled back by President Donald Trumps administration.
Now the Clean Power Plan doesnt exist anymore. So some of the rationale for that initial legislation may be out the window, Toscano said. And I think that there will be a close examination about whether we should keep that in effect. But it will depend a lot on the people who are in the room at the time.
One of the lawmakers who stood with Petersen last year as he called on Gov. Terry McAuliffe to send down a bill to undo the rate freeze after his own was killed was Del. Sam Rasoul, D-Roanoke.
Rasoul, who has refused to take contributions from any special interest political committees, also supports a ban on contributions from public utilities. He called the 2015 rate freeze the most corrupt utility law in America ever.
People are not going to stand for that kind of legislation, he said. We need to do better. And Im hoping with our new gains in the House we can build some momentum behind that change.
CHARLOTTESVILLE Spike Lee does not mince words.
The Academy Award-winning director attended the 30th annual Virginia Film Festival on Saturday and spoke frankly about Americas divisive history, Charlottesvilles own recent clashes with white supremacy and the ongoing issue of violence against African-Americans and other minorities.
At the Paramount Theater, Lee presented his 2014 documentary I Cant Breathe, as well as his 1992 documentary 4 Little Girls, which chronicles the 1963 church bombing in Birmingham, Alabama, that killed four black girls and was a catalyst for the civil rights movement.
In I Cant Breathe, Lee interviews Ramsey Orta, who shot the cellphone video of Eric Garners 2014 arrest that was seen all over the world. Sitting in front of a stark, black background, Orta describes how he witnessed Garner break up a fight on a Staten Island sidewalk, only to be stopped by police for allegedly selling illegal cigarettes.
As Garner argues that he did nothing wrong, one of the officers comes up behind him, grabbing him in a chokehold.
I cant breathe, I cant breathe, Garner repeated, as officers pressed his head into the concrete sidewalk.
Before speaking about his films, Lee asked everyone in the audience to stand and observe a moment of silence to remember Heather Heyer, the 32-year-old Charlottesville woman killed after a car plowed through a group of anti-racist protesters on Aug. 12.
Terrorism is terrorism, Lee said. Whether its ISIS or the Klan theyre all terrorists. You cant pick and choose who the terrorist is. If youre killing people, youre a terrorist.
In discussion moderated by Maurice Wallace, associate director of the Carter G. Woodson Institute for African-American and African Studies at the University of Virginia, Lee said he wanted to tackle the story of 4 Little Girls after he graduated with a film degree from New York Universitys Tisch School of the Arts.
Wallace said that while the film examines the historic murder of the four girls Addie Mae Collins, Cynthia Wesley, Carole Robertson and Carol Denise McNair it also seems to index a kind of everydayness about the violence African-Americans experienced at that time and continue to experience today.
That act of terrorism, Lee responded, changed everything.
Everyone had to wake up and see what was happening in the Deep South, he said.
His other goal for the film, Lee said, was to try to convey the uniquely painful grief of losing a child.
To lose a child, that loss, it never goes away, he said. But the way it happened and why it happened the murderers chose that church because thats where the [civil rights] meetings were happening.
Wallace then asked Lee if he had any advice for Charlottesville for moving forward, particularly following the white supremacist violence that swept through town on Aug. 12.
However much 4 Little Girls is about those girls, its also about the history of Birmingham, which is the history of America, Wallace said. What do you perceive as potential cautionary tales for Charlottesville? A life was lost here, too.
Lee stared at Wallace causing the audience to laugh and acknowledged the difficulty of answering such a broad question. But, he said, for America to move forward as one, it is high time Americans accept their ugly history.
Lee said growth as a nation involves shedding false historical narratives. The truth is the United States was built upon the genocide of Native Americans and slavery. This university was built upon slavery.
Your boy, Thomas Jefferson, was a slave owner, Lee said. This is history. Robert E. Lee was not a hero. White people should not be defensive about that.
Lee told the audience that he and Brad Pitt are approximately 12th cousins, and that Pitts ancestors once owned Lees ancestors. But, Lee said, thats OK.
We have to embrace the history of this country, Lee said. Its ugly. If we dont acknowledge the history of this country and how it was built, we cant go forward.
For I Cant Breathe, Lee said he tracked down Orta, who shot the video of Garners death, just days after it happened. Sitting Orta in front of a simple black background, the 45-minute documentary is raw allowing the story to be told through Lees interview of Orta and the viral video footage.
The officer who put Garner in a chokehold a technique police are now prohibited from using was never indicted in Garners death.
You would think footage would be enough to convict people, Lee said. But Im not surprised theres tape and cops still walk free.
Lee currently is working on Black Klansman, a film based on the true story of Ron Stallworth, a black detective in Colorado who successfully infiltrated a local chapter of the Ku Klux Klan.
Lee said the KKK put out an advertisement for new members and Stallworth, thinking it was a joke, signed up with his real name putting him in a predicament. A white officer agreed to go undercover as Stallworths alias.
Stallworth will be played by John David Washington, Denzel Washingtons son, and Adam Driver will play Stallworths white partner. The film is set for release next year.
For the two-week voyage to Vietnam, sailors, soldiers and Marines lay in stacked canvas bunks like cold cuts on white bread, fighting boredom, sea sickness and the dread of the unknown aboard the USNS General Nelson M. Walker.
As they made their way toward the combat zone, they wrote, drew pictures and signed their names to the canvas beds, leaving behind graffiti .
Many of those canvas bunks and the messages they carry were saved from the Walker by Art and Lee Beltrone, an Albemarle County couple who put them in museum exhibits that have traveled the country.
A smaller, table-top exhibit came home in honor of Veterans Day, the 242nd birthday of the U.S. Marine Corps and the 10th anniversary of the Vietnam Graffiti Project at a celebration held at the American Legion Post 72 in Keswick on Thursday.
I was kind of surprised when I saw the canvas on the table because someone from my unit had been on that ship, retired Marine Col. James OKelley said as he stood by the exhibit in the posts meeting room. He pointed to a canvas with the 1st Marine Divisions 9th Engineer Battalion inscribed on it by Pfc. R.T. DiFerdinando, of Downington, Pennsylvania.
OKelley served in Vietnam from 1966 to 1968 and his battalion was caught up in the battle and siege of Khe Sanh, the Tet Offensive and the battle for Hue.
I didnt take this ship. I didnt take a ship at all. I flew in as part of an advance party [so] we could get a shot at what we needed to do, OKelley recalled. In an engineering battalion, you have actual engineers and other Marines, and the engineers would go in and figure out how we were going to create the base.
The purpose of the exhibits is to spark memories and honor those who served, said the Beltrones, the Keswick couple who created the Vietnam Graffiti Project.
The whole thing was really to honor Vietnam veterans who were treated pretty poorly when they got back from war, said militaria expert Art Beltrone, who with his wife, Lee, salvaged the bunks and created the exhibits.
Contacted by area filmmaker Jack Fisk, who was making The Thin Red Line, Beltrone walked onto the troop ship, which at that time was in the James Rivers Ghost Fleet.
The ship, launched in 1945, was first used to transport troops in the Pacific to stage for the planned invasion of Japan. When the Japanese surrendered, the ship shuttled prisoners of war back home.
It took troops to the Korean War and brought POWs home after a truce was signed. Mothballed in 1959, the ship was retro-fitted and refurbished to transport troops to and from Vietnam in 1966 and 1967.
It was in those years that soldiers, sailors and Marines left their hopes and fears in ink, pencil and charcoal on the canvas bunk above them.
This was a project that was just meant to happen because we were dealing with the military and federal government and salvage operators and every time we tried to do something, it worked, Art Beltrone said.
When we first were on the ship before it went to salvage, it was like a time capsule. There were dirty dishes in the galley, the bunks were all made up and there were playing cards on tables just as if they expected the soldiers to return, Lee Beltrone recalled. It was kind of eerie.
When we first saw those canvases they were still in place on the bunks in the ship, just as they were when troops were being taken to Vietnam, Art Beltrone recalled. The fear was there. The anxiety was there. The attempts at humor were there. Kids who were 18 and 19 years old going off to the unknown wanted to leave some message that proved they existed, and thats what those canvases showed.
Some of the messages were simply hometowns or states and some messages were risque.
Some spoke of fear: Are you afraid to die? If so, well its best you go back home!
Some spoke of mission: Going to Nam June 9, 1967 to settle things down and make sure Charlie is turned upside down.
Some messages were of relief.
In a few days youll be sleeping here instead of me, one bunk bore in black ink. Wish you luck in Vietnam. I made it. Dont know about you. Youll know in 12 months, thats if youre still alive.
When the ship was being cut up for salvage, the Beltrones and volunteers were there to remove as many of the canvas beddings as possible.
It was difficult choosing which canvases to keep and which to use because every piece was written by someone who wanted to be remembered, Art Beltrone said. They never thought the public would see it or that their message would make it past whoever followed them on that ship, but they were trying to say, I was here or Im going or I made it.
The Beltrones said theyve heard that the exhibits two are making their way across the country, with one out west and the other in the eastern states, plus several smaller exhibits receive different responses in different locations.
A lot of Vietnam veterans said they think nobody really cared, said Lee Beltrone. Grandchildren are taking their veteran grandfathers to see the exhibits because veterans seem to find it easier to talk to grandkids.
Its a safer exhibit because it avoids a lot of politics. These are written by men going to war and not in the war, Art Beltrone said. It also helps veterans talk about it, because it gives them a way to talk to family about the experiences they had.
OKelley, who also has served with the Albemarle County Sheriffs Office Reserves and is the commandant of the local Bradley T. Arms Detachment of the Marine Corps League, said the canvases brought back many memories.
It was an interesting time in my life, he said. I served with a lot of great men.
By PTI: New Delhi, Nov 10 (PTI) The Environment Ministry today decided that every state government would set up one or more monitoring groups, which will continuously look into compliance of the short-term measures to be taken to mitigate air pollution, officials said.
During a meeting held here under the chairmanship of the secretary of the ministry, it was suggested that state governments could set up flying squads to assess the situation on the ground, prevent violation and report it, the ministry said in a statement.
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"After detailed deliberations, it was decided that all organisations of state governments and the central government involved in this, will work towards effectively implementing the short-term measures immediately," it said.
The measures include, strict compliance to Graded Response Action Plan (GRAP) and all other directives issued by the courts, effective enforcement of ban on diesel gen-sets, brick kilns, stone crushers, hot mix plants.
Ban on entry of unauthorised trucks into Delhi, enhancing parking fee and capacity augmentation of public transport, use of methods of dust containment and stopping of civil construction activities temporarily, are other measures.
"It was decided in the meeting that each state government would set up one or more monitoring groups, which will continuously look at compliance," it said.
The chief secretary of Haryana and representatives from the Punjab government have informed the committee that stubble burning in both the states was "over and in the medium-term, further problems because of that, may not arise".
However, both the states had requested that long-term measures to ensure that this does not happen every year need to be put in place.
"On these issues, it was decided that the committee will continue to meet regularly and discuss viable options like incentivising the farmers, providing subsidised equipment and using existing technologies to tide over this problem," it added.
The air quality index (AQI) remained in the severe category for the fourth consecutive day today, but the volume of PM 2.5 and PM 10 looked well on course to drop below the emergency level.
Among those who attended the meeting included, chief secretary of Haryana Deepender Singh Dhesi, Delhi Chief Secretary M M Kutty, Principal Secretary of the Department of Environment in Uttar Pradesh Renuka Kumar, Chairman, Punjab Pollution Control Board K S Pannu and Secretary, Department of Environment, Rajasthan R K Grover, it said.
Secretary of the Ministry of Earth Sciences, secretary, Department of Science and Technology and secretary, Department of Biotechnology and Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) chairman also attended the meet. PTI KND ANB
--- ENDS ---
WASHINGTON Such is the federal governments sprawl, and its power to establish new governing precedents, mere Washington twitches can jeopardize venerable principles and institutions. This is illustrated by a seemingly small but actually momentous provision of the Republicans tax bill a 1.4 percent excise tax on the endowment earnings of approximately 70 colleges and universities with the largest per student endowments. To raise less than $3 billion in a decade less than 0.005 percent of projected federal spending of $53 trillion Republicans would blur important distinctions and abandon their defining mission.
Private foundations, which are generally run by small coteries, pay a supervisory tax on investment income to defray the cost of IRS oversight to guarantee that their resources are used for charitable purposes. In 1984, however, Congress created a new entity, an operating foundation. Such organizations e.g., often museums or libraries are exempt from the tax on investment earnings because they apply their assets directly to their charitable activities rather than making grants to other organizations, as do foundations that therefore must pay the supervisory tax.
Most university endowments are compounds of thousands of individual funds that often are restricted to particular uses, all of which further the institutions educational purposes. Hence these endowments are akin to the untaxed operating foundations. Yet the Republicans, without public deliberations, and without offering reasons, would arbitrarily make university endowments uniquely subject to a tax not applied to similar entities.
Are Republicans aware, for example, that Princetons endowment earnings fund more than half its annual budget, and will support expansion of the student body? It also enables need-blind admissions: More than 60 percent of undergraduates receive financial assistance; those from families with incomes below $65,000 pay no tuition, room or board; those from families with incomes below $160,000 pay no tuition. No loans are required. Ph.D. candidates receive tuition and a stipend for living costs. Furthermore, the endowment has funded a significant increase in students from low-income families: Princeton has recently tripled to 22 percent the portion of freshmen from families with the most substantial financial needs. The idea that Princeton is largely populated by children of alumni is a canard slain by this fact: Such legacies are only 13 percent of this years freshman class.
For eight centuries, surviving thickets of ecclesiastical and political interferences, the worlds great research universities have enabled the liberal arts to flourish, the sciences to advance, and innovation to propel economic betterment. Increasingly, they foster upward mobility that fulfils democratic aspirations and combats the stagnation of elites. It is astonishingly shortsighted to jeopardize all this, and it is unseemly to do so in a scramble for resources to make a tax bill conform to the transitory arithmetic of a budget process that is a labyrinth of trickery.
Great universities are great because philanthropic generations have borne the cost of sustaining private institutions that seed the nation with excellence. Donors have done this in the expectation that earnings accruing from their investments will be devoted solely to educational purposes, in perpetuity. This expectation will disappear, and the generosity that it has sustained will diminish, if Republicans siphon away a portion of endowments earnings in order to fund the federal governments general operations.
Its appetite whetted by 1.4 percent, the political class will not stop there. Once the understanding that until now has protected endowments is shredded, there will be no limiting principle to constrain governments those of the states, too in their unsleeping search for revenues to expand their power. Public appetites are limitless, as is the political classs desire to satisfy them. Hence there is a perennial danger that democracy will degenerate into looting scrounging for resources, such as universities endowments, that are part of societys seed corn for prosperous tomorrows.
Government having long ago slipped the leash of restraint, the public sectors sprawl threatens to enfeeble the private institutions of civil society that mediate between the individual and the state and that leaven society with energy and creativity that government cannot supply. Time was, conservatisms central argument for limiting government was to defend these institutions from being starved of resources and functions by government. Abandonment of this argument is apparent in the vandalism that Republicans are mounting against universities endowments.
This raid against little platoons of independent excellence would be unsurprising were it proposed by progressives, who are ever eager to extend governments reach and to break private institutions to the states saddle. Coming from Republicans, it is acutely discouraging.
Disclosure: Will is a former Princeton trustee.
Will is a columnist for The Washington Post Writers Group.
Sunday
Valley Chamber Orchestra
Roanokes premiere community orchestra presents its fall symphonic concert, conducted by new interim musical director Shelbie Wahl-Fouts.
When: 3 p.m.
Where: Hollins University, duPont Chapel, 7916 Williamson Road, Roanoke
Cost: Free
Monday
Womens Luncheon
Celebrate women, art and education in our community. Guests will enjoy the galleries during an opening reception, then a seated meal where two women in our community will be honored for their monumental contributions to the arts. A keynote presentation from an exhibiting artist in the galleries will round out this special afternoon. Luncheon keynote speaker Angela Ellsworth will speak about her sculptures on view in the museums exhibition Tangled: Fiber Art Now!
When: 11 a.m. to 2 p.m.
Where: Taubman Museum of Art, 110 Salem Ave. S.E., Roanoke
Cost: Price varies
Contact: To reserve a table or for additional details, contact Deputy Director of Development Holly DiGangi, 204-4132, hdigangi@taubmanmuseum.org
Tuesday
Is Democratic Capitalism Sustainable?
Throughout his public career, Martin Luther preached against usury and the excesses of mercantilism. Centuries later, Karl Marx incorporated Luthers analysis and argument as a precursor of his own analysis of capitalism. Is the democratic state the only institution powerful enough and legitimate enough to constrain the market? Or is the democratic state also for sale? Panelists Robert Benne, Justin Garrison and Edward Nik-Khah, moderator Paul Hinlicky.
When: 4 p.m.
Where: Roanoke College, Kime, Colket Center, 221 College Lane, Salem
Cost: Free
Wednesday-Saturday
Theatre Roanoke College: The Trickeries of Scapin
A three-act comedy of intrigue, first performed in Paris in 1671. The plot and characters were influenced by the popular commedia dellarte, an Italian theatrical format with improvised dialogue and a cast of colorful characters. This production will use that same physical style.
When: 7:30 p.m.
Where: Roanoke College, Olin Theater, 221 College Lane, Salem
Cost: $7, $5 senior citizens and non-RC students
Thursday
Justin Moore Hell on a Highway Tour
Featuring special guest Dylan Scott.
When: 7:30 p.m.
Where: Salem Civic Center, 1001 Roanoke Blvd., Salem
Cost: $22.75, $32.75, $42.75, $49.75, $5 preferred parking
Novelist Emily St. John Mandel
Mandel is the author of four novels, most recently the New York Times bestseller Station Eleven, which was a finalist for a National Book Award for Fiction, the PEN/Faulkner Award and the Baileys Womens Prize for Fiction.
When: 8:15 p.m.
Where: Hollins University, Hollins Room, Wyndham Robertson Library, 7916 Williamson Road, Roanoke
Cost: Free
Saturday
Star City Half Marathon and 10K
Join us for a Tour of Roanoke with a Taste of Roanoke after race party.
When: 8 a.m.
Where: O. Winston Link Museum, 101 Shenandoah Ave. N.E., Roanoke
Cost: Price varies
Brew-HaHa!
Comedy and an indoor beer festival. Proceeds will benefit Mountain View Humane.
When: 5 to 10 p.m.
Where: Berglund Special Events Center, 710 Williamson Road, Roanoke
Cost: $26 for 10 tastings, $36 for 20 tastings, $11 non-taster
Southwest Virginia Ballets Annual Nutcracker Gala
A cocktail-casual evening of fun with music by The Kings. Proceeds support productions of Southwest Virginia Ballet.
When: 6:30 to 11 p.m.
Where: Shenandoah Club, 24 Franklin Road, Roanoke
Cost: $65
Ronnie Milsap
Milsap has been one of country musics most popular and influential performers since the 1970s.
When: 8 p.m.
Where: Berglund Performing Arts Theatre, 710 Williamson Road, Roanoke
Cost: $39.50, $49.50, $74.50, $99.50
In the third session of Sahitya Aaj Tak, BJP MP and actor Shatrughan Sinha gets candid about his book and choice of movie roles.
By India Today Web Desk: In the third session of Sahitya Aaj Tak, BJP MP and actor Shatrughan Sinha and former journalist and writer Bharti Pradhan had a chat with Prasun Vajpayee. Bharti Pradhan discussed Shatrughan's book 'Anything but Khaamosh'.
Sinha talked about the current political situation. He said, "I gave the first copy of my book to President Ramnath Kovind. Couldn't give it to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, as it didn't come out by the time I Iast met him."
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On his famous 'Khaamosh' dialogue, Sinha said, "Now it seems that we all have become silent. There is silence in the current atmosphere of the country."
Sinha read a poem and spoke his mind on the current human condition through the verse.
CAME TO POLITICS ON THE ADVICE OF ADVANI
Shatrughan talked about his entry into politics and how it happened after he was advised by Lal Krishna Advani. In the 1992 mid-term elections on Advani's advise, he started his political innings by contesting against Rajesh Khanna. He said that after losing the election, he vowed not to go to the BJP office at Ashok Road.
I WAS THE FIRST BOLLYWOOD VILLAIN WHO WAS CHEERED BY THE AUDIENCE
He talked about making his own identity from the villainous role in the movies. He said, "I did something different in the way villains were portrayed in movies. I was the first villain for whom people used to bow down at the screen. This never happened before me. It also came in foreign press that for the first time in India, a villain is getting cheered on."
"This applause led me to producers, directors and more movies and soon they started casting me as a hero, instead of villain," he added
WHEN SHATRUGHAN SINHA REFUSED SHOLAY AND DEEWAR
Sinha went on to talk about how he treated his roles. He said, "I never saw the role as good or bad but just did my best. My mantra to the young generation is to prove yourself that you are the best. If not, then prove that you are the most different. Be original and don't lose hope."
Sinha said that 'Sholay' and 'Deewar' were films offered to him and he refused. The movies went on to become big blockbusters and cemented Amitabh Bachchan as the star of the century. Sinha expressed happiness that his friend became a superstar because of these movies and admitted that it was his mistake to not do these films. He went on to say that he has never watched the two movies.
--- ENDS ---
Feature: Untold story on Yemen's tourism, green, peaceful city, safe home for all IDPs
Writing by Nabiha al-Haydary,
Translated by Najat Noor
IBB, Nov. 11 (Saba) - Wakefulness that wasn't getting used to, it's now accompanying her, with night joins its happy day mixing multiple voices and the reality of daily life .. it's happening in the famous, tourism, green ancient, yet young Ibb city in Yemen's central land.
It's the hospitable, peaceful city which welcomes everyone, every traveller and all communities.
Historians attribute its name to Persian language, which means heavy rain. While others say its name derived from August, the rainy month in the Arab country in the southern tip of the Arabian Peninsula.
The city was not be forgotten in the minds of those who were enchanted by the sight of heavy clouds and torrential rainfall that fall from 2,050- meter-high mountains to its deep valleys.
The city is considered a safe home for travellers, who pass through it to fuel their vehicles when travelling from the northern provinces to the south or vice versa. And most time, the travellers love to stop in the city to get at least three-day rest.
City of Peace
However, the aggression war on Yemen was a surprise turning point that was not come into the account of the city's residents.
The 5,552 km square Innocent province, its provincial capital city bears the same name, is located 193 km south of the capital Sanaa and 65 km north of the cultural capital city of Taiz.
Ibb has not been in the priorities of the policy makers in Sanaa and the civil services established by the government in the city has not met the ambitious demands of its more than 2 million residents, who form around 10 percent of total Yemen's 25 million population.
The move has forced 51 percent of Ibb citizens to travel to the United States, Briton and neighboring Arab Gulf states to work there, according to state statistics.
In early 2015, when the civil war erupted and extended in nearby city of Taiz and southern port city of Aden between Ansarullah movement and its allies and forces loyal to former President Hadi and his allies of armed militants of Islah party, the citizens there fled their homes to Ibb to escape the deadly war.
However, those internal displaced people (IDPs) see Ibb as a village lacks for most civil developing infrastructure.
"I did not expect to leave Taiz, which I still miss, and live in Ibb, which lacks the most basic services of daily life, the simplest example is a bakery that does not cover the demands of new arrivals," said Safiya Hatem, 45, married with three children.
Safiya, who had worked as a medic in a laboratory in Taiz, said she has borrowed some money from a relative abroad to open a medical laboratory to support her family in Ibb.
The rival forces have several times tried to draw the city into the conflict. Two districts in the city, Mashwara and Badan, as well as the central city, had witnessed on-and-off clashes between Ansarullah fighters and militants of Muslim Brotherhood Islah party and al-Qaida affiliate of Ansar al-Sharia. However, senior officials, sheikhs and dignitaries intervened between the rival forces and struck a compromise deal that eventually ended the conflict.
Ahmed al-Omaysi, 39, a dignitary from Sohool area stressed on the importance to avoid the city any conflict, saying "any clashes will have badly humanitarian consequences on the whole province's residents in particular and travellers in general.
"Sons of the province are diverse in terms of culture, sects and political parties at the level of single family," said al-Omaysi, adding that "such diversity however, could be seen faded and you can see them all praying next each others in one mosque."
Safe City and Job Opportunities
On March 26, 2015, the US-backed Saudi-led aggression coalition launched a large-scale military air campaign against the Yemeni people and cities and cut electricity and shut all air, land and Sea ports, during which most of the Yemeni people from cold and hot cities find Ibb as the safe heaven, although the city was hit by 398 air strikes that killed and injured around 631 civilians.
Its rich residents, who had been expelled from the Gulf states during the Gulf war in 1990s and those expatriates in the United States, have built many new buildings since 9/11 terrorist attacks and after the Gulf war in case of any emergency, and the move serves 31,600 internal displaced families (IDPs) during this ongoing war.
Many IDPs found their jobs in the crowded city in addition to the cheap, safe houses.
Young mother of Bakil, 27, who had graduated from the university, said she has found a new job in the city.
"I have got advantage of the crowds here and opened a shop to rent wedding clothes and now I have many customers," she said.
The current situation of the city is a call to all humanitarian aid groups and the international community to enhance aid supplies and strengthen the basic services to meet the increasing humanitarian demands. END
Najat
Saba
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[12/November/2017]
By PTI: Berhampur (Odisha), Nov 12 (PTI) While many farmers in Odisha are worried due to pest attack on their standing paddy crops, a farmer in Ganjam district is preparing for harvest as his crop is free from brown plant hopper (BPH) disease.
Having grown a special variety of paddy, Subrat Adhikari of Tentuapada village under Digapahandi block in the district claimed he is unaffected by the pest menace.
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Vice Chancellor of Odisha University of Agriculture and Technology (OUAT), Surendranath Pasupalak along with some scientists on Friday visited his field and found the crop was free-from much talked BPH disease.
The 39-year-old farmer cultivated around 8 acres of paddy variety "Hasanta", which was developed by the OUAT about three years ago. The standing Hasanta paddy crop was free from BPH, said Adhikari, who took to cultivation as his occupation after completing his degree in science.
Like Adhikari, other farmers in the village who cultivated this variety of paddy, are also relaxed as their standing crop is also free from BPH. However, the standing paddy crops of other varieties in the village were damaged due to the pest attack.
At least four farmers, including Adhikari, cultivated the Hasanta variety in around 14-acres of land in the village. "It shows that the Hasanta, developed by the OUAT, is free from pest attack," said the OUAT VC who visited the area.
Stating that the paddy variety was introduced three years ago by the university, he said the team also held discussion with the farmers on the menace and loss suffered by them due to the pest attack.
Hasanta, a high-yielding and pest-resistant paddy variety which can be harvested in 145 days, was released by the scientists of OUAT in 2014.
"I had cultivated this new variety in a small patch of land the same year with the advice of a scientist of the university. In subsequent years, I grew it in more areas," said Adhikari.
The productivity of the variety was between 30 to 32 quintals per acre, he said adding the crop is in harvesting stage and we will cut the crop in a week. PTI COR SKN RG
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India, Australia, Japan and the US on Sunday agreed that "a free, open, prosperous and inclusive" Indo-Pacific served long-term global interests, giving impetus to an emerging quad of democracies amid Chinas rising military and economic power.
It was the first dialogue of the quadrilateral formation of the democracies in which anti-terrorism cooperation was also discussed.
An External Affairs Ministry statement in New Delhi said foreign officials from India, Australia, Japan and the US met in the Philippines capital and held consultations "on issues of common interest in the Indo-Pacific region".
"The discussions focused on cooperation based on their converging vision and values for promotion of peace, stability and prosperity in an increasingly inter-connected region that they share with each other and with other partners," the statement said.
"They agreed that a free, open, prosperous and inclusive Indo-Pacific region serves the long-term interests of all countries in the region and of the world at large."
The officials also exchanged views on addressing common challenges of terrorism and proliferation linkages impacting the region as well as on enhancing connectivity.
Indian officials highlighted India's Act East Policy as the cornerstone of its engagement in the region.
The four countries are working to revive their quadrilateral dialogue.
The meeting was held as Prime Minister Narendra Modi arrived in Manila on Sunday on a three-day visit to the Philippines for the 15th India-Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) meet and the 12th East Asia Summit on Tuesday.
The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean), comprising Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam, has emerged as a key cornerstone of New Delhi's foreign policy, with its Look East Policy, launched by then Prime Minister P.V. Narasimha Rao in 1992.
The Modi government has turned it into the Act East Policy to focus on increased engagements with the regional bloc.
The annual East Asia Summit is held by leaders of the Asean countries and those of Australia, China, India, Japan, New Zealand, Russia, South Korea and the US.
Even as India, the US and Japan have a trilateral dialogue mechanism in place for issues relating to the Indo-Pacific region, Japanese Foreign Minister Tara Kono said in October that Tokyo was for a top-level quadrilateral dialogue that would also include Australia.
Kono said the idea was for the leaders of the four countries to promote free trade and defence cooperation across a stretch of ocean from the South China Sea, the Indian Ocean and all the way to Africa.
The emerging quadrilateral is seen to counter China's aggressive maritime expansion under its Belt and Road initiative. China's plans would cement a sphere of influence for Beijing well beyond Asia.
India responded to Kono's comments by saying that New Delhi was open to work with like-minded countries that advance India's interests.
Our visitors are interested in our culture, so it is our duty and responsibility to keep that interest alive.
So believes 61-year-old father, Pule Anelu, from the village of Lalomanu.
Pule told the Village Voice team that the most important thing that attracts tourists to our shores was how the Samoan culture and tradition were portrayed.
Everyone has a role to play, Pule said.
I think these days we hardly see tourists visit many of hotels in our villages compared to the past years.
The only time weve seen so many visitors in Samoa is during holiday seasons like Christmas up to New Year but most of them are based in overseas countries.
Pule believes that its something that we should work on.
As Ive mentioned earlier, everyone has a role to play and bringing more tourists to our country is very important because it will create a lot of job opportunities for many of our people, so its not just the hotel that will benefit, he said.
The people of Samoa and the faasamoa are unlike, in many ways, any other part of the world.
Let them (tourists) see the love of family, culture and the almighty God.
In my own opinion, showing the world our good-hearted love and respect is a great way forward for everyone.
I mean we are the frontline of it all, we should put taking care of our tourist as our priority because our country gets a lot of money from them, he said.
Pule added allowing tourists to experience the Samoan family life also impacts their lives and perspective of our country.
Yes you can show them this and that but if they dont understand what they are looking at, then their trip wont have an impact, Pule said.
Take them home, show them the reality of everyday life in Samoa, and enjoy the fresh environment out there.
Pule said tourists were here for enjoyment.
Giving tourists an experience rather than just another ....about Samoan culture is important because they want to learn something and enjoy their experience.
If we deliver who we are and the reality our people live from day to day we will attract more tourists to our shores.
We must remember that they dont come here to live in fancy hotels, they want to experience our lifestyle and the way that we are living in from day to day.
I tell you, they would come back and ask for more from us.
Furthermore, Pule says village life is very important and thats why village visits are important for the tourism sector to grow and we need to focus our attention on that as well.
If tourists are invited to village-stays and are able to observe some of the amazing geographical features that describe Samoa, then we would develop our tourism sector, he said.
Almost everything in life nowadays requires money.
And even though we are surrounded by resources such as the land and the sea, money still does the talking.
Finau Sefo, 43 years of age and a father of four from the village of Siufaga, Savaii, made his views known yesterday.
Mr. Sefo said life on the big island was really hard.
Life here in Savaii is really hard compared to Upolu, he said.
It is really hard finding a job here in Savaii because we dont have that many companies to work on but lucky enough for me, I am currently working in Amoa.
My aim here now, as the only income earner for my family, is to support my three kids in school and one baby.
Mr. Sefo said their plantation and the sea also contributed to their everyday life, and that was something good for him and the family.
The plantation is our everyday blessing because it always provides crops for us when we dont have enough money for rice or bread.
The sea is also a blessing because it also feeds us if there is no meat in the shop.
Mr. Sefo also spoke on why he still needed money.
Well we always have food here and around the house but then the thing is; we still need money.
We need more jobs so we can get money around here because we cant pay bills and pay school fees with what we have.
Mr. Sefo added money was also needed during family obligations.
We also need money when it comes to supporting family obligations and that is why we will always need money because its key to living in Samoa.
By PTI: New Delhi, Nov 12 (PTI) The first Nordic-Baltic youth film festival will start here from tomorrow showcasing a diverse mix of some of the most celebrated and Oscar nominated movies from the region.
Organised by the Nordic-Baltic embassies -- Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Iceland, Latvia, Lithuania, Norway and Sweden -- the festival will take place from November 13 at India Habitat Centre here.
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"It is a great pleasure to carry on these strong bonds and share the culture of our region with the Indian people through cinema. This film festival offers a diverse mix of some of the most celebrated films from the Nordic-Baltic region," the organisers said.
The festival will open with Land of Mine from Denmark, an Oscar-nominated film about young German prisoners of World War II who are forced to clear a beach from land mines by a Danish Sergeant.
Over the course of six days, Delhi movie-goers will have an opportunity to watch films like Face to Face, Zero Point, The Lesson, and The Wave among others.
The festival will give the Indian audience an opportunity to connect with these countries and strengthen the cultural bond.
Ranging from action to family and documentaries, the festival will offer a platform to enhance people-to-people relations and share the love for cinema.
Tied together by geography, history, trade, and culture, the Nordic-Baltic countries seek to strengthen their bond through the festival.
The event will come to a close on November 18 with the screening of Hobbyhorse Revolution from Finland, which is a quirky documentary about teenagers who bond through riding and grooming toy horses. PTI NKS MAH MAH
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There is always a way to cope with the high cost of living, it just takes determination and hard work.
Faauma Taalo, 38, from the village of Tanugamanono, knows this very well. He was selling homemade chips in the hot sun when the Village Voice caught up with him.
He said selling chips was his way of coping with the expensive cost of living in Samoa at the moment.
The cost of living is not cheap and it is really affecting us who do not have a job.
This is my job and this is what I do every day except for Sundays - sell these chips so I can make money for my family.
Mr. Taalo said his work was hard but he had no other choice at all.
It is hard work every day selling these 240 chips because I walk around carrying this basket.
But at the end of the day, I have no other choice because this is the only way to make money for me and my whole family.
Mr. Taalo also spoke about how his family was coping with the expensive cost of living.
My family is really struggling because we are just depending on the money I make from selling chips and thats about it.
I am the only income earner for our family and I guess the money here that I make supports my family as well as paying of all our bills.
Mr. Taalo added he would rather work hard then complained about the cost of living.
Complaining about the high cost of living wont bring any good or change, but I just have to go sell chips and make sure to get money to support my family.
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) Both Saudi Arabia and the U.S. now accuse Iran of supplying ballistic missiles to Shiite rebels in Yemen, including one that targeted the kingdom's capital of Riyadh and its international airport.
Here's what is known:
WHERE IS YEMEN AND WHO IS FIGHTING THERE?
Yemen, the Arab world's poorest country, sits on the southern tip of the Arabian Peninsula, bordering Saudi Arabia and Oman. It looks out onto the Gulf of Aden and the Red Sea. Shiite rebels known as Houthis seized the capital, Sanaa, in September 2014. A Saudi-led coalition began battling the Houthis and their allies in September 2015 on behalf of Yemen's internationally recognized government. The war has killed more than 10,000 civilians and pushed millions of Yemenis to the brink of famine.
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WHAT EVIDENCE DOES THE U.S. POINT TO THAT IRAN OFFERED THE MISSILES?
A top U.S. Air Force general in the Mideast on Friday alleged that missiles fired by the Houthis bore "Iranian markings," without elaborating or offering pictures. Saudi Arabia's Ministry of Culture and Information later sent military briefing material to The Associated Press showing what they allege to be part of a Houthi Burkan, or "Volcano," ballistic missile. Writing on the side matched an image of an Iranian Qiam missile. The markings on the alleged Houthi missile also largely matched an AP photograph of a Qiam missile on display in Iran on Sept. 21, 2012, areas of which read "CLAMP HERE" and "SUPPORT HERE." Another image offered by the Saudis showed the base of the rocket, which resembled that of the Qiam.
The U.S. Air Force's Central Command on Saturday declined to discuss the Saudi military briefing papers, though the image of part of the Burkan bore U.S. declassification codes.
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WHAT DOES IRAN SAY?
Iran long has denied offering any arms to the Houthis. It has yet to specifically respond to the U.S. general's comments. However, Mehdi Taeb, an influential hard-line cleric who is a brother to the intelligence chief of the hard-line Revolutionary Guard, said in April that Iran tried three times to send missiles to Yemen, but were stopped by President Hassan Rouhani's administration over fears of disrupting its nuclear deal with world powers. The Guard, answerable only to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, oversees Iran's missile program.
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HAS IRAN BEEN ACCUSED OF SENDING ANYTHING ELSE TO YEMEN?
The U.S. Navy's 5th Fleet, based in Bahrain, repeatedly has accused Iran of running armaments into Yemen. It points to seizures over a four-week period in early 2016, when coalition warships stopped three dhows, traditional ships that ferry cargo through the Persian Gulf. The dhows carried thousands of Kalashnikov assault rifles, as well as sniper rifles, machine guns, rocket-propelled grenade launchers, anti-tank missiles and other weapons.
One dhow carried 2,000 new assault rifles with serial numbers in sequential order, suggesting they came from a national stockpile, according to the London-based group Conflict Armament Research. The rocket-propelled grenade launchers also bore hallmarks of being manufactured in Iran, the group said.
Conflict Armament Research, with the permission of the United Arab Emirates' elite Presidential Guard, also examined seized drones used by the Houthis and their allies to crash into Patriot missile batteries in Saudi Arabia. Destroying Patriot missile batteries allows the rebels to fire missiles into Saudi Arabia without interference, and costs the kingdom millions of dollars to repair and replace.
While the Houthis say they manufacture the drones themselves, the research group said the drones share "near-identical design and construction characteristics" of Iranian drones.
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HOW WOULD IRAN GET THE MISSILES INTO YEMEN?
Saudi military briefing material sent to the AP alleged Iran smuggled weapons into Yemen by boat and truck. The material offered one set of images showing a truck with a false bottom that the Saudis said ferried weapons into the country.
There haven't been any major seizures of arms on the seas since 2016 and the Saudi-led coalition announced it would blockade the country's airspace and ports over the Nov. 4 missile attack on Riyadh. But a U.S. defense official, who spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity to discuss intelligence matters, said American forces believed some weapons and materiel being used by the Houthis came from Iran or with the help of Iranian-backed groups.
"It's a difficult problem and we're convinced it's still occurring," the official said. "Weapons that were not in the arsenal of Yemen before the civil war continue to show up there."
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WHAT'S THE U.S. ROLE IN ALL THIS?
The U.S. already is involved in the war in Yemen. It has launched drone strikes targeting the local branch of al-Qaida and a January raid that killed a U.S. Navy SEAL and 30 other people, including women, children and an estimated 14 militants.
The U.S. military has stopped offering targeting information to the Saudi-led coalition as its airstrikes have hit schools, hospitals, and markets, killing thousands of civilians and prompting rights groups to accuse the coalition of committing war crimes. The Air Force refuels Saudi coalition warplanes in the Yemen theater and offers support in managing airspace over the country. The Saudi-led coalition also uses American-made bombs and ordinance in its attacks.
The U.S. has come under attack once amid the Yemen war. In October 2016, the U.S. Navy said the USS Mason came under fire from two missiles launched out of Yemen that were Silkworm variants, a type of coastal defense cruise missile that Iran has been known to use. Neither reached the warship, though the U.S. retaliated with Tomahawk cruise missile strikes on three coastal radar sites in Houthi-controlled territory on Yemen's Red Sea coast.
The village of Faleseela Lefaga has been removed from the Electric Power Corporations (E.P.C.) Renewable Energy Project list.
In an interview with the Samoa Observer last week, Tologata Galumalemana Lupematasila Tile said: It is sad to see that Faleseela has been removed from the Renewable Energy Project because it was approved by the Board, Committee and the Cabinet.
You have to bear in mind a hydro-power plant project is the most stable and reliable project for renewable energy here in Samoa.
The main aim is to lower the cost of electricity in Samoa, he said.
Tologata added E.P.C. are also trying to develop solar energy but her said that we must also bear in mind that solar energy is more expensive compared with hydro energy.
It is sad to see that the village of Faleseela does not accept the project, he said.
Maybe in the near future the villagers will change their mind but what worries the E.P.C. is, that they may be too late because of the availability of the funds.
Why Faleseela?
Tologata said there was a survey carried out and there were several potential areas that were suggested. They included Faleseela, Fausaga and Tafitoala, Fulaasou and Vailoa Palauli at Savaii.
These power plants which would be built are called Micro Hydro Power Plants.
This is all part and parcel of Samoas main mission to achieve 100 per cent Renewable Energy by 2025 and to lower the cost of electricity in the country, said Tologata.
What the village of Faleseela had raised was the impact of establishing such a hydro power plant on the environment.
But Tologata said before any project was implemented, an Environmental Impact Assessment was usually carried out.
It seems that the village is using a project of planting trees and conserving the environment by the Ministry of Agriculture to stop this renewable energy project.
Overall, the study clearly identifies that there is no impact at all on the environment.
The M.N.R.E. understands what the whole project is, he said.
He referred to the hydro plant at Afulilo Dam where years back there was a problem and there was an unhealthy stench emanating from the dam and the E.P.C. was able to fix it.
Compared to these Micro Hydro Plants, he added, the water used for such projects had no effect because the whole purpose was to produce electricity.
I do believe that there are a few people are against the E.P.C. project. Those who are against it are the ones who are doing eco-system projects such as allowing tourists to visit their recreational areas.
He said the eco-system project only benefited its operators compared with the renewable energy project that benefits everybody.
For the time being, works on the Fausaga and Tafitoala, VailoaPalauli and Fulasouare Micro Hydro Plants are in progress.
Tologata did not wish to say if the Faleseela project is a big loss to the E.PC, however he said the Faleseela Hydro Plant could only produce 100 to 150 kilowatts of electricity.
The Renewable Energy Project is co-funded by the Asian Development Bank, the New Zealand Government and the European Union at an estimated figure of between $5m and $10m.
Looking from the Micro Economic prospective, Samoa does not just want to achieve 100 percent Renewable Energy, but to save money.
If the Renewable Energy is successful, Samoa will rely on its resources available locally and there will be no more importation of fuels from overseas countries, he said.
On the 11th day of the 11th month, the United States of America pauses to commemorate the service of men and women who have put their lives on the line for their country.
On Saturday, all U.S. veterans in Samoa gathered at 6.30am at the Samoa Tourism Authority building to show their respect to those who had fought in World War 1.
U.S. Veterans president, Afoafouvale Mark Moors said: Today we have gotten together family members of the Veterans because they are part of the sacrifice to give up their time to serve.
United States Charge dAffaires, Antone Greubel said: This is an absolute great honour for me because they have done so much by serving the United States of America to protect our freedom. So the least I can do is to show up and be part of this event.
Afoafouvale said they also remembered U.S. Veterans who werent part of the commemoration.
Prime Minister Tuilaepa Sailele Malielegaoi has denied claims that a member of the Human Rights Political Party had moved a motion to remove Member of Parliament, Faumuina Wayne Fong, for speaking to the Samoa Observer on issues pertaining to the H.R.P.P.
Last month, Faumuina Wayne expressed sadness at what he has described as dirty politics within the ruling Human Rights Protection Party.
At the time, he revealed there was underground jostling for the position of Prime Minister amongst certain members.
He did not say who the members were, but it was during the time Tuilaepa was hospitalized in New Zealand.
Faumuina said he had been approached by a certain party member who was rallying for support and he rejected the offer.
Last week, another Member of Parliament told the Samoa Observer that he had moved a motion to remove Faumuina.
This was my personal view. I moved the motion for the party to remove him (Faumuina) for taking issues to the media.
That should have never happened, said the Cabinet Minister, who asked not to be named.
However, when the Prime Minister was asked about a motion being moved, he vehemently denied it.
There was no such thing, it is not true and nothing like that happened, said Tuilaepa.
Iceland Air officials were among those gathered at Faleolo International airport tarmac awaiting the arrival of Samoa Airways on Saturday.
After two years of negotiations with Samoa Airways over aircraft leasing, the event was as significant to Iceland Air as it was to Samoa and her people.
For Managing Director and President of Iceland Air, Gudnie Hreinsson, Manager Production, Berlind Guomundsdottir and sales and marketing representative, Halldor Paddi Halldorsson, the moment of the aircrafts arrival was one of immense satisfaction and pride after a long process of establishing the groundwork in cooperation and production.
Mr. Halldorsson spoke to the Samoa Observer about the beginning of the business relationship between the two countries.
I started meeting with Alvin two years ago and we were discussing opportunities and possibilities of leasing an aircraft and taking it on, he said.
Of course its a big step for Samoa and it became clear to me after my first visit, that the opportunities were definitely here. So that meant that a couple of months later, I came back and then ended up building a strategic plan and today is the big day, finally. Two years later, we are here to day.
Mr. Hreinsson also expressed similar sentiments, saying he was excited and proud that two years of negotiations finally came to fruition.
Its a Boeing 77800 and its one of the most popular and most common aircrafts in the world, he said.
Its been a very successful and reliable aircraft and I think its a great fit for the routing that Samoa Airways is going to operate to Auckland and to Sydney as well. Its freshly painted, straight out of a scheduled maintenance on the aircraft which you do every now and then. Its coming straight out of there and as we would put it, its as good as new.
Once negotiations had concluded and the ink had dried on the contracts, Ms. Guomundsdottir stepped in to take over and according the President of Iceland, Ms. Guomundsdottir does all the real work.
I am in production, I basically take over when they sign the contract, she said.
I came here in August and Ive been here now for two weeks. Ive been monitoring the training and following up on the things that are going to be ready now. The training is based on the Italian A.O.C. because the aircraft is still registered there.
I train the cabin crew; you have a full Samoan cabin crew. The first few flights you will have some Italians as well just to do the training flights and then you will have a full Samoan cabin crew.
The Iceland Air officials spoke about how much they enjoyed their time in Samoa in between business dealings and that they planned to discover more about our island once Samoa Airways starts flying and gets into a routine.
I love it here, its absolutely amazing its such a beautiful country and the people are so nice and friendly, said Ms Guomundsdottir.
Last time I went around half of the island, hopefully this time I will go around the other half of the island and hopefully I will see the other island as well. But I am sure I will be coming back so if I dont get it this time, I will do so next time.
Mr. Halldorsson praised Samoa Airways for their hard work in the lead up to the aircrafts arrival and is confident that they are more than ready to successfully operate the aircraft and service the people of Samoa.
They have done a terrific job and of course everyone is very enthusiastic for the aircraft to come, he said.
Everyone has been working back to back and doing the absolute best and more than that actually and so I know they are more than prepared for the arrival of the first aircraft and I say the first aircraft because its the first of many to come Im sure.
The counselling programmes organised by the Samoa Victims Support Group (S.V.S.G.) has been hailed a success with many men and women turning up to be part of the rehabilitation programme.
The President of the Samoa Victim Support Group, Siliniu Lina Chang said: The Mens and Womens Advocacy programme first started in 2014 and it is now in its fourth year.
It has been recorded since the beginning of the programme, we have had 700 men and women who have already graduated.
The programme is primarily based on counselling, a foreign concept to our people, but a support that is greatly in need for our efforts to end violence in our homes.
It also includes anger management, couple counselling, alcohol and drug counselling, stress management and counselling on family issues.
Mrs. Chang acknowledged their partnership with the Ministry of Justice, Administration and Court because of the many cases that were referred to them to address.
Samoa Victim Support Group has been well supported by church leaders of various denominations who have come forward to be part of the programme as facilitators of these counselling sessions.
I believe that it is up to the offenders to rise up and make effective changes in their behaviour and join the fight for a violence-free community, she said
Another graduation is scheduled for the 30th of this month.
A 61-year-old man has been sentenced to 13 years jail for raping a 14-year-old girl who was under his care.
The victim is the defendants brothers granddaughter.
In handing down the sentence last week Friday, Justice Vui said: This offence occurred in the compliance of a family home, a place where children are supposed to feel loved and protected from such behaviour.
Tavui Sailasa was found guilty by a panel of assessors over the charges of rape, sexual connection with a girl under 16 years old and indecent assault.
A suppression order was issued for the sake of the victim and it extended to her village.
The prosecution was led by Vaisala Afoa of the Attorney Generals Office, the Registrar was Mane Sua and the defense counsel was Pau Tafaogalupe Mulitalo.
According to the police summary of facts, the incident occurred before Christmas in 2016 when the defendant was 61 years old and the victim was 14.
The complainant had been under the defendants care for a number of years because her parents had separated and her mother had remarried.
After the trial, defense counsel filed an application for a re-hearing based on what he said was new evidence.
He also indicated the complainant admitted to him that she lied on oath during the trial.
Justice Vui said this was a serious matter, however the allegation was dismissed.
On the morning in question, a few days before Christmas in 2016, the defendants son and the victim were in the outside kitchen doing faapau koko, said Justice Vui.
The son was engaged in faapau koko while the defendant was putting on the fire and doing some other chores.
At one stage, the son went to the toilet and the defendant came on the scene.
The toilet is in a separate structure and a bit far away from the kitchen.
The defendants wife had gone to the hospital and the other children in the family, were playing inside the main house.
According to the victim, the defendant approached her at the outside kitchen and told her to remove her clothes but she refused.
The defendant, however, went ahead and raped her.
She told the court that her uncle, who was an eye witness, was passing by the family property at the time of the incident.
He (her uncle) told the court that he saw the defendant kiss the victim and sexually harass her.
He also said while the defendant was raping the girl, he took a rock and threw it on the apa of the kitchen and the defendant immediately stopped.
Justice Vui said this was strong evidence in support of the victims testimony.
The defendant vehemently died all the allegations against him and he even told the probation officer that he is innocent.
However he accepted the fact that the uncle threw a rock at the kitchen but explained that it was for the purpose of attracting his attention because the uncle was gay and that he wanted to have sex with him but the assessors did not believe this.
According to the victims impact report, she told the defendants wife and his son what had happened to her, but in response, the wife beat her up.
In reading out the aggravating features, Justice Vui took into account the incident occurred at home.
There was a breach of trust because the defendant was the head of the household while the victim was a 14-year-old girl under his care, said Justice Vui.
In her V.I.R. she said she looked up to the defendant as her father in the absence of her own biological father.
We are all aware that the head of any Samoan family household is a unique position of cultural and financial power and has much sway on all family members and the affairs of family members.
In raping this young girl, Tavui breached that trust.
Consideration is also given to the vulnerability of the complainant because shes 14 years old and some 40 years in between the victim and the defendant.
He waited for the complainant to be alone and his wife was absent, said Justice Vui.
If the uncle hadnt thrown a rock on the apa, the rape wouldve carried on.
In sentencing the defendant Justice Vui said the starting point was 15 years and normal deductions were made which left 13 years.
You have been convicted and sentenced to 13 years imprisonment for the charge of rape, for the charge of sexual connection; you are convicted and sentenced to two years imprisonment and for the charge of indecent assault; you have been convicted and sentenced to 12 months imprisonment.
All of this are to be served concurrently.
Samoas biodiversity, rich and unique, is the result of years in geographical isolation.
The launch of a new project puts the small Polynesian country at the forefront of Access and Benefit Sharing helping ensure communities derive significant economic, social and environmental benefits from the countrys extensive genetic resources.
This project is an important milestone for biodiversity and sustainable development in our country, said Associate Minister Lemalu Taefu Lemi Taefu.
It will address some of the key barriers we face in accessing the benefits of our genetic resources, for example addressing the current access permit system.
With US$350,000 from the Global Environment Facility, the new three-year project will advance the development and strengthening of related national frameworks, human resources and administrative capabilities to effectively implement the Nagoya Protocol on Access and Benefit Sharing, entered into force in 2014.
The Division of Conservation and Environment of the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment (MNRE-DEC) will lead the project, with implementation support from the UN Development Programme Country Office and the Global ABS Project Team.
Biodiversity and ecosystem services are interlinked with human well-being and development priorities, said MNRE-ACEO, Mr Moafanua Tolusina Pouli, addressing attendees from Government Ministries, community representatives, traditional healers, local non-government organizations, and the private sector.
The Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment is excited to be working with all stakeholders on this important project to strengthen Samoas legal frameworks and guidelines, ensuring users and providers of genetic resources and traditional knowledge are well protected.
The project aligns with Samoas current national policies and existing National Biodiversity Strategies and Action Plan, including the recently launched National Environment Sector Plan.
It focuses on strengthening the legal, policy and institutional capacities to develop national Access and Benefit Sharing frameworks; building trust between users and providers of genetic resources to facilitate the identification of bio-discovery efforts; and strengthening the capacity of indigenous and local communities to contribute to the implementation of the Nagoya Protocol.
Samoas flora consists of 500 species of native flowering plants and about 220 species of ferns, making it one of the most diverse flora in the Polynesia. Over time, the countrys geographical isolation allowed the evolution of new species, and sub-species, often aided by the absence of fierce competitors and predators.
Samoa has consistently demonstrated its commitment to conserving its biodiversity and ecosystems.
In 2001, the countrys cabinet formally approved Samoas National Biodiversity Strategies and Action Plan. The strategy focused around eight themes: mainstreaming biodiversity; ecosystem management; species management; community empowerment; awareness involvement; ownership; and benefits, access and benefit-sharing from the use of genetic resources; biosecurity, agro biodiversity and financial resources and mechanisms.
In October 2014, Samoa became a party of the Nagoya Protocol of the Convention of Biodiversity. This Protocol is of paramount importance, providing both greater legal certainties, clarity and transparency for both providers and users of genetic resources including associated traditional knowledge.
Currently, Samoa uses an access permit system to allow access to its genetic resources to be used for biodiscovery. Between 2011 and 2015, about 29 such permit requests were submitted, with six permits approved.
The key challenge is the lack of monitoring and compliance of these permits and the delays in providing them. There is also a lack of benefit-sharing provisions available in the country, in the absence of a comprehensive policy and regulatory framework on Access and Benefit Sharing.
For a large number of local communities around the world biodiversity and ecosystems are also their main source of livelihood, said UNDP Deputy Resident Representative Notonegoro. UNDP is excited and privileged to be part of this project and look forward to fruitful deliberations for a successful implementation at the national level.
Following the launch event, an inception workshop provided an opportunity for the project team to clarify and take ownership of the projects goals and objectives, and to finalize the preparation of the projects first annual work plan
*Samoa is one of 24 countries from Asia-Pacific, Africa, Eastern Europe, Arab States, Latin America and the Caribbean covered under the US$12 million Global Environment Facility-financed global programme, Strengthening human resources, legal frameworks, and institutional capacities to implement the Nagoya Protocol.
Jessop Jeweler has had a 125-year glittery run since the family patriarch left England and made a killing in gold, diamonds and real estate in San Diego.
Jessops made bling for a pope, prince, vice president, admiral and aerospace hero not to mention four generations of families shopping for wedding bands, birthday necklaces and baby cups.
Serra Mesa resident Dorothy Wicks, 91, said she still has the engagement ring her father bought for her mother in 1917.
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All his life, he shopped at Jessops, Wicks said. He went for the finest. He took me there to buy my first wristwatch and made me pay for it so Id appreciate it.
Related: Jessops jewelry store closing after 125 years
Albert Szelenberger, the master goldsmith at Jessops, left, and store owner Jim Jessop look at a custom-made necklace Albert is making featuring gemstones. (Howard Lipin /U-T )
But on Thursday, James Jessop, the familys sixth-generation jeweler, called it quits.
At 65 and a rough-water swimmer in top shape, Jessop said his three sons never showed any interest in the business.
Andrew, 35, is a Lawrence Livermore Laboratory test engineer; Bryan, 32, a professional mushroom collector; and Carter, 30, an EPA mines expert, all in the San Francisco Bay area. Running a jewelry store was not on their radar.
Jessops is closing but many of the Jessop family remain in the city, continuing good work and supporting a great legacy of the families good work, he said.
And of course the Jessop clock remains a Jessop family historical monument to the city of San Diegos great history.
That 22-foot-tall street clock, built in 1907 and currently located on the main level of Westfield Horton Plaza, displays the time in 12 cities around the world a reminder to passersby that the family business counts clients worldwide.
Jessop blamed online selling for making it harder to sell family businesses. The grueling store hours can dissuade sons and daughters who hear about retail woes at the kitchen table every night.
G.T. Frost, a longtime friend of Jessops who heads Frost Hardware Lumber, says the fourth generation of his family has stepped up to prepare to take over that 106-year-old business in the Miramar area.
It doesnt just happen you have to work hard to keep your edge to make it a viable company, Frost said.
Carmen Bianchi, a lecturer in family business at San Diego State University, said she is working with a family in China thats been in the precious stone trade for many generations and now focuses on commercial real estate.
A fifth-generation San Diego family she consults has gone from rock quarrying to real estate development.
But she said most family businesses peter out after the third generation.
What happens is children go into careers of their own, she said. They dont follow the careers of their parents. Its not like it used to be and the expectation is not there anymore.
The Jessop family story resembles that of many immigrants looking for a better life in America.
Joseph Jessop, born in 1851 in West Yorkshire, dropped out of school at age 9 to help his struggling parents get by.
They died when he was 14 and by then he was learning watchmaking from his uncle, who had learned it from his uncle. But Joseph wasnt in good health.
Following a doctors advice, he and his family moved to California in 1890, tried farming for two years near publisher E.W. Scripps Miramar Ranch and then turned back to watch repairs.
In 1893 Joseph and his oldest son, Armand, opened a 15-by-20-foot small shop that rented for $15 per month at 417 F St. They slept in the backroom and rode three hours back to Miramar by horse and buggy on the weekends.
Their earliest success was rowing out to boats anchored in the harbor to repair chronometers. They moved to larger stores in 1896, 1906 and 1927.
The family moved to Golden Hill in 1898 and Coronado in 1900, kept the ranch and bought other real estate in later years.
Among the many pieces made of silver, gold and precious stone, Jessops significant creations include:
A gold-encrusted baptismal font made out of giant clam shells in 1907 for St. James-by-the-Sea Church in La Jolla;
A jewel-encrusted presentation chest box for Admiral R.D. Evans, who steered President Teddy Roosevelts Great White Fleet to San Diego Bay in 1908;
Sterling silver badges for Balboa Parks Panama-California Exposition in 1915; and,
A sterling silver model of the San Diego-built Spirit of St. Louis for Charles Lindbergh, who returned in triumph to San Diego after flying solo across the Atlantic in 1927.
A wedding band for Vice President Alben Barkley in 1949.
The jewelry business requires extreme dedication to detail. But in the 1920s, Jessops apparently slipped up.
Civic organist Humphrey Stewart ordered a silver baby cup destined for a young couple and a silver decanter for the pope, possibly Pius XI, whom he knew.
But the decanter went to the couple with a note, Have a few nips on me, and the pope got a note with the baby cup that said, Congratulations, I hope you have many more.
Jessops had some explaining to do on that one, said Joseph E. Jessop, youngest son of the company founder, in a 1981 family history.
Joseph, the elder, died in 1932 and five of the sons, Armand, Alonzo, Richard, George and Joseph the younger, carried on, each specializing in one facet of the business and taking turns as company president.
After World War II, they began opening branch stores, starting with La Jolla in 1949, and employed well over 100 staff.
They and their wives took part in many civic institutions and causes and their children and grandchildren remain active today.
But by 1970 the principals started to retire and they sold the company to Dayton-Hudson, a Minneapolis department store (Target) and jeweler. More Jessops outlets opened before Jessops was sold twice more and later closed
Meanwhile, George Carter Jessop Jr., opened a store under his own name in 1973 and his son, Jim, joined it after graduating from San Diego State University. Jim assumed control in 1987 and regained the Jessop Jeweler trade name a decade later.
A liquidation sale for the public will begin Friday with about 3,000 items worth about $3.5 million available some new and some more than 150 years old.
The Jessops street clock has been in Westfield Horton Plaza since 1985. (Howard Lipin /U-T )
Located outside Jessops downtown stores, the Jessop clock was first conceived by store founder Joseph when he and his wife Mary visited Bern, Switzerland, about 1888 and admired the citys many clocks. A particular street clock caught his eye and in 1905 he carried out plans to design a similar piece.
His mechanic and watchmaker, Claude Ledger, spent 15 months building the clock in the onsite foundry and incorporating 17 jewels tourmaline, topaz, jade and agate, mined by the family and 20 dials, 12 of which tell the time of principal cities around the world. The mainspring is wound up by electricity every eight hours.
The master clock was exhibited at the Sacramento state fair in 1907 and won a gold medal.
The clock was moved into Westfield Horton Plaza in 1985 when the Jessops store relocated from Fifth Avenue. That store has since closed.
Three stories elevate the clocks history to urban legend.
When Ledger died on March 22, 1935, the clock stopped, although no mechanical failure could be found. The story made it into Ripleys Believe It or Not newspaper column. The same thing happened when another longtime caretaker, Bill Wemer, died on April 13, 2009.
Joseph Jessop once asked a San Diego Gas & Electric official how the power plant timed the noontime, 5 p.m. and 10 p.m. whistles. The official said he passed by the clock daily and set his watch accordingly.
Well, Jessop supposedly replied, we set the clock by the whistle.
A third story holds that a youngster was so enchanted by the clockworks at the state fair that he stuck a tiny bear into the escapement so it could take a ride on the clock. He couldnt retrieve it and its been riding there ever since except, as Jim Jessop said, when the clock was dismantled and refurbished.
The Jessop family still owns the clock and has been seeking a permanent home ever since Westfield Horton Plaza indicated it might redevelop or sell the shopping center.
Jim Jessop said he has three downtown locations in mind and hopes to reach an agreement to move it to a secure but publicly accessible site in a few months and to set up a nonprofit that will operate and maintain the clock in perpetuity.
Jessops made this Opening Day trophy clock that sits above the fireplace at the San Diego Yacht Club, which Jessop family members founded and served as commodores over the last century. (Roger Showley/U-T )
1851: Joseph Jessop born April 11 in Kirkburton.
1865: He is apprenticed to his uncle George to learn watch making; his parents die within a year.
1870: Jessop marries Mary Carter, also of Kirkburton, and they eventually have 12 children, two of whom die in childhood.
1871: Jessop opens his first watch repair shop in his inlaws home and his own shop a few months later.
1881: He moves to Lytham for better weather and opens a store along with his sons Amand and Alonzo.
1890: The family of nine moves to California to improve Jessops health and buys the 50-acre Burton Ranch in the Miramar, just west of todays Interstate 15. He declares his intention to become a U.S. citizen within a month. Three more children are born in the U.S.
1892: To augment meager revenue from cattle ranching and farming, Jessop sets up a more lucrative watch repair business at a work bench, employing tools hed brought from England.
1893: Jessop and his son Armand open a store at 417 F St., relocate to 910 Fifth Ave. in 1896, 952 Fifth in 1906 and 1041 Fifth in 1927.
1905: Mary dies; 1932, Joseph dies.
1949: La Jolla store opens, followed by North Park (1952), Chula Vista (1956), Mission Valley (1961), Escondido (1964), College Grove (1968) and Chula Vista Shopping Center (1969).
1970: J. Jessop & Sons chain sold to Dayton-Hudson; 1982, to Henry Birks Ltd; and 1990, Gordon Brothers of Houston, which later closes all the stores.
1973: George Carter Jessop Jr. opens his own store downtown, a second at Hotel del Coronado in 1977, and relocates to the present site in Emerald Plaza building, 401 C. St., in 1991.
1974: James Jessop joins the firm and buys the business from his father in 1987.
1997: James buys the Jessop Jeweler name back and store once again becomes Jessops.
2017: James announces he is closing the business and holds a going-out-of-business sale with the intention of shutting down in early 2018.
2018: Jessop street clock expected to be relocated from Wesfield Horton Plaza to a permanent downtown location.
Business
roger.showley@sduniontribune.com; (619) 293-1286; Twitter: @rogershowley
According to recent reports, Gal Gadot will not sign the Wonder Woman sequel until producer Brett Ratner is ousted from the franchise.
By India Today Web Desk: Wonder Woman star, Gal Gadot, has reportedly refused to sign the sequel to the blockbuster, unless accused sexual harasser Brett Ratner is removed from the production of the film.
Ratner who has been accused of sexual misconduct in the past week, by six women, helped finance the film. He took home a stake of 412 million dollars. However, after hearing these allegations, Gadot is insisting that the Warner Bros studio buy out his stake.
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"She's tough and stands by her principles. She also knows the best way to hit people like Brett Ratner is in the wallet,' a Warner Bros. insider told a Hollywood daily. "She also knows that Warner Bros. has to side with her on this issue as it develops. "They can't have a movie rooted in women's empowerment being financed by a man accused of sexual misconduct against women," the insider added. "Now Gadot is saying she won't sign for the sequel unless Warner Bros. buys Brett out [of his financing deal] and gets rid of him."
However, Ratner, through his lawyer, has flatly denied the allegations. After Harvey Weinstein Brett Ratner is the latest Hollywood celebrity to be accused of sexual harassment.
ALSO WATCH: Abhishek Bachchan signs Sahir Ludhianvi biopic, Wonder Woman to have a sequel
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When the company that became Swinerton Builders started, Grover Cleveland was president and Henry Ford was still more than a decade away from popularizing the assembly line.
It was a much different world in 1888 when the company began as a brick masonry and contracting startup, but Swinerton says lessons learned over more than a century have shaped its workplace culture.
Today, Swinerton is a major presence in downtown San Diego with hundreds of workers contributing to the increased vertical transformation of the city. Although the company is based in San Francisco, it has roughly 35 ongoing projects in San Diego County.
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Since the early 1980s, the company has been employee-owned. All workers are included in a stock ownership program, and shares of company stock are given out as part of a bonus program. No employee can own more than 5 percent of the companys value.
Swinerton is making its first appearance in the Top Workplace list.
Mark Payne, division manager of the San Diego office, said Swinertons unique ownership model and history are what makes it stand out.
Q: What sets your company apart from others in your industry?
I think a lot of it is our culture. Were 100 percent employee-owned so everyone is taking pride in ownership. Were very much a family-orientated company, team focused and customer focused. Its such a collegial atmosphere that we have at our company, with people helping each other out. Its not that we do project management better than anyone else, or have special widgets that other people dont have. I think a lot of it deals with our culture and repeat business that we do. It all fits together.
Q: How do you recruit and keep quality employees?
On the management side we have schools were aligned with (California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo; University of San Diego; San Diego State University; NewSchool of Architecture and Design; CSU Long Beach, etc.) where we recruit, typically in construction management or engineering. We set it up through internship programs. Interns are typically sophomores or juniors. It gives us a good opportunity for them to get a feel for our company, culture. We get a feel for them, their work ethic, what drives them. (The program) has been really successful for us. Weve had interns become full-time employees. We are also members of the carpenters union and are associated with the Associated General Contractors.
Q: There is a lot of talk about lack of construction workers throughout the industry. Is that something you are experiencing?
The lack of a skilled workforce is pretty big issue, not only for us and our self-perform capabilities (flooring, concrete, etc.) but also for our sub-contractors. For the amount of work we have going on and the amount of work, in general, going on in the San Diego area, it is just really hard to get qualified craft workers on projects. It has an impact on schedules, the quality of the jobs, and safety. It really started probably two years ago and I do think it is going to continue through mid-2018.
Q: How does having a long history help your company?
The biggest part of it is a legacy you are trying to carry forward. Its what youre doing now with employees, projects youre involved in, the clients youre working for. What kind of workplace and culture do you want to leave 20 years from now, 50 years from now? Its really just picking up on the legacy and culture so it can continue for another 130 years.
Q: What are some key buildings in San Diego County that workers are particularly proud of?
Weve done six or seven projects over the years at the Hotel Del Coronado. We did their historic renovation, seismic retrofit, a spa and a lot of their North Beach timeshare condo villas. Another one is the Omni San Diego Hotel. At the time, that was the largest project we had done in San Diego. We had to get it done in conjunction with the opening of Petco Park, so there was a lot of fanfare associated with that.
* * *
Swinerton Builders
Founded: 1888
Ownership: Cooperative
Sector: General contractor
Local employees: 177
Business
phillip.molnar@sduniontribune.com (619) 293-1891 Twitter: @phillipmolnar
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The vanishing San Diego single-family home
Since the beginning of the year, San Diegos Doctible has grown from 22 workers to 55 employees.
For Co-founder and Chief Executive Ajit Viswanathan, the growth has Doctibles management working hard to retain the start-ups energetic culture.
You can have personal relationships when youre at 22 employees, said Viswanathan. At 55, it gets a little bit tougher. But we still can create an environment where our culture is intact.
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Founded in 2014 by Viswanathan and Leon Hu, Doctible makes software that automates back office tasks primarily for doctors in private practice, while also giving them tools to engage, retain and get feedback from their patients.
Doctibles patient communications and retention platform integrates with the physicians existing software stack. The company began a rapid expansion last year and now has more than 2,500 customers in 49 states. Doctible has raised $4.2 million in venture capital funding to date.
Viswanathan and Hu emphasize the companys culture first and foremost. That landed Doctible on the San Diego Union Tribunes ranking of top local workplaces for small companies.
Viswanathan recently discussed the steps Doctible takes to be a good place to work. Here are some excerpts.
Q: Where do you find workers universities, competitors?
A: San Diego is a tough job market from an employer perspective. It really depends on the type of role we are recruiting for. For example, if we are recruiting for our development/product team, it was extremely hard with the platform that we use to find people inside San Diego.
It is not for lack of trying. At the same time, we are a start-up, and we dont have all the resources to spend on recruiting that others may have.
But a couple of our most recent hires on the engineering team have actually been from out of state, and we found it very fulfilling that we were able to bring them over here and see the culture. It definitely worked out great for both parties.
If you look at our sales side, we like to hire people who are new to the workforce. We are big believers in recruiting and training and teaching them a profession. So to date, a lot of our sales employees have been from within the region.
I would say again that finding the A-grade player, it is a process. It takes time. We are primarily looking for culture fits to make sure they jell into what we are trying to achieve and are comfortable in our environment.
Q: Can you define your culture?
A: We want to create a culture where our employees are positive. When retaining employees, culture should play a huge part of it in my opinion.
We publish our core values. We hold them accountable to it. So every new employee, or even existing employees, we want them to be held accountable to those core values, myself included.
We have five core values: Always improve and innovate; be positive; do what is right; wow the customer; and build an awesome culture.
We do quarterly reviews off-site where employees can ask any question in an anonymous way. It is very open and transparent. We also do a core values check. We ask, Hey, are we doing the right thing? Are we still on track with the core values that we published?
That is what I think is crucial for us to grow as an organization -- that core fabric that is Doctible. Every core value is super important but there are two that I personally identify with.
One is always improve and innovate. I get my inspiration on that one from Amazons Jeff Bezos Day One philosophy: Always act like it is day one of the company because you stretch your mind and continue to come up with new things that are going to be differentiating from the competition.
We want to import that same intensity to everyone because we should never be happy with what is going on. Of course, we recognize employees, but we are also pushing them to go to the next level
And the next one is building an awesome culture. We always think of it is as a work in progress. But we want to give employees the autonomy to be able to create a fun culture where they are hardworking, where they see the results directly impact all of our customers and then have a sense of accomplishment.
That is super critical where people come into a place of work. No doubt it is a hard job, especially a start-up with stretched resources. But you can have fun doing it.
Q: What is your favorite perk?
A: We do many things that I think are part of building an awesome culture. But something that we do very often is recognition of employees for doing a good job. We have weekly recognitions, quarterly recognitions. We want to make sure we take a moment and appreciate the work that everyone is doing.
We also have introduced some perks recently. This is all from feedback. We take our employee feedback very seriously. Flexibility was something that was brought up very often, and we have rolled out some flex perks for employees when they hit a certain stage. Those are the kind of things that we take pride in. We are not perfect. We get it. But give us feedback and we will continue to work on it.
I think that feedback loop is so critical to forming culture so they dont feel like it is a rigid workplace when they walk in.
Q: Is it hard to keep people?
A: We have been very lucky to retain our key employees that are the core of our company. How do we retain people? I think culture should be a very big reason why people stay with the company. They spend more of their waking life in work than outside of work. What we want to have them do is build an environment where they have fun with their colleagues and managers. Now it is going to be a hard-working job, but they are going to have fun doing it.
Q: What is Doctibles best benefit?
A: I think a benefit that everybody enjoys here is we get done at 1 pm on Fridays. Its basically our way of recognizing that on Fridays, staying until 4 pm might not be the most optimal. So the company closes down at 1 pm. It give employees the opportunity to beat traffic and get a head start on the weekend.
I personally enjoy that perk, too. It is something that is now woven into the fabric of our culture, and it is not something that I would ever touch or remove at least for a long period of time.
Name: DoctibleFounded: 2014Ownership: Privately heldSector: Healthcare Information TechnologyLocal employees: 55
Business
mike.freeman@sduniontribune.com;
Twitter:@TechDiego
760-529-4973
Jan Magot was sitting atop Mt. Soledad on a sunny Saturday afternoon with hundreds of others, as she does every Veterans Day, to honor the memory of her Marine Corps husband who fought 50 years ago in Vietnam and later was awarded a Purple Heart for his heroism.
He saved the life of another Marine, she said, as the two of them were trying to duck incoming fire. Her husband, in the process of pushing the other Marine out of harms way, was hit with shrapnel in his back, but they both survived, said Magot while attending the Veterans Day ceremony there with her daughter.
Im very fortunate he came back and we were able to have a life here, she said, eyeing the curved walls lined with thousands of black granite veteran plaques at Mt. Soledad National Veterans Memorial.
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Flags waving in the breeze, the Marine band playing, and a five-plane formation flying overhead, the hour-long ceremony at Mt. Soledad was one of several Veterans Day celebrations held throughout the county.
The annual Veterans Day parade along North Harbor Drive featured 2,000 participants, including marching bands and floats, with every branch of the service represented. Other ceremonies and parades were organized throughout North County, and a Veterans Day tribute was held at Miramar National Cemetery.
There were also day-long festivities aboard the USS Midway Aircraft Carrier Museum.
The gathering at Mt. Soledad was, first and foremost, an occasion for remembering all who have served their country in war and peacetime, but it was also an occasion to celebrate the service of women.
1 / 12 Air Force veteran Bruce Bailey, former president and CEO of the Mt. Soledad Memorial Association, holds the French Legion of Honor medal pinned on World War II Army veteran Bill Galbraith, 93, who fought in Normandy on D-Day with the 101st Airborne Division. (Hayne Palmour IV / San Diego Union-Tribune) 2 / 12 The French Legion of Honor medal pinned on World War II Army veteran Bill Galbraith, 93, who fought in Normandy on D-Day with the 101st Airborne Division. (Hayne Palmour IV / San Diego Union-Tribune) 3 / 12 Pearl Harbor survivor Stuart Hedley, 96, talks to Brandon Kendro, 7. (Hayne Palmour IV / San Diego Union-Tribune) 4 / 12 World War II Army veteran Bill Galbraith, 93, who fought in Normandy on D-Day with the 101st Airborne Division, talks to Marine Capt. Kellen Skarka. (Hayne Palmour IV / San Diego Union-Tribune) 5 / 12 The Marine Band San Diego perform during the Veterans Day Ceremony at the Mt. Soledad National Veterans Memorial. (Hayne Palmour IV / San Diego Union-Tribune) 6 / 12 Pearl Harbor survivor Stuart Hedley, 96, salutes as he recites the Pledge of Allegiance. (Hayne Palmour IV / San Diego Union-Tribune) 7 / 12 Pearl Harbor survivor Stuart Hedley, 96, puts his hand over his heart during a prayer. (Hayne Palmour IV / San Diego Union-Tribune) 8 / 12 Pearl Harbor survivor Stuart Hedley, 96, puts his hand over his heart during a prayer. (Hayne Palmour IV / San Diego Union-Tribune) 9 / 12 A picture showing the plaque for Air Force Col. Jaqueline Cochran after it was unveiled during the Veterans Day Ceremony at the Mt. Soledad National Veterans Memorial. (Hayne Palmour IV / San Diego Union-Tribune) 10 / 12 People listen during the Veterans Day Ceremony at the Mt. Soledad National Veterans Memorial in La Jolla. (Hayne Palmour IV / San Diego Union-Tribune) 11 / 12 Planes with Air Group One and San Diego Performance Aircraft do a flyover during the Veterans Day Ceremony at the Mt. Soledad National Veterans Memorial. (Hayne Palmour IV / San Diego Union-Tribune) 12 / 12 People watch, including WWII Army veteran Bill Galbraith, center, a flyover during the Veterans Day Ceremony at the Mt. Soledad National Veterans Memorial. (Hayne Palmour IV / San Diego Union-Tribune)
The name Amelia Earhart is instantly recognizable for most, but not so much Jacqueline Cochran, a record-breaking pilot who paved the way for todays women aviators. A contemporary of Earharts, Cochran was responsible for organizing Women Airforce Service Pilots or WASPs during World War II, which began as an experimental program for training women to fly military aircraft so male pilots could be released for combat duty overseas.
She was honored Saturday with a plaque celebrating her pioneering career both in and out of the military. By the time she died in 1980, Cochran, a colonel in the Air Force Reserve, had racked up more speed, distance and altitude records than any other pilot, male or female.
She could have just sat back and basked in all that fame when World War II broke out, but she saw another mission in terms of going to Britain to help ferry planes and also helped start the Women Airforce Service Pilots, said former astronaut Bonnie Dunbar, keynote speaker at the Mt. Soledad ceremony. And she didnt stop there, she became a consultant for Northrop Corporation, and she set records for the T-38, the same airplane I flew into North Island in the back seat.
Now a professor of aerospace engineering at Texas A&M, Dunbar flew a total of five space shuttle missions, her last in 1998.
We need to have more young women get bit by that flying bug, Dunbar said in an interview. Young women think there are still barriers to becoming an astronaut or aviator and its just not true.
Sisters Lynn Eddy-Zambrano and LJ Eddy of San Diego, whose mother Vivian Eddy served with Cochran in the WASP program, helped unveil the replica plaque honoring Cochran.
My mom died in 2013 and my dad, an aircraft carrier pilot in the Navy, died in 2016, said Eddy-Zambrano, wearing the pilot wings Cochran had pinned on her mother. Mom was a big proponent of WASP and there was nothing she loved more than flying. She would love knowing we were here today.
Later in the day, shortly before sunset at Miramar National Cemetery, more than 100 people gathered on a lawn at the foot of the Veterans Tribute Tower and Carillon shortly before sunset.
Rep. Scott Peters, D-San Diego, noting that the county has one of the largest populations of veterans in the nation, said, We owe you profound gratitude for your service on the battlefield and for families on the home front.
Listening to it all was Henry Ruppe, 86, who served in the Marines at Camp Pendleton from 1951 to 1953. His job then was to train Marines for combat in Korea.
A friend drove him from Vista to attend the service.
I enjoyed it, said Ruppe, decked out in red, white and blue for the occasion. It was exciting to see. This is the first time I was here.
He said he expects to be buried at the Miramar cemetery and hopes to move his wifes body from Riverside National Cemetery to be next to him when that day comes.
Business
lori.weisberg@sduniontribune.com
(619) 293-2251
Twitter: @loriweisberg
CITY COUNCILS
CARLSBAD
The Carlsbad City Council met in closed special session Tuesday for labor negotiations. In regular session, the council supported a presentation from SANDAG on the Buena Vista Lagoon, outlining a switch from freshwater to saltwater. The council also approved issuing a request for proposals to lease the Dove Library Cafe. Final approval was given to an ordinance changing zoning requirements to allow auto repair within the P-M Planned Industrial Zone with a minor conditional use permit. The council also discussed and approved its 2018-2019 Community Development Block Grant Program funding plan. These appointments were approved: Shelly Sander, Historic Preservation Commission; Peter Penseyres, Traffic Safety Commission; and John Prietto, Beach Preservation Committee.
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DEL MAR
The Del Mar City Council met in special closed session Monday to discuss litigation, the city managers evaluation, and property negotiation. In open session, the council gave final approval to its short-term rental ordinance, and approved rules for a forbearance period to temporarily delay enforcement against existing, non-conforming short-term rentals in certain cases. This applies to rentals that preceded the April 4, 2016 moratorium, and the period would end with a decision by the Coastal Commission to either approve or deny the ordinance, or after 24 months expired, whichever came first. The council decided against adding a representative of the Winston School to the Shores Advisory Committee at this time. A resolution setting design guidelines for single-family, multifamily and commercial development within the city was approved. Carol Kerridge was appointed to a four-year term on the San Dieguito Lagoon Committee.
ENCINITAS
The Encinitas City Council met Wednesday for a public hearing on proposed district maps and sequence of elections. Map 16, which was designed by Councilwoman Tasha Boerner Horvath, was approved 3-2 as part of the ordinance establishing by-district elections. It sets up four districts, with representatives in districts 3 and 4 coming up for votes in 2018, and those in districts 1 and 2 coming up in 2020. The council also approved on first reading an ordinance banning marijuana-related activities and uses; and heard an update and requested a revision of tasks required to complete its housing element before bringing it back to another meeting. The council also discussed the first draft of its Coastal Mobility & Livability Study related to the Active Transportation Plan.
POWAY
The Poway City Council met in special closed session Tuesday to discuss property negotiations. In regular session, the council hired Rutan & Tucker LLP to provide legal representation in the federal litigation filed regarding the California Voting Rights Act. The council received a report on the end of fiscal year 2016-17, and a report on zoning designations for single-family attached homes.
SOLANA BEACH
The Solana Beach City Council met in closed session to discuss litigation and personnel Wednesday, and authorized the city manager to execute an agreement to settle the case filed by the city against the 22nd Agricultural District Association. In regular session, the council held a hearing on a proposed ordinance setting a minimum average workspace of at least 125 square feet per employee. The ordinance was approved on first reading, with clarification of the definition of employee. The council also held a hearing and discussed a Public Recreation Impact Fee study and a related Local Coastal Program Land Use Plan amendment. The council agreed to trigger the one-year extension, and in the meantime will continue to work to analyze the data and keep collection of fees at $1,000. Peter Lambrou was appointed to the View Assessment Committee.
SCHOOL DISTRICTS
FALLBROOK
The Fallbrook Union Elementary School District board celebrated its newly tenured teachers with a reception before its Monday meeting. In regular session, the board heard an report on the Local Control and Accountability Plan Dashboard Local Indicators, and set its annual organizational meeting for Dec. 11. A closed session to discuss litigation and personnel followed.
VISTA
The Vista Unified School District board met in special closed session Tuesday to discuss applicants for the superintendent position.
laura.groch@sduniontribune.com
For the last week, Eddie Louise Horace and her grandkids have found shelter at a Del Mar church. Before that, they had been in motel rooms. And when the money ran out, they started living out of her car.
Horace and the little ones are among those who can count on a safe place and warm food, at least for the next few months, now that a few houses of faith have opened their doors to provide winter shelter.
Sleeping in that car with two kids, one on the seat, one on the floor, you having to wake up to see who is around you really cant sleep but you have to sleep, Horace said. Here, I feel safe. We are inside, its not cold, Im able to rest. We are able to be together.
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Being able to shower is a big deal, Horace said. Being able to go to the bathroom is a huge deal. And being able to get a hot meal is critical. When you are sleeping in your car, you dont have access to those things.
The churches and synagogues are part of the Interfaith Shelter Network, which teams with about 60 houses of faith throughout the region to provide winter shelter to those in need, two weeks at a time. Another 60 congregations work in support of the network.
Its everyone working together to provide shelter for homeless people in San Diego, said Bill Zucconi, rotational shelter coordinator for the network.
1 / 17 Eddie Louise Horace with her grandchildren Crescent Swift, 4, and Kenaze Swift, 5, left, while on Horaces bed at St. Peters Episcopal Church in Del Mar. Horace and her grandchildren, who are homeless, slept in her car before being able to stay at the church through the winter rotational shelter program. (Hayne Palmour IV / San Diego Union-Tribune) 2 / 17 Eddie Louise Horace and her grandchildren Kenaze Swift, 5, left, and Crescent Swift, 4, make a tower out of building blocks at St. Peters Episcopal Church. (Hayne Palmour IV / San Diego Union-Tribune) 3 / 17 Eddie Louise Horace and her grandchildren Kenaze Swift, 5, right, and Crescent Swift, 4, make a tower out of building blocks at St. Peters Episcopal Church. (Hayne Palmour IV / San Diego Union-Tribune) 4 / 17 Eddie Louise Horace and her grandchildren Kenaze Swift, 5, left, and Crescent Swift, 4, make a tower out of building blocks at St. Peters Episcopal Church. (Hayne Palmour IV / San Diego Union-Tribune) 5 / 17 Eddie Louise Horace, left, and church member and volunteer Deborah Farrell serve themselves dinner. (Hayne Palmour IV / San Diego Union-Tribune) 6 / 17 Crescent Swift, 4, holds hands with her grandmother Eddie Louise Horace and church member and volunteer Jeff Dysart as they, other church volunteers, and people who run the winter rotational shelter program, say a blessing before eating dinner. (Hayne Palmour IV / San Diego Union-Tribune) 7 / 17 Kenaze Swift, 5, drinks iced tea as he, his sister, and grandmother, eat dinner at St. Peters Episcopal Church. (Hayne Palmour IV / San Diego Union-Tribune) 8 / 17 Eddie Louise Horace and her grandchildren Kenaze Swift, 5, center, and Crescent Swift, 4, eat dinner at St. Peters Episcopal Church. (Hayne Palmour IV / San Diego Union-Tribune) 9 / 17 Crescent Swift, 4, eats a slice of an orange as she, her brother, and grandmother, eat dinner at St. Peters Episcopal Church. (Hayne Palmour IV / San Diego Union-Tribune) 10 / 17 Eddie Louise Horace and her grandchildren Kenaze Swift, 5, right, and Crescent Swift, 4, draw with crayons at St. Peters Episcopal Church. (Hayne Palmour IV / San Diego Union-Tribune) 11 / 17 Eddie Louise Horace and her grandchildren Kenaze Swift, 5, left, and Crescent Swift, 4, draw with crayons at St. Peters Episcopal Church. (Hayne Palmour IV / San Diego Union-Tribune) 12 / 17 Eddie Louise Horace and her granddaughter Crescent Swift, 4, draw with crayons at St. Peters Episcopal Church. (Hayne Palmour IV / San Diego Union-Tribune) 13 / 17 Eddie Louise Horace draws with crayons as her granddaughter Crescent Swift, 4, watches. (Hayne Palmour IV / San Diego Union-Tribune) 14 / 17 Eddie Louise Horace plays with her grandson Kenaze Swift, 5, as her granddaughter Crescent Swift, 4, draws with crayons. (Hayne Palmour IV / San Diego Union-Tribune) 15 / 17 Eddie Louise Horace looks at the beds that her two grandchildren will sleep in at St. Peters Episcopal Church. (Hayne Palmour IV / San Diego Union-Tribune) 16 / 17 Eddie Louise Horace plays with her grandchildren Crescent Swift, 4, left, and Kenaze Swift, 5, while Horace sits on her bed at St. Peters Episcopal Church in Del Mar. (Hayne Palmour IV / San Diego Union-Tribune) 17 / 17 Eddie Louise Horace plays with her grandchildren Crescent Swift, 4, and Kenaze Swift, 5, right, while on Horaces bed at St. Peters Episcopal Church in Del Mar. (Hayne Palmour IV / San Diego Union-Tribune)
The shelters are divided into seven regions around the county. Some, like the North Coastal region stretching from Del Mar to Oceanside, are already open. Others will not be open until after Christmas. Its hard enough to find congregations with the space and people to do the job; doing it during the holidays is that much more difficult.
The North Coastal region is one of the larger ones, with 11 faith congregations willing to host families in their facilities for two weeks at a stretch. St. Peters Episcopal Church was among the first to open this year, providing space last week. The church shelter serving the beach areas Pacific Beach, Ocean Beach and such have also opened for the year, as has the East County region. Inland North County, which will serve Escondido and more, is slated to start Nov. 20.
The network has been around for 32 years. St. Peters has been a part of it for 17 years.
Its a beloved ministry at this congregation, said Chistina Grobin, who coordinates the shelter network for the church.
The congregations are responsible for everything during their two-week turn. Its Grobins job to recruit teams to cook, or set up the facility with beds and privacy curtains, or to stay with the families overnight.
Each of the families or individuals lucky enough to land in the rotational program are pre-screened by professional case management agencies, including Community Resource Center in Encinitas, which worked with Horace.
As of last Tuesday, the waiting list for was a little more than a dozen people, but it will get up there once it starts to get colder, said Miranda Chavez, who is the integrative services program manager for the Community Resource Center. Preference, she said, is given to families, but individuals do land beds as well. Two people, including an overnight caregiver, were also given beds at St. Peters.
Finding enough churches to participate can be a challenge. Add to that the hepatitis A outbreak hitting San Diego County. As of Tuesday, 544 cases of the highly contagious virus had been reported. Twenty people have died, and 372 people had been hospitalized.
This year, the hepatitis A scare led two churches to take a hiatus from the program, one in La Jolla, one in East County. It also led the network to require that all of the people receiving shelter provide proof that they have had the hepatitis A vaccine.
Horace made her way to a county clinic to get the shot. (The kids were already vaccinated.) But she said it was easy, and worth it.
She also said the outbreak led her to decide to forego other shelters and sleep in the car.
Its one thing to be homeless, she said. Its another thing to be sick and homeless.
As Horace spoke Tuesday, her grandchildren Crescent Swift, 4, and Kenaze Swift, 5 -- played across the room, building a castle with large Lego-style blocks. When they are with their grandmother, they nuzzle in quickly.
We have been treated with dignity and self respect, Horace said of the people at the host church. We are not shunned, were not looked down upon. Its been a really loving, supportive, caring environment.
And as for moving to a new host church every two weeks, Horace said she is fine with that. The kids are OK, as well.
As far as the kids go, I just let them know, Hey, we are together. I am here for you. I am not going to leave you. Im going to be here for you, she said.
I just give them a lot of comfort and assurance that we are going to get through this together.
teri.figueroa@sduniontribune.com
(760) 529-4945
Twitter: @TeriFigueroaUT
More than a century removed from the incidents that made them household names, Buffalo Bill and Sitting Bull retain a hold on the public imagination. In Blood Brothers, Los Angeles writer Deanne Stillman explores what made them legends, and how they came to spend four months traveling together in 1885 as part of a Wild West Show that was reality TV before there was TV.
Stillman, who teaches creative writing through a masters program at U.C. Riverside, will discuss the book on Tuesday at 6 p.m. at the Fallbrook Library, 124 S. Mission Road.
Q: What drew you to this story?
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A: My mother had horses when we were growing up (in Ohio) and taught me and my sister how to ride. I was around horses a lot as a little girl and developed an affinity for them and was always drawn into the world of the American West.
I really wanted to be a writer when I grew up. When I moved to California, I was always drawn to certain types of American characters and always drawn to the land. The land is a major character in a lot of my work. Many of my books are set in the California desert and the Great Plains.
Some time ago, when I was working on a previous book, I found out that Sitting Bull had joined up with Buffalo Bill Cody in his Wild West Show for four months. That was surprising. I also found out that when Sitting Bull went home to Standing Rock because he was homesick at the end of his four months, Cody gave him a horse. That was a really big deal because horses had been stripped from the tribes. It wasnt enough to deprive them of the buffalo, a food source, and to push them off the land they had to be dismounted.
The horse represents freedom and courage for them. So he got this horse, and then five years later, in December of 1890, when Sitting Bull was being assassinated at his cabin in Standing Rock, the horse, which was outside the cabin, started dancing at the sound of the gunfire. That was because it had been trained to do so in the Wild West Show. When I found that out, it really started to haunt me.
Q: What was at the center of the friendship between Sitting Bull and Buffalo Billl?
A: I think they had a lot in common, not that people talked about those things back then. The 19th Century wasnt a time of that kind of sharing. They were both warriors. They had both participated in the battles of that time. They were both fathers and sons, husbands, great icons to their people, superstars of their era. Strangely enough, both men were named after the buffalo, drew their identities from the buffalo. Cody was named Buffalo Bill for killing a lot of them. Sitting Bulls name, in Lakota, refers to the buffalo.
Q: Was there some mutual respect?
A: For sure. When Cody and Sitting Bull met for the first time, in of all places Buffalo, N.Y., Cody is waiting for him and Sitting Bull arrives with his entourage and Cody makes this little-known speech introducing Sitting Bull as the Napoleon of his era. Really gives him his due as a great spiritual leader.
As they traveled across the country, Sitting Bull was still being blamed for killing Custer. But he was also widely respected as a warrior. They both were. They certainly had a complicated relationship. The publicity material for the show called them Foes in 76 and Friends in 85.
Q: One of the things you are exploring here is the mythology of the American West. Why was that important to you?
A: It seems to me that without the Wild West shows, what stories would we be telling ourselves about ourselves? Codys show really kind of inscribed the national scripture. He was creating mythology months after the real events had happened. He scalped an Indian to avenge Custers killing at the Little Big Horn and days later he was back East re-enacting the whole thing on stage as a play.
Here he was living this very essential American life in a way and then amping it up into an official story. Its really hard to separate the two. I think what the Wild West Show is presenting in terms of mythology thats become part of our identity. Its conflated who we are and what we do and what we tell ourselves today, for better and for worse.
Q: What does that mythology get wrong?
A: Well, there werent any scenes in the Wild West shows of government officials signing treaties with Native Americans and then not honoring them. One of the themes in the shows involved an Indian raid on a settlers cabin but it didnt examine what forces led to the raid. So there was all this action in the show, but why did that action happen?
After the massacre at Wounded Knee (more than 150 Sioux killed), Cody tried to set the record straight with a film. It was a big flop. Apparently people werent all that interested in what really happened during the Indian Wars.
Cody told a friend shortly before he died (in 1917) that he was tired of the whole Buffalo Bill thing. He was a superstar trapped in a persona. That was another thing he and Sitting Bull had in common: They were both celebrities who had hangers-on and jealous people around them. Thats difficult to live that way, to be a person that everybody believes you are but maybe you arent
Blood Brothers: The Story of the Strange Friendship between Sitting Bull and Buffalo Bill, by Deanne Stillman, Simon & Schuster, 304 pages.
john.wilkens@sduniontribune.com; (619) 293-2236
Several dozen people took to the streets Saturday in Point Loma to celebrate the joy and magic of something many people take for granted: walking.
The celebration was part of The Joys of Walking, a festival marking the 40th anniversary of Walkabout International, a San Diego-based nonprofit that organizes hundreds of cost-free local walks each year. The event, held at Liberty Station, began with various speakers and ended with a walk outdoors.
Edie Andrew-Akita, 89 of San Diego, said she has been a member of Walkabout for 30 years and could attest to the power of walking regularly for exercise.
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It has kept us young, Andrew-Akita said of herself and her fellow members. Our average age is 80 or something, and everyone is in great shape.
Dr. Poulina Uddin, a cardiologist with Scripps Health who spoke at the event Saturday, said walking 45 minutes at least four days a week can improve muscle tone, reduce blood pressure, lower cholesterol and relieve stress.
Regular exercise makes people stronger and more physically resilient, so they can recover faster if they get sick or need major surgery, Uddin said.
Anything you can do to increase your baseline level of activity will help you through any illness, Uddin said. The recovery will be much better.
Another speaker, Walkabout founder Larry Forman, said decades of walking helped him get on his feet both physically and mentally after surgery to treat his brain cancer.
I certainly didnt want a little hiccup in my health like brain cancer to prevent me from pursuing my passion: walking, Forman said.
And it didnt, he said. The nurses who accompanied him on his post-surgery walks got tired before he did.
Robert Manning, an author of books on walking, spoke about its benefits on the mind and soul. He pointed to great thinkers throughout history, from the Greek philosopher Aristotle to the English author Henry David Thoreau, who said regular walks stimulated their minds.
Its also a great way to meet some sole mates, Walkabout members said. They said they met great friends through walking groups, and a couple people even found true love.
Mike Anderson, 68, a retired Navy SEAL from Spring Valley, attended the event with his wife, Kathy, and pitbull-boxer mix Timmy. He said they all walk and hike together, but they thought it might be fun to join a group.
When you get older, its kind of hard to find people to do this kind of thing, he said.
Along with meeting friends, Walkabout groups are also a great way to explore the city, members said. Volunteers lead numerous walks daily in neighborhoods throughout San Diego. The group also organizes out-of-town trips.
To learn more about Walkabout and see a schedule of walks, visit walkabout-int.org or call its office at (619) 231-7463.
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morgan.cook@sduniontribune.com
Stephanie Rivera was excited about the future when her life came to an unexpected end last week in San Diego, friends said. Beautiful, disciplined, and focused on her career, the Tijuana-born model had much to live for.
She was getting up there finally, said her friend Lali Amador, who at one time shared runways with Rivera in Tijuana, and more recently had been part of the same circle of friends in San Diego. She was making the big transition from being a Mexican model to being a U.S. model.
A former Miss Earth Baja California, Rivera, 26, died Wednesday following critical injuries sustained on Nov. 5 after she was ejected from a speeding 2016 Lamborghini that caught fire after crashing into a palm tree on North Harbor Drive.
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The driver was Michael Llamas, 33, founder of a hemp products empire. He died at the scene.
Amador and other friends believe that Llamas would have been a recent acquaintance. Joaquin Meza, who directs the Miss Earth Baja California pageant, said Rivera never mentioned Llamas when she met him on the weekend before the accident.
We were close, she would have said something, she would have said he was her boyfriend, or her suitor, Meza said. But she didnt.
Rivera was part of a growing circle of modeling talent emerging in Tijuana, said Claudia Munoz, owner of the Tijuana-based Portafolio Modeling Agency. She said stood out for her professionalism and commitment.
Always when you asked, she would be there, Munoz said. Disciplined and professional, she wanted to go far, Munoz said. But she also had a really good heart, she wasnt one of those girls who are prima donnas.
Munoz said she began working with Rivera three years ago. One time, she sent Rivera to Cabo San Lucas to tape a tourism promotion program. Another time, she sent her north of the border for a modeling job at Los Angeles Fashion Week.
Friends said Rivera was born and raised in Tijuana. She attended the Autonomous University of Baja California, studying business administration, but fell some credits short of what was needed to obtain a degree, according to the schools records.
Passionate about modeling and fluent in English. Rivera lately had been spending much of her time north of the border, working and making connections. Doors were beginning to open, Munoz said.
One friend in San Diego was Marc Chase, owner of a Sorrento Valley-based dealership specializing in racing and collectible cars. They dated briefly in 2015, and had remained in touch, he said.
Chase recalled the time he invited Rivera to a charity event in Del Mar: She showed up, even though had the flu. She was just that kind of person, that went above and beyond the call of duty to fill her obligations and commitments, he said. She was just a trooper, most girls would have called and canceled.
Even as she was making her way north of the border, Rivera kept in close contact with Tijuana friends such as Meza, the pageant director, and helped him promote causes such as beach clean-ups and stage benefits for women with cancer.
Marco Ledezma said she volunteered her talent for a program, Fashion Against Poverty, to raise funds for the Lucas Family Foundation, which works with children in Tijuana living in conditions of extreme poverty.
She was a real model, somebody that girls in the region could look up to, Ledezma said. She was always concerned about others.
sandra.dibble@sduniontribune.com
@sandradibble
Police arrested a motorist who slammed his Mustang into two parked cars in Boyle Heights, knocking one of the vehicles onto the sidewalk and killing an 11-year-old girl who was standing in front of a taco stand, authorities said Saturday.
Jose Louis Perez was booked on suspicion of vehicular manslaughter, while a juvenile in the car with him was arrested on suspicion of possessing nitrous oxide, according to the Los Angeles Police Department.
The crash occurred about 7 p.m. Friday. Perez was heading west on Whittier Boulevard near Marietta Street when he crossed into eastbound lanes and crashed into the two parked cars, police said.
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The impact thrust one of the cars onto the sidewalk, where it struck four pedestrians.
All four were taken to a hospital for treatment. One victim, an 11-year-old girl whom police identified as Elektra Yepez, died of her injuries. The other three were expected to survive.
Authorities said speed was a factor in the incident, and the departments street-racing task force was investigating the circumstances.
Anyone with information on the crash can call traffic detectives at (213) 833-3713.
alene.tchekmedyian@latimes.com
Twitter: @AleneTchek
Disneyland has shut down two bacteria-contaminated cooling towers after Orange County health officials discovered several cases of Legionnaires disease in people who had visited the Anaheim theme park, authorities said.
Twelve cases of the bacteria-caused illness were discovered about three weeks ago among people who had spent time in Anaheim and included nine people who had visited Disneyland in September before developing the illness, according to the Orange County Health Care Agency. Their ages ranged from 52 to 94.
The remaining three were Orange County residents who did not visit the park but lived or traveled in Anaheim.
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Ten were hospitalized and one person with additional health issues died, according to health officials. That person did not visit Disneyland.
Legionnaires is a severe lung infection caused by exposure to contaminated water or mist. Authorities said they have not tied any other cases of Legionnaires to Anaheim since September.
There is no known ongoing risk associated with this outbreak, the healthcare agency said in a statement.
The towers are in a backstage area near the New Orleans Square Train Station, each more than 100 feet from areas accessible to guests, a Disneyland Resort spokeswoman said Friday. A Disneyland employee is among those who fell ill with the disease.
On Oct. 27, we learned from the Orange County Health Care Agency of increased Legionnaires disease cases in Anaheim. We conducted a review and learned that two cooling towers had elevated levels of Legionella bacteria, Dr. Pamela Hymel, chief medical officer for Walt Disney Parks and Resorts, said in a statement Friday. These towers were treated with chemicals that destroy the bacteria and are currently shut down.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention notified county authorities about three weeks ago of several cases of the disease among people who had traveled to Orange County in September. County epidemiologists discovered that a cluster of people diagnosed with the disease had recently visited, lived or worked in Anaheim and contacted Disney after learning that several of them had gone to the theme park.
According to the health agency, on Nov. 3 Disney reported that routine testing had detected elevated levels of Legionella in two cooling towers a month earlier, and the towers had been disinfected. Disney took the towers out of service on Nov. 1, performed more testing and disinfection, and brought them back into service on Nov. 5.
Disney took the towers out of service again on Tuesday in advance of an order the health agency issued the following day requiring they remain down until test results verify they are free from Legionella contamination.
The towers had been turned off on Nov. 1 before Disney learned that Legionella had been detected, Disneyland Resort spokeswoman Suzi Brown said. The only reason they were turned back on was as part of the further disinfection process.
The county health agency has also alerted healthcare providers to look for Legionnaires disease in anyone who may have become ill after visiting Anaheim or Disneyland before Nov. 7.
It takes two to 10 days for symptoms of Legionnaires to appear.
The disease is caused by Legionella bacteria that grow in water and can spread when small droplets get into the air and people breathe them in, according to the CDC. Outbreaks are often traced to hot tubs, decorative fountains, cooling towers and large air-conditioning systems that emit water vapor into the air. Legionnaires is not spread person to person.
The illness can be treated with antibiotics and hospital care, but about 1 in 10 people who get Legionnaires disease die from the infection. Most at risk are people older than 50 with weakened immune systems or chronic lung diseases.
Orange County has recorded more than 55 cases of the disease this year and has seen the number of cases jump in recent years. A similar upward trend has been seen nationally and elsewhere in Southern California, according to the healthcare agency, though whats causing that is unclear.
tony.barboza@latimes.com
@tonybarboza
UPDATES:
6:55 a.m.: Updated with a quote from spokeswoman Brown.
This article was first published at 5:25 a.m.
"I remember how Manmohan ji was ridiculed when he was the PM. I said we will not do that to Modi ji. We will not go beyond a point," Rahul Gandhi told young campaigners in Ambaji in Gujarat's Banaskantha district.
By Jumana Shah: Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi on Sunday told over 2,200 young campaigners not to cross the limits of decency and insult Prime Minister Narendra Modi, no matter what the provocation.
"We will counter the lies of BJP with truth, not anger. You are Congress workers. You must maintain dignity. We will put our point across to people, counter trolls, but we will not go beyond a point," he said in Ambaji in Gujarat's Banaskantha district.
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Rahul's remarks come weeks ahead of two-phase Assembly elections in PM Narendra Modi's home state, which has long been a BJP stronghold.
The Gujarat Congress's campaign 'vikas gando thayo chhe' inpsired people to make their own memes and versions of it, mocking the BJP's main agenda of development. The BJP finally responded with 'Hu chhu vikas' (I am development). Posters of Modi and other senior BJP leaders screaming 'I am vikas' were put out.
"Following this, I wrote an email to Ashok Gehlot, asking him to instruct all our social media campaigners not to say anything undignified about Modi ji. He is the prime minister of our country and he must be respected. I remember how Manmohan ji was ridiculed when he was the PM. I said we will not do that to Modi ji. We will not go beyond a point," Rahul said, in perhaps his first formal meeting with the Gujarat social media team.
Rahul advised his audience to "keep smiling" and "let your happiness reflect in your work too."
FRONTAL ORGANISATION
Rahul is on a three day Navsarjan Yatra of North Gujarat which ends Monday. It is the fourth and last phase of Rahul's political yatra in the poll-bound state.
During Rahul's interaction with the campiagners, someone suggested that the social media team be given the designation of a 'frontal organisation', on the lines of Youth Congress, NSUI, Mahila Congress and Seva Dal.
The Congress VP responded positively, conceding that social media was now an important component.
CONGRESS SETS THE TONE
After a lull in Gujarat congress's social media campaign in 2012 and 2014 elections, the BJP scored in perception-building through direct outreach to voters. In the countdown to the 2017 elections, the Congress has set the tone so far.
Irfan Khan is a second year B.Sc student from Kheda district inn central Gujarat, who studies by the day and spends up to 8 hours online on social media for the Congress.
"I learnt from Rahul Gandhi today that one must be disciplined online. Just because there is no one to monitor us, we must not lose control and abuse the medium," he told India Today after the meeting concluded.
--- ENDS ---
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Several women in immigration custody at Otay Mesa Detention Center were sickened by chemical fumes late Friday and evacuated from their housing unit.
About 118 detainees were taken to an outdoor recreational area after the strong chemical odor was reported, said U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokeswoman Lauren Mack. The group was moved back inside about an hour later due to cold weather, she said.
The housing unit was deemed safe after about two-and-a-half hours, she said.
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Medical staff were on site in case anyone needed attention, but she said no serious medical issues were reported.
The odor was identified as a floor-stripping agent being used by detainees working near the units entrance. The incident is being investigated by CoreCivic, the contractor that runs the facility.
Luis Guerra, an immigration implementation coordinator with United Farm Workers Foundation, went to the facility Saturday. He said witnesses described seeing some women faint and vomit.
kristina.davis@sduniontribune.com
Twitter: @kristinadavis
Determined to demonstrate that large numbers of Americans remain committed to fighting climate change, a loose alliance of cities, states, companies and universities from across the United States gathered on the fringes of a United Nations climate conference in Bonn Saturday to pledge their support for the Paris agreement.
California Gov. Jerry Brown, former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg and former U.S. Vice President Al Gore were among the leaders of the U.S. coalition during a series of speeches and panel discussions in a grand pavilion named the U.S. Climate Action Center. It was set up just outside the building where the U.N. climate conference is taking place. The American political and business figures told the audience that states, cities and businesses have real power that they can leverage in the fight against climate change even though the federal government wants to bail out.
It is important for the world to know the American government may have pulled out of the Paris agreement, but the American people are committed to its goals, and there is nothing Washington can do to stop us, Bloomberg told the audience in the packed tent. He noted that the alliance of 20 states, 110 cities and 1,400 businesses would be the worlds third-largest economy and represented about half of the U.S. economy.
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President Trump announced in June that the United States will withdraw from the 2015 Paris agreement at the first possible date in 2020, arguing it was detrimental to U.S. business. Trump has expressed doubt about climate change, questioning how much human activity has contributed.
The Trump administration is represented at the Bonn talks of nearly 200 nations by a senior diplomat but has taken a low-key approach in stark contrast to the attention-grabbing U.S. Climate Action Center.
Brown, who is on a whirlwind 10-day trip to four countries addressing climate change and promoting California, was one of the featured speakers Saturday that faced dozens of hecklers in the crowd who demanded his state do even more to fight pollution, stop fracking and oil drilling, and slow global warming.
After some good-natured jousting with the green activists, Brown praised them for their dissent and announced he would reframe my speech. He also told them he was a former cheerleader in college and that he liked their rallying cry Were still in so much that he led the whole audience in a cheering: Were still in, were still in.
Only in California can we stimulate this kind of opposition with strong advocates on all sides [even though] were doing more than anyone else, Brown said. This is one of the reasons why California has the most aggressive goals: no matter what we do, were being challenged to do more, and I agree with that. Well do a lot more.
Despite his open and for the most part supportive exchange with the hecklers, Brown grew exasperated at one point by their persistent protests. When they started chants to keep oil in the ground, Brown shot back: I agree with you, in the ground. Lets put you in the ground so we can get on with the show here.
Brown also diverted from the rest of his planned Americas Pledge speech to say:
California is the most aggressive, most far-reaching climate action state in the country and in the Western Hemisphere. Is it enough? No. Do we have a lot of pollutants? Yes. Do we have 32 million cars driving 335 billion miles every year? Yes. Are we going to stop them today? No. Are we going to stop them in time? Yes, if Americas pledge is picked up by the rest of the country and rest of the world. If we can take some of that noise and bottle it into energy, well get the job done. America, were here, were in and were not going away.
Bloomberg and Brown appeared along with Fiji Prime Minister Frank Bainimarama, who is presiding over the U.N. conference at its climate headquarters in Bonn that runs until Friday. The talks are focused on designing a detailed set of rules to help guide forward the 2015 Paris climate agreement that established a goal of ending the fossil-fuel era by the end of the century.
Earlier on Saturday, Sen. Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.) promised the United States would remain committed to its climate change goals.
We are here in Bonn to say we are not saying bon voyage to our commitment on climate, he said.
UPDATES:
1:52 a.m.: The article was updated to include a comment from Jerry Brown directed at anti-fracking protesters.
San Diego Countys two congressmen in trouble traveled very different paths this past week.
Rep. Darrell Issa, whose political future is in doubt, found himself at the top of Roll Calls 10 most vulnerable House members in next years election and seemingly took steps to counter that.
Rep. Duncan Hunter, whos future in general is in doubt because hes under federal investigation, took a trip to Houston where he was a marquee speaker at a vaping conference.
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That Issa remains embroiled in his ongoing battle for political survival and Hunter takes part in one of his passions (others being fine cigars and pricey dinners, among other things) is par for the course these days.
Hunters re-election seems likely in a pure political sense; no high-flying opposition campaign nor current opponent is likely to dislodge him from his 50th District in east and inland north San Diego County. What might do the trick is a federal indictment related to his admitted misuse of campaign funds.
Its unknown whether that will be the eventual result of the FBI investigation. Hunter has said the spending was an honest mistake and paid the money back. The larger question is whether the investigation has expanded beyond use of campaign funds.
But theres nothing the Alpine Republican can do on the campaign trail to affect that at the moment. Otherwise, he seems little concerned about his challengers at this point. His biggest issue may be paying the mounting attorney bills he is collecting.
The Cook Political Report for the first time said Hunters re-election was in trouble, but only if hes hobbled by an indictment and a strong opponent emerges.
So Hunter goes about his way, a gregarious figure with a party dog reputation in Washington, appearing happy go lucky in the face of imminent danger.
And if Hunter received another spate of off-beat social media attention for his aggressive advocacy of e-cigarettes and his opposition to regulating them, so what? He already made national headlines puffing away at a congressional hearing to make a point.
At any rate, Hunter does not seem a troubled man in public.
Not so with Issa.
The Vista Republican always had the demeanor of the steely-eyed businessman he once was, though he has sought to soften the hard, inside-the-beltway, partisan edge he developed over the years. He lives in a grim world of competing political pressures in Washington and his district.
Since his narrow re-election last year, hes gone through numerous political gyrations, from attempting to untether himself from President Donald Trump, to appearing on the fence before voting at the last minute for an unpopular Republican health care plan, to announcing his opposition to the Republican tax bill the GOPs top policy priority.
Issa noted, among other things, that the bill eliminates the state and local tax deduction. A third of California taxpayers use the deduction. He said many, many people in my district are going to see a tax increase ...
Jason Roe, the San Diego-based Republican political consultant, summed up the stakes for the GOP and candidates under siege such as Issa.
If we dont get a tax bill done, it is the biggest political problem we have, Roe told the Morning Consult website. If we do, and it does eliminate the state and local deduction, there will probably be a political price to pay.
Issa announced his position on the tax bill after Roll Call named him the most endangered species in the House of Representatives, and only hours before Republicans got smoked in Tuesdays off-year elections something pundits across the nation considered a bad omen for the likes of Issa.
By contrast, Hunter doesnt seem to struggle with his positions at all: He has stood strongly by Trump from the start, called for a pre-emptive strike against North Korea and supports the tax bill even though he acknowledged it would do away with deductions taken by many Californians, including his constituents.
Issas near-loss to Democrat Doug Applegate in the closest congressional election in the nation last year remains fresh in the political worlds mind and the dynamics dont seem to be improving for the nine-term incumbent.
A lot of people thought the weekly grass-roots protests outside Issas district office in Vista would have petered out long ago including some of the leaders. In fact, theyve gotten stronger. Democratic professionals have come in to bolster, if not take over, the rallies that have also drawn some notable political stars. Tom Steyer, the billionaire hedge fund mogul turned progressive activist, showed up recently to encourage the protesters and promote his Impeach Trump campaign.
Not only that, but Issa has come under air assault, literally. As the Union-Tribunes Kate Morrissey reported, a plane was hired the other day to tow a banner urging Issa to support the DREAM Act. That would allow certain unauthorized immigrants brought here as children to remain legally. Just before the plane took to the north San Diego County skies, Issa joined about a dozen other Republicans pushing a bill to do that by the end of the year.
It will be awhile before the Democratic side shakes out between Applegate, environmental attorney Mike Levin and Navy veteran Paul Kerr. And maybe the one who emerges wont be up to snuff.
For now its hard to see a silver lining for Issa, other than the election is a year away. But at least he has company.
Of Roll Calls most vulnerable 10, eight are Republicans.
Tweet of the Week
Goes to Greg Dawson (@DawsonNBC), vice president of news at NBC 7, on widespread angst about Twitter doubling its character limit.
But what if 280 characters leads to more thoughtful, reasonable discussion? Haha, I crack myself up.
Dozens of children were injured when a stairwell collapsed at an indoor obstacle course gym in Barrio Logan Saturday night.
The incident was reported at 7:40 p.m. at Vault PK on Main Street near Sigsbee Street, a large warehouse that shares space with a paintball facility and Crossfit gym. Vault PK specializes in parkour, a physically demanding sport that requires athletes to combat obstacle courses often by launching themselves from structure to structure.
The accident occurred in the midst of an open gym night for ages 5 to 14, according to the gyms website.
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Twenty-one children of various age and two adults, ages 72 and 46, were taken to hospitals with moderate to minor injuries. About three or four of the victims suffered spinal injuries when a 10-by-30-foot wooden platform came down on them, injuries that were considered slightly more serious, said San Diego Fire-Rescue Deputy Chief Steve Wright. No one was trapped under the rubble, he said.
It could have been much worse, he said.
The patients were taken to Rady Childrens Hospital, Scripps Mercy, Sharp and UC San Diego Medical Center, Wright said.
He said there were additional people with minor injuries who left on their own, rather than by ambulance.
Zachary Smith, there with his son for a birthday party, said he was standing on the platform, which he described as a viewing area, along with about 30 others, when the staircase below collapsed, sending the platform down with it. He fell onto a little girl but neither were really hurt, he said. His son had been on the platform in line for pizza and received minor scrapes.
It was a freak accident, Smith said, but added it could have been avoided because the structure didnt seem built for the weight of that crowd.
Smith said the collapse sent the place into chaos with parents trying to find their children and pulling off chairs that had fallen on people.
Parents who had dropped off their kids for the evening rushed back to the area.
A parent who did not provide his name said the stairwell collapsed after so many children were running up and down to get free pizza. Many parents were likely using a Groupon that had been offered for the evenings open gym, he said.
His 11-year-old son was not injured. He said he thought 40 to 50 people would show up for the evening but there were probably three times that.
Joe Saari said when he and his wife dropped off their two children for a few hours there were 100 to 150 kids at the warehouse. The couple had headed back home to Chula Vista when one of their children called and said there had been an accident.
His kids suffered minor scrapes, Saari said.
A woman said her 13-year-old son was unhurt but devastated by the traumatic scene. She said she went inside to get him out and saw one child with blood all over his face.
At Total Combat Paintball, which shares the facility with the gym, It was business as usual until we heard a loud boom come from the gym, at which point our staff and some customers ran over to the gym to help any way we could, the company said in a statement.
An hour after the incident, the street around the warehouse was lined with ambulances and fire trucks, some leaving with victims inside and yet still more emergency vehicles arriving. One woman stood on the sidewalk, holding an ice pack over one eye while she talked on her cellphone.
Children huddled nearby in groups, some with parents. San Diego police corralled the children and matched them up with parents as they arrived.
City building inspectors were on scene Saturday but will begin the bulk of the investigation into the cause of the collapse Sunday morning.
kristina.davis@sduniontribune.com
Twitter: @kristinadavis
President Trump on Saturday repeatedly defended Russian President Vladimir Putin against charges that the Russian government meddled in last years U.S. elections, apparently vouching for Putins assurances that there was no interference despite the U.S. intelligence communitys reports to the contrary.
Every time he sees me, he says, I didnt do that, Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One, while traveling in Vietnam during his 12-day Asian trip. I really believe that when he tells me that, he means it.
In contrast, Trump lashed out at former U.S. national security officials who sounded the alarm about Russian interference, including former CIA Director John Brennan, former Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper and former FBI Director James B. Comey, whom Trump fired earlier this year.
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Theyre political hacks, the president said. And you have President Putin very strongly, vehemently says he had nothing to do with that.
Trumps comments drew strong condemnation from lawmakers and national security officials back in the U.S.
Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John McCain (R-Ariz.) took to Twitter to criticize Trump. Theres nothing America First about taking the word of KGB colonel over US intelligence community, McCain said, referring to Putins past as a Soviet intelligence officer.
Later during Trumps Vietnam visit, Trump appeared to try to qualify his Putin remarks, saying that he supports the U.S. intelligence community but thinks Putin sincerely believes Russia didnt meddle in the 2016 elections.
I believe very much in our intelligence agencies, the president said at a brief news conference in Hanoi with Vietnams leader. Now, at the same time ... I think it is very important to get along with Russia.
Trumps appointees to lead the intelligence agencies, including current CIA Director Mike Pompeo, have testified before Congress that they stand by the assessment that Russia meddled.
Trumps attempts to explain his conversations with the Russian leader overshadowed the presidents efforts to focus on other issues during his Asia trip, including trade and security, though the president did reignite his Twitter battle with North Korean President Kim Jong Un, calling Kim short and fat.
The seemingly contorted explanations also followed days of equivocation from the White House over whether Trump would even meet with Putin. Both men were in this seaside Vietnamese resort city to attend the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit.
Trump said he had two or three very short conversations with Putin over the last two days to discuss Syria. They issued a joint statement Saturday promising further cooperation in seeking a political solution to the countrys civil war.
U.S. intelligence agencies already have concluded that Russia engaged in a campaign to influence the election, hacking into Democratic emails that later were leaked and using a variety of online tools to spread fake news and other propaganda.
Now, the investigation into potential collusion between the Russian government and Trumps campaign is reaching a new stage.
Trumps campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, was charged last month with money laundering and conspiracy, and a second former aide, Richard W. Gates III, also was charged in the indictment, though none of those charges were related to allegations of Russian election meddling.
The same day, it was announced that George Papadopoulos, a foreign policy advisor for the campaign who worked to set up contacts with Russian officials, pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI and has been cooperating with investigators.
During the Asia trip, White House staff members have seemed intent on downplaying Trumps interactions with Putin. Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders told reporters Friday that the two would not have a formal meeting, despite reports in Russia that they would, because there was not time in the schedule. She allowed, however, that they were bound to run into each other and probably would chat.
In Vietnam, Trump said Putin told him he absolutely did not meddle in our election.
Look, I cant stand there and argue with him. Id rather have him get out of Syria and work with him on the Ukraine, Trump said.
That whole thing was set up by the Democrats, Trump continued, though it was unclear whether he was blaming Democrats for Russias election interference or for the investigation into his campaigns potential collusion with the Russians.
Trump also raised the meddling issue with Putin in July, during the Group of 20 summit in Hamburg, Germany, yielding similar results. Putin came away from the meeting telling reporters that Trump was satisfied with his denials. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson told a different version, saying the two countries may have an intractable disagreement over the issue.
Trump said Saturday that he and Putin have a good feeling toward getting things done and that a stronger relationship with Russia would be a great thing, not a bad thing.
He said China has been more helpful than Russia in efforts to contain North Koreas nuclear program. He said Putin is insulted by accusations of meddling and blamed the lack of a relationship that we have with Russia because of this artificial thing thats happening with this Democratic-inspired thing. At another point, he called the Russian collusion investigation an artificial Democratic hit job.
Responding to criticism that he had not raised human rights issues on his trip through Asia as strongly as his predecessors, Trump also asserted that he had, but I also raise issues on many other things.
And he said that while meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping this week, he very briefly raised the issue of opening China to Twitter and other social media platforms now censored in the country. But the president added that he was more focused on trade and North Korea.
In the same interview, Trump declined to say whether Republican Alabama Senate candidate Roy Moore should drop out of the race following reports that he molested a 14-year-old girl nearly four decades ago. Sanders issued a statement Friday on Trumps behalf calling it a mere allegation while adding that if these allegations are true, Judge Moore will do the right thing and step aside.
Trump told reporters he was too busy on his Asia trip to devote much time to the issue.
Im dealing with the president of China, the president of Russia, he said. Im dealing with the folks over here.
noah.bierman@latimes.com
Twitter: @noahbierman
UPDATES:
8:30 p.m.: The article was updated with additional comments from President Trump.
According to the Gun Violence Archive, a total of 307 mass shooting incidents have occurred as of Nov. 5 of this year. We should be so proud.
I liked Steve Stroebels idea (Nation seeks answers after another shooting, Nov. 8) to keep the American flag at half-staff for the 90-plus average daily victims of gun violence, but I would like to amend the plan slightly.
First, every newspaper in the country should have a box score on the front page indicating the number of people killed by guns on the previous day. This would allow everyone to be aware of the actual effects of gun violence.
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Second, if by some miracle there is a day when nobody is killed by guns, the flag should be raised for the following day. Since people tend to notice changes, they would easily notice the raised flag and know that we had a gun-death-free day.
Until our elected officials stop taking money from the NRA and fearing its influence, mass shootings will continue.
Cheryl Gahan
San Diego
Re Nation seeks answers after another mass shooting (Oct. 8): So someone wants to sue a gun maker because its product was used in an illegal act. Guess the next step is suing Ford or Chevy if its vehicle is used by a DUI driver who kills someone. How about suing Boeing because its plane was used during the 9/11 terrorist attacks?
Seriously? How about holding a person responsible for his actions and not blaming the tool?
Bob Schenkelberg
San Carlos
The word nonsense does in fact mean exactly what its component parts describe, a lack of logical thought. Following the horrific events in Texas on Sunday, your pages are filled again with the nonsense of reactionary and uninformed writers declaring what should be done.
Unfortunately, this tends to be that we subvert our nations constitutional protections of individual rights, create registries of otherwise non-criminal citizens, and immediately begin search and seizure of the private property of these citizens, and follow the lead of more progressive nations such as Australia and ban them all.
One such writer has even called for the five million members of The National Rifle Association to be held criminally responsible for these heinous tragedies. This despite the fact that it was an NRA member, using his legally owned AR-15, who thwarted the assault by hitting and wounding the deranged attacker. Nonsense.
John A. Turner
San Diego
Letters and commentary policy
The U-T welcomes and encourages community dialogue on important public matters. Please visit this page for more details on our letters and commentaries policy. You can email letters@sduniontribune.com or leave a comment below.
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Re Nation seeks answers after another shooting (Nov. 8): Whats on my mind is the slaughter of innocent people attending a Baptist church last Sunday. These innocent people were gunned down by a vicious killer. One of the weapons this murderer had was an AR-15. Enough is enough.
This weapon, which is a derivative of M19, should never have been made available for civilian use. The rifle was designed and created for the military as an assault weapon either to kill or wound the enemy.
It was never intended as a target or hunting rifle. I am not against gun ownership or the right to bear arms but allowing assault rifles without thorough background checks is insane.
Peter Malaspina
Carlsbad
The Poway Interfaith Team is sponsoring its 9th annual Interfaith Thanksgiving Service at 7 p.m. Wednesday, Nov. 15.
The community-wide event will be hosted by the Community Church of Poway, 13501 Community Road. All are welcome to attend.
The theme this year will be You Raise Me Up and leaders from diverse faiths will share personal reflections, stories and prayers on this theme.
This Interfaith Service is a highlight of the year for our faith communities and is a sacred time to be grateful for those spiritual teachers, mentors, and masters who have Raised Us Up with love, encouragement, insight, understanding and compassion so we can pursue our dreams and calling. For without them, we would not be here today, according to a press release from the Poway Interfaith Team.
This years leaders and speakers are Rev. Steve Albert and Rev. Dr. Abigail Albert (New Thought), Rev. Glen Larsen (United Church of Christ), Rabbi Nadav Caine (Ner Tamid Synagogue), Marwa Abdalla (Islamic Center of San Diego), Assem Bath (Youth from the Sikh Society San Diego), Biancca Berry (Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints), Pamela Scott (First Church of Christ, Scientist), Father Thomas Kiely (San Rafael Catholic Church) and Cantor Lori Frank (Temple Adat Shalom).
The service will also include music performed by choirs from Temple Adat Shalom and the Community Church of Poway; a solo from James Higgins, New Thought vocalist; a duet by Rayn Lizerbram and Shaine Ingamells, as well as the Childrens Choir from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Greg Anglea, CEO of Interfaith Community Services, will be the guest speaker, speaking on the topic of Raising People Up for Their Highest Good.
All donations (financial and canned goods) will go to Interfaith Community Services in Escondido. Checks should be made payable to Poway Interfaith Team.
Light refreshments and a hospitality time will commence after the service, in the Fellowship Hall.
For more information, call Rev. Dr. Abigail Albert at 858-487-8885.
Email: news@pomeradonews.com
A Navy diver fought off a shark Wednesday in Sydney Harbour, sustaining serious injuries to his hand and leg in the ports first attack in nine years.
Paul Degelder, 31, was swimming on the surface of the water with a police diver just off a Navy base when the shark attacked, Australian Fleet Commander Rear Admiral Nigel Coates said.
Degelder punched the shark a couple of times and it swam off, Coates said. He was pulled into a nearby boat, given first aid and taken to the hospital. The attack was over in seconds. There was no immediate information on the type of shark involved.
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Degelder was in stable condition after surgery.
The attack happened during an underwater trial of new naval defense technologies. The trial was temporarily suspended Wednesday as Navy officers hunted for the shark, Coates said.
The last shark attack in the harbor occurred in 2000, said shark expert John West from Sydneys Taronga Zoo. The last fatal attack in the harbor was in 1963.
Revelations that prominent radical activist Richard Aokiwas an FBI informanthave prompted angry denials among his supporters, butnewly released recordsconfirm Aoki was secretly providing information to agents during the period he gave the Black Panthers guns and firearms training.
The documents from Aokis FBI informant file - totaling 221 pages - were released after a court challenge under the Freedom of Information Act and show that Aoki was an informant from 1961 to 1977, with only brief interruptions. The records say that at various points, he provided information that was unique and of extreme value.
The records chronicle Aokis 16-year career as an informant during the time he was a student at Merritt College in Oakland and at UC Berkeley, participating in a series of radical groups, including the Black Panthers, the Asian American Political Alliance and the Third World Liberation Front, a 1969 protest for more ethnic studies that involved the most violent strike to date at UC Berkeley and led then-Gov. Ronald Reagan to declare a state of emergency.
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An early FBI report says Aoki wasassigned the alias Richard Fordto use when signing reports, as well as a permanent informant number, which the FBI redacted.It notes his date of birth, his parents names and his address.
A Dec. 14, 1971, reportnotes that Aoki was an instructor in Asian studies at UC Berkeley and a student counselor at the Grove Street campus of the Peralta Junior College District.
Coverage furnished by this informant is unique and not available from any other source,it says.Many activist individuals seek informants advice and counseling since informant is considered as a militant who has succeeded within the establishment without surrending (sic) to it.
FBI officials even reminded Aoki to report his pay as an informant on his tax return, according to a handwritten notation on aDec. 29, 1972, report. The records do not say how much he was paid, but according to a congressional study, security informants in the 1960s typically received about $100 per month, with more valuable informants receiving up to $400 per month, the equivalent of about $2,900 today.
FBI representatives Julianne Sohn in San Francisco, and John Fox in Washington, declined to comment for this story.
Aoki was a well-known member of the Bay Areas activist community in the 1960s and 1970s. After he committed suicide in 2009 at the age of 70, he was celebrated as a fearless leader.
He was born in San Leandro in 1938 and was interned at age 4 during World War II with thousands of other Japanese Americans. He achieved new notoriety with the release of a feature documentary about him in 2009 and a biography this year. Neither work mentions his relationship with the FBI.
The assertion that Aoki was an informant was first made last month in anews reportandvideowith the Center for Investigative Reporting. Both were based on the new book Subversives: The FBIs War on Student Radicals, and Reagans Rise to Power.
The information was based on an interview with retired FBI agent Burney Threadgill Jr., an FBI record that identified Aoki as informant T-2, consultation with former FBI agent M. Wesley Swearingen to interpret the records and additional research in FBI records concerning Aoki and other informants.
Threadgill, in a detailed interview before his death in 2005, recalled how he first approached Aoki around the time he graduated from Berkeley High School in 1956.
He was my informant. I developed him, Threadgill said. He was one of the best sources we had.
In a 2007 interview, Aoki denied being an informant but added, as if by way of explanation: People change. It is complex. Layer upon layer.
Aokis friends, as well as his biographer and the producers of the film about him, expressed shock at the disclosure that he had been an informant, and some of them angrily disputed it. Some suggested the story was an attempt to place a snitch jacket on Aoki - an FBI tactic of falsely claiming radicals were informants, causing suspicion and mistrust among fellow activists - even though Aoki has been dead for three years. They have provided no evidence of that.
The FBI released the records as a result of a lawsuit under the Freedom of Information Act after the initial story and video were completed. The bureau excised the names of all people and organizations on which Aoki reported but the documents identify him as an informant and assess his performance every few months. Although his name does not appear in every document, all the records are sequentially numbered in his informant file.
Swearingen, a retired FBI agent who has criticized unlawful FBI activities under J. Edgar Hoover, reviewed the file. It confirms that he was an informant, he said.
Early reports
The earliest reports contain errorsabout his age and ethnicity, describing him as white or Korean.Some later reports notehe had temporarily decreased his informing because of school or work. Generally, they show the FBI contacted him at least once a month and usually at least twice a month. The reports say his information was disseminated or channelized into dossiers on people under investigation.
The earliest memo, dated March 6, 1961, names Richard Masato Aoki and says he was being considered for development as an informant. He came to the FBIs attention in 1957, soon after he began service with the Army at Fort Ord, near Monterey. Aoki had told an Army official that he attended certain socials while a student at Berkeley High School and was acquainted with several fellow students who apparently were of interest to the FBI.
Aoki was contacted and expressed a willingness to cooperate with the Bureau in any way possible,according to the report, which bears Threadgills initials.
That fall, Aoki joined the Berkeley Young Socialist Alliance.A Nov. 8, 1961, FBI reportsays Aoki was informing on several other front groups allegedly created by organizations the FBI deemed subversive. It says he furnished voluminous information in current, concise and complete reports, usually typewritten by him.
The report also says, This informant is closely controlled and has constantly been reminded of his position as an informant and that this relationship must remain absolutely confidential.
It adds, The informant is of unusual value.
By now, Aoki had become an officer in the Young Socialist Alliance and a member of the Socialist Workers Party, two groups under intensive FBI investigation. He would remain a member of the Socialist Workers Party until 1967.
An Oct. 29, 1962, assessmentsays, During the past four months informant has furnished considerable information.An Oct. 28, 1964, reportsays, Informant has submitted complete and thorough reports.
At the beginning of the next year, a report notes that Aoki had curtailed activities because of his full-time job and course load as an undergraduate student at Merritt College. But six months later, on June 30, 1965, another report says he had resumed full activities as an informant.
There is still no indication of any instability on the part of the informant,it notes, and it is believed that he is completely reliable in exercising his responsibilities to the Bureau.
By now, Aoki was active in the Vietnam Day Committee, a Berkeley-based group whose anti-war activities were being investigated by the FBI. He worked on the groups international committee, as liaison to foreign anti-war activists.
A March 10, 1966, reportnotes Aoki was a full-time student at Merritt and had provided information that was not available from any other source in this division.
Among the Black Panthers
At Merritt, Aoki met Huey Newton and Bobby Seale, two fellow students who were forming a group that would become known as the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense. After Aoki transferred to UC Berkeley as junior in sociology in fall 1966, they consulted him about their plan for the group, and he gave them some of their first guns and firearms training.
Early in 1967, Aoki gave them additional guns, according to Seales memoir, Seize the Time. By July 1967, Aoki had been named captain of the Berkeley branch of the Black Panthers.
During this period, the Panthers openly carried weapons on their patrols of Oakland police, which they said were intended to reduce brutality against African Americans. That May, they brandished guns during a visit to the state Legislature to protest a bill that would bar carrying firearms on city streets.
That October, Oakland police Officer John Frey was killed in a shootout with the Black Panthers in Oakland, and Newton and Officer Herbert Heanes were wounded. In April 1968, Eldridge Cleaver and five other Panthers were involved in a gunfight that wounded him and two officers and killed Panther Bobby Hutton.
The FBI records show Aoki was informing during this period, but the redacted files do not mention the Panthers or guns. The documents do not show whether the FBI was aware Aoki was arming the Panthers.
A Nov. 2, 1966, report to FBI headquartersnotes Aoki was a full-time student at UC Berkeley. Informant utilizes all available time in obtaining information for the Bureau, consistent with the demands of the study program, it says.
The San Francisco FBI field office suggested contacting Aoki at least once every 30 days instead of the usual two weeks because of the security problemsincidental to contacting this informant who is so active in and so well known to the dissident elements.
The next report, dated Feb. 27, 1967, is heavily redacted but says that during the preceding period, Aoki provided no information of unusual value.
Informant utilized all available time in obtaining information for the Bureau. However, he is presently finding that his course of study at the university is both challenging and demanding and he is presently unable to increase the time devoted to the (redacted), it says.
This informant furnishes unique information of considerable value particularly relating to the personal circumstances of (redacted), it says.
Teaching and beyond
Subsequent reports say Aoki continued to inform through 1969,submitting written and oral reportson numerous people.A Jan. 23, 1969, memosays, Because of volume and value of information being furnished, informant should be continued.
The reports show he informed during the time he was a member of the Asian American Political Alliance in Berkeley and was one of the most militant leaders of the Third World Liberation Front strike.
A memo dated Dec. 29, 1969, says, Informant is cognizant of the Bureaus interest in activities on campus being limited to those individuals and organizations whose activities are directed against the interests of the U.S.
On June 30, 1970, San Franciscoreported to headquartersthat Aoki had just obtained a masters degree in sociology at UC Berkeley.
Due to the demands of his academic pursuit the informant furnished little information subsequent to April 15, 1970, and consequently has not been (redacted). It is considered necessary and desirable to maintain regular contact with the informant and to retain Bureau authority to reimburse him for services and expenses, it says.
Subsequent reports sayAoki continued to inform even after he became a lecturer in Asian American studies at UC Berkeley and Merritt.A Sept. 30, 1970, memonoted, The informant has the ability to relate to all races and crosses the barriers between the ethnic movements with ease.
Aoki informed even after he became a full-time faculty member at Peralta Community College,a July 2, 1973, report says.
Coverage furnished by this informant is classified as high level and is not available from any other sources, it adds.Another memo from January 1974says he continued to inform after he became acting head of the schools social sciences department.
A memo dated Sept. 28, 1976, is the first document that identifies him as a former confidential informant. But it says that earlier in the month, he reported information indicating (redacted) is actively recruiting members and seeking to become influential. It adds that contact will be maintained with source as in past.
The last released document, dated Oct. 13, 1977, notes that Aoki most recently has been an FBI informant in Chinese foreign counterintelligence investigations.
Aoki, the report says, had concluded that being an informant was inconsistent with his work as an educator He refused to reveal his past relationship with the FBI because this would alienate him from associates and friends and would cause him great trouble in his relationships with students as a student counselor. The report added that it was unlikely there will be any control problem concerning this informant.
This case, the report says, is being placed in a closed status.
View this story onCalifornia Watch
Gurgaon Police commissioner Sandeep Khirwar called a meeting of the SIT that initially investigated the Pradyuman Thakur murder and questioned the apparent lapses in its probe exposed by the CBI.
By Tanseem Haider, India Today Web Desk: Facing immense flak for an apparent botch-up in the investigation of the murder of seven-year-old Pradyuman Thakur, Gurgaon Police commissioner Sandeep Khirwar called a meeting of the probe team and pulled it up, sources told India Today.
Khirwar, the sources said, called a meeting of the Special Investigation Team that initially investigated the Pradyuman Thakur murder and questioned the apparent lapses in its probe exposed after the Central Bureau of Investigation detained a Ryan International School senior for the killing.
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Pradyuman Thakur was killed on September 8 inside a washroom of Gurgaon's Ryan International School. On the very day of the killing, Gurgaon Police claimed a major breakthrough in the case, arresting Ashok Kumar, a Ryan school bus conductor, for the murder and saying he had already confessed to the crime.
Gurgaon Police's theory, which also included a claim that Ashok murdered Pradyuman after attempting to sodomise him, was completely junked by the Central Bureau of Investigation, which was handed over the probe after sustained pressure from the seven-year-old boy's parents.
Turning the case on its head, the CBI last week detained a Class XI student of Ryan, alleging the minor accused murdered Pradyuman in the hopes of getting scheduled examinations and parent-teacher meeting postponed.
After thorough investigation based on scientific evidences incl. inspection of scene of crime, forensic analysis, analysis of CCTV & call records, CBI apprehended the student: CBI spokesperson Abhishek Dayal on #Pradyuman murder case pic.twitter.com/W1IuOl5dYT- ANI (@ANI) November 8, 2017
Ever since the CBI's sensational disclosure last week, the Gurgaon Police has faced tough questions regarding the investigation it carried out and how it landed upon Ashok Kumar as the accused.
Kumar, sources from within the CBI previously told India Today, told the central agency that he was coerced by the Gurgaon Police into admitting to killing Pradyuman and that the local cops made him sign a blank piece of paper.
The CBI, which earlier said its probe had not found any sexual assault angle, in its probe has also found that Gurgaon Police officials destroyed evidence during their investigation, sources within the central agency told India Today today.
Whether the evidence was destroyed on purpose (and the murder deliberately 'planted' on the bus conductor), or whether it was just poor policing, needs to be determined by further investigation, the sources added.
KHIRWAR PULLS UP MEN
It could not be immediately confirmed if Khriwar's meeting the Pradyuman murder probe team happened after news reports emerged today of the CBI putting the local cops in the dock.
In his meeting, the Gurgaon top cop is learned to have pulled up his men. In response, the probe team is believed to have admitted not to carefully analysing CCTV footage of the crime.
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It is the CCTV footage that helped the CBI narrow down their hunt for a murder suspect to the juvenile accused. Agency sources had earlier said that around eight seconds of the CCTV footage were blurry.
So, the sources said, the CBI sent the footage to a forensic science laboratory, which cleaned up the CCTV recording. In the enhanced footage, the minor accused is seen leading Pradyuman into the washroom where the seven-year-old boy was ultimately killed.
In its meeting with their boss, the Gurgaon Police SIT that probed the murder admitted not to carefully analysing these eight seconds of the CCTV footage.
Sadeep Khirwar, who was out of the country on the day of the murder and arrived in Gurgaon only the day after, had earlier defended his men, saying, "The Gurugram police's Special Investigation Team (SIT) had not completed the investigation in Pradyuman murder when the case was transferred to CBI."
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Bank of America Corp. now faces a trial with the Securities and Exchange Commission over billions in bonuses paid at Merrill Lynch, after a judge threw out the banks $33 million settlement and rebuked the agency for not pursuing charges against executives.
The news comes as Bank of America executive Anne Finucane prepares to meet Tuesday with Rep. Edolphus Towns, D-N.Y., about BofAs takeover of the troubled investment bank. BofA missed a Monday deadline to turn over details of the hastily arranged acquisition to a congressional committee.
The SEC had accused BofA of failing to disclose to shareholders that it had authorized Merrill to pay up to $5.8 billion in bonuses to its employees in 2008 even though the investment bank lost $27.6 billion that year. BofA had agreed to pay $33 million to settle the charges without admitting or denying wrongdoing, saying it didnt violate disclosure rules but wanted to avoid litigation with the SEC at a time of market uncertainty.
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But U.S. District Judge Jed Rakoff last week called the proposed settlement a breach of justice and morality, and ordered a trial. He questioned why individual executives at Bank of America werent charged, and said the settlement unfairly penalized shareholders.
The SEC gets to claim that it is exposing wrongdoing on the part of the Bank of America in a high-profile merger, the banks management gets to claim that they have been coerced into an onerous settlement by overzealous regulators. And all this is done at the expense, not only of the shareholders, but also of the truth, Rakoff wrote in his ruling.
Both the SEC and BofA have defended the earlier settlement proposal as appropriate. But after Rakoffs ruling, the agency weighed its options, either to go to trial or attempt to renegotiate the accord with Bank of America.
On Monday, the SEC said it will vigorously pursue its case against Bank of America, adding that it could seek to bring additional charges if supported by the record of evidence that develops in the trial meaning it could charge individual executives.
Bank of America spokesman Scott Silvestri said the banks position continues to be that the (disclosure document) met all legal requirements.
We intend to vigorously defend ourselves in court, Silvestri said in a statement.
The SEC trial comes as Bank of America faces pressure from other fronts. The New York Attorney Generals office is doing its own investigation into the Merrill Lynch deal and has been drafting what are likely to be civil fraud charges against top bank executives in the coming weeks.
Also, the bank missed a noon deadline Monday to provide additional information about the Merrill Lynch deal to a congressional committee.
Rep. Edolphus Towns, D-N.Y. and chairman of House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, told the bank in a letter Friday that it was hiding behind attorney-client privilege, which Congress can refuse to recognize during its investigations. Silvestri declined to comment on whether or not the bank met the deadline, but said Anne Finucane, a member of Bank of Americas executive management team, will meet with Towns Tuesday to discuss the matter.
Separately Monday, Bank of America agreed to pay $425 million to government agencies, including the Treasury Department, to exit an arrangement under which public funds might have been used to shoulder losses on $118 billion worth of risky assets from the Merrill Lynch takeover. The option was never used, but the government has argued that the bank benefited from the promise of protection.
The move is part of a broader effort by the bank to reduce its reliance on various forms of government support. Charlotte, N.C.-based BofA has been one of the largest benefactors of the governments financial rescue program, receiving a total of $45 billion from the taxpayer-financed $700 billion financial bailout program.
AP Economics Writer Jeannine Aversa in Washington and AP Business Writers Stephen Bernard and Candice Choi in New York contributed to this story.
Belize is a tiny country but filled with mystical magical things. From the 2nd longest coral reef in the world to some of the densest, untouched forest in this hemisphere. We also have the smallest capital city in Central America and one of the least dense populations in the world.
InterestingI know!
So here are some simple True or False questions thatarent always so simple. See how you fare. All the answers are at the end.
1. Aside from Caribbean islands, Belize, Canada and the United States are the only countries in the Americas whose official language is English.
2. Belize is the only country with people on her flag
3. Guatemala actively claims Belize as her territory and is seeking to take Belize in international court.
4. Of all the sea mammals, the manatee is the only one that is 100% herbivorean
5. The tallest building in Belize is a Maya structure built over 1000 years ago.
6. Possession of marijuana is legal in Belize
7. The British originally came to Belize in the early 1600s to mine precious metals.
8. Traditionally, it is bad luck to swim on Christmas day you might turn into a sea creature.
9. The coconut is the largest seed in the world
10. 1.3 million tourists visited Belize in 2015 (almost 1 million of those were day visitors on cruise ships) true or false, tourism is officially the largest industry in Belize.
1. FALSE. English is the official language of Guyana. Guyana, Surinam and French Guiana are the three smallish countries that make up the north-east corner of South America. It is the 8th least densely populated country in the world with a population of about 775,000. Guyana gained independence from Britain in 1966.
2. FALSE. There are quite a few states, municipalities and provinces around the world with humans on their flags but only a few countries with people.
Belize is the only country with humans as a major part of the flag but there are others that do depict human forms.
Malta. See that tiny picture of St. George riding a horse?
Yeahme neither. Also French Polynesia. Though againyou might feel like youve been tricked on this one.
3. TRUE. EVERYONE who lives in Belize knows the answer to this one but those abroad might find this strange. Guatemala? Thinks it owns Belize? some say all of it, some say just the bulk of our country in the south.
Here is the most recent news report (just this week) where Guatemala claims ALL of Belize is its 23rd province.
Here is much of the background over the territorial dispute that dates back to 1821 (and the independence of Guatemala.)
4. TRUE. You were probably trying to figure out the sea mammals and there arent many. Let me help.
There are five groups of marine mammals: pinnipeds (seals, sea lions, fur seals, and walruses), cetaceans (whales, dolphins, and porpoises), sea otters, sirenians (dugongs and manatees), and polar bears.
But wait! A dugong! The manatees Pacific twin. Im considered the manatee and the dugong the same animal. The sea cow.
Its my quiz, thats my prerogative.
5. TRUE. The tallest building in Belize is at our largest Maya site of Caracol in the Cayo District. Caana (or sky palace) is 141 feet high making it the tallest man made structure in Belize.
Since a story is about 10-11 feet high, that makes it the equivalent of 13 stories high. Ambergris Cayes tallest building is 5 stories.
Occupied as early as 1200 BC, Caracol was at her height from about 600-800 AD.
6. TRUE. What!? Seriously!? Yes. Over the past few months, the law has been adjusted in Belize. Belize just signed a bill to decriminalize possession of a small amount of marijuana and suggests that it be consumed at home. The amount is 10 mg.
Please do not just take my word for it or ever cite my website when at the police station here is a recent article in the San Pedro Sun
7. FALSE. While GOLD, SILVER AND GEMS were probably the headliners that loaded up the galleons with budding conquistadors, the British came to Belize for logwood.
Apparently red and purple dyed clothing became ALL THE RAGE in Europe and logwood from Belize was the source. Fortunes were made (and many lives lost) by floating these tree down the rivers of Belize and hauling them to Europe.
Interesting stuff.
8. FALSE. Trick question! It is considered by many BAD LUCK to go out on the water or in the water (sea or rivers) on Good Friday. You will turn into a mer-creature.
And while Easter weekend is one of the biggest PARTY weekends of the year, it is illegal to sell alcohol on Good Friday in Belize. On Ambergris Caye, the nighclubs and bars open at midnight and the party resumes.
9. FALSE. This is the question that got me started on this quiz. Coconuts are everywhere on this island. In fact, many of the original settlers here on Ambergris Caye came to work in the coconut industry.
For years, the island was all about coconuts. And the land owners were the Blakes, the Alamillas and later the Parhams. Laborers grew, husked and dried coconuts (called copra) for shipment to the United States.
Read a brief history of the island from Maya to current times here.
But wait! I havent answered the question. Palm trees DO produce the biggest seeds in the world and the coconut is ONE of them but the largest is
The largest seed in the world is the coco de mer, the seed of a palm tree. It can reach about 12 inches (30 cm) long, and weigh up to 40 pounds (18 kg). The coco de mer, a giant, dark brown seed, has been protected by the government of the Seychelles because of its rarity.
It is about 2x the size of the coconut and weighs about 40lbs and only exists on a few islands in the Seychelles.
10. FALSE Agriculture is OFFICIALLY the largest industry in Belize bananas, oranges and sugar.
I wouldnt be at all surprised to agriculture switch spots with Tourism very soon.
(Heres an INCREDIBLY interesting tour I took of a Banana Farm in 2014)
By PTI: firms: Radhakrishnan
Tiruchirappalli (TN), Nov 12 (PTI) Union minister Pon Radhakrishnan today rejected some opposition leaders charge that the Income Tax department was being used to target them, saying raids have been carried out against even companies owned by BJP leaders.
Against the backdrop of raids against jailed AIADMK leader V K Sasiakala and her relatives, some opposition parties in Tamil Nadu alleged that the I-T department was being used by the Centre to target them.
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In reply to a question on the allegation, Radhakrishnan said, "The income tax department is an autonomous body. We cannot question them if they take any action against any person. I-T raids are taking place in other states. There is no truth in the allegation that the Income Tax department is biased."
In fact, income tax raids had been conducted in companies owned by BJP members in other states, the minister of state for road transport, highways and shipping told reporters here.
I-T officials conducted raids at over 180 premises linked to Sasikala and her relatives in various cities in the past three days over suspected tax evasion. Sasikalas nephew and deposed AIADMK leader T T V Dhinakaran has alleged a conspiracy behind the raids to oust him and his aunt from politics.
On the GST rate cuts, he said it would benefit the people, especially the poor and traders, and industrialists would realise the advantage of the new tax regime shortly.
Referring to Prime Minister Narendra Modis recent meeting with ailing DMK patriarch M Karunanidhi, Radhakrishnan said it has "scared some parasites" in the DMK-led alliance, although it was a courtesy call. PTI SSN VS NSD
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Soon after his arrival in the Philippines for the 15th ASEAN-India Summit and 12th East Asia summit, PM Narendra Modi met informally met a number of foreign leaders.
By India Today Web Desk: Prime Minister Narendra Modi arrived in the Philippines today as he began a foreign trip that will see him attend the 15th ASEAN-India Summit and 12th East Asia summit.
Soon after his arrival in the Filipino capital of Manila, PM Modi informally met a number of foreign leaders, including United States of America President Donald Trump, with whom the Prime Minister is scheduled to hold a bilateral meeting tomorrow.
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In photos tweeted out by news agency ANI and the PM's personal handle, PM Modi could be seen warmly greeting President Trump as they two shared a half-hug and chatted with each other.
Interacting with world leaders in Manila. pic.twitter.com/qh0pdcFyXP- Narendra Modi (@narendramodi) November 12, 2017
#FLASH PM Narendra Modi meets US President Donald Trump in Manila #ASEANSummit pic.twitter.com/HofsRTZOip- ANI (@ANI) November 12, 2017
PM Narendra Modi was also seen interacting with Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte, who will also hold a bilateral meeting with the Prime Minister. This is PM Modi's first visit to the Philippines since become Prime Minister.
Among the other leaders that PM Modi met on the sidelines of the ASEAN summit and the East Asia Summit were Chinese Premier Li Keqiang, Malaysian PM Najib Razak, Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, and Japanese PM Shinzo Abe.
Russian PM Dmitry Medvedev, Japanese PM Shinzo Abe and POTUS Donald Trump with PM Narendra Modi #ASEANSummit #Manila pic.twitter.com/eMthX5nt70- ANI (@ANI) November 12, 2017
Apart from attending the ASEAN Summit and the East Asia Summit, PM Modi is also expected to meet with the Indian diaspora in the Philippines and visit the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) and Mahavir Philippines Foundation Inc (MPFI).
The ASEAN grouping comprises Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Brunei, Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar and Vietnam. The 10-member ASEAN and India comprises a total population of 1.85 billion people which is one-fourth of the global population.
The East Asia Summit, on the other hand, includes all the 10 ASEAN counties plus India, China, Japan, Republic of Korea, Australia, New Zealand, the United States and Russia.
MEETING WITH TRUMP
On Monday, PM Modi will hold a bilateral meeting with President Donald Trump. This will be the two leaders' first one-on-one engagement since Japan proposed setting up a quadrilateral alliance comprising India, the US, Japan, and Australia.
In their meeting, Modi and Trump are likely to discuss a host of key issues of mutual interest including the security scenario in the region. Trump on Friday praised India's "astounding" growth after it opened up its economy and also lauded Modi, saying he has been working successfully to bring the vast country and its people together.
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Narendra Modi's meeting with Donald Trump comes up in the backdrop of growing Chinese assertiveness in the South China Sea and south Asian region. Donald Trump has said it, on a few occasions, that the US favours a larger role for India in the strategically key Indo-Pacific region.
The use of the term "Indo-Pacific" by Trump has led to speculation that it may have something to do with Washington preparing the ground for a revival of the so-called Quadrilateral strategic alliance between the US, Japan, Australia and India to counter China's rise.
(With agency inputs)
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FLORENCE, S.C. ImmunoTek Bio Centers is set to open its latest plasma donation center on Wednesday at 1933 2nd Loop Road in Florence.
Established in 2014, ImmunoTek Bio Centers is a biotech company that collects and procures human blood plasma to create life-saving medicines. The Florence location is one of around 15 ImmunoTek centers in the U.S. and the first center in the Pee Dee, with others in Columbia and Myrtle Beach.
The Florence facility took approximately eight months and more than $2 million to create, according to ImmunoTek president, CEO and co-founder Jerome Parnell III. Parnell said the company opened a center in the Grand Strand a couple of years ago and as it was scouting the area, Parnell saw opportunity in Florence.
The demand for plasma is exponentially growing. Plasma centers are going to be popping up in smaller cities so to speak like Florence, Parnell said. I really like Florence as a town; were very happy to be there.
ImmunoTek Bio Centers gives residents an opportunity to donate plasma, a golden-colored liquid portion of blood that remains after removing the red and white blood cells and platelets. Plasma makes up approximately 55 percent of the volume of blood.
Residents can qualify to donate their plasma at ImmunoTek by passing an FDA-required medical screening. The donor must also be at least 18 years old, weigh at least 110 pounds, and have valid identification, a Social Security card and proof of a permanent address. The whole process takes approximately two hours to complete.
Donors are also compensated for their time based on the number of times they have donated. First-time donors at ImmunoTek receive $50 for their first and second donations. Return donors will receive $20 for their first donation and $40 for their second. A person can donate plasma up to two times every seven days.
Its a very controlled process and one of the most highly regulated industries in the world next to nuclear power, Parnell said. Its very safe and it impacts a global reach.
Once donated, the proteins and clotting factors contained within the plasma can be used to create medications to treat certain conditions such as hemophilia or immune system deficiencies. The Florence location is expected to hire approximately 60 employees and disburse around $2 million annually to the local community, according to Parnell.
Were happy to be doing business in South Carolina, Parnell said. There are sick patients in need of plasma globally and this is a way for local folks to participate in meeting that demand.
For more information about ImmunoTek Bio Centers, visit immunotek.com or call the Florence center at 843-773-6305.
LAKE CITY, S.C. Some residents of the Wedgefield Mobile Home Park in Lake City have been able to move their homes since the Oct. 11 deadline was established. Others remain on the property and say they hope to be moved by the coming holidays.
In June, the Greater Lake City Community Development Office acquired the land where the mobile home park stands on Morris Street. Residents were notified that the office did not want to continue to operate the area as a mobile home park, according to Steve Gant, executive director of the office.
Residents were initially notified at the end of June by the development office that they had to move within 60 days. They were later given an additional 30 days.
Since the Oct. 11 deadline passed, Wedgefield resident Yamekia Robinson said, they have not heard from the Greater Lake City Community Development Office. But she said residents are not looking for bad news, and they are taking this time to move.
Robinson and others are still living in their homes on the property.
They also have not served any type of legal action toward anyone as of yet, Robinson said. We were kind of expecting that because thats what they said they were going to do.
She has been working alongside Garena Conyers and Tatum Bostick to organize meetings for residents of Wedgefield Mobile Home Park to share resources with each other in regard to their moving efforts.
Conyers said that although no legal actions have been taken yet, residents are still working as if they expect it.
We are desperately seeking mobile home trailer movers to assist in moving the residents in hopes of speeding up the process, Conyers said. Funds have stopped, but were still asking for donations.
The situation has been bittersweet, Robinson said.
We know we have to go, and were happy when someone found a good place to go to and get moved and everything, Robinson said. When the ones that are still here and you turn around and look at an empty lot, an empty spot where your neighbor has been for years, its very sad and its very heartbreaking.
Robinson said Sundrus Bostick moved from the mobile home park last weekend. She is the mother of Conyers and Tatum Bostick.
And my mom, to stand there and look at her (Sundrus Bostick) trailer being pulled out, my mom got really emotional because its very saddening to see your neighbor leaving on grounds like this, Robinson said. Its very hard because youre pretty much breaking up a whole community which was pretty much like a family.
About 20 homes remain in Wedgefield. Not all of those who live in the mobile home park owns their homes. Some are tenants.
The tenants had to find either apartments or other homes in the area, Robinson said. Many apartments had waiting lists that surpassed 60 to 90 days.
Conyers said there are disabled and elderly people who are still living in Wedgefield.
The biggest hold-up is finding reasonably priced movers and funds for additional supplies to set up or restore services to the homes, Conyers said.
At its October meeting, the Lake City City Council voted to waive the manufactured homes permit fees for the relocation of manufactured homes in Wedgefield Mobile Home Park.
Robinson said residents want to put the whole situation behind them.
So we really want to try to get everybody settled hopefully by the holidays, if not by Thanksgiving, which is right around the corner, at least by Christmas, Robinson said.
A Project Wedgefield Movement account has been established at South State Bank in Lake City, and donations can mailed to P.O. Box 416 Lake City, S.C. 29560 and to the Florence County Collaborative Council at P.O. Box 1306 Florence, S.C. 29501 or given via GoFundMe.
Gant told the Morning News in October that the Greater Lake City Community Development Office would like to work with a developer in the future to put permanent affordable housing where the Wedgefield Mobile Home Park currently stands. Recent calls to Gant from the Morning News were left unreturned.
FLORENCE, S.C. Hundreds gathered in the cold on Saturday morning for the Florence Veterans Park 10 th annual Veterans Day ceremony.
This years ceremony was a special tribute to Vietnam War veterans. A new monument in honor of veterans of the Vietnam War, made by Bran Oswalt of Brown Memorials, was unveiled and keynote speaker retired U.S. Army Maj. Gen. Richard S. Steve Siegfried talked about his service in Vietnam.
Siegfried has received two Distinguished Service medals, the Silver Star, the Soldiers Medal for Heroism, the Legion of Merit, three Bronze Stars, two Purple Hearts and 27 other personal awards for bravery, achievement and service.
Siegfried retired from 34 years in the military in 1996, but in 1996 was called out of retirement to be chairman of the U.S. Armys Senior Review Panel on Sexual Harassment. In 2001, he was named the first director of homeland security for South Carolina. He is also vice chairman of the Honor Flight of South Carolina, and serves on the advisory board of the United Service Organizations (USO) of South Carolina.
On Saturday however, Siegfried was a serviceman talking to his comrades about their time in Vietnam.
I was there with ya; I walked in those rice patties. I left some of my blood there. We fought and we fought hard, he said. Ill tell you that it was a splendid time and it was a horrible time in a lot of ways. But I was there to hold your head in my lap and wept as I felt the last breath go out of your body.
When servicemen returned from the Vietnam War, they were often met with protests and disdain from the public due the postwar political climate regarding the United States actions in Vietnam.
Siegfried told veterans that even though they didnt receive the welcome home they deserved when returning from war, they should let go of negative feelings regarding the past.
The United States Army doesnt fight for itself. It fights for the country and the country just did not like what was going on, he said. So Im telling you dont blame your country. But stand up, put your shoulders back. We went where we were told to go. We did what we were supposed to do and we did it magnificently.
Titled India and the World: A History in Nine Stories, the Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sangrahalaya is holding an exhibition in Mumbai on November 11.
To showcase India's cultural heritage and commemorate 70 years of the country's independence, the Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sangrahalaya (CSMVS) has collaborated with the British Museum in London and National Museum, New Delhi, to present a fascinating exhibition of some 210 iconic artifacts. Titled India and the World: A History in Nine Stories, the exhibition opens in Mumbai on November 11.
Says Sabyasachi Mukherjee, CSMVS director: "We wanted to highlight our glorious past through iconic art objects from Indian collections that presented important moments in the country set in a wider global context... explore connections between India and the rest of the world."
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Mukherjee and former director of British Museum Neil MacGregor have been discussing the idea of an exhibition since March 2014, wrestling with the impossible task of trying to showcase artifacts that sum up a history that spans more than two million years.
In the end, they chose nine iconic moments in the country's history and placed them in the context of events happening in other parts of the world. Later, two co-curators-Dr J.D. Hill from the British Museum and Prof. Naman Ahuja from India-conducted further research and selected the objects from various collections.
'Shared Beginnings' features the earliest stone axe, first invented in the southern part of India, juxtaposed with a similar one developed in Tanzania 800,000 years ago. 'First Cities' features a tiny banded agate bull with golden horns alongside a series of minute weights and measures from Harappa and Mohenjodaro. Other "stories" compare the grandeur of Mughal courts with those of the Ottoman and Oriental dynasties, showcase how rulers used religion to endorse kingship, and chronicle the emergence of the Indian traders, as well as India's fight for independence and the post-Partition era. "It's a one-of-a-kind exhibition," says Mukherjee.
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Most of you werent aware of it at the time, but Florence took a giant step backward Thursday night.
Revitalize as many blocks of the city as you like and announce as many new investments by business as we can attract, but I am firmly convinced that Florence will never move full forward in a meaningful way without our public schools progressing first.
That is why accepting Randy Bridges resignation as superintendent Thursday was a truly difficult thing to do.
Working alongside Bridges these three too-short years to build a brighter future for all of our students has been, by far, the most rewarding experience of my time on the board. Before he became our superintendent, I was struggling with doubt that real change could truly happen in the district, and he demonstrated to me that we could make a difference, in spite of the resistance to and fear of change that appears to be an entrenched characteristic of Florence.
From the start, Bridges was given a formidable assignment filled with unforeseen challenges from within and out, and he handled them with great distinction. We recognized the need for dramatic changes within the district if we ever hoped to provide our students with a competitive, 21st-century education, and I am still confident that we selected the right superintendent to make that happen.
Im particularly proud and he should be, too of the numerous innovative programs that he initiated in our schools. From STEM to language immersion to one-to-one digital devices to elementary computer programming and others too numerous to list here, these innovative programs will not only benefit our students for years to come, but I believe that they also have spearheaded a new sense of innovation and excitement among our teachers that, if nurtured, will continue to grow and become a permanent part of our districts culture.
Bridges achieved results because he has what it takes: imagination, experience and leadership, an understanding of where we are today and where we could be tomorrow, and a vision for how to get there. I sincerely believe that with more time and more support he could have transformed Florence School District One into an educational organization second to none. One that would be a true asset to our community, especially in our efforts to attract new business investment in Florence.
These innovative programs are just one example of how Bridges has been the superintendent our students deserved. ...
Unfortunately, we were not always the board or the community he deserved.
My deepest regret is that I and the other board members who believed in Bridges could not do more to help him complete his vision for the district. Unfortunately I have learned that it is far easier for one individual to sink a ship than to turn it.
When Bridges came aboard, the board unanimously agreed that two of his most important goals should be to move us to a true 6-8 grade middle school plan and to help us realize a solution for replacing our aging and inadequate facilities. The unfortunate truth is that Bridges was unable to accomplish these two goals because the same board that unanimously assigned those goals failed to unanimously support him in his efforts to accomplish them. In fact, sadly some individuals made it their goal to see that he did not achieve his, with no regard for the damage this would do to our students. The successes were his, the failures were ours.
Personally, I want to sincerely thank him for the support, counsel and inspiration he provided me as a first-time chairman. His mentorship has been invaluable. This has been a challenging year for me both in regard to board business and in my personal life, but knowing that I could always count on Bridges made it possible for me to stay focused on what really matters in the district: our students.
My warmest wishes go to Bridges and his family, and I sincerely hope that he will find only happiness, great fulfillment and success in the years ahead. He leaves Florence School District One better than he found it.
Now it is up to us, as a board and a community, to ensure that the district continues down the path to success that Bridges started us on.
If you periodically read commentaries like this one about public policy, you are probably considered a pretty good citizen somebody who cares about how our society operates and is governed. You probably vote, fret about tax rates, get roused by bureaucratic incompetence and care about issues of public importance.
But what about people across our state and nation who dont read much, pay little attention to whats going on in neighborhoods and towns people who tune out, not tune in? What about other people, liberals and conservatives, who have perverted American principles for their own ends to make America less than what it has been?
With everything from another mass shooting, this time in Texas, to a U.S. senator attacked on his Kentucky lawn, something odd is going on in these United States. We might be, I fear, experiencing the dumbing down of American citizenship. Consider this quote:
It looks as if some large groups of citizens may be undermining our government right now, without fully realizing what theyre doing. They put their own selfish interests ahead of the country. They dont care what happens to you or me or anyone else, just so long as their own group gets what it wants.
They try to steamroller everyone who criticizes them. In order to get more money, or more power, for their own group, I think theyll whittle down our system of government, if they can. They are willing to take away your chances to say what you think or to run an honest business of your own. They want to rig the laws and the officials in their favor, against the rest of us.
Sound like it is describing whats happening today?
Actually, it was written 45 years ago as part of a Boy Scouts booklet for the Citizenship In the Nation merit badge. It outlines ways to be a good citizen.
Pretty surprising, huh? Rereading this 1972 guide to citizenship reinforced something bubbling in the background of the Statehouse how schools need to focus more on civics so tomorrows leaders can start understanding how government works today. There have been some advances in South Carolina schools, but more needs to be done, particularly by adults. The Boy Scout merit badge book has some good suggestions for all of us, such as:
>> Read the Declaration of Independence to understand why America was founded.
>> Read the U.S. Constitution and its amendments to better understand our system of governance and your rights.
>> Talk about public affairs to better understand problems of the day.
Some other ideas:
>> Learn about issues though newspapers, television and other media. (We suggest you read sources outside of your comfort zone to understand more than one viewpoint. Social media might not be the best source for nonpartisan information.)
>> Learn who your elected representatives are and communicate your views with them by mail or email. (Old-fashioned written letters tend to have more impact.)
>> Attend public meetings, join group discussions or do something to get involved.
>> Attend a citizenship ceremony to understand why people want to become naturalized as U.S. citizens. It will make you appreciate your citizenship more. (You can take a practice civics test at my.uscis.gov/prep/test/civics.)
In 2013, after attending a naturalization ceremony for 111 people in Mount Pleasant, I concluded, The people who became new Americans this month dont take their new freedoms for granted. They worked hard to get them. And thats something that all of us born here should remember more often than we usually do now.
Too many people have worked too hard to make America what it is. But if citizens are not vigilant enough to protect the democracy, it could disintegrate, as suggested by the late Charleston civil rights leader Septima Poinsette Clarke, who helped register hundreds of thousands of African-Americans in the 1960s at citizenship schools across the South (the first one was on Johns Island):
Freedom has always been lost by a people who allowed their rights gradually to be whittled away.
Lets not let that happen. Lets thwart any dumbing of American democracy. Lets engage more in our public sphere and make it stronger.
While there are going to be significant bilateral on the sidelines of the ASEAN Summit meetings, the Modi-Trump meeting is also crucial because it comes right after President Donald Trump's visit to China.
By Geeta Mohan: Prime Minister Narendra Modi is likely to meet US President Donald Trump on the sidelines of the India-ASEAN Summit and the East Asia Summit which he will be attending in Manila, Phillippines 12-14 November. Sources tell India Today that the meeting comes at a time when India has warmed up to the idea of a quadrilateral meeting with US, Japan and Australia.
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Bilateral meetings with Japan and Australia are also going to take place on the sidelines of the 50th ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) anniversary celebrations in Manila. He will also be hosted by President Duterte of Philippines for a bilateral meeting on November 13.
Ahead of his departure Prime Minister Modi in a statement emphasised the importance of India's foreign policy of 'act east policy'. "My participation in them symbolises India's commitment to continue deepening relationship with ASEAN Member States, in particular, and with the Indo-Pacific region, in general, within the framework of my Government's Act East Policy," the prime minister said.
PM Modi will be accompanied by National Security Advisor Ajit Doval, Foreign Secretary S. Jaishankar among other officials who handle specific divisions and countries related to ASEAN and East Asia Summit.
Prime Minister Modi will also participate in the ASEAN Business and Investment Summit which "will boost the close cooperation to enhance trade ties with ASEAN member- states, which constitutes a significant 10.85 per cent of our overall trade", said the Prime Minister in his statement. He also said he was looking towards connecting with the Indian community in the Philippines.
On Monday, he will participate in the opening ceremony of the 31st ASEAN Summit. He will also visit the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) and Mahavir Philippines Foundation Inc. (MPFI). "A large number of Indian scientists are working in IRRI and contributing to R&D in this field. My cabinet approved on July 12, 2017, a proposal for IRRI to set up its South Asia Regional Centre at Varanasi. This will be the first Research Centre by IRRI outside its headquarters in the Philippines," Modi said.
Secretary East in the Ministry of External Affairs, Preeti Saran said, "The Mahavir Philippines Foundation on the other hand is an associate centre of Bhagwan Mahavir Viklang Sahayata Samiti based in Jaipur, which is the famous "Jaipur Foot." It is a non-profit philanthropic organisation, which has been set up by eminent Filipinos and Indian expat community and has distributed free "Jaipur Foot" to needy amputees. Our Prime Minister's will visit this to demonstrate our India's support to this very important charitable activity."
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While there are going to be significant bilateral on the sidelines of the Summit level meetings, the Modi-Trump meeting is also crucial because it comes right after President Donald Trump's visit to China and the support that US has extended to China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), a move that India considers counter productive to the transparency and equality in growth of the region.
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By PTI: Melbourne, Nov 12 (PTI) A 24-year-old Indian-origin woman was today found killed with injuries on her body at her house in New Zealands Auckland city, media reports said.
Arishma Archana Singh, who lived with her three-year-old daughter and parents at the Maich road house, was found lying "in a pool of blood" on the floor of her bedroom in the early hours, NZ Herald reported.
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The woman, who worked as a child educator and had studied at the University of the South Pacific, may have been killed after disturbing an intruder or burglar, police said after launching a homicide investigation into the incident.
She was out to a friends birthday party and it appears she was killed soon after she arrived home, the report said, adding that her parents Rakesh and Aradhana Singh were also out visiting relatives and found her body when they returned.
"When they (Archanas parents) went in her room, they found her on the floor in a pool of blood. She had injuries to her face and body," the report quoted a source as saying.
Born in Nasinu in Fiji, Archana was separated from her husband three years ago and shared the custody of her daughter with her husband who had picked the girl yesterday.
Police are in the process of interviewing Archanas family, the report said.
No arrests have been made and it is not clear exactly how she died, it said.
"It is still unclear what has gone on inside house. Its early days but hopefully our scene examination and post mortem will reveal more," said Detective Inspector Gary Lendrum.
A neighbour said that they were "friendly and very nice people". PTI CPS
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Medicaid is rarely associated with getting rich. The patients are poor, the budgets tight and payments to doctors often paltry.
But some insurance companies are reaping spectacular profits off the taxpayer-funded program in California, even when the state finds their patient care is subpar.
Health Net, a unit of Centene Corp., the largest Medicaid insurer nationwide, raked in $1.1 billion in profits from 2014 to 2016, according to state data obtained by Kaiser Health News. Anthem, another industry giant, turned a profit of $549 million from Californias Medicaid program, known as Medi-Cal, in the same period.
Overall, Medicaid insurers in the Golden State made $5.4 billion in profits from 2014 to 2016, in part because the state paid higher rates during the inaugural years of the nations Medicaid expansion under the Affordable Care Act. Last year, they made more money than all Medicaid insurers combined in 34 other states with managed care plans.
Those profits are gigantic wow, said Glenn Melnick, a health economist and professor at the University of Southern California.
Jennifer Kent, Californias Medicaid director, said that health plan profits were higher than anticipated during the ACA expansion. But she said the state expects to recoup a significant amount of money within the next year, once audits are complete and retroactive rate adjustments are made.
Were going to be taking a lot of money back. Were talking billions of dollars, Kent said in an interview this month. No one should think these plans just made off like bandits, and were not going to see them again. ... We are very mindful we use taxpayer money.
Health insurers that profited substantially from Medi-Cal defend their good fortune. They say these surpluses follow losses in earlier years, and they always run the risk of red ink if medical costs spike.
The expansion may have been a little rich in the beginning, said Jeff Myers, chief executive of the Medicaid Health Plans of America, an industry trade group. But you are starting to see margins come back down.
More than 1 in 3 Californians, or 13.5 million people, is covered by Medi-Cal more than the entire population of Pennsylvania. About 80 percent of those in Californias program are enrolled in a managed-care plan, in which insurers receive a fixed rate per person to handle their medical care. The goal is to control costs and better coordinate care.
In anticipation of the Affordable Care Act rollout, officials in California and elsewhere boosted their payments to managed care companies because they expected Medicaid costs to increase as newly insured patients rushed to the doctor or emergency room after going years without coverage. But those sharply higher costs didnt materialize and insurers pocketed more money as a result.
Moreover, Californias payments keep flowing steadily even when patients fare poorly. Two of the most profitable insurers in California Centene and Anthem run some of the worst-performing Medicaid plans, according to medical quality scores and complaints in government records.
California officials acknowledge they need to do a better job of connecting money and quality.
We are looking at alternative payment methods and those types of things that we can do to help improve and to tie quality to payment, said Lindy Harrington, a deputy director at the California Department of Health Care Services, which runs Medi-Cal. But as you can imagine, its a difficult ship to turn.
Before the ACA expansion, Medi-Cal plans collectively were barely in the black, with $226 million of net income for 2012 and 2013 combined. Traditionally, these insurance contracts have yielded slim profit margins of 2 to 3 percent. California said it aims for 2 percent when setting rates, based on prior claims experience and projected costs.
But in the years since the health law took effect, many health insurers have posted margins two or three times that benchmark.
Centenes Health Net unit in California enjoyed a profit margin of 7.2 percent from 2014 to 2016. Centene acquired Health Net for $6.3 billion in March 2016. Anthems profit margin in the Medi-Cal program was 8.1 percent for 2014 to 2016.
Air Quality Tracker Check levels down to the neighborhood Ratings for the Bay Area and California, updated every 10 minutes
Health Net said that its profit margins are comparable to other Medi-Cal health plans and that the company has made major investments to improve Californians health and access to care.
Anthem declined to comment on its financial results. The company said that it has worked with the state to meet the needs of Medi-Cal patients by extending clinic hours and helping with transportation to appointments. The company said its committed to providing high quality care to our Medi-Cal members.
Overall, Centene has 7 million Medicaid enrollees across the country, with about 2 million in California. Anthem is close behind with 6.4 million Medicaid members, about 1.3 million in the state.
The federal government footed the entire bill for Medicaid expansion during the first three years, instead of taking the usual approach of splitting the costs with states. Now, states have more incentive to rein in spending, as their share of the costs grows to 10 percent by 2020.
Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., has demanded that California and seven other states account for how they spent federal Medicaid expansion dollars. Johnson, chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, asked California officials in a letter Sept. 27 whether they have conducted audits and requested information on insurance company payouts.
In her Oct. 11 response, Kent said the state spent $6,181 per expansion enrollee in 2015, below the national average of $6,365. She also said the states rates paid to insurers for enrollees in the expanded program have decreased significantly since 2014.
Kent wrote that California is a cost-efficient Medicaid program.
Chad Terhune and Anna Gorman are senior correspondents for Kaiser Health News, an editorially independent service of the Kaiser Family Foundation that is not affiliated with Kaiser Permanente. Email: cterhune@kff.org, agorman@kff.org Twitter: @chadterhune, @annagorman
By PTI: (Eds: Updating with details of raids at Coimbatore)
Chennai/Cuddalore (TN), Nov 11 (PTI) For the third day in a row, the Income-Tax department continued its searches at tge premises linked to jailed AIADMK leader V K Sasikala and her kin over suspected tax evasion but did not elaborate on the value of cash and types of documents seized.
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The searches, including in this metropolis, Bengaluru, Hyderabad and a number of other locations in Tamil Nadu, that commenced on November 9 were going on at some places, a senior tax official told PTI.
However, he declined to disclose how much cash and what type of documents were seized.
A Coimbatore report, quoting police, said the Income Tax officials, who were carrying out searches at the premises of a sand merchant M Arumugasamy, as part of the state-wide raids, completed their search today.
The sleuths, who searched a commercial complex belonging to Arumugasamy, have reportedly seized some "important" documents from there, police said.
The search was also completed at the premises of Sajeevan, who is supplying furniture across Coimbatore and Nilgiris districts.
He had also supplied wood and other materials to the Kodanadu bungalow in Kotagiri belonging to late chief minister J Jayalalithaa.
Meanwhile, searches at the Green Tea Estate (Curzon Estate), said to be bought by former chief minister, Jayalalithaa and her aide, V K Sasikala some five years ago in nearby Nilgiris district, were going on, the police said.
In Cuddalore, a 10-member team is conducting searches at two residences and a jewellery shop.
One of the residences belongs to an astrologer, who reportedly used to give advice to Sasikala, who is now in a Bengaluru jail following her conviction in a disproportionate assets case.
The raid on 187 locations was conducted by over 1,000 officials, who split into over a dozen teams on day one of the searches on November 9.
Subsequently, the number of officials carrying out the task shrunk with the conclusion of the searches at some premises.
Backed with inputs, including those from the Finance Ministrys Financial Intelligence Unit, the raids are being conducted.
The allegations included suspicion of shell companies, dubious investments, suspicious fund flow and its transfers and fudging of accounts.
Jaya TV premises in Chennai and Dhinakarans farm house were searched as part of the "Operation Clean Money", under which premises belonging to 10 Income-Tax assessee groups were raided.
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Dubbing the searches a "conspiracy", deposed AIADMK deputy General Secretary T T V Dhinakaran has alleged it was to oust him and his jailed aunt from politics. PTI VGN CORR APR NVM BN KJ
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While many Democrats have been heralding the election victories in Virginia last week as the start of the partys revival, others are using them to consider how the national party and other political organizations can better spend their money.
California Democrats didnt get a lot of return on investment for their campaign contributions last year. Even though Californians donated $107 million of the $529 million raised by the Hillary Victory Fund, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, none of that money went to the California Democratic Party. Instead, it went to 32 other state parties including Wyoming, a state that hasnt sent a Democrat to Washington since the 1970s as well as to Hillary Clintons campaign and the national party.
It wasnt illegal. Donors were told where the money was going, and most understood there were more urgent Democratic needs outside of deep-blue California. But given the national partys dismal record Democrats have lost more than 1,000 state and local seats over the past decade and are the minority party in Washington that spending plan illustrates the need for smarter, more narrowly focused spending everywhere.
How money is spent is the big issue, said Steve Phillips, the San Francisco civil rights attorney, best-selling author of Brown Is the New White and founder of Democracy in Color, an organization focused on race and politics. Are we spending it on getting out the vote in communities of color that vote Democratic, or on convincing Trump voters of the error of their ways?
Top party officials and progressive leaders say changes are starting to emerge.
Last month, every state party signed a new joint fundraising agreement with the Democratic National Committee. The pact calls for the national organization to give every state party $10,000 a month, plus the chance to compete for a piece of $10 million in grant money that would be earmarked for getting out the vote among Millennials, African Americans, Latinos and the Asian American/Pacific Islander community.
In California, theres a greater urgency to keep more of the states donor money west of the Sierra for next years midterm congressional elections. National Democrats have identified at least seven GOP-held House seats in California as the key to winning the 24 additional seats they need to assume control of the House.
It means California will benefit much more directly and in much more measurable ways, said state Democratic Party Chairman Eric Bauman, who was elected to the top leadership post this year, as was new DNC Chairman Tom Perez. It seems to be a much better situation than the previous joint fundraising agreement.
But the national Democratic Party still faces serious fundraising problems after last years debacle.
It raised $38.2 million through June 30, roughly half of what the Republican National Committee ($75.4 million) pulled in during the most recent fundraising disclosure period that began Jan. 1. While the RNC had $45 million in the bank and no debts, the DNC had $7 million cash on hand and $3 million in debt.
Part of the reason for the fundraising drop-off is that many Democratic donors are frustrated with the national party and are instead writing checks to groups created to fight President Trumps agenda, like Indivisible and Swing Left, said Wade Randlett, a longtime Silicon Valley fundraiser for Democratic candidates.
There is an appropriate level of disgust with the 2016 campaign, Randlett said. Not so much people saying, I regret giving, but (disgust) in how it was spent. For example, Randlett said, some donors wondered why party and left-leaning groups spent millions on Evan Bayh, a former senator trying to make a comeback in red-state Indiana, who lost by 10 percentage points.
But Randlett said he sees smart and tactical signs in the partys surprising victories last week in Virginia that Democrats are starting to change their ways.
The DNC spent $1.5 million on new digital and data tools, and on organizers to turn out young voters and communities of color. That was among several reasons that Democrats swept the statewide office races and made gains in the Virginia Legislature.
More funds and staffing were directed to state-level legislative offices like the House of Delegates, the equivalent of the state Assembly in California. It was an overdue strategy, Randlett said, as the party tries to rebuild from the ground up after losing so many local seats over the past decade.
Several left-leaning groups not affiliated with the national party used the Virginia race as a place to experiment with new strategies or expand on existing ones.
NextGen America, the organization funded by San Francisco billionaire Tom Steyer, spent $3.3 million on grassroots organizing in Virginia. Of that, $2 million paid for 60 staffers and 1,000 volunteers to flood 26 Virginia colleges in an effort to turn out young voters. The result: Twice as many voters younger than 30 voted for Democratic gubernatorial winner Ralph Northam on Tuesday than did for Hillary Clinton a year earlier, exit polls showed.
One group experimenting with new tactics was Forward Majority, a super PAC with Silicon Valley ties.
Started by former Obama campaign staffers, it spent $1 million on House of Delegate races, employing technology commonly used in statewide or national campaigns. For example, workers polled voters in the local races through apps on their mobile phones, which enabled them to connect with younger voters, who are ordinarily more difficult to turn out in midterm elections.
What I like is that we were using data to make decisions, Alex Roetter, a former senior vice president of engineering at Twitter who is advising Forward Majority. We were being smart and scrappy about it.
The result: Democrats won 11 of the 16 races that Forward Majority worked on. The ballots are still being counted in two races that are too close to call. The pilot program was encouraging enough that Forward Majority plans to expand to 12 swing states in next years elections.
But Phillips, a longtime critic of DNC spending priorities, remains concerned that Democrats still arent doing enough to turn out people of color. Instead, he said, they are spending money trying to woo Trump voters, who want nothing to do with them.
Phillips pointed out that through Oct. 1, Northam spent $9 million on TV commercials attacking GOP nominee Ed Gillespie for his ties to the energy firm Enron.
What is the strategic rationale of such an advertising campaign? Phillips wrote in an essay in the Nation. Clearly, those ads are not supposed to motivate African Americans, Asian Americans, Latinos, Native Americans and other people of color to take time from their busy lives to come out and support the Democratic ticket.
As the Democrats revamp their money-spending, Phillips said they also have to be mindful of what messages they are spending money on.
Trump is so forceful in his contempt, if not hatred, of people of color, but there is not a commensurate voice with the same level of forcefulness on the Democratic progressive side, Phillips said in an interview. While hes attacking, the Democrats have been more concerned about alienating Trump supporters.
Joe Garofoli is The San Francisco Chronicles senior political writer. Email: jgarofoli@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @joegarofoli
The Contra Costa County Sheriffs Office is investigating complaints of abuse by federal immigration detainees at the West County Detention Facility in Richmond.
The complaints, first reported in The Chronicle, said female inmates were being denied books, shampoo and toilet paper and told to use bags when they need to go to the bathroom.
In a Facebook post, the office of Sheriff David Livingston said those allegations reported in a series of Chronicle columns were misleading.
We have not directly received any complaints from the female ICE detainees regarding the conditions at WCDF, the post said. It went on to say that inmates have keys to their cells and are free to leave for medical appointments, visits, programs or to use the restroom.
The rooms are unlocked for most of the day, said the post, which was published late Thursday.
Still, we do take the ICE detainees claims seriously and have launched a full investigation, it concluded.
Contra Costa County has a $6 million-a-year contract with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to house male and female immigration detainees at the Richmond jail. Complaints about mistreatment, ranging from withholding of toiletries to lockdowns that last for hours, were documented in a September letter to the San Francisco activist group Community Initiatives for Visiting Immigrants in Confinement.
The letter, signed by 27 inmates, has raised concerns among state leaders.
State Sen. Nancy Skinner, D-Berkeley, sent a letter to California Attorney General Xavier Beccera urging him to probe the conditions at the jail. Rep. Mark DeSaulnier, D-Concord, scheduled a tour of the jail for Nov. 27.
Rachel Swan is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: rswan@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @rachelswan
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If you took the J-Church train in downtown San Francisco Saturday morning, you might have had the chance to ride with a pack of puppies.
The 10 Labrador and golden retrievers hopped on the Muni Metro for informal guide dog training, navigating the noisy, busy environment of mass transit to learn how to best serve blind and visually impaired commuters.
The pups, ranging in age from 6 to 15 months, took part in a socialization exercise as they rode from the Van Ness Station to the Embarcadero Station, where they got off with the people who raised them to roam around the Farmers Market at the Ferry Building.
Every dog has a purpose, said Karen Woon, vice president of marketing for Guide Dogs for the Blind. Labs and goldens seem especially equipped to aid their human companions, she added.
They have a joy in service. They have great health and the right temperament. They are eager to please, Woon said at the train station Saturday. We find these breeds to be the most successful.
It has worked out for Maia Scott, a visually impaired San Francisco artist and educator who brought out her veteran guide dog, Fiddler, to show support for the event.
Fiddler, a 6-year-old golden retriever, is her third guide dog, she said.
All three of them have been amazing and taught me a lot about life, said Scott, 46.
Scott generally rides BART or the K, L and M train lines with Fiddler, who has helped her learn to go with the flow over the years, said Scott, who works as both a massage therapist and an off-site theater and art instructor at City College.
I just traveled to Seattle, said Scott. Im always delighted at how steadfast he is and adaptable he is when were out and about.
Guide Dogs for the Blind breeds the canines in San Rafael before they are given to a puppy raiser when they reach 8 weeks of age. The raisers, who keep the puppies until they are 16 months old, help them learn traits like obedience, house manners and coping with sights and sounds that come with traveling. The dogs are then returned to San Rafael for formal training.
There, they learn specific skills, like becoming accustomed to wearing a harness and the need for intellectual disobedience, which means they wont obey a command to keep going if their owner is about to walk into a tree or otherwise get injured, Woon said.
In their informal training, the puppies have done everything from taking the ferry to going through security checks at Oakland International Airport, she said.
All of Saturdays puppies came from the San Ramon Valley Guide Dogs, whose members raise the dogs, said Gail Horn, the groups leader. She brought along the puppy she is raising a, 7-month-old black Lab named Lester.
We raise them in our homes, she said. Theyre part of a loving family.
As the raisers and their puppies waited on the platform for a train, they created a stir, with passengers in passing trains marveling at the sight. One rider seemed to mouth Oh my God, over and over as the train passed the puppies.
The short ride from Van Ness to the Embarcadero took place on a nearly empty car, with a few smiling, albeit confused, passengers. But when they reached the Embarcadero, the petting began.
Niall Battson was awaiting a train to take his son and daughter to Discovery Day at AT&T Park when the dogs arrived. Soon, his 6-year-old daughter, Mila, was patting Fiddler on the head, appearing pleased to find out they were the same age.
My daughter likes dogs. She always goes up and pets everybodys dog, said Battson, a 39-year-old Oakland resident. She keeps asking for one. Some day. Some day.
His 4-year-old son, Gus, happened to be a fan of trains, instead. He held onto Battsons hand, squirming on the platform.
Mila turned around and tugged at her fathers clothes.
Daddy, can I say hi to more dogs? she asked.
He said yes, and she took off.
A man died Saturday morning when his Honda veered off of Highway 680 in San Jose, crashing into a light pole and a tree.
The driver was heading north toward Jackson Avenue at around 10:28 a.m. when his vehicle went off the road, according to the California Highway Patrol. Officers and emergency personnel arrived at the scene minutes later and transported the man to a local hospital, where he died of his injuries.
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The names of the fallen sailors rang out: Gandy. Garrett. Gastelum. Geronimo. A bell was struck in their honor.
For all the fallen at the battle of Guadalcanal, said the man reading the names of the 107 sailors and Marines who died on the San Francisco, a 10,000-ton cruiser, 75 years ago in a key World War II battle.
With a backdrop of the Pacific Ocean, a crowd of more than 100 armed forces members, their families and friends came to the cruisers Lands End memorial site Saturday to honor those men who fought Japanese forces on and near the island northeast of Australia.
The actions and sacrifices of the men serving there were remarkable. Fathers. Brothers. Husbands and sons of American families, each willing to step into the breach for their country, said Vice Admiral Thomas S. Rowden, commander of the U.S. Naval Surface Forces. They raised their hands and went off to fight for the cause of freedom, winning one of the most significant battles that helped turned the tide in the Pacific theater of operations.
Just eight months after Pearl Harbor, in August 1942, American forces stormed Guadalcanal as it was being developed as a future air base for the Japanese.
For six months, the battle raged. On Nov. 12, 1942, the Japanese decided to make a huge push to retake the island, bringing in a convoy with thousands of troops. It was then that the San Francisco battled the Japanese forces in close combat, even after a bomber crashed into the cruisers air control station.
The fight continued into the the overnight darkness of Nov. 13, when the San Francisco, along with other American cruisers, sailed into the center of the Japanese formation of warships. Rear Adm. Daniel Callaghan, a native of San Francisco, yelled out: Get the big ones first!
The contest lasted from Nov. 12 to 15 and marked the last major Japanese effort to gain control of the island and the area around Guadalcanal. The toll was especially heavy aboard the San Francisco, with shell fire from the Japanese ships killing more than 100 sailors and Marines, including Callaghan and his staff.
Marines at shore said it was as if lightning was passing between the fighting warships, Rowden told the crowd. Let me say as a former commanding officer and a strike group commander, I cant imagine what it must have been like trading rounds with enemy combatants just yards away.
In February 1943, the Japanese evacuated Guadalcanal and ceased their campaign for the island a key turning point for the Allied Forces in the Pacific.
Some will say that as time distances us from World War II, our nation will lose its knowledge of our history, that our nation will lose its knowledge of our countrys wars, said Rowden. As I look around here today, I see a grateful audience whove purposefully made a point to remember and honor veterans and to remember and celebrate the battles and their sacrifices, even events 75 years ago.
For veterans like Jeff Dunning, a 73-year-old Concord resident and board member of the USS San Francisco Memorial Foundation, the turnout was inspiring.
When the vets come out and see this, its like theyre born again, he said. Its a glorious day to be amongst people that care.
Hamed Aleaziz is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: haleaziz@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @haleaziz
In the title story of Jeffrey Eugenides' crackling collection of short stories, Fresh Complaint, an Indian origin teenager accuses an American professor of rape. The timely tale of sexual misconduct - with unanswered questions and a dash of what some will call misogyny - is never simplistic. But that's a hallmark of the author best known for his Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, Middlesex (2002).
Written between 1988 and 2017, Fresh Complaint is Eugenides' first published collection of short stories. Each story depicts strivers pursuing different American dreams as their lives unspool because of forces beyond control. Most characters dream of money, or "a million dollars", a sum repeated with almost fetishistic frenzy in story after story. Also running along are themes of friendship, curdling of romance in a marriage and performance of masculinity.
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Grave as the issues may be, Eugenides is a master of weaving in humour. Who can resist a story titled "The Oracular Vulva", a significant chunk of which is concerned with a professor desperately trying to protect his modesty and virtue? Or "Baster", in which the cooking utensil used to drip gravy on meat is the implement of choice for a single woman who wants to get pregnant?
Like Eugenides' hugely successful novels, The Virgin Suicides and Middlesex, Fresh Complaint hinges on slippery characters who are neither good nor bad, only painfully and hilariously human. Using their miniature lives, full of little desires, mediocre hopes and big disappointments, he paints a landscape of greed, ego and disillusionment that may be set in America, but resonates everywhere.
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When Elmer Williams wife told him that a mass shooting had taken place at a church in Texas, he leaped into action. First, he skimmed a handful of news stories about the massacre. Then, when he felt sufficiently informed, he went into his home video studio, put on his trademark aviator sunglasses, and hit record.
Roughly an hour later, Williams, 51, a popular right-wing YouTube personality who calls himself the Doctor of Common Sense, had filmed, edited and uploaded a three-minute monologue about the Sutherland Springs church shooting to his YouTube page, which had roughly 90,000 subscribers. Authorities had not yet named a suspect, but that didnt deter Williams, who is black, from speculating that the gunman was probably either a Muslim or black.
Later, after the shooter was identified as a white man named Devin Kelley, Williams posted a follow-up video. He claimed that Kelley was most likely a Bernie Sanders supporter associated with antifa a left-wing antifascist group who may have converted to Islam. Despite having no evidence for those claims, Williams argued them passionately, saying that photos of Kelley circulating online suggested that he was a violent liberal.
Sometimes, you can tell a lot from a persons picture, Williams said.
I came across Williams videos several hours after the massacre, when one of them appeared prominently in YouTubes search results about the shooting, alongside other videos making unverified claims that had been posted by pages with names like TruthNews Network and the Patriotic Beast.
YouTube has long been a haven for slapdash political punditry, a certain type of hyper-prolific conspiracist has emerged recently as a dominant force. By reacting quickly and voluminously to breaking news, these rapid-response pundits the YouTube equivalent of talk radio shock-jocks have climbed the sites search results, and exposed legions of viewers to their far-fetched theories.
In a phone interview from his home in Houston, Williams told me that he had created more than 10,000 YouTube videos over an eight-year period, posting as many as 20 monologues per day, and racking up an estimated 200 million views.
His hit productions have included fact-challenged videos like Barack and Michelle Obama Both Come Out The Closet, which garnered 1.6 million views, and Hillary Clinton Is On Crack Cocaine, which had 665,000. He was admitted to YouTubes partner program, which allows popular posters to earn money by displaying ads on certain types of videos, and claims to have made as much as $10,000 a month from his channel.
I like to call myself a reporter who reports the news for the common person, Williams said.
Whether motivated by profit or micro-celebrity, the success of sensationalists like Williams has become a vexing problem for companies like Facebook, Twitter and Google, which owns YouTube.
These companies sort and prioritize information for their users, and most have built ranking systems that boost news from mainstream outlets over stories from less credible sources. But those algorithms can be gamed in breaking news situations by users who work fast, uploading their videos in the valuable minutes between when news breaks and when the first wave of legitimate articles and videos appears.
Before reliable sources put up stories, its a bit of a free-for-all, said Karen North, a professor studying social media at the University of Southern California. People who are in the business of posting sensationalized opinions about the news have learned that the sooner they put up their materials, the more likely their content will be found by an audience.
The phenomenon is not limited to YouTube. After last months mass shooting in Las Vegas, a Facebook safety check page featured a story from a site called Alt-Right News that made false statements about the gunman, and Googles search results displayed a conspiracy theory from 4Chan, the notoriously toxic message board. After last months terrorist attack in New York City, a trending topic page on Twitter briefly featured a story from Infowars, a conservative site that is popular among the conspiracy-minded.
Conservatives have argued that YouTube unfairly targets their videos while allowing liberal channels, such as the Young Turks, to post heated commentary. And some dispute that there is any conscious gaming going on.
There is absolutely no strategy, said Paul Joseph Watson, an editor-at-large at Infowars and a popular YouTube personality who has 1.1 million subscribers. On the day of the Texas church shooting, one of Watsons tweets appeared as a result in Google searches for the shooters name, although it has since disappeared.
Tech companies, already under fire for the ease with which they allowed Russia to interfere in last years election, have also vowed to take a harder stance on domestic misinformation. Twitters acting general counsel, Sean Edgett, told congressional investigators that the company would take steps to keep false stories from being featured on trending topic pages.
Its a bad user experience, and we dont want to be known as a platform for that, Edgett said.
YouTube, whose community guidelines prohibit hateful and threatening content, has begun using artificial intelligence to help identify offensive videos. But conspiracy theories dont announce themselves, and machines cant yet handle the complicated business of fact-checking.
In Williams case, human intervention seems to have been necessary. Last week, shortly after I asked YouTube some questions about Williams account, all of his videos disappeared, and his profile was replaced by a message saying, This account has been terminated due to multiple or severe violations of YouTubes policy prohibiting hate speech.
Williams, who said he had recently left his job as an operations manager at a hazardous materials plant to focus on full-time punditry, has tangled with YouTubes hate speech policies before. The company shut down one of his previous accounts for similar infractions, which he claimed cost him 250,000 subscribers and a lucrative income source.
If YouTube didnt punish me, Williams said, I could easily be making over $30,000 a month.
YouTube said that Williams account was banned as soon as it was flagged to us, because its terms of service prohibit repeat rule-breakers from opening new accounts. It also said that its terms prohibit advertising from appearing on videos featuring controversial and sensitive events, tragedies, political conflicts and other sensitive topics.
Even before this weeks crackdown, Williams was branching out. He sells cell phone ringtones on his website, and was considering starting his own paid streaming service. Just hours after he was banned by YouTube, Williams posted a video on Vimeo, another video-hosting service. He pledged to keep insulting his favorite targets Democrats, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and not shy away from controversy, no matter what the policies said.
I dont want to be on YouTube anymore, Williams said. Its too communist.
Kevin Roose is a New York Times writer.
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A pedestrian was killed in a hit-and-run in South San Francisco late Saturday night, police said.
South San Francisco police responded to a report of a vehicle striking a pedestrian just before midnight on Saturday. The incident was reported in the 200 block of El Camino Real in one of the southbound lanes, police said Sunday.
RELATED: Man dies Saturday morning in San Jose freeway crash
A female victim was found unconscious in the street, police said. She was transported to a hospital but died from her injuries.
The San Mateo County coroners office identified the victim as Teresa Gonzales, 44, of South San Francisco.
MORE: Couple who lost home in Tubbs Fire lose family pictures during benefit show
Police are still investigating the incident and said that the driver has yet to be apprehended. The suspect vehicle was described as a black Toyota or Lexus from 1998 to 2000, police said, noting that the vehicle will likely have damage to the right front end and hood.
ALSO: Herb Lee, SF's first Chinese American police officer, dies
Anyone with information can contact police at (650) 877-8900.
Annie Ma is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: ama@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @anniema15
In 1862, the city of San Francisco spent $2,000 to build a fountain in Portsmouth Square.
The beautiful new fountain didnt stay pristine for long.
Many ignorant people mistake the fountain in the center of the Plaza for a spittoon, and are in the habit of throwing cigar stumps and other trash into it, bemoaned the San Francisco Call.
Besides that, the dirty fountain was creating a problem greatly to the disgust and annoyance of two of the citys most illustrious citizens. Their discomfort was so acute that city leaders were contemplating erecting a sign that read: THIS IS A FOUNTAIN.
The two citizens were named Bummer and Lazarus. They enjoyed bathing in the fountain each day. And they were dogs.
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Bummer and Lazarus were early San Franciscos most famous duo, so beloved that they were exempt from city ordinances and gifted, according to legend, nightly tickets to every opera house in town. They were both eulogized by Mark Twain, then working at the Call, and their taxidermied bodies were displayed at their favorite bar long after they died.
Unlike modern-day San Francisco, famed for its love of pets, the city then was no place for dogs, making Bummer and Lazaruss fame even more unlikely.
San Francisco in 1860 was lousy with strays. "The city is infested with thousands of worthless mangy curs of dogs, whose numbers have at last become intolerable, the Daily Alta California wrote. We never knew a city in America so cursed with the canine nuisance as San Francisco.
In 1862, the San Jose Mercury implored their newly formed city council to make one of their first acts passing an Ordinance for the Extermination of Dogs. In June of that year, the San Francisco pound keeper captured almost 300 dogs; all but 68 were killed.
The lives of stray dogs were mostly short and miserable. But one day in 1860, a big Newfoundland showed up outside of Martins Saloon on Montgomery Street. The previous saloon dog had been poisoned, dubbed a greedy nuisance, but this dog had a talent. He was prodigiously good at killing rats the only problem bigger than dogs in the city.
The saloon-goers named him Bummer, a reference to the fact that he liked to bum snacks off the locals. They called him a professional lunch-eater.
Soon, Bummer ruled the streets around Martins Saloon. It was on a patrol of his territory in 1861 that he came upon two dogs fighting. Bummer chased away the aggressor and began to tend to the badly wounded dog. Bystanders assumed the dog would die, but within a few days, thanks to Bummer bringing him food and keeping him warm at night, the dog rose up and joined Bummers crew. He was dubbed Lazarus.
And so Bummer and Lazarus won the hearts of Californians all over, their exploits making regular news in San Francisco.
Edward Jump
While the Civil War raged on, the canine friends provided the city with moments of levity. The pair were known for their exploits, often initiated by the dimmer Lazarus. Once, Lazarus decided to nip into Rosenfields Stationery Store on Montgomery for his evening nap. When he awoke, the store had been closed and locked up for the night.
He tried to break jail but it was a no-go, the Alta California reported. He dashed his head against the thick plate glass, cracking it in several places, then jumped on the cases, and smashed up various delicate and valuable articles with perfect recklessness.
Outside, onlookers reported, Bummer kept watch, perhaps rolling his eyes at his ridiculous friend.
The pair was also something of an early K9 unit. In 1861, the San Francisco Mirror reported that a police officer was serving a warrant for a man accused of assault. The man resisted, but Bummer and Lazarus were there to assist. They pitched in, tearing the mans clothes and barking his legs until the man fell to the ground. Police took it from there.
Other adventures were less humorous. In 1862, Lazarus was picked up by the dreaded pound keeper. A city ordinance decreed that any dog not claimed in 48 hours could be killed and, as Lazaruss clock ticked, a crowd of worried citizens gathered outside the pound. Lazarus was released into their custody by the wise dogcatcher, and the city passed a special rule that made Bummer and Lazarus city property. As such, they were the only dogs in San Francisco free "to wander unmolested in pursuit of their daily food."
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Alas, fame couldnt give two stray dogs longevity. In October of 1863, Lazarus ate rat poison and died. His funeral was commemorated with a lithograph by cartoonist Edward Jump. Fellow San Francisco legend Emperor Norton presides over the service; in the background, the dog-catcher waits with his cart. Bummer looks on mournfully.
Edward Jump
Bummer saw the body, but left it with tears in his eyes, and for hours after walked the pave of Montgomery Street, reported the Red Bluff Independent. We may soon expect to chronicle the death of the faithful and inconsolable friend.
Bummer staved off death for several years more but, without the companionship of Lazarus, became just another homeless pup. For a brief time in 1864, Mark Twain wrote that a vagrant black puppy was seen with Bummer on his rounds. Despite the hopes of locals, their friendship didn't stick.
In 1865, the city learned that Bummer had been kicked to death by a drunk man. According to legend, the man was taken into police custody to keep him safe from retaliation. A Bummer fan met him in jail, though, and exacted revenge by punching him in the face.
On Nov. 11, Mark Twains obituary ran in the Call. The piece, called Exit Bummer, is a reflection on fame and mortality befitting the death of one of San Francisco's first celebrities:
[Bummer] parting with his life in the fullness of time, and in the due course of nature, sinks as quietly as might the mangiest cur among us. Well, let him go. In earlier days he was courted and caressed; but latterly he has lost his comeliness - his dignity had given place to a want of self-respect, which allowed him to practice mean deceptions to regain for a moment that sympathy and notice which had become necessary to his very existence, and it was evident to all that the dog had had his day; his great popularity was gone forever. In fact, Bummer should have died sooner: there was a time when his death would have left a lasting legacy of fame to his name.
Now, however, he will be forgotten in a few days.
Edward Jump
Twains prediction didnt quite come to pass. The taxidermied bodies of Bummer and Lazarus kept drinkers company for four decades at Martins Saloon, their old haunt, before being put in storage for good. Their names faded, little by little, as the 20th century wore on. But, in 1992, they returned anew to the city.
In a shady corner of the Transamerica Redwood Park, theres a tree with a large bronze plaque dedicated to the faithful friends.
Contrary to common belief, they were not Emperor Nortons dogs, it reads. They belonged to no one person. They belonged to San Francisco.
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WASHINGTON Republican Sen. Pat Toomey urged Alabama Senate candidate Roy Moore on Sunday to drop out of the race, adding to the partys growing disavowal of the controversial judge in a pivotal election after allegations that he initiated sexual contact with a 14-year-old girl decades ago.
Toomey said Moores explanations have been inadequate so far in response to the Washington Post report last week and that Republicans should consider current Sen. Luther Strange as a write-in candidate to run against Moore.
You know, this is a terrible situation, nearly 40-year-old allegation, well probably never know for sure exactly what happened, said Toomey, R-Pa, told NBC. But from my point of view, I think the accusations have more credibility than the denial. I think it would be best if Roy would just step aside.
Toomey did not rule out the possibility that Senate Republicans might work to unseat Moore if he wins the special election against Democrat Doug Jones on Dec. 12.
The White House, pointedly noting that President Trump did not back Moore during the primary, said Trump will probably weigh in on the Senate race when he returns from Asia this week. The White House has already made clear that Moore should step aside if the allegations are proved to be true.
Moore, an outspoken Christian conservative, has attacked the Washington Post report as completely false and misleading. Still, in an interview with conservative radio host Sean Hannity, he did not wholly rule out dating teenage girls when he was in his early 30s.
Asked if that would have been usual for him, Moore said, Not generally, no.
The story has stirred concern among anxious GOP officials in Washington in a key race to fill the Senate seat once held by Jeff Sessions, now the U.S. attorney general. Losing the special election to a Democrat would imperil Republicans already slim 52-48 majority in the Senate, which is hoping to pass a tax overhaul this year.
But a Moore victory also would pose risks if he were to join the Senate GOP with a cloud of sexual misconduct allegations.
In the immediate aftermath of the Post report Thursday, a wave of national Republican leaders called for Moore to drop out of the race if the allegations are true. They included the head of the House Freedom Caucus, Rep. Mark Meadows of North Carolina, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky and Texas Sen. Ted Cruz.
Over the weekend, more Republicans distanced themselves from Moore.
Look, Im sorry, but even before these reports surfaced, Roy Moores nomination was a bridge too far, Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tenn., tweeted Saturday.
Hope Yen and Kevin Freking are Associated Press writers.
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WASHINGTON Brett Talley, President Trumps nominee to be a federal judge in Alabama, has never tried a case, was unanimously rated not qualified by the American Bar Associations judicial rating committee, has practiced law for only three years and, as a blogger last year, displayed a degree of partisanship unusual for a judicial nominee, denouncing Hillary Rotten Clinton and pledging support for the National Rifle Association.
Last week, the Senate Judiciary Committee, on a party-line vote, approved him for a lifetime appointment to the federal bench.
Talley, 36, is part of what Trump has called the untold story of his success in filling the courts with young conservatives.
The judge story is an untold story. Nobody wants to talk about it, Trump said last month, standing alongside Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky. But when you think of it, Mitch and I were saying, that has consequences 40 years out, depending on the age of the judge but 40 years out.
Civil rights groups and liberal advocates see the matter differently. They denounced Thursdays vote, calling it laughable that none of the committee Republicans objected to confirming a lawyer with as little experience as Talley to preside over federal trials.
Hes practiced law for less than three years and never argued a motion, let alone brought a case. This is the least amount of experience Ive seen in a judicial nominee, said Kristine Lucius, executive vice president of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights.
When Trump took office in January, there were more than 100 vacant seats on the federal courts, thanks to an unprecedented slowdown engineered by McConnell during the final two years of President Barack Obamas term. The Senate under GOP control approved only 22 judges in that two-year period, the lowest total since 1951-52 in the last year of President Trumans term. By contrast, the Senate under Democratic control approved 68 judges in the last two years of George W. Bushs presidency.
Talleys nomination now moves to the Senate floor where a similar party-line result is expected.
David G. Savage is a Tribune Co. writer.
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GLEN DANIEL, W.Va. Chuck Nelson spent his life in this corner of Appalachia, working for years in the coal mines a good job in the economically depressed area. But he says the industry that helped him earn a living cost him his health, and his wifes, too.
The 61-year-old Nelson blames his kidney and liver disease on the well water he drank for years, and his wifes more severe asthma on dust and particles from surface mines near their home.
Some of his neighbors agree and say surface mining in the mountains has been a primary culprit for various health problems. Some studies agreed with them but in the end were inconclusive. A new federal study was supposed to provide the most comprehensive review to date, but the Trump administration a coal industry advocate suspended it three months ago, citing budget reasons.
Nelson and his neighbors werent surprised a previous federal study was canceled, too. The suspension feeds the mistrust theyve long harbored for politicians who routinely side with businesses: If the study comes out negative against the coal industry, its swept under the rug, and the fundings stopped by these politicians who cater to the coal industry, Nelson said.
Studies and experts agree on some points: Mountaintop mining can release coal dust into the air that is carried on the wind. Debris from surface mines can harm streams, and the coal slurries from underground mines can seep chemically treated waste into groundwater. Pollution can increase disease risks, but thats complicated by other factors.
With environmental damage or environmental issues, the problem is that most diseases that we are now concerned about are long-term diseases that take decades to appear, said David Rosner, Columbia professor of sociomedical sciences.
Rosner, a member of the organization overseeing the extensive mining study but not directly involved, said the canceled review wouldve been crucial. The science has actually created doubt rather than certainty about cause, he said. What this becomes in the hands of politicians is an excuse for inaction.
The goal of the scuttled study by National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine was a consensus from experts in various fields on potential short- and long-term health effects, focused on West Virginia, Virginia, Kentucky and Tennessee.
In May, the West Virginia Coal Association told scientists that large-scale mountaintop mining was mostly a thing of the past. State surface-mining production dropped from about 44 million tons of coal in 2012 to 14 million tons last year, it said.
Association Vice President Jason Bostic declined to say whether the study should resume to resolve any remaining questions.
West Virginias Department of Environmental Protection said it conducts significant surface water quality sampling. Agency officials shared with academy scientists their two-week testing near a mountaintop mine in 2012 that found no conclusive evidence that blasting affected air quality.
Bostic blames higher illness rates on poverty: Bad health in central Appalachia or Appalachia as a whole is not new.
Neither is coal mining.
In late September, Nelson drove an ATV up old logging roads to Alpha Natural Resources mining operation, where part of Coal River Mountain is gone. The air had a faint grayish hue 100 feet above the mine. Large coal trucks looked like childrens toys on the broad, flat landscape below. On the horizon stood the treeless outlines of three other mines. Some houses stood in a distant valley.
Joan Linville, 79, a miners widow from the hamlet of Van, says she believes her stomach cancer was caused by drinking water polluted by mines. We did have well water. We used it for everything, she said.
Linville and others hoped the new $1 million study would erase any doubts. But in canceling it in August, the Interior Departments Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement said officials were reconsidering grants over $100,000 largely for budget reasons.
Michael Virtanen is an Associated Press writer.
In a documentary, 13-year-old Kamlesh tells an interviewer he earns Rs 100-150 a day picking scrap, bottles and rags, and that he spends Rs 90 on the drug he's addicted to.
By India Today Web Desk: A Delhi grassroots foundation has asked Lieutenant Governor Anil Baijal, Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, and Police Commissioner Amulya Patnaik to find and help a teenage drug addict seen in several insensitive memes and videos.
These social media creations use snippets or images from a clip taken from Dheeraj Sharma's documentary film Nashebaaz - The Dying People of Delhi.
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In the clip, Kamlesh, 13, tells an interviewer he spends Rs 90 on 'solution', the chemical he is addicted to. He earns Rs 100-150 a day picking scrap, bottles and rags.
"We all are deeply sad after watching this video link," Uday Foundation wrote on its Twitter account, with a link to the documentary excerpt.
The foundation tagged verified handles belonging to the Delhi LG, Arvind Kejriwal and the Police Commissioner, and asked them to help Kamlesh. None of the three have responded on Twitter yet.
Respected LG @LtGovDelhi, CM @ArvindKejriwal, CP @CPDelhi .. We all are deeply sad after watching this video link https://t.co/ILpwUXvvoZ & receiving this kind of emails, pls find & help this boy .. pic.twitter.com/EOXJzmVLnB- Uday Foundation (@udayfoundation) November 12, 2017
Television actor Adil Hussain said in a tweet that "immediate attention" was needed.
Memes and clips parodying the interview, or poking fun at Kamlesh, are legion. For example, there's a YouTube video that weaves audio from the documentary into Sharman Joshi's interview scene from the Aamir Khan-starrer 3 Idiots.
"I was here to see some funny stuff but after watching this I'm feeling bad for this kid," reads a comment below another video - one of the unedited interview excerpt.
When Kamlesh is asked what he loves most, he points to the small bottle in his hand and says, "This. Solution."
He is asked whether he has any dreams or ambitions.
He lists four things.
Selling scrap. Drinking. Playing. And consuming 'solution.'
You can watch the documentary excerpt here.
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Kansas City Chiefs defensive tackle Roy Miller was arrested early Saturday in Florida on a domestic battery charge, according to Duval County jail records.
Miller was jailed shortly before 5 a.m. by the Jacksonville Sheriffs Office. The incident involved a minor injury, but no other details were available about the alleged battery.
Local news outlets reported that Miller was released on his own recognizance after an initial court appearance Saturday. Another hearing was set for Nov. 28.
The Chiefs, who are off this week, said in a statement to the Associated Press that they were aware of the incident and gathering facts. They declined further comment.
Miller, 30, who was drafted out of Texas by the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, spent the previous four seasons with the Jacksonville Jaguars. Miller signed a $1.4 million deal with Kansas City this past offseason but has appeared in only seven games with two tackles.
Briefly: Dallas left tackle Tyron Smith will miss Sundays game against Atlanta because of back and groin injuries. Chaz Green will make his sixth career start in Smiths place. ... Detroit activated tackle Taylor Decker from the physically-unable-to-perform list for Sundays game against Cleveland. Decker has been out all season because of a shoulder injury. He started every game for the Lions as a rookie last season after being drafted in the first round. ... Miami right tackle JaWuan James has been placed on injured reserve because of a left hamstring injury, ending his season. James, who was hurt in last Sunday nights loss to the Raiders, was replaced on the roster by safety T.J. McDonald, who was activated from the reserve-suspended list.
By India Today Web Desk: Karisma Kapoor is usually very secretive about her love life and relationships. Well, recently she has thrown caution to the winds, and is now often seen in public with her rumoured boyfriend Sandeep Toshniwal.
The two were snapped outside a restaurant yesterday, and were seen exiting the venue together.
Karisma looked stunning as always, in her black outfit.
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Sandeep and his ex-wife were granted divorce recently by the court. The separation had been bitter and prolonged, as the two had reportedly shared a turbulent relationship. There was even speculation that Karisma was the reason behind the divorce.
Karisma has undergone a painful divorce too. The actress was married to Sunjay Kapur for eleven years, and the two officially parted ways in 2016.
According to rumours, Karisma and Sunjay have been going steady for a while now. So, is a wedding on the cards?
When father Randhir Kapoor was asked about Karisma's marriage plans, he tactfully avoided answering directly, "think Lolo is very well settled and happy. I have never discussed the issue of marriage with her but if she does plan to, she will always have my blessings. But I don't think she wants to get married. She is a happy mother and if she wants, she can get married any time but there is no step in that direction right now. She is happy the way she is. Lolo is an excellent mother who dotes on her children and probably doesn't feel the need to get married."
ALSO WATCH: Karisma Kapoor-Sunjay Kapur divorce: Sunjay's father's Mumbai house transferred in Karisma's name
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By PTI: Jagadhari (Hry), Nov 12 (PTI) Haryana Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar today paid rich tributes to Guru Gobind Singh, the tenth Sikh Guru, to mark the closing ceremony of 350th Prakash Utsav.
On the occasion, Khattar announced the setting up of a Trust named after famous Sikh warrior Baba Banda Singh Bahadur in Lohgarh here.
Khattar, who was speaking at the state-level function orgninsed to mark the closing ceremony of 350th Prakash Utsav, also announced that the road from Ladwa to Jhinwarhdi Gurudwara Sahib would be widened and it would be named as Guru Teg Bahadur marg.
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Donning a turban, Khattar said that Punjabi has been accorded the status of second language in the state and with a view to promote this language, the process to fill up 397 posts of TGT and 352 posts of PGT in Punjabi has already been started.
He said that in view of the closing ceremony of 350th Prakash Utsav of Guru Gobind Singh in Patna Sahib from December 22 to 25, special trains would be run fom Ambala and Sirsa so that maximum people could participate in the function.
He said that the state government has also prepared a scheme of providing financial assistance to the pilgrims intending to visit religious places such as Nankana Sahib (Pakistan), Hazur Sahib, Patna Sahib and Hemkund Sahib.
A similar scheme has also been prepared for pilgrims going on Sindhu Darshan and Kailash Mansarovar Yatra, he said.
He said an educational institute would be set up in this area after the name of a the Sikh Guru.
Khattar said that till 1998, many colleges of the state were affiliated with the Punjab University.
"Now again the university wanted to get some colleges of the state affiliated with it. We are considering the proposal and if it materialises, colleges of this area would also be affiliated with Punjab University," he said.
One of the colleges would be named after the Sikh Guru, he said.
On the occasion, he asked the people to follow the path shown by Guru Gobind Singh and other Sikh Gurus and serve the nation and the society.
Khattar said that the work for the construction of a gate on the Karnal-Kaithal road named after Guru Nanak Dev has been started. PTI SUN KJ
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By PTI: Alwar (Rajasthan), Nov 12 (PTI) The body of a 35-year-old man was found near railway tracks in Rajasthans Alwar district yesterday, with activists alleging that he was killed by cow vigilantes.
The body of Umar Khan, hailing from Ghatmika village in Bharatpur district, was recovered near Ramgarh yesterday and has been sent for post-mortem, Deputy Superintendent of Police (Ramgarh Circle) Anil Beniwal said.
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"The matter is under investigation. We are awaiting the post-mortem report," Govindgarh police station SHO Daulat Ram said.
The post-mortem will be conducted in Jaipur.
According to the DSP, preliminary inquiry has revealed that Khan was involved in cow smuggling.
Police said Khan, along with two others, was transporting cattle in a vehicle on November 10.
Social worker Maulana Haneef claimed that Khan, along with two others, was ferrying cattle in a vehicle when unidentified men opened fire at them. Khan died on the spot.
"We staged a protest outside the mortuary at a hospital in Alwar where the body was kept and have demanded early arrest of the accused," he said.
Haneef said that the incident came months after the killing of Pehlu Khan, a dairy farmer from Nuh district of Haryana.
In April this year, 55-year-old Pehlu Khan was lynched by suspected cow vigilantes in Alwar while he was transporting cattle, triggering a nationwide outrage.
The Mewat region is known for rearing cows and now "self-proclaimed cow sympathisers" of various right wing outfits are targeting those who rear cows, the social activist said.
The head of Meo community panchayat, Sher Mohammad, said that even if Umar Khan was involved in cow smuggling, there are laws to deal with smugglers. "Who has given the cow vigilantes the right to take the law into own hands. Police should act against cow vigilantes," he said. PTI CORR AG SMN
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A Supreme Court bench of three judges is likely to hear the judges bribery case tomorrow afternoon. The case witnessed a showdown in the Supreme Court last week.
By India Today Web Desk: Following huge drama in the Supreme Court last week over a petition seeking SIT probe into the judges bribery case, a three-member bench is likely to hear the plea tomorrow.
The petition contends that alleged bribes were taken using the names of apex court judges for getting favourable order for a private medical college seeking relaxation in government order that barred from enrolling new students in medical courses.
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The plea filed by advocate Kamini Jaiswal is now listed for hearing before a bench of justices R K Agrawal, Arun Mishra and A M Khanwilkar at 3.30 pm tomorrow.
WHAT HAPPENED IN SUPREME COURT LAST WEEK?
A bench of justices J Chelameswar and S Abdul Nazeer had ordered on November 9 that the plea be heard by a five-judge Constitution bench of the senior-most judges of the apex court.
However, on November 10, in an unprecedented hearing, a five-judge constitution bench headed by CJI Dipak Misra had ruled that "no judge can take up a matter on his own, unless allocated by the chief justice of India, as he is the master of the roster".
The CJI-led bench had over-ruled the order of Justice Chelameswar directing a Constitution bench hearing, saying, "If any such order has been passed by any bench that cannot hold the field as that will be running counter to the order passed by the Constitution bench."
The hearing on November 10 had brought the tussle within top judiciary to the fore with the Constitution bench overturning the order of a two-judge bench to set up a larger bench to hear the graft case allegedly involving judges.
WHAT IS THE CASE?
The case pertains to a medical admission scam following a government barring 46 medical colleges across the country from admitting new students for their courses citing sub-standard facilities on the campus.
The scam involves a retired high court judge, a havala operator, promoters of the trust which run the medical college and middlemen. The CBI, in its FIR, lodged on September 19, has named several persons, including former Orissa High Court judge Ishrat Masroor Quddusi, as accused in an alleged corruption case.
Quddusi, who had also served as a judge in the Chhattisgarh High Court, was arrested along with Lucknow-based Prasad Institute of Medical Sciences' chairman B P Yadav, his son Palash Yadav and three others, for allegedly trying to settle a matter relating to a medical college barred from admitting new students.
In the showdown over the issue of supremacy in constituting a bench, it was said that the authority of CJI Dipak Misra was allegedly undermined by a bench headed by Justice Chelameswar.
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Justice Chelameswar, who is the senior-most judge after the CJI, had termed the allegations leveled in a CBI FIR as "disturbing" and ordered setting up a bench of five top judges of the court on the petition filed by Jaiswal, who claimed that there were allegations against Justice Misra.
(With PTI inputs)
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DUBAI, United Arab Emirates Long-haul carrier Emirates purchased 40 American-made Boeing 787-10 Dreamliners on Sunday at the start of the biennial Dubai Air Show, a $15.1 billion deal certain to please U.S. President Trump, who has touted the planes sales as a job creator in America.
The deal appeared to surprise Boeings archrival Airbus, whose staff had attended a long-delayed news conference and left the room just moments before the announcement. Airbus has pinned hopes of continuing production of its double-decker jumbo jet on Emirates, the worlds largest operator of the aircraft.
But instead, Emirates CEO and Chairman Sheikh Ahmed bin Saeed Al Maktoum explained how the airline decided to pick the Boeing 787-10. The aircraft typically lists for $312.8 million. Delivery will begin in 2022.
Chicago-based Boeing Co. already has 171 787-10s on order. Among those waiting for the aircraft are Abu Dhabi-based Etihad.
The twin-engine 787-10 has been a focus of Trump since he came into office. In February, he visited the Boeing plant in North Charleston, S.C., which manufactures the carbon-fiber, 330-seat plane Trump described as an amazing piece of art.
As your president Im going to do everything I can to unleash the power of the American spirit and to put our great people back to work, Trump said at the time. This is our mantra: Buy American and hire American.
Sheikh Ahmed made a point to say the deal will help create more jobs, echoing Trumps mantra.
Missing from the trade show this year is one of the regions largest long-haul carriers, Qatar Airways, amid a diplomatic fallout between Qatar and four Arab nations. Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt and Bahrain cut ties with Qatar in June over its ties with Iran and its support of Islamist groups.
Jon Gambrell and Aya Batrawy are Associated Press writers.
BEIRUT Lebanons president called Saturday on Saudi Arabia to clarify the reasons the countrys prime minister has not returned home since his resignation a week ago, announced from the kingdom, as the United States and France expressed their support for Lebanons sovereignty and stability amid heightening tensions between Beirut and Saudi Arabia.
A political crisis has gripped Lebanon and shattered the relative peace maintained by its coalition government since Prime Minister Saad Hariris stunning announcement Nov. 4 from the Saudi capital that he is resigning.
Lebanese officials have insisted on the return home of Hariri from Saudi Arabia amid rumors he is being held against his will. Saudi officials have said that their measures against Lebanon are in response to the militant Hezbollahs group support of anti-Saudi rebels in Yemen known as Houthis.
Lebanese President Michel Aoun called on Saudi Arabia to clarify why Hariri hasnt returned home since announcing his resignation, saying that the obscurity regarding Hariris conditions makes anything that he says or does not reflect truth. It was an indication that Aoun does not recognize Hariris resignation.
White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said in a statement that Washington calls upon all states and parties to respect Lebanons sovereignty, independence, and constitutional processes.
Saudi Minister for Gulf Affairs Thamer al-Sabhan warned this month that his government would deal with Lebanon as a hostile state as long as Hezbollah was in the Lebanese government. The Lebanese unity government that Hariri formed a year ago includes Hezbollah members the result of a tacit Saudi-Iranian agreement to sideline Lebanon from the other proxy wars in the region.
Al-Sabhan blasted in a tweet late Saturday as laughable those expressing support and love for Hariri despite their previous opposition to him.
In this sensitive time, the United States also rejects any efforts by militias within Lebanon or by any foreign forces to threaten Lebanons stability, undermine Lebanese government institutions, or use Lebanon as a base from which to threaten others in the region, Sanders said. She was apparently referring to Hezbollah and Saudi Arabia.
Bassem Mroue is an Associated Press writer.
JERUSALEM Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned Gaza militants Sunday against attacks as the Islamic Jihad group vowed revenge for the demolition of one of its tunnels that crossed into Israel.
The Iranian-backed group has threatened to carry out attacks after the tunnel was demolished last month, killing a dozen militants. It was a rare flare-up along the tense border, which has remained mostly quiet since a 2014 Israel-Hamas war.
On several occasions, gunmen from Gaza infiltrated Israel through a tunnel network during the fighting that year.
Israel will respond with a heavy hand to anyone who tries to attack us, or does attack us, from any front, Netanyahu said at a weekly Cabinet meeting. Israel holds Hamas, the Islamic militant group that rules Gaza, responsible for any attacks launched from the territory, he added.
Earlier, Maj. Gen. Yoav Mordechai, who heads COGAT, the defense body responsible for Palestinian civilian matters, also issued a warning, saying the militants are playing with fire at the expense of the Gaza residents, Palestinian reconciliation efforts and the stability of the entire region.
Toward the end of the 2014 war, Israel destroyed more than 30 tunnels that Hamas had dug under the border. Gaza militants had used the tunnels to infiltrate Israel and carry out attacks. Although they did not manage to reach civilian areas, the infiltrations by heavily armed Palestinian gunmen caught Israel off guard and terrified the local population.
Since then Israel has made neutralizing the tunnel threat a top priority, and several cross-border tunnels have been discovered and demolished since the war.
Daoud Shehab, an Islamic Jihad spokesman, called the comments by Netanyahu and Mordechai a declaration of war.
Ian Deitch is an Associated Press writer.
1 Spain politics: Thousands of people backing Catalonias bid to secede from Spain rallied Saturday in Barcelona to demand the release of jailed separatist leaders. The rallys organizers called for 10 prominent members of the secessionist movement in the northeastern Spanish region to be freed from prison. Eight former members of Catalonias dissolved Cabinet and two activists are in jail while investigations continue into their alleged roles in promoting an illegal declaration of independence last month. Polls show that Catalonias 7.5 million residents are roughly split over remaining a part of Spain.
2 Armistice Day: People in Britain and France paused to remember the victims of war Saturday on Armistice Day, which marks the anniversary of the end of World War I. Across Britain, people stopped in streets, squares and railway stations for two minutes of silence starting at 11 a.m. The moment the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month marked 99 years since guns fell silent at the end of the Great War on Nov. 11, 1918. In London, the bell of Parliaments Big Ben clock tower sounded the hour for the first time since it was halted for repairs in August. Armistice Day originally commemorated the millions who died in the Great War, but now also remembers those killed in World War II and subsequent conflicts.
BARCELONA, Spain Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy urged voters in Catalonia on Sunday to defeat the separatists who led the regions recent drive for independence when they go to the polls in an early election next month.
Rajoy, who used previously untapped constitutional authority to call the Dec. 21 regional election, told members of his conservative Popular Party at a Barcelona hotel that we want a massive turnout to open up a new period of normalcy in Catalonia.
Rajoys visit to Barcelona, Catalonias main city, was his first to the region since he used the constitutional powers to stifle the secession push led by the regional government. After Catalonias Parliament voted Oct. 27 in favor of declaring independence, Rajoy responded by firing top government officials, dissolving the Parliament and ordering the early election.
Its urgent to return a sense of normality to Catalonia and do so as soon as possible to lower the social and economic tensions, Rajoy said Sunday. The threat of the separatists is destructive, sad and agonizing. Secessionism has created insecurity and uncertainty.
Polls show a tight race between Catalan separatists and politicians who want the region to remain a part of Spain. In Brussels on Sunday, those favoring independence for Catalonia rallied near the European Union quarter.
Rajoys party has won three national elections since 2011, but secured less than 10 percent of the vote in Catalonias 2015 regional election.
The Popular Party continues to poll behind several other parties in the region, including the pro-business Citizens and the Socialists, which both oppose secession.
The far-left separatist CUP party decided Sunday to participate in the December elections. The CUP is one of three pro-secession parties in the region.
Rajoy defended his decision to temporarily take over running Catalonia under a section of the Constitution that allows central authorities to intervene in regions where officials act outside the law. Catalonias separatists, and even some moderates, have criticized the measures.
Exceptional measures can only be taken when there is no other option, and we adopted them to stop the increasing attacks to peaceful coexistence, Rajoy said.
Ten Catalan separatist leaders have been jailed while their roles in promoting secession are under review. Catalonias deposed president and four former members of his Cabinet fled to Brussels and plan to fight extradition to Spain.
Joseph Wilson is an Associated Press writer.
DANANG, Vietnam President Trump said Saturday that he believes President Vladimir Putin was sincere in his denials of interference in the 2016 presidential elections, calling questions about Moscows meddling a politically motivated hit job that was hindering cooperation with Russia on life-or-death issues.
Speaking after meeting privately with Putin on the sideline of the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation summit meeting in Danang, Trump said that he had again asked whether Russia had meddled in the contest, but that the continued focus on the issue was insulting to Putin.
Trump said it is time to move past the issue so that the United States and Russia could cooperate on confronting the nuclear threat from North Korea, solving the Syrian civil war and working together on Ukraine.
He said he didnt meddle I asked him again, Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One as he flew to Hanoi for more meetings. You can only ask so many times. I just asked him again. He said he absolutely did not meddle in our election. He did not do what they are saying he did.
Trump did not answer a direct question about whether he believed Putins denials, but his account of the conversation indicated he was far more inclined to accept the Russian presidents assertions than those of his own intelligence agencies, which have concluded that Putin directed an elaborate effort to interfere in the vote. The CIA, the National Security Agency, the FBI and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence all determined that Russia meddled in the election.
Every time he sees me, he says, I didnt do that, and I really believe that when he tells me that, he means it, Trump said of Putin. I think he is very insulted by it, which is not a good thing for our country.
His remarks came as the investigation into the Trump campaigns ties to Russia deepened, with disclosures over the past two weeks showing that there were more contacts between Trump campaign advisers and Russians than were previously known, and that senior campaign officials were aware of them.
The comments inspired immediate ridicule from Democratic lawmakers, including Rep. Adam Schiff of Burbank, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, which is investigating Russian interference in the election.
You know who else is insulted by it, Mr. President? The American people, Schiff said on Twitter. You believe a foreign adversary over your own intelligence agencies.
Trump angrily dismissed the criticism in a tweet early Sunday.
When will all the haters and fools out there realize that having a good relationship with Russia is a good thing, not a bad thing, he wrote.
Trump also heaped disdain on the former leaders of three U.S. intelligence agencies John Brennan, the former CIA director; James Clapper, the former director of national intelligence; and James Comey, the FBI director he fired this year appearing to suggest that they were less trustworthy than Putin.
I mean, give me a break theyre political hacks, Trump said. You have Brennan, you have Clapper, and you have Comey. Comeys proven now to be a liar, and hes proven to be a leaker, so you look at that.
Julie Hirschfeld Davis is a New York Times writer.
MANILA President Trump offered Sunday to mediate in the South China Sea disputes, while his Chinese counterpart played down concerns over Beijings military buildup and the prospects of war in the contested waters.
Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping spoke separately about the territorial rifts ahead of an annual summit of Southeast Asian nations that also includes the U.S., China and other global players. The disputes are expected to get the spotlight at the summit, along with the North Korean nuclear threat and terrorism.
The long-simmering disputes are one issue where the two major powers influence, focus and military might have been gauged, with the U.S. and China both calling for a peaceful resolution but taking contrasting positions in most other aspects of the conflict.
Unlike China, the U.S. is not a claimant to the potentially oil-rich and busy waters, but it has declared that it has a national interest in ensuring freedom of navigation and overflight and the peaceful resolution of the disputes. Several nations back an active American military presence in the region to serve as a counterweight to Chinas increasingly assertive actions, including the construction of seven man-made islands equipped with military installations.
Im a very good mediator and arbitrator, Trump said at a news conference with Vietnamese President Tran Dai Quang in Vietnams capital, Hanoi, before flying to Manila for the summit of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations.
Trumps offer faces major obstacles. For one, China has steadfastly opposed what it calls U.S. meddling in the disputes and has balked at the U.S. Navys incursions into what Beijing considers its territorial waters in the South China Sea.
The Philippines, the head of ASEANs rotational chairmanship, said member states of the 10-nation regional bloc have to consult each other but thanked Trump for the offer.
He is the master of the art of the deal, but of course, the claimant countries have to answer as a group or individually ... mediation involves all the claimants and nonclaimants, said Philippine Foreign Secretary Alan Peter Cayetano.
Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte said Xi, during a meeting in Danang, Vietnam, where they attended an economic forum last week, assured him of Chinas peaceful intentions in the strategic waterway, where Beijing, the Philippines, Vietnam and three other governments have overlapping claims.
Jim Gomez is an Associated Press writer.
New footage that surfaced Sunday purports to debunk part of the story in a viral video that showed Mumbai traffic policemen towing a car away with a woman and her baby still inside.
Jyoti Male, the woman who was inside a car when it was towed away by Mumbai traffic policemen
By India Today Web Desk: It is video versus video in Mumbai. After footage went viral of Mumbai traffic police towing a car away with a woman - Jyoti Male - apparently breastfeeding her baby inside, a second video has surfaced purporting to debunk what is shown in the recording from yesterday.
The second video (you can watch the video at the end of this report) that surfaced today seems to have been shot moments before Mumbai traffic policemen start towing the car away. The video shows Male sitting in the rear seat of the car with the door open.
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Policemen - both in the normal khakhi uniform and the white dress of the traffic department - are seen gathered around the car talking to the woman.
The cops are seen and heard asking the woman to step out of the car, with one of the traffic policemen saying the vehicle is already attached to the two truck.
Notably, the video doesn't show if the woman was already in the car when Mumbai traffic police officials attached it to the tow truck. The most notably aspect of the new video, however, is that the baby involved in this controversy is seen outside the vehicle while it is still stationery and not being towed away yet.
The child is seen in the arms of a man, presumably the father and Jyoti Male's husband. The second, newer video abruptly ends amid all the commotion and doesn't show the moment the traffic cops began towing the car away.
FIRST VIDEO
The original video that went viral yesterday began with the car already being towed by the Mumbai traffic police. Jyoti Male is seen inside the car with the baby from the start of the video.
This video was apparently shot by Male's husband who is heard shouting at the cops that his wife was breastfeeding inside the car when they started towing the vehicle away.
Soon after the video went viral, Male lashed out at the Mumbai Police. "The policemen towing the car did not ask me to get down even once. When I told them that I am breastfeeding my baby they still did not stop," she said.
Two sides to every story, as seen in Mumbai car towing case involving woman with baby #ITVideoFor more videos: https://t.co/NounxnP7mg pic.twitter.com/1hVI4K2wh0- India Today (@IndiaToday) November 12, 2017
QUESTIONS
Between the first and the second video, the question that arises is how did the child get into the car when the recording that surfaced today shows the baby outside the car before it was towed.
Also not clear is whether the woman was already inside the car when Mumbai traffic policemen decided to tow it away. What is clear, so far, is the following: The policemen had tried to get the woman to get out of the car and the baby was outside the vehicle before it was towed away.
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What is also clear is that the policemen still decided to go ahead with towing the car away even though the woman - who seems to have refused to pay heed to requests asking her to get out - still was in the car. The cops also likely knew that the baby was in the car as they were towing the vehicle away.
OUTRAGE
The video yesterday generated immense outrage. One of the traffic policemen involved in the incident was immediately suspended soon after the video went viral.
Responding to the first video, Mumbai's Joint Commissioner of Police (Traffic), Amitesh Kumar said , "He (the traffic policeman who was suspended) endangered the life of that infant. Once the lady and child entered the car he should have stopped the towing."
Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis too condemned the actions of the police. "Very unfortunate. Absolutely insensitive & dangerous to tow the vehicle with lady and the child inside. The cop is suspended and orders have been given to sensitize traffic cops so as to prevent such incidents," Fadnavis said in a statement today.
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(With inputs from India Today bureau in Mumbai and agencies)
WATCH | The two videos that show different sides of the Mumbai car-towing controversy
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ISTANBUL Turkey has dismissed as ludicrous and groundless a report that Turkish officials may have discussed kidnapping a U.S.-based Muslim cleric in exchange for millions of dollars.
On Friday, the Wall Street Journal reported that Special Counsel Robert Mueller was investigating an alleged plot involving former U.S. National Security Adviser Michael Flynn and his son to forcibly remove Fethullah Gulen and hand him over to Ankara for as much as $15 million.
Turkey blames Gulen for last years failed coup attempt. Gulen denies the claim.
In a statement on Twitter, Turkeys embassy in Washington reiterated demands that the U.S. extradite Gulen so he can stand trial. The embassy said Turkey has been working with U.S. agencies to provide evidence of Gulens culpability and rejected allegations that Turkey would resort to means external to the rule of law. Flynns lawyers also have disputed the Journal report.
Turkish officials say they have provided U.S. officials with ample evidence for Gulens involvement in the coup that killed 250 people. Nearly 50,000 people are behind bars in Turkey, and more than 100,000 civil servants have been dismissed from their jobs for alleged links to the clerics network in the governments crackdown after the coup attempt.
The Turkish embassy said the Turkish people find Gulens continued refuge in the U.S. perplexing and deeply frustrating.
Gulen has been living in the U.S. for nearly two decades. He is a former ally of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan until a public fallout in 2013 led the government to declare Gulens network a terror group.
Relations between Turkey and the U.S. have been tense over disagreements on multiple fronts. The two countries suspended non-immigrant visa services in October in a tit-for-tat after the arrest of two local U.S. embassy employees. The services resumed on a limited basis this month.
In a meeting last week, Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim and Vice President Michael Pence discussed the issues, including the U.S. backing of Syrian Kurdish militants in the war against the Islamic State group. Turkey considers the militants an extension of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party.
Zeynep Bilginsoy is an Associated Press writer.
Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi has raised with his new New Zealand counterpart, Winston Peters, the extradition of Chinese nationals facing corruption and criminal charges.
Long an ambition of Beijing, the issue of an extradition treaty has stalled because of New Zealands opposition to Chinas extensive use of the death penalty, including for commercial crimes.
The issue of corrupt individuals wanted in China and domiciled in New Zealand did seriously come up, Peters told New Zealand media in the Philippines capital, Manila, where he is accompanying Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern at the East Asian Summit meeting hosted by the Association of South East Asian Nations.
The pair moved yesterday from Da Nang, Vietnam, from the annual Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation leaders summit to Manila as part of Arderns first outing on the international stage.
Peters said he had raised the precedent where a most wanted Chinese national, William Yan aka Bill Liu, had been convicted in a New Zealand court of money laundering funds obtained corruptly in China. In that case, Yan was sentenced to five months home detention in New Zealand and repatriated assets worth $42 million to China.
That was a very successful case and they understood that, said Peters. That will be a serious precedent in the future. I think its fair enough for us to cooperate with them, providing of course that they dont execute anybody as a consequence of our action.
However, Peters stopped short of supporting opening extradition treaty negotiations with Beijing.
I would consult with my colleagues in the government to make sure we were all on the same wavelength, he said at a media conference where Ardern said she would be raising New Zealands dim view of the use of the death penalty in her bi-lateral meeting Monday with the Chinese premier, Li Keqiang.
Ardern also has formal meetings scheduled at the ASEAN summit with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the Indonesian president Jokowi Wadodo and the president of the European Council, Donald Tusk.
She did not formally meet Chinese president Xi Jinping at APEC and is not meeting US president Donald Trump formally at either meeting.
On the prospects for the stalled negotiation of a free trade agreement with India, Ardern said advancement of the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement, which includes India, was seen as a quicker route for improved trade ties.
She would reissue a long-standing invitation to Modi to visit New Zealand.
A meeting of ministers in the RCEP negotiations is occurring on the sidelines of the ASEAN summit, with Agriculture Minister Damien OConnor representing New Zealand.
She is also seeking a further meeting with her Australian counterpart, Malcolm Turnbull, where she has turned up the heat in the last two days over the need for progress on the plight of some 600 asylum seekers on Papua New Guineas Manus Island, where Australia has been holding them. A humanitarian crisis is unfolding as the detainees protest the closure of the facility where they have been held, citing personal safety fears.
(BusinessDesk)
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Prime Minister Narendra Modi's visit to Manila would be watched for far too many things than simply his meeting with US President Donald Trump and two multi-lateral summits.
By India Today Web Desk: Prime Minister Narendra Modi is in the Philippines to attend the 15th ASEAN-India summit and 12th East Asia summit. But, his Philippines visit is not only about the two summits.
Before leaving for Manila, the capital city of Philippines today, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said that his visit symbolises India's commitment to deepening ties with the ASEAN member states and the Indo-Pacific region as part of the 'act east policy'.
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PM Narendra Modi emphasised that his visit to Manila will give a new boost to India's bilateral relations with the Philippines, and also further strengthen the politico-security, economic and socio-cultural pillars of India's engagement with ASEAN.
WHAT IS ON AGENDA?
This is PM Narendra Modi's first bilateral visit to the Philippines, where apart from participating in the ASEAN-India and East Asia Summits, he would also take part in Special Celebrations of the 50th anniversary of ASEAN, Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) Leaders' Meeting and ASEAN Business and Investment Summit.
Narendra Modi would hold a bilateral meeting with Philippines president Rodrigo Duterte and also have interactions with other ASEAN and East Asia Summit Leaders. He would be meeting Indian community in the Philippines besides visiting the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) and Mahavir Philippines Foundation Inc (MPFI).
IRRI, through scientific research and development, has developed better quality of rice seed and helped the global community in addressing food scarcity issues. The Modi government in July this year approved a proposal by the IRRI to set up its South Asia Regional Centre at Varanasi, the Lok Sabha constituency of the prime minister. This will be the first Research Centre by IRRI outside its headquarters in the Philippines.
The MPFI has a special India connection because of its contribution towards distributing free prosthesis 'Jaipur Foot' among the needy amputees. Since its establishment in 1989, MPFI has fitted nearly 15,000 amputees in the Philippines with 'Jaipur Foot'.
WHAT ABOUT ASEAN?
The ASEAN grouping comprises Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Brunei, Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar and Vietnam. The 10-member grouping ASEAN and India comprises a total population of 1.85 billion people which is one-fourth of the global population.
The combined GDP has been estimated at over 3.8 trillion dollars. Trade between India and ASEAN stood at USD 65.04 billion in 2015-16 and comprises 10.12 per cent of India's total trade with the world.
Apart from the 10 ASEAN Member states, East Asia Summit includes India, China, Japan, Republic of Korea, Australia, New Zealand, the United States and Russia.
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MEETING WITH DONALD TRUMP
Prime Minister Narendra Modi will hold a bilateral meeting tomorrow with US President Donald Trump, who is on a five-nation tour of Asia. The meeting will be held on the sidelines of ASEAN.
The Narendra Modi-Donald Trump meeting is the first one-on-one engagement of the two leaders since Japan proposed to have a quadrilateral alliance comprising India, the US, Japan, and Australia.
Japan's Foreign Minister Taro Kono had indicated last month that a formal proposal for quadrilateral alliance would be made on the sidelines of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) summit.
In their meeting, Modi and Trump are likely to discuss a host of key issues of mutual interest including the security scenario in the region. Trump on Friday praised India's "astounding" growth after it opened up its economy and also lauded Modi, saying he has been working successfully to bring the vast country and its people together.
Speaking at a gathering of CEOs on the sidelines of the annual Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in the Vietnamese city of Danang, Trump cited India as one of the countries in the Indo-Pacific region making strides.
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WHAT IS QUADRILATERAL DIPLOMACY?
Reports suggest that if not the heads of India, the US, Japan and Australia, then the officials of these countries would sit down and explore the feasibility of such an alliance in the fast changing global power equation. Japan has categorically said that it favours a dialogue between the four countries to boost strategic partnership.
India has expressed its willingness by stating that it is open to working with like-minded countries on issues that advance its interests. The Trump administration has also said that it is looking at a "working-level" quadrilateral meeting in the near term with India, Japan and Australia.
Narendra Modi's meeting with Donald Trump comes up in the backdrop of growing Chinese assertiveness in the South China Sea and south Asian region. Donald Trump has said it, on a few occasions, that the US favours a larger role for India in the strategically key Indo-Pacific region.
The use of the term "Indo-Pacific" by Trump has led to speculation that it may have something to do with Washington preparing the ground for a revival of the so-called Quadrilateral strategic alliance between the US, Japan, Australia and India to counter China's rise.
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(With PTI inputs)
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By PTI: New Delhi, Nov 12 (PTI) The NIA detained three people and recovered gold biscuits weighing 2kg today, and claimed to have busted an inter-state gang of conmen who allegedly cheated many people on the pretext of exchanging fake Indian currency notes (FICN) and smuggled gold.
The National Investigation Agency (NIA) said it had handed over Rashid Khan (40), Gagan K Vyas (49) and Iqbal Ahmad Ansari to Rajasthan Police after they were nabbed from Dholpur.
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The trio, who were allegedly negotiating with a Bangladeshi FICN smuggler, Darul Sheikh, were apprehended during the agencys ongoing probe into an FICN racket case emerging from the Malda area of West Bengal, along the India- Bangladesh border.
NIA teams subsequently carried out multiple searches in Mumbai and Kolhapur as part of the morning operation and recovered 20 gold biscuits of 100 grams each, the agency said.
As per initial probe, the central probe agency said it came to light that "an inter-state gang had been active since long in the states of Maharashtra, Rajasthan, Delhi, and West Bengal".
They primarily lured people on the pretext of exchanging high-quality FICN or unbilled gold biscuits at attractive rates.
They either looted their targets directly or carried out fake police raids with the help of other associates.
The NIA said the gullible targets of these conmen used to leave their money behind and could not even lodge police complaints.
The investigation is on to ascertain more about the three and their alleged accomplices, it said. PTI NES SKL SMN
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Replying to an RTI query, the central bank said the decision was taken after considering "the wider and equal opportunities" available to all citizens to access banking and financial services.
The proposal to introduce Islamic banking in India was examined by the RBI. Photo for representation: Reuters.
By PTI: In a major move, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has decided not to pursue a proposal for introduction of Islamic banking in the country.
Replying to an RTI query, the central bank said the decision was taken after considering "the wider and equal opportunities" available to all citizens to access banking and financial services.
Islamic or Sharia banking is a finance system based on the principles of not charging interest, which is prohibited under Islam. The issue of introduction of Islamic banking in India was examined by the RBI and the government of India, the RBI said.
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"Taking into account, the wider and equal opportunities available to all citizens to access banking and financial services, it has been decided not to pursue the proposal further," the central bank said in its reply to the RTI application filed by a PTI correspondent.
The RBI was asked to provide details of steps being taken for the introduction of Islamic or interest-free banking in India.
RAGHURAM-LED PANEL WANTED A CLOSER LOOK
Prime Minister Narendra Modi had on August 28, 2014 launched Jan Dhan Yojana, a national mission to bring about comprehensive financial inclusion of all the households in the country.
In late 2008, a committee on Financial Sector Reforms, headed by former RBI governor Raghuram Rajan, had stressed on the need for a closer look at the issue of interest-free banking in the country.
"Certain faiths prohibit the use of financial instruments that pay interest. The non-availability of interest-free banking products results in some Indians, including those in the economically disadvantaged strata of society, not being able to access banking products and services due to reasons of faith," the committee had said.
Later, on the instruction of the central government, an inter-departmental group (IDG) set up in the RBI examined the legal, technical and regulatory issues for introducing interest free banking in India and has submitted its report to the government.
AN ISLAMIC WINDOW IN CONVENTIONAL BANKS
The RBI had in February last year sent a copy of the IDG report to the finance ministry and recommended an "Islamic window" in conventional banks for gradual introduction of Sharia-compliant banking.
"In our considered opinion, given the complexities of Islamic finance and various regulatory and supervisory challenges involved in the matter and also due to the fact that Indian banks have no experience in this field, Islamic banking may be introduced in India in a gradual manner," it had said in a letter to the ministry.
"Initially, a few simple products which are similar to conventional banking products may be considered for introduction through Islamic window of the conventional banks after necessary notification by the government," the letter said.
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The letter further read: "It is also our understanding that interest free banking for financial inclusion will require a proper process of the product being certified as Sharia complaint will be required both on the asset and liability side and the funds received under the interest free banking could not be mingled with other funds and therefore, this banking will have to be conducted under a separate window."
ALSO WATCH: Growth forecast falls to 6.7 per cent, inflation may go up to 4.6 per cent, projects RBI
--- ENDS ---
STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- In a flowing red, white and blue costume, I stepped onto the stage of the Intrepid in Manhattan under the hot sun. It was Fleet Week 2016 and my dance company was performing a lyrical dance to Mariah Carey's "Hero."
At first, I was very nervous. But once the music started, I performed the dance we had been practicing for seven months with ease.
This was the first lyrical dance I performed on a Brandy's Dance Unique competition team.
FIRST LOVE
From the moment I walked into my first lyrical class, I was in love with this style of dance.
Lyrical allows you to use your technical ability, while showing emotion and gracefulness. It's not as technical as ballet, or as upbeat as jazz. Every movement flows into the next.
Unlike many of my fellow dancers, I don't take classes in every style of dance. For example, hip hop is just not my thing. I took tap classes from the age of four, up until two years ago, and realized it's just not my favorite style of dance.
And while lyrical tops my list of dance styles, I also compete in jazz numbers and take weekly ballet and technique classes.
STARTING OUT
When most people start dancing school they take tap and ballet classes.
After a period of time, dancers are introduced to hip hop, jazz, contemporary and lyrical. Sometimes people specialize in one or two styles, but many times people take all different classes.
"My favorite style of dance is definitely lyrical or hip-hop. They are very different from each other, but they are the two styles where I feel I can express myself most," said Deanna Albano, 14, of Castleton Corners, a dancer at Rhythm Central Dance Company (RCDC) in Grasmere.
"I knew that lyrical suited me best because it is a style that I feel I can express myself most in. Dance is really a way for me to express myself and show what I love to do. My second home is the studio and stage, and it always has been," added Albano, who has been dancing for 11 years.
Madison Bush, 13, a dancer at Brandy's Dance Unique who travels from Cranford N.J. to take the dance classes she loves, says tap and lyrical are her favorite styles of dance.
"I have loved tap ever since I was a little girl. My mom used to be a dancer as well as a dance teacher, and I would always watch her competition dances from when she was younger," said Bush, who has been dancing for 11 years.
"Today when I do tap I love getting to learn so many new steps and being able to create a sound and a rhythm with my own two feet. ...I started lyrical when I was in third grade and from my very first class, I fell in love. I love being able to put so much emotion into my dances, and actually being able to make the audience feel something when I dance," she added.
FIGURING OUT WHAT YOU DO BEST
Like me, my friend Victoria Yzaguirre, 13, a dancer at Brandy's Dance Unique, dropped hip hop dance classes.
"Jazz is easier for me and I feel I can best express myself in jazz. My body just can't do the moves in hip hop like some other people," said Yzaguirre.
Bridget Keag,12, of Randall Manor said she fell in love with jazz seven years ago when she started dancing.
"I[?] feel like I can be myself, and it's a lot of fun," said Keag, a student at Dance, Dance, Dance in West Brighton.
Ashley Maloy, 13, is a dancer at Brandy's Dance Unique
STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- Port Richmond High School's current principal is facing scrutiny for allegedly living in New York while insuring her car in another state, according to a New York Post report.
The article states that Oneatha Swinton, interim acting principal of Port Richmond, lives and works on Staten Island -- but has registered her Lexus SUV at an East Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania address, according to documents obtained by the Post.
Swinton's car allegedly dons Pennsylvania license plates, the report states.
The Pennsylvania address is allegedly home to Tanya John, an educational vendor who has been hired by Swinton, adds the Post.
When reached by the Post at a school meeting, the article says Swinton said, "Oh no!" and referred all questions to the Department of Education.
A spokesman said Swinton "has residency" in Pennsylvania, but would not explain why she lists the vendor's address as her own, the report states.
This isn't the first bit of controversy surrounding the newly hired principal.
Last month, some parents of Port Richmond High School students disagreed over recent changes at the school.
At the crux of the issues were concerns about Port Richmond's honors program, including a rumor that it had been eliminated.
STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- Veterans were awarded free meals -- as well as many grateful hand shakes -- at all four Applebee's locations on the Island for Veterans' Day today.
Both veterans and active duty military were fed free-of-charge by the restaurant chain across the country.
This Saturday marks the 10-year anniversary of Applebee's Veterans' Day tradition, which has provided more than 8.3 million free meals to the country's veterans and active-duty military every Nov. 11 since 2008.
The chain expects to serve about one million more veterans this year and is also thanking our country's military men and women with an additional $5 Bounceback card, valid through 12-3-17 at any Applebee's restaurant location.
Girl Scouts passed out hand-made thank you notes to veterans and active military members at the Applebee's in Graniteville, and students from Star Struck Dance Studio did the same at the Staten Island Mall location.
Also at the Graniteville Applebee's, young diners thanked 93-year-old World War II veteran Gregory Cavallo of Sunnyside, who served in the Battle of the Bugle.
At the New Dorp location, Rolling Thunder motorcyclists -- a nonprofit group that aims to bring full accountability for prisoners of war and missing in action service members of all U.S. wars -- drove up and veteran members were fed for free.
Famed Island runner and Desert Storm veteran Tommy Hart of Castleton Corners chatted with other veterans and active military, like Donnell Spikes of Graniteville, who just returned from Iraq.
STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- One of the telephone calls Nicole Malliotakis made when she woke up Wednesday after losing her bid to become New York City's first female, and Staten Island, mayor was to the guy who defeated her - Bill de Blasio.
That bodes well for Staten Island.
So if you voted for Malliotakis and feel your vote was wasted because the incumbent cruised to victory, it was not.
The assemblywoman equipped herself well during the campaign, gained a lot of experience, met a lot of New Yorkers, and positioned herself prominently on the radar screen of Republican politics in the state of New York.
Along the way, that had to raise the profile of Staten Island among many of the elite New Yorkers who believe the negative image often portrayed about this community.
Malliotakis hasn't said if she plans to seek another citywide or statewide office in the future. It's too early for that.
But she did tell de Blasio she is ready to help him.
During the Wednesday call, she told the mayor what the Advance has preached for years - a one-size-fits-all policy does not work in New York City. Each borough has different needs. We have called for more local control since Rudy Giuliani walked out of City Hall.
"I offered my help and he was very gracious," Malliotakis told us and the Wall Street Journal.
She also talked of property tax inequity with the mayor.
"I'm going to keep pressing him to make sure he does the property tax commission he promised," she said.
For those Staten Islanders who think we are doomed because Bill de Blasio was reelected, think again.
The Advance endorsed Malliotakis for mayor. We believed in her moderate philosophy about how a city should run, and disagreed with all those who claimed she didn't have the experience. She possessed enough experience to take on the job, and certainly has the capacity to quickly get up to speed.
She knows the good and the bad of how government operates after serving in the state Assembly since 2011.
That said, Staten Island fared OK during de Blasio's first term. You cannot argue with Universal Pre-K, road re-pavings, a better snow removal plan, additional money for Staten Island cultural institutions, better Staten Island ferry service and a crime rate that keeps dropping.
But we can argue about oddly-placed bike lanes, a "five-borough" ferry system that leaves us out, aggressive development, and the potential of homeless shelters scattered all over the borough as part of the plan for 90 in the city.
During the Bloomberg administration, there was talk of establishing a deputy mayor for each borough. Not by Bloomberg himself but by some "players" in the community. At the very least, Mike Bloomberg had someone on his staff, and within his circle, specifically instructed to monitor all-thing-Staten-Island. And Bloomberg himself was known to reach out to people around the borough to get input on what he should know.
That does not happen often enough in the de Blasio administration. It should.
Borough President James Oddo has a strong relationship with the mayor, but he cannot call him every day with a Staten Island issue. Dealing with some others in his administration can be a challenge.
Oddo could be in constant contact with a Deputy Mayor for Staten Island.
Perhaps, Mayor de Blasio, you might consider this, and seek out the woman who had the nerve to take you on, waging a tireless campaign to get issues that affect Staten Island - as well as other boroughs - heard.
Deputy Mayor Malliotakis. Has a nice ring to it.
P Chidambaram took to Twitter to criticise the Modi government over it's decision to ban Rs 500 and 1000 notes in November last year.
By India Today Web Desk: A year after Modi government decided to ban Rs 500 and 1000 notes, former Finance Minister P Chidambaram has slammed the government in a series of tweets calling the decision "thoughtless".
On Sunday morning, Chidambaram tweeted about the failure of Demonetisation reiterating that demonetisation was not the answer to fake Indian currency notes.
In a series of tweets, Chidambaram slammed the intent behind introducing Demonetisation.
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"Despite demonetisation, corruption thrives. Bribe givers and bribe takers are being caught regularly, often red-handed," Chidambaram said in one of the tweets.
Calling Demonetisation a thoughtless and rash decision, Chidambram pointed out that everyday a portion of the black money escapes tax and is used for various purposes like giving bribes, funding elections, betting, hiring casual labour etc.
Ending the series of tweets, Chidambaram said that no government has the right to inflict unbearable hardship and misery on people.
Read the tweets below:
A few days ago, speaking at an India Today event on Demonetisation, P Chidambaram had said that even a natural calamity could not heap as much misery as the note ban did.
"Families went hungry for days, small businesses were wiped out... over 100 people died standing in queues," the former Finance Minister said.
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A group of women protested against Padmavati, and also burnt an effigy of director Sanjay Leela Bhansali in Varanasi.
By India Today Web Desk: There's clearly no end to the troubles for Padmavati, starring Ranveer Singh, Deepika Padukone and Shahid Kapoor. As the release date for Sanjay Leela Bhansali's magnum opus looms nearer, the protests against the film are getting more fierce.
A women's group, representing Rajput women, in Uttar Pradesh's Varanasi protested against Bhansali's Padmavati and said that he had distorted historical facts . During the protest, the women also burnt Bhansali's effigy at Lahurabeer in Varanasi. They held several banners that had slogans against Bhansali.
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Before this, the Shri Rajput Karni Sena and several other political groups had accused Bhansali of the same. They have beaten him up , burnt down sets, and even destroyed a rangoli. They are convinced that that there is a dream sequence between Alauddin Khilji (Ranveer Singh) and Rani Padmini (Deepika Padukone).
Bhansali has clarified numerous times, that there's no truth to the rumours. He has even asserted that the film is a tribute to Rajput valour and bravery, which is clearly visible from the trailer. However, the groups refuse to listen and continue their onslaught against the film. They even tried requesting the Supreme Court to ban the film. The SC dismissed the plea .
The film will release on December 1.
ALSO WATCH: Sanjay Leela Bhansali thrashed, sets of Padmavati vandalised by Karni Sena
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Here's a common narrative from the Leftist playbook:
Decide upon a major societal change, which few people agree with.
Convince your Leftist friendly politicians to enact legislation supporting this change.
Anytime anyone dares publicly disagree with this change, get your apparatchiks to declare them hateful.
If some disagreeing won't stop, then pull out the Hitler card.
This is the successful tactic of how Leftist SJWs have normalized a whole host of issues over the past many years.
Such is precisely what occurred recently at Wilfred Laurier University:
A Wilfrid Laurier University teaching assistant has been identified as "transphobic" and sanctioned for last week showing her class an excerpt of a video debate involving the controversial University of Toronto psychology professor Jordan Peterson. In fact, her supervising professor, Nathan Rambukkana, told her that by showing the video to her "Canadian Communication in Context" class, "it basically was like ... neutrally playing a speech by Hitler ..." Lindsay Shepherd, a 22-year-old graduate student at the school in Waterloo, Ont., was informed that merely by showing the clip, taken from a televised debate between Peterson and Nicholas Matte, a lecturer at the U of T's Sexual Diversity Studies program, she was "legitimizing" Peterson's views about genderless pronouns. She has been told that she must now submit her lesson plans to her supervisor in advance, that he may sit in on her next few classes and she must "not show any more controversial videos of this kind."
Further to the attacks on Jordan Peterson, if one dares speak out against those attacking him then those like Darren Cheng will step in to support the efforts to squash Free Speech. In and around Remembrance Day this is especially repugnant.
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But police dismissed the connection between the two incidents less than a year later, leaving Mrs Palasics' family in limbo again. Mr Mikita said this month's anniversary of his grandmother's death marked 18 years of "heartbreak, disappointment and losing trust in the people who are there to keep us safe in doing just that". He used to feel his home town was "the safest place on earth" before the attack transformed his view of the city to a place "my grandparents can be murdered and the offenders get away without being caught". "You have to rely on people coming forward and even with all the exposure, no-one's come forward to say anything. And that's the hardest part for us, just that distrust of other Canberrans." Mr Mikita was concerned pressure on police resources, insufficient funding and frequent staff changes in the homicide team had lessened his family's chances of ever finding answers.
"I am afraid that if the priorities of the powers that be continue to under-fund or under-value the vital work needed to ensure those cold case families like ours have their investigations solved. "When you research the statistics it's quite shocking to think that if things keep going on, it's only a matter of time before another family goes through what we have." Australian Federal Police Association president Angela Smith said resourcing pressures could affect cold case investigations, but it was more likely no fresh evidence had emerged. She said probing unsolved cases was "resource intensive" and police "resources are cut to the bone at the moment". "The only way [police] would close a cold case is if they absolutely know the murderer is dead. They're never closed permanently.
"Police - it's an innate thing - we want to solve crimes, and we always have the family at the forefront of our minds." An ACT Policing spokeswoman said all cold case investigations in the territory remained active. She said any new information police got would be "assessed and actioned appropriately". "Police urge anyone with information, no matter how minor, to contact Crime Stoppers on 1800 333 000, as this information could be key to furthering the investigation." Mr Mikita said the weeks around the anniversary were always difficult for his family. His mother, Elizabeth Mikita, this week said she lived with hope someone in the community would "do the right thing". "We all miss Mum desperately and think often about the way she died," she said.
Canberra charities are struggling to stay afloat after a decade of "turmoil" and "disruption", the ACT Council of Social Service says.
In a new report, the council has called on the ACT government to create a contingency fund "up to the low millions" to support the community sector through "a torrent of change ... like no other in living memory", and to cover gaps created by funding shifts under the National Disability Insurance Scheme.
ACTCOSS director Susan Helyar is calling for a stocktake of the human services sector after a decade of disruption. Credit:Jay Cronan
The council's director, Susan Helyar, said growth in demand for services over the past decade had not been matched by a growth in funding, meaning not-for-profit groups and community providers were now forced to do more with less.
Of the 401 organisations operating in the ACT, Ms Helyar said two thirds reported funding levels weren't enough to meet demand.
Chang-Kee Song got an expensive lesson that the house always wins.
The southside drug dealer initially won when he beat a money laundering rap in the ACT Supreme Court, claiming that hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash had come from counting cards.
A safe containing $377,905 in cash was found hidden under the Phillip home of Chang-Kee Song.
But prosecutors soon found a hole in his story and seized the $397,355 found hidden in his Phillip home.
Police found cash, 4.355 grams of heroin, and other drug paraphernalia during the raid in June last year.
Thieves have stolen seven ornamental trees, valued at about $700, from The RUC at Turner.
Club staff fear the Japanese Maples will not survive the move as the plants flower in spring and disrupting the root system could prove fatal.
The RUC Turner Bowls Club secretary-manager Jeremy Wilcox and Owls rugby club's Tom Gilmore were disappointed to find that seven Japanese maple trees have been stolen from planter boxes. Credit:Karleen Minney
It is the second significant theft from the northside clubs grounds this year, with flooring, to be used in a newly created gym, swiped in March.
ACT Policing confirmed it had received a report that seven plants had been stolen in Turner on Friday, November 3 about 3am.
As the fictional villain Gordon Gekko says in Money Never Sleeps: "If there's one thing I learned in prison it's that money is not the prime commodity in our lives time is."
Our former top corporate cop, Greg Medcraft, could not agree more.
Greg Medcraft working out at Moore Park Gym with his trainer. Have we mentioned that he is fit? Credit:Christopher Pearce
You could not accuse him of skiving off during his final days in charge of ASIC.
It was a big week. On top of the normal handover stuff for his replacement, James Shipton, Medcraft got to savour sweet victory with the courts ratifying the NAB and ANZ BBSW settlements on Greg's final day in the office on Friday.
By PTI: Quetta, Nov 12 (PTI) Two days after a suicide bomber killed a top-ranking police officer here, the security forces gunned down three suspected militants in the Zarghoonabad area of Nawan Killi in Pakistans restive Balochistan province.
Home minister, Balochistan, Mir Sarfaraz Bugti said a joint search operation was carried out by the Frontier Corps and Counter Terrorism Department (CTD) in the Zarghoonabad area on Friday night following information about the presence of militants in a house.
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"The militants opened fire on the search party and in retaliation three of them were killed," he said.
The operation was conducted after DIG Telecommunications Hamid Shakeel Sabir, along with ASI Ramzan Muhammad Hasani and constable Jalil Ahmed Kurd, was killed on Thursday when a suicide bomber struck his convoy while he was coming out of his house here.
Bugti said the security forces seized a large cache of ammunition, suicide vests and communication equipment from the house.
All the three militants belonged to an extremist organisation, he said.
Their bodies have been shifted to the Civil Hospital for identification, the home minister said.
The Tehreek-e-Taliban, also known as the Pakistani Taliban, had claimed responsibility for the deadly attack on Sabir, who had worked in a senior position with the CTD and carried out several operations against terrorists before he was transferred as the DIG Telecommunications. PTI CORR AQS AQS
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Consumer giant Procter & Gamble is using China's Singles Day online shopping event to sell Chinese women a product they rarely buy: tampons.
Just 1 per cent of Chinese women use these alternatives to menstrual pads, as compared to about 60 per cent in the US, according to Tampax, which invented them in 1933.
Daniel Zhang Yong, chief of China's largest e-commerce giant Alibaba Group, near a screen showing the amount of money consumers have spent after the conclusion of the Singles Day global online shopping festival in Shanghai, China,. Credit:AP
That sales potential prompted P&G's Tampax brand to launch a new, China-specific branded tampon during the $US17 billion ($22.2 billion) online shopping holiday run by e-commerce giant Alibaba on November 11.
Menstruation products represent a $US35.4 billion industry worldwide. Sales are expected to top $US40 billion globally in the next three years, according to Global Industry Analysts.
You may not have noticed, but the Productivity Commission's search for "a new policy model" for reform, in reaction to the breakdown of the politicians' "neoliberal consensus", offers better prospects for finally getting the budget under control.
That's because, although the commission doesn't say so, its reformed approach to reform represents a retreat from a central tenet of neoliberal doctrine for the past 30 years: the goal of Smaller Government.
Most economists never doubt that a growing economy is what keeps us happy.
The retreat makes sense for three reasons. First, because attempts to reduce government's role in the economy think privatisation, deregulation and cuts in government spending are central to the populist revolt against neoliberalism.
Second, because the smaller-government push has had little success and, particularly in recent times, some spectacular failures think the attempt to reform TAFE by making vocational education and training "contestable" by for-profit providers, which the commission now admits was a "disastrous intervention".
Odyssey House staff member Tammy Shiva says people phone her about alcohol and other drug support services for a range of reasons.
One caller might be feeling remorseful following the police intervention that their drug-affected behaviour sparked. Another may have drug dealers hounding them for money.
Odyssey House community services intake officer Tammy Shiva.
Generally, says Shiva, the clients who call are reckoning with a range of problems that can include poor mental health, unemployment, family breakdown, financial strain, legal problems and housing struggles.
Shiva helps educate her clients about the community services Odyssey House makes available and she collects their background information to help assess their suitability for services.
The ACT Chief Police Officer, Justine Saunders, had plenty to be happy about last week. ACT Policing's annual report revealed that, last financial year, the territory's crime levels remained stable.
Unfortunately for Saunders, the Canberra Liberal's police spokeswoman, Giulia Jones, saw things differently, and focussed her energy on the ACT's low police numbers. As a result, last week's annual reports hearing failed to highlight a very important policing development in the ACT: the community's apparent increased trust in its police.
ACT Chief Police Officer Justine Saunders with Police Minister Mick Gentleman. Credit:Karleen Minney
For many years, ACT Policing has sought to implement the last great police management fad: community policing. This fad called for a shift from the traditional security and enforcement-focussed policing model to one in which police worked in partnership with the community to solve crime.
If this community-policing approach was working, the ACT ought to have seen an increase in prosecutions or a decrease in crime by now. However, despite the best efforts of all involved, neither benefit materialised.
Crisis? What crisis? Now that the Turnbull government has lost its parliamentary majority, and with the media talking non-stop of a constitutional crisis, the common question is how serious is Australia's situation.
The first point is that the government has not fallen. Nor is it likely to. Greens leader Richard Di Natale claims Malcolm Turnbull won't survive till Christmas. That's wishful thinking, not hard analysis.
Turnbull's majority would be restored if his government wins both the looming byelections. But even if it doesn't, even if Barnaby Joyce and John Alexander lose their byelections, Turnbull will simply continue as the leader of a minority government. As the Gillard government did for three years.
Minority government in most democracies worldwide is normal, and in most of Australia's states. Turnbull would be in trouble only if he lost the backing of the two crossbench MPs who have given undertakings to support the government on the survival votes confidence and supply.
Last week, the ACT's police chief, Justine Saunders, did something rather unexpected. While fronting a Legislative Assembly committee to discuss ACT Policing's annual report, she knocked back an opportunity to press for more funds for her organisation.
The Canberra Liberals had set up the Chief Police Officer to make a case for a larger budget and more officers "on the frontline". This was unsurprising; oppositions almost always complain that governments are neglecting "law and order" and that, as a result, crime is rising, regardless of whether it actually is.
The opposition was backed by the cops' union, the Australian Federal Police Association, which says ACT Policing "desperately" needs 200 more officers due to an alleged "severe lack of frontline police". Its president, Angela Smith, points out that the ACT has the lowest ratio of police to citizens of any Australian jurisdiction an entirely meaningless metric that assumes that policing Canberra is essentially the same task as policing Alice Springs, the Sydney CBD or Palm Island. It's not.
Ms Smith also says ACT police "are stretched so thin and feel that their own safety and welfare is in a dire situation". She may be advocating well on behalf of her members, but government policy, and budgetary decisions, should be based on more than mere anecdotes like this.
SMART SPEAKERS
Smart speakers bring talkative smart assistants to life but they're also good listeners; letting you check the web, play music and control smart home devices without reaching for your phone.
In the US, Amazon's Alexa smart assistant leads the pack but Google Assistant has the jump in Australia. The Google Home and Home Mini smart speakers are already on sale locally, while we wait for Amazon to launch a full-scale retail assault on Australia in the next few months which should include its range of Alexa-powered Echo smart speakers.
Apple will also throw its hat in the ring by Christmas, with Siri coming to the long-awaited Apple HomePod smart speaker.
All of these clever speakers understand natural language commands like "OK Google, play the Rolling Stones" and can tap into streaming music libraries such as Spotify. This makes them a significant threat to traditional multi-room audio systems such as Sonos. With Sonos it's easy to play the same song in unison throughout your home or different songs in each room using the Sonos app on your computer, smartphone or tablet.
Sonos outguns its rivals when it comes to sound quality, but now it's fighting back with the new Sonos One smart speaker. It supports Alexa out of the box, but Alexa doesn't work in Australia yet (although there are workarounds to trick it until Alexa launches here). Next year Sonos will add support for Google Assistant along with Apple's AirPlay 2 for connecting to iGadgets.
VERDICT
If your primary concern is music sound quality then the Sonos One is the clear winner, outperforming any wireless speaker in its size and price range. It's perfect for playing music today but as for smart assistant features you'll need to wait for official Alexa and Google Assistant support. If you're not overly fussed about sound quality then Google Home is the perfect way to bring a smart assistant into your home today.
GOOGLE HOME
$199
Roughly the size of a 600ml carton of milk and available in a range of colours, the Google Home is a good fit for the coffee table, kitchen bench or bedside table. The speaker goes surprisingly loud without distorting, with music quality that will satisfy casual listeners but underwhelm those with an ear for detail. Like the Sonos One, its microphones do an excellent job of hearing you from across the room, even in a noisy environment.
SONOS ONE
$299
The Sonos One is a tad larger than a 1kg bag of flour, making it more difficult to squeeze into tight corners, but in return you're rewarded with louder, richer sound than Google Home including plenty of bass. Its available in black or white and moisture-resistant to protect against bathroom steam. You can calibrate the Sonos One for your room and, for an extra boost, link two speakers as a stereo pair.
CHECK THIS OUT
Smart assistants give you voice control over internet-enabled smart gadgets around your home, from smart light bulbs and power adaptors to your heating and air conditioner. If you're keen on smart lights checkout the bulbs from Linksys WeMo, Philips Hue and LifX.
Australia won't know the results of the same-sex marriage survey until 10am on Wednesday morning. But there has been a growing assumption over the course of the campaign that the "yes" camp will win.
Senior ministers such as Peter Dutton and Julie Bishop have said they think the "yes" vote will win. "Yes" campaigner Sarah Hanson-Young has said she's "very, very confident". And as voting closed last week, "no" spokesman Lyle Shelton conceded, "we're chasing down a big lead".
Poll after poll has also found support for same-sex marriage is at about two to one. Just before the survey closed last week, a Guardian Essential Poll found 64 per cent of people who voted say they ticked "yes". As pollster John Stirton recently told Fairfax Media, "it's very hard to see how the 'no' case could win from here unless an awful lot of people are straight-out lying to pollsters".
But is a "yes" result the sure bet people think it is?
Award-winning documentary filmmaker and fine-art photographer Miguel Gandert shows his work highlighting his mestizaje heritage, and the fusion and tension of the relationship between Spanish Colonial and Native Cultures of the Americas. Runs through 12/29.
Querer means to want, to desire, to be in a place, with its people. In folk terminology, querencia is such a place, the center space of desire, the root of belonging and yearning to belong, that vicinity where you first beheld the light. Querencia, in collective terms, is homeland. ~Enrique Lamadrid, Nuevo Mexico Profundo
Miguel Gandert tells stories. He tells stories of his homeland, New Mexico (and beyond), its people and the cultural practices that distinguish communities from each other while simultaneously revealing their kinship. You will have to form your own words, however. Ganderts stories are told through penetrating, black and white photos. A primary focus of his work is his own mestizaje heritage and the fusion and tension of the relationship between Spanish Colonial and Native Cultures of the Americas.
Miguel Gandert, a native of Espanola, NM, is an award-winning documentary and fine-art photographer and filmmaker. His photographs have been shown in galleries and museums throughout the world and are in numerous public collections including the Smithsonian Museum of American Art, the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston and the National Museum of American History and Art at the Smithsonian.
Querencia: Rituals of the Rio Arriba opens Friday, October 6 at the New Mexico Humanities Council, 4115 Silver Ave SE, Albuquerque. An artists reception will be 6:00 pm 8:00 pm with an artist's discussion at 7:00 pm. The exhibit closes December 29, 2017.
In honor of President of Moldova Igor Dodon, who is paying an official visit to Armenia, an official reception was held on Thursday on behalf of RA President Serzh Sargsyan, at which Presidents Sargsyan and Dodon exchanged toasts.
November 10, 2017, 11:37 Presidency hosted official reception in honor of Moldova President
STEPANAKERT, NOVEMBER 10, ARTSAKHPRESS:As the press department at the Presidents Office reported, the presidents touched upon the results of the first day of Moldovan Presidents official visit to Armenia, the potential of and the prospects for developing interstate relations and the deeply rooted ties between the two nations, as well as on the significant role played by the Armenian community in the strengthening of Armenian-Moldovan friendship.
The two heads of state reaffirmed their determination to push ahead with the furtherance of interstate relations and cooperation, implement joint programs and new ideas, as well as to build on the existing ties of friendship and cooperation between Armenia and Moldova for the sake of peace and the welfare of the two nations and peoples.
By PTI: By Sajjad Hussain
Islamabad, Nov 12 (PTI) Pakistan has suspended licences for all automatic weapons as part of a commitment by Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi to ban deadly firearms in the country.
Abbasi in his inaugural speech in Parliament after assuming office in August had promised that he would outlaw all deadly weapons.
An official of interior ministry said the ministry through a notification on November 7 has suspended all automatic weapons.
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It also asked owners of automatic weapons to swap the current weapons with semi-automatic ones or surrender them for Rs 50,000.
"We have given the owners of automatic weapons the deadline of January 15, 2018 to surrender the weapons," the official said.
Another official said the step has been taken as part of efforts to rid the country of the menace of dangerous weapons that end up in the hands of criminals and terrorists. PTI SH KUN
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Oscar-winning actress Lupita Nyong'o has spoken over the years about her struggles to learn to love her hair and skin colour. She was taunted as a young girl for her "night-shaded skin," she has said. She once felt "unbeautiful."
Finally, Nyong'o said she realised that beauty was not a thing she could acquire or change. "It was something that I just had to be," she said at a Black Women in Hollywood Luncheon in 2014.
Lupita Nyong'o at the European premiere of Star Wars - The Force Awakens. Credit:Zak Hussein
But now, at 34, Nyong'o has yet again found herself defending that beauty.
On the cover of its November issue, the magazine Grazia UK featured an altered image of Nyong'o. Gone is her mass of curly black hair, held in a thick ponytail at the back of her neck in the original photograph.
Jenny Rosalky took up embroidering and quilting 40 years ago when she gave up smoking and needed something to do with her hands. Since then she's made more than 100 quilts for family, friends and charities and filled two rooms of her Sydney home with boxes of fabric.
"I can't say what the fabric is worth it might end in divorce," she jokes. But with the average cost of fabric around $25 a metre, and a minimum of $250 worth in every quilt, deciding what to do with her substantial hoard when she's gone is no laughing matter.
Jenny Rosalky in her sewing room filled with fabric and quilts, at her home in Stanmore, Sydney. Credit:Jessica Hromas
"People who know nothing about quilting have no idea about the effort that goes into them and the cost," says the former journalist and public speaking consultant. While her children and grandchildren value their quilts, none is interested in taking up the hobby or understand what her fabric stash is worth.
It's a common refrain among hobbyists and collectors, who often fear their "treasure" could end up in landfill or sent to Vinnies when they die.
Wool prices are rising faster than Sydney house prices and farmers are rushing to cash in.
Fred Whitby has watched booms and busts come and go - first as a little baby in his father's arms in the shearing shed 94 seasons ago - but he's never seen anything like this last week.
Fred Whitby, 94,and his working dog, Snap, have never seen anything like this boom before. Credit:Andrew Meares
On Friday, wool reached an all-time high of 1681 cents per kilogram - up 58 cents in a week.
"They say it's even bigger than the 1951 boom," Mr Whitby said on his property in the hills behind Pambula on the NSW south coast.
Former Supreme Court judge Betty King is urging Victorian politicians to pass euthanasia laws to stop the criminal prosecution of those who have assisted the death of terminally ill relatives.
"Should people be put before the criminal courts for acting out of love? It is my view that they should not," she told The Age.
Supreme Court Justice Betty King, Credit:Jason South
"It is wrong that people suffering terminally are not given a choice. If you kept an animal in a state of permanent suffering you would be prosecuted and yet we charge those who try to end the suffering of others."
Justice King said every Supreme Court judge had heard at least one case where someone had been charged over assisting, or attempting to assist someone to die.
A man has been taken to hospital in a serious condition after he was stabbed several times on a street in Sydney's south this morning.
Police were called to Omnibus Road in Kingsgrove just before 3am on Sunday where they found a 21-year-old man with "multiple stab wounds".
A NSW Ambulance spokeswoman said the wounds were to the man's torso, largely to his back.
He was taken to St George Hospital in a serious condition.
A NSW Local Health District spokeswoman confirmed the man was in a stable condition on Sunday evening.
NSW Police say officers 'following the money' as part of a money-laundering investigation have helped dismantle a cocaine supply ring operating in Sydney.
Three men were arrested and charged last week over their alleged roles in a criminal syndicate as part of Strike Force Bugam, a joint investigation between the NSW Police organised crime squad and officers from the Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission, into international money laundering syndicates operating in Sydney.
Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission state manager Warren Gray and Detective Superintendent Scott Cook. Credit:Peter Rae
It brings to 18 the total number of arrests by the strike force since its inception in June last year.
The latest busts came after investigators looking into cross-border money laundering identified an alleged cocaine supply syndicate, trafficking cocaine from Thailand. The drug syndicates were uncovered as various transactions were traced through the money laundering process.
WestConnex boss Dennis Cliche has been forced to admit he falsely claimed that NSW Chief Scientist Mary O'Kane had praised the motorway's planned exhaust ventilation stacks after she warned him that the comments called into question her integrity and independence.
NSW chief scientist and engineer Mary O'Kane. Credit:AFR
Mr Cliche has also apologised for other "inappropriate" remarks he made to an infrastructure conference last week where he said the reintroduction of tolls on the M4 was "exciting" and ridiculed concerns about the health impact of the exhaust ventilation stacks.
The blunders come as the NSW government is seeking private sector interest in buying a 51 per cent stake in Sydney Motorway Corporation, where Mr Cliche is chief executive and which is constructing the $16.8 billion tollway.
Two men have been charged after more than 20 kilograms of cocaine was seized during a joint-agency investigation into international drug trafficking by NSW Police and the Australian Border Force.
A joint investigation into the importation and supply of cocaine was established by police detectives from the drug squad and investigators from the ABF in September, called Strike Force Brundson.
As part of their joint inquiries, ABF officers inspected a large consignment from Spain on Monday, October 9, where they located and seized 21 kilograms of cocaine concealed in tiles.
The cocaine has an estimated street value of $6.3 million.
The spectre of yet another potential byelection now looms for tens of thousands of Sydney voters after a legal challenge against the results of a September council election was mounted.
Fairfax Media can reveal legal arguments against three elections to the new Georges River Council were submitted to the Civil and Administrative Tribunal on Friday.
The legal challenge means former mayor of Hurstville and current Georges River councillor, Con Hindi, will face a court on two matters. Credit:Simon Alekna
The action is being brought by resident Gregory Briscoe-Hough, whose past legal challenges have previously forced a byelection and resulted in other complaints being upheld by courts.
Mr Briscoe-Hough declined to comment but is believed to be arguing there were irregularities in the poll's staging and also on information provided by candidates.
Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk has committed more than $150 million to expand renewable energy in Queensland, including solar panels for schools and a solar thermal power plant.
Ms Palaszczuk and Energy Minister Mark Bailey visited Clare Solar Farm project in Ayr within the LNP-held Burdekin electorate on Sunday to make the announcement.
The funds would support a pipeline of $20 billion in proposed investment and create up to 15,000 jobs, largely in regional Queensland.
Annastacia Palaszczuk with workers at the Clare Solar Farm project in Ayr. Credit:AAP
We are committed to our transition to at least 50 per cent renewable energy in Queensland by 2030, Ms Palaszczuk said.
After National Conference leader Farooq Abdullah's comment stating that POK belongs to Pakistan, actor Rishi Kapoor has also come out in support of him, stressing that both the governments need to hold talks on the issue.
By India Today Web Desk: Actor Rishi Kapoor has stirred controversy after his latest tweet saying that POK is Pakistan's while J&K belongs to India. Kapoor's tweet came after National Conference's leader Farooq Abdullah's statement saying that POK belongs to Pakistan and people on the Indian side should stop talking about 'azadi'.
Rishi Kapoor further said that accepting this fact is the only way the issue of Kashmir can be solved.
Farooq Abdhulla ji, Salaam! Totally agree with you,sir. J&K is ours, and PoK is theirs. This is the only way we can solve our problem. Accept it, I am 65 years old and I want to see Pakistan before I die. I want my children to see their roots. Bas karva Dijiye. Jai Mata Di !- Rishi Kapoor (@chintskap) November 11, 2017
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He also said that he hopes he'll be able to see Pakistan before he dies and wants his children to see his roots too.
Farooq Abdullah on Saturday said that PoK belonged to Pakistan. "In order to resolve the Kashmir issue, we have to speak to Pakistan. Jammu and Kashmir is as much India's part as PoK is rightfully Pakistan's. If Government wants peace, it will have to talk to Pakistan see to it that autonomy be given to Kashmir on either side of the border", he said.
He further stated that Indian government should hold talks with Pakistan government because a part of Kashmir is also with them.
Meanwhile, Rishi Kapoor's tweet quickly went viral.
Sir, Dheere boliye. Sunny Deol ne sun liya to aapke ghar ke pump ukhaad dega.- Roflindian (@Roflindian) November 11, 2017
Sir, abhi multitask mat kijiye.- Sohini (@Mittermaniac) November 11, 2017
Soda aur laau?- Gabbbar (@GabbbarSingh) November 11, 2017
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Opposition Leader Tim Nicholls has dodged suggestions the LNPs decision to preference One Nation above Labor could cost the party seats in Brisbane and the Gold Coast.
Late on Friday, the LNP announced it would list the Greens last on its how-to-vote cards and place One Nation higher than Labor in about 50 seats.
Queensland Opposition Leader Tim Nicholls helps out with a sausage sizzle during a visit to Redland Bay market on Sunday. Credit:AAP/Regi Varghese
But Mr Nicholls would not be drawn on whether the preference plan could backfire in city seats in Brisbane and the Gold Coast.
He instead blamed Labor for introducing compulsory preferential voting and then advised people to vote one for the LNP rhetoric which in the past could be literally followed, but at the 2017 election, voters will have to number every box.
Pauline Hanson herself pushed the LNP's Ian Rickuss right to the wire in 2015. Mr Rickuss ended up taking the seat with a 0.2 per cent margin, with just over 140 votes. The LNP's Lockyer candidate, veteran Lockyer Valley councillor and Laidley police officer Jim McDonald. One Nation has been confident because Mr Rickuss has retired. But it was a little nervous recently because the new LNP candidate is the well-known Lockyer Valley councillor of 13 years, Jim McDonald, who is also officer-in-charge of Laidley Police. And compulsory preferential voting could edge the LNP over One Nation, with the LNP preferencing One Nation over Labor in 50 seats.
Mr Savage said he respected his LNP rival's profile. My opponent is well known in this area and Im relatively new here, he said. "But Id like to think that people think a new broom sweeps cleanest. He also shrugged off stories he could be One Nation's Queensland leader if former LNP minister Mr Dickson loses in Buderim. Thats not for me to say, he said.
I think Steve (Dickson) will get in. He is backing a plan to build a new cannery in Grantham and said One Nation would put forward $30 million towards the $100 million private-sector project, which has struggled to win government or bank support. He will also try to bring water from the region's dams to Lockyer Valley farmers. Mr McDonald believed poor roads and electricity bills would decide how people voted. He said the media had exaggerated the impact One Nation would have in the 2017 Queensland election. The seat of Lockyer will be an important seat as are all of the seats across the state," Cr McDonald said.
"But the journalists got it wrong in Western Australia and I think they have got it wrong in Queensland, he said referring to predictions One Nation could win several seats in Western Australia and hold the balance of power. I think the point is Pauline Hanson is not running in this election and their local candidate out here (Mr Savage) is not from this area. Cr McDonald said while Mr Savage had lived in Beaudesert, until recently he lived near Bli Bli on the Sunshine Coast. Mr McDonald disagreed Lockyer was a bellwether seat for One Nation. He said it was an LNP seat to be retained. I dont think it is a bellwether seat. You know the LNP are about winning government in their own right," he said.
"And I believe that will happen." One Nation's 29-year-old Brad Trussell (right) has worked in an underground uranium mine and is confident of tackling Labor's Jim Madden in Ipswich West. Further west is the electorate of Ipswich West, where One Nation's candidate is 29-year old Brad Trussell, quite possibly Queensland's only political candidate to have dug tunnels in an underground uranium mine. When I was 18 I left here and went down to South Australia," Mr Trussell said. I worked on a big subdivision on the Yorke Peninsula, for a while.
And then I went and spent two years working underground at the BHP-Billiton mine at Olympic Dam in far north South Australia," he said. I was an offside on the development rigs underground. That meant I was digging the tunnels underground. Mr Trussell is a welder by trade and thinks he has a chance of winning the Labor-held seat, which has recently shifted from One Nation to Labor to the LNP and back to Labor. Mr Trussell said he was now back working as a welder and his youth helped connect with younger people.
I think I appeal to the younger voter and to the working class at the same time, because of my age. And what I do." Mr Trussell has the enthusiasm of a new candidate and said only "one in 100 people" snickered at him when he knocked on doors. In Ipswich West in 2015, the LNPs Sean Choat won 35 per cent of first-preference votes, while One Nations Christopher Reynolds took 10 per cent of the vote. Labor's Jim Madden won the seat easily and has a 9 per cent margin. However in 2017, with Ms Hanson actively promoting the party, one has to imagine the One Nation vote will be larger in Ipswich West, which is also being contested by Mr Madden and the LNP's Anna O'Neill.
However, preferences will determine who wins Ipswich West and Lockyer in 2017. And it is not clear, depending on which party finishes first, second and third. Mr Trussell said voters understood Ms Hanson was a senator and was not running herself. She is there through us, Mr Trussell said. It is her ideology, it is her policies. "It's her party that we've chosen to join to run for.
The estranged husband of a mother-of-three found dead on a Gold Coast street has been charged with murder.
A neighbour found the body of the 51-year-old woman, who had head injuries police described as "brutal", about 11.15pm on Sunday in Arthur Payne Court, Worongary.
Andrew Cobby was arrested on Monday afternoon.
Police said they found Andrew John Cobby, 55, from whom she had been separated for some time, in nearby bushland.
The Ashmore man was taken to Robina Hospital for treatment to minor injuries and charged with murder on Monday afternoon.
Louisa O'Neill will never forget the first time she could kick a footy with her son. He was six. Until then, she had been in too much pain.
Since slipping while running to catch a train as a 16-year-old, the Mornington mother has suffered chronic pain in her lower back.
Louisa O'Neill has lived with chronic pain for 30 years and says treatment needs to be a balance of diet, exercise, psychological support, meditation and painkillers.
"It's a silent illness," she said. "No one can see your pain."
Ms O'Neill is not alone.
After decades of retreat and loss of territory to the Greens, Victorian Labor is on the verge of a historic re-entry into Melbourne's local politics.
A formal decision to endorse and fund council candidates in key areas is likely in early 2018 following an internal review that saw an outpouring of frustration at Labor's disconnection from communities.
Labor's rethink coincides with this week's Northcote by-election and an analysis by The Age that shows how the Greens have supplanted the ALP as the dominant party in Melbourne's local politics, pouring hundreds of thousands of dollars into last year's council elections and colonising Labor's inner city heartland.
The analysis of the donations made to all council candidates at the 2016 local elections reveals the Greens party and its branches across Melbourne tipped almost $250,000 into their candidates.
A 65-year-old man is in hospital after an altercation with three men who forced open the front door of his home in Hampton in south-east Melbourne.
Police have been told three tall men in hooded jumpers used unknown objects to force open the door of the Lawson Street home shortly before 11pm last night.
Paramedics rushed to the scene after the homeowner received injuries to his head and upper body.
He sustained non-life threatening and was taken to the Alfred Hospital in a stable condition. The offenders were last seen running north on Smith Street.
Investigators are appealing for anyone with information about the aggravated burglary to contact police or Crime Stoppers.
Earlier this year another home in the same street was the target of a drive-by shooting in what was believed to be a frightening case of mistaken identity.
Washington: Two top former US intelligence officials said Sunday that President Donald Trump is being "played" by President Vladimir Putin on Russia's interference in the 2016 election and accused him of being susceptible to foreign leaders who stroke his ego.
"By not confronting the issue directly and not acknowledging to Putin that we know you're responsible for this, I think he's giving Putin a pass," former CIA director John Brennan said on CNN's "State of the Union."
"I think it demonstrates to Mr Putin that Donald Trump can be played by foreign leaders who are going to appeal to his ego and try to play upon his insecurities, which is very, very worrisome from a national security standpoint."
Appearing on the same program, former director of national intelligence James R. Clapper Jr. said he agrees with that assessment.
Hariri has given no public remarks since he resigned and no indication of when he might return to Lebanon. Hariri was summoned to the Kingdom to meet Saudi King Salman in a phone call on Thursday night, November 2. Before departing, he told his officials they would resume their discussions on Monday. He told his media team he would see them at the weekend in the Red Sea resort of Sharm al-Sheikh, where he was due to meet Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi on the sidelines of the World Youth Forum. Hariri went to his Riyadh home. His family made their fortune in Saudi Arabia and have long had properties there. The source close to Hariri said the Lebanese leader received a call from a Saudi protocol official on Saturday morning, who asked him to attend a meeting with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. He waited for about four hours before being presented with his resignation speech to read on television, the source said.
"From the moment he arrived they (Saudis) showed no respect for the man," another senior Lebanese political source said. Hariri frequently visits Saudi Arabia. On a trip a few days earlier, Prince Mohammed bin Salman had arranged for him to see senior intelligence officials and Gulf Affairs Minister Thamer al-Sabhan, the Saudi point man on Lebanon. Hariri came back from that trip to Beirut "pleased and relaxed", sources in his entourage said. He posted a selfie with Sabhan, both of them smiling. He told aides he had heard "encouraging statements" from the crown prince, including a promise to revive a Saudi aid package for the Lebanese army. The Hariri sources say Hariri believed he had convinced Saudi officials of the need to maintain an entente with Hezbollah for the sake of Lebanon's stability. Hezbollah has a heavily armed fighting force, in addition to seats in parliament and government. Saudi-backed efforts to weaken the group in Lebanon a decade ago led to Sunni-Shi'ite clashes and a Hezbollah takeover of Beirut.
"What happened in those meetings, I believe, is that (Hariri) revealed his position on how to deal with Hezbollah in Lebanon: that confrontation would destabilize the country. I think they didn't like what they heard," said one of the sources, who was briefed on the meetings. The source said Hariri told Sabhan not to "hold us responsible for something that is beyond my control or that of Lebanon." But Hariri underestimated the Saudi position on Hezbollah, the source said. "For the Saudis it is an existential battle. It's black and white. We in Lebanon are used to grey," the source said. Sabhan could not immediately be reached for comment. Hariri's resignation speech shocked his team.
Lebanese President Michel Aoun, a Hezbollah ally, told ambassadors to Lebanon that Saudi Arabia had kidnapped Hariri, a senior Lebanese official said. On Friday, France said it wanted Hariri to have "all his freedom of movement". In his speech, Hariri said he feared assassination and accused Iran and Hezbollah of sowing strife in the region. He said the Arab world would "cut off the hands that wickedly extend to it," language which one source close to him said was not typical of the Lebanese leader. Hariri's resignation came as more than 200 people, including 11 Saudi princes, current and former ministers and tycoons, were arrested in an anti-corruption purge in Saudi Arabia. Initially there was speculation Hariri was a target of that campaign because of his family's business interests. But sources close to the Lebanese leader said his forced resignation was motivated by Saudi efforts to counter Iran. Hariri was taken to meet the Saudi king after his resignation. Footage was aired on Saudi TV. He was then flown to Abu Dhabi to meet Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed, the Saudi crown prince's main regional ally. He returned to Riyadh and has since received Western ambassadors.
Police hand over food and supplies to local villagers from inside a mining area where there is conflict between the West Papua National Liberation Army and security forces. Mr Kibak said native Papuans such as himself, were farmers who could live on the cassava, soybeans and other produce that they grew, and had no desire to be evacuated from the area. However he said they were scared the military and police might mistake them for members of the West Papua National Liberation Army. Mr Kibak said the non-Papuans were also safe. "The non-natives are not being held hostage, they are free, but TPN can't guarantee their safety if they go through the battle zone and get caught in gunfire." Papuan villagers take food back to their villages. Mr Kibak said the West Papua National Liberation Army searched the shops of non-Papuan villagers to ensure they were not smuggling things in for the military, but the shops had not been burned down.
"They are safe, they are not being treated differently. They are our neighbours." The West Papua chief of police and Papua Armed Forces commander at a joint task force ceremony last week in Timika police station, West Papua. Mr Kibak met with Fairfax Media in the town of Timika, about 64 kilometres from the conflict zone in Tembagapura, after he had walked through the jungle and then hitched a ride in a Freeport helicopter on November 2. "As you can see, I am here, no one stopped me. I will return next week," he said. West Papua National Liberation Army commander Hendrik Wanmang stressed that villagers from Banti and Kembeli had not been targeted but were effectively trapped because the villages were located near the conflict zone.
He said the native Papuans did not want to be evacuated but he was discussing how to allow the non-natives access to leave the villages. "I am still considering how to get them out of here," he told Fairfax Media by phone. "Then, if I get them out, I have to consider what the TNI (military) and police will then do against the native Papuans." Mr Wanmang said he could not blindly make a decision and had to carefully weigh up the consequences of any actions. "I don't want any lives lost, I don't want anybody from the community to fall victim," he said.
Mr Wanmang said the West Papua National Liberation Army were freedom fighters who wanted to "free the nation". "Our fight's main goal is to demand sovereignty and freedom for Papuans. (We want) acknowledgement by the Indonesian government and the Dutch, Americans and UN, who were the main perpetrators who orchestrated for the benefit of Freeport that resulted in Papua being integrated into Indonesia," he said. "It is all linked to the chain of deceit." Papua police spokesman Ahmad Musthofa Kamal said police had handed over supplies to Banti villagers at the weekend after appealing for community leaders to be allowed to come and pick up food. "We didn't ask any of them to inform us of the conditions in the village because we don't want them to be thought of as our informants," said Mr Kamal. "The villages are cornered, so we avoid that. The important thing for us is the humanity side of things.
"We hope that with the villagers starting to come, information can be passed to the village and the rest can also come here." Police spokesman Suryadi Diaz said authorities were still attempting a "persuasive approach" to deal with the standoff. "Our officers are ready at their posts, but that is only if all negotiations fail, it would be a last resort," he said. "We can't just recklessly take action. The group is mixed with the villagers. We have to be very careful, we have civilians there." Tensions in Papua have escalated recently amid negotiations between Freeport and the Indonesian government over the divestment of the Grasberg mine. Local elections are also due next year. There have been a string of shootings in the area near the mine in recent weeks. A police officer was killed on October 22 and an ambulance belonging to Freeport was shot at, injuring a woman who had just given birth.
Manila: Mercurial Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte has signalled a deliberate turn towards Australia, as Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull promised that Canberra would share more intelligence on terrorism networks with the island nation.
The meeting came at the start of a day in which Mr Turnbull also had a three-way meeting with US President Donald Trump and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, on the sidelines of the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) summit in Manila.
Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull meets Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte for a bilateral meeting during the ASEAN forum. Credit:AAP
Throughout a five-day swing through Asia Mr Turnbull and Mr Trump have worked together to press Asian nations to impose tougher sanctions against North Korea.
Mr Turnbull has spent more time with the US president than scheduled, indicating a firming relationship. The two men have asked officials to schedule a meal for them together before they leave the Philippines on Tuesday.
Whether the evidence was destroyed on purpose - and a knife deliberately 'planted' on the bus conductor who was initially accused of the murder - or whether it was just poor policing, needs to be determined by further investigation, according to sources.
Pradyuman Thakur, the 7-year-old student of Gurgaon's Ryan International School who was murdered earlier this year
By Tanseem Haider: The CBI's investigation of the murder of Ryan Internation School student Pradyuman Thakur has revealed that the Gurgaon Police destroyed evidence, and that it made a false arrest when it said a bus conductor killed the boy.
Whether the evidence was destroyed on purpose (and a knife deliberately 'planted' on the bus conductor), or whether it was just poor policing, needs to be determined by further investigation, sources added.
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Four policemen from the city police's special investigation team are under the scanner. Their call records are being analysed, and a departmental enquiry has been recommended.
Once the CBI took over the case, it automatically probed the role of investigating officers, agency sources said.
On September 8, Pradyuman Thakur was found with his throat slit in the washroom of Ryan International School in Gurgaon. He was rushed to the hospital and declared dead.
HOW THE CBI CAME TO PROBE THE MURDER
The Gurgaon Police arrested a bus conductor Ashok Kumar, who confessed to murdering Pradyuman when he tried to resist a sexual assault attempt.
Suspecting foul play, Pradyuman's parents asked for a CBI (Central Bureau of Investigation) probe. His father even filed a petition in the Supreme Court. The Haryana government then handed the case to the central investigating agency.
The CBI ruled out the sexual assault theory after no evidence of it was found.
Meanwhile, the owners of the Ryan chain of schools were questioned, arrested and then released on bail.
SENSATIONAL TWIST
Earlier this month, the CBI arrested a Class XI student in connection with the murder. A copy of his remand application says he "admitted his involvement" in murdering Pradyuman.
The CBI claimed the student wanted school exams postponed and so murdered Pradyuman in order to get Ryan International School to declare a holiday.
The agency said Ashok "did not commit the murder and they are giving him a clean chit," the bus conductor's lawyer was quoted as saying by the Indian Express.
Sources in the CBI told India Today the Class XI student was taken to a shop where he purchased a knife, and later to Ryan International School - to reconstruct the scene of crime.
The father of the Class XI student has said his son is innocent, and alleged he was being tortured. The CBI has denied the allegations.
The teenager has been sent to a correction home in Faridabad for 11 days. CBI sources said the court has fixed the next date of hearing on November 22.
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WATCH | Major lapses found in Pradyuman murder investigation, CBI arrests Class 11 boy
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But others held banners of white supremacy, including one that read "White Europe of brotherly nations," according to The Associated Press.
Demonstrators burn flares and wave Polish flags during the annual march to commemorate Poland's National Independence Day in Warsaw. Credit:AP
The crowd at the march, which coincided with Poland's Independence Day, commemorating the reinstatement of sovereignty at the end of World War I, far outnumbered those at official government events earlier in the day.
Thousands of far-right nationalists marched through Poland's capital, Warsaw, on Saturday, waving red-and-white Polish flags and carrying flares.
The annual march has grown in recent years as Poland moves further to the right. Credit:AP
Still others carried signs equating Islam with terrorism, waved signs denouncing same-sex marriage, and carried banners of the National Radical Camp, an anti-Semitic group founded before World War II on extreme nationalist values.
The annual march has become something of a magnet for white supremacists and far-right groups from across Europe since it began in 2009.
As Poland has moved further to the right, the rally has grown. The right-wing Law and Justice Party, which was voted into power in 2015, has moved the nation from liberal European cooperation to an inward-facing agenda.
The slogan for Saturday's march, "We want God," comes from an old Polish nationalist song. President Donald Trump quoted the phrase during his visit this year.
US President Donald Trump said he believes Russian President Vladimir Putin's repeated denials of having meddled in the 2016 US presidential election, and only "haters and fools" can't see the benefits of a good relationship with Russia.
"Every time he sees me he says, 'I didn't do that,' and I really believe that when he tells me that, he means it," Trump said on Saturday after meeting the Russian leader briefly on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation summit in Vietnam.
Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump talk as they arrive for the family photo session during the Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation Summit in Danang on Saturday Credit:AP
"I think he is very insulted by it, if you want to know the truth. Don't forget. All he said was he never did that, he didn't do that. I think he is very insulted by it, which is not a good thing for our country," Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One en route to Hanoi.
However, after coming under significant criticism for the comments, including from intelligence agencies and some fellow Republicans, the President later walked back the comments.
US President Donald Trump has followed up his promise to solve "probably all" of the world's problems with the help of China by offering to mediate the intractable dispute in the South China Sea.
Meanwhile, the 71-year-old president has hit out at North Korea's Kim Jong-un (believed to be 33) on Twitter, complaining about being called "old".
"Why would Kim Jong-un insult me by calling me 'old,' when I would NEVER call him 'short and fat?'" Trump tweeted on Sunday.
"Oh well, I try so hard to be his friend and maybe someday that will happen!"
"Oh well, I try so hard to be his friend and maybe someday that will happen!"
"Why would Kim Jong-un insult me by calling me 'old,' when I would NEVER call him 'short and fat?'" Trump wrote, referring to the leader of North Korea's ruling dynasty.
Washington: In a string of tweets fired off on Sunday morning from Hanoi , Vietnam, US President Donald Trump responded with sarcastic insults to a recent message from the North Korean government that had referred to him as "old."
The message marks an unusually personal escalation of the tensions between the United States and North Korea over Pyongyang's weapons program. It is also another sign of the change in rhetoric used to address North Korea since Trump took office. Though North Korea has long been known for hurling bellicose insults at world leaders, rarely have those world leaders responded in kind.
Presidential face-off. Insults have been flying between the North Korean regime of Kim Jong-un and US President Donald Trump. Credit:AP
Of course, Trump is a not your average world leader. The President is a pugnacious social media user often willing to respond with his own harsh words when he feels wronged. As a spokeswoman for his wife, Melania Trump, put it earlier this year, when Trump is attacked "he will punch back 10 times harder."
Whether this instinct to hit back will help his self-described efforts toward becoming Kim's friend in the future is unclear.
The North Korean message that aggrieved Trump was released by the country's foreign ministry on Saturday and described Trump's 12-day tour of Asia as "a warmonger's trip for confrontation with our country, trying to remove our self-defensive nuclear deterrent.''
Maracuja Republics, yes. But Banana Republics, definitely not!
A few clarifying lines of political science may be appropriate here. Every government system is a Cracy which originates from the Greek word for power: Kratos. Democracy is the most favored since it is supposed to be the power of the people (demos=people). Experts with an academic background claim that due to human nature being essentially faulty, every government system in the beginning of its development has been a Kakistocracy, meaning rule by the stupid; a form of governance where the worst or least-qualified citizens are in control. But of course, since we are all non-experts and often lack the appropriate academic backgrounds, we have to see the Kakistocracy claim as a case of mind over matter; if you don't mind, it doesn't matter. Plus, in todays positively well-developed society, it may not be defensible to claim that human nature is essentially faulty.
Just one more classification that we cannot go around. By definition, a Banana Republic is considered a Kleptocratic system that economically depends upon the export of bananas. It features a society composed of an impoverished Ergatocracy and a ruling Plutocracy, composed of the Aristocracy of business, politics, or the military. Such system is something that is unheard of in the region and the expression Banana Republic is sharply criticized and even considered an insult here. So, lets move on to the subject of Maracuja Republic. I never like name and blame games and therefore on the topic, I will refer to the government system of the island St.Tosia as a positive example.
St.Tosia is called a Maracuja Republic because it blooms like a Passiflora Incarnata. The Passion Flower, knowingly has herbal calming effects but also may increase the amount of gamma-aminobutyric acid in the brain which decreases the activity of certain brain cells which is not uncommon for the local politicians and noticeable in their speech and action. The fruit of the Passion Flower is, of course, the Passion Fruit or Maracuja. St.Tosia is an island full of passion. The islanders are extremely passionate which comprises anything from love, affection, mania, fascination, obsession and neurosis. The Passion Fruit is a vigorous, climbing vine that clings by tendrils to almost any support, something that is also typical for the politicians on the island. There is no similarity whatsoever with Bananas which grow in clusters hanging from the plant. Because of these differing characteristics, a Maracuja Republic is not comparable to a Banana Republic.
St.Tosia is more in line with what the laid-back region is really all about. The island is a political adhocracy. This philosophy is typified by an aversion to planning and a tendency to respond only to the urgent as opposed to the important; focusing on 'firefighting,' rather than on establishing systems and procedures through goal setting and long-term planning. On the one hand, there is a world of business interests driven by society members who migrated to the island, and the other hand a swarm of followers, supporting and taking sides among families and clans of native St.Tosians in its House of Assembly. The worlds of business and politics often blend harmoniously well depending on the potential opportunities of benefits and favors for the individuals. And so, the St.Tosian Adhocracy is flexible and non-permanent and can respond fast to a changing environment and circumstances. It can be a thriving factor in the wellbeing of the island for some.
St.Tosia with its population of 25,000 people, has eighteen government ministries and nineteen members of the House of Assembly. So, all is fine and orderly with so many departments, authorities, and legislative supervision. The constitution of the island was written by Zadekiah Jones, a man with tremendous social foresight for his time in 1898 when the government form on St Tosia was established. It was Zadekiahs viewpoint that it is better to have more administrative offices rather than just a few because the government could employ more politicians and followers as civil servants. One may expect that this would create more bureaucracy. On the contrary! On St.Tosia, it enhances adhocracy since nothing gets done in the first place unless it absolutely urgent, and then it will be done on the spur of a moment related to a festive event. St. Tosians love parties and the incentive of having a party can be very motivating to take quick and positive decisions.
With more political seats available, one needs fewer votes to be elected to office. It supports a democratic system that distributes political power in the hands of the public which forms the electorate. In St.Tosia, it was never quite clear whether it would result in less power for more people, or in more power for less people. Its quite confusing. About one hundred votes are enough for a seat in office which pays well, provides healthcare and pension benefits plus a bodyguard and a private secretary of choice and without job qualification requirements.
The political stability of St.Tosia is mainly caused by its people not agreeing on anything. That practically means that no change will happen. And so, everything stays as it is, which may be the most obvious characteristic of what political stability is all about. Political stability is one of the symptoms that foreign investors value and are looking for. It is one reason why St.Tosia is very popular in financial circles abroad. The other reason is the investment incentives that are offered to them. With the torrent of assets being brought to the island, the economy is flourishing and blooming like a Passion Flower.
As a closing remark on Bureaucracy that comes from a different part of the world. US Admiral Hyman G. Rickover was quoted to once have said: A system under which it takes three men to check what one is doing is not control; it is systematic strangulation.
By Cdr. Bud Slabbaert
ST. JOHNS, Antigua:--- The management of LIAT wishes to advise that with immediate effect its services have resumed after yesterdays industrial action.
The company is working to restore the scheduled flights for today. The airline expects to have some delays as it works to resume its full normal schedule by tomorrow November 12th.
LIATs Chief Executive Officer, Mrs. Julie Reifer-Jones apologizes to all persons who were affected by the disruptions on Friday. The CEO reiterated that the company continues to be open to working with all union partners and wants to see the company move towards a solid footing despite the challenges of 2017. She added that with the prevailing economic conditions following the passage of Hurricanes Irma and Maria, the company will be working to ensure a smooth winter and Christmas travel season for all our passengers.
LIAT Press Release
Speaking at a press conference in Bengaluru actor Prakash Raj spoke about politics and if he supports standing up for the national anthem in cinema halls.
By India Today Web Desk: Actor Prakash Raj, speaking at a press conference in Bengaluru has said that he doesn't wish to join politics.
"I am not joining politics," the Singham star said. Not naming his counterparts Kamal Hassan and Rajinikanth, Prakash Raj said, "I don't like actors joining politics because they are actors & have fans. They should always stay aware about their responsibility towards them".
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He also added that he doesn't support the idea of someone standing up for the national anthem in cinema halls.
"I don't think someone should stand in cinema hall and show his or her patriotism," he added further.
Prakash Raj has been in controversy due to his criticism of the Modi government in recent times. He criticised PM Modi on the murder of noted journalist, Gauri Lankesh's murder. Taking a jibe at the Prime Minister, Prakash Raj said, "You can't make me believe by making promises of good days. See, I'm a bigger actor than you people (Modi government) and I can tell when you are acting. Please respect the fact that I'm a professional actor. When you act as if you don't know anything, do you think I or people will buy it?"
Last week as well, during the one year anniversary of Modi government's decision to ban Rs 500 and 1000 notes, he termed the decision as the "biggest blunder of our times" on Twitter.
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Madrid, Nov 12, 2017 (SPS) - Thousand of people representing Spanish solidarity associations with the Saharawi people and members of the Saharawi community living in Spain demonstrated Saturday in Madrid to demand the holding of a referendum on self-determination in Western Sahara as soon as possible.
The protesters waved Sahrawi flags, banners in which slogans are written asking for peace for the Saharawi people, the right to self-determination and justice and respect for human rights in the occupied Saharawi territories."
They also chanted" peace and freedom for the Saharawi people "," guilty Morocco and responsible Spain ", where are human rights ?" and many other slogans put forward in this event organized every year in Madrid, to denounce the tripartite agreements of Madrid of November 14, 1975 through which Spain has ceded the Saharawi territory to Morocco and Mauritania.
Coming in thousands from all Spanish cities, the protesters of all ages highlighted during this demonstration, the suffering endured by the Saharawi people following these agreements that allowed Morocco to invade and occupy the Saharawi territory illegally since 1975. (SPS)
062/SPS/TRA
In the ever-changing theater of business, sharp HR representatives and business owners have the words "turnover" and "employee retention" on their minds for a good part of the week. While job openings are high, "quits" were at a post-recession high of 2.2 percent in January of this year.
Related: 20 Reasons to Let Your Employees Work From Home
One way that businesses are trying to stem employee turnover and are working to improve employee well-being is embracing the paradigm shift to a telecommuting workforce, aka "working from home." A 2014 PGi survey of 1,000 workers found that 80 percent of their employers offered a telecommuting option, and about half of these employees exercised this option at least once a week. The millennial generation is all about this lifestyle, where 68 percent of millennials are more interested in a position that involves working from home and 64 percent would like the opportunity to work remotely.
At a time when corporate America -- including firms such as Yahoo, Bank of America, Aetna and IBM -- is cutting back on its work-from-home programs, does the idea of a remote workforce sound stressful and worrisome to small business employers? For many, it does. I had the same thought at the moment I decided to make the switch to a telecommuting workforce.
Our results in the first year
When I chose to go remote, I had five staff members. Several of my large clients were already remote (or parts of their organization were). One of my clients recommended that I read the book Remote by Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson.
I read the book -- and I saw an opportunity. The bulk of my staff had a daily commute of 1.5 hours each way. One of my longtimers read an article about a company moving to a remote workforce, and forwarded it to me with a proposal that JoTo PR "go remote." And it changed everything. What mattered to my people was quality of life -- and the ability to save time in their lives by not commuting.
Related: How to Keep Your Remote Workforce From Growing Distant
So, I mapped out how to replace "face time" with virtual meetings and a sophisticated reporting system.
The first six months were rough. It felt like we were starting over -- my location was gone, and all of the little things I'd been taking for granted were gone, too. While my employees were loving it, it was harder for me to feel "stable."
I lost three staff members that year, which ended up being an efficiency solution for us. It was ironic that upon review, it was found that those three staff members were the ones who'd been causing the most extra work for everyone else -- always demanding hand-holding and having to be prodded and pushed to make deadlines and targets while in the office. And those cracks in the hull only became more evident when we went remote!
Our long-term results
We measure productivity by gross income divided by the number of staff. New staff can greatly lower productivity numbers unless there is a standard and efficient onboarding, training and apprenticeship process. Ongoing training is key to efficiency. In our first "remote" year, we dropped in productivity and efficiency from 25 percent to 20 percent. This was due to the lost hires, which equates to lost training, lost institutional knowledge and new implementation and familiarization with new managing structure/processes. However, our production has now has increased to 40 percent. After the initial adjustment hump was over, productivity began to rise incrementally and stably, as it continues to do today.
Related: How to Run a Remote Startup Across Time Zones
This evolution felt like we were riding the wave-of-the-future-to-come in modern business. Just this past year, I read an article which stated that the telecommuting industry has quadrupled and will likely increase further.
Other than employee happiness, the switch to a remote workforce has made our hiring pool larger, and our processes are more streamlined. This then turned into more services which my company can provide, thus further increasing our revenue. What started as five employees working remotely has grown to 17, with more in the hiring pipeline.
One of the aspects of telecommuting that I didn't think of when we first started was the increase in quality hires I was able to make. Before the switch, we were pigeonholed into hiring from the localities surrounding our business, or hiring someone who was willing to make the long commute every day -- something that weighs heavily on even the best of employees.
The best part, however, was that we've also figured out what really made our culture: dedicated doers who are committed to the art and science of PR. It's been stellar. It's like the culture replaced the walls -- and where I couldn't find my "stability" before the switch, I now have a total certainty of our JoTo PR culture.
Related: How to Make Your Business Fully Remote in 7 Steps
Here's what a couple of my employees have said about the switch to working remotely:
"What I like most about working remotely is how it's really increased my quality of life ... my stress levels have gone down and best of all, I feel more productive," said A.R., VP operations and media relations specialist.
"I can focus on organizing my day and being ready to 'hit the ground running' instead of battling traffic and weather conditions. I can focus on client-centered or team-centered tasks and conversations without the usual office distractions," said K.B., deputy chief strategist.
It isn't perfect. I still miss having a physical location and seeing my employees every day. I don't have the ability to help some aspects of their quality of life with a stable location to go to every day. Life bleeds into work -- an angry spouse or a loud dog running around their home -- but there are good days and bad days, and I trust all of our staff to be self-starters who can work around any distraction.
However, the final proof is in the pudding. My employees are happy, there's little to no office politics or drama, and we've seen an overall 49 percent growth rate since 2014. We measure growth rate by annual revenues year over year and our first full year of being remote, we grew 66 percent.
I've learned a lot from my employees through this process -- an insight into their personal desires and the need for quality of life and balance. It may seem banal to hear these phrases, but in reality, it's something that just about every worker can appreciate. And the results, in terms of improved numbers and production, can benefit just about every employer.
Related Video: How Can You Get the Most Out of Your Remote Employees?
Related:
The Surprising Thing I Gained When I Switched to a Remote Workforce
Remote Leaders? Here's How Your Company Can Retain 99 Percent of Them.
How to Keep Your Remote Workforce From Growing Distant
Copyright 2017 Entrepreneur.com Inc., All rights reserved
This article originally appeared on entrepreneur.com
The Congress vice-president has been attacking the Centre and Prime Minister Narendra Modi over hurried roll-out of Goods and Services Tax (GST).
Rahul Gandhi has been attacking the Centre over GST and demonetisation in his election rallies in Gujarat. Photo: Reuters.
By India Today Web Desk: Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi, who is on a three-day trip to poll-bound Gujarat, will travel from Banaskantha to Patan today as part of the Navsarjan Yatra.
On reaching Banaskantha, Rahul Gandhi interacted with the party's social media volunteers.
On Saturday, the Congress vice-president visited Gandhinagar and while addressing an election rally said that "India does not need a Gabbar Singh Tax". Rahul said that the Centre made changes in the Goods and Services Tax (GST) following pressure from people and the Congress.
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"We will stop only when Gujarat and the entire country is free of Gabbar Singh Tax and the government gets the real GST in place," Rahul Gandhi said and added that if the BJP fails to bring in the changes then then the Congress will come to power and do so.
HERE IS WHAT HAPPENED IN THE DAY
4:00 PM: Thanks to Modi ji's demonetisation, all the thieves across India converted their black money into white, says Rahul Gandhi at an election rally.
3:00 PM: Rahul Gandhi tweets on GST, says petrol, diesel, LPG should be brought under the new tax structure to check rising prices.
? ?? ?? ?- ? ??? ? ?? ? ? ?? ??? ?? ?? ????? GST ?? ?? ??? ? ?? ? ?? ?? ? ????, ?? ? ?? ? ?? GST ?? ?? ? GST ? "?? ??" ?? ?? ? ? ? ? ? ?? ? ?? 18% ? ?? ?- Office of RG (@OfficeOfRG) November 12, 2017
1:45 PM: Rahul Gandhi reaches Danta village in Banaskantha district.
12:15 PM: We are not seeking revenge but we will change Gujarat (hum badla nahi, par Gujarat ko badlenge), says Rahul Gandhi in Banaskantha.
10:55 AM: However, we speak the truth and it is indeed true that 'vikas' (development) has gone crazy in Gujarat, says Rahul Gandhi.
#NavsarjanWithCongress day 2 kicks off with an interaction between Congress VP Rahul Gandhi and social media & IT volunteers in Ambaji. pic.twitter.com/SXnGsvLf3E- Congress (@INCIndia) November 12, 2017
10:50 AM: Whatever we do, spot Modi's faults or disturb the BJP, we won't disrespect PM's position. When Modi ji was in Opposition, he used to speak with disrespect about the Prime Minister. That is the difference between us and them, no matter what Modi says about us we'll not go beyond a certain point as he is the PM, says Rahul Gandhi in Banaskantha, Gujarat.
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10:45 AM: Rahul Gandhi addresses party's social media volunteers in Banaskantha, says: We reflect on ideas, there is a team of 3-4 people, to whom I give suggestions and after fine tuning them we tweet. Routine work, like birthday wishes, isn't done by me, I give little inputs on it, tweets on political issues are mine.
Ppl been asking who tweets for this guy..I'm coming clean..it's me..Pidi..I'm way ??? than him. Look what I can do with a tweet..oops..treat! pic.twitter.com/fkQwye94a5- Office of RG (@OfficeOfRG) October 29, 2017
10:40 AM: Rahul Gandhi reaches Banaskantha, meet and addresses Congress' social media team.
Gujarat: Congress Vice-President Rahul Gandhi interacts with social media volunteers of his party in Banaskantha. pic.twitter.com/zE2I7VJadM- ANI (@ANI) November 12, 2017
10:30 AM: Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi is travelling from Banaskantha to Patan today on the Day 2 of his Narsarjan Yatra in Gujarat ahead of the crucial Assembly election.
Day 2 of #NavsarjanWithCongress sees the VP travelling from Banaskantha to Patan to meet and address the issues of citizens. pic.twitter.com/hnduncApx5- Congress (@INCIndia) November 12, 2017
WATCH RAHUL GANDHI SPEAK IN BANASKANTHA ON PIDI, DEVELOPMENT AND PRIME MINISTER
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ALSO WATCH: Gujarat model meant to serve the rich, of no help to the poor: Rahul in Bharuch rally
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Sri Sri has appealed to all factions to consider an out-of-court settlement, which even the courts felt is the preferred way.
By Rohini Swamy: Spiritual leader Sri Sri Ravishankar is set to meet Muslim clerics and other stakeholders in the Ram Mandir issue in Delhi on November 13.
The meeting is crucial, as it takes the Art of Living founder's offer to mediate for an out-of-court settlement to the next level.
Several rounds of talks have already taken place between Sri Sri Ravishankar and the stakeholders in the Ram Mandir issue.
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The spiritual leader held fresh talks with members of the Hindu Mahasabha, the Nirmohi Akhada and the Sunni Waqf Board at the Art of Living center in Bengaluru on Saturday.
"We cannot reveal the specifics of our meeting but we had a good discussion. We want peace in the country and we will continue talks until the 'Bhoomipoojan' of the Ram temple is done," said Chandraprakash Kaushik of the Hindu Mahasabha. "We are very hopeful that the Sri Ram temple will be built in Ayodhya."
Interestingly, Amarnath Mishra, who is an interlocutor for the Ram temple issue, also met with Sri Sri Ravishankar at the ashram.
"My role is that I have been an interlocutor. We also need Sri Sri Ravishankar to intervene, as it involves the religious sentiments of thousands of people, and Sri Sri Ravishankar holds the confidence of both Hindus and Muslims. I will be going to Delhi with Guruji and hold a meeting with Muslim clerics in Delhi on November 13," he said.
It was on October 31 this year that Sri Sri Ravishankar had held a round of talks with the Shia Waqf Board and some representatives of the Hindu Mahasabha.
"The decision should be taken very peacefully and we hope that the compromise formula of whatever is decided between the stakeholders will be presented to the Supreme Court on December 5," Amarnath Mishra said. "Whatever the decision given by the Supreme Court, we will go by it but in the larger interest of the issue, talks should continue with our Muslim friends and in the end, it should end peacefully. Nobody can deny the fact that Ayodhya is the birthplace of Ram and we will continue our talks till the temple is established."
After the meeting, Ram Prabhat Singh of the Nirmohi Akhada said "We hope that the Ram temple will be built. We don't have much to say whether it should be a court verdict or an out-of-court settlement. It is being unnecessarily politicized and this is causing the biggest hurdles in taking a decision on the issue."
Sri Sri Ravishankar has appealed to all factions to consider an out-of-court settlement, which even the courts felt is the preferred way.
The final hearings on Ayodhya will begin in the Supreme Court on December 5 on whether a temple for Lord Ram can be built on the site or whether a masjid will be allowed. It was in 2010 that the Allahabad High Court accepted that the disputed site (which measures around two acres) was the birthplace of Lord Ram. The high court said in its verdict that two-thirds of the disputed land should be allotted to Hindus and the remainder to Muslims. The Supreme Court suspended it in 2011.
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The BJP has maintained that they will follow the court orders but have been also saying that they are determined to build a Ram temple in the disputed area.
WATCH VIDEO | BJP chief slams Siddaramaiah over Tipu Jayanti, says he is indulging in votebank politics
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USDA announces directors of state agencies
WASHINGTON President Trump has announced the Nebraska directors for the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) state agencies.
Karl Elmshaeuser will direct Rural Development and Nancy Johner will serve as the executive director for the Nebraska Farm Service Agency.
Elmshaeuser is a former U.S. Marine with a strong passion for building prosperous Nebraska communities, said Nebraska Sen. Deb Fischer. His first-rate management and development skills will enable him to make invaluable contributions to rural areas across the state, she added.
She said applauded the appointment of Johner. Her long career in public service, as an under secretary at USDA and the state director for former Sen. Mike Johanns, have prepared her to serve Nebraskans well once again at the Farm Service Agency, Fischer said.
Elmshaeuser, an Ogallala native, graduated from the University of Nebraska at Omahas Aviation Institute with a degree in general studies. He served as manager and owner of Pioneer Aviation for 13 years. Currently he serves as executive director for the West Central Nebraska Development District.
Johner is currently the CEO for Pathfinder Support Services in Omaha. She served as the state director and deputy chief of staff for former Johanns and was previously presidentially appointed as under secretary of the U.S. Department of Agricultures Food, Nutrition and Consumers Services agency. Additionally, she is a former director of the Nebraska Department of Health and Human Services Division of Children and Family.
Schroeder named to Nebraska Cooperative Council Hall of Fame
KEARNEY Rodney Schroeder will be inducted into the Nebraska Cooperative Council Hall of Fame at its 72nd annual meeting Wednesday at the Holiday Inn and Convention Center in Kearney.
Schroeder grew up on a farm near Leigh. He began his career as an accountant at Gooch Mills in Lincoln. Ten months later, he accepted a job at the Aurora Cooperative. while there, he rose through the ranks and was named CEO of the cooperative in 1984.
Schroeder spent 18 years as CEO at Aurora, and during his tenure the sales of the cooperative grew from under $1 million per year to $162 million in his final year. During that same period, the cooperative grew from three locations to 23 locations.
In 2002 Schroeder left Aurora to join Agriliance, and during that time he provided leadership to bring the regional cultures together to successfully run the business. Agriliance then integrated with Winfield Solutions, and through Schroeders leadership pre-tax earnings grew from $40 million to $162 million.
In addition to his leadership and vision at work, Schroeder also served on many local, state and national boards during his career, including the United Benefits Group, Co-op Retirement Committee, Farmers Commodity Corporation, Ag Retailers Association, The Fertilizer Institute, Crop Life America, Cooperative Mutual Insurance Company, Heritage Bank, FLM+ and Nebraska Energy Cooperative.
The Nebraska Cooperative Councils board of directors implemented the NCC Cooperative Hall of Fame in 1999 as a way to recognize individuals who have been unwavering in their support of the cooperative system in Nebraska.
USDA offering funding for underserved groups, beginning farmers
LINCOLN Mike Eller, acting state executive director of USDAs Nebraska Farm Service Agency (FSA), is reminding producers that FSA is offering specially targeted farm ownership and farm operating loans to underserved applicants, as well as beginning farmers and ranchers.
Each year, a portion of FSAs loan funds are set aside to lend to targeted underserved and beginning farmers and ranchers, Eller said. Farming and ranching is a capital intensive business, and FSA is committed to helping producers start and maintain their agricultural operations.
During fiscal year 2017 Oct. 1, 2016, through Sept. 30, 2017 Nebraska FSA obligated $180.8 million in loans to underserved borrowers and beginning farmers and ranchers.
USDA defines underserved applicants as a group whose members have been subjected to racial, ethnic or gender prejudice because of their identity as members of the group without regard to their individual qualities. For farm loan program purposes, underserved groups are women, African Americans, American Indians and Alaskan Natives, Hispanics, Asians and Pacific Islanders.
In order to qualify as a beginning farmer, the individual or entity must meet the eligibility requirements outlined for direct or guaranteed loans. Additionally, individuals and all entity members must have operated a farm for less than 10 years. Applicants must materially or substantially participate in the operation.
For farm ownership purposes, the applicant must not own a farm greater than 30 percent of the average size farm in the county at the time of application. All direct farm ownership applicants must have participated in the business operations of a farm for at least three out of the last 10 years prior to the date the application is submitted.
Underserved or beginning farmers and ranchers who cannot obtain commercial credit from a bank can apply for either FSA direct loans or guaranteed loans. Direct loans are made to applicants by FSA. Guaranteed loans are made by lending institutions who arrange for FSA to guarantee the loan.
The direct and guaranteed loan program offers two types of loans farm ownership and farm operating.
For more information on FSAs farm loan programs and underserved and beginning farmer guidelines, contact your local FSA office. To find your local FSA office, go online to offices.usda.gov.
In 1945, Clarence Hupka, from St. Mary, found himself in one of the worlds greatest ironies. Surrounded by an ocean of blue water, he was dying of thirst. Traveling from Guam to the Philippines, the USS Indianapolis sunk in the Pacific Ocean after being torpedoed during the final phase of World War II. Clarence had been a member of a crew 1,200 menonly 317 survived. He knew that drinking the salty water of the Pacific would only cause him more pain and likely kill him. Remarkably, he followed his training, resisted temptation, and lived.
After the war, Clarence moved near Cook, Nebraska, where he and his wife farmed for 40 years. Throughout his life, he shared his stories of the war, ultimately joining other Indianapolis survivors being featured in the documentary, USS Indianapolis: The Legacy.
On Oct. 29, Clarence Hupka passed away at the age of 95. Only 18 survivors of the Indianapolis are still with us, including Dale Krueger of Wayne. We should honor them and listen to the stories they share with us.
The stories of Clarence Hupka, Dale Kreuger, and veterans throughout Nebraska are inspiring to all of us. They are accounts of patriotism, heroism, and sacrifice. They are also reminders of why we can never break our promise to care for those who have bravely served this nation and defended the freedoms we hold dear.
In December 2016, Congress passed my bill, the CHIP IN for Vets Act, which granted local communities the authority to manage construction of VA projects and ensure these projects are completed on time and on budget. It set up a pilot program to test this new model of construction with five initial projects. Omaha is the first community in the country to use this model.
We must also care for veterans suffering from the invisible scars of war. Right now the VA does not provide service animals to those with PTSD. That needs to change. Research shows that service dogs often provide benefits to veterans suffering from PTSD, often treating the issue better than prescription drugs.
Thats why I worked with Senator Cory Booker (D-N.J.) to introduce The PAWS Act, a bill directing the VA to implement a five-year pilot program to provide service dogs to veterans suffering from PTSD. This pilot program would connect veterans with organizations that pair service dogs with those in need. These vets would also receive follow-up support for the rest of the dogs life, helping those suffering from the unseen wounds of combat.
In May, I was humbled to join more than 650 Vietnam veterans from Nebraska for their honor flight to Washington, D.C. Flying from Omaha Eppley Airfield to Reagan National Airport, I was able to express my gratitude to them in person before they visited the memorial dedicated in their honor. Seeing Nebraska veterans reconnect with friends from the war was an incredibly moving experience that I will never forget.
Like Clarence Hupka, our veterans have experiences they want to share with the next generation. What they have lived through is a story that helps to weave our nation together. As we commemorate Veterans Day this year, I hope you will take the time to listen to what our veterans have to say and thank them for their service to our nation.
Thank you for participating in the democratic process, I look forward to visiting with you again next week.
By PTI: (Eds: with additional inputs)
By Aditi Khanna
London, Nov 12 (PTI) British Prime Minister Theresa May was facing fresh turmoil as it emerged today that as many as 40 of her own party MPs are ready to sign a letter expressing a lack of confidence in her leadership.
Conservative party MPs are now just eight short of the required number of 48 to force a leadership challenge as May struggles to steady her government following two high- profile resignations, The Sunday Times reported.
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Indian-origin MP Priti Patel stepped down as the international development minister amid a dramatic row over her a series of unauthorised meetings with Israeli officials earlier this week.
Her resignation came days after Michael Fallon had been forced to quit as Defence Secretary amid allegations of sexual misconduct.
Two of Mays other senior Cabinet minister, Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson and First Secretary of State Damian Green, continue to battle demands that they step down.
Johnson has been accused for endangering the life of a British-Iranian national, imprisoned in Tehran, by making an incorrect statement at a House of Commons committee meeting.
Green is under investigation by the parliamentary authorities over allegations of sexual misconduct and that pornography had been discovered on his Commons laptop a few years ago.
The Opposition and her own party MPs believe that the British Prime Ministers failure to take firm action against them reflects her weakness as a leader and it is time for her to quit Downing Street.
The embattled leader also faces mounting pressure from the European Union (EU) over Brexit negotiations, after Brussels issued an ultimatum that Britain must agree on its divorce bill payments with the economic bloc within weeks or face the prospect of no future trade deal with the EU once it is no longer a member.
May is headed for some further bruising in the House of Commons when the EU Withdrawal Bill returns to Parliament on Tuesday, with Labour expected to join Tory rebels to inflict a series of damaging defeats on the government.
One of Labours key demands is that "parliament, and not ministers, has the final say on whether to approve the withdrawal agreement and how best to implement it".
"Continuing uncertainty about the governments approach to Brexit is now the biggest risk facing our country. The prime minister must end the confusion, take on the no-deal extremists in her government and back a jobs-first Brexit for Britain," Opposition Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn warned in an article in The Sunday Times.
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He demanded that May should "govern or go" because she is now showing "every sign of being in office but not in power".
Corbyn also indicated that sacking Boris Johnson would be a sign of some strength as he had become a liability.
"We have put up with Johnson embarrassing and undermining our country with his incompetence and colonial throwback views and putting our citizens at risk for long enough. Its time for him to go," he said.
Johnson is reportedly set for a meeting with the husband of Nazanin Zaghari-Radcliffe, a dual British and Iranian national in jail on charges of an attempted coup against the Iranian regime.
Richard Radcliffe has been arguing his wifes innocence and campaigning for the UK Foreign Office to secure her release.
Johnsons future in the UK Cabinet is now tied to how the case progresses. PTI AK SMJ
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Here's a roundup of some of the best -- and worst -- of the week in Iredell and elsewhere:
By PTI: (Eds: Adds details)AAA Guruvayur (Ker), Nov 12 (PTI) A 23-year-old RSS worker was hacked to death in broad daylight allegedly by CPI(M) workers at nearby Nenmeni this afternoon, the police said. The incident occurred around 1.30 pm.
The victim, Anandan, was riding a motorcycle when he was attacked with swords and knives, allegedly by the CPI(M) workers, who came in a car. He was rushed to a hospital, but his life could not be saved, the police said.
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Anandan, hailing from Brahmakulam, was an accused in a case related to the murder of a CPI(M) worker in 2013. The police said Anandans body was shifted to Thrissur medical college hospital.
The BJP will protest against the incident tomorrow.
In a statement, party state president Kummanam Rajasekharan said the ruling CPI(M) was not prepared to give up violence and this is clear from todays incident. A strike is being observed by the saffron party in Guruvayoor and Manaloor in Thrissur district. The BJP alleged that as many as 120 of its workers, 84 in Kannur alone, have been killed in Kerala since 2001.
It claimed that 14 of these killings have taken place since Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan took over the reins of the government last year. The CPI(M) in turn accused the BJP and the RSS of indulging in violence and denied the involvement of its government and leadership in political killings. PTI UD APR GVS
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For many evangelicals, fiery Alabama politician and judge Roy Moore has been a longtime hero. Others have sometimes cringed at his heated rhetoric and bellicose style.
Now, as Moore's Republican U.S. Senate campaign is imperiled by allegations of sexual overtures to a 14-year-old girl when he was in his 30s, there's an outpouring of impassioned and soul-searching discussion in evangelical ranks.
"This is one of those excruciating decision moments for evangelicals," Albert Mohler, president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, said in a telephone interview. "These allegations, if true, are devastating. If true, this is a very big deal."
Mohler said Alabama voters face a potentially wrenching task of trying to determine if the allegations Moore has emphatically denied them are credible.
According the Pew Research Center, 49 percent of Alabama adults are evangelical Protestants. For some of them, the Moore allegations echo the quandary they faced last year, wrestling over whether to support Donald Trump in the presidential race despite his crude sexual boasts.
The Rev. Robert Franklin, professor of moral leadership at Emory University's Candler School of Theology in Atlanta, said The Washington Post's report about the Moore allegations represents a test of "moral consistency" for evangelicals.
"Evangelicals are steadily losing their moral authority in the larger public square by intensifying their uncritical loyalty to Donald Trump," Franklin wrote in an email. "Since this is Roy Moore and not Donald Trump, I think there may be significant disaffection with him, and increased demands for his removal from the ballot."
As for Moore himself, Franklin suggested there were "classic evangelical remedies" such as confession, prayer and remorse and isolation.
"Election to higher office is not one of them," Franklin wrote.
Although Trump won 80 percent of the white evangelical vote in his presidential victory, his candidacy exposed and hardened rifts among conservative Christians about partisan politics, the personal character of government leaders and the Gospel. Surveys by the Public Religion Research Institute found that the percentage of white evangelicals who said they still trusted the leadership of a politician who commits an immoral act rose from 30 percent in 2011 to 72 percent last year.
Still, a solid minority of conservative Christians adopted the NeverTrump hashtag on social media and joined those outside evangelicalism who said "values voters" had lost their values. Women and black evangelicals especially emerged as critics of Trump's remarks about women, immigrants, African-Americans and Muslims. Many of these same critics of Trump's behavior and rhetoric condemned Moore in recent days and bemoaned the fact that some evangelicals were standing by him.
"Okay, seriously, we elected a man president who bragged about using his power and authority to sexually assault women," tweeted Kyle James Howard, an African-American student at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. "Why are we surprised that members of his party would now be defending a party member's sexual assault of a minor?"
One of the Southern Baptist Convention's leading public policy experts, the Rev. Russell Moore, expressed dismay after the allegations against Judge Moore no relation surfaced on Thursday.
"Whether in the hills of Hollywood or the halls of power, it doesn't matter," the Rev. Moore tweeted. "This is true: sexual assault and child molestation are evil, unjust, satanic."
Roy Moore embraced controversy as he built his evangelical following. He was twice removed from his post as Alabama's chief justice, once for disobeying a federal court order to remove a Ten Commandments monument from the lobby of the state judicial building, and later for urging probate judges to defy the U.S. Supreme Court decision legalizing gay marriage.
Among those declining to break with Moore in the wake of the sex allegations was Jerry Falwell Jr., president of evangelical Liberty University in Lynchburg, Va.
"It comes down to a question of who is more credible in the eyes of the voters the candidate or the accuser," Falwell told Religion News Service. "And I believe the judge is telling the truth."
Mohler, the seminary president, said many evangelical Alabama voters will find themselves facing a difficult choice when ballots are cast in the Dec. 12 special election.
"There's so much at stake," he said. "Those of us who are pro-life have got to be very concerned about losing even one seat in the U.S. Senate."
The Democratic candidate in the special election, Doug Jones, has said that a decision on whether to have an abortion should generally be left to the woman in question.
Abortion policy also was evoked by Ed Cyzewski, a Kentucky-based seminary graduate and author, in a series of Twitter posts Friday questioning why some of his fellow evangelicals would continue to stand by Moore.
"Right now there are evangelicals who feel trapped," Cyzewski wrote. "They think Moore did something reprehensible, but believe abortion is evil."
Katelyn Beaty, an editor at large with the evangelical magazine Christianity Today, suggested that among many of Moore's evangelical supporters, there's a "presumption of innocence" because of their mistrust of national media such as The Washington Post.
"Many Christian communities have trouble appropriately responding to sex abuse allegations," Beaty wrote in an email. "There is a default trust in powerful, charismatic male leaders, coupled with a discomfort with women who use their story or voice to challenge the status quo or power structures."
However, Beaty said more moderate evangelicals notably those critical of Trump were likely dismayed by the allegations against Moore.
"For them, the defense of Moore is another sign that both evangelicalism and the GOP have lost their credibility and their souls in the pursuit of power," she wrote.
AP Religion Writer Rachel Zoll in New York contributed to this report.
SPRINGFIELD, Mo. The inability of a jury in southwestern Missouri to decide whether a man should be put to death for kidnapping and killing a 10-year-old girl sets up a rare situation in which a judge will make that decision.
Circuit Judge Thomas Mountjoy is scheduled to announce Jan. 11 whether Craig Wood will get the death penalty or be sentenced to life in prison.
Wood was convicted of kidnapping and killing Hailey Owen in Springfield in February 2014, but the jury announced Monday that it couldnt reach a unanimous decision on his sentence.
Missouri and Indiana are the only states in which a judge can impose a death sentence, while other states follow the federal procedure that the defendant is sentenced to life in prison if a jury cant reach a decision on the death penalty, the Springfield News-Leader reported.
But in 2016, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that only a jury, not a judge, can make that decision.
Robert Dunham, executive director of the nonprofit Death Penalty Information Center, said a judge-imposed sentence might contradict the Supreme Court ruling. He said that if Mountjoy imposed the death penalty, the constitutionality of the process would unquestionably be challenged by Woods attorneys during the appeal process.
Woods attorney Patrick Berrigan declined to comment on his legal strategy.
Berrigan, a public defender who handles only death penalty cases, said it had been more than 20 years since he had a case in which a judge imposed the death sentence.
Mountjoy did not respond to News-Leader requests asking if he had ever been in this situation before.
Dunham said Missouri jurors had not imposed a death sentence since 2013, but the states hung jury procedure allowed judges to sentence a few men to death row in recent years. He did not have statistics on how many times that had happened in Missouri.
It raises very serious questions about circumventing the will of the public, Dunham said, especially in a state where no jury has sentenced anyone to death for five years.
Sister Antona Ebo, who fought for civil rights in Selma, Ala., was one of the first African-American women to join what was then the Sisters of St. Mary, now the Franciscan Sisters of Mary.
Sister Ebo died Saturday (Nov. 11, 2017) at the Sarah Community, a retirement home in Bridgeton. She was 93.
Sister Ebo, a civil rights leader and hospital administrator during her life as a Franciscan nun, was recently honored at the Missouri History Museum for her civil rights activism.
She and more than 50 St. Louisans flew to Selma three days after the infamous Bloody Sunday when civil rights marchers were attacked on the Edmund Pettus Bridge.
Sister Ebo also led a prayer vigil for peace in Ferguson in 2015.
According to an article in the Archdiocese publication St. Louis Review, Elizabeth Louise Ebo was born April 10, 1924, in Bloomington, Ill., one of three children born to Daniel and Louise Teal Ebo. She was known as Betty when she was younger.
When she was 4, her mother died suddenly at age 29 during pregnancy. During the following two years in the height of the Depression, her father lost his job and their home.
At the age of 6, Betty and her older brother and sister were placed in the McLean County Home for Colored Children in Bloomington, where she lived from 1930-42. She was baptized Catholic on Dec. 19, 1942.
Determined to attend a Catholic nursing school, she faced numerous rejections because of her race. She learned of St. Marys Infirmary School of Nursing in St. Louis, run by the Sisters of St. Mary, and she enrolled there in 1944.
On July 26, 1946, she became one of the first three African-American women to enter the Sisters of St. Mary. She received the name Sister Mary Antona, and she professed final vows on Feb. 11, 1954. (In 1987, the Sisters of St. Mary reunited with the Sisters of St. Francis of Maryville, Mo., as the Franciscan Sisters of Mary).
Sister Ebo served as a Franciscan Sister of Mary for 71 years.
Sister Ebo earned a bachelors degree in medical records in 1962 and a masters in hospital executive development in 1970, both through St. Louis University.
She earned a masters in theology of health care through Aquinas Institute of Theology and was certified as a chaplain through the National Association of Catholic Chaplains.
I am saddened to hear of the passing of renowned civil rights leader Sister Antona Ebo, Archbishop Robert J. Carlson said in a statement. We will miss her living example of working for justice in the context of our Catholic faith.
Sister Ebo is survived by her sister-in-law, Maxine Ebo of Rancho Cordova, Calif. A private burial will take place in Resurrection Cemetery.
EDITOR'S NOTE: An earlier version of this story gave an incorrect name for the Archdiocese publication St. Louis Review.
An RSS worker has been reportedly murdered in a place called Guruvayoor in the Thrissur district of Kerala.
By India Today Web Desk: An RSS worker has been reportedly murdered in a place called Guruvayoor in the Thrissur district of Kerala. The BJP has alleged that CPIM is behind the attack.
The victim has been identified as Anand, who was the second accused in the murder of CPIM worker named Fasil. The case is pending trial.
The incident took place at around 1.30 pm today. The assailants chased Anand in a car, hit his bike from behind, and attacked him with lethal weapons. He was severely injured and was rushed to a private hospital, where he died soon after reaching.
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More details awaited.
ALSO WATCH: Hindu Suraksha Samiti leader shot dead in Amritsar, incident caught on CCTV
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By PTI: New Delhi, Nov 12 (PTI) Regulator Sebi is looking to rope in a media agency for the job of publishing its investor awareness advertisements on digital and traditional platforms, including TV, radio and newspapers.
For this, Sebi has issued a notice inviting expression of interest (EoI) from interested parties.
The chosen bidder will be responsible for helping the Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) fulfil its objectives of educating and creating awareness among existing retail investors, converting savers into investors and make the future generation aware of various avenues in the securities market.
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Also, the agency will have to create awareness about and widen the use of several initiatives of Sebi, including the complaints redressal system, financial education programmes and the helpline.
The scope of the job also includes suggesting the appropriate media plan to Sebi and publish and broadcast advertisements in newspapers, magazines, TV and radio channels. Besides, they will have to collect copies of published advertisements and submit the same to the regulator.
"Advertisement material will be provided by Sebi. Agency shall print and broadcast the same in newspapers and TV channels, radio channels, digital media and any other media as approved by Sebi," the regulator noted.
Spelling out the eligibility criteria, Sebi said the agency should be a registered entity and must have been in operation for a minimum five years with at least three years of experience in providing service in media management.
Among others, it should have a gross media billing of at least Rs 100 crore as well as positive net worth during each of the last three financial years. The agency must have accreditation of the Indian Newspaper Society or the Advertising Standards Council of India or the Advertising Agencies Association of India.
The regulator further said the contract will initially be given for three years, which can be extended for a further three years. The interested agencies can submit applications till November 28. PTI SP ARD
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By PTI: By Sumir Kaul
Srinagar, Nov 12 (PTI) Veteran politician Farooq Abdullah has said the efforts of the Centres special representative for Kashmir can move forward only if Dineshwar Sharmas final report is tabled in the two Houses of Parliament for discussion.
The former Jammu and Kashmir chief minister, who was re- elected president of the National Conference, the states main opposition party, stressed that New Delhi also needed to explain what it wished to achieve by appointing Sharma as a special representative for talks on Kashmir.
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Different voices emerging from power corridors had reduced him to a "zero" even before he could start the talks, he said.
Abdullah, 80, stressed he had never been against talks, but was "baffled by the lack of clarity" on the Centres move.
"Even before he (Sharma) was to visit the Valley, there were different voices emerging from New Delhi including that from the minister in PMO (Jitendra Singh) who said Sharma was not an interlocutor," the ex-chief minister said.
Sharmas mandate, he added, was not clear to anybody in Kashmir.
"So we are confused about what he is and what his agenda is going to be," the Lok Sabha member told PTI here.
Asked why he did not meet Sharma, who was on a four-day visit to the Valley last week, Abdullah replied, "I thought its of no use until Delhi makes it clear that he has some powers and that whatever he finally recommends will be taken up in Parliament. That is the only way forward."
Abdullah also referred to earlier such moves.
"The past has shown that none of such efforts has been sincere. Does anyone talk about the report prepared by Dileep Padgaonkar and his team, Radha Kumar and M M Ansari?"
The Congress-led UPA government had appointed the three- member team for talks in Kashmir in 2010. In 2012, it submitted its report which favoured "meaningful autonomy" for the state, while preserving its distinct diversities.
"Till date, that report has not seen the light of day. It is collecting dust in the home ministry. The best thing would have been to table that report in both the Houses of Parliament," Abdullah said.
He was also sceptical about the success of Sharmas mission.
"I dont see it progressing unless the government of India makes its mind clear and gives him that authority (of tabling the report). Otherwise he will be subservient to (National Security Advisor Ajit) Doval," he said.
Abdullah said any effort so solve the Kashmir issue had to include Pakistan.
"When I talk about the Kashmir issue, I mean the entire Jammu, kashmir and Ladakh. This is not only a developmental issue, but also a political issue, and this political issue also involves Pakistan, as a part of this state is with them."
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Unless Pakistan was taken on board, "whatever we decide with Delhi will not carry any weight", he said.
"The skirmishes between the two countries at the border are only leading to death and destruction. This needs to be stopped," he said.
Abdullah said "to the best of his understanding", granting autonomy would be "the best possible solution" as it was within the provisions of the Constitution.
"Now there are some problems as far as autonomy is concerned. We have repeatedly said we can discuss (them)...If there is anything in that autonomy report which will not (be of) benefit...we can look into them, either they (the Centre) convince us or we will convince them," he said.
Instead of "just shutting it out", there should be a discussion, he added.
Abdullah also made it clear his party had said nothing against accession to the Indian Union.
"Never have we asked for azadi," he said and recalled a statement made by former prime minister P V Narasimha Rao, who had once said in Parliament that other than azadi, the sky was the limit as far as autonomy was concerned.
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"Where is that sky," asked Abdullah.
People of the state, he said, were aware of the "agenda of the BJP and RSS" of abrogating Article 370.
"But let me warn you, it will further aggravate the situation. Nobody will be here for autonomy... everyone will shout for azadi. At that time dont blame me," he said.
Abdullah said hed had a number of meetings with Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
"His speech from the Red Fort on Independence day asking all countrymen to embrace Kashmiris was a nice gesture. However, his team down below has not been translating these words into action," he said.
The Member of Parliament also requested Modi to rein in army chief Gen Bipin Rawat.
"Of late, we have seen the Army chief making political statements and this practice is not good for democracy. I am sure one day the Prime Minister will ask him to focus on our borders and look after the welfare of our Army." PTI SKL BDS
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Opotiki-born, Howard Maxwell, has just been awarded a Maori Health Research PhD Scholarship as part of the Health Research Councils 2018 career development awards.
His research centres on microbiology and his passion lies in limiting and reducing the spread of antibiotic resistance - one of the fastest growing health crises in the world.
"Resistance mechanisms have been observed for nearly every antibiotic in our arsenal," says Maxwell. "We are rapidly approaching a post-antibiotic era where no treatment will exist against seemingly insignificant infections".
Maori, he says, will be particularly vulnerable if this happens, due to both increased susceptibility to infectious organisms and reliance on antibiotics.
The Ministry of Health acknowledges that Maori are disproportionately burdened by infectious diseases and that antibiotics are dispensed to a higher proportion of Maori than non-Maori, says Maxwell.
"Preventing the spread of antibiotic resistance will reduce the threat of infectious disease in Maori and result in better health outcomes," he says.
Maxwell plans to examine the communication processes within bacteria that control the spread of antibiotic resistance genes.
Hes particularly interested in quorum sensing (a mechanism by which bacteria communicate) and its relationship to CRISPR-Cas systems (a way in which bacteria arm themselves against invading genetic material).
Before anyone can begin to manipulate these systems, he says, its important to understand how their components coordinate and communicate with one another.
Its a task thats keeping researchers around the globe busy, and Maxwell is thrilled to be joining their ranks.
"CRISPR-Cas is a rapidly developing field and various international groups and companies are already researching its potential for curing genetic disorders," he says.
Maxwell was first introduced into the research environment last summer, where he conducted a short research project within the Fineran Laboratory at the University of Otago.
The $129,900 grant from the HRC will help him build on that work and build his research expertise.
He feels that addressing health issues for Maori requires a diverse approach that not only incorporates public health initiatives, but is partnered by the investigation of fundamental biology.
"Im both curious and excited in the way that organisms function and interact with each other, people and the environment. This grant is giving me the opportunity to pursue that passion.
"Its also a good thing for my community - I dont think many people from Opotiki get this sort of opportunity - Id like to be one of many to pursue postgraduate education and academia as a way to benefit our community," he says.
The HRCs senior manager of Maori Health Research Investment, Stacey Pene, says its encouraging to see young researchers driven by the need to benefit their communities and all New Zealanders, especially in areas of rising urgency such as antibiotic resistance.
Cambridge Oaks, which opens November 25, will include 205 homes starting at just $249,000, helping young-at-heart over 50s free up capital while retaining an active lifestyle.
The village centre and facilities will include a library, gym, games room and motorhome carpark and wash-down area. The emphasis is on giving baby boomers the option to cash-up and live free.
Freedom Lifestyle Villages managing director Jacob Van Het Wout says the community appeals to singles and couples, still working or retired, who want to downsize so they can unlock capital and enjoy the lifestyle theyve worked decades to achieve.
A lot of our residents spent their whole lives working hard, raising families and saving for their retirements only to have those savings and investments affected by the Global Financial Crisis, he says. Cambridge Oaks will allow them to free the money tied up in their family homes.
Freedom Lifestyle Villages tested the model by developing the Papamoa Sands village in Tauranga and was swamped by enquiries, selling all 180 homes in under three years.
Jacob says this massive demand encouraged the development of Cambridge Oaks and a third village in Matamata, which is due to open in the middle of next year.
Sixty-five is the new young, Jacob says. Our residents love being able to socialise with their neighbours, but they also value being able to travel with the knowledge that they can lock up their homes and leave them behind in a safe community.
Unlike a retirement village, Cambridge Oaks allows residents to retain legal beneficial ownership of their homes and share in capital gains should they choose to sell and some residents at Papamoa have already made substantial capital gains on their new houses.
Cambridge Oaks also differs from a traditional retirement village in that the average age of residents is eight years younger, 25 per cent are single, and the focus is on an active lock up and leave lifestyle rather than end-of-life support.
Rather than host retirement-village facilities such as a medical centre, Cambridge Oaks features lifestyle-oriented facilities such as a village centre, a recreation shed, a gym and a secure motorhome carpark.
Local MP Louise Upston sees the development as great news.
It is exciting to see all the developments in Cambridge and particularly new residential options such as the Cambridge Oaks lifestyle village, she says.
One of my priorities for this term as MP for Taupo is to ensure there are great housing options in our community.
With people moving into this new lifestyle village, existing houses are freed up for more families to buy or rent.
This is great news for Cambridge.
Waipa Mayor Jim Mylchreest says he is delighted by Cambridge Oaks.
This is a great opportunity for people wishing to down-size from their existing homes to take advantage of a secure community environment whilst potentially freeing up capital for their retirement, he says.
Jim says that downsizing generally frees up existing family homes within the community that are absolutely necessary with the acute housing shortage facing New Zealand at the present time.
Karen O'Reilly is a professor of anthropology and sociology currently employed part time by Goldsmiths, University in London, to work on the BrexitBritsAbroad research project, which is researching the impact that Brexit is having on British nationals living in other European Union member countries. Her research recently brought her to Malaga, where she interviewed a number of Brits living in the area about their thoughts and feelings on Brexit. Karen is no stranger to Malaga and first came to the province in 1992.
A passion for learning
At the age of 30, Karen, who had been working at a nursery, enrolled at the University of Essex to study a BA in sociology. Having gained first class honours, she discovered a passion for study and that she loved university and didn't want to leave, so she went on to complete a PhD at the same institution.
The author of British on the Costa del Sol will continue to visit Spain but has no plans to live here
The subject of her doctorate was Brits living in Spain, the idea for which came about when in 1998 she came to Fuengirola with her then partner, and now husband, Trevor . The self-confessed perpetual student explains that it was her tutor at the time who said to her, why don't you do your PhD on British people living in Spain?
It was Trevor's dream, Karen explains, to live on the Costa del Sol. Karen, however, wasn't convinced at the time as she felt that her life and, in particular, her studies were where her priorities lay. She says that she couldn't understand at first why her partner liked Fuengirola so much, but explains that when she saw mountains she fell in love.
The couple have, since then, been back and forth between the UK and Spain as Karen's career really took off in the UK. After completing her PhD, Karen worked for the universities of Essex, Aberdeen and Loughborough, where she describes her career as based on research using qualitative methods, especially ethnography. In 2000, she published her book, British on the Costa del Sol. She took early retirement from Loughborough in 2016 to become a freelance research trainer, teaching research methods to medical professionals among others.
Shaping lives
Karen explains that her daughters were nine and eleven when the family first came to live in Spain. They attended Spanish school and had Spanish lessons. When they returned to the UK Karen explains how important she felt it was for them both to continue to learn Spanish. Their lives have been shaped by it, she says, adding, One daughter is married to a Peruvian and their first language at home is Spanish and my other daughter also uses Spanish in her job.
No plans to live in Spain
The professor talks frankly about Brexit as well as her own background.
She describes her upbringing as working class and says that the first time she went abroad was in 1980, aged 23, when she travelled to America. I'm not from a travelling background, she says.
However, migration has shaped her life, from the PhD and publication of her book to Brexit to the BrexitBritsAbroad research and a lot of work and research in between. She says she doesn't have much opportunity to talk about her own opinions on Brexit as she needs to focus her work on collecting the opinions of others. I really didn't think it would happen, she admits and says that she is concerned about how it is affecting Brits abroad. Options to travel, live, retire and spend time in EU easily, which we have long taken for granted, are possibly going to be taken away, she adds.
On returning to Spain after this project, Karen says that she can't see that she would live here permanently but thinks she and her husband will continue to spend time here in the future, although she concludes, I've never learned Spanish well enough to feel a full part of life here.
BINGHAMTON, N.Y. -- A dangerous sex offender and convicted rapist is back in custody after fleeing the area earlier this week, according to the state Department of Corrections and Community Supervision.
Ronald Cook
Ronald Cook, 66, was arrested Saturday evening near Binghamton.
Cook became a wanted man after officials said he cut off his ankle bracelet and fled his Utica home Wednesday. He was later spotted in Rome and Scranton, Pennsylvania, according to state officials.
Cook, a level three sex offender, was convicted of first-degree rape in 1999 for raping a 24-year-old woman near Binghamton, according to the state Department of Criminal Justice Services. His record indicated he did not know the woman.
He was sentenced to 12 1/2 to 25 years in state prison, where he was deemed a sexually violent sex offender and a predicate sex offender.
After being released in 2012, he was sent to a secretive program called "civil management." According to state records, the system allows the state to keep those deemed out-of-control sex offenders in secure mental hospitals indefinitely.
Cook was eventually let out, but had to undergo Intensive Supervision and Treatment -- a more-intense version of parole.
He went missing for about three days after cutting his GPS ankle bracelet off and fleeing his home at 129 Eagle St., Apartment 7, in Utica. DOCCS officials told the public Cook should be considered dangerous, and to call local law enforcement if he was spotted.
Cook was caught by officers with the Binghamton Police Department late Saturday afternoon and is being held in Broome County jail as a parole violator, according to state officials. He will face criminal charges after being sent back to Central New York, they said.
SYRACUSE, N.Y. -- A man in his 40s was killed on Syracuse's Near Westside overnight, police said.
Police responded to reports of a shooting on the 400 block of Shonnard Street at 1 a.m. Sunday.
They found the man suffering from serious injuries, a spokesman said. Though the incident was originally reported as a shooting, investigators don't believe the suspect was shot, Sgt. Richard Helterline said.
AMR Ambulance arrived at the scene and the victim was pronounced dead, police said.
Sgt. Richard Helterline, a spokesman for the Syracuse police, said investigators are still trying to determine the victim's cause of death. Police are investigating the death as suspicious, but have not confirmed it was a homicide, he said.
Officials have not yet identified the man. Police have not released any information about possible suspects at this time.
The Syracuse Police Department asked that anyone with information about the homicide call 315-442-5222.
Public Affairs Reporter Julie McMahon covers federal courts, government and other issues affecting taxpayers. She can be reached anytime: Email | Twitter | 315-412-1992
COHOES, N.Y. -- Police were called to the home of Cohoes Mayor Shawn Morse last week, but he denies domestic violence between him and his wife.
The Albany Times-Union reported that 911 received a call Friday morning from Morse's wife, Brenda, who told authorities her husband choked and pushed, her and smashed her phone when she tried to call police.
When contacted by The Times-Union, Morse said, "Don't [expletive] call my house ever again," according to the report. "You don't need to know what goes on in my house between me and my family."
He initially denied police were called to his house, threatened to file a lawsuit, and suggested 911 calls are "private" under New York state law.
Morse later apologized to the newspaper, and said no one was physically injured in the family dispute. He said he and his wife had a good 18-year marriage.
"Me and my wife are going through a real hard time, we are emotionally drained, we are physically drained and we are trying to find answers that we can't find," he said in interview with The Times-Union.
A police official told The Times-Union that officers who responded to the call did not observe Brenda Morse to have any injuries. The official said Morse had a small scratch on his face, which could be seen in photos of the mayor in subsequent days.
Morse "vehemently denied" there was physical contact during the argument, according to the Times-Union report.
In a Facebook post obtained by the newspaper, Morse apparently wrote that it's normal for couples to argue.
"Most couples have not had hundreds of arguments; they've had the same argument hundreds of times," Morse wrote. "Life is hard. After all, it kills you."
Public Affairs Reporter Julie McMahon covers federal courts, government and other issues affecting taxpayers. She can be reached anytime: Email | Twitter | 315-412-1992
Owing to the sizzling chemistry between Sidharth Malhotra and Alia Bhatt, there has always been buzz about their relationship.
By India Today Web Desk: Sidharth Malhotra and Alia Bhatt have always created much buzz, with their adorable photos on Instagram and Twitter. There was speculation that the two had called it quits in the middle. However, it looks like the two are close as ever, and always attend Bollywood parties together.
Sidharth and Alia have always maintained a stoic silence on their relationship, and called each other "good friends", but going by their photos, we know that's not the case. When quizzed about his relationship with Alia, Sidharth told Hindustan Times, "I have been linked with every actor I have worked with. Wonder why I have never been linked with Akshay Kumar (his co-star in Brothers; 2015). I feel bad for Akshay," he said. When pressed further, he said, "Alia and I have always been good friends."
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So he says. There was much buzz when Alia left Shah Rukh Khan's party in Alibaug wearing Sidharth's T- shirt. What do you have to say about that, Sid?
The two have acted together in Student of the Year (2012) and Kapoor and Sons.
On the work front, Sidharth Malhotra is riding high on Ittefaq' s success. Alia has just wrapped up the shoot of Raazi, and will next be seen in Gully Boy, and Brahmastra.
ALSO WATCH: Sidharth Malhotra opens up on his relationship with Alia Bhatt
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Great news for Apple fans in the Philippines who are planning to upgrade to the iPhone 8 via Smart Postpaid!
The country's largest mobile network has just disclosed its official iPhone Plans for 2017 and has likewise started taking pre-orders for bundled units through their consumer website.
iPhone Plan 1999 is the current Smart Postpaid hero offering for the Apple iPhone 8, which gives you the 64GB version of the handset plus reliable data and mobile services for a total of Php 2,699 per month (for 24 months) if you won't go beyond the inclusions . The iPhone 8 256GB is also available for Php 2,999 per month.
With this plan, you can enjoy 12GB of mobile data allocation per month, unlimited SMS to all networks, 70 minutes of calls to all networks, plus access to an app of your choice (choose among Youtube, Facebook, Viber, Waze, Instagram, or Viber).
The other plans that let you defer the payment for the unit include:
iPhone Plan 1499
with 9GB of Data Allocation, Unli All-Net SMS, 60 Minutes of All-Net Calls, App of Choice
Php 2,499 total monthly payment for 24 months for iPhone 8 64GB
Php 2,899 total monthly payment for 24 months for iPhone 8 256GB
iPhone Plan 2499
with 15GB of Data Allocation, Unli All-Net SMS, 80 Minutes of All-Net Calls, App of Choice
Php 2,999 total monthly payment for 24 months for iPhone 8 64GB
Php 3,399 total monthly payment for 24 months for iPhone 8 256GB
iPhone Plan 1499
with 18GB of Data Allocation, Unli All-Net SMS, 90 Minutes of All-Net Calls, App of Choice
Php 3,199 total monthly payment for 24 months for iPhone 8 64GB
Php 3,599 total monthly payment for 24 months for iPhone 8 256GB
*Smart Communications has just added discounted Php 4/minute calls to Smart and Talk N' Text to each plan.
Here's the Hero Plan breakdown just for comparison:
iPhone Plan 1999 - HERO
with 12GB of Data Allocation, Unli All-Net SMS, 70 Minutes of All-Net Calls, App of Choice
Php 2,699 total monthly payment for 24 months for iPhone 8 64GB
Php 2,999 total monthly payment for 24 months for iPhone 8 256GB The country's largest mobile network has just disclosed its official iPhone Plans for 2017 and has likewise started taking pre-orders for bundled units through their consumer website.. The iPhone 8 256GB is also available for Php 2,999 per month.With this plan, you can enjoy 12GB of mobile data allocation per month, unlimited SMS to all networks, 70 minutes of calls to all networks, plus access to an app of your choice (choose among Youtube, Facebook, Viber, Waze, Instagram, or Viber).The other plans that let you defer the payment for the unit include:with 9GB of Data Allocation, Unli All-Net SMS, 60 Minutes of All-Net Calls, App of Choicetotal monthly payment for 24 months for iPhone 8 64GBtotal monthly payment for 24 months for iPhone 8 256GBwith 15GB of Data Allocation, Unli All-Net SMS, 80 Minutes of All-Net Calls, App of Choicetotal monthly payment for 24 months for iPhone 8 64GBtotal monthly payment for 24 months for iPhone 8 256GBwith 18GB of Data Allocation, Unli All-Net SMS, 90 Minutes of All-Net Calls, App of Choicetotal monthly payment for 24 months for iPhone 8 64GBtotal monthly payment for 24 months for iPhone 8 256GBHere's the Hero Plan breakdown just for comparison:
As a Smart Digital Ambassador and a Filipino mobile consumer, I'd say that these Smart iPhone 8 Plans are great because of the larger data allocation that lets you do more on your handset - be it for work or play. The all-net calls and texts should also come in handy for getting in touch with loved ones, workmates, or business contacts who don't have or don't often use social media and online messaging platforms. Finally, the one free app access lets you use your favorite application - Facebook, in my case - as much as you want and not worry that it will deplete the amount of data that comes bundled with your plan.
As you can see 3GB of Data and 10 Minutes of calls separate each plan. It's up to you to decide whether the beefed up inclusions justify the additional amount (Php 200 in all cases apart from Plan 1999 to 2499, which is Php 300).Featuring an all-new glass-metal-glass design, the water-resistant Apple iPhone 8 is equipped with a 4.7-inch Retina HD True Tone display, a 12 MegaPixel rear camera, 7 MegaPixel front-cam for selfies, 4K video recorder, Touch ID fingerprint scanner, stereo speaker system, and wireless charging support. Under the hood, the handset runs iOS 10 right of the box with the all-new Hexa-Core Apple A11 Bionic processor, which incorporates an industry-leading mobile graphics chip.According to data gathered by OpenSignal from May to July 2017, Smart Communications offers the fastest mobile data speeds across the Philippines.
By PTI: Hyderabad, Nov 12 (PTI) A group of students of a private school at Chaitanyapuri here held demonstrations on the school premises against what they termed as "long school hours".
The protesting students of high school, who held a sit-in protest yesterday, accused the school authorities of running classes from 6.30 am to 6.30 pm and raised slogans- we want justice.
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"Our school classes are held from 6.30 am to 6.30 pm while in other schools, the classes are conducted from 8 am to 4.30 pm. After school hours, we again go to tuitions and there is homework also," a student is seen saying in a video circulated in media.
"By the time we go to sleep it is around 10.30 pm to 11 pm and again next morning we have to get up at 5.30 am to attend school by 6.30 am. We are deprived of sleep...parents also need to understand," the student said.
Asked on their demands, other protesting students said they wanted immediate change in timings of school classes.
City-based child rights NGO Balala Hakkula Sangham accused the school management of subjecting the school children to stress.
The NGOs honorary president Achyuta Rao alleged that the school authorities are violating all the norms and moreover giving heavy homework to students.
"The students told us that they are hardly getting any sleep after studying 13 to 14 hours and again their parents are sending them to tuitions," Rao said.
He further said they have brought the matter to the notice of Ranga Reddy District Collector, seeking action against the school for "violating norms".
Meanwhile, a school official refuted the allegations and said they conduct classes from 8.30 am to 4.30 pm and the students are given 30 minutes break in between and the students are asked to do the homework within the school timings. PTI VVK NP SDM
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Suburra: Blood on Rome, a new Netflix crime series, follows the path of extremely successful Italian crime dramas like 2014's Gomorrah, or older dramas like La Piovra (The Octopus) over a decade ago.
When Italian moviemaker Sergio Leone snatched the western away in the 1960s with his 'dollar westerns', Hollywood hit back by wresting the Mafia movie away from Italy with Francis Ford Copolla's Godfather movies in the 1970s. But now, streaming video has brought Italian crime sagas back to centre stage.
In the newest entrant, the 10-part Suburra: Blood on Rome, a mafia boss shrugs his shoulders as he tells an honest city councilman, "This place hasn't changed in 2,000 years. Patricians, plebians, politicians and criminals, whores and priests? Rome."
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Indeed, everyone in Netflix's newest crime series seems to be corrupt, conflicted and morally decadent. "But now, only the rich live here," the honest politician replies. He too is staring into a moral abyss from which there is no return.
Netflix's acclaimed three-season Narcos traversed similar territory, but that was with Colombia's cocaine crime empires. Now, the video-on-demand network has again hit pay dirt in Italy. The series (the title means slum and also alludes to a seedier part of ancient Rome) follows the path of extremely successful Italian crime dramas like 2014's Gomorrah, set in the Naples crime world or older dramas like La Piovra (The Octopus) over a decade ago.
At the centre are three youngsters from diverse backgrounds who strike an alliance of sorts. Gabriele Marchilli (Eduardo Valdarnini) is a drug dealer who is also a policeman's son. Aureliano Adami (Alessandro Borghi) is a Mafia family scion. And Alberto Anacleti (Giacomo Ferrara) is a Gypsy gangster. The deadly contest between the Vatican, Italian mobsters and assorted criminals over a piece of land in a seaside town near Rome with enormous potential for redevelopment drives the plot.
A prequel to the 2015 Netflix film, Suburra, the series is a slow burner for someone unfamiliar with the original film. And unlike Narcos, which had as much English as Spanish, this series is entirely in Italian-so you have to rely on the subtitles or lose the plot. But it remains a compelling watch-and the climax hits you with all the subtlety of a sawn-off shotgun. A worthy new entrant to the crime noir sagas and also a testament to their enduring march on streaming video.
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Youth Empowerment Project YEP youth participant help box 100 Thanksgiving baskets that will be donated to YEP families in need along with a dozen volunteers recruited through the foundation called Strong City in New Orleans, La. Thursday, Nov. 2, 2017. Tulane Medical School graduate Dr. Peter Gold, who was shot and nearly killed while intervening in the kidnapping of woman in November 2015, started Strong City as a new way for cities to share resources and empower underserved youth.
By PTI: Raipur, Nov 12 (PTI) Three Naxals were today gunned down in an encounter with security forces in forests in Chhattisgarhs Bijapur district, police said.
Three weapons, including one INSAS rifle, and explosives were seized from the encounter spot, around 450 km from here, they added.
The gun-battle took place this afternoon near Mankeli village under Bijapur police station limits when a joint team of the Special Task Force (STF) and the District Reserve Guard (DRG) was on an anti-Maoist operation, Deputy Inspector General of Police (Dantewada range) Sundarraj P told PTI.
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When the patrolling team reached Mankeli forests, an exchange of fire broke out between security forces and a group of ultras, he said.
After a brief gunfight, the rebels escaped into the core area of the forests, he said.
During a search operation of the encounter site, bodies of three rebels were recovered. Three firearms, including one INSAS rifle, and improvised explosive devices (IEDs) were also found, the DIG said.
Six Naxals, including five women, were gunned down in two separate encounters with security forces in Narayanpur district of Bastar region on November 7. PTI TKP RSY KJ
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A woman found dead in the trunk of a car Friday evening was the founder of Baton Rouge's African American history museum who helped jumpstart
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A Baton Rouge man arrested in September after police say he struck and killed a man while fleeing officers was arrested again early Saturday and booked on driving while intoxicated and drug counts, according to the East Baton Rouge Parish Prison online booking records.
An East Baton Rouge Sheriff's deputy stopped 31-year-old Reginald Weeden around 4:30 a.m. Saturday in the 5700 block of Nicholson Drive after they caught Weeden driving a black Infiniti at 70 mph in a 55 mph zone, according to an arrest report.
When Weeden opened the door, the deputy smelled "a strong odor of suspected marijuana" and saw "a small plastic bag of suspected marijuana" on the passenger seat, according to the report. The deputy reported that he then saw Weeden throw something out the passenger side window.
The deputy found several knotted plastic bags on the ground next to the passenger window that were empty except for one with a single crystal rock in it, according to the report. The rock later tested positive for methamphetamine, according to the report.
Although the ground was wet with dew, the bags were all dry, the deputy noted in his report. It was also 58 degrees outside and the passenger side window was the only one open, the deputy said. Camera footage later showed several objects flying from the passenger's window, according to the report.
Officials: Man fleeing Livingston deputies after trying to run them over causes fatal crash in Baton Rouge A Tuesday night drug investigation by Livingston Parish Sheriff's Office in Walker that transitioned into a chase ended on Florida Boulevard i
Weeden, who claimed there was nothing illegal in his car, got out and "several small crystal looking rocks" fell from his lap onto the ground, the deputy said. The deputy found a bag of 4.6 grams of suspected marijuana on the passenger's seat, a half smoked cigar with suspected marijuana inside and a pocket digital scale in the center console.
The deputy found more crystal rocks scattered around the driver's seat area and at the bottom of a cup that was filled with a drink, according to the report. All of the collected rocks of meth weighed 46 grams, according to the report.
Weeden, of 6655 Fern Drive, was arrested Saturday and booked on first-offense DWI, speeding, obstruction of justice, possession of drug paraphernalia, possession of marijuana, and distributing and manufacturing a Schedule II drug, booking records show.
Weeden was previously arrested after fleeing from narcotics detectives in Livingston Parish around 10:30 p.m. on Sept. 5 and leading officers on a chase to Florida Boulevard in Baton Rouge, according to a Baton Rouge police report.
The chase ended when Weeden, who was driving a 2016 Dodge Charger at 119 mph, crashed into a Chevrolet Impala driven by 23-year-old Jonathan Scott, police have said. Scott died in the crash.
At the time of the fatal crash, Weeden was out on bail, awaiting criminal proceedings from an Aug. 11 arrest on drug counts.
After his release from the hospital, Weeden was arrested in East Baton Rouge Parish on Sept. 11 on negligent homicide and aggravated flight from an officer.
He bailed out of East Baton Rouge Parish prison again on Sept. 19 on a $160,000 bond, according to records filed online with the East Baton Rouge Clerk of Court.
He was arrested a second time, on Sept. 20, in the fatal crash incident. Authorities in Livingston Parish, where the chase started, booked him on two counts of aggravated assault with a motor vehicle upon a peace officer, one count of aggravated flight from an officer, possession of Schedule II drugs, first-offense possession of marijuana and prohibited acts drug paraphernalia.
Man arrested in fatal Baton Rouge crash rebooked Wednesday in Livingston Parish A man previously arrested in Baton Rouge after a police chase and fatal crash was rebooked Wednesday in Livingston Parish, where the initial p
It is not immediately known late Saturday when Weeden was released from the Livingston Parish Detention Center or how much his bond was.
WASHINGTON Lawmakers on Capitol Hill will hold a hearing Monday on a recently struck compromise bill to overhaul and reauthorize the National Flood Insurance Program, a sign of progress toward breaking a months-long deadlock over the NFIP in the House.
House Majority Whip Steve Scalise, R-Jefferson, reached a deal on key provisions of the proposed reauthorization for the flood insurance program with House Financial Services Chairman Jeb Hensarling, R-Texas, at the beginning of the month.
But an initial hearing on the bill last Tuesday was scratched as Hensarling rehashed parts of its text with other lawmakers. The Congressional Budget Office, which evaluates the fiscal impact of proposed legislation, raised questions about provisions in the bill, according to Politico.
Hensarling has advocated a number of changes to the NFIP that lawmakers from Louisiana and other coastal states worried would cut off access to coverage or send premiums soaring for residents of flood-prone areas, including much of south Louisiana.
Scalises deal with the Texan softened a number of Hensarlings proposed changes to protect homeowners whose properties have flooded before.
Last week, Hensarling made two additional revisions to his bill that appeared to be concessions to Scalise and other coastal lawmakers. The latest publicly posted version scraps a proposed rule against NFIP covering homes worth more than $1 million and delays a provision that would allow commercial properties in flood zones to opt out of the program.
Both of those changes wouldve shrunk the pool of policyholders in the program, something a number of advocates and lobbyists from south Louisiana have fought against.
"Being from Louisiana and Texas, we are all too familiar with the devastating effects of floods and the havoc they wreak on communities," Hensarling and Scalise said in a joint statement announcing their original deal, which came after weeks of negotiations. "Thats why we agree on the importance of a long-term reauthorization of the National Flood Insurance Program that helps both policyholders and taxpayers."
The newly rescheduled hearing before the House Rules Committee puts the bill on track for a floor vote this week. Its also a likely indication that House leadership, including Scalise, believe they have enough votes to pass it.
Its unclear whether senators several of whom have filed their own flood-insurance bills would consider the Scalise-Hensarling bill or forge ahead with their own legislation.
Hensarling, a Dallas congressman who recently announced hes retiring next year, has spent much of his term as chairman of the House Financial Services Committee which oversees the NFIP at odds with lawmakers from Louisiana and other coastal states over potential reforms to flood insurance.
Hernsarling and a number of other conservative budget-hawks for years have set their sights on the NFIP, arguing the program is fiscally unsustainable and shouldn't be federally subsidized. Hes proposed a number of provisions that would likely shrink the program dramatically and hike premiums for high-risk homeowners significantly.
Congressional delegations from flood-prone states, meanwhile, have pushed to protect homeowners from steep hikes or from being booted out of the program.
Hensarlings original bill would have kicked out of the program some homes with multiple past flood claims including those filed by prior owners decades ago and stripped away below-risk grandfathered rates from other properties. The compromise he struck with Scalise would still increase rates on properties that repeatedly flood but would only count future not past claims against them.
The debt-laden NFIPs congressional authority expires Dec. 8, putting Congress under pressure to strike a deal on reauthorizing it. It's unclear whether a comprehensive overhaul, like the one Hensarling and Scalise are working on, could pass both chambers of Congress before that deadline.
If not, Congress could choose to briefly extend the program to buy time as lawmakers work out the details of a long-term deal.
The NFIP has been mired in growing debt to the U.S. Treasury since 2005, when a wave of claims from Hurricane Katrina wiped out its reserves and drove the program deep into the red. Program administrators say several devastating hurricanes this year will cost the program billions more to cover claims, putting the NFIP at risk of insolvency.
Congress acted earlier this fall to forgive roughly half of the programs debt $16 billion in order to free up borrowing authority to pay incoming claims.
In this Tuesday, Oct. 31, 2017 photo, President Donald Trump speaks during a meeting in the Roosevelt Room of the White House in Washington. Trump is calling for Merit Based immigration following the truck attack in New York City that killed eight people and injured 11. Trump says on Twitter Wednesday that the driver in Tuesdays attack came into our country through what is called the Diversity Visa Lottery Program, a Chuck Schumer beauty. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
Miranda Hernandez pays her respects as she visits a makeshift memorial with crosses placed near the scene of a shooting at the First Baptist Church of Sutherland Springs, Monday, Nov. 6, 2017, in Sutherland Springs, Texas. A man opened fire inside the church in the small South Texas community on Sunday, killing over 20 and wounding many. (AP Photo/Eric Gay) ORG XMIT: TXEG141
Later this week, voting machines will be moved from their secured warehouses to 3,904 precincts around the state.
Signs will be posted at Saturdays polling stations. Commissioners will be hired for each precinct four, sometimes five, at my voting location alone each paid up to $250.
Louisiana is picking a new state treasurer who, before the end of the month, will start managing the states money, deciding which infrastructure projects get funding, and assuming the fourth position in the line of gubernatorial succession.
Given the projections that few people will participate, taxpayers will pay about $20 for each vote cast to cover the costs of this election. Thats roughly six times more than what the two candidates Democrat Derrick Edwards and Republican John Schroder will have spent for each ballot they win.
+4 In Louisiana treasurer's race, these 2 candidates headed to runoff Democrat Derrick Edwards and Republican John Schroder made the runoff Saturday in the race for state treasurer.
The Oct. 14 primary also cost about $6 million and had the lowest turnout for a statewide election in recent Louisiana history. That title will be short lived, as experts calculate fewer will participate Saturday.
The expense has people talking about the need to postpone special statewide elections to coincide with federal races, even if it means the interim appointee has to sit in the temporary post for another year.
Interim Treasurer Ron Henson, for instance, picked up the baton in January after his boss of 20 years, John N. Kennedy, quit to become a U.S. senator.
Louisiana elects legislators, governors and other statewide officials in odd-numbered years. Congressional and presidential elections fall on even-numbered years.
Races to fill municipal and parish posts, as well as state House and Senate seats, are localized and dont require monumental effort of staging an election statewide. Saturdays runoff for House District 77 between Republicans Rob Maness and Mark Wright will involve 31 precincts in St. Tammany Parish. In Orleans Parish, LaToya Cantrell and Desiree M. Charbonnet, both Democrats, are competing in 351 precincts to become mayor.
Consolidation of statewide and federal races will keep the costs down and may even increase turnout, Secretary of State Tom Schedler told a national audience on C-SPAN last week. Ive been a big proponent for several years of a temporary appointment process, he said.
The savings could go to, say, helping fund the popular TOPS grant that pays most college costs for students achieving modest scholastic standards, Schedler has said in interviews.
Sulphur Democratic state Rep. Mike Danahay, whose House & Governmental Affairs Committee would vet the legislation, said Schedlers idea would be a difficult lift under the best of circumstances. A lot of word changes in a number of different laws would be needed. And thats before considering the political opposition. Some candidates think small turnouts give them an edge.
The smart money is on the formation of a study commission.
Louisiana Democratic Party struggles to gain footing in South's GOP-dominated political climate Louisiana had a rare statewide opening this year for treasurer a little-known position that has served as a bully pulpit to catapult at leas
Im sure the Legislature could think of one or two stop-gap measures. They have solutions for blueberry festivals. I dont think its that difficult, said Baton Rouge pollster Bernie Pinsonat. Hes admittedly nostalgic for the Edwin Edwards/Bennett Johnston days when 60 percent voter turnout was routine.
Recently, however, off-year statewide races have rarely attracted much attention. In 2006, special elections for secretary of state and commissioner of insurance pulled in right at 20 percent when both races are averaged. Last years U.S. Senate runoff attracted an anemic 29 percent of the states 2.9 million registered voters. Still, thats roughly double the expected turnout Saturday.
Voter apathy is not unique to Louisiana.
Dallas last week turned out 6 percent of that countys 1.3 million registered voters to decide the fate of school buses in Texas third largest city. In May 2015, only 6.7 percent of the registered voters participated in choosing a mayor.
Voter apathy has been climbing since the 1980s. Academic studies point to all sorts of reasons: frustration, mistrust, campaign costs and intrusive media, to name a few.
About half of Virginias 5.5 million voters turned out to elect a governor after a brutal advertising campaign scratched all sorts of societal scabs, from racism to porno. Democrat Ralph S. Northam soundly defeated Republican Ed Gillespie.
But Virginia is a moderate state compared to Louisiana, and political analyst G. Pearson Cross doesnt see Republicans here crossing party lines. That plays into a lower turnout on Saturday.
Republicans are more conservative and Democrats are more liberal, said Cross, of the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. If you group Louisianas statewide elections together, youd probably increase turnout and get a slightly different electorate.
As it is, both Edwards and Schroder are playing exclusively to those few voters who cast ballots in nearly every election.
The results are predictable because Schroders base of chronic voters is larger than Edwards.
With dengue deaths continuing unabated in the state, the Mamata Banerjee administration has gone on an overdrive for damage control.
By Indrajit Kundu: With dengue deaths continuing unabated in the state, the Mamata Banerjee administration has gone on an overdrive for damage control. Rather than accepting the magnitude of the crisis, the government remains in denial with ministers and Trinamool Congress leaders citing bizarre reasons for the outbreak.
On Sunday, TMC MP Kakoli Ghosh Dastidar termed the current crisis a natural calamity! "This is nothing but a natural calamity. People don't breed mosquitoes wilfully. We are a tropical country and during monsoons mosquito will breed, it's a global phenomenon. It's not as if this is unique to our state," the MP said while visiting Deganga in North 24 Pargana district, one of the worst affected areas in state.
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"State government is providing every necessary facility to treat patients and people are getting best quality healthcare and there is no issue at all," she added, while distributing mosquito nets to dengue patients admitted in government health centre.
MAKING ARRANGEMENTS MORE IMPORTANT THAN VISITING PLACES
When asked why she did not pay a visit to the area in the last two months when the dengue outbreak first came to light, the MP said she was busy arranging facilities to combat the disease sitting at the district headquarters.
"Rather than roaming around, it was more important to make sure all the arrangements were in place. I was ensuring that medical kits and other equipment were being properly sent to every locality after they had arrived at the district headquarter. As a single person, I have to handle other issue like bad roads, lack of drinking water and electricity problems too," Dastidar said.
The visit comes just days after the state government suspended a whistle blower doctor from a state run hospital in her own Barasat constituency for venting his frustration on social media over the inadequate medical arrangements to deal with the massive influx of dengue patients.
In a Facebook post, Arunachal Dutta Choudhury, a veteran doctor with the Barasat government hospital had claimed that doctors were being instructed by the state health department to mention other medical conditions as reasons for dengue deaths in certificates. Posting a photograph from October 6, Choudhury revealed how just one doctor and a nurse was allocated for 240 patients admitted on a single day at the hospital.
"We are not writing dengue as the reason for death in certificates. Seems as if there is a ban on dengue in this state. Scared of disciplinary action, we are forced to write 'fever with thrombocytopenia' as the reason behind every death," Choudhury wrote in his post.
"The district's health administration claims that all arrangements are in place but the reality is, hospital administration is completely helpless. There are unwritten instructions to cover up mess or else individual heads will roll," he added.
However, refuting all such allegations, the state government has listed three unique reasons why West Bengal was witnessing one of the worst dengue outbreaks in recent times.
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In an affidavit submitted before the Calcutta high court, state Director of Health Services Biswa Ranjan Satpathy has cited an "abrupt behaviour of climate" to "huge movement of population during long holiday seasons" and persons coming in "close contact through inter-state movement of people and through international borders" as reasons behind the rapid spread of the vector borne disease.
BJP SPEAKS
Meanwhile, Bengal BJP president Dilip Ghosh on Sunday shot off a letter to union health minister JP Nadda seeking the Centre's immediate intervention terming it an "epidemic".
"The danger out of this epidemic has become acute since the state government is not ready to accept the enormity of the crisis. The overall attempt is to put the crisis under the carpet, without combating the fallout," Ghosh states in his letter.
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In today's sharply divided politics, contests for the United States Senate tend to be much more about which party voters prefer than which candidate is most admirable.
Case in point: Republican David Vitter easily won reelection in 2010, three years after revelations of his contacts with a Washington, DC prostitution ring, by casting himself as the one thing standing between Louisiana and Democratic President Barack Obama. And even before last week's shocking, well-sourced Washington Post expose alleging that Alabama U.S. Senate candidate Roy Moore had initiated sexual encounters with teenage girls as young as 14, handicappers have been wondering whether Alabama would follow suit.
If Louisiana tilts red in national elections, Alabama is about as Republican as states come. The seat Moore hopes to claim was previously held by Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who was considered a rightward outlier on many issues even among fellow Republicans but who attracted no opposition the last time he was on the ballot.
Moore, the former Alabama Supreme Court justice who beat President Donald Trump's endorsed candidate in a knock-down, drag-out GOP primary, has long been a notoriously controversial figure. He was removed from the court for defying federal orders to remove a massive Ten Commandments monument, got elected again, then defied the United States Supreme Court's ruling legalizing same-sex marriage across the land. He's been an adherent of the birther movement, which falsely claimed that President Barack Obama was not born in the United States, and has claimed that Sharia law exists in the United States. He's said that homosexuality should be illegal, and once wrote in a formal opinion that it is "a crime against nature, an inherent evil, and an act so heinous that it defies one's ability to describe it." In the 1990s, he ruled that a mother who'd had a lesbian affair could not see her own children unsupervised; he was ultimately removed from the case for bias.
Yet until last week, a majority of Alabamans seemed to be with him, and while some squirmed, national Republicans were falling in line as well. At this point, it's not clear if the new revelations in the Post will change that.
The story, backed up by 30 sources, describes four long-ago incidents in which Moore sought sexual contact with teens. He allegedly approached the 14-year-old while he was a 32-year-old assistant district attorney and she and her mother were at the courthouse for a custody hearing. He assured the girl's mom that he'd keep an eye on her, the story says, then arranged a meeting days later, picked her up around the corner from her house, drove her into the woods and kissed her. During a second encounter, she said, he removed her outer clothes and his own, touched her over her bra and underpants and guided her hand to touch him over his underwear.
It took this, not what we knew about Moore before, to get most other Senate Republicans to disavow him, although many have added the caveat that the revelations are disqualifying "if true." But it appears to be too late to replace him on the ballot, so the real question is how Alabama voters will react.
If this is a line-in-the-sand moment, Louisiana has some experience in these things. In 1991, former Ku Klux Klan leader and anti-Semite David Duke ran for governor as a Republican and wound up in a runoff with a deeply flawed Democrat, Edwin Edwards who, like Duke, would later be convicted of federal crimes. National Republicans disavowed Duke, and many Louisiana Republicans concluded that some things are more important than party, held their noses and backed Edwards.
It's worth noting that gubernatorial races are different from Senate contests. Voters in Louisiana didn't mind sending Vitter back to Washington to battle Obama, but said "no, thanks" when he ran for governor. And it's true that a win for Moore's Democratic opponent Doug Jones a former prosecutor who, unlike Edwards, has an upstanding reputation would shift the power balance in DC and perhaps affect key votes.
Still, when faced with a stark choice, Louisiana figured out where to draw a line. The question here, for both Alabama and the national GOP, is where's their line?
Paying for things by waving a smart phone or other device is poised to take off in the coming years, as consumers are offered new features enticing them to shift to mobile payments, MasterCard predicts.
Consumers will also be able to make payments using voice-based personal assistants, through social messaging apps, or "augmented reality" programs over the coming years, says Garry Lyons, chief innovation officer of the US-listed payments giant.
Garry Lyons, chief innovation officer at MasterCard, said Australia was a world leader in contactless payments. Credit:Louie Douvis
Mr Lyons, on a visit to Australia last week, said the boom in contactless payments meant the country was positioned for growth in the next wave of digital payments, instead of using the relatively old technology of a plastic card.
So far, the number of payments on smart phones or other devices remains very small. The Reserve Bank's latest figures suggest only about 1 per cent of payments in stores are made this way.
"The program is flawed," said Miyuki Tomari, who heads the Biomass Industrial Society Network, a non-profit group promoting the use of sustainable biomass resources. "What had been expected of the feed-in tariff originally was to utilise unused wood materials from forests in Japan," she said, referring to the government guarantees backing the projects.
Government approvals for projects that use "general wood" materials, a category that includes palm oil, almost quadrupled in the year to March. The category's total capacity approved since the program began in 2012 soared to 11.5 gigawatts, up from just 3 gigawatts in 2016, and palm-oil projects account for almost 40 per cent, according to government data.
Demand for palm oil has resulted in the destruction of tropical rainforests in Indonesia and Malaysia, such as this forest in Aceh that was cleared in 2014. Credit:Michael Bachelard
Government incentives introduced after the Fukushima disaster in 2011 guarantee prices for power generated by renewable sources such as solar, wind and biomass. Palm oil, scorned by some environmentalists, who say its production destroys rainforests and peatlands, is becoming more popular because facilities that burn it are among the cheapest to build.
What started as a way to cut Japan's dependence on imported fossil fuels has led to an unexpected surge in a different and equally controversial shipment: palm oil.
Proponents of burning wood and other biomass say it's more reliable than solar or wind, because it can supply power continuously, not just when the sun is shining or the wind is blowing. Its use reduces the need for fossil fuels, they say, and carbon released while burning biomass doesn't harm the environment because it's offset by carbon removed from the atmosphere when the organic material is growing.
"Palm oil is carbon-neutral while, with fossil fuels, the more you use the more CO2 is emitted," said Masaru Kubo, vice president of Osaka-based Sankei Energy, which built a 2-megawatt plant to burn the fuel. "We think using palm oil will help deter global warming," he said, adding he was hopeful there would be more certified palm oil available to ensure the sustainable use of the fuel.
But the impact calculation can get complicated. In deciding the value of palm oil, the maths has to account for extra emissions caused by the draining and burning of carbon-rich swamps known as peatlands and tropical forests that are destroyed to make way for oil palm trees, according to the Union of Concerned Scientists. Most of the trees are grown in Malaysia and Indonesia.
Taking into account those land-use changes, emissions from burning palm oil are more than twice as high as coal, according to a report by Takanobu Aikawa, a senior researcher at the Renewable Energy Institute in Tokyo. Mr Aikawa said imported biomass fuels weren't excluded when the feed-in tariff program began, but plants that used forest materials were given a higher rating to support domestic products.
"What had been anticipated were pellets and chips and maybe palm kernel shells, and they are all solid biomass fuels," Mr Aikawa said. Liquid biomass such as palm oil is "hardly used in power generation worldwide, so it was totally unexpected".
I spent years working on my confidence, and knew the ins and outs of assertive communication. I was all about girl power. Apologise for taking up space? Not this lady.
But then I read Tara Mohr's book Playing Big: Practical Wisdom for Women Who Want to Speak Up, Create and Lead. Mohr argues that women constantly diminish their power with speech habits that make us appear apologetic, surprised or even uncertain about what we're saying. This means our ideas and opinions are unappreciated and not valued.
You may be unconsciously sabotaging your success with bad speech habits. Credit:SIMONE BECCHETTI/Stocksy
Studying Mohr's list of culprits, I realised I was guilty of letting more than one of them slip into my words. It was a humbling and disconcerting discovery. If Mohr was right, I'd been seriously undermining myself with the language I used. This did not gel with the confident, educated feminist image I thought I had cultivated. Yet it seems that a lot of women are walking around feeling powerful on the inside but presenting an entirely different picture to the outside world with how we communicate. So if you're like me, and in need of some speech-tweaking, here are some habits to ditch.
Just
It seems everything is a subscription these days. If I scan through my bank statements, there are recurring payments not just for our mortgage and basic bills but also for everything from Spotify, Netflix and Audible to Aussie Farmers Direct for the basis of our weekly grocery shop and the local swimming pool. Even the balances for my public transport card and toll road account are automatically topped up.
I'm not alone. Zuora's Subscription Economy Index from June 2017 suggests US-based subscription businesses are growing five times faster than US retail sales 15.2 per cent a year versus 3.4 per cent. Granted, Zuora is a software company that provides a subscription platform for businesses, so it's not an impartial observer, but there's definitely something in it - and it would be similar in Australia.
Gyms are notorious for making it hard to cancel membership. Credit:Tribune
Of course, businesses love subscriptions because it's regular revenue they can rely on. Sure, some customers cancel from time to time but most don't, so a subscription business model evens out the peaks and troughs of cash flow. Combine it with auto-renew, and you're on to a winner!
It's the same reason that most charities don't send people out on to the street or door to door to collect cash donations they want people to pledge to regular giving. (It's better to go direct though, so the charity doesn't have to pay a cut to the agency).
"It was a very, very rapid growth business," says Reid. "Pharmacies can be quite high revenue businesses so we had that advantage of not having to go to banks and say 'We are pre revenue'. We could show strong cash flow from the get go but that's not necessarily profit." Reid says a successful business is never easy. Within a year Reid and Giles had 100 employees and turned over $10 million. Growth industry They identified cancer care as an area of growing demand for pharmacies.
Catriona Wallace convinced Reid to invest in and chair artificial intelligence business Flamingo. Credit:Lucas Jarvis "Unfortunately cancer care is a growth industry with the increasing incidence of cancer," Reid says. "In the rest of the pharmacy world there is a diminishing role for the pharmacist but oncology pharmacy is very different, the pharmacist is a very involved part of the healthcare team because the medication regimes are so complicated." The husband and wife team bought a "whole pile" of cancer pharmacy assets then the global financial crisis hit. Reid and husband Stuart Giles co-founded the Epic Healthcare Group and the Icon Group. Credit:Michelle Smith Nobody I've ever met with a successful business has had an easy path. Cathie Reid
"We had debt up to our eyeballs and it made us very focused it's fair to say," Reid says. The pair would take it in turns "sobbing on the couch" at night time. "Nobody I've ever met with a successful business has had an easy path," Reid says. "It was brutal. We had one of our largest customers exit. We were up every night trying to work out what to do. We intimately understood what the other was going through so you just, as much as you possibly could, had each other's backs. There was no option other than to execute on our plan." Bringing in private equity That plan involved continuing to build out Epic's pharmacy business until it was turning over $300 million a year and then looking to purchase the hospitals Epic was a pharmacy provider to.
"We bought our first set of cancer care hospitals in 2012," Reid says. "By 2014 we realised what we wanted to do was expand the service model to include radiation oncology but that's a very expensive business to get into." Linear accelerators are critical to radiation oncology but cost about $1 million each. "Our personal balance sheet meant we were still self funding the business at that stage," Reid says. "We sold down a share of the business to a private equity partner [Quadrant]. We used their balance sheet and balance sheet strength to buy a radiation oncology business. Then we bought a chemotherapy compound manufacturer and brought that into the group." Icon acquired the Epic Pharmacy management company in June 2015, although the pharmacies themselves are still owned by Reid and Giles. With the cash and connections of Quadrant behind it Icon continued to grow with 27 radiation oncology centres under construction in China.
$1 billion valuation Quadrant reached the end of its investment cycle and in May this year sold Icon to QIC, Goldman Sachs and Pagoda in a transaction that Reid says values the group at "north of $1 billion". Reid and Giles continue to hold a stake in Icon and Reid is the digital adviser to the group. She walks the walk from investigating new cancer technology to blogging about her business, travels and astronaut training, a surprise Christmas present from Giles. Flamingo's founder, Catriona Wallace, says Reid is "one of the most astute business people I've ever met".
Jera Munya Van-Davis was riding his bicycle home from school when he was clipped by a semi-trailer and yanked beneath it.
The 15-year-old was turning onto Geelong Road from Sunshine Road in West Footscray, when he was dragged under the vehicle for about 10 metres, then spat out onto the kerb.
The boy's femur, tibia and fibula had all broken, but it was the sight of his leg that made him scream.
By PTI: Kolkata, Nov 12 (PTI) BJP West Bengal president Dilip Ghosh has written to Union Health Minister J P Nadda seeking his intervention to tackle the states dengue situation which, he said, has become an epidemic.
In a letter to Nadda, Ghosh alleged that hospitals and health centres of the state are inadequately equipped to treat patients and are sending them home without meaningful treatment.
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"Under such precarious situation where common people are victims and state government is busy subverting the facts, I am compelled to request you to kindly intervene in this dengue epidemic situation in West Bengal immediately and please take necessary steps to provide relief to the people," he said in the letter.
The BJP leader also accused the Mamata Banerjee government of discreetly instructing the hospitals not to write dengue in prescriptions or in death certificates and has created fear psychosis among doctors.
"The CM, who is also the health minister, has declined to accept that there is any epidemic of dengue in Bengal and said it is a conspiracy of the opposition political parties," Ghosh said.
Alleging that there is a huge shortage of dengue test kits in state-run hospitals, he wrote to the union minister that the number of dengue deaths in the state were much more than the state governments claim of 18.
The number of dengue cases have crossed 50,000 while the health department is saying it is only 18,000, he claimed in the letter written on Thursday, a copy of which was made available to the media today.
When contacted, Ghosh told PTI that the state government is unwilling to solve the situation and that is why it is trying to suppress facts.
"Lives of the common people hold no value to this government. The Mamata Banerjee government has lost the trust of the people," he said. PTI SCH NN
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An 18-year-old Berwick man has faced court over his alleged role in a crime spree through the city's eastern suburbs that left a motorcyclist dead and home owners terrified.
Tommy Merrall appeared in the Melbourne Magistrates Court on Sunday morning charged with aggravated burglary, motor vehicle theft, home invasion, attempted home invasion and various other thefts.
The scene of a hit-run crash in Mitcham which left a motorcyclist dead. Credit:Twitter/James Hancock, ABC
Mr Merrall did not apply for bail and will remain in custody until his next court appearance on Tuesday.
The 18-year-old did not address the court and was represented by a Legal Aid officer, who noted his previous diagnosis of mental health issues.
More developers may pull the plug on huge apartment projects in Melbourne's CBD after the central bank warned that investment in residential property had peaked earlier than expected.
Developer CEL Australia recently announced it would ditch long-running plans to build a 71-storey apartment tower, although it did not blame market factors.
The Reserve Bank says residential property investment has peaked. Credit:Dominic Lorrimer
The cancellation was the first of a major city project in years.
The 220-metre tower, on the corner of Queen and Bourke streets, had been planned for several years but was bogged down due to legal action by a rival Singaporean developer.
It's not enough just to own a dog these days. You have to dress him up, show him off at the right cafes and run a Facebook page and an Instagram account.
Pikelet the Staffordshire terrier has 320,000 social media followers, and in the dog world, his visit to Melbourne on the weekend eclipsed the star power of celebrities like Paris Jackson on Melbourne Cup Day
Good dog: Calley Gibson, from Sydney, brought her social media star rescue dog Pikelet to Melbourne to help raise money for animal charities at Dogapalooza. Credit:Darrian Traynor
The four-year-old pooch flew down from Sydney and on Sunday took time out from book signings (he's just released his autobiography, The Extraordinary Life of Pikelet) to be a VIP guest at Dogapalooza, a dog-friendly music festival in Richmond.
More than 1500 dog lovers with pets ranging from giant Saint Bernards to tiny Chihuahuas, lapped up the sunshine at Burnley Park as the mercury hit 22 degrees.
A young girl has died in hospital three days after her eighth birthday following a horror crash at Perth Motorplex.
Police confirmed Anita Board died as a result of her injuries at Princess Margaret Hospital on Sunday afternoon.
She was racing in the junior dragster category on Saturday afternoon when she lost control of her vehicle and crashed into a cement barrier.
Paramedics were on standby for the event, and immediately ran to the site of the crash.
More details have emerged following the death of a popular Perth teenager after he jumped into the Swan River from the cliffs at Blackwall Reach on Friday afternoon.
Curtin University student Luseni Traore was with a group of around 20 friends enjoying Friday's hot weather just after 5pm when he jumped from the Blackwall Reach cliffs.
Luseni was a popular man in the Perth community, and was getting ready to sit his university exams. Credit:GoFundMe
The drop is about 10 metres, and Luseni had completed the jump before.
9 News Perth reporter Michael Stamp said friends soon became aware something had gone terribly wrong.
Hong Kong: Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has accused North Korea of being one of the world's most "cunning, sophisticated criminals," involved in many serious crimes, including drug trafficking, in his strongest condemnation yet of the dictator Kim Jong-un.
And Mr Turnbull told US president Donald Trump and China's president Xi Jinping during a leaders' retreat in Vietnam that their relationship is one of the "single most priorities for the world today," urging them work together to pressure North Korea over is nuclear weapons program.
"If they can see eye to eye and cooperate on North Korea, for example, that problem, that regime, will be brought back to its senses," he said.
Speaking in Hong Kong where he urged financial regulators to crack down on North Korea's financial dealings in the port city, Mr Turnbull said North Korea should be seen as a criminal operation operating under the guise of a state.
By PTI: ranks? asks Shah
New Delhi, Nov 12 (PTI) BJP president Amit Shah lashed out at Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan after an RSS worker was hacked to death in the temple town of Guruvayur today, and asked what his government was doing to "curb criminal elements" in the ranks of his CPI(M).
Twenty-three-year-old Anandan was attacked with swords and knives in broad daylight allegedly by CPI(M) workers at Nenmeni in Guruvayur this afternoon when he was riding a motorcycle. Anandan died soon after.
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"The continuous violence by CPM workers & the protection to such political killings is now before the nation. CM Pinarayi must explain what his govt is doing to curb criminal elements in his rank(sic)," Shah tweeted.
Anandan, hailing from Brahmakulam, was an accused in a case relating to the murder of a CPI(M) worker in 2013.
The BJP has alleged that as many as 120 of its workers, 84 in Kannur alone, have been killed in Kerala since 2001. It has claimed that 14 of these killings have taken place since Pinarayi Vijayan took over the reins of the government last year.
Shah undertook a 15-day Jan Raksha Yatra in Kerala last month to target the states CPI(M) government over a "killing spree" against BJP and RSS workers. PTI JTR JC SMN
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Bryan police officer Austin Stearns was promoted to sergeant recently in a ceremony attended by family and friends.
Stearns started with the Bryan Police Department in August 2009, serving on patrol for about six years before transferring to the Neighborhood Enforcement Team in April 2015.
Stearns has received several awards for his work and service to the community.
He will now supervise a patrol unit.
Since his retirement as a West Texas lawyer, Bill Neal has forged a second career writing about famous and infamous murder cases on the Texas frontier.
Neal spent 40 years in West Texas courtrooms, 20 as a prosecutor and 20 as a defense attorney, before putting his research and writing skills to work as an author.
Neal, who now lives in Abilene, has written six books dealing with frontier justice, or the lack thereof, beginning with Getting Away with Murder on the Texas Frontier and Sex, Murder, and the Unwritten Law.
His latest historical true crime book is Death on the Lonely Llano Estacado: The Assassination of J.W. Jarrott, a Forgotten Hero (University of North Texas Press, $24.95 hardcover).
Neal reopens a cold case from 1902 involving the "cowmen vs. plowmen" conflict that raged between the frontier cattle kings and the settlers who moved into the area to farm and ranch smaller plots of land.
Jarrott was a leader of the homesteaders, and on Aug. 27, 1902, a hired assassin gunned him down. Who was the assassin, and who paid him to kill Jarrott?
"Nobody was ever convicted, or even tried, for the cowardly assassination," Neal writes, "and for decades thereafter nobody in the tight-lipped, South Plains frontier community dared speak openly about it."
After thoroughly researching the case, Neal names names and resolves the mystery.
He also points out that the assassination didn't accomplish what it was supposed to. "Instead of stampeding the settlers into a mass exodus, it reinforced their determination to stand their ground."
End of series: Diane Kelly wraps up her delightful Tara Holloway series with Death, Taxes, and a Shotgun Wedding (St. Martin's, $7.99 paperback).
The series, which mixes in ample amounts of mystery, romance and humor, began six years ago with Death, Taxes, and a French Manicure, and the "Death, Taxes" theme is repeated throughout the 12 novels, such as Death, Taxes, and a Skinny No-Whip Latte and Death, Taxes, and a Chocolate Cannoli.
Tara Holloway, an IRS special agent in Dallas, is excited about her upcoming wedding to fellow IRS special agent Nick Pratt. But as she drops the wedding invitations into a neighborhood mailbox, a white pickup swerves straight at her, destroying the mailbox. Tara is not hurt, but the next day she receives a greeting card at work with a death threat inside.
As she investigates who might be out to kill her, Tara revisits some of the criminal cases covered in previous novels in the series. Could it be that someone she sent to prison wants her dead?
Meanwhile, wedding plans go on, and as the title indicates, a shotgun might be present at the ceremony.
If you have read the whole series, Death, Taxes, and a Shotgun Wedding brings it to a fitting conclusion. If you haven't read any of the other novels in the series, you can easily follow the action anyway.
Glenn Dromgoole writes about Texas books and authors. Contact him at g.dromgoole@suddenlink.net.
The College Station City Council decided this week to keep City Hall at its current site in lieu of selling the prime Texas Avenue property to fund the construction of a new municipal office building on other city land.
After being presented with conceptual images of what a new City Hall building could look like on the current site and on two other pieces of land, the council voted 4-2 on Thursday to remain at the same location. Outgoing Councilwomen Blanche Brick and Julie Schultz had the opposing votes, and Mayor Karl Mooney abstained, saying he could see both sides of the issue.
City-owned property at Krenek Tap Road and Texas Avenue and at Dartmouth Street and Krenek Tap were options presented, though the council's sentiments were consistent with those expressed in February 2016 to stay on Texas Avenue across from the Texas A&M campus.
In 2008, voters rejected a 2008 bond item to build a $26.3 million building at Krenek Tap Road and Texas Avenue that would have required a 4.5 cent tax rate increase. It's not yet clear where funds would come from to construct a new building.
That was on reason why Schultz said she was in favor of the property at Texas Avenue and Krenek Tap Road, which she also believed would offer some room for future expansion and proximity to other city buildings. Selling the land City Hall currently sits on could open up "quite a bit of money" to help fund the construction, Schultz said.
According to appraisal district records, the entire 6 acre property is appraised at $10.2 million, with the land worth about $6.6 million.
Mooney didn't take a clear stance Thursday on where he thinks is best for the main hub of the city's operations, saying he couldn't decide which option he liked most.
"I can see the benefit of selling the property and being able to apply that money toward the construction," he said during Thursday's workshop discussion after the vote. "On the other hand, I see the advantage of the variability that's available on [the current site]. I think the main thing is that wherever the City Hall is, that it is the right City Hall designed with the right features to serve our citizens for years to come."
A conceptual image presented by city staff of what the current site could look like showed the main building set back from Texas Avenue with a plaza and promenade to the front, room for two future support buildings on either side of the promenade and a parking garage toward the back of the property. Current city operations would be able to remain in place during construction.
The same staff working out of the current building would move over to the new City Hall. Once construction on the new $28 million police department is complete, community development staff would be moved into the current station. That move would eliminate the need for lease space on University Drive that community development currently works out of. The council approved a three-year $350,000 agreement for that office space in February 2016. Fire administration and facilities maintenance or human resources, depending on programming, would also be moved into the current police building.
Schultz still felt the council owes residents an explanation of the benefit of putting a new building on an expensive piece of property and staying across from Texas A&M. Brick, the other council member who preferred a different location, said she liked the idea of a "municipal corridor" and some separation from the university, which she said could give the city "some sense of place."
Councilmen Jerome Rektorik and Barry Moore both cited College Station's lack of a traditional downtown, saying it makes sense to stay across from Texas A&M for that reason. The flexibility of that site for future expansion was also mentioned -- support buildings there could house more city offices, a visitors center, an emergency operations center or museum space.
"I don't think it puts us in the shadow of A&M at all," said Councilwoman Linda Harvell. "This is a beautiful piece of property, and it's very convenient. ... I like the sense that this where City Hall has been for a long time, and that if we sell it, you're not gonna see a high-rise hotel go up on this property."
Councilman James Benham also pointed out that staying at the current location keeps the city in control of property adjacent to historic neighborhoods and still preserves the other land for future expansion, if needed.
The council's strategic plan from February puts design of the new building beginning this fiscal year, and construction in fiscal year 2019.
Texas A&M senior Taylor Boles described a recent two-month class as being like a "study abroad, internship and mission trip all in one."
And, he said, the university's Summer Institute in Rwanda is one he is not likely to forget. The biomedical engineering major said he believes the program to be "unlike any other study abroad."
"Not only are you taking classes and immersing yourself in another culture, but you are getting applicable work experience," Boles said. "There is not a more productive way to spend your summer -- getting class credit, work experience, and helping in a developing country."
Hosted by A&M's Department of Biomedical Engineering in partnership with Engineering World Health, program director Michael Moreno said the undergraduate opportunity gives students the chance to experience hands-on, practical environments where they can make a real difference in the lives of the country's communities -- all while earning course credit for two summer sessions.
Moreno said for the first month of the summer program, students receive technical and cultural training in the city of Kigali, with lessons ranging from how to repair medical equipment to learning language, Kinyarwanda.
Once the training period is complete, Moreno said the students are assigned in pairs to work in host hospitals throughout the country. During that time, he said students lend their assistance by repairing and installing medical equipment, helping to train hospital staff, general problem-solving and more, giving them a chance to put into practice their new skills.
Boles, who participated in the program this summer and will be returning next summer as a teaching assistant, said his favorite part of the program was getting to see the tangible help he and his partner were able to make in the hospital where they served.
"The staff at the hospital was stretched so thin that if we were not there, the work we did simply would not have been completed," he said.
Among the projects Boles and his partner worked on while in the program included fixing broken medical equipment, maintaining the operational equipment and teaching the staff how to use the equipment properly, he said.
In addition to their main duties, Boles said he and his partner also worked on a secondary project identifying, then correcting, a need in the hospital, which he described as "one of the best engineering experiences we had."
Boles said their project was to install hand sanitizer dispensers and to design and build a rack for oxygen cylinders, which can be dangerous if left out, he said.
The two-month program is not all work though: Boles said he and the other program participants had the opportunity to make several "excursions" throughout to country, including two memorials dedicated to the Rwandan Genocide, a safari at Akagera National Park, a camping trip on Lake Kivu and more.
Moreno said although there are many study abroad options available to Texas A&M students, he believes there are few which off the "transformative" experience of the program in Rwanda.
"For A&M students, this is a program where they'll get real-world training," Moreno said. "It's a transformative experience. You're just not the same person as you were when you went over there."
For those students who may be interested in participating in the program, but are concerned about the cost, Moreno said both A&M and Engineering World Health offer "substantial" financial assistance.
He also acknowledged that while some may be concerned about safety in the East African nation, Rwanda is a politically stable country and the program is supported by "great local support."
"It's a great opportunity to do humanitarian work in an environment with a lot of support," Moreno said.
Boles said he decided to return to the nation again so that he could continue to be a part of the good work being done by the program.
"The people in Rwanda are some of the best people I have met and it is sad that they do not have access to the same standard of healthcare that we have," he said. " I saw all of the help I was able to provide to the people in the country and I want to be able to continue to improve the health infrastructure in the country."
The deadline to apply for the summer 2018 session of the program is Dec. 4.
Moreno said students interested in learning more about the program can visit engineering.tamu.edu/global/studyabroad/locations/rwanda/biomed or email him directly at michael.moreno@tamu.edu.
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November 11 is Veterans Day, and while Connecticut hosts a number of events to honor those who served, it turns out it's not a great state for them to live.
A recent study by financial site WalletHub analyzed each state and Washington DC to find the best and worst states for military retirees; Connecticut is number 46 out of 51.
Click through the slideshow to see the best and worst states for military retirees. Visit WalletHub for the full report.
The site looked at data ranging from veterans per capita to number of VA health facilities to job opportunities for veterans. One of Connecticut's lowest ranks is in the category of VA health facilities; the state is 47 out of 51 for number of VA health facilities per number of veterans.
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While retirement in general is a hot subject and important for all Americans, veterans in particular have a lot riding on these years as they retire at a much earlier age than most civilians. The average age of military retirement is about 45.
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Ironically, the worst state for military retirees is our nation's capitol, Washington DC. But the best state is its next door neighbor Virginia.
Veterans Day originated as "Armistice Day" on Nov. 11, 1919, the first anniversary marking the end of World War I.
According to the U.S. Census, Congress passed a resolution in 1926 for an annual observance, and Nov. 11 became a national holiday beginning in 1938. President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed legislation in 1954 to change the name to Veterans Day as a way to honor those who served in all American wars.
With Veterans Day upon us, there is no better time to laud the men and women who selflessly volunteer their time, energy and personal well-being to protect our country, allowing us the freedoms we enjoy. So, thank you to all who have, and continue to, volunteer and risk their lives in the service of our country.
Related: Heroes First: Veteran-Innovators and Entrepreneurs in America
Given today's observance, we should take the time to recognize and consider the other challenges veterans face as they return from active duty.
First, they've been secluded from the political and cultural events we stay-at-home Americans have known: from hurricanes to happenings in Washington to cultural oddities like the Fidget Spinner.
More seriously, returnees subjected to incredibly stressful and violent situations overseas may still suffer from debilitating injuries and emotional wounds, leaving deep scars that never heal.
In addition, when it comes to life after service, there is something more that is amiss -- entrepreneurship. After World War II, almost 50 percent of returning veterans started businesses. Since 9/11,that figure has dropped to less than 5 percent.
One organization, however,has set out to change this: Bunker Labs, a national not-for-profit organization helping veterans, their spouses and active duty service members start and grow businesses.
Recently, I moderated a panel discussion with talented veteran-entrepreneurs at an event Bunker Labs hosted in Wilmington, N.C. The event opened the floodgates to some amazing stories from these people, who, it turns out, wanted to share their stories with other veterans even more than they wanted to promote their businesses.
Here are the tips and lessons I gleaned from five of those conversations.
Ray Antonino/ PermitZone: Understand your career capital.
Upon returning to the United States, Ray Antonino transitioned from a 45-K (tank turret tech) and 95-B (military police) to a licensed contractor. His firsthand experience maneuvering contracting's complicated, cumbersome and archaic permitting process led him to start PermitZone, an online service aimed at making the building permit process easier.
"Don't listen to the people that tell you to 'follow your passion' or 'do something you love'," Antonimo started. "Doing so will set you up for failure and is a highly flawed way of thinking."
Related: 'Risk It All and Risk It Often' According to This Veteran-Entrepreneur
Instead, Antonino said he believed strongly in taking personal stock of your skills. "Read the book, So Good They Can't Ignore You [by Cal Newport]," he suggested, "and understand how the skills you have built can offer career capital."
He also emphasized that success is less about passion early on. "Once you understand what career capital is, and where you are in the process of obtaining it," he said, "then it will be time to leverage resources that help you convert your skills into the civilian work force."
Andrew Williams/ Elite Innovations: Have confidence and plan ahead.
While deployed in Afghanistan, in 2011, Andrew Williams and a fellow serviceman, Pete Foster, created a prototype of a product idea using parts of their gear and the assistance of a local Afghan sewing master. After nine iterations, they were able to get their product manufactured and distributed to every Marine Corps Exchange in the world.
Later, having left the military and learned the pain of development, sourcing and marketing a self-started product, Williams started Elite innovations, which focuses on engineering, prototyping and consulting, with a focus on assisting veteran-inventors.
Having confidence in your own ability and skills can serve you well if you're an entrepreneur transitioning into entrepreneurship. "You're a veteran, you've been getting it done your whole professional career," Williams said. "When you step into the entrepreneurship realm, it's just an extension of everything you've learned from a life at war."
As a serviceman, he said, he was trained to "control chaos," knowing when to pivot, and being able to handle the unknowns during the "fog of war." These situations mirror that of entrepreneurship, he said, acknowledging that much less is on the line, of course. Still, there is a commonality in terms of the unpredictable unknowns.
"The struggle isn't the hustle," he said. "It's correlating what you know with business and human capital goals, which requires creativity on your part."
Jessica Harris/ K9 Salute: Understand the costs associated with starting a business.
Jessica Harris is a retired combat medic who served with canine units. Upon retiring, she founded K9 Salute, a company that produces and provides healthy treats for all "four-legged heroes," as a way to honor and remember our nation's hero military dogs.
Harris said she enjoys helping ambitious veteran-entrepreneurs. "One of the most important things to consider when starting a new business is understanding how much it will cost," she said she tells them. "Most of us underestimate how much money it can take to get a business going. I would say 'Multiply your expected startup costs by two, maybe even three, depending on your business of course.'"
She admitted that she personally drastically underestimated the startup costs associated with her company while she was seeking funding: "Much [of my underestimations] was because my business plan evolved as the business started to grow, and I didn't anticipate that."
Financial planning is key, she added: "Give yourself the best possible start by either saving more money than you'll think you need or acquiring sufficient startup funds from the beginning. As veterans, we have some great resources for funding, so it definitely makes it much easier if you get it right from the beginning."
Phillip Freeman, Murphy's Naturals / Work with other companies that fit your vision.
Philip Freeman believes strongly in the importance of all-natural products and the benefits they provide, and he understands that health and wellness are closely connected to one's environment. For that reason, Freeman founded Murphy's Naturals, a line of earth-friendly products made from responsibly sourced, plant-based ingredients.
He said he finds it difficult to stand in the shoes of every veteran leaving service, and therefore tailors his advice to the personal experience of every veteran. Still, all entrepreneurs should start out with a couple of things, he noted: "First, establish a mission statement for yourself and your future endeavor based on your core values and passions.
"Sometimes," he added, "you solve a unique problem that needs a unique solution. Other times, you find a twist to how business traditionally addresses a problem, and you address it in a unique and fresh way that will evolve the marketplace. Regardless, understand the uniqueness of your purpose and avoid the traditional routes."
Veterans, Freeman said, should cooperate and collaborate with others who share a similar mission and passion. "Visit other entrepreneurial companies that fit your vision and values," he advised. "You will be surprised how willing they are to share."
Offer to work with them, Freeman continued. "Map out a bunch of companies on a map that fit your vision and go on a road trip to visit and interview their leadership. Remember that the companies you visit do not need to do what you want to do; they just need to share your values."
Ed Hall/ Petrics: Embrace and leverage your military training.
Ed Hall found the transition from service to civilian life unnerving. "For many, the military is a replacement for family and home while away," Hall explained. "Entering the civilian life after being in the military can definitely be a scary transition."
Deciding to pursue entrepreneurship is even worse. "I was absolutely excited and nervous," Hall admitted. "I was excited to go back to school, yet, I was nervous I was walking away from a stable, secure job."
Despite that nervousness, he fulfilled his entrepreneurial ambitions by founding Petric, which provides tailored health and nutrition information for pets (and their owners) via a mobile app and online platform. His military training helped, he said.
"I found that the military instilled phenomenal skills of adaptation, ability to continue under pressure, and even use that pressure to perform better and use it as a strength," Hall said. "This is why many veterans become good entrepreneurs, because those skills are everything that a business owner needs."
Related: Why Veterans Take the Initiative to Explore Entrepreneurship
Today, as he tackles the immense and competitive pet industry, Hall said he enjoys advising other veteran-entrepreneurs to take heart about returning to the civilian world. "Just remember," he likes to tell them, "that you have had many worse things thrown at you and you were able to persevere."
Related:
5 Veterans Share Their Tips for Successfully Transitioning From Service to Entrepreneurship
It's Time to Bust These 3 Myths About Hiring Veterans
The Top 150 Franchises for Veterans
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NORWALK When Norwalk Animal Control gets a call about a dog, employees know just what to do.
But a cat?
There are no laws for cats, said a representative from the agency. We notify the cat people.
So when Norwalk resident Lori Baker was driving through the city and her headlights lit up four kittens and their mother, she did not know what to do. Instead, she came back to the woodpile where she had noticed them the next day.
There they were, except for one. Only three kittens remained.
The last had been hit by a car in the short time she was away.
Baker began making phone calls, starting with her vet, who connected her to Animal Nation. She also called Pet Animal Welfare Society, an animal shelter for cats and dogs that works with many volunteers.
As she started to go back every day to visit the remaining kittens, she started realizing how many feral cats were living in the neighborhood. Baker said feral cats can become problems in both wealthy and poor neighborhoods in this area, she eventually found two dozen.
Thats when I started getting an understanding of what a big issue this is, Baker said.
Cats are preyed upon by other animals, hit by cars, maimed, diseased, killed by the cold and sometimes poisoned by people who consider them a nuisance.
Though feral cats proliferate in Norwalk and other cities in Connecticut, the Department of Agriculture does not regulate them or require cities to do so.
The department leaves that to dozens of volunteers like Baker. Those volunteers who sometimes form nonprofit groups, such as Pitter Patter Feline Rescue in Stamford trap the cats, vaccinate them for rabies and distemper, spay or neuter them, then return them to the suburban wild.
Since 2001, the state has supported humane groups by giving them vouchers to cover veterinary costs. But this year, no vouchers arrived from the state, said Ilona Zimmer, a PAWS board member.
Oh my God. We need it so badly, said Baker regarding the vouchers, which are known as the Feral Cat Program.
A notice on the Department of Agriculture website said the vouchers were suspended Aug. 1 and would remain so until further notice. The program was paid for using dog licensing fees and other revenue generated by the department's Animal Population Control Division, and did not draw money from Connecticuts General Fund, according to the website.
But the state was so strapped for cash the Legislature passed a deficit mitigation bill that included transferring $150,000 from the Animal Population Control account to the General Fund, department spokesman Steve Jensen said.
Lawmakers, faced with a deficit of $2.3 billion, did not adopt a new budget by July 1, leaving Gov. Dannel P. Malloy to take control of state finances by emergency executive order. That gave him little choice but to make deep cuts that will not be painless on the people of Connecticut, Malloy said in executing the order.
The pain extends to helpless animals, said Cora Martino, founder of Pitter Patter.
I have a cat with a gash in its leg full of maggots. Half the kittens born out there die. They have rabies, distemper, parasites, feline leukemia and feline infectious peritonitis, which is a killer, she said. Last year we trapped 36 very friendly cats, meaning they were recently abandoned pets. We can tell before we even open the trap, because they see us and start purring, and when we reach in, they rub their heads against our hands.
Now that the state has a budget, Jason Bowsza of the state Department of Agriculture said Thursday the vouchers will not resume immediately. Instead, the vouchers that were due out in September are expected to be issued starting Jan. 1, 2018.
Last year, Pitter Patters vouchers from the state amounted to $4,750, Martino said. That paid for treatment of 75 cats most of the 132 she and three other volunteers trapped. In Norwalk, PAWS received vouchers for 25 of the 200 cats that participated in its programs.
In a typical year, Pitter Patter raises about $6,500 in donations, Martino said. Without the vouchers, the tiny group will have to raise about $12,000. Many individuals who trap, neuter or spay and release cats had tales of dipping into their own pockets to help meet neighborhood needs.
But Martino had evidence that coordinated efforts can make a difference. Last year, the volunteer group concentrated on two neighborhoods. The following spring, it did not get a single call about newborn kittens from either area.
So its working, Martino said. Without the vouchers, though, there will be many more cats out there reproducing.
A single female can give birth two or three times a year, with an average litter of four to six kittens.
Not a day goes by that I dont get at least one voicemail from someone saying, Can you come to my neighborhood? Theres a bunch of kittens that need help, Martino said.
The state leaves the work to us, Martino said. But now, apparently, we are on our own.
Lisa Maupin, a Lincoln East High School teacher, won the 2017 Nebraska French Teacher of the Year award from the Nebraska Association of Teachers of French at its annual conference Oct. 28 in Omaha. Maupin is a Grand Island Senior High graduate and the daughter of Judy Maupin of Grand Island and the late Larry Maupin.
A team of Nebraska Extension educators and specialists, including Jessye Goertz, an extension educator based in Broken Bow, finished third nationally in the communications newsletters judging at the National Extension Association of Family and Consumer Sciences in October. They produce Food Fun for Young Children, an online newsletter focused on helping parents and caregivers prepare healthy meals and snacks.
Grand Island native John Maisch, now of Oklahoma City, received Project Extra Miles highest honor, the Leon Dappen Award of High Distinction, at the organizations recognition dinner Nov. 9 in Omaha. Upon learning about Whiteclay beer sales near the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation when he was a liquor prosecutor for the state of Oklahoma, Maisch worked to raise awareness around the issue in hopes of spurring change in Whiteclay, including directing and producing the documentary Sober Indian | Dangerous Indian.
Two members of Boy Scout 119 of Grand Island Hayden Price and Rhett Milner presented their Eagle Scout projects on Saturday.
Appropriately, both were tributes to veterans.
Prices Eagle Scout project took place Saturday morning at Veterans Memorial Park. The park adjoins the United Veterans Club on Capitol Avenue.
The park was recently renovated. Prices project planted about 30 trees of different varieties to green up the park.
In the afternoon, Milner presented his project at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center. His project was a documentary titled A Tribute to Grand Island Veterans. The video featured veterans recalling their service to the country. The veterans ranged from the Korean War to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Veterans Park was in full complement of American flags in honor of the special day. The United Veterans Club was bustling with activity.
Hundreds of Grand Island and area veterans gathered for a complimentary breakfast.
It is a great way to honor the veterans by making the park look good, Price said. Trees really make the city look better. They are good for the environment. It is a win-win all around.
Price said Loren Humphrey, Hall Countys facility manager, spearheaded the project.
He said Humphrey contacted his father, Todd Price, about planting trees at Veterans Park. Price is the troops scoutmaster.
I thought this would be a really good project to do, Price said.
Price described his project as kind of a facelift to the park. The Veterans Park belongs to Hall County but is managed by the vets club. The park serves as a place to remember Hall County veterans.
Price said his project was to extend those remembrances and show respect to the veterans.
He said trees are a lasting way to honor veterans for their service to their country. Trees can last a lifetime and serve as a reminder for future generations of veterans sacrifices.
Douglas Lanfear of the Hall County Board of Supervisors was on hand for the tree planting. Humphrey supervised the plantings, along with personnel from Elite Dreamscapes of Grand Island.
Price said scouts and veterans have similarities.
We both share a deep respect for our country, Price said. We love our country.
Price jointed the scouting program as a first-grade Tiger Scout. He is now a freshman in high school.
He said his project will help him become an Eagle Scout.
Scouting has taught me a lot of important values, Price said. He added that he was happy the project was celebrated on Veterans Day.
Its really amazing, he said.
For Milners Eagle Scout project, he interviewed and filmed 18 veterans from Grand Island.
It not only about remembering what they did for us, but how their stories define us as a community, Milner said. Our community would not be as it is without the noble sacrifices of the veterans.
The documentary features veterans in their 20s to an 80-year-old Korean War veteran.
Milner said his mother, Susan Milner, suggested interviewing the veterans. He started the project after Veterans Day last year.
One of the veterans he interviewed was his grandfather, Eugene Greenwalt, a Korean War veteran.
My grandfather was the first person I interviewed, Milner said. He passed away in February. I dedicated the project to him.
Milner said each story is different.
They have different emotions, but they all come to the same conclusion, he said. We need to remember the veterans, their sacrifices and their stories because of what they have done. We would not be the same without them.
Milner said he finished the documentary in August. Veterans Day was around the corner and it was the same day I started it and it should be the same day I present it, he said.
Milner has been a part of the scouting program since a young kid in Cub Scouts. That Eagle Scout rank was always the finish line, he said.
He said becoming an Eagle Scout was an obligation for being part of the scouting program, which focuses on building personal character.
But beyond becoming a good person, it is about being active in your community, Milner said. It is a huge obligation.
These are the same characteristics shared by the veterans in his documentary.
Milner said he will post the video on YouTube later this month for public viewing.
When he started the project, Milner said he had no experience as a video editor. But I did it, he said.
Milner said he likes telling stories. He is a senior and plans to attend the University of Nebraska in Omaha to study creative writing.
I always told stories since I was a kid, Milner said. I made up stories as a kid.
Todd Price, Scout Master of Troop 119, said his troop has a proud tradition of honoring veterans.
Each year, members of the troop plant flags at the Veterans Memorial Cemetery, located west of the Grand Island Veterans Home. They also carol at the vets hospital during the Christmas season. In the summer they camp out at the small pond at the vets home and invite veterans living there to fish with them.
We have had many Eagle Scout projects that honored our veterans, he said. Every year we try to get involved in honoring the veterans. It goes back to the core of Boy Scouts in being very patriotic.
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Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Sun, November 12, 2017 10:47 1830 1f87594453bb792833e1ece3a288de82 1 Art & Culture books,donation,charity,Menggapai-Mentari Free
A collection of 18 selected stories, on diversity, friendship, tolerance and the meaning of Pancasila in the eyes of children, has recently been launched in Jakarta.
Titled Menggapai Mentari (Reaching for the Sun) and published by Funtastic of Kelompok Kompas Gramedia, the book is written by students of Mentari Intercultural School Jakarta (SD MISJ) aged between 10 and 12 years old and aims to respond to diversity issues currently arising in Indonesia.
During a discussion held at the book launch, child and family psychologist Mira Amir said that parents who wanted to instill tolerance in their kids should begin by understanding and appreciating the childrens uniqueness so that they will grow to become confident individuals and know that being unique is not something to be judged or bullied.
Read also: Childrens book launched to promote Indonesian culture, wildlife
'Menggapai Mentari' is the fourth book released by the students of SD MISJ. (Mentari Intercultural School Jakarta committee/File)
According to a press release, Menggapai Mentari is the fourth book released by the students of SD MISJ. Initiated by one of the schools teachers, Pak Toro, as a way to gather the childrens writings, the first book was released in 2013.
In addition to donating part of the sales of the books to childrens education, the book is also being given to pesantren (Islamic boarding schools), churches, orphanages, elementary schools and reading parks across Indonesian cities from Aceh to Papua. The third book, titled Menabur Bintang (Sowing the Stars), has also been officially archived at the National Library of Indonesia and stored in 34 provincial libraries across the archipelago.
For the fourth book, of which 2,500 copies have been printed and is available at local bookstores, the MISJ team is holding a charity event named Mentari Berbagi where it invites the public to donate books that will be sent to reading parks. (kes)
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Linkedin News Desk (Agence France-Presse) Jakarta Sun, November 12, 2017 11:32 1830 1f87594453bb792833e1ece3a2894d5e 2 Art & Culture nazi,#Nazi,Museum,#museum,Hitler,#Hitler,statue,#statue Free
An Indonesian museum that allowed visitors to take selfies with a life-size wax sculpture of Hitler against a backdrop of Auschwitz concentration camp has removed the exhibit following international outrage, the manager said Saturday.
De ARCA Statue Art Museum in the Javanese city of Jogjakarta drew swift condemnation from rights groups after details of the controversial display were published in foreign media.
The exhibit features a sure-footed Hitler standing in front of a huge photo of the gates of Auschwitz -- the largest Nazi concentration camp where more than 1.1 million people were killed.
The museums operations manager, Jamie Misbah, said the the wax sculpture had been removed after the building was alerted to criticism from prominent Jewish human rights organization the Simon Wiesenthal Center.
"We dont want to attract outrage," Misbah told AFP.
"Our purpose to display the Hitler figure in the museum is to educate."
Read also: Chinese tourists detained in Berlin for Hitler salute
The Hitler sculpture is one of about 80 figures, including world leaders and celebrities, at the wax and visual effects center.
The Nazi-themed exhibit was a popular attraction for visitors to take selfies, and photos circulating on social media show customers -- including children -- posing with Hitler and in some cases using the Nazi salute.
Misbah said he thought it was "normal' for visitors to take photos in front of displays, but said the museum respected the exhibit had upset people from around the world.
Historians have blamed poor schooling for the lack of awareness and sensitivity about the Holocaust in Indonesia, which is home to the world's biggest Muslim population and a small number of Jews.
In January, a controversial Nazi-themed cafe in the western Javanese city of Bandung closed.
The venue, which featured swastika-bearing walls and photos of Hitler, sparked global uproar when reports about the unusual venue surfaced several years ago.
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Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Sun, November 12, 2017 12:05 1830 1f87594453bb792833e1ece3a2894d7c 1 Science & Tech Apple,iphone-7,iphone-6s,smartphone,Samsung,Canalys Free
Both Apples iPhone 7 and 6s were included in the top five list of the most popular smartphone models in Q3 2017. The list was released by Singapore-based independent analyst company, Canalys, on Thursday, based on the companys smartphone analysis service.
The iPhone 7 placed first with 13 million units that had been shipped, while the iPhone 6s sits in the second spot with 7.9 million. In third place was the Samsung Galaxy J2 Prime with 7.8 million units sold. Two models from Chinese smartphone manufacturer OPPO, the A57 and R11, sat comfortably in fourth and fifth place respectively with 7.8 million and 2.7 million units.
The iPhone 7 placed first with 13 million units that had been shipped, while the iPhone 6s sits in the second spot with 7.9 million. In third place was the Samsung Galaxy J2 Prime with 7.8 million units sold. Two models from Chinese smartphone manufacturer OPPO, the A57 and R11, sat comfortably in fourth and fifth place respectively with 7.8 million and 2.7 million units. (Canalys/File)
The iPhone 8, which was launched in mid-September, did not make the top five. In Q3 2017, Apple had shipped 46.7 million smartphones in combination with the iPhone 8 and 8 Plus of which 11.8 million were distributed. However, the number was still behind their predecessor, the iPhone 7, which hit 14 million shipments in its first quarter.
Read also: Indonesians optimistic over robots impact on society: Research
Shipments of older devices, such as the iPhone 6s and SE, saw an uptick in Q3, said Ben Stanton an analyst from Canalys. The iPhone 7 also shipped strongly after its price cut in September. Apple grew in Q3, but it was these older, cheaper models that propped up the total iPhone shipment.
Samsung was on top with 82.8 million units shipped and it was 8.2 percent more compared to Q3 2016. The second position went to Apple with 46.7 million shipments, followed by Huawei with 39.1 million, OPPO with 30 million and Xiaomi with 28 million. (Canalys/File)
The company also listed top five smartphone brands in Q3 2017. Samsung was on top with 82.8 million units shipped and it was 8.2 percent more compared to Q3 2016. The second position went to Apple with 46.7 million shipments, followed by Huawei with 39.1 million, OPPO with 30 million and Xiaomi with 28 million.
Samsungs success was due to the growth of its J-series as it sold well in India and the Middle East. Samsung had a positive quarter, Stanton said. It discounted the Galaxy S8 in several major countries in Q3, which helped ease inventory build-up from the previous quarter. In total, it shipped 10.3 million devices from its Galaxy S8 range in Q3.
However, Stanton added that Samsungs golden period could end. Apple, Google, Huawei and others have all introduced new smartphones with 18:9 displays and thin bezels. As the battleground at the high end moves toward AI and AR, Samsung is behind, and needs to catch up with competitors, such as Huawei and Apple. (wir/asw)
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Linkedin Adisti Sukma Sawitri (The Jakarta Post) Bonn Sun, November 12, 2017 13:12 1830 1f87594453bb792833e1ece3a28968a9 1 World UN-conference,COP23,UN-climate-conference,Donald-Trump,Bonn,michael-bloomberg Free
A group of representatives of American states, cities and businesses announced on Saturday that they were forming a new alliance that would rescue the sinking US climate commitment after President Donald Trump administration withdrew from the historic Paris accord.
Setting up their own pavilion outside the areas where the COP23 UN Climate Conference is meeting, the alliance aims to honor the US commitment to join the global effort to cut emissions and will report the climate action made by the American people.
After its announcement of withdrawal, the US administration has not set up a pavilion at the conference, as other countries that participate in the annual climate conference have done, and has only sent a small number of delegates to follow the negotiations.
Former New York City mayor and businessman Michael Bloomberg, who spearheaded the initiative with California Governor Jerry Brown, said the countrys commitment to climate change action would last longer than the administration.
It is important for the world to know, the American government may have pulled out of the Paris agreement, but the American people are committed to its goals, and there is nothing Washington can do to stop us, he said during the launch of the initiative, called Americas Pledge, and its first report at the igloo-shaped pavilion.
At least 20 states, 110 cities and more than 1,000 businesses and universities have declared support for the Paris deal.
COP23 president Frank Bainimarama praised the establishment of the alliance.
We are in the same canoe. No one is immune to climate change. We need everyone. Americas pledge sends a powerful message to the world that America is still in, said Bainimarama, who is also the Fijian prime minister.
Fiji is hosting the UN climate conference this year in the German city of Bonn. The meeting is set to conclude on Nov. 17.
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Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Bekasi Sun, November 12, 2017 18:19 1830 1f87594453bb792833e1ece3a28a257a 1 City #Bekasi,#health Free
The Bekasi administration proposed Rp 180 billion (US$13 million) for its free healthcare program in the 2018 city budget, which was double the Rp 90 billion it was allocated in 2017.
The health card, distributed to each household head, can be used by all family members.
The number of card holders is increasing, the citys health agency head, Kusnanto Saidi, said on Sunday as quoted by tempo.co.
The health cards were first distributed in January, prioritizing low-income families or those with incomes lower than Bekasis regional minimum wage of Rp 3.6 million.
According to Bekasi Population and Civil Registration Agency data, more than 300,000 families had been allocated health cards, with the number expected to increase.
The proposed budget, Kusnanto said, was based on the monitoring of those who sought treatment in 42 hospitals throughout the city. In the last three years, 2.7 million people received treatment at the monitored hospitals.
Bekasi Mayor Rahmat Effendi said all residents were entitled to free treatment as taxpayers.
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Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Sun, November 12, 2017 17:44 1830 1f87594453bb792833e1ece3a28a0d7d 1 City jakarta,#ViolenceAgainstChildren,#Crime Free
A child was pronounced dead at a hospital after it was allegedly assaulted by its mother on Jl. Asem Raya in Duri Kepa, Kebon Jeruk, West Jakarta, on Saturday.
The five-year-old child died at Graha Kedoya Hospital with bruises found on its body.
West Jakarta Police criminal investigation head Sr. Adj. Comr. Edy Sitepu confirmed that the incident occurred.
After doctors at Graha Kedoya Hospital examined [the body] of the victim, they found bruises on the feet and right hand, as well as traces of rope on the hands and feet, Edy said as quoted by kompas.com on Sunday.
When the police checked the crime scene on Jl. Asem Raya, they found cuts of plastic rope that were allegedly used to tie the victim.
According to a witness, Mariono, 40, a ride-haul motorcycle transportation driver, the mother ordered his service to head to Graha Kedoya Hospital, bringing along the child who seemed to be in weak condition.
When they reached the hospital, doctors pronounced the child dead, Edy said.
The case is currently being investigated by the Kebon Jeruk Police and the West Jakarta Police.
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Linkedin Tama Salim (The Jakarta Post) Manila Sun, November 12, 2017 17:46 1830 1f87594453bb792833e1ece3a28a1d64 1 Politics Jokowi,ASEAN,Manila,jokowidodo,working-visits Free
President Joko "Jokowi" Widodo has arrived in the Philippines to attend the 31st ASEAN Summit and related meetings, after leaving the APEC Leaders' Summit in Da Nang, Vietnam, earlier that morning.
The President arrived midday on Sunday aboard the presidential airplane at the Clark Air Base in the Pampanga region, just hours ahead of his engagements in Manila.
He was greeted by a band of energetic dancers clad in plant-themed attire, a marching band playing the samba tune and Filipino children holding umbrellas and placards spelling out "H.E. Joko Widodo" and "Mabuhay," the word for "welcome" in the local language.
A red carpet was rolled out before Jokowi and First Lady Iriana Widodo as they stepped out of the jet. The President wore his usual navy suit and red tie, while his wife dazzled in a bronze kebaya with a matching navy-speckled batik scarf and long skirt.
The President received a military greeting before he was escorted to his vehicle, with the motorcade embarking on a 1.5-hour trip to the Diamond Hotel in Manila, where he will be staying.
He arrived in Manila at 2:30 p.m. and was greeted by Consul General Berlian Napitupulu and his wife, Philippine Ambassador to Indonesia Maria Isleta, Coordinating Political, Legal and Security Affairs Minister Wiranto, Coordinating Economic Affairs Minister Darmin Nasution, Foreign Minister Retno Marsudi and Investment Coordinating Board chief Thomas Lembong.
He was also greeted by 89-year-old Andy Tabursala, an Indonesian furniture businessman who has been based in the Philippines for close to three decades.
The President will be briefed by Retno before he is expected to hold bilateral talks with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who is staying at the same hotel.
Later in the evening, the President and the First Lady will attend a special gala dinner in commemoration of the 50th Anniversary of ASEAN at the SMC Convention Center in Manila.
Jokowi is then expected to attend the East Asia Summit leaders' retreat later that night.
During the 31st ASEAN Summit, Indonesia will seek to increase inter-ASEAN cooperation as well as cooperation with its many dialogue partners.
"My hope is that this working visit will be able to bring tangible benefits to all the people of Indonesia, as well as those in ASEAN and the Asia-Pacific," the President said ahead of his departure from Vietnam earlier that day. (ahw)
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Linkedin Fedina S. Sundaryani (The Jakarta Post) Da Nang, Vietnam Sun, November 12, 2017 14:51 1830 1f87594453bb792833e1ece3a289b8bc 1 Politics CEPA,Jokowi,Turnbull,Rakhine-state Free
President Joko "Jokowi" Widodo and Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull discussed a wide variety of issues during a bilateral meeting held on the sidelines of the APEC Economic Leaders Week held in Da Nang, Vietnam over the weekend.
Following the meeting, Cabinet Secretary Pramono Anung confirmed that the two leaders discussed the situation in Rakhine state in Myanmar and Marawi in the Philippines, as well as the completion of negotiations on the Indonesia-Australia comprehensive economic partnership agreement (CEPA).
"At every leader's summit, Prime Minister Turnbull has always asked for a bilateral meeting with President Jokowi, which shows the close relationship between the two," he said.
Pramono explained that Australia encouraged Indonesia to continue playing an active role in finding a peaceful resolution to the situation in Rakhine state.
In turn, Indonesia also asked Australia to take part in the restoration of Marawi, with Jokowi stating that Indonesia was committed to sending moderate Muslims to the shattered city to help in deradicalization efforts.
"They also hope the CEPA will be completed by the end of this year. It has already reached the final stages, however there are still some sensitive issues [to be resolved], for example, whether or not vocational educators can be foreigners or not," Pramono said.
Bilateral trade between Indonesia and Australia has decreased over the past few years. It dropped to US$8.46 billion last year from $10.2 billion in 2012, down by 4.63 percent on average per year, according to data from the Trade Ministry.
Melina Carnicelli recalls a comment she heard often while campaigning for Auburn mayor in 1999. When her volunteers knocked on doors in the city, voters, mostly men, would ask why she wasn't watching her children or at home cooking dinner.
The sexism didn't derail Carnicelli's historic bid. She was the first woman elected mayor of Auburn.
"It didn't deter me from running because I knew I could do the job," she said in a phone interview.
New York is commemorating the 100th anniversary of women winning the right to vote. Women could vote in the state three years before the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was ratified. It was a major achievement that was decades, if not centuries, in the making.
But as the state celebrates the women's suffrage centennial, there are conversations about what the future holds for women, especially those serving or wishing to serve in government.
When Carnicelli ran for mayor nearly 20 years ago, she was already serving in city government. Four years before, she was the second woman ever elected to the city council.
The "Why isn't she at home"-type comments weren't foreign to her then and she knows similar sentiments are expressed in the present.
"That kind of prejudice against women in leadership existed at that time and still exists today," she said.
It's a reason why she and other women leaders, including Lt. Gov. Kathy Hochul, are focused on the future.
Hochul is leading the state's women's suffrage centennial commission. The panel is tasked with developing ideas for educational programs and events commemorating the anniversary.
"What happened in 1848 (at the Seneca Falls Convention) and winning the right to vote 70 years later in 1917 are wonderful parts of our history and our story, but 100 years later we have a moral responsibility to not just hold the torch and pass it on but to make sure that torch is nurtured and the flames grow even brighter," Hochul said.
Carnicelli and Hochul highlighted the challenges women face, whether it's a lack of confidence or not wanting to wade into a messy political climate.
Outside government, there are cultural issues. The rash of sexual assault and harassment allegations levied against powerful men, such as Louis C.K. and Harvey Weinstein, shed light on the conditions women are subjected to in society. Whether it's in Congress or corporate America, sexism is an epidemic.
"There are inequalities that are so prevalent in our culture that it's discouraging for women," Hochul said.
A cultural shift is needed, according to Hochul. But she also believes that internal shifts will help bring more women to the table.
She remembered the constant attacks and barrage of criticism she faced while running for Congress in 2011. Her husband would clip negative letters to the editor from the newspaper so she wouldn't see them.
"Women see this and say, 'I don't want to sign up for that' and I tell them 'But you need to,'" she said. "We're at a point where we need to stand up for ourselves."
A challenge mentioned by Carnicelli and Hochul is the number of women elected officials. Hochul noted that when she served in Congress, 21 percent of the House and Senate membership was women. Now it's 19.6 percent.
There has been a slight increase at the state level. Women now hold 27.7 percent of the seats in the state Legislature.
State Sen. Pam Helming, whose district includes Seneca Falls, is one of the newest members of the state Legislature. She was elected in 2016 to succeed state Sen. Michael Nozzolio. Helming, R-Canandaigua, is one of 14 women in the state Senate.
Carnicelli is involved with two initiatives that aim for gender parity in elected office. One program is WomenElect, a leadership class for a limited number of participants that educates women on how to run for political office. Another is First Amendment-First Vote, which is an educational program for high school girls.
Nationally, the number of women serving in elected office is 20 percent, according to Carnicelli. Yet women make up more than 50 percent of the population.
"There are plenty of qualified, dedicated and effective women who could be and should be leaders in our governance areas," Carnicelli said.
For now, Hochul urged women and all citizens to vote. But she is also asking them to consider the future and the state of women's rights in 2017 and beyond.
"How will we be judged 100 years from now? And I want people to feel the weight of that responsibility," she said. "We should be as courageous and as audacious as the women and women who stood with them a century ago were."
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Linkedin News Desk (AFP) Dhaka, Bangladesh Sun, November 12, 2017 22:37 1830 1f87594453bb792833e1ece3a28a3fc5 2 World Rohingya-Muslims,Rakhine,Myanmar,Bangladesh,United-Nations Free
Myanmar soldiers "systematically targeted" Rohingya women for gang-rape during violence against the minority Muslim community which triggered an exodus to Bangladesh, an UN special envoy said Sunday.
Pramila Patten, a special representative of the UN Secretary-General on sexual violence in conflict, made the comments after visiting Bangladesh's southeastern district of Cox's Bazar where some 610,000 Rohingya have taken refuge in the last ten weeks.
Many of these atrocities "could be crimes against humanity", she said.
"I heard horrific stories of rape and gang-rape, with many of the women and girls who died as a result of the rape," Patten told reporters in Dhaka.
"My observations point to a pattern of widespread atrocities, including sexual violence against Rohingya women and girls who have been systematically targeted on account of their ethnicity and religion."
The sexual violence in Myanmar's northern state of Rakhine was "commanded, orchestrated and perpetrated by the armed forces of Myanmar", she said.
"The forms of sexual violence we consistently heard about from survivors include gang-rape by multiple soldiers, forced public nudity and humiliation and sexual slavery in military captivity."
"One survivor described being held in captivity by the Myanmar armed forces for 45 days, during which time she was repeatedly raped. Others still bore visible scars, bruises and bite marks attesting to their ordeal," Patten added.
Deadly raids by Rohingya militants on Myanmar police posts on August 25 sparked ferocious reprisals against the community by the military in the mainly Buddhist nation.
The special representative said others involved in the sexual violence include Myanmar border police and militias composed of Buddhists and other ethnic groups in Rakhine.
Refugees are still streaming across the border from Rakhine into Bangladesh, where hundreds of thousands have settled in squalid camps.
The UN now estimates the majority of the Rohingya once living in Rakhine -- previously estimated at around one million -- have fled a campaign of violence it has likened to ethnic cleansing.
Patten said the sexual violence was a key reason behind the exodus and occurred in the context of "collective persecution" of the Rohingya.
"The widespread threat and use of sexual violence was clearly a driver and push factor for forced displacement on a massive scale and a calculated tool of terror aimed at the extermination and the removal of the Rohingya as a group," she said.
For decades the Rohingya have faced persecution in Myanmar, where they are denied citizenship and denigrated as illegal "Bengali" immigrants.
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Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Sun, November 12, 2017 13:52 1830 1f87594453bb792833e1ece3a28982a5 4 Business pertamina,Mahakam-block,financing Free
State-owned energy firm Pertamina is preparing Rp 24.3 trillion (US$1.8 billion) to start managing the Mahakam oil and gas block on Jan. 1, 2018, as Total E&P Indonesies (TEPI) contract is set to expire.
Pertamina is currently drafting a 2018 work program and budget (WP&B) that will be discussed with the Upstream Oil and Gas Regulatory Special Task Force (SKKMigas) later this month, Pertamina Hulu Indonesia (PHI) president director Bambang Manumaryoso said recently.
In the WB&B, Pertamina, through PHI, will allocate $700 million in investments and $1.1 billion in operational funds, all of which will come from internal funds.
Insya Allah [God willing], we are [financially] healthy enough. We will spend [company resources] if we have the opportunity. We are flexible in financing projects, Bambang said as quoted by kompas.com.
He added that Pertamina could manage the block alone, but was still open to taking on partners and investors as they would help PHI in boosting Mahakams productivity.
However, he pointed out that Mahakam was an old oil and gas block that was full of challenges.
Also, the internal rate return is only 10 percent. We dare to take it, but the partners [private firms] considered it uneconomic, he added.
Previously, the Energy and Mineral Resources Ministrys oil and gas director general, Ego Syahrial, said Mubadala Petroleum, a United Arab Emirates firm, expressed interest in jointly managing Mahakam block with PHI. (bbn)
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Linkedin Riad Hamade and Zainab Fattah (Bloomberg) Riyadh Mon, November 13, 2017 02:00 1829 1f87594453bb792833e1ece3a28aa8e9 2 Politics King-Salman-Abdulaziz-Al-Saud,Saudi-Arabia,throne Free
King Salman isnt planning to abdicate in favor of his son, a senior Saudi official said, dismissing mounting speculation that Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman will soon ascend to the throne.
There is no possibility whatsoever that the king will abdicate, the official said in response to written questions. Saudi kings usually stay in power even when bad health prevents them from carrying out their job, the official said on condition of anonymity. He noted the example of King Fahd, who stayed on as monarch until his death in 2005 despite being gravely ill in the last few years of his reign.
Abdication is unthinkable especially since King Salman, 81, enjoys perfect physical and mental powers, the official said. Those who suggest otherwise do not understand royal customs and traditions in Saudi Arabia, the official said.
King Salman has already sidelined senior princes as his son rose to power. Prince Mohammed, 32, was named heir to the throne in June after replacing his cousin. Last week, Prince Miteb bin Abdullah was also dismissed from his post as head of the National Guard as part of what authorities described as a sweeping anti-corruption drive, reinforcing speculation that the crown prince was on the cusp of becoming king.
The government will have difficulty credibly denying that speculation because no one expects them to acknowledge it as a possibility before it happens, said Graham Griffiths, an analyst at consultancy Control Risks in Dubai. As a result, rumor and speculation will continue to abound.
There is one precedent of a Saudi monarch stepping down while still alive. King Saud bin Abdulaziz abdicated in favor of his brother and heir, Prince Faisal, in the mid-1960s after pressure from ruling family members. The prince had already claimed broad powers to counter a financial crisis that engulfed the kingdom at the time.
Eurasia Group in September said the royal palace was finalizing plans to transfer power allowing the father to oversee the transition and prevent dissent from other powerful members of the ruling family.
Prince Mohammed already controls almost all levers of government. He oversees defense, oil and economic policies. He has vowed to wean the Saudi economy off its reliance on oil and return to a more moderate form of Islam.
While all signs now point to an orderly succession in a few years time, discontent with Prince Mohammeds domestic reform program and foreign policy initiatives could increase the familys willingness to challenge him, Griffiths said.
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Linkedin News Desk (AFP) Hanoi, Vietnam Sun, November 12, 2017 09:25 1830 1f87594453bb792833e1ece3a2886f72 2 World Vietnam,trump,hater,Russia,kim-jong-un,North-Korea Free
US President Donald Trump unleashed a twitter storm from his Asia tour on Sunday, slamming "haters and fools" playing politics with US-Russia ties and declaring that he would never describe North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un as "short and fat".
Currently on the Vietnam leg of a five-nation sweep through the region, the US president, who has been relatively quiet on Twitter since leaving Washington, put out half-a-dozen tweets in quick succession ahead of his official welcoming ceremony in Hanoi.
The missives covered a range of subjects from Trump's relations with Russian President Vladimir Putin, China's efforts to rein in Pyongyang's nuclear weapons programme, and a sarcastic tweet about his efforts to make "a friend" of North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un.
The US president, who met with Putin several times on the margins of the just-concluded APEC summit in the Vietnamese resort of Danang, took a fresh swipe at critics of his efforts to forge a close working relationship with the Russian leader.
"When will all the haters and fools out there realise that having a good relationship with Russia is a good thing, not a bad thing," he tweeted.
"There (sic) always playing politics - bad for our country. I want to solve North Korea, Syria, Ukraine, terrorism, and Russia can greatly help!" he added.
Speaking to reporters on Air Force One while flying to Hanoi on Saturday, Trump said he believed Vladimir Putin was being sincere when he denied meddling in the 2016 US presidential election.
Trump, whose key former aides are under US investigation for possible collaboration with the Kremlin, said he had repeatedly asked Putin about the claims during their chats in Danang.
"He (Putin) said he didn't meddle. I asked him again," Trump, who is marking one year since his shock election victory, told the reporters.
"I really believe that when he tells me that, he means it," he added.
Trump's Sunday morning tweets also focused on North Korea and its nuclear weapons ambitions that have been a dominant theme on each leg of his Asia tour.
'Short and fat'
Taking exception to descriptions by North Korean officials and state media of him as an "old" man, Trump declared himself disappointed by what he took to be a personal attack from the North's young leader.
"Why would Kim Jong-un insult me by calling me "old," when I would NEVER call him "short and fat?" Trump said.
"Oh well, I try so hard to be his friend - and maybe someday that will happen!" he added.
North Korea is extremely sensitive to any remarks -- even if not meant seriously -- that it sees as disrespectful of the country' ruling Kim dynasty, whose members are revered as near deities.
Since becoming president, Trump has engaged in an escalating war of words with Kim, trading personal insults and threats of military strikes and raising concerns about an outbreak of hostilities.
Over the past week, Trump has urged Asian leaders to take a united front against the threat posed by the isolated North, warning at APEC that the region "must not be held hostage to a dictator's twisted fantasies".
Late Saturday, Pyongyang hit back, calling his Asia trip "a warmonger's visit for confrontation" and saying it would only serve to accelerate Pyongyangs push for nuclear statehood.
In another tweet Sunday, Trump said Chinese leader Xi Jinping had agreed to toughen sanctions against North Korea, whose impoverished economy is hugely reliant on trade with China.
"President Xi of China has stated that he is upping the sanctions against (North Korea). Said he wants them to denuclearise. Progress is being made," he wrote.
The US administration thinks China's economic leverage over North Korea is the key to strong-arming Pyongyang into halting its nuclear weapons and missile programmes.
China has made no sanctions announcement in recent days, and it was unclear if Trump was referring to statements Xi may have made during their summit in Beijing on Thursday, or when they met at APEC.
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Linkedin News Desk (AFP) Manila Mon, November 13, 2017 04:05 1829 1f87594453bb792833e1ece3a28aa963 2 Politics Donald-Trump,duterte,Manila,summit,Duterte-style,the-philippines Free
When US President Donald Trump and other world leaders meet in the Philippines from Sunday, copying their controversial host's signature fist salute could land them in hot water.
Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte has adopted a clenched fist, often stuck out in front of his chest or sometimes at eye level, as his trademark gesture.
Duterte often seeks to have visitors pose for photos with him doing the salute, with Chinese internet tycoon Jack Ma and Hollywood actor Steven Seagal among those pictured doing so.
But critics warn the gesture has come to represent the brutalities of Duterte's drug war, which has claimed thousands of lives.
They also say it has uncomfortable similarities with Nazi leader Adolf Hitler's salute.
"Foreign leaders should recognise that the fist... symbolises a purposeful attack by Duterte on rule of law that has inflicted a human rights calamity on thousands of Filipinos," Phelim Kine, Human Rights Watch deputy Asia director, told AFP.
"(They) should deny the architect of this human rights calamity the international recognition he undeservedly craves."
Australia's spy chief, Nick Warner, was criticised when he returned home from Manila in August to find the Philippine government had released photos of him clenching his fist with Duterte.
"Completely inappropriate photo for the head of one our most important intelligent (sic) services to be in," federal opposition member of parliament Anthony Byrne said in a Twitter post.
With the photos becoming a major news item in Australia, Foreign Minister Julie Bishop was forced to publicly defend Warner. Bishop had previously criticised the drug war.
Trump and Duterte are expected to hold a one-on-one meeting in Manila on Monday on the sidelines of a 20-nation summit of Asia-Pacific leaders.
Eyes will be on whether Trump does the fist pump, having told Duterte in April he was doing a "great job" in his drug war.
Arriving back in Manila early Sunday, Duterte seemed confident he had Trump's backing for his deadly war on drugs.
"He said something about: 'You know, you handle it very well'," he told reporters.
Duterte might also expect support from Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who struck the pose when the pair met in Tokyo last year.
A photo posted by Duterte's aide on Facebook showed the two men smiling along with their officials, who also raised their fists against the backdrop of Japanese and Philippine flags.
Abe, whom Duterte has called a "true friend", has not criticised the drug war.
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Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Sun, November 12, 2017 14:48 1830 1f87594453bb792833e1ece3a289aa24 1 Politics terrorism,west-sumatra,police,fire Free
Two suspected militants were shot dead on Sunday morning after allegedly setting fire to the main building of the Dharmasraya Police headquarters in West Sumatra.
National Police spokesman Brig. Gen. Rikwanto said on Sunday that firefighters deployed to deal with the fire, which started at around 2.45 a.m., spotted two suspicious men carrying bows.
Police officers attempted to detain the two men for investigation but they resisted with one of the men shooting an arrow at them, Rikwanto said.
The officers fired a warning shot that was ignored as the men continued to fight the police. The officers then shot the two men, killing them instantly.
The police found a bow, several arrows, two bayonets and a letter calling for jihad from a man identifying himself as Abu Azzam Al Arkhobiliy at the scene.
The police are still investigating the incident.
Antara reported that following the fire, nine prisoners were evacuated to a safe location. The police are also increasing security measures in the area. (Saf/ahw)
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Linkedin Divya Patil (Bloomberg) New Delhi Mon, November 13, 2017 00:51 1829 1f87594453bb792833e1ece3a28aa6a8 2 Business United-Airlines,air-quality-monitor,flights,America,India Free
United Airlines temporarily suspended Newark-New Delhi flights due to poor air quality in Indias capital, and said some extra charges will be waived for passengers forced to reschedule.
We are monitoring advisories as the region remains under a public health emergency, and are coordinating with respective government agencies, a United Airlines spokesperson said in response to a Bloomberg query.
Other airlines were still flying to the national capital and it was not clear if they will follow United Airlines move to suspend flights.
Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, the leader of Delhi, called the capital a gas chamber as thick toxic smog continued to envelop the mega-city of around 20 million people on Sunday. The levels of the deadliest, tiny particulate matter -- known as PM 2.5, which lodges deep in a persons lungs -- soared to 676 at 2 p.m. local time, according to a US embassy monitor. World Health Organization guidelines suggest levels above 300 are hazardous.
Customers traveling over the next several days should visit the United Airlines website or download the companys mobile application for updates, the spokesperson said.
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Linkedin Nguyen Dieu Tu Uyen (Bloomberg) Danang, Vietnam Mon, November 13, 2017 05:13 1829 1f87594453bb792833e1ece3a28ab10b 2 Business Vietjet-Air,Vietnam,vietnam-airlines,America,flight Free
VietJet Aviation JSC plans to expand its fleet to include wide-body jets as the Vietnamese low-cost carrier considers California as its first U.S. destination starting about 2019.
Vietnams biggest private airline would use the larger aircraft to begin the route after the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration grants Vietnam airlines permission to fly to America, said Nguyen Thi Phuong Thao, VietJets founder and chief executive officer. The first flights could link the Southeast Asian nation with the Norman Y. Mineta San Jose International Airport, located near a large Vietnamese community, and would also be close enough to serve San Francisco, she said.
We aim to expand international flights in the next few years Thao said in an interview. We want to make international flights 60 percent of our total flights. We are also studying the possibility of using widebody planes for long-haul flights when market conditions are favorable.
VietJet, known for a publicity stunt involving bikini-clad flight attendants, is expanding rapidly as it goes head on with Vietnam Airlines Corp. for a larger slice of an air-passenger market that the International Air Transport Association estimates will be among the worlds five fastest-growing in the next 20 years. Vietnam Air CEO Duong Tri Thanh said this week the state-controlled carrier is considering a route to Los Angeles by late 2019 or early 2020.
VietJet -- which currently operates only single-aisle planes -- on Sunday signed a $600 million deal to acquire Pratt & Whitney engines to outfit 10 narrowbody jets during a ceremony with U.S. President Donald Trump in Hanoi. Trump visited the nations capital after attending the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation leaders meeting in Danang.
The latest deal is separate from a $3.6 billion contract signed earlier this year for 215 engines.
The budget airlines international capacity has soared by more than 150 percent in the past year, said Brendan Sobie, a Singapore-based analyst at CAPA Centre for Aviation.
The domestic market has had this great growth in the last five years, tripling in size, but there is a limit to that, he said. A lot of these people who have become first-time fliers in the last five years will be able to travel overseas as they build discretionary income.
The carrier has ordered 230 Airbus SE and Boeing aircraft since 2014. VietJet and national carrier Vietnam Airlines each had a 42 percent share of the domestic aviation market last year, though VietJets 2017 share is probably less as it focuses on overseas expansion, Sobie said.
Last year, the budget carrier ordered 100 Boeing 737 Max 200 aircraft with a list price of $11.3 billion. It agreed to buy 30 A320neos valued at $3.6 billion in 2015, adding to an order for as many as 100 Airbus planes a year earlier. VietJet, which began operations in December of 2011, expects to serve 17 million passengers this year, after carrying about 15 million travelers last year.
The carrier expects its 2017 profit to rise 10 percent from its target for the year, according to Thao.
VietJets international expansion has focused entirely on Asia, with more than 400 weekly overseas flights scheduled by the end of this year, up from just 130 a year ago in October, Sobie said. Flying to the U.S. will be a much tougher challenge for VietJet as it goes up against entrenched carriers, Sobie said.
The competition is very fierce, Sobie said. When you fly over 12 hours, it becomes more expensive. There are huge costs initially. The prospect of making money on this route is bleak.se.
VietJet will be able to differentiate its service to offset those headwinds, such as offering service to regional airports in San Jose and Orange County, California, which also has a large Vietnamese population, Thao said.
We are looking at airports where there is a demand but not many airlines flying there, she said.
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Linkedin News Desk (AFP) Manila Sun, November 12, 2017 10:30 1830 1f87594453bb792833e1ece3a288d58f 2 SE Asia Duterte-style,trump,human-rights,crime Free
Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte said Sunday he was "sure" Donald Trump would not raise human rights concerns when they meet in Manila, after the US President praised his deadly drug war.
Trump is due to land in the Philippine capital on Sunday evening ahead of two days of summits, and rights groups have urged him to pressure Duterte over the thousands of lives lost in the controversial anti-drugs crackdown.
Duterte expressed confidence this would not happen, saying Trump had already given him "words of encouragement" during a brief encounter on the sidelines of another regional summit in Vietnam on Saturday.
"He said something about: 'You know, you handle it very well'," Duterte told reporters early Sunday morning after returning to Manila.
He said Trump was referring to the crackdown on drugs as well as a military campaign against Islamic State supporters in the southern Philippines.
When asked if the issue of extra-judicial killings -- which rights groups say are rampant in the drug war -- would be discussed, Duterte said: "I'm sure he will not take it up".
Duterte won elections last year after promising to eradicate illegal drugs in society with an unprecedented crackdown that would see up to 100,000 people killed.
Since he took office, police have reported killing 3,967 people in the crackdown.
Another 2,290 people have been murdered in drug-related crimes, while thousands of other deaths remain unsolved, according to government data.
Many Filipinos back Duterte, believing he is taking necessary measures to fight crime, but rights groups warn he may be orchestrating a crime against humanity.
Amnesty International on Saturday called on Trump to raise the issue with Duterte, either publicly or privately. The pair are tentatively scheduled to hold one-on-one talks on Monday.
"The US has to use its influence and leverage to call out Duterte's record on human rights," said Amnesty's Philippine director Jose Noel Olano.
"He'll be meeting a man whose policies are responsible for thousands of unlawful killings, including dozens of children."
Duterte, 72, last year branded then-US president Barack Obama a "son of a whore" for criticising the drug war.
Relations between the two nations then deteriorated, but ties began to improve when Trump told Duterte in a telephone call in April that he was doing a "great job" with his campaign against narcotics.
Duterte has repeatedly said he has no regard for human rights and once said he would be "happy to slaughter" three million Filipino addicts.
But when pressured over allegations of extra-judicial killings carried out by police, Duterte insists he has never told them to break the law.
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Linkedin (Pesona Indonesia) Jakarta Sun, November 12, 2017 14:01 1830 1f87594453bb792833e1ece3a2898b65 2 News Tourism-Ministry-Pesona-Indonesia,tourism-ministry-wonderful-Indonesia,Bengkulu,human-resources Free
Bengkulu Tourism Agency recently conducted Tourism Human Resources Technical Mentoring (Bimtek) on Nov. 8-10 as part of Visit 2020 Wonderful Bengkulu program.
A total of 250 people took part in the meeting ranging from government employees, tourism industry players and communities in Bengkulu.
The provincial administration of Bengkulu has made tourism one of the leading sectors that will improve the regional economic growth as well as the locals.
Visit 2020 Wonderful Bengkulu will be the main goal of Bengkulu tourism. One of the main considerations is how to produce reliable tourism human resources by conducting technical mentoring, explained Bengkulu Tourism Agency head Yudi Satria.
For next year, Bengkulu is said to have up to 52 events on its schedule, One of the big events is Sail Bengkulu, which will highlight the beauty of Bengkulu sea that directly faces the Indian Ocean, he added.
Read also: Tourism to Komodo Island must be controlled: Official
Other interesting events are Tabot Muharam Festival and Bumi Rafflesia Festival.
Tourism Ministry's tourism marketing strategy department acting assistant Hariyanto who was one of the speakers of the event talked about how important a technical mentoring is in improving the tourism human resources. He also mentioned the importance of digital promotion in developing tourism.
How to increase the effectiveness of tourism departments participation at an event and how to market and promote the event so that it will attract tourists, told Hariyanto.
Bengkulu province in Sumatra has several famous tourist attractions such as Marlborough Castle, Bung Karno House and Panjang white-sand beach. (kes)
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Linkedin (Pesona Indonesia) Jakarta Sun, November 12, 2017 13:02 1830 1f87594453bb792833e1ece3a2896289 2 News Tourism-Ministry-Pesona-Indonesia,tourism-ministry-wonderful-Indonesia,disruptive-innovation,digital-tourism Free
Tourism Minister Arief Yahya was one of the speakers at the National Working Meeting (Rakernas) II held on Nov. 10-12 at Ciputra World, Surabaya, East Java.
Speaking in front around 300 delegates of the Association of Indonesian Tour & Travel Agencies (ASITA) from all across Indonesia, Arief talked about the three types of digital revolutions: telecommunication, transportation and tourism.
Digital technology revolution cant be avoided; it is going to happen. It will change the world, creating new business model, so business people who dont want to switch into digital platform will be left by the customers, told Arief.
He explained that digital technology has changed the transportation industry as evidenced by the rise of online public transportation companies such as Grab and Uber that have managed to reduce the transportation fee.
The same thing in the telecommunication industry, the service is also getting cheaper with the availability of chat applications such as WhatsApp, Google, Baidu, Line that allow users to send messages for free.
The third revolution is in the tourism industry where online travel agents such as Traveloka, Booking.com, TripAdvisor, Ctrip and others have disrupted conventional travel agents.
Read also: Five travel trends to watch in 2018
These online travel agents practice sharing economy and capacity optimization by selling someone elses assets in cheaper price and gaining return from cross selling. All of these are done digitally, he explained.
Arief admitted that in every revolution there must be some resistance from the conventional parties, he gave an example during his tenure as the president director of PT Telkom.
If at that time we didnt go into the cellular [industry], there would be no Telkom. We knew that Telkom customers would switch to cell phone. The same thing is happening in the tourism [industry]; 70 percent of tourists do their research online, Arief told.
In his presentation, Arief also talked about how the growth of foreign tourists coming to Indonesia could increase up to 25 percent, making it among the top 20 worldwide list, while the average worldwide growth was at six percent.
It's because we are becoming more digital, from the utilization of social media, big data, e-commerce and digital approach to customers, told Arief.
ASITA Indonesia DPP head Asnawi Bahar nodded in agreement to Ariefs explanation, as currently ASITA is preparing themselves for digital tourism.
ASITA fully acknowledges that has been told by the ministry is currently happening, hence we are preparing applications that members can use in order to compete in the era of digital tourism, said Asnawi.
The Rakernas II discussed three topics: Fun Business, Explore the Beauty of Mount Bromo and Effective and Efficient B2B Forum. It is held in Surabaya as part of an effort to promote destinations in East Java.
Rakernas II will be attended by all DPD ASITA representatives in Indonesia; there are currently 33 DPD branches in this country. Theres also Bromo Tengger Semeru Travel Mart Jatim event that brings together buyers and sellers in a B2B and B2C forum, he added.
Up to 30 sellers attended the forum ranging from tour agents, hotels to MICE organizers and management of tourist attractions in East Java. (kes)
There are currently more displaced people around the world than at any other time on record over 65 million people, according to the UN.
And while plenty of African and Asian countries are doing as much as they can to host the worlds 22.5 million refugees, the overall response in the West seems to be one of suspicion.
Nations have, historically, been wary of welcoming refugees into their countries.
But with the leader of the United States calling for a complete ban on refugees, perceptions have to be changed in order for vulnerable people to reach safety.
And thats where Syrian-born artist Mohamed Hafez and Iraqi-born writer Ahmed Badr come in.
Mohamed and Ahmed have been telling the stories of refugees from around the world Afghanistan, Congo, Syria, Iraq and Sudan who have fled war zones and built new lives in America. But theyve been doing it in a very innovative way.
A big misconception is that refugees and migrants all come from impoverished backgrounds, Mohamed, an architect who moved to the US on a student visa, said.
The project hes undertaken with Ahmed, called Unpacked, shows exactly what some refugees are leaving behind when they flee their homes, by remodelling parts of them in ornate detail.
When you see this luxurious interior in the living room, or nice furniture, nice fabrics, nice wallpaper; this is a life that existed. Comfortable lives. Some people might have left nothing but also many people have left a lot, have risked so much to get here. They did not choose to leave, they did not come here on a vacation. They had to leave.
(nelsonimaging.com)
Mohamed chose to display the homes in suitcases because he felt everyone would be able to grasp what they represent the emotional baggage that comes with leaving a whole life behind.
Its a trauma both artists know well, with Ahmed and his family fleeing Iraq when he was seven and Mohameds sister recently becoming a refugee in Sweden.
Ahmed, whose family spent two years in Syria before being resettled in America in 2008, interviewed families and saw his conversations turn into detailed models thanks to Mohamed.
His interviews can be heard through headphones next to the suitcases in the museums across America where theyve been exhibited, and one of the homes in the exhibition was his own.
(nelsonimaging.com)
Over the past three, three-and-a-half years Ive been retelling my own story. And I realised that as I was retelling my own story it was empowering me, so I wanted to give other people that same feeling, Ahmed said.
This project was the first time Ahmed and his family had discussed leaving Iraq, and seeing his house recreated by Mohamed was emotional.
It was really, really visceral to tangibly see something that fundamentally changed your life forever. And were seeing it not just with my story, but for others that weve featured as part of Unpacked.
Some of the stories being told through Unpacked are quite remarkable. Theres that of Fereshteh, an Afghan raised in Iran, who at 22 founded an underground school in the Islamic republic for the undocumented Afghan children unable to receive education legally.
The school nurtured more than 300 children each day, and Mohamed chose to build the basement where they learned for Fereshtehs suitcase.
Inside an Afghani suitcase, the story of a makeshift school that served 300 refugee kids secretly underground. A post shared by UNPACKED: Refugee Baggage (@unpackedrefugee) on Sep 22, 2017 at 10:17am PDT
After applying for refugee status, Fereshteh arrived in the US three years later in 2011, where shes now a professor of Farsi at the University of New Haven, an active translator for refugees, and attending nursing school.
Joseph, a prominent lawyer who fled the Democratic Republic of Congo, told another of the stories that stuck with Ahmed. After receiving refugee status in Kenya, Josephs son was kidnapped and is still missing.
Josephs suitcase features a dining table with several chairs all around the table, except for one off to the side that represents his son.
Ahmed said: When Joseph saw this he became very, very emotional, and it was very emotional for both me and Mohamed to witness that.
Youre literally presenting someone with their own tragedy and their own triumph. It opens the door for many reactions.
He was a prominent attorney, she was a journalist. They stood up for human rights, so they came for them Their son, is still missing till this day. #Congo #realstory A post shared by UNPACKED: Refugee Baggage (@unpackedrefugee) on Sep 22, 2017 at 2:40pm PDT
Mohamed believes that seeing the suitcases can have a therapeutic effect on the people they represent.
They couldve been more therapeutic if they made them themselves, but with that not being a possibility I think having their stories being out in the public and people coming to them and saying your story matters, you matter you cannot escape these suitcases, you cant pass by them and pretend youve seen nothing.
Mohamed also hopes his art can help people who call for travel bans and building walls to see refugees not as a monolith, but people with histories and lives and loves.
(nelsonimaging.com)
We realised that if we introduced ourselves as Muslim Arab American artists we are going to get kicked out of the room immediately, because weve already been judged two million ways. So we said OK, how can we speak with our mouths shut? he said.
Since starting the project Mohamed has filled 10 suitcases with aspects of the lives a family has left behind, and the duo hope to tell 50 stories to represent the 50 states.
The reception it has received promises to make that a reality, with immigrants and their descendants a lot of them Jewish donating suitcases.
(nelsonimaging.com)
They resonate with this push back and xenophobia, Mohamed said. Theyve been donating to me their suitcases, their miniature dollhouses.
Nothing tells a more beautiful story about diversity and living together more than Christians, Jews, Muslims and atheists coming together.
A suitcase that belonged to a Jewish immigrant, donated by their grandchildren, for a Muslim Syrian artist using yesterdays immigrants belongings to tell todays immigrants stories.
(nelsonimaging.com)
Through the project Mohamed and Ahmed have connected with lots of refugees living in the US from delivery drivers and doctors to professors, engineers and lawyers.
Hes adamant he doesnt want his work to romanticise refugees, but humanise them, and also show that its possible to move forward.
Everybody goes through hardship. It is not the whole story, it is part of the story. That is not how the story ends, he said.
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Here are details from a few of the 68 re-entry cases filed in U.S. District Court in Lincoln and reviewed by the Lincoln Journal Star:
Otto Rene Pojoy-Garcia
Pojoy-Garcia was ordered removed in Chicago and was taken to Guatemala in 2005. On May 11, 2017, ICE agents checked his fingerprints after finding him in the York County jail where he had been arrested for domestic assault. At his sentencing Oct. 16 for illegally re-entering after an aggravated felony, he said he didnt come back just to make money. He said his life was in danger in Guatemala and he was running away to save his life.
Sergio Delatorre-Vasquez
At a plea hearing June 8 in Lincoln, Delatorre-Vasquezs federal public defender said ICE had lodged a detainer with the Nebraska Department of Correctional Services, where he was serving a five-year sentence for third-degree sexual assault of a child. Somehow the paperwork didnt follow him, so when he finished his sentence, he was committed civilly to the Lincoln Regional Center. Ultimately, ICE learned what had happened and filed the paperwork to pick him up.
Maria Jimenez-Beza
Jimenez-Beza came to be with her 19-year-old son who had been in a vegetative state after being shot in the head on a Lincoln sidewalk May 14, 2011, in what police described as a gang-related shooting. Federal Public Defender David Stickman asked the judge to take her motivation as well as the fact another of her sons and her brother were shot and killed in Guatemala into account at her sentencing. The 48-year-old woman got time served.
Francisco Chairez-De La Rosa
Homeland Security agents found Chairez-De La Rosa at his brother Guadelupes house in Lincoln in January 2015 when they served a search warrant in an identity theft investigation. The 34-year-old convicted Lincoln rapist had been deported four years earlier after being released to ICE immediately from prison.
Hector Javier Garcia-Mendez
Garcia-Mendez had been deported three times prior to the September 2016 traffic stop in Pioneers Park that landed him back in ICE custody. A Lancaster County sheriffs deputy found the Mexican national in the park after hours, and Garcia-Mendez gave the deputy a different name and date of birth. The deputy suspected he was lying, and saw a stolen gun and meth in his car. Garcia-Mendez is serving five years in the federal penitentiary in Leavenworth for convictions stemming from this case. The 40-year-old is set to be released in 2021.
Manuel Rios-Ramirez
Grand Island police arrested Rios-Ramirez, a 47-year-old Mexican, after searching his home in a drug investigation in September 2015. They found dealer quantities of methamphetamine and cocaine hanging in packages from the shower curtain in his home and a package of meth buried in the backyard, according to court documents. Rios-Ramirez had been deported once before. He will be again after finishing his 10-year sentence in federal prison in Big Spring, Texas. He is set to get out in 2024.
Jeff Korbelik Features editor Jeff Korbelik is the features editor and covers dining, performing arts, TV and local media. Follow him at @LJSjeffkorbelik. Follow Jeff Korbelik 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
Hulus latest offering has a Nebraska connection in subject matter and storyline. The streaming service will release at 2 a.m. Thursday all seven episodes of Theres Johnny!, a new comedy from Paul Reiser about a young man from Valentine, Nebraska, who lands a job working on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson.
Carson, of course, grew up in Norfolk and graduated from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. His nephew, Jeff Sotzing, whos made several appearances in Lincoln over the years following Carsons significant gifts to UNLs film and theater school, is an executive producer on Theres Johnny!
Set in 1972 in Burbank, California, the coming-of-age tale stars Ian Nelson as young Nebraskan Andy Klavin, Jane Levy (Suburgatory) as Joy Greenfield, a fictional assistant talent coordinator for the Tonight Show, and Tony Danza as real-life Carson executive producer Freddie de Cordova.
After Joy introduces Nebraska what the shows writers call Andy to de Cordova, Andy says the executive producer smells really good.
(Thats) Marlboros, cologne and a steady flow of gin, Joy says back.
No actor portrays Carson because the series uses authentic footage of the comedian and his guests on screen. The pilot, for example, includes footage from the Oct. 11, 1972, episode featuring standup comic George Carlin.
Reiser, best known for starring in Mad About You opposite Helen Hunt, is finding his niche of late in series steeped in nostalgia. He starred for three seasons as a country clubber on Amazons delightful comedy Red Oaks set in the 1980s. He also plays a scientist on the second season of Netflixs Stranger Things, also set in the 80s.
"There's ... Johnny!" finds its footing once the other characters are introduced. Before that, its a tad insulting to Nebraskans, with Andy portrayed as a real bumpkin who thinks a form letter from Carson is a job invitation and who arrives at the TV studios at night not knowing the show is taped in advance.
He then, somehow, wanders onto the shows set, falling asleep on the guest couch, which sets the story in motion. The opening is a groaner, but after that its a wonderful journey back to an era when Carson was king. Grade: B
The following are other scripted shows premiering this week on streaming services:
No Activity, 7:30 p.m. Nov. 12, CBS All Access. From executive producers Will Ferrell, Adam McKay and Funny Or Die, the comedy follows the misadventures of two cops, two criminals, two dispatch workers and two Mexican tunnelers.
Future Man, 2 a.m. Nov. 14, Hulu. Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg, executive producers of AMCs Preacher, are EPs of this raunchy comedy about a video game-playing janitor recruited by time travelers to help save humanity.
Marvels The Punisher, 2 a.m. Nov. 17, Netflix. Jon Bernthal gets his own series as the Marvel superhero after debuting the character in Daredevils second season.
Otto Pojoy-Garcia sat in an orange jumpsuit at the defense table in a downtown Lincoln courtroom and tried to explain to the federal judge why he came back from Guatemala after being deported.
It wasn't just to make money, the 39-year-old said in Spanish, an interpreter translating via phone line.
"I was running away to save my life."
John Vanderslice, his federal public defender, said crime is rampant in Guatemala. Pojoy-Garcia's wife was killed there. His father-in-law, too.
Pojoy-Garcia knew he could be locked up for returning to the U.S., but took the risk knowing that at least then he'd be safe, the attorney said.
Roughly one-fourth of the nearly 500 criminal cases that go before federal judges in Nebraska each year involve people in the country illegally. Those men and women come here for a variety of reasons, but many say they fled a bad situation or came to make money or to join family.
* Maria Jimenez-Beza came to be with her 19-year-old son who was in a vegetative state after being shot in the head on a Lincoln sidewalk in a gang-related shooting in May 2011. Her public defender asked U.S. District Judge John Gerrard to consider her motivation. She got time served.
* Manuel Rios-Ramirez is described in court records as the head of a drug distribution gang in the Grand Island area. A search turned up bags of meth and cocaine hanging from his shower and more buried in the backyard. He got two years in prison for illegal re-entry concurrent with a 10-year sentence on a meth distribution charge.
* Miguel Barrera-Yerbabuena said he came to work construction and send money to his kids and wife in Mexico. "I just wanted to support my family," he told a judge at sentencing. But he promised it was the last time. "I just dont like being locked up and being away from my family," he said before being sentenced to 17 months in prison.
When immigrants are arrested in Nebraska for being in the country illegally, they can end up in one of two types of courts -- Immigration Court in Omaha or federal criminal court in either Lincoln or Omaha.
Since 2014, 4,418 have been deported administratively through Immigration Court.
In the same period, the U.S. Attorney's Office has prosecuted 523 people for illegal re-entry, many of them agreeing to take part in a fast-track program so they spend less time locked up if they don't fight deportation.
So far this year in Nebraska, the U.S. Attorney's Office has prosecuted 110 cases for illegal re-entry.
But it's just a sliver of the 45,000 immigrants estimated to be living in Nebraska illegally, according to a Pew Research Center report from last year.
Prosecutions focus on criminals
Generally, the Justice Department prosecutes immigrants here illegally who already have records, said Nebraska's Acting U.S. Attorney, Robert Stuart, who transferred to the Omaha office from San Diego in 2009 and took charge when Deborah Gilg retired in March.
"They've been removed; they've been ordered removed by a deportation judge; and they ... typically have a felony conviction or a misdemeanor conviction or two," he said.
Stuart said his office also may prosecute someone who has been busted for something small if they're back after having been deported.
"Why? Because they're not good citizens. They're not contributing to our community. We don't want them," he said.
A Journal Star review of 68 illegal re-entry cases prosecuted in U.S. District Court in Lincoln between January 2015 and September 2017 showed those individuals have been deported an average of two times each. One Honduran man had been removed eight times.
But, Stuart said, there are many who are in Nebraska illegally "who have been law-abiding individuals for a lengthy period of time and have children and work and pay their taxes and continue on."
Under the Obama Administration, they were left alone. But under the present administration, Stuart said, the directives to Homeland Security and Immigration and Customs Enforcement better known as ICE have changed.
Those departments used to focus on immigrants with aggravated felonies, significant misdemeanors and people with gang ties, but President Donald Trump broadly expanded deportation priorities in an executive order five days into his term.
"There are no longer protected classes of aliens," said Shawn Neudauer, a regional ICE spokesman. "We're just doing the job we were formed to do."
According to the National Immigration Law Center, the Jan. 25 executive order called for tripling the number of officers available for immigration enforcement and made it clear anyone violating immigration laws may be subject to arrest, detention and removal from the United States.
In time, that may lead to more administrative cases in immigration courts, and potentially to more criminal prosecutions by Stuart's office.
But, Stuart said, for now they'll continue to focus on prosecuting cases that are referred to them that meet appropriate guidelines.
Stuart said the Department of Homeland Security refers people to his office who have landed on the department's radar, typically by going to jail or from a tip.
But an immigrant here illegally who is stopped for something like speeding might not even be a blip.
"We may not ever know about them," Stuart said, especially if the person hasn't been removed before and doesn't have a criminal record.
"Our approach here is we want to deal with criminals," Stuart said, particularly getting violent criminals out of the community.
Stuart said one of the things he's loathe on are people arrested several times for DUI, whether they've been convicted of that or a reduced charge.
In some federal districts, they wouldn't land on a prosecutor's radar. Here they do, he said.
"Our belief is that those people ultimately may kill somebody, so those people are high on our list to remove from the United States," Stuart said. "And if they've been removed before, we will prosecute them."
But it doesn't always work seamlessly, as it didn't in the high-profile case of Eswin Mejia, an example President Trump has used to justify cracking down on illegal immigration.
Police say early on Jan. 31, 2016, Mejia was drunk and street racing when he slammed into the back of Sarah Root's SUV in Omaha as she drove home to Council Bluffs, Iowa. The 21-year-old, who had just graduated from Bellevue University, died of her injuries.
Police arrested Mejia, who tested three times the legal limit to drive. The Douglas County Attorney's office charged him in state court.
But he bonded out of jail and disappeared. Now he's on ICE's most-wanted list.
Prior to the crash, Stuart said another state discovered Mejia was in the country illegally, but he was released and ended up in Omaha.
"We didn't know about him," he said.
Part of the problem is sheer numbers.
Stuart said Homeland Security, which could have moved to detain Mejia before he left jail, only can encounter so many who are illegally in the country.
Looking for illegal re-entry
Neudauer said ICE agents in Nebraska routinely check the state's jail rosters, following up when fingerprints match federal databases, and on people who report to jailers during booking that they were born outside the U.S.
But not everyone discovered to have re-entered the U.S. without permission is prosecuted for it, he said.
Some may have been sentenced in state or federal court for other crimes, whether legally in the country or not, like the 214 currently incarcerated in Nebraska prisons who have immigration detainers, according to a Department of Correctional Services spokeswoman.
Some simply are deported again if a previous court order to remove them remains in effect, Neudauer said.
If they haven't been ordered deported before, they may go through Immigration Court and never be charged criminally.
But if they continue to return and get caught, theyre likely to face more time locked up, like Juan Barrera-Yerbabuena, who recently found himself in U.S. District Judge John Gerrard's courtroom in back-to-back sentencing hearings with his brother.
The 27-year-old Mexican national had been living and working in Grand Island until ICE agents encountered him there June 21, according to court records.
They scanned his fingerprints into the EAGLE Directed Identification Environment system, EDDIE for short, a database of people previously arrested by Homeland Security or law enforcement. Then they scanned them into the FBI's Next Generation Identification, NGI, a similar database.
It led to a positive match, an ICE agent wrote in an affidavit to arrest him.
Juan Barerra-Yerbabuena had been removed from the country twice before, the last time in Texas in 2013. It was his first conviction for illegally re-entering the U.S. and landed him in jail for 30 days.
This time, a Nebraska judge gave him five months and a warning: Should he return and get caught, he'll be incarcerated longer next time.
"Govern yourself accordingly," Gerrard said.
Still, some will return.
Nebraska's federal judges have increasingly seen cases in which immigrants have been found here and charged with illegal re-entry.
This year, the state jumped into ninth out of all federal districts for criminal prosecutions referred by the Department of Homeland Security relative to population size.
Just a year ago, Nebraska ranked 25th.
But what propelled the state to a higher spot on the list not far below predictable districts in border states like Texas, Arizona and Southern California isn't entirely clear.
It may reflect a drop in filings elsewhere or increased referrals here by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, better known as ICE, that have resulted in more prosecutions.
Economics a consideration
In Nebraska, at least for now, who is charged comes down to a matter of priority.
For federal prosecutors, it's more nuanced than just prosecuting all immigrants who don't have permission to be here, Stuart said.
"They're illegally in the United States. That's a crime. But who are they? Are they drug dealers? Have they possessed weapons illegally before? Are they domestic violence criminals? Are they rapists or bank robbers or child molesters? Those are the ones we worry about," he said. "That's law and order."
"Is the rest of it law and order?" posed Stuart, a Marine before he became a prosecutor. "Well, it is. It's enforcing the laws of our nation. But I would suggest in that debate there is more that comes into play than just that notion."
For instance, there's the sheer economics of it, he said. Federal prisons already are crowded. There's no money to increase capacity or hire additional corrections staff.
"Under the present administration the money may be forthcoming for all of those things. We'll see," Stuart said.
He said there's also the question of whether the government should honor its agreement not to remove DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals) young people, so-called Dreamers, whose parents brought them into the country illegally.
"These are difficult questions that I think our government and our elected officials need to come to grips with in fashioning laws," Stuart said.
"But I think that equity and who we are as a country and how we came about as a country should also form how we respond to this debate and how we ultimately decide the fate of the DACA children as a good example."
Since time immemorial, India has maintained a cultural link with South-east Asia. But that was halted owing to multiple factors during the time of colonial intervention. This cultural link is said to have been revived and rebuilt by Rabindranath Tagores visit to that region, resulting in a permanent bond between them. It was through Rabindranath, a poet and philosopher, that Indias strong passion for universalism became known to the modern world.
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With a view to fostering an international understanding and universalism, Tagore opened his famous school at Santiniketan that turned to be an international university, Visva-Bharati, where scholars from different parts of the world including South-east Asia would come and meet in different capacities. His theory of culture and civilisation was based on intellectual fervour instead of materialistic essence. That was reflected in the lectures given during his tour and also in his writings about South-east Asian countries.
Tagore, the only Nobel Laureate in Asia at that time, appeared to be a symbol of Asian glory and prestige and was heartily greeted by the people of South-east Asia. He was regarded as a reformer and a torchbearer of modernism.
The book under review is a major work that throws light on these aspects. The volume is a collection of seven essays presented at an international seminar organised by the Centre for South and South-east Asian Studies, University of Calcutta on the occasion of the 150th birth anniversary of Rabindranath Tagore. Most of the essays are well thought-out and nicely woven together, delineating how Tagores visit to South-east Asian countries (1927) contributed to building bridges between nations.
The books Introduction brilliantly speaks of the motive behind Tagores visit to Southeast Asia, mentioning his desire to discover Indian culture there and detect the Asian cultural identity. The editor observes that Tagore appeared to be a nationalist and a PanAsianist as well, and eventually a Universalist. This different state of idealism evolved from many inner tussles.
She argues that Tagores idea of international coexistence had a bearing on his tour of South-east Asia and the poet intended to reestablish Indias cultural ties with the region through proper appreciation of the ideals of Visva-Bharati. The first essay by Sabyasachi Bhattacharya deals with Tagores visit to South-east Asia in the light of his notion of universalism and humanism, focusing on the remaking of ties of friendship between India and South-east Asia.
He adds that Tagore revived the cultural links and tried to rebuild them between the two regions with a universalistic outlook and a commitment to internationalism and intercultural understanding. William Radice illustrates that in his creative responses to the visit to Southeast Asia not only a classical, positive and joyous Tagore but also the disenchanted, more pessimistic and modernist Tagore could be found. Many of his writings, Sagarika, for example, talks about the recovery of Indias past cultural contact with Bali, and his tour of Southeast Asia reflects historical interest and his ingenuity as a poet. The contributors of the third, fourth, fifth and sixth essays, U Thaw Kaung and Daw Khin Hnin Oo, Sawitree Charoenpong, Angela Oons Kheng Fay, and Phan Thi Thu Hien respectively, are from the South-east Asian countries that Tagore visited.
They have examined systematically the socio-cultural and intellectual impact of Tagore on Myanmar, Thailand, Singapore and Malay, and Vietnam where his speeches gave the vision of the unity of man and cultural awakening of Asia. His visits, as reflected in these essays, promoted cultural ties between India and these countries and brought their people close to India. These essays throw light on how newly educated young intellectuals were enormously impressed by Tagores ideas of nationalism, universalism and his model of education in VisvaBharati.
The essay by Arun Das Gupta, taken posthumously, gives a vivid account of how Tagore in Indonesia upheld the task of restoring the cultural ties with India and acted to launch a cultural exchange programme and thus build a bridge between India and Indonesia.
The author also addresses how each side was benefited by his tour. He analyses that Tagore in Indonesia inculcated the message of cultural bonding among Asian peoples, including ancient cultural ties between India and Indonesia and crossborder nationalism. Finally, Sourindranath Bhattacharya in the Afterword refers, in the context of Tagores journey to South-east Asia, to pan-Indianism an extension of cultural India, which was opposed to the politico-economic expansion of the West that affected humanism and brotherhood. Tagore denounced, as pointed out by the author, this politico-economic conquest of the others and reiterated ties of culture between India and South-east Asia.
Almost all the essays are very informative, well-researched and written in a rational objective manner. The editor has done her job very meticulously and deserves to be complimented for her ability to integrate the rich collection of essays and present them in such a lucid manner. However, most of the essays could be divided into sub-themes that would give the readers more pleasure. Moreover, an adequate bibliography would be of much more use.
Otherwise, it is a valuable work for both its range and depth. It provides the tool for a better understanding of Tagores philosophical thoughts and humanistic values in the context of his visit to South-east Asian countries in the 1920s. The book would be useful to teachers, students and researchers. It would undoubtedly add to the burgeoning literature on the cultural history of South-east Asia.
(The reviewer is professor of history, University of Burdwan)
Exclusion from the cultural and literary mainstream is an experience that women writers everywhere have had to contend with for millennia. It has been a common struggle for women writers and feminist scholars globally to claim intellectual space within the predominantly patriarchal literary canon. Kept outside the male stream, and relegated to the margins of Australian national culture, the Australian women writers too have faced neglect.
Claiming Space for Australian Womens Writing, edited by eminent South Asian scholars Devaleena Das and Sanjukta Dasgupta, attempts to redress this gendered marginalisation of Australian women writers and assert their centrality in Australian culture and literature. This edited volume presents 18 well researched scholarly articles by renowned academics and researchers, grouped thematically into four sections.
Enriched with an introduction that locates the contemporary Australian women writers in their historical and critical context, this volume showcases the varied and vibrant corpus of Australian womens writing, not damning them with indifference or faint-praise, but by charting a vigorous, mature and inclusive tradition of women writers white, aboriginal, immigrant, coloured, queer, canonical or forgotten; and celebrating more than a hundred years of Australian womens writing.
Covering a wide trajectory of representative women writers from the late 19th century to the present times and scrutinising a vast array of genres-letters, diaries, poetry, mothers laments, nurse narratives, novels, romance, druginduced accounts, aboriginal writing, protest poetry, feminist, queer and immigrant writings, this volume builds awareness about the central issues of Australian womens literature their search for identity, equality, creative freedom and literary space, self-discovery, conflict and meaning as well as their gendered reading of Australian life and society.
The essays in this collection are particularly commendable for their new and innovative perspectives. Dealing with writers as diverse as Alice Muskett, Katherine Susannah Prichard, Kate Grenville, Judith Wright, Romaine Morton, Jackie Huggins, to name a few, the essays not only emphasise the heterogeneity of these Australian women writers but also their interconnectedness.
Devaleena Dass essay in the first section builds on this inter-connectedness in the complex relationship between Louisa Lawson and Mary Gilmore. The linkages between the women writers locally or globally further come out in Susan Sheridans essay.
Ffion Murphy and Richard Nile reclaim a space for lamenting mothers from their repressive narrative silence, while Victoria Reeve deals with the complexities of the white womans gaze. In the second section, Sanjukta Dasgupta, in her overview of five Marxist-feminist writers from Miles Franklin to Germaine Greer, shows how these writers used the pen as activism to interrogate patriarchal norms and raised their voices on issues like gender equality or socio-political and economic status of women. Dasguptas discourse on inter-sectionality of gender with class, education, location or sexuality is carried on by Raymond Evans, Belinda Burns, Jessica White and Sue Kossew in their enlightening essays.
The third section dealing with the representation of the female body and sexual orientations, claims space for alternative sexualities. Susan Hawthornes essay on lesbian writers like Kerryn Higgs, and Damien Barlows explorations of nonnormative sexualities in Barbara Hanharan too are richly informative.
Nycole Prowses analysis of hippy counter-culture and the influence of narcotics soft-drug addiction and substance abuse in Helen Garners urban novel also deserve special mention. In part four, Anne Brewster delves deep into protest poetry by aboriginal women and Sibendu Chakraborty adds to her argument by spotlighting how the aboriginal feminist views negate both patriarchal strictures and Eurocentric feminism.
Ishmeet Kaur on the other hand traces how orality becomes a subversive strategy against normative literacy, empowering the aboriginal women. The immigrant womens experience in Australia is brought out in Sanghamitra Dalals focus on the Anglo-Indian-Australian writer Patricia Pengilley, Ipsita Senguptas article on the little known Mary Louisa Skinner, and finally Sharon Rundles essay on the Sri Lankan-Australian woman of colour Chandani Lokuge.
The comprehensive manner in which the essays address the identity politics, politics of location and systematic marginalisation, spatiotemporal dynamics or the politics of the body and/or sexuality as represented in the literary writings of the Australian women, makes the volume a veritable archive of scholarly material for future research, an indispensable critical resource on Australian women writers and their works. The transnational dimension brought to bear on the Australian women writers by the Indian scholars opens up space for further dialogue and new, dynamic linkages.
This collection of insightful essays thus not only claims space for Australian womens writing, as it ostensibly professes, but in doing so, it also lays claim to a transnational space for women writers everywhere beyond the narrow and delimiting boundaries of nation, ethnicity, race, religion, location, colour, gender or sexuality.
It expands the purview of analytical, cutting-edge research on womens writing, fosters academic discussion and gives rise to a new direction in scholarly engagement; thereby elucidating a rich critical tradition of comparative research open, inclusive, innovative and empowering integrating different cultures, languages and worldviews; and a new transnational sisterhood as it were fluid, multivalent and borderless for women writers and researchers across the globe.
(The reviewer is assistant professor, department of English, Dr Kanailal Bhattacharya College, Howrah, and guest lecturer, Calcutta University)
Seeking steps from the Centre to combat the dengue epidemic in West Bengal, BJPs state President Dilip Ghosh has written to Union Health Minister J.P. Nadda, alleging that test kits were being smuggled out to private health centres due to corruption of the ruling party.
There is also huge shortage of dengue test kits in government hospitals. The kits are being smuggled out to private nursing homes and hospitals and the poor are advised to get tested in those private health centres at exorbitant costs. This practice is going on due to corruption of the ruling party, Ghosh said in the letter.
According to the letter, the estimated dengue cases so far have crossed 50,000, although the government only accepted a meagre number of 18,000 of those diagnosed as dengue virus infected and declared that 34 persons have died to date, out of which only 18 were confirmed dengue cases.
Ghosh also alleged that the state health system had completely broken down and was unable to combat this manace and the danger from this epidemic had become more acute since the state government is not ready to accept the enormity of the crisis.
Highlighting the pathetic attitude of the National Institute of Cholera and Enteric Disease (NICED) in Beliaghata here, he said the institute was not taking any pro-active initiatives, instead it was taking cue from the state Health Department and acting on their behalf to subvert the ground reality.
He also mentioned that the state government had created a huge fear psychosis among the doctors and they are unwilling to even issue death certificates of dengue deaths.
West Bengal government on Saturday iterated that the Biswa Bangla Marketing Corporation is totally owned by it and is not a private entity.
If anyone claims that it (Biswa Bangla) is a private company, it is wrong. It is a government company, Rajiva Sinha, secretary to the state MSME and textile departments told newsmen here.
His statement came in the wake of newly-inducated BJP leader Mukul Roys claim at a public meeting here yesterday that Biswa Bangla is not a government entity but a private company owned by Abhishek Banerjee, nephew of Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee.
Sinha, in the presence of Home secretary Atri Bhattacharya, said that Mamata Banerjee had created the Biswa Bangla logo and transferred it to the state government.
She is the creator and we are the user of the logo.
Any department of the state government can use it, he said.
Sinha said when the government had approached the registry of trade marks, the authorities had said that two other applications were also submitted for it.
Subsequantly Abhishek Banerjee had withdrawn the two applications and the registration authority accepted it, he said.
The Home secretary said that Biswa Bangla is not only a corporation or a logo. It is a brand for the state, he said.
Bhattacharya had yesterday said the Biswa Bangla brand and logo are registered in the name of the state government for use in many capacities.
The Fukra gang is back with a bang and are all set to take everyone on a roller coaster ride. The trailer of the much-awaited film will be out on 13th November 2017.
After spreading their Fukrapan in 2013, the adventures of Laali, Choocha, Zafar and Hunny will surely take you on a hilarious ride with their latest offering.
After the teaser and posters, the makers have released quirky video clips to reveal the trailer launch date.
This time they are going wilder, crazier, more bizarre than ever.
The posters give further insights into film with the lottery tickets flying around and the presence of animals, creating curiosity amongst the audience. With the tagline, Isse deja choo Kehte hai, the audience is waiting to see what the trailer would offer.
The first film proved to be an underdog and became a sleeper hit, as it garnered a lot of attention for its comic timing and unique content.
Back on public demand, the makers have come back with the sequel starring Richa Chadha, Pulkit Samrat, Ali Fazal Varun Sharma and Manjot Singh in the lead roles.
The characters of the film have once again hit the right chord with the audience.
Directed by Mrighdeep Singh Lamba, the film will release on December 8.
Characterised by rich visuals and vibrant colours, Japanese animation known as anime to the rest of the world stands apart as a distinct art form. In the loud and often in your-face visual aesthetic of these times, the best animators in Japan adhere to a philosophy of soft and gentle scenes, which are easy on the eye. And one of the finest practitioners of the form is 64-year-old Nagasaki-born Nizo Yamamoto.
Yamamoto studied architecture but gave it up to pursue his love of animation. Thereafter he met pioneering director Hayao Miyazaki at the iconic Studio Ghibli. He has served as an art director on some of Japans most enduring animation films Laputa:Castle in the Sky (1985), Grave of the Fireflies (1988), Whisper of the Heart (1995), Princess Mononoke (1997), Spirited Away (2001) and The Girl Who Leapt Thro-ugh Time (2006). The Yamamoto Nizo Museum will be opened in his hometown, Goto in Japans Nagasaki Prefecture next year.
During his first exhibition abroad in New Delhi, he spoke about his most memorable works, hand painted animation and depicting a realistic beauty.
Excerpts from an interview:
What made you choose animation over architecture?
Ive always loved painting. When I was a student, I had a chance to work at an animation studio. And since then, Ive been in the world of animation.
Who/what were your influences when starting out?
The master named Kazue Itoh. He was my mentor and introduced me to director Hayao Miyazaki
Two films that stand out artistically are Grave of the Fireflies and The Girl Who Leapt Through Time. What were the challenges of working on them?
As art director of Grave of the Fireflies, I visited Kobe to collect reference material together with writer Akiyuki Nosaka and director Isao Takahata. During the preparatory stages of the production, I had to paint the flames and smoke for the air raid scenes, including the colours and patterns of the sky.
So I had to study those under the supervision of Takahata. I sometimes had to paint through tears, and often felt that I could not stand to paint all that. Nonetheless, I made a reconstruction of the rows of houses and nature, and landscapes of the era. When Nosaka saw the movie, he shouted out, This is what animation is all about!
It was an especially memorable movie for me as well. In The Girl Who Leapt Through Time, I made complete blueprints for the house in order to imagine better how different families live.
In that way, the viewers sitting on the other side of the screen can feel the reality of the world of the characters and empathise with them. Additionally, with complete drawings, it was easier to decide where to place the camera to obtain the right angle.
On top of that, the quality of the light changes according to the time of day and the characters emotional state. In that sense, the work of the art director ties together the work of props management, lighting and camera work that we have in live-action productions.
You began when animation was rendered by hand. Where do you stand on the digital versus hand-painted divide?
Personally, Im not good at digital devices. I tried once but I couldnt feel Im drawing properly.
The use of light in the background is another distinct feature of Japanese animation. How important is it as a visual and storytelling component?
If a background is really good, its taken for granted viewers can ignore it and just immerse themselves in the world of the movie. If its bad, they cant help noticing it, and lose their concentration. When we remember the good times in our lives, we always remember the background as beautiful, even if we didnt pay much attention to it at the time. That is the kind of realistic beauty that I want to depict.
Do you believe animators should get as much as respect as mainstream artists?
Yes, I do believe that should be the case.
Do tell about the works on display in the exhibition.
This exhibition introduces my best works including beautiful landscape paintings from Grave of the Fireflies, Princess Mononoke, The Girl Who Leapt Through Time and many more. Also, I would like to show the beauty of Goto, my hometown in Nagasaki.
What are your future projects?
Ive been painting 100 beautiful scenery of my hometown, Goto. Ive got nearly 50 as of now and Im looking forward to finishing it!
Nizo Yamamotosexhibition,The World of Japanese Animation, is on till 17 November (11 am-7 pm) at The Japan Foundation, New Delhi.
More than a decade in the making, the Louvre Abu Dhabi opened its doors on 8 November, drawing French President Emmanuel Macron to the Middle East on his first official visit.
The opening comes a decade after France and the UAE agreed to a 30-year partnership initially reported to be worth US$1.1 billion (S$1.5 billion), including nearly half a billion dollars for the rights to the Louvre brand alone. Pausing to shake hands on a red carpet lining the all-white path leading to the museum, Macron and Frances First Lady walked side by side with Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed and Dubai ruler Mohammed bin Rashed.
Macron, who is also scheduled to hold talks with UAE officials, toured the 12-gallery museum shortly after touching down in Abu Dhabi, along with the heads of state of Morocco and Afghanistan.
The new museum was a bridge between civilisations, he said at the opening. Those who seek to say that Islam is the destruction of other religions are liars.
The museum design, by Frances Pritzker prize-winning architect Jean Nouvel, conjures up the image of an Arab medina as seen through the eyes of a contemporary cinematographer. The UAE government is promoting the museum as the first of its kind, a 23-gallery museum city in the sea on Saadiyat Island off the Abu Dhabi coast.
The Louvre Abu Dhabi, the first museum to bear the Louvre name outside France, presents around 600 pieces in a modern, light-filled structure in harmony with its desert-island setting. Flagged as the first universal museum in the Arab world, it sits on the low-lying Saadiyat Island, a developing tourism and culture hub 500 metres off the coast of the United Arab Emirates capital.
It opened its doors this week, bringing the famed name to the Arab world for the first time. It is the first museum to open on the island, also the site of the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi, which is still under construction. For the next 10 years, 13 of Frances top museums will lend works to the UAE at their discretion and for a maximum of two years each. The museum currently has some 300 pieces on loan, including an 1887 self-portrait by Vincent van Gogh and Leonardo da Vincis La Belle Ferronniere.
The oil-rich emirate, which has made no secret of its push on soft power, has also spent years quietly building its own permanent collection. The Louvre Abu Dhabi is displaying more than 250 works of art from the Emirati collection, including Edouard Manets The Gypsy and works by Dutch abstract artist Piet Mondrian and Turkeys Osman Hamdi Bey.
French architect Jean Nouvel was inspired by the islands position between sand and sea, shade and light, the Louvre website says. I also wanted to play on this idea of openness, that of a desert open to the sea, the winner of the prestigious Pritzker Architecture Prize told AFP in September.
The site comprises 55 white buildings reminiscent of traditional Arab medinas.
Two-thirds of the museum is covered by a dome, 180 metres in diameter, which provides welcome shade from the scorching Gulf sun. Pierced with 7,850 star-like openings formed by the layering of the buildings structure, like interwoven palm leaves, the dome is intended to resemble silver lace.
For me, great Arab architecture (is) geometry with lights, Nouvel said. As the museum put it, sun filters through the dome like a delicate, protective rain of light reflecting the constant interplay of light and shadow in the country. The vast project claims to be the first museum of its kind in the Arab world: a universal museum that focuses on shared human stories across civilisations and cultures.
The museums price tag was initially estimated at US$654 million (S$892 million), to be put up by Abu Dhabi under a deal signed with France in 2007. But costs have risen due to funding and construction delays. Under the 30-year agreement, France provides expertise, loans works of art and organises temporary exhibitions in return for one billion euros (S$1.58 billion). The Louvre in France takes a 400-million-euro share of that sum for the use of its name up to 2037.
For the next 10 years, the Paris museum will lend works to its Abu Dhabi partner on a voluntary basis, for a maximum of two years. For its permanent collection, the museum has acquired hundreds of pieces, dating from the earliest Mesopotamian civilisations to the present day.
Thirteen top French museums, including the Musee dOrsay and the Palace of Versailles, will also loan the Louvre Abu Dhabi 300 works of art over the first year.
These include Leonardo da Vincis La Belle Ferronniere, Napoleon Crossing the Alps by Jacques-Louis David, and a self-portrait by Vincent Van Gogh.
The UAE government is promoting the museum as the first of its kind, a 23-gallery museum city in the sea on Saadiyat Island off the Abu Dhabi coast. Some five per cent of the museum is dedicated to contemporary and modern art, including a monumental piece by Chinas Ai Weiwei.
The main focus, however, is on world history and religions. Among the exhibits are a sixth century Koran, a gothic Bible and a Yemeni Torah facing each other, and carry the same message. Jack Lang, who was Frances culture minister when the Louvre in Paris received its controversial pyramid, said the Abu Dhabi museum would be much more universal than the Louvre in Paris.
It is a chance to open the idea of a museum to different continents and different civilisations, he said. It joins the art of the Louvre (and) the Musee dOrsay, in a space that is much more open and less separated. The museum design, by Frances Pritzker Prize-winning architect Jean Nouvel, conjures up the image of an Arab medina as seen through the eyes of a contemporary cinematographer. A silver-toned dome with perforated arabesque patterns appears to float over the white museum galleries, creating what Nouvel describes as a rain of light.
To reach the ground, each ray of light must cross eight layers of perforations, creating a constantly shifting pattern that mimics the shadows cast by palm trees or the roof of a traditional Arab market.
Authorities have taken serious measures to protect the art from the heat during transport and storage, in a country where summer temperatures soar well above 40 degrees Celsius. The art is also guarded by Emirati forces in coordination with French experts including civil defence and terrorism security forces.
(Dawn/ The Straits Times)
Given that I have a publicly available email address, I receive many unsolicited emails every week from strangers. Some are readers comments about my work, others requests for help, often from students who want tips on how to improve their writing standards. Over the years, I have found that there is one category of content that I dread to read.
Unfortunately, this category also has the highest number of messages that sit in my inbox among the unsolicited pile. These are emails purporting to be from students in various parts of the country seeking financial assistance for their studies. I use the word purportedly because I have no way of verifying the tragedy that is being talked about the tragedy of students who believe in themselves and are keen to learn, but who are faced with the prospect of having to drop out of school or college, or not progress any further in their studies, because they do not have the financial wherewithal to do so.
Many of the emails I receive talk of unforeseen events hitting their families circumstances, as a result of which the planned-for future is suddenly no longer possible a fathers illness or the abrupt termination of his job, an accident that leaves the breadwinner no longer able to work.
The most heartbreaking are the other ones, though the ones that talk about the breadwinner being caught up in a bomb blast, killed or maimed in acts of terror and violence and militancy that Pakistanis have sadly, grimly, had to recognise as a reality of life.
A lot of these emails seem to come from the northern and north-western parts of the country, areas that have not just been particularly hit by violence over the past decade and a half, but where the development indices were not high to begin with. Violence is somewhat less given the armys various operations, but the latter, too, have not left the population unscathed. On occasion, I read of accounts of educational institutions building having been requisitioned or occupied, or being razed or otherwise rendered useless during battles between militants and the security agencies.
And these accounts must be delineated from the reports of hundreds of schools that were earlier directly targeted by violent extremists because of their belief that education especially for girls is a reprehensible thing. Few of the students that write such emails request direct financial help or assistance, at least from someone such as myself who is simply an ordinary citizen.
Rather, most are looking for avenues of aid scholarships from either the government or private donors funds, a soft loan for education, any institution that makes a provision for underprivileged or economically stressed students. Thankfully, there are a few such initiatives such as universities outreach programmes that seek to specifically accommodate students from underserviced areas including less-developed provinces or territories such as Balochistan or Fata.
There are generous citizens whose contributions allow charities such as TCF to function admirably. At a much smaller scale, there are also individuals who are quietly willing to give their time and money to helping out, even fully funding, a student or two. Even so, these efforts are a mere drop in the ocean of need that is Pakistan.
This is not surprising when we consider that this is an underdeveloped, under-resourced country where population numbers are skewed towards the young; a place where there are issues such as the battle for law and order, the perma-crisis that is politics and governance, and so on. Do the students who cannot pursue their dreams even count?
Perhaps the answer lies in the setting up of a centralised fund or institution to which students in need of aid can apply. But given the realities of Pakistan, this feels somewhat utopian. Is this even possible in a country where corruption, malpractice or at the very least, inefficiency, are rampant, even at the level of government institutions?
And yet, if talented minds are being wasted, if a teenager has to learn a trade at the workshop rather than pursue the degree he yearns for, if his sister must contemplate marriage and motherhood rather than her dream, how can any meaningful development occur? If this isnt an issue, then what is? Just recently, the Senate dilated upon the impact of hate material in schools and the role of religious, security and educational institutions.
An MQM senator called for the declaration of an education emergency, but added that shameless activities were occurring in educational institutions. Perhaps she, and others occupying seats of power, ought to, instead, be hanging their heads in shame over how they continue every day to fail the countrys young.
(Dawn/ ANN)
Cindy Lange-Kubick Columnist Cindy Lange-Kubick has loved writing columns about life in her hometown since 1994. She had hoped to become a people person by now, nonetheless she would love to hear your tales of fascinating neighbors and interesting places. Follow Cindy Lange-Kubick 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
When Ray Solee finished writing the letter, he addressed an envelope to the general manager of La Quinta Inn & Suites in Collinsville, Illinois.
He made copies for the CEO of La Quinta and the COO of La Quinta and the chief of human resources at La Quinta.
And then he called the front desk clerk at the La Quinta in Collinsville, who had come to his aid the day his wife died.
I wanted to get her approval, Ray said Thursday from his southeast Lincoln home. She said it would be OK.
Then, finally, he mailed the two-page, typed letters. A story hed given a title in honor of that clerk: My Angel, Brianna Moore.
Hed started at the beginning: The time was a little before 7 oclock in the morning, Friday, September 22 when my wife abruptly woke me
Ray and Diane Solee had been married 54 years, both of them retired, when they took a church bus trip to Indiana and Kentucky.
The bus had stopped for the night in Collinsville, a suburb of St. Louis, before making the last leg to Kansas City where theyd first set out and where the couple had once lived.
That Friday morning, Ray had awoken to Dianes arm flailing in his face. He made a joke, and then he saw it wasnt funny. Dianes eyes were open but she didnt see him, she was having trouble breathing, a gurgling sound coming from her throat.
Ray called the front desk.
And up came Brianna, a 26-year-old from Chicago working overnights at the Inn one of two jobs as she made her way through Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville.
He asked did we have anyone with medical training, she said Thursday, at the start of her shift. I said, No, sir, whats going on?
He told her.
OK, here I come, she answered.
By the time she reached the second floor, Brianna had already called 911, listening while the dispatcher gave instructions, her phone set to speaker.
When Diane stopped breathing, she and the man in Room 216 put her on the floor.
When we got her breathing again, the paramedics wanted her to start CPR, Ray said. She did it without hesitation.
And when the ambulance arrived, Brianna drove Ray to the hospital.
She sat with him in the waiting room.
Brianna prayed with Ray and his friends from the tour bus before it left town.
When the doctor came to tell Ray that Diane wouldnt make it, Brianna was there.
After Ray met with the doctor and the coroners office and the funeral home people, Brianna returned to drive him back to the hotel.
I bet youre hungry, she said. When they stopped at Panera, she wouldnt let him pay.
And after they ate, before he went back to his room for a nap, he told Brianna she was an angel, and a blessing to him.
She answered back: You are my blessing.
The next morning I went down thinking I could talk to her, and thats when I found out about her hours.
He was stunned.
Brianna had answered my call at 6:45 a.m or 15 minutes before the end of her 8-hour shift, Ray wrote in his letter. In other words, she had attended to me and my needs, wholeheartedly and unselfishly, for six hours after her normal checkout time.
Diane died at 9 a.m. that Friday.
Shed had tongue cancer 35 years ago, followed by cobalt treatments that made swallowing food difficult, Ray said. Her nutrition came through a feeding tube Ray hooked up at night, joking: Heres your steak dinner!
Every Friday they went out for soup. If they couldnt find something pureed, Diane ordered mashed potatoes with two sides of gravy and made her own.
They didnt let not being able to enjoy food, stop them from enjoying life. Dianes obituary proved it, listing her many accomplishments and her love of travel, cooking and family.
Her death certificate listed respiratory failure as the primary cause of death, along with aspiration and dysphagia, a word Ray had yet to look up.
The couple met in Grand Forks, North Dakota, and traveled for his work before settling in Lincoln, 41 years ago. They had two grown children and three grandchildren.
In the hospital waiting room, Ray and Brianna had shared stories. He told her about his life; she told him about hers.
He asked about her name.
Hed never met anyone named Brianna, she said. That was funny because there were like seven Briannas who went to high school with me.
She described Ray as a gentle giant I worried he wouldnt fit in my car and kind. I really feel like the reason I was able to stay so calm was because he was so calm.
The day after Diane died, when Rays daughter and sister-in-law arrived to take him home, the La Quinta maid hugged him goodbye. The front desk staff hugged him goodbye.
As the car left the parking lot, more employees gathered outside, waving and wishing him well.
All of these people were so caring, Ray said. They treated me like some kind of royalty.
In his letter, he told the CEO and the COO and the head of human resources how remarkable those employees were.
He singled one out.
His angel, Brianna Moore.
"God put Brianna there that day, I have to say, he wrote. If I didnt believe in a sovereign, loving, all-knowing God, I wouldnt be able to explain it any other way.
In a bid to pay homage to thousands of Indian soldiers who lost their lives fighting for Belgiums freedom in Flanders fields around Ypres during the First World War (1914 to 1918), Belgiums King Philippe and Queen Mathilde last week, on Wednesday, inaugurated India in Flanders Fields exhibition in the Capital. The royal couple was on a seven-day maiden visit to India till 11 November.
The exhibition showcases unique objects from private and military collections in India and official collections from Belgium. The inauguration of this exhibition also marked the royal couples first state visit to India and underlines the long-standing ties between the two nations. Focusing on the unforgettable experiences and realities of war, the exhibition tells the story of that war as it was lived by those who went through it.
Similarly, the In Flanders Fields Museum Ieper (Ypres) is an award winning museum on the First World War that pays honour to Indias brave soldiers. In this exhibition, one can witness many fascinating possessions such as a rare colour photograph of Indian cavalry troopers from the Punjab in France, 1917; German postcards showing Germans fighting with Indian troops in Belgium; and various artefacts such as a GorkhaKhukri, different types leather headgears, Belgian medals and decorations and many more.
Interestingly, a coffee table book, which is a compilation of the same exhibits, titled India in Flanders Fields was also launched by the royal couple at Manekshaw Centre on the same day. The book highlights the sacrifices of Indian soldiers and showcases the pictures of artefacts and decorations displayed in the exhibition.
The exhibition will be open to the general public from 13-30 November, at the National Museum, where the book will also be available. Belgian historian DominiekDendooven, from the In Flanders Fields Museum (Ypres) and Indian Military Historian RanaChhina (United Services Institution of India) have cowritten this book that brings to fore the chronology of events during the war along with unique pictures from private and military collections of the two countries, for the first ever time. Speaking on the occasion, Chhina informed that the first Indian to fall in this war was a solider named Lathuria from Hamipur in Himachal Pradesh.
He also said nearly 1.5 lakh Indian soldiers participated in the First World War, of which nearly 4,500 died in France and Belgium, mostly in the First Battle of Ypres and Second Battle of Ypres. Besides, he also informed that the very first use of chemical warfare was done at the Second Battle of Ypres in April 1915. The book was launched in the presence of Union Minister of State for External Affairs VK Singh and Army Chief General Bipin Rawat.
Moreover, this year marks 70 years of the establishment of diplomatic ties between the two nations as Belgium was among the first nations of the world to establish diplomatic relations with independent India. The cultural and social interactions of Indian troops on the Western front with locals are understood to have started interesting debates in India then, providing an impetus to the freedom movement.
King Albert I, King Philippes great-grandfather had played a key role on the Western Front, not far from where the Indian troops fought. Earlier, King Philippe laid a wreath at India Gate and paid respects to soldiers, who laid down their lives during the First World War.
In an attempt to nurture Indo-French relations, the Embassy of France announced the third edition of Bonjour India on 8 November. The opening of the fourmonth-long cultural voyage from November 2017 to February 2018 was announced by the Ambassador of France to India, Alexandre Ziegler, along with the Counsellor for Cooperation and Cultural Affairs, Dr Bertrand de Hartingh.
Bonjour India is a key event of the historical IndoFrench relations of friendship and trust, which have grown in scope and exchanges over the last few years, Alexandre Ziegler said, speaking on the occasion. In an increasingly interconnected and interdependent world, the efforts we make to address common challenges facing humanity must be done collectively.
The third edition is focused on partnership, innovation and creativity, and is oriented in good measure towards the youth, as they renew and perpetuate our ties. Nothing can better uphold and create enduring relations than strengthening the partnership of hearts between our peoples. The first edition of Bonjour India was launched in 2009, travelling across India and offering a series of events around different ideas of science and art. Following this, France hosted Namaste France, the festival of India in France, which reaffirmed this dynamic process. In 2013 the second edition of IndoFrench collaborations and co-productions attracted a considerable audience in a span of three months.
Currently, France and India are leading players in the global scene. France being one of Europes top innovators, is aiming to contribute a larger sum through exchanges in technology as well as through artistic and educational exchanges. Thus, the cultural exchange will serve as a platform for the incubation of dreams, ideas and projects, bringing together the best talent between the two countries on an open platform for dialogue and collaborations.
The third edition of Bonjour India 2017-18, collaboratively organised across various cities in India, will engage contributors from various disciplines to inculcate progressive ideas with performances, debates, seminars and exhibitions, allowing the audience to find something that captures their imagination. Commenting on the event, Dr Bertrand de Hartingh said, Bonjour India is for everyone: it provides access to all and invites everyone to make it their own.
Bonjour India is an invitation to reimagine our world with the common threads that unite us, to take forward what we have inherited and build our future together with our minds, our hearts and our hands. We look forward to a successful voyage and fruitful collaborations, bringing value to the lives of the citizens of both the countries. With Bonjour India 2017- 18, India and France will come together to create, innovate and partner towards a progressive and sustainable future.
The current smog that enveloped the Capital over the past week has left one with a sense of deja vu. While air pollution is nothing new to Delhiites and smog ~ very different from the beautiful winter fog ~ has become a regular occurance, it is the intensity that has hit the citizens this year. It was bad last year too, with smoke from stubble burning in the neighbouring states of Punjab and Haryana taking the major blame.
The usual rounds of meetings with state officials, ministers and political leaders saw everyone running around in circles before the weather changed, clearing the smog away. This year too, its a re-run ~ blame game, official directives and advisories from various sectors. Another phenomenon is seen once more this year ~ gas masks. For the first time last year, a range and variety of masks appeared in the market.
It became a common feature to see people going about sporting a mask. From a simple surgical mask ~ which is said to be ineffective in filtering the micro-particulate matter ~ to fancy and decorative ones, manufacturers marketed them and people quickly bought them. This year too, as the smog set in post Diwali, the masks were back on peoples faces and the shops, particularly the chemists, were making a brisk sale.
In fact, an outlet in an upmarket shopping area in Central Delhi was seen selling only masks ~ of different types, brands and price range. Visitors to China around a decade ago would recall how the citizens there went about with masks on their faces and found the sight a little strange. Little did one know it would become all too common in Delhi as well. A colleague drew another parallel.
He recalled how as children one drank water directly from the tap. Today it is unthinkable and we insist on filtered or RO (reverse-osmosis) water or look for bottled water when outside home. Similarly, where we once joked about gas masks, it has become a reality today and may soon be part and parcel of our outdoor attire. Also, air purifiers may become as common as air conditioners.
At a time when women are making strides in several sectors, one is rudely confronted with incidents of indecent behaviour that remind one of how vulnerable they really are. Despite several measures taken to ensure womens safety across the country, several cases of violence against them are reported while many more minor incidents go unreported.
A colleague covering a fashion show in the Capital a few weeks back was left disgusted by one such incident. Models from across the globe participated in the show, where the host was from Colombia.
During the interval after the first round, the lady was approached for selfies and pictures, and she politely obliged. Soon, one of the guests, who was in his 60s, wobbled towards her as he was highly drunk and insisted on taking a picture with her. As he stood beside her, to everybodys shock he began touching the lady inappropriately.
The host quickly called the organisers and the drunk man was asked to leave. Seething at the episode, our colleague wondered how despite being educated and sophisticated one can end up behaving in this boorish manner. Moreover, such incidents tend to seriously tarnish the countrys image. When will we learn?
Spiritual meet
November is the month when Nirankari followers converge at an annual Samagam held at Burari in North Delhi. There are tents put up all over the huge grounds and thousands of followers brave the winter cold to stay here for three days.
Langars are organised to feed the participants. There is discourse on spiritualism every day. All one has to pay here is ones devotion. It is claimed that followers come here from Canada, the US and Saudi Arabia. A ferry service is available from the GTB Nagar Metro station to the venue. Going by the massive following that this sect has and the huge gathering that assembles every year, one can only hope and pray they do not meet the fate of the followers of Gurmeet Baba Ram Rahim Insaan Singh.
Social threat?
With a rapid increase in the number of social media users, news nowgets viral in the blink of an eye. Not only news but online trolls, who use funny and satirical content in their posts, like memes, easily attract a much larger audience with their attractive and funny clickbaits. But the dark arena of the Internet still caters to dangers that can easily dent an individuals reputation. Narrating one such instance recently, a colleague said his friend used a social media app to create some satirical memes on the after effects of demonetisation.
Not only did he use still images, he also created some videos using face filters on Snapchat (an online app), which were meant to be circulated in his private Whatsapp groups only. But shockingly, the next morning, he was taken aback when he received a threat call from fringe elements on his phone, threatening him not to put those videos again on the net or be prepared to face the consequences.
Our colleagues friend lodged a complaint in the cyber security cell and the matter is currently under investigation. He then informed our colleague that these days trusting anyone, especially on social media, is dangerous and that the government must link Aadhaar cards to these online profiles. This could at least prevent Internet access by these online goons, he contended.
Tailpiece
Our inhouse wisecrack feels if theres one segment that should be happy about the odd-even plan to regulate vehicles, its the traffic police ~ nothing to do with pollution control but more challaans and more money.
(Contributed by:Rakesh Kumar,R V Smith, Nivedita R, Abhijeet Anand, Kunal Roy and Asha Ramachandran)
India and Canada will make efforts for expeditious conclusion of a Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement on goods and services at the annual ministerial dialogue starting on Monday, said an official statement.
A high-level delegation led by the Canadian International Trade Minister Francois-Philippe Champagne is visiting India to attend the 4th Annual Ministerial Dialogue (AMD). The Indian delegation will be led by Commerce and Industry Minister Suresh Prabhu.
In the current round, India and Canada will be focusing on some of the key commercial drivers to enhance bilateral partnership, the release said.
Efforts would be made to work towards the expeditious conclusion of the Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (CEPA) for a progressive, balanced, and mutually beneficial agreement covering both goods and services, it stated.
India-Canada merchandise trade stood at USD 6.13 billion in 2016-17, down 1.87 per cent from the previous year.
The negotiations for the agreement were launched in November 2010 to boost bilateral trade and investments.
According to the release, considering the high potential for bilateral trade, the trade ministers of both countries are likely to discuss issues to explore ways of expediting the early conclusion of the CEPA and the Foreign Investment Promotion and Protection Agreement.
They would also explore options for Indian interests in addressing the Temporary Foreign Workers Programme of Canada, which is affecting the movement of Indian professionals seeking short-term visas, address equivalence by the Canadian Food Inspection Agency for Indian organic product exports and exploring two-way investment opportunities, it said.
Though geographically separated by a long distance, the historical ties between the two countries date back to the late 19th century when Indians began migrating in small numbers to British Columbia in Canada.
Canada now has over 1.2 million Persons of Indian Origin (PIOs), comprising more than 3 per cent of its population.
Though Indias commercial ties with the US have seen an upswing in the last few years, trade and investment relations between India and Canada are yet to realise their full potential, the release said.
Given enormous complementarities, a concerted effort to boost bilateral trade and investment from both sides would provide a fruitful outcome, it added.
A three-judge bench of the Supreme Court is likely to hear on Monday a plea alleging that bribes were taken using the names of apex court judges promising to secure favourable settlement of a case.
A bench of Justices J Chelameswar and S Abdul Nazeer had ordered on November 9 that the plea be heard by a five-judge Constitution Bench of the senior-most judges of the apex court.
However, on November 10, in an unprecedented hearing, a five-judge Constitution Bench headed by CJI Dipak Misra had ruled that no judge can take up a matter on his own, unless allocated by the chief justice of India, as he is the master of the roster.
It had over-ruled the order of Justice Chelameswar directing a Constitution bench hearing, saying, If any such order has been passed by any bench, that cannot hold the field as that will be running counter to the order passed by the Constitution bench.
The plea filed by advocate Kamini Jaiswal is now listed for hearing before a bench of justices R K Agrawal, Arun Mishra and A M Khanwilkar at 3.30 pm tomorrow .
The hearing on November 10 had brought the tussle within top judiciary to the fore with the Constitution bench overturning the order of a two-judge bench to set up a larger bench to hear the graft case allegedly involving judges.
The showdown over the issue of supremacy of constituting a bench in which the authority of CJI, was allegedly undermined by a bench headed by Justice Chelameswar.
Justice Chelameswar, who is the senior-most judge after the CJI, had termed as disturbing the allegations levelled in a CBI FIR and had ordered setting up a bench of five top judges of the court as a petition by Jaiswal had claimed there were allegations against Justice Misra.
The CBI, in its FIR, lodged on September 19 , has named several persons, including former Orissa High Court judge Ishrat Masroor Quddusi, as accused in an alleged corruption case.
Quddusi, who had also served as a judge in the Chhattisgarh High Court, was arrested along with Lucknow-based Prasad Institute of Medical Sciences chairman B P Yadav, his son Palash Yadav and three others, for allegedly trying to settle a matter relating to a medical college barred from admitting new students.
The National Investigation Agency (NIA) has busted an inter-state gang of cheats and nabbed its three members from Dholpur in Rajasthan, the agency said on Sunday.
The gang used to cheat people on the pretext of exchanging Fake Indian Currency Notes (FICN) or unbilled gold biscuits on attractive rates.
The NIA recovered 20 gold biscuits of 100 grams each from their possession and is conducting searches in Mumbai and Kolhapur (Maharashtra). The genuineness of the gold is also being verified.
During the preliminary examination, it was revealed that an inter-state gang had been active since long in the states of Maharashtra, Rajasthan, Delhi and West Bengal. They lured people on the pretext of exchanging high-quality FICN or unbilled gold biscuits on attractive rates, an official said.
They either looted their targets directly or carried out fake police raids with the help of associates. The off-guard targets would leave their money behind and not even lodge police complaints, he added.
While investigating a FICN-related case, the NIA had recovered fake currency of Rs 9,80,000 face value on March 31 last year from the possession of one Nasir Sheikh near the India-Bangladesh border.
He was arrested on the spot, though his associate from Bangladesh, Darul Sheikh alias Darul, managed to escape.
On Saturday, the agency received a reliable input that the same Bangladeshi absconder Darul Sheikh along with other associates was trying to strike a deal in fake currency at Dholpur.
The NIA teams swung into action and detained three suspects, Gagan Kumar Vyas alias Tiwari of Satara, Rashid Khan alias Biza of Thane and Iqbal Ahmad Ansari of Palghar, Maharashtra.
All the above detained gang members along with seized 20 gold biscuits are being handed over to Dholpur police for initiating appropriate action, the official said.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi arrived here on Sunday on a three-day visit to attend the ASEAN-India and East Asia summits where he is likely to reassert Indias push for crafting a global approach to deal with growing challenge of terrorism and radicalisation besides pitching for steps to boost regional trade.
The thorny issue of Chinas aggressive military manoeuvre in the disputed South China Sea, North Koreas nuclear missile tests and overall security architecture in the region will come up for discussion during the ASEAN summit on Tuesday, diplomats said.
On the sidelines of the main events, Prime Minister Modi is likely to have a series of bilateral meetings with a number of leaders including US President Donald Trump, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull and Russian Premier Dmitry Medvedev.
A host of leaders including Myanmar State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi, Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen, Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak, Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong and New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern have already arrived in the city to attend deliberations at the ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asia Nations), a grouping of 10 influential countries.
The ties between India and ASEAN have been on an upswing in the last few years with focus being on ramping up cooperation in the areas of trade and investment as well as security and defence.
Every single country in the ASEAN region wants India to be more engaged in the region in every possible way. That is the real synergy we have with ASEAN, Indian Ambassador to Philippines Jaideep Mazumdar told PTI.
The US, France and Japan have been pitching for a larger role by India in the strategically key Indo-Pacific region where China has been trying to increase its military presence.
Majumdar said terrorism is going to be one of the issues that will be discussed not only during the ASEAN summit but also at the East Asia summit. He said several documents are going to be adopted with an aim to contain terrorism including one on stopping money laundering for the purpose of terrorism.
While ASEAN summit is likely to focus more on trade and investment related issues, leaders at the East Asia Summit are expected to delve deep into issues relating to maritime security, terrorism, non-proliferation and migration.
Apart from the 10 ASEAN Member states, East Asia Summit includes India, China, Japan, Republic of Korea, Australia, New Zealand, the United States and Russia.
Modi will address the ASEAN-India and East Asia summits on Tuesday. He would also take part in special celebrations of the 50th anniversary of ASEAN.
The ASEAN region along with India together comprises combined population of 1.85 billion people, which is one fourth of the global population and their combined GDP has been estimated at over USD 3.8 trillion.
Investment from ASEAN to India has been over USD 70 billion in the last 17 years accounting for more than 17 per cent of India s total FDI. India s investment in ASEAN during the same period has been more than USD 40 billion.
Indias proposal to host an international conference on countering radicalisation may also be discussed during the deliberations at Manila as New Delhi is now looking at finalising the dates for the conclave.
Prime minister Modi will also participate in the ASEAN business and investment summit as well as a meeting of leaders of Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP).
The RCEP, comprising 10-member ASEAN bloc and six other countries India, China, Japan, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand is engaged in negotiations for a free trade pact.
In his maiden visit to the Philippines as the prime minister, Modi will also attend a reception by the Indian community and visit the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) and Mahavir Philippines Foundation.
Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Saturday termed as a good humanitarian gesture Pakistans decision to allow Kulbhushan Jadhav, who is on death row there, to meet his wife.
Pakistan yesterday said it will allow Jadhav to meet his wife in jail, months after New Delhi had requested Islamabad to grant a visa to his mother on humanitarian grounds.
It is a good humanitarian gesture, she said at a press conference here when asked about Islamabads decision.
India is making all efforts to get Kulbhushan Jadhav released from Pakistani prison. India has also approached the International Court of Justice (on the issue), she said.
Jadhav was sentenced to death by a Pakistani military court in April on charges of espionage and terrorism. The International Court of Justice in May halted his execution on Indias appeal.
Sitharaman said she learnt about Pakistans decision from the media. I dont know what is the position on allowing his wife to visit him, but it is a good gesture. It will boost Jadhavs morale in jail.
The Union minister is in Gujarat to campaign for the BJP for the next months Assembly polls.
Seeking to take credit for the Centres decision to reduce the GST rates on a number of items, Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi on Saturday said he would not rest till the five-slab Gabbar Singh Tax was converted into the Goods and Services Tax with an 18-per cent cap.
The Gandhi scion, who launched his poll campaign tour of north Gujarat after offering prayers at the Akshardham temple in Gandhinagar today, again raked up the issue of a company of Jay Shah, the son of BJP president Amit Shah.
We pressured (the Centre), the people of Gujarat, small shopkeepers put pressure and I am happy to say that (Union Finance Minister) Arun Jaitleyji has shifted many items to the 18-per cent slab from the 28-per cent tax bracket under the GST, he told a public meeting in this north Gujarat town.
With five slabs, it is the Gabbar Singh Tax, but with one tax, it is the GST. Neither Gujarat nor India needs the Gabbar Singh Tax. The Congress had clearly told the BJP that there should be one tax with an 18-per cent cap and a simple tax (at that), Gandhi added.
The 47-year-old Amethi MP said the Gabbar Singh Tax had caused damage to the small and medium scale businesses in Gujarat and elsewhere in the country.
This Gabbar Singh Tax is looting the small people of this country. This Gabbar Singh Tax is only aimed at breaking the back of the small and medium scale industries of Gujarat and (the rest of) the country.
This GST has damaged Gujarat and India. Good that they (Centre) brought some changes in it yesterday. But, we will not stop at this. We will stop only when Gujarat and India get the GST and not the Gabbar Singh Tax, he added.
The Congress leader said the GST, a landmark tax reform which subsumed a host of central and state levies, needed structural changes.
The GST cap should be at 18 per cent. If they (Centre) do not do it, we will put pressure on them, and if they still do not do it, we will do it soon after forming the government.
The GST requires structural changes, he added.
Yesterday, the tax rates on over 200 items, ranging from chewing gum to chocolates to beauty products, wigs and wristwatches, were cut by the GST Council to provide relief to consumers and businesses in the backdrop of an economic slowdown.
The Gandhi scion said Prime Minister Narendra Modi was silent about the company of Jay Shah, the turnover of which, as per a media report, rose from Rs 50,000 to Rs 80 crore in a few months after the BJP came to power at the Centre.
Modiji used to say he would be a chowkidar (watchman), but now people are asking whether he is a chowkidar or a bhagidar (collaborator), he said.
A report in a news portal had alleged wrongdoings in the company owned by Jay Shah, a charge vehemently rejected by the latter and his father. Jay Shah has also filed a criminal defamation case against the news portal.
Gandhi claimed that the Congress government in Himachal Pradesh, where polling took place on November 9, had done a better work than the BJP regime in Gujarat, which goes to the polls next month.
The Congress government in Himachal Pradesh opened four (new) medical colleges, but in Gujarat, no (new) medical college has come up.
The Himachal government did not close down a single school, but the Gujarat government shut down 13,000 government schools. Himachal gave 14 lakh houses to the poor (under a scheme), but in Gujarat, the number of houses given by the government was half of that. Gujarat also lags behind Himachal in education and generating jobs, he said.
Meanwhile, BJP workers showed black flags to the Congress vice-president in Himmatnagar town of Sabarkantha district in north Gujarat.
The 182-member Gujarat Assembly will go to the polls in two phases on December 9 and 14.
Waiting for reasonable and responsible NRA members and don't tell me there aren't plenty of them to step forward and support reasonable restrictions on gun sales and ownership.
You guys men and women could help us try to prevent some of this madness and carnage and save lives, including the lives of babies and children, while not forfeiting any of your constitutional rights.
You could be the difference-makers.
* * *
As Maine goes, so goes the nation.
That old political saying used to ring true in presidential elections.
Now comes the issue of Medicaid expansion, and Sen. Adam Morfeld has signaled his intention to attempt to take that question to a vote of the people in Nebraska in the wake of voter approval of a Medicaid expansion initiative in Maine.
The Maine decision bypassed the legislature and the governor to add an estimated 70,000 low-income Maine residents to the Medicaid health coverage rolls.
The proposal was approved by a strong 59 percent majority vote.
Morfeld's proposal, designed to provide health care coverage for tens of thousands of Nebraskans loosely defined as the working poor, would bypass the governor and could reach the ballot if 30 of 49 senators vote to submit the question to the people and just let them decide.
But it will be an uphill struggle in the Legislature, which has adamantly opposed all Medicaid expansion proposals.
* * *
Sen. Deb Fischer says the Senate is not likely to act on legislation dealing with DACA protections for immigrant youths before the end of the year.
"I have met with DACA recipients in Omaha and Lincoln and in Washington," Fischer said during her weekly telephone conference call with the Nebraska news media.
"I continue to be available to them (and) listen to their concerns," she said.
"We'll see what we're able to pull together on it."
The youths who were brought to the United States as babies or children when their parents or other adults entered the country illegally have legal presence to remain here under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals executive action of former President Obama.
President Trump has announced his intention to end DACA protections while giving Congress until March to institute immigration reforms.
But Democratic congressional leaders are pushing for protection of the so-called Dreamers before Congress adjourns for the year and some of them appear to be drawing a line in the sand.
The president's list of demands for immigration reform, which include cracking down on sanctuary cities and building his proposed border wall, have stood in the way of any bipartisan agreement so far.
Some 3,000 DACA youths live, work and/or go to school in Nebraska.
* * *
The men and women who are elected to the Legislature next year will participate in congressional and legislative redistricting in 2021.
And don't think the political parties, as well as rural and urban interests, aren't acutely aware of that. Particularly at a time when Nebraska is trending increasingly more urban than rural with population growth centered in Omaha, Lincoln and Sarpy County (Bellevue).
Those new legislative districts constructed in 2021 will shape the balance of power and influence in the Legislature for a decade.
Fifty-four percent of Nebraska's population now lives in Douglas, Lancaster and Sarpy Counties. And that percentage is growing.
The question in 2021 will be how accurately does legislative redistricting reflect that.
Finishing up:
* Closing the door to travel to Cuba reopens an old Cold War door; it's back to the future again.
* Election results in Virginia and New Jersey and elsewhere suggest a return to a very competitive political environment leading into 2018 that ought to invite voter attention and participation. If control of Congress truly is in play, voters who have wandered off might want to re-engage because they have plenty at stake.
* Big story in Politico last week about agriculture's growing "sense of betrayal" as President Trump threatens to dismantle NAFTA, the trade agreement with Mexico and Canada that is vital to U.S. agriculture, after already sinking the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement that especially would have benefited U.S. beef and pork.
* Elections have consequences: Big losers in the Republican tax plan's limits on deductions live in New York and California and vote Democratic.
* The drama department at UNL is located in offices at Memorial Stadium.
* if you're going to Penn State, you'd better get started. It ain't easy.
The Constitution of India established the Supreme Court under Article 124. It is the apex Court of the land possessed with the power of judicial review of State action, the final interpreter of laws made by Parliament and the protector and guardian of rights bestowed to citizens under the Constitution.
It has always been a problem-solver, be they legal, political or social. The Constitution makers vested the Supreme Court with an extraordinary power in Article 142 whereby it can pass any Order to do complete justice in any cause or matter before it. Going down memory lane, Parliament had sought to arrogate to itself an absolute power to amend the Constitution of India under Article 368.
This was challenged before the Supreme Court in the case of Kesavananda BharatiVs. State of Kerala (1973) 4 SCC 225. The Supreme Court by a razor thin majority of 7:6 Judges held that Parliament had no power to alter the basic structure of the Constitution.
The Supreme Court had to face an onslaught from the Executive of the day for protecting the Constitution. The then Chief Justice of India S.M. Sikri, who headed those in the majority, was to retire the following day. The government disregarded the seniority of three judges who had been part of the majority Justices J.M. Shelat, K.S. Hegde and A.N. Grover for the appointment of the next CJI, and appointed Justice A.N. Ray instead.
In June 1975 the Allahabad High Court held Prime Minister Indira Gandhi guilty of two corrupt electoral practices under the Representation of the People Act and disqualified her from contesting elections for six years. The appeal, Indira Nehru Gandhi Vs. Raj Narain (1975) 2 SCC 159, was listed during the summer vacation.
The legendary Nani Palkhivala made a valiant attempt before Justice Krishna Iyer for a complete stay of the judgment. Justice Krishna Iyer granted a conditional stay and allowed Indira Gandhi to attend Parliament without voting rights.
The very next day, Emergency was declared by the Government. In the course of hearing Indira Gandhis appeal, the Chief Justice constituted a 13 Judge Bench to reconsider Kesavananda Bharati case (supra). However, the Bar rose to the occasion and Nani Palkhiwala after having returned the brief of Indira Gandhi, stoutly argued against the review of the Kesavananda judgment so much so that the CJI had to dissolve the Bench.
In ADM Jabalpur vs Shivkant Shukla (1976) 2 SCC 521 a Constitution Bench by a 4:1 majority sadly justified the detention orders passed by the Executive without the authority of law. The lone dissenter, Justice H.R. Khanna, was superseded and Justice M.H. Beg was appointed as the next CJI. Justice Khanna deservedly occupies a special place in our hearts for his courageous dissent during the dark days of the emergency.
It is praiseworthy that the Shukla judgment has been criticised in the Right to privacy judgment by Justice D.Y. Chandrachud, 42 years later, despite the coincidence that his father Justice Y.V. Chandrachud was a party to the judgment. Now lets come back to the present day. The Bench and the Bar are equal participants in our system of justice dispensation. Mutual respect and mutual trust are extremely important for the institution to function. It is important for both the stakeholders to ensure that the majesty and the rule of law are not undermined.
Unfortunately, this time the attack on the Institution is not from any outsider but from within. Of late, there has been a growing trend of jumping the gun or putting the cart before the horse. The moral keepers of our institution, ignoring the salutary principles of criminal jurisprudence, want a CBI probe or an SIT headed by a retired CJI, to ensure probity in administration of justice even in cases where the criminal law has just been set in motion. For heavens sake let some credible evidence come out of the investigation. Let the investigative agency do its job.
When the Supreme Court delivered the landmark judgment in Vineet Narain Vs. Union of India (1998) 1 SCC 226 espousing probity in administration, this would never have been its intention. In the last couple of days, the Supreme Court witnessed high voltage drama involving the Bench and the Bar. Allegations flew thick and fast with the moral brigade claiming highest morals and thus placing themselves as holier than thou. Strategic mentionings were made for listing of matters and constitution of Benches.
Finally, a Constitution Bench, reaffirming the judgment of the Supreme Court in State of Rajasthan Vs. Prakash Chand and Others (1998) 1 SCC 1 held that the Chief Justice of India is the master of the roster and he alone has the prerogative to constitute benches of the Court and allocate cases to the benches so constituted. What is appalling is the manner in which aspersions are being cast. Mutual respect has flown out of the window.
The CJI is the father of the Institution and if unsubstantiated, scurrilous allegations are made against him, it undermines the majesty of the entire Institution. The fact that no favourable orders were passed in favour of the Medical College in question is conveniently suppressed as this fact would not sell. The tragedy is that a judge who ensures that every litigant gets natural justice is deprived of this right himself.
The time has come for the Bench and Bar to introspect as a common man has the highest faith in the institution called the judiciary. He has nowhere else to go to vindicate his legitimate rights. It is high time that everyone gets into a huddle and moves towards a new dawn. The citadel indeed falls never but from within-Fali Sam Nariman.
(The writer is an Advocate, Supreme Court of India)
While the Modi government celebrated 8/11 as AntiBlack money day, the opposition observed it as the Black Day and both had their own narrative. The jury is still out on demonetisation and the Goods and Services Tax the two bold economic measures of the government. The opposition has taken up these two economic issues as its political weapons.
While the government is touting several long-term gains, what is required is immediate attention to redress the grievances of the public on both demonetisation and the GST. The Modi government has been patting itself on the back for its efforts to curb black money asserting that demonetisation has the backing of people who are willing to go through the pains of the measure.
The unprecedented political success in the 2017 U.P. polls has given it much encouragement. The ensuing Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh poll results will decide whether the BJPs winning streak continues. But one year later, the opposition, Modis critics as well as some economists are questioning the success of the moves. The quickness with which the government is reacting in the past few weeks shows that it is nervous and wants to rectify its mistakes.
That is why despite its overt denial mode, the Modi government has started taking some measures like setting up of the Prime Ministers economic council and easing the process of filing GST returns among other things. There is no doubt that corrections needed to be made as the first impact of the two measures was the slow down of the economy and massive job losses, and this is supported by official figures. According to the Central Statistics Office, the GDP growth had slipped to 5.7 per cent in the AprilJune quarter, the lowest in three years.
The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) had stated that 99 per cent of the demonetised Rs 15.44 lakh crore was back in the system, raising doubts about how much black money had come into the system. The RBIs surplus payable to the Centre out of its earnings for 2016- 17 is almost halved to Rs 30,650 crore due to extra cost in printing new notes. There are also criticisms that the government has not taken forward other measures to curb black money like electoral reforms, targeting black money in the real estate, bringing back black money stashed abroad and catching the big fish.
Mr Kaushik Basu, chief economic adviser to former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has suggested that some carefully crafted policies that address both short- and long-term challenges are needed. The bigger challenge will be to nurture and sustain rapid growth in the long run. PM Modi and his Finance Minister Arun Jaitley are indeed worried about this fall in GDP growth noted by even international agencies. The government is now addressing all the four contributors to economic growth domestic consumption, exports, private investment and government spending all hit by the slow down.
It is clear that neither the private sector nor the government can quickly drive up economic growth in the short term. In fact, the Industrial Production (IIP) index grew by a meagre 1.2 per cent in July, output of consumer durables fell and the export growth has fallen to just 3 per cent. On the other hand imports have increased sharply. Since consumption is extremely sluggish in most sectors, the priority should be on how to encourage consumption. On the GST side, the government has already realised the need to bring down tax rates.
On Friday the GST council removed 178 items off the 28 per cent slab, which is welcome.
This means eating out will become cheaper and also the rate on goods of daily use will come down. Although this is done with the upcoming elections in some states in view, the BJP hopes to mollify the small traders who are the backbone of the party. The policy makers think that if the government takes necessary steps to increase its investment in infrastructural projects like building roads, power projects, and creating a conducive environment for attracting foreign investment, continuing with the reform process and undertaking fiscal consolidation, things will improve gradually.
Finance Minister Arun Jaitley announced massive Rs 6.92 lakh crore infrastructure spending recently. A major area of focus will be the banking sector as banks are choking with bad debts and a sum of Rs 2.11 lakh crore for recapitalisation has been earmarked.
To boost job creation, the government granted enhanced access of funds for MSMEs and also has plans to construct 83,677 km of highways at an investment of Rs 6 lakh crore in the next five years. The Modi government hopes that once the corrective measures are applied, both investment and growth will rise. The World Bank is upbeat about the Indian economy and predicts that starting from this quarter (October to December 2017) the economy will bounce back. Politically, it is not sure how much the BJP will be able to reap the benefits because the message has already gone down that these two measures are hurting the public.
For the BJP, the sliding GDP growth and loss of jobs due to demonetisation are two prickly issues, which might hit its 2019 poll prospects. With just about 14 months to go before the next Lok Sabha polls, the BJP needs to do much more to boost the economy and more importantly provide jobs to the youth.
My friend, Sajjan, grew up in a remote village in Nepal and walked four miles to school every day. The school was a mud hut with thatched roof, where the teacher wrote lessons on an old blackboard and all the students copied in silence. They spoke only when asked to speak, and an eager rod greeted any infraction. Sajjan was young, eager and curious. He wanted to understand a few things he read, and hesitantly he raised a hand in the class.
The teacher, Shresthaji, turned to him, but, as he started speaking, cut him off mid-sentence and sternly asked him to memorise the passages instead. Sajjan never had the explanation he sought. On two more occasions he had taken courage and asked a question. Each time Shresthaji had frowned, and told him to keep quiet and do what he had been told to do. To drive home the point, Shresthaji had caned another boy who had imprudently asked a question. Then a miracle happened. Sajjans father and family gained a US visa through the diversity lottery.
Sajjan came to Maryland, stayed, like the rest of his family, with an uncle who had immigrated earlier. Though the uncles children helped, it took Sajjan quite a while to get used to the way people lived and behaved in his new world. He joined and attended the local school. It was very different. The pupils spoke out all the time. If Sajjan didnt speak he felt uncomfortable speaking English for a long time the teacher asked him to speak.
If he asked a question, the teacher seemed happy and answered at length. He asked a classmate about caning. The classmate was confused and simply didnt understand the question. Six years later, the family went for a visit to Nepal. They took a bus from the capital, Kathmandu, and then rented a ramshackle cab to take them to their old village near Nalang. The last few miles they had to walk.
They spent the whole day with relatives and old neighbors and regaled them with stories of their new life in a strange world. Sajjan took his fathers permission and made the long trek to his old school. The school hadnt changed at all, except that Shresthaji looked much older. He still seemed to wear his old weather-beaten glasses and peered for long at Sajjans face without recognition.
Sajjan persisted and mentioned several of his classmates names, with no good result. Then Sajjan mentioned key events, such as the time a visiting school inspector had an accident and two mountaineers had died nearby in a climbing mishap. Shresthaji still scratched his neck. Then Sajjan hesitantly mentioned the occasions he had asked a question. Shresthajis face lit up with recognition. So you are the boy who always asked questions? he said with finality. Sajjan could have said that he had asked a question only thrice. He didnt dare to venture a fourth time.
He chose, however, to remain modestly silent. He had intended to ask why a student who sought an explanation needed to be caned. But he had already noticed the surprised look on Shresthajis face that an unruly pupil, who defied class discipline and asked improper questions instead of compliantly memorizing passages, had done well, wore decent clothes and even gone abroad. Sajjan politely took leave. He walked back all the four miles to his familys home, quite satisfied.
(The writer is a Washington-based international development advisor and had worked with theWorld Bank. He can be reached at [email protected])
When Monica Joseph, the Vaticans Superior General and global head of the Congregation of the Religious of Jesus and Mary, called up Mamata Banerjee from Rome on Wednesday night to convey her compliments on the urgency with which conviction has been effected in the nun rape case at Ranaghat (March 2015), her words of praise were implicitly addressed to the Nadia district administration, the magistracy, and the West Bengal government in the larger perspective.
Crucially, the case was transferred from the district court to the City Sessions Court at the behest of Calcutta High Court ~ a commentary on the potentially sinister intent of the underworld in Ranaghat. Of critical moment is the fact that the case was shifted after a petition was filed by the nun herself. In retrospect and contextualised with the Park Street gangrape (February 2012), one must give it to the states home department that its response this time around was remarkably earnest in sharp contrast to the attempt ~ at the highest level, one must interject ~ to keep the scandal under the hat.
Of course a doughty IPS officer had managed to track down the culprits, but the person was rewarded with an abrupt transfer to the sidelines in Barrackpore. Indeed, two senior officers at Lalbazar had been summoned to Writers Buildings for a verbal demarche for having discharged their duty! A far greater degree of professionalism and seriousness of purpose was manifest in the handling of the horrendous rape (of a 75-year-old nun) and robbery at a convent.
Sister Joseph has thus welcomed the courts verdict and expressed her satisfaction over the way in which the matter was dealt with by the state. That a Bangladeshi national has been sentenced to imprisonment till death and that four of the six convicts are from across the border reaffirms the unchecked influx of criminals to the peripheral districts.
The Park Street victim is no more; the nun has left Bengal. Both had countenaced the deepest tragedies of their lives with fortitude. And the enormity of the tragedy must have provoked the Additional Sessions Judge, Kumkum Singha, to quote from Oscar Wildes short story, Selfish Giant ~ Perhaps even Jesus will not forgive him as he (the rapist) had hurt not only the body of a nun, but also her soul. Police logistics in a border district betray the soul of irresponsibility.
The general refrain in Nadia two years ago was that the police station ~ nearest to the convent ~ is many miles away. Small wonder that the killers and dacoits could have a free run of the place, not to forget the easy process of ingress and egress from Bangladesh.
Ergo, a stringent check on border crime is no less imperative than curbs on an equally relentless influx. Neither Park Street nor Ranaghat are in the category of choto ghatana.
The United States has cut funding next year for the Cambodian Mine Action Centre following months of criticism from Prime Minister Hun Sens government of Americas war legacy in the Kingdom. Heng Ratana, general director for CMAC, confirmed yesterday that the US would discontinue its $2 million annual grant to the demining body starting next year. The funding has been funnelled through the nonprofit Norwegian Peoples Aid (NPA) and supported projects in the eastern part of the country, which was heavily bombed by the superpower during the Vietnam War.
I received a letter from our partner NPA to me yesterday. The letter was about the conclusion and stop to funding of the project for clearance in the eastern part of Cambodia, Ratana said in an interview. The funding cut follows months of acrimony between the two countries, with Prime Minister Hun Sen repeatedly pointing the finger at the US for its purported role in an alleged conspiracy to topple his government. Opposition leader Kem Sokha is facing charges of treason while awaiting trial in a Tbong Khmum prison ostensibly over a 2013 video in which he describes getting political training from the US.
Americas war legacy has also been repeatedly invoked by Hun Sen throughout the last year, most recently during a CMAC operation to unearth 15 tear gas bombs in Svay Rieng provinces Koki commune. As anti-American rhetoric intensified, the Vietnam-era bombs became something of a political talking point, with the premier and other officials accusing the US of shirking its responsibilities to assist the Kingdom in its recovery efforts while claiming that villagers were falling ill from the gas.
The US fired back, pointing to its history of funding clearance efforts and saying it had trained mine action officials specifically on how to remove such ordnance, which it said the government had been aware of for years. CMACs Ratana said he met with State Department officials in July and had subsequently held other consultation meetings on the bodys funding for 2018.
At no point, he said, was there any indication of cuts. There was no indication of stopping funding during the discussions. This is very disappointing, he said. They have a moral obligation and goodwill obligation because they dropped a lot of bombs on the Cambodian people.
He said the immediate aim was to try to find other development partners to make up the deficit, but that the short notice given by the US would make that endeavour tricky. CMACs funding amounts to a third of the $6 million the US contributes annually to the demining sector in the country, with other recipients including The Halo Trust and Mines Advisory Group. The Halo Trust would not comment on its own funding for 2018 or the CMAC development.
In an effort to highlight places of interest in countries across the world, their varied culture, economy and history, The Statesman brings to you a Weekly Focus on countries with which India shares diplomatic ties and friendship. This weeks focus is on Georgia. Know all about the country.
Capital: Tbilisi, Currency: Georgian lari, Ethnic groups: Georgian 86.8%, Azeri 6.3%, Armenian 4.5%, other 2.3% (includes Russian, Ossetian, Yazidi, Ukrainian, Kist, Greek) (2014 est.), Languages: Georgian (official) 87.6%, Azeri 6.2%, Armenian 3.9%, Russian 1.2%, other 1% note: Abkhaz is the official language in Abkhazia (2014 est.),
Religion: Orthodox (official) 83.4%, Muslim 10.7%, Armenian Apostolic 2.9%, other 1.2% (includes Catholic, Jehovahs Witnesses, Yazidi, Protestant, Jewish), none 0.5%, unspecified/no answer 1.2% (2014 est.)
Climate: Georgia has hot summers and mild winters, particularly in the southwest. Low temperatures are common in alpine areas. The heaviest rainfall is in the subtropical southwest. The best time to visit Georgia is in early-summer (May and June) and early-autumn (September), when temperatures are mild without the humidity and heat associated with July and August.
Secular Celebrations: The most widely observed holiday still is the New Year. Among national holidays, Independence Day is the most respected, and people like to attend even newly invented festivities such as Tbilisoba in October, a holiday invented by the Communist authorities.
Food: According to Georgian legend, when God was distributing land among the peoples of the world, the Georgians were so busy eating and drinking that they lost their place in the queue and there was no land left for them. But when they invited God to join the party, he enjoyed himself so immensely he gave them all the choicest bits of land he had been saving for himself. Georgians pride themselves, with some justification, on being the bons viveurs of the former Soviet Union, and their culinary tradition has survived better than most the dead hand of Soviet mass-catering. The cuisine makes extensive use of walnuts, which are used to thicken soups and sauces.
Some specialities include Lobio (bean and walnut salad), marinated aubergines, Khachapuri, Basturma (cured meat and assorted fresh and pickled vegetables). Some regional drinks include Kindzmareuli (a fruity, red wine, reputed to have been Stalins favourite tipple), Akhasheni and Teliani (two of the commoner red wines, fruity and dry respectively) and Tsinandali (dry white wine, as is Gurdzhaani).
Indian Presence: The Indian community in Georgia consists of students, businessmen, agricultural farmers and workers. Since 2012, their number has been considerably increasing and there are around 2000 Indians living in Georgia. This figure also includes 700 students at the Tbilisi State Medical University and about 200 Indian nationals working for Indian companies which are engaged in the infrastructure sector in Georgia.
Economic Relations: India has a positive trade balance with Georgia. In 2015-2016 the total export from India to Georgia was $82.57 million and import from Georgia was $24.47 million. Steel, infrastructure, agriculture farming and service sectors are among a few areas of large Indian investment in Georgia. Individual investors from India, mostly from Punjab (around 150) have acquired agricultural land for cultivation in Georgia at an average of 10 hectares per investor. However, only 5-10 have actually started active farming activity. TATA Power is the new Indian company to enter Georgia with its investment (approx US $ 280 mn) jointly with other European investment majors in a power project worth US $700 mn. The first ever visit by an Indian pharma delegation comprising 24 Indian pharmaceuticals companies to Georgia took place in February 2014, under the aegis of Pharmexcil.
VISA AND CONNECTIVITY
Visa: Persons can obtain Georgian visas by submitting documents through eapplication system (for any category of visa) or e-Visa Portal(for short stay visa). Documents required are: Passport (with a validity of at least 3 months after the expiry of the Visa), Photocopy(bio-data pages of the passport and all the used pages), visa application form, two photographs, confirmed onward/ return air ticket, bank statement of last 6 months and a copy of Income Tax returns, onward visa, confirmed hotel reservation receipt, certifying payment for consideration of visa issuance, travel Insurance valid in Georgia and a covering Letter from the applicant explaining the purpose of visit. Georgia E Visa can be availed for tourism and business purpose for a stay up to 30 days (single entry).-
Flights: From India, top domestic and international airlines that operate connecting flights to Georgia are Qatar Airways, Lufthansa, Jet Airways, Aeroflot, Etihad Airways, Emirates, etc. There are no direct flights from India to Georgia. From India to Georgia, the flights lay over at Dubai, Muscat, Istanbul, Abu Dhabi, and many other cities.
TOURIST ATTRACTIONS
Narikala Fortress: The Narikala Fortress is quite possibly the first major tourist attraction that comes to mind for anyone deciding on a trip to Georgia. Located in the heart of its Capital, Tiblisi, this massive fortress dates back to the 4th century when it was built by the Persians. What makes this an ultimate tourist attraction is the fact that it overlooks the entire city of Tiblisi providing a breathtaking view.
Mount Kazbek: Being a part of the Caucasus Mountain range, Mount Kazbek stands tall among others and offers a great view of the countryside that so many dream of seeing.
Tiblisi: The Capital of Georgia, this jewel of a city is sprawling with history, tradition, architecture and culture. The beauty of what Tiblisi manages to display is a great blend of tradition within its modern architecture. Whether its the architecture, brimming streets, ancient fortresses, gothic cathedrals, Tiblisi is not short of tourist attractions and things to do. Other tourist destinations: are Mtskheta (UNESCO World Heritage site), Uplistsikhe (excellent for those looking to explore off the beaten path craving a little sense of adventure), Batumi (Batumi is Georgias answer to the perfect holiday by the seaside) and Gergeti Trinity Church.
{Compiled by Kunal Jain ([email protected])}
October marked the 125th anniversary of the first Sherlock Holmes book, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes a collection of 12 short stories by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. The book was well received and the master detective with the deerstalker hat and the tobacco pipe went on to investigate 60 cases with his mysterious observational skills, sense of justice, and logical reasoning.
If youre a fan of the worlds most famous private detective, then grab your magnifying glass and head to these Holmes hotspots.
National Park (Devon)
In 1901, Sir Arthur visited the dramatic Dartmoor National Park, walking 16 to 18 miles per day to scout for possible locations. The result is his most famous Holmes novel, The Hound of the Baskervilles, in which bleak bogs, lonely houses and jagged hills set the scene. For the most part, little has changed, and film and TV crews regularly flock to the national park to capture its misty moors. Join Unique Devon Tours for a The Hound of the Baskervilles Tour, which includes tranquil village graveyards, previously burned down churches with black magic associations, and the real-life Grimpen Mire.
221B Baker Street (Westminster, London)
One of the most famous addresses in the (literary) world, 221B Baker Street is Holmes base in Sir Arthurs stories and all subsequent screen adaptations. The address doesnt actually exist, but with a bit of detective work, you can find it located between number 241 and 237. The Sherlock Holmes Museum is a recreation of the master detectives disorderly study, filled with odd Victoriana, plus Dr Watsons much-tidier quarters.
St Bartholomews Hospital (City of London)
Bartholomews Hospital is the place where Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson have their first encounter, in one of the hospitals chemical research labs. St Barts is the oldest standing hospital in England having survived both the Great Fire of London and the Blitz in World War II. The exterior of the building, most notably the roof, was the site where dramatic scenes in the second of the BBC series were filmed it was from here that Holmes supposedly leapt to his death. That promontory isnt open to the public, but you can imagine the drama unfold by gazing up from ground-level, plus enjoy the graffiti paying homage to Holmes Sherlock lives! is written multiple times on the buildings exterior walls.
Sherlock Holmes Pub (Piccadilly Circus, London)
Even super sleuths get hungry The Sherlock Holmes pub in Northumberland Street is the perfect place for fans to grab lunch or dinner. The building has retained many of the features of a traditional Victorian-era tavern and has some rooms with Sherlock Holmes memorabilia and clues from a few of his most famous cases. Sunday roasts are served every day beside a life-size replica of Holmes office.
Portsmouth (Hampshire)
In Portsmouth, Sir Arthur wrote his two inaugural Holmes novels, while setting up a doctors practice on Elm Grove.That particular building was destroyed during World War II a plaque marks the spot but theres plenty to see at the Portsmouth Museum, where books, photographs and memorabilia form part of the Arthur Conan Doyle Collection. Highlights include the First Sherlock Holmes novel (A Study in Scarlet), published in 1887, and an old postcard of Sherlock Holmes and Professor Moriarty falling into the Reichenbach Falls.
Baskerville Hall Hotel (Mid Wales)
Baskerville Hall, meanwhile, is believed to have been based on whats now the Baskerville Hall Hotel, about a two-hour drive north of Cardiff. The then country house was built in 1839 by Thomas Mynors Baskerville for his second wife, Elizabeth, and Sir Arthur, a family friend, often went to stay here. It was during one of his many visits that he supposedly came to learn of a hound-based local legend. It is reputed that at the request of his friends he set the book in Devon in order to ward off tourists.
Madame Tussauds (Westminster, London)
At the Baker Street underground station, there stands a tall bronze Sherlock statue. Just a few steps away is Madame Tussauds, where two different versions of Holmes are currently on display. Theres a wax figure of Robert Downey Jrs version of Sherlock Holmes and one of Benedict Cumberbatch from the hugely popular BBC television series, plus a murder-mystery challenge in the basement. The Sherlock Holmes Experience features period-style actors, lamp-lit Victorian streets and a case for you to solve.
The independent
Chinese President Xi Jinping has urged Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to take more practical actions to improve bilateral ties and properly manage differences in a constructive way.
To improve China-Japan ties, the key is mutual trust, Xi told Abe on the sidelines of the 25th Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Economic Leaders Meeting on Saturday.
He urged the Japanese side to take more practical actions and adopt more specific policies to reflect the strategic consensus reached by the two countries, which reaffirms that China and Japan are cooperation partners, not threat to each other.
As China and Japan are neighbours and major economies in Asia and the world, a stable development of China-Japan relationship conforms to the interests of both sides and also has an important influence on the region and the world at large, Xi said.
This year marks the 45th anniversary of the normalisation of diplomatic relations between China and Japan, and next year will mark the 40th anniversary of the signing of the China-Japan Treaty of Peace and Friendship.
He suggested the two countries promote regional economic integration, and push for cooperation within the framework of the Belt and Road Initiative at an early date.
The two sides should continue to increase exchanges on culture, media and youths, and can also strengthen people-to-people bond through carrying out cooperation on Olympics as China will host the Winter Olympic Games in 2022 and Japan will host the Summer Olympics in 2020, Xi added.
Abe extended his congratulations on the success of the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China (CPC), which was held last month, and on Xis re-election as general secretary of the CPC Central Committee.
He said the Japanese side was willing to work with China to push for the development of the strategic mutually-beneficial relationship between the two countries by marking the 40th anniversary of the signing of the China-Japan Treaty of Peace and Friendship next year.
Japan hopes to increase high-level exchanges with China, carry out reciprocal economic and trade cooperation, and explore cooperation in connectivity and under the Belt and Road Initiative, he said.
Abe also agreed to deepen exchanges on tourism, culture, youths and Olympics.
Montreal, CA (H4T1V6)
Today
Snow this morning will taper off to light snow this afternoon. Temps nearly steady in the low to mid 30s. Winds N at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of snow 100%. Snowfall around one inch..
Tonight
Mostly cloudy skies. A few flurries or snow showers possible. Low 28F. Winds W at 5 to 10 mph.
There are villains and there are villains.
Jose Sandoval stood in a Norfolk bank on Sept. 26, 2002, orchestrating death; murdering three people himself, abetting the killing of two more and terrorizing three others. In 40 seconds, he turned a would-be robbery into a homicidal frenzy.
He certainly rises to the top of the list for many Nebraskans especially in northeast Nebraska of the most heinous of villains.
In 2003, Sandoval was found guilty of killing customer Evonne Tuttle, 37, of Stanton, and tellers Samuel Sun, 50, of Norfolk, and Jo Mausbach, 42, of Humphrey. He was also convicted of the murders of bank employees Lola Elwood, 43, and Lisa Bryant, 29, both of Norfolk.
For those crimes, he was condemned to die. He also has two first-degree murder convictions for the unrelated deaths of a onetime roommate, 19-year-old Travis Lundell, and Lundell's friend, Robert Pearson Jr., for which he has life sentences.
Former state Sen. Mike Flood of Norfolk on Friday called Sandoval a "supreme risk to human life," someone about whom you have doubts could be held safely in prison.
"There's not many people locked up in the prison system that have seven murders on their record. ... He kills for sport."
Many people say Sandoval's death sentence is the only just punishment for the cold-blooded, execution-style murders he committed. They remember him looking into a news camera and smiling, defiant, flashing a gang sign as he was led out of a courthouse after his capture.
They say it's about time the punishment is carried out, 15 years too late, in fact.
Nebraska Corrections Director Scott Frakes served notice to Sandoval on Thursday of the lethal injection drugs that would be administered to cause his death if an execution takes place. Sixty days following the notification, Attorney General Doug Peterson can request the state Supreme Court issue Sandoval's execution warrant.
Those who are against the death penalty in Nebraska say he won't be executed any time soon. There are too many legal questions.
For Dave Mausbach, whose wife was killed by Sandoval, an execution would be 15 years too long in coming. He thinks about the senselessness of the crime, the money it has cost Madison County and the state to put on trial and to house the Norfolk killers, when there is no question about their guilt.
"They took a lot of innocent lives and ruined them. For what?" he said.
He resents all that he, his family and others had to put up with during those trials.
Jo Mausbach was a caring person and lived for their kids, he said. Her life was all about family.
"She was easy to get along with. It was always about somebody else instead of her," he said. "She'd drop everything and help you with anything."
That day 15 years ago, he had to pull their two kids out of school and watch as they came out, excited, thinking it must mean they would be getting to do something special. And then the heartbreak of telling them their mother was dead, gunned down at work.
"That's something I'll never forget," he said.
He's fortunate though, he said, that in the ensuing years those two Rebecca now 28 and Jacob, 24 continued to be excellent students, never got in trouble, graduated, got college degrees and then good jobs.
Sandoval's execution will bring him relief, he said.
"I'll feel a hell of a lot better, and I'm not a mean person," he said. "I hope I'm alive when this happens. It's what I'm waiting for."
Jo Mausbach's brother, Micheal Tichy, has a different take on the announcement that Sandoval has been served notice of his potential execution.
"To be honest with you I'm not a firm believer in the death penalty, even though what happened," he said in a phone call from his home in South Dakota. "If it does happen, well, he probably gets what he deserves."
He would rather have seen Sandoval's punishment be solitary confinement or hard labor for the rest of his life, he said.
With that said though, he does not appreciate hearing death penalty opponents talk about the inhumanity of Sandoval being a test subject for a never-used cocktail of lethal injection drugs.
"I'll tell you what. What was cruel and inhumane is my sister down on her hands and knees choking on her own blood," Tichy said. "That wasn't a very pretty picture. I saw it."
So did their mother, Ina Mae Tichy, who died this year.
"She was like a rock through the whole thing, and took care of us kids," he said. "She did not believe in the death penalty, either. But she would have accepted it."
Joe Smith is the Madison County Attorney who prosecuted Sandoval, Erick Vela, Jorge Galindo and Gabriel Rodriguez, an accomplice also convicted of the five murders but given life sentences.
In 2003, after a jury held Sandoval responsible for four aggravators in the deaths of all five victims at U.S. Bank, paving the way for the death sentence, Smith had said that people in Madison County won't ever get over what happened in that bank.
Smith looks at the notification Thursday of Sandoval's impending execution as potentially the first step in the last part of a long process.
"It's something that I'm sure nobody is excited about. On the other hand, it's about time the process got off stall," he said.
Flood, as speaker of the Legislature from 2007-2013, presided over multiple death penalty-related debates. Everytime he would rise to speak in support of the death penalty, he would talk about the Norfolk bank killings.
As a reporter for his radio station, he was also on the scene of the murders that September day.
"What happened on that day was pure evil. Unconscionable," he said.
And then, Sandoval, Vela and Galindo were cold and indifferent at their trials, he said. Those jury panels were made up of teachers, farmers and pastors that had to listen to weeks of testimony about what occurred inside the bank. They had to decide the mitigating and aggravating factors to recommend whether the death penalty was appropriate.
Flood's Norfolk radio station US92 posted a story Thursday about the death penalty notification. Most of the more than 40 comments went like Cindy Mathis Clyde's:
"It's about time. They all need to go."
Lincoln attorney Bob Evnen was a spokesman for death penalty proponents during a campaign to overturn the Nebraska Legislature's elimination of the death penalty, and is now a candidate for Nebraska secretary of state. He has studied capital punishment, researched death row cases and appeals, and pondered the arguments.
It's not something anyone should take pleasure in, Evnen said. The best thing would have been if the crime had never been committed in the first place.
"But the punishment that he is receiving is a just one. And it's in accordance with what the people of the state of Nebraska have voted to retain, and rightly so."
Rachel Pokora, a Lincoln college professor, remembers meeting Sandoval in 2008 on two visits to the prison as a member of Nebraskans Against the Death Penalty. He was one of the more interesting people on those visits, she said.
"Of all the other people I talked to, a lot of them were maybe not as bright, but it also then really scared me because I thought, 'He knows what he's doing.'"
Shortly after that visit, she had said it stuck in her mind what he had said to her.
I'm a very bad man, he told her. I'm the worst man you've ever met.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi interacted with world leaders, including US President Donald Trump, Chinese Premier Li Keqiang and Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, at a gala dinner reception hosted by Filipino President Rodrigo Duterte here on Sunday ahead of this year's India-Asean and East Asia Summits.
In a tweet attached with a picture, External Affairs Ministry spokesperson Raveesh Kumar said Modi spoke to Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak and Chinese Premier Li at the gala dinner to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the formation of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) here.
Kumar said that Modi engaged in a "warm and cordial conversation" with Li.
"Engaging conversation with a friend. PM @narendramodi with Dmitry Medvedev, Prime Minister of Russia at the Gala Dinner #Manila," he said in a separate tweet.
Another tweet by Modi showed him smiling warmly and shaking hands with President Trump.
Modi arrived here earlier on Sunday on a three-day visit to the Philippines to attend the 15th India-Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) and the 12th East Asia summits to be held here on Tuesday.
This is the first Prime Ministerial visit from India to the Philippines in 36 years since the visit of Indira Gandhi in 1981.
This year marks the 25th year of the India-Asean dialogue partnership and the golden jubilee of the formation of the Asean regional bloc.
The Association of South East Asian Nations (Asean) comprises Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.
Ahead of the summits, Modi will hold a bilateral meeting with Duterte here on Monday. He is also scheduled to hold a bilateral meeting with Trump on Monday.
Similar meetings between Modi and other visiting leaders are also being arranged on the sidelines of the summits.
With forests equal to the size of New Zealand having disappeared last year, new action from countries and corporations to cut emissions from forest use and establish sustainable forestry management featured at the ongoing UN Climate Change negotiations here on Sunday.
Initiatives from South America's Ecuador, Africa's Gabon, Walmart and Mars Inc were welcomed by delegates at the Forests Global Climate Action day at the Climate Change Conference named COP23.
"These ecosystems are high on the agenda for Small Island Developing States because we are among the most vulnerable nations to the impacts of climate change," said Fiji's Economy and Climate Change Minister Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum, whose country holds this year's presidency of the conference.
"While important progress has been made in protecting these ecosystems to enhance our resilience to a changing climate, we need all countries to make forest protection and rehabilitation and the financing of all forest ecosystems a priority. In particular, we need to create real incentives to attract both public and private finance to delivering nature-based solutions," he said.
Two years after the world united around the Paris Agreement and a year after its entry into force, the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change's (UNFCCC) 197 parties have been reconvened for the 23rd annual climate change talks in Bonn till November 17.
The Bonn talks, which began on November 6, are expected to take a number of decisions necessary to bring the Paris Agreement to life, including meaningful progress on the agreement implementation guidelines, to achieve a goal to cut greenhouse gases from burning fossil fuels.
The new actions to cut emissions from forest use included an Ecuadorean initiative to reduce 15 million tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions in the forest sector, launched by Maria Victoria Chiriboga, Ecuador's Under Secretary of Climate Change.
A commitment to deforestation-free commodities by Laura Phillips of Walmart's Senior Vice President of Sustainability.
Mars Inc's new policy to reduce their carbon footprint 27 per cent by 2025 and 67 per cent by 2050 by addressing deforestation throughout their corporate value chain was presented by Kevin Rabinovitch, Global Vice President of Sustainability.
Lee White, Director of Gabon's National Park Service, described efforts to halt an illegal logging operation that will stop the emission of 20 million tonnes of carbon dioxide.
Sustaining and increasing forests is vital to get on track in time to meet the Paris Climate Change Agreement's goal, which is to keep the average global temperature rise well below two degrees Celsius and as close to 1.5 degrees as possible.
The maths of climate science show that meeting this goal is impossible without nurturing forests, which from the atmosphere's point of view are a massive sink of carbon, locked up in trees, plants and the soil, and a source of oxygen through photosynthesis.
But destructive, often illegal, logging and deforestation continues. Last year, forests equal to the size of New Zealand disappeared.
"Our planet's forests are being decimated at an alarming rate. Putting a stop to this destruction is crucial to tackling climate change, reducing poverty and feeding a growing global population, in line with the Paris Agreement and the Sustainable Development Goals," said Director General of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Inger Andersen.
"Nature-based solutions such as protecting and restoring forests can contribute over one-third of the total climate change mitigation required by 2030 to keep the temperature rise below two degrees Celsius. More decisive, collective action is now needed to seize this opportunity," he added.
IANS
Thousands of people took to the streets at Barcelona to demand the release of jailed Catalonian leaders for their outlawed drive to secede from Spain.
Barcelona's municipal police force said 750,000 people participated in the march on November 11, called to demand the release of eight former members of the dissolved Catalan government and the presidents of the two main grassroots independence organisations the Catalan National Assembly (ANC) and Omnium Cultural, reported the media
The ANC and Omnium had organised the demonstration on November 11.
The jailed separatist leaders include former vice president of the Catalan regional government, Oriol Junqueras, who like the rest of his fellow Cabinet members is charged with rebellion, sedition and misuse of public funds for his role in enabling the region's October 27 declaration of independence.
The demonstrators, many waving pro-independence Estelada flags, marched past the Sagrada Familia church and other emblematic parts of Barcelona behind banners that read "Freedom for Political Prisoners" and "We Are a Republic".
Barcelona Mayor Ada Colau also participated .
The former speaker of Catalonia's Parliament, Carme Forcadell, who also is under investigation for rebellion, sedition and misuse of public funds, did not attend the march on the advice of her attorney.
On November 10, she was released from custody after posting a 150,000 euro ($174,000) bond.
Puigdemont, who fled to Brussels late last month, delivered a recorded message on November 10 to the pro-independence movement.
He called on people to take to the streets and said the Spanish government's crackdown on independence leaders would not dissuade the region from freely deciding its future at the ballot box.
Puigdemont is scheduled to appear before a judge in a November 17 hearing on the European arrest warrants that have been issued for him and four officials of his administration who accompanied him to Belgium.
Hours after Catalonia's October 27 declaration of independence, the Spanish Senate approved Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy's proposal to invoke Article 155 of the constitution and rescind Catalonia's regional autonomy.
Rajoy dismissed Puigdemont and his Cabinet, dissolved the Catalan Parliament and called regional elections for December 21.
A few weeks after Prime Minister Narendra Modi demonetised 1,000- and 500-rupee notes on November 8, a motley crowd gathered at Sathyamurthy Bhavan, the Congress headquarters in Chennai. Young men and women, engineers and IT professionals, students and street traders sat on chairs spread across the open space before the building, as a dhoti-clad man began to speak on the ill effects of demonetisation.
The crowd grew steadily as the man lucidly explained, in Tamil, the consequences of demonetisation, its effect on the lives of ordinary people like them, and the complexities involved in detecting black money. Black money is something that cannot be stocked, but which continues to flow, he said.
The man at the podium was Palaniappan Chidambaram. Over the past one year, the 72-year-old Congress veteran has emerged as a major thorn in the side of the Modi government. As former Union finance minister, he has been incisive in his criticism of the governments policy missteps, and his meticulously mounted attacks have resonated with the people. Through his writings, speeches and tweets, he has openly taken on Modi and galvanised the party to such an extent that others have followed in his footsteps.
If Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi, after his well-received Berkeley speech in September, has been the face of his partys recent resurgence, Chidambaram has been its chief architect. The peoples
disappointment and disapproval are turning them against the BJP and towards the Congress, Chidambaram told THE WEEK in an exclusive interview. When people warm up to a political party, that party will become more energised and active.
Said K.S. Alagiri, a Congress leader in Tamil Nadu who is known to be close to Chidambaram: He has travelled to some 10 corporations in the recent past to deliver lectures on economy and political economy, not just to think-tanks and policymakers, but also to laymen to make them understand the consequences of Modis economic policies. There is no other leader in the country who can explain things in such a simple way. He was in Gujarat, Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh meeting top leaders and addressing business communities. He has delivered lectures to students and others in Hyderabad, Pune, Chhattisgarh and Kolkata.
P. Chidambaram | PTI
The talks have not been without controversies. Last month, Chidambarams statement on the security situation in Kashmir drew brickbats from ministers and BJP leaders, including Modi himself. The demand in Kashmir valley is to respect in letter and spirit Article 370. And that means greater autonomy for Kashmir, Chidambaram had told a reporter when asked whether he still believed in granting greater autonomy for the state. My interactions in J&K led me to the conclusion that when they ask for azaadi [independence], most peopleI am not saying allwant autonomy.
BJP leaders promptly attacked Chidambaram saying his position was against national interest. Why are Congress leaders lending their voice to those who want azaadi in Kashmir? asked Modi at a rally in Bengaluru. Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said the Congress wanted to precipitate a crisis for India.
Chidambaram, however, has stood by his comment. Obviously, the PM has not read the whole answer to the question put to me on Jammu and Kashmir, he tweeted later. Those who criticise must read and tell me which word in the answer was wrong.
His sharp tongue and intellect have made PC, as Chidambaram is popularly known, indispensable to the Congress. Even Rahul Gandhi consults Chidambaram on every important issue concerning economy and finance, said Peter Alphonse, Congress leader in Tamil Nadu. Rahul has even quoted PC in many of his speeches. He is now the most reliable man on Indian economics and he is being targeted [by the BJP] only because of this.
The CBI and the Enforcement Directorate are inquiring into allegations of financial misconduct against Chidambarams son and political heir, Karti. In an FIR lodged in May, the CBI said it found irregularities in the Foreign Investment Promotion Board clearance to INX Media for receiving Rs 300 crore from abroad in 2007, when Chidambaram was finance minister. It is alleged that Karti helped INX Media circumvent the limit on foreign equity investments for media companies.
Karti, 45, has denied the allegations. Nothing will come out of these cases, he said. They are not even able to file the charge-sheet till date.
Leading the saffron camps attack on Chidambaram are RSS ideologue S. Gurumurthy and BJP leader Subramanian Swamy. Gurumurthy has alleged that a company controlled by Karti, known as Advantage Strategic Consulting Pvt Ltd, was involved in the 2G spectrum scam and several controversial deals in the recent past. Swamy recently wrote to Modi listing out the cases against Chidambaram and Karti, saying that even though the Prime Ministers Office cannot direct the CBI, it can nevertheless hold the CBI accountable under the Constitution for the expenditure it incurs from the Consolidated Fund of India.
Chidambaram has brushed aside the allegations saying that he is ready to transfer ownership of any of his assets to the government, in case it is found to be illegal. If the government finds one assetproperty, bank account, etcthat I or my family members have not disclosed in our income tax and wealth tax returns, let the government draw up a document and I and my family members will sign the document and transfer that asset in favour of the government, he told THE WEEK.
Chidambarams assertive nature has often been construed as arrogance. Perhaps, that is why he is not a mass leader. It is said that he chose not to contest the 2014 Lok Sabha election from his hometown, Sivaganga, because he knew that he would be defeated. His margin of victory in the 2009 elections was narrow. A senior Congress leader said Chidambaram had little connect with the party cadres in his constituency. In 2014, Karti stood for election and finished fourth.
His lack of popular appeal, however, has not inhibited his rise. He might not be a mass leader. But, as a strategist, he has remained important in the decision-making in the Congress over the years, said political observer R.K. Radhakrishnan.
Even rivals concede that Chidambaram shines as a strategist. He is the most well-informed and the most articulate among our seniors. He is well-versed in Hindi, English and Tamil, said a senior Congress leader who is not known to have cordial relations with Chidambaram. Manmohan Singh or Pranab Mukherjee is not in the list of advisers who are close to Rahul Gandhi. When Manmohan hangs up his gloves, it will be PC who takes over, and it seems this has already begun.
FORT CALHOUN Authorities say a 19-year-old Fort Calhoun man has died in a crash that occurred after he fled a police stop.
Washington County Sheriff Mike Robinson says deputies were preparing to search the vehicle when Potadle sped off. Robinson says Potadle lost control on a curve and drove into a ditch, where the vehicle hit a tree.
Authorities have apprehended a convicted rapist from Utica who has been on the loose since Wednesday after he removed his GPS ankle bracelet and stopped reporting to his parole officer.
Ronald Cook, 66, was arrested by Binghamton police Saturday evening, according to state Department of Corrections and Community Supervision spokesman Thomas Mailey. He is being held at the Broome County Jail as a parole violator.
He is expected to be extradited to central New York to face criminal charges.
Before he was apprehended Saturday, Cook was seen in Rome and Scranton, Pennsylvania.
The manhunt for Cook began Wednesday after he removed his GPS tracker and did not report to his parole officer, which violates the terms of his participation in the Strict and Intensive Supervision program managed by the Department of Corrections and Community Supervision.
Cook was convicted of first-degree rape in 1991 after sexually assaulting a 24-year-old woman in Binghamton. He was sentenced to up to 25 years in state prison for the crime. He was released from prison into the Strict and Intensive Supervision program in 2012.
As a Level 3 sex offender, Cook is considered at a high risk of committing another offense.
May I join all the voices of reason who have acknowledged His Majestys decision in ordering the immediate and unconditional re- opening of the Swaziland Christian University, whose closure could not be understood!
What our King has done simply demonstrates the benefit for us as Africans in general and for us as Swazis in particular, of having the institution of the Monarchy.
Kings or queens in our African setting present the point of last resort when those who have been privileged by being given responsibilities of leadership, fail us. The university authorities, together with the government, through the Ministry of Education and Training, were all showing signs of a confused leadership. Not only did they display this kind of confusion, but worse still, they all displayed an attitude of not caring about education!
That it is enough that they themselves acquired education, then the next generation must be frustrated. This is even worse when the leader of such confusion and indecisiveness is a former leader of the teachers struggles for years but who changes colours now that he is a minister of Education.
On this, one would also be failing if one does not commend the role played by parliamentarians in this case. We thank them too, for having been faithful to their purpose of being in Parliament - which is ensuring that the interests of the voting public are protected and promoted by all means.
Congratulations honourable ones. By so doing,some of you have made our minds and decisions on how to vote and who to vote for, while some of you have long lost our confidence and, therefore, shall not be going back to Parliament because we have already begun to identify and influence those who shall replace you.
Sir,
All ANC Members, or MK Operatives, who lived in Swaziland during the African National Congress struggle against the apartheid regime, including; Comrade Jacob Zuma, Thabo Mbeki, Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma and many others are loved very much by Swazis. This is why we refer to them as brothers and sisters, or Swazis.
As such, we are always ready to fight in their defence, when attacked. They are part of us.
During dark days of ANC struggle against apartheid regime, the Government of Swaziland allowed them to use Swaziland soil to advance ANC objectives, or MK military operations against apartheid regime.
Governments interest in the ANC was to enable the party to remove the apartheid regime, so that Swaziland could get back her land stolen by Boers.
The land includes Gauteng Province, Limpopo Province, Mpumalanga Province, Northern Kwazulu Natal Province including Newcastle, Indian Ocean, Paul-Petersburg, Edumbe, Ngwavuma etc.
Government was advancing ANC founding policies to get back Land from whites to black people.
These policies were an essential tool or basic policies in the formation of ANC in 1912.
ANC was formed by African traditional leaders, especially from Kwazulu Natal, for Swaziland to get back stolen land from whites.
In 1954, ANC formulated policies to fight against apartheid polices, as apartheid policies were introduced in 1954.
Therefore, the ANC Government must implement its land policies, to achieve its main founding objectives.
This is the reason many Swazis joined ANC. They fought very hard and suffered while others died in the ANC struggle against apartheid, as they wanted back land from whites to Swaziland Government, or black people of Swaziland.
We, therefore, urge ANC to implement its land policies in order for the Swaziland Government to get what is due to it.
We remain resolute in our position to advance the wishes, interests, and aspirations of our forefathers, to own that land as Swazis.
For it is overdue, the South African Government must bring back Limpompo Province, Gauteng Province, Mpumalanga Province,and Northern Kwazulu-Natal Province to Swaziland Government.
In 1890 many Concessions were given to white settlers through the Partitions Act of 1890.
In 1907, many concessions were given to white settlers through the Royal Proclamations Act of 1907.
Concessions were for Mining and grazing. Further, concessions were valid for 40 years, 50 years and 99 years.
In the London Convention of 1894, Boers guaranteed Independence of Swaziland Government of 1881, Article 21, in respect of the Land.
In this period, White Settlers were required to pay 25 000 to Swaziland Government for using Land of Swaziland.
The 1889-1899 Anglo Boer War, during which Boers intended to take land from Swaziland and cancel any agreement or concessions between the Republic of South Africa and Swaziland Government forcefully; they were not successful. Boers were defeated by British Government assisted by the Swaziland Government.
In 1903, Queen Regent Labotsibeni transferred the Foreign Affairs administration of the Swaziland Government to the British Government for State Protection.
Thereafter, Swaziland became British Protectorate until 1968 in which Swaziland got Independence from British.
The 1968 Independence Constitution Section 1, provides that land belonging to Swaziland, including all land under protectorate state (Land in South Africa) must be returned.
The same Section was transferred to Constitution of Kingdom of Swaziland Act No.1 of 2005.
The Native Proclamation Act of 1944 granted the King of Swaziland Lowers over all the land of Swaziland including, land occupied by White Europeans in South Africa.
However, Boers in 1963 inserted boundaries between Swaziland and land Concessions to prevent the foot and mouth disease.
History of how Swaziland acquired land in South Africa:
Our forefathers include King Ngwane III who in 1740 established, or owned land covering whole Mpumalanga Province.
In 1815-39 King Somhlolo or Sobhuza I conquered Land in Northern KwaZulu Natal, Piet Retief; he also built his Royal Residence called Embadzeni Royal Residence at Edumbe.
In 1840-1868 King Mswati II conquered land covering whole Gauteng Province, Limpopo Province, KwaZulu Natal, and Mozambique.
We are closely monitoring conduct of ANC regarding land of Swaziland Government in the possession of South African Government.
Thanking you in advance for your anticipated co-operation in this regard.
Yours faithfully
Sibusiso B. Dlamini
Secretaryi general
African United Democratic Party (AUDP)
BOX 2999
MANZINI
SWAZILAND
MBABANE There is evidence that gold of the purest form is being produced at Lomati Mine (Lufafa) in the northern Hhohho region.
This is in the shape of a one kilogramme gold dore bar that was transport to Dubai in October 2016 by Lomati Mine Managing Director Mihlakayifani Dlamini. A dore bar is described as a semi-pure alloy of gold and silver, usually created at the site of a mine before it is transported to a refinery for further purification.
The proportions of silver and gold can reportedly vary widely and dore bars are said to weigh as much as 25kg. The gold was shipped through Nigerian Billionaire Chief Benjamin Aghalieaku Arenzes company known as Aghalieaku Airways.
This was before the Nigerian businessman had his companys Swaziland bank accounts frozen by the Central Bank because of the latters reasonable believe there could be elements of criminality involved.
It is shown in documents seen by the Times SUNDAY that the gold dore bar was valued at US$41 000, which when converted to the local currency amounted to E593 540.54.
The gold Dore bar was shipped to Al Etihad Gold LCC in Dubai, United Arab Emirates and was to be handed over to a MR. M Dlamini.
Aghalieaku Airways flew the precious metal consignment, which was in a bag with a net weight of 2.5 kilogrammes, from the King Mswati III International Airport and charged Lomati Mine E63 840 for services rendered.
One of the documents signed by Dlamini reads: For export only. These commodities were exported from the Kingdom of Swaziland in accordance with the Mines and Minerals Act No. 4 of 2011 and OECD Regulations. (Our gold is mined in a conflict free zone with no use of child labour.)
The gold dore bar had a purity of 24 karat, which according to My Gold Guide, signifies that it is pure gold or 100 per cent gold.
Karat is basically a unit used to measure the purity of gold (the higher the karatage, the purer the gold).
When describing a 24 karat gold bar, My Gold Guide states: This means that all 24 parts in the gold are all pure gold without traces of any other metals. It is known to be 99.9 per cent pure and takes on a distinct bright yellow colour. There is no higher form of gold than 24K and you must be aware of this before you go to a dealer who might tell you that theyre selling you 25K or 26K gold. Since this is the purest form of gold, it is naturally more expensive than 22K or 18K gold. However, this type of gold is lesser in density as compared to gold of a lower karatage which makes it soft and pliable.
Hence, it is not suited for regular forms of jewellery. Coins and bars are mostly bought of 24K gold purity. 24K gold is also used in electronics and medical devices such as those used for children suffering from ear infections who are fitted with gold tympanostomy tubes that are known to improve aeration of the middle ear.
It is said that 24 karat gold has the natural warm colour of pure gold and its colour cannot be changed without changing the purity to less than 24 k.
Also, 24 karat gold is said to contain 24 parts pure gold and its fineness is 1 000 parts out of 1 000 pure.
Meanwhile, Al Etihad Gold LCC, where the Swazi gold dore bar was shipped to, is reportedly one of the largest and fastest growing gold and silver refineries in the Arab region.
Shortly after Inauguration Day, I began to see a new headline pop up in my email feed: "Run For Something."
At first, I thought it was a cynical reader responding to one of my cranky assaults on the goofy habits and know-nothing babblings of our national embarrassment, President Donald Trump.
If you think you're so smart, I have heard, why don't you run for something?
Why, I respond, would I want to subject myself to the same abuse that I put politicians through in this job?
Nevertheless, I have great respect for those who are willing to take the time and abuse necessary to, as an old saying goes, run something other than their mouths.
Such is the purpose of Run For Something, which turned out to be one of several new Trump-era political action groups that have popped up like Christmas stores in October to help advance progressive politics, outside of regular Democratic Party structures.
While the Democratic National Committee has tried to pull itself together in the wake of its shockingly unexpected loss to Team Trump, a lot of other independent anti-Trumpers are too impatient to wait.
Started by Amanda Litman, 27, former email director for Hillary Clinton's campaign, and her political operative friend Ross Morales Rocketto, Run For Something aims to enlist, fund and support an important group that often gets too little attention from Democratic party regulars: progressive millennials.
Run For Something and such other Trump-era progressive groups as Sister District, Swing Left, Flippable and Indivisible aim to do for the left what the tea party movement did for the Republican party's right-wing base in the Obama years.
I wished them luck, but I didn't expect miracles. Then Tuesday's off-year elections in Virginia, New Jersey and some other states showed as elections always do that you don't need a miracle to unseat powerful incumbents in our democratic republic; you just need to get more votes.
Of the 72 candidates that Run For Something fielded, the organization reported on election night that 32 had won seats on school boards, state legislatures and city councils in 14 states, with two other races -- both in the Virginia House of Delegates -- headed to recounts.
Run For Something's biggest headline makers included Danica Roem, 33, in Virginia, who became the nation's first openly transgender state legislator. She defeated 13-term incumbent Republican Bob Marshall, who authored Virginia's "bathroom bill" and considers himself the state's "chief homophobe."
Also backed by Run For Something was Chris Hurst, a former broadcast journalist in Roanoke, Va., motivated to run for office after his late girlfriend, fellow journalist Alison Parker, was murdered by a crazed gunman during a live morning television report. Pushing education and gun safety, he beat Joseph Yost, a three-term incumbent backed by the National Rifle Association -- a group that has successfully blocked all gun control efforts by Congress in recent years.
Also on Run For Something's list was Ashley Bennett, 32, a psychiatric emergency screener in suburban Atlantic City, N.J., who was offended by Atlantic County board member John Carmen's mockery of the Women's March on Washington after Trump's inauguration.
"Will the women's protest end in time for them to cook dinner?" Carmen posted on Facebook.
Ha, ha. Bennett got the last laugh, unseating Carman in the Republican dominated district by more than 1,000 votes of more than 14,000 cast.
Words like "landslide," "wipeout" and "blue tsunami" have been used to describe the surge in Democratic turnout nationwide.
Exit polls showed an unmistakeable anti-Trump backlash as turnout exceeded expectations and led to big victories for Democratic governor candidates in Virginia and New Jersey.
But the more important story in the long run may be those down-ballot races where a new generation of angry and activist Democrats can begin to push back after years of losing national and state offices to Republicans,
We usually talk about candidates at the top of the ballot carrying others from their party to victory. But the big "blue tsunami" in Virginia and other states also shows the value of "reverse coattails," where energetic down-ballot candidates help boost fellow partisans at the top.
For Democrats, this could be the first step to a national comeback, thanks largely to President Trump, who often seems to be doing all he can to embarrass his own cause.
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Chobani moves research to Idaho
When Chobani decided to open a new $20 million research and development center, it chose to build it at its yogurt factory in Twin Falls, Idaho.
We don't know whether Chobani's original plant, in Chenango County, was ever in the running for the new research center or whether New York officials were ever consulted about the new research center, despite the support they've shown for yogurt.
Company founder Hamdi Ulukaya purchased a shuttered Kraft dairy plant in 2005 in South Edmeston. Ulukaya, who studied at the University at Albany, developed the thick Greek-style yogurt that quickly dominated the market.
Seven years later, in 2012, the Idaho plant opened.
Gov. Andrew Cuomo in 2014 held a "yogurt summit" in Albany, and even designated yogurt as the official New York state snack.
We'll be curious to learn why Idaho, not New York, was chosen.
A ticket to fly and dine at the Albany airport
At least two of the high-profile chefs and restaurants Albany International Airport has landed will likely carry an admission price: an airline ticket for same-day travel.
The airport authority board approved a contract last week with OHM Concession Group to operate a Wolfgang Puck pizza shop, Chick-fil-A and Todd English American Market. Of the three, only Todd English will be accessible to anyone visiting the airport.
The other two will be on the other side of the security checkpoint, and passing through that, of course, requires a plane ticket.
Perhaps GrubHub or some other online ordering and delivery service will be able to work out a way to get deliveries out of the secure area to the public.
We understand the chicken and the pizza are both highly prized, although The Buzz has never sampled either.
Seats on airplanes continue to shrink
The New York Times published an article last week on shrinking airline seats and how the public is starting to push back.
Perhaps it was just coincidence, but a half-page ad on the facing page for State Street Advisors (this was all in the Business section) showed a parent relaxing while his four children napped.
They all fit comfortably in what was clearly a single seat on Amtrak.
An ex-airline CEO now heads Amtrak, and we hope he will leave the rail company's spacious seats alone.
Williamstown, Mass.
The Clark Art Institute's newest painting to go on display is a 5-foot-tall, 200-year-old portrait of a French boy dressed in honor of his military father.
The 1817 painting, "Portrait of Achille Deban de Laborde," by celebrated French artist Alexandre-Jean Dubois-Drahonet, was acquired by the Clark over the summer and became available for public viewing in recent days. Projected by the auction house Christie's to fetch $50,000 to $70,000, the painting went for $295,500, according to Christie's website. (As a matter of museum policy, the Clark does not discuss what it pays for works or otherwise publicly assign a dollar value to them, according to a spokeswoman.)
"When you encounter the painting, it is incredibly striking," said Esther Bell, a senior curator at the Clark. "It is a masterpiece, and it was in very, very fine condition."
The subject, Achille, was 9 at the time of the portrait. His military outfit and related elements in the painting were in honor of his father, Baron Jean-Baptiste Deban de Laborde, who was killed at the battle of Wagram in 1809, when the boy was still an infant.
The portrait was purchased by the Clark, Bell said, because it well complemented other artworks in the museum's small collection of early-19th-century pieces, particularly the portrait "Comte Henri-Amedee-Mercure de Turenne-d'Aynac," by Jacques-Louis David. Closely comparing the two "provides a poignant juxtaposition between a Napoleonic war hero and a child honoring one who was lost on the battlefield," the Clark's director, Olivier Meslay, said in a statement.
The portrait of Achille underwent light cleaning and other minor spiffing-up at the Williamstown Art Conservation Center, an independent facility, housed in a building on the Clark campus, that works on about 200 paintings, and about 700 pieces overall, each year. Many are severely damaged by age, dirt, water, falls, punctures or other indignities, but the Achille portrait, still on its original canvas stretcher and in its original frame, was in extraordinary shape for being two centuries old, said Montserrat Le Mense, the conservator who worked on it.
Referring to the painting as if it and Achille were one, Le Mense said, "He was a fantastic shape ... basically pristine." It was long held in private hands, most recently by a Belgian collector, said Bell, the curator.
Le Mense's work on the painting, which took about 65 hours over many weeks, included removing a layer of grime, thinning a coat of varnish added after the original applied by the artist, addressing tiny spots about the size of one joint of a finger, she said where paint had flaked and fixing a near-microscopic puncture.
"We basically brightened him up ... (to) get back to the original patina," Le Mense said. "He's so beautiful to look at."
sbarnes@timesunion.com 518-454-5489
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Cohoes
Cohoes police were called to the residence of Mayor Shawn Morse on Friday morning in response to a 911 call from Morse's wife, Brenda, who told a dispatcher that her husband had grabbed her neck and threw her to the ground, according to a police record.
Shawn Morse denied that his wife told dispatchers that she had been assaulted.
Information from a police report shared with the Times Union indicates that Brenda Morse called 911 at 7:45 a.m. Friday. The call was from a mobile phone and was initially relayed to a dispatcher in Rensselaer County. Because of the location of cell towers, 911 calls from mobile phones near the Hudson River border separating Albany and Rensselaer counties are often picked up by the neighboring agencies' dispatch centers.
Rensselaer County dispatchers immediately forwarded the call to Albany County, but the line went dead. Brenda Morse allegedly later told police that her husband had snatched the phone from her hand and smashed it when she dialed 911, according to a person briefed on her statements.
Dispatchers in Rensselaer County contacted Albany County dispatchers and told them Brenda Morse was using a "911-only" mobile phone and told their dispatchers that her husband, "the mayor of Cohoes ... grabbed her by the throat and threw her to the ground has scratches all over her and there's one child in (t)he residence," a police record states.
Morse had what appeared to be a scratch on his left cheek near his eye when he attended a ceremony Saturday afternoon for the dedication of the new Cohoes Veterans Memorial Park on Columbia Street. U.S. Rep. Paul Tonko, Assemblyman John McDonald and state Sen. Neil Breslin attended the event with hundreds of residents and veterans.
Morse initially reacted angrily when he was contacted after the memorial dedication and was questioned about the police response to his residence. He denied police were called to his residence.
"Don't (expletive) call my house ever again," he said. "You don't need to know what goes in my house between me and my family."
In a follow-up conversation, Morse apologized for his remarks, and blamed the struggles with his wife on a family matter involving a child. Morse said that their only child at home around that time was their 19-year-old daughter, but their youngest child was not at the residence.
Morse said he did not physically harm his wife and that they have had a good marriage for 18 years with no history of problems.
"Me and my wife are going through a real hard time, we are emotionally drained, we are physically drained and we are trying to find answers that we can't find," Morse said.
Cohoes police Chief Thomas Ross confirmed late Saturday that two patrol officers and a sergeant responded to Morse's residence for a 911 call. He said that Morse was not there when they arrived. After they left, a captain went back to the residence as Morse returned there.
Ross said the captain did not take note of any injuries to Brenda Morse and there were no signs of damage to the residence.
The captain "said that everything on the (dispatcher's) report was discounted," Ross said. "No scratches, no choking. There was a little scratch on Shawn's face under the eye."
Morse on Saturday evening denied that his face was scratched and asked a reporter how he would know that. "I certainly don't have no scratches on my face," he said. When told the Times Union had photographed him during Saturday's park dedication ceremony, Morse still denied he had a scratch on his face.
He also vehemently denied there was any physical contact between him and his wife.
"Nobody got hurt, nobody hit each other," Morse said. "We were hurt enough. We're already hurt," he added, referring to his youngest daughter's recent troubles and the couple's struggle to find common ground in how best to deal with her misbehavior.
Morse initially questioned where the Times Union obtained information about the police call. He also threatened to file a lawsuit against anyone who may have leaked a "police dispatch record," he said, adding that 911 calls are "private" under New York law.
"My family's issues are none of your business," Morse said in the first conversation. "My wife never said that I choked her. ... I didn't have an argument with anybody last night, at all. There was no cops at my house last night."
Late Friday evening on his Facebook page, Morse posted a statement: "Most couples have not had hundreds of arguments; they've had the same argument hundreds of times. Life is hard. After all, it kills you."
Morse declined to comment on the post.
Ross said the officers who initially responded to the call will be interviewed on Monday.
"The case is not closed, basically it's just kind of starting," Ross said. "Nobody got hurt, everything is good. ... Unless I'm being hoodwinked, it looks clean. ... Because of it being the mayor you want to do it right and you want to go by the numbers."
Note: An earlier version of this story misstated the time that police responded to the residence of Cohoes Mayor Shawn Morse. They were called to the residence on Friday morning.
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Barcelona, Spain
Hundreds of thousands of people backing Catalonia's bid to secede from Spain packed the streets in downtown Barcelona Saturday to demand the release of jailed separatist leaders.
The rally's grassroots organizers called for 10 prominent members of the secessionist movement in the northeastern Spanish region to be freed from prison.
Eight former members of Catalonia's dissolved Cabinet and two activists are in jail while Spanish authorities investigate their alleged roles in promoting an illegal declaration of independence last month in violation of Spain's Constitution.
A separate court in Madrid granted bail on Thursday to another six Catalan lawmakers also being investigated over the secession push.
"We want to tell the world that we want freedom for our prisoners and freedom for Catalonia," Agusti Alcoberro, the vice president of grassroots group National Catalan Assembly, told the crowd in Barcelona, the region's capital.
Barcelona's police said 750,000 people attended the rally.
Many of the protesters carried pro-independence "estelada" flags, with its white star and blue triangle superimposed over the traditional red-and-yellow Catalan colors. Many also held signs saying in Catalan "Freedom Political Prisoners" and wore yellow ribbons as a symbol of their demands.
"They (Spanish authorities) are violating many rights of freedom against our people and we come here to say that we are against that and to demand the release of our prisoners who are in prison unjustly," said 30-year-old engineer Joan Carles Roses.
Family members of the jailed separatists read messages from their loved ones to the crowd at the conclusion of the march.
Also on Saturday, the pro-independence Republic Left party announced that its jailed leader Oriol Junqueras will be its top candidate for the upcoming regional elections on Dec. 21. The Catalan party is including other jailed leaders in its list for the regional parliament. Polls show that Republic Left is favored to win the upcoming ballot, although it won't secure an outright majority.
The Catalan conflict is the worst constitutional crisis to threaten Spain in nearly four decades.
A day after Catalonia's Parliament voted in favor of a declaration of independence on Oct. 27, Spain's government activated extraordinary powers given to it by the Senate to fire the region's government, dissolve its parliament and call local elections.
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Brentwood
Angel Soler's mother brought him to the U.S. as a young boy, figuring things would surely be better than in Honduras, where he had lived in one of the world's most violent cities. Javier Castillo's father made the same calculation when he took his young son out of gang-plagued El Salvador.
Life in the leafy Long Island suburbs of New York didn't prove to be any safer.
The corpses of the two teenagers, the latest victims of suspected MS-13 gang violence on Long Island, were found a few miles from each other in secluded areas late last month. Police also discovered the remains of another young man, Kerin Pineda, who, like Soler, had formerly attended Freeport High School.
Their fates match those of many of the more than two dozen people believed to have been killed by the gang in the New York suburbs in the past two years: They were Central Americans who came to the U.S. as children seeking a better life, then vanished, only to be found slain months later.
"Destroyed," Castillo's distraught father, Santos Ernesto Castillo, said Wednesday outside the funeral home where his son's wake was being held.
A handful of friends and relatives attended Castillo's wake at a funeral home in Brentwood. His father, a former police officer in El Salvador, asked that his photograph not be taken because he feared for other members of his family.
The impressive spire and clock tower of St. Lukes Episcopal Church has been greeting those who make their way through Downtown Racine since the late 1800s.
Yet, the history of the English Gothic Revival style church at the corner of Main and Seventh streets actually dates back to 1842, when an Episcopal parish was first formed in Racine.
Prior to that, several young deacons had been holding services in schoolrooms and courthouses within a 50-mile circuit around the Root River for about three years, following the New York diocese having identified the Wisconsin territory as the location for a church. And, soon after the parish was formed, its first church building was erected on the east side of Main Street, across from Monument Square.
That building was destroyed by fire in January of 1866, but it wasnt long before the parish began building a replacement, having laid the cornerstone of the new church within six months of the fire. The first service was held in the new St. Lukes building on Sept. 8, 1867, and 150 years later services are still being held in that church, with its black walnut pews and beautiful stained glass windows, which were added in 1966.
Community impact
Among St. Lukes early members were prominent city residents such as Dr. John Meachem, who along with others founded St. Lukes Hospital in 1872. The parishs early impact on the city also included its role in the founding of Racine College, now the DeKoven Center. And, another early parishioner, Mrs. Emerline Taylor, established the Taylor Home, which served as an orphan asylum, according to church records.
More recently, St. Lukes community outreach is most visible in its Hospitality Center, which opened at the church in 2011 and provides service to the homeless and near homeless people of Racine. This ministry is open to all people, without regard to social status, religious or financial standing and is described by the church as truly a place to come and enjoy hospitality without agenda or ulterior motives.
Such outreach ministry is one of the things St. Lukes member Hazel Dickfoss says she appreciates most about her church.
I love that our churchs doors are always open, said Dickfoss, who joined the parish in 1961. There are so many people that need help and have no place to go.
Small but mighty
St. Lukes also supports the work of Racine Vocational Ministry a faith-based, nonprofit job placement organization that addresses the whole person by providing RVM with office space in its building at a reduced cost.
And, while the parish today is smaller than some, with an average Sunday service attendance of about 50, it still manages to do so much, Dickfoss said, pointing out the churchs involvement in community meals, international mission work and more.
Weve learned, that it is not the size of the congregation that matters, she said. It is how much outreach you are doing.
Dickfoss who was initially drawn to St. Lukes because it was a sister church to the one she had grown up with in England said she also appreciates how much more relaxed the atmosphere of the Episcopal Church is today, than it was when she first came to the U.S. more than 50 years ago.
Now there is no wrong way to do things in church, she said. And everyone is so open and welcoming. I like that.
St. Lukes parish, which today is led by the Rev. Bob Lambert, is also a very caring group of people, who are there for each other, Dickfoss said.
When my husband was very ill, for a long time, they helped hold me together, she said. They were the support that I needed.
For more about St. Lukes Church and its ministries, go to www.stlukesracine.com.
For many evangelicals, fiery Alabama politician and judge Roy Moore has been a longtime hero. Others have sometimes cringed at his heated rhetoric and bellicose style.
Now, as Moore's U.S. Senate campaign is imperiled by allegations of sexual overtures to a 14-year-old girl when he was in his 30s, there's an outpouring of impassioned and soul-searching discussion in evangelical ranks.
"This is one of those excruciating decision moments for evangelicals," Albert Mohler, president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, said in a telephone interview. "These allegations, if true, are devastating. If true, this is a very big deal."
Mohler said Alabama voters face a potentially wrenching task of trying to determine if the allegations Moore has emphatically denied them are credible.
According the Pew Research Center, 49 percent of Alabama adults are evangelical Protestants. For some of them, the Moore allegations echo the quandary they faced last year, wrestling over whether to support Donald Trump in the presidential race despite his crude sexual boasts.
The Rev. Robert Franklin, professor of moral leadership at Emory University's Candler School of Theology in Atlanta, said The Washington Post's report about the Moore allegations represents a test of "moral consistency" for evangelicals.
"Evangelicals are steadily losing their moral authority in the larger public square by intensifying their uncritical loyalty to Donald Trump," Franklin wrote in an email. "Since this is Roy Moore and not Donald Trump, I think there may be significant disaffection with him, and increased demands for his removal from the ballot."
As for Moore himself, Franklin suggested there were "classic evangelical remedies" such as confession, prayer and remorse and isolation.
"Election to higher office is not one of them," Franklin wrote.
Although Trump won 80 percent of the white evangelical vote in his presidential victory, his candidacy exposed and hardened rifts among conservative Christians about partisan politics, the personal character of government leaders and the Gospel. Surveys by the Public Religion Research Institute found that the percentage of white evangelicals who said they still trusted the leadership of a politician who commits an immoral act rose from 30 percent in 2011 to 72 percent last year.
Still, a solid minority of conservative Christians adopted the #NeverTrump hashtag on social media and joined those outside of evangelicalism who said "values voters" had lost their values. Women and black evangelicals especially emerged as critics of Trump's remarks about women, immigrants, African-Americans and Muslims. Many of these same critics of Trump's behavior and rhetoric condemned Moore in recent days, and bemoaned the fact that some evangelicals were standing by him.
"Okay, seriously, we elected a man president who bragged about using his power and authority to sexually assault women," tweeted Kyle James Howard, an African-American student at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. "Why are we surprised that members of his party would now be defending a party member's sexual assault of a minor?"
One of the Southern Baptist Convention's leading public policy experts, the Rev. Russell Moore, expressed dismay after the allegations against Judge Moore no relation surfaced on Thursday.
"Whether in the hills of Hollywood or the halls of power, it doesn't matter," the Rev. Moore tweeted. "This is true: sexual assault and child molestation are evil, unjust, satanic."
Roy Moore embraced controversy as he built his evangelical following. He was twice removed from his post as Alabama's chief justice, once for disobeying a federal court order to remove a Ten Commandments monument from the lobby of the state judicial building, and later for urging probate judges to defy the U.S. Supreme Court decision legalizing gay marriage.
Mohler, the seminary president, said many evangelical Alabama voters will find themselves facing a difficult choice when ballots are cast in the Dec. 12 special election.
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ALBANY State Comptroller Tom DiNapoli is jetting off to Germany Monday and Tuesday to talk a little klimaschutz. Or, for non-German speakers, climate change.
The comptroller will take part in a United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in Bonn, Germany, at which world leaders are discussing meeting goals outlined in the Paris climate accord. The United States announced it would pull out of that agreement earlier this year.
DiNapoli was invited by organizers of the 23rd annual "conference of parties" (COP23) to take part in panel discussions on investments and climate change.
The comptroller previously attended COP21 in Paris, where he announced the creation of a $2 billion index that would exclude or reduce investments in companies that are large contributors to carbon emissions. The idea is that money divested from those companies could be reinvested in lower emitters.
"I will certainly talk about ... in spite of what the Trump administration is saying about pulling out of the Paris Agreement, our committment (to the agreement) as an institutional investor," DiNapoli told Capitol Confidential. "We certainly will continue to adhere to the sprit of the Paris Agreement and work to have our portfolio positions in a way that has us participating in the transition to the low-carbon economy that Paris envisions."
As trustee of the New York state pension fund, the third largest in the nation, DiNapoli has faced pressure to divest the fund from fossil fuels. Such an idea is controversial and full divestment has been opposed by the comptroller himself.
DiNapoli has pressured Exxon Mobil in particular to reveal how climate change mitigation efforts will impact its revenues. He noted on Friday that being an investor allowed the state to engage the company in such a way.
As of 2015, $3.68 billion of the pension fund was invested in the top 200 potential emitters, according to DiNapoli's office. On the flip side, the comptroller has committed the fund to more than $5 billion in sustainable energy investments.
"The reality is all organizations have a carbon footprint of some kind," he said. "That's why we think it's smarter not to just focus on a company that's drilling for oil, but we need to focus on all organizations and say, 'What are you doing to reduce your carbon footprint?'"
The comptroller is traveling with a staff adviser on environmental policy. The trip is being paid for out of DiNapoli's campaign funds.
Labor's big election night victory
The downfall of the constitutional convention vote last week was a big victory for organized labor.
Unions bet big on the convention vote going down, contributing $3.7 million to anti-convention coalition New Yorkers Against Corruption in the run up Election Day, according to filings with the state Board of Elections. There also was union spending on "member to member" communication, which does not have to be disclosed.
The contributions paid off: The convention ultimately was rejected in a landslide.
The overwhelming rejection of a convention is a good narrative for the unions heading into 2018, when arguments and a decision are expected in what could be a landmark union dues case.
Janus v. AFSCME, which is before the U.S. Supreme Court, looks at a mandate that allows public sector unions in 22 states, including New York, to require that workers they represent pay union fees, even if they don't want to join the union. The fees apply to costs for collective bargaining and handling grievances but not to political or lobbying expenditures, which traditional membership dues help fund.
Getting rid of that obligation could deal a serious financial blow to the unions.
With Janus in mind, some see two benefits from last Tuesday's vote: It strengthened member outreach and it bolstered the case for how unions benefit paying members.
"In many ways, the organizing methods we used will serve us well if there is an adverse decision in Janus," New York State United Teachers union spokesman Carl Korn said, noting robust door-knocking and phone-banking operations.
"It showed NYSUT members how important it is to have a strong voice speaking up for them in the workplace," he added, "especially in an era when big-money, out-of-state interests want to privatize public education, destroy unions and tell teachers how to teach."
mhamilton@timesunion.com 518-454-5449 @matt_hamilton10
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ALBANY A trio of luxury cars seized by the state in recent years sold for a combined $174,500 at a state Office of General Services surplus vehicle and equipment auction on Wednesday.
A Lamborghini Gallardo Nera two-door coupe, one of only 185 such vehicles ever manufactured, fetched the highest price of the day: $98,000. It was sold to a Clifton Park automotive dealer and car collector.
"I collect cars, my son and I," said Mark Corota, the buyer. "Corvettes, Porsches all the crazy stuff. ... Getting a world-class car for $100,000 is a heck of a deal."
A 1986 Porsche 911 Turbo Carrera sold for $46,000 to a used auto parts dealer in Orange County, according to OGS. A 2012 BMW 650 convertible sold for the less eye-popping sum of $30,500 to an undisclosed buyer from Florida.
The vehicles were auctioned off as part of a regular state surplus sale, at which old, unneeded state vehicles and equipment such as snowplows and miscellaneous parts are hawked for anywhere from $25 to a few thousand dollars on average.
The Lamborghini was seized by the state attorney general's office in 2013 following an investigation into a $3.2 million Medicaid fraud case in Brooklyn. Proceeds from the sale of the vehicle will be transferred to the attorney general's Medicaid Fraud Unit.
The Porsche and BMW were both state Department of Motor Vehicles seizures. Both vehicles were found to be stolen when recovered by investigators. Proceeds of their sales go to DMV.
None of the vehicles broke the record sale price for an OGS auction: $113,000 for a 2013 Mercedes G63, which was sold to an auto dealer in 2015.
mhamilton@timesunion.com 518-454-5449 @matt_hamilton10
"KU Med no longer available on ACA to Missouri or Kansas (Wyandotte & Johnson County) residents for 2018"
Despiteexpansion and a campus that now resemblesKU Med is sending word to patients regarding medical cutbacks.A few FB denizens and lesser social media outlets are raging over this post planted by low-ranking Democratic Party activists . . .This was actuallyand the KU Med cuts are just part of the ongoing aftermath.Still . . .And so, do we blame the GOP, KU Med over-expansion or the inherent flaws of the ACA for these ominous notes about fading local healthcare which continue to pile up???You decide . . .
KANSAS CITY VOTERS WILL BE MOSTLY MISINFORMED BY CITY HALL PROPAGANDA THROUGHOUT THE CONSTRUCTION PROCESS OF THE NEW AIRPORT!!!
Unofficial KCI Progress Tracker
Check this quick compare/contrast note from SaveKCI pointing out an initial discrepancy and lower expectations already in place- Stephen Hardy is the CEO of mySidewalk employment posts an impact metric goal of 4,000 jobs by 2021, but EDC folks and Councilman Fowler in the his op/ed promised 17,000.
Quick update on a vote aftermath . . .Newsflash fact of life . . .The same kind of hyperbolic press release copy that dominates most downtown development will soon be focused on airport construction.Example . . . Here's a corporate cheerleader website already set up . . .Better still . .As far as local reporting . . .and the only served as cheerleader for this project . . . So it's doubtful local residents will get anything beyond their ongoing celebratory coverage in the future regarding the real world outcome of a rigged election.Developing . . .
While some may think that D-Day was the moment during WWII when the tides of war had changed in favor of the Allies, in reality it was more than a year and a half before at the Battle of Stalingrad that the Nazis lost their momentum and were beginning to withdraw. Without a shadow of a doubt, the Battle of Stalingrad was the most brutal engagement of WWII and the deadliest battle in the history of warfare. The outcome of the battle put an end to Hitlers dream of commanding a Global Empire and it marked the beginning of the end for the Nazis. Without this battle, D-Day could have never happened in the first place. Now, lets actually look at some of the events that happened in more detail
10. The Casualties
To properly understand the actual scale, brutality, and importance of the Battle of Stalingrad, we have to start at the end, with the casualties. This was by far the bloodiest battle of the whole war, lasting for almost seven months, from mid-July 1942 to February 2, 1943, and involving not just Soviets and Nazis, but also Romanians, Hungarians, and Italians, as well as some Russian conscripts. In the aftermath of the battle, over 840,000 Axis forces lay dead, missing, or captured, while the Soviets suffered more than 1.1 million casualties. More than 40,000 Russian civilians were also killed during the battle. It was, in fact, Stalin himself who strictly forbade their evacuation from Stalingrad, saying that the Soviet soldiers would fight harder knowing that they also had to defend the residents of the city.
To give you a comparison, the D-Day Operations and the ensuing Invasion of Normandy campaign resulted in a total of roughly 425,000 dead or missing soldiers on both sides. Now, over in Stalingrad, of the roughly 91,000 who were still alive by February 2, and who surrendered on that day, only about 6,000 would ever make it back home alive. The rest died of hunger or exhaustion in Soviet work camps, even a decade after WWII had ended. After they were cut off, the Axis forces stranded in Stalingrad roughly 250,000 had to endure some of the most horrendous conditions possible. With supplies running thin and with no proper equipment to endure the harsh Russian winter, a lot of them died of starvation or the bitter cold. Many soldiers on both sides had to resort to cannibalism to stay alive. The average lifespan of a new soldier at Stalingrad was one day, whereas for a captain, it was three days. The Battle of Stalingrad is without a shadow of a doubt the bloodiest battle in human history, claiming more lives than many other entire wars combined.
9. Bragging Rights
Today the city is known as Volgograd, but up until 1961, it was known as Stalingrad, the Soviet dictators namesake. So, as you can imagine, the city held great importance for both Hitler and Stalin. Now, the city wasnt attacked just for the sake of its name, but that did play a role here. The main purpose for the Battle of Stalingrad, however, was to secure the northern flank for the German army that was sent south to the Caucasus Mountains towards Baku and the other oil-rich regions there. Oil was Germanys Achilles Heel so to speak, with over 75 percent of it being supplied from Romania which was already depleting its reserves by 1941. So in order to have a chance at continuing the war, the Nazis had to take over some oil-rich lands. This search for oil was known as Operation Blue for the Nazis. It was part the even larger Operation Barbarossa, which aimed at invading the Soviet Union the largest and most powerful invasion force in human history.
Bolstered by the initial victories of the invasion and with the Axis forces literally sweeping through what is now present-day Ukraine and southern Russia, Hitler decided to divide his southern forces. While his northern armies were focused more on besieging Leningrad (present-day Saint Petersburg) and Moscow, the southern group was tasked with Stalingrad and the Caucasus. Present-day Belarus and Ukraine were important industrial zones for the Soviets, and if they were to lose the oilfields, they would have most certainly capitulated. With the Red Army suffering heavy losses during the previous engagements, Hitler believed that Stalingrad would be easy pickings. In the grand scheme of things, the city was not that strategically important, but because of its name, Hitler had to take it. And equally, Stalin had to defend it at all costs. In the aftermath, however, Stalin emerged victorious, the first major victory and a monumental turning point of WWII. And because it happened in his namesake city, it was an important propaganda tool for Stalin during the remainder of the war, as well as the rest of his life.
8. Not One Step Back!
Given by Joseph Stalin himself on July 28, 1942, Order No. 227 is more commonly known as the Not one step back! order. In light of the disastrous situation of the Great Patriotic War, as the Eastern Front was known to the Soviets, Stalin issued this order so as to put an end to the mass desertions and unauthorized and chaotic retreats happening up until that point. Western USSR which included present-day Ukraine and Belarus was the most heavily industrialized part of the country, as well as the so-called breadbasket of the Soviet State. Much of its civilian population lived in these parts, so even though the USSR was huge, constant retreat was not a viable option. This order meant that no military commander should issue any direction of retreat, no matter the situation, if they hadnt received such orders from higher up. Those who disobeyed this order were to be sent to a military tribunal.
Each frontline, Stalingrad included, was to have penal battalions. These were made out of roughly 800 middle-ranking commanders with disciplinary problems, as well as regular soldiers who would serve under them. These soldiers were also made out of deserters, so-called cowards, or other troublemakers. These battalions would be sent to the front lines, and always in the most dangerous battles. In addition, there were barrier troops, also known as anti-retreat forces. Each Army was supposed to have several barrier troops, made out of 200 personnel apiece. Their purpose was stay at the rear and round up or shoot deserters, or those who were trying to retreat without orders to do so. An estimated 13,500 soldiers were killed this way at Stalingrad alone, as betrayers of the motherland.
7. The T-34 Tank
Up until 1942, the Soviets were far behind the Germans, as well as their Western Allies, in terms of armor and armored vehicles. Nevertheless, they were already developing the T-34 tank as early as 1939. By June 1941, there were only 1,200 T-34s in use throughout the Eastern Front, around the time Hitler initiated Operation Barbarossa. By the end of the war, however, its numbers ballooned to over 84,000. It was by far the most mass-produced tank of the war and considered by many as the finest tank in the world at the time. The previous Soviet model, the T-26, was no match against the Panzer III the German workhorse up until that time. It was slower-moving, lightly armored, and severely outgunned. In 1941 alone, the Nazis destroyed over 20,000 Russian T-26s. But with the arrival of the T-34, the tables had turned, putting the Panzer III at a disadvantage.
The T-34 was not perfect by many standards, but it was, nevertheless, a weapon not to be reckoned with. It was fitted with a V12 engine, giving it speeds of more than 30 miles per hour, as well as the ability to work in freezing temperatures. It also had a 76.2mm main gun and two machineguns. Its tracks were wider than its predecessors and its counterparts, making it more maneuverable in the so-called sea of mud in autumn and spring, as well as the heavy snows of winter. Most notable was its sloped armor. This gave the T-34 the protection it needed, without adding to the overall weight. And as the Germans were soon to discover, most of their shots simply bounced off its armor. The T-34 was the main reason for the development of the Nazi Panther tank design. The T-34 was also fitted with railings on its upper side, so as to also double as infantry transport. The only effective way to destroy a T-34 was to get up close and personal with it, usually when an infantryman would throw a grenade inside through one of its slits, or somehow destroy the engine from behind. Another way was to use the heavier anti-aircraft artillery on it.
Its biggest advantage, however, was the fact that it was easy and cheap to produce in huge numbers. As you may expect, it wasnt confortable, and it lacked many finishing touches like paint, for instance. Many T-34s were rolled into battle immediately after leaving the assembly line. One such factory was in Stalingrad itself. Nevertheless, it was also designed to be driven easily by relatively inexperienced crewmen. This is what really set the T-34 apart from its German counterparts. The first T-34 army was deployed in a counteroffensive just prior of the Battle of Stalingrad on the banks of the Don River. This counteroffensive inflicted heavy losses on the German army and postponed the actual assault of Stalingrad by up to three weeks. This setback also reduced the Nazis resources and gave a serious blow to morale. None of them were expecting a Soviet counteroffensive during this stage of the war, let alone the T-34.
6. The Rats War
Assault on the city began with heavy aerial bombardment, reducing Stalingrad to nothing more than charred buildings and rubble. It is estimated that roughly 40,000 soldiers and civilians died in the first week of the air raid. The Soviets stubbornly refused to retreat to the eastern side of the Volga River, knowing full well what that meant for both their war effort, as well as their lives. The Russians had the civilian population women and children included dig trenches, sometimes even as close as 30 feet away from the German line. With constant shelling by both artillery and aerial bombers on both sides, the Battle of Stalingrad soon turned into a Rattenkrieg, as the Germans called it, meaning rats war.
The battle turned into a guerrilla-style war of attrition soon enough, with countless soldiers dying on both sides for every square inch of the city. Every street, every basement, room, hallway, or attic needed to be cleared out of enemy units before moving on. There were many cases of multi-story buildings with each level being alternatively occupied by the Germans or the Soviets. They would shoot at each other through holes in the floor. No place was safe. There were fierce battles fought in the streets, trenches, sewers, blown up buildings, and even overhead industrial pipelines. Initial Nazi armor and aerial advantage proved of limited use in this rats warfare, which gave the Soviets the advantage.
5. Pavlovs House
If there was a symbol to represent the Soviets resilience to constant attacks from the German forces during the Battle of Stalingrad, then Pavlovs House was it. This was a four-story apartment building overseeing the 9th January Square. It had enormous strategic importance for the Russians, as it was a great vantage point, giving the defenders a half-mile long line of sight to the west, north, and south. Being located on the western bank of the Volga River, it was a crucial and key location for the Soviet resistance. Its name comes from Junior Sgt. Yakov Pavlov, who was an acting platoon commander after all senior sergeants were killed in battle. He was in charge of a platoon of the Soviet 13th Guards Rifle Division tasked with repelling the Nazis. His platoon was reinforced several days after he took charge, bolstering his squad to 25 men. They were also supplied with machine guns, anti-tank rifles, and mortars.
Pavlov ordered his men to surround the building with four layers of barbed wire and mines, and placed machine guns at every available window facing the square. Some of the mortars and anti-tank rifles were placed on the roof of the building. This proved to be a major advantage as the German tanks trying to roll in close to the building were blown up by the rifles from above. While the tanks could not elevate their guns to shoot at the roof of the building, they were instead attacked on the thin turret-roof armor. Nevertheless, the Germans stormed the building day and night in attempts to take the building once and for all. In the meantime, the Soviets breached the walls of the basement and connected it to trench system that was bringing in supplies from across the river. Food and water were in short supply, though.
The platoon under Yakov Pavlov withstood all the German attacks for almost two months from September 27 to November 25, 1942. They were then relieved by a Soviet counterattack. The commanding general of the Soviet forces in Stalingrad, Vasily Chuikov, jokingly said that the Germans lost more soldiers and tanks in trying to take Pavlovs House than they did taking Paris. Moreover, in the maps and documents retrieved from the Germans once the whole battle for Stalingrad was over, the commanders personal map had the building encircled with the hand-written word Castle next to it.
4. Height 102.0
Located close to the center of the city is Mamayev Kurgan. This is a 102 meter tall hill (335 feet) that has a great view of the surrounding city and countryside. It also offers a great view across the Volga River to the east. And as you can imagine, this hill was heavily fought over during the Battle of Stalingrad. The first German attack on Height 102.0 came September 13, 1942. Prior to their arrival, the Soviets heavily entrenched themselves on its slopes, digging trenches and laying out barbed wire and mines. Nevertheless, the hill and the railway station at its base were conquered one day later. Over 10,000 Soviet soldiers lost their lives in that battle. Only two days later, the Russians took back the hill. In fact, Mamayev Kurgan exchanged hands 14 times during the entire Battle of Stalingrad.
By the end of the fighting there, the once steep slopes of the hill were flattened by the almost constant shelling. Throughout the entire duration of the winter, the hill was never covered in snow due to the many explosions. Even after spring came, the hill remained black, as no grass was growing on the scorched earth. It was estimated that anywhere on the hill there were between 500 to 1,250 shards of metal found on every square meter of soil. Even today, people can find scraps of metal or pieces of human bones scattered on the hillside. Mamayev Kurgan is also the final resting place for over 35,000 civilians who died in the city and over 15,000 soldiers who defended the position. Vasily Chuikov, the Soviet commander during the battle, is also buried there the first Marshal of the Soviet Union to be buried outside of Moscow. As of 1967, the hill is also the site for the colossal monument known as The Motherland Calls. From the base to the tip of its sword, the statue measures 279 feet in height (87 meters). To give you a comparison, the Statue of Liberty is only 151 feet tall (46 meters).
3. The Grain Elevator
The southern edges of the city were made mostly of wooden houses. Following the German air raids that dropped thousands of incendiary bombs there, these houses were reduced to charred pieces of timber, with only the brick chimneys still standing among the rubble. But between them, there was a massive concrete grain elevator that dominated the neighborhood. Its walls were incredibly thick; it was virtually impervious to artillery fire, like a fortress. By September 17, the entire area was under German control, with the exception of the grain elevator and the 52 Soviet soldiers inside. After they received some supplies, they were walled in. For the following three days, the Germans mounted at least 10 attacks a day on the elevator with the intent on capturing it, but all of them failed. As one survivor described it, In the elevator, the grain was on fire, the cooling water in the machine-guns had evaporated, the wounded were thirsty, but there was no water. This is how we defended ourselves 24 hours a day for three days.
By day, they were fighting from the top of the tower, shooting at the enemy with both machine guns and anti-tank rifles. By night, they were fighting at the base of the tower, fending off German troops that were trying to get inside. On the second day, a Nazi tank carrying a white flag approached. From within it a German officer emerged with an interpreter, demanding the Soviets surrender or be obliterated. Their answer was, Tell all your fascists they can go to hell in an open boat! You two voices of the people can go back to your lines, but only on foot. The tank than began to roll away, but it was immediately stopped in its tracks after it was hit by several anti-tank rounds.
2. Unlikely of Soviet Heroes
One of the most notable heroes of the Battle of Stalingrad was Vasily Zaytsev (if youve seen the movie Enemy at the Gates, that name should sound familiar hes the central character). A simple farm boy from the Ural Mountains, Zaytsev spent his childhood with his grandfather hunting deer and wolves in the mountains. With the start of the German invasion of the Soviet Union, Zaytsev volunteered for the front lines and ended up at Stalingrad. The battles there were known for the snipers, and none were more famous than Zaytsev. He took the scope from an anti-tank weapon, mounted it on his Mosin-Nagant rifle, and used to kill enemies hiding behind walls. During the Battle of Stalingrad he had a total of 225 confirmed kills. He even had a sort of sniper training school going, and had a team of 28 others with him, striking fear and bullets in the enemys heart.
Somewhat similar was the 1077th Anti-Aircraft Regiment. When the Nazis began attacking Stalingrad from the north, the Soviets were severely undermanned to deal with them there. This is when the anti-aircraft regiment lowered their guns to the lowest point and began firing at the invaders, holding the advance for two days. In the end, all of the 37 guns were destroyed, their positions were overtaken by the Nazis, and the regiment suffered heavy casualties. But only after they were finally overtaken the 1077th Anti-Aircraft Regiment did the Nazis realize that it was made up of only girls barely out of high school.
1. Operation Uranus
The operation was launched in mid-November 1942 and aimed at stranding Hitlers 6th Army within Stalingrad. With close to a million soldiers, the operation involved two forces striking from different directions, rather than hitting the Germans directly in the city of Stalingrad. The aim was to strike at the flanks of the army, which were defended by Romanian, Hungarian, and Italian troops. These were undersupplied, undermanned, and their lines were stretched far too thin. The Axis forces did not believe that the Soviets were capable of mounting such a powerful offensive and were caught completely by surprise. Ten days into the offensive, the two Soviet forces met at the town of Kalach, some 60 miles west of Stalingrad, and the Nazi 6th Army was completely cut off. The German high command urged Hitler to allow the army fighting in Stalingrad to retreat and reestablish a connection with their supply lines. Hitler would not have it, not conceiving the alternative of abandoning the banks of the Volga.
With winter setting in fast, the stranded German army could only be supplied by air. These supplies were nowhere near to being sufficient, or even adequate in most cases. In the meantime, the Volga River was frozen solid, and the Soviets could more easily supply their own troops. In December, Hitler ordered the launch of Operation Winter Tempest in an attempt at rescuing the stranded army. The special army corps was meant to come from the west and pierce a way through to Stalingrad. Hitler, however, forbade the forces in Stalingrad from attacking from the east, and the operation failed. By January, the Germans were surrounded by six Soviet armies. One month later, what remained of the army Hitler once claimed could storm the Heavens was surrendering.
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The Department of Finance (DoF) Abu Dhabi recently held a workshop to discuss the latest developments on financial systems and regulations related to government procurement frameworks, and introduce different government entities to the updates on VAT and tax regulations.
More than 500 representatives from 70 government entities in the emirate attended the event.
Riyad Abdulrahman Al Mubarak, the chairman of DoF Abu Dhabi, highlighted the departments commitment to implement initiatives which help achieve the Abu Dhabi Plan and Abu Dhabi Economic Vision 2030.
He also stressed DoF- Abu Dhabis belief in the importance of establishing unified policies and procedures that are characterised by the highest level of professionalism, integrity and efficiency, and aligned with Abu Dhabis government financial system.
The workshop covered three different topics including: value added tax (VAT), the draft pricing manual for government services, and the programme to develop the government procurement system.
Participants also had the opportunity to inquire about various elements presented during the workshop, where experts in the field offered the required answers to ensure government entities understanding of the topics and their commitment to implement the highest international standards in their work.
"It is important to prepare government entities to manage government financial work by following a precise methodology that is based on legal and scientific aspects to prove effectiveness," remarked Al Mubarak.
"These steps help in achieving the government vision to build a secure, economic sustainable community with a competitive advantage, and ensure a prosperous future for generations to come," he added.-TradeArabia News Service
This list is not comprehensive. Municipalities are listed as they appear on the criminal complaint. Suspects are presumed innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. To see mugshots of the accused, visit www.journaltimes.com/gallery. Additional information about the complaints can be found at: journaltimes.com/news/local/crime-and-courts.
Zachary G. Ailes, 2700 block of 65th Drive, Franksville, possession of narcotic drugs, possession of marijuana, and possession of drug paraphernalia.
Adrianna J. Albarran, 5000 block of 19th Ave., Kenosha, assault by prisoners, and disorderly conduct.
Carmelo Arroyo-Venegas, 1200 block of Grand Ave., Racine, operating without a license, and bail jumping.
Cicely S. Atterberry, 1700 block of Holmes Ave., Racine, fail to cause child to attend school.
Ryan J. Barr, 100 block of W. Jefferson St., Burlington, possession of marijuana, possession of cocaine, possession of a controlled substance, and possession of drug paraphernalia.
LeRoy T. Bryant, 1200 block of Center St., Racine, disorderly conduct, bail jumping, operating a motor vehicle while intoxicated, operating with prohibited alcohol concentration, operate motor vehicle while revoked, and failure to install ignition interlock device.
Maurice D. Bryant, 1300 block of Center St., Racine, possession with intent to deliver cocaine, maintaining a drug trafficking place, and possession of marijuana.
Jose M. Castelan, 2000 block of 84th St., Kenosha, possession of cocaine, and operating without a license.
Jordan T. Condiff, 31700 block of Korth Circle Drive, Burlington, disorderly conduct, and possession of drug paraphernalia.
Carlin R. Cook, 3700 block of 15th St., Kenosha, theft in a business setting.
Joseph Davis, 1100 block of Oakes Road, Mount Pleasant, hit and run causing injury, and operate motor vehicle while revoked.
Walter L. Edwards, 6100 block of Eagle Point Drive, Racine, retail theft.
Alexis K. Engelhard, 900 block of Blaine Ave., Racine, personal identity theft for financial gain, and credit card-theft by receipt.
Robert Evans, 2000 block of DeKoven Ave., Racine, threat to law enforcement officer, battery-great bodily harm, obstructing an officer, and disorderly conduct.
Jose M. Garcia, 1600 block of Warwick Way, Mount Pleasant, possession with intent to deliver or manufacture marijuana, and possession of drug paraphernalia.
Shaun P. Gilboy, 2000 block of DeKoven Ave., Racine, computer message-threaten/obscenity, bail jumping, and disorderly conduct.
Kamerin O. Glover, 4600 block of N. 76th St., Milwaukee, fraud against a financial institution.
Cindy M. Goodluck, 200 block of N. Memorial Drive, Racine, theft.
Robert L. Howard, 26500 block of Lilac Lane, Wind Lake, possession of marijuana, and possession of drug paraphernalia.
Brian K. Ivy, 4200 block of Winthrop Ave., Racine, possession with intent to deliver cocaine, possession with intent to deliver or manufacture marijuana, and maintaining a drug trafficking place.
Thomas F. Jones, 4800 block of N. Britton Road, Union Grove, physical abuse of a child-intentionally cause bodily harm, maintaining a drug trafficking place, possession of narcotic drugs, possession of a controlled substance, possession of drug paraphernalia, manufacture/deliver marijuana, and possession with intent to deliver or manufacture marijuana.
David V. McLellan, 4300 block of Haven Ave., Racine, personal identity theft for financial gain, uttering a forgery, and fraud against a financial institution.
Irineo L. Medina, 2300 block of N. Seventh St., Sheboygan, possession of marijuana, possession of drug paraphernalia, operate motor vehicle while intoxicated, and bail jumping.
Michael W. Moore, 2000 block of DeKoven Ave., Racine, aggravated battery.
Briannie I. Morgan, 2000 block of Case Ave., Racine, battery by prisoners, assault by prisoners, and disorderly conduct.
Mark A. Mosley, 4100 block of Marquette Drive, Racine, battery, domestic abuse assessments, and disorderly conduct.
Lance T. Moss, 1600 block of 16th St., Racine, retail theft.
John G. Nash, 200 block of Hubbard St., Racine, criminal trespass, and obstructing an officer.
Jacques L. Pissard, 1800 block of N. Main St., Racine, battery, and domestic abuse assessments.
Kenneth J. Readus, 1500 block of Lorelei Drive, Zion, Ill., obstructing an officer, and attempting to flee or elude a traffic officer.
Brian K. Robinson, 2000 block of Wisconsin St., Sturtevant, stalking, domestic abuse assessments, knowingly violate a domestic abuse injunction, and personal identity theft-avoidance.
Crystal R. Robinson, 23700 block of W. 7 Mile Road, Muskego, possession of drug paraphernalia, possession with intent to deliver or manufacture marijuana, maintaining a drug trafficking place, exposing intimate parts, child enticement, disorderly conduct, and recklessly endangering safety.
Justin J. Robinson, 23700 block of W. 7 Mile Road, Muskego, possession of drug paraphernalia, possession with intent to deliver or manufacture marijuana, maintaining a drug trafficking place, exposing intimate parts, lewd and lascivious behavior, child enticement, and recklessly endangering safety.
Richard W. Rocco, 300 block of E. Market St., Burlington, possession with intent to deliver or manufacture marijuana, possession of drug paraphernalia, and carrying a concealed weapon.
Faye I. Rocha, 2000 block of Phillips Ave., Racine, theft, and obstructing an officer.
Jorge E. Rodriguez, 1600 block of Carlisle Ave., Racine, battery, domestic abuse assessments, disorderly conduct, and bail jumping.
Castello F. Schumacher, 3700 block of Debby Lane, Franksville, disorderly conduct, and assault by prisoners.
Dominique K. Sims, 1600 block of W. Sixth St., Racine, false imprisonment, domestic abuse assessments, domestic abuse, strangulation and suffocation, criminal damage to property, bail jumping, disorderly conduct, and battery.
Jessica R. Stevens, 2000 block of N. Memorial Drive, Racine, uttering a forgery, personal identity theft for financial gain, and fraud against a financial institution.
Steven S. Switalski, 80 block of Riverside Drive, Racine, criminal damage to property, domestic abuse assessments, and disorderly conduct.
Araceli Torres, 1700 block of Ninth St., Racine, personal identity theft for financial gain.
Lovely L. Travis, 4600 block of 22nd Ave., Kenosha, operating without a license.
Tammy B. Travis, 6400 block of Laflin St., Chicago, Ill., personal identity theft for financial gain, and retail theft.
Norma J. Tussler, 2100 block of Clarence Ave., Racine, bail jumping.
Savontae N. Underwood, 1400 block of Riverview Terrace, Racine, possession with intent to deliver cocaine, possession with intent to deliver or manufacture marijuana, possession of drug paraphernalia, obstructing an officer, and carrying a concealed weapon.
Malta L. Valle, 2000 block of Howe St., Racine, theft-movable property, and crime against an elderly or disabled person.
Benjamin K. Warner, 100 block of Seventh St., Racine, battery, criminal damage to property, and disorderly conduct.
Tyler J. Werlein, 300 block of Smith St., Burlington, disorderly conduct, domestic abuse assessments, and bail jumping.
Saudi-based King Abdullah Economic City (KAEC) said it has signed a series of agreements and partnerships with the General Customs Authority and the Economic Cities Authority (ECA) to establish a deposit and re-export zone within the Jeddah facility and also build an auto racing circuit at Lagoona and Marina Dreams.
KAEC is the largest privately-funded new city in the world comprising King Abdullah Port, the Coastal Communities residential districts, the Haramain Railway district and the Industrial Valley.
Situated on the west coast of Saudi Arabia, KAEC covers a 181-sq-km area of land, approximately the size of Washington DC.
The deals inked on the sidelines of the third edition of the Time Forum also included one for establishing a gas station and expansion of the Industrial Valley.
In addition, there were agreements in the real estate development, tourism and leisure sectors, and supporting administrative services, said senior KAEC officials at the forum.
The event was held under the patronage of Ibrahim bin Abdulrahman Al Omar, the governor of the Saudi Arabian General Investment Authority (Sagia).
Time Forum is a platform where KAECs leaders meet with partners from ministries, government agencies, the private sector and other interested parties. This year, more than 300 national and international investors and leaders from business and the government took part.
In his address, Al Omar said: "Under Vision 2030, we are creating new growth engines in strategic sectors such as transport, healthcare, ICT, renewable energy and local manufacturing to drive greater economic diversification in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia."
"KAEC, which combines a strategic location, strong national and international connectivity and a robust private sector mindset, is an important part of our vision for the future," he added.
Fahd Al Rasheed, group CEO and the managing director, gave a presentation in which he showcased the latest developments, achievements and strategic vision of the Economic City.
Following this, the business leaders at the Economic City unveiled a package of projects and investment opportunities worth over SR7 billion ($1.9 billion) in the logistics, industry, leisure, commerce, housing, health and education sectors.
Al Rasheed stressed the important role that the government had played in the success of the city through its emphasis on the development of the non-oil economy.
He also highlighted the key role played by the city in generating quality employment opportunities for young Saudis.-TradeArabia News Service
Iran has taken delivery of the second F-class gas turbine from German engineering group Siemens for use at a 600-MW power station under construction in Bandar Abbas, a city in the country, said a report.
Based on the contract signed with Iran's energy and infrastructure conglomerate Mapna, the German group is to supply at least 20 gas turbines as well as associated generators over a period of five years, added the Iran Daily News report, citing Press TV.
The far-reaching agreement signed in March 2016 foresees the transfer of know-how for the F-class gas turbine technology to modernise the Iranian power supply system. It also includes a license for manufacturing F-class gas turbines in Iran.
The first of the two F-class gas turbines to be used at the Bandar Abbas power station was delivered in September 2016.
The contract covers not only the two SGT5-4000F gas turbines but also two SGen5-2000H generators and the associated power plant instrumentation and controls.
At the time, CEO of the Siemens Power and Gas Division Willi Meixner noted that with the delivery of the first gas turbine to Iran, his group was renewing its long-term partnership with Mapna to modernise and expand the country's power supply network.
Siemens' activities in Iran date back to 1868 and involve important infrastructure projects but the German industrial group suspended its cooperation with Iran in 2010 due to sanctions, added the report.
Officials from Qatar Solar Technologies (QSTec), a member of Qatar Foundation, and the Philippines Department of Energy (DoE) recently discussed ways to enhance collaboration in the fields of renewable energy, said a report.
QSTec chairman and CEO Dr Khalid Klefeekh al-Hajri recently met with the Department of Energy secretary Alfonso G Cusi and other officials to discuss QSTecs maturation in the energy industry and its integration across the solar value chain and the growing solar energy market in the Philippines, as well as possible collaboration opportunities, added the Gulf Times report.
QSTec is Menas first fully-integrated solar company, as well as the largest polysilicon producer in the region with a manufacturing facility of 8,000 metric tonnes per annum in Qatar.
The organisation is strongly committed to collaborating with international partners in the interest of progressively harvesting solar energy, combating climate change and reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
QSTec sees far-reaching potential for collaborating with the Philippines in effectively meeting these common targets.
Under the Philippines Renewable Energy Roadmap 2017-2040, the country aims to develop and install 20,000 megawatts of renewable energy capacity by 2040.
Already, Philippines has prompted a number of new initiatives aimed at fast-tracking renewable energy growth and investment.
Ducab, a leading manufacturer of cables and cabling products based in the UAE, will showcase its latest generation of tailored products for the oil, gas and petrochemical (OGP) industry at the Abu Dhabi International Petroleum Exhibition and Conference (Adipec), opening tomorrow.
The event, a leading event for the industry in the Middle East, will be held at Abu Dhabi National Exhibition Centre, in Abu Dhabi, UAE, until November 16.
Owned equally by Abu Dhabis General Holding Corporation (Senaat) and Investment Corporation Dubai (ICD), Ducab has been at the forefront of delivering advanced products to meet the specific requirements of the OGP sector, both onshore and offshore, as well as the highest international quality standards.
The necessity for asset and portfolio evaluations amongst OGP companies will become increasingly pressing as organisations participate in a wave of consolidation efforts over the coming year or more, according to recent report by Strategy&.
As leaders in the OGP sector evolve their business models, power, instrumentation and control cable are areas where new investments can be used to increase operational efficiency, enhance project safety, and reduce environmental impact.
Eng Jamal Salem Al Dhaheri, chairman of Ducab, said: As companies within the OGP sector adjust to the realities of the current energy market, a greater degree of price stabilization combined with a rebalancing of supply and demand fundamentals leads us to be optimistic about the future.
In this environment, the ability to scale at value will be paramount, which is why Ducab continues to invest in its own offerings for the marketplace through products and capabilities which can power more sustainable operations and profitability well into the future, he said.
Within the Middle East in particular, the company continues to see increasing demand for its Ducab PetroBICC range, which has already been supplied to notable projects such as the North East Bab Field Development Project and BU Haseer Field Development Project in UAE, as well as the Sohar Refinery Expansion Project in Oman, Clean Fuels Project and the Lower Fars Project in Kuwait, amongst others.
Ducabs PetroBICC cables are designed to meet international quality standards, including hydrocarbon resistance and low toxicity. To meet requirements for use in the hazardous conditions of the oil and gas sector, Ducab offers both polyamide and lead-sheathed cable construction within the PetroBICC range, designed for on-shore applications, and a full range of rubber cables for offshore applications, supported by full technical services and joint supervision at site during installations.
These cables are all produced within the UAE itself, whereas traditionally OGP companies needed to rely on international markets to source their power cabling. The transition to a local supply chain in recent years has provided OGP companies with more agility in their infrastructure planning.
Ducabs investments in these specialised manufacturing capabilities within the UAE has also fostered a new generation of technically skilled workers in line with the Abu Dhabi Economic Vision 2030 and the Dubai Industrial Strategy 2030.
In addition to its line of dedicated products for the oil, gas and petrochemical sector, Ducab has also developed a portfolio of cables, power control instrumentation, joints and terminations, and technical services suitable for use across a number of industries.
These include Ducab FlamBICC, the Fire Performance cable series; Ducab RuBICC range of rubber cables for flexible applications; Ducab SolarBICC, specifically created for the solar power market; Ducab NuBICC, which has been specially developed and certified for over 60 years operations for the nuclear power generation sector; and Ducab MarineBICC, a range of cables customized for the marine and offshore industry.
Ducab cables are approved by the loss prevention certificate board (LPCB), BASEC, Det Norske Veritas (DNV), American Bureau of Shipping (ABS), Bureau Veritas (BV), and Lloyds Register of Shipping in the UK, it stated. TradeArabia News Service
Saudi Arabia recently participated in the Regional Conference for Arab Women in Maritime Sector through a high-ranking delegation of Saudi women headed by Wijdan Al-Suhaibani, manager of branding and communication at National Shipping Company of Saudi Arabia (Bahri), a leader in logistics and transportation.
The conference is the most prominent event organised by the International Maritime Organization (IMO) and was held at the headquarters of the Arab Academy for Science, Technology and Maritime Transport in Alexandria, Egypt, last month.
The participation of Saudi women in the conference was a major step that reflects Saudi Arabias continued progress and sustained efforts toward achieving gender equality at workplaces and empowering women. It also showed that Saudi women have occupied leadership positions in the public and private sectors and they now represent, just like men, the proficient and trained national competencies that make active contributions to advancing the national economy and becoming a prominent presence within the sustainable development system according to the Saudi Vision 2030, said a statement.
The event assessed and deliberated the representation of women in various areas and sectors including maritime and port administrations.
In addition, the conference also saw the launch of the Arab Women in Maritime Association (AWiMA), a platform to bring together the women working in different sectors of the industry in the region and with a vision that aims at an effective Arab woman who promotes a strong maritime sector, said a statement.
The head of the Saudi delegation, Wijdan Al Suhaibani, won the presidency of the newly formed association, which emphasises the efficiency and excellence of Saudi women and their ability to play important roles in leading specialized bodies and organizations at all levels - local, regional and international, it said.
Al-Suhaibani said: It was an honour to be invited by IMO to represent Saudi Arabia at this prestigious conference. Our nations participation in these important events truly reflects the social transformation the country is going through and more so as we are representing the maritime industry, which has historically been male-dominated.
The participation of the Saudi Arabian delegation at the conference shed light on the practical steps taken by the Kingdom to achieve the ambitious Vision 2030, which envisages increasing the participation of women in the workforce from the present 22 per cent to 30 per cent.
The conferences most important recommendations given to the IMO Arab member states included the provision of effective support to the establishment of Arab Women in Maritime Association and working on the provision of an appropriate mechanism to help overcome the challenges of implementing the Saudi Vision 2030 and aligning its objectives with the goals of sustainable development including working with the responsible authorities in member states to ensure adherence to the achievement of sustainable development objectives, especially those related to the maritime sector, and encouraging the participation of women at all levels of education, training and maritime research, in addition to promoting efforts to recruit women in this sector in accordance with the objectives of sustainable development.
AWiMAs mission is to encourage and empower the Arab woman through improving her professional skills and highlighting her effective role in the maritime sector.
Its objectives include enhancing national and regional recognition of the role of Arab women as resources for the maritime industry, strengthening cooperation networks among Arab women in the port and maritime sectors on the local, regional and international levels, building national and regional capacity through equitable quality education and lifelong learning opportunities for the Arab woman, increasing employment opportunities for Arab women at the high management levels of the related sectors in maritime transport, developing partnerships and collaboration with national maritime administrations, regional entities, UN agencies and the private sector and strengthening the mechanisms for implementation of global partnerships of sustainable development particularly the UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, it stated. TradeArabia News Service
The explosion which caused a massive blaze at a major oil pipeline in the Bahraini village of Buri on Friday night was an act of terror, reported the BNA, citing the Minister of Interior.
Shaikh Rashid bin Abdullah Al Khalifa stressed that the blast was the latest example of a terrorist act carried out by terrorists in direct contact with, and under instructions from, Iran, stated the report.
Shaikh Rashid reaffirmed that the Ministry of Interiors top priority was the safety and security of all citizens, and it will spare no effort to maintain public safety.
The blast which reportedly occurred at around 10pm on Friday night in Buri forced hundreds of people to evacuate their homes and a nearby hospital.
The Minister of Interior was at the site of Fridays oil pipeline blast that was successfully controlled in record time by the civil defence response team, said the BNA report.
Speaking at the site alongside the head of public security and a number of officials, Shaikh Rashid said the civil defence team had dealt with the incident in record time.
The Civil Defence team was able to get the fire under control in the early hours of this morning, in co-ordination with the Bahrain Petroleum Company (Bapco) team which shut down the flow of oil to the pipeline.
An evacuation plan was activated with the assistance of the Northern Governorate Police Department and accommodation was found for local residents affected by the fire, which damaged several buildings.
The residents who were transferred to temporary accommodation expressed their thanks and appreciation for the quick response and the implementation of safety and security measures by the Civil Defence team.
The local road network remains closed while the investigation continues and the General Directorate of Traffic has called on motorists to take alternative routes until further notice.
Shaikh Rashid expressed his thanks and appreciation to the security authorities, Bapco and to the citizens who co-operated with the response team, whose collective actions ensured that there were no casualties.
The Public Prosecution was informed of the incident and security authorities started to investigate the causes of the fire.
Evidence gathered during the investigation confirmed that it was an act of terrorism designed to undermine the security of the Kingdom and its citizens, reported the BNA.
A further investigation is currently underway to identify the perpetrators and to bring them to justice, it added.
Meanwhile, the National Institution for Human Rights (NIHR) condemned the terrorist oil pipeline blast near Buri village.
It denounced the heinous act of sabotage which endangered lives, terrorised innocent people and targeted Bahrains national economy and vital interests.
NIHR described the blast as a gross violation of human rights.
In a statement, the institution voiced deep concerns over the oil pipeline blast which damaged several buildings and vehicles due to billowing smoke and heat.
The inalienable right to a safe, clean, healthy and sustainable environment is an integral part of human rights, it added.
Sonatrach, Algeria's state energy producer, has signed an agreement with Baker Hughes, a GE company (BHGE), to set up a 2,000-sq-m oilfield equipment manufacturing facility in Arzew Industrial Zone aiming to strengthen Algerias position in the upstream oil and gas market to meet local demand.
The agreement was signed in the presence of the Minister of Energy, Mustapha Guitouni, at a ceremony hosted by Sonatrach in Algiers.
Sonatrach and BHGE will have 51 per cent and 49 per cent ownership respectively, in the new company.
The project draws on the extensive experience of BHGE in oilfield equipment manufacturing and leverages the companys global and local scale to provide production solutions from the facility, which is anticipated to be operational in December 2019.
Through an initial combined investment of $45 million, the new company will provide manufacturing, assembly, and maintenance for various types of oilfield equipment including wellheads, xmas trees, BOPs and valves, establishing a major base to fulfill Algerias increased domestic upstream requirements with the potential for future exports.
The facility will also add training capabilities and offer competency development programmes for more than 200 engineers during the first seven years.
In addition to reducing dependence on imports, the facility will boost economic competitiveness and strengthen the local supply chain by helping to create 200 local jobs in Orans Arzew area, a substantial number of indirect jobs serving the sector, and the development of qualified industrial SMEs.
Abdelmoumen Ould Kaddour, CEO of Sonatrach, said: The creation of this company is a breakthrough in our integration chain, with a view to better controlling costs and deadlines to ensure the transfer of know-how and technologies through the diversification of its portfolio of goods and services.
It will contribute to strengthening the national industrial fabric and the creation of a network of national subcontractors, certified to international norms and standards. It will also build on the relationship between Sonatrach and BHGE, and boost it to a partnership of excellence, he said.
Rami Qasem, CEO of BHGE Middle East, North Africa, Turkey and India, said: Through the delivery of high end oilfield products and services, our company reaffirms its focus on driving further productivity for our customers across the entire oil and gas value chain.
We are honoured to work with Sonatrach and play an important role in supporting the countrys ambition to be among the key upstream manufacturers in North Africa. The combined effort underscores our commitment to help fuel the economy by improving economic competitiveness, developing skilled talent and delivering the highest manufacturing standards with plans for future exports, he said.
The new company will not only revitalise Algerias local supply chain, but also position the country as a key manufacturer in industrial equipment, he added.
Building on over 40 years of presence, BHGE has been involved in several major development projects including its partnership with Sonatrach and Sonelgaz for the creation of Algesco, a major turbomachinery, maintenance and repair centre in Boufarik, serving Algerias upstream, midstream and downstream customers.
BHGE has also launched the first edition of the global Oil & Gas University" programme in the country, an initiative that has trained 25 young professionals in technical and leadership skills, it stated. TradeArabia News Service
Dubai Electricity and Water Authority (Dewa) has partnered with Abu Dhabi Future Energy Company (Masdar) and Electricite de France (EDF) to develop the 800-MW third phase of the Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum Solar Park, as per the independent power producer (IPP) model.
Dewa signed another memorandum of understanding (MoU) with EDF for a consultancy contract for the pumped-storage hydroelectric power station at Hatta Dam.
Dewa is building a 250-MW pumped-storage hydroelectric power station in Hatta, which is the first of its kind in the GCC countries. It will make use of the water stored in the Hatta Dam, increasing the share of renewable energy.
The consultancy contract covers design, hydro-geological, environmental, geotechnical, and deep excavation studies. It also includes consultancy on deep-water tunnel designs, the dam and hydroelectric power station, the tender for material supply, supervision of construction work, site installation, on-site testing and commissioning.
Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum Solar Park is the largest single-site solar park in the world, with a planned capacity of 5,000 MW by 2030, and a total investment of Dh50 billion ($3.6 billion). The solar park contributes to achieving the objectives of the Dubai Clean Energy Strategy 2050, launched by HH Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice President and Prime Minister of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai, to provide 75 per cent of Dubais total power output from clean energy sources by 2050.
The 800-MW third phase of the solar park, is being implemented by Shuaa Energy 2, which was established by Dewa with a 60 per cent stake in the company. Shuaa Energy 2 was launched in partnership with the Masdar-led consortium, and EDF, through its subsidiary EDF Energies Nouvelles, which owns the remaining 40 per cent of the company. The international consortium led by the renewable energy contractor GranSolar from Spain, is handling the engineering, procurement, and construction (EPC). It includes Acciona from Spain and Ghella from Italy.
Dewa registered a Levelised Cost of Electricity (LCOE) of $2.99 cents per kilowatt hour (kW/h) for the third phase of the solar park, which will be operational in 2020. Upon its completion, the solar park will save approximately 6.5 million tonnes per annum in emissions. The third phase will be complete by 2020 in three stages over an area of 16 sq km. The first 200-MW stage is expected to be operational in the first half of 2018. The 300-MW second stage will be operational in 2019, and the third 300-MW stage will be completed in the first half of 2020.
The hydroelectric plant is part of the Hatta Comprehensive Development Plan, launched by HH Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum. The project will contribute to the development of Hatta, and meet its developmental, social, economic, and environmental needs. It will also contribute to the achievement of the Dubai Clean Energy Strategy 2050, said Saeed Mohammed Al Tayer, managing director and CEO of Dewa.
Dewas initiatives within the Hatta Comprehensive Development Plan will involve Hatta residents in the projects that will be implemented and provide about 200 permanent jobs in the technical, administrative and operational fields, and over 300 jobs in the visitors centre, outreach and tourism facilities associated with the project, in addition to more than 2,000 jobs during project implementation, added Al Tayer.
The pumped-storage hydroelectric power station will make use of the existing water in the Hatta Dam, which can store up to 1,716 million gallons, and an upper reservoir that will be built in the mountain to store up to 880 million gallons. The upper reservoir will be 300 m above the dam level. During off-peak hours, turbines that use clean and cheap solar energy will pump water from the dam to the upper reservoir. During peak-load hours when production cost is high, turbines operated by the force of waterfall from the upper reservoir will generate electricity that will be connected to Dewas grid. The efficiency of power production will reach 90 per cent with response to demand for energy within 90 seconds.
On the proud occasion of the President of Frances visit to the United Arab Emirates, the MoU signing highlights the strength of our partnership with Dubai Electricity Water Authority and EDF Energies Nouvelles in developing Phase Three of the Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum Solar Park, said Mohamed Jameel Al Ramahi, chief executive officer of Masdar.
It also emphasises the critical value of public-private collaboration in advancing commercially viable renewable energy, here in the UAE and the wider region. Now under construction, the 800-MW expansion of the Dubai Solar Park will be a benchmark for the global renewables sector on completion, a showcase of UAE expertise, and the capabilities of our international partners, across all aspects of utility-scale renewable energy project development. At Masdar, we are eager to build on our collaboration with Dewa and EDF to pursue future opportunities in renewable energy and clean technologies locally and internationally, Al Ramahi added.
Jean-Bernard Levy, the EDF Groups CEO and chairman, said: We are proud to be supporting the energy transition in the UAE, in close collaboration with major local partners. Our involvement in innovative renewable projects such as Mohammed bin Rachid Al Maktoum Solar Park and Hatta hydropower plant demonstrate our know-how as global leader in low-carbon growth. Both projects are aligned with the two key objectives of the groups CAP 2030 strategy: achieving 50 GW of renewable energy capacity by year 2030 and growing our business in rapidly expanding markets such as the Middle East. TradeArabia News Service
RACINE The Racine County Human Services Department collaborated on a new documentary film called (un)wanted, which spotlights the foster care crisis in southeastern Wisconsin.
Produced and directed by Joey Papa, (un)wanted was released on Oct. 30. Papa created the film to raise awareness of how children enter foster care and the dire need for community support and engagement in small and large ways. The project emerged as Papa learned more about the need for fostering children in his surrounding communities.
I knew I wasnt able to foster a child tomorrow, but I needed to do something and that something is this film, said Papa.
A public speaker and self-described media maker, Papa, of Wind Point, first learned about the crisis from Heather Lojeski. Longtime foster parents Heather and Mark Lojeski created the nonprofit Faith, Hope & Love about four years ago. The organization helps kids in crisis, like foster children, by providing them with duffel bags filled with comfort items and personal care products.
Papas goal is to inspire the people of southeastern Wisconsin to take action, stressing that everyone can do something.
(un)wanted addresses the steady rise in the number of children entering foster care and the decline in homes available to take children.
(un)wanted aligns with Racine Countys work to resolve these challenges, said Hope Otto, Racine County Human Services director. We reallocated resources to increase foster family recruitment and retention, and we engaged the community this past year through our Racine County Foster Care Task Force. We are determined to make sure our kids in crisis have the best outcomes possible.
In addition to the Racine County Human Services Department, Childrens Hospital of Wisconsin, Saint As, Safe Families of Wisconsin and Agape House also collaborated on the film. To access the film or for resources, go to www.unwantedthefilm.com.
For more information on foster care in Racine County, contact Kerry Milkie, Youth and Family Manager, at 262-638-6511 or go to www.racinecounty.com/fostercare.
RACINE Cory Mason wants it known that hes out to make a difference.
Plenty brings him pride as he thinks back on his 11 years as a state Assembly member, but he thinks of all the work that remains.
I feel like theres as much undone as there was done in my time as a legislator, he said from his new office at City Hall.
Mason took the oath as Racines new mayor on Tuesday. He was chosen in an October special election over 6th District Alderman Sandy Weidner to replace John Dickert, who left his position in July to lead the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence Cities Initiative. Now that voters have selected Mason to complete the term, which ends in the spring of 2019, he said he is looking forward to the chance to have a more tangible impact.
As a legislator, Mason said he had the opportunity to set statewide policy. But he was just one voice among many and for the past six-plus years a minority voice, at that, serving as a Democrat in a Republican-majority Legislature.
At its core, whats always driven me to do public service is improving the lives of the people that I represent, Mason said. I have no doubt that theres more opportunity to do that as a mayor.
Mason is winding down his work in Madison after announcing hell resign his Assembly position effective Jan. 15. Meanwhile, the husband and father of three said he wants to address the same issues he worked on for Wisconsin at the local level here in Racine. Employment and rebuilding the citys middle class will be top priorities.
Employment
Mason said the first bill he introduced after he was elected to the Assembly in 2006 was to raise Wisconsins minimum wage from $7.25 per hour. Although the minimum continues at that rate today, Mason hopes to use his new position to address his hometowns economy.
The newly signed contract for the development of Foxconns liquid crystal display panel plant in nearby Mount Pleasant gives the city a chance to not only think about its priorities for economic development, but also to help its residents find work, he said.
Knowing that construction jobs will be the first big wave of employment opportunities headed to Racine County, Mason wants to work on preparing unemployed and under-employed residents to fill those positions. He said he wants to work with local pre-apprenticeship programs to ensure people are prepared when those jobs become available.
The challenge for the city is: How do you recruit your workforce to be at a place that when those jobs open up, our residents are ready to take them? he said.
As a state lawmaker, Mason said his constituents have told him over the past 11 years how they long for the days of middle-class security. Although tomorrows job opportunities look different than those of the past, he said, the principle remains the same. Mason said he wants to work with the county and with technical colleges to help people prepare.
The longing for the economic security that we once had in this town, thats completely legitimate, he said.
Energy and environment
The new mayor said he also plans to continue his activism for the environment. Mason said he wants to work more on energy policies and reduce the citys carbon footprint. Not only does he want to reduce city governments energy consumption, he said he wants to leverage state and federal programs to help private businesses and property owners do the same.
I could just sort of go Oh well, the city doesnt have money, theres nothing I can do, he said. Or, I can find a way to create a vision and then find other funding sources to make it a reality.
KENOSHA WGTD (91.1 FM) is owned and operated as a public service of Gateway Technical College and is an affiliate of Wisconsin Public Radio. For an updated schedule, visit its website at www.wgtd.org.
The Morning Show airs every weekday between 8:10 and 9 a.m. Following is a schedule of show topics for the coming week:
Monday Anna Mazurkiewicz, associate professor of history, University of Gdanks, Poland. Author of Do Those Who Pay the Piper Call the Tune: The story of Polish and East European Exiles in the U.S. after World War II. Mazurkiewicz is visiting the University of Wisconsin-Parkside.
Tuesday Celebrating the final episode of the web series Star Trek Continues with James Kerwin, who has written and directed several episodes in the series and cast member Kipleigh Brown.
Wednesday Actor-activist-veteran Stephan Wolfort, who is coming to Carthage College Thursday night to present his one-man show Cry Havoc for Carthages Vet Night of the Arts.
Thursday Bryan Albrecht, president of Gateway Technical College.
Friday Postponed from last week: Sylvia Brown, author of Grappling with Legacy. Brown was once one of Americas wealthiest families, which helped create Brown University. But her familys history also includes the specter of slave ownership.
Saturday Programming includes Financial Overview at 9 a.m., Breakfast Bytes at 9:45 a.m., Education Matters at 10:30 a.m. and Community Matters at 11:15 a.m.
New Delhi, November 12
Debt-laden Air India has received a loan worth of Rs 1,500 crore from Bank of India to meet urgent working capital needs less than a month after floating a tender in this regard, an airline source said.
For the second time in recent months, the flagship carrier has received loans from a public sector lender.
Battling multiple headwinds, the disinvestment-bound airline has been working on ways to reduce its debt, including by way of selling non-core assets and expanding operations.
The source said the airline has received Rs 1,500 crore loan from Bank of India after the tender for the amount was floated last month in order to meet urgent working capital needs.
A query sent to Bank of India remained unanswered.
A tender was issued by the carrier on October 18 in which it had sought government guarantee-backed short-term loans totalling up to Rs 1,500 crore to meet its urgent working capital requirements.
Prior to that, the airline had borrowed around Rs 3,250 crore as short tenure loans from two lendersIndusInd Bank and Punjab National Bank, sources had said. This loan too was for meeting urgent working capital needs and the tender was floated in September.
In the last nearly three months, at least two public sector lendersBank of India and Punjab National Bankhave provided loans to the airline.
As part of efforts to revive the ailing carrier, which has a debt burden of more than Rs 50,000 crore, the government is in the process of finalising the contours of its strategic disinvestment.
Air India is surviving on taxpayers money under the bailout package extended by the previous UPA government in 2012.
As part of the turnaround plan, the national carrier is to receive up to Rs 30,231 crore from the government over a ten-year period subject to meeting certain performance thresholds.
The Air India group flies to 44 overseas and 75 domestic destinations. There are flights to Copenhagen, Tokyo, Washington, Stockholm, Sydney, Hong Kong, Kabul, Colombo, Seoul, Singapore and London, among other foreign cities. PTI
Ramkrishan Upadhyay
Tribune News Service
Chandigarh, November 11
In a relief for residents, the Chandigarh Housing Board (CHB) is considering to reduce the transfer fee of flats by more than 50 per cent. Sources said the committee formed by the CHB to examine the issue of reduction of transfer fee has recommended charging transfer fee at the rate of 3 per cent of the prevailing collector rates of the area.
In its recommendations placed at the last meeting of the Board of the Directors earlier, the committee had suggested to reduce the transfer fee by 50 per cent. But finding the levy still high, some members suggested reducing the rate further to give benefit to allottees.
Sources said the committee had now finalised the report which suggested a transfer fee of 3 percent of the prevailing collector rates of the area.
The Administration had fixed floor-wise collector rates for CHB flats. Earlier, various residents welfare associations had demanded reduction in the transfer fee, following which the CHB formed the committee comprising officers and the members of the board to make recommendations in this regard.
Presently, the CHB is charging transfer fee as notified by the Chandigarh Administration for different types of residential properties. Fifteen per cent of the price at the time of allotment is being charged in case of consensual transfer.
Sources said the new rates would bring a major relief to allottees of the Sector 63 housing scheme as they had been paying a fee ranging between Rs 7 lakh to Rs 10 lakh for transfer of the flats. If the CHB approves the recommendation of the panel, the transfer fee would be reduced to Rs 2 lakh to Rs 3 lakh depending on the floor on which the flat is located.
Zorawar Singh, general secretary of the Residents Welfare Association, Sector 63 housing scheme, said the recommendation was in the right direction as it would give relief to them since they were now paying transfer fee in lakhs apart from the stamp duty and other charges, which also ran in lakhs.
Pavneet Singh Chadha
Tribune News Service
Mohali, November 11
A day after a former senior branch manager of UCO Bank was arrested for allegedly duping people of Rs 3.6 crore by taking vehicle loans using their documents, the police today said the accused, Rajesh Khanna, used to target naive and gullible persons who mostly approached the bank for personal loan.
The police said the accused, a resident of Sector 12 in Panchkula, specifically targeted people who were not well-informed about the banking system and were in dire need of personal or property loan.
The investigating officer in the case, ASI Onkar Singh, said 49 persons had been booked on a complaint of the UCO Bank zonal manager. He said, These persons have defaulted on vehicle loans availed from the banks Kharar branch.
During their questioning, the police came to know that many of them had been deceived by Khanna and his aides.
The police said Khanna had met Davinder Kumar when he was posted in Nayagaon, and through him, he came into contact with other aides Karanbir Singh and Vivek Kumar. Together, they secured vehicle loans from the bank using original documents of persons named in the complaint.
Khanna told these applicants that their loan had not been approved. He also opened fake accounts in the name of automobile companies in different banks to deposit loan money, said Onkar Singh.
The police said an alleged involvement of a bank official in the Central Bank of India, Manauli branch in Sector 80, where most of the accounts had been opened, was being probed. Sources said the accused had allegedly opened accounts in Andhra Bank and Syndicate Bank branches too.
The police said most of the loans were in the range of Rs 10-15 lakh. Most of the persons named in the complaint had no information of loans having been sanctioned in their names.
Onkar Singh said, In one such instance, a car loan was sanctioned in the name of a person. But the person said he had approached the bank for a property loan, which was denied.
In another case, a person had approached the bank for a personal loan to send his son abroad. Khanna initially told him that loan would not be approved. Later, the aides convinced the man to submit documents and assured him that a loan of Rs 7 lakh would be sanctioned. The amount was paid in cash. However, a loan of Rs 10 lakh was sanctioned in his name for a Skoda car.
In some cases, the aides had paid three-four instalments for vehicle loans sanctioned in the name of other people.
Inspector Lakhwinder Singh, the EOW incharge, said investigation was on to nab the aides, who had been absconding.
The police said Khanna sanctioned 113 vehicle loans and eight home loans during his tenure as senior manager of UCO Banks Kharar branch from September 2012 to November 2013.
The accused will be produced in court on Monday.
Tribune News Service
Patiala, November 12
Punjab accounts for one of the states with the highest number of diabetics in India. This was stated by experts during a Health Talk and Walk organised at Columbia Asia Hospital here yesterday.
Lack of awareness about the disease and its health complications, delayed diagnosis, myths surrounding diabetes management and irregular treatment made diabetes detection and management extremely difficult, said experts.
The hospital will reportedly try to educate people about the importance of exercising in combating diabetes. Diabetes is fast gaining the status of an epidemic in India, with more than 6.2 crore diabetics.
We need massive awareness programmes regarding diabetes. We have to teach people about the relevance of staying fit and exercising. Walking is the easiest form of exercise. We also need to educate people about the causes, symptoms and cures of the disease. We need to convey the guidelines regarding controlling diabetes and related co-morbidities such as blood pressure and lipid disorders, said Dr Inderpreet Kaur, Consultant Endocrinology, Columbia Asia Hospital.
New York, November 12
An 18-year-old Indian-American dental student was killed in the US in a hit-and-run case when the driver of a pick-up truck ran his vehicle over her after a minor collision, according to media reports.
Taranjit Parmar was on her way home when she got into a minor accident on Hempstead Turnpike near Gardiners Ave in Levittown on Thursday, New York Daily News reported.
Parmar and the truck driver pulled over into the parking lot of a nearby gas station after colliding, police said.
But when she got out to inspect the damage to her vehicle, the driver of the pickup truck took off and ran over Parmar while speeding away, it added.
Parmar was on the phone with her mother when she was run over in the middle of rush-hour traffic, her father was quoted as saying by the report.
"She had called my wife and said, 'Hi, Mom,'" Parmar's father, Ranjit Parmar said.
"Then she said 'Oh, no, Stop!' and the call got disconnected. There was no answer after that," he added.
Medics rushed Parmar to Nassau University Medical Center, where she died from massive head and chest injuries.
Parmar, who was studying to be a dentist at Adelphi University, was 10 minutes from her home when the tragedy occurred, the report added. - PTI
New Delhi, November 12
External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj said on Sunday that the government will provide all help to the family of the Indian-American motel owner, who was shot dead in the US.
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Akash Talati, 40, who owned Knights Inn and Diamondz Gentlemen's Club in Fayetteville city, North Carolina, was shot dead yesterday during an exchange of gunfire between a man who had been escorted out of the club and a security guard, local police said.
In a series of tweets, Swaraj said the Indian Embassy in the US has informed her of the circumstances leading to the death of Talati.
"The deceased was shot by an assailant who was escorted out of his club. The security guard returned the fire and the assailant was also injured. We are in touch with the family of the deceased and will provide them all help," Swaraj said.
Talati was shot dead while four other people were injured in the shootout. Talati is reportedly from Anand in Gujarat.
Police Detective Jamaal Littlejohn said Markeese Dewitt, 23, of Fayetteville has been charged with attempted murder and assault with a deadly weapon inflicting serious injury.
Littlejohn said Dewitt was shot four or five times and remained in serious condition at Cape Fear Valley Medical Centre, fayobserver.com reported.
He said only Dewitt and the security guard exchanged gunfire and the others were bystanders.
One of the victims was in a fair condition at the hospital. The two others were treated and released. Talati died at the hospital.
Talati is reportedly from Anand in Gujarat.
Police have not released the names of three other people who were injured. Littlejohn said they included the security guard and a female employee of the club who operated the cash register.
Littlejohn said security escorted Dewitt out of the club because he had caused a disturbance. He said Dewitt appeared to have gone to his vehicle, got a gun, went back inside the club and started shooting.
Littlejohn said police have no idea what caused Dewitt to get kicked out of the club.
"All we know is he got put out, he goes and gets a gun and it goes crazy from there," Littlejohn said.
Detectives are actively investigating the homicide and shooting and have appealed to the public to contact them if they have any information on the incident. PTI
Sumedha Sharma
Tribune News Service
Gurugram, November 11
The CBI today produced the Ryan student murder accused in the juvenile court and, against speculation, did not seek his further remand.
The agency reportedly told the court that it did not require any further questioning of the accused as of now. So, he was sent to a correction home.
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The accused, who was initially the prime witness, was apprehended by the CBI a few days ago for allegedly killing Pradyuman Thakur, a class II student of Ryan International School, to get postponed exams and the parent-teacher meeting (PTM). Before producing him in court, the CBI took the accused to the school for the sequential recreation of the events on the day of the murder (September 8).
The entire recreation was videographed and the teen accused was asked to explain the entire chain of events be it his entry into the toilet or going to the examination hall or raising the alarm.
The team accompanied by forensic experts took various measurements, recorded the time and even questioned over 50 staff members.
Then, the agency used a soft toy and reportedly even asked the accused to slit its throat.
Reacting to it, the father of the accused alleged that his son was being tortured and framed.
They are brainwashing him by making him enact the murder over and over again to make their forced confession strong in court. Till now, they have not given even a single piece of evidence that could justify their allegations. The other day, they forced me and my son to sign confessions and only then I could meet him. They are now torturing him every day to mug up the murder story they are cooking, said the accuseds father.
The agency, in its official statement, refuted the allegations, saying the boy was being questioned in accordance with the Juvenile Act.
The juvenile court has appointed an independent welfare officer to monitor the investigation and questioning of the apprehended student. This impartial officer remains present during the questioning sessions and also whenever the accused is taken to any location, said an investigator.
It may be noted that after initial applause, questions are being raised on many of the CBIs claims, especially the motive of the murder.
They say my child is weak in studies and not that intelligent. So on what basis they say that he not only planned the murder, but also managed to fool the police for two months. How could he vanish from the crime spot, get teachers and students to stay quiet for months or make the conductor take the blame? said the father.
Vishal Joshi
Tribune News Service
Kurukshetra, November 12
The ploy of a Haryana youth to expose the alleged ineffectiveness of the police landed him in the jail.
Kuldeep Singh of Harigarh Bhorakh near Pehowa town in the district was arrested from Ambala City on Sunday after he reached there to meet Health Minister Anil Vij.
Abhishek Garg, Kurukshetra SP, said the minister immediately alerted the police about the presence of Kuldeep near his residence and ordered immediate arrest of the accused.
The SP said Kuldeep was involved in at least six cases in the last three years and it was suspected that he wanted to tamper with files pertaining to the police complaints against him.
Meanwhile, Kuldeep has been charged with trespassing and stealing police files, laptop, the uniform of an SHO and other items from Pehowa police station on Friday night.
Kuldeep had filmed his entry and the theft on his mobile phone.
He had exhibited various items stolen from the police station in a plastic sack before the journalists in Pehowa yesterday.
Kuldeep had claimed that unknown persons had smashed windowpanes of his car and took away over Rs 4,000 cash.
Numerous thefts have been reported in Pehowa in the last few weeks. But the police are not taking any action on such cases including on my complaint. I entered the police station and took away their official properties and other belongings only to expose the lackadaisical attitude of the police officials at Pehowa, he had reportedly told reporters yesterday.
However, Pehowa SHO Prateek Kumar today said there was no complaint of cash robbery as claimed by Kuldeep.
He said the accused did not use the well guarded main gate but trespassed through an open window into the police station.
The police learnt about the involvement of Kuldeep into the theft case only after he himself admitted before the media persons yesterday.
We are scrutinising the files and other police property recovered from him. We are also working what prompted him to malign the police by falsely claiming inaction in his complaint, said the SHO.
NEW DELHI: Patients from far-off places in the country and abroad can now consult specific doctors in the National Capital using their smartphones.
Experts at Sir Ganga Ram Hospital here have developed a mobile app myFollowup where patients can upload their clinical reports and get advice from specialists at an affordable consultation fee.
The patients, from Raipur in Chhattisgarh or living in Kenya, Indonesia and Malaysia, now need not travel all the way to Delhi to seek medical advice, saving them staggering travel cost and time.
However, in cases where physical examination is required, the app is useful only after meeting the specialist at least once.
Its not a blind date. The relationship between a doctor and a patient is that of trust. We must know the diagnosis and patients history, Dr Sudhir Kalhan, co-chairman of the Department of Minimal Access & Bariatric Surgery Centre at Sir Ganga Ram Hospital, told PTI.
We have performed many surgeries on patients who came from different parts of the country but now they need not be present physically for post-surgery treatment. This app is making huge difference, Kalhan explains.
So far, over 10,000 users have downloaded this app and more than 200 doctors from Sir Ganga Ram Hospital are available for consultation after pre-approved online appointments.
With Delhi being reduced to a gas chamber due to severe air pollution and a health emergency declared, this app again became a saviour for the parents of a 11-year-old girl, who lives in one of the satellite towns.
She underwent a liver transplant at the hospital in August but developed fever a few days ago.
The family panicked as fever in the post-transplant period can be an ominous sign. In view of the ongoing smog it was not advisable for the child to travel all the way to hospital for evaluation, explains Dr. Nishant Wadhwa, a paediatric gastroenterologist and hepatologist.
Through this app not only the blood investigations were ordered, they were also able to share the results of the investigations via it. The treatment was initiated promptly and communicated to them through the app, he adds.
Dr Wadhwa says he has at least 12 patients from Malaysia, Indonesia, Kenya and Dubai who are consulting him via the app.
Most liver transplant patients need to be protected from both bacterial and viral infections especially during the initial post-transplant period, so it not advisable for them to travel and get exposed to pollutants in air these days. Asked how the idea of developing the app originate, Dr Kalhan explains: Doctors used to struggle with patients calling at odd hours, trying to explain their health problems.
This coupled with the challenge of recalling all patients by name and face, had become a nightmare.
This led to the idea of developing myFollowup. It is a doctors virtual OPD.
The physical examination of the patient cant be replaced, how it works in that case?
This app is used only where physical examination is not needed. This is the reason that it is used at present for only patients seen by the doctors and who need a follow up. If any physical examination is required the patient is advised to meet the doctor personally.
The doctors, using the technology, say the app is a boon for them since they are able to effectively organise their work-life balance. Further, since the doctors consultation fee is to be paid before booking a call, many unwanted calls are also filtered out.
Dr Kanav Anand, who is a paediatric nephrologist, also cites an example how it is helping outstation patients.
A kid who hails from Raipur was suffering from renal failure due to HUS (a rare disease). For him to come and show his kidney function tests every now and then from Raipur was practically not possible.
But with myFollowup app he keeps sharing his reports every 2-3 weeks from his hometown and gets his treatment prescriptions from my side, Anand says.
The kids father, who is an additional district judge in Raipur, says the app proved to be a boon for him.
Last year in November when my son started treatment in the hospital, I was asked to visit the doctor after every fortnight. It was very expensive to come to Delhi by flight with my son and wife and also very inconvenient.
But now I consult Dr Kanav after 15 days via app and we are required to be there only after five months. See what difference it has made to our lives, he says.
In the next phase, the hospital is planning to introduce video calling facility where a face-to-face interaction with patients can happen. PTI
ROCHESTER Residents in the countys west end have questions about how the Foxconn manufacturing plant and all of the workers and new development it is expected to bring is going to affect their communities.
During a semi-annual super meeting Wednesday night of northwest Racine County community and school representatives, Norway Town Chair Jean Jacobson suggested that the communities all work together for planning purposes related to the development. She believes residents in her area have one primary question about the issue: Hows it going to affect the rural atmosphere weve loved and lived in?
Jacobson believes that all the communities in the west end should take a look at their land use plans and update them before work at the Foxconn site in Mount Pleasant begins. In her opinion, communities should decide where they want new businesses to locate and make a plan.
We dont want the developers to come in and do it for us, she said.
Jacobson believes that the county has done a good job with this sort of planning in the past, but the smaller communities in the west end dont have as much experience with it.
As the former county executive and County Board chair, Jacobson said she always looks at issues on a broad scale.
We should get together to talk about how we see the area growing, she said.
Rochesters Village President Ed Chart said his constituents mostly want to know if there will be enough people in the county to fulfill the expected demand for jobs. If not, people will likely be moving in, possibly to west end communities in addition to those east of Interstate 94.
It will affect us somewhat, Chart said.
Foxconn, a Taiwanese company, hopes to employ up to 13,000 workers at its proposed 32 million-square-foot manufacturing plant in Mount Pleasant.
The numbers are mind-boggling, Chart said.
Construction traffic
It is also possible that traffic in the west part of the county could increase during the plants construction, Chart said, as they transport raw materials that might be used at the Foxconn site, such as gravel and stone. Rochester, the Town of Waterford and the Town of Burlington are home to quarries.
Chart agreed with Jacobson that it would be beneficial for all the communities to work together, and praised her leadership in this effort.
He said all the entities want to ensure that any changes or developments in one community wont be detrimental to another.
I think were a very special group here, Jacobson said, I think its a very unique part of this county.
Tribune News Service
Shimla, November 12
The Social Welfare Council of India wants Article 324(5) amended to make the Election Commission fully autonomous so that it is able to insulate the electoral process from political pressure or executive interference.
In a letter addressed to the Prime Minister, chairman of the council Rajeshwar Singh Negi said the Election Commission was an autonomous body entrusted with the task of conducting free and fair elections and all recommendations and reports of the Goswami Committee, Jeevan Reddy Committee, Election Commission and Law Commission on electoral reforms be incorporated in the amendment.
Expressing concern over the lengthy poll schedule and staggered polls, Negi said despite the Election Commission being capable of conducting the general elections across the country in one go and advocating holding of the state and general elections simultaneously, its handling of the recent Assembly elections, especially in Uttar Pradesh in over seven phases, shows a picture in contrast.
Negi lamented that candidates and political parties in Himachal did not have a fair chance and time to either inform or interact with their electors in the shortest span of 12 days for campaigning and it appeared that the commission did not keep in mind the tough topography and remoteness of several areas in the hill state.
It defies explanation as to why the elections were completed in less than a fortnight yet the results postponed by over a month.
Referring to Himachal, where the model code of conduct will remain effective up to December 18, he said the code should not be imposed for more than a month.
New Delhi, November 12
The Supreme Court has agreed to examine a matter in which the Himachal Pradesh High Court has ordered the payment of Rs 30,000 to a hearing and speech impaired rape victim for her life time as compensation.
The 80 per cent handicapped victim had given birth to a girl child last year.
A bench of justices J Chelameswar and S Abdul Nazeer issued a notice to the Himachal Pradesh State Legal Services Authority (HPSLSA) for making appropriate arrangement regarding the payment of the compensation amount. It also directed the apex court registry to communicate the matter to the Chairman, HPSLSA, and depute an officer to be present on the next date of hearing on November 27.
The state government has challenged the High Court order saying there was no scheme for compensating the rape victim for life time.
Advocate Varinder Kumar Sharma, appearing for the state government, said the High Court has committed an apparent error in law in failing to consider the quantum of compensation in accordance with the existing scheme applicable in the state.
He said the quantum of compensation awarded by the High Court was contrary to the scheme and the highest compensation payable was Rs 1 lakh in case of death or disability equal to or more than 80 per cent. The court had on June 29, 2016, while dismissing the appeal of convict Rajneesh, alias Vicky, said the prosecutrix was doubly in disadvantageous position since she had to maintain herself and her baby.
She belongs to the lowest strata of society and has already suffered a lot. Thus, she needs a special rehabilitation, it had said and partially modified the trial court order to direct Rs 10,000 per month as victim compensation, in addition to Rs 20,000 awarded to her by the trial court by way of fine, during her life time.
On June 26, 2015, a sessions court in Hamirpur had held Rajneesh guilty of rape and sentenced him to 10-year rigorous imprisonment, imposing a fine of Rs 20,000.
According to the FIR lodged on December 26, 2013, by the parents of the victim, the convict, taking advantage of the prosecutrix who is hearing and speech impaired, had raped her several times and impregnated her. PTI
Rajendra P Jindal
Imagine you are getting on with years and see a friend of yours terminally bed ridden, unable to take care of himself. Or you know someone riddled with cancer and suffering from excruciating pain. Reflexively, you pray not to be put through this kind of torture. But if you still get into this kind of situation, your prayer changes to: God, please take me away. If God still doesnt listen, who will help? Probably your children are settled abroad or they dont care. You wish for a lethal injection but would have to be lucky to be in the Netherlands.
On the face of it, euthanasia should be a straightforward procedure. But the extremes of the debate remain as starkly opposed as life and death themselves. This has been going on for centuries and no solution seems in sight any time soon.
Those who are pro-euthanasia (a vast majority of doctors, lawyers and the suffering lot) hold that a mentally competent, terminally-ill patient suffering agonising pain wants someone to end his life, which has lost all quality. This reasonable right - not to be forced to suffer - should be treated like a fundamental right. They summarise their arguments on three grounds: (i) We need it. It is a matter of compassion. (ii) We want it. It is a matter of patients autonomy. It is his life, not yours. Therefore, let them make their own choice. (iii) We can control it.
Many fear this is like giving a dangerous weapon in the hands of doctors and the society as a whole though the pro people argue that there can be sufficient in-built controls. In the survey-friendly US, two out of three want doctors to help desperately sick patients commit suicide. In a debate at Debate.org, 78% said yes to euthanasia.
Those opposed are again many doctors, lawyers and mostly religious far-right people. Their point of view is that once legalised, it will be widely abused and they quote the Hippocratic Oath: first of all, do no harm. The religious say life is a gift from God and nobody has the right to take it; that suicide is a terrible tragedy and the society should prevent it rather than promote it. Their most potent and pragmatic argument is that good palliative care can make many patients change their minds. What they ignore is that it can be unaffordable, can fail and there are not sufficient doctors trained in palliative care. Another strong argument is that social and family pressures may be behind the desire for euthanasia. The right to die may actually be the duty to die.
Many doctors agree that though the law forbids them but in the end, their conscience wins. A significant number of doctors admit to having committed euthanasia in this way. There are patients sophisticated enough to signal this requirement and there are physicians sympathetic enough do it in a way that the intent and the knowledge are left deliberately ambiguous. Though many physicians fear that its legalisation will lead to ill-considered decisions, some vehemently hold that it is incredibly arrogant to say doctors will let patients go just like that.
If those who matter were to enter less into the debate and more into how to regularise it, an acceptable could be found.
If they can offer a gentler and dignified alternative to either a life ground down by pain or death in a high tech hell, the demand for euthanasia may disappear. It may be possible to find a compromise between foes and advocates of legalised euthanasia.
If euthanasia was considered not incompatible with patient autonomy and good terminal care, we may be able to find a sensible and humane way of dealing with the unbearable pain and suffering.
Many nations might be encouraged by the example of the Netherlands to move towards more merciful laws. Hopefully, sanity will prevail and the world will become a more humane place than it is today. A few years back, a book by Dr. Bert Keizer, a nursing home physician in Amsterdam, about his life among the dying, Dancing with Mister D, was a best seller. Eventually, this sort of procedure will probably settle down to be no more extraordinary than abortion.
The writer is a surgeon at Guru Gobind Singh Medical College and Hospital, Faridkot
Right to Die
On October 11, 2017, the Supreme Court reserved its verdict on a petition seeking to legalise active euthanasia based on a living will. Petitioner argued that voluntary euthanasia was aimed at getting rid of unbearable sufferings and pain and there should be legal recognition of a living will executed by an individual in full possession of his/her decision-making capacity, without any duress, enunciating the condition of ill health in which he/she would not like to prolong life by artificial support. The Centre contended it.
THE PETITIONER
Cited Indian cultural and religious traditions in Jainism and Hinduism and demanded voluntary euthanasia should be allowed for terminally ill patients
The right to die with dignity is included in the right to live with dignity guaranteed under Article 21 of the Constitution
In such a situation, persons duly authorised by the patient, should be allowed to arrange for termination of his/her life
It rests on the pillars of free will, freedom of choice and right of self-determination exercised at a time when the person is hale and hearty
THE CENTRE
The Centre opposed euthanasia on the ground that it was prone to misuse by near relatives of terminally ill patients
Legalising living will would amount to waiving of the fundamental right to life enshrined under Article 21 of the Constitution
As per the Hippocratic Oath, the primary duty of every doctor is to save lives of patients
Individual may change his death wish
The Court
While reserving its verdict, SC said that a persons advance directive to withdraw medical support to let him/her die with dignity should take effect only after a medical board affirmed that the patients condition was incurable and irreversible
Critical Terms
Active euthanasia - ending life of a patient by an act like lethal injection
Passive euthanasia - withdrawing life support to a terminally ill patient
Living will - advance directive to physicians specifying the medical treatment
Legal status
Section 309 of IPC makes attempt to commit suicide a punishable offence
Section 206 of IPC makes abetment of suicide punishable
In the absence of any specific law, euthanasia had been illegal in India
The Supreme Court on March 7, 2011 legalised passive euthanasia
Active euthanasia is a crime
Religious status
Hinduism: Samadhi is practiced to attain union with the divine
Jainism: Santhara is practiced by giving up food and water until death
Catholics: Life is a gift from God, no human being has the authority to take it
Islam: Human life is sacred and human beings should not interfere in this
Buddhism: Ambiguous
Judaism: Life is sacred, cant shorten it
Denied compassion
March 2011, SC rejected euthanasia plea in case of Aruna Shanbaug, a nurse at KEM Hospital in Mumbai, died in May 2015 after spending over four decades in a vegetative state after she was sexually assaulted and choked by a ward boy.
Our Correspondent
Phagwara, November 12
A few days after Gurbaksh Kaur and her daughter Reena Rani were rescued from Saudi Arabia and brought to India, a Jalandhar woman has urged External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj to rescue her.
Sonia, a resident of Atti village near Goraya, has urged Swaraj to rescue her from captivity in Saudi Arabia.
Sonia, wife of Lal Chand, went to the Gulf country to work as a domestic help. A mother of two, she has urged through the social media to the Centre, Punjab government and AAP MP Bhagwant Mann to save her from her employer, who has been allegedly torturing her at his house for the past several months.
Srinagar, November 12
Hardline separatist leader Syed Ali Shah Geelani on Sunday slammed National Conference president Farooq Abdullah for dismissing talk of an independent Kashmir, saying power-hungry politicians have always played deceit with people.
Blaming mainstream politicians for the prevailing political uncertainty and chaos in Jammu and Kashmir, the Hurriyat Conference chairman asked Abdullah to revisit annals of history and claimed that the latter was speaking against the wishes and aspirations of the people.
These power-hungry politicians always played deceit. These irresponsible and short-sighted people have always served the interests of their masters. They are barefaced, follow their treacherous politics and are never ashamed of their absurd statements, Geelani said in a statement here.
Abdullah, who is an MP from Srinagar, had said yesterday that talk of an independent Kashmir was wrong as the Valley is landlocked and surrounded by three nuclear powersChina, Pakistan and India. PTI
Jasmine Singh
Though Mohali-based Prabhloch Singh has decided to launch an initiative, where his NGO Human Rights Protection Group & MFP Federation will be providing a respectable burial/cremation to deceased bodies of family members who cannot afford it, he has qualms in admitting that the word, bodies sounds harsh. The word doesnt sound good; because it invites statistics along with it. Like five years down the line, people will ask me how many bodies my NGO cremated or buried, which is not how I want to hear it.
A successful DJ at the age of 15, Prabhloch switched gears, taking up human rights and fighting for them when Manu Sharma was acquitted in Jessica Lal case. He formed a pressure group (The Middle Finger group) that has been active in various protests including the Jyoti Murder case, 2012 Delhi gang rape, Aarushi Murder case. Now, after 11 years into humanitarian work, Prabhloch has decided to give club community welfare with activism. And the first initiative is that he will make sure that every deceased person gets respectful last rites, which starts from Chandigarh and will be taken PAN India. The initiative hashtagged #LeaveNoOneBehind and #RespectLastRite. Do you have any idea what the burial cost is? It is actually less than Rs 500, but it is the religious ceremonies where families end up spending more than Rs 10,000. Many families cannot afford Rs 500 also. So, through our NGO we will arrange respectable transportation of the body to the burial ground, arrange for the cremation/burial and serve clean water to the members present at the cremation.
Prabhloch will single-handedly be funding this initiative along with some money from his own NGO, but he does expect corporates and MPs to help him in this cause. He has also written to PM Narendra Modi, I am still waiting for the reply, he is quick to add.
Today, taking out a candle light march has become an easy way to voice concern. However, I feel, it is important to first study the case, see what the agencies are doing about it and then come to streets if justice is denied, shares the man who says sometime back he decided to give up on humanity and humanitarian task, But each time I see some wrong being done, I cannot help myself from voicing my concern about it.
jasmine@tribunemail.com
Our Correspondent
Doraha, November 11
The police have recovered four boxes of liquor and 400 injections in two separate cases on the National Highway No. 1, near Doraha.
Hawaldar Kulwinder Singh along with a police party recovered four boxes of liquor from Labh Singh, a resident of Rajgarh village, at a naka on the National Highway No. 1, near Doraha.
In another case a police party lead by Sub-Inspector Sajjan Singh nabbed Som Nath and Bikram of PAP, Jalandhar, and recovered 400 injections from them.
A case was registered under Sections 61/1/14 of the Excise Act at the Doraha police station.
Shahira Naim
Tribune News Service
Lucknow, November 12
Making the Uttar Pradesh urban body elections bigger than ever, the BJP for the first time launched a state-level manifesto promising regional air connectivity and metro in eight cities as well as gaushalas.
The Sankalp Patra, launched at the BJP headquarters by Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, has 28 sankalps (promises), including pink toilets for women and WiFi at prominent public places.
The manifesto promises better facilities to tackle water-shortage and water-logging. The state government has promised to change all streetlights to LED to reduce power consumption.
In line with the Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana, the manifesto promises an aid of Rs 2.5 lakh to the poor (1.5 lakh from the Centre and 1 lakh from the state government) to provide affordable housing. The BJP has even promised one district one product where the party promises to showcase one traditional product of each of its 75 districts for branding and promotion. Till now, urban body elections focused mainly on civic amenities, including better roads, drinking water and parks.
The elections are to be a litmus test for the popularity of the eight-month-old Yogi government as it has so far managed to avoid facing the voter. The CM, his two deputies and two ministers, who were not members of either House of the legislature, managed to become members of the Upper House by triggering Samajwadi Party and BSP MLCs to quit en masse.
In another first, CM Yogi is to extensively campaign during the civic elections and is expected to address at least one public rally in each of its 16 municipal corporations beginning with Ayodhya on November 14. The BJP is working overtime to ensure its victory in Ayodhya and Mathura-Vrindavan, the two cities that have been upgraded to municipal corporation level by the Yogi government.
New Delhi, November 12
A special Delhi court has directed the extradition of an Uzbek fugitive to her homeland to face proceedings in a case of human trafficking there.
Additional Chief Metropolitan Magistrate Gurmohina Kaur, who presides over the Special Extradition Court of India, directed the Centre to send Khakimova Lola Farmonova back to Uzbekistan, noting that the extradition request was received from the requesting country.
Farmonova was detained at the Goa airport on August 9 on a request of provisional detention by Uzbekistan.
The prescribed procedure has been followed in as much as the extradition request has been submitted through diplomatic channel, along with documents including the duly authenticated and endorsed court decision containing direction of arrest and required information as per the Extradition Act and concerned extradition treaty, the court said.
The order of the Uzbek court containing directions for the arrest of Farmonova was submitted by advocate N K Matta on behalf of the external affairs ministry.
In view of the above report, I hereby recommend to Union of India the extradition of the fugitive criminal for the offence of human trafficking..., the Delhi court said.
The court had in September denied her bail on the ground that the charges against her were serious.
Farmonova had earlier told the court that she was falsely implicated and there was no criminal record against her.
She had claimed that her husband was an Indian national and she would abide by all the conditions imposed by the court.
Farmonova was on her way to Dubai via Muscat by an Oman Airlines flight when the immigration officials stopped her as there was a look out circular and a red corner notice against her. She was then handed over to Goa Police.
The woman, who was living in Mumbai, had come to Goa to board the international flight, the police had said. PTI
Ahmedabad, November 12
With Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi pushing for rationalisation of Goods and Services Tax (GST) rates, Union HRD Minister Prakash Javadekar on Sunday said Congress leaders are hypocrites as they support the indirect tax at GST Council meets but speak against it in public.
Referring to Gandhis promise to cap GST rates at 18 per cent if voted to power, Javadekar said the Congress vice- president intends to increase the tax burden on the common people.
I want to ask what kind of uniform tax structure he (Gandhi) wants? He is advocating for 18 per cent GST on all items. It means that all those commodities that fall in zero per cent, 5 per cent or 12 per cent slabs should be charged at 18 per cent. It seems the Congress wants to increase the tax burden on people, Javadekar said at a press conference here.
Gandhi, who has been spearheading an aggressive campaign against the BJP for the next months assembly polls, yesterday said he would not rest till the five-slab Gabbar Singh Tax was converted into the Goods and Services Tax with an 18-per cent cap.
Congress leaders are pakhandi as they are adopting double standards on GST. They were also involved in preparing GST rates. During the GST Council meetings, Congress ministers support GST, but after coming out of the meetings they tell people that they are against it, the senior BJP leader said.
He said Gandhis visit to Surat, the countrys diamond polishing hub, on November 8 turned out to be a damp squib.
Rahul visited Surat with a hope that a large number of people would turn up to listen to him. But, it did not happen. People on board his flight to Delhi told us that Rahul was very angry. It shows that people have rejected him and the Congresss politics of hypocrisy, something which we never do, Javadekar said.
He earlier participated in a door to door campaign in Sabarmati area of the city. PTI
AUBURN Nine-year-old Finn Bell was unimpressed when he saw the star on the Christmas tree outside of Auburn's Memorial City Hall last year during the city's holiday parade. So he set out to raise enough money to help the city purchase an even bigger and better star for the Christmas tree this year.
"I didn't like how the star looked last year," Finn said during an interview at the Auburn Downtown Business Improvement District office Thursday afternoon.
Finn was at the office to see the star BID Director Stephanie DeVito bought with his donation.
"I was excited to see it," Finn said after DeVito opened the large cardboard box and revealed the sparkly gold star to fourth-grade student.
He was able to raise almost $200 to purchase the star. He said he spent a year saving up his birthday money, collecting bottles and cans and selling hugs to some of the ladies down at the Auburn American Legion.
"We are very grateful and honored that he wanted to do something for our community and do something that thousands of people are going to see over the holiday times," DeVito said. "We are grateful for his generosity and his kindness and we think he's a great kid. We're glad to have him in our community."
Finn is no stranger to helping others. Last year, he donated goody bags of small toys and stuffed animals to the Auburn Police Department so officers would have something in their cars to comfort children in traumatic situations. Finn, unfortunately, was one of those children facing a traumatic situation when his mother, Bridget Bell, was murdered by his father in 2011.
Auburn Police Chief Shawn Butler, while still a detective with the department, was the lead investigator on Bridget's murder case when he first met Finn.
"Finn remembered the experience he had in my office back in 2011 when he was real small," Butler said during the Nov. 2 Auburn City Council meeting. "Unfortunately, I didn't have any stuffed animals or any toys for him, so he got to play on my computer while, unfortunately, we dealt with some very unfortunate circumstances with his grandmother."
Since then, Butler said, Finn and his grandma Kelly Bell have kept in touch with Butler. The police chief said he "likes to think that I have become a mentor to Finn."
As a token of appreciation, Finn is leading this year's holiday parade, which is scheduled for 6 p.m. on Saturday, Nov. 25. He will ride in the chief's police car and then help Mayor Michael Quill light the Christmas tree, which will be adorned with the star Finn donated.
"Kudos to Finn," Butler said. "He's got a big heart and he's been through more than some of us will ever go through in our life. He's a special little friend not only to me, but also to the city."
Kelly, who is raising Finn, said she is working hard to instill a giving spirit in her young grandson.
"He knows that when he was a little baby and everything went wrong, this community was here for us," she said. "That's why we support Auburn all the way through. We're just trying to give back to the community what they gave to us."
"We're not doing this for publicity," Kelly added. "We're doing this from our hearts."
Another month, another massacre.
A month ago, we asked Congress to ban bump stocks, the lethal devices that were used in the Mandalay Bay shootings in Las Vegas by Stephen Paddock, that increase the rate of fire of semi-automatic weapons and essentially make them fully automatic.
Paddock used them to horrifying effect on Oct. 1, murdering 58 people and wounding another 500 at a country music concert as he rained death from his high-rise hotel room.
Slide-Fire, the Texas-based manufacturer of the bump stocks, promptly stopped taking orders for the devices, and after a month of bereavement last week started selling them again on its website.
Congress, meanwhile, dithered over the calls including ours to ban the devices. House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., said recently that Congress would rather have a regulatory solution to the problem. But the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, which gave initial approval to bump stocks, has said it cant ban the devices without Congress passing a new law.
The National Rifle Association, meanwhile, first said bump stocks should be regulated, but then backed away from any legislation to ban them. Fingers pointed in all directions and, in the meantime, bump stocks are ready for purchase as Christmas stocking stuffers.
On Nov. 5, it was another crazed shooter, in a feud with his in-laws, who walked into the First Baptist Church in Sutherland, Texas, and used his semi-automatic rifle to kill 26 innocent church-goers, many of them children, and wound 20 others. The shooter fled the church, was shot by a citizen and then apparently committed suicide.
Law enforcement authorities say the shooting was methodical, that Devin Patrick Kelley went down the church aisle firing and firing again an estimated 450 times. Fifteen empty 30-round magazines were found at the scene. No, we have not seen any reports that Kelley used a bump stock to mow down the parishioners he simply used high-capacity magazines to load and reload his rifle to shoot again and again and again and again until the pews were covered in blood.
In the aftermath of the Texas massacre, Speaker Ryan called for prayers for those injured and killed in the Texas church and was criticized by some via social media. Along with Speaker Ryan, we believe in prayer. But we also believe that God helps those who help themselves. Our problem in the wake of these now regular gun-fueled massacres is not a crisis of faith in God, but a lack of faith in Congress to do something to protect the American people.
That is Congress obligation to all citizens to make them safer no matter if they are devout in their religious practices, skeptics, lapsed Lutherans or on the secular left.
Congress has the ability to do this to stand up to the NRA and the gun manufacturers and at least blunt the lethality of the all-too-frequent massacres. There is no reasonable purpose for the use of fully automatic firepower for hunting, or for self-protection through the use of bump stocks. Nor is there a reasonable purpose for the use of high-capacity 30- or 50-round magazines.
Banning bump stocks and limiting the capacity of magazines to five or six shots will not put an end to the madness of these attacks, but it will blunt them and reduce the number of casualties and injuries. That is the least our elected representatives can and should do.
We pray that Congress hears this message before next months massacre.
Yash Goyal
Our correspondent
Jaipur, November 12
Health services remained crippled in government hospitals of Rajasthan as the indefinite strike by doctors entered the seventh day on Sunday.
The strike has left patients and their relatives at the receiving end, forcing them to visit private hospitals for seasonal diseases and urgent surgeries.
Due to the non-availability of OPD and surgery services, about 30 people, including children, have died while over 250 major and minor surgeries have been postponed, a senior directorate official said.
The state government has called in doctors from Army hospitals and also asked private and CGHS hospitals to examine patients free of cost, the official said.
All-Rajasthan In-Serivce Doctors Association president Dr Ajay Choudhary and Health Minister K C Saraf are likely to hold talks later in the day to discuss striking doctors 33-point charter of demands.
After a week-long indefinite strike by about 9,000 in-service doctors and 1,000 senior residents, the police have so far arrested 14 striking doctors under the Rajasthan Essential Services Maintenance Act (RESMA).
The doctors were arrested from different districts, including Jaipur, Tonk, Bharatpur, Banswara, Jodhpur and Jaipur, for defying the RESMA, and hundreds of doctors have given in writing that they will report on duty soon, Additional DGP (Law and Order) N R K Reddy said.
The police crackdown was ordered on Saturday after the Medical and Health Department asked the Home Department to ensure the imposition of RESMA on doctors, Reddy said. Apprehending arrests, many leaders of the association have gone underground, he said.
Hearing two PILs filed by one Dr Abhinav Sharma on Saturday, a Division Bench of Justices K S Jhaveri and V K Vyas directed the Health Department to issue individual notices to the striking doctors asking them to report for duty immediately and submit a list of striking doctors during the next hearing on November 15. The Bench also directed the government to constitute an expert committee to study the demands of the All-Rajasthan In-Service Doctors Association (ARISDA).
Calling mass resignation by the agitating doctors a propaganda, Health Minister K C Saraf said his directorate had received only two packets of blank papers from the doctors association.
The state government has agreed to meet 19 out of 33 demands, including pay parity with Central government doctors, one shift in OPDs, disastrous allowance, not to post any RAS officer on senior-level administrative posts in directorate and secretariat, and not to bring doctors services in rural areas under the Panchayati Raj institution.
Meanwhile, PCC president Sachin Pilot questioned Chief Minister Vasundhara Rajes silence on patients death. OC
Tribune News Service
Newd Delhi/Manila, November 12
Officials from India, Australia, the US and Japan met here on Sunday and discussed issues relating to cooperation in the Indo-Pacific region, seen as a first move to set up a quadrilateral grouping to pursue common interests amidst growing assertiveness by the Chinese military in the strategically key region.
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The External Affairs Ministry said the discussions focused on cooperation based on converging vision and values for promotion of peace, stability and prosperity in an increasingly inter-connected region.
They agreed that a free, open, prosperous and inclusive Indo-Pacific region serves the long-term interests of all countries in the region and of the world at large. The officials also exchanged views on addressing common challenges of terrorism and proliferation linkages impacting the region as well as on enhancing connectivity, it said in a statement.
The Indian side highlighted Indias Act East Policy as the cornerstone of its engagement in the Indo-Pacific region.
Japanese Foreign Minister Taro Kono last month had said that Tokyo favours a dialogue between Japan, the US, India and Australia to further boost strategic partnership among them.
The move to set up the quadrilateral comes in the backdrop of growing Chinese assertiveness in the South China Sea.
China claims sovereignty on almost all of the South China Sea which is disputed by Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia, Brunei and Taiwan. The US has been accusing China of violating international rules and norms by laying claims on the disputed South and East China seas.
The US has been favouring a larger role for India in the strategically key Indo-Pacific region.
Reacting to the Japanese move, India had said it was open to working with like-minded countries on issues that advance its interests.
The US had said it was looking at a working-level quadrilateral meeting in the near term with India, Japan and Australia.
US President Donald Trump last week praised Indias astounding growth, saying he has been working successfully to bring the vast country and its people together.
Speaking at a gathering of CEOs on the sidelines of the annual Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in the Vietnamese port city of Danang, Trump cited India as one of the countries in the Indo-Pacific region making strides.
The use of the term Indo-Pacific by President Trump has led to speculation that it may have something to do with Washington preparing the ground for a revival of the so-called Quadrilateral strategic alliance between the US, Japan, Australia and India to counter Chinas rise.
China has already reacted cautiously over the proposal by the Trump administration for a working-level quadrilateral meeting, saying Beijing hopes that it would not target or damage a third partys interest. With PTI
New York, November 12
An 18-year-old Indian-American dental student was killed in the US in a hit-and-run case when the driver of a pick-up truck ran his vehicle over her after a minor collision.
Taranjit Parmar was on her way home when she got into a minor accident on Hempstead Turnpike in Levittown on Thursday, New York Daily News reported.
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Parmar and the truck driver pulled over into the parking lot of a nearby gas station after the collision, the police said. But when she got out to inspect the damage to her vehicle, the driver of the pickup truck took off and ran over Parmar while speeding away, it added.
Parmar was on the phone with her mother when she was run over in the middle of rush-hour traffic, her father was quoted as saying by the report.
She had called my wife and said, Hi, Mom, Parmars father, Ranjit Parmar said. Then she said Oh, no, Stop! and the call got disconnected. There was no answer after that, he added. Medics rushed Parmar to Nassau University Medical Center, where she died from massive head and chest injuries.
Parmar, who was studying to be a dentist at Adelphi University, was 10 minutes from her home when the tragedy occurred, the report added. PTI
Mukesh Ranjan
Tribune News Service
New Delhi, November 12
With the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) sending a reference to Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) mentioning the questions raised by Vijay Mallyas lawyers over prison facilities in India, Home Secretary Rajiv Gauba is going to hold a meeting on Monday to prepare the response.
Mallyas lawyers had recently raised the issue during extradition proceeding in a British court to block Indias bid to bring back the fugitive liquor baron from the UK, where he has taken refuge to avoid investigation and court proceedings in alleged bank loan default fraud cases worth Rs 9,000 crore.
MHA sources confirmed that the Home Secretary will most likely chair a meeting on Monday to finalise Indias formal response, which will be placed before the British court, where the extradition proceeding is going on.
The development comes days ahead of the next hearing in Westminster Magistrates Court in London on November 20 where the future course of 61-year-old Mallyas extradition trial scheduled to start on December 4 will be discussed.
A senior MHA official indicated: Our stance will be that the prison facilities in India are as good as any other place in the world. A prisoners legal rights are protected here, they are given accesses to medical facilities and their safety and security is protected by the authorities.
The official said the argument put forward by Mallyas lawyers in the UK court is an obvious effort to delay his extradition. Further asserting that there was nothing special about Mallya, He said, In the past chief ministers and even corporate honchos have been lodged in the different prisons.
The official, however, insisted that it would be little pre-mature to discuss in which prison Mallya would be lodged if he was extradited as the decision would lie entirely with the Indian court concerned where he would be tried.
Yash Goyal
Our Correspondent
Jaipur, November 12
Umar, 33, belonging to the Meo Muslim community, who was carrying six bovines in a pick-up vehicle, was found murdered in Govindgarh area of Alwar district.
A resident of Ghatmika village in Bharatpur district, his body was identified by his kin last night.
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They alleged Umar had been lynched. But an FIR, filed on Sunday, stated that he had been shot dead.
A case under Section 302 (murder) of the IPC has been lodged, Alwar Circle Officer Anil Beniwal said. Another case under the Rajasthan Bovine Act has been registered too.
The body has been sent to Jaipur for postmortem. Senior police officers refused to say if Umar had been targeted by cow vigilante groups, as alleged by his kin.
Two persons accompanying the deceased, who were shot at, are admitted to a hospital in Rewari, Haryana.
On April 1, Pehlu Khan, who was transporting cattle, was allegedly thrashed to death by six gau rakshaks near Behroad on Rajasthans border with Haryana. But the CID-Crime Branch found no evidence against them.
Manila, November 12
Prime Minister Narendra Modi tonight held separate pull-aside meetings with US President Donald Trump and Chinese premier Li Keqiang on the sidelines of a gala dinner to mark the 50th anniversary of the ASEAN.
Modi was also seen chit-chatting with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev and Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak at the reception for the leaders who have arrived here for the 31st ASEAN summit.
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He also held brief interactions with several other leaders who attended the reception hosted by Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte at the mega SMX Convention Centre in Pasay City.
The PM as well as all other leaders wore Barong Tagalong, an embroidered shirt which is the national dress of the Philippines.
The brief interaction between Modi and Trump came ahead of their bilateral meeting tomorrow. The two leaders are expected to deliberate on a number of key issues of mutual interest, including the evolving security situation in the Indo-Pacific region where US favours a greater role by India.
There have been concerns over Chinas growing military presence in the Indo-Pacific and the issue was understood to have figured in a meeting of officials from India, the US, Japan and Australia today under the proposed Quadrilateral coalition of the four countries.
The discussions focused on cooperation based on their converging vision and values for promotion of peace, stability and prosperity in an increasingly inter-connected region that they share with each other and other partners, the Ministry of External Affairs said. On Tuesday, Modi will attend the ASEAN-India and East Asia summits, and also hold a meeting with Duterte. PTI
Bhopal, November 12
Congress candidate Nilanshu Chaturvedi was on Sunday declared elected to the Madhya Pradesh Assembly from Chitrakoot constituency, defeating the BJP by 14,133 votes.
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Chaturvedi led right from the start of vote count at 8 am and kept increasing his winning lead, officials said. After 19 rounds of counting, he worsted the Bharatiya Janata Party's Shankar Dayal Tripathi.
The election was called after the death of Chitrakoot's Congress legislator Prem Singh. A total of 12 candidates were in the fray, including nine independents.
Winds of change
The Congresss victory in the Chitrakoot Assembly bypoll in Madhya Pradesh signals the winds of change blowing in the political landscape in the country, its chief spokesperson said in New Delhi today.
Taking to Twitter, Congresss chief spokesperson Randeep Singh Surjewala thanked the voters for reposing faith in the party.
The winds of change are in the air. Many thanks to the people of #Chitrakoot for their faith and trust in the Congress party, Surjewala said. Agencies
Manila, November 12
Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Sunday night held separate pull-aside meetings with US President Donald Trump and Chinese Premier Li Keqiang on the sidelines of a gala dinner to mark the 50th anniversary of the ASEAN.
Modi was also seen chit-chatting with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev and Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak at the reception for the leaders who have arrived here for the 31st ASEAN summit and related meetings.
He also held brief interactions with several other leaders who attended the reception hosted by Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte at the mega SMX Convention Centre in Pasay City here.
The prime minister as well as all other leaders wore Barong Tagalong, an embroidered shirt which is the national dress of the Philippines. Renowned Filipino designer Albert Andrada has designed the shirts.
Modi also tweeted pictures of his interaction with several leaders.
The menu of the gala dinner featured various Filipino cuisines, including Filipino steak sushi.
The brief interaction between Modi and Trump came ahead of their scheduled bilateral meeting tomorrow. The two leaders are expected to deliberate on a number of key issues of mutual interest including the evolving security situation in the Indo-Pacific region where Washington favours a greater role by India.
There have been concerns over China's growing military presence in the Indo-Pacific and the issue was understood to have figured in a meeting of officials from India, the US, Japan and Australia today under the proposed Quadrilateral coalition of the four countries.
The discussions focused on cooperation based on their converging vision and values for promotion of peace, stability and prosperity in an increasingly inter-connected region that they share with each other and with other partners, the ministry of external affairs said in a statement.
They agreed that a free, open, prosperous and inclusive Indo-Pacific region serves the long-term interests of all countries in the region and of the world at large," it said.
On Tuesday, Modi will attend the ASEAN-India and East Asia summits where he is likely to reassert India's push for crafting a global approach to deal with growing challenge of terrorism and radicalisation besides pitching for steps to boost regional trade.
Modi will hold bilateral meetings with Duterte tomorrow. He also had a conversation with Li at the dinner.
"PM @narendramodi had a warm and cordial conversation with the Chinese Premier Li Keqiang at the Gala Dinner," MEA spokesperson Raveesh Kumar tweeted. PTI
Army yet to begin DPR negotiations
The construction of Kathmandu-Tarai expressway is likely to be further delayed, as the Nepal Army, which has been appointed by the government to build the 76-km roadway, is yet to begin negotiations to purchase the detailed project report (DPR).
Palanpur (Gujarat), November 12
Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi targeted Gujarat Chief Minister Vijay Rupani on Sunday over the SEBI slapping fine on his firm for alleged manipulative share trade, and asked the prime minister to speak out on the issue.
Speaking during his poll campaign tour of Gujarat, he claimed that the share market regulator has termed Rupani beimaan (dishonest) and imposed fine on him.
Gandhi asked Prime Minister Narendra Modi to speak out against his dishonest chief minister.
Gujarat is more corrupt than the entire country. Surat businessmen told me that policemen come to their units every two minutes (allegedly to demand bribe), he said.
The 47-year-old Congress leader was addressing a public meeting here in Banaskantha district on the second day of his campaign tour of north Gujarat.
Jay Shah, son of (BJP chief) Amit Shah, increased the turnover of his company from Rs 50,000 to Rs 80 crore in a few months after the BJP came to power in 2014. The people of Gujarat know this cannot be done without corruption, he said.
Some days ago, the SEBI said your chief minister is beimaan (dishonest) and they fined him.
Modiji used to say na khaoonga, na khane doonga (I will neither take graft nor allow corruption). Please open your mouth on this subject now. But he is silent. Now his slogan is na bolta hu, na bolne dunga (I will not speak myself and wont allow others to do so), Gandhi said.
The people of the country want to listen what you (Modi) have to say on Amit Shahs sons company, on Vijay Rupani. The people of Gujarat will believe that you are not chowkidar (watchman) but bhagidar (collaborator) if you dont say anything on the issue, he said.
The Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) has reportedly fined 22 entities, including Rupanis HUF (Hindu Undivided Family), for alleged manipulative trading in the shares of a company, Saran Chemicals Ltd, during the January-June 2011 period.
However, Rupani had said the Securities Appellate Tribunal (SAT) has set aside the fine of Rs 6.91 crore imposed on 22 entities, including his firm.
The fine amounts varied for the entities and it was reportedly Rs 15 lakh in the case of HUF of Rupani, who took over as chief minister in August 2016 and is currently in the thick of the BJPs campaign for the next months assembly polls.
A report in a news portal had alleged wrongdoings in the company owned by Jay Shah, a charge vehemently rejected by him and his father. Jay Shah has also filed a criminal defamation case against the news portal.
Gandhi reiterated that he and the Congress would not rest till Gabbar Singh Tax of five slabs is converted into one slab Goods and Service Tax (GST) with rates capped at 18 per cent.
The tax (structure) with five different slabs is not GST, but is Gabbar Singh Tax, meant to loot the poor and middle-class people of the country as only they pay taxes. We will not rest till the government changes GST and puts a cap of 18 per cent, he said.
On Twitter, Gandhi asked the government to stop levying GST on the maximum number of items of mass use and stop giving excuses.
It is the voice of the country the government stops giving excuses. It should abolish GST on maximum number of mass use items, he said.
Gandhi also insisted that petrol, diesel and domestic gas cylinders are brought under the ambit of the tax regime. PTI
Jaipur, November 12
As many as 15 farmers have been arrested for allegedly damaging public property and stone pelting while protesting against land acquisition in Ninder village, the police said on Sunday.
The farmers were arrested yesterday on the charge of public property and assaulting or using criminal force to deter public servants from discharging their duties, they said.
A case was registered against Ninder Bacho Sangrash Samiti coordinator Nagendra Singh and four others when a road connecting Ninder village to Jaipur was damaged during the agitation by the farmers.
A case of damaging public property was registered on the complaint of the Jaipur Development Authority (JDA), Deputy Commissioner of Police (West) Ashok Gupta said.
A separate case was registered against 10 other farmers after stone pelting by them yesterday, the officer said, adding, For both these cases we had arrested 15 farmers out of which 10 were for disturbing peace. All the accused were presented before a court yesterday which remanded them to judicial custody, Gupta said.
Recently, farmers of Ninder village had buried themselves neck-deep in the ground for 30 days against acquisition of over 1,300 bighas of land for a housing project, claiming that the compensation offered was not enough.
They had called off their protest on October 31 after receiving written assurance from the JDA about conducting a fresh survey of the acquired land.
The JDA has taken possession of 600 bighas of land so far and deposited Rs 60 crore in a local court as compensation for it after villagers refused to accept the amount, claiming it did not hold up to the prevailing market rates.
Around 10,000 houses will be built under the scheme announced in January 2011.
Zone commissioner Rajkumar Singh said, The JDA is first developing a colony on nearly 37 bigah of land to rehabilitate the farmers of Ninder village. They had earlier given consent about carrying out work on some part of land.
The work was today carried out peacefully, the zone commissioner said. PTI
Guruvayur (Kerala), November 12
An RSS worker was hacked to death allegedly by CPI(M) workers at Nenmeni in the temple town this afternoon, the police said.
The victim, Anandan,(23), was riding a motorcycle when he was attacked by the CPI(M) workers in a car. Though he was rushed to hospital, his life could not be saved, the police said.
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Anandan, hailing from Brahmakulam, was an accused in a case relating to the murder of a CPI(M) worker in 2013.
The BJP has alleged that as many as 120 BJP workers, 84 in Kannur alone, have been killed in Kerala since 2001. It has claimed that 14 of these killings have taken place since Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan took over the reins of the government last year.
The CPI(M) has in turn, accused the BJP and RSS of resorting to violence and denied the involvement of its government and leadership in political killings. PTI
Guruvayur (Kerala), Nov 12
A 23-year-old RSS worker was hacked to death in broad daylight allegedly by CPM workers at nearby Nenmeni this afternoon, the police said.
The victim, Anandan, was riding a motorcycle when he was attacked with swords and knives, allegedly by CPM workers, who came in a car.
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Anandan, hailing from Brahmakulam, was an accused in a case related to the murder of a CPM worker in 2013.
The BJP will protest against the incident tomorrow. State president Kummanam Rajasekharan said the ruling CPM was not prepared to give up violence.
A strike is being observed by the saffron party in Guruvayoor and Manaloor in Thrissur district. The BJP alleged that as many as 120 of its workers, 84 in Kannur alone, have been killed in Kerala since 2001.
It claimed that 14 of these killings have taken place since Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan took over the reins of the government last year.
The CPM in turn accused the BJP and RSS of indulging in violence and denied the involvement of its government and leadership. PTI
Rachna Khaira
Tribune News Service
Jalandhar, November 12
British MP Martin Docherty-Hughes today extended support to UK-based NRI Jagtar Singh Johal, an alleged conspirator in the seven targeted killings in the state over the past year and a half.
Hughes alleged that the police and other authorities were withholding information from Johals family following his arrest. This has been an extremely distressing time for my constituents family and I am doing everything in my power to support them as their MP. I have raised this as a matter of urgency with the British High Commission of India and the Foreign Office, Hughes tweeted today.
Meanwhile, the Sikh Federation, UK, has accused the Punjab Police of targeting Johal because of his work that highlighted the 1984 Sikh genocide.
A British-born man has been unlawfully abducted by the Indian police. He has been refused legal rep. This is a breach of human rights, the federation said, launching the Free Jaggi campaign on Twitter. The campaign is also circulating a statement reportedly released by the Johals family residing in Glasgow.
According to the letter, his family in the UK has complained to the British High Commission about the alleged police harassment. Gurpreet Singh, Johals elder brother, said, He was not even named in the FIR. This raises questions that his detention is opportunist in the absence of any evidence against him.
A senior official at the Punjab Bureau of Investigation claimed that the police had arrested Johal only after establishing his direct role in the conspiracy. The official confirmed that Johals family had sought consular access through the British High Commission for which they were asked to approach the Ministry of External Affairs. Johals family plans to move a petition to Amnesty International.
Jupinderjit Singh
Tribune News Service
Chandigarh, November 12
Hardeep Singh alias Shera (20), the alleged assassin of six religio-political leaders in Punjab, managed to evade arrest for more than 21 months, but was finally done in by his bushy eyebrows and the large tattoo of a lion on the left side of his chest.
Police officials involved in the investigation said tracking him down was the biggest challenge after they learnt that none of the five accused arrested last week was the shooter they were looking for.
The alleged assassin who practiced his sharp-shooting skills using a Swiss air pistol was only known by his alias Harman. He had no social media account and is suspected to have gone abroad after executing some of the killings.
Even though Ramandeep and three others, including Khalistan Liberation Force (KLF) chief Harminder Singh Mintoo, were arrested, it took the police two more days to track him down through a massive manhunt by 150 teams comprising over 300 cops.
Police sources said those arrested revealed Sheras code name and his identification details, mainly his bushy eyebrows and the tattoo.
In this age of tracking down criminals via phones or social media, this was the biggest manhunt launched on the ground through human resources and intelligence. Literally every gym in Ludhiana, Fatehgarh Sahib, Jalandhar, Khanna, Ropar and Mohali was scanned thoroughly. Finally, his unique identity particulars bushy eyebrows that met in the middle of his forehead and the chest tattoo led the cops to him, revealed a police official.
He said Sheras well-built physique helped a little as it was most visible in his CCTV grabs near the crime spots. It is but common to see Punjabi youths with such physique, said a senior official.
From hundreds of gyms, the police found him at Bajwa Gym in Fatehgarh Sahib on Saturday morning. He is a resident of Majri, near Amloh town in Fatehgarh Sahib.
It is learnt that Mintoo had allegedly roped in Shera whom he met in Italy a few years ago and convinced him to avenge the 1984 anti-Sikh riots and other alleged atrocities on Sikhs. Sheras paternal uncle had adopted him when he was six. He was brought up in Italy and speaks Italian well.
Tribune News Service
Chandigarh, November 12
Healthcare facilities leave much to be desired in the states border belt. Patients are at the receiving end due to poor infrastructure, acute shortage of staff and lack of medicines as well as basic life-saving equipment. In many areas, quacks are having a field day, courtesy political patronage and illiteracy.
The worst affected are the areas along the international border as the posts of doctors and paramedics are insufficient to treat a large population.
In Gurdaspur, Civil Surgeon Dr Kishen Chand claims the problem is acute in the areas along the Zero Line Dera Baba Nanak, Dorangla, Behrampur, Dinanagar and Kalanaur.
The authorities fail to take action against quacks because of toothless, archaic laws. Quackery is dealt with under the Indian Medical Degree Act, 1916, which has the provision of imposing a nominal fine on an offender, a health official said.
The department raids such premises, but the guilty enjoy political patronage. The moment we take action, an MLA calls us up. Thats the end of the matter, he rued.
The Deputy Commissioners of Pathankot and Gurdaspur have formed teams after receiving complaints of sex determination tests. Besides MLAs, local leaders also exert pressure for not taking action, said a senior doctor.
In the past five years, no FIR has been registered against this malpractice in Gurdaspur or Pathankot. For all our efforts, it has turned to be an exercise in futility, an official admitted.
Three years ago, an Akali MLA bought a large chunk of land near Babri village. In a bid to increase its price, he virtually arm-twisted the government and the administration into shifting the old hospital from the heart of the city to Babri. Now, patients have to travel 4 km from the city for treatment. The MLA had his way, but the people were the losers.
ferozepur
Quacks in demand
The availability of healthcare facilities is a major challenge. Those who cannot afford private treatment end up putting their life and limb at risk at the hands of quacks.
During a visit to Gatti Rajoke village, just 400 metres from the border, no doctor was found at the health sub-centre. A helper, Baj Singh, who takes care of basic treatment, said the doctor came twice a week. Only 8-9 patients come here daily since we dont have much to offer in terms of treatment, he said.
This sub-centre caters to the needs of about 22 villages along the Zero Line. There are four community health centres (CHCs), 26 primary health centres (PHCs) and 122 sub-centres in the district.
Bhindo, a resident of Gatti Rajoke, says rushing to the city in case of any emergency is a Herculean task. Some of the villages dont have any metalled road leading to the town. In pregnancy cases, expecting mothers dread travelling at night, says another villager, Rano.
At the CHC, Mamdot, there are three vacant posts against six sanctioned ones. The posts of specialists in Medicine, Surgery and Paediatrics are yet to be filled. In other CHCs and multipurpose health centres (MPHCs), there is an acute shortage of specialist doctors. Fresh medical graduates have been posted as a stop-gap arrangement.
amritsar
Vacant posts
Attari resident Daljit Singh complains that the local PHC does not have regular staff. On specific days, paramedics from other health centres come here to conduct medical check-ups. In emergencies, they rely on private clinics.
The health sub-centre at Balarwal village in Ajnala has two multipurpose health workers (MHWs) a male and a female. They have to attend to patients from nine villages with a combined population of over 10,000. Being a remote border village, private medical facilities are unavailable.
The civil health centre, Lopoke, caters to a population of three lakh. As per norms, there should be at least three Senior Medical Officers (SMOs). It has one SMO and five Medical Officers (MOs), of which two MOs are on deputation and training.
There are seven PHCs in the area. One post of MO is sanctioned for the PHCs at Attari, Brar and Jasraur, but all these are vacant. Two posts of MOs are sanctioned at the PHCs of Bhakna and Rajasansi. Both are yet to be filled.
There are 38 sub-centres in the civil health centre at Lopoke, 10 of which dont have any staff. Multipurpose health workers from nearby sub-centres go there to attend to patients on a weekly basis.
At the sub-divisional hospital at Ajnala, three posts of MO and an equal number of paramedics are lying vacant. One sanctioned post of nurse has also not been filled.
The sub-tehsil at Ramdas has one PHC, four mini-PHCs and 30 sub-centres, which cater to the population of 290 villages. The PHC is working at half the sanctioned strength of four MOs. The sub-centres are also putting up without eight MHWs and five Class-IV employees.
tarn taran
Shortage of experts
This border district neither has a radiologist nor an eye specialist. There are only two orthopaedic specialists. There is a shortage of 17 specialist doctors, 29 medical officers, 30 staff nurses and 39 pharmacists.
Pregnant women are referred to a private radiologist, even as officials are trying to make ad hoc arrangements.
The Civil Hospital at Patti has just three specialist doctors. The health authorities struggle to provide emergency services as the MOs from other CHCs are often put on duty, causing inconvenience to patients at their respective stations.
At Khalra, a pharmacist doubles as the medical officer, who has been assigned duty at the nearby health facility in the town.
Shortage of staff is a big hindrance in providing medical care. Most doctors want to be posted in the cities. Services in the rural belt are pitiable, admitted Dr Dinesh Gupta, a PCMS officer who took voluntary retirement a year ago.
Civil Surgeon Dr Shamsher Singh said the shortage of manpower was crippling medical services. Even if we have machines and buildings, its the personnel who use the same. He said the shortage of specialists was a pan-state phenomenon.
fazilka
No eye specialist
Eye ailments on account of stubble-burning are on the rise, but the district hospital in the home town of former Health Minister Surjit Kumar Jyani does not have an eye specialist.
The hospital was upgraded to the 100-bed level, but sanction is awaited. The sanctioned posts of skin, eye, and ENT specialists are vacant. We are running hospitals and primary health centres with just 50 per cent staff, says Civil Surgeon Dr Surinder Kumar.
No medical officer has been deployed at the PHC in the border villages of Ladhuka and Haste Kalan. The Karni Khera PHC Medical Officer has been shifted to the district hospital on deputation, even as drinking water samples taken from various sources have been found unfit for human consumption.
A state-of-the-art hospital building with a 30-bed capacity was constructed in Jalalabad represented by then Deputy Chief Minister Sukhbir Badal but it awaits a Senior Medical Officer and other medicos. Presently, only one medical officer is serving. Pregnant women are the worst sufferers as the hospitals dont have gynaecologists.
Inputs by Ravi Dhaliwal, Anirudh Gupta, Neeraj Bagga, Manmeet Gill and Raj Sadosh
Chandigarh, November 12
Days after the Punjab Police claimed to have busted terror modules and solved most targeted killing cases in the state, Chief Minister Amarinder Singh has asked the DGP to work out a scheme to give awards and rewards to those involved in solving the cases.
He also instructed the DGP to set up a system of selecting and rewarding policeman of the month to any personnel of the force who plays a remarkable role, either in solving criminal cases by investigations or providing community service of outstanding nature.
The chief minister, last night, hosted police personnel, across ranks, for a dinner at his residence here as a mark of appreciation for their efforts and role in busting several terror modules and criminal gangs over the past seven months, including those behind the targeted killings in the state.
More than 80 police personnel attended the dinner, where Amarinder Singh thanked each of them for cracking some of the toughest cases of the recent past, the most notable of them being the six cases of murder of RSS, Shiv Sena and Dera Sacha Sauda leaders, an official release said.
The chief minister lauded their exemplary courage, determination and hard work, which led to the busting of the terror modules and arrest of several gangsters, it stated.
Addressing the police personnel, he extolled them for bringing honour to the force and saving the people of Punjab from further mayhem that the suspects would otherwise have unleashed on the state.
The chief minister asked DGP Suresh Arora to work out a scheme for giving awards and rewards to those involved in busting these modules and gangs and directed them to submit a detailed proposal in this regard for approval.
Amarinder Singh reiterated his governments commitment for the welfare of the police force and cited various schemes launched since he became the chief minister.
Besides DGP Arora, DGP (Intelligence) Dinkar Gupta and DGP (Law & Order) Hardeep Dhillon, the event was attended by several other officials.
Eight AIGs, SSPs of Moga, Khanna, Batala and Nawanshahr, 20 inspectors, including SHOs of Bassi Pathana and Baghapurana, 17 head constables, 13 constables and two home guards were also hosted by the chief minister.
The star attraction of the dinner was the team that solved the targeted killing cases with the arrest of five persons, who were reported to be a part of a larger conspiracy hatched by Pakistans ISI from foreign soil.
The team consisted of IG Intelligence Amit Prasad, DIG Counter-Intelligence Ranbir Khatra, SSP Moga Ranjit Singh, SSP Batala Opinderjit Ghuman, SP Rajinder Singh, SP Wazir Singh, DSPs Sulakhan Singh and Sarabjit Singh, Inspector Kikar Singh and ASI Haripal. PTI
Cache of explosive materials seized
Police on Friday seized a huge cache of explosive materials from Panchapuri Municipality-11. Acting on a tip-off, security personnel seized 60 detonators, 555 gelatins and 22 mitres of fuse wire from a jeep (Dha 1 Ja 106) in Dhunge Bazaar.
B.N.Goswamy
In 1848 John Ruskin wrote about the buildings of past times in his publication, Seven Lamps of Architecture and his sentiment has relevance here: They are not ours. They belong partly to those who built them, and partly to all the generations of mankind who are to follow us. The properties of the Trust have been referred to as theatres of memory and, at a time of rapid change, these theatres of memory are particularly vital. Historic textiles are as much a part of that memory as is the architecture, the paintings and other decorative arts.
Textile Conservation Studio of the National Trust
This is how, keeping simply aspects of technique in mind, one of the greatest textiles now in the famed Calico Museum of Textiles at Ahmedabad, is described in the Museums catalogue of Printed and Painted Textiles: Ground: fine white cotton; Three reds, two violets, blue, two greens, yellow and flesh tint; outlines black and red. The outlines are stencilled and painted by hand with the mordant for black, except for the red areas, which are outlined with the mordant for red Delicate patterns are reserved in white on the mordant-dyed grounds by painting with molten wax before the mordants were applied The blue is resist-dyed in indigo. The darker green is achieved by over-painting green on the indigo .The flesh tints are painted.
For all the accurate information that this detail communicates, it does not prepare one for the experience of seeing this great textile in the flesh. The textile, a Hanging, dateable to 1640-1650, was made for an Indian court in the St.Thome-Pulicat region of what used to be the Madras State, and it was acquired by the Museum long years ago from the Amber Palace, Jaipur. But, as I said, these facts and details give one no idea of the magnificence, the sheer dazzle of this extraordinary piece. In it, in a fanciful palace setting of halls and terraces and pavilions, figures some distinctly European, most of them Indian jostle against one another; elegantly dressed, remarkably lissom, women stand in attendance upon a seated prince; couples hold quiet conversations; lovers eagerly bend forward holding each other in tight embraces; armed courtiers train alert eyes upon their superiors under Deccani style Islamic domes, their figures etched against rich embroideries. There is sumptuousness, a flood of colours and patterns and figures, on view in this large, very large, piece which measures close to 15 feet in length and 7 feet in height And one can imagine the impact that this, as a hanging or a qanat, would have made in a palace, when whole, for in its present state it is only a fragment.
Sadly, however sharing the fate of countless other textiles all over the world time has not been too kind to this piece, referred to in the records of the Museum as Kalamkari, No. 647. For years, it had stood there, beautifully mounted, almost greeting the visitors as they entered the unbearably rich Calico galleries, but one knew that it was time to pay to it close attention, have a textile conservator look at it. But it was not any textile conservator that Gira Sarabhai the founder of the Museum and its sustaining spirit was going to turn to: she had in mind an old and trusted friend who has been the doyenne of the rarefied world of textile conservation: Nobuko Kajitani. With her exquisite, typically Japanese passion for refinement and detail, Nobuko had headed the Department of Textile Conservation at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York for close to 30 years. In between, during her visits to India, she would come to see Giraben and the Calico Museum the fame of which spreads far beyond the borders of our land. Now, when requested to take care of this precious textile, she readily agreed. I had seen her at work on a different textile earlier, and could not take my eyes off her and a young colleague/student of hers, Miki Komatsu, attached to the Heritage Conservation Centre in Singapore, for so sharp was their observation, so nimble their fingers. This time, when I was in Ahmedabad recently, I saw Nobuko at work together with her young colleagues again: not in real life but in a long, very evocative video recording of the conservation that the Museum had made.
I had read somewhere of Nobukos concerns and methods and processes as a conservator: all those thoughts of aesthetic, technological, physical, mechanical, and chemical aspects that would pass through the mind before work even began. She would study the provenance of the textile, the in-house history since its acquisition and the environmental conditions in which it had been kept. There were old restorations to be taken into account if any been done; re-weavings needed to be removed if they were chromatically, structurally, or functionally obtrusive, and so on. All these concerns one naturally did not see in the short film that I watched, for most of them related to the area of decision-making. What I did see, however, was the utter sense of dedication to the work in hand. As many as seven conservators were involved in the delicate work at hand. When the textile had to be rolled for turning it on its back, hands would move with the gentlest of touches, and the textile brought to rest on a stand, as if it were a newborn being laid on a layette. There were no noises, no fuss: with just the briefest movement of the eyes instructions were issued and followed. Nobuko herself would bend over virtually every inch of the kalamkari, her face close to and almost parallel with the laid textile, studying every tiny detail; needles would be passed through the textile with the deftest of movements; protective sheets would be lifted as if they were gold leaf. Hands moved forming dancers mudras; noiselessly, feet shifted position; eyes kept darting from edge to edge.
The work is not finished yet. Nobuko and her team is visiting the Calico Museum again this month and then in December. I do not exactly know why, but a famous saying of the German Jewish philosopher, Walter Benjamin, comes to mind. Work on good prose has three steps, he said: a musical stage when it is composed, an architectonic one when it is built, and a textile one when it is woven.
Thomas Rogers
Walking through Oslos government quarter, its hard to miss the monumental concrete mural that dominates its central square. The semiabstract depiction of three people on a boat, pulling in a catch under a blazing sun, is on the end of a swooping modernist building known as Y-block. The Fishermen bears the unmistakable lines of the artist who designed it: Pablo Picasso, who created it in 1970, in collaboration with Norwegian artist Carl Nesjar.
In the last six years, however, both the building and the mural have been in a grim state of uncertainty. Since July 22, 2011, Y-block and an adjacent building, known as H-block, have sat largely empty, their windows boarded up or covered by screens, a ghostly reminder of the car-bomb attack that tore through the government quarter, killing eight people.
To the outrage of preservationists, architects and politicians, the Norwegian government has decided to follow through on plans to demolish Y-block and relocate The Fishermen and another of Picasso and Nesjars murals. Statsbygg, the Norwegian state property directorate, said in September that it would award a contract to redesign the quarter to a group of several high-profile architecture firms who, in accordance with government wishes, will replace Y-block with a triangular building with a semi-transparent facade and erect a row of offices along one edge of the site. Opponents of the decision see it as an affront to Norwegian and global artistic heritage, and a capitulation to Breivik.
We dont want the ministry to tear down the building when the terrorist didnt manage to do that, says Janne Wilberg, the city of Oslos director of cultural heritage. Other opponents of the ministrys plan argue that, heritage issues aside, it will leave the district with too much office space, overwhelming Oslos historic city core. Ola Elvestuen, member of the Norwegian parliament for Liberal Party, says, Theyre trying to build too many too large buildings in too small of an area. He plans to fight the proposal in parliament, aiming to preserve Y-block and its Picassos in their original locations.
This is our near past, he says, and the near past is often the hardest to preserve. The Independent
Pushpesh Pant
After the sound and fury has subsided and the hooplah over khichdis designation as the national dish of India that is Bharat is over, we can rise above parochial prejudices and political partisanship to ponder over the problems associated with cultural heritage in a land as diverse as India and the vibrant pluralism that has always been a characteristic of our syncretic civilisation.
Khichdi is an excellent illustration of not only reflecting but also celebrating diversity.
There is no single recipe that tickles the palate of 1.35 billion Indians. From sweet and savoury pongal in Tamil Nadu to bajra khichdi in Gujarat and Rajasthan, bhuni khichuri in Bengal to husked and split mash in the Hindi heartland, you can pick and choose what you like. In its non-vegetarian avatar there is khichdi keema from Hyderabad.
From consecrated pure food to a delicacy verging on sinful indulgence, the rice-and-lentil duo is encountered in more than dashaavtar (10 incarnations of the God). What is intriguing is the haste to grant national importance to the humble khichdi? Even if we accept the statement of the Minister for Food Processing that there has no such plotting, it doesnt make sense that so much energy was spent to ensure khichdi a place in the sun in the Guinness Book of World Records. Surely, seven decades after Independence we have more memorable accomplishments in different realms of artistic and scientific creativity.
True, culinary arts deserve to be put in the same pedestal as music, dance, literature, poetry, painting and none can deny that food production, processing and consumption is as much science and technology as anything else.
Economics and politics are entwined inextricably from farm to fork. The question that remains unanswered is that in these interesting times why should we aggravate divisions in society by imposing a strait jacket of religious or regional identity on a recipe? Havent we have had enough of strife engendered by language, caste and community?
Food, like, music and art, transcends linguistic and literacy barriers. There are prohibitions and prescriptions but we break taboos and acquire new tastes as we travel. For millennia, ingredients have travelled with soldiers and traders, pilgrims and fortune hunters, scholar-explorers. The betel leaf, now identified as typically Indian, came to this land from South East Asia more than two thousand years ago and was named nagvallari (the snake vine).
There are few things like rice and sugarcane that can lay a justifiable claim to being hundred per cent swadeshi. What we need to ponder seriously and dispassionately is the need to brand everything with a hot nationalistic iron. Isnt it enough to take pride in our composite culture and heritage both tangible and intangible? What Unesco has been striving to do is to make us aware that from architecture to food heritage belongs to humankind.
Of course, we should take pride in the land of our birth but this doesnt mean that we should shut our eyes and ears to what we owe others. Nor is it imperative to keep bragging about how our ancestors knew it all, had done it all before anyone else anywhere. This tendency to mindlessly glorify ourselves can only fetter us from reaching out for stars or explore beckoning horizons.
There is more to our resplendent heritage than the khichdi puran. Like khichdi, the parantha too has many layers though not all of them are indigenous and as is the samosa and pulav with their foreign origins. Even the vada-pav from amchi Mumbai and publicised as quintessential swadeshi fast food favoured by the Marathi manus is not without foreign touch. The word pav is Portuguese for leavened bread and potatoes as well as chillies were brought to us from the New World. Sabudana pearls carved from taipioca root and consumed unselfconsciously on days of ritual fasting are also imported stuff.
Fermented foods like idli and dosa, it is believed, were inspired by cooking techniques that Indian seafarers had come across in Indonesia during the Chola Empire. Appam in Kerala is cooked on a vessel called cheena chatti suggesting that the contact with Chinese has left its mark on things other than cantilevered fishing nets. Filter kapi , an integral part of South Indian food and beverages, is made from beans that originated in Ethiopia. And, though the finest Champagne teas are grown in India, when it comes to sweets, the story is not very different. The delicate chhena-based Bengali confections sondesh, rosogulla wouldnt have been born had the Portuguese not taught us the art of tearing milk. It is well known that halwa came with the Arabs and jalebi appears to have mutated from jalebia and its south Indian name is a literal give away jangir from Jahangiri!
In present times can anyone deny the national identity of these delicacies? Why then single out the khichdi to bestow the special honour?
There is not a single culinary stream in our vast and varied land that can claim to have a status superior to the rest. No one recipe can do justice to our peerless gastronomic legacy. Even the humble khichdi has many avatars in various corners and nooks of India.
Sweet and salty
Pongal: Sweet khichdi from Tamil Nadu
This is a celebratory dish cooked at the harvest festival that bears its name; belying the belief that khichdi is only for the aged and infirm. It is also so exceptional in that it is sweet not savoury.
Ingredients
Rice 1 cup
Husked moong dal 1 cup
Jaggery (crumbled) 1 cup
Ghee 1 to half cup
Cloves 3-4
Pepper corns tsp
Green cardamom powder 1 tsp
Raisins 2 tbsp
Cashew nuts 2 tbsp (broken)
Method: Dry roast lentils till these release their sweet aroma. Soak rice in water for 30 minutes. After draining, put rice and lentils in a cooker and add four cups of water along with cloves and pepper corns. Cook under pressure for two whistles. In a separate pan prepare a syrup by adding half a cup of water to the jaggery and boil it till it bubbles. Keep aside to cool. Open the pressure cooker, add the jaggery syrup to it and cook on medium flame. Mash the pongal with the back of a ladle till mushy. Fry the raisins in ghee and pour over the cooked dish. Sprinkle cardamom powder just before serving.
Bengali bhuni khichuri
This festive dish is a must in Durga pooja pandals in Kolkata.
Ingredients
Rice 1 cup
Moong dal 1 cup
Bay leaf 1
Ginger-garlic paste 1 tbsp
Cumin powder 1tsp
Coriander powder 1tbsp
Turmeric powder tsp
Red chilli powder tsp
Ghee cup
Salt To taste
Method: Dry roast the lentils till these release aroma. Soak the rice in water for 30 minutes.Heat ghee in a pan, add bay leaf, add garlic-ginger paste and stir fry till it is cooked. Now add rice after draining and lentils. Then add all powdered spices and salt. Stir fry for two-three minutes lightly. Pour four cups of water and cook till done. This khichuri is not mushy but semi-solid.
Manu Moudgil
Two women in veils are pulling out a pitcher from a shallow well adorned by a yellow stone. The water is poured into leather bags carried by two donkeys. After a few minutes, the women start walking back home, a short distance away, with pitchers on their heads and donkeys in tow. We are at Dablapar, a small village around 80 km from the tourist town of Jaisalmer in Rajasthan. Till sometime back, the women of this village used to walk 12 km to get water from a pond. During drought years, they were forced to migrate with their livestock.
This change in fortune that literally has a well walking up to their doorsteps did not come from a new enterprise, but is a rediscovery of an ancient system that has been serving the Thar desert for centuries.
Shifting sands
Western Rajasthan is punctuated by ponds, many of these are fine examples of architectural geniuses and managed with religious reverence. Its not difficult to see why! Groundwater runs very deep and is often saline. This makes ponds holding sweet rainwater the most important enterprise here and wells the most neglected. In a few areas where geological conditions permit, however, sweet water trapped in layers of sand can be accessed through beris or small wells.
An impervious layer of gypsum running underground arrests rainwater, stopping it from mixing with the saline groundwater. This unique geological feature is the lifeline of desert, informs Chattar Singh, an experienced hand in natural and cultural landscape of this region. Even in years of scanty rainfall, this reserve gets replenished and remains safe from intense heat while pond water evaporates. Beris are also found in neighbouring Barmer district. There, the function of gypsum to arrest rainwater is done by an amalgam of sand and gravel. Usually this trapped water, called rejwani paani locally, can be found at 10-50 feet from the surface, but one needs a keen eye and skilled hands, both attributes not easily found in the modern age, to access it.
Not an easy job
Digging deep is the most dangerous job in the Thar. The loose desert soil can cave in easily. Traditionally, well-digging has invoked ingenuity of man to humour nature. A net or rope of shrubs, logs of wood from khejri tree (Prosopis Cineraria) and stones carved to fit into each other were some of the methods people used to strengthen the walls of a well.
In his widely popular book Rajasthan Ki Rajat Boondein (Radiant Raindrops of Rajasthan) published in 1995, late environmentalist Anupam Mishra describes in detail the process of digging a beri. Everyday, a little of the digging is done and soil removed. The walls have to be lined before digging further to prevent them from caving in... but at many places the walls have to be further arrested with ropes made of kheep, a local grass. Such would be the skill and patience invested with the grass that an onlooker may get confused if the main task is making rope or digging a well. At many places, where kheep is not available, wooden planks made from branches of local trees are used.
For a beri that goes very deep, a plaster of gypsum was fortified with big stones carved to fit into each other. Such beris are very durable as many of these are still running. However, many a times, sand would crawl in through the narrow gaps between the stones, thus affecting the water level. Every year, sand has to be removed from the bottom, informs Rajaram Ghedu, a social worker who has been promoting ancient water harvesting methods in Barmer.
From decline to revival
The promise of canal water supply made the new generation assume that beris would become redundant. Many of these structures went defunct and the skilled men became a rarity. Today, almost all the villages boast of big concrete tanks as a testimony to government plans to supply water from the Indira Gandhi canal. But ground realities contradict promises. Either most of these tanks remain empty or the quality of supply is very poor. It is not safe to drink this water, says Mohan Singh of Habur village.
In the last decade, people like Rajaram and Chattar Singh have refuelled the interest of locals in beris. Renovation of defunct structures and building of new ones with partial support from a philanthropic organisation has turned several villages self-sufficient in water supply.
The locals have also started generating their own funds to meet the expenses of such work. Our ancestors had been self-dependent in all respects but we fell into the trap of relying on government for our basic needs. Now self-reliance is again taking roots, says Chattar Singh.
With revival of demand for beris, skilled men have also increased. Jamaluddin, the oldest well digger in Barmers Bhakasar region, has trained around 15 young men in this trade. A new technique using cement and moulds to secure the walls has also reduced the risk associated with this job. Though the work still requires patience, the risks of getting buried have reduced. The demand is increasing and we also get requests from areas like Rann of Kutch, which no longer has trained people, he says.
The day a beri starts yielding water is not short of a festival. Gifts are bestowed on the skilled diggers, prayers made to the souls of ancestors and a feast organised in the evening. That water can be held with such reverence in the times of bore-wells and gigantic dams seems like an anomaly. Heres hoping for more such anomalies to sprout.
Tribune News Service
Dehradun, November 12
As the state government prepares to hold Assembly session at Gairsain in December, the Congress has launched an attack on the BJP over the issue of permanent capital status to Gairsain.
Situated in Chamoli district, Gairsain assumes much significance as the state agitationists have been seeking permanent capital status for it. They believe their demand is in consent with the popular sentiment behind the creation of the state.
Congress MP Pradeep Tamta said yesterday that the BJPs assurance to make Gairsain summer capital was just an eyewash.
Tamta went on to assert that the previous Congress government had ensured necessary infrastructure for make Gairsain summer capital of the state. He accused the ruling of BJP of dilly dallying on the issue and appealed to all the political parties to mount pressure on the state government.
State Congress president Pritam Singh had recently questioned the state governments asking if it had pledged to make Gairsain summer capital, why the Assembly session was not conducted there in summer.
Gairsain was a unanimous choice for capital of the hill state during the agitation for the formation of a separate state. But after Uttarakhand was formed in 2000, the two main political parties decided to make Dehradun as interim capital.
Sydney, November 12
Australias Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull on Sunday said he would discuss North Korea and Islamist terrorism as threats to regional stability, ahead of his arrival at an East Asia leaders summit in the Philippines.
North Korea was a criminal regime and the single largest threat to the region, Turnbull told a televised news conference in Hong Kong.
They are very cunning operators, he said, urging a tightening of economic sanctions.
Islamist terrorism in the southern Philippines is the other key security issue Turnbull aims to discuss with Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte in Manila.
Australia said in September it would send troops to train Philippines armed forces engaged in a 154-day battle with Islamic State fighters in the southern city of Marawi, in the countrys biggest security crisis in decades.
Turnbull stressed the importance of help by Indonesian President Joko Widodo in defusing Islamist extremism as the leader of the worlds largest Muslim-majority country, which is also a democracy.
He speaks with great authority when he says Islam is compatible with democracy and moderation, Turnbull added. Hes a powerful voice for moderation in the region. Australias embattled prime minister will attend the high-powered regional summit at the same time as a citizenship crisis at home has destroyed the parliamentary majority of his ruling centre-right coalition.
The Constitution bars dual nationals from Parliament, and Turnbulls government was thrown into disarray last month by a High Court ruling that five parliamentarians, including his deputy, Barnaby Joyce, were ineligible to be lawmakers.
The resignation of another MP on Saturday has left Turnbull as the head of a minority government, with his position guaranteed only by the votes of two independents.
Turnbull said he expects Joyce to be returned to Parliament following a December 2 by-election. Reuters
London, November 12
British Prime Minister Theresa May is on Sunday coping with fresh turmoil as it emerged that as many as 40 of her own party MPs are ready to sign a letter expressing a lack of confidence in her leadership.
Conservative Party MPs are now just eight short of the required number of 48 to force a leadership challenge as Theresa May struggles to steady her government following two high-profile resignations, The Sunday Times reported.
Indian-origin MP Priti Patel stepped down as the international development minister amid a dramatic row over a series of unauthorised meetings with Israeli officials earlier this week.
Her resignation came days after Michael Fallon had been forced to quit as defence secretary amid allegations of sexual misconduct.
Two of Mays other senior Cabinet ministers, Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson and First Secretary of State Damian Green, continue to battle demands that they step down.
Johnson has been accused of endangering the life of a British-Iranian national, imprisoned in Tehran, by making an incorrect statement at a House of Commons committee meeting.
Green is under investigation by the parliamentary authorities over allegations of sexual misconduct and that pornography had been discovered on his Commons laptop a few years ago.
The Opposition and her own party MPs believe that Theresa Mays failure to take firm action against them reflects her weakness as a leader and it is time for her to quit Downing Street.
The embattled leader also faces mounting pressure from the European Union (EU) over Brexit negotiations, after Brussels issued an ultimatum that Britain must agree on its divorce bill payments with the economic bloc within weeks or face the prospect of no future trade deal with the EU once it is no longer a member.
May is headed for some further bruising in the House of Commons when the EU Withdrawal Bill returns to Parliament on Tuesday, with Labour expected to join Tory rebels to inflict a series of damaging defeats on the government.
One of Labours key demands is that Parliament, and not ministers, has the final say on whether to approve the withdrawal agreement and how best to implement it.
Continuing uncertainty about the governments approach to Brexit is now the biggest risk facing our country. The prime minister must end the confusion, take on the no-deal extremists in her government and back a jobs-first Brexit for Britain, Opposition Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn warned in an article in The Sunday Times today.
He demanded that May should govern or go because she is now showing every sign of being in office but not in power.
Corbyn also indicated that sacking Boris Johnson would be a sign of some strength as he had become a liability.
We have put up with Johnson embarrassing and undermining our country with his incompetence and colonial throwback views and putting our citizens at risk for long enough. Its time for him to go, he said.
Johnson is reportedly set for a meeting with the husband of Nazanin Zaghari-Radcliffe, a dual British and Iranian national in jail on charges of an attempted coup against the Iranian regime.
Richard Radcliffe has been arguing his wifes innocence and campaigning for the UK Foreign Office to secure her release.
Johnsons future in the UK Cabinet is now tied to how the case progresses. PTI
Danang, November 11
US President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin agreed a statement on Syria during a brief meeting at a summit in Vietnam on Saturday and Putin again dismissed allegations of meddling in last years US election.
It was their first encounter since July and came at a time that US-Russia relations have been battered and Trump is haunted by the accusations that Putin influenced the election that brought him to the White House.
Trump said their agreement to support a political solution to Syrias conflict would save tremendous numbers of lives.
We did it very quickly, Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One after leaving the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in the resort of Danang for Hanoi, Vietnams capital.
We seem to have a very good feeling for each other, a good relationship considering we dont know each other well. Talking after their meeting, Putin described Trump as a well-mannered person and comfortable to deal with.
We know each other little, but the US president is highly civil in his behaviour, friendly. We have a normal dialogue but unfortunately little time, he said. After emphasising last year on the campaign trail that it would be nice if the United States and Russia could work together on world problems, Trump has had limited contact with Putin since taking office.
The sight of Trump sitting down with Putin in public also revives the issue of election meddling, still under investigation. Trumps former campaign manager, Paul Manafort, has been indicted in the probe along with his former deputy, Rick Gates.
Trump said Putin had told him again that he hadnt meddled in the election. I really believe that when he tells me that, he means it, Trump said of the accusations. I think hes very insulted by it, which is not a good thing for our country.
Putin dismissed suggestions Russia influenced the elections through political advertising. Tech companies, including Facebook, have said some Russian-bought political content spread on their platforms around the time of the election.
Scheduling and unspecified protocol issues were to blame for the fact that a mooted sit-down meeting with Trump did not happen in Danang, Putin said. Trump said they had two or three very short conversations. They were seen chatting amicably as they walked to the position where the traditional APEC summit photo was being taken at a viewpoint looking over the South China Sea.
Pictures from the APEC meeting also showed Trump walking up to Putin at the summit table and patting him on the back. They also shook hands at the summit dinner on Friday evening.
It would be a great thing to have a good relationship with Russia, Trump said. He could really help us in North Korea, Trump said. If Russia helped us in addition to China that problem would go away a lot faster.
The Kremlin said the statement on Syria was coordinated by Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson especially for the meeting in Danang. Reuters
Putin terms accusations as fantasies
Russian President Vladimir Putin said accusations that Moscow meddled in US elections are fantasies and attempts to undermine the US presidency. Everything about the so-called Russian dossier in the US is a manifestation of continuing domestic political struggle, Putin said at APEC summit in Vietnam.
I dont know anything about it, he said. I think these are some sort of fantasies.
He told me he didnt meddle: Trump
US President Donald Trump said Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin told him that he didnt meddle in US elections. He says he didnt meddle. I asked him again. You can only ask so many times, Trump said. Every time he sees me, he said: I didnt do that. And I believe, I really believe that when he tells me that he means it. I think hes very insulted by it, which is not a good thing for our country
Barcelona, November 12
Spanish authorities said they rescued over 250 migrants, including children, on Sunday who were making the perilous Mediterranean crossing to Europe.
We saved 251 people from five improvised vessels all in the Alboran Sea, Spains maritime safety authorities said on Twitter, referring to the westernmost portion of the Mediterranean Sea.
The number of migrants arriving by sea on Spanish shores has soared over last year, with the figure nearly tripling to 15,585 in 2017 by November 8, according to the International Organization for Migration (IOM).
Many Africans undertaking the long route to Europe are choosing to avoid crossing danger-ridden Libya to get to Italy along the so-called central Mediterranean route, and choosing instead to get there via Morocco and Spain.
However, Spain is still well behind Italy, which has recorded some 114,400 arrivals by sea since since the start of the year.
Since January nearly 15,600 migrants have made it to Spain by sea, with 156 dying during the crossing, according to the IOM.
The agency estimates that some 155,850 migrants have made the dangerous crossing to Europe this year and another 2,961 died or went missing while trying. AFP.
Madrid, November 12
Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy will visit Catalonia on Sunday to begin campaigning for his Popular Party, ahead of the upcoming regional elections in December.
Rajoy is expected to address a meeting of supporters of the conservative party and his visit comes after 750,000 people rallied in Barcelona on Saturday to protest against the detention of ousted Catalan leaders, reports the BBC.
The Catalan government declared independence in October, prompting Rajoy to sack and jail its leaders.
Sundays visit will be the Prime Ministers first to the region since the upheaval which was sparked by a disputed referendum held in Catalonia on October 27, in which the independence campaign won 92 per cent of the vote, from a turnout of 43 per cent.
The Spanish government responded to the referendum by dissolving the Catalan parliament, imposing direct rule, and calling the snap regional elections on December 21.
Since the crackdown by Madrid, Catalonias sacked President Carles Puigdemont has gone into self-imposed exile in Belgium, and his top allies have been prosecuted.
A lawyer whose firm represents two of his imprisoned former cabinet ministers told the BBC that their situation had been made worse by Puigdemonts decision to flee.
Meanwhile, the left-wing ERC party, a key ally of Puigdemont, has announced that some of the prisoners, including party leader Oriol Junqueras, as well as some of the sacked ministers who also went to Belgium, will stand on its electoral list.
A recent opinion poll in Catalan newspaper La Vanguardia suggests that the ERC will win the biggest share of the vote in December. IANS
Communist principle knows no democracy: Deuba
Prime Minister and Nepali Congress President Sher Bahadur Deuba has said there is no space for democracy in the communist principle.
Danang, November 11
Countries in the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade deal have agreed on the core elements to move ahead without the United States, officials said on Saturday, after last-minute resistance from Canada raised new doubts about its survival.
Taking the agreement forward is a boost for the principle of multilateral trade pacts after US President Donald Trump ditched the TPP early this year in favour of an America First policy he believes would save US jobs. Talks, often heated, have been held on the sidelines of the APEC summit in the Vietnamese resort of Danang, where Trump and other leaders held their main meeting on Saturday.
We have overcome the hardest part, Vietnams trade minister, Tran Tuan Anh, told a news conference.
The agreement, which still needs to be finalised, would now be called the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP), he said.
Japanese Economy Minister Toshimitsu Motegi said he hoped that moving ahead with the deal would be a step towards bringing back the US.
Partly to counter Chinas growing dominance in Asia, Japan had been lobbying hard for the TPP pact, which aims to eliminate tariffs on industrial and farm products across the 11-nation bloc whose trade totalled $356 billion last year. Reuters
Hanoi, November 12
US President Donald Trump said on Sunday he was prepared to mediate between claimants to the South China Sea, where five countries contest Chinas sweeping claims to the busy waterway.
Trump was speaking in Vietnam, which has become the most vocal opponent of Chinas claims and its construction and militarisation of artificial islands in the sea. About $3-trillion in goods passes through the sea each year.
If I can help mediate or arbitrate, please let me know, Trump said in comments at a meeting in Hanoi with Vietnams president, Tran Dai Quang.
Trump acknowledged that Chinas position on the South China Sea was a problem.
Im a very good mediator and arbitrator, he said.
President Quang said Vietnam believed in handling disputes on the South China Sea through peaceful negotiations and on the basis of international laws - which Vietnam says nullify Chinas claims.
Vietnam has reclaimed land around reefs and islets, but on nowhere near the same scale as China. Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines and Taiwan also have claims in the sea.
Since Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte has grown closer to China, Vietnam has emerged as Chinas main challenger in the region. In July, China pressured Vietnam to stop oil drilling in a disputed area, taking relations to a low.
Relations have since improved and Chinese President Xi Jinping is visiting Hanoi later on Sunday.
The South China Sea was discussed in Beijing on an earlier leg of Trumps 12-day Asian tour and US. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said the United States and China had a frank exchange of views.
The United States has angered China with freedom of navigation patrols close to Chinese-controlled islands.
CODE OF CONDUCT
In August, foreign ministers of Southeast Asia and China adopted a negotiating framework for a code of conduct in the South China Sea, a move they hailed as progress but one seen by critics as a tactic to buy China time to consolidate its power.
The framework seeks to advance a 2002 Declaration of Conduct (DOC) of Parties in the South China Sea, which has mostly been ignored by claimant states, particularly China, which has built seven man-made islands in disputed waters, three of them equipped with runways, surface-to-air missiles and radars.
All parties say the framework is only an outline for how the code will be established and critics raise doubts about how effective the pact will be.
The framework will be endorsed by China and members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) at a summit in Manila on Monday, a diplomat from one of the regional blocs countries said.
The next step is for ASEAN and China to start formal consultations and negotiations for the actual Code of Conduct, and the earliest that talks on this can start is February 2018, the diplomat said.
From Vietnam, Trump flies to the Philippines for a meeting with ASEAN leaders before he heads back to Washington.
Relations between Vietnam and the United States have blossomed in the decades since their war ended in 1975. A recent survey put the favourability of the United States at 84 percent among Vietnamese.
But Vietnams trade surplus remains an irritant for the Trump administration. At $32 billion last year, it was the sixth largest with the United States, though less than a tenth the size of Chinas.
We want to get that straightened out very quickly, Trump said at a meeting with Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc. Reuters.
Hanoi, November 12
US President Donald Trump said on Sunday that he agreed with the US intelligence communitys assessment on Russian meddling in last years US election.
He was speaking a day after meeting Russian President Vladimir Putin and saying he believed the Russian leader when he denied accusations that Russia meddled, despite US intelligence agencies conclusion of Russian interference.
Addressing a news conference during a visit to Vietnam, Trump said he was not interested in arguing with Putin over meddling and wanted to get on with Russia to work on world problems.
What he believes, he believes, Trump said of Putins belief that Russia did not meddle. Reuters
London: For the first time in its over 180-year-old history, a traditional Cambridge University private members club, famous as a male-only space, has voted to allow women members. The Pitt Club has been open only to men since it was founded in 1835, with entry dependent on formal election. Until now women could accompany members to events at the clubhouse on campus but could not attend in their own right. PTI
Twitter doubles name limit to 50 characters
New York: Twitter has more than doubled its count for users display names from 20 to 50 characters, days after the social media giant ended the iconic 140-character tweet limit. The San Francisco-based company announced on Friday that a user can add a display name of up to 50 characters, up from the original 20 characters. The change comes as a relief to many users who have bigger names or want to add colour to their names. PTI
Nearly 100 Freedmen and their supporters gathered in John Hope Franklin Reconciliation Park Saturday to celebrate recent successes and mark a path forward.
The group celebrated an Aug. 30 ruling by a federal judge that said the descendants of former slaves held with the Cherokee Nation Cherokee Freedmen are entitled to the full rights of Cherokee citizenship.
The Cherokee Nation subsequently adopted the ruling, reopening the paths to citizenship previously barred to many Cherokee descendants because of the color of their skin.
Everyone who was listed on the Dawes Rolls, no matter what classification, they were members of the tribe, said event coordinator Eli Grayson. We base our citizenship on descendancy from those rolls. Its a myth that Freedmen were not on the Dawes Rolls.
Grayson is a Creek citizen and an advocate for Freedmens rights.
My ancestors were the slaveholders in the Creek Nation, Grayson said. I think Im obligated to fight for their rights.
Grayson said that much of the trepidation that still exists about extending full tribal citizenship to black members of the tribes is racism based on economics.
Slaves of the state of Mississippi were called Freedman. They are no longer called Freedmen because they stopped using it in the 1930s because it became an antiquated term, Grayson said. These people shouldnt even be called Freedmen. They should be called Cherokee, Creek, Choctaw We should have buried that term.
Several other speakers stood to discuss various aspects of the Freedmen journey for citizenship.
Grayson talked about learning about the plight of Freedmen only after moving to Oklahoma.
What I found out about were the injustices that were happening today, not in 1906, not in 1866, not in 1830, not in 1730, but in 2017, Grayson said.
Following Grayson, author and attorney Hannibal Johnson spoke on the shared history of Freedman, the Five Civilized Tribes and Oklahoma.
Only through an awareness of this rich and complex history will we approach a full understanding of the present day racial dynamics and the social, political and economic implications that go along with them, Johnson said.
Attorney Jon Velie, who was instrumental in arguing for Freedmen citizenship in the Cherokee Nation, discussed his 24 years of work in this field and laid out next steps for how other tribes can achieve the same result.
Former U.S. Rep. Barney Frank spoke about using his position to assist Freedmen in lobbying for their interests and the opportunity to participate in one of the important fights for justice.
Marilyn Vann, a Cherokee Freedmen advocate, spoke about her efforts lobbying and pushing litigation that eventually led to the Aug. 30 decisions.
State Rep. Regina Goodwin presented Vann with a letter of appreciation from the Oklahoma House of Representatives.
State Sen. Anastasia Pittman, a Seminole Freedmen, discussed next steps for Freedmen of the remaining tribes which have yet to recognize their citizenship.
Many others also came forward to offer words of encouragement.
William and Rochelle Sayles joined the rally in support. William regained Cherokee citizenship following the federal court decision and helped his children sign up for citizenship as well. Rochelle traces her ancestry to the Eastern Band of Cherokee, a distinct federally recognized tribe apart from the Cherokee Nation.
This rally is about equal rights for citizen Freedman, as it should be, Sayles said. There are a few tribes that havent accepted their Freedman yet, and hopefully that will turn around soon.
Genealogy Chair of the Descendants of Freedmen of the Five Civilized Tribes Association Ron Graham brought a display to the rally which showed a family portrait of his maternal great-grandfather, copies of each of the family members Dawes numbers and documents depicting tribal land allotments which have since fallen out of the familys hands.
Graham explained that blood quantum, while a common tribal requirement, was not a factor of tribal citizenship.
The Treaty of 1866, this is how we get our citizenship. Race had nothing, absolutely nothing, to do with citizenship, Graham said.
Robert Hadley can trace his heritage from the Dawes Rolls as well, but was put off from trying to gain citizenship when members of the Creek Nation tore apart his citizenship card after meeting his darker-skinned father.
While he doesnt consider regaining tribal membership for himself, Hadley wanted to ensure that citizenship is available for his children and grandchildren.
The Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek and Seminole nations are each at various stages of acceptance of Freedmen as full citizens of their tribes. There likely will be many more lawsuits and rallies before Freedmen achieve the full citizenship rights they seek.
Binod Ghimire covers parliamentary affairs and human rights for The Kathmandu Post. Since joining the Post in 2010, he has reported primarily on social issues, focusing on education and transitional justice.
Correction: This story misspelled Educare and misstated that it was part of Tulsa Public Schools. The story has been corrected.
The trail ranges from stark and barren to brushy and foreboding, but a community revitalization plan is in the works to provide a years worth of cleanup, brush clearing and planting to turn the Osage Prairie Trail into a welcoming and productive corridor.
Up With Trees, along with several government entities and other community partners, has created a plan to improve a 3.5-mile section of the Osage Prairie Trail from its trailhead at the Oklahoma State University-Tulsa campus at Greenwood Avenue to 36th Street North.
Just under $700,000, a portion of a $1.7 million grant to Up With Trees from the Joe and Jean Holloman Family Foundation, will be used to do a years worth of cleanup and creation of rest areas and connections with existing parks and schools including the addition of 850 trees.
The words massive cleanup appear several times in the proposed plan. The work is slated to begin early 2018 and wrap up in the spring of 2019.
The trail is popular with bicyclists who often take the path its full 14-mile length through Sperry and on north to Skiatook Central Park. But it falls short as a walking path for Tulsa residents where it could become an asset for the area as a whole for outdoor recreation and for attracting new developments in neighborhoods with easy access to downtown, according to planners.
Im really excited to see that become a more enjoyable walk, said Nathan Pickard an Up With Trees board member heavily involved in the planning.
Just up from the Rudisill (Regional) Library, right off Pine, in that area its just totally barren. Walking that stretch, especially in the summer sun, in the heat, its not an appealing stretch at all. ... Its closer to 36th Street that it becomes overgrown and it just doesnt feel safe.
Bill White walks the trail regularly and is president of the Dunbar Neighborhood Association and Director of Development for the Greenwood Cultural Center. The project literally hits him where he lives.
People have a habit of dropping trash along the way, and in places there is garbage dumped years ago by people who apparently didnt want to make the full run to the landfill, he said.
Its a neglected area, thats kind of the nicest way I can say it; it needs help, he said.
It really is a quiet little hidden gem, he said. A lot of bikers jump on it and head north all the way up to Skiatook, but on a bike you can kind of get on it and zip past everything; being on a bike and walking are two different things.
The length of the trial is relatively flat, so its a nice, easy walk or bike ride to Tulsa, something that should be appealing to new homebuilders. White often takes the 10- or 15-minute walk from his home to his office near the trailhead.
The trail succeeds as a basic path, but not a destination, he said.
There is really nothing to walk to out on the trail, he said.
Shaded rest areas and food forests could be a draw along the trail and add needed outdoor recreational spots for adjacent neighborhoods.
The improvements will provide a connecting piece of attractive greenbelt with native plants to tie in areas between an existing food forest established along the Tisdale Expressway to the west and a planned 200-acre urban wilderness area in the Flat Rock Creek drainage east of Peoria at 36th Street North. The plan also addresses connecting Lacy and Crawford parks to the trail.
The renovation proposal lists the north Tulsa area as a food desert with underdeveloped parks and recreational resources in neighborhoods with a large concentration of Tulsas economically disadvantaged and minority populations.
It calls for creating four food forests adjacent to the trail as well as tree schools at three public schools adjacent to the trail: Carver Middle School, Emerson Elementary and an Educare Center.
Ive met with Educare, and they are excited because they dont have the ability to do field trips, so they would like to be able to walk the kids back and to have different things to show the kids, native trees and different aspects of nature, Pickard said.
Trees and shrubs in food forests, like the one on Tisdale that has 500 trees and shrubs and is now 4 years old, can provide fruits and nuts like peaches, apples, cherries, grapes, figs, blackberries and pecans and chestnuts, Pickard said.
The food forests not only add to the scenery but provide an educational opportunity for students and useful sources of food for local residents.
I just picked figs out there this morning, Pickard said. This is the third year and weve had to do almost no extra work other than weed-eating. Its only had to be watered twice since it was planted.
Overall the goal is beautification of an area that has been left in disrepair.
Thats the main thing, to improve the scenery and give it life, White said. To give it some more uniformity and make it look beautiful; you cant ever go wrong with beautification of an area ... its almost like when you clean off your desk or you clean your house. It helps you see things clearer and think differently.
The massacre of 26 worshipers at a rural Texas church is the latest in a grisly series of mass shootings across America in recent years.
With each tragedy, we hear arguments about gun violence, mental health, how much firearms should be regulated and whats driving the prevalence of mass shootings. PolitiFact has worked for years to research these topics to help explain talking points used by all sides of the debate.
Here are answers to some questions you may have.
How do we define mass shootings?
There is no widely accepted definition of mass shootings. People use either broad or restrictive definitions of mass shootings to reinforce their stance on gun control.
Researchers at the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service defined mass shooting as a multiple homicide incident in which four or more victims are murdered with firearms, within one event, and in one or more locations in close proximity in a 2015 report. They counted 317 mass shootings from 1999-2013.
The report also used the term mass public shooting for a multiple homicide incident in which four or more victims are murdered with firearms, within one event, in at least one or more public locations, such as a workplace, school or house of worship. There were 66 attacks that met that definition during that 15-year period.
After the 2012 Sandy Hook school shooting, Congress defined mass killings as three or more homicides in a single incident. The definition was intended to clarify when the U.S. Attorney General could assist state and local authorities in investigations of violent acts and shootings in places of public use.
The Gun Violence Archive tracks gun deaths using media, law enforcement, government and commercial sources. Its data is based on a broader criteria: at least four people injured or killed in one location, not including the suspect. Criminologists previously told PolitiFact that this groups tally includes gang shootings and home invasion robberies.
When is a mass shooting in the United States considered terrorism?
A mass shooting needs to meet several criteria in order to be legally labeled as domestic terrorism. That definition applies to acts dangerous to human life that are a violation of U.S. or state criminal laws, which occur primarily within U.S. territorial jurisdiction and appear to be intended to:
intimidate or coerce a civilian population;
influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion; or
affect the conduct of a government by mass destruction, assassination or kidnapping.
Recent mass shootings have led to debate on who should be charged with domestic terrorism.
For instance, the suspect who plowed his car into a crowd of counterprotesters in Charlottesville, Virgina, killing a woman, was not charged with terrorism but second-degree murder, among other charges. Dylann Roof was charged for federal and state crimes, but not domestic terrorism, after shooting to death nine black churchgoers in Charleston, South Carolina, in 2015.
In the 2012 Aurora, Colorado, movie theater shooting, James Holmes was found guilty on 165 counts that included first-degree murder, attempted murder and possession or control of an explosive or incendiary device none was for domestic terrorism.
In other cases, such as the San Bernardino, California, attack or the Las Vegas concert massacre, the suspected shooters died in the event and therefore no charges were filed.
However, in the Oct. 31 truck attack on a bicycle path in New York, the suspect was charged with providing material support to a terrorist organization and for violence and destruction of a motor vehicle.
How do mass shootings in the U.S. compare to other countries?
Mass shootings do happen in other countries. But they do not happen with the same frequency as in the United States.
Two researchers Jaclyn Schildkraut of the State University of New York in Oswego and H. Jaymi Elsass of Texas State University analyzed mass shootings in 11 countries, covering the period from 2000-2014. Aside from the United States, they looked at Australia, Canada, China, England, Finland, France, Germany, Mexico, Norway and Switzerland.
The United States has more mass shootings and more people cumulatively killed or injured than the other 10 nations combined, according to their research. While part of this is because the United States has a much bigger population than all but China, the difference cant be explained by skewed population numbers alone.
When adjusted for population, the United States ranks in the upper half of their list of 11 countries, ranking higher than Australia, Canada, China, England, France, Germany and Mexico. The United States did rank lower than three countries Norway, Finland and Switzerland but they have populations so small that one or two mass-casualty events can produce a relatively high per capita rate.
Is a mental health crisis driving mass shootings?
While mass shootings can be tied to the mental instability of the shooter, mental instability is not a good predictor of mass shootings.
A study in the American Journal of Public Health found that databases that track gun homicides show that less than 5 percent of 120,000 gun-related killings in America between 2001 and 2010 were committed by people with a diagnosed mental illness.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported fluctuations over the years in the number of people who experienced serious psychological distress in the past 30 days. Since 2007, it has ranged from 2.7 percent to 3.8 percent in 2013. In both 2015 and 2016, the rate was 3.6 percent.
In the recent Texas church shooting, the killer had a history of mental illness. There have been policies to share that information more easily. Under President Barack Obama, the Social Security Administration issued a rule that stepped up its efforts to pass the names of those who lack the mental capacity to manage his or her own affairs to the National Instant Criminal Background Check System, which determines whether someone can legally buy a weapon.
President Donald Trump and Congress rescinded that rule on the grounds that it was overly broad.
One of the problems of turning the link between mental illness and mass shootings into effective public policy is that mass shootings are rare events. Gun violence researchers have found that the strongest predictors of violence in general include alcohol and drug abuse and a history of domestic violence.
The Air Force had jailed the Texas shooter for beating his wife and stepson, but failed to pass that information along to the FBI, an apparent breach of Pentagon guidelines.
Are lawmakers bought by the gun lobby?
The intensity of National Rifle Association members political sentiments on gun issues would be powerful even if the NRA didnt spend as much as it does. Still, theres no question that the National Rifle Association is an influential lobbying group, throwing a lot of money around the political process.
If you add together all of the NRAs contributions to candidates, parties and leadership political action committees between 1998 and 2016, it comes to more than $13 million, according to calculations from the Center for Responsive Politics database.
Direct contributions are not even close to the biggest part of the NRA spending on policy influence, however.
During that same period, the NRA spent $144.3 million on outside spending. This consisted largely of independent expenditures efforts expressly advocating the election or defeat of a clearly identified candidate. Often these take the form of campaign ads, but they have to be carried out without coordinating with the candidates they are supporting.
In addition, the NRA has reported spending a cumulative $45.9 million on federal lobbying since 1998, both for its in-house operations and the outside consultants it has retained.
If you add it all up, the NRA has spent $203.2 million on political activities since 1998.
Are AR-15s/semi-automatics involved in recent mass shootings?
Yes. Semi-automatic rifles similar to the AR-15 have been used in high-profile and deadly mass shootings over the years in Aurora, Colorado; Roseburg, Oregon; San Bernadino, California; Newtown, Connecticut; Orlando; and in 2017, Las Vegas and Sutherland Springs, Texas.
The original AR-15 was a derivative of a rifle first developed by gunmaker ArmaLite in the 1950s. The AR refers to ArmaLite rifle, and does not stand for assault rifle. U.S. armed forces use related models of this rifle as a standard-issue combat weapon, albeit usually with automatic capability, which is generally not legal for private citizens to own.
There are somewhere between 6 million and 10 million of these semi-automatic rifles in circulation in the United States. The NRA routinely refers to this style of semi-automatic weapon as a modern sporting rifle. Some politicians have referred to them as weapons of war.
While an AR-15-style rifle is a semi-automatic design, keep in mind that a gun does not have to be a rifle to be semi-automatic. Many handguns also are semi-automatics, as are numerous models of hunting rifles and shotguns. The killer in the 2007 Virginia Tech shootings killed 32 people with two semi-automatic handguns.
What is the difference between a semi-automatic/automatic?
The term semi-automatic refers to any firearm designed to fire one bullet with one trigger squeeze, then automatically reload the chamber with a cartridge from a magazine and re-cock the firing mechanism to be ready to fire again.
Gun control arguments often focus on so-called black rifles, but the differences between those and any other semi-automatic rifles often are only cosmetic. Semi-automatic guns whether they are black rifles, pistols, target rifles or otherwise all largely operate the same way.
Automatic weapons, meanwhile, are different in that squeezing the trigger once fires cartridges repeatedly until the shooter releases it. These weapons are often described as machine guns.
The gunman who killed 58 people in Las Vegas on Oct. 1, 2017, used a device called a bump stock to allow a semi-automatic rifle to fire at a rate of speed similar to an automatic rifle.
While semi-automatic rifles are widely available, fully automatic weapons are not. You can still buy an automatic weapon, but their sale and ownership is highly regulated and exceptionally expensive.
9th edition of India Nuclear Energy expo inaugurated
Mumbai, Nov 9 (UNI) Nuclear scientist Dr R B Grover, Homi Bhabha Chair and member of Atomic Energy Commission (AEC), on Thursday inaugurated the special 9th edition of an international exhibition and conference for the civil nuclear energy sector, 'India Nuclear Energy' (INE), at Nehru Centre in Worli area of south-central Mumbai.
Other dignitaries who graced the event included Alexandre Ziegler, Ambassador of France to India; Mr Andrei Zhiltsov, Consul General of Russia in Mumbai; Mr Gerard Kottmann, president of AIFEN, and others.
The two-day show, organised by UBM India, one of Indias leading exhibition organisers, is the only expo exclusively dedicated to supporting and promoting the civil nuclear energy industry in the country.
INE 2017 is co-organised by DAE (Department of Atomic Energy) and supported by NPCIL (Nuclear Power Corporation of India Ltd).
Other dignitaries who graced the event included Alexandre Ziegler, Ambassador of France to India; Mr Andrei Zhiltsov, Consul General of Russia in Mumbai; Mr Gerard Kottmann, president of AIFEN, and others.
The expo saw participation of over 65 exhibitors, with a brand new sector -- the non-power application of nuclear energy -- being added to last years repertoire.
In the INE 2017, senior officials from Business France, ROSATOM, South Korea, Electricite De France (EDF), Nuvia India, Kirloskar Brothers Ltd, L&T Special Steel and Heavy Forgings, Cadmatic Software Solutions Pvt Ltd, Bureau Veritas (India) Pvt Ltd, Kirloskar Chillers Private Limited. Aifen, Andra, Assystem, AXON
Cable, CEA, EGIS, ERMES, Fuji Electricals, Georgin, Korea Hydro & Nuclear Power Company (KHNP), Korea Electricity Power Company, Engineering and Construction (KEPCO E&C), Doosan Heavy Industries Co
(DHIC), and many more heavy weights from the civil nuclear industry space are participating.
The show provided direct access for exhibitors to end users from NPCIL and Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC) as well as B2B meetings with global civil nuclear industry stakeholders, including Government of India officials, senior officials from World Nuclear Association (WNA), Department of Atomic Energy, Nuclear Power Corporation of India (NPCI) and many more.
Significantly, the premier event provided opportunities for domestic and international companies to interact and network with comprehensive country pavilions from France, Russia and South Korea, along with leading corporates from the civil nuclear energy fraternity in India, to tap the huge potential of nuclear sector.
UNI JM SS NP2035
ASEAN signs free trade, investment pacts with Hong Kong
MANILA, Nov 12 (Reuters) Hong Kong on Sunday signed free trade and investment pacts with the ten-nation Association of Southeast Asian Nations, in what one of the Chinese territory's senior officials called a "loud and clear" vote against rising regional trade protectionism.
The pacts conclude nearly three years of talks, are expected to take effect on January 1 at the earliest, and aim to bring "deeper and bolder" integration of market access with the bloc, said Edward Yau, Hong Kong's commerce and development secretary.
"In the face of protectionist sentiments in other parts of the world, these two agreements are in fact a loud and clear vote from all of us here for freer and more open trade," Yau said.
KMC threatens to scrap contractors deal over Rani Pokhari project delay
Facing growing concern over a long delay in the restoration works of Rani Pokhari, the Kathmandu Metropolitan City (KMC) has threaten to scrap the contract with Worldwide Kandel KNKG amid scrutiny of the construction companys role in restoring the historic monument.
Railways to construct boundary wall on 1000 km stretch to prevent cattle run over incidents 16 Nov 2022 | 10:14 PM New Delhi, Nov 15 (UNI) After the recent cattle run over incidents involving the Vande Bharat Express train on Gandhinagar- Mumbai route, the Railway Ministry has decided to construct a boundary on a 1000 KM stretch in the next six months. see more..
Prez, PM condole loss of lives in Mizoram quarry 16 Nov 2022 | 6:13 PM New Delhi, Nov 16 (UNI) President Droupadi Murmu and Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Wednesday expressed deep grief over the loss of lives due to a stone quarry collapse in Mizoram. see more..
NHRC notice to Kerala govt over girls missing from shetler homes 16 Nov 2022 | 5:11 PM New Delhi, Nov 16 (UNI) The National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) on Wednesday said it issued notice to Kerala government over reportedly girls missing repeatedly from shelter homes in Kottayam district. see more..
Delhi Court to pronounce order on Delhi Health Minister Satyendar Jain's bail plea on Nov 17 16 Nov 2022 | 5:06 PM New Delhi, Nov 16 (UNI) A Delhi Special Court adjourned till November 17 its order on bail plea of Delhi Health Minister Satyendar Jain, who has been arrested under the provisions of Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA). see more..
FB joins hands with Govt on natural disasters
New Delhi, Nov12 (UNI) Facebook, one of the most popular social media platforms, has joined hands with National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) for instant communication with the affected people in times of natural calamities and disaster.
India is prone to natural disasters like floods, earthquake, landslides, cyclones, or droughts. These are recurring phenomena intermittently hitting various parts of the country. During and after these crises response organisations and their teams need accurate information to help communities. Traditional communication channels often go offline with the disaster and it can take time and resources to understand where help is actually needed.
Facebook has come forward and it is making Disaster Maps with the data available with India's NDMA, and other Indian humanitarian aid organisations. Disaster Maps, introduced globally in June, use aggregated, de-identified Facebook data to help organisations bridge the critical gap in information they may face while responding to natural disasters. Facebook can provide multiple types of maps to help in disaster response by including aggregated location information people may choose to share with this site.
Indonesia delivers supplies to villages after Papua rebels' threat to Freeport
JAKARTA, Nov 12 (Reuters) Authorities in Indonesia's eastern province of Papua are delivering food and aid to villages where security forces say an armed rebel group has blocked residents' movement, as police and military surround the area, a police official said on Sunday.
Police say a group linked to the Free Papua Movement (OPM) is preventing about 1,000 people from leaving five villages near a giant copper mine operated by the American miner Freeport-McMoRan Inc.
"We continue to try a persuasive approach and dialogue," said Viktor Mackbon, police chief of the Mimika area, where the villages are located. Talks with the group would be conducted through public and religious figures in the region, he added.
By Nirendra Dev
Manila, Nov 12 (UNI) Who does not like money? But love or fascination for big bucks is one thing which is dragging a large number of Filipino youngsters to opt for a career in rough seas. Many youths are happily joining the merchant navy and bringing money home in "all currencies" - as they put it.
One 30-year old Bihon Li returned home on Saturday in a flight from Hong Kong to Manali. Soft spoken Bihon says he was part of the 23-member crew that sailed in the vessel MV Postina for about 13 months - ferrying coal and iron ore from countries like Brazil and Germany.
"We have been sailing for 11 months.....with a brief technical break. The contract commenced last October and now ended. So we are returning home", he says.
Others also tend to endorse the view that merchant navy is a fast emerging sector in Philippines and as a result, even elders are encouraging children to go for studies in engineering and then join merchant navy.
Sixty-three year old Stephen Mark has therefore put his son to join engineering and then opt for merchant navy.
"This is one of the largest income generating professions and therefore many are willing to opt for it," he said.
According to an estimate, over 30 per cent youths in Philippines study science only to reap these benefits.
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Jesuit school in Karnataka plays azan, apologises 16 Nov 2022 | 10:14 PM Udupi, Nov 16 (UNI) A Jesuit school in Karnataka on Wednesday came under fire for allegedly playing Azan on the loudspeaker and making students offer namaz at a cultural event. see more..
Hemant Soren likely to reach ED office on Thursday for questioning 16 Nov 2022 | 10:04 PM Ranchi, Nov 16 (UNI) Chief Minister Hemant Soren is likely to reach the zonal office of the Enforcement Directorate on Thursday in connection with the illegal mining scam being probed by the agency. see more..
Actor Suhasini Mulay appears as surety for activist Gautam Navlakhe 16 Nov 2022 | 10:01 PM Mumbai, Nov 16 (UNI) Veteran actor Suhasini Mulay on Wednesday appeared before special NIA court as surety for activist Gautam Navlakha, an accused in the Elgar Parishad-Maoist links case, before he could be released from prison and put under house arrest. see more..
Law and order maintenance on top of govts' agenda: Nitish 16 Nov 2022 | 10:00 PM Patna, Nov 16 (UNI) Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar said that there is a complete rule of law in the state and maintenance of law and order is at the top of the government's agenda. see more..
Turkey denies ludicrous reports of plan to seize cleric from US
ISTANBUL, Nov 12 (Reuters) Turkey has dismissed what it said were ludicrous reports that Turkish officials may have discussed a plan to seize a wanted US based Muslim cleric and hand him over to Ankara in exchange for millions of dollars.
In a statement, the Turkish embassy in Washington repeated Ankara's request for the extradition of the cleric, Fethullah Gulen, who it says masterminded last year's failed military coup, but said Turkey would not operate outside the law to achieve that goal.
The statement followed a Wall Street Journal report that Special Counsel Robert Mueller was investigating an alleged proposal under which former US national security adviser Michael Flynn and his son would receive up to
Yemeni airline says not resumed commercial flights after blockade
ADEN, Nov 12 (Reuters) Yemen's national airline said on Sunday it still lacks the security permits needed to resume commercial flights, a day after the transport minister said some flights would be allowed as a nationwide blockade is eased.
The Saudi-led military coalition fighting against Yemen's Houthi movement said last week that it had closed all air, land and sea ports in Yemen to stem the alleged flow of arms to the Houthis from Iran. The move came after Saudi Arabia intercepted a missile fired towards Riyadh, which it blamed on Tehran.
Transport Minister Mourad al-Halimi had said Yemenia flights to the pro-Saudi government-held cities of Aden and Seiyun would resume on Sunday, but the national carrier said in a statement that it "didn't acquire the necessary permits" to fly.
Left alliance will get two-thirds majority: JN Khanal
CPN-UML senior leader Jhalanath Khanal has said that the leftist alliance would get a clear majority in the elections to the House of Representatives and State Assemblies.
NELTA and English dharma
A huge regional two-day conference of the Nepal English Language Teachers Association (NELTA) began in Dharan with the powerful presidential address written and delivered by a great NELTA champion Motikala Subba Dewan, on November 3, 2017.
Nepal Business Excellence Awards set for November 14
Frost & Sullivan along with the Confederation of Nepalese Industries (CNI) is set to host the first edition of Nepal Business Excellence Awards 2017 in the Capital on November 14.
Nepal needs Rs73b for flood recovery
Nepal will need to fork out at least Rs73.2 billion to rebuild infrastructure and restore livelihood affected by the floods of mid-August, says a latest report prepared by the National Planning Commission (NPC), the apex body that frames the countrys development plans and policies.
Vietnams hosting of the APEC Economic Leaders Week and its economic reforms encourage global investors
The president and chief executive officer of US-backed Overseas Private Investment Corporation, Ray W. Washburne, felt happy when he travelled to Vietnam last week at the same time as US President Donald Trumps state visit to the country and attended the APEC Economic Leaders Meeting and the APEC CEO Summit organised in the central city of Danang.
In Vietnam, together with CEOs of about 30 more leading US firms, Washburne met with Vietnamese leaders and partners to talk about Overseas Private Investment Corporations (OPIC) business plans in Vietnam, where the institution will officially provide long-term loans for American investors who have their sights set on the country.
Vietnam has changed so much, with the economy surging to become an attractive destination for foreign investors, Washburne said. This will offer opportunities to OPIC.
It is expected that OPIC will offer direct loans and guarantees of up to $250 million for tenors as long as 20 years.
As the US governments development finance institution, OPIC supports American businesses investing in emerging markets to address critical development challenges, from access to clean water and electricity to housing, education, and access to finance.
Currently, OPIC is planning to work with several partners to deploy its services in Vietnam. It is expected that OPICs loans for US investments in Vietnam will be about $500 million over the next two years, and the figure is expected to rise to about $2 billion within the next ten years.
OPIC will prioritise many types of projects in Vietnam, with a focus placed on the sectors of renewable energy, IT, construction of smart cities, agriculture, healthcare, and education and training.
Billion-dollar investments
During the APEC Economic Leaders Meeting and President Trumps visit to Vietnam, co-operation deals worth a total of about $3 billion were inked between Vietnamese and American firms, including a $1.2 billion deal on auto manufacturing, and a $120 million deal on aircraft equipment.
In the early 1990s, nearly half of Vietnam survived on just a few dollars a day, and one in four did not have any electricity. Today, an opening Vietnamese economy is one of the fastest-growing economies on earth. It has already increased more than 30 times over, and the Vietnamese students rank among the best students in the world. And that is very impressive, US President Donald Trump stated at the APEC CEO Summit.
This is the same story of incredible transformation that we have seen across the region, he said.
According to Dang Thanh Tam, chairman of the Saigon Invest Group and Kinh Bac City Development Holding Corporation (KBC), APEC 2017 is a huge opportunity for the whole country to attract a new wave of investments from more than 2,000 international groups in APEC.
We have met with many global CEOs here to discuss business and investment co-operation plans in Japan and the US, said Tam, who is also a member of the APEC Business Advisory Council.
Up until now, KBC, a Vietnamese group with 20 industrial parks nationwide, has helped Vietnam attract about $2 billion annually, accounting for over 10 per cent of the countrys total attracted foreign direct investment (FDI).
Normally, when a Vietnamese delegation goes abroad for investment promotion, it can meet only one or two CEOs of big foreign firms, and this costs much time and money for travelling and procedures. However, at the APEC Vietnam 2017, we can directly meet with them free of charge, meeting global CEOs from firms like Facebook, Cargill, Apple, Abbott, AIA, Walmart International, and ExxonMobil, Tam told VIR.
They have directly witnessed how much Vietnams business and investment climate has changed over the past few years, and how attractive the country has become to them, he added.
Last week, Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc met with several global CEOs who attended the APEC events and said that their groups wished to continue investing in Vietnam.
For example, Abbotts CEO Miles D. White said that Abbotts subordinate companies are keen on expanding operations in Vietnam and committed to assisting the country in building an open and friendly business environment via policymaking consultation.
Phuc called on Abbott to transfer technologies used in medicine and pharmaceuticals to Vietnam and encouraged its collaboration in food safety, adding that the governments administrative reform consulting group will acquire Abbotts feedback to reform administrative procedures in food safety and public healthcare.
Meanwhile, president of ExxonMobil Development Liam Mallon, told the Vietnam Business Summit that ExxonMobils multi-billion dollar Blue Whale gas deal with Vietnam is on track for a final agreement by 2019. We are actively involved in trying to progress the largest offshore gas investment ever made in Vietnam.
The Blue Whale or Ca Voi Xanh gas field has an estimated 150 billion cubic metres of reserves and is scheduled to start production in 2023.
Gas will be extracted from a depth of 1,500 metres below the seabed, transported onshore through an 88km pipeline to power four power plants to be built in Vietnams central province of Quang Nam.
Mallon praised Vietnam for its successes in attracting more and more foreign investors and wishes to do long-term business in the country.
Chang Bok Sang, president and CEO of CJ Group Vietnam, told VIR that his firm will continue expanding its operations in Vietnam in many sectors, including foodstuff.
Despite our presence in the Vietnamese market for over 20 years, CJ still thinks that Vietnamese companies understand Vietnamese consumers and markets the best. We find the best way to connect with Vietnamese consumers and the local market is in long-term investment. Mergers and acquisitions (M&A) are a way to reach it. That is why CJ always wants to co-operate with potential Vietnamese partners to do business together, Chang said.
For example, collaborating with Cau Tre and Minh Dat through M&As, CJ has made an investment in Hiep Phuoc Industrial Park to build a food complex, which includes a food processor factory, a food research and development centre, and a food safety centre. CJs starting point is frozen foods, but we will branch into dry foods as well as other various types of food, as well, he said.
In another case, Damian Kassabgi, director of Public Policy for Asia Pacific at US ride-sharing giant Uber Technologies, Inc., has come to Vietnam with a plan to expand the firms local operations.
Uber provides a smartphone application that connects drivers with people who need a ride.
Uber has been operating in Vietnam for only three years, but its revenue growth has hit double digits, and we are expecting a growth rate of triple digits in the very near future, said Kassabgi.
We are seeing very fast growth in Vietnam, with huge demand for our services. We currently have two offices in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City, but will soon expand operations in many other localities, Kassabgi said. We see millions of people using our product to travel.
Cargill Vietnam is also expanding operations in Vietnam. In December, Cargill will put into operation a $10 million warehousing facility in Phu My port in the southern province of Ba Ria-Vung Tau. The firm is also interested in further talks with the Ministry of Transport about the development of a northern port, to explore how the company can apply its existing and future capabilities to the different facilities in the countrys northern region.
Vietnam is a critical aquaculture market for Cargill. Cargill continues to be an active investor in Vietnam by further expanding our workforce, manufacturing capabilities, distribution network, and product line diversification, Jorge Becerra, managing director of Cargill Feed and Nutrition Vietnam, told VIR.
Global chairman of PwC Robert E. Moritz also confirmed that his firm will assist Vietnam in improving its business climate, helping the country become more attractive to foreign investors.
According to the Ministry of Planning and Investment, as of October 20, firms from 18 APEC economies invested in over 20,300 projects in Vietnam, registered at over $247 billion making up nearly 78.9 per cent of the countrys total attracted FDI of nearly $313 billion.
PM Nguyen Xuan Phuc met with Liam Mallon, president of ExxonMobil Development
Better business climate
At the Vietnam Business Summit as part of the 2017 APEC Economic Leaders Week, Victoria Kwakwa, the World Banks vice president for the East Asia and Pacific Region, said that Vietnams business environment has significantly improved, with the institution raising the countrys business climate index by 14 ranks a record improvement over recent years.
The organisation recently issued its high-profile Doing Business 2018 report, which stated that Vietnam has implemented the most reforms in the past 15 years, numberin 39. Today, an entrepreneur in Ho Chi Minh City spends 22 days and 6.5 per cent income per capita registering a new company, compared to 61 days and 31.9 per cent in 2003.
Under the report, Vietnams business climate index rose to the 68th position out of 190 economies surveyed, from 82nd out of 190 economies surveyed last year.
The World Economic Forums (WEF) executive director Philipp Roesler also said that Vietnam has made impressive progress in improving its national competitiveness, which, under WEFs Global Competitiveness Index 2017-2018 released in September, has climbed by five ranks in 2017 against 2016 from the 60th out of 138 economies surveyed last year to the 55th out of 137 economies surveyed this year. Many indexes have significantly improved, imcluding technology and market size.
Here at the APEC event, I would say that Vietnam is an ideal business and investment location for all of you, he told businesspeople at the summit. Thats because Vietnam is making spectacular progress in its market development.
Compared to five years ago, Vietnam has climbed by 20 ranks. This means that Vietnam is making great progress in creating a more business-friendly climate.
Last week, PwC released its 2017 APEC CEO Survey: ASEAN Report.
Confidence levels are high among business leaders in Vietnam. This is not surprising. Close to half of foreign business investors in Vietnam (47 per cent) plan to increase their investments in Vietnam over the next 12 months, said PwC Vietnam general director Dinh Thi Quynh Van.
Positive development can be seen in three areas: an expanding domestic economy, expectations of new growth from trade agreements and export expansion (both regional and intra-regional export growth), along with a positive outlook on innovation in key sectors of opportunity. Sustained economic reform, coupled with a strengthening of public institutions and an emphasis on education and skills development will be crucial to make Vietnam fit for the future, Van said.
This autumn, PwC published three reports that analysed prospects for business growth in Vietnam in different ways. The firm affirmed in these reports that prospects for revenue growth in 2018 are strong. Some 92 per cent of CEOs in Vietnam are confident in growth for their business over the next 12 months, with 38 per cent being very confident.
A net 62 per cent of CEOs in Vietnam will increase investments in 2018, higher than the APEC average of 50 per cent.
About 47 per cent of foreign investors in Vietnam plan to increase their investment in the country over the next 12 months. Vietnam is among the top four economies in this regard, the others being China, Indonesia, and the US, where at least 40 per cent of foreign CEOs plan to raise spending.
According to AmCham Singapore, 56 per cent of US firms surveyed consider Vietnam the best trade partner.
Vietnam is now making great efforts to perfect itself in order to continue being a reliable and promising business partner of the international business community, stated Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc at last weeks Vietnam Business Summit.
It is expected that the rate will be 6.7 per cent this year, and 6.5-6.7 per cent for the 2016-2020 period, Phuc said, adding that Vietnam has inked 12 bilateral and multilateral free trade agreements (FTAs) and is now negotiating another four new-generation FTAs, including some with APEC economies.
He said that 10 years after joining the World Trade Organization, Vietnams export-import turnover has increased four-fold to more than $400 billion, equivalent to 170 per cent of GDP.
We have significantly improved our investment and business climate. Vietnam has attracted more than 24,200 FDI projects from 120 countries and territories, registered at over $310 billion, equivalent to 155 per cent of GDP, Phuc said. FDI from APEC economies into Vietnam has hit nearly $250 billion, equal to about 80 per cent of Vietnams attracted FDI over the past three decades. Many leading groups of APEC economies have selected Vietnam to develop their regional production base, which is connected to the global value chain.
Furthermore, Vietnam has about 52 million internet users, or 54 per cent of the population, and 55 per cent of the population use smartphones. It is forecast that by 2020, Vietnam will be home to the largest population of smartphone users in the region.
This will offer big opportunities to potential investors working on ways to connect their products and services to Vietnams customers, the prime minister stressed.
Strong commitments
Phuc also affirmed that efforts are being made to build a more enabling government in favour of people, enterprises, and investors. In addition, he also announced a number of new priorities for the government in the near future.
Vietnam will focus on developing the healthcare and educational systems, bridging the income gap, and improving the social security network aiming to protect vulnerable citizens from negative impacts, he stated.
The country will also develop the startup scene and innovative economy by supporting and creating favourable conditions to foster and realise startup initiatives, Phuc said, calling for the engagement of investors in the process as well as the establishment of more startup support funds and venture capital funds in Vietnam.
Furthermore, Vietnam will also reform its tax policies, oriented toward improving the economys competitiveness and increasing transparency, equality, and efficiency, in line with the high standards set by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, he stressed.
Currently, the average corporate income tax in Vietnam is 20 per cent, and this rate will be reduced to 15-17 per cent under a new roadmap. Additionally, Vietnam is also offering many incentives to investors in sectors such as high-tech, supporting industries, and high-tech agriculture, the prime minister said.
According to OPICs Ray W. Washburne, Vietnams business and investment climate has significantly improved, which will help the country attract more FDI.
With a stable political climate and a large population, Vietnam is moving up on the global value chain thanks to a government strongly committed to reforming the countrys investment climate, he said.
OPIC currently manages a $20 billion portfolio of projects in 162 nations. OPIC also provides loans for US firms and investors in Indonesia, Cambodia, Myanmar, the Philippines, and Thailand. Under OPICs strategic vision, Vietnam is quite a new investment market as the country has great potential for rapid growth.
In Vietnam, OPIC has so far provided a $5.4 million loan for Australis Aquaculture to create the worlds largest sustainable barramundi fish farm in Van Phong Bay in the south-central province of Khanh Hoa. The venture specialises in sustainable and eco-friendly aquaculture and employs 100 local workers.
Meanwhile, KBCs chairman Dang Thanh Tam also said that with the governments efforts to improve the local business and investment environment, a new wave of APEC investments will soon surge in Vietnam.
You can see that the prime minister has met with enterprises many times this year to directly address their worries. This has strengthened their confidence, Tam said.
At 9am on November 12, an official welcoming ceremony for visting US President Donald Trump.Pictured is President Donald Trump's car is advancing toward the Presidential Palace.
President Tran Dai Quang hosts the welcoming ceremony.
President Tran Dai Quang waving to children at the Presidential Palace
Children waving the Vietnamese and US flags
President Tran Dai Quang welcoming US President Donald Trump
President Tran Dai Quang invited President Donald Trump to step up onto the podium. National Anthem is played.
The two Presidents inspect the guards of honour.
President Donald Trump's visit to Vietnam marks a significant milestone in the history of bilateral relations, opening up a broad future for the two countries to continue writing new chapters of their history.
President Donald Trump and his US delegation are making a State visit to Vietnam at a time when the Vietnam-US relations are seeing remarkable progress.
After the welcoming ceremony, President Tran Dai Quang and his US counterpart Donald Trump hold talks.
President Tran Dai Quang and President Donald Trump shake hands before their talks. (Photo: Zing)
AUBURN Steve Weldon, who served as a lance corporal in the U.S. Marines, felt he was representing both the living and the dead at a Veterans Day service in Auburn Saturday.
Weldon was in Operation Buffalo during the Vietnam War. He said 105 out of 120 members of his unit, 1st Battalion, 9th Marines, nicknamed "The Walking Dead," were killed. Those fallen men were in his thoughts at a Veterans Day service at SS. Peter and John Episcopal Church in Auburn Saturday.
"I remember them every day but more so on this day than others," Weldon said.
He said he acknowledges those men that died in the conflict didn't get to have the opportunities he has had, like seeing his children and grandchildren grow up. He feels he is able to represent those troops through talking about their trials.
He was one of several veterans present at the event. Auburn Mayor Michael Quill, who also served as a Marine, and city councilor Jimmy Giannettino, who was in the U.S. Air Force, were among the speakers at the church. Giannettino said his time in the service helped shape the person he is today.
A presentation, which included a musician playing the military bugle call "Taps" was played as the audience stood up from their seats.
Terry Winslow, former chief of the Auburn Fire Department, thanked the veterans that attended for their service. He said one can recognize who is a veteran because all of them "stand one inch taller as an American flag comes down."
If the veteran cannot stand, he said, there is still a sign that distinguishes them from the rest.
"There's a spark in their eye that tells you they are truly proud of the county they defended," Winslow said.
No enforcement
It is customary in democratic countries to have some normative expectations from political parties and political actors. These are commonly expressed as Codes of Conduct (CoCs).
The following is the full text of the Joint Statement.
1. At the invitation of President of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam Tran Dai Quang, President of the United States of America Donald J. Trump paid a State visit to Hanoi, November 11 12, 2017. The two leaders discussed measures to strengthen and expand the Comprehensive Partnership between the two countries based on mutual understanding, shared interests, and a common desire to promote peace, cooperation, prosperity and security in the Indo-Pacific. Both leaders reaffirmed their commitment to deepening ties on the basis of previous Joint Statements between the two sides, respect for the United Nations Charter and international law, and each others independence, sovereignty, territorial integrity, and respective political systems.
2. President Trump congratulated Vietnam on hosting a successful Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation Leaders Meeting in Da Nang. The two leaders reaffirmed their intent to continue high-level contacts and exchanges of delegations, and to strengthen existing dialogue mechanisms, including party-to-party dialogues. Both sides highlighted the expanding and mutually-beneficial economic relations between the United States and Vietnam, and underscored their shared desire to create jobs and favourable conditions for commerce and business in both countries.
3. The two leaders pledged to deepen and expand the bilateral trade and investment relationship through formal mechanisms, including the Trade and Investment Framework Agreement (TIFA). They welcomed the return of market access for US distillers dried grains into the Vietnamese market and new market access for Vietnamese star apples into the US market. They committed to seek resolution for remaining agricultural trade issues, including siluriformes, shrimp, mangos, and to promote free and fair trade and investment in priority areas, including electronic payment services, automobiles and intellectual property rights enforcement.
4. The two leaders welcomed the announcement of more than 12 billion USD in new commercial agreements during President Trumps visit. Both leaders also welcomed expanding bilateral energy ties, including discussions between companies from both sides on Vietnams import of liquefied natural gas from the United States, as well as steps by Vietnam to enhance its capacity for solar power generation with the support of the United States.
5. The two leaders underscored their commitment to deepen defense cooperation and shared resolve to address regional security challenges. President Tran Dai Quang thanked the United States government for the transfer of a Hamilton-class Coast Guard cutter to help improve Vietnams maritime security and law enforcement capabilities. Both leaders welcomed the plan for the first visit to a Vietnamese port by a United States aircraft carrier in 2018. They affirmed the 2018 2020 Plan of Action for US Vietnam Defense Cooperation to implement the 2011 Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) on Advancing Bilateral Defense Cooperation and the 2015 Joint Vision Statement on Defense Relations, strengthening bilateral defense relations in areas of maritime security, humanitarian assistance and disaster relief, peacekeeping operations, and overcoming war legacy issues. In this regard, the two leaders welcomed the early visit of the US Secretary of Defense to Vietnam.
6. The two leaders underscored that the two countries would deepen and gradually expand security and intelligence cooperation, enhancing information sharing and joint training on issues of mutual concern. The leaders expressed the intent to strengthen cooperation on cyber security through increased exchanges of delegations and information sharing, in order to promote an open and secure cyberspace. President Tran Dai Quang expressed interest in closer collaboration on aviation safety and security and counterterrorism.
7. Both leaders reaffirmed the importance of continued cooperation to address the legacies of war. In this regard, President Tran Dai Quang expressed appreciation for the United States contribution to the successful dioxin remediation at Da Nang Airport and welcomed the United States commitment to contribute to remediation at Bien Hoa Airport. He welcomed further US assistance for persons with disabilities. President Trump expressed his appreciation for Vietnams full and continued cooperation in accounting for US personnel still missing from the war, and pledged to cooperate with Vietnam in its efforts to locate its missing soldiers. The two leaders committed to cooperation in the removal of explosive remnants of war.
8. Both leaders affirmed their support for enhancing people-to-people ties to strengthen mutual understanding, cooperation and friendship between the two peoples, including through professional and academic exchanges, the launch of the Fulbright University Vietnam, 500.000 USD in Vietnam Education Foundation (VEF) alumni grants, and the arrival of the first ever Peace Corps volunteers in Vietnam.
9. President Donald Trump and President Tran Dai Quang welcomed the exchange of agreed minutes on the intent of the United States to acquire the D30 site in Hanoi for the construction of a new Embassy facility, in accordance with the laws of both countries. President Donald Trump reiterated US support for Vietnam to acquire better diplomatic and consular facilities in the United States.
10. The two leaders recognised the importance of protecting and promoting human rights.
11. The two leaders discussed and welcomed initiatives to preserve peace and stability and to advance cooperation and development in the Indo-Pacific. They recognised the central role of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) in the region, and pledged to respect and to support the centrality and unity of ASEAN in the evolving regional architecture. [Both sides expressed support for ASEAN to play a stronger role in addressing traditional and non-traditional security issues, such as terrorism, natural disasters and humanitarian crises, illegal drugs, and transnational criminal organisations]. Both sides committed to deepening the US ASEAN Strategic Partnership based on the principles outlined in the 2016 Sunnylands Declaration. They welcomed the 50th anniversary of ASEANs founding and the 40th anniversary of ASEAN US relations, and looked forward to commemorative activities, including the ASEAN US Commemorative Summit in Manila on November 13, 2017.
12. Both leaders expressed grave concern over the DPRKs nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programs and tests, which violate United Nations Security Council resolutions and threaten international peace and security. They urged all countries around the world to fully and strictly implement all relevant United Nations Security Council resolutions, and agreed to deepen bilateral cooperation to ensure their effective enforcement. The two leaders agreed on the importance of the peaceful denuclearisation of the Korean Peninsula.
13. The two leaders underscored the strategic importance to the international community of free and open access to the South China Sea, the importance of unimpeded lawful commerce, and the need to respect freedom of navigation and over-flight, and other lawful uses of the sea. The two sides reiterated the stance on the South China Sea in the previous Vietnam - US and ASEAN - US Joint statements, including their call on parties to refrain from escalatory actions, the militarisation of disputed features, and unlawful restrictions on freedom of the seas. They reaffirmed their shared commitment to the peaceful settlement of disputes in accordance with international law, including full respect for legal and diplomatic processes. They called for the full and effective implementation of the Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea (DOC), and an early conclusion to an effective, legally binding Code of Conduct for the South China Sea (COC). They further called for all South China Sea claimants to clarify and comport their maritime claims in accordance with the international law of the sea as reflected in 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea and to implement their international legal obligations in good faith in managing or resolving these disputes.
14. The leaders noted that, as a partner of the Mekong River Commission (MRC) and a founding member of the Lower Mekong Initiative (LMI), the United States supports the efforts of the Lower Mekong countries to sustainably manage the regions water and environmental resources for the benefit of all. President Tran Dai Quang acknowledged the United States leading role in reducing global carbon emissions and innovating clean energy technologies, and thanked the United States for its assistance to Vietnam in advancing climate mitigation and adaptation.
Sindhupalchok (province 2): Reopening of Tatopani border main agenda
The Tatopani border point, a major trade route between Nepal and China, has remained closed since the 2015 earthquake after it suffered massive damage.
Sirsiya Dry Port stuck in a rut
It has been more than a decade since Sirsiya Dry Port in Birgunj came into operation but the only Dry Port in Nepal with railway facility is yet to operate under full capacity.
A former Dallas attorney hopes to cash in on his hometown family roots, his legal experience and potential turmoil swirling around the McLennan County District Attorneys Office in his bid to oust District Attorney Abel Reyna.
Barry Johnson, 61, who moved back to Waco in March after practicing personal injury law in Dallas since 1989, said he is glad to be back in Waco, where he was born and raised, and said he hopes to serve the residents of McLennan County as district attorney.
Johnson, who will challenge Reyna in the Republican primary, is the son of the late Judge Joe N. Johnson, who served as justice of the peace and state district judge for 40 years. He said he literally grew up in the courthouse, just blocks from where his grandfather, Roy B. Johnson Sr., operated the first service station in Waco at Fifth Street and Webster Avenue.
Johnsons announcement Saturday comes a day after Reynas office failed to deliver a conviction in the case of Jacob Carrizal, one of 154 bikers under indictment in the Twin Peaks shootout that Reyna handpicked to be tried first.
A 54th State District jury deliberated 14 hours before saying they were hopelessly deadlocked, forcing a mistrial. Jurors told a courthouse source there were never more than six of them in favor of convicting Carrizal on any of the three counts and at one point they had agreed to acquit him on the first count.
Also, Reynas former first assistant, Greg Davis, submitted a sworn affidavit, which was filed Friday, that alleges Reyna has dismissed criminal cases for friends and influential people in exchange for campaign donations and could be the subject of an ongoing federal investigation.
Johnson, a divorced father of two sons and a daughter ranging in age form 19 to 23, said he hopes to run a positive campaign.
I would like for the campaign to be professional and to emphasize the qualifications as we are all applying for this job that being working for the people of McLennan County, to run their law firm, he said. I am looking forward to an aggressive and spirited campaign, hopefully on a positive note.
Johnson said he moved back to Waco, in part, to help care for his 87-year-old mother, Deane Johnson.
I am just glad to be back where I was born and raised and I want to serve the citizens of McLennan County, he said. I found that since I have been here that the best way to do that would be to make application with the voters in this county to head up their law firm.
That is where these public servants miss the boat, in my opinion. They forget who they work for, who pays their salary. That is the peoples law firm over there.
After graduating from the former Richfield High School in 1974, Johnson attended Baylor University, graduating in 1979 with a business degree. He worked for the Texas Coffin Co. in Dallas for five years and then worked in the Dallas real estate market for two years before going to the Oklahoma City University Law School in 1986.
He tried his first jury trial as a law student in Oklahoma City with the help of a supervising lawyer and persuaded the judge to grant a directed verdict for his client, a hotel.
After graduating from law school, Johnson returned to Waco to work for the Haley, Davis, Wren, Bristow and Rasner law firm for 20 months before he moved to Dallas and joined the personal injury law firm of Ford, Needham, Johnson and Lovelace.
He worked there until 2008 and won verdicts of more than $1 million in at least three medical malpractice cases. In 2008, he went into solo practice, handling personal injury, family law and commercial cases. Since returning to Waco, Johnson said he has been handling some criminal cases.
I think my qualifications are such that I have been trying lawsuits since 1989, been in the courthouse since 1989, trying complicated cases and running a law firm that had a staff from anywhere from 20 to 30 people in the past, he said. I intend to do what I have been taught through the years by my dad and others, and that is to treat everybody the same.
Everybody gets treated the same. That is what my dad taught me from day one in his J.P. office. He said if you ever make an exception or give a favor to one person, one, you are compromised. I also think it is important to be professional. I will bring a business sense to that job and I think I have shown through the years that I have the right temperament for that job.
Johnson, who ran an unsuccessful campaign for state district judge in Dallas County last year, even has chosen the same campaign logo and color scheme his father used in his races for state district judge.
Reyna is seeking his third term in office. He did not return a phone message seeking comment for this story. His latest campaign finance report shows he has $82,863 in his campaign coffer and $109,395 in outstanding loans.
Johnson said Reynas actions in the immediate aftermath of the May 2015 Twin Peaks shootout have left the county on the brink of a potential financial catastrophe.
To me, it was a huge mistake for the district attorney to be on the scene of the Twin Peaks murders, and the reason is that it potentially exposes McLennan County to a huge financial risk and the McLennan County taxpayers are having to come in and pay the tab, Johnson said. Every lawyer will tell you that. You cant take off your DA badge and go to the scene, where you have excellent, seasoned investigators there handling things.
That was for ambition only. Ambition is a good thing, but you cant let your ambition override your good judgment and your responsibility to the people you work for.
Reyna has testified at hearings in the Twin Peaks cases that he consulted by telephone with former Waco police Chief Brent Stroman, who was out of state at the time, but it was Stromans ultimate decision to arrest 177 bikers that night. Reynas office has since indicted 155 of them. One has died since, bringing the total under indictment to 154.
Police reports show detectives had already interviewed some bikers, identified them and released them when Reyna and his assistants arrived at Twin Peaks. After Reyna got there, everyone with ties to the Cossacks or Bandidos went to jail, reports show.
Reyna and others also have been named defendants in about 100 federal civil rights lawsuits filed by bikers in Austin. Those lawsuits are on hold pending action in the criminal cases.
Garret Jackson still remembers her second of three daughters, Lauren Jackson, clinging to her leg on her first day of school more than 20 years ago, though it feels like yesterday.
She was the most timid one. She was the one I had to peel off and go, Youre fine, honey. Go, said Garret Jackson, a reading instructional specialist at South Bosque Elementary School. Who wouldve thought shes the one who lives so far away?
That same shy little girl is now the woman giving her brave inspiration to grasp as she travels to Jordan. She left Saturday and will be spending the next two weeks helping her daughter teach English to Syrian educators in two refugee camps about 50 miles from the Syrian border and a major humanitarian crisis.
Every day its been, Mom, youve got to come. You need to help. Mom, youve got to come, Garret Jackson said. Thats how all this started. We were looking at the map, and my daughter does these brave and wonderful things, but I was like, Sweetie, its not safe near Syria. She goes, Mom, Im not going into Syria.
As of March 2016, more than 250,000 Syrians have died in an ongoing civil war, which started in 2011, and more than 11 million others have been forced to leave their homes, according to the British Broadcasting Corporation. There are about 133,000 refugees between the two camps of Zaatari and Azraq, where she works, Lauren Jackson wrote in an email to the Tribune-Herald this week.
Lauren Jackson is working toward a masters degree at American Universitys International Training and Education Program. She got a Boren Fellowship earlier this year to go to Jordan. The program supports study of languages and cultures in countries where U.S. students are underrepresented.
The former Midway ISD employee has been living in Amman, Jordan, since June, commuting every day to the refugee camps.
The effort is part of Relief International, a nonprofit dedicated to reducing human suffering across the world, according to the groups website.
Lauren Jackson is working to strengthen approaches to remedial English instruction by conducting classroom observations in the nonprofits eight education centers and mapping the needs of English teachers and students in the refugee camps, she said.
When she said, Mom, you need to come help, I said, Babe, I dont speak Arabic, what kind of help do you need? Garret Jackson said. She said they teach them English, because English is the language that will get them out of these camps, that will give them hope.
But the Syrian educators dont have the background needed to teach English effectively, Garret Jackson said. If a student wants to continue studies beyond 12th grade in Jordan, they must take a test called Tawjihi, Lauren Jackson wrote.
The English portion of the exam is considered extremely difficult and Syrian refugees in Jordan face further challenges because Syrian teachers are teaching to students with interrupted schooling and often little prior exposure to the language, she wrote.
I believe teachers have one of the most important and truly challenging jobs in the world, whether its teaching in Waco, Texas, or in a refugee camp, Lauren Jackson wrote. The difficulties teachers face are unique to their environment, but the desire to provide future opportunities for their students is often the same. Unfortunately in refugee camps like Azraq and Zaatari, few aspirations seem attainable, as the future feels very unknown.
With a background of intensive training in reading intervention and how to teach systematic phonics, Garret Jackson agreed to make the trip. But first she had to find the funding.
She called the company she trained with, which agreed to send basic flashcards and some of the same tools she uses in her own classroom. Her fellow teachers also contributed $900 to buy supplies and pay for shipping costs, and the training company pitched in the rest to ship the supplies, she said.
We talk with our students, parents and staff about displaying good citizenship and we define good citizenship as coming together to make our world a better place, Principal Stacey Voigt said. We remind our students also to be global citizens, which means theres more to learning in life beyond the walls of South Bosque, so coming together (like this) is a good example of that good citizenship. Were really proud of her and cant wait to see pictures when she comes back.
Knowing her mother will be with her soon to experience what she has encountered in the last several months will be the ultimate bring-your-mom-to-work day, Lauren Jackson wrote. When she is deeply invested in a project or cause, she loves nothing more than to rope in her family and friends, she said.
But shes still the cautious, scared child her mother remembers, Lauren Jackson said.
Its interesting. People tend to use the word brave when asking me that why question. But I think brave sounds a little exclusionary. Its one of those adjectives that feels static. You either are brave and can do scary things, or you arent so you stay home, Lauren Jackson wrote. I havent felt particularly brave at any point during this experience, but Ive grown to listen to the stubborn conviction that often the opportunities that intimidate me the most are the ones most worth doing.
Im so thankful to have been invested in by people who are doing amazing things in their communities and in far-flung places. They continually remind me that compassion and stubbornness make a powerful combination in outweighing fear.
That same compassion and stubbornness seen in her own daughter is whats encouraging Garret Jackson, who called herself a chicken by nature, step beyond her comfort zone, she said. She kept waiting and waiting during the last few months for her daughter to tell her the experience was too daunting, but that never came.
The only time her daughter has shown any sign of feeling powerless was when she told her mother she felt like the work she was doing could only be a drop in a bucket, Garret Jackson said.
It finally caught up with her just the mass need thats there, Garret Jackson said. I guess my hope is just even here, as were shedding a little light on this campus, what I can go and do is nothing. Its nothing, but at least its a beginning.
Whats exciting is if we can get more light shed on that and more resources sent over, we can show people are still stuck in this state of indecision and we need to do something greater about this. I dont know what that looks like, but Im going to go find out.
The House Republican tax plan could hurt Baylor Universitys fresh focus on research and graduate education by ending a tax exemption for graduate students tuition waivers, Baylor officials said.
Obviously, we are monitoring the situation closely and will work with the appropriate parties in Washington, D.C., to communicate our concerns, President Linda Livingstone said in a brief statement on the provision Thursday.
Larry Lyon, vice provost and dean of the Baylor graduate school, was blunter, calling the plan probably the most serious threat to doctoral education we have ever experienced.
The short-term effects would be to drastically punish doctoral students, Lyon said. The long-term effects would be to drastically harm the economy.
Doctoral students get tuition waivers worth about $30,000, and most also get a stipend of about $20,000 to teach a class or work with a professor, Lyon said. The tuition waivers and stipends are exempt from federal income taxes, but the proposed tax plan would scrap that exemption.
A graduate student with a $30,000 tuition waiver and $20,000 stipend would face an income tax bill of about $8,000, based on a 17 percent tax rate.
Our hope is that we dont try to reduce the cost of tax reform by raising taxes on graduate students, who are our future, and are only making $20,000 a year, Lyon said. I know every group thinks they shouldnt be singled out, but this is a tough one.
Almost all of Baylors about 800 doctoral students and about 250 of approximately 2,500 graduate students would be affected, he said.
U.S. Rep. Bill Flores, R-Bryan, has publicly supported the tax plan, but he told the Tribune-Herald he hopes the proposal will be changed to keep the exemption for graduate students waivers and stipends in place.
Flores has worked with Baylor, Texas A&M University and the University of Texas as he analyzes the bill, he said.
I can argue that by having folks go to grad school, get a grad degree, then they come out and make more money and pay more in taxes, Flores said. My argument is that if we retain current law, well actually raise more money than we would the other way. That group moves into a higher income class and is paying more taxes ultimately.
He predicted a 50-50 chance of a successful fix, but support for the change from the White House would make him more confident.
This issue regarding grad students with tuition discounts is a middle- to lower-income issue, he said. Thats where the president has been emphatic in terms of granting relief to that income group on taxes.
Livingstone, who started as president June 1, has announced plans to increase Baylors focus on research. The tax plan would potentially place research opportunities, which are often tied into graduate programs, in harms way.
In her statement on the tax plan, Livingstone attached a letter from the American Council on Education to the House Ways and Means Committee, which passed the bill last week. The letter states the bill would discourage participation in postsecondary education.
Senate Republicans also released their own version of a tax plan last week. The Senate version would not repeal tax exemptions for graduate students, the Washington Post reported.
The American Council on Education letter, also signed by dozens of organizations involved in higher education, states 57 percent of tuition reductions went to graduate students in the fields of science, technology, engineering and math, according to a U.S. Department of Education study.
Removing tax exemptions for graduate students would make graduate education unattainable, said Jeff Strietzel, a doctoral candidate in higher education studies and president of the Baylor Graduate Student Association.
In the global economy that we have, and in the knowledge economy that we have, we would want to create more advantages for the leading minds for developing our future faculty, for developing our future researchers, scientists and thought leaders of tomorrow, not try to make it more difficult, Strietzel said.
It all came down to a simple letter. On Jan. 18, 2015, the Waco Tribune-Herald opinion editor received a letter from Tennessee that led him to pick up the phone and call its author. It was a veteran looking for a friend he had served with in Korea. He was hoping the paper could help.
The letter writer, Jack Rutter, 85, of Blountville, Tennessee, was seeking an old Air Force friend from Waco he hadnt been in touch with since the 1950s. He had no way of knowing that the man he was looking for, Kenneth Hughes, 84, was now living in Plainview, Texas.
Turns out, Hughes only lived in Waco for a couple of years and never returned to the area after he enlisted in the Air Force in 1951. Born in Fort Worth, he went on to serve in Kempo, Korea, where he met Rutter while stationed there.
The men hit it off right away; they had a lot in common. Both served with the 4th Fighter Wing, 1st Air Postal Squadron, Detachment 28, where they maintained postal services for the front lines.
We were the contact for the troops from their families back home, Hughes said. They saw no real action, but occasionally, we were entertained by fireworks at night, he added.
Rutter and Hughes shared a six-man tent. Hughes noted the two men had many of the same qualities, including that both were country boys, and both shared a dislike of heavy drinking.
We were the closest friends that we could be, Rutter said. We never had a cross word between us.
Then, just as war brings men and friendships together, it takes them apart again. But neither forgot the friendship.
They saw each other once in the 1950s, but that was the end of their contact. At that time, we didnt have such things as emails and all that stuff, Hughes said.
Life went on for both men, and in early 1954, Hughes married Quata Barnett; they have four children, eight grandchildren and 12 great-grandchildren. He attended Sul Ross in Alpine and got a degree in animal husbandry. For 35 years, he worked in management in cattle feed industry.
In the meantime, Rutter served many years as a state trooper and later worked for a company that sold equipment used in the chemical feed systems of water and waste water treatment plants.
Rutter married Beverly Forrester and they had three sons and three grandchildren together. She died in 2015 after nearly 30 years of marriage. For the first time in a long time, I had absolutely nothing to do, Rutter said. Thats when he decided to track down his friend.
He didnt know Hughes also had been looking for him. If he ever had a chance to pass through Rutters hometown of Bristol, Virginia, he would look for him but couldnt find him, as Rutter was now living in Tennessee.
The letter that changed things
Then came the letter.
In 2015, Rutters letter ran in the paper. Even though Hughes brother, Jerry, lives in Waco, he didnt see it. A relative did, however, and called Jerry who in turn called his brother in Plainview. Hughes quickly picked up the phone, and for the first time in many years the two men talked to one another.
The following year, in October 2016, they had their first in-person visit when Hughes traveled to Tennessee with his daughter, Kerrie, and her husband, J.M. Bryant. They returned again this year to visit Rutter.
I was surprised he had changed in appearance so much (as I am sure he thought of me), Rutter said. But his personality when he spoke brought back perfect memories. I still love his Texas accent.
Hughes plans to visit Rutter again if my health holds, and if he gets the opportunity. In the meantime, he keeps in touch with his friend by phone.
Thanks to Obamacare, a family health insurance policy bought on the health-insurance exchange can cost the same or more than leasing a 2017 Bentley, Aston Martin, McLaren or even a Rolls-Royce.
Obamacare open enrollment for 2018 has begun, so a friend and tax policy expert living in Northern Virginia recently went looking at his familys health-insurance options. A CareFirst BlueCross BlueShield silver-level family HMO plan with a $3,500 deductible would cost my friend $2,179 per month. The BlueCross gold-level HMO with a $1,000 deductible would cost $2,500 per month.
However, people tend to choose Preferred Provider Organizations (PPOs) when possible because they allow patients more flexibility. You dont necessarily have to see a family doctor before contacting a specialist. But consumers pay for that extra flexibility especially under Obamacare. The BlueCross silver-level family PPO plan with a $3,500 deductible would cost $2,729 per month and the gold PPO with a $1,000 deductible is $3,087.
Now compare those monthly health insurance premiums to one Connecticut-based companys advertised monthly lease rates for several ultra-high-end 2017 cars. A Bentley Bentayga is $2,289 per month. An Aston Martin DB11 is $2,371. The McLaren 570GT is $1,995. And the Rolls-Royce Dawn is $2,750.
So my friend could lease a Rolls-Royce for less than a gold-level BlueCross family PPO policy. And those Rolls-Royce lease payments would be the same for three years, while that gold-level policy will likely be 25 percent to 50 percent more for 2019.
Of course, my friend could give up his Rolls-Royce in order to pay his health-insurance premiums, but he doesnt have one. Only the richest people can afford a new Bentley, Aston Martin or Rolls-Royce. And only the richest people can afford Obamacare premiums unless, of course, taxpayers are subsidizing them.
But couldnt he shift to a lower-cost bronze plan? One whose premium is about equal to the monthly lease rate of, say, a high-end Mercedes?
Apparently, BlueCross in his area doesnt offer one. Last May a subsidiary of CareFirst BlueCross announced it would no longer sell a bronze-level plan in Virginia a growing trend nationwide. So a BlueCross bronze plan isnt an option. But even if a BlueCross plan were available, deductibles would likely be $6,000 or $7,000 for one person and double that for a family. And it might not help him that much anyway. Even though there were a few other insurers offering a bronze plan, health-care providers are increasingly refusing to take them. Some wont accept any Obamacare plan.
For example, the world-famous, Houston-based M.D. Anderson Cancer Center accepts several insurance plans. But one type of insurance it will not accept: Obamacare. As the center explains on its website: For 2017, MD Anderson and our physicians are not included as a Participating Provider for any Individual insurance plans on or off the marketplace in Texas (i.e., ACA plans).
Unfortunately, theres no way to fix Obamacares problems because Democrats ignored standard actuarial practices when creating it. Congress can only repeal it or dump more taxpayer dollars into the sinking system in an effort to keep it afloat which is what the bipartisan Alexander-Murray bill now percolating would do. In the meantime, people in the individual market will have to make a decision: health insurance or a Rolls-Royce. Didnt Democrats name President Obamas signature legislation the Affordable Care Act?
Six killed in separate road accidents
Six people lost their lives in separate road accidents that took place in Kailali on Saturday night and Sunday morning.
I used to admire men like Roy Moore because I loved everything about church the off-key a cappella rendition of Onward, Christian Soldiers, the typos in the bulletin, the ladies who smelled like Aquanet with little round rouge circles on their cheeks, and yes men like Moore who said long prayers and ran the show.
This changed one hot summer day when I needed a ride home from Vacation Bible School. I was delighted when the preacher volunteered to drop me off. As we drove, I chatted incessantly, happy to have him all to myself without people trying to get his attention in the church parking lot. When we got to my house, I was shocked that he walked me inside my dark house, even more surprised when he lingered in conversation, and thunderstruck when he kissed me right on the lips.
At 12 years old, I swooned over my good luck. He picked me out of all the girls at church. But the relationship, especially after he moved on, reset my moral compass. If all the church conversation about morality and sexual purity was a lie, what else was fake? Now that the family of God felt incestuous, I rejected the church and myself. Didnt I want the preachers attention? Didnt I cause this? When I careened from faith, I made a series of poor romantic decisions that later almost cost me my life. Still, I couldnt very well criticize the church because I was an utter emotional mess.
On Thursday, all this came back to me after I read one sentence in The Washington Post. The article was about allegations that Alabama Senate candidate Roy Moore sexually touched a teenager when he was in his 30s. A sentence from Leigh Corfman, who was 14 at the time, jumped out at me.
I felt responsible, she said. I swallowed back tears as I read the rest. I felt like I had done something bad. And it kind of set the course for me doing other things that were bad. After her life spiraled with drinking, drugs, boyfriends, she attempted suicide two years later. In fact, she didnt come forward earlier because she worried that her three divorces and poor financial history would make people doubt her story.
One thing that 2017 has given us is a clearer picture of whos targeted for sexual abuse and what it does to victims. An anonymous man who alleged that Kevin Spacey attempted to rape him as a child also explained that hed been the victim of an incestuous relationship with an adult cousin. Formerly aspiring actress Lucia Evans said her abuse by Harvey Weinstein caused eating problems. I ruined several really good relationships because of this, she said. My schoolwork definitely suffered, and my roommates . . . thought I was going to kill myself.
The evil of sexual predators is that they attack the weak, make them weaker, then discredit them because of their weakness. These arrogant monsters go on to bigger and better things, leaving a collection of wounded people in their wake. But these victims, one by one, are coming forward anyway well aware that theyll be mocked and disbelieved, well aware that some will scrutinize their lives more harshly than their predators.
Im not an angel, Corfman pointed out. Moore, on the other hand, repeatedly claimed to be Gods warrior. However, the scripture he really needed to read wasnt one of the Ten Commandments he so desperately wanted to hang in the state courthouse. It was Luke 17:2, which warns, it would be better for them to be thrown into the sea with a millstone tied around their neck than to cause one of these little ones to stumble.
The great thing about 2017 is seeing these victims standing up straight, no longer stumbling. May we also see justice prevail for the predators, this side of heaven.
Roy Moore won the Republican nomination for the Senate seat in Alabama this year on the strength of his long-standing position as an advocate for hard-right conservative and evangelical values.
Twice elected chief justice of Alabamas Supreme Court, he left that role both times for his judicial activism on behalf of his religious beliefs. In 2003, he was removed from office for refusing to remove a monument of the Ten Commandments from a state building. In 2016, he was suspended for refusing to uphold the Supreme Courts decision on same-sex marriages.
When challenged by Luther Strange for the nomination to the seat vacated by Attorney General Jeff Sessions, Moore never trailed.
On Thursday afternoon, The Washington Post published a story detailing allegations from four women who say they were pursued by Moore when they were teenagers and he was in his 30s. One, Leigh Corfman, described how Moore had initiated sexual contact with her when she was 14 and he was 18 years older.
Republicans on Capitol Hill many of whom supported Strange in the primary, its important to note quickly called for Moore to drop out of the Senate race, a move that seems unlikely. (Moore tried to get ahead of The Posts story by denying it in advance to Breitbart.) The question then becomes whether Moore can win the general election race against Democrat Doug Jones in light of the allegations particularly given that nearly half of the state identifies as evangelical, suggesting that a moral question might dampen his support.
Recent history, though, suggests that he might not lose substantial evangelical support. That recent history is Donald Trump.
On Oct. 7, 2016, The Post had another scoop: Donald Trump had been recorded casually talking about sexual assault while preparing for a segment on Access Hollywood. When during a presidential debate he denied having actually assaulted anyone, a number of women came forward to say that hed done to them precisely what he described in those audio recordings.
The result for Trump? He won more support from evangelical voters than any Republican since the question of religious identification began being asked. Nearly half of Trumps support 46 percent identified as white evangelical Protestant.
In the wake of the Access Hollywood tape, the Public Religion Research Institute released data showing that, for evangelical voters, moral rectitude had faded in importance since 2011. More than any other religious group, evangelicals said that someone who acts immorally in their personal lives can still serve morally in office. Part of this is certainly a response to what was known about Trump. Evangelical voters supported Trump, so they were willing to say any indiscretions were irrelevant.
But why did they support him so fervently? One factor is that Trumps opponent, Hillary Clinton, was fervently opposed by evangelical voters. The Washington Posts Sarah Pulliam Bailey wrote about that last October:
She symbolizes much that runs against their beliefs: abortion rights advocacy, feminism and, conversely, a rejection of biblical ideas of femininity and womanhood. Perhaps even more significantly, Hillary Clinton, as an outspoken and activist first lady, is inextricably tied in the minds of conservative Christians to their loss of the culture war battles beginning with Bill Clintons first term in 1993.
This last point, about the culture wars, is important. In June, Politicos Tim Alberta explained why evangelicals continued to stand by Trump:
Yet for Christians who feel they are engaged in a great struggle for the identity of America and fear that their side has been losing ground the most important question is not whether Trump believes in their cause but whether he can win their wars. Jimmy Carter sat in the pew with us. But he never fought for us, Ralph Reed, chairman of the Faith and Freedom Coalition, told me after the presidents speech. Donald Trump fights. And he fights for us.
Ergo: Support for Trump. In August, Pew Research reported that half of those who approve of Trump approved of his performance in office not because of his policies but because of his approach and personality: his leadership, his willingness to speak his mind, that he wasnt a typical politician. It was the style that appealed, not what he stood for.
Which brings us to Moore. Moores political background is predicated on engaging in the sorts of fights that evangelical voters would like to see fought. Moore is aware of this. He tweeted this in early October:
But Ive been on the frontlines of the fight against the liberals all-out war on Conservative values for years. (3/6) #ALSen
Judge Roy Moore (@MooreSenate) October 6, 2017
Last week, he looped Clinton into the fight.
Now, were locked in the ultimate fight for the future of our nation with the Obama-Clinton Machine. (3/5) #ALSen
Judge Roy Moore (@MooreSenate) November 2, 2017
How Trump stumbled onto the right message for evangelicals isnt clear, but it probably stems in part from tracking conservative media. Moore, on the other hand, was steeped in it.
The allegations against Moore are decades old and, for those interested in dismissing them, dismissible as pitting his word against the womens. It seems unlikely, then, that evangelical voters would, at this point, reject his candidacy, especially with Moore denying the charges as fervently as he is.
If Donald Trump a one-time New York Democrat on his third wife with little connection to religious faith before his political run can keep the support of the evangelical community, it seems unlikely that a conservative Alabama judge who lost his job in defense of the Ten Commandments is at much risk of seeing that support evaporate.
The day Dallas Bandidos chieftain Jake Carrizals organized crime case went to the jury, the strapping, 35-year-old defendant looked confident, even jovial, joking at one point with his attorneys. Yet in other corners of the courthouse, McLennan County officials looked positively pale, thanks to what just a month of added security expense in connection with the first Twin Peaks trial seemed to portend.
As Trib staffer Cassie L. Smith reported in a bracing account last week, county security expenses for the past few weeks topped $400,000, abruptly swelling total taxpayer costs for the chaotic 2015 Twin Peaks biker dustup to nearly $1 million. And why the anxiety? Because Carrizals trial was only the first from a confused incident that saw District Attorney Abel Reyna press Waco police to jail 177 bikers on identical charges.
While 155 bikers were ultimately indicted (154 now with one death), thats still a lot of ham sandwiches awaiting court action and the declaring of a mistrial Friday only further complicates matters. Till the Carrizal trial debuted, expenses emanating from Twin Peaks were unsettling at first glance but fiscally approachable, especially given that the shootout that left nine dead bikers and 20 injured happened two and a half long years ago.
In an address before the Greater Waco Chamber of Commerce after the Carrizal trial began, County Judge Scott Felton said McLennan County had already incurred more than a half-million dollars in expenses relating to the Twin Peaks melee, including $190,010 for outside care of prisoners, $24,895 in autopsy costs (including transport of bodies) and $161,701 in indigent defense costs.
Gov. Greg Abbott helpfully funneled a state grant of $268,433 to help defray expenses, but if the tab since the Carrizal trial is any indication, this is a drop in a big bucket. While some Trib readers understandably question the need for greatly expanded courthouse security including those who believe the county is now paying the price for a headstrong district attorneys questionable decisions on May 17, 2015 we beg everyone to focus a moment beyond our county on a devastated church community in South Texas. As the wife of a law enforcement official remarked to a Trib editorial board member in the 54th District Courtroom as jurors began deliberations over pizza, we live in far different times than preceding generations, times in which hostility and homicidal impulses play out in venues once deemed sacred and off limits, even by those with evil in their hearts.
Whether in Las Vegas last month, Sutherland Springs last Sunday or a shopping center in Waco in spring 2015, headlines tell the same disturbing story. For whatever reasons social media, video games, pandering politicians or simply the frustrations of daily life American norms have been compromised. What was unimaginable a generation ago is now in the realm of the possible. In that context, county officials are wise to err on the side of caution in securing the old courthouse at this uncertain and anxious juncture in our history. Imagine who most of us would immediately blame if the unthinkable erupted amidst todays increasingly expensive delivery of justice.
Former RAAF Lockheed Orion Officially Handed Over to HARS
by Phil Buckley
It was a slightly cloudy morning during the official AP-3C Orion handover ceremony at the Historical Aviation Restoration Society (HARS) at Albion Park Airport, South Coast NSW, Australia on Friday, November 3rd, 2017. Gathered within the museums main hangar for the occasion were Australias Chief of Air Force, Air Marshal Leo Davies AO CSC; the HARS President and Chief Pilot, Bob De La Hunty; the Mayor of Shellharbour Marianne Saliba; and local Aboriginal spokesperson Aunty Lindy, who all took part in the proceedings which saw HARS take formal ownership of the former Royal Australian Air Force Lockheed AP-3C Orion A9-753.
A few hundred HARS volunteers, RAAF personnel, members of the public and assorted national media witnessed the event which saw the worlds first P-3 Orion warbird become a reality. As mentioned in a previous article, HARS is already operating a considerable number of former RAAF aircraft, including 2 x DHC-4 Caribous, 1 x SP-2H Neptune (and 3 static examples) and 2 x C-47 Dakotas. HARS has also acquired over the years a static fleet covering former RAAF jets types including a CAC Sabre Jet, 2 x De Havilland Vampire jet trainers, a GAF Mirage, MB-326 Macchi, GAF Canberra and more.
The trust and bond built up with the RAAF from HARS operating warbird aircraft like the Caribous and Dakotas is a positive sign that the P-3 Orion will be operating alongside a well-established and impeccably maintained fleet of historic aircraft. After the ceremony, Air Marshal Leo Davies told Down Under Aviation News that the RAAF sees AP-3C Orion handover to HARS as an important part in helping to preserve and maintain the RAAFs maritime legacy from the past 75 years. This legacy is well established at HARS, with both a Catalina and Neptune flying, soon to be joined by the Orion.
Air Marshal Leo Davies told everyone that he knows Orion A9-753 well, having flown 130 hours during the course of 18 flights in the aircraft earlier in his RAAF career. The aircraft itself has a varied and interesting career since joining the RAAF in 1978. It also received an upgrade to AP-3C status in 2011, and has taken part in local and overseas operations. Perhaps the most famous of these actions was searching for the missing Malaysian Boeing 777 airliner MH370 off the Australian coast during March, 2014. She has also taken part in historical fly pasts as well. The AP-3C Orion arrived at Albion Park Airport in December, 2016, and has spent the past year under the care of Airbus personnel to keep it in an operational state. A9-753 also became, for a short time, a static training aid for 292 SQN during 2016-2017, prior to the handover. HARS has not been able to do anything with the aircraft since it landed at Albion Park airport, as it has not had the ownership title. HARS ownership of the Orion required formal approval from the USA due to the terms of the initial RAAF purchase agreement. This necessitated the removal of some restricted military equipment from the airframe, and rendering other interlinked systems nonfunctional in order to demilitarize the aircraft per US restrictions. The Australian Department of Defence recommended the US State Department allow HARS to take up ownership, and after four years of negotiations and the completion of aircraft modifications, approval was forthcoming. The handover demonstrates that HARS is a proven private organization, capable of professionally managing the operation of an AP-3C Orion. This award of US DOD approval is certainly rare, and is apparently the first time that any civilian organization in Australia, besides the Australian War Memorial, has acquired such a significant piece of current military hardware.
With the handover now complete, it is encouraging to see that the RAAF is looking to place other retired AP-3C Orions at RAAF Base Point Cook Museum, RAAF Base Edinburgh and other locations which meet the appropriate heritage guidelines. The South Australian Aviation Museum is, so far, the only other private organization slated to display an AP-3C Orion. The HARS Orion is expected to undergo engine runs and taxi tests soon, and eventually to fly.
In related news, the RAAF also brought the still-service AP-3C Orion A9-659 to Albion Park Airport for the handover ceremony. She provided a perfect backdrop, parked next to the colorful HARS SP-2H Neptune. Once the formalities came to an end, the Orion started up and performed a quick flyover of the Museum before leaving the area.
WarbirdsNews thanks HARS for allowing us to cover this significant event.
Thapa fights to retain repute, Bhattarai makes fresh foray
As two youth leadersGagan Thapa of the Nepali Congress and Rajan Bhattarai of the left allianceslug it out in Kathmandu-4, voters have a difficult choice to make. While people see both leaders as capable who can deliver, they are confused over whom to select among the two competent leaders.
Vesttavia Hills, Alabama: Republican Senate candidate Roy Moore spoke defiantly on Saturday at a political gathering in Alabama that sexual misconduct allegations against him amounted to "fake news" perpetrated by political opponents engaged "in a desperate attempt to stop my campaign."
Reports earlier this week quoted four women saying Moore had pursued sexual or romantic relations with them when they were teenagers one of them was 14 and he was in his 30s.
Former Alabama Chief Justice and U.S. Senate candidate Roy Moore speaks at a rally on Saturday Credit:AP
Moore, who won the Republican nomination touting his belief in the supremacy of a Christian God over the Constitution, has invoked a defiant tone in the face of the Washington Post report.
"These campaign attacks are false and completely untrue," Moore told an audience of more than a hundred supporters, who gave him several standing ovations during his speech at the Veterans Day breakfast.
Thoughts from Tradewinds...
Communism, Socialism is nothing more than a utopian fantasy, a delusional dream where the ultimate idea is irrational in practice.. It is a false belief that the State will be the unlimited provided of all human wants and desires and where the individual is subordinated to the all encompassing central government.. All economic decisions about the national (State) production of goods and services and the allocation or distribution of these goods and services are implemented by the State's economic planning agencies.. Socialist central planning rejects the creativity of the individual, subjugating the individual to collective economic decision making.. Individual incentives are rejected in favor of collective recognition and rewards for all.. What follows and results from such ill conceived central collective thinking you will find in places like Cuba, Venezuela, North Korea where the rejection of personal freedom and individual initiative has been subordinated to the ultimate power of the State and which, if discovered, are punished severely by the authoritarian state..
As long as a nation has freedom of thought and encourages individual initiative through free market policies, the nation has the opportunity to grow and develop and therefor enhance prosperity.. When a nation's people flourish, the nation will grow and prosper.. In contrast, when a nation's government deliberately takes the people's savings and earnings, the people will spend less causing the nation's grow potential to decline.. It may not be called Socialism, but it has the same economic pitfalls and results as Socialism, furthering prolonged economic stagnation and increased human suffering by the masses become the result..
If one thinks carefully, the out-of-control growth of the government bureaucracy in the Bahamas has been gradually following this same dangerous economic direction.. Increasing government tax burdens, such as VAT, are taking earnings and wealth away from the Bahamian public at large and reducing aggregate Consumption, one of the major components required for sustainable economic growth.. Increased debt borrowings and unmanageable deficit spending has resulted in international debt downgrades to Junk Status.. Can anyone with an ounce of common sense justify these oppressive and confiscatory policies by our government which seldom if ever helps the people while only hurts and destroying the nation's economy growth potential over the long-run..
Regretfully, these were the very same fiscal policies that were proposed and shoved down our throats by the Keynesian Socialists at the International Monetary Fund in Washington.. All they ever recommend is policies to promote and enlarge central government control over the economy which only further compounded the nation's failing financial condition.. Never has the IMF offered prudent advise and counsel to reduce the bloated size of government and to cut back on wasteful and excessive, nonproductive government spending.. But then these experts are trained in Keynesian economic theory of tax, borrow and deficit spending to perpetual hoped for social prosperity, which has become one of the underlying cornerstones of contemporary IMF policy.. These economic wizards continue in country after country to preach the same Keynesian Socialistic doctrine while giving little thought or even understanding of why, despite their recommendations, real economic growth and social progress continues to faultier and be stagnate.. They never reason or accept that excessive and larger governments are the real problem and will never result in meaningful solutions.. Lets face the facts, Communism and Socialism just does not work to create economic growth and development.. Only a suffering and frightened people realize the inevitable truth about Socialism, that when the economic boat sinks, all will collectively as one go down drowning together..
NOTE for Inquisitive and Curious Minds: Those who want to know more about the theory and background of Utopia and utopian thinking, Mark Levin's outstanding book, "AMERITOPIA" is a historical based study of the subject beginning with Plato to Thomas More, Thomas Hobbes and Karl Marx.. Then the author looks at utopia from the ever changing American perspective and concludes with what he describes as the "unmaking of America.. America today is in great peril.. The people must eventually choose between utopianism and liberty".
This is must reading for those that want to try an understand why this utopian ideal and concept not only allures a free people but then ends up destroying them in the process..
Read more about The Bahamas and The Boiling Frog Syndrome here
VanMeter to be next Kentucky chief justice as Minton retires
By West Kentucky Star Staff Nov. 11, 2017 | 09:49 AM | SYMSONIA, KY
Kentucky State Police have arrested a man involved in a Friday afternoon home invasion and shooting in Graves County.State police say 31-year-old Douglas A. Becker, of Taylor, TX, unlawfully entered a home on Bell Road in Symsonia Friday night. Once inside, police say Bell assaulted two people, held one against her will, and fired at least one shot from a gun he had brought with him.
No one at the home required medical attention. One of the people from inside the home called 911 and Becker fled on foot. Kentucky State Police Troopers and Graves County sheriffs deputies attempted to locate Becker without success through the night.
At approximately 6:15 pm Saturday, Marshall County Dispatch received a call from a citizen reporting a man matching Becker's description on Phelps Road, near Symsonia Highway in Marshall County. Troopers responded to the area and located Becker. He was taken into custody without incident.Troopers transported Becker to a local hospital for medical clearance, due to his prolonged (overnight) exposure to cold temperatures. He was then taken to the Graves County Jail.He's charged with 1st degree burglary, 1st degree unlawful imprisonment, attempted murder, two counts of 4th degree assault, and three counts of 1st degree wanton endangerment.
By The Associated Press Nov. 11, 2017 | 11:52 AM | BIRMINGHAM, AL
U.S. Senate candidate Roy Moore has again denied allegations of sexual misconduct and said there would be "revelations" concerning the newspaper article that brought them to light in the next few days.
The Republican made the remark Saturday at his first public appearance since the allegations were reported by The Washington Post.
Speaking at a Republican club in a Birmingham suburb, Moore questioned why the allegations would emerge now, after he has run five statewide political races in the past 17 years.
Moore called the Post report "fake news" and said the accusations are "completely false and untrue about something that happened nearly 40 years ago." The report said Moore had a sexual encounter with a 14-year-old girl decades ago and had pursued other teenage girls.
Alabama holds a special election on Dec. 12 to fill the U.S. Senate seat previously held by Attorney General Jeff Sessions. Moore is opposed by Democrat Doug Jones.
Moore already denied the allegations in an interview Friday with conservative radio host Sean Hannity.
Longtime Republican political operatives are fearful that the GOP might lose one of its Senate seats in Alabama in spite of Roy Moore's denials that he had a sexual encounter with a 14-year-old girl several decades ago.
The Senate GOP's campaign arm formally ended its fundraising agreement with Moore just a month before the Dec. 12 special election.
The party's presidential nominee in 2012, Mitt Romney, called for Moore to drop out of the race. And two Republican senators, Utah's Mike Lee and Montana's Steve Daines, withdrew their endorsements.
Other Republicans officials have called for Moore to leave the race if the allegations are true. But Moore continues to say they are not true, though he did not rule out dating teenage girls when he was in his early 30s.
This story rewrites 1st sentence to correct Moore quote regarding impending 'revelations.' Links AP Photos.
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By Jim Waters
Nov. 12, 2017 | LEXINGTON, KY
By Jim Waters Nov. 12, 2017 | 02:22 PM | LEXINGTON, KY
An initial statement by House Majority Leader Jonathan Shell last Friday that then-Speaker Jeff Hoover "has the full support" of the Republican caucus following claims of a sexual harassment settlement were as wrong as a preliminary police report that Sen. Rand Paul suffered only "minor injuries" when physically assaulted by a neighbor at his home in a gated community in Bowling Green.
It didn't take long for the truth about the attack on Paul to come out; he suffered bruised lungs and several broken ribs hardly "minor."
It also didn't take long for a group of conservative statehouse Republicans to dispute Shell's claim about where the caucus stood regarding the sexual harassment settlement and ensuing cover-up involving Hoover and other GOP leaders.
"Contrary to what has been reported, the Representatives at issue did not have the 'full' support of the entire Republican caucus," said an extraordinary statement issued by the gang of eight lawmakers the day after Shell's statement, which no doubt helped seal Hoover's resignation the following day.
Courier-Journal reporter Tom Loftus in assessing the fallout's winners and losers rightly concludes that Shell's statement was "not true, and a big mistake."
But not everything coming out of Frankfort last week was wrong.
On Wednesday, Nov. 1, the same day reports of the sexual harassment settlement broke, the attorney general's office issued a spot-on decision in response to a Bluegrass Institute Center for Open Government complaint that a closed-door meeting of the House of Representatives on Aug. 29 violated the Open Meetings Act.
Hoover said he held the meeting behind closed doors to allow legislators "a more comfortable setting" in which to discuss a consultant's controversial recommendations for addressing the commonwealth's public-pension crisis.
But comfort and convenience cannot be determinants in whether laws including those requiring transparency are followed.
These laws recognize that citizens have as much right to witness the formation of policies the discussion and debate that occurs during the legislative process as knowing how their representatives ultimately voted on bills.
Allowing such private discussions to go unchallenged could encourage-the entire House to close its doors to any meeting involving politically difficult deliberations.
"After all, it's just a caucus meeting," political leaders could claim.
The House has 30 days following the attorney general's decision to file a court appeal to the ruling or implement the center's recommendations:
Acknowledge the statute was violated.
Release any written record or audio or video recording of the closed meeting.
Approve a resolution committing to future compliance with the Open Meetings Act.
However, not everything coming from House leadership has been wrong, either.
Several leaders have called for continued focus on solving Kentucky's severe pension crisis.
Rep. Jerry Miller, R-Louisville, chairman of the State Government Committee, is urging members to not allow Hoover's resignation and fallout to "distract us," calling pension reform "the most important thing facing Kentucky from a fiscal-economic standpoint."
Acting Speaker David Osborne, R-Louisville, said in a statement following a (legal) four-hour meeting of the GOP caucus that Republicans consider it "vital" that they both get the investigation of the scandal "right, and that we not lose sight of the policy problems facing our state as we do that."
Some seem eager to use the scandal-plagued environment to avoid meaningful reform to Kentucky's retirement systems, especially changes to the current structure of unsustainable benefits.
To say we can avoid a confrontation of our $60 billion-plus pension crisis is not true and would, indeed, be a big mistake for this commonwealth and future generations of Kentuckians who would reap the consequences of such failure.
Jim Waters is president and CEO of the Bluegrass Institute for Public Policy Solutions, Kentucky's free-market think tank. Read previous columns at www.bipps.org. He can be reached at jwaters@freedomkentucky.com and @bipps on Twitter.
TRIBUTE WAS PAID TO LOCAL VETERANS SATURDAY AT FOREST LAWN
ONE LOCAL VETERAN...HENDERSON COUNTY/EDNEYVILLE NATIVE MARK RHODES...DIED WHILE SERVING ON THE USS ARIZONA IN THE 1941 ATTACK ON PEARL HARBOR
Saturdays Veterans Day ceremony, described as a very emotional event, paid tribute to those whove served and continue to serve, as well as those who lost their lives in defense of the country.
Its to honor those who served and to also memorialize those weve lost, said R. Shuford Edmisten, past state commander of the American Legion, who was also the main speaker and master of ceremonies at the event.
While Americans have often honored their veterans, Edmisten said that is especially true during times of conflict, noting the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, as well the threats looming with North Korea.
Americans are always looking for ways to honor and to assist our veterans, he said. In times of war, patriotism gets really high.
The event opened with an invocation by the chaplains of Legion Post 77, followed by the national anthem, performed by the North Henderson High School Choir. After the pledge of allegiance, led by Post 77 Commander Drew Lacey, the West Henderson High Army JROTC Falcon Battalion presented a flag-folding ceremony. The ceremony culminated in the presentation of wreaths and a benediction.
By Larry Freeman
An emotional President and Mrs. Trump recently paid tribute to the USS Arizona...and one from Henderson County who died on the Arizona was remembered by his family on Veteran's Day this past Saturday.
Mark Alexander Rhodes was born in Edneyville on 7 March 1920. A product of Edneyville schools, Mark made the ultimate sacrifice while serving his country aboard the USS Arizona, sunk by the Japanese at Pearl Harbor Honolulu Hawaii on December 7, 1941.
Mark is buried at the USS Arizona Memorial at Pearl Harbor.
Hendersonvilles Hedrick-Rhodes Post 5206 of the VFW is named partially in honor of Marks service and sacrifice.
Is UVgel and the Colorado 1640 a Latex killer?
The latest issue of Print 21 magazine carried a cover that said "Colorado 1640, Inkjet Game Changer, Latex killer makes all the right moves". A powerful statement that should have generated some serious concern within HP and other Latex ink manufacturers in addition to all the 40,000+ printers that have invested in Latex printers across the globe.
So we asked Garry Muratore (Product Manager of Display Graphics) at Canon/Oce, the man who is spearheading the Colorado 1640 and UVgel charge to justify the statement. We also asked HP to respond to the claim but sadly, they declined to respond.
Perhaps when giants like these protagonists clash, the printer/customer can be the winner, we will have to wait, watch and see (if we can) the market share of each as it unfolds.
Here's Garry's justification for making the claim......
The Colorado 1640 was announced on the 14th March this year - see our article
Synopsis
At the recent Pacprint exhibition in Melbourne Canon debuted the Oce Colorado 1640. This is the first wide format graphic arts roll-to-roll printer developed by Canon Oce. Built to print 64 (1600mm) wide on all sorts of flexible media, coated and uncoated, it features disruptive UVgel technology that combines the speed and heavy duty of high-end systems with the ease-of-use and accessible investment level of low volume systems. This entirely new Oce Colorado 1640 production printer is designed for breakthrough productivity, offering never seen before automation capabilities, superior image quality in a unique and wide application range.
The Current Situation
If you look to the 64 roll to roll printer market, three printer/ink technologies currently exist. For many years the dominant technology was eco-solvent, however in recent years we have seen latex based ink technologies eat heavily into the solvent placements to become the dominant technology. While developers of 64 latex and eco-solvent printers have improved output speed with later iterations of these technologies, gains have been incremental rather than radical, due to the inherent limitations of the technologies, namely:
* The high degree of dot gain/coalescence of 64 latex and eco-solvent inks limits the volume of ink that can be laid down without compromising image quality * This means that 64 latex and eco-solvent technologies require a high number of passes to achieve desired image quality over a given area * This slows printing down, or forces printers to compromise quality for higher output speeds * 64 latex and eco-solvent processes require a drying stage to evaporate the water/solvent
The third technology is UV curable inks which tend to be found in higher end solutions (certainly this is the technology of choice in the flatbed printer space) Customers looking for a more industrialproduction solution may also turn to such technology which are typically 3.2metre wide devices These devices offer high output speed, the scope to work in dual-roll mode, and are therefore able to cope with industrial production volumes. However, they represent significant capital investment (>$200,000.00), which may be beyond the scope of small- to medium-sized print establishments. To invest in this type of device, the printer requires clear visibility of consistently high production volumes to assure them of an acceptable ROI. Usability for short runs is questionable with these systems. They also occupy a large physical footprint, which may not be suitable for certain businesses.
The prevailing technologies have their individual advantages, but also their limitations. For printers looking for the optimal combination of productivity, quality and media and therefore applications - versatility, there is no single choice today. The reality is that printers must compromise one attribute for another. Canon believe that there is a clear opportunity for radical innovation in the roll-to-roll market to match customers productivity requirements, while also meeting or exceeding their expectations of quality and applications diversity.
Identifying the Technology Gap
Having identified this technology gap, Canon set out to create a more comprehensive technology solution that would put an end to the compromises printers have to make today when choosing from latex, eco-solvent or conventional UV solutions. Canons objective was to develop a technology that would offer:
* Industrial speed and end-to-end productivity, for growing volumes of fast turnaround jobs * High output quality, suitable for a wide applications spectrum including demanding indoor and decor applications. * Maximum media versatility, to enable PSPs to produce multiple applications using a single device.
Canon also focused on controlling total cost of ownership (TCO), to assure printers of rapid return on their capital investment and low ongoing running costs. The result is Canon UVgel technology, and the first printing device to make use of this disruptive technology is the Oce Colorado 1640
What is Canon Uvgel technology?
The Canon UVgel technology comprises several specially-developed elements that combine to achieve a process that retains the advantages of prevailing printer technologies, while eliminating many of the compromises, these include:
* A Canon/Oce developed UVgel piezo-electric printhead. * Canon UVgel ink * Low-heat media platen * LED-curing concept
The key to Canon UVgel technology is the fact that the ink is essentially a gel, developed according to UV curing principles. The simplified stages of the Canon Uvgel printing process are as follows:
* Inside the printheads, Canon UVgel ink is heated and turns from gel into liquid. * The temperate controlled platen maintains the substrate at a constant 28oC temperature regardless of environmental factors. * On contact with the media, the liquefied ink drops return immediately to their gel state. * In their gel state, the ink droplets are pinned instantly to the media, assisted by a partial LED precure process. * Full LED curing takes place at a later stage after the image swathe is completely formed and gelled on the media.
Key Benefits of the Canon Uvgel process
The gel ink enables this innovative, instant dry, print-then-cure process. The Canon UVgel technology concept delivers multiple productivity and quality benefits:
* The solidified state of the pinned gel dot prevents coalescence (merging) between individual ink drops, delivering optimal control over the dot to prevent spread (dot gain). * By controlling dot gain, much more ink can be deposited in fewer passes, improving speed. * Because LED curing is performed later than with existing technologies, images have a more uniform, smoother surface. * By eliminating the need for immediate curing, productivity is substantially increased compared with conventional UV because curing no longer limits print speed. * Prints are instantly dry, requiring no evaporative drying process.
The printhead, the ink, the platen and the curing concept are all own developed Canon-Oce technologies. They combine to create the Canon UVgel technology, which is unique and new to the large-format graphics arts market.
How does Canon UVgel technology influence print speed and overall productivity?
Canon UVgel technology is completely different to evaporative ink technologies such as latex and eco-solvent. Canon UVgel ink is pinned to the substrate by virtue of the physical gel characteristic of the ink itself. Every droplet of Canon UVgel ink is pinned instantly upon contact with the media. Once pinned, the UVgel ink drop is fixed to the substrate and dot gain is highly controlled. This is in sharp contrast to evaporative ink technologies, in which the ink drops naturally flow on the media, growing in size and coalescing with adjacent drops in an uncontrolled way until dried by evaporation of the water or solvent content. Consequently, evaporative technologies e.g. 64 latex and eco-solvent technologies exhibit substantial dot gain and uncontrolled growth on the media. To overcome the challenges of this characteristic, it is necessary to build the printed image gradually, in multiple passes, to minimise the effect of ink coalescence. This has a substantial impact on productivity in higher-quality modes. The natural behaviour of Canon Uvgel technology delivers unprecedented control of dot gain or coalescence of the ink between jetting and curing. Therefore, with Canon UVgel, the appropriate amount of ink can be laid down in fewer passes, reducing the time required to produce the finished print.
You can see from the above illustration evaporative ink droplets immediately beginning to grow when reaching the substrate. This spread of the ink on the media results in uncontrolled dot gain and undesirable coalescence of the ink droplets, filling the print area with poorly focused, erratically spaced and overlapping ink droplets, all contributing to lower print quality. The limitations of evaporative ink technologies actually get worse at higher print speeds and/or on media with higher rates of absorption. Canon UVgel ink drops are deposited on the media and immediately form a gel on contact with the temperature controlled substrate, preventing uncontrolled dot gain or unintended coalescence. The ink is effectively pinned to the media on a drop-by-drop basis, delivering more accurate area coverage and drop position. The result is superior print quality compared to evaporative ink technologies. Other positive performance factors also improve end-to-end productivity compared with existing technologies. For example, continuous nozzle performance is critical to inkjet productivity and image quality. Temporary failure of printhead nozzles is a well-known problem in inkjet printing that can be caused by dust, for instance. Canon UVgel technology deploys on-the-fly quality control called Piezo Acoustic Integrated Nozzle Technology (PAINT). In the printheads, the nozzle status is continuously monitored acoustically (by sending a small, electro-acoustic pulse though each nozzle and listening for an uninterrupted echo).
This monitoring occurs without the need to fire droplets, thus eliminating the need to waste ink to check nozzle function. When a malfunctioning nozzle is detected, the affected nozzle is (temporarily) switched off and replaced by neighbouring nozzles. This whole process is fully automated, requiring no operator intervention. Being instantly dry and cured, the Canon UVgel print is suitable for immediate post processing and lamination, further improving end-to-end productivity.
Canon Australia
https://www.canon.com.au/production-printers
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The Veterans Day ceremony Saturday at Veterans Memorial Park near Lake Winona recognized the commitments made by the men and women in uniform.
Underneath a gray and chilly November sky, friends and families of military members gathered to raise the colors and salute what they represent.
A three-round cannon salute was fired, and a powerful echo thundered through the valley.
Speaking at the podium was Navy Lieutenant Jacob Kuehl, who graduated from Cotter High School in 1999. He returns as a career officer, and continues to serve as an instructor at one the militarys training commands.
Remembering their sacrifice: Two Purple Heart recipients from Winona share their stories Veterans who have fought for the United States are honored today Veterans Day when the s
Character, drive and attitude, Kuehl said. I am now at 18 years (in the military) and I see these three defining words in all those that Ive served with and the veterans that I meet out of uniform. These attributes are necessary for a fighting force to be effective from training to combat.
We must not forget what our military is: a group of volunteers who are warfighters. They fight for the soldier on their left and the soldier on their right. From the beginning of their careers to the end, this courageous and important value is at their heart and soul.
The crew of war reenactors who fired the cannon salute consisted of a five-man team.
Chief of the piece and gunner of the operation was Daryl Duden, who issued the commands to fire. He served as in the Marine Corps as a corporal in Vietnam.
Its important for all of us, Duden said. Freedom is a commodity that our veterans are willing to give their lives to protect, and as veterans, were willing to put our lives on the line for our country. To have a community like Winona to stand behind their veterans and honor them, its incredible.
Politics aside, a soldier just does his job. Welcoming them back into the the community is a wonderful thing, and ceremonies like this just say Welcome home.
John Cain, the No. 4 man on the cannon crew, served in Korea and Turkey as an E-6 staff sergeant in the Army.
His job during the salute is to pull the lanyard that ignites that charge to fire the antique artillery.
Freedom isnt free, Cain said. You gotta pay for it.
For the past 25 years, a candlelight vigil has been held at the park with volunteers taking watch.
Its a tradition that began in 1993, after the military affairs committee got the idea from a proposal by Roger Reitmaier, who served in the Marines as a lieutenant colonel.
I was just kind of the conduit, Reitmaier said as he attributed the idea to the actions of his daughter.
She called me the morning of Veterans Day, wished me a happy Veterans Day, and her voice was raspy and tired sounding, and I said Tammy, what were you doing last night?
She then explained that she was standing watch until three in the morning as part of her schools ROTC tradition to honor veterans.
The committee just jumped on board with the idea, Reitmaier said.
Mel Bailey, the chaplain for the Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 1287, said: Its in memory of what veterans have done and are continuing to do. I was proud of the kids that came yesterday and took part in it. We had some that came and stood the first watch with us; we were really proud of that.
There is little to celebrate following School District 861s resounding rejection of the WAPS referendum on Tuesday, but we do have a chance to initiate a solid and principled plan for the future.
We hope and expect that WAPS leadership will now work with the Winona Community to fully consider more reasonable and educationally viable options such as investing in our neighborhood schools.
We encourage the school board and the administration to:
Commit to what families in the community want: access to existing neighborhood schools;
Recognize that people in our district are willing to invest money that would truly benefit students;
Direct district staff to prepare alternative facility plans that retain all existing elementary schools. The failed options to date all have the common element of elementary school closure;
Work with an architecture firm that specializes in renovating historic schools; and
Present voters with honest and useful data that presents the educational and community benefits of small- and medium-sized schools and a pay-as-you-go plan for their maintenance. Voters have already been flooded with one-sided, biased portrayals of the costs of small schools.
It is clear from this referendum that voters want to change course. District 861s knee-jerk response to close schools when times are tough needs rethinking. This failed referendum says that we cannot afford the current path of consolidated school mediocrity. Real change will involve a commitment to the most vulnerable students. We need to improve the educational environment, support our teachers, and keep our neighborhood schools open. If we want real change to benefit our area students for the 21st century, we all need to be better leaders, better planners, and more attentive to and creative with our finances.
We look forward to supporting a fiscally responsible plan that supports our teachers and our students while making best use of our facilities resources. By reinvesting in our existing neighborhood schools, we can do better.
Gretchen Michlitsch, Save Our Schools Committee of Winona
Do you agree that those in positions of authority, shaping our nations history, destiny and character, should be able to prove they can read and write above a sixth-grade level?
Should elected officials be able to form and understand complex sentences? In a perfect world, should they be able to pass the test given to those who are currently applying for U.S. citizenship?
The test for citizenship includes questions on the nations history, a section on the implications of the separation of branches of the government and questions on the rights of individuals under the law.
Would you agree, to choose a random example, that a president of these United States should be able to construct, articulate and comprehend a document of more than three pages, and be able to read that document aloud while demonstrating, through appropriate intonation, emphasis and facial expressions that he grasps the implication of what the document says?
I do.
Apparently this marks me as an elitist when it comes to education. But, to those who accuse me of elitism, I want to borrow the words of Inigo Montoya from The Princess Bride: You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
If Im an elitist when it comes to education, then so were my parents, neither of whom graduated from high school. They both left school after the eighth-grade to help support their large families.
But they were self-educated people who understood the value and significance of learning.
They wanted always to know everything about the world around them, meaning there were always books in the house and that they each read two newspapers a day. As a family, we went to museums; we all used the library; we watched the evening news together and this is the important part we talked about it.
Because English was not their first language, they taught themselves mastery over two worlds of words and two cultures.
Believing in the significance of education does not mean you have to get a piece of paper saying youve graduated from anywhere but instead it means showing evidence, in conversation, of why you should be allowed to sit at the grown-ups table.
The grown-ups table is where people who are widely informed can express their opinions and be treated with respect.
Emotional reactions, passionate indignation and gut feelings are not synonymous with widely informed opinions.
Nor should it be based on the company they keep or how much money they make. Money and wisdom do not always keep company.
Surrounding yourself with people who know what you dont know can be helpful, but its only useful if you want to learn from them. Just having them stand next to you doesnt necessarily make you smart, just as standing next to people who are rich wont suddenly make you rich.
Think of it this way: People who are informed and intelligent can make the buffoons in their midst seem even more limited. Do you really want to be the most ignorant person in the Jeopardy! lineup, standing next to somebody who gets all the answers when you know nothing?
You cant subcontract erudition. Yes, you can surround yourself with those who are more competent than you but competency, unlike cold sores, is not catching.
And why does it seem as if the only people throwing around the term populism are elites, from both sides of the aisle? Ordinary folks at iHop and KFC arent arguing over who is a more profoundly committed populist. Have I missed the aisle where colorful Get That Populism Done! T-shirts are available at Walmart? And I have yet to see a bumper sticker saying Youll have to pry my populism out of my cold, dead hands.
Heres my other question: Why has elite become a sneer in some contexts when it is still used as high praise in others?
As author Jim Carpenter puts it, Populists speak almost reverently of elite military units, respectfully of elite athletes, but disparagingly of elite political, financial, cultural and academic figures.
America was founded on the concept of a nation with citizens sufficiently informed to want to sit at the grown-ups table. Theres room enough for everybody. But you should read something about it about it before you take your seat.
Dear Savvy Senior
What can you tell me about assistance dogs for people with disabilities? My sister, whos 58, has multiple sclerosis and Im wondering if an assistance dog could help make her life a little easier.
Inquiring Sister
Dear Inquiring,
For people with disabilities and even medical conditions, assistant dogs can be fantastic help, not to mention they provide great companionship and an invaluable sense of security. Heres what you and your sister should know.
While most people are familiar with guide dogs that help people who are blind or visually impaired, there are also a variety of assistance dogs trained to help people with physical disabilities, hearing loss and various medical conditions.
Unlike most pets, assistance dogs are highly trained canine specialists often Golden and Labrador Retrievers, and German Shepherds that know approximately 40 to 50 commands, are amazingly well-behaved and calm, and are permitted to go anywhere the public is allowed.
If your sister is interested in getting a service dog, contact some assistance dog training programs. To find them, Assistance Dogs International provides a listing of around 65 U.S. programs on their website that you can access at AssistanceDogsInternational.org.
Some groups offer dogs for free, some ask for donations and some charge thousands of dollars.
To get an assistance dog, your sister will need to show proof of her disability, which her physician can provide, and shell have to complete an application and go through an interview process. She will also need to go and stay at the training facility for a week or two so she can get familiar with her dog and get training on how to handle it.
Its also important to understand that assistance dogs are not for everybody. They require time, money, and care that your sister or some other friend or family member must be able and willing to provide.
Send your senior questions to: Savvy Senior, P.O. Box 5443, Norman, OK 73070, or visit SavvySenior.org.
Dane County plans to stop making electricity with natural gas extracted from heaps of garbage and manure so that it can sell the gas through an interstate pipeline for use as environmentally-friendly automobile fuel.
The $23.5 million project at the county landfill would be the first of its kind in the state.
The effort is a response to utility company plans for sharply cutting back on the money they have paid for nearly a decade to dozens of landfills and waste digesters for gas-generated electricity.
Multi-year contracts with utilities provided more short-term certainty about revenue levels than the county and others will have selling the gas at market prices.
But Dane County officials say current natural gas prices and government subsidies are very likely to mean more income as soon as new equipment is up and running early in 2019. And without the limits imposed by the utility contacts, the door will open to greater production of renewable energy that does far less environmental damage than fossil fuel.
The landfill will gradually increase its gas production and the county hopes the switch to gas sales will lure more private investment to build more biodigesters, said county executive Joe Parisi.
"Our digesters are so important to our lakes cleanup effort," Parisi said. "This not only shores up the economic stability of our existing digesters, but potentially allows us to expand the number of digesters throughout the watershed."
Dane County's sprawling landfill on Highway 12/18 is one of several in the state that collect gas that is created by the breakdown of organic material. Biodigesters collect manure and food waste to produce the gas.
The county projects sales of gas from the landfill alone to bring in millions of dollars annually. And biodigesters that truck their gas to the county's injection point in an interstate pipeline will bolster their bottom lines, Parisi said.
Technological advances and government subsidies have made selling the gas more lucrative in recent years. The federal subsidies are folded into the ethanol program, which appears to have the backing of the Trump administration, Parisi said. The state of California also offers subsidies the county will pursue.
Three years of gas sales revenue will cover the $18 million cost of equipment needed to purify and inject gas into the TransCanada pipeline that happens to run under the landfill, said county solid waste manager John Welch.
In addition to the $18 million in the current county budget, Parisi has proposed another $5.5 million for equipment to inject gas trucked in by biodigesters. One has committed and another has expressed serious interest in the fee-based service, Welch said. Parisi has also proposed $250,000 to study where new digesters should be built.
Utilities won't continue incentives
More than a decade ago the state Legislature and Democratic Gov. Jim Doyle instructed the Public Service Commission to encourage more production of renewable energy. The state's investor-owned utilities agreed to pay more than the market rate for a limited amount of gas-generated electricity to help spur construction of digesters and encourage capture of landfill gas.
Dane County's landfill cleared about $2.7 million annually selling electricity to Madison Gas & Electric. But when its contract lapses in 2019, that would drop to about $500,000, Welch said.
For the Clean Fuel Partners biodigester near Waunakee, it had been unclear how operations could continue after 2020 when its contract with Alliant Energy expires and revenue drops, said Clean Fuel Partners president and chief executive officer John Haeckel.
On Wednesday, Haeckel joined a group that met with the county's natural gas consultant. Haeckel said if his initial calculations on gas sales hold up, he hopes to purchase gas purification and compression equipment as soon as the county is ready to begin accepting gas. And he wants to increase gas production by 50 percent by activating an idle 1.25-million-gallon digester if he can find farmers to supply more manure, obtain regulatory approvals and secure a market for by-products.
Environmental benefits
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency requires landfills to control emissions of greenhouse gases that leak from decomposing refuse. Some simply collect and burn it off into the air, but others, like Dane County, have fed it into electrical generators.
Generating electricity with gas from landfills or biodigesters also reduces carbon emissions by reducing the need for energy from coal-fired energy plants.
Biodigesters deliver the added benefit of managing some of the millions and millions of gallons of dairy manure produced in Wisconsin.
Farmers and feedlot operators dispose of manure by spreading it on fields, but disease-causing pathogens end up in lakes, streams and drinking water. And excess nutrients that run off and cause unnatural weed and bacterial growth in lakes and streams are the state's single most widespread source of water pollution.
Biodigesters mix manure with food waste and heat it up, which speeds gas production and kills pathogens. Then, before returning the manure for field spreading, biodigester operators are supposed to run at least some of it through processes that extract nutrients for use as fertilizer in places where they are less likely to be damaging.
More than 30 biodigesters are operating in Wisconsin. It's not clear how many signed the higher-than-market-rate contracts. An Alliant spokesman said the utility has eight such contracts among 15 small electrical suppliers that include landfills and biodigesters on farms and at wastewater treatment plants.
The TransCanada interstate gas pipeline snakes through the east side of the state. Many biodigesters and landfills won't be close enough to make pipeline sales practical, said Micheal Vickerman of RENEW Wisconsin, which advocates for renewable energy.
The biodigester at the Crave Brothers farm in Waterloo produces less gas than Clean Fuel Partners facility near Waunakee, so it may not be cost-effective to install purification equipment needed to sell gas, said Haeckel, who whose company operates the Jefferson County digester.
However, the Crave Brothers utility contract runs for several more years. It's possible the price of technology will come down by then, Haeckel said.
The GL Dairy Biogas Digester in the Town of Springfield is owned by Gundersen Health System. It sells to MG&E, said utility spokeswoman Dana Brueck. Some of the Gundersen gas probably will be trucked to the county landfill with the rest going to other locations, Welch said.
State plans to sell biogas
Dane County expects to start selling gas in spring of 2019. No others in Wisconsin have made the switch, but some have recently begun working on it, Welch said.
The county's gas will be metered where it enters the pipeline which now carries only gas from outside of Wisconsin. It goes to distribution points for use in homes, or it is compressed and used as fuel in specially-outfitted cars and trucks, Welch said.
The county is selling only to compressed natural gas markets. In addition to sales revenue, the county will be able to collect money from the government subsidy programs, which are aimed at encouraging production of renewable fuel.
A new state-subsidized biodigester-landfill complex in Brown County is scheduled to begin injecting gas into the pipeline late next year.
The Public Service Commission announced in September that it had chosen a consortium called BC Organics that is made up of 24 members, led by Waukesha-based Dynamic Concepts and including WEC Energy Group of Milwaukee and U.S. Biogas of Plymouth.
The $60.3 million project came together in an effort championed by Gov. Scott Walker. It will receive $15 million from the state. Biodigester facilities are to be built near the county landfill south of Green Bay. At least nine farms with over 22,000 animal units have committed to sending manure to the digester, the PSC said.
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A severely disabled man of the United Kingdom watched his young female home attendants as they undressed in the shower.
32-year-old Farhan Mian from London has Duchenne muscular dystrophy, which causes progressive muscle degeneration and weakness.
Mian, who is paralyzed and can only move his right thumb, asked a relative to install cameras in his house, saying that he feared his home attendants were stealing from him.
The family member installed hidden cameras in his home attendants bedroom, in their private shower, and in Mians room.
Mian was able to operate all three cameras using his thumb. He used a computer in his room to turn on the device and to zoom in.
Police learned that Mian recorded three of his home attendants who were foreign aid workers from Poland and Latvia.
One woman admitted that she agreed to pleasure herself in front of Mian and she used an adult toy in his presence inside his bedroom but she never agreed to be recorded.
Mian was arrested but he fought the charges. The Isleworth Crown Court jury unanimously found him guilty of 6 counts of voyeurism for the purpose of sexual gratification.
Mian was placed on a six-month community order, which includes a three-month curfew between 10:00 p.m. and 6:00 a.m., and 5 years probation.
He was also banned from installing cameras in the bathroom and the home attendants room.
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.
Vote
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Saudi Arabia is declaring war on Hezbollah, not for its love of Israel as much as for its hatred of Iran. Not a day has passed in the past few months without the Saudi press attacking the Lebanese organization and its leader, Hassan Nasrallah.
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A red line was crossed last week, as far as the Saudis are concerned, when Houthi rebels in Yemen fired a missile at Saudi Arabias capital, Riyadh. What does Hezbollah have to do with the Houthis? Lebanon and Saudi Arabia dont share a border, and the Shiite organization is threatening Israel, not the Saudi kingdom. So why is Saudi Arabia so determined to destroy the Lebanese organization?
Hezbollah is everywhere in Syria
If we thought Hezbollah was deployed primarily in western Syria to defend Lebanons border, images released Thursday morning reveal the true story behind the war in Syria: The al-Mayadeen newspaper published joyful photos of Iraqi and Syrian fighters meeting on the border between the two countries after conquering the town of al-Bukamal in the Deir al-Zour Governorate. The articles title, Restoring the borders to their pre-ISIS condition is misleading. Thats not the case at all.
Members of Iranian-backed Shiite militias waving Hezbollah flags in Syria
The fighters in the picture are not soldiers in the Syrian and Iraqi armies. They are waving flags of Hezbollah and Shiite organization al-Hashd al-Shaabi (the Popular Mobilization Forces). In other words, the fighters meeting and celebrating the victory are actually two Iranian-controlled militias.
This is the reality the Arab Sunni world is dealing with right now. The Sunni battle against the Iranian takeover of the Middle East is being led by the Saudi kingdom, which is the strongest Arab country today both economically and militarily.
Hezbollah in Yemen
About a year and a half ago, Saudi Arabia declared war on the Iranian-backed Shiite Houthis in Yemen, following their attempt to take over the country. Saudi Arabia claims it is protecting ships passing through Yemens ports in a bid to prevent Iran from controlling 10 percent of global trade passing through the port city of Aden and the Bab-el-Mandeb strait.
About a year ago, Saudi and Qatari sources revealed (before their conflict with Saudi Arabia) that Hezbollah was not only offering the Houthis in Yemen ideological and communicational support, but was also helping them with advice and training from Hezbollah fighters.
Hassan Nasrallah. Hezbollah is training the Shiite Houthi rebels in Yemen and offering them advice
Several days ago, the Houthis demonstrated the increase in their missile range by firing a missile at the Saudi capital of Riyadh. About a year ago, the Houthis fired a missile at Islams holiest site, Mecca. In the video documenting the attack on Riyadh, the launchers are heard chanting the Houthi slogan: Death to the Jews, victory to Islam.
Hezbollahs ties with the Houthis are tactical, religious and ideological. They are both satellites of Iran and they cooperate. According to Saudi Arabia, Hezbollah is also cooperating with Iraqi organization al-Hashd al-Shaabi and with other subversive Shiite organizations in the Arab world, like the Shiite opposition in Bahrain (a Sunni pro-Saudi country where the Shiites make up 60 percent of the population).
The Saudis arent interested in the threat Israel is facing from Hezbollah. The Saudi hostility towards the Shiite organization has to do with the fear of a Hezbollah's expansion in the Syrian-Lebanon domain.
The missile fired at Riyadh by the Houthis in Yemen (Photo: Reuters)
In 2015, the Syrian regime was on the verge of collapse thanks to the Saudi and Qatari support for the Sunni opposition organizations, but the Russian intervention that year turned the tables. After the elimination of the moderate rebels and the al-Nusra Front in western Syria, and the significant shrinkage of the Islamic State (ISIS) in eastern Syria, the created void is being filled by Bashar Assads army, supporters of the Syrian regime, but also Irans Shiite militias that are helping the Assad regime, led by Hezbollah.
The arena Israel is most concerned about is the Golan Heights, where the Iranians are making an effort to recruit the Druze and the Christians as well (for example, the cells of Mughniyah and Kuntar, who were assassinated in recent years). The Saudis, however, are more concerned about the larger picture of the organizations takeover of the entire region.
Hariri is telling the difficult truth
Lebanese Prime Minister Saad al-Hariris resignation announcement last Saturday, during a visit to Saudi Arabia, took the Lebanese people by surprise. What they were mostly surprised about was Hariris public declaration, in which he said everything the Lebanese are thinking but are afraid to say: Hezbollah controls Lebanon, and the prime minister and parliaments roles are empty. In other words, Lebanon is a country under Iranian occupation.
Hariri, like his Druze colleague, Walid Jumblatt, held the feelings of insult inside of him for many years. He was forced to shake the hands of Hezbollah men, stained with the blood of his father, slain Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, in order to survive and regain the premiership. Jumblatt was forced to travel to Damascus several decades ago and shake hands with former Syrian President Hafez Assad, who murdered his father Kamal Jumblatt, in order to protect the status of the Druze community in Lebanon.
Resigning Lebanese Prime Minister Saad al-Hariri said what most Lebanese have been afraid to say, that their country is under Iranian occupation (Photo: AP)
Most Arab commentators believe that the timing of Hariris resignation has to do with information the Lebanese prime minister received in Saudi Arabianot just about the kingdoms support for him and for the Sunnis in Lebanon, but also about anti-Hezbollah activities Saudi Arabia is planning to execute in the near future.
Will Hamas become Gazas Hezbollah?
Its no coincidence that Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas left for Saudi Arabia immediately after the resigning Lebanese prime ministers visit. Abbas likely went there to receive economic aid from Saudi Arabia and discuss the danger of Hamas turning into the Palestinians' Hezbollah.
Hamas has recently drawn closer to Iran, and the option of Iranian aid to the Palestinian organization has been reconsidered. The Saudis are concerned about this relationship, as Hamas could turn into another Iranian wing on the border of Riyadhs ally, Egypt. The same slogan is now being heard from both Hezbollah and Hamas: The makauma (resistance) weapon must not be touched.
In Lebanon, there is no one who would dare try to collect Hezbollahs weapons. The Palestinian reconciliation will also come to an end once Fatah tries to collect Hamas weapons.
Drums of war are already sounding
The black monster, ISIS, is about to disappear from the map, and Saudi Arabia and its allies are now preparing the war against the yellow monsterHezbollah. After the Islamic States disappearance, Hezbollah will stand out as the largest and most dangerous Islamic terror organization in the world.
Saudi King Salman with his son, Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman (Photo: MCT)
Saudi Arabia will find it easier to enlist the United States in the Trump era, as the American president is determined to fight Iran. The US has a score to settle with the Shiite organization. Both the US and France havent forgotten the 1983 Hezbollah attack on American Marines in Beirut, which left 241 American soldiers and 58 French soldiers dead.
Any threat to Hariris life after his return to Lebanon could lead to a regional explosion. His fathers murder in 2005 led to international pressure on Syria and to its armys withdrawal from Lebanon that same year, as well as to the murder investigation which led to Hezbollah operatives. Are commentators in the Sunni world right to predict that Lebanon will soon find itself in a stat of war?
Anti-Hezbollah coalition? Not in the near future
Thamer al-Sabhan, the Saudi minister for Gulf affairs, raised an idea two weeks ago to form a coalition against Hezbollah, like the coalition against the Houthis and against ISIS. This is a convenient timing, as Hezbollah is still up to its neck in the war in Syria and will have to fight on a few fronts. The idea is likely being tossed around in conversations between Saudi Arabia, the US and the axis of moderate Sunni states.
Saudi King Salman with Resigning Lebanese Prime Minister Saad al-Hariri (Photo: EPA)
Geographically, Lebanon is surrounded by Syria from all directions apart from the south, which borders on Israel. As some of the countries expected to be part of the coalition have no diplomatic ties with Israel, they would likely favor an attack from the sea. But that is not only a complicated and difficult operation, it might also encounter Russian opposition. Furthermore, Israel would pay most of the bloody price of such a war, as Hezbollah would likely respond with massive fire on Israel.
Nasrallah, who is supposedly assuming the role of the responsible adult, has announced in the media that the Lebanese have nothing to worry about and that peace (in other words, a continuation of the Iranian occupation) will be maintained in Lebanon. Peace will be maintained, but not thanks to Nasrallah. Lebanon survived the Arab Spring because the thing that scares the Lebanese people more than anything else is a civil war (after two civil wars the country went through in the past).
An external threat is nowhere in sight either, in light of Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisis comment last week that he is against a war in Lebanon. Egypt is supposed to be Saudi Arabias main partner in the anti-Hezbollah coalition. So until the coalition is formed, the Saudis will have to settle for the traditional war they excel inthe economic battle.
Iran has denied allegations it was behind a militant attack on a pipeline outside Bahrain's capital.
Foreign Ministry spokesman Bahram Ghasemi was quoted by the state-run IRNA news agency Sunday as rejecting the "baseless and fake claims" and "childish finger-pointing" from Bahraini authorities.
Bahrain has been combatting a low-level insurgency since the Sunni monarchy quashed a 2011 Arab Spring uprising led by majority Shiites.
Bahrain's interior minister, Sheikh Rashid bin Abdullah Al Khalifa, said Saturday's blast was "the latest example of a terrorist act performed by terrorists in direct contact with and under instruction from Iran."
Gulf tensions have intensified in recent days after Sunni-led Saudi Arabia blamed Shiite Iran for a ballistic missile fired by Yemen's Shiite rebels that was intercepted near Riyadh. Iran has denied any involvement.
President Donald Trump on Sunday said he believes US intelligence agencies, which have concluded that Russia meddled in the 2016 US presidential election. But Trump also said he believes Russian President Vladimir Putin is sincere when he says Russia didn't interfere.
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"I believe that he feels that he and Russia did not meddle in the election," Trump said of Putin at a news conference with Vietnam's president in Hanoi. "As to whether I believe it, I'm with our agencies."
President Trump stands with agencies on Russian meddling (: )
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He added, "As currently led by fine people, I believe very much in our intelligence agencies."
Top US intelligence officials, including those at the CIA, have concluded that Russia interfered in the election to help the Republican Trump defeat Democrat Hillary Clinton. A special counsel and multiple Congressional committees are also investigating potential collusion between Moscow and Trump campaign aides. That probe has so far led to the indictments of Trump's former campaign chairman and another top aide for financial and other crimes unrelated to the campaign, as well as a guilty plea from a Trump foreign policy adviser.
Trump also seemed to suggest Sunday that it was time to remove the sanctions Congress has slapped on Russia in retaliation.
President Trump (Photo: Reuters)
"It's now time to get back to healing a world that is shattered and broken," said Trump. "Those are very important things."
It's a question that has followed Trump since January, when he said for the first time at a press conference in Trump Tower shortly before taking office that he accepted Russia was behind the election year hacking of Democrats that roiled the White House race.
"As far as hacking, I think it was Russia," Trump said then, quickly adding that "other countries and other people" also hack US interests.
But the issue wasn't settled.
Speaking to reporters aboard Air Force One on Saturday on his way to Hanoi, Trump had said that Putin again vehemently denied the allegationsthis time on the sidelines of an economic conference in the seaside city of Danang. Trump danced around questions of whether he believed Putin, but stressed Putin's denials. He also accused Democrats of using the issue to try to sabotage relations between the two countries, putting lives at risk.
"Every time he sees me, he said: 'I didn't do that.' And I believe really believethat when he tells me that, he means it," Trump said, arguing that it made no sense for him to belabor the issue.
"I'd rather have him get out of Syria, to be honest with you. I'd rather have him, you know, work with him on the Ukraine than standing and arguing," he said.
Speaking to reporters aboard Air Force One before landing in Hanoi, Trump also lashed out at the former heads of the nation's intelligence agencies, claiming there were plenty of reasons to be suspicious of their findings. "I mean, give me a break. They're political hacks," Trump said, citing by name James Clapper, the former director of national intelligence, John Brennan, the former CIA director and his ousted ex-FBI director James Comey, whom Trump said was "proven now to be a liar and he's proven to be a leaker."
In a tweet sent Sunday from Hanoi, Trump bashed the "haters and fools" he said were questioning his efforts to improve relations with Russia and accused critics of "playing politics" and hurting the country.
Trump's Saturday comments sparked criticism from lawmakers with ties to the intelligence community. Rep. Adam Schiff, the California Democrat who is his party's top member on the House's intelligence committee, said in a statement that Trump "fools no one" and that the president understands how the Russians intervened in the election through hacking, social media and television coverage of the presidential race.
Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., the party's presidential nominee in 2008, said in a statement that Trump's faith in Putin's denial was "naive."
President Trump with President Putin (Photo: EPA)
"There's nothing 'America First' about taking the word of a KGB colonel over that of the American intelligence community," McCain wrote, referring to Putin's former career in Soviet intelligence. "Vladimir Putin does not have America's interests at heart."
Trump was in Hanoi for a brief state visit. He heads to the Philippines later Sundaythe last stop of his five country tripfor a pair of summits.
In brief remarks after his arrival at Hanoi's presidential palace, Trump offered Vietnam help negotiating with China on disputes over the South China Sea. Beijing's island-building there has drawn criticism from Washington, which argues the US has a national interest in freedom of navigation in sea lanes critical for world trade. US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson earlier this month said China's "provocative actions" challenged international law and norms.
"If I can help mediate or arbitrate, please let me know," Trump offered. "I'm a very good mediator and a very good arbitrator. I've done plenty of it from both sides."
Vietnamese President Tran Dai Quang said he preferred to settle the dispute through "peaceful negotiations" and "with respect for diplomatic and legal process in accordance with international law."
Trump also said he hoped to have more help from Chinese President Xi Jinping as well as Russia, when it comes to isolating North Korea, in an effort to pressure the country to abandon its nuclear weapons program. "President Xi I think is going to be a tremendous help. I hope Russia likewise will be a tremendous help," Trump said. "I think they can make a big difference."
Earlier, Trump had exchanged schools yard taunts with the country's leader Kim Jong-un. "Why would Kim Jong-un insult me by calling me "old," when I would NEVER call him "short and fat?" Trump tweeted from Vietnam, adding: "Oh well, I try so hard to be his friendand maybe someday that will happen!"
Asked whether he could really be friends with Kim, Trump said, "I think anything's a possibility. Strange things happen in life."
Kim Jong-un (Photo: AFP)
Trump and Putin did not have a formal meeting while they were in Vietnam for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit, but the two spoke informally several times and reached an agreement on a number of principles for the future of war-torn Syria.
Trump's comments made clear that Trump still does not take the meddling seriously and sees little benefit in punishing a nation accused of undermining the most fundamental tenet of American democracy: free and fair elections. They also suggest that Trump is unlikely to work aggressively to try to prevent future meddling despite repeated warnings from senior intelligence officials that Russia is likely to try to interfere again.
Iran rejected on Sunday a call by French President Emmanuel Macron for talks on Tehran's ballistic missiles, saying they were defensive and unrelated to a nuclear agreement with world powers.
On Thursday, Macron said during a visit to Dubai that he was "very concerned" by Iran's ballistic missile programme, mentioning a missile fired from Yemen and intercepted by Saudi Arabia earlier this month. He raised the prospect of possible sanctions with regard to those activities.
"There are negotiations we need to start on Iran's ballistic missiles," Macron said.
But Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Bahram Qassemi rejected that possibility. "France is fully aware of our country's firm position that Iran's defence affairs are not negotiable," he said.
"We have told French officials repeatedly that the nuclear deal is not negotiable and other issues will not be allowed to be added to it," Qassemi said, according to a statement on the ministry's website.
The United States accused Iran on Tuesday of supplying Yemen's Houthi rebels with a missile that was fired into Saudi Arabia in July and called for the United Nations to hold Tehran accountable for violating two UN Security Council resolutions .
Saudi Arabia and its allies accuse Iran of supplying missiles and other weapons to the Houthis, saying the arms were not present in Yemen before conflict broke out there in 2015. Iran denies the charges and blames the conflict on Riyadh.
The United States has imposed unilateral sanctions on Iran, saying its missile tests violate a UN resolution that calls on Tehran not to undertake activities related to missiles capable of delivering nuclear weapons.
Iran says its missile programme is defensive and it has no plans to build nuclear-capable missiles.
A senior Islamic Jihad official in Gaza, Khaled al-Batash, has said that his terror organization will have no other choice to punish Israel for killing its members recently when exploding a tunnel that had penetrated into Israeli territory.
Israel has killed 12 Palestinians in Gaza and another one in the West (Bank) over the last two weeks When they kill men of the resistance, and especially from Islamic Jihad, we have no other choice but to punish the occupier, and continue to strengthen the buildup of forces from a conflict, al-Batash said.
Two weeks after Israel blew up an attack tunnel that had penetrated into its territory from Gaza, killing 15 terrorists from Islamic Jihad and Hamas, Israel has promised to respond to any revenge attack with power and determination.
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Warning Islamic Jihad in Arabic that it is playing with fire in a video uploaded on Saturday night, Maj. Gen. Yoav (Poli) Mordechai stressed that Israel would respond to any attack against the group itself and Hamas. We will respond with force against Hamas, Mordechai said.
Israel exploded a terror tunnel two weeks ago inside its territory under the sovereignty of the State of Israel. We are aware of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad's plot that is being formed against Israel, he said in Arabic.
Terror tunnel exploded by the IDF (Photo: EPA)
It is playing with fire at the expense of the residents of the Gaza Strip, at the expense of the Palestinian reconciliation agreements and the entire region.
"It should be clear: Any response by Islamic Jihad, whatever it may be, will be responded to by Israel with power and determination, not only against Islamic Jihad but also against Hamas. We advise the Islamic Jihad leadership in Damascus to be careful and get things under control, he continued.
Leaders of Islamic Jihad in DamascusRamadan Shalah Ziad Nakhalehget your hands around this quickly because you are the ones who will be held responsible.
On Sunday, Islamic Jihad responded to Mordechais words, describing them as a declaration of war.
The threat by the enemy to harm the leadership is a declaration of war and we will deal with them, the organization said in a statement said.
These threats show the real intentions of the Zionists. The enemy forces are violating the ceasefire that was brokered by Egypt in 2014."
Earlier the same day, a senior Islamic Jihad official in Gaza, Khaled al-Batash, said his terror organization will have no other choice to punish Israel for killing its members.
Maj. Gen. Yoav (Poli) Mordechai warns Hamas and Islamic Jihad
Israel has killed 12 Palestinians in Gaza and another one in the West (Bank) over the last two weeks When they kill men of the resistance, and especially from Islamic Jihad, we have no other choice but to punish the occupier, and continue to strengthen the buildup of forces from a conflict, al-Batash said.
Shortly after Israel blew up the tunnel, Hamas warned it constituted a grave escalation.
Among those killed were senior commanders of terror groups while another 11 were wounded in the explosions.
The Palestinian Islamic Jihad terror group said Sunday that comments recently made by a senior IDF official promising to target its leadership in the event of any revenge attacks launched against Israel are tantamount to a declaration of war.
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"We will not weaken the the leadership of our people and of our land. The threat by the enemy to harm the leadership is on the border of a declaration of war and we will deal with them, the organization said in a statement.
The statement came in response to a video posted on the internet Saturday evening by Maj. Gen. Yoav (Poli) Mordechai, who said that Israel is aware of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad's plot that is being formed against Israel, before warning that it is playing with fire and that any attack would be met with force and determination as the IDF targets the groups leadership.
Hamas and Islamic Jihad terrorists killed in tunnel explosion
Speaking in Arabic, Mordechai said both Islamic Jihad and Hamas would be held responsible for any revenge attacks launched on Israel for the IDFs recent explosion of a terror tunnel that has penetrated into its territory. During the explosion, several Hamas and Islamic Jihad terrorists were killed.
Shortly after Israel blew up the tunnel, Hamas warned it constituted a grave escalation.
Among those killed were senior commanders of terror groups while another 11 were wounded in the explosions.
Israel exploded a terror tunnel two weeks ago inside its territory under the sovereignty of the State of Israel, Mordechai said.
It is playing with fire at the expense of the residents of the Gaza Strip, at the expense of the Palestinian reconciliation agreements and the entire region.
"It should be clear: Any response by Islamic Jihad, whatever it may be, will be responded to by Israel with power and determination, not only against Islamic Jihad but also against Hamas. We advise the Islamic Jihad leadership in Damascus to be careful and get things under control, he continued.
Leaders of Islamic Jihad in DamascusRamadan Shalah Ziad Nakhalehget your hands around this quickly because you are the ones who will be held responsible.
According to the latest Islamic Jihad statement, Mordechais words revealed "Israels real intentions." It further indicated that violent reprisals for the tunnel explosion should be expected.
Maj. Gen. Yoav (Poli) Mordechai warns Hamas and Islamic Jihad
These threats show the real intentions of the Zionists. We have a right to respond to any aggression and, therefore, have a right to respond to criminal aggressions against the resistance tunnels that caused the death of 12 fighters from the military wing of Hamas and the (Islamic) Jihad, the statement read before issuing a stern warning.
Our message to Israel: Your hands, drenched in the blood of our children, will not stop killing until they are cut off or expelled from our land and country.
The enemys terror and threats do not frighten us and will not deter our leadership from the path of Jihadthe principle of our defense and resistance.
The enemy forces, it concluded, are violating the ceasefire that was brokered by Egypt in 2014."
Earlier on Sunday, a senior Islamic Jihad official in Gaza, Khaled al-Batash, said his terror organization will have no other choice to punish Israel for killing its members.
Israel has killed 12 Palestinians in Gaza and another one in the West (Bank) over the last two weeks When they kill men of the resistance, and especially from Islamic Jihad, we have no other choice but to punish the occupier, and continue to strengthen the buildup of forces from a conflict, al-Batash said.
PM Netanyahu (Photo: Reuters)
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addressed the possible attack in his opening Cabinet remarks Sunday, reiterating that Hamas will bear ultimate responsibility for any attack launched from the Gaza Strip.
There are those who still amuse themselves these days by trying to renew attacks against Israel. We will take a very firm stance against anyone who tries to attack us or attacks us from any area. I mean any source: rogue factions, organizationsanyone. In any event, we see Hamas responsible to any attack launched or organized from the Gaza Strip against us," Netanyahu said.
Daoud Shehab, an Islamic Jihad spokesman, said that his group "made a decision to respond" with "a response that Israel is not used to." He did not elaborate but said it would not be with rocket fire, hinting at possible attacks from the West Bank.
A Hamas spokesperson also said Sunday afternoon that threats the Israeli threats are indicative of "panic and confusion."
The threats against resistance by the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT) Yoav Mordechai reflect the state of panic and confusion the Zionist entity is in from our response to the crimes against people of the Palestinian resistance, the spokesperson said.
The courageous resistance will always continue to be ready to carry out its dutyto defend our nation and break the prestige of the occupation.
President Donald Trump has arrived in the Philippines to attend a pair of international summits and close his five-country tour of Asia.
Trump is slated to meet several times with Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte. Duterte has come under intense criticism from human rights advocates for overseeing a violent drug crackdown that includes extrajudicial killings. Trump has previously praised Duterte's handling of his nation's drug problems.
Trump was originally scheduled to depart Manila on Monday but he added a day to the visit so he could more fully participate in one of the summits.
He arrived in Manila on Sunday after a brief stop in Vietnam.
Trump also visited Japan, South Korea and China.
The Cabinet unanimously confirmed Meir Ben Shabbat Sunday as the head of the National Security Council and as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahus national security adviser.
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"I think there is no one worthier then him for this position. I am sure that my colleagues in the Cabinet and the Government have also been impressed by the qualities he brings to this job, his sharpness of mind, his rich experience, the clarity of which he presents things," Netanyahu said during his opening Cabinet remarks.
"He does not round things up, he does not cover up, he says his opinion in the clearest possible way, and I think this will be an opportunity for Meir who has contributed greatly to Israel's security, to make another significant contribution to its national security. I am congratulating in advance, because I am certain that this appointment as well as the other appointments will be accepted unanimously.
"Ben Shabbat does not cut corners, he speaks his opinion and cuts straight to the point, Netanyahu added. Meir has made enormous contributions to the security of the State of Israel and I believe that the position will give him the opportunity to make further contributions to its national security."
Meir Ben Shabbat
Ben Shabbat takes his new position after serving in the Israel Security Agency (Shin Bet) where he headed its southern division for three years and replaced acting NSC head Eitan Ben David.
He joined the Shin Bet in 1989 upon his released from his service in the IDF's Givati Brigade. He started his journey in the southern district, acquired expertise on Hamas and the Gaza Strip, and played a part in most operations against the Gaza terror group over the past two decades.
Among other things, he led the Shin Bet's operations in Gaza during Operation Cast Lead in 2008-9.
The confirmation lends stability to the position after a period of close to two years in which the NSC was left without a permanent director since Yossi Cohen left the position to lead the Mossad in January 2016.
Cohen was replaced by Yaakov Nagel who served as acting head of the NSC until April 2017, but turned down Netanyahus offer to take up the position on a permanent basis, citing personal reasons.
In February 2016, Netanyahu offered the position to the NSCs former deputy head Avriel Bar Yossef; however, the NGO Ometz (Citizens for Proper Administration and Social and Legal Justice) petitioned against the appointment on the grounds that he had received benefits for promoting the interests of an overseas businessman.
He later decided to turn down the offer and in November 2016 he was questioned by police on suspicion of bribery, money laundering and breach of trust. In July this year he was arrested on suspicion of taking bribes in Case 3,000 regarding Israels purchase of submarines from Germany.
Ben Shabbat, 51, is married with four children and holds a degree in political science from Bar Ilan University and is a graduate of Tel Aviv Universitys graduate program for directors. He joined the Shin Bet in 1989 after completing his military service in the Givati Brigade. Ben Shabbat worked his way up the ranks in the Shin Bet, gaining expertise in Hamas and the Gaza Strip. He headed the Shin Bets operations in Gaza during Operation Cast Lead, the 2008-09 Gaza war.
Israeli officials are giving a lukewarm reaction to an agreement laying out principles for the future of Syria.
The agreement, announced in a US-Russian statement Saturday, affirms a call for "the reduction, and ultimate elimination" of foreign fighters from southern Syria.
Israel opposes any permanent presence in Syria by archenemy Iran and its Hezbollah allies, especially near the Israeli border.
Israeli Intelligence Minister Israel Katz told The Associated Press the agreement is a positive development. But he stressed that Israel is not a party to the agreement and will defend its interests.
"We have proved that before and we will prove it again in the future," Katz said.
While largely staying on the sidelines of the Syrian war, Israel has carried out repeated airstrikes against suspected weapons shipments to Hezbollah.
Turkey on Sunday dismissed as "ludicrous and groundless" a report that Turkish officials may have discussed kidnapping a US-based Muslim cleric in exchange for millions of dollars.
On Friday, The Wall Street Journal reported that Special Counsel Robert Mueller was investigating an alleged plot involving former US National Security Adviser Michael Flynn and his son to forcibly remove Fethullah Gulen and hand him over to Ankara for as much as $15 million.
Turkey blames Gulen for last year's failed coup attempt. Gulen denies the claim.
In a statement on Twitter, Turkey's embassy in Washington reiterated demands that the US extradite Gulen so he can stand trial. The embassy said Turkey has been working with US agencies to provide evidence of Gulen's culpability and rejected "allegations that Turkey would resort to means external to the rule of law."
A host of former security officials, including generals and police commissioners, commanders and Shin Bet and Mossad officials have come out in solidarity with Police Commissioner Roni Alsheikh as he finds himself under fierce criticisms by members of the Likud government and by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu himself.
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Netanyahu recently accused Alsheikh of allowing information pertaining to investigations being carried out against him to leak to the press, a charge which Alsheikh has categorically denied.
Alsheikh (Photo: Avi Mualem)
The most recent assault launched on Alsheikh by the Likud-led government has been the promotion of legislation to decrease the police commissioners salary.
Speaking in an interview with Ynet Sunday, one of the signatories to the letter supporting Alsheikh, former police commissioner Shlomo Aharonishky, who argued that the governments efforts were merely designed to "critically harm the law enforcement system."
The letter, entitled "commanders for Israels security," was published Sunday morning in a bid to formally rally senior security officials spanning Israels vast law-enforcement apparatus behind Alsheikh.
The letter states that the former officials are lending support to Alsheikh and the security apparatus in light of the repeated attacks against the police commissioner and the security apparatus."
Aharonishky (Photo: Herzl Yosef)
In addition to Aharonishky, other prominent figures to have signed the letter include former police commissioners Yohanan Danino, Yehuda Vilk, Assaf Hefetz, Yaakov Turner, Herzl Shafir and Moshe Karadi; former prime minister Ehud Barak; former IDF chiefs of staff Gabi Ashkenzai, Benny Gantz and Dan Halutz; and former Mossad chiefs Tzvi Zamir, Danny Yatom and Shabtai Shavit.
"We recognize moves here intended to critically harm the law-enforcement apparatus, the police, the District Attorney's Office, the courts," said Aharonishky. "This is really about trying to harm democracy. Harming the police chief is tantamount to harming state security."
Aharonishky continued to lay the blame on politicians, who "work against the security forces, against the law enforcement apparatus. We've been seeing this over the past few months, not just in the bills, some which are completely ridiculous, but also in statements that have crossed red lines. First there were statements made against the IDF chief of staff, now they're against the police commissioner, and so it continues, more and more. Someone needs to put an end to this, someone needs to say, 'With all due respect, your people, who you were elected to lead, isn't a flock of mute sheep.' We have to do everything to stop this process."
He declined, however, to name names. "I don't need to say who we're talking about, specifically. I think we all hear the voices, see the hands go up and understand.
"The problem is that it isn't just one or two things, it isn't just one or two laws, but a whole process that they're trying to set in motion," said Aharonishky. "I can even link it to what Minister Regev said at the time about the Israel Public Broadcasting Corporation, when she asked, 'Why set up the IPBC if we don't control it?' It's as if their thought process here is: what good is the law enforcement apparatus if we can't control it."
Alsheikh receiving the delegation at his home
Aharonishky also referred to the theory that Alsheikh is receiving so much pushback from officials because he was expected to make certain investigations go away. "If someone was thinking this, not only did they not understand the first thing about the police commissioner position or how the police and democracy work, but that we must make a choice here between two less than ideal options: namely, that (they areed) either ignorant or evil.
"A police commissioner cannot stop an investigation or lower the flames for whomever needs them to be lowered, so I suggest that any handling of this (issue) by MKs or the prime minister be of the phenomenon itself, and not the messenger. Why is there corruption here, why are there people who are still supposedly marred by criminal or public offensesstart by handling that.
"This attempt to harm the messenger, to show the police who's stronger and who's less strong, will not succeed," assured Aharonishky. "The police has one compass, and that is the law and the pursuit of truth."
Amsalem (Photo: Ohad Zwigenberg)
Alsheikh himself stated that he has no plans to bow down to present threats over the police's autonomy, which currently include a bill to prevent the police from submitting its recommendations passing a preliminary Knesset vote and a new initiative by Likud MK Dudi Amsalem to lower Alsheikh's salary, which stands at NIS 83,000 a month.
"I've put up a wall," said Alsheikh on Friday evening, as he received a pleasant surprise at his homea delegation from the Police, Senior Citizens and Wardens Committee, who came to his house with flowers in a show of support.
"The commissioner is in the eye of a storm, with politicians attacking him to hurt the police," said Police and Senior Citizens Taskforce Head Oshra Asaf of their visit to Alshiekh's. "So we came to tell him the police have his back."
Alsheik explained that his putting up a defense against criticism "is a rational decision that has a mental effect: eventually you put up a wall and know that you are doing your job."
He added that "all these storms around won't affect the police's decision-making in any field, and that's what the citizen needs to know: at the end of the day, the police will provide them with the appropriate service they deserve."
Palestinian brothers Nasser Badawi, 24, and Akram Badawi , 34 from the city of Hebron were sentenced to life imprisonment after being convicted, by their own admission, of a dozen shooting attacks in the area of Hebron.
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In total, two IDF soldiers and two civilians were wounded by the brothers' terrorist attacks.
The shooting attacks attributed to the two occurred between November 2015 and January 2016. The attacks were carried out by the Badawi brothers using a sniper rifle.
Nasser (L) and Akram Badwi (Photo: Shin Bet)
The brothers were arrested in January, 2016, and were recently convicted of committing 12 offenses of attempting to intentionally cause death (a crime equivalent to a murder attempt) and several other security offenses.
The court also ordered the two to compensate each of their victims for NIS 15,000.
Shooting in the wake of another attack
The Shin Bet said that the brothers are responsible for a series of attacks.
On November 6, 2015, they met in a building owned by their father, where they went up to the third floor and entered an apartment under renovation. Akram put the gun on a windowsill facing the Tomb of the Patriarchs and started shooting. He estimated that he hit a group of worshipers near the tomb, but only later upon hearing news reports about the wounded did they realized they struck two worshipers. One worshiper was seriously wounded, the other lightly.
After the attack the brothers went to celebrate a cousins wedding.
It was also learned from the investigation that Nasser decided to carry out the attack following the death of an elderly terrorist from Hebron who carried out a vehicular attack near the Halhul junction that same day.
The sniper rifle (Photo: Shin Bet)
On November 25, Nasser went to the above-mentioned apartment, having taken the makeshift sniper rifle from the moseque the day before, and told his brother Akram that he intended to carry out a shooting attack alone. Nasser waited for soldiers to pass by "any other target". When he saw a soldier near the Tomb of the Patriarchs, Nasser shot at him, before realizing he had hit a car. After the shooting, Nasser returned the gun to the mosque. As a result, damage was caused to the parked vehicle, without anyone injured.
Later on, both brothers decided to carry out a shooting attack at an IDF checkpoint near Hebron and began to observe the area to see where the cameras were located. They located an open area among the stone quarries in the industrial area south of Hebron, from which they would be able to shoot straight towards the checkpoint. They shot at the roadblock several times but in most of the shootings the soldiers did not see or hear the shooting.
On the afternoon of January 3, Nasser spotted a group of soldiers near the Tomb of the Patriarchs and asked his brother Akram to urgently come to the same apartment from where they had already fired shots. Akram came with the rifle and fired at the group of soldiers, seriously wounding an IDF cadet.
That day Akram suggested to Nasser to perpetrate a shooting at the above-mentioned IDF checkpoint. The pair drove in Akrams vehicle and positioned themselves in the stone quarries in the area, then Akram shot at the soldiers. They heard the soldiers shouts and fled the area. As a result of the shooting a soldier was lightly wounded.
Scene of shooting attack near Tomb of the Patriarchs in Hebron
On January 9, Nasser was arrested for questioning. A week later, on January 16, Akram carried out a solo shooting attack from a building in the Abu Sneineh neighborhood in Hebron, which resulted in no casualties. Akram said in his interrogation that he carried out the attack in order to divert suspicion from his brother Nasser, which, as noted, was arrested a week earlier.
After the attack, Akram hid the makeshift sniper rifle in a craner at a quarry owned by his family at the industrial area south of Hebron. The investigation also revealed that the brothers made a makeshift silencer from an oil filter, which they learned from an Internet video.
Several people were killed and many others were injured in border areas of Iran when an earthquake of magnitude 7.3 struck neighbouring Iraq on Sunday, Iran's state TV reported.
"The quake was felt in several Iranian provinces bordering Iraq ... Eight villages were damaged ... Electricity has been cut in some villages and rescue teams have been dispatched to those areas," TV reported.
Iranian media gave contradictory figures on the number of people killed in the quake. Semi-official Fars news agency and state news agency IRNA said at least six people were killed and many others injured in the border town of Qasr-e Shirin.
But governor of Qasr-e Shirin Faramarz Akbari said only two people had died in the town and 25 others were injured.
The US, Russia and Jordan signed on an agreement on Saturday that includes a Russian commitment to remove Iranian forces, Hezbollah and Shi'ite militias in Syria from its border with Israel on the Golan Heights. Despite this, Israeli officials are wary of the agreement, and stress that Israel will retain its right to strike at Syria if necessary.
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US President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin reaffirmed on Saturday their joint efforts to stabilize Syria as its civil war wanes, including with the expansion of a July 7 truce in the southwestern triangle bordering Israel and Jordan.
A US State Department official said Russia had agreed to work with the Syrian regime to remove Iranian-backed forces a defined distance from the Golan Heights frontier with Israel, which captured the plateau in the 1967 Six-Day War.
Minister for Regional Cooperatio Tzachi Hanegbi (Photo: Yoav Dudkevitch)
The move, according to one Israeli official briefed on the arrangement, is meant to keep rival factions inside Syria, such as Iranian forces, Hezbollah and Shi'ite militias, away from each other, and it would also effectively keep Iranian-linked forces at various distances from the Israeli Golan.
Those distances would range from as little as 5-7 kms and up to around 30 kms, depending on current rebel positions on the Syrian Golan Heights, the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the issue.
Moscow did not immediately provide details on the deal.
Israel has been lobbying both big powers to deny Iran, Lebanons Hezbollah and other Shiite militias any permanent bases in Syria, and to keep them away from the Golan, as they gain ground while helping Damascus beat back Sunni-led rebels.
In televised remarks opening Israels weekly cabinet meeting on Sunday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu did not speak about the new US-Russian arrangement for Syria.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (2nd L) attends the weekly cabinet meeting at his office in Jerusalem November 12, 2017 (Photo: Reuters)
Regional Cooperation Minister and Netanyahu confidant, Tzachi Hanegbi (Likud), however, sounded circumspect about the deal, telling reporters that it does not meet Israels unequivocal demand the there will not be developments that bring the forces of Hezbollah or Iran to the Israel-Syria border in the north.
'Red lines'
Theres reflection here of the understanding that Israel has set red lines, and will stand firm on this, Hanegbi added.
That was an allusion to Israeli military strikes in Syria, carried out against suspected Hezbollah or Iranian arms depots or in retaliation for attacks from the Syrian-held Golan.
In the latest incident, the Israeli military said it shot down a spy drone on Saturday as it overflew the Golan. Israeli Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman blamed the drone on the Syrian government. Damascus did not immediately respond.
Repeating Israels warnings to Iran and Hezbollah, Lieberman said: We will not allow the Shiite axis to establish Syria as its forefront base.
Russia, which has a long-term military garrison in Syria, has said it wants foreign forces to quit the country eventually.
The US State Department official, who briefed reporters on condition of anonymity on Saturday, said that goal could be served by Russias pledge to remove Iranian-linked fighters from the truce zone in southwestern Syria.
If this works, this is an auspicious signal, would be an auspicious signal, that our policy objectivethe objective that I think so many of us share, of getting these guys out of Syria ultimatelythat theres a path in that direction, the official said.
Concern has been brewing over the last couple of months that the supply of Chinese investor capital flowing into global commercial real estate markets will eventually dry up, following Beijings latest clampdown on Chinese investment in overseas property development.
In August, the State Council of the Peoples Republic of China issued the first set of rules on overseas investment by Chinese companies. The new list of banned investments includes defence technology and casinos, while overseas property development and hotels were classified as restricted.
According to Petra Blazkova, senior director of APAC analytics at Real Capital Analytics (RCA), while stricter regulations and government scrutiny may reduce activity, Chinese appetite for overseas real estate investments is not likely to disappear completely.
The demand by Chinese investors for overseas commercial real estate investments will not evaporate, however the new rules will influence capitals behavior and direction, she said. Established Chinese investors will be able to maintain their global presence either directly via their existing offshore entities, or indirectly via balance sheets of foreign companies and investment platforms they partially own.
Blazkova added that new Chinese investors can use alternative routes, with Hong Kongs financial markets playing a key role, as no specific regulations have addressed this trading route yet.
Nevertheless, the impact of the latest regulatory restrictions is being felt in Australia, with Chinese investment in commercial real estate down more than 70% this year, according to the RCA.
For the first nine months of this year, Chinese companies have invested a mere $1.83bn in offices, sheds, malls, hotels, and other development projects.
Glen Dogan, head of sales and relationship management at Perpetual Limited, said the Chinese governments re-classification of foreign property developments and hotels as restricted assets, rather than falling yields, was the key driver for the pullback by Chinese investors into Australia.
Speaking at the Atchison Consultants 11th Global Real Assets Forum in Melbourne, Dogan said Chinese investors were the biggest purchasers of development assets last year. But this year there has been a massive drop in development site purchasers as those [Chinese] buyers have not been here, he said.
Combined with the decline in cross-border investment from major regions (with the notable exception of Singapore), 2017 looks set to be one of the weakest years for overseas investment in Australian commercial property since the global financial crisis, according to Perpetual Limited.
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Tucson, Arizona - Native American Flute Concert: A Storytelling Experience, Thursday, December 7 - 2 PM4 PM:
Acclaimed international recording artist and cultural storyteller Gary Stroutsos returns to perform his engaging world flute music, featuring traditional American Indian family songs and other music from his recordings. "My passion is to share stories and songs I have gathered over my lifetime, which is an honor for me," says Gary. His music is featured in the PBS film Desert Dreams: Celebrating Five Seasons in the Sonoran Desert as well as the Ken Burns PBS documentary Lewis & Clark: The Journey of the Corps of Discovery. His work in the PBS documentary led to a performance for former president Bill Clinton at the White House.
The National Parks Store, 12880 N Vistoso Village Dr. - Tucson
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Washington, DC - Special Presidential Envoy for the Global Coalition to Defeat ISIS Brett McGurk will lead an interagency delegation to Amman, Jordan for a meeting on November 15 with key members of the Defeat ISIS Coalition.
With Mosul and Raqqa now liberated, this meeting will be an opportunity for Coalition partners to discuss next steps to ensure ISIS is dealt an enduring defeat in Iraq and Syria and ways to accelerate our collective approach to defeat ISISs global ambitions. It will include a detailed discussion of priorities for the Coalitions multiple lines of effort, including stabilization, foreign terrorist fighters, counter-terrorist financing, and counter-messaging.
The Coalitions Small Group regularly meets to coordinate and enhance combined efforts to counter ISIS. The last meeting of senior Coalition leaders took place on September 22 at the Ministerial level on the sidelines of UNGA.
VADODRA: A non-resident Indian (NRI) was on Saturday shot dead in the United States' North Carolina by unidentified assailants.
The victim who was identified as Akash Talati, 40, hailed from Gujarat's Anand town.
Talati reportedly used to run a motel on Fretwell Road in North Carolina. He was the only son of his parents residing at Sanket Residency on Anand-Lambhvel Road.
The horrifying incident took place in the wee hours on Saturday, at around 3.30 am, when some unidentified assailants barged inside the motel to carry out loot. It was when Talati tried to stop them, the assailants opened fire leaving him dead and three other employees injured.
Talati had moved to the US 10 years back after earning a bachelors degree from Sardar Patel University and his father Ramesh Talati is a former principal of Anand Arts College, said a media report.
Akash is survived by wife Mital, who is from Surat and an eight-year-old son Jay.
New Delhi: An FIR has been registered against a former executive director of Air India for allegedly stealing a painting by renowned artist Jatin Das which was part of the airline's collection, the police said on Sunday.
The FIR follows an internal inquiry conducted by Air India, which found that Rohita Jaidka along with other unknown officers, persons stole the painting between 2004 and 2009.
During this time, Jaidka served as a general manager and an executive director (ED).
"The airline approached the police and an FIR was registered on November 11 against Jaidka and other unidentified persons," the police said.
The horizontal oil painting is titled 'Flying Apsara'. It was commissioned in 1991 by Air India.
The issue of the stolen painting came to light when Das, a Padma Bhushan awardee, wrote to Air India in June claiming that one of his paintings had gone missing and was available in the open market. The letter prompted the airline to launch an internal probe.
Das was alerted after an art curator, Pooja Acharya, contacted him to verify the authenticity of the work. Acharya was in touch with Sarabjit Singh, the person whom Jaidka was allegedly trying to sell the painting.
After the incident came to light, Jaidka returned the painting to the airline headquarters "in a torn condition" from a fake address in Noida, according to the FIR.
The Air India also said that in order to "cover up", Jaidka managed to arrange a replica of the painting and claimed she was selling the copy and not the original work.
Air India in its complaint pegs the value of the painting at Rs 25,00,000 "as per evaluations by an art historian". Jatin Das has himself, however, refused to attach a value to the piece of art.
The airline has told the police that as per its records the painting was earlier displayed at Air India Maharaja lounge at Terminal-2 and Indira Gandhi International Airport.
It was later moved to Air India's office at Hansalaya Building, near Connaught Place around 2002. The records show that the painting was at this address in 2004 as well, "whereafter it appears to have been stolen between the years 2004-2009".
Padma Bhushan awardee Das had earlier said that "indifference, negligence and theft" were behind the painting going missing.
Air India's art collection includes stone sculptures dating back to the ninth century, woodwork, decorative friezes, and a collection of exquisite clocks.
But the most prized in its collection are some of the nearly 4,000 paintings that include works by stalwarts such as M F Husain, S H Raza, V S Gaitonde, K A Ara, Anjolie Ela Menon, Arpana Caur and B Prabha.
NEW DELHI: The students of Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) on Saturday claimed that the university has restricted the use of Wi-Fi on campus.
The JNU Students Union (JNUSU) called it a "politically motivated move" and alleged, "that all website and video links which have anti-government content have been restricted." DNA tried to reach the JNU registrar Pramod Kumar and the Vice-Chancellor M Jagadesh Kumar for a response but failed to get a reply until the time of press.
Many students took to social media and wrote Facebook posts condemning the move by the administration. Students stated that with the Wi-Fi restriction, the only thing that they can be allowed to watch online are cartoons.
How do you ban selective keyword search on YouTube ? What kind of crazy conspiracy theories are churning out of #JNU. Smacks of ignorant and uneducated minds. November 12, 2017
In a statement issued by the Jawaharlal Nehru University Students Union (JNUSU) the students said, "This latest scheme of the JNU V-C is tampering with free academic thought and the environment of JNU, by placing curbs on the internet access of JNU students, through the campus Wi-Fi. Students have been facing problems in accessing web pages and channels on YouTube through the JNU Wi-Fi. JNU presidential debates, speeches of prominent student leaders have also been restricted."
Clashes between the JNUSU and the authorities over a number of issues have been taking place in recent times. The move by the JNU V-C, earlier this year, to ensure seat cuts in MPhil/PhD courses has angered students, the announcement by the administration that an army tank should be placed on campus to instil patriotism, also led to clashes with students who denounced the move.
In the statement, the students also accused the administration of "corruption in teachers' appointment in JNU... open harassment of students through notices and fines... destroying students freedom of expression and academic freedom through restrictions imposed on the JNU Wi-Fi.
(With DNA inputs)
Gandhinagar: Continuing his tirade against Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi on Saturday should stop making excuses and demanded exclusion of essential items from the Goods and Services Tax (GST) slab.
The Gandhi scion, who is on a three-day tour of poll-bound Gujarat, asked the Modi government to fix a tax slab for a new taxation scheme, which should not exceed 18 percent
The Lok Sabha MP also demanded inclusion of petrol, diesel and gas cylinders under the GST.
Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi on Sunday stood firm on his `Vikas paagal ho gaya hai` assertion, in reference to development in Gujarat, claiming he would not abstain from speaking the truth.
Hitting out at PM Modi over demonetisation, Rahul said, note ban helped 'robbers' in India convert their black money to white.
While addressing a gathering in Gujarat`s Banaskantha, the Congress vice president stood firm on his `Vikas paagal ho gaya hai` assertion, in reference to development in Gujarat, claiming he would not abstain from speaking the truth.
Rahul slammed the Modi for disrespecting the office of the prime minister when he was in the Opposition, and said that the Congress would never do the same.
"Whatever we do, spot Modi ji`s faults or disturb the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), but we will never disrespect the prime minister`s office. When Modi ji was in the Opposition, he used to speak with disrespect about the prime minister. That is the difference between us and them; no matter what he says about us, we will not go beyond a certain point," he said.
The state goes to polls next month on December 9 and 14. Gandhi, who is visiting north Gujarat, the BJP bastion over the years, is on a three-day visit to the state.
New Delhi: Congress on Sunday slammed Haryana Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar and BJP government in the state for party leaders allegedly trying to scuttle the police investigation into the murder of Class II student Pradyuman Thakur.
"Pradyuman Thakur Murder - CBI points fingers at BJP politicians and minister for scuttling police investigation as CM Khattar hurriedly gives clean chit," said Congress spokesperson Randeep Singh Surjewala on Twitter attaching a news story with a headline CBI scans politicians' role in Ryan police probe.
"Will justice be made a scapegoat at the altar of political expediency?" he asked.
In a twist to the murder of a Class 2 student of Ryan International School in Gurugram, the CBI said the crime was committed by a 16-year-old student of the school who wanted to delay upcoming exams.
The revelation derailed Haryana Police's claim that a school bus conductor, in jail since then, was the killer.
BENGALURU: Actor Prakash Raj who has been extremely vocal in his criticism of Central government's policies and Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Sunday said that he has no intentions of joining politics. "I'm not joining any political party," he said.
He said that he did not like the thought of actors joining political parties as "film actors becoming leaders is a disaster for my country," he said.
He also added that actors should be aware of their responsibility towards their fans. "I don't like actors joining politics because they are actors and have fans. They should always stay aware of their responsibility towards them," he said in Bengaluru.
His comments come at a time when actor Kamal Haasan has said that he will soon be launching his political party. He has launched a mobile app for crowdfunding for the party.
Recent reports suggest that Tamil superstar Rajinikanth is also likely to announce his political debut on his birthday on December 12. It is unlikely that the veteran actor will join the right wing or the left wing. He reportedly will form his own party.
Hitting out at Modi, the noted actor and National Award winner had earlier said that the Prime Minister is a "bigger actor" than him. "The PM is is a bigger actor than me, I should give him my award," he had said.
Also speaking against demonetisation, he had questioned if Modi will apologise for what he termed as the ''biggest blunder of our times''.
"While the rich found ways to convert their black money into shiny new notes.. this disruptive impact made millions suffer helplessly...and the unorganized sector workers went for a spin," Raj tweeted in a note addressed to 'whomsoever it may concern'.
On the controversy over the iconic Taj Mahal also, he had questioned if the monument will be a 'past in our future'. "When do you intend to bring it down. We can at least take our children and show it one last time #JustAsking," Raj had tweeted.
A popular southern film star, Raj has been a vocal critic of major political parties and the right-wing outfits. He has often spoken on various issues, including moral policing, mob lynching, terrorising in the name of religion and trolling. His remarks have also often landed him in trouble.
Aligarh: Despite Supreme Court striking down 'triple talaq' practice in the Muslim community, Yasmeen Khalid, wife of Aligarh Muslim University professor Khalid Bin Yusuf Khan, has alleged that she was recently given instant divorce by her husband on WhatsApp.
Yasmeen has alleged that Khan, who has been associated with the AMU for the last 27 years first gave her 'talaq' on WhatsApp and also through a text message, a report published in The Times of India said.
The alleged victim has threatened to commit suicide and kill her three children in front of Vice Chancellor Tariq Mansoor's residence if she doesn't get justice by December 11.
Meanwhile, Khan said Yasmeen had been harassing him for the last two decades and even lied to him about her education qualifications before marriage.
Refusing to budge from his stand, the AMU professor said he would give her the third 'talaq' too and no one can stop him.
In a landmark judgment, the Supreme Court on August 22 by a 3-2 decision struck down the centuries-old practice of instant triple talaq among Indian Muslims as unconstitutional, manifestly arbitrary and void in law.
The practice of triple talaq was "manifestly arbitrary" as the marital tie could be broken "whimsically" by a Muslim man and it must be held to be violative of fundamental right of equality, the apex court had said.
The five-judge Constitution bench, by a majority of 3:2 in which Chief Justice J S Khehar was in minority, said the practice of "'talaq-e-biddat' triple talaq is set aside"
The two separate judgements, written for majority by justices Kurian Joseph and Nariman, did not concur with the CJI and Justice SA Nazeer that 'triple talaq' was a part of religious practice and the government should step and come out with a law.
New Delhi: Bangladesh has assured India that compensation will be paid to those Hindus whose houses were torched over rumours that an offensive Facebook status was posted allegedly by a youth from the minority community.
Bangladeshi authorities have also assured adequate security to the affected persons, External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj said today.
Swaraj's remarks came after her attention was drawn to reports that a mob of protesters in Bangladesh set on fire at least 30 houses of Hindus following rumours that a youth from the minority community posted an offensive Facebook status.
She had said that the matter would be taken up by the Indian High Commissioner in Dhaka with the Bangladeshi government.
"We have received a detailed report of Indian High Commission in Dhaka. Bangladesh authorities have assured him that compensation will be paid to affected persons to rebuild their houses and adequate security will be provided," she tweeted.
According to Dhaka Tribune newspaper yesterday, one person was killed when police opened fire to disperse the crowd that launched the arson attack on the houses of Hindus.
The incident took place in Rangpur district's Thakurpara village, about 300 km from Dhaka.
The protesters claimed that they were infuriated by a defamatory status posted from the Facebook account of a person who hails from the Thakurbari village a few days ago.
Replying to separate tweet regarding the issuance of passport to Haryana boxer Jhalak Tomar, Swaraj assured that the process will be expedited and she will get her passport by tomorrow.
MUMBAI: Minister of Minority Affairs Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi has said they were trying to digitalise Hajj 2018 and that the application forms would be available from November 15 to December 7.
"The Hajj application forms will be available from November 15 to December 7 and will be uploaded on the website of Hajj Committee of India today. We are also trying to digitalise Hajj 2018," Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi told media.
He added that they were announcing this two months prior to the usual announcement dates as they wanted to prepare for Hajj in a better way.
"We are trying that all 21 embarkation points be intact for the same," Naqvi asserted.Naqvi also said whoever was going to Hajj would be able to travel from all 21 embarkation points.
He, however, added that a few conflicted embarkations points would be given an option to travel from other point.
"If people of Srinagar don`t want to travel from there, they can travel to Hajj from Delhi as well. One main reason for that is the subsidy is ending and those who will be travelling to Hajj from Srinagar will have to pay Rs. 1,10,000, while those travelling from Delhi will just have to pay Rs. 73,000," Naqvi said.
Hajj 2018 will begin August 19 and end on August 24, subject to changes.
New Delhi: A Haryana farmer has claimed that a 50 kg urea bag sold by IFFCO turned out to be eight kg less after weighing it than what it originally promised, triggering a major controversy.
The incident drew sharp reactions from the public after Magan Bhanu Bhai Gondalia posted the photo of the bag on a social media platform.
Gondalia said that on reaching his store he checked the weight of the bag and found that it contained less urea than what it was printed on it.
Though IFFCO has rejected the charges, social media users have slammed the cooperative for cheating farmers. Some even termed it as a scam.
#Farmer paid for a 50 Kg Bag of #fertilzer, the bag weighed 42 Kg !
Now #IIFCO says:pilferage was not from their end, but was done at the Society Office.
But, what is the #farmer's fault ?
Who will compensate him ?@Devinder_Sharma @_YogendraYadav @sayantanbera @kiran_patniak https://t.co/7OlSKO6Lz3 RamanS Mann (@ramanmann1974) 11 November 2017
In view of the seriousness of the charges, Union Parliamentary Affairs Minister Ananth Kumar has called for an inquiry on 'priority basis' into the matter.
However, IFFCO Managing Director Dr. Udai Shankar Awasthi has defended the organization, saying there was no wrong-doing on its part.
In a tweet message, he said, The bag of IFFCO is packed and sealed with green thread and the man posing with 42 kg bag on social media seems to have sealed it with white thread.
So, in this case, it is quite clear that the bag was opened by someone after it was measured and packed at the organizations headquarter.
Meanwhile, IFFCO has also issued a statement denying the allegations.
It said that the bag was accidentally torn while it was being shipped to the customer, and as a result, it led to the leakage of urea. Hence, the customer received about 42 kg of urea instead of 50 kg.
IFFCO said that it will compensate the aggrieved farmer.
IFFCO is committed to delivering to customers to compensate the moral responsibility for the incident and assure that no such incident occurs in near future, it said in the statement.
The Indian Farmers Fertiliser Cooperative was founded in 1967.
Manila: Officials from India, the US, Japan, and Australia on Sunday held extensive talks to pursue common interests in the strategically important Indo-Pacific region.
In the meeting, seen as the first major move in the formation of the quadrilateral security dialogue or 'quad', the officials deliberated on evolving security scenario in the Indo-Pacific region besides delving into effectively combating the threat of terrorism and other security challenges.
In a statement, the ministry of external affairs (MEA) said the consultations were held on issues of common interest in the Indo-Pacific region with a focus on cooperation based on converging vision and values for the promotion of peace, stability and prosperity in the area.
Following is the full statement by the MEA:
"Officials from Indias Ministry of External Affairs, Australias Department of Foreign Affairs, Japans Ministry of Foreign Affairs and United States Department of State met in Manila on November 12, 2017 for consultations on issues of common interest in the Indo-Pacific region. The discussions focused on cooperation based on their converging vision and values for promotion of peace, stability and prosperity in an increasingly inter-connected region that they share with each other and with other partners. They agreed that a free, open, prosperous and inclusive Indo-Pacific region serves the long-term interests of all countries in the region and of the world at large. The officials also exchanged views on addressing common challenges of terrorism and proliferation linkages impacting the region as well as on enhancing connectivity. The Indian side highlighted Indias Act East Policy as the cornerstone of its engagement in the Indo-Pacific region."
India-Australia-Japan-U.S. Consultations on Indo-Pacific held in Manila on November 12. Press release at https://t.co/lRgOBdHpEU Raveesh Kumar (@MEAIndia) November 12, 2017
The meeting took place ahead of the ASEAN and East Asia summits for which Prime Minister Narendra Modi, US President Donald Trump, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull have already arrived here.
PM Modi is scheduled to have a bilateral meeting with Trump and Abe on Monday and the security scenario in the Indo-Pacific region may figure in the meetings, PTI reported.
The formation of a quadrilateral security dialogue comprising India, the US, Australia and Japan was first mooted around 10 years back but it did not see the light of day.
Japan's Foreign Minister Taro Kono last month had said that Tokyo favours the quadrilateral dialogue to further boost strategic partnership among the four countries.
Reacting to the Japanese move, India had said it was open to working with like-minded countries on issues that advance its interests.
The US had said it was looking at a "working-level" quadrilateral meeting in the near term with India, Japan and Australia.
The US and Japan have been pushing for a deeper Indian role in the Indo-Pacific region.
The issue of China's aggressive build up in the South China Sea is understood to have figured in today's meeting which was attended by officials from the MEA, Australia's Department of Foreign Affairs, Japan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and the US State Department.
Joint Secretary (South division) in the MEA, Vinay Kumar and Joint Secretary (East Asia), Pranay Verma attended the meeting.
The move to set up the quadrilateral comes in the backdrop of growing Chinese assertiveness in the South China Sea.
The US has been favouring a larger role for India in the strategically key Indo-Pacific region.
China has already reacted cautiously to the proposal by the Trump administration for a working-level quadrilateral meeting, saying it hopes it would not target or damage a "third party's interest".
(With PTI inputs)
New York: External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj on Sunday said that the government is in touch with the family of Akash R Talati, who was killed in a shootout in the US state of North Carolina.
The Union Minister confirmed that the Indian Embassy in the US has informed her of the circumstances leading to the death of Talati.
"The deceased was shot by an assailant who was escorted out of his club. The security guard returned the fire and the assailant was also injured," she tweeted.
She assured all help to the family of the deceased.
Talati, an Indian-origin owner of a motel was shot dead and four other people were injured in a shootout on Saturday.
Akash Talati, 40, who owned Knights Inn and Diamondz Gentlemen's Club in Fayetteville city, was an innocent bystander when a man who had been escorted out of the club returned soon and exchanged gunfire with a security guard yesterday, police Detective Jamaal Littlejohn said.
Police said they were called to the club at 1:51 AM on Saturday.
The assailant, Markeese Dewitt, 23, has been charged with attempted murder and assault with a deadly weapon, CBS News reported citing Fayetteville police.
Littlejohn said Dewitt was shot four or five times and remained in serious condition at Cape Fear Valley Medical Centre, fayobserver.Com reported.
He said only Dewitt and the security guard exchanged gunfire and the others were bystanders.
CBS North Carolina quoted Talati's family as saying "the shooting happened after the man was kicked out of the club, got mad, grabbed a gun and began shooting".
One of the victims was in a fair condition at the hospital. The two others were treated and released. Talati died at the hospital.
Talati is reportedly from Anand in Gujarat.
Police have not released the names of three other people who were injured. Littlejohn said they included the security guard and a female employee of the club who operated the cash register.
Littlejohn said security escorted Dewitt out of the club because he had caused a disturbance. He said Dewitt appeared to have gone to his vehicle, got a gun, went back inside the club and started shooting.
Littlejohn said police have no idea what caused Dewitt to get kicked out of the club.
"All we know is he got put out, he goes and gets a gun and it goes crazy from there," Littlejohn said.
Detectives are actively investigating the homicide and shooting and have appealed to the public to contact them if they have any information on the incident.
Here's what is making headlines today
1. India, US, Japan, Australia hold first quadrilateral talks on Indo-Pacific cooperation
Officials from India, the US, Japan, and Australia on Sunday held extensive talks to pursue common interests in the strategically important Indo-Pacific region. Read More
2. Rishi Kapoor backs Farooq Abdullah, says J&K is ours and PoK belongs to Pakistan
Former Jammu and Kashmir chief minister Farooq Abdullah on Saturday sparked a controversy by saying that the Pakistan-occupied Kashmir belongs to the neighbouring country. And supporting him now is actor Rishi Kapoor, whose tweets often grab headlines. Read More
3. PM Narendra Modi meets Donald Trump on sidelines of ASEAN summit
US President Donald Trump and Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Sunday met on the sidelines of a gala dinner to mark the 50th anniversary of the ASEAN. Read More
4. Ashok Khemka again transferred by Haryana government, says 'crash landing again, vested interests win'
Ashok Khemka has been appointed as the Chief Secretary in the Sport & Youth Affairs department. Read More
5. Congress wins Chitrakoot bypoll by over 14,000 votes
Congress candidate Nilanshu Chaturvedi defeated his nearest rival Bharatiya Janata Party's Shankar Dayal Tripathi. Chaturvedi polled 66,810 votes as against Tripathi's 52,677 votes. Read More
6. Twitter trolls Hardik Pandya for his radical makeover
With wacky hairstyles and tattoos, Hardik Pandya is certainly on his way to becoming a style icon in the country. Read More
Mewar: MK Vishvaraj Singh, a royal member of Udaipur`s Mewar, penned a letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the Union Ministers, Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC) chief Prasoon Joshi and others, requesting them to withhold the certification and release of the Sanjay Leela Bhansali directorial 'Padmavati'.
Information and Broadcasting minister Smriti Irani, Human Resource and Development Minister Prakash Javadekar, Rajasthan Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje and Superintendents of Police were also mentioned in the recipient list.
"You are requested not to certify or permit the release of the film in its present form," Singh urged, adding, "It is the responsibility of the Government to safeguard the history of our country and the dignity of its citizens".
Bhansali, in a recent video, assured that the magnum opus is based on reliable sources and is a tribute to the valor of the Rajput queen. However, Singh raised objections that the film is about his family and a chapter in the history of Mewar, but no one approached them to verify the facts or get permission.
He further said that he doubts the accuracy of historical facts in `Padmavati` as it is reportedly based on Padmawat, an imagery poetry of the Sufi poet which also includes thinking and talking parrots. He pointed out that the movie-makers have not come up with a "well established and accepted historical source" and such errors could not be pointed out if the screening is done now.
On the argument that one cannot judge a film until it has been seen, Singh said the first song `Ghoomar` alone displays an incorrect portrayal of Rani Padmavati.
"If the film professes to be history and its maker goes on record to claim that he has kept in mind cultural sensitivities, it is an artistic and historical fraud to portray an incorrectly attired courtesan-like painted doll in the song as the very `queen` the film purports to pay obeisance to," he wrote.
The Royal member raised concerns about the effect of the movie on the future generation, who will see a distorted history of Mewar."Allowing our history and culture to be misrepresented in such a manner before the public does make one question the ability and intentions of the Government," he said.
Singh argued that misleading the public and hurting the sentiments of a community is a crime under Indian constitution, but the entire situation has only provided free publicity to the makers.
Lastly, Singh said, "allowing commercial interests to override the sanctity of national pride and heritage would be a failure on the part of the Government and will not behove well for times to come".
The letter came hours after Queen Mayuri Singh of Bundi came out in support of Bhansali and said "let the movie release first".
The period drama starring Deepika Padukone, Ranveer Singh, and Shahid Kapoor has been facing protests from various communal groups, including Shree Rajput Karni Sena, for allegedly tampering with historical facts. The Karni Sena, which demolished the sets of the movie in Jaipur and also thrashed Bhansali, last month, again, warned the director that he would face consequences if the movie distorted historical facts. The movie is slated to hit the theatres on December 1.
Manila: Prime Minister Narendra Modi and US President Donald Trump are expected to hold bilateral talks on Monday.
The two will hold the meeting on the sidelines of the 15th Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) summit and the 12th East Asia Summit in the Philippine capital.
They are expected to deliberate on a number of key issues of mutual interest including the evolving security situation in the Indo-Pacific region where Washington favours a greater role by India.
There have been concerns over China's growing military presence in the Indo-Pacific and the issue was understood to have figured in a meeting of officials from India, the US, Japan and Australia today under the proposed Quadrilateral coalition of the four countries.
"The discussions focused on cooperation based on their converging vision and values for the promotion of peace, stability and prosperity in an increasingly inter-connected region that they share with each other and with other partners," the Ministry of External Affairs said in a statement.
"They agreed that a free, open, prosperous and inclusive Indo-Pacific region serves the long-term interests of all countries in the region and of the world at large," it said.
India-Australia-Japan-U.S. Consultations on Indo-Pacific held in Manila on November 12. Press release at https://t.co/lRgOBdHpEU Raveesh Kumar (@MEAIndia) November 12, 2017
Meanwhile, the two leaders also met briefly on Sunday as they arrived for the event.
Interacting with world leaders in Manila. pic.twitter.com/qh0pdcFyXP Narendra Modi (@narendramodi) November 12, 2017
Later, PM Modi and Trump also posed for a family photograph with others leaders, including Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, and Japanese PM Shinzo Abe, participating in the event.
On Tuesday, Modi will attend the ASEAN and East Asia summits where he is likely to reassert India's push for crafting a global approach to deal with growing challenge of terrorism and radicalisation besides pitching for steps to boost regional trade.
(With PTI inputs)
Lucknow: Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh on Sunday said Prime Minister Narendra Modi was the reason behind the amendments in the Goods and Services Tax (GST) rates.
He said that when the PM got to know about the issues with the GST, he categorically stated that necessary amendments must be made.
"When the Prime Minister got to know about the issues with the GST, he categorically stated that necessary amendments must be made. It was after this that the GST council meet was held and with consensus, they made certain changes due to which the traders are now happy," Singh said.
Singh also claimed that the business and traders were very happy with the GST.
"Businessmen and traders are very happy with the GST. It was implemented on the basis of 'one nation, one tax'. Our democratic government works for the public," he further said, ANI reported.
GST rejig: Tax rate on 178 daily items reduced to 18% from 28%
In the biggest GST rejig yet, on November 10, tax rates on over 200 items, ranging from chewing gum to chocolates, to beauty products, wigs and wrist watches, were cut to provide relief to consumers and businesses.
As many as 178 items of daily use were shifted from the top tax bracket of 28 percent to 18 percent, while a uniform 5 percent tax was prescribed for all restaurants, both air-conditioned and non-AC, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley had said after the GST Council meeting in Guwahati.
Jaitley had added that the restaurants, however, did not pass on the input tax credit (ITC) to customers and so the ITC facility was being withdrawn and a uniform 5 percent tax was levied on all restaurants without the distinction of AC or non-AC.
Restaurants in starred-hotels that charge Rs 7,500 or more per day room tariff will be levied 18 percent GST but ITC is allowed for them, as per PTI.
Those restaurants in hotels charging less than Rs 7,500 room tariff will charge 5 percent GST but will not get ITC.
Also, the GST council pruned the list of items in the top 28 percent GST slab to just 50 from current 228.
So, only luxury and sins goods are now only in highest tax bracket and items of daily use are shifted to 18 percent.
Chewing gum, chocolates, coffee, custard powder, marble and granite, dental hygiene products, polishes and creams, sanitary ware, leather clothing, artificial fur, wigs, cookers, stoves, after-shave, deodorant, detergent and washing powder, razors and blades, cutlery, storage water heater, batteries, goggles, wrist watches and mattress are among the products on which tax rate has been cut from 28 percent to 18 percent.
The top tax rate is now restricted to luxury and demerit goods like pan masala, aerated water and beverages, cigars and cigarettes, tobacco products, cement, paints, perfumes, ACs, dishwashing machine, washing machine, refrigerators, vacuum cleaners, cars and two-wheelers, aircraft and yacht.
(With Agency inputs)
Manila: US President Donald Trump and Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Sunday met on the sidelines of a gala dinner to mark the 50th anniversary of the ASEAN.
The brief interaction between Modi and Trump came ahead of their scheduled bilateral meeting on Monday.
He also held separate pull-aside meetings with Chinese Premier Li Keqiang.
PM Modi was seen chit-chatting with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev and Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak too at the reception for the leaders who arrived for the summit.
At the same time, he held brief interactions with several other leaders who attended the reception hosted by Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte at the mega SMX Convention Centre in Pasay City.
The PM, as well as all other leaders, wore Barong Tagalong, an embroidered shirt which is the national dress of the Philippines.
Renowned Filipino designer Albert Andrada has designed the shirts.
Interacting with world leaders in Manila. pic.twitter.com/qh0pdcFyXP Narendra Modi (@narendramodi) November 12, 2017
On November 11, Trump had praised India's 'astounding' growth after it opened its economy and also lauded PM Modi, saying he had been working successfully to bring the vast country and its people together.
Speaking at a gathering of CEOs on the sidelines of the annual APEC summit in the Vietnamese port city, Trump had cited India as one of the countries in the Indo-Pacific region making strides.
He had pointed out that India was celebrating the 70th anniversary of its independence and had highlighted that the country was a sovereign democracy with a population of over 1 billion as well as the largest democracy in the world.
"Since India opened its economy, it has achieved astounding growth and a new world of opportunities for its expanding middle class," Trump had said, as per PTI.
"And Prime Minister Modi has been working to bring that vast country and all of its people as one. And he has been working at it very, very successfully indeed," the US President had added.
Kumusta po Philippines!
PM @narendramodi arrives in Manila to attend ASEAN and East Asia Summits; heralding 3-days of intense diplomatic activity furthering our #ActEastPolicy pic.twitter.com/ZDC3GG0Oan November 12, 2017
Enthusiastic welcome by Indian Diaspora. PM @narendramodi greeted by members of Diaspora, who form an important niche group of Filipino society. pic.twitter.com/dAEN7z4cLo Raveesh Kumar (@MEAIndia) November 12, 2017
Meanwhile, on November 11, PM Modi had said that his visit to the Philippines to attend the India-ASEAN Summit symbolised the country's commitment to deepening ties with the ASEAN member states and the Indo-Pacific region as part of the 'act east policy'.
The PM had also asserted that he was confident that his visit to Manila will give a new boost to India's bilateral relations with the Philippines, and also further strengthen the politico-security, economic and socio-cultural pillars of India's engagement with ASEAN.
In his departure statement ahead of the three-day trip, PM Modi had given a broad outline of the events he will attend during his first bilateral visit to the Philippines.
Apart from participating in the ASEAN-India and East Asia Summits, Modi would also take part in Special Celebrations of the 50th anniversary of ASEAN, Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) Leaders' Meeting and ASEAN Business and Investment Summit.
(With Agency inputs)
Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi on Sunday said that while he might spot faults by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, he would never disrespect the position held by the latter.
Addressing a public meeting in Banaskantha in poll-bound Gujarat, the Congress leader said, When Modi ji was in opposition, he used to speak with disrespect about Prime Minister.
That is the difference between us and them. No matter what Modi says about us, we will not go beyond certain point, he added.
He said that the Congress party might disturb the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) by spotting Modis faults but would never disrespect the Prime Minister of the country.
However, he went on to attack the Prime Minister saying, But we speak the truth and this is a fact ki Gujarat mein vikas pagal ho gaya hai.
The Gandhi scion also used the opportunity to clarify that his tweets on political issues are his own. He, however, consults a group of 3-4 people, who help in fine tuning his suggestion.
Several questions have been raised in the recent past over sudden change of tone in Rahul Gandhis tweet and also a spike in his retweets and followers.
This came a day after the Congress vice president reiterated his attack on Prime Minister Narendra Modi over the Goods and Services Tax (GST), tweeting India does not need a Gabbar Singh tax.
India does not need a Gabbar Singh Tax. We want a true GST. Congress, along with the people of India, fought for and ensured reduction in items in 28% bracket. Next we will fight for one rate, with a cap at 18%. If BJP doesnt do it, Congress will, he added.
Rahul Gandhi is on a three-day visit to Gujarat. On Saturday, the first day of his visit, Rahul visited the Swaminarayan Akshardham temple and Ambaji temple in Gandhinagar.
After arriving in Gujarat Saturday morning, Rahul Gandhi went straight to Akshardham temple in Gandhinagar, and offered prayers to Lord Swaminarayan. The video of him praying at the temple was also shared on social media.
Former Jammu and Kashmir chief minister Farooq Abdullah on Saturday sparked a controversy by saying that the Pakistan-occupied Kashmir belongs to the neighbouring country. And supporting him now is actor Rishi Kapoor, whose tweets often grab headlines.
Backing the National Conference supremo, the veteran actor tweeted that accepting PoK as part of Pakistan was the only solution to the Kashmir problem.
Farooq Abdhulla ji, Salaam! Totally agree with you,sir. J&K is ours, and PoK is theirs. This is the only way we can solve our problem. Accept it, I am 65 years old and I want to see Pakistan before I die. I want my children to see their roots. Bas karva Dijiye. Jai Mata Di!, said the actor.
Farooq Abdhulla ji, Salaam! Totally agree with you,sir. J&K is ours, and PoK is theirs. This is the only way we can solve our problem. Accept it, I am 65 years old and I want to see Pakistan before I die. I want my children to see their roots. Bas karva Dijiye. Jai Mata Di ! Rishi Kapoor (@chintskap) November 11, 2017
On Saturday, Farooq Abdullah had suggested the same, saying autonomy for both parts of Kashmir without changing borders is the only possible solution to the Kashmir problem.
The (PoK) part which is with Pakistan belongs to the neighbouring country and this side to India. If the Indian government wants peace it will have to talk to Pakistan and conclude that an autonomy be given to us as well as them, he had said.
"A Pakistan Minister very rightly said that you forget that the part which is yours was acquired by an Instrument of Accession. You forget Instrument of accession and say that the part is yours. If you talk about this being your part then remember the Instrument as well," the National Conference president added.
Hitting back at Abdullah, Union Minister Jitendra Singh had said, "National Conference had given up its demand for autonomy over 40 years ago when Sheikh Abdullah got himself reinstated as CM and conveniently accepted all the provisions of Indian Constitution."
When asked to comment on interlocutor Dineshwar Sharma appointed by the Modi government, Abdullah had said, I can't comment much on that. The interlocutor has held talks but talks alone is not the solution. This issue is between India and Pakistan. New Delhi should initiate dialogue with Islamabad as a part of Kashmir is also with them.
New Delhi: In a major change in its nutrition policy, the central government has decided that states are free to take a call on providing ready-to-use therapeutic food to children suffering from severe acute malnutrition.
The Centre had so far maintained that the use of ready- to-use therapeutic food (RUTF) was "not an accepted policy" and that "enough evidence" was not available for treating children suffering from severe acute malnutrition (SAM).
The move is likely to pave the way for the Maharashtra government to resume the procurement of RUTF, which it had to suspend following a petition in the Bombay High Court. The state government announced in September in the high court its decision to hold the purchase of RUTF until it received the Centre's clearance.
"For management of SAM children, the decision to provide RUTF may be left to the discretion of individual states," as per the minutes of a meeting in the prime minister's office (PMO) on November 4.
The meeting was attended by officials from the PMO, the NITI Aayog CEO, and the secretaries of the women and child development (WCD) ministry and the health and family welfare ministry.
RUTF is a high-energy, micro-nutrient enhanced paste used to treat children under five years who are affected by SAM.
According to the National Family Health Survey, over 93 lakh children in the country suffer from severe acute malnutrition (SAM), which is a condition where children have a very low weight for height or severe wasting or suffer from a nutritional oedema.
WCD Minister Maneka Gandhi, a strong votary of RUTF, held a meeting last month with PMO officials to push for the calorie-dense paste after a government committee rejected it in its draft nutrition guidelines.
"Khaana nahi dena (don't give food), we give nutrition," Gandhi said at a conference of officials from 130 districts in September.
She advocated replacing hot-cooked food with RUTF and said that it should be given not just to children suffering from SAM but to all children coming to anganwadis.
"Why should we wait for a child to become severely malnourished. We should give it (RUTF) to normal children so that they don't get into malnourishment at all," Gandhi added.
The PMO-led meeting earlier this month, however, decided that the practice of providing hot-cooked meals to children between three years and six years as well as take-home ration for children between six months and three years, pregnant women and lactating mothers "will continue as prescribed under the existing scheme of ICDS and as mandated by the NFSA (National Food Security Act)".
Under the Integrated Child Development Scheme (ICDS), 14 lakh anganwadi centres across the country provide a package of six services -- supplementary nutrition, referral services, immunisation, health check-up, pre-school non-formal education, and health and nutrition education.
The high-level meeting also decided that the ministry of women and child development "should take up pilot for direct cash transfer in lieu of take-home ration in select few districts, in consultation with the state government" -- a recommendation made by the government think tank NITI Aayog to check leakage.
In a notice in August, the WCD ministry asked states to stop providing RUTF, reiterating the government's stance that "RUTF for management of SAM children is not an accepted policy of the Government of India".
It added, "Enough evidence is not available for the use of RUTF vis-a-vis other interventions for the management of SAM. Concerns have also been raised that the use of RUTF may replace nutritional best practices and family foods that children would normally be eating."
The ministry asked the states to ensure "strict compliance" with its order.
Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi on Saturday visited the Swaminarayan Akshardham temple in Gandhinagar as he kickstarted his three-day visit to poll-bound Gujarat. The Gandhi scion also made a visit to Ambaji temple on the first day of his visit.
After arriving in Gujarat Saturday morning, Rahul Gandhi went straight to Akshardham temple in Gandhinagar, and offered prayers to Lord Swaminarayan. The video of him praying at the temple was also shared on social media.
Rahulji at Swaminarayan Mandir (BAPS), Gandhinagar pic.twitter.com/bXcrL6iBUr Shaktisinh Gohil (@shaktisinhgohil) November 11, 2017
Following his visit to the temples in the poll-bound state, the Gandhi scion claimed victory for the reduction of Goods and Services Tax (GST) on more than 200 items. He added that he would continue the fight for capping the tax at 18 per cent, and promise that the Congress party would ensure the same if it came to power.
Coming down hard on the Modi government, Gandhi tweeted: India does not need a Gabbar Singh Tax. We want a true GST. Congress, along with the people of India, fought for and ensured reduction in items in 28% bracket. Next we will fight for one rate, with a cap at 18%. If BJP doesnt do it, Congress will.
The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), meanwhile, targeted the Congress leader over his visit to temples, saying he was doing so just to target Hindu votes.
Deputy Chief Minister Nitin Patel had said, "Why is Rahul Gandhi visiting temples only ahead of elections? People know their intention that they want to get votes through such gimmicks. They have no inclination for devotion as during Rahul Gandhi's earlier trips, he never visited any temple."
"We wish that Congress sheds its pseudo-secularism and respects mainstream Hindutva. But their gimmicks to get votes will not work in Gujarat," Patel added.
The Congress hit back at the BJP, saying people would teach the ruling party a lesson as it was opposing a visit to temple.
"Does anybody have a patent on devotion? They are opposing a visit to the temple. People of Gujarat will teach them a lesson," Congress leader Shaktisinh Gohil said.
"Rahul Gandhiji has visited a Jain temple and gurudwaras apart from Hindu temples. We believe in secularism," he said.
Gandhi had started his campaign in Gujarat with a visit to the renowned Dwarkadheesh temple in September.
The state goes to polls next month on December 9 and 14.
The Supreme Court on Friday witnessed an unpleasant scene when eminent lawyer and former Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) leader Prashant Bhushan got into an argument with Chief Justice of India Dipak Misra and stormed out of the courtroom.
The incident took place during the hearing of a plea alleging bribery in the name of judges by a 5-judge bench.
According to Bhushan, the bench heard persons who were not even parties to the case, but refused to hear him, who is a petitioner.
Bar and Bench quoted the senior lawyer as telling the bench, You have heard persons who are not even parties to the case for an hour. If Your Lordships want to pass an order without hearing me, then do it.
Later, Bhushan took to Twitter to vent his anger on the development in the top court.
He tweeted, Extraordinary proceedings in SC today in the case seeking SIT Investigation in medical college bribery case involving the CJI! CJI presided over a hand picked bench to override yesterday's order referring this case to top 5 judges. This despite having a direct conflict of interest.
The court proceedings were extraordinary in that the CJI was asking all kinds of lawyers who were not parties to say things against the order of Court 2, w/o hearing petitioner. He tried to justify his role in the medical college case & speak against 'impropriety' of Court 2, his next tweet said.
Speaking to ANI, the lawyer termed it as a black day in Indian judiciary.
A plea alleging bribery in the name of judges was on Thursday referred to a Constitution Bench comprising five senior most Supreme Court judges. According to the plea, bribes were being taken using the names of apex court judges promising to secure favourable settlement of a case.
The CBI FIR has alleged that the ex-High court judge and others had hatched a conspiracy and demanded huge gratification assuring favourable settlement of a case relating to medical college admissions in the apex court.
THRUSSUR: A Rashtriya Swayam Sangh (RSS) worker was on Sunday killed in Thrissur in Kerala. He was allegedly hacked to death by CPIM workers, police said.
The 23-year-old victim identified as Anandan was riding a motorcycle when he was attacked by men who were in a car.
He was rushed to hospital but succumbed to his injuries.
Anandan, hailing from Brahmakulam, was an accused in a case related to the murder of a CPIM worker in 2013.
BJP has alleged that as many as 120 BJP workers, 84 in Kannur alone, have been killed in Kerala since 2001. It has also claimed that 14 of these killings have taken place since Pinarayi Vijayan took over as the Chief Minister last year.
The CPIM has in turn, accused BJP and RSS of resorting to violence and denied the involvement of its government and leadership in political killings.
Bhubaneswar: Union Minister of State for Agriculture Gajendra Singh Shekhawat visited Odisha on Sunday to assess the drought situation and pest menace, sparking a war of words between him and the Biju Janata Dal state government.
While Odisha Agriculture Minister Damodar Rout accused the Central government of infringing into the state government's rights, Shekhawat said there is no need for discussion with it on farmers' problems as the Centre is committed and answerable to the people of the country.
Rout said even though agriculture is a state subject, the Union Minister has visited the state without taking the state government into confidence.
"There is no problem in the visit of a Union Minister. But, Centre sends a team to analyse crop loss on the state's request," he said
Rout also blamed Shekhawat of "campaigning for the BJP on public funds" and contended that while the state government is taking all possible steps for farmers' benefit, the Central government is not cooperating.
In response, Shekhawat said it is the duty of the Union government to address the farmers' issue.
"Farmers of 14 districts are now facing drought and pest menace in Odisha. It is the duty of the Union government to address the farmers' issue and for that we do not need the permission of the state government," he said.
He, however, assured to solve the farmer's issue in cooperation with the state government.
Shekhawat also held a review meeting with state government officials over the drought and pest attack situations, where the state urged him to hike agriculture input subsidy by 50 per cent to affected farmers.
"Presently, affected farmers are getting compensation of Rs 6,800 per hectare in rain-fed areas. We requested him to raise this amount by at least 50 per cent. Since we are following Government of India guidelines this can be changed by them," said Special Relief Commissioner Bishnupada Sethi.
Shekhawat, along with a Central team, is on a two-day visit to the state
Thodupuzha (Kerala) Nov 11 (IANS) Malayalam superstar Mammootty, known for his benevolence, spent time with a group of tribals on November 11 and promised them help for a better quality of life.
The meeting between the actor and the group of tribals, hailing from the Kundalakudi colony in interior Munnar, was facilitated by the Janamaithri police.
It took place in Thodupuzha, about 100 km from the tribal hamlet, when the actor took out time in between the shoot of his film "Parole" directed by Sharath Sandith.
The group of tribals came with an offering of organic vegetables, grown in their homesteads, which included carrot, pumpkin, butter beans and cabbages.
The 66-year-old superstar expressed happiness and told media that he would do his best to provide some sort of tele-medicine facilities where through video conferencing medical professionals would be able to provide advice to the tribal community.
He also said that he would try to engage a tutor to teach Malayalam to the young members of the community, as they are currently studying in Tamil medium.
In 2012, Mammootty had visited this interior tribal colony and interacted with them.
Jaipur: Doctors in Rajasthan on Saturday ended their strike after successful talks with the Vasundhara Raje government.
Rajasthan Health Minister Kali Charan Saraf held a meeting with a five-member delegation representing the doctors.
With doctors calling off their agitation, the Rajasthan government had a sigh of relief as the health services in four districts of Rajasthan had taken a plunge after over 8,000 government doctors in Kota, Bundi, Baran and Jhalawar districts went on strike on November 6 over various demands.
14 protesting doctors were arrested under the Rajasthan Essential Services Maintenance Act (RESMA), following which 100 other agitating doctors agreed to resume work.
One of the major demands of the doctors was for higher pay scale and promotions.
The 33 long-pending demands by the doctors of the state include the formation of a separate cadre for in-service doctors, Rs 10,000 grade pay benefit for doctors, and running government health centres in a single shift, among others.
More than 640 doctors in service and about 350 resident doctors from the Kota region along with the others in the state are on strike for last six days.
Coimbatore: One person was taken into custody for allegedly attempting to set ablaze a teenaged girl near Palladam in Tirupur district on Sunday.
The man Chellapandian had poured kerosene on the girl when she was alone in her house in Chencheripudur and thrown a lit match stick.
Hearing her screams her neighbours rushed there and rescued her, police said.
The girl is brought and undergoing treatment in a private hospital here.
LUCKNOW: The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Sunday released the election manifesto for the upcoming local body elections in Uttar Pradesh. At the event, Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath said that the manifesto was the party`s accountability to the people, and would ensure a democratic form of election in the 652 urban local bodies and 16 Nagar Nigam.
Adityanath focussed on the government`s work in the area of electrification, basic public amenities, and public transport in the state, and announced the upcoming plans.
The Chief Minister said that street lights in all 16 Nagar Nigams would be changed to LED, wholly funded and maintained by ESL. The work has already begun in Lucknow, Varanasi, Kanpur, and Gorakhpur, informed the CM.
To ensure a fair procedure in electricity distribution in the state, Adityanath said that district headquarters were being provided 24 hours electricity supply, while Tehsil headquarters 20 hours electricity supply.
Besides saving the cost on electricity, the chief minister said that the government was also ensuring free electricity to households in urban as well as rural areas, and has provided free electrification to 20 lakh households in the last seven months.
In addition, seven cities have been chosen, while six are in the process of getting included among smart cities.
Adityanath said that the state was also determined towards providing pure drinking water, good parks, and cleanliness. Under the Prime Minister Awaas Yojana, the chief minister informed, 1,61,000 homes have been provided to the poor in urban areas.
Besides, budget for public toilets in the state has also been increased from Rs 4,000 to Rs 20,000.
In reference to the public transport of the state, Adityanath informed that work on metro in eight cities had begun, while regional connectivity within the state via air transport was also being worked upon.
The polling for 652 urban local bodies which includes 16 Nagar Nigam, will be held in three phases on November 22, November 26 and November 29.
KOLKATA: West Bengal health department on Saturday suspended a doctor for allegedly accusing the state government on social media over the prevailing dengue situation in the city.
The doctor Arunachal Dutta Choudhury who was associated with a state government hospital wrote in his Facebook post that Mamata government is trying to suppress facts relating to the dengue menace in the state.
Choudhury's posts on the social media amount to "misinterpretation in the public and (are) derogatory to the hospital administration," the suspension order issued by the state health department on Saturday read.
The doctor, an MD, was posted at Barasat District Hospital in North 24 Parganas district. He claimed in the posts that 500 people were admitted to the hospital on October 6 and wrote about his struggle to diagnose the patients many of whom were lying on the floor.
(With PTI inputs)
KOLKATA: West Bengal Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) President Dilip Ghosh has written to Union Health Minister JP Nadda claiming that Mamata Banerjee-led government is attempting to sweep the dengue crisis under the carpet.
Opposition parties have been alleging that the Mamata Banerjee government is trying to suppress the number of deaths because of dengue in the state.
Ghosh's letter comes a day after West Bengal health department suspended a doctor allegedly after he accused the state government of suppressing facts relating to the dengue menace in the state in a Facebook post.
Arunachal Dutta Choudhury's posts on the social media amount to "misinterpretation in the public and (are) derogatory to the hospital administration," the suspension order issued by the state health department said.
The doctor, an MD, was posted at Barasat District Hospital in North 24 Parganas district.
He claimed in the posts that 500 people were admitted to the hospital on October 6 and wrote about his struggle to diagnose the patients many of whom were lying on the floor.
Former Mamata aide and now a BJP member Mukul Roy also targetted the TMC government over the issue. "At a time the state is reeling under dengue and the disease has claimed more than 80 lives, the CM is busy celebrating film festivals. Late CM Jyoti Basu took summer vacations to London. Our CM now is doing the same," he said.
According to the health department, there have been 19 deaths in state-run hospitals since January and over 18,000 cases were reported in various government clinical establishments.
NEW DELHI: External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj on Sunday confirmed that Bangladesh will compensate the Hindu families, whose houses were set on fire following rumours that a youth from the minority community published an offensive Facebook status.
The Cabinet Minister said that the government has received a detailed report from the Indian High Commission in Dhaka on the November 10 incident.
We have received a detailed report of Indian High Commission in Dhaka. Bangladesh authorities have assured him that compensation will be paid to affected persons to rebuild their houses and adequate security will be provided, Swaraj tweeted.
30 houses of Hindus in Rangpur districts Thakurpara village, about 300 km from Dhaka, were torched.
The protesters claimed that they were infuriated by a defamatory status published from the Facebook account of a person who hails from the Thakurbari village a few days ago, Dhaka Tribune reported.
Before the police intervened, the perpetrators had torched at least 30 Hindu houses before looting and vandalising them, the report said.
A crowd of 20,000 people had reportedly gathered from six to seven neighbouring villages before the attack was launched by a group of people, it said.
The police had a tough time dealing with the protesters and restoring the law and order situation in the area, the report said.
Six persons with bullet injuries were rushed to a nearby hospital when one of them succumbed to his injuries, the report said.
In October 2015, at least 15 Hindu temples in Bangladesh were vandalised over allegations of disrespect shown to Islam on Facebook, triggering panic among the minority community in the Muslim-majority nation.
Temples in Brahmanbarhia district's Nasirnagar were vandalised on besides over 100 houses of Hindus in the area have also been looted.
London: Queen Elizabeth II took a significant step back from official duties on Sunday, leaving heir to the throne Prince Charles to lay a tribute to Britain's war dead on her behalf.
The queen traditionally lays a wreath at the Cenotaph national war memorial in London, but for the first time she observed the annual Remembrance Sunday service from a balcony.
Her eldest son Charles instead stepped forward following a nationwide two-minute silence, placing a wreath of poppies at the monument close to parliament.
Other members of the royal family, including princes William and Harry, also took part in the ceremony along with senior politicians and veterans.
Prime Minister Theresa May and opposition leader Jeremy Corbyn also placed wreaths at the Cenotaph, while the ceremony was attended by former premiers including Tony Blair.
The queen has missed the ceremony only six times in her 65-year reign and handing over her role to Charles is a visible sign to her subjects that she is reducing her official duties.
Buckingham Palace announced in advance that the 91-year- old monarch would view the service from a Foreign Office balcony, alongside her husband Prince Philip, 96, who retired from public duties in August.
Queen Elizabeth has already reduced her schedule, with official engagements dropping 22 per cent from the 425 in her 2012 diamond jubilee year to 332 in 2016.
Remembrance Sunday is the Sunday nearest to Armistice Day on November 11, the anniversary of the 1918 signing of the peace treaty that ended fighting in World War I.
More than one million people from the then British empire died in the four-year conflict, but the day has become a time to remember all the troops killed in wars since then.
Hanoi Province: The Communist leaders of China and Vietnam reached a "consensus" on handling the contested South China Sea, Chinese state media reported Sunday, hours after US President Donald Trump offered to mediate in the dispute.
Chinese President Xi Jinping met with Vietnamese Communist Party chief Nguyen Phu Trong during a state visit to Hanoi on Sunday, after Trump also visited the country.
Xinhua news agency reported that the Chinese and Vietnamese sides "reached an important consensus in accordance with leaders of the two parties and countries, to appropriately manage maritime issues, steadily advance all forms of maritime cooperation including joint development and jointly strive to uphold peace and stability in the South China Sea."
The report did not provide more details about the agreement.
China claims nearly all of the strategically vital sea, through which $5 trillion in shipping trade passes annually. It is also believed to sit atop vast oil and gas deposits.
Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia, Brunei and Taiwan also have claims in the sea, and the dispute has long been seen as a potential trigger for conflict in Asia.
Days after the US leader met with Xi in Beijing, Trump made a surprise offer to Vietnamese President Tran Dai Quang in Hanoi.
"If I can help mediate or arbitrate, please let me know... I am a very good mediator," Trump said.
The offer could irritate the Chinese government as it has repeatedly said the United States has no role to play in what it insists is a series of bilateral issues.
Vietnam has courted support from Washington in the row, in the face of Beijing`s efforts in recent years to cement its claims by building artificial islands in disputed areas.
Those islands are capable of serving as military bases, and some of the rival claimants are concerned that China will soon establish de facto control of the waters.
Tensions spiked this year when Vietnam suspended an oil exploration project in an area of the sea also claimed by Beijing, reportedly over pressure from its powerhouse communist neighbour.
In 2014, China moved an oil rig into waters off Vietnam`s coast, sparking violent protests in several Vietnamese cities.
MANILA: Donald Trump said Sunday he backed US intelligence agencies who concluded that Russia meddled in the 2016 US presidential election, but slammed "fools" who oppose better ties with Moscow.
Key former Trump aides are under US investigation for possible collaboration with the Kremlin, and the issue of whether Moscow interfered with last year`s vote has overshadowed the tail end of the president`s Asia tour.
Trump returned to the subject in an early morning Twitter storm in Vietnam, which also saw him take a sarcastic dig at North Korea`s "short and fat" leader Kim Jong-Un.
Addressing a press conference in Hanoi, Trump was asked to clarify comments he had made on Air Force One the day before about Russian President Vladimir Putin`s insistence that Moscow had never tried to affect the US vote.
"I believe he feels he and Russia did not meddle in the election," Trump said.
"As to whether or not I believe it or not, I`m with our agencies. I believe in our... intelligence agencies," he added.
But in his barrage of tweets, Trump slammed "haters and fools" who questioned his efforts to improve ties with Russia.
"There (sic) always playing politics - bad for our country. I want to solve North Korea, Syria, Ukraine, terrorism, and Russia can greatly help!" he said.
In May, US intelligence chiefs told Congress they agreed with their analysts` conclusion that Russia had interfered in the election.
CIA director Mike Pompeo, who was appointed by Trump, said Saturday he still held to that evaluation.Trump`s tour of Asia, which moved to its final leg in Manila on Sunday, has been dominated by the issue of North Korea and its ambitions to become a fully-fledged nuclear state.
His public pronouncements on Pyongyang over the last week have veered from denouncing it as a "cruel dictatorship" to offering a hand of friendship to Kim.
On Sunday, his tone shifted back to one of hostility.
Citing descriptions by North Korean officials and state media of him as an "old" man, another Trump tweet suggested he was disappointed by what he took to be a personal attack from the North`s young leader.
"Why would Kim Jong-un insult me by calling me "old," when I would NEVER call him "short and fat?" Trump wrote.
"Oh well, I try so hard to be his friend - and maybe someday that will happen!" he added.
He later insisted he hadn`t been joking about eventually befriending a man he denounced last week as a "twisted" dictator.
"It`s certainly a possibility. If that did happen, it would be a good thing," he told reporters.
North Korea is extremely sensitive to any remarks that might appear disrespectful to the country`s ruling Kim dynasty, whose members are revered as near deities.
Since becoming president, Trump has engaged in an escalating war of words with Kim, trading personal insults and threats of military strikes, and raising concerns about an outbreak of hostilities.
Late Saturday, Pyongyang hit back, calling his Asia trip "a warmonger`s visit for confrontation" and saying it would only serve to accelerate Pyongyang`s push for nuclear statehood.In another tweet Sunday, Trump said Chinese leader Xi Jinping had agreed to toughen sanctions against North Korea, whose impoverished economy is hugely reliant on trade with its giant neighbour.
"President Xi of China has stated that he is upping the sanctions against (North Korea). Said he wants them to denuclearise. Progress is being made," he wrote.
The US administration thinks China`s economic leverage over North Korea is the key to strong-arming Pyongyang into halting its nuclear weapons and missile programmes.
Trump is in the Philippines for a gathering that includes leaders of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).
Several members of the group, including Hanoi and Manila, claim part of the resource-rich South China Sea, a key trade lane over which Beijing says it has dominion and in which it has built militarised artificial islands.
Vietnam has sought support from Washington on the dispute, and dealmaker Trump said Sunday he could help solve the conflict.
"If I can help mediate or arbitrate, please let me know... I am a very good mediator," Trump told Vietnamese President Tran Dai Quang.
In the past, China has reacted angrily to any suggestion of US mediation, saying Washington has no role in the dispute.
New York: An Indian-American teenager has been killed in a road rage incident when a driver ran his truck over her after a minor collision in the city's suburb of Levittown, according to media reports.
On Sunday, police in Nassau County adjoining New York City were looking for the driver who allegedly attacked dental student Taranjit Parmar, 18, on Thursday.
WPIX TV reported that police told the family that the pickup truck's license plate could not be seen on a surveillance video of the incident. Police released the video and asked the public to help find him.
Parmar's brand new jeep was hit by a red pickup truck that was attempting to make a turn, the station quoted police as saying.
The two vehicles then pulled off the roadway and when Parmar got out got out the jeep, the truck, the driver mowed her down and drove away, according to police.
Parmar suffered fatal injuries to her chest and head.
Her tearful father, Ranjit Parmar, told the station: "She bore all the responsibility to carry the family, carry her education. I always told everybody who would listen to me, if you're going to have a daughter, this is the one."
LONDON: A 52-year-old Indian-origin doctor in the UK has been charged with committing three sex assaults, according to a media report.
Vibhore Gupta, based at Edgbaston's Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham, was arrested in March this year, following a report made to the police.
In 2013, he added his weight to West Midlands Police's "Knives End Lives" campaign, aimed at raising awareness of the perils of carrying a knife, Birmingham Mail reported.
"A 52-year-old man from Harborne has been charged with three counts of sexual assault and one count of assault," a West Midlands Police spokesman said.
"The doctor is due to appear at Birmingham Magistrates Court on Tuesday November 21."
On University Hospitals Birmingham website, Gupta is described as a consultant in emergency medicine.
His area of professional interest is military medicine. A member of the emergency team said that he is also technical service head.
MELBOURNE: A 24-year-old Indian-origin woman was today found killed with injuries on her body at her house in New Zealand's Auckland city, media reports said.
Arishma Archana Singh, who lived with her three-year-old daughter and parents at the Maich road house, was found lying "in a pool of blood" on the floor of her bedroom in the early hours, NZ Herald reported.
The woman, who worked as a child educator and had studied at the University of the South Pacific, may have been killed after disturbing an intruder or burglar, police said after launching a homicide investigation into the incident.
She was out to a friend's birthday party and it appears she was killed soon after she arrived home, the report said, adding that her parents Rakesh and Aradhana Singh were also out visiting relatives and found her body when they returned.
"When they (Archana's parents) went in her room, they found her on the floor in a pool of blood. She had injuries to her face and body," the report quoted a source as saying.
Born in Nasinu in Fiji, Archana was separated from her husband three years ago and shared the custody of her daughter with her husband who had picked the girl yesterday.
Police are in the process of interviewing Archana's family, the report said.
No arrests have been made and it is not clear exactly how she died, it said.
"It is still unclear what has gone on inside house. It's early days but hopefully our scene examination and post mortem will reveal more," said Detective Inspector Gary Lendrum.
A neighbour said that they were "friendly and very nice people".
I respond to a letter from Cindy Cooper. I feel great sympathy for what happened to her son. That is why I, along with the APD and Cayuga County Sheriff's Office, have been working to get drug dealers out of our community. It is also the reason we too have supported H.E.A.L. and their efforts to help other families avoid similar pain through education and increased treatment resources.
For more than 20 years the New York State District Attorneys Association has fought against efforts to weaken drug laws, including Gov. Patersons 2009 law allowing convicted drug dealers judicial diversion-community supervision instead of prison.
The reality is that local law enforcement and the Cayuga County District Attorneys Office oppose convicted drug dealers being granted judicial diversion. One such case involved two time convicted drug dealer Britny Hamilton, who despite our strong opposition was granted diversion. Hamilton had recently been released (from prison) on parole when the Finger Lakes Drug Task Force caught her selling narcotics again in our community. She now stands convicted of 14 additional felony counts for selling narcotics and conspiracy, running a drug ring involving at least three other drug dealers. And she is now back out on community supervision, instead of serving a prison sentence.
As district attorney I am aware that so much of the other crime, violence, and misery in this community encounters comes as a direct result of drug selling and the addiction it feeds off. We work hard to discern between addicts selling drugs to support addiction and drug dealers claiming to be addicts to avoid punishment.
Ms. Cooper referred to the case of a 50-year-old woman who had never had any trouble with the law and claimed addiction. I assure you that Judge Fandrich and I are trying very hard to balance the need for punishment, and deterrence, against the dynamics of addiction. I welcome the communitys input and assistance.
Jon Budelmann
Auburn
Jon Budelmann is the Cayuga County district attorney
Washington: The Trump administration wants to have the Taliban on the negotiating table as soon as possible to end the military conflict in war-torn Afghanistan, a top US diplomat has said.
President Donald Trump in August laid out his South Asia policy vowing to keep American troops on Afghan soil so that a hasty recall does not create a void which may be filled by terror groups like the al Qaeda and the Islamic State.
A variety of diplomatic initiatives continue to work very closely but fundamentally, there is a need to get the parties to talk to one another directly and that involves changing the Taliban's calculus, acting Assistant Secretary for South and Central Asian Affairs and Acting Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan Alice Wells told lawmakers.
"The president's strategy specifically does not attach a calendar to this commitment. It has to be conditions-based. I am not able to answer you on how long this will take.
"We would like to get it (the Taliban) to the negotiating table as soon as possible," Wells told lawmakers during a Congressional hearing this week.
She was responding to Congressman Al Brooks who asked how long the US forces are going to stay in war-torn Afghanistan.
"This war began in 2001. Now it's ongoing for roughly 16 years; that is the longest active military conflict in the history the United States. Early on the Taliban government was toppled and Qaeda to a very large degree was destroyed and quite frankly goals were achieved. Our American military won.
"Later on, Osama bin Laden was killed as a result of our presence in Afghanistan. Another goal was achieved," he said.
The US has persisted in Afghanistan despite those victories and achievements and the cost in monetary terms is estimated to be as low as 800 billion to a trillion dollars as high as four to six trillion dollars, Brooks said.
"Are you talking years... Are you talking decades and at what cost?" he asked.
Wells said: "I am sorry I can't answer that question, but I would note as the president said in his speech that the reason he reverted was because he was convinced that the national threat to our own national security remained".
The US has about 8,400 troops in Afghanistan.
Congressman Brad Sherman wanted to know from Wells if Pakistani leaders knew about the presence of Osama bin Laden.
"I've never heard any Pakistani leader suggest that Pakistan knew where Osama bin Laden was located," Wells said.
Congressman Eliot Engel asked the US diplomat about the peace process and negotiated settlement with the Taliban.
The US remains very active in all of the regional architectures that have existed and supports a negotiated political solution, she said, adding that she recently hosted a quadrilateral meeting with the Chinese, the Afghans and the Pakistanis.
Wells said a victory in Afghanistan would not come on the battlefield.
"Victory is a sustainable political settlement that results in a stable Afghanistan whose territory is not used to threaten the United States and our partners," she said.
YEREVAN, NOVEMBER 9, ARMENPRESS. First Lady of Moldova Galina Dodon visited the Yolyan Center of Hematology accompanied by First Lady of Armenia Rita Sargsyan.
The First Ladies toured the center and talked with the children patients. The children gave their handmade works to the First Ladies, and another patient, the talented Nare, sang and performed for the guests.
The children talked to First Lady Rita Sargsyan about their dream, and they have already written letters to Santa Claus.
Rita Sargsyan presented the history behind creating the Give Life charity foundation to Moldovas First Lady.
I liked the staff of the center very much. They are so kind, they reflect light and warmth. I wish health to the children, and to the medical staff only healthy children, Galina Dodon said.
She said that a similar hospital exists in Moldova as well, but not as beautiful and good as the Armenian one. With great pleasure I visited your center. I wish you success in this difficult work, Galina Dodon wrote in the guest book.
YEREVAN, NOVEMBER 9, ARMENPRESS. While on an official visit in Armenia, President of Moldova Igor Dodon and First Lady Galina Dodon visited the Tsisternakaberd Armenian Genocide Memorial in Yerevan on November 9, reports Armenpress.
Moldovas President and First lady were accompanied by Yerevan Mayor Taron Margaryan.
President Igor Dodon laid flowers at the Eternal Flame and paid tribute to the memory of the Armenian Genocide victims.
Thereafter, the Moldovan President visited the Armenian Genocide Museum-Institute, got acquainted with the exhibits and left a note in the Memory Book.
I was deeply impressed by the historical documents, photographs and eyewitness testimonies of tragic events that took place with the Armenian people more than 100 years ago. They are kept in the museum, as well as in the hearts of each Armenian. I sincerely and cordially wish the Armenian people peace, kindness, solidarity and prosperity, the Moldovan President wrote.
He also planted a symbolic fir tree in the Memorial park.
YEREVAN, NOVEMBER 9, ARMENPRESS. Moldovan President Igor Dodon is confident that his visit to Armenia will open a new page in bilateral relations, reports Armenpress.
During the joint press conference with Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan in Yerevan, President Igor Dodon said a number of activities are planned in near future aimed at boosting the bilateral ties.
I am very happy to be the first one among the Moldovan Presidents who visited Armenia. This year we mark the 25th anniversary of establishment of diplomatic ties of the two countries. The Moldovan presidents didnt visit Armenia both on working and official visits. I think my visit to Armenia will open a new page in our bilateral relations, Igor Dodon said.
According to him, during those years the two countries managed to move forward on numerous issues. 15 inter-governmental, inter-state agreements were signed, at the moment there are some agreements which are ready for signing. He expressed hope that after his visit the two countries will establish a new level of bilateral cooperation.
If we talk about the trade relations, I want to state that the existing level in this sense doesnt correspond to the potential existing between the two countries. We have agreed to hold a session of the Inter-governmental commission, as well as a business forum. I am sure that the businessmen will be able to find common programs which will boost the commercial ties, Igor Dodon added.
The Moldovan President noted that his delegation also includes the head of Moldova-Armenia inter-parliamentary friendship group. He said this group includes more than 20 MPs and added that the friendship group will hold a session next year.
We have discussed with the Armenian President the cooperation of the two countries in international European and regional platforms. I am confident that our countries are doomed to having good relations with the West and the East. In this sense Armenia is a good example for Moldova. We are highly interested in Armenias experience with the status of the membership to the EAEU. I want to thank Serzh Sargsyan for the assistance we felt in the new integration processes. Majority of Moldovan people are in favor of cooperating with the EAEU, and this year we have taken the first steps on this path. I have signed a cooperation agreement with the EAEU in early April. I have submitted application for getting a status of observer. Armenia has assisted us during the two sessions of the presidents of the EAEU member states in Bishkek and Sochi. We hope to receive this assistance in future as well, Igor Dodon said.
He added that for them it is interesting to analyze the roadmap Armenian passes. In this regard the two Presidents agreed on exchange of experience.
We also discussed in-detail other issues relating to bilateral relations, and touched upon the issues facing our countries. We hope the issues faced by Armenia will be solved exclusively through peaceful means in accordance with international agreements, the Moldovan President noted.
YEREVAN, NOVEMBER 10, ARMENPRESS. President of Moldova Igor Dodon is impressed by the Mother See of Holy Etchmiatsin, and by talking to people who preserve Christian values.
For me, as an Orthodox Christian, and a leader of a country where more than 98% of the population is Orthodox Christian, was very important to be in the cradle of Christianity. Christianity appeared on this land earlier than in other countries. The sacred sites, this 4th century Cathedral where are now is inspiring, and the interactions with people who preserve these values, Igor Dodon said during his visit to Etchmiatsin.
He wished to the Armenians of the Diaspora faith, optimism and mentioned that he is convinced that everything will succeed for both the Armenians and Moldovans.
The President and First Lady toured the Alek and Mari Manukyan Treasury-Museum and the Mother Sees Museum.
From November 8th through 10th, China hosted President Donald J. Trump on an official state visit, at the invitation of Chinese President Xi Jinping. President Trump and President Xi had candid and in-depth conversations about United States-China relations, as well as international and regional issues of mutual concern. The two presidents affirmed that the United States-China relationship is shaped by shared interests and a common commitment to addressing global challenges. Both leaders committed to expand areas of cooperation and generate positive outcomes for the benefit of the citizens of both countries. They committed to directly and frankly address areas of differences, with the aim of solving or narrowing them. The two sides also discussed the progress of United States-China relations since the presidential meeting in Florida in April.During their April meeting, the two presidents set up the United States-China Comprehensive Dialogue with four pillars: the Diplomatic and Security Dialogue; the Comprehensive Economic Dialogue; the Law Enforcement and Cybersecurity Dialogue; and the Social and Cultural Dialogue. Each of these dialogues have met since April, to prepare for President Trump's state visit and produce meaningful results.During this visit, President Trump raised his concerns about the North Korean nuclear program. The two sides committed to upholding the international nuclear non-proliferation regime, reaffirmed their commitment to achieving the goal of full, verifiable, and irreversible denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula, and stated that they will not accept North Korea as a nuclear weapons state. Both sides recognized that North Korea's nuclear and ballistic missile tests violate relevant U.N. Security Council resolutions, and affirmed a commitment to keep up pressure to curb these programs, including through full and strict implementation of relevant U.N. Security Council resolutions. Both sides will work toward resolving the Korean Peninsula nuclear issue through dialogue and to addressing the reasonable concerns of all parties. Both sides affirmed they will maintain communication about the Korean Peninsula situation and the steps that the United States and China ought to take, and will continue to strengthen communication and cooperation through existing mechanisms.The United States and China committed to maintain communication regarding macroeconomic policy topics, including fiscal, monetary, and exchange rate policies; respective structural reforms; and global economic governance-related issues. The United States and China intend to jointly promote a strong, sustainable, balanced, and inclusive global growth.The two presidents recognized the importance of United States-China economic relations to both nations' prosperity and to the international trading system. During the visit, companies of the two nations signed trade and investment deals worth more than $250 billion. These deals will create jobs for American workers, farmers, and ranchers by increasing United States exports to China and stimulating investment in American communities.President Trump underscored the importance of rebalancing the bilateral economic relationship, emphasizing the need for a more equitable relationship that strengthens American jobs and exports. He called on China to guarantee fair and reciprocal treatment to United States companies, provide greater market access to United States exports and firms, and accelerate the implementation of market-oriented reforms to reduce the bilateral trade deficit. The President emphasized that Chinese government intervention in the Chinese economy has caused stresses in the global trading system. He reiterated that the United States will use all available trade remedies to create a level playing field for United States workers and businesses.The two presidents announced their plans to enhance cooperation in combatting drugs, including synthetic opioids. The United States and China committed to quickly take steps to regulate and control two fentanyl precursors. Both sides committed to discuss the possibility of scheduling fentanyl as a class; coordinating on international drug policy, such as scheduling ketamine under U.N. conventions; enhancing precursors control and intelligence sharing; conducting case cooperation on mailed packages containing drugs and precursors; and exchanging tracking information on packages between the United States and China, so as to identify individuals and criminal networks responsible for trafficking.Both sides committed to enhancing cooperation on cybercrime cases and network protection, including by responding to outstanding requests for assistance and enforcement actions, in particular those cases involving cyber-enabled theft of intellectual property, the use of the internet by terrorists for criminal activities, and online firearm trafficking and online child pornography. The United States and China committed to fulfilling responsibilities under the U.N. law enforcement and terrorism conventions, as well as under the United States-China Mutual Legal Assistance Agreement, to prevent either country from becoming a safe haven for fugitives and to provide cooperation and mutual legal assistance in response to law enforcement requests, including cooperation with regards to business email compromise cases. Both sides committed to coordinating all law enforcement activities on each other's territory, and cooperating in investigations of uncoordinated activity. In order to better enhance law enforcement cooperation, both sides recognized the need to carry forward working-level mechanisms to resolve outstanding issues.The two presidents confirmed plans to establish a repeatable process of repatriation of illegal immigrants by the date agreed upon at the Law Enforcement and Cybersecurity Dialogue.The two presidents also reaffirmed the 2015 commitments on cybersecurity, and they emphasized the need for full cooperation into investigations of potentially contravening activity. They pledged to work together to prevent and mitigate the malicious exploitation of their networks by third countries.The two sides reaffirmed the importance of the military-to-military relationship and reducing the risk of miscalculation between our two militaries. The two sides plan to organize an early exchange of high-level visits, with Secretary of Defense James Mattis visiting China in 2018 and a senior high-level Chinese military delegation visiting the United States, also in 2018. The two sides committed to working together to hold exchanges on space security, cyberspace, and nonproliferation before the next round of the Diplomatic and Security Dialogue. Both sides expressed readiness to deepen practical nonproliferation cooperation.The two sides candidly discussed regional and maritime security. President Trump underscored the critical importance of the peaceful resolution of disputes, unimpeded lawful commerce, and respect for international law in the East and South China Sea, including freedom of navigation and overflight and other lawful uses of the sea, and raised concerns about militarization of outposts in the South China Sea.To enhance regional and global security, the United States discussed measures to support a stable and prosperous Afghanistan and promote Afghanistan-Pakistan cooperation, including addressing these issues in the Quadrilateral Coordination Group. The United States and China plan to jointly engage states in the Middle East about promoting these goals and taking measures against terrorist groups that threaten regional stability.The two leaders affirmed their commitment to strengthening bilateral cooperation on nuclear security and countering nuclear smuggling, and continuing to support the global nuclear security architecture. The United States and China reaffirmed their commitment to enhance regional capacity building through the China Nuclear Security Centre of Excellence and the China Customs Training Centre for Radiation Detection, and preventing terrorists and criminals from acquiring nuclear or other radioactive materials, including by enhancing the security of radioactive sources.Trump and President Xi committed to create an environment enabling their two peoples to promote mutual understanding and enjoy productive exchange. The two sides had a candid exchange of views on human rights and the United States side highlighted the role that the free flow of information, including citizens' access to media, plays in fostering mutual understanding.Both sides affirmed the important role that civil society organizations play in furthering social and economic development and people-to-people ties. The United States looks forward to consultations with China on the Foreign NGO Management Law by the end of the year.The two sides decided to carry out joint projects on HIV/AIDS and infectious diseases. Both sides plan to continue to implement the International Health Regulations and carry out their National Action Plans on Anti-Microbial Resistance. The two sides committed to setting up a clear process and timeline to rapidly and continuously share influenza viruses with human pandemic potential. The two sides committed to working toward establishing an annual consultation mechanism for senior health officials from both countries.The President recognizes the important outcomes arising from this visit. He thanks President Xi and the people of China for their hospitality, and hopes that the visit sets a foundation for productive engagement. The two presidents plan to keep in close contact, including on major issues of shared interest.White House
Czech President Zeman: 90 per cent of the "unadaptable" people are Roma
12. 11. 2017
cas cteni 1 minuta
Czech President Milos Zeman rejected the UN Human Rights Report dealing with the Czech Republic. The Report calls on the Czech Republic to improve the integration of the Roma minory into Czech society. Zeman said, in reaction to the report, that there should be no positive discrimination of the Roma people in the Czech Republic, because even positive discrimination "is still discrimination".
In the connection with the UN Report, Zeman has expressed the opinion that "90 per cent of 'unadaptable' people in the Czech Republic are Roma".
The word "unadaptable" (in Czech "neprizpusobivy", really meaning "a parasite") has recently become a frequently used euphemism to replace racist abuse directed systematically against the Roma in the Czech Republic. According to Zeman, "unadaptable are such people who refuse to work, even though they are healthy. 90 per cent of these people are probably Roma," he added.
The Roma members of the Czech government's Council for the Affairs of the Roma Minority have sharply criticised the above statement by Zeman. "The president cannot make such public statements without referring to reliable evidence," they said in an open letter.
"I will not even react to such an embarrassing anti-Zeman attack," said Zeman's official spokesperson Jiri Ovcacek. "These people do not represent any Roma," he added.
Source in Czech HERE
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'A community loses its voice': What the shuttering of the Times-Herald could mean for Moose Jaw
When the Moose Jaw Times-Herald prints its final issue next month, people in the Saskatchewan city will be losing more than their city's paper they'll be losing a crucial democratic service, says Steve Nixon.
"Having people focus on a particular community and watching the store, so to speak, keeping an eye on the elected officials, things like that I always think it's quite dangerous when you lose that capacity," said Nixon, who is the executive director of the Saskatchewan Weekly Newspaper Association.
Star News Publishing Inc., the company that owns the city's only daily newspaper, announced earlier this week that after more than a century of publishing, the Moose Jaw Times-Herald will print its last issue on Dec. 7.
Of the many weekly papers affiliated with the SWNA, Nixon says some are doing better than others but many are facing pressure from the drying up of main streets in smaller communities.
Though the world of print media has taken a beating, Nixon feels the printed daily itself is far less important than what's on its pages.
"What's important is the journalism," said Nixon. "The medium it's printed on, or displayed on, is secondary."
Nixon said that a big concern for him is that many people in smaller communities can't access the news reliably online and will not be able to get their local news any other way.
"It could be where they're living, it could be age based, and I think that's a problem," said Nixon. "It's always sad when a community loses its voice."
He pointed to the provincial government making announcements on social media Premier Brad Wall's retirement announcement, for example, which was made on Facebook and said that denies people who rely on non-digital media access to the news.
He worries about the effect the growing trend of politicians using social media to make announcements could have on citizens in the province.
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Nixon says that approach can be seen as an attempt to be fiscally responsible something he agrees with. What he does not agree with is "sacrificing information to the general public," he said.
The future of print journalism
University of Regina school of journalism professor Mitch Diamantopoulos feels that people have taken journalism for granted for some time, and hopes that the shuttering of another paper will make people reassess their views on journalism.
"We've heard this incessant parade of announcements of cuts. The industry has been dying a death of a thousand cuts and we've become numb, the public has become numb," said Diamantopoulos.
He said that the decline of journalism is a public issue and should be treated as such, going so far as to say that news media should be treated as a public utility. Reporting on civic, provincial and federal politics is a crucial element of a local paper, he said.
"It's become cliche to talk about how the business model of journalism is broken, but the policy model is also broken. So we need to find new ways to reinvest in quality journalism," he said.
Diamantopoulos pointed to models in other parts of the world, such as press subsidies in Scandinavian countries that assist publications. But within Canada he points to the origins of the CBC and the National Film Board,which came out of the Great Depression.
"There is a history in this country of communities pulling together to help improve our cultural sovereignty, to improve our democracy to build a better country," he said.
"Perhaps we need to change our gaze from radio and film, a half-century later, to looking at how that would work in this period of transition."
Diamantopoulos also stated that the loss of newspapers could affect the democratic ability of the city and its citizens, adding the presence of journalism in any community is to check on leaders and serve as a way to prevent important decisions being made behind closed doors.
"When you don't have journalists on the scene to hold the powerful to account, it's kind of giving a gift to the corrupt and the deceitful."
Considered the official start of the Christmas season for some, much of the province's finest craft work was showcased at the annual Craft Council of Newfoundland and Labrador's Christmas Craft Fair.
This weekend marked the 44th running of the event, where almost 100 craftspeople presented their handmade gift ideas for the holidays from Thursday to 5 p.m. Sunday.
Vendors were selling everything from clothing to snacks and decor, and plenty of people stopped by to check out the handmade treasure inside the Jack Byrne Arena in Torbay.
Jennifer Morgan is a visual artist who makes prints that explore Newfoundland history, and her own family history in particular.
"We found these old postcards that belonged to my Great-Aunt Emma, and they were sent to her 100 years ago in the 1910's," she said.
"We found them in the family house in Coley's Point, Bay Roberts."
Morgan's mother challenged her to make art out of the postcards. In one of her pieces, she compares a contemporary view of the Narrows with one from a postcard dated from 1912.
Lori Pitcher was showcasing her business, Seal Skin Treasures, which makes everything from seal skin key chains and slippers to hats, gloves, purses and even coats.
"We work from the basement of our home in Heart's Content," she said.
Pitcher said the past five years have been very successful for those selling seal skin products.
"People are proud of our heritage, and they're saying, 'You know what? We don't care what the animal rights groups think. This is our heritage, and we're going to wear it.'"
But not all of the crafts on display were derived from the culture of Newfoundland and Labrador.
Roxanne Delage makes her Ragged Ts using a reverse applique technique that's popular with the Mola culture of Panama.
"It's a traditional quilting technique. I cut out a piece underneath the t-shirt, sew around the applique and then cut the t-shirt out," she said.
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"The jersey rolls up instead of fraying and becomes nice and vintage looking."
Delage has been making the shirts out of her St. John's studio for two years now.
"I've got a picture of a fellow [wearing a Ragged T] in Istanbul, and some people in Scotland and all over the place," she said.
"They've travelled around the world, my Ragged Ts."
By Alison Bevege and Colin Packham SYDNEY (Reuters) - Papua New Guinea will delay by at least 24 hours a plan to forcibly evict hundreds of men from an abandoned Australian detention center, three asylum seekers said on Saturday. Hundreds of men have barricaded themselves into the Manus island center for more than 11 days without regular food or water, defying closure bids by Australia and Papua New Guinea in what the United Nations calls a "looming humanitarian crisis". Rejecting United Nations calls to restore utilities to the camp, Papua New Guinea this week said it would "apprehend" those responsible for the stand-off when it forcibly evicted the men on Saturday. But several asylum seekers said Papua New Guinea officials told them detainees could remain until Sunday. "Police are talking on a microphone outside prison," Behrouz Boochani, a Kurdish journalist from Iran, who has spent more than four years detained in the camp, told Reuters. "They're telling the refugees to leave, saying tomorrow will be the last day you are here," he said in a text message. It was not immediately clear what caused the postponement. Pressure on the asylum seekers, drawn largely from Afghanistan, Iran, Myanmar, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and Syria, has grown in recent days as Papua New Guinea tries to get them to move to three transit centers. The asylum seekers fear reprisals if they move to the transit centers, pending possible resettlement in the United States. The main camp was closed on Oct. 31 and water and power have been cut off. Some island-dwellers are angry at what they perceive as preferential treatment for the asylum seekers, many of them well educated, in a poor, rural society, and some detainees have come under attack when on release from the camp. The patience of Papua New Guinea authorities has begun to wane, however, and they moved this week to remove camp fences and dismantle rainwater collection bins and makeshift shelters built to ward off the tropical sun and rain. Under pressure, groups of men have elected to move to the transit centers. But the exact number left is difficult to ascertain, though Manus Island police commander David Yapu told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation about 400 remain. Several of those remaining told Reuters they would not move, setting the scene for a potential clash, which would further stoke international criticism of Australia. Australia has used the center, and a camp on the tiny Pacific island of Nauru, to detain asylum seekers who try to reach its shores by boat. It says boat arrivals will never enter Australia, even if found to be refugees, as this would encourage people smugglers in Asia. Australia says the policy prevents people drowning at sea, but it has been widely condemned. Acting Prime Minister Julie Bishop said there was no reason for the remaining men to choose to stay, rejecting criticism of inadequate facilities at the transit centers. "Over the last few months they have traveled to East Lorengau on many occasions and never raised any concerns," Bishop told reporters in Perth. (Reporting by Alison Bevege; Editing by Clarence Fernandez)
Heidy Enka says she came out as a lesbian in 2000.
But her family overseas in Croatia didn't know until recently and even some still have no idea.
"When I did really reveal it to them, I had to pick and choose," said Enka, a filmmaker and gay rights activist who first moved to the Yukon in 1985.
Enka isn't her real last name, but a creative name she uses for her films.
"My family is homophobic. They say I could destroy my family name if I use my last name as a filmmaker," said Enka.
Enka has produced 25 short films so far, some of them tackling difficult subjects like how a lesbian Haida Gwaii First Nations girl from B.C. explores her sexuality and spirituality.
Enka's latest project is called Busting out of the Cultural Closet it's a film on her personal journey, comparing the rights LGBT people have in Yukon and Canada, versus the emerging rights in her home country of Croatia.
Croatia, and the surrounding Balkan countries, are still hostile places for LGBT people, says Enka. She calls Croatia a "homophobic country" where LGBT people have been "swept under the rug for years." She says the Balkan countries often "force them into the closet," like it has for her.
That's why Enka hopes to premiere her film in these countries once it's done.
Handing the Yukon flag to Serbia's PM
The first Pride parade in Croatia was in 2002 in the capital Zagreb.
Many Pride parades in the Balkan countries have resulted in injuries and arrests after violence from anti-gay attackers. Enka was in the midst of the 2011 Split Pride parade in Croatia, and says she caught some footage of the violence on camera.
This fall, Enka was at the Pride parade in Belgrade, Serbia when Serbia's first openly gay Prime Minister marched with activists. There were thousands of police present and a helicopter was deployed.
Enka said she was trying to get an interview with Prime Minister Ana Brnabic for her film, but it was difficult.
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But she managed to have a small interaction with Brnabic.
"I still video bombed her, and gave her the Yukon flag and said Canada respects you, and she thanked me for it. It's on TV over there."
Being gay in Yukon
Enka says she's freely open about her identity in Yukon, but still careful when she travels back to the Balkans.
"I always felt the Yukon was more accepting than anywhere else," said Enka.
She says that LGBT people in Yukon are so accepted that often, there isn't a distinction.
"LGBT people don't really exist in the Yukon because we melt into society," she said. "[Being LGBT] doesn't make a difference to people here anymore."
Enka says she's still working on getting more footage for her film, and is still chasing an interview with Serbia's Prime Minister. The film is expected to be finished in a couple of years, she says.
There's a community fundraiser Saturday Nov. 11, at 5 p.m. PT at the basement of United Church in Whitehorse, to help raise money to complete her film.
The family event is a Balkan dinner, dance and silent auction.
She invites people to bring traditional Balkan food to the potluck for a free entrance, or it's $20 at the door.
The lives of two women and one girl changed dramatically five years ago when they were raped by Sofyan Boalag in St. John's.
Boalag held a knife to the throat of M.H. in the downtown area on Dec. 9, 2012. She tried to fight him off, but she fell to the ground.
He tore off her underwear. She screamed for help. Boalag threatened to kill her if she didn't stop. He raped her and squeezed her neck until she passed out.
Eight days earlier, at 2 a.m., Boalag had put a knife to the neck of F.S.
In behind St. Bon's School, he raped her as she pleaded with him to stop.
He robbed her as well.
And in late September 2012, 15-year-old I. H. felt a sharp object, maybe a stick, poke into her back. Boalag dragged her between some houses off Lemarchant Road, and repeatedly told her he was going to kill her.
He bent her over and raped her.
Dangerous offender status
On Thursday, Boalag, 38, was declared a dangerous offender.
That means he has an open-ended prison sentence, and won't get out until the Parole Board of Canada decides he can be released.
During Boalag's sentencing hearing, Crown Prosecutor Trisha McCarthy made the case for why Boalag should be declared a dangerous offender.
In order to grant it, Chief Judge Pamela Goulding had to meticulously assess if he fit the criteria.
The crown had to prove he had a pattern of aggressive, repetitive behaviour with significant similarities in his attacks; was indifferent to the impact of his actions; and is likely to carry out such attacks again.
'Deliberate and calculated manner'
In her 46-page decision, Goulding noted the consistencies in Boalag's actions, writing: "The victims were female and were violently sexually assaulted in generally similar circumstances."
Boalag's offences happened in the early morning hours, a weapon was used, there were threats of violence, and the victims did not know the rapist.
"These attacks were conducted in a deliberate and calculated manner," wrote Goulding.
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"I am satisfied beyond a reasonable doubt that the evidence established a pattern of repetitive behaviour on the part of Mr. Boalag ... showing a failure to restrain his behaviour."
He went from using a stick to using a knife, robbery, and choking his last victim, which "demonstrates a pattern of escalating violent behaviour," the judge wrote.
As part of her decision Goulding quoted what Forensic Psychiatrist Jasbir Gill wrote in her report about Boalag, that he is "a high risk to sexual recidivism (or re-offend)."
'No remorse'
On top of what he was convicted of doing to his victims, an informant at Her Majesty's Penitentiary said Boalag planned sexual violence towards female staff there.
Boalag told Gill that he did what he did because of his alcohol and cocaine abuse, and he wouldn't have believed he had committed the rapes if not for the DNA evidence.
The psychiatrist noted that Boalag said he was, "not this kind of person," deserved a second chance, and hoped he would just get time served.
She said Boalag's "denial of any underlying sexual deviancy or willingness or ability to explore his sexual attitudes," makes him a high risk to reoffend as well.
Gill said that Boalag could not relate to how his victims felt.
"Mr. Boalag has appeared more concerned with the consequences to him in terms of his freedom and 'getting [his] life back,'" she said.
In her decision, Goulding wrote: "[Boalag] has expressed no remorse. He has shown callous disregard for the emotional and physical trauma experienced by [his victims]."
Although Gill said there's a "reasonable possibility" he might be able to control himself with proper management, Goulding said that isn't good enough.
'Gratuitous and unprovoked violence'
The crown also went over the impact the attacks had on the victims.
I.H. tried to commit suicide twice. F.S. was convinced Boalag was going to kill her. M.H. had "flashbacks of torture."
Goulding concluded: "The offences against M. H. were brutal in nature. He violently sexually assaulted her and choked her until she lost consciousness."
"There was gratuitous and unprovoked violence against F.S. and I.H as well," she wrote.
The sentence
In her decision, Goulding said, "There is no evidence before me that Mr. Boalag can be rehabilitated within a definite period of time."
"There is no credible evidence that he would willingly engage in treatment designed to address the reasons for these violent sexual attacks upon women."
Goulding said the crown had shown that Boalag met the criteria for being declared a dangerous offender, and that the public might not be protected if he got a lesser sentence.
Boalag is the 13th person in Newfoundland and Labrador to be declared a dangerous offender since the designation began in 1978.
Boalag's future
It's not yet known if Boalag will appeal his convictions or the dangerous offender ruling.
He was arrested in December of 2012, and has been in custody since. As a dangerous offender, he has an indeterminate sentence, and will be assessed by the Parole Board of Canada to eventually determine his release.
The first required assessment is a little over two years from now.
As an Algerian national, Boalag will be deported if he is ever released from prison.
A banner calling for freedom for political prisoners hanging on Barcelona City Hall. Joan Sanchez
Elio Di Rupo, Pablo Iglesias, Carles Puigdemont or any other figure who these days goes so far as to attribute Francoist, fascist or authoritarian policies to Spain would do well to clarify their thoughts by falling back on any reasonable and objective exercise of recollection, or indeed any Hispanist or book of recent history, or simply, even to the weekly satirical newspaper Le Canard Enchaine, which, in a recent issue, mocked the accusations of the former Catalan regional premier, explaining how he, in spite of everything, managed to escape the fascist militias that are roaming Catalonia and reached Belgium. What an astonishing feat.
It is insulting, offensive and intolerable that an ex-Belgian prime minister would accuse Rajoy of acting as an authoritarian Francoist
Its funny, but this confusion needs something more than just humor.
The accusations of Francoism levelled at Spain and its government are not just extemporaneous, absurd and striking. It is above all else insulting, offensive and intolerable that an ex-Belgian prime minister such as Elio di Rupo, a francophone socialist who was at the head of the Belgian government between 2011 and 2014, would accuse Rajoy of acting as an authoritarian Francoist, something that would be the same as accusing Angela Merkel of being a totalitarian Nazi for a decision taken by the German justice system and with which Mr Di Rupo disagrees. A British newspaper has been editorializing about Rajoys political prisoners. And a radio station has been asking its listeners whether Spain is acting as a fascist state. Would they ask the same about Germany? Or is a strange paternalism toward Spain, linked to the Civil War mystique that has been so long crafted both in literature and journalism, still running in a simplistic fashion through the British press, in the midst of its own confusion in the face of Brexit and Eurosceptic populism?
Attacks on the prestige of Spanish democracy from outside are, without a doubt, matters that the government should monitor and combat with intelligence, but the true problem is surely that they have been made possible thanks to the ease with which they are made and repeated in our own country. Pablo Iglesias, Irene Montero, Pablo Echenique and many other politicians have all tuned in to the raging discourse of Puigdemont about supposed Spanish Francoism, in a disturbing mimesis. This is even more so due to the fact that well-known figures from the left wing such as Paco Frutos and Alberto Garzon not to mention professional historians and common sense itself have distanced themselves from any similarity between the political prisoners of the dictatorship and the current suspects being investigated for rebellion, sedition and misuse of funds by the Spanish courts. Amnesty International itself, an organization that is a doyenne in terms of its fight for the rights of those who are persecuted, has stated that the former members of the Catalan parliament and its speakers committee, as well as the heads of the pro-independence citizens associations, cannot be defined as prisoners of conscience. Hispanists such as Henry Kamen have clarified that if anyone is acting in a Francoist manner it is the separatist front, which has been falsifying historical information to build its narrative.
Spain is a mature democracy that has given plenty of lessons of tolerance in matters of sex, religion and ideology
Spain is a mature democracy that has given plenty of lessons of tolerance in matters of sex, religion and ideology, and that has taken in without traumas nor racist incidents millions of immigrants. It has risen in democratic quality to position number seven on The Economists index, for example, just below the United Kingdom and above the United States, Italy, France and even Belgium. It is suffering problems that must be addressed, such as corruption, job insecurity and the renovation of the Constitution, which among other issues will allow for the Catalan issue to be addressed and resolved. But no attack of empty rhetoric and related to the Civil War such as those being perpetrated by the populists, pro-independence forces and certain elements of the Anglo-American press can justify the allegations of the survival of Francoism. We are in 2017, but, if it is still necessary, well remind everyone: Spaniards (and Europeans!), Franco is dead.
Hundreds of thousands of people 750,000 according to municipal police came out to protest on Saturday in Barcelona to demand the release of politicians and pro-independence association leaders who are being held in pre-trial custody in relation to the secessionist drive in Catalonia. Family members of the ousted government ministers and the leaders of the ANC and Omnium associations read letters and messages that the jailed figures had sent from prison. Present at the act, held in favor of the freedom of political prisoners, was Barcelona mayor Ada Colau.
The speaker of the Catalan parliament, Carme Forcadell who is also being investigated by the courts for her role in the recent unilateral declaration of independence voted through the regional chamber took the advice of her lawyer and decided not to attend, having been released from pre-trial custody just a day before upon payment of bail.
The demonstration saw once more the streets of Barcelona filled with protestors. At 4pm, an hour before the march began, thousands of people were already thronging the streets.
Many of the attendees were wearing a yellow ribbon in tribute to what they consider to be political prisoners, including former deputy premier Oriol Junqueras and another seven ousted members of the Catalan parliament, who are all in pre-trial custody in Madrid prisons while they are investigated by the courts for offenses of rebellion and sedition.
The march was the most well-attended since October 16, when around 200,000 people (according to calculations by the municipal police) came out to protest the jailing of the heads of the pro-independence ANC and Omnium associations, Jordi Sanchez and Jordi Cuixart. The pair are accused of organizing and encouraging protests in September that impeded the Spanish authorities from carrying out operations in search of material being prepared for the illegal October 1 referendum on independence that was held in Catalonia.
On October 21, another protest calling for their release saw 450,000 people take to the streets of the Catalan capital.
Carles Puigdemont, the ousted regional premier who is facing similar charges as the members of his former government and has fled to Brussels, sent a video message to the protest, calling on citizens to remain very active and expressing his trust in that his jailed colleagues would hear the clamor of the people. Lets not let ourselves be frightened or constrained by those who want to impose the law of [Article] 155, he said, in reference to the clause in the Spanish Constitution that has been used by the central government in Madrid to sack the entire Catalan government and suspend self-government in the region. The Spanish state cannot carry on like this, he continued. The European community must stop looking the other way.
His words were received with applause and cries of President, president!
At the head of the march were the family members of the jailed pro-independence figures, as well as the heads of the PDeCAT, ERC and CUP parties, all of whom are in favor of the secession of the region from the rest of Spain.
The foreign ministers of the five Central Asian nations -- Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan -- have signed a Program on Mutual Cooperation for 2018-19.
The Kazakh Foreign Ministry said the document was signed in the Uzbek city of Samarkand during the 13th annual EU-Central Asia ministerial meeting on November 10.
The document outlines joint efforts to boost security, trade and economic cooperation, investment, transportation, energy, tourism, and culture across the region.
The ministers also agreed to cooperate in international activities and within international organizations, such as United Nations, the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), and others.
European Union foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini and European Commissioner for International Cooperation and Development Neven Mimica also attended the EU-Central Asia gathering in Samarkand.
They arrived in Samarkand from Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, where on November 9 they met with senior Kyrgyz officials.
In Samarkand, Mogherini said security experts will join the EU delegations to the five countries to assist local governments' efforts against terrorism. She cited as concerns preventing the radicalization of youth, the Iranian nuclear program, and achieving stability in Afghanistan.
Mogherini stressed the importance of Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, and Tajikistan joining the World Trade Organization (WTO) and expressed hope that Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan will also do so.
With reporting by Interfax and TASS
The de facto leader of Irans Sunnis, Zahedans Prayer Leader Molavi (Mawlana) Abdola-Hamid has again complained of discrimination and inequality.
He has reiterated that Sunnis do not get high level government jobs and he is personally under travel restrictions. He also says that there are no written laws on such matters.
In an interview published by state run Iranian Students News Agency, ISNA, on Saturday, November 11, the charismatic Sunni clergy has insisted that there is no oral or written order barring him from travelling around.
But when he travels, Molavi Abdol Hamid says, security and intelligence forces interfere and they even create problems for his hosts.
Campaign for Human Rights in Iran, CHRI, had recently reported that Molavi Abdol Hamid has been barred from traveling, except to the capital, Tehran.
It is also reported that Sunni leaders from different parts of Iran are barred to visit his stronghold, Zahedan.
His exclusion from the list of guests at President Hassan Rouhanis inauguration last August triggered a stream of vitriol among the incumbents reformist allies.
Reformists complained that Sunnis, thanks to Molavi Abdol Hamids guidance, played a pivotal role in Rouhanis reelection and he deserved to be invited to the swearing-in ceremony.
Deputy Speaker of the parliament, Ali Motahari also insisted that leaving the Sunni leaders name out of the list of the inauguration guests was a mistake.
Two weeks before last Mays presidential election, Abdol-Hamid had criticized what he said was discrimination against Sunnis by the ruling system.
Iran does not belong only to Sunnis or Shia or the Persians; Iran belongs to all ethnic groups and religious groups, he said. National unity and lasting security depends on the elimination of discrimination and equal treatment of all the nation.
Four years ago, regions with substantial Sunni populations, such as Kurdish and Turkmen areas and Sistan-Baluchestan Province, gave the highest votes to Rouhani.
However, Rouhani kept Sunnis out of his first cabinet, disregarding the fact that more than 70% of the people in mainly Sunni populated provinces of Kurdistan and Sistan and Baluchestan voted for him.
Keeping Sunnis away from high positions forced Molavi Abdol Hamid to once again directly write a letter to the Supreme Leader, ayatollah Ali Khamenei in August, complaining about discriminations Sunnis suffer from.
Khamenei, who had ignored Abdol-Hamids previous letters, this time chose to respond by saying, the pillars of the Islamic Republic, based on the Constitution, are duty bound to refrain from discrimination against Iranian citizens.
However, according to Article 12 of the Islamic Republics constitution, the official denomination of the country is Twelver Imams Shia.
Furthermore, Article 115 stipulates that high positions in the Islamic Republic, i.e. the Supreme Leadership and Presidency are exclusive to the Shia, therefore Sunnis, as well as followers of other religions and denominations cannot take these key positions.
Moreover, Sunnis have been barred from building their own mosque in the capital, while many Sunni clergy have been detained in recent years.
Molavi Abdol Hamid, recently met Ebrahim Raisi, Rouhanis main challenger in last Mays election, but he told ISNA that the meeting did not necessarily mean Sunnis were going to make a U-turn and vote for the conservatives in next presidential election.
Supporting a candidate in next election depends on the situation at the time. Yet, both factions [of the ruling system], reformists and conservatives need inner change, Molavi Abdol Hamid told ISNA.
Reformists need to fulfill their promises and stop hanging on to their high positions. They should serve the people, as well, the Sunni top cleric noted, adding The conservatives should also avoid being illiberal and narrow minded. They should take the international, regional and internal situations and trends into account.
In another part of his interview, Molavi Abdol Hamid insists, If we bring women and Sunnis into our cabinet international attitudes towards us will significantly improve. We should not stay behind [other countries]. Currently, there are several women serving in [United Arab] Emirates cabinet and one of them is a Baluch emigre. Why not having her in our own government?
However, many analysts, including former MP and political activist, Hassel Dasseh, believe that a number of Grand Ayatollahs are behind keeping Sunnis out of the Islamic Republics cabinets.
In an interview with Campaign for Human Rights in Irans website, the reformist former MP has disclosed, During a gathering with a number of officials, they told me that senior ayatollahs have called government officials, ordering them to wrap-up what they labelled as Sunni shenanigans.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Nov. 12
By Samir Ali Trend:
Four bridges have been constructed in Azerbaijani Agstafa district, Azeravtoyol OJSC told Trend.
Three bridges were built on the Agstafa-Poylu-Georgian state border highway and one bridge on the Agstafa-Poylu-Duzgishlag-Gazakh highway to ensure comfortable and safe movement of the citizens. New bridges were built across Agstafachay, Ajiderechay and Kura rivers, as well as over the railway.
The previous bridges were in a state of emergency. Bridges over Ajiderechay river and the railway were built in the 1960s, bridge over the Agstafachay river - in 1970s. A bridge over the Kura river was built in 1897.
The bridges over the Agstafachay, Ajiderechay rivers and over the railway were dismantled and new ones were built, while the bridge over the Kura river, taking into account its historical significance, was reconstructed within the project.
Ashgabat, Turkmenistan, Nov. 12
By Huseyn Hasanov - Trend
A report covering the measures of building a cotton mill in Saparmyrat Turkmenbasy district of Dasoguz region was made at the meeting of the Turkmen government, the Turkmen Altyn Asyr TV channel reported.
The countrys Ministry of Textile Industry assessed the proposals of bidders.
Hilli Yup Economic Entity deals with the design, construction and equipping of a new cotton mill. After the cotton mill is commissioned, 6,000 tons of cotton yarn will be produced annually.
Turkmen President Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov stressed that the textile industry is one of the priority directions of the processing sector of the Turkmen economy.
"Big investments, made in textile industry, stimulate the growth of production of high-quality cotton products, having a huge demand among foreign consumers," the president said.
Focusing on the importance of building new industrial facilities for the economic development of districts, where new jobs will be created, the president pointed to the need to strengthen control over the work in this direction.
More than one million tons of cotton is grown annually in Turkmenistan, which is the raw material base for the development of the textile industry. Up to 70 percent of the raw materials are processed in the country.
At present, Turkmenistan produces up to 118,000 tons of cotton yarn, 178 million square meters of fabrics, 11,000 tons of knitted fabric, 7,200 tons of terrycloth.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Nov. 12
By Maksim Tsurkov Trend:
The agreement on the common aviation space between the European Union (EU) and Azerbaijan may be signed soon, Azerbaijani Deputy Foreign Minister Mahmud Mammad-Guliyev told Trend.
"The work on the aviation agreement is underway, and it is not excluded that it will be initialed in the near future," said Mammad-Guliyev.
He did not rule out that the agreement may be signed during the European Unions Eastern Partnership summit, which will be held in Brussels on November 24.
The basic principles of the agreement have already been agreed upon, said Head of the EU Delegation to Azerbaijan Kestutis Jankauskas in late October following the third round of negotiations on the aviation agreement.
The creation of common airspace is an initiative of the European Commission.
Tehran, Iran, November 12
By Mehdi Sepahvand - Trend:
Phil Hogan, European Union commissioner for agriculture and rural development, traveled to Tehran on Saturday where he predicted a great future trade between Iran and the EU in food and agriculture sectors.
Hogan, leading a 70-member delegation from 40 European companies to Tehran, made the remarks addressing the Iran-EU Agri-Food Business Forum at the place of Tehran Chamber of Commerce, Industries, Mines and Agriculture (TCCIMA).
According to Hogan, food trade between Iran and the European Union leaped by 94 percent since the nuclear deal between Iran and world powers, officially known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, was signed in July 2015.
An early 2017 EU agri-food trade value report said that 28 members of the union had exported worth 728 million euros of products to Iran in the year to the report release. It added in the meantime Iran had exported worth 467 million euros of such products to the EU, putting the trade balance at 261 in favor of the union.
Considering these number under the fact that they come with a 94 percent improvement as Hogan has said, it is clear that under sanctions Irans agri-food trade with the EU has been scanty and still remains about the same.
To really improve agri-food trade with Europe we need to have better access to international banking services which are currently virtually lacking, Jamal Dehqani, an expert told Trend November 12.
Hogan himself had admitted while in Tehran that banking ties between Iran and the EU are not good and will take some time to develop to a proper state.
Although the JCPOA lifted many obstacles in the way of Irans banking reconnection to the world, an innate fear of US penalties continues to haunt big international banks and they have not shown enough will to start creating ties with Iran.
Iran enjoys a great potential in the agricultural sector thanks to its diverse climate. However, besides the fact that the countrys businessmen need access to international banking to settle their trades with foreign partners, the agricultural infrastructure is also in dire need of improvement, bearing on its forehead the scars of long years of sanctions. Here again, banking ties are needed in order for the country to be able to fund developmental projects in the agricultural and food sectors.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Nov. 12
By Maksim Tsurkov Trend:
From early 2001 to November 1, 2017, the State Oil Fund of Azerbaijan (SOFAZ) has received more than $127.3 billion as part of the project on developing the Azeri-Chirag-Gunashli (ACG) block of oil and gas fields in the Azerbaijani sector of the Caspian Sea, a source in SOFAZ told Trend.
"In January-October 2017, SOFAZ received over $5.195 billion within the ACG project," said the source.
The contract for developing the ACG field was signed in 1994. The proven oil reserves of the block near 1 billion tons.
The shareholders of the project are BP (35.78 percent), Chevron (11.27 percent), Inpex (10.96 percent), AzACG (SOCAR) (11.65 percent), Statoil (8.55 percent), ExxonMobil (8 percent), TP (6.75 percent), Itochu (4.3 percent) and ONGC Videsh Limited (OVL) (2.72 percent).
The signing ceremony of a new contract on development of ACG block of oil and gas fields was held in Baku Sept. 14.
Following the ratification of the contract, the new ACG participating interests will be as follows: BP - 30.37 percent; AzACG (SOCAR) - 25.00 percent; Chevron - 9.57 percent; Inpex - 9.31 percent; Statoil - 7.27 percent; ExxonMobil - 6.79 percent; TP - 5.73 percent; Itochu - 3.65 percent; and ONGC Videsh Limited (OVL) - 2.31 percent.
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Baku, Azerbaijan, Nov. 12
By Huseyn Valiyev Trend:
Azerbaijani films will be broadcast at popular foreign online cinemas, MyVideo Project Manager Ali Aliyev told Trend.
"Earlier, we launched a joint project of KATV1 and Azercell companies - www.kinoserial.az platform in Azerbaijan, through which high-quality video content of Russian partner Amediateka can be viewed through computers, tablet computers and smartphones, he said.
At the next stage of this project development, we plan to present the content of leading producers, translated into the Azerbaijani language, he said. We plan to launch several similar projects with other local mobile operators," Aliyev said.
Nowadays, people are more using laptops, tablet computers and smartphones to access video content.
"Everything being implemented in Azerbaijan corresponds to the world trends, he said. However, we do not have yet Netflix and Amazon PrimeVideo projects, when Internet platforms produce content themselves. But I think that over the next five years we will see such projects in Azerbaijan.
For example, the TV series were created and launched exclusively for viewing over the Internet in neighboring Turkey and became extremely popular, he said. The issue of monetizing content is relevant in Azerbaijan. I think in a while we will pay for Internet content. Internet can give a new impetus to the national film industry as this segment has huge financial potential.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Nov. 12
By Fatih Karimov Trend:
Irans Arvandan Shipbuilding Company and Netherlands Damen Shipyards signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) for cooperation in shipbuilding industry.
The deal envisages cooperation in manufacturing advanced offshore vessels in Iran, the Iranian company said.
The cooperation will include technology and know-how transfer to Iran and domestic capacities will be used in shipbuilding.
Arvandan Shipbuilding yard, is specialized in building vessels up to 2,500 dwt(deadweight tonnage), including crew boats, passenger ships, pilot boats, barges and multi-purpose cargo vessels. The company is also now looking to build a series of offshore support vessels.
Last year, Iran Shipbuilding and Offshore Industries Complex Co.(ISOICO) signed a similar agreement with Netherlands Royal IHC, for cooperation in engineering, technology transfer and equipments supply.
Netherlands is going to intensify collaboration with Iran in the fields of water management, port development and maritime logistics.
The two countries have already signed agreements regarding collaboration in the fields of port development, maritime logistics, offshore issues, shipbuilding and transport.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Nov. 11
By Fatih Karimov Trend:
Iran and EU will boost cooperation in food industry, Phil Hogan, the European Union Commissioner for Agriculture and Rural Development, said.
Hogan made the remarks during a meeting between a European delegation and Chamber of Commerce, Industries, Mines and Agriculture (TCCIMA) in Irans capital city Tehran Nov. 11, Iranian media outlets reported.
The EU official said that the two parties must establish a framework for boosting cooperation in various areas, including agriculture sector and food industry.
Hogan said the EU seeks to consolidate relations with Iran, adding that representatives of 40 companies from 19 European countries, enjoying very high potential for business cooperation, are present at the meeting.
"We want to provide a new ground for Iran-EU cooperation," he said, expressing hope that the negotiations will provide opportunities for new areas of cooperation.
There are good areas for cooperation in agriculture and food sectors, including dairy, meat, vegetables and chocolate with Iran, he said.
Hogan said the Europeans should get familiar with the investment capacities of Iran.
It is also necessary for European companies to know the laws and regulations of Iran, he said, adding that the parties need to trust to each other.
A high-ranking delegation headed by Hogan arrived in Tehran today as part of efforts to boost Tehran-EU relations in all areas.
The delegation comprises 70 members, including some officials from Directorate-General for Agriculture and Rural Development of the European Commission as well as representatives of some renowned companies from European countries.
The delegates discussed possible cooperation in joint investments, exports and imports, transfer of technology, and training courses in an economic forum hosted by TCCIMA's Committee for Agriculture, Water and Food Industries.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Nov. 10
By Azer Ahmadbayli Trend:
Last Sunday new comments regarding almost one-year-old Iran-Turkmenistan gas dispute have appeared. Managing Director of National Iranian Gas Company (NIGC) Hamidreza Araqi told ISNA that negotiations were underway and expressed hope to conclude the dispute through a dialog.
Why have the comments been made just on the threshold of winter and which side of the dispute is more interested in finding a prompt and peaceful solution?
Iran has produced a great amount of natural gas, raising its output continuously from year to year within more than a decade, but several factors prevent it from completely solving a serious problem concerning provision of its north-eastern regions with gas in cold seasons.
Irans rapidly growing domestic gas consumption is almost equal to the production level. In 2016, Iran produced 202.4 bcm of natural gas (a growth rate of 6.6 percent), while consumption was 200.8 bcm with growth rate being 5 percent (data from BP).
In addition, Iran has to perform its international obligations. The Islamic Republic has had a long-term gas export agreement with Turkey. In 2016 it exported about 8 bcm of gas to the neighboring country, according to the latest BP Statistical Review.
In June, Iraq became a new destination for Irans gas export. Exports started at approximately 2.5 bcm per year and would eventually reach 12.8 bcm, according to Iranian officials.
Iran itself presents data even exceeding those of BP. Iranian Oil Minister Bijan Namdar Zanganeh said last week that Iran currently sells nearly 15 bcm of gas annually, more than 90% of which go to Turkey and Iraq.
He also indicated that 98% of the urban population and over 70% of people in small towns and villages in Iran are connected to the national gas grid, according to Irans Financial Tribune.
Iran used to deliver designated amount of its own gas to Turkey at its western borders in exchange of importing the Turkmen gas from its eastern borders for provision of households in the north-eastern regions in cold seasons.
On January 1, 2017, at the height of cold weather, Ashgabat halted gas supply putting Iran into predicament.
At once the sides began to hurl reciprocal accusations at each other.
Turkmenistans Foreign Ministry said that starting from 2013 Iran's national gas company had not shown appropriate efforts to pay off the debts for Turkmen gas which has been previously supplied to the Islamic Republic.
Turkmenistan claims Iran has to pay $1.8 billion due payment for gas it received in 2007-2008. At that period of time, Turkmenistan reportedly increased the gas price for Iran from $40 to $360 per 1,000 cubic meters, despite a 20-year deal.
During the year 2016, the Iranian side was officially informed about possible limitation in supply of gas, the Foreign Ministry said.
"The lack of positive reaction from NIGC to the constructive initiatives of Turkmenistan and inactivity in the search of mutually acceptable alternatives resulted in forced limitation of Turkmen gas supplies to Iran as of January 1, 2017."
Iran, in its turn, repeatedly threatened Ashgabat with taking the matter to international arbitration court due to violation of terms of the contract, including unauthorized change in gas price and unilateral cut of gas supply despite the other side has unpaid debt.
Although Tehran talks a lot about taking the matter to international arbitration, it actually avoids following a hard line in the dispute, preferring to sort it out in tete-a-tete negotiations.
Irans gas consumption in winter usually triples as compared with warm seasons. Iran cant help taking account of needs of about 15 million people living in the north-east, where temperature falls sometimes to 14-16 degrees below zero.
By launching on August 1 the 170-km Damghan-Sari pipeline with the capacity of 40 mcm/d, transporting gas to six north-eastern regions, Iran managed to partially ease the problem. However, Irans gas production capacity in those regions stands at about 14 bcm/y, which is still less than the demand.
As it was said above, in early 2017 gas export to Iran from Turkmenistan was completely stopped. Since early 2016 Russia cancelled gas import agreement with Ashgabat and is no more the buyer of Turkmen gas in near future. Currently, China is the only buyer of the Turkmen gas. Ashgabat realizes the potential risks of having a single gas customer. Undoubtedly, it would welcome new ones.
In addition, the Turkmen economy is facing serious difficulties.
In June, President of Turkmenistan Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov ordered the Government to look into the issue of withdrawal of all social preferences for the population who have been benefiting from them for about 25 years. From November 1, 2017 new tariffs have been introduced for gas, electricity, road transportation and communications services.
The conclusion is that for the time being, Iran will hardly progress in full provision of the north-eastern regions simultaneously with its international export obligations without the Turkmen gas import. On the other hand, for the Turkmen economy, which is going through hardships, it will be a good and in-time financial injection to make profit from exporting some 5 bcm or more of gas to Iran.
Therefore, the sides have to come to an agreement. Common sense suggests that.
U.S. President Donald Trump said on Saturday that an agreement with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Syria would save many lives after the two met at a summit of Asia-Pacific leaders, Reuters reported.
We agreed very quickly, Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One as he flew from the APEC meeting in the resort city of Danang to Vietnams capital Hanoi. Its going to save tremendous numbers of lives.
The Kremlin earlier said Trump and Putin had agreed on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit that a political solution was needed on Syria and that they would continue efforts to fight Islamic State.
We spoke intermittently during that roundtable. We seem to have a very good feeling for each other and a good relationship considering we dont know each other well, Trump said, adding that he and Putin had two or three very short conversations.
Trump said Putin had reiterated that he did not meddle in last years U.S. presidential elections, which brought Trump to the White House.
Trump said a good relationship with Russia was important.
In fact it would be a great thing ... because he could really help us in North Korea. We have a big problem with North Korea and China is helping us, Trump said. If Russia helped us in addition to China that problem would go away a lot faster.
Trump said Chinese President Xi Jinping was a good man who wants to do right, but he wanted Xi to ratchet up more pressure on North Korea.
Egypts military says its warplanes have destroyed 10 arms-loaded off-road vehicles belonging to terrorists as they were attempting to infiltrate into the African country through its porous border with Libya, PressTV reported.
The forces detected and pursued 10 four-by-four vehicles loaded with amounts of weapons, ammunition and smuggled material at the western borderline, said military spokesman Tamer al-Refaay in a statement on Saturday.
He added that the army's air force, in coordination with border guards and intelligence, managed to destroy all the vehicles and kill the terrorist elements therein.
The statement went on to say that the strike was part of a continued combing operation to stop any penetration or infiltration by militants through the western border.
Late last month, the army announced an aerial raid on an area some 80 kilometers southwest of the capital Cairo in the countrys Western Desert, where a large number of terrorist elements were killed.
The military at the time asserted that the counterterrorism operation was carried out on those who were suspected of involvement in a deadly ambush on Egyptian police less than two weeks earlier around 135 kilometers southwest of Cairo, which was a rare flare-up outside the restive Sinai Peninsula. The Egyptian Interior Ministry said that 16 police lost their lives in the ambush.
KYODO NEWS - Nov 12, 2017 - 15:54 | All, Feature
A Nepalese man who spent 15 years behind bars in Japan after being wrongfully accused of murder has thanked supporters who campaigned for him on his first return to the country since his release in 2012.
Govinda Prasad Mainali, a former restaurant employee in Japan who was convicted on the basis of circumstantial evidence of killing a 39-year-old Japanese woman in 1997, also attended a civic meeting to call for the eradication of wrongful convictions.
The 51-year-old said Saturday he has "yet to receive an apology from Japanese police, prosecutors or judges." In an interview accompanied by his wife Radha, he called it "unreasonable and impermissible."
He said he has visited popular tourist spots in Tokyo such as Shibuya and Odaiba during his trip, and wondered "why cases of wrongful convictions could occur in a wonderful country like this."
Although some relatives and friends had told him not to return to Japan as it was "a dangerous country," Mainali decided to visit because he has "done nothing wrong. I wanted to say thank you to the Japanese people who helped me."
After the tearful reunion with his supporters, he said he felt his "wounds will heal a little."
The 15 years of detention have taken a huge toll on Mainali. He has problems sleeping and he stays with his 48-year-old wife "all the time" when they are at home because being alone reminds him of life in prison.
His two daughters, who were a toddler and a baby when he came to Japan in 1994, have both gotten married and now live overseas.
"I wanted to put my daughters on my lap and play with them, but I couldn't. I was deprived of my youth, the most important time of my life."
After returning to Nepal, Mainali plans to set up a nonprofit organization to support victims of wrongful convictions and their families based on his own experiences.
He said he continues to hear from his Japanese supporters about cases of false criminal accusations.
"Why do such problems continue happening? Japanese police and prosecutors must investigate properly by taking due time, and judges must listen carefully. Otherwise, the situation won't change," Mainali said.
Mainali was freed after fresh DNA tests pointed to another man as the culprit in the murder of the woman in Tokyo's Shibuya Ward. He was deported to Nepal after his release.
KYODO NEWS - Nov 11, 2017 - 18:15 | World, All
South Korea and the United States on Saturday kicked off a joint naval exercise in the Sea of Japan involving three U.S. aircraft carriers amid heightened tensions on the Korean Peninsula.
South Korea's Joint Chiefs of Staff said that the four-day strike force exercise is "aimed at enhancing deterrence against North Korea's nuclear and missile threats."
According to the U.S. Navy, it is the first three-carrier exercise in the Western Pacific since 2007.
The three flattops are the USS Ronald Reagan, Nimitz and Theodore Roosevelt. They will successively enter the exercise area in international waters east of the Korean Peninsula over the weekend, and at one point around Monday will operate together.
Also to be mobilized are 11 U.S. Aegis ships and seven South Korean warships.
"The strike force plans to conduct air defense drills, sea surveillance, replenishments at sea, defensive air combat training, close-in coordinated maneuvers, and other training," said a statement from the Navy's 7th Fleet, which is responsible for monitoring the Pacific including North Korea.
The exercise is taking place while U.S. President Donald Trump is on an Asian tour and presenting a united front with regional leaders.
Trump said in a speech at South Korea's parliament Wednesday, "Currently stationed in the vicinity of this peninsula are the three largest aircraft carriers in the world loaded to the maximum with magnificent F-35 and F-18 fighter jets."
In a commentary released Saturday, the Korean Central News Agency, North Korea's official media, criticized the United States for "heightening military tension in the Asia-Pacific region."
"The U.S. efforts to expand its military influence in Asia-Pacific and the movement of big neighboring powers to contain it escalate the military tension and increase arms race in the region with each passing day," it said.
Tensions have been running high since North Korea test-fired two intercontinental ballistic missiles in July, conducted its sixth and most powerful nuclear test on Sept. 3 and flew ballistic missiles over Japan on Aug. 29 and Sept. 15.
It has repeatedly threatened to launch ballistic missiles into the waters around the U.S. territory of Guam. Trump has vowed to "totally destroy" the country if overly provoked.
The funeral ceremony of two Indian soldiers from the 39th Royal Garhwal Rifles, who laid down their lives in World War Ist in France, will be held on November 12 at the French Military Cemetery in La Gorgue, the Army said. On September 20 last year, during an mining on the southern side of Richebourg village near Laventie Military Cemetery, approx 230 km from Paris, two human were found dead.
On examining their belongings, they were identified as casualties of the 39th Royal Garhwal Rifles. "The office of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission (CWWGC), which is the conservator of graves of these unknown heroes, in interview with the French government and the Indian mission in France, decided to hold a burial ceremony at the Laventie Military Cemetery, with full military honours,"
A mission of the Indian Army, comprising the commandant and subedar major of the Garhwal Rifles Regimental Centre, two bagpipers from the Garhwal Rifles Regimental Pipe band and Colonel Nitin Negi, was nominated to attend the ceremony. Colonel Nitin Negi is the grandson of late Naik Darwan Singh Negi, who was awarded the Victoria Cross for his gallantry in the Battle of Festubert. In a symbolic gesture, the soil from the graves of these soldiers would be brought back to their homeland.
Sqadron Leader (retired) Rana Chinna, a military historian, who has done extensive work on the participation of Indian soldiers in the world wars, said nearly 1.5 million soldiers from the country had participated in World War Ist. Nearly 4,500 of them died in France and Belgium.
The 401(k) is one of the best retirement savings tools available to workers today. And with 79% of U.S. employees having access to a 401(k), participating is a great way for most adults to grow their nest eggs. Here are a few basic things you should know.
1. How much am I allowed to contribute?
One great thing about 401(k)s is their generous annual contribution limit. Currently, workers under 50 can put up to $18,000 a year into a 401(k), while those 50 and older can contribute up to $24,000. Better yet, come 2018, these limits will increase by $500, so next year's thresholds are $18,500 for younger workers and $24,500 for the 50 and over set.
Coin being inserted into a piggy bank next to the term 401k written in on a chalkboard
Image source: Getty Images.
Of course, not everyone can manage to contribute the maximum amount each year. But if you can't max out, at least be sure to put in enough of your own money to snag whatever matching dollars your employer offers. The majority of companies that sponsor 401(k)s match employee contributions to some degree, and that's really just free money waiting to be snapped up.
2. How much money will I save on taxes by contributing?
Not only can a 401(k) be instrumental in helping you save for retirement, but it can also serve as a tax break at present. That's because 401(k) plans are funded with pre-tax dollars, and your savings will depend on the amount you contribute coupled with your effective tax rate.
If you typically lose 25% of your income to taxes, and you opt to contribute $10,000 in a given year, you'll shave $2,500 off your IRS bill. Put in $15,000, and you'll lower your taxes by $3,750. Basically, the more you contribute, the more you stand to save, which is why it pays to get as close to maxing out as you can.
3. When can I access the money in my account?
In exchange for the aforementioned tax break, the IRS has one key requirement: You're not allowed to touch the money in your 401(k) until you reach age 59-1/2. Access that money sooner, and you'll face a 10% early withdrawal penalty on whatever funds you remove.
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But penalties aside, the biggest reason you shouldn't tap your 401(k) early is that if you do, you'll have less money available in retirement. Not only that, but since the money in your 401(k) gets invested, if you take an early withdrawal, you'll lose out on whatever growth that sum could've achieved. There are plenty of reasons why taking early 401(k) distributions is a bad idea, so once you fund that account, pledge to keep your money locked away until you're older and ready to retire.
4. Will I pay taxes when I withdraw from my 401(k)?
Unless you have a Roth-style 401(k), your withdrawals, whether you take them early or in retirement, will be taxed as ordinary income. This means that the total amount you accumulate won't be yours to enjoy in full; rather, you'll need to plan on paying a portion of your total to the IRS. The good news, however, is that any growth your investments achieve over the years is tax-deferred, meaning you won't owe the IRS any money on your investment gains until the time comes to take withdrawals.
5. What happens if I leave or lose my job?
You have several options for your 401(k) once you're no longer employed by the company sponsoring that plan. For one thing, you can typically leave your money where it is, though that's generally not the best idea. Another option is to either roll your 401(k) into your new employer's plan, or roll it into an IRA that you open separately. Either way, rest assured that you won't forfeit that cash should your employment arrangement come to an end.
6. Are 401(k)s different from IRAs?
IRAs and 401(k)s have similar features. Both offer tax-free contributions and tax-deferred growth on investments, but whereas you can put up to $18,000 or $24,000 into a 401(k) at present, IRAs max out at $5,500 for younger workers and $6,500 for those 50 and over. Furthermore, the annual contribution limit for IRAs won't be increasing in 2018, thus widening the gap between IRA and 401(k) maximums.
On the other hand, IRAs tend to offer more investment choices than 401(k)s. This can be advantageous for two reasons. First, the more options you have, the greater your chances of finding investments that align with your personal strategy. Furthermore, the more low-cost investments you have access to, the less you'll lose in fees. If you don't have access to a 401(k), then it definitely pays to save for retirement in an IRA. Furthermore, you can fund a 401(k) and IRA simultaneously, though if you do, depending on your financial circumstances, you may not end up getting a tax break out of the latter.
Now that you're clear on how 401(k)s work, it's time to think about funding your account. The sooner you do, the more you stand to gain in the long run.
More From The Motley Fool
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By Tim Hepher and Alexander Cornwell
DUBAI (Reuters) - Emirates unveiled a preliminary order worth $15 billion for 40 Boeing jets on Sunday, but kept Europe's Airbus waiting for a lifeline order for A380 superjumbos as the Dubai Airshow opened amid worries over tensions in the Middle East.
The largest Middle East carrier signed a draft deal for the largest version of Boeing's Dreamliner, the 787-10, watched by Dubai Ruler Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum, credited for the launch of Emirates more than 30 years ago.
Reuters earlier reported Boeing was close to clinching a deal for 787-10s, upstaging expectations of an early Airbus deal for the larger A380.
Emirates chairman Sheikh Ahmed bin Saeed al-Maktoum said the carrier had chosen the latest version of Boeing's mid-sized wide-body jet after comparing it with the Airbus A350.
Delegates said that comparison delivered a blow to Airbus which had been competing to win back Dubai's endorsement for its mid-sized A350 after Emirates cancelled an order for 70 in 2014.
Its problems did not end there as an anticipated order for A380 superjumbos worth $16 billion failed to materialise at the last moment, forcing it into further talks to finalise a deal.
Airbus has been looking for a boost to the A380 superjumbo, which after a decade in service has seen sales decline in favour of smaller but highly efficient long-haul jets.
Emirates had been expected to announce deals worth $30 billion shared between Airbus and Boeing, whose envoys unusually found themselves rubbing elbows while waiting for deals to pop.
But in a reminder of the unpredictable nature of the $100 billion industry, some Airbus officials stepped into the packed room for a joint announcement, only to see Boeing take the honours.
Top Airbus executives extended their stay as talks continued.
"Emirates are still talking to Airbus about it. There are no promises," a Gulf source said.
TRADE-INS
A key to the deal could be the extent to which Airbus is prepared to buy back A380s due to leave the Emirates fleet.
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"A few trade-ins will be involved," a person familiar with the matter said.
Day one of the show brought $17 billion of civil orders even as business confidence in the region wobbles, but business remained relatively modest compared to the show's peak in 2013.
A rift emerged in the summer between Qatar and Arab nations, including the United Arab Emirates.
That dispute has kept Qatar Airways, which four years ago ordered planes jointly with Emirates, away from the show.
Tensions deepened this month when Saudi Arabia, the region's biggest economy, detained dozens of top officials in an unprecedented, sweeping corruption crackdown.
But Sheikh Ahmed said the Emirates 787 deal was proof that the region's hub aviation model was working.
He highlighted the impact on jobs in the United States, where Gulf airlines are engaged in a dispute with domestic carriers who accuse them of using subsidies: a charge they deny.
"This is a long-term commitment that supports hundreds of thousands of jobs, not only at Boeing but throughout the aviation supply chain," Sheikh Ahmed said.
"Our announcement today also speaks to our confidence in the future of aviation in the UAE and the region."
In a sign of confidence in demand from premium travellers, Emirates unveiled first-class suites developed in co-operation with luxury car maker Mercedes-Benz.
Azerbaijan Airlines announced an order for five Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner jets and two freighters.
In exhibition halls, defence firms were bullish about their ability to bag contracts with the UAE and its Gulf Arab neighbours given rapidly escalating tensions with Iran.
"We have good chances of closing more contracts with forces here," said Gabriel Ducroizet, sales manager with French firm Rafaut -- which produces racks connecting bombs to warplanes.
The UAE announced a $1.6 billion deal with Lockheed Martin to upgrade 80 F-16 jet fighters.
(Additional reporting by Aziz El Yaakoubi, Noah Browning, Stanley Carvalho; Editing by Catherine Evans)
(DANANG, Vietnam) U.S. President Donald Trump said he believed President Vladimir Putin when he denied accusations Russia meddled in last years U.S. election despite U.S. intelligence agencies conclusion of Russian interference.
Trump made the comment after he and Putin met briefly at a summit in Vietnam on Saturday and agreed on a statement supporting a political solution for Syria.
It was their first encounter since July and came during a low in U.S.-Russia relations and at a time Trump is haunted by an investigation into accusations that Putin influenced the election that brought him to the White House.
Putin reiterated the denials of interference, Trump said.
Every time he sees me he says I didnt do that, and I really believe that when he tells me that, he means it, Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One after leaving the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in the resort of Danang.
I think he is very insulted by it, which is not a good thing for our country, Trump said.
Trump, who has called allegations of campaign collusion with Moscow a hoax, has faced questions from Democrats about the matter since he took office. A special counsel, Robert Mueller, is conducting a probe that has led to charges against Trumps former campaign manager Paul Manafort and his associate Rick Gates.
U.S. intelligence agencies have also concluded Russians interfered to tip the election in Trumps favour through hacking and releasing emails to embarrass Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton and spreading social media propaganda.
Russia has repeatedly denied meddling.
The top Democrat on the U.S. House of Representatives intelligence committee, which is investigating the issue, harshly criticized Trumps comments and accused him of siding with Putin over U.S. intelligence agencies.
The President fools no one. He understands that the Russians intervened through the hacking and dumping of his opponents emails, the fruits of which he exploited time and again on the campaign trail, Adam Schiff said in a statement.
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He understands all this and more. He just doesnt understand how to put country over self. Or to put it in terms he is more familiar with Mr. Trump simply cant bring himself to put America first, the Democrat said.
In Danang, Putin told reporters an alleged link between Manafort and Russia was fabricated by Trumps opponents.
Putin dismissed suggestions Russia influenced the elections through political advertising. Tech companies, including Facebook, have said some Russian-bought political content spread on their platforms around the time.
There is no confirmation of our mass media meddling in election campaigns and there cant be any, Putin said.
LIMITED CONTACT
After emphasizing on the 2016 campaign trail that it would be nice if the United States and Russia could work together, Trump has had limited contact with Putin since taking office.
Trump again made this case on Saturday, saying it would benefit Washington to have a good ties with Moscow so they could work together on issues including Syrias civil war, the conflict in Ukraine and the North Korean nuclear crisis.
Look, I cant stand there and argue with him, I would rather have him get out of Syria, Trump said. I would rather get to work with him on the Ukraine rather than standing and arguing.
In Vietnam, Trump and Putin agreed a joint statement saying there was no military solution to the conflict in Syria, where Russia has militarily backed Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in a civil war now in its seventh year.
We did it very quickly, Trump told reporters. We seem to have a very good feeling for each other, a good relationship considering we dont know each other well.
Talking after their meeting, Putin described Trump as a well-mannered person and comfortable to deal with.
We know each other little, but the U.S. president is highly civil in his behaviour, friendly. We have a normal dialogue but unfortunately little time, he said.
Trump said they had two or three very short conversations.
They were seen chatting amicably as they walked to the position where the traditional APEC summit photo was being taken at a viewpoint looking over the South China Sea.
Pictures from the APEC meeting also showed Trump approaching Putin at the summit table and patting him on the back. They also shook hands at the summit dinner on Friday.
The Kremlin said their statement on Syria was coordinated especially for the Danang meeting.
With Islamic State having suffered losses in Syria and beyond, greater attention is turning to the broader conflict between Assads forces and rebel factions.
They confirmed their commitment to Syrias sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity and called on all parties to take an active part in the Geneva political process, it said. (Additional reporting by Steve Holland in DANANG, Maria Kiselyova in MOSCOW and Mark Hosenball in WASHINGTON; Writing by Matthew Tostevin and Arshad Mohammed; Editing by Hugh Lawson and Chizu Nomiyama)
So lets get this straight: The Trump administration is perfectly willing to gut environmental protection rules, relax healthcare oversight, take away consumer rights, kill net neutrality and dismantle labor laws. But when it comes to antitrust, theyre hyper-aggressive enforcers? What a joke. Makan Delrahim should be ashamed. Multiple media outlets have reported that the Justice Department may oppose AT&Ts $85.4 billion acquisition of Time Warner, which just so happens to own fake news CNN.
Jenna Greene
There are certainly good reasons to oppose the deal, but theyre reasons mainly expressed by groups such as the Consumer Federation of America and Free Press, and Senate Democrats like Al Franken and Elizabeth Warren. Because its a vertical merger. And most of the time, the government hasnt done much to limit vertical mergersones where the combining companies are not direct competitors and whose assets dont overlap. The Antitrust Division under President Barack Obama was hardly a pushover, on average opposing more than 50 mergers per year. Nonetheless, on Obamas watch the feds greenlighted vertical unions including Comcast/ NBC Universal; AT&T/DirecTV; Google/ITA; and Verizon/Yahoo. Are we seriously supposed to believe the Trump administration is more concerned about vertical restraints on competition? That they want to push the boundaries of antitrust enforcement because they just care so darn much about protecting consumers and the marketplace for free speech? (The Federal Communications Commission, which reviews certain mergers to determine if they are in the public interest, is not involved this time because the deal doesnt involve the transfer of airwave licenses.) Look, everyone knows Trump hates CNN. He reminds us of this constantly. And lo and behold, the Justice Department is reportedly asking for Time Warner to divest CNN or perhaps Turner Broadcasting as a whole to win merger approval. Its not even clear to me how doing so would mitigate basic antitrust concerns such as the power to raise prices. But heyit sure would stick it to CNN for daring to criticize the president. When President Trump pardoned Sheriff Joe Arpaio, who was found guilty of criminal contempt, I wrote that it signaled a frightening disregard for the rule of law. And so does this. The notion of using antitrust review as retaliation for reporting unfavorably on the president? Thats straight out of a despots playbook. The good news is, the parties have balked. "I have never offered to sell CNN and have no intention of doing so," Randall Stephenson, AT&T chairman and CEO, said Wednesday. Theyre well-represented by antitrust counsel. As the acquiring party, AT&T can be expected to lead the fight. The company has tapped a team from Arnold & Porter led by Richard Rosen, and from Crowell & Moring led by Wm. Randolph Smith. Veteran antitrust lawyers, both guided AT&T through successful merger review when it purchased DirecTV. Time Warner has turned to Cravath, Swaine & Moore, with an antitrust team that includes former DOJ antitrust chief Christine Varney, another leader of the bar. Heres what I hope happens. I hope AT&T and Time Warner tell DOJ to go to hell. I hope they force the feds file a complaint in federal court challenging the merger. I hope it goes to trial, and I hope DOJ gets truly and embarrassingly clobbered. I actually have genuine reservations about whether the merger will benefit the public. If the Antitrust Division under Bill Baer was opposing it, Id root for them. Because they would have been fighting it for the right reasons. But it strains credibility to believe that Team Trump, so overwhelmingly anti-regulatory in every other way, is embracing aggressive antitrust enforcement out of sincere conviction. No. This looks political, and thats unacceptable.
Visitors wait at the reception of Axis Bank's corporate headquarters in Mumbai, India July 25, 2017. REUTERS/Danish Siddiqui (Reuters)
By Devidutta Tripathy
MUMBAI (Reuters) - India's Axis Bank Ltd is to raise 116.26 billion rupees ($1.8 billion) to further strengthen its capital base by selling shares and warrants to a group of investors including Bain Capital and top Indian insurer Life Insurance Corp (LIC).
Axis Bank said in a filing that its board had approved the sale of up to 172.63 million shares at 525 rupees each, and 45.36 million convertible warrants at 565 rupees each on a preferential basis.
Ahead of the news Axis shares had closed 0.8 percent higher at 544.80 rupees in a Mumbai market that gained 0.1 percent.
The stock is up 21 percent so far in 2017, underperforming a 40 percent rise in the banking sector index and a 26 percent gain in the main market index.
The fundraising "will bolster the capital adequacy of the bank, thereby providing growth capital for the core business ... and its subsidiaries," the Mumbai-based lender said in a statement on Friday, after securing its board's approval for the deal.
The capital raising comes after the lender, India's third-biggest among private sector banks and seventh-biggest overall by assets, saw its bad loans surge in the second quarter to Sept.30 after a central bank audit.
While 21 state-run lenders account for bulk of India's record $146 billion soured loans, some of the private sector lenders have also seen defaults rising in the recent quarters.
Despite the rise in bad loans Axis Bank's capital adequacy ratio stood at 16.32 percent of assets at the end of September.
The bank will raise 90.63 billion rupees from the share sale and 25.63 billion rupees from the sale of warrants.
Affiliates of Bain Capital will invest 68.54 billion rupees in the bank, while LIC, which is owned by the Indian government and already owns a stake in Axis, will invest 15.83 billion rupees.
The bank will put the fund-raising plan to a shareholders' vote on Dec. 8, it said.
Axis Bank's investment banking arm Axis Capital advised it on the deal, while JP Morgan advised Bain Capital.
($1 = 65.1525 Indian rupees)
(Reporting by Devidutta Tripathy and Swati Bhat; Editing by Subhranshu Sahu, Greg Mahlich)
Canadian lawmakers have voted on a bill to legalize cannabis that would make Canada the first G7 country to allow free consumption of the mind-altering drug (AFP Photo/Lars Hagberg) (AFP/File)
Ottawa (AFP) - Soon-to-be legal recreational marijuana sales in Canada could bring up to Can$1 billion (US$800 million) annually into government coffers, an official said Friday.
"If the market is somewhere in the neighborhood of 400,000 kilos (440 tons)... then the tax impact of that would be somewhere in the neighborhood of Can$1 billion," said MP and former Toronto police chief Bill Blair, who has been tasked with overseeing the setup of the new regime.
"That's a very high estimate, in my opinion," he added, stressing that the actual size of the recreational pot market is not yet known.
Ottawa is scheduled to legalize cannabis next July after having already permitted its use for medical care.
One of the major considerations in the country's cannabis taxation policy is to keep costs low enough to undercut the illicit pot market.
The authorities have proposed a 10 percent excise tax on marijuana in addition to applying sales taxes of up to 15 percent, with amounts varying across jurisdictions.
The proceeds would be split with the provinces, which have announced a patchwork of public and private sector retail sales for cannabis.
"BITCOIN CASH IS BITCOIN NOW."
Issued by Li Ang, head of China-based bitcoin mining outfit Canoe Pool, the proclamation may not be distinguishable from typical cryptocurrency banter. However, the difference this time around is the context.
No idle statement, Ang's comment comes amid what can only be characterized as one of the biggest migrations of capital yet seen in the nascent asset class. Billions are on the move in the crypto markets, and it's plainly observable where the funds are headed.
After hitting a record high above $800 on Friday, the price of bitcoin cash, the alternative cryptocurrency forked from the bitcoin blockchain in August, has doubled within 24 hours, hitting a high of $1,856 according to figures from data provider CoinMarketCap. At that price, bitcoin cash is now valued at more than $30 billion, passing ethereum for second-place standing in the market.
The move follows the sudden decision this week by a group of businesses and mining pools to suspend an effort to change the rules of the bitcoin software. Called Segwit2x, or simply "2x" by some, the effort would have increased bitcoin's block size one way by which its transaction capacity can be measured.
But while bitcoin's developers and technologists lauded the suspension, miners and entrepreneurs lamented what they described to CoinDesk as a decision that would inspire others to migrate to blockchains more accommodating to their ideas and ideals. And if it was unclear at the time which alternatives would win favor, bitcoin cash is already proving the primary beneficiary.
Early and active in migrating support appears to be bitcoin's miners.
According to data from Fork.lol, at roughly 4:30 UTC on Sunday the total amount of mining power backing the bitcoin cash blockchain surpassed that of the bitcoin blockchain.
When asked about the move Jiang Zhuoer, founder of bitcoin mining pool BTC.Top, said simply that "2x fans" are moving both funds and mining hardware to bitcoin cash.
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"BTC is going to die," Zhuoer said. Hapio Yang, CEO of mining pool operator ViaBTC, responded similarly, indicating he believes that businesses and investors are now migrating funds to bitcoin cash.
"I think more and more bitcoin holders are starting to understand what is the real bitcoin," he said via WeChat.
Doom sellers
Indeed, spurred by a sudden change in market outlook, bitcoin cash supporters appeared emboldened in their remarks. No doubt part of the equation is the soaring valuation of the protocol, which after debuting at $4 billion in August, hasn't exactly solve some of its more pressing open questions.
Still, Jake Smith, general manager of cryptocurrency web portal Bitcoin.com, owned by investor and block size increase advocate Roger Ver, doubled down on the idea that the new investment dollars represent more than a speculative migration in the market soon to pass.
Smith noted that with the price boost bitcoin cash's value proposition can only now be strengthened by what he categorized as its ultimate performance increases over the bitcoin blockchain.
"I think a positive feedback loop has been created. This is waking people up to the shaky foundations BTC is built on," he said.
Smith went so far as to describe the typical doomsday situation predicted by those supporting larger blocks that bitcoin's transaction backlog will continue to grow, its transactions will become more expensive, and that these two factors will decrease user experience and force users to migrate.
Other supporters like bitcoin cash developer Juan Garavaglia chalked up the day's price movements to "better planning" by those using the protocol.
"Bitcoin Core is unable to execute, has a poor roadmap [and is] disconnected with market needs," Garavaglia said. "We can execute, we have smooth coordination with key market actors and we address market needs."
Skeptical voices
If those boasts sound familiar, so too was the rhetoric from those who were more apt to read the bitcoin cash price movements with more incredulity.
Jack Liao, the CEO of Hong Kong-based mining firm LightningASIC, for instance, sought to frame the idea that the bitcoin cash price increase represented any real uptick in interest in the project as "total bullshit."
One of the leaders behind the bitcoin gold cryptocurrency, set to launch tomorrow, Liao has been a noted critic of bitcoin's mining operators, in particular, Bitmain one of the industry's largest sellers of specialized mining chips and the operator of several mining pools.
For those following the scaling debate, Bitmain's conduct has been one of the larger contentious narrative points, and Liao (like others) believes the explosion seen in the bitcoin cash market value is nothing more than an orchestrated bid by the firm (and its supporters) to prop up the market
"Many, many investors just see the change in hash rate," he said. "But they cannot support such a big bitcoin cash price."
Beijing-based over-the-counter Zhao Dong reported a similar sentiment in some circles, crediting the price to manipulation by miners and investors who have supported Segwit2x and bitcoin cash in the past. Bitmain and Ver were both signatories of the agreement that sparked the 2x software.
"They have money, they have hash power, they have everything need to pump the bitcoin cash price," he said.
Indeed, one of the more interesting theories at the moment revolves around an unconfirmed PasteBin conversation that seems to foretell yesterday's market move. (Though this may say more about current paranoia in the industry at large).
Swing states
Still, that's not to say the reaction was broken along partisan lines.
Willy Woo, recently named one of CoinDesk's Top 5 Token Analysts of 2017, sees the price move as perhaps one to watch. In contrast to other alternative cryptocurrencies that he said may lack value propositions, he went so far as to color bitcoin cash as a more nuanced option.
"It's backed by a lot of money from China controlling its price and supporting its network. If you buy bitcoin cash, you are betting that China wants it to dominate. That's a strategic and geopolitical bet," he told CoinDesk.
Bobby Lee, CEO of mining pool and exchange operator BTCC, had a similar reaction. Long a business that supported the Segwit2x proposal to upgrade the blockchain, he reads the price boost in bitcoin cash as an obvious side effect of the decision to block the upgrade.
While he acknowledged that it's yet to be seen whether this weekend's movements amount to anything more than a quick speculative fervor, he still hinted the situation remains one he'll be watching and observing.
Of particular concern for Lee, and others, is the decline in bitcoin's total mining power.
Lee went so far as to suggest that any continuing decline in this metric could cut into an attribute that has traditionally been one of the cryptocurrency's defining characteristics.
Lee concluded:
"If BTC's hash power continues to fall, then I do think BTC has long-term trouble."
Disclosure: CoinDesk is a subsidiary of Digital Currency Group, which has an ownership stake in BTCC.
Bitcoin close-up image via Shutterstock
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Actress Ellen Page joined the recent wave of women in Hollywood who have called out the inappropriate behavior of powerful men in the industry.
In a Facebook post on Friday, the Juno and Inception actress accused movie director-producer Brett Ratner of sexual harassment and expressed regret over the fact that she worked with director Woody Allen on his 2012 film To Rome with Love. Page called Ratner homophobic and she claims he sexually harassed her about her sexual orientation while they were both on the set of 2006s X-Men: The Last Stand, which Ratner directed. Page came out as gay in 2014.
He outed me with no regard for my well-being, an act we all recognize as homophobic, Page wrote on Facebook. She also claimed to have heard Ratner make inappropriate sexual comments about other women on the film set. Several women have recently come forward to accuse Ratner of sexual harassment, though the producer has so far denied all of their allegations.
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In the same Facebook post, Page described other harassment she has endured in Hollywood and she also took aim at Woody Allen, the controversial Annie Hall director who has previously been accused of sexual abuse (allegations he has also repeatedly denied). Page called starring in To Rome with Love in spite of those previous allegations an awful mistake.
I did a Woody Allen movie and it is the biggest regret of my career. I am ashamed I did this, Page wrote.
Page is the latest actor to publicly express regret for working with Allen, while actresses such as Kate Winslet and Scarlett Johansson have received criticism in recent years for taking roles in the iconic directors films.
(Refiles to aid `Airshow' to headline; no change in text.)
By Alexander Cornwell and Tim Hepher
DUBAI, Nov 12 (Reuters) - Dubai airline Emirates joined forces with Mercedes-Benz and motoring journalist Jeremy Clarkson to launch its new first-class suites on Sunday, inspired by the styling of luxury car interiors.
Emirates, which was the first airline to put showers on commercial jets, rolled out the futuristic design at the start of the Dubai Airshow.
"This is the first time we have seen anything like this in the civil aviation world," Emirates President Tim Clark said.
The six fully enclosed cabins for its Boeing 777 jets feature seats that recline into flat beds and a 32-inch television.
B/E Aerospace, recently acquired by Rockwell Collins , is the supplier of the seats.
Emirates said it spent "many millions" of dollars developing the new premium section over several years.
"The investment is an awful lot of money," Clark said, declining to disclose exactly how much the airline had spent.
Emirates has placed high-definition cameras outside the planes, enabling passengers sitting in the middle of the first class cabin to have a window-like experience.
The airline has recruited Jeremy Clarkson, co-presenter of Amazon car show Grand Tour, for their advertising campaign to promote the new first class.
"You may not like him, but most people find him amusing, sometimes a little irritating, but he is very impactful," Clark said.
Clarkson was dropped from co-presenting BBC's Top Gear in 2015 after he physically attacked a producer.
The size of the suites will reduce the number of first- class seats on Emirates' 777s from eight to six.
Clark said Emirates was studying how to add them to its A380 fleet, and dismissed skepticism of first class by other airlines, telling reporters that there was strong demand for the premium class including on routes to China, Paris, and London.
Some carriers have reduced the size of their first class, or dropped it altogether in favour of business class and a premium economy class product. (Reporting by Alexander Cornwell, editing by Larry King)
Credit reporting company Equifax Inc. corporate offices are pictured in Atlanta, Georgia, U.S., September 8, 2017. REUTERS/Tami Chappell/Files
By Jim Finkle and Aparajita Saxena
(Reuters) - Equifax Inc on Friday issued a fourth-quarter profit outlook that fell short of Wall Street expectations, saying the massive breach of its consumer data earlier this year would hurt sales and result in costs of $60 million to $75 million during the period.
Executives at the credit-reporting company blamed the expected revenue decline on delays in contract signing from business and government customers, which began in the third quarter and continued into the current quarter.
"We're hoping to win back their trust and then be able to regain the business that we've indicated has been deferred," Chief Financial Officer John Gamble said in the call. "We're still working through that process."
Equifax shares were little changed in midday trading. They have dropped around 25 percent since the company's Sept. 7 disclosure of the breach that exposed sensitive data on 145.5 million consumers.
Analysts on Friday's call probed Equifax for further details on its recovery effort. The company declined to provide estimates on total costs from the breach or say how much might be covered by insurance.
"When is your cyber security going to be up to code, or up to standard, or however you want to define that?" asked Wells Fargo Securities analyst William Warmington.
"This is a journey," interim Chief Executive Paulino do Rego Barros Jr responded, saying the firm was working to make sure its security team could protect current systems.
The company forecast fourth-quarter adjusted profit of $1.32 to $1.38 per share, below the average forecast of $1.42 per share, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.
It said fallout from the breach will cut revenue by 3 percent to 4 percent in the quarter. The company expects revenue of $825 million to $835 million, compared to the average analyst forecast of $833.65 million.
Investors are looking for clues to help assess whether the breach will have a long-term impact on the company's sales and profit, Stephens Inc analyst Brett Huff said.
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The latest management commentary generally supports the view that the long-term business model looks at least okay," said Huff, who has an "equal weight" rating on Equifax shares.
Equifax also said it has halted a share buyback program.
(Reporting by Jim Finkle in Toronto and Aparajita Saxena in Bengalaru; Editing by Meredith Mazzilli)
Republicans in the U.S. Senate rolled out their version of a tax plan this week and left one controversial provision untouched: carried interest.
Carried interest allows some hedge fund managers, venture capitalists and private equity financiers to pay a lower tax rate than average workers; that rate can dip as low as 20% when compared with the top bracket of 39.6%. They are able to use the carried interest tax break on the portion of the profit they take from their funds overall gains during a given year, which is typically 20%. While some see the provision as an incentive to encourage financial managers to take risks, others believe the profits are being made with clients money and should be treated as income rather than capital risk.
Carried interest is a grey issue because its partly capital gains and partly labor income, Chris Edwards, director of tax policy studies at the Cato Institute and editor of www.DownsizingGovernment.org, told FOX Business. A lot of people are cynical about the role of private equity and venture capital in the economy, but it plays a crucial role. I would hesitate getting rid of it, but I wouldnt be totally against it.
Then-candidate Donald Trump said during the campaign he wanted to close the loophole, criticizing some hedge fund managers for getting away with murder where the provision is concerned. National Economic Director Gary Cohn said as recently as September that the president was committed to eliminating the loophole.
A lot of what Trump has wanted is in these bills, so his administration is having a lot of influence, Edwards said. So it is very surprising [carried interest is not included].
While GOP senators shied away from outright removing the loophole, the plan put forward by the House of Representatives would slightly amend it, delaying the so-called holding period from one year to three years. That means a hedge fund would have to hold an asset for three years in order to receive the lower tax rate on gains. Edwards said this could be a good compromise because it distinguishes between short-term and long-term capital gains, where the latter is generally favored by the government because it is more often associated with pro-growth activity.
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Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin spoke to FOX Business about the carried interest provisions in both bills on Friday, refusing to comment on whether he viewed carried interest as investment or income, saying instead that discussions on the issue would continue in Congress.
Edwards also said that the final bill could ultimately address carried interest in a different way as negotiations progress. He would only like to see it eliminated if the government were to use the money to reduce other taxes on corporations or capital gains, [using] the money to reduce taxes to spur growth in other ways.
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At a Veterans Day event this morning, Republican Senate candidate Roy Moore again denied claims that he had been sexually involved with a 14-year-old girl when he was in his early thirties, and reiterated that he will not step down from his Alabama race against Democrat Doug Jones. But since the allegations were reported on Thursday by the Washington Post, the national Republican Party has been working to block his path to the Senate.
That began with the withdrawal of a funding agreement between Moores campaign and the National Republican Senatorial Committee. But according to a Friday report in the New York Times, the maneuvering goes much deeper than that.
Alabamas Secretary of State has said that there is no legal route for the Republican Party to unilaterally remove Moore from the ballot, or replace him as the Republican nominee. Instead, the Times reports that Republicans are mulling a write-in campaign for Moores Republican primary opponent, Luther Strange. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has reportedly already spoken with Strange about the idea, and Senator Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), who won re-election in a 2010 write-in campaign, is set to speak to him this weekend.
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Republicans are also considering alternate write-in candidates, as well as riskier legal tactics to remove Moore from the ballot. That could include asking Alabamas Republican governor, Kay Ivey, to delay the December 12th election, giving the party time to replace him. That move, though, could risk violating state or federal election laws, in addition to further fracturing the Republican party.
Despite such discussions, and the unwinding of some financial ties between Moore and the national GOP, Federal Election Commission records show that the Republican National Committee and the Alabama Republican Party remain signatories to Moores joint fundraising committee. Two sitting Republicans, Maryland Representative Andy Harris and Kentucky Representative Thomas Massie, also remain minor financial backers of Moores campaign.
Opposition to Moore from the national Republican Party began long before this weeks allegations. President Trump endorsed Strange in early August, and mainstream GOP funders including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce refused to support Moore after his primary victory. Both business voices and Moores Democratic opponent have said the former judges extreme views, particularly on LGBT rights, could harm Alabamas already battered economy.
Now, Moore represents an even more imminent risk. If he loses his race, which polls now show is tied, Republicans will be left with a razor-thin majority of only 51 seats in the Senate. If he wins, they will be tainted by an alleged pedophile in their ranks.
A building on the Qualcomm campus is seen, as chip maker Broadcom Ltd announced an unsolicited bid to buy peer Qualcomm Inc for $103 billion, in San Diego, California, U.S. November 6, 2017. REUTERS/Mike Blake
By Greg Roumeliotis and Liana B. Baker
(Reuters) - U.S. chipmaker Qualcomm Inc (QCOM.O) is making preparations to reject rival Broadcom Ltd's (AVGO.O) $103 billion bid as early as this week, four people familiar with the matter said on Sunday, setting the stage for one of the biggest-ever takeover battles.
Qualcomm's board of directors could meet as early as Sunday to review the unsolicited acquisition offer and decide on its strategy, the sources said. The preparations for the board meeting indicate that Qualcomm is poised to rebuff the bid as insufficient as early as Monday, although it may decide to spend a few more days this week to prepare its full response to Broadcom, the sources added.
Qualcomm Chief Executive Steven Mollenkopf has spent the past few days soliciting feedback from Qualcomm shareholders, and feels that Qualcomm's $70-per-share bid undervalues the company and does not price in the uncertainty associated with getting the deal approved by regulators, according to the sources.
Broadcom CEO Hock Tan, who said earlier this month he would redomicile his company to the United States from Singapore, has stated he is open to launching a takeover battle. The sources said Broadcom was preparing to submit a slate of directors by Qualcomm's Dec. 8 nomination deadline. That would allow Qualcomm shareholders to vote to replace the company's board and force it to engage with Broadcom.
Broadcom has also been deliberating the possibility of raising its bid for Qualcomm, including through more debt financing, some of the sources said, although it was not clear when Broadcom would choose to make such a move.
The sources asked not to be identified because the deliberations are confidential. Qualcomm and Broadcom did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Qualcomm provides chips to carrier networks to deliver broadband and mobile data. It is engaged in a patent infringement dispute with Apple Inc (AAPL.O), and is also trying to close its $38 billion acquisition of automotive chipmaker NXP Semiconductors NV (NXPI.O) after signing a deal in October 2016. Broadcom has indicated it is willing to acquire Qualcomm irrespective of whether it closes the NXP deal.
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NXP shares have been trading above Qualcomm's offer price, as many NXP shareholders, including hedge fund Elliott Management Corp, have been holding out for a better price. Qualcomm does not plan to significantly raise its price for NXP as a defensive strategy to make its acquisition by Broadcom more expensive, according to one of the sources.
Qualcomm shares closed at $64.57 on Friday, while Broadcom ended at $264.96.
(Reporting by Greg Roumeliotis in New York and Liana B. Baker in San Francisco; Editing by Peter Cooney)
Add Sweden to the growing list of customers for Raytheon's (NYSE: RTN) Patriot air defense missile system, a fresh shot in the arm for the defense contractor as it searches globally for new business.
Patriot missile battery
A Patriot missile battery at a Turkish military base in Gaziantep, Turkey. Image source: U.S. Army, via Flickr.
The Swedish government said Tuesday that Raytheon's system had beaten out the SAMP/T platform from Eurosam GIE, a joint venture between Airbus affiliate MBDA and Thales Group. The government valued the contract at about 10 billion Swedish crowns, or more than $1.2 billion, and expects to begin taking delivery by 2020 toward a goal of having the system operational by 2025 at the latest.
A growing customer list
While the U.S. is by far the world's largest spender on defense -- accounting for $611 billion of the $1.686 trillion in 2016 global military expenditures, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute -- U.S. contractors stung in recent years by budget battles and political gamesmanship at home have increasingly been looking to mitigate domestic risk by selling overseas.
Raytheon already stands out among its peers in this regard, with about 32% of second-quarter total sales and 35% of bookings coming from international customers. Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman, by comparison, generated just 27% and 15%, respectively, of total 2016 revenue internationally.
This is Raytheon's second big Patriot win in Europe this year, following a July announcement that Romania would buy the system and other U.S. armaments. Raytheon now has more than a dozen international customers for its Patriot system, providing new potential sources of ongoing revenue even after delivery is complete thanks to maintenance and upgrade opportunities.
Michael Tronolone, director of Raytheon's European missile business, at a Defense News conference in September said he is seeing increased interest from countries, including some that previously considered the Patriot to be unaffordable. He said the growing book of business for the Patriot is helping to drive down overall costs of the program, opening it up to additional customers.
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Each win can make future competitions easier. The Swedish government said its Armed Forces "advocated Patriot as a new air defense system" because it's "a proven system with good delivery reliability and anti-ballistic missile capability." That assessment will surely be noted in Poland, where the Patriot system is currently under review.
Sluggish homefront
Defense stocks have risen dramatically over the past year in part thanks to growing optimism that after years of partisan Washington battles, Republican control of both the White House and Congress would lead to an uptick in Pentagon spending. Raytheon in particular has had a good year, with shares up 37% in the past year.
Increased spending in future years does appear likely. But so far, revenue growth has eluded the industry. And even accounting for the long-term nature of defense contracts, there is some cause for concern that the stocks have gotten ahead of themselves and a barrage of new dollars spent on weapons systems might not materialize at the levels many are hoping for.
Raytheon is currently trading at 2.22 times sales and 26 times trailing-12-month earnings, well above historical averages and nearly twice its P/E ratio as recently as mid-2015.
Obviously, it's going to take a lot more than a couple of missile system deals in Europe to sustain such lofty valuations, but these contracts are, if nothing else, steps in the right direction. Raytheon investors should be encouraged to see the company's international momentum continuing to build.
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Lou Whiteman has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
President Donald Trump confidant Rupert Murdoch contacted AT&T Chief Executive Officer Randall Stephenson twice in the last six months to ask about a sale of CNN, sources told Bloomberg on Friday, raising more concerns that federal pressure concerning a merger involving CNNs parent company could be politically motivated.
President Donald Trump confidant Rupert Murdoch contacted AT&T Chief Executive Officer Randall Stephenson twice in the last six months to ask about a sale of CNN, sources told Bloomberg on Friday, raising more concerns that federal pressure concerning a merger involving CNNs parent company could be politically motivated.
Its not clear if the executive chairman of 21st Century Fox was interested in purchasing CNN or if Murdoch was simply gathering information. One source said he offered to purchase the network in both phone calls, while another said Fox has no interest in acquiring CNN, according to Bloomberg and Reuters, which first reported the calls.
CNN has come under the microscope of the Justice Departments new antitrust chief, Makan Delrahim, who warned that either CNNs parent, Turner Broadcasting, or DirecTV would have to be sold before the federal government would allow a planned $85.4 billion merger between Time Warner and AT&T. Stephenson has said he has no interest in selling CNN.
A Murdoch purchase of the network could threaten to quiet a voice that has been critical of the Trump administration. The president has consistently accused CNN of being fake news. Meanwhile, the Murdoch-owned Fox News network has steadfastly offered sympathetic coverage of the Trump White House.
Earlier this year, Trump adviser and son-in-law Jared Kushner met with Time Warner executive Gary Ginsberg and said that 20 percent of the CNN staff should be fired because they were so wrong about the Trump campaign, sources told The Wall Street Journal. A White House official said the comments were not intended to be taken seriously, but they rattled Time Warner, the Journal reported Friday.
The merger would consolidate tremendous power in two united behemoth communication companies. But critics fear that the federal government may be using its power not to battle a monopoly but to hurt CNN.
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Trump Is The Worst Possible Messenger For The Rising Anti-Monopoly Movement
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The logo of the web service Amazon is pictured in this June 8, 2017 illustration photo. REUTERS/Carlos Jasso/Illustration
By Dan Freed and Pete Schroeder
NEW YORK/WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Small Main Street banks vowed on Wednesday to fight any review of a ban that prevents retailers such as Wal-Mart Stores Inc (WMT.N) and tech companies like Amazon.com Inc (AMZN.O) from becoming fully fledged banks.
Keith Noreika, a top U.S. banking regulator, stirred disquiet among community bankers with his call for a review of the current regulations. The proposal by the acting Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) was made at a banking conference in New York and comes as technology companies such as Amazon and Apple Inc (AAPL.O) have already broken into the financial arena with payment services and different types of lending.
"Mixing banking and commerce is a bad idea that keeps recurring like a bad dream," said Paul Merski with the Independent Community Bankers of America.
"It's one of our bedrock resolutions to oppose the threat of full blown mixing of banking and commerce."
Mixing banking and other commercial activities has traditionally been prohibited in the United States, amid fears customer deposits would be used to fund or subsidize unrelated and potentially risky non-banking business.
Even so, technology companies have been making inroads.
Earlier this week, Apple released a product called Apple Pay Cash. The feature allows iPhone users to send each other cash that can then immediately be used in stores that take Apple Pay. The system uses a so-called virtual debit card to enable in-store payments. Amazon, meanwhile, offers small-business lending.
Nonetheless, Wells Fargo & Co (WFC.N) Chief Executive Tim Sloan said he does not view Silicon Valley as a threat to banks. "I don't think Apple fundamentally wants to become a bank. I don't think Amazon wants to become a bank," he said during a CEO round table at an industry conference in New York Tuesday. "They want to use financial services products to help their customers succeed."Amazon had no immediate comment and Apple did not return a request for comment.
Story continues
THE NEXT FDIC BOSS
Technology firms would have to submit to a welter of regulation and oversight and apply for a banking charter from the OCC if they wanted to become full-service banks. Bank holding companies are also prohibited from engaging in nonfinancial activities.
In a statement, Colin Walsh the CEO of mobile banking startup Varo Money, said its charter application was going through the approval process. Student online lender Social Finance Inc withdrew its application last month.
Mobile payments company Square (SQ.N), which reported better-than-expected results on Wednesday, has applied to be a so-called industrial loan company, an entity that enjoys some of the same privileges as a traditional bank but falls short of a full bank charter.
"It (industrial loan charter) does allow us to engage more directly with regulatory bodies so its great to hear that comment coming today from the OCC," said Sarah Friar, the chief financial officer of Square.
The comments from Noreika, who has built up a reputation for a strong deregulatory bent since taking over in May, puts a spotlight on the OCC's sister organization the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC).
While the OCC issues the bank charter, the FDIC insures any deposits and must also approve the charter.
The term of current FDIC Chairman Martin Gruenberg, a holdover from the administration of former President Barack Obama, expires this month. Gruenberg has the option of staying on as chairman until his replacement is nominated and confirmed by the Senate.
Some bankers said they were comfortable with corporations entering their turf, as long as they were subject to the same rules.
"If Wal-Mart wants to be a bank that's fine, as long as they make the appropriate investments to protect the parts of the banking system that are so critical," said Kelly King, chief executive at regional lender BB&T Corp (BBT.N).
King added that he was absolutely opposed to the idea of a limited banking license.
Wal-Mart, the world's largest retailer, abandoned plans for its own bank in 2007 after opposition from lawmakers, bankers and watchdog groups.
Wal-Mart does not intend to resurrect those plans after Noreika's comments, spokeswoman Erin Hulliberger said.
Wal-Mart already operates hundreds of money centers within its stores, which offer services like check cashing, money transfers, bill payment along with prepaid debit cards and credit cards.
Facebook Inc (FB.O) in 2015 began letting people send money to friends through its Messenger app, but a move into banking is not on the companys roadmap, said spokeswoman Vanessa Chan.
(Additional reporting by Patrick Rucker in Washington, Anna Irrera in New York, Jeffrey Dastin and David Ingram in San Francisco and Nandita Bose in Chicago; Writing by Carmel Crimmins; Editing by Lisa Shumaker)
WASHINGTON President Donald Trump tried to distance himself from the Justice Departments review of the proposed merger of AT&T and Time Warner, after reports surfaced this week that government lawyers were requesting that major assets be sold off if the transaction is to go through.
Trump told reports traveling with him on his Asia trip that he didnt make that decision. That was made by a man who is actually a very respected person, a very, very respected person. Trump was apparently referring to Makan Delrahim, the chief of the Justice Departments antitrust division.
Earlier this week, reports surfaced that the DOJ had told AT&T officials that they would like the company to divest DirecTV or Time Warners Turner networks to secure approval. The suggestion of sale of Turner networks immediately raised suspicions that it was a way for the White House to punish CNN, which falls under that division and has been a frequent target of the president.
Trump did again raise the issue of news media consolidation.
I do feel that you should have as many news outlets as you can, especially since so many of them are fake, Trump told reporters en route to Hanoi. This way, at least you can get your word out. But I do believe you should have as many news outlets as you can.
Trump noted that he hasnt made a recent statement on the transaction, but acknowledged speaking out about it earlier. He said during the campaign that he would block the merger, citing the concentration of media.
AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson denied that AT&T has offered to sell CNN or that it was on the table.
I have never been told that the price of getting the deal done was selling CNN, period. And likewise I have never offered to sell CNN, he said, adding that there was absolutely no intention that the company would sell the network. But he did acknowledge getting calls from other people about the possibility of a sale.
Story continues
On Friday, Reuters reported that Rupert Murdoch called Stephenson twice in the past six months to discuss a CNN sale, but Stephenson told him the network was not for sale. Murdoch reportedly has had numerous contacts with Trump.
Trump told reporters that when it comes to the Antitrust Division review, that it will probably end up being maybe litigation, maybe not. Well see how it all plays out.
At a USC event on Friday, Delrahim again said that he has not had any communication about the transaction with the White House. But, according to the Wall Street Journal, he did challenge the idea that the DOJ rarely sees a problem with vertical mergers, the type of deal that AT&T is seeking with Time Warner.
He also seemed to challenge one of AT&Ts arguments in favor of the transaction: that it now faces a competition landscape made up of large Silicon Valley companies. Delrahim first noted Ronald Reagans quip that the most terrifying words in the English language are Im from the government and Im here to help. He added that there should be fear when an incumbent company, in whatever industry, says, Im here to help you against the evils of dynamic competition from Netflix, Amazon, Google, Facebook.'
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SoftBank expressed an interest in investing around $1 billion in Uber for a stake of at least 14 percent (AFP Photo/SAM YEH) (AFP)
New York (AFP) - Scandal hit ride-sharing company Uber on Sunday said it entered into a deal to sell a stake to Japan's SoftBank as the firm looks to turn a new page ahead of its planned IPO by 2019.
The move was announced shortly after reports emerged that its former CEO Travis Kalanick and an influential investor had buried the hatchet in a long feud that paved the way for the acquisition.
"We've entered into an agreement with a consortium led by SoftBank and Dragoneer on a potential investment," a company statement said in a statement Sunday evening.
"We believe this agreement is a strong vote of confidence in Uber's long-term potential," it added.
"Upon closing, it will help fuel our investments in technology and our continued expansion at home and abroad, while strengthening our corporate governance."
But SoftBank refused to confirm the news when contacted by AFP and said it was not planning to issue any statement on Sunday.
The Japanese group, founded by billionaire Masayoshi Son, expressed an interest several months ago in investing around $1 billion in Uber for a stake of at least 14 percent.
But it was threatened by conflict between Kalanick and US venture capital firm Benchmark.
The latter filed a lawsuit against Kalanick, accusing him of fraud, breach of contract and of plotting to manipulate the board of directors to allow him to return as CEO following his resignation in June.
The two parties reportedly reached an agreement on control of board seats, which included Benchmark putting its lawsuit on hold -- while Kalanick will allow directors to vote on his future appointments to the three seats he oversees.
A deal would be positive for Uber, which is looking ahead to the future in the wake of recent repeated scandals, among them workplace sexual harassment allegations.
Meanwhile, SoftBank has been diversifying through investment for several years, and has ventured into sectors outside its core mobile technology business -- completing deals with the likes of French robotics firm Aldebaran and e-commerce with Chinese giant Alibaba.
It is sending tremors through the tech world with a its massive new Vision Fund -- a venture capital fund with $100 billion coffers intended for startups and expected to dominate the industry so thoroughly it's playfully referred to as a "gorilla."
A taxi-hailing app. A transplant device developer. An online mortgage provider.
Those businesses may have little in common, but one shared thread is that U.S. startups in these sectors have all secured large funding rounds led by Russia-based investors.
Theyre not alone. Over the past seven years, Russia-based strategic and venture investors have participated in more than 300 funding rounds for U.S.-based startups, according to Crunchbase data. Investments span all stages, major sectors and round sizes, and include both equity and debt financings. (See deal list here.)
The cross-border deal-making isnt limited to Russian investors backing U.S. startups. Venture firms based in the U.S. have invested in more than 150 funding rounds for Russian startups over the past decade, with a particular focus on e-commerce and consumer internet deals. Well look at those trends in the second installment of this two-part series.
In this first installment, well focus on Russia-backed rounds for U.S. startups. Below, we look at the year-over-year trends, highlight some of the biggest deals and most active investors and look at what the data set does not include.
Russia-U.S. investment over the years
A Crunchbase News analysis of deals involving Russian investors backing U.S. startups found that deal counts began picking up in 2011. Activity peaked in 2012, and it held relatively steady over the next three years.
In the chart below, we look at the number of rounds per year for U.S. startups that included a Russia-based investor and the totals raised in those rounds. The investment totals reflect capital from all backers, not just Russia-based ones. Overall, Russian investment activity looks to be lessening in 2016 and 2017, with fewer rounds recorded.
In the chart below, we look at U.S. startup rounds involving a Russia-based lead investor. The number of deals with a Russian lead investor peaked in 2012, dipped over the next three years and has been trending up in the past two years.
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These are the active investors
A number of Russia-based investors have backed multiple U.S. startups, and a few are particularly active.
Among cross-stage investors, Moscow-based Bright Capital looks to be the most active. The firm has participated in 30 seed through growth-stage financing rounds for U.S. companies, with a focus on cleantech, biotech and IT. At the seed stage, Impulse VC has been quite active, participating in about a dozen rounds since 2013. And Skolkovo Foundation, which is supported by the Russian government, has extended grants or seed investments to at least 8 U.S. startups in the past six years.
Banks also have done a number of deals. VTB Capital Investment Management, a subsidiary of Russian government-controlled VTB Bank, has participated in funding rounds for at least four U.S.-based startups. Its most recent funding round was in 2016, for storage technology developer Avalanche Technology.
Sberbank, Russias biggest bank, has been active, as well. The bank was involved in two of the largest cross-border deals in the past year: a $100 million debt round for taxi app Gett and a $57 million Series C for online mortgage provider LendingHome.
Meanwhile, on the strategic side, one of the busiest U.S. startup backers is Russian pharmaceutical firm Pharmstandard, which has led or joined funding rounds for at least six (listed here) U.S. life science companies. The Moscow-based company was a lead investor in funding rounds for TransMedics, a transplant device developer; Argos Therapeutics, a now-public cancer immunotherapy developer; and Avelas Biosciences, which is working on technology used in cancer surgery.
To give an idea of the breadth of investments, we look at the largest U.S. funding rounds in recent years that involved a Russia-based lead investor:
Whos not included (and why it matters)
It should be noted that the Crunchbase data sets may not reflect the full extent of Russian involvement in the U.S. startup ecosystem. For one, the data is limited to funds and investors based in Russia. That means it leaves out Russian billionaire Yuri Milners DST Global, which is headquartered in Hong Kong.
Milner is the most high-profile Russian national actively investing in U.S. tech companies. Although his personal investments are included in the Crunchbase data set, DSTs are not. Thats significant as, since 2009, DST has participated in at least 23 funding rounds for U.S. companies, mostly not as a lead investor. Deals include many of the most prominent internet companies, including Facebook in 2009, Airbnb in 2011, Twitter in 2011 and Slack in 2015. (See the full list here.)
Russian nationals, firms and government-run entities also can participate in startup funding as limited partners, which are generally passive stakeholders in venture funds. DST, for instance, counts banking conglomerate VTB Bank, which is majority-owned by the Russian government, among its limited partner investors. The data set does not include investments by non-Russian firms with Russia-based limited partners.
Looking ahead
Where is Russia-U.S. startup investment likely to go from here? Its noteworthy that the number of U.S. startup financings involving Russian investors is down in 2017 from prior peaks, along with investment totals.
Perhaps theres greater caution in the startup community around the sourcing of capital. There were some hints of this in a New York Times report examining how the election hacking story is impacting Silicon Valley and its large Russian immigrant population. The paper reported that some Russian venture capitalists have said startups are more wary about taking their funding.
U.S. government debt yields rose on Friday, after fresh consumer sentiment data missed expectations; tax reform remained in focus. The yield on the benchmark 10-year Treasury note (U.S.:US10Y) climbed to 2.398 percent at 2:08 p.m. ET, while the yield on the 30-year Treasury bond (U.S.:US10Y) was higher at 2.88 percent. Bond yields move inversely to prices. Earlier, the 30-year Treasury yield hit a high of 2.868 percent, its highest level since Nov. 1 when the 30-year yielded as high as 2.899 percent. U.S. consumer sentiment fell from recent peaks in early November, though the index remained at the second-highest level of the year so far. The University of Michigan's index of consumer attitudes fell to 97.8 in November, missing expectations of a poll of Reuters economists. They had foreseen no change from the 100.7 level at the end of October. The measure had soared to 101.1 on Oct. 13the highest level since 2004and has been consistently deflating since. Looking to politics, President Donald Trump continued his trip across Asia this Friday. On the last trading day of the week, the incumbent brought the topic of trade to the table in Vietnam. Speaking at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Vietnam, Trump stated that while the U.S. was ready to make bilateral deals with Indo-Pacific nations, this would only be on the foundation of " mutual respect and mutual benefit ," adding that the States could no longer tolerate chronic trade abuses. Elsewhere, Wall Street was under pressure, closing lower on Thursday after news emerged that a corporate tax cut could be delayed. A proposed plan by Senate Republicans would push chopping the corporate tax rate from 35 percent to 20 percent until 2019 . The move however is seen as contradicting with another bill which is currently working its way through the House. CNBC's Jacob Pramuk and Gina Francolla contributed to this report
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Iran has rejected claims that it was behind an explosion that caused a fire at Bahrain's main oil pipeline as "baseless and cheap."
Bahraini authorities "should know that the era of making such absurd and false statements and the time of playing such childish blame-games has come to an end," Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Bahram Qassemi said in a statement on November 12.
Bahrain's Interior Minister Sheikh Rashid bin Abdullah al-Khalifa earlier said that the explosion at the oil pipeline near the village of Buri late on November 10 was a "dangerous act of terrorism."
"Terrorist acts witnessed by the country in the recent period are carried out through direct contacts and instructions from Iran," Khalifa said in November 11 statement.
No group has claimed the explosion, which damaged several buildings.
Bahrain's Interior Ministry said the authorities closed the flow of oil to the stricken pipeline and brought the fire under control.
Saudi Arabia's Energy Ministry said that the kingdom was increasing security precautions at all its facilities.
Bahrain relies on the pipeline running between the Persian Gulf island state and neighboring Saudi Arabia for much of its oil.
Bahrain, a Shi'a-majority kingdom ruled by a Sunni dynasty, is home to the U.S. Navy's 5th Fleet and a British military base is currently under construction.
The island faces occasional attacks from local Shi'ite militant groups as it continues a crackdown on dissent, imprisoning or forcing opponents into exile.
The government denies it discriminates against Shi'a and accuses neighboring Iran of stirring up tensions -- an accusation rejected by Iran.
Tensions in the region intensified after a ballistic missile fired from Yemen was intercepted earlier this month near the Saudi capital, Riyadh.
Saudi Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman accused Iran of "direct military aggression" by supplying missiles to Huthi Shi'ite rebels in Yemen. Tehran denies any involvement.
With reporting by AFP, AP, and Reuters
Iran's Foreign Ministry says the 2015 nuclear deal with world powers is "not negotiable" after French President Emmanuel Macron said during a trip to the region that it was important to "remain firm" with Tehran over its missile program.
"We have told French leaders on several occasions that the Iran nuclear deal is not negotiable and that no other issues can be included in the text" of the agreement, the semiofficial Mehr news agency quoted ministry spokesman Bahram Qassemi as saying on November 11.
France is "fully aware of our country's intangible position concerning the issue of Iran's defensive affairs, which are not negotiable," he added.
During a visit to the Persian Gulf, Macron blamed Iran for a ballistic-missile launch by Yemeni rebels targeting Saudi Arabia last weekend.
He said it illustrated the need for negotiations with Tehran over its missile development. He added, though, that France was committed to the landmark nuclear deal with Iran, which puts restrictions on Iran's nuclear activities in exchange for sanctions relief.
"The missile that was intercepted by Saudi Arabia launched from Yemen, which obviously is an Iranian missile, shows precisely the strength of their" weapons program, Macron said on November 9.
"Like what was done in 2015 for the nuclear activities, it's necessary to put a framework in place for Iran's ballistic activities and open a process, with sanctions if needed, of negotiation that would enable [an agreement]," he added.
France has been trying to salvage the 2015 nuclear that Iran signed with Britain, China, Germany, France, Russia, and the United States.
U.S. President Donald Trump has threatened to pull out of the deal, refusing to recertify that Iran is complying with its obligations and violating the "spirit" of the accord.
Trump and his administration have accused Iran of using the ballistic-missile program to further development of its nuclear weapons.
U.S. officials also accuse Tehran of supporting extremists and terrorists in the region.
Iran denies the allegations and says its missiles are needed for self-defense and that its nuclear program has purely peaceful aims.
With reporting by RFE/RL's Radio Farda, AFP, Mehr, and Samaa TV
1. Causal Patterns
2. Planning Patterns
3. Sampling Patterns
4. Interpretation of Evidence
5. Analogy Pattern
1. Causal Patterns
Assumptions:
Weaken:
Strengthen
Eg:
A study indicated that adults who listen to classical music regularly are less likely to have anxiety disorders. Clearly, classical music helps calm the nerves and lowers anxiety.
1. The results noted in the study were merely coincidental.
2. Listening to classical music was the only factor for lowered anxiety among the subjects.
1. We can simply state that the link between classical music and anxiety was coincidental.
2. We can show a counterexample: people who routinely listen to classical music but still have anxiety disorders.
3. We can break the causal link by showing that another factor explains the lower rate of anxiety disorder in people who listen to classical music.
1. We can show that the results were not coincidental by noting that other well-connected studies in several other scientific journals had found similar results.
2. We can rule out the possibility of factors other than classical music playing a role in reducing anxiety.
2. Planning Pattern
Assumption
Weaken
Strengthen
Eg:
Gotham City has seen a rise in crime over the past 5 years. The chief of police has recently installed video surveillance cameras at all major intersections in the neighborhoods with the highest crime rate. We can now expect to see a drop in the crime rate.
1. Crime is not limited to major intersections.
2. A reduction in crime in one area may lead to an increase in crime in another neighborhood.
3. Cameras often produce poor image quality.
4. Would-be criminals may not notice the cameras and so would not be deterred by their presence.
1. Suggest that state of the art cameras be installed with both a very wide scope and very good resolution.
2. Suggest that the city is conducting mass publicity of the surveillance camera program and the sentences will be enhanced for anyone caught on camera while committing a crime.
3. Sampling Pattern
Assumption:
Weaken:
Strengthen:
Eg:
Contrary to popular belief, high school students overwhelmingly approve of the high school administrative staff. We know this to be true because the student council expressed admiration for the high school principal and her staff in the council's editorial for the school paper.
1. We could break the link by proving that the student council's view does not represent the views of the rest of the students.
2. Maybe the student council is made up of sycophants who want to get favorable college recommendations from members of the administration.
1. Provide evidence that the student council's view is representative of the entire student body.
2. The student council is comprised of a good cross-section of all the students in the school.
4. Interpretation of Evidence
Assumption:
Weaken:
Strengthen:
Eg:
Ninety percent of the population Prelandia lived in rural areas in 1800. Today, only 20 percent of the population lives in rural areas. Clearly, more people lived in the countryside two centuries ago.
1. If the country's population was 100 people in 1800, 90 of them lived in rural areas. If the population is 1000 people today, then 20 percent would be 200 people.
2. More people actually live in rural areas now, even though the percentage of the population has decreased.
1. If the population was 100 people in 1800 and 100 people today, we could say that 90 people lived in rural areas in the past and only 20 people live in rural areas today.
2. Prove that the author's interpretation of the statistical evidence is valid.
5. Analogy Pattern
Assumption:
Weaken:
Strengthen:
Eg:
Contrary to opponent's charges that a single-payer health-care system cannot work in a democratic nation such as the United States, an overhaul of the American health-care system is necessary. Opponents of the single-payer system in the United States should remember that Canada, a nation with a strong democratic tradition, has run a viable single-payer health-care program for many years.
1. Suggesting reasons that the comparison is not valid.
2. We could say that the differences in population and economies of the two nations mean that policies that work in one country won't work in the other.
1. We could add additional reasons why the two nations may be compared.
2. Information about the similarities in the governmental structure of the U.S and Canada would make the conclusion more believable.
There are a few basic patterns which frequently appear on the GMAT CR Section and understanding these patterns makes it much easier to work many arguments. Not only would it make it easier to work the argument but also acts as a shortcut for uncovering the assumptions, and dealing with Strengthen and Weaken questions as well.Collaborated with assistance from the Princeton Review Manual, here is a summary of my notes for the various CR Patterns.The most common argument patterns are as follows:I will discuss the basic setup of these different argument patterns and how best to identify them. I hope you find this helpful when cracking down the CR section.Premise: A and B are correlated. Or, B follows A.Conclusion: A caused B[*] It's not a coincidence[*] There's no other cause[*] Offer evidence to show that it is a coincidence[*] Show a counter-example in which the cause is presented but the effect does not follow.[*] Identify other possible causes.[*] Offer evidence to show that it is not likely to be a coincidence.[*] Provide an additional example of the cause being present and the effect following.[*] Rule out other possible causes.Here, the author concludes that classical music helps calm the nerves and lowers anxiety because the study found a correlation between listening to classical music and experiencing a lower likelihood of having anxiety disorders. A causes B. However, the fact that two things are related does not prove that one caused the other.To author rules out two possibilities:We can weaken this argument by attacking the causal assumptions.On the flipside, this argument can be strengthened by bolstering the causal assumptions.Premise: There is a plan to solve a problem.Conclusion: Do the plan![*] There are no problems with the plan.[*] Point out problems with the plan.[*] Offer solutions to any potential problems with the plan.The argument concludes that the crime rate will drop because there are recently installed video cameras at all major intersections in the neighborhoods with the highest crime rates. The assumption is that the surveillance cameras will actually reduce the incidence of crime.To weaken the argument, we attack the assumption by pointing out potential problems with the plan:To strengthen the argument, we bolster the assumptions by offering solutions to any potential problems with the plan:Premise: Something is true for a subset of a population.Conclusion: That thing is also true for the whole population.[*] The sample is representative[*] Show that the sample is not representative of the whole by showing a difference between the sample and the population.[*] Show that the sample is representative of the whole by establishing a similarity between the sample and the population.The author concludes that students approve of the school administration based on the student council's opinion as expressed in the paper. The gap is between the student council and the general student body, and the author draws on a sample population to reach a conclusion about the whole population. To make the link, we must assume that the council is an accurate reflection of the feelings of the general student population.To weaken this argument, we attack the assumption:To strengthen the argument, we bolster the assumptions:Premise: A fact or piece of evidence (often a statistic).Conclusion: An interpretation of that evidence.[*] There is no other way to interpret the facts.[*] Be on a lookout for a shift between numbers and percentages or a misunderstanding of a statistical finding.[*] Offer an alternate interpretation of the evidence.[*] Demonstrate that the evidence was correctly interpreted.The author believes that since the percentage of people living in rural areas decreased, the actual number of people living in the rural areas must have decreased. Hence, whether the conclusion is true depends on how the past and present populations compare. To make the link, we need to prove that the total population in the past and present are comparable.To weaken this argument, we need to prove that the total population has changed:To strengthen the argument, we prove the population is comparable:Premise: True for X.Conclusion: Also true for Y.[*] X is similar to Y.[*] Show that Y is different from X in relevant ways.[*] Demonstrate that X and Y are comparable in relevant ways.The author concludes that because a single-payer health-care system works in Canada, it will work in the United States as well. The gap is between the United States and Canada, and we must assume that they are similar enough to make the comparison valid.We can weaken the argument by:We can strengthen the argument by:This summarizes the different patterns the test makers employ. Although, it may not be possible to apply these patterns to every question you see, having a good understanding will definitely give you an edge when dealing with Critical Reasoning. Please let me know what you think. I will be glad to further discuss these patterns in detail if required.Hope you find this post helpful. Please leave a kudos if you liked this post.Thank You
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New York, Nov 12 (Just Earth News): Ratings agencies must downgrade businesses responsible for unethical practices such as tax evasion carried out through off-shore-registered companies, two United Nations human rights experts warned, while urging countries to cooperate to counter this global tax abuse problem.
States must stop harmful tax competition amongst each other and work together to stop unethical tax avoidance schemes for wealthy individuals and international corporations, said Juan Pablo Bohoslavsky, the UN Independent Expert on the effects of foreign debt and human rights, who also monitors the impact of illicit financial flows.
Bohoslavsky made the comment as information from the leak of the so-named Paradise Papers continues to be exposed, following series of tax abuse scandals.
The Paradise Papers presented systematic tax avoidance by well-known international corporations, making use of tax havens in places such as Bermuda, the Cayman Islands, and the Isle of Man.
Wealthy individuals and international corporations are continuing to engage in unethical practices, reducing their tax burdens to minimal levels by using tax havens, which undermines the realisation of human rights, Bohoslavsky warned on Thursday.
In this connection, Surya Deva, chairperson of the UN Working Group on Business and Human Rights, called on businesses to assume their corporate responsibility, in line with the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights.
All business enterprises have a responsibility to avoid adverse human rights impacts caused or contributed by their tax evasion practices, said Deva.
Noting that many countries are struggling with increased debt levels as tax revenues do not match public expenditure, the experts urged Governments to make greater efforts to ensure tax justice rather than reducing spending on infrastructure.
They also warned law firms that facilitate tax avoidance schemes to assume their responsibility.
The UN Guiding Principles apply to law firms too they should consider human rights implications of their legal advice given to businesses, said Deva.
The experts further underscored that corporations should extend their commitments for respecting human rights to taxation, to be considered ethical.
The issue of corporate tax avoidance will also be addressed at the UN Forum on Business and Human Rights to be held in Geneva, Switzerland, from 27 to 29 November 2017.
Credit: UNODC
Source: www.justearthnews.com
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Dril-Quip, Inc., together with its subsidiaries, designs, manufactures, sells, and services engineered drilling and production equipment for use in deepwater, harsh environment, and severe service applications worldwide. The company's principal products include subsea and surface wellheads, subsea and surface production trees, mudline hanger systems, specialty connectors and associated pipes, drilling and production riser systems, liner hangers, wellhead connectors, diverters, and safety valves, as well as downhole tools. It also provides technical advisory services, and rework and reconditioning services, as well as rental and purchase of running tools for use in the installation and retrieval of its products; and downhole tools comprise of liner hangers, production packers, safety valves, and specialty downhole tools that are used to hang-off and seal casing into a previously installed casing string in the well bore. The company's products are used to explore for oil and gas from offshore drilling rigs, such as floating rigs and jack-up rigs; and for drilling and production of oil and gas wells on offshore platforms, tension leg platforms, and Spars, as well as moored vessels, such as floating production, storage, and offloading monohull moored vessels. It sells its products directly through its sales personnel, independent sales agents, and representatives to integrated, independent, and foreign national oil and gas companies, as well as drilling contractors, and engineering and construction companies. The company was founded in 1981 and is headquartered in Houston, Texas.
Newell Brands Inc. designs, manufactures, sources, and distributes consumer and commercial products worldwide. It operates in five segments: Commercial Solutions, Home Appliances, Home Solutions, Learning and Development, and Outdoor and Recreation. The Commercial Solutions segment provides commercial cleaning and maintenance solutions; closet and garage organization products; hygiene systems and material handling solutions; and home and security, and smoke and carbon monoxide alarms products under the BRK, First Alert, Mapa, Quickie, Rubbermaid, Rubbermaid Commercial Products, and Spontex brands. The Home Appliances segment offers kitchen appliances under the Crock-Pot, Mr. Coffee, Oster, and Sunbeam brands. The Home Solutions segment provides food and home storage; fresh preserving; vacuum sealing; and gourmet cookware, bakeware, cutlery, and home fragrance products under the Ball, Calphalon, Chesapeake Bay Candle, FoodSaver, Rubbermaid, Sistema, WoodWick, and Yankee Candle brands. The Learning and Development segment offers writing instruments, including markers and highlighters, pens, and pencils; art products; activity-based adhesive and cutting products; labeling solutions; and baby gear and infant care products under the Aprica, Baby Jogger, Graco, NUK, Tigex, Dymo, Elmer's, EXPO, Graco, Mr. Sketch, NUK, Paper Mate, Parker, Prismacolor, Sharpie, Waterman, and X-Acto brands. The Outdoor and Recreation segment provides outdoor and outdoor-related products under the Campingaz, Coleman, Contigo, ExOfficio, and Marmot brands. It serves warehouse clubs, department and drug/grocery stores, mass merchants, home centers, office superstores and supply stores, contract stationers, and distributors, e-commerce, sporting goods, specialty, and travel retailers. The company was formerly known as Newell Rubbermaid Inc. and changed its name to Newell Brands Inc. in April 2016. Newell Brands Inc. was founded in 1903 and is based in Atlanta, Georgia.
American Water Works Company, Inc., through its subsidiaries, provides water and wastewater services in the United States. It offers water and wastewater services to approximately 1,700 communities in 14 states serving approximately 3.4 million active customers. The company serves residential customers; commercial customers, including food and beverage providers, commercial property developers and proprietors, and energy suppliers; fire service and private fire customers; industrial customers, such as large-scale manufacturers, mining, and production operations; public authorities comprising government buildings and other public sector facilities, such as schools and universities; and other utilities and community water and wastewater systems. It also provides water and wastewater services on various military installations; and undertakes contracts with municipal customers, primarily to operate and manage water and wastewater facilities, as well as offers other related services. In addition, the company operates approximately 80 surface water treatment plants; 480 groundwater treatment plants; 160 wastewater treatment plants; 52,500 miles of transmission, distribution, and collection mains and pipes; 1,100 groundwater wells; 1,700 water and wastewater pumping stations; 1,300 treated water storage facilities; and 76 dams. It serves approximately 14 million people with drinking water, wastewater, and other related services in 24 states. American Water Works Company, Inc. was founded in 1886 and is headquartered in Camden, New Jersey.
The following companies are subsidiares of PepsiCo: Alimentos Quaker Oats y Compania Limitada, Alimentos del Istmo S.A., Amavale Agricola Ltda., Anderson Hill Insurance Limited, Asia Bottlers Limited, BAESA Capital Corporation Ltd., BFY Brands, BFY Brands LLC, BFY Brands Limited, BUG de Mexico S.A. de C.V., Balmoral Industries LLC, Bare Foods Co., Barrhead LLC, Be & Cheery, Beaman Bottling Company, Bebidas Sudamerica S.A., Beech Limited, Bell Taco Funding Syndicate, Bendler Investments II Ltd, Bendler Investments S.a r.l, Beverage Services Limited, Beverages Foods & Service Industries Inc., Bishkeksut OJSC, Blaue NC S. de R.L. de C.V., Blue Cloud Distribution Inc., Blue Cloud Distribution of Arizona Inc., Blue Cloud Distribution of Arkansas Inc., Blue Cloud Distribution of Colorado Inc., Blue Cloud Distribution of Florida Inc., Blue Cloud Distribution of Georgia Inc., Blue Cloud Distribution of Illinois Inc., Blue Cloud Distribution of Indiana Inc., Blue Cloud Distribution of Iowa Inc., Blue Cloud Distribution of Kentucky Inc., Blue Cloud Distribution of Louisiana Inc., Blue Cloud Distribution of Minnesota Inc., Blue Cloud Distribution of Mississippi Inc., Blue Cloud Distribution of Missouri Inc., Blue Cloud Distribution of Nebraska Inc., Blue Cloud Distribution of Nevada Inc., Blue Cloud Distribution of North Carolina Inc., Blue Cloud Distribution of Ohio Inc., Blue Cloud Distribution of Oklahoma Inc., Blue Cloud Distribution of Pennsylvania Inc., Blue Cloud Distribution of South Carolina Inc., Blue Cloud Distribution of Tennessee Inc., Blue Cloud Distribution of Texas Inc., Blue Cloud Distribution of Virginia Inc., Blue Cloud Distribution of Wisconsin Inc., Blue Ridge Sales LLC, Bluebird Foods Limited, Bluecan Holdings Unlimited Company, Bokomo Zambia Limited, Bolsherechensky Molkombinat JSC, Boquitas Fiestas LLC, Boquitas Fiestas S.R.L., Bottling Group Financing LLC, Bottling Group Holdings LLC, Bottling Group LLC, Bronte Industries Ltd, C & I Leasing Inc., CB Manufacturing Company Inc., CEME Holdings LLC, CMC Investment Company, Caroni Investments LLC, Centro-Mediterranea de Bebidas Carbonicas PepsiCo S.L., Ceres Fruit Juices Pty Ltd, ChampBev Inc., China Concentrate Holdings Hong Kong Limited, Chipsy International for Food Industries S.A.E., Chipsy for Food Industries S.A.E., Chitos Internacional y Cia Ltda, Cipa Industrial de Produtos Alimentares Ltda., Cipa Nordeste Industrial de Produtos Alimentares Ltda., Cocina Autentica Inc., Comercializadora CMC Investment y Compania Limitada, Comercializadora Nacional SAS Ltda., Comercializadora PepsiCo Mexico S de R.L. de C.V., Compania de Bebidas PepsiCo S.L., Concentrate Holding Uruguay Pte. Ltd., Concentrate Manufacturing Singapore Pte. Ltd., Confiteria Alegro S. de R.L. de C.V., Copella Fruit Juices Limited, Copper Beech International LLC, Corina Snacks Limited, Corporativo Internacional Mexicano S. de R.L. de C.V., CytoSport Holdings Inc., CytoSport Inc., Davlyn Realty Corporation, Defosto Holdings Limited, Desarrollo Inmobiliario Gamesa S. de R.L. de C.V., Dilexis S.A., Donon Holdings Limited, Drinkfinity USA Inc., Drinkstation Inc., Drinkstation Innovation Co. Ltd., Drinkstation Limited, Dutch Snacks Holding S.A. de C.V., Duyvis Production B.V., EPIC Enterprises Inc., Echo Bay Holdings Inc., Elaboradora Argentina de Cereales S.R.L., Enter Logistica LLC, Environ at Inverrary Partnership, Environ of Inverrary Inc., Eridanus Investments S.a r.l, Evercrisp Snack Productos de Chile S.A., FL Transportation Inc., FLI Andean LLC, FLI Colombia LLC, FLI Snacks Andean GP LLC, Fabrica PepsiCo Mexicali S. de R.L. de C.V., Fabrica de Productos Alimenticios Rene y Cia S.C.A., Fairlight International SRL, Far East Bottlers Hong Kong Limited, Food Concepts Pioneer Ltd., Forest Akers Nederland B.V., Forty-Six Peaks Holding Inc., Fovarosi Asvanyviz es Uditoipari Zartkoruen Mukodo Reszvenytarsasag, Freshwater International B.V., Frito Lay Gida Sanayi Ve Ticaret Anonim Sirketi, Frito Lay Poland Sp. z o.o., Frito Lay Sp. z o.o., Frito Lay de Guatemala y Compania Limitada, Frito-Lay Australia Holdings Pty Limited, Frito-Lay Dip Company Inc., Frito-Lay Dominicana S.A., Frito-Lay Global Investments B.V., Frito-Lay Inc., Frito-Lay Investments B.V., Frito-Lay Manufacturing LLC, Frito-Lay Netherlands Holding B.V., Frito-Lay North America Inc., Frito-Lay Sales Inc., Frito-Lay Trading Company Europe GmbH, Frito-Lay Trading Company GmbH, Frito-Lay Trading Company Poland GmbH, Frito-Lay Trinidad Unlimited, Fruko Mesrubat Sanayi Limited Sirketi, GB Czech LLC, GB International Inc., GB Russia LLC, GB Slovak LLC, GMP Manufacturing Inc., Gambrinus Investments Limited, Gamesa LLC, Gamesa S. de R.L. de C.V., Gas Natural de Merida S. A. de C. V., Gatorade Puerto Rico Company, General Bottlers of Hungary Inc., Golden Grain Company, Goveh S.R.L., Grayhawk Leasing LLC, Green Hemlock International LLC, Grupo Frito Lay y Compania Limitada, Grupo Gamesa S. de R.L. de C.V., Grupo Mabel, Grupo Sabritas S. de R.L. de C.V., Gulkevichskiy Maslozavod JSC, Hangzhou Baicaowei Corporate Management Consulting Co. Ltd., Hangzhou Haomusi Food Co, Hangzhou Haomusi Food Co. Ltd., Hangzhou Tao Dao Technology Co. Ltd., Health Warrior, Health Warrior Inc., Heathland LP, Helioscope Limited, Hillbrook Inc., Hillgrove Inc., Hillwood Bottling LLC, Hogganfield Limited Partnership, Holding Company "Opolie" JSC, Homefinding Company of Texas, Hudson Valley Insurance Company, IC Equities Inc., IZZE Beverage Co., Inmobiliaria Interamericana S.A. De C.V., Integrated Beverage Services Bangladesh Limited, Integrated Foods & Beverages Pvt. Ltd., International Bottlers Management Co. LLC, International KAS Aktiengesellschaft, Inversiones Borneo S.R.L., Inversiones PFI Chile Limitada, Inviting Foods Holdings Inc., Inviting Foods LLC, KAS Anorthosis S.a r.l, KAS S.L., KFC, Kevita Inc., Kinvara LLC, Kungursky Molkombinat JSC, Larragana S.L., Latin American Holdings Ltd., Latin American Snack Foods ApS, Latin Foods International LLC, Lebedyansky, Lebedyansky Holdings LLC, Lebedyansky LLC, Limited Liability Company "Sandora", Linkbay Limited, Lithuanian Snacks UAB, Mabel, Marbo Product d.o.o. Beograd, Marbo d.o.o. Laktasi, Matudis - Comercio de Produtos Alimentares Limitada, Matutano - Sociedade de Produtos Alimentares Lda., Mid-America Improvement Corporation, Mountainview Insurance Company Inc., Muscle Milk, NCJV LLC, New Bern Transport Corporation, New Century Beverage Company LLC, Noble Leasing LLC, Northeast Hot-Fill Co-op Inc., Office at Solyanka LLC, Onbiso Inversiones S.L., One World Enterprises LLC, One World Investors Inc., P-A Barbados Bottling Company LLC, P-A Bottlers Barbados SRL, P-Americas LLC, PAS Luxembourg S.a r.l, PAS Netherlands B.V., PBG Canada Holdings II LLC, PBG Canada Holdings Inc., PBG Cyprus Holdings Limited, PBG Investment Partnership, PBG Midwest Holdings S.a r.l, PBG Soda Can Holdings S.a r.l, PCBL LLC, PCNA Manufacturing Inc., PR Beverages Cyprus Holding Limited, PR Beverages Cyprus Russia Holding Limited, PRB Luxembourg S.a r.l, PRS Inc., PSAS Inversiones LLC, PSE Logistica S.R.L., PT Quaker Indonesia, Papas Chips S.A., Pei N.V., Pep Trade LLC, Pepsi B.V., Pepsi Beverages Holdings Inc., Pepsi Bottling Group Global Finance LLC, Pepsi Bottling Group GmbH, Pepsi Bottling Group Hoosiers B.V., Pepsi Bottling Holdings Inc., Pepsi Bugshan Investments S.A.E., Pepsi Cola Colombia Ltda, Pepsi Cola Egypt S.A.E., Pepsi Cola Panamericana S.R.L., Pepsi Cola Servis Ve Dagitim Limited Sirketi, Pepsi Cola Trading Ireland, Pepsi Logistics Company Inc., Pepsi Northwest Beverages LLC, Pepsi Overseas Investments Partnership, Pepsi Promotions Inc., Pepsi-Cola Advertising and Marketing Inc., Pepsi-Cola Bermuda Limited, Pepsi-Cola Bottlers Holding C.V., Pepsi-Cola Bottling Company Of St. Louis Inc., Pepsi-Cola Bottling Company of Ft. Lauderdale-Palm Beach LLC, Pepsi-Cola Company, Pepsi-Cola Ecuador Cia. Ltda., Pepsi-Cola Far East Trade Development Co. Inc., Pepsi-Cola Finance LLC, Pepsi-Cola General Bottlers Poland Sp. z o.o., Pepsi-Cola Industrial da Amazonia Ltda., Pepsi-Cola International Cork, Pepsi-Cola International LLC, Pepsi-Cola International Limited, Pepsi-Cola International Limited U.S.A., Pepsi-Cola International Private Limited, Pepsi-Cola Korea Co. Ltd., Pepsi-Cola Management and Administrative Services Inc., Pepsi-Cola Manufacturing Company Of Uruguay S.R.L., Pepsi-Cola Manufacturing International Limited, Pepsi-Cola Manufacturing Mediterranean Limited, Pepsi-Cola Marketing Corp. Of P.R. Inc., Pepsi-Cola Mediterranean Ltd., Pepsi-Cola Metropolitan Bottling Company Inc., Pepsi-Cola Mexicana Holdings LLC, Pepsi-Cola Mexicana S. de R.L. de C.V., Pepsi-Cola National Marketing LLC, Pepsi-Cola Operating Company Of Chesapeake And Indianapolis, Pepsi-Cola Sales and Distribution Inc., Pepsi-Cola Technical Operations Inc., Pepsi-Cola Thai Trading Co. Ltd., Pepsi-Cola de Honduras S.R.L., Pepsi-Cola of Corvallis Inc., PepsiAmericas Nemzetkozi Szolgaltato Korlatolt Felelossegu Tarsasag, PepsiCo ANZ Holdings Pty Ltd, PepsiCo Alimentos Antioquia Ltda., PepsiCo Alimentos Colombia Ltda., PepsiCo Alimentos Ecuador Cia. Ltda., PepsiCo Alimentos Z.F. Ltda., PepsiCo Alimentos de Bolivia S.R.L., PepsiCo Amacoco Bebidas Do Brasil Ltda., PepsiCo Asia Research & Development Center Company Limited, PepsiCo Australia Financing Cyprus Limited, PepsiCo Australia Financing Limited Partnership, PepsiCo Australia Financing Partner 1 LLC, PepsiCo Australia Financing Partner 2 LLC, PepsiCo Australia Financing Pty Ltd, PepsiCo Australia Holdings Pty Limited, PepsiCo Australia International, PepsiCo Austria Services GmbH, PepsiCo Azerbaijan Limited Liability Company, PepsiCo BeLux BV, PepsiCo Beverage Sales LLC, PepsiCo Beverage Singapore Pty Ltd, PepsiCo Beverages Bermuda Limited, PepsiCo Beverages Hong Kong Limited, PepsiCo Beverages International Limited, PepsiCo Beverages Italia Societa' A Responsabilita' Limitata, PepsiCo Canada Finance LLC, PepsiCo Canada Holdings ULC, PepsiCo Canada Investment ULC, PepsiCo Canada ULC, PepsiCo Captive Holdings Inc., PepsiCo Caribbean Inc., PepsiCo China Limited, PepsiCo Consulting Polska Sp. z o.o., PepsiCo De Bolivia S.R.L., PepsiCo Del Paraguay S.R.L., PepsiCo Deutschland GmbH, PepsiCo Eesti AS, PepsiCo Euro Bermuda Limited, PepsiCo Euro Finance Antilles B.V., PepsiCo Europe Support Center S.L., PepsiCo Finance Americas Company, PepsiCo Finance Antilles A N.V., PepsiCo Finance Antilles B N.V., PepsiCo Finance South Africa Proprietary Limited, PepsiCo Financial Shared Services Inc., PepsiCo Food & Beverage Holdings Hong Kong Limited, PepsiCo Foods A.I.E., PepsiCo Foods China Company Limited, PepsiCo Foods Group Pty Ltd, PepsiCo Foods Guangdong Co. Ltd., PepsiCo Foods Nigeria Limited, PepsiCo Foods Private Limited, PepsiCo Foods Sichuan Co. Ltd., PepsiCo Foods Taiwan Co. Ltd., PepsiCo Foods Vietnam Company, PepsiCo France SAS, PepsiCo Global Business Services India LLP, PepsiCo Global Business Services Poland Sp. z o.o., PepsiCo Global Holdings Limited, PepsiCo Global Investments B.V., PepsiCo Global Investments S.a r.l, PepsiCo Global Mobility LLC, PepsiCo Global Real Estate Inc., PepsiCo Global Trading Solutions Unlimited Company, PepsiCo Golden Holdings Inc., PepsiCo Group Finance International B.V., PepsiCo Group Holdings International B.V., PepsiCo Group Spotswood Holdings S.a r.l, PepsiCo Gulf International FZE, PepsiCo Hellas Single Member Industrial and Commercial Societe Anonyme, PepsiCo Holding de Espana S.L., PepsiCo Holdings, PepsiCo Holdings LLC, PepsiCo Holdings Toshkent LLC, PepsiCo Hong Kong LLC, PepsiCo Iberia Servicios Centrales S.L., PepsiCo India Holdings Private Limited, PepsiCo India Sales Private Limited, PepsiCo Internacional Mexico S. de R. L. de C. V., PepsiCo International Hong Kong Limited, PepsiCo International Limited, PepsiCo International Pte Ltd., PepsiCo Investments Europe I B.V., PepsiCo Investments Ltd., PepsiCo Ireland Food & Beverages Unlimited Company, PepsiCo Japan Co. Ltd., PepsiCo Light B.V., PepsiCo Logistyka Sp. z o.o., PepsiCo Malaysia Sdn. Bhd., PepsiCo Management Services SAS, PepsiCo Manufacturing A.I.E., PepsiCo Max B.V., PepsiCo Mexico Holdings S. de R.L. de C.V., PepsiCo Nederland B.V., PepsiCo Nordic Denmark ApS, PepsiCo Nordic Finland Oy, PepsiCo Nordic Norway AS, PepsiCo Nutrition Trading DMCC, PepsiCo One B.V., PepsiCo Overseas Corporation, PepsiCo Overseas Financing Partnership, PepsiCo Panimex Inc, PepsiCo Products B.V., PepsiCo Products FLLC, PepsiCo Puerto Rico Inc., PepsiCo Sales Inc., PepsiCo Sales LLC, PepsiCo Services Asia Ltd., PepsiCo Services CZ s.r.o., PepsiCo Services LLC, PepsiCo Twist B.V., PepsiCo UK Pension Plan Trustee Limited, PepsiCo Ventures B.V., PepsiCo Wave Holdings LLC, PepsiCo World Trading Company Inc., PepsiCo Y LLC, PepsiCo de Argentina S.R.L., PepsiCo de Mexico S. de R.L. de C.V., PepsiCo do Brasil Industria e Comercio de Alimentos Ltda., PepsiCo do Brasil Ltda., PepsiCola Interamericana de Guatemala S.A., Pet Iberia S.L., Pete & Johnny Limited, Pine International LLC, Pine International Limited, Pinstripe Leasing LLC, Pioneer Food Group Pty Ltd, Pioneer Foods Groceries Pty Ltd, Pioneer Foods Group Ltd., Pioneer Foods Holdings Pty Ltd, Pioneer Foods Pty Ltd, Pioneer Foods UK Ltd, Pioneer Foods Wellingtons Pty Ltd, Pipers Crisps Limited, PlayCo Inc., Pop corners, PopCorners Holdings Inc., Portfolio Concentrate Solutions Unlimited Company, Premier Nutrition Trading L.L.C., Prestwick LLC, Prev PepsiCo Sociedade Previdenciaria, Productos Alimenticios Rene LLC, Productos S.A.S. C.V., Productos SAS Management B.V., Punch N.V., Punica Getranke GmbH, Q O Puerto Rico Inc., QFL OHQ Sdn. Bhd., QTG Development Inc., QTG Services Inc., Quadrant - Amroq Beverages S.R.L., Quaker Development B.V., Quaker European Beverages LLC, Quaker European Investments B.V., Quaker Foods, Quaker Global Investments B.V., Quaker Holdings UK Limited, Quaker Manufacturing LLC, Quaker Oats Asia Inc., Quaker Oats Australia Pty Ltd, Quaker Oats B.V., Quaker Oats Capital Corporation, Quaker Oats Europe Inc., Quaker Oats Europe LLC, Quaker Oats Limited, Quaker Sales & Distribution Inc, Raptas Finance S.a r.l., Rare Fare Foods LLC, Rare Fare Holdings Inc., Reading Industries Ltd, Real Estate Holdings LLC, Rockstar Energy Drink, Rolling Frito-Lay Sales LP, S & T of Mississippi Inc., SIH International LLC, SVC Logistics Inc., SVC Manufacturing Inc., SVE Russia Holdings GmbH, Sabritas LLC, Sabritas S. de R.L. de C.V., Sabritas Snacks America Latina de Nicaragua y Cia Ltda, Sabritas de Costa Rica S. de R.L., Sabritas y Cia. S en C de C.V., Sakata Rice Snacks Australia Pty Ltd, Sandora Holdings B.V., Saudi Snack Foods Company Limited, Sea Eagle International SRL, Seepoint Holdings Ltd., Senselet Food Processing PLC, Senselet Holding B.V., Servicios GBF Sociedad de Responsabilidad Limitada, Servicios GFLG y Compania Limitada, Servicios Gamesa Puerto Rico L.L.C., Servicios SYC S. de R.L. de C.V., Seven-Up Asia Inc., Seven-Up Light B.V., Seven-Up Nederland B.V., Shanghai PepsiCo Snack Company Limited, Shanghai YuHo Agricultural Development Co. Ltd, Shoebill LLC, Simba (Proprietary) Limited, Simba Proprietary Limited, Sitka Spruce, Smartfoods Inc., Smiles and Bites Holdings S.de R.L. de C.V., Smiths Crisps Limited, Snack Food Investments GmbH, Snack Food Investments II GmbH, Snack Food Investments Limited, Snack Food-Beverage Asia Products Limited, Snacks America Latina S.R.L., Snacks Guatemala Ltd., So Spark Ltd., Soda-Club CO2 Atlantic GmbH, Soda-Club CO2 GmbH, Soda-Club CO2 Ltd., Soda-Club Switzerland GmbH, Soda-Club Worldwide B.V., SodaStream, SodaStream Australia Pty Ltd, SodaStream CO2 SA, SodaStream Canada Ltd., SodaStream Enterprises N.V., SodaStream France SAS, SodaStream GmbH, SodaStream Iberia S.L., SodaStream Industries Ltd., SodaStream International B.V., SodaStream International Ltd., SodaStream Israel Ltd., SodaStream K.K., SodaStream New Zealand Ltd., SodaStream Nordics AB, SodaStream Poland Sp. z o.o., SodaStream SA Pty Ltd., SodaStream Switzerland GmbH, SodaStream USA Inc., SodaStream Osterreich GmbH, South Beach Beverage Company Inc., South Properties Inc., Spitz International Inc., Sportmex Internacional S.A. de C.V., Springboig Industries Ltd, Spruce Limited, Stacy's Pita Chip Company Incorporated, Star Foods E.M. S.R.L., Stokely-Van Camp Inc., Stratosphere Communications Pty Ltd, Stratosphere Holdings 2018 Limited, Streamfoods Ltd, TFL Holdings LLC, Tasman Finance S.a r.l, The Gatorade Company, The Good Carb Food Company Ltd., The Pepsi Bottling Group Canada ULC, The Quaker Oats Company, The Smith's Snackfood Company Pty Limited, Thomond Group Holdings Limited, Tobago Snack Holdings LLC, Tropicana Alvalle S.L., Tropicana Beverages Limited, Tropicana Europe N.V., Tropicana United Kingdom Limited, Troya-Ultra LLC, United Foods Companies Restaurantes S.A., V-Water, VentureCo Israel Ltd, Veurne Snack Foods BV, Vitamin Brands Ltd., Walkers Crisps Limited, Walkers Group Limited, Walkers Snack Foods Limited, Walkers Snacks Distribution Limited, Walkers Snacks Limited, Whitman Corporation, Whitman Insurance Co. Ltd., Wimm-Bill-Dann Beverages JSC, Wimm-Bill-Dann Brands Co. Ltd., Wimm-Bill-Dann Central Asia-Almaty LLP, Wimm-Bill-Dann Foods LLC, Wimm-Bill-Dann Georgia Ltd., Wimm-Bill-Dann JSC, and Wimm-Bill-Dann Ukraine PJSC.
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Suncor Energy Inc. operates as an integrated energy company. The company primarily focuses on developing petroleum resource basins in Canada's Athabasca oil sands; explores, acquires, develops, produces, transports, refines, and markets crude oil in Canada and internationally; markets petroleum and petrochemical products under the Petro-Canada name primarily in Canada. It operates through Oil Sands; Exploration and Production; Refining and Marketing; and Corporate and Eliminations segments. The Oil Sands segment recovers bitumen from mining and in situ operations, and upgrades it into refinery feedstock and diesel fuel, or blends the bitumen with diluent for direct sale to market. The Exploration and Production segment is involved in offshore operations off the east coast of Canada and in the North Sea; and operating onshore assets in Libya and Syria. The Refining and Marketing segment refines crude oil and intermediate feedstock into various petroleum and petrochemical products; and markets refined petroleum products to retail, commercial, and industrial customers through its other retail sellers. The Corporate and Eliminations segment operates four wind farms in Ontario and Western Canada. The company also markets and trades in crude oil, natural gas, byproducts, refined products, and power. The company was formerly known as Suncor Inc. and changed its name to Suncor Energy Inc. in April 1997. Suncor Energy Inc. was founded in 1917 and is headquartered in Calgary, Canada.
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. 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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.) 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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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Target Corporation has a long history dating back to 1902. The company began as Goodfellows Dry Goods, operated by George Dalton, and later changed its name via a progression of mergers and acquisitions. The first Target store was opened in Roseville, Minnesota in 1962 as the discount division of the parent company. The idea was discount or low-priced items could still be fashionable and desirable. After meeting great success in the home territory, the concept went public in the late 1960s was later expanded on a national level during the 1980s. Target Corporation is now the 7th largest retailer in the US and is projected to bring in more than $113 billion in revenue for fiscal 2023.
The department stores were shed in 2004 so today Target operates as a general merchandise retailer that serves on-trend items at discounted prices. It is known as a big box retailer and is a member of the S&P 500. The company listed about 2,000 stores in mid-2022 and had plans for growth. The company offers an assortment of everyday, household, and food goods in a bright and cheery atmosphere. It has set itself apart from other low-priced retailers as the chic choice for savvy shoppers. The companys stated purpose is to help families discover the joy of everyday life and it does so by offering quality products that families can afford.
The company sells its products through a chain of stores as well as eCommerce. eCommerce is about 20% of Targets total revenue and was boosted by the COVID-19 pandemic. Services like delivery, same-day pickup, and access to thousands of necessary and discretionary items are also driving adoption. Target also offers amenities like cafes and opticians, and it hosts Starbucks inside the stores.
Target Corporation has paid and increased its dividend for more than 5 decades. The company issued its 53rd consecutive distribution increase in calendar 2022 bringing the total annual payout to $4.32. In late October 2022, the payout was worth 2.7% in yield and came with a 40% payout ratio and a 9% distribution compound annual growth rate.
Target is a leader in ESG and giving back to the community. Among its many endeavors is to return 5% of its profits to community charities as well as to inspire its employees to volunteer. Volunteers donate more than 1 million man-hours per year.
Samsungs DeX dock lets you connect one of the companys recent phones to an external display, mouse, and keyboard to use your phone like a desktop PC assuming youre comfortable with a desktop PC that runs Android.
But soon you may also be able to use your Android phone as a Linux PC. Samsung recently unveiled plans for Linux on Galaxy, promising that youd be able to run a full-fledged Linux environment on a phone hooked up to a DeX dock.
Now the company has released a brief video that provides more details. One of those details? At least one of the Linux environments in question seems to be Ubuntu 16.04.
In the video, we see someone dock their phone, choose the Linux on Galaxy option from the desktop, and then choose Ubuntu 16.04 LTS. While thats the only option shown, the fact that it does seem to be an option suggests you may be able to run different Linux environments as well.
Once Ubuntu is loaded, the video shows a user opening Eclipse, an integrated development environment thats used to create Java (and Android apps). In other words, you can develop apps for Android phones with ARM-based processors on an Android phone with an ARM-based processor.
While Samsung seems to be showing off the developer-friendly features of Linux on Galaxy right now, theoretically non-developers could use the Linux environment to run desktop apps rather than Android apps when a phone is docked. For instance, this could open the door to desktop versions of Chrome, Firefox, LibreOffice, GIMP, or other popular GNU/Linux applications although its worth noting that Samsung hasnt shown any of those programs working yet, so its not clear how easy it would be to install them or how well they would run.
via /r/Android and The Register
Important stuff you won't get from the liberal media! We do the surfing so you can be informed AND have a life!
Head of Portugal's Finance Ministry: EU countries must work faster on energy intervention
Kuwait executes 7 prisoners
Czech Republic plans to train up to 4,000 Ukrainian servicemen next year
Ukraine once again asks US for powerful drones
Belarusian border guards shoot down drone intruding into airspace from Ukraine
Greek authorities temporarily ban export of firewood from country
Azerbaijan protests to France in connection with Senate resolution
Blinken calls on Aliyev to observe ceasefire and limit provocations
Pashinyan: We're advancing rights of Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh.
Pashinyan: Armenia invites Azerbaijan to sign framework agreement on peace
Pashinyan: Most of the arable land of 4 villages in Tavush Province is occupied by Azerbaijanis
Armenian Prime Minister: Let the opposition loudly reject Russia's proposals
Pashinyan: 2023 budget growth in social protection compared to 2018 is 56%
Inflation in UK up to 41-year high of 11.1% in October
Pashinyan: We don't want to provoke war between CSTO and Azerbaijan
Pashinyan's explanation: How should we fight inflation?
Pashinyan: Armenia submitted its proposals for peace treaty to Azerbaijan, we are waiting for a response
Pashinyan: Army budget 2023 more than doubled compared to 2018
CNN: CIA director visits Kyiv
Macron urges Iran to calm down and respect the French
IRGC forces detain Mossad spy in southern Iran
Iranian Foreign Minister expresses dissatisfaction with number of 'unrealistic comments' by Azerbaijani officials
Parliament Vice-Speaker: Armenian military-industrial complex able to establish serial production of military products
Armen Grigoryan receives Major General Daniel Lasica
Ivanka Trump says she will not participate in her father's presidential campaign
KGB of Belarus states about 'threat of intervention' from Baltic States, Ukraine, and Poland
Belarus says AFU blew up bridges in direction of Gomel and Mozyr
22-year-old soldier dies in accident with army truck in Armenia
Indonesian president hands over G20 presidency to India
Azerbaijani Ombudswoman's distorted perception of reality: French Senate Resolution 'will undermine peace in the region'
Nikol Pashinyan holds telephone conversation with Irakli Garibashvili
Four explosions blow up in sky over Belgorod
NATO Secretary General to hold meeting of alliance on incident in Poland
Finnish Foreign Ministry: Many in NATO believe that Turkey has created an awkward situation for the alliance
Armenian Patriarch of Jerusalem receives group of wounded participants of 44-day Karabakh war
AP: Drone with explosives attacks oil tanker off the coast of Oman
LPR announces attack by AFU from Popasna to Kharkiv Oblast
Toyota reveals next-generation Toyota Prius hybrid
Central Bank head: State Budget deficit in Armenia to grow to 3.1% of GDP in 2023
Erdogan believes Russia had nothing to do with the missile incident in Poland
Thanasis Bakolas shares concerns that Armenian politician banned from leaving Armenia
Biden and Sunak discuss missile incident in Poland at G20 summit
Russian Defense Ministry: Elements of the Ukrainian S-300 system fell in Poland
Erdogan: Biden administration is determined to sell F-16s to Turkey
Gold price remains stable
Copper falls in price
Microsoft to leave Azerbaijan
G7 and NATO leaders say they are ready to support Poland in investigation of bombings
Joe Biden asks Congress for new funding for Ukraine
Finance Minister: Capital expenses will greatly increase in Armenia in 2023
Azerbaijani MFA accuses French Senate of undermining relations normalization process between Baku and Yerevan
Armen Grigoryan to pay working visit to India
AP: Missile falls in Poland may have been fired by Ukraine to shoot down Russian missile
Erdogan plans to discuss fertilizer transportation and grain deal with Putin
Oil price falls
Blinken calls on Armenian Prime Minister to maintain momentum of peace talks with Azerbaijan
CNN: NATO aircraft tracked the trajectory of the missile that fell in eastern Poland
Armenian FM to visit Tunisia
Yerevan draft budget 2023 revealed
U.S. Embassy: Major General Daniel Lasica arrives in Armenia
Armenian MOD refutes another misinformation of Azerbaijani MOD
Media: Fire in Istanbul is caused by several explosions, not just one
Drone 'allegedly' blows up oil depot in Oryol Oblast
Trump officially announces that he will run for president in 2024
Anwar Gargash: UAE has no interest in choosing sides between great powers
Ukraine suspends oil pumping through Druzhba pipeline towards Hungary
Germany urgently needs gas turbines to stabilize power grids
Polish media report on fall of two missiles on country's territory
Economic downturn worsens in eastern EU due to a spike in inflation
U.S. believes that meeting between Biden and Jinping was strong signal to rest of world
Karabakh MFA welcomes resolution adopted by French Senate
Italy bans facial recognition technology and smart glasses
Germany to establish maintenance center in Slovakia for weapons supplied to Ukraine
Energy Ministry: Russia carried out most massive shooting of Ukraine's energy system since war starts
French Senate passes resolution calling for sanctions against Azerbaijan
Rishi Sunak hints that he will abandon plans to declare China 'threat' to national security
EU supports any call to phase out fossil fuel use
Secretary of Security Council of Armenia receives delegation of EU special envoys, member states
Armenian President Vahagn Khachatryan receives newly appointed ambassador of Cyprus
Zelenskyy's adviser: The situation after Russian shelling is critical
Newly appointed ambassador of Cyprus visits Armenian Genocide memorial
Borrell: EU countries must work together to replenish their military stocks
French Senator: Are the lives of Armenians worth less than the lives of Ukrainians?
Turkey plans to strike targets in northern Syria
Emergency power outages in Kyiv due to explosions
Lavrov calls Zelenskyy's speech at G20 summit performance beyond all regulations and decency
Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince embarks on Asian tour
Ukrainian media report missile strikes in number of areas
Chinese 50-year-old man runs marathon smoking
Pashinyan receives delegation of EU special envoys, EU member states on Eastern Partnership
Bloomberg: Paris overtakes London to become Europe's largest stock market
Anti-Iranian rally held in Baku
Mother See of Holy Etchmiadzin: Pashinyan's approaches and wordings do not contribute to solving urgent problems
Borrell announces appearance of EU rapid reaction force in 2023
Norwegian Defense Minister pledges $30 million to NATO fund for Ukraine
Italy auctioned biggest truffle for record 184 thousand euros
Serviceman kills fellow soldier in Armenia
Kyodo: 67-year-old Japanese princess diagnosed with breast cancer
Mehriban Aliyeva hurriedly gives up her role of UNESCO 'Goodwill Ambassador' before French Senate meeting
Jeff Bezos says he's ready to give away most of his fortune
The purchase of S-400 air-defense system was Russia has been completed, Turkish defense minister Nurettin Canikli said.
He said Turkey will not stop, and their main goal is to have their own technology, Turkish media reported.
In addition to the S-400, Turkey also made preliminary agreements with the Eurosam countries to develop, produce and use the air defense system in order to improve its long-term domestic national capacity, Canikli told reporters.
Last Wednesday Turkey, France and Italy signed a memorandum of intent in air defense on the margins of the meeting of NATO defense ministers in Brussels. The agreement provides for the joint production and supply of Turkey with the new generation SAMP-T air defense system produced by Eurosam consortium.
Moscow and Ankara reached agreement on the supplies of S 400 system to Turkey and signed a contract. President Erdogan said Turkey had made the first payment for S 400.
Shabaab Claims Killing, Wounding Over 33 Somali Soldiers in Southern Somalia, Strike on Kenyan Base
Cairo (AFP) - The Arab League will hold an extraordinary meeting next Sunday at the request of Saudi Arabia to discuss "violations" committed by Iran in the region, according to a memorandum.
Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates supported the Saudi request, which was also approved by Djibouti, the current chair of the pan-Arab bloc, said the document shown to AFP by diplomats on Sunday.
Tensions have been rising between Saudi Arabia and Iran, including over League members Qatar and Lebanon.
Sunni Muslim powerhouse Saudi Arabia and Iran, the predominant Shiite power, are long-standing rivals based as much in geostrategic interests as religious differences.
Facing off across the Gulf, the two energy-rich powers have for decades stood on opposing sides of conflicts in the Middle East.
According to the memo, the Saudi request for an Arab League meeting was based on a missile the Sunni-ruled kingdom says its air defences intercepted near Riyadh after being fired from Yemen on November 4.
A Saudi-led coalition has been battling Shiite Huthi rebels in Yemen, and it has accused the Iran-backed rebels of firing the missile.
Saudi Arabia's powerful Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman later accused Iran of "direct military aggression" against the kingdom by supplying the rebels with ballistic missiles.
But Iran denied any involvement in the missile attack, with President Hassan Rouhani warning that the Islamic republic's "might" would fend off any challenge.
- Trading blame -
According to the memo, Saudi Arabia also decried what it described as "sabotage" and "terrorism" over a pipeline fire in Bahrain on Friday that temporarily halted oil supplies from its territory.
Bahrain's foreign minister blamed Iran for the fire.
"The attempt to blow up the Saudi-Bahraini pipeline is a dangerous escalation on Iran's part that aims to terrorise citizens and to harm the world oil industry," Sheikh Khalid bin Ahmed al-Khalifa wrote on Twitter.
Story continues
Tehran rejected any involvement in the incident, calling the allegation "childish".
In its request for the meeting of Arab foreign ministers, Saudi Arabia referred to those two incidents "in addition to the violations committed by Iran in the Arab region, which undermines security and peace, not only in the Arab region, but around the globe," according to the memo.
Saudi Arabia has been at the forefront of a dispute with Qatar since June 5, leading a group of nations including Bahrain, Egypt and the UAE in accusing Doha of supporting terrorism.
Riyadh has for its part been accused of being behind last weekend's resignation of Lebanese prime minister Saad Hariri, in a televised address from Riyadh.
In his broadcast, Hariri accused Iran and its Lebanese ally Hezbollah of taking over Lebanon and destabilising the broader region, saying he feared for his life.
The Arab League has 22 members, but Syria's membership was suspended at the end of 2011 following months of brutal repression of anti-government demonstrations and an opposition movement supported by Gulf monarchies.
Why would Kim Jong-un insult me by calling me "old," when I would NEVER call him "short and fat?" Oh well, I try so hard to be his friend - and maybe someday that will happen! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 12, 2017
When will all the haters and fools out there realize that having a good relationship with Russia is a good thing, not a bad thing. There always playing politics - bad for our country. I want to solve North Korea, Syria, Ukraine, terrorism, and Russia can greatly help! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 12, 2017
the actual fuck kinda drugs are you on? https://t.co/7zn9Y20Dbp Chloe Bennet (@ChloeBennet4) November 12, 2017
Can a president be impeached
For STUPIDITY Cher (@cher) November 12, 2017
Were all gonna die https://t.co/3uqqi5vT0a Kal Penn (@kalpenn) November 12, 2017
Asia trip or acid trip? https://t.co/773puqiEvR Bradley Whitford (@WhitfordBradley) November 12, 2017
Just like they greatly helped you get elected!
PS: It's "they're", not "there"
xoxo, Your #1 Hater and Fool, mh https://t.co/yepCQyLoJu @HamillHimself (@HamillHimself) November 12, 2017
FYI, @realdonaldtrump!
Their is the possessive case of the pronoun they. They left their wallets in the car.
There is an adverb that means in or at that place. She is in there.
Theyre is a contraction of the words they and are. Theyre always playing politics. https://t.co/cc0GraLDtZ Alyssa Milano (@Alyssa_Milano) November 12, 2017
It was either let him do this tweet or nuke Pyongyang. I for one and am grateful for their service. Jon Favreau (@jonfavs) November 12, 2017
Today Trump decided it was a good day to tweet insults at Kim Jung Un. He also had praise for his BFF Putin who he got to hang out with today, no doubt Putin reminded him of a certain tape. Trump also said to the press that he believes Putin when he says he didn't interfere in the 2016 election and that our intelligence agencies are political hacks.(Pod Save America hosts)Sources: 1
ewww why would they have Thor grow his hair back
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ikr. his short hair >>>>>>>>>>>>
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Chris H looks way better with short hair.
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why did they just upgrade thor to downgrade him again!!!
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bcz it's a flashback scene?
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"travel to past"?
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short hairs the best hes looked in all the movies.
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Oh no. You do not get a free pass to have me feel bad for you just because your sudden plot point family from AoU died. (Linda deserves better)
I know Black Widow has a scene with some Yakuza in Japan. (Oh the irony) She probably fights or negotiates something with them. (Please god get the long red wig back)
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Maybe she was filming Ghost in the Shell 2.
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Lol. It was all at the Atlanta set for Avengers 4
https://screenrant.com/avengers-4-images-japan-black-widow/
Edited at 2017-11-12 05:51 am (UTC)
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I love this comment
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Age of Ultron was such a travesty
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Ugh Chris and his bb is doing things to me.
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I see people did not read the summary lol.
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lmao guilty.
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I did!
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Yaaaas my babe Peggy
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Let me guess, I'm supposed to feel bad about his family dying even though they only had 15 minutes of screen time?
(I'm going to catch feelings anyway because I'm a fucking sap)
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Its so transparent lol. He's still a flop character played by a flop actor.
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Comic Clint where he's deaf, a general mess of a person, and playing dumb to everyone except Natasha is 150% more interesting than clay face Renner.
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clint in the comics is only a flop in the best of ways tbh
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Linda Cardellini deserves better anyway.
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same
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Ehh, he should have never been given a family in the first place so I'll allow this.
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I like Linda Cardellini, so if they bring her back just to kill her off then, yeah I'll be sad. However, if it happens off screen, I won't care.
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meh
gimme the infinity war trailer already im ready to stan the bad sis thanos.
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Pretty sure they're gonna release it when JL premieres.
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From your hole to God's tongue! I hope so
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oh man I hope so
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You know they are. They're petty like that.
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I hope so omg
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I was expecting it during Thor, tbh.
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If there's Ronin, can we have Kate Bishop as Hawkeye?
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Praise Fallon for creating this game
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He looks so good
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I've liked Hemsworth better with short hair for years so Ragnarok was like a gift personally addressed to me lol.
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I think I'm the only one who prefers the long hair, lol. When his hair is short he just looks like Chris and not Thor. It breaks the ~illusion~.
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TBF at least we won't see Hawkeye's Plot Point Family die the way they did in The Ultimates, because that was just incredibly fucked up.
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what was it?
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"Plot Point Family" lmao
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gdi with the fridging
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It's what he deserves after making me suffer through that fucking farm scene... tho i wasn't mad the wood cutting part
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They are killing off his one likable thing? Bye
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I like Thor with the long hair.
Edited at 2017-11-12 06:18 am (UTC)
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Same. I grew to like the short hair, but his long hair is classic Thor.
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Saaaaame. But I like it enough, especially with the shaved abstract bits, to not be irritated by it.
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I take some comfort in the fact that most short hair lovers aren't really Thor!comic followers. You are not alone, mah BB. :3I take some comfort in the fact that most short hair lovers aren't really Thor!comic followers. #lolelitist
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A study analyzing tobacco sales and advertising in city ZIP codes found that black and Latino communities are more likely to be exposed to tobacco marketing than white communities.
Linnea Laestadius, who helped design the study, presented her findings at a "community conversation" Saturday attended by about 75 people, including young people from FACT, a state anti-tobacco youth organization, and State Rep. David Crowley, who said he recently attended the funeral for one of his best friends who died from lung cancer related to smoking.
The Milwaukee Tobacco Retail Assessments Project analyzed three clusters of ZIP codes that were predominantly African-American, Latino or white to determine whether there were differences in sales and advertising for tobacco products. It also focused on places such as corner and liquor stores where children could easily access tobacco advertising and products.
"In Milwaukee County alone, there [are] over 1,000 licensed tobacco retailers and that is a lot, said Laestadius, an assistant professor at UW-Milwaukee Zilber School of Public Health.
Black and Latino neighborhoods are three times more likely to have a retailer within 500 feet of a school than neighborhoods that are mostly white. (Graphic courtesy of the Milwaukee Collaborative Project)
The study involved local and statewide tobacco prevention groups including Milwaukee County Substance Abuse Coalition, Wisconsin Department of Public Health and researchers from Zilber School of Public Health.
The study looked at three different clusters of ZIP codes that were predominantly black (Cluster A: 53209, 53206, 53205), Latino (Cluster B: 53204, 53215) and white (Cluster C: 53217, 53211, 53220, 53110). The research showed that there are 1.7 tobacco retailers for every 1,000 people in black neighborhoods, compared to 1.3 sellers in Latino neighborhoods and less than one retailer per 1,000 people in white neighborhoods.
"The tobacco industry spends over eight billion on tobacco advertising, and no one spends eight billion on anything unless they expect something in return for that," Laestadius said.
The smoking rate is Milwaukee County is 20 percent, while in Waukesha County it is 14 percent. Statewide the rate is 17 percent, Laestadius said. She added that marketing has an effect on why people choose to start smoking.
"The evidence is increasingly clear that children who are exposed to tobacco marketing in stores are more likely to start smoking," Laestadius noted.
Black and Latino neighborhoods in the study were three times more likely to have retailers within 500 feet of a school than white neighborhoods.
"If we have a ton of retailers in a fairly small area, theyre going to be closer to schools," Laestadius said.
Nia Kamara, a 10th grader at Shorewood High School and board member of FACT, attended the event to learn more about the study. FACT hosts meetings and events for students in grades seven through 12 to educate them about the dangers of smoking.
"We have our own meetings to discuss what we can improve on. We spread the truth about tobacco," said Kamara. She added that she would like to see more young people join the organization.
"So many tobacco products are geared toward our younger children, and the tobacco companies know that," said Christal West, outreach coordinator for the Wisconsin African American Tobacco Prevention Network. "What theyre doing is using subliminal messaging for our children. They go into the store and see tobacco products looking like candy," she added.
Crowley said he attended the event to be part of the solution in decreasing smoking in Milwaukee. "We need to make sure were focusing on the advertising of tobacco products in our neighborhood and local stores.
"We know that we have a big issue when it comes down to advertising tobacco products, not only with young people, but also people of color," he added. "This is an opportunity to have real-world discussions at the local level, but also to inform our state officials."
While working as an electrician Lee Carter received a literal shock, through one hand and across the chest, that jolted him into politics and turned him on to what was a dirty word in America for nearly a century: socialism. His struggle to obtain compensation for the workplace injury inspired him to run for office, and this week Carter ousted a top Republican incumbent to nab a spot in Virginia's House of Delegates, becoming one of over a dozen unabashed socialists newly elected to US state and municipal seats one year after Donald Trump took the White House. The 31-year-old former Marine is part of a growing cadre of Americans, particularly millennials, pledging their allegiance to the Democratic Socialists of America, the nation's fastest growing leftist group that was originally founded in 1982 as a foothold for Marxists. Riding the wave of democratic socialist Bernie Sanders's spirited White House bid against primary rival Hillary Clinton, the organization is helping propel socialism out of the shadows. In the years prior to the Sanders campaign, the DSA's number of card-carrying members hovered around 6,500 -- and has nearly quintupled since 2016's presidential race to more than 30,000. Its median age has dropped from about 60 to 35, according to organizers, some of whom have playfully referred to the surge among youth as a "socialist baby boom." Dismayed by Trump's rise to power Jacquelyn Smith in January joined the DSA, which has chapters in nearly every US state. And at just 22 years old, she managed Carter's victorious campaign. Organizing as a DSA member means "I am challenging the root of the problem and not the symptoms," she told AFP, speaking at a recent convention of the organization's local Washington branch. "I focus a lot less on challenging Trump and a lot more on challenging why he got there in the first place," she said, citing forces including economic inequality and white supremacist movements. Today Smith said millennials -- a generation that grew up during the 2008 financial crisis -- are eager for socialism, to "embrace the ideology and really fight with it publicly." Under her management DSA members spent months canvassing for Carter in Virginia's 50th district, about an hour's drive west of the nation's capital, knocking on more than 9,000 doors in the final four days. Those grassroots efforts helped propel Carter, who ran as a socialist on the Democratic party ticket, to an upset nine-point victory against one of Virginia's most powerful state Republicans. - 'Alarming reputation' fading - Despite their current momentum far-left groups like the DSA remain on the fringes of American politics, working within a two-party system that leaves little space for outsiders. The political group is not a party, and has nowhere near the clout of sister movements elsewhere such as Jeremy Corbyn's Labour Party in Britain, or Syriza in Greece and Podemos in Spain. But socialism has not had a voice this loud in American politics for decades. Though she would not yet classify the wave of leftist activism as a mass movement, politics professor Cathy Schneider of American University said the DSA's growth is significant in that it indicates voters shocked by Trumpism are also increasingly disillusioned with the Democratic Party. "There is a sector of American society who feel that the political parties do not address their concerns," she said. "The Democratic Socialists have said we have an answer for that." Their current strategy does not necessarily include third-party politics; instead the DSA is fielding socialist candidates for elected office using whichever ballot line makes winning likely, generally that of the Democrats. And though many members got involved in the aftermath of the Sanders campaign, organizers now say their goal is to build a movement not connected to any single politician but instead based on core issues like universal health care, public investment in education and housing and bolstering labor protections. Schneider also noted that socialism's "alarming reputation" appears to be fading, no small development in a country that lived through the Red Scare era of anti-communist propaganda. "People no longer associate socialism with dictatorships in the USSR and China," she said. That didn't stop Carter's opponent from red-baiting: in the final days of the race the Republican sent a mailer to 11,000 homes that juxtaposed the democratic socialist's face with portraits of famous communists including Karl Marx and Mao Zedong. But even Republican voters told canvassers they found the attempt to sully the leftist's image "gross," Carter said. "The scare-mongering around what's essentially a disagreement on economic philosophy doesn't work any more."
Saad Hariri, whose resignation as Lebanon's prime minister a week ago sent shockwaves across the region, said Sunday he is "free" in Saudi Arabia and will return to Lebanon "very soon". In an interview from Riyadh with his party's Future TV, Hariri brushed aside rumours that he was under de facto house arrest in the kingdom, from which he announced his surprise departure. "I am free here. If I want to travel tomorrow, I will," Hariri said. "I will return to Lebanon very soon," Hariri said, adding later that he would land in Beirut "in two or three days". Hariri, 47, announced he was stepping down from his post in a televised address on November 4 from Riyadh, and has yet to return to his native Lebanon. However, Lebanese President Michel Aoun has yet to formally accept his resignation and said the premier has been "restricted" in his movements. Hariri's surprise resignation came as tensions rise between Riyadh and Tehran, which back opposing sides in power struggles from Lebanon and Syria to Yemen. At the time, Hariri accused Iran and its Lebanese ally Hezbollah of taking over his country and destabilising the broader region. "We cannot continue in Lebanon in a situation where Iran interferes in all Arab countries, and that there's a political faction that interferes alongside it," he repeated on Sunday in apparent reference to rival movement Hezbollah. "Maybe there's a regional conflict between Arab countries and Iran. We're a small country. Why put ourselves in the middle?" As tensions heated up, the Arab League said it would hold an extraordinary meeting next Sunday at the request of Saudi Arabia to discuss "violations" by Iran in the region, according to a document shown to AFP by diplomats on Sunday. - 'Rescind resignation' - Wearing a suit and tie and with a Lebanese flag in the background, the former premier looked tired on Sunday and spoke softly but firmly throughout the interview. Hariri, who also holds Saudi citizenship, told journalist Paula Yaacoubian that he wrote his resignation himself and wanted to submit it in Lebanon, "but there was danger". He also appeared to lay down an exit strategy, saying he would be willing to "rescind the resignation" if intervention in regional conflicts stopped. "We need to respect the disassociation policy," Hariri said, referring to an agreement among Lebanese political factions that they would not interfere in Syria's six-year war. He appeared to be alluding to Hezbollah's military intervention on behalf of the Syrian government, to which Hariri is opposed. Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah said Friday that Hariri was "detained in Saudi Arabia, he is banned from returning to Lebanon". - 'Excellent' ties with Saudi - Hariri has spent the past week in a string of meetings with diplomats and Saudi officials in Riyadh, including an encounter with Saudi King Salman. He left the kingdom once for a trip to Abu Dhabi. In his interview on Sunday, Hariri said he has "excellent" ties with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in an apparent effort to put to rest rumours that the Saudi crown prince had pressured him to step down. "Really, I consider him a brother and he considers me a brother. It's an excellent and special relationship," he said. But he refused to comment on the internal political turmoil in Saudi Arabia, where dozens of high-profile politicians and businessmen have been arrested in what authorities say is an anti-graft drive. The two-time premier's father Rafik made his fortune in Saudi Arabia and also served as premier for years before he was assassinated in 2005. Saad cited fears for his life when he resigned from his post last week, less than a year after his unity government was formed with Hezbollah. Lebanese have expressed concern that the move could thrust the country into a political and economic tailspin, as it remains unclear who could replace Hariri. Western countries moved quickly to express their support for the premier, with US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson calling him a "strong partner". Tillerson warned against any party "using Lebanon as a venue for proxy conflicts or in any manner contributing to instability in that country".
Its official: the Philippines is indeed the worst place for drivers, at least according to Waze as the community-based traffic and navigation-app recently released its third annual Driver Satisfaction Index.
According to Waze, its Driver Satisfaction Index ranks its users experience based on a scale of 10 (satisfying) to 1 (unhappy) across six key factors:
Traffic: density and severity of traffic Quality: road quality and infrastructure Road Safety: density of reported accidents, road hazards, and weather Driver Services: access to gas stations and easy parking Socioeconomic: access to cars and impact of gas prices Wazeyness: happiness and helpfulness of the Waze Community
Unsurprisingly, particularly if you live in the country and have experienced the traffic in its major cities, including those outside of Metro Manila like Cebu and Davao, the Philippines is the worst country for a driver to be in with an Index score of 3.02. Apparently, despite being one of the top countries in the Asia Pacific region when it comes to Driver Services, our rankings are low in Traffic (no surprise there!), Socioeconomic (wait until the revised excise tax takes effect next year!), and Wazeyness (shame on those who dont do their part to update the app on the traffic situation wherever they are!).
Joining us to round out the five worst countries in the Index are the Dominican Republic (3.35), El Salvador (3.56), Indonesia (3.71), and Russia (3.78).
On the opposite end of the spectrum, the Netherlands is the best country for a driver to be in with an Index score of 7.9 due to prime traffic conditions, road quality, and infrastructure, according to Waze. Following closely behind it are France (7.85), the United States (7.55), the Czech Republiuc (7.49), and Belgium (7.41).
Based on Wazes study, traffic remains to be global problem with no country scoring above 8 for its Traffic Index, with only the Czech Republic coming close at 7.67. The global average based on the Traffic Index is reportedly 4.95.
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As for Safety, Argentina topped the list with 9.67. For Driver Services, Russia was the highest with 8.93. The United Arab Emirates topped the Quality Index at 10, which shouldnt be surprising given the number of supercars and hypercars driven in the country, while France led the Wazeyness Index with 8.69.
Waze Driver Satisfaction Index
The post Waze: Philippines is Worst Place for Drivers, According to its Driver Satisfaction Index appeared first on Carmudi Philippines.
Farmer Wang Enlin (2nd L) sits in his house with fellow environmental activists who have taken on a subsidiary of China's largest chemical firm, accusing it of polluting and destroying farmland
Wang Enlin, an elderly farmer who left school when he was 10 years old and taught himself law armed with a single textbook and dictionary, makes for an unlikely eco-warrior.
Yet the 64-year-old is determined to reap justice as he readies for a fresh battle in his war with a subsidiary of China's largest chemical firm, which he accuses of polluting and destroying his farmland.
"In China, behind every case of pollution is a case of corruption," he said of his mission to bring Qihua Chemical Group (also known as Heilongjiang Haohua Chemical) to account.
Wang and others villagers from northeast Heilongjiang province have sued Qihua accusing it of contaminating their soil, rendering it untenable for crops, in a case that has stretched on for more than 16 years.
This February, Wang and his self-styled "Senior Citizen Environmental Protection Team" earned a rare victory when a local court ordered Qihua to clear up their chemical waste siteadjacent to the farmers' landand pay a total of 820,000 yuan ($120,000) to compensate for lost harvests in 55 affected rural households.
But that ruling was overturned on appeal, and Wang is now gearing up to fight back on another day in court.
"We will absolutely win. The law is on our side," Wang told AFP.
His case is testing the possibilities of a national environmental protection law revised in 2015.
The legislation was widely touted as a way to open the courts to public interest environmental damage lawsuits, but has been criticised for poor implementation.
Change your fate
Qihua is a subsidiary of the state-owned ChemChina, the country's largest chemical enterprise. It specialises in crude oil processing and petroleum products.
Wang's battle began in 2001, when a village committee leased 28.5 hectares (70 acres) to Qihua for use as a chemical waste dumping ground without the villagers' consent.
The villagers claim that the company failed to take proper pollution control measures.
Wang says he felt compelled to teach himself law after realising he lacked the knowledge or resources to take on the might of an industrial giant.
China had just emerged from its Great Famine when Wang left school: "It didn't matter at the time whether you got an education," he said. "It wouldn't change your fate."
He was well into middle age when he found a textbook on environmental law at a local bookstore. It took him years to understand as he painstakingly looked up unfamiliar terms in a dog-eared dictionary.
After petitioning the local authorities to no avail, he received aid in 2007 from the Centre for Legal Assistance to Pollution Victims, which helped the villagers put together a lawsuit using evidence he had compiled.
Wang Baoqin and a fellow member of the 'Senior Citizen Environmental Protection Team' walk on farmland that they say was polluted by the Qihua chemical plant in Yushutun
A 2013 sampling of mercury levels conducted on the site by the Green Beagle Institute, a Beijing-based non-profit, found the land was "not suitable for agricultural use".
The Ministry of Environmental Protection included Qihua in a 2014 list of "major" environmental cases.
But it was still another year before Wang's case was accepted into China's justice system.
Prominent environmentalist Ma Jun told AFP that while the litigation process has been streamlined since 2015, pollution lawsuits can still take years to be heard partly because "local governments give some degree of protection to polluting companies".
Today Wang prepares his own legal paperwork and hosts daily gatherings at his home for villagers hoping to learn about their rights.
Wang, who suffers from lung problems and requires medicine to help him breathe, accuses Qihua of "pretending to be deaf and mute" on the issue.
He says he is frequently visited by police officers who urge him to drop the case and stop talking to the media.
Qihua's lawyers declined to comment on the case.
'Corrupt officials'
In September, the Qiqihar Intermediate People's Court accepted Wang's request to appeal the ruling that overturned his initial victory.
"We're just farmers, without any resources or power," said Wang Baoqin (no relation), a member of Wang Enlin's senior citizens' environmental group.
"Against the government, we can't win. Against those corrupt officials, we definitely can't win. So we decided to take the side road and fight the company."
According to Rachel Stern, the author of "Environmental Litigation in China: A Study in Political Ambivalence," the number of new legal cases related to natural resources has increased tenfold over the past decade.
The Supreme People's Court heard 133,000 such cases last year.
Some complainants have found success: in 2015, a petrol giant was ordered to pay 1.68 million yuan ($265,000) to 21 fishermen whose livelihoods suffered from oil spills.
Qihua's plant did not appear to be in operation when AFP reporters visited in late August. The land was dry and marked by patches of overgrown grass, no longer the site of a massive wastewater pond.
But no crops will grow in the spot again, Wang Baoqin predicted.
"We may not even see justice in our lifetimes," she said. "We're doing this for the generations to come."
2017 AFP
In this Nov. 6, 2017, photo, a self-raising dike is seen in the Dutch fishing village of Spakenburg. The 300-meter long dike that is raised by the very flood waters it is designed to hold back is an example of Dutch ingenuity in flood prevention that is becoming a major export earner for this low-lying nation. (AP Photo/Mike Corder)
On a calm, clear morning, historic wooden fishing boats float tranquilly on the glassy waters of the Dutch harbor of Spakenburg. Yet just over a century ago, they were slamming through the houses lining the harbor as a powerful storm unleashed flooding that devastated this picturesque fishing village.
These days, an innovative new self-raising dike protects the village on the edge of Eemmeer Lake, 50 kilometers (30 miles) southeast of Amsterdam. The 300-meter (984-foot) long barrier is concealed in the sidewalk when not in use, and is lifted up to 80 centimeters (31 inches) by the very floodwaters it is designed to keep out.
It's just the latest example of Dutch ingenuity and planning in this low-lying nation's constant battle with waterand increasingly, technology like it is becoming a lucrative Dutch export.
"We live here in a very vulnerable place," said Roeland Hillen, director of the Dutch Flood Protection Program. "We have to adapt to survive."
That message resonates with many other flood-prone countries now attending climate change talks in Bonn, where delegates from some 195 nations have gathered to discuss rules for implementing the 2015 Paris climate accord. The meeting in the former German capital, which runs until Friday, is being presided over by Fiji, one of the many small island nations threatened by rising sea levels.
"We will feel the impact of climate change all over the world most profoundly through water," said Henk Ovink, the Netherlands' Special Envoy for International Water Affairs, who is at the Bonn conference.
In this Nov. 6, 2017 photo, boats are moored near the self-raising dike in the Dutch fishing village of Spakenburg, Netherlands. The 300-meter long dike that is raised by the very flood waters it is designed to hold back is an example of Dutch ingenuity in flood prevention that is becoming a major export earner for this low-lying nation. (AP Photo/Mike Corder)
The Dutch government teamed up earlier this year with Japan and the U. N. Environment Program to create a Global Center of Excellence on Climate Adaptation in the Netherlands that will be formally launched Tuesday on the sidelines of the Bonn conference.
The center aims to "support those who struggle to put climate adaptation effectively into practice in all parts of the world," the government said.
Housing the water expertise center in the Netherlands was a no-brainer. Some 26 percent of this nation of 17 million people lies below sea level and 29 percent is vulnerable to river flooding. The Dutch struggle to keep the country dry has been a constant fact of life for centuries.
The center will have bases in the northern city of Groningen and in a new floating office in the port city of Rotterdam.
The Dutch government earmarks 1 billion euros ($1.16 billion) per year to keep up its defenses against high water. The money is spent on maintaining and strengthening dikes and levees and on other water mitigation measures. By 2050, the country aims to reinforce some 1,900 kilometers (1,180 miles) of dikes and levees, Hillen said.
But while the costs are high, expertise and technology developed by the Dutch are becoming increasingly valuable commodities. Annual exports of Dutch water technology and expertise have doubled since 2000 to just under 8 billion euros ($9.3 billion) a year.
In this Nov. 6, 2017, photo, a man rides a bicycle next to self-raising dike n in the Dutch fishing village of Spakenburg, Netherlands. The 300-meter long dike that is raised by the very flood waters it is designed to hold back is an example of Dutch ingenuity in flood prevention that is becoming a major export earner for this low-lying nation. (AP Photo/Mike Corder)
"Water is an asset and a threat," said Ovink.
Recent contracts involving Dutch companies include Netherlands-based Arcadis being selected as part of a consortium involved in a 10-year "seawall resiliency project" to strengthen a century-old San Francisco harbor wall that protects an area including the city's beloved Fisherman's Wharf.
Back in Spakenburg, experts say the self-raising dike is a good example not only of new techniques for holding back rising tides, but also how to integrate such barriers in spatial planning. Sinking the wall into the sidewalk means that it does not spoil views of the picturesque harbor for tourists or locals. The technology already is being put to use in projects in England, Vietnam and China.
Ovink stresses that it is just one of a multitude of defenses the Dutch have developed to hold water at bay.
"There is no (single) fix," he said. "It's a culture of living with water."
2017 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
AFP News
Kenya's former president Uhuru Kenyatta arrived Tuesday in eastern DR Congo's main city of Goma, as fresh clashes with M23 rebels occurred just to the north, sending thousands fleeing. Troops in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) were battling M23 fighters in Kibumba, 20 kilometres (12 miles) north of Goma, security officials and local residents said. The M23 has recently seized swathes of territory in North Kivu province, displacing tens of thousands of people in their advance. Kibumba is considered one of the last obstacles to the rebels before Goma, a commercial hub of one million people on the Rwandan border. On Tuesday afternoon, rumours that the M23 was approaching sent a fresh wave of people fleeing to the Kanyaruchinya displacement camp, south of Kibumba. About 40,000 people are currently in the camp, according to its head. A security official who asked for anonymity said that people began to flee after seeing soldiers themselves retreating towards Goma after clashes with M23 rebels. North Kivu's military governor, General Constant Ndima, urged people to remain calm late Tuesday. "I want to reassure you... Loyalist forces are containing the enemy on the heights of Kibumba," he told reporters. The crisis has cratered relations between the DRC and its smaller central African neighbour Rwanda, which Kinshasa accuses of backing the militia. Uhuru Kenyatta, a mediator for the seven-nation East African Community (EAC), arrived in Goma on Tuesday and visited Kanyaruchinya. He told reporters late Tuesday that the stories he had heard were "heart-breaking". "I cannot ignore what I have seen," Kenyatta said. "I must say to all parties: You cannot negotiate in the face of human catastrophe". - 'De-escalation' - Kenyatta's visit to the DRC is the latest in a round of diplomatic bids to defuse the crisis in the impoverished country's volatile east. The former president landed in the Congolese capital Kinshasa on Sunday for talks, following on the heels of a visit from Angolan President Joao Lourenco. The EAC has also called for a "peace dialogue" in Kenya's capital Nairobi on November 21. In addition, the bloc has agreed to send a peacekeeping mission to eastern DRC. Kenyan troops arrived in Goma over the weekend, as part of that operation. On Monday, Kenyatta urged armed groups to put down their arms and return to the negotiating table. "There is nothing that can be gained through the barrel of a gun," he had told reporters. On Tuesday, United States Secretary of State Antony Blinken said he had discussed the situation with Rwanda's Foreign Minister Vincent Biruta, on the margins of the G20 meeting in Indonesia. "I underscored the United States deep concern about the continuing violence in eastern DRC, and called on Rwanda to take active steps to facilitate de-escalation," he said in a tweet. - Rebel return - Biruta, for his part, tweeted that Rwanda is committed to regional diplomatic mechanisms to bring peace to eastern DRC, as well as to finding a political solution to the crisis. Over 120 armed groups roam the region, many of which are a legacy of regional wars which flared at the turn of the century. The M23 -- a mostly Congolese Tutsi group -- first leapt to prominence in 2012 when it briefly captured Goma before being driven out. But the rebel group returned in late 2021 after years of dormancy, claiming the DRC had failed to honour a promise to integrate its fighters into the army, among other grievances. It captured the strategic town of Bunagana on the Ugandan border in June. In recent weeks, the rebels have also won a string of victories against the Congolese army, edging closer towards Goma. The DRC expelled Rwanda's ambassador in late October amid the renewed M23 offensive. Despite official denials from Kigali, an unpublished report for the UN seen by AFP in August pointed to Rwandan involvement with the M23. Rwanda accuses the Congolese government of colluding with Hutu militants who fled across the border after the 1994 Rwandan genocide. hbm-at/eml/kjm
A Fulani cattle herder walks with his cows outside the city of Tillaberi, southwest Niger, about 100km south of the Mali border, Niger November 1, 2017. REUTERS/Stringer
By Tim Cocks and David Lewis
NIAMEY/NAIROBI (Reuters) - When Doundou Chefou first took up arms as a youth a decade ago, it was for the same reason as many other ethnic Fulani herders along the Niger-Mali border: to protect his livestock.
He had nothing against the Republic of Niger, let alone the United States of America. His quarrel was with rival Tuareg cattle raiders.
Yet on Oct. 4 this year, he led dozens of militants allied to Islamic State in a deadly assault against allied U.S.-Niger forces, killing four soldiers from each nation and demonstrating how dangerous the West's mission in the Sahel has become.
The incident sparked calls in Washington for public hearings into the presence of U.S. troops. A Pentagon probe is due to be completed in January.
Asked by Reuters to talk about Chefou, Nigerien Defence Minister Kalla Mountari's face fell.
"He is a terrorist, a bandit, someone who intends to harm to Niger," he said at his office in the Nigerien capital Niamey earlier this month.
"We are tracking him, we are seeking him out, and if he ever sets foot in Niger again he will be neutralised."
Like most gunmen in so-called Islamic State in the Greater Sahara, which operates along the sand-swept borderlands where Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso meet, Chefou used to be an ordinary Fulani pastoralist with little interest in jihad, several government sources with knowledge of the matter said.
The transition of Chefou and men like him from vigilantes protecting their cows to jihadists capable of carrying out complex attacks is a story Western powers would do well to heed, as their pursuit of violent extremism in West Africa becomes ever more enmeshed in long-standing ethnic and clan conflicts.
For now, analysts say the local IS affiliate remains small, at fewer than 80 fighters. But that was also the case at first with al Qaeda-linked factions before they tapped into local grievances to expand their influence in Mali in 2012.
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The United Nations this week released a report showing how IS in northern Somalia has grown to around 200 fighters from just a few dozen last year.
The U.S. military has ramped up its presence in Niger, and other neighbouring countries, in recent years as it fears poverty, corruption and weak states mean the region is ripe for the spread of extremist groups.
GENESIS OF A JIHAD
For centuries the Tuareg and Fulani have lived as nomads herding animals and trading - Tuareg mostly across the dunes and oases of the Sahara and the Fulani mostly in the Sahel, a vast band of semi-arid scrubland that stretches from Senegal to Sudan beneath it.
Some have managed to become relatively wealthy, accumulating vast herds. But they have always stayed separate from the modern nation-states that have formed around them.
Though they largely lived peacefully side-by-side, arguments occasionally flared, usually over scarce watering points. A steady increase in the availability of automatic weapons over the years has made the rivalry ever more deadly.
A turning point was the Western-backed ouster of Libya's Muammar Gaddafi in 2011. With his demise, many Tuareg from the region who had fought as mercenaries for Gaddafi returned home, bringing with them the contents of Libya's looted armouries.
Some of the returnees launched a rebellion in Mali to try to create a breakaway Tuareg state in the desert north, a movement that was soon hijacked by al Qaeda-linked jihadists who had been operating in Mali for years.
Until then, Islamists in Mali had been recruiting and raising funds through kidnapping. In 2012, they swept across northern Mali, seizing key towns and prompting a French intervention that pushed them back in 2013.
Amid the violence and chaos, some of the Tuareg turned their guns on their rivals from other ethnic groups like the Fulani, who then went to the Islamists for arms and training.
In November 2013, a young Nigerien Fulani had a row with a Tuareg chief over money. The old man thrashed him and chased him away, recalls Boubacar Diallo, head of an association for Fulani livestock breeders along the Mali border, who now lives in Niamey.
The youth came back armed with an AK-47, killed the chief and wounded his wife, then fled. The victim happened to be the uncle of a powerful Malian warlord.
Over the next week, heavily armed Tuareg slaughtered 46 Fulani in revenge attacks along the Mali-Niger border.
The incident was bloodiest attack on record in the area, said Diallo, who has documented dozens of attacks by Tuareg raiders that have killed hundreds of people and led to thousands of cows and hundreds of camels being stolen.
"That was a point when the Fulani in that area realised they needed more weapons to defend themselves," said Diallo, who has represented them in talks aimed at easing communal tensions.
The crimes were almost never investigated by police, admits a Niamey-based law enforcement official with knowledge of them.
"The Tuareg were armed and were pillaging the Fulani's cattle," Niger Interior Minister Mohamed Bazoum told Reuters. "The Fulani felt obliged to arm themselves."
"SELF-DEFENCE"
Gandou Zakaria, a researcher of mixed Tuareg-Fulani heritage in the faculty of law at Niamey University, has spent years studying why youths turned to jihad.
"Religious belief was at the bottom of their list of concerns," he told Reuters. Instead, local grievances were the main driving force.
Whereas Tuareg in Mali and Niger have dreamed of and sometimes fought for an independent state, Fulani have generally been more pre-occupied by concerns over the security of their community and the herds they depend on.
"For the Fulani, it was a sense of injustice, of exclusion, of discrimination, and a need for self-defence," Zakaria said.
One militant who proved particularly good at tapping into this dissatisfaction was Adnan Abu Walid al-Sahrawi, an Arabic-speaking north African, several law enforcement sources said.
Al-Sahrawi recruited dozens of Fulani into the Movement for Unity and Jihad in West Africa (MUJWA), which was loosely allied to al Qaeda in the region and controlled Gao and the area to the Niger border in 2012.
After French forces in 2013 scattered Islamists from the Malian towns they controlled, al-Sahrawi was briefly allied with Mokhtar Belmokhtar, an al Qaeda veteran.
Today, al-Sahrawi is the face of Islamic State in the region.
"There was something in his discourse that spoke to the youth, that appealed to their sense of injustice," a Niger government official said of al-Sahrawi.
Two diplomatic sources said there are signs al-Sahrawi has received financial backing from IS central in Iraq and Syria.
How Chefou ended up being one of a handful of al-Sahrawi's lieutenants is unclear. The government source said he was brought to him by a senior officer, also Fulani, known as Petit Chapori.
Like many Fulani youth toughened by life on the Sahel, Chefou was often in and out of jail for possession of weapons or involvement in localised violence that ended in deals struck between communities, the government official said.
Yet Diallo, who met Chefou several times, said he was "very calm, very gentle. I was surprised when he became a militia leader".
U.S. and Nigerien sources differ on the nature of the fatal mission of Oct 4. Nigeriens say it was to go after Chefou; U.S. officials say it was reconnaissance mission.
One vehicle lost by the U.S. forces was supplied by the CIA and kitted with surveillance equipment, U.S. media reported. A surveillance drone monitored the battle with a live feed.
The Fulani men, mounted on motorbikes, were armed with the assault rifles they first acquired to look after their cows.
(Editing by Sonya Hepinstall)
A screengrab from a video taken on Saturday (11 November) that shows the man being arrested by three Transport Security Command officers at Lavender MRT station. (PHOTO: Facebook / Justin Lee)
A 52-year-old man was arrested at Lavender MRT station on Saturday (11 November) afternoon for using criminal force on a police officer and refusing to provide his personal particulars.
The incident took place during a routine patrol when police officers stopped the man and asked for his particulars. According to a statement from the Singapore Police Force (SPF), the man was uncooperative and, at one point, pushed one of the officers.
In a video posted on Facebook by user Justin Lee, the man is seen being taken into custody by three Transport Security Command officers at the station.
JUST IN @ Lavender MRT : Kudos to the 3 officers here to maintain their calm despite being verbally abused and assaulted. This man here refused to take his ID out for a routine check, verbally abused the officers and even pushed the officers. Posted by Justin Lee on Friday, November 10, 2017
The SPF takes a serious view against persons who obstruct police officers from carrying out their duties or cause them physical and verbal harm, said the statement.
Any person convicted of using criminal force to deter a public servant from discharge of his duty can be jailed for up to four years and/or fined, it added.
More Singapore stories:
No service on part of East-West Line on Friday night after two train faults
PHOTOS: CID officers learn from US forensic expert to examine shooting incident
Donald Trump said Sunday he backed the US intelligence agencies which concluded that Russia meddled in the 2016 US presidential election, but slammed "fools" who oppose better ties with Moscow. Key former Trump aides are under US investigation for possible collaboration with the Kremlin, and the issue of whether Moscow interfered with last year's vote has overshadowed the tail end of the president's 12-day Asia tour. Trump returned to the subject in a Twitter storm in Vietnam, which also saw him take a sarcastic dig at North Korea's "short and fat" leader Kim Jong-Un. At a press conference in Hanoi, Trump was asked to clarify comments he had made the day before about Russian President Vladimir Putin's insistence that Moscow had never tried to affect the US vote. "I believe he feels he and Russia did not meddle in the election," Trump said. "As to whether or not I believe it or not, I'm with our agencies. I believe in our... intelligence agencies," he added. But in his barrage of tweets, Trump slammed "haters and fools" who questioned his efforts to improve ties with Russia. "There (sic) always playing politics - bad for our country. I want to solve North Korea, Syria, Ukraine, terrorism, and Russia can greatly help!" he said. In May, US intelligence chiefs told Congress they agreed with their analysts' conclusion that Russia had interfered in the election, and on Saturday, CIA director Mike Pompeo, a Trump appointee, said he still held to that evaluation. But after sticking to script through most of his high-profile Asia trip, Trump lashed out at three former US officials whose agencies helped produce the original intelligence finding of Russian interference. He called former CIA chief John Brennan, former director of national intelligence James Clapper and former FBI chief James Comey "political hacks." Appearing later on CNN, Brennan denounced Trump's attack as "reprehensible," and Clapper said that for Trump to so minimize a Russian attempt to undermine the US system was "astounding and, in fact, poses a peril to this country." - 'Short and fat' - Trump's tour of Asia, which began its final leg in Manila on Sunday, has been dominated by the issue of North Korea and its ambitions to become a full-fledged nuclear state. His public pronouncements on Pyongyang over the last week have veered from denouncing it as a "cruel dictatorship" to offering a hand of friendship to Kim. On Sunday, his tone shifted back to one of hostility. Citing descriptions by North Korean officials and state media of him as an "old" man, Trump suggested he was disappointed by what he took as a personal attack from the North's young leader. "Why would Kim Jong-un insult me by calling me 'old,' when I would NEVER call him 'short and fat?'" Trump wrote. "Oh well, I try so hard to be his friend -- and maybe someday that will happen!" he added. He later insisted he hadn't been joking about eventually befriending a man he denounced last week as a "twisted" dictator. "It's certainly a possibility. If that did happen, it would be a good thing," he told reporters. North Korea is extremely sensitive to any remarks that might appear disrespectful to the country's ruling Kim dynasty, whose members are revered as near deities. Since becoming president, Trump has engaged in an escalating war of words with Kim, trading personal insults and threats of military strikes, and raising concerns about an outbreak of hostilities. Pyongyang hit back Saturday, calling his Asia trip "a warmonger's visit for confrontation" and saying it would only serve to accelerate Pyongyangs nuclear program. - South China Sea support - In another tweet Sunday, Trump said Chinese leader Xi Jinping had agreed to toughen sanctions against North Korea, whose impoverished economy is hugely reliant on trade with its giant neighbour. "President Xi of China has stated that he is upping the sanctions against (North Korea). Said he wants them to denuclearize. Progress is being made," he wrote. The US administration thinks China's economic leverage over North Korea is the key to strong-arming Pyongyang into halting its nuclear weapons and missile programmes. Trump is in the Philippines for a gathering that includes leaders of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), which marked its 50th anniversary Sunday with a lavish dinner. Several members of the group, including Hanoi and Manila, claim part of the resource-rich South China Sea, a key trade route over which Beijing says it has dominion and in which it has built militarised artificial islands. Vietnam has sought support from Washington in the dispute, and dealmaker Trump said Sunday he could help solve the conflict. "If I can help mediate or arbitrate, please let me know... I am a very good mediator," Trump told Vietnamese President Tran Dai Quang. In the past, China has reacted angrily to any suggestion of US mediation, saying Washington has no role in the dispute. burs-bbk/acb
In case you somehow missed it, Palasonic the long awaited full length London based release from Palace Skateboards dropped online this week, featuring full parts from Lucien Clarke, Rory Milanes, Chewy Cannon, Blondey McCoy, Benny Fairfax, Jamal Smith and the rest of the squad.
As anticipated, Danny Brady held down one of the most enjoyable sections in the video, so we decided wed use this weeks Sunday Service to remind you of some more recent Palace/Brady gold.
Cast your eyes below for Dannys full part from the 2016 Stateside offering V Nice, which was filmed across various missions to LA with the Palace crew. As ever, the whole squad knocked it firmly out of the park, though Danny came through with a part filled to the brim with quick-footed tech lines and typically steezed out business. Hit the play button now to refresh your memory, then take in Palasonic here if you have yet to do so
2017 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming Digest #45
Posted on 12 November 2017 by John Hartz
Story of the Week... El Nino/La Nina Update... Toon of the Week... Video of the Week... Coming Soon on SkS... Poster of the Week... Climate Feedback Reviews... SkS Week in Review... 97 Hours of Consensus...
Story of the Week...
COP23: Writing the Paris accord rule book
Having agreed to limit global warming, the COP must now figure out how to measure progress toward the goals set in Paris. Without double-checking this progress, the climate goals won't be reached.
Two years after the world committed to climate action in Paris, negotiators are still trying to figure out the nuts and bolts of the global deal to limit global warming to less than 2 degrees Celsius.
A big part of that is developing a plan to monitor and verify the pledges made by nearly 200 countries to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. During the two-week long COP23 talks in Bonn, negotiators are focusing, in part, on developing a system to make those measurements.
Writing that rule book is no easy task, says University of Edinburgh climate scientist Paul Palmer, part of an international team that assesses heat-trapping gases in the atmosphere.
"We need to measure carefully. We'll be looking for small, gradual reductions of large numbers, so we need to make sure we get the numbers right," Palmer told DW.
COP23: Writing the Paris accord rule book by Bob Berwyn, Deutsche Welle (DW), Nov 7, 2017
El Nino/La Nina Update
Sea surface temperature anomalies across the tropical Pacific Ocean, showing the telltale signs of a La Nina event.
La Nina is back, ya'll. And it may have major implications for your winter weather, depending on where you live.
La Nina conditions were formally declared present in the tropical Pacific Ocean on Thursday, in a statement from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). The agency's scientists found a large expanse of the equatorial tropical Pacific Ocean to feature cooler than average waters both at the surface and extending into deeper waters. The atmosphere is responding to this in ways that match expectations for a La Nina event.
In fact, the weather for much of the fall across parts of the U.S. has featured La Nina-like fingerprints, with milder than average conditions across the South and East, in particular.
La Nina is officially here to shape U.S. winter weather, along with global climate by Andrew Freedman, Mashable, Nov 10, 2017
Toon of the Week...
Quote of the Week...
This is like throwing away the medical records of a sick patient, said David Gallaher of the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colorado. Our world is ailing and we have apparently decided to undermine, quite deliberately, the effectiveness of the records on which its recovery might be based. It is criminal.
Donald Trump accused of obstructing satellite research into climate change by Robin McKie, Observer/Guardian, Nov 5, 2017
Photo of the Week...
Carrying colorful banners with slogans that read "Revolution, not pollution," "Climate or coal chancellor?" and "Frack off our land," participants in Saturday's anti-coal march in Bonn criticized the German government's reliance on coal-fired power plants for the country's energy.
The former West German capital of Bonn is set to host the two-week climate conference, known as COP23, starting on Monday.
Demonstrators also highlighted the irony that this year's conference is being held 50 kilometers (31 miles) from Europes biggest source of CO2 emissions: the large open-cast mines near Cologne.
COP23: Thousands protest German coal use ahead of UN Climate Change Conference in Bonn by Katharina Wecker, Deutsche Welle (DW), Nov 4, 2017
Video of the Week...
The Weekend Wonk: Bloomberg, Brown at COP 23
Recommended, go to Michael Bloombergs remarks starting at 56:00, followed by Jerry Brown. (fyi Brown gets interrupted by demonstrators)
Takeaway: Cities, states, corporations and communities were already doing most of the climate mitigation work in the US, now they are more than picking up the slack left by the irresponsible, and soon to be deposed, administration.
The Weekend Wonk: Bloomberg, Brown at COP 23, Climate Denial Crock of the Weekby Peter Sinclair, Nov 12, 2017
Coming Soon on SkS...
America Last, on climate and global leadership until 2020 (Dana)
(Dana) Californias new law aims to tackle imported emissions (Zeke Hausfather)
(Zeke Hausfather) An Inconvenient Sequel The science, history, and politics of climate change (John Abraham)
(John Abraham) Impact of climate change on health is the major threat of 21st century (Daisy Dunne)
(Daisy Dunne) New research this week (Ari Jokimaki)
(Ari Jokimaki) 2017 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #46 (John Hartz)
(John Hartz) 2017 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Waming Digest #46 (John Hartz)
Poster of the Week...
Climate Feedback Reviews...
Climate Feedback asked its network of scientists to review the article, Climate change might be worse than thought after scientists find major mistake in water temperature readings by Andrew Griffin, The Independent, Oct 26, 2017
Three scientists analyzed the article and estimate its overall scientific credibility to be 'low'.
A majority of reviewers tagged the article as: Flawed reasoning, Inappropriate backing, Misleading.
Review Summary
This article in The Independent describes a study examining one type of proxy record for past global temperatures the geologic record. The study found a potential problem with temperature estimates for time periods tens of millions of years ago, but this article concludes that the study means current climate change is far worse than previously calculated.
Scientists who reviewed the article explained that this conclusion is not logically connected to the contents of the study. The article exaggerates the studys implications for records of past climatethere are multiple types of proxy records that have been used to study those time periods and invents implications for future warming.
The Independent makes a giant leap in stating that modern global warming could be worse than thought based on a single study, Climate Feedback, Nov 1, 2017
SkS Week in Review...
97 Hours of Consensus...
Corinne Le Quere's bio page
Quote derived from:
"The human influence on climate change is clear and dominant. The atmosphere and oceans are warming, the snow cover is shrinking, the Arctic sea ice is melting, sea level is rising, the oceans are acidifying, and some extreme events have increased. CO2 emissions from burning fossil fuels need to substantial decrease to limit climate change."
High resolution JPEG (1024 pixels wide)
About 16,000 photos are used in videos.
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More information about travelling in Slovakia
Please see our Please see our Spectacular Slovakia travel guide
Amateur photographer Majo Chudy, originally from Vinohrady nad Vahom, has travelled more than 10,000 kilometres within Slovakia to get beautiful shots. The travelling and filming for one video takes about a year.
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I walked more than 16,000 metres of vertical difference, often with 25-kilos in my backpack, said the 33-year-old for Dobre Noviny.
He was forced to visit some places several times because of the weather.
I took more than 40,000 photos and 16,000 of them are used in video, he said for Dobre Noviny.
Majo Chudy met wild animals several times on his journey.
On the ridge of the Nizke Tatry, at 1,880 metres above sea level, a fox came to check us. While taking photos, it bit a cable for lens heating and wanted to steal lenses from the backpack, Chudy related, as quoted by Dobre Noviny, adding that wild boars often were waiting at car park.
Read also:
Read also: 8,000 kilometres of Slovak nature in one video Read more
Almost all shots that last only a few seconds in video mean hours spent in the terrain, according to Chudy. When he wanted to have the best light at sunrise or sunset, he was often awake all night waiting on a rock or mountain peak.
Most of the time, I miss sunset because climbing the mountain takes more time than I expect. But I have also overslept, missing sunrise, said Majo Chudy, as cited by Dobre Noviny.
Disinformers dusted off the old myth about alternative car propulsion and the death of its inventor, while others spread the rumour of human genders being eliminated.
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The inventor of the water-propelled car was not poisoned
I was poisoned! US inventor Stanley Meyer cried, running out of a restaurant where he negotiated with investors. He died soon afterwards. His break-through invention the water-propelled car thus never became produced en mass. Corporations deny it and media keep mysteriously silent.
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Although Stanley Meyer is a real person who died in 1998, the story on his mysterious death has recently been published by the Czech disinformation website AC24.cz, and it also has dozens of likes on Facebook.
The truth is that his water-propelled car is very questionable and would defy the rules of physics.
Meyer claimed that he managed to transform a common car to have a propulsion system that uses water instead of petrol while the water was decomposed "by a special form of electrolyses" into hydrogen and oxygen. Hydrogen was then used as fuel, with water being the waste.
The water-propelled car and its inventor dying of mruder is a haox. (Source: Sme/AC24)
The snag is that electrolyses is very demanding from the point of view of energy, and storing highly explosive hydrogen is not something for amateurs to do. The encyclopaedia states that if Meyers fuel really worked according to his specifications, it would in fact be a perpetuum mobile, which would defy the first and second rules of thermo-dynamics.
Meyer managed to attract investors for his invention, until two of them sued him in 1996: he was ordered to compensate them financially. The inventor died in 1998, and his brother claims he ran out of a restaurant and claimed he was poisoned. In fact, Meyer had long suffered from high blood pressure and died of a brain aneurysm.
Erasing human genders in Europe is a hoax
This story, on the border between satire and hoax, earned thousands of likes.
The European Council for Correctness and Coexistence decided that beginning in 2018, dividing people according to genders will be stopped. Starting next year, nobody will be a man or a woman. We will all be equal, and we will simply be it, Czech website g.cz wrote, while some other websites quoted it. The g.cz Facebook account alone has 7,600 likes.
The story quotes an alleged chairman of the Council, Emanuelle Irglis, who depicts the dissatisfaction of various trans-wretches and monsters claiming to be the third gender.
It is necessary for the silent majority to adapt to the loud minority, the story reads, adding that the Ladies and Gentlemen address in the London underground will be cancelled. Several people allegedly welcome this step, like Margarit Xanono allegedly a man in male body feeling like a man in a female body whose problem was solved by surgery replacing his genitals with a cowbell. Also Franz Gudrun, the man who became a stilling mother and chairman of the Union of Fathers Who Have the Right to Be Mothers, approves of it.
The European Council for Correctness and Coexistence does not exist, and its chairman is also a fictitious person. (Emmanuelle is a female first name, moreover). Margarit Xanono is a completely invented identity, and the photo of this alleged man/woman shows a trans-gender woman from Australia named Taylor. Franz Gudrun, on the other hand, is the name of several real people, male and female alike, but there is no connection between this name and the photograph published on the g.cz website.
However, the abolition of the traditional address in the announcements of the London tube is true. In July 2017, CNN reported it, adding that instead of "ladies and gentlemen", the gender-neutral "everyone" will be used.
The story is clearly something between a satire and a hoax and evoked a lot of hatred on social networks. The author, Dominik Landsman, was not available for comments.
In Slovakia, sympathisers of the extremist LSNS party spread the story eagerly.
There is no mystery to defeating populism, extremism and stupidity. Democratic systems have built in solutions to people like Kotleba and Trump elections.
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Last year after Marian Kotlebas party received 8 percent in parliamentary elections I wrote an opinion piece arguing that along with shock and disappointment, we might find opportunity in the result. At the time, Kotleba gained support from 200,000 people, including an alarming 23 percent of first time voters. Young people comprised a good part of these new voters, but many others were people who generally choose not to vote meaning they were people previously not paying attention to politics who had started to do so.
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[Kotleba] has now governed a region for three years, I wrote. Next year he is up for reelection. Voters in Banska Bystrica could go a long way to stopping his momentum. If he had a chance to govern and did a bad job, it is hard for him to argue that he has solutions for Slovakias ills.
In fact, in losing last weeks regional elections in a landslide Kotleba showed he is even better at mobilising opposition than he is new voters. With the election turnout at 40 percent, it was nearly double the 24 percent when Kotleba was elected regional governor in 2013.
A similar pattern emerged in the United States this week, during several key state elections.
Credit: CC0 Public Domain
(Tech Xplore)Conclusions that we can reach a stage where renewable electricity runs the world may not sit easily with skeptics but a study contends that it is feasible by 2050.
Climate News Network said the researchers believe 100% renewable electricity is attainable by mid-century, or even earlier.
The study is titled "Global Energy System based on 100% Renewable Energy Power Sector" The study was carried out by Finland's Lappeenranta University of Technology (LUT) and the Energy Watch Group (EWG).
The Energy Watch Group (EWG) is described as "an independent, non-profit global network of scientists and parliamentarians."
The study was presented earlier this month during a renewable energy showcase event on the sidelines of the United Nations Climate Change Conference COP23 in Bonn.
The authors spelled out the extent to which they say this is feasible: A global electricity system fully based on renewable energy is feasible at every hour throughout the year. It is said to be more cost effective than the existing system, largely based on fossil fuels and nuclear energy.
"There is no reason to invest one more dollar in fossil or nuclear power production," said EWG president Hans-Josef Fell."
The study pointed out benefits accompanying such a transition to renewablesbringing greenhouse gas emissions in the electricity sector down to zero and reducing total losses in power generation. It would create 36 million jobs by 2050, 17 million more than the sector has today.
Total levelized cost of electricity (LCOE) on a global average for 100% renewable electricity in 2050 is given as 52/MWh (including curtailment, storage and some grid costs), compared to 70/MWh in 2015.
Their model, said Alex Kirby in Climate News Network, "simulates the most efficient energy supply with an optimal mix of technologies and locally available renewable resources."
What about wind farms? Other power sources? The authors said solar will make up 69 per cent of the energy mix by 2050. (Wind energy increases to 32% by 2030. Beyond 2030 solar PV becomes more competitive.)
In sum, the transition would be driven by solar PV and battery storage, with solar PV accounting for 69% of the total 2050 energy mix followed by wind with 18%, hydropower with 8%, and bioenergy with 2%, according to the study.
As for batteries, they were said to be the key supporting technology for solar PV. "The storage output covers 31% of the total demand in 2050, 95% of which is covered by batteries alone."
Kirby quoted Christian Breyer, lead author of the study and professor of solar economy at LUT. "A full decarbonisation of the electricity system by 2050 is possible for lower system cost than today, based on available technology. Energy transition is no longer a question of technical feasibility or economic viability, but of political will," Breyer said.
2017 Tech Xplore
Kendallville, IN (46755)
Today
Variable clouds with snow showers or flurries. Temps nearly steady in the mid 30s. Winds WSW at 10 to 20 mph. Chance of snow 50%..
Tonight
Variable clouds with snow showers. Low 28F. Winds W at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of snow 60%. Snowfall around one inch.
Vietnamese and U.S. companies on Sunday signed memorandums of understanding on gas development, automobiles, as well as aircraft engine purchase and support during U.S. President Donald Trumps visit to Vietnam.
PetroVietnam Gas GAS.HM and AES Corp signed a memorandum of understanding on Son My liquefied natural gas terminal project and an MoU with Alaska Gasline Development Corp on gas supply and upstream investment.
Pratt & Whitney Co signed an engine purchase support agreement and binding MoU for the sale and maintenance of its engines with Vietnamese flag carrier Vietnam Airlines.
The U.S. engine maker also signed a purchase and support agreement for 20 engines with Vietjet Aviation JSC.
U.S truck maker Navistar International Corp signed an MoU on commercial truck business with Vietnamese Hoang Huy Joint Stock Co.
No details were available on the value of the deals, which were signed in the presence of Trump and his Vietnamese counterpart Tran Dai Quang.
Over a dozen of households have settled down with their fish cages at a hydroelectricity reservoir in central Vietnam for years despite risks of drowning among their children and ravages by typhoons.
The Song Tranh (Tranh River) 2 Hydropower Reservoir, located in Bac Tra My District, Quang Nam Province, is dotted with 14 wooden houses surrounded by scores of fish cages.
The entire families initially put down roots on the lake surface to get out of poverty.
From above, the encircling huts, each with a fluttering national flag on the roof, cast shadow on the clear lake surface.
Nguyen Ngoc Canh, 50, is believed to be the earliest settler in the neighborhood.
He took his whole family from the north-central province of Thanh Hoa to Bac Tra My District 23 years ago.
Canh shared his family, who had previously eked out a meager living as a rice farmer, was one of the pioneers to raise fish and live on the reservoir after the district administration adopted a policy to encourage the practice five years ago.
At first I came here alone, while my wife and kids lived in our old house on land. Later on, I took them along so that we could be together, he added.
Canhs relatively sturdy wooden hut on the lake is fully equipped with furniture, television and other items.
The middle-aged man revealed the district assisted him in obtaining a bank loan of over VND100 million (US$ 4,322) to embark on the erection of his house and cages.
Canh initially invested in four cages in which he kept dieu hong (Oreochromis), catfish and ro phi (Tilapia).
He then switched to higher-efficiency breeds such as ca chinh (eel fish) and frogs, and increased the number of his cages to 20.
His family earn more than VND100 million each year and can afford their three children a proper education.
My children and I were scared of living afloat at first, but gradually got used to it. Now we dont want to live on land, Nguyen Thi Xoan, Canhs wife, said.
The fish farm run by Canhs fellowman and neighbor, 45-year-old Tran Van Mao, also flourishes.
Fish typically thrive in the middle of the lake where the water is pure, he explained.
Mao has his hands full tending to the enclosures every day, while his wife runs a store at the market that sells fish to clients from across the district.
Their earnings from the cages totaled more than VND200 million ($8,644) in 2016.
Mao had paid off his bank loan and splashed out more money on expanding his business.
Likewise, Huynh Viet Dung, 38, the youngest in the fish farming village, sold his house on land and took his wife and children to the lake three years ago.
Most of the residents hailed from central provinces, while the rest were members of Ca Dong ethnic minority groups, native to the district and some neighboring localities.
Family members gather for a meal on the reservoir. Photo: Tuoi Tre
Adversities, risks
All the daily activities and traveling at the fish caging village take place by boat.
They take their children to school on sampans every day.
Back from school, the kids stand onshore, waiting for their parents to ride sampans to carry them home.
Better-off families use electricity from generators, while children from needy households do their homework in the dim kerosene light in the evening.
Their worst fear is that their unattended children might fall into the water and drown.
There were several times when the minors tripped over and tumbled into the water. Luckily adults saved them just in time, Dung disclosed.
The villagers also dread the rainy, storm-packed seasons, when the currents rage and the water levels rise by dozens of meters, sending the huts to elevate as well.
They stayed awake all night long on nights that saw gusts and torrential rains coupled with cyclones to keep a watch on their fish enclosures to prevent huge waves from tearing the nets and freeing the fish.
Canh revealed several suffered hefty losses during last years rainy season as fish got out of the cages ripped apart by cyclones.
Houses shake violently during the cyclones on the lakes, which can be really ferocious, he said.
Many got too scared to sleep at night if their raft and house give way unless they put their life vests on, he added.
The area is also prone to earthquakes, with the strongest quake that has ever struck Bac Tra My since 1957 happening in November 2012, measuring 4.7 on the Richter scale.
The quake, which lasted for several seconds, got them to rush out of their houses in panic after they heard loud blasts and felt the ground shaking, walls cracking, and household items falling.
But we are used to these inclement weather conditions, he said smilingly.
The occupants from the close-knit neighborhood said the village comes alive during the days when they harvest and sell their fish to traders.
After the sale, they prepare and offer a sumptuous meal to water deities in the hope of auspicious weather and hold a cozy get-together.
Their greatest concern is now their output, with traders imposing low prices or refusing to buy the fish due to rough terrain and limited transport.
They would suffer heavy losses due to additional costs, particularly feed for the aquatic animals if no traders come to buy them.
According to Phan Thanh Phuong, deputy head of the Bac Tra My District Office of Agriculture and Rural Development, district leaders observed successful models of raising fish on the hydropower reservoir from other localities in early 2012, before piloting them on one household on the Song Tranh 2 reservoir.
The model was later expanded, with district authorities offering these needy households no-interest loans of up to VND120 million ($5,187) each, fish for breeding purposes and technical assistance.
The lake is currently home to 14 farming households with 180 cages which produce approximately 1,200 metric tons of mature fish annually.
Thanks to their diligence and efforts in seeking economically-effective breeds, several have paid off their loans, expanded their business and made a decent living, Phuong said.
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Ho Chi Minh City is poised to operate its first-ever river bus route by the end of November to help alleviate the aggravating traffic pressure on local streets.
Representatives of the municipal Department of Transport on Saturday made a survey trip of river bus route No.1 to prepare for its official launch later this month.
The 10.8-kilometer-long route is set to connect Bach Dang Port in District 1 with Linh Dong Ward in the outlying district of Thu Duc, and runs along the Saigon River and Thanh Da Canal.
The bus will pick up passengers at three stops along the route, namely Binh An (District 2), Thanh Da (Binh Thanh District) and Hiep Binh Chanh (Thu Duc District), according to Nguyen Kim Toan, director of Thuong Nhat Company, the investor of the waterway bus project.
During the operation process, the investor will complete work on other stops, including Thu Thiem, Saigon Pearl, Tan Cang, Thao Dien, Tam Vu, Binh Trieu and Truong Tho in District 2, Binh Thanh and Thu Duc Districts.
Each trip will cost VND15,000 ($0.66), and a one-way journey will take approximately 45 minutes, during which the boat will drop by each stop for three minutes besides the two main terminals.
Passengers can get on the ferry-like vehicle at Bach Dang Port and go straight to Linh Dong Ward.
Bui Xuan Cuong, director of the Ho Chi Minh City Department of Transport, said the bus will offer city-dwellers another option of getting around aside from providing a comfortable journey and sightseeing opportunity.
The waterway passenger vehicle will link Districts 1, 2, Thu Duc and Binh Thanh Districts, while No. 2 route will connect Districts 4, 5, 7 and the suburban district of Nha Be.
The boat will run from 6:00 am to 7:30 pm, with the schedule subject to slight changes based on the weather and number of passengers.
The upcoming inauguration of the maiden river bus route has received quite positive feedback from local residents.
Xuan Trang, who currently lives in District 2, revealed she would benefit from the new shuttle service as she works on Dong Khoi Street in the downtown area.
I really cant wait to get on the bus at Binh An Stop in District 2 to go to work. I will also take my family on a sightseeing tour along the Saigon River on weekends, she said.
Ngoc Thanh, a resident of Thu Duc District, complained her daily commute to work in District 5 generally takes over an hour and involves traffic jams and smothering heat and smoke.
I can easily get another [road] bus to arrive at my company after getting down at Bach Dang Port, she said, adding she would opt for the waterway bus to work over motorbikes.
Passengers buy drinks and snacks at a coffee shop inside Bach Dang Station. Photo: Tuoi Tre
A life vest and a rear-view mirror on the boat. Photo: Tuoi Tre
Inside the river bus on its pilot trip. Photo: Tuoi Tre
The boat drops by Binh An Stop in District 2. Photo: Tuoi Tre
Passengers, particularly kids, delight at the breezy journey. Photo: Tuoi Tre
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A huge number of people gathered at a pagoda in Binh Duong Province, neighboring Ho Chi Minh City, on Saturday to hold a requiem for traffic accident victims in Vietnam.
More than 10,000 Buddhist monks, followers and residents from across the country were present at Hoi An Pagoda in Thu Dau Mot City, approximately 30km from the southern metropolis, to attend the ceremony.
Attendees pray for peace and reincarnation of the deceaseds souls. Photo: Tuoi Tre
The event, jointly organized by the Vietnam Buddhist Sangha and the National Committee for Traffic Safety, was to commemorate the victims and share the pain and loss with their family members.
It was also part of a series of events following on from the World Day of Remembrance for Road Traffic Victims, which is held on the third Sunday of November each year.
Leaders of the National Committee for Traffic Safety, Ministry of Transport and Ministry of Public Security pray with joss sticks at the ceremony. Photo: Tuoi Tre
At the ceremony, representatives of the Vietnam Buddhist Sangha passed on the message of Remembrance for the deceased, for the sake of the living.
These services were aimed at praying for peace for the victims souls and to raise awareness of the devastating consequences of traffic accidents, thus enhancing public understanding and observance of traffic laws.
Over 10,000 people attend the requiem. Photo: Tuoi Tre
Traffic accidents claimed more than 6,800 lives and permanently disable 11,785 people in January-October, according to statistics released by the National Committee for Traffic Safety.
The deaths of the traffic victims, many of whom were very young, are a great loss to families as well as to society, while the injured victims are burdens on their families and the whole society.
Delegates release pigeons as a tribute to victims of traffic accidents and give the best wishes to their family members at the requiem. Photo: Tuoi Tre
Most of the accidents were put down to the drivers poor awareness and abidance of traffic rules, particularly speeding, driving in the wrong lanes, and drunk driving.
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The Vietnamese aviation watchdog has demanded low-cost carrier Vietjet sternly discipline a staffer who had been filmed ripping a late passengers ticket.
The Civil Aviation Authority of Vietnam (CAAV) confirmed they had ordered strict punishment from Vietjet on a female ground employee for tearing a late flyers ticket.
The act has marred the reputation of the aviation sectors quality and client-friendliness.
The move came after complaints were voiced over airline staffs inappropriate attitudes toward passengers on the mass and social media in recent times.
The focal point was an incident related to the Vietjet VJ159 flight on the Hanoi-Ho Chi Minh City route that happened at the capitals Noi Bai International Airport on November 5.
The CAAV commanded the airline slap a stern disciplinary penalty on the employee, which Vietjet representatives confirmed they had done, and draw experience from the incident.
Speaking with Tuoi Tre (Youth) newspaper about the video clip capturing the ripping act, the airline representatives revealed passengers were expected to board the VJ159 flight by 5:35 pm on November 5 to get ready for departure 15 minutes later.
The male passenger did not show up at the boarding gate until 5:41 pm.
The staffer refused to let the man board the plane in observance of regulations meant to ensure prompt flight departure, and directed him to the following flight on the same day.
The act of destroying the passengers ticket as reported is unfitting when it comes to communicating with customers. We have thus imposed an appropriate penalty on the violator, according to the Vietjet representatives.
A video clip which had earlier gone viral on social media captured the male flyer raising his ticket when his name was called on the speakers at the gate.
However, the female Vietjet employee told the man he had been late and denied entry to the flight.
A quarrel erupted at the counter, followed by the employee tearing his ticket, with her saying his ticket became invalid at that time.
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Foreign Correspondent returns at the end of the month but on a new night.
It will replace Four Corners across December and January.
It returns from November 27 with a story on climate change, but an online report surrounding asylum seekers in France will be available on iview from November 20.
From Greenlands melting ice cap to the nuclear threat in the Pacific, from the cobbled streets of Rome to the bombed out backblocks of Baghdad, from the remote jungles of Kalimantan to the crowded town squares of St Petersburg, ABC foreign correspondents are fanning out around the globe to bring back the stories that matter.
Featuring some of the ABCs most experienced story tellers, Foreign Correspondent goes where many others dont, cant or wont.
The TV series will launch with The Dome, showing how climate change is colliding with the Cold Wars nuclear legacy, with potentially devastating consequences.
Reported by Mark Willacy, who covered the Fukushima nuclear disaster for the ABC, The Dome takes us to an atom bomb crater covered with concrete panels on a tiny Pacific atoll halfway between Hawaii and Australia.
Hidden beneath this thick concrete cover are the radioactive remains from dozens of US nuclear tests in the 1940s and 50s. It was supposed to be a temporary solution, but nothing more has been done and as sea levels rise, the domes toxic contents are seeping into the Pacific Ocean. Meanwhile, the US veterans involved in the clean up are dying, and their government is refusing to recognise them or help them.
Foreign Correspondent is also trying something new this season, going live on November 20 with a digital first special. People Without Papers is a three part series on ABC iview, YouTube and ABC News Online featuring asylum seekers living in limbo in France, the attempts of the French state to move them on and the young volunteers who are helping them as they live rough on the streets and in the woods. There is no reporter and the stories are told from the perspective of the protagonists.
It was made by a very small team embedded with the characters on the ground, using little cameras, and is an intimate look at a huge and growing global issue.
8.30pm Monday November 27 on ABC.
FILE PHOTO: A display featuring missiles and a portrait of Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is seen at Baharestan Square in Tehran, Iran September 27, 2017. Nazanin Tabatabaee Yazdi/TIMA/File Photo via REUTERS
Thomson Reuters
DUBAI (Reuters) - Iran rejected on Sunday a call by French President Emmanuel Macron for talks on Tehran's ballistic missiles, saying they were defensive and unrelated to a nuclear agreement with world powers.
On Thursday, Macron said during a visit to Dubai that he was "very concerned" by Iran's ballistic missile program, mentioning a missile fired from Yemen and intercepted by Saudi Arabia earlier this month. He raised the prospect of possible sanctions with regard to those activities.
"There are negotiations we need to start on Iran's ballistic missiles," Macron said.
But Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Bahram Qassemi rejected that possibility. "France is fully aware of our country's firm position that Iran's defense affairs are not negotiable," he said.
"We have told French officials repeatedly that the nuclear deal is not negotiable and other issues will not be allowed to be added to it," Qassemi said, according to a statement on the ministry's website.
The United States accused Iran on Tuesday of supplying Yemen's Houthi rebels with a missile that was fired into Saudi Arabia in July and called for the United Nations to hold Tehran accountable for violating two U.N. Security Council resolutions.
Saudi Arabia and its allies accuse Iran of supplying missiles and other weapons to the Houthis, saying the arms were not present in Yemen before conflict broke out there in 2015. Iran denies the charges and blames the conflict on Riyadh.
The United States has imposed unilateral sanctions on Iran, saying its missile tests violate a U.N. resolution that calls on Tehran not to undertake activities related to missiles capable of delivering nuclear weapons.
Iran says its missile program is defensive and it has no plans to build nuclear-capable missiles.
(Reporting by Dubai newsroom, editing by Larry King)
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By Paul-Marin Ngoupana
BANGUI (Reuters) - Seven people were killed and around 20 others were injured in a grenade attack on a peace concert and reprisal violence in Central African Republic's capital, Bangui, on Saturday and Sunday, government officials and city residents said.
The riverside city has in the past been a flashpoint for inter-religious violence that erupted between Muslims and Christians in 2013 and has since engulfed most of the impoverished, landlocked nation.
Interior Minister Henri Wanzet Linguissara said two individuals on a motorcycle approached revelers attending a concert organized to foster reconciliation and social cohesion late on Saturday night and threw a grenade into the crowd.
"Following this heinous act, we have registered four deaths and 20 wounded, including four who are in serious condition and have been taken into the operating room," he said.
Heavy gunfire concentrated in and around Bangui's PK5 neighborhood -- a Muslim enclave in the majority Christian city -- erupted after the attack.
Access to PK5 was blocked off by improvised barricades on Sunday, a Reuters witness said.
"Three of our youth were killed, apparently in reprisal because they think that the Muslims were behind the grenade attack. We deplore that attack," said PK5 resident Habib Soule. "We set up barricades to ensure provocateurs don't infiltrate our neighborhood."
A second PK5 resident and a security source, who asked not to be named, confirmed that three motorcycle taxi drivers were killed in retaliation for the concert attack.
"Even now there is sporadic gunfire in PK5 and the surrounding neighborhoods are emptying," said Gedeon Leki, a resident of the nearby Castors neighborhood. "People are afraid the Muslims could take revenge for their dead."
Nearly five years into the conflict in CAR, which has been marked by successive waves of ethnic cleansing, the security situation is worsening, particularly in the east.
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Bangui, where the headquarters of 12,000-troop-strong United Nations peacekeeping mission is located, has been relatively stable in recent months, and the weekend's violence was a reminder of the city's darkest days.
"The enemies of peace ... have just set a trap," Prime Minister Simplice Mathieu Sarandji said in a radio address on Sunday. "I call upon the population not to slide back into violence."
The U.N. Security Council is this week scheduled to vote on a French-drafted resolution to authorise an extra 900 troops to protect civilians in Central African Republic.
(Writing by Joe Bavier; Editing by Catherine Evans)
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We have learned this week that the First Baptist Church in Sutherland Springs, Tex., was at the heart of a community where everybody knew everybody, as one of the survivors of the mass murder there on Sunday put it. Everyone in that small Texas town was affected by the carnage. And werent we all?
I was raised in a First Baptist Church in Albert Lea, Minn., a small congregation where everybody knew everybody. When I heard of the attack by the gunman in Sutherland Springs, I tried to imagine such a scene in my old red brick church, its great arched stained glass windows shattered by bullets, the ushers in their Sunday suits sprawled in the aisles bleeding from their wounds, the oak pews splintered in the hail of bullets, my Sunday School teacher dead with a look of disbelief on her round, kind face, a ribbon of blood sliding under the pews down the slanting polished oak floor of the sanctuary. Twenty-six of us dead? Unimaginable.
Unimaginable then, when there was only one U.S. mass murder in the entire decade of the 50s, according to researcher Grant Duwe, but not now. Why?
The reason, in part certainly, is that the technology of weaponry makes it possible for an individual with a gun to spray a crowd with bullets, as in Sutherland Springs and, recently, in Las Vegas.
Duwe, research director for the Minnesota Department of Corrections and author of the 2007 book Mass Murder in the United States: A History, wrote in October in Politico magazine that the moving average number of victims in mass public shootings is trending up since the ban on assault weapons expired in 2004. But he adds that there isnt sufficient research to determine the reason. He confirms, though, that while mass shootings are not more frequent they are becoming more deadly. Duwes book provides the following numbers of mass shootings in recent decades: 70s, 13; 80s, 32; 90s 42; 2000s, 28. Duwe defines mass public shootings as any incident in which four or more victims are killed with a firearm within a 24-hour period at a public location in the absence of other criminal activity, ... military conflict or collective violence.
Acording to Duwe, the U.S. has relatively little rigorous research on mass violence, likely due to the virtual absence of research on this subject.
He added, The few studies we do have tell us that mass public shootings, while horrific, are, fortunately, quite rare. This apparent paradoxrare yet routinelikely reflects the out-sized impact that catastrophic mass murders have on our perceptions of public safety. But until we make the investment to find solutions, we wont really know why these tragedies happen or how to prevent them.
Funding such research is a place to start for Congress in reacting to the Sutherland Springs slaughter beyond words of condolence. But the Supreme Courts 2008 decision on gun rights offers other opportunities for action on sensible Constitutional gun controls.
The Supreme Court decision made clear that nothing in our opinion should be taken to cast doubt on longstanding prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill, or laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings, or laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of arms. The decision added that like most rights, the right secured by the Second Amendment is not unlimited. The background of the Sutherland Springs shooter reminds us that those guilty of domestic violence have no business owning guns.
The decision also noted the validity of the historical tradition of prohibiting the carrying of dangerous and unusual weapons. Surely the weapons that allow the efficient mass murder of innocent citizens must qualify for that definition.
Its time for Congress to acknowledge the strong public support for action on gun control expressed in opinion polls such as the NPR/Ipsos poll following the Las Vegas shooting last month. In that poll, 91 percent of Democrats, along with 76 percent of independents and 70 percent of Republicans, said they are for banning assault-style weapons. A similar divide marked support for other types of controls.
Americans of all tribes, denominations or whatever identity we may claim are united in our sense of horror and grief after these recent mass shootings. Were all First Baptists, were all Las Vegas concert goers and vulnerable school children. Were all Americans who want what the Constitution allows: reasonable gun controls to help stop the killing.
LONDON (Reuters) - British ministers rallied around Boris Johnson on Sunday, saying the foreign secretary was doing a "great job" and had no reason to resign over remarks that critics say may prompt Iran to extend the prison sentence of a jailed aid worker.
The coordinated defence is part of attempts to shore up the government of Prime Minister Theresa May, weakened by a series of scandals and gaffes involving her top team of ministers as she negotiates Britain's departure from the European Union.
The leader of Britain's main opposition Labour Party, Jeremy Corbyn, called on May to sack Johnson, writing in the Observer newspaper on Sunday that "we've put up with him embarrassing and undermining our country through his incompetence ... for long enough. It's time for Boris Johnson to go".
Corbyn, and London Mayor Sadiq Khan, also a Labour member, said Johnson had offended states and religions before "bungling" the case of Iranian-British aid worker Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, in prison after being convicted of plotting to overthrow Iran's clerical establishment. She denies the charges.
But two of his allies, Brexit minister David Davis and environment minister Michael Gove, defended Johnson, who last week said he could have been clearer in his remark that Zaghari-Ratcliffe had been teaching people journalism before her arrest in April 2016.
Zaghari-Ratcliffe's employer, the Thomson Reuters Foundation, a charity organisation, said Johnson's comment made on Nov. 1 was incorrect, while opposition British lawmakers said the remarks could land the aid worker a longer term in jail.
The Thomson Reuters Foundation is independent of Thomson Reuters and operates independently of Reuters News.
"Why would you want to sack him? He's a good foreign secretary," Davis told Sky News.
Gove urged critics to stop focusing on Johnson's role in the case and instead to question the motivation of what he called "the Iranian regime" in jailing Zaghari-Ratcliffe.
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"There is no reason, no excuse and no justification for her detention and she should be released," he told the BBC's Andrew Marr show.
A Foreign Office source later said Johnson had held a "very constructive" phone call with her husband, Richard Ratcliffe, who has called on the minister to visit his wife in jail.
The show of support for Johnson from fellow Brexit campaigners demonstrates the difficulties May faces in keeping her cabinet unified on a range of issues.
She lost two of her ministers in a week: Michael Fallon quit as defence minister in a growing sexual harassment scandal and then Priti Patel was forced out of her job as aid minister over undisclosed meetings with Israeli officials.
Forty members of the Conservative Party have agreed to sign a letter of no-confidence in the prime ministers, eight short of the number needed to trigger a leadership contest, the Sunday Times newspaper reported.
(Reporting by Elizabeth Piper; Editing by Gareth Jones)
LONDON (Reuters) - British environment minister Michael Gove defended his colleague Boris Johnson on Sunday, saying he was doing a "great job" as foreign minister and Iran should be "in the dock" over a jailed aid worker, not him.
Asked about Johnson's comments that supporters of Iranian-British aid worker Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe said could hand her a longer jail term, Gove told the BBC's Andrew Marr show: "There is no reason, no excuse and no justification for her detention and she should be released."
"I think that Boris is doing a great job as foreign secretary ... I think it's plain wrong for us to try to find fault with democrats, and the real responsibility is to say to the Iranian regime: you are a serial abuser of human rights, you are the principal state sponsor of terrorism, you have blood on your hands in Syria, your responsibility is to ensure that this British citizen is at liberty."
(Reporting by Elizabeth Piper; Editing by Robin Pomeroy)
By Dan Williams
JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israel signalled on Sunday that it would keep up military strikes across its frontier with Syria to prevent any encroachment by Iranian-allied forces, even as the United States and Russia try to build up a ceasefire in the area.
U.S. President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin on Saturday affirmed joint efforts to stabilise Syria as its civil war wanes, including with the expansion of a July 7 truce in the southwestern triangle bordering Israel and Jordan.
A U.S. State Department official said Russia had agreed "to work with the Syrian regime to remove Iranian-backed forces a defined distance" from the Golan Heights frontier with Israel, which captured the plateau in the 1967 Middle East war.
The move, according to one Israeli official briefed on the arrangement, is meant to keep rival factions inside Syria away from each other, but it would effectively keep Iranian-linked forces at various distances from the Israel-held Golan as well.
Those distances would range from as little as 5-7 kms and up to around 30 kms, depending on current rebel positions on the Syrian Golan, the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the issue.
Moscow did not immediately provide details on the deal.
Israel has been lobbying both big powers to deny Iran, Lebanon's Hezbollah and other Shi'ite militias any permanent bases in Syria, and to keep them away from the Golan, as they gain ground while helping Damascus beat back Sunni-led rebels.
In televised remarks opening Israel's weekly cabinet meeting on Sunday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu did not speak about the new U.S.-Russian arrangement for Syria.
His regional cooperation minister, Tzachi Hanegbi, sounded circumspect about the deal, telling reporters that it "does not meet Israel's unequivocal demand the there will not be developments that bring the forces of Hezbollah or Iran to the Israel-Syria border in the north".
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"RED LINES"
"There's reflection here of the understanding that Israel has set red lines, and will stand firm on this," Hanegbi said.
That was an allusion to Israeli military strikes in Syria, carried out against suspected Hezbollah or Iranian arms depots or in retaliation for attacks from the Syrian-held Golan.
In the latest incident, the Israeli military said it shot down a spy drone on Saturday as it overflew the Golan. Israeli Defence Minister Avigdor Lieberman blamed the drone on the Syrian government. Damascus did not immediately respond.
Repeating Israel's warnings to Iran and Hezbollah, Lieberman said: "We will not allow the Shi'ite axis to establish Syria as its forefront base".
Russia, which has a long-term military garrison in Syria, has said it wants foreign forces to quit the country eventually.
The U.S. State Department official, who briefed reporters on condition of anonymity on Saturday, said that goal could be served by Russia's pledge to remove Iranian-linked fighters from the truce zone in southwestern Syria.
"If this works, this is an auspicious signal, would be an auspicious signal, that our policy objective - the objective that I think so many of us share, of getting these guys out of Syria ultimately - that there's a path in that direction," the official said.
(Writing by Dan Williams; Editing by Richard Balmforth)
SWNS
Feeling under the weather? Try the rom-com remedy three in five Americans say its their go-to movie genre when down for the count.
Thats according to a new poll of 2,000 millennial parents of kids ages 4-12, where theyre also watching action and adventure movies (37%) and series like Harry Potter or the Hunger Games (36%).
When sickness strikes, more than four in five (82%) spend most of their time in their bedroom, with 42% staying put on the couch in their living room.
This may contribute to the fact that the average parent watches five hours of TV or movies each sick day.
Conducted by OnePoll on behalf of Delsym, results showed how respondents are optimizing comfort with their favorite things.
Results revealed that respondents get sick about three times per year.
Respondents were more likely to prefer old favorites than to wrap their heads around new content when feeling ill. (23% vs 15%).
When parents are sick with their children, the most popular movies to watch are the Harry Potter series (32%) and the Toy Story series (32%).
They also watch movies like Frozen (30%), Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (28%) and Moana (25%).
More than half (56%) of respondents have a go-to or favorite feel-better comfort movie, with the average person saying they can watch it four times in a row without getting sick of it
In fact, 45% of those admit they can watch it more than four times and one in 10 of those (11%) even say they can watch it an infinite amount of times.
In total, respondents have watched their feel-better movie about 34 different times.
This movie has been respondents favorite for about six years, perhaps because it reminds them of good times (61%) and makes them laugh (53%).
Parents report feeling relaxed (54%), happy (48%) and calm (40%) after watching their favorite movie.
Almost two-thirds (63%) of parents agree that theyve passed their love of their favorite movie along to their child.
Nothing brings a family together quite like movie night, and nothing makes movie night better than a feel-good flick that fills you with warm, fuzzy feelings especially when youre sick. We understand that feeling better means more than just relieving your cough symptoms its about cozying up on the couch as you and your family work to feel better together, said Albert So, Marketing Director, Upper Respiratory Brands at Reckitt, including Delsym.
The survey also delved into how respondents are remedying their ailments by caring for their five senses.
In order to alleviate their symptoms, parents tend to want to taste soup (42%) and hot beverages like tea or coffee (26%).
They also want to touch things like their favorite blanket (40%), their significant other (19%) and their pet (14%).
When it comes to smell, respondents like to breathe in something clean like fresh linens (42%), medicine (36%) and something cooking in the kitchen (26%).
And while trying to feel better, respondents like to listen to music (58%) and their friends and family talking (29%).
When a family member is under the weather, the entire household is caught in the storm and that daily routine can be thrown off course, bringing with it discomfort and chaos. Families not only need fast-acting relief, but they need comforting remedies to help them navigate that storm, said So. Whether its moms chicken soup, your go-to feel better movie or cozying up with your kids, whatever it is that makes you feel better can go a long way.
Survey methodology:
This random double-opt-in survey of 2,000 millennial parents of kids aged 4-12 was commissioned by Delsym between October 6 and October 10, 2022. It was conducted by market research company OnePoll, whose team members are members of the Market Research Society and have corporate membership to the American Association for Public Opinion Research (AAPOR) and the European Society for Opinion and Marketing Research (ESOMAR).
In the 12 months ended 30 April, revenues jumped 448% to 18.6m. However, the adjusted loss before interest and tax widened to 10.5m from 5.4m in 2015, with sales and marketing costs up to 12.9m from 3.5m as Purplebricks continued to grow its brand.
Still, the company insisted that the UK business would move into profit in the current financial year.
Purplebricks, which is backed by fund manager Neil Woodford, said customers were responding well to its hybrid model and noted that it sold properties worth nearly 2.8bn in the year, with a further 1.7bn sold subject to contract.
Chief executive Michael Bruce said: "In just our second full year of operation we are leading change in an industry that has long been stagnant and is only now waking up to the opportunities and threats posed by technological advance and changing consumer behaviour. While others are following we have retained our leading position, with 62% of the non-traditional estate agency market and look to replicate this success in Australia.
The company said Australias 3.3bn market was a compelling proposition, as market sellers there are currently charged around 5,900 to list their properties on online portals.
Peel Hunt said: Given the low-cost hybrid offering from Purplebricks it is well placed to continue to dominate online competitors and take share from traditional high street agents in both the UK and Australia.
The shares have had a strong run in 2016, rising by c50%, which compares to the traditional agents falling by an average of 10%.
At 0950 BST, Purplebricks shares were up 2.7% to 134.84p.
Spirit AeroSystems Holdings, Inc. designs, engineers, manufactures, and markets commercial aerostructures worldwide. It operates through three segments: Commercial, Defense & Space, and Aftermarket. The Commercial segment offers forward, mid, and rear fuselage sections and systems, struts/pylons, nacelles, and related engine structural components; and wings and wing components, including flight control surfaces, as well as other structural parts. This segment primarily serves the aircraft original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) or engine OEMs of large commercial aircraft and/or business/regional jet programs. The Defense & Space segment provides fuselage, strut, nacelle, and wing aerostructures primarily for U.S. Government defense programs, including Boeing P-8, C40, and KC-46 Tanker. This segment also engages in the fabrication, bonding, assembly, testing, tooling, processing, engineering analysis, and training on fixed wing aircraft aerostructures, missiles, and hypersonics works, such as solid rocket motor throats, nozzles, re-entry vehicle thermal protections systems, forward cockpit and cabin, and fuselage work on rotorcraft aerostructures. The Aftermarket segment offers spare parts and MRO services, repairs for flight control surfaces and nacelles, radome repairs, rotable assets, engineering services, advanced composite repairs, and other repair and overhaul services. Spirit AeroSystems Holdings, Inc. has a strategic partnership with Sierra Space to enhance access to commercial space economy of the future. The company was formerly known as Mid-Western Aircraft Systems Holdings, Inc. Spirit AeroSystems Holdings, Inc. was founded in 1927 and is headquartered in Wichita, Kansas.
If Lincoln Middle School students have their way, the former Kmart property will get a lot of new green space.
Closing of La Crosse Kmart provides redevelopment opportunity The State Road Kmart store will close its doors for good Sunday, ending 52 years of bargains
Seventh-grade students in social studies teacher Scott Bagniefskis class presented their ideas for the lot earlier this month as part of an annual project to take a look at urban planning. The students worked with city of La Crosse planning staff to tour and visit the site and spent most of their fall working on their designs and vision for what the property could be.
Other than an interest in promoting economic development, the city doesnt have any financial stake in the property, assistant city planner Lewis Kuhlmann said. After three years of asking students to come up with ideas for the Riverside North property, also known as the former Mobil Oil site, he thought the Kmart lot was a nice change of pace.
Unlike Riverside Norths blank canvas, the Kmart site is already developed making this an interesting challenge for the students, Kuhlmann said. There were 35 groups who came up with ideas this year, more than any of the previous.
The 7.9-acre site includes the 88,400-square-foot former Kmart building as well as a Hardees restaurant that reopened in 2014. According to county records, the properties have an assessed value of $4.4 million, and owner J&W Management Corp. is entertaining purchase offers in an attempt to redevelop the land in next year or so.
Along with presenting their ideas to their classmates, the top ideas were put on display in City Hall and featured during the buildings Halloween potluck. Kuhlmann also said the ideas would be passed along to the developer of the property.
Many of the students went green with their proposals, whether that was turning the property into a solar-powered movie theater and pizzeria or creating a mall with an outdoor courtyard, park and food court. Other ideas included an outdoor movie theater, a dog park and adding space for new types of restaurants such as Asian-style noodles.
Bagniefski said the project is a great way for his students to learn problem-solving and teamwork skills. Not every students ideas can fit in the space allotted and any property development involves coming up with creative solutions to issues.
He said he was impressed with students dedication to the project. For example, he said some groups went the extra mile and used digital tools such as Google Earth to check that their building or store ideas would fit in the space allotted and to make things as realistic as possible.
It was so neat to see the process unfold as they went through the steps, he said. A lot goes into it and the students had to oversee it from start to finish.
Maria Andova and Madelyn Wilson worked together on the Bluffview Amphitheater group, which involved green space, fountains, a drive-in movie theater, culture center and stores. The two said it took a lot of work to get from their first ideas to a finished project but enjoyed the creativity they were allowed to express in the project.
It was really fun, Maria said. I really liked trying to figure out the different sizes of the buildings and things and figuring out how to get it all to fit.
I liked the creativity, Madelyn added. We could put what we want and leave our mark on it.
Freeport-McMoRan Inc. engages in the mining of mineral properties in North America, South America, and Indonesia. The company primarily explores for copper, gold, molybdenum, silver, and other metals, as well as oil and gas. Its assets include the Grasberg minerals district in Indonesia; Morenci, Bagdad, Safford, Sierrita, and Miami in Arizona; Tyrone and Chino in New Mexico; and Henderson and Climax in Colorado, North America, as well as Cerro Verde in Peru and El Abra in Chile. The company also operates a portfolio of oil and gas properties primarily located in offshore California and the Gulf of Mexico. As of December 31, 2021, it operated approximately 135 wells. The company was formerly known as Freeport-McMoRan Copper & Gold Inc. and changed its name to Freeport-McMoRan Inc. in July 2014. Freeport-McMoRan Inc. was incorporated in 1987 and is headquartered in Phoenix, Arizona.
Xinyuan Real Estate Co., Ltd., together with its subsidiaries, engages in residential real estate development and construction in the People's Republic of China, the United States, and internationally. It develops residential projects, such as multi-layer apartment buildings, sub-high-rise apartment buildings, high-rise apartment buildings; and auxiliary services and amenities, such as retail outlets, leisure and health facilities, kindergartens, and schools, as well as office, mixed-use, and commercial properties. The company also acquires development sites through public auctions of government land and acquisitions of entities. In addition, it provides property management services for its developments and other real estate-related services; landscaping, engineering and management, real estate consulting, leasing management, management consulting, and technical services; operates retail stores; and installs intercom systems. Further, it engages in the purchase, sale, lease, and brokerage of real estate; sale of construction materials; development and sale of robots; operation of internet platform for real estate property financing; and provision of electronic commerce and catering services. Xinyuan Real Estate Co., Ltd. was founded in 1997 and is based in Beijing, the People's Republic of China.
How to watch and what to know about Northern Iowa at South Dakota
USD
For nearly a century the Albuquerque branch of the American Association of University Women advocated for womens causes whether it be education, equal pay, gender equality or in the political realm.
Founded in 1881, the national organization has more than 170,000 members active in branches all over the country, including in Albuquerque.
Members of the Albuquerque branch gathered on Nov. 4 to celebrate the 90th anniversary since the group got its start in 1927. It was in October of that year that Mrs. Charles Root put a notice in the Albuquerque Journal announcing she would host a meeting of university women to organize a chapter of the AAUW to co-operate with the national order in promoting educational, civic and social progress of women.
Over the decades, the organization has helped found Albuquerque Museum of Art and History, provided scholarships to help women complete masters degrees, lobbied legislators on policy related to women and promoted education for girls and women.
What weve stood for is the advancement of women and girls, said Joy Donelson, branch program director and vice president.
The anniversary celebration at the North Domingo Baca Multigenerational Center drew nearly 75 people, mostly present and former AAUW members, guests and some student members from the recently formed University of New Mexico affiliate. The theme was AAUWs Vision Yesterday, Today & Tomorrow.
Members and students gave a fashion show modeling outfits from each decade of its history from the 1920s through to the present day. Lifetime AAUW member Julia Brown who was recently elected as chair of the board of directors of the national organization, gave the keynote speech.
Brown is a lawyer in Las Cruces and former Dona Ana County manager. She received the Presidential Lifetime Achievement Award in 2016, an honor that recognizes a citizens contributions to the nation.
Her speech focused on the branch history and left those in attendance with a call to action.
The challenge I leave you with today, is to celebrate, pat yourselves on the back, take a deep breath, refresh and renew yourselves because we must fight on, Brown said.
In recent years, AAUW supported the New Mexico Fair Pay for Women Act passed by the Legislature in 2013. Its Tech Trek program started in 2014 has helped support middle school girls from all over the state to attend a weeklong summer camp at New Mexico Technical Institute in Socorro where they learn about opportunities in science and engineering careers. So far, 240 girls have benefited, many from families where no one has gone to college.
Most recently AAUW representatives attended a hearing in Santa Fe to protest controversial changes to the science teaching standards that the state Public Education Department proposed for students from kindergarten to high school.
Im very proud of everything weve done, said Janet Matwiyosf, media co-chair and past president of the Albuquerque branch.
Albuquerques AAUW branch currently has about 100 members, down from 500 members in 1965. Matwiyosf said numbers declined as more women entered the workforce, but over the years the membership has diversified from being mostly teachers to including a wider variety of occupations.
Be a good girl.
Dont break the rules.
Behave.
This play is not well behaved.
Alice Birchs Revolt. She Said. Revolt Again captures the fury of modern womanhood. The script examines the language, behavior and forces shaping 21st century women and asks whats stopping us from radically changing them.
The show opens on Thursday, Nov. 16, at the Tricklock Performance Laboratory.
In some ways, it asks what the world would look like if women literally took control of the language around their sexuality and the difference between made love to and made love with, director Hannah Kauffmann said.
Explored in a visceral, vignette-driven style, Revolt challenges its audience to question everything they say to, about and around women.
There are a lot of words we use without fully realizing it that place women in a secondary position, Kauffmann said. We talk about statistics about how many women are raped, Kauffmann said. But we dont think about how many men rape. Its about turning that around.
Along the way, Revolt explores the workplace, marriage, the relationships between mothers, daughter and granddaughters and how they become who they are.
Birch wrote the play for the Royal Shakespeare Company in 2014. When it opened in London, The Telegraph dubbed this call for a feminist revolution a cluster-bomb of subversion.
Structured as a series of manifestoes, Birchs script couldnt be more prescient. But its timing within the maelstrom of sexual harassment charges against Hollywood czars such as Harvey Weinstein is accidental.
Kauffmann was driven to stage the play after reading a review of a production by New Yorks Soho Repertory last fall.
Were a company led by women; we have a female-led board, she said.
Revolt. She Said. Revolt Again. stars Diana Delgado, Juli Hendren, Katy Houska, Elsa Menendez and Drew Morrison. Original music by Kyle Wayne Ruggles.
If you go
WHAT: Revolt. She Said. Revolt Again by Alice Birch
WHEN: 8 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 16, Friday, Nov. 17 and Saturday, Nov. 18; 8 p.m. Nov. 24-25; 6 p.m. Nov. 26; 8 p.m. Nov. 30-Dec. 2
WHERE: Tricklock Performance Laboratory, 110 Gold SW
HOW MUCH: $20 general; $18 students/seniors at 414-3738 or boxoffice@tricklock.com.
Copyright 2017 Albuquerque Journal
Past, present and future veterans were celebrated and honored during a ceremony at the New Mexico Veterans Memorial in Albuquerque on Saturday afternoon.
Duty, honor and country are just as important today as they were so many years ago, said Ken OKeefe, president of the United Veterans Council of New Mexico. We celebrate today to honor those warriors past and present who stood tall in the face of Americas enemies. Patriots continue to answer the countrys call to arms and serve in any capacity needed to protect our way of life.
Several such patriots young Army recruits took the Oath of Enlistment during the Veterans Day ceremony.
Today, another group of brave young men and women will swear to protect the Constitution, OKeefe said. They will be signing that blank check just like the rest of us.
Thane Myers, 22, of Albuquerque, was among those who took the oath and received a standing ovation afterward.
Im just doing my part and serving my country, Myers said, adding it was an honor to be sworn in in front of esteemed veterans.
Myers will ship off to Fort Benning in Georgia on Monday.
Alfonso Luna, now 91, would have been about Myers age when he was drafted into the Army during World War II.
Luna, originally of Gallup and now an Albuquerque resident, served in the Philippines until the end of the war.
they allow him the chance to connect with other veterans.
It (Veterans Day) means a lot of good things and bad things that you remember, he said. Im just grateful Im here.
Two of his brothers, Jim Luna and older brother Andrew, also served in the military.
We just all thought it was the thing to do, Jim Luna, an Air Force veteran, said.
Code Talker Thomas Begay.
We all should be compelled and inspired to serve, whether its in this uniform or without a uniform, he said. Whether it be in your church or well-rearing the next generation of great Americans.
I try to look for people my age who have served, he said. Most of them are gone.
Luna said he enjoys ceremonies like those held on Veterans Day not only because they recognize the sacrifices of those who have served, but because Hundreds were in attendance at the event, including Iwo Jima veteran Navajo Keynote speaker Maj. Gen. Matthew Molloy, commander of the Air Force Operation Test and Evaluation Center at Kirtland Air Force Base, encouraged all Americans to work to serve the country and the community.
SAN DIEGO The University of New Mexico volleyball team received double-digit kills from Hailey Rubino and Lauren Twitty and strong performances from Ashley Kelsey and Mariessa Carrasco, but it wasnt enough in a 3-1 setback to San Diego State on .
20-25, 26-24, 25-13 Despite winning the first set and claiming a late lead in the second set, the Lobos (14-15 overall, 6-10 Mountain West) couldnt pull away from the Aztecs (16-13, 10-6) in the match, eventually falling by set scores of, 25-12.
Continuing a hectic season-closing stretch of five matches in seven days, the Lobos had their chances in the second of their final five matches. But San Diego State, entering the day winners of six straight home contests, proved to be a tough test for UNM.
Rubino led New Mexico with 13 kills on a team-high 34 attempts, while Twitty chipped in 10 kills on 32 swings. Carrasco added nine kills on a .400 hitting percentage.
Sarah Lobo dished out 41 assists to pace the Lobos inside Peterson Gym, as the team finished with 48 kills.
Defensively, Kelsey collected a team-high 18 digs, while adding a service ace and three assists. Twitty (nine digs) and Rubino (six) also contributed to UNMs back-row defense, which totalled 45 digs.
At the net, Rubino and Twitty both had a solo block, while Carrasco finished with a team-best four total blocks.
New Mexico opened the match scoring four of the first five points of set one, but neither team gained much separation early. UNM would hold a three-point lead at 14-11, only to have SDSU move ahead 17-16.
Undaunted, the Lobos closed the set on a 9-3 run, including the final four points, to win the opening set 25-20.
Rubino had six of her 13 kills in the opening set, with Twitty and Carrasco posting three each. New Mexico hit .483 in the set with 16 kills and just two errors.
The second set started in the Lobos favor, with UNM taking a 10-4 lead early. SDSU would pull to within two at 11-9, but New Mexico pulled back ahead by seven points at 19-12, maintaining that lead to 23-16.
But San Diego State closed with a flurry of points, finishing the set on a 10-1 run to win 26-24.
Rubino had another six kills and Twitty chipped in four of her own as UNM hit .220 in the set.
The Aztecs continued to score coming out of intermission, going up 15-4 to start set three. The Lobos would get to within nine points a couple of times, but they scored more than two consecutive points just once, that coming at the end of the set. SDSU won the set 25-13.
The fourth set started similarly, but New Mexico managed to make it a one-point affair at 5-4. But San Diego State built a 10-point lead at 17-7, riding that to a 25-12 win.
The Lobos return to action on , hosting UTEP at 5 p.m. MT in Johnson Center in Albuquerque. New Mexico then plays UNLV for Senior Night on before traveling to Air Force for its season finale on .
Box score: San Diego State 3, UNM 1
Of all the federal agencies, none has a bigger New Mexico footprint than the U.S. Department of Interior.
The sprawling federal bureaucracy and its Bureau of Land Management preside over millions of acres of public land in the state. Interior also runs the Bureau of Indian Affairs, National Park Service, U.S. Department of Fish and Wildlife and other offices with vast power to affect New Mexico and the West. Thats why its troubling to see a rift developing between the states U.S. senators and Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke.
Democratic Sens. Tom Udall and Martin Heinrich both voted to confirm Zinke, a former Republican congressman from Montana, for the Interior position in March. They said Zinkes western heritage and the moderate positions he took at his confirmation hearing gave them faith they could work with him regardless of their political differences. And despite or maybe because of their fierce objections to Zinkes proposal to scale back or alter more than two dozen national monuments, including two in New Mexico, the New Mexico senators agreed to go horseback riding with him in the states Sabinoso Wilderness in July.
The rugged ride gave the men a chance to talk public lands, get to know each other better and have a little fun. Zinke even put New Mexicos senators in a playful headlock during the outing.
A grinning Heinrich retaliated a couple of weeks later, catching Zinke in a headlock of his own at a meeting back in Washington. Zinke tweeted a photo of the horseplay, leading one to think these guys from opposing political parties might actually like each other.
But while Heinrich and Udall may enjoy a fairly warm personal relationship with Zinke, their professional relationship has become downright frosty. On a conference call with New Mexico reporters last week, Udall criticized Zinkes move to position the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska for possible oil drilling. Udall lamented that hed acted in good faith when he voted for Zinke, so Im very disappointed about how hes performed.
Two weeks earlier, on Oct. 23, Udall, Heinrich and Oregon Sen. Jeff Merkley signed onto a letter from House Minority Whip Dick Durbin threatening to block President Donald Trumps nominees to high-level positions at Interior if Zinke didnt agree to a meeting to discuss the national monuments and make public his report to the White House. Zinke did not responded to the letter until Thursday, irking all of the Democratic senators involved.
Staffers for both senators told me last week that Udall and Heinrich also want Zinke to address errors of fact in the New Mexico sections of the monuments report.
Interior Department spokeswoman Heather Swift told me Friday that Zinke has already spent a lot of time talking with the senators whose states have monuments under review, including Udall and Heinrich.
In the time since his first letter to Zinke on Oct. 23, Durbin has, in fact, put holds on four nominees at Interior, including Trumps pick to lead the Bureau of Reclamation and his choice for solicitor at the department. The four holds have stretched more than 100 days in each case significantly longer that it took their predecessors to be confirmed.
Durbin also wrote a curt note to Zinkes acting director of congressional affairs Wednesday complaining that Zinke could not find the time for a meeting.
Please let the secretary know that while my colleagues and I await his scheduling decision, my hold on Department of Interior nominees will continue, Durbin wrote.
Perhaps the Democratic lawmakers should not have been surprised by the radio silence. Politico reported in June that the White House has advised federal agencies to blow off congressional Democrats oversight requests, as Republicans fear the information could be weaponized against Trump.
Nevertheless, on Thursday Zinke did respond tartly to Durbins request for a meeting, first in a tweet and then with a letter.
These nominees have nothing to do with this monument review yet they have been forced to sit on the sidelines due to you and your colleagues desire for a meeting, Zinke wrote to Durbin. The American people deserve better. As a former Navy SEAL, this is not the type of hostage situation I am accustomed to, but I am happy to meet with you to discuss any issue within the Department of Interior.
A spokesman for Durbin told me Friday that the meeting of the parties involved presumably including Heinrich and Udall will commence, although a date has not been set.
Heinrich and Udall have not placed confirmation holds of their own on Interior nominees. But they also did not object to the maneuver Friday.
Im prepared to do anything necessary to protect New Mexicos national monuments from a Washington, D.C., land grab, Heinrich said.
Udall spokeswoman Jennifer Talhelm told me that Udall believes its important to fill these positions. However, he also believed it was important to meet to discuss the future of the national monuments in New Mexico and around the country.
E-mail: mcoleman@abqjournal.com. Go to www.abqjournal.com/letters/new to submit a letter to the editor.
HANOI, Vietnam President Donald Trump is exchanging school yard taunts with North Koreas Kim Jong Un.
In a response to North Korea calling Trumps speech in South Korea reckless remarks by an old lunatic, Trump tweeted from Hanoi on Sunday morning: Why would Kim Jong-un insult me by calling me old, when I would NEVER call him short and fat?'
Trump goes on to say sarcastically, Oh well, I try so hard to be his friend and maybe someday that will happen!
Trump has been working to rally global pressure against North Koreas nuclear weapons program on a trip to Asia. That includes a stern speech delivered in South Koreas National Assembly on Tuesday, in which he said: Do not underestimate us. And do not try us. The weapons youre acquiring are not making you safer, they are putting your regime in grave danger. Every step you take down this dark path increases the peril you face.
On Saturday, Kims government responded by accusing Trump of trying to demonize North Korea, keep it apart from the international community and undermine its government.
Reckless remarks by an old lunatic like Trump will never scare us or stop our advance, the Norths Foreign Ministry said in a statement. On the contrary, all this makes us more sure that our choice to promote economic construction at the same time as building up our nuclear force is all the more righteous, and it pushes us to speed up the effort to complete our nuclear force.
North Korea is not known to have tested any of its missiles or nuclear devices since Sept. 15, a relative lull after a brisk series of tests earlier this year.
Asked at news conference with Vietnams president later Sunday if he could become friends with the North Korean leader, Trump replied it might be a strange thing to happen but its certainly a possibility.
He said he doesnt know if that friendship will develop, but added it would be very, very nice if it did.
Copyright 2017 Albuquerque Journal
A memorial service will be held Nov. 17 for Patricia Pat Lee Estill Bates, a long-time supporter of the arts and an accomplished artist, who died on Oct. 14 at age 92.
The 5:30 p.m. service will be at Los Poblanos Cultural Center, 4803 Rio Grande NW.
Bates was a founding organizer of the New Mexico Arts and Crafts Fair, a cofounder of the now defunct Friends of Art, which raised funds for the University of New Mexico Art Museum, and a past president of the New Mexico Art League.
Bates was born in Tulsa, Okla., and received her associates degree from Gulf Park College in Gulfport, Miss. She later earned a bachelor of fine arts degree in studio art from the University of Oklahoma. She had been an active member of Kappa Alpha Theta and subsequently helped start a local chapter at the University of New Mexico.
In 1948, she moved to New Mexico with her husband, William Bill Colcord Bates, who ran the Bates Lumber Co. in the South Valley from the mid-1950s through the mid-1990s, according to their daughter Patricia Dolly Spragins of California. Bill Bates died in 2006.
In Albuquerque, Pat Bates studied art with a number of well known local artists, including Kenneth Adams, Clinton Adams, Raymond Johnson, Herb Goldman and Robert Ellis. Bates also earned her masters degree in studio art from UNM during this time.
Bates, who painted mostly in oils, was known for her portraits and later still life and abstract material. While many of her works hang in peoples homes or are part of the UNM art collection, said Spragins, her mother did not display her art in galleries nor participate in shows.
I think she had what youd call performance anxiety, but she continued to paint most of her life and did a lot of teaching.
Bates was also a Francophile and spent many summers in Paris studying art, said her daughter.
She was also part of a group of artists that included Betty Sabo and Ann Hebenstreit, who regularly recruited models to sit for them as they re-created the models figure in their respective mediums, Spragins said.
Sheilah Garcia, president of the Garcia Automotive Group, knew Bates since the late-1950s through their mutual involvement with Kappa Alpha Theta sorority. We ended up living three blocks apart. Pat was kind of a Renaissance woman. She was interested in a lot of things and she was very talented.
Garcia said she had the opportunity early on to see many of the portraits Bates painted. The were more than just pictures. You could see in the paintings something of the persons personality. She was good at capturing that.
Garcia also called her friend funny, kind and intelligent. She and her husband were always very stylish. When they walked into a room, everyone noticed.
In the 1970s, Bates and her husband started Pawidol, a business selling fine Native American jewelry throughout the Southwest.
Bates was active in the Junior League of Albuquerque and taught art for a number of years to underserved children. She was also involved with the Camp Fire organization for girls.
In addition to her daughter, and her daughters husband, Pete Spragins, Bates is survived by her son, William Colcord Bates Jr. of Albuquerque; and grandchildren Peter Bates Spragins of California, and Elizabeth Lee Spragins of Virginia.
Donations can be sent to the University of New Mexico Art Museum, 1 University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM, 87131.
Landscaping and construction con artists have been plying their trade in New Mexico recently.
State Attorney General Hector Balderas is warning of contractors who promise to do work and take peoples money for doing so, but then never complete the job.
One landscaper, for example, is the target of four recent complaints with the AGs Office from people who say the company collected a total of more than $10,000 before its owner disappeared, leaving behind nothing more than a disconnected phone number. The owner appeared to target homeowners in new housing developments, according to the AG.
In another recent case, a 70-year-old Moriarty woman paid a $4,000 deposit to an unlicensed contractor based on his estimate of a $9,000 roofing job. She also paid for tarps and metal sheeting, among other items. The contractor damaged her property and took off with the deposit before the work was done.
The AGs Office said it is working with the woman to take action.
The first lesson to be learned from these kinds of scams seems obvious: Dont pay up front for work that hasnt been done yet.
You should never pay someone to do work on your home unless and until the work is complete, Balderas said. Simply waiting until work is complete before paying would solve most of the home improvement complaints our office receives.
The AG adds that some consumers might feel comfortable putting down a deposit in some circumstances, but if you go that route, dont pay until the work has at least been started. And make the payment by credit card rather than cash or check so at least you have a chance of a refund.
In any case, do some homework and make sure the contractor is licensed by verifying with the states Construction Industries Division at public.psiexams.com/search.jsp or by phone at 877-663-9267. (The full name must be entered accurately.) If there is no listing, that means, in most cases, there is no license.
Also, check with the Better Business Bureau for any complaints against the person soliciting work from you.
***
While it might be nice to tell your Facebook friends and family what youre up to, where youre going, what time and with whom, consider carefully before doing so.
The Identity Theft Resource Center is warning about a social media-related scam that could threaten your bank account by tapping into information shared online.
The center points to a recent incident in which a member of the military stationed in California took a phone call from a scammer who claimed to be a representative of his bank. The caller said there had been fraudulent activity on the soldiers account, but said the bank had set up a new one. It just needed his authorization to transfer funds into the new account. The soldier, grateful his bank appeared to be so on top of things, complied.
Of course, there had been no fraudulent activity on his account until the fraudulent bank employee contacted him and fraudulently drained his entire savings.
Why would someone fall for this? The center said it was because the scammer had detailed information about the soldiers whereabouts and activities during the previous weeks, especially a trip to Hawaii, that likely was gleaned from Facebook posts. That information made the scammer appear credible.
Here are some guidelines from the ID Theft Resource Center:
While the whole point of social media is to share information about yourself, stop and think before you do so. Its possible to boast about accomplishments or travel (but only after youve returned home so you dont alert potential burglars) without providing too many details about yourself or relatives.
Set privacy controls. Make sure you know who can see what youve posted and how to control it.
One easy way for scammers to see your social media posts is to send you a friend request. They can initiate a new contact and look to be someone you might like to connect with, or they can spoof an existing account that youre already connected to. If you suddenly get a request from someone you should already be connected with, check with the person before accepting the request to make sure its legit.
Ellen Marks is assistant business editor at the Albuquerque Journal. Contact her at emarks@abqjournal.com or 505-823-3842.
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!)
125 YEARS AGO
From 1892: The Election in Coconino County passed off quietly, and an average vote was polled. It was the first election under the Australian system and its workings proved satisfactory although it has been proven under the system that a candidate does not lose control of the purchased voter. There was no delay experienced in Flagstaff although due to the number of scratched tickets the count was not finished until daylight Wednesday morning.
There was a scene of unusual activity in town on Election Day as all the cattlemen and residents from outlying districts came in to vote. It can be said to their credit that there were no brawls or disturbances of any kind.
All available teams that could be engaged were hired by the different candidates on Election Day to convey voters to and from the polling place. The wagons and horses were placarded with sentences and picture eulogistic of the respective aspirants and everybody took a free ride.
John Wesley arrived in town on Wednesday morning stricken with Mountain Fever. He was taken to the County Hospital where his recovery is doubtful.
This week Matt Black discovered a fine deposit of onyx about 1 mile south of town which may prove to be a bonanza. The specimens he brought in to the SUN office show it to be as fine as any previously found. All its colors are very bright. The deposit is being developed and increases in size as more is uncovered.
Col. William Cody, better known as Buffalo Bill, and a party of distinguished Americans and English noblemen arrived in Flagstaff on Thursday evening and quartered at the Del Monte Hotel. They are here for the purpose of hunting deer, bear and other large game in the surrounding country and, incidentally, to study the geographical formation and the flora and fauna -- some of the company being of a scientific turn of mind.
The party has hired teams and on Friday started for the Grand Canyon. They will follow its course for a way and then cross over into Utah. Segmiller the noted Arizona guide, has been engaged to pilot the expedition. They expect to kill game and are armed with the latest and most improved weapons.
100 YEARS AGO
From 1917: The wool growers of Northern Arizona are intensely interested in the outcome of the investigation of the recent loss of sheep on the Navajo County range. The flocks suffering the heavy losses were on the drive from summer to winter range and after being watered at the tanks along the drive sickened and died in large numbers. The stomach of one of the poisoned sheep has been sent to the Department of Agriculture for analysis to determine whether an alien enemy theory is correct and to put all sheepmen on their guard against such propaganda. Feed is very short in this area and it may be that the sheep have grazed on poisonous plants.
Thursday was a busy day in the Superior Court as four cases were arraigned which are to appear for trial at the November term of the court commencing on Monday the 26th.
Mark Baubian was arraigned on a felony charge to which he pleaded not guilty. His bail was fixed at $1,500.
Ruben Gonzales, who was charged with the murder of a man near Williams, was arraigned and pleaded not guilty. His bond was fixed at $10,000.
Franciso Grando pleaded not guilty to manslaughter and bond was fixed at $2,000.
Florention Pedroza pleaded not guilty to murder and bond was fixed at $10,000.
The criminal docket for the coming term of court will be the heaviest for several years.
The campaign on Food Conservation was a most telling one in Coconino County. Mr. Alex Johnston, the Director, has nothing but praise for the managers who so ably assisted him in the Food Drive. 1,125 heads of households have signed up for wheatless and meatless days.
Douglas Fairbanks and a crew of 40 or more people are expected to arrive at Gallup soon to film out in Canyon de Chelly, where a portion of a western picture drama will be filmed. Camp equipment and properties have already been sent out by auto truck by Louis Steward who will also transport the people to the location.
Flagstaff should get busy with the promotion of her scenic attraction, add more good hotels after this business.
75 YEARS AGO
From 1942: Currently gas rationing here is deferred for no apparent reason. Frank M. Gold, Director of the local Rationing Board, said the A gasoline coupon books will expire on July 31. At that time the Office of Price Administration will issue new books that will be different.
At this time those coupons issued earlier in The East are different from those issued here. Each new coupon will be valid for 2 months and worth 4 gallons, the total of which is expected to take your car about 240 miles at a rate of 15 miles to the gallon.
Wanted: Expert cooks, waitresses and dishwashers for the new Grand Canyon Cafe. Waitresses - $4 per 8-hour day plus bonuses. Inquire Weatherford Hotel. Mr. Spaulding.
All motorists in possession of more than 5 tires per vehicle may dispose of extra tires by calling at the local Express Office, from where they will be shipped to the Government Stockpile.
Stamp #9 is good for 3 pounds of sugar from Novemeber 1 to December 15. #8 coupon for 5 pounds expired on October 31. Office of Price Administration.
The first woman teacher at Arizona State Teachers College to answer the call to military service is Miss Verna Erwing. She will leave next Wednesday morning for Washington D. C. to enroll in a 2-week course in Recreation for Military Forces.
Governor Sidney P. Osburn issued a proclamation on Monday calling for all adult residents of Arizona to cooperate fully with the nationwide Share the Meat plan advocated to bridge the gap pending the development of a Federal rationing program in the near future.
10 million surgical dressings made by American Red Cross women along with 500,000 pounds of powdered milk for orphans have been shipped to Russia.
Last Saturdays Forget-Me-Not Sale sponsored by the Disabled American Veterans Auxiliary netted a record $356.
Justice of the Peace Maxwell found Neil Wilbur guilty of operating a motor vehicle on the Santa Fe Railroad tracks just east of South San Francisco Street.
Four-year-old David Gibson, son of Mr. & Mrs. Wallace Gibson, is ill with the measles.
All women who are interested in joining the Womens Motor Corps are asked to meet at the Red Cross Rooms on Leroux Street at 7:30 pm on Tuesday. It is being organized in cooperation with the Civilian Defense Unit.
For Sale: Chev Sedan Delivery Truck. A-1 condition. Tires fair. See Loren W. Cress.
For Sale: Turkeys. Live or dressed. Mrs. Oscar Hubbard. Rt 1 Box 130 Walnut Canyon.
50 YEARS AGO
From 1967: Chaplain Francis D. Osborn, Veterans of Foreign Wars and the Mark A. Moore, American Legion joined in a downtown parade Saturday to mark the annual celebration of the Veterans of all Foreign Wars. Following the parade there were formal ceremonies on the lawn at City Hall. Social activities were enjoyed by participants in the afternoon.
Robert Prochnow of the Chamber of Commerce met with the Bureau of Public Roads in Phoenix. The City will now make a formal request to put into action the request for an Exit from I-40 at Butler.
Two Missouri youth were arrested Tuesday night on a charge of siphoning gas at Jim Kellys motel. The investigating officer found that the items stolen from Robert Veazeys truck parked at 603 N. Beaver were stashed in the back of their truck.
Flagstaffs only Taxi Co, owned by the late H. F. Bud Moorman, has been sold to W.W. Bill Davis of NAVA-HOPI Tours.
The Shangri-La Water Co. of Oak Creek has been awarded a Certificate of Convenience to operate as a Public Utility by the Arizona Corporation Commission.
The Flagstaff Downtown Christmas Light Display is about $500 short in unpaid pledges. 27 light poles are to be decorated and a 40-foot Christmas tree erected on the Court House Lawn.
625 tons of gravel are to be used to resurface the Airport runway and in the plane parking area. The heavy planes landing on our runways cause a rapid surface deterioration.
A California couple were arrested in New York City by FBI Agents and held on charges of robbing the Navajo National Bank in Winslow last Monday. They will be returned to Phoenix.
On Tuesday, Art Tevis, Sales Manager at Modern Motors, gave the keys of a Volkswagen to Paul Scott at Flagstaff High School to be used in both High Schools Driver Education Program pointing out that the use of a manual shift and a small car will give a greater versatility to students learning.
Mountain States Telephone and Telegraph in its Bigger is Better" plan has lowered calling rates. You many now call anywhere in the United States, Station to Station all day on Saturday and Sunday and talk for 3 minutes for $1 ! Every night between 7 pm and 7 am you can direct dial any number Coast to Coast @ 75 cts for 3 minutes.
25 YEARS AGO
From 1992: The Arizona Snow Bowl returns. Fairfield Flagstaff has sold the Snow Bowl to a Phoenix Real Estate Company, the Arizona Snow Bowl Limited Partnership, for $4 million. Due to current weather conditions no operational changes are planned before the ski season starts. The Sky Lift will be reopened due to a request from the Forest Service. All current personnel will remain intact.
The old card catalog is being shuffled out as our library goes high tech. The generations-old card catalog system is being moved aside to make room for the computer age. The new system has been being gradually introduced and new software will continue to go forward with providing additional access to new materials and easier access to the old.
The City Council is considering an offer to sell from the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railroad for the Historic Amtrak Depot building and its surrounding land for the sum of $480,000, a sum consistent with its official appraisal. The estimate for repairs and renovation to turn it into Visitors Center is $275,000, which includes paving the parking area.
The city will soon be contacting the owners of 125 parcels of land in Historic Downtown Flagstaff and seek to get them excited about improvements as well as paying for said improvements. The proposed boundaries are Humphreys, Elden, Cherry and Rt. 66.
Living Christmas trees now in stock. Select yours now. We will take care of it for you until it is time to bring it indoors. Andersons, 24 S. Beaver. Mon.-Sat. 8:30 to 5.
Copyright 2017 Albuquerque Journal
Garnett Stokes was doing what she knew. What she thought made sense.
A teenage Stokes studied bookkeeping, typing and shorthand. Back in high school, she assumed she would follow in the footsteps of her mother, a secretary for a national professional organization. Neither of her parents had gone to college. She had no plans to, either.
I had teachers in high school who would say, You have to go to college, and I was adamant: I had no intention of going, Stokes said in a recent interview, laughing at the memory. Goodness gracious, what was that?
Stokes, who moved regularly as a child due to her fathers service in the Air Force, remembers thinking college was for snobs. But she was just curious enough after graduation to take a few classes at an Indiana University branch campus.
She excelled, gained confidence and realized she liked it.
That little bit of college segued into a doctorate in industrial/organizational psychology and a lifetime in higher education. That includes her current position as the provost at the University of Missouri and her next role: president of the University of New Mexico.
UNMs Board of Regents this month unanimously selected Stokes to lead the states largest university. Her five-year contract begins March 1 at an annual salary of $400,000.
In making the announcement, Regent President Rob Doughty called Stokes the consensus choice among UNM stakeholders, someone who could deliver on UNMs commitment to student success and serving the citizens of the state of New Mexico.
This career direction that a young Stokes could never have imagined has come to seem increasingly obvious. Stokes has been a provost the chief academic official since 2011, first at Florida State University and now at MU. And each of those institutions also entrusted Stokes with their top jobs at various junctures; she served as FSUs interim president for about half of 2014 and spent three months this year as MUs chancellor.
Shes one of those people who, as soon as you meet her, you see potential for advancement in their career, said Zora Mulligan, Missouris higher education commissioner and Stokes onetime colleague within the University of Missouri system.
Mulligan described Stokes, 61, as a thoughtful leader who seeks and weighs others input before rendering judgment; someone genuinely concerned about how her decisions will reverberate throughout the campus and beyond; charismatic but careful.
Mulligan on Twitter recently called Stokes the glue that held it all together, a nod to the stability she brought amid recent chaos and crisis at MU.
In late 2015, Stokes first year at Missouris flagship institution, racially charged protests rocked the campus. They garnered national media attention, led MUs chancellor Stokes boss and the University of Missouris system president to resign and, some say, have contributed to MUs recent enrollment declines.
Stokes said establishing her own relationships with people on and off campus at a time many had lost faith in MUs leadership was one of her greatest challenges.
Im sure there was uncertainty about me on the part of some, because they didnt know where my loyalties were or what direction I might take the university in the absence of the person who had hired me, Stokes said.
But under her guidance, the university created the Office of Civil Rights and Title IX, and she helped establish MUs Division of Inclusion, Diversity and Equality.
Stokes has also had to fill academic leadership vacancies across the institution. MU has 12 deans; Stokes is now in the process of hiring her ninth in less than three years on the job.
William Wiebold, a plant sciences professor and chair of MUs faculty council, said Stokes has taken a methodical approach to each hire, considering feedback and data at every step and ultimately making the decision based on what was best for the college and university, not always what was popular. He praised her performance as a provost and said she has made a lasting impact.
I suppose every human has flaws or shortcomings, he said in an email to the Journal. It is difficult for me to find one in provost Stokes.
Unlike some of the other finalists for the UNM presidency, when Stokes came to the Albuquerque campus last month for an open forum with the community, she did not outline specific plans or ideas for UNM. She instead spoke mostly about her experience and the lessons gleaned from her administrative roles at University of Georgia, Florida State and Missouri.
Though she has since landed the job, she remains reluctant to offer any sweeping assessments of UNMs present or its future.
Asked where the university is already excelling, she noted the student success gains UNM has doubled its four-year graduation rate to more than 29 percent in the last five years and its efforts to promote inclusivity.
But, she added, I think that to really answer your question well Im going to have to get to know the place, and Im looking forward to the opportunity to visit campus and getting started in March.
Stokes who said she was not on the market for a new job but was approached by the search firm UNM hired to help find its next president said the UNM opening appealed to her in part because of its status as New Mexicos flagship university, but also because its a Hispanic Serving Institution. Thats a designation for universities at which least 25 percent of its undergraduates are Hispanic. Currently, 48.6 percent of UNMs undergraduates are Hispanic.
In addition, nearly half of UNMs students, like Stokes, are first-generation college students. She said she can relate to their experience but that her own background as a one-time college doubter will also help bridge the gap with those who increasingly question higher educations value.
I think whats convincing is being able to share the kinds of experiences students have on campus, the kinds of things they learn, the extent to which peoples work lives or their lives in general are improved by the experience, she said. Its really letting people get to know the faces of a campus, because what you discover is that, Yeah, its a place full of smart people, but people with real generosity of spirit, humble natures and just a belief in the value of education itself and not in any elite sense.
Mulligan said shes extremely disappointed to see Stokes go, but eager to see what she accomplishes at UNM.
Shes going to feel like a real breath of fresh air, Mulligan said.
SUTHERLAND SPRINGS, Texas Two silver hearses carrying the bodies of a couple killed in last weekends shooting at a Texas church were followed by a long procession of vehicles Saturday that avoided passing the small church where more than two dozen people died.
Mourners instead drove around the tiny community of Sutherland Springs before reaching a cemetery on the edge of town, where dozens more vehicles waited along a rural road for the private burial of Therese and Richard Rodriguez. Sheriffs SUVs shielded mourners at the cemeterys three entrances.
The services for the recently retired couple followed a ceremony earlier in the day where about 100 people gathered to commemorate Veterans Day and to honor the shooting victims, nearly half of whom had ties to the Air Force.
Maybe this will start the healing process that will get Sutherland Springs and Wilson County to put this horrific tragedy behind us and look to the future, county Judge Richard Jackson, his voice breaking, told the crowd, which included first responders and law enforcement officers.
Jackson, the countys top administrator, thanked the first responders and others who rushed to First Baptist Church in the aftermath of Sundays shooting. What they saw there will affect them the rest of their lives, Jackson said during the ceremony outside the towns community center, where a wreath was placed near flags to remember those killed.
The gunman killed 25 people authorities put the number at 26 because one was pregnant and wounded about 20 others. The gunman died of what appeared to be a self-inflicted gunshot wound after being shot and chased by two men who heard gunfire from the church.
Investigators have said the shooting appeared to stem from a domestic dispute involving the attacker, Devin Patrick Kelley, and his mother-in-law, who sometimes attended services at the church but wasnt there the day of the shooting.
Kelley had a history of violence. He was given a bad conduct discharge from the Air Force after pleading guilty to assaulting his first wife and stepson. The ex-wife, Tessa Brennaman, told Inside Edition that Kelley once put a gun to her head because shed received a speeding ticket and threatened to kill her and her family. A former Air Force colleague told The New York Times that Kelley, after leaving the military, contacted her about his obsession with Dylann Roof, who killed nine people at a church in Charleston, South Carolina, in 2015.
Sutherland Springs is about 30 miles (48 kilometers) southeast of San Antonio and not far from several military posts, including Lackland Air Force Base. The Air Forces chief of staff, Gen. David Goldfein, said 12 of those killed were either members of the Air Force or had family ties to it.
Among them were Scott and Karen Marshall, both 56, who had decided to retire in nearby La Vernia after meeting when they were in the service together more than 30 years ago. On Thursday, a military funeral was held for them at Joint Base San Antonio-Randolph.
Retired Chief Warrant Officer Mike Gonzales, who led Saturdays Veterans Day ceremony, moved to Sutherland Springs with his wife to raise their children in 2009. He said many veterans choose to live in the San Antonio area because of its deep military ties, and families tend to migrate to the citys surrounding rural areas.
We come here to enjoy life, to get quiet and to raise our children, he said. Weve been to war zones and seen that tragedy firsthand. Never did we think that tragedy would strike here.
U.S. Rep. Henry Cuellar told the gathering to lean on one another for support. The Texas congressman said $10 million in federal assistance has been secured to help cover overtime costs for law enforcement agencies involved in the investigation.
Some in the crowd Saturday wore shirts that said Sutherland Springs Strong and included an outline of Texas with a heart of the towns location. The shirts were donated by Brenda Bierd, who lives on the Gulf Coast and whose home was damaged by Hurricane Harvey in late August.
I hadnt even heard of Sutherland Springs before the shooting, but this is what you do, she said. I just had this feeling I needed to be here.
A steady stream of people also visited a makeshift memorial of crosses adorned with flowers, photographs, red hearts and white, purple and pink balloons.
Among the visitors was Jackie Lee, who said she asked her friends on Facebook if anyone would come with her from San Antonio this weekend. She said about two dozen people quickly said they would.
It was on my heart since it happened, she said. I needed to come to show the community some support, to show these people some support.
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Associated Press writer Emily Schmall contributed to this report.
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HANOI, Vietnam U.S. President Donald Trump said it was certainly a possibility that he could become friends with Kim Jong Un, hours after insulting the North Korean leader on Twitter.
Certainly, it is something that could happen, Trump said Sunday in Hanoi, Vietnam, when asked about the possibility of becoming friends with Kim. I dont know that it will, but it would be very, very nice if it did.
Earlier in the day, Trump, 71, continued his war of words with Kim, who is believed to be 33. The U.S. leader was in Hanoi on an 11-day swing through Asia.
Why would Kim Jong-un insult me by calling me old, when I would NEVER call him short and fat?' Trump tweeted earlier Sunday. Oh well, I try so hard to be his friend and maybe someday that will happen!
In recent days, North Korean state media have taken to referring to Trumps age. The Minju Joson newspaper said in a commentary last week, The U.S. must oust the lunatic old man from power and withdraw the hostile policy towards the DPRK at once in order to get rid of the abyss of doom, it said, referring to the isolated states formal name.
Trump last week told South Koreas parliament that the dictator had turned North Korea into a hell that no person deserves.
The president listed a litany of alleged human-rights abuses under Kim and called him a deranged tyrant presiding over a cult. The previous day Trump appeared to temper his often fiery rhetoric toward North Korea, instead calling for it to make a deal on its nuclear and ballistic missile programs.
Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said Friday that he could envision the U.S. and North Korea agreeing to hold talks at some point as a precursor to formal negotiations.
Strange things happen in life that might be a strange thing to happen, Trump said on Sunday. But its certainly a possibility. If that did happen it would be a good thing for I can tell you North Korea. But it would also be good for lots of other places and it would be good for the world.
(Sharp reported from Tokyo and Jacobs from Hanoi)
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MANILA, Philippines President Donald Trump on Sunday offered to mediate in the South China Sea disputes, while his Chinese counterpart played down concerns over Beijings military buildup and the prospects of war in the contested waters.
Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping spoke separately about the territorial rifts ahead of an annual summit of Southeast Asian nations that also includes the U.S., China and other global players. The disputes are expected to get the spotlight at the summit, along with the North Korean nuclear threat and terrorism.
The long-simmering disputes are one issue where the two major powers influence, focus and military might have been gauged, with the U.S. and China both calling for a peaceful resolution but taking contrasting positions in most other aspects of the conflict.
Unlike China, the U.S. is not a claimant to the potentially oil-rich and busy waters, but it has declared that it has a national interest in ensuring freedom of navigation and overflight and the peaceful resolution of the disputes. Several nations back an active American military presence in the region to serve as a counterweight to Chinas increasingly assertive actions, including the construction of seven man-made islands equipped with military installations.
Im a very good mediator and arbitrator, Trump said at a news conference with Vietnamese President Tran Dai Quang in Vietnams capital, Hanoi, before flying to Manila for the summit of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations.
Trumps offer faces major obstacles. For one, China has steadfastly opposed what it calls U.S. meddling in the disputes and has balked at the U.S. Navys incursions into what Beijing considers its territorial waters in the South China Sea.
The Philippines, the head of ASEANs rotational chairmanship, said member states of the 10-nation regional bloc have to consult each other but thanked Trump for the offer.
He is the master of the art of the deal but, of course, the claimant countries have to answer as a group or individually mediation involves all the claimants and nonclaimants, Philippine Foreign Secretary Alan Peter Cayetano told reporters.
Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte said Xi, during a meeting in Danang, Vietnam, where they attended the annual Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum this past week, assured him of Chinas peaceful intentions in the strategic waterway, where Beijing, the Philippines, Vietnam and three other governments have overlapping claims.
When he raised concerns over Chinas increasing military capability in the South China Sea, Duterte said Xi replied, No, its nothing.
He acknowledged that war cannot be promoted by anybody, (that) it would only mean destruction for all of us, Duterte told reporters after flying back to Manila. He knows that if he goes to war, everything will blow up.
The Chinese leader, however, would not back down on Beijings territorial claim, Duterte said, and justified his decision not to immediately demand Chinese compliance with a ruling by a U.N.-linked tribunal that invalidated Chinas sweeping claims in the South China Sea on historical grounds.
China has dismissed that ruling as a sham and did not participate in the arbitration case that the Philippines filed during the administration of Dutertes predecessor. Duterte took steps to thaw frosty relations with China after he won the presidency last year.
If you go to the negotiating table and you start with the statement that I am here to claim validity of our ownership, youre wasting your time. They will not talk about it, Duterte said of China.
The ASEAN summit opens Monday under extra-tight security at a theater and convention complex by Manila Bay. Duterte hosted a gala dinner Sunday for leaders including Trump, Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, Chinese Premier Li Keqiang and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who all wore traditional barong shirts.
Riot police used shields and water hoses Sunday to push back hundreds of left-wing activists who tried to hold a protest at the U.S. Embassy and carried placards that read Ban Trump. At least 20 protesters were injured in the brief scuffle and one was arrested, according to protest leaders, adding that the demonstrators dispersed after burning a mock U.S. flag.
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Associated Press writer Teresa Cerojano contributed to this report.
For many evangelicals, fiery Alabama politician and judge Roy Moore has been a longtime hero. Others have sometimes cringed at his heated rhetoric and bellicose style.
Now, as Moores Republican U.S. Senate campaign is imperiled by allegations of sexual overtures to a 14-year-old girl when he was in his 30s, theres an outpouring of impassioned and soul-searching discussion in evangelical ranks.
This is one of those excruciating decision moments for evangelicals, Albert Mohler, president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, said in a telephone interview. These allegations, if true, are devastating. If true, this is a very big deal.
Mohler said Alabama voters face a potentially wrenching task of trying to determine if the allegations Moore has emphatically denied them are credible.
According the Pew Research Center, 49 percent of Alabama adults are evangelical Protestants. For some of them, the Moore allegations echo the quandary they faced last year, wrestling over whether to support Donald Trump in the presidential race despite his crude sexual boasts.
The Rev. Robert Franklin, professor of moral leadership at Emory Universitys Candler School of Theology in Atlanta, said The Washington Posts report about the Moore allegations represents a test of moral consistency for evangelicals.
Evangelicals are steadily losing their moral authority in the larger public square by intensifying their uncritical loyalty to Donald Trump, Franklin wrote in an email. Since this is Roy Moore and not Donald Trump, I think there may be significant disaffection with him, and increased demands for his removal from the ballot.
As for Moore himself, Franklin suggested there were classic evangelical remedies such as confession, prayer and remorse and isolation.
Election to higher office is not one of them, Franklin wrote.
Although Trump won 80 percent of the white evangelical vote in his presidential victory, his candidacy exposed and hardened rifts among conservative Christians about partisan politics, the personal character of government leaders and the Gospel. Surveys by the Public Religion Research Institute found that the percentage of white evangelicals who said they still trusted the leadership of a politician who commits an immoral act rose from 30 percent in 2011 to 72 percent last year.
Still, a solid minority of conservative Christians adopted the NeverTrump hashtag on social media and joined those outside evangelicalism who said values voters had lost their values. Women and black evangelicals especially emerged as critics of Trumps remarks about women, immigrants, African-Americans and Muslims. Many of these same critics of Trumps behavior and rhetoric condemned Moore in recent days and bemoaned the fact that some evangelicals were standing by him.
Okay, seriously, we elected a man president who bragged about using his power and authority to sexually assault women, tweeted Kyle James Howard, an African-American student at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. Why are we surprised that members of his party would now be defending a party members sexual assault of a minor?
One of the Southern Baptist Conventions leading public policy experts, the Rev. Russell Moore, expressed dismay after the allegations against Judge Moore no relation surfaced on Thursday.
Whether in the hills of Hollywood or the halls of power, it doesnt matter, the Rev. Moore tweeted. This is true: sexual assault and child molestation are evil, unjust, satanic.
Roy Moore embraced controversy as he built his evangelical following. He was twice removed from his post as Alabamas chief justice, once for disobeying a federal court order to remove a Ten Commandments monument from the lobby of the state judicial building, and later for urging probate judges to defy the U.S. Supreme Court decision legalizing gay marriage.
Prayer and repentance were among the themes Sunday at Moores home church in Gallant, Alabama. Moore himself wasnt present at First Baptist Church. The churchs pastor, the Rev. Tom Brown, prayed during the service for the entire Moore family and urged congregants to trust in God and believe that adversity could lead to a positive outcome.
Hes always been a man of character, of integrity, of honor, and theres nothing in those 25 years that Ive seen that would challenge that, Brown said. Thats all I can go by.
Also declining to break with Moore in the wake of the sex allegations was Jerry Falwell Jr., president of evangelical Liberty University in Lynchburg, Virginia.
It comes down to a question of who is more credible in the eyes of the voters the candidate or the accuser, Falwell told Religion News Service. And I believe the judge is telling the truth.
Daphney Gray of Gallant, who attends church at First Baptist, said she thought Moores Senate race was important from a Biblical viewpoint.
Hes a very good man in my eyes, Gray said. I just see a good man who loves the Lord.
There may be other influences pushing evangelical voters who might otherwise be uneasy about Moore to vote for him on Dec. 12, said Mohler.
Theres so much at stake, the seminary president said. Those of us who are pro-life have got to be very concerned about losing even one seat in the U.S. Senate.
The Democratic candidate in the special election, Doug Jones, has said that a decision on whether to have an abortion should generally be left to the woman in question.
Abortion policy also was evoked by Ed Cyzewski, a Kentucky-based seminary graduate and author, in a series of Twitter posts Friday questioning why some of his fellow evangelicals would continue to stand by Moore.
Right now there are evangelicals who feel trapped, Cyzewski wrote. They think Moore did something reprehensible, but believe abortion is evil.
Katelyn Beaty, an editor at large with the evangelical magazine Christianity Today, suggested that among many of Moores evangelical supporters, theres a presumption of innocence because of their mistrust of national media such as The Washington Post.
Many Christian communities have trouble appropriately responding to sex abuse allegations, Beaty wrote in an email. There is a default trust in powerful, charismatic male leaders, coupled with a discomfort with women who use their story or voice to challenge the status quo or power structures.
However, Beaty said more moderate evangelicals notably those critical of Trump were likely dismayed by the allegations against Moore.
For them, the defense of Moore is another sign that both evangelicalism and the GOP have lost their credibility and their souls in the pursuit of power, she wrote.
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Associated Press writers Rachel Zoll in New York and Jeff Amy in Gallant, Alabama, contributed to this report.
Donald Trump sarcastically responded to North Korea's insults that described him as a "destroyer" who "begged for nuclear war" during his tour of Asia.
In a statement lashing out at Trump on Saturday, North Korea also referred to him as a "dotard," a word meaning a very old person, and one the reclusive nation has used on him in the past.
Trump fired back hours later.
"Why would Kim Jong-un insult me by calling me 'old,' when I would NEVER call him 'short and fat?' Oh well, I try so hard to be his friend - and maybe someday that will happen!" Trump tweeted.
Asked about the possibility of becoming friends with the North Korean leader during a Sunday joint news conference in Vietnam, Trump did not rule it out.
"Strange things happen in life. That might be a strange thing that happens. But it is certainly a possibility," Trump said. "If that did happen, it would be a good thing for, I can tell you, for North Korea. But it would also be good for lots of other places, and it would be good for the world."
Trump is in Vietnam as part of a nearly two-week tour of Asia, and North Korea's nuclear weapons program has been a major talking point with his Japanese, South Korean and Chinese counterparts.
"The weapons you are acquiring are not making you safer, they are putting your regime in grave danger," Trump said about North Korea during an address at South Korea's National Assembly in Seoul. "Every step you take down this dark path increases the peril you face."
He called on nations to stop financing and trading with North Korea.
"Together we have in our power to finally liberate this region and the world from this very serious nuclear menace, but it will require collective action, collective strength and collective devotion to winning the peace," Trump said.
North Korean officials described Trump's trip as "nothing but a business trip by a warmonger to enrich the monopolies of the US defense industry."
"Trump, during his visit, laid bare his true nature as destroyer of the world peace and stability and begged for a nuclear war on the Korean peninsula," the nation's foreign ministry said in a statement.
The harsh words between the leaders have escalated in recent months after North Korea threatened to launch missiles toward the US territory of Guam.
Trump attempted a symbolic stare-down of Kim this week at the heavily fortified border that separates North and South Korea, but heavy fog forced the cancellation of his plans.
The US on Saturday began a three-carrier strike force exercise in the Western Pacific. It involves the USS Ronald Reagan, the USS Nimitz and the USS Theodore Roosevelt. The exercise, set to continue through Tuesday, will involve operations showing the Navy's ability to operate multiple carrier strike groups as a coordinated effort, it said in a release.
The strike force plans to conduct air defense drills, sea surveillance, defensive air combat training as well as other maneuvers.
This is the first time three carrier strike groups will operate together since 2007 during an exercise off the coast of Guam, according to the Navy.
Trump continued to push his harsh rhetoric for North Korea on Sunday, telling reporters that "the world has been provoked" by the rogue nation.
"We want progress not provocation," Trump said. "We have been provoked. The world has been provoked."
He added that the world needs peace, not war.
CNN's Andreena Narayan, Dan Merica, Kevin Liptak and Allie Malloy contributed to this report.
November 10, 2017
In recent years, the official memorial day for late Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin has been a day of political controversy between the political left and right between those who claim to continue the late prime ministers peace legacy and those who rebuke the accusation that the incitement of the right over the signing of the Oslo Accord in 1993 led to the assassination of Rabin.
This year, Rabins son Yuval frankly confronted Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the memorial service held at Rabins gravesite, saying that his father did not enact legislation against those who criticized him. Rabin never passed the buck or whined even when he was exposed to the terrible expressions of hatred. He was everybodys prime minister, argued Rabin. He was referring to legislation attempts by Netanyahus associates to protect the prime minister from police investigations.
There are two debates relating to Rabins legacy.
First, there is a debate concerning the legacy of the Oslo Accord. This debate opposes those who welcome the accords with the PLO, intended to lead to a sharing of the land between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River into two states, and those on the Israeli right who see the accord as a historical mistake abdicating lands that rightfully belong to the Jews.
The second debate, not less bitter, is over Yigal Amir, Rabins assassin, a religious, fanatic youth who studied at Bar Ilan University. Many believe that he was inspired to kill Rabin by right-wing Likuds demagoguery denying Rabins policies and by the messianic rabbis of the settlement movement. There are others who claim that his act was that of a lone fanatic.
Naturally, the right camp rejects the accusations by the left, although no one can deny the violent nature of the anti-Rabin demonstrations at the time, such as the March 1994 demonstration where a mock coffin was carried by the crowds with the words Zionism and Rabin painted on it. Opposition leader Benyamin Netanyahu was marching there, at the Raanana junction.
These passionate and painful debates are unlikely to ever be resolved, as they reflect Israels deep political divide.
Dalia Rabin, the daughter of the late prime minister and the head of the Rabin Center, told Al-Monitor, There was an unprecedented campaign against my father. He was targeted because in the mind of his critics on the right, Mr. Security [Yitzhak Rabin] could actually lead Israel to the goals he set. The environment that was created by this incitement led to the assassination of both him and the hope he had created.
Referring to the Oslo process, Rabin said, Yitzhak Rabin was a pragmatic, responsible and courageous leader, who decided to give peace settlement with the Palestinians a chance, knowing all too well the difficulties and complexities of such a process. His main aim, she concluded, was to give the young Israeli generation the chance for the life they deserve.
A pertinent question to be asked nowadays is what Rabin would have done in the current reality, of total deadlock of the peace process. Al-Monitor spoke with several of Rabins closest associates, who paint a picture of a leader who had evolved politically and security-wise. Rabin was a product of Israels security establishment, Mr. Security as he was often called. The transition from a security hawk toward a leader pushing for peace with the PLO and Syria derived from his conclusion that Israels security in the long run could be guaranteed only by a political settlement coupled with military deterrence. A new relationship with the Palestinians was a must in order to preserve Israels democratic and Jewish identity. Rabin believed that the Oslo Accord was a necessary bridge to improve cooperation with the Palestinians, with the goal of reaching a permanent status agreement. It was clear to him that sharing the land with a national Palestinian entity was both possible and necessary.
More so. His closest former associates told Al-Monitor on condition of anonymity that between the years 1993 and 1995, Rabin had developed a vision for a permanent status agreement to be achieved before the year 2000.
The first essential element of the plan was sharing of the land between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River, with the Palestinian state being demilitarized and the Jordan River serving as Israels security boundary. Security arrangements would be agreed upon, with Israeli military presence along the Jordan River.
The plan also consisted of relocating dispersed settlements into settlement blocs, mainly in the Jerusalem area. A united Jerusalem would remain under Israels control, except for the East Jerusalem Palestinian neighborhoods. The plan referred also to the Palestinian refugees, granting no right of return to Israel. Instead, the plan offered right of return to the new Palestinian state and international reparations.
Rabins plan favored international and Israeli investment in the Palestinian economy.
There was also a Jordanian angle to Rabins plan, as he held the Jordanian kingdom in very high esteem. The plan proposed a Jordanian-Palestinian confederation that would be decided between the two parties.
The last part of the plan consisted of normalizing relations between Arab countries and Israel. At the time, Rabin even favored a peace treaty with Syria and was ready to give up the Golan Heights for the proper security arrangements.
Above all, Rabin believed in a strong strategic relationship with the United States, which would have made such an agreement with the Palestinians possible. He definitely had the courage to make the necessary decisions for such a deal. His peace and security legacy is today espoused by the most senior veterans of Israels security establishment.
November 10, 2017
The retaking of Kirkuk by Iraqi forces in October sent shock waves throughout Iraqs Kurdistan Region. Protests took place in Erbil, including at the US Consulate. Kurds took to social media to lament the Iraqi victory, criticizing the country as well as the Popular Mobilization Units, Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) politicians, Iran and Turkey. The reverberations were also felt in Kurdish communities elsewhere in the Middle East.
As a Kurd, I was saddened, Alborz Rointan, a member of the Democratic Party of Iranian Kurdistan (KDPI), told Al-Monitor about Kirkuk. Iranian Kurds after the referendum took to the streets and showed their happiness.
Kurdish groups across the Middle East support the holding of the Kurdistan independence referendum, despite ideological differences and consequences for the region following the vote. However, they disagree considerably on the responsibility for the loss of Kirkuk.
Rointan said that Iran is to blame for what happened in Kirkuk and that former Iraqi Kurdistan President Massoud Barzani should remain in a leadership role in the party. On the strategy of Kurdish parties in Iran, he said it will not change after events in neighboring Iraq. Kurds in Iran do not have an independence request now, he noted. But central governments have never responded to any Kurdish demands. To create a democracy and a society with universal values that respect Kurdish rights, we must ask for independence.
In a press release, the KDPI condemned Iraqs military actions in Iraqi Kurdistan and warned Iran against carrying out attacks on their and the Society of Revolutionary Toilers of Iranian Kurdistan (Komala) positions.
Others do in fact blame Barzani and the KRG, however. Most importantly, it was conducted without the consensus of all Kurdish political forces, Nour al-Din Omar, a writer and supporter of the Democratic Union Party in Syria, told Al-Monitor. It was a way of shoring up support for the presidents [Barzani] weakened authority and show him as a national leader of the Kurdish people.
Omar blames the resulting actions against the KRG, including the suspension of international flights and territorial losses, on the KRG itself. The withdrawal of Kirkuk without resistance was a serious mistake committed by the leaders of Iraqi Kurdistan, he said. I wasnt with the war, but you had to take the American warnings seriously. KDP [Kurdistan Democratic Party] and PUK [Patriotic Union of Kurdistan] leaders should at the least have resigned.
At the same time, Omar said holding the referendum was a legitimate process.
Ardalan Osman, a leader in the European chapter of the Kurdish Future Movement in Syria, places blame on the PUK for Kirkuk, like many in the KDP. Those who bear responsibility for this heinous crime are certain members of the PUK and the Talabani family, who sold themselves to Qasem Soleimani, he told Al-Monitor, referring to the famed Iranian military commander.
The PUK has been accused of making a deal with Iraq to withdraw Kurdish forces from Kirkuk, though party leader Bafel Talabani said they only withdrew when defeat was imminent.
Osman believes the KRG is at fault nonetheless. Until now, they havent been able to make the peshmerga a national force. It has remained a force of the KDP and PUK, he said. The regime power and institutions all need to change. They suffer from corruption, domination and dictatorship.
Osman said that in Syria, the Kurdish Future Movement and other groups will continue to support federalism, not outright independence, following what happened to the KRG.
The Kurdish Future Movement is part of the Kurdish National Council, supported by Barzani. Their armed wing, the Rojava Peshmerga, has been prevented from fighting in Syria by the Peoples Protection Units, who seek to be the sole Kurdish military force in the country. The Rojava Peshmerga has instead fought alongside the peshmerga in Iraq against the Islamic State.
During fighting between the Rojava Peshmerga and Iraqi forces in Ninevah following the battle of Kirkuk, the Rojava Peshmerga originally refused to pull out from Zummar during the retreat of Kurdish forces, said Minyar Hafirki, a soldier in the group. They ultimately left the area, but the battle demonstrated the defiance of some Kurdish groups toward the KRGs losses.
In Turkey, the actions by the government, Iran and Iraq against the KRG following the referendum caused sadness throughout the Kurdish community. Supporting Kirkuk means supporting the dignity of the Kurdish people and Kurdistan, Osman Baydemir, the former mayor of Diyarbakir and Peoples Democratic Party lawmaker, said during the battle, according to local media.
The Iraqi government said that members of the Kurdistan Workers Party, a Turkish militant group that has traditionally been opponents of Barzani, was fighting in Kirkuk alongside the peshmerga in Kirkuk.
The autonomy the KRG has enjoyed since the era of Saddam Hussein and the US invasion is now at risk following the referendum. Should Iraq roll it [the 2003 borders] back, the realistic chances for independence will die out. Should the KRG survive, however, it can start over: rebuild, invest in institutions that guarantee good governance and resilient economies, and wait for the next opportunity to arise, Bilal Wahab, a fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, told Al-Monitor.
And the referendum aftermath could have repercussions for the Kurds in Iran, Syria and Turkey as well, according to Wahab. The fierceness with which Iraqi forces roll back the KRG and the blank support Iran and Turkey are extending is a message not only to the Kurds in Iraq but to all of them in the Middle East, he said.
The KRGs independence bid exposed the autonomous regions political and military weaknesses, as well as its internal political divisions. It also showed that the states where the Kurds live are adamant in opposing any statehood for them. At the same time, the Kurdish defeats havent stopped Kurdish activism in the Middle East and in the diaspora.
Everybody talked about how they couldnt eat or sleep for days after Kirkuk, Najman Sindi, a Kurdish activist in Norway who is originally from Zakho, Iraq, told Al-Monitor. Sindi organizes demonstrations outside embassies and with Norwegian political parties in Oslo. Were doing all we can here. You can never give up.
Mohammad Abdulssattar Ibrahim contributed to this report.
Tuesdays Democratic sweep obliterated a series of outdated story lines in American politics and opened a new era.
Forget those repetitious tales about some piece of President Trumps base still sticking with him. Its now clear, from Virginia and New Jersey to Washington state, Georgia, New York, Connecticut and Maine, that the energy Trump has unleashed among those who loathe him has the potential to realign the country.
In droves, voters rebuked his leadership, his party and the divisive white nationalist politics that was supposed to save Republican Ed Gillespie in the Virginia governors race, the centerpiece of the GOP catastrophe.
Instead, Ralph Northam, the Democratic lieutenant governor who was much-maligned until election night for being boring, swept to victory on a massive turnout with the largest percentage for a Democrat in Virginia since 1985. On top of this, Democrats picked up at least 15 of the 17 seats they need to win control of the Virginia House of Delegates and were within 200 votes in four other districts. There were comparable Democratic gains in state and local contests elsewhere.
Widespread reports of new organizing and activism on the progressive side of politics were often written off before Tuesday because earlier this year Democrats lost four special Congressional elections in very Republican constituencies. Typically overlooked were sharp shifts away from the GOP in all these districts. Its now clear that the backlash against Trump is the most consequential fact of American politics.
Other right-wing narratives died as well. Anti-Obamacare sentiment was once an asset for the Republican Party. Not anymore. On Tuesday in Virginia, the exit poll found that health care was the top issue in the governors race, named by close to 40 percent of voters. Health care voters backed Northam by better than 3-to-1. In Maine, voters defied their erratic arch-conservative governor, Paul LePage, and voted for the ACAs Medicaid expansion.
The gun issue was supposed to hurt Democrats whenever it was salient. It was the No. 2 issue in Virginia, after health care. But in an historic rebuke to the National Rifle Association, voters who said they cast ballots on gun policy split narrowly. Sane gun policies are no longer a political third rail. Its time for fearless opposition to the NRAs extremism.
The alibis of those whom the voters rejected were another source of satisfaction for the anti-Trump movement. Trump, as is his habit, chose to live in his own factual universe. Having tweeted his strong support for Gillespie when Election Day dawned, he didnt even wait for all the ballots to be counted to rebuke Gillespie because he did not embrace me or what I stand for.
Republicans take note: You can demean yourselves all you want by trumpeting Trumpian themes. It wont buy you gratitude, and except in the most deeply red parts of the nation it wont buy you victory. The leader of your party is a boor, an ingrate and, as Northam declared in his effective Democratic primary advertising, a narcissistic maniac.
Perhaps even more revealing was the response of Jerry Falwell Jr. Those who lose usually try to figure out why the voters rejected their side. Not Falwell, who proposed shipping the voters of northern Virginia, known locally as NOVA, somewhere else.
DC should annex NOVA and return the governance of VA to Virginians! Falwell tweeted. The founders intended DC to include all fed employees who are conflicted. Sorry, Jerry, but northern Virginia is full of entrepreneurs, professionals and immigrants or their children who have nothing to do with the federal government which, by the way, won the Civil War, even if many on your side still seem to revere the Confederacy.
But Falwells tweet was instructive in another respect. Republicans really do want to retreat into their own world. Already, the meme on the right is that the GOP will be fine as long as it passes an oligarchic tax bill that redistributes money away from wage and salary earners and toward corporations, the heirs to big fortunes and, well, to people like Trump. Self-deception is the most dangerous habit in politics.
And thus a brief memo to Democrats: Youd be fools to descend into sectarian infighting between your moderate and progressive wings. The results on Tuesday showed that voters across a broad spectrum backed candidates of various ideological hues to demand a new political direction. Your first job is to rally what we now know is an American majority that sees Trumps presidency as a disaster for our nation.
BarcelonaIt was announced last year, but in the end no representative for the Port Authority of Barcelona (APB) will join the Port's commercial mission to Argentina and Uruguay, starting Saturday and for all of next week. Only businesspeople from the Port community will participate. The reason: the verbal notification that the APB received from the Secretary of Promotion asking it not to participate in the mission because the Foreign Ministry does not want Catalan promotion abroad. This was explained to ARA by Port sources, who said that there was no attempt to limit the appearances of institutional representatives to the economic area --leaving aside the political debate-- but, rather, that they were told outright that no participation by APB representatives would be allowed. The mission, then, will go ahead without any institutional representation of the entity that organized it.
This would have been the nineteenth year that a commercial mission was led by the APB, together with the port community (consignees, shipping companies, importers and exporters, etc.). Last year's event was the first with a double destination, Panama and Cuba, and the president of the entity, Sixte Cambra, gave it a very positive review and announced, in November of last year, that the 2017 event locations would be Argentina and Uruguay. The political situation, however, forced the APB to change its plans, although it had been preparing this mission for months.
Although the Port of Barcelona has its own Board of Directors, it reports to Puertos del Estado (Spanish Ports), which in turn reports to Spains Ministry of Promotion. It was this latter that communicated unofficially that the Spanish government had rejected activities such as the mission scheduled for this week in South America. The Port's Board of Directors includes representatives of the Spanish government, the Generalitat, and the Barcelona City Hall, and the agreement in force is that the Catalan government names the president --in this case Mr Cambra, who has held the position since 2011, and who was a senator for Convergencia i Unio, even though he was not a member of either party in that coalition.
The mission, which begins Saturday November 11th, has a busy agenda in cities such as Buenos Aires and Montevideo, and this schedule will continue unchanged despite the prohibition of any participation by representatives of the Port Authority. The participating companies have decided to move forward with it, given the good results that they believe can be achieved through these gatherings, and for the fact that the events had already been planned.
Last year's mission was attended by Josep Rull, Catalan Minister of Territory and Sustainability (currently in prison), and Jordi Baiget, then Minister of Business and Knowledge, as well as by the General Managers and secretaries of the two departments, consuls, and the Accio agency.
In total, 148 meetings were held, and the Port of Barcelona closed a deal with Panama's Secretary of Competition and Logistics to collaborate on the promotion of e-commerce and improvement of process management.
It's Veterans Day weekend. Amid an anxious and historic year, it's a worthy moment to pause and unplug to give thanks to our heroes, mourn our victims, lament the predators and liars, and contemplate our future.
For news, plunge into Axios.com. But first, here's an Axios AM special edition, inspired by Axios CEO Jim VandeHei. If you have friends or colleagues who'd like to join our breakfast conversations, have them sign up free for Axios AM here.
Too often, we cover news from 50,000 feet a safe remove that can bring clarity, but also abets haziness. News good and bad is people, one by one. For your contemplation ...
George Papadopoulous may not have been the "low level volunteer named George, who has already proven to be a liar," as Trump once described him on Twitter. At least according to new information about his various meetings with Russian leadership, all in an attempt to connect Trump and Vladimir Putin, as reported by NYT.
Why it matters: Papadopoulous has already been charged in Bob Mueller's probe for lying to the FBI. That brought the Russia investigation closer to Trump, but Papadopoulos' claim that he lied to protect Trump, as well as the reports that he shared Russian information with Stephen Miller, make it harder for Trump to ignore this probe because it suggests senior campaign officials knew of the attempts to connect with Russian government officials.
The March 2016 meeting:
One man who claimed to have "high-level contacts in the Russian government," Joseph Mifsud, only expressed interest in Papadopoulous after he joined the Trump campaign.
to have "high-level contacts in the Russian government," Joseph Mifsud, only expressed interest in Papadopoulous after he joined the Trump campaign. He was at this meeting with Papadopoulous, as well as a woman named Olga Polonskaya, who Mifsud curiously introduced as Putin's niece though court papers indicate Putin doesn't have a niece.
with Papadopoulous, as well as a woman named Olga Polonskaya, who Mifsud curiously introduced as Putin's niece though court papers indicate Putin doesn't have a niece. Misfud had a rocky history, and those who knew him described him as "very, very strange" to the Times. But he quickly became a political pundit on Russia state TV, praising Putin and pushing his "expertise" in Russian politics.
The April 2016 meeting:
M ifsud and Papadopoulos m et for breakfast at a hotel in London, where Mifsud claimed he had "thousands of emails" containing "dirt" on Hillary Clinton.
et for breakfast at a hotel in London, where Mifsud claimed he had "thousands of emails" containing "dirt" on Hillary Clinton. Papadopoulos emailed Stephen Miller the day before this breakfast meeting. He told Miller Putin wanted to extend an "open invitation" to Trump to visit Russia.
the day before this breakfast meeting. He told Miller Putin wanted to extend an "open invitation" to Trump to visit Russia. The day after the meeting he emailed Miller about "some interesting messages coming in from Moscow about a trip when the time is right," per NYT.
he emailed Miller about "some interesting messages coming in from Moscow about a trip when the time is right," per NYT. Months later Russian-state hackers released dozens of DNC emails.
One last thing: Papadopoulos, though described as a "volunteer" by Trump, was a foreign policy adviser to Trump's campaign, even going so far as to edit a major foreign policy speech for Trump, per NYT.
Sen. John McCain criticized Trump's "sad" trip to Da Nang, Vietnam, specifically because POTUS failed to address human rights issues.
Why it matters: McCain was held and tortured as a prisoner of war during the Vietnam War, and he has spoken numerous times about addressing the human rights issues in Vietnam. And McCain's criticism joins the 20 House members, from both sides of the aisle, who sent Trump a letter urging him to discuss "Vietnam's dismal human rights record" during his visit to Hanoi.
President Trump and President Rodrigo Duterte of the Philippines share a toast at the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) summit in Manila. Trump has spoken admiringly of Duterte, despite alleged widespread human rights abuses under his administration.
The Philippines is the fifth and final stop on Trump's 12-day tour of Asia.
The White House team at the United Nations climate conference in Bonn, Germany does not plan to discuss conditions under which the U.S. might remain in the Paris climate deal, an official said.
"We are not going to address that issue . . . We don't plan to talk about what those options could be," a White House official told reporters on a conference call, noting, "I don't anticipate having delegations approach us and really try to get into that kind of discussion."
Why it matters: The U.S. posture means continued uncertainty about President Trump's comments that the country might be willing to remain in the 2015 agreement if the U.S. can secure better conditions. As we reported here, the administration has yet to put meat on the bones of the idea.
The official described it as a head-of-state level issue that's beyond what the U.S. plans to tackle at this session of the annual U.N talks.
What's next: The White House is hosting a meeting at the conference tomorrow to promote more efficient global use of fossil fuels, as well as nuclear power. The goal is a "pragmatic" discussion of how to address global warming while boosting energy security, economic growth and access to affordable power, a White House official said.
The White House official said it's an important topic that would otherwise be largely missing from the discussion in Germany, and highlighted International Energy Agency forecast of long-term growth in global energy demand and projections that fossil fuels will play a central role for decades.
"It is burying your head in the sand if you don't have this conversation," the official said.
Yes, but: The White House faces strong criticism for the refusal of President Trump and some other top administration officials to acknowledge the scientific consensus on human-induced global warming, and for abandoning Obama-era climate policies and rules.
Big picture: Asked whether reducing global greenhouse gas emissions is a priority for the Trump administration, the official said it's a "lesser priority" than energy security and economic development, but added that it's "still a priority."
Note: Axios reporter Amy Harder is in Bonn reporting from the U.N. climate conference. She'll have more on the talks and the U.S. posture in her Harder Line column tomorrow morning. Get it directly in your inbox by signing up here for Generate, our daily newsletter on energy.
12 November 2017 16:55 (UTC+04:00)
By Trend
November 12, 2017, Dubai CJSC Azerbaijan Airlines (AZAL) and Boeing Corporation have today agreed to purchase five B787-8 Dreamliner and two B747-8F (or B777F) aircrafts, AZAL's Press service told Trend on Nov. 12.
The agreement was signed by Jahangir Askerov, president of CJSC Azerbaijan Airlines and Kevin McAllister, president and Chief Executive Officer of Boeing Commercial Airplanes. The cost of the agreement is estimated at $1.9 billion. Delivery of aircrafts is scheduled for 2019-2020.
The agreement was signed within the framework of the largest international aerospace exhibition Dubai Airshow 2017.
"The decision to place an order for additional 787 Dreamliner aircrafts will significantly expand the capabilities of our airline - the purchase of new aircrafts will help us expand the geography of flights and handle increasing passenger traffic. We are satisfied with the expansion of cooperation with Boeing Corporation, which is Azerbaijans reliable partner in supply, operation and maintenance of modern passenger aircrafts," AZAL president Jahangir Askerov said.
"We highly appreciate the constant trust of the Azerbaijan Airlines to the Dreamliner aircrafts," Kevin McAllister, president and Chief Executive Officer of Boeing Commercial Airplanes said. "The highest level of efficiency and comfort provided by the new 787 Dreamliner aircrafts is in line with the airline's fleet modernization plans and will help to open new routes, securing their long-term success for many years to come."
Azerbaijan Airlines (AZAL) is one of the leaders of the aviation community of the CIS countries. Total route network of the airline is 40 destinations in 25 countries. Azerbaijan Airlines transported more than 2 million people in 2016.
AZAL has one of the newest airplane fleet. The airline has a long history of cooperation with Boeing Corporation and currently operates Boeing 787 Dreamliner, Boeing 767 and Boeing 757 aircrafts. Azerbaijani national air carriers fleet will also include modern Boeing-737 MAX aircrafts from next year.
"Azerbaijan Airlines" also successfully continues to operate Airbus 340, Airbus 320, Airbus 319 and Embraer 190 aircrafts.
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12 November 2017 10:00 (UTC+04:00)
By Aygul Salmanova
November 12 marks the anniversary of the signing of the Azerbaijani Constitution, which the nation commemorate annually as Constitution Day.
For every conscious Azerbaijani citizen, the Day is more than just a red day on the calendar - this is the beginning of the existence of the state.The Constitution of Azerbaijan is considered as the main law of our state. It is the regulator of various social relations.
The first Constitution of independent Azerbaijan, adopted 22 years ago, laid the legal foundations of the transition to the democratic republic.
The adoption of the Constitution comprised of 5 sections, 12 chapters and 158 articles in 1995 became one of the most significant milestones in the history of the state. This important document laid the beginning of a new page in Azerbaijans history.
Since the first adoption of the Constitution, a number of amendments have been made to the document, with the last one being made the last year in an effort to improve the state administration system and cope with the challenges of the modern world.
Before, the Constitution was amended through the referendum twice in 2002 and in 2009.
The advanced constitution with 29 changes is considered a new guarantee of political stability in Azerbaijan, aiming to prevent any weakening in the government.
All 29 amendments were approved by between 90 percent and 95 percent of voters, thus allowing to take an important step towards protecting the country's independence, even more successfully organizing national security and protecting human rights.
The Constitution did stand not only for a legal recognition of the new social system, but also was an indication that the development of the country had entered a new stage.
Through this law, Azerbaijanis announced their intention to defend the country, to guarantee the democratic system, to achieve the establishment of civil society and to live in friendship, peace and security with other nations.
The basic law proclaimed Azerbaijan a democratic, legal, secular and unitary republic, as well as secured its citizens rights and freedoms as the highest goal of the state.
On this glorious day, every Azerbaijani citizen feels his or her involvement in the formation of a free, democratic society aimed at providing for a bright future to subsequent generations.
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Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz
12 November 2017 10:05 (UTC+04:00)
By Trend
Rector of the Baku branch of Lomonosov Moscow State University, academician Nargiz Pashayeva has met with scientists of the University's Research Institute of Nuclear Physics. The scientists are visiting Baku to organize work of the Baku branch's newly established Atomic and Nuclear Physics laboratory.
The delegation included leading scientists in the field of nuclear physics, Deputy Director of the Nuclear Physics Research Institute of Moscow State University, Associate Professor at the Department of General Nuclear Physics of the university Evgeny Shirokov, and head of Laboratory of General and Special Workshop of Nuclear Physics Research Institute, Associate Professor Vladimir Radchenko.
Addressing the event, academician Nargiz Pashayeva noted that the opening of the faculty of physics and the establishment of the new study and research laboratories at the Branch mark a new and a crucial stage in the development of fundamental sciences not only at the university, but in Azerbaijan.
Nargiz Pashayeva said that the Baku branch pays special attention to increasing scientific potential of young researchers in the field of humanitarian and fundamental sciences.
Evgeny Shirokov and Vladimir Radchenko noted that since its establishment, the Baku branch has gained rich experience in preparing highly-qualified specialists and conducting fundamental researches.
12 November 2017 11:47 (UTC+04:00)
By Trend
North Korea said on Saturday that U.S. President Donald Trumps first trip to Asia showed he was a destroyer and he had begged for war on the Korean peninsula, Reuters reported.
Trump, during his visit, laid bare his true nature as destroyer of world peace and stability and begged for a nuclear war on the Korean peninsula, the foreign ministry spokesman said in a statement carried by the state news agency.
Trump had warned North Korea on Wednesday not to underestimate the United States as he wrapped up his visit to South Korea.
The North Korean spokesman said nothing would deter Pyongyang from pursuing its nuclear weapons programme.
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12 November 2017 13:40 (UTC+04:00)
By Trend
The countrys Ministry of Textile Industry assessed the proposals of bidders.
Hilli Yup Economic Entity deals with the design, construction and equipping of a new cotton mill. After the cotton mill is commissioned, 6,000 tons of cotton yarn will be produced annually.
Turkmen President Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov stressed that the textile industry is one of the priority directions of the processing sector of the Turkmen economy.
"Big investments, made in textile industry, stimulate the growth of production of high-quality cotton products, having a huge demand among foreign consumers," the president said.
Focusing on the importance of building new industrial facilities for the economic development of districts, where new jobs will be created, the president pointed to the need to strengthen control over the work in this direction.
More than one million tons of cotton is grown annually in Turkmenistan, which is the raw material base for the development of the textile industry. Up to 70 percent of the raw materials are processed in the country.
At present, Turkmenistan produces up to 118,000 tons of cotton yarn, 178 million square meters of fabrics, 11,000 tons of knitted fabric, 7,200 tons of terrycloth.
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Nancy Martin, the former administrator of Witchita-based Mid-Kansas Wound Specialists and Emergency Services, admitted to embezzling millions of dollars over several years as the leader of both physician-owned organizations, according to The Wichita Eagle.
Here are four things to know:
1. Both businesses, which provide services at Witchita-based Wesley Medical Center, brought a lawsuit against Ms. Martin and her husband alleging embezzlement of more than $4 million from 2006 to 2017. The lawsuit estimated damages at $6.3 million, including interest, lost profits and investigation costs. Ms. Martin, who admitted to the allegations, has reported her net worth at around 25 percent of the damages, and said she is unable to pay.
2. The attorney for Mid-Kansas Wound Specialists and Emergency Services received approval for a restraining order and temporary injunction against Ms. Martin and her husband, as well as Ms. Martin's living trust and limited liability corporations.
3. No charges have been filed in the case, but the court order prohibits Ms. Martin and her husband from hiding or disposing of their assets, except for certain expenses.
4. According to the lawsuit, companies Ms. Martin and her husband own benefited from the money she embezzled from Mid-Kansas Wound Specialists and Emergency Services.
Pacemaker Belfast 12/11/2017 James Brokenshire, NI Secretary of State, laying a wreath at the Remembrance Sunday ceremony in Enniskillen. Picture: Ronan McGrade/Pacemaker
Pacemaker Belfast 12/11/2017 James Brokenshire, NI Secretary of State, and Arlene Foster, DUP leader, at the Remembrance Sunday ceremony in Enniskillen. Picture: Ronan McGrade/Pacemaker
Pacemaker Belfast 12/11/2017 Leo Varadkar, Taoiseach, James Brokenshire, NI Secretary of State, Arlene Foster, DUP leader and Alex Baird, Chairman of Fermanagh and Omagh District Council at the Remembrance Sunday ceremony in Enniskillen. Picture: Ronan McGrade/Pacemaker
Pacemaker Belfast 12/11/2017 James Brokenshire, NI Secretary of State, Arlene Foster, DUP leader, Leo Varadkar, Taoiseach and Daniel Lawton, US Consul General at the Remembrance Sunday ceremony in Enniskillen. Picture: Ronan McGrade/Pacemaker
Pacemaker Belfast 12/11/2017 James Brokenshire, NI Secretary of State, Arlene Foster, DUP leader, and Leo Varadkar, Taoiseach at the Remembrance Sunday ceremony in Enniskillen. Picture: Ronan McGrade/Pacemaker
Pacemaker Belfast 12/11/2017 There was a large attendance at the Remembrance Sunday ceremony in Enniskillen. Picture: Ronan McGrade/Pacemaker
Irish Taoiseach Leo Varadkar has said bridges between the north and south of Ireland should be built over the shared suffering of the First World War.
He adopted the words of Irish nationalist MP Willie Redmond, who died in Flanders in 1917, a major in the British Army fighting for the defence of small nations.
Mr Varadkar envisaged a day when the poppy could lay "side by side" with the Irish shamrock and the lily worn by nationalists to commemorate the Easter Rising.
He became the first Irish premier to wear a shamrock poppy at the Remembrance Sunday ceremony at the war memorial at Enniskillen in Co Fermanagh, where he placed a green laurel wreath.
Thirty years ago 12 people attending the same event lost their lives to an IRA blast.
The Taoiseach said: "I am a strong believer that history is something we should understand and remember.
"History should be our guide, we should never allow it to be our prisoner.
"The dream that I have for an Ireland, is an Ireland in the future where the poppy, the shamrock and the lily can lie side by side.
"I think it is good to have those kind of dreams."
Northern Ireland Secretary James Brokenshire, DUP leader Arlene Foster and Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) Chief Constable George Hamilton laid floral wreaths of remembrance at the monument to the fallen.
Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Previous Next Close Press Eye - Belfast - Northern Ireland - 12th November 2017 Belfast Lord Mayor Nuala McAllister lays a wreath at The Cenotaph in the Garden of Remembrance, City Hall Grounds, Belfast during the National Day of Remembrance It is the city of Belfasts tribute to the memory of those who died in the Great War and the Second World War. Photo by Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye. Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye Press Eye - Belfast - Northern Ireland - 12th November 2017 Belfast Lord Mayor Nuala McAllister lays a wreath at The Cenotaph in the Garden of Remembrance, City Hall Grounds, Belfast during the National Day of Remembrance It is the city of BelfastOs tribute to the memory of those who died in the Great War and the Second World War. Photo by Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye. Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye Press Eye - Belfast - Northern Ireland - 12th November 2017 Belfast Lord Mayor Nuala McAllister lays a wreath at The Cenotaph in the Garden of Remembrance, City Hall Grounds, Belfast during the National Day of Remembrance It is the city of BelfastOs tribute to the memory of those who died in the Great War and the Second World War. Photo by Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye. Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye Press Eye - Belfast - Northern Ireland - 12th November 2017 Belfast Lord Mayor Nuala McAllister lays a wreath at The Cenotaph in the Garden of Remembrance, City Hall Grounds, Belfast during the National Day of Remembrance It is the city of BelfastOs tribute to the memory of those who died in the Great War and the Second World War. Photo by Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye. Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye Press Eye - Belfast - Northern Ireland - 12th November 2017 Belfast Lord Mayor Nuala McAllister lays a wreath at The Cenotaph in the Garden of Remembrance, City Hall Grounds, Belfast during the National Day of Remembrance It is the city of BelfastOs tribute to the memory of those who died in the Great War and the Second World War. Photo by Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye. Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye Press Eye - Belfast - Northern Ireland - 12th November 2017 Belfast Lord Mayor Nuala McAllister lays a wreath inside City Hall Belfast during the National Day of Remembrance It is the city of BelfastOs tribute to the memory of those who died in the Great War and the Second World War. Photo by Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye. Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye 12/11/17 PACEMAKER PRESS The National Day of Remembrance taking in place outside Belfast City Hall. PICTURE MATT BOHILL PACEMAKER PRESS 12/11/17 PACEMAKER PRESS The National Day of Remembrance taking in place outside Belfast City Hall. PICTURE MATT BOHILL PACEMAKER PRESS 12/11/17 PACEMAKER PRESS The National Day of Remembrance taking in place outside Belfast City Hall. PICTURE MATT BOHILL PACEMAKER PRESS 12/11/17 PACEMAKER PRESS The National Day of Remembrance taking in place outside Belfast City Hall. PICTURE MATT BOHILL PACEMAKER PRESS 12/11/17 PACEMAKER PRESS The National Day of Remembrance taking in place outside Belfast City Hall. PICTURE MATT BOHILL PACEMAKER PRESS 12/11/17 PACEMAKER PRESS The National Day of Remembrance taking in place outside Belfast City Hall. PICTURE MATT BOHILL PACEMAKER PRESS Press Eye - Belfast - Northern Ireland - 12th November 2017 Belfast Lord Mayor Nuala McAllister lays a wreath inside City Hall Belfast during the National Day of Remembrance It is the city of BelfastOs tribute to the memory of those who died in the Great War and the Second World War. Photo by Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye. Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye Press Eye - Belfast - Northern Ireland - 12th November 2017 General view at The Cenotaph in the Garden of Remembrance, City Hall Grounds, Belfast during the National Day of Remembrance It is the city of BelfastOs tribute to the memory of those who died in the Great War and the Second World War. Photo by Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye. Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye Press Eye - Belfast - Northern Ireland - 12th November 2017 Belfast Lord Mayor Nuala McAllister lays a wreath inside City Hall Belfast during the National Day of Remembrance It is the city of BelfastOs tribute to the memory of those who died in the Great War and the Second World War. Photo by Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye. Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye Press Eye - Belfast - Northern Ireland - 12th November 2017 Belfast Lord Mayor Nuala McAllister lays a wreath inside City Hall Belfast during the National Day of Remembrance It is the city of BelfastOs tribute to the memory of those who died in the Great War and the Second World War. Photo by Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye. Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye / Facebook
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Whatsapp Press Eye - Belfast - Northern Ireland - 12th November 2017 Belfast Lord Mayor Nuala McAllister lays a wreath at The Cenotaph in the Garden of Remembrance, City Hall Grounds, Belfast during the National Day of Remembrance It is the city of Belfasts tribute to the memory of those who died in the Great War and the Second World War. Photo by Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye.
The Inniskilling Fusiliers based in the town fought on the Gallipoli peninsula in April 1915 and later on the Western Front.
War poet Francis Ledwidge was one of the Inniskillings' most famous soldiers. He died at Passchendaele, an Irish nationalist in a British uniform.
The Taoiseach said: "They came from all backgrounds, from the north and from the south, Catholic and Protestant, and fought for different reasons.
"Some fought for king and country, others fought for the sovereignty of small nations and for Catholic Belgium."
He quoted Willie Redmond, an Irish nationalist MP who wrote home a few days before he died on Flanders' Field in 1917.
"He said it would be a fine memorial to the men who died if we could, over their graves, build up a bridge between north and south."
Previous taoiseach Enda Kenny made five consecutive visits to Enniskillen on Remembrance Sunday.
Mr Varadkar said his predecessor advised him to continue the tradition.
"I can really understand why he did so."
He said the names of Irish who died in the First World War were engraved on the wall of the school he attended in Dublin.
Other identities were etched at his mother's home town of Dungarvan, Co Waterford.
"They never came home."
He recalled the "innocents" who died in the Poppy Day bombing in Enniskillen three decades ago.
"In particular we remember those who answered that atrocity with forgiveness and led the way for so many of us into the future."
Gordon Wilson was the father of 20-year-old-nurse Marie Wilson, who died from injuries she suffered in the blast.
Mr Wilson's response to the attack was to say that he would pray for the bombers who took his daughter's life.
DUP leader Arlene Foster said she was delighted to see Mr Varadkar.
"This has now become a well-established tradition.
"The Taoiseach first came on the 25th anniversary of the Enniskillen bomb and I think it is lovely that that continues every year now and has come to be expected from people in Enniskillen."
Mr Brokenshire said it was an unbelievable privilege to be in the lakeland town.
Patrick Lee has been living in Ireland for 10 years
A dual citizen of Ireland and the United States has been extradited from Ireland to face federal charges over an alleged mortgage fraud scheme.
The US attorney's office said former Massachusetts resident, 44-year-old Patrick Lee, was arraigned on Thursday in Boston.
Lee, who has been living in Ireland for 10 years, was indicted in 2011.
His extradition was Ireland's first to the US since 2012.
Prosecutors allege Lee participated in a mortgage fraud scheme from 2005 to 2007, shortly before the housing bubble burst.
The indictment said Lee and others converted Boston properties into condominiums, prepared fake mortgage loan applications and forged property appraisals.
The properties eventually went into foreclosure. Prosecutors said lenders lost money in the scheme.
Lee's attorney told The Boston Globe her client will be acquitted.
AP
Irish Taoiseach Leo Varadkar has said bridges between the north and south of Ireland should be built over the shared suffering of the First World War.
He adopted the words of Irish nationalist MP Willie Redmond, who died in Flanders in 1917, a major in the British Army fighting for the defence of small nations.
Mr Varadkar envisaged a day when the poppy could lay side by side with the Irish shamrock and the lily worn by nationalists to commemorate the Easter Rising.
He became the first Irish premier to wear a shamrock poppy at the Remembrance Sunday ceremony at the war memorial at Enniskillen in Co Fermanagh, where he placed a green laurel wreath.
Thirty years ago 12 people attending the same event lost their lives to an IRA blast.
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The Taoiseach said: I am a strong believer that history is something we should understand and remember. History should be our guide, we should never allow it to be our prisoner.
The dream that I have for Ireland is an Ireland in the future where the poppy, the shamrock and the lily can lie side by side.
I think it is good to have those kind of dreams.
Northern Ireland Secretary James Brokenshire, DUP leader Arlene Foster and Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) Chief Constable George Hamilton laid floral wreaths of remembrance at the monument to the fallen.
The Inniskilling Fusiliers based in the town fought on the Gallipoli peninsula in April 1915 and later on the Western Front.
War poet Francis Ledwidge was one of the Inniskillings most famous soldiers. He died at Passchendaele, an Irish nationalist in a British uniform.
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The Taoiseach said: They came from all backgrounds, from the north and from the south, Catholic and Protestant, and fought for different reasons.
Some fought for king and country, others fought for the sovereignty of small nations and for Catholic Belgium.
He quoted Mr Redmond, who wrote home a few days before he died on Flanders Field in 1917.
He said it would be a fine memorial to the men who died if we could, over their graves, build up a bridge between north and south.
Previous taoiseach Enda Kenny made five consecutive visits to Enniskillen on Remembrance Sunday.
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Mr Varadkar said the names of Irish who died in the First World War were engraved on the wall of the school he attended in Dublin.
Other identities were etched at his mothers home town of Dungarvan, Co Waterford.
He also recalled the innocents who died in the Poppy Day bombing in Enniskillen three decades ago.
In particular, we remember those who answered that atrocity with forgiveness and led the way for so many of us into the future.
Gordon Wilson was the father of 20-year-old-nurse Marie Wilson, who died from injuries she suffered in the blast.
Mr Wilsons response to the attack was to say he would pray for the bombers who took his daughters life.
DUP leader Arlene Foster said she was delighted to see Mr Varadkar.
This has now become a well-established tradition.
The Taoiseach first came on the 25th anniversary of the Enniskillen bomb and I think it is lovely that that continues every year now and has come to be expected from people in Enniskillen.
Britain's Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson participates in the Remembrance Sunday ceremony at the Cenotaph on Whitehall in central London, on November 12, 2017. Services are held annually across Commonwealth countries during Remembrance Day to commemorate servicemen and women who have fallen in the line of duty since World War I. / AFP PHOTO / Tolga AKMENTOLGA AKMEN/AFP/Getty Images
LONDON, ENGLAND - NOVEMBER 12: (R-L) British Prime Minister Theresa May, former Prime Minister John Major and Labour Leader Jeremy Corbyn hold wreaths during the annual Remembrance Sunday memorial on November 12, 2017 in London, England. The Prince of Wales, senior politicians, including the British Prime Minister and representatives from the armed forces pay tribute to those who have suffered or died at war. (Photo by Jack Taylor/Getty Images)
LONDON, ENGLAND - NOVEMBER 12: Labour Leader Jeremy Corbyn lays a wreath during the annual Remembrance Sunday memorial on November 12, 2017 in London, England. The Prince of Wales, senior politicians, including the British Prime Minister and representatives from the armed forces pay tribute to those who have suffered or died at war. (Photo by Jack Taylor/Getty Images)
LONDON, ENGLAND - NOVEMBER 12: British Prime Minister Theresa May holds a wreath during the annual Remembrance Sunday memorial on November 12, 2017 in London, England. The Prince of Wales, senior politicians, including the British Prime Minister and representatives from the armed forces pay tribute to those who have suffered or died at war. (Photo by Jack Taylor/Getty Images)
LONDON, ENGLAND - NOVEMBER 12: Prince Charles, Prince of Wales attends the annual Remembrance Sunday memorial on November 12, 2017 in London, England. The Prince of Wales, senior politicians, including the British Prime Minister and representatives from the armed forces pay tribute to those who have suffered or died at war. (Photo by Jack Taylor/Getty Images)
LONDON, ENGLAND - NOVEMBER 12: (R-L) Prime Minister Theresa May, John Major, Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, Tony Blair and Ian Blackford during the annual Remembrance Sunday memorial on November 12, 2017 in London, England. The Prince of Wales, senior politicians, including the British Prime Minister and representatives from the armed forces pay tribute to those who have suffered or died at war. (Photo by Chris Jackson/Getty Images)
LONDON, ENGLAND - NOVEMBER 12: British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson (C) attends the annual Remembrance Sunday memorial on November 12, 2017 in London, England. The Prince of Wales, senior politicians, including the British Prime Minister and representatives from the armed forces pay tribute to those who have suffered or died at war. (Photo by Jack Taylor/Getty Images)
LONDON, ENGLAND - NOVEMBER 12: Prime Minister Theresa May and Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn during the annual Remembrance Sunday memorial on November 12, 2017 in London, England. The Prince of Wales, senior politicians, including the British Prime Minister and representatives from the armed forces pay tribute to those who have suffered or died at war. (Photo by Chris Jackson/Getty Images)
LONDON, ENGLAND - NOVEMBER 12: A general view at the cenotaph during the annual Remembrance Sunday memorial on November 12, 2017 in London, England. The Prince of Wales, senior politicians, including the British Prime Minister and representatives from the armed forces pay tribute to those who have suffered or died at war. (Photo by Chris Jackson/Getty Images)
A Remembrance Sunday service at St George's Hall in Liverpool, as Michael Morpurgo's War Horse joined the parade and laid a wreath. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Sunday November 12, 2017. See PA story ROYAL Remembrance. Photo credit should read: Peter Byrne/PA Wire
LONDON, ENGLAND - NOVEMBER 12: Prime Minister Theresa May and Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn during the annual Remembrance Sunday memorial on November 12, 2017 in London, England. The Prince of Wales, senior politicians, including the British Prime Minister and representatives from the armed forces pay tribute to those who have suffered or died at war. (Photo by Chris Jackson/Getty Images)
LONDON, ENGLAND - NOVEMBER 12: Princess Alexandra, The Honourable Lady Ogilvy, Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge and Sophie, Countess of Wessex during the annual Remembrance Sunday memorial on November 12, 2017 in London, England. The Prince of Wales, senior politicians, including the British Prime Minister and representatives from the armed forces pay tribute to those who have suffered or died at war. (Photo by Chris Jackson/Getty Images)
LONDON, ENGLAND - NOVEMBER 12: Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh and Queen Elizabeth II during the annual Remembrance Sunday memorial on November 12, 2017 in London, England. The Prince of Wales, senior politicians, including the British Prime Minister and representatives from the armed forces pay tribute to those who have suffered or died at war. (Photo by Chris Jackson/Getty Images)
Britain's Prince Harry (L), Britain's Prince William, Duke of Cambridge, (R) and Britain's Prince Andrew, Duke of York lay a wreath during the Remembrance Sunday ceremony at the Cenotaph on Whitehall in central London, on November 12, 2017. Services are held annually across Commonwealth countries during Remembrance Day to commemorate servicemen and women who have fallen in the line of duty since World War I. / AFP PHOTO / Tolga AKMENTOLGA AKMEN/AFP/Getty Images
LONDON, ENGLAND - NOVEMBER 12: Queen Elizabeth II during the annual Remembrance Sunday memorial on November 12, 2017 in London, England. The Prince of Wales, senior politicians, including the British Prime Minister and representatives from the armed forces pay tribute to those who have suffered or died at war. (Photo by Chris Jackson/Getty Images)
LONDON, ENGLAND - NOVEMBER 12: (L-R) Prince Andrew, Duke of York, Prince Harry and Prince William, Duke of Cambridge during the annual Remembrance Sunday memorial on November 12, 2017 in London, England. The Prince of Wales, senior politicians, including the British Prime Minister and representatives from the armed forces pay tribute to those who have suffered or died at war. (Photo by Chris Jackson/Getty Images)
LONDON, ENGLAND - NOVEMBER 12: Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh and Queen Elizabeth II during the annual Remembrance Sunday memorial on November 12, 2017 in London, England. The Prince of Wales, senior politicians, including the British Prime Minister and representatives from the armed forces pay tribute to those who have suffered or died at war. (Photo by Chris Jackson/Getty Images)
The Duke of Cambridge (left) and Prince Harry, watched by Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson (far right), bow their heads in respect after laying wreaths at the Cenotaph during the annual Remembrance Sunday Service at the Cenotaph memorial in Whitehall, central London. Dominic Lipinski/PA Wire
LONDON, ENGLAND - NOVEMBER 12: Prince Charles, Prince of Wales during the annual Remembrance Sunday memorial on November 12, 2017 in London, England. The Prince of Wales, senior politicians, including the British Prime Minister and representatives from the armed forces pay tribute to those who have suffered or died at war. (Photo by Chris Jackson/Getty Images)
The Prince of Wales has led the nation in honouring the countrys war dead on Remembrance Sunday, as the Queen observed the service from a balcony.
The Queen asked Charles to lay her wreath at the Cenotaph, in what is believed to be the first time the monarch has broken with tradition and not performed the symbolic duty when at the Whitehall service.
A two-minute silence took place at 11am and wreaths were laid at the foot of the Whitehall memorial by senior royals and political leaders including Prime Minister Theresa May and Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn.
The Queen and Duke of Edinburgh watched the service from a Foreign and Commonwealth Office balcony.
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The Cenotaph ceremony is a poignant and significant event in the life of the nation which normally involves the Queen leading the country in remembering those who have died in world wars and other conflicts, so Charles role in laying the wreath was a significant moment.
Buckingham Palace announced the change last month, which is seen as an example of the subtle shift of head of state duties from the Queen to the heir to the throne.
Earlier this year Philip, 96, retired from his solo public duties, but on occasion has joined the Queen at her official engagements.
Philips equerry laid his wreath, while Charles also laid his own wreath.
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The Duke of Cambridge, Prince Harry, the Duke of York, the Earl of Wessex, the Princess Royal and the Duke of Kent laid wreaths.
Other political figures laying wreaths included Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson, Liberal Democrats leader Vince Cable, and Commons Speaker John Bercow.
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Joining the Queen in observing the service from Foreign Office balconies were the Duchess of Cambridge, the Duchess of Cornwall, the Countess of Wessex, Princess Alexandra, the Duke and Duchess of Gloucester and Vice Admiral Sir Timothy Laurence.
The firing of a gun marked the end of the silence, and The Last Post was sounded by the Buglers of the Royal Marines before the wreaths were laid.
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Charles has laid a wreath before on behalf of the Queen, in 1983 when she was out of the country, and when the Queen was in South Africa in 1999 she laid a wreath at the Cenotaph in Durban.
This year marks the centenaries of womens service in the regular armed forces, the Battle of Passchendaele and the creation of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, as well as the 100th birthday of forces sweetheart, Dame Vera Lynn.
It also marks the 75th anniversary of the Battle of El Alamein and the creation of the RAF Regiment.
Irish Taoiseach Leo Varadkar laid a green laurel wreath at the Cenotaph at Enniskillen in Co Fermanagh.
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It is 30 years since an IRA bombing there killed 12 on Remembrance Sunday.
Northern Ireland Secretary James Brokenshire, DUP leader Arlene Foster, Police Service of Northern Ireland chief constable George Hamilton and the US representative in Belfast laid wreaths.
Privatised companies have paid out 37 billion in dividends to shareholders since 2010, according to Labour research.
Shadow chancellor John McDonnell will say the money could have been invested in public services as he restates Labours plan to nationalise key British utilities and infrastructure.
The research, conducted in consultation with the independent House of Commons Library, shows that in 2017 privatised firms paid out a total of 4.8 billion in dividends.
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According to the analysis, since 2010 more than 10 billion has been received by National Grid shareholders, 6.3 billion by BT shareholders, and 5.2 billion by investors in Centrica, which owns British Gas.
Train operators and privatised water firms also appear on the list compiled by Labour.
Under Jeremy Corbyn, Labour has set out plans to take back control of trains, the Royal Mail, energy companies and water firms, which critics have claimed would take the British economy back to the 1970s.
But at a conference in Lincoln, Mr McDonnell will say the dividend payments show that money which could have been invested in improving services is lining investors pockets.
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These figures show what could have gone into investment in these public services in order to expand and improve them or keep their charges down, he will say.
The last seven years of austerity has seen working families suffer from stagnant wages not being able to keep up with prices of items like energy bills, and underfunded public services yet billions has gone into the hands of shareholders.
The next Labour government will call an end to the privatisation of our public sector, and we will look to bring back into public ownership many of the vital services sold off by the Tories, which are undermining the living standards of millions of working households.
The shadow chancellor is speaking at a conference to mark the 800th anniversary of the Charter of the Forest a copy of which survives in Lincoln.
Sadiq Khan said he is not in favour of a state visit being organised for Donald Trump (Dominic Lipinski/PA)
Sadiq Khan says he is willing to meet Donald Trump when the US president visits the UK.
The London mayor added he would be happy to show Mr Trump parts of the capital where people of different faiths and none respect, celebrate and embrace each other.
He also described himself as a reluctant participant in Twitter fisticuffs with Mr Trump, which included the pair clashing over the response to the London Bridge terror attack.
Mr Khan told The Andrew Marr Show on BBC One: We must have really good relations with our closest ally, we have a special relationship with them.
Its good that Theresa May and Donald Trump have a good working relationship.
What Im not in favour of is a state visit with all that it entails with the red carpet being rolled out and all thats involved.
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Asked if he wants to meet Mr Trump, the Labour politician replied: If he wants to meet with the mayor of London then, of course, Ill be happy to meet with him and show him parts of London where Muslims, Christians, Jews, Buddhists, Sikhs, those who are members of organised faith and those who arent, not just tolerate each other but respect, celebrate, and embrace each other.
I think we can be a beacon not just to the president of the US but to the rest of the world as to how we should do things.
Two more teenagers have been charged with murder after a 17-year-old boy was stabbed to death in a park.
Michael Jonas was fatally attacked in Betts Park, Penge, south-east London.
Detectives have charged a 14-year-old boy and a 17-year-old boy with murder, Scotland Yard said.
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The pair will appear in custody at Bromley Magistrates Court on Monday.
Two other teenagers a 17-year-old boy and a 16-year-old boy have already appeared in court charged with murder.
The Metropolitan Police said it was called to Betts Park at around 7.20pm on November 2 to reports a male had been attacked
Officers found Michael with multiple stab wounds at the scene and administered first aid before the arrival of paramedics from the London Ambulance Service and Londons Air Ambulance.
Despite efforts to revive him, the teenager was pronounced dead at the scene just under an hour later.
A post-mortem examination at the Princess Royal University Hospital confirmed the cause of death as stab wounds to the chest and haemorrhage.
Pope Francis said priests must inform Catholic consciences but not replace them
Pope Francis has reaffirmed the "primacy" of using conscience to handle tough moral questions in a message on The Joy Of Love, his document which prompted warnings of a schism with its opening to civilly remarried Catholics receiving Communion.
Francis told a conference of Italian bishops in a video message that priests must inform Catholic consciences but not replace them.
The Joy Of Love immediately sparked controversy when released in April 2016 because it cautiously opened the door to letting civilly remarried Catholics receive Communion.
Francis reaffirmed the centrality of The Joy Of Love which has divided the Church as its guide to Catholic couples trying to navigate complicated family situations.
Church teaching holds that unless these Catholics obtain an annulment - a decree declaring their first marriage invalid - they cannot receive the sacraments since they are seen as committing adultery.
But although Francis did not give these Catholics an automatic pass, he suggested that bishops and priests could do so case by case, with the couples' "well-formed" consciences as the guide.
Conservatives accused Francis of sowing confusion and undermining the Church's teaching on the indissolubility of marriage.
Four prominent cardinals formally asked for a clarification to five "dubia," or doubts, they said were prompted by the document, and a group of traditionalist and conservative priests and scholars formally accused Francis of spreading heresy.
Cardinal Gerhard Mueller, whom Francis recently removed as the Vatican's chief doctrinal watchdog, did not join the four "dubia" cardinals or the heresy accusers.
But he warned in a recent book preface that "schismatic temptations and dogmatic confusion" were sown as a result of the debate over the document and said such confusion was "dangerous for the unity of the Church."
Cardinal Mueller sought to offer his own interpretation - that The Joy Of Love can only be read as a continuity of the traditional teaching on marriage - offering what he said was his own "contribution to re-establishing peace in the Church."
AP
Supporters of independence for Catalonia demonstrate near the EU quarter in Brussels (AP Photo/Olivier Matthys)
Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy has urged Catalans to oust separatists from their regional parliament in the early election he has called for next month.
Mr Rajoy has told members of his conservative Popular Party in Barcelona that "we want a massive turnout to open up a new period of normalcy".
His visit to Catalonia's main city was his first to the region since he used extraordinary powers to stifle its secession push.
After Catalonia's parliament voted on October 27 in favour of a declaration of independence, Mr Rajoy responded by firing its government, dissolving the parliament and calling the early election for December 21.
He said: "It's urgent to return a sense of normality to Catalonia and do so as soon as possible to lower the social and economic tensions."
Polls show a tight race ahead in Catalonia between separatists and those who want the region to remain a part of Spain.
In Brussels on Sunday, those favouring independence for Catalonia rallied near the European Union quarter.
Mr Rajoy's conservative Popular Party has won three national elections in Spain since 2011, but it won less than 10% of the vote in Catalonia's regional election in 2015.
It continues to poll behind several other parties in the region, including the pro-business Citizens and the Socialists, which are both against secession.
Mr Rajoy defended his decision to temporarily take over running the region under the constitution, which allows central authorities to intervene in regions whose officials have gone outside the law.
Catalonia's separatists, and even some moderates, have criticised the measures as heavy-handed.
"Exceptional measures can only be taken when there is no other option, and we adopted them to stop the increasing attacks to peaceful coexistence" in Catalonia, Mr Rajoy said.
"For centuries, centuries, Catalonia and Spain have built a country that is multi-cultural and diverse, and the separatists won't be allowed to break the ties that bind us."
Apart from the Catalonia government takeover, a judge has jailed 10 separatist leaders while investigating their roles in promoting secession.
Catalonia's deposed president and four former members of his cabinet have fled to Brussels where they will fight extradition.
Mr Rajoy linked the continued economic recovery of Spain, and especially Catalonia, to the removal of pro-independence parties from power.
Over 2,000 companies have relocated their headquarters from Catalonia due to fears of being cast out of the EU's common market in the case of secession. Employment numbers also showed that Catalonia fell behind other parts of Spain in October.
"The instability is slowing Catalonia's capacity to create jobs," Mr Rajoy said. "But I say that the recovery of legality and normalcy will help reactivate the economy."
AP
Days before returning home from a whirlwind trip to Asia Donald Trump has gone back on the defensive over Russian election meddling and taunted the leader of North Korea.
The US President said he considers President Vladimir Putin's denials sincere, dismissed former US intelligence officials as "political hacks" and accused Democrats of trying to sabotage relations between the two countries.
Speaking to reporters aboard Air Force One, Mr Trump said Mr Putin had again vehemently insisted - this time on the sidelines of an economic summit in Vietnam - that Moscow had not interfered in the 2016 US elections.
Mr Trump declined to say whether he believed Mr Putin, but he made clear he wasn't interested in dwelling on the issue.
"He said he absolutely did not meddle in our election. He did not do what they are saying he did," Mr Trump said as he travelled to Hanoi, the second-to-last stop of his Asia trip.
"Every time he sees me, he said: 'I didn't do that.' And I believe - I really believe - that when he tells me that, he means it," Mr Trump said.
He called the accusation an "artificial barrier" erected by Democrats - once again casting doubt on the US intelligence community's conclusion that Russia tried to interfere in the election to help the Republican Trump beat Democrat Hillary Clinton.
In a tweet sent on Sunday from Hanoi, Mr Trump bashed the "haters and fools" he said are questioning his efforts to improve relations with Russia and accused critics of "playing politics" and hurting the country.
He also exchanged playground taunts with North Korea's Kim Jong Un.
Mr Trump said in a tweet from Vietnam: "Why would Kim Jong Un insult me by calling me "old," when I would NEVER call him "short and fat?""
Mr Trump added sarcastically, "Oh well, I try so hard to be his friend" and "maybe someday that will happen!"
The President had been working to rally global pressure against North Korea's nuclear weapons program on the trip to Asia, including a stern speech delivered in South Korea.
Mr Kim's government responded to that speech by calling Mr Trump an "old lunatic".
Mr Trump and Mr Putin did not have a formal meeting while they were in Vietnam for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (Apec) summit, but the two spoke informally several times and reached an agreement on a number of principles for the future of war-torn Syria.
Mr Trump made clear that the issue of Russian meddling in the election hovers over the leaders' relationship and said it jeopardised their ability to work together on issues including North Korea's escalating nuclear program and the deadly conflict in Syria.
"Having a good relationship with Russia's a great, great thing. And this artificial Democratic hit job gets in the way," Mr Trump told reporters. "People will die because of it."
Mr Trump danced around the question of whether he believed Putin's denials, telling reporters that pressing the issue would have accomplished little.
"Well, look, I can't stand there and argue with him," Mr Trump said. "I'd rather have him get out of Syria, to be honest with you. I'd rather have him, you know, work with him on the Ukraine than standing and arguing about whether or not - 'cause that whole thing was set up by the Democrats."
Multiple US intelligence agencies have concluded that Moscow meddled in the 2016 election to try to help Mr Trump win. But Mr Trump called the former heads of those agencies "political hacks" and argued there's plenty of reason to be suspicious of their findings.
The comments made clear that Mr Trump still does not take the meddling seriously and sees little benefit in punishing a nation accused of undermining the most fundamental tenet of American democracy: free and fair elections.
They also suggest that Mr Trump is unlikely to work aggressively to try to prevent future meddling despite repeated warnings from senior intelligence officials that Russia is likely to try to interfere again.
Meanwhile, a special counsel investigation of potential collusion between Moscow and Mr Trump's campaign aides so far has resulted in two indictments for financial and other crimes unrelated to the campaign, as well as a guilty plea. Congressional committees have also been interviewing campaign and White House staff.
AP
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Alzheimer's Disease: Causes, Symptoms, Diagnosis, Treatment & Prevention Disorders Cure lekhaka-Shamila rafat
World Alzheimer's Day is observed on 21 September, every year to raise global awareness about Alzheimer's disease and other causes of dementia. The World Alzheimer's Day 2021 theme is similar to the 2020 theme, and is 'Know Dementia, Know Alzheimer's'.
Alzheimer's Disease is said to be the most common kind of dementia. While the symptoms are often quite mild at the onset of the disease, they gradually progress to take on a more severe form.
What Is Alzheimer's Disease?
Alzheimer's Disease (AD) is a neurodegenerative disease. It was in the year 1906 that Dr Alois Alzheimer found out certain alterations in the brain tissue of a woman who had succumbed to mental illness.
While living, the woman had displayed symptoms that included unpredictability in behaviour, memory loss, and language troubles. On examination of her brain tissue after death, many tangled fibre bundles and abnormal clumps were found. This condition came to be later known as Alzheimer's Disease.
Causes Of Alzheimer's Disease
Many cellular changes take place in the brain of a person with AD. The beta-amyloid protein (involved in Alzheimer's) comes in various molecular forms. These get collected between neurons. These are formed from the breakdown of a larger protein known as the amyloid precursor protein. In the brain of a person with AD, there are abnormal levels of this protein which are clumped together to form plaques. These plaques are formed between neurons eventually disrupting the cell functionality.
A number of theories have been put forward to account for why some people are more predisposed to getting AD than the rest.
Some causative factors of AD are as follows:
Advanced age: The advancement in age is believed to be the major risk factor for AD [1] .
Dysfunction of the immune system [2] : There is a close connection between the functioning of the central nervous system and the immune system [3] . The Neuroinflammation Hypothesis deals with the dysregulation of the central nervous system's immune response as a major causative factor for the onset of neurodegenerative diseases. Neuroinflammation is increasingly being recognized as a major cause of AD.
Environmental factors: It has been found that various environmental factors, such as aluminium, diet, exposure to viruses can also lead to the onset of AD [4] . In terms of diet, while total calorific intake, as well as dietary fat, have been found to be contributing factors for AD, consumption of fish has been seen to reduce the risk of AD significantly. Aluminium has been linked to neurological damage and various studies have established an undeniable link between AD and aluminium.
Viral infections cause inflammation, which in turn might lead to neurological damage resulting in AD [4] . Other environmental factors such as malnutrition or head injury have also been found to have led to AD in certain cases [5] .
Genetic factors: Genetics plays a crucial role in the predisposition of someone towards developing AD. It has been found that rare mutations in some genes can lead to early-onset familial AD [6] .
Clinical research has led to the finding that AD is indeed a multifactorial disorder in which both environmental as well as genetic risk factors interact with each other to speed up the normal rate of aging [7] .
Symptoms Of Alzheimer's Disease
On the basis of the age at which AD affects an individual, it can be classified into early-onset Alzheimer's Disease (EOAD) that occurs before 65 years of age, and late-onset Alzheimer's Disease (LOAD) that sets in when the individual is 65 years or more in age. Around 1-5% of the total cases of AD can be said to be EOAD, while the other 95% can be said to be LOAD [8] .
The common symptoms [9] associated with AD are as follows:
Loss of memory
Depression
Verbal memory deficits
Disorientation
Deficits in verbal memory
Myoclonus or jerky and spasmodic contraction of muscles
Disturbed gait
Rigidity
Personality changes
Weight loss
Sleep disorder
Difficulty in concentrating
Apathy
Delusions
Neuropsychiatric symptoms (NPS) such as psychosis, apathy, depression, and aggression are now regarded as the main features accompanying AD. It is also generally seen that the greater the severity of the symptoms, the faster is the decline of cognitive abilities and loss of freedom, even leading to a short survival eventually [10] .
Diagnosis Of Alzheimer's Disease
According to the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI), depending on the level of cognitive impairment, AD is classified into preclinical, mild, moderate, and late-stage [11] .
Preclinical AD: The preclinical stage of AD is the asymptomatic phase. In the preclinical stage, cognitive impairment is almost undetectable, and only the pathophysiological changes associated with AD can be detected with the help of biomarkers [12] .
Mild AD: The mild phase of AD is characterized by mild impairments in communicative patterns, memory, and executive ability. Depression is also witnessed in people with mild AD along with a significant reduction in the ability to conduct some advanced daily activities of daily living [13] .
Moderate AD: In the moderate stage of AD, there is a marked decline in cognitive ability, affecting abstract thought and language. The ability for carrying out instrumental activities of daily living is almost completely lost. Another symptom commonly associated with moderate AD is related to mood and behaviour [14] .
Moderate AD is also characterized by other symptoms such as dyspraxia or lack of coordination in fine and gross motor skills, dysgnosia or loss of awareness of self with relation to the environment one finds himself in, and decreased judgement [15] .
As AD progresses from the moderate to severe or late-stage AD, it is usually accompanied by psychotic symptoms, behavioural changes, and social withdrawal [16] .
Late-stage AD: In the late stage of AD, even basic activities such as feeding or dressing oneself can pose a challenge. There is a general overall decline of the patient, with him gradually becoming fully dependent on others [17] .
The most commonly witnessed symptoms of late-stage AD are dysphoria or a condition of dissatisfaction with life in general, reduced motor function, apathy, irritability, agitation, and anxiety [17] .
Do keep in mind that there is no precise definition as such for late-stage AD. The severe or late-stage AD is marked by susceptibility to various life-threatening infections, a severe decline in functioning with most patients being bedbound, severe limitations in communicative as well as cognitive abilities wherein most individuals become mute [18] .
The most severe kind of AD is identifiable with a marked resistiveness on the part of the individual. At this stage, the individual with AD will show great resistance to everyone around him. Also, eating difficulties and incontinence are most pronounced at this stage [18] .
The diagnosis of anyone suspected to be suffering from AD comprises the following steps [19] .
1. A history is taken from someone who can be considered a reliable informant. The history to be taken would include family history, general medical history, neuropsychiatric history, and neurological history.
2. A physical as well as neurological examination.
3. Laboratory tests, such as thyroid function test, complete blood count, etc.
4. Neuroimaging tests, such as computed tomography scan (CT Scan), or magnetic resonance imaging (MRI).
The diagnosis of AD focusses on finding out any functional and cognitive changes, supplemented by a structured history and corroborated by a trustworthy informant [20] .
It is always advisable to conduct a detailed psychiatric and medical analysis, as well as an assessment of substance use history to rule out other factors that might be mistaken for AD - depression, alcohol or substance dependence, medication side effects, or delirium [20] .
Treatment Of Alzheimer's Disease
The most common cause of dementia, AD is an irreversible neurodegenerative disorder [21] . Identified by memory loss and cognitive impairment, AD is an age-related and progressive disorder.
As an incurable disorder, the therapeutic options available for AD have revolved around reducing the symptoms and checking the rate of progression of damage [21] .
Prevention is undoubtedly a much better solution for tackling AD. Precise diagnosis, as early as possible, is probably the best line of defence. Generally, antidepressants and antipsychotics are given to patients with confirmed AD [22] .
As such, there is no cure for AD. No drug that can either delay or stop the progression of AD has been found. The target of therapy in AD is to inhibit the brain acetylcholinesterase [AChE]. Reversible AChE inhibitors help in improving the life quality of AD patients by treating symptoms that are related to thinking, memory, judgement, language and various other thought processes [23] .
Currently, medications that have been approved by the European Medicines Agency [EMA] and the US Food and Drug Administration [FDA] for administration to individuals with AD are reversible AChE inhibitors such as rivastigmine, galantamine, and donepezil [29] ; and memantine that works as an NMDA receptor antagonist [23] .
Memantine, classed as an NMDA receptor antagonist, is usually prescribed to people with AD. While memantine will not cure AD, it works by decreasing the brain's abnormal activity. The ability to remember and think can be improved with the help of memantine.
The importance of early medical intervention can hardly be overstated, as a delay in seeking medical assistance might lead to non-reversible progression of symptoms [24] .
Tips For Prevention Of Alzheimer's Disease
Various clinical trials and observational studies have found out certain modifiable risk factors for AD, such as physical inactivity, mental inactivity, diabetes mellitus, depression, smoking, and poor diet [25] . To this list of modifiable risk factors were later added obesity, low educational attainment, and hypertension [25] . As per estimates, around one-third of all cases of AD can be understood to have been caused by modifiable risk factors. This fact alone makes the onset of AD preventable in such situations.
The modifiable risk factors for AD can be considered under two broad categories.
Lifestyle habits: Smoking, diet, physical activity, mental activity, social activity, and diet.
Cardiovascular factors: Obesity, hypertension, and diabetes [25] .
Controlling such factors can significantly reduce the risk of someone developing AD with the advancement in age.
In recent years, almost all of the therapeutic trials conducted for AD have met with failure. A primary reason for this failure can be attributed to the clinical trials being conducted at the advanced stages of AD, at a time when irreversible damage has already set in [25] .
View Article References [1] Munoz, D. G., & Feldman, H. (2000). Causes of Alzheimer's disease.CMAJ : Canadian Medical Association journal = journal de l'Association medicale canadienne,162(1), 6572. [2] Armstrong, R. (2013). What causes Alzheimer's disease?.Folia Neuropathologica,51(3), 169-188. [3] Cao, W., & Zheng, H. (2018). Peripheral immune system in aging and Alzheimers disease.Molecular neurodegeneration,13(1), 51. [4] Grant, W. B., Campbell, A., Itzhaki, R. F., & Savory, J. (2002). The significance of environmental factors in the etiology of Alzheimer's disease.Journal of Alzheimer's Disease,4(3), 179-189. [5] Armstrong, R. (2013). What causes Alzheimer's disease?.Folia Neuropathologica,51(3), 169-188. [6] Munoz, D. G., & Feldman, H. (2000). Causes of Alzheimer's disease.CMAJ : Canadian Medical Association journal = journal de l'Association medicale canadienne,162(1), 6572. [7] Armstrong, R. (2013). What causes Alzheimer's disease?.Folia Neuropathologica,51(3), 169-188. [8] Reitz, C., & Mayeux, R. (2014). Alzheimer disease: epidemiology, diagnostic criteria, risk factors and biomarkers.Biochemical pharmacology,88(4), 640651. [9] Bature, F., Guinn, B. A., Pang, D., & Pappas, Y. (2017). Signs and symptoms preceding the diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease: a systematic scoping review of literature from 1937 to 2016.BMJ open,7(8), e015746. [10] Li, X. L., Hu, N., Tan, M. S., Yu, J. T., & Tan, L. (2014). Behavioral and psychological symptoms in Alzheimer's disease.BioMed research international,2014, 927804. [11] Masters, C. L., Simms, G., Weinman, N. A., Multhaup, G., McDonald, B. L., & Beyreuther, K. (1985). Amyloid plaque core protein in Alzheimer disease and Down syndrome.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences,82(12), 4245-4249. [12] Ihara, R., Iwata, A., Suzuki, K., Ikeuchi, T., Kuwano, R., Iwatsubo, T., & Japanese Alzheimer's Disease Neuroimaging Initiative (2018). Clinical and cognitive characteristics of preclinical Alzheimer's disease in the Japanese Alzheimer's Disease Neuroimaging Initiative cohort.Alzheimer's & dementia (New York, N. Y.),4, 645651. [13] Wattmo, C., Minthon, L., & Wallin, A. K. (2016). Mild versus moderate stages of Alzheimer's disease: three-year outcomes in a routine clinical setting of cholinesterase inhibitor therapy.Alzheimer's research & therapy,8, 7. [14] Forchetti C. M. (2005). Treating patients with moderate to severe Alzheimer's disease: implications of recent pharmacologic studies.Primary care companion to the Journal of clinical psychiatry,7(4), 155161. [15] Wattmo, C., Minthon, L., & Wallin, A. K. (2016). Mild versus moderate stages of Alzheimer's disease: three-year outcomes in a routine clinical setting of cholinesterase inhibitor therapy.Alzheimer's research & therapy,8, 7. [16] Wattmo, C., Minthon, L., & Wallin, A. K. (2016). Mild versus moderate stages of Alzheimer's disease: three-year outcomes in a routine clinical setting of cholinesterase inhibitor therapy.Alzheimer's research & therapy,8, 7. [17] Forchetti C. M. (2005). Treating patients with moderate to severe Alzheimer's disease: implications of recent pharmacologic studies.Primary care companion to the Journal of clinical psychiatry,7(4), 155161. [18] Allen, R. S., Kwak, J., Lokken, K. L., & Haley, W. E. (2003). End-of Life Issues in the Context of Alzheimer's Disease.Alzheimer's care quarterly,4(4), 312330. [19] Schachter, A. S., & Davis, K. L. (2000). Alzheimer's disease.Dialogues in clinical neuroscience,2(2), 91100. [20] Neugroschl, J., & Wang, S. (2011). Alzheimer's disease: diagnosis and treatment across the spectrum of disease severity.The Mount Sinai journal of medicine, New York,78(4), 596612. [21] Mendiola-Precoma, J., Berumen, L. C., Padilla, K., & Garcia-Alcocer, G. (2016). Therapies for Prevention and Treatment of Alzheimer's Disease.BioMed research international,2016, 2589276. [22] Yiannopoulou, K. G., & Papageorgiou, S. G. (2013). Current and future treatments for Alzheimer's disease.Therapeutic advances in neurological disorders,6(1), 1933. [23] Colovic, M. B., Krstic, D. Z., Lazarevic-Pasti, T. D., Bondzic, A. M., & Vasic, V. M. (2013). Acetylcholinesterase inhibitors: pharmacology and toxicology.Current neuropharmacology,11(3), 315335. [24] Yiannopoulou, K. G., & Papageorgiou, S. G. (2013). Current and future treatments for Alzheimer's disease.Therapeutic advances in neurological disorders,6(1), 1933. [25] Crous-Bou, M., Minguillon, C., Gramunt, N., & Molinuevo, J. L. (2017). Alzheimer's disease prevention: from risk factors to early intervention.Alzheimer's research & therapy,9(1), 71.
During the week of Nov. 12-18, the La Crosse Community Foundation joins the other 780 community foundations across the country in celebrating National Community Foundation Week. It is a time to highlight and raise awareness about the increasingly important role of community foundations as philanthropic organizations that foster local collaboration and innovation to address and tackle our communities challenges. Most people do not know what the La Crosse Community Foundation is or does, but the odds are, everyone in our community has been impacted by the La Crosse Community Foundation.
The first community foundation was established 100 years ago in Cleveland, Ohio. La Crosse residents followed suit only a decade later and formed the La Crosse Community Trust, now known as the La Crosse Community Foundation, with the purpose of enhancing the quality of life in the greater La Crosse area for all its members.
All community foundations share the goals of serving donors, non-profit organizations and their communities. A community foundation directly impacts lives, finds and funds solutions to the most challenging social problems and advances promising and leading-edge opportunities that benefit our community. The La Crosse Community Foundation brings donors and communities together and unites efforts and initiatives to help this place that we call home to grow and flourish.
So far this year, thanks to our donors, La Crosse Community Foundation has awarded nearly $2.5 million in grants and scholarships, and at least another $500,000 will be granted before years end. More than 165 local students were awarded scholarships, totaling just under $250,000, providing access to higher education and helping these students realize their future goals and dreams.
This past year, the La Crosse Community Foundation led social change by providing significant leadership and investment along with our partners in the Coalition to End Homelessness to tackle the complex issue of homelessness in our community. We achieved remarkable successes and outcomes by providing housing and services to homeless Veterans, those who were chronically homeless, including those from Tent City, and homeless youth through the Host Homes program. A new sprint to address family homelessness is actively underway.
The La Crosse Community Foundation made hundreds of other grants on behalf of our generous donors. Grants were made to advance and support the arts; address hunger and food security; improve community safety; support and promote mental health and AODA initiatives and services; and preserve the environment and natural resources that make the Coulee Region so very special. This is just a sampling of the La Crosse Community Foundations extraordinary granting and influence.
As we enter the giving season, I know that people are looking to give back to the community that they have been a part of and that has supported them and their loved ones. The La Crosse Community Foundation ensures that heartfelt giving however and whatever one chooses to give will have an impact. Notably, an impact that is lasting and sustainable and will make a profound difference now and for generations to come.
Until recently, after decades of working in education, I believed that the only way I could ever be a philanthropist was if I won the lottery. I discovered that is simply not the case.
We have hundreds of philanthropists, from every walk of life among us, giving whatever amount of time, talent and treasure they can. This includes individuals, families, organizations and businesses who are giving to support and advance ideas, programs and initiatives that benefit our community members and neighbors. The La Crosse Community Foundation provides trusted resources to support and enable them to realize their philanthropic goals, including how to leave a legacy for this fine community that lives well beyond their lifetime.
A gift to your local community foundation is truly an investment in your communitys future and in making life better for so many. As we like to say at the La Crosse Community Foundation, all gifts are For Good. Forever.
MADISON Whether its the Trump administration order to scrap the federal Clean Power Plan or legislation to jettison renewable energy goals for Wisconsin state agencies, it seems like a grim time for advocates of wind, solar and other clean energy technologies.
Less grim is this reality: The energy marketplace has already embraced renewables as part of a balanced portfolio.
Despite President Trumps oft-repeated affinity for coal and a recent spike in U.S. production, energy experts dont expect a long-term surge in coal production for power plants. There are two main reasons: More natural gas plants are coming on line and renewable sources, mainly wind, are filling the energy gap in many parts of the country.
That transition is not only because the Obama-era Clean Power Plan compelled utilities and industry to burn less coal. The shift is mostly because market prices, consumer demand for clean energy and changing technologies have made renewables more attractive and sped the retirement of less efficient coal-burning plants.
In 2015, according to a state report, wind power made up two-thirds of Wisconsins renewable energy supply. Solar energy, organic matter used as fuel, and hydroelectric power accounted for the other one-third. Coal-fired, nuclear and natural gas plants still supply the bulk of Wisconsins energy needs, but renewables are grabbing more of the market share.
More than two-thirds of Wisconsins wind power is not generated on Wisconsin wind farms. It comes from wind turbines to the west primarily Iowa, Minnesota and the Dakotas over transmission lines that carry electricity from where the wind blows to where power is needed.
Some 345-kilovolt transmission lines are in place, and work continues on completing the system and making the Midwest less reliant on coal and natural gas. One project on the books is the Cardinal-Hickory Creek transmission line, which would span about 125 miles from northeast Iowa to the town of Middleton in Dane County.
Proponents say the Cardinal-Hickory Creek line would improve the overall reliability of the regional and local transmission grid, reduce costs over time and provide a conduit for renewable energy primarily wind power. Environmental groups such as Wind on the Wires and RENEW Wisconsin support the project mainly because they see wind power as reducing Wisconsins reliance on coal, a heavy contributor to greenhouse gases, while spurring the regional wind industry.
Wind on the Wires estimates the Cardinal-Hickory Creek line will advance 10 wind farms in four states, help avoid 1.2 million metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions per year, power more than 400,000 homes and save 757 million gallons of water each year.
RENEW Wisconsin has estimated a $5 billion investment in transmission lines will unlock $50 billion in wind energy investment in the upper Midwest.
The cost of wind has come down about two-thirds in the last decade and some Wisconsin utilities are signing contracts for wind power purely because its the lowest-cost option, said Tyler Huebner, executive director of RENEW Wisconsin. The power grid is changing and its changing in favor of renewables.
Opponents wonder whether more electrical power is needed, based on economic growth and improved conservation strategies. Others question proposed routes for the Cardinal-Hickory Creek line. One proposed route follows existing roads and right-of-way but the other, more controversial route, is largely greenfield in nature.
The need for transmission lines, Wisconsins share of the costs and possible routes are subject to review by the state Public Service Commission.
Fossil fuels such as oil, coal and natural gas arent going away anytime soon. However, the share of U.S. electricity generation met by renewables has grown to 15 percent from 8.5 percent a decade ago. Consumer demand and market forces likely have as much to do with that growth as government policies.
The Midwest can continue to wean itself off coal without overpaying for emerging energy sources such as wind. Transmission lines that efficiently tap into regional wind farms is a part of that transition, no matter how hard the White House tries to rescue the coal industry.
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The Brandon Police Service arrested a 23-year-old Edmonton man on Saturday for possessing several baggies of cocaine and a folding knife.
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International Baccalaureate students will get early offers from a number of Sydney universities based on their predicted results, up to three weeks ahead of the new December 21 round of offers for HSC students.
Macquarie University will make unconditional offers to IB students on December 7 based on their predicted final results provided by schools, just weeks after their exams end on November 17 and well before IB results are released on January 5.
"It's a really good opportunity to encourage IB students to apply and also shows that the university cares about the IB program," Madeleine Bishop, 17, said of Macquarie University's early offer announcement. Credit:Daniel Munoz
The University of Sydney will also make conditional offers to IB students by December 1 based on their predicted grades, but students will still need to get the minimum IB score for their course and meet any other selection criteria such as interviews or portfolios.
The University of Technology Sydney is also considering bringing in conditional offers for IB students in December but will not have the process in place this year, a spokesman for the university said.
Excavators "dug too deeply" at a site south of Brisbane before a retaining wall collapsed, forcing the evacuation of 15 people at the weekend.
Many of the residents at the site, in Middle Street, Cleveland, are from public housing and were put up in hotels in the nearby area.
The construction site on Middle Street. Credit:7 News Brisbane - Twitter
Emergency services were called to the site about 2pm on Saturday after the construction site became "compromised", according to a spokeswoman for the Queensland Fire and Rescue Service.
Police evacuated more than a dozen people from an adjacent unit block and fire crews conducted atmospheric testing as a nearby gas line was at risk of rupturing.
Damaged door at the Hampton home where intruders forced entry. Credit:Justin McManus "He's copped a pretty severe bashing, it's not life threatening, but he's not well," the detective sergeant said. "First thing he knew the door was getting smashed in and these blokes came in. "You put yourself in his shoes that'd be terrifying." Detective Sergeant Hargreaves described it as a cowardly act. "Three blokes against one, your home should be safe and secure, they've kicked in the door, they've smashed it in," he said.
"He was there by himself, he didn't know what was going on and they've just set upon him, three against one, it's really a dog act." Detective Sergeant Hargreaves said police were not yet aware if the offenders had taken anything but that they clearly intended to steal as they were "fully disguised". The trio were seen fleeing on foot and police were yet to determine whether there was a getaway car. Police were door knocking the area and early investigations had produced several leads, Detective Sergeant Hargreaves said. So far they had not produced evidence linking it to the drive-by shooting in April.
"There's nothing to link it as yet, nothing at all," he said. "It's a nice area, it's a nice street it's quite an unusual occurence. "I think it could be an unhappy coincidence, unlucky for the person who lives there, but at the moment we don't know." A neighbour who lives around the corner from Mr Sheffield said he was a retired public servant who had lived at the same address for more than 30 years and had recently subdivided. "I haven't the foggiest why Chris was targeted," she said.
"He's a nice guy, a single-guy who drives an MG and who keeps to himself a lot. "I feel sorry for him and for the bloke across the road who's house is for sale." The woman asked to remain anonymous, saying she had heard Mr Sheffield "got himself into trouble" after giving an interview to TV news crews following the April drive-by shooting. In the park across the street from Mr Sheffield's home, several locals were walking their dogs. One woman from nearby Brighton said she was concerned about the rise of violent crime in the area. "I've a friend who's a bit of an insomniac, who used to walk his dog late at night until about a year or so ago, he never felt unsafe," she said.
"Now he never goes out late at night. "We've observed a real change over the last few years." Even so, the woman who asked to remain anonymous said she was shocked by Sunday night's events. "It doesn't matter where it happens," she said. "It's ghastly to be in your own home and have it invaded like that."
Another dog-walker who lives a few blocks away, Carol Watson, said the incident was frightening. "That's why we have a big front gate which we keep locked," she said. One woman who lives a few houses down from the victim's on Lawson Street, who also wished to remain anonymous, said she was always vigilant against crime. "It's very unfortunate but it could happen anywhere," she said. "People need to keep their doors locked, keep an eye on where and when crime is happening...
November 2017 was named National Veterans and Military Families Month on Nov. 1 by President Donald Trump.
While November was proclaimed a veterans month, Nov. 11 is a special day, said Victoria Brahm, Tomah VA Medical Center director.
We honor them on this day because it is on this day, Nov. 11, at the 11th hour, of the 1th month of 1918 that the guns of World War I fell silent, Brahm said. Across Europe Americas doughboys started coming home, and we began to support our returning veterans.
The peace did not last, Brahm said. More wars were fought, and ordinary men and women stepped up to serve and acted extraordinary.
That is the story of the American veteran ordinary men and women that have stepped up to claim independence, protect our freedom and help others in their struggles against oppression and tyranny, she said.
Those people have protected the United States everywhere, said keynote speaker and 23-year Navy veteran, Capt. (retired) Connie Walker. She said their soldiers perform their service close to home and far away, and they do it every day.
Everyone who has served is a veteran, Walker said, no matter what they did.
I didnt serve in a combat zone. I was part of that tooth to tail in terms of war fighter and logistic support that goes with that, she said. I was that logistic support back there. The most serious physical injury I ever sustained was a paper cut. So this inclusion of all veterans in our conversations is extremely important.
Its important because as service members, they become part of military culture, which is unlike any other culture in the U.S., Walker said. It creates a bond between services members of every branch of the military, and she said once a soldier leaves, it can be hard to integrate back into civilian society.
Once you leave the military, you can miss it profoundly, she said.
Walker spoke of an isolation that can envelop some when theyve left a culture that theyve been such a big part of for so long. Its also military culture, that beast with 1,000 horns that can make it so extremely difficult for men and women to ask for help when they need it in terms of post-traumatic stress or any invisible injury that results in symptoms that arent quite visible when those things arent diagnosed and treated.
Those invisible injuries can happen to service members anywhere, not just in combat zones, Walker said.
The wounds left behind by military sexual trauma sustained by both men and women moral injury, and those things can happen anywhere, not just in combat zones, she said. We tend to focus on combat zones because of all the various places that we go those are the most urgent, those are the most visible. But in any given month in the news, if you really look youll see training accidents across this country or ship collisions that resulted in deaths not in combat zones. Its an inherently dangerous business no matter where you are.
She said its important to recognize that everyone who serves is a veteran, Walker said, and to recognize that family members and loved ones also become a part of military culture and that they deserve to be recognized as well.
Walker said she did not realize how much being a member of military culture affected her family until her son spoke out.
(My son) said to me in the heat of passion that he would never wear a uniform, never take orders and never force his family to move around the country the way that I forced him and his brother to move so I could pursue my Naval career, she said. It never occurred to me, until he leveled with me in such a profoundly open way, to look at it from his perspective, to that degree. This is from someone that did what amounts to employee assistance programs for the Navy for half my career. ... I never had a real sense of empathy for what every family goes through until my son made me focus on that ... I never appreciated, until he said that, what I had asked of them.
Understanding and help among the population are needed to fully honor veterans, Walker said.
If were going to reach out to and connect and help those who need it, we have to be united in recognizing that this is going to take everyone to join in to make these invisible injuries and illnesses be things that are viewed as what they are, she said. These are manageable injuries, manageable illnesses, theyre the same as any other battle scar that you can see. So with an all-volunteer force, in which less than one percent of our population serves, its vitally important for increased and sustained public awareness so the community out there in Tomah and in the surrounding counties and in Madison and the surrounding counties can be engaged.
The Prime Minister has threatened to use his slim majority in the lower house to refer as many as four Labor MPs - including Justine Keay and Susan Lamb - to the court because they were officially still dual citizens when they nominated as candidates. Under scrutiny: Nola Marino. Credit:Facebook Labor argues they are in the clear because they took reasonable steps before the election to renounce their foreign ties, but the Coalition believes they could be ineligible given the court's strict judgment against five MPs - including Mr Joyce - last month. But with Liberal MP John Alexander resigning at the weekend over his dual citizenship, sparking a second byelection, the government is now officially in a minority in the lower house - meaning it will need crossbench support to follow through on its threat. The government holds 73 of the 148 occupied seats - not including Speaker Tony Smith - in the House of Representatives. Labor holds 69 seats and the crossbench has five.
While two crossbenchers - Cathy McGowan and Rebekha Sharkie, who is herself under a citizenship cloud - have guaranteed support for the government on confidence and supply, they have not ruled out siding with Labor on other votes. Frontbencher Christopher Pyne said on Sunday said the government would seek to refer the Labor MPs if Opposition Leader Bill Shorten failed to do so. "There is absolutely no reason the Parliament should not vote to refer those members to the High Court if the Labor Party refuses to do the right thing," he said. But no doubt cognisant of the tight numbers, Mr Turnbull was more circumspect on Sunday. "I think that the pressure is really on Bill Shorten now. Is he really going to say that it's the Labor Party that decides who sits in the parliament and not the High Court?" he said. "Labor says they've got counter arguments, terrific. Let them make them in the court. Bill Shorten has got to stop running a protection racket for his own dual citizens."
Manager of opposition business Tony Burke said the Coalition threats were "desperate". "Those in the spotlight for the Labor Party took reasonable steps before the nomination date. Those in the focus from the Liberal Party took no steps at all before the nomination date," he said. A Labor strategist said it was targeting five Liberal MPs about whom "compelling" doubts have been raised: Ms Marino, Julia Banks, Alex Hawke, Tony Pasin and Ann Sudmalis. "If Turnbull wants to fire this missile we've got the ammo to go nuclear," the source said. "If I were Julia Banks, Nola Marino or Alex Hawke I'd be sweating bullets whenever he talks about referring Labor MPs. He is locking and loading the gun at his own MPs." Ms Marino's case also highlights a gap in the proposed new disclosure regime as it does not consider the possibility of dual citizenship attained through marriage.
The Turnbull government will need crossbench support to follow through on its threat to send Labor MPs under a citizenship cloud to the High Court.
And the opposition is warning of "nuclear" retaliation if the government does pursue its MPs, saying it will target the Coalition's "foreign five".
Malcolm Turnbull says the pressure is now on Bill Shorten. Credit:AAP
Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull last week threatened to use the government's slim majority in the lower house to refer as many as four Labor MPs - including Justine Keay and Susan Lamb - to the court because they were officially still dual citizens when they nominated as candidates.
Labor argues they are in the clear because they took all reasonable steps before the election to renounce their foreign ties, but the Coalition believes they could be ineligible given the court's strict judgement against five MPs - including former deputy prime minister Barnaby Joyce - last month.
Senior figures in the Turnbull government have blamed a "messy" few weeks focused on Parliament's citizenship fiasco for the horror numbers in a new poll, which would see the Coalition wiped out at an election.
Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull's standing as preferred leader of the country has taken a beating going from 41 per cent to 36 per cent and Labor now commands 55 per cent of the two-party preferred vote, ten points ahead of the Coalition, according to a Newspoll published on Monday.
Mr Turnbull now finds himself only two points ahead of Opposition Leader Bill Shorten as preferred prime minister, and the Coalition's primary vote is four points lower than Labor's.
"There's no doubt that the last fortnight has been messy from the government's point of view because of this issue around dual citizenship," Defence Industry Minister Christopher Pyne told ABC radio.
Opposition Leader Tim Nicholls says the LNP has put to bed concerns over the declaration of $100,000 worth of donations.
Mr Nicholls said the LNP had been told by the Electoral Commission of Queensland it had satisfied its requirements, however the party would not be revealing who their donors were.
Opposition Leader Tim Nicholls plays bowls during a visit to Musgrave Hill Bowls Club at the Gold Coast on Sunday. Credit:AAP/Regi Varghese
He said the donations were small amounts and tracking them down was difficult.
"We'll continue to comply with all the requirements of the Electoral Commission of Queensland," Mr Nicholls said.
The cover of the ditched book. "I'm not aware of any other instance in Australian history where a foreign power has stopped publication of a book that criticises it," Dr Hamilton said. "The reason they've decided not to publish this book is the very reason the book needs to be published." Dr Hamilton has published eight previous books with Allen & Unwin. Credit:Rohan Thomson He was concerned that a perceived and vexatious threat, rather than an actual or justified legal action, had prompted the decision to ditch the book.
Allen & Unwin said on Sunday: "Allen & Unwin has published a number of books with Clive Hamilton, and has enormous respect for him and his work. After extensive legal advice we decided to delay publication of Clive's book Silent Invasion until certain matters currently before the courts have been decided. Clive was unwilling to delay publication and requested the return of his rights, as he is entitled to do. We continue to wish him the best of luck with the book." Chinese President Xi Jinping. Credit:AP China's Australian embassy did not respond to efforts to seek comment. The book by Dr Hamilton, who has published eight previous books with Allen & Unwin and has received an Order of Australia for his contribution to public debate, examines evidence that suggests various Chinese Communist Party agencies are seeking to extend Beijing's influence in Australia for strategic and political gains. Former foreign minister Bob Carr has criticised reports of Beijing's influence as overblown. Credit:AAP
While such activity is carried out by other states, elements of Beijing's influence campaign are clandestine or highly opaque. According to media investigations and warnings from spy agency ASIO, these efforts are targeted at Australian politicians and academics. In response, the Turnbull government has plans to legislate to counter Beijing-linked influence operations by introducing new offences prohibiting foreign interference. Political donor Chau Chak Wing is suing Fairfax Media. Credit:Sahlan Hayes Mr Gorman said in his email to Dr Hamilton that the publisher's position "would be stronger once proposed legislation targeting foreign influence in Australia passes through Parliament". However, "it sounds as though this is now unlikely to happen until next year", he wrote.
Mr Gorman also wrote that the publisher believed the Chinese government is co-ordinating attacks on Australian media reports it believes critique or undermine its authoritarian regime. "It seems that Beijing is currently focusing on larger targets. If pursued with malice, this kind of vexatious legal action from a 'whale' or a small Beijing agent mentioned in the book could result in the book being withdrawn from sale, and both you and Allen & Unwin being tied up in expensive legal action for months on end or longer," Mr Gorman warned Dr Hamilton. A former senior national security official told Fairfax Media that the Chinese government sought to use Western legal systems to advance or protect its interests. Australia's defamation laws are notoriously weighted towards litigants, unlike the legal system in the US or Britain, which have greater free speech or public interest protections. "The Chinese government seeks to use the West's legal systems against the West," the former official said.
Dr Hamilton said he rewrote the book to minimise legal risks, "but I can't stop an authoritarian foreign power exploiting our defamation laws to suppress criticism of it". Some China watchers, along with Chinese-born businessmen named in media reports and ASIO briefings, including millionaire Sydney property developer and political donor Huang Xiangmo, have dismissed allegations of undue influence as unfounded and unjust. Chau Chak Wing, a big Chinese-Australian political donor, is suing Fairfax Media over two stories that included allegations that ASIO had warned political parties against dealing with him. The Herald Sun recently printed a correction in connection to a report suggesting Huang Xiangmo was an agent of influence. The correction was issued after Mr Huang launched defamation action. The newspaper report was based on a leaked federal parliamentary library paper that examines Mr Huang's political donations and describes how he heads a Sydney-based lobbying organisation aligned with the Chinese Communist Party's United Front Work Department. President Xi Jinping has described the United Front Work Department as Beijing's "magic weapon" to entrench and extend the Chinese Communist Party's influence in China and abroad. Dr Hamilton's book details its activities in Australia.
Mr Huang, who has repeatedly dismissed claims of impropriety, has also helped set up and provide seed funding to a China research institute at the University of Technology Sydney, the Australian China Research Institute, which is directed by former foreign minister Bob Carr and economist James Laurenceson. The institute is also examined in Dr Hamilton's book. Mr Carr and Mr Laurenceson have both critiqued reports of Beijing's influence as overblown, while Mr Laurenceson recently tweeted the Herald Sun correction, describing it as a court "ruling", and appearing to endorse its coverage in the Chinese government-controlled press. A report by the Communist Party-controlled Global Times described the correction as a victory for overseas Chinese and attacked the Western media for failing to report on it. Mr Laurenceson and Mr Carr have also been dismissive of concerns around political donations linked to Chinese government-aligned businessmen such as Mr Huang. Concerns about donations have been raised repeatedly by ASIO, and acknowledged by senior Labor and Coalition figures and former chief diplomat Peter Varghese. Dr Hamilton's book includes a detailed examination of Mr Carr's advocacy for Australia to increase efforts to build relations with Beijing. It also examines concerns that some Australian universities have failed to appreciate the risks of co-operating with researchers from the Beijing-controlled military and industrial research complex.
New Zealand's rookie Labour leader, Jacinda Ardern, will become the nation's new Prime Minister after winning the backing of a small nationalist party that wants to curb the effects of capitalism.
"I want to start by saying that is an absolute honour and a privilege to have the ability as the leader of the New Zealand Labour Party to form a Government for all New Zealanders," Ms Ardern said on Thursday.
Ms Ardern, 37, will have the numbers to form a left-leaning coalition government after Winston Peters, the leader of the New Zealand First party, said it would support a Labour-led coalition that will also rely on Greens Party support.
Mr Peters' dramatic announcement late on Thursday ended weeks of political uncertainty after the result of New Zealand's September 23 election was inconclusive.
The Crown Prince had been confidently talking about cleaning up house and turning the conservative kingdom into an attractive investment destination, but there was little indication that his campaign would become a royal purge of epic proportions. New order: US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in Riyadh in May. Credit:New York Times "No one will be spared if they are involved in corruption, whoever they are, no one will be spared whether they a minister or an emir [prince] or anyone they will be tried," he said, in a recent clip that is being shared widely among Saudi social media users. The move to imprison several prominent members of the royal family in Riyadh's Ritz-Carlton has been portrayed in international coverage as either a maniacal power grab or a genuine attempt at implementing ambitious reforms rapidly as Saudi Arabia deals with falling oil prices while embarking on grand national projects such as Vision 2030.
So far, over 200 officials - including the 11 princes - have been arrested, with investigators noting they uncovered at least $US100 billion in illicit funds. "MBS has probably got two objectives: one is to seize as many instruments of power, consolidating it, and the second is to either root out significant sources of corruption or convey the image [that] that's what he's trying to do," says Robert Jordan, a US ambassador to Saudi Arabia under George W. Bush. "He has a certain impetuous streak about him," Jordan added. MBS has been lauded in Western coverage for being a single-minded reformer ushering in more liberal policies domestically. He has burnished his image internationally with interviews to The Guardian and The Economist in recent months. Bernard Haykel, a Princeton University professor who has written extensively about Saudi Arabia, is positive in his assessment of the young prince.
"I have no doubts that he has intentions to reform the kingdom because he sees oil as a resource that's losing value it's pretty clear that the writing is on the wall, that Saudi Arabia has to reform," Haykel told me. "I think the only way to discipline the [royal] family is to jolt them Look, he hasn't killed anyone, which he can easily do if he wanted to," he added. When pressed on Saudi Arabia's shocking record of imprisoning dissidents and beheading citizens, Haykel described him as an authoritarian with a reformist mindset. "I see a guy who wants to reform his country and wants to consolidate his power just like Xi Jinping has done in China and [Vladimir] Putin in Russia," he added. The Chinese 'Flies and Tigers' anti-corruption drive targeting high-level officials was also used by Robert Jordan as a comparison for how Saudi Arabia was intent on cementing its regional hegemony by diversifying its economy.
MBS's domestic moves, though, seem to be more a matter of shoring up his power base through centralisation. "There's no question that there's a really extensive purge going on that is effectively restructuring the entire power centre from a system of fiefdoms to a nationally-based government underneath the power of [King] Salman and his son," said Kristin Diwan, a senior scholar at the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington DC. Regional instability This centralisation can also be seen in Saudi foreign policy. The Kingdom has been one of the largest funders of counter-revolutionary political movements in Egypt and Bahrain. It has also been engaged in a geopolitical tussle with Iran through different proxy wars. Shiite militia fighters walk along the Syrian border outside al-Badi, Iraq, earlier this year. Credit:New York Times
Iran's sphere of influence has also widened in recent years. Its longstanding funding for the Lebanese Shiite group Hezbollah and concomitant support for the Assad regime in Syria has been added to as it reinforces the Iraqi army and Shiite militias in their fight against Islamic State and provides logistical support to the insurgent Houthis in Yemen. MBS and his father have responded to the challenge of Iran by promoting nationalism. "There's a strong new nationalism that is emerging it's a way to mobilise that is attached to the direct leadership," Diwan explained. This was on display when Saudi officials directly accused Iran of orchestrating a ballistic missile launched from Yemen by the Houthis which targeted the King Khalid International Airport in Riyadh. Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri at a military funeral in September. On November 4 he announced his resignation, slamming Lebanon's Hezbollah group and warning that "Iran's arms in the region will be cut off". Credit:AP
Similarly bellicose rhetoric was deployed towards Lebanon, and specifically Hezbollah, after Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri declared his resignation while visiting Riyadh, in what seemed a carefully choreographed statement on television. Hariri, who is a dual Lebanese-Saudi citizen and son of assassinated former prime minister Rafiq Hariri, acquiesced to forming a barely functioning unity government with Hezbollah late last year. There have been concerns that Lebanon could become the latest venue for the proxy war between Riyadh and Tehran, with the Houthis in Yemen managing to hold steady against a Saudi-led coalition and Sunni rebels in Syria being pushed back after Iran, Russia and Hezbollah came to the defence of the Assad regime. Iran's President Hassan Rouhani, right, shakes hands with Vladimir Putin during their meeting in Tehran on November 1. Credit:AP "Iran's leadership is in a tight spot domestically so it wants to enter into a war in order to unify the masses, but the [Saudi] kingdom will prevent it from doing this" said Anwar Eshki, a former general in the Saudi armed forces who also served as an adviser to the royal family.
"We are dealing with them as if we are in war, meaning political and diplomatic relations only but not a full-fledged military conflict," Eshki said, referring to Hezbollah and Iran by extension. The whereabouts of Hariri continue to dominate Lebanese political talk shows and conversations on the street. Beirut believes that Riyadh is holding Hariri against his will, in a de facto imprisonment. There have been calls for him, including by Hezbollah and Hariri's own party, to return and officially resign in order not to plunge Lebanon further into a political quagmire. As speculation reached fever pitch last week on Arab social media, a photo showing a fatigued Hariri next to King Salman appeared on the Saudi-controlled al-Arabiya channel, apparently aimed at calming tensions. "There is nothing that could surprise me anymore" said Marwan Kraidy, a Penn University professor who is an authority on Arab media. "You have an acceleration of everything having to do with Saudi politics I have no doubt that Hariri's resignation was a Saudi decision, not his."
Riyadh has also called upon its citizens living in Lebanon to leave the country. Kuwait, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates have followed suit. The Gulf states have over $20 billion in investments in Lebanon, according to Saudi media, and there are fears that economic sanctions might be the next move for an emboldened leadership. Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah, on a billboard in Beirut. In recent years, Hezbollah has evolved into a regional power thanks to the Syrian and Iraqi conflicts. Credit:New York Times Daniel Shapiro, a US ambassador to Israel under president Barack Obama, went so far as to suggest that the resignation of Hariri and the escalation of rhetoric against Hezbollah were a sign that Saudi Arabia was keen to see renewed conflict between Hezbollah and Israel, in the hope that the powerful Shiite militia, one of Iran's most feared allies, would finally be cut down to size. It is an open secret in the Middle East that Saudi Arabia and its allies - particularly Jordan and Egypt - as well as Israel itself were bitterly disappointed by the outcome of the last such confrontation in the northern summer of 2006. Princely problems
Even as the spectre of regional conflict loomed, unverified videos of beds with colourful blankets laid next to each other in a glittering ballroom at the Ritz-Carlton animated discussions on Arab social media of how the imprisoned princes were being treated. One of those caught up in MBS's crackdown is Prince Mutaib bin Abdullah. Once regarded as a contender for the throne during his father's reign, he headed up the powerful Saudi National Guard and has extensive business holdings including a luxurious hotel in Paris. In December 2016, he met with Australian Defence Industry Minister Christopher Pyne to discuss potentially lucrative deals involving the expansion of the Saudi navy's capabilities using Australian defence expertise. Although Prince Mutaib was not specifically linked to corruption in Arab media before, Diwan said that Saudi elites operate in patronage networks benefiting from business fiefdoms that they create for themselves.
Christopher Pyne meets Prince Mutaib bin Abdullah in Riyadh in December 2016. The prince is now under arrest. Credit:Twitter @cpyne She believes that his overthrow was a combination of political elimination and consolidation of various security agencies that were on his watch under the umbrella of the National Guard. "Prince Mutaib from the beginning was going to have a target on his back from the current [royal] generation," she said. Even more sinister was a helicopter crash near the Yemeni border that killed eight government officials, including Prince Mansour bin Muqrin. The strange timing and lack of transparency from the authorities have raised fears that the royal purge might have taken a lethal turn. Prince Muqrin bin Abdulaziz, the father of the deceased prince, was himself ousted from the succession when King Salman took power in 2015. Also among those arrested is Prince al-Waleed bin Talal. One of the world's richest men, with a fortune estimated to be around $US16 billion, he has invested billions in global companies such as Apple and Twitter. His arrest came as a shock to many investors and observers as he has traditionally been a regime loyalist.
Bus works for me ... With reference to Russ Morison's featured letter "Canberra public transport fails us ... " (Letters, November 11), the people who actually use Action Buses are happy with the service and are aware that the bus is not an exclusive taxi service from our home to our sole destination, but actually has to stop and pick up and set down others passengers and travel via interchanges. I enjoy the interaction with passengers and would also like to extend a big thank you to the helpful and pleasant bus drivers, and the young people who offer their seat if the bus is crowded. John Davenport, Farrer ... but cars still rule ... Your report on the first tram to leave Spain bound for Canberra (November 10) contrasts with another news item out of Portugal two days earlier.
John Krafcik, chief executive of Google's sister company Waymo, speaking at a technical conference in Lisbon announced that from mid-October Waymo has been operating its autonomous minivans on public roads in Chandler, a part of Phoenix Arizona, without a safety driver. At this stage a Waymo employee is in the vehicle. The next step for Waymo is a commercial ride-hail service, in which riders can hail one of the company's autonomous minivans via an app. "People will get to use our fleet of on-demand vehicles, to do anything from commute to work, get home from a night out, or run errands," Krafcik said. I think this is a serious prospect for Canberra's roads by 2030. Unfortunately, under Barr and Rattenbury I only foresee a conventional city clogged with cars. Will any of the high-rise buildings planned for Northbourne not boast underground parking for tenants' cars? The government ought to heed the advice of recent letter writers and plan to run a couple of old Melbourne trams up and down Northbourne because, whatever the type of tram, they will be mainly for show.
John L Smith, Farrer ... and train too slow Contrary to the recent announcement by ministers from the ACT and NSW about speeding up the train service ("Leaders meet to announce ACT-NSW memorandum of understanding and fast train plan", November 3), the new Sydney Xplorer timetable effective November 26, 2017 shows that most trips between Canberra and Sydney will soon take longer than they do now. On Friday morning, I tried to buy an unbooked walk-in seat on the Canberra to Sydney train, later returning Sydney-Canberra, but both trains were booked out. This clearly shows there is strong demand for the train service, even with its current very slow journey time of over four hours. I have been advised on good technical authority that the current Xplorer train could actually do the journey in a little over 3 hours by the simple expedients of:
Removing some of the nine Xplorer stops between Canberra and Sydney, many of which are served by NSW local trains. (Each stop costs two to three minutes.)
Adjusting the speed signage to reflect the higher speeds the Xplorer train could safely run at without track modifications.
Giving the Xplorer priority over Sydney suburban trains. These simple measures offer a workable stopgap solution to speeding up the service until that distant day when a tilt train will do it in two hours. C. Williams, Friends of Canberra-Sydney Rail Group, Forrest A better dog's life Dogs are what we make of them. If they are not trained properly they can become dangerous. So, all dogs need to be registered and those that the authorities consider dangerous must undergo proper training with their owners.
We all know that it is the owner's responsibility to make sure that the dog behaves well in public. Dogs must also learn to socialise. There is also a different kind of behaviour when a dog is on a leash and when not. The authorities need to get their act together and monitor those dogs that they believe are dangerous. But not only dangerous dogs will attack another dog or a human. When the authorities are preparing what they are going to do about this very serious problem, I hope the fines they implement are going to be tough enough to make those irresponsible dog owners wake up. And, finally, what do we expect from dogs? Unconditional love, to be a good watch dog and be part of the family. But above all, be well trained. Maureen Heslop, Bonner Euphemisms are deadly
Every Anzac and Remembrance Day, we hear euphemisms for men and women who have died in war. They are "the fallen", they "made the supreme sacrifice", "they shall grow not old". In his book Sacred Places, distinguished historian Ken Inglis nailed this language: "soldiers of the Queen did not stagger or sink or topple or have bits blown off, but fell, to become not quite simply the dead but the fallen, who cleanly, heroically, sacrificially gave their lives in war. People raised on such high diction were not prepared for squalid actualities." The more we the people who are fed that "high diction" repeat it and believe it the more we mislead ourselves about the nature of war and let ourselves be sucked into future conflicts. It's "dead" or "killed" not "fallen", "sacrificed" not "made the supreme sacrifice", robbed of their lives, not forever young. No more comforting nonsense. David Stephens, Bruce
Gunghalin failings I agree with Scott Humphries' (Letters,November 13) observation about the inadequacy of implementation of the NCDC's town centre policy. The town centres were to have substantial employment, retail, and community facilities and services primarily serving their respective town populations. The policies have been implemented with reasonable success, with the exception of Gungahlin. The failure to attract major Commonwealth offices to Gungahlin is primarily a product of the responsibility for location being devolved to individual departments and the inability to control the level of office development at the airport, a product of the bureaucratic weakness of the National Capital Authority and ACT planning. The problem was exacerbated by the pace of development of Gungahlin being higher than desirable as a consequence of delays in Molonglo's development. The result is the high level of commuting to work from Gungahlin and associated congestion from inadequate provision of transport infrastructure.
As Professor Troy has observed, light rail is a poor attempt to compensate for this transport issue. It is essential that effort be made to encourage employment at the Gungahlin Town Centre through incentives, having development-ready sites available, and the advocacy by the ACT government of the centre, which would greatly assisted by evidence from a robust review of the ACT planning strategy. Mike Quirk, Garran CTP details Let us look at some details omitted from The Canberra Times' article on compulsory third party insurance ("ACT's soaring CTP payouts", November10, p1). The article talks about soaring claims, $28million up to $108million; well, my rates and other utilities, not to mention food and power etc, have gone up by similar rates of increase. The article talks about the rising cost of treatment rates; I am lucky my costs are covered by workers comp, so I get seen privately if needed. But you don't see many hard up doctors (or lawyers!), do you?
A sense of perspective is needed, and not scaremongering regarding costs. If, as I do, you have a life-changing injury and are in pain every day, despite medication, how much would you expect in compensation? I can tell you $10million would not be enough, yet the Barr government would seek to deny us the little we would get. The changes to compulsory third party insurance are ill-considered and only designed to benefit Treasury income levels. Factor in that the jury members do not know or understand what they are doing, as evidenced by the article in this paper, and the system will not benefit consumers. Ian Jannaway, Monash
Traffic casualties The key takeaway message from the article ("ACT's soaring CTP payouts", November10, p1) is that the current compulsory third-party insurance scheme is coming under intense financial pressure and may well be unsustainable. This would explain why the citizens' jury has been hurriedly established with a narrow brief to recommend affordable changes. The reality is, the growing financial pressure is a direct result of three key factors: today's improved cars are reducing fatalities but people are living with life-long injuries; the ever-increasing costs and complexity of medical attention; and the do-almost-nothing road safety strategy. This results in a continuous stream of traffic casualties to bolster the financial exposure. To attempt to create the illusion, as the Chief Minister seems to be doing, that the most recent data includes some clearance of difficult cases, demonstrates a limited knowledge of how long-tail personal injury insurance works. Bill Gemmell, Holder Myanmar flak
Aung San Su Kyi has taken a lot of flak lately from safe and secure do-gooders like Bob Geldof for not speaking out for the Rohingya in Myanmar, but at least there are some mitigating factors. She has no control over the military, and to do anything would mean the loss of all that she has achieved so far (or can in the future) in and about the liberation of her country, personal extinction, and a regression to total military rule with even worse excesses to follow. Our own cowardly political so-called-leaders face no such dilemma in regard to the people, including children, being left to rot in the hellholes of Nauru and Manus, which are the 21stcentury's near equivalents to Devil's Island and are all our very own work. Electoral opprobrium is something that true leadership can turn around. Leadership is not the same as clinging on to or grasping for power, no matterwhat. James Gralton, Garran TO THE POINT
BUNCH OF INTERLOPERS The citizenship fiasco has revealed that we're run by a bunch of interlopers with only shallow roots in the country. The solution is obvious though: only those with Indigenous or Torres Strait Islander heritage should sit in the Parliament. Matt Gately, Rivett POLITICAL TACTICS First you ridicule by declaring the minor parties sloppy. Then you tell the High Court what to decide. Then you stall. Then you have no further ideas. What next, surrender?
Jeff Bradley, Isaacs EMPIRE STRIKES BACK Looks like for those with British antecedents the Empire has come back big time to bite them on the bum. Peter Dahler, Calwell GREAT TALENT
As a long-standing admirer of David Pope's cartoons, including drawing and detail, add me to the growing list, but "explosive unequal growth" (November 10) has special appeal. Dick Varley, Braidwood LET'S SWAP FEES Ray Atkin of Gungahlin (Letters, November 10) tells us that he should not have to pay the $10 pruning fee to be levied on power bills because the power lines where he lives are all underground. I'll make a deal with Ray: I'll pay his $10 levy if he pays me for the inevitable increase in my rates to pay for the construction and running of his Gungahlin tram.
Ian Webster, Curtin FAIR'S FAIR Have the people in Gungahlin who say they object to paying the extra $10 for clearing power lines considered how much the people of Tuggeranong are paying towards their tram? Angela Douglass, Kambah YELLEN OVERLOOKED
Janet Yellen was generally regarded as the most experienced and qualified central banker going around. She also had a pretty formidable record of overseeing good numbers in economic performance. She was widely regarded as the best choice to head the Fed and expected to retain the job. She is a highly respected, powerful woman. Altogether too much like Hillary Clinton. Obviously she had to go. S.W Davey, Torrens DIFFERENT VIEWS Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull is showing different views on the same matter. He has congratulated John Alexander for resigning from Parliament on the dual citizenship issue. Yet he insisted on keeping former deputy prime minister Barnaby Joyce in Parliament on the same issue. Is there one rule for Alexander and another for Joyce? Sankar Kumar Chatterjee, Evatt
The cost of readying just one of the alternative facilities for refugees on Manus Island was once described by the Australian Border Force as "fairly minimal", but the centre has ended up costing taxpayers $8.1 million.
Logistics giant Toll Group is being paid the hefty sum for what is believed to have been about 24 days of work upgrading the East Lorengau Refugee Transit Centre to accommodate about 440 men.
Refugees protest on Manus Island last week.
However, the facility remains half-empty, with hundreds of refugees still refusing to leave the regional processing centre after it was decommissioned two weeks ago.
The roughly 420 men who remain at the camp were braced for violence on Sunday night after authorities advised them that Papua New Guinea police may remove them by force on Monday.
The sun sets behind 26 crosses placed in a field before a vigil for the victims of the First Baptist Church shooting. Credit:AP Officials in New Braunfels, where Kelley lived with his family, have been unable to explain why his court file in their digital records is marked with a yellow flag, which denotes psychiatric issues. "We can't figure out who put it in and why," the county's sheriff, Mark Reynolds, said. Records released by the New Braunfels Independent School District show that Kelley racked up a lengthy disciplinary record in high school, including seven suspensions for falsifying records, insubordination, profanity and a drug-related offence. He graduated 260th in a class of 393 in 2009, with a 2.32 grade-point average.
His martial arts instructor from those years said Kelley had signed up because he had been bullied as an adolescent. "He had it tough," said the instructor, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, saying he hoped to avoid unwanted attention. "He didn't quite fit in. He was a good athlete, not a great athlete. He was a good student, not a great student. So I think he was struggling to find his place." The instructor said he had believed that Kelley's karate work Kelley earned a black belt about midway through high school after about four or five years of training, he said had helped set the teenager on solid footing. Unlike other family members who went to Texas A&M University in nearby San Antonio, including his father and two sisters, Kelley joined the Air Force after high school.
But his problems seemed only to grow there. Jessika Edwards, a former Air Force staff sergeant who said she worked with Kelley at Holloman Air Force Base in New Mexico, told CNN that he was constantly getting into trouble. "It was problem after problem," she said. His behaviour caused her to worry about his potential for violence toward others; Ms Edwards said Kelley displayed a fascination with mass murders. "He would make jokes about wanting to kill somebody," she said.
Ms Edwards said Kelley had threatened to harm himself before the Air Force referred him for mental-health treatment, according to CNN. He escaped from a mental-health facility near the base in 2012; police dispatched to find him said they were told that he "was a danger to himself and others." A police report said he had been caught sneaking guns onto an Air Force base "attempting to carry out death threats" against military superiors. After Kelley was given a bad-conduct discharge from the Air Force in 2014 stemming from his domestic violence case, Ms Edwards said, he reached out to her, asking her whether she'd be a reference for him as he applied to jobs. But some discussions they had over social media continued to alarm her, she said.
He told her that he bought dogs on Craigslist so he could shoot them, and he expressed admiration for Dylann Roof, who killed nine people at a South Carolina church in 2015, CNN reported. "He would say 'Isn't it cool? Did you watch the news?'" Ms Edwards said, according to CNN. "He would say he wished he had the nerve to do it, but all he would be able to do is kill animals." Kelley was charged in 2014 with a misdemeanour count of animal mistreatment in El Paso County, Colorado after neighbours complained that a man matching his description had punched a dog. Ms Edwards said that though she blocked Kelley on Facebook because of his messages, she didn't think he would act on them. "In a sane person's mind, when people say something like that, you don't think it's something they're going to do," she said.
She gave him her number and an instruction to call if he felt as if he was going to hurt himself or someone else. He never did. Instead she got a text from a friend after Kelley had been identified as the gunman last Sunday evening. "I dropped a glass and started crying," Ms Edwards said. Two parishioners of the First Baptist Church also said that Kelley's demeanour at a recent festival held by the church had concerned them. Judy and Rod Green told CBS that Kelley had showed up in all black and seemed "completely distant and way out in thought."
Rod Green told the outlet that he had tried to determine whether Kelley was armed at the time, saying he would have escorted him from the area if he had been. A woman who identified herself on Saturday to The Washington Post as Kelley's grandmother said the whole family was devastated. "I know he lost it," she said. "It's broken all of our hearts. We feel so very sad." Of Kelley's parents, she said: "They're walking through a living hell right now." Loading
It is a grand understatement to say media in America is undergoing a seismic shift these past few years. We all know print is suffering and could be threatened with extinction in the not-too-distant future (although I am still a firm believer that print will exist in some media outlets for many more decades). Radio has become a dinosaur. Even cable television is getting socked by all the cord-cutters who would rather stream than stick to prime-time viewing.
But, dear reader, all is not lost. We are also witnessing an era of the resurgent dominant dailies: The New York Times and Washington Post are producing the best journalism this country has seen since the 1970s Watergate Era. Not only are both of these dominant national newspapers putting heat on the Trump administration and all the dizzying investigations, but the Times has also opened the floodgates on the corporate sexual harassment plague in America. Its ground-breaking expose of Harvey Weinstein, done in painstaking detail, has spurred women around the country to speak out against their tormenters. Many heavyweights in Hollywood, media, the restaurant world, and in other industries have been taken down in this tsunami of media coverage.
The Washington Post, now owned by Amazon honcho Jeff Bezos, has doubled-down on investigative journalism and is regularly breaking news out of DCs ever-increasing swamp. Its editor, Marty Barron, perhaps the greatest of this generation, has already been lionized on film for his role at the Boston Globe in spearheading the exposes of the Catholic Church pedophilia scandals. Now, the paper of record for the nations capital is doing some deep digging into the Russian collusion investigation as well as the financial shenanigans of top Trump officials.
Not to be outdone by its DC competitor, the Times has been breaking scoops left and right most recently in its detailing of the dubious finances of Trump Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross. Not many people realize that Ross once tried his hand at media moguldom in New York back in the mid-1990s. In fact, Crains New York once put him on the cover under the headline: The Mini Murdoch of Local Media. I know this first hand because I reported to him at a public media company called News Communications, which then owned 23 newspapers in the metropolitan area and DC. Lets just say that Ross, now a billionaire, has been more skillful in rolling up bankrupt steel mills than he was in the media business.
Its actually incredible to contemplate the disdain for the media that this administration has from the top on down. Trump clearly thinks that the media exists to publicize him and his deals in the ways he wants (see the New York Post coverage in the 1990s and early 2000s) but when it is critical of him, its fake news or the failing New York Times.
Son-in-law and minister without portfolio Jared Kushner is famous for his media bumbling as he failed repeatedly during his turn as a budding media mogul. The New York Observer went from award-winning weekly newspaper to cringe-worthy media property during Kushners brief ownership. He tried starting other magazines like one covering New York society and another covering parenting issues, but they failed miserably. Better he should stick to real estate and tend to daddys once-mighty property empire (which the heir unwisely traded for a trophy property at 666 Fifth Avenue that is now underwater).
And dont get me started on Sean Spicer and Sarah Huckabee Sanders (and lets not forget The Mooch We hardly knew ye!) who every day wage their war on the truth and the DC media corps.
Despite these unceasing attacks, quality journalism is rising to the top as evidenced by the Times, the Post, and other great media like Vanity Fair, the New Yorker, the Atlantic, Pro Publica, NPR, and numerous other media outlets. They are truly following that famous dictum we all learned at Columbia Graduate School of Journalism our first day: Good journalism comforts the afflicted and afflicts the comfortable.
I would be remiss, however, in not pointing out some of the bad news in media of late the demise of local news outlets like DNA Info (has there ever been a worse name of company?) and Gothamist. Like the Ross-Kushner style of media ownership, these properties were owned by a wealthy man who wouldnt know the difference between a lede and a nut graph. Joe Ricketts, the Chicago titan who built financial giant Ameritrade, decided that after his newsroom unionized that hed rather just shut the whole thing down than try to forge ahead and figure out a better financial model. I guess it was his money and his right to throw in the towel, but the optics of the timing looked really bad, and reminded me that letting mercurial billionaires own media (except for Jeff Bezos) is usually a recipe for disaster.
So go out and pick up your local newspaper, buy a Times digital subscription, donate to NPR, subscribe to Vanity Fair and put your support behind quality journalism. Its one of the few things standing between our government and so much authoritarianism that we wont recognize what our country has become.
Foreign companies will be allowed to own up to 51% of any joint venture in the securities, funds and futures industries in China. Currently, China has a much lower cap on the equity stake that a foreign investor can hold in a financial joint venture. Photo: Visual China
China on Friday laid down a blueprint for creating a more level playing field for foreign firms in the countrys sprawling financial sector.
Foreign companies will be allowed to own up to 51% of any joint venture in the securities, funds and futures industries, Vice Finance Minister Zhu Guangyao was cited by the state-owned Xinhua News Agency as saying.
The report did not say from when the new limit will be effective, but added that whenever it comes into force, the 51% cap will be removed after three years. Zhu was cited as saying that this blueprint was agreed upon by China and the U.S. during Trumps visit that ended Friday.
As part of the package, foreign investors will also be allowed to own up to 51% of shares in joint ventures in life insurance in three years. The cap will then be removed after another five years.
Caixin also learned that China will consider waiving the requirement that says foreign-owned banks must have been operating for a minimum number of years before launching yuan businesses, and removing the restriction that at least one of the Chinese shareholders of a joint-venture securities firm should have a brokerage license.
Multiple sources close to Chinas financial regulators told Caixin that detailed measures to widen foreign investors access to Chinas financial market will be jointly rolled out by nine government entities including the Peoples Bank of China, the regulators overseeing the securities, banking, and insurance sectors, and Chinas top economic planner the National Development and Reform Commission.
People familiar with the matter told Caixin that the steps to further open Chinas financial sector aim to not only bring in foreign investors expertise, but to allocate resources more efficiently and improve the markets ability to fund the development of the so-called real economy the sector that produce actual goods and services.
But other people familiar with the matter raised concerns that there will still be explicit barriers for foreign investors even when the policy becomes effective.
Under the current regulatory and legal framework, there is a cap on the percentage of equity stakes foreign investors can hold in a financial joint venture. For example, a single foreign investor can only own 20% of Chinese commercial bank, and a maximum of 25% applies to the combined shareholding for multiple foreign investors in a Chinese bank.
In addition, there is a 50% limit for life insurance, and a 49% limit for fund management companies. These limitations have been partly relaxed in certain instances, such as for Hong Kong and Macau investors.
Since the early 2000s, foreign financial institutions, particularly banks, have ventured into Chinas financial market in a bid to gains access to the countrys massive household bank deposits, part of a market regarded as growth engine for the world economy.
But after the financial crisis in 2008, Western investors began selling their equity holdings in their Chinese joint ventures. For example, the New York-based Citigroup Inc. said in February 2016 that it had agreed to sell its 20% stake in the unlisted China Guangfa Bank to China Life Insurance Co.
According to data released by the China Banking Regulatory Commission, the total assets of foreign banks in China grew from 92.79 billion yuan ($13.98 billion) to 2.93 trillion yuan from 2006 to 2016. However, the total assets of foreign banks as a percentage of the total assets of Chinas banking sector dropped to 1.26% in 2016 from 2.38% in 2007.
Contact reporter Dong Tongjian (tongjiandong@caixin.com)
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'Alaskan Bush People' news update: Family returns to California; Ami Brown's cancer treatment continues
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The Brown family from the Discovery reality show "Alaskan Bush People" has returned to California to continue Ami Brown's lung cancer treatment. The matriarch will be finishing the second round of her chemotherapy and her family will be there to support her.
The entire family, including Ami, had been in Colorado to film the eighth season of "Alaskan Bush People." She also reportedly stopped receiving treatments briefly after she became too ill. Her weight dropped as a result of the therapy's side effects.
However, it looks like Ami is now ready to get the treatment again. Her husband Billy, along with their children, Matt, Gabe, Bear, Bird and Rain, have travelled to California from Trinidad, Colorado, to make sure she gets all the support she needs during these troubling times.
Ami was previously diagnosed with stage 3B lung cancer. The disease has reportedly progressed to stage 4. The family has not provided any details yet about Ami's progress on her chemotherapy, but a second round of treatment may be a sign that the first one had worked.
Meanwhile, Bam Bam, one of the Brown children who left the show during its sixth season, will be returning for the upcoming season. He previously left the show to pursue Allison, a woman he loves. However, he returned in season 7 after he learned that his mother was sick.
It is not yet clear if Allison will also be joining the Brown family in the next season of the "Alaskan Bush People." Bam Bam and Allison are now staying in South Carolina, where they are working on renovating a boat that they bought together.
The couple found the ferry just before it was sold for scrap. "We have been gutting and renovating her ever since," said Bam Bam. "It's been a blast...Alli has great artistic vision and huge plans for the renovation."
'Madam Secretary' season 4 episode 6 spoilers: Elizabeth decides on the fate of CIA agent as Henry battles for her release
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Things continue to heat up in Elizabeth McCord's (Tea Leoni) professional and personal life as she tries to juggle both at the same time.
In a synopsis for the CBS political drama, Elizabeth is poised to go a head-on collision with her husband Henry (Tim Daly) after an American CIA agent is captured by the terrorist group Taliban in Afghanistan. Henry calls for the release of the CIA agent and goes to Elizabeth and President Conrad Dalton (Keith Carradine) to help facilitate her freedom. He later finds out that Dalton and Elizabeth are not sold on the idea. In a promo trailer for the episode, Dalton reminds Henry that they will not negotiate with terrorists. Henry counters that this government cannot let an American citizen die in the hands of terrorists without doing anything. The two men's opposing views place Elizabeth in a precarious position.
Elsewhere on the show, Elizabeth turns on her maternal side as she tries to be there for her daughter Stevie (Wallis Curie) after ending her engagement and relationship with her British boyfriend Jareth (Christopher O'Shea). Stevie took a couple of days before she told her parents the truth about the breakup as it Elizabeth worries that Stevie might be blaming herself entirely for the breakup. Elizabeth rallies her entire family to show their support for Stevie during this difficult time.
In the show's last episode, Elizabeth had to deal with the illicit affair of one of her ambassadors which derailed the progress they were making in addressing the human trafficking situation in Central Asia. As she and her team tried to salvage the situation with Jay (Sebastian Arcelus) becoming her new Chief of Staff, they discovered that Henry's current intelligence work might have some connection with the problems they had been dealing with in Central Asia.
"Madam Secretary" airs every Sunday at 10 p.m. EST on CBS.
Some critics laugh at people for praying after a tragedy but this pastor explains why they're wrong
Vice President Mike Pence was heavily criticized after he rallied people to pray in light of the tragic Texas church shooting, which claimed the lives of 26 individuals and injured many others.
Some critics said praying wasn't enough and they even derided those like Pence who offered their prayers in the aftermath of the tragedy.
Instead, they want the government to take actions to stop the senseless killings. One of Pence's many critics is popular author Stephen King, who tweeted: "Enough with the prayin'. Time to start legislatin.'"
To support Pence and others who tweeted their prayers in the wake of the horrific shooting, evangelist Franklin Graham took to Facebook and highlighted the importance of prayer. "After the massacre at First Baptist Church, some Democrats on the left had the gall to mock the value of prayer. Stephen King tweeted, 'Enough with the [praying].' I say the opposite is true we need more prayer. What do you think?" he said.
"House Speaker Paul Ryan was criticized for tweeting about prayer after the shooting. Shamefully, Democratic Rep. Ted Lieu even walked out on a Congressional moment of silence yesterday. I'm so thankful we have a Vice President who knows the value and importance of prayer," he continued.
Pence also defended his call for prayer during an interview with Fox News. "I'm a believer and I believe in prayer," he said. "I know that at this moment of such heartbreak and loss in that community that what most Americans are most able to do is to pray for those families."
Pence added that prayer is not going to distract them from practical action. If anything, Pence said prayer would aid their efforts to identify the problem. He said prayer "takes nothing away from our determination ... to get to the bottom of what happened, to understand the why, to determine whether or not there were errors along the way."
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The president of Bombardier Commercial Aircraft has claimed that a deal to sell a controlling stake in the C-series program is not related to legal action triggered by U.S. firm Boeing . The U.S. administration, pressed by Boeing, slapped a 300 percent trade tariff on Bombardier , accusing the Canadian aerospace firm of both receiving state aid and potentially "dumping" its new plane on the U.S. market. Now Bombardier has struck a deal with European aerospace giant Airbus , who has agreed to develop, market and sell the Bombardier jet.
A Bombardier CS300 C Series aircraft, manufactured by Bombardier Inc., lands after a flying display on day two of the 51st International Paris Air Show in Paris, France, on Tuesday, June 16, 2015. Jasper Juinen | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Speaking at the Dubai Airshow Sunday, President of Bombardier Commercial Aircraft, Fred Cromer, said the deal which cost Airbus $1 was about using Airbus's global footprint to get the best out of the jet. "It really doesn't have anything to do with the Boeing complaint. We continue to work through those issues, " said Cromer. Bombardier believes there is a global market for at least 6,000 planes that seat between 100 and 150 people over the next 20 years. Cromer said he believed that the C-Series can account for as much as half of that demand. "The assumption of achieving 50 percent market share is something very reasonable and with the Airbus partnership, there is scope to potentially exceed that," Cromer said.
Boeing's complaint
The dispute centers on alleged illegal subsidies that Bombardier received for its C-Series program, a 100 to 150-seat jet that has been in the skies since 2016. The U.S. Commerce Department, with the support of President Donald Trump, took up a Boeing complaint that Bombardier received state aid as far back as 2008 in order to make the program a success. Boeing's second part of the complaint was that Bombardier could potentially "dump" the aircraft to buyers at below-market prices. Boeing has also claimed that Bombardier's deal with Delta Airlines will see 75 C-Series planes sold for $19.6 million apiece, way below production cost. The Department of Commerce asked Bombardier to provide information but the Canadian company refused, claiming it would provide rivals with a look into its business and pricing structure. After this refusal, U.S. authorities upheld the Boeing complaint and issued Bombardier with a preliminary 300 percent anti-dumping tariff on its C-Series. The CS100 and CS300 versions of the Bombardier plane are in use by Swiss Air and Air Baltic. In the United States, Bombardier has sold 75 of its new C-Series planes to Delta Airlines.
At least five companies said over the weekend that they will no longer advertise their products during Fox News' "Hannity" television show, which sparked an outpouring on Sunday of counter-protests on social media.
Keurig , Realtor.com, 23 and Me, Eloquii and Nature's Bounty all pulled their ads from the television show, in response to Fox host Sean Hannity's coverage of the sexual misconduct allegations against Alabama Senate candidate Roy Moore.
Last week, a Washington Post article published an article suggesting Moore had romantic or sexual relationships with four teenage girls when he was in his 30s, allegations which the candidate has vigorously denied. In the wake of the Post report, Hannity asked his viewers to give Moore the benefit of the doubt.
On Twitter, the companies announced their decision to discontinue showing their ads during Hannity's show one of Fox News' most highly rated programs that is wildly popular with conservative audiences.
Tweet Keurig
"We can confirm that we do not have advertisements running on this program," Nature's Bounty said on Twitter Friday.
None of the companies cited Hannity's coverage of the allegations against Moore as the reason that they had pulled their ads. However, the companies took to social media to announce that they were not advertising with the show, after Twitter users called for them to distance themselves from the show.
"We've received inquiries RE: advertising on Hannity," 23 and Me said via Twitter on Friday. "We are not running TV advertising on Hannity. We continue to closely evaluate where we advertise."
President Donald Trump visits the Forbidden City with China's President Xi Jinping in Beijing on November 8, 2017.
U.S. President Donald Trump said on Sunday he was prepared to mediate between claimants to the South China Sea, where five countries contest China's sweeping claims to the busy waterway.
Trump was speaking in Vietnam, which has become the most vocal opponent of China's claims and its construction and militarization of artificial islands in the sea. About $3-trillion in goods passes through the sea each year.
"If I can help mediate or arbitrate, please let me know," Trump said in comments at a meeting in Hanoi with Vietnam's president, Tran Dai Quang.
Trump acknowledged that China's position on the South China Sea was a problem.
"I'm a very good mediator and arbitrator," he said. President Quang said Vietnam believed in handling disputes on the South China Sea through peaceful negotiations and on the basis of international laws - which Vietnam says nullify China's claims.
Vietnam has reclaimed land around reefs and islets, but on nowhere near the same scale as China. Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines and Taiwan also have claims in the sea.
Since Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte has grown closer to China, Vietnam has emerged as China's main challenger in the region. In July, China pressured Vietnam to stop oil drilling in a disputed area, taking relations to a low.
Relations have since improved and Chinese President Xi Jinping is visiting Hanoi later on Sunday.
President Donald Trump (L) chats with Russia's President Vladimir Putin as they attend the APEC Economic Leaders' Meeting, part of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) leaders' summit in the central Vietnamese city of Danang on November 11, 2017. Mikhail Klimentyev | Sputnik | Getty Images
President Donald Trump tried to have it both ways Sunday on the issue of Russian interference in last year's presidential race, saying he believes the U.S. intelligence agencies when they say Russia meddled and Russian President Vladimir Putin's sincerity in claiming that his country did not. "I believe that he feels that he and Russia did not meddle in the election," Trump said of Putin at a news conference in Hanoi with Vietnam's president. "As to whether I believe it, I'm with our agencies," Trump said. "As currently led by fine people, I believe very much in our intelligence agencies." The CIA and other U.S. intelligence agencies have concluded that Russia meddled in the 2016 election to help Trump defeat Democrat Hillary Clinton. A special counsel's examination of potential collusion between Moscow and Trump campaign aides so far has led to indictments against Trump's former campaign chairman and another top aide for crimes unrelated to the campaign, and a guilty plea from a Trump foreign policy adviser. Multiple congressional committees are also investigating. Trump commented on the Russia election issue for the second straight day Sunday shortly before he arrived in the Philippines, the final stop on a five-country trip to Asia. In Manila, Trump is slated to meet with Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte and attend a pair of international summits.
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Duterte has come under fierce criticism from human rights groups for overseeing a violent drug war complete with extrajudicial killings. Trump has praised Duterte's handling of his nation's drug problems and was not expected to publicly challenge Duterte on human rights. Questions about whether Trump believes the assessment about Russian election-meddling have trailed him since January, when he said for the first time, shortly before taking office, that he accepted that Russia was behind the election-year hacking of Democrats that roiled the White House race. Trump told reporters traveling with him to Hanoi on Saturday that Putin had again vehemently denied the allegations. The two spoke during an economic conference in Danang, Vietnam. Trump danced around questions about whether he believed Putin, but stressed Putin's denials. "Every time he sees me, he says: 'I didn't do that.' And I believe I really believe that when he tells me that, he means it," Trump said, arguing that it makes no sense for him to belabor the issue when Russia could help the U.S. on North Korea, Syria and other issues. Trump said Sunday that he believes Putin believes Russia was not involved. "That's very important for somebody to believe," Trump said in Hanoi. Trump also lashed out Saturday at former heads of U.S. intelligence agencies, claiming there are plenty of reasons to be suspicious of their findings and dismissing them as "political hacks." In a tweet Sunday, he bashed the "haters and fools" he said were questioning his efforts to improve relations with Russia, and accused critics of "playing politics" and hurting the U.S. Trump's comments Saturday drew strong reactions from some U.S. lawmakers. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., the 2008 Republican presidential nominee, said in a statement that Trump's faith in Putin's denial was "naive."
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If you were a Conservative MP and wanted to stop Brexit or at least deliver the softest one possible how might you go about trying to do so? There are various options.
One is to snarl up the EU Withdrawal Bill, which returns to the Commons this week, with a mass of time-consuming amendments.
A more drastic means is to join the campaign to sack Boris Johnson, the Cabinets leading backer of Leave, over his mishandling of the plight of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, the British woman in Iran. The Observer goes full-throttle to get the Foreign Secretary out this morning, carrying a Jeremy Corbyn article arguing that he should be fired.
The most dramatic is to back the backbench campaign to force the Prime Minister out of Downing Street, which may have been given a boost by her response to the wave of allegations that recently swept through Westminster.
There is no knowing whether more Tory MPs bound by a new Party code of conduct that will be unwelcome to most; faced with the possibility of a new disciplinary IPSA, and alarmed by seeing a colleague suspended without being told why have joined the push to oust Theresa May. This morning, the plotters claim that they are eight votes short of the 48 MPs required to force a no-confidence vote in her. But if you were one of their number, you might well brief out an inflated estimate of your numbers, in an attempt to bluff more colleagues on to your bandwagon, and get it rolling. Or the claim may be true after all. There is no way of telling.
A less direct way of seeking to derail leaving the EU is to put it about that our interlocutors have forced the Government to fold during the negotiation and that more humiliation is to come. Is the claim true?
To test it, one must travel back in time little more than a year, and revisit the Prime Ministers speech to last years Conservative conference. In it, she set out a policy framework: triggering Article 50 by the end of last March; leaving the jurisdiction of the European Court, and taking control of immigration. In her words, her aim during the coming negotiation is to establish a relationship anything like the one we have had for the last forty years or more. So it is not going to a Norway model. Its not going to be a Switzerland model. It is going to be an agreement between an independent, sovereign United Kingdom and the European Union.
The following January, she put flesh on the bones of her party conference speech by making another at Lancaster House. This spelt out in terms that Britain will leave the Single Market and Customs Union as members. May also said clearly that no deal for Britain is better than a bad deal for Britain.
It is important to note that she did not rule out a transition or implementation period because the subject was skirted altogether in the speech and nor did she discuss paying money to the EU in any detail. The Conservative Manifesto of last June blurred that last matter. It said that the days of vast annual contributions will end, but also that there will be a fair settlement, which will be in accordance with the law and in the spirit [our italics] of the UKs continuing partnership with the EU.
The origins of her offer to pay 20 billion to the EU, briefed out at the time of her Florence speech in September, lies in that last clause. Such a payment would not be part of the divorce settlement. Nor would it be for another purpose mentioned in the manifesto, which said that there might be specific European programmes in which we might want to participate and if so, it will be reasonable that we make a contribution. Rather, it would be to honour obligations entered into before the EU referendum. The Florence speech also dealt with implementation/transition.
So what elements of that emerging programme has the Government backed down on? We can think of three main ones.
First, there was its attempt to move Article 50 without a vote in Parliament though the legal success of Gina Miller and others in forcing a vote turned out, by exquisite irony, to boost the cause of Brexit, since Article 50 was voted through overwhelmingly.
Second, there was the idea, hinted at in the Lancaster House speech and driven from Downing Street, of seeking to trade off continued defence and security co-operation for a fully-fledged free deal. That was promptly dropped. Indeed, the cornerstone of the Florence Speech was the offer of a new security partnership.
Finally, there was David Daviss declaration of intent about the sequencing of negotiations. Last spring, he said that the Government would resist attempts to discuss the financial settlement before a trade deal. And last summer, it folded. The reason for this was simple. In Ministers judgement, the general election had not delivered the Government a majority sufficient to resist the EUs sequencing demand. They feared that if they tried to do so, the Commons would force them to abandon the attempt.
Looking ahead, a mass of icebergs loom, even if this latest push to oust May comes to nothing. The withdrawal bill may be derailed. There may be a crisis in December if the go-ahead for trade talks is not agreed. Much more money may be offered than most voters think reasonable. A fully-fledged agreement may not be reached before March 2019. Negotiations may spill over into the implementation period, which would mean that it would not be such a period at all. Britain might then be stuck in an EEA-style transition semi-permanently. There is no Cabinet agreement over how to handle regulatory divergence. There is a big questionmark over the degree of preparedness for No Deal.
None the less, it cannot fairly be claimed, if one looks back at the story of the negotiation to date, that the Government has been driven off its negotiating fundamentals: leaving the EU by the end of March, 2019; quitting the jurisdiction of the ECJ; taking back control of our borders; ending Single Market membership, and ending Customs Union membership (currently the subject of another push by the EU27 and Commission over the Irish border). Furthermore, our media is not set up to probe the differences and divisions among our negotiating partners, which are no less real for not being adequately covered. Certainly, there are aspects of the strategy that should have been handled more deftly, such as the future of EU nationals in Britain, but its essence remains intact however much a small minority of Conservative MPs, and others, might wish it to be otherwise.
CORNWALL, Ontario The Cornwall Community Police service is asking the public for their assistance in identifying a man involved in an armed robbery.
On October 30th, 2017 at approximately 8:30 pm. a male suspect entered Jean Coutu, located at 5 Ninth St. E. and proceeded to the Pharmacy Department at which time the unknown male pulled out a black pistol and demanded prescription medication. The man then left the store with an undisclosed quantity of prescription medication. The man is described as being approx. 56, thin build, wearing a dark green construction jacket with reflective stripes, black pants and black shoes and wearing a black balaclava with his hood over his head.
If you have any information about this crime, please contact D/Cst. Joseph at (613)933-5000 ext. 2422 or ext 2404 to leave anonymous information. With your help we can make Cornwall a safer place for all to enjoy. For photos visit the CCPS Facebook page or Twitter.
Princess Cruises, the first cruise line to take guests through the Panama Canal in 1967, is marking the 50th anniversary of the trip with a series of crossings via the expanded Agua Clara locks on the Atlantic side of the canal, according to a statement.
The trips started October 26 on the Caribbean Princess, the first vessel over the previous width limit of 106 feet and with a capacity for over 3,000 guests.
The trip is a huge milestone, said Jan Swartz, Princess Cruises and Carnival Australia group president. The expansion of the Panama Canal allows us to showcase this engineering spectacle to more guests than ever.
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On November 9, Indian Navy chief Admiral Sunil Lanba visited Cherbourg and was given a detailed presentation on Frances new nuclear-powered attack submarine (SSN), the Barracuda class. The first of these six French SSNs is to join the French navy next year.
Admiral Lanbas visit to the French nuclear submarine builders at Cherbourg will be closely watched for several reasons.
The government-owned Naval Group (earlier called DCNS) is Frances largest warship manufacturer. It is also building six Scorpenes for the Indian navy at the Mazagon Docks Ltd Mumbai under a 2005 contract and is also in the reckoning for the Project 75I submarine building project.
The navy chiefs visit comes at a time when India is on the cusp of an unprecedented expansion of its undersea fleet. It is looking to build three types of submarines, one conventional and two nuclear, in three separate projects. These projects, roughly worth more than $28 billion dollars, are spread over the next decade.
A yet-to-be decided tie up of a foreign shipyard and Indian private sector company is to build six Project 75I conventional diesel-electric submarines for the navy at a $8 billion price tag. The classified Advanced Technology Vessel (ATV) project steered by the DRDO, navy and the BARC, is also designing six 6000-ton SSNs like the Barracuda class under a $18 billion project cleared in 2015. A new generation SSBN replacement for the Arihant class costing more than $1.5 billion, is also on the drawing board.
A Scorpene-class submarine. Photo: Wikimedia Commons
The Barracuda, naval analysts say, holds out hope for the navy to integrate all three diverse projects for the SSK, SSN and SSBN. The reactor, in particular, could be a game-changer because the navy is believed to be looking for a new one to power both its SSNs and new generation SSBNs.
Indias interest in the Barracuda dates back to 2007 when a delegation of senior Indian Navy personnel were briefed on the capabilities of the boat, then on the drawing board. The Barracuda-class SSNs were meant to be a quantum jump in Frances nuclear submarine capabilities. They were designed for maximum operational availability nearly 265 days of the year and to undertake two distant patrols a year into the Indian Ocean, sailing around the Cape of Good Hope. It was the closest then that the Indian navy had come to western nuclear naval reactor technology, particularly the use of Low Enriched Uranium (LEU) in French naval propulsion reactors. Of the six nuclear submarine operating countries, only France and China use LEU in their naval propulsion reactors. India, like the US, UK and Russia, uses Highly Enriched Uranium (HEU), enriched to a very high in their nuclear submarine reactors.
Naval reactors are at the very heart of a nuclear submarines phenomenal capabilities. The unlimited power from a nuclear reactor to run a submarines steam turbines which, in turn, runs the vesssels propellers, allows a submarine to carry out its operational tasks that is attacking surface ships and land targets in the case of SSNs and SSGNs or lurking silently under the sea with a load of nuclear-tipped missiles like ballistic missile submarines (SSBNs).
Miniaturising a nuclear powered reactor to fit within the confined space of a submarine is what makes nuclear submarine construction so challenging. And this is where Frances achievements in this field are commendable its 2,400-ton Rubis class were the worlds smallest nuclear powered attack submarines when they were fielded in the early 1980s, compacting a reactor into a hull slightly larger than the Indian navys kilo class diesel-electric conventional submarines.
Indias fleet of Arihant class SSBNs uses reactor technology of an earlier generation constrained by enrichment, fuelling and consequently, mission readiness of the platform.
The Indian naval delegation were impressed by the Barracuda because they asked DCNS if France would be willing to help India with reactor technology. The French response was not surprising the issue would have to be considered at the political level. Back in India, the naval delegation prepared a classified report on the need for the navy to consider French LEU naval propulsion reactors. The report also emphasised the need to establish commonality between its nuclear and conventional submarine lines. This would not only reduce build-times but also standardise spare parts and maintenance for a diverse fleet. It is not known whether the government acted on these proposals.
If it acted on establishing commonality among the various submarines, it would be in line with curent thinking both in the US and Russia. Russias "Project Husky" nuclear powered nuclear submarines are believed to be only around 6,000 tonnes, half the displacement of its Akula and Severodvinsk class SSNs, and reportedly form the basis for a new class of SSN, SSGN and SSBNs. The US Navys Virginia class SSNs can be converted into SSGNs and are also the basis for the new Columbia class SSBNs.
There is currently no explicit ban on the sale of naval propulsion reactors between the P5 nations and non-nuclear weapon states, but this has not been done so far.
France is currently helping Brazil manufacture four Scorpene class conventional submarines under a 2009 contract. Interestingly, Frances Naval Group will also manufacture non-nuclear portions (the reactor section), of Brazils first nuclear submarine.
India, meanwhile, is faced with increasing undersea threats in the neighborhood: the routine deployments of Chinese submarines both nuclear and conventional in its backyard, the sale of eight Chinese Yuan-class submarines to Pakistan and the increasing frailty of Indias ageing submarine fleet.
Brookfield Asset Management is an alternative asset manager and REIT/Real Estate Investment Manager firm focuses on real estate, renewable power, infrastructure and venture capital and private equity assets. It manages a range of public and private investment products and services for institutional and retail clients. It typically makes investments in sizeable, premier assets across geographies and asset classes. It invests both its own capital as well as capital from other investors. Within private equity and venture capital, it focuses on acquisition, early ventures, control buyouts and financially distressed, buyouts and corporate carve-outs, recapitalizations, convertible, senior and mezzanine financings, operational and capital structure restructuring, strategic re-direction, turnaround, and under-performing midmarket companies. It invests in both public debt and equity markets. It invests in private equity sectors with focus on Business Services include infrastructure, healthcare, road fuel distribution and marketing, construction and real estate; Industrials include manufacturers of automotive batteries, graphite electrodes, returnable plastic packaging, and sanitation management and development; and Residential/ infrastructure services. It targets companies which likely possess underlying real assets, primarily in sectors such as industrial products, building materials, metals, mining, homebuilding, oil and gas, paper and packaging, manufacturing and forest product sectors. It invests globally with focus on North America including Brazil, the United States, Canada; Europe; and Australia; and Asia-Pacific. The firm considers equity investments in the range of $2 million to $500 million. It has a four-year investment period and a 10-year term with two one-year extensions. The firm prefers to take minority stake and majority stake. Brookfield Asset Management Inc. was founded in 1997 and based in Toronto, Canada with additional offices across Northern America; South America; Europe; Middle East and Asia.
Cascades Inc. produces, converts, and markets packaging and tissue products in Canada and the United States. The company operates through three segments: Containerboard, Specialty Products, and Tissue Papers. It manufactures containerboards, as well as converts corrugated products. The company also offers uncoated recycled paperboards for use in packaging converters and industrial users of headers and wrappers for the paper industry, as well as partitions that are used as protective packaging; honeycomb paperboards for the beer, wine, and spirits industry; laminated paperboards for food packaging and furniture backing industries; and specialty containers, structural components, and paperboard and fiber composites. In addition, it provides egg filler flats and egg cartons for egg processors and four-cup carriers for the quick-service restaurant industry; polystyrene foam trays for processors and retailers in the food industry; rigid plastic packaging products for food industry, processors, and retailers; and flexible films for frozen foods, bakery, and ice industries. Further, the company offers bathroom and facial tissues, paper towels, paper hand towels and napkins, and other related products and services under the Cascades PRO Signature, Cascades PRO Perform, Cascades PRO Select, Cascades PRO Tandem, and Cascades PRO Tuff-Job brands; and under the Cascades Fluff, Cascades Tuff, and Satin Soft labels, as well as private labels and other secondary marks. Additionally, it offers services to recover and process discarded materials for the municipal, industrial, commercial, and institutional sectors. The company sells its products through own sales force and external representatives. Cascades Inc. was incorporated in 1964 and is headquartered in Kingsey Falls, Canada.
GSK plc, together with its subsidiaries, engages in the creation, discovery, development, manufacture, and marketing of pharmaceutical products, vaccines, over-the-counter medicines, and health-related consumer products in the United Kingdom, the United States, and internationally. It operates through four segments: Pharmaceuticals, Pharmaceuticals R&D, Vaccines, and Consumer Healthcare. The company offers pharmaceutical products comprising medicines in the therapeutic areas, such as respiratory, HIV, immuno-inflammation, oncology, anti-viral, central nervous system, cardiovascular and urogenital, metabolic, anti-bacterial, and dermatology. It also provides consumer healthcare products in wellness, oral health, nutrition, and skin health categories. The company offers its consumer healthcare products in the form of nasal sprays, tablets, syrups, lozenges, gum and trans-dermal patches, caplets, infant syrup drops, liquid filled suspension, wipes, gels, effervescents, toothpastes, toothbrushes, mouthwashes, denture adhesives and cleansers, topical creams and non-medicated patches, lip balm, gummies, and soft chews. It has collaboration agreements with 23andMe; Lyell Immunopharma, Inc.; Novartis; Sanofi SA; Surface Oncology; Progentec Diagnostics, Inc.; Alector, Inc.; and CureVac AG., as well as strategic partnership with IDEAYA Biosciences, Inc. and Vir Biotechnology, Inc. The company was formerly known as GlaxoSmithKline plc and changed its name to GSK plc in May 2022. GSK plc was founded in 1715 and is headquartered in Brentford, the United Kingdom.
Sunoco LP, together with its subsidiaries, distributes and retails motor fuels in the United States. It operates in two segments, Fuel Distribution and Marketing, and All Other. The Fuel Distribution and Marketing segment purchases motor fuel from independent refiners and oil companies and supplies it to independently operated dealer stations, distributors and other consumer of motor fuel, and partnership operated stations, as well as to commission agent locations. The All Other segment operates retail stores that offer motor fuel, merchandise, foodservice, and other services that include credit card processing, car washes, lottery, automated teller machines, money orders, prepaid phone cards, and wireless services. It also leases and subleases real estate properties; and operates terminal facilities on the Hawaiian Islands. As of December 31, 2021, the company operated 78 retail stores in Hawaii and New Jersey. Sunoco GP LLC serves as the general partner of the company. The company was formerly known as Susser Petroleum Partners LP and changed its name to Sunoco LP in October 2014. Sunoco LP was founded in 1886 and is headquartered in Dallas, Texas.
Wipro Limited operates as information technology (IT), consulting, and business process services company worldwide. It operates through three segments: IT Services, IT Products, and India State Run Enterprise Services (ISRE). The IT Services segment offers IT and IT-enabled services, including digital strategy advisory, customer-centric design, technology and IT consulting, custom application design, development, re-engineering and maintenance, systems integration, package implementation, cloud and infrastructure, business process, cloud, mobility and analytics, research and development, and hardware and software design services to enterprises. It serves customers in various industry sectors, such as healthcare and medical devices, consumer goods and life sciences, retail, transportation and services, communications, media and information services, technology products and platforms, banking, financial services and insurance, manufacturing, hi-tech, energy, and utilities. The IT Products segment provides a range of third-party IT products comprising enterprise platforms, networking solutions, software and data storage products, contact center infrastructure, enterprise security, IT optimization technologies, video solutions, and end-user computing solutions. It serves enterprises in various industries primarily in the India market, which comprise the government, defense, IT and IT-enabled services, telecommunications, manufacturing, utilities, education, and financial services sectors. The ISRE segment offers IT services to entities and departments owned or controlled by the Government of India and/or various Indian State Governments. The company was incorporated in 1945 and is based in Bengaluru, India.
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.
Ag Growth International Inc., together with its subsidiaries, manufactures and distributes grain and rice handling, storage, and conditioning equipment in Canada, the United States, and internationally. The company offers storage equipment comprising grain and bolted bins, hopper bins, smooth wall bins, temporary storage equipment, unloads and sweeps, water tanks, fuel tanks; and conditioning equipment, such as mixed flow dryers, fans and heaters, aerations, airaugers, aeration floors, vents and exhausters, stirrings, and accessories. It also provides portable handling equipment, such as portable augers, conveyors, grain vacs, post pounders, seed treaters, and accessories; and permanent handling equipment, including bucket elevators, chain and belt conveyors, enclosed belt conveyors, distributors, feed handling equipment, screw feeders and conveyors, and spouts and connections. In addition, the company offers towers, catwalks, ladders, all-steel buildings, flat storage buildings; batch blenders, bulk scales, declining weight blenders, vertical blenders, micro-dosing systems, mixers, milling equipment; and controllers, hazard monitoring equipment, monitoring and automation equipment, sampling solutions. Further, it provides cleaning and destoners, rice milling and processing equipment, bin unloads, blending and control systems, Liquid and dry fertilizer blending and conveying equipment, turnkey design and build construction solutions for seed and fertilizer facilities, and farm management software. The company markets its products under the AGI, Airlanco, Batco, Brownie, CMC, Compass, Danmare, Ezee-dry, Frame, Grain Guard, Grainmaxx, Hi Roller, Hutchinson, Improtech, Junge, Keho, Mayrath, Milltec, MMS, Neco, PTM, REM, Sabe, Sentinel, Storm, Suretrack, Tramco, Twister, Westeel, Westfield, Wheatheart, and Yargus brand names. It provides its equipment for agricultural commodities. The company was founded in 1996 and is headquartered in Winnipeg, Canada.
The following companies are subsidiares of Quanta Services: (De) Lazy Q Ranch LLC, 1 Diamond LLC, 1Diamond AS, 618232 Alberta Ltd., 8246408 Canada Inc., Advanced Electric Systems, Advanced Electric Systems LLC, Advanced Utility Testing & Maintenance LLC, Alexander Publications LLC, Allteck GP Ltd., Allteck Limited Partnership, Apprenticeship Programs Inc., Arby Construction, Arcanum Chemicals LLC, Arnett & Burgess Oil Field Construction Limited, Arnett & Burgess Pipeliners (Rockies) LLC, Arnett & Burgess Pipeliners Ltd., B&N Clearing and Environmental LLC, Banister Pipelines Constructors Corp., Banister Pipelines Constructors GP Ltd., Banister Pipelines Limited Partnership, Brent Woodward Inc., Brink Constructors Inc., Brink Constructors Inc. A Corporation Of South Dakota, Brown Engineering and Testing, CAT SPEC Ltd., CAT-SPEC Limited Partnership, CAT-SPEC Limited Partnership (Regd Name) CAT SPEC Ltd., CAT-Spec Limited Partnership, Canadian Utility Construction Corp., Cat Spec Limited LP, Cat Spec Ltd, Cat Spec Ltd. L.P., Cat Spec Ltd. LP, Cat Spec. Ltd. LP, Cat-Spec Ltd (A Domestic limited Partnership), Cat-Spec Ltd LP, Cat-Spec Ltd., Cat-Spec Ltd. L.P., Cat-Spec Ltd. LP, Cat-Spec Ltd. Limited Partnership, Catalyst Changers Inc., Chatham Electric, Citadel Industrial Services L.P., Citadel Industrial Services Ltd., Citadel Industrial Services Ltd. L.P., Citadel Industrial Services Ltd. Limited Partnership, Coe Drilling Pty Ltd., Computapole, Conam Construction Co., Consolidated Power Projects Australia Pty Ltd, Conti Communications Inc., Crux Subsurface Canada Ltd., Crux Subsurface Inc., Cutting Technology - 1 Diamond LLC, DB Utilities Inc., DE Lazy Q Ranch LLC, DNR Pressure Welding Ltd., Dacon Corporation, Dashiell (DE) Corporation (Dashiell Corporation), Dashiell Corporation, Dashiell Corporation DBA Dashiell (DE) Corporation, De Mears Group, De Mears Group Inc., Delaware Quanta Technology LLC, Delaware Underground Construction Co., Didado Utility Company Inc., Digco Utility Construction L.P. Digco Utility Construction Limited Partnership, Dorado Specialty Services L.P., Dorado Specialty Services Ltd., Dorado Specialty Services Ltd. L.P., Dorado Specialty Services Ltd. Limited Partnership, Dorado Specialty Services. Ltd. L.P., Driftwood Electrical Contractors, EHV Power ULC, ELITE PIPING & CIVIL L.P., ELITE TURNAROUND SPECIALISTS LTD, Elite Fabrication Ltd. Elite Fabrication LP, Elite Piping & Civil Limited Partnership, Elite Piping & Civil Limited Partnership, Elite Piping & Civil Lp, Elite Piping & Civil Ltd L.P., Elite Piping & Civil Ltd., Elite Piping & Civil Ltd. L.P., Elite Piping & Civil Ltd. Limited Partnership, Elite Piping and Civil L.P., Elite Turnaround Specialists L.p., Elite Turnaround Specialists Limited Lp, Elite Turnaround Specialists Limited Partnership, Elite Turnaround Specialists Limited Partnership, Elite Turnaround Specialists Ltd Lp, Elite Turnaround Specialists Ltd., Elite Turnaround Specialists Ltd. L.P., Elite Turnaround Specialists Ltd. LP, Elite Turnaround Specialists Ltd. Limited Partnership, Energy Consulting Group LLC, Enscope, Enscope Pty Ltd, FIC GP LLC, Field Personnel Services LLC, First Infrastructure Capital Advisors LLC, First Infrastructure Capital GP L.P., Five Points Construction Co., G-Tek, G-Vac, GEM Engineering Co., Grand Electric Inc., Great Lakes Line Builders, Grid Creative Inc., Grid Manufacturing Corporation, Grid Training Corporation, H.L. Chapman Pipeline Construction Inc., Haverfield Aviation, Haverfield Aviation Inc., Haverfield International Incorporated, Heritage Midstream LLC, IM Electric Inc., IUC ILLINOIS LLC, IUC Nebraska LLC, InfraSource Construction LLC, InfraSource Field Services LLC, InfraSource Services LLC, InfraSources Construction LLC, Infraestructura ETP de Mexico S. de R.L. de C.V, Infrasource Engineering Company PC, Infrasource Iowa Underground LLC, Infrasource Of Pa LLC, Integracion Tecnologica del Peru SAC, Intermountain Electric Inc., Intermountain Electric Inc. A Corporation of Colorado, IonEarth LLC, Irby Construction Company, Irby Construction Company Inc., Iron Mountain M.J. Electric LLC, Island Mechanical Corporation, J.C.R. Construction Co. Inc., J.C.R. Utility Construction Co., J.W. Didado Electric Inc., J.W. Didado Electric LLC, J.w. Didado Electric, JBT Electric LLC, Kingston Contracting Inc., Lazy Q Ranch LLC, Lazy Q Training Center LLC The Lazy Q Lineman School, Legend Foundation Services, Lex Engineering Ltd., Lindsey Electric L.P., Logical Link, Longfellow Drilling, M. G. Dyess Inc., M. J. ELECTRIC LLC IRON MOUNTAIN, M. J. Electric LLC, M. J. Electric LLC - Iron Mountain, M. J. Electric LLC DBA M. J. Electric Iron Mountain LLC, M.J. Electric LLC DBA M.J. Electric Iron Mountain, M.J. Electric LLC Iron Mountain, MTS Field Services, MTS Field Services (Richmond Co), MTS Quanta LLC, Manuel Bros. Inc., Marathon Construction Services, Mears Canada Corp., Mears Equipment Services LLC, Mears Group Inc., Mears Group Pty Ltd, Mears Installation LLC, Mearsmex S. de R.L. de C.V., Mejia Personnel Services LLC, Mercer Technical Services, Microline Technology Corporation, Mid America Energy Services Inc., NACAP Niugini Ltd., NC Northstar Energy Services Inc, NGI Construction, NGI Construction Inc., NGI Construction Inc. (FN), NLC CA. Inc., NLC FL. Inc. Northwest Lineman Center, NLC ID. Inc. Northwest Lineman College, NLC TX. Inc., NPC Energy Services LLC, Nacap Australia, Nacap PNG Limited, Network Communication Services, North Houston Pole Line L.P., North Houston Pole Line Limited Partnership, North Sky Communications, NorthStar Energy Services Inc., Northern Powerline Constructors Inc., Northstar Energy Solutions LLC, Northwest Lineman Center, Northwest Lineman College, Northwest Lineman Training Center, Northwest Lineman Training Center Inc., Nova Constructors LLC, Nova Constructors LTD, Nova Equipment Leasing LLC, Nova Group Inc, Nova Group Inc (CA), Nova Group Inc., Nova Group Inc. DBA NGI Construction, Nova NextGen Solutions LLC, O. J. Pipelines Canada Corporation, O. J. Pipelines Canada Limited Partnership, O.J. Industrial Maintenance, O.J. Pipelines Canada, One Call Locators Canada Ltd., P.D.G. Electric, PAR Electrical Contractors Inc., PDG Electric Co., Par Internacional S. de R.L. de C.V., Performance Energy Services Guyana Ltd., Performance Energy Services L.L.C., Phasor Engineering Inc., Phoenix North Constructors Inc., Phoenix Power Group Inc., Potelco Inc., Potelco Incorporated, Power Delivery Program Inc., Price Gregory International Inc., Price Gregory Services LLC, Probst Construction Inc., Probst Electric Inc., QEPC, QEPC Power Solutions LLC, QES GP LLC, QP Energy Services LLC, QPS Engineering LLC, QPS Engineering LTD., QPS Engineering PLLC, QPS Environmental, QPS Flint Construction, QPS Flint Tank Services, QPS Global, QPS Global Services, QPS Global Services (Richmond Ci), QPS Professional Services, QPSE, QS Mats, QSI Engineering Inc., QSI Finance (Australia) Pty Ltd., QSI Finance (Cayman) Pvt. Ltd., QSI Finance Canada ULC, QSI Finance GP (US) LLC, QSI Finance I (Singapore) Pte. Ltd., QSI Finance I (US) LP, QSI Finance II (Australia) Pty Ltd., QSI Finance II (Lux) S.a r.l, QSI Finance II (Singapore) Pte. Ltd., QSI Finance III (Canada) ULC, QSI Finance III (Lux) SARL, QSI Finance IV (Canada) ULC, QSI Finance IX (Canada) Limited Partnership, QSI Finance V (US) L.P., QSI Finance VI (Canada) ULC, QSI Finance VII (Canada) Limited Partnership, QSI Finance VIII (Canada) ULC, QSI Finance X (Canada) ULC, QSI Inc., QSN Lux Holdings I SCSp, QSN Lux Holdings II SCSp, QSN Lux Holdings III SCSp, QSN Lux Holdings IV SCSp, QTSL LLC, QUANTA FOUNDATION SERVICES, Quanta APL GP II Ltd., Quanta Asset Management LLC, Quanta Associates L.P., Quanta Aviation Services LLC, Quanta Canada GP ULC, Quanta Canada Holdings III Limited Partnership, Quanta Canada Holdings LP, Quanta Canada III GP Ltd., Quanta Capital GP LLC, Quanta Capital LP L.P., Quanta Capital Solutions Inc., Quanta Cares, Quanta EPC Services, Quanta Electric Power Construction LLC, Quanta Electric Power Construction Management Inc., Quanta Electric Power Services LLC, Quanta Electric Power Services West LLC, Quanta Energized Innovations Ltd., Quanta Energized Services U.S. LLC, Quanta Energized Services of Canada Ltd., Quanta Energy Services LLC, Quanta Environmental Solutions, Quanta Equipment Company LLC, Quanta Government Solutions Inc., Quanta Holdings I (Netherlands) B.V., Quanta Holdings II (Netherlands) B.V., Quanta Infraestructura de Chile SpA, Quanta Infrastructure Services LLC, Quanta Infrastructure Services S. de R.L. de C.V., Quanta Inline Devices LLC, Quanta Inspection Services, Quanta Insurance Company Inc., Quanta International Holdings (US) LLC, Quanta International Holdings II Ltd., Quanta International Holdings Ltd., Quanta International Limited, Quanta Kingsvale LP Ltd., Quanta Lines Pty Ltd., Quanta Maine Services LLC, Quanta Middle East LLC, Quanta Pipeline Services Inc., Quanta Power Australia Pty Ltd, Quanta Power Generation Inc., Quanta Power Inc., Quanta Power Solutions India Private Limited, Quanta Resource Development, Quanta Services Africa (PTY) Ltd., Quanta Services Australia Pty Ltd., Quanta Services Chile SpA, Quanta Services Colombia S.A.S., Quanta Services Costa Rica Ltda., Quanta Services Guatemala Ltda., Quanta Services International Holdings II LP, Quanta Services International Holdings LP, Quanta Services Management Partnership L.P., Quanta Services Netherlands B.V., Quanta Services Panama S. de R.L., Quanta Services Peru S.A.C., Quanta Services Puerto Rico LLC, Quanta Services of Canada Ltd., Quanta Subsurface Canada Ltd., Quanta Subsurface LLC, Quanta Tank Services, Quanta Technology Canada ULC, Quanta Technology LLC, Quanta Technology UK Ltd., Quanta Tecnologia do Brasil Ltda., Quanta Telecom, Quanta Telecom Services, Quanta Telecommunication Services, Quanta Telecommunication Services LLC, Quanta Telecommunications Services LLC, Quanta Underground Services, Quanta Underground Services (Culpeper Co), Quanta Underground Services (Spotsylvania Co), Quanta Underground Services Inc., Quanta Utility Engineering Services Inc., Quanta Utility Installation Company Inc., Quanta Utility Operation LLC, Quanta West LLC, Quantecua Cia. Ltda., R. R. Cassidy Inc., RMS Holdings LLC, RMS Holdings LLC (Delaware), RMS Welding Systems, RMS Welding Systems LLC, Ranger Directional, Realtime Engineers Inc., Realtime Utility Engineers Inc., Redes Andinas de Comunicaciones S.R.L., Riggin & Diggin Line Construction, Rms Welding LLC, Rms Welding Systems LLC, Road Bore Corporation, Ryan Company Inc. The, Ryan Company Inc. of Massachusetts, Ryan Company Inc.(The), Seaward, Seaward Corp, Seaward Corporation, Service EC (DE) Inc., Service Electric Company (DE), Service Electric Company Inc., Service Electric Company of Delaware, Servicios Par Electric S. de R.L. de C.V., Servicios de Infraestructura del Peru S.A.C., Southwest Trenching Company Inc., Specialty Tank Services L.P., Specialty Tank Services LP, Specialty Tank Services Limited Partnership, Specialty Tank Services Limited Partnership, Specialty Tank Services Ltd., Specialty Tank Services Ltd. (LP), Specialty Tank Services Ltd. L.P., Specialty Tank Services Ltd. LP, Specialty Tank Services Ltd. LP, Specialty Tank Services Ltd. Limited Partnership, Stronghold General LLC, Stronghold Holdings (BVI) Limited, Stronghold Inspection L.P., Stronghold Inspection Limited Partnership, Stronghold Inspection Limited Partnership, Stronghold Inspection Lp, Stronghold Inspection Ltd L.P., Stronghold Inspection Ltd., Stronghold Inspection Ltd. L.P., Stronghold Inspection Ltd. Limited Partnership, Stronghold Limited Partnership, Stronghold Ltd., Stronghold Ltd. Limited Partnership, Stronghold Management Holdings LP, Stronghold Specialty General LLC, Stronghold Specialty Ltd., Stronghold Specialty Ltd., Stronghold Specialty Ltd. Limited Partnership, Stronghold Tower Group LP, Stronghold Tower Group Ltd LP, Stronghold Tower Group Ltd., Stronghold Tower Group Ltd. LP, Stronghold VI LLC, Subterra Damage Prevention Specialists Ltd., Summit Line Construction, Sumter Utilities Inc., T. G. Mercer Consulting Services Inc., TA Construction, TC Infrastructure Services Ltd., Taylor Built, Texas Specialty Tank Services Ltd. LP, The Aspen Utility Company LLC, The ComTran Group Inc., The Hallen Construction Co. Inc., The Massachusetts Ryan Company Inc., The Ryan Company Inc Of Massachusetts, The Ryan Company Inc., The Ryan Company Inc. (Massachusetts), The Ryan Company Inc. of Massachusetts, The Ryan Company Incorporated of Massachusetts, The Ryan Company Of Massachusetts Inc., The Ryan Company of Massachusetts, The Ryan Company of Massachusetts (FN), Tom Allen Construction Company Inc., Tom Allen Construction Company of Delaware, Trans Tech Electric, TurnKey Automation Limited Partnership, TurnKey Automation Limited Partnership, TurnKey Automation Ltd., TurnKey Automation Ltd. Limited Partnership, TurnKey Automation Ltd. Limited Partnership, TurnKey I&E Ltd., Turnkey Automation Ltd. L.P., Turnkey Automation Ltd. LP., UCC Underground Construction Co. Inc., Ucc - Underground Construction Co., Underground Construction Co. Inc., Underground Construction Co. Inc. (Delaware), Underground Electric Construction Company LLC, Utilco Inc., Utility Fleet Services, Utility Line Management Services Inc., Utility Testing & Maintenance LLC, Utility Training Services Corporation, VALARD Polska sp. Z o.o., Valard, Valard, Valard Construction (Ontario) Ltd., Valard Construction (Quebec) Inc., Valard Construction 2008 Ltd., Valard Construction Australia Pty Ltd, Valard Construction LLC, Valard Equipment (AB) Ltd., Valard Equipment GP Ltd., Valard Equipment Limited Partnership, Valard Geomatics (Ontario) Ltd., Valard Geomatics BC Ltd., Valard Geomatics Ltd., Valard Mechanical Ltd., Valard Norway AS, Valard Sweden AB, Valard Zagreb d. o. o., Wade D. Taylor Inc., West Coast Communications, Winco Helicopters, Winco Inc., Winco Inc. an Oregon Based Corporation, Winco Powerline Services, Winco Powerline Services Inc., Winco Powerline Services Inc., Winco Services Inc., World Fiber Inc., and mmit Line Construction Inc..
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Argan, Inc., through its subsidiaries, provides engineering, procurement, construction, commissioning, operations management, maintenance, project development, technical, and consulting services to the power generation and renewable energy markets. The company operates through Power Industry Services, Industrial Fabrication and Field Services, and Telecommunications Infrastructure Services segments. The Power Industry Services segment offers engineering, procurement, and construction contracting services to the owners of alternative energy facilities, such as biomass plants, wind farms, and solar fields; and design, construction, project management, start-up, and operation services for projects with approximately 15 gigawatts of power-generating capacity. This segment serves independent power project owners, public utilities, power plant equipment suppliers, and energy plant construction companies. The Industrial Fabrication and Field Services segment provides industrial field, and pipe and vessel fabrication services for forest products, industrial gas, fertilizer, and mining companies in southeast region of the United States. The Telecommunications Infrastructure Services segment offers trenchless directional boring and excavation for underground communication and power networks, as well as aerial cabling services; and installs buried cable, high and low voltage electric lines, and private area outdoor lighting systems. It also provides structured cabling, terminations, and connectivity that offers the physical transport for high-speed data, voice, video, and security networks. This segment serves state and local government agencies, regional communications service providers, electric utilities, and other commercial customers, as well as federal government facilities comprising cleared facilities in the mid-Atlantic region of the United States. Argan, Inc. was incorporated in 1961 and is headquartered in Rockville, Maryland.
Thomson Reuters Corporation provides business information services in the Americas, Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and the Asia Pacific. It operates in five segments: Legal Professionals, Corporates, Tax & Accounting Professionals, Reuters News, and Global Print. The Legal Professionals segment offers research and workflow products focusing on legal research and integrated legal workflow solutions that combine content, tools, and analytics to law firms and governments. The Corporates segment provides a suite of content-enabled technology solutions for legal, tax, regulatory, compliance, and IT professionals. The Tax & Accounting Professionals segment offers research and workflow products focusing on tax offerings and automating tax workflows to tax, accounting, and audit professionals in accounting firms. The Reuters News segment provides business, financial, and international news to media organizations, professional, and news consumers through news agency and industry events. The Global Print segment offers legal and tax information primarily in print format to legal and tax professionals, governments, law schools, and corporations. The company was formerly known as The Thomson Corporation and changed its name to Thomson Reuters Corporation in April 2008. The company was founded in 1851 and is headquartered in Toronto, Canada. Thomson Reuters Corporation operates a subsidiary of The Woodbridge Company Limited.
Cardinal Health, Inc. operates as an integrated healthcare services and products company in the United States, Canada, Europe, Asia, and internationally. It provides customized solutions for hospitals, healthcare systems, pharmacies, ambulatory surgery centers, clinical laboratories, physician offices, and patients in the home. The company operates in two segments, Pharmaceutical and Medical. The Pharmaceutical segment distributes branded and generic pharmaceutical, specialty pharmaceutical, and over-the-counter healthcare and consumer products. The segment also provides services to pharmaceutical manufacturers and healthcare providers for specialty pharmaceutical products; operates nuclear pharmacies and radiopharmaceutical manufacturing facilities; repackages generic pharmaceuticals and over-the-counter healthcare products; and offers medication therapy management and patient outcomes services to hospitals, other healthcare providers, and payers, as well as provides pharmacy management services to hospitals. The Medical segment manufactures, sources, and distributes Cardinal Health branded medical, surgical, and laboratory products and devices that include exam and surgical gloves; needles, syringe, and sharps disposals; compressions; incontinences; nutritional delivery products; wound care products; single-use surgical drapes, gowns, and apparels; fluid suction and collection systems; urology products; operating room supply products; and electrode product lines. The segment also distributes a range of national brand products, including medical, surgical, and laboratory products; provides supply chain services and solutions to hospitals, ambulatory surgery centers, clinical laboratories, and other healthcare providers; and assembles and sells sterile, and non-sterile procedure kits. The company was incorporated in 1979 and is headquartered in Dublin, Ohio.
Sunday, November 12, 2017
The Louisiana Attorney Disciplinary Board has recommended that a petition for reinstatement be denied.
The original misconduct
Petitioner was suspended for a year and a day by the Louisiana Supreme Court on October 23, 2014, in In re Gill, 2015-1373 (La. 10/23/15); 181 So.3d 689. Petitioner was arrested and charged with three DWI offenses in addition to being arrested in connection with an alcohol-related disturbance at the Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport. He also made false statements to the ODC regarding the circumstances of his arrests. The Court adopted the Boards recommendation that Petitioner be suspended for a period of a year and a day and that prior to reinstatement, he be required to prove his fitness by clear and convincing evidence.
The Hearing Committee had favored conditional reinstatement but the Office of Disciplinary Counsel did not
According to the committee, and relative to the ODCs first argument addressing Petitioners recognition of the wrongfulness and seriousness of his misconduct under 24(E)(4), the ODC pointed to an impressive number of documents, in which Petitioner denied or belittled his drinking problem. These documents included Petitioners October 27, 2016 sworn statement and the bar admissions applications he has made to Florida, Texas, Washington, D.C., and California. Nevertheless, the committee found Petitioner credibly testified at the hearing on March 22, 2017, that he recognized the wrongfulness and seriousness of his conduct.
The committee next addressed the ODCs argument that Petitioner lacks the honesty and integrity to be reinstated under 24(E)(6). The ODC argued that he failed to meet this criterion due to his failure to adequately reveal and address the considerable debt he incurred. Further, the ODC argued that Petitioner lacks the character and fitness to be reinstated, as evidenced by his email communications with his daughters mother, and with his daughter, as well as conduct he exhibited during these reinstatement proceedings toward disciplinary counsel and staff.
Although finding it impossible to ignore the impact of the emails considering the inflammatory language used by Petitioner in communicating with his daughters mother and his daughter, the committee nevertheless took a narrow view in interpreting the reinstatement requirements, and found the evidence failed to undermine Petitioners ability to practice law. It took into consideration character evidence in the form of letters of support submitted by lawyers and judges related to Petitioners legal abilities and competence. The committee further noted that while Petitioners finances are in very bad shape, and that it was particularly disturbed by his outstanding federal tax liability, it nevertheless determined that the Petitioner had met his burden relative to 24(E)(6).
The Board concluded
The evidence indicates that Petitioner was less than forthcoming in his several bar applications and that he has continued to deny the wrongdoing for which he was disciplined. This conduct raises significant doubt as to whether he recognizes the wrongfulness and seriousness of his misconduct.
When viewing the totality of the evidence, and the conduct for which Petitioner was initially disciplined, concerns are also raised as to whether the Petitioner has met 24(E)(3). This criterion requires a lawyer seeking reinstatement to prove by clear and convincing evidence that he has successfully addressed any physical or mental disability that existed at the time of the suspension. Petitioner was disciplined in connection with multiple instances of alcohol related criminal conduct. Given the misconduct, it is clear that Petitioners sobriety would be required for his reinstatement. The evidence clearly establishes that Petitioner has been abstinent and that he has attended all required meetings under a Florida LAP agreement since September 15, 2014. The Board recognizes that Petitioner has devoted much time and energy to complying with the terms of his Florida LAP contract and commends him for maintaining his sobriety since September of 2014. Nevertheless, the Board questions whether Petitioner has pursued appropriate rehabilitative treatment. It is not clear from the record what, if any, evaluations the Florida LAP program used as the basis for Petitioners Florida LAP contract. No representative of the Florida LAP program testified and no evidence was offered relative to the appropriateness of the Petitioners treatment or the likelihood of continued abstinence.
Because of these concerns
The most comprehensive evaluation of Petitioner to date was performed by Palmetto Addiction Recovery Center, a LAP approved evaluator. After a three-day inpatient evaluation, Petitioner was diagnosed not only with alcohol dependence, but also personality disorder, NOS, with narcissistic and paranoid features. It is not clear that any treatment rendered to Petitioner has successfully addressed all concerns raised in the evaluation, which in turn, creates doubt as to whether he has clearly established compliance with 24(E)(3).20 In order to establish that he has pursued effective rehabilitative treatment and has addressed his anger issues, the Board recommends that he return to JLAP for an updated evaluation and treatment as recommended.
(Mike Frisch)
https://lawprofessors.typepad.com/legal_profession/2017/11/the-louisiana-attorney-disciplinary-board-has-recommended-that-a-petition-for-reinstatement-be-denied-the-original-miscondu.html
Consolidated Edison, Inc., through its subsidiaries, engages in the regulated electric, gas, and steam delivery businesses in the United States. It offers electric services to approximately 3.5 million customers in New York City and Westchester County; gas to approximately 1.1 million customers in Manhattan, the Bronx, parts of Queens, and Westchester County; and steam to approximately 1,555 customers in parts of Manhattan. The company also supplies electricity to approximately 0.3 million customers in southeastern New York and northern New Jersey; and gas to approximately 0.1 million customers in southeastern New York. In addition, it operates 533 circuit miles of transmission lines; 15 transmission substations; 64 distribution substations; 87,564 in-service line transformers; 3,924 pole miles of overhead distribution lines; and 2,291 miles of underground distribution lines, as well as 4,350 miles of mains and 377,971 service lines for natural gas distribution. Further, the company owns, operates, and develops renewable and energy infrastructure projects; and provides energy-related products and services to wholesale and retail customers, as well as invests in electric and gas transmission projects. It primarily sells electricity to industrial, commercial, residential, and government customers. The company was founded in 1823 and is based in New York, New York.
Ecolab Inc. provides water, hygiene, and infection prevention solutions and services in the United States and internationally. The company operates through Global Industrial, Global Institutional & Specialty, and Global Healthcare & Life Sciences segments. The Global Industrial segment offers water treatment and process applications, and cleaning and sanitizing solutions to manufacturing, food and beverage processing, transportation, chemical, metals and mining, power generation, pulp and paper, commercial laundry, petroleum, refining, and petrochemical industries. The Global Institutional & Specialty segment provides specialized cleaning and sanitizing products to the foodservice, hospitality, lodging, government and education, and retail industries. Its Global Healthcare & Life Sciences segment offers specialized cleaning and sanitizing products to the healthcare, personal care, and pharmaceutical industries, such as infection prevention and surgical solutions, and end-to-end cleaning and contamination control solutions under the Ecolab, Microtek, and Anios brand names. The company's Other segment offers pest elimination services to detect, eliminate, and prevent pests, such as rodents and insects in restaurants, food and beverage processors, educational and healthcare facilities, hotels, quick service restaurant and grocery operations, and other institutional and commercial customers. This segment also provides colloidal silica for binding and polishing applications in semiconductor, catalyst, and aerospace component manufacturing, as well as chemical industries; and products and services that manage wash process through custom designed programs, premium products, dispensing equipment, water and energy management, and reduction, as well as real time data management. It sells its products through field sales and corporate account personnel, distributors, and dealers. The company was founded in 1923 and is headquartered in Saint Paul, Minnesota.
Halliburton Company provides products and services to the energy industry worldwide. It operates in two segments, Completion and Production, and Drilling and Evaluation. The Completion and Production segment offers production enhancement services that include stimulation and sand control services; cementing services, such as well bonding and casing, and casing equipment; completion tools that offer downhole solutions and services, including well completion products and services, intelligent well completions, and service tools, as well as liner hanger, sand control, and multilateral systems; production solutions comprising coiled tubing, hydraulic workover units, downhole tools, and pumping and nitrogen services; and pipeline and process services, such as pre-commissioning, commissioning, maintenance, and decommissioning. This segment also provides electrical submersible pumps, as well as artificial lift services. The Drilling and Evaluation segment offers drilling fluid systems, performance additives, completion fluids, solids control, specialized testing equipment, and waste management services; oilfield completion, production, and downstream water and process treatment chemicals and services; drilling systems and services; wireline and perforating services consists of open-hole logging, and cased-hole and slickline; and drill bits and services comprising roller cone rock bits, fixed cutter bits, hole enlargement, and related downhole tools and services, as well as coring equipment and services. This segment also provides cloud based digital services and artificial intelligence solutions on an open architecture for subsurface insights, integrated well construction, and reservoir and production management; testing and subsea services, such as acquisition and analysis of reservoir information and optimization solutions; and project management and integrated asset management services. Halliburton Company was founded in 1919 and is based in Houston, Texas.
I'm interested in creating more of a ghost of an object, using human figure and hand gestures to represent our shared humanity, said ceramic artist Jennifer Holt ahead of the opening of the 17th annual Its Elemental art exhibit.
How can art transport viewers to another place? Are we really that different from each other in the overall scheme of things? That's part of what Holt aims to explore in her work.
For this years show at the Coconino Center for the Arts, she submitted a porcelain depiction of two arms together, held almost as though in surrender, titled Breathe. The smooth, white surface of the fired clay comes from her preference to keep the work as is, allowing each detail to come through from the casting.
Overall, my work explores ideas about time and place and memory and I do a lot of casting in porcelain to pick up the traces of its past, she explained. A lot of my pieces I dont glaze on purpose because Im really interested in what comes with that surface.
Holt favors clay due to the physicality and challenges that the process presents. From taking the wet clay and creating the form she has in mind to the firing of the final product, she finds enjoyment in each step necessary to produce a piece of art that comes from the earth with no frills and no room to hide any imperfections that may occur throughout the process.
An initial version of Its Elemental was first featured in 1984 as Wood, Fiber, Clay when the center opened and ran until the late 1990s when it closed. Since the centers reopening in 2001, the show presented by the Flagstaff Arts Council has grown to encompass art made from clay, wood, fiber/paper, metal, glass and mixed media. Pieces can be functional or not, as long as the majority of work is designed and created by the artist rather than with a large amount of commercially-made elements.
We are pleased to present this well-loved exhibition; it has become a staple art event in our community and it showcases the talent of local artists and craftspeople, deputy director Elizabeth Vogler said. This year's stunning artwork truly exemplifies fine craftsmanship of northern Arizona.
The juried show offers a wide variety of pieces to admire from all perspectives.
I feel that art offers us a different way of looking at things (and) reflecting on the world allows us to think about things without the use of words so I think thats really important, Holt said. Its really meant to be deciphered.
The exhibit opens at the Coconino Center for the Arts, 2300 N. Fort Valley Road, on Tuesday, Nov. 14, and will remain up through Dec. 16. Student works will also be on display concurrently in the Jewel Gallery just outside of the Main Gallery. For more information, visit www.flagartscouncil.org or call (928) 779-2300.
PetroChina Company Limited, together with its subsidiaries, engages in a range of petroleum related products, services, and activities in Mainland China and internationally. It operates through Exploration and Production, Refining and Chemicals, Marketing, and Natural Gas and Pipeline segments. The Exploration and Production segment engages in the exploration, development, production, and marketing of crude oil and natural gas. The Refining and Chemicals segment refines crude oil and petroleum products; and produces and markets primary petrochemical products, derivative petrochemical products, and other chemical products. The Marketing segment is involved in marketing of refined products and trading business. The Natural Gas and Pipeline segment engages in the transmission of natural gas, crude oil, and refined products; and sale of natural gas. As of December 31, 2021, the company had a total length of 26,076 km, including 17,329 km of natural gas pipelines, 7,340 km of crude oil pipelines, and 1,407 km of refined product pipelines. The company is also involved in the exploration, development, and production of oil sands and coalbed methane; trading of crude oil and petrochemical products; storage, chemical engineering, storage facilities, service station, and transportation facilities and related businesses; and production and sales of basic and derivative chemical, and other chemical products. The company was founded in 1999 and is headquartered in Beijing, the People's Republic of China. PetroChina Company Limited is a subsidiary of China National Petroleum Corporation.
Brookfield Asset Management Inc. is a publicly owned asset management holding company. The firm specializes in early stage, acquisition, distressed investments, short-term financing to mid-market companies, corporate carve-outs, recapitalizations, convertible, senior and mezzanine financings, operational and capital structure restructuring, strategic re-direction, turnaround, and under-performing midmarket companies. The firm invest in attractive businesses through the public debt and equity markets or by providing financing. The firm invest in Business services, Industrials and Residential sectors. Through its subsidiaries, the firm invests in the property, power, and infrastructure sectors. Its property business includes owning and managing office properties, developing master planned residential communities, and offering clients bridge and mezzanine lending, alternative assets funds, and financial and advisory services. Through its subsidiaries, the firm operates hydroelectric power facilities, interconnections and transmission facilities in Northeast North America, and development of wind power in Canada. Through its subsidiaries, it invests in specialty funds including private equity and makes direct investments in real estate, energy, and resource assets. The firm launches and manages equity and fixed income mutual funds. It also manages real estate and hedge funds. The firm invests in equity and fixed income markets across the globe. It also invest in British Columbia, United States, Brazil, Australia, Chile, Uruguay, New Zealand. It prefers to invest between $2 million and $500 million in its portfolio companies. The firm also prefers to take both minority and majority stakes in its companies. It was formerly known as Brascan Corp. Brookfield Asset Management Inc. is based in Toronto, Canada with additional offices in Bogota, Colombia, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Calgary, Canada, Dubai, United Arab Emirates, Gatineau, Canada, Hong Kong, Hong Kong, London, United Kingdom, Melbourne, Australia, Montreal, Canada, Mumbai, India, New York City, Perth, Australia, Shanghai, China, and Sydney, Australia.
Trilogy International Partners Inc., together with its subsidiaries, provides wireless voice and data communications services in New Zealand, Bolivia, and internationally. It offers prepaid and postpaid payment plans, including local, international long distance, and roaming services to customers and international visitors roaming on its networks. The company also provides fixed broadband communications to residential and enterprise customers, as well as a range of mobile and fixed line services in New Zealand and Australia; and fixed public telephony and wireless broadband services in Bolivia. As of December 31, 2021, it had a distribution network of approximately 13 company owned stores, 170 dealers, and 8,300 other dealer points of presence in Bolivia; and a distribution network of approximately 20 company owned retail stores, 40 independent dealers, and 2,500 points of sale through national retail chains and grocery stores in New Zealand. The company's services cover an aggregate population of 16.8 million users. It also provides services through its online self-service store in New Zealand; and operates under the Viva brand name in Bolivia. Trilogy International Partners Inc. was founded in 1982 and is headquartered in Bellevue, Washington.
Snap Inc. is a social media company operating globally. The company was founded in September 2011 by Evan Spiegel and Bobby Murphy. Originally known as Snapchat, the company changed its name to Snap in order to represent its offerings better as it grew over the years. The companys headquarters are in Santa Monica, California and it is a very tightly held company. The original founders, Evan Speigel and Bobby Murphy own a combined 45% of non-dilutable shares with ownership transferable to the other upon death. The two remain active in the company today serving on the board and acting as CEO (Speigel) and CTO (Murphy).
The company was formerly known as Snapchat, Inc. and changed its name to Snap Inc. in September 2016. Snap Inc. was founded in 2010 and is headquartered in Santa Monica, California. Over the years it has been courted by most of the big tech companies including Facebook and Google but has always opted to remain a standalone company. The business went public in 2017 and raised $30 billion on its opening day which is about 10 times the expected amount.
Today, Snap operates as a camera company internationally. The companys main revenue streams are Snapchat, a mobile app for cameras and communications, and Spectacles, a wearable augmented reality device. Snapchat is a camera app that allows users to take pictures and tell stories, the platform also permits ad sales which is an integral part of the revenue and earnings. The companys mission? To empower people to express themselves in todays digital world.
Spectacles is a hardware device that can connect with Snapchat to deliver pictures and video from a point-of-view perspective. The company has since made three upgrades to the original version and has a Next Generation model available too. The Next Generation of Spectacles are not intended for sale but will be made available to creators who wish to push the boundaries of video and digital communications.
In October 2022 the company reported it had more than 347milion daily active users with more than 250 million engaging with AR each day. The platform had more than 250,000 Lens creators (Lenses are AR experiences) with more than 2.5 million lenses created. There were more than 6 billion lens plays each day and more than 75% of 13-34-year-olds in 20 countries were users.
Bar Harbor Bankshares operates as the holding company for Bar Harbor Bank & Trust that provides commercial, lending, retail, and wealth management banking services. It accepts various deposit products, including interest-bearing and non-interest-bearing demand accounts, savings accounts, time deposits, and money market deposit accounts, as well as certificates of deposit. The company also provides commercial real estate loans, such as multi-family, commercial construction and land development, and other commercial real estate classes; commercial and industrial loans, including loans to commercial and agricultural businesses, and tax exempt entities; residential real estate loans consists of mortgages for 1-4 family housing; and consumer loans comprises home equity loans, lines of credit, auto, and other installment lending. In addition, it provides life insurance, annuity, and retirement products, as well as financial planning services; and third-party investment and insurance services. Further, the company offers trust and estate administration, wealth advisory, and investment management services to individuals, businesses, not-for-profit organizations, and municipalities; and 401K plan, financial, estate and charitable planning, investment management, family office, municipal, and tax services. It operates 53 locations across Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont. The company was founded in 1887 and is based in Bar Harbor, Maine.
Ducommun Incorporated provides engineering and manufacturing products and services primarily to the aerospace and defense, industrial, medical, and other industries in the United States. It operates through two segments, Electronic Systems and Structural Systems. The Electronic Systems segment provides cable assemblies and interconnect systems; printed circuit board assemblies; higher-level electronic, electromechanical, and mechanical components and assemblies, as well as lightning diversion systems; and radar enclosures, aircraft avionics racks, shipboard communications and control enclosures, shipboard communications and control enclosures, printed circuit board assemblies, cable assemblies, wire harnesses, interconnect systems, lightning diversion strips, surge suppressors, conformal shields, and other assemblies. It also supplies engineered products, including illuminated pushbutton switches and panels for aviation and test systems; microwave and millimeter switches and filters for radio frequency systems and test instrumentation; and motors and resolvers for motion control. In addition, this segment provides engineering expertise for aerospace system design, development, integration, and testing. The Structural Systems segment designs, engineers, and manufactures contoured aluminum, titanium, and Inconel aero structure components; structural assembly products, such as winglets, engine components, and fuselage structural panels; and metal and composite bonded structures and assemblies comprising aircraft wing spoilers, large fuselage skins, rotor blades on rotary-wing aircraft and components, flight control surfaces, engine components, ammunition handling systems, and magnetic seals. It serves commercial aircraft, military fixed-wing aircraft, military and commercial rotary-wing aircraft, and space programs, as well as industrial, medical, and other end-use markets. The company was founded in 1849 and is headquartered in Santa Ana, California.
TransUnion provides risk and information solutions. The company operates in three segments: U.S. Markets, International, and Consumer Interactive. The U.S. Markets segment provides consumer reports, actionable insights, and analytics to businesses. These businesses use its services to acquire new customers; assess consumer ability to pay for services; identify cross-selling opportunities; measure and manage debt portfolio risk; collect debt; verify consumer identities; and mitigate fraud risk. This segment serves various industry vertical markets, including financial services, insurance, tenant and employment, collections and services, technology, commerce and communication, public sector, media, and other markets. The International segment offers credit reports, analytics, technology solutions, and other value-added risk management services; and consumer services, which help consumers to manage their personal finances and consumer credit reporting, insurance and auto information solutions, and commercial credit information services. This segment serves customers in financial services, retail credit, insurance, automotive, collections, public sector, and communications industries through direct and indirect channels. The Consumer Interactive segment provides credit reports and scores, credit monitoring, identity protection and resolution, and financial management solutions that enable consumers to manage their personal finances and take precautions against identity theft. This segment offers its products through online and mobile interfaces, as well as through direct and indirect channels. The company serves customers in approximately 30 countries and territories, including North America, Latin America, Europe, Africa, India, and the Asia Pacific. The company was formerly known as TransUnion Holding Company, Inc. and changed its name to TransUnion in March 2015. TransUnion was founded in 1968 and is headquartered in Chicago, Illinois.
United Parcel Service, Inc. provides letter and package delivery, transportation, logistics, and related services. It operates through two segments, U.S. Domestic Package and International Package. The U.S. Domestic Package segment offers time-definite delivery of letters, documents, small packages, and palletized freight through air and ground services in the United States. The International Package segment provides guaranteed day and time-definite international shipping services in Europe, the Asia Pacific, Canada and Latin America, the Indian sub-continent, the Middle East, and Africa. This segment offers guaranteed time-definite express options. The company also provides international air and ocean freight forwarding, customs brokerage, distribution and post-sales, and mail and consulting services in approximately 200 countries and territories. In addition, it offers truckload brokerage services; supply chain solutions to the healthcare and life sciences industry; shipping, visibility, and billing technologies; and financial and insurance services. The company operates a fleet of approximately 121,000 package cars, vans, tractors, and motorcycles; and owns 59,000 containers that are used to transport cargo in its aircraft. United Parcel Service, Inc. was founded in 1907 and is headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia.
VMware, Inc. provides software solutions in the areas of modern applications, cloud management and infrastructure, networking, security, and digital workspaces in the United States and internationally. It offers VMware multi-cloud solutions, including VMware vSphere, a data center infrastructure that provides the fundamental compute layer; vSAN and VxRail, which offers holistic data storage and protection options to applications running on vSphere; and vRealize Cloud Management solutions that manages hybrid and multi-cloud environments running in virtual machines and containers, as well as VMware Cloud Foundation, a cloud platform that combines its vSphere, vSAN, and NSX with vRealize Cloud Management into an integrated stack and delivers enterprise-ready cloud infrastructure for private and public clouds. The company also provides networking solutions, such as VMware NSX, NSX Distributed and Gateway Firewalls, NSX Network Detection and Response Engine, NSX Advanced Load Balancer, Tanzu Service Mesh, and VMware SASE; security solutions consisting of VMware Carbon Black Endpoint, Workload, and Container; and digital workspace solutions comprising Workspace ONE Unified Endpoint Management, Access, Intelligent Hub, and Horizon. In addition, it offers application modernization solutions, such as Tanzu Application and Operations Platform, Tanzu Application Service Platform, Tanzu Observability, Tanzu Community Edition, and Tanzu Labs; and cloud management solutions, including vRealize Cloud Management, vCloud Suite, and CloudHealth by VMware Suite. The company sells its products through distributors, resellers, system vendors, and systems integrators. VMware, Inc. has a strategic alliance with Amazon Web Services to build and deliver an integrated hybrid solution. The company was incorporated in 1998 and is headquartered in Palo Alto, California.
Yelp Inc. operates a platform that connects consumers with local businesses in the United States and internationally. The company's platform covers various local business categories, including restaurants, shopping, beauty and fitness, health, and other categories, as well as home, local, auto, professional, pets, events, real estate, and financial services. It provides free and paid advertising products to businesses, which include cost-per-click search advertising and multi-location Ad products, as well as enables businesses to deliver targeted search advertising to local audiences; and business listing page products. The company also offers other services comprising Yelp Reservations that provide online reservations for restaurants, nightlife, and other venues directly from their Yelp business pages; Yelp Waitlist, a subscription-based waitlist management solution that allows consumers to check wait times and join waitlists remotely, as well as businesses to manage seating and server rotation; Yelp Knowledge program that offers business owners local analytics and insights through access to its historical data and other proprietary content; and Yelp Fusion, which offers free and paid access to content and data for consumer-facing enterprise use through publicly available APIs. In addition, it provides content licensing, as well as allows third-party data providers to update and manage business listing information on behalf of businesses. Further, the company offers its products directly through its sales force; indirectly through partners; and online through its website, as well as non-advertising partner arrangements. It has strategic partnership with Grubhub for providing consumers with a service to place food orders for pickup and delivery. Yelp Inc. was incorporated in 2004 and is headquartered in San Francisco, California.
A disorderly Brexit is now seen as almost inevitable by the worlds biggest banks ranking on a par with a global cyber-attack as a threat to the international financial system, the City of London Corporation has warned. In a letter to the chancellor sent, Catherine McGuinness, chairwoman of the policy and resources committee at the Citys ruling body, offers her detailed observations on institutional concerns following three days of meetings with Wall Street bosses and policymakers in New York and Washington DC. - Sunday Times
Forty MPs eight short of the numbers required to force a leadership challenge have agreed to sign a letter of no confidence in Theresa May as European Union negotiators threaten to block trade talks until March unless Britain agrees to settle the Brexit divorce bill. The embattled prime minister is facing a fight on three fronts following another week of Tory turmoil in which Priti Patel become the second cabinet minister to resign and two other cabinet ministers Damian Green and Boris Johnson faced pressure to quit, with the EU withdrawal bill returning to the Commons on Tuesday as Labour expect to join Tory rebels and inflict a series of damaging defeats on the government. - Sunday Times
Theresa May faces a devastating Commons defeat over Brexit within weeks if she continues to deny parliament a meaningful vote on the final deal with the EU, Tory and Labour MPs have warned. With the withdrawal bill returning to the Commons on Tuesday, a cross-party group who oppose a hard Brexit and are co-operating on tactics say they believe they have the numbers to defeat the government if they are denied such a vote. - Observer
Theresa May is effectively being held to ransom over Brexit by Boris Johnson and Michael Gove, a bombshell leaked letter reveals. The Cabinet heavyweights made a series of veiled threats in a secret missive to the Prime Minister which contained blunt instructions on how she should deliver the hard Brexit they demand, as well as containing the sinister-sounding instruction that Mrs May should make rebel Cabinet Ministers toe their line by clarifying their minds. - Mail on Sunday
The government is confident that it can resolve the question of the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic with a combination of flexibility and high-tech customs management, according to cabinet sources. The disclosure comes days after the EU put forward a plan that would in effect split Northern Ireland from the rest of the UK after Brexit. - Sunday Times
Britain will not be allowed to dictate the future of the Irish border post-Brexit, Irelands foreign minister has warned in a hardening of rhetoric over the UKs decision to leave the EU. Simon Coveney told his partys biannual conference on Saturday that Ireland would remain a steadfast opponent to any proposal that would create a hard border with the republic. - Observer
The EUs chief Brexit negotiator, Michel Barnier, has said the bloc is drawing up contingency plans for the possible collapse of Britains departure talks. Barnier, who last week gave the UK a two-week deadline to provide greater clarity on the financial settlement it was prepared to offer as part of the divorce deal, told Frances Journal du Dimanche newspaper the failure of the talks was not his preferred option. - Observer
Developers and home owners would be allowed to extend the height of properties without planning permission, under plans being considered for the budget by the Chancellor. Philip Hammond is weighing up proposals to relax planning laws to enable houses and blocks of flats to be raised to the height of the tallest building or tree in the same area without the cost or delay of seeking council approval. - Sunday Telegraph
Ministers are poised to unveil their strategy for Britains industrial renaissance but will simplify the plan by toppling several key pillars. The business secretary Greg Clark is expected to unveil the governments industrial strategy next week, just days before the budget. - Sunday Times
The great British buy-to-let dream is under severe threat, a report has claimed, with a forecast that landlord purchases will dive 27 per cent by 2022. Estate agent Savills believes the number of mortgaged buy-to-let property purchases will fall from 75,000 this year to just 55,000 in five years' time, as small investors are squeezed out by tougher regulations and a tax grab. - Mail on Sunday
Tax hikes could hit diesel drivers while a cut in fuel duty may be granted to those who favour petrol. Chancellor Philip Hammond is said to be considering the measures while Cabinet colleagues pressure him to cut dangerous emissions in his budget later this month. - Mail on Sunday
HSBCs new chairman Mark Tucker has told investors that he is on the prowl for acquisitions, with American credit card businesses among his targets. Tucker, 59, who took the reins last month, has revealed his plans for expansion in meetings with shareholders. - Sunday Times
Unilevers Dutch Works Council is threatening to call for strike action across the consumer goods giants global factories if potential buyers of its margarine business dont agree to protect jobs and pension guarantees. The Anglo-Dutch company shortlisted four private equity bidders earlier this month in the 6.5bn auction for its spreads unit which includes Flora, Stork and I Cant Believe Its Not Butter: CVC Capital Partners, KKR, Apollo and Platinum Equity, according to reports. - Sunday Telegraph
Andrew Neil, the founding chairman of Sky, has urged the Government to block the takeover of the pay-TV giant by 21st Century Fox in order to preserve it as one of the crown jewels of British broadcasting. At the investigation of the deal by the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA), Mr Neil dismissed fears the Murdoch family will influence Sky News if Fox gains control, but warned foreign ownership of Sky would not be good news for British broadcasting. - Sunday Telegraph
Oil services firm Petrofac is readying its defence against the looming threat of an opportunistic takeover as its battle against corruption allegations drags on. City sources told The Sunday Telegraph that a refreshed squad of advisers will be undertaking a forensic study of the firms true value as a pre-emptive strike against a hostile takeover following a sharp slump in its share price. - Sunday Telegraph
Platinum miner Lonmin the rump of the vast conglomerate once described as the unacceptable face of capitalism may need to make a cash call on its shareholders to avoid a funding crunch. City experts said the loss-making firm remains precarious since it warned late last month that it would delay its financial accounts, which were due to be released tomorrow. - Mail on Sunday
London buses could be used to transport Amazon parcels, under a radical plan to boost revenues in the face of falling passenger numbers. The transport giant Go-Ahead is in talks with logistics companies about converting some of its bus depots into parcel delivery hubs. It could even use empty buses to shuttle goods around the capital. - Sunday Times
The Spanish prime minister, Mariano Rajoy, has said elections in Catalonia will help the region recover from the havoc of separatism, during his first visit to Barcelona since Madrid imposed direct rule. Rajoy visited the Catalan capital to show support for his partys campaign ahead of regional elections next month, and was given a rapturous reception by more than a thousand party members waving Spanish and Catalan flags. - Observer
The EU is preparing to fine Google over its multi-billion dollar advertising empire as a high-profile investigation into its Android operating system is pushed back to next year. Europes competition commissioner Margrethe Vestager is gearing up to hit the web giant with an antitrust penalty over AdSense, its powerful advertising network, with a decision expected in the next few weeks. - Sunday Telegraph
Apples claim that an overhaul of its corporate structure did not reduce its tax bill has been called into question by an analysis of its latest accounts. The iPhone maker handed almost $1.7bn (1.3bn) to tax collectors outside America in the 12 months to the end of September equivalent to 3.7% of its $44.7bn foreign earnings, down from $2.1bn in overseas corporation tax on a $41.1bn haul a 5.2% rate. The $480m drop in tax paid appears to contradict assurances from the company that it gained no benefit from a change in its tax structure in 2015. - Sunday Times
A British subsidiary of Cadburys American owner paid no tax last year, despite making a 2.1bn profit. The accounts for Vantas International, ultimately owned by the Toblerone-to-Ritz maker Mondelez, show that 442m of income about what it would have paid in corporation tax was not subject to tax. - Sunday Times
A new era of banking will be ushered in from January next year and security experts say it could put people at greater risk of scams and identity theft. Under new open banking rules, Britains biggest banks and credit card providers will be forced to share customer data with companies that demand it. - Mail on Sunday
The Co-ops 143m takeover of convenience chain Nisa is to go to the wire after a series of stormy shareholder meetings before a vote on Monday. Nisa said the feedback from recent shareholder meetings suggested growing support for the Co-op offer but other people familiar with the process expressed concern that it would not secure the 75% share of votes required to succeed. - Observer
Airbuss troubled A380 airliner will be thrown a lifeline when Gulf carrier Emirates places a multi-billion dollar order for the superjumbo jets. The deal will help keep production of the double-decker aircraft running for several years and assist in maintaining supply chains. - Sunday Telegraph
Shoppers have spent more than $25bn (168.2bn yuan) during Chinas annual Singles Day, smashing previous records for the worlds largest retail event. Singles Day, promoted annually by Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba and held on 11 November, was supposedly started by bachelor university students in the 1990s who bought themselves presents as a kind of anti-Valentines day. - Observer
Housing associations and councils across the country are rushing to improve the fire safety of their social housing blocks by outsourcing more than 300m of work through the two biggest contract awards in eight years. Landlords have faced increasing pressure to install extra measures to prevent and fight fires in high-rise blocks after the Grenfell Tower disaster in June, in which an estimated 80 people lost their lives after a fire ripped through the flats in west London. - Sunday Telegraph
An independent watchdog to give the environment a voice and hold the powerful to account will form the cornerstone of a green Brexit, the Environment Secretary pledged. Michael Gove reveals plans to set up a world-leading statutory body to maintain environmental standards, together with a national policy statement that will permanently embed protections for land, water, air and wildlife into policy-making as Britain leaves the European Union. - Sunday Telegraph
A Morrison's in West Yorkshire is planning to destress its customers by becoming the first in Britain to have an in-store bar. The supermarket in Guiseley has opened up a bar called Barista, which will allow its shoppers to sip on a cold one while getting their shopping done. - Mail on Sunday
Instead of shopping this Black Friday, Arizona State Parks & Trails is partnering with retailer REI to encourage more people to opt outside and visit state parks.
For the third year in a row, Arizona State Parks & Trails and REI are offering free day-use passes to Arizona state parks. Passes can be picked up at the REI store in Flagstaff from Nov. 18-22 and used on Nov. 24.
Anyone who visits an Arizona state park can post a photo on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram @AZStateParks with the hashtag #OptOutside. The top 10 photos that receive the most likes will win a free Arizona State Parks annual pass, giving entry into state parks for a full year.
For information about Arizona State Parks, call 1-877-MY-PARKS or visit AZStateParks.com.
From: American Evaluation Association (AEA) For Immediate Release: Dateline: Washington , DC Sunday, November 12, 2017
Nicole Robinson, Emily Connors, Kate Westaby, Tiffine Cobb, and Elise Ahn and were board members of
To promote the science of evaluation
Provide networking and capacity building opportunities
Develop a pipeline of evaluators from underrepresented groups In the past few years we have focused on field building initiatives centered around building the capacity of evaluators to incorporate culturally responsive evaluation (CRE) and social justice into their practice. We see this goal as paramount to create a thriving field ready to respond to the evaluation needs of a multicultural world. This past year, during our flagship event, the Social Justice & Evaluation conference, is where we promoted this work. We provided CRE 101 sessions in addition to sessions helping evaluators address isms during the evaluation process from start to finish, how to assess what the current political climate can impact evaluation and the people we serve, or how social justice can be infused into practices such as results-based accountability.
Lessons Learned:
We recently administered a survey to Wisconsin evaluators and asked them about how much they use CRE. The full results will be shared in the future, but we can share a couple points for discussion. For example, 57% of evaluators who responded to the survey have never reviewed AEAs statement on cultural competence and 37% had no formal training on cultural competence. The open-ended responses provided a richer picture of evaluation in Wisconsin. While we are still analyzing this data, we wanted to share one quote that captures the complexity of this discussion, linking the absence of CRE to stagnant outcomes among other areas:
It is all about power and money. The same folks are getting the same grants or contracts and conduct evaluations in the same way. It isnt rocket science why some of the same chronic outcomes and poor quality of life has not changed. Evaluation and research studies need to be built differently by different people. If we keep producing basically the same monolithic group of academics how will things ever change? This is embedded in the systems and institutions of education, policy, procurement, political, and monetary practices. People who educate the next generation of academics and award contracts, grants, keynotes, or presidential sessions MUST be held accountable for structurally ensuring and requiring diversity in curricular content, human resources, funding priorities, contract/grant awards, keynotes, publications, etc. or things wont change.
Stayed tuned for more this week from our Wisconsin evaluators!
The American Evaluation Association is celebrating Milwaukee Evaluation! Week with our colleagues in the Wisconsin statewide AEA Affiliate. The contributions all this week to aea365 come from our Milwaukee Evaluation! members. Do you have questions, concerns, kudos, or content to extend this aea365 contribution? Please add them in the comments section for this post on the
About AEA The American Evaluation Association is an international professional association and the largest in its field. Evaluation involves assessing the strengths and weaknesses of programs, policies, personnel, products and organizations to improve their effectiveness. AEAs mission is to improve evaluation practices and methods worldwide, to increase evaluation use, promote evaluation as a profession and support the contribution of evaluation to the generation of theory and knowledge about effective human action. For more information about AEA, visit www.eval.org. Hi! We areand were board members of Milwaukee Evaluation ! Inc., the Wisconsin statewide AEA affiliate. As an affiliate and professional development collaborative of Wisconsin-based evaluators, we have three goals:In the past few years we have focused on field building initiatives centered around building the capacity of evaluators to incorporate culturally responsive evaluation (CRE) and social justice into their practice. We see this goal as paramount to create a thriving field ready to respond to the evaluation needs of a multicultural world. This past year, during our flagship event, the Social Justice & Evaluation conference, is where we promoted this work. We provided CRE 101 sessions in addition to sessions helping evaluators address isms during the evaluation process from start to finish, how to assess what the current political climate can impact evaluation and the people we serve, or how social justice can be infused into practices such as results-based accountability.We recently administered a survey to Wisconsin evaluators and asked them about how much they use CRE. The full results will be shared in the future, but we can share a couple points for discussion. For example,and. The open-ended responses provided a richer picture of evaluation in Wisconsin. While we are still analyzing this data, we wanted to share one quote that captures the complexity of this discussion, linking the absence of CRE to stagnant outcomes among other areas:It is all about power and money. The same folks are getting the same grants or contracts and conduct evaluations in the same way. It isnt rocket science why some of the same chronic outcomes and poor quality of life has not changed. Evaluation and research studies need to be built differently by different people. If we keep producing basically the same monolithic group of academics how will things ever change? This is embedded in the systems and institutions of education, policy, procurement, political, and monetary practices. People who educate the next generation of academics and award contracts, grants, keynotes, or presidential sessions MUST be held accountable for structurally ensuring and requiring diversity in curricular content, human resources, funding priorities, contract/grant awards, keynotes, publications, etc. or things wont change.Stayed tuned for more this week from our Wisconsin evaluators!The American Evaluation Association is celebrating with our colleagues in theThe contributions all this week to aea365 come from our members. Do you have questions, concerns, kudos, or content to extend this aea365 contribution? Please add them in the comments section for this post on the aea365 webpage so that we may enrich our community of practice. Would you like to submit an aea365 Tip? Please send a note of interest to aea365@eval.org. aea365 is sponsored by the American Evaluation Association and provides a Tip-a-Day by and for evaluators.
by Anthony Cervino | Sun, Nov 12th 8:14am EST
Washington Redskins beat writer John Keim is reporting TE Jordan Reed (hamstring) is officially ruled out for Week 10. (John Keim on Twitter)
Fantasy Impact:
As expected, Reed wont play Sunday versus the Vikings, missing his second straight game with a hamstring injury. Accumulating at least 58 yards receiving in five of his last six games since Week 3, Vernon Davis, who will draw the start in Reeds absence, is a back-end TE1 for Week 10.
CCTV recording will become mandatory in all slaughterhouses in England next year as the government announces its plans to improve animal welfare in the UK.
Defra Secretary Michael Gove announced the plans on Sunday (12 November), and said the department has received an "extremely positive" reaction from the agricultural industry, welfare groups and the public.
In August, Mr Gove launched a consultation on the plans to deliver a Conservative manifesto commitment for CCTV to be required in every slaughterhouse in England in all areas where live animals are present, with unrestricted access to footage for Official Veterinarians.
The government said it wants to reassure consumers consumers that high welfare standards are being effectively enforced.
Legislation will be introduced in the New Year, coming into force in the Spring. All slaughterhouses will be required to comply following an adjustment period of up to six months.
A summary of responses published shows that of almost 4,000 respondents, more than 99% were supportive of the plans.
'Cement its status'
Mr Gove said the UK have some of the highest animal welfare standards in the world, and that the governments wants to "cement" its status as a global leader by continuing to raise the bar.
"The reaction to this consultation highlights the strength of feeling among the public that all animals should be treated with the utmost respect at all stages of life and be subject to the highest possible welfare standards," Mr Gove explained.
"These strong measures also provide a further demonstration to consumers around the world that as we leave the EU we continue to produce our food to the very highest standards."
The proposals will also give the Food Standards Agencys (FSA) Official Veterinarians (OVs) unfettered access to the last 90 days of footage to help them monitor and enforce animal welfare standards.
'Crucial step'
The FSA has strict processes in place for the approval of slaughterhouses, and specially trained vets carry out checks to make sure the welfare of animals is protected throughout their time in the slaughterhouse.
If breaches are found, a slaughterhouse can be given a welfare enforcement notice, have its staffs licences suspended or revoked, or be referred for a criminal investigation.
The RSPCAs Head of Public Affairs David Bowles said the plans are a "crucial step" towards introducing higher welfare right across the food chain.
"We applaud the Secretary of State for his steadfast and focused commitment to ensuring the highest possible animal welfare standards in the UK once we have left the EU," Mr Bowles said.
"The RSPCA looks forward to seeing the details of the proposal as issues such as where the cameras will be located, footage quality and storage, and who can have access to it are essential to making the legislation meaningful."
'Vital tool'
British Veterinary Association Senior Vice President Gudrun Ravetz said the move is a "vital tool" to ensure high standards of animal health and welfare in all slaughterhouses.
"Official Veterinarians carry out an essential role in slaughterhouses by independently assessing and reporting breaches of animal welfare, and unrestricted access to CCTV footage will allow them to carry out this role even more effectively.
"We have been campaigning for these measures for a number of years and it is reassuring to see such a high level of support for their implementation from industry and the public."
Heather Hancock, Chairman of the Food Standards Agency, said that without mandatory CCTV in slaughterhouses, the UK would see minimal further progress in businesses improving animal welfare or complying with official controls to protect public health.
"We look forward to working with the industry as CCTV plans are implemented, and to seeing public confidence rise as a result," Ms Hancock said.
The government will now further discuss the details of bringing in the proposals and present draft legislation to Parliament as soon as Parliamentary time allows.
A dog owner has been charged with livestock worrying following a spat with a farmer who got fined by the police.
The incident went viral on social media after 28-year-old farmer Jonathan Sloan uploaded his penalty ticket on Twitter, criticising the police for not arresting the dog owner at the time of the incident.
Mr Sloan, who farms in Springbank Farm near Kinross, was hit with a 40 fine for trying to rescue his flock of sheep from the out-of-control dog.
Mr Sloan eventually put the situation under control by hitting the dog with his shepherd's crook to help it move away. The dog was eventually contained.
The farmer then called the police after a heated argument with the dog owner, who became aggressive. But after speaking with police officers, Mr Sloan ended up with a 40 fine for "breach of peace".
However, in a statement, Police Scotland said the dog owner has now been charged with an offence under section 1 of the Dogs (Protection of Livestock) Act 1953.
The incident follows news of a month-long campaign launched by Police Scotland to raise awareness among dog owners about the devastating effects of livestock worrying.
The Procurator Fiscal will now look at the case for consideration.
Solar must go on rooftops instead of farmland, charity says
Applying for environmental schemes can be time-consuming and have no guarantee of success, but if approved they can be financially worthwhile, as one Gloucestershire farmer is discovering.
George Ponsonby is looking to boost farmland bird numbers across his land and secure a steady income as subsidies are likely to tumble after Britain leaves the European Union.
He is particularly eager for grey partridges to return to his farm in the south-east corner of Gloucestershire close to the upper reaches of the Thames, and also plan for life after Brexit in 2019.
The answer was an environmental scheme to help him create wildflower corridors across his arable fields and compensate him for the lost profits from giving up growing wheat, barley and oilseed rape.
See also: Common errors could jeopardise CSS mid-tier applications
Colourful patchwork
This has given him a colourful patchwork of yellow-flowering mustard, purple phacelia and white fodder radish to encourage more skylarks, corn buntings and yellowhammers onto his farm.
I want people driving past to slow down and see picturesque strips of wildflowers in the fields, he tells Farmers Weekly.
He embarked on a potentially onerous application for a mid-tier Countryside Stewardship Scheme, which came into place at the beginning of 2017 replacing an older environmental scheme.
He is now in the early stages of creating a habitat around the farm and is hopeful of attracting grey partridges, which are on the RSPBs red list.
The scheme has taken 22.5ha of his least productive land out of his 210ha farm, and he is being paid 20,000 annually for the five-year scheme.
Farmland birds
The main aim was to help farmland birds such as the grey partridge, and also pollinators such as bees to thrive on the farm, he says.
This needs careful control of foxes, rats and crows, for which he relies on his gamekeeper Frank Snudden, to protect these valuable ground-nesting birds.
His Great Lemhill Farm, near Southrop, close to Lechlade-on-Thames, consists of gravel soils running to heavier land, and it is wild pheasants that are particularly attracted to this wet ground. Encouraging grey partridges may take longer.
He sees these birds, which are native to Britain, as a barometer for the health of his farm and he is eagerly awaiting their permanent return, particularly as they are sometimes seen in the area.
His approach started with his hedges, which he reluctantly cuts once every three years and then an Ecological Focus Area (EFA) 6m margin which consists of grasses and wildflowers.
Winter holding cover
Mr Ponsonbys intention is to plant an unharvestable mix of canary grass, chicory and kale to provide good winter holding cover for the birds, and stop them wandering off too far from their nesting sites in the hedge bottoms.
This will give him his EFA requirement for 5% of his arable land to be in farm practices to improve biodiversity, and so qualify for farm subsidies under the Basic Payment Scheme.
This is followed by a 4m wild flower margin which contains fine grasses, such as fescues and meadow grasses along with knapweed, birds-foot-trefoil, ox-eye daisy, ladys bedstraw, wild carrot, selfheal, red clover and chicory.
This will provide brood-rearing cover, full of insects which young partridge chicks need to feed on in the first few weeks after hatching.
This is a permanent margin with an initial seed cost of 150/ha to establish, and the result is a 539/ha payment per year under the scheme.
Wild bird cover
In addition, there are blocks of wild bird cover mixes across his fields to provide seed for adult birds and food sources for pollinators. These would include the likes of kale, mustard, fodder radish, phacelia, linseed and quinoa.
Seed cost for this mixture would typically be 130/ha for the two-year life of this mixture, and the scheme pays 640/ha.
Mr Ponsonby says the cost was a few thousand pounds to get the scheme started in terms of buying seed, but hopes the 20,000 a year over five years will more than compensate.
In five years time we would like to see the grey partridge return, and would hope to see 20 pairs of birds, he adds.
In mid-October, a covey of 11 grey partridges was seen on a feeder on the farm, right beside one of the strips of wild bird cover.
First covey
This was the first covey seen on the farm for several years and he believes that it is the habitat and his supplementary feeding that has drawn them, giving ample proof that the scheme could hardly be working better.
The grey partridge is present on some of his neighbours farms, which he manages, so he sees no reason why they will not hop over the hedge and start to breed on his land.
The other advantage of the mid-tier scheme is that he expected subsidy levels to come down even if Britain had remained in the EU, so he sees this as prudent planning for a steady income in the future.
Mr Ponsonby was advised on applying for the scheme by Neil Harris, technical adviser with Frontiers specialists seed arm Kings. He previously worked for Natural England which runs the Countryside Stewardship Scheme.
Quite onerous
Mr Harris says: These schemes can be quite onerous to apply for, and because it is a competitive scheme the applications have to be good.
There was no charge for Mr Ponsonby for an initial assessment visit to explore options, but once he had decided to go ahead there was a consultancy fee for drawing up an agreement calculated on the farms size and time involved completing the paperwork.
Once the deal was agreed, Mr Ponsonby received a discount on the seed used to implement the agreement.
Another possible advantage is that with the wild margins harbouring beetle and spiders, Mr Ponsonby hopes these two may do some extra good by feeding on some very unwelcome guests on his oilseed rape namely cabbage stem flea beetles.
Mid-Tier Countryside Stewardship scheme at Great Lemhill Farm
(22.5 hectares taken out of arable production)
Annual earnings for the scheme Arable options (*) 13,000 Supplementary winter feeding 2,500 Minimal-tillage on land with monument 2,000 Managing hedgerow-cut every 3 years 1,500 Buffer strips 500 Very low input grassland adjacent to watercourse 500 TOTAL 20,000
*Arable options include wild bird cover seed mix, nectar mix and flower rich margins.
How to send WhatsApp voice messages using Google Assistant Tips Tricks lekhaka -Gizbot Bureau
WhatsApp live location sharing feature to Android and iOS
As we all know, Whatsapp is one of the most popular messaging apps today and almost everyone uses it. On the other hand, virtual/voice assistant is gradually becoming an important aspect of a smartphone these days.
Google Assistant helps us in doing simple tasks including opening the browser, playing songs, Streaming Youtube video and much more. In fact, you could use voice commands to ask Google Assistant to send voice messages to your contacts on WhatsApp. Well, if you are thinking about installing a third-party app, you are wrong.
The Google Assistant is integrated into each and every Android mobile these days and you can activate it by holding the home button. Today, in this article, we are going to share a simple trick by which you can send voice messages to your friends on WhatsApp.
Before proceeding to the process, make note that the WhatsApp messages can be sent if your device is locked and don't need to keep WhatsApp opened to send messages via Google Assistant. Now, make sure that your Google Assistant is set up already.
Step 1: First off, activate your Google Assistant and make sure it is ready to listen to your voice from any screen.
Step 2: Once you have set up Google Assistant, activate it by saying Ok Google.
Step 3: Now, tell Google Assistant to send a WhatsApp voice message by speaking a simple phrase like send a voice message to abcd, where abcd is the name of your WhatsApp contact.
Step 4: Once done, the Google Assistant will take care the rest and send that message to that particular WhatsApp contact.
Also, remember, that if there are duplicate contact names then delete them. As Google Assistant doesnt support all language, make sure your native language is supported in Google App Settings. Google Assistant Currently supports Hindi, Japanese, Spanish, German, Portuguese, and French.
SEE ALSO: YouTube Kids app lets you block specific videos and channels
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NATO Officials Discuss Afghan Plus-Up, Russian Threats
By Jim Garamone DoD News, Defense Media Activity
WASHINGTON, Nov. 11, 2017 NATO allies and their partner forces have agreed to increase the size of the Resolute Support mission in Afghanistan from 13,000 to 16,000 troops, said Jens Stoltenberg, the NATO secretary general.
Stoltenberg spoke at the end of the NATO defense ministerial in Brussels on Nov. 9.
About 13,000 troops from 39 countries serve in Afghanistan on the mission to train, advise and assist Afghan security forces. In response to the request for more troops from the Resolute Support mission commander, Army Gen. John W. Nicholson, the United States has already agreed to increase its contribution to the mission. Twenty-seven other nations have also committed to increase troop numbers in the coming months.
Army Gen. Curtis M. Scaparrotti, NATO's supreme allied commander, said he is pleased with the movement.
"We've had the Force Generation Conference, but we also are talking to other nations that are still under consideration of perhaps additional plus-up," the general said during a roundtable discussion with reporters. "So this is all very encouraging and I would just say that as you look the contributions to the nations to date, we will fulfill Gen. Nicholson's requirement substantially -- in a very satisfactory way in my mind. I'm very encouraged by this."
The troops will be used for the train, advise and assist mission, including working at officer and noncommissioned officer training academies.
Optempo, Budget
Scaparrotti said he was pleased given the robust operational tempo in the world today. U.S. forces are needed in many areas of the globe, "but it's true for many of the nations here, to include the small ones," he said.
A second consideration is dealing with budget constraints. The general called it a fact of life for nations. "This is a complex world and there is a lot of demand on the military," Scaparrotti said. "All of these nations have to make hard choices between Afghanistan, internal responsibilities and other missions that NATO and their nations are executing. So it's just a difficult time today."
Russia remains a concern for NATO and reporters asked Scaparrotti about the Zapad military exercise in Russia and Belarus and increased Russian activity in the theater.
The general said that overall Russian maritime activity is up. "They are focused on a modernization of their force across all their domains, but the maritime in particular," he said. "As a result, we have seen increased activity in the Atlantic, the Mediterranean, and Baltic and Black Seas. And we have a responsibility to defend the Euro-Atlantic, so we have responded accordingly."
Scaparrotti said the Zapad exercise -- which tested Russian command and control capabilities, new equipment and asymmetric capabilities -- followed "basically the outline that we expected and the structure that they have typically done. "It had, both defensive and offensive, both conventional and nuclear aspects to it," he said. "I don't think there was anything that really surprised me. And no, to our knowledge today, they did not leave anything behind."
Many in the West believed that at the conclusion of the exercise, the Russian military would leave significant capabilities behind in Belarus.
NATO nations were rightfully concerned about Zapad, Scaparrotti said, but it didn't "spike" NATO concerns. "We were steady about this, we watched closely what they did, and it informed us on what capabilities we need," the general said. "I think it reinforced the activities we have taken today, for instance, refined [the NATO command structure], it's that there are capabilities and posture that we need to adjust in order to provide for an effective defense to the Euro-Atlantic. And I think it reinforced what we've been doing and the need for these changes."
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Egyptian warplanes destroy 10 arms-loaded vehicles of militants on Libyan border: Army
Iran Press TV
Sat Nov 11, 2017 05:57PM
Egypt's military says its warplanes have destroyed 10 arms-loaded off-road vehicles belonging to terrorists as they were attempting to infiltrate into the African country through its porous border with volatile Libya.
"The forces detected and pursued 10 four-by-four vehicles loaded with amounts of weapons, ammunition and smuggled material at the western borderline," said military spokesman Tamer al-Refaay in a statement on Saturday.
He added that the army's air force, in coordination with border guards and intelligence, managed to destroy all the vehicles and kill "the terrorist elements therein."
The statement went on to say that the strike was part of a continued combing operation to stop any penetration or infiltration by militants through the western border.
Late last month, the army announced an aerial raid on an area some 80 kilometers southwest of the capital Cairo in the country's Western Desert, where "a large number of terrorist elements" were killed.
The military at the time asserted that the counterterrorism operation was carried out on those who were suspected of involvement in a deadly ambush on Egyptian police less than two weeks earlier around 135 kilometers southwest of Cairo, which was a rare flare-up outside the restive Sinai Peninsula. The Egyptian Interior Ministry said that 16 police lost their lives in the ambush.
However, security sources claim that more than 50 were killed in the September 20 incident. The attack sparked huge public anger in Egypt, with many questioning President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi's success in fighting militants across Egypt.
In recent months, there has been an uptick in attacks in Western Desert close to the Libyan border, raising questions as to whether the area has become a second theater of operations for the militants beside the volatile Sinai Peninsula.
Over the past few years, militants have been carrying out anti-government activities and fatal attacks, taking advantage of the turmoil in Egypt that erupted after the country's first democratically-elected president, Mohamed Morsi, was ousted in a military coup in July 2013.
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Partial removal of Saudi-led blockade of Yemen not enough: UN
Iran Press TV
Sat Nov 11, 2017 03:54PM
A United Nations official says the re-opening of the port city of Aden and a land border crossing for dispatching humanitarian aid to Yemen is not enough as the Saudi-led coalition is still blocking desperately-needed UN aid deliveries to the impoverished country.
"Humanitarian movements into Yemen remain blocked," Russell Geekie, spokesman for the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Aid (OCHA), said on Friday.
"The reopening of the port in Aden is not enough. We need to see the blockade of all the ports lifted, especially Hudaydah, for both humanitarians and for commercial imports," he added.
On Sunday, Saudi Arabia announced that it was shutting down Yemen's air, sea, and land borders, after Yemeni fighters targeted an international airport near the Saudi capital.
UN aid chief Mark Lowcock told the Security Council on Wednesday that unless the blockade is lifted, Yemen will face "the largest famine the world has seen for many decades, with millions of victims."
According to UN figures, 17 million Yemenis are in need of food, seven million of whom are at risk of famine.
Facing international outcry, the Saudi-led coalition reopened the port of Aden on Wednesday and opened the land crossing at Wadea on the Saudi-Yemen border.
Geekie said the reopening of the Wadea crossing did not affect UN operations as no aid has gone into Aden yet.
Yemeni media have cited the transport minister of the former Yemeni government, Murad al-Halimi, as saying that two airports in Aden and the southern city of Say'un would also reopen from Sunday, and flights to and from Amman and Cairo would resume.
UN aid agencies were delivering food and medicine through Hudaydah, Salif and Aden ports, before the Saudi-led coalition imposed the blockade.
"There can be no alternative for all these ports being fully functional and receiving commercial and humanitarian cargo," Geekie said.
Saudi Arabia has been incessantly pounding Yemen since March 2015 in an attempt to crush the popular Houthi Ansarullah movement and reinstate former president Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi, who is a staunch ally of the Riyadh regime.
More than 12,000 people have been killed since the onset of the campaign more than two-and-a-half years ago. Much of the Arabian Peninsula country's infrastructure, including hospitals, schools and factories, has been reduced to rubble due to the war.
Another 2,100 people have died of cholera since April as hospitals struggle to secure basic supplies across the country.
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Ex-Trump aide Flynn plotted to kidnap Turkish dissident: Report
Iran Press TV
Sat Nov 11, 2017 10:16AM
US President Donald Trump's former national security adviser Michael Flynn was reportedly offered $15 million to help forcibly remove US-based Turkish opposition figure Fethullah Gulen and deliver him to Turkey.
Flynn and his son, Michael Flynn Jr., discussed the alleged plot against Gulen with Turkish representatives in December before Flynn was appointed national security adviser, NBC News and The Wall Street Journal reported Friday.
The alleged plot to remove Gulen was first revealed by the Journal in March 2017, citing former CIA director James Woolsey.
Woolsey told the newspaper that he attended a meeting in a hotel room in New York City last December where Flynn discussed "a covert step in the dead of night to whisk this guy away."
Friday's report describes a second meeting the same month involving Flynn at a New York City restaurant. It was at this encounter that the $15 million payment was discussed.
The Turkish government accuses Gulen, who lives in the US state of Pennsylvania, of being behind last year's failed coup in Turkey.
Flynn was forced to resign after misleading the White House about a meeting with the former Russian ambassador to Washington, Sergey Kislyak, before Trump took office in January.
The new report is the latest of a string of allegations facing Flynn, a retired general and former head of the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) at the Pentagon.
The matter is said to have emerged in a US Justice Department investigation into alleged Russian interference in last year's US presidential election.
Robert Mueller, the Justice Department's special counsel investigating Russian manipulation of the 2016 US election, has already indicted Trump's former campaign manager Paul Manafort and another senior fundraiser on charges including money laundering.
Mueller is now reported to have gathered sufficient evidence to bring charges against Flynn and his son, which would bring his investigation another leap closer to Trump.
American intelligence agencies claim that Russia interfered last year in the US presidential election to try to help Trump, who was then the Republican Party's presidential candidate, defeat Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton.
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EU to ease military mobility amid tensions with Russia
Iran Press TV
Sat Nov 11, 2017 08:43AM
The European Union has unveiled new plans to make transport of troops and military hardware across the bloc less difficult in a bid to enhance defense against what it calls Russian threats.
On Friday, the European Commission adopted a list of measures to be taken in order to remove the obstacles hampering the movement of military equipment and personnel across EU member states.
Senior commanders of the US-led NATO military alliance have repeatedly complained of burdensome border bureaucracy is hindering their ability to swiftly move resources around Europe, thereby reducing their capacity to provide a serious deterrent to what they describe as possible aggression by Russia.
European Transport Commissioner Violeta Bulc said Friday that it was "high time" that military requirements were once again taken into account in transport planning.
"The swift movement of military personnel and equipment is hindered by physical, legal and regulatory barriers," Bulc declared as quoted in an AFP report.
"This creates inefficiencies in public spending, delays, disruptions, and above all a greater vulnerability," he further explained.
The report also cited a joint statement of EU members highlighting recent war games where Customs problems and infrastructure limitations had led to "delays, disruptions higher costs and increased vulnerability."
After an initial study period, the European Commission will recommend an action plan by March 2018 for endorsement by member states.
EU authorities, meanwhile, will look to streamline Customs checks that are currently causing delays as well as reviewing infrastructure plans to ensure that roads, bridges and railways across the bloc are able to carry heavy military equipment such as tanks.
NATO announced earlier this week its plans for a new logistics hub to improve the way it moves resources around Europe. However, it needs EU's assistance to improve transport networks.
The US and its allies have been deploying weapons and equipment to NATO's eastern frontier since 2014, after the Crimean Peninsula's reintegration with Russia in a referendum.
Washington has long been asking its European allies to soften border regulations to allow easier movement for military convoys.
In June, Dutch Defense Minister Jeanine Hennis-Plasschaert urged EU officials at a meeting of NATO defense ministers to establish a so-called military Schengen zone -- loosely modeled on the open-border travel zone that has covered most of Europe since 1996 in a bid to speed coordinated military actions of the US-led military alliance.
US Army commander in Europe, Lieutenant General Ben Hodges, has long pursued the establishment of such a zone.
"We must be able to move quickly to any place where there is a threat," Hennis-Plasschaert said in a statement declaring her proposal at the NATO summit.
Russia and the NATO have had strained ties since conflict erupted in eastern Ukraine some three years ago.
Moscow has also long been wary of the NATO's expansion eastward toward Russia's western borders, saying such build-up poses a security threat to the country.
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US, South Korean navies launch war games aimed at North
Iran Press TV
Sat Nov 11, 2017 07:07AM
American and South Korean warships have launched war games off the coast of the Korean Peninsula in an unusually strong display of force aimed at North Korea.
The November 11-14 joint drills, which began on Saturday in the western Pacific, involve three US aircraft carriers -- USS Ronald Reagan, USS Nimitz and USS Theodore Roosevelt -- and seven South Korean warships including three destroyers, according to the South Korean defense ministry.
"The exercise is aimed at enhancing deterrence against North Korea's nuclear and missile threats and showing off preparedness to fend off any provocative acts by the North," a ministry spokesman said.
The joint drills -- the first in the region for a decade are taking place in the East Sea, also known as the Sea of Japan.
The last time such military maneuvers were held was during the Valiant Shield exercises in 2006 and 2007. They were staged off the coast of Guam a US territory which hosts two American military bases.
The latest war games come at a time when tensions between the US and North Korea have dramatically increased following a series of weapons tests by Pyongyang and an ugly war of words between US President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un.
Trump, whose country has thousands of nuclear weapons, has even threatened to "totally destroy" the country of 26 million people if necessary.
Addressing South Korea's National Assembly on Wednesday, Trump ratcheted up his war rhetoric against North Korea, threatening Pyongyang with "destruction" if it continues nuclear "provocations."
"We will not allow American cities to be threatened with destruction. We will not be intimidated," Trump said.
The North Korean leadership has threatened to attack the US with nukes if it continues its aggressive policy against the country.
The North Korean leader ordered the production of more rocket warheads and engines in August, 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.
Analysts say US threats against North Korea are counterproductive and justify Pyongyang's nuclear weapons and missile programs that it insists are for self-defense. They say Trump's speech could have an opposite effect, intensifying the deteriorating situation in the Korean Peninsula.
The US Air Force is reportedly preparing to place its fleet of B-52 bombers rigged with nuclear weapons on 24-hour alert for the first time since 1991 amid escalating tensions with North Korea.
A former American Senate foreign policy adviser has said the risk of war between the United States and North Korea has increased by about 30 percent after the US move.
James Jatras made the remarks in a recent interview with Press TV after General David Goldfein, the Air Force chief of staff, reportedly announced this weekend that the US would rebuild and update old B-52 nuclear bombers and put them on high alert amid threats from North Korea.
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Israeli Forces Shoot Down Drone on Syrian Border IDF
Sputnik News
16:13 11.11.2017(updated 16:26 11.11.2017)
According to the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) was intercepted with Patriot missiles while on a reconnaissance mission over the demilitarized areas of the Golan Heights, claimed by7 both Israel and Syria.
MOSCOW (Sputnik) The unmanned aerial vehicle was manufactured in Russia, representative of the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) Jonathan Conricus told Sputnik.
"Moments ago, the IDF used a Patriot Missile to intercept a UAV that attempted to infiltrate Israeli airspace in the Golan Heights," the IDF wrote on Twitter.
However, the military did not provide any further information regarding what kind of UAV was used. Several drones were shot down over the Golan Heights earlier, some of which were manufactured in Iran and used by Hezbollah, RIA Novosti reported.
"We have determined that it belonged to Syria. Earlier I told you that it was produced in Russia, but additional checks showed that we cannot confirm this information," Conricus said.
Israel and Syria have attacked each other on numerous occasions over the disputed Golan Heights, which were partly seized by Israel during the Six-Day War in 1967; further gains were made by Israel as a result of the Yom Kippur War in 1973. Meanwhile, the United Nations has repeatedly categorized Israel's presence in the Golan Heights as an occupation, and called for the return of the territory to Syria. The latest IDF attack on Syria occurred in September 2017, when the IDF attacked Syrian Arab Army forces in the province of Hama. However, the Israeli Defense Forces refused to comment on that incident.
Sputnik
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US Forces Target al-Shabab Militants Outside Mogadishu
By Abdulaziz Osman November 11, 2017
U.S. forces conducted an airstrike against al-Shabab Friday night, killing several militants outside Mogadishu, according to U.S. and Somali military officials.
A Somali military official told VOA at least 13 militants were killed when a drone missile hit militants in Basra village in the Lower Shabelle region, about 30 kilometers north of Mogadishu.
U.S. Africa Command has confirmed the airstrike, which came less than 24 hours after a strike targeted the group in Bay region, killing "several militants"
AFRICOM said Thursday's strike was carried out in coordination with the Somali government.
Meanwhile, the Somalia government said on Saturday that dozens of militants were killed in southern Somalia.
In a tweet, Somalia Information Minister Abdirahman Osman said 81 militants were killed and weapons were destroyed.
"Security forces conducted a coordinated attack on militant camps in Jilib, southern Somalia, killing 81 militants and destroying 5 pick up cars, weapons and ammunitions. Those militants killed in the attack were planning to go to Gedo region," wrote Osman.
The spokesman of al-Shabab, Abdulaziz abu Musab, denied there was an attack against the militants' camp in Jilib town. In a message posted on a pro-al-Shabaab website, Musab said the government's statement that 81 militants were killed is baseless.
Somali officials say the ongoing operation against the extremist group is paving the way for a large-scale offensive against al-Shabab. Somali leaders, including the president, declared last month that preparations are underway.
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Israel: Military Shot Down Syrian Spy Drone
By VOA News November 11, 2017
Israel shot down a Syrian military spy drone near the border on Saturday, the Israeli military said.
The Israeli military shot down the reconnaissance drone with a Patriot interceptor missile as it crossed into the Golan demilitarized zone, headed toward Israel.
"The State of Israel regards with utmost seriousness any violation of its sovereignty and will respond with force to any provocation," Israeli Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman said in a statement.
The military confirmed that the unmanned aerial vehicle was not an attack drone, and that it would investigate whether the drone had ties to Iran or Hezbollah.
The Golan area, which has separated Israel from Syria since a cease-fire deal following the 1973 war, has seen some spill-over violence from the Syrian civil war since 2011.
In September, Syria's army said Israeli warplanes hit one of its positions, killing two people in an attack that a monitor group said targeted a site where the regime allegedly produces chemical weapons.
Israel and Syria are still technically at war after Israel seized around 1,200 kilometers of land in the Golan Heights from Syria during the Six Day War of 1967.
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Pacific Rim Countries Reach New Trade Deal Without US
By Steve Herman November 11, 2017
Trade ministers of the remaining 11 countries of the expansive Pacific Rim trade pact abandoned by U.S. President Donald Trump reached a deal early Saturday to salvage the agreement without participation by the United States.
Previously known as the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP), it now will be known as the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP).
"Ministers are pleased to announce that they have agreed on the core elements of the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership," the 11 nations said in a statement.
Setback for US
"It's a huge setback for the United States," according to Deborah Elms, executive director of the Singapore-based Asian Trade Center. "If you are an exporter this is deeply damaging."
Elms said that while some large U.S. corporations might find alternative ways, with their global networks and subsidiaries, to take advantage of the CPTPP through their global networks, America's smaller agricultural entities look to suffer the most damage, especially those in the dairy, beef and pork sectors who would have benefited from significantly greater access to the Japan market.
"Australia, New Zealand and Canada will suck up that new access," said Elms, who was in Danang for APEC business and trade meetings.
"When Trump abdicated TPP and then told regional nations to go on their own as the U.S. would, it was inevitable that a new formulation of TPP would emerge not only without American leadership, but also without even an American presence," said former U.S. Ambassador to the Asian Development Bank, Robert "Skipp" Orr.
"U.S. economic interests will have to contend with the consequences of such shortsightedness," Orr, an Obama appointee who previously was president of aircraft maker Boeing in Japan, told VOA.
Opponents of the TPP have criticized it for putting corporate interests over those of workers, and it became a campaign issue during the 2016 presidential election in the United States, with Democratic Party candidate and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who lost to Trump, reversing her previous support of it.
Trade deal reboot
On the eve of the leader's summit of APEC, the forum for 21 Pacific Rim countries to promote free trade, trade ministers scrambled to complete the rebooted trade deal for their bosses.
A last-minute disagreement between Canada and Japan resulted in some drama, with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau not showing up for a meeting of the 11 remaining TPP countries, prompting its postponement.
Eventually the issue was resolved, leading to an announcement that the refashioned agreement will maintain "the high standards, overall balance and integrity of the TPP while ensuring the commercial and other interests of all participants and preserving our inherent right to regulate, including the flexibility of the parties to set legislative and regulatory priorities," according to the ministers' statement.
Trump: No multilateral agreements
Trump, in a Friday speech to APEC business executives, reiterated his opposition to multinational trade agreements but expressed willingness to negotiate with any country in the region for one-on-one trade deals.
The final text and schedules of the CPTPP have not been released, but it is expected to be signed by leaders in January or February 2018 and entering into force before the end of next year.
The TPP, led by Trump's predecessor, Barack Obama, and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, was the largest trade agreement in history when it was signed in February 2016. It was intended to create new market opportunities for companies and was touted to realize significant cost savings for corporations and consumers.
The World Bank had forecast the original agreement itself could see GDP rising by an average of more than 1 percent by 2030 and increase member countries' trade by 11 percent by the same year.
The TPP was a centerpiece of the Obama administration's "Pivot to Asia" and was seen as helping the United States, which is the world's largest economy, lead other countries in a strategic bulwark to temper a rising China, the world's No. 2 economy.
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Full text of Chinese President Xi's address at APEC CEO Summit
People's Daily Online
(Xinhua) 09:00, November 11, 2017
DA NANG, Vietnam, Nov. 11 (Xinhua) -- Chinese President Xi Jinping on Friday made a keynote address titled "Seizing the Opportunity of a Global Economy in Transition and Accelerating Development of the Asia-Pacific" at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) CEO Summit here.
The following is the full text of the address:
Seizing the Opportunity of a Global Economy in Transition
And Accelerating Development of the Asia-Pacific
Keynote Address by H.E. Xi Jinping
President of the People's Republic of China
At the APEC CEO Summit
Da Nang, 10 November 2017
Chairman Vu Tien Loc,
Leaders of the APEC Business Community,
Ladies and Gentlemen,
Dear Friends,
Good afternoon! I am glad to come to Da Nang and meet all of you again.
Our region, the Asia-Pacific, has the biggest share of the global economy; and it is a major engine driving global growth. The business community is a primary contributor to growth, as it keeps exploring new ways of development. That's why during the APEC Economic Leaders' Meeting over the last several years, I have always taken time to meet business leaders and discuss with you approaches and measures to address the challenges we face.
It has been 10 years since the international financial crisis broke out. Over the last decade, the international community have worked in concert to steer the global economy back to the track of recovery. Thanks to our efforts, the global economy is improving. Despite risks and uncertainties, global trade and investment are picking up, people are more optimistic about the outlook of financial markets, and confidence is growing in all sectors.
Development is a journey with no end, but with one new departure point after another. An ancient Chinese philosopher once observed, "We should focus our mind on the future, not the past." We live in a fast changing world, and the global economy is undergoing more profound changes. We must therefore closely follow the trend of the global economy, identify its underlying dynamics, keep to the right direction, and, on that basis, take bold action.
-- We are seeing a profound change in growth drivers. Countries are turning to reform and innovation to meet challenges and achieve growth. The potential of structural reforms is being unlocked and its positive impact of boosting growth of various countries has become more evident. A new round of technological and industrial revolutions is gaining momentum. Digital economy and sharing economy have registered rapid growth. New industries as well as new forms and models of business are flourishing. As a result, new growth drivers are being created.
-- We are seeing a profound change in the model of global growth. As time advances, development has taken on profoundly richer implications. The vision of innovative, coordinated, green and open development for all is gaining increasing public support. To achieve more comprehensive, higher quality and more sustainable development has become the shared goal of the international community. To implement the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and adapt to climate change and other challenges of a global nature has become an important international consensus.
-- We are seeing a profound change in economic globalization. Over the last few decades, economic globalization has contributed greatly to global growth. Indeed, it has become an irreversible historical trend. Against the backdrop of evolving global developments, economic globalization faces new adjustments in both form and substance. In pursuing economic globalization, we should make it more open and inclusive, more balanced, more equitable and beneficial to all.
-- We are seeing a profound change in the system of global economic governance. The evolving global economic environment demands more from the system of global economic governance. We should uphold multilateralism, pursue shared growth through consultation and collaboration, forge closer partnerships, and build a community with a shared future for mankind. This, I believe, is what we should do in conducting global economic governance in a new era.
Ladies and Gentlemen,
Dear Friends,
Faced with the profound changes in the global economy, should we, the Asia-Pacific economies, lead reform and innovation, or just hesitate and proceed haltingly? Should we steer economic globalization, or dither and stall in the face of challenge? Should we jointly advance regional cooperation, or go our separate ways?
This is my answer: We must advance with the trend of times, live up to our responsibility and work together to deliver a bright future of development and prosperity for the Asia-Pacific.
First, we should continue to foster an open economy that benefits all. Openness brings progress, while self-seclusion leaves one behind. We the Asia-Pacific economies know this too well from our own development experience. We should put in place a regional cooperation framework that ensures consultation among equals, wide participation and shared benefits, build an open Asia-Pacific economy and promote trade and investment liberalization and facilitation. We should make economic globalization more open, inclusive and balanced so that it benefits different countries and people of different social groups. We should proactively adapt to the evolving international division of labor and actively reshape the global value chain so as to upgrade our economies and build up new strengths. We should support the multilateral trading regime and practice open regionalism to make developing members benefit more from international trade and investment.
The building of a free trade area of the Asia-Pacific (FTAAP) is the long-cherished dream of the business community in our region. It was in response to the call of the business community that APEC leaders, for the first time, initiated the FTAAP vision in Hanoi in 2006. In 2014, the FTAAP process was launched in Beijing. We should get into action, fully implement the Beijing Roadmap, move toward the FTAAP and provide an institutional underpinning for growing an open economy in the Asia-Pacific.
Second, we should continue to pursue innovation-driven development and create new drivers of growth. The current global economic recovery is, to a large extent, the result of cyclical factors, while the lack of self-generating driving forces remains a nagging problem. To avoid the risk of the global economy entering a "new mediocre", we must sustain growth through innovation.
The new round of technological and industrial revolutions is unfolding before us. Digital economy and sharing economy are surging worldwide, and breakthroughs have been made in new technologies such as artificial intelligence and quantum science. We in the Asia-Pacific cannot afford to be just onlookers. What we should do is to seize the opportunity, increase input in innovation, change the model of development and nurture new growth areas. We should promote structural reform, remove all institutional and systemic barriers to innovation and energize the market. We should implement the APEC Accord on Innovative Development, Economic Reform and Growth adopted in Beijing, deepen cooperation on the internet and digital economy and strive to be a global leader of innovative growth.
Third, we should continue to enhance connectivity and achieve interconnected development. Interconnected development is the best way to achieve mutual benefit and win-win outcome. We the Asia-Pacific economies are closely connected, and our interests are interlocked. Such an interconnected development will both open up new horizon for our own development, and create driving force for us all to achieve common development as partners. In 2014, the APEC Connectivity Blueprint was formulated. This Blueprint should guide our efforts to build a comprehensive, all-round and multi-tiered Asia-Pacific connectivity network. We should boost the real economy through the building of connectivity, break bottlenecks to development and unlock potentials. With these efforts, we can achieve coordinated and interconnected development.
In May this year, the Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation was successfully held in Beijing. The Belt and Road Initiative calls for joint contribution and it has a clear focus, which is to promote infrastructure construction and connectivity, strengthen coordination on economic policies, enhance complementarity of development strategies and boost interconnected development to achieve common prosperity. This initiative is from China, but it belongs to the world. It is rooted in history, but it is oriented toward the future. It focuses on the Asian, European and African continents, but it is open to all partners. I am confident that the launch of the Belt and Road Initiative will create a broader and more dynamic platform for Asia-Pacific cooperation.
Fourth, we should continue to make economic development more inclusive and deliver its benefits to our people. The current headwinds confronting economic globalization is mostly generated by the lack of inclusiveness in development. Hard work is still needed if we are to bring the benefits of development to countries across the globe and people across our society, and thus turn our vision into reality.
Over the past few years, we have actively explored ways to promote inclusive development and have built strong consensus about it. We should deepen regional economic integration, develop an open and inclusive market and strengthen the bond of shared interests. We should make inclusiveness and sharing a part of our development strategies, improve systems and institutions to uphold efficiency and fairness, and safeguard social equity and justice. We should invest more in education, medical care, employment and other areas that are important to people's livelihood, and address poverty and the widening gap between the rich and the poor. We should reach out to disadvantaged groups, improve business environment for micro, small and medium-sized enterprises, and enable the workforce to better adapt to industrial transformation, so that everyone will have his fair share of opportunity and benefits.
Ladies and Gentlemen,
Friends,
As an old Chinese saying goes, a commitment, once made, should be delivered. Boosting development in the Asia-Pacific requires real actions by all of us members. As the world's second largest economy, China knows fully well its responsibility. Over the past five years, we have taken proactive steps to adapt to, manage and steer the new normal of China's economy and deepened supply-side structural reform. As a result, China's economy has maintained steady performance, and we are pursuing better-quality, more efficient, fairer and more sustainable development. Over the past four years, China's economy has grown by 7.2% on the average annually, contributing over 30% of global growth. China is now a main driver powering global growth.
We have worked hard to remove systematical institutional barriers that impede development through comprehensive reform. As many as 360 major reform initiatives and more than 1,500 reform measures have been taken. Breakthroughs have been made in key areas, and general frameworks for reform have been put in place in major sectors. We have sped up efforts to build new institutions of the open economy and transform models of foreign trade and outbound investment to continue the shift from quantitative to qualitative improvement in trade.
We have advanced theoretical, practical, institutional, cultural and other explorations to unleash new impetus for growth. China has become a huge platform where all factors and players of innovation converge to make a real difference. From infrastructure to various economic sectors, from business models to ways of consumption, innovation is leading the way.
We have pursued a people-centered philosophy of development to make our development more inclusive and beneficial to all. Individual income has registered sustained growth, outpacing GDP growth for many years. Income gaps between urban and rural areas and between different regions have been narrowing, middle-income group expanding, and Gini coefficient dropping. More than 13 million new urban jobs have been created every year for four consecutive years. Significant advances have been made in pursuing green development, resulting in considerable reduction in the intensity of energy and resource consumption and marked improvement in the ecological environment.
To lift all the remaining poor people out of poverty is a solemn commitment made by the Chinese government to the people. It is uppermost in my mind, and I have spent more energy on poverty alleviation than anything else. Over the past five years, I have been to many poor areas in China to pin down the causes of poverty and address them in a targeted way. As a result, decisive progress has been made in the fight against poverty. Over the past five years, we have lifted more than 60 million people out of poverty. The poverty headcount ratio has declined, and per capita rural income in poor areas has maintained double-digit growth. This has not come easily, and we are proud of what we have achieved in poverty alleviation.
Ladies and Gentlemen,
Friends,
China's development is an evolving historical process. Last month, the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China was successfully convened in Beijing. Responding to our people's desire for a better life, the Congress formulated a guide to action and a development blueprint for China in the new era. It is envisaged that by 2020, China will turn itself into a moderately prosperous society in all respects, and by 2035, China will basically realize socialist modernization. By the middle of this century, China will become a great modern socialist country that is prosperous, strong, democratic, culturally-advanced, harmonious and beautiful. Under the leadership of the Communist Party of China, the Chinese people will embark on a new journey.
First, this is a new journey of deepening reform across the board and unleashing dynamism for development. To resolve difficulties and problems on the way forward, we must deepen all-round reform. We will focus more on solving problems, get rid of all outdated thinking and ideas and all institutional ailments and break through the blockades of vested interests to inspire creativity and vitality throughout society. We will develop a set of institutions that are well conceived, fully built, procedure based, and efficiently functioning and achieve modernization of China's system and capacity for governance. Next year, we will celebrate the 40th anniversary of China's launching of the reform and opening-up initiative. China's reform will cover more areas; and more and stronger steps will be taken in pursuing this endeavor.
Second, this is a new journey of moving with the times and exploring new model of development. China's economy is in a transition from a phase of rapid growth to a stage of high-quality development. We will be guided by a new development philosophy, put quality first, give priority to performance and develop a modernized economy. We will pursue supply-side structural reform as our main task, work hard to achieve better quality and higher efficiency performance, and create more robust growth through reform. We will raise total factor productivity and accelerate the building of an industrial system that promotes coordinated development of the real economy with technological innovation, modern finance, and a talent pool. We will endeavor to develop an economy with more effective market mechanisms, dynamic micro-entities, and sound macro-regulation. All these efforts will make China's economy more innovative and competitive. We will promote further integration of the internet, big data, and artificial intelligence with the real economy, and cultivate new drivers of growth in digital economy, sharing economy, clean energy and other areas. We will continue to explore new mechanisms and pathways for achieving coordinated development among regions, promote coordinated development of the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region, Yangtze Economic Belt, Xiongan New Area, and Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area, build world-class city clusters and foster new source of growth.
As China works hard to pursue innovation and higher quality of growth, new forms of business will keep emerging, more innovations will be used, and development of various regions in China will become more balanced. All this will create a more powerful and extensive impact, present more opportunities of cooperation and enable more countries to board the express train of China's development.
Third, this is a new journey toward greater integration with the world and an open economy of higher standards. China will not slow its steps in opening up itself. We will work together with other countries to create new drivers of common development through the launching of the Belt and Road Initiative. We will adopt policies to promote high-standard liberalization and facilitation of trade and investment. We will implement the system of pre-establishment national treatment plus a negative list across the board, significantly ease market access, further open the service sector, and protect the legitimate rights and interests of foreign investors. All businesses registered in China will be treated as equals. We will grant more powers to pilot free trade zones to conduct reform, and explore the opening of free trade ports. We will speed up negotiations with partner countries on the concluding of free trade agreements and investment treaties, advance the building of FTAAP, work for the speedy conclusion of RCEP negotiations, and endeavor to establish a global network of free trade areas.
In the next 15 years, China will have an even larger market and more comprehensive development. It is estimated that China will import US$24 trillion worth of goods, attract US$2 trillion inbound direct investment and make US$2 trillion of outbound investment. In November next year, China will hold the first China International Import Expo in Shanghai, which will provide a new platform for expanding cooperation in China's market among all parties.
Fourth, this is a new journey toward a better life for the people. To secure a better life for our people is what we aim to achieve in everything we do. We will ensure and improve living standards through development and meet people's ever-growing needs for a better life. We will continue to promote social fairness and justice to see that our people will always have a strong sense of gains, happiness, and security. We will continue to implement targeted poverty reduction and alleviation measures and ensure that by the year 2020, all rural residents living below the current poverty line are lifted out of poverty. Each and every one of the over 1.3 billion Chinese people should lead decent lives. No one will be left behind!
We will speed up institutional reform for ecological conservation, pursue green, low-carbon and sustainable development, and implement the strictest possible system for environmental protection. By 2035, there will be a fundamental improvement in the environment; the goal of building a Beautiful China will be basically attained. We will actively tackle climate change, and protect our common home for the sake of human survival. China's carbon dioxide emission is expected to peak around 2030, and we will make every effort for such emissions to reach the peak ahead of time. We will increase the share of non-fossil fuels in primary energy consumption to around 20% by 2030. Once we set a target, we will not stop our efforts until it is met!
Fifth, this is a new journey toward a new type of international relations and a community with a shared future for mankind. The dream of us Chinese is closely connected with the dreams of people of other countries. Our world is full of challenges and the road ahead will not be smooth. But we will not give up on our dream. We will double our efforts and work with all others to build an open, inclusive, clean, and beautiful world that enjoys durable peace, universal security, and common prosperity.
We Chinese believe that peace is most precious and that there should be harmony among all nations. We are committed to peaceful development and we will remain an anchor for peace and stability in the Asia-Pacific region and beyond. China will, guided by the principle of upholding justice while pursuing shared interests, actively develop global partnerships, expand the convergence of interests with other countries, and work to foster a new type of international relations featuring mutual respect, fairness, justice, and win-win cooperation. Acting on the principle of achieving shared growth through consultation and collaboration, we will get actively involved in reforming and developing the global governance system to make the international political and economic order more just and equitable.
Ladies and Gentlemen,
Dear Friends,
All of our people in the Asia-Pacific deserve peace, stability and prosperity; and all of us in the region should jointly deliver a bright future for the Asia-Pacific. Partnerships based on mutual trust, inclusiveness, cooperation and mutual benefit: This is what keeps our big Asia-Pacific family together and ensures the success of Asia-Pacific cooperation. Let us take solid steps to promote cooperation and usher in an even brighter future for the Asia-Pacific.
Thank you.
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New! Super! Go! Fast! China Teases Hypersonic Military Attack Aircraft Designs
Sputnik News
01:38 12.11.2017(updated 01:50 12.11.2017)
A news report on the Chinese CCMF channel has revealed a glimpse of a top-secret JF-12 hypersonic wind-tunnel in which prospective - and presumably military - hypersonic aircraft are being tested.
Aerodynamic tunnels are commonly used to test the properties of machines prior to full scale production. In the case of aircraft that tend to be big and expensive, small models of new plane designs are positioned in wind tunnels to reveal how the new craft withstand high winds.
In the case of hypersonic planes, a tunnel is required that can simulate an aircraft movement at speeds much faster than the speed of sound. China has now demonstrated their own version.
Built in 2012, the JF-12, dubbed 'Hyper Dragon,' has been a carefully kept secret. The 2.5 meter wide, 265 meter long installation reportedly cost almost $7 million to construct and is capable of creating wind speeds up to 10 times the speed of sound, or about 7,680 mph. At those speeds, the air temperature in the tunnel can reach 5400 degrees Fahrenheit, testing the impact of hypersonic travel on structural materials.
Now, Chinese CCMF cameras have revealed a glimpse of several machines currently being tested in the hypersonic tunnel.
One futuristic hypersonic aircraft is an arrowhead-shaped glider which observers believe to be a model of the DF-ZF, previously known as WU-14.
China military and tech observers believe the machine to be capable of reaching 10 times the speed of sound, in what would be a serious challenge to current air and missile defense systems.
"The combination of high speed, maneuverability, and relatively low altitude makes them challenging targets for missile defense systems," said a report by the US National Air and Space Intelligence Center released during the summer.
Another study, quoted by the Free Beacon, details that "These weapons appear to operate in regimes of speed and altitude, with maneuverability that could frustrate existing missile defense constructs and weapon capabilities."
While there are numerous artist versions of what the DF-ZF could look like, the CCMF images are the first time China has revealed details of hypersonic planes. The image shows an aircraft model that looks very much like a paper plane, but folded with steel instead of paper.
The video shows other hypersonic vehicles of various shapes, including a triangular-shaped glider, and one weapon that appeared similar in shape to the last stage of a ballistic missile.
According to a DeathRattleSports report, a scientist in the video Jiang Zonglin never mentions the potential military application of the Hyper Dragon. Instead, Jiang explains that China is developing a commercial aircraft that could connect Beijing to New York in just two hours, seven times faster than today's air travel.
Jiang also details that the JF-12 tunnel conducts its tests every two days, and each test lasts only one-tenth of a second.
However, US officials do not seem to be too concerned about the upcoming challenges.
"Hypersonic technology is concerning to me, but it's really no more concerning to me than any cruise missile technology, any ballistic missile technology," said Air Force General John Hyten, commander of the Strategic Command, in July.
"We have to be prepared to defend ourselves against all those threats. And we have to have a deterrent that is ready to respond in case any of those break out," Hyten added.
Sputnik
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China urges South Korea to resume talks with North
Iran Press TV
Sat Nov 11, 2017 04:40PM
Chinese President Xi Jinping has urged South Korea to resume dialogue with the North to find a solution to the ongoing tension on the Korean Peninsula.
Xi made the remarks in a Saturday meeting with his South Korean counterpart Moon Jae-in on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in the Vietnamese city of Da Nang.
The meeting came as the US and South Korean warships have launched war games off the coast of the Korean Peninsula in a display of force aimed at North Korea.
The joint drills -- the first in the region for a decade -- are taking place in East Sea, also known as the Sea of Japan.
Tensions between the US and North Korea have dramatically increased following a series of weapons tests by Pyongyang and a war of words between US President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un.
Trump, whose country has thousands of nuclear weapons, has even threatened to "totally destroy" the country of 26 million people if necessary.
The North Korean leadership has threatened to attack the US with nukes if it continues its aggressive policy against the country.
The North Korean leader ordered the production of more rocket warheads and engines in August, 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. Thousands of US soldiers are stationed in South Korea and Japan.
The US Air Force is reportedly preparing to place its fleet of B-52 bombers rigged with nuclear weapons on 24-hour alert for the first time since 1991 amid escalating tensions with North Korea.
Some of Trump's advisers have warned him that US military options are limited at best, saying Pyongyang could launch an artillery barrage on Seoul, which is only about 50 kilometers from the border.
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North Korea says Trump begging for 'nuclear war' during Asia tour
Iran Press TV
Sat Nov 11, 2017 11:24AM
Pyongyang has censured US President Donald Trump's five-nation tour of Asia, saying all he has done during his visits is begging for a "nuclear war on the Korean Peninsula."
"Trump, during his visit, laid bare his true nature as destroyer of world peace and stability and begged for a nuclear war on the Korean Peninsula," the official KCNA news agency on Saturday cited a statement by the North Korean Foreign Ministry as saying.
The KCNA added that the Asian tour was a "warmonger's visit for confrontation to rid the DPRK of its self-defensive nuclear deterrence," using the abbreviation for the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, the country's official name.
The North Korean ministry also said nothing would deter Pyongyang from pursuing its nuclear weapons program.
During a speech at the South Korean parliament, the US president warned Pyongyang on Wednesday not to underestimate Washington, while offering North Korean leader Kim Jong-un a better future if he abandoned his nuclear and ballistic missile programs.
Tensions have been building on the peninsula following a series of nuclear and missile tests by Pyongyang as well as threats of war and personal insults traded between Trump and the North Korean leader.
Trump, who is on his first 12-day tour of Asia as president, had threatened the North with military action during his first two stops in Japan and South Korea.
North Korea has been under a raft of crippling United Nations sanctions since 2006 over its nuclear tests as well as multiple rocket and missile launches.
Pyongyang has firmly defended its military program as a deterrent against the hostile policies of the US and its regional allies, including South Korea and Japan.
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N. Korea Slams Trump for Trying to Halt Its Nuclear, Missile Programs
By VOA News November 11, 2017
North Korea denounced U.S. President Donald Trump on Saturday for trying to halt the North's nuclear and missile programs.
The North Korean Foreign Ministry issued its first official statement on Trump's trip to Asia, saying it "is a warmonger's trip for confrontation with our country, trying to remove our self-defensive nuclear deterrent.''
Pyongyang also accused Trump of trying to isolate it from the global community and weaken its government.
"Reckless remarks by an old lunatic like Trump will never scare us or stop our advance," the ministry said.
Much of Trump's five-nation Asia tour has focused on North Korea. Trump pressed Chinese President Xi Jinping privately on the North Korea nuclear issue, Trump administration officials said. According to Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, Trump told Xi, "You're a strong man. I'm sure you can solve this for me."
Xi urged his South Korean counterpart Saturday to reopen talks with North Korea to help manage the security threat posed by North Korea, according to Reuters news agency reports citing China's state-owned news service, Xinhua.
At APEC gathering
On the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Vietnam, Xi reportedly encouraged South Korean President Moon Jae-in to re-engage with North Korea in an attempt to get the North to end its nuclear and missile programs, which violate U.N. Security Council resolutions.
The leaders of South Korea and China agreed on the need to seek a peaceful resolution to the North Korean threat, South Korea's presidential spokesman reportedly said. As a result, the spokesman said, the two countries will engage in more intensive talks on all levels.
Tensions on the peninsula heightened last month when North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and Trump exchanged threats over Pyongyang's nuclear and missile programs.
In addition to the U.S., South Korea has urged China to take a more assertive role in curbing North Korea's military aspirations. Beijing has maintained it is doing all it can to restrain North Korea's provocative actions.
Moon and Xi have reportedly agreed to meet in China next month for another round of summit talks. In addition, Moon invited Xi to South Korea to attend the Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang in February, South Korea's presidential spokesman reportedly said.
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Iran's Su-22 Warplane Crashes Revolutionary Guard Corps
Sputnik News
12:58 11.11.2017(updated 14:17 11.11.2017)
A pilot of an Su-22 airplane of the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) was killed as the plane crashed in the Iran's south-western province of Fars.
TEHRAN (Sputnik) A Su-22 airplane of the IRGC Air Forces crashed at 08:00 a.m. [local time, 05:30 GMT] during military exercises in the south of the country, killing the pilot, the IRGC said Saturday in a statement.
Iran has faced a number of military planes' crashes in recent months. In December 2016, IRGC's light military aircraft crashed in Saravan airport, according to Trend news agency. In October, another military aircraft crashed while on a reconnaissance mission, killing the pilot and the co-pilot.
The Su-22 is an export modification of Su-17M2 fighter-bomber produced by the Soviet Union's Sukhoi manufacturer in 1970-1980s. It is widely used by the air forces of Syria, Poland, and Vietnam, alongside Iran and Arab countries. Iran has both Russian and US-made planes.
Sputnik
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Abadi: Anti-Daesh campaign has inflicted $100 billion in losses on Iraq
Iran Press TV
Sat Nov 11, 2017 02:35PM
Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi says the military campaign against the Daesh Takfiri terrorist group has cost the conflict-stricken Arab country $100 billion worth of damage as government forces, backed by fighters from the Popular Mobilization Units, are driving the extremists out of their last redoubt in the country.
"Iraq has lost $100 billion in the anti-Daesh war; but we have achieved success in three battles, namely liberating the land, maintaining Iraq's unity and standing up to threats," Abadi said during a speech in the central holy city of Karbala on Saturday.
The remarks came on the same day that Iraq's state-run al-Iraqiya television network reported that security forces had managed to fully recapture Rumana subdistrict in the western province of Anbar from Daesh.
Iraqi army soldiers, supported by pro-government fighters from the Popular Mobilization Units, better known by the Arabic name Hashd al-Sha'abi, launched a major operation on Saturday morning to retake the town of Rawah, located about 300 kilometers northwest of the capital Baghdad.
The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), in a statement released on November 8, announced that Daesh had taken about 2,500 families, equivalent to some 10,000 individuals, hostage in Rawah.
The OHCHR also appealed to the Iraqi government and security forces involved in the Rawah liberation operation to step up humanitarian efforts and open safe exit routes for civilians to frustrate terrorist schemes aimed at using ordinary people as human shields.
Late last month, the Iraqi prime minister formally ordered the launch of operations to purge Daesh terrorists from the towns of Rawah and Qa'im.
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Iraqi forces wage offensive to liberate last Daesh-held town
Iran Press TV
Sat Nov 11, 2017 11:16AM
Iraqi armed forces have waged an offensive to liberate the western town of Rawah from the Daesh terrorist group, leaving the notorious militants on the verge of collapse in the country.
Two Iraqi infantry divisions launched the operation on Saturday to recapture the small town in Anbar Province and its surrounding areas near the Syrian border, according to a statement issued by the country's Joint Operations Command.
Popular Mobilization Forces, better known as Hashd al-Sha'abi, and Sunni tribal fighters are backing the operation.
The development comes after Iraqi forces liberated the strategic town of al-Qaim located west of Rawah in Anbar -- in what Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi hailed as a "record time" triumph last week, leaving only tiny pockets of land in the hands of Daesh terrorists.
The anticipated recapture of Rawah would bring an end to Daesh control over swathes of territory it seized across Iraq and Syria in 2014, where the terrorist outfit declared a so-called caliphate.
On the side of the border, Syrian forces along with allied fighters from Lebanon's Hezbollah resistance movement also declared victory over Daesh on Thursday after recapturing the last sizable town of Bukamal near the Iraqi border.
Earlier this week, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) cautioned in a statement that Daesh terrorists had laid a siege to Rawah to prevent thousands of civilians from fleeing.
The UN agency said in its Wednesday statement that the Takfiri militants had taken about 2,500 families, equivalent to 10,000 individuals, hostage in Rawah, located about 300 kilometers northwest of the capital Baghdad, to block the progress of Iraqi forces.
Daesh terrorists swept through parts of northern and western Iraq in June 2014. They then began a reign of terror across the captured areas, committing crimes against all ethnic and religious communities in Iraq, including Shias, Sunnis, Kurds, Christians and others.
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Thousands Of Islamic Protesters Block Islamabad Streets, Demand Minister's Removal
November 11, 2017
Pakistani authorities have blocked all roads leading to parliament and deployed riot police as thousands of angry protesters demanded the removal of Law Minister Zahid Hamid for allegedly making an anti-Islamic change to electoral laws.
According to Islamabad police, more than 3,400 supporters of the radical Tehrik-e-Labaik Pakistan party, or Movement of the Prophet's Followers, staged a sit-in over the alleged change, which Hamid said was a clerical mistake and has already been corrected.
The alleged offense involved the removal of a reference in the official electoral oath to the Prophet Muhammad as the last prophet of God -- an Islamic tenet believed by most Pakistani Muslims.
"No negotiations till Zahid Hamid is removed," Islamist leader Khadim Hussain Rizvi said as protesters chanted slogans against him. "We will die to protect the honor of the prophet," Rizvi said.
Hamid released a video message saying he is a true Muslim who believes that Muhammad is the last prophet.
But it did not mollify the protesters, who say he changed the oath to appease the Ahmadiyya sect, which defines itself as Muslim, but which was declared non-Muslim by Pakistan in 1974 because it does not recognize Muhammad as the last prophet.
The sit-in has disrupted city life due to the roadblocks. On November 9, police filed charges against Rizvi and other participants in the rally, holding them responsible for the death of an sick infant after they refused passage to an ambulance.
The government has said it wants the protesters to peacefully disperse. Authorities said they are in communication with Rizvi who has not yet been detained over the charges to end the sit-in.
Authorities hinted at using force over the weekend if their talks with Rizvi fail. Pakistan has also stepped up security at Ahmadi worship places.
Based on reporting by AP, dpa, and Reuters
Source: https://www.rferl.org/a/thousands- islamic-protesters-block-islamabad-streets-demand- minister-hamid-removal/28847788.html
Copyright (c) 2017. RFE/RL, Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave., N.W. Washington DC 20036.
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Trump, Putin Say U.S.-Russia Agreement On Syria Will Save Many Lives, 'Extraordinarily Important'
RFE/RL November 11, 2017
U.S. President Donald Trump said on November 11 that an agreement with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Syria would save many lives after the two met at a summit of Asia-Pacific leaders, while the Russian leader called the statement "extraordinarily important."
"We agreed very quickly," Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One as he flew from the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in the resort city of Danang to Vietnam's capital, Hanoi. "It's going to save tremendous numbers of lives," he said of the agreement announced by the Kremlin in a joint statement on its website.
Separately, Putin told journalists at the end of the summit that the joint statement "is extraordinarily important" and confirms the principles of the antiterrorism fight.
The joint statement said that Trump and Putin had agreed on the sidelines of the APEC summit that a political solution was needed on Syria and that they would continue efforts to fight the Islamic State (IS) militant group.
Russia and the United States agree there is no military solution to the Syrian conflict, the joint statement said.
Putin and Trump reaffirmed their commitment to Syria's sovereignty, independence, and territorial integrity and called on all parties to the Syrian conflict to take an active role in the Geneva political process, it said.
Several rounds of UN-sponsored talks in Geneva between the Syrian government and the opposition have so far failed to bring an end to the civil war which killed more than 320,000 people and displaced millions since it broke out in March 2011.
Although the White House had said no official meeting was planned, Trump and Putin also shook hands at a dinner on November 10.
"We spoke intermittently during that roundtable. We seem to have a very good feeling for each other and a good relationship considering we don't know each other well," Trump said, adding that he and Putin had two or three very short verbal exchanges.
The Kremlin said earlier that the statement on Syria was coordinated by Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson especially for the meeting in Danang.
Trump said Putin had reiterated that he did not meddle in last year's U.S. presidential election, which brought Trump to the White House.
Trump said a good relationship with Russia was important.
"In fact it would be a great thing...because he could really help us in North Korea. We have a big problem with North Korea and China is helping us," Trump said. "If Russia helped us in addition to China that problem would go away a lot faster."
Trump said Chinese President Xi Jinping was a good man who "wants to do right," but he wanted Xi to ratchet up more pressure on North Korea.
After emphasizing during last year's U.S. presidential campaign that it would be positive if the United States and Russia could work together on world problems, Trump has had limited contact with Putin since taking office.
Trump publicly sitting down with Putin also brings back to attention the issue of Russian meddling in last year's election, which remains under investigation.
Trump's former campaign manager, Paul Manafort, has been indicted in the probe along with his former deputy, Rick Gates.
Speaking to journalists on the plane on November 11, Trump said Putin told him that he didn't interfere in the U.S. elections.
"He (Putin) said he didn't meddle. He said he didn't meddle. I asked him again," he said.
"You can only ask so many times.... He said he absolutely did not meddle in our election."
In response to Trump's comments about the Russian meddling in the election, Ben Cardin (Democrat-Maryland), one of the U.S. Senate's harshest critics of Russia, issued a statement, saying Trump's "denial of facts is troubling."
"President Trump believes a former KGB agent over 17 U.S. intelligence agencies. That is outrageous," Cardin, the senior Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said in a statement on November 11.
Meanwhile, Putin told the journalists in Danang that an alleged link between Manafort and Russia is being fabricated by Trump's opponents as a weapon against Trump. Manafort "has nothing to do with us," Putin said.
Reports that Putin's relatives were involved in contacts with the Trump administration are untrue, Putin said.
Putin also said he had a normal dialogue with Trump, describing the American president as civil, well-educated, and comfortable to deal with.
The Russian leader said a bilateral meeting with Trump did not happen because of scheduling issues on both sides and unspecified protocol issues.
Putin said there was still a need for further U.S.-Russia contacts, both at the level of heads of state and their officials, to discuss issues including security and economic development.
With reporting by Reuters and AFP
Source: https://www.rferl.org/a/putin-trump-agree-joint- efforts-against-is-syria/28848004.html
Copyright (c) 2017. RFE/RL, Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave., N.W. Washington DC 20036.
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Trump Says Joint Statement About Syria Issued With Putin Will Save Lives
By Steve Herman November 11, 2017
U.S. President Donald Trump on Saturday said that during the APEC summit in Vietnam he had "two or three very short conversations" with Russian President Vladimir Putin, centering on the situation in Syria.
Trump, speaking to reporters on Air Force One as it flew from Danang to the Vietnamese capital of Hanoi, said a joint statement on Syria he agreed to issue with Putin was "going to save a tremendous number of lives."
The statement, first released by the Kremlin, said the two leaders "confirmed the importance of de-escalation areas as an interim step to reduce violence in Syria, enforce cease-fire agreements, facilitate unhindered humanitarian access, and set the conditions for the ultimate political solution to the conflict."
It also said that Putin and Trump "agreed to maintain open military channels of communication between military professionals to help ensure the safety of both U.S. and Russian forces and de-confliction of partnered forces engaged in the fight against ISIS," or the Islamic State group.
Putin told reporters in Danang on Saturday that the joint statement was one of extraordinary importance, confirming the principles of the fight against terrorism.
Trump said of the Russian leader, "We seem to have a very good feeling for each other, a good relationship, considering we don't know each other well. I think it's a very good relationship."
Asked whether the issue of Russian meddling in the 2016 U.S. presidential election came up in their conversations in Danang, Trump replied, "He said he didn't meddle, he said he didn't meddle. I asked him again. You can only ask so many times."
Trump went on to say, "That whole thing was set up by the Democrats" slamming former U.S. intelligence leaders, including former CIA Director John Brennan and former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper.
"They're political hacks. So you look at it, and then you have Brennan, you have Clapper and you have [James] Comey. Comey's proven now to be a liar and he's proven to be a leaker," he said, referring to the FBI's former director, who was fired early in Trump's presidency amid much controversy.
"So you look at that. And you have President Putin very strongly, vehemently says he had nothing to do with that," Trump said.
U.S. intelligence officials declined to comment on Trump's remarks Saturday but previously have stood by the community's January 2017 assessment, which determined that Putin had "ordered an influence campaign in 2016 aimed at the U.S. presidential election."
But Representative Adam Schiff, a California Democrat and the ranking member of the House intelligence committee, said Saturday that the president understood the truth about Russian interference was simply choosing to "accept" Putin's denials "over the solid evidence of our own intelligence agencies."
"He understands all this and more. He just doesn't understand how to put country over self. Or to put it in terms he is more familiar with Mr. Trump simply can't bring himself to put America first," Schiff said in a statement.
And General Michael Hayden, former director of the National Security Agency, tweeted Saturday, "So my question is: which is the position of the U.S. government? POTUS or CIA?"
Hayden then tweeted, "CIA just told me: The Dir stands by and has always stood by the January 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment entitled: Assessing Russian Activities and Intentions in Recent U.S. Elections. The intelligence assessment with regard to Russian election meddling has not changed."
Putin: No confirmation
Putin, in Danang, asserted there was no confirmation of Russian meddling in the election, in which Trump defeated Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, and that there never would be any confirmation.
Trump, on Air Force One, said the United States could be helped a lot by Russia on the North Korean nuclear issue.
"You know, you are talking about millions and millions of lives," he said. "This isn't baby stuff, this is the real deal. And if Russia helped us in addition to China, that problem would go away a lot faster."
But Trump said, concerning the North Korea nuclear and ballistic missile issue, "I did not speak to President Putin about it, because we just had these little segments where we were talking about Syria."
Putin, in his remarks to the media, said, "We discussed all we wanted" at the APEC summit, but that unfortunately there was little time to speak in detail. He added that it would be good for Russian and American teams to sit down to talk about the whole breadth of the bilateral relationship.
Putin described Trump as a comfortable person, educated, and said he and the U.S. president were highly civil in their interactions.
The Russian leader warned, however, that action was likely to be taken against U.S. media in response to an American requirement that Russia's RT media outlet register as a foreign agent in the United States.
Putin termed it an attack on free speech by the U.S. government, and he warned retaliatory measures will be proportionate and reciprocal.
CNN, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and the Voice of America have been mentioned by Russian officials and media reports as the most likely targets of the retaliation.
VOA's national security correspondent Jeff Seldin and Katherine Gypson contributed to this report.
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The F5 is seemingly a homerun for Oppo as the interest in the smartphone just refuses to die down and it held onto the top spot in our trending chart for a third week in a row.
The Apple iPhone X saw its popularity increase significantly over the past seven days, but not quite enough and it has to settle for second once more. Xiaomi Redmi Y1, on the other hand, jumped 5 spots to complete the podium.
What follows is a trio of handsets that sit exactly where we left them last week - Samsung Galaxy J7 Pro, Xiaomi Mi A1 and Samsung Galaxy Note8 take positions four to six.
Nokia 6 edged out another phone to debut this week - the Xiaomi Remdmi Y1 - for seventh place. The final two spots are taken by the Samsung Galaxy J7 Prime and the Xiaomi Redmi 4.
Samsung Galaxy S8 took advantage of its recent price cuts to return to the top 10 and got seventh, pushing the Nokia 6 down a spot.
The third Xiaomi handset on the chart - Redmi 4 climbed to ninth, while the Motorola Moto X4 snatched the last available place.
This means there's no room for Samsung Galaxy J7 Prime and the Razer Phone among the most popular devices this week.
Police Accountability Boards starting work in most Maryland counties
Mandated by state law after the killing of George Floyd, Police Accountability Boards have begun work in the majority of Maryland counties.
To the editor:
Thank you Flagstaff and Northern Arizona. We would like to thank all those who have supported the recent Northern Arizona Volunteer Medical Corp fund-raising event, Swingin Fore Kids. The event was very successful and we are able to continue our work both locally and globally because of you. We feel blessed to be able to continue our support of Camp Colton and the Flagstaff Family Food Center. It is only through your generosity that we can help these and other local groups.
Globally we will be able to support the education of orphans in Haiti. We will be sending medical teams to Bolivia in November and to Haiti in December. Without your support these people would not receive the education and medical care that they need. In difficult times such as these, you have provided a light in the darkness.
We wish to thank the volunteers who have helped to make this event such a success and to those who have travelled with us to provide medical care and a safer home to the people of Bolivia and Haiti.
Thanks also to those who supported our Zombie Blood Drive during which we collected 95 units of blood and raised over $22,000 for the Flagstaff Family Food Center.
Again, many kind thanks.
JOHN DURHAM
CATHY FLORES
President and Vice President
Northern Arizona Volunteer Medical Corp
The Knicks plan to unload Mindaugas Kuzminskas today to make room for Joakim Noahs return from suspension, a source tells Laura Albanese of Newsday.
The Lithuanian forward has been a forgotten man in New York, playing just two minutes all season. That comes after a promising rookie year in which he appeared in 68 games and averaged 6.3 points in nearly 15 minutes per night.
I think the next three years are going to be the best of my career, I hope, because Ive never felt so good physically, mentally, Kuzminskas told reporters before Saturdays game. If it is possible to play here, I would be more than happy. I think to play here, to win here is a great feeling, especially this year, when were playing pretty good, winning more games, the atmosphere in the gym is great and everything. If it is possible for me to play here, of course I would like to stay, and if not, I would just like to play.
Kuzminskas lost one of his biggest supporters in the organization over the summer when the Knicks fired former team president Phil Jackson, who signed the 28-year-old to a two-year deal in the summer of 2016. That contract pays him $3,025,035 this season, but the Knicks are apparently willing to sacrifice that money even though there are cheaper options available. Jarrett Jack, Ramon Sessions and Michael Beasley each make $1,471,382 on veterans minimum contracts, and Jacks deal is non-guaranteed.
Last night, Noah served the final game of his 20-game suspension for using an illegal substance, and the Knicks have to make a move by 5 p.m. today to add him to the roster. They will try to work out a trade involving Kuzminskas, Albanese writes, but will waive him if that is not successful.
I think a lot of things happened this summer, you know, a lot of things changed, Kuzminskas said. And its obvious that last years team wasnt that good, so youve got to change something [And when] a person like [Jackson] is a fan of yours, its awesome, but you know, like I said, I was happy when he was here last year. He gave me a lot of advice. Just seeing him last year, the practices, it gives extra motivation. This year, hes gone. This year we have other guys who are great too in our front office.
It was back in 2010 that producer 9th Wonder properly assumed the position as Professor when he began teaching a course on music from the Civil Rights and Black Power movements at Duke University alongside Professor Mark Anthony Neal. Since then, the super-producers accolades have grown in number, eventually landing him at his alma mater of North Carolina Central University (NCCU), teaching a History of Hip-Hop course.
Its just the way to reach this generation, he said in a recent sit down with the local WRAL news station about his class. I think this generation speaks in a certain language that the generations before did not Hip Hop is now a 44-year-old art form. Within it is life. Its fashion. Its journalism. Its law. Its definitely technology when it comes to deejaying and producing and recording and the things that we use.
In this interview, 9th Wonder went on to reveal his role in NCCUs plans to launch a new Hip-Hop Central project in yet another stride in embracing Hip-Hop culture. Hip-Hop Central will include a library database, a studio, and an annual conference that will cover topics that include hip-hop education, entrepreneurship, and much more. Hip Hop speaks on what happens in America, 9th went on to say. It may speak on a side of America that you may not be privy to. But they need a voice as well.
In the same interview, 9th Wonder uncovers his origins as a student at North Carolina Central as well, revealing that his name was inspired by a Digable Planets track of the same name, and detailing the beginnings of Little Brother as the inception of his career. It continues to be a fruitful year for the Little Brother member and Jamroc honcho.
So far, hes had his hand in several major releases of the year, including Kendrick Lamars DAMN. (Duckworth), and handling most of the production on Jamroc/Roc Nation signee Rapsodys Lailas Wisdom, and lending a hand on Problems Selfish, and Masta Killas Loyalty is Royalty project.
Be sure to catch the full extended interview below.
9th
The Beyonce hashtag on Instagram no longer produces results on Instagram. When viewed on mobile, searching the hashtag leads to a blank screen with the words No Posts Yet, while the desktop view shows only the top results, as well as a disclaimer for why the results have been limited.
Recent posts from #beyonce are currently hidden because the community has reported some content that may not meet Instagrams community guidelines, it reads. Specific information on why the results have been hidden is not provided, but Instagram does have some info on why Most Recent posts for a hashtag would not be showing up. We may remove the Most Recent section of a hashtag page if people are using the hashtag to post abusive content in a highly visible place, a page from IGs Help section reads. If thats the case, youll only see Top Posts on a hashtag page for a limited period of time.
On Saturday, paparazzi photos of Beyonces twins Sir and Rumi Carter, whose images had previously only been shared via an official shoot following their birth, made their way online. The pictures were taken from afar during a family trip to Miami, very clearly without Beyonces knowledge or permission. While it has not been confirmed that this is the reason for the limiting of Beyonces hashtag results, it seems quite likely. If Beys fanbase has been reporting the photos on the platform as abusive, it could have played a role in the limited search.
Fans noticed that the hashtag results had been limited Saturday night, and some have also reported that accounts that posted photos of the twins have since been shut down. While there is no evidence that Beyonce herself had anything to do with Instagrams reaction to the photos, Twitter users had some fun imagining Bey was ordering the cancellation of certain accounts.
Beyonce recently appeared on Eminems new single Walk On Water.
This Big Indian Joint Family Has 72 Members Living in The Same House in Maharashtra
Ms Suu Kyi has faced international criticism over her lack of action to prevent alleged ethnic cleansing of her country's Rohingya Muslims
The Irish singer and humanitarian campaigner returned his freedom of the city of Dublin award in protest against the Burma leader
Aung San Suu Kyi has "duped" Ireland, Bob Geldof has said as he returned his freedom of Dublin in protest.
The musician said the Nobel Peace Prize winner who came through so much had an even greater responsibility not to "oversee" carnage in Burma.
Suu Kyi became a free woman of the Irish capital in 2000 as she struggled for democracy while under military arrest.
Since her freedom and election as de facto leader two years ago she has faced international criticism over lack of action to prevent alleged ethnic cleansing of her country's Rohingya Muslims by security forces.
Geldof, 66, said: "Having fought through moral force these thugs in the military and she comes to power democratically and it is a great moral victory.
"How much more is the onus and responsibility on you at that point to say something, to not oversee carnage?
"How much more?"
More than half a million of the Rohingya minority group have fled to Bangladesh after recent violence.
Suu Kyi's leadership has drawn criticism from human rights groups who campaigned for her freedom during 15 years under house arrest by a military junta.
There have been calls for her to be stripped of the Nobel prize she won in 1991 and she has been condemned by international leaders over her reluctance to acknowledge violence by the army.
The British Government has said the treatment of minority Muslims looked like ethnic cleansing.
Geldof delivered the scroll to Dublin City Council offices.
He said: "Dublin should not have any truck with this war. She has let us Dubliners down, she has let Ireland down, because we thought she was one thing and we have been duped."
For years she was a human rights symbol and lauded for her bravery.
She picked up the Dublin award in 2012 after her release.
Geldof performed with the Boomtown Rats, organised Live Aid to raise money to combat the Ethiopian famine in 1985 and is a committed campaigner against genocide.
He sang for Suu Kyi when she was welcomed to Dublin in 2012 but claimed she no longer deserved the honour.
The accolade was last removed from a German man during the First World War and given back to him later.
Dublin Council said it was not aware of anyone returning the freedom before.
The singer said he was saddened, adding: "It was a great day and all my family were there and it began to rain and the beautiful lettering began to run and that made it even better and that is what I have just handed back, it is a big patch on my living room wall."
He added: "I am really proud of it. I get handed things by states and cities around the world but I am a Dub and this meant very much to me.
"It does not mean much to anybody else but to me, I don't want to do it but it is the most I can do and the least."
James Brokenshire will introduce Westminster legislation to pass a budget to run public services in the absence of a devolved government in Belfast
A deal to restore powersharing in Northern Ireland could be clinched early next year, the Taoiseach said.
On Monday Northern Ireland Secretary James Brokenshire will introduce Westminster legislation to pass a budget to run public services in the absence of a devolved government in Belfast.
Leo Varadkar said he discussed Northern Ireland with the Prime Minister every fortnight.
"It is my firm view that it is possible to come to an agreement to re-establish the Executive and Assembly, to get devolution working again and to ensure that Northern Ireland has a unique voice at this important time.
"The gap between the parties in terms of substance is not huge, it is really a matter now of political willingness and trust and it is possible to come to an agreement, if not in the next few weeks then perhaps early in the new year.
"I am very much involved in that."
He met DUP leader Arlene Foster and Mr Brokenshire over the weekend and will be meeting Sinn Fein this week.
Mr Brokenshire said he was firmly focused on bringing the parties at Stormont together and the budget should not be seen as some sort of move towards direct rule from London.
Gerry Adams has called for a British/Irish inter-governmental conference on Northern Ireland.
The sticking points between the DUP and Sinn Fein include an Irish language act.
Sinn Fein's leader in Northern Ireland Michelle O'Neill said a deal was only possible if the DUP and British government upheld equality.
"Sinn Fein remains committed to the restoration of the institutions and the Executive.
"However, they only have value if they enjoy the confidence and support of the people they were established to serve.
"They only have meaning if they are delivering fairly for all our people based on the principles of equality and mutual respect on which they were founded.
"If the DUP or anyone else wish to exercise political power in Government in the north of Ireland now or in the future, then the cost is to embrace a rights-based society and equal partnership government, which works for everyone."
Mrs Foster said they must get on with bringing back devolved government to Northern Ireland.
She said Mr Brokenshire's budget would bring certainty but it would not be long before the next budget would have to be decided.
"We really must get on and bring devolution back."
She said they could come to a good agreement for nationalists and unionists.
"We want to see devolution back and we want to see government back because I am very clear that is what people in Northern Ireland want.
"Not at any price it has to be said, but they want it back and they want government back.
"There are still significant differences there, but do I think those can be overcome? I certainly think we can work together to make an agreement that is good for unionism and for nationalism."
Ireland's "stubborn" stance in the Brexit negotiations is not a "land grab" for Northern Ireland, Simon Coveney has said.
And the Foreign Affairs Minister stressed Britain did not have the right democratically to decide or shape Ireland's future.
He also warned ministers must take a strong position in the negotiations on Britain's withdrawal from the European Union.
In a hard-hitting speech during a session on Brexit at the Fine Gael national conference yesterday, he told delegates there could be no change to the regulatory or customs rules, which would negatively impact cross-border trade.
He called on the UK government to provide "credible and real answers" about what would happen to the 310-mile frontier.
"Britain does not have the right on its own to shape our future as Ireland in the context of the relationship that we have with the United Kingdom," he said
"It seems essential to us that there is no emergence of regulatory divergence from the rules of the internal market, or the customs union, which are necessary from meaningful North-South cooperation, or an all-Ireland economy, that is consistent with the Good Friday Agreement."
He stressed the Government would not waver from this "consistent, firm and stubborn position that Ireland has held for some time".
He said it was up to Ireland and Britain to work together to find solutions for the Border, which will not negatively impact the Good Friday Agreement.
"Brexit is the most important negotiation of our time. It is going to be what shapes our relationship with the European Union and the UK.
"We have an interwoven relationship with the UK which simply cannot be undone".
A border of concrete bollards and cars being stopped could never be allowed to re-emerge, he added.
"On this island we are in the business of building bridges not borders," he added.
During yesterday's session, he stressed there should be no "regulatory divergence" post Brexit, in order to keep a "functioning all-island economy".
He also warned a no-deal Brexit scenario would lead to significant levies, such as 60pc on beef.
"We need a future trading relationship with Britain. Our relationship and our economic relationship will remain strong."
Meanwhile, in his first speech to a Fine Gael national conference as party leader, Taoiseach Leo Varadkar, reiterated his position that there could be no return to a border on the island of Ireland.
He also stressed that it was his priority that Ireland remain at the heart of Europe.
"I want to reassure all border communities that we are listening to you, we hear your concerns and we promise you that we will safeguard your rights, and all that we have achieved," he said.
Addressing his party faithful in the Slieve Russell Hotel in Cavan, he repeated his insistence about the future of the open border.
"A shared space is not a lost space. So on this island, let's build bridges, not borders.
This came as MPs propping up Theresa May's UK government yesterday warned they "will not accept" a deal with Brussels that weakens Northern Ireland's relationship with the rest of the UK.
Nigel Dodds, who leads the Democratic Unionist Party's group of 10 MPs, said the European Union was failing "to engage in a meaningful fashion" over the border between Ireland and Ulster.
He also rejected a claim that Northern Ireland or the UK as a whole must continue to abide by the rules of the EU single market and customs union in order to avoid a "hard border".
Tech giant Google is close to finalising a deal to acquire the Treasury Building on Dublin's Grand Canal Street for a figure in excess of 120m, the Sunday Independent can reveal.
It is understood the proposed transaction marks the conclusion of a process which kicked off with informal talks at the beginning of this year.
While a spokeswoman for Google declined to comment, the US web giant's intended purchase of the Treasury Building represents a coup for the property's owners, developers Johnny Ronan, Paddy McKillen, and Percy Nominees.
It also serves as a statement of Google's intent to deepen its investment in Dublin, and to grow its 6,100-strong workforce.
Google's decision to buy the Treasury Building outright is in keeping with its preference for owning its own premises. It previously bought its European headquarters on Barrow Street and the nearby Montevetro building for 100m and 99m respectively, in 2011.
Both buildings were developed by Treasury Holdings, the company formerly led by Johnny Ronan and Richard Barrett. Google's move into the Treasury Building could come as early as next year.
The building's current occupier, the NTMA, is poised to move shortly to its new headquarters at Dublin Landings, which is being developed by Sean Mulryan's Ballymore and Singapore-headquartered Oxley Holdings in the north docks.
In more welcome news for Dublin and the wider economy, US tech giant LinkedIn is also understood to have agreed to pre-let 130,000 sq ft of office space at One Wilton, a 150,000 sq ft building which is set to be developed by Iput on the site of Fitzwilton House at Wilton Terrace.
LinkedIn is expected to pay a rent of 60 per sq ft for its new premises, which will be located next to its recently-opened European headquarters at Wilton Place. LinkedIn's pre-letting of space at One Wilton suggests it intends to add hundreds of new employees to its 1,200-strong workforce within the next few years. In its latest annual report, Iput indicated that One Wilton would be completed by mid-2019, subject to the agreement of a pre-let this year.
A spokesman for Iput declined to comment on the company's pre-letting agreement with LinkedIn when contacted by the Sunday Independent.
This week the Minister for Agriculture leads a trade mission to Japan and South Korea to promote Irish food exports, in particular, beef and dairy.
According to the Minister, 55pc of the worlds population will be living in the South East Asia region by 2050 and the EUs updated trade agreement with Japan is good news for Ireland, he said, presenting Ireland with an opportunity to reap the economic benefits from the EU-Japan trade deal, especially in terms of agri-exports.
Some 25 meat and dairy companies are on the trade mission, looking to tap into the Japanese population of 125m and the South Korean population of 50m people. And it's the growing middle classes that the Irish companies are looking to sell to. Japanese consumers eat around 48kg of meat every year, while pigmeat is the largest consumed meat - accounting for roughly 15.3kg of the 48kg.
Currently, Japan is Ireland's 11th most important trading and is expected to increase its imports of dairy.
In 2016, Ireland exported E56m worth of food and drink to Japan and the EU deal with Japan plans for the scrapping of duties on many European cheeses such as Gouda and Cheddar (current duties are 29.8pc).
In addition, it will allow the EU to increase its beef exports to Japan substantially, while on pork there will be duty-free trade in processed meat and almost duty-free trade for fresh meat.
Some 43,500t of Irish beef is currently sent to Japan at a tariff of 38.5pc, which could be reduced to 9pc over 15 years.
The increase will be the first time the tariff mechanism has been tripped for beef imports since it was last triggered for chilled beef in August 2003, the farm ministry said.
Japan is the world's third-largest economy, with a population of about 127 million. EU firms already export over 58bn in goods and 28bn in services to Japan annually.
A final text on the proposed EU-Japan FTA deal will be presented by the end of the year, before coming before the European Parliament for review, as well as EU Member States
According to the Minister Japan is looking to diversify its food sources and Ireland can fulfil that requirement.
The trade mission, he said, will not just be an opportunity to sell Irish food produce but also to cement the impression of Ireland the food island.
Some 40 representatives from 25 different Irish food companies are accompanying the Minister on the trip, mainly from meat and dairy companies. Beef and dairy are central to the trade mission, he said.
However, he said that it's up to individual companies when a market is opened how much product goes into the market. "We will shift as much of the market will pay an optimum price for," he said, declining to put a possible monetary value on the markets.
Beef exports have significant opportunity to grow in volumes due to reducing tariffs over the next five years, he said, but he said currency movements can have a huge effect on markets.
Forage quantity and quality remains the big issue again this month.
On quality, the main laboratories are reporting results that are very variable in dry matter, energy, protein and are displaying poor fermentation characteristics.
This reflects my own results testing silages from all over the country with portable NIR forage testing equipment.
First cut silages made in late April and in early May are of exceptional quality but quantity is obviously an issue.
Given the break in weather after this period, most late first cuts deteriorated in quality and on this late first cut ground there was little opportunity to take second cuts.
I was in Tyrone last week and saw the consequences of trying to take a second cut off late first cut ground.
It was heart-breaking to see the damage being caused to the field, but this was no doubt necessary in order to bolster depleted forage supplies.
The lack of forage stocks and lower feed quality will make for a difficult winter on some farms.
These silages will also pose a big challenge surrounding mineral and vitamin supplementation to all categories of livestock.
Soil compaction is an obvious result of heavy machinery or a heavy stocking density in poor weather conditions.
Air is driven out of the soil to create anaerobic soil conditions under which iron and molybdenum become very soluble and are rapidly taken up by the grass plant.
Any grass silage made in these conditions can be very high in molybdenum, which locks up available copper and can reduce cow fertility.
These silages may also be very high in iron which not only locks out copper but also affects zinc and manganese availability, which are essential for hoof health and fertility.
High levels of iron in silage also creates a big demand for immune antioxidants such as selenium and vitamin E, which are required to make the iron 'safe'.
This means the animal's immune system is effectively compromised and unless boosted by targeted mineral supplementation these animals will be more susceptible to health issues and infections.
Soil contamination of silage, will obviously reduce palatability while aluminium levels will increase which can lock up available phosphorus that is essential for energy and growth particularly in the growing and finishing.
This year in particular, I would urge farmers to not only sample silage for its nutritional value but also for its mineral content.
When taking samples, it is important to not only test the good bales or good pit but to get a true representation of all forage stocks.
The usual method of taking a silage sample from the top of the bale isn't recommended, a bale should be fully opened and sample from all parts as there can be a huge discrepancy between the top and bottom of a wet bale.
Careful consultation is required with your mineral/vitamin supplier to ensure that that your forage is correctly balanced to offset any negatives present in the silage. Dry cow mineral supplementation needs particular attention to ensure calf health and the cow's future fertility isn't compromised.
In a normal year, silage shortfalls could be somewhat offset using straw, hay, maize silage or wholecrop cereals. Needless to say, the available stocks of these alternatives are now very depleted around the country.
This calls for some very creative thinking to get those in difficulty through until what we all hope will be an early spring.
The gravity of the situation in marginal forage regions is hard to comprehend for those who have an abundant supply of forage.
Even at this early stage, I would call on the relevant bodies to look at the establishment of a national silage inventory for surplus forage to be made available for farmers in the affected regions, at an appropriate cost.
Forage budgeting is widely encouraged and by determining whether there is a surplus or shortage on your farm, notification could be given to a centralised organising body.
If action is taken now a lot of unnecessary cost and panic purchasing of expensive imported forage could be avoided. This week I have witnessed Lucerne hay being imported from the continent, straw from England and Spain, straw pellets from France along with other 'fodder stretchers'.
Gerry Giggins is an animal nutritionist based in Co Louth
A majority stake in Cork-based outsourcing company Voxpro was sold to Canadian firm Telus International for just under 40m, figures released last week reveal.
According to third-quarter financials from call centre giant Telus, a 55pc stake was bought for a cash consideration of CA$58m (39m). The main beneficiaries of the deal are founders husband and wife team Linda and Dan Kiely. The Canadian company said that it had also entered into a put and call option for the remaining 45pc of the shares beginning in 2021.
If the option is exercised, the total consideration is estimated to be approximately CA$152m (102.7m). Typically achieving this price would be linked to meeting challenging targets.
"The investment was made with a view to expanding further into supporting customers who provide internet-related services and products, bolstering sales capabilities in our chosen markets, and acquiring multi-site redundancy in support of other facilities," said Telus.
The deal was announced in August and at the time it was speculated that the Irish company had been sold to Telus for 150m.
The company's most recent accounts showed that it had revenues of 33m in 2015 and profits of 3m. Earlier this year, Mr Kiely had said that the firm's revenues would soon reach 100m. He also said that the company was seeking to raise finance in the "tens of millions" for aggressive expansion into Asia.
Founded in Cork 20 years ago, the company has built up expertise in high-end support for some of the world biggest name tech companies. Voxpro, which has 2,700 employees, has call centres in Cork, Dublin, Bucharest, Manila and in the US cities of Athens and Folsom.
'One51 is a major shareholder in a number of Canadian business, the largest of which is IPL, and the Canadian investors may wish to continue to be influential in relation to this business, sources said.' (stock photo)
A takeover approach by CapVest, the private-equity firm headed by Cavan businessman Seamus Fitzpatrick, for plastics company One51 fell down over a failure to reach agreement with the company's Canadian shareholders.
It understood that some progress had been made on talks and while a price had not been settled upon, the main issue was how the deal would be structured.
The Canadians - CDPQ, an institutional investor which manages funds for the Canadian public sector, and FSTQ, a Canadian government agency which supports investment in Quebec - are long-term holders in the company and would have remained as minority investors.
CapVest typically runs its investments independently of shareholders and it was expected that Fitzpatrick would have given the Canadians assurances in exchange for their backing of the deal and stepping back from operational matters.
One51 is a major shareholder in a number of Canadian business, the largest of which is IPL, and the Canadian investors may wish to continue to be influential in relation to this business, sources said. One51 said on Friday that it will push ahead with a restructuring to pave the way for an IPO.
'The proposed solar farm will provide 25mw of power to the national grid and "will assist in the secure supply of energy for local businesses and the region as a destination for investment by large energy users through the supply of green energy", said the company in a submission to the planning authority.' (stock photo)
Elgin Energy is seeking permission for a major 100-acre solar photovoltaic (PV) farm in Kilkenny, adding to its Midlands-wide solar power play.
The application is just the latest in a slew of proposals by developers for solar farms on sites right across the country over the past year, following a significant fall in the cost of solar PV technology.
Elgin - in which Superquinn founder Feargal Quinn was an early investor - has applied to build the power installation at a 39.6-hectare site close to the village of Ballyragget. Quinn is no longer involved in the business but the energy company is seeking permission to build similar farms at a number of other sites across the Midlands.
The company has received permission to build a 35-acre solar farm in Carlow. It has also been given the green light for farms in Laois, Offaly and Westmeath. It is also seeking permission for a development close to Athboy, Co Meath, while it was refused permission on a 28-hectare site near Courtown, Co Wexford.
The proposed solar farm will provide 25mw of power to the national grid and "will assist in the secure supply of energy for local businesses and the region as a destination for investment by large energy users through the supply of green energy", said the company in a submission to the planning authority.
Elgin said that the proposed project in Ballyragget could power 6,500 homes in the region or could provide enough power to meet 25pc of the nearby Glanbia factory's current annual electricity requirements. The project would eliminate 300,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions over its lifespan.
A decision on the latest Kilkenny project, which would be operational for 30 years, is due on December 5 according to Kilkenny's planning department.
In its latest submission to the planning authorities, Elgin claimed that solar PV will become "the most prevalent source of renewable technology over the coming years".
Globally, installed PV capacity is reported at around 300 gigawatts but this is expected to rise to around 1700 gigawatts by 2030. More than 12,000mw of the technology has been installed in the UK but, while proposals have risen sharply in Ireland, not many projects have yet been constructed.
In August, this newspaper reported analysis of planning applications that showed 225 applications had been received by local authorities since June 2015 and that no applications were in the system before then.
In some areas where solar farms have been proposed objectors have highlighted the fact that there are currently no national planning guidelines for the technology.
The consultation period on a proposed new renewable energy support scheme was closed on Friday.
Industry insiders said that the scheme could potentially have a major impact on the solar industry and its development in Ireland.
'News of the dividend emerged after the Sunday Independent previously revealed some investors in a CapVest fund were being bought out by private-equity firm HarbourVest Partners for 200m.' (stock photo)
Shareholders at Valeo Foods have a received a dividend as part of a 600m refinancing of the company's debts.
The Sunday Independent has learned that around 100m of the debt raised was allocated for a 10m dividend to shareholders, repaying original equity investors in the company, and paying off a range of other debt instruments.
Valeo Foods declined to comment on the transaction, which took place in the summer.
CapVest - the Mayfair-based private equity firm run by Cavan businessman Seamus Fitzpatrick - has a majority stake in the business which owns brands including Jacob's, Batchelors, Odlums and Chef.
The business was created by CapVest as a vehicle to acquire Batchelors and Origin Foods - a division of listed Origin Enterprises.
Valeo - run by former Aer Lingus chief operating officer Seamus Kearney - bought tea and coffee maker Robert Roberts and health food company Kelkin from DCC in a 60m deal a number of years ago.
It has also recently expanded into continental Europe via the acquisition of Italian sponge-cake maker Balconi.
News of the dividend emerged after the Sunday Independent previously revealed some investors in a CapVest fund were being bought out by private-equity firm HarbourVest Partners for 200m.
Investors were also offered the chance to roll their interests over into a new entity seeking to maximise the remaining assets in the fund - the stake in Valeo and another majority stake in the Mater Private Healthcare Group.
That entity is still being managed by CapVest.
The transaction came after CapVest received unsolicited approaches from investors looking to buy the assets earlier this year. The Mater healthcare group had been up for sale as recently as last year, but no deal took place.
The Revenue Commissioners have refused to rule out the prosecution of taxpayers who come forward to make disclosures about offshore assets.
Tax advisers sought clarification as to what would happen to those who came forward after May 4, a cut-off date for taxpayers to come forward in exchange for lesser penalties.
Offshore assets and tax avoidances were in the spotlight last week following reporting of the so-called Paradise Papers, a batch of leaked documents mostly from offshore law firm Appleby.
At a meeting between Revenue and accountants and lawyers in June, tax officials said that there would be no mitigation of penalties when offshore assets are disclosed and where the behaviour is seen as 'deliberate'.
According to the minutes of the meeting, practitioners raised concerns "that the possibility of criminal prosecution may prevent individuals in certain sectors from coming forward to declare any offshore defaults".
Revenue previously set a deadline of May 4 for all Irish taxpayers to come forward and reveal if they had any undeclared offshore income. This would results in a "discounted" penalty rate of 10pc of the tax due and they would avoid the prospect of criminal prosecution or having their names published.
Revenue said that following the May 4 cut-off date: "The facts and the evidence will determine if a case is put forward for prosecution. Each case is considered on its own merits. Should a person make a disclosure, Revenue will consider all facts of the case, but prosecution cannot be ruled out."
Practitioners stated that some taxpayers would not be willing to come forward if non-prosecution was not assured. Revenue said that disclosures relating to offshore matters were still encouraged.
Tax advisers also referred to the "anxiety" that may arise relating to offshore pensions to which Revenue said that the income tax exemption thresholds were high in relation to this.
Revenue also stated that they have no discretion when it comes to publication of cases, as 'naming and shaming' is mandatory under legislation if the criteria are met. Revenue also said that the deadline for making a qualifying disclosure relating to offshore matters had been widely publicised.
Richie Boucher renewed the banks sponsorship of Leinster Rugby will his successor, Francesca McDonagh, take a similar interest?
Danske is the only bank yet to reveal just how many of its Irish mortgage customers have been affected by the tracker scandal, and this has been getting some attention back home.
Denmark's biggest bank bought National Irish Bank back in 2005 and it is still busily working away to find out if it has any tracker issues lurking in its files. When the Danish Financial Supervisory Authority was pressed on Danske's role, the issue was quickly kicked backed to the Irish authorities.
But Danske's press manager, Kenni Leth, told local media that the bank should have some "concrete conclusions" from its inquiries by the end of November.
However, it is dealing with another scandal at the moment. According to the Financial Times, a French court is investigating an Estonian unit of Danske for allegedly laundering stolen Russian money.
Back in Ireland, new Bank of Ireland boss Francesca McDonagh was seen as doing the right thing by tackling its tracker history head-on.
The bank revealed that another 6,000 customers are affected by the tracker issue, which will be a costly admission. The Central Bank and politicians may have been piling on the pressure, but McDonagh gets the credit for laying all the bank's cards on the table.
But will this move on the trackers be a sign of McDonagh's willingness to do the right thing on other issues?
One of predecessor Richie Boucher's parting gifts was a renewal the bank's sponsorship of Leinster Rugby. But Leinster has been getting a thrashing for its attitude to women's rugby of late.
Leinster Rugby is refusing to accept that women's teams can achieve senior status. Dublin team Railway Union RFC, for example, has been pushing for senior status recognition, and admission to the executive to no avail and s complaining of gender discrimination.
As has previously been noted, McDonagh is a strong advocate of gender equality and when at HSBC spoke of being "stunned" by the lack of senior women in banking. Goodness knows what she will make of the Irish rugby scene.
It's early days but let's see if McDonagh will be willing to get into the thick of that particular scrum.
The book is mightier than the DVD, Eason shows
What a difference a few years make. After a torrid loss-making period, bookshop chain Eason successfully managed to restructure itself and is now trading profitably.
Fears of the demise of the book have been so far unwarranted. Word in the market is that growth in e-readers has plateaued and that theres plenty of life in the printed page yet. Thats good news for Eason a strong brand that customers like. Now its facing toward the future with a strategy known as Eason 2020.
But there was a time when it could have ended up in different ownership. I recently heard that distressed-asset investor Hilco had mulled a potential move for the business some years ago but nothing concrete ever materialised.
Hilco did buy Xtra-vision, which was ultimately closed. It also owns HMV, whose Republic of Ireland stores have been shuttered. The book is mightier than the DVD it seems.
* * * * *
A new opening on OConnell Street marked the end of an era last week. Last month the Kylemore Cafe closed its doors after 30 years on the north side thoroughfare to be replaced with a hipper alternative, SoMa.
But its not as fundamental a change as might first appear SoMa is part of the KSG family, which stands for Kylemore Services Group. The company was founded in 1920 as a dairy but moved into baking and confectionery, sparked by the success of selling cakes to fans hitting the streets of Dublin for the All-Ireland final one Sunday. The Kylemore Bakery took off, with the Kylemore cafe on OConnell Street opening in 1987, followed by 14 more restaurants.
The bakery business closed in 2002 but the company, whose shareholders now include DCC, has since prospered as a catering-services specialist. Most recent profits topped 1m. Fans of the Kylemore fry-up need not fret. SoMas menu includes a full Irish breakfast but in a sign of the times it also serves up granola and Portobello mushroom toast.
Revenue reduces tax defaulters period of shame
With all this talk of tax havens, a few people must have been scrambling to check how Revenue deals with tax defaulters.
Well, there is some good news for anyone who feels they might be in the firing line for some punishment from the authorities.
Aside from a hefty fine, one stick Revenue uses to beat tax dodgers is the publication of the tax defaulters list on a quarterly basis. Indeed, journalists often enjoy perusing the lists upon publication as well as the big fish named and shamed, there is often the chance of spotting a lower-profile acquaintance.
However, in recent months accountants and other tax practitioners have told Revenue that the defaulter lists on its website go back 16 years. Far too long, they protested.
However, recently-published documents reveal that after Revenue considered their concerns, the list will now remain online for only two-years. Too lenient? A host of company directors, farmers and medical consultants who have appeared on the list in recent years would certainly back the right to be forgotten.
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The Web Summit may have left Ireland, but the Irish have not left the Web Summit.
There were plenty of brogues to be heard around Lisbon last week, with several web and tech entrepreneurs networking at the Paddy Cosgrave event.
Among those spotted was Trustev founder Pat Phelan, who closed a 25m fund earlier this year after claiming he couldnt find any decent tech firms to back. Brian Caulfield was also there, as was serial entrepreneur Eamon Leonard and Des Traynor of Intercom.
Some of those seeking to raise funds felt it was a pity the Web Summit wasnt still in Dublin negotiating funds is naturally easier on your home turf.
But there were a few events to make the Irish feel at home, including the IDAs soiree on Wednesday night.
Irish PR firm Beachhut, headed by Paul Hayes, provided some light relief,
taking over a very hip barbershop to offer grooming and pints to weary Web Summit attendees.
In Silicon Valley nobody lingers over a coffee for an hour and has a social chat - at least not when they are talking business. It's just one of the cultural challenges that awaits the growing number of Irish startup firms heading west to try and fulfil their Californian dreams.
"The attention span here is very, very short," says Paul Burfield, Enterprise Ireland's senior vice-president west and southern United States.
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Burfield never asks someone for an hour of their time in Silicon Valley: "You get 15 minutes. 'What have you got? Is it helpful for me? Yes? Let's progress. No? Thanks for your time.' The coffee doesn't get finished."
But that has not stopped a huge increase in the flow of Irish companies seeking, often successfully, to do business in the area. More than 700 Irish firms are doing business in the US with an export volume of just under 3.7bn last year - up 11pc on the previous year. About 140 of those companies are active on the west coast and 89 of them have a physical presence in the San Francisco Bay Area, with about 20 new offices opening a year.
"There is a healthy flow of Irish companies and a general receptiveness to Irish technology in Silicon Valley," says Burrell. This in part is due to the fact that there are 1,100 US companies in Ireland and on average a US west coast company sets up here every two weeks, he says. "There is a recognition of talent and capability between big tech and Irish companies already," he says.
Burfield, an Australian by birth, has been posted in California for three years. A key goal of Enterprise Ireland's presence in the region is to help Irish companies to think and look like west coast companies long before they even get there. Burfield says Irish success stories like Openet, VoxPro, messaging platform Intercom and billing software company Britebill have already shown what can be achieved by early engagement with Silicon Valley.
Only a few, like Castlepollard, Co Westmeath-based Mergon - which designs specialist moulded plastic parts for a wide range of uses - have managed to build key relationships from afar. Mergon, which was part of the Irish delegation that travelled for Taoiseach Leo Varadkar's recent west coast visit, has become a key supplier to one of the darlings of the Silicon Valley scene, Elon Musk's Tesla, simply through its own excellence.
"It's an absolutely unique ecosystem," says Burfield of the region. "There is something about being in the genuine centre of the tech universe and the centre of the funding of that universe that is unique and is not being replicated anywhere else."
The figures back this up. Last year, more than a third of the world's early-stage deals were done out of Silicon Valley. Nearly 50pc of venture capital in the US is deployed in the area. Nevertheless, despite this huge availability of funding, competition is incredibly intense with more than 25,000 startup companies based there too.
"They are all chasing the streets of gold," says Burfield. "There has been a perception in the past that you walk into the Valley and you get funded. It couldn't be further from the truth. Raising funding here is as difficult as it is going to get anywhere, despite the volume of cash."
Burfield says the average Silicon Valley venture capital partner looks at between 3,000 to 5,000 deals a year and invests in less than 1pc of those. His message to Irish startups is to raise their early-stage capital in Ireland because it is easier to get and significantly less encumbered. But, he says, there is good reason for companies to then head to California for further funding.
"The sheer volume of what they are seeing makes them absolute subject matter experts in the trends and dynamics of their particular sector. So what we love about these guys is not necessarily their money but their knowledge. We like to see Irish companies coming for more than just money: it needs to be smart money that unlocks knowledge and a network. You can get the money in the UK or Ireland but it never comes with the level of knowledge that it comes with here. That's what makes this place unique."
But to win big in the Bay area, you have to be prepared to work hard. The Irish companies that really do well in Silicon Valley are the ones who treat it as if it is London, says Burfield.
"You would never hesitate to fly from Dublin to London to see a customer. You have to treat this market in the same way because that is what is expected. If you don't commit to the market it's just not going to happen for you. If you're not here, you're not here."
Kerry company Taxamo, which offers an international Vat payment service for ecommerce companies that sell digital products, is on its third visit to the Valley since May. Management has made the decision to take an even bigger step and open an office there from January. Taxamo is based in Killorglin, Co Kerry and was founded by John McCarthy, son of Brian McCarthy, founder of financial services group Fexco.
After the EU changed rules regarding the payment of Vat in 2015 - with many other countries since following suit - it has become the norm that the sales tax must be paid in the country where a customer is rather than where the company is based, making the payment of Vat much more complicated and laborious for these companies, not least the Californian tech giants. That means a Silicon Valley presence is crucial for a company like Taxamo.
The Kerry company initially developed a platform that was a technical solution to the Vat issue but this year added a whole new approach.
"We now assume the Vat liability for these global companies selling digital products and we take on the responsibility and associated risks that need to be managed for the company," says Dermot O'Shea, himself a former Fexco employee and board member. "We are taking away a lot of headaches on Vat for our clients. Our market is global but the greatest concentration of opportunity is in the US, particularly San Francisco and the bay area."
O'Shea believes that Irish companies looking to break into the Valley have to be based there and for Taxamo, the nature of their business makes it even more of an imperative. "We have been travelling over and back from Ireland but we have recognised that we have to have a presence on the ground. We are dealing with tax law so companies are putting a lot of trust in us when they partner with us."
The founder of Irish semiconductor company Decawave, Ciaran Connell, has already gone that extra step and moved, with his family, to live in California.
"I was advised by a significant Fortune 100 company that 'you need to be in the Valley'. There was a cost to it, to my family, etc, but there were a couple of good reasons to make the move. It allows us to know what is going on and, more importantly, to be heard and seen so that others know about us. For Decawave to be known you need to be where the knowing happens and that is Silicon Valley. It is the fulcrum of innovation. People and companies come from all over the world to be immersed in the genetic primordial soup of technology and innovation."
The company - founded in 2007 by Connell and fellow UCD graduate Michael McLaughlin, now its chief technology officer - makes integrated circuits for wireless systems that measure distance indoors, where GPS doesn't work. To date, Decawave has raised about $30m, with the last fundraising bringing in $4.5m in 2015. The company is in the process of closing another significant funding round to introduce its next chip.
"We believe that our chip will be fundamental to every IoT [internet of things] node knowing its location indoors. But there is no use having that capability unless it is achievable in terms of price and power: it has to be dirt cheap and has to consume really low power. We have the ability to do that. There's a truckload of mathematics involved in that."
Most of that maths is done in Dublin. Of Decawave's 65 engineers, 55 of them are in Dublin. But Connell leads a staff of five from a Silicon Valley office established two years ago that he sees as crucial to the company's future.
"You think Silicon Valley is just chips. But every industry in the world has their forward-thinking teams based here. The Valley is the marketplace for innovation where you put forward your idea. But you develop the idea back at base because if we brought our innovation and algorithm teams to Silicon Valley we would lose them or we couldn't afford them. Instead we have a small Silicon Valley team so we know what is going on and other people know about us."
Of course, it's not all good news stories for Irish startups in Silicon Valley and sometimes the journey west is, at best, wasted or, at worst, an expensive disaster.
"Of course you get that," says Burfield. "We try and stop that happening before they get on a plane because there really is an enormous amount you can do from Ireland before you physically set foot in this market.
"You have got to do that prep work before you get here. In a market of more than 25,000 startups there is no way you are going to get the attention you want without a researched position of differentiation.
"You might create an incremental business that gets you 200,000 or 300,000 in exports but that is not the ambition we want to see in our clients."
One of the most common problems is where software companies appoint resellers or channel partners to represent them in the US market.
"They'll clap their hands and say 'right, that's the States done, let's go off to Canada or Australia or China' and they appoint a multitude of these channel partners. But they don't recognise the amount of time, effort, energy and resources it takes to manage those to success and we see them fail way too often."
But, says Burfield, Irish startups have tended to excel in sectors such as mobile applications, digital health, enterprise software and in advanced electronics.
"Those companies represent the cream and the question is what do we need to do to transform them from a $2m company to a $150m company? That's the ambition we in Enterprise Ireland have for a lot of Irish startups. The value we can bring is our knowledge of and our network in Silicon Valley to help them with their value proposition to differentiate them from what already undoubtedly exists out here."
Dragons' Den star Barry O'Sullivan believes that the profile of Irish entrepreneurs and businesses has risen hugely since he went at the age of 25 to California, where he eventually ended up running a major division of Cisco for 25 years. He and his wife, who is also Irish, always wanted to come back to Ireland. In 2014 he co-founded Altocloud, which uses software and machine learning to make it easier for customers to communicate with businesses and vice versa. He got involved partly as a way of spending time in both Ireland and Silicon Valley ahead of a planned full-time move back to Ireland if the company fulfils its promise.
"We have been dependent on the Silicon Valley companies coming to Ireland for long enough. What we really need is for our own indigenous companies to grow big employee bases in Ireland. We have 20 people employed in Galway doing all of our software engineering but we would love to employ 1,000 there. You certainly need to be targeting the US market to achieve that and that is where 90pc of Altocloud customers are.
"A lot of companies when they start out begin by trying to work with small customers first. We decided to go straight for the very largest customers. Banks, e-commerce companies, tech companies. To do that in the US you kind of have to be there. You can't do it from Ireland. So I'm out there a lot and my co-founder is based there as well. You can't get it done otherwise."
The huge Silicon Valley investment community is another obvious draw for an Irish company and Altocloud has a mix of Irish investors - including Enterprise Ireland and Dublin venture capital companies ACT and Delta - as well as US investors such as call centre software developer Five9.
O'Sullivan has learned many lessons during his time in California and has experienced Silicon Valley over quarter of a century from the perspective of both a huge embedded tech organisation and, now, as a small incoming Irish startup.
A key lesson he has learned is that it is important to build a relationship with potential investors before you need an investment.
"If you can say 'I don't need money now but I hope to raise money in a year' that is the best place to be. So when you need the money you are not going in cold. If you are trying to raise money as you are running out of money you are going to end up giving away more of the company than you should have to."
But, for O'Sullivan, the starting point for any small Irish company heading to San Francisco is simply to figure out who is who.
"There are a lot of talkers but a lot of doers here as well," he says. "The key is to have a specific objective for every meeting. Have an ask in mind and make that ask."
In the 25 years he has been there, the Irish have become a much more visible - and successful - presence on the Silicon Valley scene. But if there is one improvement he could suggest it is that Irish people could do with sometimes being a little bit more direct, he says.
"They dance around things instead of coming straight out and saying it. That just does not work in Silicon Valley."
Ask, as they say, and you shall receive.
'Molloy said the business has just made it onto NHS England's online supply portal as well as the tender framework in Northern Ireland.' (Stock picture)
The Irish developers of a non-contact thermometer are hoping to persuade the UK's National Health Service (NHS) hospitals to adopt their product.
Trimedika co-founders Roisin Molloy and Julie Brien have developed a product which uses infrared heat sensors to measure patients' temperatures. Medical staff hold the device 3cm to 5cm away from a patient's forehead in order to take a reading.
The thermometer has recently received the "CE mark" - meaning it can be traded in the European Economic Area - and was showcased by the duo in San Francisco at the Dell Women's Entrepreneur Network (DWEN).
Molloy told the Sunday Independent that the company would save the NHS money on the plastic caps used on a standard thermometer.
"We've got some costings for the NHS in England and they [the caps] cost the NHS about 80m a year... that puts that money back into the pot right away." The makers are also pitching the product as a way to improve worker productivity as nurses don't have to spend time fitting and disposing of the plastic caps.
Molloy said the business has just made it onto NHS England's online supply portal as well as the tender framework in Northern Ireland.
Brien said the company's distributors has just started marketing the product to hospitals.
"We would expect to see some purchasing beginning before Christmas," she added.
Brien and Molloy set the business up in early 2016 and have received backing from two angel investors. The company's team has 20 years' experience in the manufacture and distribution of medical products in international clinical markets.
The duo met around five years ago working for a medical device company.
"Our job was to set up the international channels to market... we could see ways of doing it better and we both had I think a secret yearning to start up a business, start up something of our own. We saw an opportunity to go and do that, so we established Trimedika.
The Belfast-based company is now working on an internet-connected version of the device.
'Senator Bob Corker, pictured, who has commented on a wide range of issues since announcing that he won't seek re-election to the Senate in 2018, has stated publicly that "tax reform is going to make health care look like a piece of cake".' Photo: Bloomberg
Hillary Clinton in her book What Happened mentions Joe Biden's quote: "Don't tell me what you value. Show me your budget and I'll tell you what you value." Replace "budget" with 'Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA)' and Biden's point is still valid in interpreting the recently unveiled US tax reform plan: the clue is in the title of the proposed act. (I know, the irony of citing a Democrat on a Republican tax plan!)
An initial estimate from the Joint Committee on Taxation projects that the bill as released would result in a 10-year deficit spike of $1.5trn. Certain commentators, for example, Harvard's Lawrence Summers, a former US treasury secretary, argue that Congress should return to the 1986 approach of revenue-neutral tax reform, noting that the deficit is already on an increasing path without this approach being taken. However, the Bill has a long way to go before it is passed.
The bill, as initiated, brings about significant changes (from decreasing corporate tax rates to abolishing the inheritance tax) so what follows is a brief look at just some of those relevant from an Irish corporate tax perspective.
The TCJA would reduce the general corporate tax rate to 20pc effective as of January 1, 2018, which is down from a maximum tax rate of 35pc. The rate reduction would be immediate rather than implemented using a phased approach. When we sought to bring in our 12.5pc rate we didn't do it overnight but rather took almost five years to realise that goal.
When the US plan was first announced earlier this year, a rate of 15pc had been suggested. It was commented on then that such a major cut in US corporation tax would make it more favourable for US firms to manufacture in that country. But this time the more controversial aspects of the proposal, the new excise tax and deemed repatriation, would have to be considered.
Under the excise proposal, certain tax deductible payments made by a US company to a related foreign company which is a member of the same 'International Financial Reporting Group' (which could be Irish) are subject to a 20pc 'excise tax'. The Bill excludes from the definition of IFRG any group whose annual average of total specified amounts from US members to foreign members does not exceed $100m for the current and two preceding years.
As this proposal would impose full US tax on common business transactions including royalties paid to and inventory acquired from foreign affiliates. It would have an adverse impact on a wide range of large multinationals, both US- and foreign-parented. The proposal applies to amounts paid or incurred after December 31, 2018.
This isn't a million miles away from the border adjustment tax which had been suggested earlier this year before the first draft of the tax plan had been unveiled. At that time, Republicans had announced they would scrap plans for a US border adjustment tax which was an effective levy on imports. It was reported that this would have hit Irish exports to the US hard - especially for the many US manufacturers based here as well as domestic exporters.
We know that almost 70pc of IDA client firms in Ireland are American and the plans would have had consequences in particular for the medical devices and pharmaceuticals sector. It's clear that this significant issue is now back on the agenda. However, US Congressman Kevin Brady, who is one of those behind the bill, has made public statements that, in response to comments, the House Ways and Means Committee is actively considering modifications to this provision (not available at time of writing).
One of the TCJA's key reforms for businesses is a transition from the current worldwide taxation regime to a 'territorial system' for taxing foreign-source income of US multinationals. This is intended to make US businesses more competitive on a global playing field. We're looking at doing something similar as part of our Department of Finance public consultation following the Coffey report on corporation tax. Consultation on such significant issues in Ireland is critical because, as I've said before, consultation with us decreases consternation amongst us.
Our consultation, which ends at the end of January next, also suggests an exemption for foreign dividends from certain foreign companies received by Irish resident companies. The US is suggesting something similar in that certain US corporations that are shareholders of a foreign corporation (eg certain 10pc-owned foreign corporations) will have a 100pc dividends-received deduction on the foreign-source portion of any dividends paid by the foreign corporation.
That said, a once-off deemed repatriation tax is suggested as a form of quid pro quo for the above. In general, a US shareholder company owning at least 10pc of certain foreign subsidiaries should include in its income, in its year in which the subsidiary's last tax year beginning before 2018 ends, its share of the accumulated post-1986 deferred foreign income of that foreign subsidiary.
The amount of such deferred income generally takes into account earnings and profits as of November 2, 2017, or December 31, 2017 (whichever is higher) without a reduction by reason of dividends distributed in the year that includes such date. The netting of earnings and deficits takes into account the US shareholder's earnings and profits deficits of foreign subsidiaries of the US shareholder or members of the US shareholder's affiliated group. The US shareholder can claim a deduction against the above income which would result in US tax of 12pc of the income inclusion (to the extent of the shareholder's share of its subsidiaries' "cash positions") and 5pc for the remainder. This tax can potentially be reduced by foreign taxes deemed paid upon the inclusions. So a US company holding shares in an Irish company may be subject to this tax but if that Irish company has paid tax at home then the US tax may be reduced.
On a similar note, a provision is made for US shareholder companies to include 50pc of its certain foreign subsidiaries' net income for the year that represents "high" returns on investment as part of its income.
This would ensure that the "high returns" on certain foreign subsidiaries' income will bear current worldwide income tax at a rate of no less than 10pc subject to certain reduced foreign tax credits. Like deemed repatriation, if passed, this will add significantly to the administrative burden on US groups with additional costs depending on the tax relief given.
Senator Bob Corker, pictured, who has commented on a wide range of issues since announcing that he won't seek re-election to the Senate in 2018, has stated publicly that "tax reform is going to make health care look like a piece of cake".
The challenge of complying with various procedural limitations in the Senate as well as parsing potentially difficult political issues is likely to show how true that statement is.
Tom Maguire is a tax partner in Deloitte
Sean and Conor Price sing Sia's Cheap Thrills on The X Factor
Irish brothers Sean and Conor Price won a standing ovation from the XFactor judges last night.
The busking pair performed their take on George Michael's Freedom.
Judge Nicole Scherzinger compared Conor's voice to an "Irish rock version of Justin Bieber".
While the other judges lavished praise of the brothers.
Head judge Simon Cowell even compared them to his two beloved dogs, Whippy and Diddly.
Departing RTE newsreader Aengus Mac Grianna at the Co Meath alpaca farm he shares with husband Terry Gill
RTE presenter Aengus Mac Grianna has announced he is to leave RTE.
The news reader, who became an instant internet sensation after footage of him touching up his make-up and fixing his tie was aired accidentally on RTE's digital news channel in 2013, has appeared on Irish TV screens for 30 years.
The Sunday Independent reports that he is the most high-profile name yet to take the voluntary redundancy package offered by Montrose bosses which reached its deadline last Friday.
I told management over six months ago of my decision so this was decided long before any of the changes. Ive had 30 wonderful years at RTE but it is time for a change, he told the newspaper.
Mac Grianna says he is not yet ready to retire to the quiet life of the alpaca farm he shares with his husband Terry Gill in Co Meath and may return to university.
Its a bit like that book The Alchemist. I re-read it again recently and I am following my personal legend, as the book would say. I havent fully mapped out where I want to go but I know that Ill eventually get wherever that is meant to be, he said.
My ultimate dream is to keep learning and to explore and discover new things. I am open to the idea of going back to university and I will keep all my options open from architecture to archaeology.
During his 30-year career in RTE, Mac Grianna worked first as a sub-editor, then moved into reporting, and finally worked his way up to become a full-time newscaster.
His most famous moment came when, while unaware the cameras were rolling, he was caught applying foundation to his forehead.
The clip clocked up over half-a-million views and even featured on the US show Jimmy Kimmel Live!.
Afterwards, Mac Grianna took the blooper in good spirits, saying: I saw the fun in it. You have to laugh at yourself as well, I think thats important.
eBay also used the clip, as part of an ad for its sale season.
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Mr Mac Grianna can be seen fixing his tie as the narrator asks: You thought you got a prime deal but did you check eBay? at which point Aengus shouts: What?
More than 200 staff are to leave RTE within the coming months as part of a bid to reduce the broadcasters workforce. The number leaving is significantly less than the 350 hoped for by station bosses.
Mr Mac Grianna will continue to deliver the news on RTE until early next year.
When the pilot of Motherland (BBC2) aired just over a year ago, I thought its beady-eyed take on metropolitan mums very funny and I looked forward to the promised follow-up series.
Created and written by Sharon Horgan, Holly Walsh and Graham and Helen Linehan, the credentials were certainly there to make it a winner, and there were many laugh-out-loud moments in the pilot as frazzled working mother Julia (Anna Maxwell Martin) tried catastrophically to juggle career and childcare.
In the current spin-off series, she's still the hapless heroine, this week throwing a birthday party for her daughter in the hope that all the other mothers would return the favour and provide her with some breathing space for her career. Needless to say, that didn't quite work out for her.
Yet though the writing in this season-opener was as sharp as ever, most of the set-ups and gags were squirm-inducing rather than truly amusing, while the troupe of supercilious alpha-mums were almost cartoonish in their social shallowness. But there are five more episodes to come and one can reasonably expect that Horgan, Linehan and Co will hit their proven comic stride in some of them.
And at least I knew what Motherland was aiming to achieve, whereas with Desperate Houses (RTE1) I didn't know what I was watching, or why. This new series is one of those reality shows where a supposed expert cleans up people's lives for them, and in Tuesday night's opener we were asked to watch as 60-year-old Annette from Tallaght had two bedrooms emptied of their clutter and revamped for her.
Widowed for the past 30 years and also mourning a son (whose death went unexplained), Annette seemed a nice woman, but the revamping exercise undertaken by architect and designer Roisin Murphy was much ado about very little, at least as far as the viewer was concerned. I certainly failed to see the point of it all - beyond providing some feel-good therapy for Annette.
Golden: Our 50 Years of Marriage (RTE1) was also determinedly feel-good, though its stories of couples who've been together for a half-century had some winning disclosures, even if the tone was overly treacly at times.
There were no unsuccessful relationships here, even if English-born Lucy had considered leaving Johnny, owner of a posh country pile in Clones, early in their marriage. However, her mother had counselled that "if you go, you take yourself with you", which both Lucy and Johnny had thought excellent advice. So they stayed put and seem happy to have done so, even if, as Lucy observed, "we have our moments".
Elsewhere, the week was dominated by drama, Unspeakable (Channel 4) offering that old-fashioned thing: a one-off story whose mystery was resolved by the end of 60 minutes.
Indira Varma played Jo, divorced mother of 11-year-old daughter Katie and recipient at the outset of an anonymous text message stating "Your boyfriend and Katie - something's going on. It's not right". What to do? Confront the boyfriend? Go to the police? Jo finally opted for the former, only to discover that a jealous ex-husband was the text's perpetrator.
It made for an absorbing hour, though part of my interest was in watching Harry Treadaway's turn as the boyfriend - almost unrecognisable from the deeply unsettling psychopath he plays in Mr Mercedes.
This has been one of RTE1's best drama acquisitions in years and I'm mystified why it hasn't been a critical and popular success in its native America - indeed, a Google search reveals little about it, and clearly it hasn't been taken up by any major US network.
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In fact, it's ferociously good and getting more ferocious as each week passes, and with the viewer forced into as much complicity with the villain as with Brendan Gleeson's tormented ex-cop. There are five more episodes to go and unless they tail off badly, this will have been the year's outstanding thriller - better even than the recent seasons of Better Call Saul and Fargo.
Babylon Berlin (Sky Atlantic) is more ambitious in scope, though it remains to be seen whether this 16-part German drama justifies all the accolades it's been receiving in its native country.
It began arrestingly, with extraordinary visual evocations of the German city in 1929 as a police vice squad confronts the hedonistic and criminal excesses of the Weimar republic before Hitler and his henchmen put paid to all that jazz.
Volker Bruch is the haunted young cop, Peter Kurth is his affably brutal colleague, while Liv Lisa Fries is the tenement-living young woman who catalogues crimes by day and cavorts like Sally Bowles by night. There are dangerous Mafia figures, too, not to mention seditious Trotskyites, and how it will all work out is anybody's guess, but this week's pilot episode was assembled with promising assurance.
Alias Grace (Netflix) is assured, too, and you can binge-watch all six episodes if you so desire. I just looked at the first hour and was immediately struck by Sarah Gadon's playing of the servant girl jailed for the murder of her employer in 19th-century Canada.
The 1996 source novel is by Margaret Atwood and you'll find echoes of The Handmaid's Tale here, not least in its depiction of women's subjugation in a patriarchal society, though the tone is somewhat less frightening.
In Scannal (RTE1), which recalled how the Boomtown Rats were refused a licence to play in Leopardstown in 1980, Bob Geldof railed against the puritanical Ireland of old, though I was more taken with the question posed by the voiceover-narrator: "What legacy did this storm in a teacup leave?"
None as far as I could see.
A senior Catholic cleric yesterday moved to reassure all members of the community amid a row about the proposed location of a memorial to the 1987 Enniskillen bombing.
Monsignor Joseph McGuinness, administrator for the Diocese of Clogher, said in a letter that the church had "no objection whatsoever to a permanent memorial being erected to the victims".
His remarks came amid fears that community relations between Protestants and Catholics could be damaged in the town.
On the 30th anniversary of the bomb last Wednesday, a temporary memorial was unveiled to the 12 victims.
The bombing killed 11 people outright and left 68 injured, while a 12th victim, Ronnie Hill, died after spending 13 years in a coma.
Bereaved families say they have attempted to have the memorial erected permanently at the site of the blast but that the local Catholic diocese owns the land and has not yet given them permission.
However, the St Michael's Diocesan Trust, part of the Diocese of Clogher, said it was only informed of the application in late September.
The site of the bombing is now home to the Clinton Centre, built on land owned by the diocesan trust in 2002.
Yesterday Monsignor McGuinness said there had been much "ill-informed" comment on the issue.
He said: "I want to state firmly that the Diocesan Trust has no objection whatsoever to a permanent memorial being erected to the victims of the Enniskillen bombing.
"The creation of a public memorial is both a way of providing solace and comfort to those who grieve, and also a way of drawing the community together in remembrance and solidarity."
Monsignor McGuinness added: "The Ely Centre, under whose auspices the memorial was created, submitted an application to the Trust to negotiate a lease of a portion of the land at the front of the Clinton Centre with a view to placing the memorial there.
"The hope was expressed that the Trust could come to a quick decision in time for the unveiling of the memorial on November 8.
"The Diocesan Trust willingly agreed to give the proposal full and careful consideration, but made it very clear that the matter couldn't be resolved in such a short space of time."
The general manager of the former Regency Hotel in Dublin has filed High Court injunction proceedings to prevent him being removed from his role in the establishment owned by the McGettigan Group.
John Glynn filed High Court action last Thursday against Liffeyfield Ltd, whose directors are James, Dennis and Brian McGettigan, according to the website of the Courts Service.
Richard Satchwell pictured holding a photo of his wife Tina in one of her two large walk-in wardrobes Photo: Kyran O'Brien
THE husband of a woman missing from her home in Co Cork for the past 16 weeks has confirmed he was treated as a suspect by gardai but insists that he has "nothing to hide".
Tina Satchwell (45) was last seen in her home in Youghal, Co Cork, on March 20.
More than three months later, Tina has never been seen by a member of the public or captured on CCTV leaving her home.
Her husband of 25 years, Richard Satchwell, said he has no idea what happened to his wife and best friend.
"Tina is amazing. She is kind, she would give anybody anything," he told Independent.ie
"Getting up and going like she did isnt like her at all. She loves our pets, she never used to leave and go out the door without the chihuahua. It has thrown me because its so completely out of character for her."
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Richard, who married Tina in 1991 on her 21st birthday, invited Independent.ie into his home, which he said is a work in progress.
The three-storey town house on the main street in Youghal, is a shrine to Tina, with a portrait of the blonde woman hanging over the fire place.
Some of her clothes are still hanging in the sitting room and kitchen, untouched from the day she went missing.
Richard praised the gardai for their help and support, but said they currently have no leads or suspects.
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When asked if gardai considered him a suspect in his wifes disappearance he told Independent.ie, that "I have been asked questions but I havent been cautioned".
It got back to me through a member of my family that they were asking, what I thought as unfair questions, about do they think that I could harm my wife. I came back to the gardai here in Youghal and I made a complaint. I wouldnt lift a finger to my wife.
It was very upsetting. I felt that it was unfair. But then as your brain starts clearing a small bit, you understand theyve got this routine that they go through.
They searched the house when I was up the country. I didnt know that they were going to search it but now they have a key to enter whenever they like.
Ive told the truth. Ive nothing to hide.
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The truck driver said that he now works more than 12 hours a day but occasionally stops his vehicle when he thinks he spots Tina.
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He keeps a pink briefcase containing thousands of pictures of his wife posing in hundreds of different outfits.
"She loves posing. Shes spoilt rotten. She never wore an outfit twice," he said.
"She loves her fashion. She loves going around second-hand shops looking for the one individual item so that nobody can go down to Penneys or Dunnes and have the same thing.
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"Her granny, who raised her, had cancer and she never had a wedding ring of her own so Tina took her own off and gave it to her. Shes been buried 20 years with that ring. I had to go out and buy Tina another one. Thats the type of person she was."
Richard said that hell never forget the day that Tina went missing.
She got up in the morning and did the usual thing. She asked me if Id drop over to Dungarvan and get fish. When I returned two hours later she wasnt there. I found her keys on the ground as I walked in. Shed normally be watching MTV or some other chat show but there was no sign of her.
I thought she went out for a walk but when she didnt come back, naturally I got a sickly feeling.
We had conversations of late so I said right shes gone down to a member of family for a while so I gave her a couple days and I left to visit my doctor on the Friday. When I found out that nobody had seen her, it was like everything fell away.
He said the conversations were about anything and everything as they were best friends.
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I went along with the kind of wishes I thought she would have wanted me to do. I know some people think I should have reported it straight away but I made a judgement call, right or wrong. Since then Ive done a lot of work with the guards trying to trace her. Its just totally odd. Nobody has said that theyve seen her. Especially here living on the main road. As far as I understand she didnt get a taxi or a bus or anything like that because nobody saw her. Im confused.
He added that originally he thought that Tina left to get a break.
Shes been very upset in recent months. Shes had a few fights within her family over the past few years. I think it took its toll and thats why I think she left. She needed to get her head around things.
I hope shell turn up suddenly the way she disappeared. Its just completely odd.
Richard said that hes not sure what his wife took as she had so many clothes.
The entire second floor of the house is dedicated to Tinas clothes.
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The 45-year-old has her own walk-in wardrobe, the size of a large bedroom, filled with rails of clothes. Her jumpers, one of every colour under the sun, are folded meticulously.
A second room in the house is dedicated to Tinas bags and jewellery.
"Ive bought her over 40,000 worth of jewellery. Its a womans dream. She had no reason to leave," he said.
Tinas favourite pink Juicy Couture bag sits neatly on a table in her walk-in wardrobe, beside her keys.
She never went anywhere without that bag. It was her favourite. She was so delighted when she spotted it in a charity shop.
A third room contains only a tanning-bed, which Richard says Tina adored.
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I bought her everything she ever wanted.
She took clothes, money. I havent got a clue what clothes she took because shes got so many its like a department store.
Although his wife didnt take her keys and phone, he didnt think it was strange.
The keys I thought she dropped and she seldom used to take her phone.
He said his day-to-day life is now miserable without his wife, who trained as a chef but never worked.
I dont have anything to smile about anymore. The dogs are waiting for Tina to come home.
My life is hell. After having 28 years of sharing my life with her, for her to just suddenly be gone is heart-breaking.
Richard said that the day he met Tina he knew he was going to marry her.
She lived next door to my brother in England and after three months we moved to Ireland together.
They couple lived in Fermoy for 18 years before moving to Youghal last May.
We loved the area. I proposed to Tina here.
Tina loved pets. She never wanted kids, but I did so I had to make that sacrifice. Our pets were like our kids.
Its tough when you move somewhere new and you know nobody. Tina is a lot more outgoing that me so she would be out and about.
I thought she was beginning to settle in a lot more than me because I wasnt going out and socialising as much. I was doing repairs on the house when she was out and about.
She was making acquaintances but its hard to make friends in just a couple of weeks.
Since her disappearance, he said that Tinas family have acted the same as they did before.
We wouldnt have that much contact with them. I do talk with them.
Richard said that after he appeared on Crimecall, pleading for any information on Tinas whereabouts, the gardai got thousands of calls.
I dont believe that they got anything concrete. Theyre still looking through stuff they got in. So far there has been nothing to say that shes here or there.
He pleaded with his wife to contact anybody and let them know that she is ok.
Just get in touch with somebody. Just come and knock on the door. Everything is ready for her to come home.
Even if you only think youve seen Tina ring the gardai. Let them know where. That one phone call can make all the difference.
Gardai in Middleton Co Cork have renewed their appeal for information on tracing the whereabouts of Tina Satchwell who is missing from her home on Grattan Street, Youghal, Co Cork since Monday 20th March 2017.
Tina is described as 5 7, of medium build with blonde shoulder length hair and blue eyes.
Gardai are appealing for anybody with information to contact Midleton Garda Station on (021) 4621550 or the Garda Confidential line 1800 666 111 or any Garda Station.
Modern society is in the midst of a "crisis of truth" with 'fake news' rampant on social media and going unquestioned, a conference was told.
The symposium on 'Factions, Fears and Fake News' organised by Trinity Long Room Hub Arts and Humanities Research Institute and New York's Columbia University last week heard that we are now living in a "post-truth" world.
Professor Todd Gitlin, of Columbia University, said fake news, disinformation, and panic-driven assaults on evidence and logic are all embedded in the tradition of the Counter-Enlightenment.
However, he added that "what used to be carried from village to village as rumour...now flies around the world at the click of a keyboard".
Professor Darryl Jones, of Trinity College Dublin, said: "We are witnessing the coarsening of political discourse I would have hardly believed possible a decade ago."
He said in this time of fake news, President Donald Trump could insist "again and again the crowd for his inauguration was the biggest ever".
He also referred to the creation of "safe spaces" within universities and warned this was stifling debate.
"Of course, universities much be safe spaces if by that we should afford all members of our community protection from bullies and sexual harassment... While not perfect, universities are quite good at this. But not safety from exposure to new ideas. We will be betraying the future by giving our students no political or intellectual tools to mount their own resistance to these dark times," he added.
Dr Fainche Ryan, assistant professor in the Loyola Institute at Trinity, said: "Truth matters for the good of the individual and the good of society."
Stephen Rae, Editor-in- Chief of Independent News and Media - who moderated the Post Truth debate - said even before the Brexit referendum and the election of Trump in the US, lies and mud-slinging were being spread on social media sites such as Facebook.
In this post-truth era, there was an "entire machine of misinformation" readily available and targeting willing listeners, he added.
"Fake news is eroding democratic institutions and scientific facts are now being openly questioned - like smoking and the connection with certain types of cancer and climate change. Facebook has no checks and balances on its content," he warned.
When writing about the past, two common terms are often conflated: historic sites and historical sites.
Sites are historic if they played a part in history; sites are historical if they pertain to history. For example, Gettysburg is a historic battle site often written about in historical books.
Idahos highway historical markers are not always placed at the actual historic site. The Caldron Linn historical marker, for example, is on U.S. 30, three miles west of the historic site of the Hunt Party tragedy.
Here are three more historical sites, all in Jerome County:
Hunt
Milepost 14.8 Idaho 25
Excluded from their West Coast homes by military authorities, more than 9,000 Japanese Americans occupied Hunt relocation camps four miles north of here between 1942 and 1945. Until they could resettle in other places, they lived in wartime tarpaper barracks in a dusty desert, where they helped meet a local farm labor crisis, planting and harvesting crops. Finally, a 1945 Supreme Court decision held that United States citizens no longer could be confined in such a manner, and their camp became Idahos largest ghost town.
Prehistoric Man
Milepost 14.8 Idaho 25
Archaeological excavations show human occupation of the Snake River plain for more than 10,000 years. Early men left weapons and other gear in a cave in a nearby butte. Bones show that they hunted game that is now-extinct camels, ancient horses and ground sloths. In the following thousands of years, the climate grew extremely dry, much drier than it is today. Still, man adapted.
Emigrant Road
Milepost 51.5 U.S. 93
More than a century ago, fur trappers and emigrants followed an old Indian trail that crossed here on its way to Oregon.
Hudsons Bay Company traders preferred this route between Fort Hall and Fort Boise, but early emigrant wagons had to travel a road south of the Snake River until ferries and road improvements let wagons come this way. Shoshone Falls known until 1849 as Canadian Falls to British and French trappers was a spectacular attraction along this road.
An Irish law graduate is one of the youngest ever people to pass the New York Bar exam and did so from over 3,000 miles away in her Dublin bedroom.
Aoife Moore Kavanagh (23) from Louth graduated from Dublin City University with a law degree in 2016.
After spending her J1 in San Francisco, Aoife said that she knew she wanted to live and work in America and began the process of applying for the New York Bar.
If you pass the New York Bar exam you are allowed to practice law in the New York jurisdiction.
"After my J1 I realised that there were a lot more opportunities for me in New York. Ireland is so limited," Aoife told Independent.ie.
"I researched American law course providers and came across Barbri, a bar review course which I attended twice a week while working in retail."
The Barbri course was six months long and cost 4,500 to complete.
"I fell in love with New York instantly. It is so amazing. I met my boyfriend there and I really enjoyed the course.
"I applied for the New York Bar in February and continued working while I was studying. The exam was 200 multiple choice questions, two exams and six essays. I had never done such an extensive exam before."
Aoife was devastated when she found out that she missed out by ten points.
As her visa expired, Aoife returned home to Dublin last May.
"I have never been so disappointed in my life. The day I flew back to Ireland I was heartbroken. When the pilot announced we were landing in Dublin I cried."
The law graduate said she had to "dust herself off" and re-apply.
"I applied for the exam again after I returned home to Dublin. For the next two months I focused only on the exam. There were times when I couldn't even remember the last time I got dressed. I lived and breathed the American law materials. I recorded myself reciting rules and fell asleep listening to it. I studied for more than nine hours a day, six days a week."
Aoife said that she encountered "a lot of negativity" during the process.
"A lot of people didn't think it was worth my while to do a course to learn the laws of another jurisdiction. They told me it was extremely difficult for foreign examinees and I would have to accept that it was unlikely my dreams would become reality, but I am proof that it can be done."
Aoife returned to New York in July and re-applied for the exam.
"I had done absolutely everything I possible could have to pass the test. This was my goal, I had to achieve it."
Last week, Aoife received an email to say she had passed the exam.
"It was the hardest thing I have ever done. I was dancing around the kitchen when I heard I passed."
At 23, Aoife is one of the youngest people to ever pass the New York Bar. The average age is 27.
"I'll be going back to New York in February for the swearing in ceremony and then I'll be called to the bar.
"A lot of people don't know that you can take the Bar exam if you have an Irish degree. Ireland has excellent courses and can get you to where you need to be.
"I plan on becoming a judge now in New York. I can't wait to get stuck in."
The young boy's arm after he was struck by a used needle
A distraught family has spoken of their "nightmare" after a young boy was hit by a used needle and now faces a six-month wait to see if he has caught any infections.
The boy - whose family prefer to remain anonymous - was playing with friends on a communal green area in Cloonmore in Tallaght, Dublin on October 22 when they saw a blood-covered bag filled with drug paraphernalia, such as needles, gloves and tinfoil.
After looking through the bag one of the used needles hit the ten-year-old boy's arm.
His worried aunt told Independent.ie: "The kids were playing out in the field by the house, there were two bags left on the field and the kids started rummaging through them.
"One of them picked out the needle and when they threw it, it hit my nephew's arm.
"He went straight to the hospital and my dad brought the needle too.
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"I called the gardai and stood at the bags until they arrived - I didn't want to leave it because there was more stuff in it, there was blood all over the bag, bloody gloves and needles and stuff.
"The guards took it away then."
The family member said that the boy will now have to wait months to see if he has contracted anything from the needle.
She said: "My nephew had to get blood taken, he had to get a hepatitis jab, he has to have another one in a month and another one in six months, he'll get the test results in six months time.
"We have been told that whatever could be in the needle would take around six months to develop.
"He was a bit drowsy and sleepy and the next night he had hallucinations but he has been grand ever since so we are just hoping that it's nothing.
"It's a nightmare, we are all worried, we just want those six months to hurry up."
The woman is furious that this kind of rubbish was discarded in an area that many children play in.
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She said: "I don't think the kids realised the seriousness of it all.
"You would see needles and stuff by the wall but I don't think you would ever expect for it to be out there so openly, it was right in the middle of the field and there was so many kids playing there.
"There is literally a place two minutes up the road in the community centre, where people can dispose of their needles or you can bring them to Tallaght Hospital but they just decided not to.
"There's always other ways to dispose of it, you could even just put it in a box and into a regular bin but they left it in a bag open and everything was falling out of it, blood all over it - tinfoil, lighters, bloody gloves and needles falling out of it."
She added: "The main issue is that there are kids playing there and people should be wary and know where to drop their stuff instead of just dumping it in the middle of a busy field."
Local Labour party councillor Martina Genockey echoed these sentiments as she said that more must be done to try to prevent this kind of dumping.
Cllr Genockey said: "Unfortunately it isn't the first time that I have heard of this kind of littering in the area.
"There really is no excuse though, there's plenty of places to go with this kind of material, there is a needle exchange in the area, which is just two minutes up the road.
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"They're completely not thinking about the children playing in the area, it's upsetting and shocking, there are so many services available for them to dump their rubbish.
"It's something that maybe we need to look at differently - the council is spending a lot of money on tackling illegal dumping but maybe if we looked at things like moving around covert CCTV.
"People are getting away with it so there's nothing to try and stop them from doing it."
A spokeswoman for South Dublin County Council said that they are aware of the incident and outlined what people should do if they find drug waste.
She said: "The council is aware of the incident, which was recently brought to its attention and appreciates the concerns expressed by the community in this regard.
"If any member of the public comes in contact with waste where syringes or drug paraphernalia are present, they should immediately call County Hall, Customer Care on 01/4149000, through which the call is logged (for record) and referred directly to our Public Realm unit.
"As our Public Realm crew are trained in needle stick awareness, we make immediate arrangements to attend on site and remove reported items.
"Members of the public are advised not make any direct contact with this paraphernalia."
Health Minister Simon Harris says people need to "face the reality that Irish women are having dangerous abortions" either by taking an abortion pill ordered from the internet or by travelling abroad.
The minister was speaking at the Fine Gael Party conference in Cavan where the forthcoming referendum on the Eight Amendment was on the agenda for discussion.
In a heavily filled room members of the party expressed their views to the parliamentary party about Fine Gaels policy on abortion and the referendum ahead.
Emotional calls for both retaining and repealing the Eight Amendment were heard.
One member, Barry Walsh asked "where is the demand for this referendum coming from".
"Are we really going to spend as a party six months talking about abortion?"
Another woman, Geraldine Creegan told the party about her own experience with crisis pregnancy.
"I have three beautiful children but I also had a crisis pregnancy and I would not wish it on anybody".
She addressed two of her party colleagues, Peter Fitzpatrick and Bernad Durkan who identify as anti-abortion.
"This is a womens issue. God bless Peter and Bernard, they will never have the pain that I went through when I had a crisis pregnancy".
"And Im not a baby killer," she said.
The minister also reconfirmed that there would be a free vote in relation to a referendum bill and the referendum.
He called for "calm" voices and told the group: "Ive sat in far too many rooms with women who have found this country to be cold, neglectful, lonely and isolating".
"Thats the truth, abortion is a reality for many, it just takes place with a pill from the internet, or a trip to another country."
"As the Irish minister for health I have to accept the reality that Irish women are having dangerous abortions," he said.
Senator Catherine Noone, chair of the committee said the Oireachtas Committee examining the recommendations of the Citizens Assembly and hearing from expert witnesses on the issue of abortion said she will report with recommendations to the Dail by December 20th.
PRESIDENT Michael D Higgins paid a generous visit this weekend to a community still in shock after their church was wrecked by vandals the day before Hurricane Ophelia hit.
Two teenagers caused an estimated 70,000 worth of damage to The Holy Trinity Church on the Errislannan peninsula in Clifden, Connemara last month.
The churchs reverend said President Higgins lifted the spirits of the restoration group on Friday.
Reverend Stan Evans told independent.ie: Its lifted our hearts with the President coming. He was extremely compassionate. Sabina was just wonderful in her role and the way she talked to the team.
The most moving moment for me was to see him lovingly embrace our 92-year-old restorer of the Church. Shes wheelchair-bound. It meant so much to her.
The President was pictured embracing Stephanie Brooks (92) the churchs chief restorer whose husband restored the church back in 1961. She is pictured beaming at President Higgins as he holds her hand.
Photographs of the damage done show pews were overturned and ripped from the ground on October 15.
Reverend Evans said the President was clearly moved by what he saw.
He said: I think you cant help but be stunned (when you see the damage). He acknowledged he was coming into a sacred space which had been so decimated. The whole place is still very much a site of destruction. Its very sad.
The church has received an outpouring of support in the weeks since the vandalism, including from a Galway mosque which was attacked in June during Ramadan prayers. Imam Ibrahim Noonan visited the Connemara church after it was destroyed.
Reverands Evans said: We hear so much about what is wrong in Ireland but the outpouring of love and compassion for a place of sanctity has been absolutely outstanding.
(Mosque leaders from Galway) came and they wanted us to know they stand with us and understand our pain. They said they would stand alongside use and offer any help they can.
The church is reviewing the damage for insurance purposes as Gardai in Clifden continue their investigation.
Twenty years ago this week, the late Paolo Tullio reviewed The Hungry Monk in Greystones for the very first Weekend magazine and my editor had the bright idea that I should return for this anniversary edition.
Paolo liked the fact that he could drive down to Greystones from his home in Annamoe and park outside the door; we arrive by Dart - the restaurant is on the main street, a couple of minutes' walk from the station.
I suppose when a restaurant is called The Hungry Monk and committed to a monk-themed style of interior decoration scheme at the outset, it must be difficult to come up with a new look. And so the monk-themed artwork, the monk-themed geegaws, the monk-themed table mats and the monk-themed everything else - down to the monk-themed loos, with their 'convent' and 'monastery' door plates and piped Gregorian chant on a loop - remain.
Twenty years ago, Paolo said that the place reminded him of a Berni Inn. Younger readers may not know what a Berni Inn even was (the chain was sold to Whitbread in the mid-1990s; the one on Dublin's Nassau Street is now The Porterhouse) but inside they were all dark wood, red fabric and a general air of 'ye olde'.
Our table is in a dining room to the right of the main entrance and we have to squeeze through the gaps between the tightly packed tables to get to it. No one offers to take our coats, so we put them on a spare chair that's been pushed up against a wall. There's an overfamiliarity to the welcome and the piped music is gratingly awful. (At the end of our meal, my companion Rebecca says that she feels that she's been stuck in a lift for three hours, listening to the same tunes over and over again.)
The day before our visit, I read Paolo's review from 1997. I'd eaten at The Hungry Monk a couple of times in the intervening years and had a sense that it was stuck in a time warp. A quick look online confirmed some overlap between the dishes on the current menu and those offered to Paolo 20 years ago. There is probably more name-checking of producers now than there was back then - Fivemiletown goat's cheese and Ted Browne's crab from Dingle both feature - but there remains a cheerful unwillingness on the part of the kitchen to be restricted by notions of what should be on an Irish menu in an Irish restaurant, a matter that preoccupies many others.
As Paolo put it, all those years ago, in his inimitably positive way, "Freedom from the straitjacket of a traditional cuisine has allowed us choices that the French or Italians are denied in their restaurants, bound as they are by their traditions."
That means that at The Hungry Monk you'll find dishes such as Bombay breast of chicken curry alongside free-range chicken Andalucia, an abundance of sun-dried tomatoes and out-of-season green asparagus, something that's akin to menu heresy these days.
We order Wicklow lambs' kidneys Dijonnaise, in a creamy wholegrain mustard sauce with shallots and Cognac - one of the dishes that Paolo enjoyed - and agree with him that they were excellent, slightly pink and full of flavour. Smokies, on the other hand, one of the specials of the day, are dry and overcooked. (The benchmark for smokies remains the version that Eleanor Walsh used to have on the menu at the original Eden in Meeting House Square, also 20 years ago, and I've yet to encounter better.)
For mains, the pie of the day is Wicklow lamb with vegetables, a workmanlike iteration under a tired puff-pastry lid. Crispy Dublin Bay prawn scampi makes us wonder why, if you have fresh Dublin Bay prawns, you would cover them in commercial breadcrumbs and deep-fry the bejaysus out of them. It's a dish that belongs in a Berni Inn, back in the 1970s.
For dessert, we share a passionfruit creme brulee with good surface crunch but no discernible flavour of passionfruit.
Twenty years ago, Paolo wrote that The Hungry Monk had an impressive wine list featuring over 550 different bottles. He drank a Chateau Musar 1989 from Lebanon and his total drinks bill came in at 19.95, which is enough to make one weep. The list is much shorter now and rather unexciting. When we ask for advice, feigning complete ignorance, as I sometimes like to do when 'working', we find the wine service patronising. We end up with a pleasant Fleurie.
One of the things that people often say to me about Paolo is that he never gave a bad review, but that reading between the lines you could discern whether he had liked the restaurant or not. He had some kind things to say about the food at The Hungry Monk, and the fact of its longevity in a fickle business is testament to how it must be filling a gap in Greystones (we bump into a friend of his who says that she comes in regularly for great steak au poivre) but I think Paolo was too cool for The Hungry Monk. To my mind, it's a restaurant that exists in a parallel universe, almost completely divorced from all the good things that are happening in Irish food these days. Our bill came to 114.95.
THE RATING
6/10 food
3/10 ambience
7/10 value for money
16/30
ON A BUDGET
Portobello mushroom fritters followed by a chargrilled Irish heifer organic beef burger and passionfruit creme brulee for two will cost 54 before drinks or service.
ON A BLOW-OUT
Tian of Ted Browne's Dingle crab and smoked salmon, and sirloin steak au poivre, followed by cheese for two will cost 84 before drinks or service.
THE HIGH POINT
Twenty years on, the Wicklow lambs' kidneys are as good as Paolo said.
THE LOW POINT
The themed loos (convent and monastery) and the patronising wine service.
Long wait: Dr Maureen O'Leary giving one of the first HPV vaccines in Ireland at Our Lady's Grove, Dublin. Photo: Chris Bellew
The HPV vaccine has been delivered to 100 million girls in 103 countries worldwide, 220,000 in Ireland, with many nations now reporting a reduction in cervical cancer and pre-cancer rates.
It has been one of the most significant public health developments in history; indeed hundreds took to the streets of Dublin in November 2008 to demand it be included on the HSE programme when then-health minister Mary Harney announced it would be delayed, citing budget concerns. It was finally introduced in 2010.
Yet last year, uptake rates for the first round of HPV vaccinations fell to 50pc, far short of the HSE's target 80pc and the peak uptake of 87pc in 2014/2015.
Seven years in, the programme should be maturing, extending and improving. The Health Information and Quality Authority (HIQA) is considering extending it to include boys, while Australia is preparing to roll out Gardasil 9, which protects against even more cancer-causing antigens, and is already licensed for use in Europe. Instead, the HSE is waging a costly PR offensive, reiterating basic information about the vaccine's safety record and efficacy in a bid to boost uptake rates.
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The stakes are high. Not only are young girls missing out on protection from a disease that is diagnosed in 300 women a year here and kills 90, but just weeks ago, seven cases of measles were confirmed in Dublin and Meath. There are fears the rupture in public confidence over HPV could leave other vaccines vulnerable.
"There is a concern that some of the anti-vaccine sentiment around HPV may spill over into some of the other vaccines," says Dr Brenda Corcoran, a consultant in Public Health Medicine with the HSE and member of the National Immunisation Advisory Committee. "It's an area of concern for us.
Lessons from Australia
"In Australia, where they've kept up their uptake rate of HPV, they're already seeing up to a 75pc reduction in pre-cancers in young women. We won't see that in Ireland if we don't have high levels of vaccination and that's a huge legacy for us to deal with."
So just how did the HSE lose the battle for hearts and minds?
And why have countries like Australia managed so differently?
A free national HPV vaccine programme was introduced in Australia in 2007, with boys included from 2013. Uptake rates have been consistently high and the country has taken a hardline stance on the 'anti-vaxx' movement.
Laws in some states give childcare centres the power to turn away unvaccinated children either permanently or at times of outbreak. In August, authorities banned British anti-vaccination campaigner Polly Tommey, who produced the SaneVax film Vaxxed: From Cover-Up To Catastrophe after she told audiences around Australia that "doctors were murderers". Ms Tommey visited Ireland in March this year on a tour to promote the film.
Megan Smith, programme manager of the Cervix/HPV Group at Cancer Council NSW, noted that the HPV vaccine had already received media attention shortly before the programme began because the Australian of the Year in 2006, Professor Ian Frazer, played a substantial role in developing it.
"Professional bodies and independent trusted community organisations like Cancer Council have also publicly supported the HPV vaccine - so it is a consistent message from a range of organisations, not just the government speaking.
"In the first three to five years after the programme started here, we observed a 78pc decrease in the rate of infections in 18- to 24-year-old women with HPV [for the HPV types covered by the vaccine]. Precancerous abnormalities also decreased - by 2014 they were 36pc lower in 20- to 24-year-olds, which means they will be at a much lower lifetime risk of ever developing cervical cancer.
"There was also a marked decline in anogenital warts in women in their early 20s, and a decline in the rates of genital warts in young heterosexual men, even before they were included in the vaccination programme."
The battle for hearts and minds
Crisis communications specialist Alison Nulty, from Fuzion PR in Dublin, says the Government undermined public faith in the HPV vaccine from the outset when it delayed its introduction.
"Crisis PR is essentially about trying to manage the communication when disaster strikes and keeping the clear channels of communication open, so that whatever the agreed message, it is being shared and everyone in the organisation is singing off the same hymn sheet." It's that, she says, that has been lacking here.
"First, we had a health minister who announced the launch of the vaccine that was already years behind other countries, then she reversed that decision and then later announced she was going ahead.
"The HSE is now trying to make up for eight or nine years of a deficit. It should have been pushing how effective the vaccine is in 2008/9 in the immediate aftermath of Jade Goody's tragic diagnosis and death. Instead, the vaccine was shelved."
Reality television star Jade died after a short battle with cervical cancer in 2009. In the immediate aftermath, the 'Jade Goody effect' saw a rise in the number of women having smears, which detect changes in the cervix.
"It's difficult for the HSE because it's not just them involved, it's GPs, politicians, Government they all have to have the same message."
Despite the much-publicised launch of the HSE's new campaign on HPV in August, controlling the 'message' has been challenging.
When it emerged in September that then-Opposition TD Finian McGrath had written to then-health minister Leo Varadkar asking him to "remove" the vaccine in March 2016, the now Minister of State at the Department of Health initially stood over his views.
"I think somewhere in the region of 30pc of reported events are categorised as very serious... I think that's in the UK," he told the Sunday Times. "I'm 99pc sure. It's something I saw earlier on in the office, I'm nearly positive."
Minister McGrath later reversed his position, saying he had "cocked up". He's now stated he's an "unequivocal" supporter of the vaccine.
Before him Senator Paschal Mooney called the vaccine programme a "national disgrace", while Senator Fidelma Healy Eames has also spoken out against it. In April, GP Dr Ruairi Hanley sparked fury when he advocated cutting the benefits of parents who refuse the vaccine in his Irish Medical Times column.
Taking the hard line
It's perhaps no surprise that frustration has spilled over. In August, Health Minister Simon Harris announced the Government was fighting back, saying: "To those who wish to scaremonger, my message is very simple: If you wish to give medical advice in this country become a medical professional and, if you don't, please butt out." He also slammed the "misinformation and downright lies" spread on social media.
But Alison doubts his hardline stance would have won anyone over. "Shouting at parents and calling them names while they have a sick child at home is never going to win hearts and minds," she argues.
"Parents are very upset and concerned. They may feel like no one is listening and they feel they're being dismissed by the medical profession. Sometimes, when you listen to people, you take the wind out of their sails, when people don't feel like they're being listened to they will shout louder and louder until they are heard.
"The aim is to be known as a brand that understands its target audience, listens to their concerns, accepts praise but listens too then when the audience is less than happy. People want to feel that you care about them and you understand them and their story."
"I do think that political support and support from senior management is really important for us" Dr Corcoran says. "In any country where they have a high level [of uptake], there is the political support and senior management support."
However, she disagrees that the delayed introduction set the programme back, saying it began during a "huge groundswell of positivity". Dr Corcoran squarely attributes the falling uptake rates to a sustained campaign on social media.
In this arena - where storytelling, opinion and hyperbole drive mass audiences - the State body has found itself floundering.
"The programme was going very well," Dr Corcoran says of the HPV vaccine's inception. The supplier for the vaccine used in Ireland is Merck and the brand is Gardasil.
"Around that time [2014/15] there were a number of parents who got together in groups who were concerned, having seen information from other countries, particularly Japan and Denmark, where there were girls who claimed that they had developed long-term medical conditions as a result of the vaccine.
"A number of groups were very active on social media, with schools, with parents, in all different ways, to give them what they said was information that we were not giving them."
The most prominent of those groups is Regret, a parent-led vaccine-injury support group formed in 2015.
Regret's Facebook page promotes a video series called Sacrificial Virgins, made by the UK Association of HPV Vaccine Injured Daughters (AHVID) and anti-vaxx group SaneVax Inc.
Sacrificial Virgins: Not For The Greater Good is the first of a three-part documentary and has 30,845 views on YouTube. Part two, Pain and Suffering has 9,365 views, while part three, A Penny For Your Pain has accrued more than 3,000 views in just a few weeks. All feature footage of girls who say their health has been affected by the vaccine.
This style of communication was branded "emotional terrorism" by HSE boss Tony O'Brien but it does carry an impact.
Sacrificial Virgins' dramatic, heart-wrenching style is in contrast to another video, also on YouTube, from the HSE. I'm Relieved That She is Protected features an Irish mother who cancelled her daughter's vaccines after hearing scare stories. She then developed cervical cancer and had her daughter vaccinated. It has earned 3,198 views in three months.
Storytelling videos have enormous influence online, a link borne out on the HSE Facebook page where a 2016 post directing readers to information about the vaccine gets these replies: "Not a hope in hell of my girl getting this after the video I seen and shared about those girls that lives are destroyed."
Losing the online argument
Another writes: "Thanks to the raised awareness on social media ... we stopped our daughter from receiving the second injection."
While another commenter says: "I'm so glad I read this thread today as my daughter is due to get vaccine tomorrow but after reading comments and some research not anymore. If there's a chance of anything happening to her I say no"
Dr Corcoran says she empathises with the families involved but says it's wrong to attribute their symptoms to the vaccine. "There is no doubt that the girls who have been impacted, who have these long-lasting conditions, are ill. It may take some years for them to get better and that's devastating for the families.
"Unfortunately, in some circumstances, there are no answers to say, 'this is the cause of your daughter's illness'. There are, and there have always been, these chronic fatigue-like syndromes that have been known for over 200 years that do happen in teenagers, and more commonly in girls. They have happened before the vaccine was introduced, it happened to girls who've been vaccinated and it happened to girls who've not been vaccinated.
"No medical practitioner or health service wants to do anything that would harm anybody. If there was any scintilla of evidence that there was an issue with any vaccine, that is taken extraordinarily seriously and investigated at the highest level. All the evidence that has been looked at in relation to long-term side effects has shown that there is no long-term condition that is linked to the vaccine.
"It's exactly the same as the issue we had with MMR and autism, which tends to be diagnosed around the age we give the MMR vaccine," Dr Corcoran adds.
In 1998, British scientist Andrew Wakefield falsely linked the MMR jab with autism in a now widely discredited report, causing vaccination rates to plummet.
"All the scientific evidence, looking at millions of people, found no link between MMR and autism but parents are looking for a reason. The uptake rate dropped from almost 90pc to 69pc and even now, 17 years later, it's only at 93pc, below the target of 95pc.
"That's the difficulty we have"
Alison advises clients in times of crisis to look for the opportunity and the HSE is doing just that, to guard against this happening again.
"This isn't going to go away," Dr Corcoran concedes. "Vaccine scares take a long time for public confidence to recover so we will have to continue with what's been started in terms of persuading parents and all health professionals of the value of vaccines
"What we have to do is build up what's known as 'vaccine-resilient populations' in good times, so people are aware of the benefits, and that passes through from school right through to when they themselves have children."
Ultimately, though, Dr Corcoran knows it will be parents and guardians over the coming months who turn around the fortunes of the HPV vaccine; clearly many need to be convinced.
"When you're weighing up whether to vaccinate your daughter, or any other child with any of the other vaccines, weigh up the information," she urges. "The overwhelming evidence is that any vaccine is a much better option."
"From today your weekend is different," read the bold pronouncement on the front page. It was November 15, 1997, and the Irish Independent was launching an exciting new product - a stylish new magazine that would come free with each Saturday's newspaper.
"Tailor made for weekend reading," the introduction continued, the new magazine would feature "a stunning mix of interviews, stories and quality of life features". There would be a "state-of-the-art cookery section with recipes as simple as A-B-C, fabulous fashion pages and sumptuous interiors spreads" all coupled with "a blend of stylistic design and fine writing". And there would be colour - 64 pages of full colour, in a time when newspapers were for the most part black and white.
Fizzing with energy, laden with talent and bursting with colour, Weekend magazine had arrived.
Not that I noticed.
This month also marks my own anniversary with Weekend magazine. Three years ago, I took on the role of editor, and in the time since it has been my privilege to steer the course of a publication which genuinely holds a place in the hearts of the Irish public. Many of you will have been reading Weekend since its bright beginning 20 years ago this week. But in 1997, when the magazine was busy forging a new path in Irish journalism, I was a month shy of my 16th birthday - and largely shy of the rest of the world.
Having trawled through the clippings to put together this special anniversary edition of Weekend, I decided to take a look at my own archive - aka the tattered copybooks-turned-diaries that I kept.
The tome for 1997 is covered in stickers that had come free with Smash Hits, the pop music magazine for teens that, much to my grief, had ceased publishing the previous year. Some of the acts featured in my colourful collage, like Celine Dion and Oasis - the fresh-faced Gallagher brothers photographed in moody black and white - have endured. Others, such as Backstreet Boys and East 17 are no more. (My diary also contains the autograph of E17's Brian Harvey, who has signed it '2' rather than 'to' me. You just don't get that kind of cool with a selfie.)
One sticker reads "Joe Wicks - Mad For It", in reference to the EastEnders character played by Paul Nicholls (not today's peppy personal trainer). Given that the character was experiencing schizophrenia, "mad for it" doesn't seem like the most sensitive of slogans, but perhaps those were less PC times I certainly seem to have been 'mad for' heartthrob Nicholls, who features heavily in my diary alongside Freddie Prinze Junior, Jamie Theakston (cringe!) and George Clooney - then starring in ER as Dr Doug Ross and with barely a grey hair.
Television was a huge part of my 15-year-old life, and the week's viewing also included Friends, Quantum Leap and Early Edition. But above all else, it was The X-Files that obsessed me with the kind of fervour that only a teenager could summon. If ever their tapes are lost, the programme makers can consult my diary for a blow-by-blow account of every episode of Mulder and Scully's paranormal adventures.
That's not to suggest that I was a reclusive child. Indeed, the pages feature plenty of slumber parties and cinema trips. At the midterm break, I went to my first proper disco, then called Club G but better known as The Grove to the generations before me. "What a night!" I wrote, before detailing the crush of teenage bodies and hormones in the school-hall discotheque. The music was great and the atmosphere brilliant, I gushed, but I was sorry that I'd worn jeans, as no boys showed any interest in me - unlike my friend with her layered 'Rachel' haircut and wrap-around skirt.
Musings on boys, predictably, fill up many of the handwritten pages of the diary, but, terrified of the opposite sex, I seemed more content to document the flirtations of my friends than to have any of my own. In the shifting sands of adolescent friendships, I often wrote about feeling left out. But elsewhere, my views of others - even my closest friends - are dismissive and occasionally cruel.
The thing that loomed largest in my life in 1997 was my Junior Certificate. The mocks were "mostly okay", I recorded on February 11, with the exception of Maths Paper Two, which I rather ineloquently "made a balls of". In May, I wrote about feeling sick with worry about the approaching exams, describing myself as "mega panicky and stressed and depressed". By June 15, however, they were done and forgotten. With the delights of summer upon me, the diary entries became less frequent and eventually petered out.
It was the last diary that I ever kept, partly because my sister and cousin (aged eight and seven respectively) had uncovered it and took great delight in relaying the contents to our parents, and partly because I was finally growing beyond my own myopic view of the world.
So, there you have it: the 1997 musings of a 15-year-old whose to-do list included "buy the Spice Up Your Life single" and "read Wuthering Heights".
Just like Weekend, my diary was filled with TV and food and fashion and travel and stories - and people. Proof, if needed, that 20 years doesn't change the things that matter to us. Or as the tag line for that first magazine put it: "All in one magazine, the very best of Irish life. Don't miss it."
TWIN FALLS The Twin Falls Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution is accepting entries in its Junior American Citizens creative expression contests and American history essay contests. The contests are open to public school, private school and home-schooled students as well as members of youth groups and service organizations. Individual students may enter. All entries must be postmarked by Dec. 4, 2017.
Junior American Citizens contests in the categories of poster design, postage stamp design, poetry, and short story are open to students in grades K-12. All entries must be based on the theme 100th Anniversary of World War I: Service on the Homefront. Entries must meet specific requirements for size or presentation.
For the American history essay contest, the topic for grades 5-8 is World War I: Remembering the War to End All Wars. Students are asked to imagine how the end of the war would impact their daily lives and discuss the pros and cons of the changes this war introduced to society. Essays must be 300-600 words for students in grade 5, or 600-1,000 words for students in grades 6-8.
Students in grades 9-12 are invited to enter the Christopher Columbus essay contest, with the theme Advantages and Disadvantages of Working Relationships Between Foreign Parties. Students are asked to discuss what convinced the Spanish monarchy to support the voyage of the Italian explorer Christopher Columbus. Essays must be 800-1200 words.
Complete rules for any of these contests may be obtained by e-mailing dgreene@northrim.net or calling 208-308-1810.
Local winners will be recognized at a reception in February 2018 and have their entries forwarded for consideration for state, regional and national awards.
The DAR is a national organization promoting patriotism, education and historic preservation.
Kate Middleton and the Countess of Wessex (right), stand in a balcony during the annual Remembrance Sunday Service at the Cenotaph memorial in Whitehall, central London. Photo: Dominic Lipinski/PA Wire
Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge arrives at the annual Royal Festival of Remembrance to commemorate all those who have lost their lives in conflicts at the Royal Albert Hall on November 11, 2017 in London, England. (Photo by Stefan Rousseau - WPA Pool / Getty Images)
Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge attends the annual Royal Festival of Remembrance to commemorate all those who have lost their lives in conflicts at the Royal Albert Hall on November 11, 2017 in London, England. (Photo by Stefan Rousseau - WPA Pool / Getty Images)
Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge during the annual Remembrance Sunday memorial on November 12, 2017 in London, England
Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge and Sophie, Countess of Wessex during the annual Remembrance Sunday memorial on November 12, 2017 in London, England
Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge during the annual Remembrance Sunday memorial on November 12, 2017 in London, England
Britain's Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge, arrives for the the annual Royal Festival of Remembrance at the Royal Albert Hall in London on November 11, 2017 on Armistice Day
Britain's Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge attends the Remembrance Sunday ceremony at the Cenotaph on Whitehall in central London, on November 12, 2017
Britain's Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge, (C), Princess Alexandra, The Honourable Lady Ogilvy (L) and Britain's Sophie, Countess of Wessex (R) attend the Remembrance Sunday ceremony at the Cenotaph on Whitehall in central London, on November 12, 2017
Kate Middleton with Sophie, Countess of Wessex (right) as they stand in silence at the Remembrance Sunday Cenotaph service in London, Britain, November 12, 2017. Reuters/Toby Melville
Kate Middleton stands in a balcony during the annual Remembrance Sunday Service in London. Photo: Dominic Lipinski/PA Wire
Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge during the annual Remembrance Sunday memorial on November 12, 2017 in London, England
Kate Middleton joined other members of Britain's Royal family today to honour the war dead on Remembrance Sunday.
Kate, who is expecting her third child, joined Queen Elizabeth at the Foreign Office balconies of the Whitehall memorial in London.
Expand Close Britain's Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge attends the Remembrance Sunday ceremony at the Cenotaph on Whitehall in central London, on November 12, 2017 / Facebook
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Whatsapp Britain's Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge attends the Remembrance Sunday ceremony at the Cenotaph on Whitehall in central London, on November 12, 2017
The mother-of-two wore a black coat and matching hat, as she bowed her head during a two-minute silence at 11am.
Princes William and Harry joined their father Charles, and others, in laying wreaths to remember the war dead.
Kate has been stepping back into the limelight after suffering from hyperemesis gravidarum, a severe form of morning sickness.
She is in her second trimester, with the royal baby due in April.
Expand Close Britain's Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge, (C), Princess Alexandra, The Honourable Lady Ogilvy (L) and Britain's Sophie, Countess of Wessex (R) attend the Remembrance Sunday ceremony at the Cenotaph on Whitehall in central London, on November 12, 2017 / Facebook
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Whatsapp Britain's Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge, (C), Princess Alexandra, The Honourable Lady Ogilvy (L) and Britain's Sophie, Countess of Wessex (R) attend the Remembrance Sunday ceremony at the Cenotaph on Whitehall in central London, on November 12, 2017
Last night, she attended the annual Royal Festival of Remembrance at the Royal Albert Hall, in London, siimilarly attired in black.
Earlier this week, Kate made another public appearance where she spoke about taking Prince George to school and the importance of supporting young children.
Pitch Perfect star Rebel Wilson claims she has been a victim of sexual harassment in Hollywood.
The Australian-born actress, 37, accused an unnamed male star who she said was in a position of power of asking her to go in a room with him and to penetrate him with her finger while his friends filmed the incident on their phones.
She also claimed she had a separate hotel room encounter with a top director, but said nothing physical happened after his wife called and shouted at him for sleeping with actresses.
Luckily she was yelling so loud that I could hear her and I bolted out of there immediately, she wrote in a series of posts on Twitter. I was so naive the thought of anything happening apart from work talk didnt even cross my mind, she added.
Wilson said she had been working overseas recently but had found it so hard to hear all these stories relating to sexual harassment and assault in Hollywood.
She added: As you guys know, Im a pretty strong and confident person but even I have a story to tell. A male star, in a position of power asked me to go into a room with him and then asked me repeatedly to stick my finger up his ass.
All whilst his male friends tried to film the incident on their iPhones and laughed. I repeatedly said no and eventually got out of the room.
She said her agent secured a deal with the studio to protect herself if something similar ever occurred and had been threatened by the stars representative to be nice and support the male star.
I feel lucky that I grew up in a pro-female environment, going to an all-girls high school, and that I have such a strong sense of self and have taken self-defence classes. I had the ability to escape both incidents. I realise not everyone is as lucky, Wilson added.
To hear how prevalent sexual harassment and assault is, is just so saddening. I know my stories arent as horrific as other women and men have described but if youve ever experienced anything like this I feel for you and can relate on some level.
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Dozens of actresses and actors have spoken out over sexual misconduct, harassment and assault across the film and TV industry in the past month.
It comes after a New York Times report in October alleged film producer Harvey Weinstein had sexually harassed or assaulted several women. He has since been accused by dozens of women, and is being investigated by police in the US and London.
House Of Cards star Kevin Spacey also faces police investigations in the UK amid harassment and assault accusations
Rowan Atkinson is reportedly about to become a father for the third time at the age of 62.
The English star's partner Louise Ford, 33, is expected to give birth to their first child together in the next few weeks, according to a report in U.K. newspaper The Daily Mirror.
"Rowan and Louise are over the moon and can't wait for their new arrival. It's a very happy time for them both," a source told the publication.
Atkinson has two adult children, son Benjamin and daughter Lily, from his previous marriage to Sunetra Sastry.
The comedian began dating Ford in 2014 after separating from his wife of nearly 25 years. Atkinson and Sastry were officially divorced after a 65-second court hearing, and Ford later moved into Atkinson's $6.1 million (4.6 million) home in North London.
Atkinson and Ford met in 2012 when they starred together in West End comedy Quartermaine's Terms.
Ford appeared in Channel 4 comedy drama Crashing before landing a role portraying Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge in satirical comedy show The Windsors.
Atkinson found fame in the 1980s after appearing in BBC comedy sketch show Not the Nine O'Clock News and later went on to star in historical comedy Blackadder, sitcom Mr. Bean and movie franchise Johnny English.
Donald Trump and Vietnam president Tran Dai Quang attend the welcoming ceremony at the Presidential Palace in Hanoi (Kham/Pool Photo via AP)
President Donald Trump has offered to mediate in the South China Sea disputes, while his Chinese counterpart played down concerns over Beijing's military build-up and the prospects of war in the contested waters.
Mr Trump and Chinese president Xi Jinping spoke separately about the territorial rifts before an annual summit of South-east Asian nations that also includes the US, China and other global players.
The disputes are expected to get the spotlight at the summit, along with the North Korean nuclear threat and terrorism.
The US and China are both calling for a peaceful resolution but take contrasting positions in most other aspects of the conflict.
Unlike China, the US is not a claimant to the potentially oil-rich and busy waters, but it has declared it has a national interest in ensuring freedom of navigation and overflight and the peaceful resolution of the disputes.
Several nations back an active American military presence in the region to serve as a counterweight to China's increasingly assertive actions, including the construction of seven man-made islands equipped with military installations.
"I'm a very good mediator and arbitrator," Mr Trump said at a news conference with Vietnamese president Tran Dai Quang in Vietnam's capital, Hanoi, before flying to Manila for the summit of the Association of South-east Asian Nations.
Mr Trump's offer faces major obstacles, as China has steadfastly opposed what it calls US meddling in the disputes and is unhappy about the US navy's incursions into what Beijing considers its territorial waters in the South China Sea.
The Philippines, the head of ASEAN's rotational chairmanship, said member states of the 10-nation bloc have to consult each other but thanked Mr Trump for the offer.
"He is the master of the art of the deal but, of course, the claimant countries have to answer as a group or individually ... mediation involves all the claimants and non-claimants," Philippine foreign secretary Alan Peter Cayetano told reporters.
Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte discussed the issue with Mr Xi during a meeting in Danang, Vietnam, where they attended the annual Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation forum last week.
He said Mr Xi assured him of China's peaceful intentions in the strategic waterway, where Beijing, the Philippines, Vietnam and three other governments have overlapping claims.
"He acknowledged that war cannot be promoted by anybody, (that) it would only mean destruction for all of us," Mr Duterte told reporters after flying back to Manila.
"He knows that if he goes to war, everything will blow up."
The Chinese leader, however, would not back down on Beijing's territorial claim, Mr Duterte said.
The ASEAN summit opens on Monday under extra-tight security at a theatre and convention complex by Manila Bay.
Mr Duterte will host a gala dinner for nearly 20 world leaders, including Mr Trump, Russian prime minister Dmitry Medvedev, Chinese premier Li Keqiang and Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe.
Riot police used shields and water hoses on Sunday to push back hundreds of left-wing activists who tried to hold a protest at the US embassy and carried placards that read "Ban Trump".
There were no immediate reports of injuries in the brief scuffle and the protesters left after burning a mock US flag.
AP
A man twice tried to suffocate his baby daughter in the hope that tragedy would repair his relationship with his partner, a family court judge has concluded.
Judge Alan Booth heard how the couple's two oldest children had died a few years ago when babies.
Their third child then last year suffered separate "acute life-threatening" episodes at the age of four months.
The judge concluded that the man, who is in his 20s, twice tried to suffocate the little girl in a "warped" bid to mend his relationship with his partner.
He said the man was capable of doing things that most parents would find abhorrent.
Judge Booth described the man, who he said was intelligent and had a responsible job, as very dangerous.
The man's relationship with his children's mother had been in difficulties after the birth of their third child, the judge heard.
Evidence suggested that the deaths of their older children drew them closer.
Detail of the case emerged in a ruling by the judge following a private family court hearing in Blackburn, Lancashire.
He said the girl at the centre of proceedings, who is now around 18 months old, could not be identified.
Judge Booth did not say whether police were investigating.
The couple's first daughter had died when less than a month old as a result of contracting pneumonia, the judge said.
Their son had been found dead in his pram when aged about 20 months several months later on a day when he was being looked after by his father. Investigations revealed no medical reason for his death. A coroner recorded an open verdict.
In 2016, the couple's youngest child twice needed emergency treatment after stopping breathing and becoming "floppy".
She went into foster care and council social services bosses with responsibility for her welfare asked the judge to make findings, on the balance of probabilities, about what had happened to her.
Judge Booth said the man lied when giving evidence and described him as a "disturbing witness".
"He appeared able to ignore reality and the truth without a second thought," said the judge.
"He gave his evidence in a cold and unfeeling way."
Judge Booth added: "On the basis of everything I have heard and read, the most likely explanation for the lies that the father has told is that he did things to (the baby girl) that he should not have done.
"Having considered everything I am satisfied that this father is capable of doing things to his daughter that most parents would find abhorrent.
"It is likely that his motive for behaving in this way was a warped perception that this was the best way to restore his relationship with (the baby girl's) mother and that, as before, tragedy or near-tragedy would draw them back together.
"To protect himself from the consequences of what he has done he has lied.
"In my assessment he is a very dangerous man.
"I do not think that (the baby girl's) mother really knows him at all."
* Social services bosses had not suggested that the man was responsible for the deaths of the two older children, said the judge.
"The local authority does not and cannot assert that there is any corroboration for its allegations to be found from the material concerning the deaths of the couple's elder two children," said Judge Booth.
"All that the local authority seeks to draw from the material generated following the children's respective deaths is that metabolic and genetic studies revealed no abnormality in either child and there was no evidence of any cardiovascular abnormalities in either child."
Lebanon's president yesterday called on Saudi Arabia to clarify the reasons why the country's prime minister has not returned home since his resignation last week, which was announced from the kingdom.
The move came as the United States and France expressed their support for Lebanon's sovereignty and stability amid heightening tensions between Beirut and Saudi Arabia.
A political crisis has gripped Lebanon and shattered the relative peace maintained by its coalition government since Prime Minister Saad Hariri's stunning announcement on November 4 - made from the Saudi capital - that he was resigning.
Lebanese officials have insisted on the return home of Hariri from Saudi Arabia amid rumours he is being held against his will.
Saudi officials have said that their measures against Lebanon are in response to the militant Hezbollah group's support of anti-Saudi rebels in Yemen known as Houthis.
Lebanese President Michel Aoun called on Saudi Arabia to clarify why Hariri has not returned home since announcing his resignation, saying that "the obscurity regarding Hariri's conditions means what he says does not reflect the truth".
It was an indication that Aoun does not recognise Hariri's resignation.
President Aoun said in a statement from his office that any stance or move by Hariri "is the result of the dubious and mysterious situation that he is living in the kingdom".
In statements released by his office, Aoun called on Saudi Arabia "that is linked to us through deep brotherly and friendly relations to clarify the reasons that are preventing" Hariri returning to Lebanon.
White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said in a statement that Washington calls upon "all states and parties to respect Lebanon's sovereignty, independence, and constitutional processes".
The Saudi Minister for Gulf Affairs warned earlier this month that his government would deal with Lebanon as a hostile state as long as Hezbollah was in the Lebanese government.
The Lebanese unity government that Hariri formed a year ago includes Hezbollah members - the result of a tacit Saudi-Iranian agreement to sideline Lebanon from the other proxy wars in the region
"In this sensitive time, the US also rejects any efforts by militias within Lebanon or by any foreign forces to threaten Lebanon's stability, undermine Lebanese government institutions, or use Lebanon as a base from which to threaten others in the region," Ms Sanders said. She was apparently referring to Hezbollah and Saudi Arabia.
She described Hariri as "a trusted partner of the US in strengthening Lebanese institutions, fighting terrorism, and protecting refugees", adding that the Lebanese army and security forces are the only legitimate forces in Lebanon.
Also yesterday, Lebanon's state-run National News Agency reported that French president Emmanuel Macron called president Aoun expressing France's commitment to Lebanon's "unity, sovereignty and independence and to help it in preserving political and security stability".
The latest political earthquake in Saudi Arabia has led to much speculation over the future of the kingdom and the Gulf Arab states.
But most analyses have ignored the far bigger issue looming over the region's upheavals - prospects for a military confrontation between the US and Iran are rapidly escalating.
Just as Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman was consolidating absolute power last weekend - cracking down on the last royal relatives, billionaire investors, Wahhabi clerics and rights advocates who posed a threat to his reign - the kingdom announced it was holding Iran responsible for a missile attack on Riyadh by Yemen's Houthi rebels. The group has ties to Tehran, but Saudi claims remain unsubstantiated.
The abrupt resignation of Hariri - a close Saudi ally - while on a visit to Riyadh, citing fears of an Iranian attempt on his life, indicates how Lebanon is increasingly becoming a flashpoint in the cold war between Tehran and Riyadh. The Lebanese army and Iran's ally in Lebanon, Hezbollah, deny any plot against Hariri.
If Saudi Arabia forces a showdown with Iran, the US would find itself in the middle. Statements by Donald Trump and his national security team point to a more aggressive US posture toward Tehran.
Reuters
Lebanon's Prime Minister Saad Hariri has said he will return to his country "very soon", in his first televised interview since he resigned in Saudi Arabia last week.
Mr Hariri was speaking on Sunday in a live interview to his station Future TV, after pressure from Lebanese officials who said his resignation was not accepted because it was declared in Saudi Arabia.
Lebanon's president said Mr Hariri was being held against his will in Saudi Arabia.
"I am free," Mr Hariri told the TV interviewer.
Expand Close Saad Hariri on a poster in Beirut (AP/Hassan Ammar) / Facebook
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He said he decided to resign to save the country from imminent danger, but did not elaborate.
Mr Hariri said he would return to Lebanon "very soon," ''in days".
A dual Lebanese-Saudi national and an ally of Riyadh, Mr Hariri unexpectedly announced his resignation on November 4 in a pre-recorded message broadcast on Saudi TV, criticising Iran and Lebanon's Hezbollah militant group, and saying he feared for his safety.
His father, former prime minister Rafik Hariri, was killed by a car bomb in Beirut in 2005. His family lives in Riyadh.
Mr Hariri said his resignation was his decision, dismissing reports he was forced to quit a unity government with his rival Hezbollah militant group.
During the interview Mr Hariri held back tears. He said his resignation was designed to "cause a positive shock" in the country, warning against Iranian interference that was, he said, ruining relations with other Arab countries.
Mr Hariri said he "can't be the only one making concessions while the others do whatever they want".
TWIN FALLS The monthly meeting of the National Association of Employed and Retired Federal Employees will be held at 11:30 a.m. Monday at Loong Hing Restaurant, 1719 Kimberly Road, Twin Falls.
The speaker for the meeting will be Linda Culver, from U.S. Rep. Mike Simpsons office, talking about the bills before Congress that concern government employees and retirees.
Nominations for officers will be taken for the NARFE groups leaders for the upcoming year. Come and bring a friend who qualifies to this meeting. The group also will discuss any concerns you may have on your benefits.
Information: 208-732-0360.
US President Donald Trump yesterday said that Russia's Vladimir Putin once again vehemently denied interfering in the 2016 US elections during their discussions on the sidelines of an economic summit.
Trump declined to say whether he believed Putin, but made clear he's not interested in dwelling on the issue.
"He said he absolutely did not meddle in our election. He did not do what they are saying he did," Trump said of Putin, speaking with reporters aboard Air Force One as he traveled to Hanoi, the second-to-last stop of his Asia trip.
"Every time he sees me, he said: 'I didn't do that.' And I believe, I really believe that when he tells me that, he means it," Trump said, noting that Putin is "very insulted" by the accusation.
Trump called the allegation an "artificial barrier" erected by Democrats - once again casting doubt on the US intelligence community's conclusion that Russia tried to interfere in the election to help Trump win.
Trump and Putin didn't have a formal meeting while they were in Vietnam for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit - however the two leaders spoke informally several times on the event's sidelines and reached an agreement on a number of principles for the future of war-torn Syria.
But Trump made clear that the issue of Russian meddling in the election hovers over the leaders' relationship and said it jeopardised their ability to work together on issues including North Korea's escalating nuclear program and the deadly conflict in Syria.
"Having a good relationship with Russia's a great, great thing. And this artificial Democratic hit job gets in the way," Trump told reporters. "People will die because of it."
Trump danced around the question of whether he believed Putin's denials, telling reporters that pressing the issue would have accomplished little.
"Well, look, I can't stand there and argue with him," Trump said. "I'd rather have him get out of Syria, to be honest with you. I'd rather have him, you know, work with him on the Ukraine than standing and arguing about whether or not - 'cause that whole thing was set up by the Democrats."
Multiple US intelligence agencies have concluded that Moscow meddled in the 2016 election to try to help Trump win. But Trump called the former heads of those agencies "political hacks" and argued there's plenty of reason to be suspicious of their findings.
Trump's suggestion that he may believe Putin over his own nation's intelligence community is certain to reignite the firestorm over the issue of election meddling.
Meanwhile, a special counsel investigation of potential collusion between Moscow and Trump campaign aides so far has resulted in two indictments for financial and other crimes unrelated to the campaign, as well as a guilty plea. Congressional committees have also been interviewing campaign and White House staff.
Earlier, the Kremlin issued a statement saying the leaders had reached agreement on principles for Syria's future now that the so-called Islamic State group has largely been pushed out.
Among the agreements' key points, according to the Russians, were an affirmation of de-escalation zones, a system to prevent dangerous incidents between American and Russian forces, and a commitment to a peaceful solution governed by a Geneva peace process.
The Kremlin quickly promoted the agreement as the White House stayed silent. Trump told reporters that the deal was reached "very quickly" and that it would save "tremendous numbers of lives". And he praised his relationship with Putin, saying the two "seem to have a very good feeling for each other and a good relationship, considering we don't know each other well".
Snippets of video from the summit in the seaside city of Danang showed Trump and Putin shaking hands and chatting, including during the world leaders' traditional group photo. The two walked together down a path to the photo site, conversing amiably, with Trump punctuating his thoughts with hand gestures and Putin smiling.
Journalists traveling with Trump were not granted access to any of the APEC events he participated in Saturday.
White House officials had worked quietly behind the scenes negotiating with the Kremlin on the prospect of a formal meeting. The Russians raised expectations for such a session and Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One en route to Asia that it was "expected we'll meet with Putin" to discuss issues including ramping up pressure on North Korea to halt its nuclear and ballistic weapons program.
As speculation built, the two sides tried to craft the framework of a deal on a path to resolve Syria's civil war once the Islamic State group is defeated that Trump and Putin could announce in a formal bilateral meeting, according to two administration officials not authorised to speak publicly about private discussions and who talked on condition of anonymity.
But the talks stalled and, minutes before Air Force One touched down in Vietnam, White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders told reporters the meeting was off.
Trump's visit to Hanoi began with a state diner during which he showered the country with praise, saying it has "truly become one of the great miracles of the world."
Today, he'll meet with the country's president and prime minister before heading to his last stop: the Philippines, where he will meet with Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte, whose bloody war on drugs has led to the deaths of more than 12,000 Filipinos.
Reuters
Lebanon's Prime Minister Saad Hariri has said he will return to his country "within days" amid a political crisis that erupted when he announced his sudden resignation on November 4 in Saudi Arabia.
In a live interview shown on Future TV, Mr Hariri said he had resigned to protect Lebanon from imminent danger, although he did not specify who was threatening the country.
He said he would return to submit his resignation and seek a settlement with his rivals in the coalition government, the militant group Hezbollah.
But Mr Hariri said withdrawing his resignation would be conditional on the Iranian-backed Hezbollah committing to remaining neutral on regional conflicts.
Hezbollah has sent thousands of fighters to neighbouring Syria to support the forces of Syria's President Bashar Assad.
Mr Hariri looked tired and sad in the interview from Saudi Arabia on his Future TV channel that lasted more than an hour.
He held back tears as he spoke and repeated several times that he resigned to cause a "positive shock" and draw attention to the danger of siding with Iran in regional conflicts.
"We are in the eye of the storm," Mr Hariri said.
He said the unity government he formed a year ago was supposed to stick to an agreement not to interfere in regional affairs, but that Hezbollah had not kept up its end of the deal.
Apparently seeking to show he was not being detained by the Saudis, Mr Hariri told the interviewer: "I am free."
He said his resignation was his own decision, dismissing reports he was forced into it. But he also said he was looking into security arrangements before returning to Lebanon, suggesting his life was in danger.
"I saw what happened ... when my father was martyred. I don't want the same thing to happen to me," Mr Hariri said.
His father, former prime minister Rafik Hariri, was killed by a car bomb in Beirut in 2005.
The interview followed pressure from Lebanese officials, who said Mr Hariri's resignation was not accepted because it was declared in Saudi Arabia.
Many Lebanese have suspected Mr Hariri was placed under house arrest as part of a Saudi plan to unravel a coalition government he had formed last year with Hezbollah.
Lebanon President Michel Aoun said before the interview that the "mysterious circumstances for Hariri's stay in the Saudi capital of Riyadh makes all his positions questionable and in doubt and not of his own volition".
A dual Lebanese-Saudi national, the Saudi-allied Hariri unexpectedly announced his resignation on November 4 in a pre-recorded message on Saudi TV, criticising Iran and Hezbollah, and saying he feared for his safety. Mr Hariri's family lives in Riyadh.
Mr Hariri had not been heard from since but met foreign diplomats, and appeared with Saudi royalty and in Abu Dhabi.
Saudi Arabia has stepped up its rhetoric against Hezbollah and its patron, Iran, accusing both of supporting Shiite rebels in Yemen known as Houthis. A Saudi-led coalition has been at war with the Houthis since March 2015.
Mr Hariri said relations between Saudi Arabia and Hezbollah soured after the conflict began in Yemen.
Saudi Arabia has asked its citizens to leave Lebanon, and many Lebanese fear further economic sanctions or even military action against their country.
Mr Hariri, 47, first held the post of prime minister in November 2009 for nearly two years before Hezbollah forced the collapse of his government. Hezbollah ministers withdrew because of differences over a UN-backed tribunal investigating his father's assassination.
Mr Hariri was appointed prime minister in late 2016 and headed a 30-member coalition government that included Hezbollah.
But it has been an uneasy partnership between Mr Hariri, who heads a Sunni-led camp loyal to Saudi Arabia, and Hezbollah, which represents a faction loyal to Shiite Iran.
AP
Officials said the death toll was likely to rise
A train crash has killed at least 34 people and injured 26 others in Lualaba province in Democratic Republic of Congo.
Lualaba governor Richard Muyej Mangez said the toll from Sunday's crash was likely to rise because some carriages were in flames and some were carrying fuel.
Radio Okapi reported that the National Railway Company of Congo train was carrying cargo from Lubumbashi to Luena, and 11 of its 13 carriages caught fire.
Local officials and train authorities have travelled to the crash site in Buyofwe.
Radio Okapi quoted the Lubudi district's chief medical officer as saying some 30 people were taken to hospital. He said others remained at the scene awaiting transport.
AP
Kolkata, Nov 12 (IBNS): Consumer Electronics and Appliances Manufacturers Association (CEAMA), the industry body for the Appliances and Consumer Electronics (ACE), concluded their 38th annual function focussed on Championing Change in the Indian Appliance and Consumer Electronics.
Industry experts here voiced their opinions on policy changes, and shared their recommendations to propel growth within the segment.
The occasion was attended by Amitabh Kant, CEO, NITI Aayog, Dr. Ajay Kumar, Additional Secretary, Ministry of Electronics and IT, Sandeep Ladda, Technology Leader PwC along with Manish Sharma, President, CEAMA, Sunil Vachani, Vice President, North CEAMA, Kamal Nandi, Vice President, West, CEAMA and other CEAMA dignitaries.
Additionally, in association with PwC, CEAMA unveiled a detailed report on Championing Change in the Indian Appliance & Consumer Electronics (ACE) Industry.
With an anticipated CAGR of only 9%, PwC findings stated that manufacturing disabilities and a limited component ecosystem are root causes of low cumulative value addition. The large population and steep GDP growth over next 5 years will be the key driver for Indian economic pyramid shift towards the top.
The report also went onto illustrate government of Indias push to promote electronics manufacturing in order to achieve net zero imports, and placing the ACE industry at the forefront of digital India program.
This push has resulted in an increase in domestic manufacturing from INR 55,765 crore during 2015 16 to INR 64,752 crore during 2016 17.
Sharing his views, Amitabh Kant, CEO, NITI Aayog said: The appliance and consumer electronics (ACE) sector offers immense growth opportunities, not only in terms of consumption but also manufacturing and job creation. They have been one of the forthcoming industries who have successfully aligned their business strategies to various government led initiatives such as Make in India and Digital India. The policy led initiatives proposed by the government have been specifically designed to aid the small and medium enterprises. CEAMA has given these SMEs a platform to voice their opinion and become more included in government led policy and growth discussions.
Sharing his views on this occasion Manish Sharma - President of CEAMA, said: CEAMA was established with the sole objective to address the emerging issues of the Appliances and Consumer Electronics industry (ACE), and evaluate and advocate alignment with government policies. The aim behind releasing this report was to bring to the fore challenges faced by the industry in the current environment, and the policy framework needed to support the continuously evolving business ecosystem especially local manufacturing. The consumer durable industry creates 3 indirect jobs for every direct job, thus it needs to work closely with the government on further improving the local manufacturing framework to generate more employable labour.
Additionally a panel discussion was held to discuss the importance of enablers such as large scale demand generation for made in India products, cost competitiveness to make in India and easier to make in India policies to further empower the growth capacity of durable industry.
The panel comprised of industry stalwarts Manish Sharma, President and CEO Panasonic India, Ajay Taneja, MD, Shriram Pistons and Rings LTD, Hariom Rai, Co-founder and Director LAVA International and Sunil Vachani, Chairman, Dixon Technologies. The session was moderated by Sankalpa Bhattacharjya, Partner PwC.
Commemorating 38 glorious years of the ACE industry, CEAMA also felicitated its industry members for their outstanding contribution to the durable industry in India.
Ki Wan Kim, MD, LG India received the Man of Electronics Award for his excellent service of over 35 years to LG, during the course of which he transformed the company into one of the most recognized brands in the country.
Eric Braganza, President, Haier India was awarded the Man of Appliances Award for his excellent mentorship and leadership skills and steered Haier India to new heights.
Banaskantha, Nov 12 (IBNS): Addressing a public gathering in poll-bound Gujarat, Congress Vice President Rahul Gandhi on Sunday said even as he finds faults in Prime Minister Narendra Modi but he will never disrespect the latter's position.
Speaking at the gathering in Banaskantha, Gandhi said, "We might spot faults in Modiji or disturb BJP, but we will never disrespect the Prime Minister's position."
He alleged that when Modi was in opposition, he used to speak with disrespect about the PM.
"This is the difference between us and them," he said.
As his recent tweets have become matters of discussion, the Gandhi scion said his tweets on political issues are his own.
However, he said that he reflects upon the ideas of 3-4 people while posting a tweet.
Rahul is on a three-day visit to Gujarat.
On Saturday, the Congress Vice President visited the Swaminarayan Akshardham temple and Ambaji temple in Gandhinagar.
Youtube grab
Gurgaon, Nov 12 (IBNS): A court on Saturday sent the Class XI student, accused of murdering Pradyuman Thakur in Ryan International School, to a juvenile home in Faridabad.
The accused was sent to juvenile home since the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) officials said they did not require further interrogation.
Meanwhile, the bail plea of bus conductor Ashoke, who was arrested on charges of murdering a seven-year old Pradyuman Thakur in Ryan International School, will be heard on Nov. 16.
Ashoke's lawyer had traveled from Rohtak to Gurgaon to file the bail plea.
Though Ashoke had confessed his act of murdering the seven-year old boy, the CBI apprehended a class XI student of the same school in connection with the murder.
The senior student eventually was arrested.
Being a juvenile, his name was not disclosed.
After a CBI probe it appeared Ashoke was possibly framed for a crime he did not commit.
The CBI has revealed that Gurgaon police had planted the murder weapon, a knife, that was used to kill seven-year old Pradyuman Thakur in Ryan International School, on bus conductor Ashoke Kumar.
According to the CBI, the weapon belonged to the class XI student.
The teenager allegedly wanted to impede the approaching exams and parent teacher meeting and hence killed the boy.
Earlier, the suspect's father had said that his son was wrongly framed but on Thursday, the latter confessed to his crime in front of his father, said reports.
Ashoke's family has said that they will now file a case against the cops for planting evidence against him, reports said.
New Delhi, Nov 12 (IBNS): Officials from Indias Ministry of External Affairs, Australias Department of Foreign Affairs, Japans Ministry of Foreign Affairs and United States Department of State met in Manila on Nov 12 for consultations on issues of common interest in the Indo-Pacific region.
The discussions focused on cooperation based on their converging vision and values for promotion of peace, stability and prosperity in an increasingly inter-connected region that they share with each other and with other partners, read a Indian government statement.
They agreed that a free, open, prosperous and inclusive Indo-Pacific region serves the long-term interests of all countries in the region and of the world at large.
The officials also exchanged views on addressing common challenges of terrorism and proliferation linkages impacting the region as well as on enhancing connectivity.
The Indian side highlighted Indias Act East Policy as the cornerstone of its engagement in the Indo-Pacific region.
Amravati, Nov 12 (IBNS): At least 11 people were killed when a boat carrying tourists overturned in Krishna river in Andhra Pradesh on Sunday, officials said.
Search operation is still going on.
The accident took place at around 5.45 pm.
National Disaster Response Force personnel are currently performing rescue operation.
The NDRF said 20 people have been rescued alive so far.
"Boat carrying approx.35 people capsized at Krishna River, Ferry Ghats , Krishna district AP. Search and rescue operation going on . So far 20 people rescued alive & 11 dead bodies retrieved . NDRF and civil authorities conducting operation," NDRF tweeted.
The NDRF said three teams of it are currently performing operation.
Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu has condoled the loss of lives in the mishap.
Images: NDRF Twitter page
These announcements were made under the auspices of the Marrakech Partnership for Global Climate Action, created last year to spur action by state and non-state sectors to help implement the Paris Agreement on climate change.
New Transport Decarbonisation Alliance
In a major new partnership, France, the Netherlands, Portugal, Costa Rica and the Paris Process on Mobility and Climate (PPMC) launched the Transport Decarbonisation Alliance to stimulate greater political leadership in the sector.
Transport contributes about one quarter of all energy-related carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions and about 15-17 per cent of the entire spread of human CO2 emissions.
More ambitious and coordinated action on transport is required to deliver on the Paris Agreement, said Jose Mendes, Deputy Minister for Environment of Portugal.
Six new voluntary sector initiatives were also introduced in Bonn to address specific aspects of transport and climate change. These include: the 'below50' (expanding the global market for the world's most sustainable fuels); the EcoMobility Alliance (cities committed to sustainable transport); EV100 (accelerating the transition to electro-mobility); Walk 21 (valuing and delivering more walkable communities); the Global Strategy for Cleaner Fuels and Vehicles; and the Transforming Urban Mobility Initiative (accelerating implementation of sustainable urban transport development and mitigation of climate change).
Cities and communities speed coordinated climate action
Similarly, global cities and communities also announced new efforts Saturday to coordinate their climate action commitments to deliver bigger and faster results together.
Local and regional governments are making commitments that will help national Governments close the gap between current national commitments and the emissions reductions needed to achieve the Paris Agreement targets, said Gino Van Begin, Secretary General of ICLEI Local Governments for Sustainability, a global network of more than 1,500 cities, towns and regions working together for sustainable development.
Urban areas account for around two-thirds of the world's greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from global energy use. Their overall contribution to total greenhouse gas emissions is estimated at between 37 and 49 per cent globally, depending on base assumptions of data used.
Also at a press conference at COP 23, the Mayor of city of Pittsburgh (in the United States), William Peduto, announced that 367 American mayors have agreed to be part of the Paris Agreement no matter what our Federal Government did.
It's going to happen at the local level, he said.
The new initiatives announced include efforts ICLEI and the global NDC Partnership (a coalition of countries and institutions working to mobilize support for climate goals and enhancing sustainable development) to design, implement and align climate action strategies across all levels of governments.
Similarly, the Cities Climate Finance Leadership Alliance (a group of some 40 organizations working to mobilize investment in low-carbon and climate-resilient infrastructure in cities and urban areas internationally) is mapping available finance to match known infrastructure projects a critical requirement to help local governments identify funding.
Threat of ocean warming and ocean acidification
Also Saturday at COP 23, a new declaration was signed to strengthen global response to climate change impacts on oceans and coastal zones.
Oceans are the planet's largest carbon sink, a major regulating force of global climate, and fundamental to the survival and well-being of humanity.
Oceans have featured little in the UN climate negotiations to date, and yet they are not only important for planetary survival but also offer great opportunities for innovation towards a low-carbon blue economy, said Biliana Cicin-Sain, President of the Global Ocean Forum.
Isabel Torres de Noronha, Executive Secretary of the Future Ocean Alliance, a non-governmental organization, in an interview with UN News, underscored that ocean acidification might put at risk not only ecosystems but also many economic activities and food security of coastal populations.
Among initiatives at national level, she highlighted one from Viet Nam about strengthening the coastline by planting forests of mangroves.
Photo: UNFCCC
Source: www.justearthnews.com
Washington, Nov 12 (IBNS): Attacking North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un, US President Donald Trump on Sunday sarcastically called him 'short and fat'.
"Why would Kim Jong-un insult me by calling me 'old,' when I would NEVER call him 'short and fat?' Oh well, I try so hard to be his friend - and maybe someday that will happen!," Trump tweeted.
Trump met Russian leader Vladimir Putin on the margins of the APEC conference in Da Nang, Vietnam.
Speaking on the issue of meeting the Russian President, Trump tweeted: "Met with President Putin of Russia who was at #APEC meetings. Good discussions on Syria. Hope for his help to solve, along with China the dangerous North Korea crisis. Progress being made."
Attacking critics, he said: "When will all the haters and fools out there realize that having a good relationship with Russia is a good thing, not a bad thing. There always playing politics - bad for our country. I want to solve North Korea, Syria, Ukraine, terrorism, and Russia can greatly help!"
Trump is currently on a Asian tour.
He is in Philippines now to attend the ASEAN Summit.
Residents of Delhi-NCR have been choked by the blanket of smog that has covered the capital. It's been almost a week and the national capital has been engulfed in smog leading to shutting down of schools, road accidents, flight delays, etc. Read More
Here are more top news of the day:
1) Over 30 Hindu Houses Set On Fire By Mob In Bangladesh Following Facebook Post Defaming Islam
dhaka tribune
The agitated mob set on fire at least 30 houses of Hindus in Bangladesh following rumours that a youth from the minority community published an offensive Facebook status. Read more
2) Cow Vigilante Terror Hits Again As They Gun Down A Man Transporting Cattle In Rajasthan
representational image: bccl
A Muslim man who was transporting cows near the Rajasthan-Haryana border was shot dead allegedly by vigilantes while his aide was left battling for his life in a private hospital after being thrashed, reported CNN-News 18. Read more
3) After Kim Jong-Un Calls Trump 'Old Lunatic', US Prez Tweets, He Would Never Call Him 'Short & Fat'
reuters
After North Korean Leader Kim Jong-Un Called Trump 'Old Lunatic', US President tweeted that he would never call Kim Jong-Un short and fat'. Read more
4) As Delhis Air Quality Deteriorates Further, Residents Are Leaving The Capital For Good
BCCL
Mayur isn't alone in seeking cleaner air. Two years ago, when New York Times correspondent Gardiner Harris wrote that he was leaving Delhi because of its dangerous air pollution and its effect on his sons' health, many dismissed it as an expat's tirade. Read more
5) Mumbai Traffic Cop Suspended For Towing Car With Woman Breastfeeding Her 7-Month-Old Baby
In an obnoxious and shocking incident, a woman was breastfeeding her seven-month-old baby inside a stationed car when Mumbai traffic cops towed away her vehicle. Read more
Two months after the Supreme Court ruling against instant triple talaq, Yasmeen Khalid, the wife of Aligarh Muslim University professor Khalid Bin Yusuf Khan, has alleged that she has become a victim of it and threatened to commit suicide in front of the vice-chancellor's house along with her kids if "justice is not done" to her.
AFP/Representational Image
Yasmeen told TOI on Saturday that Khan, who is professor and chairman at the Department of Sanskrit in AMU and has been with the university for 27 years, "wrongly" gave her talaq first on WhatsApp and then as a text message. She said she will have no choice but to kill herself along with her three children in front of VC Tariq Mansoor's house if she doesn't get justice by December 11.
"He (Khan) turned me out of the house and I have been running from pillar to post to get justice. But no one has helped me so far. However, with the help of police, I did manage to get access to my house on Friday evening."
Khan denied the allegations. He said, "I had not only given her talaq on WhatsApp and SMS but had also verbally told her in front of two other people and adhered to the time duration as per Sharia."
Representational Image
Claiming to be the real victim in this case, Khan said, "To the contrary, she has been harassing me for the last two decades. She had hidden various facts from me before our marriage. I later got to know that she was not even a graduate, unlike what she had claimed. I will give her the third talaq too, on a proper date, and no one can stop me. I don't care what she does."
Yasmeen said she is not just a graduate but has done her MA and BEd from AMU.
SSP (Aligarh) Rajesh Pandey said that police managed to get her entry into her house. He added that Yasmeen has not yet lodged a complaint against her husband and has been insisting on counselling. "In such a scenario, there isn't much the police department can do. We have called both of them here."
AFP/Representational Image
A five-judge constitution bench of the Supreme Court in August this year termed the practice of triple talaq " unconstitutional" and asked Parliament to make a new law on the issue in six months. If the law doesn't come into force in six months, the SC's injunction on triple talaq would continue, the apex court held. It referred to the abolition of triple talaq in some Islamic countries and asked why "independent India can't get rid of it".
Lebanon's president on Saturday called Saudi Arabia to know the reason as to why the country's PM has not returned home since his resignation last week. The US and France expressed their support for Lebanon's sovereignty and stability amid heightening tensions between Beirut and Saudi Arabia.
Reuters
A political crisis has gripped Lebanon and shattered the relative peace maintained by its coalition government since PM Saad al-Hariri's stunning announcement on November 4 from the Saudi capital that he was resigning.
Lebanese President Michel Aoun called on Saudi Arabia to clarify why Hariri hasn't returned home since announcing his resignation saying that "the obscurity regarding Hariri's conditions makes anything that he says or does not reflect truth". It was an indication that Aoun does not recognise Hariri's resignation.
Lebanese officials have insisted on the return home of Hariri from Saudi Arabia amid rumours that he is being held against his will. According to a senior official, Lebanon's president is said to have told foreign ambassadors that Hariri has been "kidnapped" and must have immunity.
Reuters
Riyadh maintains Hariri is free and had decided to resign because Iran's Lebanese ally, Hezbollah, was calling the shots in his coalition government. Saudi officials have said that their measures against Lebanon are in response to the militant Hezbollah's group support of anti-Saudi rebels in Yemen known as Houthis.
Amid the growing regional crisis, Egypt's President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi dispatched his foreign minister for talks with Arab nations. "The foreign minister's tour comes in the framework of permanent consultations between Egypt and Arab brothers on mutual relations and the conditions in the region, especially in the shadow of developments in Lebanon's political arena," a ministry statement said.
Western countries have appealed for calm and freedom of movement for Hariri. White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said in a statement that Washington calls upon "all states and parties to respect Lebanon's sovereignty, independence, and constitutional processes."
Reuters
Also on Saturday, Lebanon's state-run National News Agency reported that French President Emmanuel Macron called Aoun expressing France's commitment to Lebanon's "unity, sovereignty and independence and to help it in preserving political and security stability".
Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia's energy ministry said on Saturday that pumping to Bahrain had been suspended and the kingdom was stepping up security precautions at its own facilities after its Gulf island neighbour blamed "terrorism" linked to Iran for an oil pipeline blast. Iran denies any role in unrest in Bahrain.
The agitated mob set on fire at least 30 houses of Hindus in Bangladesh following rumours that a youth from the minority community published an offensive Facebook status. According to Dhaka Tribune, one person was killed when police opened fire to disperse the crowd that launched the arson attack on the houses of Hindus on Friday. The incident took place in Rangpur district's Thakurpara village, about 300 kilometres from Dhaka.
Internet Hindu
At least five persons were injured when police fired rubber bullets and lobbed tear gas shells to bring the situation under control, it said. The protesters claimed that they were infuriated by a defamatory status published from the Facebook account of a person who hails from the Thakurbari village a few days ago, the report said. Before the police intervened, the perpetrators had torched at least 30 Hindu houses before looting and vandalising them, the report said.
A crowd of 20,000 people had reportedly gathered from six to seven neighbouring villages before the attack was launched by a group of people, it said.
The police had a tough time dealing with the protesters and restoring the law and order situation in the area, the report said. Six persons with bullet injuries were rushed to a nearby hospital when one of them succumbed to his injuries, the report said.
dhaka tribune
Police have detained 33 people in connection with the incident, bdnews24 reported. There were traffic snarls after the mob blocked the Rangpur-Dinajpur highway to protest against the police action.
Police personnel have been deployed in the area where the situation was tense, Kotwali police station officer-in-charge (Operation) Moktarul Islam said. The district administration has formed a three-member inquiry committee, headed by additional district magistrate Abu Rafa Mohammad Rafiq, to investigate the incident and submit a report in seven days, the report added.
According to an old adage, the best camera you have is the one with you.
Our smartphones today come loaded with amazing cameras, and this has led us to completely forget that point and shoot cameras even exist in the market. Many dont even feel like carrying a DSLR due to its bulky nature. If youre one of them and you wish to get a little better at your smartphone photography skills, weve got a few apps you must try out.
Prisma
This app was one of the most popular photo editing apps of last year. The app uses artificial intelligence and machine learning to add artistic filters on images. Most of these filters include famous paintings by famous artists like Van Gogh, Levitan, Picasso, and the end result is quite exquisite. A definite must have if youre trying to make a beautiful portrait more interesting.
Snapseed
Snapseed is a cool photo shooting and editing app. The app gives you precision editing tools that can fine-tune your image to look the way you want it to. You also get to edit RAW images on your smartphone, which is a cool addition.
Instagram
Instagram is a photo capturing, editing and sharing app, which is also one of the most popular social media platforms existing in the market. The app is known for its plethora of filters and image editing options to add a dramatic feel to the ordinary image. A must-have for every budding photographer to showcase his talents.
EyeM
EyeM is another image capturing, editing and sharing platform, however, whats interesting with EyeM is that you can monetise your images that you share, so your talent wont go in vain. EyeM also gets a ton of pro photo-editing options to play with, and the app is fairly feature loaded to fancy photographers.
VSCO
If you love retro-photography with films, this app is just for you. VSCO has added realistic film filters which have been adopted from actual Kodak and Fuji films in different ISOs so you can play around with your image and add the authentic film look. Apart from the filters you also get a ton of editing options to play with.
Pixlr
Pixlr is one app to make your images social-media ready. From adding funky texts to creating collages to double exposure, Pixlr has got it all. You also get regular photo-editing and photo capturing features along with cool tools to make your image perfect for sharing.
Camera360
Camera360 is a funky photo editor which adds a ton of fun to a regular selfie or portrait. The live camera app makes the minute editing tools easily accessible. You get on-screen dials to switch between filters and other options. The app also gets a ton of regular and live stickers to truly express your emotion.
Camera FV-5
If youre looking for proper DSLR like controls on your smartphone, you must definitely check out Camera FV-5. You can not only control elements like shutter speed, exposure, aperture, ISO and others, but you also have the ability to shoot in RAW. For professional photographers who want the level of precision as their DSLRs, this app is perfect for you.
Hypocam
If youre a fan of clicking black and white images, this camera app is the one youve been waiting for. The camera only shoots in monochromatic. Moreover, the app also has a ton of black and white filters, along with a bunch of editing options to make more dramatic portraits.
Motion Stills
If youre a fan of live photos on iPhone and wanting to get something similar on your Android, you could try Motion Stills. This app by Google allows you to create 2-3 second loop images, which look live- similar to photos from the Harry Potter movies. They add a ton of more emotion to the static image and best of all, you can capture your favourite frame from the small loop and save it as a static image too.
Retrica
This is yet another selfie camera with a ton of filters. Along with these filters, you also have the option to create video GIFs, collages as well as adding cute stickers to decorate boring portraits with.
I wanted to leave a message here, for humanity and all of planet, that the peoples need to join to defend Mother Nature, the soil, water and air because they are being threatened, said Ninawa Nuneshuni Kui, President of the Huni Kui People of Acre, Brazil. And humanity needs Nature to survive. So I want to say that Nature and the air are not a means of commerce for anyone and its every humans right to live in peace. Jerry Browns American Pledge will lead to the displacement of my people and the destruction of my territory. We need to respect the rights of Nature and humans beings that need her to survive.
Photo meme of Jerry Brown courtesy of the Indigenous Environmental Network.
Jerry Brown tells indigenous protesters in Bonn, 'Let's put you in the ground'by Dan BacherGovernor Jerry Brown doesnt always deal with critics of his controversial environmental policies well and that was the case again today when he spoke at the UN Climate Conference in Bonn, Germany.Californians, including indigenous water protectors and those on the frontlines of climate change, disrupted California Governor Jerry Browns speech at the Americans Pledge event at the UN climate talks to confront his strong support of fossil fuels in his state.The banner-carrying protesters yelled, Keep it in the ground and other chants, referring to the governors strong support of fracking, both offshore and on land in California, and cap-and-trade policies that could prove catastrophic to the Huni Kui People of Acre, Brazil and other indigenous communities around the globe."I wish we have could have no pollution, but we have to have our automobiles, said Brown as the activists began disrupting his talk."In the ground, I agree with you, Brown said. In the ground. Lets put you in the ground so we can get on with the show here.This is very California. Thanks for bringing the diversity of dissent here, the visibly disturbed Brown continued.A video of Brown's reaction to the protest is available here: http://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/capitol-alert/article184097901.html?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter This is not the first time that Brown has employed harsh words to blast his opponents. On July 25 of this year, Brown blasted critics of his oil industry-written cap-and-trade bill, AB 398, for practicing forms of political terrorism that are conspiring to undermine the American system of governance in an interview with David Greene of NPR (National Public Radio) http://bit.ly/2eLu3g6 Governor Brown, portrayed as a green governor, climate hero, and resistance to Trump by the mainstream media and corporate environmental NGOs, has come to the climate talks to promote California as a global model of climate leadership" at a time when increasing number of Californians are fed up with his pro-Big Oil and pro-Big Ag environmental policies."When cities and states combine together and then join with powerful corporations, that's how we get stuff done," said Governor Brown at today's event at the U.S. Climate Action Pavilion, the exhibition space sponsored by U.S. non-federal leaders at COP23. "We're here, we're in and we're not going away."However, Indigenous Peoples, frontline communities, environmentalists and climate activists disagreed strongly with Brown's contention that cities and states collaborating with "powerful corporations" is "how we get stuff done" - and held this non-violent direct action to expose Browns deep ties to Big Oil and 'false solutions" such as carbon markets.From refusing to ban fracking to letting oil companies dump toxic waste into underground water supplies, Governor Brown promotes policies that incentivize oil and gas production in the state, according to a news release from the Indigenous Environmental Network. His cap-and-trade extension includes provisions written by oil lobbyists that prevent state and local agencies from directly limiting carbon emissions from oil refineries. He has also failed to shut down the Aliso Canyon natural gas storage facility, where the largest methane leak in U.S. history forced thousands to flee their homes in 2015.On November 9, a Center for Biological Diversity report released at the Bonn conference revealed that three-quarters of Californias oil is as climate-damaging as Canadian tar sands crude. "Oil Stain: How Dirty Crude Undercuts Californias Climate Progress" found that eight of the states 10 largest-producing oil fields produce very dirty crude with greenhouse gas emissions comparable to tar sands oil, according to the Center. The report detailed how the states dirty oil problem is compounded by policies that incentivize crude production.The groups today called on Governor Brown to ban new drilling and fracking, phase out fossil fuel production, and commit to "a just transition to clean energy for all."Northern California has five refineries stretching along our Bay on the North East side of San Francisco, said Daniel Ilario, Idle No More SF/Bay Area. Those living along this Refinery Corridor experience continuous negative health effects such as respiratory problems, birth defects, leukemia and cancers. Californias answer to our global climate crisis, the Cap and Trade extension (AB 398), will continue allowing refineries to expand, pollute, and ultimately destroy life.The Phillips 66 Refinery in Rodeo, CA plans to expand their marine terminal to increase crude oil imports by water from 30,000 barrels a day to 130,000 barrels a day. We will not let this happen. Decision makers around the world need to understand that Governors Jerry Browns carbon market scheme will continue killing our people and poisoning our water, air, and soil. We will not accept the false solution of carbon trading that increase pollution in our hometowns while violating indigenous rights and human rights around the world. We must keep fossil fuels in the ground, said Ilario.Ninawa Nuneshuni Kui, President of the Huni Kui People of Acre, Brazil, said Brown's "American Pledge," based on environmentally unjust carbon trading, would lead to the displacement of his people and the destruction of his land.I wanted to leave a message here, for humanity and all of planet, that the peoples need to join to defend Mother Nature, the soil, water and air because they are being threatened, said Kui, "And humanity needs Nature to survive. So I want to say that Nature and the air are not a means of commerce for anyone and its every humans right to live in peace. Jerry Browns American Pledge will lead to the displacement of my people and the destruction of my territory. We need to respect the rights of Nature and humans beings that need her to survive.Eva Malis, a young person from Valencia, CA, pointed out that Californians have been asking Governor Brown for years to step up and "be a true climate leader.""If he is going to be celebrated by the world as a climate leader, he needs to commit to the communities on the frontlines of fossil fuel extraction. Real climate leaders dont frack. This isnt just about Californians. The world needs Jerry Brown to do more in his own state," said Malis.California Governor Jerry Brown is one of the biggest liars when it comes to being a climate leader, summed up Isabelle Zizi of Idle No More SF Bay. In 2014, hundreds of our drinking water and agricultural aquifers were contaminated with 3 billion gallons of fracking wastewater. The cap and trade bill that he passed in the summer of 2017 is in favor of more greenhouse gas emissions, more offsets for the fossil fuel industry, and is a false solution to stop climate change.Zizi is in Bonn for the UN Climate Talks. Follow her for updates on actions from the #ItTakesRoots delegation of Indigenous people, frontline communities and people of color.While Brown portrays himself as a "climate leader," he has in fact received over $9.8 million in contributions from oil, gas and utility companies, often within days of winning big political favors, according to Consumer Watchdog's "Brown's Dirty Hands" report released in August 2016.The timing of energy industry donations around important legislation and key pro-industry amendments, as well as key regulatory decisions in which Brown personally intervened, raises troubling questions about whether quid pro quos are routine for this administration, said consumer advocate Liza Tucker, report author. While Brown paints himself as a foe of fossil fuels, his Administration promoted reckless oil drilling, burning dirty natural gas to make electricity, and used old hands from industry and government, placed in key regulatory positions, to protect the fossil fuel-reliant energy industry.The report claims that twenty-six energy companies including the states three major investor-owned utilities, Occidental, Chevron, and NRGall with business before the statedonated $9.8 million to Jerry Browns campaigns, causes, and initiatives, and to the California Democratic Party since he ran for Governor. You can download the report here: http://www.consumerwatchdog.org/dirtyhands Then on February 6 of this year, twelve public interest groups, led by Consumer Watchdog and Food & Water Watch, unveiled a comprehensive "report card" on Jerry Brown Administrations environmental record showing he falls short in six out of seven key areas, including oil drilling, fossil fuel generated electricity, toxic emissions, the California Environmental Quality Act, coastal protection and water.The report calls for a moratorium on the building of natural gas powered electricity plants, given what they described as the glut of electric capacity, and calls for an outside audit of the states energy needs. The groups showed how California can improve its environmental protections to meet standards set in other states. The document also urged Brown to abandon his Delta Tunnels project, a plan to construct two massive tunnels under the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta, and to make water conservation a priorityRead the report How Green Is Jerry Brown? at: http://www.consumerwatchdog.org/isbrowngreen While Brown portrays himself as the "resistance" to President Trump's positions on climate change and other issues, it is worth noting that Brown and the Trump administration appear to share a lot of common ground on many issues, including water infrastructure, public lands, the Delta Tunnels and the expansion of fracking in California. On April 13, Brown and Secretary of Interior Ryan Zinke had a "positive and productive" meeting during the Secretary's visit to California, according to Zinke.For more information on Jerry Brown's environmental policies, go here: http://redgreenandblue.org/2017/11/09/behind-jerry-browns-green-facade-lurks-dirty-oil-environmental-injustice/
What Is a Letter of Credit?
A letter of credit, or a credit letter, is a letter from a bank guaranteeing that a buyers payment to a seller will be received on time and for the correct amount. If the buyer is unable to make a payment on the purchase, the bank will be required to cover the full or remaining amount of the purchase. It may be offered as a facility.
Due to the nature of international dealings, including factors such as distance, differing laws in each country, and difficulty in knowing each party personally, the use of letters of credit has become a very important aspect of international trade.
Key Takeaways A letter of credit is a document sent from a bank or financial institute that guarantees that a seller will receive a buyers payment on time and for the full amount.
Letters of credit are often used within the international trade industry.
There are many different letters of credit including one called a revolving letter of credit.
Banks collect a fee for issuing a letter of credit.
1:17 What Is A Credit Reference?
How a Letter of Credit Works
Buyers of major purchases may need a letter of credit to assure the seller that the payment will be made. A bank issues a letter of credit to guarantee the payment to the seller, essentially taking responsibility that the seller will be paid. A buyer must prove to the bank that they have enough assets or a sufficient line of credit to pay before the bank will guarantee the payment to the seller.
Banks typically require a pledge of securities or cash as collateral for issuing a letter of credit.
Because a letter of credit is typically a negotiable instrument, the issuing bank pays the beneficiary or any bank nominated by the beneficiary. If a letter of credit is transferable, the beneficiary may assign another entity, such as a corporate parent or a third party, the right to draw.
The International Chamber of Commerces Uniform Customs and Practice for Documentary Credits oversees letters of credit used in international transactions.
How Much a Letter of Credit Costs
Banks will usually charge a fee for a letter of credit, which can be a percentage of the total credit that they are backing. The cost of a letter of credit will vary by bank and the size of the letter of credit. For example, they may charge 0.75% of the amount that they are guaranteeing.
Types of Letters of Credit
The types of letters of credit include a commercial letter of credit, revolving letter of credit, travelers letter of credit, and confirmed letter of credit.
Commercial Letter of Credit
This is a direct payment method in which the issuing bank makes the payments to the beneficiary. In contrast, a standby letter of credit is a secondary payment method in which the bank pays the beneficiary only when the holder cannot.
Revolving Letter of Credit
This kind of letter allows a customer to make any number of draws within a certain limit during a specific time period.
Travelers Letter of Credit
For those going abroad, this letter will guarantee that issuing banks will honor drafts made at certain foreign banks.
Confirmed Letter of Credit
A confirmed letter of credit involves a bank other than the issuing bank guaranteeing the letter of credit. The second bank is the confirming bank, typically the sellers bank. The confirming bank ensures payment under the letter of credit if the holder and the issuing bank default. The issuing bank in international transactions typically requests this arrangement.
Example of a Letter of Credit
Citibank offers letters of credit for buyers in Latin America, Africa, Eastern Europe, Asia, and the Middle East who may have difficulty obtaining international credit on their own. Citibanks letters of credit help exporters minimize the importers country risk and the issuing banks commercial credit risk.
Letters of credit are typically provided within two business days, guaranteeing payment by the confirming Citibank branch. This benefit is especially valuable when a client is located in a potentially unstable economic environment.
Advantages and Disadvantages of a Letter of Credit
Obtaining letters of credit may be necessary in certain situations. However, like anything else related to banking, trade, and business there are some pros and cons to acknowledge.
Advantages and Disadvantages of a Letter of Credit Advantages Can create security and build mutual trust for buyers and sellers in trade transactions.
Makes it easier to define the specifics of when and how transactions are to be completed between involved parties.
Letters of credit can be personalized with terms that are tailored to the circumstances of each transaction.
Can make the transfer of funds more efficient and streamlined. Disadvantages Buyers typically bear the costs of obtaining a letter of credit.
Letters of credit may not cover every detail of the transaction, potentially leaving room for error.
Establishing a letter of credit may be tedious or time-consuming for all parties involved.
The terms of a letter of credit may not account for unexpected changes in the political or economic landscape.
How does a letter of credit work? Often in international trade, a letter of credit is used to signify that a payment will be made to the seller on time, and in full, as guaranteed by a bank or financial institution. After sending a letter of credit, the bank will charge a fee, typically a percentage of the letter of credit, in addition to requiring collateral from the buyer. Among the various forms of letters of credit are a revolving letter of credit, a commercial letter of credit, and a confirmed letter of credit.
What is an example of a letter of credit? Consider an exporter in an unstable economic climate, where credit may be more difficult to obtain. Bank of America would offer this buyer a letter of credit, available within two business days, in which the purchase would be guaranteed by a Bank of America branch. Because the bank and the exporter have an existing relationship, the bank is knowledgeable of the buyers creditworthiness, assets, and financial status.
What is the difference between a commercial letter of credit and a revolving letter of credit? As one of the most common forms of letters of credit, commercial letters of credit are when the bank makes payment directly to the beneficiary or seller. Revolving letters of credit, by contrast, can be used for multiple payments within a specific time frame. Typically, these are used for businesses that have an ongoing relationship, with the time limit of the arrangement usually spanning one year.
The Bottom Line
Letters of credit can play an important part in trade transactions. There are different types of letters of credit that may be used, depending on the circumstances. If you need to obtain a letter of credit for a business transaction, your current bank may be the best place to begin your search. You may, however, need to expand the net wider to include larger banks if you maintain accounts at a smaller financial institution.
The Twin Falls County Sheriffs Office is asking that anyone having information, please call 735-1911 or Crime Stoppers at 732-5387 where you can remain anonymous and may be eligible for a cash reward.
Australian suppliers attending Amazon's Marketplace sellers summit in Sydney today expect the retailing giant to kick off its operations in Australia on or around 24 November in order to coincide with its annual Black Friday and Cyber Monday shopping promotions.
The Australian Financial Review reported that suppliers attending the shopping behemoth's summit would be looking to confirm that it would start offers Down Under within the next fortnight.
The Black Friday (24 November) and Cyber Monday (27 November) shopping promotions are said to have become quite popular in Australia. They are the biggest shopping days in the US.
The report said that Amazon's Australia country manager Rocco Braeuniger would provide details about the company's Marketplace launch date at the summit in what would be his first public appearance.
The summit will be held at Jones Bay Wharf in partnership with the Australian Retailers Association and the SME Association of Australia.
Attendees are expected to include local retailers, Australians running established SMEs, and aspiring entrepreneurs planning to launch a start-up and use Amazons Marketplace to reach customers.
Amazon launched its Marketplace in 2000 and sales from sellers on the portal now make up more than 50% of sales on Amazon sites globally.
The company has said that more than 500 Australian businesses have registered to sell through its channels when the Amazon Marketplace goes live.
The University of Adelaide has secured a federal government grant of $387,884 part of total funding of $11.4 million for resarch using machine learning techniques to find the earliest signs of disease that are difficult to detect visually from a CT scan.
The grant to the University of Adelaide is part of a funding packge to 32 projects by the Australian Goverrnment through the Australian Research Councils National Competitive Grants Programme.
The Discovery Project, over three years, seeks to advance medical image analysis to discover visual bio-markers from chest CT scans, to predicting five-year survival of chronic disease.
We will be using the chest CT scans of patients who presented with disease symptoms which werent visible in a CT scan, but who subsequently died within five years, says chief investigator Associate Professor Gustavo Carneiro, from the University of Adelaides Australian Centre for Visual Technologies in the School of Computer Science.
Using machine learning, we will be able to classify which CT scans are from patients who would die in five years and, while not diagnosing the disease, well be able to highlight the particular areas of concern to enable further investigation. This would enable doctors to intervene at a much earlier stage of the disease than is being currently detected.
Another Discovery Project grant of $423,102 over three years was awarded to Professor Anton van den Hengel, director of the Australian Centre for Visual Technologies, to shift artificial intelligence to more human-like thinking. He heads a world-leading group of more than 60 researchers working in computer vision and artificial intelligence.
Artificial intelligence has made great leaps over the past 10 years with much of the progress due to a form of artificial intelligence called deep learning, says Professor van den Hengel.
Deep learning is how Facebook finds your face in photos and how a driverless car is steered. But one of the limitations is that it is purely reactive. This project will enable reason, and a higher-level analysis than previously possible.
The University of Adelaide was awarded 21 new Discovery Projects ($8.3 million), seven new Discovery Early Career Researcher Award grants ($2.55 million), one Discovery Indigenous project ($512,688), and three projects totalling $942,881 funding under the Linkage Infrastructure Equipment and Facilities scheme.
These funding outcomes add to what has already been an outstanding year of ARC funding success for the University of Adelaide, says Acting Deputy Vice-Chancellor Research Professor Julie Owens.
Peripherals manufacturer Logitech has reacted to the storm around its decision to brick all Harmony Link devices from March next year by offering a free Harmony Hub to all owners of the Link.
In its initial announcement about the Link, the company had said that those who had a device that was still under warranty would receive a Hub in exchange. Others would have to pay 65% of the cost of the Hub to get one.
The Harmony Link is a device that has a cloud-based system which allows users to control home theatre and sound equipment from a mobile app.
The reason for discontinuing the Link is the expiry of an encryption certificate licence from a third party. Logitech says, "we would be acting irresponsibly by continuing the service knowing its potential/future vulnerability".
In what can only be characterised as a climbdown, Logitechany Link owner who had paid the 65% cost of the Hub would get their money back.
In a Q and A, Logitech said it had made the decision to discontinue the Link because it had a small active user base.
The company also admitted that it had, as suspected by many users, censored the words "class action lawsuit" from posts in its support forum.
"The words 'class action lawsuit' were blocked as our Community Terms of Use do not allow solicitation, including legal solicitation. We have unblocked the terms and are reviewing our list of blocked terms," it said.
The Australian Government has launched a GeoScience-led trial of what is claimed as world-first satellite positioning technology.
Resources and Northern Australia Minister Matt Canavan launched the trial in Rockhampton and said the first contracts with industry had been signed as part of a two-year GeoScience trial examining the economic and social benefits of a Satellite-Based Augmentation System for the Australasian region.
Geoscience Australia, as leader of the SBAS test project for the Australasia region, says it will overcome the current gaps in mobile and radio communications and, when combined with on-ground operational infrastructure and services, will ensure that accurate positioning information can be received anytime and anywhere within Australia and New Zealand.
The two-year project will test two new satellite positioning technologies including next-generation SBAS and Precise Point Positioning, which Geoscience says will provide positioning accuracies of several decimetres and five centimetres respectively.
Geoscience Australia is collaborating with Land Information New Zealand (LINZ) on the test-year project to improve the positioning capability of both countries.
As part of the project, the New Zealand Government has contributed an additional $2 million to the initial $12 million in funding from the Australian Government.
Geoscience Australia and LINZ are working closely with the Co-operative Research Centre for Spatial Information on the project and the CRCSI is overseeing the evaluation of the effectiveness of an SBAS for the region, and building expertise within government and industry on its transformative benefits.
The CRCSI has called for organisations from across the aviation, road, rail, maritime, spatial, construction, mining, utilities and agriculture sectors to participate.
At CQUniversity in Rockhampton one of the first industry participants to sign on Canavan said that in coming months, further contracts are expected to be signed covering more than 30 industry-based projects across 10 sectors examining real-world applications of three new satellite positioning technologies.
We know that working closely with industries like agriculture is the key to understanding what Australia can gain from investing in technologies that may improve positioning accuracy from the current five to 10 metres down to less than 10 centimetres, he said.
As part of the trial, a number of the projects will be looking at how improvements in positioning can be used to increase production and lower costs for farmers.
For example, one of the projects will be examining the potential of fenceless farming for strip grazing, while another will be looking at how crop health can be improved through more precise irrigation, fertiliser use and pest control.
Canavan said the new technologies basically augmented and corrected the positioning signals already transmitted to Australia by constellations of international satellites like the United States Global Positioning System (GPS).
"All up, three signals will be uplinked to a geostationary communications satellite out of Lockheed Martins station at Uralla in the New England region of New South Wales.
In September, a second generation SBAS (SBAS-2) signal was switched on. It is the first time anywhere in the world that SBAS-2 signals have been transmitted. Australia is also the first country in the world to trial Precise Point Positioning corrections integrated into a SBAS service.
And, Infrastructure and Transport Minister Darren Chester said improving positioning technology also had the potential to provide safety, efficiency, capacity and environmental benefits for all transport sectors.
Satellite-based technology is already used significantly in the aviation and maritime industries, however SBAS provides opportunities to increase the safe and productive use of this technology, he said.
Automated vehicle and train management systems also provide exciting opportunities for road and rail users in the future.
The Member for Capricornia, Michelle Landry, said CQ Universitys project would receive up to $180,000 in funding from the Australian and New Zealand Governments, with the project partners contributing an additional $105,000.
Google is likely to be hit with another big fine from the European Union in the next few weeks, this time over its AdSense advertising system.
The announcement, which is expected in the few weeks, will be the second in less than a year, with the company having been fined 2.42 billion (US$2.7 billion) in June.
The British newspaper, The Telegraph, reported that the European Commission, the executive arm of the EU, had been expected to fine Google over its Android mobile operating system this year, but the investigation had been delayed as extra care was being taken to avoid any decision being challenged.
EU competition commissioner Margrethe Vestager has also fined Facebook for breaking competition law, and has asked Apple and Amazon to pay Ireland and Luxembourg respectively years of back taxes.
The June fine was for Google allegedly abusing its search engine dominance to give illegal advantage to its own comparison shopping service. It was given a date of 28 September for paying the fine.
EU competition commissioners Margrethe Vestager.
The company appealed that decision in the General Court, the second-highest court in Europe, in September. At the time, it was reported that the Luxembourg-based court was likely to take several years to decide on the appeal.
The AdSense fine is expected to rattle Google more than the shopping fine, because a major share of its revenue comes from advertising.
According to the Telegraph, "The commission alleges that Googles contracts with other websites broke competition law by preventing them from using other firms advertising networks within those websites search results."
The EU decision to delay announcement of the Android fine may also have been influenced by the fact that Intel challenged a fine of 1.06 billion for alleged anti-trust activities.
The EU Court of Justice told a lower court in September to re-examine this anti-trust fine which was levied on the company in 2009.
Neither Google nor the EU have made any public statement about the forthcoming AdSense fine.
Photo: courtesy the European Union.
Former Netcomm chief executive, ACOMMS Communications Ambassador and continuing communications pioneer and tech entrepreneur, David Stewart, is now a non-executive director of World Reach.
World Reach bills itself as "one of Australia's leading satellite telecommunications companies that designs, develops, manufactures and distributes a range of satellite phone equipment and related services".
The company says it "exists to assist people in times of disaster as well as those in remote, wilderness and maritime locations where there is no reliable access to terrestrial communications".
It announced the appointment of Stewart as a non-executive director of as of 9 November.
The company and Stewart "successfully completed a placement of 9,700,000 shares on 12 September 2017, which injected A$1,940,000 into the Company to assist with the funding of existing and prospective product developments".
"The placement conferred the right to appoint a director of World Reach Limited and David confirmed his desire to join the companys board.
"The placement and Davids decision to join the board reflects the investors positive view of the companys growth prospects in the communications sector as it continues to embark on the release of new and innovative communication products."
Stewart's work in the communications field is exceedingly impressive. Not only did he found Banksia Technology in 1988, and successfully managed the company as a fast growing and highly profitable business, but he instigated the takeovers of a number of competitors, including NetComm Limited, from 1996.
He then assumed the role of managing director and CEO of NetComm and oversaw the company's growth into a conglomerate, delivering annual revenues of over $85M (FY2016), until his retirement in December 2016.
During this time, Stewart was instrumental in expanding the business, reputation and revenues of that company over two decades, as evidenced by Netcomm being selected as the key equipment supplier to the national broadband network, in addition to impressive global comms deals.
In June 2016, Stewart was recognised for his significant contribution to the Australian communications industry with the presentation of the Communications Ambassador award, the highest honour presented by ACOMMS Communications Alliance and CommsDay each year.
World Reach chairman Simon Wallace said: Im delighted David has agreed to join us as not only a major shareholder in World Reach Limited, but also as a non-executive director and I expect he will make a substantial contribution to the direction and performance of the group in the future.
"All World Reachs directors hold shares in the company and we are professionally determined and personally motivated to ensure the company achieves all that it can. Davids skillset, experience and enthusiasm augurs well for us as a board and, by extension, all stakeholders in our company.
"The company and the directors welcome David to the board and we look forward to utilising Davids technical and commercial expertise as part of a successful future for the company.
Art Exhibits Feature Works by Esslinger, Moreau
Nov. 10, 2017
Andrea Moreau
BLOOMINGTON, Ill. Illinois Wesleyan Universitys Merwin and Wakeley Galleries will feature the work of artists Claudia Esslinger and Andrea Moreau in November.
On Nov. 13, visual artist Claudia Esslinger will present a gallery walk of her work at 11:30 a.m. in the Merwin Gallery. Focusing on media-based installation and video layering and projection, Esslinger uses media software and sculptural components to create an interactive experience for the viewer. By incorporating industrial and technical elements to natural surfaces, Esslingers projects focus on the inequities and inconsistencies within the human and the natural world.
Her exhibit Distant Tracings // Tracing Distance, explores the concepts of connection and separation. By using layered translucent video screens that complicate our vision, Esslinger focuses on the role that technology has in facilitating and frustrating our connections.
The recipient of seven Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Awards and a New Forms Regional Grant, Esslingers work has been featured in national and international exhibitions and film festivals. She has completed residencies with the Omora Ethnobotanical Preserve near Cape Horn, Chile, the Headlands Center for the Arts in Sausalito, California, Singing Pictures workshop in Seoul, South Korea and Grafikwerkstatt in Dresden, Germany.
Claudia Esslinger
Mixed-media artist Andrea Moreaus drawings function as personal interpretations of political or commercial propaganda. By using imagery from geographical artifacts such as postage stamps and printed advertisements, Moreau said she is able to create a world beyond the framework of these images. She says her work is a metaphor for the way in which we conjure the places we hear about on the news and read about in books, using the tiniest pieces of information to construct a reality that most likely bears little resemblance to any actual place."
Moreaus exhibit, Drawing out a Narrative in the Wakeley Gallery, resembles how she uses printed matter in her drawings and paintings to communicate a dialogue between the printed and the drawn, the official and the personal, and the real and the imaginary.
A recipient of the 2014 New York Foundation For the Arts Fellow in Drawing/Printmaking/Book Arts, Moreau also completed a residency in 2006 at the Vermont Studio Center. Her work has been exhibited both nationally and internationally, and has been included in Pierogi Gallery Flat Files, Drawing Center Slide Registry, and the White Columns Artists Registry. Moreau received a bachelor of fine arts degree from the University of Illinois in 1997, and a master of fine arts in painting and drawing from Ohio State University. She lives and maintains her studio in Beacon, New York.
Both exhibits will be on display from Nov.13 through Dec. 12 in the Joyce G. Eichhorn Ames School of Art Building (6 Ames Plaza West, Bloomington). Gallery hours are Monday through Friday noon to 4 p.m., Tuesday evenings 7 p.m. to 9 p.m., and Saturday and Sunday 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. The galleries will be closed Nov. 21 through 26 for Thanksgiving Break.
By Vi Kakares '20
Being well-versed in knowing what is needed when a national disaster strikes, there was no question Tom Jacobs, 70, and Anne Johnson, 65, of Flagstaff, would answer the call to deploy to Houston, Texas ahead of Hurricane Harveys impending catastrophic landfall. We got the call on Wednesday evening and left the following morning, Johnson said.
Jacobs and Johnson, with a combined 22+ years of volunteering with American Red Cross, have completed a dozen national deployments, serving their clients in floods, hurricanes, tornados, and wildfires, spanning across the country, beginning with Jacobs deployment in 2005 after Hurricane Katrina. I had always regretted not responding to 9/11 and felt this was my chance, he said. Johnson joined American Red Cross after seeing the rewarding work that Jacobs was doing. I was hesitant because of some of the conditions, she recalled before her first deployment to Hurricane Gustav, but all the hesitation disappeared after I was there helping the people in need.
On Aug. 24, Jacobs and Johnson drove to Houston, Texas, hauling American Red Cross disaster relief supplies, ready to serve the distressed residents of Texas. Jacobs admits it is not for everyone, saying direct contact with people is a hands-on experience. But, he added, there is nothing compared to the thanks, handshakes, blessings, and smiles bestowed upon us by our clients. That is our reward. Johnson agreed adding, Some of them will just hold on to you and cry.
While there, Jacobs and Johnson were assigned to travel through three towns each day to serve lunch and dinner to the residents without power and water. Each day they passed an elderly man sitting on the porch while his very young grandchildren played around him. He would not approach their truck for food or supplies. Jacobs decided to get out and approach him. He first was met with a little girl who said, I am hungry. Jacobs offered food for the elderly man and his grandchildren. The man replied, I dont have money. Jacobs explained American Red Cross services are free to everyone and proceeded to feed the family dinner and snacks. Afterward, the little girl pulled a piece of bark from her front yard tree and gave it to Jacobs saying, This is for you. You can take it home.
Would they deploy again? Jacobs said, Absolutely. Its the people in need and our ability to answer the call that will help us continue this work. Jacobs brought the piece of bark home as a reminder of why he and Johnson do this work.
Back home, Jacobs and Johnson continue to volunteer with the American Red Cross Northern Arizona Chapter. They are involved with American Red Cross national smoke alarm campaign installing free smoke alarms to prevent home fire deaths. They also work local shelters when needed and have even become involved in American Red Cross canteen services which respond to situations where gridlocked traffic strands people following a forest fire or flood. During this activity, they drive along the shoulder of the freeway handing out snacks and water until it reopens.
Jacobs and Johnson recommend that others become American Red Cross volunteers saying, Assisting others is addictive.
In the last ten weeks, the American Red Cross has launched wide-ranging relief efforts to help people devastated by three historic, back-to-back hurricanesHarvey, Irma, and Maria. And most recently, the Red Cross began supporting thousands of people affected by the deadliest week of wildfires in California history.
With the help of partners, the Red Cross has served more than 9.7 million meals and snacks, and provided more than 5.8 million emergency relief items to people in need.
Red Cross volunteers have provided more than 202,800 mental health and health services to support and care for those affected.
A total of more than 16,400 trained disaster workers, 91 percent of them volunteers, have been mobilized to support hurricane relief efforts. Many of these workers have supported multiple relief operations or deployed multiple times.
For more information about volunteering, call the Red Cross Northern Arizona Chapter at 779-5494 or go to RedCross.org/Arizona.
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By Beverly Milton-Edwards | ( OpenDemocracy.net ) |
Domestic politics in the Middle East especially in a country like Saudi Arabia never stays that way for long. Recent events in Riyadh, the Saudi capital, demonstrate the contagion effect not only on the politics in the Middle East but internationally too.
On November 3, regime forces of King Salman and Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman embarked on an arrest purge of some of the most powerful figures in the country. They called it an anti-corruption drive and in some international capitals such as Washington the cover story was parroted.
Despite the cover story about a corruption drive it is clear that the moves reflect the ongoing power-grab by Saudi Arabias Crown Prince as he clears the way both internally and externally to accede power from his father and remove perceived opponents.
The regional dimension of moves in Riyadh were apparent when the Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri who had allegedly been called to visit the Saudi capital city then made a televised announcement of his resignation.
The Saudi regime also contended with a missile attack targeting Riyadh fired from neighbouring Yemen and responded by closing ports and borders on this broken state.
The current political landscape in Saudi Arabia is being shaped by an ambitious individual who has hitherto been hailed as a reformer and moderate. Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman, commonly and also casually referred to as MbS has been credited as the driving force behind Saudi Arabias plans to reform and diversify an economy that has been tanking and causing cause for concern as local unemployment rates rise. Promises to float an Aramco IPO under his vision were also welcomed in international trade and finance circles.
Moreover, when Saudi Arabia made a dramatic volte face and over-turned an archaic driving ban on women in the Kingdom, the mark of Mohammed bin Salman the moderate was divined in some press opinion. On the surface all well and good. However, a series of moves and political calculations in the last six months have given rise to speculation that the power grab extends in terms of ambition beyond the borders of this increasingly unstable Kingdom.
The significance of this confluence of events lies in the contagion effect on the Middle East at a time of growing instability, tensions and conflict. There are fears that Mohammed bin Salman may be considering taking his country to the brink of war with Iran and seeking to recover some much-needed kudos in the wake of regional failures in, for example, Yemen and Syria.
Saudi Arabia has been seeking to recover some authority within the region ever since the Arab Uprisings of 2011. The masses forced Saudi-friendly autocrats such as Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and Tunisian President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali from power and newly mobilized citizens elected populist Islamists such as the Muslim Brotherhood to power.
With allies such as the UAE, Saudi Arabia has designed and pursued foreign policy approaches that have sought to intervene in regional hotspots to beat back the so-called Shia arc spreading from Tehran to the hillsides of South Lebanon and Israels border as well as claim the title of Sunni hegemon from groups like the populist Muslim Brotherhood.
Within this regional context, however, Saudi Arabia has had to contend with a record of failures rather than successes.
Regional contagion
Under the already relatively short tenure of Mohammed bin Salman, Saudi foreign policy strategies can be described as aggressive and confrontational. Nevertheless, rather than steering the country away from further fiasco in the region they are increasingly augmenting regional instability and inducing a greater likelihood of conflict and military intervention.
Effectively, foreign policy strategy approaches under Mohammed bin Salmans influence are contributing to rising national and regional security concerns with simultaneous fears as it relates to the security of energy supplies and the grip on power of its regional proxies.
This is apparent in the recent Saudi-led campaign against Qatar. In June 2017, Saudi Arabia spearheaded a campaign against Qatar interpreted as all but an attack on its sovereignty. Saudi Arabia and three other countries UAE, Bahrain and Egypt have imposed land, maritime and air blockades, cut diplomatic ties, and taken other measures.
They issued Qatars leader Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al-Thani with thirteen demands that amounted to a capitulation of any independence in domestic or foreign policy unless aligned to Saudi-inspired diktat. Qatar has not yielded to the Saudi-inspired plan.
The Gulf region has become further de-stabilized with ripple effects apparent in the international coalition against ISIS, Lebanon, Libya, the occupied Palestinian territories, Iraq, and beyond. The confidence that Mohammed bin Salman had in terms of imposing a new regional dispensation according to his agenda has dangerously faltered.
Mohammed bin Salmans strategic agenda raises significant concerns about the regional contagion effect of machinations in Saudi Arabia.
Yemen will continue to exhibit ungoverned spaces that Saudi Arabia can never hope to occupy if it continues its military campaign, detains its President, and imposes closures on its border that inhibit the supply lines of the most basic humanitarian relief to this collapsed state.
Qatar remains defiant and continues to enjoy powerful support within the US administration and in other foreign capitals.
Hezbollahs response to Hariri-baiting them from Riyadh only demonstrates their more powerful strategic calculus and tenacious hold on power in Lebanon.
This is a hold that Mohammed bin Salman will not be able to defeat. This is the lesson Israel was taught when it went to war with Hezbollah in 2006.
The willingness of Mohammed bin Salman to embark on a series of moves against what might be considered natural Sunni allies in the region as part of a broader conception of hostilities against Iranian power in the Middle East already shows evidence of severe miscalculation.
That Saudi Arabia would turn to its new allies, such as Israel, to shore up an emerging military union facing Tehran and its associates demonstrates how reckless the Crown Prince is being when it comes to the strategic functioning of the regional system and the role of the Kingdom, whose throne he aspires to sit on, in it.
Beverley Milton-Edwards is a Visiting Fellow at the Brookings Doha Center and Professor of Politics at Queens University Belfast, Northern Ireland. Her books include: The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, A Peoples War, Conflicts in the Middle East since 1945, and Islamic Politics in Palestine. Milton-Edwards is known for having pioneered both scholarship and practice in the field of conflict management, including ceasefires.
Via OpenDemocracy.net
MURTAUGH The first written history of southern Idaho was penned in 1811 when the Wilson Price Hunt Party floated into uncharted territory on the Snake River.
John Jacob Astor, who had amassed a fortune in the fur trade despite never stepping foot in fur country, sent Hunt and a group of some 65 trappers and explorers across the western frontier to establish a fortified trading post at the mouth of the Columbia River.
Astor offered Hunt, a 27-year-old businessman from New Jersey, five shares in the Pacific Fur Co. to lead the group from St. Louis to Fort Astoria in Oregon Country.
More than 150 years later, the Idaho State Historical Society and the Idaho Department of Transportation partnered to erect hundreds of highway historical markers youve seen them scattered along the highways including the tragic tale of the Hunt Party. These Idaho stories, often left out of history books, will enlighten and entertain motorists who take the time to read them, as they are brimming with the very history that transformed south-central Idaho into what we know today.
Caldron Linn
Milepost 233.9 U.S. 30 near Murtaugh
Soon after Lewis and Clark made their way through northern Idaho, the Astorians, led by Hunt, followed the earlier explorers route into the Rocky Mountains. But it was too late in the fall of 1811 to head north as Lewis and Clark had done. With winter coming, the group changed its plans and detoured to the south, eventually reaching the Snake River in what would later become southeastern Idaho.
After carving out the bellies of 15 cottonwood trees, the more than five dozen men and one woman piled into dugout canoes and headed for Fort Astoria.
Or so they thought.
With their supplies, tools and firearms bundled in blankets for easy storage, they floated smoothly for miles. Then they neared the southernmost point on the Snake River.
The Snake River Canyon
About 10 miles west of what would become Burley nearly 100 years later, the fleet slipped around a bend and into a chute of rapids as the river dropped into the beginnings of the Snake River Canyon.
The river flowing unimpeded on Oct. 28, 1811, before the advent of irrigation dams rendered the crude canoes uncontrollable. Explorer Ramsay Crooks boat spun in the current and hit a rock broadside in the river. The boat split in half and Antoine Clappine, a skilled steersman, drowned in the accident.
About a mile and a half above the wreck site is a small island at Milner Dam named Clappine Rock, in honor of the French Canadian whose body was never found.
Others in Crooks boat clung to rocks and were rescued. But the supplies and rifles bundled in the boat were lost in the river. The party beached the remaining boats and scouted the area for nearly a week before determining the river below was impassable.
The elevation of the riverbed drops 1,000 feet from Milner Dam to the I.B. Perrine Bridge, 20 miles downstream. The rapids during high-water years is rated world class for kayaking. So the group, faced with walking hundreds of miles through inhospitable terrain in the dead of winter to reach help in any direction, cached the supplies they managed to get ashore near Milner.
The Wilson Price Hunt Party then parted ways. Hunt took one group, including Pierre and Maria Dorion, down the north side of the river; Crooks took a group down the south side. Another group went north and still another turned around and headed back east.
The expedition reunited on foot in February 1812 at Fort Astoria, where a group of seaborne Astorians had previously landed and lost their ship, the Tonquin.
A young Robert Stuart agreed to follow the overland groups route back east, to advise their employer of the ill-fated journey to the Pacific.
When Stuart arrived in the Magic Valley in 1812, he stopped along the Snake River at the mouth of Rock Creek, then followed the creek southeast and camped at what later became known as Stricker Ranch.
Stuart then headed to the Snake River, reaching it just upstream from Murtaugh at what is known locally as Star Falls, where the entire river squeezes between giant basalt cliffs and falls into what resembles a boiling caldron. Stuart named the waterfalls Caldron Linn in his journal, after Cauldron Linn in Scotland, a waterfall that cuts through rocks in a similar fashion.
Pieces of Crooks dugout canoe were lodged in boulders in the river bed, Stuarts journal says.
But when he reached the site where the Hunt Party had buried their belongings, Stuart found that Indians, tipped off by eastbound Astorians, had raided the nine caches.
Some accounts claim wolves dug up the caches because they could smell the pelts, but Twin Falls historian Ron James said thats not likely.
They wouldnt have had furs at that point, James said.
Stuart and his men continued east and eventually discovered South Pass in Wyoming. While many others had passed through the wide gap in the Great Divide, word of the pass had not yet reached eastern ears. South Pass later became the gateway through the Rockies.
In 1939, two local men followed a goat trail from the canyon rim upstream from Star Falls east of Murtaugh down to the riverbed to fish. The year had been especially dry and the river was lower than usual, exposing parts of the riverbed that were typically covered in water.
Cliff Starry smacked his foot against something hard, lodged in the rocks a rifle from Crooks boat. Alongside were more rifles, traps and an ax head, all housed now at the Idaho State Historical Museum in Boise.
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By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) |
Wind and solar keep falling in price each fell 6% in 2016. That fall was not as big as the two previous years, but there is every reason to expect price drops much bigger in coming years, as new technology makes the move from basic science to implementation. The Trump strategy of slapping penalties on these technologies and giving fossil fuels subsidies has a very limited shelf life, since there arent enough resources in the world to stand against this kind of inexorable progress.
Wind turbines in Scotland during the month of October , driven by unusually strong gales, generated enough electricity to supply 99% of the countrys power needs, taking into account residential, industrial and business sectors! And if we just looked at the residential market, the wind turbines could have powered 4.5 million homes! One catch: Scotland only has about 2.45 million households!
On average through the year, Scotland now gets 60% of its electricity from renewables and is on track to get 100% from green sources by 2020.. One impediment standing in the way is that the English-dominated government of the UK is deeply tied to BP and other fossil fuel companies and keeps trying to hobble green energy. In the UK as a whole, green energy only produces 29% of electricity.
And then there is Sweden. GE and Green Investment Group have raised some $900 mn. for the largest onshore wind farm in Europe. To be built in northern Sweden, it will have a name plate capacity of 650 megawatts and will be operational in only two years. With increasingly inexpensive battery storage or e.g. hydropump storage, such wind farms could generate up to half as much steady electricity as a small nuclear reactor. ( Toshiba is putting in huge battery storage near a major wind farm in Texas.)
In Sweden, this one wind farm will increase the countrys wind power by 12.5%. Sweden is already a relatively low-carbon country for an industrial economy, though it can do substantially better. Some 83 per cent of the countrys electricity comes from nuclear and hydroelectric power. Only 7% comes from wind at the moment.
Still, the average Swede emits over 4 tons of carbon dioxide a year. That is better than Europes average 6 tons and way better than the US average of 16 tons per year per person (!!!). But 4 tons a person is still huge, given that CO2 is like setting off atomic bombs in the atmosphere. The new Markbygden ETT wind farm will be an important step toward carbon-free Swedish electricity. Of course, that has to be combined with switching to electric vehicles and adopting low-carbon agricultural and building techniques if we are to move to a net carbon zero civilization.
925 Sterling Silver, Red Enamel
Size: 1" x 0.7" / 2.54 x 1.77cm
Wear your faith like a badge of honor with this marvelous sterling silver necklace! Remarkably unique, this gorgeous pendant features a depiction of a pomegranate on both sides, the back one filled with red enamel. Around the image is written in Hebrew a quote from a Jewish blessing (Deuteronomy 6:4): Shema Yisrael, Hashem Elokeinu, Hashem Echad - Hear O' Israel the Lord is our G-d, the Lord is One. This wonderful necklace will make a meaningful gift for someone important to you on any occasion.
This pendant comes with a chain in your choice of length.
The chain may be different than the one pictured.
Founded in 1983, Marina Jewelry is one of Israels premier creators of exquisite Jewish jewelry. Her combination of exceptional semi-precious stones and stunning Judaica-themed designs has earned her widespread accolade, and her pieces are sold in chains and boutiques across the world. Beautiful, contemporary and flawless, Marina Jewelry pieces are guaranteed to make fabulous gifts to the people you love most.
Heather du Plessis-Allan writes:
Labour struck a deal giving in to National because it had ballsed up the vote to get Trevor Mallard into the Speakers job.
That was a pretty big embarrassment on the very first day of Parliament. It was maybe predictable and probably forgivable given the massive group of MPs Labours whips are trying to corral. But what wasnt forgivable was then telling us the whole thing went swimmingly and, actually, the deal was struck just to be decent.
Really?
Anyone who has gone through the torture of buying a house, negotiating a pay increase or grudgingly telling the dairy owner he can keep the change knows you never give up more than you have to.
Its not a surprise Labour tried to paint the schoolboy error in a better light. The alternative is looking unprepared for the basics of government. But what is surprising is that instead of opting for a plausible half truth, they threw themselves headfirst into a story no one would believe. Thats either amateur or arrogant.
TWIN FALLS The Magic Valley Fly Fishers general meeting will be from 5 to 8:30 p.m. Thursday at the Turf Club, 734 Falls Ave., Twin Falls. Todd Lanning of Henrys Fork Anglers will be the featured speaker. Todd will tie a few of his favorite fly patterns, then show some of his techniques on the ranch and his other favorite waters over in eastern Idaho. There will be time to ask Todd questions after dinner; there will have a round robin of fishing reports, stories and tall tales later in the evening.
Meetings continue to be free and feature a great buffet starting between 6 and 6:30 p.m. Thanksgiving turkey with all the trimmings will cost $15 including tax, tip, coffee or tea. There is a no-host bar. Pay at the door by check, cash or plastic. Bring your family and friends eating or not for a congenial and informative evening of fly-fishing fun for all.
Be sure to RSVP by Tuesday evening: call or text 208-934-6405 or email mvffeditor2014@hotmail.com. Be sure to come if you reserve dinner. All fly fishers and those wanting to learn are welcome. More information: magicvalleyflyfishers.com.
David Kennedy is emeritus professor of Roman Archaeology and History at the University of Western Australia and honorary research associate at the University of Oxford. He also founded the Aerial Photographic Archive for Archaeology in the Middle East (APAAME) in 1978 and has been co-director of the Aerial Archaeology in Jordan (AAJ) project since 1997. Kennedy contributed this article to Live Science's Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights.
Hundreds of thousands of stone structures that date back thousands of years and dot the deserts and plains of the Middle East and North Africa are, in many cases, so large that only a bird's-eye view can reveal their intricate archaeological secrets: gorgeous and mysterious geometric shapes resembling a range of objects, from field gates, to kites, to pendants, to wheels.
These are the "Works of the Old Men," according to the Bedouin when first questioned in the 1920s. And although ancient peoples evidently had their reasons for constructing these stone structures, their purpose has remained relatively opaque to archaeologists today.
I have been studying these Works for two decades, and their inaccessibility has made these sites' purposes even more elusive. That's where satellite imagery (used by Google Earth) and aerial reconnaissance, which involves much lower-flying aircraft) come in.
In the past few weeks, a huge opportunity opened up in this field after Live Science published an article about my research, sparking a deluge of international media coverage. Ultimately, I was invited to visit the country that has been least open to any form of aerial surveys, or even to archival aerial images: Saudi Arabia. Last month, they lifted this veil of sorts and allowed me to fly over the country's vast array of archaeological sites for the first time. [See Spectacular Images of the Stone Structures of Saudi Arabia]
Windows from Google Earth
Between the last years of World War I and roughly the early 1950s, some aerial archaeology was carried out in the countries of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) that were ruled or controlled by Britain and France. Most famously, these archaeologists included Antoine Poidebard in Syria, Sir Aurel Stein in Iraq and Transjordan, and Jean Baradez in Algeria. Then, it ended as these countries achieved independence, and except by Israel from time to time, no further aerial reconnaissance for archaeology was carried out, and access even to archival aerial photographs in every MENA country was rarely possible. For half a century, archaeologists working in this extensive region, with its rich heritage, had to do so without the benefit of the single most important tool for prospection, recording and monitoring, much less the valuable perspective the aerial view revealed.
That situation began to change in 1995, when President Bill Clinton ordered the declassification of old CIA satellite imagery. But things changed more rapidly about a decade ago, when the far superior Google Earth's (and, to a degree, Bing Maps') seamless photomap of the entire globe became available. Initially, there were few "windows" of high-resolution imagery displayed for any of these countries, but by 2008, there were enough for archaeologists to use regularly, and increasingly easily.
At a stroke, one strand of remote sensing was democratized: Anyone, anywhere with a computer and internet connection could traverse previously hidden landscapes on a photomap and see places perhaps long known to the local inhabitants but never formally defined and recorded in the databases of the national antiquities authorities. Into this space stepped a group of interested and talented amateurs for one of the countries for which aerial photographs had never been generally available: the 770,000 square miles (2 million square kilometers) of Saudi Arabia. Abdullah al-Sa'eed, a medical doctor, and colleagues of what they called The Desert Team, based in Riyadh, began to explore, via Google Earth, the huge lava field of western Saudi Arabia, called the Harret Khaybar. Then, they visited a variety of sites on the ground that they had discovered through the satellite imagery. In 2008 Dr al-Saeed contacted me and we collaborated on an article. [See More Images of the Gates and Other Stone Structures in Saudi Arabia]
The gate shown in this photograph is the fifth largest of the gates documented so far. It is 1,224 by 262 feet (373 by 80 meters) in size. (Image credit: Courtesy APAAME, APAAME_20171027_DLK-0465)
Since al-Sa'eed and I published our findings about the stone structures of Harret Khaybar, I have published several articles on the archaeological remains in these lava fields of Arabia as a whole. There are immense numbers of them (at least hundreds of thousands), and each one can be huge (hundreds of metres across). Often, they are enigmatic, as there is no consensus on the purpose of several types of these structures. And they are almost entirely unrecorded and barely acknowledged; the extensive archaeological landscapes were first reported in the 1920s (for Jordan and Syria), but only now are they coming into sharp focus in terms of scale and significance.
Although these stone structures are found extensively in the northernmost harrat the Harret al-Shaam, stretching from southern Syria across the Jordanian Panhandle and into Saudi Arabia they appear in equally large numbers in most of the harrat stretching down the west coast of the Arabian Peninsula. It is those harrat in Saudi Arabia that have attracted much recent attention, in part because of their unfamiliarity and the astonishing numbers and types of sites that have emerged, some quite different from those long known in Jordan. [See Photos of Wheel-Shaped Stone Structures in the Middle East]
My own research on Saudi Arabia since 2009 has focused on a group of harrat in the northwest of the country, where I discovered a high-resolution "window" of pendants, wheels and cairns in the Harret Rahat, northeast of Jeddah; 917 kites in the Harret Khaybar; almost 400 gates, largely in the Harret Khaybar area; and a variety of site types found in various lava fields. All of these discoveries were made using the imagery of Google Earth (with occasional supplements from Bing Maps).
The need for aerial reconnaissance
The number of high-resolution "windows" on Google Earth has increased rapidly, especially since the launch of the Landsat 8 satellite in February 2013. These virtual "windows" are marvelous tools for fulfilling the traditional roles of conventional aerial reconnaissance, which has led many to pose a question: Why do we need aerial reconnaissance now that we have free access to the satellite imagery of Google Earth? [15 Secretive Places You Can Now See on Google Earth]
Of course, Google Earth will remain a useful tool for prospection; it is simple to "pin" and catalog sites, measure them, sketch them and generate distribution maps for interpretation. The limitations are equally obvious, however. The imagery is two-dimensional, and even the best resolution can be very fuzzy when enlarged. Detail is missing, and some sites are effectively invisible for various reasons. And imagery may be months, or even years, old and thus less valuable for routine monitoring of development.
In this Google Earth satellite image, a triangle can be seen pointing to a bullseye, with a row of cairns connecting the triangle to the bullseye. (Image credit: Google Earth)
In short, traditional low-level and usually oblique aerial photography continues to have several advantages and uses: It is immediate, if there is a regular flying program; it can be timed to maximize solar and climatic conditions; the oblique view provides an extra dimension to the "flatness" of Google Earth; the high-quality camera photograph from a low altitude reveals details of structures not visible on Google Earth; and with a helicopter as the platform, it is possible to land and obtain ground data immediately for sites that may otherwise be too remote for easy access.
A triangle-shaped stone structure is seen pointing toward a bullseye. (Image credit: Courtesy APAAME, APAAME_20171029_DLK-700)
This last point is important: As has always been the case, it is vital that aerial reconnaissance (and interpretation of satellite imagery) be paired with as much ground inspection as possible. Ideally, all three techniques (aerial surveys, satellite imagery and ground inspection) would be used.
In recent years, that ideal situation has been possible in just one MENA country Jordan thanks to generous support from its government and from the nonprofit Packard Humanities Institute, which is dedicated partly to archaeology. Since 1997, aerial photos have been taken as part of my project called Aerial Archaeology in Jordan (AAJ), and over 100,000 aerial photographs have been made available for research in an archive (APAAME) established in 1978.
A game-changer in my research happened when the interest sparked by the Live Science article led to my invitation to study these structures in one region of till now, the least open of these Middle Eastern countries, regarding reconnaissance.
Aerial archaeology in Saudi Arabia
Some of Saudi Arabia's neighbors looked for archaeological sites with aerial reconnaissance before World War II, but even aerial photographs from surveys of this immense kingdom were almost entirely unavailable. Of course, archaeologists knew the kingdom was home to high-profile sites as well as great cemeteries of thousands of tumuli.
As Google Earth has opened a new and extensive area for research, it has indirectly helped to spark a trial season of aerial reconnaissance for archaeology. There is now the possibility that the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia will become the second MENA country to support a regular program of aerial archaeology to find, record, monitor and research the hundreds of thousands of sites in the country. [25 Strangest Sights on Google Earth]
On Oct. 17, Live Science published an article describing a highly unusual type of site called gates in the Harret Khaybar area, that my colleagues and I had systematically catalogued and mapped and were to publish in the scientific literature in November. That sparked immediate and extensive international media coverage, including features in The New York Times, Newsweek and the National Geographic Education Blog. Four days after the article was published on Live Science, I got an invitation from publication from the Royal Commission for Al-Ula, in northwest Saudi Arabia, to visit that town. The Al-Ula oasis is famous for hosting the remains of a succession of early cultures and more recent civilizations, all strewn thickly among its 2 million-plus date palms. As a Roman archaeologist, I had known this oasis for over 40 years as the location of Madain Salih, Al-Hijr ancient Hegra, a world-class Nabataean site adopted by UNESCO.
The expansive area includes thousands of rock-cut tombs and graves most notably, scores of monumental tombs cut into the rock outcrops of the plain and evoking those of the capital, Petra, about 300 miles (500 kilometers) to the north. After the Roman annexation of the Nabataean kingdom in A.D. 106, a garrison was installed. Some of thesetrooops left their names and units in Latin, as graffiti on a rock outcrop. More recently, a Saudi-French archaeological team recovered a monumental Latin inscription recording construction around A.D. 175 to 177 under Emperor Marcus Aurelius, as well as part of the defenses and barracks of the Roman fort inserted into the town. Not far off are the ruins of the city of Dedan, mentioned in the Hebrew Bible and the remarkable "library" of monumental Lihyanite inscriptions and art carved onto rocks and the cliff face.
However, the objective of my visit lay in the lava fields in the wider region. Helicopter flights could give access to the extensive Harret Uwayrid (and contiguous Harret Raha) to the west, stretching some 77 miles (125 km) and rising to an elevation of about 6,300 feet (1,920 meters), much of which could be viewed only from the air. The most recent volcanic eruption occurred in A.D. 640, but the hundreds of sites I had already "pinned" there on Google Earth were evidently far older, most likely prehistoric and a component of the "Works of the Old Men" that I'd encountered in other harrat.
We were also able to fly over the Harret Khaybar and view not just the gate structures but also the kites, pendants, keyholes and much more we had seen on the Google Earth imagery.
Four days after the invitation from the Royal Commission, my colleague Don Boyer, a geologist who now works in archaeology, and I were on our way to Riyadh. Almost immediately, on Oct. 27 to Oct. 29, we began three days of flying in the helicopter of the Royal Commission. In total, we flew for 15 hours and took almost 6,000 photographs of about 200 sites of all kinds but mainly the stone structures in the two harrat.
Though we didn't have much notice, Boyer and I spent three days before our visit looking over the sites we had "pinned" and catalogued using Google Earth over several years. We then, relatively easily, planned where we wanted to fly in order to capture several thousand structures in these two lava fields. Our helicopter survey was probably the first systematic aerial reconnaissance for archaeology ever carried out in Saudi Arabia. It was possible only because of the publication of the Live Science feature article describing my research on the gate structures, and the resulting international media coverage, which caught the attention of the Royal Commission.
The latter is significant: Several recent interviews and feature articles in the international media have highlighted the drive of the young Crown Prince to open up his country to development and innovation. The Royal Commission for the city of Al-Ula, an internationally important cultural center for the region that boasts world-class archaeological sites, is one element of this openness. Development is likely to be rapid, and the commission is open to engaging with international experts in its wider project to find, document and interpret the hundreds of thousands of surviving sites. Collaboration with local inhabitants, who know of even the more remote sites, and local archaeologists will be vital to this effort.
Happily, on our flights, we were accompanied by Eid al-Yahya, an archaeologidst, author and expert of Arab culture, who has traversed swaths of these harsh but archaeologically rich landscapes over 30-plus years and has explored many individual sites. Even just the archaeological component of this grand project of the commission comprises several components. One component and, arguably, one of the most pressing is to help the commission understand its wider heritage record: where and what, and then when and why.
Because the area is so immense encompassing some 10,000 square miles, or 27,000 square km this is a task for remote sensing. This method will be combined with several techniques: the interpretation of Google Earth imagery systematically, the cataloging of the sites located, complementary low-level aerial reconnaissance and photography, and associated ground investigation. We have been interpreting Google Earth imagery for some years. The ground investigation, by contrast, is in its infancy. The aerial reconnaissance part has made a good start over the past few weeks and deserves to be pursued urgently. Based on the 20 years of aerial archaeology research we have conducted in Jordan, my co-director Dr. Robert Bewley and our team can offer our expertise for this last task.
A successful systematic program of aerial archaeology in the Al-Ula region could provide valuable lessons and establish best practices for the far larger task of mapping the archaeology of Saudi Arabia, and those efforts may be assisted by partnerships with the Endangered Archaeology in the Middle East and North Africa project at Oxford University.
Kennedy's recent books include: "Ancient Jordan from the Air" (with R. Bewley, 2004), "Gerasa and the Decapolis" (2007), "Settlement and Soldiers in the Roman Near East" (2013) and an eBook "Kites in 'Arabia'" (with R. Banks and P. Houghton, 2014). In progress are books on the Hinterland of Roman Philadelphia and Travel and Travellers East of Jordan in the 19th Century.
Original article on Live Science.
Demonstrating expertise in cleaning, presenting, leading and calming dairy cattle helped Rodney
College student Jennifer Thomas win the Royal Agricultural Show Dairy Parader of the Year.
Jennifer, 18, representing Northern Districts, succeeded against other regional representatives parading at the Hawkes Bay A& P Show in Hastings to take the top award.
She will go on to represent New Zealand at the Royal Adelaide Show next year.
Jennifer says the Hastings show presented several challenges.
Rather than bring their own animals, competitors had just 30 minutes to get to know unfamiliar animals, allocated to them by drawings out of a hat.
Various breeds of cattle were used and although Jennifer typically parades Jersey cows, she suddenly had to cope with larger Ayrshires.
During the competition, the judge asked her to swap animals, obliging her to parade the stroppiest Ayrshire on the field.
She says the secret of calming such animals down is to talk to them and make sure they feel safe. It helps if you remain calm yourself.
In addition to presenting the animals at their best, paraders are also required to present themselves in appropriate and spotless uniforms and look as though they are enjoying themselves.
I was quite nervous to begin with, but once I got out there I was quite happy, Jennifer says.
She says she has been interested in showing animals ever since she joined a calf club at the age of 7.
Jennifer lives on her uncles farm between Wellsford and Tomarata.
She leaves Rodney College this year and plans to go into primary teaching.
However, she may consider a farming career after that.
A Mahurangi West producer has won the Best in Show award at the 2017 Oliveti Olive Oil Awards.
298 Olives won Gold for their extra virgin olive oil, which was entered in the Intense-Blend category.
This category deals with oils made primarily from green olives that are not fully ripe.
Judges lauded the oil for its fresh aroma, evocative of deep forest and rough stem herbs and its flavours of green pepper, apple, lemon and vanilla.
Head judge Adva Webber says the 298 oil achieved a perfect harmony between fruitiness, bitterness and pungency, with no single attribute overwhelming the others.
298 owners Debbie Hinton and Sean Jeffery say despite their win, they consider themselves still in a learning phase, figuring out the blends that work, when its the best time to pick and how extensively to prune.
They shun pesticides and fertilisers except for sheep dung.
Debbie and Seans interest in olives came accidentally when they purchased a property with 350 established trees.
At first, they were unsure what do with them until family and friends encouraged them to undertake harvesting in 2014.
Their oil has been winning awards ever since, but this is the first time they have taken Gold.
In a good year, 298 can produce 250 litres of oil and they would like to expand their business through online sales and the production of items such as olive leaf tea and skin care products with an olive oil base.
Other olive producers in the Rodney area to win at the awards, which covers Auckland and Northland, were Salumeria (Silver and Best in Class in the Medium-Blend category), Duck Creek (Silver, Medium-Blend), Millers Ark (Silver, Medium-Blend) and Les and Kay Woodhams (Bronze, Intense-Blend).
Adva Webber says producers faced a tough year in 2017 due to a wet period when the fruit began to emerge on trees.
Nevertheless, they still managed to produce outstanding oils, which will only cement Auckland and Northlands reputation for making a product that compares favourably with the best in the world.
While its still a fledgling industry of boutique growers in the north, they produce high-end, high quality oils that are better than gold medal olive oils from Italy, she says.
She says while commercial olive growing in New Zealand started in Marlborough, the north offers more potential due to its warmer climate.
Moreover, it has the opportunity to produce olives ready to be eaten at the table rather than just turned into oil.
I see a good future for olives in New Zealand and this area in particular, she says.
12.11.2017 LISTEN
Parents and other stakeholders in the Bawku Municipal and its environs have made a resolution at an engagement meeting to develop strategies to eliminate child-marriage in the area.
The meeting aimed at finding ways to discourage all forms of violence that lead to child- forced marriages as the issue had become one of the major threats to the development of girls in the area.
It was organised by the 'Belim Wusa' Development Agency (BEWDA) and funded by the Canadian government through the local initiative partnership on child marriage project in Bawku in the Upper East region.
The Stakeholders included; the Traditional authority, Politicians, Staff from the Domestic Violence and Victim Support Unit (DOVVSU) of the Ghana Police Service, Commission for Human Rights and Administrative Justice (CHRAJ), the Parent Teacher Associations (PTA), the Girl-Child Education Unit, the Social Welfare and heads of the decentralised Departments.
The participants urged District Assemblies to enact and enforce bye-laws to force parents to be responsible for the welfare of their children and strengthen the guidance and counselling units in schools.
The other strategies they resolved to take included; to empower girls, those in school and drop-outs, to further their education, the Assembly to enact by- laws to restrain children especially girls from attending night clubs and the traditional authorities and political leaders to desist from interfering in child marriage issues and allow perpetrators to be punished.
Mr Shaibu Abubakar, the Project manager of BEWDA in a presentation noted that poverty, tradition, religion, teenage pregnancy, low level of awareness, weak enforcement of the law and gender inequalities were the major causes of the menace and efforts had to be made by stakeholder to address them.
Mr Abubakar said the effect of child marriage did not only rest on the girl but had high negative repercussions on the community and country at large as the child would not be able to withstand the consequences of motherhood.
He said forcing a young girl to marry at an early age had its negative consequences as her education might be terminated and her risk of death and ill health at birth also high.
Mrs. Matilda Abolga, the officer in charge of the Girl-Child Education Unit of the Bawku Municipal Educational Directorate, urged girls to see their education as paramount and forge hard to give it a success, adding that they would only enjoy a fruitful marriage if they acquired good education.
Mrs Abolga asked the girls to learn more on the consequences of early marriage and educate their parents on it.
She cautioned Parents who indulged in such acts to desist from it as it was against the law.
GNA
By Jerry Azanduna, GNA
Arusha (Tanzania), Nov. 11, CDA Consult Ghana has called on African Governments to invest and use technology in Courts which would contribute tremendously to judicial integrity and accountability.
It removes the human interface and ensures speedy administration of justice, Justice Constant Kwaku Hometowu, Justice of the High Court stated at the Third African Judicial Dialogue in Arusha, Tanzania in a paper tagged: Use of Technology in Court-Ghanas Experience.
Justice Hometowu who spoke on behalf of, Ghanas Chief Justice, Justice Sophia A. B. Akuffo; explained that Ghana as part of a broader E-Justice System has rolled out two models of Automation - inside the court room and at registry level.
As a country, we are rolling-up the Case Tracking System (CTS) project which is expected to start by the end of November 2017 which is another top layer software that would ensure the horizontal integration of all justice delivery institutions purposely for the monitoring and tracking of criminal cases, Justice Hometowu noted.
Justice Hometowu noted that the CTS system will contribute tremendously to judicial accountability to ensure that cases are dealt with expeditiously as Management case easily track progress of cases being dealt with by individual Judges.
He through the new CTS system reports can be generated and assessment of output made in respect of cases managed by individual judges.
Types of cases intended to be tracked includes but not limited to emerging crimes such as border crimes (human trafficking), maritime crimes, cybercrime, money laundering, sexual and gender-based crimes (defilement, rape), pharmaceutical crimes such as use, sale and distribution of falsified medicines, with no active ingredients.
Others are remand prisoners on expired warrants, using (SMS) alerts mechanism.
Justice Hometowu commended the Chief Justice; Justice Akuffo for her commitment and dedication to transform the Court system which was started by her predecessor.
He also acknowledged the tremendous support by the USAID the CTS project in particular and other assistances and collaboration extended to the Ghanaian Judicial System.
Justice Hometowu also schooled the participants on categories of Court Automation; explaining that automation inside the courtroom has gone through four generation of systems - the analogue tape recording system; the use of stenographic machines called the Stentura.
The Digital voice recording and transcription systems (DVRTS) dubbed the SRS Fermida system and the Soniclaire system; and the Direct Transcription System (DTS).
He noted that Ghanas modern Courtroom has facilities such as Video Conference which allows Inter-city judgment delivery and taking of witness evidence outside the jurisdiction at the request of the parties.
He said under the new digital dispensation of Ghanas Judicial System, training for judges are sometimes organized through video conference, virtual meetings, and sometimes the Chief Justice addresses staff members via video conferencing facility.
On the automation at the Registry; Justice Hometowu said Ghana has set-up Electronic Case Distribution System, automatic allocation of cases to judges, and Electronic Case Management System.
He said Ghanas Judicial System is systematically graduating towards electronically created cases, possible alignment of regional and payment locations, automated fees assessment, integrated payment and receipts, electronic and scanned documents, and automated processing.
Other technologically induced mechanism includes measured and controlled turnaround time, financial reconciliation reports, automated reporting, and portal enablement.
Third African Judicial Dialogue, organised by the African Court on Human and Peoples Rights under the auspices of the African Union (AU).
The Dialogue is being attended by about 150 delegates from AU Member States- including Chief Justices, Presidents of Supreme and Constitutional Courts from the 55 AU Member States, as well as regional and international judicial bodies and other relevant stakeholders.
The biennial meeting is on the general theme: Improving Judicial Efficiency in Africa and is a follow up to the first edition held in November 2013 in Arusha, Tanzania, and second in November 2015, also in Arusha.
The overall objective of the Dialogue is to explore ways of enhancing judicial efficiency in Africa.
It also serve as platform for Africas top judiciary officials to exchange experiences on the on-going continental judicial reforms, trends on human rights jurisprudence, continuing judicial education and management of judicial institutions on the continent.
The African Judicial Dialogue is organized in collaboration with the World Bank, the German Cooperation (GiZ) and the European Union (EU).
The Ghana Standards Authority (GSA) and stakeholders within the electrical cables industry have agreed on the way forward to curb the influx of substandard electrical products on the market.
Over the past week the Ghana Electrical Dealers Association (GEDA) has publicly expressed misgivings about a GSA market survey report, which indicates that 70% of electrical cables on the market are substandard.
To discuss GEDAs concernsas well as other related matters, a meeting was held at GSA's head office in Accra on Friday. Stakeholders who participated in the meeting include, GEDA, the local electrical cable manufacturers, Customs Division of the Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA), Energy Commission and the Ministry of Trade.
As part of measures to curb the menace, the Authority will publish the list of registered importers and approved brands of electrical cables on its website ( www.gsa.gov.gh/ ). This information will serve as a useful reference guide to consumers of the products.Its alsoproposed that GSA should immediatelybegin to issue import certification for electrical goods, and extend this toother high risk goods.
Other recommendations discussed include, stronger collaboration of all stakeholders at the ports and other entry points; the entry points for electrical cables and other high risk goods should be restricted for effective control, and surveillance should be sustained to rid the market of substandard products.
Mr Clifford Frimpong, GSA Director of Testing, set the ball rolling with a power point presentation, which explained the methodology and results of the recent market survey undertaken in Accra, Kumasi and Tamale.
Open and frank discussions followed immediately after his presentation. All present were given an opportunity to make contributions.
On his part, Prof Alex Dodoo, GSA Director-General announced that the Agency is adopting a new approach to its strategic plan, one which will increase the focus on stakeholder engagement and public consultation. This, he said will be supported by sustained market surveillance.
Mr Joseph Obeng, GEDA President expressed satisfaction with the outcome of the meeting and commended GSA for the initiative. He assured the meeting of his Associations total cooperation at all times.
The representative of NexansKabelmetalGh. Ltdwho spoke on behalf of the local manufacturers was equally happy with the outcome of the meeting and pledged their cooperation.
The Customs Division of the GRA representative, appealed to the stakeholders to walk the talk, and not behave like in the past, when they reneged on their promises.
Ending the meeting, Prof. Dodoo noted: Our mission is to protect consumers, facilitate trade and promote industrialisation through Standardization, Metrology and Conformity Assessment.
To achieve this, we need your support and that of the public as well. I wish to assure you that our doors are open, lets keep talking, he said.
12.11.2017 LISTEN
Bonn, Nov 12 New action from countries and corporations to cut emissions from forest use and establish sustainable forestry management featured at COP23 Forests Day on Sunday.
Initiatives from Ecuador, Gabon, Walmart and Mars Inc were welcomed by delegates at the Forests Global Climate Action day at the UN Climate Change Conference in Bonn.
These ecosystems are high on the agenda for Small Island Developing States (SIDS) because we are among the most vulnerable nations to the impacts of climate change, said Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum, Fijis Minister for Economy and Climate Change, whose country holds this years presidency of the conference.
While important progress has been made in protecting these ecosystems to enhance our resilience to a changing climate, we need all countries to make forest protection and rehabilitation and the financing of all forest ecosystems a priority. In particular, we need to create real incentives to attract both public and private finance to delivering nature-based solutions, he said.
New action today included:
An Ecuadorean initiative to reduce 15 million tonnes of CO2 emissions in the forest sector, launched by Maria Victoria Chiriboga, Ecuador's Under Secretary of Climate Change.
A commitment to deforestation-free commodities by Walmart presented by Laura Phillips, Walmarts Senior Vice President of Sustainability.
Mars Inc.s new policy to reduce their carbon footprint 27% by 2025 and 67% by 2050 by addressing deforestation throughout their corporate value chain, presented by Kevin Rabinovitch, Global Vice President of Sustainability.
Lee White, Director of Gabons National Park Service, described efforts to halt an illegal logging operation that will stop the emission of 20 million tonnes of CO2.
Sustaining and increasing forests is vital to get on track in time to meet the Paris Climate Change Agreements goal, which is to keep the average global temperature rise well below 2 degrees Celsius and as close to 1.5 degrees as possible.
The maths of climate science show that meeting this goal is impossible without nurturing forests, which from the atmospheres point of view are a massive sink of carbon, locked up in trees, plants and the soil, and a source of oxygen through photosynthesis.
But destructive, often illegal, logging and deforestation continues. Last year, forests equal to the size of New Zealand disappeared.
Our planets forests are being decimated at an alarming rate. Putting a stop to this destruction is crucial to tackling climate change, reducing poverty and feeding a growing global population, in line with the Paris Agreement and the Sustainable Development Goals, said Inger Andersen, Director General of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) and chair of todays event.
Nature-based solutions such as protecting and restoring forests can contribute over one-third of the total climate change mitigation required by 2030 to keep the temperature rise below 2 degrees Celsius. More decisive, collective action is now needed to seize this opportunity, he said.
Healthy forests provide services that are essential for humans to thrive and protect themselves from extreme climate impacts. Millions live in and from forests. Forests provide water and food security and regulate global rainfall patterns.
This also makes forests essential for the success of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), providing a window of opportunity for a triple win of eliminating deforestation, boosting agricultural productivity, and reducing poverty.
Manuel Pulgar-Vidal, Head, WWFs global Climate and Energy Programme, said: Forests play a huge role in our efforts to tackle climate change the science behind their contributions is clear. Protecting forests will ensure they continue to absorb emissions from the atmosphere, protect biodiversity, and provide livelihoods for forest-dependent peoples. I believe strong collaboration and urgent and ambitious action between State and non-State actors will be a positive.
High-level panel speakers at the event also included Frank Bainimarama, Prime Minister of Fiji; Patricia Espinosa, Executive Secretary of UN Climate Change; and Jerry Brown, Governor of California, who end the day with a call for urgent, scaled-up forest protection as a major part of the solution to climate change.
12.11.2017 LISTEN
Finally, the bill authorizing the salutary establishment of the Office of the Special Independent Prosecutor has been re-laid before Parliament, as earlier on promised by Attorney-General Gloria Akuffo about a couple of months ago (See Minority Rejects Special Prosecutor DailyGuideAfrica.com / Ghanaweb.com 10/27/17). As usual, the main opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) has been fighting tooth-and-nail, as it were, to have the bill quashed. There can be no gainsaying that no amount of opposition protestation will stop the judicial apparatus of the State from being constructively strengthened in order to tackle the Stygian mess of corruption bequeathed President Addo DankwaAkufo-Addo by the Mahama-led regime of the National Democratic Congress.
It is only those who absurdly underestimate the intelligence and resolve of the Ghanaian people to drastically rid their beloved country of the politically regressive blight of corruption who, like Mr. Haruna Iddrisu, the Parliamentary Minority Leader, farcically argue that the establishment of the Office of the Special Independent Prosecutor would legally and constitutionally undermine the dispensation of the Attorney-General. No such argument could be more preposterous. Then also, Mr. Iddrisus argument that the NDC-crafted and Rawlings-gifted 1992 Constitution is writ in stone, or steel, and thus cannot be amended under any given set of circumstances, whatsoever, reeks of nothing short of the criminally scandalous.
It also fat-headed for the Tamale-South MP to instead call for the proper resourcing of existing anti-corruption agencies like the Economic and Organized Crime Office (EOCO) and the Commission on Human Rights and Administrative Justice (CHRAJ), to fight corruption in the country. Maybe Mr. Iddrisu would do well to inform the Ghanaian public why the Mahama regime, of which he was the Labor Minister, had not adequately resourced both EOCO and CHRAJ to vigorously fight corruption in the country. the fact of the matter is that both the Economic and Organized Crime Office and the Commission on Human Rights and Administrative Justice are so paralytically and politically compromised that they are literally as good as nonexistent.
We all know, as well, that it took the election of President Addo DankwaAkufo-Addo to have EOCO force Mr. Ibrahim Mahama, former President Mahamas gold-digging younger brother, to pay up on some 24 bounced checks some reportorial accounts put the figure at 48 - that the owner of the so-called Engineers & Planners firm had issued for the payment of some mining equipment imported into the country for his private business. Ghanaians also painfully remember Mr. Joseph Whittal, the CHRAJ Chairmans acrobatic decision to find then-President John Dramani Mahama guilty of active participation in the infamous Ford Expedition Payola Scam, and yet claim that Mr. Mahama was judicially not liable for any disciplinary sanctions or punitive damages.
How does any progressive leader adequately resource such virtual white-elephants? It also does not matter one way or another, whether the likes of Mr. Iddrisu are loathe to the idea of the establishment of the Office of the Special Independent Prosecutor because of their own corrupt and criminal political past. What matters is the inalienable right of the hardworking Ghanaian taxpayer to value-for-money, as Nana Akufo-Addo is fond of saying. We are reliably informed that the country loses at least $ 3 billion to waste in government and official corruption; this must give us all enough cause to sit up and devise the most effective and constructive means of preventing such waste.
Fortunately, as the Parliamentary Majority Leader, Mr. Osei Kyei Mensah-Bonsu, aptly observes, Clause 12 of the Special Independent Prosecutors Bill adequately guarantees the balance and neutrality of the administration of the Office of the Special Independent Prosecutor. The show, I say, must go on, despite the predictable vehement protestations of those who have more questions to answer before the Special Independent Public Prosecutor than the rest of us.
*Visit my blog at: kwameokoampaahoofe.wordpress.com Ghanaffairs
I have taken my time to fully-digest the publication by a Namibian media outlet chronicling how John Mahama led Ameri Group into that country.
This business entity, which is embroiled in shady deal involving the stealing of a whopping $150m belonging to ordinary Ghanaian taxpayers, was led into Namibia by a character under whose nose this very entity ripped off Ghanaians.
This indeed makes it clear that John Mahama being a leading-negotiator for Ameri in Namibia, definitely could not have been accidental coincidence, but a conscious, deliberate, calculated, planned and well-executed corruption mission.
I have been around Nana Addo for years and have gotten to know how sincere he is in his convictions to serving Ghana, and how impeccable his personal integrity is.
The sole motivation for Nana Addo to endure many tears of insults from characters who, according to Pastor Mensah Otabil, "themselves look worse than insults", is to serve with integrity, improve the lives of ordinary Ghanaians and leave a lasting legacy for generations yet to come.
By nature, Nana Addo is never materialistic, selfish or greedy. He will give you whatever he has when you approach him with a problem. In cases where he is not in the position to offer instant assistance, he will offer you words that will sooth your pain and put smile on your face. The man is an embodiment of SINCERITY, HUMILITY, KINDNESS, and above all, IMPECCABILITY in INTEGRITY.
It is knowledge of the character of Nana Addo which actually made me convinced that "HE IS A PRESIDENT THE GOOD PEOPLE OF GHANA, HAVEN'T HAD THE OPPORTUNITY TO HAVE" when he was voted against in two successive elections that were obviously stolen but which he accepted with gracious grace.
Under the stewardship of Nana Addo, the scenarios of blatant looting to State coffers by political appointees cannot, and will never happen, because, the man is not corrupt and therefore has the moral fortitude to whip his appointees in-line, dismiss them when the need be, and even prosecute if that becomes necessary.
This personal integrity of Nana Addo is the single most valuable treasure the good people of Ghana stand to heavily profit from, for the fact that the nation's resources will be judiciously managed to ensure its equitable distribution. The era where massive government contracts were hijacked and monopolized by blood-brothers and inner-circles of the president, has indeed ended.
The effects of corruption are much more devastating than total civil conflagration and therefore to have a president with impeccable personal integrity is extremely vital to the overall well-being of the masses, while the opposite is a great tragedy to the dreams of the people.
It is for this reason that Im very much convinced the return of John Mahama in 2020 will certainly spell the electoral doom of the ndc. Admittedly, i respect John Mahama, first as a person, and also, a once occupant of the highest office of the land. But when it comes to assessment of his integrity, I will always score him zero.
Now, a leader who lacks personal integrity will have no moral authority over his subordinate; and this is where the FREE-FOR-ALL misbehavior takes hold in society. This then will culminate in the highly obnoxious enterprise of "CREATE, LOOT and SHARE", where 40-solid dud cheques are issued to clear goods from our ports.
Contract sums are heavily-over-bloated; Ford Expeditions are rolled over from our neighboring countries and deposited right at the seat of government, as rewards for dishing-out juicy contracts through dubious procedures.
Heavy equipments procured with taxpayers monies are given for free, to the blood-brother of the president for his private use. Concubines of top government officials are offered, through dubious process, contracts to brand buses at cut-throat cost to ordinary Ghanaian taxpayers.
I have heard ndc propagandists claiming Nana Addo has appointed members of his family into various public offices; but would Ghanaians prefer; qualified family members occupying positions, or, blood-brother and family members being offered every single government contract with deliberately over-bloated price-tags?
Indeed, there is one thing i can confidently assure the good people of this country of, and it is simply this: Nana Addo will serve his 2-term office, graciously exit without amassing ill-wealth by way of hotels in Dubai, Mansions in America, fat offshore bank accounts and illegitimate kids dotted across the country.
Justice Abeeku Newton-Offei
Office of the President
Flagstaff House
Kanda-Accra
The Kwakwaduam Association of New York has once again donated 1000 pieces of Obstetric Delivery Kits and 10 electronic blood pressure machines worth over $12,000 to the Akuapem and Prampram Health Districts. The presentation was done on October 3rd 2017 at the Akropong Health Center with most of the midwives in the district in attendance.
It will be recalled that last year a similar donation was made by the Kwakwaduam Association of New York and because of its tremendous impact an appeal was made for its continuation which Kwakwaduam obliged.
Kwakwaduam was represented at the presentation ceremony by Mr. Kwayisi Addo, Mr. Kwadwo Fosu and Dr. Kwame Aniapam Boafo. The items were received on behalf of the Health Directorate by Nana Oye, the Kurontihemmea of Akuapem
Dr. Kwame Aniapam Boafo a Gynecologist at the Montefiore Hospital/Albert Einstein Medical School, New York and a Consultant to the Organization said that the Association recognizes the need to enhance the work done by our midwives who are at the fore front of maternal care and the need to improve the quality of work done by them. He said the stillbirth rate in Ghana is on the average about 25 per 1000 and that of the developed nation is about 3 to 5. He said there was need to bridge this gap and the provision of the Obstetric Delivery Kits will go a long way in making it easier to ensure clean and safe delivery.
The Midwifes expressed their gratitude and indicated that a concerted effort was being made to improve the perinatal statistics in concert with the MDG expectations and that the Obstetric delivery Kits were most welcome. They indicated that the blood pressure machines will help with accurate blood pressure observations in pregnancy which will lead to early recognition of Pre-eclampsia which is a leading course of death during pregnancy
The Prampram District has Nine Maternity Centers and the Akwapim District, 22 Maternity Centers including Asenema, Adukrom, Okrakwadwo, Asesseso, Abiriw, Akropong, Mamfe, Mampong, Larteh, Twum Guaso, Tinkong, Osabene, Mangoase, Adawso, Kwamoso, Aburi, Berekuso, Pokrom, Oboadaka, Pakro and Obotwere.
The President of the Organization, Mr. Mark Saforo sent his greetings and indicated that Kwakwaduam Association Inc. is an organization whose mission includes a global health component and the supply of the obstetric delivery kits was consistent with this mission. He said the funds for this project were raised at the last Dinner Dance and implored the public to support the efforts of Kwakwaduam Association Inc
A nice reception at the La Constance Villa followed the presentation.
12.11.2017 LISTEN
Suicide has always been part of the social repertoire of life, and yet the increasing rate at which some youth and children in Ghana are falling for this means of exiting the world has reached the level of national concern. Some thinkers have averred that, while there is one entry point into the world, there are multiple exits, and suicide is considered one of the exit points of life.
Many cultures appear to have ambivalent position about suicide. The rightfulness or wrongfulness of suicide was largely determined by the prevailing context under which suicide occurred. There have been instances where suicide is preferred to dishonour. During the Jewish struggle against the Hellenisation policy of the Greeks, the Maccabean Jews preferred and recommended suicide to succumbing to the desecration of Greeks.
In Ghana, the attitudes of Akan people to suicide are quite ambivalent: on the one hand, the Akan appeared to endorse suicide; on the other hand, the Akan are seen to vehemently oppose suicide. There is a proverb among the Akan that, It is better to die than endure shame/dishonour.
The basic fact that could be gleaned from this proverb is that death is preferable to shame/dishonour. The notion of honour is strong in virtually all cultures. In some cultures, a girl who deviated from canonised sexual norms and normative practices were killed. This practice, which has been contested and criticised, is known as honour killing. The basic [il]logic of honour killing is to preserve the honour of the family.
Broadly, the attempt at suicide is sometimes determined by the cosmogony of a people. Those who believe that life was created by a deity have an orthopraxis that valorises and abhors suicide. But a culture that is irreligious tends to be indifferent about suicide. Different religions and denominations within religions have different attitudes toward suicide.
In Akan traditional religion, a person who commits suicide is not accorded the normal burial rites: This could be a serious deficit in the lifecycle, since it could potentially deny one from joining the metaphysical world of the ancestors. But this can be contextualised. For example, expanding the frontiers of the conceptualisaiton of suicide, how do we account for the death Nana Tweneboa Kodua?
Was it suicide when he offered himself, alongside two other Ashantis, to die without defence before the Denkyira, in liberating Asante from Denkyira control? Christianity, which has a saviour whose crucifixion and resurrection constitute the linchpin of the faith, have had different attitudes toward suicide. Most of the first century apostles of the faith died as martyrs (suicide?), partly in imitating their master, Jesus Christ. These apostles preferred to die to recanting their faith. In Islam, suicide is treated with contempt, and yet how do we conceptualise the rise in suicide bombing and honour killing in most Muslim countries? Does the preference of some Muslims to die rather than see Islamic values being eroded a form of suicide?
Suicide is also gendered. Usually, among the Akan, a man, who commits suicide is seen to be brave and courageous. This is because the act of committing suicide is quite excruciating, and since women are usually seen to be the weaker vessel, suicide is said to belong to the domain of men.
There is an Akan short story that, An old woman boasted that she was going to commit suicide, and yet she ran away when a branch of a tree fell. The social construction of masculinity among the Akan also makes suicide the practice of men. For example, it is said that it is a man who drinks a bitter medicine. By implication, it is a man who is able to endure the pains of death, by committing suicide. Over the years, researchers have found out that while women, more than men, are quick to contemplate suicide, women hardly commit suicide, as compared to men who usually do not contemplate suicide, and yet succumb to suicide once they think about it. This paradox could be located in the fact that women are said to be more predisposed to emotionalism, who would freely voice their challenges, as opposed to men, who have a predilection towards rationalism, and would prefer to rationalise or think through a challenge rather than discussing it. A man who talks about his personal problems is said to be weak, since endurance is a test of masculinity.
Once a woman talks about her challenges, she gets the chance of getting counsel and solidarity from colleague women. This helps her in offloading emotional traumas. Men, on the other hand, prefer to solve their own problems, and so when they are unable to find a solution, they prefer to commit suicide. As I have said, suicide is considered a manly act!
The extent of sociality or individuality also determines the rate of suicide. In societies where group solidarity, especially as captured in the Ubuntu philosophy, is emphasised, suicide rate tends to be low. This is markedly different from societies, where individualism is deeply entrenched. But in both cases, the availability and ready access to counselors mitigate against rampant suicide.
My experience is that in Western societies that have taken a bent towards individualism, following the industrial revolution and reformation, there are a good number of mitigating factors, such as counselors, who work to ensure that suicide rates do not reach a breaking proportion. Sadly, it appears that the force of individualism in engendering suicide outweighs the strength of counselors.
In Ghana and many African countries, there is a deficit of well-trained counselors, so most people depend on friends and family members to resolve their challenges. Even so, persons, who are unable to get the needed support from friends and/or family members, are most likely to commit suicide if they are overwhelmed by their challenge.
Sadly to say, in the case of Ghana, the increasing rate in suicide implicates society. In most cases, societal expectation tends to put individuals in a very difficult situation and dangerous precipice. Failure is never tolerated, even though failure is a fact of life. As children and adults, we are expected to follow some trajectories of life.
We are to go to school, get good class, secure a good job, marry, have children, take care of extended family members, buy cars and build houses, and finally ensure that the next generation is successful. Any disruption and discontinuity in the trajectory is likely to cause unbalanced situation in the thinking of Ego. If Ego fails in exams, he is seen as a failure and is reprimanded by society.
If after school Ego fails to get a good job and marry to procreate [impotence is seen as dishonor to masculinity], he is seen as a failure. If Ego is unable to build a house or buy a car after working for a certain number of years, he is deemed a failure. All this brings pressure to bear on Ego, and so if he has weak socio-cultural resilience, he is likely to court suicide. Added to this is the criminalisation of social challenge: if Ego has sexual disorientation or contracts a certain diseases and behaves abnormally, the contempt he is likely to be treated can drive him to commit suicide.
To contend against suicide, it is important for Ego to have self-confidence and engage received staple social norms. Also, the belief in God is one way of overcoming the urge to commit suicide. In the face of rapid secularisation, it appears nonsensical for religion to be prescribed as a panacea to a social challenge. But the good thing about religion, even if what it proffers is false, is that it gives the believer a sense of hope in the face of lifes existential vicissitudes. Hope is one of the best solutions to suicide, and so if Ego identifies with religion, which assures hope of a better eternal life in the hereafter, his resilience capacity against the challenges of life is strengthened. Hope is the last thing we lose before we die, and so, it is important that to avert death, we keep hope alive, and since one of the basic functions of religion is to inspire hope, religion should be taken serious.
This is how we should interpret Marxs dictum that, Religion is the opium of the masses (weak, poor, destitute etc). Aside religion, Ego should be socialised in such a way that he is able to talk about his problems and challenges without seeing that as a dent on his masculinity. Finally, there is the need for a reconceptualisation of success. Epicureanism could be dangerous for life! Since Ego could destabilised the rhythm of society if he commits suicide, we all owe it as a responsibility to be each others keeper against suicide. Let us guide against the fault lines of suicide.
Satyagraha
Charles Prempeh ([email protected]), African University College of Communications, Accra
Step into the Haskell Library and youd easily mistake it for a typical small-town American library. Sure, its a bit more elegant, with original woodwork from 1905 and upholstered reading chairs but, still, a library like any other.
The library straddles two nations, with one foot in the US and the other in Canada
Soon, though, questions nag. Why do the librarians toggle effortlessly between English and French? Why do the stacks contain so many books on French-Canadian history? And, most perplexing of all, what is that black line traversing the floor?
The Haskell, it turns out, is a library like no other. It straddles two nations, with one foot in the US and the other in Canada. That black line running along the floor a strip of masking tape marks the international border, separating the towns Derby Line, Vermont, from Stanstead, Quebec. The front door, community bulletin board and childrens books are in the US; the remainder of the collection and the reading room is in Canada.
The Haskell Library sits on the border between Vermont in the US and Quebec in Canada (Credit: DON EMMERT/AFP/Getty Images)
The tape looks worn. No wonder its the source of endless attention. Not an hour goes by, according to Nancy Rumery, the librarys director, when visitors dont pose for photos with the line. They pose while making faces, or while lying across the tape. They pose with Flat Stanley, a paper cut-out of the childrens book character. Some families queue on either side of the line, others in descending height order.
Lately, Rumery has noticed something even odder: some visitors freeze before the black line, as if it were emitting an invisible force field. Theyve seen an internet rumour claiming its illegal to cross the line. In fact, it is encouraged. The library relishes its role as a sort of free-trade zone for humans, a reprieve from a border that, while not exactly the Korean DMZ, is no longer the loosey-goosey frontier of decades past. Why such a fascination, though, with an innocuous strip of black masking tape?
A border runs through the middle, yet it brings people together
Borders fascinate us, always have. There is something about the divide between two worlds that intrigues and frightens. Lets face it, borders can be scary. They hint at darkness and danger out there , on the other side. That is what makes the Haskell Library so refreshing. It refuses to cave to this fear.
A line on a map is supposed to separate us, supposed to be what divides us, said Canadian Hal Newman. But that is what makes the Haskell so spectacular. Yes, a border runs through the middle, yet it brings people together. How fantastic is that?
Library patrons can freely cross the black tape that marks the international border (Credit: Boston Globe/Getty Images)
Newman is the former director of the adjoining Haskell Opera House, which also straddles the border. He calls it the impossible room, as in impossible that such a venue exists. The stage is in Canada, most of the seats in the US. The border, in fact, slices through some of those seats, making the Haskell the only opera house in the world where you can have one cheek on both sides of the border, he said.
This is by design, not accident. The Haskell family purposefully built the library and opera house along the border more than a century ago to promote cross-border interaction and friendship.
Managing a bi-national enterprise is absolutely complex, said Rumery, who, while Canadian, uses we when referring to Canadians or Americans. There are international exchange rates to contend with (the library accepts both currencies; there are no fines, but they sell postcards and other mementos); and two sets of safety regulations (the library uses whichever is strictest). Going out to lunch requires crossing an international border (its easier to order in). Rumery must negotiate not only with readers hunting for the latest Stephen King novel but also with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, US Homeland Security, and the International Boundary Commission, among others.
The Haskell Opera Houses stage is in Canada while most of the seats are in the US (Credit: Christian Science Monitor/Getty Images)
Then there was the time 15 years ago when the library wanted to install a new lift. The lift was in Canada, but bringing the crane, which was in the US, to that side even for a few hours meant paying hefty duties. The solution? Leave the crane on US soil and hoist the lift through Canadian airspace.
Sometimes I wish I worked for a plain old cinder block library, Rumery said, but the mischievous twinkle in her eyes gave her away. She was only kidding. She wouldnt want to work anywhere else.
The library is more than a geographic curiosity; it is, in this age of geopolitical tension and talk of walls, a reminder that borders are fictions created by humans that are precisely as real, and as menacing, as we choose to make them.
Ive been visiting this stretch of borderland for years. The cottage I rent with Canadian friends represents something of a compromise; located in Vermont, but so close to Canada you can walk there which is exactly what I did this summer. I also drove and cycled across the border, each time dutifully clearing US and Canadian customs and immigration.
While kayaking on Lake Memphremagog, the author crossed the US border into Canada (Credit: Christian Science Monitor/Getty Images)
One sunny morning, though, I decided to do something different. I hopped into a kayak and paddled across the border, the boundary marked only by a small white obelisk perched on a tiny island in the middle of Lake Memphremagog. It was wrong, I knew, but also exhilarating. There is something deliciously delinquent about crossing an international border surreptitiously, even one as seemingly benign as the US-Canadian border. I had thrown shade on the Treaty of Westphalia, the 17th-Century accord that created the concept of modern nation-states that prevails to this day.
Borders are not static places. They change with the mood on one, or both, sides of the line. The big change to this sleepy border crossing came after the attacks of 11 September 2001. Streets that traversed the border were closed to traffic. Large potted plants were installed in front of the library, a barrier that would have been unthinkable on 10 September. Today, a US Homeland Security vehicle sits outside the librarys entrance 24 hours a day.
Back in the day you wouldnt think twice about crossing the border to get a slice of pizza
The biggest change, though, is the steady flow of asylum seekers northbounders, as theyre known from the US to Canada. I remember one day I saw a van driving up a street on the US side and this family gets out and they run across the border, Newman recalled. Its minus 20C outside and the kids are wearing flip-flops. Ill never forget that. People separated by the border arrange to meet at the library, embracing among the copies of Philip Roth and Robertson Davies.
Among long-time residents here a strain of border nostalgia persists. Back in the day you could cross the border effortlessly. Back in the day, the customs agents knew your name and waved you through with a smile. Back in the day you wouldnt think twice about crossing the border to get a slice of pizza. Back in the day it isnt said but understood life was better.
Before the attacks of 11 September 2001, you could cross the border effortlessly (Credit: Christian Science Monitor/Getty Images)
I used to have as many Canadian friends as American friends, said Buzzy Roy, the pharmacist at Browns Drug Store in Derby Line. You didnt think of them as Canadians or Americans. They were just friends. In our minds, the border didnt exist. Today, the two towns still share a water system but, aside from fond memories, not much else. The library and the adjoining opera house are the last places where residents regularly interact.
You didnt think of them as Canadians or Americans they were just friends
Roys pharmacy occupies a precarious position, a sort of No Mans Land between the US and Canada. Cars entering from Canada must drive about 100m before reaching the US customs and immigration post, which means that, while on US soil, they have yet to officially enter the country. The pharmacy stands in this gap. Its very confusing, very abnormal. You dont see many borders like this, he said, adding that occasionally people walk into his store not knowing which country theyre in.
Derby Line, like many small towns, is hurting economically, as the boarded-up storefronts attest. Competition from big box stores is partly to blame, but so is the border, according to Roy. Too much hassle for too little reward, he said. Sometimes borders fuel the local economy, other times they starve it. Never are they neutral.
The library's community bulletin board and childrens books are in the US while the rest of the books are in Canada (Credit: Bloomberg/Getty Images)
I can see the need for tightening the reins from 30 or 40 years ago, but some of the things they do are unnecessary, said Brian Smith, a Vermont state representative who has lived virtually his entire life in Derby Line. Smith relayed a story about an 85-year-old Vermont man who drove to visit his Canadian girlfriend. When he returned, the US Homeland Security computers were down, so the agent who knew the man insisted he wait for an hour until they came back on line. Thats ridiculous, Smith said. Canada is not our enemy.
True, but in recent years some have tried to exploit the borders relative porousness. In 2011, a Montreal man was arrested for allegedly smuggling a rucksack filled with guns through the librarys restroom. (He was recently extradited to the US to face charges there.) It was a shock to the library staff; a violation of sacred space, Newman said.
It also raised fears that, in the current climate, the librarys future is uncertain. Shuttering the library, though, wouldnt happen without a fight, predicted Smith.
You would see citizen outrage, he said. On both sides of the border.
12.11.2017 LISTEN
The Ministry of Railways development is in the process of awarding a contract for the redevelopment of Railways workshops in the country to enhance the railways sector.
'These workshops which, were once the best in West Africa are now in a deplorable state and we are going to make them the best in Africa once more'.
Mr Joe Ghartey, Minister of Railways Development said this, when he and the British High Commissioner to Ghana, Mr Iain Walker, and the UK Prime Minister's Trade Envoy to Ghana, Mr Adams Afriyie (MP) interacted with the railways workers in Sekondi.
Present were also the Deputy Regional Minister, Mrs Gifty Eugenia Kusi, Mr Andy Appiah-Kubi, Deputy Minister of Railways Development and the regional director of railways.
Mr Ghartey said government was committed to transforming the railways sector to make it once more the catalyst to transform the nation's economy.
The Minister pointed out that successive governments did not pay much attention to the railway sector, but that the current government was determined to support and develop the railway sector into a vibrant one.
He said, 'one year on we have laid a strong foundation for a take- off, for the first time in many years the story of Ghana railways is not laying off workers, it is the employment of new workers, railways would create jobs not hundreds but thousands of jobs both direct and indirect'.
He said to quicken the transformation of the railways sector, plans were advanced to revive the railways training school, noting that' the railways had a training school just like the Telecom, but now Telecom has a University but railways School has collapsed, we shall raise it from the ashes.
Mr Ghartey announced that British government has offered spaces for some young graduate to take up masters programmes in the UK and that four graduates have applied for the programme and when the pass they would form the nucleus of the people that would be lecturers of the new school.
On the rail lines, the Minister said very soon, the western rail lines would see a company to begin the standard gauge from Kojokrom, 'we are at the last stage of signing the contract and is getting the necessary approvals from the Public Procurement Authority'.
Mr Ghartey said the rehabilitation works of the Eastern lines would soon commence, which he noted would also create hundreds of jobs.
The Minister said he has also received a report on the recent incident that happened at Achimota and that very soon the Ministry would come-up with a clear timetable on what remedial measures to take, and assured Ghanians that the ministry woulld take safety seriously.
Mr Walker the British High Commissioner to Ghana who is only three months old in the country said he would focus on the next 60 years of Ghana's relationship with the UK and that he was particularly keen to talk about the future on how to share values, common interest and friendship the two counties have developed so far into something that would help Ghana to make the next step in her prosperity and economic development.
Mr Walker said this would help Ghana and the UK to build a common interest as Ghana particularly moves beyond aid, adding 'looking at the government's agenda for the years ahead particularly the economic development beyond aid, the UK is in the same place and is keen to be part of that'.
He pointed out that infrastructure was key and more so the railways, which he said was literally the back bone would enable Ghana's future prosperity, unlock, open and speed up the market.
'The UK wants to be a driver and not passengers to ensure that it drives Ghana to its destination beyond aid.'.
Mr Afriyie, whose father is a Ghanaian, said the relationship between Ghana and the UK goes beyond trade and culture and that more than half a million British were of Ghanaian heritage, adding 'the bond is long, deep and strong'.
He said the British government recognised Ghana's struggle to move beyond aid and to be seen as a common and equal partner in trade and said the UK government would support Ghana in that goal.
He noted that Ghana was not only rich in terms of mineral resources, oil and gas, but was also rich in terms of its people and workers, 'nowhere else in Africa do we have such a strong sense of educated workforce, willing, abled, enthusiastic and enterprising workforce' and that the UK was ready to work with Ghana to ensure the people really enjoyed the advantages of trade.
He said his visit was to make sure where Ghana needed assistance and expertise, whether around investment, railways, mineral exploration, training and education, the British government and its businesses stand ready to support Ghana. GNA
By Justina Paaga, GNA
12.11.2017 LISTEN
Ghana will join the rest of the world to mark the celebration of the 10th anniversary of Global Entrepreneurship Week, from Nov 13 - 19.
The week, which is the world's largest programme, is designed to celebrate and promote entrepreneurship.
A statement issued by Global Entrepreneurship Network - Ghana, and copied to the Ghana News Agency said for one week each November, about 10 million participants take part in 35,000 events, activities and competitions in more than 165 countries around the world.
It said the Global Entrepreneurship Week (GEW) - Ghana would connect entrepreneurs, students, educators, aspiring entrepreneurs, NGOs, non-profit organisations, development agencies and government officials to participate in a range of activities which would be conducted by partner organisations to foster the spirit of entrepreneurship culture in Ghana.
It said the GEW - Ghana, seeks to unleash innovators and job creators who would launch startups that would bring ideas to life, drive economic prosperity and job creation.
The statement said this year, the GEW Ghana is being organised under the auspices of the Ministry of Business Development, with support from the British Council, Ghana.
It said Global Entrepreneurship Network - Ghana, official host of GEW-Ghana would champion a series of national signature events to commemorate the week celebrations.
"This year celebrations mark our 10 years since its inception, we are proud to part of this global entrepreneurship movement since its inception in 2007.
"This 10 years of GEW in Ghana has unearthed many of thriving young entrepreneurs in Ghana, we will unveil the GEW-Ghana made entrepreneurs at our kick-off event on the 13th Nov. 2017. The theme for GEW 2017 celebrations is, 'It's Possible, Just do it," Mr Stephen Gyasi-Kwaw, the Managing Director, Global Entrepreneurship Network-Ghana.
The Global Entrepreneurship Week -Ghana is a national celebration and promotion of Entrepreneurship, which is part of the world's largest celebration of the innovators and job creators who launch startups that bring ideas to life, drive economic growth and expand human welfare.
During one week each November, GEW inspires people everywhere through local, national and global activities designed to help them explore their potential as self-starters and innovators.
These activities, from large-scale competitions and events to intimate networking gatherings, connect participants to potential collaborators, mentors and even investorsintroducing them to new possibilities and exciting opportunities.
Global Entrepreneurship Network -Ghana is a not for profit, non-partisan organisation based in Ghana that provides a platform of local, international programmes and initiatives to build, promote entrepreneurship development in Ghana. We work to foster healthier local Entrepreneurial ecosystem to help entrepreneurs unleash their ideas and turn them into promising new venturescreating jobs, unearthing innovations for society and spurring economic growth and stability.
Global Entrepreneurship Network - Ghana is part of a Global Entrepreneurship Network which operates over 160 countries independently, working to build one entrepreneurial ecosystem around the world.
GNA
South Sudanese troops have withdrawn from around the residence of powerful former army chief Paul Malong, a week after a tense standoff over his bodyguards sparked fears of clashes in the capital.
In a press statement on Sunday entitled "Misunderstanding Resolved", army spokesman Lul Ruai Koang said a peaceful resolution had been found to a dispute over the number of bodyguards in Malong's service.
Lul Ruai said scores of troops had been deployed around Malong's house as he had failed to comply with an order that he release most of his government-appointed bodyguards to return to their former duties.
"Withdrawal came about after Gen. Paul accepted (a) presidential order on reduction of his bodyguards," the army statement says.
Lul Ruai said troops were withdrawn after a "security review was undertaken which indicated lack of real security threats to the government in particular and residents of Juba in general (and) to reduce and eliminate uncertainty created by deployment of security forces."
The move was also an attempt "to build confidence between the Government and General Paul."
'Human rights violations, corruption'
Malong is a hardline ethnic nationalist whose dismissal in May by President Salva Kiir had sparked fears of a clash between his supporters and troops loyal to the president, although that never materialised.
The deployment of troops around his house last Friday saw people holing up at home for fears of clashes.
Malong, who belongs to Kiir's majority Dinka tribe, is widely regarded as the mastermind behind fighting that erupted in Juba in July 2016 that killed hundreds of people.
The clashes also crushed hopes of a power-sharing government between Kiir and Riek Machar, his former deputy turned rebel chief, who is a member of the Nuer tribe.
South Sudan has been gripped by a brutal civil war that has lasted nearly four years. Initially putting the Dinka and the Nuer against each other, the conflict has metastasised, drawing in a variety of ethnic groups and grievances.
The general, who is under house arrest, was one of three senior South Sudan officials who was hit by US sanctions in September on charges of fomenting and profiting from the civil war.
Canada followed suit last week, with Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland saying the sanctions related to individuals "linked to human rights violations and corruption".
South Sudan gained independence after the Christian-majority south split from the Muslim north in 2011 after a 22-year civil war that killed hundreds of thousands of people.
But the world's youngest nation quickly fell into civil war in December 2013 after Kiir accused Machar of plotting a coup, with the conflict leaving tens of thousands dead and forcing a third of its 12 million people out of their homes.
A US-based Ghanaian lawyer has cautioned President Akufo-Addo not to assent to the Major Mahama Trust Fund Bill as it cannot stand constitutional scrutiny.
Professor Stephen Kweku Asare says it will set a bad precedent which will undermine the tenets of rule of law by assenting to the Bill.
"The Major Mahama Bill flouts the principles of generality and non-discrimination and cannot withstand constitutional scrutiny," he said in a Facebook post Friday.
He added that "the bill targets Major Mahama and appears to ignore other security personnel we have lost in the past.
"It is a cardinal principle of the rule of law that laws must apply to broad categories of people and must not single out individuals or groups for special treatment."
He further advised the President to "return it to Parliament for it to be replaced by a comprehensive Bill that provides timely, predictable and easy to access benefits to the families of ALL SECURITY PERSONNEL who pay the ultimate price while serving the nation."
He believes that "even though the Bill is well intentioned, it sets a very bad precedent; it treats equally situated persons differently; it creates bitterness for families in similar situations who are hardly recognized; and it affects the collective morale of service personnel."
Below is his post:
Dear President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo:
Greetings! It is a tough call but my advice is that you should not give assent to the Major Mahama Trust Fund Bill. Rather, you should return it to Parliament for it to be replaced by a comprehensive Bill that provides timely, predictable and easy to access benefits to the families of ALL SECURITY PERSONNEL who pay the ultimate price while serving the nation.
The Major Mahama Bill flouts the principles of generality and non-discrimination and cannot withstand constitutional scrutiny.
The bill targets Major Mahama and appears to ignore other security personnel we have lost in the past. It is a cardinal principle of the rule of law that laws must apply to broad categories of people and must not single out individuals or groups for special treatment.
The power of parliament to isolate people for rewards, punishment or different treatment is dangerous and must not be countenanced in this Republic. We must not traverse that path.
Even though the Bill is well intentioned, it sets a very bad precedent; it treats equally situated persons differently; it creates bitterness for families in similar situations who are hardly recognized; and it affects the collective morale of service personnel.
Mr. President, seize this opportunity to reiterate your commitment to the rule of law, which requires that our laws conform to the generality principle and are not discriminatory.
The Major Mahama Trust Fund bill seeks to give the legal backing for the establishment of a fund to cater for the wife and two children of the Late Major Maxwell Mahama.
Major Mahama, who was lynched under bizarre circumstances at Denkyira-Obuasi in the Central Region in May 2017, was part of a task-force deployed to root out illegal mining in the area.
Following the death, President Akufo-Addo committed to establishing the fund, in which government will put a seed money of GH 500,000 to take care of the late officers family.
Story by Ghana| Myjoyonline.com |Abubakar Ibrahim
US investigators on Sunday returned to a village in Niger where four American soldiers were killed in an ambush in October carried out by Islamist militants, the military said.
The news came a day after the Washington Post citing villagers reported that Sgt La David Johnson, one of the four, was found with his arms tied and a gaping wound to the back of the head.
The discovery suggested he was captured and executed.
The investigative team, comprising US and Nigerien officials, "returned to the village of Tongo Tongo, Niger, on Nov. 12 in order to gain a clearer understanding of the Oct. 4 ambush, the attack site and the surrounding environment, United States Africa Command (AFRICOM) said in a statement.
"This mission allowed the investigation team to gather information and determine the facts related to the ambush that killed four US soldiers and four Niger Force Soldiers," it added.
The US had previously said five Nigerien soldiers had died.
But the investigation -- which is being headed by Major General Roger Cloutier, chief of staff to the commander of AFRICOM -- won't publish its findings until January 2018, the Pentagon said last week.
The ambush occurred on October 4 as a unit of 12 American special forces soldiers and 30 Nigerien troops returned from the village that is near the border with Mali, according to US military chief General Joe Dunford.
They were attacked by a group of some 50 fighters affiliated with the Islamic State group and equipped with small arms, grenades and trucks mounted with guns.
French forces sent a Mirage 2000 fighter jet to their aid but it did not bomb the militants for fear of hitting their allied forces.
Speculation about the incident has abounded in the US media, but the Pentagon has remained tight-lipped about the circumstances surrounding the ambush as well as the nature of the mission.
12.11.2017 LISTEN
ACCRA, Ghana, 12th November, 2017,-/African Media Agency (AMA)/- More than 100 senior executives, entrepreneurs and thought-leaders from media, tech, business and civil society will gather in Accra from Sunday 12 to Tuesday 14 November, for the annual Africa Business Media Innovators summit (ABMI), to discuss the changing face of media and new hybrid models.
Convened by Bloomberg Philanthropies in partnership with the Ford Foundation, Africa Business Media Innovators is a part of the Bloomberg Media Initiative Africa, a pan-Africa program launched by Michael R. Bloomberg to advance business journalism on the continent.
ABMI 2017 will be hosted by Matthew Winker, Co-Founder of Bloomberg News and Editor Emeritus, and Justin B. Smith, CEO of Bloomberg Media, and will examine the many new trends and approaches in the wider communications sector, from revenue models to content creation and distribution. The forum is designed so that media companies can share their strategies for navigating these changes, and their efforts to impact inclusive and sustainable economic growth on the continent.
H.E. President Nana Akufo-Addo of Ghana will welcome the delegates from across Africa, the United Kingdom and United States, and open the convening.
The program will include moderated discussions, interactive sessions, extended Q&As, and interviews with, among others: Strive Masiyiwa, Econet; Khanyi Dhlomo, Ndalo Media; Samuel Attah Mensah, OMNI Media Group; Kadija Patel, Mail & Guardian; Amrote Abdella, Microsoft 4Afrika; Omar Ben Yedder, IC Publications; Adama Wade, Financial Afrik; Erik Charas, Verdade; Caroline Southey, The Conversation; Turi Munthe, North Based Media; and Herbert Wigwe, Access Bank.
The event appeals to a global audience with a focus on the media industry in Africa. The topics which will be covered include:
The changing face of media in Africa and other emerging markets
Strengthening African media capacity by innovating with new hybrid models
Leveraging the changes in media practices to enable Africans to tell stories about Africa The role of business journalism and African media as a driver of inclusive growth
The upcoming forum will also consider: how business leaders across the continent and globally can continue to contribute to a vibrant media sector; what the primary source of revenue will be; what medium consumers will rely on for news in the next five to ten years; and what enabling factors will enhance media and business journalism.
Matthew Winkler, Co-Founder of Bloomberg News and Editor-in-Chief Emeritus says: "As the geopolitical landscape changes with African economies showing the most dynamic demographic opportunity for growth, the continent must continue to build media capacity that will serve Africans' increasing need for accurate and relevant business information. This annual gathering of global industry peers is testament to the power and determination of the communications industry to drive and maintain growth."
The ABMI summit was previously hosted in Kenya and South Africa, where stakeholders and influencers of the media and business landscape in Africa addressed the importance of a robust financial journalism sector, and the value of data and data-related technologies to drive international investment and economic growth. Admittance to this event is on an invitation-only basis. For more information, please visit the Africa Business Media Innovators 2017 site .
Dear J J Egbert,
I bring you warm greetings from the land of my birth. Ghana is a prosperous land with diverse cultural heritage.
I will desist from any attempt to recount our rich history. In my next letter, I would tell you the devastating effects of slavery, colonialism, neocolonialism and corruption on my beloved country.
The effects are so glaring and pernicious even decades away. The black and for that matter, Ghanaian is made to believe, he can't manage his own affairs. This weird mentality was fought frontally by Dr.Nkrumah, Nelson Mandela, Dr Martin Luther king Jnr, Robert Mugabe and recently John Dramani Mahama.
Are we then surprised to see all these efforts by past leaders to keep us on the path of sustainable growth and economic emancipation being dwarfed by children and grandchildren of "yti y ho" ideology?
Our real state today is pathetic. It has not only exposed the lies, but the inherent traits of deception from the primitive days of slavery.
The government has developed a strange appetite for borrowing without any physical project to show. Their communicators would quickly make reference to free SHS, Nurses and teacher trainee Allowances.
Look! I am for free quality SHS. I believe it's a bold social intervention which needs commendations. However, its current shape and form is a mission on a path of failure.
Every rational government across the globe would do targeting of those who really need it. Improve infrastructure, secure a sustainable source of financing, improving the human resource capacity of teachers etc.
J J Egbert, I wish to share with you current happenings in my country. I remember vividly, my last letter to you was about the concession speech of the past President. H E John Mahama. Today, I'm writing to you on diverse of issues.
Firstly, my country has a 72yrs old as a President. Many were those who said with his age, he has seen it all and knows it all. Unfortunately, the speech by H E John Mahama that faithful night is taking turns so quickly to my amusement. Prosperity indeed shall be the best judge.
My country is witnessing the most lawlessness ever. Even the said criminal entities have the effrontery to be threatening the life of judges, nurses, teachers, market women etc.
The other day, H E John Mahama asked a harmless question. He wanted to find out why we are made to pay a private company for an application which exist on our phones already? Then comes the man, Dr Alhaji Bawumia. He copiously read out a long thesis obviously written by same guys who sold the 419 App to us.
He read out several factual inaccuracies but is not my interest to expose him now. I still want to observe that cultural norm to desist from embarrassing my kinsmen in public. I have an option of hauling him before "Na-yiri" . His response was the exact description of a parroting propagandist. He came to me as someone who i suffering from identity conflict; ie a serial caller ranting on radio.
He needs help to migrate from his comfort zone of campaign talks to real work of buttering our bread. Mr President enough of the talk!
I share in the convictions of H E John Mahama that the said Ghana GPS app is a 419 scam. Period! An application which accepts xxx as a name of an applicant and landed me in our neighborhood toilet when I asked for a direction to the hospital is nothing but a shameful 419 scam.
Egbert, I read in the dailies that the "competent" 110 team could not raise the needed bond due to several factors. 25% of what they finally got was spent on transaction cost. Please! Don't ask me any question because I am deficient in economics. Hon. Isaac Adongo has all the answers.
Then comes the news of the failed 10 regional chairmen of the NDC issuing a communique. What? In fact, it was the "sere kwa kwa" of the week. Their actions were not only premature but a clear demonstration of the imminent house cleansing fever. Hahahahahahha
Yes! a revolution is what the NDC needs. I don't really know the form it would take but what I'm certain in mind is that, men of conscience and integrity will stand.
The NDC as a political party should be interested in building its base, taking its members through the healing processes and compiling a credible register. They should be working on carving a new look. Ask yourselves why it has become difficult to win elections in any public institution? Why a party member will not feel the need to write and defend the party?
The new face should start with polling station elections through to the national executives. We have a collective responsibility to treat the lame horse with potent medication.
The ordinary members of our party should own it. They should choose their leaders at every stage. This and many more will save the NDC from another humiliating defeat.
Remember the 2016 defeat was multifaceted. Our communication machinery was a disaster, the youth wing was in coma. The party campaign messages were not resonating with the masses. The perception of arrogance, corruption, opulence, extravagance and open thievery was loud everywhere. Certainty, a biased media landscape will blow it out of proportion.
Best regards!
Yours ever,
Azeko Razak.
Youth Activist
[email protected]
0245519547
12.11.2017 LISTEN
I read with delight an article on http://3news.com on the above subject. The network claimed that the article in question was signed by on Osman Tahidu Kikaa (spokesperson for the regent of the late Mr. Andani Dassana. I wish to echoe what is publicly known.
The spokesperson for the regent of Mr. Andani Dassana in his opening statement deceived 3news.com and Ghanaians that they intercepted a letter titled Performance of traditional activities in Bimbilla. The truth is that the family and all those who pay homage to the late Naa Alhaji Salifu Dawuni and the current regent Suong Lana do not hide any of their dealings.The letter Kikaa sought to play mischief with was meant for the public. It's a public knowledge that the District Chief Executive Hon. Abdulai Yakubu is the master planne for the Andani faction and has vowed to do anything to support their course. So, if the family of the late Naa Salifu Dawuni is fully aware of this and went ahead to served DISEC with the letter you will only be displaying your lack of understanding of the word intercepted. You got the letter from the District Chief Executive.
We are aware of the diabolic moves by the DCE and the likes of Osman Kikaa to get the Northern Regional Minister and the Defense Minister into trouble. Thats up to the DCE if he beliefs he now has power and can support people who stopped his party from campaigning in the Bimbilla Constituency. I know people who supported the NPP are waiting for opportunity to act. And that opportunity will soon, very soon present itself.
Osman with support from arm chaired media outlets such as 3news.com continue to twist facts for so long a time. 3news.com and Osman claimed that the Northern Region House of Chiefs through its ruling never held that all Nakpaa Na including Naa Salifu Dawuni could ascend to the Bimbilla Paramountcy. I know Osman is so myopic and very low in academics. But I know the ruling of the regional house of chiefs on the Nakpa case is a public document and I will refer the Andani Dassana's faction to page 170 of the ruling portions of which said UNDER THE CIRCUMSTANCES THE COMMITTEE HOLDS THAT 2ND DEFENDANT WAS AN ELIGIBLE CANDIDATE FOR SELECTION TO THE SKIN OF NAKPA AND THAT HE LIKE ANY OTHER GREAT GRANDSON OF A BIMBILLA-NA IS NOT DEBARRED BY ANY KNOWN CUSTOMARY PRACTICE OR USAGE FROM ASCENDING THE PARAMOUNT SKIN OF BIMBILLA AND FOR THAT MATTER THE NAKPA SKIN OF BIMBILLA. Im not surprise at all that Osman and all the mischief makers put out such distorted facts. They admitted through one Danaa Natogmah of not having the ruling. I know they have paid people through people like James Agalga and A.B.A Fusheini to produce their own judgment and that is what Osman and their paid journalist are tossing around.
Again, Osman and their paid journalists at 3news.com have expressed childish position on the issue of the forth-coming Damba Festival. It must be corrected that the family of the late Naa Salifu Dawuni is never interested in what the regent of the late Andani Dassana does. Damba is a festival observed among the Mole Dagombas. So anybody including Kikaa and his people is allowed to observe the festival. I dont see why people will want government to stop someone from doing what is legal. Is it because the NDC sidelined the family of Naa Salifu and supported Mr. Andani Dassana? Meanwhile, I want to tell the family of the late Naa Salifu Dawuni to sit up. I am convinced that plans are advance for the DCE to stop them from celebrating the Damba Festival. Im not a soothsayer, but I still now that the DCE connived with one Alhassan Mobila and Akpaman to fire life bullets prior to the outdooring of the Regent (Suong Lana). This was to create the impression that Bimbilla was not peaceful due to the burial of the late Naa Salifu.
What the Ghanaian public should know is that the crisis in Bimbilla is an imported one and its alien to people in Nanung. Osman and his likes are alarmists who are always in the media painting a war situation. Osman Kikaa stated on national television that they will resist any attempt to bury Naa Salifu Dawuni. He again hinted of mayhem during the Damba Festival. I hope the security of the nation is following and we as family and supporters of the late Naa Salifu Dawuni are ready 24/7 for Osman and his people.
What is true is that, Mr. Andani Dassana benefitted from the NDC government. His family and supporters were treated as first class citizens even after he was gruesomely murdered by his own people. This unfair treatment angered the family and supporters of Naa Salifu Dawuni. Those who naturally wouldve supported the NDC didnt. our prayer was for God to change the government not because we need a politician to twist issue to supported. We voted for change so that there will be equal treatment. I know people like Osman Kikaa earn their daily bread through the crisis and will continue to fuel it.
Salifu Mufteen ([email protected])
Review of CI.133 will aid in ...
By Lambert Strether of Corrente.
In this post Ill review what I can of the situation in Puerto Rico on the ground, and sketch the first outlines of the role of the Financial Oversight and Management Board (FOMB) set up under the Puerto Rico Oversight, Management, and Economic Stability Act (PROMESA) (never let a crisis go to waste). Ill go into the financial aspects of Puerto Ricos post-Maria situation in a follow-up post later this week. Today, Ill look at roads, power, water, and depopulation. Then Ill take a quick look at money, which affects the power situation, in both senses of that word. But first, Ill note that that military involvement is winding down. NPR:
There are about 11 thousand troops on the island nowdown from more than 15 thousand shortly after the hurricane. Over the next few weeks, the number will drop by about half as federal troops hand over responsibilities to National Guardsmen.
And the general in charge of those efforts is leaving. CBS:
Lt. Gen. Jeffrey Buchanan, the Pentagons liaison to the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), announced on Friday that troops would begin winding down operations He is set to leave the island next week. On the military side, were really here just for the emergency response, Buchanan told CBS News correspondent David Begnaud in a wide-ranging interview Saturday. Weve been transitioning out of the emergency response for the last several weeks. Some areas still need help, but its more of a sustained effort, and moving, transitioning into a longer recovery and rebuilding effort.
So lets look at those some areas that still need help. (Heres a vivid and excellent description of a typical day in the life of a USGS hydrologic technician. Every aspect of living and working there has been thrown into turmoil.) First, the roads.
Roads
Wnen we looked at the road situation back in October, the only road in full operation was the ring road around the island; nothing in the interior. Since then, the roads seem to have been cleared:
Buchanan said the initial response involved search and rescue operations, opening ports around Puerto Rico and clearing roads. Until the roads were cleared, helicopters were required to transport supplies. He said all roads have now been cleared, so FEMA and local officials are able to deliver supplies much more easily without the assistance of the military.
I dont have a map of the cleared roads, but I do have this map from National Nurses United, who sent down some of their members to aid in the recovery:
Most of the aid was delivered to the interior, so that suggests Buchanan is correct, and that the roads are indeed cleared, and many are passable (assuming that the nurses werent flown in by helicopter). But cleared roads arent the same as repaired roads; as this audio report on National Guard efforts shows, and passable roads arent necessarily suited for the delivery of food, fuel, and supplies of all kinds, including telephone poles and electrical equipment. Reuters describes a mammoth sinkhole:
The hole is only one of 3,500 reported incidents of hurricane damage to Puerto Rico-owned roadways, with repair costs estimated at $250 million. Cars backed up for miles along Puerto Rico Highway 2 on either side of the colossal construction site, which swallowed four of five lanes. The 20-foot crater was among thousands of sites damaged by a storm that exposed an already fragile infrastructure in Puerto Rico, decimating water, power and roadways all at once.
(Given that whoover is counting the incidents faces a task much like that of the USGS hydrologic technicians above, its likely that 3,500 is a low estimate.)
Electrical Power
To begin with, weve decided to stop counting people who dont have power. Bloomberg:
The U.S. Energy Department, which has been issuing regular reports on the efforts to restore power in Puerto Rico, just stopped releasing estimates on the number of customers whove gone without electricity since Hurricane Maria devastated the island more than a month ago. In explaining the change to its biweekly report Thursday, the agency said Puerto Ricos utility hasnt been able to give estimates on actual customers without power. It is instead estimating the amount of electricity restored as a percent of the islands peak load. That figure isnt a direct proxy for the number of customers restored because many of the critical facilities that were initially restored such as hospitals draw a higher load than residential customers, the department went on to say. In other words, the percentage of load restored could be higher than the number of homes that actually have their lights back on.
(Id speculate that the total generation figure is the one the bondholders, who we will get to, care about.) Fortunately, CNN did some really good reporting (!) on the condition of the Puerto Rican power grid. First, on the numbers:
The islands leadership is touting restoration figures [see the dashboard lambert] that show nearly 40% of electricity generation has resumed but it doesnt say how much of that power is actually reaching homes, schools and hospitals.
And now comes the reporting part:
With no reliable government information, CNN tried to contact each of the 78 municipalities in Puerto Rico, which are coordinating their own recoveries. Most calls simply did not go through. Along with so much here, communication is intermittent at best. Some 42 of the municipalities could not be contacted. Just four regions reported that they were more than half back on line Ponce and Guayanilla with 60% of residents with power.
Here is a map of CNNs results:
Perhaps more eloquent than the map, however, is the picture of San Juans still-unlit skyline, a month after Hurricane Maria struck. Meanwhile, institutional factors seem to be getting in the way of power restoration. From an excellent post mortem in Electrical Engineering News:
New day one for Puerto Rico grid repair, 7 weeks after storm Speaking with reporters yesterday, House Natural Resources Chairman Rob Bishop (R-Utah), whose committee has jurisdiction over U.S. territorial issues, said restoring energy to the island would require coordination among four players. We have to get away from the idea that somebody is in power, and in control, and realize that youve got four separate entities that have to work together and not in an adversarial way, Bishop said, naming the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), the Army Corps of Engineers, the government of Puerto Rico and the Financial Oversight and Management Board for Puerto Rico, established by Congress to watch over the commonwealths bankruptcy.
Let me know how that works out, Rob (and more on the FOMB below)[1].
Water
The water situation seems to have improved, but by how much is not clear. USA Today:
Gov. Ricardo Rossellos office said 82% of the islands water meters are now active, but many residents say they still have no running water or the water they have is unsafe.
I suppose thats an improvement on the power situation, where were not even bothering to count the meters. And of course, we in this country well, except for the Flint, Michiganders among us assume that a functioning water meter is a proxy for potable water, but it isnt:
Were worried that in places even that have running water whether that water is safe, said Erik Olson, health program director at the Natural Resources Defense Council. His group reported in May that Puerto Ricos water system had the worst record under the Safe Water Act, with 70% of the people living with water that violated standards set by the U.S. law. And now the situation is worse, Olson said. The drinking water system in Puerto Rico was already very fragile, Olson said. When you lose water pressure, what can happen is if theres groundwater contamination with sewage or flooding, that water can get into those pipes.
Of course, the power situation impacts the potability of water. Miami Herald:
Even those with tap water have been advised to boil it or use purification tablets. With electricity still unreliable in the places where it has been restored and generators prone to breakdowns, water treatment plants can go down without warning.
But its not just the water treatment plants. USA Today:
While boiling is an easy way to decontaminate water, most people I spoke to either didnt (have) electricity or cooking gas to get that done, he said.
(Bottles of cooking gas are delivered by road.). The upshot is that there are continuing reports of waterborne illness:
Medical workers who volunteered across the island report similar patterns of symptoms almost everywhere. Over the past two weeks, weve seen a continuous stream of adult and pediatric patients with gastrointestinal illness, most often involving fever, vomiting and diarrhea, said Christopher Tedeschi, an emergency medicine physician at New York-Presbyterian/Columbia University Medical Center, who returned last Thursday from Puerto Rico. Its hard to say the source or more likely sources of the illness, although contaminated food and water are very likely
And please dont say Use bottled water! USA Today once more:
In the meantime, finding bottled water can be a challenge even in San Juan. Prices have also increased since the hurricane, making it hard for low-income families to pay for filtered water.
With roads still out, power unreliable, and no water, its no wonder people are leaving.
Depopulation
From CBS Miami:
FEMA is working on arrangements to help transport survivors of Hurricane Maria from storm-ravaged Puerto Rico to the U.S. mainland. The operation, which officials call an air bridge, could take some time to set up because FEMA hasnt flown such a large number of people out of a disaster zone before.We have about 4,000, 5,000 people coming from Puerto Rico to Florida a day, said Gov. Rick Scott (R-FL).
And from the Tampa Bay Observer, one of the more dispiriting reactions:
The arrival of more than than 130,000 Puerto Ricans in Florida since Hurricane Maria
And then right in the same [family-blogging] sentence, without missing a beat:
has some officials anticipating a political shakeup in a battleground state dominated by the Republican party. Both parties are actively courting new arrivals to Florida, which President Donald Trump won last year by 112,000 votes out of 9.6 million cast.
And the Washington Post:
Experts at the Center for Puerto Rican Studies at Hunter College in New York estimate that more than 300,000 Puerto Ricans could leave the island in the next two years, and Florida would likely attract many of those. Florida is a big swing state and Central Florida is the epicenter of that, Dennis Freytes, a political activist in the Orlando area, told the Tampa Bay Times in September, just after the storm. This could be a very big deal. There are going to be voter registration drives and both parties are going to be after them. They already are.
A very big deal. Its as if Irish immigrants who dominated the Tammany Hall machine had expressed ecstasy over the Irish potato famine, because of all the voters it brought them.[2] At this point, we would do well to remember as Im sure many Puerto Ricans do that the only plan the Democrats have passed for Puerto Rico is PROMESA, where they acted on behalf of the bondholders. A comprehensive plan for Puerto Rican recovery, including debt relief? Lol no.
Money
First, Puerto Rico is going to need rather a lot of it. Bloomberg:
Puerto Rico Needs as Much as $21 Billion in Aid, Oversight Official Says
The Oversight official is Natalie Jaresko, the FOMBs (Ukrainian, Chicago-born) executive director.) Back to Bloomberg:
Puerto Rico needs $13 billion to $21 billion over the next two years to meet payroll and keep the government running, Natalie Jaresko, the executive director of the islands federal oversight board, said Tuesday during a Congressional hearing about Puerto Ricos recovery after Hurricane Maria.
$21 Billion is real money, even today, so its unsurprising that Jaresko is also moving to take control of the money spigot. Caribbean Business:
During last Tuesdays hearing, Jaresko also emphasized the importance of clarifying what role the board will play in the oversight and management of federal funds that reach the island for the recovery and reconstruction of infrastructure after Hurricane Maria. The executive director said Puerto Rico will need $13 billion to $21 billion in additional liquidity until the summer of 2019. Given this scenario, the board has already proposed legislative language that would grant it the power to control any disbursement of federal funds made available for the governments liquidity. The board assured that would be the way to guarantee that federal funds are used for Maria-related matters. In a congressional oversight hearing Tuesday, the executive director of the fiscal board, Natalie Jaresko, told the U.S. House Natural Resources Committee that her panel would welcome any legislative action that reaffirms and clarifies its powers under the Promesa federal law . She added that it would help avoid costly litigation against the Government of Puerto Rico whenever there are differences of opinion and interpretation about what the board can or cannot do.
Meanwhile, the FOMB is muscling the Puerto Rican government from another angle:
The federal board overseeing Puerto Ricos finances on Tuesday asked the bankrupt U.S. territory to submit a new fiscal turnaround plan by Dec. 22, taking into account damage caused by Hurricane Maria. Speaking at the boards public meeting in San Juan, Executive Director Natalie Jaresko said the board would approve or reject the revised draft by Jan. 12. The meeting, the first since Maria made landfall on Sept. 20, is a shift back to focusing on Puerto Ricos troubled finances, which have taken a back seat in recent weeks as the island has tried to recover from the hurricane. The new plan must be for five years instead of 10, and like the original blueprint it should focus on promoting new investment, including through pension reform and corporate tax reform, Jaresko said. She added that Puerto Rico should submit audited financial statements for fiscal year 2015 by Dec. 31.
Piece of cake. I mean, as long as theres water and power in the ministries.[3] And Im sure that readers can imagine what promoting new investment, including through pension reform and corporate tax reform means, in practice.
Conclusion
I suppose its a good sign that Puerto Rico has recovered enough for the powers-that-be to start arguing over whats really important to them: How much money there will be and who gets their cut. So, optimism!
NOTES
[1] Im not going into detail on the clownish crudity of the Whitefish contract debacle, because, given Puerto Ricos colonial status, Im sure there are compradors involved, with their own motives, as well as administration officials and donors, and thats more than I have time to untangle.
[2] From the Times:
Tammany figures, many of them descended from survivors of the potato famine in the mid-19th century, made no attempt to investigate the claims of those who sought their help. One of the machines legendary scoundrels, Big Tim Sullivan, explained how he approached those who sought a free meal in his clubhouse: I never ask a hungry man about his past. I feed him not because he is good, but because he needs food.
Universal concrete material benefits, especially for the working class.
NOTE
Via People: Lin-Manuel Miranda Will Bring Broadway Hit Hamilton to Puerto Rico and Play Title Character. Darkly ironic, given that Hamilton is an ode to finance capital, i.e., to those bondholders.
People across the Bay Area offered thanks to all who have served, honoring their service and sacrifice in a number of ways.
SOUTH BAY:
San Jose Veterans Day Parade
10 a.m. Saturday: A ceremony will be held at Plaza de Cesar Chavez
11 a.m. Parade will start at West Santa Clara Street and Highway 87. Attendees will travel east to Market Street, where they will turn south toward the reviewing stand in front of the park.
Honor on the Row in San Jose
2 p.m. to 6 p.m. Saturday: Santana Row will celebrate veterans with a gold star memorial to honor the fallen, a display of military vehicles and classic cars, and a collection booth for care packages.
SAN FRANCISCO:
We Are All Americans! Tribute to Nikkei Veterans
10 a.m. Saturday: A free public ceremony hosted by the National Japanese American Historical Society at 640 Old Mason Street.
11 a.m. Saturday: GO FOR BROKE! Anthony Brown's Asian American Orchestra
12 p.m. to 2 p.m. Saturday: Luncheon reception
Veterans Day Service + Art at the Presidio
10 a.m. to 1 p.m. Saturday: Veterans and civilians can view service members' artwork on display at the Presidio Officers' Club and participate in community service for victims of the North Bay wildfires.
11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday: Family-friendly arts and crafts
Commemoration of 75th Anniversary of the Naval Battle of Guadalcanal
10 a.m. to 12 p.m. Saturday: The Naval History and Heritage Command, in partnership with the USS San Francisco Memorial Foundation and San Francisco Fleet Week Association, will commemorate the 75th Anniversary of the Naval Battle of Guadalcanal at the USS San Francisco Memorial at 2400 El Camino Del Mar. The ceremony will honor the sailors and marines who were killed in action during the battle on Nov. 12 and 13.
Veterans Day Parade
11 a.m. to 12 p.m. Sunday: An estimated 20,000 people are expected to attend the annual Veterans Day parade that traditionally starts with motorcycle riders leading the way. It starts on the Embarcadero at North Point Street and heads to Fisherman's Wharf along Jefferson Street.
EAST BAY:
Veterans Day Celebration in Alameda
10 a.m. Saturday: The USS Hornet Sea, Air and Space Museum at 707 West Hornet Avenue will offer a station for people who want to make thank-you cards for veterans.
11 a.m. Saturday: The USS Hornet Sea, Air and Space Museum will hosts its annual ceremony on the ships hanger deck. Afterward, a wreath will be cast into San Francisco Bay in honor of U.S. veterans of all wars and branches of service.
Veterans Memorial Dedication in Union City
10 a.m. to 12 p.m. Saturday: Alameda County Supervisor Richard Valle will dedicate a new monument at Veterans Memorial Park at 4525 Dyer Street. The memorial will feature a hexahedra granite monument with each of the six sides representing a different branch of the military and memorial bricks that can be individually dedicated to service members. The event will include the presentation and retiring of colors by the United States Armys 91st Division, two ceremonial firings from a Howitzer cannon, a flyover and landing of Vietnam helicopters, and a BBQ Lunch served by local firefighters.
Sixth Annual Veterans Day Services in Castro Valley
11 a.m. Saturday: Sue Alverson of the Veterans of Foreign Wars' National Home for Children will address the crowd at Castro Valley Community Park at 3683 Quail Avenue, followed by a raffle of a Henry Salute to the Military Rifle with all the proceeds going to the VFW.
NORTH BAY:
Veterans Day Parade in Petaluma
12 p.m. Saturday: Music will begin at Walnut Park
1 p.m. Saturday: The parade will begin and end at Walnut Park
2:45 p.m. Saturday: A prayer, pledge of allegiance and follow-up program will follow the parade in the gazebo.
A Santa Rosa family whose home was reduced to ashes by the Tubbs Fire went to a concert benefiting North Bay fire victims like themselves, only to suffer yet another heartbreaking loss.
Jason Kracht lived in Coffey Park with his wife and 3-year-old daughter until California's deadliest wildfire laid waste to thousands of homes across wine country.
Coincidentally, the trio had transferred digital copies of their family pictures to a new laptop which was among the few items they were able to save before the wind-whipped flames gutted their house. The original photographs were lost in the fire.
On Thursday, the Krachts went to AT&T Park in San Francisco for the Band Together Bay Area concert, where Metallica, Dead and Company, Dave Matthews, Raphael Saadiq, Rancid and G-Eazy performed to raise money for people who suffered losses due to the wildfires.
However, they left the show and made an alarming discovery, Kracht said.
Someone had broken the rear passenger window of their vehicle, flipped a lever to drop a car seat and taken off with a suitcase and three briefcases that had been stored at the back of the family's car, according to Kracht.
Among the stolen items was a 13-inch Acer laptop that stored all their precious memories, Kracht said.
"That computer had the only copy of many of the pictures and videos of our daughter as she conquered her liver transplant and has continued to grow into a thriving 3-year-old," he said.
A Dell Precision laptop, an Apple Macbook and Samsung Galaxy tablet were also robbed.
The family is working with the San Francico Police Department and Kracht said that investigators are trying to get surveillance video from an armored car company across the street from they were parked. He also asked for the public's assistance.
"After losing nearly everything in the Tubbs fire on October 9, having these photos (on the computer) stolen from us has felt like having a knife twisted into the wounds of our previous loss," Kracht said.
Theodore Roosevelt once said, Far and away the best prize that life offers is the chance to work hard at work worth doing.
My time serving on the Twin Falls City Council and Idaho Legislature has provided me experience with both high unemployment conditions and workforce shortages. Theses economic conditions are part of the economic cycle of contraction and growth. During periods of high unemployment, we often find that available employment opportunities do not match the experience and training of those looking for work. During low unemployment periods, like we are experiencing today, there is a deficit of candidates prepared for the advanced workplace technologies and/or education needed to fill available positions across a broad range of industries.
In the great recession, Idaho unemployment rates rose sharply from approximately 3 percent in 2008 until the rate peaked at about 9.7 percent in 2009, after which we saw a slow and steady decline. In September of this year, the state unemployment rate reached a low of 2.8 percent.
The unemployment rate only tells part of the employment story. If you lose a job in an industry that is in decline, you may end up accepting work at lower wages or fewer hours. This is often called underemployment. While the current risk and demand for unemployment benefits is low, many Idahoans are underemployed and need training to gain access to opportunities available in a technology driven economy.
High unemployment and extended benefit periods during the recession eroded the Unemployment Insurance Trust Funds to a point in 2009 that Idaho needed to borrow from the federal government to cover claims. This also required a substantial increase in the Employer Unemployment Insurance rates. (All the borrowed funds have since been repaid and Trust Funds have been replenished to adequately cover another recession.)
It is time that we provide relief to Idaho employers by substantially reducing the fund multiplier that drives the unemployment insurance rate. The rate formula currently uses a fund multiplier of 1.5, an increase from a low of 0.8 over the past seven years. A 1.5 multiplier is sufficient to cover 18 months of average unemployment benefits in a major recession. During the last legislative session, Gov. Otter proposed a reduction of the multiplier to 1.3, adequate to cover 15 months of benefits. This would maintain the fund at a historically appropriate rate while lowering employer costs by an estimated $118.6 million over the next three years.
Unfortunately, this included lowering the annual funds available in the Idaho Workforce Development Training Fund by $3.6 million ($1.2 million annually). This important fund supports training and retraining of employees for the ever-changing workforce needs. UI Trust Funds are needed to provide unemployment benefits during periods of high unemployment. However, those trust funds cannot be used for workforce retraining.
We need to lower the Unemployment Insurance rate without damaging the training fund. Decreasing the rate to save employers $115 million will still assure enough resources to cover unemployment benefits of another great recession. However, we should continue to provide adequate support for workforce training throughout the economic cycle of a dynamic economy.
The annual state budget spends over $1.5 billion educating citizens from kindergarten to career. Workforce training is a good fit with our education mission. We can, and should, adopt a new rate formula to reduce employer costs while also protecting workforce training funds. The funds are needed to speed the transition for someone underemployed or receiving unemployment benefits to that prize of work worth doing.
The Contra Costa County Sheriff's Office calls reports of abuse involving federal immigration detainees misleading but it's promising a full investigation.
In a Facebook posting, the office of Sheriff David Livingston said it's investigating reports by detainees at the West County Detention Center in Richmond. The federal government pays the Sheriff's Office to house immigration detainees there.
Reports in the San Francisco Chronicle said detainees complained of being confined to cells for up to 23 hours per day and being unable to visit the restroom for hours. Activists have released a letter by 40 detainees alleging misconduct.
The Sheriff's office denies the lockup claims. It says detainees have cell keys and can leave for restroom breaks and medical appointments.
However, a California senator has called for a state investigation.
A BMW on Saturday veered off a San Francisco freeway, flipped over and crashed onto a street below, but the driver escaped from the mangled vehicle with only minor injuries, fire officials say.
The collision was reported to the San Francisco Fire Department around 4 a.m. when the vehicle flew off eastbound Interstate 80 and landed on its roof on Vermont Street, which is located close to Fire Station 29, according to officials.
Fire officials said the driver sustained non-life threatening injuries and rescued themself.
Additional details about the circumstances leading up to the crash or specifics about the driver's condition were not immediately available.
A dozen cute puppies all hopped onto the J-Church line in Downtown San Francisco on Saturday as a part of Guide Dogs for the Blind training exercise.
The adorable Labradors and golden retrievers rode the Muni Metro for an informal training exercise to understand how to navigate the noisy and hectic environment that is public transportation. To better serve the visually impaired, the informal training exercise attempted to socialize and get them used to sights, sounds and vibrations of a light rail train before finally going into formal training at 16 months old.
Every dog has a purpose, said Karen Woon, vice president of marketing for Guide Dogs for the Blind in an interview with the SF Gate. They have a joy in service. They have great health and the right temperament. We find these breeds to be the most successful.
After riding the Muni from the Van Ness Station to the Embarcadero Station, the dogs got off with their puppy raisers and roamed around the Farmers Market at the Ferry Building.
Police in South San Francisco on Sunday were searching for a vehicle and driver involved in a fatal hit and run of a woman late Saturday night.
The driver of what is described as a black 1998 to 2000 Toyota or Lexus passenger car struck a female pedestrian along the 200 block of El Camino Real just before midnight and fled the scene, according to police.
The victim, identified as 44-year-old Teresa Gonzales of South San Francisco, was taken to a hospital and later pronounced dead, police said. She was a single mother of two daughters, according to family.
GoFundMe
Police on Monday released a description of the driver based on witness statements. The suspect is described as a white male in his early to mid-30s, about 5 feet, 9 inches tall, weighing about 220 pounds, with a pencil mustache and a short, faded haircut, police said. He was last seen in the area of the 1100 block of Cherry Avenue in San Bruno.
A makeshift memorial was growing at Brentwood Bowl, where Gonzales attended a friend's concert, according to Raquel Duran, a close friend. When Gonzales decided to go home, she called an Uber, Duran said. When the Uber driver arrived, he parked across the street, and Gonzales ran toward it. That's when another vehicle struck her and sped off, Duran said.
The driver has yet to be found, police said. The suspect car likely sustained minor to moderate damage to its hood and right section of its front end.
Friends could not understand why anyone would hit a person and leave them to die. They vowed to help find the person responsible.
"I will never stop; anybody in this neighborhood that knows me, knows that I mean that," friend Mike Frye said. "I will make sure that we catch whoever did that. That woman did not deserve to be left in the street like that."
Gonzales' family started a GoFundMe campaign that had collected more than $3,000 of a $10,000 goal as of Sunday night.
An investigation is ongoing.
Anyone with information is asked to call the South San Francisco Police Department at 650-877-8900, leave an anonymous tip at 650-952-2244 or email tips@ssf.net.
NBC Bay Area's David Gonzalez contributed to this report.
Researchers are studying whether firefighters suffered any toxic exposure in last month's deadly Northern California wildfires.
The San Francisco Chronicle reported Sunday that researchers plan to take blood and urine samples from 200 firefighters for the study.
A cancer-research organization of the San Francisco firefighters' union is contributing $100,000 for the study. California state health officials and toxic-substances officials are assisting the work.
Screenings will begin on Tuesday. Those firefighters interested in participating are encouraged to call 415-779-1010 to schedule an appointment. Samplings are slated to take place in San Francisco at 325 Newhall St. and in Santa Rosa at 2126 W. College Ave.
Wildfires that broke out Oct. 8 killed at least 43 people over a half-dozen counties in Northern California. Researchers say it's important to test for any exposure to toxins as soon as possible after the fires.
Police say a Boston man drove his car into oncoming traffic in Rhode Island, causing a crash that left two people dead and two others injured.
Police say 20-year-old Houston Smith was headed south near the Raytheon Corporation's Portsmouth campus on Friday when he crossed the double yellow line and hit a car carrying three people that was traveling in the opposite direction.
Ninety-year-old Portsmouth resident Dina Occhi and 59-year-old Theodore White, of Little Compton, were killed in the second car. The 58-year-old driver of that car, Mary Ann White, of Little Compton, was taken to a hospital, along with Smith.
Smith was arraigned Sunday on charges that include driving under the influence with death resulting. He was released on personal recognizance. It's unclear if he has an attorney.
Former Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn says he's donating a portion of his private papers to Northwestern University.
Quinn was to make the announcement at the school on Friday . The donation includes his correspondence with families of fallen military veterans. The papers are connected to the memory of about 300 Illinois servicemen and women who died fighting since 9/11. [[445832893, C]]
Quinn tells the Chicago Tribune he wants "people to be able to see how special these men and women were." He says "they didn't have long lives, but they led lives of great purpose." Quinn collected programs, notes and other mementos from the military funerals he attended as governor and lieutenant governor.
Quinn is a graduate of Northwestern's Pritzker School of Law. He is running for the Democratic nomination for Illinois attorney general.
For more than four months, Ronggao Zhang has walked to his missing daughter's apartment almost every day. At first, he stood outside, hoping she would show up one afternoon. But even after he was told she'd been kidnapped and was presumed dead, he's continued his routine.
"It brings peace and comfort to my heart," Zhang explained in Mandarin, through a translator.
His daughter, Yingying Zhang, a 26-year-old visiting scholar at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, disappeared June 9 on her way to sign an apartment lease. A former graduate student has been charged with kidnapping and killing her. Zhang's body has not been found.
A few days ago, Zhang's father made a final visit to the Orchard Downs apartments with his wife, 24-year-old son and daughter's boyfriend as they prepared to return to China. They arrived here after Zhang vanished, hopeful in the beginning that she'd be found alive. After authorities relayed the grim news, they decided to stay until her remains were found so they could take her home for a proper burial, in accordance with Chinese customs.
Now they plan to leave Sunday, reluctantly, without her. Zhang's mother is in fragile health she broke down at the start of a recent court hearing and there's no way of knowing when this cruel mystery will be solved. Each day they wait, in agony.
"We don't know where she is, and I don't know how to spend the rest of my life without my daughter," said Lifeng Ye, Zhang's mother, her face tear-stained and voice trembling as she spoke through a translator. "I can't really sleep well at night. ... I often dream of my daughter, and she's right there with me. I want to ask the mother of the suspect, please talk to her son and ask him what he did to my daughter. Where is she now? I want to know the answer."
Authorities have not said how Zhang died. Brendt Christensen, 28, was charged in July with abduction and then last month accused in a superseding indictment of kidnapping resulting in death "in an especially heinous, cruel or depraved manner, in that it involved torture or serious physical abuse to the victim." That carries the possibility of the death penalty. Christensen's lawyer declined comment.
Federal prosecutors claim that Zhang, who arrived on campus in April, had missed a bus and worried she was late to sign an apartment lease when Christensen lured her into his car. Surveillance video showed her getting into the front seat of a black Saturn Astra the FBI alleges was cleaned in a way to conceal evidence.
Audio surveillance captured Christensen talking about how he abducted Zhang and brought her back to his apartment, where she "fought and resisted" while he held her against her will, according to prosecutors. They contend he also talked about who makes an "ideal victim," but prosecutors would not identify whom Christensen was speaking with or the source of those conversations.
A federal complaint disclosed that Christensen used his phone in April to visit a fetish networking site online, viewing threads titled "perfect abduction fantasy" and "planning a kidnapping." Christensen, who earlier this year earned a master's degree in physics, appeared at a campus vigil for Zhang in June before he was arrested.
Zhang's disappearance has rippled far beyond this quiet central Illinois community, generating headlines and discussion in Chinese newspapers and social media sites about the American justice system, the capabilities of law enforcement, and whether scholars who study in the U.S. are safe.
Some 5,600 Chinese students attend the university here more than any other college in the nation. The Urbana-Champaign area typically has no more than a few homicides a year.
Studying in America was a longtime dream for Zhang and "she loved her stay here," said her boyfriend, Xiaolin Hou, who was in touch with her every day via WeChat, a popular social network in China.
She chose Illinois for its highly regarded agriculture program. Zhang had been doing research on crop photosynthesis. She was to begin her doctoral work in September after having earned a graduate degree in environmental engineering from the prestigious Peking University Shenzhen Graduate School.
"She was very tough, strong, never afraid of hard work," her mother said, recalling how she was at the top of her class ever since she was a little girl. Zhang was a calming influence, too, when her parents expressed concern about her safety in America. "She always told me, 'Mom, don't worry about me. There are Chinese here, Americans here. But everyone is very nice here.'"
Zhang was a devoted daughter. At the same time every Saturday, she'd call her parents in Nanping, China. As a graduate research student, she used her meager savings to buy her family a cellphone, an air conditioner and a microwave oven. She planned to become a university professor and help support her father, a factory worker, and mother, a homemaker.
"She never hesitated, even for a moment, when others needed help," said her boyfriend, who put his doctoral studies on hold to join Zhang's family here. He said her selflessness was what attracted him to Zhang when they met in their first year in college. She also knew how to have fun, playing guitar and singing lead in a band called "Cute Horse."
Hou and family members have met with the FBI, police and prosecutors, but they're frustrated by the slow pace of justice, said Zhidong Wang, a Chicago lawyer who has been helping them. He said he's explained that even though authorities have a suspect, Christensen's constitutional rights protect him from being forced to reveal anything that would hurt his defense.
Christensen's lawyers recently sought a delay in the trial until next October, saying they needed to check into several purported sightings of Zhang and reports of suspicious people around her apartment before she disappeared.
Zhang's father said the loss of his daughter has warped his sense of time: "Every day is like a year."
Hou, Zhang's boyfriend of eight years, has struggled, too. Though they didn't have marriage plans, he said, "In my heart, she is my wife for all time."
When authorities provided scanned pages of Zhang's diary to the family, Hou said it hurt too much to read them thoroughly. She wrote regularly of long-term and short-term goals and meticulously detailed how she organized her day 20 minutes for breakfast, 20 minutes for jogging.
On June 1, her last entry, Zhang was a bit more philosophical.
"Life," she wrote, "is too short to be ordinary."
Hou said it will be hard to leave and wait from thousands of miles away to bring Zhang home.
"We don't know how much longer this journey is going to be," he said. "We just feel hopeless."
Two young children and three adults were injured in a crash in Southington Saturday afternoon.
According to police, the two children, a 5-year-old and a 1-year-old, were riding in a car on West Street near ESPN around 2 p.m. when the driver, identified as 21-year-old Stephanie Matos, lost control and spun out through an intersection, striking a second vehicle on the opposite side of the road.
Police said the 5-year-old was rushed to Bristol Hospital with critical injuries and later airlifted to Connecticut Childrens Medical Center for further treatment. The 1-year-old was taken to Connecticut Childrens Medical Center and is reported to be in stable condition.
Matos was taken to St. Francis Hospital for treatment of serious injuries. The occupants of the other vehicle suffered non-life threatening injuries.
The crash remains under investigation. Anyone who witnessed the collision should contact Southington police Officer Ryan Lair at 860-378-1623, 860-621-0101 or by email at rlair@southingtonpolice.org.
A Stratford woman was arrested on DWI charges after a wrong-way crash on Route 8 in Derby Friday night.
According to Connecticut State Police, 40-year-old Jessica Carrafiello drove north on Route 8 southbound near exit 15 around 10 p.m. Carrafiello struck another vehicle head-on. The driver of that vehicle suffered minor injuries and was taken to the hospital for treatment.
Carrafiello was arrested and charged with DWI, driving the wrong way on the highway, and failure to stay in established lane. She is due in court on November 27.
Were closing in on Thanksgiving and the wheels are now in motion. The Christmas season is up and running in several local stores. Non-profit organizations will soon give you an opportunity to Share the Christmas Spirit. Children wont be short on ideas when theyre asked what do you want for Christmas? Adults will fret about how to make this the Best Christmas Ever. Credit cards will make more frequent appearances. Rehearsals are underway for your local schools Jingle Bells holiday program, and Christian churches will soon commemorate the birth of Jesus Christ with sermons, songs, seasonal decorations and often elaborate musical presentations of their own.
Meanwhile, those so inclined will begin their annual angry search for new evidence of the War on Christmas.
The essence of the War on Christmas is the idea that those who wish to proclaim their faith in Jesus Christ in a public way should be free to do so however they see fit, even if local laws or business directives are violated in the process. They believe that any restrictions on their seasonal outpouring of religious sentiment are part of a deliberate subversive effort to thwart, stifle and snuff out Christian expression.
I have no idea who came up with the catchy phrase War on Christmas, but it has gained traction over the years by the tireless efforts of FOX News, which trots out its slick War on Christmas graphics whenever evidence of the good fight is found.
In December 2015 an artist painted a decoration on the front window of the post office in Rupert, population 5,700. The decoration read Christ is the reason for Christmas. The only problem was that federal law prohibits religious displays in or on federal buildings. Since post offices are federal buildings, the artwork came down and was replaced with the more universally themed Peace on Earth. This action, seen by some as a frontal assault on Christianity, was not received warmly by the War on Christmas warriors. The National Court of Social Media was immediately convened, and to hear all the outrage it appeared that Christianity, or America, or both, were teetering on the brink of collapse.
Its possible that our Republican-controlled White House, Senate and House of Representatives may choose to change the law and make religious displays in post office windows legal. If so, God speed.
But while we wait for our leaders to act Ill suggest that if there is a true War on Christmas, its not going very well for those waging the war. Each year the Christmas season not only returns, but seems to grow in length. Parades still flourish, bell ringers still ring bells, credit card balances still grow, your children still wake you up at 6 a.m. on Christmas morning, and devout Christians the world over still attend church and worship their Savior during this beautiful season of reflection, reverence and holy commemoration.
And speaking for myself, I couldnt care less if a passerby or a store clerk or a business window wishes me Happy Holidays instead of Merry Christmas. Listen closely: I am not offended. My spending habits are not changed. My testimony and witness of Christ as my personal savior is not weakened if a Nativity scene is staged on the front yard of a local church instead of a city park. In my travels Ive been wished Happy Hanuka in Jewish neighborhoods. My response is Thanks, you too.
It seems to me that the depth of religious conviction in an individual is measured inside the heart, not by outward splashy actions. You and I, we both believe in Christ, but if you put up Christmas lights on your storm gutters and I dont, it doesnt mean you love Jesus more than I do.
If you choose to be offended by someone who wishes you Happy Holidays instead of Merry Christmas, then please chill out. Its not about a solid red Starbucks cup. Its not about window decorations. Its not about local, state or federal laws enacted to respect the rights and beliefs of all Americans. Christmas is about you, your personal relationship with Christ, and your response to His call to serve others. The rest is just marketing.
Dozens of people attended a gun violence forum at Disciple Central Community Church in Desoto on Saturday.
It was planned by State Senator Royce West before last weekend's church shooting in Sutherland Springs.
The community conversation focused on gun laws and what can be done to make the streets of Dallas County safer.
Shun King, a Dallas mother, attended because her husband, Traytonio King, was shot and killed in July. She says he was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time.
I was forced to become a widow. My mother-in-law was forced to become sonless and my kids were forced to become fatherless. So we don't want any other families to feel the hurt that we feel because its painful every day for us, King said tearfully.
The forum also focused on mass shootings motivated by domestic violence like the Sutherland Springs shooting and the eight people recently killed in Plano.
Gorgeous and detailed gowns from artist Loren Aragon of Acoma Pueblo.
The silver-stunning, turquoise-laden bracelets of designer Leroy Begay, who creates his jewelry in the Navajo tradition.
And the Hopi kachina carving of Bendrew Atokuku, proud pieces full of history and hue and beauty.
Having the chance to encounter any of these artists, and their wearable, displayable, treasure-able artworks, is a lucky thing, indeed, but when they're headed for the same spot, along with some 200 other Native American artists, you can bet it will be a weekend to remember.
And Saturday, Nov. 11 and Sunday, Nov. 12 will be just such a weekend at The Autry Museum of the American West when the American Indian Arts Marketplace returns. A large assembly of lauded artists hailing from over 40 tribes will display and sell a host of necklaces and paintings and beaded pieces and baskets and photographs and wood carvings, just to start.
Admission is $14, which also allows you to visit the Griffith Park-based museum, too, while you're there.
The marketplace is understandably major it is, after all, called "(t)he largest Native American arts fair in Southern California but be sure to make some time to participate in the other events, workshops, and presentations threaded through the weekend.
Native Poetry: "Tending the Fire" includes poetry readings and a book signing on Saturday afternoon. The Native Voices Seventh Annual Short Play Festival: "Seven Generations" takes to the stage on Sunday afternoon.
And a Hoop Dance Workshop with the Goedel Family (Yakama/Tulalip)? Discover more about this ancient form of dance on both Saturday and Sunday at 2 p.m. and 4 p.m.
There are several other goings-on on both days, so check the full schedule before attending this premier gathering of artists, their works, dancers, filmmakers, and poets, too.
Police are searching for the suspect responsible for stabbing a man in North Miami Beach Sunday afternoon.
According to Miami-Dade Fire Rescue spokesperson Felipe Lay, an adult man was stabbed at 16475 NE 15th Ave. in North Miami Beach. The man was rushed to Jackson Memorial Hospital's Ryder Trauma Center.
Anyone with information regarding the stabbing is urged to call Miami-Dade Crime Stoppers at 305-471-8477.
Congresswoman Frederica Wilson gathered for a peaceful prayer service in Miami on Saturday, but there were salutes to heroes all across South Florida in observance of Veterans Day.
From the National Anthem on Miami Beach, to a touching ceremony in Hialeah, veterans across South Florida were honored for their service.
A brass band paid tribute on the ground and in the sky.
I feel happiness. I feel a lot of sadness for my fellow soldiers who didnt come back from the Vietnam War and I just feel that its nice to see everybody honoring the veterans, said Rusty Shattuck, a Vietnam veteran.
Veterans from the Army, Marines and more parachuted down into Lummus Park to share their memories from when they defended our nation.
As veterans, we take our pride in our nation very seriously and with honor and distinction, said John Perusek, a veteran of the U.S. Army Special Forces.
Anything that we can do to unite the country, to bring them together, to have them think about where we came from and those people that sacrificed to help us get to where we are today is important, said Shattuck.
Beyond South Florida, a wreath laid at the tomb of the fallen solder in Arlington National Cemetery.
Saturday was all about remembering those who fought for our freedom. A peace and prayer service was also held for local soldier Sergeant La David Johnson, who was killed in the line of duty.
I want to thank everybody for their service. They work so hard and if we didnt have them, we would be in serious danger, said Devin Shattuck, whose grandfather is a veteran.
Friends and family of the 265 people who died in one of New York City's worst airline tragedies gathered Sunday to remember their loved ones.
A bell rang at 9:16 a.m. to mark the moment when the plane crashed, followed by a moment of silence. Then the victims' names were read out loud.
"To everyone, who, 16 years later, still I'm sure feels lonely sometimes, I want to say to you that the city of New York is here with you today and we will be here with you tomorrow," Mayor Bill de Blasio said. "We will be here with you always.
American Airlines Flight 587 crashed in the Rockaways 16 years ago. The plane had been headed to the Dominican Republic. All 260 people on board died, as well as five people on the ground in Belle Harbor, Queens.
Tito Bautista was overcome with grief as he placed flowers at the memorial for the victims, one of whom was his father. Each year he brings flowers and each year, he says, it doesn't get any easier.
"That's my love, that's my dad. The best dad in the world," he said.
Kharyana Carty was 1 years old when she lost her aunt, step mother and little brother to the crash.
"I see the pictures and I get sad. Sometimes I cry, because I wanted to be able to meet them," she said.
The plane crashed just two months after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, sparking fears it may have been terrorism. Federal investigators later concluded pilot error was to blame.
De Blasio arrived on time at this year's ceremony, unlike his first year in office when he missed the moment of silence and angered mourners.
A data firm that worked for President Donald Trump's campaign reached out to WikiLeaks during the campaign about obtaining emails related to Democrat Hillary Clinton, the company's CEO said.
Alexander Nix, CEO of Cambridge Analytica, said the approach was in "early June 2016" after WikiLeaks Editor Julian Assange had publicly claimed he had Clinton emails and planned to publish them. Nix said his company asked a speaker's agency representing Assange whether WikiLeaks "might share that information," but Assange turned him down.
Nix's comments Thursday at the Web Summit technology conference in Lisbon, Portugal, were his first acknowledgement that he had sought emails from WikiLeaks. Assange had previously told The Associated Press that WikiLeaks had rejected a "request for information" from Cambridge Analytica. The Wall Street Journal first reported Nix's comments.
Cambridge Analytica's role in the president's campaign has caught the attention of congressional committees probing Russia's interference in the 2016 election and any possible coordination with Trump associates. The company is backed by Robert Mercer, a billionaire Trump supporter. Before joining the Trump administration, former White House strategist Steve Bannon also served as a vice president at the company.
The Trump campaign paid Cambridge Analytica nearly $6 million for data management. The campaign's first payment to the company was on July 29, 2016, according to Federal Election Commission records. But the Journal reported Friday that Nix's outreach to WikiLeaks came while Cambridge Analytica was in contract negotiations with the campaign in June. At that time, the company had already sent some of its employees to help the campaign, the Journal reported.
A spokesman for Cambridge Analytica and a related company, SCL Group, did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
During the Web Summit interview, Nix denied that his company was involved in any Russian election meddling.
"We did no work with Russia in this election. And moreover, we would never work with a third-party state actor in another country's election campaign," he said.
He also called the outreach to Assange "very benign." He said it stemmed from an article in The Guardian newspaper in early June 2016 that said "WikiLeaks was going to publish a huge amount of information that could be very relevant to the election and could impact it sincerely."
Nix appeared to be referencing a June 12, 2016, article that was based on Assange's comment to a British television network that WikiLeaks had "upcoming leaks in relation to Hillary Clinton" that were in the form of emails.
On Thursday, Nix said that after he saw the article, he asked his "office to reach out to, actually it was a speaking agency that represents Julian Assange to ask if he might share that information with us and we received a message back from them that he didn't want to or wasn't able to."
"And that was the end of the matter," Nix added.
Last month, Assange confirmed that WikiLeaks was approached by Cambridge Analytica prior to November 2016 but he declined to provide specifics about the interaction, other than saying it was a "request for information."
Assange's comments came in response to a story from The Daily Beast that reported that Nix's outreach was about possibly obtaining the 33,000 emails that Clinton said were deleted from her private server. Those emails have never been released.
Gunfire erupted outside a popular Philadelphia nightclub early Sunday morning, killing one man and injuring two others, police said.
Just before 4 a.m. Sunday, a 37-year-old man was shot four times in the chest and back after a shootout turned deadly outside A Lounge Nightclub in Feltonville, police said. The victim was taken to a local hospital and pronounced dead shortly after.
Police said the victim was shot by a 27-year-old suspect, who, in turn, was shot twice by a nightclub security guard. The suspect was taken to a local hospital and is in stable condition. He is police custody.
A fourth man, 24, was shot twice in the neck. Police do not know if he was involved in the initial fight or if he was an innocent bystander.
At least three separate shootings have taken place in as many years at A Lounge, according to police. In 2011, former Mayor Michael Nutter threatened to shut down a nearby Feltonville Supper Club after nine people were shot in a single night. The club was eventually reopened, but violence continued to plague venues in the area.
One person is dead after a crash on Interstate 5 near Mission Bay Park Sunday.
California Highway Patrol said a white sedan landed in a ditch along northbound I-5 near the Clairemont Drive exit before 6 a.m. Sunday.
It was unclear what caused the vehicle to veer off the roadway.
San Diego Fire-Rescue crews blocked one lane as they tended to the crash. All lanes were reopened by 7 a.m.
No other information was available.
His party suddenly and bitingly divided, Alabama Republican Roy Moore emphatically rejected increasing pressure to abandon his Senate bid on Friday as fears grew among GOP leaders that a once-safe Senate seat was in jeopardy just a month before a special election.
Moore, an outspoken Christian conservative and former state Supreme Court judge, attacked a Washington Post report that he had sexual contact with a 14-year-old girl and pursued three other teenagers decades earlier as "completely false and misleading."
In an interview with conservative radio host Sean Hannity, he did not wholly rule out dating teenage girls when he was in his early 30s.
Asked if that would have been usual for him, Moore said, "Not generally, no." He added: "I don't remember ever dating any girl without the permission of her mother." As for the encounter with 14-year-old Leigh Corfman, as described by Corfman in Thursday's Post article, he said, "It never happened."
The story has produced a wave of concern among anxious GOP officials in Washington but little more than a collective shrug from many Republicans in Alabama, which holds a special election on Dec. 12 to fill the seat previously held by Attorney General Jeff Sessions.
"Humphrey Bogart started dating Lauren Bacall when she was a teenager," said state Auditor Jim Ziegler, referring to the then-19-year-old actress.
"I'll always vote for him," said 28-year-old Erica Richard, of Altoona, Alabama, adding that she wouldn't change her mind even if the allegations of sexual misconduct are proven true. "He's a good man. I love him and his family, and they are all good people."
Paul Reynolds, Alabama's Republican National Committeeman, called it "a firestorm designed to shipwreck a campaign in Alabama. I think it's sinister."
Despite such support, experienced Republican operatives believe the Alabama Senate seat, held by the GOP for the last 20 years, is now at risk.
They fear the controversy could exacerbate the party's broader Trump-era challenge in appealing to college-educated suburban voters the same group that fueled a big Democratic victory in the Virginia governor's race this week.
Those familiar with recent polling of the Alabama race suggest it was always going to be close despite the state's strong Republican leanings largely because of Moore's controversial past.
In the immediate aftermath of the Post report Thursday, a wave of national Republican leaders called for Moore to drop out of the race if the allegations are true. They included the White House, the head of the House Freedom Caucus Mark Meadows, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and Texas Sen. Ted Cruz.
It got worse Friday.
The Senate GOP's campaign arm formally ended its fundraising agreement with Moore.
The GOP's 2012 presidential nominee Mitt Romney condemned his colleagues' caveat only if the allegations are true.
"Innocent until proven guilty is for criminal convictions, not elections. I believe Leigh Corfman," he said of the Alabama woman who said Moore molested her when she was 14. "Her account is too serious to ignore. Moore is unfit for office and should step aside."
Facing a tough re-election, Rep. Barbara Comstock, R-Va., likened Moore to Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein, former Rep. Anthony Weiner and former Fox News executive Roger Ailes, all men accused of sexual misconduct.
"The defense from some of his supporters is beyond disgusting," Comstock wrote. "Moore should not serve in the U.S. Senate."
Sens. Mike Lee, R-Utah, and Steve Daines, R-Mont., withdrew their endorsements.
Yet there is no sign Moore is going away quietly. And the Alabama secretary of state's office reported that it's too late to remove his name from the ballot.
The Republican Party's options, including the possibility of a write-in campaign, "are all being researched," said Steven Law, who leads the pro-Republican Senate Leadership Fund.
Those who think Moore should be replaced have little hope of that happening.
"I don't think anyone expects Roy Moore to drop out of this race," Law said. "I think he enjoys being an object of intense controversy. The fact that this has happened may make him even more committed."
Moore was twice removed from his state Supreme Court position, once for disobeying a federal court order to remove a 5,200-pound granite Ten Commandments monument from the lobby of the state judicial building, and later for urging state probate judges to defy the U.S. Supreme Court decision that legalized gay marriage.
He also previously said homosexuality should be illegal, and last week he refused to back off comments that Rep. Keith Ellison, D-Minn., should not be allowed to serve in Congress because he's a Muslim.
Virtually the entire Republican establishment including President Donald Trump opposed Moore's primary bid in September.
In Friday's radio interview, Moore cast the Post story as an effort by Democrats "and maybe even establishment Republicans" to undermine his campaign. He also mentioned an effort to investigate his accusers.
"We're also doing an investigation and we have some evidence of some collusion here, but we're not ready to put that to the public just yet," he said without elaboration.
The lawyer for Gloria Deason, one of the women cited in the Post story, issued a statement Friday saying Deason has no affiliation with either the Republican or the Democratic party, and has never contacted Moore's election opponent, Democrat Doug Jones.
The lawyer, Paula Cobia, said, "It is reprehensible that so many Alabama Republican officeholders and leaders of their party have rejected wholesale the magnitude of evidence reported in The Post."
Democrats, meanwhile, were quietly stepping up their mobilization efforts in Alabama, though being careful not to publicly ignite partisan backlash by attempting to capitalize on the troubling allegations.
Jones stood to capitalize in places where Moore had shown weakness in past statewide elections. Some Republicans conceded that Moore would likely suffer in the state's reliably, mainstream-Republican suburbs.
In Shelby and Baldwin counties suburban Birmingham and Mobile Moore ran more than a dozen percentage points behind Romney in his 2012 bid for the Alabama Supreme Court.
"It's a bad situation," said Henry Barbour, a Republican National Committeeman from neighboring Mississippi. "Do people find it believable? If they do, he will lose."
Peoples reported from New York. Associated Press writers Alan Fram in Washington, Thomas Beaumont in Des Moines, Iowa, and Brynn Anderson in Altoona contributed to this report.
I often wonder what people will say about the wars of Iraq and Afghanistan decades from now. What I will tell my children when they are able to understand the answers to questions about what happened over there. I am afraid I will forget. As every day passes, I struggle more and more to remember all the names of the soldiers in my platoon, the hard-to-pronounce places we fought, the day-to-day things we did during my two year-long combat tours in Iraq.
But what worries me most is that we, as a nation, will forget.
On Veterans Day we pay tribute to all American veterans, living and dead. We show our thanks in many ways. We attend Veterans Day parades, visit veterans hospitals or ask veterans about their service. But most important, we remember.
Even for those wars with no living veterans whether the American Revolution or World War I we can remember. We can access digital archives of battlefield maps. We can examine lists online of personnel who fought in each battle. We can read written orders from commanders, or personal diaries, journals and letters sent by soldiers to their loved ones.
Unfortunately, our recent conflicts will be difficult to remember this way. That is because for the first 10-plus years of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the military lost or deleted a majority of its field records. And, although the military has since made a greater commitment to preserve records, an outdated archival system limits their usefulness.
It may seem counterintuitive that records and battle reports were saved more reliably before the digital age. But as a 2009 Army report found, The increasing use of electronic records easy to create and move but also difficult to organize and easy to erase made the situation more complicated.
In Iraq, in part because of concerns over transporting classified material, soldiers heading home were forced to turn in computer hard drives to be wiped clean and reimaged. My own computer held hundreds of reports written after returning from daily patrols. I would note every soldier that went on the patrol, summarize our every action, list every person we talked to and often include photos. I recorded details and filed away photos of the night in 2003 that an improvised explosive device wounded three of my soldiers so badly they needed to be evacuated back to the United States. I documented the night in 2008 that a grenade was thrown at my soldiers, missed and killed a nearby Iraqi child.
My unit analyzed patterns in our digital data and used it to inform our operations. At the end of my rotations, I handed off files for a few specific projects to the relief units. But everything on my computer was deleted. Hand-written logs were similarly shredded and burned when we rotated out.
Army units failure to keep field records attracted the attention of Congress after an investigation by ProPublica and the Seattle Times published in late 2012. Some of the most pressing concerns were about whether veterans could receive proper care with no records of their wartime experiences. Medical records in the military are well-kept and rarely lost. But if a soldier who served in Iraq or Afghanistan needs to be assessed for service-related injuries or requires therapy for combat-related stress, there are often no records of the incidents that may have caused their injuries. There are often no documents to help a soldier remember and unpack what happened.
The lack of records also has operational consequences. An abundance of invaluable knowledge, often earned at great cost, wasnt available for new units that rotated into conflict zones on a yearly basis. Newly arrived troops typically would receive intelligence from army organizations about the area, enemy forces and local populations, but they were for the most part deprived of firsthand accounts from the soldiers that preceeded them. So American units that were sent to Mosul in 2014 werent able to learn from the contextual lessons or ground tactical information collected by soldiers deployed to Mosul in 2004.
Military records have major public uses, too. Once declassified, primary source documents down to the soldier level help movie and documentary makers, historians, authors, teachers, students, and other interested citizens create the stories that shape our collective memories and narrative of a particular war. They are how we research the military service of relatives weve never met. My wartime memories are our wartime memories.
One of the many official solutions to the problem of lost records was a call in 2013 to all Army units to turn in any records that had not been deleted. But because servers and hard drives from 2003 to 2013 had been erased, much of that data was simply gone. The files sent in after the call, combined with what had been previously collected by Army historians, resulted in 150 terabytes of data now held by a small organization within the military responsible for cataloguing its history. That might sound like a lot of data, but individual Army units can produce 4 to 5 terabytes during a 12-month rotation. There have been hundreds of Army unit deployments in the past 15 years.
For those years when there are large gaps in the account of our military history, the Pentagon could enhance the official record with documentation from individual soldiers and embedded journalists. Many soldiers have personal journals, photos, emails and letters home they may be willing to share. And already in the public domain are reports and film footage from hundreds of war journalists Sebastian Junger, Mike Boettcher and The Washington Posts David Ignatius prominent among them who lived with military units for weeks and months at a time. Of course, reporters werent allowed to publish classified information. And letters from soldiers to their families and friends may offer a somewhat different view of the wars than did the official reports that were lost. Still, those documents could prove useful.
For the years since 2013, the military faces a different problem: a massive amount of data that is largely unusable.
Military units have stopped ordering field records to be deleted. But in many cases, when soldiers end their deployments, their files are just left on the computers handed over to their replacements, who can choose to delete them or leave them untouched, along with years of past profiles.
And even when data is collected and stored more centrally, it often lacks metatags, keywords or descriptions from file creators, making it practically impossible to search, sort or analyze.
The military should update its record-keeping. It should be unlawful to ever delete another combat record. Daily combat records should be tagged, stored in a searchable cloud database and attached to individual soldiers files as their medical records are. That way soldiers could leave the service with complete histories of their combat experiences.
This is not a military issue. It is an American issue. Records and stories of the military and individual soldiers are an important part of how we remember. We should act before the forever wars become the forgotten wars.
Officials investigating a murder-suicide involving a father and son in Foxborough, Massachusetts now say the gun was stolen.
The district attorney said 49-year-old William Scaccia Jr. used a gun stolen from his friend to shoot and kill his 6-year-old son Anthony and then later himself.
Foxborough Police said they had had a "significant history" with the father, and that history resulted in them denying the Massachusetts father a gun permit in July.
At the time of the murder on Sept. 21, Scaccia was facing pending charges stemming from a Sept. 16 domestic incident.
Scaccia's friend told police that he unexpectedly showed up at his house the afternoon before the shooting. And it wasn't until after the shooting that the friend checked his gun locker and found his firearm was missing.
Foxborough Police responded to a home on East Street around 11:30 p.m. on Sept. 21 for a medical emergency when they found Anthony upstairs in the home with a single gunshot wound. He was taken to Norwood Hospital, where he was pronounced dead.
Police also found 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.
The kindergartner lived at the home with his grandmother and mother, who a neighbor said was working overnight at the time of the shooting. 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.
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.
Scaccia was an Iraq War veteran, and family members say he struggled with PTSD after serving overseas.
SUICIDE PREVENTION HELP: The National Suicide Prevention Hotline (1-800-273-8255) is open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
Police in Methuen, Massachusetts are searching for two suspects accused of breaking into the 6-11 Variety and Deli on Lowell Street.
The break-in happened around 3:15 a.m. Friday.
The two forced their way into the business and can be seen on security footage rummaging through cash registers and making off with several items.
The suspects fled the scene.
Police are searching for a light blue Jeep Cherokee with a Massachusetts dealer license plate attached to the rear of the vehicle.
Anyone with information is asked to call Methuen Police at 978-983-8698.
Law enforcement executed a search warrant at a Lowell, Massachusetts home on Sunday, seizing 23 grams of cocaine, shotgun ammunition, and a sawed-off shotgun.
Lowell Police detectives assigned to the Special Investigations Section and a SWAT Team from the Northeastern Massachusetts Law Enforcement Council were involved with the bust at 18 Second Street.
Detectives also seized items associated with the distribution and packaging of narcotics from the home.
Charges are expected to be filed against the residents of the home.
The investigation is ongoing.
No other information was immediately available.
Rhode Island State Police say the man who stole a police cruiser last week had his hands cuffed in front of his body because he was injured, and that is what allowed him to drive the car.
Investigators said a Rhode Island state trooper left Donald Morgan in the back of a cruiser alone with the keys in the ignition.
"He somehow got out of the rear seat into the front of the crusier while he was cuffed and stole that crusier," said state police Col. Ann Assumpico.
The incident happened Thursday as Morgan was being driven to court.
The trooper pulled over on the highway to help out with a crash when Morgan made his escape.
"This trooper did follow the proper protocol, Assumpico said.
She said most of her cruisers do not have barriers between the back and front seats.
During the manhunt for Morgan, police were reportedly told he was hiding in the back of a white pickup truck.
Police tried to pull over a truck on the highway, but the driver kept going.
It turned into a highway shootout with officers firing more than 40 rounds.
The driver, Joseph Santos, was shot and killed.
Morgan was nowhere to be found.
Investigators said they arrested Morgan the next day at a home in Cumberland and he did not go without a fight.
"A Taser was used. And there was a physical altercation."
Two other people at the home were also arrested.
Assumpico said the trooper who had his car stolen is still on the job and is not facing any disciplinary action.
President Donald Trump's lengthy Asia trip wound down as it began, with a visit meant to be centered on trade and North Korea shadowed by questions about Russia.
Trump was in the Philippines, the final stop of his trip, on Monday, poised to hold formal talks with President Rodrigo Duterte, who has overseen a bloody drug war that has featured extrajudicial killings and fears of vigilante justice. But Trump remains dogged by things he has said, and has not said, about Russia.
Days before he left for the five-nation Asia trip, Trump's campaign chairman was indicted on charges he laundered millions of dollars through overseas shell companies and a campaign adviser pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI. And while White House aides have been pleased with the president's messaging through stops in Japan, South Korea and China, Trump has brought Russia to the forefront again as he makes his final stops.
He tried to have it both ways Sunday on the issue of Russian interference in last year's presidential race, saying he believes both the U.S. intelligence agencies when they say Russia meddled and Russian President Vladimir Putin's sincerity in claiming that his country did not.
"I believe that he feels that he and Russia did not meddle in the election," Trump said of Putin at a news conference in Hanoi with Vietnam's president.
"As to whether I believe it, I'm with our agencies," Trump said. "As currently led by fine people, I believe very much in our intelligence agencies."
U.S. intelligence agencies have concluded that Russia meddled in the 2016 election to help the Republican Trump defeat Democrat Hillary Clinton. A special counsel's examination of potential collusion between Moscow and Trump campaign aides so far has led to indictments against Trump's former campaign chairman and another top aide for crimes unrelated to the campaign, and a guilty plea from a Trump foreign policy adviser.
Multiple congressional committees are also investigating.
On Saturday, Trump lashed out at former heads of the U.S. intelligence agencies, claiming there are plenty of reasons to be suspicious of their findings and dismissing them as "political hacks."
John Brennan, the former CIA director, responded Sunday on CNN's "State of the Union" that Trump was dismissing the former officials himself included as "political hacks" in an attempt to "delegitimize" the intelligence community's assessment that Russia interfered in the election.
"I think Mr. Putin is very clever in terms of playing to Mr. Trump's interest in being flattered. And also I think Mr. Trump is, for whatever reason, either intimidated by Mr. Putin, afraid of what he could do or what might come out as a result of these investigations," Brennan said.
James Clapper, the former director of national intelligence, called the threat from Russia "manifest and obvious."
"To try to paint it in any other way is, I think, astounding and, in fact, poses a peril to this country," Clapper said on "State of the Union."
Questions about whether Trump believes the assessment about Russian election-meddling have trailed him since January, when he said for the first time, shortly before taking office, that he accepted that Russia was behind the election-year hacking of Democrats that roiled the White House race.
Trump told reporters traveling with him to Hanoi on Saturday that Putin had again vehemently denied the allegations. The two spoke during an economic conference in Danang, Vietnam. Trump danced around questions about whether he believed Putin but stressed Putin's denials.
"Every time he sees me, he says: 'I didn't do that.' And I believe I really believe that when he tells me that, he means it," Trump said, arguing that it makes no sense for him to belabor the issue when Russia could help the U.S. on North Korea, Syria and other issues.
In Hanoi on Sunday, Trump also pointed to sanctions the U.S. has imposed on Russia as punishment for election meddling. "They were sanctioned at a very high level, and that took place very recently," he said. "It's now time to get back to healing a world that is shattered and broken."
Trump was originally slated to depart Manila for Washington on Monday. He added a day to the schedule amid criticism that he would have missed the final summit.
Now Trump is slated to attend the Association for Southeast Asian Nations conference on Monday to urge allies to pressure North Korea to give up its nuclear weapons program. And he is expected, in meetings with other leaders, to push his agenda for bilateral, rather than multinational, trade agreements.
Ancient discoveries dug-up locally
LIGHT will be shed on two exciting Roman finds unearthed in West Berkshire and North Hampshire at two talks later this month.
Professor Mike Fulford will be speaking on Roman rural development after his University of Reading team held their summer dig at Silchester.
A Roman temple was uncovered during the dig at the east of the site, near St Mary the Virgin Church.
It was one of three temples discovered by geophysical surveys, which previously showed the outlines beneath the surface.
The temples date from the second half of the first century, circa 50-110AD.
Nero tiles imprinted with a special stamp were also discovery at a nearby kiln site, along with a large number of bricks and decorated tiles.
And, following a sensational dig at Boxfords villa site, Mud Hole, in August, Dr Steve Clark will be hosting a talk to reveal many of the findings from the mosaic dig.
In a recent article in magazine entitled , Dr Clark confirmed that the beautifully-preserved mosaic uncovered in August is one of the most exciting finds in the last 50 years.
Only a third of the total mosaic was uncovered, but already experts have identified mythical figures, such as Telamon unknown on a mosaic in Britain and other characters, including Bellerophon killing the chimera.
Roman mosaic expert Anthony Beeson gave a fascinating insight into the discovery, recalling the moment he received a photograph of the Boxford pavement, saying: My initial reaction was that it was a hoax the depictions are incredibly rare.
Professor Fulfords talk will be held on November 22, with Dr Clarks on November 29.
Both talks will be held at Boxford Village Hall, Lambourn Road, RG20 8DD at 7.30pm and to book a place at both talks, visitors should email boxfordp@gmail.com
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Honeywell Introduces New All-in-One, Self-Monitored Smart Home Security System
ATLANTA: Honeywell (NYSE: HON), a leading Connected Home solutions provider, announced today that it is introducing the Honeywell Smart Home Security System, a self-installed, all-in-one security solution that is simple to set up and allows consumers to be aware of what's happening in and around their homes.
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This self-monitored system features Amazon Alexa, and can be upgraded and customized with accessories to fit your specific needs for the comfort and security of your home.The heart of the Honeywell Smart Home Security System is a camera base station with an integrated 1080p HD camera and 145-degree viewing that will incorporate facial recognition with push notifications so you can know when your child has arrived home safely from school. The camera base station is completely integrated with the Alexa Voice Service, a high-quality speaker and microphone. Easy to install out of the box, the system can be controlled through an app, your voice, and other optional devices."More than 150 million homeowners already trust Honeywell with their safety, comfort and security," said Michael Flink, president, Honeywell Security and Fire. "Right out of the box and enabled by Amazon Alexa, our system allows customers to keep an eye on what's happening in and around their homes. As is the case with all of Honeywell's Connected Home offerings, the system can be enabled by location-based geofencing, which means it knows when you are at home or away."The Honeywell Smart Home Security System features indoor and outdoor sensors and motion viewers that can alert you if your doors or windows are opened, and can even keep an eye on your napping baby in another room. The camera base station and additional devices can be adjusted using a schedule, location-based geofencing, or customizable event and scene triggers.Audio and video self-monitoring is available directly through the app, and the Smart Home Security System also can send alerts inside the home with customizable lighting, sirens and video notifications through your app. In addition to being able to turn video recording off in the app, the camera base station includes a manual privacy shutter so you can be sure that what you want to stay private, stays private. The system will come with 24 hours of back-up cloud storage, which will be expanded to three days later this year.The Honeywell Smart Home Security System has a robust roadmap of features available in 2018, including facial recognition updates so people will be able to know when their kids come home from school or when the dog walker shows up. Also coming in 2018, audio analytics updates will enable the system to know the difference between an alert from your smoke or carbon monoxide (CO) alarm, your dog barking or other loud noises."We applaud Honeywell for their commitment to listen to the 'crowd' in crowdsourcing ideas for their latest innovation," said Jonathan Cohen, chief enterprise solutions officer, Indiegogo. "Indiegogo's Enterprise offering will allow Honeywell to capture interest and validation while receiving actionable, product insights from consumers."Honeywell's Smart Home Security System will launch through Indiegogo's Enterprise Crowdfunding service, allowing Honeywell to engage directly with backers, garner interest and provide real-time updates on how the system can continue to expand to meet people's needs.Exclusive pre-order offers for the system will be available for a discounted price to backers on Indiegogo through December 16. Following the exclusive Indiegogo pre-order campaign, the system will become more widely available early next year with bundled pricing starting at $499 MSRP. Indiegogo backers will receive a discounted price for this bundle, which will include the camera base station, window and door access sensors, and a key fob as another option to control the system.In addition to its new self-monitored security offering, Honeywell will continue to offer professionally installed and monitored security systems available through our global network of professional security dealers.
Veterans Day a day to honor veterans for their service to our nation is a good time to take stock of where we are in ensuring that they have access to quality health care and other services that support their enduring commitment. So far this year, Congress has passed and President Trump has signed into law the following important veterans-related legislation that I supported:
The Veterans Appeals Improvement and Modernization Act of 2017 overhauls the current U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs appeals process and replaces it with a new multi-track system to ensure veterans and their families receive timelier decisions on essential benefits provided by the VA. I co-sponsored this legislation, as Idaho veterans have shared detailed personal accounts of how the VA claims appeals process could better serve veterans.
The VA Choice and Quality Employment Act of 2017 provides resources to keep the Veterans Choice Program running; authorizes various veterans home leases; and makes improvements to certain hiring and personnel-management practices at the VA. Earlier this year, similar legislation was enacted that extends the sunset date for the Choice program through January 2018; makes the VA the primary payer for all care through the Choice program; and contains provisions to improve records-keeping for veterans who use the Choice program. Neither of these laws fix all the problems with the Choice program; Idaho veterans and their family members have made clear that it does not work for Idahoans. Rather, this extension helps ensure that veterans dependent on the Choice program are not left in the lurch while work continues to address the problems including cumbersome eligibility requirements and payment delays.
The Harry W. Colmery Veterans Education Assistance Act enacts a variety of improvements to eligibility for and utilization of veterans educational assistance (GI Bill) benefits. The law includes legislation known as the Shauna Hill Post-9/11 Education Benefits Transferability Act introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives by Rep. Raul Labrador, R-Idaho. I joined Sen. Jim Risch, R-Idaho, in introducing the companion legislation in the Senate. This provision, named for Idahoan Shauna Hill who was killed in an automobile accident, enables veterans to reassign educational benefits in the event the original recipient dies.
This is not a comprehensive list, but rather highlights of what Congress has been able to accomplish for veterans so far this year. I also continue to work with veterans and the VA directly to address individual issues through casework which has resulted in the return of $2.1 million in claims and medical benefits to Idaho veterans from the VA so far this year. If you find yourself in need of assistance with a specific agency, please contact staff in one of my regional offices to discuss your situation. Contact information, the required privacy release form and frequently asked questions can be accessed through my official website at www.crapo.senate.gov.
Despite progress, we definitely have more to do to ensure that federal policy is increasingly responsive to Idaho veterans and their needs. I introduced SB1279 the Veterans Health Administration Reform Act of 2017 to address concerns raised by Idaho veterans with the Veterans Choice Program. These efforts will improve this program and make it easier for Idaho veterans to access care. I look forward to working to enact this and other pending legislation to improve veterans programs.
The input of Idaho veterans and learning from their experiences have guided my support for veterans-related legislation and policy changes. Please keep sharing your insights as work continues to ensure our nation effectively supports the service of our nations veterans every Veterans Day.
Coast Guard, communities and governments come together to improve Arctic oil spill response
IQALUIT: WWF-Canada and northern coastal community members will host representatives from the Canadian Coast Guard, Transport Canada, and members of B.C. First Nations and Alaskan Tribes this week to discuss how to improve oil spill response capacity in the North.
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Following the release of several WWF-Canada reports in March 2017 detailing the state of oil spill response equipment, response plans and regional capacity, the workshop was organized to find solutions before a major incident occurs.Participants will have the opportunity to discuss priorities, roles and responsibilities for oil spill preparedness in the North. Discussion topics include:aConcerns about oil spill hazards and consequences in the northern environment.aBest practices for building community-based capacity for shipping emergencies.aConnecting shipping safety and oil-spill preparedness initiatives across all levels of government, industry and community stakeholders.Talks will also focus on emerging research on the health and environmental impact of Arctic shipping air emissions and a possible phase-out of the use of heavy fuel oil (HFO) in the Arctic. The Government of Canada and the International Maritime Organization have begun a process which could include phasing out HFO, which is likely to take place gradually over a number of years to give industry time to adapt.How phasing out HFO will create a safer ArcticaOf all marine fuel options, HFO is the most polluting and will cause the most damage in the event of a spill.aHFO emulsifies on the water surface, whereas lighter fuels like liquid natural gas and diesel evaporate more easily. HFO's sticky properties become problematic for seabirds and animals with fur, such as polar bears, often leading to hypothermia and death.aThough safer fuels, such as diesel, are more expensive, a WWF-Canada study has found that the increased cost to northerners for sealifts would be about one per cent annually.Paul Crowley, VP Arctic for WWF-Canada, says:We're already seeing a significant increase in ship traffic through Canada's Arctic. There's no time to waste to ensure our coastal communities are ready and able to respond when an oil spill threatens the fragile marine ecosystem and the wildlife and people who depend on it. By bringing all the necessary players to the same table, together we can learn from the experiences of Indigenous groups elsewhere in Canada and Alaska to improve oil spill response in Canada's Arctic.
BFGoodrich Tires Announces Outstanding Trails Winners
LAS VEGAS: BFGoodrich Tires, in collaboration with 4 Wheel Parts, United Four Wheel Drive Associations, Jeep Jamboree USA, Blue Ribbon Coalition and Off Road Business Association, today announced the winners of the 2017 Outstanding Trails program.
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Each year, off-roading clubs from across America nominate trails to receive grants for education and preservation. This year's winning programs are:aChinaman Gulch, Buena Vista, Colo. a nominated by Ute Pass Iron GoatsaElephant Hill, Moab, Utah a nominated by Red Rock Four WheelersaGrizzly Lake, St. Elmo, Colo. a nominated by Colorado Off-Road Enterprise (CORE)aPurinton Creek Trail, Alaska a Nominated by Alaska Extreme Four Wheelers (AKX)The four winning trails were chosen out of more than a dozen nominated from eight states, including Alaska, California, Colorado, Michigan, Montana, New Mexico, South Dakota and Utah.The competition invites off-road clubs from around North America to nominate local trails that merit grants for maintenance or refurbishing. A panel of four-wheel industry experts helped select the four winning trails based on their uniqueness, terrain type and enthusiast following.Each winning organization this year will be awarded a $5,000 grant for its nominated trail. The grants may be used for maintenance, repair, preservation efforts, signage and education.Now in its 12th year, Outstanding Trails has awarded $160,000 to 44 off-road trails nominated by more than 40 enthusiast clubs across America.During the next year, BFGoodrich will participate in club events associated with these trails to highlight responsible trail use. Each of the four trails offer unique technical challenges and unforgettable scenery to off-road drivers.Chinaman Gulch, Buena Vista, Colo.: Nominated by the Ute Pass Iron Goats off-road club, this trail is popular for its close proximity to several 14,000-foot peaks in the area. The trail is open year-round, a rarity in Colorado. The club will use the grant to provide toilet facilities at the trailhead, improve signage and perform general improvements to the trail.Elephant Hill, Moab, Utah: Nominated by the Red Rock Four Wheelers, this trail presents many different terrain types, and gives off-roaders an unusual challenge a one part of the trail requires drivers to reverse direction, climbing a hill in reverse to get to the other side. The grant will be used to maintain and improve signage marking the trail.Grizzly Lake, St. Elmo, Colo.: Nominated by Colorado Off-Road Enterprise (CORE), this high altitude trail follows an old mining road up Grizzly Gulch and ends at Grizzly Lake, where off-roaders can camp and fish. The club will use the grant to repair an area of the trail that has become dug out, and to add signage to the trailhead.Purinton Creek Trail, Alaska: Nominated by Alaska Extreme Four Wheelers (AKX), this trail takes off-roaders over glacier moraine, foothills and river valleys. The trail offers more than 30 miles of hard packed dirt and rocks, hill climbs and mud. The club will use this grant to remove willow that has encroached on the trail in some sections, causing damage to vehicles.
Disney Supports Feeding America To Increase Access To Nutritious Foods
CHICAGO: The Walt Disney Company today announced a contribution of USD 1 million to Feeding America to help food banks expand their local fresh produce sourcing and distribution programs that serve kids and families who need it most.
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The funds will be distributed to 60 food banks throughout the country. The announcement was made on ABC's "The Chew" today and kicked off Disney's "Share the Joy" campaign, inspiring families around the world to help others and make a positive impact in their community during the holidays.This year, as part of Disney's "Share the Joy" campaign, Feeding America and Disney will expand access to healthy living options in neighborhoods where kids and families live, work and play. Increasing access to nutritious foods is part of Disney's long-standing commitment to create healthier generations. Disney|ABC Television Group will also inspire audiences to donate nutritious foods through Feeding America with a series of Public Service Announcements (PSAs) that will run on ABC, Freeform, Disney Channel and Disney XD through December. Additionally, ABC-owned television stations in local markets will host volunteer events with local food banks.During "The Chew" segment, Kids Cafe, a child nutrition program of the Houston Food Bank, was featured along with some volunteers. Carla Hall and Chew Super Fan Rhonda Russell (Houston, TX) help to give back to the community in the aftermath of Hurricane Harvey with a visit to the food bank. The Houston Food Bank was one of several Feeding America food banks directly impacted by hurricanes that made landfall earlier this year. To support Feeding America and the food banks' disaster relief efforts, Disney made an additional donation of $500,000 earlier this year.Feeding America is the largest hunger-relief and food rescue organization in the United States, with a network of 200 member food banks and 60,000 food pantries and meal programs. Feeding America's goal is not only to provide meals for people in need, but also to provide nutritious foods that are the building blocks to a healthy life. Thanks to funding from Disney, food banks nationwide have been able to create strategic produce plans to grow local produce channels that help meet the needs in their service area. Funds have also supported investments in assets and infrastructure to help reduce barriers to sourcing and distributing fresh produce to the people they serve."As we work to increase the amount of fresh fruits and vegetables distributed through the network, it has been reassuring to have Disney supporting us every step of the way," said Diana Aviv, CEO of Feeding America. "We know that produce is one of the most requested items at our food banks. The Walt Disney Company enables us to implement strategies to grow that food source and ultimately improve the health and well-being of the people we serve."
San Antonio Designated 'Creative City of Gastronomy' by UNESCO
SAN ANTONIO: On Tuesday, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) designated San Antonio a Creative City of Gastronomy, making the city part of the UNESCO Creative Cities Network (UCCN). San Antonio is only the second city in the U.S. to earn this distinction, and the first in Texas.
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San Antonio's culinary heritage is significant for its confluence of many world cultures such as Mexican, Spanish, German and French, as well its geology and geography.Drawn to San Antonio's river running between the coastal plains and hill country, for 13,000 years indigenous people foraged roots, harvested pecans and hunted game. Trails and river ways brought trade with other groups who introduced gulf coast game. In the 1700s, Spanish colonists and Canary Islanders introduced new traditions and tastes. Other new flavors, spices and ingredients from Europe, Asia and Africa came with German and other European settlers in the 1800s.Today the city's culinary scene has since blossomed in its richness, with chefs honoring and celebrating its culinary heritage through preservation and innovation. Beyond the famous River Walk and historic walls of The Alamo, San Antonio's culinary scene has historically been firmed planted in blends of Tex-Mex, but has now progressed to "Tex-Next."As a gateway to Latin America, San Antonio is uniquely positioned to showcase and celebrate the richness of this cuisine. The third campus of the prestigious Culinary Institute of America (CIA) is located in San Antonio. Dedicated to the foundations of culinary instruction as well as specializations in Latin cuisine, this campus takes advantage of San Antonio's cultural influences and access to indigenous ingredients. The CIA campus is located at Pearl, a 22-acre indie food haven in a repurposed German brewery built in 1883. With 18 concepts, including a robust weekend farmers market and the city's first food hall, Pearl is a destination onto itself.UNESCO's Creative Cities Network promotes international cooperation and encourages the sharing of experiences and resources to promote local development through culture and creativity. The local food movement and enthusiasm for sustainable programs spurred the dramatic evolution of San Antonio's culinary landscape and inspired a comprehensive effort to apply for the UNESCO designation in June 2017.San Antonio's officials on the designation:"This designation is a great honor for San Antonio," San Antonio Mayor Ron Nirenberg said. "As a Creative City of Gastronomy, we will seek to strengthen and expand international connections, share our culinary arts and heritage globally and introduce San Antonio as an international culinary destination. We look forward to actively participating in the Network, which is aligned with our dedication to sustainable and equitable urban planning.""Travelers are increasingly seeking a destination with a robust culinary scene as a way to really get to know the heart of a city," said Casandra Matej, President & CEO of Visit San Antonio. "The UNESCO Creative City of Gastronomy designation confirms what millions of visitors have known all alongaSan Antonio's cuisine is truly unique and authentic to our region.""One of San Antonio's most important identities comes from its deep culinary traditions which began with the innovative agricultural techniques of the Native American peoples who lived here for thousands of years," said Richard Perez, San Antonio Chamber of Commerce President and CEO. "These have evolved and mixed with many others to create a unique and burgeoning food scene. The San Antonio Chamber is honored to have been part of the UNESCO Creative City application process, and we are eager to learn from and share information with other Creative Cities on a global level to enhance the culinary arts.""This is an exciting time for the culinary arts in San Antonioathe designation reinforces the creativity and hard work of every individual who participates in and supports the local culinary community and the philanthropy of so many groups, like the Chef Cooperatives and our chapter of Les Dames D'Escoffier," Chef Johnny Hernandez of Grupo La Gloria said. "From showcasing our culinary heritage to sharing local innovations and leading the way with San Antonio's brand of culinary diplomacy, the opportunities afforded us as a City of Gastronomy are all reasons for San Antonio to celebrate today.""The international bonds San Antonio solidified as a World Heritage Site are invaluable to us as a community and growing city," District 3 City Councilwoman Rebecca Viagran said. "Becoming a UNESCO Creative City of Gastronomy will serve as another catalyst that encourages equity and more opportunity to protect and promote our local cultural assets at home and on the global stage." Viagran's district is home to four of the five San Antonio Missions that comprise a UNESCO World Heritage Site.The UCCN covers seven thematic areas: Craft and Folk Arts, Design, Film, Gastronomy, Literature, Media Arts and Music. UNESCO announced this week that 64 cities have joined the Creative Cities Network. The UCCN is now comprised of a total of 180 cities from 72 countries.
'Safety, comfort, well-being is Qatar Airways priority'
Thiruvananthapuram (Kerala) , Nov 11 : The Qatar Airways Authorities on Saturday stated that safety, comfort and well-being of our passengers is their utmost priority.
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The Airways statement had come after one of their pilots got sick midair while flying from travelling Thiruvananthapuram to Doha.A Qatar Airways spokesperson said, "We can confirm that flight QR507 TRV-DOH was diverted to Goa International Airport early this morning. One hour and forty minutes after departure from Trivandrum International Airport as our pilot fell ill.""As per Qatar Airways procedure in these instances, the aircraft was diverted to the nearest airport, Goa International Airport, where our well trained first officer landed the aircraft safely shortly before 07:00 am local time. The safety, comfort and well-being of our passengers is our utmost priority, and we have sent a relief aircraft to Goa to accommodate all passengers on a new flight to Doha, which is due to land in Doha at 05:30 pm local time," an official statement by the Airways said.Earlier in the day, 124 passengers, three infants and nine crew members onboard, was scheduled to Doha when the incident happened.The commander of the Qatar Airways, flight number QR 507, had taken off from Thiruvananthapuram to Doha, when the commander of the flight reported to Goa Air traffic control (ATC) that he is incapacitated.Goa Dabolim Airport had on priority arranged for Qatar Airways landing.The Goa Airport manager confirmed and told ANI, "QR507 safely landed at Goa airport at around 6.40 am due to flight commander."Reportedly, the flight commander, who fell unconscious, was taken to local hospital for check up.
In a world of secret offshore bank accounts, anonymous campaign donors and fake Facebook pages, transparency seems to be losing traction.
And then there is the no-holds-barred White House messaging campaign of disrespect, name-calling and reckless hyperbole (to be charitable). Civility apparently no longer figures into the art of the deal.
So it is refreshing to see three Arizona political figures come to the defense of these values in the name of democracy even though they are in different political parties.
Democrat Terry Goddard, a former two-term attorney general, is launching a campaign against so-called dark money by calling for any amount over $10,000 spent in connection with a campaign to have its root source fully disclosed. Even the late Justice Antonin Scalia, no flaming liberal when it came to voting rights, coupled his support for the Citizens United case that allowed virtually unlimited corporate campaign spending with the understanding that voters are guaranteed a right to know who is behind the spending.
Republican Jeff Flake, on the other hand, sees democracy corrupted not just by big money secretly pushing self-interest over the common good but the values espoused at the top. Without naming President Trump, Sen. Flake, in his retirement speech, made it clear that the Republican Party, if not the entire country, will lose credibility with voters and the world through leadership that is reckless, outrageous and undignified.
DEGRADED DISCOURSE
Flake wasnt honing in so much on White House policies on health care or tax reform as on the way the president and his underlings have degraded discourse that should recognize a pluralism of values and the right to be heard. He said that when we give in to our anger and resentment however justified by scapegoating and belittling others, we have given up a claim to a key article of democracy: the dignity and equality of those with whom we disagree.
Leave it to another Arizona Republican, Sen. John McCain, to tie Flakes complaints on White House conduct and character to the inward-looking ethno-nationalism being advanced by the Trump wing of the Republican Party. A party that exploits ethnic and class conflict for short-term political advantage quoting McCain, a spurious nationalism has forgotten democracys promise of openness to the world and a confidence in the future that serves the common good.
The two senators have shown common ground in putting their pluralistic values to work by their past membership in the so-called Gang of Eight. This was the bipartisan group of senators that fashioned a comprehensive immigration reform bill that actually passed the Senate in 2013 by a vote of 68-32, only to be killed in the House. It said those in the country illegally must pay fines and leave the country before re-entering, but ultimately they could be put on a path to U.S. citizenship.
Four years and several million deportations later under the Obama administration, the populist right here and in Europe has seized on the refugee crisis and ISIS terrorism as a reason to move against Muslim migration and immigrants generally. There may indeed be economic limits to how many newcomers a nation can support, but those arent the points being debated by the ethno-nationalists.
CITIZENS UNITED WORKAROUND
McCain and Goddard also find common ground through McCains past sponsorship of the McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform act of 2002, which limited national party spending (so-called soft money) and barred groups from running "issue ads" within 60 days of a general election if they refer to a federal candidate and aren't funded through a PAC subject to spending limits. It was the latter provision that was struck down under Citizens United, with the Supreme Court ruling 5-4 that such ads are legal and can be funded without limit by anyone, including unions and corporations.
Goddard has decided not to take on Citizens United directly in his constitutional amendment campaign the state has no say over federal campaigns, anyway. Instead, the language of the initiative would force disclosure of all major sources of funding in state and local races, not only in reports filed with the Secretary of State's Office but also in advertising, mailers and other campaign materials.
Some might question whether such transparency would do any good they say its the amount of money buying campaign ads that help turn voters for or against a candidate or issue. But forcing a company to take ownership of a spurious campaign message might moderate the message away from anonymous hyperbole and name-calling. In other words, the company would have to balance the worth of its reputation for, say, honesty and civility against any gain it sees in a victory by its candidate or issue. And this isnt proprietary information being disseminated; its part of a public process - informed voting -- at the heart of democracy.
LIVING LABORATORY
Such a system, if enacted at the state level, would provide a living laboratory for comparison with campaigns for Congress and the presidency. But for now, Goddards group must get enough signatures to make the 2018 ballot and surmount the usual ballot-access legal challenges, including from the Koch Brothers and their PAC, Americans for Prosperity. We urge voters to sign the Goddard ballot petitions and let the debate begin next year in earnest. With Flake and McCain sure to also be speaking out on other threats to democracy, it should be a lively Arizona campaign season indeed.
Having spent more than half of my adult life in red states (North Carolina, Georgia and Kentucky), I have seen true fiscal responsibility. Their schools don't have to depend on bonds to operate. This form of hidden taxation would have resulted in voters throwing their elected out of office faster than a speeding bullet. Those states understand the need to honestly have taxes to fully support education and infrastructure which is beyond our elected morons' ability. Our education budget needs to be tripled at a minimum, and infrastructure requires at least a five-fold increase. Idaho is battling for last place in per-student funding, and Idaho spends less than $0.15 per person on infrastructure with the national average of $0.45. (2015 figures) On Idaho's income tax form there are a number of check boxes you can select to donate your refund. These are all organizations which the the state should be funding, but, again our elected morons would prefer to run around proclaiming "We are conservative."
Pollution likely to impact tourism in Delhi-NCR
New Delhi Nov 11 : Delhi's ongoing tourism season which is yet to pick up completely, could be severely hit owing to the deadly smog in the capital city, according to an ASSOCHAM report.
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The toxic smog in National Capital Region encompassing not only Noida, Gurgaon and Faridabad but also right up to Ludhiana, Meerut, Panipat, Bhiwadi and Rohtak is likely to affect the economy in sectors like tourism, transport, automobile and real estate.November and December are the peak months for foreign travellers to visit India, as majority of them opt for the Golden Triangle tourist circuit - Delhi, Agra, and Jaipur.ASSOCHAM interacted with 350 tour operators who revealed that international tourists are quite particular about their health and safety and with such negative developments Delhi is bound to drop off from the map of international tourists who will pick 'cleaner' South Asian destinations.The rising pollution levels will keep foreigners away, as they are too particular about weather and climate, including their safety. Currently no major cancellation has been recorded as money is paid in advance. But during the peak tourist season, foreigners who are still in the planning stage will become sceptical about visiting Delhi, according to the ASSOCHAM papaer.Even domestic tourists are avoiding Delhi.The air pollution in Delhi-NCR is not just devastating the environment but harmful amount of gases, dust, fumes and odour are causing breathing problems to people.Along with the tourism, the transportation linked to the tourism, would also take a hit if investment and tourists traffic gets a setback.The transportation is one of the key contributors to the national economy in the services sector. Both transportation and tourism are highly employment-oriented and jobs may be a casualty of the pollution, the ASSOCHAM paper concluded.
Dipa Karmakar honoured with D.Litt. by NIT Agartala
Agartala (Tripura) , November 12 : India's star gymnast Dipa Karmakar has been conferred a D.Litt. degree from the National Institute of Technology (NIT) Agartala.
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Expressing happiness on being honoured with the degree, Karmakar said she wanted to achieve such a degree once and that it would further add to her responsibility towards the people of the country.The 24-year-old Tripura girl is the first Indian woman gymnast to have qualified for the Olympics. She finished fourth in the final round of the women's vault event at the Rio Olympics Games in Brazil last year.The director of NIT, Agartala, Professor Ajoy Kumar Ray, handed over the degree to Karmakar, during the 10th convocation programme at the Rabindra Satabarshiki Bhavan here."In a recognition of her brilliant success and contribution in the field, the government of India had conferred upon her Padma Shri in 2017 and our institute NIT Agartala also felt it was very appropriate and truly inspiring to hundreds of very good athletes, sportsman and gymnast all over the state to know that this institute which stands for excellence to award Honoris Causa D.Litt. degree to Dipa Karmakar," Prof. Ray said.Dipa is now preparing for the 18th Asian Games in Indonesia's Jakarta and 21st Commonwealth Games to be held in Australia's Gold Coast.Besides Dipa, the NIT also conferred D.Sc. degree upon IIT Guwahati Director Goutam Biswas and Jadavpur University professor Biswajit Ghosh at its tenth convocation held on Saturday.Degrees were given to 950 students and 31 PhD scholars. 20 students, including 11 girls, were given gold medals in various academic branches of the institute.
PM Modi behind amendments in GST rates: Rajnath Singh
Lucknow (Uttar Pradesh) , November 12 : Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh on Sunday said Prime Minister Narendra Modi was the reason behind the amendments in the Goods and Services Tax (GST) rates made in the recent council meeting.
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The Union Home Minister said the Prime Minister got to know about the issues with the GST and he categorically stated that necessary amendments must be made."When the Prime Minister got to know about the issues with the GST, he categorically stated that necessary amendments must be made. It was after this that the GST council meet was held and with consensus, they made certain changes due to which the traders are now happy," Singh told the media.Singh also claimed that the business and traders were very happy with the GST."Businessmen and traders are very happy with the GST. It was implemented on the basis of 'one nation, one tax'. Our democratic government works for the public," he further said.Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley had recently announced moving 178 items from the 28 per cent to the 18 per cent tax bracket under the GST, applicable from November 15.The changes in the tax system were decided at the 23rd GST Council meeting headed by the finance minister, at Guwahati on Friday.
2017 GCHERA World Agriculture Prize Awarding Ceremony Held in Nanjing Agricultural University -- Award Granted to Botanist Dirk Inze
NANJING, China: On October 28, 2017, the Fifth GCHERA World Agriculture Prize Awarding Ceremony took place in Nanjing Agricultural University (NAU). As the world-only international award in the higher education of agriculture, Dirk Inze, professor and director of Ghent University Botanical System Biology Center, is the Laureate of World Agriculture Prize of 2017 for his outstanding contribution in the research of plant vegetative organs and biomass and productivity.
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Prof. Dirk has long been devoting himself to solving the puzzles regarding the molecular mechanism of plant vegetative organs, biomass and seed setting rate. He is also the first scholar studying the periodic regulation of plant cell. He led his team to find the core elements for periodic regulation of plant cell and proved that these elements are useful to improve plant growth and crop yield.Prof. Dirk has committed to promoting the application and transformation of the results, boosting the development of related industries as well. The "Ghent Agricultural Biotechnology Park", which was established with the efforts of Prof. Dirk, is currently the world's second largest plant biotechnology cluster that has joined fundamental plant research forces from Gent University and the College of Life Science. Besides, Bayer, BASF, Syngenta and other large enterprises are involved in the crop improvement.World Agriculture Prize was formally proposed by both Prof. Zhai Huqu, former President of the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences (CAAS) and Prof. Zhou Guanghong, President of NAU on October 20, 2012 on the occasion of NAU's 110th anniversary. Jointly held by Global Confederation of Higher Education Associations for Agricultural and Life Sciences (GCHERA) and NAU, the prize aims to promote the global development of the mission of its member institutions in education, research and innovation in agricultural and life sciences by recognizing the distinguished contribution of an individual to this mission. Da Bei Nong Group established the "Open Fund of World Agriculture Prize" and sponsored the donation."NAU will join hands with GCHERA to develop the World Agriculture Prize to be a typical award for global agricultural science and technology, and to encourage global scientists to better participate in the development, innovation and promotion of agricultural science," said Zhou Guanghong.Over the past few years, the prize has been successively awarded to outstanding scientists who have made prominent contribution in crop improvement, soil remediation, food engineering, veterinary medicine, etc., and has attracted great concern and support from the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) and other international organizations.
Dubai Ruler Launches IT Education Initiative to Create One Million Arab Coders
DUBAI, UAE: Supported by the Hussain Sajwani-DAMAC Foundation, Initiative aims to create a pool of software coders to lead the Arab world into the digital era
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The Hussain Sajwani - DAMAC Foundation, a joint venture between DAMAC Properties and its Chairman, Mr Hussain Sajwani, has signed a partnership memorandum to support and sponsor the One Million Arab Coders initiative. The initiative, launched by UAE Vice President, Prime Minister and Ruler of Dubai, His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, aims to provide free coding training for one million Arabs.(Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160714/389603LOGO )(Photo: http://mma.prnewswire.com/media/594854/Damac_Properties_Partnership_Agreement.jpg )Sheikh Mohammed said, "We thank the Hussain Sajwani - DAMAC Foundation for supporting the One Million Arab Coders initiative, which seeks to empower Arabs with the language of the modern era - an essential step towards building a brighter future. Our private sector institutions are key partners in development and play an active role in building tomorrow's societies."'One Million Arab Coders' is a first of its kind pan-Arab education initiative that is created in collaboration with the Hussain Sajwani - DAMAC Foundation, a joint philanthropic initiative between the DAMAC Group and its Chairman to support His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum's vision for the creation of an empowered, happier society through learning and skills development.The partnership agreement was signed during a ceremony held at the Dubai Future Foundation offices at Emirates Towers, by His Excellency Mohammed bin Abdullah Al Gergawi, Minister of Cabinet Affairs and Future, Vice Chairman and Managing Director of Dubai Future Foundation, and Hussain Sajwani, Chairman of DAMAC Properties.Commenting on the initiative, His Excellency Al Gergawi said, "This initiative aims to provide the fundamental capabilities and skill sets that the participants will need tomorrow, without cost, to help the Arab world in creating solutions needed to drive sustainable development, while building a knowledge-based economy that is underpinned by technology.""The Hussain Sajwani - DAMAC Foundation is committed to see His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum's vision for a better future through empowered, happier societies across the Arab world," said Sajwani. "I am delighted to have One Million Arab Coders as our first initiative and to be partnered with the Dubai Future Foundation."The One Million Arab Coders initiative is part of the Mohammed bin Rashid Global Initiatives (MBRGI), the charitable foundation dedicated to spreading education and knowledge to contribute to a renaissance in the Arab world, and to advance the region by investing in youth, whose energies and abilities will build the future.The initiative, which is managed by the Dubai Future Foundation, consists of three phases to be completed over two years. The first phase includes enrolment by Arab students and tutors from across the world at http://www.arabcoders.ae . Here, participants can begin free training, and receive a certificate at the end of each course.In the second phase, the top 1,000 students will be selected through the Coders Challenge, and they will be able to enrol in, and receive, more advanced courses, scholarships and vocational courses for professionals.In the third stage, the top ten coders will be selected. The first-place winner will receive an award of $1 million, while the remaining nine will each receive $50,000. The top four tutors will receive $200,000 in total, with each receiving $50,000.The initiative will empower Arabs so they can get jobs - current statistics reveal that, globally, approximately 80 million jobs will be available in 2020 in software, smart phone applications, and web development.
Microsoft announces one of the largest wind deals in the Netherlands with Vattenfall
AMSTERDAM: On Thursday, Microsoft Corp. announced its second European wind project in the Netherlands with Vattenfall, one of Europe's largest electricity and heat retail and producers.
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Microsoft will purchase 100 percent of the wind energy generated from a repowered and expanded wind farm that is adjacent to its local datacenter operations in the Netherlands. The 180-megawatt wind farm will be constructed and operated by Nuon, part of Vattenfall in the Wieringermeer Polder, near Amsterdam.Vattenfall will begin construction of the expansion in 2018, and expects it to be operational effective 2019. Once completed, the Wieringermeer wind farm will be one of the largest onshore wind farms in the Netherlands, almost three times bigger than the Princess Alexia wind farm inaugurated in 2013."We are very glad and proud to be able to support Microsoft's transition toward using fossil-free energy in its datacenter operations," said Magnus Hall, president and CEO of Vattenfall. "This deal is completely in line with our strategy to help all our customers power their lives in ever smarter ways and free from fossil fuel within one generation."This wind farm will be located adjacent to Microsoft's Netherlands datacenter operations that serves as a regional hub to deliver Microsoft Cloud services to customers across Europe, the Middle East, and Africa, as well as global customers. With the latest expansion completed in 2015, the datacenter is a technologically advanced facility built to reduce water, power and energy use.The proximity of the wind farm to Microsoft's datacenters in the Netherlands made it particularly attractive, as this will allow the energy generated from these turbines to directly power the datacenter with local, clean wind energy. Matching production and consumption of renewable energy so closely unlocks great transmission efficiencies."Investing in local clean energy to power our local datacenter is a win-win for our business and the Netherlands," said Brian Janous, general manager of energy at Microsoft. "Microsoft is committed to bringing new renewable energy sources online to power our datacenters. By focusing on local projects, we're able to create new economic opportunities, reduce carbon emissions and make progress on our global commitment to increase the amount of clean energy used to power the Microsoft Cloud."This project builds on the existing partnership between Vattenfall and Microsoft. Vattenfall relies on Microsoft Azure and other cloud-based tools to digitally transform its business operations, including renewable energy operations. Vattenfall is implementing advanced analytics powered by Azure with many new use cases, including new analytics for Vattenfall Wind."There's a virtuous circle in greening the cloud enabled by this kind of deal," Janous said. "Our powerful cloud tools help companies operate more effectively and efficiently. In the case of Vattenfall and other energy companies, this strengthens their business and creates new opportunities a and that means new opportunities for Microsoft to partner with them to buy new, clean energy to power our cloud, which then powers our customers' cloud services."Nuon plans to expand the project to eventually include 100 windmills. That will allow the production of approximately 1.3 billion kWh of renewable electricity. Nuon has partnered with key local actors, ECN and the Windcollectief Wieringermeer, to lease lands and operate these turbines. This additional generation capacity will not become available until 2020.Nuon CEO Peter Smink commented, "We power climate-smarter living and help datacenters use locally produced renewable energy. This is not only an important investment in Dutch renewable energy, but also a new step in the greening of IT in the Netherlands."The agreement will help support the continued long-term growth of the Microsoft Cloud services delivered from the Netherlands, which is one of 42 Azure regions announced across the globe, and is also one of the first regions to offer the preview of Azure Availability Zones. It also builds on recent local investments in sustainability and energy in the country. Earlier this year, Microsoft sponsored smart-energy startups at the Dutch accelerator Rockstart by providing collaboration and access to business development, data analytics and the Internet of Things."This is Microsoft's second wind energy project in Europe, closely following a new Irish wind farm announced about a month ago," said Christian Belady, general manager, Microsoft Cloud Infrastructure and Operations, Microsoft. "Once completed, this wind project will bring Microsoft's total global direct procurement in renewable energy projects to almost 800 megawatts.
High Hampton Announces Appointment of Additional Strategic Advisors
TORONTO: High Hampton Holdings Corp. (CSE: HC) (FSE: 0HCN) (High Hampton or the Company) is pleased to announce that it has engaged Steve Selleck and Dove Byrne as strategic advisors to the Company.
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Mr. Selleck has garnered over 25 years of hands-on experience in the construction and disaster recovery industry. He is the Co-Founder and Managing Director of Strategic Response Partners which has successfully grown into one of the United States' preeminent and largest disaster management firms. Prior to founding Strategic Response Partners, he completed courses in Architecture Design and Structural Engineering and founded his first contracting firm which employed a team of over 60 people. Mr. Selleck's companies have restored over 4,000 properties domestically and internationally.Mr. Byrne is a professor at the School of Business at Humboldt State University, in the heart of the Emerald Triangle in Northern California, where he teaches accounting, management, and finance. His work as a business consultant includes cash flow analysis, financial modeling, business planning, accounting, budgeting and online services. As a member of the Humboldt Interdisciplinary Institute for Marijuana Research (HiiMR), Mr. Byrne designs, conducts, analyzes, and disseminates research, as well as provides applied expertise to policy makers, researchers, health professionals, businesses, and the media. With cannabis industry ties to Mendocino, Humboldt, and Trinity counties, Mr. Byrne is well established in the Emerald Triangle as a consultant and subject-matter expert.Brendan Purdy, CEO, commented:"We continue to build out our advisory team with individuals that we feel bring a specific and essential skillset to the Company's operations. We are excited to add Steve Selleck's extensive project management and construction expertise to board level discussions. Steve will additionally be relied upon to vet contractors, to work directly with our engineering team to minimize capital expenditures, and to reduce the timeframe to completion of the cultivation facility. Dove Byrne is a cannabis expert and is very active with research and policy management. Being a lecturer at Humboldt State and an active member of HiiMR, Dove will provide industry specific insight into future development plans, brand creation, and State-wide licensing opportunities."
Brits Are Train-ing Themselves for Staycations as Brexit Looms
BIRMINGHAM, England: With the nation deciding not to give Brexit the boot, it appears Brits are now realising the potential for a change of scenery when it comes to their well-deserved holidays.
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According to new research out today from CrossCountry trains, nearly a third of the nation (27%) is already suggesting that Brexit will impact their future travel plans, with 50% of Brits believing that cutting ties with Europe will see additional costs passed down from travel operators to holidaymakers.With 67% also concerned about the impact on exchange rates, nearly half of the nation (46%) are worrying about the impact on visas, and more than a third (39%) of those surveyed believe Brits will be less welcome by pro-EU residents of the countries they visit.However, CrossCountry, which celebrates its 10th birthday this November, found that almost a third of the country (31%) actually prefer a staycation than a holiday abroad - must be the weather!Other than the nation's capital, Manchester (31%), Edinburgh (31%) and Birmingham (27%) are the most visited UK destinations, with Edinburgh (21%) also the favourite place for a frolic by train.An overwhelming 80% of respondents stated they'd prefer to ditch the car and take a train to their next staycation, with three in five Brits saying they are a fast and convenient method of travel around the UK.Catherine Terry, Head of Marketing at CrossCountry, said: "Following the decision on Brexit, the nation's attention has turned back towards Britain and staycations are on the up. With an incredible mixture of inspiring culture, beautiful landscapes and stimulating people, Britain has more to offer than most of us care to realise. At CrossCountry, we're proud to be celebrating 10 years of connecting Brits to all corners of the nation, and everywhere in between."
The Macau Auto Show Will Assist China's Self-owned Brands in Gaining Global Recognition
MACAU: The 2017 China (Macau) International Automobile Exposition (2017 Macau Auto Show) will be held on November 3rd - 5th at The Cotai Expo of The Venetian Macau. For seven consecutive years, The Macau Auto Show has remained focused on precise market positioning under the theme of Brands, Bridge, Opportunities.
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Today, it has become a large-scale integrated platform for displaying and trading the world's luxury cars and famous vehicles. It also has the largest international exposition in Hong Kong and Macau regions which attracts the most Chinese self-owned auto brands.Adjoining Southeast Asia and enjoying close ties with Portuguese-speaking countries and the international market, The Macau Auto Show actively responds to the Belt and Road Initiatives and provides a high-quality platform for economic and trade exchanges and services which showcases the development achievements of China's auto industry, facilitating China's auto industry to go global and enhance the international influence of China's self-owned brands.At the Exhibition Hall for China-Made Autos of 2017 Macau Auto Show, famous Chinese self-owned brand enterprises such as FAW Group, Dongfeng Group, ChangAn Group, GAG Group, SAIC, SINOTRUCK, JAC, Yutong Bus, Xiamen King Long, CRRC and Guangtong Auto will join together to showcase the strength and the quality and display the charm of China's self-owned brands. The Macau Auto Show will hope to assist China's self-owned brands in gaining global recognition.
Ben and Jerry's Unveils First Ever Special Stash Flavor with Jimmy Fallon: Marshmallow Moon
BURLINGTON, Vt: Tonight Show host Jimmy Fallon had a special treat for lucky fans in Studio 6B last night: they were the very first ones to get their hands on Jimmy's latest Ben and Jerry's flavor.
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The new concoction, Marshmallow Moon, is a vanilla ice cream with marshmallow and graham cracker swirls and fudge flakes and is available only for an extremely limited time on Ben & Jerry's e-commerce store and participating Scoop Shops.This flavor kicks off Ben & Jerry's Special Stash offering, where the ice cream maker will churn out small-run artisan batches of funky flavors available in Scoop Shops and store.benjerry.com for fans to purchase for a limited time only.Experience the interactive Multichannel News Release here: https://www.multivu.com/players/English/8026458-ben-and-jerrys-marshmallow-moon/The Marshmallow Moon flavor was developed over two years ago and almost netted the position in place of Fallon's current full-time flavor, Tonight Dough. Tonight Dough has earned a spot as one of Ben & Jerry's top ten flavors ever since its release. Like Tonight Dough, all of Fallon's proceeds from every Marshmallow Moon pint sold will benefit the SeriousFun Children's Network - an organization committed to providing children living with serious illnesses with life-changing camp experiences, in the safest and most supportive environment and with the highest-quality medical care. Proceeds from Tonight Dough have raised more than $1.2 million dollars for SeriousFun, supporting programs that have a lasting impact on the lives of children with serious illnesses and their family members around the world, totally free of charge."I'm so excited about Marshmallow Moon," Fallon said. "And the name totally makes sense, because the Tonight Show logo has a moon, and I have a body like a marshmallow."While the host poked fun at himself, SeriousFun Children's Network CEO Blake Maher reiterated the importance of the relationship in a Fallon-friendly format, a thank you note: "Thank you Ben & Jerry's and Jimmy Fallon for helping us serve up two big scoops of camp magic to kids living with serious illnesses all around the world. Your support in raising both funds and awareness is essential to providing truly transformative camp experiences to children who need them most."Ben & Jerry's is excited to unlock the vault with the first of its Special Stash flavors. Fans can purchase Marshmallow Moon and future Special Stash offerings online at store.benjerry.com and at participating Ben & Jerry's Scoop Shops. Fans can also request Marshmallow Moon via delivery services including UberEATS, who will be offering free delivery for the flavor in five cities during the launch week including Los Angeles, Seattle, Portland, Memphis, New York City and Hoboken. These small batches are made in an extremely limited number and when they're gone, they're gone!
Energy Fuels to Sell Non-Core Uranium Properties in Wyoming for USD 5.39 Million
LAKEWOOD, CO: Energy Fuels Inc. (NYSE American: UUUU; TSX: EFR) (Energy Fuels or the Company), a leading producer of uranium in the United States, is pleased to announce that it has entered into an agreement to sell certain non-core uranium properties in Wyoming to Uranium Energy Corp. (UEC) for USD 5.39 million, including USD 2.94 million of cash and USD 2.45 million of shares in UEC that will be priced upon the closing of the transaction.
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The disposed properties are adjacent to the Reno Creek Project, recently acquired by UEC. The Company considers these properties to be non-core to its current and future uranium recovery operations. As a standalone project, these properties would require extensive permitting and licensing work, and significant time and capital, for Energy Fuels to bring them into commercial operation in the future. Therefore, they are much better suited to be combined with UEC's Reno Creek Project. In addition, the Company holds significant low cost ISR uranium assets that are currently producing or that can be brought into production in Wyoming much sooner, including the operating and fully-permitted Nichols Ranch ISR Project, and the fully-permitted Jane Dough and Hank properties. The Company also holds significant low cost ISR uranium resources and assets at the fully-constructed, licensed and permitted Alta Mesa ISR Project in South Texas. The disposed properties are estimated to contain 3.8 million tons of Measured and Indicated Mineral Resources with an average grade of 0.06% eU3O8 containing approximately 4.3 million pounds of uranium. This sale will not impact Energy Fuels' higher grade Nichols Ranch, Jane Dough, Hank, West North Butte, North Rolling Pin, and the Arkose Mining Venture ISR properties. In aggregate those properties hold 4.6 million tons of Measured and Indicated Mineral Resources with an average grade of 0.12% eU3O8 containing approximately 10.7 million pounds of uranium, along with an additional 3.4 million tons of Inferred Mineral Resources with an average grade of 0.10% eU3O8 containing 7.1 million pounds of uranium.Stephen P. Antony, CEO of Energy Fuels stated: "At a time when companies are experiencing weak uranium markets, we are pleased to realize significant value from non-core uranium properties that are not a part of Energy Fuels' long-term business plan. The proceeds from the sale will significantly enhance our working capital position, and we look forward to closing this transaction."
Inspur Launches the B and R Digital Economy Strategic Alliance
JINAN, China: On November 2, the B and R Digital Economy Strategic Alliance, initialized by Inspur and co-founded by Cisco, IBM, Diebold Nixdorf and Ericsson, was established in Jinan, China.
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The Alliance will integrate the world-class IT products, technologies and solutions of its members to accelerate the construction of digital silk road together with three Chinese national financial institutions, namely the Export-Import Bank of China, China Development Bank and China Export & Credit Insurance Corporation.The launch of the "B&R" Digital Economy Strategic Alliance is the exploration and practice for Inspur to fulfill China's Belt and Road Initiative and develop the digital silk road, as well as the first Belt and Road integrated platform founded by global technology giants. The alliance not only provides a new wide platform to promote the construction of digital silk road and to deepen cooperations among its members, but also allows the cooperations in China among top technology companies to go global.The alliance adopts the cooperation mode of "1+4+3", which means that as the initiator, Inspur establishes the alliance together with four global technology giants, Cisco, IBM, Diebold Nixdorf and Ericsson, with support from three Chinese national policy-based financial institutions, the Export-Import Bank of China, China Development Bank and China Export & Credit Insurance Corporation. The alliance will provide the world-class new datacenters, cloud services, smart finance, smart home, smart taxation, smart cities and other total technology solutions, and complete funding solutions for countries along the Belt and Road. The Alliance will firstly carry out projects in South Asian and African countries including Thailand, Bangladesh, Malaysia, Nigeria, Ethiopia, Tunisia, Tanzania, Zambia, and Kenya, build a series of sample projects, and then promote them in countries along the route.In the future, the alliance will attract more companies with top informatization products and technologies from all over the world, provide the most complete and advanced informatization total solutions for countries along the Belt and Road together with many financial institutions, and allow more people from those countries to enjoy benefits of the digital economy development.
Cubic Awarded Contract to Continue Readiness Training Support to the U.S. Marine Corps Systems Command
SAN DIEGO: Cubic Corporation (NYSE: CUB) today announced that its Cubic Global Defense business division received a contract award, valued at USD 11.5 million, from the U.S. Marine Corps Systems Command (MARCORSYSCOM) to support the Marine Air Ground Task Force (MAGTF) Training Systems Support (MTSS) effort.
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During the six-month period of the contract, Cubic will provide training in Marine warfighting skills; command post exercises; battle staff training; mission rehearsal exercises; command, control, communication and computers (C4) mobile training; in addition to combat simulation ranging from individual to joint and combined staffs training."The MTSS program provides the functional and technical training services necessary to plan, prepare and execute the Marine Corps' individual, unit and staff training events," said Dave Buss, president of Cubic Global Defense. "As the leader in providing Performance-Based Training solutions focused on the mission readiness of our armed forces, we are excited to be partnered with the Marines once again to assist in improving their warfighting skills."MTSS is the premier training program to prepare senior commanders and their staffs to operate across the range of military operations and within the context of Joint and/or Combined Task Force environment for the U.S. Marine Corps.The program will be managed from Cubic's Orlando, Florida facility.
Dunn-Edwards Paints and Pop Up Greens Launch 2018 Trends Collection
LOS ANGELES: Dunn-Edwards has teamed with Pop Up Greens, a Los Angeles-based shop specializing in hand-painted pots, to celebrate the company's 2018 Trend Colors.
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The Pop Up Greens x Dunn-Edwards 2018 Trends Collection features five of the paint company's top Trend Colors for the coming year. Three new designs created especially for the collection will also be available.Tweet This: @DunnEdwards launches limited-edition planter collection inspired by 2018 Trend Colors with LA-based Pop Up Greens #2018TrendsCollectionThe 2018 Color and Design Trends Report features five color palettes with an emphasis on Celebrations - of memories, natural wonders, the stars and unknown, life's adventures and childhood joys. Sara McLean, color expert and stylist for Dunn-Edwards, chose the color trends after researching everything from world events, lifestyle, fashion and food to trends in travel, wellness and individuality.According to McLean, the partnership with Pop Up Greens allows Dunn-Edwards to showcase its Trend Colors in fun, playful ways. "Typically, we have only revealed our Trend Colors in the annual Color + Design Trends Report and on DunnEdwards.com," says McLean. "By incorporating the colors on these beautiful hand-painted pots, we want to inspire people to add new colors into their living space. And, they make great gifts for the holidays."Molly Rhymer, owner of Pop Up Greens, was already a fan of Dunn-Edwards Paints and was "so excited" when the company approached her with the partnership idea. "I've gone through a lot of trial and error to find paint that holds up to wear and tear, and general handling of the product," says Rhymer. "The pots are hand painted, so finding a paint that wouldn't chip or bubble was key for me. Finding ARISTOSHIELD in eggshell was like finding the holy grail! It's by far the best paint product I've used."When choosing colors for the collection, Rhymer was immediately drawn to Natural Wonders. "I wanted colors that feel organic and subtle, a color you would see in nature and that goes well with the green foliage of plants." After pulling the Trend Color options, she worked with McLean on the final color selections for the collection.The pots showcase five Trend Colors: DET544 The Green Hour, Dunn-Edwards' 2018 Color of the Year; DE5477 Fresh Honeydew; DE6094 Canyon Dusk; DE5257 Fall Foliage and DET550 Heritage Blue. Made from fiberglass, these hand-painted pots are lightweight and durable, and range in sizes from 7.5" to 15.5". All the pots are painted using ARISTOSHIELD in eggshell from the Dunn-Edwards Ultra-Premium line of paints. Prices start at $60 for the 7.5" to $160 for the 15.5" size.The limited-edition collection is available for purchase on PopUpGreens.co through May 31, 2018.
CVS Pharmacy to Host 45 Free Community Health Screenings in Houston
HOUSTON: In its ongoing commitment to support post-Hurricane recovery efforts in Houston, CVS Pharmacy, the retail division of CVS Health (NYSE: CVS) will be hosting Project Health, its signature free health screening program across the city to improve access to affordable health care for residents.
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The annual campaign, which was originally scheduled to begin in September, was postponed as the community recovered from the effects of Hurricane Harvey.This year's screenings will be held from Nov. 2 through Feb. 18 in select CVS Pharmacy locations across the greater Houston area and offer an array of free comprehensive health assessment screenings, including blood pressure, Body Mass Index (BMI), glucose and total cholesterol screenings, which can help detect risk for chronic conditions like diabetes, hypertension, and heart disease."Even as the residents of Houston have begun to recover and rebuild their lives following Hurricane Harvey, we know the impact this type of stress can place on a person's health and wellness," said Jeff Schmidt, area vice president, CVS Pharmacy. "Our free health screenings can help identify health concerns or other risk factors for participants who may not have access to care otherwise, as well as provide referrals to local doctors and information on low-cost health insurance options."Once screened, patients have access to on-site consultations with bilingual nurse practitioners or physician assistants who will analyze results and refer patients who require additional medical care and follow up to no-cost or low-cost medical facilities nearby or to their primary care physician. The events are open to everyone and do not require an appointment.This year, CVS Pharmacy has partnered with the YMCA in Houston to encourage their members to participate in Project Health screenings in these markets."Health screenings are the first step in recognizing opportunities for improving one's health," said Lharissa Jacobs, association director of community health for the YMCA of Greater Houston. "Screenings, like those provided at Project Health, provide people with valuable information to make important decisions in reclaiming their health for the long run, and the Y is so pleased to encourage people to live their healthiest life."Houston is one of 10 cities across the country where Project Health screenings are taking place this year. A total of 450 wellness events will deliver more than $5 million worth of free health services in multicultural communities with a large number of uninsured or underinsured Americans.Since it was established in 2006, Project Health has delivered more than $117 million in free health care services to more than 887,000 people.
Karma Tribe Launches Crowdfunding Campaign to Change the World with Kindness
JACA, Costa Rica: Costa Rican start-up, Karma Tribe, announced yesterday the launch of their crowdfunding campaign during the month of November.
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The campaign seeks to raise $50,000 in order to create a mobile-friendly application for sharing skills and resources, and to develop a special "projects" feature enabling local groups around the world to organize and take action for social and environmental causes.Since its inception in 2016, Karma Tribe, a global network of people willing to help each other for free, has grown to over 3100 members in 56 countries. Members offer and request services on karmatribe.com from the heart, with no expectations of anything in return. "In many countries, people have smartphones but no computer," said Dave Grillot, founder of Karma Tribe. "In order to serve these communities, we need to make our platform easy to access. We are also developing a projects feature which will enable local groups to organize activities for social betterment like the beach clean-ups that we're doing in Jaco, which have already removed 600kg of garbage from the beach."The crowdfunding campaign will be hosted by Indiegogo's Generosity site, a place for campaigns intended for the good of society. Karma Tribe plans to offer some gifts for different levels of donation including "Karma Cards," T-shirts, virtual badges for a person's profile on the Karma Tribe platform, and even adventure experiences in Costa Rica.Founded last year by Canadian expat Dave Grillot in Pochotal, Costa Rica, Karma Tribe is a new addition to the technology landscape of Latin America and currently has over a thousand "favors" listed on its website. Through Karma Tribe's online platform, members give and receive everything from recipes and language instruction to travel advice and computer help. "Mariana became fluent in English after four months of Karma Tribe lessons. It changed her life because it allowed her to get the job she wanted. We plan to spread this technology for collaboration worldwide, and enable millions to help each other," said Grillot.
Digital Medicine 2.0: The Future is in Policymaking, Paying and Protecting
CARLSBAD, Calif: An exclusive report produced by EBD Group and authored by Forbes contributor Nicole Fisher, covering trends in digital medicine policy, financing, privacy, and partnering, was released today.
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With perspectives from over seventeen thought leaders in the digital health space representing pharma, tech, regulatory agencies, and investors, this report, Digital Medicine 2.0, builds on the first edition, published in August 2016.Download Digital Medicine 2.0: The future is in policymaking, paying and protecting here.The report is presented with support from Demy-Colton, Digital Therapeutics Alliance, Evidation Health, Hogan Lovells, Rock Health and StartUp Health. Key themes include:aFurther defining digital medicineaHow partnerships are making the advancement of digital medicine possibleaInvestment trends and funding the future of medicineaThe shifting regulatory environment and its impactaThe need for data security and how we can achieve thisThe impact of the digital medicine industry is reflected in the comments of contributing thought leaders from top companies and organizations in the field, including Aliki Interactive, Digital Therapeutics Alliance, Evidation Health, Hogan Lovells, Medidata, MDIC, Michael J. Fox Foundation, NostaLab, Omada Health, PULSE@MassChallenge, Qualcomm Life, Roche, Rock Health, Sanofi, Stanford University, StartUp Health, U.S. FDA, and Verily.Asher Rubin, Global Head of the Life Sciences and Healthcare Industry Team at Hogan Lovells says, "There is more certainty now than there was a year ago about where things fall on the spectrum of tools and toys. We have a better sense of how patients use therapies, how providers use therapies, and how the ecosystem is getting connected.""A great digital health partnership depends on complementary skills and a shared goalaoften, to find ways to improve patient care by understanding what it is really like to live with a disease," asserts Heather Bell, Senior VP and Global Head of Digital and Analytics at Sanofi."Right now we're in the fact-finding stage with digital health for Parkinson's: what can we measure and how may that be useful in understanding and treating this disease," says Deputy CEO Sohini Chowdhury of the Michael J. Fox Foundation. "Parkinson's is a very variable disease, which makes real-time monitoring with digital health tools attractive to researchers and patients."The convergence of digital technologies and healthcare opens up valuable opportunities for partnerships that will result in innovative solutions that improve patients' lives. All stakeholders, from researchers, patients, payers and providers, as well as new entrants in this field, will need to adapt and adopt these new technologies to realize the promise of digital medicine.
Food Drive Expected to Provide 35,000 Meals to Area Hungry
SANTA FE, N.M: Fifteen tons of food will nourish the bodies and minds of hungry New Mexicans this fall. That's the goal set by Buffalo Thunder Resort and Casino during their annual Coins for Cans food drive benefiting The Food Depot, according to Christine Gabaldon, Director of Marketing. And that's the equivalent of providing 35,000 meals for those in need.
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Buffalo Thunder Resort and Casino has a long history with The Food Depot in support of its mission to hunger in Northern New Mexico."We recognize the need in our own community," Gabaldon said. "And as a company, we're in a unique position to do something about it. We ask that our own guests and gamers get involved by bringing in cans of food, and in doing so, they earn slot play here Buffalo Thunder."The Coins for Cans food drive is already in full swing, and several truckloads -- an estimated 16,000 pounds -- of food has already been picked up by The Food Depot.But what does hunger look like in New Mexico? And why is the need so prevalent? Those are questions many people ask, and Jill Dixon, Development Director for The Food Depot provides insight."Hunger is often hidden, but it affects one in every five people in our state. One in three of those are children," Dixon said. "It's a growing concern.""A typical scenario of hunger in New Mexico is a household of six," added Dixon. "The father works a seasonal construction job and the mother can't afford to work outside the home, since she's caring for four kids. Then comes an economic downturn and the construction work they relied on dries up. Every month the budget gets tighter, and no work means no income. No income means no food. This can and does happen in communities all around us," she said.In fact, Dixon said, "52% of those served by The Food Depot are working adults. Of the remaining 48% served, approximately 80% are caregivers to family members or loved ones who cannot care for themselves.""That's why we count on the support of Buffalo Thunder to help us make a difference," Dixon adds. "They are one of the most engaged, present and proactive donors that we have had the privilege to partner with. They feel very rooted in the community, and recognize how our community suffers. This is an organization that is utterly philanthropic and have a strong commitment to making life better.""A simple food drive," Dixon said, "has grown into an extensive partnership over the years, offering food, financial support and countless volunteers.""We feel so fortunate, and we see every day how the community benefits because of their involvement," Dixon said."It's no coincidence that the Coins for Cans food drive takes place every autumn," said Gabaldon."The fall is typically a season of abundance," she said. "By raising awareness of hunger in our community at this time of year, we make a lasting impact in hearts and minds. We remind people that hunger is present every single day of the year."The community is invited to help end hunger in the area by dropping off canned goods at Buffalo Thunder now through November 15.About Buffalo Thunder Resort & Casino: Link: http://buffalothunderresort.comBuffalo Thunder Resort and Casino is located and operated by the Pueblo of Pojoaque just north of Santa Fe, New Mexico. Opened in 2008, Buffalo Thunder joined the ranks of the casino elite of New Mexico, included its sister casino, Cities of Gold. Art from Native contributors statewide, and from many different Pueblos, are displayed proudly throughout the casino.
American Future Leaders Connect in London and Walk for Peace with World Leaders
WASHINGTON: Four American young leaders joined 46 others from around the world to participate in Future Leaders Connect, a British Council program. While in the UK, the future leaders met former global leaders, ambassadors and visited No. 10 Downing Street and the Houses of Parliament.
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The British Council's Future Leaders Connect program provides an opportunity for young people with leadership potential to become the next generation of policy leaders. It is a long-term program to build a community of policymakers around the world whose leadership and policy skills have benefitted from learning in the UK. The British Council aims to support this network of emerging leaders whose global visions and values will help them address issues they face in their regions.One of the many highlights was hearing Kofi Annan and Graca Machel speak about challenges for peace in Trafalgar Square. This event was in partnership with The Elders, an independent group of global leaders founded by Nelson Mandela a decade ago to work together for peace and human rights.The Elders, including Kofi Annan, Graca Machel, Ban Ki-Moon, Gro Harlem Brundtland, Ricardo Lagos and Ernesto Zedillo, led a walk with hundreds of people including the future leaders through central London to lay peace candles by the statue of Nelson Mandela.Kofi Annan, Chair of The Elders and former Secretary-General of the United Nations, said:"Only collective action and cooperation can meet global challenges, from climate change to nuclear proliferation, and only solidarity can protect fundamental human rights and freedoms from tyrants and abusers."Graca Machel, co-founder of The Elders with her late husband Nelson Mandela, added:"Today we are walking together in London, but our message goes out to everyone in the world, from the slums of Gaza to the refugee camps in Calais, the townships of Soweto to human rights defenders in Charlottesville, USA: your struggle is our struggle, your freedom is our freedom, your peace is our peace."Following the walk, The Elders and British Council held a public event in Church House, Westminster. The event brought together The Elders and Future Leaders Connect members for a rich debate on how to build peace and bridge political, economic, social and cultural divides.Four USA young leaders were among fifty emerging leaders from Egypt, India, Indonesia, Kenya, Mexico, Morocco, Nigeria, Pakistan, Tunisia and the four nations of the UK. Imani Jacqueline Brown is a New Orleans native, artist, activist, and researcher tackling gentrification and socio-economic inequality post-Hurricane Katrina. Imani is Director of Programs at Antenna, Co-Founder of Blights Out and a core member of Occupy Museums. Juliana Ospina Cano from Atlanta, Nashville and now Washington DC is a first generation immigrant from Colombia focused on STEM education for underserved students at UnidosUS. Juliana is also studying for her post-doctorate at Johns Hopkins University. Sonia GuiAansaca is a migrant poet, cultural organizer, and activist from Harlem by way of Ecuador. As Managing Director of CultureStrike, Sonia's global vision for change is to shift culture and narratives about migration to address the political, systemic, and social needs of migrants and refugees. Tada Vargas is a member of the Cheyenne River Sioux tribe in South Dakota, focused on food sovereignty given the local challenges of her community. She is pursuing Chemistry and Conservation Biology at Oglala Lakota College, a Tribal College composed of eleven centers across the Pine Ridge Reservation.Future Leaders Connect members were chosen from 11,000 applications from around the world. Applications to be part of Future Leaders Connect 2018 will open in February 2018.Sir Ciaran Devane, the Chief Executive of the British Council, added: "An international outlook is vital for the future leaders of all countries, if they wish to overcome the challenges they will face."Through Future Leaders Connect the British Council will help a new generation to understand practical policy development by putting them in contact with the leaders of today. The programme will help them to develop the skills and international contacts they need to make positive change in their countries."Research by the British Council's Higher Education Policy Unit found that 55 current world leaders, covering one in four countries, were educated in the UK.
Wolfram Research Announces Innovator Award Winners for 2017
CHAMPAIGN, Ill: Wolfram technologies have long been a major force in many areas of industry and research. Leaders in organizations and institutions have played a major role in pushing the boundaries of how the Wolfram technology stack helps a growing diversity of fields, disciplines and industries succeed through innovation.
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Founder and CEO Stephen Wolfram recognized nine such recipients with the Wolfram Innovator Award at the Wolfram Technology Conference in Champaign, Illinois. "It's fun to create this stuff, but it's perhaps even more fun to see all the impressive ways people use it," Wolfram said.This year's winners include:aFor developing a customized framework in Mathematica with over 800 new Wolfram Language functions:Youngjoo Chung, a professor at the Gwangju Institute of Science and Technology, where he and his student researchers use the Wolfram Language for symbolic computing in mathematical physics.aFor creating an optimized computer vision algorithm in the Wolfram Language:Massimo Fazio, a professor at the University of Alabama Birmingham's School of Medicine, where he uses the Wolfram Language for optical coherence tomography and image processing in ophthalmological applications.aFor innovating new classes of vehicle systems using Wolfram SystemModeler:David Milner, a senior research engineer at Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC), where he uses Wolfram technologies for systems modeling and simulation in mechanical engineering applications for military combat vehicles.aFor developing educational digital humanities curricula using computational thinking and the Wolfram Language:Peter Nilsson, the director of research, innovation and outreach at Deerfield Academy, where he teaches English and developed the first high-school-level digital humanities course using the Wolfram Language.aFor using Wolfram SystemModeler and Mathematica for high-performance computing and minimizing risk:C. Christopher Reed, an applied mathematician at the Aerospace Corporation, where he uses Wolfram technologies for modeling and simulating structural engineering projects.aFor implementing inventive trading workflows using Wolfram Finance Platform:Tarkeshwar Singh, a software engineer and quantitative analyst at Quiet Light Securities who brought high-performance Wolfram technologies into workflows for the support of financial derivative trading operations.aFor implementing the Wolfram Language in high-volume data analysis for optimal health outcomes:Marco Thiel, a personal chair at the University of Aberdeen and affiliated with the Institute for Complex Systems and Mathematical Biology, where he uses Wolfram technologies in academic research, collaboration with industry and university teaching.aFor building a cutting-edge enterprise analytics and reporting system in the Wolfram Language:Andrew Yule, an oil- and gas-flow assurance specialist at Assured Flow Solutions, where he developed an internal toolkit written entirely in the Wolfram Language that is deployed to his colleagues through Wolfram Enterprise CDF technologies and used by everyone in the company.aFor modernizing mathematics education and improving student test scores using Wolfram technologies:The Mathematical Methods Computer-Based Exam System Team at the Victoria Curriculum and Assessment Authority, which uses Wolfram products to help students use technology to improve learning outcomes. The award was accepted by David Leigh-Lancaster, mathematics curriculum manager.Winners are nominated by Wolfram Research employees and selected by a panel of experts.
College Research Income Leaps by 20pc in One Year - George Brown College Heads National Ranking
TORONTO: Canada's leading research colleges posted a combined research income of USD 201.7 million in Fiscal 2016 compared with USD 167.8 million in Fiscal 2015, a gain of 20.2pc , according to Research Infosource Inc., which today released its annual ranking of Canada's Top 50 Research Colleges.
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Toronto's George Brown College led the Top 50 with $13.2 million of research income, followed by Fanshawe College ($12.3 million) and Lambton College ($11.0 million)."On the surface, an overall 20.2% gain in research income is an outstanding result," said Ron Freedman, CEO of Research Infosource, "but appearances can be deceiving. Most of the increase was driven by one-time federal government grants that have skewed the underlying trends, and which will not be repeated next year. The increased funding was distributed to a minority of colleges, but nonetheless it affected the national total."Colleges reported a total of 2,845 active formal research partnerships with external organizations, a 10.5% gain over Fiscal 2015. Colleges also indicated they had completed 2,766 research projects, a 12.8% improvement over the prior year. The number of college researchers rose by 12.9% to 2,379. However, the number of college students paid to engage in research increased by only 1.9% to 2,075.Overall year-over-year income growth was strongest at Fanshawe College (564.4%), George Brown College (245.2%) and Cegep de Sept-AZles (95.3%). Twenty Quebec colleges captured 37.4% of the national income total followed by 13 Ontario institutions (36.9%), and 6 Alberta colleges (8.6%).College research funds received from industry sources rose to $40.5 million, a gain of 8.4% over Fiscal 2015. Industry research income increased at 26 colleges compared with 22 colleges where industry income fell, and 2 colleges were flat."A rising tide of college research income and research activity is certainly to be welcomed," said Mr. Freedman, "but one-time federal research grants to a minority of colleges are no substitute for sustained base funding. The challenge for the funding winners is to translate the federal government largesse into increased levels of research activity."
Epicor Partners with Redington to Grow Presence in India and Support Small to Medium Size Manufacturers
BANGALORE: Epicor Software Corporation, a global provider of industry specific software to promote business growth, announced today the appointment of a country-wide distributor to accelerate business growth and meet demand for enterprise resource planning (ERP) solutions across India.
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The partnership will see Redington India, one of the country's largest technology distributors, selecting and training specialist resellers from its network of over 20,000 business partners to grow the Epicor customer base.Anand Chakravarthy, president, at Redington India Limited commented, "Epicor ERP is a great fit for midmarket manufacturing companies in India looking to grow. Adding Epicor ERP to our portfolio will enable us to capitalise on the currently untapped market potential. The modern architecture of Epicor ERP will not only work today, but will enable customers to successfully deal with future challenges such as preparing for Industry 4.0, as more and more smart technologies are adopted."Sabby Gill, executive vice president, international at Epicor Software commented, "Whilst India is one of the fastest growing economies in the world, it is also a digitally advanced market. As one of the largest technology distributors in India, Redington has an experienced and dedicated team on the ground that can enable local manufacturers to digitally transform their companies and grow their businesses. Thiru Vengadam, regional vice president, will spearhead the strategy to grow our footprint and help companies thrive through ERP."As a distributor Redington will identify, appoint, train and equip resellers, taking full responsibility for effectively managing the delivery and deployment of Epicor ERP solutions in India. In return, Epicor will provide Redington with the necessary support to deliver its solutions to the market, including marketing, professional services, training, and access to Epicor University with certification for partners.
What is the Future of Housing?
CHICAGO: Global market research company, Ipsos, released its inaugural issue of What the Future (WTF), a quarterly research series. The report asks important, forward-facing questions about top consumer-spending categories including transportation, health care and food.
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The first WTF focuses on housing, a category touching almost every aspect of today's society. Download it from Gen Pop, a magazine produced by Ipsos, at gen-pop.com/wtfWTF asks the big questions such as, "What if Millennials are never able to afford homeownership?" New research from Ipsos shows that more than eight in 10 millennials still aspire to own a home and specifically a detached single-family home. But the home ownership rate is falling for this generation. If that doesn't change...aWhat will that mean for industries ranging from finance to consumer packaged goods, to home furnishings?aHow can marketers create products and messaging to address these changes?aHow can cities and governments create impactful policies that address important housing issues?"What the Future is a question we need to ask because the future doesn't care if we're thinking about it. It is coming regardless," said Oscar Yuan, president of Ipsos Strategy3. "We hope the questions we ask and the trends we unpack in this report will inspire the creativity needed to solve our country's housing future."Ipsos convened five experts from varying perspectives to ask what data we might need five or ten years from now that we should gather today. The experts include an economist, mayor, urban theorist, home retailer and a futurist.WTF Experts:aRichard Florida, urban theorist and author of "New Urban Class"aMary Lunghi, head of market intelligence for IKEAaRodney Harrell, director, livable communities for AARP's Public Policy InstituteaAmy Webb, founder of the Future Today Institute and authoraLawrence Yun, chief economist of National Association of Realtors (NAR)aPaul Soglin, mayor of Madison, WisconsinMillennials and the Urban CrisisHow will millennials' values and financial circumstances impact housing now and in the future?Millennials find themselves beset by student debt and many came of age during a weak job market and housing crash. Yet, American adults under 35 years of age make up the largest share of the housing market and 76 percent of millennials said they delayed homeownership due to student load debt, according to the National Association of Realtors. The data shows a preference to buy, but financial barriers prevent them from saving for a down payment or getting a mortgage."The aspiration numbers today are encouraging, but they could change if people believe it will become nearly impossible to attain their dream," said Yun, chief economist, NAR.In addition, young, talented millennials continue wanting to live in city centers with its urban amenities such as cultural vibrancy, transportation and economic opportunity, but they're deterred by rising prices and competition for urban space. Meanwhile, suburban sprawl costs the U.S. economy roughly $600 billion a year related to inefficient land use and car dependency and another $400 billion indirectly from traffic congestion and pollution, according to a 2015 study from the London School of Economics."Cities must strike a balance between offering a sufficient and diversified share of public amenities and making sure all residents have access to these resources," said Richard Florida, urban theorist and author of New Urban Class.Future of HomeHow will your house make your daily life easier?Several trends impacting home living right now will shape future home design. According to a recent Ipsos survey, millennials identified automated cleaning, like vacuuming robots or shower cleaners, as their top choice of innovation that would make their lives easier. In addition, smart homes and automation will impact home product design."We want to understand the direction your home life is taking. Do you envision a smart home in your future? If you do, we have to figure out how to work with that. That feeds into our innovation and product design," said Lunghi of IKEA.Urbanization has already led builders and developers to rethink home spaces given the smaller sizes in urban areas. The "fluid home" offers multi-functionality through the house. For example, the kitchen has always been the heart of the home, but increasingly is used beyond traditional functionality. It's a gathering place for entertaining, a space for working from home or doing homework. Future kitchen design will need to accommodate this behavior. A new Ipsos survey shows the kitchen (23%) as the number one room people want to remodel in their home, ahead of the bathroom (19%) and the living room (17%).America's Aging PopulationAs people grow older, will their homes support their changing needs?By 2060, nearly 100 million Americans will be older than 65, double what it is today and the vast majority of older adults (85%, according to recent Ipsos study) want to stay in their homes and communities as they age. This has implications on the future of housing given that homes today largely don't support mobility for the elderly."The problem is you can't create a new housing stock overnight, so we have to start working now," said Harrell of AARP. "Nobody should be forced from their home because it doesn't work for them."Factors from the FringeWhat trends outside of the housing industry will have an impact on housing in the future?Futurist Amy Webb checks in "from the fringe" identifying forces that will shape where housing heads next, including the following:aClimate change, extreme weather and its impact on migration away from populous U.S. coastsaUnderground farming techniques that could make places like Oklahoma a "hot spot" in the futurea"Landscrapers" a new building trend for commercial structures being longer and loweraAutonomous vehicles allowing longer commutes to be more realistic and productiveExplore the full report at on GenPop at https://gen-pop.com/ along with articles about people and what make them tick. Each article is grounded in research and layered with perspective, examples, insights and stories.MethodologyIpsos study conducted August 16 to August 18, 2017 among 2,031 adults. Full methodology can be found at Ipsos.com
Brian Wang is a Futurist Thought Leader and a popular Science blogger with 1 million readers per month. His blog Nextbigfuture.com is ranked #1 Science News Blog. It covers many disruptive technology and trends including Space, Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, Medicine, Anti-aging Biotechnology, and Nanotechnology.
Known for identifying cutting edge technologies, he is currently a Co-Founder of a startup and fundraiser for high potential early-stage companies. He is the Head of Research for Allocations for deep technology investments and an Angel Investor at Space Angels.
A frequent speaker at corporations, he has been a TEDx speaker, a Singularity University speaker and guest at numerous interviews for radio and podcasts. He is open to public speaking and advising engagements.
Boeing and Lockheed are the backers of ULA. They have not built a complete new rocket for over a decade. They have used the Russian engine for the Atlas V. They have not launched the Space Launch System in spite of getting over $12 billion since 2001. They will not launch the first Space Launch System until late 2019 or more likely 2021. ULA is contracting out to Aerojet and Blue Origin to make a replacement engine for the Atlas V.
ULA gets about $832 million per year to be the reliable heavy launch provider for the USA. ULA still gets this money in 2018, supposedly to guarantee launch capabilities for the USA.
The US government should give the nearly $1 billion per year to Spacex and Blue Origin in order to have two reliable rocket companies. They should also kill the $2-4 billion per year Space Launch System project. Boeing can then stick to making commercial jets and Lockheed will continue to ripoff the US taxpayer with the ridiculously overpriced F35 stealth fighter.
Blue Origin is not yet a successful rocket company. They have a reusable suborbital system and have successfully test fired a new large rocket engine. The US wants more than one supplier for heavy rockets, so beyond Spacex, Blue Origin seems like the best bet.
United Launch Alliance has a problem and the problem is that rocket science is hard. They are struggling to get non-Russian engines working by 2019 or 2020 for about $100-150 million per launch without factoring in launch pad maintenance costs.
* SpaceX aims to fly each Block 5 first stage ten times with only inspections in between, and up to 100 times with refurbishment. This could reduce launch costs by 2 to 4 times
* Spacex will try to launch the Falcon Heavy for the first time in Dec 2017. It could take 2-3 launches for the Spacex Heavy to get reliable
* Spacex is building the BFR rocket able to launch 150 tons and is fully reusable. Spacex has a target for launch costs of about $7 million per launch
Even with only some reusability and just the Falcon 9, Spacex is half the launch cost of United Launch Alliance when ULA is using the Atlas and the Russia engines.
With the more reusable Block 5 Falcon 9, Spacex becomes four times cheaper than United Launch Alliance and the Atlas V. Without the Atlas V, Spacex is about 5-8 times cheaper than the Delta rockets.
The Falcon Heavy will mean that Spacex can launch two to three times more than United Launch Alliance for each launch.
Blue Origin is developing the Vulcan engine. It is slated to enter service in 2020, likely using a new rocket engine known as the BE-4 under development at Jeff Bezos Blue Origin. To bridge the gap between now and 2020 ULA needs to continue launching its Atlas V rocket, and the Atlas V needs the RD-180 to power it.
In 2014, ULA detailed their launch costs.
ULAs launches cost an average of $225 million;
The Delta 4 Heavy, its most powerful rocket, runs about $350 million a launch;
The lower end of the Delta costs $164 million;
Any launch of the Atlas V (version 401) over the current buy would cost less than $100 million (this is the rocket closest to Musks Falcon 9).
Delta runs $164 million as part of the regular contract. The lower costs result from the fact that the launch maintenance costs preparing and maintaining the launch pad and the equipment that goes with it are paid for on annual basis by ULA. So the $64 million is already paid for, ULA representatives explained, and the per-launch price comes down below $100 million.
Since 2016 ULA has provided pricing for the Atlas V through its RocketBuilder website, advertising a base price for each rocket configuration which ranges from $109 million for the 401 up to $153 million for the 551. Each additional SRB adds an average of $6.8 million to the cost of the rocket. On top of the base price, commercial customers can also choose to purchase larger payload fairings or additional launch service options. NASA and Air Force launch costs are often higher than equivalent commercial missions, due to additional government accounting, analysis, and processing requirements. These government requirements can add $30-$80 million to the cost of a launch.
The U.S. Air Force awarded a $115 million contract to Aerojet Rocketdyne for development of the AR1 engine to be completed in 2019. Contract options could increase government funding up to $501 million. Aerojet had received US$228 million in funding for AR-1 through June 2017. In April 2017, Aerojet announced that the engine would be built in a new factory planned to be built in Huntsville, Alabama.
'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?
US, Indian companies driving technological innovation to new heights: US Consul General Chennai Judith Ravin
Chennai: IT raids on Jaya TV premises continue for 4th day
India
oi-Madhuri
The Income Tax (I-T) raids continued for the fourth day against the aides and relatives of jailed AIADMK leader V K Sasikala and ousted AIADMK leader T T V Dhinakaran, but tax authorities refused to give details of the seizures effected.
Earlier on Saturday, the IT department raided at Dr Namadhu MGR (Tamil newspaper) and Jaya TV Offices, also at the residence of Managing Director Vivek Jayaraman and his sister Krishna Priya in Chennai on in connection with alleged tax evasion matter.
IT sleuths raided simultaneously at 40 locations. The allegation covers aspects like shell companies, dubious investments, fund flow and fudging of accounts, income tax sources told PTI.
The raids are being conducted over suspected tax evasion as part of 'Operation Clean Money'.
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Story first published: Sunday, November 12, 2017, 10:38 [IST]
Conflict of interest: Dovals son demands evidence
India
oi-Vicky
By Vicky
Charges must be substantiated that the India Foundation was involved in a case of conflict, Shaurya Doval, son of National Security Advisor, Ajit Doval said.
He said that the news portal which carried the news about the foundation of which he is a director must substantiate the charges either in a court of law or before the people. The statements were made to a private news channel.
The accusations about our foundation, in political debates people can say anything what they want. That's democracy, but the evidence of that gets proved in the court. All those who make accusations must logically pursue them in the court of law and substantiate it or if that's not the way... that if you are fighting a perception battle, then take it out to the people and prove to the people the perception, he also said.
The Wire had reported that India Foundation, which has four senior Union ministers on its board as directors, was using its proximity with the government for lobbying.
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Story first published: Sunday, November 12, 2017, 6:48 [IST]
Shatrughan Sinha likely to join TMC, may be sent to Rajya Sabha
If PM can, why cant I: Sinhas dig at BJP
Bengal by-election results: Shatrughan leads by over 2.8 lakh votes as TMC eyes clean sweep in both assembly
Shatrughan Sinha wins big: More than half of Asansol votes for him
Everybody silent in country's current climate: Shatrughan Sinha's latest barb at Modi
India
pti-PTI
Talking about the current political scenario, actor-BJP MP Shatrughan Sinha today said there is silence in the current atmosphere of the country.
The 71-year-old veteran actor, famous for his "Khaamosh" dialogue, was speaking during a session at Sahitya AajTak.
"Now it seems that we all have become silent. There is silence in the current atmosphere of the country," Sinha said.
The actor added when he travels to Pakistan, kids ask him
to recite his famous dialogue "Khaamosh".
The actor was in conversation with former journalist and writer Bharti Pradhan and anchor Punya Prasun Vajpayee about his biography "Anything but Khaamosh".
Talking about the book, Sinha said, "I gave the first copy of my book to President Ramnath Kovind. (But) couldn't give it to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, as it didn't come out by the time I last met him."
He revealed that he made his foray into politics after he was advised by senior BJP leader L K Advani.
Sinha also said he never saw the roles that he took up "as good or bad" but just tried to do his best.
"My mantra to the young generation is to prove yourself that you are the best. If not, then prove that you are the most different. Be original and don't lose hope," he added.
PTI
40 down and counting: Forces on the verge of wiping out Pakistani terrorists in Valley
Mubin did it in Coimbatore: Why do Islamist terrorists shave their body before a suicide mission
Final push: Pak places on standby 30 terrorists for infiltration before winter
India
oi-Vicky
By Vicky
30 terrorists have been kept on standby at the Indo-Pak border, an Intelligence Bureau report states.
The IB report that this core team of the Lashkar-e-Tayiba and the Hizbul Mujahideen have been kept on standby and are awaiting instructions to infiltrate into the Valley. The IB says that this is the final push before the winter sets in.
The latest intelligence report suggests that the 30 member team would infiltrate in batches. The ISI wants the process to be completed by November. The ISI has instructed these terrorists to infiltrate into the Valley, but not carry out any attack immediately.
Once they infiltrate, they have been instructed to get into their hideouts and then wait for orders. The 30 member team would be used in batches to strike at regular intervals during the winter, the IB report also said.
Army sources however said that the vigil along the border is tight. We will not let any infiltration take place, the officer added. We are aware that they will try and step up infiltrations before the winter sets in, but we will not let their plans succeed the officer also added.
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Story first published: Sunday, November 12, 2017, 13:00 [IST]
India will continue to rely on close cooperation of US to address global economic challenges: Sitharaman
It is our territory, will go there, Nirmala Sitharaman on Arunachal visit
India
oi-Vicky
By Vicky
What is the problem? There is no problem. It is our territory, we will go there. This was the reply by Defence Minister, Nirmala Sitharaman on China's reaction on her visit to Arunachal Pradesh.
She said the northeastern state is an Indian territory and the country is not concerned about someone else's opinion on it.
Earlier this week, China had objected to Sitharaman's first visit to the border state, saying her tour of the "disputed area" was not conducive to peace in the region.
India had rejected Beijing's objection and asserted that Arunachal Pradesh is an integral part of the country. "We are not concerned with someone else's opinion on this," the minister, who is campaigning for the BJP in poll- bound Gujarat, said in a press conference.
Sitharaman had visited forward army posts in remote Anjaw district of the state bordering China to take stock of defence preparedness.
The minister had visited Nathu La area on the India-China border in Sikkim last month and greeted the People's Liberation Army soldiers across the border. Her "friendly gesture" had earned appreciation from the Chinese media.
Asked if giving shelter to Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama was the reason for strained relationship between India and China, she said it was not so. "One issue can not make or break a relationship. There are many issues. Every issue has its own weight," she said.
OneIndia News
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Story first published: Sunday, November 12, 2017, 7:19 [IST]
Rishi Kapoors last tweet was appeal to refrain from violence towards health care professionals
J&K is ours, PoK belongs to Pakistan: Rishi Kapoor backs Farooq Abdullah
India
oi-PTI
Former Jammu and Kashmir chief minister Farooq Abdullah on Saturday sparked a controversy by saying that the Pakistan-occupied Kashmir belongs to the neighbouring country. And supporting him now is actor Rishi Kapoor, whose tweets often grab headlines.
Abdullah had on Saturday said that talk of an independent Kashmir was "wrong" as the Valley is landlocked and surrounded by three nuclear powers China, Pakistan and India.
His statement came days after Pakistan Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi had rejected the idea of an "independent Kashmir", saying it was not based on "reality".
Reacting to the same, Rishi wrote on Twitter, "Farooq Abdullah ji, Salaam! Totally agree with you sir. Jammu and Kashmir is ours, and PoK is theirs. This is the only way we can solve our problem.
"Accept it, I am 65-years-old and I want to see Pakistan before I die. I want my children to see their roots. Bas karva dijiye (Please make it happen). Jai Mata Di!"
The Kapoor clan has a house in Peshawar, Pakistan. It was constructed between 1918 and 1922 by Dewan Basheswarnath Kapoor, father of Prithviraj Kapoor, who was the first from the family to enter the Indian film industry. The family shifted to India after Partition.
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Story first published: Sunday, November 12, 2017, 17:01 [IST]
Kerala govt intends to replace Governor as Chancellor of universities through ordinance
DGP Kerala orders FIR against The Kerala Story after TN journalist forwards complaint to CM
Kerala: RSS worker stabbed to death in Thrissur, BJP suspects CPM role
India
oi-Deepika
By Deepika
A Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) worker was hacked to death by alleged activists of the ruling Communist Party of India (Marxist) in Kerala on Sunday.
The victim has been identified as Anand, one of the accused in the murder of CPM worker Fazil. He was out on bail.
The incident occurred around 1 PM. Anand was riding his bike when a group rammed their vehicle into it, causing him to fall. The accused them lynched him. He died en route to hospital.
The BJP has alleged that CPM was behind the attack.
Reacting to the incident, BJP state president Kummanam Rajasekharan said, "LeftistTerror bloodshed continues in Kerala. BJP Karyakartha Anand murdered brutally in Guruvayur, Thrissur."
OneIndia News
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Story first published: Sunday, November 12, 2017, 16:11 [IST]
Massive Rajput protests in Gandhinagar, Surat against 'Padmavati'
India
oi-PTI
Members of the Rajput community on Sunday held massive protests in Gandhinagar and Surat in Gujarat demanding a ban on the release of Bollywood film 'Padmavati'. The protestors allege that the makers had distorted historical facts in the film.
While over one lakh members of the community converged at a massive gathering at Gandhinagar, thousands took part in the protest march in Surat to raise their demand of staying the release of Sanjay Leela Bhansali-directed movie.
The movie is scheduled to release on December 1.
Mansinh Rathod, who is leading the Gujarat chapter of 'Karni Sena', claimed that Mr Bhansali has "distorted the historical facts in the movie."
"We have learnt that there is a dream sequence in the movie wherein 'Rani Padmavati' has been shown romancing with 'Allaudin Khilji'. We condemn such a heinous portrayal our queen. 'Karni Sena' will never allow such movie to hit the theatres," Rathod said.
He said not just Gujarat, the movie must not be released anywhere in the country. "To raise our demand, Karni Sena and other Rajput and Hindu organisations called a gathering in Gandhinagar. We had also organised a protest march in Surat. It is our clear warning that if this movie gets released on December 1, there will be violent protests and government will be responsible for the law and order situation," he added.
In Gandhinagar, the mega gathering of the Rajput community saw the presence of senior Karni Sena leaders, such as its founder Lokendrasinh Kalvi and national president Mahipalsinh Makrana.
"Though the release has been scheduled on December 1, we will make sure that the movie does not see the light of the day," Kalvi claimed.
According to Virendrasinh Bhati of Karni Sena, Bhansali has backtracked from his promise of showing the movie to the Rajput community to get a clearance first.
"We are very much sure that there is dream sequence in the movie. If Bhansali claimed that the movie is as per the historical facts, then why he has not fulfilled his promise of showing it to us. We want the government to take a clear stand and ban the movie. If the movie gets released, Rajputs will show what they can do," said Mr Bhati.
With the Assembly polls approaching in Gujarat, Rajput agitators also warned the ruling BJP to face consequences if the movie gets released.
"We want a complete ban on the movie. If the Centre or state government fails to step in, the BJP may have to face the ire of the community during the Gujarat polls," Rajput leader from Surat Yashwantsinh Vala said.
Last month, former Congress leader and Rajput strongman Shankersinh Vaghela demanded a pre-release screening of 'Padmavati' for Hindu and Rajput community leaders to check if the makers have not distorted the facts.
He had also warned of violent protests by the people of Gujarat if the movie is released without showing it to community leaders.
Recently, Gujarat BJP had given a representation to the Election Commission opposing the release ahead of Gujarat elections next month, saying that distortion of facts in the movie will hurt the sentiments of the Kshatriya Rajput communities.
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Story first published: Sunday, November 12, 2017, 20:33 [IST]
PM Modi arrives in Philippines to attend ASEAN-India, East Asia summits
India
oi-Madhuri
Prime Minister Narendra Modi arrived in Philippines on Sunday on a three-day visit to the during the course of which he will attend this year's India-Asean Summit and the East Asia Summit.
The Prime Minister will have a tight schedule in the Philippines as besides attending the 15th ASEAN-India summit and 12th East Asia summit on November 14, he will have a series of other engagements including bilateral meetings with several leaders.
While the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) summit is likely to focus more on trade and investment related issues, leaders at the East Asia Summit are expected to deliberate on matters relating to maritime security, terrorism, non-proliferation and migration.
In his maiden visit to the Philippines as the prime minister, Modi will also attend a reception by the Indian community and visit the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) and Mahavir Philippines Foundation.
IRRI is an institute of global repute where a number of Indian scientists are working. On India's proposal at last ASEAN-India summit at Lao PDR to host a conference on countering radicalisation, Saran said India was in the process of fixing dates for it. Saran said during the India-ASEAN Summit, the two sides will review the bilateral trade and investments and discuss important regional issues as well.
The 10-member grouping ASEAN and India comprise a total population of 1.85 billion people which is one-fourth of the global population. The combined GDP has been estimated at over 3.8 trillion dollars.
Trade between India and ASEAN stood at USD 65.04 billion in 2015-16 and comprises 10.12 per cent of India's total trade with the world. Apart from the 10 ASEAN Member states, East Asia Summit includes India, China, Japan, Republic of Korea, Australia, New Zealand, United States and Russia.
OneIndia News (with PTI inputs)
Ready to quit cinema if it becomes hurdle to political career: Kamal Haasan
Predictions about Kamal Haasan's political future
India
oi-Chennabasaveshwar
By Chennabasaveshwar
According to a Delhi-based astrologer, Tamil Superstar Kamal Haasan has a bright political future, provided he completely commits himself to public service.
Radhan Pandit, the Tamil astrologer, says actor Kamal Hassan's horoscope has similarities with the horoscope of late Tamil Nadu chief minister MG Ramachandran. And that Kamal's great run has just begun. With health providing support, Kamal can continue for 20-25 years in politics.
As far as DMK president MK Stalin is concerned, he too has a spectacular future in Tamil Nadu politics. However, Radhan Pandit said Kamal can overtake Stalin, and could become CM of Tamil Nadu in future.
Radhan Pandit explains further that Kamal was born in Tula/Libra Rashi. Venus and Mars planets are exalted in the horoscope. Hence, he can be very good administrator/ruler. He is intelligent, sensitive and walks the talk.
Kamal's horoscope has many good 'yoga'- means the combination of planets- which leads to rising career. Moon-Mars Yoga, Jupiter-Mars Yoga, Jupiter-Moon combinations prove favorable to the actor Also, he is blessed with Mahalakshmi Yoga. Kamal might have name and fame in his field, but could not enjoy his life like a common man.
Radhan Pandit predicted that Kamal Hassan, 63, could live up to 90.
Kamal will have golden run till 2036. Currently, his horoscope is under the spell of Venus Dasha and Mercury Bhukti followed by Ravi/Sun Dasha. This horoscope has all the characters of Kamal becoming the Chief Minister.
OneIndia News
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Story first published: Sunday, November 12, 2017, 0:22 [IST]
Madrasa survey in UP complete, next up is meeting with government: Minister
UP civic polls 2017: Free WiFi, 'Pink' toilets for women, BJP's key poll promises
India
oi-PTI
Free WiFi at prominent public places, "pink toilets" for women and free water connections to all homes are among the key promises made in BJP's 'Sankalp Patra' released on Sunday ahead of the Uttar Pradesh civic polls.
The polls are being seen as the first major electoral test for Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, who unveiled the 'Sankalp Patra', a virtual poll manifesto, at the BJP headquarters here along with deputy chief ministers Keshav Prasad Maurya and Dinesh Sharma, state Urban Development minister Suresh Khanna and UP BJP chief Mahendra Nath Pandey.
At the event, Adityanath spoke about providing services transparently and without "partiality".
"As many as 652 urban local bodies across the state are going to polls, the highest number so far. This includes 16 municipal corporations. Earlier, there were 12 municipal corporations in the state," Adityanath said.
He expressed happiness that the Ayodhya and Mathura- Vrindavan municipal corporations, constituted by his government, were going to polls for the first time.
The 'Sankalp Patra' comprises 28 promises (sankalps) including better drinking water facilities, improved street lighting, free community toilets, pink toilets for women, grant of Rs 20,000 for the construction of personal toilets, provision of adarsh nagar panchayat, e-tendering and 'kanji' houses for stray animals.
It also seeks to protect the interests of small shopkeepers, promises free water connections to every house, time-bound disposal of public grievances, proper bus service, clean environment, effective implementation of Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana, beautification of parks, house tax exemptions to freedom fighters and their dependents.
Development of cities as 'smart cities', better parking arrangements, auditoriums and exhibition grounds and awarding the best performing workers were among the other promises.
Adityanath said the state government had "ended partiality in power supply" in the state.
"In the urban areas of the state we have begun providing electrification to all households with focus on saving energy. In the unauthorised colonies, we have started the electrification process, and provided more than 20 lakh connections in these seven months. This has helped in curbing power theft," he said.
Adityanath added that all street lights in the urban areas of the state will be changed to LED lights. For this we have entered into an agreement with ESL and in the first phase the street lights in all the 16 municipal corporations will be changed, he said.
"Work in this regard has been completed in Varanasi and Allahabad, and is going on in Lucknow, Gorakhpur, Agra and Kanpur," he said.
Adityanath added that there will be no "corruption in the name of street lights", claiming it used to take place in the past.
"Rs 20,000 will be given for construction of personal toilets. Apart from this solid waste management will be strengthened. The door-to-door garbage collection system has started functioning in a few parts of the state. Our endeavour will be to increase its ambit, once the new urban local bodies under the leadership of the BJP begin functioning," Adityanath said.
On the issue of stray animals, the UP chief minister said that in the first phase, in 16 municipal corporations, along with one big 'gaushala', an old kanji house will be revived.
"In the 653 urban local bodies of the state, which are associated with traditional craft etc, we have come up with the concept of 'one district, one product' to promote these crafts and products. This will generate employment, and help urban local bodies to become economically self-reliant," he said.
The polls are important as far as the development of urban areas of the state is concerned, Adityanath said.
"So, when there is a BJP government at the Centre, at the state, and the urban local bodies are under BJP, then there will be no delay in development reaching the lower levels. The last person of the society had been deprived of the fruits of development and other civic amenities during the previous governments," the chief minister said.
Asked whether the civic election results will be seen as a referendum on the state government, Adityanath said, "We consider every election as an examination. But, the question is that opposition has already left the field."
He said the speed of developmental works would depend upon the constitution of the new urban local bodies.
"If the new urban local bodies are of the BJP, then there will be no problems, as the ideology will be the same. Else, like in the past there was government of rival party in the state. The Centre wanted to give funds for development..," he said.
UP BJP chief Pandey said the party was not contesting the polls merely to bag posts of mayors or corporators, but to ensure better quality of life to the people.
As many as 24 districts will go to polls on November 22, while 25 districts will go to polls on November 26, and 26 districts on November 29.
Counting of votes for 16 nagar nigams, 198 nagar palika parishads and 438 nagar panchayats will be done on December 1.
More than 3.32 crore voters will be eligible to cast their ballots at 36,269 polling booths and 11,389 polling stations.
The polls will be held eight months after the BJP came to power with a landslide victory in the state. Though, the BJP has traditionally been strong in urban constituencies, the acid test for Adityanath would be to match the performance of the Assembly elections.
PTI
Vigil stepped as terrorists look to derail peace talks in Valley
India
oi-Vicky
By Vicky
The Intelligence Bureau has directed security agencies to step up vigil both at the border and the Kashmir Valley. The new directive comes in the wake of the Centre's special representative commencing talks.
The IB says that there is a possibility of terrorists trying to disrupt the process and hence the vigil must be up at all times. An IB officer informed that a core team of the Jaish-e-Mohammad led by Talha Rashid was activated only to disrupt peace in the Valley. Rashid, the nephew of Jaish boss, Maulana Masood Azhar was killed in an encounter recently at Pulwama.
A few months back 30 terrorists in batches had infiltrated through the Poonch sector.
They were to spread out in different groups and launch attacks in the Valley.
The Pulwama encounter was a precise and successful one. It took four hours to gun down the terrorists. The encounter began on Monday at 6 pm and ended by 10 pm.
OneIndia News
This piece was reprinted by OpEd News with permission or license. It may not be reproduced in any form without permission or license from the source.
From Counterpunch
Rt Hon Jeremy Corbyn, Leader of the Labour Party, UK
(Image by Chatham House, London) Details DMCA
British Prime Minister Theresa May is well on course -- if indeed she is not already there -- to go down, down as the most weak and ineffectual Tory prime minister since John Major presided over his cabinet of 'bastards' in the early nineties.
The escalating crises that are now a near daily occurrence within May's government and cabinet are symptomatic of a Tory party which is irretrievably split on Brexit between no-deal fundamentalists, of whom Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson is most prominent, and soft Brexit single market adherents, led by Chancellor Phillip Hammond.
It is in the context of this split, which has grown evermore deep and antagonistic over the months of deadlock and lack of progress in the government's Brexit negotiations with Brussels, that Theresa May has been drained of personal authority to the point where the likes of Johnson and her former International Development Secretary, Priti Patel, have felt emboldened to go rogue and plough their own furrows. Add to the mix the recent resignation of Defence Secretary Michael Fallon over sexual harassment revelations, and at this writing the mounting pressure on her Secretary of State Damien Green to resign over similar allegations of sexual impropriety, and Theresa May has been reduced to a political mannequin.
However for the British establishment the only thing worse than a mannequin in Number Ten is Jeremy Corbyn, whose popularity and personal standing as leader of the opposition and prospective prime minister since June's general election has only increased. Indeed a seesaw effect between Corbyn's increasing popularity and May's increasing unpopularity is now markedly evident.
The reasons for establishment dread of what a Corbyn government portends are easy to discern. For the first time in generations, the Labour Party is led by a man who offers a decisive break with the status quo ideologically, economically, and on foreign policy. While certainly not the Marxist his detractors claim, Jeremy Corbyn is a socialist who believes in redistributing the bulk of society's surplus to the working class, doing so in the context of increasing investment in public services, a living wage, public ownership, investing in affordable housing, and supporting an enlarged role for the unions in the workplace when it comes not only to defending wages and conditions but improving them.
Taxing the rich, business, clamping down on tax evasion and avoidance, while introducing tighter regulation in the financial and banking sector, ensures that for each of the groups affected, Corbyn looms over the horizon as a latter day Che Guevara intent on fomenting bloody revolution. It is a primal fear reflected in the concerted attempt to destroy his leadership from the moment he was elected leader of Labour in 2015 up to the aforementioned general election, when in cementing his authority with a campaign performance that ranks as one of the best of any Labour candidate for Downing Street ever, it was clear their efforts had failed.
Illustrating the dread within the UK financial and banking industry of what Corbyn represents economically was its hysterical response to Labour's intention of introducing a financials transaction tax (Robin Hood tax) of 0.5 percent per transaction, bringing with it the prospect of raising up to an additional 5.6 billion in government revenue by 2021/22. With Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell leaving no doubt that the tax was designed to "make the financial sector pay its fair share," especially given its role in the 2007/08 economic crash, we are talking an economic policy underpinned by an ideological commitment to meaningful wealth redistribution.
Even more danger is attributed to what Corbyn's foreign policy would entail, how it would impact and change Britain's various international alliances and commitments. The Labour leader's years-long support for the cause of Palestinian self-determination is well known, as is his dim view of Britian's arms trade with Saudi Arabia, its membership of NATO, the Atlantic Alliance with Washington, and on a personal level at least Britain's Trident nuclear deterrent.
With this in mind, one man who is in no doubt that Corbyn should be kept away from Number Ten at all cost is Sir Richard Dearlove, former head of Britain's foreign intelligence agenct MI6. Writing in The Telegraph on the eve of the general election in June, Dearlove opined, "the leader of the Labour Party is an old-fashioned international socialist who has forged links with those quite ready to use terror when they haven't got their way: the IRA, Hizbollah, Hamas. As a result he is completely unfit to govern and Britain would be less safe with him in No 10."
The fact that the real danger to Britain's security in recent times has been a foreign policy responsible for the proliferation of international terrorism, the worst relations with Russia since the Cold War, and a refugee crisis of biblical proportions, is obviously lost on Mr Dearlove and the establishment he represents and undoubtedly speaks for. However the point remains: Jeremy Corbyn is the British establishment's worst nightmare and the primary reason Theresa May has not yet been kicked to the curb, risking in the process an early general election which Corbyn would almost certainly win at this point.
If the leader of the opposition was a Blairite and thus represented continuity rather than change, she would already be toast at the hands of her very own cabinet and party of "bastards."
"My crown I am," Shakespeare wrote, "but still my griefs are mine. You may my glories and my state despose but not my griefs; still I am king of those."
From Alternet
Trump is prepared to provoke a constitutional crisis.
While President Trump cavorts in Asia, his legal problems at home continue to mount. The indictment of three aides, his record-low poll numbers and a wave of Republican defeats in state and local elections compound the threat to his aides, his family and himself by limiting his options. When he returns November 18, he will find himself more vulnerable than ever.
Is Trump trapped? Let's just say the president's defenses have a way of backfiring.
Last May, Trump fired FBI director James Comey in an effort to get rid of "this Russia thing." The result was the appointment of special prosecutor Robert Mueller who indicted former campaign manager Paul Manafort and his aide Rick Gates. According to NBC News, Mueller has also amassed enough evidence to charge Michael Flynn, Trump's short-lived national security adviser.
Trump claimed allegations of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia were "fake news." Then came the indictment of George Papadopoulos, a former foreign policy aide who says he spoke to a Russian about getting "dirt" on Hillary Clinton.
Trump, who has boasted having "one of the greatest memories of all time," said he couldn't "recall much" about a 2016 meeting in which he appeared in a photograph with Papadopoulos.
Now Trump has a new defense, offered by surrogates in Congress and Fox News.
"Risk of a Coup"
"We are at risk of a coup d'e'tat in this country if we allow an unaccountable person with no oversight to undermine the duly elected president of the United States," Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) said in a Capitol Hill speech Wednesday, according to The Hill. "That is precisely what is happening right now with the indisputable conflicts of interest that are present with Mr. Mueller and others at the Department of Justice."
Along with Congressmen Louie Gohmert (R-Texas) and Andy Biggs (R-Arizona), Gaetz co-sponsored a resolution last week that questions Mueller's neutrality. Capitol Hill Republicans claim the ongoing Trump-Russia investigation is compromised because Mueller was the head of the FBI when the Obama administration approved the sale of the Uranium One mining firm to the Russian atomic energy agency.
The Uranium One story, it must be said, has replaced "Benghazi" as the conservative conspiracy theory du jour for a good reason: The Uranium One story does have the whiff of Clintonian corruption.
People associated with Uranium One donated an astonishing $145 million to the Clinton Foundation, mostly before and during Hillary Clinton's 2008 presidential run, according to the Washington Post. In addition, Bill Clinton received $500,000 from a Russian bank to give a speech at a conference in Moscow in 2011.
What the Uranium One story doesn't have is any evidence of wrongdoing or bias or conflict of interest by Robert Mueller. The Treasury Department was the lead agency that headed the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, which approved the investment, according to CNN.
There is no evidence that the Uranium One sale violated any laws or harmed the United States.
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See original here
By SemDem
This would be considered a scandal at any other time under any other presidency.
Donald Trump, who just announced to everyone that he trusts a former KGB agent over all 17 American intelligence agencies, is allowing the former head of KGB counter-intelligence to be handed the keys to US Embassy security in Moscow.
Mr. Viktor Budanov and his son Dmitry run Elite Security Holdings, which was just awarded the $2.83 million contract to handle security for not only the Embassy, but US consulates in several cities to include St. Petersburg.
The contract and background of the firm was reported this past Friday in Kommersant, a Russian-language newspaper distributed in the United Kingdom.
Mr. Budanov was a Soviet spy who became the director of the KGB's counter-intelligence division, and also headed the KGB branch in East Germany in the late 1980s. During that time, a young KGB officer named Vladimir Putin reported to him.
Even more maddening: Budanov worked with Britain's most infamous Soviet double agent, Mr. Kim Philby, after Philby defected to the USSR in 1963. According to UK court proceedings, Budanov handled sensitive operations like teaching Bulgarian agents how to kill dissidents.
The UK Telegraph tried to seek answers from Rex Tillerson's State Department on how it was okay that someone with Budanov's background, who might just pose a significant "security or intelligence risk" to the United States, be allowed to provide security at the US Embassy.
T he State Department said "no comment".
Also troubling is the fact that Mr. Budanov was fiercely loyal to Putin and an outspoken critic of the United States.
This piece was reprinted by OpEd News with permission or license. It may not be reproduced in any form without permission or license from the source.
Canada and Canadians should be celebrating. Against all odds, Syria has all but defeated Daesh. Reverend Andrew Ashdown summarized recent developments in these words:
Excellent news that the Syrian Army has liberated the last ISIS held town in Syria, Abu Kamal, on the Iraqi border. And been able to meet up with Iraqi forces. Impressive advances. Meanwhile, western-backed Al Qaeda groups in the Damascus suburbs continue to shell central areas of the city on a daily basis causing death, destruction and fear. Difficult to counter because of the extensive network of tunnels being used by terrorist groups under the city, and the civilians they are holding as human shields. Enormous respect for the resilience of the city's population, and the Syrian Army that is trying to protect them.[1]
But Canada and Canadians are not celebrating these victories of Peace and Justice over War and Terrorism.
The forbidden truth, concealed by totalitarian propaganda messaging, is that Canada continues to support the very terrorists that it publicly condemns. The Truth is "forbidden" because whereas Canada projects an image of peace and humanitarianism, its foreign policy is barbaric. Canada's foreign policy is anti-humanitarian, anti-democratic, anti-human rights, anti-everything, even as it is pro- war and terrorism.
The truth would set us on a course compatible with international law, not contemptuous of it. It would reinforce our sovereignty, and it would give meaning to the words "Never Again", whereas criminal war lies will continue to give us "Again and Again": more vacuous vilifications, more fear-mongering, more war, more poverty, more death, more disease, more refugees, more of everything that War imposes on us and others every time.
All of the imperial lies against Syria and Syrians have been exposed. All of the evidence-free allegations have been discarded. Since the beginning of the war on Syria, imperialists have committed all of the crimes that they continue to falsely project onto Syria and Syrians. To what end? To further an agenda of international lawlessness, high crimes, war, and terrorism.
(Image by Global Research) Details DMCA
Baseless vilification campaigns against Syria continue to override common sense. Whereas it is commendable that the Syrian government signed the Paris climate accord, it is a sign of our government's absolute moral bankruptcy that Environment Minister Catherine McKenna should feel compelled to apologize for "praising Syria".
Syria and its allies have been fighting, and winning, a just war against terrorism. Canada and its allies are still scampering about looking for and creating fake pretexts to inflict further misery on Syria and the world.
Syria and its martyrs have earned the respect of the world. The Canadian government and its propaganda apparatus have not.
Note
[1] Reverend Andrew Ashdown, Facebook commentary, 8 November, 2017.
The original source of this article is Global Research
Copyright Mark Taliano, Global Research, 2017
(Article changed on November 12, 2017 at 22:56)
(Article changed on November 14, 2017 at 23:26)
The US, EU countries, and Israel are terrorist in the eyes of the Islamist President of Turkey and Ayatollah of Iran. But the Turkish media like to repeat this statement below in every news or article for the readers to read in the hope they will dislike PKK Kurdish forces: 'The PKK is listed as a terrorist organization by Turkey, Israel, the European Union, and the United States.'
If the US, EU countries, and Israel are terrorist, how they can call PKK terrorist? It is only to help ease the Turkish madness toward themselves. It works; they are selling weapons to Turks to kill civilians and accepting Turkish explanation that 'Everyone Is a Terrorist' who wants freedom and peace from Turkish murderers.
Turkish army lost the war to PKK Kurdish forces on Zagros Mountain range from the Black Sea to Northern Iran-Iraq border and now President Erdogan's son-in-laws are manufacturing bomb-laden drone to be used against the PKK forces instead of using Turkish armed forces.
Turkish President Erdogan and his family must be ready to take revenge from PKK forces for the generation to come. PKK could use the bomb-laden drone to kill President Erdogan and his family members too. The rule of war is you kill others, then you should be ready to be killed by others too. You can not be protected anymore like before.
PKK is an organization that will take revenge. Anyone dares to kill PKK members, they should be prepared to be killed by the PKK forces. PKK members are working together as family members. And now they have the technology to use bomb-laden drones too.
Turkish President Erdogan is thinking that he will get away with murder. He hopes to stay in power for many generations to come. But bomb-laden drones can do the job anytime. They do not need to wait for the generation to come. You can fly the bomb-laden drone in the Ankara-Turkey too.
The world is changing rapidly; no one is secure anymore. The rapid technology development can help or harm people.
Indeed, PKK has every right to use any means for self-defense.
References
In Erdogan's Turkey, Everyone Is a Terrorist
click here
Erdogan: The US is 'sheltering a terrorist'
click here
Erdogan questions why U.S. has armed Syrian Kurdish 'terrorists,' disputes claims of dictatorship
click here
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From Counterpunch
The political hypocrisy of crony capitalism -- touting market capitalism while making taxpayers fund corporate welfare -- is a rare and unfortunate case of bipartisan consensus. Republicans openly embrace it, but many Democrats also fall prey to government-guaranteed corporate capitalism when they believe it to be politically expedient.
Maybe these examples will get you steamed enough to tell your members of Congress -- "enough already!"
Jeff Bezos recently launched a bidding war pitting cities against one another for Amazon's second headquarters. Imagine shelling out at least 7 billion taxpayer dollars in return for Amazon's unenforceable promise of 50,000 jobs and $5 billion in capital investment.
The bidding frenzy with the taxpayers' money, without a taxpayer referendum, should be an embarrassment to the mayors who are bidding for Amazon's business. Mayor Jeff Cheney of Frisco, Texas (population 160,000) wants to build the city around Amazon and its taxpayer-funded entitlements. Philadelphia's officials have offered a slew of tax incentives for Amazon's empty promises. Never mind that existing businesses would continue to pay taxes that are waived for a giant company that is emptying out property tax-paying Main Street, USA.
So far, Amazon has managed to flim-flam local leaders across North America. GT Bynum, Tulsa's Mayor, is doing somersaults. No problem with tax escapes. "Whatever it takes," he assures them. From the Mayor of Washington, DC to the Mayor of Ottawa, Canada, cities are promising whatever it takes to bring this predatory-pricing Moloch to their city.
Egging them on before the October 15, 2017 deadline for submissions, Bezos' spokesman, Adam Sedo, imperiously declared: "We invited cities to think big, and we are starting to see their creativity."
San Jose, California's Mayor Sam Liccardo said "no way." In a column printed by the Wall St. Journal, Liccardo wrote: "My city won't be offering incentives to Amazon. Why? Because they are a bad deal for taxpayers. With many subsidies, the jobs a company brings to an area don't generate revenues commensurate with public expenditures." He cites the cost to Boston's taxpayers for luring GE's headquarters from Connecticut to be $181,000 for every job promised. Iowa, he added, gave Apple $213 million in tax escapes to locate a 50-job data center in Waukee, IA.
Besides, wrote the forthright Mayor Liccardo, the presence of a skilled workforce, good schools and infrastructure "play a far larger role in determining boards' corporate location decisions."
"Why are they doing this whole dog and pony show?" asks Matthew Gardner, from the nonpartisan Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy. "They would like a package of tax incentives for something they were going to do anyway." Professor Art Rolnick of the University of Minnesota went so far as to call Amazon's bidding wars "blackmail."
Meanwhile, Emperor Jeff Bezos, the world's richest man, gets to sit back and watch his "candidates" fight it out.
A Taiwanese giant, Foxconn, the builder of Apple's iPhones in China, enjoys a similar advantage. To build a flat-screen plant, by sheer coincidence, in House Speaker Paul Ryan's district, Ryan's buddy, Governor Scott Walker, compelled his Republican legislature to cobble together a $3 billion taxpayer-funded package for an unenforceable promise of 13,000 jobs (from an initial 8,000 jobs after more taxpayer cash was assured).
The whole deal, repeatedly trumpeted by Trump, with a company notorious for not following through on previous deals elsewhere, was pushed on Wisconsin's elected officials by funding from the extreme right-wing Charles Koch Foundation and the Bradley Foundation.
Not to be outdone, Trump's energy secretary, Rick Perry, is pushing $3.7 billion in loan guarantees to the failing, long-delayed, red-ink doused Vogtle Nuclear Power Plant in Georgia. Add this sum to the $8.3 billion already extended in taxpayer-guaranteed loans to this "boondoggle" and still the New York Times reports that these guarantees "might fall short of what will be required to complete the costly reactors."
These corporate interests see American taxpayers as a limitless honey pot for their giant, bungling, conniving businesses. At the same time, Trump's director of management and budget, Mick Mulvaney, constantly justifies ruthless cuts to important public programs by citing taxpayers' rights. Apparently, these rights are not applicable to protecting taxpayers from predatory big-business executives hungry for corporate welfare that gets Mulvaney's regular approval.
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The GOP does not have a Judge Roy Moore problem. It has a Judge Moore's problem. That's plural for a reason. Moore is hardly an aberration in GOP ranks. In the past two decades the list of GOP governors, congresspersons, and state and local officials who have been accused of, convicted of, and either summarily dumped from office or resigned reads like a who's of a roster sheet of sexual deviants. The long list of GOP sexual rogues has engaged in sexual molestation, rape, pedophilia, pornography trading, peeping tomism, and every sort of internet sexual trading, pandering and solicitation imaginable.
GOP Senate and party leaders sweat bullets over Moore in part because he is a political embarrassment and a potential lethal political liability with the 2018 mid-terms around the corner. Moore in office, and in the Senate, is a direct threat to their shakiest of shaky grips on the Senate. They are toying with every desperate political trick and tactic in the book to get rid of him. That includes: finding a write-in candidate, delaying the December 12 special election, and the even more longshot tact of moving to deny him a seat or expel him if he wins the Senate race.
That's only part of the reason the GOP sniffs deep danger in Moore. He casts the ugly and sordid public glare back on the GOP's long history of being a safe hideout for packs of sexual deviants. Moore is yet another reminder of what has been standard operating procedure for the GOP's family values, bible thumping moralists who have previously gotten caught with their pants down.
In nearly all cases when the sexual deviancy, profligacy, philandering, abhorrent fetishes, and pedophilia of GOP notables is exposed, the word that instantly comes to mind is hypocrisy, with a capital H. And, in nearly all cases, the news of their misdeeds quickly blew over. They were not endlessly pounded by Democrats for their acts.
This stands in stark contrast to the virtual crucifixion of former North Carolina Democratic Senator John Edwards (and for a time, top Democratic presidential contender) after the revelation that he had an affair and fathered a child out of it. With Edwards there was even some talk of a criminal prosecution, as a spin off from the infidelity and out of wedlock child fathering. The party has repeatedly whipsawed Democrats for being the loose, anything goes, under miners of family values by touting gay marriage, abortion, and Planned Parenthood. These have become in the GOP hit lexicon code words for the "permissiveness" that then GOP presidential candidate Richard Nixon lambasted Democrats for in 1968. He parlayed that attack into a White House win.
In the years since then, GOP presidents, presidential candidates, and nearly every GOP officer holder, or would-be officeholder used Nixon's morals script to win and hold office, and tar and slander Democrats as apologists for immorality. Despite the bad behavior of legions of GOP officials, the GOP has firmly imprinted family values defenders as its exclusive preserve. It will not give up the morality preserve without a fight.
Moore himself is a near textbook example of that. He has virtually told GOP leaders to stuff it. He will not step down. He has legions of local GOP operatives and party officials in Alabama and in other parts who passionately defend him, and finger point the usual suspects, Obama, Clinton, the liberal media, and put-up vengeful women out to torpedo the candidacy of a staunch conservative.
GOP Senate leaders are indignant and rage at Moore because he's a huge political albatross. They are stone silent though about how the Moore's of the present and past have been so pervasive a fixture in the GOP. And worse, how GOP elected officials have led the charge against such things as transgender bathrooms and pornography, while themselves being outed for fetishes with pornography and child sex. This isn't much different than the GOP's monumental two-faced posture on race. It has perfected the fine art of racial assault through the deft use of code words, slogans, and double speak to win and keep its hold on state and national offices while pretending to be the party that is color blind and race neutral.
The beauty of the Moore flap beyond making the GOP squirm in trying to cut and run from another alleged sexual deviant in its ranks is that it exposes a political vulnerability of the GOP. That's important in the next round of GOP initiated culture wars over abortion, transgender bathrooms, and strengthening LGBT protections.
Whether the Democrats chose to make an issue over the Moore's in the GOP or not is less important than the fact that the GOP beyond scrambling to protect its political turf
has no answer for them. And Moore and the Moore's in the GOP will always take great comfort in that.
Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. His latest book is, The impeachment of President Trump? (Amazon Kindle) will be released in August. He is a weekly co-host of the Al Sharpton Show on Radio One. He is the host of the weekly Hutchinson Report on KPFK 90.7 FM Los Angeles and the Pacifica Network.
Prime Minister Binali Yildirim Saturday (November 11) denied Turkey's involvement in an alleged plot involving former U.S security adviser Michael Flynn to kidnap U.S.-based controversial cleric Fetullah Gulen, allegedly behind last year's coup attempt to overthrow President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
Extraditing Gulen is a major priority for President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
In an interview with CNN television host Fareed Zakaria, Yildirim said Turkey was expecting the White House to extradite Gulen. However, "we see that there is no signal [through] which extradition will occur," said Yildirim.
When asked if Flynn had given any assurances to Turkey, Yildirim said: "No, we are not dealing with Michael Flynn, we are dealing with the government of United States."
The Wall Street Journal reported Friday, special counsel Robert Mueller is investigating Michael Flynn and his son's alleged plan to forcibly remove Gulen from the United States and deliver him to Turkey.
Flynn, who is President Trump's former national-security adviser, and his son Michael Flynn Jr. were allegedly were involved in a plan to deliver Fethullah Gulen to the Turkish government, which views Gulen as a political enemy and has pressed the U.S. for his extradition, the Journal reported. In exchange, Flynn and Flynn Jr. would be paid as much as $15 million.
Flynn -- who was forced out of his White House job this year after revelations that he had misled officials about his conversations with the Russian ambassador -- reportedly discussed the plan with Turkish government representatives last December. The meeting caught the attention of FBI, who have questioned at least four people about it.
The Journal quoted one person who spoke to the FBI as saying that the alleged discussions included transporting Pennsylvania-based Gulen on a private jet to the Turkish prison island Imrali. Turkish officials, according to the Journal, first raised the possibility of removing Gulen from the country by force in an earlier meeting that took place in September.
Flynn had publicly supported Gulen's extradition in an op-ed published on The Hill -- a U.S. political website -- on November 8, the U.S. presidential election day, according to Zakaria.
Yildirim said the Turkish justice minister was in contact with his U.S. counterpart regarding Turkey's extradition request. "They were in communication. They are still in communication to provide some progress on that matter."
He compared the defeated coup attempt in Turkey to the September 11 attacks in New York, adding that Turkey was the first country to offer help and send its army to Afghanistan to fight the U.S. war on terror.
"We didn't ask who was behind this. The United States said this is Al-Qaeda behind of this attack and Al-Qaeda is responsible. Nobody asked the United States is there any evidence that Al-Qaeda did so," he said.
Flynn's top attorney in a statement, on November 10, called the allegations "outrageous" and "false".
Flynn, who only lasted 24 days as Trump's national-security adviser, has been a key figure in Mueller's Russia investigation.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has accused FETO and its leader Gulen plotting the July 15, 2016 attempted coup, which left 250 people killed and nearly 2,200 injured.
Turkish-US relations
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From The Intelligencer
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Some of humanity's most primordial stories involve flooding: The tales of Noah, and before that Gilgamesh, tell what happens when the water starts to rise and doesn't stop. But for the 10,000 years of human civilization, we've been blessed with a relatively stable climate, and hence flooding has been an exceptional terror. As that blessing comes to an end with our reckless heating of the planet, the exceptional is becoming all too normal, as residents of Houston and South Florida and Puerto Rico found out already this fall.
Hurricanes Harvey, Irma and Maria provide a dramatic backdrop for the story Jeff Goodell tells in "The Water Will Come": If there was ever a moment when Americans might focus on drainage, this is it. But this fine volume (which expands on his reporting in Rolling Stone) concentrates on the slower and more relentless toll that water will take on our cities and our psyches in the years to come. Those who pay attention to global warming have long considered that its effects on hydrology -- the way water moves around the planet -- may be even more dramatic than the straightforward increases in temperature.
To review the basic physics: Warm air holds more water vapor than cold air does, which means you get more evaporation and hence drought in arid areas, and more rainfall and hence floods in wet ones. (Harvey, for example, was the greatest rainfall event in American history, the kind of deluge possible only in a warmer world.) Meanwhile, heat melts ice: Greenland and the Antarctic are vast stores of what would otherwise be ocean, and now they're beginning to surrender that water back to the sea.
These effects were somewhat harder to calculate than other impacts of climate change. In particular, scientists were slow to understand how aggressively the poles would melt, and hence the main international assessments, until recently, forecast relatively modest rises in sea level: three feet, perhaps, by century's end. That's enough to cause major problems, but perhaps not insuperable ones -- richer cities could probably build seawalls and other barriers to keep themselves above the surface. Yet new assessments of the disintegration of glaciers, and more data from deep in the Earth's past, have convinced many scientists that we could be looking at double or triple that rate of sea level rise in the course of the century. Which may take what would have been a major problem and turn it into a largely insoluble new reality.
Consider Miami and Miami Beach, where Goodell has concentrated much of his reporting. Built on porous limestone or simply mounds of mud dredged from the surrounding sea, low-lying South Florida streets already flood regularly at especially high tides. The simple facts, however, haven't stopped the Miami real estate boom: When Irma hit, more than 20 huge cranes were at work building high-rises (and two of them toppled).
Goodell manages to track down the city's biggest real estate developer, Jorge Perez, at a museum opening. He was not, he said, worried about the rising sea because "I believe that in twenty or thirty years, someone is going to find a solution for this. If it is a problem for Miami, it will also be a problem for New York and Boston -- so where are people going to go?" (He added, with a Trumpish level of narcissism, "Besides, by that time I'll be dead, so what does it matter?")
Goodell dutifully tracks down the people who are working on those "solutions" -- the Miami Beach engineers who are raising city streets and buildings; their Venetian counterparts who are building a multibillion-dollar series of inflatable booms that can hold back storm tides. In every case the engineering is dubious, not to mention hideously expensive. And more to the point, it's all designed for the relatively mild two- or three-foot rises in sea level that used to constitute the worst-case scenarios. Such tech is essentially useless against the higher totals we now think are coming, a fact that boggles most of the relevant minds. When a University of Miami geologist explains to some Florida real estate agents that he thinks sea level rise may top 15 feet by 2100, Goodell describes one "expensively dressed broker who was seated near me" who sounded "like a six-year-old on the verge of a temper tantrum. ... 'This can't be a fear-fest,' she protested. 'Why is everyone picking on Miami?'"
No one, obviously, is picking on Miami. But the developed world is definitely picking on the low-lying islands of the Pacific and Indian oceans (Goodell gives sharp descriptions of the imperiled Marshalls and the outsize role the nation played in international climate negotiations). The vast majority of people at risk live in places such as Bangladesh and Burma, where rising seas are already swamping farmland and forcing internal migration, mostly of people who have burned so little fossil fuel that they have played no serious part in causing the crisis we now face.
There are precisely two answers that give some hope to a world facing this greatest of all challenges. The first is to stop burning fossil fuels. If we moved with great speed toward 100 percent renewable energy, we might still hold sea level rise to a meter or two. And this is now a realistic possibility: The rapid fall in the price of wind and solar power over the past few years means we could conceivably make the transition in time. That's precisely what President Trump is now preventing (and to be fair, it's more than President Barack Obama wanted to do, either -- Goodell's extensive interviews with the former president capture both his fine rhetoric and his sad policy waffling). At this point, the world seems more likely to stumble along a path of slow conversion to clean energy, guaranteeing that the great ice sheets will crumble.
The other way forward is to adapt to the unpreventable rise in sea level. Goodell describes a few of the plans for floating buildings and such, but if you want a real sense of what this option looks like, you're better off reading Kim Stanley Robinson's massive and massively enjoyable novel "New York 2140," published this year. Robinson is described as a science fiction writer, but in this case he's more like a political scientist, describing a New York a century from now that's been largely inundated but where people inhabit (often with surprising good cheer) the ever-shifting inter-tidal zone. Of course, this metro-size version of the Swiss Family Robinson happens only after two great pulses of sea level rise have killed off a huge percentage of the human population, so it's not the ideal scenario.
Or we could take the path laid out by Miami Beach Mayor Philip Levine at the 100th anniversary of the founding of Miami Beach. "If, 30 or 40 years ago, I'd told you you were going to be able to communicate with your friends around the world with a phone you carried around in your pocket," he said in 2015, "you would think I was out of my mind." Thirty or 40 years from now, he promised, "we're going to have innovative solutions to fight back against sea-level rise that we cannot even imagine today."
Forget building the ark, Noah -- we've got an app for that.
From Smirking Chimp
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On Wednesday, November 8, just as President Trump was clinching new business deals with the repressive Communist government of China, the Trump administration announced its new rules rolling back President Obama's opening with Cuba. The new regulations restricting travel and trade with the Caribbean island will make it once again illegal for Americans to travel to Cuba without a special license from the Treasury Department, and will dramatically reduce the number of Americans traveling there.
The regulations, which include a list of 180 banned entities, are supposed to punish hotels, stores and other businesses tied to the Cuban military and instead direct economic activity toward businesses controlled by regular Cuban citizens. But during our visit to the island on a 40-person delegation organized by the peace group CODEPINK, we found that Cuba's small private businesses, the very sector that the Trump administration wants to encourage, are already feeling the blow.
In 2014 President Obama announced a new opening with Cuba. While the U.S. sanctions imposed on the island following the 1959 revolution can only be lifted by Congress, Obama used his executive power to renew diplomatic relations and relax restrictions on travel and trade. Cuba, which already has a large tourist sector with guests from Europe and Canada, geared up for a "tsunami" of American visitors coming on newly authorized commercial flights and cruise ships.
The Obama policy of engagement coincided with a new Cuban policy of allowing Cubans to leave their miserably paid state jobs to try their hand at starting up their own small businesses. Hundreds of thousands of Cubans jumped at the opportunity, many flocking to businesses catering to tourists. Cuba became the fastest growing site for AirBnB, as thousands of Cuban families spruced up extra bedrooms in their homes to accommodate foreign guests. Others took their life savings, or borrowed money from relatives abroad, to open small restaurants in their homes called paladares.
All over downtown Havana, we saw signs of this small business renaissance, with refurbished rooms for rent and boutique eateries boasting live salsa music and high-quality meals for about $10. State-run hotels and restaurants, notorious for bad food and bad service, now face competition from well-run, family businesses.
While Trump's rollback of Obama's opening just went into effect, he announced his plans back in June before a crowd of hardline anti-Communist Cuban-Americans. Then in September came another setback for U.S.-Cuba relations, when the United States said that US personnel in Cuba had been subjected to mysterious sonic attacks that affected the health of 24 diplomats. The U.S. government withdrew non-essential personnel and diplomat family members from the US Embassy in Havana. On September 29, the State Department put out a "Cuba Travel Warning." It said that because the U.S. Embassy employees' safety was at risk and the U.S. had been unable to identify the source of the attacks, "we believe U.S. citizens may also be at risk and warm them not to travel to Cuba."
All the Cubans we talked to thought the sonic attack was a bunch of baloney. From taxi drivers to government officials to dissidents, Cubans told our group that the whole episode was concocted to justify turning back the clock on Obama's de'tente with Cuba. "Maybe they had hearing losses because the reggaeton music here is so loud," joked one taxi driver. "But to say Cuba is unsafe is a lie. Cuba is the safest country in the world. You can walk around here alone at 2a.m. in the morning and no one will bother you."
Between the new restrictions and the travel warning, Cuba's burgeoning private sector has already felt what Cubans call "the Trump effect." Jose Colome, owner of Starbien private restaurant in Havana that employs 35 people, shook his head in disgust. "We had 48 reservations from US tourist groups booked in the past three months; 30 of them cancelled. "
Proximity Cuba, a travel agency catering to U.S. university groups, lost half its business in one fell swoop. "We had developed wonderful programs for U.S. students in Cuba. Suddenly, the administrators read the travel warning, and got cold feet and cancelled," said Proximity Cuba's Director Rodrigo Gonzalez.
Even the non-tourist sector is feeling the effects. The agricultural cooperative we visited in Artemisa province was anxious to purchase US tractors to replace their ancient Russian models, but now worry that the deal will fall through. "It is only natural for us to buy agricultural inputs from the US market 90 miles away," said Maria del Carmen of the National Association of Small Farmers. "Trump's policies and the continuing blockade of Cuba are hurting our farmers."
On November 1st, for the 26th year in a row, the UN General Assembly voted overwhelmingly to condemn the US embargo against Cuba. The vote this year was 191 nations against the embargo vs two in favor: the United States and Israel. The embargo, which was first imposed in the 1960s, is seen by the overwhelming majority of the world's nations as an outdated and failed foreign policy that has only served to punish the Cuban people and isolate the United States internationally.
Just before the UN vote, 10 U.S. Senators, led by Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT), sent a letter to President Trump saying: "Our failed embargo against Cuba has been repeatedly and publicly condemned by the international community as ineffective and harmful to the people of Cuba. The longer we maintain this outdated Cold War policy the more our international and regional credibility suffers. The overwhelming majority of Americans, including Cuban-Americans, and Cubans, including Cuban entrepreneurs and many dissidents, oppose the embargo and favor engagement of the United States with Cuba."
"The United States is punishing Cuba because it says our government is undemocratic," Dr, Aduabez Tabiada Zamora, a member of Cuba's National Assembly, told our group. "Yet year after year, the entire world community condemns this mean-spirited policy. Is that democratic?"
The reversal of the Cuba opening is a victory for a small handful of southern Florida officials like Senator Marco Rubio and a small group of Cuban-Americans, but it is a major blow for diplomacy, people-to-people ties, and most of all, Cuba's new private businesses.
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"Kall's well-researched book integrates knowledge from philosophy to economics and ecology. He shows us how, all over the world and across many fields of endeavor, we humans are organizing new and rewarding ways of acting for the common good. His book is both idealistic and realistic and gives us a vision of what we all most need -- hope for the future"
Mary Pipher, psychologist, and #1 New York Times best-selling author of Reviving Ophelia and Writing to Change the World
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Melissa Lord sings "America the Beautiful" at the first Mont Belvieu Community Veterans Day Celebration. Lord dedicated the song to her brother, a retired Marine first sergeant.
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From The Hill
Based on publicly available evidence there is a compelling case that special counsel Robert Mueller could indict Russian dictator Vladimir Putin for crimes involving multiple violations of American law, as the U.S. once indicted former Panamanian strongman Manuel Noriega.
Alternatively, in a course of action I would recommend Mueller consider, he could name Putin as an unindicted co-conspirator for any crimes that could be documented with facts and detailed under law.
All Americans, including all Republicans serving in Congress, must fully understand the dangerous implications of the continuing covert war waged against American democracy, in violation of American law, by Russian operatives acting under the command and control of Putin.
Were Mueller and his special counsel team to name Putin as an unindicted co-conspirator, and publicly detail the full list of crimes that have been committed during these attacks against American democracy, they would offer America and the world a breathtaking case that every democratic citizen must fully understand.
Reasonable people hope that relations between America and Russia can be restored to normalcy and mutually beneficial relations can be established between our nations. This can only happen when Putin ends his war against American democracy, which American intelligence, counterintelligence and law enforcement agencies warn is continuing today. These crimes appear designed to continue against our national unity, national security and national elections in 2018 and 2020, with ever-growing attacks and ever-increasing violations of American law.
Robert Mueller and his special counsel team offer the great bulwark of protection and defense against this attack against our country by a hostile power that wishes us ill. It is the truth that sets our nation free and the law that protects our nation's security as much as guns, bombs and courageous troops.
For these reasons Congress should make it clear that any effort by President Trump to fire Mueller or grant pardons to those who are found guilty or suspected of crimes involving this Russian attack against America would constitute an impeachable offense. The president's supporters in Congress state that this will not happen. Hopefully they are right, but the fact that these actions would bring the most severe legal and constitutional consequences should be made crystal clear to the president and his advisers today.
Some who travel in Trump circles are facing a cold Russian winter in the American justice system. There have already been two indictments and one major plea bargain. Almost certainly there will be more of both in the coming weeks and months.
There is no need to list the well-known names who have been the subject of speculation, and there is a need to reiterate that no guilt or innocence has yet been determined about anyone.
However, it is self-destructive and damaging to America for the president to constantly attack, criticize, berate or undermine the work of legal or congressional authorities investigating the Russian crimes against democracy.
It would be an abuse of power for the president to pressure the Justice Department or FBI to initiate a wrongful attack against a political opponent such as Hillary Clinton. Readers should revisit the articles of impeachment against Richard Nixon, passed by the House Judiciary Committee in 1974, to understand the grave implications of this presidential conduct.
The fact is: Putin hated Clinton. The truth is: Putin worked to elect Trump. Any lie to the contrary does no service to the political or legal interests of the president. Nor do partisan Republican actions in Congress that misuse taxpayer money to continue legislative vendettas against Clinton, which will not succeed in diverting the crucial investigations of the Russian attacks against America and do not provide any defense for those under suspicion in them.
Robert Mueller and his special counsel team are the vital bulwarks of American democracy under attack from Russian aggression. The innocent should be cleared. The guilty should be convicted. The truth should be revealed. The Russian attacks must end.
From WSWS
In television interviews and an open letter to political supporters, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders has renewed his pledge of eternal fealty to the second-oldest capitalist party in the world. He sent out the mass email under the title, "Revitalizing the Democratic Party" on Monday, on the eve of the off-year elections in New Jersey and Virginia, which the Democrats won by wide margins.
The statement is the first major response from Sanders to the revelations by former interim Democratic National Committee chair Donna Brazile about the takeover of the DNC by the Hillary Clinton campaign in August 2015, six months before the first votes were cast in the contest for the Democratic presidential nomination.
The joint fundraising agreement between the Clinton campaign and the DNC gave Clinton veto power over DNC appointments and actions, even though the leading party body was required by its own rules to remain neutral in the nomination contest between Clinton, Sanders and several other candidates.
Rather than condemn the blatant collusion, which led to the DNC putting its weight behind Clinton at every point during the nomination fight, Sanders cited Brazile's revelations as an argument for uniting with the former Clinton aides who now run the DNC, like the current DNC chair Thomas Perez, who was secretary of labor in the Obama administration and backed Clinton for the Democratic presidential nomination.
Sanders wrote, "What the recently released book excerpt from former interim DNC Chair Donna Brazile made clear is that unless we get our act together, we are not going to be effective in either taking on Donald Trump or in stopping the extremist right-wing Republican agenda.
"In order to do that, we need to rethink and rebuild the Democratic Party. We need a Democratic Party that opens its doors to new people, new energy and new ideas. We need a Democratic Party that is truly a grassroots party, where decisions are made from the bottom up, not from the top down."
Contrary to Sanders, the Democratic Party is owned and operated by Wall Street, not by the American people. It is one of the two capitalist parties, controlled by the financial aristocracy, which exist to give the illusion of political choice in elections, while both carry out the instructions of the billionaires.
This perspective is not a new one for Sanders. Despite his nominal "independence" from the two-party system, he sought the Democratic presidential nomination while pledging from the outset to support the eventual Democratic nominee. Once defeated by Clinton, he threw his full support to the candidate who was the favorite of Wall Street and the military-intelligence apparatus.
His main task during the 2016 campaign, which continues today, is to give this corrupt party of corporate America a populist and even "socialist" gloss. In his long email statement, accordingly, Sanders outlined a series of cosmetic reforms that he urged his supporters to demand from DNC Chair Perez and the Democratic National Committee Unity Reform Commission, which is comprised of former Clinton and Sanders supporters as well as additional members selected by Perez.
These include reducing, but not eliminating, superdelegates, opening up participation in primaries and caucuses, and making the DNC's own procedures and budget more transparent. In support of this pathetic effort, Sanders urged his supporters to sign a petition to Perez urging action on the reform proposals at the commission's final meeting on December 8-9. Significantly, he said nothing in the email about the decision by Perez to remove several Sanders supporters from the bylaws and rules committees of the DNC.
Sanders continued in this vein in a series of interviews after the Democratic election victories on Tuesday. Interviewed by Anderson Cooper on CNN Wednesday, he praised Donna Brazile for displaying "an enormous amount of courage" in exposing the backroom deal between the DNC and the Clinton campaign, but declined to describe the nomination campaign as "rigged." He continued, "Anderson, to be very honest with you, my job, our job is to go forward, is do everything we can to defeat this right-wing agenda of the Republican Party in the Trump administration, not to look backwards. "
On Thursday, Sanders spoke at length with the Washington Post about his call for reform of the DNC, including changes in how the DNC decides on financial backing for candidates for local, state and federal office. "We don't have transparency," he said. "This is tough stuff, but it means to say that you can't have a few people in a meeting saying: Well, we can't support the guy in Kansas. We can't support the guy in Montana, or whatever. That process has to be much more open."
In other words, the "reform" of the Democratic Party is a grubby struggle over which candidates will receive the money doled out by the DNC from its fundraising from the "millionaires and billionaires" whose support Sanders claimed to disavow.
According to the Post, Sanders told them that the Brazile revelations should not become a distraction. "The media likes all the divisiveness, and Clinton versus Sanders -- fine," he said, but he did not want to pursue the issue further.
These comments from Sanders do not represent any shift in his orientation, but only establish more definitively that he is continuing the political course set during his campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination. Shocked by the mass support from young people and sections of workers for his (purely nominal) pretensions to socialism, Sanders seeks to divert this leftward movement among working people back within the straitjacket of the corporate-controlled two-party system, to establish a roadblock against any break by the working class from the Democratic Party.
From The Guardian
There's an urgent need for reform for disclosure of how much money mighty political lobbyists are giving lawmakers who are writing relevant tax legislation
When powerful lobbyists work hard over the coming weeks to convince Republican lawmakers to change their tax package to please them, it would probably be of interest to know exactly how much campaign cash these so-called stakeholders and their industries have given or spent in recent years for the members of Congress who are writing tax laws.
But because federal disclosure laws need to be updated, it's probably too difficult to ever really know the complete answer.
An opaque system of legalized bribery and legalized extortion is not an outrageous way to characterize the state of our nation's federal campaign finance laws. Over the past few years, real campaign finance reform has gone the way of voting rights and gun control. There is no longer a bipartisan starting point where discussion and negotiation could begin. The Republican party has caved in to its right flank and put party interests ahead of the country's.
Ronald Reagan and George W Bush both renewed the Voting Rights Act during their tenure. Now Republicans would not think of undermining their strategy of voter suppression. Background checks on gun purchases used to be a basic bipartisan middle ground. Now, even those are controversial, and are characterized by powerful lobbies like the gun manufacturers or the NRA as "liberals trampling over the second amendment." The same lack of common ground is the case for campaign finance reform.
Billionaire Robert Mercer is on record as giving about $41m to federal campaigns over the past 10 years, but the reality we see clearly now in the recently released Paradise Papers is that it would be impossible to know the full amount of dark money Mercer or any other billionaire has funneled into conservative causes and white supremacist outlets -- which all act as arms of the causes and various Republicans they support.
Avoiding paying taxes and sending millions of dollars into the electoral system to advance a hate-filled agenda in secret is not a patriotic way to achieve common ground. The Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002 -- also known as McCain-Feingold -- passed the Senate with 11 Republicans supporting it, and it passed the House with 41 Republicans supporting it.
Working with my friend John McCain was an honor and a privilege, and for seven years we stuck together -- committed to working with each other and many others to pass a bipartisan reform. (I used to joke that many people started to think my first name was McCain!)
And when the law was enacted by Republican President George W Bush, he said: "I long have believed that complete and immediate disclosure of the source of campaign contributions is the best way to reform campaign finance."
Disclosure of campaign-related contributions used to be a minimum standard on which everyone could agree. But, since 2002, the supreme court issued its horrible ruling on Citizens United , and the Republican party sold out to dark money. Now, the Republicans' only goal with campaign finance is opening the floodgates as wide as they possibly will go and, sadly, many Democrats have a childish "everybody does it" approach and mistakenly think they can compete with conservative funders.
All hope is not lost, however. Just like with voting rights and gun control, campaign finance reform recently found some success at the state level, where bipartisanship can still be found if one looks closely.
One of the strongest disclosure laws in the country was just enacted in California. The California Disclose Act, which passed the California senate and assembly with bipartisan support, requires political advertisements to list the top three donors of $50,000 or more. It also prevents dark money from hiding behind middle men, by requiring donors to be listed even if their money is funneled through obscure committees.
Californians will finally be able to see clearly where hundreds of millions of dollars behind state propositions come from -- more than $473m was spent by backers and proponents on just 17 state propositions in 2016. As California assemblyman Kevin Mullin, the bill's autho r, said: "Transparency in elections is critical to our democracy and [this law] brings that transparency to California, giving our voters the opportunity to make informed decisions based on honest information."
The US Congress has an opportunity to follow California's lead. Senator Tom Udall and Representative David Price introduced a comprehensive approach to campaign finance reform in September. The We the People Democracy Reform Act of 2017 would tackle some of the most pressing challenges today pertaining to our democratic legitimacy, including campaign finance reform and the lack of transparency, but it would also go further and address extreme gerrymandering, lobbying and revolving door laws, and voter suppression.
These challenges are not mere inconveniences. They go to the very legitimacy of our democracy. As Udall has said: "Our democracy has reached a crisis point. The American people are losing faith in our electoral process and in our institutions -- because they've seen too much evidence that our government no longer answers to ordinary citizens."
For the sake of our democratic legitimacy, we need to stand up for the return of a political middle ground or starting point on campaign finance reform on something as basic as increased disclosure. Without it, passing necessary reforms is an extremely uphill challenge and the fallout of this doesn't just mean the continuation of dark money reign.
Bloody NRA
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There is a mass shooting in the US about once per day, defined by a murder of more than 4 people at a time; 307 so far this year by Nov. 8, the 312th day of the year. A little known statistic in the US about gun ownership explains everything you need to know about gun control: Each time there is a mass shooting, sales of guns go up, not down! This may seem non-sensical to people in other countries such as Australia, where I currently live. The last time there was a massacre in Australia was in Port Arthur, Tasmania in 1996, when 35 people were killed. The government immediately organized a mandatory buy-back of most of the guns in the country, and that was basically the last time it happened. People are baffled why nothing like this happens in the US. That is because foreigners do not understand how the US operates.
Dmitry Orlov wrote an article a while back about a Financial Black Hole, which sheds light on the subject. He explained it this way: "American officials and politicians are definitely puppets, controlled by corporate lobbyists [such as the NRA] and shady oligarchs. But here's a shocker: these are also puppets--controlled by the simple imperatives of profitability and wealth preservation, respectively. In fact, it's puppets all the way down. And what's at the bottom is a giant, ever-expanding, financial black hole." Orlov further explained, "it turns out that the black hole is sentient. But it is also very, very stupid. And the way it enforces its will is by destroying the minds of its puppets--by making them unable to understand certain things."
So to explain the US to foreigners I try to get them to understand that the US is very, very simple to understand, but also very, very stupid; everything is driven by profit. War is for profit, health care is for profit, education is for profit, pharmaceuticals are for profit, guns are for profit, etc. Or as Calvin Coolidge once said, "the business of America is business". It is not complicated at all, if you understand that as Orlov points out, it also destroys the minds of the people involved in this system.
Each time there is a mass shooting is a fantastic new marketing opportunity for gun companies and their puppets, the NRA. This operates in two ways: The first is to convince people that they need to be armed to protect themselves from psychotic mass murderers, who are prevalent in the US. Due to fear of being shot, many people immediately purchase guns after a massacre, thinking it will protect them. This also serves to expand gun carrying laws, such as the recent effort in Michigan to allow residents to carry firearms inside previously gun-free places such as churches, schools, bars and stadiums. Laws loosening guns laws are more likely to appear after mass shootings. As Orlov points out, it destroys their minds. But in any case there is typically a spike in gun purchases after massacres.
The second way that mass shootings are free advertising for gun companies is by demonstrating the superior lethal firepower of whatever automatic weapon was used by the shooter. Mass shooters seem to be competing for the greatest number of fatalities in one massacre. This scuttles any effort to restrict laws against purchasing automatic weapons, because mass murder requires the very best military-grade automatic weapons currently available. It would go against the free market to limit it, and the free market is the religion of the US.
While we may cringe at these facts at the level of individual shooters, it may make more sense at the national level. The current massacre of Yemen by Saudi Arabia is extremely profitable for US and UK arms companies. For example, recent headlines indicate that British arm sales to Saudi Arabia have increased by 500%. Obama and Trump each made weapons deals for $100 billion with Saudi Arabia. This is a great business opportunity for US arms manufacturers. Likewise, every mass murder in the US is just another business opportunity for US gun companies. There is no difference.
So stop looking for complicated reasons in the "disturbed psyches" of American mass shooters, or in the violence of society or video games. It is just good business.
Significant Growth Foreseen by Automotive Drivetrain Market During 2017 - 2025
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Global Automotive Drivetrain Market: MarketIntroductionA drivetrain is a group of components that provides power to the driving wheels. The major function of the drivetrain is to couple the engine that produces the power to driving wheels that consume this mechanical power. The precise component of the drivetrain varies according to the type of vehicle. For instance, the manual transmission car, automatic transmission car, front-wheel drive car, four-wheel drive off-road vehicle are the various types of vehicles available in the market.Better vehicle control in unfavorable terrains is expected to increase the demand for automotive drivetrains. For instance, in countries such as U.S., Canada, and Germany, the roads are frequently covered with snow; therefore the vehicle requires extra grip and better traction to be sufficiently under the control of the driver.A sample of this report is available upon request @Global Automotive Drivetrain Market: Market DynamicsThe primary driver of the market is the growing demand for comfort and safety in vehicles. Moreover. the increase in the vehicle production is another major driver for the automotive drivetrain market during the forecast period. For instance, The countries in APEJ such as China, India, and South Korea are the leading countries in terms of vehicle production. The market for front wheel drive vehicles have a larger share in the APEJ market, however, the rear wheel drive and the all-wheel drive vehicle are also growing at a steady rate, thus enhancing the sales for automotive drivetrain market.The increasing usage of electric vehicles is also further expected to enhance the sales for the automotive drivetrain. For instance, according to the International Energy Agency, one million electric cars were sold in 2015. The ambitious targets and policy support have reduced the vehicle costs and have also extended the vehicle range.However, the key factor restraining the growth of automotive drivetrain is the high adoption and maintenance cost of vehicles equipped with all-wheel drive vehicle. Further, the cost of all-wheel drive systems is costlier compared to conventional front wheel drive and rear wheel drive system. Moreover, the all-wheel drive systems include additional components such as driveshaft, transfer cases, and locking hubs.Automotive Drivetrain: Market SegmentationOn the basis of the vehicle type, the global automotive drivetrain market can be segmented into:Vehicle TypePassenger carsLight Commercial Vehicle(LCV)Heavy Commercial Vehicle(HCV)TrucksBusesElectric Vehicle TypeBattery Electric Vehicle (BEV)Hybrid Electric Vehicle (HEV)Plug-in-Hybrid Electric Vehicle (PHEV)On the basis of drive type, the global automotive drivetrain market can be segmented into:All-Wheel Drive (AWD) VehicleFront Wheel drive (FWD)Rear-wheel Drive (RWD)On the basis of engine location, the automotive drivetrain market can be further segmented into:Rear EngineFront EngineOn the basis of transmission, the global automotive drivetrain market can be further segmented into:Manual TransmissionAutomatic TransmissionContinuous Variable TransmissionAutomated Manual TransmissionDual-Clutch TransmissionTo view TOC of this report is available upon request @Automotive Drivetrain Market: Regional OutlookRegional coverage for automotive drivetrain market includes North America, Latin America, Europe, APEJ, Japan and the Middle East and Africa. Automotive drivetrain witnesses a high demand in APEJ because of the high investments in the region. Changing consumer perceptions in this region boost the growth of the market. Moreover, the automotive drivetrain market is expected to grow significantly in terms of revenue in North America and Europe regionAbout UsPersistence Market Research (PMR) is a third-platform research firm. Our research model is a unique collaboration of data analytics and market research methodology to help businesses achieve optimal performance.To support companies in overcoming complex business challenges, we follow a multi-disciplinary approach. At PMR, we unite various data streams from multi-dimensional sources. By deploying real-time data collection, big data, and customer experience analytics, we deliver business intelligence for organizations of all sizes.Contact UsAbhishek BudholiyaPersistence Market Research305 Broadway7th Floor, New York City,NY 10007, United States,USA Canada Toll Free: 800-961-0353Email: sales@persistencemarketresearch.comWeb:
Global Dystonia Drug Market Growth Analysis towards 2022
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Qyresearchreports include new market research report Global Dystonia Drug Sales Market Report 2017 to its huge collection of research reports.The report on the global market for Dystonia Drug tries to help stakeholders gather a proper understanding about the current trends and vulnerabilities of the market. It is made up of important information that provide a thorough insight into the global market for Dystonia Drug. This is comprised of growth drivers and restraints shaping the trajectory of the market from 2017 to 2022. The report also sheds light on the different regulatory policies likely to mold the course of the market in the next couple of years.The information has been packed in the report after complete primary and secondary research. Data related to financial records of key companies in the market has been obtained from the Dystonia Drug markets historical statistics. Further, analysts have also interviewed industry veterans and other trusted industry sources for necessary insights needed to compile the detailed report.Know More with Sample study of Report @The report banks upon market-leading analytical tools such as Porters five forces and SWOT analysis to gain an accurate understanding of the bargaining power of buyers and suppliers and the threat from new entrants and close substitutes available in the market. It also helps to figure out the opportunities and pitfalls awaiting players in the global Dystonia Drug market.To further scrutinize the global market for Dystonia Drug, the report segments it based on various parameters such as type of products and applications and geography. It also attempts to uncover the most attractive segments and regions that are considerably contributing to the growth in the market.The report provides an executive-level blueprint of the global Dystonia Drug market that comprises of profiles of the prominent companies operating in it. It studies their unique selling points (USPs) and weaknesses and key strategies as well.Browse full table of contents of Report @List of Tables and FiguresFigure United States Dystonia Drug Revenue and Growth Rate (2011-2021)Figure China Dystonia Drug Revenue and Growth Rate (2011-2021)Figure Europe Dystonia Drug Revenue and Growth Rate (2011-2021)Figure Japan Dystonia Drug Revenue and Growth Rate (2011-2021)Figure Southeast Asia Dystonia Drug Revenue and Growth Rate (2011-2021)Figure India Dystonia Drug Revenue and Growth Rate (2011-2021)Figure Global Dystonia Drug Sales and Growth Rate (2011-2021)Figure Global Dystonia Drug Revenue and Growth Rate (2011-2021)Table Global Dystonia Drug Sales of Key Manufacturers (2011-2016)Table Global Dystonia Drug Sales Share by Manufacturers (2011-2016)Figure 2015 Dystonia Drug Sales Share by ManufacturersFigure 2016 Dystonia Drug Sales Share by ManufacturersTable Global Dystonia Drug Revenue by Manufacturers (2011-2016)Table Global Dystonia Drug Revenue Share by Manufacturers (2011-2016)About UsQYResearchReports.com is an unimpeachable source of market research data for clients that comprise acclaimed SMEs, Chinese companies, private equity firms, and MNCs. We provide market research reports on various categories such as Energy, Chemicals, Alternative and Green Energy, Manufacturing, Machinery, Pharmaceuticals and Materials, and Glass.Contact usBrooklyn, NY 11230United StatesToll Free: 866-997-4948 (USA-CANADA)Tel: +1-518-621-2074Web:Email: sales@qyresearchreports.com
Rising Adoption of Voltage Controlled Oscillators in North America will Boost The Market Growth
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The demand for a varied oscillation output led to the introduction of voltage controlled oscillators. Replacement of one of the two capacitors with a varactor, with innovations in technology, led to the invention of voltage controlled oscillators. The major factor contributing to voltage controlled oscillators growth was the ability to generate oscillations with respect to the input provided as the product had more applications when compared with a conventional oscillator. The primary applications of a voltage controlled oscillators was in an electronic jamming equipment, FM modulation and for the production of different types of noise and electronic music owing to its increased demand.A sample of this report is available upon request @Voltage Controlled Oscillators operate on a specified range of operating voltage which limits its applications after a threshold voltage. Usually, the maximum voltage on which voltage controlled oscillator functions lies between 23V - 25V.Voltage Controlled Oscillators Market: Drivers and RestraintsVoltage Controlled Oscillators are smaller in size, provides high temperature stability, immunity against false signals, adjustable bandwidth and enables a programmable carrier frequency which were the limitations offered by the conventional oscillators. These enhanced features of voltage controlled oscillators are the primary factors driving its growth. The ability of the voltage controlled oscillator to generate varying frequency oscillations, with a change in input voltage, furthermore, increases its applications in industries such as military and networking. In addition to this, an increased demand for voltage controlled oscillators is accounted because of its large output frequency range.Voltage controlled oscillators produces high phase noises limiting its applications. Furthermore, introduction of high-end oscillators functioning over MEMS technology, providing enhanced features, has resulted into a reduction in adoption of voltage controlled oscillators.Voltage Controlled Oscillators Market: Market SegmentationGlobal Voltage Controlled Oscillators Market can be divided into the following segments - based on Typr, Oscillation Type and Applications.Segmentation on basis of Oscillation Type for Voltage Controlled Oscillators Market:Quartz Oscillator:Silicon Oscillator:Segmentation on basis of Oscillation Type for Voltage Controlled Oscillators Market:The major segments of Voltage Controlled Oscillators market on basis of oscillation type include:Linear or Harmonic Oscillators: The output generated by these voltage controlled oscillators are in a sinusoidal form and oscillators such as crystal and tank oscillators are categorized under this category.Relaxation Oscillators: These type of voltage controlled oscillators provides a wide range of operational frequencies and give the output in a triangular waveform.The advantages of harmonic oscillators such as higher frequency stability and enhanced accuracy for frequency control, over relaxation oscillators, accounts for its increasing demand.Segmentation on basis of Applications forVoltage Controlled Oscillators Market:The major segments of Voltage Controlled Oscillators market on basis of applications include:MilitaryConsumer ElectronicsIndustrialTelecomGlobal Voltage Controlled Oscillators Market Technology Regional OverviewAPAC is presently the most technological advanced region for voltage controlled oscillators. In addition to this, the maximum number of manufacturers and vendors are also present in APAC region. Henceforth, APAC is expected to dominate the global voltage controlled oscillators market. North America and Europe, with a comparatively fewer resources, are expected to follow APAC in the global voltage controlled oscillators market.To view TOC of this report is available upon request @Global Voltage Controlled Oscillators Key PlayersSome of the major Voltage Controlled Oscillators global players include SiTime Corp., SEIKO EPSON CORP., Texas Instruments Incorporated, ON Semiconductor, Silicon Laboratories, MACOM, Crystek Corporation, Analog Devices, Inc., BOWEI Integrated Circuits CO.,LTD. and FUJITSU.About UsFuture Market Insights is the premier provider of market intelligence and consulting services, serving clients in over 150 countries. FMI is headquartered in London, the global financial capital, and has delivery centres in the U.S. and India.U.S. Office616 Corporate Way, Suite 2-9018,Valley Cottage, ,
How fermented black beans Market will Grow in Future? Offers TMR Research 2017 - 2027
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Fermented black beans are the dull-black, wrinkled soft soybeans and that have a tint of gingery taste. Fermented black beans, commonly known as douchi in China, traditionally made from soybeans that have been dried and fermented with pepper and salt. Black beans look somewhat like small raisins and are salty, a bit bitter and sweet in taste. Fermented black beans can be stored, in air tight closed container, can be cold stored for a year. Fermented black beans are widely used for seasoning purposes and are very popular in variety of Chinese dishes, either they are stir-fried, steam cooked, or stewed at low flame. Few of the favourite ones are twice-cooked pork from Sichuan, mapo tofu, steamed pork ribs and seafood of the region such as braised mud marinated with fermented black beans. Some of the restaurants have picked fermented black beans as their special ingredient as black beans gives moist, aromatic, mouth-watering succulent flavour to the pork ribs.Global Fermented Black Beans Market: Drivers and RestraintsThe global fermented black beans market is estimated to be primarily driven by the Asia-Pacific (APEJ) region, where China is the major consumer black beans in their pork preparation since it has been one among the oldest known soy food of china and now being used all across the globe in one or the other form or preparations. Fermented black beans, commonly known as douchi in China mainly in the form of soy sauce, soybean paste or in the form of marinated mud form of fermented black beans to give it a distinct succulent black bean flavour to the entire dish.Request Report Brochure @Global Fermented Black Beans Market: SegmentationOn the basis of form, market is segmented into:-Powder derivativesLiquid derivativesOn the basis of application, market is segmented into:-Functional foodPasteSoy saucesDipping sauceFood dressingsPork preparationsOthersGlobal Fermented Black Beans Market: Region wise OutlookThe global fermented black beans market is divided into seven regions, namely Eastern Europe, Latin America, Asia Pacific excluding Japan (APEJ), North America, Japan, Western Europe, and Middle East and Africa (MEA). In the Asia-Pacific region, China is the major consumer of black beans followed by U.S. in North America being second-largest region where it has been extensively used in different form of soybean derivatives in various pork preparations and has other applications as well making it largest producer and exporter of Black beans. There has been a significant rise in the export volume of the fermented black beans out of the United States as well, the U.S. total export share in the fermented black bean market has experienced a drastic downfall in the same period making it quite difficult to counter back that loss in market. This has shown some positive growth effect on other black bean producing markets particularly Latin American regions such as Brazil and Argentina also In the APEJ region in ASEAN countries such as Philippines, Vietnam and Cambodian cuisines demand has increased significantly making APEJ region one of the growing market for the fermented black bean products.Visit For TOC@Global Fermented Black Beans Market: Key PlayersSome of the key players identified in the global fermented black beans market includes:Archer Daniels Midland Company.JY Corporation Co. Ltd ( south Korea, Seoul)Cargill Plc, Inc.DuPont SARLKikkoman Foods Europe B.V.Monsanto companyTofutti Brands, Inc.Lijiang Huali Bio-Product Development & Pharmaceutical Co. LtdDrackettGliddenGriffith Labs.Protein Technologies InternationalAbout Us Transparency Market Research (TMR) is a next-generation provider of syndicated research, customized research, and consulting services. TMRs global and regional market intelligence coverage includes industries such as pharmaceutical, chemicals and materials, technology and media, food and beverages, and consumer goods, among others.Contact Us:Transparency Market ResearchState Tower,90 State Street, Suite 700,Albany NY - 12207United StatesTel: +1-518-618-1030Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.comWebsite:
North America to Attribute Largely to Multimedia Projectors Market Growth By 2027
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The demand for a larger display, especially for presentation purposes, was met with the introduction of projectors. There was a transition observed from LCD displays because of multimedia projectors variation of display size and connectivity with computer devices, DVD, VCR, CD player etc. features, which were lacked in other display devices.A sample of this report is available upon request @Continuous technological advancements led to the introduction of portable small sized multimedia projectors. In addition to this the projection technology also observed a shift from conventional projection technology to laser projection technology. These innovations are corresponded with the increasing demand by end users for an enhanced product.The global multimedia projector market is further going to witness an exponential growth because of the increased demand of the product.Multimedia Projectors Market: Drivers and RestraintsDigitalization has an impact over the educational system and henceforth, the primary driver governing the growth of multimedia projector is the investment by the government to support digital education system in schools/colleges. Furthermore, continuous innovations in technologies for providing an enhanced quality output by the multimedia projectors by major vendors are further going to drive the global multimedia projector market. For instance demand for multimedia projectors functioning over laser technology is boosted as implementation of laser technology for projection has resulted into enhanced output quality.The output quality for a larger area display is compromised with the size. Henceforth, compromised quality for providing larger area display is the major challenge faced by the major players of multimedia projectors.Multimedia Projectors Market: Market SegmentationGlobal Multimedia Projectors Market can be divided into the following segments - based on type, technology type and applications.Segmentation on basis of Type for Multimedia Projectors Market:The major segments of Multimedia Projectors market on basis of Type include:DLPLCDOthersSegmentation on basis of Type for Multimedia Projectors Market:Portable multimedia projectorsCeiling mounted multimedia projectorsIncreasing adoption of portable multimedia projectors is observed as it is light in weigh and provides more convenience & mobility when compared with ceiling mounted multimedia projectors. Henceforth, it is expected to witness a higher growth percentage in the future.Segmentation on basis of Applications forMultimedia Projectors Market:The major segments of Multimedia Projectors market on basis of applications include:PackagingAgricultureConstructionMiningAutomotiveEducationOfficesAerospaceMajor applications of multimedia projectors are observed in educational institutes and offices.Global Multimedia Projectors Market TrendsTransition from ceiling mounted multimedia projectors to portable multimedia projectors and reduction in the size of projectors are the key trends followed by key vendors of multimedia projectors.Global Multimedia Projectors Market Technology Regional OverviewNorth America, because of the presence of most advanced technologies, is the most dominant region in the global multimedia projectors market. North America is followed by Europe and APAC as these regions are experiencing increasing number of emerging educational institutes and offices. These increasing institutes and offices are corresponded by the increasing populations in the respective regions. In addition to this the initiatives taken by the government for the same are also governing the adoption of multimedia projectors.To view TOC of this report is available upon request @Global Multimedia Projectors Key PlayersSome of the major Multimedia Projectors global players include BenQ, Dell, Epson, Hitachi, InFocus, JVC, LG, Mitsubishi, Optoma,Panasonic, Sanyo, Sharp, Sony, ViewSonic, VivitekAbout UsFuture Market Insights is the premier provider of market intelligence and consulting services, serving clients in over 150 countries. FMI is headquartered in London, the global financial capital, and has delivery centres in the U.S. and India.U.S. Office616 Corporate Way, Suite 2-9018,Valley Cottage, ,
Market Dynamics to Escalate Demand for Embedded Non-Volatile Memory Throughout 2017 - 2025
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Global Embedded Non-volatile Memory (eNVM) Market: SnapshotMemory technologies have made some spectacular advances over the past few years with the development of embedded electronics. Embedded non-volatile memory (eNVM) is a significant technology advancement that has made modern computing systems faster and scalable. Compared to stand-alone flash memories, eNVM technologies have improved in-system re-programmability and made electronics designs more flexible.A sample of this report is available upon request @The demand for improving the memory density in computers and the need for augmenting the performance of mobile terminals are key factors driving the growth of the embedded non-volatile memory market. The demand for low-voltage electronics products has further boosted the adoption of eNVM technologies. Some of the key applications of embedded non-volatile memory technology are programming, trimming, data encryption, coding, and identification.Popular eNVM technologies include eFlash, embedded one-time-programmable (eOTP), electrically erasable programmable read-only memory (eE2PROM) and emulated multi-time programmable (eMTP). With the exception of eOTP, all these allow multiple reprogramability. The proliferation of IoT devices and the growing popularity of cloud-based services in emerging and developed nations are the key developments bolstering the uptake of embedded non-volatile memory technology. Several manufacturers of the technology are exploring a number of end-use segments to gain competitive edge over others. In recent years, the adoption of eNVM technology is proving lucrative for the automotive industry. In addition, the design of advanced robotics systems for integrated memory features is also expected to accentuate the market in the coming years.Embedded memory technology forms an integral part of any system that requires higher performance, less power consumption, small physical volume and mobility. Specifically, embedded non-volatile memories (eNVM) is primarily used to make mobile terminals having high performance. Currently, embedded non-volatile memory (eNVM) has become an essential and important memory IP that enhances the flexibility of an electronic products to a great extent. The market of embedded non-volatile memory is predicted to witness a robust growth during the forecast period from 2017 to 2025 owing to rising demand of technologically advanced embedded non-volatile memories that can be utilized for the purpose of programming, data encryption, trimming, coding, identification and redundancy.In order to provide a comprehensive and exhaustive insights of the embedded non-volatile memory market across the globe, the market has been segmented into product type and end user. Different types of embedded non-volatile memory that is available in the market includes eOTP (Embedded One-Time-Programmable), eFlash, eE2PROM (Electrically Erasable Programmable Read-only Memory) and eMTP (Emulated Multi-Time Programmable).Moreover, an embedded non-volatile memory also find its application across various end user segments such as consumer electronics, automotive, information and communication sector and robotics among others. In addition, complete regional perspective of all the above mentioned segments including product type and end user across different regions such as Europe, North America, Asia Pacific, Middle-East and Africa (MEA) and Latin America is also provided in this report.Increasing demand of IoT (Internet of Things) devices and services across different parts of the world is one of the most important factor predicted to trigger the demand of embedded non-volatile memory during the forecast period from 2017 to 2025. The principle need of providing ubiquitous connectivity and to manage large amount of data arising from these IoT devices is anticipated to trigger the rapid deployment of economic and less power consumable memory products that has the ability to communicate securely and reliably.Thus, proliferation of various IoT devices and services is expected to spur the demand of embedded non-volatile memory in the coming years. In addition, surging adoption of embedded non-volatile memory in place of comparatively bulky and standalone traditional non-volatile memory owing to its higher efficiency and compact architecture is another important factor anticipated to accelerate the demand of embedded non-volatile memory in the coming years. Additionally, these embedded non-volatile memories are also increasingly used across various automobile applications especially in advanced key less push button start features and in head-up displays. Thus, rising demand for technologically advanced automotive is also expected to create a better opportunity for various embedded non-volatile memory manufacturers in the coming eight years.In spite of so many driving factors, higher design cost along with lack of scalability especially in eFlash and eOTP memory is one of the key factor expected to deter the demand of embedded non-volatile memory to a great extent during the forecast period from 2017 to 2025.Among the different types of embedded non-volatile memory, eFlash memory generated the highest revenue share in 2016 and is anticipated to maintain its leading position throughout the forecast period. Increasing adoption of eFlash memory across various application segments such as consumer electronics, smart card and automotive among others owing to its high efficiency and low power consumption is the most important factor behind this segments dominance.Geographically, the global embedded non-volatile memory market is expected to be majorly driven by Asia Pacific region both in terms of market share and growth during the forecast period. The embedded non-volatile memory market of Asia Pacific region is followed by North America owing to wide concentration of key microcontroller unit (MCU) manufacturers such as Texas Instruments and Silicon Lab among others.To view TOC of this report is available upon request @Some of the major players operating in the embedded non-volatile memory market includes United Microelectronics Corporation (Taiwan), Microchip Technology Inc. (The U.S) and Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation (China) among others.About USTransparency Market Research (TMR) is a next-generation provider of syndicated research, customized research, and consulting services. TMRs global and regional market intelligence coverage includes industries such as pharmaceutical, chemicals and materials, technology and media, food and beverages, and consumer goods, among others. Each TMR research report provides clients with a 360-degree view of the market with statistical forecasts, competitive landscape, detailed segmentation, key trends, and strategic recommendations.Contact Us-U.S. OFFICE:State Tower,90 State Street,Suite 700,Albany NY - 12207
Mining Metals Industrial and Market studies - Global Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Trends, and Forecast 2016 - 2024
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"Mining Metals Market - Global Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Trends, and Forecast 2016 - 2024" The Report covers current Industries Trends, Worldwide Analysis, Global Forecast, Review, Share, Size, Growth, Effect.. .Description-' '-- Global Mining Metals MarketThe mining industry contributes significantly toward the economic and industrial growth of a nation. Major mining metals include lead, copper, tin, zinc, nickel, cobalt, and aluminum. Gold, platinum, palladium, and silver are among the precious mining metals. The global mining metals market has been among the fastest growing. However, in recent years, the market has witnessed slow growth due to the economic slowdown across nations.. .Get Sample Report With TOC @' 'Iron ore, gold, copper, and nickel are the most important investment targets for mining companies as these premium metals are expected to play a pivotal role in future projects. It has been observed that mining companies are increasingly exploring the benefits of vertical integration to control the entire value chain of the market. Market players are focusing on every phase of the value chain, right from mining to production. However, to control the value chain, mining companies need to control operating costs as well as commodity prices.-- Global Mining Metals Market: Key Trends and OpportunitiesThe global mining metals market is highly dependent on the economic growth of nations. As a nations economy grows, investments increase in the infrastructure sector, thereby fuelling the demand for mining metals. Oversupply and low demand for mining metals leads to significant fall in their prices. For example, the economic slowdown in China has led to drastic reduction in the prices of mining metals, especially copper. With Chinas economy slowing down, investments in the energy and mining sectors have reduced. Ongoing projects in these sectors have been stalled. As a result, the demand for mining metals has reduced significantly. This has created a negative impact on the overall growth of the global mining metals market. Falling oil prices since 2015 have also hampered the growth of the market. Consequently, 2015 has been termed as one of the worst years for the global mining metals market.A rise in labor costs has led market players to cut down their workforce. This has resulted in labor unrest across various locations in the recent years. Market players are also facing increased regulatory compliance costs due to the implementation of new taxes. The global mining metals market is expected to witness significant demand from the equipment industry.-- Global Mining Metals Market: Region-wise OutlookThe global mining metals market has been segmented into four key regions: Europe, Asia Pacific, North America, and Rest of the World. Asia Pacific has been the major region in the market due to the growing demand from emerging economies such as China, Indonesia, Australia, and India. In the last couple of years, the region has witnessed increased investments in the mining sector with market players expanding their production capacities and exploring new mining sites. The rapid growth of economy in China and India has created favorable opportunities for the growth of the market. In fact, China is now playing a major role in the growth of the market. It is the largest importer of copper and imports around 45% of the total copper mined across the globe.-- Some of the prominent players in the global mining metals market are Rio Tinto (Australia/the U.K.), BHP Billiton (Australia/the U.K.), China Shenhua Energy (China), Vale (Brazil), and Glencore Xstrata (the U.K.). Currently, the key players are struggling to maintain their profit levels with the market suffering from oversupply and weak demand for mining metals. Prices of mining metals are falling below the cost of production across many mining projects by the key players.The report offers a comprehensive evaluation of the market. It does so via in-depth qualitative insights, historical data, and verifiable projections about market size. The projections featured in the report have been derived using proven research methodologies and assumptions. By doing so, the research report serves as a repository of analysis and information for every facet of the market, including but not limited to: Regional markets, technology, types, and applications.-- The study is a source of reliable data on:Market segments and sub-segmentsMarket trends and dynamicsSupply and demandMarket sizeCurrent trends/opportunities/challengesCompetitive landscapeTechnological breakthroughsValue chain and stakeholder analysis-- The regional analysis covers:North America (U.S. and Canada)Latin America (Mexico, Brazil, Peru, Chile, and others)Western Europe (Germany, U.K., France, Spain, Italy, Nordic countries, Belgium, Netherlands, Luxembourg)Eastern Europe (Poland, Russia)Asia Pacific (China, India, Japan, ASEAN, Australia and New Zealand)Middle East and Africa (GCC, Southern Africa, North Africa)The report has been compiled through extensive primary research (through interviews, surveys, and observations of seasoned analysts) and secondary research (which entails reputable paid sources, trade journals, and industry body databases). The report also features a complete qualitative and quantitative assessment by analyzing data gathered from industry analysts and market participants across key points in the industrys value chain.A separate analysis of prevailing trends in the parent market, macro- and micro-economic indicators, and regulations and mandates is included under the purview of the study. By doing so, the report projects the attractiveness of each major segment over the forecast period.-- Highlights of the report:A complete backdrop analysis, which includes an assessment of the parent marketImportant changes in market dynamicsMarket segmentation up to the second or third levelHistorical, current, and projected size of the market from the standpoint of both value and volumeReporting and evaluation of recent industry developmentsMarket shares and strategies of key playersEmerging niche segments and regional marketsAn objective assessment of the trajectory of the marketRecommendations to companies for strengthening their foothold in the market-- Note: Although care has been taken to maintain the highest levels of accuracy in TMRs reports, recent market/vendor-specific changes may take time to reflect in the analysis.. .Report Enquiry and Other Query @ResearchMoz is the worlds fastest growing collection of market research reports worldwide. Our database is composed of current market studies from over 100 featured publishers worldwide. Our market research databases integrate statistics with analysis from global, regional, country and company perspectives. ResearchMozs service portfolio also includes value-added services such as market research customization, competitive landscaping, and in-depth surveys, delivered by a team of experienced Research Coordinators.Researchmoz Global Pvt. Ltd.90 State Street,Albany, NY 12207,United States,Tel: 866-997-4948 (Us-Canada Toll Free),Tel: +1-518-621-2074
Global Decorative Coatings Industrial and Market studies with Focus on Performance Coatings: Size, Trends & Forecast (2016-2020)
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"Global Decorative Coatings Market with Focus on Performance Coatings: Size, Trends & Forecast (2016-2020)" The Report covers current Industries Trends, Worldwide Analysis, Global Forecast, Review, Share, Size, Growth, Effect.. .Description-' '-- Scope of the ReportThe report entitle Global Decorative Coatings Market with Focus on Performance Coatings: Size, Trends & Forecast (2016-2020) provides an in-depth analysis of the global decorative coatings market and its segments, with detailed analysis of market size and growth both in terms of value and volume and market share by region. The report also provides the analysis of global performance coatings market by value and by segments.. .Get Sample Report With TOC @' 'The report includes a brief regional analysis covering market share by country, by segment and by distribution channels for following regions: Europe, North America China and Latin America.Furthermore, the report also assesses the key opportunities in the market and outlines the factors that are and will be driving the growth of the industry. Growth of the overall global decorative coatings market has also been forecasted for the period 2016-2020, taking into consideration the previous growth patterns, the growth drivers and the current and future trends.The global decorative coatings market is highly fragmented with various players. AkzoNobel Coatings, PPG Industries Inc., Sherwin Williams and RPM International Inc. are some of the key players operating in the global decorative coatings market whose company profiling has been done in the report. This segment of the report summarizes business overview, financial overview and the business strategies of the companies.-- Country CoverageEuropeNorth AmericaChinaLatin America-- Company CoverageAkzoNobel CoatingsPPG Industries Inc.Sherwin-WilliamsRPM International Inc.-- Executive SummaryArchitectural/decorative coatings market can be segmented into interior based water coatings, exterior based water coatings, solvent based coatings (interior as well as exterior) and lacquers etc. Performance coatings are one of the major segments of decorative coatings market. Performance coatings market is further segmented into: Industrial & powder Coatings, Automotive & Specialty Coatings and Marine & Protective Coatings.The global decorative coatings market has increased with healthy growth rates over the years and is expected to increase further during the forecasted period (2016-2020). The global decorative coatings market is supported by various growth drivers such as growing urbanization, growth in construction activities of both residential as well as commercial in Asian countries, high investments and growth in construction and furniture sector and high spending on decorative coatings in Western Europe and the US etc. Yet the market faces some challenges, such as environmental impact and stringent regulations, availability of substitutes, rising raw material prices and slowdown of emerging economies.. .Report Enquiry and Other Query @ResearchMoz is the worlds fastest growing collection of market research reports worldwide. Our database is composed of current market studies from over 100 featured publishers worldwide. Our market research databases integrate statistics with analysis from global, regional, country and company perspectives. ResearchMozs service portfolio also includes value-added services such as market research customization, competitive landscaping, and in-depth surveys, delivered by a team of experienced Research Coordinators.Researchmoz Global Pvt. Ltd.90 State Street,Albany, NY 12207,United States,Tel: 866-997-4948 (Us-Canada Toll Free),Tel: +1-518-621-2074
Global Heat Shrink Packaging Machines Market Professional Survey Report 2017 : Advance Packaging, Swift Pack, Sontex
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Qyresearchreports include new market research report "Global Heat Shrink Packaging Machines Market Professional Survey Report 2017" to its huge collection of research reports.The in-depth study of the global Heat Shrink Packaging Machines market can be done with sources such as the internet or web. However, it is extremely difficult to pick important data and leave out the rest of the information that may not be important, because the internet is full of information and humungous amount of data is available regarding the global Heat Shrink Packaging Machines market. The market reports added in QY research reports presents just the perfect data, discarding anything that is unnecessary, whereas inclusive of all important aspects of the global Heat Shrink Packaging Machines market. The key segments of the global Heat Shrink Packaging Machines market is studied. Moreover, the Heat Shrink Packaging Machines market is studied from a global perspective as well as regional perspective.This report focuses on top manufacturers in global market, with production, price, revenue and market share for each manufacturer, coveringAdvance PackagingSwift PackSontexE-shrink PackagingQingdao Ausense Packing EquipmentXunjieTo Get Sample Copy of Report visit @In addition to this, the report presents an unbiased analysis of the various factors that will hamper or challenge the growth of the Heat Shrink Packaging Machines market. The impact analysis of the restricting factors is also given. The important growth drivers and the various macro and micro economic factors that have a hand in fueling the growth of the global Heat Shrink Packaging Machines market is also discussed. The degree of competition and the threat of substitutes have been analyzed in the report. In addition to this, the threat of new entrants and the bargaining power of buyers and suppliers are also given in the report.The competitive landscape of the global Heat Shrink Packaging Machines market is given in much detail. It comprises a detailed analysis of the leading players within the global Heat Shrink Packaging Machines market and their collective share in the market. The recent developments by leading players and the challenges faced by them over the course of period have also been revealed in the report.Table of ContentsGlobal Heat Shrink Packaging Machines Market Professional Survey Report 20171 Industry Overview of Heat Shrink Packaging Machines1.1 Definition and Specifications of Heat Shrink Packaging Machines1.1.1 Definition of Heat Shrink Packaging Machines1.1.2 Specifications of Heat Shrink Packaging Machines1.2 Classification of Heat Shrink Packaging Machines1.2.1 PE Film Heat Shrink Packaging Machine2 Manufacturing Cost Structure Analysis of Heat Shrink Packaging Machines2.1 Raw Material and Suppliers2.2 Manufacturing Cost Structure Analysis of Heat Shrink Packaging Machines2.3 Manufacturing Process Analysis of Heat Shrink Packaging Machines2.4 Industry Chain Structure of Heat Shrink Packaging Machines3 Technical Data and Manufacturing Plants Analysis of Heat Shrink Packaging Machines3.1 Capacity and Commercial Production Date of Global Heat Shrink Packaging Machines Major Manufacturers in 20163.2 Manufacturing Plants Distribution of Global Heat Shrink Packaging Machines Major Manufacturers in 20163.3 R&D Status and Technology Source of Global Heat Shrink Packaging Machines Major Manufacturers in 20163.4 Raw Materials Sources Analysis of Global Heat Shrink Packaging Machines Major Manufacturers in 20164 Global Heat Shrink Packaging Machines Overall Market Overview4.1 2012-2017E Overall Market Analysis4.2 Capacity Analysis4.2.1 2012-2017E Global Heat Shrink Packaging Machines Capacity and Growth Rate Analysis4.2.2 2016 Heat Shrink Packaging Machines Capacity Analysis (Company Segment)4.3 Sales AnalysisBrowse Complete Report with TOC @List of Tables and FiguresFigure Picture of Heat Shrink Packaging MachinesTable Product Specifications of Heat Shrink Packaging MachinesTable Classification of Heat Shrink Packaging MachinesFigure Global Production Market Share of Heat Shrink Packaging Machines by Type in 2016Figure PE Film Heat Shrink Packaging Machine PictureFigure China Heat Shrink Packaging Machines Market Size (Million USD) (2012-2022)Figure Europe Heat Shrink Packaging Machines Market Size (Million USD) (2012-2022)Figure Southeast Asia Heat Shrink Packaging Machines Market Size (Million USD) (2012-2022)Figure Japan Heat Shrink Packaging Machines Market Size (Million USD) (2012-2022)Figure India Heat Shrink Packaging Machines Market Size (Million USD) (2012-2022)About UsQYReseachReports.com delivers the latest strategic market intelligence to build a successful business footprint in China. Our syndicated and customized research reports provide companies with vital background information of the market and in-depth analysis on the Chinese trade and investment framework, which directly affects their business operations. Reports from QYReseachReports.com feature valuable recommendations on how to navigate in the extremely unpredictable yet highly attractive Chinese market.Contact Us1820 AvenueM Suite #1047Brooklyn, NY 11230United StatesToll Free: 866-997-4948 (USA-CANADA)Tel: +1-518-621-2074Web:Email: sales@qyresearchreports.com
Global Microbial Enhanced Oil Recovery Market Size, Status and Forecast 2022 - Titan Oil Recovery, Royal Dutch Shell, BP
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Qyresearchreports include new market research report "Global Microbial Enhanced Oil Recovery Market Size, Status and Forecast 2022" to its huge collection of research reports.This report on the global Microbial Enhanced Oil Recovery market provides in-depth region wise and country wise analysis, aspiring to serve as a credible business tool for its targeted audiences. Stakeholders of this report include manufacturers and service providers, raw material suppliers, research institutes, government agencies, and new players planning to enter the market. One of the primary feature of this report is an elaborated section on competitive landscape, which also includes profiles of some of the key companies currently operating in the global Microbial Enhanced Oil Recovery market.This report studies the global Microbial Enhanced Oil Recovery market, analyzes and researches the Microbial Enhanced Oil Recovery development status and forecast in United States, EU, Japan, China, India and Southeast Asia. This report focuses on the top players in global market, likeStatOilTitan Oil RecoveryRoyal Dutch ShellBPConocoPhillipsDuPontGenome PrairieChemiphaseTo Get Sample Copy of Report visit @The report provides qualitative and quantitative analysis of the global Microbial Enhanced Oil Recovery market. Qualitative analysis comprises market dynamics, trends, product overview, and country-level market information. Quantitative analysis includes major players with their reported revenue, market size, and forecast in every important region including North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, Latin America and Middle East & Africa. Major country-wide markets for Microbial Enhanced Oil Recovery have also been explored, such as the U.S., Canada, Germany, Italy, France, United Kingdom, Spain, Japan, China, Brazil, and Saudi Arabia. Market revenue is provided in terms of US$ Mn from 2015 to 2025 along with the compound annual growth rate (CAGR %) from 2017 to 2025 for all the segments, considering 2016 as the base year. The executive summary of the report provides a snapshot of the Microbial Enhanced Oil Recovery market with information on leading segments, country wise market information with respect to the market size, growth rate (CAGR %), and growth factors.The market overview section comprises impact factors such as drivers, restraints, and opportunities for the global Microbial Enhanced Oil Recovery market. These factors would aid the stakeholders in establishing a strong foothold in this market. Furthermore, the market overview section comprises key industry events, product overview, market attractiveness analysis and emerging trend in the latest technologies. The market attractiveness analysis provides a graphical view comparing the growth and market dynamics in various segments and country wise to identify the most attractive market.Table of ContentsGlobal Microbial Enhanced Oil Recovery Market Size, Status and Forecast 20221 Industry Overview of Microbial Enhanced Oil Recovery1.1 Microbial Enhanced Oil Recovery Market Overview1.1.1 Microbial Enhanced Oil Recovery Product Scope1.1.2 Market Status and Outlook2 Global Microbial Enhanced Oil Recovery Competition Analysis by Players2.1 Microbial Enhanced Oil Recovery Market Size (Value) by Players (2016 and 2017)2.2 Competitive Status and Trend2.2.1 Market Concentration Rate2.2.2 Product/Service Differences2.2.3 New Entrants2.2.4 The Technology Trends in Future3 Company (Top Players) Profiles3.1 StatOil3.1.1 Company Profile3.1.2 Main Business/Business Overview3.1.3 Products, Services and Solutions3.1.4 Microbial Enhanced Oil Recovery Revenue (Value) (2012-2017)Browse Complete Report with TOC @List of Tables and FiguresFigure Microbial Enhanced Oil Recovery Product ScopeFigure Global Microbial Enhanced Oil Recovery Market Size (Million USD) (2012-2017)Table Global Microbial Enhanced Oil Recovery Market Size (Million USD) and Growth Rate by Regions (2012-2017)Figure Global Microbial Enhanced Oil Recovery Market Share by Regions in 2016Figure United States Microbial Enhanced Oil Recovery Market Size (Million USD) and Growth Rate by Regions (2012-2017)Figure EU Microbial Enhanced Oil Recovery Market Size (Million USD) and Growth Rate by Regions (2012-2017)Figure Japan Microbial Enhanced Oil Recovery Market Size (Million USD) and Growth Rate by Regions (2012-2017)Figure China Microbial Enhanced Oil Recovery Market Size (Million USD) and Growth Rate by Regions (2012-2017)Figure India Microbial Enhanced Oil Recovery Market Size (Million USD) and Growth Rate by Regions (2012-2017)About UsQYReseachReports.com delivers the latest strategic market intelligence to build a successful business footprint in China. Our syndicated and customized research reports provide companies with vital background information of the market and in-depth analysis on the Chinese trade and investment framework, which directly affects their business operations. Reports from QYReseachReports.com feature valuable recommendations on how to navigate in the extremely unpredictable yet highly attractive Chinese market.Contact Us1820 AvenueM Suite #1047Brooklyn, NY 11230United StatesToll Free: 866-997-4948 (USA-CANADA)Tel: +1-518-621-2074Web:Email: sales@qyresearchreports.com
ON his last day at the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Vietnam, President Rodrigo Duterte promised to make the country even more competitive in the region.
The government will also focus on education, with the President suggesting that Filipino school children should learn the basics about cyberspace and digital communications.
And I will make that mandatory, he said.
RAISE YOUR GLASS. President Rodrigo Duterte (right) and US President Donald Trump (left), both wearing the traditional barong Tagalog, toast to start the special gala celebration dinner of the 50th anniversary of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations. Malacanang Press Pool Photo
Duterte said the government will also increase infrastructure spending to realize the Golden Age of Infrastructure that will enhance mobility and connectivity.
There must be an improvement in food security, he said, noting that while the country allocates vast tracts of land for commercial cultivation of crops for the export market, ensuring enough local supply of food must be given priority.
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Arriving Sunday from Vietnam, Duterte said he had most productive meetings with the leaders of China and Russia, who were also at the Apec summit.
I took the opportunity to meet my counterparts from many economies. I renewed my friendship with President Vladimir Putin of Russia and with President Xi Jinping of China, Duterte said upon his arrival at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport Terminal 2.
Duterte first met with Putin on the sidelines of the Apec Economic Leaders Meeting, where the Russian president vowed to support the countrys fight against terrorism ,which is a common challenge for both countries.
Duterte thanked Putin for Russias timely assistance in putting an end to the five-month long Marawi crisis.
Before he returned to Manila, Duterte met with President Xi Jinping, lauding him also for Chinas assistance in resolving the Marawi siege.
I see a very bright future for our relationship. Nothing to do with military. I have stated before and I was not lying, I would not entertain talks about military or anything except that I had to thank Mr. Xi Jinping for the timely and crucial help that he extended to our country when we were fighting the siege of Marawi, he said.
China donated firearms and committed financial support for the rehabilitation of Marawi and for state troops who fought Islamic State-inspired terrorists.
Russia also gave the Philippines firearms and other military equipment.
Duterte said the issue on the Code of Conduct in the South China Sea was discussed noting that the Chinese President expressed willingness to hold a summit or a multilateral dialogue to tackle the matter.
President Xi Jinping mentioned about a summit or a meeting, multilateral only to talk about the rules of conduct. It has nothing to do with sovereignty, he said.
He added that China made the assurance that it would not impede the freedom of navigation in the disputed sea.
He said he believed that the tensions in the South China Sea would not escalate into war, saying that China also could not afford to put the lives of its people in danger.
He knows that if he goes to war, everything will blow up. He acknowledged that war cannot be promoted by anybody, but it would only mean destruction for all of us, he said.
The two leaders also discussed North Korea.
At this time when everybody has in his pocket a large number of nuclear arms, China, America, Russia, Iran, North Korea, it is not a good time to talk about a quarrel, Duterte said.
Duterte said he assured Xi that his friendship with him would remain warm and robust.
On Sunday, Davao City Rep. Karlo Alexei Nograles said the country would receive even bigger investments after an independent pollster said he was the most trusted Philippine president in the last 20 years. With Rio N. Araja
Investor confidence in the Philippines just went through the roof. And with the Association of Southeast Asian Summit, we can expect the country to receive a tidal wave of foreign investments and financial packages that otherwise would have not been offered to us with a different president, he said.
Rio N. Araja
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Global IoT Sensors Market Research Report 2017 : Texas Instruments, LORD Corp, Semtech
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Qyresearchreports include new market research report "Global IoT Sensors Market Research Report 2017" to its huge collection of research reports.The report IoT Sensors Market Research Report 2017 is a comprehensive industry study featuring qualitative and quantitative analysis. For qualitative analysis, the IoT Sensors industry landscape and trends, technology landscape, industry dynamics and key events, key issues, policy and regulatory scenario, and competitive landscape, along with product benchmarking, has been employed.For quantitative analysis, the report considers the market volume and its revenue estimates along with forecasts for the various key segments of the market and presents a company market share analysis. In addition to this, the report implements a blend of primary and secondary research to forecast and estimate market growth. Along with primary and secondary research, the report also incorporates insights from industry leaders.Global IoT Sensors market competition by top manufacturers, with production, price, revenue (value) and market share for each manufacturer; the top players includingLinear TechnologyTexas InstrumentsLORD CorpSemtechAnalog DevicesMillennial NetFujitsuTo Get Sample Copy of Report visit @The report begins with an overview of the global IoT Sensors market and then elaborates on the China market. Throughout the study, the key global trends that will influence the China IoT Sensors market have been included. Furthermore, a detailed segmentation of the IoT Sensors market on the basis of product, application, and geography has been covered in the report. The key sectors with their market share in terms of volumes and revenue are available in the report. Additionally, a detailed evaluation of their sub-segments has also been included in this study.This research study serves as a valuable guide for both new entrants and established companies. The factors on the basis of which the companies compete in the IoT Sensors market have been scrutinized in the report. Further, key strategies of the leading market players are also available in the report. The report features key industry events and their impact analysis. In addition to this, strategic recommendations from lead analysts will help readers overcome the major challenges and tap the latest market opportunities in the IoT Sensors market.Browse Complete Report with TOC @Table of ContentsGlobal IoT Sensors Market Research Report 20171 IoT Sensors Market Overview1.1 Product Overview and Scope of IoT Sensors1.2 IoT Sensors Segment by Type (Product Category)1.2.1 Global IoT Sensors Production and CAGR (%) Comparison by Type (Product Category)(2012-2022)1.2.2 Global IoT Sensors Production Market Share by Type (Product Category) in 20162 Global IoT Sensors Market Competition by Manufacturers2.1 Global IoT Sensors Capacity, Production and Share by Manufacturers (2012-2017)2.1.1 Global IoT Sensors Capacity and Share by Manufacturers (2012-2017)2.1.2 Global IoT Sensors Production and Share by Manufacturers (2012-2017)2.2 Global IoT Sensors Revenue and Share by Manufacturers (2012-2017)2.3 Global IoT Sensors Average Price by Manufacturers (2012-2017)2.4 Manufacturers IoT Sensors Manufacturing Base Distribution, Sales Area and Product Type2.5 IoT Sensors Market Competitive Situation and TrendsAbout UsQYReseachReports.com delivers the latest strategic market intelligence to build a successful business footprint in China. Our syndicated and customized research reports provide companies with vital background information of the market and in-depth analysis on the Chinese trade and investment framework, which directly affects their business operations. Reports from QYReseachReports.com feature valuable recommendations on how to navigate in the extremely unpredictable yet highly attractive Chinese market.Contact Us1820 AvenueM Suite #1047Brooklyn, NY 11230United StatesToll Free: 866-997-4948 (USA-CANADA)Tel: +1-518-621-2074Web:Email: sales@qyresearchreports.com
Passive Fire Protection Materials Market share will expand till 2024
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The global market for passive fire protection derives much of its growth from the increasing demand for enhanced fire safety standards in the residential and commercial buildings sector. The rising emphasis to deploy passive fire protection products in buildings by the regional governments is likely to drive the growth of this market over the next few years. The growing usage of passive fire protection in the oil and gas industry to avert the structural damage in case of explosive fire accidents is also projected to boost this market significantly in the near future.Request Sample Copy of the Report @Additionally, the surge in the demand for fire protection products that can go on for a longer period is likely to reflect positively on the demand for passive fire protection materials over the forthcoming years. However, the price volatility of raw material prices may hamper the markets growth to some extent in the near future.This research study provides a detailed analysis of the global market for passive fire protection materials. It acts as a highly dependable business tool by assisting in recognizing prominent trends and growth prospects of this market at both, global as well as regional levels. It also offers an unbiased and deep insights into the competitive landscape of this market by reviewing the profiles of the key companies on the basis of their market shares, business strategies, product details, revenue structure, and latest development. A SWOT analysis of each of the participants has also been carried out in this report to identify their potential growth trajectory.Global Passive Fire Protection Materials Market: Trends and OpportunitiesCementitious materials, intumescent coatings, and fireproofing cladding, specifically intumescent coatings, are the registering a significant demand in the global market for passive fire protection materials market, thanks to their growing usage in various industries, such as the construction, energy, warehousing, and oil and gas sectors.Among these, the oil and gas industry has emerged as the leading end user of passive fire protection materials across the world and the scenario is likely to remain same over the next few years.Global Passive Fire Protection Materials Market: Geographical AnalysisNorth America has been leading the global market for passive fire protection materials, thanks to a well-established industrial sector, the rising demand of consumers for enhanced fire safety of buildings, and the growth in the expenditure by the regional governments on improving the overall infrastructural security of the region. The growing usage of these products in the aerospace industry to avoid the damage in the aircraft structure and minimize the asset loss is anticipated to fuel the demand for passive fire protection in North America over next few years, ensuring its dominance.On the other hand, Asia Pacific is likely to witness strong growth due to the increasing demand from various industries, such as the manufacturing, construction, automotive, and warehousing industries. The rising willingness of consumers to pay and the growing awareness pertaining to fire safety are anticipated to boost the demand for these products in Asia Pacific in the coming years.Companies Mentioned in the Research ReportThe global market for passive fire protection materials demonstrates a highly fragmented and competitive landscape with the presence of a number of regional as well as international companies. The leading players operating in this market are Carboline, Leighs Paints, HILTI, Rudolf Hensel GmbH, Sherwin-Williams, Hempel, 3M, Sharpfibre, Nullifire, and Lloyd Insulations (India) Ltd.Request TOC of the Report @About UsTransparency Market Research (TMR) is a global market intelligence company providing business information reports and services. The companys exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trend analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. TMRs experienced team of analysts, researchers, and consultants use proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather and analyze information.TMRs data repository is continuously updated and revised by a team of research experts so that it always reflects the latest trends and information. With extensive research and analysis capabilities, Transparency Market Research employs rigorous primary and secondary research techniques to develop distinctive data sets and research material for business reports.Contact UsTransparency Market Research90 State Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207Tel: +1-518-618-1030USA - Canada Toll Free: 866-552-3453Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.comWebsite:
Nano-Fiber Cell Scaffold Market trends estimates high demand by 2024
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Nano-fiber cell scaffolds, replicate tissues at the nanoscale, to provide mechanical, biological, and chemical support in tissue formation. Tissue engineering entails developing organs by implantation of engineered tissue from a recipient. Nano-fiber cell scaffolds find application in myocardial tissue engineering, dermal wound healing, bone repair, cartilage repair, and toxicology testing. The global market for nano-fiber cell is still in a very nascent stage and hence holds out solid promise for new players across the world.Request Sample Copy of the Report @The global nano-fiber cell scaffold market can be segmented on the basis of materials into natural biomaterials, elastomeric composites, and synthetic biomaterials. Based on the techniques used for the synthesis of nano-fibers, the market can be segmented into electrospinning, self-assembly, and phase separation. Among the three, electrospinning is the most popular technique that has mostly shown good results vis-a-vis tissue engineering applications.The report by Transparency Market Research has been prepared after a thorough primary and secondary research to offer an insightful peek into the global nano-fiber cell scaffold market. The report attempts to provide a granular view of the segments in the global market along with the factors influencing them. It presents a comprehensive picture of the competitive landscape and details pertaining to the bargaining power of suppliers and buyers. The document is collated with comments and recommendations from expert market leaders for new and existing players.Global Nano-Fiber Cell Scaffold Market: Drivers and TrendsIn the overall scaffold technology market, the nano-fiber cell scaffolds are slated to exhibit a robust growth pace in the upcoming years. This is due to their ability to mimic the architecture of the tissue at the nanoscale, which in turn guarantees prevention of immunological rejection normally occurring during organ transplantation. This is the unique selling proposition that has substantially upped the adoption of nano-fiber cell scaffolds in regenerative medicine and other clinical applications. Other factors fuelling an uptick in demand in the global nano-fiber cell scaffold market are the burgeoning elderly population and rise in instances of organ defunctionalization cases along with demand for appropriate treatment.Global Nano-Fiber Cell Scaffold Market: Geographical OutlookThe global market for nano-fiber cell scaffold can be segmented geographically into Europe, North America, Asia Pacific, and the Rest of the World. Among them, North America is the dominant market on account of the significant thrust on tissue engineering research in the U.S. Furthermore, a robust healthcare infrastructure and concentration of many leading players in the region has also helped its market substantially. Going forward, Asia pacific market is predicted to move at a good clip because of improving healthcare infrastructure and helpful government initiatives to support research and development in the pharmaceutical industry in the region.Key Players Mentioned in the ReportTo present an in-depth assessment of the competition prevailing in the global market for nano-fiber cell scaffold, the report profiles companies such as Baxter International Inc., DePuy, Inc., Medtronic, Inc., Advanced Tissue Sciences, Zimmer Holdings, Inc., Stryker Corp., Terumo, Synthecon, Inc., MorphoGen Pharmaceuticals, Novartis Pharmaceuticals, Bacterin International Holdings, Inc., and Stratum Laboratories.Request TOC of the Report @About UsTransparency Market Research (TMR) is a global market intelligence company providing business information reports and services. The companys exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trend analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. TMRs experienced team of analysts, researchers, and consultants use proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather and analyze information.TMRs data repository is continuously updated and revised by a team of research experts so that it always reflects the latest trends and information. With extensive research and analysis capabilities, Transparency Market Research employs rigorous primary and secondary research techniques to develop distinctive data sets and research material for business reports.Contact UsTransparency Market Research90 State Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207Tel: +1-518-618-1030USA - Canada Toll Free: 866-552-3453Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.comWebsite:
2, 5-Furandicarboxylic Acid Market to observe high growth by 2023
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2, 5 Furandicarboxylic acid (FDCA) is an oxidized furan derivative. It is an important renewable organic compound which can be used as a substitute for terephthalic acid (PTA) in the production of polyesters. FDCA can be synthesized in four stages viz. dehydrahation of hexose derivatives, oxidation of 2, 5-disubstituted furans, catalytic conversions of various furan derivatives and biological conversion of HMF. In addition, FDCA is detected in human unrine. A human body produces 3-5 mg/day. 2, 5 furandicarboxylic acid is also known as dehydromucic acid. FDCA is a stable compound with high melting point. Synthesis of FDCA is a patented process.Request Sample Copy of the Report @FDCA is expected to be a potential substitute for petroleum derived chemicals such as terephthalic acid, adipic acid, phthalic anhydride and bisphenol A among others. PET, polyamides, polyester polyols and others are expected to be the application segments of FDCA with PET and PBT being the application segments. There are a very few companies producing 2, 5 Furandicarboxylic acid primarily for scientific purposes. The current estimated production of FDCA is around 4 metric MT a year with revenue of USD 10 million.FDCA has applications in pharmacology. Additionally, FDCA derived anilides exhibit strong anti-bacterial action. Furthermore, HMF is metabolized via FDCA in mammals including humans. A diluted solution of FDCA is used for preparing artificial veins for transplantation. Moreover, 2, 5 Furandicarboxylic acid can be used as an ingredient of fire foams which help to extinguish fires in a short time caused by polar and non-polar solvents. The FDCA monomer offers opportunities to create a variety of polymers such as polyesters, polyamides and polyurethanes, plasticizers and coating resins.FDCA is used in making polyesters, PEF fibers, PEF films and polyamides among others. Thus, the growing packaging industry coupled with the increasing demand for engineering plastics and coating resins, is expected to boost the FDCA market substantially within the forecast period. However, there are very few companies which procure and sell FDCA as there is no economic viability behind its usage. Research and development including development of cost effective oxidation technology FDCA formation may open new avenues for the 2, 5 Furandicarboxylic acid market.In 2011, Avantium produced 40 ton/year of FDCA monomer at a pilot plant for scientific applications. In addition, it has also developed a cost-effective route to produce FDCA. Moreover, Avantium is currently working in collaboration with the Coca Cola Company, ALPLA and Danone to make 100% biobased PEF bottles in the market with the help of FDCA. The company is expected to open its first commercial purpose FDCA plant with a capacity of 300-500 kilo tons by 2016. .Europe dominated the 2, 5 Furandicarboxylic acid market in 2012. Avatium Technologies B.V headquartered in Netherlands has been the major company contributing to the FDCA market. Asia Pacific is expected to be the fastest growing market on account of the high demand for packaging in this region owing to the rising disposable income. Emerging economies in South America, the Middle East and Africa are expected to witness substantial growth on account of the industrial development taking place in these regions. In addition, the growing population and disposable income is expected to fuel the 2, 5 Furandicarboxylic acid market within the forecast period.Some of the key players in the 2, 5 Furandicarboxylic acid market are Avantium Technologies B.V, Satachem Co.Ltd., Synbias , Carbone Scientific Tokyo Chemical Industry, V & V Pharma Industries, Chemsky and Good Scents Company among others. There are a very few companies producing 2, 5 Furandicarboxylic acid. These companies produce FDCA primarily for scientific purposes.Request TOC of the Report @About UsTransparency Market Research (TMR) is a global market intelligence company providing business information reports and services. The companys exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trend analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. TMRs experienced team of analysts, researchers, and consultants use proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather and analyze information.TMRs data repository is continuously updated and revised by a team of research experts so that it always reflects the latest trends and information. With extensive research and analysis capabilities, Transparency Market Research employs rigorous primary and secondary research techniques to develop distinctive data sets and research material for business reports.Contact UsTransparency Market Research90 State Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207Tel: +1-518-618-1030USA - Canada Toll Free: 866-552-3453Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.comWebsite:
Medical Grade Silicone Market size in terms of volume and value 2024
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Medical grade silicone is used in implantable and disposable medical devices which require high performance and safety standards when in contact with the human body. Medical Grade Silicone include instruments with critical functions such as defibrillators, heart pumps, and surgical reconstructive components which employ the biocompatible and hydrophobic properties of silicone. It has gained widespread acceptance because of its negligible levels of toxicity and low risk of unfavorable biological reactions. Liquid silicone rubber is a highly common variety owing to its high bacterial and chemical resistance, excellent transparency, gas permeability, clarity, elongation feature, superior dielectric strength, high tensile strength, and ability to function in extreme temperatures.Request Sample Copy of the Report @The report offers a comprehensive evaluation of the global medical grade silicone market. It does so via in-depth qualitative insights, historical data, and verifiable projections about market size. The projections featured in the report have been derived using proven research methodologies and assumptions. By doing so, the research report serves as a repository of analysis and information for every facet of the global medical grade silicone market, including but not limited to: Regional markets, technology, types, and applications.Global Medical Grade Silicone Market: Drivers and RestraintsThe growing need for disposable devices has led to an increased demand for medical grade silicone. Liquid rubber silicone, for instance, is utilized in sealing membranes, electric connectors, seals, and infant care products such as bottle nipples, besides several other medical applications. Lifestyle shifts and changing concepts of beauty resulting in the rising incidence of cosmetic and plastic surgeries are considered to be significant drivers of the global medical grade silicone market. Modern food habits often associated with cardiovascular diseases play a role as well in the growth of the global medical grade silicone market.Global Medical Grade Silicone Market: Key SegmentsIn terms of products, medical grade silicone is divided into four categories: gels, medical adhesives, medical coatings (hydrophilic or hydrophobic), and liquid silicone rubbers. Based on application, the four segments of the medical grade silicone market are: prosthetics, orthopedic components, medical devices, and medical tapes. The former two are major applications, whereas the latter two could be further distributed into the following sub-segments: medical electronics and device assemblies, medical tubes, catheters, medical rings and gaskets, and miscellaneous accessories such as drugs, gels, and oral care products; and wound care, drug delivery, personal hygiene, and component joining, respectively. In terms of molding processes, the segments are liquid injection molding, transfer molding, compression molding, micro-molding, silicone to metal bonding, and silicone infused with desiccant molding.Global Medical Grade Silicone Market: Regional AnalysisThe global medical grade silicone market has shown a significant growth in 2015 and is expected to exhibit the same trend during the forecast period. Asia Pacific is projected to be a rapidly expanding market of medical grade silicone due to applications such as prefilled syringes, prosthetics, surgical implants, catheters, and medical tapes. North America and Europe are major consumers thanks to the technological advancements and mounting health concerns in these regions. The developmental activities in Latin America and Middle East & Africa make them emerging regions in the global medical grade silicone market.Global Medical Grade Silicone Market: Companies Mentioned in the ReportKey players in the global medical grade silicone market include Dow Corning, Wacker Chemie AG, Shin-Etsu Chemical Co., Ltd., Bluestar Silicones, 3M Company, Nusil Technology Llc, and Applied Silicone Corporation.The report offers a comprehensive evaluation of the market. It does so via in-depth qualitative insights, historical data, and verifiable projections about market size. The projections featured in the report have been derived using proven research methodologies and assumptions. By doing so, the research report serves as a repository of analysis and information for every facet of the market, including but not limited to: Regional markets, technology, types, and applications.Request TOC of the Report @About UsTransparency Market Research (TMR) is a global market intelligence company providing business information reports and services. The companys exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trend analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. TMRs experienced team of analysts, researchers, and consultants use proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather and analyze information.TMRs data repository is continuously updated and revised by a team of research experts so that it always reflects the latest trends and information. With extensive research and analysis capabilities, Transparency Market Research employs rigorous primary and secondary research techniques to develop distinctive data sets and research material for business reports.Contact UsTransparency Market Research90 State Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207Tel: +1-518-618-1030USA - Canada Toll Free: 866-552-3453Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.comWebsite:
Sodium Bromate Market size and Key Trends in terms of volume and value 2024
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Sodium bromate is produced commercially from bromine by reacting it with sodium carbonate. It is also produced through electrolytic oxidation of sodium bromide. Sodium bromate is available in white crystalline form and is water soluble. It may explode upon prolonged exposure to heat or fire. It is a powerful brominating agent for aromatic compounds that contain de-activating substituents thereby producing bromate ions for production of nitrobenzene, benzoic acid, and benzaldehyde.Request Sample Copy of the Report @Sodium bromate is primarily used in the cosmetics industry (hair dressing, straightening, and bleaching), textile industry (dyeing process of synthetic fabrics) and the food Industry (baking agent). It is also used prominently in the explosives industry depending on the thermal decomposition of bromine and formation of oxygen. Naturally occurring bromates are found in water when ozone reacts with bromide ions.Sodium Bromate: Market Trends and DynamicsExtensive use in the cosmetics industry followed by brominating of aromatic compounds (benzene, hexane and toluene) in which corresponding product such as Benzoic acid is formed) is considered to drive the market for sodium bromate. Cosmetic is a consumer-centric industry. Demand for natural ingredients in the cosmetic mixture is likely to boost the cosmetic industry. This, in turn, is expected to propel the global sodium bromate market. Sodium bromate is an inorganic salt and acts as an oxidizing agent. Salts of bromates (especially potassium and slight amounts of sodium) are added to the flour to strengthen the dough. This allows the dough to rise higher.Sales of sodium bromate have become stronger because of its use as a dying agent. Handling is one of the major restraints for bromine and its compounds, as these are carcinogenic, toxic, and hazardous chemicals. Recent study on bromate and its carcinogenic effects has propelled the use of substitutes that can eventually replace the use of bromates or minimize its harmful effect on the human body. Overall, the usage of sodium bromate in the food industry is set to decline in the near future due to the implementation of regulatory sanctions.Currently, research is being conducted in the usage of bromate salts for the manufacture of hypochlorite and hypochlorate. These are anticipated to be used in the water disinfectant process industry. The usage of sodium bromate is still in the research and testing phase.Sodium Bromate: Market SegmentationBased on the type of chemical synthesis, the sodium bromate market can be classified into sodium bromate, sodium bromide, and sodium chlorate. Based on the type of application, the sodium bromate market can be divided into 92%, 99%, and 99.999% pure sodium bromate. Sodium bromate is used in the manufacture of sulfur and VAT dyes in continuous batch dying process. It is also used in the printing and dying, consumer goods, and personal care industries. It is also used as a solvent in precious metal mining such as gold.Sodium Bromate: Region-wise OutlookChina is the leading manufacturer of sodium bromate across the world owing to the availability of cheap labor, high access to bromine, availability of required expertise, and presence of sufficient manufacturing facilities. India and other countries in Asia follow China in the manufacture of sodium bromate.Sodium Bromate: Key PlayersMajor manufacturers of sodium bromate in China include Shandong Weifang Longwei Industrial Company and Weifang Haihua Yuanda Fine Chemical Company Ltd. Other non-Chinese players in the market are India Chemicals Ltd., DL Intrachem Ltd., and Emery Oleochemicals Ltd.Request TOC of the Report @About UsTransparency Market Research (TMR) is a global market intelligence company providing business information reports and services. The companys exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trend analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. TMRs experienced team of analysts, researchers, and consultants use proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather and analyze information.TMRs data repository is continuously updated and revised by a team of research experts so that it always reflects the latest trends and information. With extensive research and analysis capabilities, Transparency Market Research employs rigorous primary and secondary research techniques to develop distinctive data sets and research material for business reports.Contact UsTransparency Market Research90 State Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207Tel: +1-518-618-1030USA - Canada Toll Free: 866-552-3453Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.comWebsite:
Marine Cargo Handling Market Volume Forecast and Value Chain Analysis 2025
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The marine cargo handling industry plays a vital role in the transfer of goods between the seller and buyer. However, more than 90% of the international trade being directed by sea. Cargo ships are types of ships or vessels that carry cargo, material, and goods from one place to the other. Various types of ships such as bulk container ships, rely primarily on shore-side cargo handling equipment to discharge or load their cargo. Marine cargo handling ships or containers are used to import or export various goods in inland waterways or oceans through national or international borders, wherein handling is carried out by the government or private port companies.Request Sample Copy of the Report @Containers are the most preferred transported method of cargo form across globe, as they are transported by land, air, and water transportation systems. The cargo handling of the containers on ships becomes very dangerous, as they are exposed to strong wind and harsh weather in the sea. However, higher competition among marine cargo handling companies is estimated to put a downward pressure on prices. This is a major restraint for the expansion of the marine cargo handling market. Increasing demand for goods fuels the export and import of various goods internationally, via sea, land, or air. Transportation of goods internationally via ships is most economical, which in turn boosts the marine cargo handling market.In terms of type of cargo, the marine cargo handling market can be segmented into bulk, containerized, and break-bulk. Bulk cargo vessels range from 50,000 to 150,000 DWT, and are considered to be one of the bigger vessels. These vessels included ore carriers, bulk carriers, combination carriers, and timber carriers for dry bulk, oil, and ore. Break-bulk general cargo ships are self-sustaining in cargo handling, i.e. they do not require on-shore handling equipment.In terms of cargo equipment, the marine cargo handling market can be segmented into container handling crane, stackers-reclaimer, ship loader, ship unloader, forklift, specially designed truck, and passenger gangway. The container handling crane is specially designed crane to load and discharge containers from ships and to the ships.The global marine cargo handling market is anticipated to expand significantly due to increasing marine traffic. Emerging nations such as India, China, Brazil, and Russia are investing in new marine port construction. However, cargo operators are capitalizing on advanced technology equipment to reduce loading and discharging time and improve its operating efficiency. This is likely to boost the marine cargo handling market. However, stringent fuel consumption and emission regulations in the U.S. and Europe are replacing with hybrid and electric equipment by diesel-based equipment. This is also likely to fuel the marine cargo industries. Additionally, rising burden from increasing traffic at marine ports is expected to raise the demand for cargo handling equipment. High initial investment is required in order to install advanced cargo handling equipment, which is limiting the growth of hybrid and electric equipment, particularly in Asia Pacific. This may act as a restraint for the expansion of the marine cargo handling market.In terms of geography, the global marine cargo handling market can be segmented into North America, Latin America, Europe, Asia Pacific, and Middle East & Africa. Asia Pacific is a key player in the global marine cargo handling industry. Asia Pacific is estimated to continue its dominance in the global marine cargo handling market due to the anticipated expansion of the end-use industries. Asia Pacific is followed by Europe and North America, in terms of market share. Ports on the east west and gulf coasts of the US contain public facilities governed by port authorities and private-held terminals. The west coast trade has accounted for more than 50% of the total container of water-borne trade in the U.S.Key players operating in the global marine cargo handling market include NEW LIGHT CARGO SYSTEM LLC, Holt Cargo Systems Inc., Cargo Express Inc., Shell Global, Blue Water Group LTD, and OCEANAIR CARGO INC.Request TOC of the Report @About UsTransparency Market Research (TMR) is a global market intelligence company providing business information reports and services. The companys exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trend analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. TMRs experienced team of analysts, researchers, and consultants use proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather and analyze information.TMRs data repository is continuously updated and revised by a team of research experts so that it always reflects the latest trends and information. With extensive research and analysis capabilities, Transparency Market Research employs rigorous primary and secondary research techniques to develop distinctive data sets and research material for business reports.Contact UsTransparency Market Research90 State Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207Tel: +1-518-618-1030USA - Canada Toll Free: 866-552-3453Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.comWebsite:
Automotive Trailer Tow Mirror (ATTM) Market Revenue, Opportunity, Forecast and Value Chain 2025
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The driving mirror assists the driver to perceive what is close to the vehicle. Furthermore, it helps the driver to estimate the distance between the trailing vehicles and the car. Some of the other types of automotive mirrors are door or wing mirrors, generally recognized as side-view mirrors. A rear-view mirror gives the view of an object at a close range of the car by replicating the images that are reflected on the internal driving mirror. Certain vehicles use sensors or cameras for alerts to distinguish between different types of objects. A front-view mirror reflects images of the nearby cars as well.Request Sample Copy of the Report @One of the major drivers for the growth of the automotive trailer tow mirror market is the increasing demand for towable RVs or recreational vehicles, which is positively impacting the progress of towing mirrors. Towable recreational vehicles are vehicles that are meant for pleasure or recreation activities such as camping and vacations. These vehicles have several facilities including a kitchen, sleeping room, and bathroom. Positive business environments as well as encouraging regulatory guidelines are likely to aid the growth of the towable RVs market across the world. This rise in the acceptance of towable RVs, especially in the North America region is likely to fuel the growth of the overall automotive trailer tow mirror market during the forecast period. Moreover, the incorporation of cameras to cover the blind spots is another trend that is gaining momentum in the global market. The automotive trailer tow mirrors find additional applications when they are combined with cameras. The system comprises three cameras, one on the rear side of the trailer and two side view mirrors. The side cameras are incorporated into the side mirror that helps in refining the side vision of the automobile. When the arrangement is turned on, it displays the side view on the central screen. Additionally, this camera is connected to the trailer light for power and it also helps in communicating the image to the display wirelessly. This improvement in towable mirrors is likely to fuel growth of the automotive trailer tow mirror market during the forecast period.The global automotive trailer tow mirror market can be segmented by vehicle type and geography. In terms of vehicle type, the global market can be segregated into towable RVs, and pickup trucks. In 2016, the pickup trucks segment held a prominent share in the global automotive trailer tow mirror market and it constituted the main part of the market, by revenue. The implementation of towing mirrors by many agencies such as the NHTSA or National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and the European Commission is one of the major factors for the dominance of this segment in the global automotive trailer tow mirror market.By geography, the global automotive trailer tow mirror market can be divided into North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, Latin America, and Middle East & Africa. Among these, North America held the maximum share and is estimated to retain its position during the forecast period. Some of the factors such as change in living patterns and lifestyles have increased the demand for travel trailers significantly, thereby propelling the overall automotive trailer tow mirror market in this region.The global automotive trailer tow mirror market is highly fragmented in nature owing to the presence of a number of regional and international vendors across the globe. Aftermarket players held a huge share of the market, as they provide a number of additional features such as cameras, cargo and lamps. In order to remain relevant in this environment, a growing number of manufacturers are following different approaches including mergers and acquisitions and product innovation. Some of the major players operating in the global automotive trailer tow mirror market are Milenco, Samvardhana Motherson, ISP Glendale, CARiD.com, Power Vision, K Source, and Ford Motor Company.Request TOC of the Report @About UsTransparency Market Research (TMR) is a global market intelligence company providing business information reports and services. The companys exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trend analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. TMRs experienced team of analysts, researchers, and consultants use proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather and analyze information.TMRs data repository is continuously updated and revised by a team of research experts so that it always reflects the latest trends and information. With extensive research and analysis capabilities, Transparency Market Research employs rigorous primary and secondary research techniques to develop distinctive data sets and research material for business reports.Contact UsTransparency Market Research90 State Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207Tel: +1-518-618-1030USA - Canada Toll Free: 866-552-3453Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.comWebsite:
In-Home Senior Care Franchises Market Size to Grow Steadily during Forecast period 2016 2026
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Every person who is born must eventually grow old at some point. Considering how busy we have all become, it can often seem that life passes us by in a blur. When we do age, though, we usually have only one wish to live out the rest of our years in safety and comfort. Most of us would also like to live in our own homes if we can make that choice. That is where the In-Home Senior Care Franchises market comes into play. In-home senior care is a perfect fit for the franchising model since it is highly regulated, systems-oriented and highly personal. It enables franchise owners to develop strong ties with both their clients and the community at large. The long-term prospects of the In-Home Senior Care Franchises market are very bright indeed.In-Home Senior Care Franchises Market DriversAn ageing population in the west will be the main driver of the In-Home Senior Care Franchises market. The Baby Boomer generation born immediately following World War II are expected to demand greater medical care and attention. Elderly care in the U.S alone is expected to be worth more than $300 billion in 2016. There is also a major shift towards ageing in place. Most adults like living in the comfort & privacy of their own homes for as long as is possible. Even after they cross the age of 65, people prefer living on their own or with family members rather than in an old-age home. The In-Home Senior Care Franchises market is also expected to get a boost from improving technology. Assistance & safety monitoring equipment has taken a dramatic leap in recent times driven by advances in sensory networks, bio-sensing, robotics, cloud computing and telecommunications. Another factor boosting the In-Home Senior Care Franchises market is the high revenue. In-home senior care requires very low initial investment and the earning opportunities are immense. Franchise owners are likely to earn more than independent providers improving the attractiveness of the In-Home Senior Care Franchises market.Request For Report Sample@In-Home Senior Care Franchises Market RestraintsOne of the biggest constraints in the In-Home Senior Care Franchises market is that of cost. In-home care facilities can cost anywhere from $3000 to $6000 a month. This makes it prohibitively expensive even for those families that are insured by insurance companies since they will almost certainly not cover the entire expense. The second challenge is a lack of trained professionals. It can be very difficult for in-home senior care franchises to find qualified nurses, staff or medical professionals to assist their patients. The demand for these individuals is anticipated to be much more than the supply in the years ahead. The third barrier to the growth of the In-Home Senior Care Franchises market is a lack of regulation in the industry. While it might be comforting to think of home health aides as certified professionals, the truth is that they have usually gone through a small training program for the company which hires them. There is no standardisation leading to great confusion about what these individuals are able and unable to do. One more challenge is the intense competition in the In-Home Senior Care Franchises market. This is a 24/7, 365 days a year business which requires franchisees to always be on call. Incumbent companies may offer additional benefits for holding on to their clients, making it difficult for newcomers to the field.In-Home Senior Care Franchises Market Key RegionsThe global In-Home Senior Care Franchises market is divided into North America, E.U, Asia, MENA and the rest of the world. North America is the largest market followed by the E.U. A large geriatric population, technological improvements and government reimbursement for health care are the primary reasons that it is dominant. Asia led by China, Japan and Korea are anticipated to outpace Europe in this decade due to their economic heft and a greater focus on domestic healthcare. Companies would be well advised to focus on the Asian In-Home Senior Care Franchises market for their future growth prospects.Visit For TOC@In-Home Senior Care Franchises Market Key Market PlayersSome companies in the In-Home Senior Care Franchises market are BrightStar, Synergy HomeCare & Right at Home.ABOUT US:Future Market Insights (FMI) is a leading market intelligence and consulting firm. We deliver syndicated research reports, custom research reports and consulting services, which are personalized in nature. FMI delivers a complete packaged solution, which combines current market intelligence, statistical anecdotes, technology inputs, valuable growth insights, an aerial view of the competitive framework, and future market trends.Future Market Insights616 Corporate Way, Suite 2-9018,Valley Cottage, NY 10989,United StatesT: +1-347-918-3531F: +1-845-579-5705Email: sales@futuremarketinsights.comWebsite:
Cochineal Extract Market Forecast Report by Future Market Insights Offers Key Insights 2016 2026
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The cochineal is an insect from Dactylopius coccus family, from these insects natural food color dyecarminis derived. The female insect is dried and then dye is extracted from dried insect as well as from eggs. This extract is further mixed with calcium or aluminum salts to use as dye. Carmine is primarily used as a colorant in foodand in lipsticks. Cochineal extract is being used as colorant since centuries, it has wide applications as natural colorant into food, textile, medicine and personal care products. The cochineal insect farming is done to grow the particular insects for red color dye. The origin of cochineal insect is seen in Peru and Mexico.The insects are grown on specific type of cactus plant these insects grow on the moisture and nutrient contents of the cactus leaves. Insects are then collected and sun dried to produce extract. Dried cochineal, contains 17 % to 24% carminic acid, is carefully extracted in an acidic, aqueous, alcoholic solution to produce red, orange color dye.Request For Report Sample@Cochineal Extract Market Segmentation:Cochineal extract market is segmented on the basis of its form, application and region. On the basis of forms, cochineal extract market is segmented into powders and liquid form. The cochineal extract is available in both water soluble as well as oil soluble. Cochineal extract market is segmented on the basis of its applications as food and beverages, textile/fabric, cosmetics & personal care, pharmaceuticals and others etc.Cochineal extract market demand is considerably high in the food and beverage market segment as it is considered as natural color option where synthetic color is prohibited, and hence demanded as colorant in various food products such as bakery and confectionary, beverages, dairy products etc. Thus, food and beverages market segment is dominate market for cochineal extract. In cosmetics & personal care market segment cochineal extract is mainly used as colorant in skin care products, lipsticks, face powders, rouges, and blushes etc. Applications of cochineal extract in fabric/ textile segment is comparatively lesser as numerous new and synthetic color dye options are being invented, however in few of the markets its still popular. In pharmaceutical market segment cochineal extract is basically used for color pills and ointments, however this segment comprises very small share of total market. Others market segment includes cochineal extract uses in the manufacturing of artificial flowers, paints and crimson ink.Cochineal extract market is further segmented on the basis of regions as North America, Latin America, Asia Pacific Excluding Japan, Japan, Europe, and Middle East and Africa. Latin America is major export market of cochineal extracts, Mexico and Peru being major regional producers. In European markets France is the major importer for cochineal extract. Due to various government bans on the uses of synthetic food colorant in Japan , Japan is also a becoming major importer for cochineal extract in coming years.CochinealExtractMarket Drivers:Cochineal extract is in high demand in several application sectors across the world. Principle factors driving market demand are continuous rising demand natural colorants. As synthetic colorant had proven allergic and hazardous for health, natural color market demand is high. Also rising market demand for natural products based cosmetics and skin care products is becoming another market driver for cochineal extract. Various government such as Japan has banned synthetic color uses in food and beverage products, this is driving natural colorant market demands such as cochineal extracts.CochinealExtractMarket Restrains:Cochineal extract has no known health risks, number of people have been found to experience occupational asthma, foodand cosmetic allergies due to use of product containing cochineal extracts. Increasing vegan food culture and adoption of 100% plant food concept, many consumers are not ready to accept animal products and not preferring product labeled with cochineal extract or carmine as an ingredients. These are the main restraints for cochineal extract market.Visit For TOC@CochinealExtractMarket Key Players:Maximum amount of cochineal extract is produced in Mexico and Peru and get exported into global markets. Key players operating in cochineal extract market are DDW The Color House, Gentle world, Xian LiSheng-Tech Co., Ltd, Chr. Hansen Holding A/S, Colores Naturales EIRL, Lake Foods, and many of the local Mexican and Peru market players extract the cochineal product like Earthue, Biocon del Peru.ABOUT US:Future Market Insights (FMI) is a leading market intelligence and consulting firm. We deliver syndicated research reports, custom research reports and consulting services, which are personalized in nature. FMI delivers a complete packaged solution, which combines current market intelligence, statistical anecdotes, technology inputs, valuable growth insights, an aerial view of the competitive framework, and future market trends.Future Market Insights616 Corporate Way, Suite 2-9018,Valley Cottage, NY 10989,United StatesT: +1-347-918-3531F: +1-845-579-5705Email: sales@futuremarketinsights.comWebsite:
DA NANG, VietnamPresident Rodrigo Duterte on Saturday told Chinese President Xi Jinping that many Filipinos were increasingly becoming concerned over Beijings actions even while he thanked China for helping the Philippines beat the terrorists in the Marawi siege.
Theres a bit of misunderstanding. Actually, what I was trying to say is that a lot of businessmen, and the Filipinos, have been asking me what is your position with China?
Duterte then reiterated there will always be a time to look into the issue, after which, members of the Chinese security already asked members of the press to leave the venue of the bilateral meetings, held at the Da Nang Crowne Plaza Hotel.
Presidential Spokesman Harry Roque described the talks as frank and Xi, replying to Dutertes inquiry, said there had been an agreement on the Code of Conduct and the talks would be continuing.
They also tackled the issue on the freedom of navigation since everyone would be sailing from the Indian Ocean through the West Philippine Sea and there was need for unhampered navigation.
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On the North Korean issue, Roque said China had expressed no interest in a conflict on the Korean peninsula.
According to the Chinese leader, China, which is a member of the UN Security Council, was encouraging both Washington and Pyongyang to hold talks on issues of security concerns.
On Thursday night, Duterte said he would raise the supposed militarization in the South China Sea, as chairman of the 10-nation Association of Southeast Asian Nations.
Duterte also said he would not be asking for any military assistance from Washington to help wage a war against Beijing.
The regional bloc, which will hold its 31st Summit in Manila, is expected to discuss Beijings continued militarization of the disputed waters, amid the proposed start of negotiations for the actual code of conduct in the South China Sea between Asean and Beijing.
China claims almost the entire South China Sea, through which more than $3 trillion of seaborne trade passes each year.
Duterte told Xi the Philippines values highly its friendship with China, as he thanked them for the crucial help it gave during the war against extremist forces which laid siege in Marawi last May.
First of all, let me thank you for your crucial help in our fight in Marawi a few weeks ago. We badly needed help, and it was China who first came to our aid; for that we are very very thankful, Duterte said.
Duterte stressed he already gave word to Xi that Philippines and China can be true friends.
Your arms that you provided are very crucial and one of our sharp shooters killed Hapilon using a Chinese-made sniper rifle, the President added, as he remarked that Beijing-made firearms were very good and very accurate.
Duterte, in one of his speeches last week, credited the sniper rifles donated by China as the weapons used to kill the top leaders of Marawi siege. With Sara Susanne Fabunan
Hapilon and Maute were killed by government forces in a crucial operation that ended the Marawi siege.
Duterte was at the middle of his foreign trip in Russia when he declared martial law in Mindanao.
Meanwhile, as the Asean leaders and China are set to announce the start of the Code of Conduct negotiations, a Southeast Asian diplomat said on Saturday the geographic scope of the COC would be a very challenging aspect between the claimant countries in the disputed South China Sea.
In an interview, the Southeast Asian diplomat, who refused to be named, said the geographic scope of the COC, the dispute settlement and the issue whether or not it would be legally binding would be the challenges once Asean and China officially started their negotiations on the COC.
The geographic scope of the COC will be an issue (when the negotiation starts). The nature of the COC will be very challenging aspect because last August, the Asean Foreign Ministers announced that we want a legally binding COC, but we havent heard from the other side (China), the diplomat lamented.
During the Asean Regional Forum, China insisted for a maritime code of conduct with Southeast Asian countries will not be legally binding or a less forceful binding.
But the diplomat said as the negotiation would officially start next year, the 10-member bloc would definitely push for a legally binding COC, despite Chinas opposition.
We will push for (a) legally binding (COC) because thats what the Asean wanted. Whatever comes out of negotiation should be observed by everyone, the diplomat said.
When asked to react on the suggestion of the Philippines former foreign secretary Albert del Rosarios suggestion to start building up defense capabilities amidst continuous reclamation activities in the disputed island, the Southeast Asian diplomat said such advice was not a great solution.
The diplomat explained that if claimant countries or if Philippines would put its money in arms, all of the countries in the region would now have an excuse to further militarize.
If the Philippines will put money in arms, what do you think will happen? All of these countries in the region will now have an excuse to further militarize. You will have an environment to arms race, the diplomat said.
The diplomat said, Asean-China process was the only viable mechanism that the 10-bloc countries have in preventing escalation of the tension.
If you are going to express pessimism even before the start of negotiation, if I may return the question, what kind of alternatives can you present instead of having COC? the diplomat said.
The diplomat noted that the Philippines could not keep on suing countries who may have violated the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea.
In a separate press briefing, Department of Foreign Affairs spokesman Robespierre Bolivar said the Asean leaders were set to announce the start of an actual negotiations on November 13. With Sara Susanne Fabunan
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Government Support will boost Lemongrass Oil size During Forecast Period 2016 2026
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The Lemongrass oil is obtained by extraction of the stalks of the Lemongrass (Cymbopogon) herb. Lemongrass shrubs/plant mainly grows in Asia and cannot be available as fresh throughout the year, but now a days lemongrass oil and lemongrass extract or dehydrated forms are commonly used.According to the discovery health, lemongrass oil is one of the bestselling oil in the world which is used by the culinary artist because of its fresh and enjoyable scent. Traditionally, lemongrass parts as well as its oil have been used as a remedy for various health issues such as, digestive disturbances, behavioral problems, circulatory issues, etc. It is also known as fever grass due to its ability to bring down a fever. Lemongrass oil is useful in prevention of growth of some yeast and bacteria, and has antioxidant/ antibacterial properties and an important vitamins such as vitamin A, B2, B3, B6, B5, B1, folate and vitamin C and also provides essential minerals such as copper, calcium, phosphorous, zinc, manganese, iron and magnesium. Due to all these numerous benefits of lemongrass oil market is in high demand. Lemongrass thrives in tropical and subtropical regions, such as India, Malaysia, Sri Lanka, China, Cambodia, and Guatemala.Request For Report Sample@Lemongrass Oil: SegmentationLemongrass oil market is segmented on the basis of the application, grade and regions. On the basis of lemongrass oil application market is segmented as pharmaceutical, cosmetics & personal care, and food and beverages. As Lemongrass oil possess high medicinal value and used in various treatments since history market demand in pharmaceutical segment is significantly high. On the basis of lemongrass oil application in cosmetic & personal care products, the product is used in soaps, deodorants, shampoos, conditioner, body lotion, air freshener and tonics. Its essential vitamin contents as well as skin healing properties are driving lemongrass oil market demand in personal care market segment. Lemongrass oil popularity as fragrance and taste, its demand in food and beverage market segment has grown over the time. It is used in various culinary delights, added to ready-made curries, paired with beef, fish, poultry and seafoods, it is also used for flavoring tea and soups.Lemongrass oil market is further segmented on the basis of grades as food grade and therapeutic grade. Food grade is basically for food and beverage purpose and therapeutic grade is for pharmaceutical as well as personal care uses. Lemongrass oil market is later segmented on the basis of regions, as North America North America, Latin America, Eastern Europe, Western Europe, Asia-Pacific excluding Japan, Japan, and Middle East & Africa.Lemongrass Oil: Region wise outlookLatin America and Europe are leading regional markets importing lemongrass oil. However, being origin region of lemongrass oil, Asia Pacific market leading exporter market for lemongrass oil, India and China are major producer markets. Asia pacific and Europe markets are expected to witness higher growth in forecast period. In Asian countries such as, Thailand, Malaysia, Cambodia, Vietnam and Indonesia, lemongrass oil is a popular ingredient in many culinary delights. The market demand of lemongrass oil is increasing its popularity in flavoring Asian cooking too. Lemongrass oil is gaining popularity from health conscious consumers from Latin America, which is driving market growth in the region.Lemongrass Oil: Trends and DriversLemongrass oil has various medicinal, skin care properties as well as health benefits, due to this lemongrass oil is gaining popularity in the worldwide markets. Increasing popularity of lemongrass oil in aromatherapy is driving global market demand. The trending natural oil based personal care product demand by consumers, is another market driver for lemongrass oil.In addition, lemongrass oil has various health benefits which are related to with essential oil are anticipated to drive the lemongrass oil demand in pharmaceutical and applications medical and the product has no harmful side effects which will help in penetrating the market in future. Also, increasing uses in food and beverage industry for culinary dishes is another major market driver.Visit For TOC@Lemongrass Oil: Key playersSome of the key participating players in Lemongrass oil market globally are, The Leburmuth Company, Essential Oils of New Zealand, Young Living Essential Oils, doTerra, Sydella Laboratoire, West India Spices Inc, Falcon ,Rajkeerth Aromatics, Reho natural ingredients etc. among the others.ABOUT US:Future Market Insights (FMI) is a leading market intelligence and consulting firm. We deliver syndicated research reports, custom research reports and consulting services, which are personalized in nature. FMI delivers a complete packaged solution, which combines current market intelligence, statistical anecdotes, technology inputs, valuable growth insights, an aerial view of the competitive framework, and future market trends.Future Market Insights616 Corporate Way, Suite 2-9018,Valley Cottage, NY 10989,United StatesT: +1-347-918-3531F: +1-845-579-5705Email: sales@futuremarketinsights.comWebsite:
High Abuse Shrink Bags Market Forecast and Opportunity Assessment by Future Market Insights 2017 2027
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Shelf life acts as an essential factor among meat packaging manufacturers while choosing packaging bags and films. High-abuse shrink bags are one such solution to extend the shelf life of fresh meat products by offering advanced innovative and patented technology. High abuse shrink bags are designed for surface pasteurization of meat products inside of the packaging. Nowadays, meat packaging manufacturers are more focusing on the designs of packaging in order to sell their products differently as it is highly dependent on the purchasing decision for a positive impact. Further, this led to the specific requirement of packaging films for meat packaging applications.Raw materials play a major role in packaging films in order to gain popularity among meat packaging manufacturers and retailers in the future. For instance, material like Ethylene Vinyl Alcohol (EVOH), which is highly used in high abuse shrink bags has properties such as high gas barrier, amazing strength and environmentally friendly as compared to other raw materials.Request For Report Sample@High Abuse Shrink Bags Market: Drivers and RestraintsAccording to the U.S Food and drug administration, sales of fresh meat majorly accounts for about 65% of the overall food sales thus creating ample opportunities for high abuse shrink bags consumption, which in turn driving high abuse shrink bags market. Moreover, the food sector coupled with food service restaurants have shown a promising growth in the recent past years which is fueling the growth of meat packaging as well as the high abuse shrink bags market.Food packaging acts majorly driving the growth of the high abuse shrink bags market as flexible packaging accounts for nearly 50% of the total food packaging market. The rise in prices of meat products can be a major challenge to the global high abuse shrink bags market.High Abuse Shrink Bags Market: Region wise OutlookIn terms of geography, the global high abuse shrink bags market is divided into majorly five regions namely North America, Latin America, Europe, Asia Pacific and Middle East & Africa. Among these regions, North America and Europe are expected to collectively dominate the global high abuse shrink bags market throughout 2016 to 2024. North America, being the largest producer of meat packaging which is attributed to the huge usage of high abuse shrink bags in the developed countries of North America. However, the trend is gradually picking up the pace in developed markets for the global high abuse shrink bags market. Furthermore, Asia Pacific is expected to be primarily driven mainly by china, Japan and India in the global high abuse shrink bags market. Latin America and Middle East & Africa are expected to witness steady growth over the forecast period. In Latin America, Brazil, Argentina and Mexico are expected to create market opportunities for companies involved in the high abuse shrink bags market.High Abuse Shrink Bags Market: SegmentationOn the basis of material type, the global high abuse shrink bags market is segmented intoEthylene Vinyl Alcohol (EVOH)Ethylene-Vinyl Acetate (EVA)PolyolefinPolyethylene (PE)Polypropylene (PP)Polyester (PET)Polyamide (PA)Polyvinylidene chloride (PVDC)On the basis of application type, the global high abuse shrink bags market is segmented intoFresh MeatFrozen Fish and Sea FoodNon gassing CheeseNon-ripening cheeseOthersOn the basis of meat type, the global high abuse shrink bags market is segmented intoBeefVealLambPorkOthersVisit For TOC@High Abuse Shrink Bags Market: Key PlayersSome of the key players in the global high abuse shrink bags market includes Bemis Krehalon UK Ltd., Flexopack, Krehalon Industries B.V., EPACKAGING LLC., TDI PACKSYS LLC, Apex Packaging Corporation, Printpack, Fortune Plastics, Novolex, and Berry Plastics Group Incorporated, Fuji Seal International Incorporated, Inteplast Group Limited and many more.ABOUT US:Future Market Insights (FMI) is a leading market intelligence and consulting firm. We deliver syndicated research reports, custom research reports and consulting services, which are personalized in nature. FMI delivers a complete packaged solution, which combines current market intelligence, statistical anecdotes, technology inputs, valuable growth insights, an aerial view of the competitive framework, and future market trends.Future Market Insights616 Corporate Way, Suite 2-9018,Valley Cottage, NY 10989,United StatesT: +1-347-918-3531F: +1-845-579-5705Email: sales@futuremarketinsights.comWebsite:
Tempeh Market Trends, Forecast, and Analysis by Future Market Insights 2017 2027
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Tempeh is a type of fermented soy cake product which can be consumed with rice or as a snack.Tempeh is obtained from fermentation of soybean with Rhizopus oligosporus as a starter culture. Tempeh was originated in Indonesia and has been increasing its demand in global market as a competitor of tofu. Tempeh has many health benefits such as reducing cholesterol, increasing bone density, reducing menopausal symptoms, promoting muscle recovery, etc. Tempeh is a rich source of manganese, copper, fiber, protein, phosphorus, vitamins, magnesium, etc. which makes it popular in health conscious consumers globally. Tempeh is a better meat alternative of all fermented soy products. Tempeh contains high nutritional value and hence is used in various vegetarian cuisine worldwide, where it is used as meat analogue. Tempeh contains high levels of vitamins B6, B5, B3, and B2. Tempeh has the ability to have many textures and flavors which makes it a better substitute for meat and meat-based products.Market Segmentation:The global tempeh market is segmented on the basis of type, distribution channels, form, and region. The global tempeh market is segmented on the basis of type such as tempeh bacem, tempe bongkrek, tempe mendoan, and tempe semangit. The global tempeh market is segmented on the basis of distribution channel as supermarket/ hypermarket, retail shops, online shops etc. The global tempeh market can also be segmented on the basis of form such as organic tempeh and conventional tempeh. On the basis of form the demand for organic tempeh is growing worldwide as a result of increasing health awareness among consumers. Hence, the global tempeh market is expected to significantly increase the revenue contribution over the forecast period.Request For Report Sample@Market Regional Outlook:On the basis of regions, the tempeh market has been segmented into North America, Latin America, Western and Eastern Europe, Asia-Pacific Excluding Japan, Japan, Middle East and Africa. Globally, among all regions, Asia Pacific has developed as the dominant region in global tempeh market followed by North America. Tempeh is originated in Indonesia which produces and consumes maximum amount of tempeh domestically. China is growing in producing tempeh to cater to consumer needs in global market. Japan, Korea and India are some countries which are gaining interest in producing fermented food products from soybean in turn growing tempeh market globally.Market Drivers and Trends:Tempeh is a healthy food containing probiotic which helps increasing antibodies, build stronger immune system, regulate appetite and reduces sugar. Tempeh is popular in health conscious consumers as it helps in reducing cholesterol levels naturally. Availability of tempeh in supermarket/ hypermarkets is also driving market for tempeh in urban countries. Increasing awareness of consumption of healthy food is driving market for tempeh globally. As a result of growing population of working professionals demand for ready-to-eat tempeh is increasing in urban areas driving market for tempeh globally. Manufacturers are focusing on providing healthier product offerings. Tempeh also has many health benefits such as its helps in muscle building, reduces risk of diabetes and treats inflammatory diseases which helps in growing global market for tempeh. Hence, the global tempeh market is expected to observe robust growth over the forecast period.Visit For TOC@Tempeh Market Key Players:Some of the key players in the tempeh market include Lalibela Farm, The Cultered Bean Company, Nutrisoy Pty Ltd., Impulse Foods, ALIVE & HEALING INC., and American Soy Asia are among these. The companies are expected to expand their business by enhancing their product portfolio in global tempeh market. The companies are projected to frame certain strategies in future in order to gain the competitive advantage in global tempeh market till 2027.ABOUT US:Future Market Insights (FMI) is a leading market intelligence and consulting firm. We deliver syndicated research reports, custom research reports and consulting services, which are personalized in nature. FMI delivers a complete packaged solution, which combines current market intelligence, statistical anecdotes, technology inputs, valuable growth insights, an aerial view of the competitive framework, and future market trends.Future Market Insights616 Corporate Way, Suite 2-9018,Valley Cottage, NY 10989,United StatesT: +1-347-918-3531F: +1-845-579-5705Email: sales@futuremarketinsights.comWebsite:
Food Preservative Market: Opportunity Assessment Research Study 2020
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Food preservatives are substances that are added to food to keep it safe and fresh for longer duration of time. The food preservatives are used across beverages, dairy bakery, snacks, meat and sea food during processing and packing to prevent them any bacterial effects. The growth in demand of these food items is expected to be major driver for the food preservative market. Global nature of food sourcing and increasing complexities in the food supply chain have resulted in increasing demand for products and techniques required to prolong the shelf-life of the food product, thus increasing the demand for food preservatives.There are two types of food preservative: natural and artificial. Also, the food preservatives are used for different functions such as antimicrobials, antioxidants, chelating agents and enzyme attackers. Salt, sugar, alcohol, vinegar are some of natural preservatives use in making jams, juices and pickles. Sulphites, Nitrites and Benzoates are three classes of artificial preservatives commonly used in food. Sulphites are used to prevent the growth of bacteria in wine, dried fruits and vegetables in vinegar or brine. Sorbic acid is used in preservation of potato and cheese product. Nitrites are used in meat products such as sausages and hams to protect against the bacterium that can causes botulism. Benzoic acid is more effective against yeasts than against molds and bacteria. It is used as antifungal and antibacterial in low sugar jams, jellies, and condiments.Request For Report Sample@North America is the largest market for food preservative, followed by Asia-Pacific and Europe. The Asia-Pacific market is expected to have a higher growth rate during the forecasted period. India is the worlds second largest food producer after China, which shows the potential market for food preservative in Asian country.Preservation techniques for preventing food spoilage have been practiced since ages. Changing lifestyle and increasing trade of food products across the globe have led to the increasing demand for food preservatives. Various government bodies and private industries keep proper regulation to maintain the high standards food quality containing preservatives. Increasing consumer awareness and changing food consumption habit along with increasing population is driving the demand of various segments of food and beverage industry, which in turn, is driving the food preservative market. This growth is also driven by increasing demand for natural food preservatives in developed markets and continued demand for processed food in emerging markets. Sensing the increasing reference of consumers towards the natural food products, certain global companies have started replacing artificial food preservatives with the natural preservatives in their food products. They are further using this to project their product as all-natural food product thus attracting larger consumer interest. Convenience food products and personal care products have further increased the application area for the food preservatives.Visit For TOC@Some of the major players operating in the market are ABF Ingredients Ltd., Ajinomoto Co. Inc, Archer Daniels Midland Company, Albemarle Corporation, Brenntag Inc., Cargill, Incorporated, Celanese Corporation, Edlong Flavors, Jungbunzlauer Ag, Kerry Group, Purac Biochem B.V, Royal Dsm N.V. and Dupont De Nemours & Company.About UsPersistence Market Research (PMR) is a third-platform research firm. Ourresearch model is a unique collaboration of data analytics and marketresearch methodology to help businesses achieve optimal performance.Contact USPersistence Market Research305 Broadway7th Floor, New York City,NY 10007, United States,USA Canada Toll Free: 800-961-0353Web:Email: sales@persistencemarketresearch.com
Anti-Caking Agents Market Intelligence with Competitive Landscape 2020
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Anti- caking agent is an additive, which used in food industry including seasoning & condiments, dairy products, meat products, bakery, soups & sauces and sweeteners. It is used in the form of powder or granules to prevent the formation of lumps and for easing packaging, consumption and transport. They do not have any nutritional value. Some of the commonly used anti-caking agents in food industry are calcium silicate, sodium aluminosilicate and silicon dioxide, magnesium stearate, powdered cellulose, , sodium bicarbonate, sodium ferrocyanide, magnesium trisilicate, calcium ferrocyanide potassium aluminium silicate, stearic acid, tricalcium phosphate and polydimethylsiloxane . Sodium aluminosilicate is used as an anti-caking agent in table salts. Application of anti-caking agents is used in fertilizers, feed, road salt, cosmetics, and synthetic detergents. Use of anti-caking agent in fertilizer includes phosphorus, nitrogen, ammonium, and compound based fertilizers.Growth of the food and beverage industry due to the rising population, rising consumer awareness about packaged food and shifting consumer preference towards convenience food, growth in disposable income are some of key reason which leads to boost the demand for anti-caking agents market over the forecast period.Request For Report Sample@The global anti-caking agents market is growing with high potential. Europe is the largest market for anti-caking agents followed by North America. Growth in food industry in North America further boosts the anti-caking agents market. Growing large population, changing lifestyle of people, inclination towards westernized eating habits, rising consumer preference towards junk food, rising awareness of benefits of packaged food and growing food & beverage industry are major reason which drive the anti-caking agents in Asia Pacific region. Growing technological developments in food and dairy industry further helps in the growth of anti-caking agents market. Asia Pacific is the fastest growing market among all regions of the world. Implementation of some regulations by European Food Safety Authority for the use of anti-caking agents, act as a market restrains for anti-caking agents market.Major companies operating in anti-caking agents market includes, Bogdany Petrol Ltd., Huber Engineered Materials, Evonik Industries AG, Kao Chemicals, Sasol Wax, IMAC INC, BASF, Fuji Chemicals Industries, Grain Corporation, Norkem Group, Chemipol S.A., PPG Industries, Inc., PQ Corporation and Sweetener Supply Corp.Visit For TOC@Key points covered in the reportReport segments the market on the basis of types, application, products, technology, etc (as applicable)The report covers geographic segmentationNorth AmericaEuropeAsiaRoWThe report provides the market size and forecast for the different segments and geographies for the period of 2010 to 2020The report provides company profiles of some of the leading companies operating in the marketThe report also provides porters five forces analysis of the market.About UsPersistence Market Research (PMR) is a third-platform research firm. Ourresearch model is a unique collaboration of data analytics and marketresearch methodology to help businesses achieve optimal performance.Contact USPersistence Market Research305 Broadway7th Floor, New York City,NY 10007, United States,USA Canada Toll Free: 800-961-0353Web:Email: sales@persistencemarketresearch.com
Urinary Catheters Market to Exhibit a Healthy Growth of 4.1% CAGR Between 2015-2021
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According to a new market report published by Persistence Market Research titled "Global Market Study on Urinary Catheters: Intermittent Catheters Segment to Witness Highest Growth by 2021, the urinary catheters market is expected to be valued at US$1,377.5 Mn by the end of 2015. It is anticipated to expand at a CAGR of4.1% from 2015 to 2021, to reach US$1,755.0Mn by 2021.Presently, the urinary catheter market is mainly driven by factors such as growing ageing population, favorable reimbursement policies and increasing demand for advanced urinary catheters. However, factors such as growing incidence of urinary tract infections and the threat from substitutes are expected to hamper market growth. The urinary catheter market is segmented on the basis of product type and application.Request to view table of content @The global catheter market was valued at around US$ 25,895.6Mn 2014. The urinary catheter market accounted for 5.1% of global catheter market in 2014 and was valued at US$ 1,326.0 million. Revenue contribution by urinary catheter market to the global catheter market is expected to increase to US$ 1,755.0 by the end of 2021, expanding at a CAGR of 4.1% between 2015 and 2021. The increasing prevalence of chronic diseases and growing ageing population are factors expected to positively affect the growth of the urinary catheter market across the globe.Request Sample Report @By region, North America dominated the market with over 30% market share and is expected to remain dominant throughout the forecast period. The urinary catheter market in Asia and Latin America are expected to expand at a CAGRs of 4.7% and 4.6% respectively during the forecast period.Key players covered in this report include B. Braun Melsungen AG, Coloplast A/S., CR Bard Inc., Teleflex Incorporation, Boston Scientific Corporation, Covidien Plc, Hollister Incorporated, and Cook Medical.Buy Urinary Catheters Market Report @About UsPersistence Market Research (PMR) is a third-platform research firm. Our research model is a unique collaboration of data analytics and market research methodology to help businesses achieve optimal performance.To support companies in overcoming complex business challenges, we follow a multi-disciplinary approach. At PMR, we unite various data streams from multi-dimensional sources. By deploying real-time data collection, big data, and customer experience analytics, we deliver business intelligence for organizations of all sizes.Contact UsPersistence Market Research305 Broadway7th Floor, New York City,NY 10007, United States,USA,Canada Toll Free: 800-961-0353Email: sales@persistencemarketresearch.comWeb:
2017-2022 Global and United States Western Cutlery Market Status and Forecast by Players, Types
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Qyresearchreports include new market research report "2017-2022 Western Cutlery Report on Global and United States Market, Status and Forecast, by Players, Types and Applications" to its huge collection of research reports.The report Western Cutlery Market is a comprehensive industry study featuring qualitative and quantitative analysis. In todays complex business environment, players in the Global and United States Western Cutlery market need to remain updated about the latest trends. The latest intelligence on the Western Cutlery market can help companies form more informed business decisions. Furthermore, knowing the latest market trends will also help companies avoid any unnecessary business risks in the changing landscape of the Global and United States Western Cutlery market. The research report on the Global and United States Western Cutlery market presents to readers recent news, key deals, and other trends that are shaping the market. Furthermore, the valuable recommendations provided in the Global and United States Western Cutlery market report will help companies form a more effective strategy, whether to penetrate a new market or expand their portfolio.The research report begins with a brief industry overview. In this section, the report offers definition, specifications, classifications, and applications of Western Cutlery. Further to this, key data on the latest industry news and major deals is covered. This will update readers regarding the key events that are shaping the Global and United States Western Cutlery market. Moreover, the report also provides the latest news and details regarding the regulatory framework of the Global and United States Western Cutlery market.For More Info Download Free PDF Brochure :The major players in global and United States Western Cutlery market, including Cangshan, Williams Sonoma, Rachael Ray, Wusthof, Oster, Zwilling, Temiov, Oneida, Twine, Chicago Cutlery, Victorinox Swiss Army, Yamazaki Amalfi.Lastly, the research report delivers a comprehensive analysis of the competitive landscape of the Global and United States Western Cutlery market. This section covers the analysis of key companies operating in the Global and United States Western Cutlery market with their portfolio, production data, company profile, price, revenue, and cost. In addition to this, this section also enlists the contact information of these major firms.Table of Contents1 Methodology and Data Source1.1 Methodology/Research Approach1.1.1 Research Programs/Design1.1.2 Market Size Estimation1.1.3 Market Breakdown and Data Triangulation1.2 Data Source1.3 Disclaimer2 Western Cutlery Market Overview2.1 Western Cutlery Product Overview2.2 Western Cutlery Market Segment by Type2.3 Global Western Cutlery Product Segment by Type2.4 United States Western Cutlery Product Segment by TypeAccess the Report and full TOC @7 Western Cutlery Players/Manufacturers Profiles and Sales Data7.1 Cangshan7.1.1 Company Basic Information, Manufacturing Base and Competitors7.1.2 Western Cutlery Product Category, Application and Specification7.1.3 Cangshan Western Cutlery Sales (K Units), Revenue (Million USD), Price (USD/Unit) and Gross Margin (%) (2012-2017)7.1.4 Main Business/Business Overview7.2 Williams Sonoma7.2.1 Company Basic Information, Manufacturing Base and Competitors7.2.2 Western Cutlery Product Category, Application and Specification7.2.3 Williams Sonoma Western Cutlery Sales (K Units), Revenue (Million USD), Price (USD/Unit) and Gross Margin (%) (2012-2017)7.2.4 Main Business/Business OverviewList of Tables and FiguresTable Research Programs/Design for This ReportFigure Bottom-up and Top-down Approaches for This ReportFigure Global Western Cutlery Revenue (Million USD) Status and Outlook (2012-2022)Figure United States Western Cutlery Revenue (Million USD) Status and Outlook (2012-2022)Figure Global Knife Sets Sales (K Units) and Growth Rate (%) (2012-2017)Figure Global Chefs Knives Sales (K Units) and Growth Rate (%) (2012-2017)Figure Global Steak Knives Sales (K Units) and Growth Rate (%) (2012-2017)Table Global Western Cutlery Sales (K Units) and Growth Rate (%) Comparison by Types (2012, 2016 and 2022)About UsQYReseachReports.com delivers the latest strategic market intelligence to build a successful business footprint in China. Our syndicated and customized research reports provide companies with vital background information of the market and in-depth analysis on the Chinese trade and investment framework, which directly affects their business operations. Reports from QYReseachReports.com feature valuable recommendations on how to navigate in the extremely unpredictable yet highly attractive Chinese market.Contact US:1820 AvenueM Suite #1047Brooklyn, NY 11230United StatesToll Free: 866-997-4948 (USA-CANADA)Tel: +1-518-621-2074Email: sales@qyresearchreports.com
2017-2022 Report on Global Perfluoroelastomer Market Status & Forecast by Key Manufacturers, Types
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Qyresearchreports include new market research report "2017-2022 Perfluoroelastomer Report on Global and United States Market, Status and Forecast, by Players, Types and Applications" to its huge collection of research reports.This report on the Global and United States Perfluoroelastomer market has been compiled by research analysts of the industry, with a primary aim to offer relevant information on the current market conditions for the Global and United States Perfluoroelastomer. Its objective is to talk about the growth prospects of the market and reach out to a wider range of audience such as government agencies, manufacturers of Perfluoroelastomer, and multiple consultancy services. The research report offers comprehensive analysis of the vital driving factors that will have a huge impact on the Global and United States Perfluoroelastomer market. It also studies the impeding or restraining aspects, upcoming and latest trends in the Global and United States Perfluoroelastomer market which the prominent players in the Global and United States Perfluoroelastomer market should make a note of to enhance their market presence. The potential of other factors of the Perfluoroelastomer market can be assessed by studying its multiple segments such as products, end users, types, application, services, and others, whichever are applicable. The report also studies the future conditions of the Global and United States Perfluoroelastomer market in all the important regions across the world, such as Latin America, Middle East and Africa (MEA), North America, Europe, and Asia Pacific.The report of the Global and United States Perfluoroelastomer market gives out the projection of the market size in terms of its revenue (USD billion). Top-down as well as Bottom-up approaches are applied in the study report to give an estimate and confirm the size of the Global and United States Perfluoroelastomer market and of its other different sub-segments. The research report also extensively discusses the opportunities that may arise in the Global and United States market for Perfluoroelastomer by type and application in the manufacturing countries, and provides a prediction for the period of 2017-2022.For more information on this report, fill the form @The major players in global and United States Perfluoroelastomer market, including Dupont, 3M (Dyneon), Solvay Solexis, Daikin (AGC), Asahi Glass, Dyneon, JL White, LLC, All Seals, Precision Associates, Inc., Eagle Elastomer.Some of the prominent companies in the Global and United States Perfluoroelastomer market have been mentioned to attract the market shareholders. These companies are profiled respectively so as to give out their product portfolio, recent strategic decisions, and overall market share. The chapter also tries to grasp the possibility of the entry of upcoming players in the Global and United States Perfluoroelastomer market. The leading companies of the Global and United States market have been spotted with the help of secondary research methodologies and their dominance in respective areas have been evaluated with the help of detailed primary as well as secondary research.Table of Contents1.1 Methodology/Research Approach1.1.1 Research Programs/Design1.1.2 Market Size Estimation1.1.3 Market Breakdown and Data Triangulation1.2 Data Source1.3 Disclaimer2 Perfluoroelastomer Market Overview2.1 Perfluoroelastomer Product Overview2.2 Perfluoroelastomer Market Segment by Type2.3 Global Perfluoroelastomer Product Segment by Type2.4 United States Perfluoroelastomer Product Segment by TypeObtain Research Reports @7 Perfluoroelastomer Players/Manufacturers Profiles and Sales Data7.1 Dupont7.1.1 Company Basic Information, Manufacturing Base and Competitors7.1.2 Perfluoroelastomer Product Category, Application and Specification7.1.3 Dupont Perfluoroelastomer Sales (K Pieces), Revenue (Million USD), Price (USD/Piece) and Gross Margin (%) (2012-2017)7.1.4 Main Business/Business Overview7.2 3M (Dyneon)7.2.1 Company Basic Information, Manufacturing Base and Competitors7.2.2 Perfluoroelastomer Product Category, Application and Specification7.2.3 3M (Dyneon) Perfluoroelastomer Sales (K Pieces), Revenue (Million USD), Price (USD/Piece) and Gross Margin (%) (2012-2017)7.2.4 Main Business/Business OverviewList of Tables and FiguresTable Research Programs/Design for This ReportFigure Bottom-up and Top-down Approaches for This ReportFigure Global Perfluoroelastomer Revenue (Million USD) Status and Outlook (2012-2022)Figure United States Perfluoroelastomer Revenue (Million USD) Status and Outlook (2012-2022)Figure Global Fluoride concentration >70.5 Sales (K Pieces) and Growth Rate (%) (2012-2017)Figure Global Fluoride concentration >72 Sales (K Pieces) and Growth Rate (%) (2012-2017)Table Global Perfluoroelastomer Sales (K Pieces) and Growth Rate (%) Comparison by Types (2012, 2016 and 2022)Table United States Perfluoroelastomer Sales (K Pieces) and Growth Rate (%) Comparison by Types (2012, 2016 and 2022)About UsQYReseachReports.com delivers the latest strategic market intelligence to build a successful business footprint in China. Our syndicated and customized research reports provide companies with vital background information of the market and in-depth analysis on the Chinese trade and investment framework, which directly affects their business operations. Reports from QYReseachReports.com feature valuable recommendations on how to navigate in the extremely unpredictable yet highly attractive Chinese market.Contact US:1820 AvenueM Suite #1047Brooklyn, NY 11230United StatesToll Free: 866-997-4948 (USA-CANADA)Tel: +1-518-621-2074Email: sales@qyresearchreports.com
Global Electric Vehicle Charger (EVC) Market Survey Report 2017 : AeroVironment, Elektromotive
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Qyresearchreports include new market research report "Global Electric Vehicle Charger (EVC) Market Professional Survey Report 2017" to its huge collection of research reports.The thorough report here assembles different perspectives having a place with the general Electric Vehicle Charger (EVC) market which verbalizes the present-day data and future exposures with reference to the dynamic powers at play. The prime reason for the examination report is to offer the endorser with a sweeping format and make accessible the gainful certainties and records. The quantifiable and testing illuminations behind the examination other than executes data on issues, for example, drivers, shackles, and projections to gage the postponed outcome of the general Electric Vehicle Charger (EVC) market through the cross of the said gage period in the examination report. The report in like course passes on a brief and world class record of the predefined market follows, which joins a couple of occasions of the veritable fixations at work which are concentrated to trigger change in the market or may cause any negative effect.This report other than stations into the general Electric Vehicle Charger (EVC) market by in a general sense examining the thing and industrialized chain of the market. This is required to moreover help in passing on good 'ol fashioned information and data on compound parts of the fitting market, for example, material relating to methodologies for the directing body in the standard and general strata, transport and transmission structure, targets, and purposes behind premium got for the contributed mean.Order a Free Copy of Sample Report @This report focuses on top manufacturers in global market, with production, price, revenue and market share for each manufacturer, coveringAeroVironmentChargePointElektromotiveLG ElectronicsAker WadeABBLealacpowerChroma ATELesterSilicon LabsThe report utilizes a couple of demonstrated industry examination and whole contraptions. They permit the examination collect pass on an uncovered fundamental assessment of the general Electric Vehicle Charger (EVC) market and help endorser and market troupes to be advised with respect to theory and business judgments. The wide thinking of the examination gives a market position on an obvious and minute scale. It amasses key and optional research structures thusly. The administrators have figured the recorded encounters and rose it from the forward and thus around change parade circumstance to plan a structure for the general Electric Vehicle Charger (EVC) market in the years ahead.Table of Contents1 Industry Overview of Electric Vehicle Charger (EVC)1.1 Definition and Specifications of Electric Vehicle Charger (EVC)1.1.1 Definition of Electric Vehicle Charger (EVC)1.1.2 Specifications of Electric Vehicle Charger (EVC)1.2 Classification of Electric Vehicle Charger (EVC)1.3 Applications of Electric Vehicle Charger (EVC)1.4 Market Segment by Regions2 Manufacturing Cost Structure Analysis of Electric Vehicle Charger (EVC)2.1 Raw Material and Suppliers2.2 Manufacturing Cost Structure Analysis of Electric Vehicle Charger (EVC)2.3 Manufacturing Process Analysis of Electric Vehicle Charger (EVC)2.4 Industry Chain Structure of Electric Vehicle Charger (EVC)View TOC (table of content) of the Report:8 Major Manufacturers Analysis of Electric Vehicle Charger (EVC)8.1 AeroVironment8.1.1 Company Profile8.1.2 Product Picture and Specifications8.1.3 AeroVironment 2016 Electric Vehicle Charger (EVC) Sales, Ex-factory Price, Revenue, Gross Margin Analysis8.1.4 AeroVironment 2016 Electric Vehicle Charger (EVC) Business Region Distribution Analysis8.2 ChargePoint8.2.1 Company Profile8.2.2 Product Picture and Specifications8.2.3 ChargePoint 2016 Electric Vehicle Charger (EVC) Sales, Ex-factory Price, Revenue, Gross Margin Analysis8.2.4 ChargePoint 2016 Electric Vehicle Charger (EVC) Business Region Distribution AnalysisList of Tables and FiguresFigure Picture of Electric Vehicle Charger (EVC)Table Product Specifications of Electric Vehicle Charger (EVC)Table Classification of Electric Vehicle Charger (EVC)Figure Global Production Market Share of Electric Vehicle Charger (EVC) by Type in 2016Table Major Manufacturers of On-board Electric Vehicle Charger (EVC)Table Major Manufacturers of Off-board Electric Vehicle Charger (EVC)Figure Global Consumption Volume Market Share of Electric Vehicle Charger (EVC) by Application in 2016Table Manufacturing Cost Structure Analysis of Electric Vehicle Charger (EVC) in 2016About UsQYReseachReports.com delivers the latest strategic market intelligence to build a successful business footprint in China. Our syndicated and customized research reports provide companies with vital background information of the market and in-depth analysis on the Chinese trade and investment framework, which directly affects their business operations. Reports from QYReseachReports.com feature valuable recommendations on how to navigate in the extremely unpredictable yet highly attractive Chinese market.Contact US:1820 AvenueM Suite #1047Brooklyn, NY 11230United StatesToll Free: 866-997-4948 (USA-CANADA)Tel: +1-518-621-2074Email: sales@qyresearchreports.com
Global RTLS for Industrial Applications Market to grow at a CAGR of 31.14% during the period 2016-2020
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RTLS is used to track asset, person, or any object in real-time basis. RTLS employs radio frequency identification (RFID) technology for communication, but some systems use optical (based on infrared waves) or acoustic (based on ultra sound) technology, either combined or separately. RTLS involves two components:Tags: These are hardware components attached to the object that has to be tracked.Readers: These are a combination of both hardware and software used to monitor signals emitting from the tag and determine the location of the object to which it has been attached.RTLS uses inexpensive radio tags and a cellular reader system to detect the presence and location of the containers. RTLS helps track assets within a smaller geographical area. RTLS provides passive or active information about the location of objects and generally tracks assets in confined areas where the required location points are covered with wireless nodes. RTLS enables transportation, healthcare, retail, and government organizations to monitor and track assets and resources more effectively. This helps in the optimal utilization of assets, streamlining of operations, and improvement of productivity. This ultimately enables enterprises to enhance their work processes. RTLS mainly uses technologies such as RFID, UWB, and Wi-Fi to locate objects.Get The Sample Copy OF Report :Technavios analysts forecast the global RTLS for industrial applications market to grow at a CAGR of 31.14% during the period 2016-2020.Covered in this reportThe report covers the present scenario and the growth prospects of the global RTLS for industrial applications market for 2016-2020. To calculate the market size, the report considers the revenue generated from from both licensing of software as well as shipment of RTLS hardware.The market is divided into the following segments based on geography:AmericasAPACEMEATechnavio's report, Global RTLS for Industrial Applications Market 2016-2020, has been prepared based on an in-depth market analysis with inputs from industry experts. The report covers the market landscape and its growth prospects over the coming years. The report also includes a discussion of the key vendors operating in this market.Key vendorsAeroScoutAwarepointEkahauEssensiumHPPINC SolutionsSchmidtUbisenseZebra TechnologiesView TechnologiesMarket driverAdoption of RTLS for ease of inventory managementFor a full, detailed list, view our reportSend An Enquiry :Market challengeSafety and security concernsFor a full, detailed list, view our reportMarket trendGrowing popularity of smart factoriesFor a full, detailed list, view our reportKey questions answered in this reportWhat will the market size be in 2020 and what will the growth rate be?What are the key market trends?What is driving this market?What are the challenges to market growth?Who are the key vendors in this market space?What are the market opportunities and threats faced by the key vendors?What are the strengths and weaknesses of the key vendors?You can request one free hour of our analysts time when you purchase this market report. Details are provided within the report.MRRbiz supports your business intelligence needs with over 700,000 market research reports, company profiles, data books, and regional market data sheets in its repository. Our document database is updated by the hour, which means that you always have access to fresh data spanning over 300 industries and their sub-segments.Office: United StatesState Tower90 State Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207United StatesToll Free: 866-997-4948(USA-Canada)Tel: +1-518-621-2074E: sales@marketresearchreports.biz
BEIJING is making no attempt to change the status quo amid its reported militarization and construction of artificial islands and facilities in the disputed South China Sea, Chinese President Xi Jinping told President Rodrigo Duterte as they vowed to uphold freedom of navigation in the crucial waterways.
Speaking to reporters on his arrival from the 2017 Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Summit in Da Nang, Vietnam, Duterte said Xi gave him specific answers to his queries about Chinas intentions in the disputed waters.
He made statement even as international security experts sounded the alarm over what they said was the lackluster future of an all-important code of conduct on the West Philippine Sea.
Those negotiations, if they beginand they haventwould still take years, said Gregory Poling, director of Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative at the sidelines of the Stratbase ADR Institute summit on Asean Leadership amid a new world order held recently in Makati.
What I expect is that the disappointments that [are] going to be obvious after this year might finally kick Asean states into gear, make them realize that they need to think of a different venue to get this done.
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Duterte said Xi had assured him that the increasing militarization in the South China Sea was nothing.
I was talking about the military buildup, he says no, its nothing, Duterte said.
He knows that if he goes to war, everything will blow up. He acknowledged that war cannot be promoted by anybody, but it would only mean destruction for all of us.
Duterte said he believed Xis explanation because, like me, hes worried about the health and the problem of his countrymen.
He said Xi had assured him that China would not impede the freedom of navigation in the South China Sea.
Do not worry, you have all the rights of safe passage. That will be applicable to all countries, Duterte quoted Xi as saying.
Duterte met with Xi on Saturday along with his top Cabinet officials in a bilateral meet held at the Da Nang Crowne Plaza Hotel.
Presidential spokesman Harry Roque, who joined Duterte and other members of the Cabinet in his talks with Xi, said both tackled the issue on the freedom of navigation since everyone would be sailing from the Indian Ocean through the West Philippine Sea and there was a need for unhampered navigation.
In his remarks, Duterte claimed Xi expressed surprise over the countrys stronger and more assertive tone in discussing the maritime dispute amid the much-stronger statement issued by the Asean ministers in August.
He was quite surprised by my coming in very strong, of my statement about the [Code of] Conduct in the [South China] Sea. I said Im not raising any sovereign issue, do not worry, but I said as [Asean] chairman, I was made a channel of the communications, to be active, Duterte said.
I had to do it because the Philippines chairs Asean, I cannot escape from that duty. I had every right to ask him. But I explained it to him in a very nice way thats all there is to it.
Duterte said Xi likewise appeared to have jested that Manila was siding with another country, then responding that he only made such pronouncements since the Philippines was this years rotating chairman of the Asean.
We were joking. You like the other one better. I said No. We look upon you as a country with honor. Im just trying to perform my duty as chairman, Duterte said.
He said the Philippines remained to be a good friend of China despite the ongoing territorial tussle over the disputed waters.
Before leaving to attend the APEC meeting, Duterte said he would raise the supposed militarization in the South China Sea, since the Aseam was quite aware of Beijings militarization in the disputed waters.
Duterte also said he would not be asking for any military assistance from Washington to help wage war against Beijing.
The Asean is now negotiating a code of conduct in the South China Sea between Asean and Beijing, a legally binding document expected to resolve matters of dispute between and among countries.
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New Research Report,Hot Stamp Coders Market,Trends and Forecast 2017 - 2023
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Hot stamping is a process of transfering a pigment from a carrier strip, which is known as a foil, onto a substrate with heat and pressure. Hot stamping provides best solutions in the field of packaging wherein environment with low temperatures, high humidity, and dust impact the packaged products. Hot stamp coders enable labelling the products in a better way than the electronic printers. Hot stamp coders are made up of stainless steel and aluminum (Al). Foils are mainly of two types: metallic and non-metallic foils. Non-metallic foils consist of an adhesive material, a color layer, and a release layer. In metallic foils, the color layer is replaced by a layer of vacuum-metallized aluminum or chrome. Metallic foil is available in different metal forms, such as silver, bronze, copper and gold. Pigment layer does not have a metallic sheen. Meanwhile, the holographic foil contains a 3-dimensional image which bestows a unique appearance. The principle of hot stamp coders is to spread over ink with the help of a heated metal stamp, in order to press an ink-coated film against the product. The ink consists of an adhesive material which quickly solidifies the surface of the product. The ink provides a distinct print which is not soluble in water or oil, are thermally stable and provides good effectiveness in terms of labelling the products.Click Here For Free Sample Report :The number of different packaging solution at one facility across industries primarily drives global hot stamp coder market. This has provided a wider scope for market growth. Hot stamp coders have various advantages over the conventional equipment, such as they are more effective and ensure better efficacy. Automated stamp coders are easy in terms of operation and are also more accurate. The real time data is transferred to a PC systems, connected with the integrated manufacturing line, so that the operation can be controlled from remote locations. Several industries integrate hot stamp coders along with manufacturing line, food and beverages being the prominent one. The focus of the food and beverages industry is primarily on the packaging and labeling, with an aim to meet the regulatory standards imposed by the various policy and regulatory bodies across the globe. Hot stampings are inexpensive and permanent; besides, hot stamp coding is a simple process, and operator training is also minimized. These are some of the critical but latent factors which are anticipated to contribute to the demand for hot stamp coders over the coming years.The global hot stamp coders market is segmented based on products, application, and end user. By product, the global hot stamp coders market is further segmented into manual hot stamp coders, semi automated hot stamp coders, automated hot stamp coders and hot stamp foils, hot stamp inks, and hot stamp tools. Based on application, the market is segmented into plastic material, glass material, and metals. Based on the end user, the market is further segmented into cosmetic industry, pharmaceuticals industry, food and beverages industry, and chemical industry.In view of the rise in demand for innovative packaging technologies in different industries, such as food and beverages, pharmaceuticals, and cosmetics, companies are increasingly adopting advanced packaging methods in order to reduce their production cost and time, which in turn is expected to fuel further growth of the hot stamp market in the coming years.On the basis of geography, the hot stamp coders market is segmented into seven key regions, namely North America, Latin America, Eastern Europe, Western Europe, Asia Pacific excluding Japan, Japan, and the Middle East and Africa.The North America market currently dominates the global hot stamp coders market, wherein the packaging technology is mostly used in the cosmetic and pharmaceutical industries. Increasing awareness among the people about the use of new technologies is a major factor propel growth the market in the North America region. The market in the Asian Pacific region is rapidly evolving in view of the significant infrastructure development witnessed in the region, which in turn is anticipated to further contribute to the overall growth of the global hot stamp coders market.Read Full Report With TOC @Some of the key players in the hot stamp coders market are Allen Coding (a division of ITW), CER-Cerfoils, BD Tronic, Eidos S. p. A, LC Printing Machine Factory Limited, MADAG printing Systems, Spartanics, Kortho Coding and Making, etc.The report offers a comprehensive evaluation of the market. It does so via in-depth qualitative insights, historical data, and verifiable projections about market size. The projections featured in the report have been derived using proven research methodologies and assumptions. By doing so, the research report serves as a repository of analysis and information for every facet of the market, including but not limited to: Regional markets, technology, types, and applications.The study is a source of reliable data on:Market segments and sub-segmentsMarket trends and dynamicsSupply and demandMarket sizeCurrent trends/opportunities/challengesCompetitive landscapeTechnological breakthroughsValue chain and stakeholder analysisThe regional analysis covers:North America (U.S. and Canada)Latin America (Mexico, Brazil, Peru, Chile, and others)Western Europe (Germany, U.K., France, Spain, Italy, Nordic countries, Belgium, Netherlands, Luxembourg)Eastern Europe (Poland, Russia)Asia Pacific (China, India, Japan, ASEAN, Australia and New Zealand)Middle East and Africa (GCC, Southern Africa, North Africa)The report has been compiled through extensive primary research (through interviews, surveys, and observations of seasoned analysts) and secondary research (which entails reputable paid sources, trade journals, and industry body databases). The report also features a complete qualitative and quantitative assessment by analyzing data gathered from industry analysts and market participants across key points in the industrys value chain.A separate analysis of prevailing trends in the parent market, macro- and micro-economic indicators, and regulations and mandates is included under the purview of the study. By doing so, the report projects the attractiveness of each major segment over the forecast period.Highlights of the report:A complete backdrop analysis, which includes an assessment of the parent market Important changes in market dynamics Market segmentation up to the second or third level Historical, current, and projected size of the market from the standpoint of both value and volume Reporting and evaluation of recent industry developments Market shares and strategies of key players Emerging niche segments and regional markets An objective assessment of the trajectory of the market Recommendations to companies for strengthening their foothold in the marketMake An Enquiry @Market Research Reports Search Engine(MRRSE) is an industry-leading database of market intelligence reports. MRRSE is driven by a stellar team of research experts and advisors trained to offer objective advice. Our sophisticated search algorithm returns results based on the report title, geographical region, publisher, or other keywords.MRRSE partners exclusively with leading global publishers to provide clients single-point access to top-of-the-line market research. MRRSEs repository is updated every day to keep its clients ahead of the next new trend in market research, be it competitive intelligence, product or service trends or strategic consulting.State Tower90, State StreetSuite 700Albany, NY - 12207United StatesTelephone: +1-518-730-0559Email: sales@mrrse.comWebsite :Read More Industry News At:
Petoskey library hosting food drive this holiday season
The Petoskey District Library has partnered with Manna Food Project to host a food drive Nov. 14 Dec. 23 to help people in need this holiday season.
Let me tell you about a man and a place far away from the cornfields of the Midwest: Jeff Pleadwell and Jeffs Pirates Cove at 111 Route 4, Ip Read moreJeffs Pirates Cove: A place of history
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UNEXPECTED JOURNEY: AN ARMENIAN IN THE SAUDI DESERTFrom Arthur Hagopian(Nov 12, 2017)It was a clandestine, unexpected journey, undertaken some years ago, the details classified, but against the backdrop of momentous developments unfolding in the Middle East, the telling of the untold tale provides just the right element of fascination, reminiscent of the setting of an Arabian Nights interlude.I was slogging through the graveyard shift at the Kuwait Times, putting the finishing touches for the morning's lead story when the phone rang."News desk, Arthur speaking," I said."Arthur, ecoute," it was Yousuf Alyan, owner and editor of the tabloid daily. A former Saudi Arabian diplomat, he liked to tease me about my faltering French, a language he himself had picked up from his chique Parisienne wife, Christine."Sois pret (be ready) en 15 minutes.""Tal umrak, (may you live long)," I said, using the mandatory respectful address when speaking to a sheikh or high-ranking dignitary, "what's up? I'll need a bit more than a quarter of an hour to put the paper to bed."As news editor, I had my hands full, and had an unforgiving deadline to adhere to."Ma yikhalef (never mind), let Josh handle it," he came back. Josh, a cheerful Indian, a native of Kerala, was our indispensable "bulldozer" sub whose wry sense of humor, often helped ease the omnipresent stressful atmosphere of the newsroom."C'est encore la visite du Roi Hussein, notre front page lead?""Oui.""Zain, (good)," he switched to Arabic. "Can you be ready in half an hour's time?""What's up?" I asked again."We're going on a trip.""It's just after midnight," I protested, needlessly it would seem."Listen, ya bani adam (son of man - his favorite expression of mild reproach), just hand over to Josh, and get over here.""Do I need to pack?""No need. Christine will put something together for us," he said, then added, "bring a coat. It might be cold. And don't tell anyone, not even Josh. The whole thing is deniable.""But where are we going?""Across the border, that's all I am allowed to say. I received the invitation from the Ministry [of Guidance and Information] only a short while ago. Blair will be coming with us."Blair Slater, a Scotsman, was an irrepressible acquisition, an appendage who acted as all-around aide, fiercely devoted alike to Alyan and Johnnie Walker: once he had me stay up all night regaling me with tales of his colorful adventures, a bottle to keep him company. I had purchased it from the Gray Mackenzie outlet, housed in a Quonset hut, in the city centre: the British company was the sole distributor of alcoholic beverages to its select clientele of Christians."I don't have a visa for either Saudi Arabia or Iraq" (the two countries bordering Kuwait), I reminded Alyan."You worry too much, ya bani adam. It's a border crossing. You won't need a visa. We're traveling in the Minister's convoy."Sheikh Jaber, the Minister, was a man with a deceptive smile stamped across his rugged features, who ruled his fiefdom with a fist of iron. An uncompromising conservative, he had once threatened to deport me after I filed an article for the Associated Press, describing how a school incident had ended up with the Minister of Education slapping a high-school girl."Agool (I say), there is no censorship here, but next time you write something like that, I'll put you on the first plane home," he told me.His message was unequivocally clear: cabinet members were untouchable.Half an hour later, we were driving south towards the desert kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Blair drove Alyan's the car with familiar ease. Eschewing the friendly persuasion of his fellow sheikhs, and Christine's unvoiced pining, Alyan had discarded the luxury of the ubiquitous prestige icon, a Cadillac, and opted for a more practical Mercedes.It was a moonless night, phalanxes of clouds scudding in silent array across the sky where stars had long taken over.Alyan sat in the back, reading directions from a map, with the aid of a cigarette lighter he had borrowed from Blair.We were scooting along the ribbon of the paved road, a straight silver streak in the pitch darkness, interrupted sporadically by the ghosts of sand dunes that stretched incongruously into the distance.Blair turned round: "Did you hear about the Armenian, the Kuwaiti and the Scotsman who went to a pub in an oasis in the desert?"Alyan punched him in the back. "Not now. And I hope you left that flask behind."Blair nodded, sorrowfully. "Never thought the day, or night, would come when I would be bereft of the golden nectar."The paved road ran out and we reached the randomly marked border with Saudi Arabia. Aside from a ramshackle post, there were no other milestones or signs indicating the beginning of foreign sovereign territory.Blair parked the Mercedes near a stunted bush, and we got out to stretch our legs.We were all dressed in the traditional white dish-dasheh and kefiyyeh: the three of us looked like uncertain phantoms under the starlight.Blair rummaged in the boot and extracted the thermos of coffee Christine had prepared. In the arid wilderness, and creeping cold, it was like manna."Let's hope they won't be late," Alyan said."They have to be," remarked Blair. "It's the Arab way."A half hour later, the sound of engines erupted into the silence and the darkness was shattered by twin pinpoints of light coming from the direction of the kingdom."That must be our escort," Alyan said.Two Land Rovers, with no markings, scudded to a stop a few feet away, and disgorged a squad of black-clad men toting M16s.Their leader moved towards Alyan and rubbed noses with him in the traditional Bedouin way of greeting.Alyan asked him how long it would take to get to our destination, and the man said barely 15 minutes, but we had to wait for Sheikh Jaber.He gave an order and one of the soldiers set about removing the Kuwaiti licence plates of the Mercedes. He handed them to Blair who deposited them in the boot.Sheikh Jaber arrived half an hour later. His Cadillac crunched to a halt but he did not get out. Instead, he waved to Alyan and the two chatted for a few seconds. Once his car's licence plates were removed, the convoy started on its way.We drove along a track in the sand that looked more like a groove etched out by a giant bandy-legged monster, the dust cloud the wheels churned obscuring all behind us."All right, Arthur, now listen carefully," Alyan. "We are now in Saudi Arabia, heading towards an undisclosed location where we have been invited to witness a 'sulha' (reconciliation) between two one-time warring clans from Iraq. It's of paramount importance for both Kuwait and Saudi Arabia that the outcome be successful - the risk inherent in bypassing the Saddam Hussein regime is great that is why it's all hush-hush: we will not be allowed to report the event, just witness it. You understand?""Clear, tal 'umrak."In the distance ahead, a black monolith, studded with twinkling lanterns, began to rise out of the torrid darkness. It was the huge camel's hair Bedouin tent where the meeting was to take place.Rows of gleaming American sedans and limousines flanked the tent on one side.We left the car there and walked towards the tent where a couple of heavily armed men checked our names against a list and ushered us into a liftout from the pages of the Arabian Nights.I had been inside one or two Kuwaiti palaces before, and had sat in sitting rooms featuring ornate fountains with fish spouting water into lucid pools, and hand crafted carpets strewn across marble floors, curtains fluttering in the gentle breeze emitted by A/C vents in a languid pas de deux.But this tent was a more modest replica: no water fountain and no curtains, but heavily carpeted.There were only a few people inside, but the tent soon filled up.We were led in and invited to sit down. An elderly Bedouin served us mint tea and dates.The tea, brewed over the embers of a low coal fire for hours on end, scattered the cobwebs of sleep that had begun to sweep in my brain as soon as I had begun to relax on the carpet."The party's about to begin," Blair nudged me.The tent flaps parted and two groups of men entered from different directions. There was aflurry of nose-rubbing and handshaking before they settled down for their peace parley on each side of a low slung table.A wizened imam read the "Fatiha", the opening sura of the Quran, and the talks began.Alyan was sitting with the Kuwaiti delegation but I and Blair were both too far away to hear the frenzied back and forth that soon developed. At one stage, the two opposing parties looked like they had reached an impasse, but whatever had caused it was soon resolved, and the talks resumed.For another two hours.When it was all over at last, conflict resolved and accord at reconciliation attained, the assembly heaved itself up like a tidal wave amid more hugging and hand-shaking, in a euphoric outpour of gratification.It was now time to celebrate, and no less than a regal "mansaf" would do. The last time I had been to one was years ago at the wedding of a friend in a Bethlehem.But that was a poor cousin, a tepid imitation of the massive feast that was now laid before us: plumes of rice towering over the dunes of two roasted sheep, sprinkled with pine-nuts, and a concoction of spices.Everyone dug in with their hands - you don't use knives or forks here - the "samneh baladyeh" (home concoted fat) dripping down our arms: the trick is to grab a little fistful of rice and meat in your palm and flick it into your mouth (I am a pseudo-vegetarian, and sampled the rice only). For the Arab guests, it was no big deal. For me and Blair, it was no joy: we ended up with more food on the floor than in our belly.The banquet lasted almost as long as the parley, and the stars were slowly beginning to wink away, when a mass exodus from the tent began. It was tacitly understood that the business at hand needed to be settled before the sun came up.We returned to Kuwait city in time to pick up a copy of the morning papers."King Hussein to visit Kuwait next week", ran the front page banner headline of the English-language Kuwait Times.But no mention of the Armenian crossing the desert of Saudi Arabia.ENDSPIX: Camel's hair tent
Future Market Insights has announced the addition of the Anti-Reflective Coatings Market: Global Industry Analysis and Opportunity Assessment 2017-2027" report to their offering.
Anti-Reflective Coatings Market
PR-Inside.com: 2017-11-12 11:36:52
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CONTACT:Future Market InsightsAbhishek Bhudoliya616 Corporate Way, Suite 2-9018,Valley Cottage, NY 10989,United StatesT: +1-347-918-3531F: +1-845-579-5705Email: sales@futuremarketinsights.comWebsite: www.futuremarketinsights.comAbhishek Budholiya+1-347-918-3531
An anti-reflective coating is an optical coating that is applied on any lens surface or optical element to reduce the reflection. In a typical imaging system, this improves efficiency as much less light is lost. While the primary benefit is the reduced reflection itself, an anti-reflective coating on something like a pair of spectacles helps make the wearers eyes more visible, aiding eye contact. It also helps reduce the glint from a covert viewers telescopic sight or binoculars. An anti-reflective coating consists of transparent thin films with alternating layers of a contrasting refractive index. The anti-reflective coating market caters to the needs of many companies dealing in eyewear, electronics, automobiles, solar panels and telecommunications.Eyewear not expected to cede its share of the anti-reflective coatings market any time soonEyewear is expected to retain a strong position in the anti-reflective coatings market. This is because a large number of people are anticipated to join the workforce in the years ahead and they may require vision correction. These customers should easily be able to see the difference that light transmitting glasses make in their daily lives. Anti-reflective coating glasses offer greater comfort by the reduction of painful sunlight glare, elimination of unwanted reflections and adjustment of surrounding contrast levels that improves visibility and provides an easier night driving experience. Anti-reflective coating sprays are also useful in eyewear applications.Request For Report Sample: https://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/sample/rep-gb-2805 Electronics and telecommunications is likely to be the second largest end user in the anti-reflective coatings market. It is predicted to show rapid growth during the forecast period due to a booming demand for smartphones. For a device checked more than a hundred times a day, an anti-reflective glass panel can mean the difference between frustration and satisfaction, especially in bright lights, indoors or in sunlight outdoors. Large screens and ultra-high definition televisions in excess of 50 inches are becoming very popular in developed countries. These massive, flat display panels would need an anti-reflective coating to enable a pleasurable viewing experience for customers. Anti-reflective coatings also find use in the fabrication of semiconductors during the photolithography stage. They help eliminate the reflections, which further enhances lithography.A focus on renewable and non-polluting sources of energy is a trend that is seen worldwide in the 21st century. There is a greater realisation that conventional resources will eventually deplete, fuelling the urgency to look for alternative energy sources such as solar panels, windmills, and hydropower. Solar panels should become increasingly important in the days ahead and they will prove to be a steady adopter of anti-reflective coatings. Governments in a number of countries including the U.S., U.K., France, Germany, China and India are framing policies that offer financial incentives to companies installing solar power systems to counter the energy crisis, global warming and unacceptable levels of pollution. Any light reflected from a solar panel is wasted energy and anti-reflective coatings help deliver better light transmission and reduce light reflection.The automobile industry is already a massive source of employment in developed countries and production is rapidly expanding in emerging markets such as China, India, Thailand, Mexico and Indonesia. Discerning customers have begun to demand the latest technologies in their vehicles such as GPS navigation systems and intelligent touchscreen infotainment systems compatible with their smartphones. These screens should ideally be coated with an anti-reflective coating as there would be too much glare otherwise, hampering system use. In addition to this, even the cars windshield and glass usually have an anti-reflective coating to prevent glare distraction while driving.Lack of customer awareness and regulations may hamper anti-reflective coatings market growthIn spite of all the advantages offered by anti-reflective coating in various industries, usability related issues are likely to raise their ugly head in the coming years. There is a lack of consumer awareness about the benefits offered by anti-reflective coating in a few cases. Some countries have very strict norms concerning raw material use in the manufacture of anti-reflective coating, challenging the anti-reflective coatings market growth in the long run.Anti-Reflective Coatings Market: Key RegionsThe largest anti-reflective coatings market is presently North America due to a high demand for smartphones, solar panels, spectacles and automobiles in the region. However, the strongest growth is predicted to be in Asia because of improving customer awareness of anti-glare spectacles and electronic displays. Rising energy requirements in these populous countries should increase solar panel sales, thereby boosting the APAC anti-reflective coatings market.Request For Report Table of Content (TOC): https://www.futuremarketinsights.com/toc/rep-gb-2805 Anti-Reflective Coatings Market: Key PlayersSome of the companies operating in the anti-reflective coatings market include Carl Zeiss, Essilor, and Hoya Corporation.
PR-Inside.com: 2017-11-12 12:10:24
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Barium nitrate is a salt composed of barium and nitrate ion. Chemical formula of Barium nitrate is Ba(NO3)2. Barium nitrate exists as white crystals at room temperature. Barium nitrate is odorless. Barium nitrate is soluble in water and slightly soluble in ethanol and acetone. Barium nitrate can occur naturally as nitrobarite. Barium nitrate can be manufactured synthetically by two processes. In the first process, heated solution of sodium nitrate is combined with barium chloride, which results in separation of barium nitrate crystals from the mixture. The second process requires dissolving small lumps of barium carbonate in nitric acid, letting iron impurities to precipitate, then filter, evaporate, and crystallize. Barium nitrate can be toxic to human beings if came into contact either by inhalation or ingestion. Barium nitrate when comes into contact can cause skin irritation, eye irritation, gastroenteritis, muscle spasm, slow pulse, and respiratory system irritation. The type and severity of symptoms varies depending on the amount of barium nitrate involved and the nature of the exposure.Request Sample Copy of the Report @ https://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/sample/sample.php?flag=B&rep_id=4168 Barium nitrate is most commonly used as an oxidizer to make green fireworks. Barium nitrate plays a vital role in manufacturing of various explosives used in the defense industry. Baratol which is typically used as explosive, consist of barium nitrate along with TNT and binder. Flash powder, a highly explosive product is produced by mixing barium nitrate with aluminum powder. Barium nitrate is mixed with thermite to form Thermate-TH3, which is important component of military thermite grenades. Barium nitrate also plays a vital role in the manufacturing process of barium oxide. Barium nitrate is used as a plaining agent in the manufacture of special glasses and optical glasses in place of the combination of alkali metal nitrate and arsenic. Barium nitrate is used to manufacture compounds like barium chloride and barium hydroxide.Increase in the number of application of barium nitrate in the explosive industry is major driver for the growth of barium nitrate market. Barium nitrate is soluble in water and can be found in lakes, rivers, and streams. Because of its water-solubility barium nitrate can be spread over great distances. Fish and other aquatic organisms can absorb this barium nitrate which gets accumulated in their bodies and eventually enter food chain. Thus, barium nitrate can be harmful to environment and other living organisms. This can act as a restraining factor for the growth of barium nitrate market.Countries such as U.S., China, Russia, Japan, and India invest heavily in defense sector of their country. Eventually the consumption of barium nitrate, which is widely preferred in the production of various explosives, is higher in these countries. Asia Pacific is projected to be the fastest growing market for barium nitrate in the next six years. The main reason for this is the growing demand for barium nitrate market from countries such as China, India and Japan. The Asia Pacific market is expected to be followed closely by North America and European market. The global barium nitrate market is predicted to grow at a double digit CAGR from 2014 to 2020.Some of the major companies operating in the global barium nitrate market are Solvay S. A., Degussa AG, Barium Chemicals Co. Ltd., Sakai Chemical Industry Co. Ltd., San Yuan Chemical Co. Ltd., Sigma Aldrich Corporation, Angene International Limited, and Hummel Corporation.Request TOC of the Report @ https://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/sample/sample.php?flag=T&rep_id=4168
Future Market Insights has announced the addition of the Bioalcohols Market: Global Industry Analysis and Opportunity Assessment 2017-2027" report to their offering.
Bioalcohols Market
PR-Inside.com: 2017-11-12 11:35:51
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CONTACT:Future Market InsightsAbhishek Bhudoliya616 Corporate Way, Suite 2-9018,Valley Cottage, NY 10989,United StatesT: +1-347-918-3531F: +1-845-579-5705Email: sales@futuremarketinsights.comWebsite: www.futuremarketinsights.comAbhishek Budholiya+1-347-918-3531
Bioalcohols are key in protecting the environment from greenhouse gases and global warming. Bioalcohols are biologically produced alcohols and some of the most common bioalcohols are ethanol; and propanol and butanol to some extent. They are produced by the action of microorganisms and enzymes through the process of the fermentation of sugars or starches. Bioalcohols are also produced through the fermentation of cellulose. The most common application of bioalcohols is their use as an alternative to gasoline. The global bioalcohols market is growing due to increasing scarcity of fossil fuels and huge fluctuations in global crude oil prices. Due to the problem of global warming, which is caused by the emission of carbon dioxide contributing to the greenhouse effect, bioalcohols are emerging as a popular alternative to traditional fossil fuels. Due to the increasing use of bioalcohols, the carbon footprint is reduced, and hence there is a lucrative opportunity for the use of such substances as the fuel of the future. Combined with this, the rising use of bioalcohols in emerging economies is fuelling the global bioalcohols market in a positive direction.Bioalcohols as a fuel of the futurePresently, bioalcohols are manufactured by the process of fermentation of biomass including organic wastes. With latest technological advancements, the production of bioalcohols is increasing being derived from cellulosic biomass usage, thus supporting the growth of the global bioalcohols market. Cellulosic biomass comprises complex sugar molecules such as those found in switch grass and corn. Due to the rapid advances made by biotechnology, researchers have now devised a way to use this cellulosic biomass for improvements to fossil fuels. There are distinct advantages of bioalcohols over fossil fuels in terms of emissions related to sulphur, nitrogen oxide, ground ozone and carbon monoxide. The emission of such hazardous substances is reduced by mixing bioalcohols in fossil fuels. The only emissions that are generated by the use of bioalcohols are formaldehyde and acetaldehyde, that dont have any effect on the surroundings. Ethanol gases possess the property of having less atmospheric reactivity, and thus result in reduced oxidant formation. There are various hazardous substances that are emitted by the burning of fossil fuels, and some of them are even cancerous. The emission of such hazardous substances will be reduced by using ethanol and methanol, because they give out advanced steam pressure after getting mixed with petrol. There is no change in the performance of petrol by mixing it with ethanol or methanol.Request For Report Sample: https://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/sample/rep-gb-2812 Key regions leading the production and consumption of bioalcoholsThere are various types of bioalcohols such as bio butanol, bio BDO, bio methanol and bio ethanol. Currently, Germany is the largest consumer and producer of bioalcohols. There are stringent norms in Germany regarding pollution control and protection of the environment, and hence the market for bioalcohols is growing in this country. However, the shortage of raw materials from which bioalcohols can be produced is acting as a major dampener in the bioalcohols market in Germany. United States is the second largest market for bioalcohols in the world. The administration in the United States has taken several initiatives to support the production of bioalcohols as an alternative fuel or as an additive to fossil fuels. The United States government is offering financial assistance to the manufacturers of bioalchols to set up the necessary infrastructure for the production of bioalcohols. Emerging regions such as South America are also a promising market for the production of bioalcohols. The South America region is a hub for the production of bio ethanol, which is one of the major products comprising bioalcohols.Request For Report Table of Content (TOC): https://www.futuremarketinsights.com/toc/rep-gb-2812 Bioalcohols Market: Leading PlayersSome of the key manufacturers of bioalcohols are BASF SE, Cool Planet Energy Systems, DSM and Cargill.
PR-Inside.com: 2017-11-12 12:10:18
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Bronopol is an antimicrobial agent which strongly inhibits the growth of gram negative and gram positive bacteria. It is also responsible in eliminating the growth of pseudomonas such as pseudomonas aeruginosa. It is a solid, white in color but appears to be yellow in commercial samples. The melting point of Bronopol is about 103 degree celcius and it is reported to undergo lattice rearrangement at 100 to 150 degree celcius. Above 140 degree celcius, bronopol, by exothermal decomposition, releases oxides of nitrogen and hydrogen bromide. Bronopol is also known by the other names such as 2 Bromo 2 nitro 1, 3 Propanediol, Bronopol BP and Bronosol among others. Bronopol is often combined with other antimicrobials to control molds and yeasts. Certain blends of parabens and bronopol provide excellent coverage of all microbial spectra. Bronopol is known to be a versatile product once it combined with anionic, cationic and amphoteric surfactants. Bronopol is soluble in polar solvents such as isopropanol, propylene glycol and water. Bronopol breaks down under elevated temperatures and alkaline conditions. It should not be used with secondary amines as this would lead to undesired chemical reaction and formation of nitrosamines. Bronopol produce low levels of formaldehyde under extreme alkaline conditions.Request Sample Copy of the Report @ https://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/sample/sample.php?flag=B&rep_id=4165 Bronopol is manufactured by a process of brominating di-nitromethane, which is derived from nitromethane by a nitrodiol reaction. The major application areas for bronopol are as a preservative agent in pharmaceutical, cosmetics, toiletries and household products among others. It is also used in various products and processes. The other applications of Bronopol include gas and oil operations, water treatment, paper mills and pulp, water based inks and paints, household, institutional and industrial products and metalworking fluids among others.Growing demand from the personal care and cosmetics industry is the major factor driving the growth of global bronopol market. Increasing demand from the other applications including water treatment, paper and pulp, oil and gas and pharmaceutical are also anticipated to boost demand for bronopol in the market.Rising health concerns related to bronopol are expected to hamper the growth of global bronopol market. Bronopol if comes in contact with the eyes may cause eye irritation, corneal injury and may even lead to impairment of vision. It may cause skin irritation with redness on contact with skin. On inhalation it may cause irritation to the upper respiratory tract. Owing to the aforementioned factors the growth of bronopol market is expected to decline in the near future.Asia Pacific is expected to be boost market demand for bronopol owing to the growing demand from personal care and cosmetic industry in the region. North America and Europe are also expected to fuel demand for bronopol owing to the demand from various end-user industries such as oil and gas operations, pharmaceutical and pulp and paper among other industries in the region.Some of the major players profiled for global bronopol market research report include, The Dow Chemical Company, Sharon Laboratories, Sai Supreme Chemicals, Ramdev Chemicals Pvt Ltd, Symbolic Pharma, Mani Agro Chemicals, Gayathri Chemicals and Agencies, Weifang Haihua Yuanda Fine Chemicals Co.Ltd , Aecochem Corp, Haihang Industry Co., Ltd., BQ TECHNOLOGY (HK) COMPANY LIMITED, Shanghai Rich Chemicals Co., Ltd, Shanghai Peiyang Chemical Co. Ltd and Wuhan Fortuna Chemical Co., Ltd among others.Request TOC of the Report @ https://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/sample/sample.php?flag=T&rep_id=4165
PR-Inside.com: 2017-11-12 09:55:19
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According to a new research study by Transparency Market Research (TMR), The Global Dental Chairs Market is characterized by technological innovations. The strategic alliances among international and domestic companies is another emerging trend in this market. The leading suppliers of dental chairs across the world, such as Danaher, A dec Inc., DentalEZ Inc., Dexta Corp., Dome Inc., are increasingly involving into mergers, acquisitions, and tactical partnerships in an effort to strengthen their foothold in the global market. Over the next few years, the market is anticipated to witness intense rivalry between the vendors, competing on the basis of innovation in products and price differentiation, notes the research study.View Report-Rising Prevalence of Oral Diseases to Influence Demand for Dental ChairsWith the tremendous rise in the prevalence of oral (gum and teeth) diseases across the world, the global dental chair is experiencing a remarkable surge in its valuation and size, says a researcher at TMR. The advancements in the medical and healthcare infrastructural, worldwide, is also propelling the growth of this market substantially. However, the dearth of ergonomic features may limit the adoption of these chairs, reflecting negatively on their sales and, subsequently, on the market in the years to come.Nonetheless, the advancements technology and the rising awareness level of people pertaining to the overall oral health and hygiene is projected to boost this market over the next few years. As per the research study, the opportunity in the worldwide market for dental chairs is estimated to attain a value of US$455.5 mn by the end of 2017. The market is poised to further increase at a CAGR of 3.90% during the period from 2017 to 2022 and rise to US$551.8 mn by the end of the period of the forecast, states the market report.Request Dental Chair Market Report Brochure -Rising Patient Pool to Ensure Dominance of Europe Dental Chair MarketThe Middle East and Africa (MEA), Asia Pacific excluding Japan (APEJ), North America, Europe, and Japan have surfaced as the primary regional markets for dental chairs across the world. Europe, among these, has acquired the leading position in the global market. Analysts at TMR predict this regional market to maintain its dominance over the forecast period, creating an absolute opportunity worth US$27.9 mn. The Europe market for dental chair is anticipated to gain significantly from the rising pool of patients suffering from tooth and gum-related problems and the increasing number of laboratories over the next few years.Request to view Sample Report -Oral surgery dental chairs have been witnessing a comparatively higher demand from consumers across the world. Researchers predict this trend to remain so in the years to come. However, other types of dental chairs will also report a steady rise in their demand. Hospitals and clinics will continue registering a higher demand for dental chairs, globally, over the forthcoming years, notes the research study.Dental Chair Market Report is available @ US$ 5795
PR-Inside.com: 2017-11-12 12:10:13
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Dipropylene glycol is typically a colorless, odorless liquid which possesses moderate viscosity. Dipropylene glycol has low volatility and is totally soluble in water. Dipropylene glycol is hygroscopic i.e. it attracts water from atmosphere. A distinctive feature of dipropylene glycol as compared to other types of glycols is its wider range of solvency. Particularly, the ability of dipropylene glycol to solubilize oil such as castor oil makes dipropylene glycol highly useful for a wide range of applications. The two main grades of dipropylene glycol include regular grade and a high purity grade having low odor. The typical applications of regular grade dipropylene glycol include urethanes and paints and coatings while the major applications of high purity grade of dipropylene glycol include cosmetics, fragrance and personal care. The growing demand for dipropylene glycol from all such applications is expected to drive the global dipropylene glycol market in the next few years.Request Sample Copy of the Report @ https://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/sample/sample.php?flag=B&rep_id=4116 The regular grade dipropylene glycol is mainly used as a reactive intermediate in the production of polyurethanes, high-performance unsaturated polyester resins and plasticizers. The regular grade dipropylene glycol peculiarly has high solvency, low toxicity, low evaporation rate, low odor and high viscosity, ultimately making it a widely preferred chemical intermediate in a variety of applications. The major applications of regular grade dipropylene glycol include high-volume plasticizer, as a reactant in unsaturated polyurethane resins, addition of hydrolytic stability and flexibility, as an initiator in urethane polyols and as a polyol in certain rigid polyurethane systems, as reactive diluents in radiation cured resins and coatings, for cutting viscosity and allowing easier application. The other uses of regular grade dipropylene glycol mainly comprise hydraulic brake fluids, textile lubricants, cutting oils, printing inks, industrial soaps, coatings and solvents for chemicals used in agricultural applications such as insecticides.The high-purity grade dipropylene glycol is specifically designed for odor-sensitive applications including fragrances and cosmetics. The high-purity grade dipropylene glycol is mainly a distilled product which has purity more than 99.5% as dipropylene glycol and is a liquid which is colorless, odorless, hygroscopic and water-soluble. The high-purity grade dipropylene glycol offers exceptional co-solvency for oils, water and hydrocarbons, has low skin irritation potential and minimal odor and possesses low toxicity with consistent isomer distribution. All these properties make high-purity grade dipropylene glycol an ideal choice in applications such as skin care products including lotions, creams and sun-care products, perfumes and colognes, deodorants or antiperspirants including roll-on and stick deodorants, shower and bath products, hair care products including conditioners, shampoos, coloring and styling products and shaving products including foams, creams, gels and after-shave lotions.The developing economies in Asia Pacific region are expected to be the fastest growing market for dipropylene glycol in the next few years primarily due to growing demand for dipropylene glycol used in plasticizers and in polyurethane resins. Additionally, the demand for dipropylene glycol for textile lubricants is further anticipated to aggravate in India and China considering their extensive growth in textile chemical industry. Moreover, the considerable growth in industrialization in these countries thereby increases demand for dipropylene glycol in printing inks, automotive industry and several other end-user industries. In addition to this, the developed regions across the U.S. and European countries are progressively recovering from the sluggish economic conditions and further boosting the global demand for dipropylene glycol. Considering this outlook, the demand for dipropylene glycol application products is expected to record an outstanding growth in the next few years.Some of the major companies functioning in dipropylene glycol are Shell Global, LyondellBasell, The Dow Chemical Company, Huntsman Corporation, Dupont Tate & Lyle Bio Products LLC, Manali Petrochemicals Limited.Request TOC of the Report @ https://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/sample/sample.php?flag=T&rep_id=4116
PR-Inside.com: 2017-11-12 12:21:43
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Huntington's disease is an inherited disease that causes degeneration of nerve cells in the central nervous system (CNS). The disease has a broad impact on functional abilities of the human and usually results in movement and thinking disabilities. Most people with Huntington's disease develop signs and symptoms in their age of 30 to 40. When disease begins before age 20, the condition is known as juvenile Huntington's disease.Huntington's disease usually causes psychiatric, cognitive and movement disorders with a variety of signs and symptoms. Cognitive disorders associated with Huntingtons disease include lack of flexibility, difficulties in learning and lack of impulse control that can result in sexual promiscuity. Movement disorders associated with Huntington's disease includes muscle problems, abnormal eye movements and difficulties with the physical production of speech and swallowing. The most common psychiatric disorder associated with Huntington's disease is depression. Depression appears due to the injury of the brain and subsequent changes in brain function.Request for Report TOC @ https://www.persistencemarketresearch.com/toc/3730 To overcome this problem, medications are available to manage the symptoms of Huntington's disease; however treatments can't prevent the mental, physical and behavioral disabilities associated with the condition.In terms of geographic, North America dominates the global Huntingtons disease therapeutics market. This is due to increased awareness about this disease in the region. The U.S. represents the largest market for Huntingtons disease therapeutics followed by Canada in North America. In Europe, Germany, France and the U.K. holds major share of Huntingtons disease therapeutics market. However, Asia is expected to show high growth rates in the next five years in global Huntingtons disease therapeutics market. This is due to many companies constructing their manufacturing facilities in the region. In addition, increasing awareness about Huntingtons disease is also supporting in the growth of the market in the region. Japan, China and India are expected to be the fastest growing Huntingtons disease therapeutics markets in Asia.In recent time, unmet medical need is key driver of the global Huntingtons disease therapeutics market. Increased pharmaceutical R&D investment and introduction of innovative drugs have also fueled the growth of global Huntingtons disease therapeutics market. This is due to less number of curative drugs has led manufacturers to increase investment in R&D for development of innovative solutions to treat Huntingtons disease. Extensive pipeline drugs with properties, such as high patient compliance and improved safety, is also supporting in the growth of global Huntingtons disease therapeutics market. Alternative therapies, such as psychotherapy, speech therapy and physiotherapy hold immense potential to the growth of global Huntingtons disease therapeutics market.However, stringent regulations hamper the growth of global Huntingtons disease therapeutics market. Moreover, less number of approved drugs for the treatment of Huntingtons disease also obstructs the growth of the market. Increasing mergers and acquisitions between drug manufacturing companies is key trend of global Huntingtons disease therapeutics market.Request for Report Sample @ https://www.persistencemarketresearch.com/samples/3730 Some of the major companies operating in the global Huntingtons disease therapeutics market are Valeant Pharmaceuticals International Inc., Alnylam Pharmaceuticals Inc., AmpliPhi Biosciences Corp, Ceregene Inc., Lundbeck, Prana Biotechnology Limited, Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd., Cortex Pharmaceuticals Inc., Vertex Pharmaceuticals Incorporated, Auspex Pharmaceuticals, SOM Biotech, GlaxoSmithKline, Siena Biotech, Raptor Pharmaceutical, Pfizer, Palobiofarma, Omeros and Ipsen.
PR-Inside.com: 2017-11-12 09:19:48
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Transparency Market Research has published a market intelligence report that focuses on the global glyphosate market for genetically modified and conventional crops. The report is titled Glyphosate Market - Global Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Trends and Forecast 2013 - 2019 and is available on the companys website for sale.Glyphosate, an organophosphorus compound, is a highly popular and extensively used non-selective herbicide. It is known to control both broadleaf grass as well as weeds that compete with the growth of field crops. Since the herbicidal properties of glyphosate were first uncovered in 1974, the use of the compound has significantly increased in the field of agriculture. In the coming years, the demand for glyphosate is projected to rise owing to the introduction of glyphosate-resistant genetically modified crops in the recent past.View Report: https://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/glyphosate-market.html A significant share of the overall glyphosate produced on a global front is consumed for application in genetically modified glyphosate resistant crops. The report states that the rising level of adoption of GM crops, especially in developing countries, is one of the major factors that will drive the global glyphosate market over the reports forecast period. However, the presence of several regulatory mandates regarding the use of genetically modified crops will limit the overall growth of the market to a certain extent over the reports forecast period.The report segments the market on the basis of two criteria: application and geography. On the basis of application, the market has been segmented into genetically modified crops and conventional crops. Of these, the segment of genetically modified crops accounted for a 45.2% share in the global glyphosate market in 2012. Owing to the rising adoption of genetically modified varieties of crops such as soybean, rapeseed, maize, and cotton, the demand for glyphosate is expected to further rise in the future.Request to view Sample Report: https://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/sample/sample.php?flag=S&rep_id=1362 On the basis of geography, the market has been segmented into North America, Asia Pacific, Europe, and Rest of the World. Of these, the market is expected to expand at the fastest pace in Asia Pacific over the reports forecast period. Rising awareness about genetically modified crops and the high use of glyphosate in agrarian economies such as China and India in Asia Pacific will be the prime driver of glyphosate market.The report also presents a detailed overview of the competitive landscape of the global glyphosate market for genetically modified and conventional crops. The report includes detailed business profiles, SWOT analysis, and new project feasibility analysis of some of the key vendors in the market, and gives an analysis of recent developments and industry experts, with an overview of the potential future impact of the scenario on the markets growth prospects.Buy Glyphosate Market Research Report: https://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/checkout.php?rep_id=1362 Monteverde)
I found a car rental for $645 for that time (with my Visa CDW and 80% coverage)
To get full coverage would be $821.
I'd love to hear advise from the more experienced travellers out there!
Thanks!!
Hi everyone,
My partner and I are booked to visit Hoi An, Vietnam, on the 29th of November for 5 days. We're reading mixed bits of news about the typhoon that hit Hoi An recently & am not sure if we should A) cancel our accomodation & flights to visit somewhere else, B) Stick with our original plans & hope Hoi An has recovered by then. There is also reports of an additional 'Typhoon' like storm hitting Vietnam in the coming days. We're also visiting Ho Chi Minh city & Nha Trang - but from my understanding they haven been effected. Any information would be greatly appreciated, thanks everyone.
Hi,
planning a 3 week trip (maybe an extra few days on top as we would like to see Hongkong for a bit too ) flying in/out of Hongkong as trying to make the most of some airmiles. If anyone can help with an itinerary that would be realistic for the time we have would be great.
At the moment looking at mid/late April arrival . If works better we can fly home to London from another airport and just have the comfort of a one way with virgin.
We've been to Thailand a few times but as we're without kids this time we would ideally like to get down to a more local level . Want to see more / be in constant transit less as time is limited (unless it adds to the experience ) . If need to pay a bit more to cut out unnecessary long bus rides we would definitely consider. We both love culture /experiences /food / bit of chilling on a beach but definitely not our main aim and we don't need to be too tight with budget
It is possible, but it does mean you waste a lot of time commuting. I did do something similar last time I was in Japan which was also during April. On that occasion I stayed in Osaka due to the high prices in Kyoto. But I only stayed in Osaka for 2 nights, and only made one day trip into Kyoto. I took a JR train into Kyoto, and it was sort of 'free' because I had a JR Rail Pass. But I am glad I only did it once. The train trip was just an average long distance commute, sort of interesting to do once, but I am glad I did not do it several days in a row.
So I think it is possible. But it is up to you whether you think it is worth the extra time and effort.
I am planning my family vacation 4.5 months in advance, planning to fly in from the UK into Newark on March 31st, returning April 9th.
1. Hotel room for 2 adults & 2 teenagers
My 1st challenge is picking the right hotel room for 4 people. Due to location & having 2 seperate rooms, I think Double Tree Suites Times Square seems ideal, as there is a room with 2 x queen size beds and a sofa bed in the lounge, so I can separate my boys with one on a sofa bed and the other on a bed in the bedroom. Also the location seems very convenient.
2. Newark to Times Square
We arrive into Newark at 20:15 after a long flight from the UK, so I need to have a plan, I estimate a cab to be $50 - $75 to Times Square taking approx 45 minutes at that time of night. I think the New Jersey Transit train will be $5.50 X 4, then a cab from Penn station to Times Square $8 will take 1.5 hours. My question is by the time we get through immigration a cab might seem a lot more tempting than a long train journey with suitcases.
3. Jersey Shore
To break up 9 nights thinking of heading to a lovely beach perhaps, Jersey Shore via the New Jersey Transit. Somewhere that has a great theme park with rides and a change of hotel near the beach.
As all the jersey shore towns are so different I am so confused. I was set on ATlantic City then read some reviews that suggest its a pretty depressing place to go. Caesar's Palace looks amazing though. ANy suggestions on where to go and how to get there?
4. I'd like a rough plan of what to do over the 9 days to mix up sight seeing + shopping with fun restaurants, pizza places, diners and some iconic sporting events. Your tips for fun in April 2018 please.
@nyc10025
@nywhiz
@NYCgirl
@queensboulevard
I would appreciate your expertise, to make this a great holiday for my very excited husband & boys
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- There is no constututional crisis in the country, just you losing an election again - Gatundu South MP Moses Kuria has told off Raila
- The vocal MP, through his Facebook page, alleged that the country was enjoying a stable economy, despite the fact that the NASA leader had called for an intervention by international envoys on the current stalemate
- According to Kuria, Raila was making a crisis out of the fact that he had missed out on Presidency again
Gatundu South Member of Parliament Moses Kuria has typically thrown cold water on NASA leader Raila Odingas 30-minute lecture on Kenyas political impasse in Washington DC on Friday, November 10.
As TUKO.co.ke earlier reported, Raila during his address called on international envoys to take a keen eye on elections in Africa, rather than solely focusing on matters extremesim and terrorism.
I have come to Washington to convey a simple message: We need a much fuller engagement in the many arms of government that your country possesses to assist the envoys in Nairobi, Raila had spoken at the Centre for Security and International Studies.
Raila Odinga during a past address in the US. Photo: Courtesy
Railas speech was typically faulted by Jubilee affiliated leaders, with DP Ruto leading the pack in trolling the former Premier.
So, Tinga went all the way to the USA to seek support to scuttle the possibility of a son of peasant from being elected prezo in 2022!Balaa! Ruto had tweeted soon after Railas address.
DP Ruto was left unimpressed by Raila Odinga's call for help from international envoys. Photo: Nation
Moses Kuria also faulted Raila on Saturday, November 11 for telling international envoys that there was a crisis in Kenya when according to him, things are running fairly smoothly.
Gatundu South MP Moses Kuria and Raila Odinga at a past event. Photo: Courtesy
Forex reserves have held fort never falling below 5 months of import cover. 1.5 Million Kenyan children are sitting for examinations. Parliament has voted for money to provide for free day secondary school in January. So what crisis are we talking about? Kuria said in his vocal Facebook page.
According to the Gatundu South lawmaker, Raila was painting a picture of a crisis in the country to cover up for his losses in his election bid.
A certain candidate losing every election is a sad, regrettable thing but cannot be termed a crisis, He went on.
Moses Kuria's sentiments are however contradictory to a recent report by Treasury Cabinet Secretary Henry Rotich who conceded that the country had indeed slowed down economically due to prolonged electioneering period.
He however exuded confidence that the economy would slowly bounce back in 2018.
"We are forecasting economic growth to steadily grow at between 5 percent and 5.1 percent for the remainder of the year in view of the prevailing economic conditions in the country; and in defiance of the poll jitters that have characterized the sector for the last four months, Rotich was quoted by Capital.
Meanwhile, NASA are pushing for a referendum in an attempt to minimize the influence of Jubilees massive numbers in parliament.
Have anything to add to this article or suggestions? Share with us on news@tuko.co.ke
Governor Wahome Gakuru died following a traggic road accident:
Source: TUKO.co.ke
The Ministry of Health is reminding the public of the dos and donts when it comes to dealin
Lowell, a Massachusetts mill town whose minorities nearly makeup a majority of its residents, has a history of all-white governing bodies. But in a citywide election this week, driven by a debate over the high schools fate, voters elected two Cambodian-Americans, putting one on the City Council and the other on the School Committee.
The two victories in the city, which has the second-largest Cambodian-American community in the U.S. after Long Beach, California, came as voters nationwide elected a diverse group of candidates that included refugees, immigrants and members of the LGBT community, as well as racial and ethnic minorities.
The electoral wins also came during a time of rising xenophobia and white supremacy in the country.
In Lowell, residents also made history Tuesday by electing the first minority to the School Committee, as the school board is called. Cambodian-American Dominik Hok Lay came in fourth in the vote for six open seats.
Vesna Nuon, a Cambodian-born candidate, garnered the most votes 6,518 out of 90,756 cast for the nine open Lowell City Council seats. Nuon previously served on the council for one term, 2011-2012.
We are one city
I think it is a historical day in the city, said Rodney Elliott, an incumbent who was re-elected. He credited his victory, in part, to allies in the Cambodian community. We have a Cambodian city councilor and we have a Cambodian School Committee person. It is good for the city.
I think it is a strong message that we are one city, and that we are starting to come together and understand and work together, Elliott said.
About 49.2 percent of Lowells population, which totals a little more than 110,000, form the minority bloc, of which Asian-Americans are the largest group. Since 1999, only four minority candidates have been elected to the City Council.
Tuesdays success is important for the citys almost majority.
In May, several minority citizens filed a lawsuit alleging the citys at-large, or winner-take-all, voting system dilutes the minority vote and discriminates against candidates from minority communities.
On Oct. 17, at the first public hearing on Huot v. City of Lowell in U.S. District Court, Judge William Young denied the citys motion to dismiss. This means Lowell may find itself headed to trial against some of its minority residents, unless the council decides to opt for a change from within.
Nuon, 50, came to the U.S. in 1982 as a Cambodian refugee. He said the victory is for Lowell residents, especially the Cambodian community, who he says have trusted in his leadership vision in the city.
This success is not just for me, but for Cambodian community and Lowell residents as a whole, Nuon said. Now it is time to work together for a better Lowell.
A single-issue election?
Although this was an election when minorities were expected to obtain representation on the two city panels, the future of Lowell High School, whether to build a new school in a new location or renovate the current downtown school, emerged as the largest issue that drew voters to the polls.
The high school issue was pervasive in all races. Of the 18 City Council candidates, 10 supported the estimated $350 million renovation, while eight wanted to spend an estimated $334 million to build a new school nearer to the outlying playing fields.
In June, the City Council voted 5-4 to relocate the high school to Cawley Stadium in Belvidere, a predominantly white and well-to-do enclave. Sixty percent of those who voted in the election Tuesday, which included a measure on the high school, came from Belvidere, according to an analysis in the local newspaper the Lowell Sun.
Sokhary Chau, a Cambodian-born American candidate, lost his bid for the City Council.
A first-time candidate who favored relocating the high school, Chau said he was disappointed with the results, saying the election was dominated by Belvidere voters, although he was proud of the two Cambodian winners, Nuon and Lay.
This is democracy, said incumbent Elliott, who supported the campaign to relocate the high school. People were organized and they voted. It is good to go out and vote. It is good to exercise freedom of speech. It is all good.
Another incumbent who was re-elected on Tuesday agrees.
Councilor William Samaras, a former mayor, told the local newspaper that the ballot-box battle over the high schools future wasnt a neighborhood issue. It was a citywide issue and the results show it.
Or as Nuon put it, The people have spoken.
A week into his first trip to Asia, US President Donald Trump arrived in Manila on Sunday for the Association of Southeast Asian Nations annual summit, giving him what analysts said was the perfect platform to present his vision for the region and the ten-nation ASEAN bloc.
Then again, his lack of vision for Southeast Asia might be on display instead, they said.
The summit is the most high-profile event of the year for the regional body, and plays a key role in multilateral efforts to resolve security and trade issues in Southeast Asia and beyond. However, Mr. Trumps relationship to ASEAN first garnered headlines when he announced he would skip the blocs East Asia Summit, which brings together Southeast Asian leaders with those from superpowers such as China, Russia, and the US.
The decision was interpreted by many in Southeast Asia as a lack of interest in multilateralism and the region in general. The president changed his mind only at the last minute, on Air Force One while headed to Asia.
Miguel Chanco, lead analyst on ASEAN for the Economist Intelligence Unit, said the fact that Mr. Trump did not initially want to attend the East Asia Summit, and that his administrator has yet to appoint a successor to replace the outgoing American ambassador to ASEAN, Nina Hachigian, highlighted how low Southeast Asia is in his list of priorities.
I do not think that Donald Trump's presence at the upcoming ASEAN meetings says much about the notion of ASEAN centrality, he said.
I suspect that Donald Trump will largely stick with his usual script by touching on his pet topics: the US's trade deficit with a number of countries in ASEAN and how this imbalance needs to be corrected; and a call on ASEAN member states to do more to contain the threat posed by North Korea, the London-based analyst said.
Chheang Vannarith, a research associate at the Institute of Southeast Studies in Singapore, agreed that ASEAN countries would likely have low expectations of Mr. Trump, particularly on economic and free trade issue.
Still, he said the US presidents simple presence in Manila would be seen by Southeast Asians as evidence that they were still important to the superpower. In an era when many countries in the region are nervous about Beijings growing power, Mr. Trump would provide assurance that the US is still committed to counterbalancing China in terms of security.
Trumps presence is very important, the analyst said. Though we do not know what to expect from what he will raise in terms of content, the image of his presence sends a clear signal that the US is continuing to play a significant role in the region.
ASEAN doesnt expect much in particular, but the bloc wants to see commitment, determination and action from the US to keep the balance of power in the region through its role in the regional security aspect, he added.
Pushingand Definingthe Indo-Pacific
In a speech soon after he arrived in Vietnam on Friday for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit, Mr. Trump made conspicuous use of his favored new term for the region: the Indo-Pacific.
I have an honor in sharing our vision for a free and open Indo-Pacifica place where sovereign and independent nations with diverse cultures and many different dreams can prosper side by side and thrive in freedom and in peace, Mr. Trump said to businesspeople gathered in the coastal Vietnamese city of Da Nang.
The new administration has been increasingly using the Indo-Pacific term over the past several months, phasing out Asia and Asia-Pacific. Scholars and analysts have suggested that the concept is intended to reframe the region as stretching from India to Australia, both key American allies, while decentering Beijing.
It is a strategic concept to draw participation from countries like India to resist the growing hegemonic power of China in the region, Mr. Vannarith said.
Shihoko Goto, a senior associate in the Asia Program at the Wilson Center in Washington, D.C., said a key point of interest at the ASEAN Summit would be watching how Mr. Trump deploys the term and explains the thinking behind it.
Having made a point of welcoming the idea of a more inclusive Asia-Pacific region through an Indo-Pacific network, there are more questions than answers that have come about as a result, she said.
While its emphasis on abiding by the rule of law, ensuring democracy, and encouraging free and fair trade has been welcomed, just how that translates into actual policies remains unclear. A real test of the idea will be in assessing the situation of the South China Sea. If he points to the Indo-Pacific concept as part of the solution to ongoing tension regarding the territorial disputes, then it would gain more traction.
Explaining America First to Asia
Some analysts argue that Mr. Trumps persistent theme of America First is inherently bad for the Southeast Asian nations, which need to stick together and ally themselves with stronger nations such as the US to counteract the political and economic hegemony of a rising China. The very concept behind ASEAN is rooted in ideals of multilateralism and free trade, they say.
If the US continues its "America First" policy, I am afraid the US will not be able to block China's rise in the region, at least on the economic front, said Kaewkamol Pitakdumrongkit, an associate professor at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore.
In his speech in Da Nang, Mr. Trump defended the decision to withdraw from the US-initiated Trans-Pacific Partnership, complaining about chronic trade imbalances while stressing the importance to the US of negotiating favorable bilateral trade agreements.
These echo his "America First" policy, which views trade as a zero-sum game (focusing on US trade deficits with its trading partners) and emphasizes bilateralism as a way to foster relationships between the US and other states, because the US thinks that these bilateral deals will maximize its chance of getting agreement terms favorable to itself, said Ms. Kaewkamol.
Given the new economic and political uncertainties created by Mr. Trumps presidency, ASEAN leaders need to get more serious about strengthening the blocs ability and willingness to take the lead and shape regional economic architectures, she argued.
Rights and Democracy Take a Back Seat
At the summit, Trump will sit side by side with a group of leaders frequently described as authoritarian and responsible for narrowing space for rights and democracy in the region. From Bangkok and Phnom Penh to Manila, Southeast Asian governments have been increasingly aggressive in targeting critics and dissenters this year.
The Trump administration is not likely to abandon Americas traditional focus on human rights and democracy, which have been pillars of US foreign policy for decades, in dealing with Southeast Asian authoritarian leaders. However, they will likely be back-seated to regain some leverage, said Thitinan Pongsudhirak, a political scientist at Chulalongkorn University in Thailand.
Mr. Thitinan, who is also the director of the Bangkok-based Institute of Security and International Studies, said Mr. Trump may have learned lessons from his predecessor Barack Obamas struggles to promote democratic values among ASEAN leaders without alienating them, when they are needed to counter Chinas ambitions in the South China Sea and the Mekong River.
However, he said it was likely that technocrats and lower-level diplomats at various US embassies across the region would be relied on to ensure that democratic values and human rights continue to be priorities in US foreign policy.
Its a matter of balance. We can see certainly that the US under President Trump has prioritized US interests over democratic values. However, I dont see it as a matter of black or white. Its not like they have interests only and no values, but Trump is probably not going to prioritize democratic ideals, human rights and election during this visit, he said.
Additional reporting by Sok Khemara
On this edition of Press Conference USA, host Carol Castiel and Tatiana Vorozhko, Senior Editor in VOAs Ukrainian Service talk with Alina Polyakova, Senior Fellow in the Foreign Policy program at the Brookings Institution, about the nature, extent and impact of Moscows disinformation campaign via social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter, in the 2016 US presidential election.
This Sundays program gives the inside scoop on the AFRIMA 2017 Awards! The playlist includes several tunes by Heather's favorite nominees including Msafiri Zawose. Also learn about the new album Kali za Pwani from the Kenyan Coast with an on the ground report by Bill Odidi. There's also fanmail and "Gbo Gan Gbom" MTIA's song of the week. So give your music taste buds a treat! Shake em up and listen to Music Time in Africa this week! This Sunday and the following Saturday at 15 and 2000 UTC.
Thanks to a new law, California residents who do not identify as either male or female can choose a third option on their driver's licenses and birth certificates. VOA's Genia Dulot spoke with a Berkeley resident who is that third option, known as non-binary.
In Cambodia, one of Asias poorest countries, the rapid improvement in internet connectivity and availability of affordable smartphones has been a great leveler.
Many of its roughly 15 million urban and rural inhabitants have gained, in a short time, access to mobile internet and social media, which provide relatively free communication and independent, nongovernment sources of information.
Some tech-savvy Cambodian activists, like Ngeth Moses, began to harness the internet to foster social change years ago.
Ngeth Moses, head of the Media/ICT Unit with the Center for Alliance of Labor and Human Rights in Phnom Penh, has campaigned online through social media platforms for political freedom and human rights causes.
Ngeth Moses has also trained dozens of members of NGOs and youth organizations on how to use online campaigning and online expression platforms, such as Open Cyber Talk.
In the past year or so, however, the optimism among activists about the positive impact of greater internet access has given way to growing fears as the Cambodian government stepped up efforts to curtail online freedom of expression and political opposition.
Im more cautious now before posting or commenting [on] anything political online, Ngeth Moses said, because of the growing state scrutiny of online content and the increase in reprimands or arrests of netizens.
At the same time, however, Prime Minister Hun Sen and the ruling Cambodian Peoples Party (CPP) have actively raised their online profile ahead of the national elections next year in an attempt to reach millions of new social media users.
Tightening online control
In early 2016, a new law increased the governments authority over the telecommunications industry to include overbroad surveillance powers that pose a threat to the privacy of individual users, according to the U.S. think tank Freedom House.
The law includes punishments for several offensives, among them a prison term of seven to 15 years for threatening national security, a charge that the local human rights group Licadho said is vague and open to political abuse.
A pending cybercrime law is also raising concerns about legal limits on what users are allowed to post on the internet.
In 2016, the court used an older law to punish online dissent when it sentenced university student Kong Raiya to 18 months in prison for incitement over a Facebook post that criticized the CPP.
The opposition Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP) has been increasingly targeted over online statements.
Senator Hong Sok Hour was sentenced to seven years in prison for allegedly posting false documents on Facebook in 2016. On October 25, King Norodom Sihamoni pardoned him at Hun Sens request.
Last month, a 20-year-old fruit vendor was arrested in western Cambodia and reportedly charged with incitement and public insult for Facebook posts said to defame Hun Sen and the Queen Mother Norodom Monineath Sihanouk.
The situation of internet freedom in Cambodia is of increasing concern, said Ramana Sorn, who coordinates the Protecting Fundamental Freedoms Project of the Cambodian Center for Human Rights, adding that the governments technological ability to collect the communications and social media data from individual users has expanded exponentially.
In the current political climate, social media users must be keenly aware of the risks related to what they are posting and sharing on Facebook and other web platforms, Ramana Sorn said.
Nop Vy, media director of the Cambodian Center for Independent Media, echoed these concerns, saying, Human rights and social workers who are using the social media platforms feel insecure in communicating and publishing their information.
Government plays down concerns
Government spokesmen told VOA Khmer that the activists criticism was overblown and that prosecutions over online content concerned only those who defamed others or posed genuine threats.
We need those multiple opinions, but we do not want those insulting or organizing any subversive campaigns against other peoples reputations they will face legal consequences, said Phay Siphan, spokesman for the Council of Ministers.
Only those having a hidden agenda are concerned about it, CPP spokesman Sok Eysan said. Those who have nothing to hide, they need not worry about being surveilled or monitored.
The rising online repression comes, however, amid a nationwide crackdown on political opposition and independent media ahead of the July 2018 national elections.
On September 3, CNRP Chairman Kem Sokha was arrested and charged with treason.
Hun Sen announced the CNRP would be dissolved, and many party members, including deputy party leader Mu Sochua, have fled Cambodia since the first week of October, fearing arrest.
Also in September:
The 24-year-old independent English-language newspaper The Cambodia Daily closed after receiving a $6 million tax bill;
The Phnom Penh office of U.S.-funded Radio Free Asia Khmer-language news broadcaster was closed;
Local FM radio stations were ordered to stop carrying the Khmer news broadcasts by RFA and the Voice of America; some independent FM stations were shut down;
And the U.S.-funded National Democratic Institute was expelled after years of operation.
This crackdown, seen as the worst in 20 years, prompted widespread international condemnation and threats of action from the European Union and the United States, but Cambodia, which relies on Chinas political support and largesse, appears unmoved.
Greater access to information
Despite the broad crackdown, millions of Cambodians are now on Facebook and connected through digital communications apps, sometimes encrypted.
Experts said any repressive government will find it hard to check the spread of independent information that can inform the public of politically sensitive issues.
In 2015, internet/Facebook became the main information channel for Cambodians, with 30 percent of netizens using it to access information, surpassing the more state-controlled TV (29 percent) and radio (15 percent), according to an Asia Foundation report.
The improved access to online information often wakes people up and makes [them] more likely to be critical of the government, said Mike Godwin, an internet freedom expert and a senior fellow with the U.S.-based R Street Institute.
In fact, efforts to suppress [online] dissent probably will not work as well as they had hoped because they may have the effect of awaking citizens to their unhappiness, he said.
When popular political analyst Kem Ley was assassinated last year, his funeral march in the capital, Phnom Penh, drew hundreds of thousands of people, many of whom reportedly learned of the event through online messages and posts that quickly went viral.
Cambodias capacity and effort to control online content, however, are still less than those of its mainland Southeast Asian neighbors, according to Freedom House, which ranked the country on its 2016 Freedom on the Internet Index as partly free.
Strongman seeks likes
Amid the tightening government control on online dissent, Hun Sen and his CPP have sought to expand their social media use to reach out to the public ahead of the national elections next year. In 2013 elections, the CPP narrowly beat the CNRP in a disputed result.
The 65-year-old strongman has urged officials to use Facebook, and he has presented a warm, revitalized image on his Facebook page, which he began in 2015 and has 8.5 million followers. Some photos show him driving passenger cars, attending family outings and frequently exercising.
Some researchers have said that the Cambodian government has formed a nationwide program with cyberunits run at local levels, which spread countless pro-CPP messages, denounce the opposition and attack government criticism on social media.
Ngeth Moses, the tech-using activist, said the CPPs recent embrace of social media only belied the worsening freedom of expression in Cambodia, as could be seen in the controls exercised over pro-CPP Facebook pages.
Commenters on the prime ministers [Facebook] page have been followed and if these comments contained inappropriate words, there were people who got the commenters to apologize, he said. On the surface, the internet freedom in Cambodia looks better than in some other countries in ASEAN [the Association of Southeast Asian Nations], but in practice it is not.
Emirates Airlines agreed to buy 40 Boeing 787-10s in a deal worth more than $15 billion.
The purchase was announced Sunday at the Dubai Air Show by the largest airline in the Middle East.
Deliveries of the wide-body, twin-engine planes are set to begin in 2022.
Boeing's website says the aircraft typically carries 330 passengers with a range of 11,900 kilometers.
The manufacturer says the 787 is 25 percent more fuel-efficient than the aircraft it replaces.
Also, Azerbaijan Airlines announced a $1.9 billion deal for more 787s, five to carry passengers and two more to haul freight.
For the first time, a museum in Australia is telling the stories of the massacres by colonists of indigenous people from an Aboriginal perspective. Thousands of First Nation people are believe to have been killed by white settlers until the 1940s, but much of that history is yet to be uncovered.
Near the city of Portland is the site of the oldest known massacre of indigenous people in the Australian state of Victoria.
There was tension in the early 1830s between European settlers, who had set up a whaling station, and a local Aboriginal tribe over a whale carcass. The precise details of the confrontation have been hard to establish, but 60 to 200 First Nation people were killed in what is known as the Convincing Ground massacre.
The killings are part of a series of stories being told in a new exhibition at the Melbourne Museum. Called Black Day, Sun Rises, Blood Runs, the multimedia show is included in the museums Bunjilaka Aboriginal Cultural Center.
Indigenous stories
The stories are told by indigenous people who have been filmed at the sites of several massacres.
Officials say the testimony tries to fill gaps in the documentation of the killings contained in court proceedings, newspaper reports and Aboriginal records.
Curator Genevieve Grieves says the exhibition contains valuable historical information.
We are going quite deeply into six narratives that include massacre, they include resistance, they include the native police, who were used against Aboriginal people in Victoria and other parts of the country, she said, And we are really doing that through first-person voice. So we are just talking to people connected to those spaces and so we have got what is on the historical record, but also what is contained in memory as well, in indigenous memory and, indeed, in non-indigenous memory as well.
Grieves says this is the first time a new permanent exhibition at an Australian museum has detailed the stories of the massacres from an indigenous perspective.
Thousands massacred
According to the University of Newcastle in New South Wales, about 1,200 indigenous people in Victoria state died in 40 massacres from the 1830s to the 1850s. Academics say that armed white settlers or farmers would ambush Aboriginal camps in the night or early morning.
In July, an online map marking the massacres of Aboriginal clans across Australias colonial frontier was launched. It detailed more than 150 sites where violent attacks against indigenous groups took place in eastern Australia following the arrival of European settlers in the late 1700s.
Israel signaled on Sunday that it would keep up military strikes across its frontier with Syria to prevent any encroachment by Iranian-allied forces, even as the United States and Russia try to build up a cease-fire in the area.
U.S. President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin on Saturday affirmed joint efforts to stabilize Syria as its civil war wanes, including with the expansion of a July 7 truce in the southwestern triangle bordering Israel and Jordan.
A U.S. State Department official said Russia had agreed "to work with the Syrian regime to remove Iranian-backed forces a defined distance" from the Golan Heights frontier with Israel, which captured the plateau in the 1967 Middle East war.
Moscow did not immediately provide details on the deal.
Israel has been lobbying both big powers to deny Iran, Lebanon's Hezbollah and other Shi'ite militias any permanent bases in Syria, and to keep them away from the Golan, as they gain ground while helping Damascus beat back Sunni-led rebels.
In televised remarks opening Israel's weekly Cabinet meeting on Sunday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu did not speak about the new U.S.-Russian arrangement for Syria.
His regional cooperation minister, Tzachi Hanegbi, sounded circumspect about the deal, telling reporters that it "does not meet Israel's unequivocal demand the there will not be developments that bring the forces of Hezbollah or Iran to the Israel-Syria border in the north."
Red lines
"There's reflection here of the understanding that Israel has set red lines, and will stand firm on this," Hanegbi said.
That was an allusion to Israeli military strikes in Syria, carried out against suspected Hezbollah or Iranian arms depots or in retaliation for attacks from the Syrian-held Golan.
In the latest incident, the Israeli military said it shot down a spy drone on Saturday as it overflew the Golan. Israeli Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman blamed the drone on the Syrian government. Damascus did not immediately respond.
Repeating Israel's warnings to Iran and Hezbollah, Lieberman said: "We will not allow the Shi'ite axis to establish Syria as its forefront base."
Russia, which has a long-term military garrison in Syria, has said it wants foreign forces to quit the country eventually.
The U.S. State Department official, who briefed reporters on condition of anonymity on Saturday, said that goal could be served by Russia's pledge to remove Iranian-linked fighters from the truce zone in southwestern Syria.
"If this works, this is an auspicious signal, would be an auspicious signal, that our policy objective the objective that I think so many of us share, of getting these guys out of Syria ultimately that there's a path in that direction," the official said.
The Kremlin said on Sunday that inflexibility on the part of the United States was to blame for the lack of a bilateral meeting between Russia's President Vladimir Putin and U.S. President Donald Trump during a summit in Vietnam.
Trump and Putin met briefly on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Vietnam on Saturday and agreed on a joint statement supporting a political solution for Syria, but did not hold substantive bilateral talks.
"Unfortunately the American side did not offer any alternatives despite all efforts of our Russian colleagues.
There was only one time offered that was convenient for the American side, and only one place offered, which had already been rented by the Americans," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov was quoted as saying by the RIA news agency.
"The Americans showed no flexibility, and unfortunately did not offer any other alternative proposals. That is why the meeting could not happen," Peskov added.
Putin himself said on Saturday the lack of a bilateral meeting with Trump in Vietnam was due to both leaders' schedules and protocol obstacles that their teams had been unable to overcome.
Allegations that Trump's election campaign colluded with Moscow last year to turn voters away from Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton have hampered the president's efforts to improve frosty U.S.-Russian relations.
Putin renewed his denial of the allegations during his brief meeting with Trump on Saturday. Trump has previously said the accusations of collusion were a hoax.
Lebanon's president urged Saudi Arabia on Saturday to explain why Saad Hariri had not returned to Beirut since his surprise resignation as prime minister a week ago.
Hariri announced on November 4 in a televised statement from Riyadh that he would be stepping down from the post, sending shock waves through Lebanese politics.
The premier has yet to return to Lebanon, and rumors have swirled that he is being held in Saudi Arabia against his will.
President Michel Aoun on Saturday called on the kingdom to "clarify the reasons that have prevented the return of PM Hariri to Lebanon to be among his people and supporters."
"The obscurity surrounding the condition of PM Saad Hariri since his resignation a week ago means that all positions and actions declared by him or attributed to him do not reflect the truth," Aoun added.
"They are instead a result of the ambiguous and obscure conditions [under which] PM Hariri is living in the kingdom of Saudi Arabia."
Conversation with Macron
Aoun on Saturday spoke by phone to French President Emmanuel Macron about the "latest developments" surrounding Hariri's resignation, Lebanon's presidency said in a statement.
The Lebanese head of state has yet to formally accept Hariri's resignation and has criticized the circumstances surrounding it as "unacceptable."
Present at reception
On Saturday evening, Hariri attended a reception at the Riyadh airport for Saudi King Salman, who had flown back to the capital from the holy city of Medina, Hariri's media office said.
The emailed statement said Hariri had earlier met in Riyadh with both the British and Turkish envoys to the kingdom.
In his shock announcement, Hariri accused Iran and its Lebanese ally Hezbollah of taking over his country and destabilizing the broader region, saying he feared for his life.
His statement prompted fears that Lebanon dominated by rival camps led by Hariri and Hezbollah would be caught up in spiraling tensions between Riyadh and Tehran.
House arrest?
Hariri's weeklong absence from Lebanon has sparked rumors that the ex-premier who also holds Saudi nationality is under de facto house arrest in the kingdom.
"The head of the Lebanese government is detained in Saudi Arabia, he is banned from returning to Lebanon until now," Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah said in a televised address Friday.
Members of Hariri's own Al-Moustaqbal (Future) party said they had no information on his fate.
And Lebanese Foreign Minister Gebran Bassil announced on Friday that he was launching a "diplomatic campaign to bring back the head of our government of his own free will."
Even world powers have appealed for calm and freedom of movement for Hariri.
U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson on Friday described Hariri as "a strong partner" and warned against "any party, within or outside Lebanon, using Lebanon as a venue for proxy conflicts or in any manner contributing to instability in that country."
On Friday, a spokesman for France's Foreign Ministry said: "We wish Mr. Saad Hariri to have all his freedom of movement and to be fully able to play the essential role that is his in Lebanon."
Iraqi security forces have found mass graves in an area recently retaken from the Islamic State group that could contain up to 400 bodies, an Iraqi official said Sunday.
The bodies of civilians and security forces were found in an abandoned base near Hawija, a northern town retaken in early October, Kirkuk governor Rakan Saed said. He didn't say when authorities will start exhuming the bodies from the mass graves.
Khalaf Luhaibi, a local shepherd who led troops to the site, said IS used to bring captives to the area and shoot them dead or pour oil over them and light them on fire. The area was strewn with torn clothing and what appeared to be human bones and skulls.
Iraqi forces have driven IS from nearly all the territory it once controlled. Authorities have already uncovered several mass graves in other newly liberated areas.
U.S.-backed Iraqi forces have driven the extremists from nearly all the territory they once controlled, with some fighting still underway near the western border with Syria.
On Saturday, Iraq's prime minister announced an operation to capture a patch of territory on the western edge of the country near the border with Syria. Hours later, Iraqi Defense Ministry announced capturing Romana area, saying the troops will head to nearby town of Rawa.
According to Ahmed al-Asadi, a spokesman for the Shiite-majority paramilitary forces, Rawa is the last Iraqi town held by IS who still control some scattered small villages in mainly desert areas.
When Doundou Chefou first took up arms as a youth a decade ago, it was for the same reason as many other ethnic Fulani herders along the Niger-Mali border: to protect his livestock.
He had nothing against the Republic of Niger, let alone the United States of America. His quarrel was with rival Tuareg cattle raiders.
Yet on Oct. 4 this year, he led dozens of militants allied to Islamic State in a deadly assault against allied U.S.-Niger forces, killing four soldiers from each nation and demonstrating how dangerous the Wests mission in the Sahel has become.
The incident sparked calls in Washington for public hearings into the presence of U.S. troops. A Pentagon probe is to be completed in January.
Who is Doundou Chefou?
Asked by Reuters to talk about Chefou, Nigerien Defense Minister Kalla Mountaris face fell.
He is a terrorist, a bandit, someone who intends to harm to Niger, he said at his office in the Nigerien capital Niamey earlier this month.
We are tracking him, we are seeking him out, and if he ever sets foot in Niger again he will be neutralized.
Like most gunmen in so-called Islamic State in the Greater Sahara, which operates along the sand-swept borderlands where Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso meet, Chefou used to be an ordinary Fulani pastoralist with little interest in jihad, several government sources with knowledge of the matter said.
The transition of Chefou and men like him from vigilantes protecting their cows to jihadists capable of carrying out complex attacks is a story Western powers would do well to heed, as their pursuit of violent extremism in West Africa becomes ever more enmeshed in long-standing ethnic and clan conflicts.
For now, analysts say the local IS affiliate remains small, at fewer than 80 fighters. But that was also the case at first with al-Qaida-linked factions before they tapped into local grievances to expand their influence in Mali in 2012.
The United Nations this week released a report showing how IS in northern Somalia has grown to around 200 fighters from just a few dozen last year.
The U.S. military has ramped up its presence in Niger, and other neighboring countries, in recent years as it fears poverty, corruption and weak states mean the region is ripe for the spread of extremist groups.
Genesis of a jihad
For centuries the Tuareg and Fulani have lived as nomads herding animals and trading Tuareg mostly across the dunes and oases of the Sahara, and the Fulani mostly in the Sahel, a vast band of semi-arid scrubland that stretches from Senegal to Sudan beneath it.
Some have managed to become relatively wealthy, accumulating vast herds. But they have always stayed separate from the modern nation-states that have formed around them.
Though they largely lived peacefully side-by-side, arguments occasionally flared, usually over scarce watering points. A steady increase in the availability of automatic weapons over the years has made the rivalry ever more deadly.
A turning point was the Western-backed ouster of Libyas Moammar Gadhafi in 2011. With his demise, many Tuareg from the region who had fought as mercenaries for Gadhafi returned home, bringing with them the contents of Libyas looted armories.
Some of the returnees launched a rebellion in Mali to try to create a breakaway Tuareg state in the desert north, a movement that was soon hijacked by al-Qaida-linked jihadists who had been operating in Mali for years.
Until then, Islamists in Mali had been recruiting and raising funds through kidnapping. In 2012, they swept across northern Mali, seizing key towns and prompting a French intervention that pushed them back in 2013.
Turning point in 2013
Amid the violence and chaos, some of the Tuareg turned their guns on their rivals from other ethnic groups like the Fulani, who then went to the Islamists for arms and training.
In November 2013, a young Nigerien Fulani had a row with a Tuareg chief over money. The old man thrashed him and chased him away, recalls Boubacar Diallo, head of an association for Fulani livestock breeders along the Mali border, who now lives in Niamey.
The youth came back armed with an AK-47, killed the chief and wounded his wife, then fled. The victim happened to be the uncle of a powerful Malian warlord.
Over the next week, heavily armed Tuareg slaughtered 46 Fulani in revenge attacks along the Mali-Niger border.
The incident was bloodiest attack on record in the area, said Diallo, who has documented dozens of attacks by Tuareg raiders that have killed hundreds of people and led to thousands of cows and hundreds of camels being stolen.
That was a point when the Fulani in that area realized they needed more weapons to defend themselves, said Diallo, who has represented them in talks aimed at easing communal tensions.
The crimes were almost never investigated by police, admits a Niamey-based law enforcement official with knowledge of them.
The Tuareg were armed and were pillaging the Fulanis cattle, Niger Interior Minister Mohamed Bazoum told Reuters. The Fulani felt obliged to arm themselves.
Injustice, exclusion and self-defense
Gandou Zakaria, a researcher of mixed Tuareg-Fulani heritage in the faculty of law at Niamey University, has spent years studying why youths turned to jihad.
Religious belief was at the bottom of their list of concerns, he told Reuters. Instead, local grievances were the main driving force.
Whereas Tuareg in Mali and Niger have dreamed of and sometimes fought for an independent state, Fulani have generally been more pre-occupied by concerns over the security of their community and the herds they depend on.
For the Fulani, it was a sense of injustice, of exclusion, of discrimination, and a need for self-defense, Zakaria said.
One militant who proved particularly good at tapping into this dissatisfaction was Adnan Abu Walid al-Sahrawi, an Arabic-speaking north African, several law enforcement sources said.
Al-Sahrawi recruited dozens of Fulani into the Movement for Unity and Jihad in West Africa (MUJWA), which was loosely allied to al-Qaida in the region and controlled Gao and the area to the Niger border in 2012.
After French forces in 2013 scattered Islamists from the Malian towns they controlled, al-Sahrawi was briefly allied with Mokhtar Belmokhtar, an al-Qaida veteran.
Today, al-Sahrawi is the face of Islamic State in the region.
There was something in his discourse that spoke to the youth, that appealed to their sense of injustice, a Niger government official said of al-Sahrawi.
Two diplomatic sources said there are signs al-Sahrawi has received financial backing from IS central in Iraq and Syria.
Enter Chefou
How Chefou ended up being one of a handful of al-Sahrawis lieutenants is unclear. The government source said he was brought to him by a senior officer, also Fulani, known as Petit Chapori.
Like many Fulani youth toughened by life on the Sahel, Chefou was often in and out of jail for possession of weapons or involvement in localized violence that ended in deals struck between communities, the government official said.
Yet Diallo, who met Chefou several times, said he was very calm, very gentle. I was surprised when he became a militia leader.
U.S. and Nigerien sources differ on the nature of the fatal mission of Oct 4. Nigeriens say it was to go after Chefou; U.S. officials say it was reconnaissance mission.
One vehicle lost by the U.S. forces was supplied by the CIA and kitted with surveillance equipment, U.S. media reported. A surveillance drone monitored the battle with a live feed.
The Fulani men, mounted on motorbikes, were armed with the assault rifles they first acquired to look after their cows.
Iran's nuclear deal is "not negotiable," Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Bassam Ghassemi said Saturday in response to remarks by the French president.
Emmanuel Macron called for vigilance toward Tehran over its ballistic missile program and regional activities, in an interview published Wednesday by the Emirati daily Al-Ittihad.
"We have told French leaders on several occasions that the Iran nuclear deal is not negotiable and that no other issues can be included in the text" of the 2015 agreement, state news agency IRNA quoted Ghassemi as saying.
France, the Foreign Ministry speaker said, is "fully aware of our country's intangible position concerning the issue of Iran's defensive affairs, which are not negotiable."
In the interview with Al-Ittihad, published during Macron's 24-hour visit to Abu Dhabi, the French president said: "It is important to remain firm with Iran over its regional activities and its ballistic program."
Macron also said there was no immediate alternative to the Iranian nuclear deal long lambasted by U.S. President Donald Trump which curbs Iran's nuclear program.
France has been trying to salvage the 2015 nuclear, which Iran signed with six world powers Britain, China, Germany, France, Russia and the United States.
On October 13, Macron told Iranian President Hassan Rouhani in a phone call that France remained committed to the deal.
But the French leader stressed it was also necessary to have a dialogue with Iran on other strategic issues, including Tehran's ballistic missile program and regional security, a proposal ruled out by Iran.
Macron's visit this week to Abu Dhabi came amid renewed tensions between regional arch-rivals Iran and Saudi Arabia.
Iran's nuclear deal saw sanctions imposed on Tehran lifted in exchange for limits on its atomic program.
Despite 70 years of tense relations between India and Pakistan, the two countries share a passion for each other's movies, food and fashion trends. Take the example of palazzos, a popular Pakistani type of pants that are all the rage in India. VOA Urdu's Ritul Joshi reports from Delhi that the trend started after a new Indian TV channel started broadcasting Pakistani dramas.
Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy arrives in Catalonia Sunday, his first visit since Madrid imposed direct rule on the region.
His visit to Barcelona comes one day after Catalonias battered independence movement staged a massive protest in the city, demanding the release of jailed leaders and recognition of a separate Catalan Republic.
Rajoy is expected to make a campaign appearance in Barcelona for his conservative Popular Party, ahead of regional elections next month.
Spains central government imposed direct rule on Catalonia immediately after its regional parliament voted for independence Oct. 27. It arrested dozens of secessionist politicians, causing the head of the regional government, Carles Puigdemont, to flee to Belgium.
Eight members of the dissolved regional government and two prominent activists are in jail.
Those imprisoned without bail include Catalan Vice President Oriol Junqueras.
The head of the regional parliament who presided over the independence vote, Carmen Forcadell, was released from prison Friday after retracting her secessionist stance before Spanish judges. She said the independence vote had been symbolic.
A bail of $165,000 was posted for her by the pro-independence Catalan National Assembly (ANC), one the main organizers of Saturdays march.
Even though Madrids virtual decapitation of the Catalonian secessionist leadership has left the independence movement badly split, the ANC and another organization called Omnium Cultural managed to turn out more than 700,000 protesters Saturday, according to Barcelonas local police. Other estimates put the figure between 500,000 to 600,000.
We must not allow ourselves to be scared or coerced by those who want to cut our liberties and annihilate and humiliate our institutions, Puigdemont said in a prerecorded video from Brussels, which was played on a large screen before the crowds.
We never expected the government to react quite so hard, ANC activist Doria Asina told VOA. We calculated that the chances of the Madrid imprisoning our leaders was no more than 10 percent. Its all come as something of a shock.
The secessionist coalition itself also is fractured.
Heads of the separatist PEdeCAT, Catalan Republican Left and the extreme leftist CUP have traveled to Brussels for meetings with Puigdemont, who is trying to cobble together a united front for independence to contest the Dec. 21 regional elections called by Prime Minister Rajoy.
Spanish government analysts fear that a disconnect could develop between the politicians and radical activists, who may opt for more violent tactics.
Republican legislators have been reluctant to come back to the table in a special session needed to solve Montanas fiscal crisis. Its a crisis largely of their own making, but theyve been remarkably cavalier about it. Austin Knudsen, the mulish termed-out Speaker of the House from Culbertson who repeatedly refused to negotiate with Bullock during the last legislative session, has said he doesnt see why a special session is needed.
"There is a distinct lack of leadership from the executive branch, but my caucus will do what needs to be done to address the budget head-on while doing what Montanans elected us to do ... keeping in mind the taxpayers and those who utilize government services, he said.
Knudsen saying Bullock has displayed a lack of leadership is hypocritical in the extreme. Unlike other key Republican legislative leaders like Sen. Llew Jones and Rep. Nancy Ballance, Knudsen has from the start of the Legislatures regular session early this year shown no interest in working together with the governor to get to a good result for Montana. Hes been too busy throwing blame and saying no.
Bullock is, to our minds, taking a reasonable approach. He has identified some $76.6 million in cuts to state government that he will implement after the special session. Hes asking the Legislature to come up with the rest of the states $227 million shortfall at least partly through some temporary tax increases.
It should be pointed out that the Legislature refused to deal with a projected shortfall during the session, relying on a too-rosy revenue projection they themselves devised, and rejecting revenue enhancements like increasing the tax on tobacco which would have helped significantly.
Now the bill is coming due.
Meanwhile, the Republicans in the Legislature have fixed on a new bright shiny object an offer of $30 million in cash from the operators of a private prison in Shelby in exchange for a 10-year contract extension.
This feels strikingly like blackmail. Bullock is in the position of having to renegotiate a complex contract basically in a week for beds theres a good chance the state wont even need a few years down the road with the sword of Damocles over his head. Thats not a good way to handle the states business.
The deal, which has been lobbied hard to Republicans by prison operator CoreCivic, is like a payday loan for a cash-strapped consumer. We believe its a bad idea.
The bottom line: Montanans should demand conscientious work and collaboration in the Legislature this special session, not parroted talking points and refusal to take constructive action.
The crackdown by military forces on the ethnic Muslim Rohingya population in Myanmar has forced hundreds of thousands from their homes and across international borders to seek refuge. Those fleeing from Myanmar, including Rohingya, now account for the largest number of refugees resettling in the United States. Their unique dialect has made resettlement and integration challenging and has fueled demand for those who can help guide them through their new life in America.
For most of his life, Hamidul Hassan says he has struggled to find an identity.
As a Muslim Rohingya living in Myanmar, he had no passport, lacked the freedom to worship his religion, was not free to travel and had no formal education.
He says his only hope for a future was to leave the only country he ever knew.
So, in 2012, he fled to neighboring Bangladesh before reaching Malaysia.
When he eventually arrived off an airplane as a refugee resettling in the United States in 2015, he spoke no English.
Finding a mission in US
But just two years later, Hassan has found his voice and a mission.
Except Burmese, I speak five different languages, he told VOA. Bengali, Hindi, Malaysia, English and my own language, Rohingya.
English is a recent addition to his resume but has created exhaustive demand for Hassans services in Fort Waynes growing Rohingya community.
Here, nobody translates for the Rohingya, so I am the one, he said.
Which means day and night, Hassan is essentially on call, traveling around the city to assist about 150 Rohingya families with everything from hospital visits to shopping trips.
He recently quit his job translating for Catholic Charities, the organization helping many Rohingya resettle in Indiana, to take a better paying job in a factory, which means most of his free time now is spent helping others.
Whenever they need me, they need my assistance, he explains. So if Im already with someone, I cant give them time, so of course, they need more translators.
The violent crackdown by military forces on the ethnic Muslim Rohingya population in Myanmar has forced hundreds of thousands to flee across international borders in what officials from the United Nations have categorized as textbook ethnic cleansing.
WATCH: Tensions Follow Rohingya Refugees to United States
Refugees
The U.S. State Departments Refugee Processing Center reports in 2016, those fleeing Myanmar, including many Rohingya, account for the largest number of refugees resettling in the United States, outpacing those fleeing conflicts in Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria.
The unique dialect of the Rohingya has made resettlement and integration somewhat challenging in communities where few speak their language, and has fueled demand for those like Hassan who can help guide them through their new life in America.
Hassan was one of the first Rohingya to resettle in Fort Wayne, and he was hoping to get some help when the rest of his family arrived to join him.
But the arrival of military forces in his village in Myanmars Rakhine state changed those plans.
They fire our house at midnight, so my two brothers and my sister-in-law and their whole family were sleeping at midnight, so they dont know. So according to my mom, my mom told me before they fire the house, they locked the door from the outside, so they could not get out, and they threw the petrol down the house, Hassan says.
Family tragedy
Hassan says both of his brothers died in that fire in July.
His mother was shot in the leg as she made her escape from Myanmar to a refugee camp in Bangladesh, where she was treated and now waits to be reunited with the rest of her family, who are scattered around the globe in the wake of continuing violence in Myanmar.
As he racks up the miles on his used car traveling around the city of Fort Wayne, the heart-breaking stories Hassan hears from those he helps are strikingly similar to what his own family faced.
He says it reinforces to him the importance of his role in helping fellow Rohingya refugees find stability, and hopes more can find peace alongside him and the other Burmese of many different religious and ethnic backgrounds who have all sought refuge in Fort Wayne.
Whatever went wrong in Burma is not going to happen in this country, because we are all refugees, he emphasized during his interview with VOA. We have to live here together.
Together in a community now made up of more than 6,000 refugees from Myanmar, making Fort Wayne one of the largest Burmese communities in the United States.
Saudi Arabia has denied reports that King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud is planning to relinquish the throne in favor of his son, Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman.
There is no possibility whatsoever that the king will abdicate, a senior Saudi official told Bloomberg news on condition of anonymity, noting that Saudi kings usually stay in power even when bad health prevents them from carrying out their job.
There is one precedent of a Saudi monarch stepping down while still alive. King Saud bin Abdulaziz abdicated in favor of his brother and heir, Prince Faisal, in the mid-1960s after pressure from ruling family members. The prince had already claimed broad powers to counter a financial crisis that engulfed the kingdom at the time.
Speculation of King Salmans possible abdication surfaced last week after an Iranian news channel, Press TV, reported that the crown prince would soon ascend to the throne and King Salman would make a decision within the next two nights.
The Saudi official told Bloomberg that King Salman, 81, enjoys perfect physical and mental powers and that abdication is unthinkable.
Media reports about the monarchs possible abdication emerged days after the Saudi government detained over 200 people, including powerful princes, businessmen and sitting ministers, in a sweep that investigators say has uncovered at least $100 billion in corruption.
Saudi experts have called the purge of top princes a move by the crown prince, Mohammad, 32, aimed at consolidating power. The purge has sidelined potential rivals as he keeps an eye on the throne. Many of the princes detained in the corruption probe were reported to have voted against Mohammad rising to crown prince in the allegiance council a state body established in 2007 by former King Abdullah responsible for determining future succession to the throne in the Kingdom, analysts say.
Moves towards absolute monarchy?
The Saudis have denied any abdication in pretty strong terms. But most outside observers say that the aim is to have Salman abdicate once Crown Prince Mohammad is secure enough to rule in his own right, David Des Roches, an associate professor at the National Defense University in Washington, told VOA. People who are skeptical of Salman and of Saudi Arabia think the aim of an abdication would be to bypass the allegiance council of senior princes and ensure the crown prince takes over.
Des Roches, however, believes that given that every credible rival to the crown prince has now been sidelined or arrested, there may not be a need to rush to abdicate.
By now, Mohammad bin Salman has control over all the levels of power. There wont be a popular upswing in favor of the old guys who got rich. So he can wait for his dad to die and then take over the state in title as well as in practice, Des Roches said.
The National Defense University professor warned that while reforms are badly needed in Saudi Arabia and the old guys who got rich off the old ways of doing business are less likely to introduce reforms, the purge of top princes might move the country toward stricter rule.
The concern is that the Kingdom is now shifting from Saudi Arabia to Salmani Arabia. If the crown passes down through the house of Salman, a lot of princes who have been exercising power and getting money will be cut off, Des Roches said. Instead of a consensual monarchy for the princes, not the commoners the Kingdom will become an absolute monarchy.
The move against top princes and businessmen came as Saudi Arabia has stepped up its rhetoric against Hezbollah and its patron, Iran, accusing both of meddling in the Arab region affairs and supporting Shiite Houthi rebels in Yemen. A Saudi-led coalition has been at war with the Houthis since March 2015.
Saudi Arabia last week accused Iran of committing an act of war when the Houthi rebels fired a ballistic missile at the King Khalid International Airport in Riyadh.
South Sudanese troops have withdrawn from around the residence of powerful former army chief Paul Malong, a week after a tense standoff over his bodyguards sparked fears of clashes in the capital.
In a press statement on Sunday entitled "Misunderstanding Resolved," army spokesman Lul Ruai Koang said a peaceful resolution had been found to a dispute over the number of bodyguards in Malong's service.
Lul Ruai said scores of troops had been deployed around Malong's house as he had failed to comply with an order that he release most of his government-appointed bodyguards to return to their former duties.
"Withdrawal came about after Gen. Paul accepted (a) presidential order on reduction of his bodyguards," the army statement says.
Lul Ruai said troops were withdrawn after a "security review was undertaken which indicated lack of real security threats to the government in particular and residents of Juba in general (and) to reduce and eliminate uncertainty created by deployment of security forces."
The move was also an attempt "to build confidence between the Government and General Paul."
'Human rights violations, corruption'
Malong is a hardline ethnic nationalist whose dismissal in May by President Salva Kiir had sparked fears of a clash between his supporters and troops loyal to the president, although that never materialised.
The deployment of troops around his house last Friday saw people holing up at home for fears of clashes.
Malong, who belongs to Kiir's majority Dinka tribe, is widely regarded as the mastermind behind fighting that erupted in Juba in July 2016 that killed hundreds of people.
The clashes also crushed hopes of a power-sharing government between Kiir and Riek Machar, his former deputy turned rebel chief, who is a member of the Nuer tribe.
South Sudan has been gripped by a brutal civil war that has lasted nearly four years. Initially putting the Dinka and the Nuer against each other, the conflict has metastasised, drawing in a variety of ethnic groups and grievances.
The general, who is under house arrest, was one of three senior South Sudan officials who was hit by US sanctions in September on charges of fomenting and profiting from the civil war.
Canada followed suit last week, with Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland saying the sanctions related to individuals "linked to human rights violations and corruption".
South Sudan gained independence after the Christian-majority south split from the Muslim north in 2011 after a 22-year civil war that killed hundreds of thousands of people.
But the world's youngest nation quickly fell into civil war in December 2013 after Kiir accused Machar of plotting a coup, with the conflict leaving tens of thousands dead and forcing a third of its 12 million people out of their homes.
Senior officials from 10 Southeast Asian countries, including some of the worlds fastest-growing, expect joint progress at summits in the Philippines this week on trade, investment and security with help from major world powers.
But analysts say they are unlikely to get too far.
Heads of state from members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) arrived one by one Sunday for a series of summits in Manila through Tuesday. They came to sign a free-trade agreement with Hong Kong and issue a proclamation on protecting migrant workers.
Some will share tips at a forum Monday on how small enterprises can get money to vie with big ones.
The leaders are widely expected to endorse efforts toward a denuclearized North Korea and peace in the South China Sea, where four ASEAN members dispute resource-rich tracts of water with Beijing.
Separately they may consider a resolution against terrorism and extremism.
Cross-border suspicions
But ASEAN member countries also resent each other over old historical issues to wit Cambodia and Vietnam while harboring suspicions of outside powers, some of whom will attend the 31st ASEAN Summit this week. Leaders from China, India, Japan, Russia, the United States and four other countries will join.
China is already offering development aid around Southeast Asia to smooth trade, yet to avoid possible payback such as ceding natural resources or sovereignty to Beijing, those governments prefer a stronger U.S. role.
They hope U.S. President Donald Trump gives them reassurances in Manila this week but expect no tangible breakthrough such as arms sales.
Russia, which will send a delegation, is also considered disinterested due to relatively weak economic ties, while India is just getting started via economic cooperation with Vietnam.
Russia-ASEAN relations are likely to develop in a slow, incremental fashion over the next few years, Chris Cheang, senior fellow with the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore, said on the schools website.
"To begin with, unlike China and the U.S., Russia has had no tradition of strong relations with Southeast Asia," said Cheang. "Except with Vietnam and Indonesia in the 60s, Moscows links with the region had been little to speak of.
Making Trump happy
Southeast Asian countries are expected to seek favor particularly with Trump, who has made complimentary remarks to hosts around Asia on a tour since November 3. Playing to Trump's America-first ideals, Malaysia and Singapore announced plans earlier this year to buy aircraft from Boeing.
To win more support in Washington, Southeast Asian leaders may voice support for Trumps ambition to stop the development of missiles and nuclear weapons in North Korea, analysts say. But, they warn, Trump may not give much back, in keeping with his America-first principles.
For example, Vietnam, an exporter nation with a U.S. large market, wants American help resisting Beijing in the South China Sea, as well as more trade liberalization with the U.S.. It also bitterly contests part of the sea with China, leading to periodic clashes since 1974.
I think that the Vietnamese government wants some assurance from President Trump that the U.S. will play a front role in maintaining the freedom of navigation in the South China Sea as well as some response to future assertive Chinese behavior, said Trung Nguyen, international relations dean at Ho Chih Minh University of Social Sciences and Humanities, citing one example.
In Hanoi earlier Sunday to meet Vietnamese leaders, Trump offered to help settle South China Sea disputes. If I can help mediate or arbitrate, please let me know, he said. I am a very good mediator.
But Southeast Asian leaders may play down the South China Sea dispute to get along with China, experts believe.
Summit host the Philippines set aside its maritime sovereignty contests last year to build friendship with Beijing, which in turn pledged aid and investment worth $24 billion. Brunei, Malaysia and Indonesia have their own tight economic relations with China despite territorial disagreements.
I think they will discuss major security issues like the North Korea nuclear threat, terrorism [and] extremism, said Le Hong Hiep, research fellow with ISEAS Yusof Ishak Institute in Singapore. Im not sure how much substance or how much emphasis they will put on the South China Sea dispute.
Spreading capital around the region
At the ASEAN Business and Investment Summit Monday, officials will discuss ways that smaller firms in Southeast Asia can find capital to vie with the regions dominant large corporations.
But that effort could grow tense as Southeast Asian countries compete with one another for investments, said Joey Concepcion, ASEAN Business Advisory Council Chair. Outside donors such as Japan and China use aid to vie with each other for favors in Southeast Asia.
Summit organizers declined to say what non-ASEAN countries might offer at the event.
When we are trying to form this brotherhood of 10 countries, definitely competition continuously exists, Concepcion told a news conference. But, he said, you cant just leave the large corporations growing and the small guys staying where they are. Prosperity for all will definitely be severely challenged.
The 50-year-old association encompassing 630 million people prides itself on overcoming disputes among members by reaching all-inclusive agreements on free trade and immigration.
Those liberalizations have helped countries such as Cambodia and the Philippines grow economically at more than six percent a year.
Spanish authorities said they rescued 251 migrants, including children, on Saturday who were making the perilous Mediterranean crossing to Europe.
The people were saved "from five improvised vessels, all in the Alboran Sea," Spain's maritime safety authorities said on Twitter, referring to the westernmost portion of the Mediterranean Sea.
The number of migrants arriving by sea on Spanish shores has soared over last year, with the figure nearly tripling to 15,585 in 2017 by November 8, according to the International Organization for Migration.
Many Africans undertaking the long route to Europe are choosing to avoid crossing danger-ridden Libya to get to Italy along the so-called central Mediterranean route, and choosing instead to get there via Morocco and Spain.
However, Spain is still well behind Italy, which has recorded 114,400 arrivals by sea since since the start of the year.
Since January, nearly 15,600 migrants have made it to Spain by sea, with 156 dying during the crossing, according to the IOM.
The agency estimates that 155,850 migrants have made the dangerous crossing to Europe this year and another 2,961 died or went missing while trying.
An outbreak of cholera in Tanzania has left 18 dead in two months, the Health Ministry said Saturday, warning that the situation could worsen as the rainy season continues.
The ministry said the outbreak had left "18 dead out of 570 cases recorded" between September 1 and October 30, and it urged local authorities to take measures to keep the disease from spreading.
In 2015, Tanzania was struck by a major outbreak of cholera that infected 10,000 people and left 150 dead.
Cholera is transmitted through contaminated drinking water and causes acute diarrhea.
The leaders of Tanzania and Uganda criticized on Saturday a plan by the International Criminal Court (ICC) to investigate alleged human rights abuses in Burundi.
A statement from the office of Tanzanian President John Magufuli said the court's decision "compromised efforts" of an East African Community (EAC) committee "charged with seeking a resolution to the Burundi conflict."
The committee is led by Uganda President Yoweri Museveni and former Tanzanian President Benjamin Mkapa.
Museveni on Saturday accused the ICC of "interfering in the efforts of the EAC." He currenty heads the EAC, a regional bloc made up of Tanzania, Uganda, Kenya, Rwanda, Burundi and South Sudan.
On Friday, Burundi's government said it would not cooperate with the proposed ICC investigation. The east African nation recently withdrew from the ICC charter, but the court argues the pullout does not affect its jurisdiction over crimes committed earlier.
Speaking to reporters in Burundi's capital, Bujumbura, Justice Minister Aimee Laurentine said the ICC has no right to conduct an investigation in her country.
"Burundi, not being a state party to the ICC statute, is not concerned with those so-called decisions of that court," said Laurentine . "The government of Burundi rejects that decision and reiterates its firm determination that it will not cooperate with the International Criminal Court or any other fraudulent manipulation intending to facilitate extended mandate of the ICC in the territory of Burundi."
The government response came a day after three judges at the ICC authorized the prosecutor to open an investigation into alleged human rights abuses committed inside and outside Burundi between April 2015 and October 2017.
Burundi became a member of the Rome Statute, the treaty that established the ICC, in 2004. The country announced the plan to withdraw from the statute in October 2016 and the notification took effect last month. Burundi accused the court of targeting African countries.
'No crime can go unpunished'
Vital Nshimirimana, who heads Burundi's Forum for Strengthening the Civil Society, said pulling out of the ICC wouldn't save those behind crimes against civilians.
"Now it's very well-informed that it cannot escape justice because victims are crying for justice and today no crime can go unpunished in the modern world," said Nshimirimana.
According to human rights organizations, between April 2015 and May 2017 at least 1,200 people were killed, 900 disappeared forcefully and more than 10,000 people were illegally detained amid Burundi's political unrest.
Security forces and the ruling party youth wing better known as Imbonerakure have been accused of being behind much of the killings of civilians and political opponents.
Laurentine said her country has the capacity to prosecute those behind the human rights violations.
"Burundi has efficient and able institutions and legal mechanisms to conduct investigations and to take it before justice of any kind of crimes committed in its territory without discrimination, fear or favor," she said.
Some rights groups, however, doubt that Burundi's judiciary can give justice to the victims of political violence.
President Donald Trump says he will have a major statement on trade when he returns to Washington following a 12-day, five-nation trip to Asia.
Speaking on the sidelines of the ASEAN Summit in the Philippines Monday, Trump said Weve made a lot of big progress on trade. He added that his Asia trip has generated $300 billion in sales to various companies, including China. However, he offered no details on the coming trade announcement.
His comments came at a trilateral meeting on the sidelines of ASEAN with the leaders of Japan and Australia. He said the three were discussing trade, North Korea and other subjects.
Earlier, as regional leaders gathered at a colorful ceremony to open this years ASEAN summit in Manila, Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte sidestepped the sensitive issue of combating illegal drugs, which he himself had raised.
In opening remarks at the plenary session of the 31st summit of the Association of Southeast Asian leaders Monday, he called illegal drugs a menace that threaten the very fabric of our society, without mentioning methods to control the crime.
I apologize for setting the tone of my statement in such a manner, but I only want to emphasize that our meetings for the next two days present an excellent opportunity for us to engage in meaningful discussions on matters of regional and international importance, Duterte told 17 other heads of state after also mentioning a recent fight against Muslim rebels in the southern Philippines as well as the broader threat of terrorism.
Dutertes war on drugs
Asian experts say they do not expect President Donald Trump to raise human rights issues and concerns about extrajudicial killings when he meets with Duterte.
Im sure he will not take it up, Duterte said Sunday. Human rights groups have expressed alarm over allegations that Philippines police have killed 3,000 to 7,000 suspected drug users and dealers in a countrywide crackdown, one of the presidents major campaign promises.
Trump told Duterte earlier this year that he is doing a great job and has yet to openly criticize the Philippines leader for his alleged campaign of violence.
Duterte had once insulted former President Barack Obama, calling him a son of a whore. He also boasted of murdering someone when he was 16 because the victim gave him a funny look.
Except for comments on North Korea, the issue of human rights has scarcely emerged during Trumps Asian tour.
Protests greet Trump
Trump arrived in Manila Sunday. About 3,500 protesters tried to march on the U.S. Embassy and were stopped by riot police. The protesters shouted for Trump to leave and accused the U.S., a former Philippine colonizer of about 50 years, of looking for overseas wars.
One banner read Dump Trump #1 Terrorist!
Another group of protesters was marching toward the leadership summit venue near Manila Bay as of 10 a.m. Monday, an organizer said.
Momentum in Vietnam
Before arriving in Manila, Trump met in Hanoi with Vietnamese President Tran Dai Quang. Trump told a joint press conference, For trade to work, all countries must play by the rules. I am encouraged that Vietnam has recently become the fastest growing export market to the United States.
He added I am confident that American energy, agriculture, financial services, aviation, digital commerce, and defense products are able to meet all of your many commercial needs.
Speaking to Communist Party General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong in Hanoi, Trump said Think where we are and where we have come, its a tribute to both countries. Trade has become a very important element of our relationship.
Quang called his meeting with Trump as A milestone in Vietnam-U.S. relations, creating strong momentum for the substantive, effective, and stable development of the bilateral, comprehensive partnership.
North Korea
Trump and Quang also discussed disputes over the South China Sea and tense relations with North Korea. Trump called North Korea a major threat to peace and stability in the region. As I said in my speech to the Republic of Koreas national assembly, all responsible nations must act now to ensure that North Koreas rogue regime stops threatening the world with unthinkable loss of life.
He added, We want stability not chaos and we want peace, not war.
In a Tweet Sunday, Trump hit back at North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, who had again called him a dotard, a term that describes an elderly person who is losing his mental abilities.
During his bilateral meeting with Quang, Trump also offered his services as a mediator for the South China Sea dispute. When asked about the offer at the press conference, Quang would only say Vietnam seeks a peaceful resolution to the issue through negotiations and in line with international law.
APEC
Before his arrival in Hanoi, Trump was in the central Vietnamese city of Danang, where he attended the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit.
Trump said he spoke to APEC leaders about previous agreements that created trade imbalances he says hurt the United States.
Its disgraceful, he said. And I dont blame any of those countries. I blame the people we had representing us who didnt know what they were doing because they should have never let that happen.
At the close of the APEC meeting, the 21 member nations expressed support for free trade and closer regional ties, without any mention of Trumps America First doctrine.
The talks in Manila will likely cover North Korea, the South China Sea and terrorism from a Southeast Asian angle. Many hope Trump will offer stronger trade and security ties to Southeast Asia but doubt he will announce deliverables this week.
China
On Friday, Trump and his Chinese counterpart, President Xi Jinping, offered starkly contrasting views of the direction for trade in Asia in separate speeches to regional business leaders.
Trump told the APEC CEO Summit that he is willing to make bilateral trade agreements with any country in the Indo-Pacific region, but he firmly rejected multi-national deals such as the 12-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership, which he abandoned early in his administration.
The president said he will make deals with nations that want to be our partner and that will abide by the principles of fair and reciprocal trade. Trump said we will no longer sign deals that Tie our hands, surrender our sovereignty, and make meaningful enforcement practically impossible.
WATCH: Leaders of US and China Offer Asia Business Leaders Divergent Paths
The U.S. president said that in the past when his country lowered market barriers, other countries didnt open their markets to us. ... We expect that markets will be open to an equal degree on both sides and that private investment, not government planners, will direct investment.
President Xi, whose countrys rise has been driven by large-scale government planning, immediately followed Trump on the stage in Danang.
Xi embraced the multilateral concept, in particular calling for support for a Free Trade Area of the Asia-Pacific (FTAAP), which would harmonize regional and bilateral economic pacts.
China was left out of the TPP, which had been led by the United States and Japan, and was meant in part as a bulwark against Chinas strategic ambitions.
VOA's Ken Schwartz contributed to this report from Washington.
Two former U.S. intelligence officials slammed President Trump Sunday for saying believes that Russian President Vladimir Putin "feels that he and Russia did not meddle" in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.
Former CIA director John Brennan, in an appearance on CNN with James Clapper, the former director of national intelligence, said Trump's initial indication that he believed Putin shows "that Donald Trump can be played by foreign leaders who are going to appeal to his ego and try to play upon his insecurities, which is very, very worrisome from a national security standpoint."
Clapper said Russia poses and obvious threat to the U.S., and to suggest otherwise "poses a peril to this country."
Trump was asked Saturday whether the issue of Russian meddling in the 2016 U.S. presidential election came up in conversations with Putin in Vietnam where the two leaders attended an Asia-Pacific summit. Trump replied, He said he didn't meddle, he said he didn't meddle. I asked him again. You can only ask so many times.
Trump went on to say, That whole thing was set up by the Democrats - slamming former United States intelligence leaders, including Brennan and Clapper.
"They're political hacks. So you look at it, and then you have Brennan, you have Clapper and you have [James] Comey. Comey's proven now to be a liar and he's proven to be a leaker," he said, referring to the FBI's former director, who was fired early in Trump's presidency amid much controversy.
So you look at that. And you have President Putin very strongly, vehemently says he had nothing to do with that," Trump said.
Taking issue
Trump's remarks brought immediate criticism on Saturday.
In a statement, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), a frequent critic of the president from his own party, said, Theres nothing America First about taking the word of a KGB colonel over that of the American intelligence community. Vladimir Putin does not have Americas interests at heart. To believe otherwise is not only naive but also places our national security at risk.
But Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA), the Ranking Member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, said Saturday the president understands the truth about Russian interference, and is simply choosing to "accept" Putin's denials "over the solid evidence of our own intelligence agencies."
He understands all this and more. He just doesnt understand how to put country over self. Or to put it in terms he is more familiar with - Mr. Trump simply cant bring himself to put America first," Schiff said in a statement.
And Gen. Michael Hayden, former director of the National Security Agency (NSA) tweeted Saturday, "So my question is: which is the position of the U.S. government? POTUS or CIA?"
Hayden then tweeted, "CIA just told me: The Dir stands by and has always stood by the January 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment entitled: Assessing Russian Activities and Intentions in Recent U.S. Elections. The intelligence assessment with regard to Russian election meddling has not changed."
On Sunday, President Trump clarified that he meant Putin was sincere when denying that Russia did not meddle in the election.
"As to whether I believe it, Im with our agencies," Trump said. "As currently led by fine people, I believe very much in our intelligence agencies."
Cooperation with Russia
Trump also reiterated his stance Sunday that "having Russians in a friendly posture, as opposed to always fighting with them, is an asset to the world and an asset to our country, not a liability."
Earlier Sunday, on his Twitter account, the president wrote: "Does the Fake News Media remember when Crooked Hillary Clinton, as Secretary of State, was begging Russia to be our friend with the misspelled reset button. Obama tried also, but he had zero chemistry with Putin."
Trump told reporters on Air Force One as it flew from Danang to the Vietnamese capital of Hanoi Saturday that a joint statement on Syria he agreed to issue with Putin is going to save a tremendous number of lives.
The statement, first released by the Kremlin, says the two leaders confirmed the importance of de-escalation areas as an interim step to reduce violence in Syria, enforce cease-fire agreements, facilitate unhindered humanitarian access, and set the conditions for the ultimate political solution to the conflict.
It also says that Putin and Trump agreed to maintain open military channels of communication between military professionals to help ensure the safety of both U.S. and Russian forces and de-confliction of partnered forces engaged in the fight against ISIS.
A very good relationship
Putin told reporters in Danang Saturday the joint statement is one of extraordinary importance, confirming the principles of the fight against terrorism.
Trump said of the Russian leader we seem to have a very good feeling for each other, a good relationship considering we dont know each other well. I think its a very good relationship.
Trump also said the United States could be helped a lot by Russia on the North Korean nuclear issue.
You know, you are talking about millions and millions of lives. This isn't baby stuff, this is the real deal. And if Russia helped us in addition to China, that problem would go away a lot faster.
But Trump said, concerning the North Korea nuclear and ballistic missile issue, I did not speak to President Putin about it, because we just had these little segments where we were talking about Syria.
Putin, in his remarks to the media, said, We discussed all we wanted at the APEC Summit, but unfortunately there was little time to speak in detail. He added that it would be good for Russian and American teams to sit down to talk about the whole breadth of the bilateral relationship.
Putin described Trump as a comfortable person, educated, and said he and the U.S. president were highly civil in their interactions.
RT retribution
The Russian leader warned, however, that action is likely to be taken against U.S. media in response to an American requirement that Russias RT media outlet register as a foreign agent in the United States.
Putin termed it an attack on free speech by the U.S. government, and he warned retaliatory measures will be proportionate and reciprocal.
CNN, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and the Voice of America have been mentioned by Russian officials and media reports as the most likely targets of the retaliation.
VOA National Security Correspondent Jeff Seldin and VOA House Correspondent Katherine Gypson contributed to this report.
Albuquerque author and travel journalist Ashley M. Biggers signs and discusses her travel companion book listing the eco-friendly destinations, farm-to-table restaurants, green hotels and more.
TRAVEL JOURNALIST PRESENTS NM GUIDE 3:00 PM SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 12, AT PAGE ONE
Albuquerque author Ashley M. Biggers, travel journalist, will be at Page One Books 3:00 pm Sunday, November 12, to talk about and sign her latest non-fiction effort, "Eco-Travel New Mexico: 86 Natural Destinations, Green Hotels, and Sustainable Adventures."
The book is described as such: "'Eco-Travel New Mexico' is the essential take-along companion to sustainable travel in New Mexico, on the main trails and off the beaten path. Ashley M. Biggerss guide delves into the heart of this enchanting landfrom stunning natural landscapes to vital cultural areas that give New Mexico its distinctive character. With handy insider tips and insights, the guide takes travelers to eco-friendly destinations, farm-to-table restaurants, and green hotels and introduces them to sustainable outfitters. Complete with recommended hikes and camping areas, Eco-Travel New Mexico gives travelers the tools they need to authentically and responsibly explore their environment."
Biggers, born and raised in New Mexico, is a travel journalist who has contributed to many magazines, including "New Mexico Magazine," the "Santa Fean," and "Beyond." She completed her undergraduate degree in communication studies at the University of Puget Sound, and earned a masters degree from the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Arizona State University. She is the several-times author of the "New Mexico True Adventure Guide," the New Mexico Tourism Departments travel guide, and she is the author of "100 Things to Do in Albuquerque Before You Die," a bucket-list guide to the Duke City. She lives in Albuquerque.
Page One Books is located at 5850 Eubank Blvd NE, Suite B-41, in Albuquerque's Mountain Run Shopping Center (southeast corner of Eubank and Juan Tabo). The Biggers event is free and open to the public. For more information, please call 294-2026 or visit www.page1book.com.
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Ashley M. Biggers website: http://www.ashleymbiggers.com
After more than a week of carefully crafted messages about his trip to Asia, U.S. President Donald Trump has again launched a tweet storm aimed at his critics at home and abroad.
In the span of three quick tweets from Vietnam early Sunday, Trump defended his meeting with Russian President Putin and hit back at North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.
During the flight to Hanoi late Saturday, the president said Putin had again denied to him allegations of Russian meddling in the 2016 U.S. Presidential election. He added that he believed the matter was set up by Democrats.
Those comments drew sharp criticism in Washington, where Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), the ranking member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, said the president understands the truth about Russian interference, and is simply choosing to accept Putins denials over the solid evidence of our own intelligence agencies.
In a statement, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), a frequent critic of the president from his own party, said, Theres nothing America First about taking the word of a KGB colonel over that of the American intelligence community. Vladimir Putin does not have Americas interests at heart. To believe otherwise is not only naive but also places our national security at risk.
In the first of three successive tweets Sunday morning, Trump hit back at his critics.
Trump also tweeted about what he said were the failures of the previous administration to improve relations with Russia.
He also turned his attention to North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, who had again called him a dotard, a term that describes an elderly person who is losing his mental abilities.
On Twitter, Trump, who has called Kim Little rocket man, said:
U.S. President Donald Trump says he is seeking two-way trade with Vietnam that will benefit both countries.
After meeting in Hanoi Sunday with Vietnamese President Tran Dai Quang, Trump told a joint press conference, For trade to work, all countries must play by the rules. I am encouraged that Vietnam has recently become the fastest growing export market to the United States. Mr. President, I applaud your efforts to implement economic reforms and increase Vietnams trade and investment in all directions. The United States is enthusiastic about reforms that promote economic prosperity for all Vietnamese citizens.
He added, We just had a great discussion about American goods and services coming into Vietnam. Two-way street. I am confident that American energy, agriculture, financial services, aviation, digital commerce, and defense products are able to meet all of your many commercial needs. And, in fact, not only meet them but what we do is better than anybody else.
Speaking through a translator, Quang described his meeting with Trump as fruitful, saying, The presidents state visit to Vietnam marks a milestone in Vietnam-U.S. relations, creating strong momentum for the substantive, effective, and stable development of the bilateral, comprehensive partnership.
North Korea
The two men also discussed North Korea and the South China Sea.
Trump repeated his warning that North Korea represents a major threat to peace and stability in the region.
As I said in my speech to the Republic of Koreas national assembly, all responsible nations must act now to ensure that North Koreas rogue regime stops threatening the world with unthinkable loss of life. Safety and security are goals that we can progress, not provocation. I mean, we have been provoked, the world has been provoked. We dont want that. We want stability not chaos and we want peace, not war.
In a Tweet earlier Sunday, Trump hit back at North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, who had again called him a dotard, a term that describes an elderly person who is losing his mental abilities.
On Twitter, Trump, who has frequently called Kim Little Rocket Man, said:
When asked if it was possible for the two of them to ever be friends, Trump told the press conference, I think anythings a possibility. Strange things happen in life. That might be a strange thing to happen but, its certainly a possibility. If that did happen it would be a good thing, I can tell you, for North Korea. But, it would also be a good thing for lots of other places and it would be good for the world. So, uh ... certainly it is something that could happen. I dont know that it will. But, it would be very very nice if it did.
During his bilateral meeting with Quang, Trump also offered his services as a mediator for the South China Sea dispute. When asked about the offer at the press conference, Quang would only say Vietnam seeks a peaceful resolution to the issue through negotiations and in line with international law.
President Trump is also holding closed door meetings in Hanoi with Nguyen Phu Trong, secretary general of the Communist Party, and Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc of Vietnam. He left Sunday for the Philippines to attend ASEAN meetings with other regional leaders.
APEC
Before his arrival in Hanoi, Trump was in the central Vietnamese city of Danang, where he attended the annual Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit.
En route to Hanoi aboard Air Force One, Trump reiterated to reporters traveling with him that he discussed with APEC leaders agreements that have resulted in trade imbalances he says are disadvantageous to the U.S.
Its disgraceful. And I dont blame any of those countries. I blame the people we had representing us who didnt know what they were doing because they should have never let that happen.
At the close of the APEC meeting, the 21 member nations issued a statement expressing support for free trade and closer regional ties, without any mention of Trumps America First doctrine.
WATCH: Leaders of US and China Offer Asia Business Leaders Divergent Paths
China
On Friday, Trump and his Chinese counterpart, President Xi Jinping, offered starkly contrasting views of the direction for trade in Asia in separate speeches to regional business leaders.
Trump told the APEC CEO Summit that he is willing to make bilateral trade agreements with any country in the Indo-Pacific region, but he firmly rejected multinational deals such as the 12-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership, which was quickly abandoned in the first days of his administration.
I will make bilateral trade agreements with any Indo-Pacific nation that wants to be our partner and that will abide by the principles of fair and reciprocal trade, Trump said. What we will no longer do is enter into large agreements that tie our hands, surrender our sovereignty, and make meaningful enforcement practically impossible.
The U.S. president said that in the past when his country lowered market barriers, other countries didnt open their markets to us.
From now on, however, Trump warned the United States will, expect that our partners will faithfully follow the rules. We expect that markets will be open to an equal degree on both sides and that private investment, not government planners, will direct investment.
But making that happen is something that is easier said than done.
China has already shown that it has no intention of playing by the rules, said Fraser Howie, co-author of the book Red Capitalism: The Fragile Financial Foundation of Chinas Extraordinary Rise.
China has been in WTO terms simply much sharper and smarter than the Americans, Howie said. While the Americans went in with good faith thinking the Chinese would change and whatever, the Chinese never had any intention of changing.
President Xi, whose countrys rise has been driven by large-scale government-planning, immediately followed Trump on the stage in Danang.
Xi embraced the multilateral concept, in particular calling for support for a Free Trade Area of the Asia-Pacific (FTAAP), which would harmonize regional and bilateral economic pacts.
China was left out of the TPP, which had been led by the United States and Japan, and was meant in great part as a bulwark against Chinas strategic ambitions.
Xi also termed globalization an irreversible trend, but said the world must work to make it more balanced and inclusive.
The speeches came just hours after Trump left China where he and Xi met several times on Wednesday and Thursday.
The large drop in global cocoa prices has hurt African farmers, leading some to abandon their plantations. In Cameroon, however, cocoa producers are mapping out ways to encourage more local processing.
At Nkog-Ekogo in the center region of Cameroon, a cocoa post-harvest processing and treatment center is inaugurated. Farmer Petronella Ndukong said that will help farmers dry and conserve their produce while waiting for prices to increase.
"[It] is going to be a wonderful thing for the producers," Ndukong said. "They will start learning how to transform it."
The world's fifth-largest cocoa producer, Cameroon's average cocoa production was 230,000 tons in 2015. That increased to 260,000 tons last year when demand rose in the world market.
The International Cocoa and Coffee Organization reports that in 2015 there was a boom with growing demand, particularly in the new markets of China and India. This pushed farmers to produce a surplus of 400,000 tons of cocoa against the four-million-ton annual supply. In 2016 and 2017, there has been another surplus of about 400,000 tons.
Yet, local processing in Africa is only 25 percent of production, so the continent relies on developed countries for processing.
Luc Magloire Mbarga Atangana, Cameroon's trade minister, said this year has been the worst in the last five as the farm gate price per kilogram officially dropped to $1, from $3 three years ago. That is pushing farmers to abandon their farms.
Atangana said the main challenge is that financial and social pressure is forcing some farmers to harvest cocoa that is not ready, and drying it under unhealthy conditions. The result, he said, is that prices will continue to be drastically reduced because the cocoa is of very poor quality.
And there are indications production will plummet.
Ambe Funui, president of a cocoa producers association in the Lekie, center region of Cameroon, said environmental factors are harming production.
"I pray that the production should not reduce this year because we have noticed that there is very timid bearing of cocoa, there is late bearing and then it seems as if there is persistent black spots despite the fact that farmers are applying the insecticides and fungicides," Funui said.
During the Yaounde meeting to encourage African countries to process cocoa, Daniel Mercier of the French Confederations of Chocolate Makers and Confectioners said it will be dangerous for Africa's economy if cocoa production is abandoned because of low prices. He advises that production should not be dropped and the quality of the crop should be controlled by halting early harvests.
It is a shame, he said, that while developed countries process cocoa and make much profit from its sale, producing countries remain very poor. The best thing would be for cocoa-producing countries to process their cocoa to highly consumable food items like chocolate, he added.
Seventy percent of the world's cocoa comes from west and central Africa. Producers have suggested that the issue of cocoa price decline should be included in the agenda of the Africa-EU summit to be held later this month in Abidjan, Ivory Coast, which, together with Ghana, contributes 60 percent of the cocoa sold in the world.
A Zimbabwe state-run newspaper says four people have appeared in court for facing charges of booing the country's first lady, who has moved closer to succeeding her husband as president.
The Zimbabwe Herald reports that three men and a woman from Bulawayo are accused of booing Grace Mugabe at a ruling party rally last weekend attended by President Robert Mugabe.
The report says they face charges of undermining the authority of the president.
State prosecutor Jerry Mutsindikwa says the four allegedly sang "We hate what you're doing" as the first lady spoke.
The 93-year-old president last Monday fired his deputy and longtime ally Emmerson Mnangagwa, accusing him of plotting to take power via witchcraft. Grace Mugabe is expected to replace Mnangagwa as one of Zimbabwe's two vice presidents next month.
Tension is growing over the status of Zimbabwe's first lady, after President Robert Mugabe praised her at a rally last Wednesday, indicating that she may be his pick to replace his recently fired vice president.
"We should uphold the route of the party," Mugabe said at the rally in Harare. "We despise those that abandon the party in the afternoon and, when it is evening, they go against the party. We despise that it does not matter even if you were very close with the president. It does not matter if the president called you to the party and put you close to him and walked with you through the journey."
As the president spoke, people held up banners showing support for first lady Grace Mugabe.
Already, state controlled-media which is loyal to the longtime president has reported that some provinces have chosen to back Mrs. Mugabe to be the new vice president.
The ruling ZANU-PF party will make the official decision at a party conference in mid-December.
Meanwhile, Chris Mutsvangwa, the head of Zimbabwe's powerful veterans' association, was in neighboring South Africa on Wednesday, agitating for recently sacked vice president Emmerson Mnangagwa to lead a multi-party coalition to challenge Mugabe in the polls next year.
He deflected the notion of mobilizing the nation's army to overthrow Mugabe by force.
"If we are going have an electoral slate, once the electoral process is restored to an even keel, where there is no interference, we will want a ticket where Mnangagwa becomes the head of the ticket and Dumiso Dabengwa becomes the vice," Mutsvangwa said.
The president fired Mnangagwa on Monday, citing disloyalty, deceitfulness and other issues.
Mutsvangwa served in Mugabe's cabinet in the 1990s and now says he regrets it.
"They [the Mugabes] are using the state, the executive of a doddering, senile old man who has now been completely seized by his wife, who is young and ambitious. We want to say to the region, 'Can't you find a way of making this old man see sense?' . This is a coup by marriage certificate,'" Mutsvangwa said.
Robert Mugabe is 93 years old; his wife is 52.
In a statement issued Wednesday from an undisclosed location, Mnangagwa said he fled threats on his life, but is safe now and that he was loyal to Mugabe to a fault during his tenure. He says he will now work to restore the integrity of the ruling party without the Mugabes.
Ellison Anne Williams, a 12-year NSA veteran, left the agency a year ago and started her own company, EnVeil, located near Columbia, Md. (Michael Robinson Chavez/The Washington Post)
With a newly minted PhD in pure math in 2004 (it was actually a dual degree in math and machine learning), Ellison Anne Williams saw her work going in one of three directions: the National Security Agency, IBM or academic research.
She chose classified government intelligence work and spent the formative years of her career laboring away in secret, immersed in the agencys mission. She climbed the ranks to become a senior technologist at the agency.
But the urge to be her own boss never went away. So last year, after 12 years at the NSA, she left to start her own cybersecurity company.
She didnt have to go far. She and about a dozen agency colleagues now work out of an office in Maple Lawn, a young community south of Columbia, Md., just a few minutes drive from the NSAs campus at Fort Meade. The small company, called Enveil, has more than a dozen corporate customers and has raised $5 million from investors.
Williams likes the start-up grind, but it has required a change in mind-set.
Its what I always wanted to do, but that doesnt mean there wasnt a cultural learning period . . . a sort of detox, she said.
Williams is one of a number of longtime NSA-ers who have been leaving Fort Meade for the private sector. Many are tempted by the opportunity to start a business or pull down a big paycheck working for a major bank or other institution.
In recent years, high-profile hacks have repeatedly embarrassed brand-name businesses, nudging deep-pocketed corporations to spend more on data security. Market research firm Gartner pegs the worldwide information security market at close to $100 billion and growing.
EnVeil offices. (Michael Robinson Chavez/The Washington Post)
Investors are taking notice, leading to a doubling of the number of venture-capital deals going to Washington-area cybersecurity start-ups. Media and data giant Thomson Reuters, insurance firm USAA and Bloombergs investment arm recently invested $4 million to help Enveil grow.
Williams owes much of her success to a rare moment of openness at the NSA: Through an official technology transfer program, she was able to declassify some of her work and commercialize it.
The company sells an encryption service designed to follow data wherever it goes. Her team at the NSA leveraged decades of research into novel ways of encrypting information and found new ways to apply it to large organizations.
She got some help from a private start-up incubator called Datatribe, which writes founders checks in the range of $1.5 million, typically in exchange for a 25 percent ownership stake in the company.
Datatribe was founded by Mike Janke, a former member of the Seal Team 6 elite counterterrorism unit who later founded an encryption firm called Silent Circle. Janke said part of the job of the incubator is to keep government technologists from leaving the area.
JPMorgan and Morgan Stanley will take more people [from the NSA] in a month than we do in a year, Janke said.
The incubator benefits from added financial firepower from Silicon Valley. At the direction of Bob Ackerman, who earned the moniker cybersecuritys money man for investing in the industry in its early days, Silicon Valley venture fund Allegis Capital recently set up a Maryland-based office to be closer to Datatribe and the NSA. To help in the effort, it added Dave DeWalt, the former board chairman of California cybersecurity giant FireEye, as a board member.
DeWalt says hes looking at Maryland-based companies because he wants to unlock the NSAs trove of talent and know-how for the private sector. He says offensive cybersecurity expertise as in going on the offense to hack someone else is exceedingly rare in Silicon Valley but plentiful in Maryland.
It started 10 years ago, maybe less, when governments began to attack commercial companies, he said. At one point we responded to 5,532 American breaches while he worked in the private sector.
Ackerman said hes not trying to poach people from the NSA or persuade anyone to abandon public service. What he does want to do is find people who are already thinking about leaving and give them an opportunity to start a business.
There are a lot of people who, for their own reasons, get to a point in time where theyre passionate about what they do, theyre passionate about beating the bad guys, but they want to do it in a different environment, Ackerman said. Were there to support them.
Much of the incubators credibility comes from an early success that set a high bar for founders such as Williams. One of Datatribes first companies was a start-up called Onyara which, like Enveil, was built around NSA technology.
It was founded by Steven and Joe Witt, brothers who respectively worked in the CIA and NSA. In family discussions that started in 2010 and fizzled out twice under do we really want to do this anxiety, the brothers left their respective intelligence agencies in March 2015, taking a handful of close associates with them.
Onyaras core product, called Apache Nifi, is designed to rapidly analyze the millions of rapid-fire signals that come off connected devices. The brothers declined to say what the agency was using it for, but the software was freely released outside the agency in the fall of 2014.
Corporations use the product to manage the signals coming off things like oil rigs, mobile phones and other industrial equipment.
Onyara signed its first customer after just four days and sold the company five months later for $40 million. Now the group operates as a Baltimore-based unit of a California-based security firm.
The way the Witt brothers see it, they never really left public service.
The people leaving intelligence agencies dont view it as theyve left CIA or NSA and thats it, Steven Witt said. They could go back into the public sector or run for public office.
For her part, Williams believes the emerging ecosystem of young companies and investors will be key to the success of start-ups like hers.
It takes somebody that understands the power of technology in a government setting to take a risk on something like this, she said.
Ill Behavior (Showtime at 10:30): Chris Geere (Youre the Worst) stars in this BBC comedy about a man who goes to extreme lengths to stop his best friend from forgoing treatments for cancer in favor of natural remedies. (Jon Hall/Showtime)
Dancing With the Stars (ABC at 8) The five remaining couples advance to the semifinals.
The Voice (NBC at 8) The playoff rounds begin.
Kevin Can Wait (CBS at 8) Kevin and Vanessa try to stop Rootger from suing them after he has an accident at the office.
Valor (CW at 9) Ian clashes with the deputy director of the CIA ("Scandal's" Brian Letscher).
The Gifted (Fox at 9) Eclipse gets a call from his ex ("Gotham's" Michelle Veintimilla), leading him to revisit his dark past.
Robert Kirkman's Secret History of Comics (AMC at 10) "The Walking Dead" creator examines the origins of Wonder Woman.
The Good Doctor (ABC at 10) Shaun experiences prejudice from an unexpected source when he treats an autistic patient.
Documentaries
War Dog: A Soldier's Best Friend (HBO at 8) This documentary looks at the role of dogs in America's current wars and the lasting bonds that form between handlers and their canines.
POV: Almost Sunrise (WETA and MPT at 10) This documentary follows two Iraq War veterans as they undertake a 2,700-mile walk from Milwaukee to Santa Barbara, Calif., in search of redemption, acceptance and closure.
Returning
Man With a Plan (CBS at 8:30) Season 2.
Late Night
Daily Show (Comedy Central at 11) Hari Kondabolu.
Fallon (NBC at 11:34) Jeff Daniels, Mary J. Blige.
Colbert (CBS at 11:35) Former vice president Joe Biden, Elton John.
Corden (CBS at 12:37) Jason Segal, Seth Rogen, Jaden Smith.
Meyers (NBC at 12:37) Carey Mulligan, Beanie Feldstein, Danny Bowien.
Former columnist
Back in 1962, Elmo Roper, a pioneer in public opinion polling, identified a problem in his field.
"A preference for certainty over doubt, for the plausible over the proved, for drama over accuracy, for hunch and intuition over the hard-to-assemble facts, is a common human tendency," he wrote.
Fifty-five years later, Nate Silver todays political-statistics guru has the same complaint.
"There's a strong desire for a narrative, and a lot of groupthink," the founder of Fivethirtyeight.com told me last week.
I had called him up to ask why should anyone ever trust polls again.
After all, last year, we were told that Hillary Clinton would be a shoo-in over Donald Trump. And when that turned out to be spectacularly wrong, there was hand-wringing throughout the land, and a call to substitute shoe-leather reporting for cold numbers.
Then a year passes, and the biggest election in the country, the Virginia gubernatorial race, approached.
Once again basing their views on public opinion polls, news reports told us that Republican Ed Gillespie had closed an early gap and might well defeat Democrat Ralph Northam.
Close polls set Democrats teeth on edge, wrote Politico in one take. The Washington Post described the race as neck and neck.
MSNBCs Morning Joe convened a Monday panel, asking Will Gillespie take Virginia? The screen showed some typical poll numbers: Northam ahead 43 percent to 40 percent.
But several panelists predicted a Gillespie win. And they were far from alone.
A lot of smart reporters and commentators, people I respect, were talking about Northam blowing it, said Tom Bonier, chief executive of the polling firm TargetSmart. The idea was that once again Democrats would be sunk by identity politics.
Then came election night, and Northam not only won but won big.
Voters might reasonably feel they were once again led astray.
Silver, not for the first time, argues that the numbers themselves are not to blame. In aggregate, and allowing for margins of error, they were reasonably accurate.
Its the interpretation by journalists particularly the pundit class thats to blame, he says. For one thing, they often dont use the aggregation of the various polls, but rather a single one, often the most recent.
And they interpret them to create a dramatic preferably surprising horse-race story.
They start out with an idea and backfill the justification, using whichever numbers help make the case, Silver complains.
So the last-days narrative went like this: Gillespie has come from behind and could easily end up winning.
The race was fairly close but most polls showed Northam maintaining a lead of several points. Given the margin of error, that meant Gillespie could have squeaked out a win, or in the other direction Northam could win comfortably.
No one wanted to repeat the failure to predict accurately in 2016, so most went the other way, favoring Gillespie.
Theres a tendency to fight the last war and overcompensate for what went wrong last time, said Micah Cohen, politics editor of FiveThirtyEight. Thats true for generals but also for pollsters and journalists.
Bonier also sees fault in the nature of polling itself.
Every poll rests on a prediction of turnout, he told me. And thats hard to fathom. So polls simply cant be seen as a precise road map more like a blurry mirror of a single moment.
Then theres the fact that a lot of news consumers, and too often journalists, dont know how polls work or how to interpret them.
That was never clearer than during last years campaign, when various news organizations were depicting the probability of Hillary Clinton winning. Some of the models showed the probability, even on the last days, at well over 80 percent.
Silvers site was among the most cautious. By the last days of the campaign, he had increased Trumps chances to about 30 percent.
Pro-Clinton voters found this reassuring, Silver said, but they shouldnt have.
How would you feel if you were about to board a flight and you were told the plane had a 30 percent chance of crashing?
Youd be scared silly, for good reason.
Whats the answer? Its not to substitute anecdotal reporting for numbers-based reporting. Both have a role in painting a fairly accurate picture, and they work well in tandem.
But lose the groupthink, says Silver, and let go of the need for a surprising narrative. Provide more context and more help interpreting the numbers, which are always an imperfect measure.
As Bonier puts it: Pollsters and prognosticators and I would include the media need to do a better job presenting the uncertainty.
But, as Elmo Roper noted half a century ago, human nature suggests that wont come easy.
For more by Margaret Sullivan visit wapo.st/sullivan
VIRGINIA
Man fatally stabbed in Manassas
A man was fatally stabbed Saturday morning in Manassas, city police said. He was found in the 9700 block of Bragg Lane, but no name was given.
The police said in a statement they thought the stabbing was an isolated incident and the victim and attacker knew each other.
Keith Alexander
MARYLAND
State trooper hurt when patrol car is hit
A Maryland state trooper was injured early Saturday when his patrol car was struck on the Capital Beltway at Allentown Road in Prince Georges County.
Police said Maurice Gresham, 51, of Lanham was charged with driving under the influence of alcohol.
Police said the trooper, Angel Ortiz, was in a marked vehicle while investigating a disabled vehicle.
Keith Alexander
The Region
Plane scrubs launch to space station
Rockets are known to bring down aircraft, but in the Wallops Island, Va., area on Saturday, an aircraft stopped a rocket. And perhaps caused some impatience on the International Space Station.
A resupply mission to the station was scrubbed Saturday after a small airplane strayed into restricted airspace, officials said.
It prevented the scheduled launch of an Orbital ATK Antares rocket that was to carry a Cygnus resupply aloft, permitting it to link up with the space station.
Cygnus is to carry 7,500 pounds of crew supplies, hardware and research equipment, NASA said.
NASA's Wallops Flight Facility said the small plane that prompted the postponement was at 500 feet about 6 miles off shore. The launch was rescheduled for Sunday with a launch window to open at 7:14 a.m. NASA said.
Martin Weil
Dania M. de Guerra, 21, (left) went missing in Montgomery County, Md. on Nov. 6. She was found dead on Friday. Elmer M. Campos-Martinez, 47, (right) is charged with second-degree murder in the case. (Montgomery County Police)
Dania de Guerra kept a routine after her shifts ended at a KFC restaurant in downtown Wheaton: Shed walk home, just a few blocks away, to her husband and 4-year-old child.
Six days ago, de Guerra never came home. Her husband reported her missing.
On Friday, the search for the 21-year-old ended in the most tragic of ways: Her body found with traumatic injuries to her head and face was found behind two large dumpsters just a block from the restaurant. Within hours, detectives had charged another KFC worker a 47-year-old who purportedly had a romantic relationship with de Guerra with killing her.
The defendant disclosed to investigators that the victim was upset with him and wanted to break up, detectives wrote in a charging document filed Saturday.
Police identified him as Elmer M. Campos-Martinez, of the 14000 block of Cove Lane in Rockville. He was ordered held without bond at the Montgomery County Detention Center and is expected to appear in court Monday to have the terms of his bond reviewed.
The dumpsters in Wheaton, Md., where the body of Dania de Guerra was found. (Dan Morse/The Washington Post)
Online records do not indicate if Campos-Martinez has retained an attorney.
On Saturday, police said de Guerra died of blunt force trauma and asphyxia.
On Nov. 5, Campos-Martinez and de Guerra worked the evening shift, starting at 4 p.m., at the KFC on University Boulevard West, three blocks east of Georgia Avenue.
Campos-Martinez left the restaurant at 11:45 p.m. De Guerra left less than an hour later, at 12:30 a.m.
Police began their search for her later that day. During the investigation, they learned that de Guerra and Campos-Martinez were involved in a relationship, according to a police charging document.
It wasnt clear from the arrest records how quickly police suspected that Campos-Martinez was responsible for what had happened to de Guerra.
At 3:30 p.m. Friday, her body was found partially obscured by trash behind a dumpster behind a building along University Boulevard West.
The victim appeared to have suffered trauma to her head and face, and there were defensive wounds to her hands, detectives wrote in court records.
Investigators spoke to Campos-Martinez.
He said that after hed gotten off work late Sunday night, he waited near the KFC for de Guerra to get off work. He said they met up, she told him she wanted to break up and an argument ensued, according to police.
Campos-Martinez disclosed punching the victim three times and pushing her to the ground where she hit her head, court documents allege.
Campos-Martinez said de Guerra appeared to be unresponsive. He took her purse and cellphone and called a taxi to leave the area, according to the documents.
Campos-Martinez also said that he discarded the cellphone and purse in a dumpster after he got home.
The charging documents do not detail any further questions detectives may have asked Campos-Martinez, such as whether he tried to call 911 after he saw de Guerra appear to be unresponsive.
Detectives charged him with second-degree murder, which does not carry with it the premeditation needed for the states more serious charge of first-degree murder.
In cases like this, evidence is presented to a grand jury to see if the case should proceed. During that process, the specific charges also can change.
A three-car crash on Interstate 66 in Prince William County early Sunday left one person dead and two others injured, Virginia State Police said.
The incident occurred about 4 a.m. in the westbound lanes near the 48-mile marker. One vehicle overturned, leaving the driver with minor injuries. Two people were injured one fatally in the second vehicle.
The driver of the third vehicle, a white SUV, fled. A short time later, authorities spotted the vehicle leaving the highway. They stopped it and arrested the driver, 58-year-old Dustin Tran of Manassas, on charges of hit-and-run and driving under the influence.
Authorities did not release the name of the deceased victim.
D.C. police have concluded their investigation into two officers accused of striking an 11-year-old bicyclist with their cruiser and then driving off, saying they were unable to prove the allegation, according to the department.
The investigation yielded insufficient evidence to determine the officers struck the bike, police said in a statement. Officials would not comment on details of the incident, including whether the officers pursued the youngster.
Dustin Sternbeck, the departments chief spokesman, said the cruisers driver and passenger were cited for a minor transgression connected to the incident, but he declined to elaborate on what that was, citing privacy rules on employee discipline.
Lawrence K. Bou, an attorney for the youth, called the decision disappointing and said of the police conclusion, there is evidence to prove otherwise. Bou called on police to provide more information. There is a lack of transparency, he said.
The incident occurred June 29 in Northwest Washingtons Park View neighborhood. Police said at the time they had conflicting accounts of what happened.
[Child bicyclist says police officers struck him, then left scene]
Several people who saw the aftermath told The Washington Post they heard a scream and saw the child lying next to his damaged Roadmaster Granite Peak bicycle at the end of an alley at Otis Place and Sixth Street NW, near Bruce-Monroe Elementary School. One neighbor said she saw two officers standing over the child and then saw them leave in their cruiser.
No one who spoke said they saw the police car strike the bicycle. The childs mother, Portreona M. Brown, said in a July interview that her son had told her the cruiser hit the back wheel of his bicycle as he tried to get away from police because he had fireworks sticking out of his back pocket. The boy had bruises on his lower right leg and the bike was damaged, according to his mother and two neighbors who spoke to him moments after the incident. One woman told The Post that she bandaged the childs wound.
D.C. police have not identified the officers. Reached on Wednesday, Brown referred questions to her attorney; she had asked in July that her minor son not be named.
Bou said he is weighing his options. This is a hit-and-run, he said. The boy was either intentionally or negligently struck and knocked off his bicycle by a 2013 Ford Taurus police cruiser. . . . The cruiser rolled up onto his bicycle, pinning him to the ground, causing lacerations to his right lower leg.
Bou said the officers pursued this young boy for quite some distance and after they struck him, they stopped momentarily, did not identify themselves, and did not provide assistance to this little boy who was on the ground bleeding. They got back in their car and drove away.
A woman was sexually assaulted during an armed robbery in Northeast early Sunday, D.C. police said.
Rachel Reid, a spokeswoman for D.C. police, said the assault took place at 6:30 a.m., in the 1100 block of Penn Street NE, near the campus of Gallaudet University.
Reid said the suspect approached the victim, displayed a handgun and forced her into an alley, then robbed and sexually assaulted her.
Visitors interact with the Wall after Saturdays ceremonies commemorating the 35th anniversary of the Vietnam Memorial on Veterans Day. (Bill O'Leary/The Washington Post)
It was a bright November day in 1980, when Maya Lin, then a 21-year-old architecture student at Yale University, first came to the National Mall and sat on the grass, contemplating how to design a monument that could honor millions of U.S. service members who died or served in the Vietnam War.
She did not know that what started as a homework assignment for a funerary architecture class would win a national contest and become the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, attracting millions of visitors a year and offering a place of healing for veterans and those who love them.
I had a simple impulse to cut open the Earth and to polish the Earths open sides, Lin said of that day.
She was speaking to hundreds of veterans Saturday at a ceremony in front of the Wall to mark the 35th anniversary of the memorials dedication.
The wall, and its anniversary, became a central focus of the Veterans Day holiday in the nations capital. Saturday morning, Vice President Mike Pence joined volunteers to clean the granite wall. Later on, he placed a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknowns and address a group of veterans at Arlington National Cemetery.
The anniversary event, attended by Lin and Chuck Hagel, former Secretary of Defense, followed a four-day-long reading of each of the names of the more than 58,000 service members who were killed or lost in action and who are commemorated on the wall.
[How Veterans Day went from celebrating world peace to thanking armed forces]
The Vietnam Memorial was first proposed at a time when America was still divided over a deeply confusing and unpopular war. Lins design for the memorial was selected from more than 1,600 anonymous entries, including from celebrated architects.
It was heralded for its simplicity, but it was met with controversy from the start.
Critics called it a dirty ditch or a black scar and said it was unheroic and disrespectful. (As a result of the debates, a bronze statue of three soldiers was later built near the wall to add a more traditional component to the Memorial. )
Frederick F. Sona Jr., a 69-year old U.S. Army veteran who traveled from Cliffwood Beach, N.J., for the ceremony, said he remembers those early debates. Memorials are up, they arent down. They arent under the ground, he said.
But he said he has come to see how it fits: Veterans keep their memories buried, he said. For a long time, he wanted nothing to do with the war.
He came home, got married, had three sons. But in the past 30 years, he has come to visit the Wall often, he said.
Its relieving it relieves my emotions to be here, he said.
At the ceremony, Lin said she knew the memorial needed to rise above the divisive politics.
Maya Lin, who designed the Wall, revisits her creation before ceremonies to commemorate the 35th anniversary of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. (Bill O'Leary/The Washington Post)
She described her vision in more detail: The walls would not be massive, but instead thin and light, so the names alone would be the object of attention, and they would be polished to a mirror shine so visitors could see their reflection and feel a part of it.
The memorial would be deep enough underground to offer refuge but not enough to become oppressive, she said.
And she wanted the Wall to be in clear sight of the Lincoln Memorial and the Washington Monument so people could see the veterans and themselves as part of our nations fabric.
[Recalling the dedication of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial]
At the ceremony, autumn foliage framed the dark wall. The U.S. Armed Forces color guard marched on the grass above the Wall, and the bright colors of the flags offered a stark contrast against the solemn backdrop.
Jimmy Grant of Oakwood, Ga., a U.S. Air Force veteran, said he was there the day the Wall was dedicated and has traveled back frequently since.
He said he enlisted in the military two weeks after he graduated from high school.
A lot of us had no choice, he said. Our lives were planned for us. For him, the Wall represents his generation.
That Wall, its us, he said.
In her remarks, Lin said she is gratified to have been a part of the veterans healing.
If this memorial has helped to welcome you home and helped heal some of the turmoil and pain of that war and [helped] to embrace you and honor you in our nations capital, then I am deeply honored to have played my part in your story, she said.
Columnist
Theres a rhythm to official workday Washington, a flow to its businesses and government offices, its stores and its think tanks. Subway cars and sidewalks get crowded. Office doors are unlocked. Computers are woken up. Emails are read or sent or ignored. Customers are helped.
Its a rhythm most of us are familiar with, one we live day-to-day with minimal variation.
But theres another rhythm, too, one that thousands of people in our area experience. Its the daily search for a meal, a search for a place to stay, a search for a job. Its a search for the stability that will allow those things to be acquired and kept.
Its a search for lost dignity.
Fortunately, many nonprofit groups in Washington offer help. These charities have their own healing tempo. I'll be exploring them in upcoming weeks during The Washington Post's annual Helping Hand fundraising campaign, which begins today.
Weve partnered with three respected local charities Bright Beginnings, N Street Village and So Others Might Eat in the hope that you will be moved to support them.
At Bright Beginnings, a preschool not far from New York and New Jersey avenues NW, families start arriving about 7:30 a.m. They walk up stone stairs that are flanked by two compact playgrounds: one for toddlers, one for older kids.
Founded in 1990, the school extends a lifeline to unique and uniquely desperate parents. Bright Beginnings offers child care for homeless families. Its a safe place for children as young as 6 weeks old to be while Mom or Dad is navigating the bureaucracy that can hopefully set the family on a path to a better life. Parents can pick up their children as late as 11:30 p.m., allowing them to work or go to night school.
But Bright Beginnings is more than just a child-care facility. Its a preschool, too, with a rich program designed to help kids who have grown up in traumatic settings get ready for kindergarten.
And it serves more than just children. Bright Beginnings aims to help the whole family, so, depending on the day, the rhythm there might include a job-training session, a resume workshop, a financial literacy class or a healthy-cooking demonstration.
When children are arriving at Bright Beginnings, homeless women are leaving the night shelters operated by N Street Village. The organization's shelter near Logan Circle called the Luther Place Night Shelter and a second in Chinatown, are open from 4 p.m. to 7 a.m.
But women arent simply cast into the streets when the sun rises. Across N Street is the organizations day center, a haven for homeless women. It opens when the shelter closes, offering a safe place to take a shower, wash some clothes, use the Internet and just relax in a setting that doesnt require the hypervigilance that being a homeless woman demands.
In the beginning, thats all some women want. But for many, N Street Villages day center serves as the first rung on the ladder out of homelessness. It introduces them to other N Street programs designed to build their self-esteem and their physical health. They can make an appointment to see a doctor. And they can learn about the housing programs that N Street Village offers.
By 11 a.m., a line has already started forming on O Street NW, near North Capitol Street. People who are hungry know they can find a meal at a place whose name only hints at the breadth of its services: So Others Might Eat (SOME).
Yes, men and women experiencing homelessness and poverty can eat there: every day of the year, breakfast and lunch. But there is health care, too: medical and dental clinics, as well as behavioral therapy.
On Tuesday and Friday mornings, clients can go shopping for outfits in SOMEs clothing room, replacing a warm coat that has seen its last days or picking out a suit for a job interview.
SOME oversees hundreds of units of low-cost housing, too, with more on the way. And at its West Virginia facility, SOME offers addiction treatment.
There, in the clear mountain air far from Washington, former drug abusers are introduced to a new rhythm: life without drugs.
Extend your helping hand
With your help, we can meet our goal of raising $200,000 by Jan. 5. To find out more about our three Helping Hand partners, and to donate online, visit posthelpinghand.com. Prefer to donate by check? Read on:
To donate to Bright Beginnings by mail, make a check payable to Bright Beginnings and send it to: Bright Beginnings, ATTN: Helping Hand, 128 M St. NW, Suite 150, Washington, DC 20001.
To donate to N Street Village, make a check payable to N Street Village and mail it to:
N Street Village, ATTN: Helping Hand, 1333 N St. NW, Washington, DC 20005.
For So Others Might Eat, make a check payable to So Others Might Eat and mail it to SOME, ATTN: Helping Hand, 71 O St. NW, Washington, DC 20001.
Tuesday: After nearly 40 years as an addict, Annette gets clean with the help of So Others Might Eat.
Twitter: @johnkelly
For previous columns, visit washingtonpost.com/johnkelly.
The long-awaited report on Metro by former U.S. transportation secretary Ray LaHood urges the regions three jurisdictions and the federal government to provide the agency with permanent, dedicated funding, but it sidesteps the politically charged question of what kind of tax or other mechanism should be adopted for that purpose.
The study also calls for replacing Metros entire, 16-member board with a five-member reform board for three years. LaHood has aired the proposal previously, but the report says explicitly a new board is needed to make tough decisions such as cutting pension benefits and reducing bus service.
The 24-page report, a copy of which was obtained by The Washington Post in advance of its release later this month, was commissioned in March by Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe (D). The study provides a foundation for the next phase of an intense debate in the region over how to restructure Metros governance and meet its funding needs.
The study is the most comprehensive independent analysis of Metros structure and finances in years. It finds that Metro suffers financial pressures partly because it provides about 20 percent more service per rider than other large transit agencies.
It urges raising bus fares from a base level of $2 to $2.10, which is closer to the average of $2.16 among peer agencies. It also calls for a major overhaul of bus routes to offer service that matches actual demand. The combined savings could be $38 million a year.
Comparable reductions in rail service could be necessary as well, the study says, if rail ridership fails to rebound as Metro hopes.
[Virginia Gov. McAuliffe taps Ray LaHood to head panel to study Metro.]
The report finds Metros overall labor costs are average compared with similar transit systems with the exception of some pension benefits that are too generous and should be trimmed. For example, hourly workers who contribute about 3 percent of their paychecks to pensions should be required to raise that closer to the national average of 7 percent. That would reduce the need for subsidies by $25 million per year.
The report endorses the leadership of Metro General Manager Paul J. Wiedefeld, who is about to complete his second year in the position.
Wiedefeld has not shied away from taking on the problems that have plagued [Metro] for years, it says. It praises him for closing lines temporarily to ensure safety, for terminating low-performing employees and for reducing service to manage costs.
He is the right person for the job at hand, LaHood says in the report.
The centerpiece is a five-page cover letter from LaHood to McAuliffe outlining seven key findings and six recommendations. The letter is supplemented by a 19-page review of Metros operating, governance and financial conditions, done in large part by the consulting group WSP.
Together, the documents lay out a detailed argument for how to make Metro more efficient and why it needs at least $500 million more per year in dedicated funding from the District, Maryland and Virginia.
It suggests ways to save money on service and labor costs to show the governments that fund Metro theyre not throwing good money after bad. The call for a radical restructuring of the board is also designed to demonstrate to funders that its no longer business as usual at the agency.
Among other things, the report says Metro could save $18 million a year by reducing fare evasion. Another $7 million a year could be saved by curbing absenteeism.
Metros advertising revenue is proportionally the lowest among the large transit agencies studied, the report says. Metro could reap an additional $10 million a year from advertising if it matched the performance of Chicagos system, for example.
Metros capital program has suffered not only from inadequate funding but also from the agencys failure to spend allocated funds.
For much of the last decade, [Metro] was rarely able to spend more than 80 percent of the capital funds it budgeted for a given year, the report says. Performance has improved markedly under Wiedefeld, but investment will have to continue rising.
At current funding levels, however, the report says Metro would not even have enough to address the new needs that arise each year, let alone tackle the backlog that has accumulated.
WSP, the consultant, estimates that Metro needs an additional $540 million a year in dedicated funding for capital expenses, but LaHood says the target should be $500 million because the gap can be covered by savings in operating costs.
Metros problems will never be solved without this new money, LaHood says. [Its] infrastructure is aging and needs renewal, and the funding it receives today is not enough to get this done. Not even close.
[McAuliffe, Hogan, Bowser agree with LaHood that Metro board should shrink.]
The report also provides background on how Metro suffered from years of underinvestment, especially after many parts of the rail system began to reach the end of their 30-year useful life around 2006.
The system is now 40 years old and much of it needs renewal or replacement, the study says. Unfortunately, the funders that pay for [Metros] capital program have grown accustomed to contributing at a level adequate for a new system, but far too low for an aging system.
LaHood says the extra revenue should come in the form of dedicated funding a reliable stream of earmarked revenue. That allows the funds to be pledged to repay bonds and thus allow Metro to borrow more easily on financial markets.
However, in an omission that will disappoint many Metro supporters, LaHood declines to endorse a particular tax or other instrument to provide such funding. The decision reflects his inability to find a consensus within the region, whose top officials are sharply divided over the issue.
I am not proposing a specific method because many different arrangements would work, La-Hood says.
Each funding partner can generate its share in a way that makes sense for them. The methods can be different so long as the key criteria are met: the total is sufficient, the funds are dedicated, and they arrive soon, the report says.
[In reversal, Hogan offers $500 million extra for Metro if Virginia, D.C. and feds match it.]
LaHood also calls for the federal government to increase its contribution to Metro. In an unforeseen recommendation, he says Congress should provide it in dedicated funding, rather than annual appropriations as at present.
The current federal subsidy, which expires in two years, provides Metro with $150 million a year in capital funding. Some politicians and Metro observers have said the most the agency can expect from Congress is an extension of that subsidy, rather than an increase.
Achieving an increase in federal funds will be difficult, but I trust that the members of the House and Senate that represent this region will do all they can to make it happen, LaHood says.
If LaHoods proposals are to be adopted, the initial goal, once the report is released, will be to persuade the District, Maryland, Virginia and the federal government to replace and shrink the board.
LaHood declined to comment for this story, saying he was awaiting the reports official release. But he has said in the past that major changes in governance are necessary to persuade local governments and Congress to contribute more money.
The agencys board is too large, too fractious and too oriented toward interests of the regions individual jurisdictions rather than the needs of the region as a whole, LaHood says in the report. For the next several years, the board will need to focus on one thing: making the system safe and reliable. This will require tough decisions, and jockeying for position among the regions jurisdictions will need to take a back seat.
Lahoods report says the change should be accomplished without revising the Metro compact, which spells out how Metro is governed and funded. Amending the compact is a lengthy, cumbersome process, and LaHood says the agency cant afford the time it would take.
The report does not spell out how the board would be replaced. The most probable scenario is that McAuliffe, Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan (R), D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) and U.S. Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao would all ask their representatives on the board to resign. They each would then appoint a single representative to the reform board, and those four would select a chairman.
McAuliffe strongly supports a board overhaul, and his newly elected successor, Gov.-elect Ralph Northam, is expected to do so as well. Hogan recently said he would back LaHoods plan to overhaul the board, while Bowser has been less supportive. Chaos position is uncertain.
Toward the end of his report, LaHood sums up his position by saying he can be optimistic about Metros future only if his recommendations are followed.
The last decade has not been a good time for [Metro], and we need to make major changes to its leadership, operations and funding to turn this around, he says.
Alabama Senate candidate Roy Moore has been accused of initiating sexual contact with a teenage girl. (Brynn Anderson/Associated Press)
Outspoken Virginia Republican Corey Stewart this weekend defended U.S. Senate candidate Roy Moore, who has been accused of initiating sexual contact with a teenage girl. Meanwhile, Rep. Andy Harris (R-Md.) said if the allegations are true, Moore should drop out of the race in Alabama.
Stewart, chairman of the Prince William Board of County Supervisors and a candidate for the GOP nomination to challenge Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.), defended Moore on Friday in a Facebook Live event.
These allegations are 40 years old. Forty years old, and theyre unsubstantiated, Stewart said in response to a question from Ian Sams, Kaines campaign spokesman. Theres no way to prove it. They didnt prove it, but youre presumed guilty? Thats not right.
Sams, speaking on behalf of Kaine, said, Any person of conscience should be willing to condemn child sex abuse, and the fact Corey wont speaks volumes about him.
The Washington Post published an interview Thursday from a woman who said Moore initiated sexual contact with her when she was 14 and he was a 32-year-old assistant district attorney in Alabama. Leigh Corfman told The Post that Moore took her to his house and touched her sexually,
[Woman says Roy Moore initiated sexual encounter when she was 14, he was 32]
Three other women interviewed by The Post say Moore pursued them when they were between the ages of 16 and 18 and he was in his early 30s.
Moore, 70, has not ruled out that he may have dated girls in their late teens when he was in his 30s but denies any wrongdoing.
Since the allegations were first reported, a growing number of Republicans, including Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.), have said Moore should withdraw from the race if the charges are true. The Senate GOPs campaign arm also formally ended its fundraising agreement with Moore.
Harris endorsed Moore in September in a GOP runoff, saying at the time that Moore would bring "principle" and a "backbone of steel" to the Senate.
On Friday evening, Harris, the only Republican representing Maryland in Congress, posted a one-sentence statement about Moore on his Facebook page.
If the allegations regarding Leigh Corfman are accurate, Judge Moore should withdraw from the race, he wrote.
Corey Stewart, chairman of the Prince William Board of County Supervisors and a candidate for the GOP nomination to challenge Sen. Tim Kaine D-Va.), defended Moore on Friday in a Facebook Live event. (Jahi Chikwendiu/The Washington Post)
Rep. Barbara Comstock, the only woman in the Virginia congressional delegation, issued a stronger rebuke of Moore on Friday.
Harvey Weinstein, Anthony Weiner, Roger Ailes, Roy Moore . . . No MOORE of this, Comstock (R) said in a statement, adding that Moore had not provided a credible response to the allegations. Roy Moore should not serve in the U.S. Senate.
But Stewart, who ran unsuccessfully for the GOP nomination for governor and is known for making blunt pronouncements that galvanize his base and opponents took the opposite tack.
Until theres proof, I dont believe it, Stewart said. Until theres proof, were not going to judge Judge Roy Moore.
Stewart did not respond to questions about what would constitute proof, nor did he elaborate Sunday on his comments during the Facebook event, in which he took questions on a variety of topics.
He also blamed the media.
The media, by the way, total double standard, Stewart said, arguing that reporters covered for Weinstein, despite the many press reports about decades of allegations against the Hollywood producer.
As first reported in detail in the New Yorker and the New York Times, followed by other outlets, Weinstein is accused of a 30-year pattern of abuse and sexual assault.
"Hey, where's Tim Kaine about that?" said Stewart, who has been described as the "titular head of the Trump movement" in Virginia.
However, Kaine was asked about Weinstein last month by CNN and responded: Any leader should condemn this. . . . The allegations are lowlife behavior.
Weinstein was a major donor to the Democratic presidential campaign of Hillary Clinton, who chose Kaine as her running mate.
Geoff Stiller, at his practice in Moscow, Idaho, sought permission to perform vaginoplasties in a small community on the Washington-Idaho border. (Melina Mara/The Washington Post)
The surgeon had spent several years preparing reading medical journals, finding someone to train him, practicing on cadavers until only one hurdle remained: getting permission for the medical procedure he wanted to bring to this small community on the Washington-Idaho border.
Vaginoplasties, Geoff Stiller remembered telling the CEO of Pullman Regional Hospital, referring to the surgical construction of vaginas for transgender women. I want to do them at your hospital.
Nine months later, Stiller looks back on that conversation as a final moment when his request still seemed like an easy one. Nobody yet had cited Bible verses or argued that culture was blurring the line between men and women. Another doctor at Pullman hadnt yet sent an email to eight co-workers, who forwarded it around the hospital, with the subject line Opposition to Transgender Surgery at PRH. The hospital hadnt yet received hundreds of letters from the community. Stiller hadnt yet lost 20 pounds from the stress, nor had he yet anticipated that his request might turn for him into something more a fight not just over a surgery, but over what hed later call a moral issue.
The only thing Stiller was trying to do on that initial day was expand his career in a direction he had come to see as fascinating and much-needed. There were several dozen American doctors performing vaginoplasties almost all of them, until that point, in major cities.
But Stiller, 47, was different from those other doctors because he worked in a rural area with 60,000 people side-by-side college towns surrounded by conservative farming counties. He had spent much of his career in places like this, performing appendectomies, responding to middle-of-the-night emergencies, pulling up to the hospital in his pickup truck.
The moon rises over homes near the University of Idaho in Moscow, Idaho. (Melina Mara/The Washington Post)
Yet it was precisely because of where he worked that Stiller felt certain he was witnessing a widening social and medical movement. Even here, a stream of transgender patients was coming into his waiting room, asking for help. One patient was in her 60s, balding and graying, saying she had just recently decided to transition to female. Another patient was rolling up her sleeves, showing Stiller the self-inflicted cuts on her arm. Another was walking in for the first time, kneading her fingers, as Stiller introduced himself and then said, So, tell me your story.
Well, Ive been living full time as myself for about 2 years, she said.
Family? Are they okay with this? Stiller asked.
Not supportive. I havent talked to them in two years.
I am sorry, Stiller said, and then he asked her how he could help.
Sometimes, the patients wanted breast augmentations. Other times, breast removal or facial feminization. Stiller had offered those procedures for several years. But he also had a growing list of patients who said they were interested in vaginoplasties.
That surgery was the final and most significant step of a female transition and over the past few years, insurance programs had started to cover its cost. Stiller could pinpoint only one reason the procedure wasnt more commonplace: a lack of training programs. But the videos he watched showed a surgery that maintained the nerves of the male genitals to build working, sensation-feeling female genitals. The transgender medical books he bought, citing study after study, called the surgery the best way to help people with severe dysphoria.
The right thing to do, Stiller found himself saying.
Before Stiller spoke with the hospital CEO, patients in the region who had wanted the surgery had one option: to go elsewhere. They could fly to Thailand or India, paying in cash. They could put their names on lengthy waiting lists for surgeons in Chicago or San Francisco. As far as Stiller knew, no other surgeon in Montana, Idaho or Washington state was offering the surgery something he told the CEO at Pullman Regional. He believed there was no reason those people needed to go so far. What if, instead of going to Thailand, patients could get into their car and drive down the road to their hospital?
*
Rod Story has worked for eight years as a physician at Pullman Regional Hospital in Pullman, Wash. He respected his colleague, but Stillers request to perform vaginoplasties didnt sit right with the reformed evangelical Christian. (Melina Mara/The Washington Post)
The first inkling that this wasnt going to go easily came three months after he brought up the idea with the CEO, in the form of an email from another doctor. I am writing to you seeking to develop a response to plans by Dr. Stiller, an email from Rod Story began, and his letter was now in the hands of almost every employee at Pullman Regional.
I do not find convincing data . . . he had written.
Contrary to good medical care . . .
Drastic and irreversible . . .
And then: If you would like to join my efforts in opposing this surgical technique, please feel free to contact me.
Like Stiller, Story was a doctor of good reputation in the community. Unlike him, he saw the surgery not as the right thing to do, but as something that defied his most basic belief as a physician and a reformed evangelical Christian: that there are immutable differences between men and women.
Story, 43, had been conflicted about whether to share his views widely. He respected Stiller and considered him highly skilled. Plus, Story liked his job. He had been a physician at Pullman Regional for eight years, treating nonsurgical patients and assisting surgeons before and after their procedures. He and his wife had nine children, a spacious and renovated house on a hill, a back yard with a picnic table that overlooked miles of wheat and lentil fields and buttes. Our ride-into-the-sunset plan, Storys wife, Jenny, called it.
But Story also felt that he had built much of his life by following his conscience, even when it was inconvenient. Two decades earlier, Jenny had gotten pregnant. They werent yet married. Story was a pre-med student. They had no money for a baby. They were embarrassed at having crossed a moral line, and they talked about crossing one more line getting an abortion. Instead, Story temporarily dropped out of school. Jenny delivered the baby. Story spent three years working as a janitor, earning money, and feeling he had preserved some part of what he believed in.
When he first heard of Stillers plans for the surgery, he didnt immediately send the email.
First, he did some research. He Googled terms like transgender surgery risk, collecting 40 transgender-related links on his computer, and what he concluded was that Stiller was right to be concerned about the patients and wrong to offer them surgery. These were patients with mental conditions, Story felt. Its a body dysmorphic disorder, he said of the conclusion he had reached. You have an incorrect perception of your body. Probably the most common example is anorexia. It was a hospitals job to protect those patients, not enable their wishes. That was enough to concern him, but making it worse, he said, was that the hospital couldnt guarantee he would be excused from preparing the patients for operations.
I need some advice, Story remembers telling Doug Wilson, a pastor who founded Storys church. Wilson said it felt like a secularist, nonbelieving morality is being jammed down our throats.
Rod Story at home with daughter Lucy, 7, in Moscow, Idaho. (Melina Mara/The Washington Post)
What is a man? What is a woman? Wilson said. The shared consensus is almost gone. This is a fundamental issue.
Story sent the email and waited a day as his note spread around the hospital. Then, his phone rang. He was called into a meeting with the hospital chief executive, Scott Adams, and the chief medical officer, Gerald Early. They talked for more than an hour, according to notes Story kept, and by the end, Adams wondered if the hospital had been moving too fast. He called Storys objections the tipping point.
What happened after that was an announcement: Even as Stiller performed two training vaginoplasties supervised by a more experienced surgeon from Los Angeles Pullman Regional said it would ask for public input, accepting comments from residents for three weeks. The initial hospital announcement was just a short news release with an email address, but soon the announcement was posted all over Facebook, and that was all it took to open a split in the community.
This surgery will save lives, one resident wrote.
Cutting off/out sexual organs doesnt change our chromosomes, said another.
A hospital should be a place of healing and rest, and not a place of turmoil and cultural conflict.
Offer the damn surgery and tell everyone else to mind their own business.
The hospital received hundreds of comments, as well as thousands of signatures in dueling petitions started by Wilsons church and a university associate dean. The hospital heard from activists, from former patients, from the American Civil Liberties Union, from employees in support, from employees in opposition.
All through this, Stiller stayed silent. The high road, he called it, but he was also hiding his anger. He stayed away from the Internet. He skipped meals. He spent a weekend camping with his parents Trump supporters to a T, he called them and couldnt bring himself to tell them he was pushing for these surgeries. Were stepping back on social issues, he remembered thinking to himself.
Stiller figured he would be able to perform the vaginoplasties somewhere. He had asked permission from another small hospital as well Gritman Medical Center, 10 miles from Pullman, right across the Idaho border. At that hospital, the administrators didnt consider the public reaction. They seemed willing to open their doors for the surgery. So, maybe Stiller wouldnt need Pullman Regional after all. But the longer the debate went on, he realized that wasnt the only point. He thought every hospital, presented with a choice, should reach the same decision. We need to become comfortable taking care of these patients, Stiller said.
Story, meantime, posted his views on social media, then one Sunday walked into his church and found out that the sermon was about him. Think of Rod and Jenny Story right now, the pastor, Ty Knight, told the congregation, and Story could feel some eyes turn toward him and his wife.
Story had sometimes felt alone since writing the letter. His initial email had been read by almost everybody at Pullman Regional, posted at nurses stations, and only two people had responded to him. But that was the medical community, and this was the church, and there were 120 people in the pews, and a thousand other members of affiliated congregations in the area, and it was here at least where Story sensed support.
There is a great sin that is looking to come into the [region] of having transgender surgery, the pastor said. Rod is faithfully holding to Gods word.
Stiller performs a double mastectomy as part of a sex reassignment at Gritman Medical Center in Moscow, Idaho. (Melina Mara/The Washington Post)
*
As the hospital debated what to do, Stiller was compiling a list of patients who wanted the surgery, and this was the name right near the top: Sarah Bergman, 33, who lived two miles from Pullman Regional.
The last step, Bergman called it.
For so long, the desire for the surgery had been Bergmans personal secret something discovered on the Internet by a preteen. The certainty of being female went back as far as Bergman could remember, to being 2 or 3 years old and starting to wear dresses. At 6, family members were saying the behavior had to stop. At 12, beginning to grow some facial hair, Bergman refused to go to school, making up excuses for two years, finally becoming an eighth-grade dropout in the Arizona suburbs who felt comfortable almost nowhere, except alone in the bedroom.
The online world was Bergmans only one for almost the next decade. Eating became compulsive. So did playing video games with an avatar called Sarah. The fear of being disowned was consuming. Bergman finally said it as forcefully as possible at 23, weighing 360 pounds, with a dark beard, while going through a Wendys drive-through with a grandparent: She was a woman.
I was just so desperate, she said. After that, I started existing in the real world.
First, she just started buying a few pieces of womens clothing. But then she found a therapist. She started using a treadmill. She lost weight. She started taking estrogen. She had her facial hair removed. People started assuming she was a woman. On a transgender online forum, Bergman struck up a friendship with an artist, and then traveled to Pullman to meet her. Within four years they would be married, and Bergman enrolled at Washington State University, majoring in molecular biology, almost a decade older than her classmates.
She considered Pullman a nice small town, a place where she earned money pulling night shifts as a campus public safety officer and could feel safe walking back to her apartment at 2 a.m. For the first time, she said, it barely mattered that she was transgender.
But then came the Pullman Regional announcement and all the comments not just submitted to the hospital but all over Facebook. Bergmans wife, who is also transgender, worried about their safety. Maybe the same people calling transgender people deviants on social media were standing next to them at the supermarket checkout. Maybe their neighbors were the ones reading Storys interview with the college paper, where he said the vaginoplasties offered false hope. One day, Bergmans wife opened her laptop and composed a letter. Dear Dr. Story, it began, and she described the harm he had done under the guise of Christianity.
I have lived in the Pullman region for about 6 years now, she wrote, and until this episode I felt at peace for probably the first time in my life. Your behavior has turned that peace upside down.
Bergman read the letter and said it was powerful. But she also thought that not everybody needed to agree to open the door to progress. The surgery was a personal decision, between a doctor and a patient. And in her own case, it had come easily. She had studied how the surgery worked. She had researched the criteria for patients: a required year-long period of using hormones and living as a woman and letters of referral from mental health experts. She had also looked into the risks. Some patients new genitals didnt function. Bergman felt she could handle any of it.
The only part she hadnt envisioned was that a surgeon in her own town would become interested in the vaginoplasties. It was a surgeon she knew and liked one who had performed three other cosmetic procedures for her. Bergman had been thinking about heading to a clinic outside Philadelphia for the surgery. Instead, she decided to wait on Stiller. They had two consultations over the summer, and then Bergman was ready.
If every hospital offered this, it wouldnt be such a big deal, Bergman said.
Eventually, her wife said, I think everybody will be doing it.
Eventually.
*
Stiller in the hallway at his practice in Moscow, Idaho. (Melina Mara/The Washington Post)
Seven months after Stillers conversation with the CEO, after all the public comments, after all the signatures and petitions, Pullman Regional Hospital had a board meeting where it would announce a final decision. People filed into a conference room, including Story, and sitting up front were the hospital board members.
Administrators had prepared a report, passed out to the audience, saying that the last months had been polarizing but that supporters for the surgery well outnumbered the opponents. It said gender reassignment surgery is a growing medical practice. Then the seven-member board voted unanimously to give Stiller the green light.
Story slipped out of the meeting before it ended, and minutes later he was back inside his home on the hill, back in front of his computer, and this time he pulled up a document he had already started working on one he wasnt sure until now that he would need. He tweaked a few words and looked it over. I am regretfully resigning from my position, it said, and then he thanked the hospital for eight years of employment. He said his last day would be Dec. 31, 2017.
Over the next weeks, he thought about what to do next. His wife worried that new potential employers would Google his name and conclude he was Dr. Bigot. Maybe he could reach out to old medical friends to land a different job in town.
Havent gotten many callbacks, Story said one evening.
You havent gotten a single callback, Jenny said.
Our culture is moving out of lockstep with us a bit, Story said.
A bit? Jenny said. Its a whole different direction. Were not even on the same road anymore.
For Stiller, the approval from Pullman Regional had been months in the making, but he felt little better than if the hospital had said no. Opening the debate to the public had been so bruising, he felt.
Only days earlier, Gritman Medical Center had also given him the final clearance; the hospitals CEO said she considered the vaginoplasties no different from any other service line we would provide to the community. It was that hospital, not Pullman Regional, that was really ready to treat transgender patients, Stiller felt, and so thats where Bergman arrived before sunrise on a cool autumn Friday, the same day Story would meet with a real estate agent to scout nearby office space for a solo private practice.
Bergman walked up to the second floor of the hospital, changed into slippers, changed into a gown, and then there was a knock on her waiting room door.
Good morning, Stiller said, walking in.
He crouched at the foot of Bergmans bed, so he was eye-level.
What questions do you have? he asked her.
How long will it take, do you think? she asked, and he said five or six hours.
He smiled. We can rush it and do it in one if you want.
I already went through all the freaking out, Bergman said.
Okay, sign the consent form and well get started.
Okay.
The operation took all morning, and when it was over, Bergman was wheeled into a recovery room, where soon she would wake up, the anesthesia wearing off, with bandages packed around her genitals and a surgical technician saying, Everything went great, sweetie.
Down the hallway, hospital staff cleaned and sterilized the surgical instruments, while Stiller wiped off a little sweat. He took a 45-minute break. He called Bergmans wife. He ate a sandwich. Then he walked back toward the operating rooms, because soon he had to get back to work. He had a second vaginoplasty scheduled for the afternoon, and then the following morning a third.
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 []
TENNESSEE
Man charged after 3-year-old shoots sister
Police say a 3-year-old shot and killed a 1-year-old sister after a man placed the younger sibling in a bed with his gun, Memphis Police said Saturday.
Police said Shawn Moore, 25, has been charged with criminally negligent homicide, being a felon with a handgun and tampering with evidence in the death of Robbin Keefer.
Police say Robbin was shot Friday morning at a Memphis apartment complex.
Witnesses heard a gunshot, and noticed Robbin had been hit, police said. She was pronounced dead at a hospital.
Police said Moore fled with the gun but later turned himself in. Shelby County Sheriffs Office records said Moore was booked into jail Friday night.
Associated Press
FLORIDA
NFLs Miller arrested on domestic battery
Kansas City Chiefs defensive tackle Roy Miller was arrested early Saturday in Florida on a domestic battery charge, according to Duval County jail records.
Miller, 30, was jailed shortly before 5 a.m. by the Jacksonville Sheriffs Office. The incident involved a minor injury, but no other details were available, records said.
Local news outlets reported Miller was released on his own recognizance after an initial court appearance Saturday.
Another hearing was set for Nov. 28.
The Chiefs said in statement they were aware of the incident and gathering facts. They declined to make any further comment.
Associated Press
NEW JERSEY
3 arrested after probe of report to kill officer
Police in New Jersey said an investigation of a reported plot to kill a police officer resulted in the arrests of three people on firearm and drug charges.
Asbury Park police said the probe began after a report that a local gang member had told several people he was plotting to kill an Asbury Park police officer.
Authorities searched an Asbury Park home early Friday and arrested two men and a woman on charges of possessing a defaced firearm, unlawfully possessing weapons, and drug possession. The woman also was arrested on two child endangerment counts.
Police reported finding cash, weapons, drugs and an $800 bicycle bought from a drug addict on the streets for $5.
No charges have been filed in connection with the reported plot.
Associated Press
Disneyland shuts towers after 2 became ill: Disneyland has shut down two cooling towers after people who visited the Southern California theme park came down with Legionnaires' disease. A dozen cases of the bacterial lung infection were discovered about three weeks ago, the Orange County Health Care Agency announced Friday. The patients, ranging in age from 52 to 94, lived or had spent time in Anaheim, and nine had visited Disneyland in September. One patient, who hadn't visited the park, has died, the agency said. There haven't been any new cases linked to Anaheim since September, the agency said.
Woman accused of stealing 30 cats: A Rhode Island animal care clinic and shelter says a former employee broke into the clinic and stole more than 30 cats this week. Care for Animals and PAAWS Rhode Island said Friday that police have been made aware of the Tuesday theft. The Warwick shelter says the recently terminated employee took the 33 cats because she wanted to retaliate against the facility for losing her job. The shelter says it has no information on the location or condition of the cats.
From news reports
SPAIN
Thousands protest to free Catalan leaders
Hundreds of thousands of people backing Catalonias bid to secede from Spain packed the streets in downtown Barcelona Saturday to demand the release of jailed separatist leaders.
The rallys organizers called for 10 prominent members of the secessionist movement to be freed from prison.
Eight former members of Catalonias dissolved cabinet and two activists are in jail while Spanish authorities investigate their alleged roles in promoting a declaration of independence last month in violation of Spains Constitution.
We want to tell the world that we want freedom for our prisoners and freedom for Catalonia, Agusti Alcoberro, the vice president of grass-roots group National Catalan Assembly, told the crowd.
Associated Press
THE VATICAN
Pope stands by using ones conscience
Pope Francis reaffirmed the primacy of using ones conscience to navigate tough moral questions in his first comments since he was publicly accused of spreading heresy by emphasizing conscience over hard and fast Catholic rules.
Francis issued a video message to a conference organized by Italian bishops on his controversial 2016 document on family life, The Joy of Love.
Francis told the conference that priests must inform Catholic consciences but not replace them. He stressed the distinction between ones conscience where God reveals himself and ones ego that thinks it can do as it pleases.
When it was released, The Joy of Love sparked controversy because it cautiously opened the door to letting civilly remarried Catholics receive Communion. Conservatives accused the pope of sowing confusion and undermining the churchs teaching on the indissolubility of marriage.
A group of traditionalist and conservative priests and scholars accused Francis of spreading heresy.
Associated Press
Thousands of right-wing groups march in Warsaw: Tens of thousands of nationalists marched in a demonstration organized by far-right groups in Warsaw on Saturday, as Poles celebrated their country's Independence Day. The far-right march was one of many events marking Poland's rebirth as a nation in 1918 after being wiped off the map for 123 years. The march has become the largest Independence Day event in recent years, overshadowing official state observances and other patriotic events.
Bahrain blames Iran for pipeline explosion: Bahrain says an explosion that caused a fire at its main oil pipeline Friday was caused by "terrorist" sabotage, linking the unprecedented attack to its arch-foe Iran. Bahraini authorities said they had brought the fire under control. "Terrorist acts witnessed by the country in the recent period are carried out through direct contacts and instructions from Iran," the statement quoted Interior Minister Sheikh Rashid bin Abdullah al-Khalifa as saying. Iran denies any role in the gulf island kingdom's unrest.
Islamic State regains control of Syrian town: Syrian opposition activists say fighters of the Islamic State have regained control of a town near the border with Iraq the government said it captured earlier this week. Boukamal, the last major Islamic State stronghold in Syria, was taken by government soldiers and their allies on Thursday. Islamic State militants withdrew from the town but launched a counteroffensive over the past two days. Rami Abdurahman of the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights and Omar Abu Laila, a Europe-based opposition activist originally from Syria's eastern province, said Saturday that Islamic State fighters are again in full control of the town. The government had no comment on the report.
From news services
A new era of cutting-age technology begins Monday at the United States Supreme Court, as the public for the first time will be able to access briefs and other case documents on the courts website.
[crickets]
Unimpressed? Perhaps the reader, in the waning second decade of the 21st century, thinks such an innovation might have been implemented, say, many years ago, as it was for the rest of the federal courts.
The reader is reminded that the Supreme Court is a place that still awards quills to lawyers who argue cases there.
The rollout will be slow and gradual and careful. And if you think the court is the least bit sheepish about this, well, there again, you havent spent much time at the marble palace.
The courts will often choose to be late to the harvest of American ingenuity, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. wrote when announcing the online project at the end of 2014. Courts are simply different in important respects when it comes to adopting technology, including information technology.
[Tech-wary Supreme Court investing more in digital age]
Roberts said at the time that the online upgrade could come as soon as 2016, but it does little good to try to hurry things along.
"The court does its own thing at its own pace," said Thomas C. Goldstein, publisher of the independent Scotusblog, which was founded 15 years ago and is the go-to online site for those looking to read petitions and case documents filed with the court. (The American Bar Association publishes digital briefs in the cases the court accepts.)
Very little outside the building influences the justices thinking about what makes the most sense, Goldstein said. So it seems odd to people on the outside, but it really doesnt surprise anyone who deals with the court regularly.
As Roberts explained in that year-end report on the judiciary, the court's primary responsibility is deciding the cases and controversies that come before it. Everything elseincluding public transparencyis a distant second.
So the court is interested in technology that helps its decision-making, Roberts explained, and warier of other technology cameras, same-day audio, etc. even if it might make the court more accessible to the public.
The justices are often called upon to decide cases involving the latest technology but have gotten a bad rap about their own familiarity with it. Justice Elena Kagan offhandedly told an audience in 2013 that the justices are not big fans of email. Drafts of opinions are printed and circulated among the nine.
But the court is not nearly as Luddite as its image. It has had a website, supremecourt.gov, since 2000, and its opinions are available there as soon as they are announced from the bench. Transcripts of oral arguments are available within hours. For reasons never quite explained, audio of oral arguments is posted at the end of the week following Monday through Wednesday arguments, instead of on the same day.
Beginning this week, all documents filed by parties represented by a lawyer must also be filed electronically. (Prisoners and others sometimes represent themselves and file on paper).
But the official filings will still be those on paper, and follow the court's detailed instructions.
The familiar booklet briefs lawyers provide the court 40 copies each are typeset in fonts of the Century family on paper that is opaque, unglazed, and not less than 60 pounds in weight. Their cover colors white, orange, tan, light blue, light red, yellow, cream, light green, dark green reflect their purpose: a merits brief, for instance, or a request that the court not accept a case.
The Supreme Court is developing its own online system, rather than being part of PACER, which serves the other federal courts. Viewing documents on supremecourt.gov will be free. PACER charges 10 cents a page, and is the subject of a class action suit about whether that fee is too high.
The court hasnt explained why it developed its own system, but Roberts in 2014 repeatedly noted the courts sense of caution.
Litigation often involves sensitive matters: Criminal prosecutions, bankruptcy petitions, malpractice suits, discrimination cases and patent disputes may all lead to the collection of confidential information that should be shielded from public view to protect the safety of witnesses, the privacy of litigants and the integrity of the adjudicatory process, he wrote.
Courts understandably proceed cautiously in introducing new information technology systems until they have fairly considered how to keep the information contained therein secure from foreign and domestic hackers, whose motives may range from fishing for secrets to discrediting the government or impairing court operations.
Of course, as Roberts notes, the lower courts have dealt with such concerns for years. More than a billion documents are stored in the PACER system.
More important, Roberts said, was a reluctance to change what the justices feel is working.
Like other centuries-old institutions, courts may have practices that seem archaic and inefficient and some are, he wrote. But others rest on traditions that embody intangible wisdom. Judges and court executives are understandably circumspect in introducing change to a court system that works well until they are satisfied they are introducing change for the good.
In that 2014 report, Roberts noted that at the close of the 19th century, pneumatic tubes were revolutionizing the way American business worked. Air compressors could shoot containers of documents hundreds of feet in buildings. The court waited three decades before installing such a system to relay its opinions to the waiting press and then left it in place for decades.
In 1968, Roberts noted, The Washington Posts Supreme Court correspondent, John P. MacKenzie, described the courts process of transmitting decisions as perhaps the most primitive . . . in the entire communications industry.
Everyones a critic.
Lebanon's recently resigned prime minister insisted Sunday on television from Saudi Arabia that he is "free" to move as he pleases, and, in his first interview since he unexpectedly stepped down while in the Saudi capital, he rejected suggestions by his political allies that he was coerced into leaving his post.
In a live television interview from Riyadh, a tired and sometimes emotional Saad Hariri said that he hoped his resignation would cause a positive shock between Saudi Arabia, his regional patron, and its rival, Iran, which backs the Hezbollah movement. Hezbollah plays a dominant role in Lebanese politics.
We are in the eye of the storm, he said.
Lebanon has repeatedly become a stage for the regional ambitions of its more powerful neighbors. Hariris Nov. 4 resignation came amid heightened tension between Iran and Saudi Arabia, and coincided with an aggressive purge of rivals by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman under the cover of an anti-corruption drive.
The interview aired on Future TV, Hariris own station. But in a sign of just how fractious the political moment is for Lebanon, the countrys president, Michel Aoun, said on Twitter shortly before the broadcast that Hariris comments may be in doubt and without his will.
During the hour-long interview, Hariri said his resignation was in the best interests of Lebanon, and he appealed to Iran to stop interfering in countries throughout the Middle East.
His departure has caused wild speculation in Lebanon, with politicians across the political spectrum claiming that his hand was forced by Saudi Arabia. The resignation came after a surprise summons to Riyadh, and aides said they had barely spoken to him since, beyond exchanges of pleasantries.
Hariri denied those rumors Sunday. I am free within the kingdom; if I want to travel, I can travel tomorrow, he said, in a reference to Saudi Arabia. He said that security arrangements were under review and that his return to Beirut would come soon.
Speaking with a Lebanese flag in the background, he again blamed Iran and Hezbollah for destabilizing his country and defended Riyadhs war of words against its arch foe.
At times, his eyes appeared to dart away from the interviewer, Paula Yacoubian, to a man behind a window of the studio.
Hariri also suggested that he would withdraw his resignation if Hezbollah committed to remaining neutral in regional conflicts.
There is a Lebanese group that is carrying out certain actions, he said. I will not allow for anyone to launch regional wars on Lebanon for regional gains.
Hezbollah has become a dominant force in Lebanons unity government, which was headed by Hariri, and it has sent thousands of fighters to Syria, Lebanons neighbor, to support the forces of Syrias President Bashar al-Assad. It is also believed to have offered training to Iran-backed rebels in Yemen, which is locked in a destructive war with Saudi Arabia and its allies.
In a Beirut shisha cafe Sunday night, patrons were divided between concern and resignation. Its one big political show, isnt it, said Mustafa Khalil, a 34-year-old engineer. Hes not his own man anymore. He is saying what he needs to survive.
Read more
In Lebanon, supporters of missing prime minister demand his return from Saudi Arabia
Saudi Arabia detains more than 200 people in expanding anti-corruption campaign
Todays coverage from Post correspondents around the world
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A foundation overseen by billionaire industrialist Charles Koch is making major investments in foreign policy programs at elite American universities, including a soon-to-be-announced $3.7 million grant to Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
The latest grant, which is expected to be made public early next week, is part of a larger effort to broaden the debate about an American foreign policy Koch and others at his foundation argue has become too militaristic, interventionist and expensive. It follows about $10 million in similar grants the Charles Koch Foundation has given in recent months to Notre Dame, Tufts University, Catholic University and the University of California at San Diego.
"This is the beginning of a much bigger project to ask questions about America's proper role in the world and how we move forward," said Will Ruger, vice president for research at the Charles Koch Foundation.
Charles and his brother David Koch have stirred controversy in recent years as symbols of big money run amok in American politics. They typically support Republican candidates who advocate for smaller government, less regulation, free trade and are skeptical about humans role in contributing to climate change. The money the Charles Koch Foundation is spending on foreign policy amounts to only a fraction of the $300 million to $400 million the brothers are expected to pay out over the next two years on policy and political campaigns up from $250 million during the 2016 elections.
[Koch network could serve as potent resistance in Trump era]
Charles Koch. (Patrick T. Fallon/For The Washington Post)
In the world of foreign policy, the grants are a major investment aimed at generating new ideas about how America should use its military power and vast economic influence.
On foreign policy, Charles Koch has been an iconoclast, and has frequently broken with mainstream Republicans to raise doubts about the wisdom of Americas wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. He pointedly declined to back President Trumps campaign for the White House but is seen as an ideological ally of Vice President Pence, especially on matters related to domestic policy and politics.
At the height of the Vietnam War, he took out a full-page ad in the Wichita Eagle calling for an end to American involvement in the conflict.
The foundations grants are designed to encourage research that advances the realist school of foreign policy, a view that is skeptical of American-led humanitarian interventions, abhors nation-building in places like Iraq or Afghanistan and preaches the importance of restraint on the world stage.
Foreign policy realists typically support big investments in naval and air power to dissuade potential adversaries, such as Russia and China, and to safeguard global commerce and free trade.
We are not pacifists, Ruger said, but we want to be smarter. . . . This isnt a liberal or conservative issue. Its looking at what weve been doing and saying whats a better approach.
[17 things you didnt know about the Koch brothers]
The investment at Harvard and MIT, like the Koch foundation programs at the other universities, will primarily pay for graduate-level and postdoctoral fellowships. Stephen Walt, a professor at Harvards Kennedy School of Government, and Barry Posen, the director of MITs Security Studies program, will oversee the Koch-funded program at the two schools.
Both professors are known as realists who have criticized the Republican and Democratic foreign policy elite for overstating Americas capabilities and too quickly defaulting to the U.S. military to deal with threats they say are only peripheral to American interests. The goal, they said, is to break the bipartisan Washington consensus on American foreign policy.
Theres been no disagreement on American exceptionalism and global leadership in a lot of places. For example, Iraq had bipartisan support initially, Walt said. There are nasty debates about tactics but most of those happened between the 45-yard lines.
Posen said during the Cold War there were often big debates over nuclear weapons and U.S. policy in places such as Latin America or Asia. The debate that was quite spirited became somewhat somnolent in the post-Cold-War world, he said.
Trumps America First foreign policy philosophy, which is skeptical of free trade, NATO and other big security alliances, has opened up some of the debate. But, he has also led the Republicans and Democrats who make up the foreign policy elite to close ranks in opposition to him.
Posen and Walt said the fellowships wouldnt be limited to foreign policy realists.
This is not about politics, Posen said. This is about policy and training graduate students and scholarship.
The foundation is also bankrolling a foreign policy debate series with the Brookings Institution that kicked off last week in St. Louis and will be followed with similar discussions over the next few weeks in Las Vegas and other U.S. cities.
The first debate focused on Americas global leadership role and future debates will cover China policy, trade, military power and the relationship with Russia and NATO.
President Trump on Nov. 11 said he believes that Russian President Vladimir Putin is being truthful when he denies that Russia meddled in the 2016 presidential election.
President Trump said that President Vladimir Putin had assured him again Saturday that Russia did not interfere in the 2016 presidential campaign, and indicated that he believed Putins sincerity, drawing immediate criticism from lawmakers and former intelligence officials who assessed that the meddling took place.
I asked him again, Trump said after what he described as several brief, informal chats with Putin in Danang, Vietnam, where they were attending a regional conference. You can only ask so many times . . . He said he absolutely did not meddle in our election. He did not do what they are saying he did.
I really believe that when he tells me that, he means it . . . I think hes very insulted, if you want to know the truth, Trump told reporters traveling with him aboard Air Force One from Danang to Hanoi, on the ninth day of a long Asia tour. Trump voiced similar conclusions after his only previous meeting with Putin, last July in Germany.
Trumps response to questions about his conversations with Putin was a jarring return to the more insular preoccupations of Washington after more than a week of what has been a trip filled with pageantry and pledges of mutual admiration, but few substantive outcomes, between Trump and Asian leaders.
[He said he didnt meddle: Trump talks with Putin about U.S. elections and Syria in brief interactions]
Later, in a news conference Sunday in Hanoi with Vietnamese President Tran Dai Quang, Trump appeared to be trying to parse his earlier remarks, saying, What I said is that I believe [Putin] believes that.
President Trump attempted to clear up confusion over whether he accepts Russian President Vladimir Putin's denials of meddling in the 2016 U.S. election.
As to whether I believe it or not, he said, Im with our [intelligence] agencies, especially as currently constituted.
I want to be able . . . to get along with Russia, Trump said. Im not looking to stand and argue with somebody when there are reporters standing all around.
Reporters were not permitted inside the hall where the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation conference was held in Danang.
In a tweetstorm Sunday morning, in which he also disparaged North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, Trump continued to bash critics of his relationship with Moscow, calling them haters and fools who dont understand the importance of having a good relationship with Russia.
On Saturday, in his Air Force One remarks, Trump suggested that what he called the artificial Democratic hit job of investigations of possible collusion between his campaign and Russia were somehow preventing U.S.-Russia cooperation on a range of issues, including North Korea. Its a shame, he said, because people will die because of it.
Putin, in his own news conference after speaking with Trump, said he knew absolutely nothing about Russian contacts with Trump campaign officials, and called reports that a campaign official met with his niece bollocks, according to an interpreter.
They can do what they want, looking for some sensation, Putin said of the investigations. But there are no sensations.
On Saturday, Trump described the former top U.S. intelligence officials who concluded in January that the tampering took place including former director of national intelligence James R. Clapper Jr. and former CIA director John Brennan as political hacks. He called former FBI director James B. Comey, who testified to Congress that Trump asked him to drop an investigation of his campaigns connections to Russian officials, a liar and a leaker.
Clapper said in a statement that the president was given clear and indisputable evidence that Russia interfered in the election. His own DNI and CIA director have confirmed the finding in the intelligence community assessment. The fact that he would take Putin at his word over the intelligence community is unconscionable.
Brennan declined to comment.
In a statement, the CIA said that Director Mike Pompeo stands by and has always stood by the January 2017 Intelligence Community assessment . . . with regard to Russian election meddling. That position, it said, has not changed. The assessment also concluded that Russia had acted to promote Trumps victory over Democrat Hillary Clinton. Although Pompeo said last month that intelligence agencies had determined that Russian interference had not altered the electoral outcome, the assessment did not address that question.
[CIA director distorts intelligence communitys findings on Russian interference]
Former CIA director Michael V. Hayden said he was so concerned by Trumps statement that he contacted the agency to confirm that it stood by the January assessment. He described Trumps remarks as egregious comments on the character of folks who have been public servants . . . [and] the public should know that these guys are thoroughgoing professionals, and what the president left unsaid is that the people he put into these jobs agree with the so-called hacks.
Senior officials in the intelligence community will be dismayed by the disparagement of two respected intelligence veterans, Hayden said. "People have a right to ask at senior levels: 'Does what I do make a difference anymore?' "
Michael Morell, a former acting director and deputy director of the CIA, said Trump was biting hook, line and sinker the word of Putin, a former intelligence officer who is a trained liar and manipulator. Although progress had been made in the intelligence communitys initial raw relationship with Trump, Morell said in an email, this will most definitely be a step backward.
Sen. Mark R. Warner (Va.), the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, one of the panels investigating Russian interference in the 2016 election, said he was left completely speechless by Trumps willingness to take Putins word over the conclusions of our own combined intelligence community.
Rep. Adam B. Schiff (Calif.), the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, said in a statement: Instead of criticizing the Russian leader for the audacity of his interference and denials, he attacked Directors Brennan, Clapper and Comey . . . But the President fools no one. He understands that the Russians intervened through the hacking and dumping of his opponents emails, the fruits of which he exploited time and again on the campaign trail.
Several Republican members of the Senate and House intelligence panels did not respond to requests to comment on Trumps remarks.
Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) said in a statement that theres nothing America First about taking the word of a KGB colonel over that of the American intelligence community . . . Vladimir Putin does not have Americas interests at heart. To believe otherwise is not only naive but also places our national security at risk.
President Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin shook hands on Nov. 11 at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum in Danang, Vietnam.
Trumps latest comments on the subject came as investigations of allegations that his campaign colluded with Russia have moved into a new, more visible and potentially consequential phase.
Special counsel Robert S. Mueller III filed criminal charges two weeks ago against three people including a former Trump campaign chairman and two lower-level campaign advisers and more charges are expected.
Although Trump, his family members and close aides reject any suggestion of collusion, new evidence has emerged that people in Trumps orbit communicated with Russians during the campaign. Three congressional committees investigating the matter are focused in part on a meeting that occurred in Trump Tower in June 2016, attended by Trumps son Donald Trump Jr.; his son-in-law, Jared Kushner; and then-campaign manager Paul Manafort, with a well-connected Russian lawyer offering negative information about Clinton.
In his news conference, Putin said he and Trump hardly know each other. He described the U.S. president as very professional, very friendly, he behaves very appropriately, and added, Unfortunately, we did not have enough time to get down to some more details, because we have many matters to discuss.
The two leaders issued a joint statement pledging to continue their cooperation to defeat the Islamic State in Syria, and their commitment to U.N.-brokered peace negotiations between the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and opponents fighting to oust him.
Putin also said that he and Chinese President Xi Jinping, who held a long meeting at the forum in Danang, had "similar views" on various issues, including North Korea. "Our views completely coincide . . . We do not accept the nuclear status of that country," Putin said.
Trump said in his airborne remarks to reporters that a Xi statement calling for denuclearization of North Korea, which depends on China for its economic survival, was a major step forward that a lot of people . . . didnt pick up.
Russia, Trump said, also could be tremendously helpful on North Korea but was prevented by this artificial Democrat barrier of the election investigations. I think its a shame that something like that can destroy a very important potential relationship between two countries that are very important countries, Trump said. Russia could really help us.
Putin blamed the lack of a formal meeting with Trump at the conference on the failure of their teams, adding they would be lectured on the lapse.
Relations with the United States, Putin said, are still in crisis, even though Russia is saying that we are ready to turn that page over and go forward and look into the future.
Putin noted that Russias relations with China, a country that he said would soon be the biggest economy in the world, are growing stronger. The United States, he said, is losing out on profitable investments in Russia, presumably because of sanctions.
If you dont want to work, Putin said, there will be others. Your competitors will come and take your place.
Parker reported from Hanoi, and Nakamura reported from Danang. Tom Hamburger and Greg Miller in Washington contributed to this report.
Opinion
The Last Verse Trampled by Turtles embody the spirit of Americana on the album Alpenglow
Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 10/11/2017 (1832 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.
Tyne Cot cemetery near Passchendaele, Belgium, is the largest Commonwealth forces cemetery in the world, for any war. Twelve thousand graves hold the physical remains of those who died in First World War battles from 1917-18, including almost 8,500 who were buried unnamed.
The names of 35,000 men whose bodies are still missing are etched in the stone walls. One hundred years ago, these fields from Ypres to Passchendaele witnessed some of the biggest losses of life in the First World War, including many Manitobans, with minimal gains for the front line.
MARIA HART PHOTO Walter Cami looking out over the street in Ypres where the soldiers marched to the front.
It was here on Oct. 14 that a centenary ceremony was held, organized by the Memorial Museum Passchendaele and the Municipality of Zonnebeke. The event named Silent City meets Living City was held to honour and remember the fallen. White headstones, 12,000 in all, formed a semicircle around a large cross set in a platform built on a former German pillbox, which was a concrete guard post. Behind more than half of these headstones someone stood to remember the dead: a family member, an appreciative Belgian, or a stranger paying homage to their sacrifices.
It was implausibly quiet as we waited for the observance to begin. Row by row we stood holding candle lights as the sun lowered. It was so hushed; not a breath of wind broke the stillness. There wasnt a cloud in the sky to detract from the simplicity and calm of the lowering sun. The living city was almost as silent as the dead despite the 7,000 people, including children, from the various Commonwealth countries in attendance.
The observance began with sounds of missiles and gunfire played over the sound system. Vignettes performed by actors dressed as First World War soldiers followed a spell of music and reading. Then the bugle and bagpipes played the Last Post, evoking a moving atmosphere.
Between where we stood and the sunset, green farmland with contented grazing cattle stretched out in a pastoral panorama. Exactly 100 years ago it was a wasteland of mud, blood and firing guns. Canadian troops were sent to this location in October 1917 to relieve the exhausted Australian and New Zealand soldiers and secure victory. Many battalions from Winnipeg, representing men from throughout Manitoba, were among them.
MARIA HART PHOTO The Menin Gate Memorial and the street on which the soldiers marched to the front near Ypres, Belgium.
To this day, tons of metal surface in farmers fields. We call this the iron harvest, said Walter Cami, a local First World War expert and president of the Committee of Patriotic Associations in Eeklo, Belgium. Artillery shells, fuses, mangled rail tracks and even chemical weapons yet to be discharged continue to be purged from the soil. Every now and then, the body of someone who fell in battle is discovered. These remains are taken for a proper burial by the War Graves Commission.
Cami remains very grateful to the soldiers, especially the Canadians. These people from the Commonwealth were volunteers they did not have to come. The Canadian soldiers were the ones who freed our town of Eeklo and we must never forget them. I am very grateful.
This is where it gets personal.
The war was not just statistics and military strategies and politics. For four long years, men, women and horses gave their lives. The people were part of families who suffered the loss of loved ones.
MARIA HART PHOTO Remembrance crosses at the Menin Gate Memorial near Ypres, Belgium.
Personally, I was there to pay my great respect and represent my own family member: Pte. James Peter Robertson. He was awarded the Victoria Cross for gallantry in the face of the enemy. During the third battle of Ypres, he and the 27th Infantry Battalion (Winnipeg) were hemmed in by German barbed wire, machine- gun fire and mud. It was cold and wet and morale was low. Robertson, my great-great uncle, rushed a machine-gun nest and wrestled the gun from several enemy soldiers. This provided advancement for his platoon and some cheer to his comrades at a time when it appeared especially needed. Later, he climbed out of the relative protection of the trench and rescued one, and then another wounded sniper. On his return with the second, he was killed. That was Nov. 6, 1917; only four days from the end of that battle.
But our family story is one of many stories of loss. I spoke with a woman from England whose great-great uncle lost his life serving as a chaplain in the war; then the Australian great-great niece of a man who was awarded a military medal for bravery in devising a way to bring wounded back through the oppressive mud in a collapsed creek bed. He survived this only to be killed by some random hit in lighter fighting, she said, shaking her head at the irony. My great grandfather came back from the war, said one man. He never spoke of it and died when I was 14. I wish he would have lived longer, for me to ask him more about the war.
I wish they all could have lived. Lets not forget those whose lives were lost or changed forever, and strive for peace in the future.
Maria Hart is a freelance writer
Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 12/11/2017 (1830 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.
Manitobans tip bar and restaurant servers millions of dollars a year.
And with no idea as to how much of this income is being declared as taxable, its possible the provincial and federal governments are missing out on revenue.
Burdened with a massive health-care cost crunch resulting in lost jobs and ER closures, is it time for the province to start looking at taxing tips in a uniform way to try to start closing the gap?
THE CANADIAN PRESS THE CANADIAN PRESS FILES Restaurant owners are grappling with the thorny and complex issue of balancing the huge discrepancy in income between servers and kitchen staff created by the current practice of tipping.
How Quebec handles the issue may provide some insight.
The money you make as a server is incomparable, says Darcelle Paquette, 28, a former server in Montreal and Winnipeg.
In Quebec, I was required to claim my tips biweekly and they were added to my cheque. In Manitoba, it was my responsibility to keep track.
In December 2015, the sector saw $68.8 million in pre-tax sales in Manitoba, Statistics Canada said.
While declaring tips for tax purposes in Manitoba is done by the honour system, it still made Paquette anxious as it rolled around.
Tax season made me really nervous in Winnipeg, Paquette says. I didnt want to claim too much and make my co-workers look bad, but I also didnt want to claim too little and get myself into trouble.
Paquette started serving in 2007 when she moved to Quebec to make money while she was in school. In 2011, she returned to Winnipeg and continued working in the restaurant industry.
It was really different than in Quebec, Paquette says. In Quebec, I would receive my tips every two weeks, after they had been taxed for me. Here (in Winnipeg), it was up to me to keep track, and that wasnt always easy to do.
Her experience also suggests servers who get injured could achieve greater financial security by declaring their tips biweekly.
In 2013, Paquette burned her hand while working in a Winnipeg restaurant and was unable to work for a week. But because Manitoba servers declare their tips at the end of the year, she only received workers compensation for a percentage of her hours worked in the last six weeks.
That amounted to much less than she was making.
Theres also additional red tape for small businesses.
Wendy May, owner and manager of the Oakwood Cafe, thinks putting the onus of declaring servers tips on owners could add a lot of work and frustration.
If it was done on card payments, you can have the owners claim that part of it with no problem, May says. But, I think it would be very difficult to get the cash aspect under control.
In most of Canada, tips are considered other employment income and are to be filed on line 104 of tax returns.
There is no way to determine how much of it is tips, says Marie Tichborne, communications manager for the Canada Revenue Agency in Manitoba.
All other employment income refers to occasional earnings that are not included on your T4 slip. Legally, youre supposed to declare all tips as a form of income on line 104 of the tax return at the end of the year.
Although its not trackable in Manitoba without an audit, Quebec has put a system in place to make it easier. In 1998, that province introduced an automatic tip-declaration system.
At the end of each pay period, each employee who works in the food and beverage industry must report his tips to his employer, says Genevieve Laurier, director of public relations for Revenu Quebec, in an email.
If declared gratuities are less than eight per cent of sales (before taxes) resulting in the receipt of a gratuity from the employee, the award mechanism must be applied by the employee.
According to the Quebecs committee on standards, equity of occupational health and safety, servers who get tips earn a minimum wage of $9.45 per hour.
The employer then assigns the employee an amount of gratuity that ensures that the total of the tips declared by the employee and assigned by the employer corresponds to a minimum of eight per cent of the employees sales, Laurier says.
In 2016, $701.1 million was reported as tip income, Revenu Quebec said.
I would have preferred my employers (in Winnipeg) just take care of it, Paquette says. It would have relieved me from a lot of stress.
May says she would welcome a trial period for this model, but would want a lot of information for her staff prior to it being implemented.
A Statistics Canada report said 43.1 per cent of restaurant revenue in Manitoba in 2015 was from full-service restaurants. The agency defines a full-service restaurant as a restaurant where the customers are served and order once they have been seated and dont pay until after their meal. These establishments typically sell alcohol as well.
If Manitoba adopted Quebecs system, automatically requiring servers to claim eight per cent of their sales as taxable income, there would have been a guaranteed $5.44 million in additional tax revenue from full-service restaurants for one month.
There is no way to track whether this amount is being claimed on tax returns.
If Manitoba restructures the way taxes are done and mimics the way its done in Quebec, it can introduce a harmonized sales tax.
HST is used in provinces where both the federal goods and services tax and the regional provincial sales tax have been combined into a single value-added sales tax. By combining their tax systems, they can tax tips separately from line 104.
Laurier says the eight per cent minimum is claimed on line 101 of a Quebec tax return. However, its still the responsibility of the server to claim any additional tips they did not declare through their employer on line 107.
The Montreal style wasnt perfect, Paquette says. But it was definitely more organized.
Melissa Hansen is a senior journalism student in the creative communications program at Red River College in Winnipeg and a server. This article was a product of a feature writing assignment.
Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 11/11/2017 (1831 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.
A community meeting organized by Coun. Shawn Dobson got heated Saturday, as citizens came together to discuss the potential construction of a long-term addictions recovery facility in their neighbourhood.
More than 100 people packed into the Heritage Victoria community centre for the 2 p.m. meeting, listening to Dobson (St. Charles) address the crowd, debating the issue amongst themselves and signing petitions to stop the construction of the facility.
Mayor (Brian) Bowman never notified the residents, or myself, about this. As far as I can tell, none of the other councillors were notified either. This is basically a backroom deal by the mayor, the province and Scott Oake. Its really quite simple: they need to start being open and transparent, Dobson said.
Ruth Bonneville / Winnipeg Free Press Winnipeg Coun. Shawn Dobson is calling for transparency with regard to the $14-milion, 50-bed rehabilitation facility proposed for the site of Vimy Arena.
Local residents are concerned that the City of Winnipeg has offered up the Vimy Arena in the Crestview neighbourhood as the potential new home for a $14-million, 50-bed rehab facility.
They fear there could be safety concerns, as well as losses in property value, should the plan go through. In addition, they feel that the city has shut them out of the process and ignored their concerns.
They further claim Bowman is ignoring council policy and is planning to transfer the property to the province in order to find a loophole around city zoning bylaws.
In my eyes, and in the eyes of a lot of people here, it shouldnt be in a residential area. Were not opposed to the facility, we just feel it should be in a country setting, or in an industrial area, Dobson said.
But they (the city) have basically said, There is an opioid crisis, so suck it up. Which is unacceptable.
Bowman denies keeping Dobson, or any of the other councillors, in the dark on the potential plan.
Also in attendance Saturday was Independent MLA Stephen Fletcher, whose riding the facility would be built in.
He decided to show up in order to voice his support of the neighbourhoods attempts to stop construction of the facility.
As the meeting went on, the tension level in the room continued to rise and some tempers flared.
While the majority of residents in the neighbourhood do not want the facility built, a small minority has no problem with it and claims those opposed are being ruled by fear.
Dobson says he plans to rally as many residents as he can to attend the Nov. 15 city council meeting, in case Bowman decides to put the matter to a vote.
This is basically a call to arms, Dobson said. We need people calling the mayor. We need to call the councillors. We need to call the MLAs. And if the mayor decides to walk this onto the floor, we need to come down to city council.
ryan.thorpe.media@mail.com
Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 11/11/2017 (1831 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.
Not a seat was empty, or a lapel without a poppy, at the Remembrance Day ceremony at the RCB Convention Centre Saturday, as hundreds gathered to honour those whove laid their lives on the line in service for Canada.
Men and women in uniform many with medals pinned to their chests filled the room. A deep sense of reverence could be felt as the veterans gathered with family, friends, politicians and citizens.
On a projection screen behind the stage footage of the Second World War played, interspersed with interviews of the men and women who were there and lived to talk about it.
RUTH BONNEVILLE / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS Wendy Hayward, mother of Cpl. James Arnal who was killed while serving Canada in Afghanistan, lays wreath for memorial cross mother during the annual Winnipeg Remembrance Day Service at the RBC Convention Centre Saturday.
Of the veterans in attendance, many gathered amongst themselves, catching up with old friends and swapping stories. While many wore different coloured uniforms, different coloured berets and had different medals pinned to their chests, they all had one thing in common: a poppy on their lapel.
Occasionally throughout the ceremony music filled the air a snare drum and horns playing military songs, or a lone trumpeter blowing out The Last Post, before a moment of silence.
Following the passing of the torch, Rev. Bruce Miles addressed the crowd, holding up and old black and white photograph in front of him.
In it, a young boy is seen running after his father who is marching out of town for war. His mother chases behind and his father almost breaks ranks by reaching out for his sons hand maybe for the last time.
It is for those left behind, as well as those whove died, that we must remember and honour, Miles said. He knows the feeling of being left behind first-hand, having lost his older brother to the Second World War.
Id never seen my father cry before. Id never seen my mother numb with grief, he said of the day they learnt of his brothers death.
A cenotaph honouring those who have died in combat stood in the corner of the room, flanked on the corners by servicemen stoically standing with rifles. One-by-one people unpinned their poppies and placed them on the cenotaph.
Among all those in attendance with a personal and painful connection to the realities of war, only a handful got the opportunity to lay a wreath during the ceremony. One of them was Wendy Hayward, this years Silver Cross Mother for the ceremony.
There were times today that my heart hurt, Hayward said, pain audible in her voice. She paused for a moment, teary eyed, before composing herself and continuing.
But there were more times today when I was just overflowing with pride. Its an honour to be asked to lay the wreath on behalf of the mothers and to keep that promise that Canada will never forget.
A Silver Cross Mother is chosen each year to participate in the Remembrance Day ceremony. The wreath they lay is in honour of all mothers who lost a child in service of their country.
Haywards son, Cpl. James Arnal, was killed in action during his second tour of duty in Afghanistan in 2008. He was 25-years-old.
I sometimes feel guilty that I didnt put my foot down and tell him not to go. But I think as parents the only thing you can do is support and encourage your children to follow their heart. And he was following his heart, she said.
Arnal was on foot patrol when an improvised explosive device was remotely detonated. He was carrying a number of grenades at the time, which created a secondary explosion, and was killed instantly.
He was kind of blown away. They had to find him, Hayward says, again emotion and pain taking over her voice. He died, but Im sure he would have chosen to take that hit rather than anyone else he worked with.
She remembers her son as an adventurous and kind hearted man, who lived 50-years in his 25-year life.
I miss him every day, she said.
Arnal was known to give portions of his food rations to children in Afghanistan who were hungry, according to his mother. Eventually an order came down that soldiers would no longer be able to do so. It was an order he ignored, says Hayward, as he was unable to see a hungry child and not do something about it.
She says it was for the children of Afghanistan, as well as his buddies in the military (who he considered family), that he went back for a second tour of duty.
At the end of the ceremony, after the politicians and citizens and most of the veterans had filed out the room, Hayward walked over to the cenotaph, slowly unpinned her poppy from her shirt, and pinned it next to the hundreds of others that had been left behind.
And as she did so, undoubtedly, she was thinking of her son: Cpl. James Arnal.
ryan.thorpe.media@mail.com
Five people have been accused in the slaying of a San Diego mom whose remains were found last month days after she went missing, according to multiple news reports.
The new developments in the case of Alexandria Nicole Smith were announced on Thursday, according to the San Diego Union-Tribune.
Authorities in San Diego County have released few details about the investigation so far. But they have said Smiths clothed body was discovered by a detective on Oct. 12 in a wooded area of Temecula, California, north of San Diego 10 days after the 30-year-old woman was last seen alive, the Union-Tribune and local TV station KNSD report.
Her remains were covered with a blanket, according to KGTV. She died of asphyxiation.
On Wednesday, according to these news reports, two men and three women were taken into custody on suspicion of first-degree murder in Smiths death: Jonnie Isaguirre, 22; Crystal Melendez, 33; Maria Pereira, 26; Amber Suarez, 37; and 35-year-old Pablo Valadez.
All five are being held without bail, and it was unclear Friday if they had entered pleas or had retained attorneys who could comment on their behalf. (Investigators were unavailable on Friday to comment on the case.)
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Smith was reportedly last seen late on Oct. 2 as she drove down El Cajon Boulevard in San Diegos College Area, where she lived with her mom and 10-year-old daughter.
She apparently disappeared while heading to a party in nearby National City, California. Her mother reported her missing after she didnt come home.
Smiths cell phone was found two days later dumped in a trash bin in Vista, California. Her parked car was recovered in Temecula on Oct. 9.
Its been hell. Its been awful, Smiths best friend, who said she traveled from Oregon to help in the search, told KNSD. Deep down, we think its the worst and were trying to mentally prepare ourselves for that.
The five suspects were arrested this week around San Diego County.
Police have not confirmed a motive or if Smith knew her accused killers, but detectives reportedly said the five suspects were connected.
Getty Image
According to a new report, Brett Ratner was the subject of a sexual harassment complaint filed with New Line back in 2005. The report arrives not too far removed from Ellen Pages account of homophobic, sexist and derogatory behavior on the set of 2006s X-Men: The Last Stand.
Variety reports that theyve spoken with former New Line employees that claim Ratners actions led to complaints provided to the human resources department. Terri Goddard, who worked as an assistant at New Line, said Ratner had a reputation for ogling assistants, making them uncomfortable and creating an unpleasant enough work environment that led to several employees expressing their concerns with HR. She also notes that Ratners behavior changed after the complaints were brought forward.
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Its humiliating to be objectified when youre trying to do your work, Goddard told Variety. People were just appalled.
Goddard says she made the decision to come forward with her experience to dispel the idea that no one knew about Ratners alleged behavior. Warner Bros., the parent company of New Line, issued a statement claiming they have come across no evidence of any claim filed in this matter.
Ratners attorney Andrew Brettler denies that his client was confronted about his conduct.
Brett wasnt aware of any report being filed against him by anyone at New Line, said Brettler. No one came to Brett to tell him he needed to curb his behavior.
Earlier this month, the Los Angeles Times released a report with Ratner accused of sexual harassment and misconduct by six women.
(Via Variety)
The Millennium Falcon disguised in the English countryside (Photo: Google Maps)
Carmen Sandiego and Waldo aint got nothing on the Millennium Falcon. Ever since Disney and Lucasfilm relaunched the Star Wars film franchise, fans have been going to great lengths to sleuth out clues to the stories. But perhaps the greatest sport to arise is the Twitter game of Find the Falcon, in which intrepid Force aficionados use any means necessary to locate the most iconic vessel from that galaxy far, far away and reveal it on social media.
This weeks headlines came courtesy of one Kevin Beaumont, a Brit who, using Google Maps, was able to spot the disguised ship near Longcross Studios outside of London. Disney covered the Falcon with sheeting and tucked the beloved hunk of junk behind a ring of shipping containers, shielding it from fans and Imperial troops alike.
Lol Disney tried to hide the Millennium Falcon by surrounding it with shipping containers. Also, its on Google Maps. https://t.co/LgerDntmKQ pic.twitter.com/SfuYkmHJbl Kevin Beaumont (@GossiTheDog) November 9, 2017
The ship, which was used recently for both The Last Jedi (premiering Dec. 15) and Solo: A Star Wars Story (to be released on May 25, 2018), is presumably parked on the lot until shooting begins on Star Wars: Episode IX early next year.
With cloaking technology limited to Star Trek movies, this isnt the first time aerial views of the ship have leaked, despite Fort Knox-level security (reportedly including anti-snoop drones) around the Star Wars productions. These images of the London-area Last Jedi set surfaced on Twitter last year.
Star Wars: Episode VIII set pictures pic.twitter.com/PEungJckAA Star Wars Direct (@StarWarsDirect) April 30, 2016
And back in 2014, when The Force Awakens was in production, the Falcon was being rebuilt at Greenham Common airfield outside London, which was hardly restricted airspace. Discovered and posted by a pilot named Gordon Macmillan, the initial shots, which showed Resistance headquarters with a partially constructed Falcon and an obsucred X-wing fighter, were scrubbed from Twitter by Lucasfilm. However, once word got out, subsequent spy shots quickly popped up.
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#StarWarsEpisodeVII Filming at RAF Greenham Common on Saturday pic.twitter.com/d6lw6TS2aX Justin Reeves (@1JUS) September 10, 2014
Whoo! Full size Millenium Falcon & X-Wing fighters on set for the new Star Wars film. pic.twitter.com/vKJEkVF7mO Ste. (@Ste_F1) September 29, 2014
As one commenter put it, The secret Rebel base isnt so secret.
Now that the latest Falcon has been found by fans, its only a matter of time before Lucasfilm hides it again, and the cat-and-mouse game begins anew.
Read more from Yahoo Entertainment:
George Takei denies the claim made Friday by former model Scott R. Brunton, who said the Star Trek actor groped him in 1981.
Im writing to respond to the accusations made by Scott R. Bruton, Takei wrote in a Twitter thread on Saturday. I want to assure you all that I am as shocked and bewildered at these claims as you must feel reading them.
Scott R. Brunton told The Hollywood Reporter that he met Takei in 1981 at a bar in Hollywood, and they exchanged phone numbers. He went on to say that after a night on the town, they went back to Takeis apartment for drinks and, after two, Brunton said he began feeling very disoriented and dizzy and passed out.
Also Read:George Takei Accused of Sexual Assault of Former Model
The next thing I remember I was coming to and he had my pants down around my ankles, Brunton said, adding that Takei was groping my crotch and trying to get my underwear off and feeling me up at the same time, trying to get his hands down my underwear.
Takei didnt respond immediately to the allegations because he is traveling in Japan and Australia, but he denied Brutons claims early Saturday.
The events he describes back in the 1980s simply did not occur, and I do not know why he has claimed them now, he wrote. I have wracked my brain to ask if I remember Mr. Brunton, and I cannot say I do.
But I do take these claims very seriously, and I wanted to provide my response thoughtfully and not out of the moment. Right now it is a he said / he said situation, over alleged events nearly 40 years ago. But those that know me understand that non-consensual acts are so antithetical to my values and my practices, the very idea that someone would accuse me of this is quite personally painful.
Also Read:Zachary Quinto, George Takei Join Critics of Kevin Spacey Merging Apology and Coming Out
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Friends, I'm writing to respond to the accusations made by Scott R. Bruton. I want to assure you all that I am as shocked and bewildered at these claims as you must feel reading them. /1 George Takei (@GeorgeTakei) November 11, 2017
The events he describes back in the 1980s simply did not occur, and I do not know why he has claimed them now. I have wracked my brain to ask if I remember Mr. Brunton, and I cannot say I do. /2 George Takei (@GeorgeTakei) November 11, 2017
But I do take these claims very seriously, and I wanted to provide my response thoughtfully and not out of the moment. /3 George Takei (@GeorgeTakei) November 11, 2017
Right now it is a he said / he said situation, over alleged events nearly 40 years ago. But those that know me understand that non-consensual acts are so antithetical to my values and my practices, the very idea that someone would accuse me of this is quite personally painful. /4 George Takei (@GeorgeTakei) November 11, 2017
Brad, who is 100 percent beside me on this, as my life partner of more than 30 years and now my husband, stands fully by my side. I cannot tell you how vital it has been to have his unwavering support and love in these difficult times. /5 George Takei (@GeorgeTakei) November 11, 2017
Thanks to many of you for all the kind words and trust. It means so much to us. Yours in gratitude, George /end George Takei (@GeorgeTakei) November 11, 2017
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Kate Middleton Covers Baby Bump in Chic Coat Dress at Festival of Remembrance The 35-year-old royal was seated next to Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip.
Kate Middleton's pregnancy style continues to impress!
The Duchess of Cambridge covered up her baby bump in a chic black velvet coat dress at the Royal Festival of Remembrance at Royal Albert Hall in London on Saturday.
Middleton's Catherine Walker & Co Caressa dress featured jet, glass and silver Swarovski buttons. The 35-year-old royal accessorized the look with black pumps and a red paper poppy to honor fallen troops.
Photo: Stefan Rousseau - WPA Pool / Getty Images
Photo: Stefan Rousseau - WPA Pool / Getty Images
The soon-to-be mother of three was seated next to Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip at the event, who were also dressed in black. Middleton's husband, Prince William, and his brother, Prince Harry, meanwhile were in Wales, attending the Wales v. Australia Autumn International rugby match at the Principality Stadium.
Photo: Stefan Rousseau - WPA Pool / Getty Images
RELATED: Pregnant Kate Middleton Recycles Chic Black Dress Also Worn By Meghan Markle!
Middleton, who revealed her pregnancy in September, is due in April 2018. She and William are already parents to 4-year-old Prince George and 2-year-old Princess Charlotte.
See more in the video below.
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Its a royal family affair.
Kate Middleton joined Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip on Saturday evening for the Festival of Remembrance, an annual musical tribute to remember Britains fallen soldiers. The event was held at Londons Royal Albert Hall.
Unlike last year, Kate attended without husband Prince William. The royal dad was on official duty at a rugby match in Cardiff, Wales, so he couldnt be at the annual event. Prince Harry, who attended the England vs. Argentina rugby match, also missed the Festival of Remembrance.
Other members of the royal family who attended the Festival of Remembrance were Prince Andrew, who sat next to Kate, as well as Prince Charles and Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall, who just finished a four-country tour of Singapore, India, Brunei and Malaysia.
The royals and the audience decorated their outfits with the poppy emblems, the traditional symbol of tribute to those who have suffered in wars and military conflicts.
Kate Middleton
Queen Elizabeth II
There were several events held this week in honor of Britains fallen soldiers. On Thursday, Prince Harry, 33, laid a small wooden cross at the Field of Remembrance outside Westminster Abbey, while William spoke at a gala dinner for veterans in London.
The events will continue on Sunday, with the Remembrance Sunday service. This years service will be different than those in years past. The Queen, 91 has chosen not to lay a wreath at the ceremony but to hand the duty off to her son and heir, Charles. Instead, she will stand side-by-side with husband Philip, 96, who retired from public duties in August, on the balcony overlooking the ceremony.
Former Downton Abbey star Michelle Dockery revealed in a new interview that she considers herself a widow after the shocking death of her fiance John Dineen.
I refer to myself as a widow, yes, Dockery said in a new interview with The Guardian. We were engaged, and married at heart, and so I do consider myself a widow.
Thats the first time Ive said that, and its a bit of a relief to say so, the British actress added, saying it helped her connect with her Good Behavior character Alice.
Dockery laid low in the months following Dineens death, but returned to work on Good Behavior her first TV project following Downton three months later.
The 35-year-old star also addressed the ongoing sexual misconduct scandal in Hollywood, which was sparked after dozens of women came forward with allegations against super producer Harvey Weinstein.
Everyones talking about it, Dockery told The Guardian. And I have huge admiration for those women who have come forward.
Dockery admitted that she had heard rumors about Weinstein and had a brief meeting with him several years ago and had left feeling uncomfortable but that nothing much happened.
She also said that she thinks the ongoing movement has opened the floodgates and that things are changing in Hollywood.
I think that the casting-couch system well, the couch should be burned, she said. I just think something has to change. And this is the start of it.
On Thursday, Mika Brzezinksi and Joe Scarborough celebrated their engagement with a star-studded party in New York City.
Brzezinksi, 50, opted to wear a dark green dress for the occasion and the bride-to-be was all smiles as she was spotted holding onto her fiances arm. Scarborough, 54, also kept things simple, wearing a plain dark suit with a red tie.
The party for the TV hosts was thrown at Morning Joe contributor Steve Rattners Fifth Avenue apartment and attracted a variety of notable guests.
CBS anchor Gayle King was one of the celebrities who showed up to support the happy couple, and she appeared to be in good spirits as she waved to photographers as she arrived at the event.
Gayle King
Domestic mogul Martha Stewart also stopped by the event, and while waiting outside, both King and Stewart were joined by former Secretary of State John Kerry.
Martha Stewart
Martha Stewart (left), Gayle King and John Kerry
And Kerry wasnt the only politician to stop by the star-studded celebration.
New York City Mayor Bill De Blasio who recently got re-elected to serve another term and the Reverend Al Sharpton also stopped by to pay their respects to the happy couple.
Major Bill de Blasio
Reverend Al Sharpton
Former Americas Next Top Model judge and fashion editor Andre Leon Talley was also present for the party which, according to Page Six, featured a special appearance by a Donald Trump impersonator.
Page Six reported that a toast to the couple was interrupted by a Trump impersonator who railed against the TV hosts, saying: The fake news is at it again. They love to lie. The show is awful and unwatchable. People are saying it was canceled weeks ago.
Shortly after Brzezinksi and Scarborough announced their engagement, Trump who would go on to personally attack the Morning Joe hosts on Twitter said the couple should get married at either Mar-a-Lago or the White House and even offered to marry them himself.
The White House that I grew up in was an amazing place. If it werent Trump, it might be something to think about, Brzezinski told Vanity Fair, explaining that they turned the offer down. (Brezezinskis father is Zbigniew Brzezinski, a diplomat who worked for former president Lyndon B. Johnson and Jimmy Carter.) The mental picture is just fascinating, but the reality is just . . . no. No, no, no, no, no.
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Andre Leon Talley
In May, the Morning Joe anchors who had long sparked relationship rumors confirmed their engagement.
A source told Page Six that Scarborough proposed during the couples vacation to France and Monaco in celebration of Brzezinskis 50th birthday.
Joe got down on one knee and proposed old-fashioned-style with a ring. Of course, Mika accepted. They came back from the trip on Cloud Nine, an insider told the outlet. There are no wedding plans as of yet, they are just telling their families the happy news.
Another source added, Mika turned 50 and realized she wanted to move forward with her life and spend every minute with Joe, and not just at work.
Rebel Wilson is the latest actress to share her story of alleged sexual harassment.
In a series of tweets on Saturday, the Pitch Perfect actress claimed that she was once sexually harassed by one of her male costars while his friends tried to film the incident on their phones.
A male star, in a position of power asked me to go into a room with him and then asked me repeatedly to stick my finger up his a. All whilst his male friends tried to film the incident on their iPhones and laughed. I repeatedly said no and eventually got out of the room, she continued.
I've been away in a 'bubble' of sorts creating new comedy overseas but it's so hard to hear all these stories relating to sexual harassment and assault in Hollywood. As you guys know, I'm a pretty strong and confident person but even I have a story to tell.
Rebel Wilson (@RebelWilson) November 11, 2017
A male star, in a position of power asked me to go into a room with him and then asked me repeatedly to stick my finger up his ass. All whilst his male 'friends' tried to film the incident on their iPhones and laughed. I repeatedly said no and eventually got out of the room.
Rebel Wilson (@RebelWilson) November 11, 2017
I called my agent immediately and my lawyer made a complaint with the studio basically to protect myself in the event something similar ever occurred Id be able to walk out of the job and not obliged to return, she added.
Wilson also alleged that following the incident, she was threatened by one of the stars representatives to be nice and support the male star.
I refused, Wilson continued. The whole thing was disgusting. Ive told hundreds of people in the industry the story in more graphic detail basically to warn them off this individual.
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I called my agent immediately and my lawyer made a complaint with the studio - basically to protect myself that in the event something similar ever occurred I'd be able to walk out of the job and not obliged to return.
Rebel Wilson (@RebelWilson) November 11, 2017
Later I was threatened by one of the star's representatives to be nice and support the male star. I refused. The whole thing was disgusting.
I've told hundreds of people in the industry the story in more graphic detail basically to warn them off this individual.
Rebel Wilson (@RebelWilson) November 11, 2017
Wilson then went on to detail a separate alleged incident with a top director who invited her to his hotel room.
Earlier in my career, I also had a hotel room encounter with a top director. I thought we were there to talk comedy. Nothing physical happened because the guys wife called and started abusing him over the phone for sleeping with actresses and luckily she was yelling so loud that I could hear her and I bolted out of there immediately, she said. I was so naive [that] the thought of anything happening apart from work talk didnt even cross my mind.
Wilsons rep did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Earlier in my career, I also had a 'hotel room' encounter with a top director. I thought we were there to talk comedy. Nothing physical happened because the guy's wife called and started abusing him over the phone for sleeping with actresses and luckily she was yelling so loud...
Rebel Wilson (@RebelWilson) November 11, 2017
that I could hear her and I bolted out of there immediately. I was so naive the thought of anything happening apart from 'work talk' didn't even cross my mind.
Rebel Wilson (@RebelWilson) November 11, 2017
I feel lucky that I grew up in a pro-female environment, going to an all-girls high school, and that I have such a strong sense of self and have taken self-defense classes. I had the ability to escape both incidents. I realize not everyone is as lucky, Wilson continued.
Wilson also went on to say that in the future, if I witness this behavior, whether it happens to me or someone I know, I will no longer be POLITE. Interpret that as you will.
I feel lucky that I grew up in a pro-female environment, going to an all-girls high school, and that I have such a strong sense of self and have taken self-defense classes. I had the ability to escape both incidents. I realize not everyone is as lucky.
Rebel Wilson (@RebelWilson) November 11, 2017
To hear how prevalent sexual harassment and assault is, is just so saddening. I know my stories aren't as horrific as other women and men have described - but if you've ever experienced anything like this I feel for you and can relate on some level.
Rebel Wilson (@RebelWilson) November 11, 2017
I know, moving forward, that if I witness this behavior, whether it happens to me or someone I know, I will no longer be POLITE. Interpret that as you will.
Rebel Wilson (@RebelWilson) November 11, 2017
Wilsons claims come amid a growing wave of allegations against powerful men in Hollywood, including producer Harvey Weinstein, director Brett Ratner, actor Kevin Spacey and comedian Louis C.K.
WASHINGTON Roy Moore, the embattled Alabama U.S. Senate candidate, said that the allegations that he sought sexual relations with teenage women when he was in his 30s were completely false.
These allegations are completely false and misleading, Moore told Sean Hannity on his radio show on Friday, adding that they were politically motivated.
The Washington Post reported the womens on-the-record stories on Thursday, including that of a woman, Leigh Corfman, who said she was 14 when Moore initiated a sexual encounter with her.
Moore bashed the media in his interview with Hannity and said, Im sure in the next four weeks, theyre going to come out with another article.
White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said Friday that President Donald Trump would urge Moore to drop out of the race if the allegations are true: Like most Americans, the President believes that we cannot allow a mere allegation in this case, one from many years ago to destroy a persons life. However, the President also believes that if these allegations are true, Judge Moore will do the right thing and step aside.
A number of other Republicans, including Senate Majority Mitch McConnell and Vice President Mike Pence, have said the same. Others, like Sen. John McCain (R-Arizona) and Mitt Romney, have said he should exit the race immediately, apparently confident of the veracity of the Post story. The writers cited 30 sources in their report.
Moore, though, has not bowed out, and his campaign issued a statement Friday afternoon.
I have never provided alcohol to minors, and I have never engaged in sexual misconduct, Moore said in the statement. As a father of a daughter and grandfather of five granddaughters, I condemn the actions of any man who engages in sexual misconduct not just against minors but against any woman.
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Corfman told the Post that when she was 14, Moore engaged in at least two attempts to have sexual relations with her, which she said was unwanted.
Moore, however, told Hannity that he didnt know Ms. Corfman from anybody. Moore was asked whether he recalled dating any teenager when he was in his 30s, and he responded, Not generally, no. The age of consent in Alabama is 16. He said that he didnt remember dating any girl without the permission of her mother.
He said that he dated a lot of young ladies after he returned from military service in Vietnam, but said that his behavior was always appropriate.
Although he said that he did not know Corfman, he did recognize two of the women who were quoted in the Post, including Gloria Thacker Deason, who claimed that he purchased alcohol for her even though she was 18. The drinking age was 19 at the time.
The Post story has once again exposed insurgent vs. establishment fissures within the Republican party. Moore is backed by Steve Bannon, Trumps former chief strategist, and has waged a campaign of attacks on the GOP establishment, including McConnell.
Even before the allegations against Moore, McConnell, when asked about his candidacy, had cited past far-right candidates who have stumbled in the general election, giving Democrats unexpected victories. They include Todd Akin, who sought to oust Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.), in 2012, and Richard Mourdock, who sought a seat in Indiana that same year yet was defeated by Democrat Joe Donnelly.
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Top Music & TV Exec Benny Medina Accused of Sexual Attack: 'I Could Not Fight Him Off' Alleges Actor Jason Dottley
Music executive Benny Medina has been accused of attempting to rape Sordid Lives: The Series actor Jason Dottley.
In an article published by the Advocate Friday, Dottley, 36, claimed Medina who has managed the careers of several A-list stars like Jennifer Lopez, Will Smith and Mariah Carey, as well as execute producing The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air (which was based on his life) allegedly tried to rape him at Medinas Los Angeles mansion in December 2008.
Medinas attorneys Howard Weitzman and Shawn Holley said in a statement to PEOPLE, Benny Medina categorically denies the allegation of attempted rape.
The actor claimed Medina invited him and a friend, fellow actor T. Ashanti Mozelle, for a tour of the home, at which point Medina led Dottley to his bedroom and allegedly attacked him.
Mozelle, who had been swimming in Medinas pool, told the Advocate he walked into the bedroom and claimed he saw the music executive on top of Dottley.
[Mozelle] burst in the room and [was] screaming something like, Get off him!' Dottley told the publication. Benny Medina got off of me and grabbed me again by the chest of my shirt and threw me at not to, but at his bedroom door and all he said was You two get the f out of here.'
Dottley told PEOPLE Friday he was left feeling powerless during and after the alleged attack.
What I remember most about the encounter with Benny was the feeling of giving up, Dottley says. The moment I realized that I could not fight him off, that I was slowly losing my ability to breathe because of his arm on my neck, that moment of complete and utter powerlessness, thats what I remember the most.
Speaking of the alleged incident, Dottley said Medinas change in demeanor was like Jekyll and Hyde, and that he was scared of telling anyone of the incident, including his then-husband and playwright, Del Shore, whom Dottley claims the music exec threatened.
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You dont try to rape someone, then threaten to kill their husband via text message if you arent incredibly fearless of what youre doing, Dottley says. This could not have been his first time.
The actor told PEOPLE he found strength in numbers after Anthony Rapp came forward with his account of alleged sexual assault.
He adds that he has no regrets about coming forward with his story.
[I feel] so incredibly empowered and hopeful that just like the ones before me gave me courage, I hope to help another victim come forward, he says.
with reporting by Liz McNeil
Armistice Day observed Member of the Royal British Legion carries wooden crosses adorned with poppies at the Field of Remembrance in London, Britain, Nov. 11, 2017. (Photo: Peter Nicholls/Reuters)
Millions of people in Britain and France paused to remember the victims of war Saturday on Armistice Day, which marks the anniversary of the end of World War I.
Across Britain, people stopped in streets, squares and railway stations for two minutes of silence starting at 11 a.m. The moment the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month marked 99 years since the guns fell silent at the end of the Great War on Nov. 11, 1918.
In London, the bell of Parliaments Big Ben clock tower sounded the hour for the first time since it was halted for repairs in August.
Many Britons wore red paper poppies, symbolizing the flowers that bloomed amid the carnage of World War Is Western Front. Armistice Day originally commemorated the millions of who died in the Great War, but now also remembers those killed in World War II and subsequent conflicts.
Across the Channel, French President Emmanuel Macron led a solemn ceremony on Paris Champs-Elysees, laying a wreath at the statue of wartime French Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau, a key architect of peace between the great powers. Macron then inspected French troops and laid a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at the Arc de Triomphe.
Former French Presidents Nicolas Sarkozy and Francois Hollande also attended the ceremony, which attracted crowds despite the drizzle.
On Sunday, Queen Elizabeth II, British political leaders and dignitaries will attend a Remembrance Sunday ceremony at the Cenotaph war memorial in London.
Next year France will host a grand Armistice centenary, marking 100 years since the wars end in 1918 with envoys from 80 nations. (AP)
Heres a look at Armistice Day observations around the world.
See more news-related photo galleries and follow us on Yahoo News Photo Twitter and Tumblr.
It's here. After months of speculation, spy shots and fleeting public tests captured on video, the 2019 Chevy Corvette ZR1 is finally here. It looks vicious, like the already hot Z06 moonlighting as a GT3-spec Le Mans racer. The rear wing looks large enough for light aircraft duty and the front splitter could help ZR1 owners offer snow-plow service during the winter. The engine is so tall that the 755-horsepower supercharged 6.2-liter V8 literally pokes out of the hood. This is the ne plus ultra of any production car ever badged with a bowtie.
At the heart of every Corvette is a rip-roaring, fire-spitting V8. Anything else would be tantamount to treason, causing marches on Bowling Green calling for blood and the ashes of Zora Arkus-Duntov. The new LT5 might be named in honor of the 1990 ZR-1's (C4 had the hyphen) engine, but eschews that V8's dual-overhead cams. Instead, this pushrod V8 uses an Eaton supercharger that's 52-percent larger than the one on the Z06. The throttle body has a diameter of nearly 4 inches. All in, the LT5 makes 755 horsepower at 6,300 rpm and 715 pound-feet of torque at 4,400 rpm. That's a 300-horsepower leap over the base Corvette.
In addition to the extra displacement from the blower, the LT5 makes use of both direct and port fuel injection. Not only should this help fuel flow, it should slow the carbon buildup that occurs with direct-injected engines. It uses a more efficient intercooler, too, helping prevent the heat-soak issues that plagued the Z06. The supercharger and intercooler are so large that the hood is open in the middle, raising a big middle finger to pedestrian crash standards. It sits three inches higher than the standard car. The whole front end has been honed and shaped to feed air into the engine and driveline. Four new radiators bring the total to 13.
Power is sent to the rear wheels through either a seven-speed manual or an eight-speed automatic. Both are the same as the ones found in the Z06, gear ratios and all. If it follows the Z06's trend, the car might actually be quicker if you let the computer handle the shifting. Still, save the manuals and all that jazz. Tadge Juechter, chief Corvette executive engineer, says that the manual is more robust and the preferred option for track use.
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Still, all the power in the world means jack if you can't put it down. Look at the lengths Dodge had to go to with the Demon. With the ZR1, it's all about aero, hence the splitter and rear wing. Downforce without drag was key, and it seems to have worked. Like the Z06, there are multiple aero packages for the ZR1. The standard low-wing setup delivers 70-percent more downforce than a base Z06. Top speed with the low wing is 210 miles per hour. It also makes it far easier to access the rear cargo area.
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The two-way adjustable high-wing kit lowers the top speed but gives the car 60-percent more downforce than a Z06 with the Z07 package. A few bolts on the stanchion allow for five degrees of adjustment. The wing is mounted to the chassis to prevent cracking the hatch under load. Every ZR1 comes with a new underwing. The Corvette team looked at having an active rear wing. The idea was nixed after considering packaging and weight issues. Juechter said that because an active rear wing can provide low drag and high downforce when it's up they decided to "just leave the damn thing up." Underbody aero was developed with the Corvette Racing team. Balancing the big rear wing required more aero up front, so an inverted airfoil aids without having a giant shelf out front.
The high wing is part of the ZTK Performance Package (Chevy loves its build codes). Juechter and Chief Designer Top Peters say the ZTK package is equivalent to the Z07 package on the Corvette Z06. In addition to the airplane appendage, the ZTK kit adds a front splitter with carbon-fiber end caps, Michelin Pilot Sport Cup 2 tires (the same ones that are on the Z06) and different tuning for the chassis and Magnetic Ride Control. That's right. No fancy spool-valve shocks like on the Camaro ZL1 1LE. The ZR1 uses a short/long arm double wishbone setup with cast aluminum control arms and transverse-mounted composite springs both front and rear. It is a Corvette after all.
While Pilot Sport Cup 2s are optional, the car comes standard with Pilot Super Sport run flats. The staggered setup - P285/30ZR19s up front and P355/25ZR20s out back - cover carbon-ceramic brakes with calipers the size of Dwayne Johnson's forearm. With the Cup 2s, expect 60 to 0 mph stops of fewer than 90 feet, real world-class stuff.
The debut ZR1 comes in a special Sebring Orange Design Package that adds orange paint and brake calipers and orange stripes on the rocker panel and splitter. Inside, the car gets orange seat belts, orange stitching and bronze aluminum trim. In addition to the performance parts, all ZR1s are available with heated and ventilated Nappa leather seats, a carbon-fiber rimmed steering wheel, a Bose stereo and GM's Performance Data Recorder. Like other Corvettes, the ZR1 is available with multiple seats with varying degrees of bolstering.
The car goes on sale next spring. Pricing hasn't been announced, but expect it to start around $120,000. Yes, that's a lot for a Corvette or any Chevy for that matter, but a huge bargain when compared to the competitive set. While it hasn't been revealed, look for a convertible version to follow sometime soon. We've seen that car running around Detroit. Sure, some were hoping for a little more out of the car. Maybe a surprise like dual-overhead cams or a hybrid system. This is impressive, if a bit unsurprising. Still, if this is it for the front-engine 'Vette, it's going out with one hell of a bang.
Related Video:
2019 Chevy Corvette ZR1: All hail the 755-horsepower C7 king originally appeared on Autoblog on Sun, 12 Nov 2017 12:00:00 EST.
Two companies, Realtor.com and Keurig, have pulled advertisements from Fox News host Sean Hannitys programme after he interviewed Alabama Senate candidate Roy Moore.
The Republican running the special election on 12 December has come under criticism for allegations of sexual abuse of teenage girls - all of which Mr Moore has denied.
Every single person in this country deserves the presumption of innocence, said Mr Hannity during the programme, which included ad spots from both companies.
He also later said If its true [Mr Moore] should step aside from the race.
The Washington Posts original story on the allegations included no less than 30 sources, four of whom went on the record.
Viewers notified Kuerig and Realor.com via Twitter about their ads.
Neither has confirmed the reason for the pull was because of the interview with Mr Moore, however, they did respond to concerned Twitter users.
Angelo, thank you for your concern and for bringing this to our attention. We worked with our media partner and FOX news to stop our ad from airing during the Sean Hannity Show. Keurig (@Keurig) November 11, 2017
Thanks for bringing this to our attention. We are adjusting our media buy to no longer include this show placement. -MS realtor.com (@realtordotcom) November 10, 2017
One accusation against Mr Moore, that of Leigh Corfmans, has come under the spotlight.
Ms Corfman told the Washington Post that she was 14 years old in 1979 when then-district attorney Mr Moore, 32, approached her outside a courtroom where her parents were attending a child custody hearing.
He then proceeded to meet her twice more, kissing her and then undressing her, forcing her to touch his genitals.
Two other women - both teenagers when Mr Moore was in his 30s - have also come forward with similar stories.
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Mr Moore made a name for himself in politics by touting his conservative Christian values.
Several prominent Alabama officials have come forward in defence of Mr Moore, with several arguing that since she has been married three times and filed for bankruptcy her charges are likely false.
Mr Moore has said the allegations are completely false and are a desperate political attack by the National Democrat Party and the Washington Post on this campaign.
The campaign levied the now consistent fake news charge against the newspaper.
Four polls have been run since the story surfaced. Three show Mr Moore roughly tied with Democrat Doug Jones in the race.
One, conducted by JMC Analytics, has Mr Jones ahead by four points.
That same poll conducted prior to the child sex abuse charges had Mr Moore ahead by nearly eight points.
The election is set to take place 12 December.
Andrew Rasmussen, a Danish native, worked his way up from vineyard worker to a highly regarded vineyard and winery superintendent in Napa Valley. He credited his success, at least in part, to taking advantage of every opportunity to learn about viticulture and enology.
To pursue his dream, 16 year old Rasmussen left Denmark in 1876. For the next three years he lived and worked on his uncle Hans Rasmussens Nebraska farm. Andrew left for San Francisco in 1879 where he worked in a machine shop during the day and attended school at night.
Rasmussen continued his educational pursuits when he arrived in Napa Valley. Tom Gregory, author of the 1912 The History of Solano and Napa Counties, California book, wrote, In 1880 he came to Napa County and found employment at the Talcoa vineyard, here taking up the study of viticulture under Prof. George Husmann, during the following four years.
Husmann hired Rasmussen to be his Chiles Valley vineyard foreman. Two years later in 1886, Rasmussen to become foreman at the Wheeler vineyard and winery in St. Helena, where he worked for three years. Simultaneously, he worked as foreman for the nearby Lemme vineyard.
According to Gregory, During all these years spent in the study of this line of industry, Mr. Rasmussen had developed remarkable aptitude.
As his expertise grew so did his professional advancements. In 1890, Rasmussen became the superintendent of the 130-acre Summit vineyard. He held that position for 18 years.
During that time frame, Rasmussen met and married Evelyn Penland, a daughter of early Napa County settler farmers, Issac and Susan (March) Penland. Andrew and Evelyn eventually had four children, Pearl, Rolla, Edna and Ivan.
Following his marriage and as his family grew, in 1898, Rasmussen left Summit to created a Napa Valley homestead. From his 120 Calistoga area acres, Rasmussen cleared 40 acres of timber to construct a comfortable family home as well as outbuildings and planted a 30-acre vineyard.
Gregory continued, About this time he entered the employ of the California Wine Association (CWA) at the Greystone winery and each season for the following five years had charge of the manufacturing of the wine.
In 1903 CWA sent Rasmussen to Fresno to run its Scandinavian vineyard and winery. But a few years later Rasmussen left CWA to return to Napa Valley. In 1906 he accepted Husmanns job offer of special agent in viticulture. Gregory wrote, and at that time (he) was the only special agent in the state. As for what that position actually was as well as its details and responsibilities, Gregory omitted that information.
While the title of his new job sounded intriguing and even privileged, Rasmussen left that job about a year later to return to CWA to become the superintendent of all of their Fresno area vineyards and wineries. He supervised the operations of two wineries and 1240 acres of vineyard.
About two years later, 1909, CWA transferred the 49-year-old Rasmussen back to their Napa Valley properties. Although he supervised only two Napa Valley wineries, their combined production capacity was 2.1 million gallons of wine.
Mr. Rasmussen still owns his ranch near Calistoga, which is looked after by his son, Rolla. It is known as the Monte Vista, or mountain view, vineyard. The Rasmussen family is still comfortably located on their home ranch, Gregory wrote in 1912. In the business circle Mr. Rasmussen is well known and, during the many years that he has been connected with the wine business and the growing of grapes, has become a recognized authority along those lines.
Washington (AFP) - Police in North Carolina have arrested and charged two men -- one an airport employee -- for possessing a homemade bomb, police said.
They said a man named Derrick Fells, 39, had constructed the device. Upon his arrest Sunday -- following a 911 phone call from an unidentified informant -- Fells admitted making the device, which was described as a pipe bomb.
Fells told police in Charlotte he had intended to use the bomb against a neighbor with whom he had been arguing, but changed his mind and gave it to Paul Dandon, 30, a full-time employee of the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) based at Charlotte Douglas International Airport.
Police said Dandon's job gave him access only to an offsite air traffic control tower, but not to any restricted area in the airport terminal or to any aircraft.
The FAA, in a separate statement, said Dandon's access to those facilities had been terminated, and that he was cooperating with authorities, including agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. He was charged with possession of a weapon of mass destruction (WMD) and related charges.
Fells was charged with three counts, including manufacturing a weapon of mass destruction.
While the US Defense Department defines WMDs as those capable of causing mass casualties, the Justice Department has given prosecutors broad flexibility to apply the term to weapons including bombs, grenades and certain guns.
At UN climate talks in Bonn, Gore is heading an unofficial group trying to stop climate change in the face of scepticism from Trump administration officials
Al Gore at the climate summit in Bonn. Gore has emerged as one of the leading voices in the fight against climate change. Photograph: Wolfgang Rattay/Reuters
Al Gore has accused Donald Trump of surrounding himself with the absolute worst of climate deniers and said he has given up attempting to persuade the president to reverse his dismantling of policies combatting global warming.
However, both Gore, the former US vice-president, and Jerry Brown, governor of California, told the Guardian they were confident the US will regain its leadership position on climate change if Trump is defeated in the next presidential election.
Gore, Brown and Michael Bloomberg, the billionaire former mayor of New York, are heading a broad coalition of climate change hawks from US states, cities and businesses in Bonn, where UN climate talks are being held. This alliance is in sharp contrast to the official US delegation, which is representing the only national government in the world that doesnt want to be part of the Paris climate accords.
I havent had any conversations with [Trump] since his speech to withdraw from Paris. I tried my best and thought hed come to his senses but Ive been proven wrong, Gore, who met with Trump during the transition to try to influence his thinking, told the Guardian. I dont feel I have the ability to change his mind. Hes surrounded himself with the absolute worst of climate deniers who seem to have captured his mind on the issue.
Trump has aligned with Scott Pruitt, the head of the US Environmental Protection Agency who is a vocal critic of the Paris deal. Pruitt has cast doubt on whether carbon dioxide drives global warming, and claimed there is tremendous disagreement among scientists over climate change.
Several former and current members of the administration, including Stephen Bannon and Mick Mulvaney, have also previously dismissed evidence for climate science.
Gore, who is now one of the worlds leading voices on climate change, said other countries are aghast at Trumps retreat from climate policy but said the backlash both within the US and abroad is encouraging.
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The US cities and states have made a tremendous difference and I think the reaction of the rest of the world has minimized the damage done by Donald Trump, he said. The reaction to Trump is if anything stronger than the actions Trump is taking.
This experiment with Trump is less than a year old and in science, experiments are sometimes cut short early. Im not saying this will happen this time, but this feels like a movie Ive seen before.
We went off the rails a bit in the last election. I think the rest of the world understands that the Trump period is an unfortunate departure from what the US is known for when we are at our best. Those who have appreciated US leadership grieve its loss and hope its temporary.
Brown also said he sees little point attempting to sway the Trump administration. The official policy of the US is that climate change is a total and complete hoax conceived by Chinese conspirators, the California governor told the Guardian. That is so preposterous that engagement on that basis is just useless.
However, the California governor said mid-term elections in the US next year may pressure Trump to change position. Hes an action orientated person, not a politician, so who knows, he said.
Ultimately we wont have a denier in the White House forever. We are engaged in a great political struggle between the deniers who want to turn the world over to fossil fuel interests and scientists and concerned activists who want to see decarbonization.
Donald Trump is a very small point in the overall climate factor. We are facing a moment of truth over whether we can decarbonize or see civilization itself decline over the next 100 years.
We have a political sidebar we can tweet about but the existential problem is that species are being destroyed, ecologies are being degraded and mankind is on the chopping block. This isnt the time for politics, its the time for courageous action.
Brown has attempted to step into the vacuum created by US withdrawal by holding dozens of events and meetings with national leaders, UN officials and NGOs across Europe ahead of the Bonn talks.
The Democratic governor has taken on a role highlighting the impact of sub-national entities such as California, which would have the sixth largest economy in the world if it were a country and has implemented a cap and trade emissions trading system that may soon be linked to a similar mechanism used by European Union countries.
I want to strengthen the coalition of states and provinces in order to do everything possible to reduce carbon emissions, Brown said.
The great threat to the world is the radically changing climate and the level of indifference and inertia is so powerful that I find it incumbent to build a counterforce of mayors and governments to work together to protect our climate and get us off the carbon addiction.
The Bonn talks, which will run until 17 November, are largely a technical exercize in helping countries implementing the goals of the Paris agreement, where nearly 200 nations agreed to limit global warming to 2C above the pre-industrial era.
Trump has vowed to pull the US from the agreement but under the pacts rules he will be unable to do so until 2020. In Bonn, the US delegation is expected to follow the lead of the president, a vocal supporter of fossil fuels, by extolling the benefits of efficient coal, nuclear energy and natural gas.
One year after Donald Trumps election, defeated candidate gets rapturous reception in Wisconsin where she paid high price after not campaigning
Hillary Clinton the best way to show personal resilience is to get up and the best way to show political resilience is to win elections. Photograph: Matt Rourke/AP
Hillary Clinton has hailed Democratic victories in elections this week as proof that the fever has broken and the fightback against Donald Trump has begun.
The defeated presidential candidate was speaking to nearly 2,500 people at Milwaukees Riverside Theater on Thursday, exactly a year after she delivered her concession speech to tearful supporters in New York.
Praising an outpouring of activism and engagement in the resistance to Trump over the past 12 months, Clinton said: And just this week we saw what a difference that can make because in elections across America hope beat hate, right? The audience erupted in cheers.
Democrats swept to victory in governor, state legislative, county and mayors races across the country on Tuesday. Clinton claimed that voters sent a clear message: The fever has broken. Americas not going to put up with the kind of political machinations that emanate from this administration and their allies in Congress. Were going to chart a different course.
She cited the wins of Danica Roem, the first openly transgender person elected and seated in a state legislature, over a social conservative, and Chris Hurst, whose girlfriend was shot dead on live television, over a rival backed by the powerful National Rifle Association. You know what? Despite the NRAs best efforts, he won in Virginia.
Clinton continued: So, this was a resounding affirmation of the values we share and, as of Tuesday night, we are one step closer to an America that is kinder, fairer, more equal, where we embrace the fact that our diversity is a strength not a weakness, where we keep striving for progress and for a more perfect union.
The 70-year-old praised a huge grassroots organisational effort that involved volunteers knocking on thousands of doors. And none of that would have happened if people had got so discouraged that they decided to give up and leave politics to the dark forces that have been in the ascendancy over the last years in states like Wisconsin and now in Washington.
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So we should celebrate those wins but we cannot let up for one minute because, as you know, right here in this state, there are some critically important elections on the horizon. The best way to show personal resilience is to get up and the best way to show political resilience is to win elections.
Critics might be tempted to say Clintons visit to Wisconsin was too little, too late. She infamously did not campaign here during the general election and became the first Democratic presidential candidate to lose the state since 1984. Along with Michigan and Pennsylvania it proved decisive.
She did not address the issue directly during a 65-minute conversation with actor Bradley Whitford, who hails from Wisconsin. But when she walked on stage to a standing ovation and deafening cheers and screams that lasted 78 seconds, her opening line got a laugh: Well, I should have come back to Wisconsin sooner.
Clinton added: I couldnt think of any place Id rather be than right here to start the year after the year I just had. This years been kind of hard, for obvious reasons. Its not an anniversary Ive been looking forward to, but it felt really good on Tuesday. It bodes well if we all stay focused for whats ahead of us and theres nowhere Id rather be than here with all of you.
In her book she suggests that voter suppression in Wisconsin which some experts say wiped out tens of thousands of votes was more significant than her failure to hold rallies. On Thursday she described it as a civil rights issue and said: There is no better example of an attempt to rig an election than the massive voter suppression we experienced here in Milwaukee Wisconsites who desperately wanted to vote were turned away at the polls despite having all kinds of identification.
The former secretary of state also attacked Trump for handing China the initiative in renewable energy and for stating, during his visit to Beijing, that he gives China great credit for taking advantage of the US on trade. That is not the right answer. She predicted that the Chinese president would run rings around Trump. I know Xi Jinping, she said. I know Xi Jinping is sitting there thinking, Man, this is going to be easier than I thought.
In contrast to her sombre tone at the New Yorker hotel a year ago, Clinton bantered with Whitford, best known for playing White House deputy chief of staff Josh Lyman in The West Wing and a Barack Obama supporter with a dark secret in the horror comedy Get Out. I have no idea what hes going to say or what hes going to ask, she said. I dont know if its going to be West Wing or Get Out.
Whitford gushed over his interviewee I just want to say I love you offered a Bill Clinton impression unlikely to trouble Tim Watters and failed to question her over former Democratic National Committee chairwoman Donna Braziles explosive new book.
But the actor did deliver some memorable lines about Trump including Youre running against a guy whose language is the verbal equivalent of a chimpanzee and Its like having a pilot whos never flown a plane before and thinks planes are stupid. And watching the press deal with Trump is, Whitford said, like a bunch of professors giving an oral exam to a professional wrestler.
When my husband and I got engaged, we entertained the idea of getting married in the church. After all, we were both raised Catholic. Up until high school, he attended a Catholic private school. And I started every Sunday with mass and then picked a Catholic university.
Charla Storey Photography
There was no way around it. We were engulfed in religion.
It was the primary reason we were even considering incorporating the ritual in our wedding day. Even though during our two-year relationship, and one-year engagement we had never attended mass as a couple, we felt like it was something we had to do.
So we began calling churches to inquire about pricing. I was shocked to discover our first pick required a $1,200 mandatory donation for 45-minute use of the church (more than 10 times the cost of our wedding venue for the evening). And from there, our options got less and less attractive.
A wedding symbolizes the start of a life together. The planning process is one of the first official steps in working as a team, and deciding what's best for you as a couple. Getting married in a church is a beautiful tradition, but we had to look at our options objectively to decide if this was something worth sacrificing for and potentially going over budget for.
We decided it wasn't.
Elizabeth Messina
The church had played no part in our relationship. We honored and respected the traditions held by family and friends, but realized we had to make a choice between what we 'should do' and what was right for us. For us, that meant promising to honor, love and respect each other every day. A pledge requiring work from both parties and not a religious deity to do the heavy lifting for us.
It was not a decision made out of spite or as a protest statement. But rather as a practical look at our finances and interactions with our religion. Not everyone was thrilled and it took time for some people to accept our decision. But ultimately, upon hearing our explanation, everyone understood our approach to the situation and welcomed it wholeheartedly. It helped that we were paying for most of the wedding ourselves, because it gave us the liberty to do what we wanted.
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In the end, it all worked out. We got married without any church drama or protests. And that's in large part because we analyzed the situation and did what was best for our relationship.
Family members still ask if one day I'll get married by the church. Being Mexican and Catholic is part of my identity so the answer is yes. One day it'll happen when we're ready, not when someone tells us to.
Style Me Pretty Contributor - Ximena N. Larkin is a writer and publicist. She lives in Chicago with her husband and dog.
(HANOI) President Donald Trump on Saturday deflected questions about whether Alabama Republican Senate candidate Roy Moore should drop out of the race because of sexual misconduct allegations against him.
Trump, who has been traveling in Asia, said hes been too busy reading documents and hasnt had time to catch up on television news coverage about Moore. So I have not seen very much about him, about it, Trump told reporters traveling with him as Air Force One flew from Danang to Hanoi, in Vietnam.
Trump referred back to a written statement that White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders read to reporters after The Washington Post report that an Alabama woman said Moore had sexual contact with her when she was 14 and he was a 32-year-old assistant district attorney.
The White House statement said Trump believes Moore will do the right thing and step aside if the decades-old allegations are true.
Moore, an outspoken conservative Christian and former state Supreme Court judge, said Friday during an interview with conservative radio host Sean Hannity that the alleged encounter with the 14-year-old never happened.
Asked when he would decide whether Moore did what he has been accused of, given that four women have come forward, Trump said: Honestly, Id have to look at it and I have to see.
The allegations have sparked a wave of concern among GOP officials in Washington who are anxious about their slim majority in the Senate. But they have produced little more than a collective shrug from many Republicans in Alabama, which holds a special election on Dec. 12 to fill the seat formerly held by Attorney General Jeff Sessions.
Moore was not Trumps preferred candidate. The Republican president had endorsed and campaigned for Sen. Luther Strange in the GOP primary. After Moore defeated Strange, Trump pledged to campaign for Moore.
Republican senators, including Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., have said Moore should step aside if the reports are true.
Trump suggested he would have more to say on the matter after he returns to the White House next week.
Ill stick with my statement for now, he said. But Ill have further comment as we go down the road. I have to get back into the country to see whats happening.
Today in 5 Lines
In an interview with conservative commentator Sean Hannity, Alabama Senate candidate Roy Moore denied allegations that he had a sexual encounter with a 14-year-old girl when he was 32, but only said he could not recall dating girls as young as 17. Earlier in the day, Mitt Romney said Moore is unfit for office and should step aside. Senate Republicans campaign committee will no longer fundraise on Moores behalf. During a speech at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit, President Trump delivered an America First message and pledged to pursue fair trade deals. Five Democratic senators said they want to hold a second confirmation hearing for Kirstjen Nielsen, Trumps nominee to head the Department of Homeland Security.
Today on The Atlantic
Fight the System: The Trump White House is becoming increasingly frustrated about the restrictions on its authority and is finding other ways to pursue the presidents political agenda. (Alex Wagner)
Do Taxes Matter That Much?: Republican leaders believe that passing tax reform will be the key to their success in 2018. Its more likely that the opposite is true. (David A. Graham)
It Was 40 Years Ago: Here are some of the ways that Alabama Senate candidate Roy Moores supporters have defended him from allegations of sexual misconduct. (Elaine Godfrey)
Radio Atlantic: What lessons have journalists taken from the 2016 campaign and President Trumps election? Whats changed since then? And what should change going forward? In the latest episode of Radio Atlantic, Adrienne LaFrance, the editor of TheAtlantic.com, and Yoni Appelbaum, the magazine's politics and policy editor, join Matt and Jeff to look back and look ahead one year after the Trump Era began.
Follow stories throughout the day with our Politics & Policy portal.
Recommended: 'I Don't Remember Anything Like That'
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Snapshot
President Donald Trump speaks on the final day of the APEC CEO Summit, part of the broader Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation leaders' summit, in the central Vietnamese city of Danang. Anthony Wallace / AP
What Were Reading
No Place in Politics: David French argues that Alabamians should not dismiss the allegations against Senate candidate Roy Mooreand should consider supporting a write-in candidate on the ballot. (National Review)
Recommended: Trump Battles Constraints on His Power
A Biden Bid: After repeatedly changing his mind about launching a presidential bid, people close to the former vice president say hes leaning toward running in 2020. (Edward-Isaac Dovere, Politico)
The Highlights: In his interview with The New York Times, former White House Chief Strategist Steve Bannon talked about his plan to topple the political establishment and shape the Republican Party in Trumps image. Here are a few key takeaways. (Jeremy W. Peters)
Predicting 2020: Trumps supporters are still loyal to himand probably will be no matter what, argues Ezra Klein, but we shouldnt mistake Trumps hardcore support for the votes that won him the White House, and that hes at most risk of losing. (Vox)
Inexperienced: President Trumps nominee to be a federal judge in Alabama has reportedly never tried a case and was rated not qualified by the American Bar Association. (David G. Savage, Los Angeles Times)
Visualized
Its Been a Long Year: Want to feel old? Take a look at this timeline chronicling the 365 days since Donald Trump was elected president of the United States. (Benjamin Freed, Washingtonian)
Question of the Week
This week, we asked you to share your memories from the 2016 election. Many of you shared similar stories, mostly marked by disbelief at the results.
I was awake until 1 a.m. and gave up and went to bed, writes Daphne Georges from Massachusetts. I voted for Trump for a number of reasons but never thought hed win. When I woke up the next morning and turned on the news, I felt like Rip Van Winkle. Couldnt believe it.
Recommended: Why the AR-15 Was Never Meant to be in Civilians' Hands
For others, that surprise was less welcome. Kathryn Ischinger from California writes that she had planned for a Clinton victory: Caviar was in the refrigerator as was the champagne. Needless to say, there was not a celebration to be had.
Dennis Futoryan from New York was at the Hillary Clinton election party in New York City, where he said the atmosphere was hopeful at first. But then came Florida, and the crowd stood as the state turned red, he writes. As a state would turn red or blue, people would look to their phones to read the latest analysis and answer the question of What state does Hillary need next to guarantee an Electoral College victory? I didnt stick around too soon after that, as the waiting grew tiresome and cold in the late hours.
Thanks to everyone who submitted responses, and stay tuned for next weeks Question of the Week.
-Written by Elaine Godfrey (@elainejgodfrey)
Read more from The Atlantic:
This article was originally published on The Atlantic.
By Alison Bevege SYDNEY (Reuters) - Australia's Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull on Sunday said he would discuss North Korea and Islamist terrorism as threats to regional stability, ahead of his arrival at an East Asia leaders' summit in the Philippines. North Korea was a criminal regime and the single largest threat to the region, Turnbull told a televised news conference in Hong Kong. "They are very cunning operators," he said, urging a tightening of economic sanctions. Islamist terrorism in the southern Philippines is the other key security issue Turnbull aims to discuss with Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte in Manila. Australia said in September it would send troops to train Philippines armed forces engaged in a 154-day battle with Islamic State fighters in the southern city of Marawi, in the country's biggest security crisis in decades. Turnbull stressed the importance of help by Indonesian President Joko Widodo in defusing Islamist extremism as the leader of the world's largest Muslim-majority country, which is also a democracy. "He speaks with great authority when he says Islam is compatible with democracy and moderation," Turnbull added. "He's a powerful voice for moderation in the region." Australia's embattled prime minister will attend the high-powered regional summit at the same time as a citizenship crisis at home has destroyed the parliamentary majority of his ruling center-right coalition. The constitution bars dual nationals from parliament, and Turnbull's government was thrown into disarray last month by a High Court ruling that five parliamentarians, including his deputy, Barnaby Joyce, were ineligible to be lawmakers. The resignation of another MP on Saturday has left Turnbull as the head of a minority government, with his position guaranteed only by the votes of two independents. Turnbull said he expects Joyce to be returned to Parliament following a Dec. 2 by-election. (Reporting by Alison Bevege; Editing by Clarence Fernandez)
Dubai (AFP) - Bahraini Shiite opposition leader Sheikh Ali Salman will face trial later this month for "spying" for Qatar, the state prosecution said on Sunday.
Salman will be tried alongside two of his colleagues, Hassan Sultan and Ali Mehdi, from November 27 after they were charged earlier this month of espionage.
"The prosecution has referred the case in which Ali Salman, Hassan Sultan and Ali Mahdi are accused of spying for the state of Qatar to the High Criminal Court," the state prosecution said in a tweet.
Salman has been behind bars since 2014 serving a nine-year sentence for allegedly inciting hatred.
On November 1 the state prosecution charged him with "spying on behalf of a foreign country ... with the aim of carrying out subversive acts against Bahrain and harming its national interests".
Salman was also charged with "revealing defence secrets to a foreign country and disseminating information that would harm Bahrain's status and reputation".
The investigation into purported links between Salman and Qatar was first launched in August, after a quartet of Arab countries -- Bahrain included -- accused their gas-rich neighbour of supporting terrorism and close relations with Shiite Iran.
State-run Bahrain Television aired a report which claimed that neighbouring Qatar was behind anti-government protests that have shaken the tiny kingdom for the past six years.
It alleged that Qatar's former premier Sheikh Hamad bin Jassem Al-Thani contacted Salman -- then head of Bahrain's largest opposition group, Al-Wefaq -- in 2011 and asked him to urge protesters to flood the streets and ramp up pressure on the state.
Al-Wefaq was the largest group in parliament before its lawmakers resigned en masse in protest at the crushing of Arab Spring-inspired demonstrations in 2011 calling for an elected government.
The Shiite Muslim movement has called for Bahrain to become a constitutional monarchy.
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The Shiite majority in Bahrain, which has been ruled by the Al-Khalifa dynasty for more than two centuries, has long complained of marginalisation and the country has been rocked by sporadic unrest since 2011.
The start of the trial comes amid rising regional tension between Sunni-ruled Saudi Arabia, a close ally of Bahrain, and rival Shiite powerhouse Iran.
Bahrain on Saturday accused Iran of being behind a pipeline fire that temporarily halted oil supplies from Saudi Arabia.
A spokesman for the Iranian foreign ministry on Sunday rejected the accusations.
President Donald Trumps decision to send thousands of additional troops to Afghanistan has paved the way for a major expansion of the U.S. air war against the Taliban and will involve more American forces working directly with Afghan troops in combat to call in airstrikes.
Hundreds of American troops will accompany Afghan forces on combat missions, where they will be able to directly request bombing raids and artillery fire for their Afghan partners, current and former Pentagon officials told Foreign Policy.
The tactic will allow commanders to widen an already intensifying air campaign that has seen more strikes taken this year than at any point since 2012. Senior military officers say the approach of embedding American forces with Afghan units in the field is modeled on the U.S.-led air war in Iraq and Syria, where American commandos dialed in heavy firepower while local Iraqi and Kurdish forces fought the Islamic State on the ground.
As in Iraq and Syria, however, U.S. troops are being told to stop short of engaging in direct combat, letting Afghans do the fighting while the Americans hold nearby, two military officials told FP, providing tactical advice and calling in air and artillery fire.
While U.S. special operations troops will continue to take on this mission in Afghanistan, newly arrived U.S. soldiers will also spread out with with small Afghan units in the field. The combat advising mission represents a sea change in the American approach to the war since the end of combat operations in 2015, after which American forces were largely confined to their bases, training Afghan forces and advising military leaders.
In August, Trump announced a new Afghan strategy that paved the way for expanded operations in the country. After months of back-and-forth between the Pentagon and White House, an agreement was reached to send an additional 3,000 U.S. troops on top of the 11,000 already on the ground.
The expanded mission carries the risk of more American casualties in a war that has already claimed 2,400 American lives, but U.S. commanders insist the only way to break the stalemate with the Taliban is to push Americans closer to the fight, and give them air and artillery support to slice through Taliban and Islamic State opposition.
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There have already been over 2,400 U.S. airstrikes in Afghanistan this year, the highest number since 2012, when there were 90,000 American combat troops in the country. About 14,000 U.S. troops are on the ground now.
American airpower in Afghanistan has ebbed and flowed over the 16-year war. Until the Obama administration came into office in 2009, Afghanistan was seen as secondary to Iraq, and resources were regularly diverted to what was seen as the main effort against al Qaeda there.
The Obama surge brought over 100,000 troops to the fight and saw a major uptick in airstrikes until then-commander Gen. Stanley McChrystal scaled back bombing raids to avoid alienating the local population. When he was replaced by Gen. David Petraeus in 2010, strikes spiked to about 5,000 a year, before gradually falling off again to around 1,000 in 2015 and 2016 until this year.
As part of the Trump surge, about 700 soldiers from a specially trained and equipped U.S. Army unit are slated to arrive early next year in Afghanistan, where theyll partner with Afghan forces and call in air power to back up their operations.
While the new forces are regular Army troops, theyll in many ways mimic the role Special Forces soldiers have traditionally played on the battlefield. Known as the Security Force Assistance Brigade, the unit is currently wrapping up its training at Fort Benning, Georgia.
The soldiers are receiving instruction on specialized equipment, like the Nett Warrior system, a small, smartphone-like device that allows soldiers to pinpoint and share intelligence with friendly forces. Many of them are also receiving training as joint fires observers, which will allow them to call in airstrikes during combat operations, a job normally reserved for a small number of specialized troops.
Lightly equipped, and in the field with Afghan units, the soldiers will need to be able to pick up a hand mic and call for indirect fire support, said Brig. Gen. Brian Mennes, director of the Armys Force Management School. The soldiers will also get the best current communications equipment similar to what you see with Special Forces and Rangers.
The move will enable the expanded use of American air power to back up Afghan forces on the ground, said David Sedney, a former senior Pentagon official and diplomat who oversaw policy on Afghanistan and Central Asia.
Similar concepts were proposed by the Pentagon and rejected by the Obama White House, he said, as officials at the time wanted to curtail the U.S. military role.
Sedney acknowledged the plan is not guaranteed to work, and its success hinges on Afghan forces performing effectively. The Afghan army and police have had an erratic track record and have been plagued by desertions and debilitating combat casualties.
The biggest risk to that is the overall leadership to the [Afghan] government and the military, he said. In order for the military to work, the government has to work. Its still a fractured and fragile government.
Nonetheless, its an excellent approach, said Sedney, who is critical of the decision to pull back most U.S. ground forces several years ago. Its what we should have done in 2014.
YAOUNDE (Reuters) - Separatists from Cameroon's Anglophone region have killed four security forces in several attacks over the past few days, the government said on Saturday, an unprecedented violent turn to a movement that risks morphing into a full blown insurgency. A government crackdown on the separatists has killed dozens of people since October and driven many into the arms of a once-fringe separatist movement ahead of presidential elections in 2018. It followed on from demonstrations a year ago by English-speakers in the western region bordering Nigeria against what they see as a marginalization by the mostly French-speaking government of President Paul Biya, who has been in power for 35 years. Only a minority want to secede, however. The secessionists have been around for decades, but operated underground and had been largely non-violent until a few weeks ago. A spokesman for the separatists acknowledged the latest attacks but disputed details of the government account, and said five security forces had been killed. In Saturday's statement, Communications Minister Issa Tchiroma gave more details of the killing of two gendarmes reported on Tuesday and Wednesday, and said two further attacks on Thursday night had killed two soldiers. Referring to attacks earlier in the week, Tchiroma said assailants armed with machetes stormed a high school in the town of Jakiri on Tuesday. The separatists are disrupting schools that teach in French. Gendarmes arrived on the scene to stop them, but one was killed in the resultant scuffle. Tchiroma said he was "executed", but Cho Ayaba, a leading member of the political wing of the separatist movement who lives abroad told Reuters in Dakar by telephone that he was killed in a firefight. Then on Wednesday, in the restive city of Bamenda, another attack left a gendarme dead, Tchiroma said. Ayaba reported two deaths of security forces in that attack. On Thursday night, insurgents killed a soldier in Bamenda by slitting his throat, Tchiroma said, and another female soldier guarding a bridge. "As I speak, four members of the Defense and Security Forces on duty have been killed, murdered by terrorists on behalf of the secessionist movement," Tchiroma said. Ayaba contradicted that, saying that all of the deaths had occurred in shootouts, and that no one had their throat slit. "That's absolute nonsense," he said. "There was no physical contact." Cameroon's language divide is a legacy of World War One, when the League of Nations split the former German colony of Kamerun between allied French and British victors. Hundreds of Anglophone Cameroonians were swept up in mass arrests following demonstrations on Oct. 1, and at least 5,000 have fled the crisis for neighboring Nigeria. The crackdown, which included cutting the Internet, locking up opponents and using helicopter gunships to fire on civilians, and a lack of any political solution is fast transforming a protest movement into an armed rebellion. "Cameroon soldiers are enforcing an occupation," Ayaba said. "The only thing that will make us stop these attacks is if the regime withdraws ... if they stop using the military to impose political exclusion and systematic terror on our people." (Writing and additional reporting by Tim Cocks in Dakar; editing by Clelia Oziel)
SUTHERLAND SPRINGS, Texas (AP) -- Two silver hearses carrying the bodies of a couple killed in last weekend's shooting at a Texas church were followed by a long procession of vehicles Saturday that avoided passing the small church where more than two dozen people died.
Mourners instead drove around the tiny community of Sutherland Springs before reaching a cemetery on the edge of town, where dozens more vehicles waited along a rural road for the private burial of Therese and Richard Rodriguez. Sheriff's SUVs shielded mourners at the cemetery's three entrances.
The services for the recently retired couple followed a ceremony earlier in the day where about 100 people gathered to commemorate Veterans Day and to honor the shooting victims, nearly half of whom had ties to the Air Force.
"Maybe this will start the healing process that will get Sutherland Springs and Wilson County to put this horrific tragedy behind us and look to the future," county Judge Richard Jackson, his voice breaking, told the crowd, which included first responders and law enforcement officers.
Jackson, the county's top administrator, thanked the first responders and others who rushed to First Baptist Church in the aftermath of Sunday's shooting. What they saw there will affect them the rest of their lives, Jackson said during the ceremony outside the town's community center, where a wreath was placed near flags to remember those killed.
The gunman killed 25 people authorities put the number at 26 because one was pregnant and wounded about 20 others. The gunman died of what appeared to be a self-inflicted gunshot wound after being shot and chased by two men who heard gunfire from the church.
Investigators have said the shooting appeared to stem from a domestic dispute involving the attacker, Devin Patrick Kelley, and his mother-in-law, who sometimes attended services at the church but wasn't there the day of the shooting.
Kelley had a history of violence. He was given a bad conduct discharge from the Air Force after pleading guilty to assaulting his first wife and stepson. The ex-wife, Tessa Brennaman, told "Inside Edition" that Kelley once put a gun to her head because she'd received a speeding ticket and threatened to kill her and her family. A former Air Force colleague told The New York Times that Kelley, after leaving the military, contacted her about his obsession with Dylann Roof, who killed nine people at a church in Charleston, South Carolina, in 2015.
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Sutherland Springs is about 30 miles (48 kilometers) southeast of San Antonio and not far from several military posts, including Lackland Air Force Base. The Air Force's chief of staff, Gen. David Goldfein, said 12 of those killed were either members of the Air Force or had family ties to it.
Among them were Scott and Karen Marshall, both 56, who had decided to retire in nearby La Vernia after meeting when they were in the service together more than 30 years ago. On Thursday, a military funeral was held for them at Joint Base San Antonio-Randolph.
Retired Chief Warrant Officer Mike Gonzales, who led Saturday's Veterans Day ceremony, moved to Sutherland Springs with his wife to raise their children in 2009. He said many veterans choose to live in the San Antonio area because of its deep military ties, and families tend to migrate to the city's surrounding rural areas.
"We come here to enjoy life, to get quiet and to raise our children," he said. "We've been to war zones and seen that tragedy firsthand. Never did we think that tragedy would strike here."
U.S. Rep. Henry Cuellar told the gathering to lean on one another for support. The Texas congressman said $10 million in federal assistance has been secured to help cover overtime costs for law enforcement agencies involved in the investigation.
Some in the crowd Saturday wore shirts that said "Sutherland Springs Strong" and included an outline of Texas with a heart of the town's location. The shirts were donated by Brenda Bierd, who lives on the Gulf Coast and whose home was damaged by Hurricane Harvey in late August.
"I hadn't even heard of Sutherland Springs before the shooting, but this is what you do," she said. "I just had this feeling I needed to be here."
A steady stream of people also visited a makeshift memorial of crosses adorned with flowers, photographs, red hearts and white, purple and pink balloons.
Among the visitors was Jackie Lee, who said she asked her friends on Facebook if anyone would come with her from San Antonio this weekend. She said about two dozen people quickly said they would.
"It was on my heart since it happened," she said. "I needed to come to show the community some support, to show these people some support."
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Associated Press writer Emily Schmall contributed to this report.
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Karbala (Iraq) (AFP) - The Islamic State group's occupation of northern Iraq and the battle to defeat it has caused more than $100 billion worth of damage, Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi said Saturday.
He was speaking during a visit to Karbala, a city holy to Shiite Muslims, where millions of pilgrims gathered Friday to mark the annual Arbaeen commemoration.
"The damage caused by the IS occupation of Iraqi cities already amounts to more than $100 billion," Abadi said.
"That's just the damage to the economy and infrastructure."
IS, a radical Sunni group, seized around a third of Iraq and parts of Syria in a sweeping 2014 advance.
But its self-declared "caliphate" has since been decimated by multiple offensives and squeezed into a pocket of territory on the Iraqi-Syrian border.
Iraqi forces launched an operation Saturday to retake the last IS-held towns in Iraq, including the Euphrates valley town of Rawa and nearby villages.
The assault also aims to "clean open areas in the desert" of western Iraq, said Abadi, who is also head of the armed forces.
Arbaeen is one of the biggest religious festivals on earth and marks the end of the 40-day mourning period for the 7th-century killing of Imam Hussein by the forces of the Caliph Yazid -- a formative event in Shiite Islam.
Around 15 million pilgrims gathered in Karbala for this year's commemoration, including three million non-Iraqis, mostly Iranians, the province's security chief Qais Khalaf said Saturday.
The pilgrimage, under tight security, passed off without incident.
The expulsion of IS from Iraqi cities added an extra dimension to this year's pilgrimage, as the Sunni extremist group has repeatedly targeted Shiites.
Last year, a suicide bombing killed at least 70 mainly Iranian worshippers returning from the commemoration.
Donald Trump took to Twitter during his trip in Vietnam to trade barbs with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, calling the dictator short and fat.
Why would Kim Jong-un insult me by calling me old when I would NEVER call him short and fat? he wrote.
Oh well, I try so hard to be his friend and maybe someday that will happen!
Mr Trump made the comment after attending the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (Apec) summit in Danang.
Speaking later in Vietnams capital, Hanoi, the US President said it would be very, very nice if he and Mr Kim could become friends.
That might be a strange thing to happen, but its a possibility, he said.
North Koreas state media agency KCNA had accused the US President of escalating tensions between the two countries to the extremes and called on America to oust its leader.
No-one can predict when that lunatic old man of the White House, lost to sense, will start a nuclear war, KCNA had said. The world is undergoing unprecedented throes because of Trump, a notorious political heretic.
The US must oust the lunatic old man from power and withdraw the hostile policy towards the DPRK at once in order to get rid of the abyss of doom.
Why would Kim Jong-un insult me by calling me "old," when I would NEVER call him "short and fat?" Oh well, I try so hard to be his friend - and maybe someday that will happen! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 12, 2017
The US had better make a decisive choice ... if it does not want a horrible nuclear disaster and tragic doom.
The KCNA's calls for Mr Trump's removal come after the billionaire attacked the haters and fools who he said are preventing the development of good relations forming between the US and Russia.
When will all the haters and fools out there realise that having a good relationship with Russia is a good thing, not a bad thing, Mr Trump tweeted.
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The President came under fire after making remarks on Saturday that suggested he believed Russian leader Vladimir Putins assertions that his country had not meddled in the election that took Mr Trump to the White House.
The comments drew criticism as US intelligence agencies had already concluded there had been Russian meddling in the election race.
Donald Trump talks to Vladimir Putin during a photo session at an economic conference in Danang, Vietnam, on Saturday - REUTERS
President Donald Trump poses a threat to American national security because he is vulnerable to being played by Russia, according to two former intelligence chiefs.
Their comments on Sunday came after Mr Trump tried to walk back his claim that he believed Vladimir Putins denials that Russia did not meddle in last years American election.
But John Brennan, former director of the CIA, and James Clapper, former director of the National Security Agency, condemned his refusal to push back hard against the Russian president Putin and his role in trying to sway the outcome.
Mr Brennan told CNNs State of the Union: I think it demonstrates to Mr Putin that Donald Trump can be played by foreign leaders who are going to appeal to his ego and try to play upon his insecurities, which is very, very worrisome from a national security standpoint.
The American president has been dogged by questions about the Russia scandal during his five-nation visit to Asia.
Donald Trump talks with Rodrigo Duterte, president of the Philippines, during a gala dinner after arriving in Manlia on the final leg of his five-nation tour of Asia Credit: Reuters
On Saturday, Mr Trumps said he accepted the sincerity of Mr Putins denials.
Every time he sees me, he says: I didn't do that. And I believe I really believe that when he tells me that, he means it, he told reporters aboard Air Force One.
Later that day, he tried to clarify his remarks, insisting he did trust his intelligence agencies which had come to a different conclusion.
I believe that [Mr Putin] feels that he and Russia did not meddle in the election, said Mr Trump at a news conference in Hanoi.
As to whether I believe it, I'm with our agencies. As currently led by fine people, I believe very much in our intelligence agencies.
Former CIA Director John Brennan says it is puzzling why President Trump doesnt call our Russian President Vladimir Putin for meddling in the 2016 election #CNNSOTUhttps://t.co/3tSTZ9Cgqp CNN (@CNN) November 12, 2017
He also said he did not believe Mr Putin was personally involved and lashed out at former heads of US intelligence agencies including Mr Brennan and Mr Clapper - calling them political hacks.
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The CIA and other agencies have presented evidence that Russian officials, directed by Mr Putin, tried to help Mr Trump defeat his rival, Hillary Clinton.
A federal investigation into whether Mr Trumps team colluded with that effort has already led to charges against three members of the campaign.
There's nothing "America First" about taking the word of KGB colonel over US intelligence community. There's no "principled realism" in cooperating w/ Russia to prop up murderous Assad regime. To believe otherwise is naive & places nat'l security at risk. https://t.co/SYiVHtHXPX John McCain (@SenJohnMcCain) November 11, 2017
But former senior intelligence officials say they are mystified about Mr Trumps failure to take a tougher line.
James Clapper, former director of National Intelligence, told CNN: Putin is committed to undermining our system, our democracy and our whole process. To try to paint it in any other way is, I think, astounding and poses a peril to this country.
Mr Trump arrived in the Philippines yesterday on the final leg of his trip.
The American president has previously praised the countrys violent war on drugs, despite allegations of widespread extrajudicial killings.
His host, Rodrigo Duterte, has sometimes been called the Trump of the East for his brash, no-holds-barred style.
Mr Trump has frequently been at odds with Asian and Pacific leaders who are forging ahead with free-trade deals.
And hours before they were due to meet, Mr Duterte delivered another snub, casting further doubt on American economic leadership in the region.
Today China is the number one economic power, and we have to be friends, he told a business conference in Manila.
Donald Trump is currently on his 12-day Asian tour, but that doesnt mean he doesnt have time to fire off some tweets. Once again, he blasted fake news media for criticizing his relationship with Putin and insisted that a relationship with Russia would be a good thing. He also fired back at Kim Jong-un calling him an old man.
In a series of tweets, Trump mentioned that he met with Putin at APEC saying that he and the Russian President had some good discussions on Syria and said that progress is being made.
He then went on to blast all the haters and fools, saying having a good relationship with Russia is a good thing, not a bad thing. He adds, I want to solve North Korea, Syria, Ukraine, terrorism, and Russia can greatly help.
Of course, a conversation about Russia wouldnt be complete without putting his two cents in about how the fake news media treats him versus how they treated Crooked Hillary and Obama with their attempts at Russian relations.
Finally, Trump addressed Kim Jon-uns recent speech in which he referred to him as a lunatic old man. His response was a bit tame: Why would Kim Jong-un insult me by calling me old, when I would NEVER call him short and fat?' He then went on to say that maybe one day they will be friends.
Met with President Putin of Russia who was at #APEC meetings. Good discussions on Syria. Hope for his help to solve, along with China the dangerous North Korea crisis. Progress being made. Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 12, 2017
When will all the haters and fools out there realize that having a good relationship with Russia is a good thing, not a bad thing. There always playing politics bad for our country. I want to solve North Korea, Syria, Ukraine, terrorism, and Russia can greatly help! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 12, 2017
Does the Fake News Media remember when Crooked Hillary Clinton, as Secretary of State, was begging Russia to be our friend with the misspelled reset button? Obama tried also, but he had zero chemistry with Putin. Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 12, 2017
Why would Kim Jong-un insult me by calling me "old," when I would NEVER call him "short and fat?" Oh well, I try so hard to be his friend and maybe someday that will happen! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 12, 2017
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Marching bands and color guard teams took to the streets of downtown Napa on Saturday to compete in the 28th annual Vintage Reserve Band Review hosted by Vintage High School.
Spectators lined down Third Street to listen to and watch teams from 19 different high schools from across the Bay Area, including Half Moon Bay High School, Hayward High School, and Livermore High School, compete in the parade portion of the competition.
Vintage High School hosted the competition, so instead of competing, they performed an exhibition.
This is what the kids have worked for all year, said Jan Knudsen.
Jan and her husband, Bill, were volunteers during the competition Saturday. Its their way of supporting their granddaughter, Brooke, a freshman in the high school band. She plays the clarinet and, for the past two weeks, she and her fellow bandmates have been practicing until 9 p.m.
Its a lot of dedication, Jan said.
Its just like playing sports, said Brookes father, Tom Knudsen. It keeps kids out of trouble.
More than that though, Jan said, the students become like a big family.
They bond, they have fun and they go on wonderful trips, she said.
Parent Paul Nepo drove more than an hour to watch two of his children perform in the competition. Competing isnt a big deal for the Oak Ridge High School students, he said, because it is something they do every two weeks.
Kristel Laurora, 12, of Fairfield came with her family to watch her older brother, Christian, perform.
Hes really good and Im proud of him, Kristel said. Christian, a senior at Fairfield High School, has participated in band all four years of high school and has performed in the Vintage Review before. Hes currently the leader of the euphonium section.
The Vintage Reserve Band Review was scheduled to last until 9 p.m. with the second half of the competition, including a percussion competition and field show competition, held at Memorial Stadium on Menlo Avenue. The competition is one of six fundraisers the Vintage High School Instrumental Music Department holds throughout the year.
Former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper said US President Donald Trump downplaying Russian election hacking is a threat to national security: JIM WATSON/AFP/Getty Images
The former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper said that US President Donald Trump's downplaying of Russia's meddling in the 2016 US election "poses a peril to this country."
Mr Clapper was speaking alongside former CIA Director John Brennan on CNN regarding Mr Trump's tepid comments on his current Asia tour after conversations with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
"The threat posed by Russia, as John just said, is manifest and obvious. To try to paint it in any other way is, I think, astounding, and in fact, poses a peril to this country," noted Mr Clapper.
Mr Brennan said that by not confronting the issue directly and not acknowledging to Putin that we know you are responsible for this, I think hes giving Putin a pass."
The US President's lack of seriousness on the matter shows that he "can be played by foreign leaders who are going to appeal to his ego and to try to play upon his insecurities," based on Mr Brennan's estimation.
The Russian leader reportedly denied the hacking allegations once again during a brief meeting with Mr Trump at the Asia-Pacific Economic Summit.
"I believe that he feels that he and Russia did not meddle in the election," Mr Trump said at a news conference in Hanoi, Vietnam.
"As to whether I believe it or not, I am with our agencies, especially as currently constituted with the leadership," he added.
However, the US president did not categorically say Russia was behind the meddling which could have contributed to his ultimate victory, though US intelligence officials have confirmed as much.
The latest comments also appear to be backtracking on his initial statements following the meeting, when Mr Trump said: "Every time he sees me he says I didn't do that, and I really believe that when he tells me that, he means it...I think he is very insulted by it, which is not a good thing for our country."
However, Mr Trump also took to Twitter later to call out "haters and fools" for fomenting bad relations between the US and Russia.
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When will all the haters and fools out there realize that having a good relationship with Russia is a good thing, not a bad thing. There always playing politics - bad for our country. I want to solve North Korea, Syria, Ukraine, terrorism, and Russia can greatly help! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 12, 2017
He also noted that his attempt at better relations with Mr Putin was more beneficial than that of former President Barack Obama's, adding they had "zero chemistry."
Does the Fake News Media remember when Crooked Hillary Clinton, as Secretary of State, was begging Russia to be our friend with the misspelled reset button? Obama tried also, but he had zero chemistry with Putin. Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 12, 2017
Mr Clapper called Mr Trump's initial comments "unconscionable" and is not the only US official to be wary of the President's comments.
Senator John McCain was concerned about Mr Trump's naivety in "taking the word of a KGB colonel over that of the American intelligence community."
Adam Schiff, the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, commented: "You know who else is insulted by it, Mr President? The American people. You believe a foreign adversary over your own intelligence agencies."
Current CIA Director Mike Pompeo issued a statement that the agency stands by it and the intelligence community's findings from January 2017.
Mr Trump is currently on a 12-day Asia tour and meeting with Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte today.
U.S. President Donald Trump addresses a joint news conference at the Presidential Palace in Hanoi - REUTERS
Donald Trump fired off a passive aggressive barb directed at North Korean leader Kim Jong-un today insisting he would never call him "short and fat".
In a response to the regime's foreign ministry calling him "old", President Trump, who is in Vietnam, said on Twitter:
Why would Kim Jong-un insult me by calling me "old," when I would NEVER call him "short and fat?" Oh well, I try so hard to be his friend - and maybe someday that will happen! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 12, 2017
Mr Trump made the comment after attending the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (Apec) summit in Danang.
Speaking later in Vietnams capital, Hanoi, the US President said it would be very, very nice if he and Mr Kim could become friends.
That might be a strange thing to happen, but its a possibility, he said.
things facts you didn't know about north korea
North Koreas state media agency KCNA had accused the US President of escalating tensions between the two countries to the extremes and called on America to oust its header.
No-one can predict that lunatic old man of the White House, lost to sense, will start a nuclear war, KCNA had said. The world is undergoing unprecedented throes because of Trump, a notorious political heretic.
The KCNA's calls for Mr Trump's removal come after the billionaire attacked the haters and fools who he said are preventing the development of good relations forming between the US and Russia.
When will all the haters and fools out there realise that having a good relationship with Russia is a good thing, not a bad thing, Mr Trump tweeted.
Donald Trump waves from the door of Air Force One plane as he arrives at Noi Bai International Airpot in Hanoi, Vietnam: EPA
Donald Trump has defended efforts by him and his administration to maintain close ties with the Kremlin amid intense and growing scrutiny of Russian meddling in the US election, insisting a good relationship with Vladimir Putin was a "good thing".
He called out "haters and fools" who questioned the benefits of maintaining friendly relations with Moscow, claiming Barack Obama tried and failed to foster closer links with Mr Putin because of a lack of "chemistry".
He also claimed "progress is being made" in efforts to reign in North Korea's nuclear programme after China vowed to increase sanctions against the pariah state.
In a series of tweets on Saturday evening that ranged from the Korean crisis to the "fake news media" and "crooked Hillary Clinton", the US President wrote: "President Xi of China has stated that he is upping the sanctions against #NoKo [North Korea]. Said he wants them to denuclearize. Progress is being made."
President Xi of China has stated that he is upping the sanctions against #NoKo. Said he wants them to denuclearize. Progress is being made. Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 11, 2017
Tweeting from Vietnam - the penultimate stop on his five nation Asia tour - Mr Trump added: "Met with President Putin of Russia who was at #APEC meetings. Good discussions on Syria. Hope for his help to solve, along with China the dangerous North Korea crisis. Progress being made.
"When will all the haters and fools out there realize that having a good relationship with Russia is a good thing, not a bad thing. There always playing politics - bad for our country [sic]. I want to solve North Korea, Syria, Ukraine, terrorism, and Russia can greatly help!"
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When will all the haters and fools out there realize that having a good relationship with Russia is a good thing, not a bad thing. There always playing politics - bad for our country. I want to solve North Korea, Syria, Ukraine, terrorism, and Russia can greatly help! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 12, 2017
He claimed Ms Clinton and Barack Obama had "begged" Russia for closer ties, but added that his predecessor in the White House had "zero chemistry with Putin".
Does the Fake News Media remember when Crooked Hillary Clinton, as Secretary of State, was begging Russia to be our friend with the misspelled reset button? Obama tried also, but he had zero chemistry with Putin. Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 12, 2017
His comments followed several brief conversations between the Russian and US leaders during the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (Apec) summit.
The men reportedly discussed the North Korea nuclear crisis, the Syrian civil war and Russian meddling in the 2016 US presidential election.
Speaking after their meeting, Mr Trump said the accusations had hurt Mr Putins feelings.
He said he didnt meddle, the US leader told reporters aboard Air Force One. I asked him again. You can only ask so many times... He said he absolutely did not meddle in our election. He did not do what they are saying he did.
And I believe, I really believe that, when he tells me that he means it.
Mr Trump also appeared to respond to reports last week that North Korean leader Kim Jong-un had described him as a "lunatic old man".
And he said he had tried "so hard" to be Mr Kim's "friend...and maybe someday that will happen!".
Why would Kim Jong-un insult me by calling me "old," when I would NEVER call him "short and fat?" Oh well, I try so hard to be his friend - and maybe someday that will happen! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 12, 2017
On Sunday, Mr Trump travels to the Philippines capital, Manila, to meet President Rodrigo Duterte for the last leg of his 12-day Asia trip.
Donald Trump offered a fresh olive branch to North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un, saying it would be a "good thing" if the two men met.
Speaking at a press conference in Hanoi he reiterated his willingness to sit down with Kim while at the same time stepping up his attacks on Pyongyang.
Asked if he believed a meeting could happen, Mr Trump responded: "Anything is possible. Strange things happen in life.
"If that happened it would be good for North Korea. It would be a good thing for the world. I don't know if it will happen, but it would be a good thing if it did."
North Korea | Kim Jong-uns fiery relationship with the US
Earlier in the day, Mr Trump took exception, on Twitter, to the North Koreans calling him old - tweeting that he would never call Kim "short and fat."
The US president called on other countries to support the US in curbing Pyongyang, warning of the consequences if nothing was done.
"All responsible nations must now ensure that North Korea's rogue regime stops threatening the world with unthinkable loss of life.
"We have been provoked, the whole world has been provoked. We want stability, not chaos. We want peace, not war."
In the same press conference, the US president appeared to distance himself from suggestions that he accepted Vladimir Putin's insistence that Russia had not meddled in the 2016 US election.
"What he believes is what he believes," Mr Trump told reporters as he tried to draw a line under the controversy, despite saying he that he agreed with the U.S. intelligence community's assessment on Russian meddling in last year's U.S. election.
US President Donald Trump addresses a joint news conference at the Presidential Palace in Hanoi Credit: Jonathan Ernst/Reuters
"I want to get on with Russia, to get on with China, to get on with Vietnam."
"Frankly Russia and China to help us with the North Korean problem. We have to work together to solve Syria, solve Ukraine, solve terrorism.
"Russia has been heavily sanctioned. Now it is time to get back to healing world which is shattered and broken. Having Russian in a friendly posture and not fighting with us is a healthy thing for the world."
Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin meet in Vietnam - AFP
The United States and Russia issued a presidential joint statement saying there was "no military solution" to the war in Syria after their leaders met briefly on the sidelines of a regional summit in Vietnam.
There had been mixed messages for days from both Moscow and the White House on whether President Donald Trump and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin would hold face-to-face discussions during the APEC summit in Danang.
The statement, issued by officials from both sides, said the two presidents had made progress on Syria, which has been battered by six years of civil war.
The US and Russia have backed competing factions in the bloody conflict, and agreement on the next steps towards peace is rare.
"The presidents agreed that there is no military solution to the conflict in Syria," the statement said, adding that the two sides "confirmed their determination to defeat ISIS" an alternative name for the Islamic State jihadist group.
In quotes | The Trump - Putin relationship
The statement added that the two sides had agreed to keep military channels open to avoid potential clashes over Syria and urged the warring sides to participate in UN-led peace talks in Geneva.
Russia has run a major bombing campaign in Syria since 2015, when it stepped in to support President Bashar al-Assads fight against rebels some of them US-backed tipping the conflict in his favour.
The Russian military has recently accused the United States of merely "pretending" to fight IS in Iraq and of hindering the Russian-backed offensive in eastern Syria.
But Saturdays joint statement expressed satisfaction with efforts to prevent incidents between their respective forces in Syria.
"The Presidents affirmed their commitment to Syrias sovereignty, unity, independence, territorial integrity, and non-sectarian character," it said.
According to senior State Department officials, the statement was the result of "months of fairly intense discussions" and was finalised on the margins of the APEC summit between diplomats.
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It represents Russias firm commitment to the UN backed peace process, one of the officials said.
"We made very clear that there will not be any reconstruction aid in Syria until there is a meaningful political process moving along the timeline," he said.
"I cannot speak to the Russians, but I think it might be one of the reasons why they clearly committed to the fact that the ultimate resolution to the civil war will be under the Geneva process," he added.
A new round of talks is scheduled to be held in Geneva from November 28, the UN special envoy for Syria announced Thursday.
There have been seven previous sessions between the Syrian regime and the opposition, which failed to overcome the main obstacle the fate of President Assad.
Mr Trumps relationship with Moscow has haunted the first year of his presidency, with key former aides under a US investigation for alleged collaboration with the Kremlin.
Syria war timeline
Mr Putin and Mr Trump last held face-to-face talks at a G20 summit earlier in the year, and there was intense speculation over whether they would so do again in Danang.
After the pair met on the sidelines of the APEC summit, Mr Trump said he believes Mr Putin was sincere when he denied meddling in the US election that propelled Mr Trump to power, adding that the Russian leader felt "very insulted" by the allegations.
Overly amicable talks between Mr Trump and Mr Putin in Vietnam risked being an awkward sell for the White House, as it vigorously denies any undue links with the Kremlin.
Malabo (Equatorial Guinea) (AFP) - Voting in Equatorial Guinea ended Sunday, with the opposition alleging fraud and irregularities in elections that the ruling party was expected to sweep and maintain its firm grip over the tiny oil-rich country.
Internet access was completely cut in a country where opposition websites have been blocked since 2013. Since the start of the election campaign on October 27, Facebook has been inaccessible as well.
In the capital Malabo, queues of people waiting to vote formed early as most polling stations opened on schedule and were very busy most of the morning, an AFP correspondent said.
Security forces were deployed and private vehicles banned for the day. Residents complained that this had left them unable to go to polling stations -- often located very far from their homes -- which were mostly closed by 1700 GMT, one hour before the official end of polling.
Around 300,000 people were eligible to take part in Sunday's election, which will choose 100 MPs and 75 senators as well as the mayors of Malabo and Bata, the country's economic hub.
State media said the vote took place in good conditions and without incident, but opposition representatives spoke out against fraud and irregularities and the arrest of activists who opposed such alleged discrepancies.
The election is widely expected to be dominated by the party of President Teodoro Obiang Nguema, Africa's longest-serving leader, who has ruled the former Spanish colony for 37 years.
His Democratic Party of Equatorial Guinea (PDGE) controls 99 percent of the seats in parliament, over which it has held sway since single-party rule was scrapped in 1991.
Despite the PDGE's immense power, opposition parties hope to make gains, even if they say they have no access to state media, which regularly broadcasts campaign ads by the ruling party.
Equatorial Guinea, which borders Cameroon and Gabon, is one of sub-Sahara's biggest oil producers but a large proportion of the 1.2 million population still lives in poverty.
Paris (AFP) - EU Brexit chief Michel Barnier said Sunday that he is making contingency plans for the "possible" failure of divorce talks with Britain, which he has given two weeks to reach preliminary agreement on key issues.
"It's not my (preferred) option," he told French weekly Le Journal du Dimanche (JDD). "But it's a possibility. Everyone needs to plan for it, member states and businesses alike. We too are preparing for it technically."
He recalled that without a deal on post-Brexit trade terms the EU and Britain would revert to World Trade Organization (WTO) tariffs, with trade ties "like those we have with China".
On Friday Barnier gave Britain a two-week ultimatum to make concessions on a divorce agreement if it wants to unlock the next phase of talks in December.
He said it was "vital" for Britain to increase its offer on its exit bill -- which a figure senior EU officials put at up to 60 billion euros ($70 billion) -- to open up talks on a future trade deal.
- Fate of Northern Ireland -
EU leaders decided at their last summit in October that there was insufficient progress on the exit bill as well as two other main issues -- Northern Ireland and the rights of three million Europeans living in Britain.
They said they hoped to open talks on future relations and a post-Brexit transition period at their next meeting on December 14-15, but officials have warned that could now slip to February or March.
The fate of the border between British-ruled Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland has thrown an unexpected spanner into the works.
British negotiator David Davis insisted that any Brexit deal cannot create a frontier between Northern Ireland and the rest of the United Kingdom.
But the EU called at talks in Brussels last week for Northern Ireland to effectively stay in a customs union with the bloc to prevent a hard border with Ireland.
The open border helped underpin the 1998 peace deal that ended decades of sectarian unrest.
"The tragic conflict between the Protestants and the Catholics was not that long ago," Barnier, a former French foreign minister, told JDD. "I won't do anything that could weaken" the 1998 accord.
If a deal is reached by Barnier's December 1 deadline, the next phase of talks could open in January towards a "new treaty, which would take at least two years to take effect," he said.
Each year on Nov. 11, Americans observe Veterans Day.
Veterans Day is about far more than a long weekend people around the country use the day to reflect on the sacrifices of members of the military, and to thank them for their service.
Heres what Veterans Day is, how it began and its original name.
What is Veterans Day?
Veterans Day gives Americans a chance to pay tribute to all service men and women, living or dead. Memorial Day, by contrast, is a holiday dedicated specifically to veterans who died during their service.
When is Veterans Day 2017?
The holiday is observed on Nov. 11 each year. WWI ended at 11 a.m. on Nov. 11, 1918, and since Veterans Day began in remembrance of WWI vets, the date stuck.
What was the original name of Veterans Day?
The holiday initially began in remembrance of WWI veterans. The original name of Veterans Day was Armistice Day.
Congress named the holiday Armistice Day in 1926, according to VetDay, and declared it an official national holiday 12 years later. In 1939, however, WWII broke out in Europe. With more Americans joining the military, a motion to broaden the holiday beyond WWI veterans began to gain steam. In 1947, the first general tribute to military members, called Veterans Day, was held in Birmingham, Ala. In 1954, President Dwight Eisenhower signed into law a bill officially proclaiming Nov. 11 Veterans Day.
The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier was also interred on Nov. 11, 1921. Almost a century later, Arlington National Cemetery still holds poignant remembrances on Veterans Day.
How is Veterans Day observed?
Many schools and businesses close in observance of Veterans Day, and many shops and restaurants offer discounts to active and former military members to thank them for their efforts. In Europe, Great Britain and the Commonwealth countries, people often observe two minutes of silence at 11 a.m. on Nov. 11, according to History.com.
How many veterans are there today?
By Census estimates, almost 20 million veterans currently live in the U.S. According to the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, more than 41 million people served at some point during the nations history.
Trump partially backtracks on Russia election meddling remarks
Ex-CIA chief Brennan: presidents criticism is a badge of honour
Two former US intelligence chiefs have said Donald Trump poses a peril to the US because he is vulnerable to being played by Russia, after the president said on Saturday he believed Vladimir Putins denials of Russian interference in the 2016 election.
Former director of national intelligence James Clapper and former CIA director John Brennan issued a stern rebuke to Trump after the president called both men political hacks for their support of an intelligence agency consensus that Russia meddled with the US election.
First of all, he was referring to us as political hacks because he was trying to delegitimize the intelligence assessment that was done, Brennan told CNNs State of the Union.
He added: By not confronting the issue directly and not acknowledging to Putin: We know that youre responsible for this, I think hes giving Putin a pass.
And I think it demonstrates to Mr Putin that Donald Trump can be played by foreign leaders who are going to appeal to his ego and try to play upon his insecurities, which is very, very worrisome from a national security standpoint.
Special counsel Robert Mueller, a former FBI director, recently issued the first indictments in the investigation into possible collusion between Trump aides and Russia. Trump has repeatedly denied collusion.
On Saturday, Trump told reporters on Air Force One during a flight to Hanoi that Mueller was leading an artificial Democratic hit job which could cost millions and millions of lives by interfering with diplomatic efforts with Russia.
Asked if he had raised the issue of Russian interference during sideline conversations with Putin at the Apec summit in Da Nang, Trump said: Every time he sees me, he says, I didnt do that. And I believe I really believe that when he tells me that, he means it.
The president later tweeted criticism of haters and fools and insisted that having a good relationship with Russia is a good thing, not a bad thing because he wanted to solve North Korea, Syria, Ukraine, terrorism, and Russia can greatly help!
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Trumps outbursts over the weekend, which also included a reprimand of the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-un, whom Trump said he had refrained from calling short and fat, marked a departure from a relatively disciplined performance in Asia over the week.
Trump met regional leaders including the Chinese president, Xi Jinping, and Japanese prime minister, Shinzo Abe. He also addressed South Koreas national assembly in Seoul, calling on the North Korean regime to abandon its nuclear program and address human rights violations.
Speaking to reporters in Vietnam on Sunday, the White House chief of staff, John Kelly, attempted to downplay the presidents online outbursts by claiming he did not read Trumps tweets.
They are what they are, Kelly said, according to the New York Times. But like, you know, in preparation for this trip, we did the staff work, got him ready to go and then at each place we brief him up on whatever the next event is and all that. The tweets dont run my life. Good staff work runs it.
Also on Sunday, Trump appeared to contradict his own remarks on Russia during a press conference in Hanoi, saying he was with our agencies on the issue of election interference.
Nonetheless, Clapper seized upon Trumps initial comments. The former director of national intelligence also told CNN such backtracking was indicative of weakness in front of the leaders of rival powers.
I think he [Trump] seems very susceptible to rolling out the red carpet, honour guards and all the trappings and pomp and circumstance that come with the office, Clapper said. I think that appeals to him and it plays to his insecurities. Yes, I do think that both the Chinese and the Russians can play him.
Trump criticised Clapper and Brennan, who served under both Democratic and Republican presidents, as well as James Comey, the FBI director he fired in May over, he said, this Russia thing, during the same flight to Hanoi on Saturday.
Brennan said the remarks were reprehensible but added: Considering the source of the criticism, I consider that criticism a badge of honour.
To impugn the character of somebody like Jim Clapper on Veterans Day, who has dedicated so much of his life to this country, I just find that outrageous. I think its something Mr Trump should be ashamed of, but it doesnt seem that anything that he does he feels any shame of whatsoever.
Trumps treasury secretary branded the former intelligence chiefs remarks ridiculous statements.
President Trump is not getting played by anybody, Steven Mnuchin told CNN. President Trump was focused on some very important issues in North Korea and Syria and those are areas in which we need to work with Russia and get them onboard with our strategy.
A family of four and their dog were found shot to death in Utah in what police believe was a murder-suicide.
Timothy Griffith , 45, his wife, 42-year-old wife Jessica Griffith, his stepdaughter Samantha Badel, 16, and his 5-year-old son Alexendre, were all found dead in their Mapleton home Thursday, police said.
The family dog was also killed in the shooting.
Read: Hikers Found Dead After Months Missing May Have Died in 'Sympathetic Murder-Suicide'
Police said the family moved to the town months ago from Switzerland after Timothy Griffith got a job in the state. A family friend told KUTV that the move was a dream come true for the family.
Friends reportedly said the deaths were shocking because the Griffiths were "a very affectionate family."
"I just can't imagine what happened, when I talked to him there was no depression, there was no anything. It's just amazing just comprehend what happened," neighbor Doug Allin told the station. "It seems like everyone was getting along really good.
Neighbors called police after they noticed the familys cars had not moved and their lights had not been turned off for days, authorities said.
One member of the family had also not shown up for work, according to police.
When officers arrived, no one answered the front door, police said. Authorities then removed a window to get inside and found the bodies.
Read: Mother Dead Along With 5-Year-Old Twin Daughters in Apparent Murder-Suicide: Report
Police said they are investigating the tragedy.
Mapleton has a population of about 9,500.
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Beirut (AFP) - The Islamic State group recaptured Albu Kamal in eastern Syria on Saturday after a fierce fightback to save the last urban bastion of its collapsing "caliphate".
The jihadist rebound came as the United States and Russia issued a surprise joint presidential statement saying there was "no military solution" to Syria's grinding six-year war.
The two countries have long backed opposite sides in Syria, but the Kremlin on Saturday said US President Donald Trump and Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin made progress during a brief meeting on the sidelines of a summit in Vietnam.
Trump and Putin also "confirmed their determination to defeat ISIS", an alternative name for IS.
The jihadist group overran swathes of territory in Syria and Iraq in 2014, but its self-styled "caliphate" has since been whittled down to a pocket of land along the border between the two countries.
IS is putting up a fierce defence there, particularly for the vital Syrian border town of Albu Kamal, said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group.
Syrian regime forces and allied militia from Lebanon, Iraq and Iran overran Albu Kamal on Thursday but lost the town again just two days later after a string of IS counter-attacks and ambushes.
"IS fully recaptured Albu Kamal, and regime forces and allied militia are now between one to two kilometres from the city limits," Rami Abdel Rahman, head of the Britain-based Observatory, said on Saturday.
The Observatory also reported 26 civilians killed, including nine children, since Friday night in artillery fire by regime forces and Russian air strikes that hit villages and camps for those displaced by the fighting in Albu Kamal.
- IS squeezed in Iraq -
Across the border, Iraqi forces seized on Saturday several villages from the jihadists in an offensive to capture the last IS-held section of their country.
The operation's commander, General Abdelamir Yarallah, said his forces captured Rumana and 10 other villages as they worked their way towards the Euphrates Valley town of Rawa, the last Iraqi town still held by IS.
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The jihadist group has in the space of a few weeks seen its "caliphate" shrink to a small rump and lost major cities such as Mosul in Iraq, and Raqa and Deir Ezzor in Syria.
Albu Kamal is the last significant Syrian town it controls. Losing it would cap the group's reversion to an underground guerrilla organisation with no urban base.
IS rose to prominence in the chaos of Syria's conflict, which broke out in 2011 with protests against President Bashar al-Assad.
It has since evolved into a complex war that has killed more than 330,000 people, forced millions more to flee, and left much of the country in ruins.
Violence has broadly decreased since a series of "de-escalation zones" have been put in place in recent months in battlefronts across the country.
- 'Just like Iraq' -
On Saturday, Jordan announced it had agreed with the United States and Russia to formally establish such a zone in southern Syria to build on a ceasefire already in place there.
Multiple rounds of peace talks hosted by the United Nations in Geneva have failed to resolve Syria's entrenched conflict.
Saturday's joint statement from the US and Russian presidents urged Syria's warring sides to take part in a new round of talks later this month in Switzerland.
"What the joint statement indicates is a commitment to get this to a political reconciliation and peace process. That serves their interest, it serves our interest," a senior US State Department official said Saturday.
The official said it was likely that Syria's post-conflict political system would be "a power-sharing arrangement just like we ended up with in Iraq".
The official expected that future parliamentary and presidential elections would see the Syrian people "decide they want different leadership".
Assad would be allowed to go "wherever he would like to go. Unless he's under war crimes investigations", the official said.
The police officer prevented Alleshouse from continuing to drive the lawn mower and could detect a potent smell of alcohol coming from him: Port St Lucie Police Department
A man has been arrested after police say they witnessed him riding a lawn mower on a Florida highway while carrying a case of beer.
Kenneth Burton Alleshouse, 56, was seen by a Port St Lucie police officer on 3 November just after 6 in the evening.
The police officer prevented Mr Alleshouse from continuing to drive the lawn mower and claimed he could detect a potent smell of alcohol coming from him.
He carried out a driving under the influence investigation and police said his blood alcohol level was three times over the legal limit for intoxication when he was pulled over by police.
Investigators say Mr Alleshouse, who has now been arrested on a drunk driving charge, was carrying a case of beer and driving the red snapper lawn mower erratically.
Mr Alleshouse was in turn arrested and taken to the St Lucie County Jail in Florida.
This comes after police arrested a woman in Lakeland, Florida, who was drunkenly riding a horse down a highway earlier in the month.
WASHINGTON Two former top U.S. intelligence officials on Sunday denounced President Donald Trumps repeated refusal to definitively affirm Russian meddling in the 2016 election, saying the president is being manipulated by Russian President Vladimir Putin.
By not confronting the issue directly, and not acknowledging to Putin that we know that youre responsible for this, I think hes giving Putin a pass, former CIA Director John Brennan told CNN. And I think it demonstrates to Mr. Putin that Donald Trump can be played by foreign leaders who are going to appeal to his ego and to try to play upon his insecurities, which is very, very worrisome from a national security standpoint.
James Clapper, former director of national intelligence, during an appearance with Brennan on CNN, warned that Trumps downplaying of Russias involvement in the U.S. election poses a peril to this country.
Trump has repeatedly questioned the conclusion of top intelligence agencies that Russia conducted a sophisticated effort to tip last years election in Trumps favor. Trump has shown a fondness for Putin, and his campaign faces multiple investigations into whether it colluded with Russia.
Trump on Saturday reignited the controversy, when reporters asked if he discussed Russian interference with Putin while meeting at the Asia-Pacific summit in Vietnam.
Attacking Brennan and Clapper as political hacks, Trump said he sided with Putins denials over the conclusion of his own intelligence agencies.
He said he absolutely did not meddle in our election. He did not do what they are saying he did, Trump told reporters on Saturday. Every time he sees me, he says, I didnt do that, and I really believe that when he tells me that, he means it. But he says, I didnt do that.
Trump later attempted to soften those comments, claiming, I believe very much in our intelligence agencies.
In response, Brennan said Trump is perhaps being manipulated by Putin.
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I think Mr. Putin is very clever in terms of playing to Mr. Trumps interest in being flattered, Brennan said. And, also, I think Mr. Trump is, for whatever reason, either intimidated by Mr. Putin, afraid of what he could do, or what might come out as a result of these investigations. So, its very worrisome. And I think it sends a worrisome, very disturbing signal to our allies and partners who are concerned about Russian interference in their democratic processes as well. So, its either naivete, ignorance or fear, in terms of what Mr. Trump is doing vis-a-vis the Russians.
Asked about the investigations into possible collusion between Trumps campaign and Russia, Brennan would only say that he had spoken to investigators.
Clapper, before he stepped down from his post, said in January that he could not conclude whether Trumps campaign colluded. When he made that remark, Clapper said on Sunday, he didnt know of recent disclosures, including details of a meeting where a Russian lawyer offered Trumps eldest son information that would incriminate Democrat Hillary Clinton, and former Trump campaign adviser George Papadopoulos telling investigators he worked to obtain dirt on Clinton from the Russian government.
The statement I made at the time was true. I had no direct evidence of collusion, Clapper said Sunday. At the time, he added, we had lots of concerns, because we were aware of multiple meetings that were going on.
The new information raises, I think, circumstantial questions, if nothing else, he said.
Trumps treasury secretary, Steve Mnuchin, dismissed the concerns of Clapper and Brennan, and downplayed the issue of Russian interference.
President Trump is not getting played by anybody, Mnuchin said later on CNN. President Trump was focused on some very important issues, which are North Korea and Syria. And those are areas that we need to work together with Russia and get them on board with our strategy.
I think the country is ready to move on off of this and focus on important issues.
Also on HuffPost
U.S. President Donald Trump flies via Marine One helicopter over the Tokyo suburbs to meet Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe at Kasumigaseki Country Club in Kawagoe, Japan.
President Donald Trump and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe wave to reporters after they signed hats reading 'Donald and Shinzo, Make Alliance Even Greater'.
President Donald Trump gestures to Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe as Japanese professional golfer Hideki Matsuyama looks on, as they play golf at the Kasumigaseki Country Club in Kawagoe, north of Tokyo, Japan.
President Donald Trump pours fish food out as Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe looks on while they were feeding carps before their working lunch at Akasaka Palace in Tokyo.
President Donald Trump puts on a U.S. Pacific Air Forces bomber jacket before delivering remarks to members of the U.S. military at Yokota Air Base, Japan.
First Lady Melania Trump shows her calligraphy with Akie Abe, wife of Japanese prime minister, while attending a calligraphy class of 4th graders at the Kyobashi Tsukiji elementary school in Tokyo.
Melania Trump and Japan's first lady Akie Abe visit Kyobashi Tsukiji elementary school in Tokyo.
President Donald Trump smiles during a joint press conference with South Korea's President Moon Jae-in at the presidential Blue House in Seoul, South Korea.
White House senior staff discuss the situation as U.S. President Donald Trump sits in his car after being grounded from an attempt to visit the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) in the truce village of Panmunjom dividing North Korea and South Korea, at a U.S. military post in Seoul.
President Donald Trump and first lady Melania visit the Forbidden City.
President Donald Trump shakes hands with opera performers at the Forbidden City.
President Donald Trump departs Seoul in Marine One while en-route to Osan Air Base, South Korea.
U.S. President Donald Trump and first lady Melania arrive on Air Force One in Beijing, China, November 8, 2017. REUTERS/Aly Song
President Donald Trump and first lady Melania arrive on Air Force One at Beijing, China.
U.S. President Donald Trump takes part in a welcoming ceremony at the Great hall of the People in Beijing, China.
President Donald Trump and China's President Xi Jinping shakes hands after making joint statements at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing.
President Donald Trump boards Air Force One to depart for Vietnam from Beijing Airport.
Melania Trump smiles with children holding U.S. and China flags as she visits Beijing Zoo.
Melania Trump visits the Mutianyu section of the Great Wall of China.
President Donald Trump shakes hands with Russia's President Vladimir Putin (R) as they pose for a group photo ahead of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Summit leaders gala dinner in the central Vietnamese city of Danang on November 10, 2017.
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LONDON (Reuters) - Forty members of parliament from Prime Minister Theresa May's Conservative Party have agreed to sign a letter of no-confidence in her, the Sunday Times newspaper reported. That is eight short of the number needed to trigger a party leadership contest, the mechanism through which May could be forced from office and replaced by another Conservative. May has been struggling to maintain her authority over her party since a snap election on June 8 which she called thinking she would win by a wide margin but instead resulted in her losing her parliamentary majority. Divided over how to extricate Britain from the European Union and hit by multiple scandals involving ministers, May's government has failed to assert control over a chaotic political situation that is weakening London's hand in Brexit talks. An earlier attempt to unseat May in the wake of her disastrous speech at the annual party conference fizzled out, but many Conservatives remain unhappy with the prime minister's performance and talk of a leadership contest has not gone away. May has lost two cabinet ministers in as many weeks: Michael Fallon stepped down as defense secretary after becoming implicated in a wider scandal about sexual misconduct in parliament, while Priti Patel resigned as aid minister after she was found to have had secret meetings with top Israeli officials. In the event of a leadership contest, if a challenger defeated May he or she would take over as Conservative leader and as prime minister. A national election is not necessary for that to happen. (Reporting by Estelle Shirbon; Editing by James Dalgleish)
Bucharest (AFP) - Thousands of Romanians demonstrated for a second straight Sunday against proposed judicial reforms which they say will weaken an anti-corruption drive.
Around one thousand people rallied in the capital Bucharest where they also slammed the "incoherence" of government economic policy.
The crowd, comprising chiefly young adults, converged on the headquarters of the ruling Social Democratic party and denounced the party as "thieves".
"We cannot have confidence in leaders -- they want to bring justice under political control," said one protester, 42-year-old computer scientist Iulian Sandu.
Caludiu Dumitrescu, a 35-year-old restaurateur, blasted the government's economic policies which he said he had weakened the leu currency and forced up the price of fuel.
Other marches took place in the western cities of Cluj and Timisoara and the central city of Brasov.
Last week, a similar rally drew some 12,000 people to Bucharest.
Similar protests were also held in dozens of other cities across the country opposing the parliamentary bill that would reduce the powers of the anti-corruption prosecutor's office (DNA) and prevent it from investigating magistrates.
The bill would also mean the president could no longer name senior prosecutors.
Last January, the government tried to soften anti-corruption laws, only to backtrack under pressure after a series of huge protests, the largest since the end of communism in 1989.
The European Commission has warned Romania that its bid to overhaul its justice system could undermine efforts to stamp out rampant corruption.
Romania joined the EU in 2007 and in recent years has been enjoying high growth rates, but both Brussels and the International Monetary Fund have pressed the government to do more to tackle graft.
Nima Nia (left) and Ramin Haghjoo pose for a portrait at their August wedding. (Photo: Courtesy of Ramin Haghjoo)
WASHINGTON In the best-case scenario if Ramin Haghjoo and Nima Nia still lived in Iran, they would be married. Just not to each other to women, probably through arranged marriages. Perhaps they could have found women also attracted to their own gender and looking to hide the fact, like one of Haghjoos friends did. In a bleaker scenario, they would be dead or behind bars for the crime of being what they are: gay.
Instead, Haghjoo and Nia ended up in the United States, where they married each other in a joyful ceremony this August.
The couple came to the U.S. as refugees several years ago, after fleeing Iran for Turkey. Things are better here in many ways, and they see their story as a hopeful one for other LGBTQ Iranians. Theyre alive, theyre married, and they live openly as gay men.
But Haghjoo and Nia also find themselves in a country where the president tried to ban new refugees and immigrants from Iran and several other Muslim nations, on the argument that such people pose a threat to Americas safety. And they worry now about what will happen is already happening to LGBTQ people in a country under Republican rule.
They want Iran to change so that people like them can be accepted as gay couples. They want the U.S. to change so they can be accepted as gay refugees from Iran.
After so many borders crossed, what will my next country be after tonight? Haghjoo posted on Instagram the day of the 2016 election.
Ramin Haghjoos Story
Haghjoo, 31, grew up in a relatively supportive family in Tehran, but he still struggled. He came out at age 19 to a nurse, who urged him to tell his family. They accepted him, for the most part other than a brother who used abusive language against him until their mother threatened to take away the brothers inheritance.
Haghjoo adjusts his bow tie before the wedding ceremony. (Photo: Courtesy of Ramin Haghjoo)
Haghjoo was exempted from the military service mandated for all Iranian men because of his sexual orientation, which the Iranian military considers a mental problem. He was terrified to tell the government about his sexuality, as Iran is a dangerous place for LGBTQ people. Homosexuality is against the law, and sex between two men can be punishable by death. Other acts, such as kissing or even just confessing to homosexuality, can lead to punishment. While there are secret networks for LGBTQ people, many of them online, members live under the constant threat of being exposed.
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But Haghjoo also wanted to be honest about who he was and to avoid military service, because it can be dangerous even for closeted gay men.
He was at risk for other reasons as well. At a June 2009 protest during the Iranian Green Movement which called for the ouster of then-President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad he yelled out to warn an old woman to be careful because an armed man in a military uniform had his gun aimed at her. The man turned his gun on Haghjoo instead and shot him. The bullet ripped through the right side of his abdomen. He had surgery to remove nearly a foot of intestines and was in the hospital for almost a week.
Haghjoo spoke about the experience of being shot to a documentary crew and later found out the filmmakers planned to focus on his story. He was afraid of the attention that would draw, so he decided to flee to Turkey. The documentary aired one week after he left Iran. Afterward he wanted to return home, but his mother feared it wasnt safe. Do not come back, she told him.
Nima Nias Story
Nia, 29, began receiving text messages from an unknown phone number back in 2006. The first said Happy Valentines Day, and the number was from Isfahan, Iran, where he was about to move for school. He replied to the texts at first, thinking they were from someone in a LGBTQ chatroom, but eventually he stopped. When he arrived in Isfahan, he received another: Welcome to our city. He didnt reply.
Soon came another message threatening to call him on his home number. Then his home phone rang.
The man on the other end of the line said that he knew Nia was gay and that nothing bad would happen to him if he cooperated by going to the mans house and named other gay people. Nia repeatedly declined to confirm that he was gay or to identify anyone else, but the man kept calling.
At his college, a security guard told Nia that a man had been there and asked for his schedule. Nia thought he saw someone following him on the street.
One day, the man called to say he was near Nias house. Nia could hear a siren both through the phone and through his door. He was frightened.
Nia smiles during the outdoor wedding. (Photo: Courtesy of Ramin Haghjoo)
After months of harassment, Nia met another man who worked as a security guard at a bank and told him what was happening. The security guard contacted the man who had been threatening Nia, and the phone calls finally stopped.
But when Nia and the security guard began dating, he faced new problems. The security guard became hostile, threatening both Nia and his parents. Nia escaped that situation when he left for mandatory military service in Abadeh, Iran. (He chose not to tell authorities about his sexual orientation.)
When he returned to Isfahan two months later his period of military service was shortened based on his fathers past work in a war zone Nia got a new apartment and a new phone number. He went back to college to study art. But he still didnt feel safe every call from a wrong number made him uneasy, and he kept worrying that someone might throw something through his apartment window.
Nia finally decided he couldnt stay in Iran, even though he was only a semester away from finishing his degree. He fled to Turkey, leaving his life and art behind.
Life As Refugees
Haghjoo arrived in Turkey first, in 2010. He and Nia had been friends back in Iran, but they only began dating after Nia left their homeland as well.
For eight months, Haghjoo waited to find out whether he would be allowed to enter the United States as a refugee based on the persecution he faced for his sexual orientation, political beliefs and religion. He is a Sufi, and people like him who practice a more mystical brand of Islam have been targeted by the Iranian government. Nia, meanwhile, applied for refugee status in the U.S. based on the persecution he experienced as a gay man.
Sometimes others who had fled their homes and were now stuck in Turkey argued that being gay made it easier for Nia and Haghjoo that they could move through the refugee process more quickly, while it took longer for political refugees. They didnt understand that being gay in Iran had been a prison, Nia said.
Being in Turkey was difficult, too. They had hardly any money and at times went days with no food while waiting for money transfers to come through. Nia was abruptly kicked out of a house hed rented in the middle of winter because the owner sold it.
At least they were together. When Haghjoo first told Nia he loved him, Nia wasnt ready to say it back. Not until 2011, when Haghjoo learned his application for refugee status had been accepted and he prepared to leave for the U.S., did Nia finally say he loved him, too. Another year passed before Nias refugee admission was approved. He joined his partner in Philadelphia in November 2012.
It was hard coming to the United States, even if they believed it was their best option. Their right to be citizens of their native country had been wrenched away from them. They feared that a family member would get sick and die, and they wouldnt be able to go back and say goodbye. I left all of these big and beautiful things for freedom, Nia said. Its not fair.
Life In America
Adjusting to the U.S. wasnt simple. In Philadelphia, Nia worked a few jobs that he hated, including in a Walmart stockroom. He wasnt able to use the skills he learned in art school he had to take the options available to a newcomer to the U.S. He began to lose hope in this American life.
In 2014, the couple moved to Washington, D.C., to look for full-time work, and Nia finally got to do something creative: designing artwork and producing a podcast for a nonprofit. But he quit that job, he said, because the organization didnt treat him well. Now hes working on a comic book narrated by a cat. Haghjoo is employed as a human rights researcher at a different nonprofit.
The couple has made many friends here. They were featured on the popular Humans of New York Facebook page in a photo of them standing on a pathway framed with snow and a short caption: Were gay refugees from Iran. More than 240,000 people liked it.
Haghjoo and Nia were featured on Humans of New York. (Photo: Humans Of New York)
The 2016 election was difficult for them to watch. They both think anti-LGBTQ sentiment has become more explicit under President Donald Trump. The president attempted to bar transgender people from the military, and his Justice Department has said the 1964 Civil Rights Act doesnt prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation. Haghjoo said he has a very real fear that if he went to a largely pro-Trump part of the country, he would be in danger. He avoids traveling to those places.
Trumps efforts to stop Iranians and others from majority-Muslim nations from immigrating to the U.S. have hit them hard, too. It doesnt make sense to punish people who dont support their countrys government for what that government does, Haghjoo said. Barring refugees in particular seems cruel to him. Americans should put themselves in refugees shoes and think about what those individuals have been through, he said.
Im not afraid of Donald Trump, but Im afraid of the ideology hes representing, Nia said. That ideology is not kind, its not pro-human rights, its not pro-diversity.
Haghjoo said hes fed up with fighting for rights, and if it comes to a point in the U.S. when gay people begin to lose their freedom like they did in Iran, he would leave.
Ill find somewhere that Im accepted and Im free and Ill go there, said Haghjoo. Which might not be a place on Earth, so we have to fight.
Unless we move to another planet, Nia said.
A Time For Celebration
But its not all bad. Last January, Nia proposed to Haghjoo in Boston. It was a surprise Haghjoo thought their friends were gathering from around the country for his birthday. Nia played a video with pictures of the two of them, set to Leonard Cohens Dance Me to the End of Love. Then, he presented Haghjoo with a cake decorated with their photo and the words Marry me. Everyone cried.
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Haghjoo and Nia hold hands after their wedding. (Photo: Courtesy of Ramin Haghjoo)
They consider themselves opposites in some ways. It would be boring to be with someone just like himself, Nia said. He loves that his husband is kind to everyone and feels responsibility for those around him. I fell in love with all of that, unfortunately, Nia joked. Haghjoo loves that Nia is honest and dedicated to art and creativity.
The two married on Aug. 26 at Mount Airy Mansion in Upper Marlboro, Maryland, a short drive from Washington. The only family member there was one of Nias sisters, who also lives in the U.S. Most of their relatives dont support the marriage, even though Haghjoos family is generally open-minded about his sexuality. But even if those living in Iran had wanted to come to the wedding, it would have been next to impossible to obtain the necessary visas. It would have been hard for them to get U.S. visas even before Trumps executive orders barring entry for Iranians. (Both orders have now been blocked in court.)
Haghjoo and Nia's wedding ceremony. (Photo: Courtesy of Ramin Haghjoo)
But Haghjoo and Nia still celebrated. Their first dance was to a song with lyrics by Seyed Medhi Mousavi, an Iranian political refugee who now lives in Norway. He wrote it for them specifically.
Imagine there is one for you, who wants to leave the crying behind, the lyrics say, as translated from Farsi. Hes that person you saw in your dreams, the one who can understand the depth of your pain. The one who is different from the rest of the world, the one who knows life is hard, who has his own troubles, but still, sitting next to you, he is happy!
The newly wedded couple pose for a photo. (Photo: Courtesy of Ramin Haghjoo)
They want to share their story so that other gay people now living in fear around the world know its possible to find a life out of the closet although you may have to leave everything you know behind to do it. I left money, I left my car, I left home, I left my friends, said Haghjoo. We lost many things.
Now you want to make a new life, and an amazing one, with your love, he continued. Sometimes I say, Nima, hes my money, hes my parents, hes my brother, hes my old friends and my family. Hes my everything.
CORRECTION: A previous version of this article misstated the city where Nia attended university. It was Isfahan, not Mianeh.
This article originally appeared on HuffPost.
Sen. Pat Toomey (R-Pa.) says Alabama Republican Senate candidate Roy Moore, who has been accused of sexual misconduct with teenage girls, should withdraw from the race.
You know, this is a terrible situation, Toomey said Sunday on NBCs Meet the Press. Nearly 40-year-old allegation. Well probably never know for sure exactly what happens. But from my point of view, you know, I have to say, I think the accusations have more credibility than the denial. I think it would be best if Roy would just step aside.
In an explosive report published Thursday by The Washington Post, four women alleged that Moore pursued them when they were teenagers and he was in his early 30s. The most serious story came from a woman who said she was just 14 when Moore sexually assaulted her.
Moore has denied the charge made against him by the 14-year-old. But when asked Thursday whether he remembered dating women in their teens when he was in his 30s, Moore told Fox News Sean Hannity: Not generally, no.
Toomey, while saying he didnt find Moores denials terrible credible, also questioned the timing of the allegations.
When someone waits 40 years before they make an accusation, you know, that raises a question itself, he said. So its probably not knowable. But there seems to be enough there that its very disturbing.
Toomey suggested the party explore a write-in campaign with another GOP candidate.
I think [appointed Alabama Sen.] Luther Strange would be a strong candidate for a write-in. But a write-in is very difficult, lets face it. So theres no easy solution to this. I think we should consider a write-in.
Strange was appointed early this year to the seat Republican Jeff Sessions gave up to become President Donald Trumps attorney general. Moore defeated Strange in a late September primary runoff for the GOP nomination in the Dec. 12 special election for the seat.
Three GOP senators have withdrawn their endorsements of Moore following the Post story: Bill Cassidy (La.), Steve Daines (Mont.) and Mike Lee (Utah). Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.), who recently announced he would not be seeking re-election next year, called Moores nomination a bridge too far even before the allegations of sexual misconduct surfaced.
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Moore is a far-right social conservative who vocally condemns homosexuality. He twice removed from the Alabama Supreme Court for defying federal court orders.
Two senior members of Trumps administration expressed concernduring interviews on Sunday the allegations leveled against Moore, but stopped short of calling on him to end his candidacy.
Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin told CNN that Moore should step down if the allegations prove to be true. But he did not detail what proof against Moore would be sufficient a stance similar to the one taken by White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) when the Post story first broke.
A former prosecutor who worked with Moore in the early 1980s told CNN on Saturday that it was common knowledge that Moore dated teenagers and Moores colleagues thought it was weird.
White House director of legislative affairs Marc Short said on Meet the Press that sexual misconduct allegations like those leveled against Moore should disqualify anyone from serving in public office. He added that no Senate seat is more important than the issue of child pedophilia, and that there is a special place in hell for people who have done those crimes.
But he cautioned we here in Washington have to be careful as well in this, given that Moore has denied the charge involving the 14-year-old.
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The tax reform plan introduced by House Republicans eliminates a number of tax deductions to pay for a series of tax cuts that mostly benefit the very wealthy.
One of the provisions it eliminates is a rule that allows graduate students to deduct from their taxes the tuition waivers they receive as a form of compensation from their universities. The proposed removal of the deduction has generated much uproar among research advocates who argue that it will discourage people from getting advanced degrees.
But ending the deduction would also hurt university employees who benefit from tuition waivers if they or their children attend the university where they work, noted a Friday blog post by Sam Brunson, a professor of tax law at Loyola University Chicago School of Law, and Michael Austin, executive vice president of academic affairs at the University of Evansville.
For well-paid university administrators or star professors, paying taxes on this benefit is likely a manageable, though significant, burden.
But for secretaries, janitors and security guards on the universitys payroll receiving free college tuition, ending the exemption would be financially onerous. Thats especially disconcerting because being able to pay for a free college education often enables the children of these working-class employees to move up the socioeconomic ladder.
Tuition waivers can be a life-changing opportunity for some of our lowest-paid employees, Brunson and Austin write.
House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) conducts his weekly news conference on Nov. 9. (Photo: Tom Williams/Getty Images)
To make matters worse, Brunson and Austin write, the income tax on the tuition waiver would tax the full sticker price of tuition rather than the discounted rate universities provide for most students. As a result, low-earning university employees could find themselves paying taxes on income that is worth far more than the university tuition would cost in practice.
The two experts cite as an example an administrative assistant earning $30,000 a year. If she sends two children to college courtesy of the university, and the schools sticker-price tuition is $35,000 a student, the government will tax her as if she earned $70,000 more than her salary for a total of $100,000 in taxable income.
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What this means is that fewer college employees, and fewer of their children, are going to have the opportunity to attend college because the life-changing benefit of a tuition waiver will become too expensive for them to afford, Brunson and Austin write. Of course, just as it does with graduate students, this limitation applies only to those without personal or family resources. Those with such resources will be fine.
And this is why it matters: access to higher education remains the only thing standing between the current United States and a society of hereditary privilege and permanent class divisions, they add. The proper term for such a society is an aristocracy, and it is precisely what our country was founded not to be.
University employees still have some hope: The Senates version of tax bill kept the deduction for tuition waivers in place. But if the Republican Congress is able to hash out a compromise between the two bills, there is no guarantee the provision will make it into the final legislation that heads to President Donald Trumps desk.
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Taking Security Seriously
Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) talks with Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) before the start of a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing concerning the roles and responsibilities for defending the nation against cyberattacks, on Oct. 19, 2017.
With Liberty And Justice...
Members of Code Pink for Peace protest before the start of a hearing where U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions will testify to the Senate Judiciary Committee in the Hart Senate Office Building on Capitol Hill on Oct. 18, 2017. Committee members questioned Sessions about conversations he had with President Donald Trump about the firing of former FBI Director James Comey, the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) policy, the ongoing investigation about Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election and other subjects.
Whispers
Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.), right, speaks with Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) before a confirmation hearing for Christopher Sharpley, nominee for inspector general of the CIA, on Oct. 17, 2017.
Not Throwing Away His Shot
Lin-Manuel Miranda, creator of the musical "Hamilton," makes his way to a meeting of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Interior, Environment and Related Agencies in the Rayburn Office Building during a round of meetings to urge federal funding for the arts and humanities on Sept. 13, 2017.
Medicare For All
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), center, speaks on health care as Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), left, and Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.), right, listen during an event to introduce the Medicare for All Act on Sept. 13, 2017.
Bernie Bros
Supporters of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) pack his office on Sept. 8, 2017. Members of the "Draft Bernie for a People's Party" campaign delivered a petition with more than 50,000 signatures to urge the senator to start and lead a new political party.
McCain Appearance
Sen. John McCain, second from left, leaves the Capitol after his first appearance since being diagnosed with cancer. He arrived to cast a vote to help Republican senators narrowly pass the motion to proceed for the replacement of the Affordable Care Act on July 25, 2017.
A Narrow Win
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, center, speaks alongside Sens. John Barrasso, left, John Cornyn, right, and John Thune, rear, after the Senate narrowly passed the motion to proceed for the replacement of the Affordable Care Act on July 25, 2017.
Kushner Questioning
Jared Kushner, White House senior adviser and son-in-law to President Donald Trump, arrives at the Capitol on July 25, 2017. Kushner was interviewed by the House Intelligence Committee in a closed-door meeting about contacts he had with Russia.
Hot Dogs On The Hill
Rep. Frank Lucas (R-Okla.) prepares a hot dog during the American Meat Institute's annual Hot Dog Lunch in the Rayburn Office Building courtyard on July 19, 2017.
And Their Veggie Counterparts
Rep. Jackie Speier (D-Calif.) visits the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals veggie dog giveaway on July 19, 2017, countering a National Hot Dog Day event being held elsewhere on Capitol Hill.
Poised For Questions
Callista Gingrich, wife of former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, waits for a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on her nomination to be the U.S. ambassador to the Vatican on July 18, 2017.
Speaking Up
Health care activists protest to stop the Republican health care bill at Hart Senate Office Building on Capitol Hill on July 17, 2017.
In The Fray
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) speaks to members of the media after announcing the revised version of the Senate Republican health care bill on Capitol Hill on July 13, 2017.
Anticipation
Christopher Wray is seated with his daughter Caroline, left, as he prepares to testify at a Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation hearing on his nomination to be the next FBI director on July 12, 2017.
Up In Arms
Health care activists protest to stop the Republican health care bill at Russell Senate Office Building on Capitol Hill on July 10, 2017.
Across A Table
Speaker of the House Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) meets with South Korean President Moon Jae-in on Capitol Hill on June 29, 2017.
Somber Day
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) speaks about the recent attack on the Republican congressional baseball team during her weekly press conference on Capitol Hill on June 15, 2017.
Family Matters
Rep. Joe Barton (R-Texas), right, and his sons, Jack, 10, and Brad, arrive in the basement of the Capitol after a shooting at the Republican baseball practice in Alexandria, Virginia, on June 14, 2017.
A Bipartisan Pause
Rep. Joe Barton (R-Texas), right, coach of the Republican congressional baseball team, tells the story of the shooting that occurred during a baseball practice while he stands alongside Rep. Mike Doyle (D-Pa.), left, a coach of the Democratic congressional baseball team on June 14, 2017.
Hats On
Rep. Chuck Fleischmann (R-Tenn.) reacts about the shooting he was present for at a Republican congressional baseball practice in Alexandria, Virginia, as he speaks with reporters at the U.S. Capitol in Washington on June 14, 2017.
Public Testimony
U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions is sworn in to testify before a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing on Capitol Hill on June 13, 2017.
Comey's Big Day
Former FBI Director James Comey testifies before a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing on Russia's alleged interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election on Capitol Hill on June 8, 2017.
Conveying His Point
U.S. Director of National Intelligence Daniel Coats testifies at a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing on his interactions with the Trump White House and on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act on June 7, 2017.
Selfie Time
Vice President Mike Pence takes a selfie with a tourist wearing a "Make America Great Again" hat inside the U.S. Capitol rotunda on June 6, 2017. The vice president walked through the rotunda after attending the Senate Republican policy luncheon.
Budget Queries
Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney testifies before the House Budget Committee about President Donald Trump's fiscal 2018 budget proposal on Capitol Hill on May 24, 2017.
Flagged Down By Reporters
Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.), chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, leaves a closed committee meeting on Capitol Hill on May 24, 2017. The committee is investigating possible Russian interference in the U.S. presidential election.
Shock And Awe
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) hold a news conference on the release of the president's fiscal 2018 budget proposal on Capitol Hill on May 23, 2017.
Seeing Double
Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) arrives in the Capitol for the Senate Democrats' policy lunch on May 16, 2017.
Honoring Officers
President Donald Trump speaks at the National Peace Officers Memorial Service on the West Lawn of the Capitol on May 15, 2017.
Whispers
Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Richard Burr (R-N.C.), right, and ranking member Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) talk during a hearing with the heads of the U.S. intelligence agencies in the Hart Senate Office Building on Capitol Hill on May 11, 2017.
Skeptical
Former acting Attorney General Sally Yates arrives to testify before a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. election on Capitol Hill on May 8, 2017.
Differing Opinions
Rep. Glenn Grothman (R-Wis.) gives a thumbs-up to protesters on the East Front of the Capitol after the House passed the Republicans' bill to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act on May 4, 2017. The protesters support the ACA.
Real Talk
United States Naval Academy Midshipman 2nd Class Shiela Craine (left), a sexual assault survivor, testifies before the House Armed Services Committee's Subcommittee on Military Personnel with (2nd from left to right) Ariana Bullard, Stephanie Gross and Annie Kendzior in the Rayburn House Office Building on Capitol Hill on May 2, 2017. Kendzior, a former midshipman, and Gross, a former cadet, were both raped twice during their time at the military academies. The academy superintendents were called to testify following the release of a survey last month by the Pentagon that said 12.2 percent of academy women and 1.7 percent of academy men reported experiencing unwanted sexual contact during the 2015-16 academic year.
In Support Of Immigrants
Congressional Hispanic Caucus Chair Rep. Michelle Lujan Grisham (D-N.M.), center, is joined by dozens of Democratic members of the House of Representatives to mark "Immigrant Rights Day" in the Capitol Visitor Center on May 1, 2017 in Washington, D.C. The Democratic legislators called on Republicans and President Donald Trump to join their push for comprehensive immigration reform.
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Ljubljana (AFP) - Slovenia's internet-savvy President Borut Pahor on Sunday won a second term in a runoff vote that was marred by an abysmally low turnout.
Centre-left ex-premier Pahor, 54, had been touted to win in October, but a record low 44-percent turnout triggered a repeat vote, with 1.7 million people called back to the ballot box.
On Sunday, Pahor, who took 47.1 percent in the first round, garnered 53.1 percent of the ballot in which turnout was around 40.1 percent, according to near-complete results.
His rival Marjan Sarec, a 39-year-old former comic actor and now a local mayor portraying himself as anti-establishment, gained 46.9 percent. He had 24.9 percent in the first round.
The presidency is largely ceremonial in the small EU country.
Polls published on Friday by the Dnevnik and Delo dailies put Pahor on 52-56 percent against 44-47 percent for Sarec.
"Pahor has been rather defensive in the run-off, underlining his achievements, merits and friends, which has seemed unattractive," analyst Miha Kovac said after a final televised debate on Thursday.
"That could turn against him, in particular if turnout is low," he said on state television.
Dubbed the "Instagram president" by the media, former model Pahor hiked around the country to campaign for re-election, chatting to supporters and posting photos and videos to his 40,000 Instagram fans.
However, his detractors call him "Barbie", and Slovenia's first president Milan Kucan accused Pahor of cheapening the role of head of state and using it for self-promotion.
Pahor stepped down as prime minister in 2011 after his government collapsed at the height of the global financial crisis that drove eurozone member Slovenia close to needing a bailout.
But the following year he won a surprise victory in presidential elections as an independent backed by the Social Democrats, part of the ruling coalition of Prime Minister Miro Cerar.
Slovenia now boasts one of the EU's most impressive growth rates, with four percent growth forecast for 2018.
DUBAI (Reuters) - Iran rejected on Sunday a call by French President Emmanuel Macron for talks on Tehran's ballistic missiles, saying they were defensive and unrelated to a nuclear agreement with world powers. On Thursday, Macron said during a visit to Dubai that he was "very concerned" by Iran's ballistic missile program, mentioning a missile fired from Yemen and intercepted by Saudi Arabia earlier this month. He raised the prospect of possible sanctions with regard to those activities. "There are negotiations we need to start on Iran's ballistic missiles," Macron said. But Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Bahram Qassemi rejected that possibility. "France is fully aware of our country's firm position that Iran's defense affairs are not negotiable," he said. "We have told French officials repeatedly that the nuclear deal is not negotiable and other issues will not be allowed to be added to it," Qassemi said, according to a statement on the ministry's website. The United States accused Iran on Tuesday of supplying Yemen's Houthi rebels with a missile that was fired into Saudi Arabia in July and called for the United Nations to hold Tehran accountable for violating two U.N. Security Council resolutions. Saudi Arabia and its allies accuse Iran of supplying missiles and other weapons to the Houthis, saying the arms were not present in Yemen before conflict broke out there in 2015. Iran denies the charges and blames the conflict on Riyadh. The United States has imposed unilateral sanctions on Iran, saying its missile tests violate a U.N. resolution that calls on Tehran not to undertake activities related to missiles capable of delivering nuclear weapons. Iran says its missile program is defensive and it has no plans to build nuclear-capable missiles. (Reporting by Dubai newsroom, editing by Larry King)
Iraqi forces discovered a mass grave at the abandoned Al-Bakara Base, a former Iraqi military outpost used by Islamic State militants to execute hundreds of Iraqi soldiers and civilians near Hawija in the Kirkuk province on November 11.
Rakan Said, the acting governor of Kirkuk, announced the discovery of the mass grave just hours before Shiite militia leaders arrested Hassan al-Tikriti, the alleged IS commander responsible for the executions. Hassan al-Sufi, a local Popular Mobilization Unit commander in Kirkuk, told the media that al-Tikriti confessed his responsibility for the mass executions without providing any further details. Credit: YouTube/Kirkuk Provincial Media Office via Storyful
(Adds defence minister comment, details)
By Maayan Lubell
JERUSALEM, Nov 11 (Reuters) - Israel shot down a Syrian spy drone over the Golan Heights on Saturday, the Israeli military said.
The drone was downed with a Patriot interceptor missile over the Golan demilitarized zone that has separated Israeli and Syrian forces since the ceasefire deal that followed their 1973 war.
The military initially told Reuters the UAV was Russian-manufactured but offered no evidence. A military source later said it was unclear whether the UAV was indeed Russian-made.
"It was a reconnaissance UAV (unmanned aerial vehicle) and not an attack UAV and we are checking whether there is any connection to Iran and Hezbollah," military spokesman, Lieutenant-Colonel Jonathan Conricus, told Reuters.
Israeli Defence Minister Avigdor Lieberman said Israel viewed the incident gravely and would respond to any provocation.
"We hold the Syrian regime responsible for any firing or breach of sovereignty and call on it to hold back all players active in its territory," Lieberman said in a statement.
Russia intervened in the civil war on behalf of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in 2015, joining a de-facto alliance with Iranian forces, Lebanese Hezbollah and other Shi'ite Muslim militias helping Damascus beat back Islamic State and other Sunni Muslim insurgent groups.
Israel fears an eventual Assad victory could leave Iran with a permanent garrison in Syria, extending a threat posed from neighbouring Lebanon by the Iranian-backed Hezbollah and has been lobbying Russia and the United States for reassurances that Iranian and Hezbollah forces will not be allowed to deploy near its border or set up bases within Syria.
"We will not allow the Shi'ite axis to establish Syria as its forefront base," Lieberman said.
The Golan, which Israel captured from Syria in the 1967 conflict, has seen spillover violence from the Syrian civil war. Israel has at times fired to foil what it deemed deliberate cross-border attacks and has struck suspected Hezbollah arms shipments around 100 times in Syria during the civil war.
For its part, Russia has set up a military hotline to prevent warplanes or anti-aircraft units clashing accidentally over Syria.
(Reporting by Maayan Lubell; editing by Alexander Smith and Louise Heavens)
Jerusalem (AFP) - An Israeli general has warned Palestinian militants against carrying out attacks in revenge for the blowing up of a tunnel stretching from the Gaza Strip into the Jewish state last month.
Major General Yoav Mordechai, head of a defence ministry unit responsible for activities in the Palestinian territories, made the comments in an Arabic-language video distributed late Saturday.
Referring to the Israeli operation on October 30, he said that Israel "destroyed a terror tunnel in Israeli sovereign territory," which resulted in the death of 12 Palestinian militants from Hamas and Islamic Jihad.
"We are aware of the plot that the Palestinian Islamic Jihad terror group is planning against Israel," said Mordechai, whose defence ministry unit is known as COGAT.
"They are playing with fire at the expense of Gazan residents, the Palestinian reconciliation efforts and the stability of the entire region.
"Let it be clear: Any attack by Islamic Jihad will be met with a harsh and determined Israeli response.
"This will not only apply to Islamic Jihad but also to Hamas," the Islamist movement that runs the Gaza Strip.
Mordechai also addressed the Damascus-based Islamic Jihad leadership, mentioning Ramadan Shalah and Ziad Nakhaleh by name.
He called on them to "take control over the situation," as they are the ones "who will be held accountable" for any attack.
Israel has said it is holding the bodies of five militants retrieved from the tunnel and implied it would try to use them as bargaining chips to retrieve the remains of two Israeli soldiers believed held by Hamas.
Two Israeli civilians, said to be mentally unstable, are also believed to have entered Gaza and to be held by Hamas.
Indirect negotiations led to a 2011 deal which saw Israel release more than 1,000 Palestinian prisoners in exchange for soldier Gilad Shalit, who had been held for five years.
Hamas and Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas's Fatah signed a landmark reconciliation deal on October 12 aiming to end their decade-long split.
The deal is supposed to see the Palestinian Authority retake control of the Gaza Strip by December 1.
Jared Kushner, Donald Trump's senior adviser and son-in-law: Zach Gibson/Getty Images
Donald Trump's senior adviser and son-in-law, Jared Kushner, reportedly urged a top executive at CNN's parent company to fire a fifth of its staff over its coverage of the presidential election.
Mr Kushner told Time Warner executive Gary Ginsberg that the broadcaster should sack 20 per cent of its employees because their analysis of the outcome of the November's vote had been wrong, according to the Wall Street Journal.
A White House official claimed Mr Kushner had been joking but sources at the media company told the newspaper the remark "wasn't taken lightly".
Mr Ginsberg reportedly replied that Time Warner would not be able to sack CNN staff and would not consider doing so.
President Trump has frequently lashed out at CNN over its coverage of him and his administration, disparaging it and its reporters as "fake news".
Mr Kushner's reported comments emerged as the US government holds up an acquisition of Time Warner by American telecoms giant AT&T.
His remarks will fuel suspicion that the Justice Department has put the brakes on the $85 billion (65 million) deal so the White House can put pressure on CNN.
The Justice Department has reportedly told AT&T that it wants the telecoms company to ditch video assets, citing competition laws. The government is said to have made the sale of the DirecTV satellite unit or Time Warner's Turner Broadcasting, which houses CNN, a condition of approval.
As a candidate, Mr Trump vowed to block the merger because it concentrated too much "power in the hands of too few."
But the hold-up has raised suspicions of political retaliation even among those who oppose the deal.
"While there are plenty of good reasons to oppose AT&T's Time Warner takeover, punishing CNN for trying to hold this administration accountable isn't one of them," said Craig Aaron, president of Free Press. The consumer group opposes the deal and media consolidation in general.
Story continues
Jessica Rosenworcel, a Democratic member of the Federal Communications Commission, tweeted: "Are we really going to make the [Justice Department] use anti-trust law to force the sale of a cable channel because the President doesn't like its news coverage?
"You can dislike consolidation but still find this extremely disturbing if true."
A White House spokesman said Mr Trump "did not speak with the attorney general about this matter"
Makan Delrahim, the Justice Department's anti-trust chief, said he has "never been instructed by the White House on this or any other transaction under review by the antitrust division."
By Ellen Francis
BEIRUT (Reuters) - Lebanon's president called on Saudi Arabia on Saturday to clarify why Lebanese Prime Minister Saad al-Hariri could not return home, a week after he stunned his country by resigning while in the kingdom.
A senior Lebanese official said President Michel Aoun had told foreign ambassadors Hariri had been "kidnapped" and should have immunity.
Hariri's shock resignation has thrust Lebanon back into the frontline of a power struggle between Sunni Saudi Arabia and Shi'ite Iran - a rivalry that has wrought upheaval in Syria, Iraq, Yemen, and Bahrain.
"Lebanon does not accept its prime minister being in a situation at odds with international treaties," Aoun said in a statement. He said any comment or move by Hariri "does not reflect reality" due to the questions over his status following his resignation in a broadcast from Saudi Arabia.
Lebanese authorities believe Riyadh is detaining Hariri who flew to Saudi Arabia on Nov. 3, two top Lebanese government officials, a senior politician close to Hariri and a fourth source have said.
French President Emmanuel Macron echoed similar concerns, saying in a call with Aoun on Saturday that "Lebanese political leaders should enjoy freedom of movement".
Macron, who made an unscheduled visit to Riyadh earlier this week, will receive the Lebanese foreign minister in Paris on Tuesday, the Elysee statement said.
Riyadh says Hariri is free and decided to resign because Iran's Lebanese ally, Hezbollah, was calling the shots in his coalition government.
Hariri has made no public remarks since quitting last week, when he said he feared assassination and accused Iran along with Hezbollah of sowing strife in the Arab world.
Hariri, whose family made its fortune in the Saudi construction industry, has also given no sign of when he might return to Beirut.
The Lebanese premier took part in a ceremony in Riyadh on Saturday welcoming Saudi King Salman from Medina, his media office said. Hariri met with the Turkish and British ambassadors at his Riyadh home in the afternoon, it said.
Story continues
Sources close to Hariri say Saudi Arabia has concluded that the prime minister - a long-time Saudi ally - had to go because he was unwilling to confront Hezbollah.
His phone was confiscated after he arrived in Riyadh, and the next day he was forced to resign on a Saudi TV channel, senior sources close to Hariri and top Lebanese political and security officials said.
FREEDOM OF MOVEMENT
Aoun wants Saudi Arabia, "with which we have brotherly ties and deeply rooted friendship, to clarify the reasons preventing Prime Minister Hariri's return," his office said.
France and other Western countries have looked on with alarm at the rising tensions in the region.
"We would like Saad al-Hariri to have all his freedom of movement and be fully able to play the essential role that is his in Lebanon," a French foreign ministry spokesman said on Friday.
Hariri's resignation unravelled a political deal among Lebanon's rival factions that made him prime minister and Aoun, a Hezbollah ally, president last year. The coalition government included Shi'ite Hezbollah, a heavily armed military and political organisation.
Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah said on Friday that Saudi had declared war on Lebanon and his group, accusing Riyadh of forcing Hariri to resign to destabilise Lebanon.
The comments mirrored an accusation by Riyadh earlier this week that Lebanon and Hezbollah had declared war on the Gulf Arab kingdom.
Hariri's political party denounced on Saturday Iranian intervention in Arab countries and attacks against Saudi Arabia.
The Future Movement party said it stands by the premier and was "waiting impatiently for his return to Lebanon to handle his national responsibilities in leading this stage."
In a statement, the United States called Hariri "a trusted partner" and referred to him as prime minister.
The White House "rejects any efforts by militias within Lebanon or by any foreign forces to threaten Lebanon's stability ... or use Lebanon as a base from which to threaten others in the region," it said.
U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson had told reporters on Friday there was no indication Hariri was being held against his will but that the United States was monitoring the situation.
The resignation of Hariri comes amid an anti-corruption purge in Riyadh in which dozens of senior princes and businessmen have been rounded up.
(Additional reporting by Laila Bassam; Editing by Richard Balmforth and Hugh Lawson)
Veterans Day is an occasion to recall the service of our troops. But women's stories have often been absent from those recollections, as author Cara Hoffman lamented in a 2014 op-ed for the New York Times. Works of fiction and nonfiction, memoirs (such as Mary Jennings Hegar's), documentaries (including "The Invisible War"), and dramas (such as"Blood Stripe") have helped show this side of the armed forces. But myths about female veterans endure. Kayla Williams, who wrote a memoir about serving as an Army linguist in Iraq, remembers an infantryman who was "sure that women troops would be flown by helicopter to shower every three days." Here are some of the most persistent misconceptions.
Myth No. 1: There aren't that many female veterans.
The National Veterans Foundation reported this year that because of stereotypes about veterans, perhaps developed from movies and television, "when most people think of 'veterans,' they think of men." A 2014report from Disabled American Veterans noted "the enduring perception that a woman who comes to VA for services is not a veteran herself, but a male veteran's wife, mother, or daughter."
Congress established a regular women's component in all branches of the armed forces in 1948 but capped women's participation at 2 percent of the total force. This kept the numbers of female veterans proportionally low until the cap was lifted incrementally, beginning in 1973, to enable the creation of an all-volunteer force. Women now make up 20 percent of new recruits, 15 percent of the active-duty force and 18 percent of the reserve and National Guard. Almost 280,000 women have served in Operations Enduring Freedom, Iraqi Freedom and New Dawn. More than 2 million veterans - about 9 percent of the total veteran population of 21 million - are women.
Myth No. 2: American women began serving in combat recently.
Many hold the misperception that "official military policy has long kept female service members away from the front lines," as a History Channel essay put it. And it's true that two provisions in the Women's Armed Services Integration Act of 1948 prohibited Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps women from combat Air Force sorties and naval vessels (they were already barred from direct ground combat). In 1998, an ambiguous Defense Department rule closed noncombat positions to women if the risk of exposure to direct fire, combat or capture equaled or exceeded that experienced by combat units in the same theater of operations.
But women have fought for this country as long as it has existed. In April 1775, a 35-year-old mother of six named Prudence Cummings Wright formed a women's militia in Pepperell, Mass. Dressed in men's clothing and armed, the women captured a suspected British courier at the bridge over the Nashua River and delivered him and his documents to the rebellion. At the Battle of Fort Washington in 1776, Margaret Corbin took over her husband's gun when he was killed. Disabled by grapeshot that nearly severed her arm, she was placed in the Continental Army's Invalid Regiment at West Point, drew a lifetime military pension and was reinterred at West Point with full military honors in 1926. In 1778, a Creole woman named Sally St. Clare fought disguised as a man and became the first woman to die in action in the service of America. And historians estimate that at least 200 women disguised themselves as men to fight on both sides in the Civil War.
Since the establishment of the Army Nurse Corps in 1901, American women have served overseas, under fire and at the front lines in every major U.S. military conflict.
Myth No. 3: The Pentagon integrated women as a social experiment.
In the 1990s, conservative activist Elaine Donnelly accused Rep. Patricia Schroeder and "her feminist friends at the Pentagon" of trying to "undermine readiness and morale for the sake of social engineering" by opening combat billets to women "to advance the career ambitions of a few." This idea had staying power: In 2013, retired Army Gen. Jerry Boykin repeated a version of it to CNN. It recurs almost daily in the comments on military-related news sites, blogs and social-media pages.
In fact, the activism of military women is what drove the expansion of their roles. Doctor Mary Edwards Walker, awarded the Medal of Honor in 1865 for her work as a military surgeon and spy, wrote in 1859 that women should serve as soldiers. Reps. Edith Nourse Rogers (R-Mass.), who served in the Red Cross in Europe during World War I, and Margaret Chase Smith (R-Maine), who later joined the Air Force, crafted the 1948 legislation establishing permanent women's components in the armed forces. Hundreds of women in uniform assigned to personnel commands lobbied quietly for incrementally greater opportunities. Navy electrician Yona Owens, Army helicopter pilot Mary Jennings Hegar and other military women even sued the U.S. government to open chances for women to serve legally on naval combatants and in direct ground combat.
Myth No. 4:Women are less able to meet the military's demands.
We've come a long way since 1979, when former Marine and future Navy secretary Jim Webb articulated this idea in a misogynistic rant in Washingtonian. Still, in September 2015, the Marine Corps sought an exemption from then-Defense Secretary Leon Panetta's 2013 direction to integrate women fully into every branch of the armed forces; the Marines cited a study that claimed to have found mixed-gender units slower, less lethal and unable to evacuate casualties as rapidly as all-male units. Navy Secretary Ray Mabus rejected the Marine Corps request to exclude women from infantry billets.
The 1994 Defense Women's Health Research Program, a $40 million initiative that funded research targeted at improving the health and performance of women in the armed forces, demonstrated more than a decade ago that women equal men in their ability to tolerate gravity forces, respond to stress, and survive in extremes of heat and cold. A 2015 Army study found no reason to exclude women from any military occupational specialty as long as they measured up to newly established physical standards for their jobs. A few women have already met the physical, academic and leadership standards for the Army's demanding Ranger School and the Marine Corps Infantry Officer Course.
Myth No. 5: The typical homeless veteran is a man.
In a 2014 study by the veterans advocacy group Got Your 6, almost half of the adult Americans who were shown a photo of a man who appeared to be homeless identified him as a veteran. The stereotype persists: a white man, often a Vietnam-era veteran, panhandling with a cardboard sign at an intersection and sleeping under a highway overpass or on the streets. He has long-term mental health issues and/or substance use disorders. Veterans advocate Lily Casura found in a nationwide survey of thousands of female veterans that even these veterans, 40 percent of whom had themselves experienced homelessness, repeated such details when asked to describe a homeless veteran.
Republicans need to hurry for two reasons. First, if Republicans dont pass meaningful legislation, it is unlikely they will maintain their majority in the House or the Senate. Second, Republicans need to hurry because history alone suggests they will lose their majority in 2018.
Everything so far suggests a losing cycle. If Ed Gillespie winning in Virginia would have been a good omen for the midterms, what does Gillespie losing badly say about the midterms?
Lets remember, in American politics, what is supposed to happen tends to happen. And in Virginia, gubernatorial races tend to favor the candidate whose party is not in the White House. In fact, since 1977, the incumbent presidents party has lost every Virginia gubernatorial election with just one exception in 2013.
Also, remember that in modern history, midterms spell trouble for the presidents party in Congress. If President Donald Trumps approval rating were anywhere near 50 percent, perhaps the outlook in the House would not be so bleak. When presidents are above 50 percent, their party loses an average of 14 seats in the House in the midterms compared with an average loss of 36 seats when presidents are below 50 percent. But Trumps approval rating is at 38.2 percent and there is no sign of it approaching 50 percent anytime soon.
So, from a historical perspective alone, Republicans are in trouble. But in Trumps case, losing the majority will be particularly problematic. Democratic activists and the presidents opponents in Congress and in the media want blood. They want payback. They want more than just stalled nominations and roadblocks to legislation. They despise Trump so much that they want him persecuted, prosecuted and removed from office. They want his personal fortune revealed and diminished, his family tormented and their brand crushed.
With all the spite directed his way, one would think Trump might focus his attention on making real changes. If he were capable and more self-aware, he would be in a panic to pass tax reformnot just to check a box as a legislative accomplishment, but to add fuel to the economy. If anything can save the GOP, it is a real spike in economic growth.
Along with that, just to state the obvious, Trump should work to improve his personal popularity. Many voters who are normally part of the GOP coalition have given up on him and concluded that he is not only a drag on Republican policies and Republican candidate recruitment, but also at the ballot box itself. Trump has every reason to want to make this situation better. But will he?
According to my old boss, Edward J. Rollins of the pro-Trump Great America Alliance super PAC, The White House isnt paying attention to the suburbs, and there has never really been a political operation there. They have to develop a strategy where its not just Trump alone winning, where the whole party is able to win. Well said.
I would add that a lot of what appeals to suburban Republicans would be a change in the tone and daily dose of diatribes coming directly from our president.
Impossible, you say? Im not looking for the long-lost Trump pivot, but as the saying goes, when a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully. Again, he needs to hurry.
Anyway, while the results in Virginia were predictable, they should still serve as an alarman alarm that confirms we, Republicans, are headed for a cliff. And given this presidents vulnerabilities, he should be particularly eager to alter course and avoid the calamity that is coming into view.
Simply put, between historical tides, modest accomplishments and an unpopular president, Republicans will lose in 2018 unless they fundamentally change their trajectory.
We have now been treated to the sight of dozens of Facebook memes that played a part in Russias successful disruption of our electoral process. Pretty depressing. The divisive themes, the inflammatory language, the careful targeting. Weve been had.
You have to give these trolls their due, however. They not only identified the hot-button issues that give Americans aneurysms, but they also knew the degree of subtlety required to garner lots of clicks and shares. And that would be pretty much none. The word crude does not convey the lack of subtlety, the almost-sci-fi exaggerations of reality in these memes.
Probably most depressing of all for me were the memes with religious images (if its not a sacrilege to use that word in describing this laughable trash)for example, the comical, cartoonish portrayal of a red-hued Hillary, complete with devils horns, facing off with a pugilistic Jesus. Above the image are the words, Like if you want Jesus to win!
This is where I have my aneurysm.
The idea that this kind of phony, 99-Cent Store, skin-deep, cartoonish religion could do anything other than repel and disgust an adult viewer is beyond incredible. What does this say about Americans? Are we that gullible? Are we drowning in an ocean of fake, group-think piety that allows us, on the one hand, to deny less-privileged children health care and a hot meal at school, but that makes us quite happy to send money to rich televangelists who have more in common with sideshow carnival barkers than with anything even vaguely Christian?
The Russian trolls knew the answers to those questions. They knew they had found their perfect mark: an army of insipid, respectable citizens who are always talking about Jesus as their personal savior but who cant seem to recognize as a monstrous fraud a New York con-man with three wives, a bogus university, and 4,000 lawsuits to his name.
Reports that Vladimir Putin was directly responsible for orchestrating this internet campaign are very believable, considering how deep his resentment of the United States runs, and the study hes made of the issues that divide us. He understands Americas naive, superficial, self-conscious piety very well, having first encountered it in his 2001 meeting with George W. Bush. It was a two-hour con job on Putins part, which included a discussion of the miraculous recovery of a metal cross from the burned-out ruins of one of Putins dachas. What American with any capacity for embarrassment can forget Bushs subsequent pronouncement of having looked into Putins soul and found kinship? Talking to Putin about spirituality is like talking to a king cobra about a donation to Oxfam.
Putin understood much more about us than just our religious foibles, of course. He has been a devoted student of confirmation bias as a phenomenon. He certainly understood that people would endorse just about any absurd meme as long as it stoked the fires of whatever distorted opinions they had already willingly shaped for themselves. Pure twaddle on top of pure twaddle. Once any kind of real discernment goes, then its the more the merrier, the crazier the better.
Among all the chilling conclusions one might derive from this Russian internet assault, the most disturbing one is not how cyber-vulnerable we allowed our institutions to be, nor how slow the response to the attack was, nor even the lack of a more robust response. Worse than all of these is the shocking recognition of just how brilliant Putin is. With all the variables, the bewildering number of forces at work and all the possible outcomes, he played his hand boldly, with great resolve and equally great flexibility.
If Bush was no match for Putin, Obama wasnt either. Its hard to shake the conclusion that Putin had already taken Obamas measure before launching the cyber disinformation campaign. He certainly noted Obamas lack of strong support for the Ukrainian government as the Crimean invasion unfolded in 2014, and his empty red line threat concerning the gassing of Syrian civilians in 2013. Both events revealed a marked timidity, one that Putin readily exploited.
So America now faces this evil Russian genius, and we look around at the current cast of political personalities available to stand in our defense. Donald Trump? Be serious. It will take consistent, carefully-crafted policies to contain Putin, not some tweetstorm or a one-off launch of cruise missiles targeting Syrian locations that were warned of the attack beforehand. Erratic, severe personality disorders and a loud mouth make a cheap and easy lunch for Putinlike putting a hyena in a cage with a grizzly bear. And thats presupposing that blackmail isnt lurking in the background.
Anybody got Wonder Womans cell number?
Joshua Gurto is charged with raping and murdering a one-year-old girl: Conneaut Police Department
An Ohio man has been charged with raping and killing his girlfriends 13-month-old daughter.
Joshua Gurto, 37, could face the death penalty if convicted of beating to death Sereniti Jazzlynn-Sky Blankenship-Sutley.
The girl was found unconscious by her 22-year-old mother on 7 October in a bedroom at their flat in Conneaut, 70 miles north-east of Cleveland. She was later pronounced dead in hospital.
A coroner said the toddler had died of blunt force trauma to her head and body.
Ashtabula County prosecutor Nicholas Iarocci said Mr Gurto faced charges of murder, aggravated murder, rape, assault with a dangerous weapon, and domestic violence.
Mr Gurto was arrested in Alleghany County, Pennsylvania on 27 October after spending three weeks on the run. He had been questioned on the day Sereniti died but police said they did not have enough evidence to detain him at the time.
He subsequently fled, sparking a manhunt.
Sereniti Jazzlyn-Sky Blankenship-Sutley was found unresponsive by her 22-year-old mother (Justice for Baby Sereniti )
He was spotted in a Pittsburgh convenience store the day before his arrest.
Detectives said he had been camping in woodland as he sought to evade police and was found with a backpack containing maps of Pennsylvania and New Jersey. He also had a knife and a tent.
Mr Gurto is being held at Ashtabula County Jail.
Sereniti's mother is not facing any charges.
A Colorado man who was in court for a felony drug charge got in more trouble when drugs allegedly fell out of his hat during the hearing, reports said.
Juan Jose Vidrio Bibriesca, 43, was in court on Wednesday standing next to two defendants when a wad of cocaine allegedly fell from his hat, the Associated Press reported.
Read: Man Cleared of Drug Charge After Cops Mistake Kitty Litter for Meth
Bibriesca was allegedly taking off his hat in front of the judge when a square, folded paper fell to the floor, reports said.
Police reviewed the surveillance footage and reportedly determined the cocaine inside of the paper had fallen from Bibriescas hat.
Read: 2 Men Try to Buy Cocaine From Cop - in Front of Police Station: Authorities
Bibriesca was walked over to the county jail and charged with narcotics possession and a bond violation.
Bibriesca was born in Mexico and is reportedly in the country illegally, reports said.
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Roy Moore speaks in Birmingham, Ala., on Saturday. (Photo: Brynn Anderson/AP)
White House director of legislative affairs Marc Short said on Sunday that if the allegations against Alabama Republican Senate candidate Roy Moore are true, theres a special place in hell for him.
I think that theres a special place in hell for those who actually perpetrate these crimes, Short said in an interview with Chuck Todd on Sundays Meet the Press on NBC. And I think Roy Moore has to do more explaining than he has done so far.
But Short also cautioned against a rush to judgment against the Senate hopeful. I think we here in Washington have to be careful as well in this, Short said. Roy Moore is somebody who graduated from West Point, he served our country in Vietnam, hes been elected multiple times statewide in Alabama. The people in Alabama know Roy Moore better than we do here in D.C., and I think we have to be very cautious.
Short added: If more evidence comes out that can prove that he did this, then sure, by all means he should be disqualified. But thats a huge if, and I think we have to allow that more facts come out.
Todd asked Short if the White House would step in if the evidence pointed to Moores guilt.
Theres no Senate seat more important than the notion of child pedophilia, Chuck, Short replied. I mean, thats reality.
On Thursday, the Washington Post published a bombshell story quoting a woman, Leigh Corfman, who alleged that Moore had attempted sexual relations with her when she was 14 and he was 32. The story also quoted three other women who said Moore hit on them when they were between the ages of 16 and 18 and he was in his 30s. Moore initially dismissed the entire report as fake news and an attack by the Democratic Party and the countrys most liberal newspaper.
On Friday, Moore denied even knowing Corfman, who told the Post she and her mother first met him outside an Alabama courthouse in 1979 when he was an assistant district attorney.
I dont know Ms. Corfman from anybody, Moore said in a radio interview with Fox News host Sean Hannity.
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Other top White House officials were asked about the claims against Moore on Sunday.
Steve Mnuchin on Roy Moore: It appears that there is a significant issue here that needs to be addressed #CNNSOTU https://t.co/IrU58KP2iA CNN (@CNN) November 12, 2017
On CNNs State of the Union, Treasury Steven Mnuchin also said Moore should drop out of the race if the allegations prove to be true.
I only know what I see on TV and what I read in the paper, Mnuchin said. Im not an expert on this issue, but what I would say is, people should investigate this issue and get the facts.
When pressed, Mnuchin said it appears that there is a significant issue here that needs to be addressed.
On ABCs This Week, Kellyanne Conway, President Trumps special counselor, said that the conduct as described should disqualify anyone from serving in public office.
The president and others in the Republican Party have made clear that if the allegations are true, this man should step aside, Conway said. But Ive gone farther than that, and Ive reflected something the vice president said as well, which is everybody should know that conduct is disqualifying.
Conway was asked if she had doubts Moores accusers were telling the truth.
I know what I read. I dont know the accusers. And I dont know Judge Moore, she said. But I also want to make sure that we as a nation are not always prosecuting people through the press. He has denied the allegations. I have read the stories. I have heard not the testimony and the evidence, but what people are saying publicly.
She added: Let me say it one last time, the conduct as described is not just offensive and disgusting, it disqualifies anyone who has done it from holding public office. So let me go a little step farther: If theres anyone currently in public office who has behaved that way to any girl or any woman, maybe they should step aside, because in a country of 330 million people, we ought to be able to do better than this.
Moore speaks at the Values Voter Summit in Washington, D.C., last month. (Photo: James Lawler Duggan/Reuter)
Aboard Air Force One, White House press secretary Sarah Sanders told reporters the president believes that we cannot allow a mere allegation in this case, one from many years ago to destroy a persons life.
However, the president also believes that if these allegations are true, Judge Moore will do the right thing and step aside, Sanders added. Regardless, the president must and will remain focused on representing our country on his historic trip to Asia where he has been treated with great respect and made unprecedented progress in further strengthening alliances and promoting Americas interests above all else.
Short said on Sunday that he expects Trump will address the Moore scandal in more detail this week following his 12-day overseas trip.
I think the presidents been on an incredibly important foreign trip, Short said. When he returns Im sure well have the chance to discuss this.
Read more from Yahoo News:
US First Lady Melania Trump hiked the Great Wall and spent some time with a couple of China's most prominent diplomats in Beijing on Friday: the pandas Meng'er and Gu Gu.
While President Donald Trump jetted off to a summit in Vietnam after his state visit to China, his wife stayed behind to see the Beijing Zoo's favourite tenants before heading to the Great Wall.
The former model was greeted by a group of schoolchildren who waved Chinese and American flags and led her to the panda enclosure.
They oohed and aahed as Meng'er crawled on to a platform and began munching bamboo. His name means "Cute No. 2" in Mandarin.
Trump later "interacted privately" with Gu Gu behind-the-scenes, zoo director Li Xiaoguang told reporters.
Born in 1999, Gu Gu is a "good-looking panda with a robust memory," traits that serve him well as "goodwill ambassador of the zoo", Li said.
Gu Gu's name doesn't have a particular meaning, but the repetition of syllables is generally used in China to make names sound adorable.
Beijing has cultivated a global fascination with pandas as part of its diplomacy by sending the animals to overseas zoos where they have proven a wildly popular draw.
In 2015, former US first lady Michelle Obama and her Chinese counterpart, Peng Liyuan, chose the name for Bei Bei, a panda cub born at the National Zoo in Washington.
Pandas, whose natural habitat lies in mountainous southwestern China, have a notoriously low reproductive rate and are under pressure from factors such as habitat loss.
Trump later visited the Great Wall.
After a short cable car ride, she braved the cold weather to spend about half an hour hiking the refurbished Mutianyu section of the famous fortification.
An official told reporters she had said: "This is beautiful. This is amazing."
Donald Trump, who wants to build his own massive wall along the US-Mexico border to stem illegal immigration, did not visit the Great Wall, despite it being a usual stop for US presidents.
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China treated the Trumps to a lavish state visit with a private tour of the Forbidden City on Wednesday and a banquet dinner on Thursday.
The president wrote on Twitter that his wife would later fly to Alaska to meet with US troops.
The US leader was in Vietnam for an Asia-Pacific summit and he will then head to the Philippines on Sunday for the final leg of his five-nation tour of Asia.
By Michael Nienaber BERLIN (Reuters) - Germany should lead the fight against climate change and cut emissions without destroying jobs, Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Saturday, treading a fine line as she tries to clinch a coalition deal with environmentalist and pro-business parties. Merkel's comments, made in her weekly podcast in the midst of 200-nation talks on limiting global warming in Bonn, show the dilemma of the center-right leader in tricky coalition negotiations to form the next government. Merkel's conservatives, which bled support to the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) in the Sept. 24 election, are trying to forge a coalition government with the pro-business Free Democrats (FDP) and the environmentalist Greens. The unlikely partners have cited progress after three weeks of exploratory talks about a three-way coalition. But the Greens raised the pressure on Merkel ahead of a meeting on Sunday in which party leaders are due to thrash out differences over climate, immigration and euro zone policy. The Greens want Merkel and the other parties to spell out which additional measures the next government will implement for Germany to reach its 2020 goal of lowering emissions by 40 percent from 1990 levels. In her podcast, Merkel said industrialized countries had a special responsibility to reduce their emission of climate-damaging greenhouse gases, warning that time was running out. "The urgency, I think we all see this in light of the natural disasters, is great," Merkel said. Climate change is leading to droughts and famine and this is causing mass migration from poorer to richer countries, she added. Referring to the Paris climate agreement, Merkel said: "As things stand right now, the target to keep the rise in temperature below two degrees Celsius - ideally at around 1.5 degrees - will be missed." WRESTLING Due to strong economic growth and higher-than-expected immigration, Germany is at risk of missing its emissions target if the next government does not implement further measures. "That's why we are also wrestling in exploratory talks for a possible new coalition about this: How can we adopt even more measures in order to try and reach this 2020 goal," Merkel said. But the chancellor insisted that Germany's "industrial core" should not be put at risk and any further climate measures should not force companies to relocate. "If steel mills, aluminum factories, copper smelters, if they all leave our country and go somewhere where environmental regulations are not as strict, then we have won nothing for global climate," Merkel said. The government should therefore adopt a sound mix of regulatory policy, financial incentives and voluntary measures in order to avoid major disruptions and job losses, she said. "We have to push ahead forcefully with electromobility and alternative drive systems," Merkel said. She also suggested that the next government should give tax incentives for home owners to improve building insulation. The Greens called on Merkel's conservatives and the FDP to make concessions after the party itself gave ground on Tuesday by dropping its demand for fixed dates to ban cars with internal combustion engines and shut down coal-fired power stations. "Instead of the week of truth, this was a week of disappointment," parliamentary floor leader Anton Hofreiter told Der Spiegel magazine, adding that the Greens had done their part by offering "painful" compromises. Juergen Trittin, another senior member of the Greens, warned Merkel personally that her political future was at stake. "Mrs Merkel, the lead candidate of the conservatives and acting chancellor, she wants to get re-elected - with our votes," Trittin said. "And for this, she must move now." (Reporting by Michael Nienaber; editing by Clelia Oziel)
San Francisco police and game wardens stationed on rooftops in a city neighborhood watched for hours for a young male mountain lion before bringing it down with tranquilizer darts.
When I arrived the mountain lion was hunkered down, Lt. James Ober, a game warden with the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, told the San Francisco Chronicle. It appeared to be under a lot of stress.
It took two darts to subdue the 82-pound cat on Friday after it had been spotted prowling around the Diamond Heights neighborhood in the heart of the city. Police stood by with rifles in the event of an emergency.
The animal, believed to be 18 months old, was masked and its paws secured with straps. The Santa Cruz Puma Project at the University of California Santa Cruz fitted the animal with a tracking collar and ear tag before it was taken to the Crystal Springs open area in the northern Santa Cruz Mountains.
You can see some small movements coming from lion which was shot w/ two tranquilizer darts pic.twitter.com/7HQGu8kqSJ Melanie Woodrow (@MelanieWoodrow) November 10, 2017
Officials still investigating if this is the same lion seen earlier this week pic.twitter.com/JjvrvyqLvt Melanie Woodrow (@MelanieWoodrow) November 10, 2017
Experts believe the young animal was striking out to find new home territory of its own and ended up in the wrong place.
Its not unusual for California mountain lions to be close to or even in cities, but its dangerous for the big cats to be roaming close to homes. A mountain lion identified as P-22 has been spotted in Hollywood, and other pumas live in the hills around Los Angeles. It was the first time a mountain lion was captured in San Francisco.
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There were at least two sightings of a mountain lion the first week of November near the Presidio and Sea Cliff area of San Francisco. Surveillance video at the home of Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff captured the images. Its not known if that mountain lion was the same as the one tranquilized on Friday. The area is a few miles from Diamond Heights.
There was one other mountain lion sighting in the city in 2015, but there hadnt been a sighting before then in San Francisco for a hundred years, KGO-TV reported.
Half of California is considered prime mountain lion habitat, but its unknown how many of the animals live in the state because theyre difficult to track. There may be as many as 6,000 of the big cats in the state, according to the Department of Fish and Wildlife.
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A Massachusetts district attorney plans to meet with a teenager who accused actor Kevin Spacey of committing sexual assault at a Nantucket restaurant last year, The Boston Globe reported Friday.
Cape and Islands D.A. Michael OKeefe told the newspaper that hes interested in everything thats relevant and material, and that the investigation will proceed from there. He plans to talk to the 19-year-old college sophomore soon.
The alleged assault involves the son of former Boston TV news anchor Heather Unruh. Spacey gave her star struck son, 18 at the time, drink after drink at a restaurant where he worked as a busboy, then jammed his hands down the teenagers pants and grabbed his genitals, she said at a press conference Wednesday. Unruh tearfully characterized the encounter as a sexual assault and said Spacey should go to prison.
Nothing could have prepared my son for how that sexual assault would make him feel as a man, she said. It harmed him and it cannot be undone.
Her son, who hasnt been publicly identified, has filed a police report, and a criminal investigation is underway, Unruh said.
The #weinsteinscandal has emboldened me-- #truth time. I was a Kevin Spacey fan until he assaulted a loved one. Time the dominoes fell pic.twitter.com/C0eiWEfHSO Heather Unruh (@HeatherUnruh) October 13, 2017
Unruhs son is being represented by Mitchell Garabedien, whose clients have included several victims of sexual abuse by Catholic clergy members. Garabediens hunt for justice in the church sex scandal in Boston was highlighted in the award-winning movie Spotlight.
Garabedien told The Globe that hes looking into any kind of documented evidence of an encounter between Spacey and the teen, and is also seeking other possible victims in the area (Spacey was known to frequent Nantucket bars and restaurants). Unruh said she is searching for a woman her distraught son turned to at the bar after the encounter with Spacey. The woman urged her son to flee while Spacey was in the bathroom, which he did, according to Unruh.
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Several people, including Danny Lanzetta and Harry Dreyfus, have accused Spacey of sexual misconduct since actor Anthony Rapp alleged last month that Spacey sexually harassed him when he was just 14. Spacey responded that he owed Rapp the sincerest apology but didnt remember the encounter that may have been deeply inappropriate drunken behavior. He said he was seeking evaluation and treatment.
The actor has since been cut from the Netflix TV series House of Cards, and its production was suspended. His scenes also have been erased from the Ridley Scott film All the Money in The World, due out in December. The filmmakers plan to reshoot his scenes with Christopher Plummer replacing him. He reportedly has also been dropped by his talent agency and publicist.
Spacey is reportedly already under investigation in London for an alleged sexual assault there in 2008.
The actor is one of a quickly growing number of men in Hollywood, including Harvey Weinstein, James Toback and former Gossip Girl star Ed Westwick, who have been accused of sexual harassment or assault in the past few weeks.
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SEOUL (Reuters) - North Korea said on Saturday that U.S. President Donald Trump's first trip to Asia showed he was a "destroyer" and he had begged for war on the Korean peninsula. "Trump, during his visit, laid bare his true nature as destroyer of world peace and stability and begged for a nuclear war on the Korean peninsula," the foreign ministry spokesman said in a statement carried by the state news agency. Trump had warned North Korea on Wednesday not to underestimate the United States as he wrapped up his visit to South Korea. The North Korean spokesman said nothing would deter Pyongyang from pursuing its nuclear weapons programme. (Reporting by Dahee Kim; Editing by Stephen Coates)
China has developed a magnetic propulsion drive for use on nuclear submarines, making them almost silent
The China Shipbuilding Industry Corporation (CSIC) has recently unveiled and tested a new magnetic propulsion motor that may put China at par with the U.S. and other Western naval forces. According to reports, the new technology is the countrys first permanent system of its kind and may enable nuclear submarines to move about with better speed and increased stealth.
Reports have indicated that the new magnetic propulsion system has been tested on naval vessels docked at Sanya, in South Chinas Hainan Province. As per the reports, this area serves as the headquarters for the countrys conventional and nuclear submarines. The state media has noted that the tests were carried out on October 18, and have shown positive results as far as vessel speed is concerned.
Reports have also revealed that the new technologys magnetic drive utilizes a superconducting magnet to force water through the submarines shaft, which is then subsequently funneled out at the back. The magnetic drive requires less moving parts, which makes the vessels more quiet than conventional submarines, experts say.
Submarine and anti-submarine technology and capabilities have long been considered a weak link in Chinese naval power. It appears that they are making concerted efforts to address this shortfall, states Eric Wertheim, author of Combat Fleets of the World.
Chinese submersible arsenal ships are also on the works
Reports have also revealed that the Chinese Navy is currently developing submersible arsenal ships with the ability to fire missiles at the surface, or submerge below the waves to carry out an underwater attack. (Related: Thermonuclear missile launch near Los Angeles is final sign of World War III on the precipice US, China and Russia all escalating covert attacks in run up to global war.)
Data obtained from Chinese media show that naval experts are mulling over two types of partially-submerged warships that can displace about 20,000 tons. Experts note that the ships design could mask their radar signatures as they submerge, which in turn would enable the large, missile-carrying warships to carry out stealthier operations. The design is also set to allow the ships to perform high-speed mission at the surface, the experts added.
Reports claim the country has been allegedly testing potential models since 2011, and that a proof-of-concept model developed by the Bohai Shipbuilding Heavy Industrial Corporation will be available in the year 2020.
Sources include:
DailyMail.co.uk
Motherboard.vice.com
North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un visits a shoe factory in this undated photo released by North Korea's Korean Central News Agency in Pyongyang - REUTERS
A North Korean defector has made a heartbroken plea for international help to save his wife and young child from execution after they were caught trying to flee the pariah state into China.
In an emotional interview with The Telegraph, Taewon Lee, 29, said he last heard from his wife and four year old son whose identities he wanted to protect on November 4, in a snatched telephone conversation when she told him they had been arrested in China.
I almost fainted. I collapsed on the floor for hours, he said, speaking from the South Korean capital, Seoul. Since then he has pleaded with the Souths foreign ministry for help, but their diplomatic efforts to locate his family have yielded few results.
The consequences of deportation would be dire. They will definitely be sent to a prison camp. In the worst case, they will be killed, said Mr Lee.
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un provides guidance with Ri Hong Sop (3rd L) and Hong Sung Mu (L) on a nuclear weapons program Credit: Reuters
Even if they forgive my son, his background will be that his father went to South Korea, his mother was in a prison camp or executed. He will have no family, maybe he will become a street child. I cant bear to imagine.
News of the young familys plight comes just days after a blistering speech by US President Donald Trump to South Koreas parliament where he denounced the North as a hell that no person deserves, whose citizens face torture, starvation, rape and murder on a constant basis.
But despite building evidence of human rights atrocities, there has been a reported surge in deportations back to the North from China, the most the common escape route for defectors.
In September, Human Rights Watch reported the arrests of 41 North Koreans in July and August alone, compared to 51 cases identified between July 2016 and June 2017.
Mr Lee fled to South Korea two years ago, choosing to make the initial journey alone as it was so dangerous. The former coalminer said he had longed to find freedom from the dictatorship that was controlling his familys lives. I couldnt say or do what I wanted to do, he said.
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At a glance | North Koreas human rights record
When he safely reached Seoul, he saved the money for his wife and son to join him but she was too terrified to leave because of the steep penalties for being caught.
Constant harassment from security agencies asking about Mr Lee eventually forced her to take the risk of crossing the Amnok River into Chinas Liaoning province on October 17.
There she and her son joined eight other mainly female defectors in a safe house to wait out a security crackdown and tightened immigration controls during the ruling Communist partys national congress.
The group was waiting for smugglers to take them across China and into Laos and Thailand, where most North Korean defectors are allowed to fly to Seoul. But when they attempted to move on November 4, the police arrested them in the northeastern city of Shenyang.
Last week South Korean foreign ministry spokesman Roh Kyu-deok said Seoul was closely monitoring the case and making diplomatic efforts to prevent their forced repatriation.
Floral tributes are paid to the statues of North Korea founder Kim Il Sung and late leader Kim Jong Il on the occasion of the 72nd founding anniversary of the Workers' Party of Korea (WPK) in Pyongyang Credit: KCNA
Chinas foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said in a daily news briefing on Tuesday that she was unaware of the details of the case but stressed that China handled such matters with humanitarian principles.
China, however, views North Korean defectors as illegal migrants who flee for economic reasons and denies them refugee status. Pyongyang accuses escapees of being criminals, and many are forced to place their lives in the hands of exploitative human traffickers.
About 31,000 have survived the dangerous journey in recent years to resettle in South Korea, according to government data.
Mr Lee urged Chinese President Xi Jinping to put himself in his shoes. If it was his grandchild, how would he feel if they were sent back to be killed? he asked.
The international community should take serious action. My son is only four years old. This is not his fault.
Michael Glendinning, director of the European Alliance for Human Rights in North Korea, called for urgent steps to pressure the Chinese to send the group to South Korea.
It is highly probable that the North Korean regime will incarcerate them which in itself can often be a death sentence or execute them, he said.
By John Miller ZURICH (Reuters) - Novartis's bid to move in on Bayer's and Regeneron's eye-drug turf was buoyed on Friday by data showing patients on the Swiss drugmaker's new RTH258 drug showed less disease activity than those on its rivals' drug Eylea. Active disease was observed in 23.5 percent of RTH258 patients versus 33.5 percent of Eylea patients at 16 weeks, Novartis said, of its investigational treatment for wet age-related macular degeneration (AMD), where abnormal, leaky blood vessels can cause blindness. A second, similar study found active disease in 21.9 percent of RTH258 patients versus 31.4 percent of those on Eylea for the condition affecting 20-25 million people worldwide. Novartis in June touted initial data showing its drug may require fewer injections directly into the eye than Eylea, while matching it on vision and safety measures. The Basel-based drugmaker hopes this latest analysis lends RTH258 additional muscle when matched head-to-head with Eylea as well as Lucentis, which Roche sells in the United States. "When you take all of that together ... we believe we have a very compelling proposition," Vas Narasimhan, Novartis's chief drug developer who will become CEO in 2018, said on a conference call. Novartis, which released the data at the American Academy of Opthalmology conference in New Orleans, predicts RTH258 annual sales will top $1 billion and aims to file for U.S. approval in late 2018. Making it a success is by no means clear sailing. For one, Novartis owns Lucentis rights in Europe where it has contractual obligations to continue marketing that drug. Analysts say cannibalization from RTH258 will be a challenge. Competition abounds, too: Eylea, with $5 billion in annual sales, has made inroads against the $3.2 billion-per-year Lucentis, whose 2020 U.S. patent expiration will expose it to cheaper copies. Moreover, Roche's cancer drug Avastin is effective in off-label AMD use and has won favor because it costs a fraction of Lucentis and Eylea. In Britain, Novartis and Bayer are fighting doctor groups aiming to switch to Avastin. NEEDLE IN THE EYE Other would-be rivals are racing to market, too. Allergan, whose investigational Abicipar is in Phase III trials, is also trumpeting prospects of reduced injections compared to Lucentis. Gene therapies may also be on the distant horizon. Still, Novartis's Narasimhan remains optimistic for RTH258's reception when it hits the market, likely in 2019. "When you actually see an image of a patient having a needle inserted into their eye, this is something patients definitely want to avoid," he said. "Retinal surgeons have busy offices and want to do more complex retinal surgery. Today, they have offices filled with patients waiting for injections." (Reporting by John Miller; Editing by Adrian Croft)
A panda 'photobombs' Melania Trump at Beijing Zoo - AP
Beijing Zoos world famous giant pandas refused to be upstaged when Melania Trump came to visit, with one cheekily photobombing the First Lady.
The 47-year-old former model met giant panda Gu Gu on her trip and got to learn about his nutrition and training.
She was greeted by a group of school children who waved Chinese and American flags while singing a Chinese folk song at the panda enclosure.
The pandas seemed to appreciate the song, with one of the animals appearing in the background as Melania posed for a photo with the children.
She also signed a panda print during the visit, writing: Thank you to the Beijing Zoo! Wonderful to meet Gu Gu! Melania Trump.
The First Lady poses for photos near the Panda enclosure Credit: AP
The zoos director Li Xiaoguang told AFP that Gu Gu, born in 1999, is a goodwill ambassador of the zoo and a good-looking panda with a robust memory.
Melania was later taken on a tour of the Great Wall of China, where she spent around 30 minutes hiking a section of the famous fortification.
A panda at Beijing Zoo Credit: AFP
This is beautiful. This is amazing, she said of her visit.
Meanwhile, Donald Trump headed to a summit in Vietnam after his state visit to China as part of his five-nation tour of Asia.
Melania Trump walks along the Mutianyu Great Wall section n Beijing Credit: AP
He tweeted: I am leaving China for #APEC2017 in Vietnam. @FLOTUS Melania is staying behind to see the zoo, and of course, the Great WALL of China before going to Alaska to greet our AMAZING troops.
Earlier in his trip, the US presidents unorthodox fish-feeding technique was a talking point on social media.
By Colin Packham SYDNEY (Reuters) - Papua New Guinea Immigration Minister Petrus Thomas said authorities would take steps on Monday to forcibly remove around 450 men who remain in an abandoned Australian detention center without food or running water. Hundreds of men have barricaded themselves into the Manus Island center for more than 13 days without regular food or water supplies, defying attempts by Australia and Papua New Guinea to close the facility. "We will be taking steps with relevant authorities to move the residents based on serious exposure to health risk for the food of everyone that is remaining," Thomas said in a statement issued late on Sunday. The timetable stokes fears of a potential clash between authorities and asylum seekers - drawn largely from Afghanistan, Iran, Myanmar, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Syria - who have refused to move to three transit centers. The United Nations has warned of a "looming humanitarian crisis." The standoff has cast Australia's immigration policies into the international spotlight, triggering a rare rebuke from New Zealand, Canberra's closest international ally. Australia has used the center, and a camp on the tiny Pacific island of Nauru, to detain asylum seekers who try to reach its shores by boat. It says boat arrivals will never enter Australia, even if found to be refugees, as that would encourage people smugglers in Asia. The asylum seekers on Manus fear reprisals if they move to the transit centers, pending possible resettlement in the United States. The main camp was closed on Oct. 31 and water and power have been cut off. Australia and Papua New Guinea both insist the transit centers are safe, offering the asylum seekers the same level of care they had received before the closure of the Manus Island camp. Papua New Guinea last week removed the fences of the camp, while authorities also dismantled rainwater collection bins and makeshift shelters built to ward off the tropical sun and rain, intensifying pressure on the detainees. New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said she would seek a meeting on the sidelines of the APEC Summit in Vietnam with her Australian counterpart, Malcolm Turnbull, to discuss the situation. "No matter what label you put on it, there is absolute need and there is harm being done," Arden told reporters. Turnbull earlier this month rejected an offer from New Zealand to resettle 150 asylum seekers as it prioritized an existing refugee swap deal he negotiated with former U.S. President Barack Obama last year. Under that deal, up to 1,250 asylum seekers could be sent to the United States and Australia will in turn accept refugees from Central America. (Reporting by Colin Packham; Editing by Jane Wardell and Peter Cooney)
It looks like Google still isn't done fielding complaints about the Pixel 2 XL's display. While some users are experiencing premature screen burn-in and seeing a bluish tint, others are apparently having trouble with its responsiveness. Comments posted on the Pixel 2 community website have revealed that some units are having issues getting their phones to register touches near the edges of the screen. One poster even conducted a test and found that while the edges on his display can recognize swipes just fine, they can't always recognize taps.
Here's a video of the experiment:
According to Android Police, this happens because the device's accidental touch protection feature is just bit too effective. The good news is that it's a software issue, and Google is already working on a fix. Orrin, a Pixel 2XL Community manager, posted on the thread to inform people that the Pixel team is already investigating and addressing the problem in an upcoming over-the-air update.
In an effort to preempt similar complaints about bluish or greenish tinted screens and burn-ins, Apple recently updated its support page to explain that those are perfectly normal for OLED displays like the iPhone X's and Pixel 2 XL's. Nevertheless, iPhone X's screen seems to come with its own set of issues. Some of them have a nasty green line going down their edges, while others stop responding to touches in cold temperatures.
(MANILA) President Donald Trumps lengthy Asia trip wound down as it began, with a visit meant to be centered on trade and North Korea shadowed by questions about Russia.
Trump was in the Philippines, the final stop of his trip, on Monday, poised to hold formal talks with President Rodrigo Duterte, who has overseen a bloody drug war that has featured extrajudicial killings and fears of vigilante justice. But Trump remains dogged by things he has said, and has not said, about Russia.
Days before he left for the five-nation Asia trip, Trumps campaign chairman was indicted on charges he laundered millions of dollars through overseas shell companies and a campaign adviser pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI. And while White House aides have been pleased with the presidents messaging through stops in Japan, South Korea and China, Trump has brought Russia to the forefront again as he makes his final stops.
He tried to have it both ways Sunday on the issue of Russian interference in last years presidential race, saying he believes both the U.S. intelligence agencies when they say Russia meddled and Russian President Vladimir Putins sincerity in claiming that his country did not.
I believe that he feels that he and Russia did not meddle in the election, Trump said of Putin at a news conference in Hanoi with Vietnams president.
As to whether I believe it, Im with our agencies, Trump said. As currently led by fine people, I believe very much in our intelligence agencies.
U.S. intelligence agencies have concluded that Russia meddled in the 2016 election to help the Republican Trump defeat Democrat Hillary Clinton. A special counsels examination of potential collusion between Moscow and Trump campaign aides so far has led to indictments against Trumps former campaign chairman and another top aide for crimes unrelated to the campaign, and a guilty plea from a Trump foreign policy adviser.
Multiple congressional committees are also investigating.
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On Saturday, Trump lashed out at former heads of the U.S. intelligence agencies, claiming there are plenty of reasons to be suspicious of their findings and dismissing them as political hacks.
John Brennan, the former CIA director, responded Sunday on CNNs State of the Union that Trump was dismissing the former officials himself included as political hacks in an attempt to delegitimize the intelligence communitys assessment that Russia interfered in the election.
I think Mr. Putin is very clever in terms of playing to Mr. Trumps interest in being flattered. And also I think Mr. Trump is, for whatever reason, either intimidated by Mr. Putin, afraid of what he could do or what might come out as a result of these investigations, Brennan said.
James Clapper, the former director of national intelligence, called the threat from Russia manifest and obvious.
To try to paint it in any other way is, I think, astounding and, in fact, poses a peril to this country, Clapper said on State of the Union.
Questions about whether Trump believes the assessment about Russian election-meddling have trailed him since January, when he said for the first time, shortly before taking office, that he accepted that Russia was behind the election-year hacking of Democrats that roiled the White House race.
Trump told reporters traveling with him to Hanoi on Saturday that Putin had again vehemently denied the allegations. The two spoke during an economic conference in Danang, Vietnam. Trump danced around questions about whether he believed Putin but stressed Putins denials.
Every time he sees me, he says: I didnt do that. And I believe I really believe that when he tells me that, he means it, Trump said, arguing that it makes no sense for him to belabor the issue when Russia could help the U.S. on North Korea, Syria and other issues.
In Hanoi on Sunday, Trump also pointed to sanctions the U.S. has imposed on Russia as punishment for election meddling. They were sanctioned at a very high level, and that took place very recently, he said. Its now time to get back to healing a world that is shattered and broken.
Trump was originally slated to depart Manila for Washington on Monday. He added a day to the schedule amid criticism that he would have missed the final summit.
Now Trump is slated to attend the Association for Southeast Asian Nations conference on Monday to urge allies to pressure North Korea to give up its nuclear weapons program. And he is expected, in meetings with other leaders, to push his agenda for bilateral, rather than multinational, trade agreements.
LONDON (Reuters) - Prince Charles led the annual ceremony to honor Britain's war dead on Sunday, laying a wreath on behalf of 91-year-old Queen Elizabeth to mark Remembrance Sunday as she watched the service from a balcony. Breaking with her usual custom of placing the wreath at the Cenotaph on Whitehall in central London, the queen asked her eldest son to take on the role, in part because of the demands of the ceremony for someone in their 90s. A two-minute silence was held at 1100 GMT (6.00 a.m. ET) and wreaths were laid at the foot of Britain's main war memorial by senior royals and political leaders including Prime Minister Theresa May and the leader of the main opposition Labour Party, Jeremy Corbyn. The queen and her 96-year-old husband, Prince Philip, watched from the balcony of the nearby Foreign Office. Royal historian Hugo Vickers said the queen had slightly stumbled during last year's service. "One of the most important things with the queen as she gets older is not to put her in any situation where she might be uncomfortable or things might be difficult," he told Reuters. "It requires a certain amount of standing around and then it involves the queen carrying something quite heavy and walking backwards." But he rejected the notion that it symbolized something more significant, saying it was "another step that we realize that we have an ageing monarch, and it's very important that we should not put too much pressure on her". The head of state has been gradually reducing her workload and younger royals, including the 68-year-old Charles, have been taking up some of her duties. Philip retired from public life in August but was keen to attend the annual ceremony, which commemorates the fallen of two World Wars and later conflicts. The queen has missed the wreath-laying ceremony only six times in her 65-year reign. On four of those occasions she was on foreign visits: to Ghana in 1961, Brazil in 1968, Kenya in 1983 and South Africa in 1999. She also missed the ceremonies in 1959 and 1963, before the births of her two youngest children, Prince Andrew and Prince Edward. (Reporting by Michael Holden, Elizabeth Piper, Editing by Gareth Jones)
By Denis Pinchuk DANANG, Vietnam (Reuters) - Concluding a peace treaty between Russia and Japan would involve Moscow examining how it could be affected by Tokyo's security commitments to its allies, Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Saturday. Russia and Japan never formally ended their hostilities after World War Two because of a dispute over a chain of islands in the Pacific. Putin was speaking at the end of an Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Summit in Vietnam at which he said he discussed talks on the treaty with Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. Japan has a long-standing defense alliance with the United States, a stance that sits uncomfortably with Moscow, which has often accused Washington of projecting its military might close to Russia's borders. "I want to say that here there are lots of questions regarding the peace treaty," Putin told reporters. "Its not a secret that we also need to look at what commitments Japan has towards its partners in the areas of defense and security, and how that will influence the progress of the negotiating process on the peace treaty between Russia and Japan." Putin said Moscow needed to examine "what commitments Japan has and what she can do, and cannot do, independently. It's entirely natural, if there are some commitments, that they obviously have to be observed, and how does that impact our relations with Japan?" "We all have to understand that it's a lot of work, and maybe it is indeed not a question of just one year," the Russian leader said at a news conference in the Vietnamese city of Danang, where the APEC summit was held. The disputed islands are known in Russia as the Kurile islands and in Japan as the Northern Territories. Soviet forces occupied four islands at the southern end of the chain at the end of World War Two. Putin said that there were some aspects of the dispute which could already be addressed, including easing visa restrictions for Japanese citizens to visit the disputed islands, and establishing economic cooperation there. "That it to say, there are certain things that can be done right away, some things probably will take a long time," Putin said. "It does not depend on who is in office; Abe, Putin, or someone else," Putin said. "It's important that our countries, our peoples are resolved on a long-term resolution of all the problems to create a favorable environment for our relations to develop." (Reporting by Denis Pinchuk; Writing by Christian Lowe; Editing by Alexander Smith)
Russia's president Vladimir Putin (L) and US president Donald Trump during a meeting of world leaders on the closing day of the 25th APEC Summit. - TASS
President Donald Trump has said that Vladimir Putin told him there was no Russian interference in the US election, and that he was offended by the mere suggestion.
He said he didn't meddle, said Mr Trump, speaking to reporters on Air Force One during his 11-day Asia trip.
I asked him again. You can only ask so many times. But I just asked him again, and he said he absolutely did not meddle in our election. He did not do what they're saying he did.
US intelligence agencies are unanimously agreed that Russia attempted to swing the election in Mr Trumps favour, through online campaigns and the production of fake news.
Robert Mueller and Congress are both investigating whether Mr Trumps team colluded with the Russians to ensure their victory.
Russia's president Vladimir Putin (L front) and US president Donald Trump during a meeting of world leaders on the closing day of the 25th APEC Summit Credit: TASS
Mr Trump has been loathe to accept his own intelligence agencies conclusions, and has vehemently denied any collusion between his team and Russia. He described the former heads of the CIA, FBI and National Security Agency - who have all testified to the extent of Russian interference - as political hacks.
And on Saturday he seemed to accept Mr Putins assurances above the verdict of the US officials.
Look, I can't stand there and argue with him, he said. I'd rather have him get out of Syria, to be honest with you. I'd rather have him - you know, work with him on the Ukraine than standing and arguing about whether or not - because that whole thing was set up by the Democrats.
He said the Russian president was angered by the suggestion that Moscow was attempting to interfere.
Every time he sees me, he says, I didn't do that. And I believe, I really believe that when he tells me that, he means it. I think he's very insulted by it, if you want to know the truth.
Bob Cartoon Nov 11
Mr Putin on Saturday said accusations that Moscow meddled in US elections, particularly through contacts with Mr Trump's campaign team, are "fantasies" and attempts to undermine the US presidency.
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"Everything about the so-called Russian dossier in the US is a manifestation of continuing domestic political struggle," he told journalists at the Asia-Pacific summit in Vietnam.
Mr Trump's acceptance of Mr Putin's assurances were greeted with horror by his critics at home.
"Putin is trained in deception," said Michael McFaul, US ambassador to Russia until 2014.
"The KGB (FSB/SVR) are pros at it. That our president doesn't understand this basic fact is frightening."
Adam Schiff, the most senior Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, expressed dismay at Mr Trump's taking Mr Putin's word "over the solid evidence of our own intelligence agencies."
On Saturday night, in Vietnam, Mr Trump attended a state banquet in Hanoi, ahead of a welcoming and deal signing ceremony on Sunday, with Vietnam's top leadership.
Much of Mr Trumps tour so far through Japan, South Korea and China has focused on North Korea.
On Saturday North Korea issued its first response, calling the presidents tour a "warmonger's visit for confrontation and saying it was designed to take away Pyongyangs nuclear weapons which they referred to as its self-defensive nuclear deterrence".
It said Mr Trump's warnings "can never frighten us or put a stop to our advance".
The US presidents next stop is the Philippines for a two-day visit that will include an ASEAN summit of Southeast Asian leaders, capping off the 11 day visit to Asia.
There he will hold talks with President Rodrigo Duterte, the Philippine leader who is waging a no-holds-barred war on alleged drug dealers, and has boasted of murdering multiple people. On the eve of his meeting with Mr Trump, he claimed to have killed another person announcing in a press conference that he had stabbed someone to death when he was 16.
Mr Duterte also boasted that his own policy was even more strident than Mr Trumps much-vaunted America First approach.
You ---- with my countrymen, I won't let you off the hook, he said. Never mind about the human rights advocates.
The Queen and other members of the Royal Family are marking Armistice Day by celebrating the centenaries of women's service in the regular Armed Forces.
This year the Royal Festival of Remembrance is being held at the Royal Albert Hall where the Battle of Passchendaele, the creation of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission and the 100th birthday of forces' sweetheart, Dame Vera Lynn, will be remembered.
It will also commemorate the 75th anniversary of the Battle of El Alamein and the creation of the RAF Regiment.
The Western Front Association's annual service of remembrance at the Cenotaph, London Credit: PA/Rick Findler
The Queen is joined by the Duke of Edinburgh, the Prince of Wales, the Duchess of Cornwall, and the Duchess of Cambridge who is pregnant with her third child.
The event at the Royal Albert Hall is being hosted by its president Jon Moynihan and Air Marshal David Walker, president of the Royal British Legion.
Other events taking place, as the UK marks Armistice Day, include an outdoor service of remembrance within the walls of the Armed Forces Memorial at the National Memorial Arboretum in Staffordshire.
Princess Anne at the Menin Gate earlier today Credit: NICOLAS MAETERLINCK/AFP
The Western Front Association is holding its annual service of remembrance at the Cenotaph in Whitehall on Saturday, where a two-minute silence will be held and wreaths laid.
On Sunday the Queen will watch from a balcony along with the Duke of Edinburgh as Prince Charles lays a wreath on her behalf at the Cenotaph.
Standard bearers lower their Colour Flags during a two-minute silence at the Edinburgh Garden of Remembrance Credit: Andrew Milligan/PA
The Prince will then lead the nation in honouring the country's war dead in what is believed to be the first time the Queen has broken with tradition and not performed the symbolic duty when at the Whitehall service.
The change is seen as an example of the subtle shift of head of state duties from the 91-year-old sovereign to the heir to the throne.
- AFP or licensors
The Prince of Wales has led the nation in honouring the country's war dead on Remembrance Sunday, as the Queen observed the service from a balcony.
The Queen asked Charles to lay her wreath at the Cenotaph, in the first time the monarch has broken with tradition and not performed the symbolic duty while in attendance at the Whitehall service.
A two-minute silence took place at 11am and wreaths were laid at the foot of the Whitehall memorial by senior royals and political leaders including Prime Minister Theresa May and Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn.
The Duke of Edinburgh, Queen and Duchess of Cornwall watch the Cenotaph ceremony Credit: Paul Grover for the Telegraph
The Queen and Duke of Edinburgh watched the service from a Foreign and Commonwealth Office balcony, along with the Duchess of Cornwall.
The Duchess of Cambridge, Countess of Wessex and Princess Alexandra watched from a second balcony, looking on in sombre contemplation.
The Prince of Wales lays a wreath on behalf of the Queen Credit: AFP
For Royal-watchers, the Cenotaph ceremony will have been a significant moment, as the heir to the throne represents his mother in one of the key public duties of the year.
Announcing the decision last month, Buckingham Palace said the Queen wished to be by her husband's side on the balcony and had asked the Prince to lay a wreath instead .
The Prince of Wales carried out the symbolic duty for his mother, the Queen Credit: AFP
The Duke's equerry laid his wreath, before the Prince laid his own wreath, his second of the day.
The Duke of Cambridge, Prince Harry, the Duke of York lay their own wreaths together, followed by the Earl of Wessex, the Princess Royal and the Duke of Kent.
Other political figures laying wreaths included Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson, Liberal Democrats leader Vince Cable, and Commons Speaker John Bercow.
Queen Remembrance Sunday
Joining the Queen in observing the service from Foreign Office balconies were the Duchess of Cambridge, the Duchess of Cornwall, the Countess of Wessex, Princess Alexandra, the Duke and Duchess of Gloucester and Vice Admiral Sir Timothy Laurence.
The firing of a gun marked the end of the silence, and The Last Post was sounded by the Buglers of the Royal Marines before the wreaths were laid.
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Politicians lay their wreaths Credit: Getty
Prince Charles has laid a wreath before on behalf of the Queen, in 1983 when she was out of the country, and when the Queen was in South Africa in 1999 she laid a wreath at the Cenotaph in Durban.
This year marks the centenaries of women's service in the regular armed forces, the Battle of Passchendaele and the creation of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, as well as the 100th birthday of forces' sweetheart, Dame Vera Lynn.
The Queen laying a wreath at the Cenotaph on a previous Remembrance Sunday Credit: Paul Grover at The Telegraph
It also marks the 75th anniversary of the Battle of El Alamein and the creation of the RAF Regiment.
Irish Taoiseach Leo Varadkar laid a green laurel wreath at the Cenotaph at Enniskillen in Co Fermanagh.
The Queen and Prince Philip through the ages
It is 30 years since an IRA bombing there killed 12 on Remembrance Sunday.
Northern Ireland Secretary James Brokenshire, DUP leader Arlene Foster, Police Service of Northern Ireland chief constable George Hamilton and the US representative in Belfast laid wreaths.
Beirut (AFP) - Saad Hariri pledged on Sunday he would return to Lebanon from Saudi Arabia "very soon," in his first television interview since his shock resignation as prime minister eight days ago.
In an exclusive interview from Riyadh with his party's Future TV, Hariri brushed aside rumours that he was under de facto house arrest in Saudi Arabia.
"I am free here. If I want to travel tomorrow, I will," Hariri told journalist Paula Yaacoubian.
"I will return to Lebanon very soon to initiate the necessary constitutional procedures," Hariri said.
Hariri, who also holds Saudi citizenship, stepped down in a televised broadcast from Riyadh on November 4, a move that sent shockwaves throughout Lebanon and the region.
Lebanese President Michel Aoun has yet to formally accept Hariri's resignation and has said he wants to meet him in person to discuss the situation.
Just hours before Hariri's interview on Sunday, Aoun blasted the "obscure circumstances" around the resigned prime minister's stay in Riyadh.
In a statement from his office, Aoun said "Hariri's freedom has been restricted and conditions have been imposed regarding his residence and the contacts he may have, even with members of his family."
In his announcement last week, Hariri accused Iran and its Lebanese ally Hezbollah of taking over his country and destabilising the broader region, saying he feared for his life.
Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah said on Friday that Hariri was "detained in Saudi Arabia" and "banned from returning to Lebanon".
Republican and Democratic officials condemn alleged sexual misconduct by Alabama Senate candidate but local support appears to continue
Judge Roy Moore speaks in Alabama. Photograph: Marvin Gentry/Reuters
Politicians from both sides of the aisle said on Sunday Donald Trumps handling of allegations of sexual misconduct against Roy Moore, the Republican Senate candidate in Alabama, was not good enough and he should call for Moore to withdraw.
Appearing on CNNs State of the Union on Sunday, the US treasury secretary, Steven Mnuchin, repeated the White House line that was first articulated by the White House press secretary, Sarah Sanders.
If the allegations prove to be true, he should step down, he said.
Dick Durbin, a Democratic senator from Illinois, countered that it was Trumps responsibility to do more when it comes to this situation in Alabama.
John Kasich, the Republican governor of Ohio, agreed the White House response was not good enough and added that he had thought Moore, a hardline Christian conservative twice removed from his states supreme court, too divisive of a person to go to the Senate even before the allegations were made.
The Washington Post reported this week that an Alabama woman said Moore had sexual contact with her when she was 14 and he was a 32-year-old assistant district attorney. Three other women told the Post Moore had sexual contact with them when they were teenagers.
Moore, 70, has denied the allegations and said they were politically motivated. On Saturday, he told a Republican audience in a suburb of Birmingham: In the next few days, there will be revelations about the motivations and the content of this article that will be brought to the public. We fully expect the people of Alabama to see through this charade.
On Air Force One on Saturday Trump, who is travelling in Asia, referred reporters to Sanders original statement, although he did add that he did not know about Moores case because he did not watch much television.
Trump himself has been accused by least 16 women of sexual misconduct or assault. He has denied the allegations and Sanders said last month all those women were lying.
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On Sunday, Mnuchin was asked if the weight of claims against Moore might be enough to disqualify him. He said: Im not an expert on this issue but what I would say is that people should investigate this issue and get the facts. And if these allegations are true, absolutely this is incredibly inappropriate behaviour.
Asked if he believed the four women, Mnuchin conceded that it appears that there is a significant issue here that needs to be addressed.
Durbin and Kasich also spoke to CNN. Durbin said: A lot of my Republican colleagues feel very passionately about this. Theyve spoken out on it and I respect them for doing it. Its time for the president to do the same.
Kasich, who fought Trump for the Republican presidential nomination, said: Look, I wasnt for [Moore] in the beginning theres a growing list of people that think he ought to step aside and not be the standard bearer.
Moore, who has said homosexual conduct should be illegal and contended that the 9/11 attacks were a case of divine retribution, is backed by the populist wing of the Republican party, a force fuelled by the former Trump counsellor Steve Bannon.
In a week that saw Democratic gains in state and local elections, establishment figures including the Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, have called on Moore to step aside. Trump backed McConnells preferred candidate in the primary, then switched his support to Moore.
Kasich continued: So many people now in Alabama are saying: Yeah, we believe her, and you have Republicans like John McCain, Mitt Romney, John Kasich saying he should step aside, [so] yes, of course he should [step down].
Moore cannot be removed from the ballot in the 12 December special election, which will fill the seat vacated by the US attorney general, Jeff Sessions. Kasich would not say Alabamans should vote for Moores Democratic opponent, Doug Jones, but he pointed to another Republican Senate election success against a populist insurgent.
He said: I think he should step aside. If not maybe [we] can get a write-in candidate. Lisa Murkowski did it in Alaska, she was elected, I think shes urging somebody down there to do that.
Local Republicans have been supportive of Moore, who is strongly backed by evangelical voters. On Saturday, Albert Mohler, president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky, told the Associated Press the allegations if true, are devastating.
But he hinted at likely resilience among Moore supporters when he said that for evangelical voters theres so much at stake. Those of us who are pro-life have got to be very concerned about losing even one seat in the US Senate.
Other Republicans also weighed in. Tim Scott, a senator from South Carolina, told CBSs Face the Nation Moores denial was not as strong as the allegations and said the GOP ought to be a party focused on principles.
Pat Toomey, a senator from Pennsylvania, told NBCs Meet the Press the preponderance of the evidence seems to support the accuser and said he would prefer for Roy to step aside in favour of a write-in candidate.
Like Kasich, Toomey would not be drawn on whether Republicans in the Senate should work with Moore if he is elected regardless.
U.S. Senate candidate Roy Moore has again denied allegations of sexual misconduct and said there would be revelations concerning the newspaper article that brought them to light in the next few days.
The Republican made the remark Saturday at his first public appearance since the allegations were reported by The Washington Post.
Speaking at a Republican club in a Birmingham suburb, Moore questioned why the allegations would emerge now, after he has run five statewide political races in the past 17 years.
Moore called the Post report fake news and said the accusations are completely false and untrue about something that happened nearly 40 years ago. The report said Moore had a sexual encounter with a 14-year-old girl decades ago and had pursued other teenage girls.
Alabama holds a special election on Dec. 12 to fill the U.S. Senate seat previously held by Attorney General Jeff Sessions. Moore is opposed by Democrat Doug Jones.
Moore already denied the allegations in an interview Friday with conservative radio host Sean Hannity.
DUBAI (Reuters) - Saudi Arabia's energy ministry said pumping to Bahrain had been suspended and the kingdom was stepping up security precautions at its own facilities after its Gulf island neighbor blamed "terrorism" linked to Iran for an oil pipeline blast. Iran denies any role in unrest in Bahrain, host to the U.S. Fifth Fleet and a key Western ally, which has for years grappled with protests and sporadic violence. "The attack on the pipeline ... was followed by the suspension of the pumping of oil to the State of Bahrain," the Saudi Ministry of Energy, Industry and Mineral Resources said. "The Ministry of Energy also confirmed that it has increased its security precautions at all its facilities, and that all these facilities enjoy the highest levels of protection and safety," it added in a statement. (Reporting by Reem Shamseddine and Noah Browning; editing by Alexander Smith)
Madrid (AFP) - Spain said Friday it had noted news manipulation about the Catalan crisis on social media originating "from Russian territory," adding the issue would be raised at an upcoming EU ministers meeting.
Spanish media have already accused Moscow-backed outlets such as Russia Today and Sputnik -- which have Spanish language services -- of playing a destabilising role in the crisis triggered by Catalonia's banned October 1 independence referendum.
Defence Minister Maria Dolores de Cospedal told reporters the government had established that "many messages and interventions via social networks come from Russian territory."
But she insisted that authorities had not established whether the Russian government was behind them or not.
Cospedal was responding to a journalist who asked about "Russia's interference in preparing messages that could alter the internal workings of some countries," pointing specifically to the Catalan crisis in Spain.
She did not give specific examples of the types of messages that had been identified.
The El Pais daily wrote an editorial Friday denouncing "the intense campaign by Russian media that are close to the Kremlin," whose "propaganda machine" it accused of siding with the pro-independence movement.
Earlier Friday Spain's Foreign Minister Alfonso Dastis said there was evidence of activity by "Russian networks, hackers."
"They're not exclusively aimed against Spain, but it's a manner of destabilising the EU," he told Spanish radio.
Spain's government spokesman Inigo Mendez de Vigo, meanwhile, said disinformation on social networks was a "serious issue."
"The foreign minister will raise this issue which Europe must take very seriously," he added, pointing out that strategic communications and the fight against disinformation were on the agenda at an EU foreign ministers meeting on Monday in Brussels.
On Thursday, US General Curtis Scaparrotti, the commander of NATO forces in Europe, demanded Russia "stop meddling" in European elections amid concern over Kremlin interference in the Catalan crisis.
Moscow is also suspected of interfering in last year's US presidential election and Britain's Brexit vote, and Scaparrotti said he was concerned by "Russian malign influence" in other countries.
By Michael Martina
DANANG, Vietnam (Reuters) - Taiwan's envoy to the APEC summit of Asia-Pacific leaders said on Saturday he had good exchanges with both U.S. President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping, but did not discuss political issues with Xi.
Trump upset China by taking a telephone call from Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen shortly after winning the election last year. The United States has no formal relations with self-ruled Taiwan, claimed by China as its territory, but is bound by law to provide the island with the means to defend itself.
Xi told Trump in Beijing on Thursday that Taiwan is the most important and sensitive issue in Sino-U.S. ties.
Speaking to reporters on the sidelines of the APEC summit in the Vietnamese city of Danang, Taiwan's envoy James Soong said during informal moments between events he had the opportunity to have "very good interactions" with Trump and U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, among others. Soong said he would report back to Taipei before speaking more about the contents of those conversations but said they were held in an atmosphere of "great consideration".
Soong said his meeting with Xi was "natural and friendly", but added: "This isn't the occasion for cross-Taiwan Straits political talks."
Relations between China and self-ruled Taiwan have nosedived since Tsai was elected last year. China believes she wants formal independence for Taiwan, a red line for Beijing.
For her part, Tsai says she wants to maintain peace with China but will defend Taiwan's democracy and security.
China has suspended a regular dialogue mechanism with Taiwan, stepped up military drills around the island and boosted diplomatic pressure by siphoning off its remaining diplomatic allies.
China has yet to give its account of Xi's interaction with Soong, who was born in China and heads the China-friendly Taiwan opposition party the People First Party.
Despite Taiwan's lack of diplomatic recognition by the vast majority of countries, APEC allows the island to participate as a separate economic, rather than political, entity. It is one of the few forums senior Chinese and Taiwanese officials both attend.
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In 2013, Xi told Taiwan's envoy at an APEC summit in Indonesia that a political solution for Taiwan could not wait forever.
Nationalist forces, defeated by the Communists, fled to Taiwan at the end of the Chinese civil war in 1949.
(Reporting by Michael Martina; Writing by Ben Blanchard; Editing by Ros Russell)
SUTHERLAND SPRINGS, Texas The First Baptist Church wont be silenced.
One week after a black-clad gunman stormed its sanctuary, killing 26, members of the community packed a service hosted by the church inside a tent on a ball field about a half-mile away. The first three rows were reserved for church members. Packets of tissues were placed on each seat.
I know every single name, every one who gave their life that day, said the Rev. Frank Pomeroy, whose 14-year-old daughter Annabelle was among those slain. They were my best friends, and my daughter. And I guarantee beyond any shadow of a doubt that they are dancing with Jesus.
About 450 seats inside the tent were filled as the service began, and about 100 people were standing. Many greeted each other with long embraces.
Pomeroy implored worshippers to choose life, not darkness. He said at least 11 people had told him they have come to Christ since the killings.
My heart breaks, but Im excited to see what God is going to do, he said. I know God has a plan.
After he spoke, worshippers sang the gospel tune Youre a Good Good Father with hands raised. Many cried.
Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) reminded worshippers that theyre not suffering alone.
Its only been seven days and this community is back to worship, bound together by faith, he said. Across this great nation, people are praying for you. They are supporting you.
Six specially trained emotional support dogs from Cherry Hill, New Jersey, were brought to the service to comfort members of the community.
Sundays service will show the world that we may be knocked down temporarily but WE ARE NOT DEFEATED, wrote Sherri Pomeroy, wife of the pastor. Please come help us honor their lives doing what they died for: worshipping our sovereign God!
Seven days earlier, Devin Patrick Kelley ambushed the church with a semiautomatic rifle. For seven minutes, he creeped around the pews, methodically shooting victims in the head, according to security footage reviewed by law enforcement. As he exited the church, he was shot at by an armed civilian. He fled in his SUV and was later found dead with a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
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Kelley appears to have targeted the church because his wifes family worshipped there, authorities said. His mother-in-law, Michelle Shields, was a member, as was his grandmother-in-law, Lula White, who he killed. According to a church directory, his wife Danielle Shields also was once a member, although its unclear if she still worshipped there.
Authorities said Kelley was involved in a domestic situation with his wifes family and had sent threatening texts to his mother-in-law, who was not at church on the day of the massacre. A friend of hers told The New York Times that Kelley had been abusing his wife physically, verbally and mentally. He was convicted of abusing his first wife when he was in the Air Force.
About one-quarter of the First Baptist Church congregation was slaughtered in the shooting. Another 20 people were injured. Funerals began this weekend.
The church has been closed since the day of the massacre. It will reopen to the public on Sunday afternoon as a memorial. Visiting hours are Monday through Friday from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. It is unclear if it will remain open permanently.
Pomeroy had said earlier that because the church held such painful memories for his congregation, he would like to see it razed so a new church can be built on the property. Its common for sites of mass shootings to be demolished or repurposed into memorials.
The church said in a news release on Saturday that volunteers had restored the church sanctuary from the scene of an unspeakable event into a beautiful memorial that celebrates and pays tribute to the lives that were lost.
Good morning from rainy Sutherland Springs. Today is one week anniversary of the massacre. pic.twitter.com/fh4LkWTUJH Melissa Jeltsen (@quasimado) November 12, 2017
Joe Ybarra, 46, an employee of the Valero gas station across the street from the church, said he thought it was a good idea.
I know some people may not want to go in there because of the reminders, but it might be good for the survivors to have some closure and move on, Ybarra said.
He added that he would like to visit the memorial.
I will go in there to pray for them, he said.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) proclaimed Nov. 12 as a Day of Prayer.
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An ex-wife of Devin Kelley, who authorities have identified as the gunman responsible for the mass shooting at a church in Sutherland Springs, Texas, earlier this month, described his alleged abuse in a television interview.
He just had a lot of demons or hatred inside of him, Tessa Brennaman, 25, said on CBS Inside Edition.
Kelley had a history of domestic violence; TIME reported earlier this week that, in 2012, Tessa Kelley accused him of beating and choking her, breaking her infant sons skull and threatening her with a gun. A military court charged Kelley with domestic violence and sent him to a mental hospital in New Mexico, but he briefly escaped. Later that year he pleaded guilty to domestic violence charges, and a year after that was discharged for bad conduct after spending a year in military prison, according to CBS News.
In her interview with CBS News, Brennaman describes how Kelley allegedly threatened her with a gun over a speeding ticket. He took that gun out. and he told me do you want to die? do you want to die?' she recalled. She also said he threatened to kill her and her whole family.
Kelley, 26, who died after the shooting, killed more than 26 people including an 18-month-old baby and injured at least 20 others when he opened fire at the First Baptist Church in Sutherland Springs, Texas, on the morning of November 5. Officials said they believe the attack was the result of a domestic dispute, citing threatening messages Kelley had sent his mother-in-law, who was a member of the church.
According to the Associated Press, Kelley was able to obtain the weapons that he used because the Air Force did not relay his criminal past to the FBI. If they had, he wouldnt have been able to buy a gun.
The Sutherland Springs church where Devin Kelley opened fire a week ago - Austin American-Statesman
A former wife of the Texas church gunman has told how she lived in constant fear of him, detailing his violent temper and repeated rages.
Tessa Brennaman, 25, was married to Devin Kelley for 18 months, filing for divorce in October 2012.
He pleaded guilty in 2013 to hitting, choking, kicking and pulling her hair, and fracturing the skull of their infant son. He was sentenced to 12 months in prison and court martialled, and should have been prohibited from buying a gun but the air force failed to document his record.
"He just had a lot of demons or hatred inside of him," she told CBS News.
She described the marriage as filled with abuse, and said she was once threatened over a speeding ticket.
"And he had a gun in his holster right here and he took that gun out, and he put it to my temple and he told me, 'Do you want to die? Do you want to die?'" she said.
Devin Kelley died after Sunday's shooting
She said he threatened to kill her and her whole family.
On Sunday Kelley walked into a church in Sutherland Springs, Texas attended by his in-laws believed to be the relatives of his second wife and opened fire, killing 26 people in Texass worst-ever mass shooting.
Eleven people remained in hospital on Friday with wounds from the shooting.
The church will be demolished, the pastor has said, but will first serve as a temporary memorial. The building will be scrubbed down and whitewashed, and chairs will be placed inside - one to commemorate each of the dead.
Pastor Frank Pomeroy, whose 14-year-old daughter Annabelle was killed, told leaders of the Southern Baptist Convention earlier this week that it would be too painful to continue using First Baptist Church as a place of worship.
Washington's top diplomat visited the remains of a Vietnam War era prison on Saturday where American POWs were held, including veteran Republican senator John McCain.
US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, who is accompanying president Donald Trump on a tour of Asia, stopped by the notorious Hoa Lo prison -- dubbed the "Hanoi Hilton" by imprisoned GIs during the war -- shortly after arriving in the Vietnamese capital.
Much of the building was demolished in the 1990s but a gatehouse remains alongside a museum that is a popular stop-off for tourists in Hanoi.
McCain, a former airforce pilot, was shot down over Hanoi in 1967 and spent more than five years held captive by the North Vietnamese, enduring often brutal conditions, torture and interrogations.
A famous photograph shows an injured McCain being hauled from a Hanoi lake he parachuted into after ejecting from his stricken aircraft.
State Department staffers told reporters that Tillerson had specifically requested to see the prison museum and the lake during his time in Hanoi.
During his visit Tillerson looked at a copy of the photograph, remarking that McCain had the same photo on his office desk.
He also paid a visit to the lake from which the captured pilot was pulled.
McCain has been a rare outspoken critic of Trump from within the Republican party, something that has infuriated the president.
During his election campaign, Trump -- who dodged the draft five times to avoid being sent to Vietnam -- mocked the veteran Republican senator for getting captured.
"He's not a war hero," Trump said. "I like people that weren't captured, ok?"
Tillerson, a former CEO of oil giant Exxon, was preceded by Barack Obama's Secretary of State John Kerry, who also fought in Vietnam.
Last year, during a trip to the Southeast Asian country, Kerry visited the exact spot where a boat he commanded was ambushed by Viet Cong fighters, even meeting and embracing one of his former adversaries.
President Donald Trump launched into a wild Twitter rant on Saturday after a statement from North Korea referred to him as an old lunatic.
Why would Kim Jong Un insult me by calling me old, when I would NEVER call him short and fat?, Trump wrote on Twitter.
The president has, however, repeatedly referred to the North Korean leader as a little rocket man.
I try so hard to be his friend, the president added.
Why would Kim Jong-un insult me by calling me "old," when I would NEVER call him "short and fat?" Oh well, I try so hard to be his friend - and maybe someday that will happen! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 12, 2017
Trumps Twitter tantrum, which occurred while the president was in Vietnam as part of his trip to Asia, was apparently in reference to comments made earlier in the day on state media from North Koreas Foreign Ministry calling the president an old lunatic and a warmonger.
Its not the first time Pyongyang has described Trump as such. Earlier in the week, North Korean state media called Trump a lunatic old man.
Trump reserved some of his own choicest insults Saturday for those apparently Americans suspicious of his relationship with Russia, calling them haters and fools.
When will all the haters and fools out there realize that having a good relationship with Russia is a good thing, not a bad thing. There always playing politics - bad for our country. I want to solve North Korea, Syria, Ukraine, terrorism, and Russia can greatly help! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 12, 2017
He also took digs at Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.
Does the Fake News Media remember when Crooked Hillary Clinton, as Secretary of State, was begging Russia to be our friend with the misspelled reset button? Obama tried also, but he had zero chemistry with Putin. Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 12, 2017
Both Trump and Kim have exchanged insults in the past.
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I told Rex Tillerson, our wonderful Secretary of State, that he is wasting his time trying to negotiate with Little Rocket Man... Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 1, 2017
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
In September, Kim memorably called Trump a dotard, sending hordes of curious Americans to the web to search for the definition, and the word trended on Twitter.
I will surely and definitely tame the mentally deranged dotard with fire, Kim said in a statement released by the North Korean government.
Journalist Jihye Lee said the statement actually used a term that could more accurately be translated as old beast lunatic, but it became dotard in the English version released by North Korea.
On Sunday, White House counselor Kellyanne Conway defended Trumps Twitter feud with Kim.
I think that was the president just responding the way he does to somebody who insulted him first, she told ABCs Martha Raddatz, when asked whether name calling is helpful.
Conway on Pres. Trump's tweet on Kim Jong Un: That "was the president just responding the way he does to somebody who insulted him first." pic.twitter.com/7I70BxeI3U ABC News Politics (@ABCPolitics) November 12, 2017
Trump, meanwhile, expressed the possibility that he could become friends with Kim, when asked about his tweets at a press conference in Vietnam on Sunday.
Strange things happen in life. That might be a strange thing to happen, but its certainly a possibility, he said. If that did happen, it would be a good thing for I can tell you for North Korea. But it would also be good for lots of other places, and it would be good for the world.
This article has been updated with comments from Conway and Trump on Sunday. Marina Fang contributed reporting.
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This article originally appeared on HuffPost.
HANOI (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump said on Sunday that it was possible he could be friends with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un one day and that it would be "very, very nice" but he was not sure that it would happen. Asked at a news conference in Vietnam if he could see himself being friends with Kim, Trump said: "That might be a strange thing to happen but it's a possibility. "If it did happen it could be a good thing I can tell you for North Korea, but it could also be good for a lot of other places and be good for the rest the world," Trump said. "It could be something that could happen. I don't know if it will but it would be very, very nice." (Reporting by Steve Holland and Mai Nguyen; Editing by Himani Sarkar)
Manila (AFP) - Donald Trump shook hands Monday with a smiling Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte, a man who boasts about personally killing people and who is waging a drug war that rights groups say involves mass murder.
The US leader is in Manila with leaders of 18 other nations for two days of summits, the final leg of a headline-grabbing Asian tour dominated by the North Korean nuclear crisis.
Allegations of Russian meddling in last year's US presidential elections have also hounded the second half of his 12-day trip, which took him from Japan to South Korea, China and Vietnam.
Rights groups have called on Trump to end his Asian journey with a strong statement against Duterte's drugs war, which has seen police and suspected vigilantes kill thousands of people.
But brief encounters between them in the lead-up to official talks scheduled for late Monday morning appeared to support Duterte's confidence that Trump was not concerned with the killings.
Trump shook hands with Duterte, then the pair chatted for about 30 seconds as the Philippine leader smiled broadly, before the opening ceremony for the first summit on Monday morning. Trump had his back to the cameras.
The pair also sat next to each other at a pre-summit banquet on Sunday, during which they smiled, chatted and clinked champagne glasses.
Duterte, 72, sang a Filipino love song in front of his audience at the banquet, saying in a light-hearted fashion that he did so on the orders of the US president.
"I'm sure he will not take it up," Duterte said on Sunday when asked whether he expected Trump to raise the issue of alleged extra-judicial killings in the drugs war.
Duterte won elections last year after promising to eradicate illegal drugs with an unprecedented campaign that would see up to 100,000 people killed.
Since he took office, police have reported killing 3,967 people in the crackdown.
Another 2,290 people have been murdered in drug-related crimes, while thousands of other deaths remain unsolved, according to government data.
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Many Filipinos back Duterte, believing he is taking necessary measures to fight crime, but rights groups warn he may be orchestrating a crime against humanity.
Amnesty International accuses police of shooting dead defenceless people and paying assassins to murder addicts.
- 'I already killed someone' -
When pressured over allegations of extra-judicial killings carried out by police, Duterte insists he has never told them to break the law.
But rights groups say police are following Duterte's incitements to kill, including comments made last year when he said he would be "happy to slaughter" three million addicts.
He has also repeatedly boasted about killing people himself, most recently on Thursday while in Vietnam for the Asia-Pacific economic summit.
"At the age of 16, I already killed someone. A real person, a rumble, a stabbing. I was just 16 years old. It was just over a look," Duterte said.
Former US president Barack Obama was one of many prominent critics of Duterte's handling of the drugs war. The Philippine leader responded last year by calling Obama a "son of a whore".
But Trump has appeared to be a fan of Duterte, telling him in a telephone call in April that he was doing a "great job".
Duterte said on Sunday that Trump had offered him further "words of encouragement" during a brief chat in Vietnam the previous day on the sidelines of another regional summit.
Duterte is hosting the world leaders because the Philippines holds the rotating chair of the 10-nation Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) bloc.
The events on Monday and Tuesday in Manila are two separate ASEAN-hosted summits, which also include China, Japan, Russia, South Korea, India, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.
The rising threat of the Islamic State group across Southeast Asia, and further efforts to pressure North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un to abandon his nuclear ambitions, were top agenda items in Manila.
"Terrorism and violent extremism endanger the peace, stability and security of our region because these threats know no boundaries," Duterte said in an opening ceremony speech on Monday.
Manila (AFP) - US President Donald Trump offered Sunday to mediate in a territorial dispute over the resource-rich South China Sea, after years of Chinese island-building in the contested waters.
Trump's surprise proposal to insert himself into the decades-long row risked a backlash from China, which has repeatedly said the United States has no role to play in what it insists is a series of bilateral issues.
"If I can help mediate or arbitrate, please let me know... I am a very good mediator," Trump told Vietnamese President Tran Dai Quang in Hanoi during an official state visit.
Hours later, the Communist leaders of China and Vietnam said they had reached a "consensus" on handling the disputed waters during a state visit by Chinese President Xi Jinping to Hanoi, according to the official Chinese news agency Xinhua.
The countries "reached an important consensus in accordance with leaders of the two parties and countries, to appropriately manage maritime issues, steadily advance all forms of maritime cooperation, including joint development and jointly strive to uphold peace and stability in the South China Sea," Xinhua reported.
China claims nearly all of the strategically vital sea, through which $5 trillion in shipping trade passes annually. It is also believed to sit atop vast oil and gas deposits.
Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia, Brunei and Taiwan also have claims in the sea, and the dispute has long been seen as a potential trigger for conflict in Asia.
Vietnam has courted support from Washington in the row, as it and other claimants have been powerless to stop China's efforts in recent years to cement its claims by building artificial islands in disputed areas.
Those islands are capable of serving as military bases, and some of the rival claimants are concerned that China will soon establish de facto control of the waters.
Tensions spiked this year when Vietnam suspended an oil exploration project in an area of the sea also claimed by Beijing, reportedly over pressure from its powerhouse communist neighbour.
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In 2014, China moved an oil rig into waters off Vietnam's coast, sparking violent protests in several Vietnamese cities.
Trump's offer came just before he flew to the Philippine capital of Manila for another regional summit.
- Thanks, but... -
However, his proposal was not immediately accepted by the Philippines, which under President Rodrigo Duterte has sought to defuse tensions with China over the row in favour of closer economic ties.
"We thank him for it. It's a very kind, generous offer because he is a good mediator. He is the master of the art of the deal," Philippine Foreign Affairs Secretary Alan Peter Cayetano said when asked about Trump's offer.
"But of course the claimant countries have to answer as a group or individually and not one country can just give an instant reply because mediation involves all of the claimants and non-claimants."
Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte said he had discussed the dispute with Xi when they met on the sidelines of APEC in the Vietnamese city of Danang on Saturday.
"He assured us again: 'Do not worry, you have all the rights of safe passage. That will also be applicable to all countries'," Duterte told reporters after arriving back in Manila.
But that assurance appeared to be based on a premise of China controlling the waters, and whether it would allow other countries to pass through them.
On Monday China and ASEAN are expected to announce in Manila that they have agreed to begin talks on a code of conduct for the sea.
Chinese Premier Li Keqiang will promote the agreement as an important breakthrough, Filipino foreign department spokesman Robespierre Bolivar told reporters last week.
However, the talks are not expected to begin until "sometime next year" and, at China's insistence, any agreement will not be legally binding, Bolivar said.
Vietnam had been pushing for the code to be legally binding. But with the Philippines acceding to Chinas demands, ASEAN agreed in August that it would not have any legal force.
China agreed in 2002 to begin talks on a code, but has delayed actually doing so while carrying out its expansionist strategy.
Hanoi (AFP) - Vietnam and the United States signed a raft of energy and aviation deals Sunday during a visit to Hanoi by US president Donald Trump who railed against Washington's yawning trade deficit with the fast-growing nation.
Trump was in the communist capital at the tail end of his swing through Asia where he has promoted his "America First" mantra on global trade, prioritising "fair" bilateral deals over sprawling multilateral pacts.
Several agreements were signed during his state visit Sunday, including in the natural gas sector, transport and aviation.
National carrier Vietnam Airlines signed a deal worth $1.5 billion for engines and support services from US firm Pratt & Whitney, which the airline said would boost US-Vietnam ties.
"(The agreement) will further reinforce the important economic, trade and investment partnership between Vietnam and the United States," Vietnam Airlines CEO Duong Tri Thanh said in a statement.
Trump is seeking to boost exports of American goods and services as part of a campaign pledge that ushered him into office with hefty support from blue-collar workers in the United States.
He has accused Vietnam and China, two key Asian manufacturing hubs, of "stealing" American jobs and blamed for previous US administrations for allowing trade deficits to grow unchecked.
On Sunday he again complained about the United States' gaping trade deficit with Vietnam, worth $32 billion in 2016.
"We have to get rid of the trading imbalance, we can't have a trade imbalance," he said at the beginning of a meeting with Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc.
"We have to take care of American companies and we have to take care of American workers," he added in comments likely to play well among his base back home.
American energy firms Alaska Gasline Development Corporation and AES Corporation also signed deals Sunday, along with US truck company Navistar and Vietnamese budget airline VietJet, though no details were provided.
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Vietnam has eagerly sought to drum up trade and investment with the United States since Trump came to power, especially after he withdrew from the massive Trans-Pacific Partnership free trade deal that Vietnam stood to gain enormously from.
The US is a leading export market for Vietnam, where a booming manufacturing sector has largely driven dizzying economic growth in recent years.
American exports to Vietnam have soared in the past decade, increasing ninefold to more than $10 billion in 2016, according to official figures from the US Trade Representative. Vietnam's exports to the United States over the same period rose around fivefold.
Russia's President Vladimir Putin (L) and US President Donald Trump talk as they attend the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) leaders' summit - AFP
US President Donald Trump unleashed a twitter storm from his Asia tour on Sunday, slamming "haters and fools" playing politics with US-Russia ties and declaring that he would never describe North Korean leader Kim Jong-un as "short and fat".
Currently on the Vietnam leg of a five-nation sweep through the region, the US president, who has been relatively quiet on Twitter since leaving Washington, put out half-a-dozen tweets in quick succession ahead of his official welcoming ceremony in Hanoi.
The missives covered a range of subjects from Mr Trumps relations with Russian President Vladimir Putin, Chinas efforts to rein in Pyongyangs nuclear weapons programme, and a sarcastic tweet about his efforts to make "a friend" of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un.
The US president, who met with Mr Putin several times on the margins of the just-concluded APEC summit in the Vietnamese resort of Danang, took a fresh swipe at critics of his efforts to forge a close working relationship with the Russian leader.
When will all the haters and fools out there realize that having a good relationship with Russia is a good thing, not a bad thing. There always playing politics - bad for our country. I want to solve North Korea, Syria, Ukraine, terrorism, and Russia can greatly help! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 12, 2017
"When will all the haters and fools out there realise that having a good relationship with Russia is a good thing, not a bad thing," he tweeted.
"There (sic) always playing politics - bad for our country. I want to solve North Korea, Syria, Ukraine, terrorism, and Russia can greatly help!" he added.
Speaking to reporters on Air Force One while flying to Hanoi on Saturday, Mr Trump said he believed Vladimir Putin was being sincere when he denied meddling in the 2016 US presidential election.
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Mr Trump, whose key former aides are under US investigation for possible collaboration with the Kremlin, said he had repeatedly asked Putin about the claims during their chats in Danang.
"He (Putin) said he didnt meddle. I asked him again," Mr Trump, who is marking one year since his shock election victory, told the reporters.
"I really believe that when he tells me that, he means it," he added.
Why would Kim Jong-un insult me by calling me "old," when I would NEVER call him "short and fat?" Oh well, I try so hard to be his friend - and maybe someday that will happen! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 12, 2017
Mr Trumps Sunday morning tweets also focused on North Korea and its nuclear weapons ambitions that have been a dominant theme on each leg of his Asia tour.
Taking exception to descriptions by North Korean officials and state media of him as an "old" man, Mr Trump declared himself disappointed by what he took to be a personal attack from the Norths young leader.
"Why would Kim Jong-un insult me by calling me "old," when I would NEVER call him "short and fat?" Mr Trump said.
"Oh well, I try so hard to be his friend - and maybe someday that will happen!" he added.
North Korea is extremely sensitive to any remarks even if not meant seriously that it sees as disrespectful of the country ruling Kim dynasty, whose members are revered as near deities.
Does the Fake News Media remember when Crooked Hillary Clinton, as Secretary of State, was begging Russia to be our friend with the misspelled reset button? Obama tried also, but he had zero chemistry with Putin. Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 12, 2017
Since becoming president, Mr Trump has engaged in an escalating war of words with Kim, trading personal insults and threats of military strikes and raising concerns about an outbreak of hostilities.
Over the past week, Mr Trump has urged Asian leaders to take a united front against the threat posed by the isolated North, warning at APEC that the region "must not be held hostage to a dictators twisted fantasies".
Late Saturday, Pyongyang hit back, calling his Asia trip "a warmongers visit for confrontation" and saying it would only serve to accelerate Pyongyangs push for nuclear statehood.
In another tweet Sunday, Mr Trump said Chinese leader Xi Jinping had agreed to toughen sanctions against North Korea, whose impoverished economy is hugely reliant on trade with China.
"President Xi of China has stated that he is upping the sanctions against (North Korea). Said he wants them to denuclearise. Progress is being made," he wrote.
The US administration thinks Chinas economic leverage over North Korea is the key to strong-arming Pyongyang into halting its nuclear weapons and missile programmes.
China has made no sanctions announcement in recent days, and it was unclear if Mr Trump was referring to statements Xi may have made during their summit in Beijing on Thursday, or when they met at APEC.
Manila (Philippines) (AFP) - Donald Trump said Sunday he backed the US intelligence agencies which concluded that Russia meddled in the 2016 US presidential election, but slammed "fools" who oppose better ties with Moscow.
Key former Trump aides are under US investigation for possible collaboration with the Kremlin, and the issue of whether Moscow interfered with last year's vote has overshadowed the tail end of the president's 12-day Asia tour.
Trump returned to the subject in a Twitter storm in Vietnam, which also saw him take a sarcastic dig at North Korea's "short and fat" leader Kim Jong-Un.
At a press conference in Hanoi, Trump was asked to clarify comments he had made the day before about Russian President Vladimir Putin's insistence that Moscow had never tried to affect the US vote.
"I believe he feels he and Russia did not meddle in the election," Trump said.
"As to whether or not I believe it or not, I'm with our agencies. I believe in our... intelligence agencies," he added.
But in his barrage of tweets, Trump slammed "haters and fools" who questioned his efforts to improve ties with Russia.
"There (sic) always playing politics - bad for our country. I want to solve North Korea, Syria, Ukraine, terrorism, and Russia can greatly help!" he said.
In May, US intelligence chiefs told Congress they agreed with their analysts' conclusion that Russia had interfered in the election, and on Saturday, CIA director Mike Pompeo, a Trump appointee, said he still held to that evaluation.
But after sticking to script through most of his high-profile Asia trip, Trump lashed out at three former US officials whose agencies helped produce the original intelligence finding of Russian interference. He called former CIA chief John Brennan, former director of national intelligence James Clapper and former FBI chief James Comey "political hacks."
Appearing later on CNN, Brennan denounced Trump's attack as "reprehensible," and Clapper said that for Trump to so minimize a Russian attempt to undermine the US system was "astounding and, in fact, poses a peril to this country."
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- 'Short and fat' -
Trump's tour of Asia, which began its final leg in Manila on Sunday, has been dominated by the issue of North Korea and its ambitions to become a full-fledged nuclear state.
His public pronouncements on Pyongyang over the last week have veered from denouncing it as a "cruel dictatorship" to offering a hand of friendship to Kim.
On Sunday, his tone shifted back to one of hostility.
Citing descriptions by North Korean officials and state media of him as an "old" man, Trump suggested he was disappointed by what he took as a personal attack from the North's young leader.
"Why would Kim Jong-un insult me by calling me 'old,' when I would NEVER call him 'short and fat?'" Trump wrote.
"Oh well, I try so hard to be his friend -- and maybe someday that will happen!" he added.
He later insisted he hadn't been joking about eventually befriending a man he denounced last week as a "twisted" dictator.
"It's certainly a possibility. If that did happen, it would be a good thing," he told reporters.
North Korea is extremely sensitive to any remarks that might appear disrespectful to the country's ruling Kim dynasty, whose members are revered as near deities.
Since becoming president, Trump has engaged in an escalating war of words with Kim, trading personal insults and threats of military strikes, and raising concerns about an outbreak of hostilities.
Pyongyang hit back Saturday, calling his Asia trip "a warmonger's visit for confrontation" and saying it would only serve to accelerate Pyongyangs nuclear program.
- South China Sea support -
In another tweet Sunday, Trump said Chinese leader Xi Jinping had agreed to toughen sanctions against North Korea, whose impoverished economy is hugely reliant on trade with its giant neighbour.
"President Xi of China has stated that he is upping the sanctions against (North Korea). Said he wants them to denuclearize. Progress is being made," he wrote.
The US administration thinks China's economic leverage over North Korea is the key to strong-arming Pyongyang into halting its nuclear weapons and missile programmes.
Trump is in the Philippines for a gathering that includes leaders of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), which marked its 50th anniversary Sunday with a lavish dinner.
Several members of the group, including Hanoi and Manila, claim part of the resource-rich South China Sea, a key trade route over which Beijing says it has dominion and in which it has built militarised artificial islands.
Vietnam has sought support from Washington in the dispute, and dealmaker Trump said Sunday he could help solve the conflict.
"If I can help mediate or arbitrate, please let me know... I am a very good mediator," Trump told Vietnamese President Tran Dai Quang.
In the past, China has reacted angrily to any suggestion of US mediation, saying Washington has no role in the dispute.
burs-bbk/acb
Washington (AFP) - US investigators on Sunday returned to a village in Niger where four American soldiers were killed in an ambush in October carried out by Islamist militants, the military said.
The news came a day after the Washington Post citing villagers reported that Sgt La David Johnson, one of the four, was found with his arms tied and a gaping wound to the back of the head.
The discovery suggested he was captured and executed.
The investigative team, comprising US and Nigerien officials, "returned to the village of Tongo Tongo, Niger, on Nov. 12 in order to gain a clearer understanding of the Oct. 4 ambush, the attack site and the surrounding environment, United States Africa Command (AFRICOM) said in a statement.
"This mission allowed the investigation team to gather information and determine the facts related to the ambush that killed four US soldiers and four Niger Force Soldiers," it added.
The US had previously said five Nigerien soldiers had died.
But the investigation -- which is being headed by Major General Roger Cloutier, chief of staff to the commander of AFRICOM -- won't publish its findings until January 2018, the Pentagon said last week.
The ambush occurred on October 4 as a unit of 12 American special forces soldiers and 30 Nigerien troops returned from the village that is near the border with Mali, according to US military chief General Joe Dunford.
They were attacked by a group of some 50 fighters affiliated with the Islamic State group and equipped with small arms, grenades and trucks mounted with guns.
French forces sent a Mirage 2000 fighter jet to their aid but it did not bomb the militants for fear of hitting their allied forces.
Speculation about the incident has abounded in the US media, but the Pentagon has remained tight-lipped about the circumstances surrounding the ambush as well as the nature of the mission.
US journalist Martha O'Donovan, who was arrested on charges of insulting Zimbabwe's president and attempting to subvert the country's regime, sits in the back of a US Embassy vehicle as she leaves Chikurubi Maximum Prison near Harare - AFP
The US woman charged with subversion in Zimbabwe over allegedly insulting President Robert Mugabe on Twitter was freed on Friday on $1,000 bail.
Martha ODonovan did not speak to reporters as she emerged from a prison in the capital, Harare, and left in a US Embassy vehicle. Her lawyers also did not make any statements.
The 25-year-old New Jersey native will return to court on Wednesday.
ODonovan is accused of calling the 93-year-old Mugabe a "sick man" in a tweet including an image of the president with a catheter.
She faces up to 20 years in prison if convicted for subversion. She also faces a charge of undermining the authority of or insulting the president, which carries up to a year in prison.
ODonovan has denied the charges as "baseless and malicious."
US journalist Martha O'Donovan (C), who was arrested on charges of insulting Zimbabwe's president and attempting to subvert the country's regime, talks with Zimbabwe Correctional Services officers as she leaves Chikurubi Maximum Prison near Harare Credit: AFP
It was the first arrest since Mugabe last month appointed a cybersecurity minister, a move criticised by activists as targeting social media. Zimbabwe was shaken last year by the biggest anti-government protests in a decade.
Frustration is growing in the once-prosperous southern African nation as the economy collapses under Mugabe, the worlds oldest head of state, who has ruled since 1980. This week his wife, Grace, moved a dramatic step closer to succeeding him as leader after Mugabe fired his deputy Emmerson Mnangagwa and accused him of plotting to take power, including through witchcraft.
Also on Friday, the state-run newspaper Zimbabwe Herald newspaper reported that four people had been arrested and accused of booing the first lady at a ruling party rally over the weekend attended by the president.
In this Wednesday, Nov. 1, 2017 file photo, Zimbabwean President Robert Muagbe addresses mourners at the Heroes Acre in Harare Credit: AP
ODonovan, who has described herself as a "media activist," had been working with local social media outlet Magamba TV, which says it produces "satirical comedy sensations."
A court over the weekend dismissed an attempt by ODonovans lawyer to have the charge of subversion dropped. The lawyer argued that police had not notified ODonovan of the charge at the time of her arrest at her home in the capital, Harare.
The group representing ODonovan, Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights says it has represented nearly 200 people charged for allegedly insulting Mugabe in recent years.
China deployed a soldier to closely watch every step that Donald Trump took as he navigated a set of stairs that Margaret Thatcher tumbled down 35 years ago.
Walking sideways just inches from Mr Trumps left shoulder, the soldier fixed his gaze on the US presidents feet as he strode down two flights of steps from the Great Hall of the People in Beijing.
Mr Trump had just concluded talks with Xi Jinping, the Chinese president, on Thursday, and was making his way to his motorcade.
He was closely monitored by the attentive soldier for almost 20 seconds, a video captured by The Telegraph shows.
Beijing appeared to be taking no chances with the 71-year-old billionaire, and authorities would have been mindful of an incident involving Mrs Thatcher in 1982.
The former British prime minister fell down the same stairs at the north entrance of the Great Hall of the People following talks with Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping.
Mrs Thatcher became the first serving prime minister to visit Communist China when she arrived in Beijing for the start of complicated and often difficult talks on the future of Hong Kong.
She initially believed that the former colony could remain - at least partially - under British control.
But she would eventually be forced to back down for one of the few times in her career, agreeing to hand over full sovereignty of the city to China in 1997.
Chinese media described her fall, which was captured by television cameras, as the result of Deng's aggressive negotiations.
Margaret Thatcher, accomapanied by Zhao Ziyang, Chinese PM, as she inspects a Peoples Liberation Army guard of honour on her arrival in Beijing in 1982 Credit: AP
In a report which identified the north entrance of the building as the scene of the tumble, The Beijing Times said: She obviously was not in a good mood after talks which lasted two-and-a-half hours.
But Mr Trump faced far less antagonism from his Chinese hosts who rolled out what was billed a state visit plus.
The US president has praised the welcome he received in a series of tweets and has flattered Mr Xi throughout the trip.
The Great Hall of the People is the main ceremonial building for Chinas Communist Party leaders.
Additional reporting by Christine Wei
A US woman had an emotional meeting with a man who was given the face of her late husband in a surgical transplant.
Lilly Rosss husband, Calen Rudy Ross, from Minnesota, killed himself last year. Shortly after his death, his face was surgically removed and attached to Andy Sandness, 32, from Wyoming.
Sixteen months later, the clinic that oversaw the transplant arranged a meeting between Ms Ross and Mr Sandness.
Ms Ross told the Associated Press she had been nervous about the meeting because she feared that seeing her husbands face again would bring back painful memories.
However, the fact that Mr Sandness has very different eyes and bone structure means he does not resemble Mr Ross.
Mr Sandness lost most of his face after shooting himself in 2006. He put a rifle under his chin and pulled the trigger but survived, albeit with major scarring.
The face transplant operation took 56 hours and involved more than 60 medical professionals (AP)
Mr Ross shot himself dead in Minnesota last year. His widow, who was eight months pregnant at the time, had already agreed that his organs should be donated when it was suggested to her that his face could also be transplanted.
Mr Ross and Mr Sandnesss ages, blood type, skin colour and facial structure were so similar that the surgeon who oversaw the operation, Dr Samir Mardini, said the two men could have been cousins.
Ms Ross and Mr Sandness hugged upon seeing each other. The widow took her young son Leonard with her to the meeting and said one of the reasons she agreed to the donation was that she wanted him to understand what his father had done to help others.
Ms Ross, who met her late husband at school, said: It made me proud. The way Rudy saw himself, he didnt see himself like that.
The transplant operation lasted 56 hours and involved more than 60 medical professionals working to lay the donated face onto Mr Sandnesss tissue. Surgeons then restored his nose, jaws, teeth, salivary glands and facial muscles.
The 32-year-old, who had lived as a recluse for almost ten years because of embarrassment over his injuries, said the new face had transformed his life, although he still has to take daily anti-rejection pills and is working to retrain his nerves and muscles.
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He said: I wouldnt go out in public. I hated going into bigger cities. And now Im just really spreading my wings and doing the things I missed out on going out to restaurants and eating, going dancing.
Ms Ross said the meeting had given her closure, while Mr Sandness said he wanted to help contribute to a trust fund for Leonards education.
Explaining why he wanted to meet Ms Ross, he told her: I wanted to show you that your gift will not be wasted.
US President Donald Trump and his Middle East advisors have begun to formulate the basic frameworks of a renewed peace initiative to the Israel-Palestinian conflict, according to a report in the New York Times.
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The report states that the initiative is expected to differ from past US peace pushes as Trump seeks to achieve what he has repeatedly described as the ultimate deal.
President Trump (Photo: AP)
Since entering the White House in January, Trump has dispatched his main advisors Jason Greenblattalong with his other special Middle East advisor and son-in-law Jared Kushnerto the region to acquaint themselves with the complexities of the conflict, shuttling between private meetings with top regional leaders to lay the groundwork for ending the seemingly intractable conflict.
According to White House officials, Trump and his team are now preparing to announce concrete steps they intend to take in a bid to achieve what has eluded all his predecessors.
Jason Greenblatt with PA President Mahmoud Abbas (Photo: Reuters)
While Trump has never explicitly endorsed the two-state solution that has served as the cornerstone of US policy since the inception of the conflict, the new plan is expected to address settlements and the future of Jerusalem and not necessarily stray too far from traditional US policies.
Nevertheless, Greenblatt insisted that while Washington aspires to achieve peace, an agreement would not be forced on the two warring parties.
We have spent a lot of time listening to and engaging with the Israelis, Palestinians and key regional leaders over the past few months to help reach an enduring peace deal, said Greenblatt.
PM Netanyahu with Jared Kushner (Photo: Amos Ben Gershom/GPO)
We are not going to put an artificial timeline on the development or presentation of any specific ideas and will also never impose a deal. Our goal is to facilitate, not dictate, a lasting peace agreement to improve the lives of Israelis and Palestinians and security across the region.
In February, Trump said during a joint press conference in Washington with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that he would not be wedding his administration to conventional policies, but would be pursuing new ideas as long as both the Israelis and Palestinians could agree.
"Im looking at two state and one state. And I like the one that both parties like," Trump said when asked whether he had abandoned the notion of a two-state solution.
Nadia Buari is one of the happiest Ghanaian actresses and also a proud mother of twins.
Yen.com.gh brings to you the latest news in Ghana
Nadia Buari and her twins
READ ALSO: Okyeame Kwame and son battle for supremacy in new photo shoot
The Ghanaian celebrity is one of the few actresses who is able to ward off media speculation as far as her private life and family are concerned.
The actress over the period has become her own expert for not succumbing to media pressure to argue with others about her private matters.
The actress watching one of her twins closely
The talented actress, who gave birth to twins some time back, endured media speculation and refused to unveil to the public photos of her babies.
READ ALSO: Mahama is a bad father Akufo-Addo spits fire
Nadia Buari taking a walk with one of her twins
However, the actress released photos of her daughters to her fans at her own convenience with a the limitation of not showing their faces.
During the weekend, Nadia, who recently premiered her movie, Deranged, put photos of her babies on full display on Instagram.
The actress taking it easy with her of her babies
The actress was spotted cooling off with her adorable babies in their own way.
Meanwhile, the adorable photos have so far received huge responses from her social media fans.
READ ALSO: Youre 'foolish' to attack me over my underwear, brassiere direction Obinim fires Ghanaians in new video
YEN.com.gh 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. Message us on Facebook now
Source: YEN.com.gh
12:22
MK Vishvaraj Singh, a royal member of Udaipur's Mewar, penned a letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the Union Ministers, Central Board of Film Certification chief Prasoon Joshi and others, requesting them to withhold the certification and release of the Sanjay Leela Bhansali directorial 'Padmavati'.
Information and Broadcasting minister Smriti Irani, Human Resource and Development Minister Prakash Javadekar, Rajasthan Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje and Superintendents of Police were also mentioned in the recipient list.
"You are requested not to certify or permit the release of the film in its present form," Singh urged, adding, "It is the responsibility of the Government to safeguard the history of our country and the dignity of its citizens".
Singh said that he doubts the accuracy of historical facts in `Padmavati` as it is reportedly based on Padmawat, an imagery poetry of the Sufi poet which also includes thinking and talking parrots.
He pointed out that the moviemakers have not come up with a "well established and accepted historical source" and such errors could not be pointed out if the screening is done now.
On the argument that one cannot judge a film until it has been seen, Singh said the first song `Ghoomar` alone displays an incorrect portrayal of Rani Padmavati.
"If the film professes to be history and its maker goes on record to claim that he has kept in mind cultural sensitivities, it is an artistic and historical fraud to portray an incorrectly attired courtesan-like painted doll in the song as the very `queen` the film purports to pay obeisance to," he wrote.
The royal member raised concerns about the effect of the movie on the future generation, who will see a distorted history of Mewar."Allowing our history and culture to be misrepresented in such a manner before the public does make one question the ability and intentions of the Government," he said.
-- ANI
European Union's chief Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier (R) looks at Britain's Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union David Davis (L) during a press conference at the end of the sixth round of Negotiation on 'Brexit' talks at the EU Commission in Brussels, Belgium, on Nov. 10, 2017. (Xinhua/Ye Pingfan)
BERLIN, Nov. 10 (Xinhua) -- Germany faces a steep hike in its annual European Union (EU) membership contributions as a consequence of Brexit, German media reported on Friday.
According to a financial assessment of the European Parliament cited by the "Funke" media group, Berlin would have to cover around 3.8 billion euros (4.43 billion U.S. dollars) of a net annual EU household funding gap of 10.2 billion euros left by Britain after its departure. This would amount to an increase of 16 percent compared to Germany's current yearly cost of membership.
As long as Britain was a member of the EU, countries such as Germany, the Netherlands and Sweden benefited from being partially compensated for the "British rebate" on membership contributions. Brexit will render the corresponding agreement nil and void, however, forcing some countries to contribute a larger share towards EU budgets.
Nevertheless, the European Parliament report noted that a significant degree of uncertainty remains as to how high post-Brexit membership fees will ultimately be.
EU officials are also discussing about the possibility of lowering the bloc's overall expenditure, or raising new taxes, to offset the costs caused by Britain's decision to leave.
British Brexit Secretary David Davis announced on Thursday night that London would enshrine in law March 29 at 2300 GMT as the exact date when Britain ceases to be a member of the EU. He hereby responded to growing concerns amongst Eurosceptic members of his Conservative party that Brexit could be postponed, or even reversed.
Meanwhile, the sixth round of Brexit negotiations between the EU and British representatives has begun in Brussels.
Although British Prime Minister Theresa May has signalled her country's willingness to make further concessions on the "divorce bill" worth 60 billion euros demanded by the EU, German media reports on Friday claimed that a new conflict has now erupted in the diplomatic talks over the future of the border between the Republic of Ireland and Britain's Northern Ireland.
Brussels has called for Northern Ireland to remain within the EU Customs Union to prevent the creation of a "hard border", a solution which senior British politicians have repeatedly rejected as "impossible". (1 euro = 1.17 U.S. dollars)
Source: Xinhua| 2017-11-12 03:18:42|Editor: yan
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CHICAGO, Nov. 11 (Xinhua) -- Chicago Board of Trade (CBOT) grains futures settled mixed over the trading week which ended Nov. 10, with the long-awaited official yield estimates being the key factor in market ups and downs.
The most active corn contract for December delivery fell 4.75 cents weekly, or 1.36 percent, to 3.435 dollars per bushel. December wheat delivery rose 5.75 cents, or 1.35 percent, to 4.315 dollars per bushel. November soybeans edged up 0.25 cent, or 0.03 percent, to 9.87 dollars per bushel over the week.
Before the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) released its monthly crop supply and demand estimates on Thursday, the trade's common expectation was that USDA would cut U.S. soybean crop estimate while lifting the corn crop. This pushed up in advance the soybean prices while dragging down the corn futures earlier this week.
Another record-high yield in the USDA November report pulled corn futures further to new lows, but this only lasted for one session and massive technical buying pushed up the prices again.
Analysts with the AgResource Company expect the long-established range between 3.30-3.80 USD in corn futures to hold until more is known about South American harvest potential.
However, a record large short position in corn market might not be maintained too long and a South American weather problem would trigger some rallies, they added.
CBOT wheat futures closed higher this week as world wheat stocks were lowered one million metric tons in the updated USDA monthly report. Short-covering also boosted its prices, with additional support from the latest demands from Middle East countries such as Egypt, Iraq and Turkey.
It is expected that U.S. wheat inventories will decline further into 2019, but the overall structure of the wheat market won't change without severe drought in the EU or Black Sea region next year. It might take years for world wheat stocks to decrease significantly.
As for soybeans, the USDA data released on Thursday were not as bullish as the trade had expected, as the yield was left unchanged and stocks were only lowered 5 million bushels. In response, the soybean futures took back almost all of the early week gains and closed this trading week fractionally higher.
Still, the January soybean contracts are above the 200-day, 100-day and 50-day moving averages, which will provide support to the market.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-11-12 03:33:44|Editor: yan
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BRUSSELS, Nov.11 (Xinhua) -- The Belgian government's crisis center announced on Saturday evening that the fire in the Flemish Brabant area of Drogenbos on the outskirts of Brussels is " firmly under control and no casualties or injuries have been reported".
In addition, the center said in the statement that air quality tests showed normal results and there is no longer any health or environmental risk.
Similarly, Angie Electrabel and the Drogenbos municipality have issued separate statements saying that all the preventive containment measures previously requested can now officially be lifted.
According to local press, the incident was triggered by one of the battery containers which caused release of toxic smoke on Saturday morning. The municipality of Drogenbos responded urgently, asking residents to keep their windows and doors closed.
Previous preventive measure (since lifted) also applied to all motorists driving along the ring of Brussels, as well as municipalities across the Brussels Region.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-11-12 03:38:47|Editor: yan
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TRIPOLI, Nov. 11 (Xinhua) -- Libyan UN-backed Foreign Minister Mohamed Sayala said that 30 foreign embassies have returned to Libya so far after more than three years of closure.
"The Schengen visas are being granted from inside Tripoli by the Italian embassy and the Turkish embassy, which are distinguished embassies operating in the capital," Sayala told Xinhua in a recent special interview.
Foreign embassies and diplomatic missions left Libya in 2014 due to heavy clashes that erupted in the capital between rival militias, which created the current political division.
Foreign missions began to return gradually since the end of 2016 after the UN-backed government took full control of the capital Tripoli.
"The foreign ministry is working on the return of all embassies and providing appropriate security conditions for their work from within the capital Tripoli," Sayala explained, noting that this "will facilitate communication of the Libyan people with the outside world to obtain entry visas."
Libya is currently negotiating with the U.S. State Department and working to meet the requests by the U.S. embassy to return to Libya, Sayala added.
"The requests include providing security. A high-level delegation from the U.S. State Department will visit Tripoli soon to see the embassy's headquarters in terms of location," Sayala said.
Libya has been suffering security vacuum and chaos since the fall of Muammar Gaddafi in 2011. The country is plagued by political division and unrest.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-11-12 03:48:51|Editor: yan
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ALGIERS, Nov. 11 (Xinhua) -- Algerian counter-terrorism forces arrested seven suspects associated with terrorism in the province of Batna, 400 km southeast of Algiers, Defense Ministry said in a statement on Saturday.
"As part of the fight against terrorism, and thanks to efficient exploitation of intelligence, army forces on Friday managed to arrest a terrorist and six members of a group which provided support to terrorists in Batna," read the statement.
Army troops retrieved in this operation a hunt riffle and a shotgun, the source added.
Later last month, Algeria launched a large-scale counter-terrorism operation in the eastern region, killing six militants and arresting seven others including five women.
Located in a region plagued by unprecedented security and political instability, Algeria faces ongoing terrorist threats.
A few militants affiliated to al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) and recently established Daesh affiliate groups are sheltering in the dense woods in the north and remote desert areas near the troubled Libya and Mali.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-11-12 04:23:58|Editor: yan
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Chinese President Xi Jinping (R) meets with South Korean President Moon Jae-in in Da Nang, Vietnam, Nov. 11, 2017. (Xinhua/Ding Lin)
DA NANG, Vietnam, Nov. 11 (Xinhua) -- Chinese President Xi Jinping met here Saturday with South Korean President Moon Jae-in on bilateral ties and the Korean Peninsula situation.
During the meeting on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Economic Leaders' Meeting, Xi told Moon that China and South Korea are close neighbors that can not move away and are natural cooperation partners.
The two countries share broad common interests in promoting their economic and social progress, and in realizing regional peace, stability and prosperity, said Xi.
He added that friendly exchanges and win-win cooperation have always been the main theme of China-South Korea diplomatic relations since they were forged 25 years ago, while China places importance on its relations with South Korea.
China stands ready to join hands with South Korea to push for the healthy and steady development of bilateral ties, Xi said, as good bilateral ties are in accordance with the trend of history and time, as well as the common expectation of the two peoples.
Noting that the China-South Korea relations are at a crucial stage, Xi said both sides need to respect each other's core interests and major concern, maintain political mutual trust, and enhance communication and coordination.
Xi reiterated China's stance on the issue of the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD).
He stressed that on such high-stake issues, the two sides should take an attitude that is responsible to history, to bilateral ties and to both peoples, and make decisions that can stand the test of history, so as to steadily move forward bilateral relations in the right direction.
Noting the important leading role of high-level interactions on bilateral ties, Xi welcomed South Korea's foreign minister to visit China this month.
Xi said the two countries need to make an over-all plan for developing bilateral ties in the next stage and discuss how to expand cooperation in international and regional affairs.
He urged both sides to deepen practical cooperation and communication in various fields, so as to better serve the interests of the two peoples.
Moon congratulated Xi on the successful conclusion of the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China (CPC) and his re-election as general secretary of the CPC Central Committee, saying he supports Xi's vision of building a community with a shared future for mankind.
South Korea supports the Belt and Road Initiative and is willing to actively participate in its implementation, he said, while calling for concerted efforts to resume bilateral high-level exchanges and cooperation in various fields as soon as possible.
South Korea attaches importance to China's concern on the THAAD issue, and has no intention to harm China's interests of strategic security, Moon said.
The two leaders also exchanged views on the Korean Peninsula situation.
Xi told Moon that China sincerely hopes for the best for the peninsula, and encourages South Korea to resume contact and dialogue with the Democratic People's Republic of Korea and restart cooperation for reconciliation.
China is willing to maintain communication with South Korea on promoting peace, stability and talks, as well as avoiding conflicts on the peninsula, said Xi.
South Korea appreciates China's positive role on the Korean Peninsula nuclear issue, stands ready to maintain close communication and coordination with China, and insists on solving the issue in a peaceful manner to protect peace on the peninsula, said Moon.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-11-12 04:39:01|Editor: ZD
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Military vehicles of Iraq i army carry out an operation to drive out Islamic State (IS) militants from their last urban stronghold in the Iraqi western border with Syria , near Rawa, Iraq, on Nov. 11, 2017. Iraqi security forces battling IS militants on Saturday freed a town and nine villages near the IS-held Rawa, the Iraqi military said. (Xinhua)
BAGHDAD, Nov. 11 (Xinhua) -- Iraqi security forces battling Islamic State (IS) militants on Saturday freed a town and nine villages near the IS-held city of Rawa, the Iraqi military said.
The soldiers of the 7th Infantry Division and the 8th Armored Division, backed by the paramilitary Sunni tribal fighters, crossed the Euphrates River and captured the town of Rumana, its bridge and nine nearby villages, Lt. Gen. Abdul Amir Yarallah, Commander of the Liberation of West Anbar Operations, said in a brief statement.
They also managed to seize the areas near the border with Syria, and would continue to clear the vast rural areas in the north of the river, Yarallah said.
Earlier in the day, Yarallah announced the launch of an operation to free the city of Rawa and the nearby town of Rumana within the first phase of a major offensive to clear the rural areas in the north of the Euphrates River.
On Oct. 26, the security forces started a major offensive to free the last urban IS stronghold in Iraq near the Iraqi-Syrian border.
The IS militants seized large swathes of territory in Iraq in 2014. After three years of battles, the Iraqi forces have retaken most of the occupied areas from the terrorist group, including the country's second largest city Mosul.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-11-12 04:49:04|Editor: ZD
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Chinese President Xi Jinping (L) meets with Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc in Da Nang, Vietnam, Nov. 11, 2017. (Xinhua/Fei Maohua)
DA NANG, Vietnam, Nov. 11 (Xinhua) -- Chinese President Xi Jinping met here Saturday with Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc, urging the two neighbors to extend the breadth and depth of their comprehensive strategic cooperation.
Xi also extended his sincere condolences over the heavy casualties and property loss caused by Typhoon Damrey in southern and central Vietnam, saying that China will support Vietnam's rescue and relief efforts.
He stressed that under the leadership of the Communist Party of Vietnam (CPV) and the Vietnamese government, people in the affected areas will certainly be able to overcome the disaster and resume normal work and life as soon as possible.
Xi will fly to the Vietnamese capital of Hanoi on Sunday to start his state visit to the country.
He expressed satisfaction on the current development momentum of China-Vietnam ties, which now feature frequent high-level visits, deepening practical cooperation, vigorous people-to-people exchanges and close coordination on multilateral occasions.
China attaches great importance to ties with Vietnam, said Xi, adding that he hopes to have in-depth exchanges of views with Vietnamese leaders on relations between the two parties and the two countries as well as issues of common concern, so as to open a new chapter for the two countries' comprehensive strategic cooperative partnership.
The international and regional patterns are undergoing profound and complicated changes, while the reform and development of China and Vietnam are also at a crucial period, said Xi.
He suggested the two sides expand the breadth and depth of their comprehensive strategic cooperation and realize lasting peace and stability of the two socialist countries led by Communist parties.
China and Vietnam should maintain high-level contacts, strengthen strategic communication, and deepen experience sharing on party and state governance, he said.
He called on the two countries to speed up the alignment of their development initiatives -- the China-proposed Belt and Road Initiative and Vietnam's "Two Corridors and One Economic Circle" plan -- and deepen cooperation in such areas as economy and trade, finance, production capacity and infrastructure construction, so as to achieve mutual beneficial and win-win results.
The Chinese president called for more dynamic people-to-people exchanges to promote mutual understanding and friendship between people of the two countries.
He also suggested that both sides should properly deal with divergences to ensure the relations between the two parties and the two countries always move forward along the right direction.
For his part, Phuc thanked Xi for choosing Vietnam as his first overseas destination after the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China (CPC).
He also extended warm congratulations on the elevation of Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era into the party's guiding principles during the landmark congress and on Xi's re-election as general secretary of the CPC Central Committee.
Vietnam cherishes the traditional friendship with China and is happy to see the success of China's economic and social development, which Vietnam views as great achievements of socialist construction, said Phuc.
To upgrade Vietnam-China relations is the priority of Vietnam's foreign policy, he said, adding that Vietnam hopes to enhance cooperation with China in such fields as investment, trade, production capacity, science and technology, agriculture, electricity, infrastructure and the construction of cross-border economic cooperation zones.
Vietnam is committed to enhancing the level of bilateral cooperation, said Phuc, noting that Vietnam would dock its "Two Corridors and One Economic Circle" plan with the China-proposed Belt and Road Initiative and beef up cooperation with China in tourism, culture and local affairs.
The meeting was held on the sidelines of the 25th Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Economic Leaders' Meeting.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-11-12 05:09:08|Editor: ZD
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By Burak Akinci
ANKARA, Nov. 11 (Xinhua) -- Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim's visit to the United States on Nov. 7-10 has not produced a breakthrough on resolving key issues of contention, but the two NATO allies agreed to prevent further deterioration of their bilateral ties.
"There is no apparent agreement on issues that have poisoned bilateral relations, but on a practical level we see that both parties are keen to push for more contact and communication in order to avert that ties are strained even further," told Xinhua Serkan Demirtas, Hurriyet Daily News Ankara bureau chief.
"I think there is a will despite differences on major issues to have relations to return back on track in some way and open communication channels to that effect," said this expert on international affairs and a keen reader of Turkish government issues.
After their tit-for-tat, Yildirim and U.S. Vice President Mike Pence had warm statements on the future of bilateral relations after meeting, yet no breakthrough was announced to clear the air.
There was no sign of the U.S. agreeing to consider extraditing the U.S.-based Muslim cleric Fethullah Gulen, accused by Ankara of masterminding the coup attempt of July 2016, or to stop supporting arming Syrian Kurdish militants that Turkey considers as an offshoot of the Kurdish Workers' Party (PKK), listed as a terrorist group by Turkey, the U.S., and EU.
Meanwhile, Turkey did not give any guarantee to free American evangelical pastor Andrew Brunson jailed since last year for alleged links with the Gulen network.
In his statement after the meeting, Pence relayed his "deep concern over the arrest of American citizens, Turkish local staff, journalists, and members of civil society under the state of emergency," underlining nevertheless the "strategic partnership between Washington and Ankara."
Yildirim defined his discussions with Pence as "very productive." The White House said Pence and Yildirim hoped to "usher in a new chapter" in U.S.-Turley relations. However, it is unclear what exactly ushering in a new chapter means in the actual context of affairs.
"The important thing that comes from this meeting is that communications between the leaders of the two nations may increase in the coming days and this will avert further deterioration," commented Demirtas.
There was also no decision on a full restoration of visa processing. Ankara and Washington eased days before Yildirim's visit reciprocal visa restrictions imposed early October after the arrest of a Turkish worker of the American consulate in Istanbul on charges of espionage and alleged links with coup plotters.
"We expect normalization in the visa crisis, and Mr. Pence has a positive stance on finding a solution," Yildirim said.
Turkey has launched a massive crackdown on Gulen's network after the coup attempt last year, arresting tens of thousands of suspected followers in the army, police and judiciary.
"We demanded that at least a step to restrict Gulen's movements and actions be taken as a start," said Yildirim, adding that the extradition process, which falls in deaf ears in the U.S. government, is long overdue.
Yildirim also met journalists, think tankers and lawmakers in Washington on Tuesday and Wednesday, and in New York met UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, Jewish community leaders and investors.
"Relations between Turkey and the United States are going through tough time," said Yildirim to reporters in Washington.
Strained ties are not only about Turkey-U.S. relations, but also about the region in Turkey is located, Yildirim noted.
In Ankara, a source close to the government told Xinhua that "as long as the U.S. harbors Gulen, relations will suffer. But at least we have expressed our firm opinion to the U.S. that we want Gulen back to Turkey to be tried for the deeds that he has done."
"We know and the Americans know it is better to be friends than foes, and relations in difficult global circumstances between the U.S. and Turkey should not crumble like a castle of cards," remarked this source on the condition of anonymity.
Moreover, the case of Reza Zarrab also matters. The Turkish-Iranian gold trader said to be close to the Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's entourage is currently under arrest in the U.S., and accused of violating U.S. sanctions on Iran.
According to press reports, the investigation could easily have a big negative impact on U.S.-Turkish relations if it implies Erdogan himself or his political connections.
"Such an event could shatter the actual status quo. Thus, so it seems, the two nations have seemingly found some kind of understanding in order to prevent irreversible damage," Serkan Demirtas said.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-11-12 06:19:18|Editor: yan
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BEIRUT, Nov. 11 (Xinhua) -- Lebanon's President Michel Aoun said Saturday that the circumstances of the resignation of Prime Minister Saad Hariri were "ambiguous and mysterious."
Any stance or move by Hariri "is the result of the dubious and mysterious situation that he is living in the kingdom," Aoun said in a statement from his media office.
He said that this meant all decisions and steps that Aoun had taken cannot reflect reality.
The comments came after Aoun called on Saudi Arabia to clarify the reasons why Hariri had not yet returned to Lebanon following his resignation announcement.
Hariri made the unexpected announcement on television from the Saudi Arabian capital Riyadh last Saturday.
According to Article 69 of the Lebanese constitution, the government is considered resigned if "the PM resigns" without specifying the forms in which the resignation should be submitted to the president.
Tensions have heightened between Lebanon and Saudi Arabia in the wake of Hariri's exit and the delay in his return to Lebanon, which has thrown the country into a state of uncertainty.
Aoun has since been convening high-level meetings with Lebanese politicians and foreign diplomats.
According to a prior statement from Baabda, Aoun said Lebanon does not accept the position of its prime minister to be at odds with international treaties.
He said Friday in a meeting with the International Support Group for Lebanon (ISG) that he had concerns regarding Hariri's situation and that he would await the prime minister's return in order to find out the reasons behind his resignation.
He reminded the group of "international agreements that foster relations between states and the immunity that they provide to their agents."
Source: Xinhua| 2017-11-12 06:34:22|Editor: ZD
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Syrian army soldiers fire an artillery on the Islamic State (IS) positions near the city of al-Bukamal in the eastern countryside of Deir al-Zour province, Syria, on Nov. 10, 2017. The Syrian army captured al-Bukamal in the eastern countryside of Deir al-Zour province on Wednesday and officially declared its victory on Thursday. The Islamic State (IS) clawed back over 40 percent of the city of al-Bukamal, the last IS stronghold that has been recently captured by the Syrian government forces, a monitor group reported on Friday. (Xinhua/Ammar Safarjalani)
DAMASCUS, Nov. 11 (Xinhua) -- The Islamic State (IS) wrested back control over the city of al-Bukamal, the last IS stronghold in Syria that had been recently captured by the Syrian government forces, a monitor group reported on Saturday.
Following the Syrian army's declaration of capturing al-Bukamal in the eastern countryside of Deir al-Zour province in eastern Syria on Thursday, the IS militants unleashed a wide-scale offensive on the city, and recaptured over 40 percent of it on Friday, said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
Then on Saturday, the IS militants retook the entire city, pushing the government forces and allied fighters to retreat around 2 km out of the city, the London-based watchdog group said
Being their last home in Syria explains why the IS militants are fighting back.
On Thursday, the Syrian army declared capturing the city, saying in a statement that the liberation of al-Bukamal constitutes a "strategic achievement and a base for eradicating remnants of the terrorist organizations with its various names along the Syrian territories."
The army also hailed what it described as "the continuous coordination" between the Syrian and Iraqi armies," saying it has played a big role in clearing large swathes of the border area and in preventing the infiltration of IS militants.
Al-Bukamal is very important for the IS due to its proximity to IS-held areas on the Iraqi side of the border, which have recently been stormed by the Iraqi army and allied troops.
Last month, the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces captured the northern city of Raqqa, the de facto capital of IS.
Also, the Syrian army captured the capital city of Deir al-Zour this month.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-11-12 07:29:30|Editor: liuxin
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MEXICO CITY, Nov. 11 (Xinhua) -- At least six people were killed and four others injured on Saturday when a passenger bus hit a hearse in the state of Zacatecas in central Mexico, the police announced.
Zacatecas' secretary of public security said the accident happened along highway 49 between the towns of Rio Grande and Juan Aldama, in the northeast of the state.
The hearse was carrying a body and four passengers from the town of Miguel Auza, when it struck the bus.
All four people on board the hearse died in the crash, along with the driver and one passenger on the bus, which was travelling from the border town of Ciudad Juarez to Mexico City.
The emergency rescue teams also treated four injured bus passengers, with one of them in serious condition and transferred to a hospital in Rio Grande.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-11-12 07:29:31|Editor: liuxin
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CARACAS, Nov. 11 (Xinhua) -- The Venezuelan opposition, the Democratic Unity Roundtable (MUD), stated Saturday that the planned dialogue with the government in the Dominican Republic on Nov. 15 is suspended.
Through a statement, the MUD indicated this is because the government had not agreed on the dialogue being attended by foreign ministers of observer countries, namely Mexico, Chile, Paraguay, Bolivia and Nicaragua.
The opposition said that the diplomats of these nations, called "friendly countries," "would accompany the negotiation process to exit the political, economic and institutional crisis which Venezuela is suffering."
While the government of President Nicolas Maduro has constantly said it is ready for dialogue, the MUD has dismissed this and said the authorities are not willing to discuss its agenda, including calling "fair presidential elections and the urgent opening of a humanitarian channel of food and drugs."
"The country is clamoring for a solution to the general crisis which currently exists and Venezuela's commitment must tackle all the factors. We demand seriousness and commitment in these difficult moments for the country," wrote the MUD.
On Thursday, the MUD said it was ready for "serious dialogue" with the government setting the date of Nov. 15.
This latest attempt at dialogue is taking place after gubernatorial elections on Oct. 15, when the government won 18 states and the MUD won five.
Municipal elections are set for Dec. 10, but at least five opposition parties within the MUD alliance have said they would not take part.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-11-12 07:49:33|Editor: liuxin
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ANAHEIM, the United States, Nov. 11 (Xinhua) -- Students as young as sixth-graders can learn and perform CPR effectively and should be targeted for training, according to preliminary research presented at the American Heart Association (AHA) Scientific Sessions 2017 which starts Saturday in Anaheim, California.
According to the AHA, over 350,000 out-of-hospital cardiac arrests occur in the United States each year and almost 90 percent of people who suffer out-of-hospital cardiac arrests die.
Statistics prove that if more people knew CPR, more lives could be saved. CPR, especially if performed in the first few minutes of cardiac arrest, can double or triple a person's chance of survival.
Some states in the United States already require Hands-Only CPR training for high school graduation, but researchers say there has been little focus on younger children.
"We were wondering why they need to wait until 12th grade when sixth graders have learned the circulation system and seem mature enough and are interested in learning Hands-Only CPR," study author Mimi Biswas, M.D., a cardiologist at University of California Riverside School of Medicine and Riverside Community Hospital, was quoted as saying in a news release.
In the research, 160 sixth-graders, average age 12, were divided into three groups. One group (the control) watched the AHA's video CPR in Schools Training Kit to learn how to perform 100 to 120 compressions per minute (CPM) on the adult CPR manikins. The second group watched the video and listened to music with a tempo matching the goal compression rate. The third group watched the video and played a video game to reinforce the goal compression rate.
Each child then tested their new skills to perform Hands-Only CPR for adults on the manikins. The study found that across the groups, most students remembered to call 911, performed CPR in the correct location and provided high-quality compressions.
However, attainment of goal compression rate for effective Hands-Only CPR was higher among the music and video game groups than the control group. Based on these findings, researchers suggest that tempo-reinforcing tools like music and video games may help children attain goal compression rate.
AHA's Scientific Sessions, a premier global exchange of the latest advances in cardiovascular science for researchers and clinicians, attracts nearly 18,000 attendees, with a global presence from more than 100 countries.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-11-12 09:44:52|Editor: Xiang Bo
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by Zhao Qing, Gao Jie
MANILA, Nov. 12 (Xinhua) -- China will continue prioritizing the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) in its neighborhood diplomacy and firmly supporting the building of the ASEAN Community, said Chinese Ambassador to ASEAN Xu Bu.
In an interview with Xinhua ahead of the 31st ASEAN Summit and related meetings held here, Xu said "China appreciates the grand vision of ASEAN and is looking forward to and has every reason to believe that ASEAN will make new and greater accomplishments in the next 50 years."
ASEAN celebrates the 50 years' anniversary this year and the Philippines, the rotating chair of this year, has proposed the theme "Partnering for Change, Engaging the World", which envisions an integrated, peaceful, stable and resilient ASEAN.
The establishment of the ASEAN Community at the end of 2015 marked a new milestone in the process of regional integration of Southeast Asia. ASEAN has become the most important regional bloc, and a model of union and self-reliance of countries with different social systems and at different levels of development, the ambassador said.
Politically, countries in Southeast Asia have creatively initiated "the ASEAN Way", which features mutual respect, consensus through consultation, non-interference in each other's internal affairs and accommodating each party's comfort level.
Regional cooperation has been pursued in a constructive way, making positive contribution to the region's stability, peace and development, Xu noted.
Economically, with a total population of over 630 million and a combined GDP of over 2.5 trillion U.S. dollars, ASEAN has grown to be the world's sixth largest economy. With its economic growth rate reaching 4.8 percent in 2016, ASEAN has abundant momentum and huge potential for economic development, the ambassador said.
On the aspect of regional cooperation, "the ASEAN Way" has been widely accepted by countries in the region as an important principle for pushing forward the regional cooperation in Southeast Asia.
Currently, East Asia and Southeast Asia have formed ASEAN-centered regional cooperation frameworks such as ASEAN+1, ASEAN+3 (China, Japan and South Korea), East Asia Summit, and ASEAN Regional Forum, providing important platforms for countries in and close to the ASEAN region to jointly discuss affairs and tackle challenges in the area.
Established in 1967, ASEAN groups Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.
Leaders from the 10 ASEAN member countries and ASEAN dialogue partners gather in Manila from Nov. 10 to Nov. 14 for the 31st ASEAN summit, 12th East Asia summit and related meetings. Strengthening regional integration and global free trade, security issues, among others, will be the major topics.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-11-12 09:49:54|Editor: Xiang Bo
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by Gao Jie, Zhao Qing
MANILA, Nov. 12 (Xinhua) -- China and ASEAN should strive to broaden consensus and deepen cooperation so as to build a higher level of China-ASEAN strategic partnership and a even closer China-ASEAN community of shared destiny, said Xu Bu, Chinese ambassador to the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).
In an interview with Xinhua ahead of the 31st ASEAN summit and related meetings that are taking place here, Xu said the relations between China and ASEAN is currently at a key point that is "dynamic and enriched" but "needs an upgrade."
As close neighbors, China and ASEAN began talks in 1991, and established the Strategic Partnership for Peace and Prosperity in 2003. During a visit to Indonesia in 2013, Chinese President Xi Jinping expressed China's willingness to work with ASEAN countries to jointly build the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road and the China-ASEAN community of shared future.
"With joint efforts for this goal, China-ASEAN ties have developed into the most dynamic and enriched among ASEAN's relations with its dialogue partners, leading to fruitful achievements in cooperation in various areas," Xu said.
In the area of politics, political dialogues between China and ASEAN have been increasingly enhanced, Xu said, offering examples that "top leaders of the two sides are in frequent contact and continuously visit each other."
China and ASEAN countries have made significant progress in implementing the Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea, stabilizing regional situation and showing a good will of countries in the region to jointly maintain peace and stability of the South China Sea, Xu noted.
Economic and trade cooperation between the two sides have also been developing rapidly, Xu said, pointing out that China and ASEAN have set up the world's largest free trade agreement (FTA) for developing countries and have finished negotiations on upgrading the FTA.
Bilateral trade volume between China and ASEAN reached 452.2 billion U.S. dollars in 2016. China has been ASEAN's top trade partner for eight consecutive years, while ASEAN being China's third largest trade partner for six consecutive years. Two-way investment has also scored rapid increase, with a total of over 178 billion U.S. dollars.
Besides, the past few years have witnessed a "continuous deepening" of people-to-people exchanges between China and ASEAN, Xu said.
In 2016, more than 38 million trips were made between the two sides, reaching ahead of schedule the goal of 30 million trips in 2020. China has become ASEAN's largest source of foreign tourists, with more than 2,700 flights flying between the two sides every week.
However, despite the achievements of cooperation in various areas, Xu pointed out that China-ASEAN relations are facing some challenges, including lack of mutual trust, cooperation at bottleneck and low level of people-to-people exchanges.
As China and ASEAN wait to mark the 15th anniversary of the establishment of strategic partnership next year, the ambassador suggested the two sides continue deepening political mutual trust as a prerequisite and guarantee for friendly cooperation.
He promised that "China will, as usual, steadfastly support the development of the ASEAN Community, back ASEAN's central role in regional cooperation, and support ASEAN in playing a greater role in international and regional affairs."
Xu also suggested China and ASEAN make long-term planning for the overall development of their relations, including pushing forward the formulation of the China-ASEAN Strategic Partnership Vision 2030 and drawing a blueprint for the development of their relations in the next 15 years.
For bilateral pragmatic cooperation, Xu urged the two sides to seek "new dynamism", including jointly implementing the Initiative on Promoting Unimpeded Trade Cooperation and promote the comprehensive and early realization of the upgraded version of China-ASEAN FTA, and accelerating regional infrastructure development to realize four-pronged connectivity that covers land, sea and air transport as well as communication network.
Besides political and economic cooperation, Xu also expected further strengthened people-to-people bonds as a "third pillar" in China-ASEAN relations.
Xu expressed China's willingness to support ASEAN countries' efforts in social development areas such as medicine, health and poverty reduction, to realize the implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development of the United Nations.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-11-12 10:09:57|Editor: liuxin
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WASHINGTON, Nov. 11 (Xinhua) -- U.S. President Donald Trump will discuss enhancing bilateral maritime and naval cooperation with Vietnamese leaders in his upcoming state visit to the Southeast Asian nation, a senior U.S. administration official said Saturday in a background press call.
The official told media via teleconference that the two nations are going to conclude a new three-year plan of action for defense cooperation involving an increase in bilateral naval activities
He said Washington is formally transferring the first U.S. Coast Guard cutter to the Vietnamese navy to help enhance Vietnam's maritime security and awareness.
Trump, who attended the APEC summit in Da Nang, Vietnam on Friday-Saturday, will also secure "the new commitments from Vietnam's leadership to support the maximum pressure campaign" to bring Pyongyang "back to the path of denuclearization," he said.
The official, who declined to be named, added that the two countries will also pledge to intensify discussions toward expanding bilateral trade and investment, adding the two nations are likely to reach commercial agreements worth 12 billion U.S. dollars.
On Sunday, Trump will fly on to Manila to meet with Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte and other leaders of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and of the East Asia Summit (EAS).
A number of things will "come out of the two summits, as well, in the way of cooperation and initiatives between the United States and ASEAN and some of the individual member states," said the official.
He said Trump and Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong will co-sponsor an EAS Leaders statement on chemical weapons to reaffirm the region's commitment against the development of those weapons by Pyongyang and beyond.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-11-12 10:19:59|Editor: Xiang Bo
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by Zhao Qing, Gao Jie
MANILA, Nov. 12 (Xinhua) -- Members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) are the prior and primary partners of China in promoting the Belt and Road Initiative, Chinese Ambassador to ASEAN Xu Bu told Xinhua in an interview ahead of the 31st ASEAN summit and related meetings from Nov. 10 to Nov. 14.
ASEAN's development plans, including ASEAN Community Vision 2025, AEC Blueprint 2025 and Master Plan on ASEAN Connectivity 2025, are highly compatible with the objectives of China's Belt and Road Initiative, China and ASEAN have both agreed to integrate and mutually promote the development strategies of both sides, Xu said.
According to him, the Belt and Road Initiative has made remarkable progress and achievements in ASEAN countries in five aspects.
Firstly, with effective policy communication, the Belt and Road Initiative and ASEAN countries are forming a multi-level inter-governmental communication mechanism.
Secondly, the construction of infrastructure interconnectivity has been speeding up along with China's high-speed rail "going out" and a series of flagship projects being implemented.
Thirdly, with the China-ASEAN deal to upgrade their free trade agreement (FTA) formally going into force, the two sides have been closely pushing forward production capacity cooperation with industrial parks as key projects, and rapidly enhancing trade and investment.
Furthermore, the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank has attracted participation and support of all ASEAN countries, providing a firm guarantee for financial integration.
Besides, with cultural exchanges and tourism as a link, non-governmental contact between the two sides is becoming increasingly active, laying the social foundation for people-to-people bonds.
The Belt and Road Initiative, put forward in 2013, is aimed at building the Silk Road Economic Belt and the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road by promoting trade, financial integration, infrastructure inter-connectivity and people-to-people exchanges among continents.
A recent report by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development showed that ASEAN would need infrastructure investment of 60 billion to 146 billion U.S. dollars per annum up until 2025.
China has been providing assistance in railway infrastructure projects to ASEAN countries, including Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia, Cambodia, the Philippines and Laos. These include Indonesia's Jakarta-Bandung High Speed Rail link, Malaysia's East Coast Rail, China-Thai high speed railway, and China-Laos railway, according to China's National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC).
Established on Aug. 8, 1967, ASEAN groups Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.
Leaders from the 10 ASEAN member countries and ASEAN dialogue partners gather in Manila from Nov. 10 to Nov. 14 for the 31st ASEAN summit, the 12th East Asia summit and related meetings. Strengthening Regional integration and global free trade, security issues, among others, will be the major topics.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-11-12 10:45:04|Editor: liuxin
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WASHINGTON, Nov. 11 (Xinhua) -- U.S. President Donald Trump and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin said on Saturday they are satisfied with the communication between their militaries, which has "dramatically" accelerated the losses of the Islamic State (IS) on the battlefield in recent months.
In a joint statement issued after their meeting on the margins of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Economic Leaders' Meeting in Da Nang, Vietnam on Saturday, the two leaders confirmed their determination to defeat IS in Syria.
According to the statement, which is posted on the website of the U.S. State Department, they agreed to maintain open channels of communication between the two militaries to help ensure the safety of U.S. and Russian forces engaged in the fight against the IS until its final defeat.
"There is no military solution to the conflict in Syria," read the statement, adding that the two leaders confirmed that "the ultimate political solution to the conflict must be forged through the Geneva process."
They affirmed that these steps must include the full implementation of UN Security Council Resolution 2254, constitutional reform and free and fair elections under UN supervision, "with all Syrians, including members of the diaspora, eligible to participate."
Trump and Putin also affirmed their commitment to Syria's sovereignty, unity, independence, territorial integrity and non-sectarian character, urging all Syrian parties to actively participate in the Geneva political process and to support efforts to ensure its success.
They also confirmed the importance of de-escalation areas as an "interim" step to reduce violence in Syria, enforce ceasefire agreements, facilitate unhindered humanitarian access, and set the conditions for the ultimate political solution to the conflict.
In the statement, Trump noted that "he had a good meeting with" Putin, adding that the successful implementation of the agreements "will save thousands of lives."
Earlier on Saturday, Trump told the media en route to Hanoi that he and Putin could have a great relationship.
Trump said that Putin rejected any involvement in last year's U.S. presidential election up in his face, saying that "all he (Putin) said is he never did that, he didn't do that. I think he's very insulted by it, which is not a good thing for our country."
"There's an artificial barrier that (was) put in the way by the Democrats. It's a fake barrier. There was no collusion," said Trump. "The Democrats wanted to have a good relationship with Russia, but they couldn't do it because they didn't have the talent to do it. They didn't have the chemistry to do it."
A municipal worker sprays water on the tree to settle dust as a measure against ongoing heavy pollution in the air in New Delhi, India on Nov. 9, 2017. (Xinhua/Sarkar)
by Peerzada Arshad Hamid
NEW DELHI, Nov. 11 (Xinhua) -- The local government in Indian capital of New Delhi on Saturday cancelled its plan to implement odd-even car rationing formula from Monday aimed at reducing the blanket of smog enveloping the city and outskirts, officials said.
The local government's decision was announced after a cabinet meeting that followed hours after India's environmental court, National Green Tribunal (NGT), granted a conditional permission to the authorities for the scheme.
The green panel banned all exemptions granted under the Odd-Even scheme including two-wheelers, government officials and women drivers.
The court told the government the odd-even formula should come into effect every time the particulate matter (PM) 10 exceeds the level of 500 and PM 2.5 rises above 300.
However, Delhi Transport Minister Kailash Gahlot said the Delhi government could not compromise on the safety of women. The government, he added, does not have enough public transport alternatives to accommodate over 6 million two-wheelers.
"At the moment we are calling it off. We will again approach the NGT and will ask them to allow exemptions to women and two-wheelers," Gahlot told media. "On Monday, the government will file an appeal in the Green Court to reconsider its no exemption for women and two-wheelers."
Under the arrangement, private cars with odd registration numbers are allowed to run on odd dates while even-numbered cars will ply on even dates.
The decision to impose the formula was made in wake of rising air pollution levels in the national capital.
Deadly smog has covered the city for the last six days.
Earlier, NGT on Friday asked the Delhi government to submit data or studies on the basis of which it has planned to introduce the odd-even car rationing formula from next week.
Since Tuesday morning, Delhi was covered with thick smog, following which health officials issued advisory to elderly and children to avoid venturing out.
All schools in Delhi, adjoining areas and Punjab were closed until Sunday in view of the rising pollution.
The entry of trucks except those carrying essentials has been banned in the national capital, besides work on civil construction sites was suspended.
The deadly smog chocks air causing breathlessness and lung difficulties, besides badly affecting the visibility.
Authorities have asked citizens to avoid burning dry leaves, crop residue in and around the city.
India's federal government, meanwhile, has issued an advisory to the state governments to create awareness among the farmers about the harmful effects of straw burning.
The directive was issued by agriculture ministry in wake of the increasing levels of pollution in New Delhi.
Delhi is considered to be the most polluted city in the world. Last year the city's high court described the capital as "gas chamber."
Source: Xinhua| 2017-11-12 12:05:14|Editor: Jiaxin
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by Yuan Mengchen, Dario Agnote
MANILA, Nov. 12 (Xinhua) -- The upcoming visit by Chinese Premier Li Keqiang to Manila next week is a boon to the warming-up diplomatic ties between Manila and Beijing, a member of the Philippine House of Representatives told Xinhua.
Rep. Arthur Yap, chairman of the House of Economic Affairs Committee, said Li's scheduled official visit to the Philippines will bring more opportunities for cooperation.
"If there are increased interactions between our leaders, and this is regularly and constantly done, then there will be more avenues and opportunities for us to discuss issues. Hopefully, when we have opportunities for all these issues, of course, the future will be brighter (for the Philippines and China)," Yap said in an interview with Xinhua.
"As neighbors and brothers, we must try to look out for each other. As long as the relationship is benefitting and progressing for both of us, then the relationship can only strengthen and improve for both of us," Yap said.
The Chinese premier will pay an official visit to the Philippines at the invitation of Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte.
Li will attend the leaders' summit of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and the East Asia summit next week from Nov. 12 to Nov. 16. Li will also attend the leaders' meeting of ASEAN-China.
Besides the ASEAN-China summit, Li will also attend the ASEAN+3 summit with Japanese and South Korean leaders, and the leaders' meeting on the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) during his stay in Manila.
Yap is optimistic that the China-Philippines economic relations will further strengthen in the months to come.
"I feel that with the warming-up of the relationship between China and the Philippines, the area of economy can only improve. So we are very happy about that," Yap said.
Relations between China and the Philippines, which span several centuries, have been predominantly warm and cordial. But in recent years, the dispute in the South China Sea got in the way, resulting in the "cooling off" of relations, according to the congressman.
Duterte's visit to Beijing in October last year restored the frayed bilateral ties, he said.
Warming bilateral relations have been translated into economic benefits for both sides. And China is currently the Philippines' largest trading partner, largest import market and the fourth largest export destination, Yap said.
The Philippines is keen to see more Chinese investments in the future. "We hope that with the upcoming visit of Premier Li Keqiang, we can hear more news about the Chinese direct investment to the Philippines," Yap said.
Yap said the Philippines "has a lot of advantages."
"First, the Philippines is in the central position of Southeast Asia, which has 600 million consumers."
"Second, the Philippines is not far away from China. And third, Chinese investors and businessmen can use the Philippines as an intermediate point ship to the whole Asia," he said.
The Philippines also has a lot of preferential trade agreements with big economies such as the European Union and the United States.
Yap also lauded China's Belt and Road Initiative, saying "stronger economic trade is anchored in the integration."
The Philippines will definitely benefit from the initiative, he said.
Yap noted China's commitment to giving official development assistance to the Philippines.
"I think the Philippines just need to get the act together and rush and make sure we can implement all these projects ahead of time," he said.
Yap stressed the need to sustain the momentum in various areas.
"We must bring culture, sports, education, science and technology into play," the congressman said.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-11-12 12:30:17|Editor: Jiaxin
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BEIJING, Nov. 12 (Xinhua) -- The Hekou Port on the China-Vietnam border has been the scene of an almost ceaseless flow of goods crossing the border this year.
When a truck carrying 30 tonnes of coke pulled away from the checkpoint Tuesday, the port chalked up a record 5 million tonnes of cargo this year, over 60 percent more than the total for all of 2016. Trucks carrying minerals, timber, vegetables and fruit trundle across the border day and night.
Hekou is the busiest China-Vietnam land port. Port officials attribute the healthy throughput mainly to easier customs routines including paperless declarations and a new logistical system that coordinates road, rail and river transport.
But the growth in Hekou is only a small fraction of improved trade and economic cooperation. In the first three quarters, trade between the two countries was up more than 20.5 percent from last year. China's Ministry of Commerce (MOC) expects the amount to reach 100 billion U.S. dollars by the end of the year.
China has been Vietnam's largest trading partner for 13 years, and Vietnam is China's biggest partner in the ASEAN. Chinese President Xi Jinping will begin a state visit to Vietnam on Sunday after attending the 25th Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Economic Leaders' Meeting.
China and Vietnam need to deepen cooperation and foster new prospects in their interconnected interests, Xi said in an article published prior to the trip, noting the two countries need to work for substantive progress in cooperation in key areas, including infrastructure, trade, industrial capacity, cross-border economic cooperation zones and agriculture.
"As both countries have entered their own crucial development stages, leaders of the two sides will set a clear direction for practical cooperation in the future," said Hong Xiaoyong, China's Ambassador to Vietnam.
With the progress of the Belt and Road, more opportunities will arise for businesses and investors and mutual benefit will be generated.
A Chinese trade delegation arrived in Vietnam earlier this week and dozens of Chinese companies signed agreements worth nearly 2 billion U.S. dollars with Vietnamese peers, including purchases of Vietnamese aquatic products and fruit.
Chinese investment now amounts to 15 billion U.S. dollars in Vietnam, with 1.28 billion dollars made last year.
Construction is underway of a China-Vietnam economic and trade cooperation zone in Hai Phong, Vietnam's third largest city and the biggest port city in the north of the country.
Rather than simply transplanting outdated capacity, the 200 million U.S. dollar industrial park will feature high-tech manufacturers from Shenzhen. "Three tech firms have agreed to move in and plan to start operations by the end of the year," said Zhang Xiaotao, an executive director of VCEP, an investor in the zone.
By the time the third stage is completed in 2022, the zone is expected to have received more than 1 billion U.S. dollars of investment and created more than 30,000 jobs.
Infrastructure improvement is also on China-Vietnam cooperation agenda.
China and Vietnam have agreed to push for the completion of the Hanoi light rail (Cat Linh - Ha Dong) project and the design of a standard-gauge railway linking Hai Phong, Hanoi, and Lao Cai, part of a cross-border railway network that connects China with Vietnam's eastern coast.
China will help Vietnam secure Chinese preferential loans and borrow from the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank to finance infrastructure and joint projects, according to a communique issued during Vietnamese President Tran Dai Quang's visit to China in May.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-11-12 13:10:22|Editor: Liangyu
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Xi Jinping, general secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and Chinese president, arrives in Hanoi on Nov. 12, 2017 for a state visit to Vietnam. (Xinhua/Lan Hongguang)
HANOI, Nov. 12 (Xinhua) -- Chinese President Xi Jinping, who is also general secretary of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee, arrived in the Vietnamese capital of Hanoi on Sunday for a state visit to the southeast Asian country.
It is Xi's second visit to Vietnam as China's head of state and top CPC leader.
Before flying to Hanoi, Xi concluded a busy two-day stay in Vietnam's central city of Da Nang, where he attended the 25th Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Economic Leaders' Meeting.
During his stay in Hanoi, Xi will hold talks with General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Vietnam (CPV) Nguyen Phu Trong and meet with Vietnamese President Tran Dai Quang and the Chairperson of the National Assembly of Vietnam, Nguyen Thi Kim Ngan.
The visit, which comes on the heels of the 19th CPC National Congress, is also reciprocal for previous visits to China by Trong and Quang earlier this year.
Trong made a four-day official visit to China in January, while Quang paid a state visit to China in May and attended the Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation in Beijing.
"The leaders of the two countries will have in-depth talks on promoting the relations between the two countries under the new circumstances, "said Chinese Ambassador to Vietnam Hong Xiaoyong.
In a signed article published on Nov. 9 on Nhan Dan, the official newspaper of the CPV, Xi said China and Vietnam need, more than ever, to work in joint efforts in their pursuit of dreams of national strength and prosperity.
The two countries have made tangible progress on the strategic alignment of their development initiatives -- China's Belt and Road Initiative and Vietnam's "Two Corridors and One Economic Circle" plan.
Bilateral trade has also seen a rapid growth in the past few years. Statistics show that China has been Vietnam's biggest trading partner for 13 consecutive years, while Vietnam is China's largest trading partner in Southeast Asia.
In 2016, bilateral trade volume reached 98.23 billion U.S. dollars. The figure is expected to reach 100 billion dollars by the end of this year, according to Hong.
China invested a total of 823.6 million dollars in Vietnam in the first quarter of 2017, becoming the third largest foreign direct investor of the country.
"It is of great significance for the leaders of the two countries to strengthen the top-level design and jointly work on the blueprint of the future development," the Chinese ambassador told Xinhua.
Vietnam is the first leg of Xi's two-nation Asia tour, which will also take him to Laos on Monday.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-11-12 13:30:27|Editor: Xiang Bo
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NANJING, Nov. 12 (Xinhua) -- A China-Germany new businesses cooperation zone in east China's Jiangsu Province is expected to be home to 100 German enterprises by 2020, local authorities said Sunday.
The government of Kunshan City said that the number of European and American companies in the zone will reach 200 (including German companies) with an annual output of 30 billion yuan (4.5 billion U.S. dollars) by then.
The China-Germany (Kunshan) small and medium-sized enterprises (SME) cooperation zone was approved by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology in May.
In neighboring Taicang City, an increasing number of German companies have come to the city since first German company settled there in 1993. They cover a wide range of fields, including high-end equipment manufacturing, auto parts and services.
There are more than 280 German companies in Taicang with an annual output value of more than 40 billion yuan, according to Shen Mi, Party chief of the city.
Around 20 new companies from Germany have come to the city every year.
Taicang has platforms to promote development of German SMEs there, including a cooperation and innovation park and a China-Germany international education park.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-11-12 14:40:35|Editor: Yamei
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Chinese President Xi Jinping attends the 25th Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Economic Leaders' Meeting in Da Nang, Vietnam, Nov. 11, 2017. (Xinhua/Lan Hongguang)
DA NANG, Vietnam, Nov. 12 (Xinhua) -- Chinese President Xi Jinping on Saturday stressed importance of win-win cooperation and called for properly managing differences while handling bilateral ties during meetings with world leaders on the sidelines of the 25th Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Economic Leaders' Meeting.
Xi said healthy and stable development of relations between China and its neighboring countries will bring peace and stability to the region and the world at large.
WIN-WIN COOPERATION
In his keynote speech at the APEC meeting held in Vietnam's central port city of Da Nang, Xi outlined pragmatic ways to achieve common development by furthering economic globalization, fostering an open economy, and promoting trade and investment liberalization.
"We need to take determined steps toward a Free Trade Area of the Asia-Pacific in line with the agreed roadmap, and herald a new round of development in the Asia-Pacific in the course of opening up," Xi said.
During his meeting with South Korean President Moon Jae-in, Xi said the two countries share broad common interests in promoting their economic and social progress, and in realizing regional peace, stability and prosperity.
Xi added that friendly exchanges and win-win cooperation have always been the main theme of China-South Korea diplomatic relations since they were forged 25 years ago, while China places importance on its relations with South Korea.
China stands ready to join hands with South Korea to push for the healthy and steady development of bilateral ties, Xi said, as good bilateral ties are in accordance with the trend of history and time, as well as the common expectation of the two peoples.
While meeting with Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc, the Chinese president called on the two countries to speed up the alignment of their development initiatives -- the China-proposed Belt and Road Initiative and Vietnam's "Two Corridors and One Economic Circle" plan -- and deepen cooperation in such areas as economy and trade, finance, production capacity and infrastructure construction, so as to achieve mutual beneficial and win-win results.
In his meeting with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Xi said that as China and Japan are neighbors and major economies in Asia and the world, a stable development of China-Japan relationship conforms to the interests of both sides and also has an important influence on the region and the world at large.
The two sides should, bearing in mind the fundamental interests of the two peoples, correctly grasp the general direction of peace, friendship and cooperation, and work to enable the bilateral relations to keep improving and developing for the better through unremitting efforts and accumulating positive factors, Xi said.
Meanwhile, in his meeting with Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte, Xi stressed that with the two countries' cooperation enhanced, bilateral relations have seen healthy and stable development, bringing tangible benefits to both peoples and contributing to the region's peace and stability.
The Chinese president also witnessed the signing of a bilateral deal with his Chilean counterpart, Michelle Bachelet, on upgrading the Free Trade Agreement (FTA) between the two countries, underlining that this is China's first FTA upgrade completed with a Latin American country.
REGIONAL PEACE AND STABILITY
Reaffirming China's commitment to peace and stability in the Asia-Pacific region and the world, the Chinese president said China will treat neighboring countries with amity, sincerity, mutual benefit and inclusiveness, pushing forward the building of a community with a shared future for mankind.
Xi told Duterte that China is to work with Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) to maintain peace and stability, as well as development and prosperity in the South China Sea region.
He also called for more dynamic people-to-people exchanges between Beijing and Hanoi to promote mutual understanding and friendship between people of the two countries, during his meeting with Phuc.
He suggested that China and Vietnam should properly deal with divergences to ensure the relations between the two parties and the two countries always move forward along the right direction.
Meanwhile, Xi urged Japan to take more "practical actions" to improve ties with China and properly manage differences between the two countries in a "constructive way."
"To improve China-Japan ties, the key is mutual trust," Xi told Abe.
A constructive way should be used to manage and control the differences between the two countries, he said.
Noting that the China-South Korea relations are at a crucial stage, Xi told Moon that both sides need to respect each other's core interests and major concern, maintain mutual political trust, and enhance communication and coordination.
He reiterated China's stance on the issue of the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD), stressing that on such high-stake issues, the two sides should take an attitude that is responsible to history, to bilateral ties and to both peoples, and make decisions that can stand the test of history, so as to steadily move forward bilateral relations in the right direction.
He said that China sincerely hopes for the best for the peninsula, and encourages South Korea to resume contact and dialogue with the Democratic People's Republic of Korea and restart cooperation for reconciliation.
China is willing to maintain communication with South Korea on promoting peace, stability and talks, as well as avoiding conflicts on the peninsula, said Xi.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-11-12 14:50:37|Editor: Xiang Bo
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HANOI, Nov. 12 (Xinhua) -- U.S. President Donald Trump told a press conference here on Sunday that Russia and China can help on the Korean Peninsula nuclear issue.
"Frankly, Russia and China in particular can help us with the North Korea (the Democratic People's Republic of Korea) problem which is a world-wide truly great problem," Trump said here at a joint press conference along with Vietnamese President Tran Dai Quang.
"It's very important to get along with Russia, get along with China, get along with Vietnam..." to solve a lot of problems, including those relating to Syria, the DPRK, Ukraine and terrorism, said Trump.
After talking with Quang, Trump wrapped up his first visit to Vietnam and left for Manila to attend the 31st ASEAN summit.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-11-12 14:55:38|Editor: liuxin
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MAHMUD-E-RAQI, Afghanistan, Nov. 12 (Xinhua) -- Afghan government forces launched a series of cleanup operations in the country's eastern province of Kapisa, leaving eight Taliban militants dead and retaking several villages, an official said here on Sunday.
"Eight militants loyal to the Taliban were killed, during a joint army and police forces' operation that resulted in retaking several villages in Tagab district on Saturday," Shir Aqa Faqiri, a press officer of army Corps 201 Selab based in the region, told Xinhua.
The Taliban hasn't made a comment yet.
The Afghan security forces have beefed up military operations against militants as the Taliban militants and Islamic State (IS) fighters are attempting to take territory and consolidate their positions ahead of winter in the mountainous country.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-11-12 14:55:39|Editor: Lifang
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HANOI, Nov. 12 (Xinhua) -- U.S. President Donald Trump tried to clarify his stand here on Sunday on whether he believed Russia meddled in the U.S. presidential election last year.
At a joint press conference with Vietnamese President Tran Dai Quang here on Sunday, Trump tried to distance himself from his previous remarks by saying that he believed his intelligence agencies.
On Saturday in Vietnam's Da Nang city, Russian President Vladimir Putin told Trump that he did not meddle with the election, and then Trump told reporters he believed Putin.
Trump's remarks drew criticism back home for choosing Putin's side over the U.S. intelligence agencies, as they have long claimed Russia meddled in U.S. presidential election in 2016.
"I believe that he (Putin) feels that he and Russia did not meddle in the election. As to whether I believe it or not, I am with our agencies," Trump said, adding that he believed in U.S. intelligence agencies.
However, Trump also said stronger U.S. ties with Russia would benefit the world because many matters need resolving with the participation of such countries as Russia and China, including those on the Korean Peninsula, Syria, Ukraine and terrorism.
The U.S. president said he believed "having Russia in a friendly posture as opposed to always fighting them is an asset."
"People don't realize that Russia has been very, very heavily sanctioned," Trump said.
"It's now time to get back to healing a world that is shattered and broken," the U.S. president said.
After wrapping up his first state visit to Vietnam, Trump left Hanoi for Manila to attend the 31st ASEAN summit.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-11-12 16:05:57|Editor: Mengjie
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A ceremony is held by the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) to commemorate the 151st anniversary of the birth of revolutionary leader Sun Yat-sen at Zhongshan Park in Beijing, capital of China, Nov. 12, 2017. (Xinhua/Zhang Ling)
BEIJING, Nov. 12 (Xinhua) -- A ceremony was held Sunday to commemorate the 151st anniversary of the birth of revolutionary leader Sun Yat-sen.
The event was held by the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), China's top political advisory body, in Beijing's Zhongshan Park, which is named after Sun.
Born in 1866 in south China's Guangdong Province, Sun was the founder of the Kuomintang Party, and is a revered revolutionary leader who played a pivotal role in overthrowing imperial rule in China.
Officials from the CPPCC National Committee, the National People's Congress Standing Committee, the Revolutionary Committee of the Chinese Kuomintang Central Committee, the United Front Work Department of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee, and the Beijing municipal government, laid flowers at Sun's statue.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-11-12 16:05:58|Editor: Mengjie
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MANILA, Nov. 12 (Xinhua) -- Chinese Premier Li Keqiang arrived here Sunday for an official visit to the Philippines and a series of leaders' meetings on East Asian cooperation.
During his five-day stay, Li is scheduled to attend the 20th China-ASEAN (the Association of Southeast Asian Nations) (10+1) leaders' meeting, the 20th ASEAN-China, Japan and Republic of Korea (10+3) leaders' meeting and the 12th East Asia Summit.
This is Li's first overseas trip since the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China (CPC), and is expected to deepen friendly cooperation with the Philippines, promote China-ASEAN ties and enhance regional cooperation in East Asia, Chinese authorities said ahead of the visit.
In Manila, Li will brief the leaders on the spirits of the 19th CPC National Congress as well as China's stance and policy on cooperation in East Asia, said Chinese Assistant Foreign Minister Chen Xiaodong in a press briefing earlier this week.
The Chinese premier will propose nearly 30 new initiatives under various mechanisms to deepen practical cooperation on interconnectivity, food security, poverty reduction, tourism and anti-corruption, Chen added.
In addition, Li will attend the leaders' meeting on Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), a free trade pact involving the 10 ASEAN members and six other countries -- China, India, Japan, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand.
During the visit, the Chinese premier will also hold talks with Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte on bilateral ties and issues of common concern.
In a signed article published by major Philippine newspapers prior to his trip, Li said he hoped the visit would help enhance the friendship between the two peoples, deepen bilateral cooperation and open new prospects for China-Philippines relations.
It is the first visit to the Philippines made by a Chinese premier in 10 years.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-11-12 16:16:01|Editor: Lifang
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ISTANBUL, Nov. 12 (Xinhua) -- Agatha Christie's spirit is alive and well in Turkey. Aficionados and movie buffs had the chance to see the latest adaption of the late author's classic thriller "Murder on the Orient Express" at a premiere at Istanbul's historic Sirkeci railway station where the famous train started its journey in the film.
A special screening was organized for a selected group of invitees Tuesday in the premises of the terminal located in the Asian side of Turkey's most populated city, connecting east and west, before the movie hit screens across the country on Friday.
The best-selling British author Agatha Christie's classic murder-mystery tale was adapted several times on the big and little screen since its first publication in 1934, the latest one being in 1974.
It tells the suspenseful and thrilling tale of thirteen strangers stranded on a lavish train, the Venice Simplon -Orient express connecting Gare de l'Est in Paris to Constantinople, Istanbul's former name, 3,000 km east.
In the latest remake, Belgian mustachioed detective Hercule Poirot solves yet another mystery crime committed in the luxury train. The film is directed by Kenneth Branagh who plays Poirot and stars Johnny Depp, Michelle Pfeiffer, Judi Dench, Penelope Cruz and Willem Dafoe.
"It was something enchanting, like watching Verdi's Aida (opera) in the midst of the pyramids. It was like we were going to say farewell to legendary investigator Hercule Poirot from the waiting lounge of the terminal" where the screening was held, wrote journalist Sirzat Bilallar in her column in Gunaydin daily, one of the few dozens of lucky cinema enthusiasts present at the event.
An avid traveler, Christie was a regular on the Orient Express, which she called "the train of her dreams." And no wonder it was the perfect setting for her most famous tale of murder. During her lifetime Christie wrote no less than 66 novels, more than 150 short stories and some 20 plays.
Kerem Ayan, director of the International Istanbul Film Festival, said to journalists that "fans of Agatha Christie know very well that the Sirkeci terminus is the spot where the murder story takes off and it's also an iconic place. That's why we wanted to do the first screening here."
The famous train ran from Paris to exotic Istanbul between 1883 and 1977. It was launched by the hotel group Compagnie Internationale des Wagons-lits, and at its height, offered travelers the chance to journey across Europe and into Turkey's most famous city in style and comfort.
However, later on with the introduction of other fast passenger trains, the luxury service became a thing of the past until shorter trips but still high-end private trips were launched at the turn of the 21th century.
Istanbul has a special meaning and importance for the "Murder in the Orient Express." Christie wrote the first part of the novel in Aleppo, a Syrian town near the Turkish border and reputedly finished it at Istanbul's Pera Palace Hotel, built in 1892 for Orient Express travelers in the last years of the Ottoman Empire and which still majestically exists today, entirely renovated in 2010 to the 19th-century grandeur.
The crime novelist always stayed in Room 411 of the city's then first luxury hotel. Nowadays this room is known as The Agatha Christie Room and still has its original antique furniture.
The room is very popular with today's guests because of the mystery surrounding the novelist disappearance for 11 days in 1926 after an emotional crisis. Her car was found next to a lake, crashing into a tree with all of her belongings. It was believed that she had fallen into the nearby lake and died.
After fruitless research by the police, she was spotted in a hotel in Harrogate, England and claimed of having no memory of what had happened to her.
Pera Palace hotel today offers thriller lovers special packages including accommodations in The Agatha Christie Room, if you can afford it of course. Christie fans also can take the opportunity to dine next door to the hotel at the Orient Express Restaurant where photographs and other memorabilia can be viewed at different stages of her life.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-11-12 16:31:05|Editor: Mengjie
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SHANGHAI, Nov. 12 (Xinhua) -- Shanghai-based Juneyao Airlines has reached agreement with General Electric (GE) to supply GEnx engines for its Boeing 787-9 aircraft.
Juneyao ordered engines for its 10 Boeing 787-9 aircraft, purchased in 2016 for delivery from 2018.
The order is valued at 1.4 billion U.S. dollars and includes a 15-year agreement with GE Aviation for maintenance and repair of the engines.
The deal is one of many contracts and two-way investment agreements signed by China and the U.S. during President Donald Trump's visit, worth more than 250 billion U.S. dollars.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-11-12 16:41:08|Editor: Liangyu
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HANOI, Nov. 12 (Xinhua) -- U.S. President Donald Trump tried to clarify his stand here on Sunday on whether he believed Russia meddled in the U.S. presidential election last year.
At a joint press conference with Vietnamese President Tran Dai Quang here on Sunday, Trump tried to distance himself from his previous remarks by saying that he believed his intelligence agencies.
On Saturday in Vietnam's Da Nang city, Russian President Vladimir Putin told Trump that he did not meddle with the election, and then Trump told reporters he believed Putin.
Trump's remarks drew criticism back home for choosing Putin's side over the U.S. intelligence agencies, as they have long claimed Russia meddled in U.S. presidential election in 2016.
"I believe that he (Putin) feels that he and Russia did not meddle in the election. As to whether I believe it or not, I am with our agencies," Trump said, adding that he believed in U.S. intelligence agencies.
However, Trump also said stronger U.S. ties with Russia would benefit the world because many matters need resolving with the participation of such countries as Russia and China, including those on the Korean Peninsula, Syria, Ukraine and terrorism.
The U.S. president said he believed "having Russia in a friendly posture as opposed to always fighting them is an asset."
"People don't realize that Russia has been very, very heavily sanctioned," Trump said.
"It's now time to get back to healing a world that is shattered and broken," the U.S. president said.
After wrapping up his first state visit to Vietnam, Trump left Hanoi for Manila to attend the 31st ASEAN summit.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-11-12 17:16:14|Editor: Lifang
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MANILA, Nov. 12 (Xinhua) -- The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and China's Hong Kong strengthened their trade and economic relations on Sunday with the signing of a free trade agreement and a related document to help facilitate trade and investment.
The agreements aim to provide ASEAN and Hong Kong with better access to each other's markets, create new business opportunities, and further enhance trade and investment flows between the two sides.
"They will also help reduce the restrictions in doing business and expand business opportunities for Hong Kong enterprises," Edward Yau, secretary for commerce and economic development of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region government, said.
ASEAN is Hong Kong's second largest trading partner in merchandise trade and the fourth largest in services trade.
Yau pointed out that all ASEAN member states are also economies along the Belt and Road and the agreements will extend Hong Kong's trade and investment network to cover all major economies in Southeast Asia.
"The closer ties forged will enhance Hong Kong's role as a trading and investment hub and cater for our strategy to tap the business opportunities offered by the Belt and Road Initiative," Yau said.
Ramon Lopez, secretary of trade and industry of the Philippines, said the signing of the agreements will expand external economic relations to foster greater trade opportunities for the ASEAN Economic Community.
Lopez also said that the agreements would provide job opportunities for people and enhance collaboration among businesses, particularly micro-, small-, and medium-sized enterprises.
Hong Kong and ASEAN commenced the negotiations on the free trade and investment agreements in July 2014. Both sides announced the conclusion of the negotiations in September 2017.
The agreements are expected to come into force on Jan. 1, 2019 at the earliest, subject to completion of necessary procedures by Hong Kong and ASEAN members.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-11-12 17:21:16|Editor: Lifang
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ISTANBUL, Nov. 12 (Xinhua) -- Istanbul police on Sunday detained at least 34 foreign nationals linked with the Islamic State (IS) in counterterrorism operations in six districts of the city.
The suspects were reportedly planning to carry out attacks and had previously fought for the militant group, the Daily Sabah said, noting digital material and documents linked to the group were also seized in the operations.
The detainees are expected to be deported following due procedures, the daily said.
A total of 82 foreigners were captured in Istanbul as IS suspects on Friday, as Turkey's continuing crackdown on the group, which is being routed in neighboring Syria and Iraq, has many other suspects netted in other parts of the country.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-11-12 17:46:21|Editor: Lifang
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KABUL, Nov. 12 (Xinhua) -- Five militants were arrested following a joint operation in Parwan, eastern Afghanistan on Sunday, authorities said.
"Personnel of fourth Battalion of Afghan National Army Corps 201 Selab, together with Afghan National Police, launched a joint operation Sunday morning in Baba Khel, an area in outskirts of Charikar city, capital of eastern Parwan province. As a result five militants were arrested," the army corps said in a statement.
Two automatic guns, three hand guns, along with ammunition and four motorcycles, were seized following the raid in the province.
The Bagram Airfield, the main U.S. and NATO airbase, is located in Parwan, 55 km north of Afghanistan's capital of Kabul.
The Afghan security forces have beefed up military operations against militants as the Taliban militants and Islamic State (IS) fighters are attempting to take territory and consolidate their positions ahead of winter in the mountainous country.
The Taliban has yet to make comments.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-11-12 18:11:26|Editor: Mengjie
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DUBAI, Nov. 12 (Xinhua) -- The 15th edition of the biennial Dubai Airshow kicked off here on Sunday, as China's Aviation Industry Corporation (AVIC) and air force acrobatic team are ramping up appearance in this third-largest such gatherings.
The airshow, which features an international turnouts of 160 commercial and military aircraft, invited for the first time the Chinese Air Force's August 1st Air Demonstration Team, which will demonstrate with seven J-10 aerobatic fighter jets its acrobatic skills.
Moreover, AVIC is also bringing aircraft including unmanned aerial vehicles to the airshow, Executive Vice President Zhang Xinguo introduced, adding that with an integral solution to the UAV system, AVIC is providing a more consumer-friendly service to its users.
Hosting around 1,200 exhibitors, 100 of them for the first time, the airshow includes a space forum, produced in partnership with the United Arab Emirates Space Agency, and a summit for drones, a cargo zone and a conference "Airport Solutions Dubai."
Organizers behind the event said last month the show will highlight the future of travel, including space travel and new technology.
"We are looking forward to an exciting and successful Dubai Airshow 2017," said Michele van Akelijen, Managing Director of show organizers Tarsus F&E LLC Middle East. "The Dubai Airshow truly represents the centre of the aerospace industry and we are pleased to welcome the industry's key players from around the globe."
The airshow is scheduled on Nov. 12-16, and is expecting over 70,000 visitors.
Burundian soliders parade during the celebration to mark 55th anniversary of independence in Bujumbura, capital city of Burundi, on July 1, 2017. (Xinhua/Evrard Ngendakumana)
DAR ES SALAAM, Nov. 12 (Xinhua) -- Tanzanian President John Magufuli and his Ugandan counterpart Yoweri Museveni on Saturday criticized a decision made by the International Criminal Court (ICC) to conduct a full-scale investigation into alleged crimes against humanity committed by state actors in Burundi.
Speaking at the Ugandan town of Masaka shortly before he left for Tanzania at the end of his three-day official visit, Magufuli said: "The move by the ICC is derailing efforts by the East African Community (EAC) aimed at finding a lasting solution to conflicts in Burundi."
He said the EAC and peace-loving people across the world were pinning their hopes on the ongoing peace talks facilitated by President Museveni, the current chairman of the EAC, and former Tanzanian President Benjamin Mkapa.
Magufuli said the two leaders have agreed to meet again on November 23 to continue with the peace talks, said a statement by the Directorate of presidential Communication at state House in Dar es Salaam.
Magufuli said the situation in Burundi was not as worrying as it was been trumpeted by various quarters, said the statement.
"The situation in Burundi is calm and that's why refugees who fled to Tanzania are now returning to their country," said Magufuli.
President Museveni asked the ICC to stop conducting the investigations, saying the EAC was capable of resolving the conflict.
Early this week, the ICC authorized its judges a full-scale investigation into alleged crimes against humanity committed by state actors in Burundi.
On October 27, Burundi became the first party to withdraw from the Rome Statue, the ICC's legal foundation.
In response, Burundian government's ambassador to the UN, Albert Shingiro, tweeted that the judges' ruling was a "non-event" and described it as "another attempt to destabilize Burundi that will fail as its previous (attempts did)."
Anicet Niyonkuru, executive secretary of CNARED, the main opposition alliance of Burundi, said he was now confident that Burundi's worst perpetrators would finally be brought to justice.
Violence first flared in Burundi in 2014 when President Pierre Nkurunziza announced to run for a controversial third term.
A cargo train packed with 41 containers left Kouvola, south eastern Finland, for Xi'an, an inland city in northwestern China, on Nov. 10, 2017. The first Finland-China cargo train was a landmark signaling the Nordic country became part of the "silk road". The train would cross the Eurasia continent and reach the final destination via Russia and Kazakhstan. It would take about 17 days, 30 days less than the normal sea freight, to cover some 9,000-kilometer distance. (Xinhua/Li Jizhi)
KOUVOLA, Finland, Nov. 10 (Xinhua) -- With more than 40 containers on it, the cargo train bound for Chinese inland city of Xi'an departed Kouvola, southeastern Finland, on Friday.
It will take 17 days to run 9,000 km to cross the Eurasia continent, passing through countries including Russia and Kazakhstan, before reaching its final destination of the northwest China's Xi'an, one of the oldest cities in China.
Compared with the normal sea freight, the cargo rail line can shorten the travel time by 30 days.
NEW TRADE CHANNEL
Goods packed in the containers are all made in Finland, ranging from machinery, timber, workwear to ship components, according to Jari Gronlund, chief operation officer of Unytrade company.
Founded just in this summer, Unytrade especially serves the newly opened route, said Gronlund, who believes the only railway route linking Scandinavia and China will open a new channel to bring more Nordic products to the nations along the route.
Olli-Pekka Hilmola, logistics professor at Lappeenranta University of Technology, told Finnish national broadcaster Yle that a regular train connection from Kouvola to China would be important to the Finnish economy.
According to Li Zhao, Assistant of General Manager of Xi'an International Inland Port Investment & Development Group, the goods will be further transported to various markets in China after arriving in Xi'an.
Being the main operator of the multinational project, the Group has outsourced the transportation in Finland to VR, the country's state-owned railway monopoly, and the other sections to the railway companies of Russia and Kazakhstan accordingly.
As planned, a total of five trains would run between Kouvola and Xi'an by the end of this year. At the same time, a train would depart Xi'an towards Kouvola every week.
Li said the running may start to pace up if the trade goes smoothly and hopefully a train of goods would be sent every day in the near future.
A cargo train packed with 41 containers left Kouvola, south eastern Finland, for Xi'an, an inland port city in northwestern China, on Nov. 10, 2017. The first Finland-China cargo train was a landmark signaling the Nordic country became part of the "silk road". The train would cross the Eurasia continent and reach the final destination via Russia and Kazakhstan. It would take about 17 days, 30 days less than the normal sea freight, to cover some 9,000-kilometer distance. (Xinhua/Li Jizhi)
ENHANCED INTEGRATION
So far, hundreds of China-EU cargo trains have been running through the central Asia each year, but the new line diverted to Kouvola would serve as a new chapter for economic ties and cultural communication, said Murat Nurtleuov, Ambassador of Kazakhstan to Finland.
He reminded the Belt and Road Initiative proposed by China, which was later supported by dozens of countries especially in Asia and eastern Europe, saying now that Finland has been part of it, a new direction is found.
By launching the railway route, said Chinese ambassador to Finland Chen Li "we have achieved the communication among the four countries, which are China, Finland, Kazakhstan and Russia, the connectivity in facilities, the smooth flow of trade activities, the financial integration as well as the commonality among the people."
Source: Xinhua| 2017-11-12 18:56:34|Editor: Lifang
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TRIPOLI, Nov. 12 (Xinhua) -- Libya's National Human Rights Commission on Sunday said that 28 bodies, including army soldiers killed by the UN-backed government's forces, were found in the western area of Warshaffana.
"The National Human Rights Commission followed with great concern the finding of 28 bodies of people in Wadi Al-Hira west of Warshaffana, scattered since Wednesday," the commission said in a statement.
"Initial information indicates that a number of military personnel from Warshaffana have been killed and their bodies have been abused after being captured by the Joint Operations Chamber forces of the Government of National Accord," the statement added.
The commission pointed out that 14 bodies were brought to the hospital of Esbe'a, and several others were transferred to the hospital of Tarhuna. The families of the victims were not allowed to receive the bodies of their relatives, without knowing the reasons so far.
The commission called on the Military Prosecutor, the Human Rights Section of the United Nations Support Mission in Libya, and the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, for an "immediate investigation into the circumstances of the crime."
The committee also called upon the concerned authorities to hand over the bodies to their families for burial.
Forces allied with the Government of National Accord in Tripoli recently launched a military operation in the western area of Warshaffana to "eliminate crime in the area." The forces took over the area on Wednesday.
The fighting killed 70 people, including members of the Justice and Equality Movement of Sudan, according to a local official.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-11-12 19:01:35|Editor: Lifang
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TRIPOLI, Nov. 12 (Xinhua) -- The Libyan Misurata International Airport was closed on Sunday until further notice by protesting workers.
"As of today, all flights of Libyan and African airlines have been suspended until further notice and transferred to Tripoli International Airport," Sulaiman Al-Jahimi, media official of Misurata International Airport, told Xinhua.
"Workers of the ground handing company protested because they have not been paid their salaries for more than a year and half," Al-Jahimi added, stressing that officials did not commit to paying their salaries, despite promises over the past few months.
The workers of the ground handing company carried out sit-ins in November 2016 and last September. They were promised to pay their salaries in return for the end of the sit-in, but no payment was made so far.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-11-12 19:01:36|Editor: Lifang
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GAZA, Nov. 12 (Xinhua) -- Palestinian Islamic Jihad movement said Sunday that the Israeli threats to target its party leaders is "a declaration of war that we will confront."
The movement said in an emailed press statement that it "will not ease its protection of the Palestinian people and land, and tomorrow isn't too long to wait."
It added that those Israeli threats "unravel the real Israeli offensive intentions that its forces started by violating the cease-fire brokered by Egypt in 2014."
Chief of Coordination of (Israeli) Government Activities in the Territories Office (COGAT) Yoav Mordechai posted on his Facebook page a video warning Islamic Jihad from carrying out any offensive against Israel.
"We are aware of the conspiracy that Islamic Jihad is planning against Israel and we consider that the movement is playing with fire on the expense of all of Gaza's residents and the expense of the Palestinian reconciliation and the entire region," said Mordecai in the video.
He also added "it better be clear that Israel will respond to any reaction by Islamic Jihad against Israel strongly and firmly, not only against Islamic Jihad, but also against Hamas," urging the leadership of the movement in Damascus to be careful and take things into control because the leadership itself will bear the responsibility.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-11-12 19:11:38|Editor: Lifang
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MOGADISHU, Nov. 12 (Xinhua) -- The United Nations and African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM) held a joint meeting here on Saturday to discuss a comprehensive approach to improving security in Somalia.
The meeting drew participants from key federal ministries, member states and international partners, as the government has launched a major offensive against Al-Shabaab militants in southern region.
Special Representative of the U.N. Secretary-General for Somalia, Michael Keating, said terrorist groups remained the main threat to peace and stability in Somalia.
"The core issue before us is how we can continue to stabilize Somalia and preserve the many gains that have been made," Keating was quoted as saying in a statement issued by the U.N. Assistance Mission in Somalia (UNSOM).
He stressed the need to protect the political space so that the Somalis can continue constructing the state, building peace and resolving various challenges on social economy, politics, constitutional review, job creation and service delivery.
"There is a need to develop a strategy led by the government in conjunction with the AU, securing populations' centers, main supply routes, joint operations and a plan for strengthening Somali security forces' capability," he added.
Francisco Madeira, special representative of the African Union Chairperson for Somalia, emphasized concerted efforts to address the security challenges, appealing for enhanced information sharing and intelligence capabilities on the terrorists.
"Once we know the enemy, once we know our capabilities, we know what needs to be done. And once we know what needs to be done, we need resources. We need to sit down together and see how we mobilize these resources," Madeira said.
Somali Prime Minister Hassan Ali Khaire noted that a comprehensive approach in dealing with Somalia's security situation is critical, as the government readies itself to completely neutralize the militants in order to restore peace and order in the country.
"Maintaining security is not just about offensive action. We remain cognizant that we require a comprehensive approach that has been well articulated by our president, who is keen on engaging our population in good governance, fighting corruption, reconciliation and healing the wounds of the past," Khaire said.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-11-12 19:16:39|Editor: Lifang
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TRIPOLI, Nov. 12 (Xinhua) -- UN Support Mission in Libya on Sunday said that 25 migrants from Niger, including women and children, have been repatriated from the Libyan capital Tripoli on Saturday to Niger.
"The group is heading to Niger as part of a humanitarian evacuation initiative between UNHCR, the Libyan government and the government of Niger. Among these 25 refugees, there were 15 women, six men and four children," the mission said in a statement on Sunday.
The mission stressed the importance of such humanitarian evacuation "in addressing the need for safe solutions and alternative pathways for the most vulnerable refugees in Libya who are often forced to embark on deadly sea journeys in search of international protection."
Due to the insecurity and chaos that followed the 2011 uprising, Libya is a major point of departure for illegal immigrants wanting to cross the Mediterranean towards European shores.
Migrants who are rescued by the Libyan navy at sea are detained in reception centers with poor living conditions.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-11-12 19:21:42|Editor: Lifang
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HERAT, Afghanistan, Nov. 12 (Xinhua) -- The NATO-led Resolute Support (RS) mission began providing training to units of the Afghan National Army in the western Herat province on Sunday, said an army commander in the western region, Gen. Mohammad Nasir Hedayat.
"In the training which began today, hundreds of the personnel of the national army would learn the ways and means on how to fight terrorists on the mountains, streets and in residential areas," Hedayat told Xinhua.
The course, he said, would continue for four weeks.
More than 14,000 NATO-led RS forces are presently serving in Afghanistan to provide training and advising to the Afghan security forces.
The number of NATO-led RS forces is expected to go up as U.S. and NATO member states are expected to send a few thousand more troops to insurgency-hit Afghanistan.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-11-12 19:31:44|Editor: Lifang
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DHAKA, Nov. 12 (Xinhua) -- Speakers at a session in Bangladesh capital Dhaka have stressed the need of cyber safety for children to reap the benefits of the Internet.
The session, held at a leading English press medium here on Sunday, is part of an initiative which Bangladesh's largest cell phone operator, in partnership with BRAC, the largest global NGO, launched to make the Internet safer and more secure for everyone, specially for children.
Beginning in September 2017 till now, the program engaged over 50,000 students in more than 240 schools across the country, said a Grameenphone press release.
Grameenphone Chief Executive Officer Michael Patrick Foley said: "Access to Internet and youngster's ability to use it confidently is very important as the world is in the midst of a digital revolution. Therefore we are trying to aware school children around the country to learn the skills to be safe on the Internet and use it responsibly."
"As a school, it is our responsibility to protect and guide our students which only can happen through dialogues. We have been talking about Internet safety for some time now with parents," said Sabrina Shahed, principal of Sir John Wilson School.
"Today's initiative is a first of its kind and we are thankful to Grameenphone for taking the lead which will make our students more conscious of the dangers and smarter in using gazettes and technology."
In Bangladesh, a survey conducted by Grameenphone's parent company Telenor of students who have Internet connections have found that half are likely to encounter cyber bullying or unsafe online situations.
Before this year's program, Grameenphone said it reached 80,000 children in 500 schools across Bangladesh with BRAC through activations in schools and distribution of guidebooks on the safe and responsible use of the Internet.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-11-12 19:36:47|Editor: Lifang
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CANBERRA, Nov. 12 (Xinhua) -- John Alexander has become the seventh Australian politician to leave the nation's parliament on the grounds of being a dual citizen.
Alexander, a Member of Parliament (MP) representing Bennelong in Sydney for the governing Liberal National Party (LNP), on Saturday announced his resignation from parliament.
In another blow to the government of Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, Alexander conceded he is "most likely" dual-British citizen on account of his father being born in the United Kingdom.
Under Section 44 of the Australian Constitution, anyone who is a citizen of a country other than Australia is ineligible to serve in parliament.
The High Court in October disqualified five parliamentarians, including Deputy PM Barnaby Joyce, after it found they were in breach of Section 44.
A sixth, Senate President Stephen Parry, resigned after the High Court ruling after discovering he too is a British citizen.
Alexander said he would renounce his British citizenship immediately and contest the Bennelong by-election.
"I have always believed that I am Australian and solely Australian," Alexander told reporters on Saturday.
"In view of recent events and the High Court decision, in my position, I have had to thoroughly examine my situation.
"Given what I have learned about the Constitution and understanding now of the High Court decision just a couple of weeks ago, I can no longer, with sufficient certainty, maintain the belief that I have held through my 66 years.
"Australia is tired of this absurd situation."
Addressing the situation while at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) conference in Vietnam, Turnbull said Alexander had "done the right and honorable thing."
Turnbull plans to introduce laws that would force all 220 remaining parliamentarians to declare their citizenship status before the end of 2017.
Alexander's resignation has left the LNP with 74 seats in the lower house of Australian parliament, short of the 76 required to pass any bill through the house.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-11-12 19:51:49|Editor: Lu Hui
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Chinese Premier Li Keqiang (R, front) arrives in Manila, the Philippines, Nov. 12, 2017, for an official visit to the Philippines and a series of leaders' meetings on East Asian cooperation. During his five-day stay, Li is scheduled to attend the 20th China-ASEAN (the Association of Southeast Asian Nations) (10+1) leaders' meeting, the 20th ASEAN-China, Japan and Republic of Korea (10+3) leaders' meeting and the 12th East Asia Summit. (Xinhua/Pang Xinglei)
MANILA, Nov. 12 (Xinhua) -- Chinese Premier Li Keqiang arrived here Sunday for an official visit to the Philippines and a series of leaders' meetings on East Asian cooperation.
During his five-day stay, Li is scheduled to attend the 20th China-ASEAN (the Association of Southeast Asian Nations) (10+1) leaders' meeting, the 20th ASEAN-China, Japan and Republic of Korea (10+3) leaders' meeting and the 12th East Asia Summit.
This year marks the 50th anniversary of the establishment of ASEAN and the 20th anniversary of 10+3 cooperation.
As the world economy is going through weak recovery, East Asia has maintained the momentum of regional cooperation and development, and has become a stabilizing force in the complex and ever-changing global landscape, Li said upon his arrival.
Noting that ASEAN stands at a new starting point of development, the premier said China would work with all parties to plan for the future and build a closer community of a shared future.
China and ASEAN will mark the 15th anniversary of their strategic partnership in 2018.
This is Li's first overseas trip since the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China (CPC) in October. The visit is expected to deepen China's friendly cooperation with the Philippines, promote China-ASEAN ties and enhance regional cooperation in East Asia, Chinese authorities said ahead of the visit.
In Manila, Li will brief the other leaders on the spirit of the 19th CPC National Congress as well as China's stance and policy on cooperation in East Asia, said Chinese Assistant Foreign Minister Chen Xiaodong in a press briefing earlier this week.
The Chinese premier will propose nearly 30 new initiatives under various mechanisms to deepen practical cooperation on interconnectivity, food security, poverty reduction, tourism and anti-corruption, Chen added.
In addition, Li will attend the leaders' meeting on Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership, a free trade pact involving the 10 ASEAN members and six other countries -- China, India, Japan, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand.
During the visit, the Chinese premier will also hold talks with Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte on bilateral ties and issues of common concern.
It is the first visit to the Philippines made by a Chinese premier in 10 years.
Currently, the China-Philippines relations are making steady and healthy progress, which accords with the common interests and aspiration of the peoples of the two countries and of the region as a whole, Li noted.
The premier said he would like to exchange views with the Philippine leaders on further strengthening friendship between the two nations and deepening cooperation in areas that suit the development needs of both sides.
In a signed article published by major Philippine newspapers prior to his trip, Li said he hoped the visit would help enhance friendship between the two peoples, deepen bilateral cooperation and open new prospects for China-Philippines relations.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-11-12 20:06:53|Editor: Lifang
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DUBAI, Nov. 12 (Xinhua) -- Emirates Airline, the international carrier of the United Arab Emirates (UAE), ordered here on Sunday 40 aircraft of Boeing's 787-10 Dreamliner worth 15.1 billion U.S. dollars, marking the first major order at the Dubai Airshow 2017.
The deal was signed by Sheikh Ahmed Bin Saeed Al-Maktoum, chairman and CEO of the Dubai government-controlled carrier Emirates, and Kevin McAllister, CEO of Boeing Commercial Airplanes, in the presence of UAE Vice President, Prime Minister and Ruler of Dubai Sheikh Mohamed Bin Rashid Al-Maktoum on day one of the 15th edition of the biennial airshow.
Sheikh Ahmed said the order marks the carrier's fleet up to the highest standard and comfort for the passengers, as the 787-10 Dreamliner is Boeing's latest version of the wide-body aircraft. Delivery will start from 2022 onward, he added.
"We see the 787-10 mid-size, wide-body aircraft as a great complement to our Boeing 777 fleet," said Sheihk Ahmed. Boeing's McAllister congratulated and thanked Sheikh Ahmed for the ongoing partnership.
The deal takes place at a time when Middle East carriers face major headwinds.
Earlier in the month, the International Air Transport Association (IATA) said Middle East carriers witnessed a 3.7 percent year-on-year rise in passenger demand in September, marking the slowest rate of increase since February 2009 as the Middle East-U.S. market had been hit hard by the now lifted cabin ban on large portable electronic devices. Globally, passenger demand rose 5.7 percent in September, said IATA.
However, Emirates said earlier last week it posted in the first six months of its fiscal year 2017/18 a profit of 452 million dollars, up 111 percent year on year. The Dubai government-controlled airline attributed the increase to the easing of the strong dollar and enhancement of efficiency.
The five-day Dubai Airshow runs through Thursday, Nov. 16.
File photo shows registration of residents' national identity cards in Msambweni Kwale county, Mombasa, Kenya, Oct. 25, 2016. (Xinhua/Mbuyu Cazeiya)
by Christine Lagat
KWALE, Kenya, Nov. 12 (Xinhua) -- Jaffari Kombo has an emotional attachment to the serene and idyllic Kickakamkwanju village in Kenya's south coast where his ancestors settled in the first quarter of the 20th century after relocating from the Indian Ocean islands of Zanzibar and Pemba.
The 50-year-old village elder is a descendant of Pemba fishermen who defied geographical barriers and hostile tribes as they sailed north of the Indian Ocean in search of freedom and economic opportunities.
Kombo's Pemba tribesmen, whose total population in Kenya is estimated to be around 4,000, have lived in their adopted home for close to a century but are yet to be granted citizenship.
During a recent interview with Xinhua, the sharp-witted village elder decried the lack of official recognition of the Pemba people as Kenyan citizens, hence their growing feeling of exclusion.
"The last batch of elders from the Pemba community settled here in the south coast 70 years ago, but we have always been considered aliens with no proper identification documents," said Kombo during an open air forum at Kichakamkwanju village located in Kenya's south coastal county of Kwale.
He is among dozens of grassroots leaders who have joined a campaign to push for the recognition of the Pemba as Kenyan citizens.
The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) Kenyan office and its local partners have lobbied authorities to grant the Pemba citizenship after decades of statelessness.
Wanja Munaita, the Assistant Protection Officer in charge of Statelessness at UNHCR Kenyan Office, said recognizing the Pemba as citizens of their adopted country is both a moral and legal imperative.
"The people of Pemba descent should be granted citizenship status as a matter of urgency. They have been part and parcel of this nation's fabric since pre-colonial days," Munaita said.
According to the UNHCR, the Pemba comprises the largest group of stateless people in Kenya followed by Shona who trace their ancestry to Zimbabwe.
There are also pockets of Burundians and Rwandese who settled in Kenya during colonial days but are yet to be recognized as citizens of their adopted country.
Munaita said his push to grant citizenship to the Pemba is in line with UNHCR ten-year global plan to end statelessness that is considered a human rights violation.
"We need to step up pressure on the government to recognize and register stateless people," Munaita remarked, adding the recognition of the Makonde who trace their ancestry to Mozambique as Kenyan citizens was a milestone in ending statelessness.
The quest for the Pemba community to be granted Kenyan citizenship has gathered steam thanks to grassroots advocacy and fervent appeals from the international community.
Shaame Hamisi Makame, the Chairman of Pemba community in Kenya, said his kinsmen desire to be recognized as citizens of their adopted nation in order to contribute fully to its socio-economic progress.
"Our ancestors came here to conduct fishing and trade but successive generations have been denied education, jobs and voting rights due to lack of citizenship," said Makame.
He noted that the Pemba have made an immense contribution to the development of post-independent Kenya through their renowned entrepreneurial spirit and rich culture.
"The Pemba living along the vast Kenyan coastline are a valuable resource that should be tapped to develop this country. We pay taxes, have built schools and our cultural heritage can be showcased to attract tourists," Makame remarked.
Lack of citizenship has also taken a toll on the youth from the Pemba community who worried about an uncertain future unless their plight was addressed.
Hamisi Hassan, a 22-year-old high school graduate, said lack of a birth certificate almost denied him a chance to sit for his final exams in both primary and secondary schools.
The affable community organizer said that his quest for college education was almost cut off prematurely because of lack of a national identification card.
"Obtaining formal education has been a herculean task and were it not for the intervention from local administrators, I was almost giving up on primary and high school education," Hassan said.
He revealed that statelessness has denied the Pemba youth a chance to pursue white collar jobs and start families.
The elders from Pemba community have emboldened its quest to be granted Kenyan citizenship through quiet diplomacy.
Mohamed Ahmed Mohamed, a Pemba elder from Takaungu village in Kenyan northern coastal county of Kilifi, said his community will employ peaceful means in its quest for recognition as citizens of the East African nation.
"The journey in our quest for citizenship in this country has been laborious but dialogue with authorities is key to gaining victory," said Mohamed.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-11-12 20:57:02|Editor: Mengjie
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HANOI, Nov. 12 (Xinhua) -- Visiting Chinese President Xi Jinping, also general secretary of the Communist Party of China Central Committee, met here Sunday with Nguyen Phu Trong, general secretary of the Communist Party of Vietnam Central Committee.
In their meeting, they agreed to deepen the comprehensive strategic partnership of cooperation between the two countries under new circumstances.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-11-12 21:07:05|Editor: Lifang
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CAPE TOWN, Nov. 12 (Xinhua) -- The South African Presidency on Sunday denied press reports that the National Treasury had stopped President Jacob Zuma from announcing free education.
The Sunday Times newspaper said Zuma was planning to announce free education in his State of the Nation Address in February but was stopped by the National Treasury.
This report "is a fabrication" and the president never planned to make such an announcement, presidential spokesperson Bongani Ngqulunga said.
This came as a new spate of student protests over tuition fee is looming following remarks by representative body Universities South Africa that students in the country should expect a fee increase of 8 percent.
Zuma had appointed a commission of inquiry into higher education funding, Ngqulunga said, adding that at no stage did Zuma plan to make any announcements that would undermine the work of the commission.
According to the spokesperson, the president has tasked the Inter-Ministerial Committee on Higher Education Funding to process the commission's report and advise him on how to respond to the content thereof.
South African students are planning a national day of action as their demands for Zuma to release the much-awaited Fees Commission Report intensify.
Following widespread student protests over tuition fee increases in 2015, Zuma established a Commission of Inquiry in January 2016 to investigate the feasibility of making higher education and training fee-free in the country.
After failing to present the report within the 18-month deadline, the commission had its term extended until June 30, 2017.
Zuma received the final report from the commission on August 30, 2017.
"The Presidency is now finalizing the processing of the report which requires, among other things, that the Presidency consult with the relevant ministers to ensure that government is ready to implement the president's decision as as soon he releases the report," Ngqulunga said in October.
In 2015, widespread student protests erupted in all major universities across the country, triggered by tuition fee hikes from 10 to 50 percent for the 2016 school year.
The protests continued for weeks until Zuma succumbed to students' demand for zero-percent increase in tuition fee.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-11-12 21:27:10|Editor: Mengjie
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MANILA, Nov. 12 (Xinhua) -- Chinese Premier Li Keqiang, in a signed article published here on Sunday, lauded the China-Philippines relationship as "seeing a rainbow after the storm and showing a good momentum across the board".
In the article titled "Opening a new chapter of China-Philippines relations," Li said that since the complete turnaround in bilateral ties during Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte's successful visit to China in October 2016, the two sides have developed closer high-level exchanges and have advanced practical cooperation on all fronts with fruitful results.
The article could be seen on major Philippine newspapers including the Manila Times and the Philippine Star.
The two sides have signed over 20 cooperation documents at the governmental or departmental levels and identified a number of priority infrastructure projects, which are making important progress, the article wrote.
The first 10 months of this year also saw China become the Philippines' biggest trading partner, on the back of a surge in Philippine exports to China, it added.
The article also noted that the Chinese people and the Philippine people share a close bond and a long history of friendly association, which could be traced back to the periods of China's Tang (618 A.D.-907 A.D.) and Song (960 A.D.-1279 A.D.) dynasties.
"In the context of our thousand-year friendly interactions, our differences are but brief interludes that will neither weaken our commitment to good neighborliness and friendship nor shake the solid foundation of our relations as good neighbors, good friends and good brothers," it wrote.
To take bilateral relations forward, Li stressed three aspects, namely good faith and sincerity, results-oriented cooperation, as well as affinity between the two peoples.
"China will work with the Philippines to continue to properly handle the maritime issues through friendly bilateral consultation by giving full play to such mechanisms as the Bilateral Consultation Mechanism on the South China Sea and the Joint Coast Guard Committee on Maritime Cooperation," the article wrote.
Li arrived here Sunday for an official visit to the Philippines and for a series of leaders' meetings on East Asian cooperation.
It is the first visit to the Philippines made by a Chinese premier in 10 years.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-11-12 21:34:25|Editor: Yamei
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Tourists harvest rice during a fair in Shunyi District of Beijing, capital of China, Nov. 12, 2017. Citizens here took part in a rice harvesting fair on Sunday to experience the traditional farming culture. (Xinhua/Luo Xiaoguang)
Source: Xinhua| 2017-11-12 21:37:13|Editor: Mengjie
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MANILA, Nov. 12 (Xinhua) -- When leaders of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and its dialogue partners gather here on Monday, they will once again look to the progress of cooperation between China and ASEAN which has inspired ASEAN's external relations.
This year marks the 50th Anniversary since the founding of ASEAN. In the past half a century, the ever-growing ASEAN has become a representative force to maintain regional peace and security and to push forward multi-polarization in the world.
Among ASEAN's dialogue partners, China has built an all-round and mutually beneficial partnership with the 10-nation bloc, setting an example as the most dynamic and substantial partnership.
The flourished relations between China and ASEAN started 26 years ago when then Chinese Foreign Minister Qian Qichen was invited to the opening ceremony of the 24th ASEAN Foreign Ministers' Meeting in 1991.
Since the establishment of the relations, China has persisted in supporting ASEAN's community building effort, its centrality in regional cooperation and its bigger role in regional and global affairs.
Political mutual trust between China and ASEAN has been strengthened over the decades, together with fast-paced growth in economic ties as well as closer people-to-people exchanges.
China was the first major country outside the region to endorse the Treaty of Amity and Cooperation in Southeast Asia, the first to acknowledge ASEAN's centrality in regional cooperation, and the first to build a strategic partnership with ASEAN.
Among the most fruitful cooperation stand blossoming trade and economic ties.
China and ASEAN have built the largest free trade area among developing countries. The signing and implementation of the protocol on upgrading the China-ASEAN Free Trade Area is expected to further boost trade and foster industrial transformation.
According to Xu Bu, China's ambassador to ASEAN, trade between China and ASEAN amounted to 452.2 billion U.S. dollars in 2016. China was ASEAN's largest trading partner for the eighth consecutive year and ASEAN was China's third largest trading partner for the sixth consecutive year. Accumulated two-way investment stood at 178 billion dollars.
In recent years, China and ASEAN have injected new momentum into the cooperation by actively synergizing the Belt and Road Initiative and regional development strategies, jointly pushing for the establishment of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) as well as launching the Lancang-Mekong cooperation mechanism.
The past 26 years also witnessed ever-closer people-to-people exchanges, which have become a new pillar for China-ASEAN relations. In 2016, more than 38 million trips were made between the two sides, more than 2,700 flights link China and ASEAN countries on a weekly basis.
China and ASEAN, linked by waters and mountains, are good neighbors, good friends and good partners. The China-proposed Belt and Road Initiative is well received by the ASEAN countries, while China's call for building a "community of common destiny" is also echoed in the region.
"There is no denying that China's economic growth has been instrumental toward ASEAN's development in recent decades - it has been the tide that has lifted all boats," said Shahriman Lockman, senior analyst at Malaysia's Institute of Strategic and International Studies.
"That looks set to continue as China and ASEAN collaborate on the Belt and Road Initiative, and find ways to synergize those efforts with the Master Plan on ASEAN Connectivity 2025," he added.
Proposed 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.
"As we are linked closer and closer by means of infrastructure, trade, finance and popular bonds, it is inevitable that a community of common destiny will emerge," said Oh Ei Sun, special adviser for international affairs of Malaysia's Asian Strategy and Leadership Institute.
Chinese Ambassador Xu said relations between China and ASEAN are now at a crucial point for cooperation of higher quality.
"The future China-ASEAN ties need a long-term perspective with a focus on the present. We need to broaden our consensus, deepen our cooperation for a higher-level China-ASEAN strategic partnership and a closer China-ASEAN community of common destiny," he said.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-11-12 21:47:15|Editor: Lifang
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WASHINGTON, Nov. 12 (Xinhua) -- U.S. aerospace firm Orbital ATK's unmanned cargo ship blasted off Sunday for its eighth resupply mission to the International Space Station.
The Cygnus spacecraft took off atop the company's own Antares rocket at 7:19 a.m. EST (1219 GMT) from the Wallops Flight Facility on the east coast of the eastern U.S. state of Virginia.
Under a commercial resupply services contract with the U.S. space agency NASA, Cygnus carried about 7,400 pounds (3,350 kg) of crew supplies and science experiments to the space station.
Among the cargo were several CubeSats, or small satellites, which will conduct a variety of missions, from technology demonstrations of laser communication and increased data downlink rates to an investigation to study spaceflight effects on bacterial antibiotic resistance.
Other experiments will advance biological monitoring aboard the station and look at various elements of plant growth in microgravity that may help inform plant cultivation strategies for future long-term space missions.
The spacecraft also transported a virtual reality camera to record a National Geographic educational special on Earth as a natural life-support system. ' If everything goes well, Cygnus will arrive at the station two days later, where it's expected to stay for nearly one month.
The spacecraft will depart the station in early December and deploy several CubeSats before its fiery re-entry into Earth's atmosphere as it disposes of several tons of trash.
The Virginia-based Orbital ATK is one of two U.S. companies that provide cargo delivery services to the station for NASA. The other company is SpaceX in the western U.S. state of California.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-11-12 21:52:17|Editor: Lifang
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MOGADISHU, Nov. 12 (Xinhua) -- Security forces in southern Somalia's Jubaland region on Sunday arrested two suspects with explosive devices, authorities said.
Luq district commissioner Mohamed Hussein Osman told journalists that the two were arrested following a security operation in the area.
"We have arrested two people in possession of explosive devices after a successful security sweep by our forces," said Osman. "Three others are on the run and our forces are in hot pursuit for them," he added.
Osman said the men were suspected of planning attacks on government buildings in the southern coastal city. Terror group Al-Shabaab has previously attacked government positions in Jubaland before.
Meanwhile residents in Basra location in Middle Shabelle state said Sunday several military strikes hit the town. Residents told the local media there were several aerial bombardments early Sunday.
The attack follows a clash between Somali National Army (SNA) and Al-Shabaab four days ago. SNA said it killed three Al-Shabaab fighters.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-11-12 22:02:19|Editor: Lifang
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NAIROBI, Nov. 12 (Xinhua) -- Kenyan Ministry of Health will implement a raft of strategies that include universal immunization and introduction of new drugs to contain infant deaths linked to pneumonia, officials said on Sunday during an occasion to mark World Pneumonia Day.
Cabinet Secretary of the Ministry of Health Cleopa Mailu said the government has developed a sound policy framework to guide prevention and treatment of pneumonia that kills an estimated 19,000 Kenyan children annually.
Pneumonia is ranked among leading cause of deaths among children under five in Kenya though the country has made progress in combating the disease in the last four years.
Statistics from the Ministry of Health indicate that Kenya reduced under-five mortalities linked to pneumonia from 19,000 in 2012 to 10,507 in 2016 thanks to immunization, better nutrition and early diagnoses.
Mailu said the fight against pneumonia dovetails with a national action plan to reduce infant mortality to levels recommended by the World Health Organization (WHO).
"We should safeguard milestones while scaling up efforts in the achievement of universal coverage through prevention, protection and treatment intervention," Mailu said.
Principal Secretary of the Ministry of Health Julius Korir said the launch of a pneumococcal vaccine, training of health workers and distribution of efficacious and affordable tablets has reduced pneumonia deaths among infants.
"We have achieved key milestones in the war against pneumonia due to availability of medicines and diagnostics in all public health facilities," said Korir.
He added that county governments have pledged to be on the frontline in the fight against childhood pneumonia.
DUBAI, Nov. 12 (Xinhua) -- The 15th edition of the biennial Dubai Airshow kicked off here on Sunday, as China's Aviation Industry Corporation (AVIC) and air force acrobatic team are ramping up appearance in this third-largest such gatherings.
The airshow, which features an international turnouts of 160 commercial and military aircraft, invited for the first time the Chinese Air Force's August 1st Air Demonstration Team, which will demonstrate with seven J-10 aerobatic fighter jets its acrobatic skills.
Moreover, AVIC is also bringing aircraft including unmanned aerial vehicles to the airshow, Executive Vice President Zhang Xinguo introduced, adding that with an integral solution to the UAV system, AVIC is providing a more consumer-friendly service to its users.
Hosting around 1,200 exhibitors, 100 of them for the first time, the airshow includes a space forum, produced in partnership with the United Arab Emirates Space Agency, and a summit for drones, a cargo zone and a conference "Airport Solutions Dubai."
Organizers behind the event said last month the show will highlight the future of travel, including space travel and new technology.
"We are looking forward to an exciting and successful Dubai Airshow 2017," said Michele van Akelijen, Managing Director of show organizers Tarsus F&E LLC Middle East. "The Dubai Airshow truly represents the centre of the aerospace industry and we are pleased to welcome the industry's key players from around the globe."
The airshow is scheduled on Nov. 12-16, and is expecting over 70,000 visitors.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-11-12 22:27:25|Editor: Yamei
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AMMAN, Nov. 12 (Xinhua) -- Jordan and Germany on Sunday signed an additional grant agreement worth 10 million euros to finance the School Construction Programme Phase II under the Jordan Response Plan (JRP).
The grant, which is part of 2016's commitments, aims to finance the 2nd phase of the School Construction Plan to build new public schools, and expand and provide furniture and equipment to existing ones at Syrian refugees host communities.
The 1st phase was signed on July, 31, 2017 with value of 19 million euros. The project comes as part of the commitments made during the London Conference on supporting Syria and the region held in 2016.
During the signing ceremony, Minister of Planning and International Cooperation Imad Fakhoury said that the programme is among the priorities of the Jordan Response Plan to the Syrian crisis, and will contribute to implementing the Education Ministry's plan on addressing the impacts of the Syrian crisis on education in the Kingdom and improving the quality of education provided to the Syrian and reducing overcrowding at schools.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-11-12 22:57:32|Editor: Mu Xuequan
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DUBAI, Nov. 12 (Xinhua) -- Six J-10 aerobatic fighter jets of the Chinese Air Force's August 1st Air Demonstration Team demonstrated their acrobatic skills for the first time in the history of the Dubai Airshow which started on Sunday in its 15th edition.
The six jets showed formations like barrel rolls, vertical stunts and parallel flights in the shape of triangle.
Shen Jinke, spokesman of the PLA Air Force, said earlier in the month, the air force is ready for pragmatic exchange and cooperation in more fields and many levels with air forces of other countries and to make new contributions to peace and development.
Several visitors of the airshow expressed their excitement about the Chinese aerial show.
"I think it is very good that China shows aerial stunts here at the Dubai Airshow," Mansour Janbi, COO of Arab Express Aviation said.
Florian Descargues, an IT support specialist of Airbus, was not aware that the fighter jets he filmed were Chinese, saying that it is just "extraordinary. I filmed everything with my smartphone."
Omar Alhoshan, founder of Alhoshan Aviation, a Saudi-based consulting-firm, said the display shows "a very nice formation. we saw some very good stunts," adding that "it is important that China shows up in the Gulf region. China is the biggest consumer in aviation, so they must be here at the airshow."
The five-day Dubai Airshow runs through Thursday.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-11-12 23:17:35|Editor: huaxia
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MANILA -- Chinese Premier Li Keqiang arrived here Sunday for an official visit to the Philippines and a series of leaders' meetings on East Asian cooperation.
During his five-day stay, Li is scheduled to attend the 20th China-ASEAN (the Association of Southeast Asian Nations) (10+1) leaders' meeting, the 20th ASEAN-China, Japan and Republic of Korea (10+3) leaders' meeting and the 12th East Asia Summit. (China-Li Keqiang)
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BAGHDAD -- An Iraqi helicopter crashed on Sunday in Iraq's eastern province of Wasit, killing seven crew members, the Iraqi military said.
The Russian Mi-17 helicopter was on a training mission when it crashed in Wasit province, and "all of its seven crew members were killed," the media office of the Joint Operations Command said in a brief statement. (Iraq-Helicopter Crash)
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LOS ANGELES -- At least 21 kids were injured Saturday evening after a stairwell collapsed inside a recreation facility in the southwestern U.S. city of San Diego.
The incident occurred in a large warehouse that shares space with a paintball facility and crossfit gym during an open gym night for ages 5-14, according to a local news outlet San Diego Union-Tribune. (US-Stairwell Collapse)
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TRIPOLI -- Libya's National Human Rights Commission on Sunday said that 28 bodies, including army soldiers killed by the UN-backed government's forces, were found in the western area of Warshaffana.
"The National Human Rights Commission followed with great concern the finding of 28 bodies of people in Wadi Al-Hira west of Warshaffana, scattered since Wednesday," the commission said in a statement. (Libya-Human Body) Enditem
Source: Xinhua| 2017-11-12 23:22:36|Editor: Mu Xuequan
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LONDON, Nov. 12 (Xinhua) -- A British television Channel 4 documentary that reveals the role a 140,000- strong Chinese army played in World War I will be aired Sunday night, seeking to archive their vital contribution and war mementos 100 years after their arrival in Europe to serve.
Britain's Forgotten Army, the landmark documentary which tells the story of the Chinese Labor Corps workers who came to European battlefields and risked their lives for the Allied war effort, will be broadcast at 7 p.m. on the weekend of Remembrance Day.
An official statement from Channel 4 press office said that the documentary will examine a treasure trove of recently discovered unpublished letter, diaries and documents which give light to how and why these unsung heroes were recruited by Britain and France.
The documentary is expected to correct an oversight of the credits of the Chinese workers who have been minimized in the official histories. The workers, recruited to prop up the British and French army, were dubbed as "the sinews of the war" and tasked with building vital roads and trench systems, repairing railways, maintaining tanks, dismantling un-exploded bombs as well as keeping precarious supply lines operational.
Of the Chinese army, 96,000 served the British army.
Jazz Gowans, executive producer for the documentary, said the Chinese army worked 10-18 hours a day, seven days a week with only three days holiday a year.
"Yet their contribution was repeatedly erased from history," he said. "Their story needs to be told."
The contribution of the Chinese Labor Corps continued long after the Armistice Day, but they were painted out of history because of prejudice and racism.
"There are elements of the betrayal story you heard about how China was betrayed by the allies," Simon Chu, director of the documentary told Xinhua.
Thomas Chan, Deputy Lieutenant for the London Borough of Redbridge, told Xinhua that the contribution of the Chinese has never been recognized.
"Of the 60,000 Great War memorials across Britain, including those to even animals, none commemorates the Chinese," said Chan, who has been actively working to commemorate and raise awareness of the role of the Chinese who aided Britain during the war.
"They were crucial in enabling Allied forces to keep fighting," he said.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-11-12 23:22:37|Editor: Mu Xuequan
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MANILA, Nov. 12 (Xinhua) -- Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte said here Sunday that the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) would continue to engage the world as the 10-nation bloc held a grand gala to celebrate its 50th anniversary with leaders of its dialogue partners.
The celebration was held ahead of the 31st ASEAN summit and related summits, which gathered leaders from the 10 ASEAN countries and ASEAN dialogue partners, including major countries like China and the United States.
"I am deeply honored to host this rare occasion where a number of world leaders are gathered in celebration of the 50th anniversary of ASEAN," said Duterte, whose country holds the ASEAN chairmanship this year.
ASEAN has continued community building under Philippine's chairmanship, said Duterte.
"We continue to harmonize the three pillars of the ASEAN Community by strengthening economic integration and building a common identity, while embracing our uniqueness and diversity," he said.
"ASEAN countries continue to engage the world," said the Philippine president. "From its founding, we have established meaningful and constructive engagements with external partners anchored on ASEAN centrality."
He added that he was looking forward to having constructive and substantive discussions with other leaders during the summits.
At the 31st ASEAN summit, leaders are expected to discuss the implementation of the ASEAN Community Vision 2025 and the way forward. It would be followed by summits between ASEAN and its dialogue partners including 10+1, 10+3 and the East Asia Summit.
ASEAN groups Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-11-12 23:42:41|Editor: Mu Xuequan
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SAN FRANCISCO, Nov. 12 (Xinhua) -- U.S. sailors who were killed in a savage WWII battle aboard a cruiser were honored on the national Veterans Day Saturday, local media reports said.
More than 100 U.S. servicemen, along with their families and friends, came to the cruiser's memorial site in San Francisco, in the U.S. western state of California, to commemorate the 106 sailors aboard USS Cruiser San Francisco, named after the city of San Francisco, with a bell struck in their honor.
Vice Admiral Thomas S. Rowden, commander of the U.S. Naval Surface Forces, said the soldiers "went off to fight for the cause of freedom, winning one of the most significant battles that helped turned the tide in the Pacific theater of operations."
In 1942, the cruiser USS San Francisco attacked a vastly superior Japanese force off the coast of Guadalcanal, the most brutal close-quarters naval engagement of World War II.
The San Francisco, which sustained heavy damage after sinking a Japanese ship and seriously damaging two others, managed to make it back to port, but 106 sailors including Rear Admiral Daniel Callaghan were killed and 131 more wounded.
Saturday's event was part of the annual celebrations on Veterans Day, which falls on Nov. 11, across the United States, and schools in San Francisco were closed to give students a holiday in memory of U.S. servicemen in World War II.
Earlier in the day, U.S. President Donald Trump hailed U.S. veterans in a tweet, saying they are "this country's greatest national treasure."
Source: Xinhua| 2017-11-12 23:57:49|Editor: Mu Xuequan
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by Zhao Qing
HONG KONG, Nov. 12 (Xinhua) -- The signing of the Hong Kong-ASEAN free trade agreement (FTA) will bring ample opportunity for the development of Hong Kong, said Jonathan Choi, chairman of the Hong Kong-based Chinese General Chamber of Commerce.
China's Hong Kong Special Administrative Region government and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) on Sunday signed the FTA and a related document on the sidelines of the 31st ASEAN summit held in Manila, the Philippines.
The signing of the Hong Kong-ASEAN FTA will open the door to the big market of Southeast Asia for Hong Kong, creating enormous opportunity in trade and investment, Choi told Xinhua in a recent interview.
It will also further promote the economic, trade and investment integration between the Chinese mainland, Hong Kong and ASEAN, he said.
The FTA negotiations between Hong Kong and ASEAN commenced in July, 2014 and concluded in September of this year.
The FTA and the related investment document cover a wide range of areas, such as trade in goods, trade in services, investment, economic and technical cooperation and dispute settlement mechanisms, according to Choi.
Hong Kong can fully enjoy the outcomes brought by the ASEAN FTA thanks to the signing of the agreements, he said.
With the economic growth of the ASEAN member countries, Choi said the bloc will also grow into a big import and consumer market while continuing to maintain its advantages in such fields as resources and exports.
Therefore, the ASEAN member countries are bound to bring enormous opportunity in trade and investment to Hong Kong, he noted.
The chairman said China and ASEAN have worked out an updated version of the FTA between the two sides and the Belt and Road Initiative has been making steady progress in many regions of the world, including Southeast Asia.
The Belt and Road Initiative, proposed by China in 2013, refers to the Silk Road Economic Belt and the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road, aiming at building a trade and infrastructure network connecting Asia with Europe and Africa along the ancient trade routes of Silk Road.
Choi said Hong Kong can give full play to the unique advantages of the "one country, two systems" and get involved in the Belt and Road Initiative so as to jointly move forward the economic, trade and investment integration between the Chinese mainland, Hong Kong and ASEAN.
According to Choi, since reform and opening up of the Chinese mainland nearly 40 years ago, Hong Kong has been its biggest source of investment.
He said that in the country's ongoing "going global" campaign, over 60 percent of the mainland's investments went out via Hong Kong and many countries invested in the mainland also through Hong Kong.
In recent years, with the steady progress of the Belt and Road Initiative in Southeast Asia and other regions, Hong Kong has been playing a triple role of connector, investor and operator in the process.
The chairman also spoke highly of the plan for the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area, which has been included into the national 13th Five-Year Plan (2016-2020), saying the plan will greatly boost Hong Kong's development.
Choi said he foresees a bright future for Hong Kong, as it is well on board the express train of the national development.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-11-13 00:12:53|Editor: huaxia
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MANILA -- Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte said here Sunday that the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) would continue to engage the world as the 10-nation bloc held a grand gala to celebrate its 50th anniversary with leaders of its dialogue partners.
The celebration was held ahead of the 31st ASEAN summit and related summits, which gathered leaders from the 10 ASEAN countries and ASEAN dialogue partners, including major countries like China and the United States. (Philippines-ASEAN)
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YANGON -- About 14 million Myanmar children, aged from nine months to 15 years old, will soon to be vaccinated against Japanese encephalitis across the nation starting from Nov. 15, official Global New Light of Myanmar reported Sunday.
Under the management of the Ministry of Health and Sports, the vaccination programs will be conducted into two different themes, school-based vaccination program which will be conducted from Nov. 15 to Nov. 23 and people-based vaccination program from Dec. 11 to Dec. 18, respectively. (Myanmar-Children)
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HANOI -- U.S. President Donald Trump told a press conference here on Sunday that Russia and China can help on the Korean Peninsula nuclear issue.
"Frankly, Russia and China in particular can help us with the North Korea (the Democratic People's Republic of Korea) problem which is a world-wide truly great problem," Trump said here at a joint press conference along with Vietnamese President Tran Dai Quang. (Vietnam-U.S. President)
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MAHMUD-E-RAQI, Afghanistan -- Afghan government forces launched a series of cleanup operations in the country's eastern province of Kapisa, leaving eight Taliban militants dead and retaking several villages, an official said here on Sunday.
"Eight militants loyal to the Taliban were killed, during a joint army and police forces' operation that resulted in retaking several villages in Tagab district on Saturday," Shir Aqa Faqiri, a press officer of army Corps 201 Selab based in the region, told Xinhua. (Afghanistan-Militants)
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MANILA -- The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and China's Hong Kong strengthened their trade and economic relations on Sunday with the signing of a free trade agreement and a related document to help facilitate trade and investment.
The agreements aim to provide ASEAN and Hong Kong with better access to each other's markets, create new business opportunities, and further enhance trade and investment flows between the two sides. (Philippines-ASEAN-HK-Trade)
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CANBERRA -- John Alexander has become the seventh Australian politician to leave the nation's parliament on the grounds of being a dual citizen.
Alexander, a Member of Parliament (MP) representing Bennelong in Sydney for the governing Liberal National Party (LNP), on Saturday announced his resignation from parliament. (Austalia-Dual Citizenship)
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NEW DELHI -- At least 14 people died after a boat capsized in a river in the southern Indian state of Andhra Pradesh on Sunday, a police officer said.
The incident took place in Krishna river near Ibrahim Patnam area in the state's Vijaywada district. (India-Boat Capsize) Enditem
Source: Xinhua| 2017-11-13 00:17:54|Editor: Mu Xuequan
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HANGZHOU, Nov. 12 (Xinhua) -- The record sales at major Chinese e-commerce sites Saturday offer an insight into the robust domestic demand in the world's second-largest economy.
November 11 has become an online shopping spree since 2009 when Alibaba's Tmall made its first online sales promotion. And now it is on par with "Black Friday," when most U.S. retailers online or offline offer promotions.
November 11 is known in China as Singles' Day because the date, 11-11, resembles four "bare sticks," a term used in China to refer to single people.
The world's biggest online shopping spree is a barometer of consumer behavior. It has attracted shoppers from around the world looking for bargains and multinational corporations seeking sales.
Trade at Alibaba, China's largest e-commerce platform, reached 168.3 billion yuan (25.4 billion U.S. dollars) on Saturday's shopping promotion.
Alipay, Alibaba's mobile payment platform, handled 1.48 billion payments from around the world, 41 percent more than last year.
A total of 812 million orders were generated in the 24 hours, up 23 percent.
More than 140,000 overseas brands participated, with 206 countries and regions involved in. Customers came from 225 countries.
JD.com, who started promotions at the beginning of this month, reported 127.1 billion yuan of orders. Kaola.com posted a 300 percent annual growth in sales on Saturday.
"From 52 million yuan in 2009 to 168.3 billion yuan this year, we have witnessed a rapidly growing domestic demand in the nine years," said Zhang Yong, CEO of Alibaba.
Zhang said the shopping spree on November 11 is just an epitome of the potential of China's consumption power.
China's strong domestic demand has brought opportunities for global sellers.
Nick Mann, sales director of the Australian health products brand Swisse, said Swisse sales doubled in each of the past four years.
With rising living standards, more Chinese consumers are buying quality non-daily necessities and the consumption habit is also driving the Chinese manufacturers to upgrade their products, said Zhang.
"The November 11 shopping spree is a commercial miracle even for the world," said Chen Qin, a programmer at Alibaba.
Many e-commerce sites have used AI and big data to predict consumers' shopping habits, prepare inventories of goods and help cope with the surge in orders. This could help reduce logistics costs and deliver goods to consumers earlier than usual, Chen said.
China Air Force Bayi Aerobatic Team stunts at Dubai Airshow 2017. (Xinhua Photo)
DUBAI, Nov. 12 (Xinhua) -- Six J-10 aerobatic fighter jets of the Chinese Air Force's August 1st Air Demonstration Team demonstrated their acrobatic skills for the first time in the history of the Dubai Airshow which started on Sunday in its 15th edition.
The six jets showed formations like barrel rolls, vertical stunts and parallel flights in the shape of triangle.
Shen Jinke, spokesman of the PLA Air Force, said earlier in the month, the air force is ready for pragmatic exchange and cooperation in more fields and many levels with air forces of other countries and to make new contributions to peace and development.
Several visitors of the airshow expressed their excitement about the Chinese aerial show.
"I think it is very good that China shows aerial stunts here at the Dubai Airshow," Mansour Janbi, COO of Arab Express Aviation said.
Florian Descargues, an IT support specialist of Airbus, was not aware that the fighter jets he filmed were Chinese, saying that it is just "extraordinary. I filmed everything with my smartphone."
Omar Alhoshan, founder of Alhoshan Aviation, a Saudi-based consulting-firm, said the display shows "a very nice formation. we saw some very good stunts," adding that "it is important that China shows up in the Gulf region. China is the biggest consumer in aviation, so they must be here at the airshow."
The five-day Dubai Airshow runs through Thursday.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-11-13 00:48:01|Editor: Mu Xuequan
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MOSCOW, Nov. 12 (Xinhua) -- Any double interpretation of the latest joint statement on Syria by Russian President Vladimir Putin and his U.S. counterpart Donald Trump would be inappropriate, the Kremlin said Sunday.
According to the statement, the two heads of state agreed to maintain open channels of communication between the two militaries to help ensure the safety of U.S. and Russian forces engaged in the fight against Islamic States until its final defeat.
The statement was at first agreed at the level of experts and then agreed between Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, before finally being approved by the two presidents, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov was quoted by Russian news agencies as saying.
"There is no need to comment on anything. There is the text of the statement, which is available for reading. That is why double interpretation is inappropriate," Peskov said.
On Saturday, Putin and Trump issued a joint statement about Russia-U.S. cooperation on Syria after their short meeting on the margins of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Economic Leaders' Meeting in Da Nang, Vietnam.
Russia and the U.S.-led coalition are backing separate offensives against IS in Syria, with both advancing in oil-rich Deir al-Zour province in the east of the war-torn country.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-11-13 00:53:06|Editor: Mu Xuequan
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ADDIS ABABA, Nov. 12 (Xinhua) -- Chinese medical team on Sunday provided free healthcare treatment and educational materials support for school children in need in Ethiopia's capital Addis Ababa.
The support by members of the 20th Chinese medical team in Ethiopia also incorporated food items provision and educational materials support in partnership with the Chinese Embassy in Ethiopia and Chinese companies.
Zhao Cheng, Chinese medical team leader and cardiologist, said that the free healthcare service provision to students enrolled at Muday Charity Association was made in an attempt to enable school children, who are drawn from financially insecure families, to effectively undertake their education.
According to Zhao, 10 medical team members provided services including mouth and respiratory organ treatments, eyes protection support and heart condition checkups.
Muday Charitable Association, a local non-governmental organization based in Ethiopia's capital Addis Ababa, helps thousands of disabled young Ethiopians.
Muday Mitiku, founder and head of the association, affirmed that the support is "very important for these children since their families are poor who are unable to follow up their health and education."
"This is really very important for us. These children are from poor families and they didn't get checkups and we do not even know simple health problems," she said. "They have also helped us in other materials by bringing some school materials and food items that we really needed very much," Muday added.
Zhu Wenqiang, secretary at the Chinese embassy in Ethiopia, stressed that the support provided on Sunday is part of the Chinese government's commitment to support African friends.
"China is still a developing country but we still think it's our obligation to help African friends as much as we can," he said.
"We invite Chinese companies to perform similar community support activities. It's a great initiative and we will continue doing these kinds of activities in the future," Zhu added.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-11-13 00:58:08|Editor: Mu Xuequan
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BEIRUT, Nov. 12 (Xinhua) -- Russian Ambassador to Lebanon Alexander Zasypkin said Sunday that the resignation of Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri reflected a wider regional problem.
Speaking to local media Voice of Lebanon, Zasypkin called on supporters of Iran and Saudi Arabia in Lebanon to stop exchanging accusations.
"The problem is much bigger than what happened with the resigned premier, where there is Saudi-U.S. pressure and maybe Israeli pressure on Iran through Lebanon," Zasypkin said.
Hariri announced his resignation as prime minister on Nov. 4, in a statement broadcast from the Saudi Arabian capital Riyadh. He has not yet returned to Lebanon, and has made no public statements since his resignation address.
Zasypkin praised the role that Lebanese President Michel Aoun has been playing in managing crisis, pointing that Russia, France, the United States and Egypt were trying to help to put an end to the crisis.
Zasypkin also suggested that Lebanon raise the issue at the United Nations Security Council.
"Heading to the Security Council is the right of every state that feels its security in danger or that senses instability," Zasypkin said.
"We suggest sending a neutral international committee to Saudi Arabia to find out what is happening with Hariri," he added.
The ambassador also downplayed speculation about the possibility of an Israeli attack on Lebanon with Saudi's support, saying that no one has interest in going in that direction at the moment.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-11-13 01:08:09|Editor: Mu Xuequan
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ANKARA, Nov. 12 (Xinhua) -- Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim on Sunday denied the report that Ankara was involved in an alleged plan to kidnap U.S.-based cleric Fetullah Gulen.
On Friday, the Wall Street Journal reported that U.S. Special Counsel Robert Mueller was investigating an alleged plot involving former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, who met with Turkish officials twice last year and was offered 15 million U.S. dollars to kidnap Gulen from his complex in Pennsylvania.
In an televised interview with broadcaster CNN International on Sunday, Yildirim said: "No, we are not dealing with Michael Flynn, we are dealing with the government of United States."
Fethullah Gulen has been blamed by Ankara for orchestrating a failed coup attempt on July 15, 2016. At least 249 people were killed and over 2,000 people were injured in the coup attempt.
Yildirim said the Turkish Justice Minister was in contact with his U.S. counterpart regarding Turkey's extradition request. " They are still in communication to provide some progress on that matter."
He called on the White House to extradite Gulen, adding that Turkey sees "there is no any signal through which extradition will be in place."
The Turkish Embassy in Washington released a statement Saturday rejecting that Turkey would use unlawful methods to extradite the cleric, describing the allegations "utterly false, ludicrous and groundless."
The embassy said Turkey has been working with U.S. agencies to provide evidence of Gulen's culpability.
Turkey has repeatedly demanded Gulen's extradition from the U.S., which is one of the several disagreements between two countries.
Ankara claims that the U.S. has turned the issue into a political tool being used against Turkey.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-11-13 01:08:10|Editor: Mu Xuequan
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BUDAPEST, Nov. 12 (Xinhua) -- Hungary's conservative Prime Minister Viktor Orban gave a confident speech ahead of next year's general elections here on Sunday, on the 27th Congress of his party Fidesz that reelected him as party president.
"Fidesz is ready for the elections today," Orban told amid applause of his party members.
The reelected party leader explained that his party had three tasks in the future: to reinforce the results of the past seven years, to deepen the intellectual foundations of its policy, and to defend Hungary's future.
"We need another four years to reinforce our results, to make them irreversible," he declared, adding that the popular mood was "not for a change of government, but for a change of the opposition."
Indeed, Orban is largely leading almost all polls, as his opposition is very scattered.
Orban is also known to be a fervent critic of the European Union.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-11-13 01:18:12|Editor: Mu Xuequan
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MOGADISHU, Nov. 12 (Xinhua) -- The U. S. military confirmed that it conducted the two airstrikes against the Islamist State (IS) and Al-Shabaab militants early Sunday in Somalia, killing "several terrorists."
The U.S. Africa Command (Africom) said the first strike occurred at approximately 3 a.m. against Al-Shabaab in the Lower Shabelle Region about 64 km west of the capital of Mogadishu.
According to Africom, the second separate strike occurred at approximately 9 a.m. against IS in Puntland in northeast Somalia.
"In coordination with the Federal Government of Somalia, U.S. forces conducted two separate airstrikes against Al-Shabaab and ISIS, in Somalia on Nov. 12, killing several terrorists," Africom said in a statement.
Africom, which has in the past conducted counterterrorism airstrikes against the terror group in Somalia, said its special forces will continue to use all authorized and appropriate measures to protect Americans and to disable terrorist threats.
"This includes partnering with AMISOM and Somali National Security Forces (SNSF); targeting terrorists, their training camps and safe havens throughout Somalia, the region and around the world," it said.
The statement came after the Somalia government said its forces killed 81 Al-Shabaab militants during the joint security operation on Saturday in Jilib town in middle Jubba region in southern Somalia.
However, Al-Shabaab has denied the statement on Saturday by Information Minister Abdurahman Omar Osman that there were attacks in Jilib town area. Al-Shabaab's military spokesman Abdulaziz Abu Musab described the minister's statement as "baseless."
Source: Xinhua| 2017-11-13 01:28:14|Editor: Mu Xuequan
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STOCKHOLM, Nov. 12 (Xinhua) -- Swedish police remanded 16 members of the far-right extremist Nordic Resistance Movement during a demonstration in central Gothenburg on Sunday.
Around 40 people dressed in black and carrying flags took part in the march around Sunday noon without application for demonstration permit, Swedish Television reported on Sunday.
Asked why the police broke up this demonstration while they did not interrupt a similar one that was held in Gothenburg two weeks ago, police press spokesperson Ulla Brehm said: "It is hard to compare the two events. We make judgements on a case-by-case basis and today we put a stop to it," she said.
Brehm said that 16 people were taken into custody on Sunday on suspicion of disrupting public order, but at around 5 p.m. the police announced that they would start releasing them. None are though to have arranged the demonstration and are therefore not suspected of having committed a criminal act, according to police officer Johan Ljung.
The Nordic Resistance Movement, a far-right extremist group, held its biggest demonstration to date in September this year. The march coincided with the Gothenburg Book Fair, and inspired massive counter-demonstrations and a major police operation.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-11-13 01:43:17|Editor: Mu Xuequan
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AMMAN, Nov. 12 (Xinhua) -- Jordan and Egypt on Sunday looked into efforts to relaunch Palestinian-Israeli peace talks, the state-run Petra news agency reported.
At a meeting in Amman, Jordanian Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi and his Egyptian counterpart Sameh Shukri discussed efforts exerted to end the Palestinian divide and reach reconciliation, which creates the necessary environment to resume peace talks.
Such peace talks, they said, should lead to the creation of an independent Palestinian state at the borders of 1967 with east Jerusalem as its capital.
In this regard, Safadi stressed on the role played by Egypt in reaching a Palestinian reconciliation. Discussions also covered developments in the Middle East.
Also Sunday, King Abdullah II of Jordan received Shukri who presented him a letter from Egyptian President Abdel Fattah Al Sisi on ties and the need for continued coordination.
King Abdullah stressed on the importance of continued solidarity and coordination among the Arabs to stand up to challenges in the region.
Discussions also shed light on the need for political solutions to regional crises.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-11-13 01:48:19|Editor: Mu Xuequan
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CAIRO, Nov. 12 (Xinhua) -- Tunisia is keen to boost security, economic and trade cooperation with Egypt, said Tunisian Prime Minister Youssef Chahed in a statement in the Egyptian capital Cairo on Sunday.
Chahed's statement came following his meeting with Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi and ahead of convening the 16th session of the Joint Egyptian-Tunisian Higher Committee with his Egyptian counterpart Sherif Ismail.
"Tunisia is looking forward to enhancing security cooperation with Egypt through a joint committee that is scheduled to meet late November to discuss joint efforts in fighting terrorism," the premier said.
Being neighboring Arab states of Libya, Egypt and Tunisia, in addition to Algeria, closely coordinate positions and push for dialogue among rival Libyan factions to reach a political settlement in the war-torn North African country.
Chahed highlighted the significance of coordination between the two Arab countries to help reach political settlements to conflicts in the Arab region.
"Cairo also plays an important role at the Arab and regional levels," said the Tunisian premier, noting his country condemns terrorist attacks that are meant to undermine Egypt's security and stability.
Chahed continued to say that Tunisia and Egypt face similar challenges in boosting development and economic reform as well as fighting terrorism and extremism, urging for further coordination between the two countries and collective cooperation of international efforts in this regard.
Meanwhile, the two prime ministers witnessed in Cairo the signing of a number of agreements and memorandums of understanding between both countries in the cabinet headquarters in Cairo.
The 16th session of the Joint Egyptian-Tunisian Higher Committee was attended by a number of ministers representing both sides and 18 representatives of Tunisian companies, discussing cooperation in various fields.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-11-13 02:08:21|Editor: Mu Xuequan
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ALGIERS, Nov. 12 (Xinhua) -- Algeria and France on Sunday inked three partnership agreements, including the establishment of an assembly unit for the French automaker PSA-Peugeot in the western province of Oran.
These economic cooperation contracts, which concern the sectors of automotive, agri-food and energy, were signed at the end of the fourth Joint Economic Committee in Algiers, in the presence of foreign ministers of both countries.
Algerian Industry Minister of Industry and Mines Youcef Yousfi, and French Minister for the Economy and Finance Bruno Le Maire also attended the ceremony.
The first agreement includes a joint venture company to establish a unit to assemble Peugeot cars in Algeria. The shareholders of this project are PSA-Peugeot which holds 49 percent of the stake, and three other Algerian partners holding 51 percent stake, namely Condor Electronics, Palpa Pro and PMO Constantine Group.
A memorandum of understanding was also signed between Algeria's Agrolog and French Agromed for the establishment of a joint venture to export Algeria's fruits and vegetables, in addition to a partnership agreement in the field of organic agricultural products.
The two sides also signed a shareholders' pact between the Algerian state-run group of Elec El Djazair and the French Schneider Group in the field of manufacturing low, medium and high voltage electrical equipment.
The committee was established to help promote the bilateral economic and trade relations between Algeria and France.
Since it was created 5 years ago, some 45 protocols, memoranda and partnership agreements have been signed.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-11-13 02:43:28|Editor: Mu Xuequan
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BEIRUT, Nov. 12 (Xinhua) -- "Anything Prime Minister Saad Hariri says while in Riyadh should be doubted as it is not said by his choice," Lebanon's President Michel Aoun said Sunday.
The president made the remarks hours before Hariri is expected to give an interview with Future TV.
Aoun's remarks reiterated a similar position made Saturday, when he said that any comment that comes from Hariri doesn't reflect the truth.
Aoun also raised the issue of the "ambiguous" circumstances of Hariri's situation, a statement from his media office said.
Aoun considers that these circumstances are such that Hariri's movement is limited and that conditions have been imposed on his residency and ability to communicate with his family members.
Hariri said in a stunning television address from the Saudi Arabian capital Riyadh on Nov. 4 that he resigned from his post.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-11-13 02:48:30|Editor: Mu Xuequan
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Chinese President Xi Jinping, also general secretary of the Communist Party of China Central Committee, meets with Vietnamese National Assembly Chairwoman Nguyen Thi Kim Ngan in Hanoi, Vietnam, Nov. 12, 2017. (Xinhua/Zhang Duo)
HANOI, Nov. 12 (Xinhua) -- Visiting Chinese President Xi Jinping on Sunday called on Chinese and Vietnamese legislatures to enhance all-level exchanges and cooperation.
Xi made the remarks when he met with Nguyen Thi Kim Ngan, Chairwoman of the National Assembly of Vietnam, while he is paying a state visit to the Southeast Asian country.
Xi spoke highly of the friendly exchanges between the National People's Congress (NPC) of China, and the National Assembly of Vietnam.
The legislatures of the two countries have played an important role in the national political life respectively and in strengthening the mutual understanding between the two peoples, Xi said.
He called on the two countries' legislatures to enhance all-level exchanges, increase experience-sharing in state governance and legislative oversight, and promote understanding between the two peoples.
During the meeting, Xi also briefed the Vietnamese top legislator on China's experiences in comprehensively carrying out the basic policy of governing the country by law.
It is Xi's second visit to the neighboring socialist country as the head of state of China and the top leader of the Communist Party of China (CPC).
China and Vietnam have a long history of friendship and face broad prospects for cooperation, Xi said, noting that China attaches great importance to the development of the bilateral ties.
China is willing to promote the long-term, healthy and stable development of the two countries' comprehensive strategic cooperative partnership under the principles of "long-term stability, future-orientation, good-neighborliness and comprehensive cooperation" and in the spirit of "good neighbors, good friends, good comrades and good partners," the president said.
Under the new circumstances, China and Vietnam should carry forward their traditional friendship, keep high-level contacts, broaden strategic communication, increase experience-sharing in party-running and state governance, and expand mutually beneficial cooperation in various fields, he said.
This is Xi's first overseas trip on the heels of the landmark 19th CPC National Congress held in October.
Nguyen Thi Kim Ngan, on her part, conveyed warm welcome to Xi's state visit to Vietnam, adding that Xi's address to the National Assembly of Vietnam two years ago is a vivid memory till now.
She extended congratulations to the success of the 19th CPC National Congress, and expressed her belief that the socialist cause of China with Chinese characteristics will make great success under Xi's leadership.
Amid its own process of reform, the National Assembly of Vietnam is willing to enhance exchanges and experience-sharing with the NPC, so as to make contribution to the friendly bilateral ties, she said.
Before flying to Hanoi, Xi concluded a busy two-day stay in Vietnam's central city of Da Nang, where he attended the 25th Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Economic Leaders' Meeting.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-11-13 03:28:40|Editor: Mu Xuequan
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Chinese President Xi Jinping, also general secretary of the Communist Party of China Central Committee, addresses a welcoming banquet held by General Secretary of the Communist Party of Vietnam Central Committee Nguyen Phu Trong and Vietnamese President Tran Dai Quang at the International Convention Center in Hanoi, Vietnam, Nov. 12, 2017. (Xinhua/Lan Hongguang)
HANOI, Nov. 13 (Xinhua) -- Visiting Chinese President Xi Jinping here on Sunday called for advancing the China-Vietnam comprehensive strategic cooperative partnership while attending a welcoming banquet.
General Secretary of the Communist Party of Vietnam (CPV) Central Committee Nguyen Phu Trong and Vietnamese President Tran Dai Quang held a banquet for Xi, also general secretary of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee, at the International Convention Center.
Xi stressed that his state visit to Vietnam aims to consolidate traditional friendship, deepen practical cooperation and chart out future for bilateral ties.
The fact that China and Vietnam both follow the leadership of Communist parties and socialist road, jointly strengthen solidarity and cooperation, as well as seek prosperity, is in line with the fundamental interests of both peoples and conducive to the peace, stability and development of the region and the world, said Xi.
Xi urged the two countries continue to be good neighbors, good friends, good comrades and good partners.
Trong, on behalf of the Vietnamese party, government and people, extended warm welcome to Xi, saying that Vietnam and China are neighbors with traditional friendship.
Vietnam attaches great importance to Vietnam-China ties and is willing to work together with China to enhance traditional friendship, deepen practical cooperation and ensure sustainable, healthy and stable development of the comprehensive strategic cooperative partnership, Trong said.
Trong believed that Xi's visit will inject new impetus to the bilateral ties.
Xi arrived in Hanoi on Sunday for a state visit to the Southeast Asian country. It is his second visit to Vietnam as China's head of state and top CPC leader. His previous state visit was in 2015.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-11-13 03:33:42|Editor: Mu Xuequan
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TRIPOLI, Nov. 12 (Xinhua) -- Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General and Head of UN Support Mission in Libya Ghassan Salame met Sunday with the Libyan UN-backed Prime Minister Fayez Serraj in Tripoli to discuss political solution of the country's crisis.
According to the Prime Minister's media office, the meeting discussed "the latest development of the political solution and the next phase of the road map proposed by by Salame, which will lead to presidential and parliamentary elections."
Salame will address the UN Security Council on development of the political situation in Libya on Nov. 16, the media office confirmed.
Salame also met with Italian Ambassador to Libya Guiseppe Perrone in Tripoli on Sunday and discussed "Italy's support to UN efforts and upcoming Security Council meeting on Libya."
The UN envoy met with Turkish Ambassador to Libya Ahmad Dogan and "expressed solidarity with the people and government of Turkey over the kidnapping of Turkish workers."
Source: Xinhua| 2017-11-13 03:43:46|Editor: Lu Hui
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Chinese President Xi Jinping, also general secretary of the Communist Party of China Central Committee, and Nguyen Phu Trong, general secretary of the Communist Party of Vietnam Central Committee, witness the signing of a memorandum of understanding on joint implementation of the Belt and Road Initiative and Vietnam's "Two Corridors and One Economic Circle" plan, as well as a series of cooperation documents in such areas as industrial capacity, energy, cross-border economic cooperation zone, e-commerce, human resources, economy and trade, finance, culture, health, media, social science, and border defense, after their talks in Hanoi, Vietnam, Nov. 12, 2017. (Xinhua/Yao Dawei)
HANOI, Nov. 12 (Xinhua) -- China and Vietnam agreed here Sunday to deepen their comprehensive strategic cooperation under new circumstances.
During their talks, visiting Chinese President Xi Jinping, also general secretary of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee, and Nguyen Phu Trong, general secretary of the Communist Party of Vietnam (CPV) Central Committee, spoke positively of the two countries' development achievements and agreed to carry forward, preserve and promote the traditional friendship between China and Vietnam.
Xi is on a state visit to the Southeast Asian country. Before flying to Hanoi, he just concluded a busy two-day stay in Vietnam's central city of Da Nang, where he attended the 25th Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Economic Leaders' Meeting.
The two leaders also agreed to pursue a friendly policy toward each other and continuously boost the China-Vietnam comprehensive strategic cooperative partnership so as to bring more benefits to the two peoples.
Xi briefed Trong on the 19th CPC National Congress held in Beijing last month, while Trong introduced to Xi the progress the CPV and his country have made.
China and Vietnam are close neighbors connected by mountains and rivers, good friends sharing weal and woe, good comrades with similar ideals and beliefs, and good partners for win-win cooperation, Xi said.
Since the two nations established their diplomatic ties 67 year ago, the China-Vietnam traditional friendship started by the older generations of two countries' leaders has been continuously consolidated and promoted.
Xi commended the positive progress made in bilateral ties, which have seen close high-level exchanges and ever deepening cooperation in various fields.
Currently, both China and Vietnam are at a crucial period of reform and development and they are also facing historic opportunities for advancing both domestic development and bilateral relations, said the Chinese leader.
Xi called on the two sides to attach importance to the overall interests of the two parties and the two countries, proceed from the fundamental interests of the two peoples, and carry forward the fine tradition of weathering hard times together, so as to open a new chapter in China-Vietnam relations.
He expressed the hope that the two nations will work hand in hand to achieve common prosperity and seek common development on the road forward.
The Chinese president extended congratulations on the great achievements Vietnam has made in its cause of reform and opening-up in the past 30 years.
Xi said he believes that under the strong leadership of the CPV Central Committee led by Trong, the fraternal Vietnamese people will surely be able to create a better future for the cause of socialist construction.
For his part, Trong conveyed warm congratulations on the successful conclusion of the 19th CPC National Congress as well as on Xi's re-election as general secretary of the CPC Central Committee and his being established as the core of the CPC leadership.
Vietnam, Trong said, is grateful to China for the tremendous help it has offered to Vietnam's national liberation and development, and supports China playing a bigger role in international and regional affairs.
The Vietnamese side highly appreciates China's achievements in economic and social development and its positive contribution to regional development, he said.
Vietnam welcomes Xi's proposition of building a community with a shared future for mankind, which shows China's global vision and responsibility as a major country, he added.
Vietnam, he said, is ready to work with China to deepen their traditional friendship and comprehensive strategic cooperative partnership, so as to benefit the people of both countries and contribute to regional peace and prosperity.
In the talks, the two leaders noted that China and Vietnam are neighbors enjoying a long history of friendship and both are socialist countries under the leadership of Communist parties.
They agreed that the two countries have the same political systems and similar development paths, and their future is closely connected.
They pointed out that China and Vietnam should learn from each other and seek common development, so as to inject new vitality into their respective socialist construction causes, push for sustained, healthy and steady development of their partnership, and jointly contribute to regional peace, stability and prosperity.
The two leaders agreed to maintain the tradition of high-level exchanges, firmly adhere to a friendly policy toward each other, enhance strategic communication and political mutual trust, and properly deal with differences, so as to lead China-Vietnam relations to move in the right direction.
Sharing a unique bond, the two sides pledged to deepen party-to-party exchanges and step up exchanges of experience in governance of party and state.
They also agreed to make good use of the China-Vietnam steering committee on cooperation to enhance exchanges and cooperation at various levels and among such departments as diplomacy, defense and public security.
On development initiatives, the two sides agreed to earnestly implement cooperation documents on jointly carrying out the China-proposed Belt and Road Initiative and Vietnam's "Two Corridors and One Economic Circle" plan.
They pledged concerted efforts to promote regional economic links and connectivity, secure practical results in such cooperation areas as economy and trade, industrial capacity, investment, infrastructure and monetary finance, and push forward the construction of cross-border economic cooperation zones as well as cooperation in agriculture, environment, science and technology, and transportation.
The two sides also vowed to expand cooperation in culture, education, media, health, youth-related affairs and tourism, and bring the Chinese Cultural Center in Hanoi and the Vietnam-China Friendship Palace into operation as early as possible, so as to further consolidate the public support for China-Vietnam friendship.
Moreover, the two sides agreed to properly handle maritime issues, promote maritime cooperation in various forms, including joint development, and strive to maintain peace and stability in the South China Sea, on the basis of the consensus the leaders of the two parties and countries have reached.
The two sides also agreed to cement coordination within international and regional frameworks such as the United Nations, APEC, the Asia-Europe Meeting and the China-ASEAN (the Association of Southeast Asian Nations) and Lancang-Mekong cooperation mechanisms.
The Chinese side expressed congratulations to Vietnam on the successful APEC Economic Leaders' Meeting and pledged to work with Vietnam and all other parties to make positive contributions to the economic integration, development and prosperity in the Asia-Pacific region.
After the talks, Xi and Trong witnessed the signing of a memorandum of understanding on joint implementation of the Belt and Road Initiative and Vietnam's "Two Corridors and One Economic Circle" plan, as well as a series of cooperation documents in such areas as industrial capacity, energy, cross-border economic cooperation zone, e-commerce, human resources, economy and trade, finance, culture, health, media, social science, and border defense.
Ahead of the talks, Xi attended a grand welcome ceremony hosted by Trong with full military honors and a 21-gun salute.
Upon his arrival at the Presidential Palace, Xi was welcomed by Trong and greeted by a cheerful crowd wearing traditional clothes and waving the flags of the two countries.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-11-13 04:59:00|Editor: Mu Xuequan
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CAIRO, Nov. 12 (Xinhua) -- Egypt on Sunday expressed concern about its share of the Nile River water after its meeting with Ethiopia and Sudan failed to approve an initial study on the effects of Ethiopia's new dam on the downstream states.
The two-day ministerial meeting of the tripartite technical committee of Egypt, Ethiopia and Sudan on the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD), which kicked off on Saturday, failed to approve an introductory report by a consultant company on the dam's effects on the two downstream countries, namely Egypt and Sudan.
"Egypt is concerned about this development that could obstruct technical studies despite Egypt's efforts and flexibility over the past months to make sure the studies will be completed as soon as possible," said Egypt's Minister of Water Resources and Irrigation Mohamed Abdel-Aati.
The irrigation ministers of Ethiopia and Sudan did not approve the consultant company's introductory report of the studies despite Egypt's initial approval, while asking for amendments that would affect the studies and make the report contentless.
Egypt is worried about its annual share of 55.5 billion cubic meters of the Nile River water amid the GERD's rapid construction.
Egypt's ties with Ethiopia have seen ups and downs since the latter started the dam project since April 2011 as Egypt has been suffering from turmoil following an uprising that toppled former president Hosni Mubarak.
When President Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi took office in 2014, he showed understanding of Ethiopia's aspiration for development through the GERD that would produce around 6,000 megawatts of electricity to the country.
In March 2015, the leaders of Egypt, Ethiopia and Sudan signed an initial cooperation deal on the principles of sharing the Nile River water and the construction of the GERD, which will be Africa's largest dam upon completion.
Earlier in 2010, an agreement was signed among some Nile Basin states in Uganda's Entebbe about the sharing of the Nile River water, but it was rejected by Egypt and its downstream partner Sudan, citing the deal affects their usual annual share of the Nile water.
On the other hand, relations between Egypt and Sudan have been tense over the past years on various issues.
In May, Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir accused Egypt of providing military support to armed rebels in his country. The two countries also have a territorial dispute over the border region of Halayeb and Shalateen.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-11-13 05:59:13|Editor: Mu Xuequan
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RABAT, Nov. 12 (Xinhua) -- Morocco and Qatar on Sunday vowed to enhance bilateral cooperation, while hailing the "excellent relations" between the two states.
The two sides made the pledge during a meeting between visiting Moroccan King Mohammed VI and Qatari Emir Sheikh Tamim Bin Hamad Al Thani in Doha, the Moroccan official MAP news agency reported.
After a broad meeting that included top officials from both countries, the two leaders held a private meeting.
The meetings "touched on the excellent relations between the two brotherly countries and the firm will by the two leaders to further reinforce cooperation in the different areas," the report said.
The two heads of state also discussed regional and international topics of shared interest, it added, without disclosing details.
The Moroccan king arrived in Qatar after paying a five-day visit since Tuesday to the United Arab Emirates (UAE), which is part of the Saudi Arabia-led coalition that has cut ties with Qatar and imposed a full blockade on Doha.
A strong quake measuring 7.2 magnitude hits Iran's northern province of Sulaimaniyah on Sunday, killing 4 people and wounding 50 others. (Xinhua Photo)
BAGHDAD, Nov. 12 (Xinhua) -- A huge earthquake measuring 7.2 magnitude hit Iraq's northern province of Sulaimaniyah on Sunday, killing four people and injuring 50 others, according to the Kurdish Rudaw newsite.
The epicenter of the earthquake was 32 km southwest of the Halabja area near the Iranian border at the depth of 33.9 km, according to the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS).
The earthquake was felt in many Iraqi provinces in the north and central regions, including the Iraqi capital Baghdad, witnesses said.
Four people were killed and nearly 50 others injured by the damage of the houses, in addition to a landslide in a mountain adjacent to the Darbandikhan Dam, according to the report.
Most casualties occurred in the town of Darbandikhan, some 35 km southeast of the city of Sulaimaniyah.
The casualties in Darbandikhan could rise as some houses have collapsed and it is not clear yet whether there were people buried under the debris, Nasih Mala Hassan, mayor of Darbandikhan, was quoted as saying.
The Iraqi Minister of Water Resources warned the people down the Darbandikhan Dam to be in highest alert as the condition of the dam is not clear.
In Erbil, the capital of the semi-autonomous Kurdish region, dozens of people were taken to hospitals. Some were treated from injuries and others fainted or shocked, said the online newsite.
Many of the injured in Erbil were students who live in dormitories, local health department was quoted as saying.
Saad Maan, spokesman of the Iraqi Interior Ministry, told reporters that cracks appeared in some buildings in central Baghdad, while an old house was seriously damaged.
In Iraq's eastern province of Diyala, five people were wounded in the city of Khanaqin, some 165 km northeast of Baghdad, due to the collapse of their houses and shops, Head of the City Hall Samir Mohammed Noor told Xinhua.
Faris al-Azzawi, head of Diyala's provincial health department, told Xinhua that some 140 people fainted due to the earthquake and were sent to hospital, but no casualties were reported so far from the collapse of some houses and buildings.
China's Assistant Foreign Minister Qian Hongshan speaks during the Conference of the State Parties to the United Nations Convention Against Corruption in Vienna, Austria, on Nov. 6, 2017. The Chinese government is in favor of developing a guideline document to serve as a reference for states formulating a legal instrument dedicated to asset recovery, Qian Hongshan said here on Monday. (Xinhua/Pan Xu)
VIENNA, Nov. 12 (Xinhua) -- Western states have been passive in international efforts to recover assets secured through corruption and subsequently stashed abroad, thereby weakening the work of a United Nations (UN) anti-corruption conference that concluded here on Friday.
During the 7th Session of the Conference of the States Parties to the United Nations Convention against Corruption this week, a diplomatic battle between developing countries and some western states over the resolution on asset recovery took place at the body's headquarters in the Austrian capital.
Drafted by Nigeria, the resolution aimed to boost international cooperation in asset recovery, one of the key issues in the field of anti-corruption.
According to a joint research of the UN and World Bank Group (WBG), an estimated 20-40 billion U.S. dollars each year, more or less equivalent to 15-30 percent of official development assistance funds, is stolen from developing countries due to corruption.
A large part is believed to be transferred to some western countries, which are golden havens for stolen assets from developing nations.
A mere 5 billion of such funds have been repatriated over the past 15 years, shining light on the difficulty in asset recovery.
However, a diplomat involved in drafting the resolution told Xinhua that some western states jointly boycotted a more detailed resolution, trying to set barriers for international cooperation in asset recovery.
Amended by some developed countries, the resolution is now weak and ambiguous and lacks substantive content to fully return stolen assets to their country of origin.
The diplomat, who wanted to remain anonymous, said the key reason for western countries are hindering the process is that there is a wide gap between stolen assets hidden in rich countries and those have been repatriated.
"Because it's not their economic and strategic interest (to return the money back)," said the diplomat. "This is theft."
"Lack of political will" was cited as a key impediment to the recovery of the proceeds of corruption, said the report made by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime and WBG.
The report listed 29 barriers for asset recovery, including legal barriers and operational barriers, making the issue much more complicated. The diplomat said the barriers could be easily set by developed countries.
"Russia's position on asset recovery is that international cooperation on this issue should be considerably strengthened. I think nobody can be satisfied with the current situation," Deputy Head of the Russian delegation Avetisyan Andrey told Xinhua.
Low-to-moderate income renters and homeowners in rural Arkansas are reaping the savings from a program they pay for themselves over time to improve energy efficiency in their house or apartment.
Tammy Agard, president and co-founder of EEtility in Arkansas, told nearly 190 people attending the 46th annual meeting of the Northern Plains Resource Council Saturday about a program in which an energy cooperative lends people money for energy efficiency or renewable energy improvements to their homes.
Residents pay nothing out-of-pocket for the improvements, but instead pay off the loan over time through their monthly utility bill.
One rule of thumb: The residents saving needs to be at least 20 percent more than the cost of the improvements.
The on-bill loan program is also known as tariff on-bill financing. What Agard appreciates about the program she manages is that it helps low-income people achieve energy efficiency. The mentality used to be that energy efficiency is for wealthy people, and not for me. We are proud to be at the forefront.
Heres how one program works: Renters or homeowners have a contractor over to test the house for needed energy improvements, which are made by the contractor and then paid for by the local utility cooperative. A utility representative then inspects the house to make sure the work was done correctly.
Weve done this in the southern Arkansas delta without one penny of taxpayer money, she said. There is no catch. It really can be done, and it brings immediate relief to an awful lot of folks who have otherwise been left out of energy efficiency.
In a question-and-answer session that followed her talk, Agard said that the way to get state public utilities commissions interested in on-bill loan programs is to give them data lots of data, because the program is performance-based and not rebate based.
She said some people were concerned that the owner of an 85-unit apartment building that received the energy upgrades in Arkansas would dramatically increase rents on his tenants. Then they thought again.
The cooperative knew the local pastor who owned the property, she said with a smile. They also knew where the pastor would go if he dramatically increased his tenants' rents.
Another hurdle, she said, is that there arent a lot of weatherization contractors in rural communities. We reach out to them, tell them theres upcoming activity, and urge them to participate.
Failing that, EEtility does on-the-job training so that area workers can learn weatherization skills.
These are $50,000-a-year jobs with benefits, she said.
For Agard, the best part of the program is that it doesnt require legislative approval, since its strictly a utility decision.
A few residents, she noted, have turned down the program. Some were in the middle of a divorce. Others had a sick family member or planned to move soon. Others told her, This is too good to be true.
She said she hopes Montana will soon follow suit.
Im going to retire in Montana. Im making that announcement today, the former Hamilton resident joked. We absolutely need to do the same thing, because I really need to move back here.
GILLETTE, Wyo. Alinda (Kelley) Gallegos, 63, can't forget that day 30 years ago when she watched her brown, three-level home in Rawhide Village being towed away because of methane gas seepage in the subdivision north of Gillette.
She remembers the scenes as if it were a movie: Tears filled her eyes and she couldn't bear to watch as a semitrailer carried her family's first home one they'd designed from the foundation up starting 10 years earlier to another family in southeast Wyoming (possibly Torrington) that had bought and moved it.
All the months of helplessness, fear and stress in 1987 came down to this final moment for Gallegos and hundreds of others in that subdivision across the highway from Prospector Village and Rawhide Elementary School.
There had been evidence of methane gas seeping from coal seams lying below Rawhide Village for generations.
But that was little solace for residents after many were forced to evacuate and leave their homes because of explosive and dangerous levels of methane, hydrogen sulfide and hydrogen selenide gases all more toxic than the other as they were discovered in that order.
Construction of the subdivision a little more than 1,600 feet to a mile from Eagle Butte Mine began in 1976. It came to life during a severe housing shortage in booming Gillette and by 1987 was home for about 600 people in a close-knit, rural community of their own.
Despite cracking and deteriorating streets, trouble with sewer utilities and other problems, many loved the neighborhood.
In February 1987, however, that began to change. A few residents had complained to Campbell County about the awful rotten-egg odor pervading their homes inside and out. Those homes were just a few feet away from the Kelleys, including Alinda, her husband and two kids.
Others saw and heard the streets around their homes bubbling. Some even lit the streets on fire with matches.
Now Gallegos wonders why anyone thought it would be OK to build a subdivision of single-family homes there.
Rawhide Village is where she started her family as a young mother. Gillette is where part of her heart remains, no matter where she is.
Her license plate says it all. It reads "Wyolady."
Now she drives around Alva, Oklahoma, with her heart on her sleeve. Alva is the community where she grew up. But home? Well, that's back in Wyoming.
Salt Box Lane
Gallegos had grown to love the Cowboy State despite living in an 8-by-30-foot trailer in Wright that first year. Her first child, JB (James Brandon) Kelley, was born in December 1976 and the young family had moved to Wyoming while her husband landed a coal mining job.
On June 1, 1977, they bought the house at 202 Salt Box Lane in Rawhide Village. It was just a foundation at the time.
"We were among the first to move there," Gallegos said. "We moved in two weeks before Thanksgiving and all the heat was on one breaker."
It was about 2 p.m. on Feb. 24, 1987, when her husband was standing in front of the house as he prepared to leave for the overnight shift at the mine. David Holland, the then part-time emergency manager in Campbell County, told them they'd have to evacuate their home.
Campbell County paid for them and other neighbors around Salt Box Lane to live in a motel for a month as officials tried to determine the extent and cause of the potentially explosive problem.
"It was very stressful. I had two kids. I had to gather a few things and my husband had to go to work," Gallegos recalled. "They told us it was the methane."
Her family happened to live in methane central. Some of the highest readings in the subdivision were on Salt Box Lane and in her home.
"One time we had 39 percent methane in our bedroom," she said.
The family lived in one of six homes, five on Salt Box Lane, with consistent methane recordings, according to a 1987 state report. Those houses included 188, 199, 200, 202 and 203 Salt Box Lane. The report said concentrations of 9 percent were found in the sump pump hole of her home. Anywhere from 5 to 15 percent is considered explosive.
Gallegos suffered from headaches. Her kids also had a little more strep throat than others their age. That disappeared when they left Rawhide.
Soon, they were forced to give up their Rawhide house so the bank would forgive the mortgage.
"It was just devastating. ... I had put everything into that house," Gallegos said. "It was like we were losing everything we had."
She wasn't the only one feeling that way.
A disaster area
Dave and Vicky Dorson and their two children living at 200 Salt Box Lane were the first family forced to evacuate, he recalls. He has a video he hasn't watched in 25 years that shows methane bubbling in the standing water of the meandering creek bed behind their home.
"It was kind of like a jacuzzi," said the 59-year-old as he strode through 3-foot tall prairie grass occupying his former home site to show where that occurred. Large trees stretched into the sky behind him, one of which was just a few feet tall when he lived there.
He worked in the oilfield at the time and had lived in the subdivision for three or four years. He had seen the bubbling in the streets. He saw a neighbor light his driveway on fire too, but he didn't realize it was methane gas that could explode.
"We were in town that day," Dorson said. "We were riding around with a Realtor all day that day and had stopped for dinner at Golden Corral. A friend of mine said sheriff's deputies were looking for me."
Soon, the family was escorted to their home, managed to grab some clothing, items they needed and the baby bed. Then they went to spend the night in a hotel. They never lived in their home again.
"It was horrible for a couple of months," Dorson said. "We wanted them to declare it a disaster area."
President Ronald Reagan had denied the first request for a disaster declaration from Wyoming Gov. Mike Sullivan in June. On Sept. 4, 1987, after an appeal, drilling tests and more, Reagan approved a partial declaration which included paying for rent up to a year. But that came well after much of the drama, Sept. 4, 1987. Rawhide Village is the first disaster declaration and only one to this day involving methane gas seepage in homes out of the 3,928 approved disasters since 1953.
The family eventually moved into an apartment in Gillette and Dorson was told they could default on their home loan and it wouldn't affect their credit. That turned out not to be true, he said. But he also couldn't risk his children.
"I wasn't going to put my family through that," he said.
So they left. Later, behind the apartment they ended up renting next to Interstate 90, he got a call from his wife. Their old home, a tri-level of about 1,800 to 2,000 square feet, sat on a truck parked behind their rental just off I-90. They stood and viewed it from their deck before it headed to Sheridan.
There's some irony in that.
"For a couple of years, it was kind of tough," Dorson said.
There were many twists and turns that kept Rawhide residents in limbo for most of 1987. The situation sparked protests, anger, national television and newspaper coverage, and lawsuits. The National Enquirer even wrote about Rawhide Village with the headline "Helltown USA." For those who were in the crossfire, it's still hard to forget about Rawhide Village.
Perhaps that's why there's an active Facebook page for Rawhide Village survivors 30 years later.
A fun neighborhood
Gallegos remembers the water fights the families and neighbors engaged in. They also often had dinners with other families, parties and cookouts.
"We had a lot of fun," she said.
Many of the families were of similar ages and many made their living from the coal mines.
"Rawhide was the perfect subdivision to grow up in," Jo Petterson, who lived at 189 Salt Box Lane, wrote in a Facebook post. "Having to move was devastating."
Justin Biesheuvel, now an auctioneer in Gillette, lived at Rawhide Village with his family at 196 Geronimo Circle. He recalls being in junior high at the time they were forced out.
"It was like a small, little community out there. It was a neighborhood where everybody knew everybody," he said. "It was a close-knit neighborhood. Your neighbors were your best friends. We didn't want to leave."
Still, he suffered from frequent nosebleeds and migraine headaches as a kid.
"I have never had a migraine since we left," Biesheuvel added.
After being forced to leave Rawhide, his family lived in a hotel room together for a month, eating dinner at the Soup Kitchen with other Rawhide refugees each night. Then his family rented a small home at the corner of Fourth Street and 4J Road.
"I remember them talking," he said of his parents. "I can't imagine everybody going through that. Looking back on it now, my parents didn't come out very good. It wasn't like we were well off."
Kelly Guffey, now 47, would sometimes journey to the top of a hill near his home. It overlooked nearby Eagle Butte Mine and he could see his father, Willard Guffey, as he worked. The Guffeys, four in all, lived at 198 Salt Box Lane for six years.
Willard worked overtime and his wife worked as well, so they could afford the house payments.
"It was a pretty big investment," Willard said. They all loved Rawhide Village. "It was wonderful," he said. "It was quiet. We liked our neighbors. There were a lot of young kids around back then. ... I still would love to live out here."
"It was a pretty tight community," Kelly said, reminiscing as he pointed out the location of their home 30 years ago. "We had our own community."
When Rawhide was evacuated, they all "kind of went to the winds" and separated, he added. It's never been the same.
"It's crazy to look out here and know what happened," he said. "It's really sad now that you look and you think of all the people and the houses that were out here then and now it's gone."
He, like his father did until he retired, now works at Eagle Butte Mine. His son, 21, does too. That's three generations of coal miners and two generations who shared Rawhide Village.
Waiting and waiting
The evacuations of Rawhide accompanied the search for answers about possible explosive levels of methane, the presence of hydrogen sulfide (a toxic gas) and hydrogen selenide (even more lethal), and what caused them to seep into the subdivision. It resulted in drilling and monitoring for months.
The county commissioners evacuated nine homes on Feb. 24, 1987. Then 22 more March 6, 1987. Some families were allowed to return March 26.
On May 29, 1987, county officials hand-delivered letters to every resident in Rawhide ordering an evacuation of the entire subdivision by July 31.
Willard, now 71, recalls coming home from work that night. His wife met him in the driveway, crying. That letter was in her hand.
"I was at my house one night at 6 and I was told I had to get out of the house by 10," Willard recalled. They spent the next week in a hotel and later rented an apartment with three bedrooms. They were allowed to come back and get their clothes and possessions. Their home was just three or four houses west of where that "rotten egg smell" started it all.
"I knew nothing about it," Willard said. "I was home from work one day and Al Doyle said 'look at this' and walked into the middle of the street with a lighter and poof, it lit up."
Then came the endless parade of meetings, vague answers and little help. Willard was a veteran and the Veterans Administration wouldn't say what it would do to help homeowners with VA loans. Willard got so upset at one meeting he told a VA official from Denver to either do something or get off the pot.
"I lost all that equity. I never got anything out of it," Willard said. "I had two sons. We had no choice. ... We were among the first who had to leave. It was a stressful situation for our family. We were put out of our home. ... The whole thing is, you don't know where you're going to go."
In a meeting broadcast on national TV, county officials said they felt compelled to act after there were two cases of confirmed hydrogen sulfide gas poisoning and indications the methane gas plumes were extending into the northern portion of the subdivision.
The entire subdivision with just 12 families remaining as they waited to close on houses was again evacuated July 6, 1987, when a large volume of hydrogen sulfide gas was discovered during drilling.
While the county suspended its evacuation order July 3, it left intact a resolution that the entire subdivision was uninhabitable. On July 7, one homeowner was arrested by sheriff's deputies as he tried to bypass a roadblock to retrieve his tools and children's clothing from his home.
In the meantime, the drilling and monitoring continued. On July 28, the county rescinded its evacuation order. Only eight residents remained at that point.
Limbo stretched on, though.
Holland said he'd consulted with a variety of government agencies and nobody knew quite what to do. "Nobody's really dealt with something like this," he said.
"I am hearing too much 'I don't knows' from the experts," a resident said at one of those public meetings. "Rawhide is doomed."
It truly was.
Battle Cry Lane
Steve Skinner moved his family out of Rawhide soon after fire officials warned residents not to set the streets on fire. He had moved to Gillette in 1970 and returned in 1979 after serving in the military.
He and his wife, Solley, lived at 200 Battle Cry Lane with their young son and daughter, across from the park at Rawhide. They loved their small home of 1,470 square feet. But he said he couldn't put his young children at risk, so he quickly made the choice to get out.
"I ended up going bankrupt over it," Skinner said recently "Bankruptcy was the only way I got out of that house. We got way upside down over it."
Like many, the family lived pay day to pay day just to make ends meet. Filing for bankruptcy just added to that.
"It was pretty financially stressful for us," he said.
He still will drive by his former home, just to marvel at the foundation and how tiny it truly was.
"I actually liked it. We had good neighbors and we were across from the park," Skinner said, adding he could car pool to his mining job.
Their house was demolished since it couldn't be moved.
Others in the subdivision decided not to leave, some because they had so much invested there. Rawhide remains their home to this day.
"We never, ever checked the gas readings," Skinner said. "As soon as they began lighting the streets on fire, we left."
Gallegos has been back to Gillette since. Her last memory at Rawhide Village is seeing, but not wanting to watch, her coveted home traveling in the opposite direction. That was too much.
"I got in the car and left. I didn't ever look back," she said.
The United States military is expected to spend between $4 billion and $5 billion over the next 10 to 20 years in Cheyenne to modernize F.E. Warren Air Force Bases intercontinental ballistic missiles system. That kind of money would be significant anywhere, but especially so in Cheyenne where it could more than quadruple the typical amount of construction spending in the city.
Its good news to locals. Dale Steenbergen, president of the Greater Cheyenne Chamber of Commerce described it as huge dollars.
But the local economic benefit comes as just one small piece of a project meant to overhaul the countrys nuclear weapons system at a time of rising tensions between the United States and Russia and an increasingly bellicose North Korea, which has nuclear warheads of its own. While Wyomings Congressional delegation and some policy makers view it as an overdue step to keep America safe, others see it as a risky gambit that could push the world closer to nuclear war.
Boon for locals
While the Cheyenne dollars will be spent on relatively non-technical upgrades like concrete pours for new missile silos and buildings to house improved communications systems for the ICBM system, theyre part of a roughly $140 billion effort to replace aging Minuteman Missiles.
The missiles, which are armed with nuclear warheads, are part of what is known as the Ground Based Strategic Deterrent, and over the summer the Air Force gave two $359 million contracts to Boeing and Northrop Grumman to develop proposals for replacing the system.
The GBSD changes are in turn part of a larger $1.35 trillion effort to modernize the United States nuclear weapons arsenal.
The need to modernize an aging arsenal and upgrade old equipment is not especially controversial. For example, the nuclear-tipped missiles at F.E. Warren are intended to be fired within minutes of an order from the president. Anything but the latest technology hampers that capability. The initial missiles were installed over 40 years ago.
Our missiles were built in the 1970s, Secretary of the Air Force Heather Wilson said in an August statement. Things just wear out, and it becomes more expensive to maintain them than to replace them.
Boeing and Northrop Grumman have three years to develop full proposals to upgrade the ICBM program at which point the Air Force will give one of them the contract to build the new system.
Thats when Steenbergen expects the economic benefits to start rolling into Cheyenne. Adding $4 billion to $5 billion to the local economy would be dramatic, he said. Construction starts the total project value of construction begun in a given year typically ranges between $132 million to $851 million, according to estimates by Dodge Data and Construct Connect, two of the few firms that collect such information.
He said the chamber of commerce has been in contact with both companies, encouraging them not just to hire local contractors but to consider Cheyenne as a logistics hub for the improvements that will also be made to the nuclear missile bases in Montana and South Dakota.
We feel like Cheyenne might be a good spot, Steenbergen said. We have good rail service, we have interstate highways.
Northrop Grumman GBSD vice president Carol Erikson confirmed that the company has been in touch with the chamber about the impact of the project on the local community.
Boeing did not respond to a request for comment. The Air Force was unable to provide answers to a list of questions by press time.
New power
As the United States has entered into nuclear non-proliferation treaties and agreements with Russia to reduce the stockpile of nuclear weapons in both countries, weapons development has focused on creating more powerful warheads and delivery systems to compensate for the reduced quantity.
But despite the increased efficiency of the weapons, proposals to improve the ICBM force call for maintaining the current number of missiles: 400. Wyomings U.S. House Rep. Liz Cheney successfully inserted an amendment into a defense spending bill in Congress earlier this year that requires the military to maintain at least that many ICBMs, a move that helps maintain F.E. Warrens important role in Cheyennes economy.
In defense bill, Cheney pushes for more deterrence overseas including nuclear weapons A longtime advocate for a more powerful American presence overseas, Wyomings U.S. Rep. Liz Cheney successfully advocated for taking a tough line with both Russia and North Korea, along with investing in the United States nuclear weapons program, in a major military spending bill.
The amendment to protect the ICBM force smacks partly of parochial politics, Michael OHanlon, an expert on American defense strategy at the Brookings Institution, said in August.
(Cheney said that while F.E. Warren does benefit Cheyenne, her amendment was focused solely on national security interests.)
It was also Cheneys way of shoring up support of the nuclear triad land-based missiles, nuclear submarines and bombers the need for which has been called into question in recent years due to the high cost of upgrades. Some military leaders have suggested that the nation may no longer need ICBMs, or at least not as many, and could instead rely primarily on air and sea forces.
Cheney vehemently disagrees.
Weve got to make sure that every leg of the triad is doing the job its intended to do, she said in an interview.
For Cheney, the GBSD program and the greater nuclear weapon modernization program is part of a larger priority to upgrade the entire United States military. Cheney has opposed defense spending caps imposed under federal sequestration and repeatedly emphasized the need to grow the military following what she says was a steady reduction in capability during the Obama administration.
Cheney says Trump is wrong on NATO Wyomings newly elected U.S. House Rep. Liz Cheney criticized President Donald Trumps views on NATO and Russia in comments to the Star-Tribune.
The whole world of warfare has changed and is moving in new directions, she said. Weve got do better.
Cost estimates for the GBSD improvements have varied, and Steenbergen cautioned that Congress will need to appropriate the necessary funds once a proposal is complete.
Sen. John Barrasso, another member of Wyomings all-Republican congressional delegation, said that he supported the program. A spokesman for the final member of the delegation, Sen. Mike Enzi, said that Enzi supported the program and had co-authored a white paper last year calling for the program to be fully funded.
Senator Enzi believes a strong national defense begins with a strong nuclear deterrent and this means a strong ICBM force, spokesman Max DOnofrio said in an email.
Caution urged
Despite agreement that dated elements of the ICBM program need upgraded, some experts are concerned that the improvements to the nuclear weapons program in Cheyenne and across the military may spook Americas nuclear adversaries, especially Russia, and risk sparking a nuclear war.
The point is not about should we modernize or not, said Hans Kristensen, director of the Nuclear Information Project at the Federation of American Scientists. Its more about what kind of modernization is necessary.
While he is not opposed to the idea of modernizing Americas nuclear weapons, Kristensen, with the Federation of American Scientists, is concerned that policymakers are not thinking about the goals of the effort. Many of the improvements being made to nuclear weapons may have drastic consequences for how foreign nations perceive intentions of the United States and how the American government itself considers whether to use its nuclear arsenal.
Take one example. Right now, the fuses on warheads loaded onto Minuteman missiles are set to detonate using a relatively blunt calculation related to elevation. Kristensen said that upgraded fuses are being installed on the warheads that are more sophisticated and able to take factors beyond elevation into account, making it far more likely that a warhead destroys its target even if the missiles trajectory is slightly inaccurate.
Kristensen and two other nuclear analysts wrote an article for the prestigious Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists in March warning that upgrades like the so-called super-fuze was heightening the risk of nuclear conflict, especially with Russia, which might worry that the United States was preparing for a preemptive strike.
I dont think that the U.S. is planning for that certainly not in the context of Russia, at all but it can appear like that to Russia, Kristensen said. Modernization programs like this, they shape the perception of Russian policymakers.
Kristensen wrote in the article that the modernization drive by both the United States and other nuclear-armed countries, including Russia, have raised the risk of an inadvertent nuclear war sparked by paranoia or misunderstanding to levels at least as high as during the Cold War.
That has convinced many, especially on the left, that nuclear war is reemerging as an existential threat to humanity. Noam Chomsky, the prominent intellectual and critic of American foreign policy, cited Kristensens article as evidence of this in an interview with The New York Times published over the summer.
The significance is clear, Chomsky said. It means that in a moment of crisis, of which there are all too many, Russian military planners may conclude that lacking a deterrent, the only hope of survival is a first strike which means the end for all of us.
But not all analysts are so convinced. Michael May, a professor emeritus at Stanford Universitys Center for International Security and cooperation, said in an email that the improvements being made to Americas nuclear-armed missile arsenal have been anticipated by Russia and other U.S. adversaries and is not likely to change the balance of power.
I dont find the modernization destabilizing, May said. The word is thrown around whenever some group doesnt like a new development. The modernization program keeps the balance as it is and doesnt change incentives on either side; it is mostly needed upkeep and, as needed, replacement of the existing force.
Cheney, too, finds arguments for exercising restraint when it comes to upgrading the countrys nuclear weapons to fundamentally misunderstand the point of nuclear deterrence. If some see increasing the kill capacity of American nuclear weapons as risking conflict with Russia, Cheney believes weakness not upgrading the weapons is more provocative by leaving an opening where foreign powers could see space to attack the United States.
Its a flat wrong analysis, Cheney said. Theyre much more likely to be mistaken about thinking they can take action and not face consequences if they believe our forces no longer have the capability.
Known unknowns
If the tangible benefit of the GBSD program to Cheyenne is relatively straightforward an economic boost the project also comes with more abstract benefits and risks.
Steenbergen, with the chamber of commerce, is aware of the risks posed by nuclear war. But he said that living in Cheyenne has given him a new appreciation for how the United States handles its arsenal of weapons.
When he first moved to town, Steenbergen said he was surprised to see nuclear missiles being driven around Cheyenne in military convoys. If Cheney emphasizes the importance of strong nuclear weapons as a deterrent to Americas enemies, Steenbergen said that the weapons being out in the open in Cheyenne shows this theory in action.
That transparency is just to show the world exactly what we have, he said. In order to get rid of our nuclear capability you have to attack the homeland and that is stabilizing for us because people know they cannot take away that threat.
Then theres what happens if that deterrent effect is not strong enough.
While economists regularly try to account for the negative side-effects of development, this is much easier to do when calculating traffic congestion that might result from a new convention center than it is when calculating the risk that the billions of dollars being pumped into Cheyenne might also carry a slim risk of nuclear war.
University of Wyoming economics professor Anne Alexander said that the difficulty of this calculation stems from the challenge of predicting the likelihood of nuclear war resulting from improvements to F.E. Warren. It is much easier to measure the positive impact of $5 billion being pumped into Cheyennes economy.
Of course, were things to go awry, the cost of those weapons being used would blot out any economic stimulus. Millions could die immediately. Infrastructure would be destroyed. Crops might not be able to grow for hundreds of years. Radioactive fallout could spread across the globe.
Nuclear Armageddon would be devastatingly expensive, Alexander said. It would be more money than theres ever been on Earth.
CODY, Wyo. U.S. Marine Corps veteran and Cody resident Bill Buntyn knew he had something special when he purchased an old German banner in 1983 at a military surplus auction in Ohio.
Last month, he had the chance to see just how special.
Buntyn, the former commander of the Cody VFW, traveled to the town of Insheim, Germany in October to personally deliver the banner to the town where it had once hung more than 100 years ago.
The banner once belonged to a worker's party from the area, the Insheim Workers Education Union, and was taken down due to fear of reprisals after World War I around the time of the rise of Adolph Hitler's National Socialists. Exact dates of when the banner, and the party itself, ceased to exist are still buried in history.
Insheim Mayor Martin Baumstark relayed much of the history during an event attended by around 300 residents to welcome the return of the banner and thank Buntyn for the gift.
Buntyn said it was as warm a welcome as he could have imagined.
In the leaders of Insheim, he found people who appreciated history as much as himself, even if the banner hung for a relatively brief period of the town's 1,235-year history.
"It's important to remember our history," he said. "All of it - good and bad."
Buntyn said he could have sold it to a collector in the U.S. for a tidy sum, but he had no doubts about wanting to return it to its rightful owners.
"When I purchased it I knew it'd be sacred to Germany," he told the Cody Enterprise . "I was offered a lot of money by collectors, but I turned them all down."
It was one of many military items he's collected over the years as a lover of history, and as someone committed to preserving it.
The actual trip was the conclusion of a long process undertaken by Buntyn because, he said, of his desire to not let history be forgotten.
Buntyn initially reached out to the communities of Insheim and Herxheim in 1985, at which point a notice was published in the weekly newspaper asking residents to be on the lookout for any information on where the banner had come from.
Nothing came from that, and life moved on in the small German towns and for Buntyn.
Recently Buntyn decided to jump back into the work of identifying the origins of the banner with the help of Bill Thielemann and Petra Hales. Their knowledge of German enabled Buntyn to learn more about the banner.
Buntyn then contacted a member of one of Insheim's historic boards to tell him he'd be delivering the banner during the summer.
Having been diagnosed with cancer, Buntyn said he wanted to make sure he did this while he was still able. After returning, he said while it wasn't always easy, he was glad he went. The residents of Insheim made sure he knew that they were glad as well.
"Ladies and gentleman, for us in Insheim the flag means history and remembrance," said Baumstark, via a translator, to the assembled crowd. "I am convinced with this flag an additional connecting link has been created between our American friends and Insheim."
Buntyn said Baumstark had talked about traveling to the United States soon and visiting Cody in particular.
It's a bond formed over a flag more than 100 years old, which is once again in the care of a small German town with a long history - a history Buntyn is now a part of.
The banner will now be displayed prominently along with other pieces of the town's history.
"I am sure this flag will find an exceptional place in the small historic town hall in Insheim," said attendee Heidi Braun, mayor of nearby town Herxheim.
I want to share a real story with you. Joe has left the ranch early to pick up his kids, Ben, and Mary, who have gone from school to their church youth group. Joe is focused on getting home to complete his chores before dark. As he and his kids walk from church to their car, uniformed men approach and tell Joe he needs to come with them immediately. Amid tears, shock and fear, it is decided that Ben will drive Mary home and tell Mom what is happening. Days become weeks, then months and their father is not returned. Mary goes from a healthy, engaged student to a fearful, traumatized child with one illness after another. Even with Mom working full time, Ben is forced to drop out of school and get a job to help support the family. They lose their home and are forced to move into a cheap motel in town. The American Dream has become a nightmare for Joes family and two children are shoved to the fringes of society, making their success unlikely.
Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and Chinese President Xi Jinping have agreed to further their countries' relations. The 2 leaders met for about 50 minutes on Saturday in the southern Vietnamese city of Da Nang. This was their 6th meeting with the previous one held in Germany in July.
Xi opened the talks by saying he and Abe built a consensus on bilateral relations when they met at the G-20 summit in July. He said there are still many things to do in the process of improving ties between the 2 countries. Xi said he will promote positive developments in bilateral ties.
Abe said Japan and China are solidifying their leadership. He said relations will improve next year as they look forward to marking the 40th year since signing the bilateral peace and friendship treaty between the 2 countries.
Abe said Japan and China hold a big responsibility for stability and peace in the region, and worldwide.
He said he would like to cooperate with China, particularly on responding to challenges in North Korea.
Abe expressed his appreciation for China's efforts to take concrete steps to implement the UN Security Council resolutions against North Korea. Abe said he hopes the efforts will continue.
Referring to Xi's recent meeting with US President Donald Trump, Abe said he understands the talks were a great success.
He said it is significant that the 2 leaders agreed on efforts toward denuclearization by putting an economic squeeze on Pyongyang.
Abe is believed to have discussed not just North Korea but also the situation in the East and South China Seas. He is also believed to have urged Xi to help Japan,China and South Korea hold summit talks in Japan by the year-end.
Nov 12 (ANNnewsCH) - aaaSa aeaaaaaaccaeaaaaceaaaaaaeeaseaeaaaeaaaaacSaaeaaaaaaaaeaaaaYaaaaccaaaaaaeaaeYaSaaaaaaescasaaacaaaeacaaaaSaaaYa
Japanas national debt hit a record A1,080,440.5 billion at the end of September, up A1,474.1 billion from three months before, the Finance Ministry said Friday.
Per capita debt came to some A8.53 million, based on the countryas estimated population of 126.72 million as of Oct. 1.
The national debt is the combined balance of Japanese government securities, borrowings and financing bills.
The balance of government securities grew A4,767.1 billion to A949,998.6 billion, led by an increase in outstanding bonds maturing in 10 years or more.
The Kawasaki Heavy Industries C-2 is making its debut outside of Japan at the air show, as the country pushes for export sales of the military transport.
Powered by General Electric CF6 engines, the aircraft has been developed as a successor to the Kawasaki C-1 in both strategic and tactical airlift missions.
With a 15.6m-long (51ft) cargo compartment, the C-2 is able to carry a maximum payload of 36 tonnes for a range of 2,430nm (4,500km), or has a ferry range of 5,300nm.
"The C-2's capacity sits just in the middle of the C-130 and the C-17," says Colonel Tokukazu Omine, programme manager at Japan's Acquisition, Technology and Logistics Agency. "We are quite proud of its capability."
Development of the jet started in 2001, and was completed this March. Following that, the Japanese government signed a contract with Kawasaki to produce 11 C-2s, of which four have been delivered and are now in service with the Japan Air Self Defence Force.
Omine says the four aircraft are now undergoing operational testing, and have been involved in operational reliability tests, paradrops and tactical operations. Full operating capability is expected in 2018.
With Japan's government clearing the way to start defence exports, it is keen to tap the market for C-130 replacements, or for countries requiring a larger strategic airlift capability.
The United Arab Emirates and New Zealand are expected to be strong prospects for sales. However, Omine would not be drawn on which countries have the greatest export appeal. He adds that a "variety of countries" have expressed interest in the type, including a number of C-130 operators.
Nov 13 (ANNnewsCH) - caacaaaaaacaaaeaaa aaaaaaaaaaa12aaaaaaYaecaaaaaeceeesSaazeeYaaaaaaaaaaaYaa12aaaaaaYaaaaecaaaaaacaeaaaaazaaeaaaaaaaaaaaaa
The Fire and Disaster Management Agency plans to make the installation of hydrogen filling stations easier by revising ordinances related to the fire service law in fiscal 2018, in order to help promote the use of fuel cell vehicles, Jiji Press has learned.
At present, there must be a certain distance between gasoline and hydrogen filling facilities to prevent fires when hydrogen stations are built at gas stations.
Through the revision of the ordinances, the agency plans to allow the installation of hydrogen facilities very close to those for gasoline if certain safety measures are taken, according to informed sources.
This is expected to make it easier to install hydrogen stations in urban areas and other locations where enough space is not available, possibly helping spread the use of environmentally friendly fuel cell vehicles, according to the sources.
In Japan, as few as 1,799 fuel cell vehicles were in use as of the end of March this year, due partly to a lack of hydrogen stations. There are only some 90 such facilities in the country.
Currently, a gap 10-15 centimeters wide and deep must be secured on the ground between gas and hydrogen facilities to prevent gasoline from reaching the hydrogen facilities in case of leakage.
This requirement is making it difficult to increase hydrogen stations in urban areas.
Stroke care awards
The North Dakota Stroke System of Care Task Force recently gave awards to critical access hospitals for their stroke care, based on data collected from hospitals by the North Dakota State Stroke Registry.
The North Dakota Department of Health recognized the following area facilities for supporting the efforts necessary to foster better outcomes for stroke care:
National Institute of Health Stroke Scale Documentation Award, Southwest Healthcare Service, Bowman.
IV rt-PA Arrive by 2 Hour, Treat by 3 Hour Award, Tioga Medical Center, Tioga.
Door to CT in Less Than 25 Minutes Award, Mercy Medical Center, Williston.
Time to Intravenous Thrombolytic Therapy 60 Minutes Award, West River Regional Medical Center, Hettinger.
North Dakota Critical Access Hospital Quality Measure Set Award, Jamestown Regional Medical Center, Jamestown.
Recognized by the American Heart Association/American Stroke Association for excellence in care were these area Primary Stroke Centers:
Get With The Guidelines: Stroke GOLD PLUS Achievement Award, CHI St. Alexius Health, Bismarck, and Trinity Health, Minot.
Get With The Guidelines: Stroke SILVER PLUS Achievement Award, Sanford Medical Center, Bismarck.
Group aids site
St. Georges Piecemakers donated $1,275 to the North Dakota Historical Society for use toward restoring and maintaining the Bread of Life Episcopal Church at Camp Hancock in Bismarck.
The group from St. Georges Episcopal Church in Bismarck raised the money through a quilt raffle. Thrivent Financial awarded the Piecemakers a grant that helped buy the materials to make the quilt.
Lang recognized
Sharon Lang, Sterling, has been named a Hometown Hero by Modern Woodmen of America for her volunteer work with the Burleigh County Senior Adults Program Sterling Meals Program.
The Burleigh County Senior Adults Program offers congregate and home-delivered meals to adults age 60 and over.
Modern Woodmen of America is a member-owned fraternal financial services organization.
Korslien awarded
Renae Korslien, Minot, general manager of the North Dakota State Fair, received a Friend of Extension Award from Epsilon Sigma Phi, the North Dakota State University Extension Service honorary organization.
Work recognized
Two people from Dickinson are among those to be honored Thursday when the Northern Plains Chapter of the Association of Fundraising Professionals hosts National Philanthropy Day.
North Dakotans and northwest Minnesotans who engage in philanthropy and volunteerism will be recognized at the event in Fargo.
Irene Schafer, a 1983 graduate of what was then Dickinson State College, will receive the Outstanding Individual Volunteer Award. Schafer volunteers for several organizations and founded the Power of 100 Women, a group that has grown to over 200 women and this year will donate over $80,000 to four charities.
Debora Dragseth and her Business Ethics Class at Dickinson State University will receive the Outstanding Volunteer Group Award. For the past four years, the class has collected items for the Red Paper Clip Auction, with proceeds donated to a charity or charities chosen by the class.
The whistle-blower that gave information leading to the recovery of N13bn from Flat 7B Osborne Towers, Ikoyi, Lagos, has denied having been paid five per cent of the recovered sum PUNCH reports.
A lawyer, Yakubu Galadima, who claimed to be counsel for the unnamed whistle-blower, alleged on Friday that the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission has reneged on the promised fiver per cent.
The lawyer, who spoke with journalists on the premises of the Lagos State High Court in Ikeja on Friday, described as untrue the claim by the acting Chairman of the EFCC, Mr. Ibrahim Magu, that the whistle-blower had been paid.
A statement on Thursday by the spokesman for the EFCC, Wilson Uwujaren, quoted Magu as saying in Vienna, Austria, that the young man who blew the whistle had already become a millionaire.
We are currently working on the young man because this is just a man who has not seen N1m of his own before.
So, he is under counseling on how to make good use of the money and the security implication.
We dont want anything bad to happen to him after taking delivery of his entitlement. He is a national pride, Magu was quoted as saying.
But Galadima claimed that the whistle-blower, his client had been abandoned, saying the EFCC did not even know his whereabouts let alone counseling him.
The EFCC does not even know the whereabouts of my client. He is presently living from hand to mouth having been abandoned by the commission.
We have written to the President and even to Magu himself and we have yet to get any form of response. I even sent Magu an SMS this morning debunking the allegation that my client has been paid; but as I speak, I have yet to get a response from him, Galadima told journalists.
The lawyer said he had already written a letter dated October 10, 2017, to President Muhammadu Buhari in this regard but had yet to get any response from the presidency.
Our correspondent sighted an acknowledged copy of the letter marked highly confidential.
It bore the stamp of the Office of the Attorney General of the Federation, Federal Ministry of Justice, indicating that the letter was received on October 12, 2017.
He stated this in Abuja yesterday at the launch of the portal.
Fayemi said the portal is a cutting edge initiative that leveraged technology for the innovation, efficiency and effectiveness in the mineral sector governance.
The overall objective of the project is to increase provision of reliable information and knowledge, to enhance promotion of investments in the sector, using the technology-driven innovation and to increase the sectors GDP.
The portal was designed for mining investors to perform business processes such as online mining licences and mineral titles applications, online payment of royalties and fees, database for revenue drive and to block revenue leakages.
The portal is credible and provides timely information about the mining sector, performs and responds to online queries, business intelligence/analytics, reports and statistical data generation.
Mining investors could view all existing mining titles and track them anywhere in the world through the portal, access all agencies information, global mining news, live chat and document library, among others.
Lists of mining operators with valid licences and related minerals trade on private mineral buying centre and renewal of private mineral buying centres could also be accessed through the portal.
According to the minister, the portal is designed to serve as an input and decision support system to other entities of government MDAs.
We have spent about N700 million to develop this Integrated Automation and Interactive Geo Information Systems (GIS) Web Portal to improve Ease-of-Doing-Business in the mining sector.
This event is coming at a very auspicious time, on a broad scale; dividends of this administrations commitment to turning around our economic fortunes, he said.
He said that operation of online application of mining title and licences issued by Nigerian Mining Cadastre Office, online application of licences and permit issued by Mines Inspectorate Department and GIS laboratory, among others, would commence in the first quarter of 2018.
Abubakar Bwari, Minister for State, Mines and Steel Development, said the integrated web portal was conceived as a means of making information more accessible to players and the public alike.
Bwari said the initiative was to revamp the sector, as the ministry was moribund before himself and the senior minister assumed the sector.
According to him, government is a continuum and as long as subsequent administrations keep to track, mining will become the crown jewel of Nigerias economy.
Mohammed Abbas, Permanent Secretary of the ministry, sought the support of the Ministry of Communication to assist with experts that would manage the portal effectively.
King Mohammed VI who is currently on a friendship and work visit to the United Arab Emirates held talks Saturday in Abu Dhabi with Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi and Deputy Supreme Commander of the UAE Armed Forces.
After a meeting, attended by the members of the delegation accompanying the Monarch and UAE officials, King Mohammed VI and Sheikh Mohammed held private talks.
The two leaders discussed the latest regional developments and international issues of mutual concern.
They also discussed the brotherly and excellent ties binding the two countries and their multi-faceted strategic partnership, and agreed, in order to enhance further the economic relations, to give a new momentum to the Morocco-UAE joint commission.
Sheikh Mohamed emphasized in this regards that the UAE would continue its longstanding approach of strengthening its distinguished ties with Morocco, reported the UAE news agency WAM.
King Mohammed, who attended on Wednesday the official inauguration of the Louvre Abu Dhabi and who offered the cultural institution Moroccan artworks dating back to the 19th century, congratulated the UAE for this cultural landmark in the region, underlining that the museum conveys a noble message, that of the values of tolerance, coexistence and peace.
After his visit to the UAE, King Mohammed will visit Qatar, where he is expected on Sunday Nov.12 article states.
The Kings visit to the Gulf is the first since the outbreak of the crisis opposing Qatar to its neighbors, the UAE, Saudi Arabia, and Bahrain.
Many analysts saw in this visit a potential to defuse the Gulf crisis, given the close ties binding Morocco and the member states of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC).
Despite the remarkable progress in installing democratic political solutions witnessed in Tunisia since deposing President Ben Ali, the country continues to suffer from rampant corruption putting its democratic transition at risk, said the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in a recent analysis
Dubbed Tunisias Corruption Contagion: A Transition at Risk, the analysis notes that corruption continues to be a contagion taking a decentralized aspect plaguing every aspect of Tunisias economic, political, and security reform process and undermining faith in institutions while promising prospective instability.
Once tightly controlled under former president Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali, corruption has now become endemic, with everyday citizens engaging in and benefitting from corrupt practices, the analysis says, noting that numerous legal measures and civil society initiatives have been working to fight corruption, but it is perceived to be even more pervasive today than it was under Ben Ali.
For democratic transition to survive, the article recommends that Tunisia must fight a two-front war to address simultaneously the former kleptocracy and the emergence of widespread petty corruption.
To be successful, government and civil society must first agree on a framework for understanding and implementing the war. The international community should then support this framework with targeted funding and assistance, it said.
If left unaddressed, corruption will remain a central roadblock to Tunisias democratic consolidation and increasingly add to the regions serious economic and security challenges, the analysis warns.
It goes on to recommend funding of Tunisias anticorruption bodies, including the National Anti-Corruption Authority and the Financial Judiciary Pole, as well as civil society watchdog groups, such as Al Bawsala and I Watch.
The analysis also advises Tunisia to continue to strengthen civil society and ensure that Tunisia maintains a free media.
The US should look at Moroccos comprehensive anti-terrorism strategy in its efforts to put an end to mass shootings, said the editorial board of the Christian Science Monitor (CSM)
In the wake of 9/11 attacks, the US launched a counter-terrorism strategy that proved efficient abroad though lone wolf killers inspired by radical Islam, such as those responsible for the shootings in San Bernardino, Calif., in 2015 and Orlando, Fla., in 2016, have been difficult to detect ahead of time, said the paper, adding that Its also been difficult to identify non-Muslims, who, motivated by racism, revenge, or anti-Islam bigotry, have planned attacks, and prevent them from carrying them out.
In this respect, the CSM advices the US to take the example of Morocco as a country that has experienced a shift in public attitudes.
After a series of terrorist attacks in Casablanca that killed 45 in 2003, the North African nation launched a holistic and proactive approach aimed at reaching deep into society to avert further attacks, the article highlights.
It also recalls that Morocco was praised in the US State Department report last July for its multidimensional strategy, which places at the top of its priorities the objectives of economic and human development, vigilant security measures, as well as regional and international cooperation.
Morocco has made social reforms, such as granting rights to women in hopes they might better prevent radicalization, said the CSM, noting that the Kingdom has taken economic reforms aimed at its poorest regions in order to reach marginalized youth.
It encouraged Muslim preachers to promote a peaceful version of Islam. It beefed up security agencies to provide community-based policing and better track individuals supporting the Islamic State group. And if radicalized Moroccans are captured, the government tries to de-radicalize them and reintegrate them into society, underscores the article.
Morocco is now considered a leader in the battle of ideas taking place in the Muslim world, according to an article in Foreign Affairs magazine last year, and in forging a more inclusive society.
A photo hanging on the wall of Caffe Aromas north location reads: Dont be like the rest of them darling. This has become the mantra for the coffee shops latest owners.
There are some amazing coffee shops in the area Were creating a brand in a Starbucks, Caribou kind of industry, said Tina Wetzel of her brand based on neighborliness and customer service.
Two best friends from central Minnesota bought the longtime local business in June 2015 and have grown it into a second location and catering business.
They came in with energy and enthusiasm, said commercial Realtor George Yineman, who listed many of the spaces in the Copper Ridge building where Caffe Aroma north is located.
When her husband went to work for Bobcat, Wetzel started shopping around for her own business. She knew Emily Burrows from a restaurant she had managed. They joked over the phone about Burrows moving to Bismarck to open the coffee shop together.
But two days later Burrows called back to say lets do it.
The pair spent a year and a half in the coffee shops former Logan building location before opening up down the block in the former Impact Gallery in December.
It was the hardest block weve ever moved, said Burrows of the blizzard that hampered their progress.
They like their downtown location, complete with open mic night events, Saturday night jam sessions, eclectic hand-me-down furniture and local art hanging on the walls, which they joke covers up their amateur paint job.
But theyve found a niche on the north side, too, allowing the friends to get to know a new group of people, Burrows said.
They have found that the space they have in Copper Ridge is like a locally owned oasis in an area mostly dominated by big box stores. In the Copper Ridge strip mall, there is also Karmins Kitchen Table, a local dentist and a local eye clinic, to name a few, which fit with the friends goal of supporting other local businesses.
If you expect locals to support you, you have to support local as well, Wetzel said.
Theyve paired up with Mighty Missouri Coffee to make their own blends to serve in their shops. Sweet Treats and Dakota Nuts and Candy provide desserts and Concrete Daisies provides flowers.
North just keeps getting better, said Wetzel, adding a book club meets in the northern location every Wednesday.
They absolutely know what the demand is downtown and theyre taking that same approach up north, Yineman said of the women who he calls intuitive millennial entrepreneurs who see opportunity and expound upon it.
Yineman said the north coffee shop has become a gathering space for residents of nearby age 55-plus housing developments.
One lady comes in and then goes out and tells all her friends, he said. Its become like a gathering space for that community.
And he agrees with the women about the Copper Ridge being a local and regional strip center, adding that the demand for those neighborhood spaces is present across the Bismarck-Mandan community.
They rely on those rooftops that are nearby, Yineman said, as well as serving the 300 employees in office buildings nearby.
Still the friends say customer service is how they stand out.
You become your product, Wetzel said, and theyve passed that on to their young employees, showing how far eye contact and conversation can go in building a business.
The pair also has changed up the menu with new wraps, sandwiches and soup, as well as adding natural juices and protein shakes. They added beer and wine to the downtown location this past summer.
Catering makes up 30 percent of their business and Wetzel said people are amazed to find out what they can do with a plate of food.
The two friends said they continue to take things day by day in their business venture to keep it going and growing.
Former CIA director John Brennan (L) and former Director of the Office of National Intelligence James Clapper (R) appearing on CNN on Sunday. Photo: Screencap/CNN
Former CIA director John Brennan and former National Intelligence director James Clapper said on Sunday that President Trump is likely being manipulated by Russian president Vladimir Putin and other foreign governments. The two Obama administration officials appeared on CNNs State of the Union to respond to Trumps comments over the weekend indicating that he still doubted the U.S. intelligence communitys assessment that Russia interfered in last years presidential election.
Speaking with reporters aboard Air Force One on Saturday, Trump suggested that he believed Vladimir Putins denials on the matter. He also denigrated Clapper, Brennan, and former FBI director James Comey as political hacks in what appeared to be an attempt to discredit their agencies conclusions regarding election-meddling. Trump later tried to distance himself from his own comments on Sunday, insisting he did trust U.S. intelligence agencies now that they were being run by members of his administration.
But to Clapper and Brennan, Trumps comments, which echoed the framing Putin has used on the subject, indicated that the president was just being manipulated. Brennan pointed out that Trump was clearly trying to delegitimize the U.S. intelligence communitys assessment, and the former CIA chief was also worried about Trumps concern that Putin felt insulted by the accusations:
I think Mr. Putin is very clever in terms of playing to Mr. Trumps interest in being flattered. [] And I think Mr. Trump is, for whatever reason, either intimidated by Mr. Putin, afraid of what he could do or what might come out as a result of these investigations [into possible collusion between Russia and members of the Trump campaign]. So, its very worrisome. And I think it sends a worrisome, very disturbing signal to our allies and partners who are concerned about Russian interference in their democratic processes as well. So, its either naivete, ignorance or fear, in terms of what Mr. Trump is doing vis-a-vis the Russians.
Clapper said that Trumps bullish attitude about working with Putin was naive or worse, since the likelihood that the Russians are going to pursue like interests with us is slim and none. He added that its perilous to this country to make an assumption that Russia is going to behave with the best interests of the world or certainly the United States in mind. Theyre not.
And while Brennan agreed that relations between the U.S. and Russia need to improve, he said Trump was giving Putin a pass by not tackling the issue with the Russian leader and making sure he knows that Trump knows what really happened. Instead, according to Brennan, the presidents weak response only proves that he can be played by foreign leaders who appeal to his ego and to try to play upon his insecurities, which is very, very worrisome from a national-security standpoint.
In Clappers mind, Trump seems very susceptible to rolling out the red carpet and honor guards and all the trappings and pomp and circumstance that come with the office and that could be used against him by foreign powers.
I think both the Chinese and Russians think they can play him, he said.
Still got it. Photo: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
If you strike Obamacare down, it will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine.
That, so far, is the lesson for the Trump administration, which has done just about everything in its power to weaken, undermine, and subvert the Affordable Care Act and now it must contend with the reality that Americans are not only voting to expand the law but also racing to sign up for it in record numbers.
A government report from last week showed that 601,462 people had enrolled in the Affordable Care Acts individual marketplaces during the first four days of open enrollment, up 79 percent from the same period a year ago. Twenty-three percent of those customers are new to the marketplace.
Its still early in the sign-up period which, thanks to the Trump administration, is only half the length of last years and theres ample reason to be cautious that the final enrollment statistics wont look so rosy. Still, the numbers are remarkable considering the lengths the Trump administration has gone to in order to dissuade Americans from President Obamas signature law. Besides cutting the enrollment period, the Trump administration has eviscerated outreach funding for both advertising and in-person navigators, and has performed suspiciously timed website maintenance.
The administrations anti-Obamacare efforts go well beyond the sign-up process. In October, President Trump announced he would cut off key subsidy payments to insurance companies, a decision designed to boost customers premiums though, perversely, it has made some peoples plans cheaper. He also announced that companies would now be able to forgo birth-control coverage if they had a moral objection to doing so, rolling back an important Obamacare mandate.
President Trump has been straightforward about his sabotage, claiming that Democrats will own the premium increases he has already caused, and insisting at every turn that the law is collapsing under its own weight. And the rest of his administration has been singing the same propagandistic tune. In perhaps the most galling example of the administrations zealotry on the issue, the Health and Human Services Department used taxpayer money to run ads opposing the law its supposed to carry out.
Were making sure that people are aware of their choices and their options. But the reality is Obamacare is not working, said Seema Verma, the head of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, last month.
But someone forgot to tell the voters. While Obamacares roiling individual marketplaces get the most media attention, Medicaid expansion is the component of the law that has brought health insurance to the most Americans. And last week, Maine became the 33rd state to expand the program and the first via referendum in a landslide vote that served as a rebuke to its virulently anti-Obamacare governor. That result has encouraged Medicaid-expansion advocates in redder states like Utah and Idaho, who hope to put the issue to voters next year.
Judging by public-opinion polls, theyll have a good chance of succeeding. Republicans repeated, hamfisted efforts to repeal Obamacare which have ended, for the time being at least, in humiliating failure accomplished what President Obama never could: making the law popular. Polling shows that a majority of Americans now favor Obamacare, an extraordinary turnaround after years of public rejection. Voters are now fully aware that President Trumps plan to offer great health care to all Americans was a sham, and any future attempts to fully dismantle the law will face fierce opposition.
The Trump administration is nowhere near done with its anti-Obamacare agenda. Verma announced last week that she would be open to states rewriting their Medicaid-expansion laws to include work requirements, a provision the Obama administration had blocked. President Trump and other Republicans are still hoping to repeal, or at least weaken, the laws individual mandate, a move that would deal a significant blow to Obamacares structure. The individual marketplaces, so neglected by the administration, also remain trouble spots in some states. The uninsured rate recently ticked up for the first time in years, likely in part because of Trumps negligence strategy.
And yet, all things considered, a year after President Trumps election, the law that has undergone so many near-death experiences is in better shape than almost anyone would have imagined.
The scene in Warsaw. Photo: Janek Skaryzynski/Getty
About 60,000 anti-Islam, anti-immigrant nationalists and fascists trooped through Warsaw on Saturday, marking Polands Independence Day in a striking display of right-wing strength.
Thousands join independence-day parade organized by youth movement seeking ethnically pure Poland https://t.co/tPauJL4Pu0 The Wall Street Journal (@WSJ) November 11, 2017
For the event, the marchers chose the slogan We Want God, a phrase from a Polish religious song that was uttered by President Trump during his visit to Poland in July.
The march, organized by a Polish youth movement, drew extremists from around Europe. The Wall Street Journal reports that banners displayed slogans such as White Europe, Europe Will be White, and Clean Blood. Al Jazeera reports that some of the marchers chants directed expletives at refugees, leftists, liberal media outlets, and the U.S.
As Polands government has veered hard to the right in recent years, the march has become the premier event every Independence Day, supplanting official commemorations in visibility. Polands government appears to be supportive of that development.
It was a beautiful sight, Interior Minister Mariusz Blaszczak said. We are proud that so many Poles have decided to take part in a celebration connected to the Independence Day holiday.
About 5,000 Antifa counterprotesters also gathered; there were no reports of clashes between the two groups.
November 11 marks Polands reemergence as a country in 1918, after 123 years of being ruled variously by Russia, Prussia, and the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
It wasnt me. Photo: Jim Watson/AFP/Getty Images
President Trump claimed on Saturday that he had nothing to do with the Justice Departments handling of the $85.4 billion AT&TTime Warner merger, which reportedly included the potential requirement that AT&T sell off Turner Broadcasting, CNNs parent company, in order to gain approval from antitrust regulators. I didnt make that decision, Trump said to reporters aboard Air Force One on Saturday, it was made by a man whos a very respected person a very, very respected person, likely referring to DOJ antitrust chief Makan Delrahim. Delrahim was among the federal officials who informed AT&T earlier this week that, due to anti-competition concerns, the government would sue to block the merger unless the company divested itself of some of its soon-to-be combined assets, likely including Turner Broadcasting or DIRECTV.
President Trump, arguably the biggest and most powerful critic of CNN in the world, said near the end of last years presidential campaign that the merger was a deal we will not approve in my administration because its too much concentration of power in the hands of too few and that it was an example of the power structure Im fighting. Then in January, Bloomberg reported that Trump was still opposed to the deal, with one Trumpworld confidant explaining that the then-president-elects opposition was, in part, due to his frustration with CNNs coverage of him. One analyst whom Bloomberg spoke with at the time even suggested that AT&T consider selling CNN to avoid Trumps meddling.
Likely referring to his earlier remarks opposing the merger, Trump said on Saturday that I did make a comment as to what I think, further explaining that he felt you should have as many news outlets as you can especially since so many are fake.
I didnt make a statement on it, but I made that statement long before at the very early part. So well see how that it will probably end up being maybe litigation, maybe not. Well see how it all plays out.
Trumps vocal criticism of CNN has hardly abated since he became president, and he has repeatedly accused the network of publishing fake news reports about him and his administration, and has even shared a video of himself attacking a CNN avatar on Twitter.
On Friday, The Wall Street Journal reported that, earlier this year, senior White House adviser Jared Kushner, who is also Trumps son-in-law, met a top executive at Time Warner to complain about CNNs coverage of the Trump campaign. During that meeting, Kushner told the executive, Gary Ginsberg, that CNN should fire 20 percent of its staff because they had failed to correctly analyze the campaign and predict the outcome of the election. Ginsberg rejected the suggestion.
Both Delrahim who said late last year that he didnt see the merger as a major antitrust problem and the White House have denied that Trump or White House officials have attempted to instruct or influence the DOJs decision regarding the merger. Delrahim, a Trump supporter, was recently confirmed to lead the governments antitrust efforts after a stint as a top White House lawyer. DOJ officials told the Journal that plans to challenge the merger predated Delrahims arrival at the agency; but the Journal also reports that the governments demands of AT&T became much more forceful following Delrahims confirmation, though that could be because of legitimate anti-competition fears that emerged over that short time.
In July, however, the New York Times reported that, according to a senior Trump official, White House advisers had discussed using federal approval of the merger as leverage to pressure CNN for more favorable coverage. Whether those discussions became strategy is not known, but AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson said on Thursday that he had no reason to suspect the governments decision was politically motivated, and that he has not been instructed to sell CNN in order to gain approval though he reportedly brought up the CNN issue at a meeting with the Justice Department on Monday.
In another twist, Reuters reported on Friday that none other than 21st Century Fox executive chair Rupert Murdoch had twice called Stephenson, unprompted, in May and again in August to chat about CNN. One source told Reuters that Murdoch had asked if the network was for sale though another source denied that. 21st Century Fox had tried to acquire Time Warner in 2014 and had apparently planned to divest CNN as part of the deal to avoid antitrust issues but their $80 billion offer was rejected.
Stephenson said on Thursday that he will not sell CNN or divest from any other major assets on account of the merger, and that AT&T is prepared to litigate if the government sues to block the merger. Considering Trumps comments and anti-CNN cheerleading, as well as all the other intrigue around possible White House machinations regarding the deal, that court case could prove interesting.
President Trump literally shrugging off Putins meddling denials at a press conference in Vietnam on Sunday. Photo: Screencap/YouTube
A day after he sounded almost indistinguishable from a Russian propaganda outlet, President Trump tried to walk back his comments supporting Vladimir Putins contention that Russia had not interfered in last years U.S. presidential election. Im with our [intelligence] agencies, especially as currently constituted with their leadership, Trump insisted in Vietnam on Sunday.
Aboard Air Force One on Saturday, Trump explained to reporters that President Putin had once again denied that Russia meddled in the election when the two chatted on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit. He says, I didnt do that, and I really believe that when he tells me that, he means it, Trump said. He added that Putin seemed insulted by the accusations and that the meddling allegations were an artificial Democratic hit job that made it difficult for the U.S. to have a good relationship with Russia, which would be a great, great thing.
Trump also took the opportunity to denigrate the Obama administration intelligence officials who concluded that Russia had worked to interfere in the election. Calling them political hacks, he went so far as to suggest that their official assessments on the matter should be compared to Putins very strong statements of denial. Trump ultimately seemed to have concluded that, as Putin has maintained numerous times, the entire issue is a meaningless distraction preventing the U.S. and Russia from having the close relationship they deserve.
Trump dodged a direct question about whether he believed Putins denials, though the rest of his comments made it pretty clear that he did, or at least wanted to. Either way, there wasnt much room to misinterpret Trumps remarks.
Later Saturday, the CIA released a statement making it clear that Director Mike Pompeo disagreed with Trump and Putins assessment. Trumps comments drew plenty of well-deserved scorn and criticism from others, too. Senator John McCains response referred to Putins former profession: Theres nothing America First about taking the word of a KGB colonel over that of the American intelligence community, he said. Elsewhere, media outlets struggled to frame their reports on the remarks based on what Trump could have meant when he said he believed that Putin means his denials, but again: Either Trump is incapable of using words to communicate ideas or he indicated that he backed Putins claims of innocence on Saturday.
At a short press conference with Vietnamese president Tran ai Quang on Sunday in Danang, Trump was given another shot to sound off on the subject. This time, he seems to have been prepped to provide a new, less controversial answer. Taking questions from his press pool, Trump called first on Fox News John Roberts, who proceeded to explain to Trump how his Saturday remarks about Putin had been interpreted (or in Robertss mind, misinterpreted) back home. Roberts then asked Trump, If you could, once and for all, definitively, yes or no, say whether or not you believe that President Putin, and/or Russia, interfered in the election?
Trumps characteristically inarticulate response was hardly a definitive yes or no answer:
What I said and Im surprised theres any conflict on this what I said there is that I believe he believes that, and thats very important for somebody to believe. I believe that he feels that he and Russia did not meddle in the election. As to whether I believe it or not, Im with our agencies especially as currently constituted with their leadership. I believe in our intel agencies, our intelligence agencies Ive worked with them very strongly.
Then, in the middle of saying he stands with Americas intel agencies, Trump recycled one of the talking points he has used in the past to downplay the U.S. intelligence communitys conclusions about Russias meddling. Press reports initially indicated that 17 federal agencies had made the assessment, when in fact, it was only the four main intelligence agencies: the FBI, CIA, NSA, and ODNI. Trump has liked to refer to this as a way to cast doubt on the assessment, when the error wasnt actually relevant to its credibility. On Sunday, the president simply couldnt resist bringing it up again, noting the discrepancy twice.
Trump also elaborated on why he now trusts U.S. intelligence officials because they are now members of his own administration instead of President Obamas. As currently led by fine people, Trump emphasized, I believe very much in our intelligence agencies.
Trump went on to reiterate that he thinks its very important to get along with Russia and other countries because we have a lot of things we want to solve like the North Korea crisis. To that end, he claimed that he didnt want to get into a public argument with Putin at the summit with the press around (though Trumps traveling press pool was barred from attending the APEC summit). Then, as on Saturday, Trump insisted that everyone has suffered enough and its time to move on from the Russian meddling story (which is what Putin has been saying all along):
I think it was very obvious to everybody. I believe that President Putin really feels, and he feels strongly, that he did not meddle in our election. What he believes is what he believes. What I believe is we have to get to work [to solve international problems together] People dont realize, Russia has been very, very heavily sanctioned. They were sanctioned at a very high level. And that took place very recently. Its now time to get back to healing a world that is shattered and broken.
Trump then proceeded to reemphasize how important it was to have a good relationship with Russia, and criticized Hillary Clinton and President Obama for failing to rekindle the relationship ideas he also took to Twitter on Sunday:
When will all the haters and fools out there realize that having a good relationship with Russia is a good thing, not a bad thing. There always playing politics - bad for our country. I want to solve North Korea, Syria, Ukraine, terrorism, and Russia can greatly help! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 12, 2017
Does the Fake News Media remember when Crooked Hillary Clinton, as Secretary of State, was begging Russia to be our friend with the misspelled reset button? Obama tried also, but he had zero chemistry with Putin. Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 12, 2017
On the Sunday morning political shows in the U.S., Trumps surrogates were on the same page. Appearing on CBSs Face the Nation, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin oddly claimed that nobody thinks [Russias meddling] has had any impact on the election. So whatever occurred, there was no impact. So I think the American public is ready to move on to more important issues: tax reform and foreign policy and national security. On ABCs This Week, Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway added that the president is not the chairman of the Board of Elections in this country, hes the president of the United States.
Whatever Trump considers his job to entail in addition to interpreting Putins feelings, more than a year after his election, the president is clearly still unable to fully acknowledge Russias attempts to influence the election for his benefit. Even when he tries, like on Sunday, theres always an aside to sow doubt or an attempt to change the subject. Put another way, at this point, its impossible to really believe that when Trump tells us he agrees that Russia interfered, he means it.
If he did it. Photo: Bill Clark/CQ-Roll Call
As GOP senators and governors continued to repudiate Alabama Senate candidate Roy Moore over allegations that he had sexual contact with teenage girls while he was in his 30s, White House aides went on Sunday morning television to criticize the candidates behavior, too but with a telling caveat.
On ABCs This Week, Martha Raddatz asked White House counselor Kellyanne Conway if she had any doubt about the claims against Moore. Conway responded, The president and others in the Republican Party have made clear that if the allegations are true, this man should step aside, but Ive gone farther than that, adding that everybody should know that conduct is disqualifying. (The president has not actually weighed in on the issue, telling reporters on Saturday that he was too busy reading documents to form an opinion.)
Conway added that Mr. Moore has denied that conduct, and youve got other people out there talking about what did or did not happen many years ago, slippery phrasing that recalls her bosss classic rhetorical device many people are saying.
Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin, who seems to enjoy weighing in on matters well beyond his purview, told CNNs Jake Tapper that if the allegations prove to be true, he should step down. Tapper pressed Mnuchin, arguing that no more definitive proof was bound to come to light, but Mnuchin stuck to his line, saying, People should investigate this issue and get the facts.
Conway and Mnuchins strategy echoed that of many Senate and House Republicans, who are being presented with a growing body of evidence for Moores misbehavior on Saturday, a prosecutor who worked with him said it was common knowledge that hed dated high-school girls as an adult but are holding out for an impossible standard of ironclad verification that will likely never arrive.
Continuing in that vein, Director of Legislative Affairs Marc Short told Meet the Presss Chuck Todd that Moore had a right to defend himself, and that the candidate plans to come forward with more evidence to support his innocence. But Short did allow that theres no Senate seat more important than the issue of child pedophilia.
Perhaps Doug Jones has found his new campaign slogan?
The month of October will linger on in the minds of so many following the two separate fire incidents in southwestern Uganda.
In one of the schools, girls set their dormitory ablaze because the school authorities had denied them the liberty to go for night preps with their male classmates. In the other school, the fire was an act of vengeance upon prefects who other students considered puppets of the administration.
Memories of the unfortunate Budo Junior School fire are still in our minds. For others, the Kibwetere cult inferno is a recollection they still struggle with many years after. It is mind-blowing for our children to plan and set themselves or their colleagues ablaze.
We definitely will not sit anymore with hands folded as though it is business as usual. There is a problem! We may choose to believe it or not, but that does not take away the fact that the problem is real and glaring at us.
The world is grappling with terrorism; many a times leaving people wondering how on earth one takes delight in mass killing even if it means that he/she dies with the victims.
When I heard about the two separate incidences, I could not avoid the bitter thought that probably we were raising self-made terrorists, though they were not enrolled in any recognized terrorism school.
If not this, how do we explain the tragedy of adolescents that plan their own death in the name of making a statement to the school?
This again took my mind to the so many times I had tried to poke my nose into the social ills that are eating up our society, largely because of the fallen family unit. I was looked at as overtly perfectionist or unaware that we are living in modern days.
If modernity is about raising idiotic offspring, then I will comfortably remain in my conservative world if this will make a small contribution in raising children with an ounce of brain material in this morally degenerated world.
We must all be concerned at the trend of things in society today. The recklessly raised child you do not give a damn about could be your prospective daughter/son-in-law. As long as our children are going to share life on this planet, we all must be concerned about how they are raised.
The bitter truth is that the good ones will not relocate to their own planet leaving behind the wretched and uncultured.
As long as they are to live together, it is our responsibility to train them in a way that will inculcate humaneness in their lives.
If you were a parent in any of the said schools, how would it feel waking up to such news that your child is dead or critically injured because of a handful unreasonable brats fighting over non- issues? The pain and trauma are definitely unimaginable.
But how many times have we read or heard about innocent children dying because of strikes or bullying in schools, and we just brush it off because our children are not affected?
It is high time we realized that the deep grounding to transform our children is our responsibility. It starts at home, not the reverse. As we send our children to be shaped and molded by the teachers, what have we done as parents?
You may never know what your children may suffer at the hands of the poorly brought up colleagues.
About three years ago, Rose Muloni graduated with a first-class degree in Bio-Chemistry.
This did not come as a surprise because her performance had always been far above average throughout her school life.
Whereas most bright students will usually excel in a particular category of subjects, Muloni was lucky to excel at both humanities and sciences. She says she wrote her history papers as though the story was her original script, and did mathematical calculations as though she invented the calculator.
To say Muloni was a gem would be an understatement. Even the bright students referred to her as an academic wonder.
Year after year, she won academic merit awards and prestigious bursaries. If any parents are proud of their children, Mulonis must be honored to have brought forth such a bright girl.
Usually, it is uncommon to have brains and gorgeousness in one package, but Muloni had both. She is one of the scenarios where one would be tempted to say God was unfair.
It is easy to assume that with such attributes, she has it all. Having graduated with excellent grades, with a good managerial position at her workplace and driving a posh car, what else would a 28-year-old want?
Her biggest dilemma, however, is that all her potential suitors think she is too bright for them. You would not blame the men either. Society has branded bright girls as unmanageable; rendering them non-marriage material.
I had failed to understand why most potential men shun me after our first interaction, until one told me in a text message that I outreasoned him on our first date, Muloni says.
POLICY ON EDUCATION
According to the Uganda Bureau of Statistics education sector gender profiles statistics, the governments policy provides for equal opportunities in education and other sectors for both sexes.
The government, through the ministry of Gender, Labour and Social Development formulated the National Action Plan on Women and the National Gender Policy to help advocate for gender equity at all levels in all aspects of life.
The ministry of Education and Sports, in collaboration with the government and the international community, have in addition put in place various initiatives. The policy emphasizes equal opportunity for both boys and girls. It focuses on promoting gender parity in enrolment, retention and performance in education.
For some of these policies, however, the reality on ground leaves a lot to be desired. Factors including, but not limited to, the socially constructed roles of females have a major effect on their school performance and finishing rates. In most cases, girls are expected to do domestic chores (sometimes at the expense of school), and are vulnerable to early pregnancies.
Findings further reveal that on average, whereas the literacy rate is higher for girls than boys at primary three, the reverse is true at primary six.
However, numeracy remains a challenge for the girls at both primary three and primary six, and hence needs to be addressed. Within the age group 10 to 19 where the upper primary to secondary population is found, more females than males were reported to be literate. However, the other age groups do not show wide variations in the literacy rates between males and females.
Overall, the gap in the literacy rates grows wider among the sexes as ones age increases beyond 20. There is need to appreciate the implication of the social roles played by both boys and girls within our communities, with respect to the wide gap in the literacy rates. In the age cohort of 15 to 24, findings showed that males are generally more literate than females.
This could be explained by the obstacles and persistent resistance to gender equality in literacy, especially in the rural areas where traditional attitudes are predominant in addition to the inadequate education infrastructure and materials to meet the ever-increasing demand.
These statistics put into perspective why any girl beating the odds to keep in school and perform better than boys would be one out of the ordinary.
MENS PERSPECTIVE
Asked if he could marry a girl who is evidently brighter than him, Joseph Mugisha, a marketing executive, says that is a no-go area for him. He justifies his answer with the assertion that such girls are overconfident and very strict with life.
Does that spell insecurity on the part of the man? Mugisha insists that as a man, he wants to always be in charge of his home, and bringing in someone brighter than him might put his position in the home at risk.
Steve Mulawa, who is now thinking of settling with Miss Right, says his search excludes the Miss Bright type. Asked if he would not want to have his children share on the brightness in the DNA, he shyly smiles, as he responds: I have not seen many girls with beauty and brains. Most bright girls are not beautiful, Mulawa says.
When I challenged him that his argument is a mere cliche, he insisted that on average, you will find a handful of women who are physically beautiful and also bright.
Mulawa adds that he would choose beauty for brightness; after all, my wife is not coming to sit for any exam at home.
ARE BRIGHT GIRLS ACTUALLY COMPLICATED?
The adage that bright girls are usually overly controlling and unnecessarily too sure of themselves could actually be a mere social construct. Women were culturally meant to be in the kitchen and homemakers in most African cultural settings.
With the generational shift, women are no longer confined to the kitchen. Some have taken the woman power a notch higher by occupying high-profile positions. In fact, most women bring a bigger loaf of bread to the table in some families.
Unfortunately, some men are still grappling with coming to terms with this fact. They live in the shadow of deception that women are still in the position they occupied centuries ago.
For the women who have hit the glass ceiling, the temptation to brand them unusual, quite often with a negative connotation, is real. Having fought their way into what ideally was a mans territory sets them apart as more than just women.
Does that mean bright women risk missing out on some societal joys? The reality is that in this chauvinistic society, bright women still struggle to gain acceptance especially from the males.
Quite often, you will hear people ask questions like who is the man in her life? when a woman achieves something. The questions do not come because people want to pat the man in her life on the shoulder with congratulation, but, rather, to ironically sympathize with him.
Some women have suffered to this effect that no man is willing to take them on as wives. It gets even worse when such women get marital challenges and society does not even care about the mans responsibility in the family woes, but just conclude with lines of is a bright woman manageable anyway?
SHOULD BRIGHT WOMEN BE WORRIED?
Naome Komugisha, who was the best student in her entire secondary school life, says she is not bothered about what names her male counterparts or society may choose to give her. She adds that the Miss Bright idea is just in the mind.
To be a bright human being is worth being happy about irrespective of whether one is male or female. It is immaterial of who is bright, says Komugisha.
The underlying factor is that the bright person is useful to society.
She adds that the Miss Bright brand is not manifested in old age. She recalls that even back in primary school, she had to endure being isolated and nicknames like bookworm because of her academic performance.
Komugisha says its an unfortunate occurrence which will hopefully die out gradually as society continues to come to terms with the fact that both males and females are equal.
WHEN IS SHE TOO SMART FOR HIM?
The issue of a womans level of brightness, and whether this is a threat to a man, remains a question about the mans esteem. If some men still feel challenged by a woman excelling in what they feel is their territory, it is a question of what defines such mens worth.
It is a shame for anyone in this century to think of potential in relation to gender. Bright women, too, can make good friends, spouses or mothers.
Academic excellence may contribute to reinforcing ones esteem but cannot, as a single factor, form ones character.
Despite the social stigma tagged to bright women, they continue to soar high in career and positions of influence.
The value of Miss Bright, just like any human being, should be defined by her character, not the scores on her report card.
prim.tumu@gmail.com
President Yoweri Kaguta Museveni has promised to follow Tanzanian President John Pombe Magufuli's modus operandi to fight corruption in Uganda.
Addressing a joint press conference at State Lodge in Masaka on Friday, Magufuli said corruption cannot be fought successfully without the involvement of the general public. He also hastened to add that the fight needs decisive action from the top leadership of the country.
Magufuli's intolerance to corruption has won him admiration within East Africa and worldwide two years after he took office as president of Tanzania in 2015. He said corruption had partly persisted in Tanzania because the past leadership did not face it squarely.
President Museveni with Tanzania President John Pombe Magufuli
Magufuli who has only been out of his country, four times since he took office in November 2015, said he immediately slapped a ban on foreign travels by government officials and ministers.
He said by leading as an example on limiting foreign travels, the country has been able to save lots of money that has been diverted into development. Government officials in Tanzania need clearance from Magufuli himself for travels abroad.
He said fighting corruption requires direction and determination by the top leadership like the presidency and it also requires a leadership that is ready to enforce it.
The press conference almost turned into an anti-corruption lecture as Dr Magufuli outlined what his leadership has done in fighting corruption.
Museveni, who, has decade after decade declared war on corruption albeit unsuccessfully, appeared to have been attentively listening while some government officers present would occasionally clap and stamp their feet on the ground as Magufuli went on outlining some of the benefits from his intolerance against corruption and corrupt officers.
He said the money saved from purging the government of ghost workers, restricted travels abroad and other anti-corruption initiatives has been used to increase the country's development budget from 26 per cent to 40 per cent.
Magufuli said it is from such savings that the government of Tanzania is funding its 726 kilometer Standard Gauge Railway at a cost of Tshs 7.1 trillion.
Museveni in April this year vowed that all people involved in corruption if caught will be exposed and dealt with according to the law. The threat was made after the arrest of then minister of state for Labour, Employment and Industrial Relations Herbert Kabafunzaki. He said Kabafunzaki's arrest was is just a taste of what is to come.
Museveni has however not arrested or sacked any other corrupt persons in government compared to what his visiting counterpart is doing in Tanzania. Museveni personally admitted to not doing enough and congratulated Dr Magufuli for being intolerant to the corrupt.
Museveni said Magufuli is succeeding in the war on corruption because he is not entertaining bureaucratic methods when dealing with the corrupt. Magufuli said corruption is yet to be eliminated from Tanzania but he said it is being fought heavily.
"Corruption is a really an enemy, but President Magufuli has given us new impetus. Even me, I'm picking new things from him which you will hear about in the coming days", Museveni said.
One of the journalists at the press conference seemed to anger the Tanzanian leader when he asked whether Magufuli's fight against corruption was not violating the rights of those that have been summarily sacked over alleged corruption.
Magufuli said the government has to choose whether to continue with human rights or continue with corruption.
The Tanzanian president said they have built special courts to handle corruption cases and that the aggrieved parties have options of appealing in other courts if they are not satisfied by the decisions of the special courts.
On his part, Museveni observed that the corrupt are abusing the rights of majority of the citizens.
"The corrupt people are the ones abusing the human rights of everybody and the issue is, that the institutions are distorted like the courts and so on instead of defending the rights of the right people, they are defending the corrupt people", Museveni said.
MUSEVENI, UGANDA'S UNAPPRECIATED PROPHET
Magufuli praised the Uganda-Tanzania relations saying; of the four times he has been out Tanzania since taking over office in 2015, two trips have been to Uganda.
"I have been out of Tanzania four times but the two times I have been out, it has been to visit Uganda. This shows how important the relationship between Tanzania and Uganda is to me, Magufuli said.
Idi Amin was in Uganda but he did not discover the oil. All the past Presidents did not see the oil but the experienced Museveni discovered it and using his professionals, he studied it and began the process of drilling it. A prophet is not honoured in his country but back in Tanzania, we are so grateful to Mr Museveni, Magufuli added.
Museveni said Uganda chose Tanzania over Kenya for the $3.5 billion oil pipeline because of terrain and compensation costs. He said Tanzanians are "not as greedy as Ugandans". He asked Ugandans to fully embrace the opportunities that the 1,444km UgandaTanzania crude oil pipeline would bring.
BURUNDI PEACE TALKS
Meanwhile, the two presidents condemned the decision by the International Criminal Court (ICC) to open a war crimes investigation into Burundi, saying it will likely undermine regional peace initiatives.
The two presidents said the ICC decision is likely divert them from peace-making process. Museveni is of the view that the ICC investigation be halted for the peace process to be given a chance.
"Investigation of the Burundi situation, we condemn it because it is diverting us from peace making. What we want is peace making in Burundi. Wed arranged that later on, we would have truth and reconciliation commission which could go into all those issues but after peace. Anything that goes into disturbing the peace, we shall not support it and I will consult other East African leaders and communicate officially to the ICC. They should stop this unilateral actions without consultations. Why dont they consult us? This is our region, these are our people, we have more information", said Museveni.
Museveni who doubles as chair of the East African Community (EAC) has been working with the former Tanzanian President, Benjamin Mkapa to bring the warring parties in Burundi to talks. Magufuli concurred with Museveni condemning the latest ICC decision on Burundi.
"This process is actually going to disturb the stability of Burundi instead of making it in the proper way. After all the facilitator is a Mkapa", he said.
Mkapa and his team of mediators on Burundi peace talks are expected to hold another round of talks during the third week of November.
ICC judges Chang-ho Chung, Antoine Kesia-Mbe Mindua, and Raul C. Pangalangan of pretrial chamber III issued the decision to open an investigation on October 25. The decision was under seal to protect victims and potential witnesses.
While the two Uganda and Tanzania leaders are opposed to the ICC decision, Human Rights Watch in a statement said the decision by ICC gives victims hope that those responsible for grave crimes over the past two years could be held to account.
In late April 2015, the announcement by the Burundi President Pierre Nkurunziza that he would run for a third term ignited protests in the capital, Bujumbura, and later in other locations.
The unrest led to thousands of deaths, alleged torture of opposition figures and over 300,000 refugees fleeing into neighbouring countries.
Burundi became a state party to the ICC in December 2004. Following its notification to the UN secretary general of its intent to leave the court in October 2016, on October 27, 2017, Burundi became the first member country to officially withdraw from the ICC.
The pretrial chamber found that the court has jurisdiction over crimes allegedly committed while Burundi was an ICC state party.
The judges also concluded that the prosecutor is authorized "to extend her investigation to crimes which were committed before 26 April 2015 or continue after 26 October 2017 if certain legal requirements are met."
So far, the ICC prosecutor has identified the crimes against humanity of murder and attempted murder, imprisonment or severe deprivation of liberty, torture, rape, forced disappearance, and persecution allegedly committed in Burundi, and in certain instances outside of the country by Burundi nationals.
In September, a UN-mandated commission of inquiry indicated that there were reasonable grounds to believe that crimes against humanity have been committed in Burundi, including murder, torture, rape, imprisonment, and persecution, against a backdrop of almost total impunity.
The commission urged the ICC to investigate these violations. The ICC according to Human Rights Watch is meant to act as a court of last resort, stepping in only when national courts cannot or will not prosecute the most serious international crimes.
Hundreds of people have been tortured, killed, raped, or disappeared in Burundi since 2015. The Burundian justice system, deeply corrupt and manipulated by ruling party officials, almost never conducts credible investigations or brings those responsible for these crimes to justice. Hundreds of arbitrarily arrested people have been detained on trumped-up charges.
House and Home, a temporary exhibit, has opened at the North Dakota Heritage Center & State Museum in Bismarck.
A free public program observing the exhibit opening will feature NASA scientist Jon Rask, originally from Mandan, presenting The Intersection of Space and Home: How Our Experience in North Dakota Shapes the Nations Space Program at 7 p.m. Tuesday. Find out how frontier lifestyles, farming, ranching, the prairie, cold winters and even the Bakken formation are influencing the nations space program.
Rask is a research scientist in the Space Biosciences Research Branch at NASA Ames Research Center. He serves as the director of the NASA Space Life Sciences Training Program and is a co-investigator for the University of North Dakota Inflatable Lunar and Mars Habitat in support of NASAs future human missions to Mars.
Through photographs, old advertisements, historic documents, vintage household items, and first-hand accounts of home life, the "House and Homes" exhibit will demonstrate the familiar, yet complex, world of home.
The North Dakota Heritage Center is open 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday and 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday and Sunday. Admission is free.
As the paralyzing strike called by medical doctors enters its second week, their leader, Dr Ekwaro Obuku, has rebuked the government for resorting to threats instead of pursuing constructive talks.
Speaking on the Capital Gang, a Saturday morning political radio talk show on Capital FM, Obuku said they will not be returning to work until their issues are attended to -- despite a Thursday night ultimatum issued by the government, through minister of Health Jane Ruth Aceng, for doctors to resume work or face the sack.
Aceng, herself a medical doctor, has declared the Uganda Medical Association (UMA) headed by Obuku not legally mandated to negotiate for medical workers.
On Saturday, she refused to reveal her next course of action. She told The Observer in an interview: Wait and see what I will do. I dont want to tell you my secret and you release it in the papers.
Doctors at Mulago hospital
During a hastily arranged press conference on Thursday night, Aceng denounced the industrial action as illegal and ordered the doctors to return to work or face disciplinary action.
The involvement of UMA in influencing the public service activities by calling on doctors to strike is illegal and should cease henceforth and the perpetrators should be treated as trespassers, Aceng said.
The minister has largely been ignored. Her threat of disciplinary action against the striking doctors seems to have instead strengthened their resolve.
Aceng said while the health workers demands are genuine, they must exercise their rights with restraint and patience to allow government handle their issues in a phased manner.
But Obuku called out the minister.
We were about to agree with the office of the prime minister, he said but then the ministry of health [has] poured cold water on the deal. Threatening will not work. We call upon the government to end the strike because it is the chief organiser of strikes by not meeting the demands of health workers.
Obuku said medics will not accept governments well-rehearsed excuse of having no money to meet their demands. He said the politicians should stop hoodwinking the public that there are no resources to effect a pay rise for doctors.
I want parliamentarians to jump over tables and throw chairs in order to pass the health budget when it is around 15 percent. Doctors have decided to conduct this industrial action because life was being lost excessively [because of poor working conditions] and we are saying that as vanguards of the health sector, we should be the first ones to stand up because we have also lost doctors to preventable diseases, Obuku said.
Instead of resident district commissioners and the controversial State House health monitoring unit (HMU) wasting money spying on doctors, Obuku said, government should be looking for a peaceful resolution to the impasse.
Dr Ekwaro Obuku
Speaking on the same show, Sister Florence Abati Abalo, a nursing officer working with HMU, said the doctors timing of the strike was bad, especially before they exhausted all channels of dialogue.
Nurses constitute 65 percent of the health workers. We hoped that if the doctors sat down together with us and discussed a way forward of how to organise this strike, we would have agreed to hold it. The president is willing to listen to them; the strike of health workers means life and lives have already been lost, Abalo said.
She also added that doctors knew what they were signing up to when they accepted to work with government. However, panelist Abdul Katuntu (MP for Bugweri) said doctors have every right to withdraw their labour when they feel their working conditions are not favorable.
He said Ugandas biggest problem is the duplication of roles where ministry work is done by units within State House.
The president is running a double government. You create another structure, you put in too much money which should go to the ministry of health, Katuntu said.
Last week, the doctors said they can return to work as negotiations on their demands continue if three key conditions were met.
These are the disbandment of a State House anti-corruption operation directed against their fraternity, sorting out the perennial problems facing medical interns, and the payment of various duty allowances.
Dr Obuku told The Observer in an interview last week that health workers have been humiliated by HMU whose work methods he described as draconian.
The doctor-to-patient ratio in Uganda is among the worst in the world with 32,000 patients for every available doctor.
The Ugandan doctor is not valued by [his/her] government; thats why many are running to other African countries for greener pastures, Obuku told this newspaper.
We are spending much more money in private health insurance schemes for State House, cabinet, statutory authorities, Obuku said.
In their demand, the doctors want the salary of an entry-level doctor to be increased from Shs 1.1 million to Shs 8.5 million, while that of a senior consultant who is currently at Shs 3.4 million be increased to Shs 45 million.
bakerbatte@observer.ug
It is now a common trend in our courts for suspects who have been acquitted or released on bail to be rearrested by security operatives and be driven off to unknown locations.
The latest of this trend happened on November 7, 2017 at Nakawa chief magistrates court when four of the seven suspects charged with the murder of Afande Andrew Felix Kaweesi were rearrested by plainclothes persons shortly after being released on mandatory bail.
This trend is now forcing suspects released to stealthily flee from court premises for fear of being rearrested on apparently fresh charges against them.
The question, however, is: if the police, in its so-called investigations, deem it fit to bring fresh charges against these suspects, why wait until the suspects have been freed to arrest them again?
The answer to this question is that the police and other security agencies are blatantly abusing court processes. What is more appalling is that the director of public prosecutions, who is an officer of court, is complicit to this abuse.
Take the example of the seven Kaweesi murder suspects: for the past 180 or so days, the DPP has failed to commit them for trial before the High court (clearly because of lack of evidence to support the charges), leaving the magistrate with no other choice but to release the suspects on bail as required by Article 23 (6) (c) of the Constitution.
If police honestly had fresh charges against these suspects, why not bring them within the 180 days? Did the so-called investigations yield results on the day the suspects were to be freed?
Basing on this trend, clearly, the so-called fresh charges are not only malicious but also brought in utmost bad faith.
Surprisingly, judicial officers seem to be condoning the process of court to be abused with impunity. Court should be used properly, honestly and in good faith.
The judiciary should not only condemn these acts, but also join in to stop such abuse of the justice system.
Raphael Okiot,
okiotr@gmail.com.
Lets fight skimpy dressing in teens
Looking at the way girls dress these days, I wonder whether Ethics and integrity minister Simon Lokodo is in the country or not.
In some schools, holidays have already begun and teenagers are on the loose. Fr Lokodo should be on the alert.
Schools too must revisit their designs because some uniforms are very immoral. We can only stop this if we rehabilitate children starting at home. Together, we can make Uganda morally upright.
Timothy Kitasse,
0775852575.
Ugandans cant afford hydro electricity
On November 8, 2017, the New Vision reported that the government has flagged off the extension of electricity to rural areas in 13 districts of Acholi, Lango and Teso sub-regions.
The program is worth $16m and expects to connect 15,000 homesteads to the national grid. With the high levels of poverty in these sub-regions and other parts of the country, where people live below the poverty line of Shs 4,500, it is very clear that even if government extended electricity in rural areas and also gave free connections, most homesteads will not manage monthly electricity bills.
Lets consider other sources of energy that do not require monthly subscriptions such as solar power.
Balach Bakundane,
Afiego research associate.
letters@observer.ug
The debate about whether to amend article 102(b) of the Constitution to lift the presidential age limit continues but no one seems to focus on the lost opportunities for Uganda.
The ruling NRM has drawn the line and its clear that without its founding leader Yoweri Kaguta Museveni, it could crumble if one listens keenly to the statements being made by some of its key leaders.
For instance, the NRM, or rather government chief whip Ruth Nankabirwa, asked a journalist to tell her if there is a single political party that would legislate itself out of power.
In other words, failure to amend article 102(b) would directly mean the NRM is losing power. Indeed, her fears are not farfetched. The dominance of Museveni over the years has blocked any possible successors from emerging.
Those that have tried were fought from the onset. The lack of internal democracy in the ruling party has also blocked the vibrancy that one would expect within a political party.
In fact, many pundits have repeatedly said that if Museveni retired, the centre would implode and the NRM would have several splinter groups and that some members would even opt to return to their original political parties. This would be a great loss to the young generation and the country at large.
So, what are the lost opportunities for the NRM in that kind of situation? The party has failed to ensure continuity, not only for itself, but for the country at large.
Some NRM members who do not want to be quoted have quietly suggested that if the Constitution is amended, Museveni would use the 2021-2026 term to organize the party. One would wonder why he has failed to do that for many years that he has hard full control.
Its widely known that a political party built around an individual instead of its ideology and membership is bound to suffer from the founders syndrome.
At a given point, the NRM might follow the same trajectory the Kenya African National Union took. NRM leaders who believe in a vibrant political party and the future of Uganda should start internal mobilization to reform the party and prepare it for a transition.
They can begin now by pushing for a transitional committee and, if they are equal stakeholders in the party, their views must be listened to. There will be consequences at the start, but this will result in a more organized, stable and vibrant political party
Turning to the opposition, have they taken into account the fact that using its numbers and other measures, the NRM may have their way on the age limit? If yes, are they preparing better to face off with Museveni again?
My answer is a big no. The opposition is still sharply divided yet they need unity to convince other people, especially from the ruling party, to join them. The bitterness within the opposition fold can at times leave one wondering if they would, in fact, provide a better alternative or not.
Currently, they are united under the red ribbon campaign popularly known as Togikwatako. This campaign against the plans to lift the presidential age limit has captured the support even in some NRM strongholds.
Has the opposition thought about growing this unity and perhaps build a national red ribbon alliance? If they are not thinking about that or planning to do that, then this will also be a lost opportunity.
Most of the NRM members who will most likely support lifting the age limit due to pressure will face it rough at the next elections. A well-organized opposition would now be drawing up strategies targeting such constituencies and who to jointly front. This would be an opportunity for them to bring about the change they preach or to at least reduce the dominance of the NRM in parliament.
The opposition should also start thinking outside the box; if the current top leaders cannot deliver, why not consider a wild card as a presidential candidate?
If the top leaders of the opposition truly believe in the liberation message they are spreading, then they should be able to overcome their cheap disagreements and embrace and rally behind a new candidate who might be able to provide a fresher platform and agenda for the opposition.
As this debate on the age limit continues, from whichever point you look at it, there are great opportunities for both the ruling party and the opposition that should not be wasted.
The author is a journalist and chief executive officer at BuzyMinds Ltd.
In Charles Dickens novel titled Hard Times, the author satirizes the education system, which intended to crash imaginative faculties of pupils and promote the learning of dry facts at the expense of other pursuits.
It was an abomination for children to attend circus performances where there was life, imagination and amusement.
What mattered was the mastery of figures and transforming those skills for the greater good for the greatest happiness of the greatest numbers.
This system turned children into lifeless beings whose social ranking in society was determined by how well they mastered the figures or facts. Facts, figures and averages, and nothing else, Dickens derides.
A similar and dangerous situation is creeping in Ugandas education system. What is worse for Uganda is that whereas the Dickensian times emphasized figures at the expense of imaginative pursuit, for Uganda, the pursuit for academic excellence has been driven by cheating exams.
For the last two months, the media has been awash with news about the leakage of national examinations for O-level schools. What was even more alarming was that exams leaked through social media.
Who is leaking them? Nobody specifically can be pinned for this crime. But some claim disgruntled officers at Uganda National Examinations Board (Uneb) are doing it.
There is speculation that some employees have a score to settle with their new boss, Dan N Odongo. His ascent to the top seat has won him friends and foes alike.
So, the foes have devised a sinister plot to leak the exams so that the appointing authority looks at him as incompetent.
Whereas that may hold some water, I would like to believe that the problem lies with failure to recognize that education is a public good, and not a commercial service which has to be marketed and sold with all the aggressiveness of entrepreneurs.
The leakage of exams says a lot about how we look at education. What is the purpose of education? Why do we send our children to a certain school, and not the other? It also speaks volumes about the decadence of our moral and social values.
What values do we expect to impart in our children when we take them to school?
Teaching used to be one of the most valued professions in Uganda. Not any more. Education has ceased being a public good which ought be distributed fairly and for purposes of improving ones life.
It is now a commercial service driven by aggressive profit-seeking entrepreneurs. And because it has become an enterprise, the country must brace itself for the attendant negative spinoffs.
The learners who are the supposed beneficiaries of this modern education have become the first casualties. The proliferation of private schools comes with negative ripple effects.
Schools must make money. And how do they make money? The pupils must all pass with flying colours. If it is a primary school, out of 30 candidates who sit primary leaving examinations (PLE), at least 28 must pass with aggregate 4. How do you achieve this? The owners and teachers must be creative. And how do they become creative? They must cheat.
Whenever examination results are released by Uneb, school owners or head teachers make a mad dash to media houses to have their schools and best candidates profiled. Others even cook and exaggerate figures of their learners performance.
I recall one head teacher of a little-known school who came to The Observer offices and presented results inconsistent with those released by Uneb.
Without any justification, he wanted The Observer to stick with his set of results and discard what Uneb had released in respect of his school. He was told that if he felt very strongly that Uneb had made a mistake, then he could pay for advertising space to publish what he called true results. He didnt take this option.
The values we hold as a newspaper, integrity being one of them, could not allow us publish this mans forgeries. But later we learnt he was able to persuade other newspapers to publish his falsehoods.
That is what stiff competition in the education sector does to the lives of our children. The entrepreneurs have hijacked the delivery of this public good. Learners are no longer educated but vigorously drilled to pass exams. How sad!
Children have lost confidence in their abilities. They cannot attempt any challenge in life without being aided or without expecting favours. Before they appear for job interviews, their background check includes the possibility of bribing those on the interviewing panel.
If they dont offer bribes, the parent would try to influence the process through behind-the-curtains manoeurvres!
Cheating and use of unfair advantage continues throughout their lives. The entrepreneurs have further stratified children into categories of failures and educated ones.
Worst, education now appears to be designed for the few that are intellectually and financially stronger. And this leaves the privileged feeling superior while the rural poor, studying under mango trees and unroofed classrooms, feel more inferior and ignored.
What kind of society are we building?
The author is the business development director at The Observer Media Limited.
GREENWICH A Veterans Day presentation at the Greenwich Free Library looked at World War I from the perspective of Germans and the Greenwich-Easton home front.
Historian Sandy McReynolds opened the program at 11 a.m., the hour at which the Armistice took effect on Nov. 11, 1918, effectively ending what was then known as the Great War.
Local accounts of the time recalled Americas participation in the war as a time of white-hot patriotism, when we were all Americans, McReynolds said.
Walter Grom, a member of the librarys board of trustees, is a German-American who had several relatives on the German side. His mothers father, Walter Flocke, was killed at the Second Battle of the Somme in 1916. His step-grandfather, a shoemaker by trade, was assigned to the air squadron of German flying ace Oswald Boelcke, where he put his skills to use repairing the aircrafts canvas skins.
He had it relatively good, Grom said. He was never in the trenches. Grom showed photographs of aircraft, aviators, and soldiers from his step-grandfathers collection.
A family friend served on a German submarine. During a sea battle, his submarine was rammed and began sinking. The crew managed to get it back to the surface and limped to a port in neutral Spain, where they were interned. After surreptitious repairs, they escaped the harbor, navigated the treacherous Straits of Gibraltar and crossed the Mediterranean to Trieste, an Austrian port on the Adriatic. They were heroes, Grom said. Kaiser Franz Josef, Austria-Hungarys ruler, came to congratulate them personally.
Groms father, a German immigrant, owned a bar in Schoharie where young Walter often listened to stories of German and other war veterans and refugees. Many of the veterans suffered from what would today be diagnosed as traumatic brain injuries from the concussion of artillery shells and PTSD from their war experiences, he said.
The United States didnt enter the war until 1917, almost three years after it started and after strenuous attempts at home to keep the United States out. We were suckered into the war, according to the German-American attitude, Grom said. If anyone was responsible for the war, it was Kaiser Wilhelm (Germanys emperor). He was a nut case.
Grom has made many trips to Europe and visited some of the battlefields. Many areas are still off-limits because of the danger from unexploded poison gas and artillery shells.
War just kind of lasts, he said.
The enormous cemeteries are popular tourist stops, where visitors leave tributes to family members who fell in the war. On one visit, Grom told his son Robert, This is the harvest of war all these rocks.
Greenwich and Easton organizations began collecting relief supplies and money for French and Belgian civilians at the outbreak of the war, McReynolds said. At least 241 men and two women from the two towns did wartime service. 12 men died, more from disease than battlefield injuries.
Civilians were encouraged to contribute funds to the war effort through Liberty Loans. The two towns gave almost $1.4 million, worth $22.3 million today. The local newspaper published a list every week of who had donated and how much. That was very motivational, McReynolds said.
The Greenwich railroad station was the departure point for enlistees from southern Washington County. They had a long journey ahead of them and often found scanty supplies when they arrived at their camps. The Willard Mountain Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution, the Greenwich Womens Club and other charitable groups saw them off with boxed meals, warm socks and clothing and other necessities.
All the local industries played a part in the war, McReynolds said. The Dunbarton Flax Spinning Co. continued to pay its male employees who had gone to war $20 a month. The mill replaced the men with young women, many of whom also had small children. To accommodate them, the mill opened a day nurserya novel idea at the time.
After the war, the Greenwich Womens Club organized a memorial service for the areas 12 fallen men and planted 12 trees at the railroad station, now an apartment building.
The program was a joint presentation of the Willard Mountain DAR chapter and the librarys Gill Room, a collection of local history. McReynolds said the Gill Room is interested in any veterans story, from any war.
GLENS FALLS A proposal to renovate the old Look TV building downtown has gotten the green light.
The Planning Board on Tuesday approved the application to renovate the building at the corner of Glen and Park streets.
Were really excited to move forward, said Joe Serrins, one of the co-owners of the building.
Serrins is a New York City-based architect who grew up in Glens Falls.
He and another native, Connecticut-based orthopedic surgeon Dan George, bought the building in December for $475,000.
The renovations will include new stairs and an elevator and improvements to the facade. In addition, the plan includes reconfiguring the parking lot, adding a new building entrance from the Park Street parking lot with a canopy, and installing new windows facing the parking lot on the ground floor. The renovation project is estimated to cost about a half-million dollars.
The plan calls for retail on the first floor, according to Serrins. The second and third floor would be used for office space, or possibly apartments.
The next step is to obtain the building permit. Serrins said he hopes the renovations could take place over the next six to nine months.
Were hoping to have the top two floors occupied this summer, he said.
The building was once home to R.G. Landry. Later, it housed Look TVs downtown television studio until late 2011, when the property fell into foreclosure.
Planning Board Chairman Daniel Bruno praised the project.
Were happy to have you back, more than happy to have the investment. Its another piece of the puzzle, he said. Its going to fit very nicely downtown with the developments that are going on.
In other business, the board approved the architectural changes to the building at 28-30 Elm St., which will become the new home of Hanks Quality Flooring.
Hank Marler said he plans to beautify the outside of the building by adding some color stonework, installing some tempered glass, planting new shrubbery and installing a stoop and canopy.
I think youll be pleased a year from now, he said.
Also planned are new aluminum doors and new windows to replace the single-pane uninsulated glass windows.
The new location will have twice as much space as the business current Upper Glen Street location.The board tabled an application by Argyle Cheese Farmer to move its cheese and yogurt manufacturing operations to space at 7 Pruyns Island. It would keep its family farm in Argyle.Planning Board member Peter Ethan Hall said the applicants, Marge and Dave Randles, have been working on a sewer issue to make sure that their operations discharge will be accepted by the citys sewage treatment plant.
A pair of former US intelligence chiefs blasted President Donald Trump Sunday after he attacked them a day earlier while discussing his recent conversation with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper said Sunday on CNN"s "State of the Union" that Trump's downplaying of the threat posed by Russia's meddling in last year's election was dangerous to US national security and allows countries like Russia and China to "play" the President. Former CIA Director John Brennan said Trump is allowing Putin to get away with Russia's efforts to disrupt the presidential election.
Speaking alongside Brennan, Clapper said: "The threat posed by Russia, as John just said, is manifest and obvious. To try to paint it in any other way is, I think, astounding, and in fact, poses a peril to this country."
Clapper, a CNN analyst, was responding to Trump's mixed comments about alleged Russian interference in the 2016 election.
'Giving Putin a pass'
Brennan said Trump was in effect "giving Putin a pass," which invited other countries to seek to sway Trump.
Clapper concurred, saying, "I do think both the Chinese and the Russians think they can play him."
Brennan said Putin's apparent success with Trump was due to his use of flattery and Brennan's suspicion that Trump "for whatever reason" might be "intimidated" by Putin.
"It's either naivete, ignorance or fear in terms of what Mr. Trump is doing vis-a-vis the Russians," Brennan said.
President clarifies his Saturday statement on believing Putin
Trump, while speaking Sunday at a news conference in Hanoi, sought to clarify remarks he made a day earlier that suggested Russian President Vladimir Putin was being sincere in his denials that Moscow engaged in election meddling.
The President stressed he was not accepting Putin's denials at face value, instead saying he merely believed Putin was being genuine.
"I believe that he feels that he and Russia did not meddle in the election," Trump said. "As to whether I believe it or not, I am with our agencies, especially as currently constituted with the leadership."
But he again stopped short of stating explicitly that Russia was behind the interference in the 2016 presidential election, which US intelligence has determined was conducted to help Trump.
Trump on Saturday also dismissed former officials like Clapper, Brennan and former FBI Director James Comey as "political hacks."
The intelligence community released an unclassified version of its assessment in January, saying Putin ordered the election meddling to hurt Hillary Clinton's candidacy and bolster Trump's successful bid. Putin denies the accusations, and Trump has wavered publicly on his own stance.
Brennan said he considered Trump's attack on them as an attempt to undermine the credibility of that intelligence community report, which the former CIA director noted was written by intelligence and law enforcement officers, not himself, Clapper or Comey.
"He was referring to us as political hacks because he was trying to delegitimize the intelligence community assessment," Brennan said.
The Obama-era CIA chief added that he took the criticism from Trump with pride.
"Considering the source of the criticism, I consider that criticism a badge of honor," Brennan said.
Asked about his own knowledge of any potential collusion between Trump's associates and Russia, Brennan demurred, saying he had spoken with the congressional investigators, and went on later in the interview to praise former FBI Director Robert Mueller, who is leading the special counsel investigation.
Clapper said that although he had "no direct evidence of collusion" while still on the job, he did not know about former Trump foreign policy adviser George Papadopoulos' activities, which were revealed last month in unsealed court documents. Papadopoulos pleaded guilty last month to making a false statement to the FBI after he lied about his interactions with a foreign contact close to the Russian government.
Since leaving government, Clapper said more information had come out that raises at least "circumstantial questions" about potential connections between Trump's associates and Russia.
Ken Tingley
I will warn you right now, you do not want to read this.
It will disturb you.
You will have nightmares, if you can sleep at all.
You will be angry at me for giving you the front seat to unspeakable carnage, for providing images no human should ever conjure up.
You will blame me for sensationalizing the bloodlust and having a liberal agenda.
I will be called a twinkie, a lib-tard, and accused of coming for your guns, because I have the gall of speaking of humanity and demanding that this end.
Sorry to disappoint you, but I have given up.
Further gun control is impossible.
I now believe it is not in our nature to be peaceful.
I now believe the monsters in our midst are looking back at us in the mirror.
Consider what happened last Sunday:
Kelly went aisle by aisle through the pews and shot dying children at point blank range.
Thats what a witness who lived told The Associated Press.
Consider those words, and then the image.
We are all culpable.
You should be forced to look at the crime scene photos.
You should be forced to see what an AR-15 will do to the head of a crying baby.
But that wont be allowed.
That would be inhumane, inappropriate for a culture that spills buckets of blood playing authentic-looking video games.
After 20 babies were killed in Newtown, the state of Connecticut passed a law that prohibits the release of photographs, film, video and other visual images showing homicide victims if they can reasonably be expected to constitute an unwarranted invasion of personal privacy of the victims surviving family members.
Its to protect the family.
Its not.
Its to protect the gun lobby.
So I offer up these words from one officer who first arrived at the Newtown shooting. I doubt you have heard it before.
At first glance it did not appear that there were any casualties. To the left of the room as you walk in there was a bathroom in the corner. There was a massive pile of bodies in this room. At the time I did not know that it was a bathroom and wondered how the suspect had the time to kill that many people and stack them in the corner of the room. There appeared to be about 15 bodies in the small room and several bodies, including two adults near the entrance to the room.
Imagine that scene.
Since the killings in Sandy Hook, 49 were killed in a nightclub shooting in Orlando, 58 attending a concert in Las Vegas and another 20 at that church in Texas, and the assailants all used AR-15 weapons.
We have accepted it.
We have condoned it.
So gun manufacturers can make a buck.
Earlier this month, SUNY Adirondack officials armed their security officers to make everyone feel safe.
Police were on the scene during the attack in Las Vegas.
Police arrived at Sandy Hook within minutes.
And even the heroic efforts of an AR-15-toting neighbor near the church in Texas were too late to save those crying babies from execution.
No one is safe.
All the other bodies were inside the bathroom or in the entrance to the bathroom. An adult victim was lying across the mass of bodies inside the bathroom. Sgt. Carrio began to lift bodies off of the top of the pile (redacted) and many of the bodies had injuries that were obviously fatal. As. Sgt. Carrio began to empty out the bathroom, it became apparent what had occurred due to how efficiently packed in the bathroom the children were. It appeared as if the teachers in the room immediately upon hearing the gun shots began to pack children into the bathroom. The children that were sitting on the floor of the bathroom were packed in like sardines. One little girl was sitting, crouched in between the toilet and the back corner of the room. I thought that she might have the best chance for survival. As the pile got higher it appeared that there was a mad scramble to get into the bathroom with people stepping on one another and climbing on top of each other. The teachers would not have been able to get into the room even if they wanted to. The teachers appeared to have been shepherding the children into the room and were then probably going to shut the door.
Imagine those final seconds, because we know how this ends for the babies and the teachers entrusted to protect them.
They did not close and lock the door to the classroom for some reason and were interrupted by the shooter as they attempted to fill the bathroom with children. The shooter then opened fire on the mass of children and adults. As Sgt. Carrio got to the last bodies, it was clear that no one had survived.
These words should leave you shattered.
The image should stay with you, haunt you as it does me.
Maybe sleep will be difficult.
Maybe you will come to the same realization I have come to none of us will ever be safe.
And we are the monsters because we wont do anything about it.
Ken Tingley is the editor of The Post-Star and may be reached via email at tingley@poststar.com. You can read his blog, The Front Page, daily at www.poststar.com or his updates on Twitter at www.twitter.com/kentingley.
New York makes it difficult to vote.
You get one day.
If youre sick that day, if your car breaks down, if you have a family emergency, if you have to work overtime or if any one of a thousand and one unforeseen events arises that makes it impossible for you to get away for half an hour, you are out of luck.
Your franchise the right to participate in a representative democracy, the right to make a difference by voting for the candidates of your choice has been taken away by random misfortune.
We should not leave something so vital up to chance, and most states dont. Thirty-seven states have some version of early voting. Our state senator, Betty Little, wants New York to have it, too, and its about time.
Now, if you know youre going to be out of town or wont be able to get out of your house on Election Day or if youre just going to be too busy, you have to fill out an application for an absentee ballot and list a reason why you need it.
As nice as it is to show up at a neighborhood school or firehouse and see familiar faces and pick up something from the bake sale when you vote, the system is antiquated.
The goal is to make voting as easy as possible for as many people as possible while protecting the integrity of the process.
New York seems to have adopted the opposite philosophy: Make voting inconvenient by forcing everyone to do it on the same day, and make the absentee process cumbersome and intrusive.
Some people dont want to list on ballot applications dates when theyre going to be out of town or reveal that theyll be in the hospital.
Under Littles common-sense proposal, voters will be able to go to the local Board of Elections, pick up an absentee ballot without having to give an excuse and fill it out at their leisure. Those who want to fill out the ballot on the spot and turn it in will be able to.
This is being billed as no-excuse absentee voting, but it is early voting by another name.
Convenience wont solve all our problems. Lots of people still wont vote, unfortunately. But considering how abysmal our participation rate is now, we should be doing everything we can to improve it.
It makes sense that women are leading this effort, because very often it is women who are in the position of trying to juggle numerous responsibilities work, kids, home and so are most likely to appreciate the inconvenience of restricting voting to certain hours on a single day.
The states League of Women Voters has backed no-excuse absentee ballots for decades. The states lieutenant governor, Kathy Hochul, helped launch the proposal in August during a meeting of New York State Womens Suffrage.
We want to make it easier for people to vote, said Laura Ladd, director of the League of Women Voters of New York State.
That is simple and admirable. Its hard to imagine an objection to it.
But its worth remembering that, not so long ago, various states made it almost impossible for people of color to vote and that was a critical part of a crushing system of oppression that was supported by state governments.
Liberty and access to the ballot box go hand in hand. Those politicians like Betty Little who seek to widen that access are working for the cause of liberty, and we cant think of a better use of their time.
Shortly before graduating from North Scott High School in 2015, I considered an offer to attend Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. For several weeks, I agonized over my decision between the University of Iowa and Georgetown.
When it came down to it, however, I knew the value of an education at the University of Iowa was unrivaled. I knew that with scholarships, I could graduate from the University of Iowa with a student debt of $0and that was priceless. Despite all the prestige behind Georgetowns name, I am proud to now study international relations and Spanish at the University of Iowa.
A week before classes began at the University of Iowa this year, however, it was announced the university intends to increase tuition by 41 percent over the next five years. I pay $7,486 each year for base tuition as a University of Iowa student. This does not include nearly $1,500 in annual fees.
An increase of this proportion means that an in-state student in the class of 2028 will be paying $10,537 a year for base tuition, amounting to a whopping $42,148 over four years. And no, that figure does not include room and board.
The University of Iowa prides itself on providing a high-quality education while keeping tuition costs low as compared to other flagship universities around the country. The result? High school graduates in Iowa stay in Iowa, invest in Iowa, and contribute to the local economy. Data published in The Washington Post indicates 87 percent of Iowa high school graduates enrolled in college remain within the states borders.
In neighboring Wisconsin and Minnesota, that number is 81 percent and 72 percent, respectively. The figure is even more abysmal in Illinois, where a mere 71 percent of graduates choose to remain in state for college.
In the words of Gov. Kim Reynolds there is no way Iowa families could afford the proposed increase. Across rural expanses of much of the state and inner-city neighborhoods are thousands of low-income families whose prospects of sending children to one of Iowas state schools are lowered by the additional $12,204 tacked onto the cost of four years of college.
Simply put, the proposed tuition increase is prohibitively expensive for low-income and often marginalized communities. It is crystal clear who will bear the brunt of this price tagand it will not be families where a college degree is the status quo.
Decreased state appropriations equates increased pressure on the Iowa Board of Regents, which equates higher tuition for students. It is our Iowa Legislatures responsibility to ensure Iowa universities have enough funding to support the edge that makes Iowa a world-class institution.
When the Legislature failed to do so and instead passed $15.4 million in cuts earlier this year, they knew someone down the line was going to lose out. It was the Iowa Board of Regents responsibility to ensure that students are not that someone. In that, they failed.
Twelve-thousand and two-hundred and four dollars in additional costs for students is out of touch with the reality of Iowa families. I encourage readers to write to legislators and the Iowa Board of Regents to tell your story, and demand a pragmatic, student-focused approach to university tuition.
Everyone has a sacred cow or two.
And that's precisely the problem faced by congressional Republicans in their mad dash to hammer through the first major rewrite of the tax code in more than a generation. Republicans from the Northeast might be asked to swallow a poison pill by supporting the legislation that would end deductions for state and local taxes benefiting their constituents. Lawmakers friendly with real estate, too, should be gulping hard while eyeing the death of the mortgage tax deduction, proposed in the House version.
Taxes are, in a very real sense, government's best tool for social engineering. It rewards everything from home ownership to marriage. And what's come out of Congress so far rolls back most of those targeted benefits.
Enjoy that deduction for interest on student loans? Tough. Knocking corporate taxes from 35 percent to 20 percent is more important and someone's got to pay for it, say writers of the current proposals.
There's a reason U.S. tax code hasn't been seriously overhauled in more than three decades.
Throughout the country, pet industries -- especially those that compete with industries cozy with Republicans -- might pick up the tab for sweeping cuts for corporations, the wealthy and a doubling of the standard deduction.
Take, for example, Iowa's booming wind energy sector. MidAmerican Energy has pumped a cool $1 billion into gargantuan wind projects in recent years. That investment was spurred by three factors: Growing consumer environmental awareness, more efficient technology and, yes, tax benefits.
But, now, the nation is led by pro-oil and coal interests incapable of uttering the words "climate change." Unsurprisingly, tax breaks for wind -- a massive boon for Iowa -- are on the chopping block.
So, too, are historic preservation tax credits. It can be said with all confidence that these breaks propelled the rebirth of Davenport's downtown. Hotel Blackhawk -- the catalyst for downtown's rise from the ashes -- is probably still a burnt and hollow shell if not for historic preservation credits.
Credits for wind and historic preservation are important tools for Iowa. And any mention of their demise immediately gets our hackles up. It's a reality that's playing out throughout the country.
And the math isn't helping the already monumental political lift. The non-partisan Tax Policy center this past week concluded that about 30 percent of middle class households would actually experience a tax hike under the House proposal. The richest Americans would enjoy the vast majority of benefits, analysts concluded. And the Congressional Budget Office said the House bill would explode the deficit by $1.7 trillion over the next decade.
We agree that the tax code should be simplified. But it's almost comical that a party that's spent years railing against the deficit would introduce legislation that would explode it. By their own rhetoric, Republicans have weakened their position.
Any overhaul should be fair and reasonable. Punching a gaping hole in the federal budget just to hit a preconceived corporate tax rate is ridiculous. A 30 percent tax rate, for example, would concurrently achieve a long-held Republican campaign promise while not costing an arm and a leg. And anyone who espouses a belief in the free market should only support killing the wind tax credit if oil and coal also loses the heaps of benefits collected over the years. The proposals do nothing but pick winners and losers.
Republicans are under extreme pressure to score a legislative win now that they control all of government's levers. Legitimate questions about the GOP's ability to govern right grew from its failure to repeal the Affordable Care Act. Stark losses in state races on Tuesday hint at a backlash against President Donald Trump and his chaotic, divisive style.
There's a reason tax reform has been kicked down the road for decades. And, judging by the proposals now in Congress, there's little reason to believe this attempt will end any differently.
GRAFTON -- Tom Campbell says his cream-colored Chevrolet Tahoe has 28,000 more miles on it since the end of May. It has a cracked windshield and a clothing rack behind the drivers seat -- telltale signs of the high-mileage lifestyle the state legislator and longtime farmer is leading nowadays.
But on the morning of Nov. 1, Campbell was at a potato packing plant near the edge of his native Grafton, a town of about 4,300 people north of Grand Forks. Its a low, white building, and yet another outpost in the sprawling potato empire he built with his brothers.
Wearing a black pullover with conservative farmer stitched on the left breast, he walked past sacks, bags, pallets and giant totes of potatoes; he clutched bags of two varieties of red-skinned potatoes to show a reporter the fine differences. Campbell has spent decades becoming a local potato king, growing from the 130 acres planted in the first year using pretty junky equipment.
I always say we started with a big prayer and a small loan, Campbell said, sitting at the head of a boardroom table at Campbell Farms Grafton offices. We didnt have any cash down, didnt have any cash flow, but our loan officer always said we had character.
Now Campbell is taking another risk and pursuing one of the highest elected offices in the country.
Campbell is seeking the Republican nod to challenge incumbent Sen. Heidi Heitkamp, D-N.D., in a race that will draw national attention to this sparsely populated, conservative state. Republicans control the Senate by just two seats, and Campbell and the rest of the GOP see an opportunity to extend their slim majority.
But Democrats and at least one fellow Republican say Campbell doesnt have a strong enough record in his nearly five-year stint in the North Dakota Legislature to match Heitkamps long public career.
I dont think Tom Campbell can beat Heidi in any way, shape or form, state Rep. Roscoe Streyle, R-Minot, said. I just dont think he has what it takes, from a raising money standpoint, to being able to debate her, to a record that would show hes done anything in the Legislature.
Despite no formal opposition for the Republican nomination yet, Campbell has personally lent $425,000 to his campaign, according to public financial records, and is fashioning himself as a conservative outsider, despite his wealth and seat in the Legislature. But to climb to higher office, one ally said, Campbell will have to remake himself from a representative of a rural farming area to one who can think on a nationwide scale.
He also has to get caught up on all the issues of the world and nation, said Bruce Gjovig, a longtime Grand Forks Republican activist who described himself as a future donor and campaign adviser. He understands, for example, health care from a Grafton hospital standpoint, but now he has to extrapolate that nationwide.
Farm to Capitol
Campbell, 58, grew up the fifth child of seven near Grafton, watching his father deliver mail and tend a wheat and barley farm part time. Campbell and his brother, Bill, started a custom combining business while Campbell was still 16, leasing a new combine and traveling to Oklahoma to work their way north with the weather.
In Campbells first year out of high school, he and Bill bought a full complement of potato equipment to begin farming their own fields. Joined soon after by their other brother, Greg, theyve since grown the operation to a few thousand acres, and ship throughout the U.S. and Canada.
Campbell pursued his economics degree around farming, loading up on courses at North Dakota State University during winters. By 2012, Campbell won a seat in the Legislature. His Senate district covers the eastern half of Walsh County and the northern and western regions of Grand Forks County.
But Campbells life almost took a decidedly different turn when he attended Catholic seminary at Notre Dame starting in 1980. He eventually decided it wasnt for him -- the celibacy issue was a challenge -- and he married his wife, Lori, soon after. She splits time between Minneapolis and Grafton for work, and they have two adult children.
Faith continues to play a central role in Campbells life. He has been doing prison ministry work for more than 18 years, he said, and previously served on the board of the Grand Forks homeless shelter known as Northlands Rescue Mission.
Campbell has taken efforts at the shelter beyond the boardroom. During undercover visits there -- he didnt shave for three weeks and smoked a cigarette to get into the role -- Campbell said he found some people were taking advantage of a free meal and a free bed, even though they could work.
I just found out there were a lot of people there that shouldnt have been there, he said. It was really frustrating to me because we were always short money and we couldnt handle all the people that really needed help.
Campbell said he has a caring heart for poor people but wants to hold them accountable. That tough love message is consistent with a bill he introduced earlier this year in the Legislature to develop a suspicion-based drug testing program for welfare benefit applicants. The bill was amended but defeated in the Senate.
Its just like when you go into a forest where it says, Dont feed the animals, because then theyll become dependent on it, he said, referring to welfare benefits. I wanted to keep giving them their benefits so they would not be deprived of it, but yet put them in an environment where theres no drugs.
Campbell has been the primary sponsor of 18 bills over three legislative sessions, with eight becoming law. During that span, he signed on as a co-sponsor to more than 70 Senate and House bills and resolutions. Sen. Lonnie Laffen, R-Grand Forks, said Campbell manages to balance being very compassionate and conservative as a legislator.
Sometimes thats a hard line to walk, he said. If you want to keep spending down, sometimes that means programs that help people. But he has a good sense of balance that way that I admire.
Campaigning early
Alarmed at conservative values being whittled away, Campbell announced he would run for U.S. Senate a month before Heitkamp herself made it official. Since then, he has carpeted the airwaves with ads largely focused on his farming background.
Former Gov. Ed Schafer said Campbell isnt making the mistake of believing everyone knows him. Campbell also explored a run for governor in 2015, which may have helped him gain wider name recognition.
If he gets the Republican nomination for Senate, Campbell will be much better positioned to be able to use his resources to communicate with the people about what he wants to do and not have to spend all the time and energy to have people know who he is, said Schafer, whose 1992 transition team included Campbell.
Unlike some other national Republicans, Campbell is unafraid to ally himself with Donald Trump, whom he credited for a roaring stock market and low unemployment. The president defeated Hillary Clinton in North Dakota by almost 36 percentage points a year ago, and polls released in July and October indicate hes more popular here than much of the rest of the country.
Campbell said hes following a majority of North Dakota hard-working families agenda, which just happened to be aligned with Trumps agenda.
The Affordable Care Act needs to be repealed and replaced, Campbell says, though he wants to maintain insurance protections for people with pre-existing medical conditions. A top priority for the upcoming Farm Bill is crop insurance. Hes keeping a close eye on Trumps willingness to withdraw from the North American Free Trade Agreement, given North Dakotas agricultural exports. Hes been pleased with Trumps deregulatory agenda and his pick for Environmental Protection Agency administrator, but was highly critical of Heitkamps vote against repealing a methane emissions rule.
I just think that its a common-sense thing that we need to have less regulation and less government and control ourselves, Campbell said.
Court cases
Campbell and his business have been at the center of contract disputes with major agricultural companies in the region. Lawsuits brought by J.R. Simplot Co., in 2005, and MCM Inc., in 2011, were both settled, according to court records.
Campbell also was involved in a legal dispute over Jefferson-Pilot Life Insurance Co.s decision to rescind his mothers policy after she died in 2006. The company said pending applications with other life insurers were not disclosed to Jefferson-Pilot.
The total amount of life insurance benefits applied for from all four of the companies was $14 million, according to court records. Campbell was the executor of his mothers estate.
Campbells former attorney argued that the insurance agent may have known about issues in the policy applications, but the Campbells did not, according to court records. A federal judge said in 2008 that there is a genuine issue of material fact as to whether the Campbells colluded with (the insurance agent) in failing to disclose the applications to Jefferson-Pilot.
The two sides agreed to a confidential settlement through mediation and the case was dismissed, according to a September 2008 court filing.
Campbell called the episode a tragedy for his family and said they were misled by our agent, who later lost his license amid allegations that he forged Campbells mothers signature on documents after she died, according to the St. Paul Pioneer Press.
There was no collusion, Campbell said.
Not the last?
Campbell is the first but perhaps not the last Republican to jump into the North Dakota Senate race, given that a handful of others are in the mix. Trump strongly encouraged Rep. Kevin Cramer to consider joining the race recently, but he wont make a decision before the tax reform legislations fate is decided.
Despite Campbells enthusiasm for White House policies, its not clear what Trump thinks of him. When the president visited Mandan to tout his tax plan, he was joined on stage by none other than Heitkamp, who Trump called a good woman, stoking speculation that he had hurt his own partys chances in unseating her.
But Campbell said it was an example of Heitkamps disconnect from North Dakota voters.
It was a shame that our president of the United States had to take one full day off to let Heidi Heitkamp know what her constituents really wanted, he said.
Pressed on Trumps interaction with Heitkamp -- and if it meant Trump was out of step with North Dakota politics -- Campbell insisted the president sent Heitkamp a message.
It may seem like I may be frustrated, but in the end, Trump, he's a doer, he gets things done, Campbell said. And he's frustrated right now because he's running into people like Senator Heitkamp.
A spokesman for Heitkamp deferred comment to the state Democratic-NPL Party. Party spokesman Daniel Tick called Campbells time in the state Senate ineffective and said hes a political insider whos willing to spend his personal fortune on self-promoting TV ads, but refuses to address important issues for North Dakota.
Campbell is undeterred. And for all the talk about Heitkamp, its his quest for name recognition and his partys support that will have to come first. Now, crisscrossing North Dakota in his windshield-cracked Tahoe, Campbell senses its within his grasp.
Nobody can outwork me, he said. Theres not enough hours in the day.
WASHINGTON | Randy Spronk climbed off a combine in Edgerton, Minn., last week and boarded a Delta flight to the nation's capital to deliver a warning.
If President Donald Trump withdraws from the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), "the giant sucking sound you hear will be the air going out of the agricultural economy of rural America," Spronk told a forum at U.S. Chamber of Commerce headquarters.
Spronk's twist of the phrase echoed one-time presidential candidate Ross Perot, who once used it to describe how NAFTA would take jobs away from Americans. Now it underscored Spronk's feelings about the stakes of Trump's attempt to improve or remove what he once called the worst trade deal ever made.
Spronk, a hog farmer who also raises corn and soy beans, did not mince words in describing the impact he and others in the Minnesota agricultural sector will feel if the president's rhetoric blows up the 23-year-old trade deal between the U.S., Mexico and Canada.
"It will be," Spronk told the Chamber forum, "a financial catastrophe. I'm not sure if everyone in the administration understands that."
U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer reinforced the White House position after the fourth round of NAFTA talks in mid-October. "The United States had two objectives in these talks," Lighthizer said. "First, we wanted to update a 23-year-old agreement to reflect our modern economy. Obvious areas for modernization included intellectual property, digital trade, anti-corruption, technical standards, financial services, and others.
"Our president has been clear about our second objective. NAFTA has resulted in a huge trade deficit for the United States and has cost us tens of thousands of manufacturing jobs. The agreement has become very lopsided and needs to be rebalanced. We, of course, have a 500 billion dollar trade deficit. So for us, trade deficits do matter. And we intend to reduce them."
Chamber CEO Thomas Donohue has fired back with an extensive, expensive lobbying campaign focused on American businesses that would be hurt by withdrawing from NAFTA or alienating Mexican and Canadian trading partners.
"The more we look as this issue, the more specific and personal it gets," Donohue said in a speech at the forum. "People are getting discouraged. I'm interested in getting aggressive. ... This deal has got to survive."
Minnesota is playing a major role in trying to make that happen. Republican Rep. Tom Emmer laid out some numbers that explain why: "In 2016, more than 30 percent of Minnesota's exports went to Canada and Mexico, injecting over $1 billion into the Minnesota economy."
Shortly before Spronk spoke live at an event entitled "The Future of NAFTA: The Stakes for American Agriculture and Business," the chamber played videos of business people from around the country who rely on NAFTA. Among them was Rick Gessler, a vice president of Delkor Systems, Inc., a packaging company in Arden Hills.
Free-trade agreements remain a difficult issue for many in Congress, including some in Minnesota's delegation. For example, Rep. Rick Nolan, the Democrat who represents the state's Iron Range, has been sharply critical of NAFTA, but wants to keep trading with Canada.
"The North American Free Trade Agreement has hurt Minnesota's businesses and industries and cost us thousands of jobs," Nolan said. "As the Trump administration moves to renegotiate, fix, and modernize NAFTA, I support changes that benefit all sectors of the Eighth District, including agriculture. We need to protect our strong trade relationship with Canada, which supports nearly 18,000 good paying jobs in the district and over $60 million in Range iron ore exports."
Democratic Rep. Betty McCollum called the Trump administration "clueless about how their efforts to blow up NAFTA will affect Minnesota agriculture. I don't want our state's workers, farmers, and businesses to be collateral damage."
Republican Rep. Erik Paulsen sits on the Ways and Means Committee, which is responsible for trade policy. Paulsen acknowledged NAFTA's role in Minnesota. "For decades, NAFTA has been important to the success of Minnesota agriculture and farmers," he said. "I am working to modernize and improve NAFTA to make sure Minnesota and U.S. interests are met."
Spronk credits NAFTA for much of the success of his multi-generational farm. Since he and his brothers established a pork production business in 1991, U.S. trade agreements have helped it grow from 6,000 hogs a year to 120,000. Spronk, who is a past president of the U.S. Pork Producers Association, said a blown NAFTA renegotiation could cause his family to lose "around $2.5 million" a year.
NAFTA renegotiations have slowed down as the three sides have reached sticking points, among them a five-year sunset on any agreement and a rejiggering of trade balances.
For business people like Spronk, five years is too small a window on which to base things like capital expenditures.
For Lighthizer, it is a risk of doing business.
Businesses say, " 'Oh, we can't have a sunset; we can't have a provision where you actually look after five years to see whether it's been good or not,'?" Lighthizer recently told reporters. "Why? 'Because we won't be able to invest.' And I'm thinking, well, why don't you just calculate that into your investment?"
The stumbling block of trade balances is also huge. If the Trump administration thinks it is going to get major concessions from Mexico on trade balances, it is wrong, Iowa State agricultural economist Dermot Hayes told the chamber panel. Mexico is already looking for other trading partners, including a billion-dollar deal to buy wheat from Argentina.
What the U.S. could get if it walks away from NAFTA, the professor said, are 20 percent tariffs on meat exported to Mexico and 45 percent tariffs on dairy and corn exports.
"The pain," Hayes pointed out, "would be localized in counties in flyover country."
When "House of Cards" debuted in 2013, it catapulted Netflix to a new level of Hollywood recognition and acclaim. The dark political series about an unscrupulous Washington power couple became Netflix's first breakout hit, planting a flag for the streaming service in the competitive world of original TV programming.
But just as its protagonist Frank Underwood fell ignominiously from power last season, the series itself has collapsed in scandalous fashion following allegations around actor Kevin Spacey, who has been accused of sexual harassment and assault by numerous men, including employees on the show.
Netflix isn't the only company left holding the bag. Media Rights Capital is the production company that owns the series and licenses it to Netflix. Since news about Spacey broke last week, followed by additional allegations, the companies moved quickly to cancel the seventh season of "House of Cards" and put production of the sixth season on indefinite hold. Netflix said in a statement that it is cutting all ties with Spacey and that he will not be involved with the show that he has starred in since 2013.
"Netflix will not be involved with any further production of 'House of Cards' that includes Kevin Spacey," the company said.
While the scandal represents a public-relations debacle for Netflix, it isn't likely to materially affect the company, even though "House of Cards" remains one of its most popular series, experts said.
"I think of 'House of Cards' as a trampoline," said Paul Levinson, a professor of media and communications at Fordham University. "Netflix put it up, jumped on it and Netflix got so high that it no longer needs 'House of Cards.' "
Netflix spent about $100 million to produce two 13-episode seasons for "House of Cards." The political drama launched the company's venture into original programming, helping to transform the streaming service into a global powerhouse and disrupter of the TV business. The company now has 104 million paid streaming subscribers and has made big investments in new shows. It will spend as much as $8 billion on content next year alone.
As a result, Netflix now has multiple hit series including "Stranger Things," "Orange Is the New Black" and "The Crown" that it can rely on to retain and attract subscribers.
The speed at which Netflix responded to the allegations against Spacey the first of which was made by actor Anthony Rapp on Buzzfeed is likely to work in the company's favor, said Michael Pachter, a digital media analyst at Wedbush Securities, where he covers Netflix.
"I think Netflix is handling this extremely well," Pachter said. "This is what you want them to do from an investor's point of view."
Analysts said the cancellation of "House of Cards" was probably an easy decision for Netflix to make because the series was already past its prime and nearing the end of its run.
Public scandals are rare for major TV series but not unheard of. The most recent instance was CBS's "Two and a Half Men" when Charlie Sheen left after his personal problems became public. His character was killed off from the show.
Among "House of Cards" fans, the most recent season was seen as something of a creative resurgence but the show was clearly on the decline and had lost a lot of its buzz. Creator and showrunner Beau Willimon had left the show last year after four seasons.
"During the time I worked with Kevin Spacey on 'House of Cards,' I neither witnessed nor was aware of any inappropriate behavior on set or off," Willimon said in a statement. "That said, I take reports of such behavior seriously and this is no exception. I feel for Mr. Rapp and I support his courage."
Rapp alleged that he was 14 when Spacey made an unwanted sexual advance on him in the 1980s. Spacey responded by saying that he didn't recall the incident, but offered Rapp "the sincerest apology for what would have been deeply inappropriate drunken behavior." The two-time Academy Award winner also used the opportunity to come out as gay.
On Thursday, eight current and former "House of Cards" employees alleged to CNN that Spacey created a "toxic" work environment with his behavior. The allegations include a former production assistant who said Spacey sexually assaulted him during one of the show's early seasons.
A representative for Spacey could not be reached for comment.
Netflix could face civil legal exposure from any employee harassment that occurred on "House of Cards" because Spacey was also credited as an executive producer on the show, which means that he was in a supervisory position, according to Genie Harrison, an attorney who specializes in employment and sexual harassment cases.
"The company will have strict liability because he's a supervisor and because he would be seen as acting on behalf of the company," Harrison said.
As the studio behind "House of Cards," Media Rights Capital could also face legal exposure for any of its employees who were harassed by Spacey on the show.
MRC declined a request for an interview but said in a statement that during the show's first year of production, in 2012, someone on the crew complained about a specific remark and gesture made by Spacey. The company didn't elaborate on the nature of the complaint.
"Immediate action was taken following our review of the situation and we are confident the issue was resolved promptly to the satisfaction of all involved. Mr. Spacey willingly participated in a training process and since that time MRC has not been made aware of any other complaints involving Mr. Spacey," the company said in the statement.
Netflix, which also declined an interview request, said in a statement that it was just made aware of the 2012 incident and was informed that it was swiftly resolved.
"Netflix is not aware of any other incidents involving Kevin Spacey on-set," the company said in a statement. "We continue to collaborate with MRC and other production partners to maintain a safe and respectful working environment."
Both companies said they are evaluating the future of "House of Cards." It remains unclear if writers and hundreds of crew members are being kept on the payroll as executives decide on the fate of the sixth season.
MRC would be on the hook for whatever expenses have to be absorbed as production on "House of Cards" is shut down, though the company could have insurance to cover such events.
"House of Cards" is estimated to cost several millions of dollars per episode, with each season consisting of 13 installments.
MRC sold the international rights for "House of Cards" to Netflix in a deal estimated to be worth more than $200 million, according to one industry executive familiar with the show.
Even if Netflix emerges relatively unscathed from "House of Cards," the streaming service faces another challenge with an upcoming movie it is making with Spacey, in which he plays the late writer Gore Vidal.
The movie, which had been expected to be released next year, is believed to focus on the years that Vidal spent in virtual exile in Italy. Netflix said Friday night that it will not release the film.
Netflix rival Amazon Studios confronted its own scandal last month when Roy Price resigned as head of the studio after accusations made by an executive producer that Price had made lewd remarks and unwanted advances.
The late Moon Mullins knew what it meant to serve his country and his fellow man. His 20-year military career spanned three conflicts World War II, Korea and Vietnam and earned him several awards.
Mullins didnt talk much about his time in the Air Force, said friend Carl Larsen.
Wed get into it, and hed just sort of change the subject, Larsen said. So I never pried.
Eventually, Mullins made his way to Chadron, Neb., where he continued serving others through his efforts with the Masonic Lodge, the American Legion and the Chadron Rural Fire Board. With his passing in 2016,Mullins continued to give back to his community, splitting his $1.2 million estate between the Shriners Burn Institute and the Chadron Volunteer Fire Department.
He understood the importance of keeping equipment updated, and he understood the cost of it too, said fireman Pat Gould of Mullins, who served on the Rural Fire Board in the 1970s and 80s.
Mullins was born in West Virginia, the son of a coal miner. His legacy of service began even before his official entry into adulthood, when he lied about his age to enlist in the Air Force.
For the next 20 years he served his country in World War II, Korea and Vietnam. According to service records, he spent time as an aerial gunner before becoming a utilities technician, and a water superintendent and sanitation specialist. His military career took him to the Philippines, Germany, Okinawa and Korea. Stateside, he was stationed in South Dakota, Florida and Texas.
During the course of his career, Mullins received the following: Army Good Conduct, Air Force Good Conduct, National Defense, United Nations Korea, Armed Forces Expeditionary, Victory WWII, National Defense, Berlin Airlift, Humane Action, Army European Occupation, Air Force Outstanding Unit Award, Vietnam Service Medal, Air Force Small Arms Exert, Air Force Longevity Service, two clusters.
When the Nebraska National Guard was activated and deployed to Vietnam, Mullins apparently served as a lieutenant in the Nebraska State Guard, a now inactive defense force that was activated during WWII and Vietnam to assume the stateside duties of the National Guard. Friends Mike and Carla Crawford only learned about that part of his service when they discovered Mullins Nebraska State Guard uniform among his things after his death.
With his military career complete, Mullins earned a bachelors degree in biology and chemistry from Chadron State College in 1970. While on campus he taught judo and karate, a pastime he pursued while stationed in Korea. He earned his fourth degree Black Belt in judo and a one degree Black Belt in karate.
In addition to his efforts on the Rural Fire Board, Mullins was also a member of the local Masonic Lodge, an organization he also belonged to in Florida, and which he became acquainted with while still stationed in Korea. Those memberships inspired the gifting of half of his estate to the Shriners Burn Institute.
He had a very soft heart when it came to children, said attorney Marty Connealy, who handled Mullins estate.
Shriners Hospitals for Children have provided specialized burn care since the mid-1960s, doubling the survival rate for children with burns on more than 50 percent of their bodies.
Mullins was proud of his work with the Masonic Lodge and the fire department, Larsen recalled.
He loved the Chadron area, he said. He would go to Florida, but said Ill always come back.
Larsens first experience with Mullins came at the 77 Club, where Mullins was bartending. Larsen was working as a wire chief for the phone company and went there with a friend to celebrate the end of a strike. In a celebratory mood, he bought drinks for two college kids who came in around the same time, but when they expected him to buy drinks for two more of their buddies who later joined them, his refusal sparked an argument.
Mullins diffused the situation with a bit of story; he told the kids Larsen had a Black Belt and not to mess with him. Larsen offered to buy him a drink in appreciation, and the two men shared boilermakers and conversation.
That was my introduction to Moon Mullins, Larsen said. Every time I saw him we had boilermakers.
Larsen, like many long-time Chadron residents, visited the old country club regularly after Mullins and his wife, Rose, opened it.
We always had to have his famous bean soup, Larsen remembers. That soup was recalled fondly by Mike and Carla Crawford as well, and it was a staple at the American Legion benefit during the Super Bowl.
I do know this: If he could have handled it in his later years, hed have had that place running, Larsen said of the old country club.
Whenever Larsen patronized the club, his ticket at the end of the night would never include his drinks.
Id ask Moon, What do I owe you? and hed ask How many drinks did you have? Larsen said. When he questioned Mullins about why he as the owner didnt keep track of that, Mullins response was, If you cant keep track, you wont be able to drive home.
He was just a very interesting, friendly person, Larsen continued.
Carla and Mike Crawford had their wedding reception at Mullins restaurant and helped him out tending bar and waiting tables when needed. Their friendship evolved into Friday night suppers, trips to Deadwood for Thanksgiving and a visit to Florida.
Mike helped Mullins learn to fly.
Then Rose wouldnt ride with him so he sold his airplane, Mike said.
His other pastimes included fishing with friends, coffee at Helens, playing cards and reading Louis Lamour westerns. He also restored an old Model T and a 1949 Buick and did some woodworking and carpentry, according to the Crawfords.
After Moon and Rose closed the country club, they spent their winters in Florida and enjoyed taking cruises and traveling the U.S. Moon especially enjoyed going to the reunions for his military group, Carla said.
They were just wonderful people, Carla said.
Three suicides among three male students between July and September caught school officials flatfooted.
We were dealing with it reactively, said Matt Seebaum, assistant superintendent for educational services at Rapid City Area Schools.
Was it more than a chance cluster? Suicide among youth can spark a contagion, a me-too effect, leading others to take their lives. School officials wanted especially to avoid inspiring a contagion.
The district had policies in place, Seebaum said, but the incidents from summer and fall revealed holes and inconsistencies.
We did tighten things quickly, he said. One existing policy required written reports on every interaction involving a concern for suicide. This was extended so top administrators became better aware of ongoing problems.
From the start of the school year through Nov. 9, Seebaum said, the district received 77 reports of suicide concern. Of those, 18 involved elementary school students, 14 involved middle school students, and 45 involved high school students. Follow-up showed the degree of risk to each student ranged widely. Responses to the most serious were scaled up to include law enforcement and mental health practitioners.
The numbers should concern everyone, but they wont surprise people working with suicide. South Dakota has a high suicide rate, especially among youth, and the rates have risen over the last two decades. South Dakota lies in the western suicide belt a string of sparsely populated states running north to south where there is near universal access to guns. Guns may not increase intent, but they are designed to kill.
Meanwhile, the suicide rate among South Dakotas Native Americans is nearly double that of whites. About one fifth of Rapid City students are Native American, Seebaum noted, and there is a lot of crossover with the states reservations, with a lot of opportunity for contagion.
As bad as that is, the reality is probably worse. The statistics show only what agencies have been able to count, Seebaum noted. We do not have a complete data set, he said.
In September, amid the districts concerns of a me-too contagion, RCAS reached out to national school suicide experts Scott Poland and Richard Lieberman. The pair addressed the recent contagion at Academy 20 schools near Colorado Springs, Colo., where suicides occurred within one year, including four within four weeks.
Their insights helped, Seebaum said, but RCAS officials quickly realized the district could do more to intervene and prevent suicide.
We cant predict the future, but we can anticipate, he said. What we have works for now, but what we can have can be so much better.
While the focus is on a better plan for the district, RCAS hopes it can spark a collaborative community approach to better address suicide en whole. Such an effort would blur the lines between mental health, law enforcement, health care, and the public.
We can close some loops, Seebaum said. RCAS can bring nearly all of the players together for a discussion.
One example of that is the second community meeting on suicide that RCAS will host at 6 p.m. Tuesday in the Western Dakota Tech Events Center. More meetings are planned throughout the school year as the district prepare for the launch of its more comprehensive suicide program in fall.
Among the insights Poland and Lieberman shared was an appreciation of suicides seasonal trends and danger points.
For students, the winter holiday season attends more suicides but so does spring, a time when students realize their school year was not as successful as they had hoped.
A deeper dive into the 77 suicide reports issued so far also points to concerns around fifth grade (nine reports) and ninth grade (22). Transitions between elementary, middle school and high school can be difficult for those who do not feel prepared.
The districts new approach to suicide will involve more training about suicide, expanded awareness of warning signs, and a culture of reporting.
Poland and Lieberman tell them suicide reports will rise, but attempts and completions will decline. The key word is decline rather than prevent.
The districts new approach will also define a better path for recovery once a student suicide occurs.
I dont know what was so important on your phone to distract you.
Every single day we see them and likely have the same thoughts as Shawn Imitates Dog did except he was reflecting on the death of his mother and the driver whose negligence took her life.
Theresa Martinez and two friends were traveling on U.S. Highway 18 on July 30, 2015, when their vehicle was struck by a Ford Expedition driven by Sophia Janis, who had one hand on the steering wheel and the other along with her eyes on the smartphone. The 27 year old told investigators she was checking Facebook when the tragedy occurred.
She now looks forward to 37 months in a federal prison after a judge decided to send a message that hopefully others will heed, but one delivered too late for 58-year-old Theresa Martinez.
Janis is hardly alone with the social media appetite she displayed on that dreadful day. In Rapid City, any leisurely drive on a main thoroughfare will reveal the extent of the grasp social media has on society. Drivers can be seen scrolling through social media websites or texting while operating a vehicle that weighs three, four or more tons and can have the destructive power of a missile.
The desire, need or compulsion to check social media sites or text while driving has become so commonplace nationally that Janis attorney offered it as reason to treat her with leniency before U.S. District Court Chief Judge Jeffrey Viken delivered his sentence.
Were all guilty of some form of that if you have a smartphone, the attorney said after citing a study by Apple that said the average iPhone user unlocks their phone 80 times a day proof that her client was acting within the norms of a digital society.
It was an argument the prosecutor, an assistant U.S. attorney, apparently bought. He recommended probation, which would have allowed the defendant to drive home and share the good news on her favorite social media platform.
For her part, Janis apologized for her bad judgment and asked the judge to please have mercy on me and my family.
Judge Viken, however, had thoughts of his own to express before disregarding the prosecutors recommendation. He called distracted driving an enormous risk in modern society and cited figures published by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. According to the federal agency, the judge said 3,100 people died and 431,000 were injured in crashes involving distracted drivers in 2014. While distracted driving can describe a broad range of behaviors like eating while driving or even listening to the radio, it is smartphone usage that is most often cited by experts and law enforcement when warning people about its dangers.
It is about time someone in a position of authority made a strong statement about the clear and present danger of operating a smartphone and vehicle at the same time. The Legislature has refused in the past to pass a law that takes the tiny step of making texting while driving a primary offense. Instead, it remains a secondary offense, which means it gets scant attention from law enforcement even though a person whose attention is riveted to a phone can be just as deadly as a drunken driver as the family of Theresa Martinez knows all too well.
Judge Viken was willing to hold a young woman accountable for gross negligence while driving, while others were willing to downplay the behavior. The judge should be commended for taking this stand for public safety. The problem, however, is that the message is largely confined to those in the courtroom that day or read the story in the Rapid City Journal.
Vikens message needs to be amplified by those who make policy in this state. The Legislature could at least consider tougher penalties for using a smartphone while driving. Attorney General Marty Jackley, who is running for governor, could make road safety a priority for his office and a talking point on the campaign trail. The law enforcement community could urge elected officials to pass tougher laws and then enforce them with the same vigor as drinking and driving.
Smartphones play an integral role in our lives and that will only continue but ignoring the consequences of distracted driving should not. A strong deterrence is needed or others will be asking the same question in the same circumstance as Shawn Imitates Dog did in a Rapid City courtroom.
If you believe in eternal recurrence, you wont be surprised at all by this column.
It marks my return to the pages of the Rapid City Journal after an absence of more than four years. And Im happy to be coming home to the newspaper I have read and loved since I was a teenager, one I worked for as a reporter, columnist and blogger for more than 16 years.
I left the Journal in August of 2013 because of the management at the time. I return now, not as a full-time staffer but as a regular columnist on this page, because of new management.
I sense in that management a genuine commitment to re-connecting with readers and with the community in ways that faltered in recent years. And I hope to be a part of that, even if its a smaller part than in the past.
Friedrich Nietzsche would not be surprised by my return. The German philosopher promoted the eternal recurrence notion, suggesting that your whole life, like a sandglass, will always be reversed and will ever run out again.
This latest reversal in the flowing sands of my life began a few weeks ago when my cell phone rang. I glanced at the caller ID and recognized but couldnt quite place the number: 394-8413.
On the third or fourth ring I finally answered, This is Kevin, even as I realized that I was answering my own phone. Or at least my old phone number, the one I used to have in the Rapid City Journal newsroom.
The response from the caller was: Hey, Kevin, this is Chris Huber down at the Journal. Do you have a minute?
I like Chris. Hes a West River guy with an easy-going style but a relentless work ethic and gifts in multi-tasking. Even better, I trust Chris. That means a lot.
So I had a minute, then some.
Chris and I worked together for about a year before I left the Journal. Then we saw each other on assignments during the three years I worked as a KELO TV reporter based in Rapid City and during the 10 months since I started blogging and offering radio commentary for South Dakota Public Broadcasting.
And, OK, let me say it before you do: Yes, I have a better face for radio than I did for TV. (I refused to wear the make-up for TV, by the way, even though it was suggested by my managers and probably would have been a good idea, from a visual standpoint.)
Youll just have to tolerate the picture of the rough old mug that will run with this column. Initially, Ill be writing a column every other Sunday. Beyond that, well see.
A few days after that call from Chris, who is now the managing editor, I joined him in a meeting at the Journal with Editorial Page Editor Pat Butler, a friend and colleague at both the Sioux Falls Argus Leader and the Journal, and with Publisher Eugene Jackson.
I liked Eugene right away and not just because he loves to hunt and fish. I was encouraged by the respect he showed for local people and our opinions and his commitment to local news and improved community relations.
He must have thought I was OK, too, because here I am, back again, in a recurrence that might or might not be eternal but certainly is familiar and comfortable.
Its enough to put a smile on this old, un-made-up face.
GRAND FORKS Changes made to North Dakota law this year to reduce incarceration rates and penalties for drug users have resulted in a sharp decline in felony drug possession charges in Grand Forks, but have yet to have a definitive impact on the overall number of felony charges filed.
When House Bill 1041 was signed by Gov. Doug Burgum, laws regarding drug possession became less severe. Possession of any non-marijuana drug went from being a Class C felony to a Class A misdemeanor for first-time offenders. The bill also moved toward sentence reduction and substituting probation for incarceration for low-level offenders without criminal history.
So far, Grand Forks defense attorneys say not much has changed.
Ive seen, at this point, no difference, defense attorney Ted Sandberg said of the new laws impact on the northeast central district court.
The Grand Forks States Attorneys Office did not file a single Class C felony of a controlled substance charge from August through October this year, according to legal services coordinator Darlene Jensen. The office filed 48 such charges in the same period in 2016.
But overall, felonies in Grand Forks during those three months are up over the same period last year. The States Attorneys Office filed 142 total felony charges from August through October 2017, up from 117 during that period in 2016.
The Burleigh County States Attorneys Office filed 50 Class C felony possession of a controlled substance charges from August through October this year. Burleigh prosecutors filed 97 of those charges in the same period of 2016.
That reduction did not, however, lead to a reduction in overall felonies charged. From August through October, Burleigh County filed 303 felonies this year. In 2016, they filed 278 felonies during that three-month period.
Through October, the Burleigh County States Attorneys Office has filed 1,765 felony charges, putting it on pace to surpass next year.
The Cass County States Attorneys Office said it could not fulfill an information request, but said its numbers resemble figures seen in Burleigh County in terms of reductions in felony drug possession charges.
Out west, one county is seeing a sharp drop in felonies charged since the new law went into effect.
Ward County filed 80 felony controlled substance possession charges between August and October 2016. This year, under the new law, theyve filed just 18. Ward County has seen a large drop in overall felonies since the law changed. From April through October 2017, Ward prosecutors have filed 612 felonies, 180 fewer than the 792 felonies filed during that time in 2016.
Sandberg said reducing first-time drug possession from a felony to misdemeanor is essentially just reducing the charge before a sentence deferment, which is a common outcome in felony possession charges, and that it doesnt affect the most serious drug users.
Where it is going to make a profound impact, ultimately, is in the lives of the college students, Sandberg said. Those are the ones who just get hammered, because they make a mistake and get hooked on some kind of pill or drug and it becomes a C felony.
One group who might be feeling the effect is police trying to get information on dealers from drug users.
I think its going to have an impact maybe more on law enforcement, and I think theyre a bit edgy about it, Sandberg said. Because when somebody has a felony over their head we can always reduce it down to a misdemeanor in some way shape or form.
Sentencing changes
HB1041 mandated probation over incarceration for Class C felony and Class A misdemeanor charges in cases without aggravating factors and defendants with low criminal history.
But Sandberg said nonviolent felons have not been pushed toward the state prison system in Grand Forks for a long time, and despite some excitement from defense attorneys, the law was largely addressing a problem that didnt exist.
In North Dakota, I personally thought they were already pushing people toward the probationary route, Sandberg said.
Peter Welte, a lawyer at Vogel Law Firm and former Grand Forks County States Attorney, said the new laws outcomes will often depend on individual prosecutors.
The law is a blunt instrument and the prosecutor holds that charging decision in their hands, and its something that should be considered in a very circumspect way before its used, Welte said.
Welte said his former office has always been judicious when charging out cases. He thinks some prosecutors may glance at the law when deciding what to charge.
When something's charged out you try not to be outcome-oriented, but I think what happens with a bill like this is when youre making the charging decision, you cant help but taking a look at where is this going to end up, based on the new law? he said.
Sandberg said Grand Forks has long been considered a reasonable district by defense attorneys.
In Grand Forks, the prosecutors, the court and defense attorneys are all independent, Sandberg said.
As far as caseload goes, defense attorneys say theyve seen few changes.
I think were busier here than weve ever been, Welte said.
A potential tradeoff in the new laws emphasis on sentence reduction is law enforcement seeking new venues to prosecute bigger cases, according to Sandberg.
I have seen an uptick in people being brought in on federal charges under the idea that Maybe were not going to get as harsh a sentence under state court or were not going to be able to continue our drug investigation in the state court, but if theres a federal connection and they can make that connection than theyre going to go into the federal system, said Sandberg, who handles cases as a public defender in U.S. District Court.
He thinks the Legislature may end up back at the drawing board next biennium, finding the law hasnt really changed the way justice is administered in North Dakota.
I dont know that its anything more than an attempt to reduce costs at the department of corrections, Sandberg said.
I know it. Most Montanans know it. At its core, the strength of Montanas economy and our way of life relies on the power of a strong public education system. Nowhere is that more clear than on a road trip in Montana. Here is my most recent road trip story.
At Miles Community College, I heard story after story of students attending agriculture programs, then going back to the family farm to substantially increase the farms productivity through techniques learned in school. Young Montanans can earn a two-year degree by age 20, then theyre instantly making upward of $40,000 per year working trade or skilled jobs.
Miles Community College has a truck driver training program that takes only a couple weeks to earn CDL certification. As a guy who helped pay for college by driving a truck, I know thats a job that pays well by the mile if youre willing to work hard over long hours. Because of the bureaucracy of the federal student loan program, the school is out of reach for so many people. They are willing to work hard, but cannot afford the training.
In Glendive, at Dawson Community College, students are invited to partake in incredible welding and corrosion programs the corrosion program being unique to the state. These schools are training young people for jobs that are here in Montana, right now, that will provide a good paycheck.
Back at home, my wife Meagen and I have been sending our children to the Billings public school across the street from our house for nearly ten years, and well be continuing to send them to Montana public schools for even longer.
Up the street at the Billings Career Center, students are building entire houses, which are then sold at the end of the academic year. Mechanics classes are rebuilding a car bumper to bumper. Students in one class were even learning how to suture a wound. These programs are designed to help graduates prepare, whether they enter the workforce with job-ready skills, or with a solid foundation for their next phase of schooling, these public school programs are prime examples of what public education can and should be in the 21st Century economy.
I recently visited a government class at Billings West High School and it was inspiring; teenagers spoke up about their enthusiasm for leadership and civics, engaging me with thoughtful questions, perpetual inquiry. The young people in our state are truly critical thinkers.
Yet, schools are constantly under threat, asked to do more with less.
Support for public education is not a partisan issue. Its just good economic policy. When we invest in our schools, we invest in our children, and we make sure they are equipped for the jobs, which employers in our great state need filled. We are building our tax base and ensuring continued economic growth in our communities. Rather than give tax cuts to billionaires and corporations, we could be using this money to invest in Montana and our future.
Young Montanans can earn an excellent education within a field that they are able to walk out the door and into a good paying job in our state, grow our economy and grow our tax base, and thrive.
As your next U.S. Congressman, I will expand taxpayer funding of quality public education, particularly trade and vocational skills. It is an important, wise investment. Not a single student should be deprived of the ability to get certified as a welder, or in heavy equipment operations, or for diesel repair because they cannot afford the tuition.
The secret to reinvigorating Montanas economy is no secret at all. We must invest in our young people, Montanas next generations.
John Heenan, Candidate for U.S. House of Representatives, Montana
As the clock ticks toward a special session and lawmakers pack their bags for Helena, a deep divide still separates Republicans who hold a majority in the Legislature from Democrats and the governors office over ways to balance the state budget, leaving several unsure if a deal can be struck.
Committee hearings start at 10 a.m. Monday, with the full session scheduled to open Tuesday.
The Legislature is coming back to Helena to address a $227 million anticipated shortfall in the state budget. Its not a matter of revenues tanking or any economic downward spiral. What happened is taxes and fees came in lower than the official estimate adopted by lawmakers, so legislators crafted a budget that spent more than what the state is now expected to bring in. Then the state experienced an extraordinary fire season, racking up $75 million in unanticipated firefighting costs.
The governors office has proposed plugging the $227 million hole by dividing it into thirds. About $76 million would come from cuts made by the governor to state agencies, another $75 million would come from proposed temporary tax increases and the remaining $76 million would come from a mix of transfers and delayed payments.
The governors office and Democrats feel theyve put together a solid list of proposals that will offset the amount of cuts the governor needs to make to balance the budget.
Earlier this fall Gov. Steve Bullock, a Democrat, put out a proposal that would have balanced the budget solely through cuts, causing an outcry statewide. Then discussions about a special session to offset some of the cuts started, and last week the governor's office said it was close to working out a deal.
But Republicans, who hold a 59-41 majority in the House and 32-18 majority in the Senate, are saying not so fast.
Even as the temporary tax increases pitched by Bullock were crafted into bill drafts by legislative staff last week, many Republicans, including those in leadership, say there is a slim-to-none chance those proposals will have enough support to clear their caucus, where many campaigned on promises to never increases taxes.
Also complicating or simplifying the process, depending on what side of the aisle you're on, was a move by Republicans at the end of last week to expand the scope of the special session. The most prominent piece of that agenda-expansion includes a GOP push to accept roughly $30 million from the company that runs the private Crossroads Correctional Center prison in Shelby in exchange for extending the state's contract with the facility.
Culling the list
As late as two weeks ago, the governor and lawmakers from both sides of the aisle were working with a long list of two-year temporary tax increases, options that together totaled more than $290 million. By last Monday, it had been narrowed to three proposals that would generate $75 million: raising the tax charged on hotels, campgrounds and other lodgings by 4 percent; increasing the tax on rental cars by 6 percent; and charging a 3 percent management fee on some assets of Montana State Fund, the quasi-public workers compensation insurance entity.
Those skeptical of tax increases, no matter how temporary, included Republican Rep. Nancy Ballance of Hamilton, who helped craft the list.
Ballance helped whittle down the list of proposals by eliminating some tax increases that were killed in the regular session last winter, such as upping the rate charged on tobacco taxes or alcohol, the so-called sin taxes, or increasing the tax rate on the wealthy.
As we looked at it, there were just some things that I knew our people were not going to go there (on because) it was so obvious during the (last) session they were just not willing to do it, Ballance said.
Increasing the lodging and rental car taxes might find some support, she said, saying similar ideas found traction last session. A bill that cleared the House 56-44 would have increased the bed tax, albeit by less than whats being proposed now, to pay for a new state heritage center. The effort died in the final days of the session because it was never taken up by the Senate.
I thought thats probably something at least a few people would be willing to vote for again, so its probably worth keeping on our list, Ballance said.
The accommodations and rental car taxes were designed to hit out-of-state people harder than Montana residents, Minority Leader Jenny Eck, a Democrat from Helena who was part of the negotiations, said Friday.
"A significant amount of that tax would be paid by tourists and that's something we should try to do is capture those dollars as they come through."
Eck said the tax proposals on the final list are a "middle ground" she hopes both parties can get behind.
"It's not how we (Democrats) would probably choose to address the need for revenue. We would certainly have other preferences, such as making the capital gains tax more fair so that if you're making more than $1 million on capital gains you're not paying the same as someone who works for a living,'' she said. "We'd probably prefer to do an upper income tax bracket."
Both of those proposals died last session, which made them unlikely prospects this go-around.
But even with a negotiated list, Ballance was less than optimistic about any of the tax increases passing.
If they are going to consider anything, maybe these will be ones they might, she said of her caucus. But I just dont seem to find enough (support for) tax increases, even on a temporary basis. Thats just one of those things that separates our people really fast. Its probably worth having the conversation, but I dont know how we get there.
Sen. Dee Brown, a Republican from Hungry Horse, collected the accommodations tax for 26 years at the RV park near Glacier National Park she owned with her husband. Like many in her caucus, she doesnt support upping the bed tax, or any other tax.
We all pay it. I would say it probably leans more heavily (on Montanans) if you look at the aggregate over a year. The bottom line is were getting taxed, Brown said Thursday.
Small businesses such as family-owned hotels would not be able to absorb a bed tax increase and would have to pass on rates to their customers, most of whom are Montanans, Brown said. Its just one more increase they have to ask their guests for.
It wasnt lost on Brown or other lawmakers that as they traveled to Helena over the weekend, families around the state were driving to and from high school playoff games. She pointed out Montana businesses who send employees to training and conferences also pay the accommodations tax.
Senate President Scott Sales, a Republican from Bozeman, was skeptical any tax increases would get enough support.
To tell the truth, I dont know where (the governors) going to get his votes, Sales said.
Sales points to the bellwether of the last regular session that ended in April, when nearly every tax increase the governors office proposed was shot down. Sales didnt predict this time would be any better.
I dont think theres a big appetite for it, Sales said. I can only speak for myself, and Im not going to be supporting any new taxes.
The fact that Democrats are outnumbered is front and center for Sen. Jill Cohenour, D-East Helena.
We are the minority. We are not going to have a lot of control over what happens here," she said.
Last Thursday, the organization Carols List organized a call with a handful of Democratic women in the Legislature. The call included Cohenour, who fired shots at Republicans by saying they had a role in creating the problem but arent stepping up to the plate to fix it. In April, near the end of the session, the House Taxation Committee voted along party lines to increase state revenue estimates by $100 million based on an updated revenue estimate from the Legislative Fiscal Division that the governor's budget office was skeptical of at the time. Twelve Republicans voted for the increase and eight Democrats voted against it.
The Republican majority in the Legislature, who doesnt always listen to us, basically put in force a lie, Cohenour said. They based the budget on a lie. What that basically said was, This is the stuff we need to pay for, and were going to lie about the amount of money we think were going to have coming in.' And then you set your budget in stone and then you hand that budget off for someone else to handle.
When they put forward their proposal, their budget to the state of Montana through House Bill 2 (the bill that sets the state biennium budget), they didnt want to actually make the cuts that might be necessary to make those decisions about what things should be funded and what things shouldnt be funded. They basically lied to the people of Montana and said we have enough money to cover this and we dont need to do anything.
Expanding the scope
When the governor calls for a special session, its done through a document narrowly tailored to allow only for a few selected issues to be debated. The Legislature, however, can choose to expand that call, which Republicans accomplished Friday.
That could force the governor to have to consider $30 million offered from CoreCivic, the company that operates the privately run Crossroads Correctional Center prison in Shelby.
Since the state signed a contract with CoreCivic in 1999, it has been paying an additional $9.17 per prisoner per day on top of the regular rate into a fund that can be used to offset the cost of purchasing the facility, if the state chooses to go that route when the contract ends in 2019. In exchange for offering the cash now to help out the state's budget crunch, CoreCivic has asked its contract be extended.
Republicans say with that $30 million, they can offset the amount of taxes to be raised. And if the governor chooses to not negotiate with CoreCivic, GOP lawmakers say it's on Bullock to come up with the $30 million in additional cuts to state agencies.
Democrats generally oppose any deal with CoreCivic, saying the company is taking advantage of the state's financial crisis to blackmail Montana.
Bullock's office Friday did not directly answer if it would consider any offer from CoreCivic, saying in an emailed statement:
"What the governor proposed earlier this week is the result of weeks of discussions with Republican and Democratic legislators. ... The governor has put forth a reasonable solution that honors the 'a third, a third, a third' approach legislators on both sides of the aisle have said they are comfortable with. These proposals do not jeopardize our ability to negotiate the best terms for a long-term contract and get the best deal for Montana taxpayers."
Sales said Thursday the expanded call, which also includes charging the health insurance premium tax to Montana Health Co-op and PacificSouce and other insurance changes, is just an opportunity for us to get more pieces on the board.
Im confident that with more puzzle pieces on the table were going to be able to put together a better puzzle, Sales said. The more items that are out there for discussion and that are options, I think that we can probably resolve this without a tax increase.
One of the pieces of the puzzle thats most palatable to all sides is looking at various fund transfers or temporarily halting payments to some special state accounts such as a pension program for judges that is over-funded or a two-month holiday on state contributions to employee benefits. Both of those actions could be taken without affecting the solvency of those programs.
Lawmakers are fairly split on a proposal to charge Montana State Fund a 3 percent management fee on any investments it has with the state-run Board of Investment over $1 billion. State Fund is a quasi-public insurance company that provides workers' compensation coverage.
Critics feel the State Fund holds too much in reserves and that money should be tapped in a crisis, but fund president Laurence Hubbard earlier this week questioned the legality of charging the fee.
Ballance said the State Fund could be an option as long as the management fee comes from reserves and not ratepayers or from dividends.
We believe that based on what the actuaries say, we are overfunded in reserves and we could put a fee on that, Ballance said.
Sales said hes confident the Legislature will get something done," though it may not be what Democrats hope for.
Im confident the books will be balanced. It may not be to the governors liking.
The public spoke and the county commissioners listened.
Recently, south Bitterroot Valley legislative representative Theresa Manzella scheduled a meeting with the commissioners to ask them to meet with Karen Budd-Falen.
Westerners are certainly familiar with Budd-Falen, or if theyre not, they should be. She is a Wyoming attorney who never met a national forest or national grassland she could love. Shes made a legal and political career of fighting conservation groups and by representing Cliven Bundy, another anti-public lands zealot whose name is well known to those who love our public lands.
Budd-Falen rejects the very concept of public lands and works around the west supporting the transfer of public lands to state and local control, which is just a euphemism for the ultimate goal of selling off our public lands to private buyers.
Manzellas pitch to the commission was confusing and not particularly well thought out, and it seems she was relying on her status as Republican legislator to make her case for her. It appeared that she wanted the commission to meet with Budd-Falen publicly for four hours on Nov. 17 to write a growth policy or write amendments to the five-year-old natural resource policy. It was not really clear what she wanted and the commissioners, understandably, were a bit baffled. But to their credit, they were also skeptical. They asked probing and thoughtful questions that Manzella seemed unable to answer coherently.
In fact, Manzella, and other fellow travelers in the just say no to public lands movement, fail to answer a lot of questions. She simply cannot make a case that the costs of owning and managing public lands in the west can be borne by state or local taxpayers. She cannot explain how local or state ownership of federal public lands is even constitutional - probably because it isnt. She doesnt explain whether the odious public lands transfer idea extends to all public lands in the U.S. Or is it just the Bitterroot National Forest she wants taken out of public hands?
More importantly, she cannot answer this simple question: Who supports the transfer of our precious public lands into some other ownership, be it local, state or private? The answer to that one is easy: No one, except ideologues who oppose all things public, including schools. The American people certainly do not support turning over their public lands to anyone.
In the end, the commissioners listened to the 20 or so people, all members of Bitterrooters for Planning, who attended and urged their elected representatives to reject a meeting with Budd-Falen.
Manzella was not prepared for the questions the commission had for her, and had no allies in her support. Ultimately, she agreed to extend personal invitations to the unnamed local individuals who she said agreed to fund Budd-Falens trip here, and to hold the meeting at an unidentified private residence. She extended invitations to the commission, but she had no takers.
The commissioners did the right thing and they deserve public recognition for it.
I hope the voters recognize that in Theresa Manzella, Ravalli County has an elected representative to the Montana Legislature who supports transferring national forests to, ultimately, private ownership. If you support the notion of keeping public lands in public hands, then please dont support Theresa Manzella.
Carlotta Grandstaff, Bitterrooters for Planning
Kathmandu, Nepal: President Bidhya Devi Bhandari is leaving for United Arab Emirates (UAE) for four day state visit from Monday.
President Bhandari has set state visit to UAE from November 13 to 16 at the invitation of Sheikh Mohammed Bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the crown prince of Abu Dhabi.
President Bhandari has set the state visit to the UAE in the mean time when Nepal and the UAE are marking the 40th year of establishment of their diplomatic relations.
According to the source at the office of the president, Sitalniwas, President Bhandari and the UAE crown prince Nahyan, who is also the deputy supreme commander of the UAE Armed Forces, will hold official meeting in Abu Dhabi on November 14.
The President Office source has also stated that matters of mutual interests and bilateral cooperation will be discussed in the meetings.
During her stay at UAE, the president will also meet the Nepali community at a program to be organized by Charge dAffaires of the Embassy of Nepal in Abu Dhabi.
KANCHANPUR, Nov 12: The Nepali Congress (NC) has forged an electoral alliance with the Rastriya Prajatantra Party (RPP) and the Rastriya Prajatantra Party (Democratic) (RPP-D) in Kanchanpur.
As per the agreement, both the RPP and RPP-D will support all NC's election candidates in Kanchanpur district (three for the House of Representatives polls, and six for the State Assemblies).
The coalition formation was announced at a joint press conference held on Saturday evening in Bhimdattanagar in Kanchanpur.
"We have formed a joint election coordination committee, and are launching joint election campaign. An election mobilisation committee will also be formed in the district," said RPP's district Chairman Purna Bahadur Chand at the event.
Likewise, NC central member and former minister Ramesh Lekhak said they started a new practice by forging an electoral alliance with the RPP and RPP-D. RSS
Kathmandu, Nepal: At least two persons killed and about one dozen others sustained injuries in a road accident at Lamahi municipality -1 of Dang district on Sunday morning.
The accident had occurred when a truck with registration number Na 4 Kha 7999 collided with the jeep, with registration number Na 1 Ja 1349.
It is said the deceased, who had died on the spot is identified as Rampati Chaudhary, 36 of Rapti rural municipality while another deceased, who had breathed his last while rushing to a hospital, is yet to be ascertained.
Shirley Contreras lives in Orcutt and writes for the Santa Maria Valley Historical Society. She can be contacted at 623-8193 or at shirleycontreras2@yahoo.com. Her book, The Good Years, a selection of stories shes written for the Santa Maria Times since 1991, is on sale at the Santa Maria Valley Historical Society, 616 S. Broadway.
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AMES, Iowa Brent Sexton says he can see the light at the end of the tunnel.
Life is hectic for Sexton, who is in his fourth year at Iowa State Universitys College of Veterinary Medicine.
Its pretty busy, he says. Boards are coming up, people are starting to look for work. Its a little crazy.
Sexton, who grew up on a farm near Rockwell City, Iowa, is the son of Keith and Barb Sexton. He became interested in veterinary medicine while caring for his 4-H and FFA livestock.
As I went through 4-H and FFA, I knew I wanted a career in agriculture, and that I enjoyed working around animals, Sexton says. Around my sophomore or junior year in high school, I became more interested in veterinary medicine.
My neighbor (Tim Collison) was a veterinarian, and I worked for him, and I really enjoyed it.
After graduating from ISU in 2014 with a degree in animal science, Sexton started veterinary school.
I always knew I wanted to work in production animal medicine, he says. I enjoy working with producers, and I know what I do will impact their ability to raise livestock.
Demand for large animal veterinarians remains high, says Pat Halbur, a veterinarian and interim dean of ISUs College of Veterinary Medicine.
Thats something we are seeing across the U.S., he says. I think one of the reasons is that some vet schools are producing fewer food animal veterinarians. Weve done the opposite at Iowa State.
Once students reaches the fourth year of school, they choose one of four options small animal, equine, mixed animal and food animal.
Halbur says more than 65 percent of veterinary students at ISU are choosing food animal medicine. That figure has risen from 20 percent over the last five to eight years, he says.
Halbur says a large number of veterinary students at ISU come from non-farm backgrounds.
They are getting turned on to animal agriculture, and we think thats great, he says.
Iowa State has about a 98 percent placement rate for its veterinary school graduates, Halbur says.
He says there are just 30 veterinary schools in the country.
Its pretty competitive to get into Iowa State, Halbur says. What makes us unique is that we are at the center of a $33 billion animal agriculture industry, and that is very appealing to students.
ISU has the oldest public veterinary school in the country, with the second largest number of alumni, trailing only Ohio State. Halbur says nationally there are 1.6 applicants for each slot in a vet school. At Iowa State, for the class accepted in 2017 there were six applicants for each spot. Applications for fall 2018 appear to be up substantially.
Thats mostly a reflection of all the out of state applicants we received and likely a reflection of our strength in food animal medicine, Halbur says.
He says ISU also does a good deal of recruiting to attract students.
Weve markedly ramped up our recruiting process, he says. Its so competitive to get into the school. We have an excellent reputation nationally, and that helps us attract the best students out there.
Sexton says he and his fellow students understand the demand for food animal veterinarians. He says internship opportunities are plentiful, and soon he and other fourth-year students will start the job application process.
He has chosen a particular field.
Im looking to get into swine production medicine, he says. My primary interest is finding the right clinic that is going to help me develop and become a better veterinarian.
PAULLINA, Iowa | Kellie Einck became the first Iowan in 19 years to win an FFA American Star award when the hardware was handed out at the completion of the recent FFA National Convention in Indianapolis, Indiana.
The award comes with a certificate, a medal and a $4,000 prize.
Einck, 22, said she'll put the certificate and medal in the home she's buying in Paullina. The $4,000? That will help with closing costs and, perhaps, may make more of a down-payment possible.
The answer should surprise few when it comes to this industrious student/worker, a 2014 graduate of South O'Brien High School, a full-time service technician/service writer who earned her commercial driver's license before joining the Icon Ag & Turf enterprise at Paullina two months after her high school graduation.
"I went to Northwest Iowa Community College in Sheldon (Iowa) and studied diesel mechanics there during my junior and senior year in high school," said the daughter of Paul and Lee Einck, of nearby Primghar, Iowa.
Einck, who grew up riding around with her dad, who owns and operates Einck Trucking, then earned her associates degree in accounting from NCC in the summer of 2015. Next month, she'll complete her bachelor's degree in accounting at Briar Cliff University.
The American Star Award features 16 finalists from throughout the United States who are nominated by a panel of judges who then interview them individually. Einck emerged from that field to secure one of four top awards, a first for the prestigious South O'Brien High School FFA program directed by Eric Kumm.
"It's a huge deal, I think, for Mr. Kumm, and I was really happy for him," said Einck, who noted how she'd grown as a leader through her high school FFA involvement.
Two years ago, Einck was named the National FFA Proficiency Award winner in Ag Mechanics Repair and Maintenance, placement. She topped all Iowa entrants that year before ascending to the title among four national finalists in a National FFA Convention held in Louisville, Kentucky. That accolade also represented a first for South O'Brien High School.
The recent Star Award, she commented, is broader. One qualification: A recipient must first achieve the FFA's American Degree, which Einck reached during the past FFA National Convention.
"I think a little over 4,000 members got the American Degree and then there were four Star winners," she said.
Einck's application included 15 to 20 pages, a packet that contained her resume as well as multiple letters of recommendation. Through the written word and via action, Einck had to demonstrate how she'd grown in her field and education, a process that shines great light on the virtues of education, work, leadership and more.
"And then I had to go through the interview, where I sat in the middle of a U-shaped table before 10 judges," she said. "Some of the judges were CEOs, some were vice presidents or managers of their businesses. The interview took 20 minutes."
The last question is the one Einck remembers vividly: "What's your biggest fear in life?"
That wasn't a question Einck had thought about much. Maybe she hasn't had the time, what with considering her class and work load the past four to five years. In addition to writing papers and completing projects for school, Einck juggles an ICON work load that, on Tuesday, for example, had her fixing hydraulic leaks in a John Deere 4430 that she had to service.
"I got the tractor this morning and hope to have it done tonight or tomorrow morning," she said. "It's been used this fall to move grain wagons and they put it on the agitator and pumped manure with it."
A farmer's livelihood, she continued, especially during harvest, can rest upon a technician's ability to get a tractor or combine back into the field in working order.
So, Einck has had little time in her young life to focus on fear. This is someone, after all, who had little to no hesitation about joining a field dominated by men. She laughed and said that even after three years of servicing implements, she occasionally has to explain to a caller to the shop that she's not a secretary.
"I thought about the question," she said, returning to the question at-hand, "and said my biggest fear would be getting to a certain age and saying that I wish I would have done something more."
She continued by saying how she tried to immerse herself in a number of activities in high school, rather than sitting on the sidelines. When she wasn't working or studying, Einck was leading the FFA chapter as president. She also played softball, ran cross country and served on both student council and National Honor Society.
"High school is such a short period of time," she said. "You can't sit like a bump on a log, because it goes by too fast."
After a pause, she added, "Actually, life is a lot like that."
Einck's accomplishments and her ability to think on her feet, she said, must have convinced the judges of her worthiness as an American Star Award winner.
"When I saw her resume and learned (in 2014) that she graduated from high school in May and was a diesel mechanic by July, I knew then she had special talents," said Jason Briese, service manager at ICON Ag & Turf in Paullina. "She hasn't let me down."
Einck, who now helps handle payroll for those employed in the shop, said the award is something she'll share with her school, her FFA chapter, her corner of Northwest Iowa and the state itself.
"I'm proud of my school, this area and the state," she said, "even though it had been a while since Iowa had a winner."
It has one now, a "Star" who is making a name -- and a home -- for herself in Paullina.
U.S. Sen. John Thune set South Dakota history by winning his fourth Senate term. He became the second South Dakota senator to win four terms, defying what is known in local political circles as the Curse of Karl" because Sen. Karl Mundt was the only politician to accomplish the feat. But it's not clear whether Thune's party will hold the majority after a midterm election in which the GOP failed to meet expectations of a sweeping victory. Thune says he wants to stay focused on solutions, especially on inflation, rather than bombastic politics. He is also pressing for his party to look beyond former President Donald Trump's influence.
Small stones, about the size of landscape rocks and brightly painted with inspirational messages, have been cropping up around Sioux City lately.
They're hand-painted, and each one has a unique (and often intricate) design.
Who's been leaving these cute little things all over the place?
Some of it is the work of the Sioux City Rocks club, a Facebook group dedicated to painting small rocks, hiding them for people to find, and encouraging finders to post the rocks on Facebook before re-hiding (or keeping) them.
Husband-and-wife team Mitchell and Sammy Stevens Finnesgard began the rock club a year ago this month. They were inspired after Sammy's sister came to visit from Washington state and told them of a rock club there.
"I said, 'Oh I wish we had a club here, that would be fun, I want to leave rocks and have people find them,'" said Sammy, a nurse at Mercy Medical Center. "She's like, 'Why don't you start it? You can start it -- I think you can you do it!'"
So Sammy got got busy painting rocks, while her husband got to work on a Facebook page.
"I kind of laughed at them. I was like, 'Ah, painting rocks is kind of silly, not a big deal,'" said Mitchell, a Mercy Air Care helicopter pilot and Army veteran. "At one point I was like, 'Eh, whatever, I'll pick up paint and start painting' -- hadn't picked up a paintbrush for 15 years -- and I start painting and I'm like, 'Hey, this is kind of fun!'"
Now people regularly ask Mitchell if he would be willing to paint a special rock for them.
One of the rocks he showed off has a highly detailed image of snowmen crossing a crosswalk while cars idle at the stoplight. Another has a small camping scene and the words "Life is good" painted on it. He calls this his "mantra rock."
"He's very good," Sammy said.
Was Mitchell artistic in his youth?
"No, not at all, that's what's funny about it," he said as his wife laughed.
A small world of rocks
Sometimes, a rock is taken on quite an adventure once someone finds it.
"It's fun to watch because it'll pop up and then it'll disappear for a few days, then it'll pop back up somewhere else, then it'll disappear, and it'll pop up," Mitchell said.
Rock clubs have been cropping up all around the country. Mitchell's sister lives in Valdosta, Georgia, and is a member of the rock club there. Oddly enough, one day a rock from the Valdosta club made it all the way up to Sioux City and was left at the Milwaukee Wieiner House.
The rock's photo made it back to the Valdosta rock club's Facebook page, where Mitchell's sister saw it.
"So she sent me a screenshot of Valdosta's rock that was left in Sioux City," Mitchell said. "I was like, 'Whoa, it's a small world!'"
The rocks are usually hidden in high-traffic areas where people are likely to find them -- on sidewalks, in parks, downtown, in front of stores and the library, and once inside the Jackson Street Brewery (with permission).
"We left it on a table, and we went there like two weeks later and it was still there," Sammy said. "It did disappear eventually."
There is one part of town where Sioux City Rocks hasn't yet been very active yet -- but they're working on it.
"Not a lot has happened on the west side," Sammy said.
"We've been trying to venture over there a little bit more," Mitchell added.
A slow start
When the club first started, the rocks and their Facebook page didn't get too much attention -- it was winter, after all.
"Just this summer it started kind of exploding," Mitchell said.
Now the Sioux City Rocks Facebook page has about 2,800 followers, some of whom actively paint and hide their own rocks.
"A lot of really good artists," Sammy said.
But you don't have to be a pebble-Picasso to join in the fun.
"It doesn't matter what age you are, or what talent level you are," Mitchell said.
A lot of people post pictures of rocks and say they were inspired by the messages painted on them.
"They're just like, 'I found this rock at Mercy,' and they just got a diagnosis, and they found a rock and it just cheered up their day," he said. "It provides a little bit of light for somebody."
"One person said it really helps with her anxiety," Sammy said.
Earlier this month, the group had their first rock-painting gathering.
"I think only 13 people RSVP'd, but we had almost 50 people there," Sammy said. "It was just getting together and painting rocks."
Previously, all the rocks were painted by people on their own, and the participants didn't really know one another.
"It was nice to meet some people face-to-face, we've been doing this club online," Sammy said.
The activity has become so popular, Sioux City Rocks isn't even the only rock club in town -- there are also 712 ROCKS and Sioux City Joy Rocks.
Fortunately, there's a lot of rocks to go around, and plenty of places to hide them. So the competition probably won't get too intense.
Sioux City Rocks will have its next rock painting event on Dec, 2, at 1:30 p.m. at the Aalfs Library, 529 Pierce St.
The couple were married on Nov. 10, 1979. Chris is retired and Bill retired from AGC. The couple are regulars at Mercy Hospital Rehab and Dialysis and have lived in Sergeant Bluff for more than 25 years.
ROYAL, Iowa | Florence "Fluff" Ihry, one of Siouxland's "senior" politicians, rolled to victory in the election on Tuesday, earning 111 votes for the mayor's seat in Royal, easily outdistancing a pair of opponents who garnered 19 and 5 votes, respectively.
Ihry started her fourth mayoral term with a city council meeting on Wednesday. After the meeting, members of the council presented her with a cake, bearing the words, "What a Sweet Victory."
The next celebratory cake for "Fluff" Ihry will mark her 90th birthday. She reaches that milestone on Valentine's Day, no doubt making "Fluff" among the oldest mayors in Iowa.
"I know that when I became a mayor for the first time six years ago, I might have been the oldest first-time mayor in Iowa," Ihry told me Thursday. "I don't know if I'm the oldest. I'll let you and Google try to figure that out."
Ihry hasn't the time nor the inclination to look it up. She's got other things on her mind, like pushing for the residents of Royal, pop. 417.
"We've got terrible cell phone reception in Royal," she said. "I want to get that improved. We need a tower somehow or another."
Ihry said the community has responded to an aggressive tree-planting effort aided with the receipt of a couple of major grants. More than 100 trees have been planted in town, guarding against the invasion of the emerald ash borer, which will almost certainly kill the ash trees in this community.
"We've planted the new trees close to the trees we know may die," Ihry said.
Other recent developments in her town involve improvements on drainage ditch No. 23, work that isn't glamorous, until you need it. I recall writing about Ihry one Memorial Day weekend a few years ago as she held the legs of the town's maintenance plant superintendent as he reached down to grab floats measuring water levels at the city's lift station. Ihry kept in contact with the Federal Emergency Management Agency following that soggy weekend as residents pumped water from their homes.
"And this may sound small, but we used to take our yard waste to Spencer," Ihry said of the Clay County seat. "And that option was shut down. We also had a (dump) site here, but that was closed by the (Iowa Department of Natural Resources.) We now have another site and if people bring old wire or stuff other than yard waste and tree limbs cut to a certain length, we'll have to close it down."
So, Ihry has worked with officials in Royal to educate the public on what they can and cannot transport to the dump site.
All this underscores the quote, "All politics is local," made famous by the late Tip O'Neill, Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives.
"I love this town and I want to keep it flourishing," the mayor said.
Five years ago, on a trip to the Clay County Fair in Spencer, I stopped in Royal to see Ihry, then one year into her mayoral role. I missed the mayor, who, that day, was awaiting surgery for a broken hip at the Spencer Municipal Hospital. So, I stopped by the hospital to see her post-surgery. And while she wanted to talk about her community, she waved off the interview that September day, understandably. We still laugh about it.
When we got together for a story months later, Ihry flashed her trademark sense of humor. "I wondered if all I had to do was break a hip to have a story written about me," she said.
No, all she had to do was step up for her adopted hometown, a town she obviously loves and will continue to challenge and promote. A "Prince of a Community," that, judging by her repeated success on Election Day, loves "Fluff" Ihry.
SIOUX CITY | The Sioux City Journal has sponsored Mr. Goodfellow Charities during the holidays to raise money to purchase toys for needy children in Siouxland for more than a century.
Sunday marks the first day the Journal launches a daily page A1 feature that recognizes the many businesses, groups and individuals that have contributed $1,000 or more to the charity. The goal this holiday season is to raise $135,000 to buy toys for nearly 6,500 underprivileged children.
"Mr. Goodfellow is as important today as it was 103 years ago as many families are trying to make ends meet," said organizer Sue Stusse. "Providing toys for the children takes the stress off those families that are trying to meet the basic needs of food, shelter and clothing."
The fund drive culminates with the annual sale of the Little Yellow Dog pup at noon on Dec. 9 in the atrium of the HoChunk Centre in downtown Sioux City. Last year, Aspen-- a 14-week-old Maltese at the time-- went to the high bidder to a tune of $16,000. This year's dog has not been revealed.
Families must apply for the Goodfellow toys with the application that is running every day in The Journal and in the Siouxland Shoppers Guide. An application can also be picked up at The Journal, 515 Pavonia St. The toys will be distributed on Dec. 10 and Dec. 16 at the warehouse directly south of the Journal building.
A Journal reporter started Mr. Goodfellow Charities in 1914. Organizers sold the first Little Yellow Dog in 1936.
SIOUX CITY | Developers in the last six months have unveiled plans for more than $100 million of redevelopment projects in downtown Sioux City, from the long-awaited restoration of the historic Warrior Hotel to the transformation of three landmark office building into housing units.
Nearly all the projects would be in serious jeopardy if the House adopts a Republican-backed proposal to eliminate the federal Historic Tax Credit (HTC) program, as part of major overhaul of the nations tax code.
The House Ways and Means Committee advanced the tax reform bill last week, and the legislation could get a vote in the full House as early as next week.
A Senate version of the tax bill, unveiled Thursday, would retain HTC but would scale back the credits.
The historic tax credit program, administered by the National Park Service and Internal Revenue Service, in partnership with state historic preservation offices, is designed to encourage developers and municipalities to save historically-significant buildings that are abandoned or dilapidated. The program allows developers to receive a tax rebate of up to 20 percent on eligible projects over a five-year period after the work is finished.
Developers and economic developments officials coast-to-coast have sounded the alarm over the prospect of the nearly 40-year-old tax credits being defunded, warning it would have a devastating effect on Sioux City and other communities.
"Our biggest concern, right now, is we have a very significant number of large projects in the development phase that are very, very good especially for downtown Sioux City," Marty Dougherty, the city's economic development director, said.
Warrior/Davidson
One of the big-ticket projects at-risk is a proposed $54 million investment designed to breathe new life into the former Warrior Hotel and adjacent Davidson Building. Local owner Lew Weinberg, in a partnership with a developer that specializes in restoration of historic buildings, Restoration St. Louis, unveiled a plan this summer that would include converting the Warrior into a 146-room boutique Marriott brand hotel.
The project, which would rely heavily on historic tax credits, also calls for transforming the vacant floors into luxury apartments, bars, restaurants and other retail outlets.
Roger Cauldron, a spokesperson for Weinberg, said developers are alarmed by the GOP tax plan, saying it would kill momentum for the Warrior/Davidson and other downtown projects.
We dont really understand why its being put on the chopping block because it (has) strong economic development impacts, said Caudron, a former Sioux City economic development director.
The Warrior/Davidson project, for instance, would create 200-300 construction jobs and 250 full-time jobs, he noted.
Its been an important program for us locally and across the country, he said.
Devastating effect
Julie Stavneak said
The loss of the federal historic tax credits would be devastating to an Omaha/Council Bluffs firm that recently unveiled plans to restore three historic buildings in Sioux City. It would open a 20 percent gap in funding on all three projects, said Julie Stavneak is a principal at J. Development, which specializes in repurposing historic structures.
Asked if projects could be completed without the tax credits, Staveneak's simply said, "no."
The developer plans to invest $16.25 million to turn the 105-year-old Commerce Building into 77 apartments and 18,000 feet of first-floor commercial space; $12.4 million to convert the 93-year-old former hospital into 69 market-rate apartments, and another $5.95 million to build 30 market-rate apartments and establish 6,175 square feet of commercial space on the first floor of the former Hatch Furniture Building.
Stavneak estimates her firm has successfully used historic tax credits to offset costs for up to 20 projects over the last 13 years. She noted the program is not only crucial to J. Development but the communities that benefit from redeveloped buildings.
We are working diligently to reach out to all the politicians and the folks that we can so that we can tell them, obviously, how important this is, Stavneak said. Its been around since 1978 and its done so many great things for not only Sioux City, the state of Iowa, but for the country really.
Restore, ReImagine, ReVeal
The Lamb Arts Regional Theatre is in the midst of an $11.5 million campaign to relocate its operations to a 98-year-old building downtown that was Sioux City's first municipal auditorium and most recently the home of KCAU's television studios.
Although the building is historic, Russ Wooley, a Lamb Theatre co-founder and the production companys artistic and managing director, said they had not planned to tap the HTC program.
He explained that because a portion of the program requires buildings to be listed on the National Register of Historic Places a process that can take years to complete they are going in another direction and only plan to restore the buildings facade to its historic state.
The renovated interior will include a two-story atrium with a skylight and three theaters: a 220 to 250-seat thrust theater, a 50-seat cabaret-style bar and a second-floor 120-seat theater. Other rooms will include a costume shop, classrooms, a scene shop and a catering kitchen.
While the Lamb Theatre project wont require HTC, Wooley remains a strong proponent of the program.
This is a devastating proposal for the nation to remove these historic tax credits, he said. Not only does it stop projects and progress, what happens then is if these buildings, if they arent able to be refurbished and reused, they fall apart and then people tear them down and look at what we lost.
Non-partisan issue
In October, the Sioux City Council unanimously passed a resolution supporting the HTC program and that also encouraged Iowas congressional representatives to endorse a bill to increase it to 30 percent.
During the discussion prior to the vote, Mayor Bob Scott said, Its not a Republican or Democrat issue. Its a preservation issue, so it shouldnt matter what politics you have. You should be supportive of it.
One group that is doing its best to preserve the credit by directly lobbying to lawmakers is the National Trust for Historic Preservation.
The Washington, D.C.-based privately-funded nonprofit is dedicated to saving Americas historic buildings.
Shaw Sprague, the organizations director of government relations and policy, noted more than 42,000 buildings nationwide have been saved through the use of the HTC program since its inception. Combined, those projects have generated $29.8 billion in federal tax revenues, exceeding the $25.2 billion in credits allocated to it through the U.S. Treasury Department.
What weve seen is that there is significant revenue generated at the both the local, state and federal levels when you take an often underperforming historic building and repurpose it for modern use, he said. Not only do you see taxable income at the local, state and federal levels, you create a catalytic asset throughout the community.
"As an example, if you look at the Municipal Auditorium that was rehabilitated in Sioux City in 2006, as a result of that rehabilitation youve seen other properties that have moved in around that area that havent used the historic tax credit.
More than $13 million in tax credits were used to help turn the former auditorium into the Long Lines Family Rec Center, as part of a larger Vision Iowa project that included construction of the Tyson Events Center.
Great success
Since 2002, a dozen projects in Sioux City valued at about $60 million have benefited from the federal historic tax credits.
Some of the projects include the Castle on the Hill apartments housed in the former Central High School building, the rechristened State Steel offices on Third Street, and multiple structures on Historic Fourth Street, and the Orpheum Theatre.
Can you imagine Sioux City right now without the Orpheum Theatre?," said Dougherty, who followed up by calling the 90-year-old performing arts theater as one of the citys most valuable assets.
The Orpheum underwent a drastic nearly $13 million renovation project 15 years ago that included recreating and restoring a lot of the ornate theater's original features.
Historic tax credits were an invaluable part of that project and Im not sure they would have succeeded without it, Dougherty said.
Dougherty noted Sioux City has taken a lot of positive steps in the last few years in its quest to revitalize its downtown.
The Warrior/Davidson project is one aspect of the citys $134 million reinvestment district that also includes a five-story, 150-room hotel adjacent to the Sioux City Convention Center, Ho-Chunk Inc.s Virginia Square residential development and an ag expo center.
Without the HTC, Dougherty thinks the entire reinvestment district, which received $14 million in state funding in August, could collapse.
Were on the verge of almost seeing a kind of a renaissance of downtown Sioux City, he said. A lot of that is underway today and we have momentum that we could lose here.
SOUTH SIOUX CITY | Surgery patients will have the unique opportunity to complete their recovery in a hotel setting rather than a hospital bed following procedures at a new multi-million-dollar surgical center planned along the South Sioux City riverfront.
Tri-State Specialists plans to open the $37 million Riverview Surgical Center next to the Delta Hotels by Marriott, 385 E. Fourth St., next fall. The proposed two-story structure will include nearly 50,000 square feet of space to house operating rooms, medical offices and patient suites.
Those needing post-surgery care will have an option to recover in one of nine riverfront patient suites within the center, but some will also have the option to stay in the adjacent Delta Hotels by Marriott with family under nurse and doctor supervision.
That's something Tri-State Specialists CEO Lee Hilka said will make it a unique program in Siouxland. He pointed to the hotel recovery program at Tria Orthopaedic Center in Bloomington, Minnesota, as the nearest such program.
"It's all about the patient experience," Hilka said. "I want them to get in and out as quickly as possible, ensure that theyre comfortable and that it's cost effective."
During their hotel stays, patients can have family stay with them and will be attended by personal nurses, visited by doctors and physical therapists. The setting is meant to be more relaxed and help ease the transition back to home life.
"We think when you talk to the plastic surgeons, that most of their patients would probably opt for the hotel," he said.
Hotel owner John Gleeson said he looks forward to having a positive working relationship with the surgical center.
"We are very pleased and willing to work with the surgical center on providing guest rooms and food and beverage services for the patients," Gleeson said.
The Delta Hotels by Marriott was formerly known as the Marina Inn. The property went through major renovations prior to transitioning to the national brand last month.
Hilka said surgery services at the new center will include orthopedic, gastrointestinal, plastic surgery, some OB-GYN and ear, nose and throat.
The bottom floor of the structure will be the surgery center, which will include four operating rooms, four recovery rooms and pre- and post-surgery rooms.
The top floor will include doctor's offices, which Hilka said are already entirely leased out. He said he has commitments from some Omaha and Sioux Falls specialists to come to Sioux City and provide services that patients would otherwise have to drive for.
"They can do the consultations here. They don't have to do the surgery here, but I want to make it more convenient," Hilka said. "The physician should be coming to the patients, not the other way around."
Approximately $28 million of the $37 million price tag for the surgery center will be equipment costs, he said. Approximately half of the staff would work at the surgery center, while the rest will be physicians and imaging and nursing staff on the second floor.
Work on the project will begin next week and should take 11 to 12 months, Hilka said, depending on the weather. W.A. Klinger will serve as the contractor.
Hilka said Tri-State Specialists, which is based on the campus of UnityPoint Health -- St. Luke's Hospital in Sioux City, chose the riverfront location because of its proximity to the hotel.
"We were looking for comfort suites for an overnight stay," he said. "So we had to find basically a vacant lot for sale next to a hotel that we think is a prestigious hotel."
Hilka said another reason to locate in Nebraska was because that state does not require surgical facilities to undergo the process for a Certificate of Need, a regulatory review process required for surgery centers in the state of Iowa.
That factor also played in the location of the Dunes Surgical Hospital in Dakota Dunes, South Dakota, when it opened in the mid-1990s.
Hilka said Tri-State Specialists opted not to locate in South Dakota because that area already had the surgical center's presence.
The Siouxland Chamber of Commerce will hold a ground breaking ceremony for the South Sioux City project Wednesday morning.
News of the new development comes as Tri-State Specialists continues plans for a new two-story clinic at the southeast corner of the intersection of 27th and Pierce streets.
Hilka said that separate $3.5 million project will include urgent care on the first floor with doctor offices on the second floor. Construction will begin in March and is expected to be complete around August or September, he said. It will employ 20 to 25 people.
Construction on the clinic was pushed back due to the reconstruction of Pierce Street. Plans had originally been to open in spring 2018, but that would now mean opening in the midst of construction on the 27th Street intersection, which would limit the facility to one access point.
The gravity of the existential threat we face from Islamic Jihad is truly of epic proportions. It is essentially a battle pitting free-civilized man against a totalitarian barbarian. What is at stake is the struggle for our very soul - namely who we are and what we represent. The lives that were sacrificed for individual rights and freedoms that we've come to cherish are being chiseled away from right under our noses by the stealth jihadists. And many of us are in denial and totally clueless.
The left's appeasement and pandering to evil is nothing new. What makes their utopian delusions so infuriating and unpardonable is that it is not only they who will have to pay the consequences, and deservedly, so, they are thwarting and undermining our best efforts at resistance and are thus dragging us down in the process as well.
By Peter Lancz,, the head of the Raoul Wallenberg World Campaign Against Racism.
Le Collectif Cheikh Yassine a organise un certain nombre dactivites et de festivites pour les enfants de Gaza sous le theme La joie des enfants de Gaza pour lAid . Ces activites ont commence le premier jour de lAid et continue jusquau 4eme jour de lAid dans la bande de Gaza.
Plusieurs activites, ont ete organisees parmi lesquelles : des competitions recompensees par des prix, des jeux, des animations et des chants presentes par un groupe ainsi que des distributions de cadeaux et daides financieres.
GRAND FORKS Doors could open for North Dakotas unmanned aircraft industry, thanks to a federal pilot program allowing local governments to partner with others in the industry.
But the state will have to prove it is the place to test drone integration if it wants to be one of the few successful candidates, the states U.S. senators said Friday.
President Donald Trump signed an executive order late last month that will launch the UAS Integration Pilot Program, a three-year experiment that will give state, local and tribal governments a chance to establish innovation zones for testing complex UAS operations, according to the executive order. The goal is to integrate unmanned aircraft, also known as drones, into local airspace and to accelerate the testing of UAS operations.
This is addressing a variety of issues the industry is dealing with it, said Thomas Swoyer Jr., president of Grand Sky Development Co. One of those issues is, there is a proliferation of growth in local regulations in the use of unmanned aircraft systems -- some prohibiting it, some supporting it.
The program would allow successful candidates to form partnerships with other public or private-sector entities. The U.S. Department of Transportation will choose at least five applications to participate in the program.
The executive order allows communities that want to support drone technology a chance to develop the industry while testing which regulations work, Swoyer said. Grand Forks, for example, is home to Grand Sky, a tech park established west of town that allows companies to expand their UAS capabilities. It also has been used to test federal regulations, can fly multiple drones at once and has the green light to conduct beyond-line-of-sight flights without chaser planes.
The state of North Dakota has so much to offer this industry, Swoyer said. Logically, you would think this would be one of the locations chosen, maybe several locations in North Dakota.
It also is a sign the country wants to support the UAS industry, said U.S. Sen. Heidi Heitkamp, D-N.D.
Its a recognition that we need to move and move more expeditiously than what we have been moving, she said, adding the order is a step in the right direction.
Governmental entities in North Dakota have a good chance to snag one of the few spots in the program, but it is not a done deal, Sen. John Hoeven, R-N.D., said. The rest of the country is competitive and will want to be a part of the program.
The order doesnt put a limit on the number of partnerships the DOT will approve, but Hoeven said the government likely will choose a small number.
I think there are going to be five, maybe 10, he said. Its not going to be hundreds.
Federal Aviation Administration Administrator Michael Huerta said the FAA would like to emphasize meaningful partnerships with industry, Hoeven said.
To me, that says key industry partners, the senator said, adding he wants to focus on industrial companies like Northrop Grumman Corp., General Atomics and General Electric, which owns LM Wind Power in Grand Forks.
North Dakota has UAS capabilities other parts of the country dont have, but it needs to keep searching for the next thing to make it even more competitive, Hoeven said.
He said he is trying to convince Amazon, which has a branch in Grand Forks, to test shipping capabilities using drones. In previous conversations, Amazon told Hoeven that Grand Forks would need beyond-line-of-sight capabilities, the ability to fly multiple drones at once and cell towers that could help with low-level command and control operations.
The last one would require a partnership with a cellphone company.
That is an opportunity to go back to Amazon, which we are doing, and to reach out to Verizon or AT&T, he said.
North Dakota needs to use every resource available to show the country the states UAS capabilities and competitiveness, Heitkamp said.
Once people know, and once people see what we are doing, I cant just imagine more competitive than any other state in securing one of these pilots, she said.
The DOT has until Jan. 23 to establish the pilot program. Once the program is in place, the DOT will have 180 days to choose and form agreements with the successful governmental jurisdictions who want to participate in the program.
The DOT also can accept new applications for participation in the program a year before the three-year pilot schedule terminates.
Simon Said rode a pocket trip to claim victory in the $2,400 Preferred Pace on Saturday, November 11 at Red Shores Racetrack and Casino at the Charlottetown Driving Park.
The Joey Squires-trained pacer, returning $28.80 to win, overpowered pacesetter Adkins Hanover in deep stretch to win in 1:56.1 with Mark Bradley in the bike. Race favourite Adkins Hanover was second with The Big Bite finishing third. Simon Said is co-owned by Squires with partners Jack MacGillivray of Charlottetown and Albert MacGillivray of Middle Sackville, N.S.
Prettyndangerous prevailed in the $2,250 Open Mares Pace for driver Adam Merner and trainer Bo Ford, who co-owns with Arnold Myers of Charlottetown. The daughter of Armbro Deuce defeated Good Luck Kathy with Hurricane Hill third.
MacPherson piloted Holy Molie Maggie to win the $1,850 Open Trot in 2:01.4. The Jeff Holmes trainee powered past race favourite Freddie with Wedgewood third.
To view Saturday's harness racing results, click on the following link: Saturday Results - Charlottetown Driving Park.
(With files from Red Shores)
With cooler, darker days ahead and more pressure on heating and lighting systems the risk of barn fires increases. So, now is the time for your annual combustible clean-up!
Combustibles are everywhere and unavoidable around the horse farm, but your management of them can considerably reduce the risk of a barn fire.
To help you learn more about the combustible hazards in your barn and evaluate the safety of your facility, go to Equine Guelph's Barn Fire Prevention online tool. The interactive assessment tool asks 20 questions about inside and outside of your barn and takes five minutes to complete.
The chart below outlines some of the common fuel sources that burn rapidly once ignited and discusses best practices for prevention.
Combustible
Solutions
Hay
Ensure moisture content is not too high before storage.
Tidy up loose hay from storage area and barn aisles.
Store in a separate building at least 50 feet away from barn.
Bedding
Also preferable to store in a building at least 50 feet away from barn.
Sweep up any loose material.
Cobwebs
Take them down with a broom.
Weeds, Overgrown Grasses
Use the weed eater to trim around buildings.
Gasoline or Diesel
Keep any fuel for farm equipment in a separate storage area at least 50 feet away from the barn. This includes the tractor and equipment!
Paint, Pesticides & Other Flammable Liquids
Keep in a separate storage area at least 50 feet away from the barn.
Dust
Avoid fine sawdust shavings as a bedding material.
Sweep and clean dust from surfaces of the barn on a daily basis.
Remove dust and debris from fan blades and motors.
Lint
Clean dryer lint traps and ensure proper exhaust.
Garbage
Take out the trash (empty feedbags, binder twine...all combustible)
Wood
Consider other building materials such as concrete block or steel.
"Once you have reduced your risk taking care of combustibles, inspect all possible sources of ignition," said Equine Guelph director, Gayle Ecker. Electrical malfunctions are a primary ignition source for many fires including barns.
To reiterate, farm buildings can have an increased fire risk in winter when heating and electrical systems are more heavily taxed for heating and lighting. Portable heaters are a risk as are other appliances not intended for agricultural use. When not in use, electrical equipment should be unplugged and properly stored away. It is important not to let water bucket heaters run dry. Once empty, the continuous heat can melt the bucket resulting in ignition of stall bedding and hay.
An annual electrical inspection, completed by a qualified electrician familiar with livestock barns, is highly recommended to check for signs of deterioration or corrosion. The Electrical Safety Authority has stringent requirements for installation of electrical equipment in animal confinement areas. Have any issues that are found repaired without delay.
Jim Zyta, vice president of loss prevention with Heartland Farm Mutual, provided the following tips: For additional protection against fire, especially in the animal housing area, consider arc-fault protection on 15 and 20amp circuits and receptacles. This is especially important if your wiring is recessed within barn walls and above ceilings. Arc-fault protection could prevent a fire due to loose connections or rodent damage saving your building and much more.
When using 240-volt approved barn heaters, consult with your Electrician and ESA Inspector. It is a best practice to hardwire these units directly to a 30amp circuit avoiding a receptacle connection. These 30amp/250V receptacles are notorious for burning up! Always maintain clearances to combustibles as per manufactures installation guidelines. Zyta says Heartland is happy to partner with Equine Guelph on this initiative, "We are helping barn owners protect what they value the most."
For more tips on fire prevention and to complete interactive activities inside and outside your barn, visit the Barn Fire Prevention Tool, sponsored by Heartland Farm Mutual.
Want to learn more? Equine Guelph will be hosting a Technical Large Animal Emergency Rescue Course, with a fire safety component, from November 17 - 19 at the Meaford Fire Department Training Centre in Ontario, Canada. Contact [email protected] for more details.
(Equine Guelph)
MOSS POINT, Miss. -- Lukewarm weather, gentle breeze, and rippling waves set the stage for the commemoration and celebration of veterans past and present in Moss Point as the 17th annual Jackson County Veterans Day program was held on Saturday.
Before the program began, members of the Magnolia Classic Cruisers rolled into the city with American flags proudly waving outside of their vehicles in honor of the veterans.
After the welcome from Mrs. Carla Todd Voda, President of the Jackson County Chamber of Commerce, the Moss Point High School NJROTC presented the colors, which was then followed by the National Anthem, sung by Dr. Kimberly Cox Rasmussen.
The next words were heard from Mayor Mario King as he welcomed those from near and far into the city and briefly discussed what an honor it was for the program to be held in Moss Point.
"As was previously stated earlier, freedom isn't free and the fight is ongoing, so we would like to honor those living and those who have paid the ultimate sacrifice so that we could enjoy the freedoms we have today," King said.
After the invocation by veteran Victoria Todd, each of the different armed forces anthems were played to recognize the veterans in the audience who served in different branches of the military.
Veteran Mitch Ellerby along with active veteran Robert Cunningham performed the POW/MIA ceremony where they paid homage to those who may have been captured by their enemy or were not fortunate to make it back to their brothers and families.
For those such as Ellerby, Veterans Day is a day of reflection of the comrades they lost.
"A day like today means a whole lot to me because it represents sacrifice that comrades have made and that we all have made to make America free," he said.
Veteran James Fisher says his experience was unlike any other, but said he would recommend the military to anyone.
"I encourage anyone to join the armed forces because it encourages discipline and allows you to see the world," Fisher said. "It will provide a greater appreciation for the freedoms we enjoy here today."
The program's keynote speaker was Chaplain, Capt. Torrey M. Garrison of the U.S. Air Force. Garrison provided three points of reference in his keynote that centered around living your best life.
Those were: perseverance through hard times, maintaining our bearing, and being a friend someone can always rely on.
Garrison referenced three military groups and men who made valiant efforts in battle for their fellow man. In speaking to perseverance, Garrison said that while everyday may not be a great one, you have the God-given right to wake up the next day to be better than you were the day before.
"One of the keys to being successful in today's world is knowing where we are and where we are going -- that is military bearing," Garrison said. "We must know our battles and we must be prepared to fight them."
"We all need friends that we can rely on and I can guarantee you, someone needs you," Garrison said. "Go and make a difference in someone else's lives."
When Gwen Dey took guardianship of Charity Purtteman as a foster child, it took lots of love to help her overcome years of neglect and abuse.
Like many aging parents of disabled adults, Dey worries about what will happen to Charity, who is now 31 but still has the mental capacity of a child, when she is gone.
We have to teach her that we wont always be around, Dey said Thursday.
Thanks to a partnership between a housing opportunity nonprofit and a local supportive care provider, Kelso now has two new duplexes to help four disabled adults, including Charity, live safely and as independently as possible.
Options for Supported Housing, an Ohio-based nonprofit, recently built the two duplexes on Mill Street in Kelso specifically designated for low-income residents with severe developmental disabilities.
What happens with people with developmental disabilities (is) a lot of times theyve lived at home for years, said Options for Supported Housing Executive Director Kathy Streblo. When the family members begin to age and become elderly, it becomes clear they need another living arrangement.
Supported Housing has houses in 10 other states, including 36 in Washington. It is partnering here with Life Works, which will provide around-the-clock staffing support for the four women.
The main focus of Life Works is to help remove barriers that keep people from being able to participate in their communities, Life Works Executive Director David Hill said.
Another new duplex resident will be Kalene Swingler, the 23-year-old daughter of Kellie Swingler, who is moving out of residency at a different Life Works building. Her daughter has improved under the 24-hour care shes had there, but the new living arrangements will give her daughter more personal space and new appliances, Kellie Swingler said.
This is more of a personal setting with their own living space, she said. And they dont always have to be with their roommates.
The project was funded by the City of Kelso, the Federal Home Loan Bank and the State Housing Trust Fund. Adam Trimble, who oversees grant funding from the Longview-Kelso HOME consortium, said the citys contribution of about $55,000 came from Housing and Urban Development (HUD) funds.
The duplexes are developed to efficiency and environmental standards, Trimble said. Features include bright new countertops, smooth wooden cupboards and extra-wide doors and tile floors for wheelchair accessibility.
Options for Supported Housing has guaranteed the complexes will provide housing for low-income residents with special needs for the next 40 years, Trimble said. Rent for the homes is set at 30 percent of the tenants income, which is typically about $800 a month.
People with developmental disabilities are generally speaking a low-income population, Life Works Executive Director Hill said. They rely on Social Security as their primary source of income. ... Any chance they get for subsidized housing is a real opportunity to participate in their community.
Kristy Coons, program coordinator with Life Works, said the program finds ways for clients to be involved in their community with trips to dances, the movies, the beach, water parks and events put on by the city parks and recreation department.
They strive to be like anybody else. So why not help them live like anybody else? Coons said.
LONG BEACH, Pacific County Named after a character in a cowboy book, Police Chief Flint Wright describes himself as pretty conservative.
A portrait of Ronald Reagan hangs in his office, along with photos of John Wayne, and his father and grandfather on horses capturing the rural lifestyle of Pacific County, which curves around Willapa Bay in the states southwest corner.
He doesnt talk about it much, but he voted for Donald Trump, helping Pacific County go with the Republican presidential candidate for the first time in decades. Among other things, he liked Trumps promise to secure the borders. Economic migrants are not a problem in his mind hes seen how hard they work but he wondered, Whos coming with them? Terrorists, he feared.
Then came the July arrest of Mario Rodriguez by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
I was kind of in shock, to be blunt with you, Wright said.
Rodriguez, whose visa had expired, had lived in the area without legal permission for more than a dozen years. He had worked in bilingual education and periodically tipped police to trouble spots.
He was real pro-law enforcement, the police chief said. Shoot, anybody would like to have him as a neighbor.
Trump, on the campaign, had talked about kicking out Mexican drug dealers, criminals, rapists. And thats the kind of immigration crackdown a lot of people here were expecting.
Yeah, we dont want that element, Wright said. But Rodriguez? The police chief couldnt believe sending him back to Mexico would do anybody any good.
That kind of shock is reverberating throughout the county as Trumps toughened immigration policy hits home. ICE has arrested at least 28 people in the county this year, according to numbers provided to the Sheriffs Office.
While thats just a small share of the roughly 3,100 ICE arrests overseen by its regional office in Seattle which covers Washington, Oregon and Alaska it represents a pronounced upward trajectory. Last year, ICE reported eight Pacific County arrests to the sheriff and for a long stretch of years before that, zero.
In a county of small, close-knit communities Long Beach, population 1,400, is one of the largest its noticed when someone goes missing. The number is magnified by those who have moved, gone into hiding or followed family after a deportation. People have lost neighbors, schools have lost students and businesses have lost employees.
With its windswept bay and wide-open coast, the county is beautiful and feels remote, especially on the Long Beach peninsula. It is also poor. Some buildings are boarded up. Median household income, about $38,000, is half that of Washingtons.
A limited economy revolves around seafood, cranberries, tourism and, new to the scene, marijuana.
The work can be grueling, particularly in the seafood industry. At sunrise or midnight, workers might be out on the bays mudflats, taking advantage of low tide to dig for clams and oysters.
It is not the case that immigrants are the only ones applying, said shellfish farmer Marilyn Sheldon. It is the case that immigrants are the only ones willing to stick it out.
Some are here legally. Some are not.
So ICE represents a threat that has a huge ripple effect, said Steve Gray, a seafood-cannery owner who was boiling crabs one afternoon in his backyard.
We dont have Nike. We dont have Boeing. This is what we do down here, he said. Take the main workforce out you will lose whole industries.
Dont go, Gladys
The agents started appearing early in the morning, stopping people on their way to work. Or they waited in parking lots. Mysterious figures unlike the local law-enforcement officials some knew from high school, the ICE officials knew names.
Mario? one asked in late July after Rodriguez got out of his car in a post-office parking lot. He was studying to be a teacher at that point, having left his longtime school-district job that involved supporting bilingual and migrant families.
I turned around, Rodriguez recounted. I extended my hand. I was even smiling.
Do you know why were here? asked the agent.
Rodriguez did. A Mexican native with family in the U.S., he once had a visa to visit this country, but it expired years ago.
They were very kind, Rodriguez said of the two agents. They apologized for using handcuffs, asked if he wanted to switch the radio station in their car and gave him a burrito when they got to their office in Portland.
But that didnt change his eventual destination, the Northwest Detention Center in Tacoma, where he spent four weeks. He is now out on bond as his case winds through immigration court.
Agents also targeted Gladys Diaz through an online ad for a pinata she had made. The man who answered it asked to meet in the parking lot of a bank rather than the address she offered.
It seemed a little suspicious.
Dont go, Gladys, her boyfriend yelled as she drove away that June day with their young daughters. She either didnt hear or didnt listen.
Shortly afterward, while he did yard work around their apartment complex, he saw ICE agents walking toward him with his family. They were handing over the kids and taking Diaz away. His 12-year-old was crying.
Why you dont take us all? he asked.
They said Diaz had a prior deportation order. A decade ago, she was caught sneaking across the border, sent back and prohibited from re-entering the U.S. for years, according to her boyfriend. She tried again the very next day, and made it.
Diaz and two daughters, both born in the U.S., are now back in Mexico.
Neighbors just snatched
ICE activity isnt new to Pacific County. In 2006, the agency raided a seafood company and arrested 16 workers. In the 1980s and 90s, immigration officers conducted sweeps that took away dozens at a time, said Sheriff Scott Johnson.
But the Obama years, despite a record level of deportations nationally, seemed to leave the countys immigrants pretty much alone.
In Washington and nationally, ICE still isnt arresting as many people as it did before Obama scaled back enforcement in his final years, largely by directing immigration officials to focus on serial and serious criminals and those who sneaked across the border recently.
Under President Donald Trump, ICE continues to prioritize its enforcement resources to focus on aliens who pose a threat to national security, public safety and border security, according to an email from a spokeswoman.
Trump, in an executive order his first week in office, broadened the grounds that deem someone threatening: Convictions arent necessary; all crimes count no matter how serious; and so does an unheeded deportation order reaching back decades.
Trump also freed ICE to arrest anyone else it deems fit. The agency does NOT exempt classes or categories of removable aliens from potential enforcement, the spokeswoman wrote.
Although all the numbers are not in for fiscal 2017, the latest count shows ICE almost tripled arrests without criminal convictions in the agencys Seattle region, to 696.
Stephanie Serrano, an activist in north Pacific County, expressed frustration that so many people have said this is not my issue.?
Its true that, for many locals, other issues rank higher, said Nan Malin, a longtime officer of Pacific GOP. While traditionally a Democratic stronghold, the county has always leaned conservative in some ways. Property and gun rights loom large, she said.
Feeling overburdened by environmental regulations, many also believe that Seattle politics are completely against rural Washington, Malin added.
If that factored into the countys Trump vote, so did health care at least for Malin. A sharp critic of Trump, whom she doesnt consider a true conservative, she didnt know who she was going to vote for.
Right before the election, she got an insurance-renewal notice informing her that she could no longer see her doctors across the Columbia River in Oregon. She blamed Obamacare regulations.
I reached over, took out my ballot and did not vote for Hillary, she said, talking over tea in her 1905 house, built when the peninsula served as a getaway for Portlands gentry.
Many also liked what they heard from Trump on immigration, she said, even if it played a minor role in their vote.
Sure, people want to see a wall built, she said. They want sanity in immigration.
But the way ICE is carrying out Trumps policy locally, described in poignant detail by a Chinook Observer series called Stories from the Heart none of the Republicans I talk to are happy, she said.
We shouldnt be ripping families apart, Malin said. It seems very Gestapo.
ICE declined to make anyone available for interviews about its Pacific County activity.
A lack of information adds to the sense of unease.
Wright, the police chief, talked about neighbors just snatched and about sitting in church on a Sunday wondering whether the Hispanic family he hasnt seen in a while has been arrested or is in hiding.
Johnson said someone recently called the Sheriffs Office about neighbors they hadnt seen in a while. He said theres no way of knowing whether theyre really missing or taken by ICE.
The sheriff has pushed the agency for notification of when agents are in the county and who leaves with them in handcuffs. In a recent meeting with him, assistant field directors of ICEs Seattle and Portland offices agreed to the first part.
He consequently knew, as he recounted the meeting in his South Bend office, that agents were around that very day. He also learned from ICE the next morning they had arrested a 35-year-old man.
ICE wont give him names, however. Its a privacy issue, Johnson said officials told him. I dont buy that. If we arrest somebody, your names on the internet. (His departments website posts jail bookings.)
If you have someones assigned immigration case number, or an exact name (not always commonly known with double surnames) and country of origin, you can check where a detainee is being held through a federal website.
Unlike with most courts in the U.S., there is no public place to look up a case file in the immigration system. Arrest reports, lawyers briefs and hearing transcripts are generally inaccessible.
Despite his agitation, the sheriff is viewed with suspicion by some local activists and immigrants, who believe his office is collaborating with ICE. They note Johnson, along with other local sheriffs, met with U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions during a visit to Seattle in September.
I respect the position, said Johnson, a Democrat.
In 2011, the sheriff opted the county into Secure Communities, a federal program that runs fingerprints of people held in local jails and prisons through FBI and Department of Homeland Security databases. If immigration violations are found, ICE will follow up.
Johnson said he sees that as a way of catching, and possibly deporting, serious criminals.
He strongly denies working with ICE in other ways. Like many local law-enforcement officials, he said its important that crime victims and witnesses feel safe coming to his office, no matter their immigration status.
I dont think Ive ever in seven years been so misperceived on any issue, he said.
As I visit communities across Northwest Oregon, I hear from many Oregonians who feel left behind and left out of the economic recovery. Too many people are still struggling to make ends meet. If they are working, their wages are stagnant. They feel overwhelmed by rising rent prices, barriers to transportation, and sky-high childcare costs. There may be job openings in their community, but the jobs require skills and resources they dont have.
They are not alone. More than half of the jobs in todays labor market require less than a four-year degree, but more than a high school diploma. Unfortunately, only 43 percent of American workers have the skills for those positions. This creates a skills gap, leaving businesses struggling to find workers with necessary skills, and workers without pathways to better-paying jobs.
Apprenticeships and work-based learning programs help close the skills gap. Employers can align training with the skills they need, and workers learn while they earn through classroom instruction and paid, on-the-job training. Its a win-win.
We need to strengthen investments in work-based learning programs that respond to local industry needs, like the Oregon Manufacturing Innovation Center (OMIC). OMIC brings together industry leaders like Boeing with educational institutions such as Oregon Tech, Oregon State University, Portland State University, and Portland Community College to develop work-based learning programs. This collaboration will result in growth and efficiency in advanced manufacturing, and more good jobs for Oregonians.
OMIC is the right approach, at the right time, in the right place. It will foster the expertise and innovation that American industries need to continue to thrive and compete globally. This public-private partnership is a tremendous opportunity for Oregonians because it brings value to our communities and the economy.
To help Oregonians and many other Americans who still face job insecurity, we must expand work-based learning to sectors of the economy that lack established apprenticeship programs, like health care and technology start-ups. Small- and medium-sized businesses often do not have the resources to establish work-based learning programs. Like OMIC, industry partnerships bring together employers, education institutions, training providers, and community-based organizations to support the creation and expansion of work-based learning programs that benefit workers and the economy as a whole.
Recently my colleague on the Education and Workforce Committee, Congressman Drew Ferguson, and I introduced bipartisan legislation to expand opportunities for skills training. Our bill, the PARTNERS Act, would support industry partnerships to help small- and medium-sized businesses develop work-based learning programsat no additional cost to taxpayers. The industry partnerships will also make it easier for people to re-enter the workforce by providing workers with access to tools, work attire, transportation, child care services, and mentorship support.
Through greater investment in apprenticeships and other training programs, we can get more people back to work and provide our nations businesses with a more productive and efficient workforce. The PARTNERS Act and OMIC stem from the same good concept: when we approach economic problems with workers and businesses in mind, we come up with better solutions for everyoneand we all win.
WASHINGTON Saudi Arabia risks committing the original sin of modern Middle East politics fighting its regional wars in Lebanon and driving that fragile country once again toward civil strife.
Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salmans target in Lebanon is Hezbollah, the nations dominant political force, which is backed by the Saudis nemesis, Iran. Unwilling to risk a direct shot at Tehran, the crown prince is instead attacking Irans clients in Beirut.
The proxy battle has escalated over the past week. First, the Saudis pressured Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri to resign last Saturday; hours later, MBS, as the 32-year-old crown prince is known, launched sweeping arrests of rival princes and business leaders in Riyadh, creating an uproar across the region. On Thursday, the Saudi government told its citizens to leave Lebanon and advised against future travel there.
For a Sunni Arab world that fears and loathes Iran, the moves by MBS will probably be popular. Hes emerging as the strongest (if also the most impulsive) Sunni leader in decades, exercising a kind of raw power at home and in the region that hasnt been seen since Iraqs Saddam Hussein.
The Saudi moves have rattled the Lebanese political class but havent panicked the financial sector. Riad Salameh, the governor of Lebanons central bank for the past 25 years, said last weekend that the monetary authorities had over $43 billion in reserves, enough to ensure stability. That calmed the markets.
Lebanese officials fear that whats next is a broader economic quarantine on Lebanon, much as Saudi Arabia has imposed on Qatar. Lebanese sources told me Thursday in telephone interviews that the Saudis want to force Hezbollah to leave the Cabinet and Parliament. Thats understandable for Riyadh, but not realistic.
Saudi Arabias real leverage is that about 500,000 Lebanese work in the Gulf, sending home roughly $3 billion annually, a tide of remittances that keeps Lebanons financial and property markets afloat. If those Lebanese were expelled, a dramatic downward spiral would begin.
For Lebanon, this is a familiar story. Since the 1950s, regional and global powers have manipulated the countrys all-too-pliable sects for their own advantage.
The Sunnis were played by Egypts Gamal Abdel Nasser and then, catastrophically, by the Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, whose challenge to the central government triggered the 1975-76 civil war. The Israelis battled the Palestinians in Lebanon using Christian and Shiite Muslim proxies and finally invaded outright in 1982. The Syrian regime held Lebanon hostage from 1976 until 2005, when enraged Lebanese demanded they withdraw after the assassination of Rafik Hariri, Saads father.
Hezbollah emerged as the dominant force in Lebanon partly because of the instability that followed Israels unwise 1982 invasion. The Iranian-backed militia has subverted Lebanese democracy and been a dangerous forward outpost for Irans power. When the Syrian civil war began in 2011, many analysts predicted that a frail Lebanon would tumble back into chaos. But it hasnt happened yet because Hezbollah worked quietly with Saad Hariri and other Lebanese leaders to keep a lid on unrest.
Can such quiet cooperation continue? Not if the Saudis sabotage the countrys economy in what they describe as an effort to punish Hezbollah.
For the U.S., Lebanon poses whats becoming a recurring challenge how to encourage MBS push to modernize the kingdom without letting him drive Saudi Arabia and the region off a cliff.
Call it the MBS conundrum: The headstrong crown prince jumped into what U.S. officials thought was an unwise war in Yemen; its still raging, despite U.S. attempts to find a settlement. MBS escalated a feud with meddlesome neighbor Qatar; Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has tried unsuccessfully to mediate. This week in Lebanon, the U.S. was again attempting damage control, as Ambassador Elizabeth Richard pledged $42 million for the Lebanese army and expressed support for a stable, secure, democratic, and prosperous Lebanon.
The rivalry between Iran and Saudi Arabia has been ripping the fabric of the Middle East since the Iranian revolution of 1979, spawning terrorist movements and proxy wars among Shiite and Sunni allies of the two nations. This sectarian bloodletting seemed unstoppable when a strong, arrogant Iran faced a weak, confused Saudi Arabia.
MBS wants to become the powerful Sunni leader who could eventually balance the region and open the way for a grand bargain that would bring stability. Thats a desirable outcome. But in the short term, the challenge for Washington is to prevent this would-be strongman from blowing up himself and his neighbors.
Another failed state in the Middle East is not in Americas interests.
WASHINGTON Many seniors are scared right now that the Republican tax plan, if passed, will eliminate an important deduction that helps them defray the high cost of medical care.
Under current tax law, if you itemize, you can deduct medical expenses for yourself, your spouse and your dependents if the cost exceeds 10 percent of your adjusted gross income.
The proposed bill would do away with this deduction.
What is of particular concern for some seniors is that this means they would be losing a deduction that covers payments for nursing homes, assisted living or inpatient hospital care.
Nearly 8.8 million households filed 2015 returns that claimed the medical and dental expenses deduction, according to the IRS. AARPs Public Policy Institute says that 49 percent of those who took the deduction had income of less than $50,000, and 69 percent had income under $75,000.
I asked readers to comment on what they thought of the plan to eliminate the deduction for medical expenses.
This will be catastrophic for my 90- and 93-year-old parents, who live in assisted living, wrote Marla Payne Wise from Canton, Georgia. My husband and I also itemize our medical expenses, which will only get higher as we age.
John McCreight of Hilton Head Island, South Carolina, estimates the loss of the deduction would cost him an extra $6,570 in taxes. I hope and pray that whatever changes are made, this deduction will stay.
One Virginia resident said the deduction is important to her 90-year-old widowed mother, who has numerous health problems and is in an assisted-living facility.
My parents were committed to serving their community through education, and they provided for their children on the modest salaries of two public school teachers, the reader wrote, asking for anonymity. Thanks to their lifelong habit of careful saving and investing, my mother is able to cover her own long-term care expenses through her pension, Social Security, and investment portfolio. However, this is possible only because she can deduct so many of her long-term care and other medical costs. If the medical deduction were taken away, many of the funds that currently go toward her support would be eaten up by taxes, thus depleting her assets more rapidly and with a concurrent rise in her medical costs as she further ages. Congress needs to understand that this greatly increases the probability of her outliving her savings, and this in turn would increase costs to the government for her care (state-sponsored assistance and/or Medicaid) whereas now she has the means to pay from her own resources.
Many of the people who responded said they werent looking for a handout, just a helping hand.
I well realize that new policy changes are never going to make every citizen happy, and some of us may have to suffer to support the majority, wrote Dottie Rogers of St. Louis, Missouri. Losing this deduction will really be tough. I had to put my husband, a 24-year stroke victim, into a nursing home in July 2016. I am now watching our retirement assets go down at a rapid pace. I wanted to be a responsible individual and not seek out help from the government. But if this deduction goes away, which allowed me to barely break even last year, this will be an additional push down the slide to a zero balance in life savings.
One 78-year-old retiree in North Carolina said the Republican tax bill would make his taxes go up by 23 percent. On his 2016 tax return, he was able to deduct $12,000 in medical expenses.
Linda Warner worries about the financial impact on her 93-year-old mother, who has severe dementia and lives in an assisted-living memory-care facility in Wisconsin. For 2016, Warner said her mother was able to deduct $56,711 in medical expenses, leaving her taxable income of just over $28,000.
Mom has almost used up her four years of her long-term care insurance benefits, Warner said. She earns $90,000 a year from retirement annuities and Social Security. Her assisted-living memory-care expenses are about $7,650 a month. As you can see, even someone with a relatively high income for a single person is going to be [hurt] by this tax plan.
In the context of fixing a complicated tax code, it might be easy to dismiss the voices of people who decry that their deduction shouldnt be touched. Once a tax break is given, it can be painfully hard for it to be taken away.
But in this case, a lot of folks would be significantly harmed were Congress to eliminate a financial lifejacket that has helped them stay afloat amid the weight of their medical expenses.
Kriti Sanon slays in her new apparel brand campaign
Kriti Sanon has been on a brand endorsement signing spree post the success of her last film, Bareilly ki Barfi. With about 4 to 5 new endorsements, Kriti Sanon is currently endorsing about 12 brands.
The actress has been endorsing an apparel brand for quite some time now that is known for their western outfits. Not very long ago, a new campaign of the brand was released and Kriti Sanon looked super chic in it. As she shot for a new campaign of the brand for this season, she looked extremely stylish and elegant at the same time.
The brand team planned an extensive marketing plan for the new campaign and had Kritis pictures all over, be it t on hoardings or on social media.
US cities, states defy Trump, still back Paris climate deal
Demonstrators costumed as US President Donald Trump and polar bears protest against the climate change during climate conference COP in Bonn, western Germany on Saturday.
AP, Bonn :
A group of U.S. states, cities, businesses and universities said Saturday they are still committed to curbing global warming even as U.S. President Donald Trump's administration is walking away from the Paris climate accord.
But the alliance, which has an economy larger than Japan and Germany combined, says it won't be able to achieve the necessary cut in greenhouse gas emissions without some efforts at the federal level.
"It is important for the world to know, the American government may have pulled out of the Paris agreement, but the American people are committed to its goals, and there is nothing Washington can do to stop us," former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg said at a global climate meeting in Bonn, Germany.
"In the United States, we have a federal system, and states have real power as do cities. And when cities and states combine together, and then join with powerful corporations, that's how we get stuff done," he said.
His speech was briefly interrupted by anti-coal and anti-fracking protesters, who held up banners and shouted "We're still in! Trump's still out!"
The group calling itself "America's Pledge" said states, cities and private groups have been taking considerable steps to reduce emissions by promoting renewable energy use and climate-friendly transportation systems.
"This is a pledge, and it's a pledge that you can cash, because it's real," Brown said. "We are doing real stuff in California."
In a report, however, the group said that "we cannot underscore strongly enough the critical nature of federal engagement to achieve the deep decarbonization goals the U.S. must undertake after 2025."
Daniel Firger, one of the report's contributors, said it was intended to show that many in the U.S. aren't prepared to wait for Trump to change his mind on climate change again or wait for the next administration to tackle the issue. "The good news around Trump's announcement to withdraw is that it has galvanized a groundswell of bottom-up support from all corners of the U.S. economy," Firger told The Associated Press.
Cities, regions and businesses in other nations around the world could look to the group for inspiration and support, he said, noting that the lessons learned by local authorities and businesses in the U.S. could be applied elsewhere.
Also Saturday, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said in her weekly podcast that every country needs to pitch in to keep global temperatures from rising.
KHULNA: Prof Dr Md Fayek -uz- Zaman, VC, Khulna University talking to guardians of the students of intake examination of the university recently.
1.5 lakh Yabas recovered within three days, 2 held
Chittagong Bureau :
Detective branch police of CMP rounded up two drug peddlers along with 6000 yaba tablets from Bakalia area in front of Teachers Training College gate of Noor Bhaban on Saturday night. Police recovered 6000 Yabas from their possession. The drug peddlers indentified as Md Jubair and Md Imran. Both of them hail from Cox's Bazar district under Teknaf thana, sources said. The confessed their involvement in drug trafficking in Chittagong caring from Teknaf border belt areas since long; A case under narcotics act has been lodged with the Bakalia thana, sources said.
UNB from Chittagong reports: Members of Rapid Action Battalion (RAB) in a drive arrested a man along with 40,000 Yaba tablets from Katakhali Purbapara area in Teknaf upazila in Cox's Bazar yesterday.
The arrestee was identified as Md Abul Hashem, 35.
Mimtanur Rahman, senior assistant director (media) of Rab-7, said on secret information, a team of Rab conducted the drive in a house owned by Mia Hossain and arrested Hashem.
The team recovered the Yaba tablets worth Tk 1.99 crore searching a room of the house.
Another report adds: Members of Rapid Action Battalion (RAB) arrested an alleged drug peddler along with some 50,000 pieces contraband Yaba tablets from Sitakunda upazila of Chittagong district on Friday.
The arrestee was identified as Harunur Rashid, 43, a resident of Laxmipur district.
Sources at the RAB said based on secret information, an operational team of the elite force set up a check post at Uttar Bazar in Sitakunda municipality on Dhaka-Chittagong Highway around 11:30 am.
The RAB personnel challenged a Dhaka-bound covered van when the vehicle was crossing the check post.
Sensing presence of the law enforcers, Harunur Rashid, who was inside the van, tried to flee the scene.
However, RAB men managed to arrest him.
Searching the covered van, the law enforcers recovered the consignment of Yaba pills.
Mohiuddin Chy flown to Dhaka with critical condition
Chittagong Bureau :
The hero famous of Chittagong and elderly politician, former mayor ABM Mohiuddin Chowshury was flown to Dhaka by helicopter from Chittagong with critical health condition. He was taken to Dhaka by a helicopter from MA Aziz stadium helipad yesterday afternoon.
Sources said ailing Chowdhury has been admitted in Dhaka Square Hospital.
While flying towards Dhaka Square hospital in a Hospital helicopter at 3 pm, city Mayor and general secretary of city AL AJM Nasiruddin along with party leaders, workers, relatives and well-wishers were present at stadium helipad.
Family sources said Moshiuddin Chowdhury was earlier admitted in city city's Max Hospital on Saturday at about 11 pm with critical condition and given treatment in ICU.
A doctor of the hospital told the media that he was attacked with mild heart attack and kidney complications and following the deterioration of his health from midnight at 3 pm on Saturday, attending physicians decided to sent him to Dhaka for better treatment.
Sources said, he may be flown to Chennai or Singapore if needed. Mohiuddin Chowdhury boarded in helicopter direct from Max hospital at about 2.30 pm, sources said.
DIU Chairman presents paper on entrepreneurship in AUAP
Md. Sabur Khan, Chairman, Board of Trustees, Daffodil International University make presentation at the 32nd Annual Conference of the Association of Universities of Asia and the Pacific on Wednesday in Xi\'an International University, Xi\'an City, China.
Campus Report :
Md. Sabur Khan, Chairman, Board of Trustees, Daffodil International University (DIU) joined as an elected Director of the Executive Council at the 32nd Annual Conference of the Association of Universities of Asia and the Pacific (AUAP) during November 7-10, 2017 in Xi'an International University, Xi'an City, China.
Md. Sabur Khan presented his presentation in the plenary session of the conference on 8th November in front of more than 300 participants from 64 universities titled 'Incorporating Entrepreneurship in Education' on the theme "New Initiatives to Promote Entrepreneurship and Innovative Thinking in Higher Education Institutions" which drew the attention of the dignitaries. He spoke on the need, importance, evaluation, challenges, culture and scope of entrepreneurship; comparative study; co-relation between entrepreneurship and education; innovation and its future trend; counseling, guiding and consulting needed from universities for students in way of entrepreneurship; need of technology; global exchange; DIU initiatives in entrepreneurial education; DIU Industry Academia Lecture Series on Entrepreneurship Development; Innovation and Industry Academia Collaboration; DIU Publications on Entrepreneurship; DIU's Department of Entrepreneurship as pioneer in Bangladesh; curriculum development; social entrepreneurship; global exchange; practical involvement of students; and Employability 360 degree during his presentation.
The great outcome for DIU of networking with AUAP is to strengthen networking in and around the area. The AUAP Secretariat in cooperation with Zhengzhou University, China currently declared the availability of fifty scholarships that DIU students are also encouraged to apply. There will be many more opportunities in coming days for DIU students through AUAP.
India announces changes to its new national tax
AFP, New Delhi :
India announced Friday a slew of changes to its new national goods and services tax as pressure mounted on New Delhi to ease burden on businesses in the midst of an economic slowdown.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government launched a new national goods and services tax on July 1, its biggest tax overhaul in a generation that was meant to unify the $2 trillion economy into a single market, with four tax rates of 5, 12, 18 and 28 percent.
But traders and businesses complained the new process was too complex and increased the cost of doing business.
Economists agree it has contributed to dragging on India's growth which hit a three year low of 5.7 percent in the first quarter of the financial year.
On Friday the government, which is in the midst of elections in a couple of states including Modi's home state of Gujarat in December, announced plans to slash rates on several items across all tax slabs, easing the burden on consumers and businesses.
The biggest pruning occurred in the highest tax slab of 28 percent where New Delhi said it will slash rates on 177 of the more than 200 goods including chocolate, shampoo and shaving cream.
HC judge feels embarrassed to hear plea
UNB, Dhaka :
A High Court judge on Sunday felt embarrassed to hear a writ petition that challenged the legality of parliament membership of ruling Awami League leader Nizam Uddin Hazari.
The HC bench of Justice Md Mozibur Rahman Miah expressed embarrassment to hear the petition over the legality
of Nizam holding a parliamentary seat and sent it to the Chief Justice. The Chief Justice will assign another HC bench for hearing and disposing of the petition. Earlier, the Chief Justice assigned the single bench of the High Court (HC) for final disposal of the writ petition.
Advocate Kamrul Haque Siddiqui moved for the petitioner while advocate Yusuf Hossian Humayun for the Nizam Hazari. On December 6 last year, a HC bench delivered a split verdict on a writ petition challenging the legality of AL MP Nizam Uddin Hazari's parliament membership.
Senior judge of the bench, Justice Md Emdadul Huq, declared the election of the Feni-2 constituency MP, Nizam Hazari, illegal, while the junior judge of the bench, Justice FRM Nazmul Ahsan, rejected the petition. In 2014, Shakhawat Hossain Bhuiyan, a Juba League leader of Feni, filed the writ petition with the HC, attaching a newspaper report of May 10, 2014, stating that Nizam Uddin Hazari had been awarded 10 years of imprisonment in an arms case, but had been freed from prison two years and 10 months before his jail term was completed.
Need for programmatic intervention to Rohingya crisis
Dr. Md. Shairul Mashreque and Dr. Mohammad Yakub :
Humanitarian crisis warrants careful development intervention. Now we are besieged by a sort of crisis created by the ethnic cleansing - the worst victims being the Rohingyas. They are beleaguered, persecuted, and deprived species. Recently Myanmar military junta's earth scorched policy with killing spree and arson using the anti-Rohingya Buddhists especially rustic Mogs in Arakan has made their lives hail and unlivable. They are facing genocidal military action with the eventualities like rape of women and young girls, plundering and gutting of houses. The situation thus created out of the circumstance compelled them to take refuge in Teknaf and Ukhia in Cox's bazar. Mentionably Ruhingyas subject to oppression of the military government and anti-Rohingya ethno religious groups have been displaced from their original village home. They found no option other than rushing in southeastern part of Bangladesh. Now the crisis has multiplied. Thousands of them trying to cross Naf River died. The infants died being hungry for long time on the way to Teknaf through river. This is really a humanitarian issue.
The piercing humanitarian crisis stems from junta's deliberate policy of ethnic cleansing. In other words they let loose a reign of horror with repressive measures to flush out what they termed as Bangladeshis or Muslims living in the state Rakhaine. They are not recognized as citizens being deprived of all civil and political rights. Living in a perpetual state of repression Rohingyas have been living without any state support devoid of education, health, public health, and primary health cares. They have no voting rights. On the other hand the military government legally or illegally imposed tax on birth and marriage registration, crop production, sale of dairy animals and other day to day purposes.
Bangladesh has been responding well giving them food and shelter. Its initial response helped them to overcome trauma stage. Now they need temporary shelter. Health facilities with the support of international agencies should be extended to them. The children under shelter should be brought under open space education. As for health and other facilities there must be coordination among various agencies to avoid programmatic duplication and overlapping. There must be policy to regulate various agencies coming forward to serve the distressed.
Our government is in the state of sense and sensibilities accepting the victims for the sake of humanity. No sooner they had started living in Ukhia, than they showed the sign of improving severe trauma. They need to be benefitted from the response of our government. We point to the medical supports and logistics to be provided by development agencies mostly NGOs. But there must be an alliance among them to make supporting role meaningful. Intervention in health, hygiene and sanitation sectors is a must. The absence of medical support will spell disaster. Several diseases may break out in epidemic form. We are afraid of water bone, communicable non-communicable diseases. Displaced females who suffered manifold hazards on the way need both prenatal and antenatal treatment. While thinking of a common programme of rehabilitation the concerned agencies should think circumspectively about monsoon. The latest fashion of violence against Rohingyas was terrible, horrendous and severe. As a result more than six lac victims entered Bangladesh for saving life. Many victims died on the way to escape, even pregnant women faced natal problem. Many trying to cross river falling easy prey to impostures like agents of boatmen became drowned with mothers or fathers carrying death bodies of their infants. Ok we are kind enough to help the victims with shelter, food and medicine. But be careful about environment. No need of cleaning jungles and cutting hill and trees. Such act may be damaging to stable equilibrium.
For environment based development initiative in aid of Rohingyas there must be alliance among NGOs and international agencies. They must put their programmes together in the spirit of co-operation. Let us think that we are working towards humanitarian purposes. Programmes of collaboration with donors' support on long term basis must be capable of implementation without damaging environment. According to reports numerous NGOs have been rendering voluntary services in Ukhia, and Teknaf of Cox's Bazar to handle the situation. They are extending all possible support so that situation does not go beyond control. But they should come under a common platform to ensure progrramatic integration. It's time to go all out to stop further deterioration. The refugees ought to be concentrated in some areas as centres for rehabilitation. The centres must have a detailed list of the distress deserving assistance. However, help them to help themselves and to return home.
We are serious about the crisis of mass-exodus of the Rohingyas. We try to address the crisis. While stressing the rehabilitation programmes we must keep in mind that further inflow of refugees may create demographic imbalance all to the disadvantage of the local inhabitants. Number of the refugees getting helps must be recorded properly. It should be data base with detailed information of date of migration, causes of crossing borders, family identifications and others.
(Dr. Md. Shairul Mashreque, former Professor, Chittagong University and Dr. Mohammad Yakub, Development Consultant)
ASEAN summit should come forward to save Rohingya Muslims
THE three-day ASEAN summit started Sunday in the Philippines capital Manila is mainly scheduled to discuss how to cool tension over South China Sea, Rohingya issue and rise of radicalism and extremism in the region. Regional security takes back ASEAN to its roots as it was set up as a shield during Vietnam War.
Media reports said Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razzaq will take up the Rohingya issue to bring pressure on Myanmar to end the persecution of Rohingya Muslims and take back the refugees. We don't believe all Buddhist countries in the region - nine in all - will shelter Myanmar's criminal act and look at it as a humanitarian cause.
It is regrettable that China, Russia and India are supporting Myanmar military while others have not spoken so far. We must say China and Russia must change their policies and others should come to Rohingyas' help. The ASEAN summit is a big opportunity to take a serious look at the plight of the helpless Muslims.
Philippines President Mr Rodrigo Duterte, who is hosting the summit, however looks at using the summit to create a kind of coalition to fight radicalism and threat from Moro Islamist group fighting for independence. His troops had to fight several months recently to free a coastal town from the occupation of the rebels
But analysts believe such issue will not overshadow the Rohingya issue as Myanmar is desperately trying to depict them as radical Islamists to hide the crime of its military. Unlike Moros, Rohingyas are butchered and their villages torched to permanently oust them from their ancestral land. Over one million now live in refugee camps in Bangladesh in inhuman condition.
Myanmar is obviously a colonial power which occupied Arakan State now Rakhine two and a half century ago and now they are uprooting the Muslim population out of hatred to make the country a purely Buddhist religion state.
For Bangladesh, Myanmar has waged a direct war against us while it is shooting its people and pushing them across the border. Myanmar is acting in flagrant violation of international law and people's inalienable right to their own land.
We must say Myanmar can't be allowed to mislead the regional leaders and observer countries taking part in the summit. We believe it is the responsibility of the ASEAN leaders to come to their protection as an endangered people within ASEAN bloc. No country can expel its minority using state power.
The fact is that Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi is using all her power and influence as member of the ASEAN bloc to avoid any pressure on her way to final solution of ethnic Muslims problems. She arrived in Manila one day before the summit to lobby and blackmail other leaders.
But Bangladesh has no such presence. It should have deployed skilled diplomats to lobby over the issue in the sideline. We can't sleep and only wait to see that the UN and others will help us unless we take proactive diplomatic moves to translate positive world opinion into action against Myanmar.
Even Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is visiting Manila this time to take part in the ASEAN -India and East Asia summit. He is also scheduled to take part in another Quadrilateral summit comprising India, USA, Japan and Australia; which is focused on facing China's growing assertiveness in the region. Bangladesh's absence from such forums is painstaking and failure to exploit the occasion is unpardonable.
Only proper use of rule of law can reduce crime
AT least eight people, including a teenage boy, were killed in Kishoreganj, Faridpur, and Comilla on Wednesday night and early Thursday. In Kishoreganj, three siblings and two more were killed and over 50 injured in a clash between two rival groups of ruling Awami League and main opposition BNP. The dead included two siblings in Faridpur who were hacked to death by miscreants. Several more people were killed in Kishoregonj in land disputes and local rivalries late last week.
What is more terrible is that police recovered the decomposed body of a 14-year-old boy from a septic tank in his school in Comilla. The sudden increase of crime shows the law and order situation is slipping out of hand at every place; as criminals are least bothered about police action and justice through court trial. The perpetrators are powerful or enjoy protection from powerful quarter for political reasons and they don't hesitate to engage in fight or commit murder. The situation is loathsome in rural areas while it is similarly terrible in urban neighbourhoods.
As there is a tendency that factional fights and crime increase in winter and there is a growing need to mobilize law enforcers to take care of the law and order away from keeping busy in political duty and toll collection. They must know saving people's life should be the highest priority.
The killing in Kishoreganj took place following a longstanding dispute between the groups over a canal, which falls between two villages. Two groups had clashed several times before and also filed cases against each other. This time when they engaged in fight it left four dead on the spot and another injured succumbed to his injuries on his way to a hospital. The fight this time started over fishing in the canal.
The killing of the two siblings in Faridpur took place at Swashan Ghat. Police said miscreants equipped with sharp weapons attacked them leaving critically injured. They were taken to Faridpur Medical College and Hospital where they died. The class IX student in Comilla went missing on last Saturday and on a call on victim's uncle's phone for Tk 50 lakh as ransom police arrested three SSC examinees of the school. They later admitted to have strangulated the boy and dumped him in the septic tank.
We must say these are brutal cruelties when human values did not work in those beasts like people. They deserve to be given exemplary punishment to set example. The fact is that criminals are enjoying impunity and therefore they commit crime time and again. The impunity under the shelter of powerful people or buying police who give misleading report to destroy the case must end. Rule of law must be firmly established to reduce crime.
Home Minister seeks time to continue search of missing persons
Staff Reporter :
Home Minister Asaduzzaman Khan Kamal has sought some more time in order to find out the whereabouts of those who went missing.
Rejecting the charge that the law enforcement agencies' could not trace the whereabouts of the 'abducted' persons, he said, "We need some more time. The missing persons will be discovered."
Asaduzzaman Khan said this at a programme at Mirpur Police Staff College on Sunday marking the founding anniversary of River Police. The comment was made at a time when Dhaka University teachers and students were holding programme demanding steps to trace university teacher Mubashar Hasan.
"We think that we will be able to rescue them at any moment," the home minister said while replying to a reporter's query on the missing people including North South University teacher Mubashar Hasan and journalist Utpal Das.
The minister said, law enforcing agencies are investigating the reason behind the missing of people, he added.
Mubashar is among a host of individuals becoming victims of either abduction or enforced disappearance in recent months. At least nine people, including journalist Utpal Das, book importer Tanvir Yasin Karim, businessman Aniruddha Roy Chowdhury and some political leaders, had gone missing since August 22.
JS session to continue till Nov 23
The 18th session of the 10th parliament that began on Sunday will continue until November 23.
The decision came at a meeting of the Business Advisory Committee of the current parliament held at the Jatiya Sangsad on Sunday. Committee Chairman and Speaker Dr Shirin Sharmin Chaudhury presided over the meeting. The session will start at 4pm on each working day. The meeting also decided that the Speaker may extend or reduce the working days of the current session. It has decided to hold discussion on the historic 7th March Speech of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman as Unesco has recognised it as part of the world's documentary heritage, and Rohingya issue and CPA conference on three separate days.
Leader of the House and Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, Opposition Leader Raushon Ershad, Industries Minister Amir Hossain Amu, Commerce Minister Tofail Ahmed, Sheikh Fazlul Karim Selim, Deputy Speaker Fazle Rabbi Miah, Abul Hasnat Abdullah, Civil Aviation and Tourism Minister Rashed Khan Menon, Chief Whip ASM Firoz, Main Uddin Khan Badal and Law, Justice and Parliamentary Affairs Minister Adv Anisul Huq attended the meeting. The Prime Minister told the meeting that the 7th March speech is the main source of inspiration of the nation. "This speech is recognised by the world," she said.
On Rohingya issue, she mentioned that Bangladesh opened the new door of humanity by giving shelter to the Rohingyas and it is acclaimed worldwide. Sheikh Hasina also appreciated all, including the Speaker, for holding the 63rd CPC successfully.
Myanmar military be punished for raping Rohingya women
Reuters :
The UN Secretary-General's special representative on sexual violence in conflict has said that the Myanmar armed forces must be held to account for the alleged sexual violence against civilians in Rakhine State.
"A clear picture is emerging of the alleged perpetrators of these atrocities and their modus operandi," Pramila Patten said at a press briefing in Dhaka on Sunday after her visit to Cox's Bazar where she heard "horrible" stories of sexual violence.
"Sexual violence is being commanded, orchestrated and perpetrated by the Armed Forces of Myanmar, otherwise known as the Tatmadaw," she said, in a written statement.
"Other actors involved include the Myanmar border guard police and militias composed of Rakhine Buddists and other ethnic groups," she said.
"Any actor that commits, commands and condones sexual violence against civilians must be held to account."
Asked who will hold them to account, she said there is a possible option that UN Security Council, which is divided on Rohingya issue because of China's backing to Myanmar, adopt a resolution instructing the International Criminal Court or ICC to open an investigation.
Patten, a lawyer by profession, said the Security Council can also establish the same mechanism which was done for Syria for the crimes committed by Islamic State to investigate crimes for eventual prosecution. She, however, said her visit was not a fact-finding mission.
According to her, she came to Bangladesh to understand the trends and patterns of sexual violence to brief the Secretary General and also prepare a report on the issue.
Myanmar has denied her access despite request.
Over half a million Rohingyas have fled 'ethnic cleansing' since Aug 25 from the Rakhine State.
Patten said the forms of sexual violence she heard from the survivors include gang-rape by multiple soldiers, forced public nudity and humiliation, and sexual slavery in military captivity. One survivor descried being held in captivity by the Myanmar Armed Forces for 45 days, during which time she was repeatedly raped. Others still bore visible scars, bruises, and bite marks, attesting to their ordeal.
She said several sources informed them that some women and girls have been "literally raped to death".
"These brutal acts of sexual violence occurred in the context of collective persecution, the burning and looting of villages, torture, mutilation, and the slaughtering of civilians - even babies, who represent the next generation and the future of this community," she said.
Some expressed a desire to return home, provided they would be granted citizenship and equal status while others said they have nothing left to return to but ashes. All of them without exception demanded justice.
Patten thanked Bangladesh for giving them shelter and said survivors told them that "In Myanmar, we felt like we were in the home of our in-laws, but here we feel as if we are in our parents home". "This speaks volumes about the warm welcome they have received". She said the authorities in Bangladesh can rest assured that "their efforts and their humanity will be remembered in history". "For our part, my office stands ready to amplify the voices of the survivors and to bridge them to the international community, in order to keep a spotlight on this crisis," she said, adding that this includes keeping the spotlight of international scrutiny on the perpetrators.
"I want the survivors to know that they are not alone and I also want to ensure the government of Bangladesh will not be alone in coming to their aid".
No credible election possible under Hasina
Khaleda wants Army deployment with magistracy power
BNP Chairperson Begum Khaleda Zia addressing a mammoth rally at Suhrawardy Udyan in city on Sunday marking the National Revolution and Solidarity Day as chief guest.
Staff Reporter :
BNP Chairperson Khaleda Zia on Sunday stressed for a neutral government to hold the next general election as a fair poll is in no way possible under Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina.
She also demanded deployment of army with magistracy power to ensure free, fair and participatory parliamentary polls.
"We firmly want to say that the BNP will never participate in parliamentary polls under the incumbent Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina. No fair election can be held under Sheikh Hasina," Khalida Zia while addressing a rally at Suhrawardy Udyan in the city to mark the 'National Revolution and Solidarity Day'.
The BNP observes the November 7 every year marking the civil-military upsurge in 1975 through which its founder and late president Ziaur Rahman was freed from military captivity.
Khalida Zia said, "The people could not give their votes under her (Sheikh Hasina) rule because the goons of the ruling Awami League used to occupy all vote centers to rig votes."
She also called for a national consensus in politics, asking the government to refrain from the politics of vengeance. "We forgive you. We will never take any revenge on you. But we want to make you purify," she said.
Huge numbers of people attended the rally since noon to hear BNP chief Khaleda Zia's speech as the former Prime Minister was such a public meeting in the city after a gap of about two years.
Khaleda Zia gave her speech amid huge slogan of her party workers and activists. The party men were seen with festoon and placards with different slogans in good mood.
Meanwhile, many party leaders alleged that the government has stopped bus services from different adjacent districts towards the capital in a planned way to prevent gathering of people in its rally at Suhrawardy Udyan.
The BNP chairperson asked the Election Commission, specially the Chief Election Commissioner, to ensure neutral government for holding a free, fair and participatory general election. She also urged the EC to deploy military with magistracy power during polls.
She said, "Without deploying Army the people will not be able to cast their votes freely. We also have no objection about police. They (police) will also to be deployed as well."
Khaleda Zia asked the EC to nullify the plan of using electronic voting machines (EVM).
Terming the present parliament, the BNP chairperson said both the incumbent government and the parliament are illegal as there was no election held on January 5, 2014.
She said, "154 MPs were elected unopposed in the election. The rests were elected without vote. Even the MPs could not give their own votes to themselves, because it was totally unnecessary."
Khaleda Zia alleged that the present government is involved in looting public assets after grabbing state power illegally.
She put ahead some statistics of corruptions of the government as like as looting money from banks and the state's treasury, giving reference of international organizations' reports.
The BNP chief said, "The ruling party men laundered more than Tk 4,50,000 crore abroad in last ten years, according to a Washington- based organisation."
She also said that Tk 7,000 crore was stolen from the banks in last four years, alleging that the ruling party men are behind this.
"There are Tk 5,000 crore fund for Bangladeshi account holders in Swiss banks. But we never heard before that the Bangladeshis deposit money in Swiss banks," she said.
She also blamed the government not to investigate the Panama Papers scam in which some Bangladeshis were reportedly involved in huge corruptions.
Khaleda Zia asked the government to stop force disappearances in the country, saying many of her party men were kidnapped and became victims of force disappearances.
The BNP chief blasted the government and the ruling party of unleashing a reign of terror on opposition leaders and activists and said that the BNP would not take revenge of such atrocities.
Khaleda Zia said the people want a change and the BNP too wants the same but through election, not any other means. She said the government has forced Chief Justice SK Sinha to leave the country. "Even the government sent their men abroad to force Sinha to step down," she said. All these were done because Sinha had spoken some truth such as the government's controlling the lower court and move to influence the Higher Court, she said.
She criticized the government of its dealing with the issue of Rohingya refugees. She said it is national problem and it should be resolved through proper diplomacy.
Khaleda Zia promised to introduce unemployment allowances, free treatment for all citizens, health insurance and low costs agricultural materials like seeds and fertilizers. She started to deliver her speech at the rally at Suhrawardy Udyan at around 4:10pm and spoke for around one hour.
BNP Secretary General Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir presided over the rally while party standing committee members Dr. Khandaker Mosharraf Hossain, Barrister Moudud Ahmed, Mirza Abbas and Gayeshwar Chandra Roy spoke, among others.
The BNP rally formally began with the participation of huge numbers of party leaders and activists at about 2:00pm with recitation from the holy Quran.
Huge number law enforcers have been deployed in and around the rally venue.
Leaders and activists of the party started gathering at the venue in small processions since noon.
Khaleda Zia last addressed a rally at the same venue on January 20, 2014, 15 days after the 10th parliamentary polls.
Unless judges prove otherwise, judiciary is in the dust
Former Chief Justice SK Sinha lost nothing. He would have retired in January. But the Chief Justice of the country was disgraced using the government's raw power of harassment. The image of the nation has been sullied awfully. No civilised country would take it unashamedly.
The saddest thing is that the government has succeeded in forcing out Chief Justice SK Sinha and the protector of the Constitution under pressure and in humiliating circumstances.
The obvious reason for the Chief Justice to earn ire of the government is the judgement he and all other five judges handed down declaring the constitutional provision for vesting the parliament with power to impeach the judges of the Supreme Court unconstitutional. His observations on weaknesses of the government gave the government additional fuel to get rid of him.
Firstly, the Chief Justice was restricted for some twelve days from leaving his residence for attending the court and announced that he was ill so could not meet visitors. Only the Law Minister and few other government top notches visited him. Nothing about the purpose of their visits was disclosed. The rumour had it-he was put under heavy pressure to resign. But he resisted.
Then he was allowed to leave the country. Justice Sinha availed the opportunity to deny he was ill in a written statement under his hand. He said to the pressmen that he felt humiliated. He promised he would come back.
Instead of returning, he has sent his letter of resignation. We think he has done the dignified thing. Otherwise there would have been much hot and ugly politics using his name and position. He was a political victim but he avoided political scandal to be swirling around the government and him dragging down the judiciary further.
By throwing out the Chief Justice the government has certainly made its position clear. It is all powerful and the judiciary has to remain subservient. The highest constitutional position of the Supreme Court means nothing to stop the government about its plan. The weakness of the judiciary, as revealed, has emboldened the government. That the government could use some fellow judges has emboldened the government.
At the moment, unless otherwise proved by the judges themselves, the independence of the judiciary is in the dust. The ultimate losers are the people. Now the belief is-there is no judiciary, strong and independent, to protect their rights.
Once again it has been proved how easy it is for any government to deny the people their hard earned democracy and how unfit we are to enjoy the fruits of freedom.
The Undead Archives
I have finally salvaged my pre-Blogger TDR archives and added them into Blogger. They are almost totally in the form of one giant post for each month. And the formatting strayed from the originals. Sorry. But historians everywhere can rejoice that this treasure trove of my thoughts is restored to the world.
I think I finally understand blockchains. Blockchains are a concept that is creeping into the logistics literature. Pay attention; we might be looking at a fundamental shift in how business gets done.
I own a house. It is an interesting house, built three hundred years ago. Yup, the house is older than the United States. It was built in 1718 and is listed in the National Historic Register.
Ive actually gone to the Registry of Deeds to read the file. It begins with a land grant from the king and that deed is in the file. The original homestead was huge, covering a big chunk of this side of town.
Obviously, I dont live on an estate of hundreds of acres in suburban Boston. Instead, while I do live in the original house, the residence sits on about a ten thousand square foot plot that is all that remains of the original land grant. The rest of the estate has been peeled away over the years.
Starting from the bottom of the pile of documents at the Registry of Deeds, I can start with the deed from 1718. Stepping through transactional record, on paper, I can walk forward across the chain of actions. I can see every action that connects back through the pile to the original land grant, or block, all the way forward to the current deed on the top of the pile. The piece of paper at the top of the pile is my home.
What blockchain could do is take the paper in the file and make it digital and distributed. Once any transaction is encrypted and shared, there is no need for a central repository at the Registry of Deeds. Copies of the chain could be shared virtually with all of the participants in the chain.
Integrity is maintained by links among the copies of the transactions embedded in the chain residing with each participant: If any of the records get out of synch, the distributed technology flags the discrepancy.
Integrity is maintained by encryption: Anybody not involved in the transaction doesnt have the key.
Integrity is maintained by an architecture that is inherently opaque: People cant peer inside the transaction and understand what is happening, so hackers attempting crack a pile of encrypted records cant find the on ramp to a successful hack.
Think of blockchains as information stored in stealth packets; you know that something is out there somewhere but you cant see it so you cant hack it.
I think I feel the world shifting. The financial community is leading the pack with block chain, and the supply chain is sure to follow. But we have a slash of the Titans coming. Should the government have the right and the power to read your transactions? Or do individuals have a right to transactional privacy? This is going to get interesting.
For more on this topic, please check out this column by DC Velocity columnist Clifford Lynch.
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Linkedin News Desk (AFP) United Nations Sat, November 11, 2017 09:20 1831 1f87594453bb792833e1ece3a286f487 2 World Somalia,Islamic-State,United-Nations,violence Free
An Islamic State faction in Somalia has grown significantly over the past year, carrying out attacks in Puntland and receiving some funding from Syria and Iraq, a report by UN sanctions monitors said Friday.
The faction loyal to Sheikh Abdulqader Mumin was targeted by US drone strikes last week in the first US operation targeting IS in the Horn of Africa, US Africa Command said.
In the report, the UN monitoring group for Somalia said the IS faction, which was estimated in 2016 "to number not more than a few dozen, has grown significantly in strength" and may "consist of as many as 200 fighters."
Phone records from Mumin showed he was in contact with an IS operative in Yemen who acts as an intermediary with senior IS leaders in Iraq and Syria "though the exact nature of this contact is unclear," said the report.
Former members of the faction who defected in December said the Mumin group received orders as well as financing from Iraq and Syria, the report said.
The group captured the town of Qandala in Puntland's Bari region in October 2016, declaring it the seat of the Islamic Caliphate in Somalia before being pushed out two months later by Puntland forces backed by US military advisers.
In February, IS gunmen stormed a hotel in Bosaso, the economic capital of Puntland, and in May the faction carried out its first suicide attack at a police checkpoint near Bosaso, killing five people.
"The group showed signs of increasing tactical capabilities during its first attack target a hotel," said the UN monitors.
- Haven for foreign fighters -
The UN report raised concerns that the Bari region could become a potential haven for foreign IS fighters as the extremists are driven out of their strongholds in Syria and Iraq.
The IS group in Somalia "presents more natural appeal to foreign terrorist fighters than Al-Shabaab," whose aim is to establish a state government by Islamic law, it added.
Al-Shabaab, another Islamist militant group, is affiliated with IS's global rival Al-Qaeda.
The Bari region has attracted a limited number of foreign fighters including Sudanese national Abu Faris who is on the US terror list for recruiting foreign fighters for Al-Shabaab.
While the faction is expanding, its fighters appear to be poorly paid or not paid at all.
Unmarried fighters receive no salary, while married militants receive $50 per month plus $10-$20 per child, depending on the age.
The report estimated that the salary payments were between $3,000 and $9,000 per month, allowing IS leaders "to fund its insurgency on a limited budget".
UN monitors said the faction will likely face frequent defections from poorly paid fighters, a problem that also affects Al-Shabaab.
HERRIN Throughout Southern Illinois on Saturday, people stopped their day to pay homage to the men and women who had contributed service and maybe even their lives, to serving in this country's armed forces.
They did so in Herrin, where men, women and children gathered at the Doughboy plaza, in front of the "Spirit of the American Doughboy," which honored the specific works of soldiers during World War I. The event was organized by the Herrin Doughboy Commitee.
As accolades were paid to these men and women and others who served in this country's other wars, organizer Charles Parola, a veteran of the Vietnam War, took the occasion to talk about the renovation of the city's perhaps most iconic monument, its Doughboy
The Doughboy statue is among dozens made by E. M. Viquesney, an artist who mass-produced them from a cast he made. The statues are named after the name given to the men, the foot soldiers, who fought in World War I, according to an online article from the Emmitsburg Area Historical Society in Indiana. Parola said there are six of the Doughboy statues still in existence across the state.
Parola announced that the Doughboy statue committee had contracted with metalsmith John Medwedeff, who is based in Murphysboro, to complete the work. Medwedeff shared Saturday that his own grandfather served in WWII and his father in WWII.
Medwedeff said he encountered the monument for the first time about three years ago when he was driving through Herrin. He got out and inspected the statue.
"It's got a few signs of age, there is heavy corrosion," he said. "Our goal is to return this structure back to its original (luster)."
The project is estimated to cost $26,000, with another $11,000 needed to care for the plaques with the names of veterans in the plaza, Parola said.
The gathering also heard from Harry Spiller, a former Williamson County Sheriff and author and former professor at John A. Logan College.
"(It's remarkable) that what veterans have done, they signed a contract with the United States of America to the fullest extent, including, giving their lives," Spiller said. "Ladies and gentlemen, that's honor. That's true honor. You can't get any better than that. And as a result of what they've done, we live in the greatest nation in the world."
"Now, I hear people sometime say 'they're going to make America great again'," Spiller said. "I don't know where they've been, but we live in the greatest country in the world, and we have for 200 years. And we have because of sacrifices that the ordinary veterans have made, men and women. You can't get any better than that."
The 981-mile Ohio River begins in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and borders or runs through six states, including a 133-mile leg along the southern border of Illinois. The Ohio enters the state near Uniontown, Kentucky, which is about 15 minutes from Old Shawneetown in Gallatin County, and then runs alongside Hardin, Pope, Massac, Pulaski and Alexander counties.
It ends in historic Cairo at Fort Defiance, where it feeds into its storied sister, the Mississippi, and heads south toward New Orleans. Though less celebrated through time in comparison to the Mississippi, the economic artery that pumps through the Heartland has quite the American story to tell, too. It is a tale of triumph and betrayal.
This region helped build Illinois at statehood in 1818. Almost 200 years later, as Illinois prepares to celebrate its bicentennial, lower "Egypt" as its affectionately known has largely been forsaken, or so it seems to many of the people who call Illinois Ohio River Valley region home.
When Chicago was just getting started people laughed and said, Youll never amount to nothing without the Ohio River, said Rhonda Belford, president of the Ohio River Scenic Byway in Illinois. Now, the tables have turned. Its like weve been forgotten down here.
However, Belford, a resident of Hardin County, is convinced there will be a new day for the region.
Any one community here may not be too big to fail many already have but considered collectively as a nine-county region, close to 95,000 people still live here making it slightly bigger by population than the suburban Lake County city of Waukegan. This part of Illinois has too much potential to wither into oblivion, Belford said.
Ohio is an Iroquoian Indian word derived from the Seneca name for the Ohio River, Ohi:yo, meaning great river. The French took to calling it La Belle Riviere translated as beautiful river. During the Civil War, slaves seeking freedom across the river that represented the dividing line between north and south referred to it as the River Jordan.
It really doesnt get prettier than this, Belford said as she navigated a winding road from Elizabethtown to Rosiclare. The mesmerizing view out the window was of acres of freshly harvested farmland giving way to the rolling hills of the Shawnee National Forest.
Only recently, the cool weather snap had turned the leaves shades of bright yellow, red and orange. But as one hand giveth, the other takes away.
The scenic natural beauty that has blessed the bottom stretch of Illinois is interrupted by harsh living conditions for too many. As job opportunities fall to the wayside, temperatures are rising, and its understandable why. The river keeps secrets.
Too many children go hungry. Too many people live in barely-standing shanty shacks held together by shoddy repairs, and seemingly, a hope and a prayer.
In that area, you have the worst rural poverty in the state, without question, said Christopher Merrett, director of the Illinois Institute for Rural Affairs at Western Illinois University.
'The worst'
For the purpose of this article, the valley region is defined as Illinois six counties that border the Ohio River Gallatin, Hardin, Pope, Massac, Pulaski and Alexander plus their three closest neighbors Johnson, Union and Saline (This boundary is not an exact science; The Southern's intention was to examine Illinois' southernmost counties facing common economic concerns. Alexander and Union also border the Mississippi River).
Below are some statistics that further explain what a drive around the Ohio River Valley region makes apparent: an economic crisis has taken root here.
In all nine counties, the percent of people living below the poverty line is greater than the overall statewide rate of 14.3 percent, as of 2015 estimates published by the U.S. Census.
According to Fahe, an organization dedicated to the elimination of poverty in the Appalachia, the average poverty rate of the counties that make up the Appalachian region is 19.7 percent. The average poverty rate for the nine Illinois counties that constitute the Illinois Ohio River Valley region is 19.9 percent, as of the 2015 U.S. Census estimates.
In four of the nine counties, the poverty rates are above 20 percent. They are Alexander, at 34 percent; Saline County, at 23 percent; Hardin, 21 percent; and Pulaski 20 percent.
In five of these counties, more than 10 percent of veterans are living in poverty (the statewide rate is 7 percent): Alexander, at 20 percent; Johnson, at 11 percent; and Massac, Pulaski and Union at just above 10 percent each.
Though rural poverty can appear shocking to those unaccustomed to its manifestations, its not like a natural disaster that easily gets the attention of political leaders, in Springfield or Washington. Yet, persistent rural poverty leaves thousands of families, children and the elderly without adequate shelter, food, educational opportunities, and access to healthcare.
Thats not to say the U.S. has perfected its response to natural disasters look no further than Puerto Rico to see the massive challenges facing the nations crisis response system but the country does respond. People living in devastating rural poverty are rarely the priority, Merrett said.
There will always be excuses for why government cant address struggling communities, he said. Because its easier to put out the wildfire, and its easier to rebuild after a tornado, or a hurricane. But to address the chronic and secular decline, and I mean uninterrupted decline, facing many rural communities, thats not exciting.
That would be like, literally, watching paint crack and peel. Its a slow deterioration. Its very unexciting.
Unseen poverty
And what goes avoided and unseen goes unaddressed until its far too late to do much about it, such as is the case in Alexander County where a public housing crisis in Cairo is forcing about 400 people from their home city.
Cairo, with a population of 2,831 as of the 2010 U.S. Census count (and is likely below 2,500 now), is the fifth largest city in this nine-county region behind, in order of size: Harrisburg, in Saline County (9,017); Metropolis, in Massac County (6,537); Anna, in Union County (4,442); and Eldorado, in Saline County (4,122).
Cairo has received much national attention of late because of Housing and Urban Developments involvement there relocating residents. But "it's not just Cairo anymore" -- as Belford put it.
Collectively, these nine counties lost an estimated 11,000 people from 2000 to 2016, and almost half of that in the past six years.
The 25 school districts that serve the children of these counties have lost, combined, roughly 850 students in the last five years, according to the Illinois School Report Card.
Seven school districts had a student population loss of greater than 10 percent between 2013 and 2017: Buncombe (Johnson County), at 22 percent; Meridian (Pulaski County), at 20 percent; Cairo (Alexander County), at 17 percent; Egyptian (Pulaski County) and Shawnee (Union County), at 16 percent each; Cobden (Union County) and Century (Pulaski County), at 13 percent each.
As populations shrink and age, the young families who remain become, overall, more vulnerable. The average median age in the nine counties combined grew from about age 39 to age 44 between 2000 and 2010. The median age in Illinois is 37.
The schools are becoming the only place many children can regularly get a hot meal. At the same time, they lack the resources to offer the menu of extracurricular options all schools once did, such as band, art and drama.
The high school I graduated from is no longer able to provide teachers for any of the fine arts, wrote a Hardin County High School alum on a GoFundMe online campaign. The presently-circulating fundraiser is to assist the teachers who give freely of their time to provide for students what the school can no longer pay them to do. Twenty people helped the campaign meet its $1,000 goal in a month.
Its a short-term victory that illustrates a problem in need of long-term solutions.
In September 1967, the federal government published a report on the subject of rural poverty titled: The People Left Behind: A report by the Presidents National Advisory Commission on Rural America. It described rural poverty as so widespread and so acute, as to be a national disgrace."
Fifty years ago, the report declared, Our programs for rural America are woefully out of date. The most recent presidential election did not start the conversation about the rural-urban divide. But the countrys attention span is short when it comes to the problems facing rural America.
Across this region, coal and mineral mines and rock quarries have shuttered or significantly reduced their footprints. Factories have closed. Farming remains a viable industry but, in some cases, young people are moving away to pursue other careers rather than choosing to follow generations of footsteps into the fields. Mechanization means fewer workers are needed to tend to whats left.
Down a country road in rural Hardin County, Bob Winchester, of Rosiclare, a former state representative who served from 1974 to 1985, stepped out to survey a once-active coal loading dock on the Ohio River. He wondered aloud how long American Coal Co. had idled the dock it leases from Vulcan Mineral Co. It's concerning, he said. He hopes it's only temporary.
"Recently, President Trump reversed Obama's executive orders making it tougher for coal-fired electric plants to be able to use coal," he said. "Hopefully, now, we'll see more Southern Illinois coal mines open back up to ship coal to these particular plants."
Winchester said he's also hopeful that fluorspar mining makes a comeback, as he has read articles stating that China is exporting less of the mineral that serves a variety of industrial purposes.
The purple mineral mined from ore near and underneath the Ohio River at one time put Rosiclare on the map as "the fluorspar capital of the world." That came to an end when Ozark-Mahoning halted its fluorspar mining operation in early 1996. At one time, there were 35 fluorspar mines in Hardin County. Because of cheap labor, China was able to mine, mill and ship fluorspar to the U.S. cheaper than the mining operations in Roscilare could get it out of the ground.
Winchester, like many in this region, tries to keep a positive attitude about what's around the corner, but he's also cautious. Hope floats, but the undercurrent of despair is strong.
Aggravating raw feelings, the state and federal government seen by many as the last lifeline for jobs is pulling up stakes too. The state has vacated two prisons in the region. Former Gov. Pat Quinn's administration shuttered Tamms Correctional Center in Alexander County in early 2013. Gov. Bruce Rauners administration moved prisoners out of the Hardin County Work Camp three years later. The state pays two guards for around-the-clock fire watch duty in Tamms. At the work camp near Cave-in-Rock, the state hasnt even bothered to keep the grass mowed of late.
This fall, the U.S. Department of Labor announced its decision to permanently close its Job Corps program for at-risk youth in Golconda, citing a "negative campus culture" that has persisted for years. The closure affected about 60 workers.
Unhealthy trends
Meanwhile, the populations of the counties that make up the states Ohio River Valley region are shrinking in size, growing older, and becoming unhealthier including increasing alcoholism and drug dependency and families and children have greater social needs but fewer resources to meet them. Data from various sources show the following:
The opioid epidemic is hitting Southern Illinois harder than any other region in the state. Seven of the nine counties Hardin, Pope, Saline, Gallatin, Massac, Union and Alexander ranked in the top 10 in terms of Schedule II opioid prescriptions per patient in 2016, according to a recent report by the Belleville News-Democrat, which cited data from the Illinois Prescription Monitoring Program. Four of those counties were in the top five: Hardin, at 3.51 prescriptions per patient; Pope, at 3.16; Saline, at 2.99; and Gallatin, at 2.97.
Law enforcement officials and residents say the drug problem, a symptom of poverty, is hard to manage.
Ive seen this before in Kentucky, said Kaycee Varvel, who lives in Brookport. When theres nothing for people to do, they turn to drugs. Varvel worries what that means for her neighborhood, and her safety.
Child abuse and neglect rates are well above the statewide rate in all nine counties, and double or more the statewide rate in the counties of Alexander, Hardin, Massac, Saline and Gallatin, according to the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services.
Child sexual abuse rates are triple the statewide rate in Alexander, Hardin, Gallatin and Saline.
Four of the nine counties are among the top 10 for lung cancer death rates, according to data provided by The Hope Light Foundation. The Illinois death rate from lung cancer per 100,000 people is 47.6. In Pulaski County, the death rate is 88.6; Pope County, 77.3; Hardin County, 76.1 and Union County, 72.
Hungry children
The poverty rates for children younger than 18 have grown much faster than that of the overall population, which means that families who remain are facing more serious economic challenges than ever before.
Mike and Ruthie Dick said they purchased a home in Dongola next to the post office about 11 years ago. Both Christian missionaries, they had been living in Florida at the time and were ready for a change. Ruthie spotted an old Victorian house online for sale in need of some tender loving care.
They bought it without ever seeing it in person. They quickly set about fixing it up. After settling in, they were struck by the hidden poverty at their doorstep.
Children were actually stealing from peoples fridges. If they are hungry, they cant hear Gods love, she said. The adults tend to keep to themselves, not wanting to bother anyone asking for help, she said. But kids are more honest about their needs."
More than 25 percent of children under 18 (greater than one in four) live in poverty in five of the Ohio River Valley counties: Alexander, at 58 percent; Saline, at 35 percent; Pulaski and Massac at 27 percent each; and Hardin, at 26 percent.
Johnson Countys childhood poverty rates have historically been among the lowest of the nine and remain so. But the rate of childhood poverty increased nearly 7 percentage points between 2000 and 2015, from 11 percent to 18 percent.
In four school districts, 99 percent to 100 percent of children are considered low-income: Shawnee, Cairo, Egyptian and Meridian. In another six school districts, the number of low-income students ranges from 60 percent to 65 percent, the next highest rate range: Century, Massac, Cobden, Harrisburg, Eldorado and Gallatin.
In five schools districts, 10 percent or greater of the student population is considered homeless, meaning they do not have permanent or adequate housing. They are: Buncombe, at 14 percent; Shawnee, at 13 percent; Century, at 12 percent; Cypress, at 11 percent; and Lick Creek, at 10 percent.
Helping hands
The Dicks said they started hosting dinners for neighborhood children not long after moving to Dongola. Mike is a contractor, and said he began offering to help people with needed repairs to their homes they had put off for years because of the expense. He also helped paint the post office.
The thing Ive seen over the years is that people start fixing their place up, then the neighbors want to do that, he said. And so it takes just a little bit of effort and the whole community can change and people start feeling like, Hey, theres life here, and its not just a difficult place to live. Mike stressed that they are among a number of people in the region who offer helping hands to those who need it.
After seven years of living in Dongola, the coupled spent four years in Switzerland, where Ruthie is from. They recently returned to Southern Illinois. "The people here you just can't find anywhere," he said. "They're just so down-home and everybody has been so good to us and so friendly."
Kaycee and Gary Varvel live on a little corner in Brookport on land that has been in Garys family for generations. A portable garage divides two trailers on the property, one that is Garys moms, and the other where the couple lives with their five dogs: Timber, Vee-Vee, Chief Brindle, Jazz and Roscoe two are American bullies, three are pitbulls.
Four years ago, a tornado ripped through here, bending mobile homes into abstract art and throwing Garys mom into a neighbors yard. She survived. They all rebuilt. As a condition of accessing emergency funds to rebuild, the Federal Emergency Management Agency required that their new homes have raised foundations that would put them above the base flood elevation.
From their front lawn, they can see what appears to be a vacant trailer floating over a low-lying plot, where the owner started to build the required foundation but left before it was finished. In other parts of the neighborhood, there are homes that still show signs of damage from the November 2013 tornado and properties in need of attention. It makes your property value go down, she said. Not that ours is worth much to start with, but I shouldnt have to look at this.
Gary is a truck driver. Because his job is mobile, they talk about uprooting and returning to her familys farm in Cadiz, Kentucky. I dont believe in sugarcoating it and acting like Im happy here because Im not, he said. Its not worth it.
Kaycee added, I hate this town with a passion. I cant stand it. She said the town's only redeeming quality is that it's only five miles across the Brookport Bridge to Paducah.
But asked if he intended to sell the land with the move, Gary said no way. Its a humble plot, but its theirs, and has been in the family for years. Everybody has tried to run my family off this corner, he said. Its not going to happen.
Hanging on
Thirty miles to the west, in Karnak, a Pulaski County village of about 500, Mayor Dean Hamilton knows the struggles all too well. The town once revolved around Main Brothers Box Factory that employed close to 300 for decades. It closed in the mid-1980s. At one time, we had four gas stations, two grocery stores, two hotels, a skating rink, a movie theater, a car dealership and the box factory, he said. Today, Hamilton is frustrated that he cant lure a gas station to town because every company he calls says they only go places where at least 1,000 people live.
Yet, the village still has responsibilities such as maintaining its aging gas, water and sewer systems. No money. No grants. No help. We have tried our best to hang on ourselves, he said.
Asked why people dont just up and move, the mayor said, You cant move a whole town. People live here. People growed up here. Whats still here, they want to stay here.
Hamiltons comment strikes at the core of the conundrum that federal housing officials face in Cairo. Two dilapidated public housing complexes have been slated for demolition and they are trying to relocate people to other communities, most in excess of an hour away.
For years, residents have complained of rampant infestation, inadequate heat, mold and many other health and safety issues. As they pleaded for help, a good number of residents said they hoped for an opportunity to get out of Cairo.
But then when HUD announced in April it was going to help move everyone, there was an uprising. When this summer HUD Secretary Ben Carson called Cairo a "dying community" during a Senate hearing in Washington, the people of this region were aghast even though locals have used very similar language to describe their own hometowns. The pain the situation has caused is not lost on HUD officials, but the economic depression makes for limited options. "We hope, and think, we're doing the right thing," said HUD spokesman Jereon Brown.
Black and white, young and old, rich and poor, people throughout this region are connected through shared bitter feelings of the perception they have been long neglected by state and federal governments.
But it's sort of like the old expression about how one can describe their own family members using any number of colorful choice words, while anyone else who does it is asking for a fight. Despite that people face mounting problems, strong town identity and pride is common in rural areas. Because of that, Charlie Eichorn, owner of Liquor Party Hut in Metropolis, said he knows he will take a lot of heat for this bit of advice to young people: "Fill your tank up and drive like hell out of town."
"There ain't nothing here right now," he said. Eichorn said he hopes to see a rebound for his city, but in the meantime, young people who can move should do whatever it takes to provide a good life for themselves and their families.
Fighting kryptonite
Sam Stratemeyer, of Metropolis home of Superman says its time to get real about whats happening here, before its too late. In his view, high property taxes are the regions kryptonite.
Stratemeyer is one of at least three Republicans who have announced they intend to seek the 118th House District seat that longtime Rep. Brandon Phelps recently vacated. Hes been driving around an old police cruiser that hes dressed up with large black lettering that reads: Anti-Tax Patrol and Tax Relief Now.
On a recent afternoon, he pointed out vacant properties in Metropolis, Brookport and Joppa that have been abandoned to the county trustee because the owners could no longer afford the property taxes, couldn't find a buyer for the property, or simply walked away. As more people leave, the property owners that remain take on a greater share of the burden of funding schools and local government, he said. It's an economic house of cards.
In several recently stable neighborhoods, houses sit abandoned, with weeds growing up over the front doors. One falls, then another, then, as if a slow-moving virus has taken hold, entire neighborhoods can go south.
Across the counties, home vacancies are on the rise:
As of 2015 U.S. Census estimates, about 10 percent of Illinois homes are sitting vacant. Its well above that in all of the nine Ohio Valley counties.
40 percent of homes are vacant in Pope County; 33 percent in Alexander; 27 percent in Hardin; 26 percent in Pulaski; 20 percent in Johnson; 16 percent in Massac; 15 percent each in Union and Saline; and 12 percent in Gallatin.
Its going to keep getting worse and worse and worse, Stratemeyer said. What youre seeing in Cairo, thats whats coming everywhere in these bottom counties.
In Lanesia and Johnny Edwards neighborhood in Pulaski, the trouble has already arrived. The economy is really poor here, she said, of the tiny village of about 200 that sits in the county by the same name. We dont get a lot of help from the state. Lanesia said she worries about the state of the Meridian school district, where their son is in the sixth grade, and from which she graduated high school in 1995. The district seems to have fewer resources and more difficulties than it did 20 years or so ago, she said.
The Edwardses live on a lot where her grandmother lived. The land has been in the family at least 100 years, she estimated. Across the way, a home that was declared a loss several years ago from a fire still stands. A nearby street sign is riddled with bullet holes. The roads are marked by potholes. Just up the street is an appliance graveyard of discarded washing machines and stoves.
Most of the people who are around here are either alcoholics or they are on drugs, she said. Lanesia said she hopes that when her son graduates high school, he leaves for a place with more opportunities.
Traven, 12, said he plans to go off to school and become a doctor so that he can return to take care of his mom, who has faced several health scares. As the sun set on a Sunday evening, Traven shot hoops in the muddy road as the rain let up and talked about the dreams he has for his future.
A few miles away, Bible Way Church of God in Christ was hopping. The occasion for the revival was the 15th anniversary celebration for Pastor Roy A. Johnson. To the soulful worship hymns, hands swayed in the air. People jumped to their feet. Hallelujah, they proclaimed. Sweet Jesus.
Indeed, this region could use a miracle.
'We're forgotten'
Susan Hodges, of Villa Ridge, said most of the people up north dont even realize the state runs all the way to its bottom border. Her husband, Robert, works at Bunge, a soybean processing plant in Cairo.
She works as a part-time office clerk for a local police department, but is thinking about enrolling in classes at Shawnee Community College to learn a skill, such as medical transcription, that would allow her to work from home. Hodges said she heard that older adults can attend for free. They are both from the area, but up until four years ago, Hodges was living in Chicago. She moved back when reconnecting turned into marriage.
In Chicago, when Id tell people Im from Southern Illinois, theyd say, Oh, Kankakee? and Id say no. So theyd say, Oh, Springfield. And Id say, Have you heard of Carbondale? Theyd say, Well yeah. And Id say, Well, 50 miles south of there is where Im from and they couldnt believe it.
Were forgotten, she said, adding that she misses the big city up north and its opportunities. Robert whispers, conspiratorially, that though she may, shes just a river rat at heart.
These hills and hollers beat the rat race any day if you ask Randy Johnson, who is originally of upstate Elgin. For 15 years, hes owned the hardware store in Dongola with his wife. They met in Elgin, but she is from the area. Johnson had a stressful job and wanted to be his own boss.
When the longtime owner of the hardware store was ready to sell, they made the move they'd talked about for some time. Business has been good, but this year they hit a rough patch. It was the slowest summer I can remember in 15 years, he said. People just dont want to spend money right now. Its tough, tough around here.
Still, they arent going anywhere. People can earn a keep if theyre willing to work hard for it, he said. He also works as a heating and air technician on the side while his wife manages the store.
Recently, the couple welcomed a baby boy into the world. His wife is 51 and hes 60, and they figured that a child was not in the cards for them. So it came as a bit of surprise, but Johnson said little Corbin is their pride and joy. He's glad his son will be raised in the country with small-town values. I grew up in Elgin. I wouldnt want him to grow up there," he said. "I really wouldnt mind him being a farmer, actually. But he can be whatever he wants to be.
Editor's note: This story has been updated. An earlier version incorrectly stated the year Illinois became a state as 1808. The correct date is 1818.
News / National
by Staff reporter
The expulsion of former vice president Emmerson Mnangagwa from both the ruling Zanu-PF party and government "was linked to President Robert Mugabe's fast deteriorating health", New Zimbabwe.com reported on Friday.Mugabe, 93, fired Munangagwa, the man who for so long looked like he would succeed the longtime Zimbabwe president."It had become evident that his conduct in the discharge of his duties had become inconsistent with his official responsibilities," Information Minister Simon Khaya Moyo told a press briefing on Monday as he announced Mnangagwa's dismissal."The vice president has consistently and persistently exhibited the traits of disloyalty, disrespect, deceitfulness and unreliability."Stumbling blockThis came after Mugabe - and particularly his wife Grace - had been stepping up their verbal attacks on Mnangagwa, 75, for weeks.Security sources, New Zimbabwe.com said, claimed that Grace's demands for Mnangagwa's sacking were motivated by concern over her husband's failing health.Mugabe, 93, was "now virtually unable to walk without assistance, always needing the support of his wife, Grace, and the phalanx of bodyguards he travels with", the report said.The report quoted leaked details as saying that Mugabe's doctors had informed Grace that Mugabe was "unlikely to live for too long".Meanwhile, critics maintained that the former vice president had become a "stumbling block to First Lady's ambitions to succeed her husband".
News / National
by Simbarashe Sithole
A self proclaimed witch allegedly broke her legs and arms after falling from a winnowing basket in an alleged 'head on collision' in the air.The 73 year old widow, Regina Simion, from Lucknow farm has become the talk of Mvurwi town after sources who declined to be named said the "witch" testified that she was involved in a head on collision while rushing for human flesh."The old lady has admitted that she is a witch and people are still flocking to see her," said the source.Apparently she was part of a syndicate after a dead person's head when the accident happened. Hospital staff barred this reporter from seeing the alleged witch.Contacted for comment, Chief Makope confirmed that he knows about the case but said he was waiting for the matter to be brought to his court for him to preside over."We heard that matter and my advisors are investigating the matter. She fell from a winnowing basket with no clothes on and broke her bones," said Chief Makope.Meanwhile, Chief Makope said witches should not be excommunicated from the community but instead the spirit of witchcraft should be exorcised by either prophets or witch hunters."Witches should not killed like what used to be done but should be cleansed by prophets or witch hunters and be accommodated in the society like any other human being,"he said.However, the Ministry of Home Affairs is seriously bemoaning witch hunters (Tsikamutanda) and labelling them as people who stride the length and breadth of the country causing havoc in families.Many witch hunters have been arrested around Zimbabwe and some have been convicted of conning clients through dubious means.
South Carolina has an estimated 164,400 women-owned businesses, employing 111,200 and attributing to roughly $15.7 billion according to the seventh annual State of Women-Owned Businesses Report, commissioned by American Express OPEN.
The report analyzes data from the U.S. Census Bureaus Survey of Business Owners and fa 495 years of Husqvarna service ctors in relative changes in Gross Domestic Product.
The analysis, reported by industry, revenue and employment size at the national, state and top-50 metro levels, shares an investigation into the growth trends over the past 20 years among the 11.6 million women-owned enterprises, which employ nearly 9 million people and generate more than $1.7 trillion in revenues.
Nationally, the number of women-owned firms increased by 114 percent from 1997 to 2017, compared to just a 44 percent increase among all businesses. Therefore, over the past 20 years, the number of women-owned firms has grown at a rate of 2.5 times faster than the national average.
South Carolina is ranked fourth in growth of number of women-owned firms over the past 20 years with a 156 percent increase, 40th in growth of jobs created with a 10.9 percent increase and 49th in growth of firm revenues with a 47.8 percent increase.
Hospice Care of S.C. honored by magazine
SPARTANBURG Hospice Care of South Carolina was recently ranked No. 29 among health care providers and insurers by Modern Healthcares 2017 Best Places to Work in Healthcare.
The honor identifies and recognizes outstanding employers in the health care industry nationwide. Modern Healthcare partners with the Best Companies Group on the assessment process, which includes an extensive employee survey gathering about the company's policies, practices, demographics and benefits. In addition, the magazine surveys the organization's staff on eight core areas: leadership and planning, culture and communications, role satisfaction, working environment, relationship with supervisor, pay and benefits, overall engagement, and training, development, and resources.
A decade ago, Modern Healthcare set out to recognize outstanding employers across the industry. Now in its 10th year, Modern Healthcares Best Places to Work in Healthcare has become the hallmark for organizations striving to be just that, said Fawn Lopez, publisher of Modern Healthcare.
HCSC was honored at the 2017 Best Places to Work Awards Dinner in September in Las Vegas.
Hospice Care of South Carolina has provided patient care since 1997. Licensed to serve every county statewide, it has offices in Orangeburg and Bamberg.
Claflin gets SCBEA scholarship funds
COLUMBIA -- The South Carolina Broadcasters Associations Educational Foundation announced that it has awarded $50,000 in scholarships to nine schools in South Carolina, including Claflin University in Orangeburg.
The SCBA Educational Foundation, established in 1982, provides grants, scholarships and endowments for South Carolina colleges, technical colleges and universities that offer a curriculum in broadcast training. The Foundation established an endowment in 2004 with a one $1 million target and in 2008 reached that goal. The scholarship program will continue in perpetuity.
Other schools receiving scholarships for 2018 are: Bob Jones University, Clemson University, Furman University, North Greenville University, Tri-County Technical College, Trident Technical College, University of South Carolina and Winthrop University.
Each year the SCBA Educational Foundation accepts proposals for funding from colleges and universities in South Carolina which offer broadcast or communications training. Funding is not provided for capital items or internships. Funds are distributed in May and August of the following year.
We are proud to support the good work of these South Carolina schools through these annual scholarships said SCBA Educational Foundation President Steve Sinicropi. We believe that by investing in their education today, we will have qualified broadcasters to hire tomorrow.
Ports Authority has strongest October ever
CHARLESTON The South Carolina Ports Authority reported its strongest October on record, with 184,804 20-foot equivalent container units handled.
Fiscal year-to-date TEU volume is up 5 percent, with 724,799 TEUs handled since the Port's fiscal year began in July.
"Container growth in October was broad-based across multiple segments, with particular strength of export loaded containers," said Jim Newsome, SCPA president and CEO. "All indicators are that the U.S. port market will continue to grow, based on good performance of the global economy. We look forward to the addition of container volume from major manufacturing operations such as Volvo Cars, Samsung Electronics and Mercedes Vans going into 2018."
As measured in pier containers, or boxes handled, SCPA moved a record 105,208 containers across the docks of its two container terminals in October, surpassing the previous October record of 102,413 pier containers in 2004. Fiscal year to date, pier container volume is up 5.7 percent with 410,856 boxes handled July through October.
Inland Port Greer also achieved its strongest October since the facility opened in November 2013, with 11,773 rail moves handled.
Electronic Engineering Technology students Marcus Hilliard and Derek Martin traveled to Washington, D.C., Oct. 23-25 to participate in the 2017 ATE Principal Investigators Conference, sponsored by the National Science Foundation and the American Association of Community Colleges.
This is the third time OCtech students have been invited to present at the conference.
This years theme was Hands-on, Minds-on: Pathways to a Highly Skilled U.S. Workforce.
Hilliard and Martin helped collect temperature data on campus during the total solar eclipse in August. LabVIEW software and data acquisition hardware were used for the project, which was funded through the NSF Advanced Technological Education Program (NSF/ATE award number 1501828).
Several OCtech faculty and staff members also presented the colleges ATE Robotics and Automated Manufacturing Program, which is designed to increase awareness of opportunities in STEM for women and underrepresented minorities through programs in robotics and automated manufacturing. Dean of Engineering and Advanced Manufacturing Technology Richard Murphy, NSF Grant Program Director Jim Payne, Grant Writer/Special Projects Director Linda Payne, Engineering Design Technology Instructor Stephanie Thompson and Mechatronics Instructor Jerry Zissett represented OCtech at the conference.
Mary Abraham bundled up and came downtown Saturday morning to see her husband, veteran Johnny Abraham, march in Orangeburg Countys first Veterans Day parade in 17 years.
Veterans did so much for the country. We would not be able to be here and to do what we do now if it was not for the veterans who fought for us. That is why it is important, she said.
The people who came out to view the parade were waving U.S. flags as floats decked out in red, white and blue passed by.
The Orangeburg-Wilkinson High School marching band played a number of patriotic hymns during the parade, including "America the Beautiful."
The sounds of Lee Greenwood's "God Bless the USA" emitted from some floats as the parade traveled down Russell Street to Orangeburgs Veterans Memorial Park.
Orangeburg Countys oldest veteran, 99-year-old World War II veteran Harvey Fullard, served as the parade's grand marshal. The U.S. Navy veteran turns 100 on Feb. 1.
"It is a wonderful thing to meet the people and to be here," Fullard said. "To survive as long as I have, it is good to be here."
He had no doubts as to the reason he was able to be in the parade.
"I thank God has blessed me to see this day come," he said.
U.S. Navy veteran Jerry Smoak and his wife, Darlene, traveled about six hours from Cedartown, Georgia to visit their daughter and grandchildren.
The couple did not want to miss the opportunity to see the parade and show their gratitude to the countrys veterans.
"A lot of them sacrificed their life and they died for this country, Jerry Smoak said. "A lot of these people protesting, I don't agree with it. If we didn't fight, we would probably not have freedom over here. So many died and so many are disabled that served our country. I am proud of them."
Darlene Smoak was also at the parade to honor her father, Clinton Cantrell, who served as a gunner in World War II.
They brought their 6 and 7-year-old grandchildren to instill in them the importance of Veterans Day.
"I think all of them should be raised up to tell them what people before them went through," Smoak said. "A lot of times if we don't tell them, nobody else will tell them."
U.S. Army veteran John Staley, who served in Vietnam, said the parade was a sight for sore eyes.
"It is giving the veterans recognition," he said. "When I came back from Vietnam, we didn't get no recognition. We were called baby killers."
Orangeburg resident George Graham gives hats off' to those veterans who have served.
"I think we should show them all the respect and honor every chance we can get because they give their lives for us to be safe," he said. "I think that is a great thing."
After the parade, a short ceremony was held at Orangeburgs Veterans Memorial Park.
Following the playing of the Star-Spangled Banner by the Orangeburg-Wilkinson High School band, Orangeburg Mayor Michael Butler thanked God for the sacrifices so many of our veterans have made.
"We thank you Lord even for the families that have paid the ultimate price and some that did not make it back home," Butler said. "We pray for the families for strength. We thank you Lord that we celebrate our country. America is a great place to live, America is a great place that you established. We thank you for the land of the free and the brave."
Orangeburg County Veterans Affairs Officer Kenisha Grimes and Orangeburg County Veterans Council Commander Lee Jeffries Sr. were honored by the Orangeburg Veterans Council for their contributions.
A wreath was laid at the close of the ceremony.
Members of the O-W band played Taps to close the ceremony.
NEESES Two alumni of the former Norfield Elementary School in Norway were recognized at Neeses Town Council's November meeting.
Neeses residents Shelby Pough, 99, and Mrs. Jeter Gleaton, 93, were presented certificates and mascot T-shirts by the Hornet-Trojan Alumni Association of the old Norfield School and Hunter-Kinard-Tyler High School.
Other seniors ages 90 and older, who were also alumni of the school, were recognized in their absence, including Margaret Hutto, Tony Fogle and Margaret Fogle.
Council awarded customized embossed candy dishes to the seniors. The dishes, designed by Neeses Election Commission Chairperson Josie Dyches, featured the Palmetto tree emblem and the Town of Neeses logo.
The community room of Neeses Town Hall was filled with family and friends of those recognized, and refreshments were served.
Tracie Clemons of Blackville, an HKT alumnus and vice president of the Hornet-Trojan Alumni Association, announced a community cleanup will be held from 8 a.m. to 12 p.m. on Saturday, Nov. 18, at 526 Winchester Ave. in Norway and food will be provided. She said the group wants to revitalize the old Norfield/HKT High School and continue with monthly cleanups there.
Mayor Joe Corbett said that at a recent meeting with Orangeburg County Litter Control, it was reported some properties identified as eyesores had been cleaned up but other owners of derelict had not yet been served papers notifying them they must clean up their properties.
They are having trouble finding owners of some of the littered properties, he said.
Corbett said the county will eventually clean up the properties of those who do not clean them up themselves and bill them via tax liens.
In other business:
It was announced the Neeses Crime Watch meeting will be held at 6:15 p.m. on Monday, Nov. 13, at town hall. A Thanksgiving dinner will be served, and Dianne Curlee, education coordinator for Keep Orangeburg County Beautiful, Orangeburg County Soil and Water Conservation District, will be the speak.
The Toys for Tots collection box will be at Neeses Town Hall until the last day of November for donations of new, unwrapped toys for needy children.
Maurice Mosley, an alumnus of South Carolina State University, was moved by the passing of his former professor and mentor, Willie Bill Heggins, in November 2016. Inspired by the life that Heggins lived, Mosley decided to donate $20,000 to S.C. State to establish the Willie J. Heggins II Scholarship fund.
Heggins, who was also a S.C. State alumnus, retired in 2005 after serving as a professor in the universitys School of Business for more than 40 years. Those who knew him know that he loved his alma mater dearly.
Mosley attributes his growth and success to Heggins.
I was a headstrong kid from Waterbury, Connecticut when I came to S.C. State. Professor Heggins took me under his wing and made me become a man," he said. "I am forever grateful for the guidance that he provided me and many others that came to S.C. State. This is the least I can do to show my gratitude.
S.C. States School of Business recognized Mosley and the inaugural Willie J. Heggins II Scholarship recipients for the 2017-18 school year during a homecoming luncheon in October.
This years scholarship recipients are Ariana Ruiz, a junior agribusiness major from Manning; Jasmine Pate, a junior management major from Bennettsville; Dajihnee Thompson, a sophomore management major from McClellanville; Carl Williams, a junior accounting major from Miami, Florida and Kehinde Biotidara, a junior accounting major from Lagos, Nigeria.
An accomplished professional, Mosley currently serves as a judge for the New Haven District Superior Court in Connecticut. He was nominated by Gov. Dannel Malloy and confirmed by the legislature on March 6, 2013.
Mosley was recognized as Citizen of the Law in 2016 by the Waterbury community for his inspiration and contributions to those in need. He was also acknowledged for exercising good will within the environment and society as a whole.
He earned a Bachelor of Science in business administration from S.C. State University and a Juris Doctor degree from the University of Connecticut.
Dr. Barbara Adams, interim dean of the School of Business, expressed appreciation for the generosity of alumni such as Mosley.
Adams said, We strive to cultivate graduates such as,Judge Mosley. Not only has he excelled in his profession, but he is reaching back to help others.
Scholarship applicants must be rising juniors or seniors majoring in one of the areas in business with a 3.0 or higher GPA. Applications for the 2018-19 school year are currently available in the deans office, located in Room 106 of Belcher Hall.
For more information about the scholarship, call Dr. Barbara Adams at 803- 536-8980.
The crossroads community of Creston does not have an office building, grocery store or even a blinking light.
But for Keller Kissam, the close-knit farming community of about 33 souls gave him the guidance and wisdom he needed to embark on life's successful journey.
"It was great," Kissam said. Creston is a place where a person can hold their breath from one part of the town to the other.
"We did not know what we didn't have, but we had everything."
Kissam was recently named president of South Carolina Electric & Gas amid the personnel changes following the failure of the V.C. Summer nuclear plant project. The project was a joint effort between Santee Cooper and SCANA, which is SCE&Gs parent company.
SCE&Gs new president comes from a family of successful siblings.
Kissam's brother, Luke, is the chairman, president and chief executive officer of the Albemarle Corporation. Keller Kissam said his brother has been a mentor to him.
His younger sister, Ann, is a certified public account in Irmo. He joked that shes also beginning to move into the role of the mother hen of the family.
As kids growing up in Creston, life was not about things but it was about people," Keller Kissam said.
The communitys love was exemplified when a familys home burned.
"It was a time before cell phones, but news of the fire would spread by word of mouth," Kissam said. "Farmers would end up showing up with their water tanks to put out the fire."
"It was about people helping people," he said.
This same love of neighbor is what continues to drive Kissam. He says it will guide him in his new position.
"I feel very blessed to be from that community and I am going to do my dead best to not let them down," he said.
Growing up
Kissam was born March 28, 1966 at the Orangeburg Regional Hospital to Maud and L.C. Kissam III. He was the middle of the three children.
Kissam has always been close to his family and says his parents love helped form him as a child.
His mother, who was a Latin and English teacher, taught him many things. One sticks out to him now.
"She taught me to apply my talents and to use my God-given talents to the fullest," he said.
His father provided the needed discipline to keep him on the straight and narrow.
"He would tell us to go pick sticks up in the front yard before he cut the grass," Kissam said. "He told us that if he came across a stick that he would whip us with it. He held us accountable and responsible."
Kissam said while his father's brand of accountability may seem countercultural today, he loved his children and his children loved their father.
"It sent a strong message," Kissam said, noting he is a better person because of his father's love.
In addition to his immediate family, Kissam's church family at Shady Grove United Methodist Church also helped raise him. The church's enrollment at the time he was a child was 53 and those same farmers who helped put out their neighbors fires were all in attendance.
"We were there every Sunday," he said. His church family instilled in him an unconditional love of God.
"Every morning when I wake up and look in the mirror I say, 'Lord, not my will, but thy will be done.' I say that even today," Kissam said.
Kissam's father says his son is a classic case of it taking a village to raise child.
"He grew up in the church," L.C. Kissam said. "Everybody was interested in what he was doing and his future. They were always complimentary when he achieved something. They instilled a lot of pride in what Keller has accomplished."
He says he was there for Keller Kissam and for all his children. He described himself as the disciplinarian of the family.
"None of my kids ever gave me any problems," he said. They may have done some devilish things in high school, as most kids do, but he said overall his kids were well behaved.
I can say that with pride," he said.
L.C. Kissam also gives credit to The Citadel and its regimented ways for helping build his sons character.
"I would consider Keller to be a people's person," he said. "It is easy for Keller to meet people."
At the age of 14, while attending Wade Hampton Academy, Keller Kissam received his first job working for Calhoun County farmer Drake Perrow.
"My momma would drop me off at the filling station in Cameron and the cotton growers would pick me up and then she would pick me up in the evening," Kissam said.
"I scouted cotton back when we had the boll weevil," he said. "I would take farmers their cotton reports."
This experience exposed him to the business world and others.
"I dealt with a wide variety of folks where you can learn something from everybody you come into contact with if you have deep humility for yourself and have respect for them, he said.
Moving up
Kissam continued to scout cotton through his time at The Citadel.
He graduated from The Citadel with a bachelors degree in 1988. He served as the regimental commander of the South Carolina Corps of Cadets.
He got his first job with SCE&G at the age of 21 in its new utility professional program. He spent a year working in various departments of SCANA.
After completing this program, Kissam worked for SCANAs South Carolina Pipeline Corporation.
He became manager of contract administration and, in 1993, became vice president of SCPC and was responsible for contract administration and gas supply.
In 1996, he moved over to work for SCE&G as vice president of gas operations and was responsible for the gas distribution operating company in South Carolina until 2003, when he became vice president of SCE&G electric operations -- a position he held until he was promoted to his current position.
Kissam says the three h's are the key to being successful in life.
"Youve got to be humble, you have to be willing to help others and youve got to find happiness," he said.
A family of his own
Kissam is married to Anne and they have two children.
Keller Jr., 22, is a senior at Clemson University majoring in agriculture mechanization. His 20-year-old daughter, Elliott, is a sophomore at the University of South Carolina majoring in biology. Her desire is to help children with pediatric cancer.
Kissam says both of his children enjoy going to church in Shady Grove and are being influenced by the same people he was influenced by growing up.
"I can see how that has molded them as much I as have tried to mold them," he said.
Kissam says his daughter has also helped form him.
At the age of 6, she was diagnosed with leukemia.
Kissam keeps a picture of her with him when she was going through treatments with not a string of hair on her head, he said.
"When I think I have a bad day I look at that picture and it puts it all into perspective for me," Kissam said.
V.C. Summer nuclear project
Kissam is becoming the president of SCE&G at a time when the company is experiencing the fallout from the failed construction of two reactors at the V.C. Summer nuclear plant in Fairfield County.
SCE&G and state-owned utility Santee Cooper halted the construction of two new nuclear reactors this summer after chief contractor Westinghouse filed for bankruptcy.
Both utilities have faced intense scrutiny since the nearly $10 billion failure, which both state and federal authorities are investigating. State lawmakers are also probing the project's collapse.
Kissam says he will take his upbringing in Creston as a guiding light to his new position.
"Where I come from, you mean what you say and you do what you say," he said. "The bottom line is we did not do what we said we were going to do."
"As a result of that, I am sorry to our customers, I am sorry to the elected officials who have to take time to deal with this matter and I am sorry to the employees who have had to deal with the tumultuous time in our company," Kissam said.
Using an analogy from his youth, Kissam said if hail or the boll weevil destroys a cotton crop, you have to look forward to planting for the new season not back.
"I have to focus on that new season," he said.
The utility will continue to focus on providing safe and reliable energy to customers, Kissam said. "Hopefully, we will be able to reach a settlement that is in the best interest of customers and to restore confidence and credibility to our company."
A special panel of House members is working on a plan to return money to ratepayers. The House Utility Ratepayer Protection Committee is drafting several bills for lawmakers to consider when they return to the Statehouse in January.
WASHINGTON -- "Thoughts and prayers" are fine. Locking arms "through the tears and the sadness," as President Trump prescribed, is all well and good. But none of this does a damn thing to stop, or even slow, the carnage.
A Sunday ago in Sutherland Springs, Texas, a disturbed and angry man with a military-style semiautomatic assault rifle opened fire at the First Baptist Church during services, killing 26 people. It was the worst church shooting in modern American history. Think about that: We've seen enough mass killings at houses of worship that we can rank them in order.
Why did he do it? We may never be certain; the assailant, 26-year-old Devin Patrick Kelley, is dead. But we can say with certainty HOW he did such an unspeakable thing: with a gun designed for warfare, a weapon that has no business in civilian hands.
I've written this column before, and I will have tragic occasion to write it again. I don't care about that. I'll keep writing it because we cannot become inured to this horrific gun violence. We cannot allow mass killings to become normalized, even though they happen with increasing and numbing frequency. We can accept the loss of life on the battlefield as the price of freedom, but not senseless murder in the church pews.
Now begins the sophistry from apologists for the gun lobby. First they will feign outrage that anyone would "politicize" such a tragedy by seeking ways to prevent such a thing from happening again. Then the National Rifle Association's water-carriers will choose some gun control proposal and crow about how that specific measure could not have prevented this specific massacre. Therefore, they will argue, we must do nothing at all.
If all else fails, the complicit enablers of horrific gun violence -- and that's what they are -- will rush to get in front of the discussion and lead it astray, as the NRA did after Las Vegas by encouraging debate about bump stocks. Yes, those accessories allow a gunman to fire more rapidly. But a standard AR-15-style rifle is plenty rapid enough. What kills are the high-speed, large-caliber rounds that tear through flesh, bone and brain as if they were tissue paper. But the NRA doesn't want us to focus on the gun or the ammunition, because then even strong supporters of the Second Amendment might begin asking inconvenient questions.
Chief among them: Why do we make it easier to amass an arsenal of weapons of war than it is to get a driver's license or register to vote?
The guns most often used in these mass shootings are variations on rifles designed for soldiers to carry into combat. They are not optimized for killing rabbits or deer, but for killing people. They have no business in civilian hands.
Large-capacity magazines are also unnecessary for hunting or target shooting. How do you define what's large-capacity and what isn't? Just do it. Pick a reasonable number and write it into the law.
It goes without saying that there should be universal background checks for purchasing firearms. But there should also be enforcement mechanisms, with teeth, to make sure that dealers do not sell weapons to individuals banned from obtaining them. And just as there is a mandatory, comprehensive registry of automobiles, there should be such a registry for firearms and ammunition.
The United States is alone among advanced countries in having gun policies that facilitate, rather than obstruct, deadly rampages such as Kelley's. The Supreme Court has made clear in its rulings that the Second Amendment permits reasonable gun control measures. This crisis is political, not constitutional.
You and I have the power to elect leaders who will reduce gun violence. The blood of innocents is on our hands.
News / National
by Staff reporter
THE United Congregational Church of Southern Africa (UCCSA) has elected Zimbabwean Reverend Sikhalo Cele to lead the entire Southern African denomination, a move that is expected to further grow the church in the region.Rev Cele, who has been an ordained minister of the UCCSA since 2003, will for the next four years be at the helm of the church in the region, a challenge which he says he is ready to tackle.In an interview with Sunday News, Rev Cele said he would work round the clock to see to it that the ministry grows, noting that the region had shown confidence in his capabilities and further that the Zimbabwean branch had now been given decision making powers within the church."What happens is for the next two years I will be known as the president-elect but already I am now a denominational officer and already in the presidium, the last two years I will then be the full president, it is automatic."As the Zimbabwe Synod we are excited as we have managed to groom a leader in myself, who has been thrust at the helm of the entire church in the Southern African region. This is the time therefore not to disappoint the people who elected me and show that I am capable and help the church to grow," said Rev Cele.He said among the many challenges ahead, priority was to unite the church and lead from the front pushing its growth and development."From where I stand I am the glue of the church where I am expected to make sure that the church is united and that there is cohesion considering that the church is multi-racial, multi-tribal, multi-lingual among other things."The task might seem impossible from afar but speaking from a Christian perspective anything is possible, I will put the Lord ahead of everything I do and I will surely prosper," said Rev Cele.Rev Cele is also the church's president of the Soldiers in Christ commonly known as Amabutho.
In 2016, the FBI started to track animal cruelty, including neglect, torture and sexual abuse, because of disturbing connections between abuse and killing of animals and dong the same to humans.
Writing for theconversation.com, Jessica Rubin of the Animal Legal Defense Fund and an assistant clinical professor of law at the University of Connecticut, states the evidence is more than anecdotal. Researchers like psychologists Randall Lockwood and Frank R. Ascione have determined that people who abuse animals may move on to hurting people.
By vigorously prosecuting animal cruelty cases, the justice system could potentially help stave off violent crimes against people, Rubin writes. But these animal cruelty offenses often get short shrift in state courts.
Rubin notes that courts and prosecutors often have more cases involving crimes against people than they can handle. So cases of animal cruelty are dismissed or defendants are given probationary sentences leaving no record of the offenses.
In South Carolina, that may be about to change with a package of animal welfare reforms drawn up by a group of state officials and animal-rights activists and approved by a panel of state senators. The proposals are headed for the Senate Agriculture and Natural Resources Committee in January.
Dog-tethering would be prevented for the first time, and pronged or choke collars would be banned.
At present, law enforcement cannot take action against owners who leave their dogs tied up outside unless officers decide the tethering constitutes animal cruelty. The change would require that any dog tied up and unsupervised for more than an hour must have food, water, shelter and at least 100 square feet of useable space.
Importantly, the Senate proposal also includes more training for local magistrates on handling animal-cruelty issues because tougher laws on animal cruelty will do little if law enforcement and the judiciary do not take them seriously.
Toward cases being treated seriously, Connecticut offers a model.
Writing in the article titled How Dogs and Cats Can Get Their Day in Court, Rubin said Desmonds Law enacted in 2016 creates a program that allows courts to appoint supervised law students or lawyers to serve as volunteer advocates for animals in cruelty cases. The legal experts represent the interests of animals and justice, mirroring a practice that is already standard for children who have been abused or killed.
Advocates research police and veterinary records, interview experts and present recommendations to courts regarding intermediate and final issues in cruelty cases. They aim to ensure that courts consider and protect animal interests, Rubin writes. Volunteers track cruelty cases in the state and attend court hearings.
The first case to use Desmonds Law involved a defendant accused of engaging in dogfighting, Rubin notes. Lacking a record of prior convictions, he was eligible to apply for an accelerated rehabilitation program through which a defendant complying with court conditions and not committing additional offenses may have charges dismissed.
A student under Rubins supervision argued that the defendant should not be eligible for the accelerated rehabilitation program because the crime of which he was accused was serious and likely to recur.
A Connecticut judge allowed the defendant to use the program but was receptive to imposing conditions on the defendants probationary two-year program term. For example, he may not have any contact with animals and must undergo a psychological assessment.
South Carolina may not be ready to implement its own version of Desmonds Law but such an approach should be considered. It would be a way to give legal advocates for animals standing to do more than speak loudly in the public arena a could be a factor in putting a stop to violence against humans later.
Four major firms in Bahrain, including two construction companies, have been blacklisted by the government over non-payment of wages, reported the Gulf Daily News, our sister publication.
For further details, visit http://www.gdnonline.com
Sweden-based Sandvik will be showcasing its wide range of tube products at the Abu Dhabi International Petroleum Exhibition and Conference (Adipec) 2017, which opens tomorrow (November 13), in Abu Dhabi, UAE.
The event will be held at Abu Dhabi National Exhibition Centre, in Abu Dhabi, UAE, and will run until November 16.
These include hydraulic and instrumentation tubing, heat exchanger and high temperature tubing, control lines, umbilicals and OCTG tubing, said a statement from the company.
Sandvik, a developer and producer of advanced stainless steels, special alloys, titanium and other high-performance materials, has seen double digit growth in the Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) region over the past three years, it said.
Earlier this year, the company established its regional oil and gas headquarters in Dubai, UAE, to increase delivery of local services and products for customers, it added.
In addition, there have been increased activities in Abu Dhabi, Saudi Arabia, the Eastern Mediterranean, North Africa and Nigeria where the company secured a significant project to supply oil and gas control and chemical injection lines.
The order saw Sandvik providing approximately 100,000 ft of control and chemical injection lines (flatpacks) for a deepwater project offshore Nigeria via its recently opened facility in Brazil, it added.
The lines were supplied using Alloy 825, an industry standard material with high mechanical strength and corrosion-resistant properties that are cost-efficient. The lines can normally take up to 16 weeks to be delivered, but having materials in stock meant Sandvik was able to cut the delivery time to five weeks from placement of the order.
Phil Cherrie, regional sales and marketing director, oil and gas, Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA), Sandvik, said: Africa is one of the focus markets for our geographical expansion this year. While weve been active in EMEA for over 30 years, we are now seeing increasing activities and huge potential for the oil and gas industry in this part of the world.
We see growth opportunities to further expand supply of our oil and gas product portfolio, particularly our range of control and chemical injection lines, which are designed for the challenging conditions of the African deepwater subsea environment, he said.
The project win in Nigeria showcases our commitment to the market, and we will continue to work together with our customers to provide end-to-end capabilities including in-house encapsulation, flushing, filling, pressure testing as well as services that enable companies to go further with our high-performance materials, he added.
James Doughty, regional sales director, tube core and standard, Mena, Sandvik, said: As the worlds economy gradually recovers from uncertain oil prices, industry players are now looking for solutions that would enable them to identify and fulfil new opportunities.
At Sandvik, we are seeing more customers in various industries exploring cost-effective ways to upgrade existing systems. We look forward to showcasing our high-performance tubular materials to our industry peers at Adipec, he added.
Sandviks hydraulic and instrumentation tubes are optimised for hardness allowing for easy, reliable bending and consistent quality. Since 1980, over 100 million meters of H&I seamless stainless tubing have been supplied to customers worldwide.
The companys oil and gas offerings include control lines that are highly resistant to pressure, high temperature and adverse conditions; umbilical tubes with high corrosion resistance and excellent mechanical properties to cope with extremely adverse conditions; and downhole casing and production tubing (OCTG) that can cope with aggressive environments found in sour wells.
Having produced steel products for over 150 years, Sandvik possesses the expertise to contribute to customers productivity, reliability, and cost efficiency while often reducing environmental impact.
The company has over 50 years of advanced technical expertise and geographical experience in the oil and gas industry, having established itself as a committed supplier of advanced materials technology combined with a focus on providing customer-centric additional services.
This includes offering swift and fuss-free solutions facilitated through an extensive inventory of stock, quick processing time, customisation for the customers own reels and direct delivery to the site, it stated. TradeArabia News Service
Oman-based Petroleum Development Oman (PDO), a leading exploration and production company, along with Sumitomo Corporation Tubular Solutions Oman (SCTSO) and Port of Duqm Company (PDC), have announced the arrival of the first shipment of OCTG (oil country tubular goods, namely casing and tubing) pipes at Duqm Port.
A first lot of 4,900 metric tonnes from Nippon Steel & Sumitomo Metal Corporation (NSSMC) was successfully discharged at the ports commercial quay, from where it will be moved to a specialised storage area managed by Middle East Tubular Services (Mets) in the logistics zone adjacent to the port, added the Oman Daily Observer report.
This operation marks the next phase of SCTSOs successful delivery of supply chain management (SCM) services to PDO, following a Mill to Well model for the first time in Oman, which will be operated from Duqm.
This new model will further optimise supply chain efficiencies and offer substantial cost savings to PDO, by making full utilisation of Duqms central location towards PDOs various inland oil and gas fields.
SCTSO expects that Duqm Port will handle four to five similar shipments per month from now on as the project move to Duqm nears completion, added the report.
CDB Aviation, one of the largest Chinese-owned aviation leasing companies, said it has finalised a $7.4 billion order with Boeing for 42 models of 737 MAX 8s, eight 787-9 Dreamliners and 10 737 MAX 10s.
The order, which was placed at this year's Paris Air Show, also includes a conversion of six 737 MAX 8 orders, to the 737 MAX 10, said a statement from Boeing.
CDB Aviation is part of the launch customer group for the 737 MAX 10, the newest member of Boeing's 737 MAX family.
"The 737 MAX and the 787 Dreamliner are some of the most advanced, most fuel-efficient airplanes in the world today," remarked CDB Aviation president and chief executive Peter Chang.
"We're confident that the reliability, efficiency and superior economics of the MAX and Dreamliner families will be very appealing to our customers," stated Chang.
Based in Dublin, Ireland, CDB Aviation operates as a wholly-owned Irish subsidiary of China Development Bank Financial Leasing Company and features a committed fleet of over 300 aircraft.
The Boeing 787 Dreamliner is the fastest-selling twin-aisle airplane in history. Boeing has delivered more than 600 787s entering service in 2011, flying more than 200 million people on more than 610 unique routes, saving over 19 billion pounds of fuel.
On the big order, Kevin McAllister, the president and chief executive of Boeing Commercial Airplanes, said: "CDB Aviation is a leader in the leasing market and we are excited the 737 Max and 787 Dreamliner will be the pillars of its growing fleet."
"The 737 MAX family is the fastest-selling airplane in Boeing history with over 4,000 orders from 93 customers worldwide. Boeing has delivered more than 30 737 MAX airplanes this year," he added.-TradeArabia News Service
Azerbaijan has witnessed a huge eight-fold rise in visitors from Bahrain this year, it was revealed at a meeting of travel trade representatives and media in Manama.
The Ministry of Culture and Tourism of Azerbaijan hosted the exclusive meeting on tourism advancement at the Ritz Carlton Hotel Bahrain, attended by over 50 specialists including Gulf Air Deputy CEO Captain Waleed Abdul Hameed Al Alawi.
The event was organised by the Representative Office of the Ministry of Culture and Tourism of Azerbaijan in GCC, Atlantis Holidays.
Azerbaijan recorded a 30- fold growth in overnight visits from the GCC market in 2016, developing into one of the biggest tourism players, said the Azerbaijani Minister of Culture and Tourism Abulfas Garayev. He said strategies are under way to draw more Bahraini and GCC tourists to the country.
We are having this exclusive meeting in Bahrain given the influence of this market to Azerbaijani tourism. Bahrainis are great people who are respected and love to travel. And Bahrain is assuredly among the dominant five countries with tourists visiting Azerbaijan. Azerbaijan is an outstanding destination for GCC travellers, particularly the Bahrainis," he said.
"We share a great culture, and Azerbaijan, being a diverse destination, offers great halal food, scenery, shopping and easy accessibility because of its closeness, just 2 and half hours from Bahrain. Besides that, Bahrainis get visas on arrival to Azerbaijan and can even get advance visa online.
He said Azerbaijan Tourism hopes to market the country as a unique tourist destination for couples and families.
The chairman of the Representative Office, Rashid Al Noori, said: What distinguishes Azerbaijan from all the other destinations is its climatic condition, the Halal way of life and the homely and luxurious feel the country offers to GCC visitors."
Al Noori highlighted the expanded air links to Azerbaijan from the GCC, and operation of Azerbaijan Airlines, Fly Dubai, AirArabia, Qatar Airways, Jazeera Airways, and Wataniya Air to the country. He also pointed out that Etihad Airways will launch flights to Azerbaijan starting March 2018. - TradeArabia News Service
Gulf Air, Bahrains national carrier, and CFM International have signed an agreement for the purchase of 58 LEAP-1A engines to power 17 Airbus A321neo and 12 A320neo aircraft and an additional seven spare engines to support the operation.
The firm engine order is valued at approximately $1.9 billion at list price, including a long-term service agreement. The aircraft order was announced in January 2016.
To support its fleet, the airline has also signed a 10-year Rate Per Flight Hour (RPFH) agreement. Throughout the term of the agreement, CFM guarantees maintenance costs for all of Gulf Airs LEAP-1A engines on a dollar per engine flight hour basis.
Gulf Air has been a CFM customer since 1992 and currently operates a fleet of 16 Airbus A320ceo aircraft powered by CFM56-5B engines. Going forward, the airline will welcome 17 Airbus A321neo and 12 A320neo aircraft alongside 10 Boeing Wide Body aircraft - due for delivery commencing in early 2018.
Gulf Airs incoming fleet will facilitate the long-term expansion capabilities for the airline's future network requirement. The modern fleet will herald a new era for Gulf Air as it continues to enhance its product and service offering.
Marking the announcement, Gulf Air Deputy Chief Executive Officer, Captain Waleed Abdulhameed Al Alalawi, said: CFM International are a key and longstanding partner for Gulf Air, with whom the airline has worked closely for over 2 decades. Our selection of this engine for our incoming Airbus aircraft is significant, reflecting the reliability and expertise afforded by CFM products. This is integral to our ongoing strategic development and I am pleased to call CFM International Gulf Airs partner of choice as we move ahead with our long term plans to shape the future trajectory of our carrier.
"It is highly gratifying when an airline of this stature makes your products such an essential part of its operations, said Gael Meheust, president and CEO of CFM International. We are honoured to be a part of this team and to be a part of Gulf Airs continued growth and success. The CFM56-5B engines they currently operate have performed very, very well over the years. We know that the LEAP-1A engines will bring even greater benefits and we cant wait to help them induct this advanced technology into their fleet.
The LEAP engine entered commercial service in August 2016 and is providing its more than 20 operators with a 15 percent improvement in fuel efficiency, with an equivalent reduction in CO2 emissions; and lower noise and NOx emissions. To date, the fleet in service has logged more than 75,000 engine flight cycles and more than 350,000 engine flight hours while maintaining CFMs industry-leading reliability, the statement said. TradeArabia News Service
ROCK SPRINGS The Sweetwater County commissioners hiring of a consultant to review oil and gas production audits to make sure the county is receiving its fair share of valuation seems to have ruffled some feathers at the state level.
Ron Trowbridge with Trowbridge Consulting out of Cheyenne reported to the commissioners on Tuesday that his request to review oil and gas audits was refused by the Attorney Generals Office.
The commissioners were not pleased with the news. Commissioner Wally Johnson said the states refusal is akin to telling the county it does not have the right to review.
Sweetwater County Treasurer Robb Slaughter said he asked Dan Noble, director of the Wyoming Department of Revenue, his perspective on the issue. According to Slaughter, Noble said it is the attorney generals position that Trowbridges reviews would be audits moving forward, and that he didnt think there is really anything extra out there to find.
Trowbridge disagreed with the states assessment. He said reviews hes done for Sweetwater County in the past has revealed undervalued production, netting extra revenues for the county. He believes a new review will reveal much the same as was revealed in the past.
Opinion / Columnist
Events happening in Zanu-PF party in Masvingo province can be best described as the Generation 40's (G40) kiss of death as the faction is going for the kill ahead of the extra-ordinary congress slated for December this year, a development which has seen members of the rival Team Lacoste faction being eliminated at every level over a spate of allegations.The latest most prominent casualty at the moment is provincial chair Ezra Chadzamira although there are indications that his colleagues in the province will soon be booted out too.Chadzamira was last week suspended together with youth secretary for administration Brian Munyoro on allegations of indiscipline. Though Chadzamira and Lacoste members on Monday hurriedly organised a meeting which ran parallel to the welcome celebrations for the newly appointed Provincial Affairs minister Dr Paul Chimedza to try and reverse the suspensions, it seems G40 is already in control of the province now.Addressing members at the welcome celebrations, newly appointed Minister of Foreign Affairs Dr Walter Mzembi, who was the guest of honour, warned Chadzamira that resisting suspension would result in him being kicked out of the party altogether."Nhenjana is the acting chairman because the former chairman Ezra Chadzamira was relieved of duty last week. If you are relieved of your duties, you accept and follow the procedure as per the letter served to you."I was once relieved of my duties in 2004 and I did not fight the suspension but waited for due process. When I was cleared of any wrong doing, I went back to my office. It does not help to fight suspension and start leading rebel groups in Masvingo, we don't want that."You should not mislead people to follow your resistance movement to rise against President Mugabe. Saka ndiri kumuyambira muchinda uyu kuti kana wanzi uri suspended uchenjere kudzingwa zvachose (I am warning this guy [Chadzimira] that if he fights the suspension, he risks being fired from the party)," said Mzembi amid ululations from the crowd.Provincial commissar Jeppy Jaboon, who was the Master of Ceremony (MC), kept the crowd in stitches by rubbishing Team Lacoste at every turn.Mzembi, who is now referred to as the most senior member of the party in the province, said he will never watch indiscipline without taking action."When one third of angels in heaven turned against God in heaven they were kicked to earth and they influenced people to do bad things like what Chadzamira is doing. Two thirds of the angels remained in heaven and that is where the concept of two thirds majority springs from."If you win elections with two thirds majority, like Zanu-PF, it means you will reign and God still reigns because he has two thirds. We need discipline, discipline, discipline," said Mzembi.President Mugabe's 'blue-eyed boy' Mzembi was credited for pushing for Chimedza's appointment as the resident minister.Dr Chimedza said he will keep his doors open to everyone and will try to build bridges to create good relations in the province."I want to thank the President for giving me the privilege to serve. I will work towards bringing the people of Masvingo together. I know others will fight to create chaos and there is nothing I can do about them," said Dr Chimedza.Jaboon took a dig at the separate meeting held by disgruntled Chadzamira and company, saying although they were still in denial but the truth will soon sink in."Vachakabatwa nechiveve but they will soon come to terms with reality. They have been firing district chairpersons who did not support their cause but we are going to reinstate all of them."Kucongress hakuendwi nematsotsi. The congress shall only be attended by the people who support the President not those who pretend to like him by day and plot against him by night," said Jaboon.While Amasa Nhenjana is now acting chairperson of the province, Chiredzi West legislator Darlington Chiwa has been appointed provincial secretary for administration replacing Brian Munyoro who was suspended together with Chadzamira.Chadzamira and other Lacoste minions snubbed the welcome ceremony of Dr Chimedza and caucused at Masvingo Provincial Show grounds where they were leaking their wound. They purportedly nullified the suspensions by the national commissariat describing Saviour Kasukuwere as mentally retarded.The faction made it clear it will fight tooth and nail to make sure that the suspensions do not stand, saying they will write to the national secretary for administration Ignatius Chombo on their grievances.
Three empty buildings along Ash Street in downtown Casper might be getting a makeover.
Local business representatives interested in purchasing and revitalizing the properties presented their proposals at City Councils Tuesday night work session.
The buildings, which were part of the former Plains Furniture property block, include the former Ka-Larks gymnastics studio, the former Milos Toyota body shop and a former livery stable. City officials purchased the former Plains Furniture property block in early 2016, with no exact plans for its use.
Preference will be given to proposals that indicate an ability to start redevelopment within 30 days of receiving the contract and those that prioritize historic preservation, according to the memo.
The city followed the same general process with the former Fruit Warehouse building in late 2013 and early 2014. Now in the building are ART 321, Raccas Pizzeria Napoletana and Urban Bottle.
Western portions of the United States tend to have fewer historic buildings than its eastern counterpart, Becher previously told the Star-Tribune, and she believes its especially important for this region of the country to try and preserve older structures.
The anticipated revenue from the sales of these properties is estimated at $850,000, states the memo. The revenue would repopulate the Revolving Land fund.
The Plains Furniture property block also includes the former Plains Furniture store that is along David Street. The city learned after purchasing the structure that it was hiding two pieces of local history.
An old photo revealed that the building next door a restored 1920s fire station that now houses commercial space had a garage, which was later covered by the furniture store. Another discovery was made this summer: Behind the ceiling tiles and white-painted dry wall of the store are the remnants of Nolans Chevrolet dealership, a 1920s staple in downtown Casper.
That property is undergoing a partial demolition project that includes asbestos-containing material abatement and light interior and exterior demolition.
Revitalizing the citys core has been a priority for city leaders in recent years. Becher previously said the city will begin renovating Midwest Avenue in January by adding street lights, widening the sidewalks and moving the electrical wiring underground.
Were going to totally reconstruct it, just like we did with West Yellowstone, she explained. Well have park benches and bike racks, and at the corners well have planters with trees and flowers.
The David Street Station, a plaza that offers community gathering spaces and a stage, was opened by the Downtown Development Agency in August.
City officials hoped the complex would encourage economic growth and the plan appears to be working. New businesses have recently popped up in the surrounding blocks including Raccas Pizzeria Napoletana, Urban Bottle and The Gaslight Social bar.
The wind whipped through the courtyard, tugging at an American and a Wyoming flag. A small group gathered as people took turns Saturday reading the Remembrance Day National Roll Call from fluttering pages outside the Casper College Student Union and University of Wyoming at Casper Building.
The readers spoke the names of all the U.S. military servicemen and women killed in action since Sept. 11, 2001.
The Casper College Veterans Club organized the local event for Veterans Day, joining other groups around the county in the National Remembrance Day Roll Call. This is the first year of the event for the club, which plans to make it an annual tradition in Casper, said Nick Whipps, who oversees campus veterans activities as Casper Colleges special population coordinator. The observance is open to anyone who wants to read names or simply attend, he added.
The group paused for a minute of silence at noon along with participants around the country at the same time, Whipps said.
We thought we really want to do something that would honor those whod made that ultimate sacrifice, and we wanted to do something simple but powerful, Whipps said. And whats more powerful than standing out there and reciting the names of everybody who paid that ultimate sacrifice after 9/11?
The roll call started with names from Alabama and proceeded alphabetically by state. Wyoming troops would be the last called. Whipps estimated about two dozen people read names from 9 a.m. to 4:45 p.m.
We are going to be out here until that list is read, he said Saturday morning. If were out here until 6 p.m., so be it.
Club member and past president Josh Banister found out about the National Remembrance Day Roll Call at a conference last summer for Wyoming college veterans services coordinators, he said. University of Wyoming had started the tradition on its campus, and the Casper College Veterans Club decided to participate as well, he said.
Memorial Day is the official holiday to honor those whove died in U.S. military service, while Veterans Day honors all veterans. But one day isnt enough, said Banister, a U.S. Marine Corps veteran who deployed to Iraq in 2005 and 2006.
Everybody went there and left a piece of them there, and these are the ones that didnt come back, Banister said. So I think that they deserve more than one day of honor, and I think that we can share our day to honor them as well.
Casper College School of Science Dean Paul Marquard read some of the names Saturday morning. He came out to support the colleges veterans and honor all those whove served the country, he said. One of the last names read that day would be that of a former student and advisee of his, Wyoming Army National Guard Capt. Robert L. Lucero. Marquard remembers the friendly engineering student, who was killed Sept. 25, 2003 in Iraq. The instructor played bagpipes for Luceros funeral.
The list of names was provided by Eastern Kentucky University, which started the National Remembrance Day Roll Call, said Casper College Veterans Clubs president and U.S. Marine Corps veteran Jordan Janski.
Theyre not just names, theyre people who went overseas to defend their country and they deserve to be recognized by everybody, not just once a year, Janski said. And we can help spread their name out there for their family to hear, for somebody else to hear, their friend to see it and to remember what they gave up for the county. Its the least we could do.
The University of Wyoming hired a director and another adviser for its Education Abroad Office, part of the schools push to boost its overseas programs.
The university hired Shelley Jewell for the newly created position of director of the office, which was previously called the Office of Study Abroad. Amanda Poppe was hired as an adviser. Both started on Oct. 2, according to a university press release.
The universitys strategic plan, approved by UWs board of trustees in July, calls for the number of students and faculty studying abroad to jump from last years total of 425 to 650 by 2022. The number has hovered around 400 for several years, according to the release, attributable partly to a limited number of advisers.
I feel very strongly about the impact and change that study abroad can have on students, Jewell said in the press release. ... I believe it is our role in education abroad to support and encourage students to participate in programs from all disciplines and backgrounds, as well as to develop innovative programming that meets the needs of an increasingly diverse student body that seeks challenges outside of the traditional abroad models.
The effort is the latest university move driven by the strategic plan, the creation of which President Laurie Nichols pushed after her arrival in spring 2016. In the months after the blueprint was advanced in July, the university has worked on a 10-year housing plan; hired administrators for enrollment, graduate education and its new Honors College; and formed task forces to study wages and engagement.
In addition to boosting study abroad opportunities, the plan targets increases in enrollment, retention rate, research funding, endowed faculty, and more.
Jewell was previously the director of Study Abroad at Belmont University in Tennessee, according to the release, where she doubled the total number of faculty-led study-abroad opportunities while tripling the number of students who participated in overseas programs. Before Belmont, she worked at Vanderbilt University.
Poppe previously worked as an international admissions recruiter at the University of Buffalo, according to the release.
Both women have masters degrees and are Fulbright grant recipients.
SWEETWATER COUNTY At 4 a.m., with a wild badger as her only company, Chris Thomas felt the weight of the high desert darkness.
She stood in the sand, an hour from any sizeable town. She felt minuscule among the southwest Wyoming dunes and the endless sagebrush surrounding them, unprotected from the disgruntled juvenile badger she was attempting to relocate from the Rock Springs mall. In the dead of night, the hills seemed to have eyes, to be watching her. The small woman was deeply alone.
Solitude is nothing new for Thomas. Most days she enjoys patrolling wide-open spaces as Sweetwater Countys only animal control officer. But the work gets lonely sometimes, especially since the sheriffs office eliminated the other animal control position earlier this year due to budget cuts.
Now its just me, Thomas said Wednesday, as she navigated her white sheriffs office truck down County Road 85 toward a chemical plant west of Green River.
When Thomas took the job in April 2007, the sheriffs office employed two animal control officers to pick up stray animals, relocate wildlife in precarious situations and work on cases of neglect and abuse. But the budget cuts forced the office to eliminate 10 positions, including one of the animal control officer jobs. The other animal control officer took another post within the agency, leaving Thomas to patrol the 10,000 square miles of Sweetwater County alone a jurisdiction larger than the states of Connecticut, Delaware and Rhode Island combined.
The loss of the job hasnt necessarily meant more work for Thomas, however. While she still responds to every animal-related call, the budget cuts mean she cant bring all the strays into the shelter. The sheriffs office has to pay to care for every animal its staff brings to the animal shelters in Rock Springs or Green River. The moneys simply not there. The cages in the bed of her truck are more empty than usual.
We can no longer pick up simple strays because the money is just not there, Sweetwater County Sheriff Mike Lowell said in August.
Unless the animal is vicious, elderly or appears sick, Thomas cant bring it to the shelter. Often, shell pick up a stray and keep it in her truck, frantically making calls until she can find its owner or someone to take the animal until one can be found. So far, she hasnt been forced to leave any animal behind. But she knows the day may come.
The inability to take every stray to a safe place is difficult for a woman who has spent her entire adult life caring for them. She feels like shes letting down the public she serves.
Its a judgment call, she said. Is it right? Is it wrong? You cant know until its all done. I do the best I can.
***
Every morning, Thomas rouses her 3-year-old blue heeler rescue, Hoss, and loads him in the truck. They stop for coffee on their way on to the sheriffs office in Rock Springs. The coffee shop employees always have a treat ready for Hoss, her unofficial partner on the job.
Each day is different for the pair, but its always just the two of them in the truck. Some shifts are spent solely responding to calls. Animal control officers with the Rock Springs and Green River police departments handle calls within those communities, but the rest of the county is Thomas responsibility. In 2016, the sheriffs office responded to almost 700 animal calls. In the first eight months of 2017, Thomas had already responded to nearly 500 incidents.
Covering that expanse requires teamwork, she said. The agencies from the local police departments to Wyoming Game and Fish assist each other when needed. Like when that badger holed up outside the Rock Springs mall. Or when a herd of about 20 heifers suddenly disappeared from their corrals.
Other days give Thomas more time to patrol. She rambles around the outskirts of the two larger towns, then to the Little America rest stop, to Wamsutter, to Kemmerer. On an average day, Thomas puts between 200 and 300 miles on her truck.
She tries to respond as quickly as possible, but the reality of wide open Wyoming land means that the wait is not always short especially when there are outside factors that make travel more difficult.
We have two seasons out here: winter and construction, she said. I always tell people that Ill be there the second I get there.
On Wednesday, Thomas and Hoss started their afternoon with a trip to the Solvay Chemical Plant, 20 miles west of Green River. After a brief wait in the parking lot, plant workers brought out a cage containing two tiny kittens, no more than 5 weeks old. The plant had brought in some cats a few years ago to contain the rodent population, but now the feline population was becoming the issue.
Over the kittens plaintive mewing, Thomas explained to the workers how to most effectively catch the cats in a humane way. She instructed them to disable all traps over the weekend if nobody was around to check them.
From the window of her truck, Hoss watched protectively until Thomas sat back in the drivers seat. He climbed up onto the center console to lick her face, tan even in early November, pressing the buttons that turn on the trucks lights as he made his way.
Im glad I dont have sirens because wed have sirens going off all the time, Thomas said, her black jacket covered in the blue heelers hair.
Thomas accidentally adopted Hoss from the Rock Springs shelter a year ago. At first, she just intended to teach him a few commands so hed be more adoptable. Then she got attached.
Now, Hoss goes just about everywhere Thomas does. On Wednesday, he traveled in the back seat of the truck and gnawed on a one-leg Elmo stuffed animal as Thomas drove the kittens to the Rock Springs animal shelter. She talks to him throughout the day, as people do with their pets, calling him a hot wreck when hes being good and a turdblossom when he misbehaves. All the deputies know Hoss. Even the sheriff shares his trail mix with the energetic dog.
Hoss also helps mitigate the stresses of the job. Its been difficult to explain to the public why she cant pick up every stray, she said. If she recognizes the animal, or finds one with a collar, shell simply take the pet home. But thats not always the case.
I do the best I can with what Ive got and what Im given, she said. Right now, Im limited in what I can do.
***
When Thomas was a girl, her parents forbade her from bringing any more animals home. She felt compelled to take care of the lost or hurt creatures she encountered around their Colorado home.
Now delivering animals to safety is her profession. Sometimes, that means shes still taking animals home to her husband and two teenage children.
The Thomas household is home to three shelter dogs, one cat and a chinchilla all rescues. In the past, theyve also housed a pony that was rescued from a neglectful home.
The joke of my house is that were Chris Halfway House for Wayward Animals, she said with a laugh.
Thomas moved to Sweetwater County in 1994 and worked at the racetrack and as a veterinarian technician before the animal control officer position opened up. During her job interview, she was asked a blunt question: Did she think she was up for the job?
Thomas knew she would find dead animals. She knew she would have to euthanize others and deliver bad news to their owners. She knew there would be dark moments. But she knew she could do good as well.
For the past decade, shes educated people on the responsibilities and realities of owning a pet. Shes implored potential pet owners to research the ordinances of where they live, the needs of the animal as it matures. Too often, she finds animals that were brought into homes only to be abandoned when they grew too large, or became too time-consuming.
A few years ago, Thomas helped rescue a boa constrictor from James Town, a community of about 500 just west of Green River. Someone found the snake, at least 4-feet long, curled on a sidewalk. The snake was likely seeking the warmth of the pavement as winter approached. Thomas will never know how the snake ended up on the sidewalk, but she assumes its owner didnt realize how big it would become and released it as it matured, essentially sentencing it to death.
They dont survive well in the Wyoming winter, she said. She sent the snake, named Sage, to a rescue facility in Utah, which was able to rehabilitate the creature.
Other moments on the job make her giggle. Shes spent an early morning chasing a pig that escaped from the truck bringing it to the butcher. Shes rescued ducklings from yards and pulled porcupines out of trees in residential areas. Shes repeatedly consoled interstate travelers who think the areas wild mustangs are lost or confused domesticated horses.
But Thomas endures more difficult days as well. She once had to use a Taser on a dog after it charged her. Shes sent the cremated remains of animals lost and killed on the interstate back to their owners thousands of miles away. Like other law enforcement, shes dealt with irate and dangerous people. Often, shes dealing with these dangerous situations alone.
I try to get in the truck every morning with a good attitude, she said. Every day I make it a goal to come home safe and sound to my family.
***
The wide open land helps her navigate those frustrations. Shes come to know the seemingly inhospitable dunes and rocky crags, the imposing red stone structures that dominate the horizon. She likes being from a place where the pronghorn outnumber the people. Although she was born in Colorado, she considers herself a Wyomingite now.
The days get lonely, she admits, even with Hoss. But Thomas relishes the space, the time, the driving. It gives her time to ponder and process the days news, her own life.
She often muses on a society that, as far as she can tell, treats everything as expendable. She sees it in the dogs abandoned by owners who decided to move without the hassle of a pet, in the cats that are kicked out after they pee on the rug one too many times.
Everything is so disposable now, she said. The reason we have animal control is because we have so many unwanted animals.
Despite it all the lonely drives, the constrictions on her ability to do her job, the isolation, the deaths of innocent animals this is the life Thomas loves.
I wouldnt trade it, she said. Its where I can do some good.
RIVERTON A Wyoming man who pleaded guilty to second-degree murder in the 2014 stabbing death of another man who was in bed with his estranged wife has been sentenced to 50 years to life in prison.
25-year-old Jeremiah Shull, who was sentenced Thursday, stabbed and slit the throat of Jacob Willenbrecht as Willenbrecht slept in bed with Julie Cordell-Shull on Oct. 19, 2014.
Shull has said he went to his wife's house not with any ill intent, but in a last attempt to save his marriage.
On Thursday, he said he agreed with Willenbrecht's family that his actions were "horrible, cowardly and wrong."
A jury found Shull guilty of first-degree murder in 2015, handing him a mandatory life sentence. But the Wyoming Supreme Court ruled the jury instructions had been flawed.
As shoppers flock to a bustling shopping center on Tucsons south side, 240 acres of adjacent land destined to become housing and a tech park sit vacant and will likely remain that way over the next decade.
Tucson Marketplace at The Bridges, off of Interstate 10 and Kino Parkway, has over the last two years become home to Costco, Dave & Busters, Walmart, Century Theater and Starbucks.
The undeveloped plot of land to the north is where a University of Arizona Tech Park, hotel, conference center and a housing development were supposed to be built. A document from the Tucson Development Services Department detailing the master plan for the complex, dated February 2007, indicates that the plans are now more than a decade old.
Still, nothing besides Tucson Marketplace has been constructed, despite the installation of streets and utilities.
Richard Fimbres, the city councilman for Ward 5, where The Bridges is located, attributes the lack of development to the 2009 recession. Like many other construction projects, it scattered funds and halted activity for the development.
Its been slow, Fimbres said. We havent caught up; we havent recovered.
The future of the housing development to be built through a partnership between KB Home and Lennar, dubbed 5151 East is unknown.
Unfortunately, at this juncture 5151 East, LLC cannot provide a timeline for the Bridges community, said Craig LeMessurier, a spokesman for KB Home.
As far as the tech park goes, Bruce Wright, the associate vice president for Tech Parks Arizona developer of the University of Arizona tech parks is still hopeful it will be developed within the next 10 to 20 years.
Tech Launch Arizona agrees that the recession, played a major role in the developments delay, but now they are awaiting a corporation to house in the tech park. Once a developer is secured, construction can begin.
The focus, Wright said, is currently on the southern third of the park, known as the technology precinct.
From there, Tech Launch Arizona would like to continue developing the remaining three precincts of the park.
The UAs existing Tech Park at Rita Road has seen success.
Located south of Tucson, it houses over 40 companies and organizations including IBM, Raytheon, and Citi, with 6,000 employees working there. Vail Academy and High School is located on the tech park grounds, and it has a solar zone, which generates solar power on 173 acres.
The Western Hills neighborhood association, which has been active in the development of the Tucson Marketplace, has been in contact with University of Arizona President Robert Robbins, who has promised to move the project along quickly, said Association President Willie Blake Jr.
Though progress is a ways away, Blake is pleased with how the area looks now because it was littered with trash before development began.
When the U of A comes, itll put a new face on the whole area, he said, adding that hes confident the project will be finished within the next decade.
SUCCESS IS VISIBLE
The delay in the housing and tech park projects is not stopping the Tucson Marketplace from continued growth.
Its moving, Councilman Fimbres said Theres some things coming that are good.
A Popeyes Louisiana Kitchen and Discount Tire are in the works.
Frank Egan, an asset manager for Toronto-based Fullerton Properties, which assisted with the development of much of Tucson Marketplace at The Bridges, also expressed delight at how the shopping complex is coming along, while noting that future development will still take a few years.
I think the success is visible out there now, Egan said. We still have, plus or minus, 40 acres to develop.
While there are currently no other large stores lined up for construction at Tucson Marketplace, the focus in the meantime is on smaller stores, in addition to medical and service-based businesses, Egan said.
When Tucson-based World View Enterprises began flying high-altitude balloons in 2013, much of the buzz was around the companys plans to take tourists on breathtaking trips to the stratosphere.
But while the prospect of near-space tourism flights is tantalizing, World View is in no hurry to launch them especially amid surprisingly strong demand for unmanned commercial flights.
The company has flown about 50 test and commercial flights with its Stratollite vehicles, refining its proprietary flight systems in flights of increasing duration.
World View flew four Stratollites from late September through October, including its first launch from Spaceport Tucson a launch pad adjacent to its headquarters south of Tucson International Airport on Oct. 1 that landed five days later.
We sort of surprisingly have this amazing business of unmanned (flight) work, so were letting that be the driver and have the manned flight fall in after that, said Taber MacCallum, World View co-founder and chief technology officer.
World View co-founder and CEO Jane Poynter, MacCallums longtime business partner and wife, said the company is on track toward its initial goal of about 100 launches per year from Tucson.
Thats the pace that were going to be at by the second half of next year, said Poynter. Weve got customers that are banging down our doors, so we were really happy to have been able to really demonstrate for ourselves that launch capability.
SETTLING IN
World Views custom-built headquarters and manufacturing plant, financed by Pima County in a $20 million deal that is subject to an ongoing lawsuit, has worked out well since opening in late 2016, Poynter said.
The company has about 70 full-time employees at salaries averaging nearly $60,000 a year and plans to eventually hire more than 400 workers.
The facility features a wall of windows overlooking the Spaceport Tucson launch pad, an open office space with a lounge area overlooking the pad.
Its really set up for efficiency, for growth, and it works really well for our customers, Poynter said, noting that customers can observe launches from a bridge area and view live flight video without interfering with mission control.
World View is marketing its Stratollites as a low-cost alternative to satellites for communications, imaging and remote sensing. Besides satellites, competing technologies include planes, drones and terrestrial infrastructure.
The company says its proprietary technology allows Stratollites to stay in an approximately stationary position over an area of interest, eventually for months at a time.
World View hasnt finalized a standard price for commercial Stratollite flights, but the cost now ranges around a few hundred thousand dollars, compared with tens or even hundreds of millions for satellites and some high-altitude drones.
LEARNING FROM LAUNCHES
World View cant talk about most of its clients under confidentiality agreements, Poynter said, noting that about half of its current business is defense-related.
Customers who have been made public include NASA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Ball Aerospace and the U.S. Southern Command.
In October, World View flew an hours-long research flight for Southwest Research Institute under a NASA program from a site in Idaho.
In February, the company flew a package of sensors for Colorado-based Ball Aerospace.
Were collaborating with World View to explore the feasibility of persistent imaging using their platform and Balls sensors and data analytics to open up new markets and opportunities for both companies, said Debra Facktor, Ball vice president and general manager of strategic operations and commercial aerospace.
The companys first launch from Spaceport Tucson last month included a payload for the U.S. Southern Command, a multi-branch military agency exploring the use of the balloon vehicle to help combat human and drug trafficking and maritime piracy. The company followed up a few weeks later with a second launch from Tucson for a confidential government customer.
And then there was the chicken sandwich.
In June, World View flew a spicy chicken sandwich as part of a promotion by fast-food giant KFC.
The 17-hour sandwich mission yielded more than publicity for KFC. The company used the mission to test a new mechanism to keep the Stratollites solar-panel array pointed toward the sun, and it pointed up the gentle nature of balloon flight, Poynter said.
Everyone understood why we did it, KFC was thrilled and we got huge exposure for the company, she said. Yes it was a chicken sandwich, but you cant fly a chicken sandwich on a rocket so it does speak to aspects of the differentiation of this its very gentle and we can carry anything to the edge of space and keep it there.
GEOENGINEERING EXPERIMENT
Though World View generally cant discuss its future flights, it did confirm one planned flight for next year that will carry an experiment in climate change by Harvard scientists.
Harvard professors David Keith and Frank Keutsch hope to use a Stratollite to spray a fine mist of materials such as sulfur dioxide, alumina, or calcium carbonate into the stratosphere in a test of whether reflective particles could lower surface temperatures to combat global warming.
Poynter and Keith said the mission which has already attracted some criticism from opponents of geoengineering is still in the works but declined to elaborate.
We are working away developing the experiment. We hope to fly next year, Keith said in an email.
Meanwhile, World View will continue to push the envelope on longer-duration flights, with an initial goal of keeping Stratollites aloft for months at a time.
Our stretch goal is a year thats our North Star, thats what were aiming for, but that does require some materials work, Poynter said.
World View is working with its plastics supplier, Dow Chemical, to develop polyethylene film with additives to prevent damage from ultraviolet light in the bright stratosphere, MacCallum said, adding that results so far are promising.
Its a complicated machine that also has to operate in this crazy-cold and crazy hot environment, he said, adding that more testing on the Stratollites computers, electromechanical systems, battieries and other hardware is needed to make sure components can survive long-duration flights.
MacCallum said the companys in no hurry to push manned flights, which it initially estimated would cost $75,000 per passenger, though it has begun the licensing process with the Federal Aviation Administration.
In 2014, Poynter and MacCallum worked with Tucson-based Paragon Space Development Corp., a company the couple co-founded, to fly Google executive Alan Eustace to 135,908 feet in a special suit beneath a balloon, breaking several skydiving world records. World View later acquired the technology used in the project from Paragon, which specializes in environmental and life-support systems.
We can use the experience of unmanned flight at high altitude to inform how we would would do the manned flight, making the cost of doing the manned side much, much less, MacCallum said.
LEAGUE OF THEIR OWN
For now, at least, World View has few direct competitors, but others are plying the stratosphere with balloons.
Google has been experimenting with high-altitude balloons to provide internet service and recently set one up to restore connectivity to hurricane-ravaged Puerto Rico.
A Spanish company is working on a launch vehicle that uses the combination of a balloon and a rocket to deliver small satellites to low-Earth orbit.
Its really, really different from what anyone else is doing, Poynter said of World Views balloon systems.
Investors have been impressed enough with the companys prospects. Last year, the company raised $15 million in venture-capital funding in an investment round led by California-based Canaan Partners, after raising $7 million in 2014.
In a report issued last year, Accenture Consulting said the Earth observation industry including planes, drones, balloons and satellites is currently valued at $2 billion and revenues are projected to surpass $5 billion by 2026 at a compound growth rate of 9.5 percent.
Accentures report, which profiled World Views business model, said high-altitude balloons will certainly find a comfortable niche in the market in the coming years as the commercial industry realizes their value.
Tucsonan Tom Miller first visited Cuba 30 years ago. He has returned often, writing about a Cuba most dont get to see. His books include Trading with the Enemy and Revenge of the Saguaro. This is an excerpt from his latest, Cuba, Hot and Cold:
Jose Marti, leader of Cubas nineteenth-century independence movement, is said to have had a voice that sounded like an oboe. Perhaps thats why the country has so many oboe players. I took oboe lessons in Havana when I lived there in the early 1990s and wrote about them at the time. I was hoping to improve my mediocre oboe skills acquired during junior high school, and frankly, I wanted to show readers that contemporary music in Cuba was more than just salsa and reggaeton. I succeeded with the latter, but far less with improving my ability. I even had trouble with the ducks in Prokofievs Peter and the Wolf. And so I put my oboe on the top shelf in my Arizona office where it gathered desert dust. Id glance up at it now and then with a sense of forlorn pride, reassuring myself that I owned a quality instrument that I once played with some gusto.
Dust gathered for some twenty-five years. At times I considered the instrument little more than a dull black tube scattered with metal keys, as Blair Tindall describes her first oboe in Mozart in the JungleSex, Drugs, and Classical Music. During those years I led literary tours of Havana and beyond. One autumn as I began organizing the following Januarys trip I looked up at the dust-encrusted oboe case and thought, if I leave it there another twenty-five years, half a centurys dust will have accumulated and not one orchestra will ever have tuned to my oboes A-above-middle-C, as is the global custom.
Back when Adlai Stevenson was the Democratic Partys standard-bearer my family lived across the street from an elementary school named for the Frenchman Lafayette; my parents were active in school affairs there. One of my earliest memories is a pile of musical instruments in the living room growing in size as parents dropped off unused instruments to be distributed among primary school children. I wished that pile still existed so I could donate my unused oboe. Instead, I packed it on my next trip to Cuba.
Whatever happened to my old oboe teacher in Havana, Jesus Aviles? He had, I learned, moved to the city of Matanzas, sixty-five miles east. In the capital he was the principal oboist for Cubas Orquesta Sinfonia Nacional, but in Matanzas he taught oboe to eight students. I took my Literary Havana group to a publishing house in Matanzas one day and invited Jesus to join us afterward at the Velasco Hotels dining room. (He was remarkably easy to find.) Before lunch I ceremoniously presented him with my old oboe and asked him to give it to a deserving student. There was a smattering of applause, and I surprised myself by getting all choked up for parting with a token of my youth. We were served a choice of pork or fish.
The oboe, made by the Robert Thibaud company in Paris, went not to a student right away but to Pedro Puentes, one of Havanas two woodwind repairmen. Pedro lived in Marianao, a suburb that foreigners see only on their way to the Tropicana Cabaret. He made double reeds for oboes, the oboe damore, English horns, and bassoons, and sold them for about a dollar each. Pedro overhauled my old Thibaud tightening screws, adjusting pads and metal, replacing cork, and repairing slight leaks. When Pedro finishes restoring it, Jesus said with quiet pride, it will be good as new. Much of Marianao, on the other hand, was in worse shape than the worst oboe, strewn as it was with abundant potholes, cracked sidewalks, and homes in desperate need of rewiring, replumbing, repainting, and reconstruction. Marianao looked like no one had tended to it since Batista left Cuba.
Pedro led me to the small workbench in the second-floor bedroom to which the citys woodwind musicians brought their ailing instruments. His granddaughter, who lived with him and his wife, moistened a double reed, climbed up on the double bed, and tooted a couple of scales on her fathers oboe. Her eight-year-old right pinky practically reached the low C, C#, and D# keys. I dont want her to decide on the oboe at her age, Pedro said. She should try other instruments as well.
The good-as-new Thibaud was now in the hands of Jesus, who started considering each of his students. Eventually he decided upon fourteen-year-old Lorena Gomez, who had been playing oboe since she was ten. Her qualifications: Dedication. Ambition. Potential. Family support. A sweet tone comes out of her instrument. She wants to play oboe professionally.
Lorena, her parents, Jesus, and his wife met me at the bus when I next traveled to Matanzas. Jesus had recently suffered a severe bout of pneumothorax, more commonly known as collapsed lung. Two procedures at a Matanzas hospital were required to eliminate a bubble in one lung and to fix a perforation in the other. In all, he spent twenty days and zero pesos in the Faustino Perez Hospital. By the time I reached Matanzas the good news was that Jesus was in full recovery mode. The unfortunate news was that his lungs could no longer generate sufficient air pressure to vibrate a reed and produce the oboes tone. After more than fifty years playing the oboe throughout the Americas and Europe, sixty-eight-year-old Jesus Aviless oboe-playing days were over. Sure, he could still teachembouchure, fingering, posturebut he couldnt coax even a squeak out of his instrument.
The six of us walked a few blocks to the Jose White Concert Hall where Lorena set up her music stand on stage, put her moistened double reed in the oboe, and, alone with an audience of five, played an Albinoni oboe concerto. She stood about five-foot-four, dark hair, dark eyes, light skin, and a teen-age smile. She wore a pretty pink dress for the occasion.
Nicely played, we all agreed. She showed poise where she might have shown anxiety, composure where tension wouldnt have surprised us. Ves? Jesus motioned. See? We all congratulated her and walked over to a state-run snack bar on Parque de la Libertad. On the way we passed a recently established hot spot where giggling young matanceros tried out their smartphones for the first time. You are all invited to lunch, Lorenas dad, Orlando, proclaimed to us all once we arrived at the snack bar. We have plenty of shrimp at the house. Although a college grad, he chose to work at the Restaurante Italiano, part of the Melia hotel complex at the nearby beach resort of Varadero. The tips were better than a government salary.
We took a cab to their home in Barrio Penas Altas, climbed to the second floor of a duplex where their dog Sofi greeted us, and sat on the back porch with a lovely view of Matanzas Bay. While Orlando prepared lunch Lorena played a short piece on their painfully out of tune upright piano.
Each province has a music school named for a musician except, curiously, for the one Lorena attended in Matanzas. It was named for Alfonso Perez Isaac, active in the Castro revolution and the Angolan War. The list of martyrs and the list of schools must not have come out even.
Lorena was soon to take a national exam to qualify for the music conservatory in Havana where they taught music theory. Shed play in ensemble groups there and learn how to whittle her own reeds. The state supplies low-quality Chinese oboes and plastic ones. Jesus made a face. Shell have no trouble getting into the Havana school with this new one. As a light rain fell we spent the afternoon taking pictures of each other and eating shrimp. We could hear freighters plying Matanzas Bay.
Tucson Masterworks Chorale will introduce its new conductor on Sunday, Nov. 19, when it opens its 68th season with Songs of Poetry and Love.
The choir in July tapped Yoojin Muhn as its artistic director, replacing Jonathan Kim, who took a university teaching job in Wisconsin.
Muhn, who also serves as the music director at Oro Valleys Vistoso Community Church, will lead the choir in works that express love and poetry through choral music. The program includes Brahms Neue Liebeslieder-Walzer (New Love-Song Waltzes), featuring a quartet of soloists and two pianists; Eric Whitacres Five Hebrew Love Songs, with a solo violinist; Randall Thompsons Frostiana, which sets seven of Robert Frosts poems; Harold Darkes In the Bleak Midwinter; and John Rutters What Sweeter Music.
Muhn, a native of Seoul, South Korea, started her music career as a church pianist when she was 12.
She later studied composition at SookMyung Womens University in Seoul, and earned her masters degree in sacred music from Westminster Choir College, where she graduated with distinction. She also earned a masters degree in choral conducting from the University of Cincinnati and a doctorate of musical arts in choral music from the University of Southern California. While there, she directed the Oriana womens chorus and led the concert choir as an assistant director.
Before coming to Tucson, Muhn was on the conducting faculty at Southwestern A/G University in Texas.
We've collected a few front pages from newspapers.com to give you a look at some Nov. 12 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.
Opinion / Columnist
We have said it before that Emerson Dambudzo Mnangagwa without Jonathan Nathaniel Moyo is weak and unable to act swiftly to absolve himself from false accusations: or at least to powerfully fight back, repel heat from his adversaries. Mnangagwa dossier against Moyo was so weak; it never convinced anybody in that politburo. Mnangagwa was given and trained to killing other people and not to thinking constructively: a political midget, fit to be sent on errands, the errands he executed absolutely at the behest of the Fuhrer Mugabe. Now that he is in self imposed exile, Mnangagwa cannot take up arms from his hibernation to topple Mugabe, if he failed to do so when he was in Zimbabwe: if he failed to take charge of the army and oust Mugabe from power here in Zimbabwe, how is he going to be effective those fictitious objectives outside of the country. Who is going to allow him to stage another guerrilla war? South Africa? Mozambique? Zambia? Botswana? China is not a front-line state.Mnangagwa achaita mangoromera api ku self-imposed-exile ikoko, far away from the levers and echelons of power to effect change. What change does Mnangagwa know? Does he define change just to replace Mugabe and his crocodile wife and be the devil incarnate for another 37 years? Mnangagwa had every organ and apparatus: army, CIO police, those arms of power at his disposal; friends and sympathizers in the War-veterans department, all the same it did not help him; he failed dismally to manipulate himself to get power from the oldie Mugabe. It is all evident that Jonathan Moyo was aware of Mnangagwa's intellectual weaknesses. Va Mnangagwa is not smart as he is perceived to be. If he was smart, he would be in power right now: he would be President of the Republic of Zimbabwe as we speak today. He is not in power because he failed; instead he is a fugitive in off-shore lands.Mnangagwa is strongly advised to go back home to Zimbabwe and he must brew beer: amuke abike doro, and ask his ancestors why they left him hanging: hanging to dry! He must go to Fort Victoria or Great Zimbabwe (once called Zimbabwe Ruins) and he asks his ancestors for forgiveness for all his genocidal and criminal activities for 37 bloody years. What made it impossible for Mnangagwa to use the same means and strategy to counter Jonathan Moyo and the President and his destructive crocodile wife? He should ask his ancestors that question: a pertinent one. The answer is that Mnangagwa is very weak without Jonathan Nathaniel Moyo, period. Jonathan should be commended for destroying the animal called Zanu PF from within. We can be assured of a new era dawning in Zimbabwe in our life time. The whole lot must go and the party Zanu should never exist in a new Zimbabwe because of the damage, loss of life is just too much for the peace-loving people of Zimbabwe to comprehend.It is one thing to be a mhondi, a criminal, a murderer; it is another thing to leave the country that one was part of for 37 years, he enjoyed in Zanu PF by meting absolute power with all its impunity: he is leaving Zimbabwe as a fugitive. He is accused of high treason; the same accusations Amai Mujuru suffered painfully, led to her dismissal. What goes around comes back indeed. Mnangagwa had to test his medicine before he dies. Mnangagwa knows how it feels to run away for your life in his hands: the same what he did to our Comrade Joshua Nkomo. Did Dambudzo Mnangagwa dress himself like a woman to conceal his self? Our Comrade Joshua Nkomo did dress himself like a woman to conceal himself from the state apparatus sent by Mnangagwa as State Security Minister in Mugabe's office to fire bullets at him short-range. The good God said the vengeance is mine. In our life time we see the VP Mnangagwa accused of the same treason charges our relatives and friends, sons and daughters of Mathebeleland and Midlands and indeed our Shona speaking peoples who were Zapu card holders were also not spared, were systematically purged and killed cold blood, by the same brutality of Mnangagwa's dogs of war: the Fifth Brigade.Curiously enough: criminals, murderers, mhondi chaidzo are cowards. Mnangagwa has died many times before his death. Mnangagwa knows a lot of things today: he now knows how it is like to be accused of treason; he knows how the victims of Mathebeleland and Midlands Gugurahundi atrocities felt when they were accused of crimes they did not commit, how they feared death that was imminent. Mnangagwa must be told wherever he is hiding that the atrocities he committed is the early 1980s, the crimes against humanity he committed in 2000; the crimes against humanity he committed during Murambatsvina still linger in our minds and we shall not rest until we get justice. Dead or alive his name will one day be at the international court of justice, dead or alive he will be charged with crimes against humanity together with all his criminal cabal of Zanu PF who were architectures of genocide and crimes against humanity. For us peoples of Mathebelelands and Midlands, this is the moment!There is no better news than to hear that Mnangagwa was stripped of his appointment as VP and member of Zanu PF. Mnangagwa is now a refugee somewhere just like all of us who cannot go back to our country of birth because of Mnangagwa. There is no better news than to hear that Mnangagwa is in a hideout somewhere God knows where- ever for fear of death at the very able hands that assisted him for so long to be criminal like himself. Mnangagwa has absconded Zimbabwe like fugitive to Mozambique. Amai Joyce Runaida Mujuru was pushed out of VP post and the party Zanu PF. Unlike Mnangagwa, Amai Joyce did not move an inch away from her home; instead she challenged them the big powers that be to come and arrest her.Amai Mujuru is a woman who has exercised absolute courage at the hands of the most brutal regime she once served with absolute loyalty. That a MAN of the likes of Mnangagwa is a coward cannot stand the heat, what Runaida can do says a lot about Zimbabwean women. We are bold and courageous without measure: better than our men folk. Please tell us who is more courageous of the two genders: we are told women are weak: who is more courageous between Amai Mujuru and Mnumzana Mnangagwa? I ask again?Amai Mujuru did nothing treasonous leading to her expulsion, never deserved to be purged in that manner her party Zanu Pf did. Here is a woman, who lost a husband mysteriously, obviously murdered by Zanu PF. At that painful moment of Solomon's death, instead, she went out of her way to still support the system that devoured her husband. Mnangagwa knows that Zanu PF well Zanu deyeropa. He knows it as so as the person behind kuteura ropa. He had to abscond: he had begun to smell like a goat: the system could have eaten him up, first by frying or grilling or plain cooking. What happened in Zanu PF, before independence and after, how they killed our children, the Arab organisation ISIS would be green with envy.At this point in time it would be wise if all political parties seized this opportunity of Zanu PF political weaknesses, destruction and their foreseeable downfall to actually boycott the elections and demand electoral reforms to take place within three of National Transitional Administration. This is the solution for Zimbabwe at the moment. Going for 2018 elections that have already been rigged boggles the mind. The opposition parties should act collectively and make a blanket boycott of the 2018 general elections. To wait for the elections to be done and cry foul thereafter will not assist anyone. The people of Zimbabwe are not part of this war in party Zanu PF. Their purging one another does not bring bread let alone butter on their tables. We kindly ask you to do the right thing: to collectively boycott the elections to crush the incumbent government once and for all. The removal of Mnangagwa from the party and government does not mean Zanu will stop rigging the elections; they will go ahead and rig. Rigging is their only hope to remain in power for another 5 years. We hope and pray the opposition will do the right thing.
PHOENIX The Arizona Houses top official says the chamber has the right to investigate charges of sexual harassment against Rep. Don Shooter and discipline him if lawmakers find him guilty although some of the alleged incidents predate Shooters House term.
Technically speaking, the (state) constitution doesnt require justification, just simply gives authority to us over the members of this chamber, House Speaker J.D. Mesnard said Friday. And he is presently a member of this chamber.
Mesnard did say, however, the fact that some of the allegations against Shooter date back to 2011 through 2016, when he was a state senator, certainly complicates things a little bit.
Attorney Paul Bender, who teaches constitutional law at Arizona State University, told Capitol Media Services that it may be an error to interpret the rules to allow the House to punish a lawmaker for conduct before he or she took office there.
The issue comes on the heels of Mesnard appointing seven staffers as an investigative team to look into charges leveled against Shooter by Rep. Michelle Ugenti-Rita, R-Scottsdale, and several others, including lobbyist Marilyn Rodriguez, who says Shooter touched her inappropriately.
First-term Reps. Athena Salman, D-Tempe, and Winona Benally, D-Window Rock, have filed complaints accusing Shooter of inappropriate behavior this year.
The most serious claims against Shooter, leveled by Ugenti-Rita, allegedly occurred while he was still in the Senate. These include comments about her breasts, showing up at her hotel room door with a six-pack of beer and saying he wanted to be with her while telling her he was a very powerful senator.
Senate President Steve Yarbrough said his chamber lost any jurisdiction over Shooter after he moved to the House at the beginning of this year. That would leave only the House with any ability to sanction him if its members find him guilty of disorderly behavior.
Mesnard, who on Friday suspended Shooter as chairman of the Appropriations Committee, said the question of jurisdiction will be part of what the special panel and its investigators review.
Probably the next step would be the Ethics Committee and potentially the whole body, depending how far this goes, he said.
The Arizona Constitution says that each house may punish its members for disorderly behavior, and may, with the concurrence of two-thirds of its members, expel any member.
House GOP spokesman Matt Specht acknowledged that the provision does not define disorderly behavior.
House attorneys interpret disorderly behavior to mean any behavior detrimental to the business of the House, he told Capitol Media Services. He said that gives lawmakers the discretion to discipline members for disorderly behavior that affects the business of the House, regardless of when that behavior occurred.
Specht also noted that there is no statute of limitations within the constitutional provision.
Bender, however, said its not that simple.
There may be an argument that because of what he did (before becoming a House member) hes somehow disqualified from serving, he said. But I dont know what that argument would be.
Bender said the constitution and the rules appear to suggest that discipline short of removal on grounds of disorderly behavior can be accomplished by a simple majority vote. He said it would appear to be improper for just 31 members of the 60-member House to take action against a lawmaker for something that occurred in some cases years before he became a representative.
I dont think they can discipline him, he said.
Bender conceded, though, that the constitutional right of both the House and Senate to eject members may provide a virtual legal carte blanche. He said that would suggest that with 40 votes they could expel a lawmaker for no reason at all, as long as it was not done because of the persons race, gender or any other legally protected status.
Still, he said, an argument might be made that conduct that predates a lawmakers service cannot be grounds to take action against that person.
I dont think any of this is clear, Bender said.
Melissa Ho, Shooters legal counsel, had no comment on the subject.
A familiar face returned to the Pima County Attorneys Office last month, taking on the role of director of Victim Services Division. Vanessa Helms returned to the office Oct. 16, after more than a decade of experience working with victims of crime.
In 2016, Helms was named the executive director of Homicide Survivors, a nonprofit organization meeting the needs of families of murder victims. She previously worked at the County Attorneys Office for 12 years.
The Star spoke to Helms about why she made the switch back to the County Attorneys Office and her plans for the Victim Services Division.
Q: How did your role as executive director of Homicide Survivors prepare you for your role as director of Victim Services?
A: My story is kind of a circular journey. When I first started in the victim services field 13 years ago, I actually started at the County Attorneys Office. I coordinated the volunteer program, worked as an advocate, coordinated the Victim Compensation Program and worked with Homicide Survivors through that time.
Then, about 1 years ago, the former director left, so I moved over to Homicide Survivors. I had been working in the victim services field all of that time and then working as the director of Homicide Survivors gave me the insight to the administrative role I now have at Victim Services.
Its really a combination of the work that Id previously done at the Pima County Attorneys Office compiled with the director position at Homicide Survivors that gave me all of the skills, information and experience that I need to now work as director of the Victim Services Division.
Q: What got you into the victim services field?
A: When I graduated from the University of Arizona, I wasnt really sure what I wanted to do like a lot of college graduates. My first job outside of college was working at Child and Family Resources as a case manager. I worked with families who were having a tough time and who needed resources.
I really loved it. I just found that being able to offer help was really fulfilling to me and I felt like because I was able to, I should. That was really important. It was so nice to see growth and change when people got information that maybe they didnt have before. It was just so fulfilling to see that change in people and know that I could help.
I then got my masters in counseling because my supervisor at the time had a masters in counseling. I knew that was sort of the direction I wanted to go. Through that program at the University of Phoenix, I realized that the direct therapeutic services, sort of sitting down one-on-one on a couch, wasnt really as fulfilling to me.
I was still in the social services field and when the position opened up at the County Attorneys Office I thought that it sounded really interesting, especially with the volunteer program and crisis response. I got the job there and that was my first exposure to crime victims, which was really powerful. Ive been working with crime victims ever since.
Q: What are you most excited about moving forward as director of the Victim Services Division?
A: The Victim Services Division has an amazing reputation not only in the state, but also around the country and even the world. For over 40 years now, the Victim Services Division has responded all over the world to provide services or training for other advocates. For example, we just had a team of staff and volunteers who responded to Las Vegas after the shooting.
To be a director of an organization that has that stellar reputation is a lot of responsibility, but I think its also an opportunity to continue to uphold that reputation, to work with some of the best of the best. Were so fortunate in Pima County that we have such an extensive program for crime victims and to be able to work in collaboration with all of the advocates and other community organizations in Tucson.
Its such an amazing network of victim services providers and Im really looking forward to being able to continue to build those collaborations to provide the best services to victims and maintain that reputation.
Q: As director, what projects do you hope to work on in the future?
A: Victim Services has traditionally been and is currently involved in a lot of initiatives that Im excited to be able to continue to work on and expand upon.
One is a lethality assessment that currently some law enforcement jurisdictions utilize at the scene of a crime, asking questions of domestic violence victims to determine how lethal their situation is. Victim Services is currently involved in a collaboration to enhance and expand that. Arizona Supreme Court right now is determining whether or not this is a form that can be utilized all over Arizona statewide, so Im really excited about that possibility because its going to save lives. The County Attorneys Office years ago worked with a small number of law enforcement agencies to implement this project working with the Maryland Network Against Domestic Violence and brought it here to Pima County. Its also a collaboration with Emerge Center Against Domestic Abuse.
It has saved lives and I think it could save even more, so Im really excited about the possibilities of that collaboration and that initiative.
Q: Is there anything the general public should know about Victim Services?
A: I think that for those of us who have been fortunate enough to not have experienced a victimization, its nice to know that theres something out there thats making our community stronger. And to know that if, God forbid, anything did happen, that theres something there for you. That there are people that can be supportive right after the moment that its occurred and can walk with you through the criminal justice system and to know that youre not alone. We have a strong team of advocates willing and ready to provide that emotional support and information thats going to get you through.
Q: Does it ever take an emotional toll working with victims and survivors?
A: It absolutely does. Everybody has a different way to do the work to make sure that theyre not going to take on what we call vicarious trauma or compassion fatigue. Its important to be able to have a level of self-awareness to know when youre feeling like youre taking on those emotions.
Fortunately, one of the benefits of working with a team of advocates, is that you always have someone that you can talk to and say Im having a really rough time, and have people there to support you. Its important to have that level of awareness, and after doing it for so many years, having an understanding of what your boundaries are to know when youre starting to take it on and knowing how to take care of yourself. We really encourage our advocates to do what they need to do to take care of themselves.
In Pima County, theres an awesome wellness program that really offers a lot for employees to take advantage of, so they can take care of themselves when theyre taking care of so many other people.
In October 2014, a criminal defendant reached an agreement with the Pima County Attorneys Office and pleaded guilty to two minor drug crimes: solicitation to possess methamphetamine and possession of drug paraphernalia.
The deal for the two Class 6 undesignated offenses also included a $1,000 fine that the plea agreement at least strongly implied was mandatory.
It was to be paid to the Drug and Gang Enforcement Account, which also receives federal support and was established in 1987 to help investigate and prosecute drug offenders, according to a 2017 report from the Arizona Criminal Justice Commission. The commission in turn awards millions of dollars in grants from that fund to state law enforcement agencies, including the county attorney.
Now, three years later, both the county attorney and the Pima County public defender agree the fine in this case and thousands of cases like it was not mandatory. Though the county attorney argued it was appropriate, Superior Court Judge Richard Fields ordered any unpaid portion of the fine in this case waived.
The State believes that the fine was lawfully imposed as a term of the plea agreement even though it was not mandatory, prosecutor Jacob Lines wrote in response to the public defenders request to waive the fine. Under the law governing plea agreements, the parties can legally agree to a fine as part of a plea agreement.
In recent months, though, the drug fines for hundreds of defendants who accepted comparable pleas have been waived and several hundred more likely will be in the near future, according to information provided by the public defender in response to a records request from the Star.
But thats just the tip of the iceberg, at least according to estimates provided by the Public Defenders Office.
In recent years, roughly half of all drug-case defendants in the county ultimately pleaded guilty to what are known as preparatory offenses, such as solicitation or attempts to commit certain drug crimes. The fines mandated by statute for completed drug offenses are not applicable for these charges, according to court documents filed by both the defense and prosecution.
Assuming defendants have pleaded to such charges in similar proportions for several decades, more than 12,000 people may have accepted deals with fines that were mistakenly believed to be mandatory since the late 1980s or early 1990s. The total fines for those cases could be as high as $18.2 million, according to public defender estimates.
Though a number of defendants have already had their fines waived, it is unclear what legal remedy if any is available to the vast majority of those who accepted the deals.
One county supervisor cited the fines as an example of criminalizing poverty.
Pima County Attorney Barbara LaWall declined an interview request from the Star, deferring questions to Chief Criminal Deputy Tom Weaver.
The fines were not improperly imposed and were well within the lawful range for felony offenses, he wrote in an email to the Star. All plea agreements are entered into and signed by both the prosecution and defense. Pleas must also be approved and accepted by the court.
Responding to the request to waive fines for the October 2014 drug case, prosecutor Lines also noted that at no time did the defense attorney involved in this case bring to the states or the courts attention any concern about the fine not being mandatory, and instead allowed their client to take the plea.
Given the defendants argument that they were denied the opportunity to ask the court to not impose the fine, it is possible that the defendant may have a claim of ineffective assistance of counsel to bring before this Court, Lines argued.
The county, Lines said, did not challenge the request to waive the fine because, in part, it did not want the defendants claim of ineffective counsel burdening the court. In the interests of justice, the state will not object to the reconsideration of the imposition of a fine in this case, Lines concluded.
While Public Defender Joel Feinman said its hard to say what kind of lawsuits might ultimately be filed by affected defendants who may have been improperly fined, he acknowledged to the Star, We should have caught this much sooner. We didnt.
Were trying to make amends and correct our mistakes, he added of the thousands of clients whose pleas included the fines. We seem to be the only one admitting that we made a mistake and trying to correct it.
Feinman ran unsuccessfully against LaWall in the 2016 Democratic primary before being appointed public defender by the County Board of Supervisors in April 2017.
The fine issue itself was uncovered by Assistant Public Defender Howard Wine in early 2017, according to Feinman.
No longer mandatory
In the late 1980s, the Legislature approved a number of minimum fines for certain drug crimes, like possession of marijuana, fines for which have a floor of not less than $750, according to current statute. However, over the next few years, several court cases established that those fines do not apply to preparatory offenses, according to Wine.
Somebody should have woken up in the prosecutors office and said, wait a minute, the court of appeals is definitely telling us that these fines are not mandatory and theyre not required in the same way as they are for completed offenses, Wine said.
As to why it took the Public Defenders Office nearly three decades to discover the error, Wine suggested part of the explanation could be an apprehension among defense attorneys about provoking the County Attorneys Office by complaining about a provision in a plea deal. Doing so could make things much worse for their defendants.
Waiving unpaid fines is available to defendants currently on probation, but only after their cases have been reviewed by the county attorney, according to the terms of an agreement between the public defender, Superior Court and the county attorney, according to Wine.
Of the 750 cases initially slated for review, 500 defendants were expected to have had their fines waived by Friday, according to information provided by the public defender.
There is the possibility that currently eligible defendants may lose waiver eligibility if they complete probation by the time their case is reviewed, Wine said. Because the waivers apply only to unpaid portions of the imposed fines, it is also possible that potentially eligible defendants are actively making payments that will ultimately be annulled.
There are people getting off probation every week who, if the prosecutor would have gotten to it timely, would have had their fines waived, Wine said.
Weaver acknowledged some defendants completed probation during the review, but said it was incumbent on the defendants attorneys to notify their clients if their fines could be subject to a waiver. He denied claims the review process is taking longer than it should.
There have also been several cases in which defendants were close to completing probation whose cases were fast-tracked to ensure they did not lose eligibility to have their fines waived, according to Weaver. We made that happen, he said.
More waivers possible
In fiscal year 2016, 23 percent of all fines imposed in Pima County Superior Court that year had been paid in full by years end, according to figures provided by a public defender employee. That does not include those who had only paid a portion. Wine reviewed a recent month of fine payments for people on probation for preparatory charges and found that substantial payments were being made.
Wine said that in cases where there is a criminal law remedy, his office intends to seek waivers for more defendants. However, he estimates the number of additional defendants who might get a waiver is likely less than 2,000, a relatively small portion of the estimated 12,000 believed to have been improperly fined.
The reason why our confidence is low beyond that is that time deadlines in criminal law are hugely important to the courts, he said. And after a certain amount of time expires, no matter how just your claim, the criminal courts are essentially closed.
County Supervisor Sharon Bronson described the fines as another instance of criminalizing poverty.
These were all minor drug offenses, and this clearly shows a need for oversight in terms of how the county attorney conducts business, she said.
In response to Bronsons claim that the fines were criminalizing poverty, the County Attorneys Office said fines are a consequence for criminal behavior and that community service can be used as substitute, according to Weaver.
Its true the fines were not mandatory, Weaver said. Had the issue been raised earlier, he said his office would have simply changed the plea language.
In any event, the fines themselves were legally permissible, as we have explained in our responses in these motions, he said.
Because the defendants were all convicted of lesser crimes than they were charged with, all received substantial benefits from the plea agreements, he said.
Weaver said the waivers cover only people who are currently on probation, because the court still has jurisdiction over them.
The court no longer has jurisdiction over defendants who were sent to prison or who have already completed probation, so the only way for the court to regain jurisdiction and for defendants to possibly get their fines returned is for them to go to court and claim they received ineffective legal representation, among other possible grounds.
Defendants have options to restore the courts jurisdiction, according to Weaver, who added that any defendants who believe their plea deal may have included an illegal fine is welcome to file a motion in court. So far, the defense attorneys involved in this have declined to pursue (motions for) relief, Weaver said.
But people who have paid their fines might be out of luck: The court indicated that it was unwilling to order refunds, Weaver said. It was only willing to order the waiver of unpaid fines.
In addition, the County Attorneys Office has maintained from the start that theres no legal basis for vacating the fines, since they were within the legal range and agreed to by the defendants.
In the 2017 fiscal year, the County Attorneys Office was awarded $421,915 in grants by the Arizona Criminal Justice Commission, $143,417 of which came from proceeds from state drug fines like those included in plea agreements, according to a 2017 report.
Fines have returned but are much smaller
For several months after Wines early 2017 questioning of certain fines, the plea deals offered to defendants charged with preparatory drug offenses by the county attorney did not include fines, Wine said.
Now the deals again include fines, though substantially smaller ones.
The Star obtained a copy of an October plea deal for solicitation to possess meth and possession of drug paraphernalia, the same charges in the October 2014 plea detailed earlier. This time around, the defendant was required to pay $500, not $1,000. Wine said the new fines are typically half the mandatory amount for completed offenses and suggested their inclusion was an effort by the county attorney to save face.
Some Superior Court judges are suspending the new fines, Wine said.
But even the smaller fines strike Wine and Feinman as excessive. The vast majority of defendants in these cases are poor and many have histories of drug abuse and addiction, they said.
It would be nice if (the county attorney) would simply say like we said, that it was a mistake to impose it, and there was no good reason to impose it beyond what the letter of the law required for completed offenders, Wine said.
The words were chilling and harrowing, even when their authors read them calmly in matter-of-fact voices. The writers provoked images of despair and suffering that they had experienced directly.
The Gestapo and SS came immediately after the German army, and the persecution began. My uncle, Israel Lichter, was dragged away and put in a converted enclosure along with many single young Jewish men. They were all tortured and murdered, said Pawel Lichter.
Lichter, who was born in Poland, was one of five witnesses of the Holocaust who told their stories Monday, Nov. 6, at the Nanini Library on North Shannon Road. They read their own words from the book To Tell Our Stories: Holocaust Survivors of Southern Arizona, a collection of 36 stories published in 2015 by the Jewish Family and Childrens Services of Southern Arizona.
The book evolved from the work of Raisa Moroz, a program director at Jewish Family, who works with Holocaust survivors. A refugee herself from Belarus of the former Soviet Union, Moroz began urging her Russian-speaking clients to write their stories. Richard Fenwick, a volunteer at Jewish Family and a retired U.S. Air Force Russian translator, stepped forward to translate the stories into English and transcribe recorded stories. The project expanded to include stories in English from Western European survivors.
I believe it is important for people to know what happened years ago and from the people who experienced what happened, said Moroz, whose family fled in 1996 because of anti-Semitism in the former Soviet Union.
Eventually, more anti-Jewish laws came about. One made all Jews wear the yellow star. Another called for all Jews to be concentrated into one neighborhood, to move into Jewish Houses, or as they were called, Star Houses, Erika Dattner read in her testimony to the small library audience.
Dattner survived the war hiding under an assumed name, with the help of Protestant clergy, in Budapest, Hungary. Her father was forced to work as a laborer, and her mother used false identification to work as a maid. After the war, Dattner immigrated to Palestine in 1947 and 10 years later arrived in the United States.
Hearing directly from the survivors takes on greater importance because of the fact that there are fewer and fewer survivors. Moroz said of the original 36 survivors who contributed stories to the book, 12 have died.
Overall, she said, there are close to 100 survivors in Tucson and she estimates a total of about 250 live in Southern Arizona. She said a second book, containing 40 new stories of local Holocaust survivors, will be published next year.
Wolfgang Hellpap was born in Berlin in 1931 to an unmarried couple, a Jewish father and a Christian mother. He said he first experienced anti-Semitism when he entered school.
I made it to the second grade before they found out I was officially Jewish. They kicked me out of school in the middle of class, when the teacher said she had my name on a a list and told me to leave. That was the law. All of a sudden the other kids were throwing rocks and spitting at me, so I had to run as fast as I could. I was crying.
With his father gone and his mother unable to care for him, the young Wolfgang was on his own, hiding, living with family members until he was discovered by the Gestapo. He was placed in a childrens Jewish camp where some of the Jewish teachers cooperated with the authorities.
He survived and immigrated to Palestine when he was a teen. He served in the Israeli army and came to the U.S. in 1955.
Moroz said that the survivors who are included in the book have told their stories to schoolchildren and community groups. And there will be more public readings from the book in the coming months.
But Lichter began publicly sharing his stories only a couple of years ago. He realized people needed to hear them.
We dont want it to happen again, said Lichter, who fled Poland with his family after the German invasion and settled in Uzbekistan. After the war he returned briefly to Poland, then immigrated to Mexico in 1947 where he lived for 10 years before immigrating to the U.S.
While he is willing to share some of his stories, Lichter, 86, said there are still some he harbors, too horrific to retell.
Its depressing, he said. There are stories like that.
Pawel, like his fellow survivors, asks that we read their stories and those of other Holocaust survivors to understand that genocide has and continues to plague our world.
Things like that shouldnt happen anymore, he said. We need to have consideration for other people who realize that were all human.
Up in Maricopa County last week, voters enthusiastically decided theyre willing to pay more for their public schools.
They considered 27 ballot issues from school districts wanting budget overrides or to sell bonds, and they said yes to all. The average margin of victory was about 24 percentage points.
In Tucson, we narrowly recognized the need to watch hippos swimming gracefully under water in a possible new display, approving a tiny sales-tax increase for the Reid Park Zoo. But we said a loud No to most of our schools.
The average margin of defeat for three override or bond-issue questions put up by local districts was 21 percentage points. Only Flowing Wells district voters broke the pattern in the Tucson area, passing a bond issue by 24 percentage points.
It was a reversal of the traditional perception of how school funding elections go. Stereotypically, the more liberal Pima County voters tend to be more free spending with their districts, even if it means paying a little extra property tax. The more conservative Phoenix-area voters tend to be stingier.
Why the change? Paul Ulan, a Phoenix campaign consultant who worked on 17 of the school campaigns in Arizona, chalked up the districts greater success in Maricopa County to growing awareness of the need there.
I think theres the realization that the Legislature is not funding schools, and this is the only option available, Ulan said.
Some of the credit belongs to pro-public-school activists, said Chris Herstam, a former legislator and chief of staff to former Gov. Fife Symington.
The Save Our Schools group has done a masterful job of developing sympathy for public education in Maricopa County, said Herstam, who converted from Republican to Democrat in 2015.
Maybe that campaign hasnt hit Southern Arizona yet. Or more likely, we have local issues that undermined the school districts last week.
Like trust. The Tucson and Sunnyside unified school districts, especially, have trust issues. The constant controversies of TUSD and the scandal-plagued reign of former-Sunnyside superintendent Manuel Isquierdo may mean some people still dont trust the districts enough to hand them more of our money on their word. Flowing Wells, on the other hand, has long sustained its strong relationship with its small community.
Were going to have to build our trust back up to the citizens before theyre going to look at helping us, TUSD board chair Michael Hicks told me.
Thats too bad, because anyone familiar with the condition of many TUSD schools knows they desperately need more money to repair and upgrade buildings. And its not really their fault: The state has been so bad about funding the districts capital needs buildings and the like that it is facing a lawsuit it will likely lose over the underfunding.
Voters may not know that, though. Sunnyside Superintendent Steve Holmes acknowledged his district may have lingering trust issues from the Isquierdo days, a remnant that does not recognize the tough position the state has put school districts in.
He also said voter turnout in Sunnyside, which was well under 20 percent, hurt. Ulan, the campaign consultant, said these off-year elections are often harder than higher-turnout years.
Plus, in Tucson, there was the overhang of multiple tax requests of the same voters. TUSD, Sunnyside and Flowing Wells all have districts that significantly overlap the city of Tucsons borders. In Tucson, we just raised the sales tax by a half of one cent in May.
Then there were more, simultaneous sales-tax requests in this election: Another half-cent increase for Strong Start Tucson, the one-tenth of one cent zoo request, and also a request to raise the mayor and councils salaries. It was easy for the smaller group of voters in an off-year election to start filling in the No bubble and just keep saying no.
Of course, those Tucson tax factors didnt have an effect in Marana, where voters have traditionally voted in favor of school bond issues and budget overrides. This year, they voted 61-39 percent against.
Superintendent Doug Wilson attributed the loss in part to the off-year nature of the election. Early analysis showed that 88 percent of the people who voted in the election were over age 50, he said.
Finally, of course, theres the economy. Employment and wages continue to lag well behind Phoenix in the Tucson area. Job growth has been nonexistent here while its been strong in Phoenix. The latest figures from the UA Eller School show that the Phoenix areas average hourly private-sector wages are 20.5 percent higher than Tucsons $22.36 in Tucson to $26.96 in Phoenix.
Still, several people I spoke with drew hope from the Phoenix results for the future of Tucsons schools.
As Maricopa goes, so goes the state, Wilson, the Marana superintendent, said. If theres a shift now to support public education, maybe that will help us. Then it doesnt become a local issue, it becomes a state issue.
That is, after all, the best way to deal with this school-funding issue: Raising the base funding at the state level, rather than repeatedly asking local voters for a little more.
Going into an election year, it would be fantastic if Gov. Doug Ducey and the Legislature feel the full weight of Maricopa Countys renewed enthusiasm for funding schools. If they do, it wont matter that Tucson-area voters had issues with their districts this year but still wanted to see hippos swim.
This weeks 50th Anniversary of the UA College of Medicine should note how difficult it was to start.
In 1958, the president of ASU announced his intention to build a medical school in Phoenix. It caught University of Arizona President Richard Harvill by surprise. If there was to be a College of Medicine, he wanted it here.
The siting debate that ensued grew in energy and resulted in the Board of Regents hiring an outside consultant to study the options and make a recommendation.
The 1961 Volker report came as a shock to Phoenix, which had more people, more hospitals, more political clout and a fundraising head-start. It concluded that above all, the college should be hosted at the campus with the strongest basic sciences the UA.
The regents blessed the report but with the caveat that forbade the UA from using any existing dollars to begin planning. Money would have to be newly appropriated from the Legislature, or raised. The matter was squarely thrown into the public arena.
The president of ASU immediately recognizing his electoral advantage announced his intention to take the matter to the 1962 ballot for the voters to decide.
That years request by the UA for a budget supplement to plan the college forced a collision of political forces that held the session in extended suspension for weeks, and the ramifications of which are still felt to this day.
As the session limped on with this the only remaining issue Gov. Paul Fannin forced a compromise: ASU would drop its initiative campaign and the UA would drop its budget request.
So Tucson boldly upped the ante. A group of leading citizens wrote an open letter to Phoenix leaders with a shockingly aggressive message if you divide the state over a medical school we will divide it over water distribution. At the time, the only hope of bringing Colorado water to Arizona was a united Congressional delegation.
Bill Mathews, the publisher of the Star, called U.S. Rep. Mo Udall an influential member of the Interior Committee and made it plain: Put the water squeeze on Phoenix or this editorial page will put the squeeze on you.
Water was the ultimate leverage, and the matter was settled.
The federal government had established medical school start-up grants, but a condition of eligibility was a $2 million match. And the Legislature made it clear as did the regents that there would be no state money. The local in-state match would all need to be raised privately.
Everyone in Tucson helped.
I remember driving into a gas station where the attendant asked my dad, Arent you the guy on the news raising money for the medical school? When he said yes, the attendant said: We have something for you. And he and the mechanics all came out and presented us an oily Folgers can filled with coins. He said: We understand the importance of this school to Tucsons future and we are collecting our tips for it.
Ours was the first public medical school launched entirely with private funds.
The final existential crisis that faced the school in its pre-student era occurred in 1967, when Gov. Jack Williams proposed a state budget that froze the university faculty. The medical faculty had not yet been fully hired. The school was faced with a choice to be a one-year medical school, or rescind half of the soon-arriving first medical class so the existing faculty could teach two years.
The school leadership decided these were unacceptable choices and took it upon themselves to build a base of support in every legislative district in the state. They prepared the case, took it statewide and spoke to over 100 civic clubs. They articulated the statewide benefit and obligation of a land grant university. They committed support to rural Arizona, starting with Med-Start and manifesting in telemedicine that grows to this day. And they prevailed. The Legislature disregarded the governors hiring freeze and the college hired the talent it needed.
In the beginning, every single person involved in the vision and creation of this medical school believed it was destined to become among the best in the United States. This week, 50 years hence, we can celebrate a mission accomplished.
Is there any other civilized country on earth where a teenager can walk into a gun store and legally buy military-style assault weapons and large magazines designed to maximize the death toll?
We all know the answer to that. Just like we all know that the latest tragedy in Sutherland, Texas will be followed by more gruesome mass shootings of Americans while they pray, watch a movie, listen to a concert, sit quietly as a teacher reads, attend a peaceful rally or just go to work, the post office, a lecture, a restaurant, a family reunion.
Just like we know that every few week, Washington politicians will send thoughts and prayers to innocent victims and their families, but dismiss any talk of gun control legislation as disrespectful of the dead; and for a few days therell be an outcry about mental illness from the very politicians who have slashed such health care funding.
Just like we know that the NRA and those who consider themselves defenders of the Second Amendment will swear that guns are not the problem and then turn around and suggest that guns are the only solution to arm the nation, from the pulpit to the kindergarten classroom.
Just like we know people like me in every state will write op-ed pieces full of grief and anger, demanding sensible gun laws, while the gun makers get richer, the politicians more callous, and the majority of Americans who support a ban on assault weapons grow more discouraged.
We know all this. But is it a comfort to the Sandy Hook families? The families in Charleston or Sutherland or a hundred other cities? Is it a comfort to parents or grandparents or any American hoping to make the world a little safer and more respectful?
After decades of ever-increasing, senseless mass murders, it must appear to non-Americans that our Second Amendment rights trump all other freedoms. That we in America value the right to possess and potentially use an assault-style rifle above all other citizen commitments to keep the peace.
As someone who treasures this democracy for which so many have given their lives to sustain, I see the lack of gun control as an assault on freedom. The constant stream of mass murders for the last three decades has weakened our First Amendment rights to assemble peaceably, to speak and worship freely. Who doesnt feel a twinge of fear now in a darkened movie theater or bowing their head in a place of worship? Who can go to a large public celebration without wondering if it might turn into a massacre? Who hasnt said a prayer for their child to be safe at school?
As a baby boomer, I had the privilege of growing up in an open, free society. Not perfect, but at least domestically not armed to the teeth and perennially paranoid. What we have now is the de-civilizing of a great nation.
If we care about democracy, the very least we can do is to immediately, without loopholes, ban all military-style, semi-automatic, assault weapons. Of course, increased funding for mental illness, universal background checks, domestic violence prevention are also needed. But this ban, which presidents from both political parties supported back in the 90s, is a critical first step to restoring homeland security. Without it, the tragedy of mass murder will go unchecked, and our personal freedom save the right to amass an arsenal will continue to erode.
As an elected representative, the most important thing you can do is make sure the voice of your community is heard in Washington.
While I served in Congress, I fought every day on behalf of the Southern Arizonans I represented, particularly when it came to protecting access to quality, affordable health care.
Each time I voted against repealing the Affordable Care Act, I voted to protect the health and financial security of my constituents. Now, as a private citizen, I am pledging once again to be a health care voter.
In 2014, my opponent pledged to repeal the ACA, ignoring the hundreds of thousands of Arizonans gaining coverage under the law. Despite the criticisms I faced, I continued to support expanding the law and coverage for millions, not jeopardizing health care for the most vulnerable.
Since her election, Rep. Martha McSally has voted to repeal the ACA.
In doing so, she has disregarded those whose health and financial security are threatened by undermining the law. Since January, President Donald Trump, Rep. McSally, and many of her Republican colleagues in Congress are actively working to sabotage our health care system, no matter the costs.
Despite bipartisan efforts to ensure coverage for millions of Americans, including a bill proposed by Sens. Lamar Alexander and Patty Murray, far too many congressional Republicans have remained silent as the Trump administration sabotages our healthcare system.
From causing instability in the marketplace to cutting funding for cost-sharing reductions (CSR), members of the majority in Congress have chosen inaction as Trump threatens their constituents health care. Now, more than ever, it is time for Republicans and Democrats to work together for the good of the people they were elected to represent.
Having worked on this issue as an elected official, candidate and congressional district director, I know the power of voters voices in persuading representatives to take action. At town halls and rallies, through social media and calls, constituents can and should contact their elected officials to ask questions, raise their concerns, and show up when their interests are not being served. This year, we fought back to protect our health care and we won.
As advocates, constituents, and consumers, we demanded that Republicans in Congress stop playing politics with peoples lives. We rallied, marched, and called until each repeal bill failed. We used our voices and told our stories to say, clear and plainly, that we would hold our representatives accountable for their votes. We should not, however, get complacent. The fight to preserve access to health care is not over!
While the publics outcry has helped to stop congressional action to repeal, we must keep pressure on Trump and Members of Congress to stop their cruel and careless threats to health care. As constituents and as health care voters, we must speak out to hold our elected officials accountable.
Help India!
By Amit Kumar, TwoCircles.net
Over the past few years, the Indian state has faced increasing resistance from Adivasis across the nation over land acquisition and rehabilitation programmes. Even the most cursory look at the conditions of Adivasis across the nation lays bare the claims of the government that the Adivasis have been adequately compensated for their losses. This three-part series looks at how tribal regions; lives and homes in Gujarat have been left in disarray in the name of development, both new and old. The second part looks at how Sardar Sarovar Dam has ruined the lives of thousands of Adivasis living in the region of Narmada river, and how their repeated pleas to the government have been ignored by the central and state government.
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Read Part One here
Read Part Two here
Over the past two decades, the issue of large dams and the displacement it has caused in Gujarat has almost exclusively focused on Sardar Sarovar Dam. However, as our stories in this this series has shown, there are other dams too that have caused havoc with the lives of Adivasis of Gujarat. And in some cases, the stories of displacement pre-date the ones of Sardar Sarovar Dam. Like the Vallabh Sagar Dam/Ukai Dam in Tapi district of Gujarat. And again, the ones paying the highest costs of displacement are Adivasis.
The Ukai Dam is a multi-purpose dam constructed on the river Tapi. It was commissioned in 1964 and completed in 1972. The dam led to the loss of thousands of acres of land, all of which belonged to Adivasis of the region. Like Sardar Sarovar and Machan Dam that we discussed in previous parts, the displaced people moved to other regions, but the process of resettlement has been anything but smooth. And two generations later, the pain has not reduced.
We visit the village of Limri, about 30 km from the site of the dam where almost 70 families from the submerged villages moved out of desperation. The village consists of about 200 villages and has a near-equal split between Hindu and Christian Adivasis. In the village, we met Sureshbhai Vasava, a 37-year old pastor who grew up as a displaced in the village. Vasava talks about the stories of loss that he heard from his father and grandfather. According to them, we had about 10 hectares of land which got submerged in the catchment area of the Ukai Dam. We were displaced in 1970 and landed up here, about 30 km from our native village, with a few things that we salvaged from our homes. We arrived on bullock cartswe were promised land for land then, and 47 years later, the truth is for all to see, he says. We came here, settled here, and started farming on land that technically belongs to the forest division and the government, but we were left with no choice but to farm in these places. It has been the same since the 70s, he added.
Aadhar? Check. Election card? Check. Land rights? No
It is important to point out it is not as if the government treats the family of Vasava and other displaced families as encroachers. After all, the families have been issued voter ID cards, ration cards and even Aadhar based on their current addresses. Yet, when it comes to the all-important question of allotting land to these families, the government has chosen ignorance as their best weapon. I have lost count of how many times we have been promised land: we are told that officials will come and map out the land, that they will come and allot land within a few months, that we will soon have land deeds prepared, yet the truth is this: from here (Limri) to the Maharashtra border (about 20 km), there are more than 15 villages full of people who are displaced, and I can guarantee you that no one has been compensated adequately, Vasava adds.
By adequate compensation, Vasava means that some people did get some land from the government in the 70s, but it was neither in proportion to what they lost nor was it uniform. About 30 km from Limri is the village of Amalpada, which consists almost entirely of displaced families. Sumanbhai Vasava is a 63-year old who was a teenager when he and his family was displaced in 1968. He claims that his family lost about 124 acres to the dam, but also adds that he considers himself lucky. In three instalments, we got 10 acres of land in the village. It is nowhere close to what we lost, but at least it is something. Some people got half an acre to build a house, others did not get even that, he says. Also, it must be pointed out that just like in the case of Machan and Sardar Sarovar, here too the locals say that land was not the only promise that was never kept.
As mentioned earlier, Ukai Dam is listed as a multi-purpose dam, and irrigation is one of its main functions. The nearly 5-km long dam, with the largest reservoir in Gujarat, however, adds nothing to the lives of the Adivasis who lost the most at its hands. As Sumanbhai reminds us, It was only a few years ago that we got handpumps installed in our village. You should come during the summer season to see how parched the land is; how difficult it is to get even drinking water. This year, thanks to good rainfall, we have been able to sow satisfactorily. We have such a huge dam, yet depend on rains for a healthy harvest.
FRA a pipe dream for Adivasis in this region
Even the harvest, given the confusing stature of land ownership, can be a contentious issue between the forest department and the locals. Residents of Limri said because they were yet to get land deeds, forest department officials harass them over the produce. The forest department knows it is more advantageous for them to stop us from farming and instead use the land for plantations. This is another reason why implementation of Forest Rights Act (FRA) is another major issue in this region. Across the villages that we travelled, the implementation of FRA is so far from reality that, as a local said, If and when local MLA Ishwarbhai Parmar comes here from election campaigns, he is unlikely to talk about how FRA or even mention it. To take an example, in the village of Limri, Sureshbhai pointed out that despite the Gram Sabha clearing all 191 claims as early as 2008, only two people had got land deeds. Both, of course, got much less land they claimed: one person who claimed 2 acres got half an acre, while the one who claimed 4 acres got 1 acre instead.
The displaced population is well aware that any recognition of their ownership of land would be challenged by the Forest Department, especially since they own the land which is tilled by the Adivasi farmers. In fact, in Amalpada village, we met one Adivasi, Dasratbhai Vasava, whose family moved to a village about 15 km from Amalpada to Moglipada, deep inside the forests in 1968 after losing land to Ukai Dam. In 2008, we filed for land rights under Forest Rights Act for 10 acres. In 2009, he was allotted rights to 5 acres, but it was only in 2013 that he finally got the papers which made it official. But in July 2013, when he and his family moved to the land allotted to him, the Forest Department officials beat him, burnt his belongings and chased him out. Dasratbhai filed a case with the police but that resulted in nothing.
Three years ago, he went to the Allahabad High Court, which last year ordered the Collector, DFO and the Ministry of Tribal affairs to ensure that Dasratbhai got the land he had claimed. However, last week, he received a letter from the District Collector that his claim had been rejected. They are saying that the village I live in falls in the Waspur forest range while the land I got is in Tapti forest range. This division between the forest ranges happened in the late 90s. When they displace us, they have no issues throwing us around but when we assert our rights, they claim technical reasons to abuse us? asked a dejected Dasratbhai, who was visiting Amlapara to discuss with local leaders about the next course of action. No wonder then, that there is little enthusiasm about upcoming elections. Sumanbhai, who has seen almost 10 state elections during his lifetime, rightly summed up the mood of the locals, What will they promise us that they havent promised before, and what will they fool us with that they havent tried earlier?
Opinion / Columnist
Humanly, as we all are, former Vice President Comrade Mnangagwa expects Zimbabweans of all kind to rise up and fight for freedom. He humanly expects the people of Zimbabwe to humanly see the obvious wrongs of President Mugabe and fight to remove him as a matter of urgency and install Mr Mnangagwa as consolation to his unfair abuse.Mr Mnangagwa now wonders why Zimbabweans are so incapable to fight someone who has caused poverty, corruption, potholes, Company closures, dysfunctional hospitals, dysfunctional transport infrastructure, muting political opponents and producing a dead liberated country?Mr Mnangagwa left Zapu in 1963 citing tribalism and joined Zanu which was killing Karanga and Manyika freedom fighters and elevating Zezurus and a few passive Karangas. Mrs Mugabe just told him "Zezuru unconquerable"Mr Mnangagwa worked hard since 1976, perpetuating President Robert Mugabe and helping him to achieve all the disprogress Zimbabwe is known for today.We, the negligible opponents of Zanu who have been writing articles, showing people in Zanu PF how wrong they are, have warned Comrade Mnangagwa before.Today I salute Mr Paul Siwela, or should I call him Prophet Siwela who said that Vice President Mnangagwa will be declared National Hero before President Mugabe leaves office. "Treason" is the charge Mnangagwa in now wanted for. I am very sure that Honourable Mnangagwa is keen to know where in Diaspora Prophet Siwela is hiding, so that he can seek a safe shelter.It does not matter how much one writes these negligible articles, what is certainly a constant is that all Zanu current operators perpetuate Mugabe to destroy Zimbabwe. These perpetuants have no capability to see the negative impact of their projects until Mugabe has finished using them.Intrinsically, Mugabe does not keep a friend. Anyone who thinks is Mugabe's friend, will wake up like Mnangagwa, to count the wounds of his allegiance. If Sally Mugabe died a betrayed woman, what is Mnangagwa? What is a war vet? What is Jonathan Moyo? What is Kasukuwere? What is Simon Khaya Moyo? What is George Charamba?We, the negligible "vanongo hukura, Zanu ichingotonga, ichitonga ichitonga" will soon become Prophets with tangible or empirical outcomes.Treason carries death sentence Mr Mnangagwa and you did too little in fifty years to stop this Dynistical Demon from accumulating too much power to field Security Forces with its own tribe. Who will fight for you now? You now need us tichingohukura, zanu ichingotonga. Can you now tell Jonathan Moyo how he will end? Did Joyce Mujuru tell you how you would end in 2013? Who told you the truth, Mugabe or us, tinohukura?This cycle now needs junior Army and Police operatives. Senior ones are handpicked from the Dynasty, so they can't help you Mr Mnangagwa. If you need help from us the barking dogs, come around for a coffee in our Diaspora homes. I left Zimbabwe in 1989, having lost a home to you Mr Mnangagwa and your Zanu private army of 1983. Can you now tell Chiwengwa that he will either join me in Diaspora or go the Solomon Mujuru way?Can you now see sense in what Thomas Nhari was fighting against before Zanu, you and Mugabe hung him in 1976? Or can you now see what Richard Gwesela was fighting against in 1983? Are you now in the same camp with Gwesela, Tekere, and Nhari? Are opponents of Mugabe traitors or Heros. Are you now a Hero or traitor? Are you going to bury the remains of Gwesela in Heros acre if you take over? Where would you bury Mugabe or what do you call him today?Please Zimbabweans, stop perpetuating Mugabe Dynasty and start looking for a ripe neutral politician to elevate to lead Zimbabwe. I am a Zapu member myself but I would choose Welshman Ncube as the best candidate to take us to a new Zimbabwe.I have never been a member of Welshman's party, but, his age, his roots, his vision and humility fit the criteria of a neutral leader who can clean our country.If we removed him from his newfound coalition, and empowered him with support for a brand new Party, maybe named ZimAll, we would have a clean country in nine months.
Help India!
Amarkantak (Madhya Pradesh), (IANS): President Ram Nath Kovind on Saturday said the aim of the Indira Gandhi National Tribal University is to help tribal youth participate with greater vigour in the building of modern India.
It could be done by giving them the best possible opportunities in education, he said during the universitys convocation here.
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He said establishment of the Indira Gandhi National Tribal University in Madhya Pradesh was appropriate as the state had a 15 million strong tribal population.
He also said that a university convocation was not just a ceremony to honour the graduating students but an opportunity to dedicate to society the services of an educated, equipped and disciplined cadre of youth.
A convocation is not the end of education but the beginning of a responsible life.
The President called upon the students to leave an imprint on society that was so meaningful that the university could be presented as a model for the entire nation.
He expressed confidence that the graduates would always keep learning and would make a significant contribution to the uplift of the underprivileged in the society and to the progress of the nation.
Help India!
By TwoCircles.net Staff Reporter
Months after lynching of Pehlu Khan, a cattle trader in Alwar district of Rajasthan, the district faced another fresh set of violence after two Muslim men were gunned down by cow vigilantes on suspicion of smuggling cows.
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Ummar Muhammad and Tahir Khan again cattle traders were transporting cows from Mewat in Haryana to Bharatpur in Rajasthan, when they were stopped in the Fahari village near Alwar district.
Landed in scuffle with the cow vigilantes, who stopped the traders, Ummar Muhammad died on the spot after facing pistol firing from the vigilantes. Moreover, Tahir Khan is battling for his life in a private hospital in the close vicinity.
Ummars dead body has been kept in Rajiv Gandhi Memorial Hospital in Alwar. The officials have denied saying anything on the matter, but have nodded to the fact the Ummar died because of the bullet injuries.
Reportedly, members of Meo community to which Ummar and Tahir belonged have launched a protest demanding arrest and high level probe into the matter.
The community members have also accused police of accompanying the attackers. However, there is no FIR yet in the matter.
This is the same region where 55-year-old Pehlu Khan was thrashed to death by cow vigilantes in April this year, resulting into a nationwide outrage.
In last month of October, police snatched around 51 cows from a Muslim family of Alwar after Hindutva groups launched a protest on the pretext of that the family kept cows to slaughter.
When TwoCircles.net tried to reach Superintendent of Police and Additional Superintendent of Police at Alwar on phone, their numbers remained unresponsive.
Help India!
Ram Puniyani
From last few years, around October 31, lot of statements from BJP stable have started coming which eulogize Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel. This year (October 2017) was no exception as Mr. Modi said, I am from the BJP and Sardar Patel was from Congress, but I still follow his ideology and beliefs, which belong to no party.
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At the same time attempt is on to undermine Nehru; Modi had said Nehru that didnt attend Patels funeral. These attempts of Modi-BJP have a political agenda.
As BJPs ideological camp did not participate in the freedom movement of the country, they do need an icon that was part of the freedom movement. This is why they want to iconize Sardar Patel.
Since Nehru was the tall leader with secular values, they want to show him in a poor light. Motivated by this agenda they are desperately trying to make statements which create a falsehood of differences between Nehru and Patel. These statements eulogize Patel and undermine Nehru. BJPs attempt to set opposition between the two major leaders of freedom movement is most despicable to say the least.
Modis statement that he is following the ideology Patel is a total lie. Patel was an Indian nationalist, a firm follower of Gandhi. On the contrary Modi comes from the ideological stream of RSS which has the agenda of Hindu nationalsim. Patel knew the divisive nature of RSS ideology, Hindu nationalism and its role in spreading hatred. Patel writes, as [a] result of the activities of these two bodies [the RSS and the Hindu Mahasabha], particularly the former, an atmosphere was created in the country in which such a ghastly tragedy became possible The activities of the RSS constituted a clear threat to the existence of the Government and the State.
In contrast to BJPs attempt to create a binary between Patel and Nehru, the relationship between them was that of supplementing each other. There was no rivalry. Patel knew that Nehru was immensely popular. Commenting on the massive turn out in a rally Patel told American journalist Vincent Sheean, They come for Jawahar, not for me.
At the same time Patel was the back bone of Congress party as an Organization. Gandhi who had mandate of the nation asked Nehru to take the responsibility of Prime Minister ship as he knew that Nehru had better understanding of the global politics and was very popular with the masses.
In order to undermine Nehru, Modi stooped very low when he stated that Nehru did not attend the funeral of Patel. This is a blatant lie. The Times of India, on front page had covered this event prominently and told the readers about the presence of President Dr. Rajendra Prasad and Prime Minister Pandit Nehru on the occasion. It also published the deep condolences of Nehru who said that Sardar Patel has contributed immensely to the process of Indias freedom and making of India.
Congress Leader Digvijay Singh posted the clip of the documentary showing Nehru attending the funeral. Also Morarji Desai in his autobiography Volume I page 271, Para 2 mentioned the presence of Pandit Nehru on the occasion. In the face of this Modi later did retract the statement, and usual things about being misquoted etc were dished out, but this reveals his machinations for creating a naegative impression about Nehru.
Trying to create a distance between Congress-Nehru and Patel, Modi has also said that Congress facilitated Partition (Narendra Modi while talking in Kheda in Gujarat). This is a very motivated statement. As a matter of fact the two major leaders who were handling the negotiations on behalf of Congress at that time were Pundit Jawaharlal Nehru and Sardar Patel. Mr. Jaswant Singhs book on Jinnah, taking one sided view blames Nehru-Patel for partition. Partition was a multi layered phenomenon. Now as Patel is being praised for his contribution; Congress is being blamed for partition. This is untrue as it was Nehru-Patel duo, which was acting together on the issue of Indias partition. VP Menon, the architect of the Partition Plan, wrote that Patel accepted the division of India in December 1946, while Nehru would only acquiesce six months later.
The attempts to present that Nehru and Patel were on different paths was propagated earlier also. Disturbed by that Nehru wrote to Patel, saying that he is disturbed and hurt by such rumors. In response to the letter Patel wrote (May 5, 1948): I am deeply touchedWe both have been lifelong comrades in a common cause. The paramount interests of our country and our mutual love and regard, transcending such differences of outlook and temperament as existed, have held us together.
He also stated in the parliament I am one with the Prime Minister on all national issues. For over a quarter of a century, both of us sat at the feet of our master (Gandhi, added) and struggled together for the freedom of India. It is unthinkable today, when the Mahatma is no more, that we should quarrel.
On the issue of Kashmir also attempt is being made as if they had differing approach and that Patel would have forced merger of Kashmir with India. Lets see what Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel had to say on the matter way back. He said at a public meeting in Bombay on October 30, 1948: Some people consider that a Muslim majority area must necessarily belong to Pakistan. They wonder why we are in Kashmir. The answer is plain and simple. We are in Kashmir because the people of Kashmir want us to be there. The moment we realize that the people of Kashmir do not want us to be there, we shall not be there even for a minute We shall not let Kashmir down. (HT, October 31, 1948)
As Patel points out in his letters and interventions in Parliament, these two great leaders had a great rapport and respect for each other. The false propaganda of BJP will definitely bite the dust.
Lest we forget all those who have been killed in all wars, whether they are military or civilian and whichever side they stand. The white poppy of peace represents the idea that all wars were meaningless and that all deaths were pointless. Refusing to wear a red poppy and either opting for a white poppy or nothing, is a controversial opinion to those on the right but they have hijacked the red poppy for their own ideological attacks on a differing opinion, without a regard to the facts.
The idea that World War I was avoidable is hotly debated and the topic continues to divide historians and political commentators, however, World War II is widely regarded as an unavoidable conflict against the rise of fascism.
But is it perverse to consider that both were avoidable?
World War I
The events that led to the start of the Great War were complex and it is wrong to pin it down to aggression from one nation, but prior, Germany had built the nation and were looking to establish themselves as a global power, Herwig states in The Origins of World War I, "The all-too-clever argument that vast but indirect social movements and serious class, political, and regional antagonisms limited the freedom of German decision makers in 1914 Begs The Question of causality and responsibility."
This underlines the problems fuelled by the UK government of the time, their failure to recognise Germany as a global power provided provisions for German leaders to promote their propaganda to the people, consolidating their grip and ability to encourage the population to fight for them should war break out.
Which began when Germany used their Austrian-Hungarian allies in the Balkans, this was called the July Crisis and subsequently led to the assassination of the Archduke, Franz Ferdinand. The British decided against involvement in the Balkans but were concerned over the future threat to British interests because for the last century, the British Empire had grown to be a powerful trading empire in Europe and the world.
The German growth was a serious threat to the economic stability of the empire and had overshadowed the ever-impending Russian threat. Essentially, the wealthiest elite within Britain decided to protect their interests and subdue the rights of another population within the process, the latter point is proved through the Treaty of Versailles and was key element in the rise of Adolf Hitler.
It was also a guise to establish a power in the middle-east and dismantle the Ottoman Empire, who sided with Germany. In the years before and during the Great War, Britain had actively encouraged the Arab Revolt in the middle-east to divide and conquer the Ottoman Empire who were a powerful force in suppressing Russian forces in the east of Europe, whom the British had to ally with as well as the French Republic.
But importantly, Britain had already established a relationship with Abd-al Aziz of the exiled Saud family in Kuwait and subsequently the Darin Treaty was signed in 1915 by Dardanelles of France and Belgium, and Ibn Saud to bring them under the British protectorate. Britain needed a reason to suppress the German growth and protect their trade advantage, divide the Ottoman Empire and establish a colony within the region, all this was made possible during the Great War.
Remembering every life lost
The wars that ensued from British attempts to consolidate their position at the top of global powers, were two of the bloodiest wars in history and whilst it is agreed that Hitler was a smart individual and that Nazi Germany had to be stopped, current world events and the rise in the 'alt-right' begs the question, if Hitler had never had risen to power, would fascism be a legitimate mainstream far-right ideology?
Furthermore, the Great War was nothing more than a powerplay by Russia, France and Britain, who were all the biggest powers in Europe at the time. The assassination of Archduke Ferdinand was the perfect spark for Britain to get involved. Nonetheless, this day we remember every life that has been lost fighting for their country's sake because it is always the people who suffer their leader's desire to concentrate power for themselves, lest we forget and forge a future we can call our own.
This last Week In Politics has seen the government lose another member of the cabinet and more gaffes that continue to highlight ineffectualness of Theresa May's leadership of the Conservative Party. International Development Minister, Priti Patel, resigned over secret meetings with Israeli officials whilst on holiday, Boris Johnson made an astonishing gaffe that proves he's unfit for the foreign office and the extent of tax avoidance was revealed in the Paradise Papers.
Meanwhile the rest of world has seen Donald Trump take a trip to Asia to solidify relations with China and discuss North Korea, the Vatican are to ban cigarettes from next year citing public health and Saudi Arabia continue to crack down on corruption.
UK news
This week it was revealed that International Development Minister, Priti Patel, had been meeting with Israeli officials, including Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, in secret whilst on holiday. This was a bid to further relations with the state and with the idea to funnel the international aid budget into the Israeli army. Theresa May's office claimed to have known nothing of the meetings, but it has been revealed since that she may have known. Boris Johnson, whose job it is to secure international relations, was left in the dark over the meetings. However, Priti Patel later resigned from her cabinet position which begs the question, why wasn't she out rightly sacked by Theresa May?
Boris Johnson made an astonishing gaffe that could see 5 years added onto the sentence of British-Iranian, Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, who was on holiday in Iran when she was arrested and jailed. Reports have surfaced that she has been kept in solitary confinement and has endure interrogations over her reasons for being in Iran.
Boris Johnson remarked in a foreign affair select committee that she was training journalists, which is not the case, but Iranian state hardliners and media pounced on those remarks which could see the increase jail sentence. The foreign office has since been negotiating with Iran to try and rectify Johnson's monumental gaffe.
On a side note, Mr Johnson has since angered Spain by heaping praise on bullfighting in a bid to improve Anglo-Spanish relations, a stance that has evidently backfired.
Paradise Papers
Early in the week, the group of journalists who released the Panama Papers have released a second set of papers investigating the murky world of tax avoidance, a scheme which is legal but morally repugnant. Notable figures include the Queen and Prince Charles, the former's estate had an offshore portfolio that included a stake in Brighthouse, a rent-to-buy retailer, the firm were criticised for irresponsible lending and forced to pay A15 million in compensation. Meanwhile, Prince Charles's private estate invested in a Bermuda business set up to trade carbon credits, run by one of his close friends.
Former Conservative Party Treasurer and Chairman, Lord Ashcroft, has been linked to a previously unknown Bermuda trust that made substantial payments to him. Internal correspondence from Appleby revealed the firm was uncomfortable with the trust's management. He has denied controlling the trust. Prominent Brexiteer, Arron Banks, co-owns the Isle of Man-based Conister Bank, which opened accounts for a man whose gambling firm and business partner were being pursued by the US justice department. The Barclay Brothers, who own the Telegraph, obscure their ownership of a company by appointing another company to act as shareholder in their place.
World news
The Vatican said it would ban the sale of cigarettes from next year.
Unbound by Italy's high sales taxes, the Vatican's trade in cheap cigarettes, in its duty-free shops and supermarkets, has long been popular and profitable. Saudi Arabian officials arrested up to 500 people, including prominent royals and businessmen, alleging corruption. The government says more than $100 billion has been embezzled from the kingdom. Critics accuse Muhammad bin Salman, the crown prince, of trying to concentrate power.
Donald Trump continued his ten-day sojourn in Asia. He has assured legislators that the North Korea dispute would "all work out". The American administration's claim that new deals worth $250 billion were signed during the China visit were met with scepticism. The agreements were mostly non-binding memoranda of understanding.
Meanwhile in the US, the Congressional Budget Office stated the House Republicans' tax-reform bill would add $1.7 trillion to America's debt: $1.4 trillion in revenue reduction plus debt-servicing costs. Measures include slashing the corporate-tax rate by 15%, limiting interest deductions and repealing the estate tax.
The government are in a complete omnishambles and they no longer have any sense of direction, they also have been failing to spot imminent disasters despite having knowledge of them prior. They have worse foresight than the crew of the Titanic. Michael Fallon resigned because he touched someone's knee 15 years ago, subsequently, that person cared less about the incident than Jeremy Corbyn cares for Trident.
Of course, there is significantly more to the Michael Fallon episode, but that drama has been replaced by a whole new series of monumental disasters befitting that of an episode of The Thick of It or perversely more relevant, House of Cards.
Priti much damned
Boris Johnson kicked off the week with a badly timed and dreadfully delivered 'joke' which could see a British national's jail sentence extended by a further 5 years in Iran. The Foreign Secretary has yet to apologise properly and firmly believes that its just a misunderstanding. Naturally, he has thus far kept his job because holding Conservative politicians to a high standard is an absurd notion under theresa May, she'd rather just rewrite the code of conduct. Then Priti Patel tops Johnson, not literally, by going on a holiday and meeting up with leading Israeli leaders, including their fascist leader, Benjamin Netanyahu. In a bid to secure our relationship with them and divert foreign aid funds to their army, so that they can continue their genocide of the Palestinian people.
The mess is even worse because Theresa May knew about it and even planned it behind Boris Johnson's back, even though that is literally his job. Boris knew nothing of it, then when this came out, Theresa Mays 'office denied all knowledge and proceeded to throw Priti Patel under the bus, but Mrs Patel then dragged May with her by revealing that they had planned it, still with me?
Even after it had come out, Mrs May failed to act properly and allowed Mrs Patel to resign because she is clearly a kind and considerate person. Meanwhile Brexit negotiations are going nowhere, it has been reported in the Telegraph that police are ignoring low priority crimes, these include theft, assault and violence, largely down to the severe public service cuts and Donald Trump is about to start a war with North Korea because why not?
If the Conservatives Party stay in power or a general election hasn't been announced by February next year, that is definitive evidence that this country is no longer democratic and that we live in a society of corrupt leaders. Theresa May is about as useful as an ice cube in a volcano and as William Shakespeare wrote in Measure for Measure, "O! it is excellent. To have a giant's strength, but it is tyrannous to use it like a giant." The only difference is that Mrs May has little to strength to show despite attempts to be tyrannous within parliament by not taking part in votes they know they will lose.
This story started with a tweet. I was browsing through Twitter a couple of days ago when a tweet came up on my timeline. A user mentioned that there had been several Bombings in Sweden over the last month and that no one from the Mainstream Media was talking about it. It would be highly irresponsible to take somebody's tweet as gospel truth, but this infrequent mention of these events perplexed the inquisitor in me, so I decided to have a look around on the internet and see what this was all about. After some research what I found was quite disturbing and revealed that this was a phenomenon that was really occurring.
So many attacks, such little publicity.
There is one attack in Sweden that did receive some mainstream media coverage, On April 7th, 2017, just days after the Westminster Bridge Attack which killed five people in London, a hijacked lorry was driven into crowds of shoppers in Stockholm, killing 5 people and seriously injuring 14 others. The attacker in this incident was a failed asylum seeker from Uzbekistan called Rakhmat Akilov. Rakhmat Akilov was said to have had links to ISIS and his attack was motivated by his sympathies towards the Islamist cause.
A powerful bomb attack outside Police Station
That attack did receive some mention, but while following this trail of breadcrumbs I found another story which was dated much more recently.
I came across a small article in the Independent which spoke of a "powerful explosion" outside a police station in the Southern Swedish town of Helsingborg. Nobody was injured in the blast, but the Swedish prime minister called the bombing "an attack on our democracy." The blast was not initially treated as a terror attack, but nobody has come forward to claim responsibility and the motive is still unclear.
This attack occurred around the 17th of October 2017.
Then I came across another story, this was another small article in the Daily Star which told of a bombing outside a nightclub called the Babel in the Swedish city of Malmo, Sweden's third largest city. Nobody was injured in this incident again but the powerful bomb caused substantial damage to the nightclub.
This bombing took place on the early hours of Friday 3rd November 2017. While looking into this story these are the only events I could find which I can provide proof of occurring. There are however numerous reports circulating on the internet that these two bombing attacks are just part of a string of up to 12 bombings across Sweden in the last 28 days.
Little or no media coverage of bombings
While it is difficult to substantiate if 12 bombings really have occurred, it is certain that two serious incidents have occurred in Sweden in the last few weeks, and the story has received little to no media coverage. Some conspiratorial voices are blaming this on the fact that migrant gangs are suspected of being behind the incidents.
Sweden has seen a large influx of mainly Middle Eastern migrants enter the country in recent years, as have many other European nations in response to the "migrant crisis." Other people have blamed the bombing incidents on feuding criminal gangs, but a motive for these two incidents have not yet been established.
It was reported recently that Sweden has up to fifty-five "no-go areas" in the nation, due to high levels of crime. I cannot speak to the accuracy of the rumours that are circulating about the perpetrators behind these incidents and their motives behind it, what I can speak to is the fact that there have been two major bomb attacks in a European nation and nobody on the mainstream media is talking about it. I think it is highly urgent that more of us ask the question, what is going on in Sweden at the moment?
Fethullah Gulen is a name which many Americans would not be interested in. He is, however, an important man and is in exile in the United States. His name has cropped up in the ongoing investigation about the Russian connection and the role of Lt Gen Michael Flynn, former security advisor to the US president. Flynn lasted only 24 days before he was sacked for lying about his Russian connection. Flynn appears to have been a con-man and many unsavory acts of his are coming to the foreground. The special counsel Robert Mueller is investigating a bizarre plot by the former Security Advisor, who along with his son planned to kidnap the Turkish Opposition Leader and hand him over to Turkey.
It is alleged he could have made $15 million in the deal. This is reported by Newsweek.
Gulen and Erdogan
This information appears to be authentic as NBC News has also confirmed it and has cited multiple sources which are not named. Fethullah Gulen is an opposition leader who is opposed to the Turkish president Tayyip Erdogan. The Turkish president accuses Gulen of being the mastermind of the coup attempt against him and has been making all efforts to lay his hands on him. He has also requested the US government to hand over Gulen to him.
Kidnapping plot
In all likelihood, Flynn became part of a plot to kidnap the Muslim cleric. It is alleged that in case Flynn had been able to kidnap the opposition leader, he and his son could have made $ 15 million.
Former CIA Director James Woolsey has said that Flynn attended a meeting in a hotel room in New York City during last September, to discuss plans to kidnap the Turkish opposition leader. The alleged plan was to whisk away Gulen at night by a private jet to the Turkish island prison Imrali.
It has now revealed that during the election Flynn was working as a foreign agent for Turkey.
His company Flynn Intel Group Inc, reportedly received $539,000 to lobby for Turkey in the US. Flynn also wrote an op-ed last November in which he suggested that the US should expel Gulen.
Mueller is already investigating Flynn's role in the Russian interference in the 2016 election.
Closing in on Flynn
The special counsel Mueller's investigations are bringing out many unsavory facts and he has already proceeded against three men who had at various times been on Trump's team. Now he is closing in on Flynn and NBC News has reported that during his investigation, he has uncovered enough evidence to indict Flynn and his son.
DA NANG President Xi Jinping delivered a speech titled "Working Together for a New Chapter of Win-Win Cooperation in the Asia-Pacific" here Saturday at the first session of the 25th Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Economic Leaders' Meeting.
President Xi Jinping attends the 25th Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Economic Leaders' Meeting in Da Nang, Vietnam, Nov 11, 2017. [Photo/Xinhua]
The following is the full text of his remarks:
Working Together for a New Chapter of Win-Win Cooperation in the Asia-Pacific
Remarks by H.E. Xi Jinping
President of the People's Republic of China
At Session I of the APEC Economic Leaders' Meeting
Da Nang, 11 November 2017
President Tran Dai Quang,
Dear Colleagues,
I wish to thank President Tran Dai Quang and the Vietnamese government for their thoughtful arrangements. Vietnam was hit by Typhoon Damrey a few days ago, resulting in heavy casualties and economic losses. On behalf of the Chinese government and people, let me express my deep sympathy to those affected by the typhoon.
Three years ago on this day, we discussed in Beijing the blueprint for Asia-Pacific cooperation. The Chinese people believe that three years is a good time to take stock of what one has achieved. In the past three years, the world economy has gradually rebounded, showing strong momentum of recovery since the outbreak of the international financial crisis. People in all sectors are gaining more confidence.
Those who recognize the trend are wise and those who ride the trend will win. We need to take note of the profound changes taking place in the world economy. At yesterday's CEO Summit, I shared my thoughts on this subject. If Asia-Pacific economies seize the trend and take action, we can usher in a new round of development and prosperity for the world.
First, we need to promote innovation as a strong growth driver. Innovation is the most powerful lever for development. As new technologies emerge and the new industrial revolution gains momentum, we face a rare historic opportunity for innovation-driven development. We need to strive for both scientific and technological innovation and institutional innovation, build synergy between market and technology, and help bring to fruition new technologies, new business forms and models to fully unlock our development potential. This is why, in the context of APEC, we need to implement in real earnest the Roadmap on the Internet and Digital Economy we have drawn this year.
Innovation has proven to be essential to the emergence of new drivers for the Chinese economy in recent years. Thirty years ago, China's first email was sent from Beijing. Today, China has 750 million Internet users, our on-line retail sales are growing by 30 percent a year, our "sharing economy" has reached 3.5 trillion yuan in size, and China's mobile payment transactions have exceeded 158 trillion yuan. This example shows that as long as we keep exploring, we will see more opportunities and successes of innovation-driven development.
Second, we need to open up our economies to create more space for development. History has taught us that closed-door development will get nowhere, while open development is the only right choice. We need to remain true to APEC's founding purpose: advance trade and investment liberalization and facilitation, build an open economy, uphold and strengthen the multilateral trading regime, and help rebalance economic globalization. We need to take determined steps toward a Free Trade Area of the Asia-Pacific in line with the agreed roadmap, and herald a new round of development in the Asia-Pacific in the course of opening up.
Next year will mark the 40th anniversary of China's reform and opening-up. In nearly four decades, China has opened its arms to embrace the world and achieved "leapfrog development" of itself in this process. Looking ahead, China will open still wider and its development will deliver even greater benefits to the rest of the world. Starting from next year, China will hold an International Import Expo. I am sure this new platform of mutually beneficial cooperation will help all parties to better share the opportunities of China's development.
Third, we need to pursue inclusive development to enhance our people's sense of fulfillment. Lack of inclusiveness in development is a problem facing many economies. We should redouble efforts to address this problem. To enable more people to share the benefits of development, efforts must be made to strike a better balance between fairness and efficiency, capital and labor, technology and employment. Greater attention must be paid to the impact of artificial intelligence and other technological advances on jobs. APEC members need to do a good job of implementing the Action Agenda on Inclusion formulated this year, and deepen cooperation on poverty reduction, micro, small and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs), education, fighting corruption, urbanization and women's empowerment. All this will contribute to the well-being of the 2.8 billion people in the Asia-Pacific region.
China gives high priority to employment. We have worked to ensure that economic development is pursued in a way that supports job creation, encouraged business start-ups as a means to create more jobs, and paid particular attention to the employment of college graduates and other key groups. We have also provided the labor force with better education and training to tackle structural unemployment. In each of the past few years, we have created over 13 million new jobs in cities and towns. An important thing we have learnt from all this is that with better coordination and the right measures, economic restructuring does not have to come at the expense of employment. On the contrary, stable employment would allow greater leeway for reform and development.
Fourth, we need to enrich our partnerships and deliver benefits to all involved. As APEC economies, we have a stake in each other's success and our future is closely connected. With a shared future in mind, we need to develop a stronger sense of community, harmonize our policies and create synergy. We need to foster a spirit of harmony in diversity, draw on each other's strength, pursue mutually beneficial cooperation and draw on each other's best practice in development. We should consider the interests of others while pursuing those of our own, and reduce the adverse spillovers of our domestic policies. As we have agreed on the direction and framework of an Asia-Pacific partnership, it is time to take solid steps toward this goal.
China has put forward the Belt and Road Initiative and is pursuing it in a spirit of extensive consultation, joint contribution and shared benefits. This initiative is well received and supported by various parties. The successful and fruitful Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation held in Beijing in May marked a new stage of full implementation. Going forward, China will deepen policy, infrastructure, trade, financial and people-to-people connectivity with our Asia-Pacific partners, seek interconnected development and move toward a community of shared future.
Dear Colleagues,
You may all have an interest in China's future development. Last month's 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China was a great success. We laid out our development strategy and blueprint for the coming decades, keeping in mind that socialism with Chinese characteristics has entered a new era whose overriding goal is socialist modernization and national rejuvenation. We will continue to be guided by a philosophy of people-oriented development, resolve the issue of unbalanced and inadequate development and raise the quality and efficiency of growth to better meet our people's ever-growing needs for economic, political, cultural, social and ecological progress, promote all-round development of our people and facilitate social progress across the board. We will act on the new vision of development, comprehensively deepen reform, turn China into an innovation-driven country at a faster pace, break new ground in pursuing opening-up on all fronts and build a modern economic system.
I am convinced that a China that enjoys stronger growth and interacts more with the world and whose people have a greater sense of fulfillment will surely bring more opportunities and make greater contributions to the Asia-Pacific and the world at large.
Thank you.
File photo shows Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte supporters gather during a vigil backing the anti-drugs crackdown at the Luneta park in metro Manila, Philippines February 25, 2017. [Photo/Agencies]
At the 43rd Philippine Business Conference in October, Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte said the bullet that killed Isnilon Hapilon, Islamic State's "emir" in Southeast Asia, in Marawi was fired from a sniper rifle made in China. "It was only China who gave it on time and plenty, plenty," he said. Among those attending the conference was Zhao Jianhua, China's ambassador to the Philippines.
Duterte was referring to Chinese military assistance to the Philippines in two shipments in June and October, which included high-precision rifles, sniper rifles, automatic rifles and ammunition. Beijing's assistance was aimed at strengthening Manila's campaign against the IS group-inspired terrorists.
Radical Islamic and jihadi groups in Southeast Asia such as Jemaah Islamiyah, Abu Sayyaf, al-Qaida and the offshoots of terrorist outfits are almost as diversified as the fauna in its tropical forests, but what is most alarming is the speed of their rise and their affiliation to the IS group. No wonder Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong has called Southeast Asia a "key recruitment area" for the IS group.
Besides, ever-worsening humanitarian situation and violence in Myanmar's Rakhine Province add to the fear that extreme Islamists from elsewhere in Southeast Asia and beyond might try to exploit the plight of the Rohingya refugees for their gain. Plus, the Sulu Sea around southwestern Philippines has become a new haven for pirates and armed robbers. According to the International Maritime Bureau, they were responsible for 71 percent of global incidents in 2015, and the number of maritime kidnappings last year hit a 10-year high.
China has huge stakes in the peace and stability of Southeast Asia, as it is ASEAN's largest trading partner while the Association of Southeast Asian Nations is its third-largest trading partner. Southeast Asia is also a vital link in the China-proposed 21st Century Maritime Silk Road and one of the most popular tourist destinations among Chinese nationals.
Also, it is vital to cut off the Southeast Asia route between the IS group and Xinjiang separatists who use the region as a gateway to join the terrorist outfit in Iraq and Syria. And a bomb explosion in Bangkok in August 2015 that killed 27 people and left 120 injured was confirmed to be a "revenge" attack against the Thai government for its help to China in nabbing Xinjiang separatists smuggled into Thai territory.
That most of the ASEAN member states have purchased or received through donation some kind of Chinese weapons to combat terrorists shows China can help Southeast Asia fight terrorism through military assistance. And the fact that the largest quantity of the Chinese assistance requested by Duterte comprised 6,000 rifles (along with bullets for them) indicates that some countries' under-equipped militaries might still need such basic help from China.
It is no less important for China to help in capacity building, through mechanisms such as joint training, joint patrol, and when necessary, joint operation. China and Thailand have held quite a few counter-terrorism drills at the tactical level, which could be extended to include other countries, and the Chinese and Vietnamese navies regularly patrol the Beibu Gulf. Moreover, in response to the brutal killing of 13 Chinese sailors on the Mekong River in October 2011, law enforcers from China, Laos, Myanmar and Thailand conducted 63 joint patrols along the river to prevent attacks on cargo vessels.
Can China help combat maritime terrorism in the Sulu Sea? If the Chinese navy can combat piracy in the Gulf of Aden, why it can't do so in a region closer to China? Duterte has invited the Chinese navy to conduct joint exercises with the Filipino navy around Mindanao and in the Sulu Sea. This is a progress from his earlier remark that he would invite only the Chinese coast guard to patrol there. But since joint exercises, however useful, cannot end piracy, the ongoing joint patrol by Malaysian, Indonesian and the Philippine navies is not enough to cover an area that is much larger than the Strait of Malacca currently patrolled by four littoral states.
Therefore, Duterte should invite other ASEAN countries and international navies, including the Chinese navy, to conduct joint patrols there. Remember, it took the navies of more than 20 countries almost five years to keep the pirates at bay in the Gulf of Aden and Somali Basin.
The author is an honorary fellow at the Center of China-American Defense Relations, PLA Academy of Military Science.
LI MIN/CHINA DAILY
While President Xi Jinping is on a state visit to Laos after attending the APEC Economic Leaders' Meeting and visiting Vietnam, Premier Li Keqiang is in the Philippines to take part in a series of high-level meetings across five days starting Sunday, including the 20th China-ASEAN (10+1) leaders' meeting and the 20th ASEAN-China, Japan and the Republic of Korea (10+3) leaders' meeting, and the 12th East Asia Summit. The senior leaders' diplomatic moves, the first after the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, highlight the great importance China attaches to its Southeast Asian neighbors.
As the first Chinese premier to visit Manila in a decade, Li will hold talks with Rodrigo Duterte, president of the Philippines, which holds the APEC chair this year.
That China and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations are expected to formulate a China-ASEAN 2030 vision and upgrade the existing free trade agreement will be watched closely. The protocol on upgrading the China-ASEAN Free Trade Area, which was agreed last July, has further boosted economic and trade development, and optimized the distribution of resources within the FTA framework.
China has been ASEAN's biggest trade partner for eight consecutive years, while ASEAN has been China's third-largest for six years. From January to July, two-way trade increased 14.5 percent year-on-year thanks to the tariff-free policies covering more than 90 percent of the goods traded and streamlined customs procedures.
While expediting service trade exchanges, tearing down investment barriers and funding cooperative projects, both sides also have to improve the policy environment and tap into cross-border e-commerce. A China-ASEAN e-commerce platform, established late last year, has attracted 135 ASEAN companies that received 646,000 orders in just three months.
Over the past four years, the Belt and Road Initiative, which now serves as an engine of China-ASEAN cooperation, has greatly improved infrastructure connectivity and boosted the construction of industrial clusters. But for deeper interaction with the ASEAN economies, Beijing should map out more detailed, targeted plans under the Belt and Road framework.
Trade remains high on the agenda, so does infrastructure. Given the differences in the economic development levels of ASEAN member states, China should accord priority to infrastructure and exploitation of agricultural resources in its cooperation programs, and deepen cooperation with countries such as Vietnam, Laos and Myanmar. And the focus of cooperation should be industrial capacity, service trade and cross-border investment.
Besides, to allay concerns over the China-proposed multinational economic arrangements, more attention should be paid to cultural exchanges, promotion of China's expertise in targeted poverty-reduction measures, and maritime cooperation pivoting on the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road.
Also at the center of China-ASEAN cooperation is infrastructure, through which China managed to export its quality products and labor resources, and Southeast Asian countries can have better public facilities and more stable electricity supply.
By the end of May, Chinese enterprises had signed infrastructure contracts worth more than $296.2 billion with ASEAN economies, and about $204 billion of the total amount has been put into business. China and ASEAN are also deliberating the possibility of a southward sea route connecting western China, Central and West Asia, and Southeast Asia. Also, in the long run, China and ASEAN should elevate their infrastructure cooperation, so that it centers on the engineering-procurement-construction mode, and widens financing channels by promoting public-private partnership.
Thirteen years into its permanent location in Nanning, capital of the Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region, China-ASEAN Expo, too, has great potential to rise above trade and investment. Now a key platform for upgrading the China-ASEAN FTA, it will play a bigger part in economic integration, internet-driven service trade and the transfer of technology in the region.
The author is a researcher at the Policy Research Office of Chengdu Municipal Committee of the Communist Party of China, and a researcher at the China-ASEAN Collaborative Innovation Center for Regional Development, Guangxi University.
President Xi Jinping(R) meets with Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte in Da Nang, Vietnam, Nov 11, 2017. [Photo/Xinhua]
There are signs that the Philippines-China relationship is among the priorities for both countries. This signifies not just the assistance (China is offering the Philippines), but also the trust it is gaining in doing so, the establishment of comfortable relations between China and the Philippines.
In the past, this was not the case because of "beggar-thy-neighbor" policies. What we need, as China is showing, is "prosper-thy-neighbor" policies. If that were to happen, we will definitely see Asia rising, which will strengthen globalization and help ensure a peaceful world.
The Asian financial crisis taught us a number of lessons which we must continue to learn from to move forward. Among these is the fact that the Asian economies have to strive to be much more interdependent, in order to move forward.
Prior to the crisis, the economic strategy of most Asian economies was built on an export-driven economy, the model being Japan, and the exports made their way mainly to the United States and Europe.
Asian economies are once again rising, with China leading this trend. The China-proposed Belt and Road Initiative will improve infrastructure connectivity from China through Asia and all the way up to Europe and Africa, by building or strengthening interstate highways, railways and ports.
A lot will depend, of course, on the agreements with the Central Asian countries such as Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan. But if they reach such agreements, and the initiative is implemented smoothly, we will see Asia rise to prominence the way it has not done in recent history.
The Belt and Road Initiative is going to be particularly important for Asia, including the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, for to approximate what has been achieved by the Western economies, particularly the US and Western Europe, there have to be three important elements in placea universally recognized and stable financial banking system; modern infrastructure; and peace, order and security. And in order to establish a good financial structure, Asia has to mobilize its savings, which are the largest in the world.
When I was the chairman of the APEC Finance Ministers' Process in the mid-to-late 1990s, I tried, together with the other Asian financial ministers, to suggest such use of Asia's savings to the other side of the table, which was at that time led by International Monetary Fund managing director Michel Camdessus, US Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan, and the US treasury secretary. The lesson everyone in Asia has learned is that Asians have to figure out a way of not being totally dependent on the decision-making process of the West if they want to get themselves mobilized properly.
Fortunately, an offshoot of that discussion was the beginning of the Asian Bond Fund, which is now going to be a platform for an internationally accepted funding mechanism in Asia, which includes the recognition of the renminbi as an international reserve currency. So the idea of putting a financial plan and structure in place has happened before.
The Belt and Road Initiative, plus the assistance that China has given to the economies such as the Philippines to build or improve their infrastructure will play a big role in generating domestic economic activities, and the kind of international activities that will allow Asia to grow and maintain peace and order.
The author, former Philippine secretary of finance, is chairman of the RFO Center for Public Finance and Regional Economic Cooperation and a founding member of the Boao Forum for Asia.
Vietnamese scholars and experts have high praise for President Xi Jinping's article "For a New Vista in China-Vietnam Friendship," published on Thursday in Vietnam's Nhan Dan newspaper. The publication preceded Xi's state visit to Vietnam, where he will also attend the 25th Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Economic Leaders' Meeting in Da Nang.
In the article, Xi reviewed the China-Vietnam friendship "forged with blood" by the older generation of leaders and the two peoples, and he called on both sides to make greater efforts to promote bilateral ties.
"It is a nice surprise that before his visit, President Xi sent messages to the Vietnamese public via such a friendly channel," said Tran Viet Thai, deputy general director of the Institute for Foreign Strategic Studies at the Diplomatic Academy of Vietnam.
Bui Tri Dung, editor at Vietnam's Investment newspaper, told Xinhua: "His words recalled unforgettable memories when we two peoples stood side by side as comrades, supporting each other in our fight for liberty and independence. That is really touching."
Luu Bich Ho, former director of the Institute of Development Strategy under the Vietnamese Ministry of Planning and Investment, also said that he was impressed by Xi's article.
Xi expressed the hope that the two countries jointly create a new vista in China-Vietnam relations. "These words are remarkable," Ho said on Thursday afternoon.
Ho said the vista is being driven by three factors:
Vietnam and China are both entering new periods of pursuing development, reform and innovation;
China and Vietnam are making great efforts to lift cooperation to a higher level that will bring more practical benefits for both peoples;
Given the changing global context, cooperation is crucial to ensure stability and development for Vietnam and China, but also for the region and the world.
Do Tien Sam, former director of the Institute of Chinese Studies under the Vietnam Academy of Social Sciences, said he strongly agreed with Xi's thoughts on deepening cooperation and fostering new prospects for "our interconnected interests".
Sam said Vietnam and China have huge potential to work together on this aspect as both are members of several multilateral cooperation mechanisms such as APEC and China-ASEAN cooperation frameworks.
Xinhua
(China Daily 11/11/2017 page2)
President Xi Jinping delivers a keynote speech at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) CEO Summit in Da Nang, Vietnam, Nov 10, 2017. [Photo/Xinhua]
DA NANG, Vietnam - Chinese President Xi Jinping on Friday made a keynote address titled "Seizing the Opportunity of a Global Economy in Transition and Accelerating Development of the Asia-Pacific" at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) CEO Summit.
The following is the full text of the address:
Seizing the Opportunity of a Global Economy in Transition
And Accelerating Development of the Asia-Pacific
Keynote Address by H.E. Xi Jinping
President of the People's Republic of China
At the APEC CEO Summit
Da Nang, 10 November 2017
Chairman Vu Tien Loc,
Leaders of the APEC Business Community,
Ladies and Gentlemen,
Dear Friends,
Good afternoon! I am glad to come to Da Nang and meet all of you again.
Our region, the Asia-Pacific, has the biggest share of the global economy; and it is a major engine driving global growth. The business community is a primary contributor to growth, as it keeps exploring new ways of development. That's why during the APEC Economic Leaders' Meeting over the last several years, I have always taken time to meet business leaders and discuss with you approaches and measures to address the challenges we face.
It has been 10 years since the international financial crisis broke out. Over the last decade, the international community have worked in concert to steer the global economy back to the track of recovery. Thanks to our efforts, the global economy is improving. Despite risks and uncertainties, global trade and investment are picking up, people are more optimistic about the outlook of financial markets, and confidence is growing in all sectors.
Development is a journey with no end, but with one new departure point after another. An ancient Chinese philosopher once observed, "We should focus our mind on the future, not the past." We live in a fast changing world, and the global economy is undergoing more profound changes. We must therefore closely follow the trend of the global economy, identify its underlying dynamics, keep to the right direction, and, on that basis, take bold action.
-- We are seeing a profound change in growth drivers. Countries are turning to reform and innovation to meet challenges and achieve growth. The potential of structural reforms is being unlocked and its positive impact of boosting growth of various countries has become more evident. A new round of technological and industrial revolutions is gaining momentum. Digital economy and sharing economy have registered rapid growth. New industries as well as new forms and models of business are flourishing. As a result, new growth drivers are being created.
-- We are seeing a profound change in the model of global growth. As time advances, development has taken on profoundly richer implications. The vision of innovative, coordinated, green and open development for all is gaining increasing public support. To achieve more comprehensive, higher quality and more sustainable development has become the shared goal of the international community. To implement the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and adapt to climate change and other challenges of a global nature has become an important international consensus.
-- We are seeing a profound change in economic globalization. Over the last few decades, economic globalization has contributed greatly to global growth. Indeed, it has become an irreversible historical trend. Against the backdrop of evolving global developments, economic globalization faces new adjustments in both form and substance. In pursuing economic globalization, we should make it more open and inclusive, more balanced, more equitable and beneficial to all.
-- We are seeing a profound change in the system of global economic governance. The evolving global economic environment demands more from the system of global economic governance. We should uphold multilateralism, pursue shared growth through consultation and collaboration, forge closer partnerships, and build a community with a shared future for mankind. This, I believe, is what we should do in conducting global economic governance in a new era.
Ladies and Gentlemen,
Dear Friends,
Faced with the profound changes in the global economy, should we, the Asia-Pacific economies, lead reform and innovation, or just hesitate and proceed haltingly? Should we steer economic globalization, or dither and stall in the face of challenge? Should we jointly advance regional cooperation, or go our separate ways?
This is my answer: We must advance with the trend of times, live up to our responsibility and work together to deliver a bright future of development and prosperity for the Asia-Pacific.
First, we should continue to foster an open economy that benefits all. Openness brings progress, while self-seclusion leaves one behind. We the Asia-Pacific economies know this too well from our own development experience. We should put in place a regional cooperation framework that ensures consultation among equals, wide participation and shared benefits, build an open Asia-Pacific economy and promote trade and investment liberalization and facilitation. We should make economic globalization more open, inclusive and balanced so that it benefits different countries and people of different social groups. We should proactively adapt to the evolving international division of labor and actively reshape the global value chain so as to upgrade our economies and build up new strengths. We should support the multilateral trading regime and practice open regionalism to make developing members benefit more from international trade and investment.
The building of a free trade area of the Asia-Pacific (FTAAP) is the long-cherished dream of the business community in our region. It was in response to the call of the business community that APEC leaders, for the first time, initiated the FTAAP vision in Hanoi in 2006. In 2014, the FTAAP process was launched in Beijing. We should get into action, fully implement the Beijing Roadmap, move toward the FTAAP and provide an institutional underpinning for growing an open economy in the Asia-Pacific.
Second, we should continue to pursue innovation-driven development and create new drivers of growth. The current global economic recovery is, to a large extent, the result of cyclical factors, while the lack of self-generating driving forces remains a nagging problem. To avoid the risk of the global economy entering a "new mediocre", we must sustain growth through innovation.
The new round of technological and industrial revolutions is unfolding before us. Digital economy and sharing economy are surging worldwide, and breakthroughs have been made in new technologies such as artificial intelligence and quantum science. We in the Asia-Pacific cannot afford to be just onlookers. What we should do is to seize the opportunity, increase input in innovation, change the model of development and nurture new growth areas. We should promote structural reform, remove all institutional and systemic barriers to innovation and energize the market. We should implement the APEC Accord on Innovative Development, Economic Reform and Growth adopted in Beijing, deepen cooperation on the internet and digital economy and strive to be a global leader of innovative growth.
Third, we should continue to enhance connectivity and achieve interconnected development. Interconnected development is the best way to achieve mutual benefit and win-win outcome. We the Asia-Pacific economies are closely connected, and our interests are interlocked. Such an interconnected development will both open up new horizon for our own development, and create driving force for us all to achieve common development as partners. In 2014, the APEC Connectivity Blueprint was formulated. This Blueprint should guide our efforts to build a comprehensive, all-round and multi-tiered Asia-Pacific connectivity network. We should boost the real economy through the building of connectivity, break bottlenecks to development and unlock potentials. With these efforts, we can achieve coordinated and interconnected development.
In May this year, the Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation was successfully held in Beijing. The Belt and Road Initiative calls for joint contribution and it has a clear focus, which is to promote infrastructure construction and connectivity, strengthen coordination on economic policies, enhance complementarity of development strategies and boost interconnected development to achieve common prosperity. This initiative is from China, but it belongs to the world. It is rooted in history, but it is oriented toward the future. It focuses on the Asian, European and African continents, but it is open to all partners. I am confident that the launch of the Belt and Road Initiative will create a broader and more dynamic platform for Asia-Pacific cooperation.
Fourth, we should continue to make economic development more inclusive and deliver its benefits to our people. The current headwinds confronting economic globalization is mostly generated by the lack of inclusiveness in development. Hard work is still needed if we are to bring the benefits of development to countries across the globe and people across our society, and thus turn our vision into reality.
Over the past few years, we have actively explored ways to promote inclusive development and have built strong consensus about it. We should deepen regional economic integration, develop an open and inclusive market and strengthen the bond of shared interests. We should make inclusiveness and sharing a part of our development strategies, improve systems and institutions to uphold efficiency and fairness, and safeguard social equity and justice. We should invest more in education, medical care, employment and other areas that are important to people's livelihood, and address poverty and the widening gap between the rich and the poor. We should reach out to disadvantaged groups, improve business environment for micro, small and medium-sized enterprises, and enable the workforce to better adapt to industrial transformation, so that everyone will have his fair share of opportunity and benefits.
Ladies and Gentlemen,
Friends,
As an old Chinese saying goes, a commitment, once made, should be delivered. Boosting development in the Asia-Pacific requires real actions by all of us members. As the world's second largest economy, China knows fully well its responsibility. Over the past five years, we have taken proactive steps to adapt to, manage and steer the new normal of China's economy and deepened supply-side structural reform. As a result, China's economy has maintained steady performance, and we are pursuing better-quality, more efficient, fairer and more sustainable development. Over the past four years, China's economy has grown by 7.2% on the average annually, contributing over 30% of global growth. China is now a main driver powering global growth.
We have worked hard to remove systematical institutional barriers that impede development through comprehensive reform. As many as 360 major reform initiatives and more than 1,500 reform measures have been taken. Breakthroughs have been made in key areas, and general frameworks for reform have been put in place in major sectors. We have sped up efforts to build new institutions of the open economy and transform models of foreign trade and outbound investment to continue the shift from quantitative to qualitative improvement in trade.
We have advanced theoretical, practical, institutional, cultural and other explorations to unleash new impetus for growth. China has become a huge platform where all factors and players of innovation converge to make a real difference. From infrastructure to various economic sectors, from business models to ways of consumption, innovation is leading the way.
We have pursued a people-centered philosophy of development to make our development more inclusive and beneficial to all. Individual income has registered sustained growth, outpacing GDP growth for many years. Income gaps between urban and rural areas and between different regions have been narrowing, middle-income group expanding, and Gini coefficient dropping. More than 13 million new urban jobs have been created every year for four consecutive years. Significant advances have been made in pursuing green development, resulting in considerable reduction in the intensity of energy and resource consumption and marked improvement in the ecological environment.
To lift all the remaining poor people out of poverty is a solemn commitment made by the Chinese government to the people. It is uppermost in my mind, and I have spent more energy on poverty alleviation than anything else. Over the past five years, I have been to many poor areas in China to pin down the causes of poverty and address them in a targeted way. As a result, decisive progress has been made in the fight against poverty. Over the past five years, we have lifted more than 60 million people out of poverty. The poverty headcount ratio has declined, and per capita rural income in poor areas has maintained double-digit growth. This has not come easily, and we are proud of what we have achieved in poverty alleviation.
Ladies and Gentlemen,
Friends,
China's development is an evolving historical process. Last month, the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China was successfully convened in Beijing. Responding to our people's desire for a better life, the Congress formulated a guide to action and a development blueprint for China in the new era. It is envisaged that by 2020, China will turn itself into a moderately prosperous society in all respects, and by 2035, China will basically realize socialist modernization. By the middle of this century, China will become a great modern socialist country that is prosperous, strong, democratic, culturally-advanced, harmonious and beautiful. Under the leadership of the Communist Party of China, the Chinese people will embark on a new journey.
First, this is a new journey of deepening reform across the board and unleashing dynamism for development. To resolve difficulties and problems on the way forward, we must deepen all-round reform. We will focus more on solving problems, get rid of all outdated thinking and ideas and all institutional ailments and break through the blockades of vested interests to inspire creativity and vitality throughout society. We will develop a set of institutions that are well conceived, fully built, procedure based, and efficiently functioning and achieve modernization of China's system and capacity for governance. Next year, we will celebrate the 40th anniversary of China's launching of the reform and opening-up initiative. China's reform will cover more areas; and more and stronger steps will be taken in pursuing this endeavor.
Second, this is a new journey of moving with the times and exploring new model of development. China's economy is in a transition from a phase of rapid growth to a stage of high-quality development. We will be guided by a new development philosophy, put quality first, give priority to performance and develop a modernized economy. We will pursue supply-side structural reform as our main task, work hard to achieve better quality and higher efficiency performance, and create more robust growth through reform. We will raise total factor productivity and accelerate the building of an industrial system that promotes coordinated development of the real economy with technological innovation, modern finance, and a talent pool. We will endeavor to develop an economy with more effective market mechanisms, dynamic micro-entities, and sound macro-regulation. All these efforts will make China's economy more innovative and competitive. We will promote further integration of the internet, big data, and artificial intelligence with the real economy, and cultivate new drivers of growth in digital economy, sharing economy, clean energy and other areas. We will continue to explore new mechanisms and pathways for achieving coordinated development among regions, promote coordinated development of the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region, Yangtze Economic Belt, Xiongan New Area, and Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area, build world-class city clusters and foster new source of growth.
As China works hard to pursue innovation and higher quality of growth, new forms of business will keep emerging, more innovations will be used, and development of various regions in China will become more balanced. All this will create a more powerful and extensive impact, present more opportunities of cooperation and enable more countries to board the express train of China's development.
Third, this is a new journey toward greater integration with the world and an open economy of higher standards. China will not slow its steps in opening up itself. We will work together with other countries to create new drivers of common development through the launching of the Belt and Road Initiative. We will adopt policies to promote high-standard liberalization and facilitation of trade and investment. We will implement the system of pre-establishment national treatment plus a negative list across the board, significantly ease market access, further open the service sector, and protect the legitimate rights and interests of foreign investors. All businesses registered in China will be treated as equals. We will grant more powers to pilot free trade zones to conduct reform, and explore the opening of free trade ports. We will speed up negotiations with partner countries on the concluding of free trade agreements and investment treaties, advance the building of FTAAP, work for the speedy conclusion of RCEP negotiations, and endeavor to establish a global network of free trade areas.
In the next 15 years, China will have an even larger market and more comprehensive development. It is estimated that China will import US$24 trillion worth of goods, attract US$2 trillion inbound direct investment and make US$2 trillion of outbound investment. In November next year, China will hold the first China International Import Expo in Shanghai, which will provide a new platform for expanding cooperation in China's market among all parties.
Fourth, this is a new journey toward a better life for the people. To secure a better life for our people is what we aim to achieve in everything we do. We will ensure and improve living standards through development and meet people's ever-growing needs for a better life. We will continue to promote social fairness and justice to see that our people will always have a strong sense of gains, happiness, and security. We will continue to implement targeted poverty reduction and alleviation measures and ensure that by the year 2020, all rural residents living below the current poverty line are lifted out of poverty. Each and every one of the over 1.3 billion Chinese people should lead decent lives. No one will be left behind!
We will speed up institutional reform for ecological conservation, pursue green, low-carbon and sustainable development, and implement the strictest possible system for environmental protection. By 2035, there will be a fundamental improvement in the environment; the goal of building a Beautiful China will be basically attained. We will actively tackle climate change, and protect our common home for the sake of human survival. China's carbon dioxide emission is expected to peak around 2030, and we will make every effort for such emissions to reach the peak ahead of time. We will increase the share of non-fossil fuels in primary energy consumption to around 20% by 2030. Once we set a target, we will not stop our efforts until it is met!
Fifth, this is a new journey toward a new type of international relations and a community with a shared future for mankind. The dream of us Chinese is closely connected with the dreams of people of other countries. Our world is full of challenges and the road ahead will not be smooth. But we will not give up on our dream. We will double our efforts and work with all others to build an open, inclusive, clean, and beautiful world that enjoys durable peace, universal security, and common prosperity.
We Chinese believe that peace is most precious and that there should be harmony among all nations. We are committed to peaceful development and we will remain an anchor for peace and stability in the Asia-Pacific region and beyond. China will, guided by the principle of upholding justice while pursuing shared interests, actively develop global partnerships, expand the convergence of interests with other countries, and work to foster a new type of international relations featuring mutual respect, fairness, justice, and win-win cooperation. Acting on the principle of achieving shared growth through consultation and collaboration, we will get actively involved in reforming and developing the global governance system to make the international political and economic order more just and equitable.
Ladies and Gentlemen,
Dear Friends,
All of our people in the Asia-Pacific deserve peace, stability and prosperity; and all of us in the region should jointly deliver a bright future for the Asia-Pacific. Partnerships based on mutual trust, inclusiveness, cooperation and mutual benefit: This is what keeps our big Asia-Pacific family together and ensures the success of Asia-Pacific cooperation. Let us take solid steps to promote cooperation and usher in an even brighter future for the Asia-Pacific.
Thank you.
Chinese President Xi Jinping delivers a keynote speech at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) CEO Summit in Vietnam's central city of Da Nang on November 10, 2017. [Photo/Xinhua]
"Our region, the Asia-Pacific, has the biggest share of the global economy; and it is a major engine driving global growth."
- Chinese President Xi Jinping at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) CEO Summit in Da Nang, Vietnam, November 10, 2017
The following is the highlighted parts of the speech:
I. Global economy is undergoing more profound changes.
1. A profound change in growth drivers
2. A profound change in the model of global growth
3. A profound change in economic globalization
4. A profound change in the system of global economic governance
II. We must advance with the trend of times, live up to our responsibility and work together to deliver a bright future of development and prosperity for the Asia-Pacific.
1. Foster an open economy that benefits all
2. Pursue innovation-driven development and create new drivers of growth
3. Enhance connectivity and achieve interconnected development
4. Make economic development more inclusive and deliver its benefits to our people
III. The Chinese people will embark on a new journey under the leadership of the CPC.
1. Deepen reform across the board and unleashing dynamism for development
2. Move with the times and exploring new model of development
3. Greater integration with the world and an open economy of higher standards
4. A better life for the people
5. A new type of international relations and a community with a shared future for mankind
I've participated in a lot of two-year training programs, from my low-residency MFA at Bennington (which I began in June of 1997, more than twenty years ago -- how did that happen?!) to the Davenen Leadership Training Institute while I was in rabbinical school. But I've never taught in one -- until now.
Today I'm on my way to Malvern Retreat House, a retreat center outside of Philadelphia, where I'll be serving as faculty for the Academy for Spiritual Formation. Here's how their website describes the enterprise:
Since 1983, the Academy for Spiritual Formation has offered an environment for spiritually hungry pilgrims, whether lay or clergy, that combines academic learning with experience in spiritual disciplines and community. The Academy's commitment to an authentic spirituality promotes balance, inner peace and outer peace, holy living and justice living, God's shalom. Theologically the focus is Trinitarian, celebrating the Creator's blessing, delighting in the companionship of Christ and witnessing to the power of the Holy Spirit to transform lives, churches and the world.
This will be the second week of this cohort's journey together. In the mornings they'll be learning with Rev. Marjorie Thompson. In the afternoons I'll be teaching them about the psalms. Each of us will teach for an hour, and then the students will enter an hour of silence (primed with questions for reflection), and then we'll regroup for half an hour to work with whatever arose for them during that contemplative time. I'll also take part in the week's various prayer and meditation opportunities designed to help cultivate discernment as the participants continue on their journey of spiritual formation.
Each instructor had the opportunity to assign two books in advance. I assigned Miriyam Glazer's Psalms of the Jewish Liturgy and Rabbi Marcia Prager's The Path of Blessing (not about psalms per se, but an excellent introduction to the richness of Hebrew as a sacred language.) I'm looking forward to seeing how those books resonate for them, and what kinds of questions they open up. My hope is to open for them an authentic and devotional relationship with the psalms: without ignoring the substantial differences between our traditions, but without getting bogged down in them, either.
I'm looking deeply forward to learning with and from the students -- and to attending daily prayer in a tradition that's not my own. (One night I'll have the privilege of leading evening prayer, which puts me in mind of when I got to do something similar at Beyond Walls at Kenyon College a few years ago.) I'm fairly certain I will be the only Jew in attendance. I'm looking forward to experiencing how my own spiritual journey will be enriched by walking alongside this group of Christians for a week.
Reb Zalman z"l, the teacher of my teachers, spoke often of Deep Ecumenism -- not merely "interfaith dialogue," but connecting deeply with our siblings of other traditions. One metaphor he used is the image of light pouring through a stained glass window. In order to appreciate its beauty, one has to be inside the building. Just so with spiritual truth: in order to understand what trinitarian theology does for a Christian, I need to be willing to stand in their shoes, to feel as they feel -- without ceding my own spiritual authenticity as a Jew. My Jewishness need not be threatened or diminished by that. On the contrary, it can be enriched.
He taught that we need to transcend triumphalism (the belief that any tradition is "right" and therefore the others are wrong). Instead, we can draw on the wisdom of Rev. Matthew Fox, who speaks of "many wells, one river." We all draw living waters from our own wells, but the source of that water is the same underground river, the same source of flow. (It's that same flow that my hashpa'ah / spiritual direction training gives me tools to discern with, and cultivate in, those whom I serve in that capacity.) May I be a fitting conduit for that flow, so that I can bring openness and authenticity to the awesome task of this teaching.
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It is very easy for believers to become almost totally inwardly focused. I am not speaking about contemplative self-examination like mystics would engage in. Rather, what I speak of is individual Christians and their churches focusing inwardly in the sense that most time, energy, effort, creativity, and money is expended on internal needs or worse, internal wants. The local church really ought to lay hold of the idea that the church does not exist for itself.
First of all, the church belongs to Christ and exists to bring pleasure, honor, and glory to Him. Furthermore, the church exists not for those who are members, but rather for those who are not yet members.
The Resurrected Christs final instructions to us are recorded in Matthew 28 and Acts 1. He plainly tells us that we are to be actively seeking the lost, sharing the good news about forgiveness found in Christ, and teaching the new converts all that Christ commanded. Your church and my church, the local expressions of the world-wide church, made up of all who have trusted Christ, should be focused like a laser beam on those who are not yet members. Our decisions about where to worship, how to worship, when to worship, what activities to offer, how to spend money, what ministries to be involved in, etc. ought to be dictated by the most effective method to reach out to the lost, i.e. those who are not yet members. We ought to ignore the subtle yet strong urge to please ourselves. Sharing the gospel with the lost, denying ourselves, and cooperating with other believers is perhaps the best way to direct glory to God.
Acts 11:19-30 is a case study of this type of thinking by the believers in Phoenicia, Cyprus, and Syria. Antioch seemed to be near the center of this activity. This passage tells us that disciples of Christ were first called Christians at Antioch. This indicates that we ought to carefully examine this passage looking for characteristics of Christians. Why else would that fact be recorded here or anywhere in the Bible for that matter? Believers from several locations, obviously in several different local churches are shown to be a virtual beehive of activity. They were actively involved in sharing the gospel with both Jews and Gentiles. Apparently those who were well suited to reach Jews shared with Jews and others who were well suited to share with Gentiles shared with Gentiles. Large numbers believed and turned to the Lord. The Christians in these local churches then turned their attention to teaching and training these new converts. They even found a little time to encourage each other to stay true to the Lord. When they found out about a famine that was about to hit Judea, they took up a collection and delivered it to their brothers and sisters in Christ.
It seems to me that we can learn a lot from Acts 11:19-30. The church is not a country club. Country clubs exist for the pleasure and comfort of its members. Churches exist to direct glory to God by refusing to focus on our own needs/wants, and instead cooperating with others in seeking out the lost, sharing the gospel, teaching new converts all that Christ commanded, encouraging others, and helping to meet the needs of our brothers and sisters regardless of their location. Everyone who has been adopted into Gods family automatically becomes a brother or sister to every other believer, no matter where they live. The church exists to proclaim the glory of God by inviting others in and not to satisfy me.
HA NOI The benchmark VN-Index is heading to the 870-point landmark this week with the support of large-cap stocks experts have predicted, but cautioned a likely correction after a long rally.
On the HCM Stock Exchange, the VN-Index expanded 2.9 per cent last week, closing Friday at 868.21 points. This is the sixth straight week of gains for the VN-Index with cumulative growth of 8.2 per cent since October 2.
Liquidity hit a record high since the establishment of the southern bourse with an average of 195.4 million shares worth over VN8.5 trillion (US$374.5 million) being traded per session.
However, like what happened in the previous weeks, trading focused on large-cap stocks, especially newly-listed Vincom Retail (VRE) and dairy giant Vinamilk (VNM) last week.
Vincom Retail debuted over 1.9 million shares on the HCM Stock Exchange on November 6. With a gain of nearly 27 per cent in the first trading week, the company became the seventh largest company, valued at VN82.4 trillion ($3.63 billion).
Trading on this stock mainly happened through put-through (negotiated) transactions. On November 7 alone, foreign traders bought nearly 410 million VRE shares worth more than VN16.6 trillion while selling 286.8 million shares worth VN10.9 trillion.
According to market analysts, VRE may be the new factor helping the VN-Index continue its gains in the coming trading weeks.
Meanwhile, its parent company VinGroup (VIC) also increased for four consecutive sessions, up 9.6 per cent for the week.
Dairy firm Vinamilk also had four growing sessions last week with gains of 12 per cent. Especially, it hit the ceiling price of 7 per cent growth on Friday thanks to news of the successful auction of 3.33 per cent of capital by the State Capital Investment Corporation on the same day.
Foreign traders paid over VN1 trillion to purchase a net 6.6 million Vinamilk shares on Friday.
According to Sai Gon-Ha Noi Securities JSC (SHS), money flows still concentrated mainly in the large-cap group, helping push up prices of these shares and thereby lifting the VN-Index to new peaks.
However, market divergence continued to happen, causing profit-seeking opportunities to shrink for a large number of investors, SHS analysts wrote in a note.
In general, the uptrend may continue over the next week but a cautious view in this period is necessary, they said, predicting the VN-Index can cross the psychological threshold of 870 points.
On the Ha Noi Stock Exchange, the HNX-Index also increased over 1.9 per cent last week, ending Friday at 106.37 points. Without the support of major blue chips, liquidity was modest with about 38 million shares worth VN465 billion being traded per session.
Oil stocks
Energy stocks had positive trades last week when major stocks including PV Gas (GAS), Petrolimex (PLX), PetroVietnam Drilling and Well Services (PVD) and PetroVietnam Technical Services (PVS) gained between 4.5-6.9 per cent each.
Their growth was mainly driven by continuous increases in global oil prices which extended to five consecutive weeks of gains amid fears of instability in the Middle East.
Two major commodities West Texas Intermediate (WTI) and Brent rose by more than 2 per cent last week.
According to observers, oil price hikes in recent weeks are due to efforts to cut production of major oil producers.
At the meeting of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) on November 30, producers are expected to extend their expiration agreement to March 2018. Meanwhile, US crude production is expected to rise to 9.2 million barrels a day this year and 10 million barrels a day next year.
Analysts predict positive development in the global oil market will likely support domestic oil stocks in the near future.
Besides the oil sector, banking and rubber stocks also increased substantially last week. Major stocks in these groups saw growth of 4-14 per cent. VNS
HA NOI President Tran ai Quang and President Donald Trump witnessed the signing of co-operation agreements worth a total of US$12 billion, mostly in aviation, petroleum and seaports between Viet Nam and the US after their talks in Ha Noi on Sunday.
The national carrier Vietnam Airlines and American aerospace manufacturer Pratt & Whitney signed a $1.5 billion contract of the selection of aircraft engines and support services for 20 Airbus A321NEO aircraft.
The two parties also signed a memorandum of understanding on maintenance contracts covering these engines.
The deal between Vietnam Airlines and Pratt & Whitney includes 44 Pure Power Geared Turbofan (GTF) engines in accordance with comprehensive terms of warranty, maintenance and repair of engines.
President and CEO of Vietnam Airlines Duong Tri Thanh said the signing ceremony marked a new step in the development of Vietnam Airlines A321 fleet.
Thanh said the engine the firm chose was highly fuel efficient and especially environmentally friendly, and comes with comprehensive repair arrangements which help the firm to increase operational efficiency and save on operating expenses.
I believe that the agreement between Vietnam Airlines and Pratt & Whitney will further reinforce the important economic, trade and investment partnership between Viet Nam and the US, said Thanh.
Speaking at the ceremony, senior vice president of sales, marketing and customer support at Pratt & Whitney, Rick Deurloo, said he was proud to celebrate this momentous occasion with Vietnam Airlines.
"Weve been powering Vietnam Airlines since the early 1990s when the airline received its first PW4000-powered 767. We look forward to continuing our strong relationship and long history with Vietnam Airlines, said Deurloo.
Since its first operation in 2016, the GTF engine has shown strong performance with a reduction of 16 per cent in fuel consumption, 50 per cent in emissions and 75 per cent noise compared with the current engine.
Vietnam Airlines A321 airplanes equipped by GTF engines are the new version of the A321 - the largest aircraft type in the Airbus A320 family.
The A321NEO will provide passengers with new standards that will optimise cabin space, increase the size of the exits and new design of passenger cabins. Vietnam Airlines expects to receive 20 A321NEOs in 2018 and 2019.
Pratt & Whitney, a subsidiary of United Technologies Corp USA established in 1925, is a global aerospace leader in the design, manufacture and services of aircraft engines and auxiliary power units. Today, Pratt & Whitneys large commercial engines are being used by 25 per cent of the worlds aircraft. Pratt & Whitneys maintenance, repair and overhaul services are carried out on a global basis.
On the same day, Vietjet and Pratt &Whitney also announced the selection of the GTF engine to power the budget airlines order of 10 new aircraft.
This deal, which is valued at $600 million at list prices, includes a 12-year EngineWise Fleet Management Program for Vietjets 10 new-age aircraft.
We are delighted to add 10 additional GTF-powered aircraft to our fleet. We look forward to the proven performance and environmental benefits that they deliver, inh Viet Phuong, Vietjets vice president said.
The PetroVietnam Gas Joint Stock Corporation (PV Gas) struck a MoU on the Son My natural liquefied petroleum gas warehouse with the AES Group Ltd. with a total value of $1.3 billion, and another MoU on co-operation with the Alaska Gasline Development Corporation in natural liquefied petroleum gas provision and upstream investment. Meanwhile, Hoang Huy and Navistar groups inked a MoU on trade of trucks.
Trumps first visit to Viet Nam, which ended on Sunday, was taking place at a time when the Viet Nam-US comprehensive partnership is progressing, especially after the US visit by Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc in May 2017.
Viet Nam and the US established diplomatic ties on July 12, 1995. Positive strides have been recorded in bilateral relations in all spheres since the countries established a comprehensive partnership in July 2013 on the basis of respecting each others territorial integrity, political regime and development path, for the sake of their own interests and for regional peace, stability and development co-operation. Since 2005, the US has become one of the leading trade partners of Viet nam, with two-way trade rising 20 percent in recent years. VNS
HA NOI Children and artists yesterday collaborated on an installation art piece at ong Kinh Nghia Thuc Square in Ha Nois Old Quarter to celebrate the success of the APEC Economic Leaders Week held in Viet Nam.
Titled "APEC and the Chamber of Secret No 21", the artwork includes 21 chairs made out of paperboard symbolizing the 21 members economies of APEC. Each chair has been decorated with images of the members flag and traditional culture or architecture.
The chairs are grouped together around a flame like international leaders gathering at an important conference to discuss international affairs. They are united in the same direction as the flame, as a symbol of the strength and solidarity of APEC, according to Mai Ly, initiator of the installation.
Each chair sits on an area of 1.6m by 1.2m, and has been decorated by children paint to present the wonderful culture of the member economies. For example, the Russian chair is painted with images of Red Square in Moscow.
The artwork is inspired by Dutch artist Vincent Van Goghs famous painting Chair, she said.
The installation, organised by Pop Art Green, an art education company, will be displayed in HCM City and a Nang. VNS
A NANG The Communist Party of Viet Nam (CPV) and the Vietnamese Government treasure the comprehensive strategic partnership with China, considering it a consistent policy, a strategic choice and a top priority in Viet Nams foreign policy, said Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc.
During a meeting with General Secretary of the Communist Party of China (CPC) and President Xi Jinping in a Nang on November 11, PM Phuc applauded the Chinese leaders State visit to Viet Nam and his attendance at the APEC Economic Leaders Meeting in the central city.
He expressed his appreciation at the progress made in bilateral ties, stressing that China remained the largest trade and tourism partner of Viet Nam while the country remains the largest trade partner of China in ASEAN.
Regarding investment, the PM said Viet Nam welcomes and would do its best to create favourable conditions for Chinese firms to carry out large-scale projects using advanced and eco-friendly technologies, particularly in infrastructure, processing industry, clean energy and high-tech agriculture.
He suggested the two sides implement the Two Corridors, One Belt framework and Belt and Road initiative, and improve infrastructure, particularly in border areas.
On trade, PM Phuc took this occasion to urge China to take effective measures to reduce the trade deficit with Viet Nam and import more Vietnamese goods such as agro-forestry-aquatic products, striving to foster stable and balanced trade and achieve the bilateral trade target of US$200 billion in 2025.
The government leader called for the effective implementation of cooperation projects in finance, agriculture, environment, transport and science-technology.
He proposed China provide more preferential credits for Viet Nam and make it easier for the country to get access to soft loans within bilateral and multilateral frameworks.
PM Phuc also suggested stepping up studies on rice cross-breeding adapted to drought and saline intrusion, jointly dealing with issues arising in fishing at sea, increasing coordination in the use, management and protection of water resources across the border as well as fostering cooperation in tourism, transport, friendship exchanges and mutually-beneficial ties among localities.
On maritime issues, PM Phuc said both sides need to settle disputes via peaceful measures in line with international law, including the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea 1982. He proposed both sides strictly implement the Agreement on Basic Principles guiding the Settlement of Issues at Sea between Viet Nam and China, efficiently manage disputes, avoid actions that expand and further complicate disputes, maintain peace and stability in the East Sea, and accelerate demarcation and cooperation for mutual development in disputed waters.
For his part, CPC General Secretary and President Xi Jinping affirmed that the Party, government and people of China attach the utmost importance to strengthening friendly neighbourliness and comprehensive cooperation with Viet Nam, saying the stable and healthy development of bilateral relations is in line with the interests of both nations and aspirations of their people.
The Chinese leader stressed the need to increase high-level meetings to discuss major issues in bilateral relations, promote strategic connectivity for development, facilitate trade and investment ties, foster cooperation in key fields and major projects, enhance people-to-people friendship exchanges, strictly implement common perceptions reached by senior leaders and maintain peace and security at sea for the overall complexion of the bilateral relationship.
He spoke highly of Viet Nams thorough preparations for and congratulated Viet Nam on successfully hosting the APEC Economic Leaders Meeting.
The Chinese leader also extended his sympathy to the CPV, government and localities that were recently hit by natural disasters and declared that the Chinese government will offer 10 million yuan ($1.5 million) in aid to Viet Nam to help with post-disaster recovery efforts. VNA
HA NOI President Tran ai Quang and President Donald Trump discussed measures to enhance relations between Viet Nam and the US in a more practical and effective manner during their talks in the capital city on November 12.
President Quang affirmed Vietnams consistent external policies of independence, self-reliance, and diversification and multilateralisation of international relations while proactively integrating into the world.
He hoped Viet Nam US relations will continue to grow based on respecting the respective independence, sovereignty, territorial integrity and political institutions of each side.
President Trump expressed his pleasure on visiting Viet Nam for the first time and said the US attaches great importance to the friendship and comprehensive cooperation with Viet Nam. The two Presidents agreed that the establishment of the bilateral comprehensive partnership in 2013 lays an important foundation for Viet Nam and the US to reinforce their ties.
Promoting economic, trade and investment ties will continue to be a focus of the bilateral comprehensive partnership in the future, contributing to growth and employment in both countries.
Viet Nam and the US agreed to increase high-level delegation exchanges and promote the efficiency of existing cooperation mechanisms while considering the establishment of new appropriate ones.
The two sides will step up cooperation in other fields such as the settlement of post-war consequences, people-to-people exchanges, science and technology, education and training, and security and defence.
President Quang thanked the US for its prompt assistance to Vietnamese flood victims and hoped the US will strengthen coordination with Viet Nam in humanitarian aid activities and natural disaster relief in the future.
Quang and Trump welcomed the two countries efforts to complete the detoxification project at a Nang airport and plan to soon implement similar ones at Bien Hoa airport and other locations. They affirmed that Viet Nam and the US share common benefits in maintaining peace, stability, cooperation and development as well as respect international law in the Asia-Pacific region, while agreeing to increase coordination at regional and international forums.
President Quang thanked the US for supporting Viet Nam in its successful hosting of the APEC Year 2017 and proposed the US push ahead with relations with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).
President Trump congratulated Viet Nam on the successful hosting of the APEC Economic Leaders Week 2017 and highly valued the role of Viet Nam as the host of the event.
He affirmed the US will continue supporting the central role of ASEAN and promote the strategic partnership with the bloc.
Regarding regional issues, the two sides stressed the need to maintain security, safety and freedom of navigation and aviation in the East Sea. They agreed to address disputes via peaceful means in accordance with international law, including the 1982 UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (1982 UNCLOS), while respecting diplomatic and legal processes, implementing fully and effectively the Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the East Sea (DOC), and soon signing a Code of Conduct (COC) in the East Sea.
After the talks, host and guest answered reporters queries at a joint press conference, issued joint statement on Viet Nam US relations, and witnessed the signing of economic cooperation agreements worth over US$12 billion. VNS
VN US Joint Statement
Viet Nam President Tran ai Quang and US President Donald Trump discussed measures to strengthen and expand the Comprehensive Partnership between the two countries based on mutual understanding, shared interests, and a common desire to promote peace, cooperation, prosperity and security in the Indo-Pacific.
Both leaders affirmed their support for enhancing people-to-people ties to strengthen mutual understanding, cooperation and friendship between the two peoples, including through professional and academic exchanges, the launch of the Fulbright University Viet Nam, $500,000 in the Viet Nam Education Foundation (VEF) alumni grants, and the arrival of the first ever Peace Corps volunteers in Viet Nam.
The United States will acquire the D30 site in Ha Noi for the construction of a new Embassy facility, in accordance with the laws of both countries.
President Tran ai Quang thanked the United States government for the transfer of a Hamilton-class Coast Guard cutter to help improve Viet Nams maritime security and law enforcement capabilities. Both leaders welcomed the plan for the first visit to a Vietnamese port by a United States aircraft carrier in 2018. They affirmed the 2018 2020 Plan of Action for US Viet Nam Defence Cooperation to implement the 2011 Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) on Advancing Bilateral Defence Cooperation and the 2015 Joint Vision Statement on Defence Relations.
Both leaders expressed grave concern over the DPRKs nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programs and tests, which violate United Nations Security Council resolutions and threaten international peace and security.
The two leaders underscored the strategic importance to the international community of free and open access to the South China Sea, the importance of unimpeded lawful commerce, and the need to respect freedom of navigation and over-flight, and other lawful uses of the sea. The two sides reiterated the stance on the South China Sea in the previous Viet Nam - US and ASEAN - US Joint statements, including their call on parties to refrain from escalatory actions, the militarisation of disputed features, and unlawful restrictions on freedom of the seas. VNS
HA NOI Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc met with US President Donald Trump in Ha Noi on November 12, during which the latter expressed his pleasure in meeting the Vietnamese Government leader again.
The two sides said they were satisfied with the development of bilateral relations after the US visit by PM Phuc in May this year, particularly in the fields of politics and diplomacy, economics and trade, security and defense, and settlement of post-war consequences.
Viet Nam and the US vowed to strengthen relations on the basis of respecting the respective independence, sovereignty, territorial integrity, and political systems of the two sides, for the benefits of both peoples as well as peace, stability, cooperation and development in the region and around the world.
The host and guest exchanged specific measures to promote the economic-trade-investment partnership, focusing on building a win-win cooperation framework, minimising trade-investment disputes, and implementing more effectively signed economic deals.
PM Phuc said Viet Nam has been improving its business environment and encouraging US companies to invest in the country. He called for stronger coordination to address issues of mutual concern based on promoting trade for mutual benefit.
He thanked the US for opening its market to Viet Nams star apples and proposed the US consider the import of Vietnamese mangoes and other fruits while simplifying import procedures of the catfish inspection programme and soon launching a working group on the recognition of Viet Nams market economy mechanism.
President Trump agreed to step up win-win economic-trade-investment cooperation with Viet Nam, and lauded Viet Nams effort in handling prioritised trade issues, such as the opening of its market to US farm produce, industrial products, and information-technology products and services.
While discussing the regional situation, the two sides agreed to address disputes in the East Sea via peaceful means and in line with international law, including the 1982 UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), while respecting diplomatic and legal processes, implementing fully and effectively the Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the East Sea (DOC), and soon signing a Code of Conduct (COC) in the East Sea.
They pledged to strengthen coordination at regional cooperation mechanisms, including the upcoming East Asia Summit in the Philippines.
President Trump affirmed that the US will push ahead with cooperation with Viet Nam to promote the bilateral comprehensive partnership in a more practical and effective manner.
On the afternoon of November 12, President Donald Trump left Ha Noi, wrapping up his State visit to Viet Nam at the invitation of President Tran ai Quang. VN
HA NOI National Assembly Chairwoman Nguyen Thi Kim Ngan held a meeting with General Secretary of the Communist Party of China (CPC) and State President Xi Jinping in Ha Noi on Sunday.
The top legislator briefed her guest on the Vietnamese parliaments priorities in making laws and overseeing the national matters, adding that the agency has made improvements toward effectiveness and democracy.
Ngan affirmed that Viet Nam values the development of stable and long-lasting relations with China, thus supporting the neighbouring countrys further growth, its increasingly active role and practical contributions to peace and prosperity in the region and the world.
She said amid complicated and fast changing global events, both nations want to sustain a peaceful and stable environment to reform, integrate, and build a socialist government based on the rule of law.
She urged both sides to implement common perceptions reached by their Party and State leaders to boost cooperation across sectors, laying a basis for bilateral ties to thrive.
She suggested the two countries maintain discussions and exchanges between their high-ranking leaders to promptly handle key diplomatic issues, reinforce political trust, and propel bilateral cooperation.
She added a need to direct relevant agencies to implement bilateral agreements and joint programmes and expand the engagements in line with each countrys development strategy for mutual benefits.
Controlling disagreements, stabilising marine situations, as well as increasing people-to-people exchanges, particularly among youths, intellectuals and border residents, are also key to healthy bilateral relations, Ngan stated.
Regarding cooperation between the two legislative bodies, Ngan suggested that both sides effectively implement agreements between Viet Nams NA and Chinas National Peoples Congress, while strengthening the exchange of experience, especially in law-making and supervising the governments in conducting signed collaboration deals.
Committees of the two parliaments should also foster the sharing of information and experience, she said, proposing that both sides support each other at regional and global parliamentarian forums.
For his part, Xi recalled his good impressions during his tour of Viet Nam in 2015. He affirmed that the Party and State of China always attach importance to developing the comprehensive strategic cooperative partnership with Viet Nam.
He stressed the need to further consolidate and promote the traditional friendship between the two countries, as well as increase the number of high-level exchanges and meetings.
The two sides should boost cooperation in practical areas, achieve balanced and sustainable trade, cooperate in infrastructure, and production, and build cross-border economic zones as well as major cooperation projects, while expanding people-to-people contacts and connectivity between youngsters and media agencies, he said.
Viet Nam and China should work together in controlling disagreements, he stressed.
The Chinese leader also highly valued the role and significance of bilateral legislative cooperation, describing it as an important factor in the comprehensive strategic cooperative partnership between the two countries.
He lauded the expanded delegation exchanges between the Chinese National Peoples Congress and the National Assembly of Viet Nam, saying these have contributed to the building the State of the rule of law in each country. Both sides have also coordinated in regional and world inter-parliamentarian forums, he noted.
Xi also expressed his hope that the two legislative bodies continue optimising their pioneering role in bolstering the friendship between the two peoples, thus deepening mutual understanding, trust and solidarity and providing a solid social foundation for the countries relations.
He said he welcomes the top Vietnamese legislator to pay an official visit to China soon. VNA